Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(11)
“Isn’t it obvious? That whole business with the Etruscan Box. You stopped Lauren from opening it, you saved the day, and more importantly, you saved my prince. He wants to commend you. Perhaps even reward you.”
I could do without getting any presents from a demon prince. There was no such thing as “no strings attached” in Sitri’s world. Still, I stayed close to Caitlin as the bouncers lifted the velvet rope for us without a word. Beyond the black doors, a whirlwind of light and teeth-rattling bass washed over us. Ice white and sapphire blue were the colors of the night, while fractals in emerald and gold exploded over wall-mounted LCD displays. Even without the crowd, churning and writhing under the hot lights, it would have been pure sensory overload.
We walked down a broad, curving staircase. Below, a bar coated in onyx tiles curved around the packed dance floor. Caitlin said something I couldn’t hear, and I leaned closer.
“—DJ just got back from a tour in Japan!” she shouted. “We poached him from the Regal!”
I bobbed my head, my feet moving to the beat despite my curmudgeonly efforts to resist. Caitlin led me down a side corridor lit in cool blue, the colors gradually growing thicker, darker, as we turned one corner and then another. As the throbbing beat grew fainter, the chaos slipping away, a cold and sterile order took hold. The back of my neck tensed.
Bathed in blue light, a man in a full-face gas mask and black leather overalls stood by a steel door at the end of the hall. I couldn’t make out his eyes behind the tinted lenses. He held as still as a statue. The wash of color mirrored the light show sparking in my psychic senses. The entire club was steeped in magical radiation, thick and dark.
“He’s my guest,” Caitlin told the man, nodding at me.
He turned toward a keypad discreetly set into the wall. That was when I noticed the machete dangling from his belt, flecked with what I hoped was dry rust. Caitlin reached out, her arm fast as a biting snake, and grabbed him by the chin of his mask. She forced his head toward me.
“Mark his face,” she told him. “He has the liberty of this place, should he ever come without me. If you forget, I shall be irritated.”
She let him go. The man let out a raspy groan behind the mask, murmuring words I couldn’t make out, and bowed his head as he keyed in a six-digit combination. The metal door rattled, then slid open. Caitlin smiled merrily and took my hand. Together we descended into the depths of Winter.
Six
The club under the club swam in a sea of black—black velvet and black leather—lit here and there by golden sprays of neon. The builders had designed it for maximum shadow, and the music—now just a faint echo from above, nothing but the steady thump-thump-thump of the nightclub’s heartbeat—made me feel like I could have been a million miles underground. I thought of a beehive. Not one large room but chamber after chamber, hiving off from the gallery hall, stretching who knew how far into the darkness.
The crack of a whip and a shrill, sharp cry set my teeth on edge. My gaze darted left and right, the acoustics impossible to track in these honeycombed rooms, and Caitlin rested her hand on the small of my back.
“Be at ease, my knight in tarnished armor,” she said. “No one is being hurt here. Not anyone who doesn’t desire it, at any rate. Just a playground, nothing more.”
“Well now, this is a pleasant surprise.” Emma emerged from the darkness. Backlit in gold, she wore a laced leather corset that ended in a flowing silk skirt. Golden bangles matching the color of the neon light adorned one arm. Something told me, given how pleased with herself she looked, that she was anything but surprised.
“We’ve been summoned to the Conduit,” Caitlin said, curling her arm around my waist. “We.”
“Oh,” Emma said. “Well, I’m sure it’s nothing too terrible. Come find me when you’re done? I’m doing a corset-piercing demonstration, and I’d love volunteers.”
Caitlin tapped her bottom lip with her fingernail. “Why don’t you use April? Oh, right, she was on Isaac’s leash, last time I saw her.”
Emma’s hands clenched at her sides.
“She what?”
“Oh, mm-hmm,” Caitlin said, nodding innocently. “I just saw the two of them around here somewhere. She was wearing his collar. Looked deliriously happy.”
“I—” Emma started to say, then shook her head. “I will kill him. I will kill him.”
Caitlin gave a little wave as Emma stomped off into the honeycomb maze. “Ta, dear. Do say hello for me.”
I blurted out a laugh and pulled her close. A spark stung my lips as we kissed. I tasted the faint flavor of strawberries.
“She hates it when people play with her toys,” Caitlin murmured into my ear, stroking the back of my neck with her fingernails.
“You are so—” I paused. I was going to say “evil.” I meant it as a dry compliment, but the word brought me flying a little close to the reality I tried not to spend too much time thinking about.
When dating an agent of hell, moral issues got a little fuzzy around the edges. Caitlin was the love of my life. She was smart, charming, kind when she wanted to be…and if her people got their way, humanity as we knew it would be doomed. So we joked around it. We left the heavy stuff in the corner and met in the middle, in that shadowy gray ground we both knew so well.