The Castle Doctrine (Daniel Faust Book 6) Read online

  She’d bought me time to get back on my feet, just as Corman burst into the living room with an overstuffed shoe box in his arms. Bentley scurried to meet him, tossing the lid to the floor and rummaging through the box while I played matador with the zombie. I waved the hat in the creature’s face, keeping it focused on me, leading it in a slow, deadly dance around the room.

  Bentley held up a glass vial, filled with brick dust and something that sparkled like shavings of silver under a hot desert sun. He crouched down beside the wall, tapping out the powder and drawing a four-foot line on the carpet.

  “A derivative of marrowgoode powder, mixed with Mama Margaux’s spirit-warding dust,” he murmured. “Potent against spirits and lower forms of the infernal, and should have the same effect on the risen dead, at least from an alchemical standpoint, assuming Paracelsus’s Constant is correct and Heinrich Agrippa wasn’t a complete quack—”

  I ducked under a frantic swing, broken fingernails jabbing for my eyes. “Bentley! A little help here, please?”

  “Right, right—try to lead it over the line of dust!”

  I jogged sideways, waving the hat, taunting the dead woman. She lunged toward me—and stopped short at the line of dust, as if she’d run headlong into an invisible wall. The creature’s face twisted in confusion.

  Behind it, Melanie groaned as she pushed herself up on her elbows. Unable to get at me, the zombie spun and focused its attention on fresh prey.

  33.

  Melanie was still stunned from the hit and the fall, her hair sticky, matted, a trickle of blood leaking down her neck. She didn’t see the dead woman shambling her way. She wasn’t going to get up in time.

  I ran between her and the zombie, grabbing Melanie by the shoulder and hoisting her to her feet. I felt the dead woman’s fetid breath on the back of my neck, heard her rattling wheeze as she reached for me—

  —and the thing went down in a heap of snapping bones as Corman tackled it head-on, throwing himself into the fight. He hit the floor alongside it, rolling clear and scrambling on hands and knees to get away as the infuriated creature thrashed and kicked. Corman gasped, getting up on one knee, both hands clutching the small of his back.

  Bentley crouched over the carpet a few feet away, intent on his work as he drew a second line in glittering dust. “Almost done!” he shouted.

  I waved the hat to catch the dead woman’s attention, bringing her toward me again, while Melanie darted over to help Corman back to his feet.

  “Okay,” Bentley told me, “bring her back over this way. Careful! Don’t scuff the lines with your shoes.”

  Easier said than done. I backpedaled as fast as I could, neck craned to watch the floor behind me. Bentley had drawn a corral of dust, extending from one wall, then making a hard turn, three sides of a box. I led the zombie into the heart of the trap. She bumped the invisible wall again and turned, just as Bentley poured out the final line behind her and sealed her in.

  The dead woman staggered, bumping forward, stumbling back, arms scrabbling at a barrier she couldn’t touch. Penned in, at least for the moment. I raced over to Corman and Melanie.

  “Are you two okay?”

  Melanie winced, pressing her fingers to the back of her head. They came away wet. “I think I’m all right. It’s just bleeding a lot.”

  “We have a first aid kit in the bathroom.” Bentley gently took her by the shoulder and steered her past the flailing zombie, up the hall. Corman clutched his hands against the small of his back, taking deep breaths with his eyes squeezed shut.

  “Take it from me, kiddo, don’t get old. Getting old sucks.”

  “Hell of a tackle, though.”

  “Yeah, and I’m gonna be paying for it. My back ain’t as strong as it used to be.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  He nodded. “Bring me the heating pad from the hall closet. And my beer.”

  I got Corman more or less comfortable on the couch, but my thoughts were racing, miles away. How had Ecko found this place? He was getting his intel from the Outfit, and they didn’t know about Bentley and Corman, so how did he? Exhausted as I was, fixing this mess wouldn’t wait—and that started with finding a permanent solution for the furious dead woman trapped in the living room.

  “I’m gonna run downstairs,” I told Corman. “Need to see if the coast is clear. We’ve gotta get the three of you someplace safe for a few days. Just until I deal with Ecko.”

