Praise for TIM WAGGONER

"It's hard to say if this singular novel, which boasts a wicked sense of humor to round off the horror, should be eligible for an Edgar Award or a Bram Stoker or both."

– Elliot Swanson, Booklist

"Both horror and mystery readers will be delighted by this horror-noir adventure."

– Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"It's a classic. If you're a fan of Simon R. Green, who does a series very much like this one, you'll especially enjoy Nekropolis. It's a horror spoof done with a sense of wit and pulp detective done tongue-in-cheek. Sam Spade, watch out. There's a slow-footed zombie creeping up on you!"

– Bewildering Stories

"This is a terrific melding of the horror and private detective genres. Waggoner's writing is visually led, and the Blade Runner/Dark City atmosphere is well drawn."

– Total SciFi

"With plenty of twists, surprises, and undead smack downs, Nekropolis has made my list of top reads of the year. The setting is a lot like Simon Green's Nightside series with mystery, dark humor, and horror. Though I found myself enjoying this novel even more. The story is darker, a bit more complex, with likeable characters. It's fresh and fun; and I didn't want it to end. Fantasy and horror fans, don't miss this fantastic release."

– SciFi Chick

"It's the perfect weapon for killing a day. The cure for boredom. Nekropolis slaps all the disgustingly fun aspects of Tim Waggoner's writing right on the autopsy table, and I came away happy to have spent my money."

– Spine Busters

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Novels

Nekropolis

Dead Streets

Dark War

Cross County

Dark Ages: Gangrel

Darkness Wakes

Defender: Hyperswarm

Dying For It

Godfire: The Orchard of Dreams

The Harmony Society

In the Shadow of Ruin

Like Death

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Protégé

Pandora Drive

A Shadow Over Heaven's Eye

Stargate SG-1: Valhalla

Blade of the Flame

Thieves of Blood

Forge of the Mindslayers

Sea of Death

Dragonlance, the New Adventures

Temple of the Dragonslayer

Return of the Sorceress

Collections

All Too Surreal

Broken Shadows

TIM WAGGONER

The Nekropolis Archives

THE NOVELS

Nekropolis

Dead Streets

Dark War

THE SHORT STORIES

Disarmed and Dangerous

The Midnight Watch

Zombie Interrupted

HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR FIRST TEN MINUTES IN NEKROPOLIS

By Matt Richter

The name's Matt Richter. I was a cop once, worked Homicide in Cleveland, Ohio. But that was a few years ago – back when I was alive. Now I'm a zombie, and I work as a private investigator on the very mean streets of a city called Nekropolis. You won't find it on any map, not a map of Earth, anyway. See, four centuries ago, the world's Darkfolk – supernatural creatures such as vampires, werewolves, witches, demons, ghosts and the like – decided humans were becoming too numerous for their comfort, and so they traveled to a dimension of darkness where they could build their own city and live in peace (or at least their twisted idea of peace). They dubbed their new home Nekropolis. But the Dark Lords who ruled the city didn't want to sever all ties to Earth's dimension. Not only was it their original home, but the planet contained numerous resources – both natural and human-made – they could make use of. These portals were strictly monitored and controlled, of course, but that didn't mean others weren't created illegally. Crime, it seems, is a multiversal constant. Good thing, too. For dimensional ex-pats like me, it means job security.

Humans occasionally emigrate to Nekropolis (you wouldn't believe how many damn Goth kids find their way here). These immigrants come for many reasons. Some simply have a fascination with the darker side of existence, while others want to do business – legitimate or, more often, illicit – with the Darkfolk. But sometimes people find themselves stepping through a portal into Nekropolis by accident, without the slightest notion of what waits for them on the other side. And as you might imagine, ignorance is not only far from bliss in this case, it's usually fatal. The commonly accepted wisdom among Nekropolitans is that the average lifespan of an unprepared human on the streets of Nekropolis is ten minutes. When I first heard this statistic, I thought it was an exaggeration. Now after having lived – or at least existed – here for several years, I think it's an overly generous estimate.

So, as a service to those of you who might one day find yourselves gazing into a floor-length mirror whose surface doesn't look quite as solid as it should – a mirror which seems to be beckoning you to step just a little bit closer… and to those of you who might be walking down a dark alley one night when a strange green mist appears out of nowhere and engulfs you… to all of you who end up suddenly standing on a sidewalk in Nekropolis wondering what the hell just happened, I present the following tips for surviving your first ten minutes here. Keep in mind that this advice comes with no guarantees, no money back, and your mileage may vary.

1. Don't make eye contact.

This one might seem like a no-brainer at first. In an earthly city, making eye contact is an open invitation to scam artists, beggars, or crazies who want to tell you all about the wonderful new religion they've created based on the worship of a giant Styrofoam grasshopper named Agnes. But you know how some wild animals take direct eye contact as a challenge? A lot of the citizens you'll encounter on the streets of Nekropolis are wild animals in one way or another. And the last thing you want to do is extend a challenge to them – because it will be the last thing you ever do. Remember, survival of the fittest isn't just an abstract concept in Nekropolis. It's practically the city's unofficial motto.

2. Don't bleed.

Many Darkfolk have a heightened sense of smell – not to mention a heightened appetite. Get cut (or for women, visit Nekropolis at the wrong time of your cycle), and you'll find yourself attracting some extremely unwanted attention. And while you're at it, try not to sweat too much. Or breathe too loudly. Or break wind. Or… Hell, just try your best not to do anything.

3. Stay out of the street.

While walking into the middle of a busy city street is never a good long-term survival strategy, the road traffic in Nekropolis is an altogether different animal – sometimes literally. With their enhanced reflexes and resistance to physical damage, Darkfolk can and do drive as fast as they want. And to them a major vehicle collision is little more than a mild inconvenience, especially for those who are already (or mostly) dead. And then there are those vehicles that are practically lifeforms in and of themselves: Meatrunners, Carapacers, Grillgoyles, Leviavans… many of which run on a more meaty fuel than gasoline, and which aren't averse to topping off their tanks with a quick snack if it's suicidal enough to get in their way.

4. Don't walk too close to doorways or alley entrances.

You know that old phrase, "The Boogeyman will get you if you don't watch out"? Well, in Nekropolis the Boogeymen have a damn long reach and lightning-fast reflexes. Imagine giant trapdoor spiders hopped up on golf ball-sized amphetamines. Tread carefully, and if possible, travel with a friend who weighs more – and is therefore more appetizing – than you.

5. Don't assume something's not dangerous just because it doesn't look dangerous.

There's a simple rule of thumb in Nekropolis. Everything wants to kill you. Vampires, demons, and werewolves are obviously apex predators. But that scrawny little puppy that wanders up to you, wagging its tail and whining pitifully because it's cold and hungry? If you're dumb enough to stoop down to pet it, you deserve what happens to you next.

Now that you've read my tips, you may be thinking there's no way you'll ever make it past the ten-minute mark. But just remember: I did. Hell, I managed to last almost half a week before I died. So welcome to Nekropolis and good luck. You're going to need it – by the truckload.

Matt Richter

Nekropolis

417 AD (Anno Descension)

A SHORT STORY

DISARMED AND DANGEROUS

Gleaming steel talons came streaking toward my face, and though my reflexes aren't what they used to be, I managed to dodge to the right in time to keep from losing anything more than my left ear. I wasn't particularly concerned. An ear's not all that important, and I could always get it reattached later. Assuming that the demon on the other end of those talons didn't turn me into shredded zombie flakes first.

The steel talons – possibly a surgical augmentation since the rest of the creature appeared organic – sank into the alley wall, neatly pinning my ear to the brick in the process. The alley walls were covered with leech-vine, but luckily for the demon, its talons had sunk into a patch of brick where the vine was thin. Even luckier, the inorganic substance of its talons didn't prod the vine into attacking. The demon grunted in frustration and the scale-covered muscles on its arm tightened as it fought to pull its hand free. This would have been an excellent time for me to turn and run like hell – or in my case, do a shuffling half-walk, halfrun – away from the demon. But I had unfinished business with the damned thing. Besides, it had my ear.

A variety of specialized weaponry comes in handy in my line of work, and I reached into the outer pocket of my suit jacket and withdrew one of my most useful tools.

With a final yank the demon managed to pull its hand loose, and it turned to face me, shark teeth bared in a savage snarl, my bloodless ear still stuck to one of its talons. When it saw the weapon I held aimed at the corrugated hide directly between its eyes, the snarl became a chuckle.

"A squirt gun?" Its voice sounded like ground glass being shaken in a coffee can. "Are you insane? Real bullets wouldn't do much more than tickle me!"

"I know." I tightened my finger on the plastic trigger and began pumping streams of holy water into the demon's face.

The creature howled in pain as its facial scales began to sizzle and smoke. The demon threw up its hands to protect itself, the motion dislodging my ear and sending it flying. I didn't see where it landed; I was a bit busy. I'd look for it later – assuming I survived. I kept firing, if that's the right term to use when your ammo is liquid, hoping to at least disable the demon, if not kill it. Unfortunately, the demon had other ideas.

Bellowing in agony, eyes squeezed shut and weeping blood, the creature lashed out and fastened its thick fingers around the wrist of my gun hand. Before I could react, the demon yanked, and my right arm came out of the socket as easily as a greasy wing parting from an overcooked chicken. I had only a single thought.

Not again!

"I have to warn you, Matt. This isn't the prettiest work I've ever done. I'm a houngan, not a surgeon."

"Don't worry about it. I got over being vain about my appearance about the same time I stopped breathing. Look at it this way: you have an important advantage over a medical doctor. You don't have to worry about your patient dying if you screw up."

It was late afternoon, and my confrontation with the demon lay several hours in the future. I was sitting on a stool in Papa Chatha's workshop, shirt off, holding my right arm in place with my left hand while Papa, seated next to me, played seamstress. His brow was furrowed in concentration, and small beads of sweat had gathered on the mahogany skin of his smoothly shaven head. His white pullover shirt and pants were splotched with stains that looked too much like blood. None of if was mine, though. I hadn't bled for a long time. One of the advantages to being a zombie.

Another benefit was that I felt no pain as Papa sank the bone needle into the gray-tinged flesh of my shoulder. I could feel pressure as the pointed tip emerged from the ragged skin of my left arm, felt the tug as Papa pulled the thread through, but that was all. I looked away, but not because I found it uncomfortable to watch someone reattaching a limb that had once been part of my body. I've gotten banged up quite a few times since I came to Nekropolis, and Papa's usually the one who gets stuck trying to put the pieces back together. I didn't want to watch because seeing Papa at work reminded me that not only couldn't I experience pain, I couldn't experience pleasure, either. Not physically, at any rate.

I scanned the shelves in Papa's workroom, taking in the multitude of materials that a professional voodoo practitioner needs to perform his art: wax-sealed vials filled with ground herbs and dried chemicals, jars containing desiccated bits of animals – rooster claws, lizard tails, raven wings – books and scrolls piled on tabletops next to rattles and tambourines of various sizes, along with pouches of tobacco, chocolate bars, and bottles of rum. Papa said he used the latter three substances to make offerings to the Loa, the voodoo spirits, and while I had no reason to doubt him, over the years I've noticed that he tends to run out of rum before anything else.

"There." Papa broke off the thread with his ivory-white teeth then tied the end into a knot. I turned back and examined the result. The stitching looked tight enough, but the pattern was uneven, to put it kindly. Papa hadn't been kidding about the aesthetic qualities of his sewing. You'd think a guy who makes as many voodoo dolls as he does would be a better seamstress.

"Give it a try," Papa said.

I made a fist with my right hand and flexed the arm. It moved stiffly, but that had nothing to do with Papa's repair job and everything to do with the fact that I was dead.

I lowered my arm. "Feels good. Thanks." I rose from the stool and went over to the chair where I'd draped my shirt, suit jacket, and tie. Most zombies wear whatever rags they died in, but I'm not your run-of-the-mill walking dead man. I'm still self-aware and possess free will. Before I came to this dimension, back when I was alive, I worked as a homicide detective in Cleveland. I wore a suit on the job then, and I still wear one now. Makes me feel more human, I guess.

Papa continued sitting on his stool while I got dressed. "Sorry I couldn't do more for the skin, but the spells I used to fuse the bone and muscle back together should last for about a month before they need to be reapplied," he said. "That is, assuming you don't irritate any more cyclops." He frowned. "Cyclopses? Cyclopsi?" He shrugged. "Whatever."

I finished with my tie and slid on my jacket. "You know Troilus. Always trying one scam or another to make easy money. This time it was a protection racket." I lowered my voice to a bass monotone in what I thought was a passable imitation of the cyclops. "'Pay me a hundred darkgems a week or you might end up taking a bath in Phlegethon.'"

Phlegethon is the river of green fire that surrounds Nekropolis and separates the city's five sections. It's a cold fire that burns the spirit instead of the flesh, but its waters are home to giant serpents called Lesk who are only too eager to use their sharp teeth to take care of what the flames can't.

Papa grinned. "I assume you were hired to encourage Troilus to pursue alternative methods of securing an income. Your employer anyone I know?"

"A vampire named Kyra who has a tattoo parlor on the other side of the Sprawl, not far from the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures. She uses living ink, and the tattoos she creates move through their wearer's skin. It's a striking effect."

Papa nodded. "This is the first time I've heard her name, but I've seen her work before. So what did you do?"

"I decided on the subtle approach. I tracked down Troilus and told him that if he didn't stop threatening people, I'd poke his eye out."

Papa laughed. "Very subtle! Let me guess: in response, Troilus yanked your arm out of the socket."

"That's right. But I'm nothing if not professional. Instead of getting angry, I calmly asked Troilus to give me my arm back. People like him are used to getting what they want through violence, and he was so surprised by my lack of reaction that he just looked at me with that basketball-sized eye of his for a moment before doing as I asked."

"And what did you do after that?"

"Undead or not, I'm a man of my word. An arm doesn't have to be attached to be useful, you know." I looked at the fingers on my right hand and frowned. "I think there's still some vitreous fluid under my nails."

Papa grinned and shook his head. "One of these days, Matt, you're going to get yourself torn into so many bits that not even Father Dis will be able to put you back together."

"Let's hope that day's a long time coming." I reached into the inner pocket of my suit jacket and took out a handful of darkgems. My fee for helping Kyra. I hadn't charged her much, but even though I was dead and no longer needed food or drink, I still needed money to cover the rent on my apartment and to pay Papa Chatha for his services. Not only for today's repair, but for the regular application of the preservative spells that keep me from rotting and smelling like Lake Erie at low tide.

I held them out to Papa Chatha. "I know it's not enough, but I'll get you the rest when I can."

He took the gems and tucked them into a pocket of his white shirt. "Tell you what, I'll call it even if you stick around and play a few games of rattlebones with me."

I hesitated before replying. Not long, but long enough for Papa to notice.

"I'd love to, but I've got an appointment to see another client."

Papa could've asked me to call and reschedule. We do have cell phones in Nekropolis, along with our own Aethernet, too. But he just smiled – a touch sadly, I thought – and nodded his understanding. I mumbled a quick goodbye and departed Papa's workshop. I was lying. I didn't have any appointment scheduled, but I'd never been much for socializing, even when I was alive. Besides, I needed to scrounge up some more work if I was going to pay Papa the rest of what I owed him. Even houngans have expenses. It's not like dried raven wings come free, you know.

And I stunk at rattlebones anyway.

Monsters are real. So are witches and ghosts and just about any other thing you can think of that goes bump in the night. They co-existed alongside humanity for thousands of years, peacefully enough for the most part. But several centuries ago Father Dis – who supposedly was worshipped as a god of death by the Romans – decided that humans were becoming too numerous and more importantly too dangerous to share the planet with. Dis met with five other powerful supernatural beings called Darklords to decide what should be done. Several of the Lords wanted to enslave humanity or simply exterminate the pests altogether, but in the end it was decided that the Darkfolk, as supernaturals call themselves, would relocate to another dimension, a realm of darkness called the Null Plains, and there they would create their own home, a vast city to rival any that had ever existed on Earth.

Nekropolis.

The Darklords didn't completely sever their ties to Earth, though. After all, not only was it their original home, the Darkfolk had all sorts of uses for humanity's technology – not to mention humans themselves. Five mystic portals between Earth and Nekropolis were created, each one controlled by a different Darklord. I came through one of those portals as a living man, chasing a suspect in a series of ritualistic murders that had happened in Cleveland. By the time I'd finished with, as Elvis used to say, TCB, the suspect was dead and I was too. Except I didn't stay that way. I couldn't return home as a zombie – without Papa Chatha's preservation spells I'd eventually rot away to nothing – so I had no choice but to remain in Nekropolis and try to make a new life for myself here. It was easier than you'd think. I didn't have any family or friends to speak of back home, and Darkfolk aren't all that different than humans, not deep down. They have needs and desires, and while most try to fulfill them lawfully, many don't. Too many.

Since I was a cop on Earth, I use those same skills to pay the bills here. But Nekropolis doesn't have an organized police force. Each of the five Darklords sees to justice in his or her domain, while Father Dis – with the aid of his squadron of golem-like Sentinels – oversees the entire city, including the Darklords. But just like back home, justice isn't always applied fairly and consistently in Nekropolis, and that's when people turn to me, Matthew Richter, zombie PI.

Papa Chatha's workshop was located in the Sprawl, a riotous maze of streets and buildings ruled over by Lady Varvara, the Demon Queen. Although ruled is too strong a word. The Sprawl is a combination of Times Square on New Year's Eve, Mardi Gras, and Carnivale in Rio – a never-ending party with Varvara serving as eternal hostess. I make my home here, not because I'm especially fond of the chaotic anything-goes atmosphere, but because I've had a few run-ins with the other Darklords, and I'm not exactly welcome in their domains. Besides, this is where all the work is.

Case in point: only a few moments after I left Papa's, a woman came hurrying up to me. I'd never seen her before; if I had, I'd have remembered. She was beautiful, with long blonde hair that fell halfway down her back, and she was tall, well over six foot, with a trim, well-toned body. The state of her physical fitness was easy to assess because she wasn't wearing any clothing. Not that she was naked, exactly. From the neck up, her skin was a creamy ivory, but from the neck down – excluding her hands – it was black. Not African-American black, but black-black. Obsidian. The color created the illusion that she was wearing a black skin-tight body suit, especially in the shadowy half-light provided by Umbriel, the dark sun which shrouds Nekropolis in perpetual dusk.

"Excuse me – are you the dead guy who helped out Kyra, the tattoo artist?"

She stopped as she reached me, out of breath, and I wondered how far she'd run to find me. All the way from the other side of the Sprawl, I guessed, given her mention of Kyra. That meant whatever her problem was, it was urgent. At least to her.

"That's me. Matthew Richter." I offered my right hand for her to shake. My arm movement felt a little loose and wobbly, and I wondered if Papa's repair job was already starting to go bad. It's not like him to do shoddy work, but then again, reattaching entire limbs isn't normally part of a houngan's repertoire.

The woman eyed my hand for a moment before giving it a perfunctory shake. Citizens of Nekropolis are generally tolerant of racial and species differences, but even here, few people are thrilled to touch a zombie's flesh.

"My name's Maera." She looked as if she wanted to wipe her hand off, but since she wasn't wearing any clothes, she didn't have anything to wipe it off onto other than her own body. As she struggled with this dilemma, I took the opportunity to examine her more closely.

She was strikingly beautiful, especially given her wardrobe choice, so much so that I wondered when someone would finally get around to inventing Viagra for zombies. But if I had any doubt about Maera's beauty, I had only to look around at our fellow pedestrians. All the men on the street, and more than a few women, gazed at Maera with intense interest. Some seemed to merely appreciate the aesthetics of her appearance, while others – most notably the vampires, ghouls, and lycanthropes in the crowd – clearly hungered for her, and not just sexually. I wasn't certain what race she was at first. Back on Earth, racial distinctions mattered only in a social sense, and even then they were only part of an individual's background, not a defining quality. Individuality is just as important a factor in Nekropolis, but racial qualities carry more weight here. When dealing with someone on these streets, it's important to know if in the back of their minds they're considering eating you, drinking your blood, pos sessing your body, devouring your soul, or any combination thereof.

Maera's teeth were blunt, and she had no excess body hair or feral gleam in her eyes. So she wasn't one of the Bloodborn or a lyke, and she was far too attractive to be a ghoul. She wasn't a ghost or a revenant. Her handshake had been too solid and firm. I thought for a moment that she might be human, perhaps one of the witchfolk known as the Arcane, but then I noticed multicolored flecks in her eyes rotating slowly, like small organic kaleidoscopes.

"You're a demon," I said.

She nodded. "How could you tell?"

"I'm a detective. It's my job." Clients expect you to say stuff like that. It's all part of the package they're buying.

I didn't add that she was extremely beautiful for a demon. They come in all shapes and sizes, and some of them can change their form as easily as you or I change clothes. But no matter what body they appear in, they can't disguise their eyes.

Maera continued. "Kyra's the one who did my…outfit." She gave me a tentative, almost shy smile. "I saw her today, and she told me how you helped her with the cyclops, and I thought…" Her fragile smile fell away and she looked as if she might cry.

"You're in trouble, and you need help." I didn't need to be a detective to figure this part out.

Maera nodded.

"Tell me about it."

She drew in a trembling breath and started talking.

"They're holding him on the second floor," Maera whispered.

We were standing close together in an alley across the street from the building in question. So close that, if I hadn't been dead, I could've felt Maera's breath in my ear as she whispered. I was disappointed I couldn't. There are a lot of things about being alive that I miss, and you can probably imagine most of them, but it's the small, unexpected things I miss the most. Like a woman's breath on my skin.

This was one of the seamier neighborhoods in the Sprawl, and that's saying something. The sidewalks were cracked – when they were paved at all – and the buildings looked like they were made out of crumbling sandstone instead of brick. The windows were boarded or barred, and probably protected by cheap wardspells that were just as likely to backfire and injure the residents as repel intruders. Leech-vine covered walls and roofs, and rat-like vermen skulked through the shadows, fighting over whatever rancid treasures they came across. The few pedestrians that were either brave or foolish enough to walk the street moved with quick, determined strides, expressions coldly neutral, gazes alert for any challenge or threat. None of them appeared to be armed, but I knew they were, some of them heavily so. No one came here without a means of protecting themselves, myself included.

The building Maera had pointed out looked no different than any of the others on the street, but then, if what she'd told me was true, it was important the occupants didn't draw attention to themselves.

"How many?" I asked.

"I only saw two. The rest of the building was deserted."

Appeared deserted, I amended mentally. "How long ago was that?"

"It was early, before noon. I was too upset to notice the exact time, though."

According to Maera's story, this morning she and her lover – a male demon named Finn – had been on their way to the SixLegged Café, one of Nekropolis' more specialized eateries, for a breakfast of live cockroaches and blood-fattened tics. But before they could reach the restaurant, a pair of men approached them and drew obsidian daggers with intricate runes carved into the blades. The instant nausea that surged through Maera's gut told her the weapons were Dire Blades, knives created specifically to slay supernatural creatures of all kinds. Of course, as sharp as the daggers were, they were quite capable of killing non-supernatural beings as well. Dire Blades were so lethal to supernaturals that it hurt just to hold them, and there was only one group in the city tough enough to wield them: the Dominari, Nekropolis' version of the Mafia

The two mobsters – a werewolf with cybernetic implants and a creature that resembled a bipedal lobster with opposable thumbs on its claws – told the demon lovers that they had come to collect the darkgems Finn owed them. Maera had known Finn loved to gamble – after all, they'd met at a tangleclaw table – but she hadn't known that her boyfriend had been dumb enough to borrow money from a Dominari loan shark to finance his hobby. A hobby, as it turned out, that he was spectacularly bad at. Finn had been sure he'd win enough to pay back the darkgems he owed along with the steep interest the Dominari toughs wanted. But Finn had hard luck and even less skill, and he didn't have a single gem to his name, and Maera didn't have much more than what it would take to pay for their buggy breakfast.

The Dominari sharks were less than pleased, but when they saw how beautiful Maera was, not to mention the striking way she "clothed" herself, they decided to cut Finn a break. They wouldn't kill him on the spot…if his gorgeous girlfriend used her unnatural assets to earn the money Finn owed them. Maera started to tell Techwolf and Lobster-Head that she had no intention of prostituting herself for them, but before she could get more than a couple words out, the lycanthrope pricked Finn on the back of the hand with his Dire Blade. That brief touch was enough to cause the demon to scream in agony, and Maera, tears streaming from her kaleidoscope eyes, told them she'd do anything they wanted, just as long as they didn't hurt Finn anymore. After that, the two Dominari toughs escorted the demon lovers to this blighted neighborhood and marched them into the abandoned building across the street. Inside, in one of the upper rooms, they shoved Finn onto the floor and bound him in manacles made from the same enchanted obsidian as their Dire Blades, rendering him helpless. Then Maera received her instructions on just how much money she had to make and how fast she had to make it in order to pay back the debt Finn owed the Dominari and save his life. And she was warned that if she so much as looked in a Sentinel's direction, let alone told her tale of woe to one of the golems, Finn would die for certain, and she'd be next.

Filled with despair but seeing no other choice, Maera returned to her usual stomping grounds in the Sprawl, picked out a street corner to conduct business on, and prepared to do what she had to do. But before she could attract her first customer, Kyra saw her and came over to talk, specifically, to tell her about what this zombie PI she'd hired had done to a certain greedy cyclops earlier. Maera realized then that she did have another choice, and after asking Kyra where I could be found, the demoness abandoned her street corner and hurried off to search for me.

At least, that's the story Maera told. But she was a demon, and her kind had been known to tell a fib now and again. I was withholding judgment on her tale until I'd had a chance to check it out more thoroughly.

"You stay here and keep out of sight," I told her. "I'll go see how the land lays."

Without waiting for her to reply, I left the alley and started across the street. Instead of walking, though, I shuffled, dragging my left leg and allowing my arms to dangle loosely at my sides. I canted my head to the left and let my mouth gape open. If I'd been able to produce any saliva, I'd have drooled. There aren't many benefits to being a zombie, but instant camouflage was one of them. Walking – or rather shuffling – dead are common in Nekropolis, so much so that people pay them little attention. As long as I don't moan "Braaaaaaaiiiinssssss…" and try to take a bite out of someone's skull, once I go into my act, I might as well be invisible.

I made it to the sidewalk in front of the Dominari sharks' hideout without drawing any undue attention to myself. I doubted I'd done so unobserved, though. The sharks would either have sentry wards on the building to warn them of anyone's approach, or if they were too cheap to pay for the spellwork, one of them would be keeping watch on the street through a window, mostly likely one of the two on the second story facing the street. I couldn't simply look up and check without risking blowing my disguise. Regular zombies aren't bright enough to recognize a building for what it is, let alone understand what windows are. But there was a way to make that work for me.

I continued shuffling toward the building and bumped into the wall, like a goldfish bopping its nose against the glass of its bowl. I was careful to avoid the leech-vine clinging to the front of the building. It couldn't do much to me since I was already dead, but it would snag hold of me nevertheless, and I couldn't fight my way free without ruining my act. I stumbled back from the wall, waving my arms erratically and looking around in confusion: right, left, down, and then up. If anyone was watching, all they would see is another brain-dead zombie perplexed by the seemingly magical appearance of a large solid object in his path. And when that zombie looked up, he saw a dingy, tattered curtain drawn away from the right second-floor window, and then a second later, he saw it fall back into place. I didn't get a look at whoever had been standing at the window. Considering the dark light cast by Umbriel, everyone in Nekropolis is usually standing in shadow of one sort or another. But the movement of the curtain was enough to let me know that someone was indeed on the second floor of the building, and that whoever it was knew a zombie had come calling. I just hoped they bought my act and decided I was a harmless nuisance to be ignored.

I stumbled around for a moment as if unsure what to do next before finally heading down the sidewalk toward the alley at the side of the building. I was tempted to look back across the street to see if Maera had done as I'd told her, but I didn't want to give her away in case I was still being observed. I shuffled into the alley, did my bump-into-the-wall bit again, and looked up. Leech-vine completely covered this side of the building, so thick that I couldn't tell if there were windows here or not. I decided to take a chance that if there were, the vines would block any view of the alley, and I hurried to the other end at my usual lessthan-breakneck-but-faster-than-a-shuffle speed. I knew the longer I took to reconnoiter the place, the more time whoever was inside would have to get suspicious.

Behind the building was a cross alley that provided a lovely view of the backsides of another row of vine-covered hovels. Detritus filled the alley, along with rats, cats, dogs, vermen, and other less-identifiable scavengers, all sifting through the open landfill for whatever they could find to eat, including each other. But I hadn't come here to observe the local fauna in action. I'd come in search of a back door, and I'd found one. The problem was, it was wide open and someone was standing in the doorway grinning at me – someone who now possessed a fancy new ocular implant in place of the eye I'd poked out earlier.

"Hello, Troilus. Whoever your cyber-doc is, he, she, or it did a decent job." In some ways, the technology in Nekropolis is more advanced than Earth's. The physiognomy of supernatural creatures – given their overall strength and healing capacity – lends itself far more easily to biomechanical and genetic enhancement than humans. Troilus' eye implant was a little crooked, it wept pus, and from the way the skin around it had blistered, I knew the machinery was running hot. The image resolution was probably substandard too, but all in all, not bad for what had surely been a rush job completed by a street surgeon.

The cyclops was bald, though he had a curly black beard. He was heavily muscled, and wore a white tunic, black belt, and sandals. The front of the tunic was stained reddish brown, and it took me a moment to realize that Troilus hadn't changed it since this morning. He'd either been in one hell of a hurry for revenge, or he was a mega slob. Probably both, I decided.

"I think I actually did you a favor," I said. "Your cyber-eye makes you look twice as intimidating as you did before. Of course, it also makes you look twice as ugly too, and I didn't think that was possible."

Troilus' large hands curled into equally large fists. "If you got any more jokes, you better tell them fast," he growled. "Because when I get hold of you, the first thing I'm going to do is rip out your tongue so I don't have to listen to you yammer on anymore."

I contemplated a witty rejoinder, trying to decide between I don't give tongue on the second date and Go to hell, asshole, when I heard trash rustle behind me. "Hello, Maera. I was wondering when you were going to show up."

I turned around and, sure enough, there she was, looking beautiful as ever, kaleidoscope eyes glittering, lips stretched into a cold, cruel smile.

"There's no Finn and no Dominari loan sharks," I said. "Just a pissed-off cyclops and his demon friend."

"Business associate," Maera corrected. "You didn't think Troilus planned to go into the protection racket by himself, did you?"

"I suppose he's the brawn and you're the brains."

Her smile widened, pliable demon flesh stretching farther than a human's could without tearing. I'd seen similar effects before, but it was still disturbing to watch. "Actually, we're both brawn."

Maera's attention-getting form blurred and shifted, and when she'd finished rearranging herself, instead of a beautiful naked woman with a black body-suit tattoo, standing before me was a hulking reptilian demon with steel talons jutting forth from its thick scaly fingers.

"This your real shape?" I asked.

Maera shrugged her massive shoulders. "I'm whatever I choose to be." Her voice had become high-pitched, brittle, and grating, like metal fragments and glass shards rubbing together.

"That's true of everyone, one way or another," I countered.

A heavy hand gripped my shoulder, and Troilus turned me back around to face him. "Spare us the philosophy," he said. "I got enough of that from the damned Greeks."

"Tell me one thing before you start dismembering me." Before Troilus could deny me, I hurried on. "You could've jumped me anytime. Why bring me here, and using such an elaborate cover story to boot?"

It's hard to read the expression of someone whose only eye looks like a large camera lens, but a smug tone crept into the cyclops' voice. "To humiliate you, of course. You think you're so smart, so tough…" He sneered. "How does it feel to know that you've been outsmarted by a pair of street crooks?"

"If it ever happens, I'll let you know." While Troilus had been talking, I'd reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a handful of narrow white plastic pouches. I took one between my thumb and forefinger, aimed it at Troilus' new eye, and squeezed. The packet burst under the pressure and thick red liquid splattered his lens. Before he could react, I took hold of the remaining packets, squeezed them in my fist, and smeared the gooey red results onto the cyclops' tunic to join the stains already present.

"What the – what is this gunk?" Troilus reached toward his ocular implant to clear his lens, but all he succeeded in doing was smearing it around more.

Maera laughed. "It's ketchup, you moron!" The demon looked at me. "Is this your idea of a secret weapon?"

"That's right." I grabbed hold of Troilus' arm, spun him around once, kicked him in the kneecap to knock him off balance, and then shoved. I'm not any stronger than I was when alive, but I had the advantage of surprise. The cyclops went stumbling backward and landed on his mythological ass in a pile of trash.

Maera laughed even harder, but the demon's laughter quickly died away as the first of the alley's hungry scavengers – attracted by the smell of the ketchup – began to swarm over Troilus, Mostly bugs at first, but larger creatures swiftly followed. Within seconds, Troilus was screaming and thrashing about, trying to shake off his attackers. But his exertions lessened, his screams diminished, and soon he lay still and quiet, and the scavengers were able to continue feeding in peace.

Maera gaped as she watched her partner's remains being swiftly and efficiently disposed of.

"Everything tastes better with ketchup," I said.

Maera turned to me, her kaleidoscope eyes flashing with fury, and thrust her steel talons toward my face.

"I already had that arm reattached once today, and I still haven't paid for it!"

Maera grinned as she tossed the limb in question aside. Her scaly hide was dotted with charred, smoking patches where the holy water had struck, but the wounds weren't enough to incapacitate her.

"Forget the arm," she said. "You're not going to need it anymore. As a matter of fact, when I'm through, you're not going to need your body at all."

The demon continued grinning as she came toward me. I'd dropped the squirt gun when she tore my arm off, and the weapon lay on the ground. I could operate it with my left hand well enough if I could get hold of it, but there was no way I could get past Maera now. I stepped back as Maera advanced, and I felt myself bump into the alley wall. Coils of thirsty leech-vine wrapped around my body, barbs penetrating my clothing and sinking deep into my flesh, pinning me in place.

"Perfect!" Maera said in delight. She stopped in front of me, close enough to reach me but not so close that she was in danger of being attacked by leech-vine. "The way I figure it, you're already dead, so the leech-vine won't hurt you. It'll probably let go of you in a minute once it realizes there's nothing inside your veins for it to feed on. But it should hold you still long enough for me to tear your head off. If you're dead, you can't be killed, and that means you'll stay conscious even after you're decapitated." She leaned in closer, and her grin widened. "I'm going to take you home and make you my pet. I might get a birdcage for you, or maybe I'll just keep you in a box. Who knows? I might start a whole new trend: pet zombie heads!"

She reached out with her steel-taloned hands, but before she could take hold of my head, I spoke.

"You're right: leech-vine can't hurt me, and I can continue to survive as just a head. But you forgot something."

Maera's thick brow wrinkled in a frown. "What?"

"My arm." I nodded toward the ground.

Maera looked down just time to see my arm – which had crawled over to us in the time it had taken the demon to advance – snatch hold of a leech-vine tendril and jam it against it her reptilian foot. The vine, realizing it had something alive to feed on, released me and whipped a dozen tendrils toward Maera. She screamed as the leech-vine covered her body and pulled her tight against the alley wall. The air was filled with soft slurping sounds as the vine began to drain the demon's blood, but I didn't look. Maybe Maera, like Troilus, had deserved what she got, but that didn't mean I had to gloat about it. I understand death better than most, and I know it's never something to celebrate.

With a sigh, I bent down to retrieve my arm for the second time that day. I tucked the limb under my remaining arm and walked out of the alley, headed back to Papa's.

"So when did you first become suspicious of Maera?" Papa asked. For the second time that day, the voodoo priest worked on reattaching my arm, but with one difference: instead of using a needle and thread to hold the skin together, he employed a hot soldering gun. I wondered what burning zombie flesh smelled like, and I was glad my nose was as dead as the rest of me.

"When Maera first approached me, she told me she was a customer of Kyra's. But Kyra specializes in living, animated tattoos that move across the wearer's skin – Maera's full-body tattoo didn't move. That didn't mean that Kyra couldn't have done the work, but it started me thinking."

Papa squinted one eye shut as he worked, and while the smell didn't seem to affect him, I noticed he made sure to breathe through his mouth. "And where did those thoughts lead?" he asked.

"Maera's story sounded good on the surface, and it's exactly the sort of thing the Dominari does, but that was the problem: it sounded too good. Why would Techwolf and Lobster-Head take both Finn and Maera to their hideout? They could've given her their instructions when they first accosted the two demons on the street. Why waste time forcing Maera to accompany them to their pesthole of a neighborhood? The faster she started turning tricks, the faster the Dominari would get their money back."

"Maybe the loan sharks didn't want to conduct their business in the public eye." He gave me an embarrassed smile. "If they'd been real, I mean."

"I'll admit Maera's story wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility. The loan sharks might've wanted to make their demands on her in private, and they might've wanted her to see Finn in manacles, just to drive home the point that they were deadly serious. And despite their warning not to seek help from the Sentinels, Maera might've decided to take a chance on the zombie detective that had helped out her friend Kyra. But that was one too many might'ves for me. I decided her story was bogus, and after that, it was just a matter of playing along until I could figure out what her game was."

"And you nearly ended up as a talking head in a birdcage for your troubles," Papa said. He touched the hot metal tip of the soldering gun to my shoulder one last time, and then leaned back. "Finished. Try to take it easy on the arm for the next few days so the spells have a chance to take hold fully, all right? Same with the ear."

"Sure thing." I reached up with left hand and touched the ear Papa had also reattached. The arm worked and the ear didn't fall off, so all was right with the underworld – at least for the time being. I got up from the stool and slipped on the pullover shirt that Papa had loaned me. My suit jacket and shirt were riddled with holes from where the leech-vine had grabbed me, and while Papa had used his soldering gun to seal the punctures on my dead flesh, he drew the line at tailoring. Considering how bad his sewing was, I didn't mind.

Papa rose from his stool, turned off the soldering gun, and placed it on his workbench to cool.

"There's one last thing," I said. "Since Maera's story was a lie –"

"She didn't pay you," Papa finished. "Which means that not only don't you have the darkgems to cover the balance on your last repair, you can't pay for this one either."

"Afraid not."

Papa grinned. "No worries. You'll pay when you can. You always do." He stuck out his hand and we shook.

I'd told a small lie of my own to Papa just then. There was something more about Maera, something that I'd learned from her and Troilus. Solitude can be all well and good, but sometimes it's nice to have a friend.

"If you have the time, I'm up for a game of rattlebones," I said, then added, "If the offer's still good."

Papa looked at me, and for a moment I thought he might comment on my change of heart, but instead he grinned even wider and clapped me on the back gently, careful not to ruin his latest repair.

"Always, my friend. Always."

BOOK I

NEKROPOLIS

ONE

I was sitting in Skully's, nursing a beer that I couldn't taste, and which I'd have to throw up later, and trying real hard to look like I was minding my own business, when the lyke walked in.

He (I knew it was male only because I'd been told) stood well over seven feet tall. But he didn't have to stoop to enter the bar. Since Skully's is located close to the Wyldwood, a lot of his customers are lykes, who often wear their wildforms, and he'd designed the nine-foot high doorway to accommodate the specialized – and mutable – physiognomy of his clientele.

The lyke, Honani by name, stone-cold killer by rep, was one of the newer shapeshifter breeds, a mixblood: lyke biology tweaked by the hand of genetic engineering. But as far as I was concerned, he was an ugly mess. I could pick out badger, puma, crow and what I thought was a bit of snake around the eyes. He looked almost as ugly as one of Lady Varvara's demon kin. Almost.

Skully's doesn't offer much in the way of décor, but that has more to do with the owner's practicality than any lack of aesthetic sense on his part. The nine-foot high door is solid iron, and there are no windows so customers aren't tempted to throw anything – or anyone – through them. The walls are unpainted brick and the floor smooth concrete so Skully can hose the place down every night and remove the bloodstains. The tables are solid oak and bolted to the floor to make it more difficult to use them as weapons, and the chairs are easily replaceable cheap wood because they have an extremely short life-expectancy. There's no mirror behind the long oak bar – not only because it would be just another damned thing to break, Skully once told me, but because it would annoy the vampires.

Honani stomped across the floor, the concrete shuddering beneath his considerable weight. Even for a lyke, he was massive.

The jukebox in the corner had been singing a fairly decent rendition of "I Ain't Got Nobody," but the three heads bolted to the top of the machine had gone silent when the huge lyke entered, and now they watched him pass by with nervous gazes. The multitude of scars, bruises, welts, and fresh cuts on their flesh testified to how hazardous their job could be, and they knew trouble when they saw it.

Skully stood on the other side of the bar close to me, sizing up the mixblood. "He looks bigger than I expected," he said softly. "Meaner, too."

"You're supposed to be my friend," I replied, just as softly. "Try to be a little more encouraging."

"That was encouraging. What I really wanted to say is he looks like he could tear your head off with just his little finger."

I grimaced. "Thanks." Unfortunately, I couldn't disagree with him.

Skully's is always open, and the man himself is always behind the bar – or at least he is whenever I go there. I'm not sure what he is exactly. He looks like a stocky, broad-shouldered human, at least from the bottoms of his feet up to the top of his fleshy neck. But resting on that neck is a skull. Just a skull: no hair, no skin, no organs. Hence his name, obviously. Skully always wears a white shirt with the cuffs rolled up, a black apron, black pants, and black shoes. To the right of the bar is a second iron door which leads upstairs. I assumed Skully had quarters up there, but he'd never said anything about them, even when I'd pried a bit. There are no other servers in Skully's, and he doesn't bring drinks to your table. He'll mix your drinks when he gets around to it, you have to come to the bar to fetch them, and if you don't like it, you can get the hell out.

As Honani continued heading toward the bar, Skully's other patrons looked up to assess the nightmarish hodgepodge's threat potential. An insectine demon with tangleglow delivery tubes surgically grafted to its chitinous head sat next to me at the bar. The demon glanced at Honani once, and then quickly found an empty corner of the room to turn its attention to. A pair of blackclad vampires – one male, one female – sitting at a nearby table were playing a game of bloodshards, the game pieces appearing in the air between them, projected from the holographic implants where their eyes had once been. Though neither looked in Honani's direction, I could tell by the way the crimson shards momentarily faded that their attention was on the lyke instead of their game. The table next to the holo-vampires was occupied by two men and a woman who were working on finishing off a pitcher of beer. Their clothes were simple – flannel shirts, jeans, boots – and at first glance, they seemed human enough, but each of their eyebrows met in the middle, a sure sign that they were shapeshifters. As Honani passed, the trio growled softly and wrinkled their noses in disgust. From their reactions, I knew the three were un-enhanced lykes who had just made their low opinion of their genetically altered cousin clear. I half-expected Honani to stop and snarl a challenge at the trio, but he just kept on walking. The other lykes continued to glare at his back, but from the way the tension in their bodies eased, I could tell they were relieved he'd kept going.

"He cowed those three lykes without doing a thing. Impressive."

"Not helping, Skully," I muttered.

Honani continued toward the bar, passing a table where a lean heavily pierced man with a shaven head and a black T-shirt with an anarchy symbol on the front was sitting. A soft shimmer of argent energy passed over the man's piercings as Honani went by, and I knew the punk was one of the Arcane, a magic user, and that he'd just activated a battery of defensive spells. There was something naggingly familiar about the warlock, but I didn't know what. I figured I'd probably seen him around the Sprawl somewhere before. Sitting at the table next to the warlock was a fluid shadowy mass that sometimes resembled the silhouette of a person, sometimes a formless blob. I had no idea what the thing was, but as Honani walked by, the shadowy thing flowed down to the floor, became a black puddle, and then quickly oozed toward the exit and slipped beneath the closed iron door.

The last customer in the bar was a reed-thin blonde dressed in tight black leather sipping a glass of aqua sanguis alone at a corner table. The woman's gaze was focused intently on Honani, her brow furrowed in concentration. She looked alert, but not especially worried. She was extremely attractive, and if I'd still been alive – but I wasn't, so I turned my attention back to Honani.

The big lyke reached the bar and slapped a paw on the shoulder of the insectine demon sitting next to me and threw him/her/it backwards. The demon squealed in fright as it sailed across the room and smashed into the table where the holo-vampires were sitting. Despite how sturdy the table was, it collapsed, and the bloodshards winked out of existence. The demon, tangleglow leaking from cracked tubes, squealed in terror and scuttled off into a corner where it rolled into a quivering ball and attempted to make itself look as non-threatening as possible. The vampires, who looked so much alike they could've been brother and sister, turned toward Honani and hissed in cold anger, displaying their incisors. But as much as the vampires might have liked to, they didn't make a move toward the lyke. He was just too damned big.

"Whisky," he growled, the words barely recognizable coming out of his inhuman mouth.

Skully trained his empty sockets on Honani for a long moment before finally nodding and setting a bottle on the counter in front of the lyke. Skully unscrewed the cap with his fully fleshed fingers, set it down, and then reached for a glass.

"Forget the glass," Honani said, then grabbed the bottle and drank the entire contents down in three gulps. He tossed the empty over his shoulder and it shattered against the concrete floor.

Skully normally doesn't put up with much crap. He keeps a silver broadaxe behind the counter, but he hardly ever has to use it. Rumor is that he has ties to the Dominari, Nekropolis's version of the Mafia, and while he's never admitted it to me, he hasn't denied it, either. A rumor like that, true or not, can head off a lot of trouble before it starts. If the Descension celebration hadn't been in full swing, and Honani already likely drunk before he even came in here, he would've had more sense than to act like such a jackass. Probably. But Skully didn't reach for his axe. Instead he looked over at me – at least I think he looked at me; it's kind of hard to tell when the person you're talking about doesn't have any eyes. I nodded. Show time. If I still had a pulse, it would have been racing.

I stood up.

"My friend," I said just a bit too loudly, "you are the butt-ugliest sonofabitch in the city." And considering the citizenry of Nekropolis, that was saying something.

The thick muscles in Honani's shoulders rippled and tensed beneath his fur. The other people (and I use the term extremely loosely) in the bar drew in surprised gasps of air. Those that breathed, anyway.

Honani turned around. His lips curled back from his sizable teeth in a snarl, and his eyes burned feral yellow.

"I ain't your friend."

The lyke was damned intimidating, but I stood my ground. There's only one cardinal rule when it comes to surviving in Nekropolis: Show No Fear.

"That's true. If you were my friend, I'd suggest you have a street-surgeon remove your ass and graft it onto your face. It'd be a vast improvement."

The big lyke just stood there a moment, blinking in confusion while his alcohol-sodden brain struggled to process what I'd said. Either he figured it out or decided to give up and just assume I'd insulted him. Either way, he let out an ear-splitting roar and came at me.

You know the old cliché about how time seems to slow down when you're in danger? It's true. Unfortunately, being dead, my reflexes aren't what they once were, so the shift in time perception didn't do me any good. But twenty years' experience as a cop can make up for a whole hell of a lot, and thus I was able to sidestep just as Honani's claws – which had lengthened to twice their previous size and were still growing – raked the air where my chest had been a moment earlier.

I was a bit slow, however, and the lyke's razor-sharp talons sliced through my Marvin the Martian tie, decapitating the cartoon spaceman. I watched Marvin's headless body flutter to the floor.

"Damn it! Do you know how hard it is to come by ties like that around here?"

Honani didn't sympathize with my sartorial loss. Instead, he lunged forward, mouth wide open, jaw distended farther than should have been anatomically possible, and fastened his twisted yellow teeth on my shoulder. I didn't feel a thing – except regret that along with my tie, I'd also lost a perfectly good suit jacket and shirt.

But before he could take a hunk out of me, he pulled back, his face scrunched up in disgust, and spat great gobs of foam and saliva to the floor. "You're a deader!" he accused.

"Guilty as charged. You'd have known that if you'd bothered to smell me." Mixbloods' patchwork physiology doesn't always function properly. It was quite possible his sense of smell was no better than an ordinary human's.

Though the idiot should've been able to tell just by looking. It'd been a while since my last application of preservative spells, and I wasn't too fresh – skin gray, dry, and beginning to flake. I probably didn't taste too good either.

As if emphasizing this last point, Honani spat once more then looked at me with disdain. "Go back to the Boneyard, zombie. Your kind isn't wanted around here." And then he turned and walked toward the bar.

Honani's reaction was understandable. Most zombies are little more than undead automatons under the control of whoever raised them, and hardly a threat to a lyke as strong as Honani. But I'm not most zombies.

I removed a glass vial full of gray dust from the inner pocket of my suit jacket and pried off the cork. And then I made a leap for Honani.

My reflexes may be slower, and I'm no stronger than I was when alive, but I can get the job done when I have to. I threw my left arm around Honani's chest and with my right jammed the vial into the lyke's massive mouth and emptied the contents. There wasn't much in the vial, but a little was all that I needed.

Honani choked and sputtered and then I felt a distant tearing sensation. I stepped back from the lyke, still clutching the mostly empty vial. Something was… and then I realized what had happened: my left arm was gone. The preservative spells were breaking down fast.

Honani whirled around and brandished my detached limb like a club. Behind him, I saw Skully lifting his silver axe, ready to strike, but I shook my head and he lowered his weapon.

"You… damn… corpse!" Honani advanced on me, no doubt intending to pound me into grave mold with my own arm. But he only managed a few steps before he doubled over in pain. He dropped my arm and it hit the floor with a meaty plap! His breathing became harsh, labored, and he started whining like a wounded animal, which, I suppose, he was.

"You shouldn't have killed her, Honani," I said. "Lyra was a simple working girl; it wasn't her fault you couldn't get it up." Like I said, mixblood physiology doesn't always work right.

He fell to his knees, breathing rapidly now. His entire body shook, as if a great struggle were occurring within him.

"That dust I dumped into your mouth was part of Lyra's ashes. Not much, but enough. You took her life; now you're going to give it back."

He rolled onto his side, quivering uncontrollably in the throes of a violent seizure. His eyes had lost all of their anger and wildness and were now rolled up in their sockets.

This was it.

With my remaining hand, I reached into one of my jacket's outer pockets and removed a small clay jar. I shook off the lid, which was attached by a short length of twine, then knelt down next to Honani's head and held the open jar in front of his mouth.

His exertions lessened bit by bit and finally his body grew still. And then, as I watched, thin whitish wisps curled forth from between his teeth, lazily at first, but then the jar's magic began to draw them in, and they flowed out of his mouth faster and faster, until at last they were done. I sat the jar on the floor, put the lid back on tight, and then slipped Honani's soul into my pocket.

Honani – or rather his body – began to stir. I put my right hand beneath one of the lyke's sweaty armpits and lifted. I don't know how much help I was, but a few moments later, the body was on its feet again.

Lyra swayed dizzily and for a moment I thought she might fall, but then she steadied herself and gave me a toothy smile.

"It worked!" The voice was Honani's, but yet it wasn't.

I nodded. "Of course. Didn't Papa Chatha say it would?" I decided not to tell her that sometime Papa's spells failed, often in quite spectacular – and deadly – fashion. Why spoil the moment?

She ran her hands across her new body. Luckily, Honani's claws had retracted during the struggle for possession of his form, or else she would have sliced herself to ribbons.

"It feels so strange… and I'm male now, aren't I?" She reached down to check and I politely looked away.

"Yes," I said. "But it's better than being dead, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, much!" And then she looked at me. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean–"

I held up my remaining hand. "That's okay. I know what you meant." Would I have traded in my undead carcass for Honani's body? Maybe. Probably. I don't know.

She pointed at my empty, ragged left sleeve. "Your arm!"

"Don't worry about it. Occupational hazard. Papa'll fix it up for me." I hoped.

She regarded me for a moment, and I could see the confusion in her eyes.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

"I… I don't know what to do now." She shrugged her massive shoulders.

"You're alive – do whatever you want."

She grinned, and even though I knew it was Lyra inside the body, the sight of all those teeth being bared still unnerved me. "You're right." She came forward and gave me a hug that, if I hadn't been dead, most likely would have killed me on the spot.

"Thank you, Matthew."

I wanted to respond, but I couldn't pull any air into my dead lungs to do it. She released me, and then with a wave she left the bar for whatever her new life held in store for her. I couldn't help but envy her.

Everyone watched her go, and then Skully said, "All right, show's over," and his customers returned to drinking, talking, laughing, the incident well on its way to being forgotten. Just another day in Nekropolis.

I walked up to the bar and sat on one of the stools.

"Looked pretty hairy there for a minute," Skully said. "Pun intended." He grinned at that, but then he always looks like he's grinning.

"You know, I can never figure out how you talk without lips or a tongue."

"Just talented, I guess."

"Right." I got off the stool. "Thanks for letting me conduct my business here."

"No sweat. What're friends for?"

"Gotta go. Papa's waiting." I started to leave.

"Matt? Don't forget your arm."

"Oh, yeah. Right." I bent down to retrieve it, more than a little embarrassed, and then continued toward the door. I was half aware of some of the bar-goers watching me as I left, especially the blonde in leather.

However, it wasn't until later I learned that as soon as I left, she got up and followed.

TWO

Papa Chatha's shop was on the other side of the Sprawl from Skully's, and while navigating the maze of cramped streets was never easy, this time of year it was a nightmare, both figuratively and literally. It was the anniversary of the Descension, and the Sprawl, always party central for Nekropolis, had become a mix of Las Vegas and Disneyland (assuming the Haunted Mansion had exploded and taken over the entire park) during both Mardi Gras and New Year's Eve. Beings of every description – and quite a few who defied description – choked the streets, drinking, shouting, singing, groping, slapping, hitting, dancing, screwing… You name the verb, they were doing it. It was Halloween as scripted by Franz Kafka, with costumes and set design by Salvador Dali.

Umbriel, the shadowsun, hung motionless in the starless sky, fixed in the same position it holds day in, day out, its strange diffuse light maintaining the city's perpetual dusk. And directly below Umbriel, rising forth from the ground like a gigantic obsidian talon, visible from anywhere in Nekropolis, rested the Nightspire, home to Father Dis, founder of Nekropolis and its absolute ruler. And in many ways, its God.

Over three hundred years ago, the Darkfolk, rather than deal with an increasingly populous, aggressive, and technologically advanced mankind, decided to leave Earth. Led by Father Dis and the five lesser Lords, they traveled to a distant dark dimension where Nekropolis was born. This leave-taking, which the Darkfolk call the Descension, is Nekropolis's most sacred holiday.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a gigantic pain in the ass.

The Sprawl was crowded at the best of times, but this was madness. Normally, the streets were filled with traffic, vehicles of every type and description – and many that defied description – racing this way and that, drivers searching impatiently for whatever pleasures they'd come to the Sprawl to find. But because of the Descension celebration, the Sprawl was presently closed to vehicular traffic, and masses of partiers thronged the streets, as if determined to take advantage of the one day during the year when Nekropolitans could stand in the middle of the street and not risk getting run down by cars… or devoured by things only pretending to be cars.

The sidewalks weren't much better, but I shoved my way through the crowds as best I could, past bars, clubs, restaurants, and establishments offering more esoteric – and often stomachturning – entertainments. I'd have kept one hand on the few darkgems I carried to prevent pickpockets from taking them, but I needed my good arm to carry my detached one.

I was passing by Sawney B's, a fast-food franchise established by descendants of the infamous Scottish cannibal, when a trio standing outside the restaurant's cave-entrance façade turned to look at me. A bald man with large spider legs growing out of his head held a container of lady fingers, while his friends – a being who looked like a lobster in a leisure suit and a well-built woman with pythons instead of arms – sipped a marrow shake and nibbled homunculus nuggets, respectively.

The bald man was about to pop a lady finger with cherry-red nail polish into his mouth when he stopped and pointed the finger at me. "Hey, check it out! The guy's been disarmed!"

The three gourmands laughed. I stopped walking and turned to scowl at them.

"I only need one arm to yank those legs off your head and shove them where Umbriel doesn't shine."

The laughter died in their throats and I continued on my way to Papa Chatha's.

The architecture in the Sprawl is a mad conglomeration of styles – Art Deco, Tudor, Baroque, Victorian, Post-Modern, Frank Lloyd Wright, and buildings which look like structures made from regurgitated insect resin. The whole place is like an M. C. Escher fever dream. But the Sprawl is Lady Varvara's Dominion, and zoning isn't exactly high on the Demon Queen's list of priorities.

After struggling through the drunken, drugged-up throngs for what could only have been an hour or so but which felt more like a handful of eternities, I saw the greenish tint against the sky which told me I was nearing the flaming river Phlegethon and the Bridge of Nine Sorrows. Papa Chatha's was close by – finally.

And then I felt a hand on my shoulder; or rather, I felt the pressure of a hand on my shoulder, as that was all the sensation my dead nerves were capable of conveying.

"Excuse me."

The voice was soft, feminine, and nervous. But while I'd been in Nekropolis only a couple years, that was long enough to know that in this place appearances mean jack. So I stepped forward, and whirled about, body tensed, ready to fight, holding my detached arm out before me like a weapon.

The woman – the leather-clad blonde I'd seen at Skully's – took a step back, startled by my action. But then she regained her composure, or at least a good portion of it, and said, "I watched you handle that lyke in the bar. A most impressive performance, Mister Richter."

She was barely five feet tall, slim to the point of being modelthin, with pale porcelain skin. Her short hair was bright blonde, almost white. Her eyes were large and red, as if from crying. Or perhaps too much celebrating. "Yeah, well the next show isn't till midnight. Now if you'll pardon me, I have to go see a voodoo priest." I turned to go.

"Wait, please!"

The urgency in her voice, almost panic, made me hesitate. "Look, whatever it is, can't it wait? I'm no expert, but as I understand these things, if I don't get my arm reattached soon, I'll lose it for good."

"I… it's just…" She looked around, as if afraid someone might be listening, though how anyone could overhear us talking in the din of celebration, I didn't know. Hell, I could barely hear us. She leaned forward and mumbled something.

"I'm sorry, you'll have to speak up."

She looked around once more and then said, with exaggerated lip movements so I'd be sure not to miss it this time, "I need you."

I was flattered, and like I said earlier, she was very attractive. Still, I couldn't take advantage of her offer even if I wanted to. "Sorry, I don't go in for that kind of thing anymore. I'm dead. And I don't get off on fulfilling other people's necrophiliac fantasies. Enjoy the festival." This time I did go, forging a path through the partiers in the general direction of Papa Chatha's.

"You don't understand." Her words sounded in my ear, and although I couldn't feel her breath, I was sure it was cold, like a draft from an open grave.

"Vampire, right?" I said without turning around. "That's why I didn't hear you come up behind me just now."

"Please, we prefer the term Bloodborn."

"And I'd rather be referred to as Previously Living, but at the end of the day I'm still just a damned walking corpse." I would've loved to shake her off my trail, but even if the street hadn't been so crowded, I probably couldn't. I'm not as fast as I used to be, and at my fastest, I'm still standing still compared to a vampire… excuse me, one of the Bloodborn.

So I just kept on slogging through the crowd toward Papa Chatha's, and hoped she'd get bored soon and go find another dead man to put the moves on. I'd used my handvox – Nekropolis's version of a cell phone – to call Papa earlier. He'd been out celebrating at his favorite hangout, the Bar Sinister, but when I told him I needed some serious repair work, he promised he'd be home when I got there. Papa's the best houngan a dead man could have.

"They say you're a detective."

That's when I realized the vampire wasn't warm for my undead form. I felt stupid, but I wasn't about to show it. "They say wrong. When I was alive, I was a cop, yes. But I'm not alive anymore." I wiggled my detached arm to emphasize my point.

"But you helped that woman, the one the lyke killed."

"Sometimes I do favors for people – for a fee. Preservative spells don't come cheap, you know."

"I am in desperate need of a favor. And I can pay. Please!"

She sounded as if she might burst into tears at any moment. But that wasn't what made me stop. I knew Papa Chatha would only give me so much for Honani's soul. And now thanks to that miserable lyke ripping off my arm, I needed more work done than when I'd decided to help Lyra. More work than Honani's rotten spirit would pay for.

It wasn't her beauty, and it wasn't the threat of her tears. It was the money. Really.

I turned around. "All right, Miss…?"

"Devona," she supplied. "Devona Kanti."

"You can come along, Devona. We can talk after I see Papa. But I'm not promising anything," I cautioned.

"Of course." But she smiled in relief just the same.

I rotated my left arm and then flexed it a couple times.

"How's it feel?" Papa Chatha asked.

"A bit loose," I admitted.

Papa ran long, slender black fingers through his short gray hair, and then sighed. "That's what I was afraid of."

"I don't like the sound of that."

Papa Chatha was a dignified, handsome black man in his sixties, with a tattoo of a blue butterfly spread across his smooth-shaven face. The edges of the butterfly's wings seemed to ripple, but it was probably just my imagination.

I scanned the shelves in Papa's workroom, taking in the multitude of materials that a professional voodoo practitioner needs to perform his art: wax-sealed vials filled with ground herbs and dried chemicals, jars containing desiccated bits of animals – roos ter claws, lizard tails, raven wings – candles of all sizes and colors, varying lengths of rope tied in complicated patterns of knots, small dolls made of corn shucks and horsehair, books and scrolls piled on tabletops next to rattles and tambourines of various sizes, along with pouches of tobacco, chocolate bars, and bottles of rum. Papa said he used the latter three substances to make offerings to the Loa, the voodoo spirits, and while I had no reason to doubt him, I've noticed that he tends to run out of rum before anything else.

Papa sat on the only chair in his workroom, a simple wooden stool, and smoothed his loose white pants which matched his pullover shirt. He then tapped his bare toes on the wooden floor.

I had the impression he was stalling.

"You're a self-willed zombie, Matt. Do you have any idea how rare that is?" He had a deep, resonant voice that was usually full of good humor. But he was somber today.

"From what you've told me, pretty damned rare."

He nodded. "Most zombies are merely reanimated corpses, bereft of souls, linked to the life-force of the sorcerer who raised them from the dead. It's this link, this sharing of a living being's life-force, which prevents their dead flesh from withering away. But you have no master." He frowned. "How did you become a zombie, anyway, Matt? You've never told me."

"Just too stubborn to die, I suppose."

Papa looked at me a long moment before going on. "Since you have no master–"

"I know," I interrupted. "I need you and your magic to keep my body in tip-top condition."

Papa gestured at the collection of odds and ends that cluttered the shelves and benches of his workroom. "My meager arts can only do so much, Matt. And I fear they've done all they can for you."

I don't feel emotions the same way I did when I was alive, but I felt an echo of fear at Papa Chatha's words. "What do you mean?"

"That this last application of preservative spells almost didn't take. And they may not last more than two, three days."

"You mean–"

"We've staved off the inevitable as long as we could, my friend. I'm sorry."

I felt like a man who'd just been told by his doctor that he only had a short time to live. And I suppose in a way, I was.

"Nothing personal, Papa, but is there anyone else who might be able to help me? After all, Nekropolis is lousy with all sorts of witches and magicians. Maybe one of them–"

Papa shook his head. "I'm afraid not. While it's true there are others more powerful than I, there is only so much power can do."

