Chapter Two
“Nuts!” Eddie barks.
“Again?” Mike Bass asks. “I thought we lost that guy in New Mexico!”
“Might not be the same one.” Eddie pumps his boomer.
“How does that make me feel better?”
“Making you feel better isn’t my job,” Eddie growls. “I just book the gigs and play the chords.”
Jim Throat strides out onto the far side of the bridge. Before him is a row of arches, each coming down in a tip like a stalactite, melting and flowing into a stalagmite base rising from the floor. Behind the arches are open passageways, and whipping up one of those is a cloud of flies.
Really big flies. Flies the size of large dogs. With clacking metal mandibles.
“Mab’s belly button.” We’ve seen these things before.
Jim draws his sword, and about time.
I realize I’m last, and I look over my pony shoulder. Hop Badger and Amble Owl and the others are regrouping. There’s no time to waste.
“This way!” I call to the band. They hear it just as a whinny, but they must see me flashing past and racing into a narrow, shadowed corner of the portico. It doesn’t look like a passage because it isn’t lit, but I know it’s one anyway. I race into the darkness, careful not to let Adrian fall off my back.
I hear pounding feet behind me, which must be the band—they all run too heavy to be any of Mab’s folk, and the flap of wings is distant and behind them. Then I hear BOOM, BOOM, BOOM and BANG, BANG, and the noise is thunder, so loud that the walls of the passage shudder, trying to cover their ears.
Ahead there’s an exit. I’m no expert in things Infernal—if I were, I’d have known about their inability to take a joke, and I might have avoided my Gigantic Colossal Mistake and still been welcome in the Queendom. But I remember that Zvuvim are creatures of darkness. They can’t take daylight, it melts them right into nothing. Their master-spawner, the Baal, doesn’t like it either.
Adrian could get us some light, he’s done it before, but he’s asleep.
Still, I know the way out. And in the Queendom, it’s always day.
Ahead of me is a spiral staircase. I need to get on it and head down, but four Queen’s Rangers suddenly come racing up from one side and array themselves in front of me. Two of them show bobcat and raccoon, which don’t worry me much. But the others show ape and rhinoceros, and unless I get very lucky, I’m not going to be able to just run past them.
But I decide I’d better try.
I don’t want the ape to wrap its arms around me, nor do I want the rhino’s horn in my flank. I aim between them, hoping that neither one of them will be able to stop me. Behind me is all BOOM, BOOM still, and I lower my head, scraping against the rhinoceros and feeling my side abrade like I’m being rubbed with a file. The ape grabs, but I’m too fast and he misses, and I’m through.
I’m on the other side, laughing and showing boy at the top of the stairs, with a fighting stick in each hand, before I realize that the ape wasn’t grabbing at me after all.
He flashes me funny teeth and slings Adrian over his shoulder.
“Ooh-ooh-ooh,” he says. It’s a joke. He’s stolen my wizard, and now he’s making monkey sounds to tease me. I have to admit, it’s kind of funny, but I don’t laugh. Behind him, Mike Bass and Eddie Guitar are getting closer. Jim is behind them, poking flies out of the air with his sword.
I shrug. “Keep him,” I say, and I turn to go down the stairs—
Then I spin suddenly. I fling one of the fighting sticks under my arm. It flies straight, like a skipped stone off a flat lake.
Wham! I smack the ape in his eyeball. He hisses, drops Adrian, and then shows skinny green snake as he slithers away.
Adrian hits the floor hard, poor fella. “Mmmmph?” he asks.
I show pony to kick the rhinoceros in the side of his head because he’s looking at his buddy, the ape. Then I grab my thrown fighting stick off the floor and I slap the two of them together, on opposite sides of Slip Bobcat’s neck, just as she jumps up and tries to kick me. Her kick fizzles out, and she sinks to the floor, choking.
But then Dodge Raccoon lunges at me, and his spear is out. He’s clever, he’s let the others take the damage and exhaust me, and he’s jumping in for the kill. I’m not going to be able to get out of the way, and my sticks are in the wrong position to block.
This is going to hurt.
BOOM!
Dodge flies sideways. The boomer shell is too worked, too man-made to really hurt him, but the impetus of the little hunk of metal is enough to throw the Ranger down the stairs, squeaking.
For good measure I pummel Slouch Rhinoceros in the face several times. He’s so stunned he shows girl and then passes out.
