The Castle Doctrine (Daniel Faust Book 6) Read online

  “Run and hide. Seems that’s what everyone is telling me to do.”

  “It’s wise advice.”

  “It’s bullshit,” I said. “This guy’s aiming to wipe out the entire universe, one Earth at a time, and you think I’m gonna sit on my hands? I could help if you people would just let me. What about you? Aren’t you afraid he’s going to come after you next?”

  Carolyn snorted. She poured a second dollop of whiskey into her mug—more booze than coffee now—and drank it down.

  “I’m told he generally lets the Scribe live until the very end. It’s an ego thing. Who else is going to write the story of his great triumph?” Her gaze went distant, her voice wistful. “All those books, written by other mes. Scattered across countless dead worlds, lost and unread forever. I wonder if any of them were any good.”

  “So is there any upside to being the Thief? Do I get…special powers, or anything?”

  “You should be very good at stealing things.”

  “I was already good at stealing things.”

  “Well then,” she said, “I guess you got screwed, honey. Welcome to my life.”

  18.

  I left Carolyn Saunders to her cynicism and her Irish coffee. She’d told me what I needed to know: namely, that the Enemy had a good reason to see me dead, and he wasn’t going to stop coming after me. Fine. I had every intention of returning the favor. More than that, though, Carolyn had given me a lead. If the Enemy was after all of Howard Canton’s stage gear, I didn’t think being outbid in an auction would slow him down. That hat was sitting in David Gosselin’s private museum, just waiting to be stolen.

  His private museum, about fifteen minutes outside Las Vegas.

  I doubted getting my hands on some dead magician’s top hat would strike a crippling blow against the Enemy’s plans, but it was something. I needed to throw a punch, to get a little payback for burying me in Eisenberg and turning my life upside down. For now, I’d take what I could get. Besides, if the thing had any residual enchantment from Canton’s heyday, maybe I could figure out what was so important about it.

  So, I thought, time for a little heist. At least I’m back in my element.

  I turned on my phone as we landed at McCarran Airport. Three messages from Jennifer. That wasn’t good. Shuffling in lockstep off the crowded plane, I gave her a call.

  “Really could have used you at the Commission meeting, sugar.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “I had some business to follow up on. I just got back in town.”

  “Caitlin filled me in. Negotiations didn’t go so good, huh?”

  “That’s an understatement. She tell you about Koschei?”

  “I was a little hazy on that part,” she drawled. “That’s the same Koschei we fed to a wood chipper back in LA?”

  “Same guy. Apparently, he got better. What happened at the meeting?”

  She sighed. “Well, had our first walkout. Little Shawn and the Playboy Killers decided they’d be better off on their own.”

  “They flipping sides?”

  “Not saying they are, not saying they aren’t. I’d give it pretty good odds, though. Forget ’em, they’re punks. Meanwhile, my big plan to send everybody into hiding was a non-starter. Nobody wants to put their business on hold. Oh, and after insisting up and down that she have a seat at the table, your girl Emma didn’t even bother showing up.”

  “She’s not my girl, Jen.”

  “She’s Prince Sitri’s accountant. Remind me, which one of us is dating a demon? Face it, Danny, you’re pretty much hell’s ambassador to the Vegas underworld these days. Nobody else has an inside line like you do.”

  “Not a job I asked for.” I hustled down the access tunnel and emerged into the terminal. Slot machines rattled and jangled in thick banks down the middle of the concourse, welcoming me home as they sucked the last bits of spare change from tourists’ pockets. “Still, that’s not like her. Did you try calling?”

  “Sure, I tried.” She didn’t even pretend to be enthusiastic. “Got her voicemail.”

  “I’m gonna swing by her place, just to be safe. You want to grab dinner later, maybe?”

  “Already made plans. Sorry.”

  I didn’t need a translator to interpret her tone. I’d chosen chasing a lead on the Enemy over covering her back, and we both knew it. It didn’t matter that I’d only been delayed a few hours, didn’t matter that I’d sent Caitlin to watch over her. I wanted to get defensive, get angry, tell myself she’d have done the exact same thing if she were in my shoes. Thing was, I knew she wouldn’t have.