I thought for a moment. "Could my spirit be caught, like Honani's, and implanted into a second body?"

"Perhaps," Papa allowed. "If you are willing to steal another's form."

So much for that. After what he'd done to Lyra, Honani deserved to be evicted from his body. But I couldn't do that to someone else just to save my own life. If I did, in effect I'd be a killer, no better than Honani.

I stood there, trying to come to terms with what Papa had told me. I wasn't going to die. I couldn't; I was already dead. But my body was going to… what? Collapse into a puddle of putrefaction? Or just flake away to dust? And when it was gone, what would happen to me? Would I end up wandering Nekropolis, a disembodied spirit like Lyra? Or would my soul depart for some manner of afterlife? Assuming, of course, that there was any beyond Nekropolis. Or would I just cease to be, my spirit rotting away to nothing along with my body?

As much as I hated my mockery of a life, it was the only mockery I had, and I didn't particularly want to lose it. There had to be a way for me to continue existing, a way that wouldn't result in my having to steal another's body. I'd just have to find it within the next couple days.

I shook Papa's hand. "I appreciate everything you've done for me." I reached into my pocket, intending to hand over the soul jar containing Honani's spirit to pay for Papa's services.

"Keep it, Matt." He smiled sadly. "This one's on the house, okay?"

I didn't know what I'd do with Honani's soul, but Papa refused to take it, so in the end I walked out with the jar still in my pocket. I had two souls now, when what I needed was another body. Life – and death – is full of little ironies, isn't it?

Devona was waiting for me outside, leaning up against the wooden wall of Papa's shack, arms crossed, surveying the Descension Day celebrants in the street with a wary, nervous gaze. The crowd was thinner this far from the center of the Sprawl, but there were still a lot of loud, drunken monsters about, and they bore watching.

Devona's leather outfit clung to her like a second skin, and even though I no longer had any libido to speak of, I couldn't help appreciating how good she looked in it.

I had my own problem now, and no time for hers. But I thought I could at least hear her out. Maybe her problem would turn out to be something simple. And I could use the darkgems; I would need them if I was going to find someone else – someone more powerful than Papa – to extend my unlife.

"All done. I'm ready to talk." I didn't feel a need to mention the bad news I'd received. After all, Devona and I had just met.

"Not here. We need someplace private."

Like I'd told her, I wasn't a detective, no matter what she'd heard from them, whoever the hell they were, and I didn't have an office. But my apartment wasn't far from Papa Chatha's.

"How about my place?"

She nodded.

A few more blocks of negotiating our way through the chaotic riot of partiers – which for Devona meant slapping more than a few males of various species and states of life and death who decided to grab her shapely leather-clad posterior – and we were there.

My neighborhood is actually one of the more mundane sections of the Sprawl, a street of urban townhouses, which, except for the fact that the bricks appear to be made of gristle, looks perfectly ordinary.

We went up the front steps, inside, and up more steps to my apartment. I had unlocked the door and was just about to grip the knob when a voice behind us said, "Hey, Matt!"

"Hell," I muttered, and turned around to greet my neighbor. "Hi, Carl," I said without enthusiasm. "What's up?"

Carl was a grizzled old fart in a rumpled seersucker suit which had probably once been white but was now mostly yellow.

He grabbed a sheet of paper from the stack under his arm and thrust it into my hand.

"Just finished printing out the latest edition of the Night Stalker News. I'm breaking a major story this week."

I glanced at the headline: WATCHERS FROM OUTSIDE PLOT CITY'S DESTRUCTION.

"Sounds ominous, Carl. I'll be sure to read it."

I quickly opened the door and gestured for Devona to go in; she did and I hurried after her.

Carl scowled. "Don't you humor me now, Matt. It's true! None of the other media will have anything to do with the story. It's too hot for the Tome, and even that rag the Daily Atrocity won't touch it. If we don't do something about it soon, we'll all be–"

I closed the door in Carl's rapidly reddening face, cutting him off.

"Just you wait!" came his muffled voice from the other side of the door. "You'll be singing a different tune when the Watchers come!"

He shouted a bit more before finally moving off, grumbling to himself about idiot zombie cops.

"Who was that?" Devona asked.

"Just some nut who lives upstairs. Used to be some sort of tabloid reporter back on Earth, but he can't find work on any of the papers in the city. The stories he comes up with are too crazy even for Nekropolis. Don't worry; he won't bother us anymore. He'll no doubt head out into the street to harangue the festivalgoers with his latest paranoid expose." I crumpled Carl's so-called "paper" into a wad and tossed it into an empty corner while Devona surveyed the room.

"It's better than a tomb, even if it does have about as much personality," I said, feeling only a little self-conscious. A threadbare couch, a single wooden chair – with one leg shorter than the others – and a Mind's Eye set sitting atop a wooden stand comprised the sole contents of the living room. No pictures, no rugs, not even curtains. No toilet facilities, either, but then I don't need them. One of the perks of being dead.

Nekropolis doesn't have television. Instead we have Mind's Eye Theatre. Mind's Eye is exactly what it sounds like: psychic transmissions are received by your set and then relayed straight into your brain. The process is kind of hit and miss for me, probably because my zombie brain doesn't get good reception, so I tend not to watch too often. I read instead, hence the reason for the piles of books stacked in the corners of the room. Right now the set was off, the large eye closed, its lashes crusted with yellowish crud, probably because it had been so long since I'd turned it on. I wondered if the set had some kind of infection, and I told myself to remember to call a repairman.

"Do you have a bed?" Devona asked.

"I told you: I don't do those kinds of favors."

She gave me a look which said I was being less than amusing. "I'm just curious. Do zombies sleep? I've never thought about it before. But then, I've never been to a zombie's apartment, either."

"I have a bed." Though it was just a lumpy mattress sitting on the floor, no sheets, no covers. "I don't sleep, exactly, but sometimes I feel a need to… rest. To relax."

"And so you just lie there and stare at the ceiling?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I close my eyes. So tell me, what's it like to sleep in a coffin? Ever feel like a sardine?"

"Bloodborn don't sleep in coffins," she said disdainfully.

"Even when they're half human?"

Her eyes widened in surprise. "How did you know?"

I shrugged, the gesture a bit lopsided thanks to the bite Honani had taken out of my shoulder, which Papa hadn't been able to repair completely. "Little things. You don't move as gracefully as other vampires. Your pallor isn't as white. And whatever your problem is, it's got you tied up in knots inside. I've never seen a full-blooded vampire afraid. It doesn't seem to be an emotion they're capable of."

I went into the bedroom, and she followed. Aside from my mattress, the only other items in the room were my laptop computer, the desk it sat on, and the chair I sat on when I used it. In Nekropolis, the computers are organic, fashioned from bone, cartilage, muscle, sinew, and specialized organs. The machines breathe, gurgle, and moan – especially when doing difficult tasks – and have even been known to burst blood vessels if asked to perform too many functions at the same time. The damned things literally get sick when they catch a virus and become all mopey and lazy, refusing to do any work until they get better. The spoiled things are worse than pampered cats.

My computer made a soft humming sound to catch my attention, and I grudgingly went over and scratched the top of its casing. In response, it let out a moist, phlegmy purr.

"You use your bedroom as your office too?" Devona asked.

"I don't have an office because I don't have a business," I said. "I mostly use the computer to play DVDs – it works better for me than the Mind's Eye – and to hop on the Aethernet from time to time." The Aethernet is Nekropolis's answer to the Internet back on Earth. Information is swiftly transported through the system by data-ghosts: the spirits of executed criminals sentenced to spend their afterlives ferrying bytes back and forth for the rest of us.

"So you can check out zombie porn?" Devona asked with a wry grin.

"You ever see one of those sites? No? Well, if you get curious, take my advice and don't eat for a week or two before logging on."

I removed the soul jar from my pocket, and placed it on the desk next to my computer. I then walked over to the closet and removed my torn jacket, tie, and shirt. I opened the closet door, dropped my ruined garments on the floor next to my footlocker, and scanned my pitifully small collection of clothes for replacements. If Devona felt any disgust upon seeing so much of my bare zombie skin with its slight grayish cast revealed, she showed no sign.

"You said you don't think vampires experience fear," Devona said, picking up the thread of our earlier conversation. "But they do. They just don't like to show it. But you were right about me; I'm only half Bloodborn. My mother was human."

From my closet's meager offerings, I chose a brown shirt, yellow paisley tie, and a brown jacket. I could wear whatever I want, I suppose. I'm not a cop anymore, and besides, I'm dead. Who cares how I dress? But old habits – and old cops like me – die hard, I guess. And besides, wearing the sort of clothes I wore in life makes me feel more… well, human.

I dressed and stood before the cracked mirror hanging on the wall and adjusted my tie. Thanks to Papa Chatha's latest round of spells, I didn't look too much different than I had in life, grayish skin aside. Black hair, brown eyes, features on the ordinary side of handsome (or so I'd been told by my ex-wife; I'm no judge of such things). Face a bit thinner than when I'd been alive. Death is a great diet plan.

I put the soul jar in the pocket of my new jacket. I'm not really sure why; it just didn't seem like the sort of thing a person should leave lying around, and then I turned to face my guest. "And who's your father?"

She hesitated a moment before answering. "Lord Galm."

If my heart had been functional, it would've skipped a beat or two right then.

"I think you'd better leave now," I said.

Confusion spread across her face. "Why?"

"It's nothing personal; I just make it a policy never to get involved with Darklords if I can avoid it. And that includes getting involved with their relatives."

Lord Galm is an ancient, powerful vampire, ruler of the Bloodborn, and of Gothtown, the Dominion where the vampires live, or rather, exist. And like any Darklord, he's dangerous as hell. I'd rather run up to a Mafia don in his favorite restaurant, dump his spaghetti marinara in his lap, and accuse him of diddling his grandchildren than I would mess with a Darklord.

"Please, at least let me–"

I held up a hand to cut her off. "I'm sorry. Really, I am. But getting involved with a Darklord is what got me killed and resurrected as a zombie. I hate to think what might happen to me the next time. Being dead isn't all that much fun, but I've lived in Nekropolis long enough to know it could be worse. A lot worse."

She cocked her head to one side and looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. "Which Darklord was it?"

"I'd rather not talk about it, if you don't mind. And I don't want to talk about your problem either, not if it involves Lord Galm."

She crossed her arms and gave me a calculating look. It didn't appear as if she were in a hurry to leave.

"I don't know a lot about zombies, but I know they need to have preservative spells regularly applied to keep them from rotting." She smiled. "And as I've seen, they occasionally need limbs reattached. Spells like that cost money."

"I can get darkgems somewhere else," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. And besides, I wasn't worried about mere preservative spells now. I needed to find a way to keep my body from rotting away to nothing. I imagined I could already feel the slight itch of decay – one of the few sensations I can feel.

"One hundred? Two? Three hundred?" she countered. "Three hundred darkgems would pay for quite a lot of spells."

"They would at that," I was forced to admit. That would be roughly the equivalent of several thousand dollars back home in Cleveland. But would even three hundred darkgems be enough to buy the kind of magic I would need to keep my body intact?

And then it hit me. I needed the kind of power few beings in Nekropolis possessed: the power of a Darklord. If I helped Devona, perhaps she would intercede with her father on my behalf – and Lord Galm could use his magic to "cure" me.

I cautioned myself not too get excited, that it was a long shot, that even if Devona asked, Lord Galm might not help me. But right then it looked like the best – and only – shot I had. Besides, if I did have only a few days left in my existence, I'd rather spend them working than sitting around my place staring at the walls.

"All right, Devona, tell me about your problem."

"I'm seventy-three years old," she said. "Surprised?"

"Not really," I said. "Seventy-three is young for a vampire."

We were sitting in the living room. Devona was on the couch, and I'd taken the chair. The sounds of the Descension celebration out in the street – blaring music, laughter, shouting, and the occasional scream – served as a muted background to our conversation.

"Although," I added, "you're the best looking seventy-three year-old I've ever seen."

She blushed slightly. Another sign that she was half human. A full-blooded vampire can't blush.

"Lord Galm didn't exactly love my mother. But he came as close to it as a being like him can, and when I was born, he brought me from Earth to Nekropolis."

"And your mother?"

"Died delivering me," she said softly. "Human women usually do when giving birth to a half-Bloodborn child." She looked down at her lap, where the thin, fine fingers of her delicate hands played nervously with each other. "We have our teeth early, you see, and we're born hungry…"

The resultant images in my mind might've nauseated me if I still had a working digestive system. "I understand. Go on."

"I was raised in the Cathedral. I didn't see my father very often – he was usually busy ruling Gothtown or engaging in power struggles with the other Lords. I was cared for and taught by Father's staff, and I grew and learned."

"I thought vampires didn't age."

"Those that were originally human and transformed into Bloodborn do not. But those like me, who are half human, do age, only very, very slowly."

"So you'll die one day?"

She nodded. "And afterward, I may rise as one completely Bloodborn. Or I may not. No one can say."

"Could your father transform you, make you a full vampire?"

"He could try. But there's no guarantee I would survive the process and be reborn. At this point, I'd rather wait and take my chances."

"I don't blame you."

"When I reached my forty-fifth birthday, Father called me in to his study and told me that he wished me to join the staff of the Cathedral and serve him. It was a great honor, and I accepted thankfully."

"What did he want you to do?"

"I was given charge of his Collection, and I have taken care of it for the last twenty-eight years."

I noticed a black spot on the far wall – a spot which hadn't been there when we'd started talking. It was a roach-like insect. Gregor, or rather one of his little informants. I nearly waved hello, but I didn't want Devona to think I wasn't listening to her. Besides, the bug didn't care if I acknowledged its presence or not. All it wanted to do was observe.

"His… Collection?" I said, returning to the conversation.

"Father is incredibly ancient; how old, even he isn't certain. Thousands and thousands of years, at least. And in all that time, he has acquired quite a number of items. Some are merely mementos of lives lived, countries and cities long dead; others are trophies: of triumphs, conquests, battles won, enemies defeated. Still others are tokens of magic, mystical objects of great power – any of which the other Darklords would dearly love to get their hands on in order to increase their own strength.

"As I said, I have watched over, cared for, and guarded the Collection for nearly three decades. And I have never had any problems," she said proudly. But then she lowered her head. "Until yesterday."

"Let me guess. You went to check on the Collection and found something missing."

"How did – of course, you're a detective."

I almost protested that I wasn't, that I was just an ex-cop – and ex-human – who did favors for people, but I decided to let it lie.

"Yes, something was missing. And I want you to help me get it back."

I thought for a moment. "Why come to me? Why not go to Lord Galm? He's a Darklord. With the powers at his command, I should think he'd be able to locate the object easily."

"Perhaps. But I cannot go to my father. Lord Galm is not especially… understanding of failure. Or forgiving. My only hope is to recover the object on my own, or at least discover what has happened to it. If I am unable to do either…" she trailed off, shuddering.

"But you're his daughter."

"Yes, but the Bloodborn have a different set of values when it comes to determining family relationships. Those who are chosen for transformation are considered true children, and are closest to their sires' hearts. Half-human get like me… well, I suppose the closest human equivalent would be children born out of wedlock. Our sires still care for us, just not as deeply.

"Most of Lord Galm's staff are children of his, whether fully Bloodborn or partially. And there is a great deal of competition among us for our father's favor."

"And so you can't turn to any of them, either."

She nodded. "That's why I need your help. You have a reputation for not only getting the job done, but for keeping quiet about it as well."

"I didn't know I had a reputation. I don't suppose you heard anything about my sparkling personality or my dazzling wit?"

She smiled. "Unfortunately not."

She had a beautiful smile, the effect spoiled only slightly by her revealed canine teeth.

"Tell me about the object."

"It's a crystal a little larger than my fist called the Dawnstone. What it does precisely, I'm not certain. While I tend his Collection, Father doesn't entrust me with complete knowledge of it. The Dawnstone is one of those items whose secrets he wishes to keep to himself."

I thought it ironic a vampire would own an artifact called a "Dawnstone."

"But you know it's powerful," I said.

"Of course. Why else would Father be so secretive about it? And the wardspells which protect it are among the most potent in the Cathedral."

"Yet someone got past those spells."

"Yes."

"How do you know Lord Galm didn't just take the Dawnstone himself and forgot to tell you?"

"Father is a stickler for procedure. In twenty-eight years he has never failed to inform me when he removed an item from the Collection."

"Still, there's always a first time," I pointed out.

"I suppose. But I can hardly go up and ask him, can I? If he hasn't removed the Dawnstone, my asking after it would alert him to its disappearance."

"And buy you a world of trouble."

"Yes."

She definitely needed help – and I needed the aid of a Darklord if I was to survive. I stood. "I have more questions, but I can ask them on the way."

"The way to where?"

"The Cathedral, of course. One of the first steps in any investigation is to examine the scene of the crime."

I looked over at the spot on the wall where the bug had been, but it was gone now. Gregor's tiny minion had probably heard enough and moved on to find something more interesting to observe.

Devona stood. She smiled, took my hand, and gave it a squeeze. "Thank you, Mr. Richter."

I could only feel the pressure of her hand, but I could imagine how smooth and soft her skin was. "Call me Matthew."

Detective or not, I was on the job once more – and this time, I was working not only to help my "client," but to save my own life.

Talk about incentive.

THREE

Before leaving, I strapped on my shoulder holster and then made a few selections from the foot locker on the floor of my closet. My 9mm handgun – a souvenir from my days on the force back in Cleveland – along with a few other goodies that I'd picked up since. I slid the 9mm into the holster and hid the rest in various places about my person, mostly in the extra pockets sewn into in the inner lining of my suit jacket, and then I was ready. Or at least as ready as I was going to get.

As we walked down the front steps of my building, Devona eyed the street full of drunken revelers. "It's going to take some time to get through this mess."

"You could go on ahead, and I could meet you."

"Go on? Oh, you mean shapeshift. I don't possess the capability of assuming a travel form. Not many half-human Bloodborn do. Although I do have other… talents."

Before I could think of a witty reply, a shriek went up from the festivalgoers at the far end of the street, and the crowd began to part like water before a large yellow object careening toward us.

"Oh, no," I moaned. "It's Lazlo."

Sure enough, with a rattling and knocking of the engine and a roar of purplish exhaust, Lazlo's cab carved a path through the suddenly terrified partiers, only running down one or two in the process. Lazlo pulled up to the curb in front of my building with a pitiful squeal of brakes begging to be replaced and sent on to car-part heaven.

"Heya, Matt! How's it hanging?"

"I'm dead, Lazlo, remember? Hanging is all it does anymore."

Lazlo guffawed violently, his laughter a combination of genuine amusement and someone in desperate need of the Heimlich maneuver. Lazlo's a demon whose face looks something like a cross between a mandrill and a ferret, with a little carp thrown in for good measure. And although I can't testify to this personally, I've heard he smells like a toxic waste dump.

Evidently the rumors were true, for Devona recoiled as if she'd just taken a sledge hammer blow to the side of the head.

Before Lazlo could say anything else, one of the festival-goers came lumbering toward us. I'd seen it around the Sprawl before, but I didn't know its name and I'd taken to mentally referring to it as Tri-bod. The creature had one extremely large head which looked something like a half-rotted flesh-colored pumpkin with humanoid eyes, noise, and mouth. Supporting that immense dome were three bodies – the outer two male, the one in the middle female. The two male bodies wore tuxedos, while the female was garbed in a sequin-covered evening gown. The female body could've graced the cover of any high-profile beauty magazine back on Earth… as long as the photographer made sure to shoot her from the neck down.

Tri-bod's mushy facial features were contorted into an angry scowl, and when it spoke, its voice was a combination of male tenor, female alto, and male bass.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, dumbass? You can't drive on the streets today! They're closed!"

Tri-bod came up onto the sidewalk and one of its male components shoved me aside so it could lean down and look at Lazlo while it yelled at him. To help keep its balance, all six of Tri-bod's hands grabbed hold of the cab at various points.

"You really don't want to do that," I warned.

Devona shot me a questioning look, but before I could answer, the hood of Lazlo's cab sprung open, revealing a maw filled with razor-sharp teeth. A serpentine tongue whipped through the air toward Tri-bod's middle neck and wrapped tight around the soft feminine flesh.

"I only got one rule," Lazlo said calmly. "Hands off the cab."

Though Tri-bod had two other sets of lungs to breathe with, its face nevertheless began to turn purple. I guess a head that big needed all the oxygen it could get.

I leaned close to one of Tri-bod's misshapen ears. "Ever see a kid pop the head off a dandelion? If I you were you, I'd apologize."

Tri-bod's eyes bulged from a combination of terror and air loss. Its flabby lips moved silently several times before it finally managed to gasp out, "Sorry" in its two male voices. The female voice was silent.

Nothing happened right away, and for a moment I thought the cab wasn't going to accept Tri-bod's apology. But then the tongue released the woman-neck, receded into the toothsome mouth, and the hood slammed shut.

Lazlo smiled at Tri-bod, the expression truly grotesque on the cabbie's inhuman face.

"Now, what were you saying about my not being allowed to drive here?"

"N-nevermind," Tri-bod wheezed. The creature leaned back, took its hands off Lazlo's cab, and beat three pairs of feet out of there. It quickly merged with the crowd and did its best to disappear into the throng. If there was anyone else around who was displeased with Lazlo's driving, they decided to keep their feelings to themselves.

Lazlo looked up at me, his hideous smile widening into a truly appalling grin. "Need a ride, pal?"

"You know I do. When else do you show up?"

He guffawed again, sounding this time like he was about to cough up a kidney. "You slay me, Matt." He put the engine in park, hopped out, opened the rear door, and gestured for us to climb in, bowing as he did so.

"Your chariot awaits."

Lazlo, despite my attempts to convince him that it would be in the best interests of the entire citizenry of Nekropolis, refuses to wear clothing. His body resembles a spider that's been turned inside out and then stomped on. I've gotten somewhat accustomed to his rather unique anatomy over the years, but Devona's eyes goggled.

"No offense," she said, "but I'd prefer to walk."

I'm sure Tri-bod's reception by Lazlo's cab was as much behind her reticence to get into the vehicle as was the sight – and smell – of the demon's unclothed body.

"Don't worry," I told her. "The cab won't do anything as long as Lazlo vouches for us. Besides, every moment we waste is another moment for your father to find out what's happened." I added this last bit softly, so Lazlo wouldn't overhear.

She hesitated, but finally agreed. "I may have to hold my nose the whole trip, though."

"Go right ahead." I didn't tell her it wouldn't help. She'd find out soon enough.

We got into the cab; Lazlo closed the door, hopped behind the driver's seat, and put the car in gear.

"Surprise me, Lazlo," I said, "and try not to drive like a maniac for a ch–" That's as far as I got before Lazlo slammed on the gas and I was thrown back against the seat.

He hung half out of his open window, shouting, "Out of the way, morons!"

Most of the celebrants scattered, but despite what had happened to Tri-bod a few moments ago, a massive bull-headed man wearing an I'M HORNY T-shirt wasn't – pardon the expression – cowed so easily. He planted his feet firmly on the ground and braced himself for impact.

"Look at the size of him!" Devona cried. "Swerve!"

But there was no point shouting at Lazlo. He never listened to passengers' suggestions. "After all," he once told me, "I'm the professional."

"Hold on!" I warned Devona, and then there was a loud crash and the cab shuddered and jerked; but it kept moving. Behind us, falling quickly away in the distance, came the wounded bellow of one very unhappy – but lucky to be alive – minotaur.

"Hah!" Lazlo barked in triumph. "That'll teach that uddersucker to play chicken with me!" He turned around to look at us, and grinned. "So where we headed, folks?"

"Put your eyes back on the road, and I'll tell you," I said nervously. The last time Lazlo turned around to talk to me, we almost ended up taking a flame bath in Phlegethon.

Lazlo laughed, but did as I asked, so I said, "The Cathedral. And we'd like to get there in as close to one piece as possible."

"Gotcha. You two just sit back and enjoy the ride." He pointed his cab in the general direction of the Bridge of Nine Sorrows – the crossing point between the Sprawl and Gothtown – and pressed down on the accelerator.

"Enjoy the ride?" Devona said, her nails digging into the greasy fabric of the seat. "Not until it's over!"

I had to agree.

A few blocks from my townhouse, Lazlo was forced to stop when a fight erupted between a group of lykes and several vampires. Even Lazlo wouldn't try to drive through that mess. Things got pretty bloody for a bit, until a Sentinel came charging through the crowd, knocking aside those who didn't get out of its way fast enough, and broke the conflict up, basically by breaking the combatants up. The Sentinels are Father Dis's police force: eight feet tall, massive, gray-fleshed, featureless golems that are strong as hell and, as far as I know, completely invulnerable. The lykes and vamps tried to fight back, but they never had a chance. When it was over, the Sentinel tossed their bloody, broken bodies into an alley and stomped off. The fighters would heal, eventually, but in the meantime, they wouldn't be bothering anyone.

As Lazlo pulled away from the scene, I said, "Every time I see a Sentinel in action, I can't help thinking we could've used a few during my days on the force in Cleveland. Sure would've made life a lot easier."

"For the cops, maybe," Lazlo said. "But the morticians would've been a hell of a lot busier."

"I've never seen a Sentinel before," Devona said quietly.

I looked at her, surprised. "You're kidding."

She gave a small shrug. "I don't get out of Gothtown, much."

From her tone, I knew she wanted that to be the end of it, so I leaned forward and said to Lazlo, "Hear anything interesting on the street lately?"

We'd reached the Obsidian Way, the only road that passes through all five of the Darklords' Dominions. There was a Hemlocks next to the on-ramp, and a skeletal being in a sombrero who looked like a picture on a Mexican Day of the Dead postcard came out of the coffee shop, carrying a grande-sized drink of one sort or another. The bone-man made the mistake of stepping into the street just as Lazlo came barrel-assing along, and the demon barely yanked the steering wheel to the right in time to avoid turning El Hombre Muerte into a pile of bleached-white pick-up sticks.

Lazlo flipped off the bone-man as the cab roared onto the Obsidian Way. The road's glossy black surface is hard as diamond, though it's not slick, and there's never a crack or chip in it. Despite how crowded the streets of the Sprawl were, the Way was empty of anything save other vehicles. The road was constructed by Father Dis two hundred years ago, at the end of the Blood Wars, when the Darklords fought each other for control over Nekropolis. One of the Accords that resulted from the war states that travel throughout the city on the Obsidian Way, including across the Five Bridges, is not to be impeded for any reason, not even by the Darklords themselves. Once travelers leave the Way, however, all bets are off and they go at their own not inconsiderable risk.

Of course, just because that was the law didn't mean that everyone always followed it – Darklords included. So it paid to keep an eye out for trouble when traveling on the Obsidian Way. Traffic was lighter than usual because of Descension Day, but there were still a fair number of vehicles sharing the road with us. Some were ordinary-seeming vehicles imported from Earth – sensible fuel-efficient cars, sports cars built for speed and status, family-sized vans and gas-guzzling SUV's. But this was Nekropolis, which meant most of the vehicles rolling along the Obsidian Way were of a rather more exotic nature.

I saw an Agony DeLite, a car made out of a dozen masochistic humans – their hands and feet providing the motive force instead of wheels. Such vehicles are powered by their components' suffering. They moan at idle, yell when moving, and scream when the vehicle is traveling at high speed. The humans that form the car love the pain, and they're enchanted so that all of their wounds heal instantly. But from what I understand, the drivers have to work damned hard to hurt the vehicles in just the right ways to coax maximum performance out of them, and in addition the upkeep is a real bitch. You can spend a small fortune buying new and ever more deviant S&M equipment.

There were several Carapacers on the road as well, hollowedout giant insect husks animated to serve as vehicles, scuttling along at high speeds, and something I'd never seen before: a gigantic chrome-covered flatworm which undulated past us so swiftly I barely got a good look at it. Lazlo's cab growled as the thing flew by, but the demon shushed it softly and patted the dashboard to keep the vehicle calm.

Once the cab had settled into a groove, Lazlo responded to my question. "I hear lots of things, Matt. Rumor has it that the Conglomeration tried to absorb one too many bodies and ended up in the Fever House, where it's being treated for separation anxiety. I also heard there was a riot at Sinsation last night when they ran out of aqua sanguis and tried to replace it by draining water out of the toilet tanks and adding red food coloring."

"Fascinating," I said, "but I was thinking more along the lines of crime-related activity. For example, hear about any big thefts recently?"

Devona frowned, but she didn't object to my asking.

"Big thefts? How big?"

"Big. We're talking about an object of power, Lazlo. A lot of power."

"Can't say as I have, Matt. But I'll keep my ear to the ground."

"Just so long as you keep your wheels on the ground, Lazlo."

The demon guffawed as turned on the cab's radio and turned it to Bedlam 66.6, the most popular station in the city.

A song ended and the DJ's fake-enthusiastic voice came through the cab's tinny speakers. "That was the latest from Midnight Syndicate's new album, The Dead Matter. Happy Descension Day, Nekropolis! Eat, drink, and be scary! And now, by request, let's give a listen to the music of Erich Zann."

Unearthly sounds that bore only the faintest resemblance to music filtered forth from the speakers, and Lazlo hummed along in voice that sounded like a rabid weasel slitting its own throat. The demon kept the gas pedal jammed to the floor as he continued the insane kamikaze death-race he called driving, and Devona and I held on for dear life, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Once we crossed the Bridge of Nine Sorrows and entered Gothtown, Lazlo pulled off the Obsidian Way, and we drove through the Dominion's narrow streets. I really could've done without the cobblestones, though, especially at the speed at which Lazlo drove over them. Before long, even my dead kidneys were starting to ache from the abuse.

The Sprawl is to Nekropolis what the French Quarter is to New Orleans – which is exactly the way Lady Varvara likes it – and thus the majority of the Descension celebration was taking place there. But that didn't mean Gothtown was deserted. Lazlo passed a number of horse-drawn carriages clip-clopping along, as well as midnight-black stretch limos silently cruising the streets, all likely bearing their occupants to various private parties. The older vampires tend to keep to themselves and their Dominion; it's the younger ones who seek out the more decadent lifestyle offered by the Sprawl.

Gothtown itself lives up to its name: every street looks like a set-piece for an old Universal horror flick, buildings of gray stone sporting arches, spikes, towers, turrets, and gargoyles. Gothtown is the cultural, historical, and artistic center of the city, which only makes sense given how long the Bloodborn live. They prefer anything of a classical nature, meaning anything as old as they are. The best art and historical museums, the grandest concert halls, and the most respected theatre district in the city are all located here. And while the elder Bloodborn tend to look down their undead noses at other species in general, they admire nonvampires who display high intelligence or exceptional artistic skill, so it's not uncommon to find a demon painter with a Bloodborn patron living in Gothtown, or a mixed-species orchestra performing in one of the concert halls. Nekropolis's hospital, the Fever House, where the poor Conglomeration was evidently at that very moment missing out on all the Descension fun, is also located in Gothtown. The Bloodborn aren't particularly known for their mercy, but they do have an ancient tradition of keeping blood – both theirs and that of their food supply – pure, hence their highly developed knowledge of medicine.

We kept driving for a time and finally the Cathedral hove into view. I asked Lazlo to let us off a couple blocks away.

"Will do, Matt."

Lazlo slowed and actually came to a stop without slamming on the brakes and fishtailing for a half dozen yards as he usually does. Maybe his driving skills were beginning to improve. Or maybe he figured we'd suffered enough for one ride and decided to take pity on us. Whichever, he stopped and we got out. Being dead, I guess my sense of balance was less affected by the tumultuous ride than Devona's. As soon as her feet touched the cobblestones, her knees buckled under her. She would've fallen if I hadn't managed to catch her in time.

I helped her stand, and she nodded to indicate she was okay. I wasn't so certain, but I took my hands away. She stood a trifle unsteadily, but she stood.

She turned to Lazlo. "How much do we owe you?"

The demon's fur turned crimson, and his cab began to growl beneath the hood. "Owe me?" he said, as if grievously insulted. "Lady, Matthew Richter and his friends never have to pay to ride in my cab – not after what he did for me!" And then with a wave and a wink of one bulbous bloodshot eye, he roared off to endanger lives elsewhere in the city.

"What did he mean by that?" Devona asked.

"I've done favors for other people besides you. But I don't think Lazlo would appreciate me discussing the particulars."

She scowled. "You didn't seem too reluctant to discuss my problem when you were asking him questions. 'Hear about any big thefts recently?' I told you I don't want anyone to find out what's happened – especially Lord Galm."

"One of the things I hated the most when I was alive was people trying to tell me how to do my job. And that hasn't changed now that I'm dead. You want me to find the Dawnstone? Then I'm going to have to ask questions. And you'll just have to trust me to do so as discretely as possible. You don't have to worry about Lazlo. He won't say anything; he's good people, even if he is a demon."

She looked like she was going to say something, but then thought better about it. "All right. I'm sorry I questioned you. Now let's go."

We started walking toward the Cathedral.

"By the way," Devona asked, "how did Lazlo know to come get us?"

"I have no idea. Sometimes he just shows up when I need him."

"That's odd," she said.

I laughed. "You're a half-human vampire who's asked a zombie ex-cop to help you track down a stolen magic crystal – and you think Lazlo's odd?"

She smiled. "You've got a point."

We walked to the end of the street, turned the corner, and before us lay the Cathedral, the seat of Lord Galm's power. I've never been to Europe, but I've seen pictures of the great Gothic cathedrals. But this place made them all look like tarpaper shacks. It rose four, maybe five hundred feet into the sky (Umbriel's strange shadowlight sometimes makes it hard to judge distances correctly). I'd never been this close before, and if I still breathed, the sheer insane scope of the structure would have taken my breath away. If I hadn't known this was Galm's home, I wouldn't have been surprised to discover the name "Jehovah" stenciled on the mailbox.

A number of carriages, and one or two limos, were lined up outside the Cathedral. Handsome men and beautiful women with chalk-white skin were disembarking and entering through the vast entranceway between twin black oak doors at least fifty feet tall. The Bloodborn's clothing represented numerous eras in Earth's history: ancient Rome and Greece, Elizabethan England, medieval France, colonial America, the Aztec and Mayan Empires, feudal Japan, and many more time periods, cultures, and countries that I didn't recognize. I was impressed despite myself.

"Lord Galm always hosts a reception for the elite of the Bloodborn before the Renewal Ceremony," Devona said. "A number of dignitaries even return from Earth to attend."

"There are still vampires on Earth? I thought all the Darkfolk, vampires included, had migrated to Nekropolis."

"Most did. But some remained behind, hidden, to look after the Lords' interests on Earth – and to keep trade routes open."

That explained how so much modern technology had found its way to Nekropolis. Even across dimensions, the law of supply and demand still held sway.

I felt a pang at the thought of the dimensional portal housed within the Cathedral. Each Darklord had one; I had entered Nekropolis through Lady Varvara's. But any one of them would return me to Earth, if not to my hometown of Cleveland. But they wouldn't do me any good now that I was dead.

I had heard of the Renewal Ceremony before, of course, but I didn't know much about it. But I had more immediate concerns right then. "Maybe this isn't the best time to examine the Collection. Things look awfully busy right now."

"No, it's the perfect time. Everyone is so caught up in the reception that no one will notice us."

"I don't think too many zombies received engraved invitations to Lord Galm's party."

"There'll be quite a few humans there as well. Ones who are… drawn to the Bloodborn."

"I know what you mean. Shadows." Vampire groupies who get their rocks off by having their blood drained, or who hope to form a relationship with a vampire and become one of the Bloodborn. Or both. They're called Shadows because they stick close to whichever vampire claims them – and because over time the cumulative blood loss makes them thin, pale shadows of their former selves.

"If anyone takes note of your pallor, and the way you walk, they'll just think you're another Shadow." She smiled, almost shyly. "My Shadow."

I frowned. "What's wrong with the way I walk?"

"Never mind." She took my elbow, the strength of her grip surprising me even though it shouldn't have, and led me across the cobblestone street toward the Cathedral. I tried very hard not to feel self-conscious about my slightly stiff-legged zombie gait.

A crimson carpet, appropriately enough, had been laid out for the occasion, and we walked across it, up the steps, and toward the open doorway. Above the entrance perched a clutch of snarling stone gargoyles, and as we came closer, I could have sworn that one of them moved the slightest bit. I tried to tell myself that it was my imagination, but I wasn't very convincing.

Whether they were just statues or something else, the gargoyles remained motionless after that, and then we were in.

Before us stretched a long stone corridor with torches burning in wall sconces. The flames were green-tinted – the same fire as that which burned in Phlegethon? I didn't know. But whatever the nature of the flame, it produced no smoke. No heat, either, as near as my dead nerves could tell. Still, I didn't want to get too close. No sense taking a chance on becoming zombie barbecue.

"We'll just take the corridor to the ballroom, and then keep on going," Devona whispered.

I nodded slightly. We were on her turf; all I could do was follow her lead.

As we continued, the mingled sounds of merriment – tinkling glasses, the buzz of conversation punctuated by an occasional burst of laughter, the soft lyrical sound of a string quartet – grew louder. The couple before us, who were garbed in Roman togas as white as their alabaster skin, were greeted enthusiastically at the ballroom entrance by a large burly vampire dressed like a Scottish highlander.

The highlander said something I didn't catch, and the three of them broke into peals of laughter. But their merriment had a dark edge to it, and I was glad I hadn't overheard what had sparked it.

We reached the ballroom and kept going, passing the Romans and the highlander, who were still chuckling over whatever black joke had amused them. And although I shouldn't have done it, was risking drawing attention to ourselves – or specifically to my non-vampiric, non-human, not-invited-to-the-party self – I couldn't resist taking a quick look into the ballroom. What can I say? A curious nature was one of the things which led me to become a cop in the first place.

The ballroom was gigantic, four stories high at least. The floor and walls were completely covered by a smooth, mirrored surface that reflected the greenish light from the wall sconces, a scattering of people whom I took to be human, and nothing else – despite the fact that the room was packed with men and woman garbed in all manner of historical dress. Among those whose reflections were visible, however, were strolling human musicians who wandered through the room, along with equally mortal singers, comedians, jugglers, acrobats, and stage magicians. When the humans' performances met with the Bloodborn's approval, they received polite applause, and if the vampires were particularly amused, they might slip a performer a few darkgems as well. But when the performers didn't quite measure up… well, the humans had more to offer than their meager talents, and the Bloodborn weren't shy about taking their entertainment in liquid form.

I tried to catch a glimpse of myself in the wall mirror, but there was so many people milling about I couldn't. I did, however, see a hazy ghost image of a petite blonde for just a moment. Devona was half human. It only made sense she would cast half a reflection.

But as impressive as the gathering of Bloodborn royalty was in and of itself, one thing was more impressive still. In the center of the room stood a great marble fountain, and bubbling forth from it a thick shower of reddish-black liquid. I told myself the viscous fluid couldn't really be what it seemed; that it was either aqua sanguis, the synthetic blood substitute produced in the Sprawl, or a decorative effect of some sort achieved through Lord Galm's dark arts. I almost believed it, too.

And then Devona and I were past the ballroom and continuing down the corridor.

"I don't think anyone noticed us," Devona said, relieved.

"I hope you're right."

After a few dozen more feet we came to a winding stone staircase. Devona removed a torch from a sconce on the wall and started up the stairs. I held back a little. Maybe the torch wasn't lit with real fire, but zombie-flesh is dry, bloodless, and very flammable. I wasn't about to take any chances.

Devona led the way up: two, four, seven floors. I don't tire as I did when alive, but just to break the silence, I said, "I wonder if Lord Galm has ever considered installing an elevator."

"Most Bloodborn don't need to rely on stairs," she answered. "They have their travel forms. Besides, Father won't have anything to do with technology. He thinks it a decadence which promotes laziness of the mind and spirit."

I wondered what Galm thought of those Bloodborn who'd arrived in limousines that night. I thought of asking Devona, but I decided to stick to business instead. "I didn't notice Lord Galm in the ballroom."

"He's probably still meditating, marshaling his power for the Renewal Ceremony."

I thought I might take the opportunity to find out more about the ceremony – it struck me as awfully coincidental that one of Lord Galm's most powerful mystic objects should just happen to vanish so close to the Renewal Ceremony. But then we reached the ninth floor and Devona gestured that we should stop.

Devona stuck her head into the corridor, looked both ways, and then motioned for me to follow. I did, but to the right I saw a window, and I couldn't resist stepping over to it and taking a quick peek outside.

The window was covered with thick iron bars, but that wasn't the only protection. I could hear, or rather almost hear, a hum in the air, like the ultrasonic whine of an alarm system.

"Don't stand too close," Devona said. "The wardspell on the window is a particularly deadly one."

"Thanks for the tip."

The borders of Nekropolis form a perfect pentagram, and the points of the pentagram – connected by the flaming barrier of Phlegethon – are the strongholds of the five Darklords. This window faced outward from Nekropolis and toward the Null Plains: a flat black featureless expanse which stretched to the horizon. A whole hell of a lot of Nothing.

I'd only seen the Null Plains a couple times before, but viewing them always gave me the creeps. There was something about the blackness that the human (or zombie) eye couldn't quite deal with, a subtle movement, nearly undetectable, like glacially slow tides of solid darkness sliding and swirling against one another.

I thought of crazy Carl and the headline of his idiotic "newspaper" – WATCHERS FROM OUTSIDE PLOT CITY'S DESTRUCTION – and I couldn't help shuddering. Looking out at the endless darkness, I could almost believe something was out there, watching, waiting…

"Not much to see," Devona said.

"Not much," I agreed, turning away from the window. There was nothing out there, certainly not any Watchers. Carl was a loon, and that was the end of it.

We continued down the corridor past a series of solid-looking wooden doors, each of which appeared to be exactly like the one before it, until we came to a door which didn't seem particularly special, but evidently was, for Devona stopped.

"This is it. The entrance to the Collection." She unzipped her leather jacket halfway to her waist to reveal an iron key hanging on a chain between her partially exposed breasts.

As she detached the key from the chain, I asked, "Is this the only key to the chamber?"

She nodded. "Not even Lord Galm has one. But then, he doesn't need a key. The door is spelled to open at his touch." She moved to insert the key in the lock – not having bothered to zip up her jacket (like I said, I pay attention to details) – but I grabbed her wrist before she could.

"Let me have a look first." I let go of her wrist and knelt down to examine the lock.

There aren't too many good things about being a zombie, but one of them is that, while my thought processes sometime take a little longer than they used to, I'm able to focus my attention and concentrate like crazy. The dead aren't easily distracted.

The lock appeared to be made of the same iron as the key. The door handle rested directly above it. I looked closely for scratches, nicks, or dents – anything which might indicate the lock had been picked or forced. There were none.

I straightened. "Let's go in." I stepped aside, and Devona inserted the key. The lock turned with a metallic clack, she pushed open the door, and Lord Galm's great Collection was laid bare before us.

FOUR

And most impressive it was.

The stone walls were covered with weapons, from simple wooden spears and bows to highly polished swords and ornate jewel-encrusted daggers. There were broadaxes far too large for anyone possessed of merely human strength to wield, and a series of maces and morning stars, each covered with larger and crueler spikes than the last.

The floor was taken up by stone tables, daises, and columns upon which rested a variety of non-military objects: a tiny golden skull which glowed with a soft, gentle yellow light; an Egyptian scarab carved from jade, but which nevertheless moved, scratching away at the inner surface of the glass globe which imprisoned it; a stereopticon constructed entirely of what appeared to be spider silk, a stack of picture cards next to it, displaying what looked like Tarot images; and on and on. There were no placards, no labels to name the objects, but after nearly thirty years of tending the Collection, I doubted Devona needed any.

The Collection communicated an almost tangible sensation of antiquity, and for the first time I had an inkling of what it truly meant to be immortal.

"I'm surprised everything's out in the open like this," I said.

"They're protected by wardspells placed by Lord Galm himself."

"I don't much know about magic, but as I understand, certain spells have to be renewed from time to time." Like the preservative spells which, up until that point anyway, had kept me from crumbling into a pile of rotten hamburger. "Maybe some of these, specifically the one protecting the Dawnstone, are due for a recharge."

She shook her head. "My job is to oversee the Collection, which means that I primarily monitor the wardspells. Lord Galm saw to it that I was taught just enough spellcraft to check the wards, but not enough to actually tamper with them. The wardspells Lord Galm employs are powerful and intricate. It takes me over six hours to check them all. And the first thing I did when I realized the Dawnstone was missing was examine the ward which protected it. The spell was intact and not due to be recharged by Lord Galm for some time."

"Is it possible for someone with enough magical know-how to circumvent the wardspell?"

Devona thought about that for a minute.

"I suppose, but it's highly unlikely. Another Darklord might be able to do it, but then a Darklord could never enter the Cathedral without Lord Galm knowing."

It was my turn to think. "How about any of the visitors from Earth? Do any of them possess enough power and skill?"

"There are some who are almost as ancient as my father, and certainly as cunning," she admitted. "But Father keeps a very close eye on them when they're in Nekropolis."

"Might he have brought one of them up here to show off his Collection and–"

"No," she interrupted. "Father is a private man, and not given to bragging."

"I see. It strikes me as odd that someone–" I couldn't bring myself to call Lord Galm a man – "who is so secretive and possessive about his Collection should entrust its care to another, no matter how worthy of that trust she might be."

"Father is very, very old, and his mind…" She paused. "After millennia of existence, time doesn't mean the same thing to him as it does to you and me. Not only would the constant examina tion of the wardspells waste hours which he could be spending on more important matters, quite frankly, months, perhaps years, might go by before he remembered to check the wards."

"So you got your job because your dad has a lousy memory."

She smiled ruefully. "Something like that."

I nodded. It was looking more and more like Lord Galm – despite Devona's assurance that he would never do so – had removed the Dawnstone for reasons of his own, reasons he had elected not to share with the guardian of his Collection. But I decided to continue my examination of the room anyway. After all, that's what she was paying me for.

"Show me where the Dawnstone was."

Devona led me through the maze of clutter that was Lord Galm's Collection until we came to a narrow stone column with nothing on it.

"It was here. Don't get closer than a foot or so," she warned. "The wardspell's still active."

"And we don't want to alert Lord Galm that we're here. Right." I stood as close as I could and took a look at the spot where the Dawnstone had rested. I didn't know what I thought I might see, but then I never do; that's why you look.

At first glance there appeared to be nothing special about the flat surface of the column. Just smooth gray stone, no cracks, no sign of age. The column might have been chiseled yesterday for all I could tell. Part of the wardspell's protective qualities?

Another thing about being dead: my patience has increased. When I was alive, I would've given the column a quick look or two, and then moved on. But now I scanned each inch thoroughly, and then I did it again. It was on my second pass over the column that I saw, in what from my vantage was the far righthand corner, a couple tiny specks of white powder.

I smiled. Score one for the dead man.

I pointed the specks out to Devona. "Know any vampires with dandruff?"

She ignored the joke and instead leaned forward and looked closely at the white grains.

After a bit, she straightened and said, "I have no idea what that is. Do you?"

"Maybe," I said, declining to elaborate. "There's no way we can reach it, is there? Not without setting off the wardspell's alarm."

She nodded.

"Figures. Well, if there are two specks, maybe there's more." I asked Devona to stand back, and then got down on my hands and knees – my zombie joints creaking in protest – and did my best impersonation of a bloodhound, crawling slowly across the floor, face only inches above the stone and searched. I had the patience, the ability to hyperfocus my attention, and I didn't breathe, so I didn't have to worry about accidentally blowing any specks away before I could find them.

It took some time, but I located five more grains, all of which I collected with a pair of tweezers and slipped into a small white envelope. I never was a Boy Scout, but I know enough to be prepared all the same. And the gods of evidence collection were in a beneficent mood that day, for I also stumbled across a hair.

I gripped it in my tweezers, stood, and showed it to Devona. It wasn't especially long, but longer than mine (which doesn't grow anymore; another of the few fringe benefits being a zombie: no trips to the barber). It was difficult to tell the color in the greenish light of the torch, but it appeared to be–

"Red," Devona pronounced.

"I think you're right. Lord Galm's?"

"He has brown hair; and his is much longer than this."

"Well, it's not yours. That is, unless you're not a natural blonde."

She smiled. "As half Bloodborn, I suppose I qualify as an unnatural blonde. But no, I don't color my hair."

I took another envelope out of my jacket and carefully placed the hair within. I didn't bother to seal it – no saliva, you see – and tucked the envelope and tweezers away in a pocket.

"Know anyone with red hair who might somehow gain access?"

"Well… There's Varma, I suppose. But I don't see how he could possibly get in here."

"Who's Varma?"

"One of Lord Galm's bloodchildren – a human that's been fully transformed. He's one of Father's favorites, though why, I don't know. He's an irresponsible hedonist."

"That's a fine way to talk about your own brother." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were the wrong thing to say: Devona's jaw tensed and her eyes flashed. Literally.

"He's not my brother!" she snapped. It might have been my imagination, but her canines seemed longer, sharper. "In Bloodborn terms, we're considered the equivalent of cousins. Distant cousins at that."

I held up my hands in what I hoped was a placating gesture. "Okay. I'm not here to untangle the roots of your family tree. I'm here to help you find out what happened to the Dawnstone."

She glared at me for a moment longer, and then, with a sigh, relaxed. "I'm sorry. It's just that half-humans like me are looked down upon by the fully Bloodborn. To put it mildly. I'm not sure Father would ever have given me my position if I hadn't displayed a talent for magic. It's one of the few advantages of being half human: we tend to possess more aptitude for magic and psychic feats than the fully Bloodborn."

I understood then why her position and its attendant duties meant so much to her. It was a way for her to feel important, to be something more than just a mere half-breed in the eyes of the fully Bloodborn – and most significantly, in the eyes of her father.

I understood how she felt, at least a little. I was a zombie – not human anymore, not even alive. I'd seen the looks of disgust, heard the jokes and taunts, especially when my latest batch of preservative spells started to wear off and I didn't look my best. I knew what it was like to feel less than everyone around you.

If she couldn't get the Dawnstone back, she'd consider herself a failure to the Bloodborn, to her father, and especially to herself.

I was determined to do my best to see that didn't happen, whether I kept my body from crumbling to dust or not.

"I didn't mean to snap at you like that," Devona said.

"Forget it. We've all got something that pushes our hot button."

"What about you?"

"With me, it's flies who mistake me for a nursery. Now let's go see if we can find Varma. I've got a few questions to ask him."

FIVE

Devona wasn't too thrilled with what I had in mind. Truth to tell, neither was I. But we needed to talk to Varma, and in order to do that, we had to find him. And the most likely place to look was Lord Galm's party.

"You said yourself that Galm won't be there, that he'll be meditating to prepare himself for the Renewal Ceremony. And I can stay out in the corridor while you hunt for Varma in the ballroom. Then the three of us can go somewhere private and we'll see what your cousin has to say for himself."

She agreed, but she didn't look happy about it.

We went back downstairs, and I took up a position in the corridor about fifty feet from the ballroom entrance.

"Good luck, Devona. Oh, and you, uh, might want to zip yourself up."

She looked down at her jacket, which was still open halfway to her waist. She smiled. "I suppose I should if I don't want to attract any more attention than necessary." She pulled the zipper tab upward, and then headed for the ballroom. Considering how tight her leather outfit was, I thought she would attract attention no matter what she did.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall and waited. I'd waited quite a bit during my two decades as a cop, and I was real good at it – and being dead made it even easier. I listened to the sounds of celebration wafting from the ballroom, stared at the opposite wall, and let one part of my mind wander, while another kept watch for Devona's return.

I don't know how much time passed, but eventually I became aware of someone approaching. I turned, expecting to see Devona, hopefully with Varma in tow, but instead a middle-aged woman in an elaborate pre-French Revolution gown and a towering white wig staggered down the corridor toward me. Her skin was ivory white, and I doubted it was because she powdered it. She wore a fake beauty mark in the shape of a tiny bat on her left cheek. Cute.

"Pardon, Monsieur, could you direct me to the–" That was as far as she got before doubling over and vomiting a gout of redblack liquid all over the corridor floor.

I was sympathetic vomiter when alive; all I had to do was hear someone retch and my own gorge would start to rise. My zombiefication had cured me of that, but I was still uncomfortably aware of the booze I had drank at Skully's while waiting for Honani to show up, still sitting undigested in my stomach. I knew I had to get rid of it soon, before it pickled my dead innards.

When she was finished, she straightened and wiped her mouth with a dainty hand. Her wig had gone slightly askew, but she didn't bother to right it. She smiled shyly at me.

"Forgive me, but I have such trouble resisting the temptation to overindulge at these affairs."

I was hoping that would be the end of it, and she would return to the party. But she stood looking at me expectantly, so I said, "No apologies necessary."

She looked into my eyes and I noticed a thin red line dimpling the flesh of her neck. From an encounter with Monsieur Guillotine? "Well, aren't you a gallant one?" She reached out and drew a long, blood red fingernail lightly down my cheek. "And you're rather handsome, in a consumptive sort of way."

Some compliment. But I didn't say anything.

She smiled lopsidedly. "Did you know that the Bloodborn do not cast shadows? It's true. And I miss mine something awful. Perhaps you would be a gentleman and take its place for a while?"

Before I could answer, she linked her arm in mine, and started pulling me forward. Despite appearing middle-aged and being inebriated, she was still a vampire and strong as hell. I couldn't resist, not unless I wanted an arm torn off for the second time that day.

"I'd be honored," I said as she dragged me toward the ballroom. At least she'd mistaken me for a Shadow. I could only hope Lord Galm's other guests would do the same.

"Matthew, allow me to present the honored Amadeo Karolek. Amadeo, this is my new Shadow, Matthew."

The male vampire, who was dressed in a coat of gold brocade, didn't bother to hide his disgust. "Charmed," he said in a voice which let me know he was anything but.

I almost offered my hand to shake, just to irritate him, but the way he glared at me, he'd most likely have crushed it, and then torn it off.

"Excuse me, Calandre, but I see someone I really must say hello to." And then Amadeo collapsed into a pool of black water and flowed away across the floor.

Calandre – which meant lark, she'd told me – still had a death grip on my arm. But after introducing me to more than a dozen vampires, all of whom acted like I was some new species of giant maggot, I was considering sacrificing the limb, like an animal caught in a leg-hold trap, desperate to escape. But I'd already had an arm reattached once that day, so I resisted the urge.

I knew next to nothing about Bloodborn etiquette, but from what I was able to observe as Calandre hauled me about the ballroom, Shadows were supposed to walk or stand at least three feet behind the vampires they belonged to, keep their heads down, and remain quiet. But Calandre, still drunk – or whatever the vampiric equivalent was of gorging on too much blood – was parading me around like I was her new lover. And the other vampires definitely did not like it. I had the impression her behavior was akin to that of a human woman going to a party and introducing everyone to her favorite vibrator.

So much for my keeping a low profile. I could only hope that Devona would eventually find me and come to my rescue, or that Calandre would tire of me and let me go.

Calandre licked her lips. "I'm dreadfully thirsty, Matthew." She smiled, displaying her incisors. "Dreadfully."

This was bad. If she bit into my flesh, she'd realize I wasn't alive. My blood had long ago turned to dust in my veins. It'd be like someone expecting a nice, refreshing drink of water suddenly getting a mouthful of chalk instead.

I returned to contemplating spending the rest of my unlife as a one-armed zombie, when a statuesque woman in an Edwardian frock coat walked up, her features scrunched into an expression of supreme distaste.

"Really, Calandre, this is too much, even for you!"

Calandre drew herself up haughtily, which wasn't easy since her wig looked as if it would topple off her head any moment. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Naraka, nor do I care. Now why don't you take your little penis-envy pageant elsewhere?"

Naraka made a sound deep in her throat, and I realized she was growling. This did not look good, especially since Calandre still had hold of me; I didn't relish the prospect of being caught in the middle of a catfight between two vampires.

"Ladies, please, there's no need for–"

"Silence, Shadow!" Naraka's hand flashed out and her nails, which had suddenly become claws, raked my left cheek.

"Really, Naraka, you didn't…" Calandre's voice trailed off, and I had a pretty good idea why. She had noticed that the deep scratches Naraka had inflicted on my face weren't bleeding.

"Father Dis!" Naraka swore in disgust. "It's one thing to drag a human around as if he were one of us. But a zombie!"

"But I… He… I didn't…" In her surprise and confusion, Calandre released my arm, and I decided that, zombie-slow or not, I was going to make a run for it.

And then the torches along the ballroom walls dimmed, and the noise and music ceased as if a switch had been thrown. Everyone looked upward, even Calandre and Naraka, who seemed to have forgotten all about me. I didn't know what was happening, and I didn't care. I was just grateful for the distraction.

I started to edge away from the two vampire women, but then I stopped. The atmosphere of the ballroom felt charged with energy, like before a violent storm breaks loose. It had to be a psychic and not physical sensation, or else I probably couldn't have perceived it, but whichever, it stopped me in my tracks and made me look up along with everyone else.

Darkness gathered along the mirrored surface of the ballroom walls, thickening and growing. And then the darkness exploded into a thousand shards which darted and whirled through the air, a cyclone of shadow. One of the black fragments dipped near my head, and I could see that what had been formless pieces of darkness had assumed the shape of large bats. Not actual threedimensional animals, but instead shadowy silhouettes circling madly about the room.

And then the flock of shadow-bats drew close together directly above the gushing fountain of red, and coalesced into the form of a huge, well muscled man, who wore only a loincloth, boots, and a cape made out of black fur. His skin was white as bone, and his body looked hard as marble. He had long brown hair, and an equally brown beard which spilled onto his chest. His eyes were frost-white and cold as glaciers.

I didn't need a formal introduction to tell me this was Lord Galm, progenitor of the Bloodborn and ruler of Gothtown – and, if I was lucky and Devona managed to persuade him to help me, my eventual savior.

"My children." Though Galm spoke softly, his low rumbling voice echoed through the ballroom in tones as cold as an arctic plain at midnight.

As one, the assembled vampires fell to their knees and bowed their heads. "Our Lord," they chanted in unison.

I was about to kneel myself to keep from drawing the Darklord's attention, when I felt someone grab my arm and start dragging me backward. It was Devona – and she looked scared.

I didn't know what to do: stay and risk being exposed as a zombie and a party-crasher – thus earning Galm's wrath – or go with Devona and risk drawing the vampire lord's ire for not displaying the proper obeisance. In the end, simple fear won out and I turned and we both ran like hell for the exit.

I felt a freezing-cold sensation on the back of my neck, as if it were suddenly coated in ice. I didn't have to turn and look to know the Darklord was watching us. But for whatever reason, he did nothing, and we reached the corridor, turned left, and kept going.

As we ran, I thought it was a good thing I was dead. If I'd been alive, I would surely have needed a change of underwear at that point.

We didn't stop running until we were a couple blocks from the Cathedral. Devona put her hands on her knees and gulped air – another sign that she was half human; a full-fledged vampire wouldn't have needed to breathe, let alone catch her breath. I just stood and waited for her to recover, not fatigued in the slightest myself, although I thought my left arm was a trifle looser than it had been.

"Will Galm send someone after us?" I asked Devona when her breathing had returned to normal.

She shook her head. "He's going to be too busy receiving guests for the next few hours. But I'm sure he'll tend to us later." She slumped back against the wall of a building and rubbed her forehead, clearly upset.

I laid a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe Galm will be more forgiving of our disrupting his entrance if we can recover the Dawnstone, or at least discover what happened to it."

She gave me a weak smile. "Perhaps. It's something to hope for anyway." She stood straight, took a deep breath, and did her best to regain her composure. And then she noticed the cuts on my face. "Oh, you're hurt!"

She reached a hand toward my wounds, but I took a step back. I didn't want her smooth, half-living hands touching my dead flesh, didn't want to see her possibly pull away in disgust.

"I'm a zombie; I can't be hurt. Don't worry, Papa Chatha will just take care of it the next time I see him." Or in a couple days I'd be gone, and a few scratches wouldn't matter anymore. I changed the subject. "Did you locate Varma?"

"No one had seen him. He's probably off celebrating in the Sprawl somewhere."

"Do you have any idea where he might be? Any favorite hangouts?"

"I know a couple places that he frequents. So we're off to the Sprawl, then?"

"Not just yet. First, we need to find out as much about the Dawnstone as we can."

"How are we supposed to do that? We can hardly ask Father, can we?"

"Maybe not. But I know someone else we can ask."

"Who?"

I smiled. "Do you have your library card on you?"

SIX

"You can't be serious," Devona said.

We were on the Avenue of Dread Wonders, where museums housing the rarest and strangest artifacts in all Nekropolis were located. The neighborhood here was deserted and blessedly free of Descension Day chaos. I guess a museum district isn't exactly high on anyone's list of party destinations. Before us, nestled between the Pavilion of Nightmares Incarnate and the Hemesphere, stood the Great Library. I'd never visited the Pavilion, and from the way its shadowy architecture continually shifts and reforms itself into ever more sinister configurations, I'm not sure I ever will, but I had poked my head into the Hemesphere once. Inside the large round building is a museum that exhibits blood samples from famous people – both Darkfolk and human – acquired throughout history. The place doesn't do much for me, but then I don't have a sense of smell, let alone the enhanced sensory apparatus necessary to tell the difference between one blood sample and another. From what I've been told, you need to be a vampire or shapeshifter to fully appreciate the experience.

The Great Library didn't look like much from outside, especially not compared to the two grander structures flanking it. It was just a simple wooden building, more appropriate for a cobbler's or a baker's. Devona's doubts had nothing to do with the Library's appearance, though. Everyone in Nekropolis knew what it looked like; no, what she didn't believe was what I'd just told her.

"You really expect to just walk up to the door," she said, "knock, and be let into the repository of not just the sum total of Bloodborn history but the accumulated knowledge of the entire Darkfolk?"

"No," I deadpanned (I'm good at that). "I've never had to knock before."

"Matthew," she said in the tone of an adult speaking to a mistaken child, "no one just goes into the Great Library whenever he wants. That's not how it works."

So it was Matthew now. I wondered when in the last couple hours we'd gotten on a first-name basis.

"Call me Matt. And yes, that's precisely how it works for me."

"Waldemar is very selective about who he allows inside the Library and when. And no one knows how he chooses who may enter. I've never been inside. Even Lord Galm cannot just drop by whenever he feels…"

She broke off when she saw me reach out and open the door. Her jaw dropped. "That's… impossible!"

"Are you sure Waldemar's reputation isn't just exaggerated? Like I said, the door's always been open every time I've come here." Even Nekropolis, a place where so many myths and legends are real, still has its share of tall tales.

"I don't…" Whatever she was going to say, she decided against it and finally just shook her head.

"C'mon, let's go." I held the door open for her and gestured for her to enter. She walked past me and stopped on the other side of the threshold and swayed dizzily.

