Crashing Paradise

by Christopher Golden

  Yet part of him shrinks away in spite.

  He feels the hands of Creation upon him, molding and shaping his flesh once more, and some of the turmoil within him is eased. This is as it should be. He feels the love and purpose of the Creator again, but beneath it he senses a return of the whimsy and curiosity he has felt so often as inspiration forged him anew, and anew, and anew.

  Two natures have begun to war within the Clay, but in this moment they are joined in their exultation.

  And then the hands pull at his flesh one final time, and he is torn in twain. The Clay screams with two voices, drifting through the infinite. But the hands of the Creator have not released them—the two of them. Ripped asunder, they can see one another there in the void, the two halves of the Clay, the one who longed to be a part of the world, and the one filled with jealousy and hatred.

  The Clay can no longer see the infinite. Bright colors wash past his eyes, the blue-and-white sky, the green of forest and hill, and he feels himself falling. He strikes the Earth and his eyes flutter closed and for a brief time, he is aware of nothing.

  When he awakens, he can hear the trickle of a stream and smell the rich scents of the Garden, which is itself the seed from which the world was grown. Of his other half—the part of him torn away by the hands of the Creator—he can find no sign. The beauty of the world suffuses his soul, yet with it there comes a sadness.

  Curiosity and whimsy. He felt it in the purpose of the Creator, a desire to separate the two voices in the heart of the Clay, to set them upon the world and see what would become of them. Like so much of this world, and of the infinite, the Clay and his brother have become an experiment.

  Loneliness fills him. He wonders what will become of him, and of his brother, but he fears that this last, at least, he already knows. There will be no loneliness in his other half—

  only rage.

  The Clay rises and surveys the Garden. The world’s star, its sun, shines brightly on the horizon, gliding across the sky.

  He starts toward it, hoping he will meet his brother, and they will be together once more. It is only much later that he will realize what an error he has made. His brother will see the sun and turn his back upon it, and set off in search of his own path in the direction of the encroaching darkness in the east, vanishing into the night.

  SQUIRE woke to pain. As consciousness crept like the dawn across his mind, his body began to contort, as though it could escape the parts of him that had been injured. His right shoulder dropped, and he curled almost fetally in upon himself, trying to shield a slash across his upper arm and chest from any further harm. His legs were seared with hellfire or whatever magic the demon Abaddon had been hurling at him.

  As his eyes opened, he pulled a breath in through his teeth.

  “Fuck, that hurts,” he whispered to the darkness around him.

  Squire blinked. Darkness. His chest rose and fell painfully with each breath, but he would heal quickly enough. Nothing fatal or damning. As long as he had the time to heal.

  Unfortunately, he had a terrible suspicion he wouldn’t have that luxury.

  He recalled those last few moments in Eden, running for the shadows, the bitter taste of retreat in his mouth.

  Hobgoblins weren’t brave, by nature. Brave meant halfway to foolish, and Squire didn’t consider himself a fool. But he also wasn’t a coward. When the chips were down, the fool was the one who wouldn’t stand and fight. Some human had once scribbled a bit of sloganeering about how all that was required for the bad guys to win was for the white hats to do nothing. Sounded like a bunch of propaganda, but it was also the truth.

  Squire didn’t like running. But sometimes strategy meant you had to run. Common sense. The better part of valor. All that shit. True enough.

  So he’d gotten out, hit the Shadowpaths. Now that the Garden Gate was open, he’d be able to travel the paths back to the Blight. He’d never have been able to find Eden from the human world—even with the Gate open—but coming from this world and heading back to the other, he was confident he’d make it.

  Or he would have if he wasn’t bleeding all over the damn place, and if the serpent wasn’t slithering out there in the shadow realm somewhere, searching the paths for his scent.

  How long was I out? he wondered. A few minutes, okay.

  But a few hours, pally, and you’re screwed.

  He forced himself not to think about whether or not any of his friends were already dead. If they still lived, they were likely prisoners. Squire had only a single Gemini dagger on him as far as weapons went, and that wasn’t going to be a hell of a lot of help. He needed to get to his workshop, and he needed reinforcements—whatever troops he could muster on short notice.