  I jogged down the stairs. The street-side door at the bottom had suffered the same fate as the one above. Ecko’s pet had smashed her way through, littering the foyer with shards of broken glass. I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk, tasting something funny on the night air. The scent of frankincense, and some exotic herbal oil.

  A shadow lunged from the alley, and withered hands clamped down on my throat with crushing strength. An autopsy patient in a blood-smeared hospital gown, his cranium sawed open. Black flies nestled on the exposed, rotten gray meat of his brain, laying their eggs. The fingers clenched, cutting off my air, dropping me to my knees as scarlet flecks flooded my blurring vision. My throat strained. I felt the cartilage about to buckle like a cardboard tube under the dead man’s merciless grip.

  Then a dark hand landed on his shoulder and a voice barked, “Baron says sit.”

  Something gusted past me, like a ghost on gossamer wings, and the walking corpse crumpled lifeless to the pavement.

  I coughed, wheezing, rubbing my sore throat. Mama Margaux—a pillbox cap perched on her cornrows, the neckline of her midnight-blue dress laden with copper and pewter amulets—held out a hand and pulled me to my feet.

  “That evil man’s in town, leadin’ a parade of the dead, and I’m not the first person you call?” She shook her head at me. “Ou se yon moun sot.”

  I didn’t speak Creole, but the tone of her voice was all the translation I needed. Once I caught my breath, I spread my hands helplessly.

  “I’ve…I mean…it’s been a really busy couple of days.”

  Margaux crossed her arms and stared me down.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Look, just…hold the door, or what’s left of it, okay? Can’t leave this thing out on the street.”

  I got my arms under the corpse’s shoulders, trying to ignore the stench of rot, the flies that swarmed my face, and lugged the dead weight into the vestibule one aching foot at a time.

  “There’s another one in the apartment,” I told her. “It’s penned in, but still moving.”

  “On it,” she said, sauntering up the stairs ahead of me.

  Once the dead woman had been laid to her final rest, left in her pen of dust where she’d fallen, we all clustered in the tiny kitchen nook while Bentley put on a pot of coffee.

  “One thing I don’t get,” I said after bringing Margaux up to speed. “How did you know Damien Ecko was in town?”

  She looked at me like I’d asked why water is wet.

  “The loa told me. That man is an abomination. The things he does are an abomination. They want him”—she snapped her fingers twice, whipping her hand back and forth—“gone. Just haven’t been able to find him, not for lack of trying.”

  “He’s got a spell for that. His ingredients are running out, though. He’ll have to surface soon. Surface or leave town, and I don’t think that’s an option.”

  “Thought as much. So then I tried my hand at finding his creations. They give off a…a stench. They must be invisible at his side. Can’t find the nest. But when he sends them out on errands, they light up the city if you’ve got the nose to sniff ’em out.”

  “Glad you did,” I said. “What’s bothering me is that he found this place. I don’t know how he pulled it off.”

  Margaux knitted her brows. “You said you had something of his?”

  I handed her the blue-glazed amulet, wrapped up tight. She unfolded the tissue and scowled at the stone Emma had torn from Ecko’s chest.

  “You were gonna track him with this?” />
  “That was the idea. It’s been buried under his skin for a few thousand years. It’s basically part of his body. You can’t ask for a better sympathetic link. Like attracts like.”

  She handed it back to me.

  “Uh-huh. Which is how he found you. You said it yourself; this is a part of his body. He’s using that link. Wherever you carry that little stone, he knows.”

  “So he followed me here, put two and two together, and put a target around your necks.” I slumped back against the kitchen counter. “This was my fault. Damn. I’m sorry.”

  “Nonsense,” Bentley said. “I suggested you try it, and the risk didn’t even occur to me. I think we can share the blame evenly.”

  Melanie curled her bottom lip. She stared at the amulet like it was radioactive.

  “And besides, if my mom hadn’t given it to you, if he’d followed her to that hospital room…” She left the rest unspoken.

  I tapped my fingernail against the stone falcon’s wing.

  “All right. So now we know. And that’s good, because Ecko doesn’t know we know.”