I shut the door quickly and put a hand on her arm to steady her. "I'm sorry, I really should have warned you. The shift in perspective hits you pretty hard the first time."

We stood inside a vast room, far larger than such a small building as the Library appeared to be from outside could possibly contain. And the room was filled with case after case, shelf upon shelf, of books, papers, parchments, and scrolls. And what the shelves couldn't hold were stacked on the floor, piled on top of cases, shoved into corners, jam-packed into every nook, cranny, and crevice available.

I didn't have a sense of smell anymore, but I could imagine the wonderful musty odor of ancient knowledge and thought that permeated the place. Breathing this air would be like breathing Time itself.

"So what do we do?" Devona asked in the hushed, respectful voice people only use in churches and libraries.

"We start wandering around. Eventually Waldemar will show up."

She looked skeptical, but she didn't say anything. After all, the front door had opened as I said it would. We started walking.

As big as the Great Library looks when you first enter, you don't really get a sense of how truly enormous it is until you start exploring. Room after room: some large, high-ceilinged, footsteps echoing against tile floors; some small, cramped, barely bigger than a closet, with hardly enough room to squeeze through the moldering books and papers jammed against the walls. There was no obvious source of light: no torches – naturally enough in a place filled with paper – no electric or fluorescent lights, and no magical equivalents to any of the above. Nevertheless, every corner of the Great Library was clearly illuminated, and we had no trouble making our way.

After a time, Devona asked, "Do you know where we are?"

"Of course," I answered, even though I had no idea. It didn't really matter, not here.

I don't know how long we wended through the maze of books and papers, but eventually we came to a circular room with a high domed ceiling fifty feet about the floor. The walls were lined with bookcases which rose nearly all the way to the ceiling, leaning against them at irregular intervals stood a half dozen long, rickety-looking ladders to provide access to the upper reaches of the shelves. In a regular library, the ladders might have had wheels. Here, they had tiny clawed lizard feet. They might have been for purely decorative purposes, but I doubted it.

"We're wasting time, Matthew," Devona said, exasperated. "Waldemar obviously doesn't wish to talk to us. Instead of wandering aimlessly through here, we should be trying to locate Varma."

"I understand how you feel, but the more we can learn about the Dawnstone, the more–" I broke off, frowning. "Do you hear something?"

Devona's brow furrowed as she listened. It was faint, but there was a definite skritch-skritch-skritch coming from an overburdened shelf of books against the far wall.

"What is it?" she asked.

Despite the fact that my nervous system was as dead as the rest of me, a chill rippled down the length of my spine. "So you do hear it. Damn! I was hoping it was just my imagination."

The skritching became louder.

"Matthew, just tell me what the hell it is!"

Before I could answer, the bookshelf exploded, sending fragments of torn paper, parchment, and vellum flying toward us. Devona hissed in pain as the sharp edges of the paper-storm sliced through the flesh on her face and hands. I suffered similar injuries, of course, but I didn't feel them. Even if I had, I wouldn't have cared right then. I was too busy watching the thing that was responsible for the explosion step forward from the hole in the wall where the bookshelf had been. A seven foot tall insect with a silvery carapace stood upright on its four rear legs, sheafs of paper clutched in its upper two limbs. Antennae quivering nervously, the giant bug stepped forward into the room, jammed the paper it held into its mouthparts, and chewed noisily.

"Just what I was afraid of," I said. "It's a goddamned silverfish."

Devona goggled at the monstrous insect. "That's a silverfish? It should be the size of the end of my little finger, if that!"

I shrugged. "This is the greatest library that's ever existed, so it only makes sense that it would attract the largest pests in existence."

The silverfish finished its snack and regarded us dispassionately with cold black eyes. The creature's antennae continued to quiver, as if drinking in every bit of sensory data it could find, but otherwise, its body remained unnaturally still. But a certain tension radiated from the giant insect nevertheless, as if the thing might dash toward us in an instant if we made the wrong move.

Devona, as if sensing the silverfish's mood, spoke in a hushed tone. "What does it want?"

"Mostly, just to be left alone to gorge itself on paper," I said. "It's trying to decide whether or not we're a threat to it."

"You mean it's afraid we might be the exterminators?" she asked in disbelief.

"Something like that."

"And if it should decide we mean it harm?"

"While the giant silverfish that dine at the Great Library might prefer a diet of paper products, they've been known to eat other things from time to time," I said. "This is Nekropolis, after all."

"When you say 'other things', I don't suppose you mean popcorn and potato chips."

"Afraid not."

The silverfish shifted its weight from side to side then, as if working up the courage to attack.

"So what do we do?" Devona asked. "Slowly back away, keeping our gazes trained on it the whole time?"

"You've watched one too many nature documentaries," I said. "That's a sure way to get us both eaten. There's only one way to deal with a monster silverfish." I'd known we'd probably end up at the Great Library sooner or later, and so I'd come prepared. Slowly – very, very slowly – I reached into my jacket pocket and removed a small white plastic container.

The silverfish's entire body began to quiver then. I unscrewed the container's lid, careful not to make any sudden moves. Devona watched me, a puzzled frown on her face.

"Is that… glue?"

"Not just any glue," I answered. "It's really thick… and it has sparkles in it."

The silverfish's antennae blurred with anticipation, and its legs began tap-tap-tapping on the floor, like an excited little dog getting so worked up it was going to start peeing any minute.

I slowly held the container of sparkle-glue out before me. "Back on Earth, silverfish eat more than just paper. They also eat the glue in book bindings. And this is really good glue. Expensive, top-of-the-line stuff, imported from an art supply store near the Louvre."

The silverfish's body began to undulate rapidly, almost as if it were swimming underwater, the strange motion a major reason for its species' name. The giant insect took a single hesitant step forward, then a second…

"Whatever you do," I said to Devona, "don't move."

Before she could ask why, the silverfish darted forward. I spun around and hurled the open container of glue through the nearest doorway. The silverfish became an argent blur as it scuttled past – missing us by only a few inches – and raced out of the room in mad pursuit of the treat I had brought it. A moment later loud, enthusiastic slurping noises came from the outer chamber, quickly followed by a heavy thud.

"Poison?" Devona asked.

I started to answer, but before I could say anything, a new sound disturbed the Library's quiet. A soft papery rustling. A sheaf of torn book pages blew into the room on what I imagine was a musty, antiquity-laden breeze, tumbling and scratching against each other like dry autumn leaves caught in a windstorm. The pages stopped in front of us, whirled about in a column, faster and faster, closer and closer, until they merged together and resolved into the form of a friendly-faced, middle-aged man wearing granny glasses. He looked like Ben Franklin by way of Shakespeare's tailor.

"There's no need for poison," Waldemar said. "A rich meal of French glue just makes the poor things logy." He sighed. "I try my best to keep them out, but somehow they always manage to find their way in again."

"Maybe if you wouldn't keep leaving scraps of paper in the back alley for them to eat," I said.

Waldemar grinned, displaying a small set of fangs. "And where would be the fun in that, I ask you?" He took my hand in both of his pale, pudgy ones and pumped vigorously. "Delighted to see you again, Matthew, my boy!"

"Good to see you too, Waldemar." I was about to introduce Devona when he released my hands and took hers, shaking them just as energetically.

"Devona Kanti – it's a privilege and a joy to finally meet you! And how is your esteemed father?"

Devona looked at Waldemar for a moment, his effusive greeting catching her off guard. I guess she hadn't expected Nekropolis's most respected historian to act like someone's effusive uncle.

"He's, uh, rather busy right now, actually," she said.

Waldemar nodded. "Of course, of course. It is the anniversary of the Descension, after all. The three hundred and seventy-third, to be precise." He paused and touched a finger to his lips. "Or is it three hundred and thirty-seven? Oh, well, it's one or the other. I think." Then he looked at me and brightened, as if he'd forgotten all about us and had just remembered.

"Now, how may I be of service to you and your lovely companion, Matthew?"

Waldemar's befuddled scholar pose didn't fool me. I'd known him too long. He was a vampire as old as Lord Galm, perhaps older. And when I looked closely into his gray eyes, I sometimes got a sense of the ancient, vast intelligence at work between them. I had no doubt he'd be able to tell us what we needed to know.

"We'd like to learn about a mystic artifact called the Dawnstone."

Waldemar's finger returned to his lips, only this time to tap them thoughtfully. "Dawnstone, Dawnstone…" His eyes got a far away look in them, and not for the first time after asking him a question, I had the impression that I had set a complicated process into motion, as if I'd asked a computer to divine the meaning of life and then balance my checkbook.

Waldemar began meandering about the room, muttering softly to himself, the words unintelligible, except for the occasional repetition of "Dawnstone."

Devona looked at me as if to ask what we should do now. I shrugged and started after Waldemar.

"Dawnstone, Dawnstone, Dawnstone…" He pulled books off the shelves, seemingly at random, flipped them open, and barely glanced at their pages before putting them back. Once, I swore he checked a book, replaced it, and then immediately removed and looked at it once more before moving on.

Curious, I pulled the book in question off the shelf myself and opened it. I wasn't particularly surprised to find that the page I had chosen – like all the pages, in fact – was blank.

I reshelved the volume and wondered if all the books, scrolls, and parchments in this room – maybe in the entire Library – were also blank.

As I watched Waldemar continue randomly searching his collection, I had the impression that he wasn't consulting books so much as sifting through the immense reaches of his unfathomably ancient mind, and that perhaps the Great Library itself was nothing more than a physical manifestation of his memories. And if that was true, what about the giant silverfish? Were they really pests or were they simply Waldemar's way of forgetting?

Another thought occurred to me then. If Devona and I truly were standing somehow within Waldemar's memories made real, what might happen if his absent-mindedness wasn't an act after all, and he really did forget we were here? Would we vanish, just two more minor memories, no longer needed? I didn't want to think about it. I had all the existential dilemma I could handle just being a possibly soon-to-be-rotted-away-to-dust zombie, thank you very much.

"I have a number of interesting references regarding dawn," Waldemar said as he continued looking. "Some lovely bits of poetry, and quite a few more references dealing with stone, stone cutting, stone working… Especially fascinating is a song cycle from an ancient aboriginal people dealing with a man who wanted to mate with a boulder shaped like a woman. His chief difficulty lay in his inanimate paramour's lack of the requisite, ah, anatomy. He solved the problem by constructing a crude hammer and chisel and–"

"We just want to hear about the Dawnstone, Waldemar," I cut in. "Not to be rude, but we're in something of a hurry."

He looked a bit hurt, but thankfully didn't resume his story. Instead he took a volume which appeared to be bound in green scale from the shelf, flipped it open, and ran a finger along the righthand page. "Ah, yes, here it is! No wonder it took me so long to find it. The object in question is only mentioned in several obscure pre-Atlantean myths, and only once as the Dawnstone. Other names include the Eye of the Sun and–"

I must have been frowning because Waldemar looked at me, cleared his throat, and said, "So on and so forth. While the details of the myths vary somewhat, the basic story is the same. A loathsome demon carries off a beautiful young woman to a shadowy underworld with the intention of making her his bride. The maiden's paramour, a strong and clever hero, ascends into the heavens and steals one of the Sun's eyes. He takes it down into the underworld, and – after overcoming sundry obstacles – confronts the demon and unleashes the eye's light. The creature of darkness cannot withstand the Sun's all-powerful illumination and perishes. The hero escorts his love back to the surface world, and then returns the eye to its rightful owner, the Sun."

Waldemar snapped the book shut. "Quite an amusing little fable. It rather puts one in mind of Orpheus and Eurydice, doesn't it?"

"Is that all?" Devona asked, sounding like a kid who's opened all her Christmas presents and discovered that Santa not only brought her underwear this year, it's full of holes.

"I'm afraid so, my dear," Waldemar said. "But I have quite a selection of other myths dealing with similar themes. For instance, there's a story among the Native American Indians regarding–"

"Thanks, anyway, Waldemar," I said hurriedly before he could get too far into this latest digression. "But we really must be going."

"So soon? Ah well, if you must, you must, I suppose. You'll have to promise to stop back and see me again, though, Matthew."

"I will," I said, knowing it was a promise I might not be able to keep. "Same price as usual today?"

"Of course." And then Waldemar reached into my chest – or seemed to; I was never clear on that – and pulled forth a scrap of paper, leaving my flesh and the shirt that covered it unmarked.

I felt a wrench deep in my soul, and then a sense of loss which quickly began to fade.

"Father Dis!" Devona swore in surprise. "What…?"

"Waldemar's standard price for information," I explained. "A page out of your life."

Waldemar held the page up to his face, adjusted his glasses, and quickly perused its contents. "Most interesting, most interesting indeed." He sniffed the paper like a bloodhound trying to catch a scent, and then in a single, swift motion crumpled the page and stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed greedily, noisily, a thin line of saliva rolling down his chin. Then he swallowed and grinned.

"Most delicious, Matthew. Thank you."

Devona had gone as pale as a full vampire. I took her by the arm, said goodbye to Waldemar, and led her out of the room with the domed ceiling, the master of the Great Library licking his fingers behind us as we left.

I knew it didn't matter which route we took as we departed. However we went, we'd eventually discover the way out or it would discover us. And sure enough, before long we found ourselves back at the entrance, and then outside on the Avenue of Dread Wonders once more. The sidewalk was still deserted, and everything was still quiet. For some reason, the stillness made me uncomfortable, and I wondered if I'd gotten too used to living in the chaos of the Sprawl.

I started walking, but Devona took hold of my arm to stop me. I turned to look at her, glad to see that the vicious paper-cuts she'd received thanks to the silverfish were almost fully healed. Before long, not even scars would remain to mar her flesh. I wished I could've said the same.

"What happened in there?" Devona asked. "Waldemar didn't actually–"

"Devour a snatch of my life? He sure did. Most vampires live on blood. He subsists on memories."

"You mean you gave up one of your memories just for some information… to help me?"

I didn't want to tell her that it hardly mattered, seeing as how I'd be zombie guacamole in a couple days. So I just nodded.

"Which… which memory did you lose?"

"I don't know. I never do. Once they're gone, they're gone completely. It could have been something as boring as failing an algebra test in high school."

"Or something as important as the first time you fell in love."

"I suppose. But it doesn't matter now."

She thought for a moment. "How many times have you done this, Matthew? Given Waldemar one of your memories?"

Too damned many, I almost said, but then I realized it would cheapen what I had done in her eyes – cheapen me, too, for what kind of a man, living or dead, thinks so little of his own memories that he's willing to spend them like money?

"Only a couple," I lied.

"You shouldn't have," Devona said. "It's my case you're working on; I should've been the one to pay."

But you're not the one who may die soon, I thought. "The important thing is we've gained some vital information about the Dawnstone."

"Assuming what he told us was more than just an old, forgotten myth. And even if it was, I'm not sure we learned anything useful, certainly not anything worth the price you paid."

"We learned that the Dawnstone is probably the most potent weapon Nekropolis has ever seen. For what could be more devastating in a world of shadows and darkness than a piece of the sun itself?"

SEVEN

We started walking through Gothtown, away from the Great Library, heading toward the Bridge of Nine Sorrows. Devona kept looking around nervously, as if she were expecting trouble.

"Worried that Lazlo's going to show up and run us over?" I asked, only half-jokingly. "Don't be. His frequency of appearances, like everything else about him, tends to be erratic. A month might go by before I see him again." Not that I might be here – or anywhere for that matter – in a month, but I decided not to mention that particular tidbit of information.

"It's not that," she said, shooting a quick glance over her shoulder. "I think we're being followed."

On TV and in the movies, cops always sense when they're being tailed, as if they have a sixth sense or something. It's true that you do develop certain instincts after a while, but when you live in Nekropolis, where quite a few of the residents possess the physical capabilities to sneak up on a fly, instincts don't do you a lot of good. Besides, Devona's half-vampire senses were much sharper than my dulled zombie ones; I decided to trust her.

I reached into one of the homemade inner pockets of my jacket and removed another of the little surprises I'd picked up before we left my apartment. I held it down at my side, and gestured with my other hand for Devona to stop. I quickly scanned the street, looking for cover, but there was nothing. We'd just have to fight in the open.

"Hey, deader! What you doing here in Bloodsville?" The voice, a male's, came from out in the street, but no one was in sight.

"Maybe he's come to see how his betters live," came a second voice, this one female.

"Or maybe he's looking to upgrade." Another male. "Trade in his rotten zombie teeth for a nice new pair of shiny fangs."

Disembodied laughter echoed up and down the street.

"Who–" Devona started to ask, but I cut her off and pointed to the end of the street.

"Just watch," I said.

Moments later a roiling wall of crimson mist came wafting around the corner. It rolled forward, gathering momentum, completely filling the street. The mist stopped when it reached us, and quickly dissipated, as if scattered by wind. But the air was still.

Standing in front us were now three young (or at least youngseeming) vampires, two male, one female. Instead of wearing clothing, their fish-belly white bodies were wrapped in tangles of multicolored wire, cables, and circuitry. The bodysuits might've been high-tech, but I knew they were powered by the vampires' own dark lifeforces, making their outfits a fusion of science and magic. All three had clean-shaven skulls, and in their foreheads were embedded tiny silver crosses, the flesh around the holy objects swollen, cracked, and festering. They smiled, displaying their canines, the left incisors painted bright ruby red – the calling card of the Red Tide, one of the most vicious street gangs in Nekropolis.

"How are you two doing this fine Descension Day?" asked the girl, whose body appeared to be that of a fourteen year-old girl, fifteen tops. A pair of glowing tesseracts dangled from her lobes like earrings. The latter were a nice touch, I thought.

"Us, we're bored bloodless," said one of the males, who was tall, lean, and looked to be in his mid-twenties.

"Then you three ought to head to the Sprawl and live it up with the rest of the city," I said.

The other male, short, stocky, and looking like he was in his early thirties, spat a gob of blood-colored saliva onto the cobblestones. "Fuck that noise. Bunch of lame-asses running around drunk in the streets. Not our kind of fun, is it, Narda?"

The girl gave a wicked, lopsided smile. "Not at all, Enan."

The lean male giggled, a high-pitched, crazy sound.

"What is your kind of fun?" I asked, though I had a damned good idea.

Narda answered. "Thought maybe we'd take ourselves apart a zombie."

"See what it looks like inside," added Enan.

The still nameless male just kept giggling.

Narda looked at Devona and frowned. "What are you doing with this corpse, honey? Can't find yourself a real man?"

"Maybe she likes 'em dead," Enan said.

"Dead and limp," added the giggler.

"Why don't you just go on ahead and find a party somewhere, honey?" Narda said. "And leave the deader to us."

I'd had enough of this, and was about to step into the street and confront them when Devona spoke, her voice shaky with barely contained fear.

"Do you have any idea who I am?"

Nada wasn't impressed. "Yeah, you're a dumb half-breed blood-slut who ought to have better taste than to hang around with a pile of walking hamburger like him." She nodded in my direction.

I signaled for Devona to be quiet, but she ignored me and went on.

"I am Devona Kanti, daughter of Lord Galm and guardian of his Collection," she said haughtily, or at least as haughtily as she could while trembling.

I groaned inwardly. That was exactly the wrong thing to say.

"You're lying, bitch," Narda said. "And if you aren't, you're just plain stupid. The Red Tide doesn't give a damn about the highand-mighty Lord Galm."

"Galm hates tech," Enan put in.

The giggler raised his forearm and made a fist. The wires around his arm quivered like hungry worms. "And Red Tide is wired, man."

As if in agreement, the holo-cubes dangling from Narda's ears flashed red. "Wired solid," she finished.

Screw this, I thought, and raised my surprise and leveled it at the three undead gang bangers.

"You'll get the hell out of here if you know what's good for you," I said in my best I'm-a-cop-and-I'm-through-taking-shit voice.

They saw what I was holding and burst out laughing.

"A squirt gun?" Narda said, incredulous. "Deadboy, your brains must have rotted away to goo!" She turned to her two companions. "C'mon, let's each grab a limb and make a wish."

They started forward and I aimed my plastic green squirt gun at their heads and pumped the trigger three times in rapid succession. Three streams of liquid flew out of the nozzle, one for each vamp.

When the fluid struck them, their undead flesh sizzled and popped and steam rose into the air. I imagine it didn't smell too good, either. They screamed and fell to their knees, clutching their wounded faces in their hands.

"That's a mixture of holy water and garlic juice," I said. "And unless you want some more, you'll–" Before I could finish, Narda – her burns already beginning to heal – pointed at me and a thick tentacle of braided wire and circuitry shot forth from her arm. The tentacle wrapped around my gun arm and squeezed. Sparks crackled where the wire connected with my arm, and I could hear my own flesh begin to fry. I knew I had to do something quick, before my dry zombie skin caught fire.

I dropped my gun, intending to catch it with my left hand and continue squirting, but my zombie reflexes were too slow. I missed and the plastic gun clattered to the street.

I tried to bend down to retrieve my weapon, but Enan stabbed his hand forward and a thick black cable lashed out toward me like a whip. It coiled around my neck and Enan grunted as he yanked me forward. I slammed face-first onto the cobblestones and got to listen to a few of my ribs break for good measure.

This wasn't exactly going as well as I'd hoped.

The Giggler decided to get into the act then. Thin tendrils of wire uncoiled from around his arms and came snaking through the air toward me. Like Narda's, electricity coruscated up and down the length of the Giggler's wires, but unlike hers, his streaked toward my mouth. I realized then that the bastard intended to cook me from the inside out.

I clamped my mouth shut tight and struggled to roll over onto my side. I would've pinched my nostrils shut to prevent the Giggler's wires from entering me that way, but I only had one hand free, and I had a more important use for it. I reached into my jacket and groped for something else that might fend off the vampires, but before I could get hold of anything they started shrieking anew. I looked up and saw that Devona had retrieved my squirt gun and was dousing the Red Tide members with my holy water and garlic combo.

"For godsakes, be careful!" I warned. "You don't want to get any of that stuff on you!"

The three tech-vampires retracted their cables and wires, releasing me. She and the other two vamps didn't look so hot. Their faces were a mass of burns, and their combination hi-tech and magic body suits were starting to short circuit, throwing off showers of miniature fireworks.

The vampires staggered to their feet and stumbled off, howling in pain. At the end of the street, Narda turned, and fixed us with a hate-filled stare from her single remaining eye.

"The Red Tide's going to store this in permanent memory, fuckers! Bet on it!" Then she turned and continued running after the other two, leaving us alone on the streets of Gothtown. They were vampires; their injuries would heal eventually. But it was going to take some time.

I pushed myself to my feet with my left arm, and stepped over to Devona. She still pointed the squirt gun in the direction the Red Tide vamps had gone, holding it in an iron grip. Her entire body shook, and her breath came in ragged gasps. I'd only fired my weapon twice in the line of duty when I was cop – before coming to Nekropolis, that is – but I understood what Devona was feeling.

"Why don't you give that back to me before you break it and that crap leaks all over your hands?"

She looked at the gun as if realizing for the first time what she was holding, and she handed it over to me gingerly, like it was a live grenade. I suppose for a vampire – even a half-vampire – it was.

I checked the water level, saw that the squirt gun was almost empty, and then replaced it in my jacket pocket.

"Thanks for taking care of those three, Devona. You probably saved my unlife." At least for another day or two, I added mentally.

"I didn't think about it; I just grabbed the gun off the ground and started shooting." She sounded amazed, as if surprised by her own actions. "Where in Nekropolis did you get holy water, anyway? It's extremely illegal. If Father Dis found out–" She stopped and looked at me in horror. "The Hidden Light! You're a member of the Hidden Light!"

She started backing away and I held up a hand – my right one – to calm her. It was a little hard to control, thanks to Narda sizzling my arm, but it still worked. "Take it easy. I'm not one of the Hidden Light, but from time to time they supply me with certain items I can't get any other way."

That didn't do much to reassure her. "They're a terrorist version of the Inquisition, Matthew: radical Christians completely dedicated to the destruction of Nekropolis and the Darkfolk by any means necessary!"

"I don't condone their actions, but if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have been able to get me hands on the holy water that just helped save your butt."

"I don't care what your reasons are. It's because of people like them that my kind had to leave Earth in the first place. People like them – and like you." She looked at me like I was the lowest form of life imaginable.

I knew the intensity of Devona's reaction was an emotional aftereffect of the battle we'd just survived – most likely the first she'd ever fought – but despite that I couldn't control my rising anger.

"If you don't want my help anymore, just say so. Maybe you'll get lucky and the Dawnstone will just show up on its own. And if it doesn't, maybe Lord Galm will have mercy and kill you quickly." It was a rotten thing to say, and I immediately wanted take it back, but I didn't know how. I've never been good at apologies.

Devona was silent for a few moments, and I could tell that she was considering walking away and being done with me. But in the end her dedication to her job – and fear of her father – won out.

She let out a long sigh and then in a tired voice said, "All right. Where to now?"

I was glad she stayed. I needed her to intercede with her father on my behalf, get him to use his powers, or his influence with the other Lords or even Father Dis himself, to save my undead excuse for an existence. Not because it mattered to me what happened to her… and definitely not because I was starting to care for her.

Honest.

"We head back to the Sprawl," I said. "To find Varma and – with any luck – the Dawnstone."

EIGHT

I wouldn't have been all that unhappy if Lazlo had shown up then, truth to tell. I wasn't looking forward to battling the crowds in the Sprawl again. But of course he didn't, and so we had no choice but to walk. There were no coaches or cars for hire in Gothtown that night; they'd all been previously engaged by Bloodborn for transportation to the Cathedral.

To pass the time, and more importantly because it might have something to do with why the Dawnstone was stolen, I asked Devona to tell me everything she knew about the Renewal Ceremony. I was familiar with the basics – every Nekropolitan was – but I hoped that as the daughter of a Darklord, she might be able to provide more insight into the specifics.

"The river Phlegethon, the air we breathe, and in some ways the city itself are all maintained by the power of Umbriel. When the Darkfolk first came to this dimension, Father Dis and the five Lords created the shadowsun and set it above the Nightspire to sustain their people in their new home. But Umbriel isn't eternal; it needs to be recharged once a year."

"And thus the Renewal Ceremony," I said.

She nodded. "The five Darklords conserve their powers for months and then, on the anniversary of the Descension they gather in the Nightspire along with Father Dis to perform the rite which will revitalize Umbriel. Nekropolis's most illustrious citizens are invited to witness the ceremony. I never have, though. My rank among the Bloodborn isn't high enough to merit an invitation." She said this quietly, without self pity. "Do you think there's a connection between the theft of the Dawnstone and the Renewal Ceremony?"

"Maybe," I answered. "The Darklords don't particularly like being equal; they're always trying to gain an advantage over each other."

That's what caused the Blood Wars two hundred years ago, and though a lasting peace was finally negotiated – or, as I've heard it, violently enforced by an extremely fed-up Father Dis – to this day the Darklords continue to spy on and plot against one another. I suppose all the intrigue and power struggles prevent them from getting bored as they while away Eternity.

I went on. "From what Waldemar told us, it sounds like the Dawnstone would be a powerful weapon – especially against a vampire. Because of the Renewal Ceremony, this day is the one time of the year when the Darklords' minds are on matters other than their endless bickering… a good time to take an opponent by surprise."

Devona stopped walking, grabbed me by the arms, and turned me toward her. She might have only been a half vampire, but she was still strong as hell. "You think someone – perhaps Varma – is plotting to destroy my father?"

"Possibly."

"Then we must return to the Cathedral and warn him!"

She let go of me and started to run in the direction of Lord Galm's stronghold, but it was my turn to grab her, and I took hold of her arm to stop her. She struggled, and she was more than strong enough to break free of my grip if she wanted to, so I knew I had to talk fast.

"You told me you didn't want your father to know about the Dawnstone being missing before we had a chance to at least find out what happened to it."

"That was before you said he might be in danger. Now let me go!" She tried to pull away from me, but I tightened my grip, praying her exertions wouldn't snap off my fingers.

"Listen to me for a minute: if someone does intend to kill Lord Galm, whoever it is won't try now. Think. You told me the Darklords conserve their power for months before the Renewal Ceremony – right?"

"Right."

"So who would be foolish enough to attack Galm at the height of his strength? No, the best time to kill him would be during the Ceremony, when he's distracted and expending his power to help recharge Umbriel. He's safe until then."

Devona didn't look completely convinced, but she stopped trying to tear away from me, which was good, because as strong as she was, she probably would've taken my arm with her when she left.

I pressed on. "Even if you did try to warn him, as busy as he is right now, would he even talk to you?"

"Perhaps not."

"And don't forget that there's a good chance your father is angry with you right now for bringing a zombie to his pre-Ceremony celebration. Besides, what do you really have to tell him, other than vague suspicions? The more we can learn, the greater the chance we can make him listen to us. Make him believe us. Look, how long do we have before the ceremony starts?"

She shrugged. "Hours, at least. We'll know it's near when the Deathknell of the Nightspire sounds."

"So we have time to try to find Varma."

She sighed. "I suppose."

"All right, then let's quit talking and start walking."

She nodded, but she didn't look happy about it.

We started in the direction of the bridge again, but immediately stopped. There before us was a midnight black coach hitched to two large ebony horses. And perched in the seat on top sat a man in a top hat and cloak which looked as if they'd been fashioned out of solid darkness, a horsewhip cradled in his lap. He turned his face toward us, but I couldn't make out his shadowy, indistinct features. He inclined his head and touched the brim of his hat in greeting, but said nothing.

The coach had made no noise whatsoever pulling up, but either Devona hadn't noticed or it didn't bother her.

"Look, Matthew, perhaps we won't have to fight our way through the crowds after all." She stepped toward the coach, but I grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.

"That's the Black Rig, Silent Jack's coach," I said harshly. "You don't want to ride with him."

She frowned at me. "Why not?"

"That's right; you said you didn't get out of Gothtown much. Let's just say that Jack has a thing for the ladies. And his fares are quite steep."

Jack's shadow-shrouded face remained pointed at us a moment more, then he turned forward, raised his whip, and cracked it soundlessly over his horses, Malice and Misery. The animals whinnied silently, displaying teeth as black as their hides, and then the rig vanished, winking out of existence as if it had never been.

"You know," Devona said in a shaky voice, "Suddenly walking doesn't seem so bad after all."

Bars, nightclubs, strip joints, and bad theatre are as common in the Sprawl as scales on a Gill-man. But the hottest, trendiest, most debauched entertainments can be found in only one place: Sybarite Street. It's jam-packed with pleasure-seekers at the best of times, but during the Descension celebration, you couldn't cut your way through the throngs with a high-precision laser. Still, if Varma were anywhere in Nekropolis, he was probably here, so Devona and I made our way the best we could.

According to Devona, Varma frequented quite a few establishments on Sybarite Street, so we decided to start with the first one we came to: the Krimson Kiss. I'd never been inside before, but I'd heard a few things about it. I wasn't looking forward to finding out if they were true.

Outside, the Krimson Kiss wasn't much to look at. A large blocky stone building with two large neon K's on the roof, blazing – what else? – crimson light into the darkness. Like everywhere else on the street tonight, there was a long line of less-than-patient would-be patrons standing outside. But I figured there was a good chance I would rot away to a pile of zombie dust before the line budged a foot, so I took hold of Devona's hand and pulled her along with me to the front. A tall, broad-shouldered satyr was working the Krimson Kiss's door that night, and he stood behind a velvet rope barrier, well-muscled arms crossed over his body-builder chest, grinning at the crowd through his curly reddish-brown beard. He was naked, as was customary for his kind, but since he was covered with thick fur from beneath his washboard abs down to his cloven-hoofed feet, he didn't really need any clothing.

I started to say something to the satyr, but before I could get a word out, I felt pressure as a hand gripped my shoulder. I turned around to see a petite woman dressed in a 1920's flapper outfit glaring at me. Her skin was covered with pulsating lesions, and when she opened her mouth to yell at me, I saw that her tongue was covered with blood-fattened ticks.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she said, her words made mushy by all those ticks. "I've waited hours in this line, and now that I'm next, I'm not about to let some chewed-up deader and his leather-clad slut cut in front of me!" She bobbled her head as she spoke, making the locks of her pageboy haircut swish back and forth and causing the ostrich feather tucked into her headband to jerk about spasmodically. Her lesions began to throb violently, presumably as a result of her anger.

"Surely those aren't those real ticks." I leaned close to the flapper and squinted my eyes, while at the same time reaching into one of my pockets and palming one of the objects I found there.

"Of course they're real!" she said indignantly. "They're the very latest thing. Take a look if you don't believe me."

The flapper stuck out her parasite-infested tongue for my inspection, and that's when I flicked my lighter and touched the flame to the insects. The blood-gorged bugs popped and sizzled and leaped off the flapper's tongue like… well, like dying ticks leaping off a burning tongue. The woman shrieked and batted her blazing tongue with both hands, while tears streamed down her face. "My babies!" she shouted. "What have you done to my babies?!"

At least, I think that's what she said. It was kind of hard to tell with that flash-fried tongue of hers.

I then turned to glare at the rest of the people at the head of the line, and in my best gruff cop voice said, "Anybody else got something to say?"

A tall man dressed like a mortician with an inside-out face stepped forward, but before I could do anything, Devona bared her fangs at him and hissed like a cougar on crack. The tall man swallowed – a very disturbing sight considering the state of his face – and quickly stepped back in line.

I looked to Devona. She kept her fangs bared, but I could see the satisfied twinkle in her eyes.

A hearty laughed boomed out, and Devona and I turned to face the satyr.

His teeth were perfectly white, perfectly straight. "Thanks for that – it was the most fun I've had all night! But even though I'm a great fan of street theatre, I'm afraid the two of you will just have to wait in line like everyone else."

There was some half-hearted applause from the people behind us, but it cut off when Devona whirled around and hissed again.

I sighed. It had been a long day, and I'd never had much tolerance for people who thought they were God's gift – on in this case, Dis's gift – to the world. "We're going into the club to look for someone, and you're going to let us in. Now."

The satyr's left eyebrow climbed toward one of his horns. "Really?" he said, his voice dripping sarcasm. "And just how is this miraculous event going to take place?"

The asshole was really getting up my nose, but even though I was no longer a cop, I had a cop's training, and I knew that it's best to negotiate whenever possible. And I did have a few darkgems on me to offer as a poor excuse for a bribe.

"It depends," I said. "What would it take for you to help make it happen?"

The satyr ran his fingers thoughtfully through his shaggy beard. "Oh, I don't know." Then he looked at Devona. A smoldering lust came into his gaze and a sly smile spread across his face. "She's not bad-looking, and even better, she's feisty. Fifteen minutes alone with her in the back alley, and I'll let you both in. What do you say?"

Devona's pretense of fierceness dropped away, replaced by shock. She looked to me, unsure how to respond. But that was all right – I knew exactly how to respond.

I still had hold of my lighter, and now I slipped it back into my pocket and exchanged it for a small burlap-wrapped ball tied with a thin white ribbon. I tossed it toward the satyr and said, "Catch."

He caught the ball in one hand and then turned his palm up to examine it.

"What's this?" he said, frowning in suspicion.

"Inside is some hair shed by a hellhound with a serious case of mange. As for what it does, it functions as a highly effective depilatory spell."

The satyr's frowned deepened into a scowl. "Depilatory? What's that mean?"

A second later, he found out precisely what it meant when all of his hair – atop his head, on his face, and most especially from his waist down – slid off his body and fell to the ground in large clumps.

The people in line took one look at what the satyr's groin fur had been hiding and started to laugh – and despite her injuries the burnt-tongue flapper laughed loudest of all.

"You wanted fifteen minutes with me?" Devona said, giving a certain portion of the satyr's anatomy a pointed look. "That thing's so small, it would've taken me half an hour to find it."

More laughter, and the satyr – who was now absolutely and undeniably naked in the most profound sense of the word – wailed with embarrassment and took off running. The crowd on the sidewalk obligingly parted for him as he clip-clopped away on his goat hooves, bawling like a baby, which I decided was only appropriate considering he had an infant-sized wee-wee.

The satyr had dropped the hellhound fur ball when he ran, and I bent down, retrieved it, and tucked it back into my pocket. As I straightened, Devona said, "Is there anything you don't have in those pockets of yours?"

"Yeah. A wallet. Who needs one in Nekropolis?"

I offered her my arm, she took it, and together we walked into the Krimson Kiss.

The atmosphere of the Krimson Kiss was even seedier than Skully's. Bare dirt floor, crude wooden tables and chairs, guttering candles shoved into beer bottles… Vermen servers scuttled from table to table, the humanoid rodents taking and fulfilling orders with obsequious speed. The creatures stand between four and five feet tall and usually walk with a hunched-over shuffle, though they can move damned fast when they want to. They only wear clothes when working for humans (or humanlike beings), and the servers in the Krimson Kiss wore white waistcoats liberally splattered with bloodstains, equally stained white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties. No shoes, though. No amount of darkgems could get Vermen to cram their long clawed toes into such tortuously uncomfortable things. One passed close by me, carrying a tray loaded with pewter tankards. It was a female, I think, though I have a hard time telling one gender from another when it comes to vermen. She twitched her whiskers as she went by, and I couldn't help feeling a wave of disgust. I've made a lot of adjustments since coming to Nekropolis, but for reason I've never have been able to get used to vermen. Maybe my mother was frightened by a Mousketeer when she was pregnant.

The Krimson Kiss's clientele was a mix of vampires, lykes, and ghouls, with a scattering of demon kin and a few less identifiable beings. Some were watching a horror movie playing on big screen TV – I didn't recognize it, but it was one of those English ones, in color, with lots of blood – and laughing uproariously. But most were busy gorging themselves on the establishment's specialty – plates heaping with slabs of raw, wet meat and tankards brimming with blood, all provided by the Krimson Kiss's claim to fame: the Sweetmeat.

The ghastly thing filled a recessed pit in the center of the club, a grotesquely fat blob of pink, boneless flesh from which a dozen stunted, withered arms and legs jutted forth. Vermen waiters ringed the creature, cutting off hunks of its flesh and slapping them on serving trays, filling mugs from brass spigots surgically implanted in its sides, all as fast as the ravenous crowd could order them.

Once a verman sliced off some meat, he took a step to the right and cut another. By the time he had taken three more steps, the first cut he had made was already healed.

The Sweetmeat possessed a horrendous, toothless maw on its back, and a line of vermen passed down metal buckets full of a grayish glop which they dumped into the obscenely gaping mouth. Bucket after bucket after bucket. No slowing, no end in sight.

"Lovely, isn't it?" I said sarcastically.

Devona didn't answer; she looked like she was too busy trying to keep from vomiting.

"Do you see Varma?"

She took her eyes off the Sweetmeat – and was more than likely quite grateful for a reason to do so – and scanned the room.

"No."

"Then let's start asking around."

It would've been more effective if Devona and I had split up, but I was mindful of the fact that she didn't have much experience outside Gothtown – maybe even outside the Cathedral, I suspected – so I thought it best if we stuck together. I didn't see any friends or better yet, anyone who owed me a favor. But I did recognize a few of the beings stuffing their faces, so we began with them.

Glassine, also know as the Transparent Woman, was eating alone. Supposedly she was the descendant of some English scientist who'd invented an invisibility potion a century or so ago. Unfortunately, her attempts to recreate her relative's formula had only met with partial success, rendering her skin invisible but not the muscles, veins, organs, and bone underneath. She didn't mind answering a few questions, but she'd never heard of Varma and had never seen a Bloodborn of his description at the Krimson Kiss. She actually turned out to be rather chatty and even invited us to join her, but we declined as politely as we could.

Glassine sighed. "I get that a lot, especially when I dine out. I tend to spoil people's appetites."

I said something about not having an appetite anymore myself, but I couldn't help sympathizing with Glassine. In my current condition, I doubted too many people would want to have a meal in my presence, either.

Next we spoke to Legion – or at least, whoever was inhabiting his body at the moment. Legion appears to be an ordinary-looking human in his late twenties, usually dressed in T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes, but he makes his living by renting out his body to spirits who are eager to experience physical pleasures once more. Whoever – or whatever – was possessing Legion at the moment was so busy cramming food and drink into its host's mouth that he barely paused to answer my questions.

"Yeah, I've seen Varma around a few times. He comes in here now and again for a tankard of blood, but far as I know, he hasn't been in for a couple weeks." Legion burped loudly and wiped a smear of blood off his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I don't suppose we could talk to any of the other entities inside you for a moment, just to see what they might know?" I asked.

"Hell, no!" Legion – or rather his current occupant – said. "I paid good money for my time in this body, and I'm not about to give up so much as a second of it!"

"Speaking of money, tell me something," I said, genuinely curious. "Where do spirits get darkgems anyway?"

A sly look game into Legion's eyes. "You'd be surprised at the sorts of things you can find out when you're both invisible and intangible. There are all kinds of valuables out there, ripe for the taking – if you know where to look. Now fuck off and let me eat."

Legion returned to gorging himself, and Devona and I walked away from his table.

"Do you think he makes good money renting himself out like that?" Devona asked, mouth pursed in distaste.

"I don't know, but I bet buying antacids and paying for detox treatments must cut a damned big chunk out of his profits."

We moved on to the Mariner's table. The old man looked miserable as ever, and while he wasn't partaking of any food or drink himself, the dead albatross hanging around his neck was tearing at a raw chunk of Sweetmeat with sickening gusto.

When we asked him about Varma, he shook his head. "But you know who you should be asking?" The Mariner turned and pointed to an obese ghoul sitting at a large table in the rear of the place. "Arvel. He owns the place."

I'd heard of Arvel, but I'd never met him before. I thanked the Mariner, and we started to go.

"Wait!" he said desperately. "I have a tale to tell thee!"

"Sorry, but we're rather busy at the moment," I said and started to pull Devona away from the old man's table. Once he got going with his story, there was no stopping him.

Devona resisted and stood her ground. "We really are too busy to stay, but why don't you go on over and tell her?" she said, pointing to Glassine. "I'm sure she'd be glad for the company."

The Mariner glanced over at the Transparent Woman, and for the first time since I'd known him, he broke into a smile.

"Thanks. I think I'll do that."

"Not until I'm done with my meal, you old fart!" the albatross squawked.

The Mariner gave the undead bird a solid thump on the head to quiet it. "That's old salt, featherbrain." He gave us another smile and a nod, picked up the plate with his bird's meal, and started toward Glassine's table, walking with a rolling seaman's gait.

I looked at Devona and she shrugged.

"So I'm sentimental," she said. "Sue me."

"I can't. No lawyers in Nekropolis. They're too scary even for this city."

Devona and I made our way over to the Arvel's table. Given the way they eat, ghouls tend to run to fat, but this specimen was the largest I'd ever seen. His face was practically all jowl, his thickfingered hands so swollen they resembled flippers. He was bald, as all ghouls are, male and female alike, and he had the same eyes – completely black, no white of any kind. His fleshy lips were ridged like a reptile's, and his mouth was lined with double rows of tiny piranha teeth, top and bottom.

Ghouls normally go naked, and Arvel was no exception. We were saved, however, from having to gaze upon the entirety of his body by a large drop cloth that was spread across his chest and belly, a cloth covered with bloodstains and gobbets of partially chewed meat.

Arvel was so huge that he had to sit in a specially constructed chair made of steel and bolted to the floor in front of a cherrywood table which had been cut in a half moon in order to accommodate the vast spill of the ghoul's stomach.

Vermen waiters tended him constantly, bringing him a steady stream of meat and blood which they shoved and poured into his mouth. Arvel chewed and swallowed, his flipper-hands resting on the tabletop, unneeded. I wondered how long it had been since he'd last lifted them. Quite some time, I suspected.

His moist black eyes were fixed on the big screen TV and the image of a buxom young English actress who was succumbing to the satanic charms of Christopher Lee's Dracula. He didn't take his gaze off the movie as we approached his table.

"Excuse me," I began.

"Shhh!" he admonished, a bit of bloody meat falling out of his mouth and sticking to one of his upper chins. "Forgive me, but this is the best part!"

Christopher Lee made his move and the girl swooned as Dracula put the bite on her.

Arvel let out a wet, bubbling chuckle. "They always react so melodramatically when he bites them. A ghoul wouldn't waste precious eating time on such carnal preliminaries." He looked up and saw us for the first time. "Pardon me for speaking so crudely, Miss. I didn't realize a lady was present."

Devona didn't respond. Vampires and ghouls, despite their dietary similarities, don't get along too well. Vampires consider ghouls disgusting mistakes of Unnature, while ghouls view vampires as little more than walking leeches with an unholier-than-thou attitude. I tend to agree with both sides.

"What can I do for you two fine people this glorious Descension Day?" Despite his appearance and physical mannerisms, Arvel's voice was smooth and cultured, as if he'd OD'd on Masterpiece Theatre. Even so, he didn't stop his gluttony to talk to us, but rather continued speaking his refined words through mouthfuls of meat and blood, spilling liberal amounts onto the drop cloth as he conversed.

I introduced us, and his lamprey mouth twisted into a delighted grin. "Your reputation proceeds you, Mr. Richter! I've heard quite a bit about your exploits, but I never thought I'd be fortunate enough to actually meet you!"

He clacked his teeth together twice, and a verman scurried up.

"Bring chairs for my friends," he ordered, his tone cold, completely devoid of feeling. When the rat-man had scampered off, Arvel was once again the gracious host. "Carbuncle will be back momentarily. While we wait, would either of you care for a beverage?" He smiled sheepishly, suddenly embarrassed. "Forgive me, Mr. Richter, I forgot that you have no need of nourishment. But surely you won't pass up a tankard, Ms. Kanti? We serve the best blood in Nekropolis. It's the real thing, too. None of that horrid aqua sanguis for us here at Krimson Kiss." His smile widened, and I could see bits of flesh caught between his tiny sharp teeth.

Devona didn't say anything at first. I don't know if it was because she was too disgusted to answer, or whether she was actually thinking it over. After all, she was a half vampire.

"No, thank you. I fed earlier."

I hadn't seen her drink any blood during the time we'd been together, and I wondered if she was lying, or if perhaps she'd managed to sneak a quick snack while we were separated at the Cathedral.

"Pity," the ghoul said. "You don't know what you're missing." A verman hurried up with a full tankard. Arvel opened his mouth and the rodent poured the gore straight down his gullet. The ghoul didn't even have to swallow.

Carbuncle returned then, carrying a pair of the simple wooden chairs that everyone else in the place but Arvel was using. The rat-man set them down at the table, took a few steps back, and waited for more orders, his whiskers twitching nervously.

Devona looked at me and I nodded. I wasn't feeling especially sociable, but my years as a cop taught me that sometimes it's better to go along with the program if you want to loosen someone's tongue. We sat.

Arvel was brought another mouthful of meat followed by a mug of blood. As he devoured them, I said, "This is certainly an… interesting place you have here."

He belched loudly. "Pardon me. Yes, it's quite nice, isn't it? Though I dare say that has everything to do with my delectable Sweetmeat. Dr. Moreau over at the House of Pain created the dear thing for us, using a combination of vampire and shapeshifter DNA, mixed with a few special ingredients of his own, of course. The Sweetmeat's wounds heal almost instantly, and it quickly replaces the flesh and blood it's lost – as long as we keep it well fed with the special nutrient solution the good Doctor developed. For all intents and purposes, the Sweetmeat is immortal. It will live – and taste delectable – forever." Arvel shook his head, or rather, wobbled it from side to side a fraction. "Whenever I take another delicious bite of the Sweetmeat, I wonder why some of the Darklords are so against importing human technology from Earth."

I thought of the misbegotten thing trapped in Arvel's pit, constantly being bled and cut for the ghoul's patrons. And if what Arvel said was true, the creature was immortal and could conceivably suffer this treatment for eternity.

"I can think of a few reasons," I said.

Arvel ignored the dig. "Tell me, Mr. Richter, is it true what they say? That you're responsible for Lady Talaith's recent ill fortune?"

"I'd really rather not discuss it, if it's all the same to you."

More meat, more drink. "Ah, but there is something else you wish to discuss, no?" He licked a smear of red from his lower worm-lip. "Quid quo pro, Mr. Richter. We ghouls have an ancient aphorism: You feed me, and I'll feed you." He smiled smugly. I wanted to punch him in the mouth, but I'd probably just have shredded my hand on those teeth of his.

"Yes, it's true. But it was a couple years ago, when I first came to Nekropolis."

"Please, go on."

I sighed. "My partner and I were investigating a series of killings on Earth. There was no connection between the victims' age, race, gender, economic status, or location. The only similarity was in the way they were killed. Each victim showed no signs of having been in a struggle. It was as if they'd all just dropped dead, despite the fact that all of them were healthy with no history of serious medical conditions. Autopsies revealed something else strange: a tiny segment of their frontal lobe was missing – despite the fact that their skulls had all been intact before their autopsy."

"Sounds like quite a mystery," Arvel said as he chewed another in his endless mouthfuls of meat.

"It was. To make a long story short, through dogged detective work and more than a little luck, my partner and I tracked the killer down to a park near the lake. But just as we were about to catch him, the killer disappeared through a strange shimmer in the air."

"A portal," Arvel said.

I nodded. "Varvara's. My partner Dale and I followed, and found ourselves in the basement of the Demon Queen's lair. The killer was gone. It took a bit for us to acclimate to Nekropolis–"

Arvel laughed. "I imagine it did!"

"But once we had our bearings, we continued to search for the killer. At first, we thought the warlock had ties to Varvara, but we learned Talaith had been using the Demon Queen's portal because hers had been damaged in a previous struggle with Lord Edrigu. When we learned the truth, we headed to Glamere, determined to bring the killer back to Earth to face justice."

"And what happened?" Arvel's black eyes were shining; he was hanging on to my every word as if were a child being told a favorite bedtime story.

So I continued.

NINE

I stood with my back flattened against a smooth wooden wall, 9mm held easily at my side in my right hand, a small device gripped tightly in my left. The corridor was lit by a series of gently glowing blobs of yellowish light hovering near the ceiling, and the shadows they cast seemed to slither across the floor as if possessing a life of their own. From what I'd seen of this insane city so far, I knew it was quite possible that the shadows really were alive, and I reminded myself to keep an eye on them. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck and across one of the many small wounds covering my body. It stung, and I started to take in a hissing breath of air out of reflex, but I forced myself to take a deep, calming breath instead.

You swore an oath to serve and protect, Matt. And even if you are a bit out of your jurisdiction, that's exactly what you're going to do.

My partner stood next to me, gun held ready as he peered around the corner.

"How many?" I whispered.

Dale pulled his head back and turned to face me. "Two," he said, speaking softly. "Both male, big and tough-looking. The corridor stretches a long way – a couple hundred feet, easy – and they're standing guard in front of a large wooden door at the end of it. No obvious weapons that I could see."

"They don't need to carry physical weapons," I reminded him. "Not in this place."

"Don't I know it."

Dale Ramsey was a lean African-American man in his early fifties. His short black hair was starting to grey at the temples, and the lower half of his face was covered with thick stubble. People thought he did that to look stylish, but I knew it was because he often forgot to shave, sometimes for days. He wore a sharp-looking blue suit and, despite his slightly scruffy physical appearance, his outfit was dry-cleaned and neatly pressed as always. Dale had been my partner in the homicide division for the last five years, though I'd known him even longer, all the way back to when I'd started on the Cleveland force as a patrol cop and he was working Vice.

Thin lines of blood trickled from tiny wounds peppering Dale's forehead, and he bent his head forward and used his tie to wipe away the blood so it wouldn't run into his eyes. He'd used his tie instead of the back of his hand because his hands – like mine – were covered with similar wounds and were bleeding too. Not a lot, certainly not enough to be life-threatening, but definitely inconvenient.

Dale looked at the new smear of blood on his tie and grimaced. He hated getting his clothes dirty. "Who uses a barrier of animated thorn bushes as security? I mean, really."

"Just be glad we got through without being sliced to bits."

"I think that little lizard you picked up in the Sprawl helped some," he said.

"Salamander. They're amphibians." At least, I thought the creature I'd used to clear a path through Talaith's thorn barrier was an amphibian. The dealer who'd sold it to me had said the small bright-red animal was a salamander in the mythological sense, meaning that it blazed with intense magical fire when threatened. I didn't care what species it was, just as long as it worked as advertised. When Dale and I approached the thorn barrier surrounding Woodhome, and I'd had to do was removed the little guy from my pocket, and toss him into the thorns. The instant one pricked him, he opened his tiny mouth and let loose a blast of flame that would've done Godzilla proud. The salamander's fire-blast cut a swatch through the thorns, and Dale and I had to run like hell to reach the entrance to Woodhome before the barrier closed up again. We'd made it, but not without getting pricked, scratched, and slashed in the process. I didn't know what had happened to the salamander, but I wasn't worried. As the little guy had so amply demonstrated, he could take care of himself.

I was only sorry that the creature's magical fire hadn't been strong enough to set Woodhome itself ablaze. But from what I understood, Talaith wasn't only a witch, she was a Dark Lord – one of the most powerful beings in Nekropolis. And that meant her stronghold was protected by some serious magic, and since it was basically a gigantic tree – really a living mass formed from dozens of huge ancient trees intertwined – she'd been smart enough to fireproof it. But not, it seemed, smart enough to do the same to her thorn barrier. Or maybe she simply hadn't wanted to waste the magic on her thorns. I didn't know from magic, and I had no intention of learning. Dale and I had come to Woodhome for one reason: to track down the warlock who'd been killing people in Cleveland and bring him to justice. After that, Dale and I would head home and this place would be nothing more than a nightmare that both of us would work damned hard to forget.

Inside, the corridors and chambers of Woodhome looked as if they'd been grown instead of built. The ceiling, walls, and floors were smooth but somewhat uneven, and instead of running straight, the corridors had a tendency to curve right or left, up or down. There were no signs to help us tell which way to go, but I'd picked up a few other items in the Sprawl besides the salamander, and one of them was the object I held in my left hand.

"You sure this is it?" he asked.

In response I held up the compass. Beneath the glass was the tiny figure of a skeleton lying flat, right arm stretched over its head, index finger pointing toward the wall – or rather, toward the chamber on the other side of the wall.

"How are we supposed to know if that thing's working right? Or if it is working, it's functioning as advertised?"

I shrugged and tucked the compass into one of my jacket pockets. "It's supposed to locate sources of powerful magic. And if what the seer in the Sprawl told us is true, what we're looking for should be the most powerful device in this place. Besides, I can't think of any other way to find this Overmind thing. Can you?"

Dale made a face as if he'd just taken a bite of what he thought was prime rib only to discover someone had snuck a turd onto his plate when he wasn't looking. "I hate this place. I like to keep things simple: good guys, bad guys, witnesses, and evidence. I could do without all this hocus pocus."

"You and me both, partner," I said. "But when in Rome…"

"I've never been to Rome, but I'm confident it's nothing like this shithole." He sighed. We'd worked together for so long that I knew Dale's quirks and mannerisms as well as my own. Better, in fact. That sigh was Dale expelling the last bits of tension from his body as he geared up for action. He raised his gun and fixed me with his soft brown eyes. "You ready?"

I reached into one of my pockets with my left hand and took out a small mirror.

"Let's do it."

Without another word, we turned the corner and started running down the corridor.

The guards were exactly as Dale had described – big and meanlooking, but then they were guards: that was how they were supposed to look. They were two of a kind, Literally, they were twins. Both wore their black hair pulled back in ponytails, both sported Vandyke beards, and both wore black tunics, black pants, and high black boots. I'd only been in Nekropolis a couple days, but I'd already learned that in this city, black was the new black. The warlocks looked surprised at first to see us, but they only hesitated a few seconds before raising their hands and gesturing wildly as they prepared to throw some very nasty magic our way.

The twins' hands began to glow with silver-tinted energy, and Dale and I poured on the speed.

"That damned mirror better work!" Dale shouted.

"Look on the bright side," I yelled. "If it doesn't, we'll be dead before we find out!"

Before Dale could come back with a witty rejoinder, the twins thrust their hands forward, sending a pair of lightning bolts crackling down the corridor toward us. Still running, I held out the mirror in front of me, and it drew the lightning toward its glossy surface and swallowed it whole. The glass vibrated and grew hot in my hand as it struggled to absorb the mystical power of the twins' strike.

"How many spells is that thing good for?" Dale shouted.

"Three," I said, "so we have two–" My words cut off as the mirror exploded in my hand, glass shards piercing the soft flesh of my palm.

"Fuck!" I shouted. My hand was bleeding like crazy and hurt like a sonofabitch. I lost momentarily lost my concentration and started to stumble, but Dale caught hold of my elbow and steadied me. "Make that one," I said through gritted teeth. Whether on Earth or in Nekropolis, it seemed you couldn't trust a goddamned street vendor.

Dale and I had covered half the distance to the chamber at the end of the corridor, but the twins started gesturing and chanting once more, both of them grinning with dark anticipation. They had us and they knew it.

Still running, Dale and I raised our guns and started firing. One thing about spellcasters: it's hard for them to shift gears when they're in the middle of working an enchantment. Our aim wasn't perfect, but it was good enough, and several 9mm slugs slammed into the warlocks, and while their black tunics might've been the latest in magical guard chic, the cloth didn't do a damned thing to stop bullets. By the time Dale and I reached the wooden door, the twins had slumped to the floor, bleeding from their wounds. Dale had gotten his twin twice – once in the shoulder, once in the gut – and I'd hit mine in the chest. Both were still alive, but they were in too much pain to concentrate on working any hoodoo on us.

If we'd been on Earth, Dale and I would've cuffed the two warlocks and called for an ambulance. But this was Nekropolis, and even if it wasn't we didn't have time to do things by the book. Dale and I slammed our gun butts into the twins' heads, and they fell onto their sides, unconscious. I knew there was a chance one or both of them might die from their injuries, but they were warlocks. There was an equally good chance they'd find a way to heal themselves soon. At least, that's what I told myself to assuage my conscience.

Dale took a second to check his weapon. "I'm out of ammo."

"Me too." And neither of us had reloads. We'd used up all our bullets over the last couple days just surviving long enough to get this far. I holstered my gun, and Dale did the same. "Guess we'll just have to improvise," I said.

"Fair enough." Dale grabbed the door handle, but before he opened it, he said, "How much you want to bet there's no lock on it?"

"Who needs locks when you have a pair of beefcake warlocks to guard your secret chamber of evil?" I said.

Dale laughed as he opened the door, and we rushed inside. I'd been expecting the chamber to be like the rest of Woodhome – smooth, barkless wood – but instead it was spherical and covered with glimmering metal panels. The chamber reeked of ozone and overheated circuitry, and a low thrumming filled the air, the sound of a powerful machine in the process of warming up. In the middle of the room was a huge pinkish mass the size of a bull elephant. Its wrinkled surface was slick with blood, and dozens of black cables extended from its pulpy substance out to different points on the walls and ceiling.

This was the Overmind.

Dale and I stopped to look at the obscene thing.

"I thought brains were gray," he said.

I shook my head. "That's only after they've been preserved. Inside our skulls, they look like that: all pink."

Dale and I weren't alone in the chamber, though. There were two others standing before the Overmind. A male warlock with long flowing blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard standing next to a handsome middle-aged woman with short black hair. The warlock wore a dark red robe – not quite black, but close enough, I supposed – while the woman was garbed in an oldfashioned Puritan dress of severe black-and-white. I didn't recognize the warlock, but I had a pretty good idea who the woman was: the Dark Lady Talaith, ruler of Glamere and mistress of the Arcane.

Dale immediately fixed his attention on the warlock. "Let me guess. You're the sonofabitch who's been killing people in my town back on Earth." We'd tracked the killer down in Cleveland, even watched as he'd disappeared back through Varvara's mirror portal, but neither of us had gotten that good a look at him. But now, standing here gazing at the bastard, both Dale and I knew this was our man.

If the warlock was surprised to see us, he didn't show it. He stepped toward us with a casual confidence that said he was used to having his evil rituals interrupted by a pair of out-of-town cops. Very out-of-town.

"I'm afraid I'm unacquainted with you two gentlemen, but I'm impressed that you made it this far." He looked us over. "Though I must say that you both appear somewhat the worse for wear."

Despite the fact his weapon was out of ammunition, Dale drew it and leveled it at the warlock's head. "You can cut the 'It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bond' crap. Just tell me if you're the person responsible for the death of seven men and women in Cleveland."

Amusement flickered in the warlock's eyes, and I wondered if he could somehow sense that Dale's gun was empty. "I am. Though as you can see, they've been reborn." He gestured toward the Overmind. "So technically, I suppose I'm not a killer. I'm more of a…" a slow smile spread across his face. "A recycler, I suppose you could say."

Despite ourselves, Dale and I turned to regard the Overmind once more.

"The coroner's report said the people you killed died without outward signs of violence," I said. "We've already figured out that you used some kind of spell to stop their hearts. But the coroner also said that portions of their brains were missing, even though each of their skulls was intact."

The warlock bowed his head in mock-humility. "I must confess to possessing a certain modicum of skill at psychic surgery."

I ignored the arrogant bastard and went on. "So you're telling us that you used the brain matter you stole from those people to build the Overmind?"

The warlock stepped closer to the giant brain and laid his hand on it as if stroking a beloved pet. "Precisely. Those seven people were all extremely gifted psychically, but none of them knew it. Moreover, they'd never even used their preternatural abilities, which meant their brain matter was completely unspoiled. Pristine minds – virgin minds, if you will – are almost impossible to find in Nekropolis. They need to be… imported."

Up to this point, Talaith hadn't said anything, but now she stepped toward the warlock, grabbed his shoulder none-toogently, and spun him around to face her. "We don't have time for this foolishness, Yberio. We need to finish powering up the Overmind and use it strike against Edrigu before he becomes aware of what we're trying to do! The fool may be Lord of the Dead, but doesn't mean he's as slow-witted as his mindless subjects. We only have moments before he senses what we're up to."

She glanced past Yberio at Dale and me, and I could feel the hatred blazing in her eyes as if it were a physical force. "Kill them while I continue the ritual."

Yberio's jaw muscles tensed, telling me that he didn't appreciate being spoken to as one of the help. "Yes, my love," he answered through gritted teeth.

"Forget the 'my love' shit and just do it!" she snapped. She turned to face the Overmind, raising her hands over her head and chanting harsh, guttural words in a language I didn't recognize, but which hurt to hear. It felt like someone was jamming rusty metal spikes into my ears.

Dale and I exchanged a quick look. Understanding the emotional stressors on your opponents is just as important as knowing what weapons they have – sometimes more so. It was obvious that Yberio was Talaith's lover and that he thought that relationship made them equals. It was just as obvious to Dale and me that Talaith thought differently.

Yberio glared at Talaith for a moment, but she ignored him as she continued working whatever magic was necessary to get the Overmind to do its thing. Yberio turned back to face us, and from the dark expression on his face, it was clear he intended to take out his anger toward Talaith on us.

Dale kept his empty gun trained on the warlock, and with his free hand he gestured to me behind his back. Get ready.

