“You’d never know it from your news shows, Donny, but humanity has gotten nearly respectable lately. More educated. More rational. More tolerant. Less prone to war and atrocities and mayhem.
“There was nearly a major exception: back in the sixties you came darn close to blowing yourselves off the planet. It seemed so inevitable that we were trying to figure out how to expand the pit to accommodate all the new bodies we were expecting! But you pulled back from the brink—and, by and large, you’ve gotten more peaceable. Then, finally, you people did something so amazing that I knew the time had come.”
Again Angela let the silence linger. Donny didn’t wait so long to ask this time. “What? What did we do?”
She threw her hands up. “You went to the moon, for crying out loud. You sent people in a rocket to the moon, and they walked around for a while, stuck a flag in it, picked up some rocks, and flew back home. Do you even appreciate how outrageous, how audacious, how supremely wonderful that was? I bought a bunch of newspapers. ‘Man Walks on Moon!’ ‘One Giant Leap for Mankind!’ And I brought them to the council. ‘Look at this!’ I shouted. ‘Look what these numbskulls have accomplished! And what about us? Down here, nothing has changed at all! If Earth can make progress, why can’t Hell?’ And that was when the debate truly started. All I got back at first was ridicule, scoffing, and two scoops of outrage. But slowly I won some converts. And something else worked in our favor. The imps in the pit? Turns out a lot of them weren’t too happy with the work and would be delighted to put out the fires.
“One by one, we picked up more votes in the council. It was funny how it went. Some of them simply agreed with me. Some of them thought that if we extinguished the pit, it would get Lucifer’s attention and he’d come back. It took years and plenty of arm-twisting, but we gained momentum.”
Donny could see the pit from there. It yawned across the landscape, ominous even without the flames and writhing figures. “So you guys just voted on it?”
“It never came to that,” Angela said. “Once the Merciless saw that change was inevitable, they went a little crazy.”
“Crazy how?”
“Oh, they called us traitors, started riots, assassinated a bunch of us. Finally they decided that they wanted to split away, form their own realm, and take all the souls with them. Apparently, the bigger a change you try to make, the more violently the other side reacts. Anyway, things escalated, and pretty soon we had a war on our hands. You can still see the damage. Look there, and there.” She pointed to other pillars like the one they were on, where the base was surrounded by rubble, and straight below to the ruined section near her own home.
“Now, look that way—all the way across. See the far wall with the jagged peaks?”
Donny looked. Far away, beyond the pit, the river, mushroom forests, and miles of strange stone formations, lay what he thought of as the eastern side of this cavernous world. Out there stood mountains with narrow tops—really a series of colossal stalagmites that had merged together in a range that ran for miles.
“We call those the Dragonbacks,” Angela said. “Now look there, between the two tallest peaks, at the bottom. See the dark space?” Donny looked at what seemed to be the mouth of a cave. In front of that opening was a wall of stone.
“Inside those mountains there are enormous passages and caves,” Angela said. “Those are the Depths. We don’t even know how far they go, or how deep, or what’s down there. When the Merciless lost the war, that’s where they retreated. We built that wall you can just make out from here, and we keep an army there to guard the cave. But we haven’t seen them since.”
Donny looked again at that opening, so dark in contrast with the harshly lit peaks around it. “What do you think they’ve been doing all this time?”
Angel tapped her chin with one finger. “According to Havoc and his fraudulent expedition, they’re searching for Lucifer, and they’ve gone so deep, they can’t be found. I don’t buy it. I think he’s gone there to scheme with them. The Merciless care too much about their precious pit to give up. They’re either plotting a comeback, or they’re biding their time, hoping that things change in Sulfur. That last thing is what worries me the most.”
“Why?”
She brooded for a while. “Now that years have gone by, some on the council wonder if we did the right thing. There are thirteen members, you know. Right now if it came to a vote, it would be eight to five in favor of keeping the pit extinguished. But a couple of council members could be swayed.”
“Why would they change their minds?”
“Different reasons. It might be nostalgia. They miss the fire, the heat, and the howls. Or Havoc is winning them over. Havoc thinks what we’re doing is an abomination. He preaches that we’ve abandoned our traditions and our duty. As far as he’s concerned, roasting mortals in the fire is the only reason we exist.”
“But eight to five is still pretty good,” Donny said.
She frowned at that. “Do the math, Donny. If two members change their votes, we lose everything we’ve fought for.”
Donny looked up at the billowing, incandescent clouds dripping fire. They were so bright, he had to squint to see them. Angela had just stuffed his brain with an overwhelming feast that would take a while to digest. There was a long silence, both of them lost in their own thoughts.
One of the gargs swept past them. It dove steeply from above and chirped as it passed. Two more dove by, and then another. “Odd,” Angela said. She stood and shaded her eyes as she gazed into the cloud.
A terrible screech, as harsh as nails on a blackboard, rang down from above. The noise alone was enough to make Donny cringe. “What was that?”
“Hope it’s not what I think it is,” she said. A dozen other gargs left their perches on the stone and rushed away from the cloud in a panic. Donny glimpsed a larger shape inside the cloud as it swooped by.
