Marlow took one last look east, the sun hauling its liquid bulk up over the roof of the hotel. Then he turned the other way, west, toward home. That way was his mom, sure. But here, right here, was his family.
“Let’s kick Ostheim out on his ass,” he said to Herc. “New York City can wait. We’re Hellraisers, like you say.”
“Good man,” said Herc, clapping him so hard on the shoulder he almost tripped up the steps. Herc slid the door shut, running around and clambering into the driver’s seat. He started the engine, then turned to face them all.
“I…” he croaked, looking like he was trying to swallow a loaf of bread in one go. “I…”
“Yeah,” said Marlow. “We love you, too. Now get us out of here before those nuns come back and catch us sinners red-handed.”
MIRROR, MIRROR
Venice was as beautiful as Pan expected but it stank like a public bathroom.
The place was mobbed, too, tourists clogging the streets like artery-blocking sludge, their sweaty bodies rubbing against Pan every time she tried to squeeze past. Most of them were American, their shirts so bright and their chatter so loud she could have been back in Times Square or any other nightmarish tourist mecca in her hometown. One guy—who had to have been even larger than Truck—almost decapitated her while taking a video on his cell with a selfie stick and she’d flicked her fingers his way before she remembered she didn’t have any electrostatic electricity left to Taser him with.
Just as well, really, because as they crossed yet another stone bridge a couple of polizia walked past, both of them eyeballing Herc. With his wounds, both old and new, he looked like the bad guy in a Bruce Willis movie. He was holding a map they’d bought from a vendor in Saint Mark’s Square. Not that it had done them much good so far.
“You sure that’s all he told you?” Herc growled as he pushed through the mob, scanning street names. He ducked into an alleyway between the rickety, jumbled buildings that crowded the saltwater lagoons. True to form, gondolas were idly cruising the waters, families and couples lazing on them and eating gelato. If any of them had so much as glimpsed what had gone down in Paris yesterday they would have scooped out their own brains and thrown them into the dirty water.
“That’s all he said,” Pan replied. A screaming toddler bounced off her knee and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to punt it into the water. “A shop, in the old town. A mirror shop.”
“Why would one of the Pentarchy, with all the power in the world, work in a shop?” Charlie asked, popping gum.
“Not working,” said Pan. “Hiding. Makes sense, to hide in plain sight, right?”
He shrugged. “None of this makes sense.”
They exited the other side of the alleyway onto a cobbled walkway lined with houses that could have been built a thousand years ago. They were so crooked that she didn’t know how they were still standing. Most had to be shops, their small, dark windows full of displays of soft toys, dolls, furniture, chocolates. Most of these looked untouched in just as long, lost beneath cobwebs as thick as sheets, drowning in dust. The doors were closed, some of them barricaded. There were no people here, not one. And it wasn’t hard to work out why.
“Feel like I’ve just taken a sledgehammer to the family jewels,” said Truck. “Anyone else getting that?”
Pan had no idea what that would feel like but she could sense there was something bad back here, no doubt about it.
“He ever speak about her?” Pan asked, sidling up to the redhead, Jaime. She’d not said much at all since leaving Paris but it was there in every look she threw at Pan, or Marlow, or Herc. You did this. There it was again, pure hate, her eyes burning.
“No,” she said, spitting the word up like it was acid. “He told us she existed, and that she was best left alone. He told us she’d once been like him, fighting Ostheim and the Fist. Said she was injured so badly that she just ran, went into hiding. He hasn’t … He hadn’t seen her in, I don’t know…”
“A hundred years,” said Charlie. “More, maybe. He wasn’t sure.”
“He told you?” Marlow said, joining them.
“Told me everything,” he said. “Was the only way he could make me believe he was on the right side. Meridiana was his sister, I think.”
That made sense, Pan thought. She’d seen it herself, hadn’t she? The truth, when she’d touched Mammon’s hand.
“His sister?” said Jaime.
Charlie nodded.
