"Don't get cute, smartass. That's my job."
As Squire spoke, Octavian felt a prickling on his skin and the hair at the back of his neck bristled. A subtle shift in the pressure of the darkness sent a sharp pain through his skull; he winced and reached up to massage his left temple.
"You all right?" Squire asked.
"Something weird just happened."
"Transition. We moved between worlds."
Octavian shook his head. The pressure in his skull had subsided but his amazement did not.
"And how did we do that?"
"You just gotta feel your way."
"And someone who isn't a hobgoblin?"
"Nah, you'd be screwed. Just stick with me and you're fine. Otherwise you'd either be trapped in here or end up coming out in some shithole world where the sun's exploded or some interstellar leviathan has swallowed it whole."
"That happens?"
Squire didn't reply. Octavian thought this another attempt at humor — the hobgoblin's fallback position — but as they continued round the bend in the path he caught a glimpse of Squire's profile in the light from the orb and saw the sorrow and the grief etched in his features and he knew the truth.
After that, he didn't trouble his friend with the need for conversation.
They walked on for what might have been twenty minutes or an hour — Octavian found it difficult to gauge time here — and then Squire halted. He glanced around and seemed to be listening carefully, as if he worried that some hidden observer might lurk in the shadows.
"Kill the light," the hobgoblin said.
With a wave of his hand, Octavian complied. The darkness seemed even more complete than before, utter blackness that swallowed even the yellow, internal gleam of Squire's eyes. In that darkness, Octavian felt Squire take his wrist and they stepped away from the path. The ground became soft and yielding underfoot, as if they might sink right in if they weren't careful.
A muffled clank came from straight ahead. Squire paused a second, there came a creak, and then the orange glow of firelight appeared before them, outlining a low doorway. Octavian had only a second to marvel at the presence of a door here in this vast, barren nothing, and then Squire pulled him inside and shut the door behind them, throwing a heavy bolt.
Octavian glanced around, feeling cooped up now that they were actually inside. A further door led into a room from which that firelight glowed brightly, and the heat that poured out of it had him sweating instantly. The low, steady crackle of the flames — a sound that had been inaudible out in the shadows — made a soft bed of noise below the solid presence of the place.
"Home sweet home," Squire said.
But Octavian had known it already. The walls of this entry room were lined with hundreds of weapons, swords and daggers and battleaxes made to be held by gigantic hands and tiny ones. There were ornate guns with fat barrels and lengths of hooked metal, morningstars and maces, masterfully crafted bows and arrows fixed with feathers that must have come from creatures Octavian could not imagine.
"You wanna go to Hell, you're gonna have to kill some demons," Squire said. "I know you're all frickin' Houdini and such, but I think I can help."
Looking at the armory the master weaponsmith had created, Octavian wasn't about to argue.
Yet Another World
Boston, Massachusetts
Danny Ferrick sat on the steeply sloping, tiled roof of Mr. Doyle's townhouse, nearly hidden between a pair of dormer windows, one of which led into his bedroom. He often sat out here after dark, perched like a gargoyle in the moonlight, and listened to the city. Tonight a light rain fell, so the only people on the streets were walking their dogs under wide umbrellas or rushing through puddles to fight over a taxi they hoped would take them home from work.
Louisburg Square was a tiny, private enclave on Boston's Beacon Hill, a garden park surrounded by a black wrought iron fence around which a ring of brick townhouses sat, austerely watching over the gardens. Observing Louisburg Square, it would have been easy to see the city as unchanged — to imagine a world that had not suffered the unknowable horrors of a cosmic evil and barely survived. Boston had not grown any quieter, though so many had died. But the sounds of the city had changed. There were more tears, now, and more screams. And as Danny sought the inner calm that nearly always eluded him, meditated and tried to extend his senses outward, there were areas of the city which sent back nothing — parts of Boston so charred and blighted that not even scavengers would set foot in the ruins there.