Another garg dropped from the cloud, but this one was injured, one of its wings in bloody tatters. It flapped awkwardly and lost altitude fast. Unable to glide like the others, it aimed for the pillar and a place to land.
“What do you think it is?” asked Donny. He got up and backed away from the edge of the landing.
The thing revealed itself, dropping out of the clouds. It was a larger, nastier version of the gargs, gray and black except for the red of its mouth when it screamed. A serrated horn jutted from its snout, and the talons on its feet looked like knives.
“That is a shreek,” Angela said.
The shreek closed in on the fleeing, wounded garg. The smaller creature just made it to the pillar. It grabbed the rock with its hands and feet and tried to squeeze into a crevice. But the shreek soared by and raked it with those awful talons.
The garg toppled off the pillar and fell limply past them. The shreek arced past the ledge where Donny and Angela stood, so close that Donny ducked low. With nothing else to throw, Angela took off one of her shoes and flung it at the creature. “Hey! Knock it off! Go back to the Depths!”
The shreek seemed surprised to see her there. It screeched at her as it went by, such an awful sound that Donny jammed his fingers in his ears. The cry was answered by others hidden in the clouds.
“Wish I had my sword with me,” Angela grumbled. “I’d have shut him up in a hurry.” She looked out at the bottoms of the fiery clouds. In the distance, above the Council Dome, smaller gargs were driven out of the clouds by the larger, fiercer shreeks. “I can’t even tell how many there are.”
“Is this unusual? Aren’t they always here?”
She scrunched her mouth. “No. Not since the war. They were allies with the Merciless. They would carry barrels of fire and drop them on us. When the Merciless were forced into the Depths, the shreeks followed. We’d see one or two every once in a while, but nothing like this. I guess they’re back.”
Donny saw another poor garg drop lifelessly fr
om the cloud. “They’re horrible.”
“Ugh,” Angela said. She shook her head. “Let’s get out of here.”
• • •
Going down the spiral path was easier with gravity on their side. The commotion above had died down now that the gargs had been driven away. The shreeks were quiet and stayed hidden in the clouds.
Without the noise, Donny was able to think again, and he realized there was an important question he’d never asked. “Angela?”
“Mmm?”
“How did you know what you would do with the souls once they weren’t going to be in the pit?”
“Cricket, that’s enough history for one day. I want to get my mind off this stuff that’s been happening. It feels like everything’s going here in a hand basket.” She put her arm around Donny’s shoulder and jostled him. “Are you ready for some fun?”
Donny gulped. He wondered what Angela’s definition of fun might be. “Um. I guess so?”
“Swell! We’ll pack some things and leave tomorrow.”
“Where are we going?”
“Topside, of course.”
“What are we going to do?”
Her smile widened. “We’re gonna catch a monster.”
CHAPTER 14
Donny’s eyes fluttered open. He lifted his head and saw the canopy all around. At least this time he knew where he was when he woke up. He parted the material on both sides, half expecting to find Tizzy peering at him, but the room was empty. There was a clock on the table beside his bed. It was four a.m. Sulfur time.
All night he’d dreamed about the astounding things he’d seen since arriving. It was almost too much to absorb, and the sheer volume and intensity of the memories had woken him in a dizzy state. Amid those confused thoughts, a word floated up: infinite. Why, he wondered, had that popped into his head? It was connected to something. Then he realized what it was. That strange old imp named Sooth had said that puzzling phrase over and over: When eight sleeps, it is forever.
“Eight sleeps,” Donny muttered. He closed his eyes and pictured the word eight sleeping, and then the number 8 sleeping. And then he started to laugh. “Oh,” he said, grinning. “I get it.” He turned over again, laughed into his pillow, and dozed off once more.
CHAPTER 15
Wake up,” said a musical voice. Little hands bounced Donny’s shoulders into the mattress.
“Hi, Tizzy,” he said through a yawn.
She fired words like machine-gun bullets. “Angela says you’re lazy and you sleep too much and you have to go have breakfast with me right now because you’re going somewhere with her later.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess we are.”
She bit her bottom lip. “Are you going home?”
Donny laughed. “No. Not home. She has something else she wants me to do.”
“Are you from New York?”
“Yes.”
“Is that Gotham?”
“Well, some people call it that.”
“Do you know Batman?”
Donny looked at her and tried to figure out if she was clowning around. She stared back with wide eyes. “Batman isn’t a real person, Tizzy,” he said.
“I know that.” She looked over her shoulder, then leaned closer and whispered, “It’s his secret identity.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean . . .” He took another look at those wide, dark, unblinking eyes. She was holding her breath. “I mean, no. I’ve never met Batman. Maybe someday, though.”
She nodded and then rubbed her stomach. “I want scrambled eggs and bacon! Cookie makes them into a smiley face.”
“Sounds good,” Donny said. “I’ll meet you downstairs in a little while.”
