The Living End (27 page)

“What if she calls me?” Roth asked.

“Let it go to voicemail, and that goes double for Meadow Brand. You won’t be waiting long. If I can’t shut Lauren down in the next couple of days, this’ll all be a moot point. Right now I want you to go home, get your family, and take off. Is there a place you can go, somewhere Lauren doesn’t know about?”

His fingers rapped the edge of his coffee mug as he tried to think.

“The ranch outside Dallas. Belongs to my wife’s family. We go there every summer. It’s secluded.”

“Good,” I said. “The farther off the grid you are, the better. Just be ready. Like I said, I’m going to need one last thing from you before this is done.”

He left me with the tab and a half-eaten plate of scrambled eggs. I watched him leave, staring listlessly out the window until his taillights turned a corner and slipped out of sight. If he didn’t realize he’d been played, if he didn’t talk to Lauren or Meadow and find out the truth, if this whole scam held together just a little bit longer, we might be all right.

That was too many
ifs
for me. I needed to work faster. What I really needed right now, though, was at least six hours of sleep somewhere besides a plane or a car seat. Lethargy was catching up fast. I couldn’t afford that.

I called Caitlin. “How did it go? Everybody make it home okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “Everyone’s fine. Did you get what you needed?”

She sounded more tired than I felt. There was something off in her voice, something distracted and moody.

“I think so. He’ll back our play, if he doesn’t wise up. You okay? What’s wrong?”

“Emma’s here…we should talk, Daniel. Can you come over? I can’t leave right now.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I tossed a twenty on the table and called for a taxi.

The glass doors of the Taipei Tower slid open at my approach. I crossed the expanse of cherry chrysanthemum carpet to the chromed doors of the VIP elevator. As usual, it was already keyed for the penthouse level and waiting to sweep me to the top.

Caitlin met me at her door. I’d seen that hardness in her eyes before. It was the look she got when she was working.

“Come in,” she said. No embrace, no kiss.

Emma sat on Caitlin’s black leather couch with a box of tissues in her lap. Her red, puffy eyes told me a little more of the story. I wasn’t prepared for the anger in her voice when she saw me.

“He shouldn’t be here!” she snapped. “This isn’t about him. He isn’t
relevant
—”

“He is entirely relevant, and you know it,” Caitlin said. Her voice was calm and cold, layered over unbending steel.

“Look,” I said, “if you want me to come back later—”

Now Emma’s eyes were molten copper, and she shouted at me from a mouth that had too many teeth in it. “
I do!
”

“Emma!” Caitlin snapped. She strode across the floor, getting between us. “You will calm down,
now
, and remember that you are a guest in my home. Don’t
make
me tell you twice.”

Emma lolled her head back on the couch and pressed the heels of her palms to her human-again eyes, rubbing them.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice weak. “I’m sorry, Daniel. I just…I don’t want anyone seeing me like this.”

I held up my open hands. “It’s okay. What’s wrong? Can I help?”

Emma plucked a tissue from the box and blew her nose. She looked over at Caitlin. “Well? Go ahead. You wanted to tell him, tell him.”

Caitlin clasped her hands behind her back and paced the hardwood floor, poised like a general as she considered her words.

“There are agreements in place between our courts,” she said, “treaties of old made in the interest of mutual survival. One of these agreements is called Case Exodus. It’s a plan of last resort, in a situation where the Earth is…compromised beyond recovery by an occupying force. In such a case, our greatest concern is the protection of hell itself.”

She stopped pacing and turned toward me.

“Orders came down tonight from the prince’s council. Lauren’s ascension, and the union of this world and the Garden, would constitute such a threat. If she succeeds, Case Exodus will be executed.”

“Wait,” I said, “what exactly does that mean? What happens?”

“Severance,” Caitlin said. “Every gate and conduit leading off of Earth, either to hell or to any other realm we know of—we seal them. Blow them up. Shut them down. Whatever we have to do to completely sever any escape from the planet. Whatever it takes to stop the contagion from spreading further. Earth will be thrown under eternal quarantine.”

“We salt the soil on our way out,” Emma said. “Spark as many incidents as possible in what little time we have to reap as many damned souls as we can.”