“You’re almost late!” I say to Eddie. It isn’t a very good joke, but it’s all I can come up with at the moment. I’m distracted because the Zvuvim are not only following Eddie, they’re also swarming at me from somewhere else.
“There’s a second Baal here,” Eddie grumbled. He blows three of the big flies into black papery shreds with a single pull of the trigger of his boomer. They’re thick around us now, and I pound them before I crouch to grab Adrian Keys.
“Down the stairs!” Mike shouts, and fires his shooter. He’s right. I can hear the second Baal Zavuv coming, heavy footsteps. The stone shrinks away from his touch, it isn’t right for the Infernals to be here. Not that it’s the first time, of course.
Grrrwwaaaaaragh!
The squealing noise makes my tail stand up. It means Jim has managed to poke the first Baal and the beastie isn’t happy about it.
“Come on, love,” I say to Adrian. I show him lovely girl, warm-peace-sunshine-happiness-and-I-love-you-you-silly-wizard, and I stroke his face. He’s not bad-looking, for an Outsider who always shows the same thing. “Wake up now and give us a nice spell.”
“Gah.” Adrian struggles, but he’s forcing his eyes open now.
“What is it, Twitch?” he asks.
“A little light, darling.” I show him tender, smiling girl, and he smiles back.
He digs into his pocket and pulls out the Eye. “Easy-peasy,” he says, “and so on.”
BOOM! Eddie Guitar and his boomer shatter a Zavuv chittering behind my shoulder. Jim’s close.
“Now would be good,” I suggest warmly.
Adrian grins like it’s nothing. And it should be nothing, only every time he tries to do anything that matters, Adrian Keys risks falling asleep. “Per Isidem Lux,” he says, waving the Eye.
And that’s it, daylight. The dark columns and shadowed niches are all suddenly bathed in yellow light like it’s noon in the Outer Bounds, where it’s never usually anything but twilight. The demon-flies buzz, they’re in pain. They swarm this way and that, scattering to get out of the light. Some of them make it. Others don’t, and they melt away into nothing.
Slip Bobcat yowls. It might be surprise or it might be a war cry. Either way, big Mike kicks the Ranger and sends her flying down the stairs. She lands on the face of the second Baal Zavuv, just as he’s trying to shield his eyes. Suddenly his fly-eyed, pig-tusked head, gray-black and mummified-looking, is wearing a bobcat fur cap. That bites and scratches.
He stumbles back into the darkness, teeming with his fly horde progeny.
“Which way?” hollers Eddie. He’s dragging Adrian to his feet. I keep showing girl to Adrian and smiling at him, trying to distract him from the angry buzz of flies and the bellow of a rhinoceros trying to climb to its feet.
“Downstairs,” I tell him, and I shrug an apology.
“There’s a monster down there!” Mike shouts. BANG, BANG! He fires his shooter down the stairs, into the darkness that’s alive with flies and their lord.
“Upstairs, then!” I laugh. “It all goes to the same place!” That’s not really true, but it’s funny to see the looks on their faces, and I have an idea.
The wizard’s eyes start to flutter. Eddie slaps him, which only sends him to sleep.
The light snuffs out.
“Fundillo!” Mike grabs Adrian and slings him over his shoulder. That’s fine, it frees me up.
I show falcon and race up the stairs. I strafe the raccoon and the rhinoceros as I go, raking them with warning claws to remind them that I’m dangerous and that I’ll be back, and then I’m wheeling past Mike, who huffs and puffs, and around the staircase. The boomer starts going off again below me.
The stairs up are lit by windows beneath each step, which makes everyone’s face look strange and cavernous, gaping eye sockets and mouths. “Don’t imagine this light will help you,” I call out as a reminder, but of course I’m showing falcon and all the band will hear is a bird’s cry.
At the top of the stairs is a long hall. I touch down and show girl, fighting sticks in both hands. Six Rangers charge in my direction across the hall, a leopard and a wolfhound and others I don’t immediately make out because they’re coming too fast.
“Wake up Adrian!” I yell to Mike as he shuffles to the top, and I run at the Rangers.
They’re too many, I don’t like the odds. Naturally, I run right for the biggest, fiercest looking one of the lot, and that’s the leopard. “Fool!” she snarls.
Two of her fellows are showing boy. I know them, they’re Skip Robin and Shudder Mole. They’re holding nets and running at the outside of the pack. I can’t afford to get into a fight, or I’ll get myself tangled up in rope.
I have to keep moving.