  Bentley gave me a worried look. “You’re not throwing it away?”

  “Hell no. As long as I’m not going someplace we can’t let Ecko know about, like the Tiger’s Garden or Caitlin’s penthouse, this sucker is staying right in my pocket. I want him to think I’m oblivious, and he can track me down whenever he wants.”

  “Risky play,” Corman said.

  “Risky, but this is how we’ll draw that bastard out of hiding. There’s one other thing I need.” I looked Bentley’s way. “I have to borrow the Black Eye.”

  “That…wretched thing is downstairs, in storage. I’ll dig it out for you.”

  “Thanks. Ecko’s got a way to go invisible whenever he wants and slip under the radar. Now I will, too. You three need to get clear for a while. Corman, do you still have that timeshare in Orlando?”

  “Unfortunately,” he grumbled, shooting a look at Bentley.

  “Well, go soak up the Florida sun for a few days. Visit Epcot Center or something. I’ll call you as soon as Ecko’s been dealt with. Melanie, you need to go be with your mom and her people right now. They’ll be able to keep you safe until this blows over.”

  “I’d really, really rather not.”

  “I know,” I told her. “But she’s worried about you, and she loves you. Look at it this way: making your own choices is only half of what it means to be an adult.”

  She gave me a dubious look. “What’s the other half?”

  “Doing stupid shit you hate. For some people, it’s putting up with a crappy nine-to-five job. For others, it’s going head-on against a three-thousand-year-old necromancer who mummified himself. For you, it’s putting up with your mom’s obnoxious coworkers for a couple of days.”

  “When you put it that way,” she said.

  “Right? Bentley and Corman can drop you off on their way to the airport. Obviously I can’t follow either of you, since I’ve got Ecko breathing down the back of my neck. Shoot me a text when you get where you’re going, so I know you’re safe.”

  Bentley handed Melanie a deck of cards.

  “Besides,” he told her, “you need time to practice that palming technique. Get it perfect, and I promise—next time we meet, I’ll teach you the oil-and-water routine.”

  Her face lit up, and she clutched the deck like a talisman.

  “What about my part?” Margaux asked.

  “You? You’re my secret weapon, my ace in the hole. Which means I need to stay far, far away from you until it’s go time, so Ecko can’t use me to hunt you down. Just wait for my call.”

  I didn’t like isolating myself from my family and friends, but it was the safest choice. Well, safest for everyone but me. I thought about Nicky and Paolo, both of them languishing in different hospital rooms, one a victim of the Outfit’s greed and another the victim of Ecko’s vengeance. I wanted to check in on them, but we were well past visiting hours and the lump of blue stone in my pocket felt like a lead weight against my hip. Anywhere I went from this point forward, Ecko could—and would—be following. I couldn’t expose anyone else to that kind of danger.

  But soon he’d run out of cambion blood. And with his tarnished soul bared to the winds of magic, and mine hidden under the shroud of the Black Eye, it would be time to turn the tables.

  34.

  I spent the night in a cheap room at the Karnak, halfway up the black-glass pyramid. Ecko knew I did, too, thanks to the blue amulet snug in its nest of tissue on the nightstand. When I finally slept, I slept light. It wasn’t like he could bring a platoon of zombies into a casino—at least, I didn’t think he was that crazy—but nothing was stopping him from paying me a personal visit.

  Calculated risk. I figured he wanted to hurt me more than he wanted to kill me, at least for now. And since that meant going after the people I cared about, I had to gamble that he’d hold back, bide his time until I gave him another target.

  I was on the move before dawn. Out on the highway and rolling south, toward the outskirts of Vegas. I pulled over a few blocks before my destination and walked the rest of the way, leaving Ecko’s amulet in the car.

  The end of the line was the Sunset Garage, standing in the shadow of an overpass. Dead neon rimmed the pillar-mounted sign out front, the faded plastic showing a vintage Studebaker under a glowing sun. Down on the street, where the air smelled like diesel and dust, a pair of mastiffs in spiked collars snarled and hurled themselves against a barbed-wire fence.