“Far as I know, they were all brothers and sisters—Mammon, Meridiana, Ostheim, too. Then something happened, something bad. Ostheim turned against the others. They’ve been fighting for, I don’t know, forever. The last time they met, Meridiana lost her mind. Mammon never saw her again.”
“All that time, though,” said Marlow. “How is that even possible?”
“All this, and you’re asking how that’s possible?” said Pan.
“The Engines,” said Jaime. “Use them enough and they become part of you, they change you. Mammon, Meridiana, and Ostheim, too. That asshole was one of the Pentarchy and nobody even knew it.”
Pan saw him now, his body erupting into darkness, those black limbs pouring out of him like a nest of snakes. She’d never seen anything like it, never seen anything so powerful. Even Mammon, with all his power, had lasted just seconds against him.
“So if she hasn’t been seen in a hundred years, and she’s crazy,” said Marlow, “then why are we looking for her?”
It was a good-enough question, and she didn’t have an answer other than “What else have we got?”
“Great,” muttered Marlow.
They walked on, past more shops shut and shuttered. The rumble of the crowds was now a distant murmur, whisper-quiet, the group’s footsteps on the cobbles the loudest thing in the world.
Pan felt something tickle the back of her neck and went to brush off a mosquito. It happened again, not an insect but something else, something watching. She could feel it as clearly as if their mad, bulging eyes were pressed against her skin. She didn’t want to look back but she did anyway: just Marlow and Claire, both of them exhausted.
“We’re close,” she said with a shudder.
“Yeah,” said Marlow, pointing a hand across the street. “Mirrors.”
A building sat there, something out of a fairy tale—each floor jutting farther out over the street. The peeling white paint had to be the only thing holding it together. The leaded windows were dark and blind. There was a sign over the faded red door, almost illegible.
“Meridiana’s,” Pan read.
“So, she’s been in hiding forever,” said Charlie. “Nobody can find her. But she put her name on the front of her shop? Am I missing something here?”
Herc was already crossing the street, one hand stretched out for the door’s brass handle.
“Wait!” yelled Pan. “Hang on, this doesn’t feel right.”
“What’s new?” Herc said. He flashed her a grimace and then twisted the handle. The door resisted for a second, then groaned inward. Herc waved away a cloud of dust, peering into the gloom of the interior.
“Hello?” he yelled. “Anyone here? Meridiana?”
Nothing. Pan walked to the door, the cool current of air that blew from it refreshing in the muggy heat. Squinting, she could just about make out a room full of ghosts beyond—a dozen old white sheets draped over what could have been furniture and what could have been people.
“That’s not creepy at all,” she said.
“I’m not going first,” said Marlow behind her.
She tutted, crossing the threshold. Her feet crunched on broken glass, so much of it on the floor that it could have been snow. It wasn’t just cold inside, it was freezing, her skin breaking into goose bumps like the devil was breathing down her neck. She fought the urge to retreat, shivering into the room. It stank of age and time, the dust choking her, as though she had pressed her face into the funeral shroud of a long-dead corpse.
She took another crun
ching step, the sound of it echoing around the room. Ahead, one of the sheets rippled.
Pan spread her fingers.
Crap.
Then reached for her crossbow.
Double crap.
She bunched her fist. Whatever was under there, she could still pound its nose into its brain.
“Hello?” Herc’s shout made her jump, a scream trying to rip its way out of her throat. Two more of the sheets billowed and a quiet, shrill cry rose up from the other side of the room—barely there. It was followed by a whisper, fast and low, tickling her ear like a fly’s wings. She couldn’t catch what it said.
“Keep moving,” Herc said to her. It wasn’t like she had a choice, everybody was tiptoeing through the door behind her, pushing her into the shop. The room was small, a rectangle of darkness at the far end where a passageway led deeper.
Herc gave her another shove and her fingers brushed against one of the sheets. It was clammy, and it moved against her like it was trying to take her hand. She recoiled with a groan, a tremor running through her.