My left hand still had fragments of glass in it – and still hurt like hell – but my gun-hand was free and uninjured, and I took a half-step behind Dale to cover my motion from Yberio as I reached into my jacket pocket and removed the last device we'd managed to acquire in the Sprawl. It looked like a simple pocket watch, old and badly in need of polishing, but otherwise unremarkable. Lady Varvara – who was very displeased that Talaith had made use of her dimension portal in her latest scheme to attack Lord Edrigu – had given the device to us before we left the Sprawl. She'd said it was called the Death Watch and that all we would have to do was push the switch to activate it when the right time came. After that, we'd know what to do.

I hoped like hell she was right – and that she was telling the truth. She was a demon, after all, and her kind had a reputation for being somewhat lacking in the truth-telling department.

If Yberio had seen me take hold of the Death Watch, he gave no sign. Perhaps he simply thought he was too powerful to worry about whatever meager magics Dale and I might have acquired during our brief stay in Nekropolis.

"You gentlemen were quite correct in your earlier surmise," the warlock said. "I did use magic to kill those people. The spell is a quite simple one, really." He smiled coldly. "Allow me to demonstrate it to you."

That sure as hell sounded like a cue to me. I thumbed the switch atop the Death Watch, and the black hands on the clock face began spinning wildly. Dark energy spread outward from the watch, so cold that it felt as if I'd plunged my hand into ice water. I wanted to drop the damned thing, but I forced myself to hold on to it.

Talaith continued chanting, but she shot me a quick look, and her eyes widened in shock when she saw what I held. Yberio stared at the Death Watch and the spreading ebon energy that surrounded it, his jaw hanging open in a way that might've been comical in other circumstances.

"You can't possibly have that!" Yberio shouted. "There's no way you could've gained possession of a token of such power!

Talaith broke off her chanting to yell at him. "Don't be an idiot! That bitch Varvara must've have given it to them! But it doesn't matter how those poor excuses for mortals came by it, just kill the morons before they can use it!"

Yberio's head jerked as if she'd just physically slapped him, and he blinked several times before raising his hand and pointing his index finger at me. I understood then what was going to happen to me: Yberio was going to use his magic to stop my heart, just as he had done with the seven men and women he'd killed on Earth. By this time the dark energy emanating from the Death Watch had formed a black sphere around my hand about the size of a soccer ball. My hand felt frozen, and I could sense tremendous power building up within the sphere, but I still had no idea what to do with it.

C'mon, Varvara… you said I'd know what to do when the time came…

Yberio spoke a word and a thin beam of white light shot forth from his finger and headed straight toward me. But Dale threw himself between me and the warlock, and the light speared him straight through the heart instead. He made no sound, but his entire body stiffened as if a massive electric current passed through him, and then he simply collapsed to the floor. No final words, no last look passing between us. It was like Yberio had reached inside my partner, found his life switch, and flipped it off.

Yberio grinned as he looked down at Dale's corpse, then he raised his head to look at me.

"That's eight," he said. "And you'll make nine." He lifted his hand and aimed his index finger at me.

And then, just as Varvara had promised, I understood what I had to do.

"Fuck you –" I looked to Talaith – "both." And then I turned to the Overmind and thrust the hand holding the Death Watch into the pulpy mass of the gigantic brain. I heard Talaith shout "No!" followed by the sharp sensation of Yberio's magic beam cutting through me. And then I heard the Overmind's voice in my mind – a chorus of six voices combined, actually, and it whispered two words:

Thank you.

And then a darkness blacker, deeper, and colder than anything I had ever imagined rushed in to fill me, and I knew nothing more.

"When I woke up, the Overmind was nothing but a pool of necrotized tissue on the floor on the metal chamber, the cables that had attached it to the walls dangling useless in the air. I crawled over to Dale – my limbs were stiff and uncooperative, and at the time I thought it was just due to the aftershock of the Overmind's destruction – and I checked his pulse. I wasn't surprised to find he no longer had one. Yberio and Talaith were both lying on the floor as well. I assumed they'd been hit by some kind of psychic or magical backlash when the Overmind exploded, but I had no idea if it would cause them any permanent damage. After all, I was still alive. Or so I thought.

"I checked their pulses. Yberio didn't have one. Talaith did, but hers was weak. I was a cop – supposedly one of the good guys – but I confess at that moment, I seriously considering wrapping my hands around Talaith's throat and finishing what the destruction of the Overmind had started. Instead, I turned away and did a quick search for the Death Watch. I'd lost my grip on the device when I blacked out, I couldn't find it in the mess of what remained of the Overmind. For all I know the Death Watch was destroyed, but if not, I suppose Talaith has it. I really don't know, and to tell you the truth, I don't care. I gave up looking for the watch, picked up Dale's body, and carried him out of the chamber."

Devona, who'd been listening to my story as raptly as Arvel, if not more so, put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed hard enough so I'd be sure to feel it. "I'm sorry for your loss, Matt."

I nodded my thanks for her sympathy. Dale was a good man, a good partner, and a good friend. I don't know how I would've made it through my divorce if he hadn't been there for me. He saved my life more than once on the streets of Cleveland, and in the end he'd given his own life so that I could live a few moments longer to finish the last case we'd ever work together.

"He was a hell of a cop, and he died in the line of duty." It was all the epitaph I could bring myself to say aloud, but maybe it was enough.

"Yberio was a Demilord," Arvel said, "one of the high-ranking Darkfolk who, while extremely strong, weren't quite powerful enough to be chosen by Dis to help him create Nekropolis. There's been no mention of him on the streets for the last couple years." The ghoul smiled with his blood-stained lamprey mouth. "Now I know why."

"What happened to Talaith?" Devona asked.

"She's a Darklord," I said. "I assume her powers enabled her to withstand the blast, but considerably weakened. She's recovered some since then, but she's still not up to her full strength. Needless to say, I haven't been to Glamere many times since. And I make sure to watch my back when any Arcane are around."

Arvel smacked his lips. "A most… delicious story, Mr. Richter. But you left out one salient detail: how you became a zombie."

"Remember how I said the murder victims showed no sign of external injuries? It's because Yberio threw a deathspell at them and stopped their hearts instantly. That's how Dale died, and Yberio did the same to me – just as I released the power of the Death Watch into the Overmind. Somehow, Yberio's spell, the Death Watch's magic, and the release of psychic energy when the Overmind died all combined and when I awoke, I was dead, but in a way still alive, too." I shrugged. "That's Papa Chatha's theory, anyway."

"Fascinating!" Arvel gushed. "I knew some of the details, of course, but I've never heard the full story. Tell me, what arrangements did you make for the disposal of Mr. Ramsey's remains?"

I felt a wave of anger and disgust. Ghouls had an unhealthy preoccupation with dead bodies, and I wasn't about to tell Arvel where and how I'd laid Dale to rest, just in case the gluttonous monster decided to go in search of my dear, departed partner.

"Not to be rude," I said, not caring if I was or not, "but my associate and I are in something of a hurry."

"Ah, another case full of danger and intrigue! You must let me know how it turns out!"

"I will," I said. It was an easy promise to make, since I knew there was a chance I might not be around to keep it. "Now if you could quid quo pro us right back?"

"I'll be happy to answer your questions; once I've finished attending to nature's call, that is."

I was about to ask if he needed any help getting up, but then I noticed the large metal washtub beneath his chair. Arvel clicked his teeth and Carbuncle scuttled over and pulled a lever on the side of the ghoul's chair, releasing a trap door in the seat.

As the next few moments passed – along with a number of other things – I was more grateful than ever that I had no sense of smell.

TEN

As we left the Krimson Kiss, Devona looked like she was suffering from shell shock.

"My father is anything but a saint, and during my time at the Cathedral I've seen some terrible things. But I have never experienced anything as sickening as that ghoul!"

"He's disgusting, no doubt about it. But he did give us some useful information."

Devona snorted, but whether because she didn't agree with me or because she was trying to get the stink out of her nostrils, I don't know.

"All he told us was that while Varma used to frequent the Krimson Kiss, he hasn't been around in the last few weeks."

"You're forgetting what he said about Varma being a heavy drug user."

"That's no surprise; I told you he was a hedonist. Besides, drugs don't affect Bloodborn physiology the same way they do the human body. Varma would need to take large doses to get even mild effects."

Nekropolis has all the drugs you'd find on the streets of any city on Earth – marijuana, coke, crack, heroin, crystal meth – as well as quite a few locally produced specialties, such as tangleglow and mind dust.

"But that gives Varma a motive for stealing the Dawnstone beyond mere lust for power" I said. "He wouldn't be the first junkie to steal to support his habit. And don't forget the traces of powder we found in the Collection room. They could very well be drug residue of some sort."

Devona shook her head. "I told you, Bloodborn handle drugs differently than humans. We don't get addicted. I suppose it's because the need for blood supersedes all other needs."

"Maybe," I allowed. "We'll just have to ask Varma when we find him, won't we?"

We continued walking down Sybarite Street and checked a couple more places, including the Freakatorium and, as Father Dis is my witness, a country vampire bar named Westerna's. I'll never forget the sight of vampires in cowboy hats, jeans, and boots line dancing – though I intend to spend the rest of my existence trying like hell.

Finally, we'd penetrated to the heart of the Sprawl, and one of the hottest of its hot spots: the Broken Cross. From the outside, it looks like any trendy Earth night club: all chrome, glass, and glitter. The only difference is the day-glo neon sign above the entrance; it looks like the sixties' peace symbol, only without the circle. An upside down and broken cross.

The street outside the club was completely jammed with people who wanted in. Half a block away was the closest we could get. I steered us toward a fluorescent street light, and we took up a position alongside it.

"Now what?" Devona asked. "Are you planning to introduce the Broken Cross's doorman to the wonders of instant hair loss or do you have yet another surprise in those pockets of yours?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." I reached into one of my jacket pockets and brought forth two of the most dangerous weapons in my entire arsenal – a string of firecrackers and my trusty lighter.

"Would you like to do the honors?" I offered.

She frowned, unsure of what I was up to, but she took the lighter and lit the firecrackers.

"Throw them as close to the entrance as you can," I instructed.

She heaved the firecrackers over the heads of the crowd and, thanks to her half-vampire strength, they fell within five feet of the entrance.

I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted, "The Hidden Light! They're attacking!"

And the pop-pop-pop of firecrackers exploding began. The sound wasn't very impressive, but then it didn't have to be, given what I'd just yelled. People screamed, shrieked, bellowed, and howled in fear, probably believing incendiary grenades were going off in their midst, or perhaps a hail of silver bullets rained down upon them. Whatever they thought, they had a single common desire: escape.

"Grab hold of the pole and don't let go!" I told Devona. We held tight as a panicking mass of Darkfolk and humans rushed past, nearly sweeping us away. We got battered pretty good, but we managed to hold on, if only barely.

Several minutes later, the street was clear.

Devona looked at me. "That wasn't very nice."

"Tell you what, you find me a blackboard, and I'll write, 'I'll never fake a terrorist attack again' a thousand times – after we find the Dawnstone." I started across the empty street and Devona followed, looking like she was trying hard not to laugh.

Inside, the party was going strong. Either word of the faux Hidden Light assault hadn't filtered into the club, or everyone was too high or drunk to care. I suspected the latter.

Techno-rave music throbbed and pulsed, the jams cranked out by Nekropolis's most sought-after DJ, the Phantom of the Paradise, and laser lights flashed in time with the beat. Beings of all sorts gyrated wildly on the dance floor, looking more like they were engaging in foreplay or ritualistic warfare – perhaps both – rather than dancing. Above their heads played out a holoshow depicting various scenes of torture. It looked as if MTV had produced a special on the Inquisition.

Though all of Nekropolis's many and varied types of Darkfolk were represented in the Broken Cross, the club was a favorite with Bloodborn, and they predominated tonight. One of the things about vampires, especially the younger ones, is that because of their supernatural healing abilities, they go in for the most extreme forms of entertainment. Not so much because they enjoy pain more than anyone else, but because of how much physical punishment they can take. For example, in one corner of the Broken Cross, a vampire who called himself Anklebiter – appropriately enough, since he appeared to be no more than three years old – was taking on all comers in a one-on-one, no-holds-barred mixed martial arts battle. Whoever was dumb enough to accept Anklebiter's challenge got to make the first move. Anklebiter then got the second, which was also usually the last. In another corner, a vampire wearing only a pair of black shorts stood with his back against the wall, while a group of enthusiastic knife throwers used him for target practice (no silver blades allowed, though).

Perhaps most disturbing of all was Mimi the Conflagration Artist. She danced naked in an iron cage that hung down from the ceiling above the middle of the dance floor, just below the holographic torture scenes. She thrashed and writhed along to the music while flames licked at her pale undead flesh. Before performing, she slathered her body with a chemical that kept the fire from burning too fast or too hot, so it wouldn't devour the flesh before her Bloodborn physiology could repair the damage. I'd had occasion to speak with her a time or two, and I'd once asked her if she enjoyed her work. She'd shrugged and replied, "At the risk of making a terrible pun, it's a living."

Devona leaned close to my ear and shouted in order to be heard over the racket. "How are we supposed to find Varma in this chaos?"

"The same way we've been doing: we start asking around."

I caught sight of Patchwork the Living Voodoo Doll on the dance floor, and I took Devona by the hand and led her over to him. Patchwork was gyrating bonelessly to the throbbing dance-club beat, arms and legs flopping about wildly. As his name implies, Patchwork is made up of cast-off scraps of cloth, all different sizes, patterns, and colors, and he has two large black buttons for eyes. I have no idea how he sees with those things, but then I also can't figure out how he can stand upright with no skeletal system.

Patchwork is a hair under six feet tall, and while he normally had dozens of hat pins sticking out of his body, he'd thoughtfully removed them before starting to dance. That, or he'd lost them all doing his whirling dervish act and they were scattered across the floor, or had become embedded in his fellow dancers.

The music was so loud that I had to lean close to Patchwork's ear – or at least where an ear would've been if he'd had one sewn on – and shout.

"Hey, Patch! I'm looking for a vampire named Varma!"

Patchwork shook his head. "Never heard of him, but you want me to put a hurt on him for you?" Patch's voice sounded like rustling cloth and came from a small flap of a mouth sewn into the bottom of his face. "Free of charge for you, Matt!"

Despite his somewhat whimsical appearance, Patchwork was one of the deadliest beings in Nekropolis. All he needed was a personal token of a target – a photo, a piece of clothing, or better yet a lock of hair or a nail clipping – and wherever he stabbed himself with his pins, his target felt the pain. Depending on his clients' wishes, Patchwork could simply annoy a target, make life miserable for him or her, temporarily or permanently disable them or – if he jabbed a long enough, sharp enough needle into the right place on his artificial body – kill them.

"I appreciate the offer, but I'm trying to locate Varma, not perforate him!" I shouted.

"Suit yourself! Let me know if you change your mind! You might ask Fade, though. I saw her over at the bar not too long ago!"

Then Patchwork spun away like a cloth top and lost himself in the pounding beat once more.

I turned to Devona. She was watching Patch's performance and bobbing her head from side to side in time with the music. Earlier, she told me she didn't get out of the Gothtown much. I wondered if what she'd really been saying was she didn't get out of the Cathedral often. It was quite possible she'd never been to a nightclub before. I felt the urge to start dancing with her, but I checked it. I knew we didn't have time to waste on such foolishness… plus I'd never been the greatest dancer when I was alive, and my damaged and swiftly rotting zombie body wasn't going to help that situation any.

I led Devona off the dance floor and we wended our way through the crowd and headed toward the bar. We found Fade deep in half-drunken conversation with a vampire named Ichorus. Outwardly Fade looked like a normal club-crawler – early twenties, petite, purple lipstick, dark green eyeshadow, long brunette hair past her waist, black combat boots, little black dress that fit her in all the right places, and a pair of barbed-wire hoop earrings that were almost as large as her head. Fade has a problem, however. She's reality-challenged. For reasons she keeps to herself, her existence is so tenuous that if she isn't careful to constantly reinforce her own reality, she's in danger of vanishing into nothingness, hence her nickname. So in order to ensure her survival she had to make sure to see and be seen, which was why she spent almost all her time club-hopping. The more time she spent alone, without anyone around to validate her existence, the more she risked fading away completely. That's also the reason she took a job as gossip columnist for the Daily Atrocity. Knowing everyone, whether they liked it or not, made her perfect for the job, and the more people that read her byline, the more anchored she was in reality.

She looked pretty solid right then. Descension Day was always a good time of year for her. Tons of people for her to interact with – and right now she was interacting with Ichorus.

One of the Accords that came out of the Blood Wars set limits on air travel in Nekropolis in order to make it more difficult for the Dark Lords to attempt sneak attacks across Dominion borders. No one is permitted to travel by air over Phlegethon, for example, and everyone – whether possessing the power of flight or not – has to use one of the Five Bridges to travel from one Dominion to another. Ichorus doesn't just hate the restriction imposed on air travel; he utterly loathes it and does everything he can to fight it.

He's a stereotypical vampire type: tall, lean, dark-haired, handsome. But what makes him stand out is the pair of huge ebon wings growing out of his back. The feathers are made of lightweight super-strong metal, and their edges are razor-sharp. Whether they're magical or some kind of technological augmentation, I don't know. Ichorus goes shirtless because he refuses to constrain his wings, so he wears only a pair of black pants. No shoes either, but I don't know if that's because it helps him fly or he just doesn't like shoes. His chest is covered with dozens of criss-crossing scars, the result of numerous less-than-welcome receptions he gets from flying throughout the Dominions in defiance of the Accords. Since he's a vampire and can heal any injury, his scars are a testament to how seriously the Darklords take anyone transgressing on their airspace – and how strongly they and their servants will fight to stop him. But Ichorus still flies on, undeterred in his endless quest to defy authority.

We approached the pair and asked them about Varma. Ichorus didn't know him, but of course Fade did; she knew everyone, as a matter of self-preservation, if nothing else. But she hadn't seen him tonight.

"Go check with Shrike," she said. "I was talking to him earlier over by the VR booths." She gestured vaguely toward the other side of the club. I thanked her and reached out and briefly patted her arm. She smiled gratefully. Talking with people helps her maintain reality, but I knew that being touched helped her more.

Before Devona and I could walk away, Ichorus said, "I've got a big flight planned next week, Matt! I've heard rumors of an invisible moon that orbits around Umbriel, and I'm going off in search of it! Should be quite an adventure!"

Fade grinned at him. "Should make quite an article for the Atrocity."

Devona looked at me and raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Don't look at me. I've never heard anything about a moon in Nekropolis, invisible or otherwise." I turned back to Ichorus, shook his hand, wished him luck, and then Devona and I went off in search of Shrike. True to Fade's word, we found him by the Mind's Eye virtual reality booths.

Despite Shrike's chronological age, which I had no way of knowing, he resembled a skinny boy in his teens. His hair was a wild tangle of black the same shade as his deliberately ragged t-shirt and pre-torn jeans. He was talking on his handvox, everpresent cigarette in his mouth. As he exhaled, he became transparent, solidifying again only when he took his next puff. Handvoxes have the same basic design as Earth cellphones, except they're made – or maybe grown – from flesh. There's an ear for you to speak into, and a mouth that relays the words of whoever is on the other end, and which speaks in their voice, too. I find the damned things more than a little disconcerting, especially when the person on the other end tries to make the vox's mouth kiss, lick, or even bite you. That's why I hardly ever use mine.

Shrike saw us approaching, shut his handvox, and tucked it into his pants pocket. He grinned, displaying his elongated canines.

"Matt!" He had to shout to be heard over the din. "What the hell are you doing here? This isn't exactly your kind of scene." Then he looked at Devona, ran his gaze along her body from foot to head, and back again. "Wow. Your taste in friends is definitely improving, my man."

"Shrike, this is Devona Kanti. Devona, this is Shrike."

"Lord Galm's kid? Cool." He took a battered pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and held it out to Devona. "Want one?"

Devona shook her head. "No thanks."

I noticed the brand: Coffin Nails.

I nodded toward the pack. "The name's a cute touch."

He grinned again. "I like to think so," and put the pack back in his pocket.

I don't know why he carries the pack around. In all the time I've known him, I've never seen his cigarette burn down, no matter how many drags he takes on it.

"What's up, Matt? You've got to be working a case. I can't imagine any other reason why you'd be here." He leaned toward Devona as if about to confide a secret. "The man's sense of fun is as dead as the rest of him." Then he looked at me and frowned. "Say, you all right, Matt? You're not looking too fresh, if you know what I mean." He pointed to the wounds on my face.

If I was alive, I could've run my fingers over my cuts to check their condition. As it was, I'd just have to wait until I came across a mirror. But from Shrike's comment, I doubted they looked very good. Injuries don't hurt zombies, but they do tend to start rotting before the rest of the body.

"You're not looking all that hot yourself, kid," I said. "Maybe you should think about trying the nicotine patch."

Shrike grinned. He always gets a huge kick out of my calling him kid. Probably because he's a hell of a lot older than he looks.

He put an arm around my shoulder and addressed Devona. "If it wasn't for this guy, I wouldn't be here today. Hell, I wouldn't be anywhere today! I love this guy!" and then he planted a loud, wet kiss on my cheek, despite its less-than-attractive condition.

"Get off of me, you lunatic!" I said good-naturedly as I shoved him away.

Devona laughed. "Another favor?" she asked me.

I nodded. "Shrike got himself into trouble over at the House of Dark Delights a while back."

"One of their girls accused me of making her Bloodborn without her permission. I was innocent, but it took Matthew to prove it. Good thing, too. Madam Benedetta was so mad, she'd sicced a Soulsucker on me." He frowned. "Or was it Master Benedict who did it? Whichever. I still get nervous when I think about it." He took a long drag on his cigarette, his hand shaking slightly.

Me too. Defeating a Soulsucker isn't easy. I still have a few psychic scars left over from that battle.

"So what can I do you for, Matt?" Shrike said, cheerful again. "You name it, you got it."

I removed one of the evidence envelopes from my jacket and handed it to him. "Know what this stuff is?"

He opened the envelope, stuck his finger inside, and brought out a couple of the white grains I'd gathered in Lord Galm's Collection chamber. He smelled them, then took his omnipresent cigarette out of his mouth and gingerly touched his finger to his tongue.

His reaction was immediate. "Jesus Christ!" As soon as the holy name passed his lips, his mouth burst into flame.

I grabbed a beer out of the claw of a demon at a nearby table and splashed Shrike in the face, hoping to douse the fire. It worked: the flames died, leaving Shrike's lips charred and his tongue blackened.

"I've told you before, kid, you've got to be careful what you say when you're upset!"

The demon had risen from his chair, and was coming toward me, his leathery gray lizard hide turning battle-angry red. I tossed a couple darkgems at him – her? it? who could tell? – to pay for another beer and that ended the matter.

"Do oo know what dis stuff is?" Shrike said as best he could with his ravaged mouth.

"No, that's why I asked."

He looked around to see if anyone was listening, then leaned forward. "It's veinburn." He leaned back. "Ashully, it's prolly a good thin' I swore. Maybe burned ou' the shit 'efore it got inna my shystem."

"C'mon, Shrike, it was only a couple grains."

He took a puff on his cigarette, and while his mouth didn't heal all the way, it improved noticeably. I bet the Surgeon General would've been surprised to see that.

"It doesn't take much to get you hooked." His speech was a little clearer, too. "Where'd you get it?"

"Never mind. Is it new? I've never heard of it before."

"New and nasty. It's really strong and highly addictive – even for Bloodborn."

Bingo. Sometimes I love being a detective – doing favors for people. "Who produces it?"

"I don't know. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Dominari have a piece of that particular action."

"Makes sense." I said. "I've got another question for you."

"Shoot." Shrike's mouth was almost completely healed now, just singed a little around the edges.

"You seen a vampire named Varma tonight?"

"Varma? You mean the one who's Lord Galm's bloodchild, right? Yeah, sure. He was out on the dance floor last I saw him. That was probably, oh, an hour ago, maybe less."

"Think you could make a quick circuit of the club for me, see if he's still here?"

"Sure. Be back in a minute." He took a deep drag on his cigarette, became solid, and blew out a long stream of gray-white smoke, his body turning transparent as the smoke left his lungs and then fading altogether until he was gone. The smoke Shrike had blown out wafted purposefully toward the dance floor.

"That's his travel form?" Devona asked. "Interesting."

"Yeah, Shrike's got his own style, that's for sure."

She leaned close to me so I could hear her better over the music. "I've been thinking. I have an idea of how Varma might have been able to get into the Collection chamber and past the wardspell on the Dawnstone."

"Go on."

"Even though Varma isn't biologically Lord Galm's child, the transference of blood necessary to turn a human into a vampire makes him Galm's son in a metaphysical sense. It's possible that since the door to the chamber and the wardspell both are keyed to recognize and permit access only to Lord Galm, they could be made to recognize someone who shares the same blood – provided this someone had the right magical help."

"Are you sure?"

"Remember, I'm no mage; I was taught only enough magic to monitor the spells on the Collection chamber. But from what I understand, it might be possible."

The way things were going, the Dawnstone would be back in Lord Galm's Collection before he returned from the Renewal Ceremony. Devona would hang on to her position and her dignity, and maybe, just maybe, she could convince her father to help me stave off my dissolution.

I should've known better. Life – and death – is never so easy.

"Matthew Richter?"

I turned around. "Yes?"

Before me stood a tall raven-haired woman in a red mini dress. She might have been pretty if her features hadn't been so sharp, her expression severe. Her eyebrows met in the middle. A sure sign she was a lyke.

"My name is Thokk. Honani and I were littermates."

Her dress ripped away as she began to change.

ELEVEN

Thokk was a mixblood, like Honani, but where he'd turned out a hodgepodge mess, whoever engineered her had done the job right. She was primarily lupine, the most common wildform for lykes. After all, as Waldemar once told me, the word lycanthrope comes from the Greek: lykoi for wolf and anthropos for man. But the term, and its abbreviated version, lyke, has become common parlance for any of the shapeshifters under Lord Amon's rule. Still, Thokk displayed signs of other animals in her mixblood lineage too – her stomach was hairless and scaled, resembling a snake's, and her gray fur held a greenish tint. Her eyes were reptilian as well, cold and staring, and when she opened her canine jaws, long, curved fangs sprang forward, glistening with venom.

"You killed Honani, zombie." Her barely intelligible voice was a deep growl with a slight hiss to it.

I was aware of the club-goers around us abandoning their tables, having decided that being in my proximity at the moment wasn't conducive to their continued good health. I didn't blame them.

"Technically speaking, he's not dead," I pointed out. "His body's still alive." I was uncomfortably aware that I still was carrying the soul jar containing Honani's spirit in one of my jacket pockets.

Thokk pulled her head back and in a single liquid motion, jerked forward and spit a stream of venom into my eyes. If I'd been alive, the venom probably would've started me shrieking, perhaps cause me to fall to the floor in agony and Thokk would've moved in to finish me off. But I felt nothing and calmly wiped the venom away with my tie. My vision was a trifle blurry, but it was nothing I couldn't deal with.

"What good is the body if the soul is gone?" She swayed back and forth, her torso undulating bonelessly.

"According to some folks, zombies don't have souls, and I feel just fine," I countered. "Besides, Honani's body does have a soul. It just happens to be a new one."

For a second I considered offering to give Thokk the soul jar which contained her brother's spirit, thinking it might placate her. But then I realized she'd probably attempt to return it to its original body, evicting Kyra from her new home. I couldn't allow that.

"Your littermate was a killer, Thokk, and he got what he deserved," I said. "End of story. Now why don't you leave, unless you'd like some of the same?"

She hissed and came at me.

I reached under my jacket and drew the 9mm from my shoulder holster. The gun was loaded with silver bullets, but one would be all I needed to take care of Thokk. I aimed and started to squeeze the trigger.

But I was too slow. Thokk's arm lashed out and she smacked the gun out of my hand, sending it tumbling through the air toward the suddenly deserted dance floor. The Phantom of the Paradise remained at his station, though, to keep the throbbing dance beat going, either because he was too caught up in his work to flee or because he wanted to provide some appropriate background music for my battle with Thokk. Thoughtful of the bastard, wasn't it?

I reached into my jacket, but Thokk was on me before I could pull forth anything from my dwindling supply of surprises, slamming into me and coiling her python-supple arms around my midsection, pinning my arms to my sides. She lifted me off the floor and began squeezing.

I felt pressure, but no pain. I couldn't breathe, but all that meant to me was that I couldn't pull in any air to make my voice work. Still, I was concerned. If she snapped my spine, I'd survive, but I'd be unable to walk. And after I was immobilized, it would be a simple matter for her to take my head in her hands and crush my skull. Once my brain was destroyed, no amount of preservative spells, no matter how powerful, could restore me.

I was wracking my dead excuse for a brain, trying to get it to come up with a brilliant plan that would, if not defeat Thokk, at least get me out of her clutches, when a gurgling sound came from deep inside me, and I remembered the beer that had been sitting in my dead stomach since I'd dealt with Honani at Skully's.

You picked the wrong zombie to squeeze tonight, Thokk, I thought, and then a gout of sour-smelling fluid jetted out of my mouth and struck Thokk in the face.

The lyke roared with fury, but she didn't drop me as I'd hoped. Instead she gripped me tighter and opened her mouth wide. I doubted she was going to try to eat me; most lykes can't stand the taste of dead meat, unless they have scavenger wildforms. More likely she intended to get a solid grip on my head with her teeth and then rip it off my shoulders.

I watched helplessly as her mouth descended, and then she stopped, stiffened, and shrieked. Her arms uncoiled, dumping me to the floor, and I saw what was happening. Devona had leaped onto the lyke's back and was tearing into the beast's neck with her own teeth. Thokk's arms curled over her shoulder, grabbed Devona, yanked her off, and threw her forward – into me, just as I was starting to rise.

We went down in a tangle of undead and half-undead limbs. Thokk advanced on us, the ragged neck wound Devona had inflicted already healing.

With vampiric grace and speed, Devona disengaged herself from me and stood before Thokk, fingers touching her temples.

"Stop," she said in an even, measured voice.

Thokk hesitated.

"Leave this place now," Devona continued. "Go."

Devona had told me she had a certain amount of magical training, and now it seemed she was attempting to use her abilities to influence Thokk's mind. At first, it looked like Devona's plan was going to work. Thokk stopped coming toward us. She lowered her hands to her sides and seemed about to turn away, but then she chuckled – the sound like a snake's rattle – reared back, and spat venom into Devona's face. Devona screamed and frantically began wiping at the poison, trying to get it out of her eyes.

Thokk knocked Devona aside easily and came stomping toward me once more. But I'd had enough time to fish a small metal box out of my jacket. I flipped open the lid, stood, and flung the contents at Thokk's muzzle.

Her eyes teared up instantly and she began wheezing.

"Powdered wolfsbane," I said. "Never leave the grave without it."

Her eyes began swelling shut and her wheezing took on a more desperate, labored tone. Her throat was closing. I allowed myself to feel smug. All lykes are allergic to wolfsbane to some degree, some more so than others. But it appeared Thokk–

I stopped my self-congratulating in mid-thought. Thokk's breathing became easier and the swelling around her eyes lessened. Her mixblood physiology was counteracting the effects of the wolfsbane. Like I said, whoever designed her had done it right.

I had nothing left in my bag – or rather jacket – of tricks that would stop her. I glanced toward the dance floor. I doubted I could reach to my gun before Thokk recovered. But I had to try.

I started toward the dance floor, running as best I could in the slow, stiff-legged way we zombies have and hoped that it would take just a few more seconds for Thokk to fully throw off the effects of the wolfsbane.

My hope was in vain. Claws raked the right side of my head, knocking me to the floor.

"I'm going to shred you to gobbets for that," Thokk said, her voice hoarse and thick with mucus. "Very, very slowly."

I rolled over to face her. After all, dead or not, a man should look his fate straight in the eye.

She lifted her clawed hands to strike, disturbing a cloud of smoke hovering over her head. And then the smoke darted toward her mouth and curled down her throat.

Thokk howled in agony, and thrashed about as if her every nerve was on fire. She coughed up a gout of blood and crashed to the floor, rolling back and forth, her limbs flailing spastically. But finally her exertions slowed and then ceased altogether.

A moment later tendrils of smoke wafted from her mouth and coalesced into the form of Shrike, his ever-present cigarette the last thing to solidify.

He took a drag and exhaled. "Did you know you can do a lot of damage by partially solidifying inside someone?"

"Do tell." I hauled my undead carcass to its feet. "Is she dead?"

"Nah, not even the kind of damage I did to her can kill a lyke. But I bet she's not going to be moving too fast for a few weeks. Unless, of course, someone does something about her first." He nodded toward my gun.

It was tempting. Thokk had tried to kill me, and would no doubt try again when she recovered. And it wasn't like anyone would try to stop me. But that wasn't the way I operated.

I shook my head. "Why don't you retrieve the gun while I see to Devona?" Without waiting for Shrike to reply, I turned and headed back toward my client – I mean, the person who I was doing a favor for.

Devona knelt on the floor, her face cradled in her hands.

"Are you okay?"

"Not exactly. I'm blind."

I helped her stand and kept a hand on her elbow to steady her. She took her hands away from her face, but she kept her eyes shut tight.

She took in a hiss of breath. "Dis, but it hurts!"

I didn't know what to say. I'd been human for most of my existence, and in that time I'd known my share of pain. You'd think I'd remember what it was like to hurt. And I do, sort of, but the memory's hazy, indistinct, like a memory of a memory. I suppose a lot of people would've been grateful for that. But it made me feel cut off from Devona, distant, as if we were at the moment inhabiting two vastly different worlds, and there was no bridging the gap between them.

Shrike came up, holding my gun gingerly by the butt with two fingers – like shapeshifters, vampires aren't especially fond of silver. He was carrying a glass in the other hand: a glass filled with thick red liquid – and I doubted it was aqua sanguis. He handed me the gun, then offered the glass to Devona, saying, "Drink; it'll help."

Her nostrils flared as she picked up the scent of blood, the real thing. She reached out and Shrike placed the glass in her hand. She brought it to her lips, but then hesitated.

At first I couldn't figure out why she wouldn't drink. And then it hit me. Though being half human was a negative to most Bloodborn, it was important to Devona, maybe even a secret source of pride for her. And humans didn't drink blood.

"Go on," I said. "Shrike's right, it'll help."

She hesitated a second more, but then drank, slowly at first, but then with increasing enthusiasm, gulping down the last few swallows.

Devona shuddered as if she'd just downed a glassful of hard liquor and couldn't stand the taste. A few moments went by, during which a couple lykes came forward. From the way they glared at me and snarled, I thought they were going to cause trouble, and I wasn't sure I was up to it just then. But the lykes merely took hold of Thokk by the arms and hauled her out of the club, probably to take her back to the Wyldwood so she could convalesce. Soon the noise level in the club returned to normal and people were back on the floor, dancing. No one bothered to wipe up the blood Thokk had vomited. Perhaps they thought it added to the club's ambience.

Devona gingerly opened her eyes. She blinked a few times, and then smiled. "Much better."

Like lykes, vampires heal fast, but only if they've fed recently. Otherwise their wounds don't heal any faster than a human's.

I holstered my gun and then turned to Shrike. "Thanks for taking care of the lyke. I owe you one, kid."

"Hardly. I've got a few hundred more favors to do for you before we're close to being even." Shrike grinned. "Besides, it was fun."

"That kind of fun I can do without, thank you." I turned back to Devona. "And thank you for jumping into the fray too."

"What for? All I did was manage to get myself blinded."

"If you hadn't attacked when you did, Thokk probably would've squeezed me in two. And what was that other thing you tried? It looked like you were casting a spell on her or something."

"Remember when I told you I can't assume a travel form but had other talents? Besides my minor skill with magic, I also possess some rudimentary psychic abilities, as half Bloodborn often do. Not that they did anyone much good today. All I did was make Thokk hesitate."

"When you're fighting for you life, sometimes that's enough," I said.

"That's nice of you to say, but I still–" She broke off and frowned. "Matt, are you missing an ear?"

Shrike snapped his fingers. "Almost forgot!" He reached into the pocket of his jeans and brought out a grayish-colored ear. "Found this on the floor, not too far from your gun. Thokk must've torn it off you sometime during the fight."

I brushed my hair back and felt the open dry wound where my right ear had been. "Probably happened when she knocked me down the last time." I took my ear from Shrike and, without any place better to put it, stuck it in one of my jacket's handy pockets.

"Won't you lose it if you don't get it reattached right away?" Devona asked, concerned.

"Maybe not. An ear isn't all that complicated, not like an arm. It'll keep longer." I had no idea if that was true or not, but I didn't have time to bother with one ear, not when I had the survival of the rest of my body to worry about.

That reminded me of why we'd come to the Broken Cross in the first place.

"Shrike, did you spot Varma?"

"In all the excitement, I forgot you were looking for him. Yeah, I found him. He was sitting alone at a table in the back, looking like he was higher than Umbriel." He turned and pointed. "Right over–" Pointed to an empty table. "He was there just a minute ago, I swear to Christ! OW!"

I sighed as Shrike's mouth sizzled. He'd never learn.

Varma had probably cut out when Thokk attacked. I doubt he recognized me, but he surely recognized Devona. He didn't have much of a head start on us, though.

"How are you feeling?" I asked Devona.

"Well enough; let's go."

I thanked Shrike again, but he was too busy frantically slapping his tongue in an attempt to extinguish the flames. Devona and I headed for the table Varma had until only recently occupied – the one next to the door marked EXIT.

The door opened onto a trash-strewn alley.

"Which way?" Devona asked.

I pointed left. "But there's no need to hurry. Not anymore."

Lying face down on the ground not twenty feet away, surrounded by a massive pool of blood, was the body of a redheaded male.

Varma.

TWELVE

I was pretty sure Varma was dead, but I looked to Devona – and her heightened senses – for confirmation. She nodded, her eyes moist with tears. I was surprised; I'd thought there was no love lost between Devona and her "cousin."

Nekropolis has more than its fair share of scavengers. Stray dogs and cats brought from Earth as pets and then abandoned and left to fend for themselves. The poor animals often end up mutating into bizarre and dangerous forms upon repeated exposure to the strange magics coursing through the city. And there are rats, of courses, far larger and meaner than back home, if nowhere near the size and ferocity of vermen. But there are a number of home-grown varieties as well. Carrion imps are tiny, primitive versions of ghouls that scuttle about in their endless quest to fill their bellies with dead flesh. I can't tell you how many times I've been meditating in my bedroom and opened my eyes to find one or more of the little bastards gnawing on me. Leech vine is a vampiric plant that grows on buildings, especially in the Sprawl where no one bothers to kill it. There was some growing on the walls of the alley, but I wasn't worried about it. Leech vine doesn't move; it's only dangerous if you're foolish enough to brush up against it – and once it has you, if you can't escape fast enough, it'll drain you dry just as fast as a flesh vampire.

But one scavenger always gave me pause. It was one of the deadliest of the city's bottom feeders, and a prime specimen was standing at the edge of the blood pool on four tiny legs, lapping daintily at the gore.

"What is that horrid thing?" Devona cried, and started toward the small creature, intending to scare it away from Varma's body. I grabbed hold of her arm to keep her back.

"Don't. That's a chiranha. It's alone, but if it calls for its pack, we're done for."

She looked at me with disbelief. "You can't be serious! It's so tiny!"

The creature under discussion raised its head, glared at us with beady black eyes, and let out a soft, high-pitched growl. It resembled a small dog with short tan fur blended with fish scales, and its mouth was filled with rows of razor-sharp triangular teeth.

"Chiranha are either someone's idea of a sick joke or the result of some very unnatural evolution, but either way, the damned things are dangerous as hell. Believe it or not, they're a hybrid of chihuahua and piranha fish. They may look harmless at first glance, even adorable in their way, but get them in a pack, and they can strip the flesh from your bones within seconds. I once saw a pack take down a sasquatch – the poor sonofabitch didn't even have time to scream."

"Use your gun," she said. "Fire a bullet in the air to scare it away."

"The little fuckers are fearless," I said. "Besides, I doubt he'd even hear the gunshot with all the noise coming from Sybarite Street. I could shoot him, but the one thing guaranteed to bring a pack of chiranha faster than a bark from one of their own is the smell of chiranha blood. They tend not to eat vampire flesh – not unless they're really hungry, that is. Let's just wait a minute. With any luck, this one will decide to go seek his dinner elsewhere."

The chiranha growled at us a few seconds longer, before leaning down to sniff Varma's blood once more. Then after giving us a parting glare to let us know it wasn't afraid of us, the chiranha turned and padded off down the alley in the other direction.

"All right. It should be safe to approach now."

I moved forward to examine Varma's body, trying not to step in blood, unable to avoid it. He was thin, and shorter than I'd imagined. I realized that somehow I'd expected him to resemble Galm, even though he wasn't the Darklord's biological child. He was dressed in the white silken weave of spidermesh, a fashion popular in Nekropolis at the time, and one with partially technological origins – a rebellion against his bloodsire? Or just the latest in a series of trends he'd followed over the centuries? Or maybe he'd just liked the way it felt; Devona had said he was a hedonist.

From the back, there appeared to be no marks on the body to account for so much blood. I put my hands under Varma, intending to roll him over, but my damaged right arm refused to cooperate. I had no choice but to ask Devona to help me.

She did so, fighting tears, but when Varma's blood-smeared face was revealed, she lost the battle and sobbed.

His skin was bone-white, dry, and brittle like the cast-off husk of a cicada. He stared lifelessly, eyes wide, whites completely red, pupils dilated so much they were practically nonexistent. His skin was white as polished bone. Dry, cracked lips had pulled away from his teeth to reveal sickly gray gum. The inside of his desiccated mouth was caked with blood-soaked clumps of whitish powder. Veinburn.

No sign of a wound on his front, either. I looked more closely.

"He overdosed on veinburn, didn't he?" Devona asked as she wiped tears from her eyes. "When one of the Bloodborn's blood supply is contaminated beyond the power of his system to cleanse it, his body casts it out – all of it – and unless he can replenish it within moments, he dies."

"I didn't know vampires could die of blood loss. Interesting."

She looked at me as if I had just slapped her. When she spoke, I thought she might yell at me, though I had no idea why she would want to. But all she said was, "It's very rare."

"Shrike said veinburn was an extremely powerful drug, but I'm not sure Varma did this to himself."

"What do you mean?"

"The veinburn in his mouth. You said a vampire's blood is poisoned, he has to get rid of it. I assume it would be vomited out."

Devona's expression became steely, and she wiped away the last of her tears. "Primarily."

"Then why is there veinburn left in his mouth? Wouldn't the blood have washed it away?"

Devona glared at me. She was obviously upset with me, but I still didn't know why. "Perhaps it had been in his stomach and became lodged there, perhaps after he fell forward onto his face."

"Maybe, but then why is it still partially white? With the all the blood Varma brought up, the veinburn should be completely soaked. And there are these." I turned Varma's forearm so Devona could see the five tiny puckered marks arranged in a half circle.

"They look like needle marks," she said.

"They sure do, don't they?"

"So perhaps Varma injected the veinburn."

"Then why is there some caked in his mouth? And where's the needle? There isn't one lying around, and spidermesh is skin tight; no room for pockets. Not that Varma needed them. I assume that as the bloodchild of a Darklord, he could charge whatever he wanted to Galm's account – when he just didn't get things handed to him free, that is. In my experience, addicts don't usually vary how they ingest drugs. There's more than one reason they're called drug habits." I ran a finger over one of the marks. Why, I don't know; it wasn't like I could feel it. "And these marks are fresh. All of them."

"That merely means that Varma died before they could begin to heal."

"Which means he died fast. And that he injected quite a bit of veinburn into himself at one time. Literally one time, for if he'd given himself five shots with one needle, the first mark would've started to heal before the last was made."

Devona's eyes widened in comprehension. "Unless it had been some time since Varma had fed, the first mark would've fully healed before he made the fifth."

I glanced at the pool of blood surrounding us. "I think it's safe to say it hasn't been that long since his last meal."

Devona's lips tightened, but she didn't respond.

"So if the first mark is as fresh as the last, that means Varma was injected by five different needles at the same time. And I doubt even the bloodchild of a Darklord is talented enough to do that – and then make the needles disappear the instant before he dies. No, Varma was killed. Probably to keep him from revealing what happened to the Dawnstone." I looked up and down the alley. "No tracks. Whoever injected Varma took off before he started puking." Too bad; I could have used an easy-to-follow set of bloody footprints just then.

I stood. "Damn it!" I swore in frustration. With Varma dead, and no clues as to who killed him, I didn't know what to do next.

And then I saw a tiny black shape I hadn't noticed before scuttle quickly away along the surface of the alley wall. A roach. Or something so close to a roach as to make no difference.

I knew then what we could do – if I was willing to risk it, that is. But given Papa Chatha's prognosis for my survival, what choice did I have?

Time to pay Gregor a visit.

"C'mon, Devona. We need to talk to someone."

"Talk – Matthew, Varma's dead. We have to take care of him."

"Take care… what are you talking about? He's dead; for real this time. There's nothing we can do for him now."

"We can not leave him lying in an alley like discarded refuse," she said tightly.

"Well, we can't very well take him with us. Even in Nekropolis, carrying a bloody corpse around attracts attention. Besides, you didn't seem to care very much for him when I made the mistake of calling him your brother. In fact, you seemed quite offended."

"Varma was not especially kind to me, it's true. But he was related to me, after a fashion. He was family. And besides, you just don't leave a person to rot in an alley when he dies – it just isn't right!"

"Now I know you don't get out of the Cathedral much. Most of the people in this city would do just that and not think twice about it. Hell, I doubt they'd even think once about it."

"I'm not most people. But I guess you are, eh?"

"What are you insinuating?"

"I can't believe how cold you're being, Matt. The way you didn't blink an eye when we found Varma… examined him as if he were just a piece a meat. He was alive and now he's dead. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Doesn't it do anything to you?"

"I'm a zombie, Devona. And zombies don't feel emotions, at least not the same way–"

"Normal zombies don't think, either; they only do what their masters tell them too. But you think just fine. If you don't feel anything, perhaps it doesn't have anything to do with your being a zombie. Perhaps that's who Matthew Richter really is – a man who was dead inside long before he died on the outside."

She pushed past me and ran out of the alley. I just stood and watched her go, her words having hurt me in a way I didn't think I could be hurt anymore. I told myself I'd only been doing my job, had been focused on trying to help Devona and prevent my final end.

Maybe she was right, maybe I should have, could have, felt more. But Christ, I was a cop for twenty years, and in that time I saw more cruelty, despair, and death than I can remember. You had to become numb eventually to survive, to get through the day without losing it, climbing up a water tower, and taking potshots at pedestrians. All cops knew it; it was part of the price you paid when you signed on to serve and protect.

But human beings aren't machines: they can't turn off their emotions at work and then turn them on once they get home. So they get into the habit of leaving them off all the time. That's why so many cops are divorced, like me. Or end up substance abusers or suicides.

Maybe Devona was right; maybe I had been a zombie long before I came to Nekropolis.

I looked down at Varma, and tried to feel something – sadness, pity, disgust. But I didn't feel anything. I hadn't known Varma. But I did know Devona.

I bent down and, as best I could with my bum right arm, I lifted him over my shoulder and carried him out of the alley.

Devona didn't say anything when I caught up with her. We walked in silence, making our way through the crowds in the street as best we could. I had been wrong about one thing: no one paid any attention to us. Since it was the Descension celebration, I guess everyone assumed that we were escorting a friend who'd ingested a little too much fun. That, or they had ingested a little too much of their own and didn't give a damn about anything except remaining upright.

I didn't know what Devona expected us to do with the body. If we took Varma back to the Cathedral – to Lord Galm – that would be the end of our investigation. Galm would learn of the Dawnstone's theft, punish Devona (and perhaps blame her for not informing him about the Dawnstone earlier so that he could have taken steps to prevent his son's death), and in a day or two I'd be a pile of Kellogg's Zombie Flakes. Unless Lord Galm in his anger decided to destroy Devona and me on the spot.

Preoccupied with these cheery thoughts, I almost didn't notice when Devona held up a hand for me to stop. She pointed to a hulking gray figure stomping unimpeded down the street as if the crowd didn't exist.

"Sentinel!" she called out.

The faceless – and for that matter earless – golem stopped, and then turned in our direction. It regarded us for several seconds before heading toward us with its stiff-legged gait, parting the crowd before it like the Moses of ambulatory clay.

It stopped and regarded us with whatever sensory apparatus it possessed. It looked like every other Sentinel I'd ever seen, save that this one had faint line about nine inches long down the middle of its chest. Probably a souvenir left by one of Nekropolis's more powerful – and foolish – denizens resisting arrest.

"My friend and I found this man," she indicated Varma, "in the alley behind the Broken Cross. We believe he died of a drug overdose."

The Sentinel stood impassively for a moment and then pointed with a thick finger at the ground. The message was clear; I set Varma down. The Sentinel bent forward from the waist as if hinged, and examined the body. At least, I assumed it examined the body. I had no real way of telling for certain.

When it was satisfied, the Sentinel straightened and pointed down the street. Again, the message was unmistakable. We were free to go.

If I'd been alive, I'd have probably had to release a relieved breath. There had been a good chance that the Sentinel might've wanted to take us to the Nightspire for questioning by an Adjudicator. Maybe there was too much going on during the Descension festival for the Sentinel to bother. Even in Nekropolis, where the police force had been mystically manufactured, there weren't enough cops to go around.

I nodded, one cop to another, and we got the hell out of there before the Sentinel could change its mind. When we were halfway down the street, I looked back to see that the Sentinel had slung Varma's body over its shoulder and was moving off in the opposite direction – toward the Nightspire.

"The Adjudicators will eventually identify Varma, and then inform Lord Galm," Devona said. "And Father will claim the body and see that it's laid to rest." She sounded relieved.

"Then you intend to continue searching for the Dawnstone?"

"Of course. Whatever gave you the idea I wanted to stop?"

Human, vampire, or a combination of the two – sometimes women just didn't make any sense to me.

"Oh, and Matt? Thanks." She smiled gratefully.

It was one of the best smiles I'd ever been favored with. "Sure. And now we need to find a way to–"

I was interrupted by the loud blat-blat-blat of some idiot leaning on a car horn.

Across the street, parked halfway on the sidewalk, was a cab.

"Hey!" Lazlo shouted. "You two need a ride?"

THIRTEEN

"Are you out of your worm-eaten mind?" Lazlo shouted as he swerved to avoid a being that resembled a pair of giant Siamese frogs.

"I've gone through Glamere a couple times since my run-in with Talaith," I said. "And you've taken me on nearly every occasion. We got through okay then."

"That's because of my finely honed driving skills and a hell of a lot of luck." Lazlo roared across the Bridge of Nine Sorrows, taking us from the Sprawl and back into Gothtown. "But luck doesn't hold forever, Matt – and you've used more than your fair share over the last couple years."

"Life's a gamble, Lazlo." Especially when you might only have a day or two of it left. "The case I'm working on is stalled, and I need Gregor to give it a jump start. Besides, if you think about it, this is the safest time for me to cross Glamere. Talaith is undoubtedly conserving her strength for the Renewal Ceremony. She won't have the time – or the energy – to worry about me."

"Maybe," the demon allowed, "but if your bones end up hanging on a wall in Woodhome, don't say I didn't warn you."

"Duly noted." I sat back against the seat and turned to Devona. "Maybe you should think about letting us drop you off before we get to Glamere. If Talaith detects my presence, things will get very ugly, very fast."

"I understand the risk involved, but I still want to go. It's my problem we're trying to solve, after all. And I've never been to Glamere or the Boneyard. Besides," – she paused – "I think we make a good team."

I smiled. "I think you're right."

We didn't say much more after that, just sat, gripped the armrests, and prayed that Lazlo wouldn't swerve off the Obsidian Way and slam us into a building. After a time, we drew near the Bridge of Shattered Dreams, the entrance to Glamere. As we drove across, I hoped the bridge's name wouldn't turn out to an omen of things to come.

Glamere – the Dominion of the Arcane, the magic workers of Nekropolis – is a series of medieval villages nestled in a bucolic countryside. The buildings range from simple huts and shacks to wood-and-stone houses with thatched roofs. Nearly every house has a garden full of herbs, flowers, and plants, some recognizable, most not… and some which sway and undulate as if more than just exotic-looking vegetables. Emblazoned on the outside of each building, sometimes in crude soot-drawn lines, sometimes in elaborately painted colors, are an infinite array of hex signs. I couldn't decipher any of them, so I asked Devona.

"I only recognize those that serve as wardspells," she said. "As to the rest, your guess is as good as mine."

The roads in Glamere are little more than unpaved wagon routes for the most part, but since we were traveling on the Obsidian Way, our ride was smooth and we made good time. We often saw fires in the distance, probably surrounded by chanting witches and warlocks celebrating the Descension in their own pagan way. Besides producing most of the city's spells, potions, and magic devices, Glamere was also the primary farming center, and on a normal day we might have run into (literally, with Lazlo driving) ox-drawn carts full of produce or herds of animals being brought in from pasture. But this was Descension Day. No one was working and aside from Lazlo's cab, the Obsidian Way was thankfully deserted.

If I'd been alive I would have been holding my breath ever since we'd crossed over into Talaith's Dominion. But we were halfway across Glamere – or at least I thought we were; it's hard to judge distance since there are no road markers or prominent landmarks – and nothing had happened yet. I actually allowed myself to start thinking this was going to be the easiest part of the case yet.

Stupid of me.

Lightning flashed across the sky, startling me. Not because I'm afraid of storms, but because Nekropolis normally doesn't have weather. No sun, only Umbriel's eternal shadowlight, no heat, no rain, no snow – nothing except wind, and never very strong at that. No, this lightning wasn't natural. And that could only mean one thing.

"Talaith's aware of us," I said. Thunder rumbled from somewhere off in the distance, probably originating from Woodhome.

"How?" Devona asked. "She should be husbanding her power for the ceremony!"

"Maybe she doesn't care," Lazlo said. "And by the way, Matt, I told you so."

"Get exorcised," I snapped. "How much farther do we have to go until we reach the Boneyard?" Darklords don't directly use their powers in another Lord's Dominion – not unless they want serious trouble from Dis. I knew if we could make it to the Boneyard before Talaith attacked, we would be safe. Hopefully.

"Too far," Lazlo answered. He stomped on the pedal, and the cab, which had already been doing what seemed to me close to the speed of sound, accelerated.

Go as fast as you like, Richter, said a smug, slimy voice in my head. It won't do you any good.

More lightning. And the thunder which followed was closer this time.

You're mad, Talaith, I thought back. You can't afford to waste your energy like this. The Renewal Ceremony is approaching. And Dis won't be pleased if you're too weak to fulfill your part in it.

I'm touched by your concern, she thought mockingly. You'll be relieved to know that I'm not using a single iota of my own power. My loyal subjects are thoughtfully allowing me to borrow theirs.

I realized the significance of all the fires we'd seen. The Arcane weren't celebrating; they were conducting a rite to transfer mystic power to their Lady.

A series of lightning flashes this time, much closer, and the crack of thunder sounded almost immediately.

How'd you know we were coming? I thought. I doubt you've been wasting power constantly scrying for me – you don't have it to spare. Not in your present condition.

I sensed her anger at my taunt. I always conduct an augury using a mourning dove before every Descension Day to determine how things will go. This year, the bird's entrails told me that you would be passing through tonight. And so I prepared. Glee and anticipation suffused her thoughts. With the help of my people, I'm going to destroy you once and for all, Matthew Richter, and your friends along with you. What do you think of that?

Lightning crashed outside the cab, thunder cracked, rattling the windows. A driving rain began to fall. Lazlo hit the wipers.

What if I told you that I'm due to decompose in another day or so anyway? Why bother wasting magic power, even if it isn't your own, to destroy me if I'll be gone in a handful of hours?

Talaith didn't respond right away, and the rain slackened, but didn't let up entirely.

I sense you're telling the truth. And in that case letting you go would be the sensible thing. But I don't want to be sensible; I want revenge.

The rain picked up, coming down so hard now that visibility was near zero, but Lazlo didn't let up on the gas. The lightning and thunder were constant now. I wondered how close we were to the Bridge of Lost Souls. Not close enough, I feared.

Instead of destroying you, perhaps I'll try to merely incapacitate you. That way you'll get to see your friends perish, and afterward I can bring you to Woodhome and have the pleasure of watching you rot away to nothing. Yes, that sounds quite lovely.

I had one last card up my sleeve. It wasn't an ace… hell, it wasn't even a deuce, but it was all I had, so I played it.

What would you say if I reminded you about the Accord that states travelers on the Obsidian Way aren't to be interfered with?

I'd say, "What Accord?"

And then I felt Talaith's foul presence depart my mind. If I could have, I would've taken my brain out and given it a good scrubbing to get rid of the mental aftertaste of the Witch Queen's thoughts.

"Uh, guys, we have a problem."

"No shit we have a problem!" Lazlo shouted over the riotous thunder. "I can barely see two feet in front of us, and these socalled roads are rapidly turning into mud!"

I filled them in on my mental tête-à-tête with the mistress of the Arcane.

"An augury!" Lazlo said in surprise. "Those went out with evil eyes and love potions!"

"This is no time to discuss fashion trends in magic," I said. "We have to figure a way out of this!"

"We better figure fast, then." Lazlo pointed at the sky beyond the windshield. There, highlighted against black clouds, was the figure of an angel with wings of lightning. But this was a dark angel with wild raven hair, hate-filled eyes, and lips twisted in cruel laughter that boomed louder than thunder. Talaith, or at least a reasonable facsimile, getting ready to swoop down for the kill.

I looked out the windshield. Talaith's avatar had left her position in the sky and was swooping down toward us, dark glee and anticipation blazing on her face.

Talaith's avatar closed on our cab. She plucked a bolt of lightning from her wings and it shaped itself into a sword crackling with electricity. As she neared, she shrieked like a banshee experiencing labor pains, lifted the glowing yellow-white sword, and, as she reached the cab, swung.

But Lazlo was ready for her. Just as she brought the sword around, he jerked the steering wheel to the left and hit the gas. A sizzling sound filled the interior of the cab and then we were spinning out of control. I grabbed Devona because I hoped my zombie body might absorb some of the impact – neither of us were wearing seatbelts because Lazlo's cab doesn't have them. He tore them out because, as he once explained to me, they "show a real lack of confidence in the driver" – and together we bounced around the back seat as Lazlo swore mightily and struggled to regain control over his machine.

But it was no good; the car tipped, bounced, and rolled five times before finally crunching to a stop. The cab – what was left of it – was resting on its hood in the middle of a rain-soaked field. I still had hold of Devona.

"You okay?" I shouted above the still rollicking storm.

"I think so. Plenty of aches, but I don't think anything's broken."

"Lazlo?"

He moaned and I thought he'd been hurt. But then he said, "My cab! What did that bitch do to my beautiful cab?"

If any of us had been human, or in Devona's case all the way human, we most likely would've been killed. As it was, it looked like we were going to survive long enough for Talaith to kill us in person.

I kicked out the safety glass of the shattered rear window, which wasn't easy since my left leg didn't work quite right anymore, and pushed Devona through the opening. I yelled for Lazlo to get out of the car, and then crawled after Devona.

Getting up wasn't easy with my latest injury, but once I was up, I could stand okay. Devona pointed to the cab's passengerside tires: they were nothing but melted globs on the rims.

So Talaith's avatar had gotten in a shot after all. I suppose the air was filled with the greasy-oily stink of burning rubber, though my dead zombie nose couldn't detect it. The rest of the cab didn't look much better than the tires.

The driver's door burst off and flew into the field as Lazlo forced his way out. The demon's a lot stronger than he appears. As soon as he got a good look at what Talaith had done to his beloved cab, he began sobbing. The vehicle's hood had been torn off, exposing its inner mouth. Numerous teeth had been broken off, the cab's long tongue lolled onto the ground, and a pool of dark liquid that might or might not have been oil was spreading beneath the vehicle. Devona hurried over to console Lazlo, and I looked to the sky, expecting to see Talaith's avatar gazing down at us and laughing with dark delight. But there was no sign of the Witch Queen, and a moment later the rain ceased and the clouds began to clear.

"What's happening?" Devona said as I walked over to join her and Lazlo next to the demon's dearly departed death-machine.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe Talaith used up the magic power she borrowed from her people and couldn't maintain her avatar any longer."

Bright white light flared into existence around us, revealing a dozen men and women carrying wooden staffs with glowing lux crystals attached to the ends. Most of them wore tunics, but three – two men and a woman – wore loose-fitting hooded robes. I didn't have to guess who was in charge.

One of the robed men, a portly fellow with a gray mustache and goatee stepped forward.

"Or maybe," he said with a sinister smile, "instead of wasting more power, our Lady sent us to retrieve you."

"That's another possibility," I said.

"You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Matt."

"How long have you been waiting to use that line?" I said.

"A few hours," Devona admitted.

"You two are a riot," Lazlo said. "Are you guys always this funny or only when you're tied to stakes and surrounded by pissed-off witches and warlocks?"

Our Glamere welcoming committee had brought us – by force, naturally – to the village of Merrowvale. They'd hustled us into the village square and then tied us to three large wooden stakes atop a stone dais. The three robed Arcane, who I took to be the village Elders, then ordered children to begin piling firewood around Devona and Lazlo's feet. But not, I noticed, around mine.

The entire square was filled with villagers, young and old, all decked out in medieval dress. It looked like a renaissance fair, only without the funnel cakes and ATM machines labeled Queen's Treasury. Only about half of them carried magic staffs with lit lux crystals, but that didn't mean the other half were harmless. Even the smallest child here was capable of casting at least some rudi mentary spells. Both Devona and Lazlo were strong enough to break free from the ropes binding them if they wished, but they knew they couldn't hope to escape from this many Arcane, and so they simply remained where they were while the children stacked the fuel for a good old-fashioned stake-burning at their feet.

The Elders stood at the base of the dais, and I caught the portly one's eye.

"Why don't I get any wood? You people have something against the smell of burning zombies?"

"Don't answer him, Zorian," said the Elder standing to the portly man's right, a tall middle-aged woman with her graying brunette hair tied up in a bun. "He's not worth the breath it would take to speak to him."

I almost fired off a witty comeback, but I noticed something odd about the woman's face. I looked at her more closely, and it didn't take me long to figure out what was bothering me about her. I examined her fellow Elders, and then I turned my head as far as I could – given that I was tied to a stake – and gazed upon as many of the good folk of Merrowvale as I could. And when I was finished, I smiled to myself. These people had a secret, and they weren't hiding it very well. But I decided to keep that to myself for the moment.

"Hush, Gizane," said the third Elder, a tall beefy man with a neatly trimmed brown beard who looked as if he would have made a hell of a quarterback on Earth. "Let Zorian have some fun. After all, it is Descension Day." He grinned at me, a savage gleam in his eyes. He reminded me of a mean little boy who'd caught a trio of insects and couldn't wait to start tearing their legs off.

