17.
Staying mobile was my best hope. A janitor’s broom closet beckoned to me, offering the temptation of a hiding place, but that was a sucker bet: sooner or later, either Fleiss or Elmer or his “night crew” would find me and drag me out of hiding, and then I’d be finished. Once Caitlin and my reinforcements rolled in I might have a fighting chance at living through this. Until then, nothing mattered but running down the clock.
A lonely doorway opened onto a stairwell. It rose up like a fat chimney along the back of the building, the concrete steps lined with black rubber runners. I bounded up two at a time, grabbing the iron rail with one hand and my phone with the other, thumbing the speed-dial.
“I’m with Jennifer,” Caitlin said. “We’re five minutes out. She rounded up a number of her Calles friends, and most of Winslow’s associates just rendezvoused with us on the road. They’re a bit inebriated, and eager for a fight.”
“They’re going to get one. Warn everybody: this necromancer goes in for some extreme body modification. His crew is faster and stronger than they look.”
“Noted. Where are you?”
“On the move.”
I rounded the next landing. A long, narrow window reinforced with chicken wire looked out over the company lot. Shapes bounded across the puddles of stark yellow light on all fours, more animal than man, the night crew hunting for prey.
“Gonna try the roof,” I told her. “I’m hoping they won’t think to look for me up there.”
I hung up without telling her the second part of my plan. If they did find me, I wasn’t going to let Fleiss take me alive. A three-story drop onto the asphalt was a better way to go than anything she had planned for me.
I burst out onto a flat rooftop covered in fine white gravel, stumbling to a stop, and put my hands on my knees as I doubled over and took deep breaths. My heart pounded a staccato rhythm against my ribs. Blood roared in my ears louder than the steady hum of the boxy air-conditioning units that studded the roof.
I could see the lights of the Strip from here. So bright, offering a world of normality and safety so close I could almost reach out and touch it. I could be sitting in a casino bar right now, nursing a Jack and Coke, or out strolling with the tourist crowds and enjoying the night air.
But I was here, trapped on a roof, neck-deep in a world of monsters, torture, and death.
“The fuck am I doing with my life?” I breathed.
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. I had kicked off the lethargy, the self-doubt, the ennui that kept me couch-surfing and doing nothing for months on end. That was a victory. But what was I doing with it? Assuming I survived to see daylight, was this really how I wanted to spend the rest of my life? Living by the gun, down in the nightmare underbelly of the world?
Was I capable of doing anything else?
A swarm of headlights flared on the access road, coming in hot. Philosophy class was over. I crouched down low and got as close to the rooftop’s edge as I dared.
A dirt-encrusted semi truck crashed the gate at sixty miles an hour, sending twisted metal flying in a shower of sparks. A pair of minivans in Calles brown and yellow—gunships, with the side doors yawning open so shooters could lean out and make the drive-by—were right on its tail, followed by a dozen Harleys. Their engines revved in a full-throated diesel shout.
The night crew answered with an air-splitting chorus of screeches. They raced from the shadows, swarming like ants, and my reinforcements answered with crackling gunfire. The darkness lit up with muzzle flashes like a fireworks show on the Fourth of July.
The motorcycles never stopped moving, roaring as they wheeled around and charged up and down the asphalt. One of Elmer’s creations pounced from the darkness. He landed on a rider’s back and dragged him down. The bike spun, out of control and crashing into a loading dock wall, while the feral creature pinned the rider down and ripped out his throat with its teeth. It raised its head to howl in a bloody-mouthed victory—and another biker streaked by, giving it both barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. The creature flipped onto its back, kicking like a dying bug, its headless neck ending in a stump of broken spine.
I caught a glimmer of white leather under the lamplight. It was Caitlin, her battle coat flaring out behind her as she darted into the building. Jennifer was out front with her crew; a razor blade glinted between her teeth. Her chromed .357 bucked in her hand, taking down one of Elmer’s men in mid-leap, and she slashed her blade across her opposite arm. Blood boiled from her wound, a glittering wet cloud, then hardened into a cluster of deadly crystalline brambles. With a single guttural word, the ruby barbs fired in a buckshot blast.
I whirled around as a door slammed open at my back. Fleiss had found me.
Clawed hands latched on to the sides of the doorway, heaving as she squeezed her rubbery, elephantine bulk through one glistening inch at a time. Her head was an Easter Island idol with oval slabs of black onyx for eyes, swaying on a leathery serpentine neck, and her legs bent on backward joints.
I slid one foot back, the white pebbles rustling under my shoe as I moved closer to the rooftop’s edge.
“I’ll jump,” I warned her.
Her squat feet thumped on the stony rooftop as she emerged from the door. Her head tilted, opaque eyes drinking me in.
“If you die,” she hissed, “good chance the mantle of the Thief will return to Marcel Deschamps. We have Marcel. Same outcome.”
My mind raced. I knew my cards would barely slow her down, and I didn’t stand a chance in a fistfight. Violence wasn’t going to win this one; I had to keep her talking, keep her off-balance.
“A good chance. You want to bet eternity on that? We both know part of the Enemy’s power is locked up in the Thief’s death. If I die here, tonight, without fulfilling the requirements and the Thief reincarnates on some other Earth…how long is it going to take you to find him again? A thousand years? A hundred thousand? A million? How about ‘never’? How will your boss take the news, do you think?”
Fleiss wavered. Her frog mouth quivered. “I won’t allow you to die here. Not like this. My lord’s will must be obeyed.”
She moved toward me, looming, and I stopped her with a single word.
“Why?”
The wrinkled skin around her onyx-lens eyes went tight.
“Why?” she echoed.
“Yeah. Why? You’ve been carrying a torch for that asshole for centuries. Why do it? What’s he ever done to earn that kind of loyalty?”