Once upon a time he had been careful, those nights on the roof, not to be seen by passersby in order to avoid scandal and terror. In those days, no one had ever seen a demon before. Danny had been born in Hell and switched at birth with a human child, the way so many fairies seemed to have been. A glamour had been cast upon him so that he had the appearance of a human child, but when he had reached puberty that had slowly begun to change, so that by now — at the age of twenty-two — he had the black-red horns and leathered skin and scarlet eyes of a devil. His horns weren't long, perhaps six inches with a slight curve at the tips, but no hat would hide them now.
Yet it wasn't his diabolical appearance that kept him indoors most of the time. People might be terrified of him, but most Bostonians recognized him as part of Mr. Doyle's Menagerie — and the Menagerie had sacrificed everything to combat that cosmic darkness. Everything. They were heroes.
No, Danny mostly stayed indoors because he hated people. Hated humans. He had no desire to live in Hell, though the minions of that infernal realm were always deferential toward him, but that said more about his hatred for Hell than his love of Earth. Nothing remained for him here. Other twenty-two year olds in Boston were freshly graduated from college, just starting their first jobs or their first semester of grad school. Danny Ferrick spent his days playing video games and watching movies or internet porn, eating pizza and Chinese food whose delivery men would barely look at him, men who stood on the front stoop and handed the food in to him, then could barely wait for payment before they fled. One pimple-faced kid had pissed on the steps.
The memory made Danny snicker. The edges of his lips turned upward in something approximating a smile, but he knew from experience that his smile these days would terrify any ordinary person. Once, he'd looked like a typical kid, decent-enough looking and in need of a haircut. Now he looked like a monster, and he spent every day wrestling with the question of how he could keep himself from letting his monstrous outside from seeping under his skin, corrupting him down to his heart.
So far, he hadn't come up with an answer.
Laughter rose into the air, an eruption of girlish giggles that came from several blocks west. Danny scowled, shifted his weight on the rain-slicked roof tiles, and shot an emphatic middle finger in that direction.
"Die," he growled.
He hated them all, but the pretty girls the most.
No. That's a lie. He hated his parents the most — not his human mother, the woman who had never lost her faith in her boy, no matter how monstrous he became, but the demons who had snatched her human infant and left him, their own offspring, in its place. He wished he had never seen the human world, never had his first taste of human food or listened to the hauntingly beautiful music of ordinary people. He wished he had never made a friend in this world, never known the smile of a girl. It would have been better to have spent his life in Hell than to have known a taste of humanity. Now he lived in a limbo inside Mr. Doyle's house and he felt more like one of the damned than if he'd spent his life in a pit of fire.
But the rain felt nice.
Danny exhaled, letting the trickles of October rain that ran down his face and neck make him shiver. Despite all the horror that had befallen this world, the night air smelled fresh, and the flowers that remained in the park down in the square still gave off their lovely scents. If he just stayed out there on the roof in the dark, in the rain, he thought he might be able to keep himself from going mad.
He froze, one pointed ear c
ocked toward his open bedroom window. His lips curled back again, baring sharp teeth, but not in a smile. Something had made a noise inside the house and he strained to hear more or to catch a scent.
Footfalls.
A roof tile cracked as he darted toward his open bedroom window and lunged through it to land on the sodden, ruined, moldy carpet. Wings fluttered. He'd spooked one of the birds that nested in his open closet. Crouched in the center of the room, he heard voices coming from elsewhere in the house and rushed to the bedroom door, where he paused and tilted his head, inhaling deeply. Leftover Chinese food rotted in containers on the bureau, but over its stink he could make out most of the smells in the house, all of them familiar. All but one.
Squire, Danny thought. The hobgoblin had returned after a long time away.
His eyes narrowed. Squire hadn't come alone.
The claws on his feet tore the carpet as he darted into the corridor. As he raced down the hall to the stairs that led to the second floor, he sniffed the air and caught another scent, the faint trace of something he had not smelled in this house in a very long time.
Mr. Doyle? Danny thought, and a spark of hope ignited within him. Mr. Doyle and the others had always made him feel as if he had a place in this world, as if he wasn't alone.
