The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(2)

Lauren looked over at Highcastle. The orderly stood slump-shouldered by the door, staring at his shoes.

“Leave us,” she said. “And lock the door behind you, please.”

Eugene turned, wide-eyed, and shook his head. “Don’t go,” he rasped, nearly pleading.

“Sorry, Doc.” Highcastle grimaced with shame, but he still turned his back on the man. “Just the way it’s gotta be.”

Then he left them alone together.

“Two hundred dollars,” Lauren said.

“What?”

“Two hundred dollars,” she said, “is what I paid that man to betray you. Another two hundred for the part-time security guard, to ensure that camera in the corner is turned off. That’s the going rate for a Judas these days, I suppose. Now, Eugene, I spend more money than that on a new pair of shoes. Are you really going to stand there and lecture me about what I can and can’t get away with?”

“You can’t buy your way out of facing justice,” he said.

She laughed. It was an ugly sound, a mocking snicker that ended in a hissing rasp from behind her black lace veil.

“I’ve been doing it for years,” she said. “Grow up, Eugene. I own a senator. I realize you haven’t gotten out much lately, but this warmed-over hippie nonsense is beneath you. Hard work and dedication have provided me with the resources to shape the world to my liking. Haven’t you read your Nietzsche? Or Hobbes? It’s entirely natural that I exert my will.”

“Daniel Faust.” Eugene spat the words like a weapon. His frail hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Hmm? What of him?”

“He’s coming after you,” he said. “He’s coming for you, and he won’t stop until you’ve paid for everything you’ve done. When he does? When your hold over me is gone and I can leave this tomb? The first place I’m going to visit is your grave. So I can stand over your dead body, breathe free air, and know that we beat you.”

Lauren lifted her veiled face. She glanced over to the clock on the wall, an old workhorse with a plain white dial and needle arms under a dusty bubble of plastic.

“Hmm. It’s eleven o’clock.”

“So?” Eugene said.

She looked back at him. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew from the tone in her voice that she was smiling behind the veil.

“Daniel Faust,” she said, “died fifteen minutes ago.”

Eugene didn’t say a word. He wanted to laugh in her face, wanted to call her bluff, but he knew her too well for that. He knew the steel backbone in her voice, that old familiar confidence.

She was telling the truth.

“That’s the problem with hope.” She studied her gloved hand, curling her fingers. “It lifts you up to the heavens, but one good kick and you plummet to the dirt. When I’ve remade the Earth to my design, the concept of hope will be the first casualty. It’s kinder that way. I had such aspirations for you…once. I have learned, though, that the road to success demands absolute devotion and absolute sacrifice. I cannot allow any soft spots in my armor, not when I’m about to go to war with the entire world. No indulgences.”

Eugene straightened his back and stared her down.

“Am I supposed to be scared?” he said. “I’ve been rotting in this hospital for twenty years. Branded as insane, abandoned, forgotten by the outside world. You have no power over me, Lauren. Nothing you could do to me is worse than what I’ve already endured. So go ahead. Kill me. All you’re doing is setting me free.”

Lauren peeled off her right glove. Her arm was mottled and green, peeling in spots, the flesh of a dying leper or a snake preparing to shed its skin. Eugene’s eyes widened.

“So many sacrifices,” she murmured from behind her veil. “I’ve been going through some changes of late, my dear. Difficult changes, but the victory is only sweeter for the pain. And no, I didn’t come here to kill you.”

Eugene let out a held breath. Then he tried to inhale and suddenly couldn’t.

His fingers clawed at his throat as his windpipe slowly bulged. His face turned purple as he struggled for air. He crashed to the floor, kicking and thrashing, one flailing foot slamming into a chair and toppling it over.

“I came to take custody of our child,” Lauren said placidly. “Killing you is just the side effect.”

A rattling hiss echoed from the depths of Eugene’s throat. Soon the thing in his stomach showed its diamond-shaped head, swamp green and glistening with bile, as it peeked out from the professor’s soundlessly screaming mouth.

Eugene made one last desperate thrash, heaving himself across the floor toward Lauren’s feet, then fell still. His dead eyes stared up at the visiting-room windows. The snake slithered out from his mouth, dropping with a wet, wriggling plop onto the floor.

Lauren reached down with her bare hand. Veins pulsed under the rotten skin, like a nest of worms infesting her arm.

“Come to Mother,” Lauren whispered. “Welcome home.”





One



Out in the Arizona desert, in a ghost town called Chloride, I slouched in my chair and patted my hip through my windbreaker. Reminding myself that the gun was still there.

Chloride was an old mining town off US-93. Back in the 1800s they had over seventy mines and two thousand men to work the rock. Today the mines were long gone and only a couple hundred people remained, retired to the dusty streets and clean, cool mountain air. Abandoned tractors rusted in the sun next to the ruins of a once-booming town, nothing left but clapboard, hickory, and smoke.