Besides, Filima would have a quant.i.ty of useful magical energy with which he could restore himself. Not a lot, but fresh, better than the thin sc.r.a.ps flowing around him in the h.e.l.l-river. First he would drain her, then strangle her. Then he could go down to his Black Room and try to salvage his experiment.
Perhaps he should hold off the strangling, though. In dealing with the Otherside powers it was a good idea to bring an offering. So what if she wasn"t a virgin? Her soul was innocent enough to make a meal for them. They relished innocence since there was none in h.e.l.l. The supply of souls they got was only the worst leavings sent there by the Powers. No wonder the demons were anxious to feast on living beings on this side. . . .
The horse stubbornly tried to turn back, forcing him to wheel it around. b.l.o.o.d.y beast, he should offer it to them as well. The move left him confused on his direction. d.a.m.n Anton"s worthless eyes. Botello squinted, trying to fix on anything familiar in the dim blurs that made up his faulty vision. He spied a vague, flickering light. That would be the fire by the bell tower. It must be spreading. Bells were ringing all over Rumpock; people were emerging from their houses, muttering sleepy, uneasy questions. A few recognized him or rather who he seemed to be.
"Lord Anton! What is the matter?" asked one man holding a lantern.
"Nothing, which way is Darmo House?"
The man hesitated. Probably with his mouth hanging open.
"Answer me!" He pulled hard on the reins to keep the nervous horse in hand.
Several pointed. "Is there a fire? What are those bells about?"
He left them no reply, but dug in his heels and held onto the saddle pommel to keep from falling off.
d.a.m.ned animal must have caught a whiff of the smoke. Now it was only too glad to move along.
Botello thought he knew where he was now. Any street going in this direction would open onto the lane that ran around the whole of his property. Once inside he could find his way easily enough.
He made it to the lane and slowed his mount, peering anxiously for a break in the high wall. It was hard to tell if the amorphous blot ahead was a gate or a change in brick color. He decided it was a gate, flanked by two oddly shaped black columns. He had no such decor outside his wall. Had Filima changed things? Throwing his money around, was she? The columns came to attention as he approached, startling him.
"Lord Anton, sir!" said one of them, probably snapping a smart salute.
He quickly recovered. "Report."
"All is quiet, my lord."
"One of you hold this d.a.m.ned beast for me."
A guard, no longer a column, darted forward to take the horse"s bridle. It calmed down forhim . Botello dismounted and went toward the gate. Yes, this was the small one leading to the stables and gardens.
Normally the overduke would go through the main entry, but Botello had no time for protocol. It would shortly become a useless concept, anyway. He felt inside the metal work for a hidden catch under the lock and swung it open.
"Do you wish escort, my lord?"
"No, I can manage."
Now . . . should he go through the secret tunnel by way of the stables or just take a side door into the house? He opted for the quickness of the latter. Filima would be surprised either way. First by the overduke"s appearance in the house, then by his true ident.i.ty when he revealed it to her. What a look she would have on her face; he"d have to be sure to stand close enough to see each nuance of her horrifiedrealization.
Unless Cadmus or his man had gotten here ahead of him and alerted them all. There were other gates, other means inside.
But the house was dark, no sign of disturbance that he could see-which was very d.a.m.ned little with these eyes. No matter. He could deal with any trouble now, while in this skin. How satisfying it was to be in control of everything. And it would only get better and better.
The Main Gates of Darmo House "Shankey?"
"Yeah, Debreban?"
"Does it look like the fire is spreading?" Debreban peered down the long hill to a distant, evil glow in the middle of Rumpock.
"Sure does."
"Lots of smoke."
"Sure is. Not your fault, though."
Debreban appreciated the sentiment. "Maybe we could yell and send people from here over to help fight it."
"I think they"re already on their way. The bells and the Watch are doing their job of waking the city. We have to stay here and do ours until Lord Botello arrives."
Debreban grunted agreement, but it was hard to stand by and do nothing. He hated waiting.
"Shankey . . . ?"
"I"m still here, Debreban," came the patient reply.
"What if Lord Botellodoesn"t come in by the front way?"
In h.e.l.l The crystal flickered in my hand like a loose lightbulb. "Did you see that?"
Yeah, said Terrin. Keep swinging until it steadies out.
I waved it around, turning. "No dice. Maybe it needs fresh batteries."
There"s too much psychic interference for it to fix on Anton.
"Where"s it coming from?" You don"t wanna know. You guys really have to focus on him so I can cut through it.