  But the Murawa was here, somewhere. Damned shadow snake.

  Squire lay half on the path and half in the churning gray maelstrom beyond it. His lower torso and legs were barely visible to him, obscured by that thick cloud of shadows.

  When he moved his feet, the pain in his burned legs jolted him. The surface that passed for ground beyond the edge of the path seemed even less solid here than elsewhere. It gave way as he tried to drag himself fully onto the path, and for a moment he felt as though he might slip down into the fabric of the shadow realm, swallowed whole. He could walk in there, travel there, if he had no other choice. But it would be a terrible risk. He might never emerge.

  Groaning with pain, Squire pulled himself onto the path and for a long moment, he only lay there.

  Something moved in the darkness farther along the path.

  He snapped his head up, gritting his teeth at the pain from the gashes in his arm and chest and the burns on his legs.

  Maybe it was the serpent, and maybe it wasn’t. But Squire knew one thing—pain meant he was alive. If he had to haul himself between worlds, across whole universes of shadow, with this pain drilling into him, then he would do that. Death was the only other option, not only for himself, but for the rest of the Menagerie.

  Not gonna happen.

  Thick, dark blood ran from the gashes in his flesh and dripped onto the Shadowpaths. Even to his own nose, the scent of hobgoblin was unmistakable. If the shadow serpent hadn’t already sensed his presence, it would notice soon; and then it would be coming.

  Squire started along the path, trying to push away images of what his friends might be enduring. He focused on his objectives—the weapons at his forge and help for the others.

  A wave of pain went through him. He shuddered and went down onto his knees. Cursing, he rose again and pressed on, but too slowly. Too damned slowly. He hissed through his teeth as the pain rattled him again. He staggered on. The healing had already begun. The waves of pain were a part of that, his body reacting to both the injury and the trauma of its repair.

  The Shadowpath was firm as stone underfoot, but these were wild edges of the matrix of dark roads in this realm, and the gray-black clouds of shadow substance encroached upon the path. Up ahead, it narrowed so much that he would have to take great care not to stumble away from the trail.

  Fresh pain jolted him. Squire froze, waiting for it to pass.

  Not working, he thought. In the roiling dark, he felt sure he heard something in motion. If not the serpent, then some other creature he did not want to encounter in his current condition.

  And now he could not escape the fear he felt for the fate of his friends. He imagined a dozen gruesome deaths for them in the space of as many seconds. His situation was hopeless. No way could he gather up reinforcements like this, never mind weapons. The serpent would be on him before he reached any useful destination.

  He could practically hear Eve’s voice in his head. Move your ass, runt, or you’re snake food. But moving his ass wouldn’t solve the problem. Squire simply didn’t have the strength yet, and the Murawa would not give him the time to recover. Neither, he felt sure, would Abaddon and the other monsters who’d invaded Paradise.

  Time for another plan.

  The fabric of the sha
dows pulsing on the left side of the path ahead seemed to rustle like a curtain about to part.

  Squire had no choice. He wasn’t going anywhere. The Legion of Doom—Abaddon’s ugly bastards—had planned it all too well. The hobgoblin was a wild card, but the Murawa trumped him. Even if he could get through to find help, who would he go to first? Who could he be absolutely certain would help them, would not have been compromised already by Abaddon?

  Only one person came to mind: Danny Ferrick. And the demon kid didn’t have the most reliable record. But this job was just the sort of thing Danny loved. See bad guy, tear bad guy to ribbons.

  If it just came down to Squire and Danny, they’d at least make a fight of it. Sneak in through some shadow in Eden when no one was looking, free whichever of the Menagerie were still alive, and stop Abaddon. Danny had shown a capacity for manipulating shadows in a way even Squire did not understand.

  The hobgoblin could travel by shadow, could slip in and out of them, but he couldn’t control them, couldn’t wrap himself in them or twist them to suit his purposes, and the demon kid had turned out to have hints of that kind of power.