On the second floor landing he raced to the dusty balustrade that overlooked the grand foyer. Squire stood in the center of the foyer, near the ruin of the great chandelier that had once hung overhead. Beside him Danny saw a tall, thin man with graying hair. His back to Danny, the man gazed around the foyer and up toward the second story. An axe hung at his side and he had a sword slung across his back, tied in a leather and burlap scabbard. There would be daggers, Danny felt sure, and other hobgoblin-made weapons. At his other hip, a bulge showed through his black wool coat — a morningstar or something.
Danny flinched back from the balustrade. They'd come ready for battle, or just for killing. The beast in him, the demon in his heart, felt a savage paranoia. Had they finally realized he had no place in this world and come to destroy him?
No, he told himself. Not Mr. Doyle. The old mage would never —
The man turned. Glanced upward. Met Danny's gaze.
Squire had not brought Mr. Doyle home after all. Danny had never seen this man before in his life. The hobgoblin noticed the trajectory of his companion's glance and looked up to see Danny against the balustrade, in the shadows of that second floor corridor that ran above the foyer.
"Hey, kid," Squire said, smiling. A little worried. "Love what you've done with the place. Maid's day off?"
Danny frowned, a growl building in his chest. He blinked, searching inside his memory for what the grand foyer of Mr. Doyle's townhouse had originally looked like. Elegant. Gleaming wood. Beautiful artwork. Now the art had been torn or shattered and the wood dulled and scratched. A layer of dust covered it all. Squirrels and pigeons had made the place their own and their droppings were all over the floor. Several windows in the house were broken and Danny had never bothered to fix them. The elements did not trouble him, so it had never seemed important.
Stop, he thought. You don't have to explain yourself. This is your house.
He launched himself over the railing, dropped through the air and landed half a dozen feet from the intruders. Rising to his full height — half a foot taller than Squire's companion — he loomed above the hobgoblin.
"Who is he?"
"A friend," Squire said.
"Not my friend."
The hobgoblin held up his hands. "Kid, give it a rest, will ya? A friend of a friend is a friend. We ain't here for trouble. Besides, I still have a place here, don't I? I mean, I've got a room. I still live here, too."
Danny felt brittle, vulnerable, though he could have torn both their hearts out. Maybe. Squire, yeah, but the other . . .
"You haven't been here in months!" Danny roared, stalking toward Squire. "I've been alone!"
"I know," Squire said. "And I'm sorry. I've been wandering a little and what I'm finding ain't pretty. There's a lot of nasty shit going —"
Danny turned toward the other. The visitor. The friend.
"Who are you?"
"Peter Octavian. I'm . . . not from here."
Danny narrowed his gaze, studying the man, then slid toward him. He sniffed the man's hair, caught the scent of his breath, and his frown deepened. The flesh at the base of his horns itched, as it nearly always did, and he reached up to scratch himself. Most were terrified of him, especially this close. Nobody endured his attention without flinching, but this man seemed entirely untroubled. Whatever he was, he had not lied. Underlying the other scents on him was the peculiar odor that Squire always brought with him when he'd been traveling the Shadowpaths to parallel worlds.
"I guess you're not," Danny agreed. He scratched at his horns again.
"Danny —" Squire began.
"I smell magic," Danny said.
"He's a mage, like —"
"Mr. Doyle," Danny finished for him, and his loneliness blossomed anew. He stared at this newcomer, this Octavian, another moment before turning sadly toward Squire. "I thought it was Mr. Doyle coming back."
The hobgoblin's yellow eyes softened. "Oh, shit, kid, you know Doyle's gone. They're all gone, and they ain't comin' back."
Danny lashed downward and struck Squire with the back of his hand, knocked the little man to the filthy floorboards. A bright green light crackled to life in the gloom and Danny turned to see spheres of emerald fire burning around Octavian's fists. Magic.
The devil laughed.