That whine again, like a child’s cry. And was that a choked sob that followed—the sound of a hanged man—or was it just the thunder of her pulse?
“Hello?” Herc said for a third time, his voice shaking.
The sheets rustled together, all of them flapping in a wind that Pan couldn’t feel. The sound of it was like whispers in her ear, so clear that she could almost make out words.
… is he? Lost … where is my …
The sheet reached out for her again, actually curling around her hand—like seaweed wrapping itself around the limbs of a drowning woman. This time Pan grabbed it back and pulled, whipping it away. Tendrils of dust burrowed into her mouth, her eyes, and when the sheet fell lifelessly to the ground there was a mirror there.
It stood about six feet tall, a slab of dark glass mounted in a frame of long-dead flesh. It looked like something taken from a serial killer’s apartment, something knitted together from dead skin and yellow bone. There was even a face, Pan saw, at the very top of the frame—so old and withered and desiccated that it didn’t look like it could ever have been human. The shrunken head stared back at her with beady black eyes, a doll’s eyes, alive but dead at the same time.
“What the…” said Marlow, appearing next to her in the mirror and taking a puff on his inhaler. Charlie joined on the other side, pulling an expression of disgust. The glass was dark, stained at the edges with something that might have been black rust. It was warped, Pan’s skin mottled and distorted. But no amount of damage to the glass could explain what was going on in the mirror.
Right in front of Charlie was a reflection, but it wasn’t his—it was Marlow’s. In front of Marlow stood Charlie. When Pan lifted her right hand, her reflection in the glass did the same. It wasn’t a mirror image, it was more like looking at the feed from a security camera. They weren’t seeing a reflection, she understood, they were seeing what the mirror saw.
“Never seen you look so good, Marlow,” said Charlie, but there was an edge to his voice. He stepped away from the mirror and so did Pan—quickly.
Jaime had tugged away another sheet, the mirror behind it wider and squatter, mounted on an old table. It, too, had a frame that belonged in a mortuary. This one had four faces on it, one to each corner. They were like death masks and they stared blindly back at her.
“Who would make these?” said Jaime, brushing a shaking hand through her red hair.
Pan didn’t answer. The second mirror was tilted so that she could see the reflection of the ceiling. Had something moved there, between the ornate painted carvings? She glanced up—nothing—but when she turned to the mirror again she could definitely make out movement snaking between the antique bosses.
“Cover it,” she said quietly.
“Why?” Jaime replied. “It’s just a—”
Something ran at them on the other side of the mirror, fast and hard. Pan could hear the thunder of hooves as if a bull was charging across the room. A shape hit the glass hard enough to shunt the table three feet across the room, a jagged crack splitting the mirror in two.
Jaime fell back, Herc trying to catch her and both of them sprawling to the glass-covered floor. Inside the mirror was a creature the likes of which Pan had never seen before. It was a tumorous mass of sinew and muscle, like somebody had skinned a dog and thrown it into a wood chipper only to attempt to stitch it back together. It stood on four legs in the same way as a gorilla, its top half too big for its lower body.
The face, though, is what made Pan stagger away, what made her want to dive back into the day and stare at the sun until her eyes burned out.
It was made up of teeth, hundreds of them arranged in concentric rings and grinding like an industrial blender. It had no eyes, no nose—just row upon row of those jagged shark teeth.
It charged again, butting the glass with the ugly slab of its head. The crack widened, another one splintering in the top corner. The creature snorted from the red pit of its throat and a tongue extended, as wet and gray as old beef. It licked the mirror, probing it. It was making soft uhk, uhk sounds and she realized it was sniffing, even though it didn’t have a nose. Something about that noise was so familiar, and when the creature reared again, every muscle bulging as it tried to slam those jaws down on the glass, she understood why.
“Oh my God,” she said. “It’s a demon.”
It lunged again, trying to pound its way through. The glass cried out again, as if it were screaming for help. Any second now it was going to shatter.