  He could walk the Shadowpaths, if he could figure out how to get in.

  “What are you thinking?” Squire whispered to himself.

  He couldn’t get to Danny. The kid was back in Boston, hellhound-sitting for Shuck. There were far too many paths to walk between here and there. Squire would never reach him without the serpent catching up to him.

  He peered around, gazing into the roiling darkness on all sides. Gray-and-black wisps reached out from the void, inviting, caressing. Squire knew, then, with total certainty. He didn’t have a chance of making it to safety, never mind to any destination that could provide a way for him to help the Menagerie.

  The hobgoblin grinned.

  Thoughts of Danny back at Conan Doyle’s brownstone had given him a glimmer of hope. He didn’t have to go get help. Not when there was a chance he could get help to come to him.

  Putting a pair of grubby, leathery fingers into his mouth, he took a deep breath and whistled, as loud and long as he could manage. Pain shot through his chest, and he coughed a moment, then did it again.

  Slipping the Gemini dagger from its sheath, he stepped off the path and let the primal darkness embrace him. In the maelstrom, soft shadow sifting underfoot, all he could do now was wait and hope he could stay close to the path.

  The blood had stopped seeping from his wounds. But it had created another path, there in the dark realm—one that would be simple for any shadow beast to follow.

  AWASH in the flickering light from the television, Danny lay sprawled on the couch with the remote control clutched in his hand. The heavy curtains were drawn in the living room of Conan Doyle’s brownstone, and he had long since lost track of the time of day. A glimmer of light glowed at the edges of the curtains, but that might have come from the streetlights out in Louisburg Square just as easily as early morning or late afternoon.

  Since the visit from Sanguedolce—which had totally freaked him out—he’d barely moved from the sofa. Several times he’d nodded off, but he had lost track of how much time he’d slept. His jeans and black hoodie sweatshirt had a stale smell that told him he ought to get up and take a shower pretty soon. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that.

  From the moment that Squire had taken off to help the others search for Eve—leaving Danny dog-sitting for Shuck—a feeling had been growing in him. Dread comprised only a part of it. Hour by hour he had become more certain that he had a role to play in the current crisis, that he had some task to perform beyond just sitting on his ass and watching the enormous shadow hound pace the halls, sniffing at corners and breaking putrid wind.

  He’d never had a feeling like this before. More than just gut instinct—or his fervent wish to have something to pummel—this gnawed at the back of his skull so much that he’d had to force himself to relax. This was something more, genuine precognition. Danny had never had any kind of psychic powers and usually thought they were a lot of bullshit. But he couldn’t deny what he felt.

  Whatever might be unfolding, it pulled at him, as though the need to act was imminent. But time dragged on, and still nothing happened, forcing him to tamp down any excitement that might be brewing in him.

  Instead, he was bored out of his skull.

  Listlessly, Danny thumbed the remote control, surfing the channel guide, hoping to come up with something that involved evisceration or lots of naked girls or, in a perfect world, both. News. Gardening. Reality crap. Seventies cop shows. At last he stumbled across an old movie that had Bill Murray mugging for the camera. Probably no tits, but at least he could have a laugh.

  His stomach growled. Barely aware of it, he ran his tongue across his teeth. He wanted something hot to eat, not something he could snatch from Squire’s snack cabinet. But getting that would mean ordering takeout to be delivered, and that would mean getting up off the couch. If Danny did that, he feared he might start pacing the halls like Shuck. Never mind that he didn’t even know what time it was and if there was anyplace open that would deliver.

  He started bouncing his left leg up and down, a nervous habit he’d had since childhood. With a sigh, he started switching channels. Bill Murray might as well have been the Marx Brothers for all he could hold Danny’s attention.

  Anything made before he had been born automatically had two strikes against it.

  “Stir-crazy,” he muttered to himself. “You’re gonna lose it.”

  An itch started, right behind his left horn, and he reached up to scratch at the leathery skin there. After a few seconds, he tossed the remote aside and practically leaped up from the couch.

