King Among the Dead - Lauren Gilley Page 0,87
his conduit stood.
Rose tried to catch Beck’s eye, staring at his taut profile, willing him to glance her way. But he didn’t; didn’t even blink. A muscle leaped in his jaw.
One of Castor’s guards had come to his side – the stern-faced one from before, who’d poured the conduit’s blood into the vat at the factory. His jaw was clenched nearly as tight as Beck’s; his gaze, dark and hooded, swept toward her – one brief, shocking moment of eye contact that conveyed how very displeased he was with this whole situation – then settled respectfully on the floor at his boss’s feet. He extended a small bundle on flat palms, one that Castor unwrapped with an almost delicate touch. A dagger: gleaming, sharp-edged, with an obsidian handle set with rubies. It was comically overwrought…but the sight of it winking in the lamplight as Castor lifted it filled her with fresh dread.
There was power in that weapon. It fairly pulsed with it.
“You know,” Castor mused, turning back to face them – to face Beck. She wasn’t relevant here, and she wasn’t going to say anything to make herself so. Was going to continue twisting her wrists subtly, working at the knots that bound her. They were tight, and tied well, but if she could just get the knife in her sleeve loose… “I should really be thanking you, Becket. It was your obsession that led me down the path to research. The path to this.” He gestured with the dagger, seeming to encompass the chalk circles and runes on the floor. “I have the means to bring it to fruition, but you – you had the imagination.” He offered a nasty grin, and a waggle of the dagger tip that seemed to say oh, you.
Rose heard the quiet sound of an indrawn breath. Beck: he’d sat up straight and stiff; his brow had cleared.
Castor beamed. “Do you understand, now?”
Rose searched the edges of the drawn circles with her gaze, followed them in to their center – to the pentagram.
His hell theory, Kay had called it. Then it was Rose’s turn to gasp.
“You’re bluffing,” Beck said, voice strained and hoarse. “You don’t have that kind of power.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But my friend Daniel does.” Castor lifted his arm, twirled the dagger, and offered its handle to the conduit at his side.
The moment Daniel’s hand touched the hilt, a low pulse moved through the floor; a wall of air pressed Rose back against the column to which she was bound. The guards shrank back against the walls; the one who’d brought Castor the dagger retreated, disappearing from view.
“Why?” Beck demanded, seething now, struggling at his bonds.
Rose twisted her wrist, back and forth, back and forth – and the knife in her sleeve finally slipped loose of its sheath. Its point slid down into her palm, slicing her skin – and the rope.
Daniel regarded Beck with a flat, disinterested stare; an angel contemplating a mortal. The white glow around him swelled. They were all just specks of dust to him; little sin-filled blips of nothing. “The Rift closed too soon,” he said, and Beck stilled, listening.
Rose listened, too, sawing at the rope as best she could, moving as little as possible.
No one was watching her, though. Every eye was riveted on the conduit.
“The day that it opened was to be the day of reckoning. The forces of Heaven and Hell were to converge on the battlefield of this mortal plane. But Hell’s gates didn’t open.”
“No one to kill but us humans, then,” Beck spat. “You had to make do.”
“Yes,” Daniel said, without inflection.
“Being a drug dealer was just a bonus, then?”
The first sign of expression: Daniel’s lip curled. “Don’t insult an angel with your petty human morality.”
“Our friend Daniel has the power to open a portal to hell,” Castor said, gleeful, eyes shining.
“And what do you get out of it, Tony?” Beck snarled.
The man looked rapturous. “The favor of heaven’s forces. Incredible power. Untold riches.”
“Yes. Untold riches,” Daniel said, and plunged the dagger into the gangster’s stomach.
A collective shout went up from all the guards.
Three of them rushed Daniel – and Daniel lifted his hand, and decapitated all of them with a flick of his fingers.
He pulled the dagger out, and blood coursed from the wound, spilling down Castor’s legs even as he gasped and clutched at his stomach. The blood ran over his shoes…and touched the stones of the floor.
The room exploded with light. White, and then red. Rose closed her