“Incidents?” I asked.

Emma shrugged. “Massacres, power plant accidents, plane crashes, whatever we can manage. Then there’s the…”

She paused and looked questioningly at Caitlin. Caitlin sighed and looked back to me.

“The Court of Tarnished Memories,” she said, “has control of at least one nuclear weapon.”

I shook my head. “What you’re telling me is if Lauren gets the ball, you’re going to break all the toys and go home.”

“To stop her from invading
our
realm?” Caitlin said. “Yes, without hesitation. You know her. She won’t be satisfied with ruling the Earth. She won’t be satisfied
at all
. Some hungers can never be fulfilled. Once she ascends, quarantine will be the only way to keep her in check.”

No pressure or anything.

“So how about a little help, then?” I said. “If everybody knows it’s five minutes to doomsday, why aren’t the other courts sending the cavalry? Every prince has a hound, right? So why are you the only one here?”

“Duplicity is in our nature.” Caitlin paced the floor. “It could be doomsday, or it could be my prince playing an elaborate trick, trying to lure the other princes’ elite forces into an ambush. It’s a game of odds. It’s far more likely to be a trick than a genuine crisis, so they’d rather play it safe, keep their distance, and save their own skins.”

“Then I guess that means we’re on our own,” I said. “Now, what aren’t you telling me?”

“What—what do you mean?” Emma said.

I nodded to the box of tissues. “I can understand being pissed off about losing your favorite sandbox, but let’s get real. I know you, Emma. This is a business decision when you get right down to it, and you don’t cry over business. You fight, and you thrive. So what’s wrong?”

She looked over at Caitlin with wet eyes. Caitlin gave the slightest shake of her head. No help there. It had to be something personal, something Emma was worried she’d lose and couldn’t replace…

“Melanie,” I said. “You don’t think Melanie’s damned.”

The kid had demon blood but a human soul. And a good heart. Like she’d made crystal clear when she stood up to Sullivan and told him off, she had just as much power over her fate as anyone else. Maybe the power to find her own road into the afterlife, too.

Truth was, we didn’t know what was out there in the great beyond. Hell was real, but heaven? You tell me. All I knew was that when some people shuffled off, decent people, there was no finding them again.

“I don’t know,” Emma said. She tugged another tissue from the box and crumpled it in her clenched fist. “I thought…I thought maybe I could get her to cross that line. It wouldn’t take much. A random killing, a mortal sin or two—”

“But she wouldn’t do it, and you know that,” I said.

“She wouldn’t, not if I asked her to,” Emma said. She took a deep breath. “You know, Daniel…she listens to you.”

She could have punched me in the gut, and it would have hurt less. I turned my back. I had to walk away, just a few steps, to keep my temper from boiling over.

I kept my voice soft. “I took the rap for killing Ben, and I didn’t mind, because it was for a good cause. I’ve done a lot of shitty things in my time, and I’ve done them for worse reasons. But this…you want me to talk Melanie into sending herself to hell?”

I turned to face her.

“No, Emma. I won’t do that. Because I’ve still got some fucking self-respect left.”

She rose from the couch. The box of tissues fell to the floor. She walked toward me, slowly, hands balled into fists and fresh tears welling in her eyes.

“Then let me help. With stopping Lauren.”

“No,” I told her. “You want to take a chance at turning your daughter into an orphan? Leave this to me. You go home. Go home, be with Melanie, and
stay
with her.”

“Then you do something else for me,” she whispered hoarsely, forcing the words out. “You do whatever it takes, and you
kill Lauren Carmichael
. I can’t lose Melanie. Not for eternity. Please, don’t let her take my baby from me.”

“I promise,” I said.

That much I could do.

Emma turned, flustered. “I should go. I have to prepare, have to get notifications out—”

Caitlin reached out and clasped Emma’s shoulder. Her eyes were hard as emeralds and her lips a tight, bloodless line. I realized, looking at Emma’s face, that this was the Caitlin she needed right now. Not her friend, but the prince’s hound, in complete control. A bastion of cruel authority to hold back the storm.

“Hell prevails,” Caitlin said.

