by Amy Cross
"There's one more thing I should say," Matt continues. "You won't like it, but I'm going to say it anyway." He looks at us both, his eyes heavy with some secret he's about to reveal. "There's one final legend about the Underworld that I think is relevant to your journey, and I want you to keep it in mind at all times."
"Okay," says Darla. "Shoot."
"Remember," Matt says, "I'm just telling you what I know. This isn't my fault."
"Shoot," Darla continues.
Matt nods. "There's an old saying. Whenever two friends shall enter the Underworld together, not both those two shall make it out alive. It seems to me that you two are friend, and you're going into the Underworld together." He stares at us. "Let's just hope that part of the legend isn't true, yeah?"
"Let's hope," Darla says quietly. She turns to me and smiles. "But if one of us has to die, it'll be me."
"Will it?" I ask, surprised.
"Totally," she says. "I'm the quip-happy lively one. You're the quiet, thoughtful one. Don't you watch horror films? I'm clearly living on borrowed time as things are."
"It's an attitude like that," Matt says, "that'll get you both killed."
"Spoilsport," Darla snaps back at him, then she turns to me again and smiles. "See what I mean?"
"One last thing, Matt," I say, ignoring Darla for a moment. "Is there any way we can persuade you to come with us? At least part of the way. You seem to know so much about the Underworld, about how to get about down there. If you could just come with us part of the way, you can turn back when things get too dark -"
"No," he interrupts. "No way. I've been there before. Never again. And you know full well that if I came in part of the way, I'd end up staying with you until the end. There's just no way. I'll take you as far as the throne room, then you're on your own. I've already told you enough. You know more than most people know when they first go down to the Underworld. You know more than I knew. Keep your wits about you, don't judge things by how they look at first glance, and you've got a decent shot at getting out alive." He pauses. "At least one of you, anyway."
The throne of Lycanth is in a small room at the bottom of the pit. It takes quite a bit of effort to persuade Matt to come down there with us, given that he's only recently been freed from the pit. But I think he understands that we need all the help we can get, so the three of us climb down and approach the throne. It's a large, old stone construction, bare but imposing. There are no jewels, there's no gold, it's just made of stone and rock. It looks like it was designed for a big man to sit up there, but no-one has sat therefore for many years. As Matt explains to us, the Wolf King long ago left Britain to travel the world. Where he is these days, no-one knows.
Matt shows us to a small door behind the throne. Pushing the door open, we find a long passage heading away into the darkness. Darla and I each have a torch, which we shine into the distance, but there's nothing to see except a long corridor carved out of the rocks.
"How far until we reach the Underworld?" I ask.
"It'll take you the best part of a day," Matt says, to my surprise. "It's not exactly an easy journey. At first you'll hear Tube trains going past in nearby tunnels, but when you're about halfway those sounds will stop. You'll be on your own then. You'll know when you reach the Underworld because... well, trust me, you'll just know."
"One more time," I say, turning to him. "Please come with us. We need you."
"I know you need me," he says. "But there's no way I'm going back down there. Not again. Not ever. But I wish you two the best luck in the world. Even Duncan. I don't like him much, but he deserves better than to end up trapped in the Underworld."
"Where are you going to go?" I ask.
Matt shrugs. "Out of London, that's for sure. Maybe I'll go to Scotland and check in with the rest of my pack."
"Can I ask you a favor?" Darla says. She takes a deep breath. "If we don't survive... if I don't survive... could you go and find my friends and tell them... well, just say goodbye to them for me? They live in a small carnival somewhere in northern Cornwall. Just let them know that I was planning to come back to them, and life - or death - just got in the way." She laughs. "Sorry, I'm being maudlin. I'm sure I'll be back with them in a week, but just in case... Tell them that for me, yeah?"
Matt nods, then he turns to me. "And you, Jess? Do you want me to take a message to your family in case you don't make it back?"
I shake my head.
"Nothing at all?" he asks, surprised.