  I’d make it up to her. I jumped into my lime-green Spark, paid the equivalent of a college tuition to get out of airport parking, and headed for Summerlin. It was near sunset by the time I rolled up on Emma’s quiet little suburban tract, neat rows of tan stucco houses, manicured lawns, and minivans. Her freshly washed Caravan was parked in the driveway, sporting a “My Daughter is an Honor Student at Palo Verde High School” bumper sticker.

  The front door to the house hung open, swinging in the afternoon breeze, its twisted lock dangling from splintered wood.

  My wheels slammed against the curb. I threw the car into park and jumped out running, racing up the front walk and hitting the broken door shoulder first as I barreled into the living room. Details hit me like drumbeats, snapshots of information seared across my mind’s eye. Their glass table, shattered. A cell phone in a slim pearl case abandoned in the debris, screen flashing with an incoming call as it rattled in a bed of broken shards. A slow, heavy, rhythmic thumping sound up the hall, somewhere to my right.

  “Emma!” I shouted. “Melanie!”

  A high-pitched scream echoed through the house, muffled behind a closed door. The thumping grew louder, more fervent. I ran toward the sound, reckless, rounded the corner and froze. A dead man stood in the hall, hammering his raw fists on a closet door. He was dressed in ragged denim, with a baseball cap bearing the ace of spades perched on his pale brow. His head lolled back to bare the gaping, crusty hole where his throat had once been. A rasping, mournful hiss whistled from the dead man’s lungs as he slowly turned, fixing his sightless eyes on me.

  “Melanie,” I called out as I took a defensive step backward, “can you hear me?”

  “Dan! We’re in the closet—Mom’s hurt!”

  “Just—just stay right there.” I backpedaled as the zombie lurched toward me, his outstretched hands clawing at the air. “I’ll take care of it.”

  A fine notion, as soon as I figured out how. I’d seen Ecko’s creations in action back in Chicago. One had ripped off a man’s jaw as easily as a child snapping a wishbone. Another had punched a hole through its victim’s chest. These things were slug-slow and clumsy, but if they got their hands on you, it was all over. I jogged backward, keeping its attention on me and away from the battered closet door.

  The hall was too tight to maneuver. I backed up into the living room while the dead man shambled my way, ducking away from another clumsy lunge as he grabbed at me. My fingers dipped into my pocket, a pair of cards jumping to my fingertips, and my hand swept out to send them flying like razor-edged hornets. One card hit him in the shoulder, burying itself half an inch into necrotic skin and muscle, gouging a bloodless wound. The second card went straight for his left eye. It ruptured like a rotten egg, the card flopping as it dangled from his eye socket, watery goo running down his cheek. The thing didn’t even react. No pain, no hesitation, just the endless whistling moan from his ravaged throat.

  I looked around, frantic, searching for an edge. Then I found one: the long, cherry-red stick of a fireplace lighter, sitting on the living-room mantel. I darted around the dead man, my shoes crunching on shattered glass, and snatched it up. I held the lighter out before me like a magic wand, triumphantly pulled the trigger—and watched a tiny, quarter-inch flame spark at the tip. Not good enough.

  The creature groaned and lunged at me, stumbling forward, faster than I thought he could move. I threw myself to one sid
e, hit the carpet, and rolled, wincing as chips of broken glass dug into my shoulder. I came up in a crouch and jumped backward, his clutching hands flailing at my face.

  “Melanie,” I shouted, “do you have any hairspray?”

  “What?” she called back.

  “Hairspray! Now would be good, please!”

  I ran circles around the dead man, keeping him turning, stumbling, confused, as running feet pounded up the hallway. Melanie stood on the other side of the room, the creature between us. In the stress of the moment, she wasn’t even trying to pass for human. The teenager’s demon blood expressed itself with egg-yolk eyes and a web of veins, blue as her mop of neon-dyed hair, that spread across her cheeks like the pattern on a butterfly’s wings. She held up a slender black can of L’Oreal.

  “Like this?” she said.

  “Perfect, toss it!”