Zorian nodded to the other man. "Thank you, Ortzi." Then the warlock turned to me. "We have no intention of burning you, Mr. Richter. Our Lady wants you all for herself, and we'd be poor subjects indeed if we kept the pleasure of destroying you for ourselves."

A scattering of laughter passed through the crowd, but it was more dutiful than enthusiastic.

"She's en route now," Ortzi said. "She's coming here personally to claim you, though to be honest we're not sure whether she'll destroy you on the spot or take you back to Woodhome and save you for after the Renewal Ceremony. Me, I'm hoping for on the spot. I'd love to see the Lady in action."

"That would be a treat," Gizane admitted.

"Once her avatar forced the three of you off the road, she mentally contacted the three of us," Zorian said, "and we – along with a few of the more powerful members of our village – went out to find you and escort you back to Merrowvale. Our orders are to hold you here until Talaith arrives, Mr. Richter."

Ortzi grinned. "But she told as that as a reward for our service, we can do anything we like to your two friends. So we're going to burn them alive at the stake – while you watch, helpless to save them. Won't that be just awful?"

The children finished piling up the wood, and they stepped off the dais and returned to their parents. Ortzi's lux crystal began to glow orange and flames flickered to life around it. The warlock made no move to step forward and touch the flaming tip of his staff to the wood yet. He wanted to make this last as long as he could.

"Uh, Matt?" Lazlo said, his bulbous demon eyes transfixed by the fire atop Ortzi's staff. "If you have any brilliant ideas, now would be an excellent time to implement them."

"Don't worry," Devona said. "He'll think of something."

The simple confidence in her voice was both heart-warming and heart-breaking. I did have an idea, but if it was going to have any chance of working, I had to stall just a bit longer, to give Talaith time to get closer to Merrowvale.

"Out of curiosity," I said, "how's Talaith traveling here? Broom? Magic carpet? A pair of ruby slippers?"

The three Elders only glared at me, and someone in the crowd shouted out, "Quit talking and light the goddamned fires!"

I decided I'd better move on to something else, and quickly. "All right, forget that. But tell me this: just how close to the Bridge of Lost Souls were we when Talaith's avatar knocked us off the Obsidian Way?" When none of the Elders responded right away, I added, "Come on… you'll just make us more miserable by telling us." When they continued to hesitate, I said, "You know, if Talaith were here she'd tell me… Now there's a woman who really knows how to torment a man – and not in the good way."

"Very well," Zorian said. "You were less than a mile and a half from the Bridge."

"You might have made it, too," Gizane said, nodding toward Lazlo. "If that idiot demon was a better driver."

"Too bad ugly – or body odor – doesn't equate with driving skill," Ortzi said. "Otherwise, he'd be qualified for the Grand Prix back on Earth."

Lazlo ground his teeth, sending small sparks shooting out of the corners of his mouth. He glared at Ortzi, and from the way his muscles were bunched up, I knew my demonic friend was getting ready to burst his bonds and show the Elders what happens when someone insults his driving.

I couldn't afford to stall any longer.

"Tell me something, Gizane. Where do you get your make-up?"

Gizane drew up the hood of her robe as if to hide her face and gave her fellow Elders a sideways glance.

"I don't know what you're talking about, zombie."

"I'm not criticizing," I said. "It's nicely understated – the eye shadow, the eyeliner, the rouge, the lipstick… all very naturallooking. And you, Ortzi. Your beard is a deep, rich brown, but the color is a slightly different shade than your hair, and you've got a significant amount of gray at your temples. A man's beard usually goes gray before his hair. I suppose you imported the stuff you use to color it from Earth."

Ortiz started to cover his beard with his hand, but then he must have realized he was only drawing attention to it and lowered his hand once more – though it looked like it took an effort for him to do so.

I turned to Zorian then. "And unless my dead eyes deceive me, I see a small flesh-colored hearing aid nestled in your right ear, Zorian. Another import, I take it?

Zorian glanced at his fellow Elders, and all three of them looked nervous as hell.

"I don't understand, Matt," Devona said. "Now that you've pointed out those things about them, I can see them all, but why would Arcane bother using mundane items like that? Wouldn't they just use their magic to improve their appearance or repair their hearing?"

"I'm sure that's what Talaith would prefer. But these three aren't the only ones who prefer non-magical ways of solving problems – or just enjoying life. Take a good look at the crowd. You'll see people wearing wristwatches, talking on cell phones – the real thing, not handvoxes – texting on BlackBerrys, taking digital pictures and video of us… More than a few folks are listening to music on their iPods, and a number of the children are playing handheld video games. And if you'll look really close at that alley over there, you'll see someone sitting on the ground typing furiously on a laptop. Probably blogging about our imminent demises. All of them are trying to hide their toys, but they're doing a crappy job of it."

Now the assembled villagers were starting to look nervous too.

"I still don't get it, Matt," Devona said. "Lots of people in Nekropolis use imported Earth technology, whether in its pure form or adapted somehow by dark magic. What's the big deal?"

"The big deal is that these people are subjects of Talaith," I explained. "And she's not particularly fond of technology – especially not after how things turned out with the Overmind. By Talaith's edict, technology of any sort is illegal for the Arcane to possess or use as long as they are within her Dominion. If she catches any Arcane with technology, she punishes them." I smiled at the three Elders. "Most severely."

The Elders paled.

I went on. "Talaith has a huge problem trying to enforce her edict, because pure technology is fascinating to the Arcane, almost to the point of addiction. Chemicals, medicines, and machines that can perform wonders without requiring a spellcaster to use her or her own energy to power them? What could be more wondrous? Merrowvale is one of the outlying villages in Glamere, so close to the Boneyard that it's a simple matter to smuggle technology in and far enough away from Woodhome that they don't worry too much about getting caught. If you went into their homes right now, you'd probably find flat-screen TVs, DVD players, video game systems, personal computers, refrigerators, microwave ovens, washers and dryers… you name it, they've got it, and portable generators to power it all. And now they've captured us and their mistress is coming here to get me." I smiled at the Elders. "What makes you think you're going to be able to hide all your toys from Talaith when you couldn't hide them from me – and I'm not even a Darklord."

Gizane grabbed the collar of Zorian's robe and turned him to face her. "He's right! Talaith will find out! She may even already know!"

"And if she doesn't," I said, "I'll make sure to tell her the moment she arrives."

People in the crowd began wailing and crying. They had a good idea what sort of reaction they could expect from their mistress once she discovered their village's tech-fetish.

"Don't panic!" Ortzi said. He gave me a sly look. "If we destroy the zombie along with his friends, there will be no one left alive to tell Talaith anything."

Gizane and Zorian looked at him hopefully.

"But Talaith gave you specific orders not to destroy me," I pointed out. "If you burn me up along with my friends, how will you explain it to Talaith? And even if you could come up with an excuse that she'd buy, she'd punish you all for stealing her chance to get revenge on me."

Gizane and Zorian no longer looked so hopeful. In fact, they both looked as if they might vomit at any moment.

"Then we're lost!" someone in the crowed wailed. "There's nothing we can do!"

"There is one thing," I said. "You could let us go."

"Are you mad?" Ortzi shouted at me. "Talaith would be sure to punish us in ways beyond imagining if we did that!"

"That's true," I admitted. "But not if the citizens of Merrowvale release us, then tell Talaith we got away because the three of you screwed up and allowed us to escape."

"Is your brain as dead as the rest of you?" Ortzi snapped. "Zorian, Gizane, and I would never permit the villagers to do that – and even if somehow they succeeded, we'd simply tell the Dark Lady what really happened."

"True again. But the villagers could tell Talaith that after you let us escape, they killed you in her name for your incompetence. Then there would be no one left to tell Talaith about what really happened, the villagers could keep all their toys, and the Dark Lady would be none the wiser."

Zorian tried to look calm, but the lines of sweat trickling down his face told a different story. He kept shooting sidelong glances at the crowd in the square. "I think you've underestimated the good folk of Merrowvale, Mr. Richter. They would never do anything so heinous simply to keep their…" He broke off as he noticed the villagers staring quietly at him and his two fellow Elders. The lux crystals of the villagers who carried staffs began to glow a baleful red, while others started making intricate hand gestures and chanting mystic phrases.

I turned my head so I could see Devona and Lazlo.

"You might want to close your eyes. I have a feeling this is going to get real ugly, real fast."

The villagers let out a roar as they surged en masse toward the dais.

Devona, Lazlo and I were hoofing it on the Obsidian Way. I'd been tempted to ask the villagers if we could borrow some horses, though the beasts tend to shy away from me, probably because of my smell. And if they turned up their noses at me, I couldn't imagine how they'd react to Lazlo's stink. But after seeing what the villagers had done to their Elder – and the zeal with which they'd gone at it – I decided not to push our luck. A mile and a half isn't that far to walk, even on stiff, partially damaged zombie legs. But time, as they say, was of the essence. Talaith had already been on her way to Merrowvale when the villagers released us, and it wouldn't take her long to arrive. Once she saw that we'd escaped, she'd come looking for us, and as long as we were in her Dominion, we weren't safe. We needed to get to the Boneyard, and we needed to get there fast, and I doubted we were going to make it on foot. If worse came to worst, I would give myself to Talaith and urge her to let Devona and Lazlo go, but I knew the Witch Queen wouldn't go for it. She'd kill the both of them just to hurt me further. So either we all made it or none of us did. Once more, I attempted to cudgel my zombified brain into providing a way out.

I knew the Darklords constantly strove against one another – within the boundaries set by Dis, that is. They spied on and schemed against one another, tried to outdo the others' accomplishments and win favor in the eyes of Dis. They ruled their individual Dominions and the inhabitants thereof absolutely, though some of the Lords were more involved in their subjects' lives than others. Still, it was considered an act of great transgression for a Darklord to interfere with another's Dominion and its subjects.

I also knew the four remaining Darklords had to be aware of what Talaith had been up to tonight. Even if it was borrowed, the sheer power she was expending would stand out to them like an atomic bomb detonating at a July Fourth celebration. In fact, the other Lords were likely keeping close watch on the situation right now, if for no other reason than to make certain Talaith wasn't somehow gearing up for an attack on them.

And then I had an idea.

I lived in the Sprawl. That made me a subject of Varvara, didn't it? If I called upon the Demon Queen, might she intervene to save one of her subjects? No, I decided. Varvara liked me well enough, but we weren't friends. What she liked about me was the amusement value I offered as a zombie ex-cop trying to survive in Nekropolis. But I doubted she'd find a confrontation with Talaith amusing, especially when the Witch Queen was filled with the combined mystic power of her subjects. Varvara might miss me when I was gone, or she might get a laugh out of my demise, but she wouldn't help me.

I looked up, trying to see if Talaith was on her way. I saw no sign of the Witch Queen.

As if reading my mind, Devona said, "I feel psychic pressure at the base of my skull, Matt. She's coming."

I quickly explained my idea about the Darklords watching.

"If they are, then that means Father is watching too," she said thoughtfully. "And he knows I'm here and in danger. But if that's the case, why hasn't he done anything?" She looked up into the sky. "Father!" she cried. "Father, help us!" But nothing happened.

Maybe I'd been wrong about the Darklords watching. Or maybe they were, but Galm was constrained by one of the Accords, or maybe he just couldn't afford to expend any of his power so close to the Renewal Ceremony, even to save the life of his own daughter. Or maybe his reasons were political. From what I understood, Galm and Talaith, while not the best of friends by any means, had about as cordial a relationship as any two Darklords can.

But I knew a Lord who Talaith wasn't on such good terms with – a Lord she'd planned to attack with the Overmind before Dale and I destroyed it.

A voice whispered in my mind then, thick with barely restrained fury. Another valiant attempt to escape me, Matthew, but you're too late. Look up.

I did and saw a figure swiftly approaching from the western sky. Talaith sat upon an airborne throne of black marble held aloft by a pair of giant flapping raven's wings growing from the throne's back. Despite myself, I was impressed. Much classier than a broom or carpet. I knew we had only moments before she reached us. Once again, it was time to do something desperate.

I raised my hands to the heavens. "Lord Edrigu! Hear me! You are Master of the Dead; I am a zombie! Will you allow Talaith to insult you by attacking one of your own subjects? I ask you to help us, if for no other reason than to spite her!"

I waited, but nothing happened.

Nice try, zombie. Talaith's thought-voice was smug. But Edrigu would never da–

And then, as if Talaith's comment was a cue, the air near us shimmered and a shadowy coach appeared.

It was Silent Jack's Black Rig.

• • • •

We didn't have time to think about it.

"C'mon!" I shouted, grabbing both Devona's and Lazlo's arms and pulling them toward Jack's coach.

"I'm not going to ride in a ghost hack!" Lazlo protested. "I'm a real cabby! Besides, I'm not going to leave my cab. We have to go back and–"

Talaith was close enough now for us to hear her voice, and she shrieked, furious at Jack's sudden appearance. She gestured and a bolt of lightning crashed to the ground less than three yards from where we stood.

"I'm going to shut my mouth and get inside," Lazlo finished.

The door of the coach sprung open of its own accord, and we climbed in: Devona first, Lazlo second, me last. I pulled the door closed after us, and it shut with a muffled click. The interior of the coach was dark and the wood looked… insubstantial, somehow, as if you could put your finger through it if you pressed hard enough. But what else could you expect from a ghost coach? At least it was solid enough to keep the rain out.

I thumped on the roof to get the driver's attention. "Let's go, Jack!"

Silent Jack, true to his name, didn't reply. His whip cracked soundlessly, Malice and Misery let out a pair of inaudible whinnies, and we began to move. But the horses didn't pull us, at least not in the usual way. The entire coach, horses, slid forward as if on a conveyer belt, slowly at first, but with increasing speed. There was no bouncing or juddering; the ride was eerily smooth.

I pushed aside the curtain over the rear window and saw Talaith pursuing us, eyes flashing with mystic energy and blazing bright with anger and frustration. The Witch Queen poured on the speed, but inch by inch, we began to outdistance her.

Damn you, Richter! a furious voice thundered in my head. This isn't over!

It is for now, I responded, and settled back in my seat. I'd survived another encounter with the mistress of Glamere.

I looked up at the ceiling and thought of Jack sitting atop the coach, driving the horses onward in silence. We'd gotten away, but, I wondered, at what price?

FOURTEEN

The coach neared the border between Glamere and the Boneyard, but instead of heading for the Bridge of Lost Souls, it aimed straight for Phlegethon. Before we could protest, the coach had passed through the wrought iron fence at the side of the road – somehow allowing us to pass through as well – and continued through the air as if the road had never ended, bearing us easily across the river of green fire. I wonder if any Lesk, the giant serpents that plied the flaming waters of the river, were looking up, disappointed we hadn't fallen in. But I didn't look out the window to check. Some things are better left a mystery.

Now that we had crossed over into Edrigu's Dominion, Talaith no longer pursued us. But that didn't necessarily mean we were safe. Nekropolis doesn't do safe.

As soon as we reached the other side, the Black Rig glided to a stop on the Obsidian Way.

"It wasn't as much fun as a car," Lazlo said, "but I have to admit it was a pretty decent ride." He tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge. "Hey, it's locked!" Lazlo gripped the handle tighter and shook it for all he was worth, but despite his demonic strength, the door remained closed. "What gives?"

"I believe it's time to settle the matter of our fare," Devona said.

I remembered the rumors about Silent Jack, about how much he liked the ladies. And from the look on Devona's face, she was thinking the same thing.

"I'll get this one, Jack," I said loudly.

The door sprung open.

"Matt, no!" Devona protested. "You shouldn't pay for all three of us!"

"She's right," Lazlo agreed. "We all three rode; we all should pay."

I shook my head. "I'm the one who requested Lord Edrigu's assistance, so I'll be the one to settle the tab. Now go ahead and get out, both of you."

Devona refused, so I looked to Lazlo. The demon sighed. "All right, Matt; if that's the way you want it. Let's go, Devona." He took her hand and pulled her struggling from the coach. As strong as Devona was, Lazlo was stronger. As soon as they were both out, the door snicked shut once more, and Silent Jack appeared on the seat opposite me. This was the closest I'd ever been to him, but I couldn't make out any facial features. It was as if he were formed entirely out of shadow, just like his cab and the horses that drew it.

The ghostly coachman held out a gloved hand, but I was fairly certain he wasn't asking for darkgems.

"Name your price, Jack."

He put his hand in his lap, held it out again, and then pointed to me. The message was clear – he wanted me to hold out my hand. I extended my left hand palm up. Jack reached out and with the sharp ebon nail of his index finger traced four lines on my palm. When he removed his finger, my flesh puckered and scar tissue formed in the shape of a letter E. E for Edrigu. What did it mean?

I started to pull back my hand, but Jack gripped my wrist, and with his other hand got hold of my pinkie and yanked. There was a snapping, tearing sound, and my finger came loose in his hand. He inserted the finger in his vest pocket, tipped his hat to me, and then vanished.

The door opened.

I climbed out and stood next to Devona and Lazlo. We watched as Silent Jack – who sat once more atop the coach – and his Black Rig faded from sight.

"What was his price?" Devona asked.

I showed them the mark on my palm.

"What do you think it means?" I asked.

"I'm not certain," Devona said. "Perhaps merely that you are in Lord Edrigu's debt. Or perhaps that you now have a new master."

A master. I couldn't deal with all the implications of what that might mean. I'd always been my own man, even when I was on the force in Cleveland. And now I had a master?

Edrigu was Lord of the Dead – had he perhaps repaired the damage to my body? I took a quick inventory. No, my face was still scratched, my ear still missing, my right arm and left leg still damaged. Edrigu hadn't bothered to fix me, which meant that I was still in the process of decomposing for the final time. It didn't make any sense. Why would Edrigu have Jack put his mark on me if he wasn't going to bother preserving me?

And then I felt an echo of a chill run along my dead spine. What if Edrigu wasn't interested in my undead body? What if he wanted my soul?

Well, if that was the price I had to pay to save my friends, it was worth it. But I wasn't about to give up on Devona's case or on trying to find a way to keep my body intact. Lord Edrigu might have a lien on my soul, but that didn't mean I had to make it easy for him to collect.

Devona noticed my pinkie was missing. I told her what had happened to it.

"I don't understand," she said, puzzled. "Why would Jack take your finger if you'd already paid Lord Edrigu's price?"

"For his tip," Lazlo said, "what else?"

Bereft of transportation, we had no choice but to hoof it. We left the Obsidian Way and began walking along the Boneyard's cramped, narrow streets. But foot travel wasn't a problem in this Dominion, even during the Descension celebration. With the exception of the occasional shade drifting across our path, the streets were deserted. Everything was in a state of arrested decay: the roadways buckled and bulged, bricks cracked and crumbling; the buildings covered with dead, dry ivy, shutters hanging by one hinge, roofs full of holes or collapsed entirely; the trees and bushes lining the streets twisted, gray, and barren. And, according to Devona and Lazlo, the air was still, stagnant, and stale.

We caught glimpses of movement out of the corner of our eyes, flashes of darting wraith-like shapes that disappeared when you tried to look at them directly. I seemed to be more aware of them than either Devona or Lazlo, maybe because I was dead myself. Not for the first time I wondered just how many spirits inhabited the Boneyard. If we could see them clearly, would we find the streets full of people, perhaps celebrating the Descension along with the rest of the city? Were we even now walking among – walking through – throngs of laughing, shouting merrymakers, oblivious to their presence?

The Boneyard isn't strictly the Dominion of the dead, though. Many living beings – warm ones, as the dead refer to them – also live there. Those who for whatever reasons feel more comfortable living in the presence of death. Some simply like the quiet and solitude, while others go there only for the sake of morbid fashion. And then there are those disturbed individuals who are drawn to death like moths to a cold dark flame, such as the Suicide King and Overkill, who can only truly feel alive when they come as close to death as possible.

Me, I feel more alive around the living. Weird, huh?

Ghosts aren't the only supernatural inhabitants of the Boneyard. Anything dead falls under the rule of Lord Edrigu: poltergeists, skeletons, liches, mummies, wights, wraiths, and others dwelled within his Dominion. Most of these creatures preferred keeping to the shadows or haunting their lairs, waiting for those curious or foolish enough to seek them out or stumble blindly across them. As the three of us walked, we caught the occasional glimpse of a shambling thing lurking in an alley or dark eyes peering through broken shutters in an abandoned building, but we made sure not to disturb them and they in turn didn't seek to devour our souls. A good arrangement all the way around, as far as I was concerned.

Unfortunately, there was one type of dead creature more aggressive than all the others, and as we turned a corner, we saw a group of them coming down the street toward us, walking with stiff, spastic movements and groaning softly.

"Are those… zombies?" Devona asked.

There were eight of them – nine if you counted the partially decayed dog carrying a severed hand in its mouth. Three women, five men, aged anywhere from twenty to sixty at the time of their demise. Their clothes were torn and stained with patches of blood, some of it relatively fresh. Their flesh was a mottled grayish-green color, and their bodies displayed various types of damage: cuts, gouges, tears, and bite marks. A couple were missing arms – I couldn't help feeling a pang of sympathy toward them – and one was missing a good portion of his scalp. It took the zombie horde, such as it was, a moment to realize we were there, but as soon as they did, they began moaning, "Braaaaiiiinssss…" and started heading toward us as fast as their dead bodies would permit.

"Idiots," Lazlo said. "Why are they always obsessed with brains? Don't they know how hard it is to bite through a skull?"

"I do not want to know how you came by that knowledge," I said.

As the zombies – dead doggie included – shuffled closer, Devona stepped closer and grabbed hold of my arm, as if seeking my protection. I wanted to put my arm around her and hold her closer, but I didn't. I told myself this wasn't the right time, and anyway, it wouldn't be professional. But in truth, I was afraid if I tried, she might pull away from me in disgust. After all, right then I didn't look, or smell, any better than the walking corpses slowly coming toward us.

"What's wrong with them?" Devona asked. "I've seen zombies before – normal ones, not self-aware ones like you, Matt – and they don't act like that. For the most part, they just stand around and wait for someone to give them an order."

"You're thinking of voodoo zombies," I said. "Those are corpses resurrected by a voodoo priest or priestess for the purpose of being a servant. Those zombies–" I nodded toward the moaners – "are a more recent breed."

"Not to mention more annoying," Lazlo out in. "They're always wandering out of the Boneyard and into the other Dominions, staggering around and trying to feast on the flesh of the living. The only good thing about them is that you have to shoot them in the head to kill them. Makes them good target practice."

"Where did they come from?" Devona asked. "And more to the point, why are we just standing here if they want to crack open our skulls and slurp up our brains?"

The zombies had crossed half the distance to us in the time we'd been talking, and they were becoming more excited the closer they got, moving with more urgency, and all of them were loudly moaning, "Braaaaiiiinssss…"

I decided to ignore Devona's second question and answer her first. "No one's sure where they originated from. Some say they're the result of voodoo zombies mutating after exposure to some kind of supernatural or science-based power source. Others think that one mad scientist or another got hold of an old Earth flesh-eating zombie movie on DVD, saw it, and decided to see if he could actually make them."

The zombies were almost upon us by then.

"Wherever they came from" Lazlo said, "I'd wish they'd go back and stay there." He glanced at me. "No offense, Matt. You're in a way different league than these moaners."

"No offense taken," I reassured him.

The first of the zombies was just about within arm's reach now, and she stretched a trembling hand toward us that was more bone than flesh. Her milk-white eyes stared hungrily at us, her leathery lips moving as if she were anticipating the meal to come.

"Brains…" she whispered softly in an eerie, hollow voice.

Devona was pressed against me so tight now that I feared she might break a few more of my ribs.

"Guys…" She sounded on the verge of panic, but before she could do or say anything else, the zombie woman paused.

Her dead nostrils flared as they took in our scents, and I was jealous. I couldn't smell, but then I didn't need to hunt down brains to devour, either. The zombie's features twisted into a mask of pained disgust, and she stuck out a slimy black tongue.

"Yuck," she spat, then turned to face her fellow zombies.

She said or did nothing obvious to communicate with the others, but they stopped and gazed at her with their dead eyes. And then as one the entire group, zombie-dog included, slowly turned and began shuffling away.

Devona relaxed a bit, but she made no move to step away from me. Not that I was complaining.

"What just happened?" she asked.

"That breed of zombie only feasts on living human flesh," I explained. "Not demon, not half-vampire, and certainly not another zombie."

Lazlo shook his head as he watched the zombies slowly depart. "That's the other thing I hate about them: they're picky eaters."

Devona ignored the demon and gave me an irritated look. "You could've told me that sooner."

I smiled. "What, and spoil the surprise?"

She hauled off and punched me in the arm using her full strength. It might have been my imagination, but I thought it actually hurt a little.

We resumed walking and eventually came to an open field containing the bent, broken, and rusted hulks of hundreds of cars, with a faded, weather-beaten sign proclaiming the place to be Riffraff's Revenants. A junkyard. It made sense, I suppose. After all, this Dominion was reserved for the dead, right? And what was a junkyard other than a cemetery for machines?

Lazlo stopped and stared, a beatific expression on his hideous face. He looked like a demon who had died and, much to his surprise, gone to heaven.

"Look." He pointed to a crumpled hunk of yellow metal that had once been a taxicab and grinned. "I thought I'd never see it again."

"Surely you don't think that's yours," Devona said.

"Look at the tires on the passenger side," I said. "They've been melted."

She shook her head. "It's not possible."

"Maybe this is where cars go when they die," Lazlo said in wonder.

"Or maybe it's part of the deal I made with Lord Edrigu. Whichever, it sure looks like your cab."

"I'm going to check it out, see if anything's salvageable. Maybe, with enough work, I can even get the poor thing running again. You guys go on ahead." He started forward.

"We can't just leave you here," I said.

Lazlo stopped. "Why not? What can happen to me in the Boneyard? Everything's dead here."

I thought of the E emblazoned on my palm. "This is Nekropolis, Lazlo. Just because something's dead doesn't mean it isn't dangerous."

He chuckled. "You worry too much."

"We almost died in Glamere," Devona pointed out.

"We didn't, though, did we?" Lazlo countered. "But my cab did. Maybe now I have chance to get it back. You two take care, and good luck." And with that he shuffled toward the remains of his pride and joy.

"Let's go, Devona."

"But–"

"Lazlo's cab is his whole life. And you've seen him drive. Once he starts, he doesn't slow down, and he doesn't listen to anyone telling him to stop. He's like that about everything. He'll probably mess around with the cab for a few hours, realize it's no use, mourn his loss, and then head on back to the Sprawl. Eventually, he'll either find another cab, or he'll be forced to go into a new line of work and the pedestrians of Nekropolis will be able to breathe a little easier."

Devona looked at Lazlo – who was walking around the wreckage of his cab, shaking his head and muttering – one last time, and then together we continued down the street toward Gregor's.

The streets in the Boneyard had no names, and there were no particular landmarks, just block after block of decay and dissolution, so finding Gregor's place wasn't easy. Eventually we passed a large factory that looked something like a medieval castle with three towering smoke stacks pumping black clouds into the already ebon sky. An intricate lattice of metal beams and wires stretched upward from the roof of the building, and electricity sizzled as it swept through the lattice, bolts cracking like thunder as they leaped from one connection point to another. A high wrought-iron fence surrounded the facility, tipped with sharp spear points to prevent any curiosity-seekers from being tempted to climb over.

Devona gazed upon the factory with wonder. "Is that–"

I nodded. "The Foundry. Home, laboratory, and production facility of Victor Baron, otherwise known as Frankenstein's Monster."

"It's bigger than I imagined," she said.

"Baron lives to create things, and that includes his facility. He's been expanding it for over two hundred years, and he shows no signs of stopping anytime soon."

"Do you know him?" she asked.

"Only by reputation. From what I understand, he doesn't leave the Foundry much."

For the last two centuries, Victor Baron had been Nekropolis's prime supplier of what he terms reanimation technology but which most people call meatwork. Baron is responsible for the city's Mind's Eye technology, handvoxes, flesh computers, and anything other tech based on resurrecting the dead. Just look for the label, often tattooed into the flesh of your device: Another Victor Baron Creation. From time to time I'd toyed with the idea of making an appointment with Baron to see if he could anything to stabilize my zombie state or, better yet, return me to the living, but Papa Chatha counseled caution.

Magic and science don't always get along as well as they could, Papa once warned me. Baron's technology would be as likely to destroy you as help you.

I sometimes wonder if Papa feels more than a little professional jealousy toward Baron, but since my houngan has kept me going for years, I've decided to trust his advice.

Devona and I kept walking. Gregor's place wasn't far from the Foundry, and I soon recognized a broken beam here and a shattered wall there, and before much longer we stood before the ruins of a stone building: roof collapsed, walls fallen, columns broken and time-worn.

"This is it," I pronounced. "Good thing Gregor has the columns, or I'd never be able to find this place."

"Who is Gregor, precisely?"

"Gregor is probably Nekropolis's best kept secret. He's an information broker on a par with Waldemar. But where Waldemar specializes in the past, Gregor deals in the present." I smiled. "If he doesn't know something, it's because it hasn't happened yet."

"Then why didn't we come here in the first place?"

"Because to do so we had to go through either Glamere or the Wyldwood. It's suicide for anyone but a lyke to travel the Wyldwood – and you experienced Talaith's hospitality. Gregor may be the best source of information in the city, but he's not exactly the most accessible."

"I understand." She surveyed the ruins. "How do we get in?"

I led the way up the cracked and broken steps and we walked carefully through the rubble of Gregor's building until we came to a shiny black rectangle set into the ground.

"It's me, Gregor. And I brought a friend."

Nothing happened for a moment, and then the rectangle parted as the tiny black shapes which comprised it scurried off.

Devona took in a hiss of air. "Insects!"

"Gregor's little friends – and his informants."

As the roach-like bugs retreated, they revealed stone stairs leading down into the earth.

"Try not to make any sudden moves," I told Devona. "Gregor and his friends tend to be on the skittish side."

I took out a pocket flashlight, thumbed the switch to low, and shined its beam down the steps, sending more insects fleeing, thousands of hair-thin segmented legs whispering across stone. Gregor didn't keep his underground lair lit, so the flashlight was a necessity for me – one which he tolerated. And even though I had no reason to fear Gregor, none that I could name, anyway, I always felt better visiting him with flashlight in hand.

We started down into the darkness, roaches scuttling away from the steps and walls as we descended. I'd been here only a handful of times since coming to Nekropolis, but I'd never gotten used to seeing so many of Gregor's friends in one place. My dead nerve endings didn't work anymore, but I still felt itchy when I visited.

When we reached the bottom of the steps, Devona turned around.

"The insects have closed up behind us." Her voice was steady, but I detected a hint of nervousness beneath her words.

"They always do that; don't worry about it."

We were in a large, empty basement which seemed cloaked in tangible darkness, except for the small circle of gray stone around us illuminated by my flashlight.

"Is this place… filled with them too?" Devona asked me in a whisper.

"Try not to think about it," I whispered back, and then in a normal voice I said, "Thank you for seeing us, Gregor."

A faint clicking sound emerged from the darkness where the opposite wall should be.

"Always a pleasure, Matthew." The voice was soft and the words rustled like insect carapaces sliding against one another. "Ms. Kanti, it's quite an honor to meet you."

"The honor is, uh, all mine." As a half-vampire, Devona's eyesight was far better than mine, and I was sure she could see through the basement's gloom to Gregor.

"Please, both of you, come closer. But keep your flashlight pointed downward, if you don't mind, Matthew."

"Not at all," I replied, and we walked forward, the carpet of insects which blanketed the floor flowing out of our path like living oil. We stopped about nine feet from the gigantic insect huddled against the basement wall. He leaned back like a humanoid, though his body wasn't really built for it: he looked as if he might topple over any second. I wondered, as I had before, whether this was a natural position for him, or if he assumed it to seem more humanlike. If the latter, the attempt was a dismal failure.

Gregor was a gigantic version of the far smaller insects which served as his spies throughout the city. Somewhat like a roach, but his head was too large, his legs too many, and his eyes… they didn't resemble a human's, but then they didn't look all that much like an insect's, either. They looked more like obsidian gems set into the hard shell of his carapace.

A constant stream of the smaller Gregors ran up his body, over his head, and touched their antennae to the tips of his far larger feelers. They then scuttled back down as another took their place, and then another, and another. The flow of information from his spies never stopped, even when he was involved in a conversation.

"You'll have to excuse me if I seem a bit distracted today," Gregor said. "But the Descension celebration is the busiest time of the year for us – so much happens around the city – and the sheer tidal wave of information my children bring me can be a bit overwhelming at times. Please bear with me."

"No problem," I said. "So I don't waste your time or ours, Gregor, why don't you tell us how much you know about why we've come? I assume you at least know a little. After all, I did see one of your children in my apartment when I first spoke with Ms. Kanti, and I saw another in the alley where we found Varma's body."

Gregor made a high-pitched chittering sound which I took for laughter. "Very observant, Matthew. Suffice it say I have a fair grasp of your basic situation."

I knew that was all we would get out of him on the subject. Gregor never gave away more information than he had to.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Of course you do. Why else would you be here?" More chittering. Then he folded his legs across his abdomen – a sign he was preparing to listen closely.

"First off, do you know who stole the Dawnstone?"

"Regrettably, no. My children have a very difficult time penetrating the Darklords' strongholds. Their protections are too strong, too intricate."

"Are you aware of anyone trying to fence the Dawnstone?"

"Again, no."

I was certain Gregor's children had every fence in town "bugged." If he didn't know of anyone trying to sell the Dawnstone, then no one had.

"Do you know who killed Varma?"

"My child happened late upon the scene, but arrived in time to see three members of the Red Tide departing."

The Red Tide. And three of them. When it came to believing in coincidences, I was an atheist. "Are you aware we had a runin with some Red Tiders?"

"I am."

"Were the three who left the alley the same three who attacked us?"

"As I said, my child only saw them leave the alley, but I believe it was them, yes."

It was beginning to look like our encounter with the gang members in Gothtown hadn't been just random bad luck after all.

"Do you know where they went?"

"Alas, no. My children lost them in the confusion of the festival."

"What do you know about veinburn?"

"It's a relatively new drug, very powerful, created by a fusion of magic and science. It's effective on all of Nekropolis's species, with the exception of the completely dead, such as zombies and ghosts." He paused. "Since you're the city's only self-willed zombie, I have no idea whether it would affect you or not. It would be interesting to find out, wouldn't it?"

"After what happened to Varma, I think I'll just say no, if you don't mind. Who's making the stuff?"

"The Dominari is distributing veinburn. But the drug itself is made by the Arcane."

Arcane? That meant: "Talaith."

Gregor's head bobbled, his version of a nod, I suspect. "And the plants which are used to make veinburn are cultivated in Glamere."

"That's surprising," Devona said. "I wouldn't expect Talaith to use technology, not after what Matt told me about how she demands her people practice pure, natural magic – and especially with what happened with the Overmind."

"Times change," I said. "And the Darklords will do anything to gain an advantage over each other – including abandoning their principles. Assuming they ever had any in the first place." I suddenly recalled who Devona's father was. "Sorry."

"Don't be, you're right; even Father might be persuaded to set aside his hatred of technology if he thought it was to his advantage." She thought a moment. "Could the Hidden Light be mixed up in this somehow? After all, they manage to smuggle holy items into Nekropolis. Perhaps they also bring in technology."

I answered before Gregor could. "Doubtful. The members of the Hidden Light are capable of a lot of things, but working closely with Darkfolk isn't one of them. They have a deep aversion to associating with those of a supernatural persuasion."

"Then why do they deal with you?" she asked.

"Because I was killed while foiling one of Talaith's plots. They view me not as a monster so much as a victim of a Darklord's evil." I turned to Gregor. "What do you think? Could the Hidden Light be in on this?"

"I must concur with your assessment, Matthew," he said. "The Hidden Light has always worked alone in the past."

That settled, I returned to my original line of questioning. "Do you know where The Dominari have their lab set up?"

"Somewhere in the Sprawl, I believe, but the exact location is unknown to me." Gregor's mandibles clicked together once, twice, an action I think was intended to substitute for a smile. "The Dominari may not be Darklords, but their protective spells are still quite formidable."

"I don't suppose you know who Varma's veinburn connection was."

"Actually, I do, or at least, I have a suspicion. The only veinburn dealer I'm aware of is a demon named Morfran who works out of the Sprawl."

I frowned. "Only one dealer? That doesn't make any sense. It's not like the Dominari to work on so small a scale."

"I have the impression they've been field-testing veinburn," Gregor said, "trying to get the formula just right."

"I suppose." Still, it didn't sound like the Dominari's style. Like the criminal organizations back on Earth, they always went for the money, and they weren't exactly known for their patience. "Can you think of anyone in particular who would gain from stealing the Dawnstone?"

"You're asking me to theorize. You know how much I dislike doing so in the absence of facts. But if I were to hazard a guess, I would say someone who wished to harm Lord Galm – or perhaps even Father Dis. And in all likelihood, that would be another Darklord."

"Talaith," Devona said. "Relations between my father and Talaith might be cordial at the moment, but they haven't always been so. And if Talaith is behind the creation of veinburn–"

"She could have gotten Varma hooked on the stuff, and used his addiction as leverage to get him to steal the Dawnstone for her," I finished. "It certainly seems to fit. No wonder she was ready for us when we tried to cross her domain. Augury, my dead ass. One of her people probably saw us asking around about Varma in the Sprawl and alerted her that we were investigating the Dawnstone's theft and figured there was a good chance we'd consult Gregor."

"And the Red Tide?" Devona asked. "They came after us after we'd visited Waldemar – long before anyone could've been aware of what we were doing."

"Maybe Talaith's got an informant in the Cathedral, someone who saw us there."

"Why the Red Tide, then? They hardly seem like the type to work for Talaith."

"Darkgems are darkgems, no matter who pays them to you. And the Red Tide's tech can't come cheap, not when it has to be imported from Earth."

Around us, Gregor's children began getting restless. A sign, I knew, that Gregor himself was becoming bored and was eager to move on to another topic.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"Not that I can think of," I answered.

"Then on to the matter of payment." If there's such a thing as an insect version of a purr, Gregor's words were it.

Before I could respond, Devona stepped in front of me and said, "I'll pay."

"No you won't," I said.

She turned to me, her face set in a determined expression. "You paid Waldemar's price, Lord Edrigu's, and Silent Jack's. It's my turn."

"I could afford to pay them, Devona. I… Papa Chatha gave me some bad news. My body can no longer be preserved by magic. I'll be gone in a couple days, maybe less."

Gregor didn't react; he'd probably already known. But Devona came forward and took my hand.

"I thought your skin looked a little grayer than when we first met, but I told myself it was just my imagination. It wasn't, though, was it?"

I shook my head.

"And you're spending the time you have left helping me." She sounded bemused, as if she couldn't quite bring herself to believe it.

I felt a need to tell her the truth. "My motives aren't unselfish. I was hoping that if we recovered the Dawnstone, you would intercede with Lord Galm on my behalf and ask him to help me make Papa a liar."

"So you haven't given up."

I smiled. "It's not in my nature."

"Then the prices you paid – a page from your life, bearing Edrigu's mark, losing your finger – you paid them even though you still intend to continue living. Uh, existing."

"Yes."

She nodded, as if in understanding, but of what I had no idea. She released my hand and turned back to face Gregor. "I shall pay this time."

"Actually," Gregor said, his antennae quivering as if he could barely contain himself, "since the information I've provided may benefit both of you – Devona, by helping recover the Dawnstone, and Matthew, by providing a chance to avoid discorporation – you must both pay."

"What?" Devona nearly shouted, setting Gregor's children to rustling nervously. "That isn't fair!"

Gregor leaned forward, and although nothing else in his attitude changed, I sensed a hint of menace in the motion. "This is my home. Here, I decide what is and isn't fair."

From behind us came a soft whispering, like a distant wave breaking on the beach. I turned to see Gregor's children had left the ceiling and the walls and were massing behind us.

I put a hand on Devona's shoulder. "It's okay. Information is the only coin he deals in."

"Quite so," Gregor affirmed.

Devona sighed. "Very well, then."

I looked behind us; the mound of Gregor's children was growing smaller as they returned to their places.

"Ms. Kanti, you shall pay first." Gregor settled back once more. "As Matthew told you, all that interests me is information. But as I mentioned earlier, there are some places in Nekropolis – only a few, mind you – where my children have a difficult time venturing. Among these places, as I indicated, is the Cathedral. I want you to escort one of my children into Lord Galm's stronghold and then, after a period of precisely one month, escort it out again. You need do nothing else to pay your debt to me."

Devona considered briefly, and then said, "Agreed."

"Excellent." Gregor did or said nothing more, but one of his insects detached itself from the others and scurried up Devona's leg, over her waist and chest, along her neck, across her jawline, and then darted into her ear.

She screamed in pain and clapped her hand to the side of her head. Blood trickled out from between her fingers. She swayed and then fell to her knees.

I went to her and gently pulled her hand away from her ear. I saw no sign of the insect and, thanks to her half-vampire physiology, the wound of its passage was already healing.

"I apologize. I should have made clear what I meant by escort." Gregor chittered softly.

"If you've hurt her–"

"No need for dramatics, Matthew. My child must be hidden inside Ms. Kanti in order to be able to penetrate Lord Galm's wardspells. Despite the initial… unpleasantness of the process, she will not be harmed by hosting my child, and when a month is over, it shall depart and Ms. Kanti's body will heal the minor damage caused by its leave-taking." He rubbed four of his legs together, maybe in anticipation of soon gaining access to a place so long denied him.

"I'm all right, Matt," Devona said, sounding a bit shaky but otherwise unhurt. I helped her to stand. "It feels… odd," she said. "But that's all."

"All right, Gregor," I said. "My turn. Let me guess: you want me to carry one of your little spies too, so in case I do rot away to dust, I can ferry it over to the afterlife with me."

More chittering. "Hardly. You have only to answer one simple question for me, Matthew: how do you feel about being a zombie?"

FIFTEEN

"I don't know what you mean."

"Come now, Matthew, it's a simple enough question. How do you feel about being a zombie?"

"Why do you want to know?"

Gregor chittered loudly. "Why do I want to know anything? Because it is there to be known, because I do not already know. Because by knowing, I can perhaps come to understand."

"Understand what?"

"Everything, of course. But to answer your initial question more specifically, I wish to know because you are one of a kind, the only self-willed zombie in Nekropolis, perhaps the only one that has ever existed. And unlike normal zombies, you are aware and can provide valuable insight into your state of existence."

"I'd like to help you, Gregor, but I don't experience emotions the way I did when I was alive. I'm not sure I have any feelings about being a zombie."

Gregor's mandibles clacked together slowly – tik-tik-tik-tik – a gesture and sound which I'd come to know as a sign that the big bug was losing patience.

"Come now, Matthew. You forget to whom you are speaking. My children have watched you many times since your arrival in Nekropolis. You pretend to help people solely for monetary compensation in order that you might purchase preservative spells. But the lengths you go to in order to help them, the risks you take, indicate a man who is interested in far more than just collecting a paycheck."

"When I take on a job, I do it to the best of my abilities. That's how I am."

"And is that why you chose to help Lyra? She was a spirit, Matthew, and unable to pay you."

"Not true; I got to keep Honani's soul."

"Which you did not know would happen when you decided to aid Lyra. You helped her because you felt sorry for her and because her death filled you with righteous anger and you wanted to make her killer pay. You cannot deny it."

Gregor was right, I couldn't. "So?"

"So that proves you still feel, Matthew. Now answer my question and discharge your debt to me."

I looked at Devona and thought of what she had said to me in the alley where we'd discovered Varma's body. If you don't feel anything, perhaps it doesn't have anything to do with your being a zombie. Perhaps that's who Matthew Richter really is – a man who was dead inside long before he died on the outside.

Had she been right? Was that really who and what I was?

I heard the soft whisper of Gregor's children gathering behind.

"Matt–" Devona said warningly.

"How do I feel, Gregor? Even in Nekropolis I'm an oddity – a freak in a city of freaks – the only walking dead man with a mind of his own. And that mind is trapped in a body that's little more than a numb piece of meat. I can't feel warm or cold, can't feel the wind on my face. Can't smell, can't taste. I'm cut off from the world around me, on the outside of life, looking in and trying to remember what it was like to be a man, to be Matthew Richter, instead of just a pale memory of him.

"And now my undead body's preparing to betray me, getting ready to fall apart like so much overcooked chicken slipping off the bone. And despite my hope that Lord Galm might have the power to restore me and that he might deign to do so if I can help Devona recover the Dawnstone before I rot away completely, I'm still scared that none of it's going to matter, my body will cease to be and my spirit–" I showed the E on my palm to Gregor. "I suppose Lord Edrigu will get that."

I lowered my hand. "You want to know how it feels to be me, Gregor? Right now, it well and truly sucks. Satisfied?"

Gregor slumped against the wall, legs curled across his abdomen and stroking it slowly with a faint rustling sound as of a mass of dry twigs being rubbed together. His attitude was that of a someone who has just had a very large and very good meal. Or great sex.

"Extremely. Thank you, Matthew. And good luck on your dual quests to locate the Dawnstone and discover a way to avoid your impending dissolution. I truly hope you succeed. Nekropolis is a far more interesting place with you inhabiting it."

I felt humiliated at having been forced to bare my soul for Gregor's amusement, and that Devona had been a witness. "I hope your next visitor is a very big can of sentient bug spray."

I turned to go, and Devona followed. Together, we walked up the temporarily insect-free stairs, Gregor's chittering laughter following us all the way.

We walked through the dilapidated streets of the Boneyard in silence for a time after that. The wraith images of the domain's inhabitants seemed to be sharper now, maybe because we'd moved further into the Boneyard, or maybe we were just getting used to them. A few tried to talk with us, but they made no sound, at least none we could hear, and after several moments of attempting to communicate by gesture, they gave up and drifted away.

When Devona finally spoke, she said, "What do we do now?" No mention of my embarrassing little scene back in Gregor's basement, for which I was quite grateful.

"We have several possible avenues of investigation at this point. We could try to find Morfran, the demon veinburn dealer; we could try to locate the drug lab the Arcane and the Dominari have set up in the Sprawl; or we could try to learn who hired the Red Tide vampires that killed Varma and tried to kill us."

As if on cue, a crimson mist rolled forth from a nearby sewer grate.

"No need to bust your rotting ass looking for us, zombie," Narda's voice drifted forth from the vermilion cloud. "We're right here."

The fog dissipated to reveal Narda, Enan, and the Giggler.

Enan raised his right hand. The fingers blurred and shifted, becoming five large hypodermic needles, the points glistening with liquid veinburn. He grinned. "Time to plug and play, Deadboy."

The vampiric trio looked the worse for wear since last I'd seen them, but not as much as I'd expected. There were still traces of burns on their faces and hands, but the worst injuries had been covered by patches of what appeared to be blue rubber that seemed to have bonded to their skin. Narda's missing eye hadn't regenerated; rather, in its place was a camera lens which protruded several inches from the socket. Their tech bodysuits, which had been short-circuiting as they fled from us in Gothtown, had been repaired, but sloppily – exposed wires, mismatched parts, metallic glops from hurried soldering. The suits sparked here and there, and the power hum was overloud and sounded a bit strained. I imagined the air contained the faint hot metal and plastic smell of machinery working too hard.

"The Boneyard isn't exactly your normal stomping grounds," I said. "How'd you find us?"

"We want to find someone, they're good as found," Narda said.

"You can't hide from the Tide," Enan added.

The Giggler giggled. Big surprise.

"What's with the blue gunk?" I asked. "New fashion statement?"

"Plaskin," Enan said. "Helps burns heal faster – even for Bloodborn – but they still hurt like a bitch." He gnashed his fangs, and his eyes blazed with anger. "But not as much as you're going to hurt before we finish you."

The Giggler lived up to his nickname once again, and I decided now was not the time to point out that my body was incapable of feeling any sensation, including pain. It would just make them more determined – and inventive.

"I'd have thought you'd be used to burns by now," I said. "After all, don't the crosses embedded in your foreheads burn your flesh?"

"Sure they do," Narda said. "They show the Red Tide's hardcore, and that we're not afraid of anything."

The Giggler let forth another peal of his high-pitched, girlish laughter. I was really getting tired of that sonofabitch. I bent down and picked up a broken brick from the worn and cracked street.

The Red Tide vampires laughed.

"What do you think you're gonna do with that?" Enan asked.

"This." Throwing isn't easy as slow as I am, but I've had plenty of practice. With a wind-up and then a half-throw, half-lurch, I hurled the makeshift missile as hard as I could at the Giggler's forehead. It struck the cross set into his flesh, driving it inward. The Giggler screamed and clawed at his forehead, but it was no good. The cross's corrosive effect on vampire flesh and bone, aided by the impact of my brick, had buried the holy object in his brain. Steam curled forth from the wound, and then rays of pure white light shot out of his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. The light winked out and Giggler now had nothing but open ruins where his sensory organs had been. He stiffened and fell forward onto the broken pavement. I was confident he was dead, but I half expected him to start giggling again anyway.

"You worm-eaten motherfucker!" Narda shrieked.

For a moment, all Narda and Enan could do was stared in stunned amazement at the body of their fallen comrade – long enough to allow me to pull out my garlic and holy water squirt gun, which was mostly empty. But before I could start pumping the plastic trigger, Narda pointed and tendrils of wire shot forth to wrap themselves around Devona's arm.

"Put the gun down, Deadboy, or little Miss Leather here'll get a few million volts. Enough to fry her up good."

Vampires, for all their strengths, have a surprising number of weaknesses. Beyond the ones everyone knows about – sunlight, holy objects, wooden stakes – are others such as silver and fire. Vampires aren't as flammable as zombies by any means, but fire can kill them.

I dropped the squirt gun to the ground with a plastic clatter.

"Kick it away."

I did.

Enan grinned. "Now we're going to have ourselves a little fun. Put your hands above your head, zombie, and step toward me slowly. Make any funny moves, and Narda turns your friend into charcoal. Got it?"

I nodded and did as he ordered.

"Stick out your arm," he commanded.

I did; I knew what was coming. "Veinburn won't work on me. I'm dead. All the way dead, not like you overgrown mosquitoes."

"Then you won't mind if I do this!" Enan plunged his needle fingers into the unfeeling flesh of my forearm. After a few moments, Enan yanked his hand away – tearing five ragged holes in my gray skin in the process – and the needles thickened into fingers once more.

"Well?" he asked. "How's it feel, deader?"

"I told you, I'm not–" I broke off, my body beginning to shake all over. I collapsed to the pavement not far from the Giggler's corpse, flipping and flopping like a fish tossed live into a frying pan.

"I'll be damned again!" Narda crowed. "This shit's even stronger than they said it is! Look at him go!"

"I bet that's the best he's felt in a loooooong time!" Enan laughed.

My exertions became so severe that I rolled over onto my stomach, and when I came around on my back again, I'd drawn my 9mm and leveled it at Narda's head. If I'd still been a cop, I'd have given her a warning. But I wasn't a cop anymore.

Two silver bullets apiece later, Narda and Enan had joined the Giggler on the ground. I stood, walked over to the bodies, reloaded, and pumped another couple rounds into their hearts, just to be sure.

Devona had untangled herself from Narda's wire. "I take it the veinburn didn't affect you. Nice acting job."

"What can I say? I was in drama club in high school." I examined the patches of plaskin on the forms of the dead vampires. I wondered if the substance might help fend off my decay, but I decided it probably wouldn't. The plaskin likely only worked on living tissue. No loss; I don't look good in blue anyway.

Devona gazed at the remains of the Red Tide members. "Makes it rather difficult to question them, doesn't it? Their being dead and all."

"You complaining?"

She smiled. "Not in the slightest. But it does narrow our options."

"The Red Tide has to get its technology somewhere, and the only Darklord enamored of technology is Varvara. But none of this strikes me as her style. Varvara's charming, fun, and she'd betray her best friend in a heartbeat if there was a laugh in it, but the Red Tide are too déclassé for her. My money's on the Dominari. They have the connections to import technology from Earth and supply it to the Red Tide, and from what Gregor told us, the Dominari are involved in the manufacturing and testing of veinburn, which Enan possessed in abundance."

I put my gun away and shook my arm; it felt heavy and swollen. "Stupid vamps. Not only doesn't this stuff work on me, you'd think they'd have realized I'd need a functioning circulatory system to distribute it throughout my body."

"What will happen to the veinburn?"

"It'll just sit in my arm until I have it removed. Papa Chatha can do it for me. If I'm still around in a few days." As soon as I said the words, I regretted them. It was one thing to think those kind of morbid thoughts, another to voice them.

"Oh, Matt, I wish you had told me earlier."

"We only met a few hours ago, Devona. My situation has no bearing on your problem or on our efforts to resolve it." I paused. "Besides, I didn't want you worrying about me."

"That's sweet." And then she did something that surprised the hell out of me. She leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I hadn't been kissed since I'd died, hadn't even really been touched – in a non-violent way, that is – by a woman.

I didn't know how to react, so I didn't. Just stood there and looked at her. Pretty smooth, huh?

"I want you to know something, Matt. No matter whether we find the Dawnstone or not, I intend to ask my father to help you."

Now I really didn't know what to say. But Devona didn't wait for a reply. "I assume we're off to the Sprawl again?"

I nodded. "To locate either Morfran or the drug lab." I smiled. "And I promise not to kill anyone else before we've had a chance to talk with them."

• • • •

You know the old punchline? You can't get there from here. Nekropolis can be like that sometimes. To get back to the Sprawl, we had to either go through Glamere once more – definitely not an option – or pass through the Wyldwood, Dominion of Lord Amon, King of the Shapeshifters.

When I brought this up to Devona, she said, "Couldn't we take a shortcut across the grounds of the Nightspire?"

The Nightspire rests on a small island in the middle of the pentagram that is Nekropolis. This island is surrounded by the fiery waters of Phlegethon, the same waters which enclose the city and separate the five Dominions from each other. But in addition to the main bridges, there is a second set of smaller ones which connect each section of the city to the Nightspire. Devona's suggestion made sense on the surface. It would make our journey to the Sprawl far simpler and less deadly if we could walk from the Boneyard to the Nightspire, pass the bridge leading to the Wyldwood and take the one which led to the Sprawl.

"Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. During my time here, I've had occasion to travel a good bit of the city. I had the same idea as you a while back and tried to cross over one of the bridges to the Nightspire."

"What happened?"

"It didn't work. Powerful winds buffeted me, nearly knocking me into Phlegethon. When I retreated, the winds ceased. I later learned from Gregor that the wind, which he said was caused by the invisible Furies which guard the Nightspire, repels all who attempt to cross – not including the Darklords, of course – unless they are accompanied by one of Dis's representatives."

"So that's out then," Devona said. "And we can't risk another encounter with Lady Talaith."

"I'd rather not," I admitted.

"Which leaves only the Wyldwood."

"Talk about Scylla and Charybdis."

Her eyebrows rose. "I didn't realize you were so well read."

"Yeah, well, when you don't sleep, eat or go to the bathroom anymore, you have a lot of extra time for reading. Let's go. And on the way, maybe you can talk me out of it."

SIXTEEN

Before leaving the Boneyard, Devona and I discussed the best way to make it through the Wyldwood. Devona argued that the Accord which established unrestricted travel on the Obsidian Way would protect us in the Wyldwood, and so we should stay on it. I countered that might be true – if we were traveling in a vehicle, preferably a very fast one that could outpace a speeding lyke. But by walking completely unprotected out in the open, we would be marking ourselves as prey for every denizen in the Wyldwood. And Accord or no Accord, no lyke would pass up the opportunity to attack a pair of morons who wouldn't even bother trying to conceal their presence. As far as a lyke would be concerned, anyone that stupid deserved to have their flesh shredded into bloody gobbets.

"But the lykes will still be able to catch our scent, whether we're traveling on the Way or not," Devona said.

"Off the Way, we can move through the trees, and that will help mask our scent somewhat," I suggested. "Plus, my zombie… uh, ambience will seem more like rotting carrion in the woods, where there's less chance of lykes seeing me and realizing the smell is coming from a walking dead man. If they think I'm just the remnants of another lyke's kill, they'll leave us alone and go off in search of fresh prey."

In the end we compromised. We'd travel overland but stick as close to the Obsidian Way as possible, so we could return to it if necessary.

We crossed the Bridge of Silent Screams, left the Obsidian Way, and entered the dense tangle of forest that was the Wyldwood. We picked our way carefully through the underbrush, searching for a path and trying not to make too much noise lest we attract the attention of any lykes that might be nearby. Lykes were chaotic enough outside their Dominion, but here they were totally wild, killing on sight any who dared attempt to cross their land. Like I said, Devona and I made our way very carefully.

Despite the thickness of the forest, we could still see well enough. Some strange quality of Umbriel's shadowy light? Or maybe Lord Amon's magic was responsible. Whichever, I was grateful. Otherwise, I would have been totally dependent on Devona's vampire vision to lead me – and I don't like being dependent.

Still, being able to see didn't help us navigate. I'd been a city boy all my life and death, and Devona had spent most of her existence within the Cathedral and the surrounding environs of Gothtown. Neither of us was exactly a skilled outdoorsman. In order to make sure we didn't stray too far from the Obsidian Way, Devona had to climb trees a number of times to check the position of Umbriel and get a fix on our location. She went up with an easy grace and came down the same way, and watching her, admiring her strength and beauty, I felt a strange tightness in my chest. I told myself it was probably the result of the numerous injuries I'd sustained since taking on Devona's case, but I knew better.

After one such check, Devona climbed down from a large oak, a deep scowl on her face and said, "As near as I can tell, we've been going in circles – and I couldn't see any sign of the Way."

"Maybe there's some sort of enchantment on this Dominion that makes navigating difficult." I said this to make Devona feel better, but in truth I figured we two city kids had simply lost our way. I would've killed for a compass, but I'm not certain one would work in Nekropolis's dimension. I thought for a moment, trying to get my dead brain to cough up what little woodlore it knew. "Maybe we should start marking trees as we go, so at least we don't–"

Devona put a finger to her lips to shush me, and then she touched her ear. I listened, but I didn't hear anything. Devona's half-vampire hearing was far superior to mine, though, so I listened again, and this time I heard it: a soft rustling of leaves, not very far away and coming closer.

A lyke? I mouthed. The Wyldwood was home to many ordinary animals as well, all prey beasts for the lykes to hunt. Hopefully, what we heard was only a deer and not a savage shapeshifter come to gut us and feast on our entrails.

Devona shrugged then sniffed the air. At first she frowned, and then nodded, but she didn't seem all that certain. I wondered why, but knew now wasn't the time to ask. Something was coming, and whatever it was, I doubted it was the Welcome Wagon. I wished I'd given in to Devona earlier and stuck to the Obsidian Way like she'd wanted, but it was too late for regrets now. We headed off through the brush in the opposite direction of the rustling, trying to be as silent as we could, but being two city dwellers, I sure we failed miserably.

The rustling became a crashing as something loud bounded toward us. I pulled my 9mm out and rested my finger easily on the trigger. I only had five silver bullets left – not nearly enough to get us through the Wyldwood, but I couldn't worry about that now. Whatever it was came around our left and then approached from in front, slowing as it neared.

I aimed my weapon at the spot in the brush where I judged the lyke would appear and waited.

A few seconds later the leaves parted and I tightened my finger on the trigger. But then I paused as a six-foot white rabbit with yellow eyes stepped out of the underbrush.

"Don't tell me," I said. "You're late for a very important date."

The hare scowled. "Funny. But if she's Alice, then who the hell are you?" The voice was masculine, if a bit on the high side.

"I'm the guy who's got a gun full of silver bullets pointed at your chest. Please tell me you're not a carnivorous bunny."

The rabbit's large amber eyes fixed on my pistol, but his voice remained steady enough. "Who ever heard of such a thing?"

"This is Nekropolis, pal. A meat-eating rabbit would actually be rather mundane here."

"Good point. But no, I'm not a predator." He opened his mouth and displayed flat rabbit teeth. And then his form blurred and shifted until before us stood a thin, but still rabbity looking young man his mid-twenties, with an unruly shock of white hair and wearing nothing but a pair of overalls.

"Where did the pants come from?" I asked, curious. "I mean, you weren't wearing them before, and now here they are."

He shook his head as if I'd just asked the stupidest question imaginable. "Magic. A far better question is where did you two come from?"

I lowered my gun, but I didn't put it away. I wasn't ready to trust Bugs just yet. "The Boneyard."

He looked me over. "That I could've guessed." He wrinkled his nose. "And smelled."

"Sorry, but they don't make deodorant for zombies." I gave him an extremely truncated version of who Devona and I were and what we were doing here.

"You'd have been better off taking your chances with Lady Talaith. The Wyldwood is never a safe place for outsiders, but it's even more dangerous now."

"Why?" Devona asked.

The wererabbit opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the sound of horns echoing in the distance. Hunting horns.

"That's why. Today Lord Amon is conducting the Wild Hunt."

I sighed. "Of course he is." Why, I wondered to myself, are these things never easy?

The lyke, whose name turned out to be Arleigh ("It means 'from the hare's meadow,'" he said proudly), led us through the forest and to a vast stretch of pasture where cattle grazed contentedly beneath Umbriel's shadowlight.

"Here in the Wyldwood, we produce most of Nekropolis's meat and blood – real blood, not that synthetic glop Varvara's factories have started churning out." Arleigh said. "Well, animal blood, anyway. Cattle, sheep, goat… Non-preds like me tend the herds. The carnies are too impulsive for the work and usually end up killing and eating the animals themselves."

"You're a farmer?" Devona asked.

Arleigh nodded. "Most herbs like me are."

"So you lykes have a caste system?" I asked. "Doesn't seem fair."

Arleigh shrugged his lean, bony shoulders. "It suits my nature, and I enjoy the work. What's wrong with that?"

I thought of my own work as a "doer of favors." In reality, I had to admit to myself, I was really still just a cop. My nature, I suppose. "Nothing wrong at all."

I noticed Devona was frowning, and I wondered if she was thinking about her own work as tender of Lord Galm's Collection.

"We're safe along the pastureland," Arleigh said. "The Hunt's conducted in the wilder part of the forest, using animals Lord Amon has specially bred at his Lodge." He lowered his voice. "I've heard it said that this year, he's using animals that have been… augmented."

"What, you mean through technology?"

He nodded.

"I guess it's everywhere," I said. I wondered how long it would be before Waldemar installed flesh computers in the Great Library and Gregor set up his own homepage on the Aethernet.

"Unfortunately," Arleigh said," the pastureland doesn't extend all the way to the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures."

"Let me guess," I said. "The way we need to go is directly through the section of the Wyldwood where the Hunt's being conducted."

Arleigh nodded, and I sighed again. Never easy.

Arleigh offered to help us through the Wyldwood and I, distrusting soul that I am, wanted to know why. He puzzled over my question for a few moments before finally smiling apologetically. "The only reason I can give you is because it's the right thing to do."