"Nothing," I say. "Don't do anything for me, okay?"
Darla looks at me. "You never talk about your human family -"
"That's right," I say. "I don't. Come on, let's get on with this. The sooner we head down there, the sooner we can find Duncan and come back up."
"Good luck," says Matt. "Hey, you never know. Maybe this time in a few days, we'll all be sitting around in a pub somewhere, laughing about things."
"Maybe," I say, turning to Darla. "We can stand here talking all day, but at some point we're gonna have to start moving. Why wait?"
"She's right," Darla says. "We're putting this off." She reaches out to Matt and they hug.
"Bye," I say, turning and heading down the tunnel. "Let's go." I hear Darla following, and eventually I look back. She's right behind me, but Matt is standing at the entrance to the tunnel, watching us go.
"You can't blame him for not coming," Darla says, as if she can read my mind. "To be honest, I plan on making this a one-time trip myself."
"I know," I say as we walk on. "I just think it'd be marginally easier for us if he helped more. But that's our problem, not his." And with that, we walk on in silence down the tunnel, which starts slowly sloping downwards as we head toward the Underworld.
Lumic
He lives.
Standing in the bottom of the grave, with rain pouring all around me, I look at the dismembered legs and lower torso and I realize, with rage and anger, that he lives.
He has escaped.
I underestimated him. I thought that by slicing him in half and burying him in hallowed ground, I'd finally be rid of him. But he tunneled his way down into the Underworld, and now he's hiding there, slowly regrowing his body. He thinks there's no way I can touch him while he's down there, that he's safe. But he's wrong. He'll never be safe from me. I won't rest until he's dead. Permanently, this time.
I look down and see a dismembered head in the mud. I pick it up and find that it's an old man's head, with various wires and tubes sticking out of it. It means nothing to me, so I drop it in the dirt. Climbing out of the grave, I look across the moonlit cemetery. That head wasn't down there before. Someone else has been in this grave.
With no time to waste, I make my way across London. All around me in the streets, humans are crowding in and out of bars and pubs, like the detestable animals that they are. They should be thankful that I merely walk past them. Were I not in such a hurry, I would gut every single one of them, slicing open their bellies and ripping out their intestines. That's all that humans are good for. Vermin. They infest this city with their noise, their dirt and their big ideas. But let them laugh for now. One day, they will be wiped off the face of the planet.
Finally I am able to make my way down below the surface, beyond the parts of this wretched city that are within reach of humans. But as I approach the pit, I hear voices. Pausing, I immediately recognize the sound of three werewolves engaged in conversation. I remain in the shadows near the top of the pit.
"Come on," one of the voices, a female, is saying. She sounds tense and nervous. "Let's get on with this. The sooner we head down there, the sooner we can find Duncan and come back up." That name. Duncan. It seems I'm not the only one who's looking for him. But I don't intend to bring him back up. I intend to bury him.
"Good luck," says another voice, male this time. It's a familiar voice, though I can't quite recall where I have heard it before. "Hey, you never know. Maybe this time in a few days, we'll all be sitting around in a pub somewhere,
laughing about things."
"Maybe," says the female voice. "We can stand here talking all day, but at some point we're gonna have to start moving. Why wait?"
"She's right," says a third voice. Female again, and quite unfamiliar. There is as much fear in this voice as in the first, if not more. "We're putting this off."
"Bye," says the first female voice. I hear her walking away, and the voices die down. They must be heading down the tunnel, down into the Underworld. I allow a smile to cross my lips. The chances of these fools surviving down there are minimal, and even if they do live more than a few hours, I'll easily be able to finish them off.
I step out of the shadows for a moment, but then I hear a sound in the pit and I step back. Someone is climbing back out, and after a moment a male werewolf appears at the top. I recognize him immediately as Matt DiMera, an acquaintance of Duncan's and the wolf who was doomed to spend the rest of his life in the pit. The idea that he could now be walking freely is somewhat disturbing, but at least he has the wisdom not to head down into the Underworld. He chose to remain here, in the Overworld. To be safe. To survive.