Emma took Caitlin’s free hand and raised it to her lips, kissing the curve of her pale fingers. Caitlin stared impassively, nodded once, and saw her to the door.

I hoped that when she turned around again, her mask of ice would thaw. If anything, after she clicked the lock and met my eyes, she was colder than before.

“I had to make a difficult decision tonight,” she said.

“So basically just like every other night?” I asked, trying to find a smile.

“Don’t be flip. Not now. Daniel, do you understand what the scope of Lauren’s power will encompass, should she master the Garden? She will rule over life and death itself.”

“Right. She’s going to kill everybody. We know that.”

“You think?” she said. “Will she be that merciful to her enemies? After all you’ve done to stand in her way, what do you think she’d do to you, given her whims?”

I suddenly thought back to the New Life clinic. That poor mutated bastard, bloated with black tumors and cannibalized by cancer, dying in unimaginable agony.

Except I wouldn’t die
, I thought.
She would NEVER let me die
.

The sudden chill in the room must have shown on my face. Caitlin nodded.

“There are more hells than mine,” she said.

“I
’m not backing down,” I told Caitlin.

“I know,” she said and took my hand.

She led me into the bedroom. I wasn’t sure what she had in mind, until she pulled back her gray silk pillow. A dagger lay underneath. It was a short, nasty little blade with a jagged edge and a handle of bone.

“I thought about killing you tonight,” she said.

I took a step back, toward the open door. “What? Why?”

She crossed the distance between us and took hold of my shirt collar.

“Because I keep what is mine, and you are mine. Because I don’t want to take any chance of losing you to Lauren’s revenge, cut off forever between two severed worlds. Because,” she said through gritted teeth, “I love you.”

She let go, shoving me back, and turned away. The anger in her words grew, her voice breaking as she tried to hold it in.

“And that’s why I can’t do it. Because if…if that’s what I feel for you, if it’s really love, then I have to trust you. And I have to trust your choices. And these are feelings…these are feelings I was not created to
deal
with, and it is not fucking
fair!
”

“Hey,” I said.

She turned around. Her bottom lip quivered, trapped between pearly teeth.

“I think you’re doing a pretty good job,” I said.

She gave a tiny shrug and stared at the carpet.

“Thanks for not killing me.”

Her gaze lifted to meet mine. Maybe she’d expected me to reject her when she told me what she was feeling. Maybe part of her had wanted me to. I tried to make sure she didn’t see anything in my eyes but understanding. What I saw in hers was a spark of hope.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, sounding tired.

“Besides,” I said, “I promised Emma, so you know, now I have to win. That woman holds grudges like crazy. Do
not
want to get on her bad side.”

Caitlin sat down on the edge of the bed. She tugged my hand, pulling me to sit beside her.

“I can’t be there when you face Lauren,” she said. “My prince’s orders. Thanks to Case Exodus, my job is to watch from a distance, sound the call to action if you fail, and leave this world. Immediately and forever.”

I reached up and stroked the curve of her cheek. She gave me a little smile.

“Be prepared for a boring night,” I said, “because I’m not going to lose.”

“You have to promise me one thing,” Caitlin said.

“Name it.”

“Whatever happens, no matter what…don’t let her take you alive.”

I couldn’t hold back a shiver, thinking of that thing at the clinic. Wondering what worse nightmares Lauren could conjure up with the power of a goddess at her fingertips.

“Don’t even worry about it,” I said. “I’ve gotta get some sleep. Okay if I crash here tonight?”

She reached over and untucked my shirt, undoing the buttons one by one.

“You say that like you have a choice.”

• • •

I woke up on an airplane.

The lighting was all wrong, like I was a bug inside a chunk of amber, and there was nothing outside the porthole window but smoke. The smoke roiled in thick black clouds.

“I’m sorry about this,” Bob Payton said, sitting next to me.

I squinted, trying to focus. It was a full flight, but everyone around us was sound asleep.

Asleep. Dreaming. You’re dreaming.

“I didn’t have any other way to reach you,” he said. “You have to come to New York, right away.”

I tugged at my seat belt. It didn’t budge. There was no reason for the latch not to work. It just didn’t want to.

“I don’t have time for this,” I told him.