I didn't buy it, but then twenty years as a cop and two as a zombie had made me a tad cynical. Maybe the lyke was just following his nature again. Whatever his reason for aiding us, we couldn't afford to turn him down.

Arleigh led us through the Wyldwood's pasturelands, but even though he assured us we were safe here, I kept my gun out. Just in case. Before long, however, we had to leave the pastureland and return to the forest. Arleigh thought he'd be able to lead us past the Hunt, but I could tell by the nervous way the lyke kept sniffing the air and looking around that he wasn't as confident as he would've liked us to believe.

We periodically heard the hunting horns, sometimes closer, sometimes farther. Arleigh told us not to worry overmuch about the horns, for sound traveled in deceptive ways in the forest.

Eventually, we reached a small clearing, and Arleigh said he needed to stop a moment and get his bearings. He crouched down, his nose shifted back to a rabbit's, whiskers and all, and he sniffed the ground.

A horn blasted, sounding close by. It was followed by the noise of something large and heavy crashing through the underbrush directly toward us. Arleigh stood, rabbit nose quivering in fear.

"We need to get out of here!" I told him. "Which way?"

But he only stood, transfixed, staring in the direction of whatever was approaching, and trembled. I grabbed his arm and shook him a couple times, but I couldn't break him out of his terror-induced trance. I figured to hell with him, then.

"C'mon, Devona, we have to–"

Before I could finish my sentence, an animal unlike any I had ever seen before bounded into the clearing. It looked something like a muscular ostrich, only with a thick neck and a large, cruelly hooked beak. No doubt one of the "augmented" animals the Hunt pursued. The bird skidded to a stop upon seeing us. It cocked its head and examined us, probably trying to determine if we were a threat or not.

Evidently, the answer was not, for it let forth an angry squawk and came charging at us, snapping its hook-beak.

I only had five silver bullets left, and I hated to waste them on the lyke's prey, but I couldn't let the giant bird attack us either. I aimed for the thing's throat, but before I could fire, a spear whizzed through the air and sunk into the creature's back with a meaty-moist thuk! The bird screeched in pain and pitched forward, where it lay writhing in the grass.

A huge wolfman stepped into the clearing, powerfully built, lupine head held high in a regal fashion. Lord Amon, I presumed. He was followed closely by a half dozen other lykes of various predator species, one of which – a humanoid bobcat – carried an antler horn slung over his shoulder by a leather strap. I was impressed by how silent the lykes had been – they hadn't made a sound.

I didn't need Arleigh to tell us we had stumbled across the Wild Hunt.

The bird, though bleeding profusely, was still very much alive, squawking and thrashing its powerful legs. The wolfman walked up to the animal and regarded it for a moment. I expected him to finish it off, but instead the wolf-headed humanoid padded over to us. I thought he might do any number of things, all of them involving his teeth and claws and our flesh, but he stopped in front of us and then did something I didn't anticipate and couldn't have imagined: he fell to one knee.

"I have downed the bird, my Lord. Would you do me the honor of dispatching it?"

At first, for some crazy reason, I thought the lyke was addressing me. But then Arleigh replied, "You have done well, Rolf. Rise and claim the honor for yourself." The wererabbit's voice was no longer high-pitched but low and resonant.

The wolfman stood and grinned. "Thank you, my Lord." Then he turned and loped toward the bird and, with a single savage bite and twist of his jaws, broke the animal's neck. He ripped off a hunk of meat, and walked away from the kill to devour it. The other lykes waited until Rolf was eating before rushing to the dead bird, snarling, yipping, and biting as they fought for the best of the remaining meat.

"My people have never been much for table manners," Arleigh said.

Devona and I turned toward him, but the rabbity man was gone; in his place stood a broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced man in full fox hunting regalia – little black hat, red jacket, white jodhpurs, shiny black boots, even a riding crop held in one black leather-gloved hand. But despite his transformation, the being still possessed the same yellow eyes as Arleigh.

"Allow me to introduce myself," he said with a touch of British accent. "I am Amon, Lord of the Wyldwood." He smiled, displaying a mouthful of sharp teeth. "So nice of you to drop by."

SEVENTEEN

"Forgive my little deception, but once I became aware of you, I thought it best to investigate. And the guise of Arleigh seemed a perfect way to do so."

"And what did you learn?" I asked. It appeared Amon wasn't limited to one wildform as were his subjects – which made sense seeing as how he was King of the Shapeshifters. Still, I was more than a little angry at myself for being fooled so easily. The yellow eyes should have been a tip-off. Who'd ever seen a rabbit with yellow eyes?

"What I needed to know: that you're not a threat sent by one of my fellow Lords. This time of year, we Darklords tend to be busy with certain preparations. So busy that we're more vulnerable than usual to each others' machinations." He smiled. "I myself have set in motion several plots against my peers over the centuries, most of them around the anniversary of the Descension. Unfortunately, none bore much fruit. We tend to be too evenly matched. Still, the fun is in the game, is it not?"

"I'm not a Darklord, so I wouldn't know," I said. Devona gave me a warning look, but I ignored her. The English gentleman act was getting on my nerves. "And speaking of preparations, shouldn't you be conserving your energy for the Renewal Ceremony? I'm surprised you're out hunting instead of meditating or something."

The English fox hunter guise melted away to be replaced by that of a khaki-clothed big-game hunter, complete with elephant gun. The English accent disappeared, too, to be replaced by gravely American. "We each prepare in our own way. Galm meditates, Talaith engages in rites with her people, Edrigu communes with the spirit world, and Varvara throws a lavish party. I have been marshaling my power for weeks now. Today I prepare my mind and soul by engaging in the activity which is at the very core of my being – the Hunt."

I nodded to the ravaged corpse of the huge bird. "It didn't look like you were doing much hunting to me."

Amon ignored the dig. "My sons and daughters always accompany me. This was Rolf's kill."

I looked at the lykes of varied species scattered about the clearing, all of whom were hunkered down, greedily devouring their shares of meat. "Nice family," I said dryly.

Frank Buck gave way to a yellow-eyed Daniel Boone, dressed in the requisite buckskin clothing and coonskin cap, complete with Kentucky accent. "What they lack in manners, they make up for in enthusiasm."

"You're a busy monster, so let's cut to the chase," I said. "What do you intend to do with us?"

"The story we told Arleigh – told you – is true," Devona added. "We're just trying to get back to the Sprawl. We're on an errand of great concern to my father, Lord Galm."

"I believe you," Amon said. "Though you provided few details, I could sense what you told me was indeed the truth."

I wondered how Amon could be so sure of that. Because of his heightened shapeshifter senses, which functioned as an organic lie detector? Or maybe through other abilities he possessed as a Darklord? Whichever, he did seem to believe us, which was the important thing.

Devona started to talk but Amon, who had become a tall, lean, spear-wielding African tribesman, silenced her with a gesture. "Details are unnecessary. Regardless of whether your errand is of major or minor importance, if your failure to complete it will inconvenience Galm, that's reason enough for me to keep you from continuing your journey."

I still held my 9mm at my side. I wondered if silver would prove effective against Amon, who was obviously much more than an ordinary lyke. The way things were going, it looked like I'd find out soon enough.

"But I have another reason to detain you. Two, actually. And their names are Honani and Thokk."

I groaned inwardly and was uncomfortably aware of the soul jar containing Honani's spirit – which now seemed suddenly very heavy – still resting in my jacket pocket.

"Mr. Richter, you are responsible for Honani's body being taken over by another, and for the grievous injuries inflicted on his sister when she tried to seek justice."

"Vengeance," I corrected.

Amon, now a Native American brave, shrugged. "A mere difference in terminology. Honani and Thokk turned to science to alter their natural abilities. As such, they are outcasts among my people."

I gestured toward the nearly picked clean carcass of Big Bird. "You don't seem completely adverse to science."

"It has its uses," Amon admitted. "Provided it isn't taken too far. Still, even though mixbloods possess corrupted genes, they are shapeshifters and thus still family. You have transgressed against two of my subjects. As Lord of the Wyldwood, I have a responsibility to my people to see that justice is done." He smiled. "Or, if you prefer, vengeance."

I preferred neither in this case, but I kept my mouth shut.

Rolf had finished eating and walked over to us. "These two aren't worthy of your attention, Father." He licked blood off his muzzle. "Especially the zombie. Allow me to slay them for you so that you might not dirty your hands."

Amon, now a shaggy caveman holding an animal's jawbone in one of his thick-knuckled hands, affectionately cuffed his child. "You've had your fun, Rolf. Now it is your father's turn."

Rolf bowed his head and stepped back.

I wondered what the odds were of my squeezing off a shot at Amon before one or more of his children fell upon me. Not good, I decided.

Then I had an idea. I raised my left hand and displayed the mark upon my palm. "My master, Lord Edrigu, will be displeased if anything should happen to us."

Amon looked at the mark for a moment and then burst out laughing. "That symbol merely means that Edrigu has laid a claim on your soul, zombie. I'm sure he'd be happy to collect it earlier than anticipated."

"Then what of my father?" Devona said in her best haughtyregal voice. "I am not just his daughter; I am also the keeper of his Collection. He would be furious if any harm were to come to me or my companion."

She sounded convincing enough, but I could tell by the uncertain look in her eyes that she wasn't sure that Lord Galm would be all that upset if his half-breed daughter died in the Wyldwood. I felt sorry for her then. What would it be like to have known a father for over seventy years, to have taken care of his Collection for nearly thirty, to have worked hard for him in hope of some simple recognition and still not know whether he cared if you lived or died?

Maybe Amon sensed her uncertainty as well, for after a moment's thought, he said, "You have aided in an assault on one of my subjects and trespassed on my Dominion. Galm cannot gainsay my right to justice."

Amon shimmered and was now a beer-gutted, flannel-shirted, John Deere-capped, shotgun-toting hunter, complete with chewing tobacco juice dribbling down his stubbled chin.

"But as it's the anniversary of the Descension and we are in the middle of the Wild Hunt, I shall make you a proposition." He turned his head and spit a brown stream into the grass. "Several miles from here is a small glen. You will be taken there and set free. All you need do is reach the other side, and I shall let you continue on your way to the Sprawl and will seek no further action against you for what happened to Honani and Thokk."

"And the catch is?" I asked.

Amon smiled, displaying tobacco-stained fangs. "I shall be hunting you."

"You have been given a great honor," Rolf said. He and his feral siblings escorted us through the forest, Rolf leading, the others enclosing us in a circle.

"Yeah, it's a dream come true," I replied.

He snarled and his clawed hands tensed. I'm sure he would've taken my head off if we hadn't been his father's prey. Before we'd set out, Rolf had taken my gun from me and now carried it in his left hand. Lykes are highly allergic to silver, but my bullets were safely encased within the gun, allowing him to hold it without harm. Still, I thought I could detect a slight swelling of his hand. I was surprised and puzzled that the lykes hadn't gotten rid of my gun as soon as they'd taken it from me. But when we reached the glen, I understood why.

"The hunt shall begin as soon as we depart," Rolf said solemnly. "My father, in deference to your weakness, shall give you a head start." His sharp-toothed smile reminded me of Amon. "How much of a head start, however, you shall not know." He pointed a clawed finger toward the other side of the glen. "The rules are simple. Reach the other side and your lives will be spared. Fail to do so, and you die."

He dropped my gun to the ground. "Once we are gone, you may pick up your weapon and begin." Before we could ask any questions, Rolf and the others bounded away into the forest, moving through the underbrush with silent, liquid grace.

I retrieved my gun and checked the clip. The five silver bullets were still there.

"It seems Lord Amon doesn't believe in hunting defenseless prey," Devona said.

"Or that he isn't as vulnerable to silver as an ordinary lyke. Let's get moving; the clock's ticking."

As soon as we stepped into the glen, it became night. I don't mean the perpetual dusk created by the diffuse shadowlight of Umbriel; I mean honest-to-God night, with stars and everything. Despite our situation, I was so surprised that I stopped and stared overhead. They were the first stars I had seen in two years, and they were beautiful.

For an instant I had the dizzying sensation that we had somehow stepped through an unseen door between Nekropolis and Earth – that I was home.

"Are those stars?" Devona asked, her voice soft with wonder. "I've heard about them, but I've never actually seen any before. They're lovely – and so far away. They make me feel small, and yet somehow big at the same time. Does that make any sense?"

"It makes perfect sense. But they can't be real stars. What we're looking at is most likely an illusion, a distraction designed to slow us down."

"You're right, of course. I'll lead the way; my night vision is better than yours." She took my hand and pulled me forward.

"And keep a nose out for Amon. We don't know what form he'll be wearing when he attacks, but it has to have a scent."

"Right."

We ran. The grass was slick with dew, and the sound of crickets chirping filled the air. I knew it was all just special effects supplied courtesy of Amon, but a wave of homesickness hit me hard, and I thought that if I had to die for good, I could pick far worse places in Nekropolis.

We continued forward, Devona's gaze fixed unwaveringly on the opposite tree line, her heightened senses alive and alert; I held my gun at the ready, my comparatively weak vision and hearing working overtime, cop instincts on full.

Moments that felt more like hours passed, without any sign of the master of the Wyldwood.

"Why is Amon even bothering to stalk us?" Devona said in frustration. "He's a Darklord, one of the six most powerful beings in the city, including Father Dis. How can we possibly provide him with a real challenge?"

"I don't know much about Amon, but I've heard it said he gets as much pleasure from swatting flies as he does from stalking big game. To him, the hunt is everything."

Devona started to reply, but then she suddenly squatted down, yanking me along with her so hard I felt something pull in my arm. I heard rather than felt something large pass through the air above us, approximately where our heads had been. A shrill cry of frustration sounded, followed by the flapping of wings as whatever it was began gaining altitude for another run.

"Looks like our head start's over," I muttered, scanning the night sky for Amon. I looked for a black patch against the stars, but whichever shape Amon was wearing, he was moving too fast for me to locate him. And then I heard something large whistling through the air and Devona screamed.

The starlight didn't provide much illumination, but it was enough for me to see that Devona was struggling with a large bird – an eagle or maybe a condor; it was difficult to tell in the dark. Whichever the particular avian, I knew it really was Amon. I raised my gun, but didn't dare fire for fear of hitting Devona.

"Throw him off you so I can get a shot!" I shouted.

Devona grabbed the bird by the wings and hurled him forward. It was dark, the bird was moving fast, and my reflexes are not nearly as good as they were when I was alive. But I didn't worry about any of that. I squinted my left eye, aimed, and squeezed off a shot.

The bird shrieked and hit the ground with a heavy thump. I held my gun on it, waiting for it to stir, but it didn't move. Without taking my eyes off it, I asked Devona if she was all right.

"A few cuts on my face, a couple fairly deep. Messy, but otherwise I'm unharmed. I should heal before too long."

The bird remained motionless, but I didn't lower my gun an inch; I knew better. "He was probably going for your eyes. Makes sense, since you're the only one of us who can see in the dark."

"Is he dead?" she asked.

"What do you think?"

"I think a Darklord doesn't die this easily."

"I think you're right." I moved toward the bird slowly, keeping my gun trained on it the entire time. It didn't so much as move a feather as I approached and stood over it.

"What kind is it?" I asked.

"An eagle, I think," Devona answered. "I've only seen them in books, though."

I carefully toed the eagle and its body collapsed into dust. I bent down, intending to get a closer look, but within seconds, the dust too was gone.

"Perhaps we got lucky," Devona suggested.

"I don't believe in luck." I stood. "We'd better–" My sentence was cut off as a snarling piece of darkness detached itself from the night and slammed into me, knocking me to the ground, spitting and clawing. Ivory fangs glinted in the starlight as the panther buried its teeth in the undead flesh of my neck.

But as sudden and hard as the impact had been, I still had hold of my gun. As the big cat worried my neck, I calmly raised my pistol to its head, pressed the muzzle against its black fur, and fired.

The panther let out a cry and fell limp.

"Devona, could you help haul this thing off me?" I asked. "It's pretty heavy. Oh, and be careful. Its teeth are still lodged in my neck."

Together we got the panther off without much additional damage to my already ravaged neck. Devona then helped me to my feet, and I noticed that my head was canted to the left. I tried to hold it upright, but it wouldn't stay. One more repair to add to the list for Papa Chatha – if I found a way to survive past the next couple days.

"Matt, your neck…" Devona sounded concerned and, although she was trying to hide it, mildly disgusted. She knew intellectually that I was a zombie, but I think this was the first time she'd really understood what that meant.

"It may look bad, but believe me, I'm okay. Now let's check out Sylvester here." I kicked the kitty corpse as I had the eagle's, with the same result: it collapsed into dust.

"Amon must be cheating," Devona said indignantly, "sending other shapeshifters in his place."

"I don't think so. Lykes don't disintegrate like this when they're killed. I think we have been fighting Amon, but he's a far different kind of shapeshifter than his subjects. When we shoot him, we kill the body he's wearing at the time – not him."

"You mean he discards his shape, leaves it behind?"

"Like a snake shedding his skin. He'll keep coming at us in different forms until I've used up my three remaining silver bullets. And then he'll have us."

"Not if we can get to the other side of the glen first," Devona said.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about that. We ran for a while before Amon attacked, right?"

"Yes, I'd estimate for perhaps five minutes."

"Me too. And in that time, we should've been able to cover a significant amount of ground, right?"

She nodded warily.

I pointed in the direction we had come, toward the line of trees where Rolf had left us – trees that were only a few feet away. "Then how come we haven't moved?"

EIGHTEEN

"No wonder Amon steered us to this glen," Devona said. "It's enchanted."

"I hate Darklords," I said. "I really do."

"I don't know if we've been running in place, running in circles, running in a straight line through warped space, or have been standing still and just think we've been running."

As an experiment, I stepped back to the tree line – keeping an eye out for Amon's next attack, of course. I didn't seem to have any trouble getting there. I even reached out and touched the trunk of an elm. I looked back and saw Devona standing several feet away.

"Start walking."

She did, and it was the oddest thing. On one hand, she appeared to be walking away from me, but on the other, she seemed to stay in place. It was as two different films were being played at once on the same screen.

"Keep walking, but look back over your shoulder," I called. "And tell me what you see."

"All right." A pause. "This is strange; I appear to be moving away from you, but at the same time you seem to be almost right next to me."

"Okay, stop walking."

My vision lurched, and I experienced a dizzying moment of vertigo that might very well have nauseated me if I still had a working stomach. The far-off image of Devona was gone, and only the close-up Devona remained.

I returned to her side. "Well, that didn't help any." I scanned the sky and ground for any sign of Amon, but there was none. Maybe he had to recover, build up his strength again from having been shot twice. Or maybe he was just enjoying our confusion over the nature of his glen.

"No, it helped a great deal," she said. "The effect we experienced is similar to that of certain wardspells which operate by making someone believe he is walking toward the object warded, when in reality he cannot approach it."

"So how do we break the spell?"

"I said this spell is similar; I didn't say it was the same. We're talking about a spell laid by a Darklord. Even if I had the mystical ability to circumvent the normal version of this spell – and remember, my father made certain I was trained only in the monitoring of wardspells, not the laying or breaking of them – I couldn't begin to touch the enchantment on this glen."

"Just because Amon cast this spell doesn't mean it can't be broken. The Darklords can't afford to waste much power on such trifles as this, can they? They have the Renewal Ceremony to think about, let alone trying to defend themselves from each other. Maybe you didn't receive any formal training in getting around wardspells, but that doesn't mean you can't extrapolate from what you did learn. And if a person knows how a lock works, he stands a good chance of picking it."

"But I'm not a magicworker," Devona protested. "I'm a curator, and I suppose really little more than a glorified security guard."

I sighed. "Look, I'd like to do this gently, but we don't have time. What you are, Devona, is a half-breed vampire who gets her entire sense of sense of self-worth from basically dusting another man's treasures. Because of the way you were brought up and the attitude of other vampires toward your mixed heritage, you feel that being the keeper of your father's Collection is all you can do, that there isn't any more to you.

"But in the short time I've known you, I've seen much more. I've seen a woman who when faced with danger doesn't run, doesn't back away – she fights. I've seen a woman who when faced with a problem doesn't give up – she keeps working at it until she finds a solution. I've seen a woman who's intelligent and caring… and," I said softly, "who sees the man inside me, the man I thought had died along with his body. I've seen a woman who, having ventured beyond her tightly circumscribed life, is starting to find out who she really is and what she's truly capable of. Well, it's time to find out some more, Devona. It's time to find us a way out of here."

I didn't know how she'd react: tell me to go to hell, start crying, or haul off and belt me. Maybe all three. But she just looked at me for a long moment, her expression blank, eyes unreadable in the dark. And then she nodded.

"Let's start walking again. I need to examine the spell while it's functioning." She headed off without waiting for my reply.

I smiled as I hurried after her. Wholly human or not, she was some woman.

While we walked and walked and got nowhere, Amon came at us again, this time in the more classic form of a large gray wolf. He managed to take a hunk out of my right leg before I dispatched him, or rather, his shape.

Two bullets left.

"I have an idea," Devona said not long after Amon's wolf facade had disintegrated. "I'm not sure it'll work, though."

"I'm rapidly running out of ammunition. Anything's worth a try at this point."

"I don't have the mystical training to break the spell, but I do think I understand how it's constructed. It's really very simple, a mere matter of aligning psychothaumaturgic energy structures in a constantly rotating–"

"In simple English, please, for the magically challenged among us."

She grinned. "Sorry. Basically, the spell works by constantly assaulting our minds with false sensory input. The trick to overcoming such a spell is to block out the false input so that our senses can detect reality once more."

"Sounds like quite a trick."

"It is. But I think I know how we might accomplish it. Remember I said that as half Bloodborn I possess a certain amount of psychic ability? While I haven't been trained in its use, I believe I may be able to sense in which direction the Sprawl lies by focusing on the combined mental energy of all the celebrants there. Ordinarily, I might not be able to accomplish such a feat, but this time of year there are so many people crowding the streets of the Sprawl and the emotional atmosphere is so charged, that even with my untutored powers I should be able to get a fix on it. And once I know where the Sprawl is–"

"You'll be able to shut out the glen's spell and lead us across," I finished. Earlier, I'd been wishing for a compass. Now it looked like Devona had found us a psychic equivalent.

"There's a problem, though," she said.

I smiled. "Only one?"

"You'll still be affected by the spell."

"Why is that a problem? You can guide me."

"And if Amon attacks and we become separated?"

"You can use your powers to locate me."

"I don't know if I can maintain my fix on the Sprawl and locate you at the same time. And even if I could, Amon might take the opportunity to finish one or both of us off while I'm looking for you." She shook her head. "No, it would be better if we both were able to home in on the Sprawl."

"That would be nice, but I'm afraid a set of psychic powers wasn't included in my zombie membership kit."

"You don't need powers of your own; we can link minds. That way you'll be able to sense what I sense."

"Link minds?" I tried to imagine what it would be like to have my mind joined with someone else's, but I couldn't. The closest I could come to was some sort of psychic equivalent to a phone connection, and somehow I doubted it would be like that.

Devona must have sensed my reluctance because she hurried to add, "I really believe it's the only way."

It wasn't like we had a lot of options to choose from. "Have you ever linked with anyone before?"

She looked down at the ground, and when she answered, she sounded embarrassed. "I've had a few Shadows of my own over the years. And I've linked with some of them."

She said Shadows but the word I heard was lovers. I don't know why it bothered me – we were both adults, and Devona was older than I, in her seventies chronologically. And for that matter, I was a zombie. I had no business being jealous – but I was.

"Will it work on me?" I asked. "However my brain functions, I'm sure it's not the same as a living man's."

"I don't know, Matt. We'll just have to try."

I didn't like the idea of anyone invading my mind, no matter who it was. But it didn't look like I had a choice. "Okay. But we'd better hurry before Amon attacks again."

Without another word, Devona reached out with both hands and placed her fingers lightly on the sides of my head. I wondered what her touch felt like.

Nothing happened at first, and I was afraid that my zombie mind wasn't capable of linking with a living one, when all of a sudden a warm, bright light flashed behind my eyes. And then I felt Devona inside me.

There are moments in every person's life when they feel close to someone else. It could be something as simple as a shared look, a moment when you exchange glances and know that each understands the other perfectly. Or it could be a joke that you share, one that always makes the two of you break up even though no one else around you ever seems to get it. Holding hands while walking at sunset; running your fingers slowly, gently along each other's skin after making love; hugging each other tight, bawling like babies as your hearts are breaking.

Being linked with Devona was all of these things and more.

It had been so long since I had felt this close to another person – no, I had never felt this close to another person: not any of my friends, not my ex-wife, not even my partner Dale. And I didn't know whether to feel joy at this sharing of souls with Devona, or sadness because I had never allowed myself to experience it before.

And then I looked to the far side of the glen, and although it didn't appear any different than before, somehow I could tell that it wasn't very far away at all. Only a few minutes' run at most.

Race you, Devona said in my mind.

Not with the hunk Amon took out of my leg, I responded. How about a fast walk?

You're on, she thought playfully, and we set off.

Together.

I expected Amon to attack just as we reached the other side, but he didn't. We stepped out of the glen, through the trees, and then the night sky and stars vanished, to be replaced once more by Umbriel and the featureless gray-black sky it hung in.

And there, not more than fifty feet away, lay the Obsidian Way and the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures, the crossing point from the Wyldwood to the Sprawl. We'd done it.

Without thinking about it, Devona and I hugged each other. Linked as we were, the gesture was automatic and completely natural, a physicalizing, however imperfect, of the closeness that we shared.

And then the link dissolved and one became two again.

Devona stepped back. "I'm sorry. I was so excited to see the bridge, I lost concentration."

"That's okay. The link had served its purpose anyway." I had never felt more alone in my existence. I felt like half of my soul had been ripped away. And yet, an echo of Devona remained inside me, the merest trace, like a memory of shared laughter, or a kiss that lingers on the lips long after your lover has departed.

I reached out and took Devona's hand. "Let's get out of here before Amon comes after us." I led her toward the bridge.

"But he said we'd be free if we made it across the glen."

A guttural voice came from behind us. "I lied."

I whirled around to see a massive yellow-eyed grizzly bear standing on all fours at the edge of the glen. Amon roared and charged. I raised my gun to fire, but before I could pull the trigger, the bear was upon us.

With a powerful blow of his huge paw, Amon knocked the 9mm out of my hand. It flew through the air, struck the ground, and discharged. It would have been nice if the bullet had happened to strike Amon, but it went flying off into the trees, wasted.

One bullet left.

Devona leaped onto the bear's back and grabbed double handfuls of its coarse brown fur. She then bared her fangs and sank them into the beast's back, using them like knives, slashing and tearing at Amon's ursine flesh.

Amon bellowed in pain and reared up on his hind legs. He tried to shake Devona off, but she clung to his back as if she were the world's largest and most determined tick. Amon then tottered toward the bridge in the stumpy-legged gait bears have when walking erect.

I ran – well, given the state of my chewed-up right leg, I halfran, half-hobbled – toward my gun. I retrieved it, and galumphed toward the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures.

Amon had crossed onto the bridge, and technically Devona and he were no longer in his Dominion. But he didn't show any sign of stopping his attack, and I didn't expect him to.

Devona continued ripping away at Amon's flesh. Her face was covered with blood, and she looked as savage and wild as the bear she battled. It was hard to reconcile this Devona with the one I'd so recently been linked to. But I didn't have time to think about that. Amon had backed up against the iron railing and his form began to shimmer and change.

So far he had only come at us in one shape at a time, and although that had never been spelled out as part of the deal, I'd assumed it was. Looked like I was wrong.

His interim form resembled a blurry amoeba, and Devona was having a tough time holding on. In a flash, I understood what he was going to do: he intended Devona to lose her grip on his fluid transitional form and fall into Phlegethon. If the river's mystic green flame didn't kill her, the Lesk which swam within it surely would.

"Devona, jump!" I shouted as I raised my gun and fired.

The last silver bullet struck Amon in the chest – or rather where his chest would have been if he'd been solid – just as Devona launched herself up and over the Lord of the Wyldwood. Devona landed easily on the bridge as the amoebic Darklord pitched backward over the rail and plummeted soundlessly toward Phlegethon's fiery green embrace.

I tucked my empty gun into my shoulder holster and hurried over to Devona. She was covered with blood, but it was impossible to tell if any of it was hers.

"Are you okay?"

She wiped a smear of blood from her mouth and nodded. "Do you think it's over?"

"It's possible Amon is more vulnerable in his transitional state and the last silver bullet did him in."

"Do you believe that?"

"I believe Darklords are very hard to kill. Let's get out of here before–"

A gigantic reptilian head rose up before us, fiery green water trickling down its black-scaled hide.

"Too late, zombie." The voice of Amon's British hunter guise, the one that annoyed me so much, boomed out of the Lesk's serpentine mouth. I'd never seen one of the great beasts close up before, only the black lines of their backs as they plied the waters of Phlegethon. The creature was far larger than I had imagined, and looked something like a snake encased in black armor. Its brow was spiked, and it had a row of bony serrated triangles running down its back. And of course it possessed Amon's feral yellow eyes – eyes full of fury and hunger.

"Let us go, Amon!" I shouted. "We played by the rules of your challenge and beat you, fair and square!"

Amon laughed, a harsh, brittle sound, as of a thousand bones breaking.

"The Hunt has only a single rule, little man: victory belongs to the strongest and swiftest." He hissed and his jaws opened wide in preparation to devour us.

"What of Honani, Darklord?" I yelled.

Amon paused and narrowed his basketball-sized eyes.

I reached into my jacket and removed the soul jar. "This container is what I used to draw Honani's spirit from his body. Honani remains inside. All I have to do to release him is pry open the lid." I gripped the lid in my fingers. "If I do, his spirit will be set free to wander Nekropolis for eternity. Or maybe he'll end up in the Boneyard as one of Edrigu's servants."

Amon's head swayed slowly back and forth as he regarded me.

"You told us earlier that despite being a mixblood, Honani was still one of your subjects – one of the family, as you put it." I gave the jar a shake. "Well, here he is, Amon. Are you going to abandon him just because his body now belongs to another?"

Amon hissed softly. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"How did you know it when you pretended to be Arleigh?" I countered.

Amon considered. "Very well," he said at last. "Place the jar on the bridge and you may go."

"Nothing personal, but I'd rather keep it with us until we reach the other side, if it's all the same to you."

Amon laughed again, and I was surprised to hear no malice in it. "Go on, then!"

We backed toward the Sprawl side of the bridge, keeping our eyes on Amon the entire way. When we reached the far side, Amon touched his serpent's nose to the bridge and flowed into his English hunter body.

I set the jar on the bridge and Amon gave me a little salute. "Well played, Mr. Richter. Well played, indeed. I haven't enjoyed a Wild Hunt this much in decades."

"I'm glad you liked it," I said wryly. And Devona and I turned and hurried into the Sprawl before the lord of the shapeshifters could change his mind.

From now on Amon would have to add a corollary to his rule about the Hunt: sometimes victory doesn't go to the strongest or swiftest. Sometimes it goes to a desperate dead man with deep pockets.

NINETEEN

"So that's the infamous House of Dark Delights," Devona said, sounding less than impressed.

The Sprawl's best-known brothel was located on the southeast end of Sybarite Street, and the Descension Day celebrating was a bit more subdued here, mostly because by this time a majority of partiers lay on the sidewalks, in the gutters, and in the alleys, unconscious or worse, robbed of whatever darkgems they'd had in their pockets, and more than likely missing several pints of bodily fluids and an organ or two. At least it was easier to get around in this neighborhood for those us who remained ambulatory – if you didn't mind stepping over all the bodies, that is.

The House sat between a casino called, ominously enough, Bet Your Life, and a soul-modification parlor (slogan: When you've done everything to your body that you possibly can) called Spiritus Mutatio. The House of Dark Delights was a pleasant-looking three-story building painted white, with green shutters and matching shingles. There, the dark is all on the inside.

The facial lacerations Amon had given Devona were almost completely healed by now, after snacking on a couple blood-ices she'd purchased from a street vendor along the way.

"It doesn't seem very well protected – especially for this part of town," she said. "No fence surrounding the place, no bars on the windows…"

"You're good with wardspells, right?" I said. "Try checking out its magical defenses."

Devona closed her eyes and concentrated. A few seconds later her eyes snapped open, and she looked at me with an expression of shock. "The spells protecting the building are almost as strong and complex as those warding my father's Collection!"

I smiled. "Bennie doesn't like to take any chances."

"Bennie?"

"The owner and operator," I said. "I just use Bennie. It makes things easier."

Devona gave me a puzzled look, and I told her she'd understand soon enough. As Devona had pointed out, there's no fence around the House of Dark Delights, and we strolled up the front walk, onto the porch, and I knocked on the door. The first time I'd come here, no one had warned me to knock first. I made the mistake of reaching for the doorknob, and as soon as my undead flesh came in contact with the metal, I found myself blasted across the street and through the front window of Les Escargot, a gourmet restaurant run by giant snails. The food's supposed to be great, but you wouldn't believe how slow the service is.

The door opened, and an extremely large and muscular mixblood lyke was glaring down at us – one that I knew well. After all, I'd seen him, or at least his body, walking out of Skully's only several hours ago.

"Lyra?" I said hopefully. I was thinking of how I'd traded the soul jar containing Honani's spirit to Amon for our freedom. Had the Darklord used his powers to force out Lyra's essence and return Honani to his rightful body?

The mixblood glared at us for a moment longer before dissolving into a fit of giggling. "Darn it! I knew I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face!"

I started to sigh in relief, but Lyra scooped me up and gave me a vicious hug, squeezing the rest of the air out of my lungs. When she put me down, I half expected to collapse to the porch in a mass of dead flesh and shattered bone. But luckily my skeletal system had withstood Lyra's affectionate embrace, if only just.

"What are you doing here, Matt? And who's your friend? She's cute!" Lyra turned to Devona and started to smile, but she frowned instead. "Hey, didn't I see you at Skully's when I walked out? I was kind of muzzy-headed from the transfer into this body, so maybe I'm wrong, but I could've sworn–"

"I was there," Devona confirmed.

"After you left Skully's, Devona asked me to help her out with a problem, Lyra. We're here because I think Bennie might be able to help us."

"Sure – come on in!" Lyra stepped aside so we could enter. When we were inside, Lyra closed to the door and even I, without any mystical training whatsoever, could sense a battery of defensive spells activating.

"So you decided to return to your old, uh, stomping grounds?" I asked Lyra.

Lyra grinned with Honani's mixblood mouth, and though she displayed a truly intimidating array of teeth, she still somehow managed look cute.

"More than that, I've got a new job! Bennie made me a bouncer!" Lyra flexed her right arm, and her new mixblood muscles bulged impressively.

I couldn't help laughing. "Perfect!"

"I know! Bennie's the best, aren't they? They also offered to get me an appointment with Dr. Moreau at the House of Pain to see if he might be able to give my new body a sex change, but I think I'm going to keep it as is for now. I always wanted to see how the other half lives, and now I've got my chance!"

Devona looked at me. "They?"

"It'll all make sense soon. Trust me."

Lyra led us through the foyer and into the lounge which, as usual, was filled with customers waiting for appointments to begin, restocking on fluids between assignations, or bragging about their performance to their companions afterward. The lounge was decorated like a tasteful upscale neighborhood tavern back on Earth: black lacquer tables and chairs, a small kitchen which served appetizers and snacks, and – instead of flat-screen TV's – giant Mind's Eye devices were mounted on the walls, the orbs broadcasting news coverage of Descension Day activities throughout the city. But the heart of the lounge was undeniably the large circular bar in the middle of the room. The bartenders on duty could mix any type of drink you wanted, but every one of them was Arcane and their true specialty was potion-making. They could create any manner of aphrodisiac or performance-enhancing substance imaginable, and many that were beyond imagination, even in Nekropolis.

Every table in the lounge was taken by men and women representing all the races the city has to offer – Bennie doesn't believe in discrimination when it comes to love, or the reasonable facsimile on the menu at the House of Dark Delights – and it looked like Devona and I were going to have to stand. But Lyra escorted us over to a table where two vampires I recognized were playing a holographic game of bloodshards.

The male looked up as we approached, his holo-eye implants switching over to normal vision, and he groaned when he got a good look at us, or more specifically, at me.

"Not you again! My sister and I just want to be left alone to play in peace!"

"And that's all you've been doing for the last four hours" Lyra said. "This lounge is reserved for paying customers, Reshem. I let you slide because of the trouble Matt and I caused you at Skully's earlier, but now I have to ask you to take your game elsewhere."

The female vampire switched her implants over to regular vision then too, and the holographic game pieces vanished. "But this is the only place we've able to find where a fight hasn't broken out within ten minutes of our arrival," she protested. "We figured it would be safe to play here because the customers aren't interested in fighting."

Her brother grinned. "Because they have other activities on their mind."

Lyra put her large clawed hands onto the table and went into her pissed-off mixblood routine, teeth bared, brow furrowed, growl rumbling deep in her throat.

The male vampire sighed. "All right, we're going. Come, Halina, let's try the restaurant across the street. We should be able to get in at least a dozen games before the server arrives to take our drink orders."

The vampire siblings left, and Lyra gestured to the now empty table. "If you'd like to take a seat, I'll go find Bennie and tell her you want to talk to her. I'll have someone come over and get you something to drink while you wait." Lyra gestured to one of the servers, gave us a last smile, and then turned to go.

We sat and watched Lyra make her way back to the foyer, everyone in her path stumbling over one another to get out of her way. Lyra acted as if she didn't notice, but I knew she loved every minute of it.

"I think that girl has a bright future ahead of her in the nuisance-deterrent business," Devona said.

I couldn't help but agree.

While waited for a server to come over, Devona glanced around the lounge, taking everything in. She frowned. "All these people… the place hardly seems large enough to accommodate them all. As big as the lounge is, I don't see how they have any space left over for rooms."

"That's because only part of the House of Dark Delights is above ground," I said. "There are seven levels beneath us, each more, ah, intense than the last."

Devona raised an eyebrow and I hastened to add, "Or so I've been told. I've never actually had the opportunity – or the desire – to explore beyond the lounge."

Devona smiled, obviously enjoying my discomfort. "Sure, Matt. Whatever you say."

A white-furred werecat server wearing an almost nonexistent black leather bikini came over and asked if we'd like anything to drink – on the house. I politely declined, but Devona ordered a glass of aqua sanguis. The server winked at me as she left, swishing her tail a bit more strictly than necessary as she headed toward the bar. I noticed Devona scowling.

"Why Ms. Kanti, if I didn't know better, I might think you were actually jealous."

Devona laughed just a little too loudly. "Right. As if I would be jealous of a cheap little thing like. Doesn't she realize that six breasts is just overkill?"

"You're right: you don't sound a bit jealous."

She smiled. "All right, I admit it, I am."

"I don't think you have to worry about anyone snatching me away. I'm not exactly the best-looking guy in the place at the moment." Cuts on my face, burnt arm, missing ear and pinkie, chewed-up leg, tilted head, and skin getting grayer by the minute – not to mention the state of my suit. I'd never been a male model, but I'd definitely seen better days.

Devona reached over and took my hand. "It's not the outside I see when I look at you. Especially after what happened in the glen."

All I could feel of Devona's touch was the slight pressure of her fingers against my skin. But it was enough.

"So you felt it too?"

She nodded. "It was the most intense experience of any kind I've ever had."

"I thought you said you'd linked with men before."

"I have, but it was never like that. Those men were Shadows in more ways than one, Matt. Shallow, hollow men who just wanted me for my body, or because I was Bloodborn and exotic, or because they thought I could make them Bloodborn too. But you – you're special. I don't think you realize just how much."

"Devona…" I didn't know what to say. We'd met each other less than a day ago, but after what had happened in the glen, after joining souls as we'd done, it was like we'd known each other for years. No, forever. But I couldn't let this go on, no matter how much I wanted it to, and believe me, I did.

The werecat brought Devona's drink, and we were silent while she put it down on the table. She saw we were holding hands, so she kept her winks to herself this time when she departed.

When the girl was out of earshot, I continued. "What kind of relationship can you have with a zombie? I'm not exactly fully functional, if you know what I mean."

"I don't care about that, Matt. We don't need physical love, not when we can link."

"Even so, I think it would be best for now if we just tried to concentrate our attention on the job at hand."

Her eyes grew cold and hurt and she tried to pull away, but I held her hand tight.

"I'm not rejecting you, Devona. I want to make that clear. I probably should reject you, to be honest, but I can't. But we shouldn't go forward with this until I know for certain that I'm going to… I guess 'live' isn't the right word. Survive, I guess. Unless your father can help me, I'll be gone soon."

"Then we can have that time together, Matt."

I shook my head. "I won't do that to you. I can't. We know how we feel about each other – know it in a way that two people who haven't been linked never could. Right now that has to be enough. If I'm lucky, in a couple days, I'll still be here, and then we can continue this conversation where it left off. I promise."

A crimson tear pooled at the corner of her right eye. "And if you aren't lucky?"

I grinned. "Would you smack me if I said we'll always have the glen?"

She squeezed my hand and I squeezed right back.

"Well, look who we have here! If it isn't Matthew Richter, the man who helped supply me with the best bouncer I've ever had!"

We looked up to see a tall, striking woman in a tuxedo striding confidently toward us. She wore her bright orange hair in a buzz cut, and her cherry-red lipstick contrasted with her ice-blue eyes. She stopped when she reached our table. There were only two chairs, and we were currently occupying them. I offered mine, but Bennie declined.

"Thank you, Matt, but there's no need." In a louder voice, Bennie said, "The first person who offers their chair gets two minutes alone with me in the Correctionary."

A near-riot ensued as men, women, and creatures of indeterminate species and gender fought to be the first to get a chair to Bennie, but in the end, a man with iron spikes jutting forth from his flesh like he was some sort of industrial porcupine won. He held the chair as Bennie sat.

"Thank you, love," Bennie said then added, with a dark twinkle in her eye, "Let's make it two and a half minutes, shall we? Don't go far; I'll come for you later. Or vice versa."

Spike-man looked so overwhelmed, I thought he might pass out, but he managed to hold onto consciousness long enough to thank Bennie before heading straight for the bar, no doubt intending to get some heavy-duty pharmacological assistance to prepare for his 180 seconds in the Correctionary with Bennie. If even a tenth of what I've heard about her skills is true, I figured he'd need it. Everyone else in the lounge was glaring jealously at Spike-man, and he was lucky no one present possessed the evil eye, or he would've been dead before he got two steps away from our table.

"Thanks for the floor show, Bennie," I said. "Do you take requests?"

She let out a hearty laugh. "You wish!"

I turned to Devona. "Devona Kanti, may I present the owner of the House of Dark Delights, Madame Benedetta."

Bennie reached out to take Devona's hand in the way some women will, intending to clasp it gently from underneath and give it a gentle squeeze. But halfway across the table, Bennie's slender fingers swelled and the slight reddish hair on the back of her hand became more pronounced. Bennie took Devona's hand in a masculine grip and gave it a good shake.

"Pleased to meet you," Bennie said in a voice that had suddenly grown deeper. "You're far too lovely to be keeping company with such a rough customer as Matt. However did the two of you meet?"

Devona stared at Bennie. His shoulders were broader, neck thicker, the lipstick was gone, and he sported a mustache and goatee the same bright orange shade as his hair. Bennie was still just as striking as before, but he most definitely was–

"A man?" Devona said.

"Occasionally," Bennie said. "There are so many pleasures to be had from life. Why limit yourself to experiencing them from only one perspective?"

"And now, Devona, you've also met Master Benedict," I said.

"But you can call me Bennie," our host said. "It makes things so much simpler."

Devona gave me an amused glance. "So I've heard."

"An ancestor of mine was a chemist who once tried to use specialized drugs to distill the good in man's nature and separate it from the evil," Bennie said. "My goals are somewhat less lofty. I use his formulae – along with some of my own devising – to make a buck or two." He gestured toward his body. "And, as you've seen, to enjoy myself. I also helped developed most of the aphrodisiacs and performance-enhancers we serve at the bar, although I must admit, my Arcane employees have helped a great deal with those formulae which require magic. And speaking of formulae…"

Bennie sat back and lifted his hand, and the werecat was instantly there, with a glass of scotch to put in it. Or at least, it looked like scotch. I wondered if it wasn't the special libation that allowed him and/or her to switch back and forth between genders.

"Thank you, Lourdes. That will be all…" Bennie gave her a smoldering look. "For now."

"Promises, promises." The werecat purred as she slinked off to see to other customers.

Bennie took a sip of his drink. "Lyra told me you needed my help with something. After what you did for that sweet child, Matt – not to mention what you did to the bastard who killed her – I'm forever in your debt. Whatever you need, just name it."

I spent the next few minutes giving Bennie the rundown on why we were there.

After winning our freedom from the Wyldwood, Devona and I returned to the Broken Cross, hoping that Shrike might know something about the veinburn dealer Morfran. Shrike told us that Morfran was demon kin of a particularly rare insectine subspecies who mated only during a three-week period every year. This was the middle of week two for Morfran. It seemed he'd come into quite a bit of money recently – I could guess how – and that lately he'd been spending a good portion of his funds at the House of Dark Delights. According to Shrike, Morfran had been visiting the House several hours every day.

"Father Dis, do I know him!" Bennie said when I was finished. As I'd talked, she'd switched genders again and was at the moment a woman. "If you look up the word indefatigable in the dictionary, you'll find only a drawing of that disgusting little bug. But his darkgems are as good as anyone else's, and he certainly has a lot of them to spend. I'm not sure if he's here now, though. Descension Day is our busiest time of the year, Matt, and the customers come and go so quickly." She grinned at her own pun, but quickly grew serious again. "So you think Morfran sold the drug which killed Devona's brother?"

"According to Gregor, there's a good chance he did. We need to talk to him, Bennie – and we need him to give us some answers."

"I see." Bennie's scotch glass was empty. She held it up, and Lourdes swooped by to snatch it out of her hand and replace it with a fresh one. Bennie sipped as she thought. Then an idea came to her and she slowly smiled.

'I think I know how can help you. You know my motto: Better living through chemistry." And her smile became a broad grin.

Devona glanced at the four-sided clock mounted on a metal pole in the middle of the bar. Nekropolis follows standard Earth time: twenty-four hour days, seven-day weeks, twelve-month years – not that it means very much when you live beneath Umbriel's perpetual dusk and, like me, you don't need to sleep. Bennie had left us some time ago, to see about one thing or another. A gender-switching brothel owner's work is never done.

"We've been waiting here almost an hour," she said. "Maybe Morfran's already left."

"We'd have seen him." All of the House's customers had to pass through the lounge in order to get to and leave the rooms. Bennie didn't make nearly as much money on booze and drugs as she did sex, but she wanted to squeeze as many darkgems out of her customers as she could before sending them back into the streets, so she made certain her clientele had two opportunities to sit down and have a couple drinks. And, after hoisting a few on their way out, if they decided they'd rested up enough and were ready for another go, why, they could just head right back on through the lounge, and hire themselves some more fun.

I'd heard it said that Bennie is as wealthy as any Darklord. I wouldn't doubt it.

"Perhaps he left through a rear exit," Devona said.

"There is no rear exit. Bennie had it bricked over years ago to stop deadbeat customers from sneaking out without paying." Rumor had it that several such customers had been present – and bound in chains – when the bricks were laid. "Just try to relax."

"Shrike was probably wrong, and Morfran's not even here."

"Bennie sent Lourdes to check for us, remember? He's downstairs all right – with three girls: one lyke, one Bloodborn, and one demon kin. I can't begin to imagine the geometric and metamorphic possibilities."

And before I could add anything more, Morfran finally walked into the lounge.

The demon swaggered like he was, you'll pardon the expression, cock of the walk. Or in his case, gigantic walking stick of the walk. He was a twig-thin insectine demon, with a carapace resembling fluorescent-red Formica. He had a triangular face something like a praying mantis, with huge eyes like those of a too-precious moppet in a black-velvet painting.

As he scuttled past our table, I said, "Morfran!"

The demon stopped and swiveled his head back to look at me. His expression – assuming his bug face was even capable of making one – was unreadable.

"It's me, Matt. You remember, I was one of your customers, back when I was alive."

A few seconds ticked by, then he said, "Oh, yes," in a voice which sounded like a hive full of buzzing bees.

His voice was almost as difficult to read as his face, but I thought he sounded a trifle unsure, as if he knew he didn't remember me, but thought maybe he should. Exactly the response I wanted.

"Why don't you sit down and have a drink with us, for old times' sake?"

His head tilted quickly to one side, then to the other, then back once more, as if he were an insect version of a metronome.

"I don't know. There is much I should be doing."

"I've heard you're quite the ladies' man," Devona virtually purred. "Three at one time, they say."

Given his physiognomy, it was impossible for Morfran to puff himself up with pride, but that's what it looked like.

"Nothing personal, Morfran," I said, good-naturedly but with plenty of skepticism, "but three at a time? Come on!"

"Yes, three at a time." He sounded aggrieved. "Not only that, but once a day for nearly two weeks now."

"Really!" Devona said, leaning toward him and flashing more than a hint of cleavage. "Quite impressive!"

Even without the necessary equipment for facial expression, Morfran still gave the impression of leering at Devona's chest.

"I don't know…" I said doubtfully.

Morfran skittered up to our table and, since his body structure wouldn't allow him to take a seat, at least not comfortably, he stood. "Are you doubting my word, Mark?"

"Matt," I corrected. I signaled Lourdes and pointed to Morfran. She nodded and padded over to the bar, her tail swishing slowly back and forth, to get him a drink. I noticed Devona frowning at me, and I quickly returned my gaze to Morfran. "I'm not doubting you; I'm just saying that guys exaggerate sometimes, that's all."

"I am not exaggerating. It is the nature of my subspecies to be sexually prolific during this time of the year. It is our mating season."

I tried to imagine just how something so… alien could manage to have sexual congress with one humanoid female, let alone three. But try as I might, I just couldn't picture it.

Lourdes brought over Morfran's drink, set it in front of the demon, and gave me another wink before departing with more tail swishing. I really wished she hadn't winked. I had a feeling I'd be hearing about that later on.

"You mean the rest of the year you don't… Well, that explains it, then." I lifted my glass, and Devona did likewise. "Here's to you, Morfran; you're a bona fide sex machine."

"Only for three weeks out of the year," he said, but he seemed pleased nonetheless. He leaned his head over his drink and a needle-thin organ extended out of his small mouth and dipped into the booze. He drank greedily, with great slurping sips. Within moments, his glass was empty.

"Whoa! You must really have worked up a thirst back there!"

Morfran's body shivered. His equivalent of a laugh, I think. "One does tend to expend a great deal of fluid during mating."

I was glad my stomach was as dead as the rest of me; if it wasn't, it would've turned right then.

Morfran's eyes narrowed. "I must admit that I don't remember you as clearly as I would like, Mark. You said you were a customer of mine when you were alive? I certainly hope my wares were not the cause of your demise."

"Actually, I have a confession to make: we've never met before."

His head titled back and forth again, right-left, right-left, very fast this time.

"We've come here to ask you a few questions," I said. "About veinburn – and about a vampire named Varma."

Sometimes the direct approach works; sometimes it doesn't. This was one of the latter times. Morfran's carapace turned completely brown – the same color as the table and floor, I noticed – he whirled about, and his twig legs became a blur as he fled for the foyer.

"I told you he'd run," Devona said.

"You were right." Neither of us bothered to get up and give pursuit. There was no need.

A few moments later, Morfran was carried back to our table, squirming, legs flailing madly, carapace rapidly changing colors from red to yellow to brown.

"He almost got past me," Lyra said. "I guess I still haven't gotten the hang of this body yet."

"You did great," I told her. "Now if you could just hold him still for a moment while I explain a few things to him?"

Bennie's newest – and strongest – bouncer smiled sweetly, the effect somewhat spoiled by Honani's jagged mixblood teeth. I hadn't had a chance yet to tell her about what had happened at the edge of the Wyldwood with the soul that had previously occupied her current body, and I'm not sure I wanted to. The knowledge that Amon had Honani's spirit – and worrying what the Dark Lord might seek to do with it – would only plague her. But I made a mental note to talk with Bennie before I decomposed. With her wealth and devotion to her staff, I hoped she could arrange for some way to protect Lyra from Amon, should it come to that.

Lyra squeezed Morfran and the demon's carapace creaked alarmingly.

"Careful," I warned. "We don't want to reduce him to kindling now."

"Oops. Sorry." She eased up. Morfran struggled a bit more, until it became obvious he wasn't going anywhere, and then he finally gave up and just hung motionless in Lyra's massive arms.

"Okay, here's the situation, Morfran," I said. "Before the waitress brought your drink over, I spiked it with a potion specially prepared for you by Bennie herself. She serves a lot of potions, you know. Some work to induce a state of sexual readiness in someone whose spirit may be willing but whose flesh needs a little more help. Other potions work just the opposite: they suppress sexual functioning. These are used these for clients who refuse to pay their tabs or for those who mistreat the staff."

I wished Honani hadn't been too proud to accept the aid of one of Bennie's potions when he'd visited Lyra. If he had taken one, she'd probably still be alive and in her own body.

I went on. "To put it simply, Morfran, you can't get it up anymore – or whatever it is males of your species do. And you won't be able to until you receive the antidote. If you cooperate and answer a few questions, I'll make sure you get it. If not, you'll miss out on the final week of your mating season." I'd learned from Shrike that Morfran's subspecies of demon was mindlessly driven to copulate during this time, and the potion Bennie had created for Morfran was a cruel one: it removed sexual functioning, but actually increased desire, making it all the more effective when it came to convincing delinquent customers to make good on outstanding debts.

Morfran's carapace edged toward black now. "It doesn't matter. I have quite a bit of money; I can easily afford to purchase an antidote from a witch somewhere else."

"You could try. But Bennie's enchantments aren't easily removed. It's true you might find someone who'll hit on the right formula to remove the spell eventually, but it could take some time. Easily a week."

"Oh, much more than that, I think," Devona said. "He might still be looking this time next year."

Morfran's shell had gone completely black now. I wondered if it was a sign of anger, or maybe fear. Whichever, it was clear we were getting to him.

"You don't understand," he said quietly, with an edge of desperation. "The people I work for would be most displeased if I told you anything."

"By 'people' you mean the Dominari, right? I sympathize with you, Morfran old bug, but all I can tell you is to ask yourself which is worse: talking to us and maybe having the Dominari find out, or going the rest of this year's mating season desperately needing to have sex, but without any lead in your pencil."

Morfran regarded me for a moment, his head tilting back and forth slowly this time. Finally, he let out an edgy buzz of a sigh that already sounded tinged with the beginnings of sexual tension and frustration. "Very well. What do you wish to know?"

We asked the demon some questions, and he answered them clearly, quickly, and concisely. I was fairly certain that he had nothing directly to do with Varma's death – it was clear the Red Tide vampires had been responsible for that – and so when we were finished, I had Lourdes bring over the antidote. Morfran practically inhaled the potion, and then scuttled off back to the more carnal sections of Bennie's establishment, no doubt intending to make sure the antidote worked as advertised.

And so Devona and I said goodbye to Lyra, who I wished well in her new profession, and Devona alone (as she insisted) thanked Lourdes. Bennie gave us both kisses on the cheek – despite the nasty condition of mine, Dis bless her/him – and we left the House of Dark Delights to follow up on what we had learned from Morfran.

We headed for Skully's.

TWENTY

The bar was still busy as hell, and there were a few new suspicious-looking stains on the floor since the last time I'd been here, but the atmosphere seemed calm enough now. But considering why Devona and I had come back, I doubted it was going to stay that way for long.

The juke box was singing "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" when Devona and I walked in, but as soon as the trio of heads caught sight of me, they stopped. The middle one said, "Not you again!" and all three shut their mouths tight and closed their eyes, as if they were little children who thought they could make me vanish by pretending I didn't exist. I noticed none of the patrons complained about the performance being interrupted.

Devona and I walked over to the bar and took a pair of stools suddenly vacated by a couple lykes in human form who wrinkled their noses in disgust as they left.

"What did you expect, roses?" I muttered as they walked off.

Skully was busy at the other end of the bar filling a mug of beer for the pierced warlock I'd seen the last time I was in here. The Arcane man still seemed somewhat familiar to me, and while he waited for his beer, I studied his face, but I still couldn't place him. When Skully handed him his beer, the warlock noticed my scrutiny, but instead of looking upset, he merely gave me a nod and walked over to sit at the same table he'd been at when I'd fought Honani earlier. I wondered if he'd been sitting there alone drinking the entire time I'd been gone. Maybe he was just a solitary type who wanted a relatively quiet place to hide out from the Descension Day madness. Still, there was something about the man that bothered me…

My thoughts were interrupted as Skully came down to our end of the bar.

"Hey, Matt! I'm surprised to see you back so soon – and with your arm reattached, I see. Business?" He nodded to Devona, and from the tone in his voice he would have smiled if he'd possessed the lips and facial muscles to do so. "Or pleasure? Wait, let me guess. Has to be business, as bad as you look. You shouldn't be in here: you should be over at Papa Chatha's getting some more work done."

"This is my new friend Devona. Her father lost something – something very important – and I'm helping her look for it."

"Oh?"

"Her father's name is Galm, and the object is called the Dawnstone. Sound familiar?"

Skully shook his fleshless head. "No, should it?"

"Yes, because according to my source" – who was at that very moment most likely expending a great deal of fluid, as he'd put it – "you're responsible for its disappearance from the Cathedral. Or at least your bosses the Dominari are."

Then something happened which I'd never seen before. Tiny pinpricks of crimson light began to blaze deep in the cold darkness of Skully's eye sockets. "I think maybe you'd better leave, Matt, and take your new friend with you."

He started to turn away, but I grabbed his pudgy, hairy wrist and stopped him. "I know there's a Dominari-run lab upstairs, Skully. A lab that's been awfully busy lately cranking out veinburn."

Skully yanked his arm away. "Your mind has finally rotted through, Matt, you know that? All that's upstairs are my quarters and some extra storage space."

Skully and I looked over the bar at each other for a moment. I knew his silver broadaxe wasn't far from his reach.

"If that's true, then you won't have objection to my taking a look, now will you?" And before Skully could respond, I jumped off my stool and ran-limped as fast as I could toward the iron door located to the right of the bar.

Head aside, Skully has a fully fleshed body. A little too fully fleshed, and I thought given my current state, we'd be evenly matched with it came to speed. But even with his bulk, Skully was able to grab his axe from behind the counter and leap over the bar and come after me before I made it halfway to the stairs.

He shouted my name, and I turned in time to see him raise his axe over his head, the silver glinting even in the bar's dim light. "Don't make me hurt you, Matt. Please."

Everyone in the bar watched us play out our little drama, not only to see what would happen next but also to help them decide if they should bother taking cover. But no one observed us more intensely than the pierced warlock.

Where the hell do I know that sonofabitch from? I thought.

"If you really don't want to hurt me, Skully I have a suggestion: put the axe down."

"I can't do that, Matt," he said sadly.

The irony inherent in the situation was so thick you could cut it with Skully's axe. It was like a replay of earlier in the day, only instead of a murdering lyke, I now faced a friend. A friend who was about to bring a very large, very sharp weapon down on my head, but a friend nonetheless.

"I can't let this one go," I said. "It's too important."

"And I can't let you reach those stairs."

Stalemate. I had little in the way of surprises left in my pockets, and nothing that would take care of Skully. Hell, I wasn't even exactly sure what sort of creature he was, and I didn't have the first clue as to what sort of weaknesses he might possess.

"So what do we do now, Matt?" he asked.

"I figure you can just stand there, and I'll watch as Devona cracks you over your bony noggin with a chair."

"Come off it, I'm not going to fall for–" The chair connected with his skull with a sharp crack! and a shower of splintered wood. Skully dropped his axe, which hit the concrete floor with a loud clang, and a second later, Skully himself crashed down beside it.

I quickly examined him. He had a tiny jagged fissure in his skull, and the lights in his socket had been extinguished.

Devona held only a pair of chair legs in her hands now, and she let them clatter to the floor. "Is he unconscious?"

"Who can tell? But he's not moving right now and that's good enough. Let's go." I continued toward the stairs, this time with Devona at my side.

Skully's patrons didn't know what to do at first. They merely sat and stared. Then one particular Einstein among them shouted, "Hey, free drinks!" and a stampede for the bar commenced. I hoped Skully wouldn't get stepped on too badly, even if he had been prepared to turn me into filet-o-zombie.

The iron door that led to the bar's upper level was locked and – as Devona had figured it would be – it was protected by some seriously powerful wardspells. But Shrike had managed to borrow some magical lock picks for us from a thief he knew, and using the knowledge Devona had gained from years serving as guardian of Galm's Collection, she was able to bypass the wardspells and open the door in surprisingly short order.

"I'm impressed," I said. "If you decide to stop working for your father, you can always take up a career as a cat burglar – or maybe I should say bat burglar."

She grinned, and we hurried up the stairs as fast as my bum leg would allow and exited onto the second floor. The short hall had only three wooden doors, all closed. I turned to Devona and touched the side of my nose. She nodded and inhaled.

"That one." She pointed to door number two.

"That one it is, then." I took out my 9mm, which was now loaded with purely ordinary bullets, stepped to the door, and was about to try the knob when Devona stopped.

"Let me see if it's warded." She waved her hands over the door's surface, careful not to touch it. "It's clean. I guess the Dominari figured the wardspells on the door downstairs were enough protection. Idiots." She tried the knob, but it wouldn't budge. "At least they weren't too stupid to lock it."

"As a macho type, I'd ordinarily kick the door in myself," I said, "but seeing as how you're somewhat stronger than I am…"

She smiled, leaned back and executed a swift, powerful kick to the middle of the door, which exploded off its hinges and flew into the room.

Devona stepped back and I moved past her into the room, fighting the urge to shout, "Police!" Instead I said, "Nobody move!" Hardly as satisfying, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. At least it fulfilled my quota of tough-guy talk for the day.

There was no one in the room. I kept my gun out, though, just in case. Inside sat a table filled with chemical apparatus: copper tubing, black rubber hoses, beakers, vials, the whole junior chemistry lab bit. Next to that lay a stone altar upon which rested various flowers and herbs, along with the sliced-up body of a dead lamb and the rune-engraved obsidian knife which had done it in. Science and magic, working together to create a better world, or at least a more profitable one – for the Dominari, that is.

"So Morfran was telling the truth," I said. Even with the motivation we'd provided him with, I still hadn't quite believed what he'd told us. You can never trust drug-pushing scum, regardless of species or home dimension.

"And I'll make damn sure the bug pays for it, too."

I recognized the voice coming from behind us, and though I was dead, it sent a chill through my room-temperature blood. We turned to see the voice belonged to the shaven-headed punk warlock from downstairs. His piercings – multiple rings in the outer curves of his ears, across his bottom lip, in both nostrils, along his eyebrows, down both sides of his forearms, and who knew where else beneath his ratty jeans and A is for Anarchy Tshirt – pulsed with a silvery energy that wreathed his body in a shimmering argent aura.