  Inside the open garage bay, a few of Winslow’s Blood Eagles performed surgery on the open belly of a Harley Fat Boy, power tools whining over the tinny guitar rock that blared from a radio on a cluttered shelf. Winslow looked over from a machine lathe and gave me a tired wave.

  “Early bird gets the best worms,” he told me. I followed him to a tarp in the corner of the garage. He hauled it aside, then tugged a rope tied to a ring in the floor. A panel groaned back to expose a ladder that plunged down into the dark below.

  Winslow’s real business was in the cellar. He clicked on an industrial light, the fat bulb dangling in an orange plastic cage, and shed a hot glow across the wire racks that ringed the concrete walls. It was a gunslinger’s paradise, everything from six-shooters to sleek assault rifles modified for full-auto rock and roll. Winslow spread his hands wide, inviting me to browse.

  “You in the mood for an expert opinion?” he asked me.

  “Always.”

  “Well, my first opinion is, you’re a goddamn lunatic.”

  “Duly noted,” I said.

  “But if you’re really gonna walk onto Little Shawn’s home turf and take him out, I’m thinking you wanna go with the shock-and-awe approach. Hit the room loud and nasty, get the job done before they even see you coming, and leave any survivors pissing their pants.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I looked to one empty corner of the cellar. “Don’t suppose you’ve still got that old flamethrower lying around?”

  Winslow gave me an odd look. “Funny, I had that damn thing forever, just collecting dust. Sold it yesterday, to a brand-new client. Weird chick.”

  A sneaking suspicion tugged at the back of my brain. A curious itch I couldn’t help but scratch.

  “This ‘weird chick,’ she wasn’t a blonde with short, mussy hair, was she? Wearing a black suit and a man’s necktie?”

  “Yeah,” Winslow said. “How’d you know?”

  So Harmony Black was in town. And now she had a Vietnam-era backpack flamethrower. Great.

  “Just a hunch. You know she’s a federal agent, right?”

  He snorted. “Not yesterday, she wasn’t. She wasn’t looking to put anybody under arrest. Underground, more like.”

  Nothing to do with me, I told myself, using it as a mantra to push my worries aside. I hoped I was right. Studying the weapons kept my mind busy, my thoughts drifting back to Damien Ecko. I remembered Halima’s warning, telling me there was only one sure way to bring
the necromancer down. “Got a funny question for you.”

  “Pardon me if I don’t laugh,” Winslow said. “I’ve got a notoriously deficient sense of humor. Comes from a bad childhood.”

  “If I needed to blow up a chunk of stone, roughly the size of a human heart, and I was probably only going to have time to get a single shot off…you got anything that can handle that?”

  “A chunk of stone the size of a human heart,” he echoed. “No, I’m not even gonna ask. But sure, easy. Got a fifty cal that’ll put a fist-sized hole in an up-armored engine block, if you’re a good enough shot. Stone ain’t no thing at all. Can you do it at range?”

  I shook my head. “I wish, but I have a feeling this is going to be up close and personal.”

  He thought about it, rubbing the stubble on his weathered cheeks, then nodded.

  “I know just what you need. An oldie but a goodie.”

  The weapon he chose, gingerly taking it down from the rack and passing it over to me, looked like something a stagecoach guard would tote in an old western. A sawed-off shotgun, its varnished maple stock inlaid with filigreed brass. Two hammers, two side-by-side triggers, and two fat barrels that looked big enough and deep enough to swallow the world.

  “This here’s Bessie,” Winslow said. “Now, Bessie’s not much of a charmer, but she’s a loud little lady with two very strong opinions. Opinions which, when expressed at close range, will end just about any argument.”

  I curled my fingers around the shotgun’s grip, feeling its weight, cradling it in both hands.

  “I think I’m in love,” I said. “Is she single?”

  “Jenny said she’s paying for whatever you want, so if you like her, you’re Bessie’s new steady beau.”

  There’s something to be said for the march of progress. Back when Ecko transformed himself into a monster, gunpowder hadn’t been invented yet, and bows and arrows wouldn’t have put much of a chip in his heart of stone. The modern world brought new solutions to old problems.