By that I understood he was speaking to the others in his circle. Was he in their heads, too? Were they in mine? Yeeps.
Picture him clear in your mind like he was standing in front of you. Remember he looks like Botello, but Anton"s inside the skin. Hold it steady.
The quartz glowed, but went out again. I moved forward. The closer I got to Anton the brighter it would get. Presumably. It had been hit or miss since my arrival, with me switching directions every few yards or so. The vivid red monotony of the landscape was getting to my overstressed brain in a big way, disorienting perception. The land, or whatever it was on this Side, seemed to slowly breathe. Hopefully it was only an illusion; I didn"t need a bout of seasickness just now.
I began to hear another noise besides the bitter, chimelike laughter and Terrin"s mental chat. Bits of low sound, almost a voice, but not quite, floated to me on the burned-sugar air, like a ba.s.so-fortissimo bear with a bad stomach. Sometimes it was close and loud, very cranky. My ears were twitching all over the place; my legs moved faster. Cat instinct was trying hard to cut in and take over; I couldn"t stop if I wanted so I didn"t. Strange thing, though, I wasn"t tired or running out of breath. Astral bodies were tough, apparently. That or they had other kinds of weaknesses.
"I think I"m going in a circle, Terrin. That rock looks familiar."
Rock? Oh, yeah, rock. Yeah, that"s a rock. Nothing else at all. Don"t touch it, okay? You"re right, we"ve been here before. I"m gonna have to crank up the volume. Brace yourself.
Pausing, I braced, knowing better than to ask him what for and rode out the next shifting, shimmering wave of change.
Things got darker and smellier, being too much like the burglar alarm in Botello"s tunnel. I"d need a week-long bath to get rid of the stink. If I ever got back.
Then I sawthem .
Shadowy beings loomed out of the murk,huge hulking things with pointy teeth and glowing eyes and scales and att.i.tudes. I was completely unprepared to deal with their immensity and ugliness. It wasn"t just the surface fear of a bad surprise, this one went down to my toes and back again. All the cat in me, all the human in me froze, trapped in place by an abject primal panic so intense it hurt. My heart thumped a few times, crawled into my throat, flipped over, and stopped. I remained standing, but swayed.
"Are those demons?" I whispered, hardly able to hear myself.
Yuppers. Take it easy. I don"t think they"ll notice you unless you make a fuss. They"re not too smart.
Neither are bulldozers, but they can still do damage. These things were about the same size.
"Terrin . . ."
Chill out, buddy. I mean it! Chill! I won"t say it"s okay, but you have to focus if you wanna leave.Try to get that d.a.m.n crystal to work.
I felt like the proverbial cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Maybe I didn"t have a tail, but a feeling of hideous vulnerability was all over me like a cheap suit.
The quartz began to glow very faintly when I swung it in a direction off to my left. It wasn"t so much a swing as uncontrollable trembling.
Great! Follow it, Myhr!
Anything to get out of this place. It was ground zero for everything I hated most and a few I"d never thought about. The demons remained ghostly to me, and I could only hope I appeared the same to them.
They seemed too busy with various activities to pay any attention. Those activities-I didnot look closely-involved inflicting a wide variety of tortures on writhing forms and figures. Some of those looked human; others were too twisted out of shape to tell. What had once been hard laughter had become screams. The bear noises were from the demons. This was more like theAlien set Terrin had mentioned, only in comparison the alien was cute and cuddly. This was H.R. Giger on acid having areally bad trip.
I held tight to the sword and the crystal and let my feet do their stuff. The movement got my heart going again, but it was still jammed in my throat. I had to swallow a lot to be able to talk. "Terrin? The quartz is getting heavier. Not much glow, but it"s putting on weight."
He made approving sounds. You"re getting closer. Hurry!
Did that. The demons got louder and more solid-looking. One of them paused in its activity and looked right at me, glowing eyes going narrow with awareness. Oh, s.h.i.t. I sprinted, hoping for concealment, and instead found a lot more like him beginning to perceive my presence.
"My cover"s blown. Can you put me back in the candy h.e.l.l?"
No.
No time to ask why not; I kept going. The crystal put on a few more pounds. Then I had to stop.
Cutting through the otherwise flat landscape was a wide, deep gully, right across my path. It was steep-sided here, nothing I couldn"t handle, but if I went down into it the demons wouldreally notice me in its uncluttered emptiness.
On the other hand, maybe there was a good reason why it was so bare. If natives avoided a place it was usually because something nasty was already in residence. It had to be monumentally awful to scare off a bunch like this. I gingerly worked my way along the edge.