  The can sailed in an arc over the dead man’s head. I snatched it out of the air, aimed the can and the lighter, and pulled both triggers.

  The spray touched the dancing flame and erupted, billowing, a wave of heat that sucked the air from my lungs. My makeshift flamethrower blasted the creature dead-on and lit him up like a torch. He flailed wildly, staggering across the living room and leaving gouts of burning carpet with every thudding step, blindly careening into the wall. I kept the pressure on, hitting him with burst after burst, until he collapsed in a motionless heap. The can fell from my singed fingertips, and I stomped out a patch of smoldering carpet near my foot. The living room filled with gray smoke and the stench of rotten meat on a barbecue spit.

  Melanie darted into the kitchen, racing back with a fire extinguisher clutched in both hands. As the burning patches of carpet slowly spread, the flames greedy to grow, she washed the smoking body in a torrent of icy foam.

  “I’ve got this,” I said, taking the extinguisher from her. “Go get your mom.”

  I hoped I had this. I coughed into my shirtsleeve, feeling like a fist of smoke was squeezing my lungs as I battled the fire. The extinguisher squealed and kicked in my hands, white mist pushing back the blaze one inch at a time. As I put out the worst of it, smoke clearing to reveal a motionless and charred corpse, Melanie helped Emma hobble to the front door. Emma was limping, one arm around Melanie’s shoulders and the other dangling useless at her side, snapped in two places. Exposed, white bone glinted at her wrist, her hand encrusted with blood.

  “I’ll get her to the car,” Melanie said, but I waved a hand to stop her.

  “Can’t go outside like that.” The extinguisher kicked in my hand again, killing another patch of burning carpet.

  “What? Why?” She paused, catching a glimpse of her face in the mirror by the door. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Emma’s eyes were heavy-lidded, her skin pale. She rested her forehead on her daughter’s shoulder.

  “Deep breaths,” Emma said.

  Melanie closed her eyes. Deep breaths through her nose, out through her mouth, as the butterfly tattoo of veins slowly faded. I was almost done putting out the fire when the extinguisher rattled and died, kicking out a sad wisp of white mist. I tossed it aside, grabbed a cushion from the sofa, and beat out the last of the flames. The living room was a wasteland. Broken glass, charred carpet, a door-sized chunk of wall scorched black and the paint bubbling, and the gnarled corpse of a dead man. The smoky stench clung to everything, the air thick with an oily haze. I dropped the cushion, wiped a few specks of glass from my sleeve, and surveyed the damage.

  “Well,” Emma murmured, her voice slurring, “it was a lovely house. I guess we’re remodeling. Melanie, dear, I’ve lost a lot of blood. A hospital would be appropriate, I think.”

  We put her in the backseat of the Spark and I hit the gas. Summerlin Hospital Medical Center was five minutes away. I pulled up outside the ER, tires squealing, and Melanie ran in to get some help. A team of orderlies laid Emma on a rolling gurney and rushed her inside. As they wheeled her away, her eyelids slowly drifted shut.

  19.

  Hospital time is the dark twin to casino time. Both move at their own pace, untouched by the world outside the walls, playing tricks on you and skewing your vision. Hospital time runs slow. I watched the minutes tick by on the old clock in the waiting room, thick black hands under a plastic bubble. Then I’d look away, make small talk with Melanie, try to read a random crumpled magazine, only to find myself right back where I’d started. The minute hand was carved from stone, the hour hand a glacier.

  “He just seemed like a harmless old man,” Melanie told me, her voice a library whisper. “He came to the door and said his car broke down, asked if he could borrow a phone to call for help.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Old suit, probably a bow tie? Dark complexion, gray hair?”

  She nodded. “It took him a second when I gave him my phone. I thought maybe he didn’t know how to use one. Then I realized he was looking at my name. ‘The Loomis family,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to be sure I had the right house.’ And that’s when…that’s when…”

  Her bottom lip curled. Her eyes shifted, catching the harsh fluorescent lights, her irises starting to yellow and blur. I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “You don’t have to talk about it now.”

  We waited in silence under the motionless hands of the clock.