He walks toward me. He hasn't spotted me yet, lurking in the shadows.
"Hello," I say, stepping in front of him.
He stops, and I can see that he instantly recognizes me. The look of fear on his face is priceless.
"I see you decided not to follow your friends down into the Underworld," I say. "Very wise. We both know what'll happen to them down there. If the Flesh Weavers don't get them, the Golvs will. And if the Golvs don't them... I'll get them."
Matt just looks at me, a mixture of shock and fear in his eyes. He looks around. For what? An escape route? A weapon? To be honest, I'd respect him more if he just came right out and attacked me. At least that way he'd be something of a challenge. As it is, he looks more likely to just roll over and die, which would be somewhat anti-climactic. I can afford to wait a moment, to toy with him. Those girls won't get very far down the tunnel before I catch up to them anyway.
"I remember you from years ago," I say, stepping toward Matt. "You were always very talkative. What's changed? Or is it just that you don't have anything to say to me? Or that you know there's nothing you can say that will save your miserable life."
I can see in his eyes that he's trying to think of a way out of this. He's trying to decide whether to stand his ground, or to run. He can't decide, and his indecision will be his downfall.
"Well," he says, his voice sounding nervous, "you know what they say. If you -" And suddenly, he turns and runs to the pit, jumping straight down. I follow, and I land right on top of him at the bottom. We both instantly change to our wolf forms and I take his neck in my mouth and bite hard, feeling his hot blood flowing into my mouth. Before he has a chance to fight back, I bite again, this time ripping a chunk from the side of his face. With a third bite, I tear off part of his neck and his blood sprays from the wound. I look at his eyes and see him losing consciousness.
He will never wake up.
Barely even panting, and with not a scratch on my body, I consider my options. He's dead, but being a werewolf he will quickly recover. I could take him to hallowed ground and bury him, to finish him off and prevent him from ever recovering, but that tactic failed with Duncan. I need to do something more brutal. I look up at the entrance to the tunnel. Those two girls are getting further and further ahead of me with every passing second, but it won't take me too long to catch up with them, not if I run in my wolf form while they apparently choose to walk as humans. So I have a little time to kill here.
I lean down and tear away a large chunk of Matt DiMera's neck. There is only one way to make absolutely sure that he will stay dead forever. It's the same way that I should have used with Duncan, and that I plan to use on him when I catch up with him this time. Slowly, ravenously, I start to eat Matt DiMera's body.
Jess
"Do you hear that?" Darla asks.
We stop. This tunnel seems to have been going on forever, and we've been walking for so long that I've lost track of time completely. "What?" I ask.
"Silence," Darla says. "No trains. We haven't heard a passing tube train in an adjacent tunnel for hours now." She has a pensive, concerned look on her face. "Do you remember what Matt said? When we stop hearing trains in tunnels, that means we're halfway to the Underworld."
"Great," I say, smiling nervously. "I guess we'll be there in a few more hours, then."
We walk on.
"Are you scared?" Darla asks.
"I don't know," I say. "Are you?"
"Fuck yeah." She smiles. "Come on, darling. You can tell me. It's natural to be scared. In fact, if you're not scared, I'm turning back right now 'cause you're clearly a psychopath."
I smile, for the first time in days. "Okay," I say. "I'm scared. But what else can we do?"
"Nothing," Darla says. "I guess I can understand why Matt stayed behind. Nothing could have persuaded him to come down here. He'd rather stay safe back at the entrance to the tunnel."
"It's not his fault," I say. "Like you said earlier, he's been down here once already. It doesn't sound like it's exactly Disneyland in the Underworld."
"We need a plan," says Darla, stopping suddenly.
"What do you mean?" I ask, stopping a few paces ahead of her.
"We're blundering into this without a plan," Darla says. "When we get into the Underworld, then what?"
"We find Duncan," I say. "I can already sense him, we just have to follow my instincts until we find him."