  “Screw it.”

  He wanted to go up onto the roof, check out the windows of the buildings around Doyle’s. People watching had become an obsession. It was best when he could catch girls naked or in their underwear, but sometimes he liked to watch no matter who it was or what the situation. Peeking in other people’s windows was the only glimpse he ever got of normal life these days. It hurt some to watch them, but in a strange way it soothed him, too.

  Danny strode down the corridor, steps squeaking on the hardwood. He hit the stairs and started up, noticing that the carpet runner on the stairs was slightly worn. The lights that were on downstairs didn’t reach this far, and as he set foot on the third step, he crossed into shadow.

  A frown creased his brow. He’d heard something, a high, shrill sound, like a whistle. He paused a second to see if it would come again, but when it didn’t, he started up the stairs again.

  Back on the first floor, Shuck began to bark. The massive shadow beast came running from the back of the house, probably the kitchen, bellowing a thunderous clamor. The house shook. Danny could feel the place tremble through the wooden banister.

  Shuck tried to slow down and reverse direction as he reached the bottom of the stairs, his claws scrabbling on the wood, scoring it deeply. The shadow hound nearly tripped over himself, but then he recovered his step and started up the stairs toward Danny.

  “Whoa, boy!” Danny called, holding up both hands.

  The hound came on.

  “Hold on! Back off, you stupid mutt!”

  But then Shuck leaped at him. Danny went down on his butt on the stairs. He tried to push the big, ugly dog off him, but Shuck caught his sleeve in his jaws and pushed past him, dragging him farther up the stairs. For all Danny’s demonic strength, the shadow hound was too powerful for him. Danny spun around on the stairs and cooperated.

  “All right, all right. I’m coming. What, Timmy’s down the fucking well?”

  The hound led him to the second-floor landing, tugging the entire way. Shuck kept growling and the sound rolled like distant thunder. If it didn’t seem obvious that the monstrous dog meant him no harm, he would’ve thought Shuck intended to eat him or something. But then the growling turned to whining, a desperate sound, and Danny knew whatever the hound wanted him to do, it had to be
done fast.

  “What is it, mutt?” he asked, no longer joking. “What’s going on? Danger coming? What do you want from me?”

  Down at the end of the hall, a light burned in Conan Doyle’s study. The rest of the floor was cast in gloom. But on the landing, there was a jog in the wall that created a dead corner, almost entirely devoid of light. The shadows gathered there.

  Shuck dragged Danny toward that darkened corner, edging backward. In moments, the hound reached the point where he ought to have bumped into the wall. Instead, he kept going, the entire rear half of the creature vanishing into the shadows.

  A trickle of fear went down Danny’s spine. “Wait. Hey, cut it out.” He tried to pull away, but the dog’s jaws were clamped tight on his sleeve. “I can’t go in there. Squire’s the shadow-walker, not me. Even if I could get in, how the hell would I find my way out?”

  The dog growled and bent low, muscles rippling beneath oil black fur as it tried to drag him unwillingly into the liquid shadows.

  “Cut the crap!” he snarled. With all his strength, he tore his arm away from the hound. His sweatshirt ripped, and a swatch of the fabric remained in the beast’s jaws. “Look what you did!”

  Shuck took a step toward him, partially emerging from the Shadowpaths. Now there was danger in his growl, a warning.

  The pleading whine had left his repertoire.

  “What the hell’s set you off?” he shouted at the hound.

  Danny blinked. What had gotten into Shuck? When he’d stepped into the shadows, he’d heard that weird whistling noise. This creature was from the Shadowpaths. Maybe the whistle had been some kind of summons. Something he recognized.

  He needed to go, and he wanted Danny to come along. Timmy-down-the-well didn’t seem so off base all of a sudden. He’d never seen that old show about the dog rescuing the kid all the time, but he’d heard the reference made hundreds of times.

  Maybe this is it, Danny thought. Maybe this is the thing that’s been causing that feeling.

  Shuck growled low, cocked his head, and stared at Danny.