What are you doing?
I explained my reasons; Terrin subsided. For a moment.
Y"know? It looks like a dry riverbed.
"For the h.e.l.l-river?"
What are the odds? In this place, considerably better than me winning a lottery jackpot. I followed the bank until a wall emerged out of the dark red murk. A really big wall, twice the size of the one they used to keep King Kong in his yard. The gully ran right under a ma.s.sive-beyond-ma.s.sive Gate. I couldn"t see what lay past it.
"I think I have to go there. Will it be safe?"
How the h.e.l.l should I know?
"I thought you"d been here before!"
Yeah, but not this spot. I party in better areas. You"re in the slums.
Slums? h.e.l.l had slums? It made a creepy kind of sense.
"You. Come here." A deep, guttural, slow-motion, bearlike voice,not friendly, and much too close.
Oi vey, it was a demon. More teeth than Bruce the shark and his whole family of sequels. Solid.
Hungry-looking. Looking right at me.
"Come here," it roared, making the air vibrate.
Yeah, right. I scampered into the gully and ran flat out toward the gap under the Gate.
This gotlots of attention. Dozens of demons hulked over to line the banks, pointing, shouting up a major earthquake.
It"s okay! They won"t touch you so long as you have the sword!
"Dothey know that?!?"
Terrin didn"t reply right away; I ran faster. The gap yawned, but wasn"t as tall as I"d thought. I"d have to duck to get under it. No problem.
"Noot alllooowed," said the demon, slow-motion p.i.s.sed. It began to lumber down into the gully. Maybe it couldn"t run, but being able to cover ground in sweeping five-yard strides it had enough speed to match my efforts. So this was how Jack felt when he was up the beanstalk loping through marathons.
After the one glimpse, there was no need to look back; I could hear the demon catching up. The ground rippled with each step it took. Red gravel shook from the sides of the gully like stony rain.
Boom. BOOM.BOOM.
Like it was home plate, I made a headfirst dive and slide under the Gate into the gray oblivion, slamming onto what felt like firm earth. Scrambling blindly forward, I sensed a low, confined s.p.a.ce. The demon, yelling, was right on top of me. I rolled farther to escape its reach and lashed out with the sword. It connected, sc.r.a.ping against a giving surface. The next sound-which I a.s.sumed was the demon screaming-made nails on a chalkboard seem sweet as Mozart. Man, that cold iron stuff really did the job. When I pulled the blade back it had some green goo on it that smoked like burning rubber and smelled even worse. The din and the monster retreated, but I wasn"t going to wait to see if some of his friends might be brave enough to follow. I lurched to my feet . . . and abruptly cracked my skull against something hard. Light flashed behind my eyes, and my legs forgot how to take my weight. They slithered right out from under me. I pitched forward.
Hold on to the d.a.m.n sword! Terrin yelled.
Sword? I had a sword?
Darmo House Botello looked about his fine home with a mixture of smug contempt and frustration. The latter was the result of the overduke"s rotten vision. Botello kept b.u.mping into things in what should have been familiar territory. Had that b.i.t.c.h been moving the furniture around? His world was blurred beyond patience; he kept rubbing his eyes, trying to clear away the obscuring film.
What little he could see in the deep shadows was so dull, so utterly, pathetically,mundane compared to the wonders and horrors he"d recently observed. It was a symbol for the whole of this b.l.o.o.d.y boring Reality. How could he have thought to return when there were so many other places to manifest? He"d lived his life on a flat plain and almost too late discovered the addictive enchantment of mountains and valleys. Two weeks in h.e.l.l could indeed change a man"s outlook on everything, especially when that man was the only one to ever escape the place. He"d fooled them all: demons, Outer Guardians, overlords, and Powers, and gotten away with it.
Just a little cleaning away of old business here and he could leave forever. A thousand times a thousand planes and more were out there waiting for him to find them. Of course to get to them he needed magical power, more than this world could provide, but that would come when he finished manipulating the river.
The truly laughable part was how Anton and Cadmus had helped him. Tucked away in their minds had been the keys Botello needed to open the Otherside Gate. Their researches in this Reality to solve their little h.e.l.l-river problem had plucked up arcane details he"d overlooked before in his own studies. Neither man had the whole, nor would they have known what to do with it. But when he"d pa.s.sed through their minds the separate and well-scattered pieces jumped out as sweet, bright flashes of insight. It seemed so brilliantly simple to him now.