The leopard leaps and I leap too. I throw myself at the floor under her feet, and at the same moment I show falcon. The cool stone floor whizzes beneath me just under my feathered breast, and I fly underneath the leopard. Claws slam into the floor on either side of me from above.
I bank sharply to the right once I’ve passed beneath her, swerving towards the stone wall and then swerving right again.
The wolfhound leaps for me, misses, and then Shudder Mole throws her net. Dog and net together collide into the wall and fall to the floor.
I show girl, which has me running on the wall for two steps before I tumble to the floor and land in a crouch. Jim fights at the top of the stairs with his sword. Dead flies lie around his feet like nutshells or the rinds of eaten fruit, and he stabs at the Baal Zavuv, keeping it from coming out. Fortunately, the stairs are narrow enough and the Baal Zavuv is big enough that only one of them can come up at a time. I think. It’s also fortunate that Jim is so good. Good as he is, though, he won’t last much longer, even with Eddie at his side pumping boomer shells down the stairs.
I can barely hear myself, even though I yell. “Wake Adrian up!” I point at the wall. My head hurts from all the noise. “Tell him he has to open a hole right there!”
I hope that’ll work.
And then a net falls over me.
But only over my back and haunches. It doesn’t quite cover me, and when I switch instantly to showing pony, it covers me even less. Mike shakes Adrian. I kick back, and I feel my hooves kick into flesh and bone.
I bolt forward. A spear jabs me in the haunch, and it hurts, but then I’m away from the attacker. The net snags on my rump, and I drag it with me.
“Ummph!” yells one of the Rangers behind me. I hear the thud of someone hitting the floor, and I feel weight. I look back. The leopard charges me, and two other Rangers have their hands tangled in the net. They’re climbing it like a ladder on the ground, dragging themselves in my direction.
I run. I gallop into a mass of flies, champing with my teeth and throwing my head around like a club. I knock some of them out of the way and keep their mandibles from my face, which is good.
But they land on my back and bite.
It hurts. I can feel myself bleed. Their jaws look like harmless steel, but cut into me like lethal bone.
Into me, and into the rope strands of the net.
I feel the weight suddenly lift as the Zvuvim cut through the ropes and the net disintegrates. Immediately I show a girl and somersault forward. Confused flies bounce away from me, and I slam into them with my fighting sticks, crushing eyes and wings and legs with every swipe.
Eddie backs away from the stairs, reloading shells into his boomer. Jim backs with him, and I see both Baalim squeezing out of the top of the stairs. They’re big and gray and man-shaped, like ogres, but they have eyes like enormous flies and tusks like wild pigs. And they reek. Where Jim has cut them or Eddie has plugged them with his boomer, they leak black ooze. In the ambiguous, criss-crossing shafts of light that leave the hall a dull gray, I can see tiny flies bubble in the ooze.
“Now!” I yell.
Spring Leopard charges me with a spear tucked under her arm, its sharp end pointed right at my chest. Behind her come two more Rangers, one on each wing. I brace myself and bring my sticks into position.
Mike punches Adrian in the face. He yells something in Spanish, and it doesn’t sound very happy.
I charge. I yell as I go, “Here’s Johnny!” I saw that on television once on the lips of a crazy man, and it was hilarious. Also, Spring Leopard won’t know what it means, so it might confuse her.
I think I hear Adrian’s voice, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.
I jump and show falcon.
But one of the Rangers jumps before I do. It’s the wolfhound, he got out of the net somehow, and his jaws clamp down on my shoulder. I gasp and show pony. In the same moment, he shows boy, and his arms are wrapped around my strong white neck. We fall to the ground hard. I was not prepared for this and I land badly, on my side and tumbling.
Spring Leopard stabs me. Then I roll over the spear and shatter it with the weight of my body. I feel the splinters in my flesh, and then she shows me her leopard. At the same moment the other one shows wolfhound, and they pile on top of me, tearing and biting.
This really isn’t funny.
BANG! BANG!
Something bowls the wolfhound away from me. Slugs from Mike’s shooter, I guess. I show girl just as Snow Leopard does, and we roll to a stop. I’m on top of her with my hand at her throat, and I punch her right in her button nose.
She lies still. I really hurt.
“Thanks, Mikey,” I say to him. He ignores my words and shoots past me, I guess at the other Rangers. The little brass shells from his weapon rain down around me, stinging when they hit my face. I drag myself to my feet. I’ll have to pluck splinters from my hip and butt later, but right now I don’t have the time.
“Mike,” he says. He jams more rounds into his shooter.