I might have been a zombie, but right then I felt a fury inside me as strong as any emotion I'd ever experienced as a living man. I fought to keep my voice calm as I said, "Hello, Yberio."

The warlock smiled, displaying metal-encased teeth. "Surprised to see me back from the dead, Richter?"

"Are you kidding? This is Nekropolis. Half the people you meet here are one kind of dead or another. You've changed a bit from when we last met." I looked him up and down. "The new look suits you. What does Talaith think about it?"

Devona's jaw dropped. "Wait, this warlock is the one who created the Overmind for Talaith, the one who–"

"Killed Richter's partner," Yberio finished. "Indeed."

At that moment, I was painfully aware that I still held my 9mm in my right hand. It was down at my side, and I calculated my chances of raising the weapon and getting a shot off before Yberio could do anything to stop me. My reflexes would've been slow even if my undead body had been in its peak condition, but as beat-up and decayed as I was right then, I wasn't in danger of being crowned fastest gun in the Sprawl anytime soon. Yberio must've guessed what I was thinking – or perhaps he literally read my mind – and he evidently thought more of my threat potential than I did, because he made a small gesture with his hand and tendrils of silver energy flowed forth from his aura, snatched the gun out of my hand, and tossed it into the corner of the room with contemptuous ease.

"Not that I couldn't stop a bullet if I wanted to," Yberio said, "but I'm more conservative in my use of power these days, seeing as how I don't wield quite so much as I used to. But then again, what's the point of possessing power if you don't enjoy it from time to time?"

The warlock stretched his hands toward us and before we could react, two gouts of silver energy blasted forth, slamming us backward into the table holding the chemical and mystical apparatus used for creating veinburn. Vials and beakers shattered, noxious chemicals spilled, the dead goat went flying, and the table broke from the force of the impact. Since I couldn't feel pain, I wasn't stunned, and I immediately tried to sit up. But before I could manage to do so, Yberio gestured again, and two more tendrils extended from his aura, the tips shaping themselves into large silvery hands as they came at us. The energy hands smashed into our chests and pressed down like iron weights, pinning us where we lay.

Yberio laughed softly. He sounded pleased, but also a bit sad. "You know, there was a time when I could've destroyed both of you far more elegantly than this. I was a Demilord once… but that was before you came to town, Richter."

I managed to wriggle my right arm free enough to reach up and attempt to clutch the wrist of the silvery hand holding me down. It remained attached to Yberio by an umbilicus of energy, but while it felt solid enough on my chest, when I tried to grab hold of it, my hand merely passed through as if it wasn't there. I felt a distant tingling sensation, as if I'd come in contact with a strong electrical field.

"Don't you mean before you decided to start killing people in my jurisdiction back on Earth?" I countered.

"Details, details," Yberio said.

I turned my head to check on Devona. She appeared unharmed, and while she too struggled to free herself from the grasp of Yberio's argent energy, she met with no more success than I had.

"Matt checked your pulse after the Overmind was destroyed," she said. "You didn't have one."

"I did," Yberio said. "It was just hard for him to feel it – especially since he'd become a zombie and wasn't used to his newly deadened sense of touch. I wasn't dead, merely in a deep coma as it turned out, and I spent a number of months in that state as my mind and body worked desperately to heal themselves. Talaith helped as much as she could, but she'd suffered her own injuries from the Overmind's demise and needed the bulk of her magic to heal herself. And when I finally awoke, I found myself… diminished. I still had my knowledge of magic, but I was only capable of accessing and channeling a fraction of the mystic energy I once could. It seemed the psychic backlash caused by the destruction of the Overmind had burned out a portion of my own mind, and I was no longer a Demilord, but merely an ordinary warlock." He paused, and his tone grew bitter, "And not a particularly strong one at that."

I couldn't reach any of my pockets, and even if I could, I didn't have anything that I could use against Yberio. I looked around at the wreckage of the lab table that I was lying amidst, hoping to find something, anything, I could use as a weapon. My gaze fell upon a half-broken beaker that still contained several ounces of a yellow-green chemical. Not veinburn itself, but one of its ingredients. The beaker lay just outside of my reach, but if I could manage to stretch a bit…

"That's why you wear all those rings," Devona said. "They augment your natural magical abilities."

"Very good," Yberio gave Devona an appraising look. "You're half vampire, right? Perhaps you have a bit of Arcane blood in you on your human side. But you're correct. My rings help me absorb, store, and channel the mystic energy, all of which I can no longer do on my own. In human terms, it's the equivalent of replacing a lost limb with a prosthesis or using a wheelchair if one can no longer walk."

I saw Devona give me a quick glance. She understood what I was trying to do, and she looked back to Yberio and tried to keep him talking.

"I bet Talaith wasn't happy about that," she said," considering how she feels about technology."

"My rings aren't technology in the strictest sense, but you're right. Talaith considered them to be the same thing. At the very least, she thought them… unnatural." Yberio let out a dark, bitter laugh. "As if there could be anything more unnatural than the likes of us! But she was angry with me for talking her into creating the Overmind, and she blamed me for the injuries that resulted in her loss of power. Darklords aren't known for their forgiving nature, but one thing they can never forgive is anyone who causes them to lose strength or, even worse, face."

I stretched my fingers toward the broken beaker. I was almost there. Just another inch…

Yberio continued his one-man pity party. "Talaith felt that I had made her a laughing stock in the eyes of her fellow Lords." He sneered. "As if that mattered. Arrogant fools, every one of them. They think they're better than we Demilords, simply because Dis chose them to help create Nekropolis. But did you know that Dis spent an entire year traveling the length and breadth of Earth, searching for the most powerful Darkfolk to help him turn his dream of Nekropolis into reality? And once he found them, he tested them in combat to determine just how strong they were. I was one of the Arcane Dis tested during the Wanderyear, and I acquitted myself admirably. I might well have been chosen to be a Darklord instead of Talaith – and I should've been! Dis might fancy himself a god, but in the end he's just another damned monster like the rest of us. He's not perfect; he's fully capable of making errors of judgment."

A half-inch now…

"But Dis didn't choose you, he chose Talaith," Devona said. "And Talaith banished you for failing her and turning to artificial means of enhancing your power, didn't she?"

From the face Yberio made, you'd have thought he was having trouble swallowing a crap-covered turdball rolled in shit sprinkles. "Yes – and that's when I realized I'd been a fool standing by her side all those centuries, helping her fight for one meaningless cause or another, all so she could increase her own power. First in the Blood Wars, and then in her endless pissing contests with the other so-called Lords. When I left Woodhome, I decided that from then on, I was going to work to increase my power and no one else's!"

The tips of my fingers brushed the beaker's glass surface. I thought I felt something snap in my shoulder, as if a tendon had torn loose, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was getting my hand on that beaker.

"But power costs money," Devona said. "You needed a way to make darkgems, so you began freelancing for the Dominari, helping them make new drugs like veinburn."

Yberio gave her a smug little smile. "Well. I do still retain my knowledge of magic, you know."

At last, I managed to wrap my fingers around the beaker.

"Tell me something, Yberio," I said. "Do you still know how to catch?"

Before he could react, I hurled the beaker toward him. As I'd hoped, he wasn't prepared for the attack and the half-broken glass container sailed through his silver energy aura without resistance. I got lucky and the jagged edge of the beaker hit him in the face, and the greenish-yellow liquid inside sloshed into his eyes. Yberio screamed and staggered backward, and as his concentration shattered, the silver hands holding Devona and I down vanished, along with the energy aura surrounding him. Crimson blood mixed with yellow-green chemicals as Yberio desperately wiped at his eyes, trying to clear them.

I sat up, intending to rise to my feet and confront the warlock who had killed my partner, but before I could stand, Devona leapt to her feet and closed on Yberio with the savage speed and grace of a jungle cat. She grabbed hold his shoulder with one hand, grabbed the top of his bald scalp with the other, and yanked his head to the side. Then she bared her fangs with a snarl and plunged her teeth into the warlock's exposed neck. Yberio shrieked as Devona tore out a chuck of his flesh and blood gushed from the wound.

Devona stepped back, her mouth and chest covered with the warlock's blood. She spat out the hunk of meat she'd bitten off and it hit the floor with a wet plap. Now Yberio pressed his hand to his throat, trying to keep his lifeblood from spilling out.

"A few hours ago, I was joined to Matt soul-to-soul," Devona said. "I experienced his thoughts, his emotions… and his memories. I know what you did to his partner, and more, I know what that loss did to him. You should've died the day the Overmind was destroyed, you bastard. But you didn't, and so I'm glad to finish the job. For Matt." She paused. "For my love."

I was so overwhelmed by what Devona had done – and even more by what she'd just said – that for a moment all I could do was sit there gaping like an undead moron. Her fangs were distended, her eyes were wild, and her mouth was smeared with gore… and I'd never seen any woman more beautiful.

But then Yberio's free arm flared with silver energy and he backhanded Devona, sending her sailing through the air to collide with the far wall. She bounced off and fell onto her side, moaning.

Silver power flickered to life around the hand Yberio held pressed to his neck wound, and I knew he was attempting to heal it. I slowly rose to my feet and started toward him.

"You know, Richter, as long as you and your little bloodcunt didn't find out about this lab, I was going to leave you alone. Sure, your destruction of the Overmind ruined my life, but I like to think I've risen above such petty things as revenge. If you don't stand in the way of my acquisition of power, why should I bother with you? But things have gone way too far now, and I'm–"

By this time I'd reached Yberio. I calmly took his head in my hands and gave it a single vicious twist. There was a loud crack, Yberio's eyes went wide, and his silver aura winked out. When I released his head, his dead body slumped to the floor. "You shouldn't have called her that," I whispered. Then I turned and went over to see how Devona was.

She managed to rise to a kneeling position, and I took her hand and helped her to stand.

"You all right?"

She drew the back of her hand across her mouth to wipe away Yberio's blood. "I've been better, but I think I'll live."

I intended to take her into my arms and give her the hug of her life, when I saw Skully standing in the doorway, axe held at his side. I searched for pinpricks of anger in his sockets and found none. He looked down at Yberio's dead body, his boneface expressionless as always.

"I never did like that dick," he said.

"I've known you ever since I first came to Nekropolis, Skully. Hell, I was still alive when we met. I knew you worked for the Dominari, but I never figured you'd associate with a scumbag like that." I gestured toward Yberio's corpse.

"I had my orders." Skully said. "And given who my bosses are, it's a good idea to do what they want, regardless of what I might think about it."

"Yberio was Arcane – not to mention Talaith's former consort," I said. "Was she in on this operation?" I asked.

"Not to my knowledge. The bosses don't like messing around with Darklords. Far as I know, Yberio worked here only for the money."

Did that mean Gregor – as impossible as it sounded – had been wrong about Talaith's involvement? Or was Skully not telling me the truth?

"What do you know about the theft of the Dawnstone, Skully? And what do the Dominari plan to do with it?"

"The bosses had nothing to do with stealing the Dawnstone. They were working with someone else, someone whose identity I don't know. I wasn't particularly chummy with Yberio, but we talked a few times. From what I gathered, someone approached the bosses with the formula for veinburn, but needed some capital and the technical know-how to produce it. For providing both, and giving a relatively small quantity of the finished product to their silent partner, the Dominari got to keep the formula."

"So the Dominari are probably setting up other veinburn labs around the city even as we speak. Great. Tell me, Skully, didn't it bother you what they were doing up here?"

"Sure it did." He gazed down at Yberio's body. "I may have to take orders, but that doesn't mean I always like it."

It was impossible to gauge his emotional state from his face (or lack thereof), but he sounded sincere. "And you have no idea who your Dominari's mystery partner might be?"

"No, and I don't think Yberio knew, either."

"How does Morfran fit into this?"

"He's one of the bosses' regular dealers, a small timer who usually sells mind dust. The bosses wanted him to try veinburn out on the market, see how people took to it."

"Which they undoubtedly did, given how addictive it is." I thought for a moment. "You said Morfran's a small timer. Why would the Dominari choose him for such an important project?"

"I wondered about that myself, but like I said, it's best not to ask questions."

"Perhaps because the Dominari's new partner asked them to," Devona said. "Because one of his regular customers was Varma."

"Who, fun-loving guy that he was, was probably first in line to try Morfran's newest product," I said. "Which got him hooked–"

"And after that, he'd do anything for more," Devona finished for me. "Including risk Father's wrath by stealing the Dawnstone."

"This unknown 'partner' probably made his or her own arrangements with Varma. The theft of an object of power from a Darklord is far too difficult an undertaking to involve a sleazy little bug like Morfran. And then, once we started nosing around, Mr. or Ms. Unknown decided to have Varma killed, in case we found him and got him to talk."

"And if Varma wouldn't have told us what happened to the Dawnstone, I would've had no choice but to tell Father everything myself, and he most definitely would've gotten Varma to talk. So Varma had to die."

I didn't want to think about what sort of persuasive techniques Lord Galm might have used on his bloodson. Varma's death by veinburn, ugly as it had been, might well have been kinder than leaving him to Galm's less-than-tender mercies.

Devona frowned. "What I don't understand is why wait to kill Varma? Wouldn't it have made more sense to kill him as soon as he delivered the Dawnstone?"

"Murdering Varma then would've drawn too much attention too early. Mr. Unknown wasn't worried about Varma spontaneously confessing. Varma would've been too afraid of Galm – and the punishment he would deliver – to admit his crime. It wasn't until we got too close that Varma became a liability and needed to be dealt with."

Devona's already pale skin grew paler. "Then… we're responsible for his death. No, I am, because I was afraid to go to Father, afraid of his anger, his disappointment. If I had spoken to Father instead of hiring you… Varma might still be alive."

I took her hand. "The only ones responsible for killing Varma are the Red Tide vampires, and whoever was pulling their strings – or in their case, wires. Okay?"

Devona didn't look completely convinced, but she nodded anyway. I figured it was the best I was going to get just then. I turned to Skully, who had been standing silently by while Devona and I tried to piece this mess together. "Do the Dominari have any connection with the Red Tide?"

"No, those tech-psychos are too unstable."

"So they worked directly for Mr. Unknown. I thought as much." There was something important about that particular tidbit of information, but I couldn't quite put my rapidly decomposing finger on it. Not yet.

"So where does that leave us?" Devona asked.

"Not much farther along than we were before," I admitted. "It appears Talaith doesn't have the Dawnstone and neither do the Dominari. It looks like Skully's bosses are the only ones who know who does have it, but I doubt they'd agree to share that information, assuming we could even locate them." I sighed. "I think it's safe to say that our investigation has run into a very large and very dead end."

"Uh, Matt?" Skully said. "There's something else."

"What? You know something you haven't told us?" I said hopefully.

"Not exactly. Remember when I told you it was a good idea to follow the bosses' orders? Well, they gave me some instructions about what I should do if you discovered the lab."

He lifted his axe.

"You don't want to do this," I said.

"No, but I have my orders." He took a step forward.

"If you really wanted to kill us, it would have been much easier to lead us up here in the first place, get us off our guard, and then let Yberio catch us unaware. But you didn't do that. You tried to send us away, and then you tried to stop us from coming up here."

Skully's grip on his axe tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened, as if were trying to decide his next move.

"So?"

"So I think you were disobeying orders, not following them, when you asked us to leave. And I think it's because you didn't want to have to kill a friend."

Skully gave forth a hollow laugh. "The Dominari and their servants have no friends."

"Then prove me wrong. Go ahead, make like Lizzie Borden. I won't stop you."

I heard Devona draw in a nervous gasp of air, but otherwise she did nothing.

Skully stood silently for several moments before finally lowering his axe. "You're right, Matt; I don't want to kill you. You're the closest thing to a friend I have. But when the bosses find out I couldn't go through with it…" His shoulders slumped. "Maybe I should just go ahead and turn myself in to the Adjudicators. Spending the rest of eternity locked away in Tenebrus would be a far gentler fate than what the Dominari will do to me when they learn I've failed."

Tenebrus was Nekropolis's prison, located deep beneath the Nightspire. Run by the ancient Egyptian sorceress Keket and her jackal-headed Warders, even in a city built from terror and darkness, it was among the most feared of places.

"Don't worry," I said. "We can make it look like you tried to kill us. Yberio is dead, and the lab's already trashed from our fight with him. We'll clonk you on the head again, this time with your own axe. We'll take off and you can just lie here unconscious until someone comes looking for you – or your customers downstairs steal all your booze, whichever comes first. With any luck, when the Dominari investigate, they'll believe you when you say you tried, but how could be you expected to stop of pair of dangerous characters like us who killed a former Demilord? "

"Won't they punish Skully anyway?" Devona asked.

"I doubt it. Skully's place has been a fixture in the Sprawl for years, and I bet the Dominari get too much use out of it – and its owner – to get rid of either." I turned to Skully. "If your bosses ask why I didn't turn you in to the Adjudicators, tell them you bribed me to keep my mouth shut."

"You'd do all that for me?" Skully asked.

I smiled. "Hey, what are friends for?"

Just then a solemn, sonorous tone sounded off in the distance. Several seconds later another sounded, and then another. They kept coming every ten seconds, soft and low, reminding me a bit of the lonely, mournful sound a foghorn makes.

"What's that noise?" I asked.

"Father Dis!" Devona swore. "It's the Deathknell summoning the Darklords to the Nightspire – the Renewal Ceremony will start soon!"

It was my turn to swear. We were too late. I was certain whoever had the Dawnstone planned to use it during the ceremony to kill Lord Galm, or maybe even Dis himself, if such a thing were possible. And there was nothing we could do about it. Unless…

I grabbed Devona's hand and pulled her toward the door. "I'm afraid you'll have to hit yourself over the head, Skully. Devona and I have to go." I shoved past him, and Devona and I stepped over the late and very much unlamented Yberio. We hurried down the stairs, taking them as fast as my bum leg would allow.

"Where are you going?" Skully called after us.

I shouted over my shoulder. "To crash a party!"

TWENTY-ONE

From the outside, Lady Varvara's stronghold is a glass and steel building ten stories tall, which wouldn't be out of place in the business district of any midsize city on Earth. Inside, Demon's Roost is a paean to pleasure, a twenty-four-hour-a-day bacchanalia that makes Las Vegas look like a kindergarten playground. It's an adults-only amusement park which contains such a dazzling scope and variety of decadence and perversity that it might give Caligula himself pause.

Beside the mass of partiers, getting inside wasn't a problem. Varvara doesn't believe in locking doors or posting guards. Anyone can come in and play, from the lowliest street beggar to any of the Demon Queen's fellow Darklords – but once inside, you're on your own and good luck to you. Just remember: there are no guarantees you'll ever make it out again. Devona and I made out way into the Atrium by squeezing through a mass of beings drinking, drugging, gambling, screwing, eating, talking, laughing, yelling, fighting – often, it seemed, all at the same time.

Any number of Nekropolitan luminaries were in attendance. After all, Demon's Roost is the place to be on Descension Day. The Scream Queen and her band Kakophonie provided the musical entertainment – if you could call the banshees' dissonant wailing music – and I spotted Marley's Ghost rattling his chains in time to the beat. Fade, who had made her way over from the Broken Cross, had gotten herself cornered by the Else, who was obviously trying to convince her to do a feature story on him, while the Jade Enigma looked on in cynical amusement, Antwerp the Psychotic Clown was stabbing himself over and over with a butcher knife and laughing uproariously, much to the annoyance of those unfortunate enough to be in range of his blood spatter. The Suicide King stood nearly, watching Antwerp's gory display with a critical eye and shaking his head. As Devona and I passed by, I heard him mutter, "That's not how you do it."

I noticed a trio of Demilords standing off to the side and keeping to themselves. Baron Samedi seemed to be enjoying himself well enough, if his broad grin was any indication, but Slitheria the Serpent Goddess watched the revelry with a reptilian gaze of cold disapproval. Molog, Demon Lord of Insects, stood with his arms crossed over his chest, the millions of six-legged creatures that formed his body scuttling about restlessly, making it look as if he might fall apart any second.

I'd seen them – and other Demilords – around the city before, but after our recent encounter with Yberio I now viewed them in a different light. Maybe they weren't quite as powerful as the Darklords, but they weren't saddled with the responsibilities of the five Lords, either. The Demilords were incredibly powerful beings free to do as they pleased, and they had no need to conserve their strength to help renew Umbriel once a year. In that sense, they were more powerful than the Darklords, and I wondered if – like Yberio – they resented being passed over by Dis during his Wanderyear in favor of the five current Darklords, and what they might intend to do to even the score one day.

The party wasn't confined to the ground, though. The Atrium extended several stories upward, and numerous beings flew or levitated above our heads, some swooping and darting about, while others merely circled slowly – perhaps hoping to spot prey of one sort or another below. Ichorus was there, no doubt having accompanied Fade. I wondered if they were an item. If so, I bet that would be one tidbit of gossip that would never appear in Fade's tabloid column. A number of ghostly figures were ballroom dancing in the air, their graceful moves somehow perfectly complementing Kakophonie's thunderously strident melodies.

Devona kept swiveling her head this way and that, trying to take it all in and failing dismally. It was like trying to hold the ocean in your arms. No matter how hard you work at it, it's just not going to happen.

"Varvara has a one-word philosophy," I shouted to be heard over the Scream Queen and her band. "More!"

"She certainly appears to live by it!" Devona said.

The atrium of Demon's Roost looks as if it had been ground zero during the explosion of an atomic kitsch bomb. Gaudy pastel-colored carpeting, black velvet paintings in neon-tube frames, mirrored disco balls spinning above… We passed a wall collage formed from thousands of tiny cheap toys from fast-food kids' meals, and soon after that, my favorite piece, a thirty foot-tall pewter statue of Elvis gazing benevolently down on a flock of plastic pink flamingos.

"Oh, my," was all Devona could manage to say.

"Quite a change from the Cathedral, isn't it?"

We stood for a moment and regarded each other. Neither of us looked our best right then. I was a broken, decaying mess, and Devona was covered with Yberio's drying blood. Neither of us had commented on what had taken place in the veinburn lab, partially because we didn't have time to talk about it, but also I suspect because neither of us was exactly sure what to say. I was touched that Devona had felt the need to avenge Dale's death for me, but I was also once more painfully aware that we might have only a couple days, maybe even only a few more hours, together if Lord Galm wouldn't or couldn't use his magic to preserve my body. We'd come to mean so much to each other in such a short time, and I didn't want to face the very real possibility that what was growing between us would die before it had a chance to be fully born. So we looked at each other and didn't speak, but Devona took my hand and gave it a squeeze and that was enough.

Even with all the tumult in Demon's Roost, the tolling of the Deathknell could be heard, the sound muted and distant, but unmistakable. None of Varvara's guests seemed to notice, or more likely they just didn't care. After all, the Renewal Ceremony had been taking place every year for over three centuries. It was nothing special to them. They were far more concerned with obtaining their next drink and/or lover. But then, none of them knew about the Dawnstone and the use to which it would soon be put – unless Devona and I could stop it.

We continued on pushing, shoving, elbowing, and in a few cases kneeing our way through the crowd until we came to a bank of elevators. There were five, all the same, except the last on the left. That one had a red button, while the others had white buttons. And standing in front of the red-button elevator was an eight-foot-tall muscular creature with blue skin, shaggy black hair and a wild, unkempt beard. Its red-tinged eyes were the size of saucers, and huge incisors jutted down from behind its upper lip and curved outward like tusks. The thing wore only two items of clothing: a loincloth made from tanned human hide, and a necklace of tiny human heads.

"What is he?" Devona asked.

"His name is Jambha – it means jaws in Hindi – and he's a rakshasa, a demon from Hindu mythology. That's Varvara's private elevator he's guarding. If anyone tries to use it without permission, he eats them."

Devona looked at me. "You're joking, right?"

"Well, he doesn't eat them right away. Among other things, back on Earth rakshasa were known for devouring the dead on battlefields. They like their food to age somewhat, say a week or two." I put a hand up to block my mouth so Jambha couldn't read my lips. "Watch out for his breath. I don't have a working olfactory system, and even I can't stand the stink of it."

Without another word, I led Devona over to Jambha. As we drew closer, we could see that the heads on the necklace were replicas of ours, little Matt-heads alternating with little Devonaheads, one after the other, all the way around. The neck stumps were ragged, as if the heads had been torn off by force, and they were fresh. Tiny drops of blood fell in continuous patters from the torn necks and onto Jambha's blue chest.

"How–" Devona began.

"Rakshasa are masters of illusions," I told her. "So don't believe everything you see."

When we came within three feet of the demon, I stopped us. Any closer, and we'd be instant demon chow.

"Hey, Jambha," I greeted him. "It's been a while."

The rakshasa looked me over from head to toe, and I felt like a piece of rotting meat in a demonic butcher's display case. A line of drool rolled down from his left tusk.

"You smell absolutely appalling," Jamba said, and licked his lips with a forked tongue.

"If that's a compliment, I guess I should say thank you, but keep your distance: no free samples, remember?" Since rakshasa love dead, rotting meat, in my current state I was like a walking ten course meal to Jambha, dessert included.

Jambha looked disappointed, but he recovered quickly. "No sample, no elevator ride."

I had a detached rotting ear I could give him somewhere in one of my pockets, and I started to fish around for it, but then I caught a glimpse of Devona's watching me with disapproval. I remembered what she'd said about the price I'd paid Waldemar – a page out of my memory. What kind of man thinks so little of his own experiences that he's willing to sell them for a few darkgems? So while giving Jambha the ear would've been the easy thing to do, in the end I decided not to.

'Listen, Jambha, we need to see Varvara right now. It's vital we catch her before she heads to the Spire for the Renewal Ceremony. Let us through."

"And I told you: no sample, no ride." He looked at me, his saucer eyes filled with carrion-lust.

The Deathknell sounded again, reminding me we didn't have time for playing around.

"Don't make me do it, Jambha."

The rakshasa scowled. "Do what?" he said warily.

"I have a pair of true-sight glasses in my pocket. If you don't let my friend and I use Varvara's elevator right now, I'll hand them to her and tell her to take a good look at you."

Jambha's scowl eased into a worried frown. "You're bluffing."

I shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

The rakshasa and I stared each other down for a moment, but in the end Jambha sighed, pressed the button for us, and then stepped aside.

"Go on," he said miserably.

The door slid open and Devona and I stepped onto the elevator, both of us trying to ignore the disconcerting way the tiny Matt and Devona heads on Jambha's necklace all grinned as we walked by. Inside, there was only one button and I pushed it. As the door slowly closed, Jambha hurriedly said, "If anything does fall off, and you don't happen to have need of it, I'd appreciate it if you'd save it for me."

"I'll see what I can do." Then thankfully the door shut and the elevator began a smooth ascent. We rode upward to the lilting strains of a Muzak version of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." Varvara's odd sense of humor seemed appropriate given what had brought us here.

"This will take us straight up to the penthouse," I told Devona, "which is probably where Varvara's at right now, getting ready for the ceremony."

"Do you really have true-sight glasses?" Devona asked.

"No. I don't know if such things exist. I just made them up to bluff Jambha."

"Why would a rakshasa care if I looked at him with true-sight glasses – assuming any existed – or not? He certainly didn't seem overly concerned about his appearance before."

"Remember when I told you rakshasa were masters of illusion? In Jambha's case, he uses his abilities to hide his true body from everyone's eyes: in reality he stands a little under three feet tall and has arms like pipe cleaners. Not exactly the best look for a Darklord's guard. If word get out about his true appearance, Jambha would not only be embarrassed as hell, he'd never be able to work security in this town again."

"I'm just glad he let us get on," Devona said, "and I'm impressed that Varvara lets you use her private elevator. How do you rate? No, let me guess: you did her a favor once."

"Not quite." I didn't want to go on, but Devona was looking at me expectantly. "She finds me… amusing."

"Oh. In a good way or a bad way?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure."

"Do you think she'll listen to us?"

"There's no telling with Varvara. She might hear us out, or she might have us executed for bothering her before the Renewal Ceremony."

Devona looked suddenly alarmed.

"Relax; I was joking about the last part." At least, I hoped I was joking. It all depended on what sort of mood Varvara was in.

The elevator glided to a stop and the door opened to reveal a boudoir of silks, satins, and a thousand overstuffed pillows scattered everywhere. Every possible shade of red and pink was represented, and I later learned from Devona that the air was thick with the mingled scents of a dozen different cloying perfumes mingled with a truckload of potpourri. The whole place was like a romance writer's wet dream.

Half of the large room was taken up by a monstrous canopy bed upon which lay the still, naked body of an obscenely muscled man. At first I thought he was dead, but he stirred slightly, and I realized he was only nearly dead.

I stepped off the elevator, and Devona followed. On the far side of the room, a stunningly beautiful redhead with a body that made most centerfolds look like concentration camp survivors stood before a mirrored wall, checking her outfit – a skin-tight dress made entirely of emeralds.

"That doesn't look very comfortable," I said.

Varvara didn't take her eyes off her reflection. "Comfortability is not the point." She turned around and examined her rear.

"Then what is?"

"Maximum amount of soul-gnawing envy from all women in the vicinity and maximum number of painfully unendurable erections from all men." She nodded. "I believe this will do nicely."

Varvara turned away from the mirror. "Hello, Matthew." She quickly looked me up and down. "You are aware, I trust, of your achingly desperate need of a makeover? So, what brings you into my bedroom this fine Descension evening? And with such a cute little friend!" Her brow crinkled as she frowned at Devona. "Though you could use a good hosing down, dearie. A bit of advice: next time you decide to snack on someone, wear a bib."

She turned to me and smiled. "Don't tell me you want to get a foursome going, Matthew. I'm afraid I don't have the time, and Magnus–" She nodded toward the insensate slab of beefcake sprawled on her bed – "does not have the energy, and most likely won't for some days to come." She gave her boy-toy an appraising look. "I do hope I didn't break him. Victor Baron made him especially for me, and this was the first time I've had the chance to put the dear thing through his paces. He acquitted himself well enough, but there were a few moments there where I thought he might stroke out. Ah well, I suppose I can always send him back to the Foundry for a tune-up if necessary."

Now that Varvara faced us, her single non-human feature – unless you count her exaggeratedly feminine body as nonhuman – was evident: her slightly overlarge eyes. They contained multicolored flecks which rotated slowly around the pupils. All demons, regardless of type, had those flecks, and they remained no matter what form a demon might assume. Varvara's eyes were more striking than most demons', though. They possessed an intensity that reminded me of an apex predator: cold, calculating, and always in the process of trying to decide whether or not to attack. She flashed us a dazzling smile that almost, but not quite, wiped away the eerie sensation of those savage eyes constantly sizing you up.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Varvara, but I'm not exactly up for those sort of games, if you know what I mean."

She walked over to us, every step runway model perfect, even with the incredibly steep high heels she was wearing. She leaned forward, nearly spilling out of her emeralds in the process, and whispered in my ear, "You could always watch."

And then she stepped back and laughed.

"Matt told me you find him amusing," Devona said icily. "Is it because he puts up with you cruelly taunting him like that?"

I shot Devona a warning glance. Maybe it was jealousy, or concern for my feelings, or both, that had prompted her to speak out, but talking like that to Varvara is not exactly conducive to your health.

The Demon Queen regarded Devona impassively for some time, but Devona stood her ground and stared at Varvara with equal intensity. And even though I didn't need to breathe, I held my breath anyway.

Then Varvara smiled. "I like you," she said simply. Underneath her words was an unspoken message: I think I'll let you live.

I released my breath.

"I'd really love to stay and chat, but I must dash. Have to help Dis and the other Darklords keep Nekropolis going for another year." She sighed theatrically. "Dreadfully dull, but I suppose it has to be done."

She started toward the elevator, but before she could reach it, I called after her.

"I have a favor to ask of you, Varvara."

She stopped and turned around. "A favor?" She smiled slowly. "Why of course, Matt. We demons love to do favors – for a price."

I held up my hand and displayed Lord Edrigu's mark. "I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of trade right now."

She frowned upon seeing the mark, and her manner became serious. "What in the Nine Hells have you been up to?"

So I told her.

When I finished, Varvara said, "I wasn't even aware that Galm had the Dawnstone, and now he's lost it. Intriguing." "You know about the Dawnstone?" Devona asked.

Varvara waved the question aside. "Honey, when you've lived as long as I have, there isn't a whole lot you don't know." She turned toward the mirror and looked thoughtfully at her reflection. "I wonder if there's a way I can use this to my advantage."

"This isn't the time for scheming," I said sternly.

Varvara turned away from the mirror. "While the Dawnstone is a potent token of power, I'm not sure it really poses much of a threat. Still, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to telepathically check with my fellow Lords, especially since the Renewal Ceremony is soon to begin." She nodded to herself as if making a decision. "You two wait here." She turned and headed for a closed door on the other side of the room.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

She stopped. "To a private chamber where I can concentrate more effectively. We Darklords have built up quite strong psychic defenses against each other over the millennia, and it's going to take some effort on my part to get even a simple message past their guard – if I can."

"What about contacting Father Dis?" I suggested.

She gave me a withering look. "Darling, you don't contact Dis; he contacts you." And with that she walked to the door, opened it, stepped inside, and closed it behind her.

"Private chamber?" Devona said. "That looked like her–"

"Bathroom, yeah. But you have to admit, 'private chamber' sounds a lot classier."

"So what do we do?"

"You heard her: we wait."

Devona went over to the mirror and examined her transparent reflection. "I wish now that I had gone to Father right away. What if we can't stop whoever it is from using the Dawnstone?"

I joined her in front of the mirror, though I didn't particularly appreciate the chewed-up zombie it showed me. "There's no point in worrying about might-have-beens, Devona. All we can do now is our best. In the end, that has to be enough."

She didn't look convinced, so I decided to try to take her mind off her recriminations while Varvara attempted to contact the other Lords. "This is more than just a mirror, you know. It's Varvara's dimensional portal."

Devona took a half step back, as if afraid the mirror might suck her in. "You and Dale came to Nekropolis through here?"

"This is Varvara's personal portal. She has a larger one down in the lower levels of the Roost, which is what Dale and I used." I smiled. "I don't think we would've lasted very long if we'd popped out into Varvara's bedroom – especially if she'd been busy entertaining company."

Devona stepped back to the mirror. "I've never seen Father's portal. I wonder how it works."

"The one downstairs is pretty simple. All you have to do–" I reached out and tapped the glass three times with my index finger. The mirror shimmered and our reflections were replaced by an image of a park just before sunset – trees, benches, neatly trimmed green grass, birds singing, people walking, holding hands, riding bikes, in-line skating… From the trees and the way people were dressed, it looked like late spring. And then I realized: sunset. Horrified, I tried to push Devona out the way. But she planted her feet solidly on the floor, and with her strength, I couldn't budge her.

"What are you doing?"

"The sunlight!" I said. "You have to get away from the portal before–"

She laughed. "Matt, I'm half-human, remember? Sunlight doesn't destroy my kind, it just temporarily nullifies our vampiric abilities."

I wasn't sure, but it looked like her skin was slowly turning pinker, more fully human. I thought it would be a different story if I tried to shove her away from the mirror now. Her strength would be no greater than an ordinary human's too.

"So that's the sun," she said in a hushed voice. "It's redder than I imagined, but still quite beautiful." She touched her cheek. "And so warm."

For a moment I thought she was joking, but then I remembered Galm had brought her to Nekropolis soon after she'd been born. She really never had seen the sun.

"What are we looking at?" she asked.

"A park. It's a place where people in the city go to get away, feel close to nature, and relax." I smiled. "Kind of like the Wyldwood, only without the murderous shapeshifters."

"Everyone looks as if they're enjoying themselves. I wonder what it would be like to be human, fully human, and live in an ordinary house, work at an ordinary job, and go to the park at sunset."

"As I recall, it was pretty damned good." It had been a while since I had seen Earth except in movies on Mind's Eye broadcasts. But this was a hundred times better, and more heartbreaking, than any movie could ever be. Because I knew that all I would have to do to go there was to step through the glass. I was tempted. If I were going to die for good in the next day or so, at least I could die in the world where I'd been born and lived most of my life.

But I didn't step forward. There was still a chance that I could save myself. And besides, I don't like to leave a job unfinished.

"Pretty isn't it? Especially for Cleveland." Varvara had come out of the bathroom – excuse me, her private chamber – and was standing behind us. "Still, we don't have time for sightseeing." She snapped her long red-nailed fingers and the park evaporated and the mirror was just a mirror again. Devona looked disappointed.

"Any luck?" I asked.

"No, the fools wouldn't even acknowledge my attempts. Can't say as I blame, them, though. I'd have done the same thing; centuries of distrust are hard to overcome. I'll just have to try to talk to them once I get to the Nightspire, I suppose."

"You mean, once we get to the Nightspire," I said. "Devona and I have been through too much not to see this to the end."

"I don't think so, Matt. While you're fun to have around, Dis doesn't appreciate tag-alongs."

"The Darklords always bring a retinue with them," Devona said. "My father does, though I've never had the distinction of being part of it."

"So why couldn't we tag along with your tag-alongs?" I asked.

"Our retinues are primarily made up of Demilords, relatives, high-level city functionaries, and important Earth contacts," Varvara said. "Still… I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything."

"And think how much it'll annoy Talaith to see me there," I pointed out.

The Demon Queen brightened. "There is that. All right, you may accompany me. But we should go now. There isn't much time left before the ceremony starts." She looked at us and then wrinkled her nose. "But perhaps you two should freshen up a bit first."

After Devona and I spent a couple of minutes in Varvara's "private chamber," the three of us headed for the elevator.

As we walked by the bed, I nodded to the still comatose Magnus. "What about him?"

"Let him sleep," Varvara said with a wicked grin. "He'll need all the rest he can get for when I return."

The elevator arrived. We got on and began our descent.

Varvara turned to Devona. "Before, you asked – in quite a snippy tone, I might add – what I found so amusing about Matt."

"I was just–" Devona began.

"What I find so amusing about our friend here is that he is a champion of order in one of the most chaotic places in the Omniverse – an undead Don Quixote, tilting at Nekropolis's windmills on what may very well be an ultimately futile quest to make this a better place." She smiled. "Besides, he makes me laugh."

"I'm just a guy who does favors for people, Varvara, you know that." I hate it when she talks about me that way. Probably because I'm afraid she's right.

The elevator stopped, the door opened, and we were off to the biggest windmill Nekropolis has to offer – the Nightspire.

TWENTY-TWO

Of all the ways I might have imagined traveling to the Nightspire in pursuit of a thief and murderer, riding in the back of a hot pink limousine (with matching interior) wasn't one of them. Behind us was a line of far less striking vehicles bearing Varvara's retinue, primarily demons, but a few humans – mostly music industry and Hollywood types – who served her as well.

Varvara sipped a frozen daiquiri whipped up from the tiny wet bar by her personal bartender, a creature which resembled a levitating sea urchin, and waved through the open widow at the cheering crowds lining the street. Psychographers captured mental impressions for live Mind's Eye coverage of the Renewal Ceremony as we passed, while reporters from both the Tome and the Daily Atrocity shouted out questions to Varvara, all of which she cheerfully ignored.

"It's so nice to receive the adulation of the masses, don't you think?" Varvara said. She downed the rest of her daiquiri and told the urchin to mix her another.

Varvara is probably the most popular Darklord, considering she lets her subjects – and anyone who visits the Sprawl, for that matter – pretty much do as they please. I can't say near-anarchy is my idea of effective social policy, but then Varvara's never asked for my opinion. And I must admit, the Sprawl is the most interesting place in Nekropolis, which is why I suppose I make my home there.

The driver, who I would've taken for just another pretty muscle-boy if it hadn't been for the ram's horns jutting out of his head, spoke over the intercom.

"I have to slow down, Milady. Several Sentinels are coming up behind us."

Varvara pushed a button on her armrest. "No problem, love, but when they're past, speed up a tad. We're running a wee bit late."

I turned around, and through the rear window I saw three Sentinels walking in a row down the middle of the street. They weren't running – I wasn't sure if they could – but they were walking faster than I'd ever seen any of the golems move before.

"Don't tell me," I said. "They're going to arrest us for assault with an exceptionally tacky paint job."

"Remember what I said about you making me laugh?" Varvara asked. "I take it back."

The Sentinels tromped around us and continued down the street, accompanied by boos and hisses from the drunk and drugged-up crowd. Father Dis's police force wasn't exactly beloved by the denizens of the Sprawl.

"Where are they going in such a hurry?" I asked.

"They've been recalled to the Nightspire for the Renewal Ceremony," Devona explained.

Varvara frowned at me. "How long have you been in Nekropolis now, two years?"

"Just about."

"And you didn't know the Sentinels are part of the ceremony?"

I shrugged. "This is only my second Descension celebration, and I spent the first helping a pregnant witch escape her abusive warlock husband. At one point, he actually switched my personality with that of the fetus, and I – well, suffice it to say the situation took some straightening out, and I missed a good part of the celebration, including the Renewal Ceremony."

"You have to tell about that one some time, Matt," Varvara said. "So many mortals wish to return to the womb, but you're the only one I know who's managed to do it!" And she laughed the rest of the way to the Nightspire.

As we approached the slender black needle that was the Nightspire, I noticed something strange.

"Umbriel seems larger than usual."

"That's because it's descending for the Ceremony," Varvara said impatiently. "Really, Matt, are you going to be this tiresome the whole time?"

"More, if I can manage it."

The crowd was thickest as we neared the bridge that led from the Sprawl to the Nightspire. Varvara continued playing the gracious queen parading before her adoring subjects, when a grizzled old man in a yellowed seersucker suit and carrying a sheaf of paper broke out of the crowd and came running toward the limo, and Varvara's open window.

"Oh, no," I moaned. "Not now, Carl."

Carl thrust one of his homemade papers through the window and into Varvara's face.

"Beware the Watchers, Lady!" he shouted wildly, "Beware–" But that's as far as he got before Varvara hit a button and the window slid up. Carl barely retracted his arm in time. He released his "paper," however, and it fell onto Varvara's lap. With a grimace of distaste, she brushed it onto the floor.

"Usually I find Carl's rants diverting, but I'm not in the mood tonight."

"I'm surprised he was able to approach the car at all," Devona said. "I'd think a Darklord would have better security."

"If Carl had any ill intent toward us, the wardspells on my car would've fried him as soon as he came within three feet." Varvara smiled. "Secure enough for you?"

Devona didn't reply.

The ram's-horn hunk drove us onto the bridge. The winds of the Furies didn't rise, but then we were expected. As soon as we reached the dull, gray, grassless earth of the island on the other side, the sonorous tolling of the Deathknell stopped.

I looked at Varvara, but she said, "That merely means that all five Darklords have now reached the Nightspire. I'm usually the last."

"Why am I not surprised?"

The driver pulled up to the Nightspire and parked behind a double row of coaches and wagons – the other Darklords' vehicles, I presumed. The chauffeur came around and opened Varvara's door, and she slid out, taking his proffered hand and allowing him to help her, though she was doubtless the far stronger of the two. Devona and I had to haul our butts out unassisted, of course.

The other cars in Varvara's entourage parked behind us, and their occupants disembarked, more than a few of them giving Devona and me dirty looks, obviously wondering who we were and how we rated riding in the front of the procession with their queen – especially when they didn't.

The green flames of Phlegethon which surrounded the small island flared higher than usual. Because of the coming ceremony? I wondered. The air seemed charged with barely contained energy, and I looked up. Directly over the tip of the Nightspire, Umbriel, looking bloated and heavy, continued its slow descent.

Varvara started toward the rectangular entrance of the Nightspire, and gestured for Devona and me to follow. I heard a few mutterings from Varvara's other guests. It appeared we'd usurped yet another honor. My heart would've bled for them – if I'd had any blood.

As we walked, I saw Silent Jack atop his Black Rig, a pale woman in a blood-stained dress sitting next him. Jack had brought his wife, Bloody Mary, along with him for this special occasion. The ghostly coachman touched his finger to the brim of his hat as we walked by, but Mary just looked at us with the crimson hollows where her eyes had once been. I thought of the E on my palm, and a chill ran down my back regardless of the fact I had no working nerves.

As we entered, I thought that if Gregor had wanted Devona to carry one of his children so that he might finally get a look-see inside a Darklord's stronghold, how much more excited he would be to actually learn about the interior of the Nightspire itself. Inside was the same as the outside: featureless black, as if the Nightspire had been shaped from solidified shadow. We walked down a long narrow corridor lit by torches of green fire. Varvara's outrageously high heels clacked hollowly as she walked, echoing up and down the hall. She looked like someone who was trying to appear as if she wasn't hurrying, when in fact she was. I had a feeling we were running more than a "wee bit late," as she'd earlier told our driver.

A mural was painted on the corridor's wall showing scenes depicting key events in the history of the Darkfolk leading up to the founding of Nekropolis. The first scene was of a primordial swamp, like the kind you'd see in any Earth museum showing primitive lifeforms leaving the water to take their first tentative steps on land. But instead of amphibians, the creatures emerging from this swamp were shapeless sinuous shadows. I learned later that this event was known as Darkrise and the creatures were called Shadowings.

The second scene was more sinister, showing creatures that were obviously forerunners of vampires and lykes preying on primitive humans. The Darkfolk in the next scene were more developed – looking much as they do today – and they sat on thrones made from human bones while mortal men and woman bowed down to them, worshipping them as dark gods. The fourth scene showed the tables turning, as humans with crude swords, spears, and axes attacked Darkfolk, driving them away from human settlements and into the shadowy wilderness. The next scene skipped a couple thousand years and picked up the visual narrative with the Inquisition, showing Darkfolk being tortured by humans – vampires staked, lykes skinned, witches and warlocks burned alive.

The Wanderyear came next, showing a robed figure I assumed to be Dis traveling the length and breadth of the world in search of other Darkfolk powerful enough to help him create Nekropolis. Good thing Yberio was dead; he'd certainly have felt slighted to learn he wasn't among those portrayed in this scene. The Darksome Council came after that, when Dis met with the five current Darklords atop a wind-blasted mountain peak where the barriers between dimensions were thinnest. Here Dis showed the Lords the Null Plains, the new home where the Darkfolk would build their great city. After that was the Bedarkening – the creation of Umbriel above the Null Plans – followed by the construction of Nekropolis, and then the Descension, when Earth's Darkfolk finally emigrated to their new home. The second-to-last scene showed the city in flames, blood running red in the streets while the Darklords' armies fought with no quarter given and none asked: the Blood Wars. The last image was of Nekropolis as it looks today: the five Dominions at relative peace, the Nightspire rising above all, as if to keep a close eye on things.

The corridor let us out into a vast circular chamber which sloped inward the farther up it rose, and I realized that the Nightspire was hollow. But while the inside walls of the Nightspire were the same unchanging black as the exterior, white marble columns ringed the chamber, and the floor was made of tiled mosaics. Dis had once been the Roman god of the dead, and it seemed his taste in interior decorating hadn't changed since the Empire's fall.

In the middle of the chamber was a large, raised marble dais in the shape of a pentagram. Sentinels surrounded the dais, face out, as if they were guarding it. At a quick estimate, I figured there were maybe thirty Sentinels altogether. I hadn't realized the city had that many. I thought I recognized one, a Sentinel with a faint scar running down its chest, as the one who had taken Varma's body off our hands. I wondered if the golem had delivered Varma to the Cathedral, and if so, what Galm's reaction had been. I supposed I'd find out soon.

The Sentinels were far from the chamber's only occupants, though. Vampires, lykes, Arcane, and half-visible spirits stood in small groups, talking and sampling hors d'oeuvres and imbibing drinks brought to them by bald, red-robed men and women. That is, the living ate and drank. The dead merely watched them do so. Between two columns on the far side of the chamber, a tuxedo-clad pianist with four arms played soft, unobtrusive background music.

"I can't believe it," I said. "After everything I've heard about it, the vaunted Renewal Ceremony turns out to be nothing more than a cocktail party?"

"These are merely the preliminaries to the ceremony," Varvara said quietly. "The ceremony itself will begin shortly."

"Who are the baldies in red?" I asked.

"The Cabal," Varvara said quietly. "Dis's personal attendants. And it would be a good idea to avoid calling them 'baldies.'"

"They look like waiters to me," I said.

"They are whatever Dis says they are," Varvara replied. "Don't bother trying to talk to them; they only respond to their master."

"We must find my father and tell him of the threat," Devona said, and without waiting for either of us to reply, she set off for a group of nearby vampires nibbling on what appeared to be small animal hearts. Varvara and I hurried after her.

She asked the vampires – who were dressed in overdone Bela Lugosi drag – where Lord Galm was. The vampires, who I took to be out-of-towners from Earth by the way they dressed, pointed to the base of the pentagram dais, where Galm was standing talking to Amon in his English hunter guise, Talaith, and a thin man with the gaunt face of a mortician. I assumed the latter was Edrigu. Devona made a beeline, or in her case a batline, toward them. There was one dignitary in attendance I'd never seen but heard a great deal about. Wrapped in ancient cerements, a crimson cape draped over her slender shoulders, a mask of wrought gold concealing her face stood Keket, Overseer of Tenebrus, flanked by a pair of her jackal-headed Warders. Keket held such a powerful position in the city, she sometimes was referred to as the Sixth Lord, though she had no official standing as such. She stood off to the side, ignoring everyone else, and being ignored right back in turn. Prison wardens are never among the most popular of party guests, no matter what dimension you're in.

I half-expected to see Waldemar there too, but supposedly he never leaves the Great Library. Sometimes I think he is the library, body and soul.

Varvara caught up to Devona and grabbed her arm to slow her down. "I think it would be best if I led the way, dear." From her tone, and the way her eyes flashed, it was clear Varvara wasn't making a request.

Devona looked like she was going to argue, but then thought better of it and nodded. We continued with Varvara in the lead, and as we approached the other Lords, the Demon Queen opened her arms and said, "Darlings! So nice to see you all!"

"And for us to see so much of you," Talaith said cattily as she eyed Varvara's outfit. "Why didn't you just come naked this year?"

"Is that a criticism, or are you voicing a regret?" Varvara shot back.

Talaith reddened but didn't reply. She looked smaller than the avatar which had attacked us in Glamere, older and more tired too. Physically, she appeared to be in her late sixties, with short gray hair, baggy eyes, and sagging skin. She'd looked better before the destruction of the Overmind: one more reason for her to hate me. In diametric opposition to Varvara's skimpy outfit, Talaith wore a simple black and white dress reminiscent of Puritan garb. I wondered if anyone had ever attempted to burn her at the stake. If so, I was sorry they'd failed.

Talaith turned to Devona and me, and her upper lip curled in disgust. "I knew your standards were low, Varvara, but really."

"Watch your tongue, witch," Galm growled. "The woman is one of my birth daughters." Maybe Devona, as a half human, didn't rate as high in the vampire hierarchy as the fully Bloodborn, but it seemed she was high enough for Galm to object to anyone insulting her.

"I was referring to the zombie," Talaith covered smoothly. She looked to the thin-faced man. "Really, Edrigu, isn't there something you can do about this… thing? After all, as one of the undead, he falls under your purview."

The corners of Edrigu's thin lips raised a fraction in what I assumed was meant to be a smile. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties and was bald save for a fine layer of black hair along the sides and back of his head. He wore a tattered white shroud covered with grave mold, and through the ragged cloth glimpses of not flesh but bone were visible.

"What would you have me do, precisely, Talaith?" His voice was a hollow monotone, a lonely echo in a deserted mausoleum.

"Oh, I don't know. Wave your hand and make him collapse into dust, something along those lines."

Edrigu gave me a look and I felt the mark on my palm itch. He knew he didn't have to do anything to me; I was due to turn to dust soon enough as it was.

"Sour grapes, Talaith," Amon said. "You're still bitter Mr. Richter and his late partner disrupted one of your little schemes a while back."

"Not much of a scheme, as I recall," Varvara said. "Even if Matt hadn't happened along, I doubt it would've worked."

Talaith glared at them both, but otherwise did nothing. The bantering Darklords reminded me of wary jungle predators facing each other over a water hole. They hated each other and weren't afraid to show it, but this wasn't the time or place to do anything about it. But I could see in Talaith's eyes that she was keeping track of every insult and adding it to her list of grievances against her fellow Lords.

Edrigu stepped closer to me and reached out to shake my hand. When our flesh touched, the E on my palm burned like fire, and I took in a hissing breath. It was the first pain I'd felt since I died.

"Hello, Mr. Richter," Edrigu said in that eerie voice of his. "It's nice to finally make your acquaintance. You are, after all, a unique specimen among my charges." He smiled with cold amusement. "By the way, my driver says you taste absolutely delicious."

I withdrew my hand. Edrigu's comment had rattled me – not to mention the burning sensation – and I quickly tried to cover. "You're a Darklord, Edrigu. You'd think you'd be able to afford some skin to cover those ribs."

Edrigu just smiled, his eyes cold as a tomb in deep winter. I turned away, unable to meet that awful gaze. The burning in my hand was mostly gone, but a distant echo of its pain lingered.

Devona went up to Galm and hesitantly touched his bare ivory arm. "Father, we must talk. It's urgent!

Up to now, Galm had been brooding and not paying attention to the conversation. But when Devona spoke, he looked up, startled, as if he'd forgotten she were here. "Not now, child. We received bad news at the Cathedral while you were out. Varma died the final death earlier today."

"I know, father," Devona said softly. "Matt and I found his body."

The other Lords fell silent and awaited Galm's reaction. Keket seemed especially interested, which only made sense since she represented what passed for the law in Nekropolis. I half expected Galm to destroy Devona and me where we stood, but instead the ancient vampire spoke softly in a voice thick with restrained anger. "Tell me what you know."

Devona hesitated, and then launched into a concise summary of everything that had happened since she'd discovered the Dawnstone was missing.

After she was done, the ice on Lord Galm's glacially impassive face broke and his features contorted in fury. "Varma was a weak, immature man who existed only for pleasure. If the Dominari hadn't introduced him to veinburn, he would have tried it on his own eventually. But had you come to me immediately, child, I might have been able to locate Varma and use my magics to burn the addiction out of him, quite possibly preventing his assassination." He shot Varvara a meaningful look, and I imagined the two of them were going to have a few conversations about the drug trade in Varvara's Dominion not long after the ceremony.

"But you let your pride as keeper of my Collection interfere with your duty to your cousin – who was fully Bloodborn, I might add."

Devona hung her head in shame. "Yes, my Lord."

I wanted to shout at Galm, to tell him he was being unnecessarily cruel – not to mention just plain wrong-headed – to talk to Devona like he had. But I knew that despite my watering hole analogy, the Darklords' truce didn't extend to me, and I had to watch what I said.

"My Lord," I said, nearly choking on the words, "what about the Dawnstone?" I hoped this would distract him from berating Devona and also turn his attention to the most important aspect of her story: that whoever stole the Dawnstone likely planned to attack with it during the Renewal Ceremony.

But I was surprised by his response.

"It is of no consequence."

"No consequence!" I said. "I thought it was an object of great power!"

"It is," Galm admitted, "but one which takes much mystic knowledge and skill to operate. Such attributes are possessed only by my fellow Lords."

"And we would never use such a device," Edrigu said. "Not during the Renewal Ceremony."

"Edrigu's right," Amon said. "It would be one thing to employ the Dawnstone against each other outside of the Nightspire, but to use it here and risk Dis's wrath? Never."

"Not to mention what the effect of using an object of power would have on the ceremony itself," Talaith said. "We need Dis, and all five of us, to maintain Nekropolis. If the ceremony were interrupted before completion, Umbriel would fail to be renewed."

"And Nekropolis, and all its denizens, would be no more," Edrigu finished. "There'd be nothing left to rule over."

"Besides," Talaith pointed out, "there's no way anyone could sneak such a powerful artifact into the Nightspire, not with the powerful wardspells Father Dis has placed on the entrances."

"It's far more likely the Dominari have different – but no less nasty – plans for it," Amon said. "But that need not concern us at the moment."

I looked to Varvara for confirmation. "They've got a good point," she told me. "Several, in fact."

It sounded as if the other Lords had managed to convince Varvara. And truth to tell, what they said did seem reasonable. But that didn't mean I bought it. My undead gut told me that despite all the Darklords' arguments to the contrary, whoever had the Dawnstone would use it here, soon. But if the Darklords didn't believe us, I didn't know what we'd be able to do about it.

Evidently, Devona felt the same, too, for she said, "Father, please, you must–"

"Forget the Dawnstone," Galm said, icy reserve in place once more. "It is no longer any of your concern, for you are no longer keeper of my Collection."

Devona stared at her father in stunned disbelief.

"You have failed me and failed Varma. From now on you are cast out from the Bloodborn; you are no longer my daughter. Do not return to the Cathedral. If you do, I shall kill you." And with that, Galm turned and strode away.

Devona's eyes filled with tears which she fought desperately. Her hands clamped into fists so tight, her nails punctured the flesh of her palms and blood dripped from her wounds. She was shaking in both sorrow and anger. She opened her mouth – to call after Galm, I presume – but no words came. No matter what she might have said, I knew it wouldn't have helped. Lord Galm had rendered his judgment, and I doubted even Father Dis could get him to reverse it.

I put what I hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder. I wanted to say something to console her, but it was my turn to be unable to find the right words. Everything that had defined her existence and her very identity for her entire life – seventythree years – had been stripped away from her in mere moments.

I suppose I should have also been concerned that I'd lost my chance to gain Lord Galm's aid in staving off my final decay. But you know something? The thought didn't even occur to me.

Edrigu, Amon, and Talaith wandered off, the latter looking quite pleased with the way things had turned out. Keket – who, I'd noticed, had stayed out of the debate over the Dawnstone – gave us a last look before trailing after the four Darklords, her dog-headed servants in tow. Varvara remained with us, though I wasn't sure why.

And that's when a gong sounded, though there was none in the room to be seen, and through a doorway on the other side of the room entered a handsome man dressed in a dark purple toga.

Father Dis.

TWENTY-THREE

Everything stopped – the music, the conversation – and everyone turned toward Dis and slowly went down on bended knees. I don't mind showing someone respect, provided they earn it. But the idea of paying homage to a person I'd never met as if he were royalty – even if in Nekropolis he was – really grated. Still, I knelt along with the others, though I gritted my teeth while doing so.

Dis strode into the chamber with the easy confidence of someone who is lord of all he surveys and doesn't feel a need to make a big deal out of it. He paused for a moment, smiled, and then gestured for us to stand. Everyone complied, but they remained silent, watching Father Dis and waiting for their next cue.

Dis wasn't what I had expected. There was nothing monstrous about him at all. He stood over six feet, had short curly black hair, a large but distinguished-looking nose, and a relaxed, charming smile. This was the ultimate Lord of Nekropolis? He looked more like an Italian movie star.

He walked through the crowd, smiling and nodding to those he passed, stopping once or twice to shake someone's hand (or paw or claw). And then he continued walking – straight toward us.

When he reached us, he stopped and flashed that smile of his. "Varvara, how lovely to see you, as always." He took her hand and kissed the back of it. His voice was a mellow tenor, but with an odd accent I couldn't quite place.

"My Lord," Varvara said solemnly, all trace of the shallow, fashion-crazed party-girl persona she affected gone.

Dis released her hand and turned to Devona and me. "I see we have two new guests this evening. Charmed, Ms. Kanti." He kissed Devona's hand, and she just watched him, flustered. "Mr. Richter."

I held up my gray-skinned hand. "If you're going to kiss my hand too, I have to warn you, it's seen better days." I couldn't help it; I'm even more of a smart aleck than usual when I'm nervous.

Dis chuckled. "I've seen far worse in my time, Mr. Richter, believe me." And then the pupils in his warm brown eyes dilated, becoming windows to a darkness deeper and colder than anything I had ever imagined. His pupils returned to normal and he shook my hand. "So glad you two could make it tonight. I hope it shall turn out to be a memorable experience for you both."

And with that he left us and walked toward the pentagramshaped dais. "The time is nigh!" he called out in a commanding voice, the charming host gone, replaced by the Lord of the City. "Let us begin!"

He mounted the dais steps and climbed to the top, and passed through the ring of Sentinels. He took a position in the center of the pentagram and waited. The five Darklords, including Varvara, then joined him, each standing on the point of the pentagram which corresponded to the location of their stronghold in the city, facing Father Dis.

I half expected dramatic music to swell as Dis and the Darklords raised their arms above their heads, but the chamber was silent, the air charged with anticipation. Everyone stood gathered around the dais, watching, waiting. Dis chanted no harsh, multisyllabic words of magic, made no complicated mystic gestures. All he did was simply look upward – and the Nightspire began to open.

As if it were an ebon flower curling back its night-dark petals, the tip of Nightspire blossomed open to reveal Umbriel. The shadowsun hovered huge and heavy in the eternal night of Nekropolis's sky, its hue no longer pure black but now shot through with patches of gray. It seemed to sag in the sky, as if weary and barely able to keep itself aloft.

The Darklords lowered their hands until they were pointing at Dis. And then gouts of darkness blasted forth from their palms to engulf him in a turbulent, writhing shroud of shadow. Dis inhaled, drawing the darkness into him as if it were air, and then, with the Lords continuing to feed him with their shadow, Dis lowered his arms, threw back his head, and opened his mouth wide.

A torrent of darkness surged upward from deep within the being that called itself Father Dis, spiraling up through the interior of the Nightspire, geysering forth from the opening, and streaking across the starless sky toward Umbriel. The stygian bolt struck the shadowsun, feeding, restoring, renewing it. As we watched, the patches of gray began to shrink, and Umbriel seemed to grow stronger and more vital. It was a wonder to behold. A dark wonder, yes, but a wonder just the same.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I became aware of movement on the dais. One of the Sentinels – the one I'd recognized earlier, with the scar on its chest – was stirring. It moved its thick-fingered hands to the line of puckered flesh, plunged them into the skin, and pulled open its chest. It reached into the cavity and brought forth a crystal a bit larger than a man's fist.

The Dawnstone.

I understood in a flash how the artifact had been smuggled past the Nightspire's wardspells. Concealed within a Sentinel, one of Dis's own guards, it hadn't tripped any of the mystic protections.

Some of the others in the audience had noticed the Sentinel's actions, and were shouting and pointing. If the Darklords and Dis were aware of what was happening, they gave no sign. The Lords continued pumping Dis full of darkness, and he in turn continued feeding it upward into Umbriel.

The Sentinel cupped the Dawnstone in its hands, and a warm yellow glow began to suffuse the crystal.

"It's activating the stone!" Devona shouted. "But that's impossible! A Sentinel is a golem, a mystic automaton without a mind of its own! It can't work magic!"

The Dawnstone's glow was getting brighter.

"Well, this one can!" I said.

People were shouting to the Lords, trying to get their attention, but it was no use. Whether the Lords couldn't hear or couldn't afford to be distracted at this point in the ceremony, they didn't respond. Neither, for that matter, did the other Sentinels, who remained motionless on the dais. Maybe they too were somehow part of the ceremony, or perhaps they needed Dis to command them to action. Whichever the case, they stood by, useless.