  A young doctor in emerald scrubs emerged through a swinging door. Melanie jumped to her feet, and I was right behind her.

  “She’s going to be all right,” he said. “It was touch and go there for a bit—she lost a lot of blood—but your mom is one hell of a fighter.”

  Melanie let out her held breath, her clenched shoulders relaxing as she gasped a sigh of relief. I felt relieved, too, but for a different reason. Emma was a hijacker, the kind of demon that could only get a foothold in our world by possessing a human body. I didn’t have a good history with hijackers. Emma was a rare exception, since the body she’d commandeered was brain-dead: an heiress on life support who made a “miraculous recovery.” If she’d been forced to abandon her damaged host and jump into an unwilling victim, our generally amiable relationship would have gotten…complicated.

  “We need to keep her overnight,” the doctor told us, “maybe a couple of days, and she’ll need physical therapy for her arm. Recovery’s not going to be easy, but I think she’ll eventually get her full range of motion back. She’s awake. Would you like to see her?”

  He ushered us into a private room that smelled like faded flowers and rubbing alcohol. Emma’s arm was in a suspended cast, along with one leg, her chest wrapped in bandages. Monitors beeped softly around her bed, her broken body nestled in a web of tubes and wires. Emma’s head lolled on the stiff, starch-white pillow, her good hand curled around the control button for her morphine drip. Her sleepy eyes lit up when she saw her daughter.

  The doctor left us alone, and I shut the door behind him.

  “I am so proud of you,” Emma told Melanie.

  “I was useless back there,” Melanie said.

  “You were not. You did everything right.” She looked my way. “Hilarious, the surprise on that bastard’s face. He thought he was facing a couple of humans. Then his dead puppet hit me from behind. I got a good lick in, though. Melanie, did you bring it?”

  She nodded and handed me a folded square of tissue paper. I gently opened it to unveil the treasure inside. It was a tiny amulet, carved to resemble a falcon with unfurled wings, painted blue and glazed like ceramic pottery. Egyptian hieroglyphs adorned the back of the amulet, glittering with latent magic. Scraps of withered sinew, like rotted beef jerky, clung to the stone.

  “The old man tried to grab Melanie,” Emma said. “When I shoved him back, I felt these strange lumps under his chest. So I grabbed one, twisted, and tore. You should have heard him scream. He fell back, but his puppet kept coming, and that’s when it latched onto my arm. Melanie dragged me into the hall closet before it could finish the job.”

&nbs
p; “And he just…left?” I asked.

  “Oh, he was furious. I heard in the hallway, making a phone call to ‘Mr. Mancuso.’”

  “Angelo Mancuso?”

  Emma gave a tired shrug. “Who else? He said that Mancuso should have warned him what he was up against, that he needed special ritual items to ‘permanently deal with someone like me,’ and he would have brought them if he’d known. I think that was the plan: leaving his zombie to keep us penned in while he ran and fetched his gear. From the tone of his voice on the other end, I don’t think Angelo had any idea what he was talking about.”

  I paced the room, making the connections, putting it all together. Only one answer fit.

  “Damien Ecko is working for the Outfit,” I said aloud. I brought them up to speed fast, sketching out the broad strokes of my first encounter with Ecko in Chicago, from the heist at his jewelry store to the frame job that left a bounty from two infernal courts on his head.

  “So that’s the human Caitlin was talking about,” Emma said. “Apparently she and Royce have a bet going on.”

  “Ecko hooking up with Angelo makes sense. Damien wants me dead in the worst way, but he can’t find me. The Outfit probably offered him a trade: he helps with their hit list, wiping out the New Commission one member at a time, and they help track me down. They’re a double threat, but you just gave us the edge we need.”

  “What’s that?”

  I held up the amulet. “Like attracts like. And this has been buried under Ecko’s skin—literally a part of him—for about thirty-six hundred years.”

  “You’re going to use a tracking spell,” Emma said, reading my mind.

  “You got it. Finding him is going to be a piece of cake—and wherever he’s holed up, Angelo and the rest of his goons are probably right there with him. We can wipe them all out at the same time.”