“Per Janum portam aperio!”
I see Adrian. He stands, Eye in one hand and looking through it, chanting and waving his fingers at the wall, right where I pointed. As the last of his words leave his lips, the wall parts like eyelids opening. Light streams in, not the gray light coming through every mirrorgate in the Outer Bounds, but the golden-green-blue-red light of day in the Queendom.
Relief. It worked.
Adrian’s legs buckle.
“Adrian, baby!” I call to him with my silveriest voice. I show him a girl picnicking beside a stream and shove my arm under his to try to catch him. My rump hurts, and so does my head. I need a long rest in a cool, quiet place, and I don’t think I’m going to get one today.
“Twitch?” he says in that woozy voice that means he’s not quite asleep yet.
Mike’s shooter explodes again in my ear. Zvuvim buzzing around me splatter into wisps of dried carapace and husk, falling apart as the beams of light touch them. The Baalim shriek, outraged. They stagger back. Jim presses the attack, stabbing them with the sword he has in one hand and swinging some wiggling, flailing, unhappy object in the other.
The object complains loudly and changes shape. I see that it is Flit and that Jim has her firmly by the tail as he pounds her into the face of the nearest Baal Zavuv again. Flit yowls. She’s having a bad day. Ah, well. I told her I didn’t want her to get hurt, and she should stand aside.
“Come on, handsome,” I whisper into Adrian’s ear.
“I’m awake,” he insists, and stumbles towards the light.
I help him get through the opening. It’s a circle, just opened up in the wall, so we have to pick up our feet a bit to step through it. On the outside is a rooftop, sloping gently down just beneath the hole. Its tiles are baked clay, and they hold firm as we step onto them. The daylight warms my skin out here, and a gentle breeze tickles me under the ears. The sweet smell of rotting matter fills my nostrils. My bottom still hurts.
“Mikey!” I call. “Mike!” I add, since it’s funny to call him Mikey but maybe now is not the time to provoke him into doing something stupid.
Mike Bass galumphs our way. He stops at the opening and turns to fire some more. Even standing outside the Outer Bounds, the noise of all the gunfire happening within is still deafening. I look over the edge of the rooftop and see the tops of trees. That’s good. Depending on the trees, of course, we might still be a mile off the ground, but it could always be worse. If you force them to, the Outer Bounds go up forever.
Eddie backs up to the opening too. They both smell like the bitter smoke that pours from their weapons.
“Jim!” Eddie yells. I doubt Jim can even hear him over the riot. “Get over here, dammit!”
Mike shuffles out through the opening like an ape. He teeters on the roof and almost loses his balance, which is less like an ape and more like a clown, but then he recovers and sets about putting more ammunition into his shooter.
Eddie is smoother. He takes jerky, deliberate steps, and when Amble Owl gets around a boomer blast and comes at him, Eddie swings the butt-end up the boomer up and clocks Amble right in one of his owl eyes. He shows boy and falls to the floor, crying. Eddie knees Amble in the face and kicks him back into darkness.
I move with Adrian closer to the edge.
“You ready to close the door, sweetie?” I whisper to him, showing him proud lover. I show him this one a lot. It makes him feel powerful, which is what the band usually needs from Adrian Keys.
He nods, adjusts his grip on the Eye.
Mike and Eddie unload a fusillade of thunder into the hole and then pull back. Jim vaults through, lands on the rooftop, and spins to face the threats behind him. He still has his sword in one hand and Flit in the other.
“Now!” I shout, but Adrian is already waving his fingers.
“Per Janum portam claudio!”
A pair of gray arms lunge from the opening and grab Jim Throat. Jim smashes at the bug eyes above them with the hilt of his sword. The Baal shrieks, I don’t know whether from the pain of being clobbered or the pain of being burned by the light.
Jim struggles, pounding the basket hilt of his sword against the Baal’s knuckles repeatedly. He skins the monster, and black ooze spatters Jim’s shirt.
The Baal squeezes tighter. Jim stabs the Baal in the shoulder, twisting the point of his sword in the wound.
Grrrrraaaaaraaaaarrgh!
The Baal shrieks, but he doesn’t let go. He yanks Jim inside as the opening shrinks. He slams Jim’s head against the wall and Jim goes slack, dropping his sword and the trembling body of Flit Fox on the tile before he’s dragged into darkness.
Eddie grabs at Jim’s boots and misses.
Adrian collapses to the tiles, unconscious.
Then the hole closes and Jim is gone.