"I know," Darla says, "but do you really think it'll be that easy? You heard what Matt said, there's all sorts of creatures down there. Seriously dangerous things. Do you reckon they're gonna just stand aside and wave as we walk past?" She stares at me. "Come on. We bump into a Flesh Weaver. What do you do?"
I shake my head. "How can I plan when I don't even know what a Flesh Weaver looks like?" I ask.
"Exactly!" Darla says. "You know less than me, and I don't know anything. Fact check, Jess. We're very, very unlikely to just bump into a Flesh Weaver, because they don't tend to wander about looking for victims. They delegate all the nasty stuff to the Loom People. But neither of us really -"
"I know!" I say, interrupting her. "But we can't plan for every eventuality, can we?"
"No," Darla says, "but put it like this. The tunnel opens out into the Underworld, right?"
"Right," I say.
"So if you were a hungry, nasty creature looking for a snack," she continues, "wouldn't your first priority be to hang around the end of the tunnel, waiting to attack anything that comes out?"
I open my mouth to argue with her, but then I realize that there's nothing I can say. She's right. We're walking straight into danger. We're almost certain to be attacked by something pretty nasty once we get into the Underworld. But what's the alternative? We have to keep going. And if Darla's too scared...
"You can turn back," I say.
"No..." Darla replies.
"I mean it," I say. "This isn't your battle. You don't know Duncan. You've never even met him? Why are you here anyway? Why are you marching into certain danger for someone you've never met?"
She sighs. "I've met you," she says. "And I like you. And I want to help you. And what's the alternative? Go and crawl into bed and hope the bogeyman doesn't come for me? You're my friend. You saved my life back at the carnival, you did it again in the Blaum Building, and I owe you. And I want to hang out with you." She steps closer. "Look, the truth is, I..." She pauses. "I... I just want to help, that's all. Okay?"
I nod. "Sorry," I say. "I guess I'm just worried I'm going to get us both killed."
"Nah," says Darla. "You won't get us killed. What'll get us killed is some huge worm with millions of teeth, or a Golv that tries to eat us with its eyes, or God forbid we wander into the path of Black Annis. Whatever. If I'd stayed back there with Matt, maybe I'd have got so bored I'd have tripped and smashed my head open and died right there. Accidents happen. And any
way, we're werewolves. We're tough. It takes a lot to kill us, and even if we do die, I doubt there's much hallowed ground down in the Underworld. So unless we actually get eaten -"
"Which can happen," I say.
"Which can happen," she repeats. "But unless it does, we'll be okay. Okay?"
"Okay," I say, and we keep walking.
***
After what feels like many more hours, we finally find that the tunnel is starting to get wider. It feels as if it's opening out, and eventually we noticed that in the far distance there appears to be a fork in the route. Sure enough, we get there and find that there's a stone wall ahead of us, and we have a choice: we either go left, or right. In both directions, there appears to be nothing more than more tunnel.
"Matt never mentioned this," I say, puzzled.
"Maybe it's new," Darla says.
I give her a dubious look.
"Well..." She pauses. "Even down in the Underworld, they must redecorate from time to time."
"Which way?" I ask.
Darla looks in both directions. "Right is right," she says. "It's always right. And there's probably not a wrong way. They're just different."
I try to get a clear impression of Duncan, but although I can sense his presence, he still seems to be far away and I can't work out any kind of direction.
"Right," I say. "If you say right, we'll go right."
We head down the tunnel to the right, but we've only got a few paces when we hear a hideous, blood-curdling scream coming from somewhere up ahead. It sounds like some kind of animal being slaughtered, and it's so horrific it actually sends shivers down my spine.
"Left?" Darla asks.
"Left," I say, and we turn around, taking the left tunnel instead. This time there are no screams and we keep walking for a while as the tunnel slowly curves around to the right. After a little while, we spot something up ahead and soon we come to a small wooden door. We stop and stare at it.