She looked like the question had never occurred to her before. She spoke slow, piecing her words together with justifications and twine.
“He is…everything. He is my lord. Therefore I must serve him. I was…I was created to serve him.”
“No,” I said. “You weren’t. He didn’t create you. I think you know that, deep down inside. I know that you know that.”
“You’re lying,” she grunted. “All you do is lie.”
She took another ponderous step closer. Two more and she’d be close enough to grab me in those leathery, steel-cord arms and tear me to pieces. I held my ground, sensing the sheer drop at my back.
“I do lie a lot, true, but not about this.” The words of the Lady in Red drifted back to me. I recited them to Fleiss. “Once upon a time, nine beasts emerged from the Shadow In-Between. Nine of the Lady’s daughters, war-witches all, pledged to slay them. But they were tricked and led into an ambush.”
“Stop. Stop talking.”
“They were bound, trapped in the form of tools, their powers to be commanded by any man who wielded them.” I gazed up at her. “But the Enemy didn’t just wield you, did he? He knew he was about to be tossed into a prison dimension; his only hope was to store his magic in a reliquary, before his rivals could drain it from him, and give it to a servant he could trust. A servant who literally couldn’t think of rebellion. A servant who thought she was in love with him and believed he loved her back.”
“He does love me,” she hissed.
“Has he ever told you that?”
She halted in mid-stride, one stumpy foot hovering an inch above the pebbled rooftop.
“No,” I said. “He’s never said he loves you. And you know, deep down, you know it’s because he doesn’t. He never will. He’s not even capable of it. He twisted your memory, your mind, your body. He stole from you. He stole everything from you. But you can take it all back. You have a mother. You have a family that loves you, that really loves you. Let me take you to them. Let me help you.”
Fleiss stood frozen. Her face twisted in an agony of indecision, buried doubts and fears racing to the surface as she warred with herself.
Then her foot slammed down, turning the white pebbles to broken powder. She lunged for me, stampeding in, and lashed out one elongated arm. Her claws latched tight around my throat. My breath cut off and she heaved me off my feet while I kicked frantically at the open air.
“No more lies.” Her other hand clamped nails tight around my jaw. “I’m taking your tongue for a trophy.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said the voice at her back, tinged with an amused Scottish burr.
Fleiss swung me around like a rag doll as she turned. Caitlin stood fifteen feet away, draped in her white leather coat, one hand casual on her hip.
“I’m fond of his tongue,” Caitlin said. “He’s very skilled with it.”
Fleiss tossed me aside. I hit the roof, landed hard on my shoulder and rolled into a crumpled heap. Coughing, I gulped air back into my aching throat.
“She means my witty repartee,” I croaked as I shoved myself to my feet.
“Oh. That too.” Caitlin wriggled one scarlet eyebrow. Then she tossed back her coat like a gunslinger, baring the coil of a bullwhip on her belt. “As for you…kneel and face judgment. Cooperate, and I’ll make it quick.”
Fleiss flexed her claws, ten knives of black iron. “I won’t be judged by the likes of you, demon. I answer to a higher authority.”
Caitlin curled her lips into a pleased little smile.
“Right here, right now,” she said, “I am the highest authority. But if you won’t die with dignity, I suppose we can do this the entertaining way.”
Fleiss bellowed as she charged. Her bulk thundered across the rooftop, kicking up a cloud of flying pebbles and white dust. Caitlin broke into a sprint, ran at her, and leaped to one side as Fleiss’s claws made a wild swipe. Her boot caught the edge of an air-conditioning unit, and she used it for a launchpad, sending herself sailing at Fleiss heel-first. She drove a bone-crunching kick into the creature’s face and Fleiss staggered backward. One of the lenses over her distended eyes sprouted a spiderweb of cracks.
Caitlin didn’t have time to savor her victory. Fleiss was faster than she looked. She rallied, knocked Caitlin’s next kick aside, and shoulder-charged her. Caitlin landed hard on her back and rolled to escape the pile-driver slam of Fleiss’s foot.
I hurled my cards, one after another, a crackling swarm of magic-charged hornets. The pasteboard missiles sank into the blubber of Fleiss’s back and dangled like a porcupine’s quills. She wheeled around, slapping at them, and it gave Caitlin just enough time to jump back to her feet.
Her whip snaked free of her belt. She brought it down on the rooftop with a thunder-snap crack, and flames erupted from the brass grip. They raced down the leather like a gasoline trail, setting the whip alight. She swung it above her head, a blur that left a burning smear in my vision, then lashed it around Fleiss’s neck.
Fleiss clawed at the snare as it burned blue-hot into her skin and the air filled with the stench of sizzling, rotten meat. Caitlin ran past her, springing from air conditioner to air conditioner, winding the whip tight as she sprinted around the bellowing creature. Then she leaped, yanking hard on the line and driving both heels into Fleiss’s backbone.
Fleiss crashed down. She fought free of the whip, driving Caitlin back with frenzied slashes of her claws, and staggered back toward the far edge of the roof. The skin of her serpentine neck was charred black and weeping pus.
“Next time,” she snapped, “I choose the battleground.”
She dragged her claws through the open air in a vicious downward swipe and opened a rent in the universe. A black and starless void howled beyond the tear. The edges of reality flapped and rippled like canvas sails in the wind. I heard the faint sound of wind chimes, and the scent of roses kissed the night air.
“Stop her!” I shouted, racing in as I hurled another brace of cards. “Don’t let her—”
Too late. Fleiss dove into the void. It whipped shut behind her as the world repaired itself. She left nothing behind, nothing but the fading floral aroma, dissolving away on a stiff, cold breeze.