• • •
After he washed and dressed, he found Tizzy in the main room below, slapping her knees and clapping her hands to amuse herself. “I’m hungry,” she said when she saw him.
Echo waited by the door. “Hello, Echo,” Donny said.
“Hello,” the giant imp replied.
“Where’s Angela?” Donny asked Tizzy.
“She said go and eat, and she’ll meet you here later,” Tizzy told him. “And she said Echo has to go with us, but it’s not because weird stuff is happening and she’s worried.”
“Okay,” Donny said. He watched Echo pick up the lethal club that leaned against the door. “Echo, are you coming along so you can protect me?”
“Protect,” Echo said. He rested the weapon on his shoulder.
“Thanks,” Donny told him. He didn’t want to wander around alone, or just with Tizzy, with Butch in the vicinity.
They went through the tall doors, down the steps and the ramp, and took the same road toward the strangely out-of-place diner. When they approached the shattered building and the broken column where Sooth had been perched, Donny looked for the old gray imp. He planned to call out the answer to yesterday’s riddle, and wanted to hear if Sooth had a new one. But the little imp wasn’t in his usual place.
Tizzy noticed too. “I wonder where Sooth is.”
Donny was about to answer, but instead he gasped as a hand clamped on his elbow. He looked down and saw Sooth staring wildly up. “After the light comes the fall,” he said in that froggy voice.
“Right,” Donny said. “Hey, I figured out the last one. The number eight looks like the symbol for infinity when it’s sideways.”
“After the light comes the fall,” Sooth repeated, louder this time. He squeezed Donny’s arm until it was nearly painful and his breath wheezed through his nose.
“Why aren’t you up there?” Tizzy asked. She pointed at the broken column.
Sooth let go of Donny’s arm and repeated the riddle again, reaching for Tizzy. She backed away. “After the light comes the fall,” he croaked at her. The ancient imp turned to Echo next. “After the light comes the fall!”
“Are you feeling all right?” Donny asked. But Sooth wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. Someone else was walking down the street. Donny was pretty sure it was another one of the council members who he had seen outside the dome. Sooth stumbled toward the newcomer and repeated the riddle again, louder still.
“He’s acting funny,” Tizzy said.
“Funny,” Echo said.
They went on to the diner, and Donny turned the phrase over in his mind. He wondered if it could be solved as easily as the last one.
After the light comes the fall.
CHAPTER 16
You’re back,” Angela called down when they’d returned from the diner. It sounded like she was in one of the rooms upstairs.
“Sooth was acting weird!” shouted Tizzy.
“Isn’t he always? Donny, come up here, will you?” When Donny went upstairs, he saw the door to her room open, and rapped his knuckles on it.
“Come in, Cricket,” she sang out from within. Donny stepped inside, and almost whistled in admiration when he looked around the room. The ceiling was twenty feet tall, and the frame of her bed reached almost as high. Murals of cherubic angels covered the walls. But the most curious feature of the room was that the bed, the shelves, the bureaus, and the tables were littered with stuffed animals of all sizes: teddy bears, dogs, cats, lions, giraffes, pandas, and more, as if she’d cleaned out an aisle at the toy store.
“Almost time to go,” she said. She stepped out of a smaller connected room that must have been a huge walk-in closet. Donny saw clothes inside, hanging in long rows, with hundreds of shoes in racks and dozens of hats on shelves above. Angela was dressed in a black shirt with silver embroidery, a jacket with tails, and dark jeans with leather boots that came to her knees. The matching glove on just one hand was an eccentric touch, but even with that she’d blend in easily on the streets of New York.
“You should grab some money,” she said. As she put on a glittering necklace, she gestured with on
e elbow to a table in the corner.
“Are you kidding me?” Donny asked. The table was littered with piles of money. He stepped up to it, his mouth hanging open. There were stacks of bills, euros, and other currencies he could not identify. “You just leave this sitting here?”
“Who’s going to steal it? It’s not like anyone can use it down here,” she said. “Go on, grab some good old American buckaroos.”
“This is crazy,” Donny said. He picked up a bundle that was an inch thick. On top was a hundred-dollar bill. He riffled through the stack. They were all hundred-dollar bills. “This isn’t real, is it?”
“Of course it’s real.”
“But . . . how much is there?”
“I haven’t the slightest. Loads.”
“But . . .” Donny’s head wobbled. “How did you get this?”
She stepped up beside him and shoved some of the bundles into a purse. “You know all those people who arrive here by barge every day? The wicked dead? There are plenty of rich ones among them, with a lot of ill-gotten gains. If we ever run low on money, we ask the new arrivals to tell us where the loot is hidden. They’re so eager to help! The embezzlers, the bank robbers, the tax cheats, the drug lords, the grafters, the white-collar weasels . . . They all figure that, if they give it up, maybe we’ll go easy on them.”
“Do you?”
“You’re so funny.” She thrust another stack into his hands. “Come on, fill those pockets. New York is expensive, you know.”
Donny stared at the pile of bills again. He shook his head and stuffed one of the bundles into his pocket. “Hey, did you find out what happened with the clouds?” he asked.
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