"Pete, no," Squire grunted, climbing to his feet. Danny rounded on him again but Squire showed no fear. "Kid, you need a friend. I'm your friend, remember. Still and always. And Pete here . . . he's my friend. I've told you a million times that any time you want to get out of here, I'll take you wherever you want to go. Any place, any world."
"I've got nowhere to go," Danny said, turning away. "Besides, Mr. Doyle left me to watch over the house."
"He gave you the damn house, kid. It's not the same thing."
Danny strode away from him, not liking the thoughts in his head. He used the heel of his right hand to pound on his temple. Took a deep breath. Then another. His stomach grumbled and he realized that he hadn't eaten or drunk anything since the frozen waffles he'd had at breakfast.
"Maybe we shouldn't have come," Octavian said quietly to Squire.
All the breath went out of Danny. He spun around and held up his hands in as friendly a gesture as he knew how to make.
"No, no. It's okay," he said quickly. "I'm sorry. I'm just . . ." He pounded his temple again. "I'm not used to company."
Stupid, he thought. If he drove them off, he'd be alone again.
"You guys want something to eat?" He smiled and then forced the smile away, not wanting to look more frightening than he already did.
Squire looked dubious. "You have food that hasn't been shit on by squirrels?"
"I have —"
"Wait," the hobgoblin interrupted. "This food wouldn't happen to be the squirrels?"
"Fuck you, Squire," Danny said. "I don't eat squirrels."
Squire laughed and some of the tension went out of the house. Danny exhaled in relief. In truth, he had eaten the occasional squirrel, but he had always cooked them first.
"The kitchen is in okay shape," Danny said. "I don't have much besides waffles or mac and cheese, but we could order pizza. I might have beer."
"How about mac and cheese on waffles?" Squire asked.
Octavian groaned. "You'll eat anything." He looked at Danny. "Why don't you tell me what you want, Danny, and I'll order something in for us. Anything."
Danny opened his mouth to reply, thinking of the Tex-Mex place that had survived the great cataclysm but didn't deliver. If Octavian would go out and pick it up, bring it back . . .
"Why are you here?" Danny asked, before he could stop the words from coming out. "What do you want?"
Don't, he chided himself.
Tex-Mex.
"Kid," Squire started.
"No," Danny said, shaking his head. "You haven't been here in months and then you show up with this guy, armed to the teeth for a fight with someone. I know you, Squire. Maybe you would've stopped to look in on me and maybe you wouldn't, but you didn't bring this guy here for a social call. You want me to fight."
Danny's stomach gave a sickening twist.
"I'm done fighting," he rasped. "I don't want to kill anyone else."
He felt Squire's warm, leathery hand clasp his and almost pulled away before he realized that this was the first contact he'd had with anyone in . . . he couldn't remember how long.
"Danny, I didn't come to ask you to fight. I wouldn't do that to you. I promised, and I mean to keep that promise," the hobgoblin said. "But I did come to ask a favor. Pete, here . . . I owe him. He's a good man, Danny, and he's asked for my help. I intend to give it to him, but that's going to be hard to do without you."
"No fighting?" Danny asked, staring at the floor.
"I promise," Squire said.
Danny glanced up at Octavian. "So, what's the favor?"
Octavian ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw, his eyes full of sorrow and determination.
"Let's get something to eat, and then I'll tell you."
Danny held his breath for several seconds, and then nodded. What could it hurt just to listen? And, after all, there would be Tex-Mex.
CHAPTER SIX
Phoenix's World
Dobbs Ferry, New York, USA
Phoenix drove with both hands on the wheel, knuckles white from the strength of her grip. Her heart pounded in her chest and thumped in her ears and her thoughts whirled in a maelstrom of fear and grief and confusion. The tires skidded in road sand as she took a hard turn onto Route 9, headed south into Dobbs Ferry. In the dimming of the day, the sky looked more like a painting than reality and it played into the strange, dreamlike feeling that had gripped her since the ghosts had possessed her father, just before he died.
"Talk to me," Ronni said, her voice small and afraid. "Please, you've gotta talk to me. You've been through something like this —"
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