“Move!” she shouted, running to where the sheet had fallen. She picked it up, shaking it like she was making her bed. It flopped over the mirror and she wrenched down the corners until the glass was covered.
More choking snorts, the shrill whine of cracking glass.
“I’ve never—”
“Shut up!” she hissed at Herc. “Nobody make a sound.”
Nobody did, the room suddenly choked with quiet. Over the roar of her heart Pan listened to the sound of the demon sniffing, then the soft rumble of its feet as it galloped away. Even then she held her breath for as long as she could.
“I’ve never seen a demon like that,” Herc said, picking himself up and helping Jaime to her feet. They both brushed broken glass from their clothes.
Neither had Pan. The demons could exist in this world only if they possessed inanimate matter—it’s why they always burst from walls and floors and furniture and enormous bronze lion statues. This one looked like it had been made of flesh. It looked like a living, breathing thing.
Because it was a living, breathing thing.
“It’s what they look like before they cross,” she said as it suddenly clicked. “It’s what they look like in hell.”
And when Ostheim succeeded in opening the gates, she realized, that’s what they would look like when they poured through. There would be no need for them to possess matter, they’d teem into this world like a plague of locusts.
“Anyone want to guess what they’re doing inside that?” Marlow said, nodding at the mirror.
“Security,” said Herc. “Gotta be. It’s what Mammon must have meant, when he said she was hiding. She’s in one of these.”
“Crazy chick, hiding inside a mirror, guarded by demons. Why the hell not?” Marlow shook his head, biting at his knuckles.
“Which one?” said Charlie, nodding at the passageway. “There are loads. There might be more through there.”
“And that,” said Pan, “is how she has stayed hidden for so long.” She blew out a sigh.
“Hey, Meridiana,” she said. “Look, I don’t know if you can even hear me, but we need your help. We work with Mammon.” Even saying it now, after everything she’d learned in the last day, felt utterly wrong. “He told us to come find you.”
More whispers, but they were drowned out by a throbbing growl from the other side of the room, the sound of claws scratching at glass. Something was prowling there, inside a mir
ror. Something big.
Pan broke away from the group, weaving her way through the sheets until she reached the passageway. It was pitch black inside, but there was a shimmer of light at the other end. Feeling her way down the wall, she stepped into another room, this one twice as big and twice as full. Dozens of mirrors sat beneath their dustsheets, lit by a trickle of honey-colored light from the room’s single shuttered window. Nothing moved, aside from the swirling clouds of dust.
It was hopeless. How were they supposed to find her?
Pan walked to the nearest mirror and lifted the sheet. It was the same deal—a macabre frame made from the dead, holding a plane of dark, warped glass. She could see herself there, and the shop behind her. But there was something wrong with the reflection again—the walls crumbling, a hole in the middle of the floor.
… have you done with him …
The words were louder now, coming not from here but from the corner of the room. Pan lowered the sheet, cocking her head to catch another line.
… no more, I cannot …
She checked over her shoulder to make sure the others were there—the six of them cowering in the passageway, watching her—then she made her way across the room. The sheets fluttered in her wake, whispering to one another.
“Be careful, Pan,” Herc said.
Duh.
“Meridiana?” she said. “Is that you?”
More soft words, and a sound that made her think of a tiger padding through the woods—big feet keeping time with her. Something snorted again, testing the air. There were five mirrors clustered in the corner, separate from the others. The largest one stood before several of various smaller sizes. It made Pan think of a mother shielding her children from something terrible.
… do not, or I will …
There and gone again, a distant voice on the wind. Pan reached the large mirror—it had to be eight feet tall and half that in width—and lifted the sheet.
Another Pan peered back, the dark glass making her look even more exhausted than she felt. Again, the reflection didn’t completely show the truth, the room behind her flickering. She leaned in, saw that inside the mirror the walls and floor were teeming with spiders—great big fat ones that swarmed over her reflection, pushing between her lips, into her eyes. The other her smiled, sticking out a too-long tongue and using it to scoop a giant, hairy spider into her mouth.
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