Dis's red-robed attendants, the Cabal, dropped their serving trays and rushed toward the rogue Sentinel, their hands flaring with crimson energy. But the Sentinel merely pointed the Dawnstone at the oncoming attendants. A dazzling lance of white light blazed forth from the crystal and washed over the Cabal. They didn't even have time to scream. One second they were there, the next they were gone. Not even dust remained.

A number of the Darklords' guests – the vampires especially – fell to the floor, crying and moaning in pain, injured from merely witnessing the release of the Dawnstone's awesome power. Keket managed to remain on her cloth-wrapped feet, but she'd averted her eyes, unable to face the Dawnstone's luminance. Her Warders huddled behind her, whining like terrified dogs. Everyone else either stood in mute fear or was trying to escape the chamber. No one headed for the Sentinel, which was slowly starting to turn around to face Dis and the Darklords.

It looked like it was up to the dead man. I drew my 9mm, aimed at the Sentinel's head, and squeezed off three shots.

I wasn't the world's greatest marksman when alive, but death has given me a much steadier hand, and my shots hit their intended target. But I might as well not have bothered; the bullets merely scratched the Sentinel's doughy gray flesh.

I decided to try a different target and fired three more shots at the Dawnstone. Because of the way the crystal was glowing, it was hard to tell if I hit it, but I believed I did. But instead of being rewarded with the sound of shattering magic crystal, nothing happened.

"I should've known it wouldn't be that easy," I muttered as I pulled out the spent clip and replaced it with a fresh one.

The Sentinel completed its turn and aimed the Dawnstone at Father Dis and, along with the five bolts of darkness still blasting into him from the Darklords, a stream of white light struck him full on the chest. The shadow streaming forth from Dis's mouth cut off as the Lord of Nekropolis screamed.

Take all the pain in the universe, not just physical pain, but all the mental and emotional anguish you can imagine. Put them all together, double, triple, quadruple them, and you still wouldn't match the intensity of the agony in Father Dis's cry.

And then the ground began to shake, as if the Nightspire shared its master's anguish. I wondered if the disturbance was localized to Dis's island, or if the entire city experienced the tremors. I feared the latter.

I finished reloading and turned to Devona. "Time to get your crystal back," I said.

She nodded grimly, and we started toward the dais, but before she could get three steps, she stiffened, grimaced in pain, and fell to her side. In my concern for Devona, I momentarily forgot about the Sentinel, the Dawnstone, the Lords, and the quaking of the Nightspire. I knelt by her side.

"What's wrong?"

She touched the side of her head and between pain-gritted teeth forced out, "My head… feels like it's… on fire…"

I feared she was suffering from some delayed reaction to viewing the Dawnstone's brilliance. I wanted to help her, wanted to take away the pain, but I didn't know how.

"Forget about me, go… stop… Dawnstone…"

I didn't want to leave her lying there in agony, but I knew if someone didn't do something soon, we'd all be destroyed. I nodded, squeezed her hand, then stood and half-ran, half-limped toward the dais. I weaved between weeping and wailing guests, my mind racing to come up with some sort of plan of attack.

I couldn't hurt the Sentinel by shooting it, couldn't shatter the Dawnstone. I certainly couldn't physically battle the golem, nor did I have any mystic knowledge that would allow me to attack it magically. And I didn't have anything in my jacket of tricks that would help. If only the damned thing's hide wasn't so blasted tough! Then I could – and then I realized: its skin might be impenetrable, but what about its insides? There was a gaping hole in its chest now where the Dawnstone had been concealed. If I could just get a shot at that hole…

I circled the dais, looking for an angle. It wasn't easy, considering the other motionless Sentinels in the way, not to mention the Darklords and Father Dis. But I finally found a space between a Sentinel and Talaith that, while not perfect by any means, would have to do. I aimed, doing my best to ignore Dis's cries and the chamber's shaking. Steady, steady… I fired.

One, two, three shots right into the open gash in the Sentinel's chest. Success! The creature staggered and the Dawnstone's beam winked out. But the golem didn't go down. Instead, it leveled the Dawnstone at me and I was blinded by the crystal's blazing light. I raised an arm to protect my eyes, but I felt no heat and no pain.

The light extinguished, and I blinked furiously, trying to force my eyes to work again. Within seconds, I could see once more, although my vision was peppered with floating purple and orange afterimages. I took a quick inventory of my body, and as near as I could tell, the Dawnstone hadn't harmed me. I was grateful the crystal produced no heat; otherwise, I likely would have burst into flame.

The Sentinel seemed to regard me for a moment – it was difficult to tell for certain since it possessed no facial features – and then it turned and began descending the dais. I checked Dis. He knelt in the middle of the pentagram, obviously shaken. The Darklords were still emitting beams of darkness at him, though, and the Nightspire continued quaking furiously. Dis got to his feet and looked up at Umbriel once more. The shadowsun was covered with gray patches, many more than before, and jagged fissures criss-crossed its surface. The Renewal Ceremony was failing.

Dis opened his mouth and released a shout of equal parts frustration and determination, and pure darkness fountained from deep within him and rushed upward toward Nekropolis's dying sun.

The Sentinel, meanwhile, had reached the chamber floor and was stomping toward me, the Dawnstone held at its side in one massive hand. Magic hadn't harmed me, so it looked like the big bruiser was going to get physical. No problem; this kind of fight I understood.

I aimed for the gash and squeezed off three more shots.

The Sentinel took a step back, swayed, and then dropped the Dawnstone, which fell to the floor with a loud clack! but was undamaged. The rent in the golem's chest widened, and out spilled a black flood of tiny hard-shelled insects.

I stared in surprise, and suddenly a whole lot of things began to make sense.

I didn't have time to reflect on my newfound realizations before the insects were upon me, covering me completely from head to toe. I slapped at them, tore at them, hit the ground and rolled in an attempt to crush them, but while I got a few that way, there were just too damned many, gnawing, chewing, ripping away at my undead flesh. It didn't hurt, of course; I felt a certain distance from what was occurring, as if it were happening to someone else.

And then I couldn't move my left arm anymore, nor my right. I fell to the floor, my legs useless. I couldn't see, for I no longer possessed eyes. And my thoughts became erratic and sluggish, and I realized the insects had penetrated my brain.

I experienced a moment of vertigo, followed by darkness. Then I could see once more, only now I was looking down upon a carpet of insects that were picking clean a rag-covered skeleton, and I understood what had taken place. The insects had destroyed my body and released my spirit. I was dead, for the second time.

I wasn't upset by this development, didn't feel anything about it one way or the other. It just was.

Although I had no body, at least none that I was aware of, I did appear to have a limited range of vision, as if I were still using eyes to see. I wanted to know what the Sentinel was doing and, as if having the desire was all that was necessary, my vision focused at the golem.

It stood motionless while the insects finished their work, and then like a movie in reverse, they flowed back into the Sentinel. When they were all inside once more, the golem gripped its chest wound and pinched it closed, in order to hold the insects in, I presumed, and then stomped back toward the dais where Father Dis and the Darklords still struggled to renew Umbriel.

I watched, unconcerned, as the Sentinel retrieved the Dawnstone and mounted the steps of the dais. The golem then raised the mystic crystal and once more unleashed a blast of light at Dis. The ruler and founder of Nekropolis screamed, and the dark power he channeled upward to Umbriel was cut off again. He fell to his knees as the tremors which shook the Nightspire grew even more violent. I wondered idly how long the structure could withstand such shaking, not that it mattered much. Nothing mattered. The concept no longer held any meaning for me. Everything just was.

And then I felt a pull, as if something were drawing me toward it. I "looked" in that direction and saw a light a thousand times brighter than any the Dawnstone could ever produce. I began drifting toward that light, slowly at first, and then faster, leaving the struggles of the flesh creatures behind me, already forgotten.

And as I neared the light, I heard a voice, a voice that I hadn't heard in almost two years.

It's not like you to leave a job unfinished, Matt.

With a jolt, I remembered the Sentinel and the Dawnstone, Dis and the Darklords, Umbriel and the Nightspire.

And Devona.

Dale was right; I still had work to do.

Thanks for the reminder, pal.

I turned away from the light and moved back toward the chamber and the struggle taking place on the dais. I had no idea what I could hope to do as a disembodied spirit – I just knew I had to do something. I wished Lyra were here to give me a few pointers. She'd spent enough time as a spirit and probably could… And then it hit me. Lyra and Honani, one soul exchanged for another.

I didn't have a spell designed by Papa Chatha to aid me, but I did have a hell of a lot of determination. I concentrated on drifting toward the Sentinel, who was still unmercifully blasting Father Dis with the Dawnstone.

More specifically, I aimed for the gash in the thing's chest.

I slipped into the Sentinel's body and was suddenly aware of another consciousness within it. A fragmented, alien consciousness that I experienced as a million tiny voices whispering back and forth to each other. And then I sensed the voices become aware of me and begin speaking as one, only they weren't whispering this time: they were shouting – shouting for me to get out.

But I wasn't about to go anywhere. I concentrated my entire will on merging with the Sentinel, on becoming one with it, being it. I could feel the alien presence's grip on the golem begin to weaken, and I took advantage of the opportunity to seize control of the Sentinel's arms.

The alien presence shrieked within my mind as I brought the crystal to the chest of the body we shared, pried open the gash, and aimed the stone within. I sensed that all I needed to do to activate the Dawnstone was will it.

I did.

Light flooded through our shared being, and I could hear the presence's agonized screams, feel its death throes. And then the presence was gone, and the Dawnstone's light grew dim and went out altogether, leaving me alone in the Sentinel's body.

I began to feel my thoughts slipping away then, to feel my very Self begin to dissolve into an approaching night that was warm, welcoming, and eternal.

I didn't care, though. All that mattered was Nekropolis – and more importantly, Devona – was safe. I only wished I'd had a chance to say goodbye.

TWENTY-FOUR

I walked down the steps into Gregor's basement, my flashlight on high this time. I half expected him not to be there, but he was, crouching against the wall in his usual position, masses of his children – more than normal, I thought – all around him, covering the walls, floor, and ceiling. The ones scuttling across the floor remained outside my flashlight beam, but only just.

"Hello, Matthew," Gregor said.

"You don't seem very surprised to see me alive, or at least my version of alive. But then you wouldn't be, would you? We never did find the child of yours which Devona carried in her head. She thought it had somehow been destroyed by her proximity to the light of the Dawnstone. But it really escaped while Devona was half unconscious with pain and came back here to report to you, didn't it?"

"Getting into the Nightspire is one thing," Gregor said. "Getting out another. Your surmise is correct."

"Why'd you implant it in her? As a sort of fail-safe device?"

"As a precaution, in case either of you came too close to interfering with the plan. We would have tried to manipulate you into hosting one of us, Matthew, but we knew you would never agree to it."

"You were right. Speaking of people being right, I'm still shocked that crazy Carl actually reported a legitimate story."

"Even a lunatic is occasionally correct," Gregor said.

"That's what you are, isn't it? One of the Watchers from Outside… meaning outside the city."

"Yes, but despite our pose as Gregor, it is incorrect to refer to use as separate individuals. We are One."

"That's what I saw back in the Cathedral, when I looked out the window over the Null Plains and viewed what I took to be shifting waves of darkness. It was really millions upon millions of bugs, wasn't it? Millions of bits and pieces of you."

Gregor, or at least the part of the Watchers' group mind that appeared to be Gregor, nodded.

I became aware of insects gathering quietly around us. I had no doubt that if I turned to look, I'd find the entrance to the stairs blocked. But I continued talking.

"You know, I always wondered just what species you were. You didn't seem like any other being in Nekropolis. Now I know why."

"This dimension is our home, and has been for more years than your birth planet has existed. When Dis and the Darklords first entered this dimension and created Nekropolis, we had no idea what had happened, for as One we had no concept of otherness. No concept of invasion. But we learned. We entered the city, tunneling beneath the flaming barrier of Phlegethon, and we spread throughout Nekropolis. It took over fifty of your years before we began to understand what had taken place, understand that others had come to our home, had stolen part of it and claimed it as their own. We became determined to do what anyone from your world would do in similar circumstances: repel the invaders and reclaim what was ours.

"We merely observed for the next century, learning as much as we could about Nekropolis and its denizens, their strengths and weaknesses, desires and fears, wants and needs. And when we felt we had learned enough, we decided it was time to begin. We created the guise of Gregor and began trading information. Not because we needed it; we collected more than enough on our own. But because we wished to make contacts with others that would be able to serve us. This is why we aided you over the last two years, Matthew, in the hope that we might eventually find a way to use you. Unfortunately for us, you proved adept at resisting manipulation.

"As the years passed, we slowly, cautiously began to shape the course of events in Nekropolis. Through our agents, we helped foment dissent between the Darklords, founded the Dominari and the Hidden Light, established street gangs, encouraged the growth of crime on all levels. We worked especially hard to make sure the Darklords did not cut off all contact with Earth. We wanted not only to make certain the Others had a way to leave our dimension, but that the developing technology from their former homeworld would continue to flow into the city to provide us more tools to fight with. And for the next two centuries, we gathered information, made contacts, manipulated, plotted, and schemed. And finally we saw our opportunity."

"The Dawnstone," I said.

"Gregor" nodded. "We have worked hard the last dozen or so years aiding the development of various thaumaturgically enhanced drugs such as tangleglow and mind dust. But when one of our agents created veinburn, a drug so powerful it would prove addictive even to the strongest of supernatural beings, we realized its awesome potential. As Gregor, we made arrangements with the Dominari to begin producing veinburn in limited quantities–"

"And made sure Morfran, who was the supplier to a bloodson of a Darklord, distributed it."

"Yes. Varma, indolent pleasure-seeker that he was, eagerly sampled Morfran's new product. And from that moment on, he was ours. By threatening to cut off his supply of veinburn, we convinced Varma to cooperate with us. He told us anything we wanted to know, all the secrets of his father that he was privy to. Including the contents of his vaunted Collection. And we learned of the Dawnstone.

"We had acquired much mystical knowledge over the last few centuries, and were instantly aware of the potential a crystal that produced actual sunlight would have here in a city of darkness. The Renewal Ceremony was fast approaching, and we realized it would be the perfect time to strike, for if Dis and the Darklords could not revitalize Umbriel – the power source which actually maintains the existence of Nekropolis within this dimension – the city would be destroyed and we would finally have gotten rid of the hated Others."

"So you had Varma steal the Dawnstone. After using your magical know-how to make sure his aura matched his father's so that he could get past Galm's wardspells."

The insects were all around me now; I was surrounded by solid walls of them. Only the illumination of my flashlight protected me. Still, I did nothing.

Gregor went on. "Varma delivered the Dawnstone, and we resumed his supply of veinburn. We saw no need to slay him at that time; there was no chance he would report his crime to Lord Galm, and we did not wish to draw any undue attention to the theft of the Dawnstone. Eventually, of course, it became necessary to have him killed in order to keep him from talking to you. He was a pathetic, weak creature, and would have told you everything with little prompting on your part.

"We had previously managed to implant some pieces of ourself into one of Dis's Sentinels, and we realized we could use it to ferry the Dawnstone into the Nightspire and then, once inside, use it to attack Dis and disrupt the Renewal Ceremony."

"So you stuck the Dawnstone inside the Sentinel, and waited for it to be recalled for the Ceremony. Tell me, why did you leave a scar on the Sentinel, even a faint one?"

"Our mystic knowledge, gleaned as it has been in scattered fragments over the centuries, is less than complete. The spells Dis used to create the Sentinels were unfamiliar to us, and we could only partially heal the golem's flesh. We had no choice but to go forward with the plan and hope no one would notice."

"I should have known it was you all along, Gregor. One of your children was on the wall listening when I first spoke with Devona. You were the only being in the city besides the two of us who knew we were investigating the theft of the Dawnstone, the only one who could have sent the Red Tide vampires to kill us after we left the Great Library."

"We knew you, Matthew. You wouldn't let go of this until you saw it through to the end, one way or another. You had to be stopped. Ms. Kanti was of lesser importance. If she had been been killed, it would have been solely due to her association with you."

"How did you manipulate the Red Tide members?"

"They were pathetically simple-minded creatures. To secure their services, we had only to promise them unlimited access to whatever technology they wished. They were no different than Varma, in that regard. They cared only for seeing their lusts fulfilled. Vampires' need for blood tends to make them highly addictive personalities in other regards."

"Thanks for the psychology lesson." The insects were only inches away from me now, and edging closer all the time. "I suppose you were behind all the attempts on our lives?"

"Most of them. Through various agents, we made sure Thokk knew you were in the Broken Cross, and that Talaith was aware of your passage through her realm. And of course, we made certain the Red Tide vampires were waiting for you after you left here. We also had the Dominari order Yberio and Skully to kill you. Unfortunately, the warlock proved too weak for the task, and Skully prized your friendship more than he feared his masters."

"And the insect we saw in the alley?"

"An error. It was one which we had implanted in Varma in order to keep track of him. The sheer amount of veinburn the Red Tide vampires injected into Varma was enough to affect the child, and slow its escape long enough for you to see it."

The writhing, softly chittering wall of darkness that surrounded my back and sides was only an inch away now. I knew if I swept my flashlight beam around, they would scurry off. But I kept the light shining at my feet. I wanted to lure as many of them into the basement as possible.

"I understand why you misled us into thinking Talaith might be behind the Dawnstone's theft; you wanted to draw attention away from yourself. But why did you tell us the truth about Morfran being a veinburn supplier?"

"Because the best lies are those mixed with some truth. And if the Red Tide vampires failed to kill you, we hoped that Morfran would lead you to Skully, who would finish you off. A hope that was in vain, as it turned out. It is a shame our plan failed, but we are nothing if not patient. We came close this time, and we shall succeed the next, whether it be tomorrow or a hundred years from now."

"I'm glad to see you're maintaining an optimistic outlook."

"We would have succeeded if not for you, Matthew. You have a fine, incisive mind and excellent instincts. Join us; help us free our home from the scourge of Others which infests it."

"Help you?" I said incredulously. "After everything that's happened, everything you've done, how can you even ask such a thing?"

"Because I have something to offer you, Matthew. I can make you mortal again."

"You're lying."

"The child Ms. Kanti hosted remained hidden in the Nightspire long enough to witness the Renewal Ceremony completed and Dis reward you for saving his city by removing your spirit from the Sentinel and restoring your body to you. But he didn't return you fully to life, did he?"

"He said it was beyond his power, that I had been a zombie too long to make me human again."

"Perhaps it is beyond the capabilities of Dis, but it is not beyond ours. Remember what you said when I asked you how you felt about being a zombie? You said you were a freak, trapped in a body that was little more than a numb piece of meat. Cut off from the world around you, on the outside of life. A pale memory of the man who was once Matthew Richter. We can end your suffering, Matthew. Help us destroy the invaders and we shall make you live again."

I didn't respond.

"Surely you have no love for this city or its inhabitants. Your kind regard them as monsters: unnatural, unholy things. You would be doing creation a favor by helping us destroy them."

"After nearly two years as a walking dead man, it's hard to see others as monsters, Gregor."

"Then consider it justice. This is our home; the Others are trespassers. They have no right to live in this dimension, no right to befoul it with their obscene otherness. Help us be rid of them, and we shall make you a man once more and use one of the Darklords' portals to return you to Earth. Perhaps you will not be able to resume your life where you left off, but at least you may begin a new one."

"Sorry, Gregor, but I can't do that. Maybe Dis and the Darklords shouldn't have built Nekropolis here, but they did, and you didn't protest."

"We did not understand! We knew nothing of otherness then! We did not know there were Others to protest to!"

"Even so, the city and its people have been here for almost four centuries. Isn't it time you learned to co-exist with them?"

"Impossible! Otherness can not be tolerated!"

"Then there's nothing I can do for you, Gregor. I won't help you. In fact, I'll do everything I can to stop you."

"You'll do nothing. It's a pity you won't join us, but that is your decision. You were foolish to come here alone, Matthew. We destroyed your body once, and we shall do so again – and this time there is no one to restore you. And don't think your flashlight will protect you. While we are creatures of this dark dimension and light does hurt us, there are far too many of us for your feeble beam to kill."

"I don't intend to use my flashlight. And you're wrong, Gregor. I didn't come alone." I clicked off the light and was plunged into darkness.

No insects swarmed over me as in the Nightspire. Instead, there was a rushing, moaning sound that made me think of a cold winter wind blowing across a blood-soaked battlefield. And then I heard the screaming of thousands upon thousands of tiny voices, the same as when I had shone the Dawnstone into the Sentinel's chest cavity, only multiplied to the nth degree.

And then there was silence. I waited a few moments more, and then I turned the flashlight back on. Its beam revealed Father Dis, standing alone in the now empty basement.

"Are they all gone?" I asked. I was grateful my flashlight had been turned off. I had no idea how Dis had destroyed the insects, and from the horrible sounds they had made while dying, I was certain I wanted to remain ignorant.

"All that were present at this location. I fear many more remain within the city, however, and even if none do, there are uncountable millions more outside Phlegethon's boundaries. I seriously doubt we've heard the last of the Watchers." He sighed. "I was of course aware of them when I led my people to this dimension, but I thought them some sort of native animal life. I never realized they were intelligent. If I had… well, it's too late now, isn't it?"

"Can't you do something? Like wave your hand in a godly gesture of omnipotence and smite them?"

Dis smiled. "As I told you when I restored you, there are limits to even my powers. The vast majority of my strength is used to maintain Umbriel and Phlegethon. The Darklords help, of course, but far less than even they imagine. Still, there's no use in letting them know that; everyone likes to feel they're important, don't they?"

"So you were telling the truth when you said you couldn't make me alive again?"

Dis nodded. "Though I was able to see to it that you are in no danger of inevitably decomposing again, provided of course you keep up regular applications of preservative spells. Barring accidents, you might very well exist forever."

Forever. The word had no meaning to me now. I wondered if it ever would. I figured I'd find out.

I showed Dis the underside of my hand. "My little finger grew back when you restored me, but I still have Edrigu's mark."

"Edrigu had a previous claim on you which I can do nothing about. Be careful what deals you make in Nekropolis, Matthew. They are always binding."

"I figured you'd say something like that. One more thing: back at the Nightspire, that mural in the corridor…"

"Yes?"

"The first scene depicted shadow creatures emerging from a swamp. Those things were the beginning of the Darkfolk, weren't they?"

"The Shadowings," Dis said. "There were indeed the progenitors of all of my kind that would follow. That was our only form for millions of years until humans began to evolve. Their dreams changed us, molded us, until we became dark reflections of their worst fears. Creatures that drank blood, changed into animals, worked black magic, and survived beyond death – all because humans imagined it so." Dis smiled. "So you see, Matthew, the Darkfolk really are your people's nightmares." But his smile quickly faded. "But the humans outgrew us, came to hate us and desire our destruction. Perhaps because we reminded them of the darkest parts of themselves."

"Maybe," I said. "But eating them might've had something to do with it too."

A hint of Dis's smile returned. "Possibly."

"When you and I first met, you allowed me to glimpse the true darkness that lies behind Father Dis. That darkness is what you really are, isn't it? You're one of the first Darkfolk – a Shadowing. One that's never changed for all these millions of years, not deep down where it really matters."

Dis didn't respond right away, and I thought he wasn't going to answer. But then he said. "It's why the Darkfolk call me Father, you know. I didn't literally sire them, of course, but my kind gave rise to theirs."

"That's why you wanted to create Nekropolis, wasn't it?" I said. "Because it's a father's duty to look after his children, to make sure they have a safe place to live."

Dis smiled fully once more, showing his perfect movie star teeth, but I knew that what I was really looking at was only a mask, a disguise for something so old, so utterly inhuman, that there was no way I could ever hope to understand it.

"You know, Matthew, you're really quite good at figuring things out. Have you ever considered becoming a detective?"

He laughed, and with that Dis began to fade, like the Cheshire Cat in a purple toga, until he was gone, not even leaving behind so much as a smile.

I picked my way though the rubble above what had been Gregor's lair, and walked down the steps to the broken sidewalk. Dis had brought me here after restoring my undead body so we could take care of Gregor before he abandoned his hidey-hole, but for whatever reasons, the Lord of Nekropolis hadn't seen fit to provide me with a lift home. Not that I was ungrateful: Dis had already done plenty for me. Still, it was rude to leave a guy stranded – especially when said guy had just saved the whole goddamned city.

I started walking. But I hadn't gotten more than a block away from Gregor's when I heard what sounded like a water buffalo moaning in extreme pain coming up behind me, followed by a blat like a strangling trumpeter swan.

I turned and saw a hideous conglomeration of metal barreling down the street toward me. The thing screeched to a stop, and Lazlo hung out the window.

"Sorry it took me so long, Matt, but I had a little trouble getting the old cab running. I ended up having to cobble together a new one from what I could scrounge up in the junkyard – with a technical assist from the folks at the Foundry. I think it turned out pretty good overall, don't you?"

I walked over to the bent and twisted thing that coughed and shuddered alongside the curb. Not only was it patched together from different pieces of metal, but from swatches of living flesh as well. The hood opened a crack, displaying rows of teeth – some of which were now made out of iron – and I had the impression that the cab was smiling at me.

"This… is a car?"

Lazlo guffawed. "You really kill me sometimes, Matt, you know that?" He shook his head. "'This is… a car?' That's rich! Come on, hop in!"

I climbed into the passenger seat – once I figured out how to get the door open – and Lazlo said, "Where to, pal?"

"Demon's Roost," I answered.

TWENTY-FIVE

I found Devona standing alone in front of Varvara's bedroom mirror, looking at the image of a park at nighttime. Fluorescent lights glowed, attracting small clouds of insects, and even with the competition from the lights of the buildings downtown, the stars remained visible in the dark-blue sky.

I looked around, but Varvara was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the unconscious playmate Victor Baron had made for her. Maybe the Demon Queen was being uncharacteristically considerate and decided that Devona and I needed some time alone together. Then again, maybe Varvara had taken Magnus back to the Foundry for some repair work. Whatever the case, I was glad for the chance to be alone with Devona.

"Those are real stars, aren't they?" Devona asked without taking her eyes off the scene in the mirror. "They look different from the illusion in the Wyldwood. Crisper, brighter."

"Yes, they do."

"You know, I've never really experienced night before. I thought I had, living in Nekropolis, but what we have here isn't true night, is it? More like a perpetual gray. Real night seems more peaceful… soothing. And, even though everything is still, it possesses an energy all its own."

"Maybe that's your vampire half talking. After all, the night – true night – is a vampire's natural environment. Still, I know what you mean."

"I wish there was sound to go with the image," she said wistfully. "Birds singing…" She turned to me. "Do birds sing at night?"

I smiled. "Sometimes."

Devona turned back to the mirror. "Good. Birds singing, leaves rustling in the wind…"

Horns honking, brakes squealing, people shouting… but I decided not to mention these things just then. Why spoil the moment for her?

Devona took my hand and we stood silently and drank in the night.

Once the Renewal Ceremony had been completed and Umbriel was recharged for another year, Dis resurrected me – for the second time – and took me to Gregor's. Varvara offered to take Devona back to Demon's Roost while Dis and I dealt with the giant insect. Exactly how Dis and I traveled, I couldn't tell you. One moment we were in the Nightspire, the next we were standing on a street in the Boneyard. I guess when you're a god you can go wherever you want, whenever you want. When Lazlo later dropped me off at Demon's Roost, I figured I'd find Devona up in Varvara's penthouse. I'd hoped she wouldn't be standing in front of Varvara's mirror when I walked in, but I wasn't surprised to find her there.

After a time, Devona said, "At first it devastated me when Father fired me and cast me out of the Bloodborn. But now I see that Father never cared for me. A creature like him is incapable of feelings like love, tenderness, forgiveness… I failed in my duty, and I had to be punished. It was as simple as that to him. Never mind that I served him for well on thirty years. That's only the blink of an eye to a being like him." She turned back to face the mirror. "Thirty years…" She shook her head as if to clear it before going on. "But I've decided to view my excommunication as an opportunity. I've spent all my life in Nekropolis, most of it cloistered within the Cathedral, tending a collection of someone else's half-forgotten memories. It's time I created some memories of my own."

"I think that would be a very good thing." I paused and tried to sound nonchalant when I asked, "Any thoughts about how you might start?"

"I'm not sure. While I can't return to the Cathedral, I'm not entirely banned from Gothtown – though I doubt I'll ever be very welcome there." She smiled sadly. "I suppose I could try to find work in one of the museums on the Avenue of Dread Wonders. I have the right experience, though I worry the work might be too much like tending Father's Collection. I'd just be trading one dusty old cage for another."

With her free hand, Devona brushed her fingers against the mirror's glass. She continued to hold onto my hand with the other.

"I suppose I could explore the other half of my heritage… get to know my mother's world, the world I was born into. I… spoke with Varvara while you were gone. I told her I was thinking about visiting Earth for a while, and she gave me the names of some of her people there who could help me get settled. She even gave me some Earth money."

If my heart had been beating it would've seized up in my chest at Devona's words.

She turned to face me then. "What do you think, Matt? Do you have any suggestions about what I should do?"

I knew by the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice what she wanted me to say: I love you. Please don't go. I knew it was crazy – Devona and I had met only yesterday – but the psychic link we'd shared in the Wyldwood had connected us on such a profound level that it was like we'd known each other all our lives. Maybe it shouldn't have made sense, but this was Nekropolis: nonsensical things happen here every day and twice on Sundays. The truth was that I did love Devona, more deeply and completely than I'd ever loved anyone before.

"I think you should go to Earth," I said.

A look of shocked disappointment spread across her face. She let go of my hand and took a step away from me. I hurried on before she could speak again.

"Earth is as much your birthright as Nekropolis. Maybe the new life you're looking for isn't here – it's there." I gestured toward mirror. "There's only one way you're ever going to find out, and that's to step through and see for yourself what's waiting for you on the other side."

Devona looked at me for a long moment, searching my eyes, trying to gauge my emotions. But my eyes are as dead as the rest of me, and they won't reveal anything I don't want them to.

When she spoke again, her tone was slightly reserved, the way it had been when we first met. "Maybe you're right."

Devona leaned forward as if she wanted to kiss me, but I held back. I couldn't bear the thought of her soft living lips touching my dead ones right then. Besides, no mere physical contact could ever compare to the link we'd experienced in the Wyldwood. After a moment she pulled away.

"You take care of yourself, Matthew Richter." Crimson tears welled in the corners of her eyes, and she fought to hold them back. If I'd been physically capable of crying… but I wasn't.

"You too."

She gave me a last long look before turning and walking toward the mirror.

I almost said it then: Don't go. Stay with me. But I gritted my teeth and held the words back.

And then she stepped through the glass and was gone. I wanted to watch her walk through the park a while, wanted to see her initial reactions to physically being on Earth for the first time since she'd been a baby. But as soon as she was through, the portal became a simple mirror again, and I was left staring at my gray-tinted face. I'd expected my expression to be completely emotionless, but the man I saw gazing sadly back at me from the mirror looked as if his undead heart was breaking.

"I thought it best if the portal closed as soon as she passed through."

I turned to see Varvara sitting on the edge of her bed. The Demon Queen was dressed in a skimpy red silk gown with a Chinese dragon embroidered in gold encircling the waist, its tail – which served as the robe's belt – clutched in its mouth.

"I should have known you couldn't pass up spying on us," I said bitterly. "I hope you enjoyed the show."

"I just teleported in this very moment, Matthew. I placed a spell on the mirror to let me know when Devona had gone through. I assure you, I know nothing of what occurred between the two of you – but I can guess. Noble idiot that you are, you let her go, didn't you?"

"She was born on Earth, Varvara. She deserves a chance to get to know her homeworld."

"You could've gone with her."

"It wouldn't have worked. I'd still need preservative spells."

"You could always come back to get them."

"Magic doesn't function as reliably on Earth as it does in Nekropolis, you know that. There's no telling how long a preservative spell would last for me there. I might decompose after only a few hours."

"Or you might not. You might be just fine. But that's not the real reason you didn't go with her, Matt, is it?"

"You may have been away from Earth for a few centuries, Varvara, but I bet you haven't forgotten what it's like. It's so much more than Nekropolis… Devona will have more opportunities, more chances, more choices than she ever could have here – especially since Galm made her an outcast among the Bloodborn. How could I deny her that?"

Varvara rose from her bed, walked over, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. For an instant, I felt her lips on my flesh just as if I'd been a living man, but the sensation quickly faded.

"I still say you're an idiot, Matt, but alive or not, you're a good man." She smiled, and the embroidered dragon around her waist winked. Her manner grew serious. "Are you going to be all right?"

"Of course. I'm a zombie; I don't have any feelings, remember?"

"Right. I forgot."

I knew Varvara didn't believe it, and for the first time in a long time, neither did I.

Lazlo was waiting for me in his cab outside the main lobby of Demon's Roost. He offered to give me a ride back to my place, but I told him I'd rather walk. If he noticed my mood, he didn't say anything. I turned away from his cab and started heading in the general direction of my apartment building.

Now that Umbriel had been renewed for another year, the Descension festival was officially over. Most of the partiers had already gone home to recover from the damage they'd done to themselves, but a few stragglers – or perhaps I should say staggerers – remained out, probably because they didn't possess enough command of their higher brain functions to remember where they lived or how to get there. The streets and sidewalks were covered with trash, most of it fairly innocuous – discarded fast-food wrappers, cigarette butts, Styrofoam cups and the like – but some of the debris was a bit more disturbing in nature and didn't bear close inspection. Already thick glutinous pseudopods were extruding from the sewer grates and stretching toward the trash, engulfing it, swiftly breaking down its molecular structure, and absorbing its mass. The Azure Slime lives beneath the streets of the Sprawl and functions as the Dominion's waste removal service. While the Slime feeds well all year, when Descension Day is over and everyone else's good times have ended, that's when the Slime's feast of feasts begins. It's usually good about not absorbing anything – or anyone – it shouldn't, but occasionally it gets so excited by the grand repast laid out before it that it forgets and devours a passed-out drunk or a barely conscious partier who's hung around on the streets just a bit too long. I was walking fast enough that I wasn't worried about being absorbed, and the one time a bluish pseudopod did slither too close to my feet, I kicked at it, and the tendril withdrew almost sulkily.

Crimson ambulances from the Fever House slowly patrolled the streets, searching for those who'd been wounded beyond their capacity to heal themselves. When the Bloodwagon medics found someone who needed to be taken to the hospital, they stopped the ambulance, got out, and rushed to put their patient in the back of the vehicle before the Azure Slime got there. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they didn't, and sometimes they had to pry what was left of a patient out of the Slime's fluidic clutches and hope enough remained for them to restore to some semblance of health. The Bloodwagon medics had competition, however. Midnight-black hearses from the Foundry also cruised the Sprawl, the Bonegetters looking for dead bodies, severed limbs, or misplaced organs to salvage and return to their master. Victor Baron was always in need of fresh supplies, and the raw material his assistants recovered could keep the Foundry going for another year.

I saw more than a few predators lurking in the shadows, but those who made a move toward me took one look at the expression on my face and decided it might not be a bad idea to go in search of easier prey. Wise choice.

Now that they were no longer needed for the Renewal Ceremony, Sentinels patrolled the streets again – the Azure Slime made damn sure to stay clear of them – and I found it more than a little eerie to see the impassive golems after what had happened at the Nightspire. For a few moments, I'd actually been one of the things, and I knew I'd never look at them the same way again. Still, there was no doubt they were needed. Those Darkfolk who were unconscious but not in need of medical attention would be left to lie where they'd fallen until they managed to sleep off whatever had put them down. In the meantime, they were prime targets for thieves of all sorts, those who wanted darkgems, of course, but also those desiring to steal a victim's memories, soul, and even his or her potential futures. The Sentinels were the police force of Nekropolis, and they had their beat to walk, and while the impassive creatures made me uncomfortable now, as a former cop myself, I had to respect that.

I don't know how long I wandered, but eventually I found myself in front of my building. I almost expected crazy Carl to come running up to me with his latest bizarre expose, but he was nowhere to be seen. He was probably exhausted and getting some rest, like everyone else in the city. Sometimes I really miss sleeping. When you sleep, you don't have to think. Or remember. Or regret.

I climbed the steps to the building, entered the lobby, and walked to my apartment door. As I reached for the knob, I saw the door was open and slightly ajar. My cop instincts kicked into high gear, and I silently drew my 9mm and listened. I heard nothing, so I slowly pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Devona was sitting on the couch. She put down the book she'd been reading and smiled at me. "It's about time you got home."

I had no idea what to say, but at least I had the presence of mind to holster my gun.

"By the time I came back through Varvara's mirror and got down to the street, you were already gone. Lazlo was still there, though, and he gave me a ride here." She made a face. "Did you see what he's done to that cab? And I thought it was hideous before! When I got here and discovered you weren't home, I used the mystical lock picks Shrike found for us, and I let myself in."

I walked over to the couch and sat down next to her. "I know Cleveland isn't exactly the grandest city on Earth, but I have a hard time believing you got tired of it this fast."

"That's not why I came back. There I was, standing in the park, drinking in all these wonderful new sights, sounds, and smells, when I realized something: I'd forgotten to pay you for helping me find the Dawnstone. If I remember right, the price we settled on was three hundred darkgems."

I was surprised, and truthfully, a bit insulted. "You don't need to pay me. Dis restored my body, and I'm as good as new. Well, good as a new zombie, anyway. Besides, it's not like I really did anything to help you. We found the Dawnstone, sure, but you ended up losing your job and being cast out from your people."

"Be that as it may, we made a deal and I intend to honor my part of the bargain. And don't tell me you can't use the money. Dis may have repaired your body with his magic, but you're still a zombie, and you still need preservative spells, right?"

"Don't worry about that. I've decided to get out of the business of doing favors and start an official private investigation business. A real one, with an office and everything."

"Good for you! But from what I understand, there are a lot of expenses associated with starting a new business – which is all the more reason to let me pay you. You're going to need the money." She paused. "Of course, I don't have a job at the moment, and I can't go to Father and ask to borrow some darkgems… so it might be a while before I can scrape up what I owe you."

I couldn't help smiling. "Tell you what, let's put it on your tab, and you can get it to me whenever you can, okay?"

She smiled back. "Okay." She leaned close and laid her head on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her. It felt so natural, so right, and I would've been content to sit like that for hours. But after a few moments, Devona said, "There's something I've been thinking about trying ever since we left the Wyldwood, Matt."

"What?"

"It might be easier if I show you." She sat up, touched her fingertips to my temples, and then closed her eyes.

I experienced a dizzying lurch, and then I was tumbling through a seemingly endless void. But it did have an end, and when I reached it, the falling sensation ceased and I found myself sitting on the grass by the edge of a pond, with Devona by my side. The sky above was a gentle blue and a light spring breeze was blowing. It was daylight, and for the first time in two years I felt the sun on my face. I looked down at my hands. Instead of gray, the flesh was a healthy pink. I turned to Devona and saw that her skin was no longer pale. We were both dressed the same as we'd been in Nekropolis, except now our clothes were clean and in good repair.

"What's happening?" I asked. The breeze blew across my skin, and I trembled. "Where are we?"

Devona placed her fingers on my lips and gently stroked them. The sensation was so intense, I couldn't stop myself from moaning.

"Home," she said simply.

Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine. And you know something?

She was right.

A SHORT STORY

THE MIDNIGHT WATCH

"You're really thinking about doing this, aren't you?"

Devona didn't answer me right away, and I took that as a bad sign. I knew she heard me. We'd only been together a couple months, but in that time I'd learned that not only was her halfvampire hearing sharp as hell, she rarely missed anything that went on around her. So if she wasn't answering me, it could only mean one of two things: I'd asked the wrong question or she was afraid I wasn't going to like her answer. This time, it turned out to be both.

We were standing on the sidewalk in front of a squat stone building that put me in mind of a giant toad that had looked a gorgon straight in the eye. Thick tendrils of leech vine covered most of the surface, and the stone that we could see was pitted and cracked. I wouldn't have been surprised if the damned vine was the only thing holding the ancient structure together. The building was located in the Sprawl, not all that far from my apartment… make that our apartment. Devona had moved in not long after we met, but I still sometimes had trouble wrapping my undead brain around the concept that I was part of a couple again. I'd been married back on Earth, but that was a while ago. I'd long since divorced and traveled to the other-dimensional city of Nekropolis where I'd died and been resurrected as a self-willed zombie. After that, I figured my dating days were over. I mean, really, would you want to go out with someone who's perpetually decaying? But Devona was a broad-minded woman, even for Nekropolis, and I regularly visited my houngan for periodic applications of the preservative spells that prevented me from completely rotting away to dust.

I was fairly fresh that day, with only a slight grayish-green tinge to my flesh. I wore my usual gray suit and my tie displayed images of Dahli's famous melting clocks draped limply over tree branches. If you looked closely, you could see the fabric hands of the clocks move and hear the soft ticking of gears at work. Devona wore a form-fitting black leather outfit, as she often did, and it looked damned good on her. She was a petite blonde who appeared to be in her twenties, but in truth was in her seventies. She might have been only half vampire, but that was enough to significantly slow down her aging process.

This was a relatively sedate part of the Sprawl – one of the reasons why I'd chosen to rent an apartment there – but the emphasis was most definitely on relatively. The Sprawl is the Dominion of the Demon Queen Varvara, and she believes in absolute freedom. It's rumored that the old Beast Alistair Crowley stole his infamous satanic commandant from her: Do as Thou Wilt. I wouldn't be surprised. If the Sprawl doesn't exist in a state of total anarchy, it'll do until the real thing shows up. But like I said, this neighborhood was quiet enough, with pedestrians going about their business searching for prey or trying to avoid becoming prey – often at the same time – and vehicles of various makes, models, and degrees of sentience rolling, crawling, and scuttling down the street. To the right of the stone toad building was a misfortuneteller's establishment, and on the left was a head shop (new and used, all species, original size and shrunken). Not exactly the most glamorous of neighbors, but they seemed… well, not normal, but harmless enough.

Devona finally decided to respond to my question. "Not thinking…"

A sinking feeling hit me. "Please tell me you haven't bought the place. Sight unseen, no less."

She shrugged. "All right, I won't tell you."

I suppressed a sigh. Devona was the half-human daughter of the Darklord Galm, and she'd spent most of her life living in his stronghold and serving as the caretaker of his collection of rare and powerful artifacts. So while she was chronologically older than me by several decades, in terms of actual life experience, she could be a bit naïve at times. And, as I'd been learning over the last couple months, a trifle impulsive.

"We talked about how it's not a good idea to buy real estate without a thorough inspection first, remember?"

Devona turned to me, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. I'd seen that expression before. It meant Stop patronizing me, Matt. "I remember it quite well, and perhaps you'll recall that my main motivation for purchasing the building was to acquire the name of the business associated with it more than the actual structure itself." She smiled. "Of course, now that we're here, I suppose we should go in and take a look around."

This time I didn't bother to suppress my sigh. I don't need to breathe, but I have to take in air to talk, and while strictly speaking, I don't have to sigh, sometimes a sigh can communicate more than a dozen well-chosen words.

"Couldn't you have bought the name by itself?" I didn't ask why she wanted it so badly. That was another discussion we'd already had.

The Midnight Watch was the security firm back in its day, Devona had said. Long before your arrival in Nekropolis, Matt. If you wanted something or someone protected, you hired the Watch. Even the Darklords were known to employ its services from time to time. If I'm going to go into business on my own, that kind of name recognition will help get me established. Besides, I was caretaker of Father's collection for many years. I like things with a little history behind them.

I'd met Devona when she'd hired me to help her recover an artifact that had been stolen from Galm's collection. In the process, we'd not only found the artifact and saved the city from total an nihilation, we'd also fallen in love. Makes for a great first date story, don't you think? Unfortunately, Galm cast out Devona for losing the artifact in the first place – even though another of his children had been responsible for the theft – and so jobless and homeless, she'd moved in with me. She'd been helping me with cases ever since, and I thought we made a good team, professionally as well as personally, but Devona eventually decided she wanted to work for herself.

Please don't take this the wrong way, Matt, she'd told me. I've loved working with you, but I served my father all my adult life… lived in his home, tended his property… I've never had anything of my own. Never had to make my own way in the world. I want to see if I can. I hope you'll understand.

Of course I did. You don't get to be the only private detective in a city full of monsters, demons, and witches without having a strong independent streak. I told her I loved her and admired her for wanting to start her own business – which was true, though I knew I'd miss her working with me. The mean streets of Nekropolis would seem a little lonelier without her by my side.

When I asked her what business she wanted to go into, she said, I was thinking security. A big part of my job for father consisted of overseeing the protections – both magical and mundane – on his collection. I could put that experience to good use in my own security firm. And if I advertise that I used to do security work for a Darklord…

I had to admit, it sounded like my love had a head for business. If things kept going this way, I might well end up working for her one day.

Devona turned back to examine the building once more. "I did check into buying the name. When the original owner died, the property defaulted into Varvara's hands, and when I asked her if I could simply purchase the name Midnight Watch, she told me the name went with the property, and I couldn't have one without the other."

"I don't suppose she gave you a reason."

Devona looked at me as if I'd just said something incredibly stupid, and on reflection, I didn't blame her. The Demon Queen did what she did solely for her own pleasure.

"All right, then tell me this: did she smile when she told you that?"

Devona's face is normally pale – she is half Bloodborn, after all – but it went chalk white as the implications of my question hit her.

"I was afraid of that." If Varvara finds something amusing, it's usually bad news – especially if what she finds amusing is you. "So there's something wrong with the building… probably very wrong. All right, let's go find out what it is."

I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets and started toward the building's entrance.

Devona put a hand on my shoulder to stop me, and stop me she did, dead – if you'll pardon the expression – in my tracks. She's petite, but her vampiric heritage gives her greater strength than a human. I couldn't have gone anywhere if I'd wanted to.

"No, Matt. If it's going to be dangerous…"

I turned back to look at her. "I appreciate the concern, but this is Nekropolis. Everything is dangerous here: the only question is how dangerous. Besides, if you really want to set yourself up in business as the revived Midnight Watch, you'll need to use this building, right?"

"That's very sweet of you."

She leaned forward and gave me a hard kiss on the lips. Devon knows I can only feel the pressure of her kisses, so she always makes sure there's enough for me to feel. When she pulled back, she gave me a wry smile.

"And this gallantry of yours has nothing to do with your irritation over the fact that Varvara knew you'd come here with me to check the place out and was amused at the notion of you tangling with whatever lies inside."

"Not in the goddamned slightest," I said. "C'mon, let's go."

As we walked toward the door, I warned Devona to stay clear of the leech vines. The bloodsucking vegetation wouldn't bother me – no blood – but Devona had plenty of the red stuff coursing through her veins, and it was half vampire. Leech vine loves vampire blood best of all. It's like the finest of wines to the plant. Me, I find it poetic justice that one of the city's greatest predators has a blood-thirsty nemesis that desires to feed on its liquid life essence, but the vampires don't see it that way. That's why the best leech vine exterminators in the city are Bloodborn.

The door was covered with leech vine, but since I'd known the building had been abandoned for years and had likely fallen prey to the vine, I'd come prepared. I took my right hand out of my jacket pocket and aimed the object I'd removed – a tiny figurine resembling a white ape – at the door. I spoke a single activating word and the ape's mouth opened, unleashing a torrent of frigid air. The leech vine covering the door instantly turned black and fell to the ground. When the figurine was finished, I tucked it back in my pocket.

"What in the nine hells was that?" Devona demanded. "The stench is awful!"

"Yeti's Breath," I said. "It's a great spell for killing leech vine." I smiled. "Especially when your sense of smell is as dead as the rest of you."

Devona looked as if she was desperately trying to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged. "Give a girl some warning next time, all right?"

"Sorry." Embarrassed, I turned away from her. When you're dead, it's easy to forget the strong impact that sensory input can have on others. Maybe, I thought, it'll be better for Devona when she doesn't have to work with me anymore.

I examined the door. It was covered with frost that was already starting to melt, but beneath it I could make out a metal plaque with these words engraved upon it:

The Midnight Watch: Guarding All Workhouses and Institutions Against Intruders and Meddling. Savage Beasts Employed.

"Catchy," I said. I turned back to Devona. "Sense anything?"

In response, Devona closed her eyes and concentrated. Not only was she highly skilled at detecting wardspells, as a vampirehuman hybrid, she possessed certain psychic abilities that most Bloodborn did not.

"Yes, I…" She broke off, frowning. Then she opened her eyes. "I thought I sensed something there for a moment, almost as if there was someone inside the building, but the feeling faded quickly. Most likely I was picking up psychic impressions from the businesses on either side."

"Maybe." But I didn't believe it. I'd lived – or maybe I should say existed – in Nekropolis too long. Besides, if Varvara was amused at the idea of the two of us entering the building, there was definitely something Bad inside.

I pointed to the door knob. "How about that?"

Devona waved her hand over the knob several times and then bent down and examined it visually. She straightened.

"Clean. No traps, mystical or otherwise."

I hmpfed. "For a security firm, it seems they weren't too concerned with folks breaking in."

"Wardspells are intricate to construct and require constant maintenance," Devona said. "It's been at least fifty years since the building's been occupied Any wardspells on the door would've lost their potency and deactivated long ago."

"Fifty years, and no one's bought the building in all that time? Or at least tried squatting in it? I find that hard to believe." And considering the kinds of things I'd had to learn to believe in since coming to Nekropolis, that was saying something. "This might not be the most prime location in the Sprawl, but real estate here is always in high demand. After all, it's sin central for the entire city, and that means there's a hell of a lot of darkgems to be made here. What would keep a building in the Sprawl vacant for so many years? Wait – let me guess. It's supposed to be haunted. And not just regular haunted, with a few ghosts flitting about the rooms to lend the place some gloomy atmosphere. It's haunted with a capital H, by some kind of unknown and incredibly deadly force that will shatter our minds, mutilate our bodies, and ravage our souls, right?"

"As a matter of fact…"

I didn't sigh this time. I was too depressed to bother.

"This probably isn't the time or place for this, Devona, but I think you and I really need to work on our communication skills."

I tried the knob and wasn't surprised in the slightest to find it unlocked. I turned it (far too easily, I might add), pushed the door open (it didn't even have the good grace to creak), and we went inside.

It was dark, of course. Any windows were completely covered by leech vine, but since Nekropolis is shrouded in the perpetual dusk created by Umbriel the Shadowsun, it would've been dark inside even if the windows were clear and left wide open. Devona's hybrid eyes could see in the dark far better than my undead ones, so while I took a flashlight out of my jacket pocket, I didn't turn it on right away.

After several moments, she said, "We're in a foyer, but I don't see anything special. You might as well go ahead and turn your light on, Matt."

I flicked the flashlight's switch and played its beam around to get my bearings. It was just as Devona had said: a foyer with stone walls and ceiling and a marble tiled floor. Nice enough, in a cold, Spartan way, but nothing to e-mail home about. There were sconces on the walls where greenfire torches had undoubtedly once burned to light the place, but the mystic flames had died away decades ago, and without an Arcane torchlighter to rekindle them, it looked like we were stuck with my flashlight.

As we started slowly down the foyer, I said, "So, are you going to tell me why this place is supposed to be haunted?"

"The original owner and founder of the Midnight Watch was a warlock named Leander Crosswise. He was reputed to be a genius when it came to devising new and innovative wardspells and was also known for breeding some of the fiercest and most intelligent guard animals the city has ever seen. He ran the Midnight Watch very successfully for nearly a century before he finally decided to retire. But before he could, he was murdered, right here in the building, doors locked, wardspells in place. When one of his employees arrived for work the next day, Leander was found lying facedown on the floor of his office, a Dire Blade sticking out of his back."

Nasty things, Dire Blades. Obsidian daggers with mystic runes carved into the surface, absolutely deadly to supernatural creatures, the Arcane included. They're the favored weapons of the Dominari, Nekropolis' version of the Mafia, but other criminals use them as well, provided they can scrounge up enough darkgems to purchase one of the things. They're damned expensive, and a good thing, too, or else every low life in the city would have one.

By this time Devona and I had left the foyer and entered a large room that looked something like a den – dilapidated furniture, stone fireplace filled with cobwebs, musty old paintings on the walls, rotting wooden beams overhead. I assumed the room had been used as a place to meet clients and was likely impressive enough, in its time. There was no sign of anything out of place, and certainly no ghosts leaping out from behind the moldy couch or the cracked leather chairs, so Devona and I left to continue our exploration of the building. As we walked, I asked Devona some questions about the story she'd just told me.

"Was the murderer ever caught?"

"No. Leander was a prominent citizen in the Sprawl, so Varvara sent her best Inquisitors and Hellhounds to investigate, but they turned up nothing. She even asked Talaith to send some Arcane investigators, but their magic failed to locate a single clue, let alone reveal the identity of Leander's killer."

So the warlock's employees were cleared and, while it was possible, if not likely, that Crosswise had enemies or even disgruntled clients who wished him ill, it seemed none of them had been implicated either.

"Did the investigators have any luck tracing the Dire Blade?"

Devona and I were walking down a hallway now. When we came to a door, we'd stop, Devona would check for wardspells or booby traps, and when she gave the all-clear, I'd open the door and shine my flashlight inside. All we found was office furniture: desks, chairs, filing cabinets and the like. Nothing of interest. At least nothing had jumped out of the shadows and tried to devour our faces – yet.

"The Blade belonged to Leander. As you might imagine, he owned quite a few weapons, some mystical, some not. Some he'd purchased for the business, some he'd picked up on various jobs. The employees all testified that the Blade was Leander's."

"And no fingerprints or DNA – or the magical equivalent – was found on the weapon," I said. "Except for Crosswise's."

"That's right."

That didn't necessarily mean anything. Nekropolis is lousy with beings who can manipulate objects magically or with the power of their mind. And a really good magic user could destroy any traces that they'd handled the weapon. But then again, two Darklords had sent their best investigators to look into Crosswise's death, and even if a magic user had tried to remove any evidence they'd handled the weapon, investigators of that caliber would've found it.

"You said Crosswise was going to retire."

"That's right. He was killed on the night before he planned to officially retire, as a matter of fact."

"That's interesting."

"Why?"

We'd just finished checking our third office and were headed toward our fourth. I was beginning to think that Varvara had been so amused at the thought of our coming here because she'd known the place would end up boring us to death.

"It might speak to possible motive," I said. "Maybe someone resented Leander retiring. Was he planning on selling the business or giving it to a successor?"

"Neither," Devona said. "He planned to close the business and sell the building. He wanted the Midnight Watch to end with him."

"Maybe someone didn't want him to sell."

"Is that really enough motive to kill someone?"

We reached the fourth door. None of them had any names on them, but this was nicer than the others, made of sturdy black oak that I imagined had once held a highly polished sheen. I had no doubt this was Crosswise's office.

"Back when I was homicide detective on Earth, I once arrested a man who killed his brother for changing the channel during his favorite sitcom. And it was a rerun."

"Point taken," Devona said as she waved her hands in the air over the door. I figured she'd find nothing and proceed to visually examining the lock, but instead she stopped her hand waving and frowned. "Something's strange here."

I can't get cold chills anymore, but if I could've, I would've then.

"What?"

"I'm getting that feeling again, like I did outside. As if there's something alive in the office, only… not. Something that's almost there but not quite."

"You know, you still haven't told me why people believe this building is haunted." Although right at that moment, standing in a dark hallway before an ominous black door, I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

"People have tried to enter the building since Leander's death. Some report a force like a strong wind shoving them back outside. Others…"

"Go on," I urged.

"Others have died in some particularly horrible ways. Bodies turned inside out, blood boiled in their veins, that sort of thing."

"Lovely. And what distinguished those poor unfortunates from the lucky ones who were simply evicted?"

"The ones who died…" Devona paused, and time seemed to slow to a crawl while I waited for her to finish her sentence. "Were those who intended to purchase the building."

"Once again, we so have to work on our communication skills! When were you planning on telling me this?"

"I don't know," she said. "I was still trying to figure out the best way to tell you I'd already gone ahead and bought the damned building."

The instant the words left her mouth, the door burst open and a roaring wind filled the hallway. The force slammed Devona into the opposite wall and held her there. The wind – or whatever it was – grabbed hold of me with insubstantial hands and started dragging me away from her. I fought it, tried to tear myself free of its grip, but there was nothing I could do. I could feel the force holding me, but when I tried to touch it, to grab hold and dislodge myself, I couldn't feel anything. I dropped the flashlight. It hit the floor, luckily without breaking, and rolled into a position where its beam illuminated Devona. Her face was contorted with agony and bright dots of red covered her skin. Whatever this unknown force was, it looked as if it was drawing the blood out of her body through her skin. Vampires – even half ones like Devona – can take a hell of a lot of punishment and heal, but one thing they can't recover from is the loss of their blood supply. Their power is in their blood, and if they're drained, they have no magic to draw upon in order to heal themselves. I knew if I didn't do something fast, Devona would die, and she wouldn't be coming back.

I'd brought some other toys with me, various spells and such, but none of them would prove effective against the strange force attacking us. And with each passing second, the wind was pulling me farther from Devona. I had only seconds in which to act, and I had no weapons that I could use. Except the one weapon which has always served me best, whether I was alive or dead. My mind.

I thought fast. What did I know about the Midnight Watch, Leander Crosswise, and how he died? Devona had told me he specialized in creating new and powerful wardspells, that he also developed new breeds of strong, intelligent guard animals, and he was killed on the eve of his retirement, after which he planned to close his business and sell the building. And he was killed by a Dire Blade that had apparently wielded itself. Or been wielded by something that didn't need a physical hand to hold it.

That's when it came to me.

I shouted to be heard over the roar of the wind. "She did buy the building, it's true, but she did so in order to resurrect the Midnight Watch!"

It might have been my imagination, but I thought I felt the wind's grip on me lessen, and it seemed I was no longer traveling so swiftly down the hallway away from Devona. Encouraged, I continued.

"Her name's Devona Kanti, and she hopes to start her own security business right here, in this very building, and she plans to use the name Midnight Watch! It's a proud, noble name, one she's honored to be associated with!"

Blood had begun trickling in rivulets from Devona's pores, and while she was obviously in pain, she still possessed enough presence of mind to pick up on what I was doing.

"It's true! I love the history associated with this place, and all I want to do is make the name Midnight Watch mean something in the city again!"

The wind's roar subsided to a mere whisper, and I was no longer being dragged away from Devona. I started toward her just as she slumped to the floor. By the time I reached her, the wind had died away completely and the hallway was silent again, save for the sound of her pained breathing.

I knelt beside her and took her hand. "Are you going to be all right?"

"I… I think so. It hurt like hell, but I didn't lose too much blood." She managed a weak smile. "You're going to have to take me out for a big meal tonight, though."

"You've got it."

She tried to stand, but I encouraged her to sit for a few more moments to give her metabolism time to counter her blood loss.

"So, are you going to tell me what you figured out," she asked, "or are you going to make me guess?"

"Once the wind – or whatever it was – attacked us, it seemed obvious to me that it must've wielded the Dire Blade that killed Crosswise. And that it was the force responsible for killing anyone who tried to purchase the building in all the years following. This force was clearly here before Crosswise was killed, and since it's remained here, that means it's part of the structure. And if Crosswise was such a skilled warlock, I can't believe there was any mystical force attached to the Midnight Watch that he didn't know about. So the force was something he was aware of but thought he had no reason to fear. And evidently he didn't: until he decided to retire and sell the building. When you told me what his specialties were –"

Devona's face lit up with sudden understanding. "It's a wardspell, isn't it? A supremely sophisticated one that Leander created!"

I nodded. "But more than that. You said he also bred guard animals – highly intelligent ones. I think the force is both a wardspell and a guardian, and it's smarter than Crosswise gave it credit for. When he planned to retire and sell the building –"

"The ward creature would be sold too, for its tied to the structure. In a way, it's the lifeforce of the building."

"Crosswise was going to sell the building, and it's my guess any new owners wouldn't want such a powerful being as part of their new property."

"So Leander planned to remove the spell, which meant the ward creature would cease to exist. So it was defending itself when it killed Leander."

"Yes, just as it believed it was doing every time a potential new owner entered the building. That's why it only evicted others. The creature didn't perceive them as threats. I hoped that if I could make it realize you weren't a threat, it would break off its attack. Luckily, I was right."

Devona smiled. While streaks of blood remained on her face, neck, and hands, her color was less pale, and she seemed stronger. I stood, reached down, and helped her to her feet.

"My hero."

She gave me another hard kiss on the lips, and though there was still a bit blood on her mouth, I didn't mind at all. You come to expect that sort of thing when you're in love with a vampire. She has it worse; she has to worry about whether one of my lips might fall off when we kiss.

She took my hand and we started down the hallway back toward the front door.

"So," I said, "does this uh, revelation alter your plans any?" I was trying to be careful with my words. I didn't want to rouse the ward creature's ire again.

Devona thought about it for a moment. "Well, I still want to run my business out of this building, and I think that with a little work, I'll be able to make friends with the ward creature, and it'll make a wonderful guardian for the place." She paused, long enough for it to be a Meaningful Pause. "I'm not sure you're aware of it, Matt, but we've taken an important step forward in our relationship today."

Like a lot of men, I'm not always as aware of relationship milestones as my partner, and I wracked my undead brain, trying to figure out what Devona was referring to.

"Uh, you mean because you've officially established your independence?"

She grinned and punched me on the arm.

"No, silly. Because now we have a pet together."

We continued on down the hallway, hand in hand.

BOOK II

DEAD STREETS

ONE

That night, working security at Sinsation, I learned something new. Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't hurt.

I'm not talking physical pain. I hadn't experienced any of that since the day I died and was resurrected – through means I still don't quite understand – as a self-willed zombie. And I'm not talking mental and emotional pain. My body may be dead, but my brain is still very much alive – or at least functional – so I still experience those kinds of pain on an all-too-frequent basis. I'm talking about an entirely different sort of pain, one that up to this point I hadn't given very much thought to: aesthetic pain.

I was making my way through the thrashing, gyrating crowd that choked Sinsation's dance floor, doing my best to shut out the noise blasting from the stage, but it was impossible. Kakophonie was simply too damned loud. The band's lead singer went by the sobriquet of Scream Queen, and considering that she was a banshee, the name fit. She looked like an emaciated human woman in her early twenties, with long, stringy black hair, a bone white complexion, eyes set in dark hollows, lips snail belly gray, and a stylish touch of grave mold at her temples and the nape of her neck. She wore a tattered white shroud made from sheer fabric that left little about her too-skinny body to the imagination. Her nails were black, overlong, and sharp, and I wondered if they were fashion statements or weapons. Both, I decided. In Nekropolis almost everything – and everyone – is a weapon in one way or another.

The rest of the band's lineup was an eclectic mix of Darkfolk. A lean male vampire with cyberimplants played guitar, his technological enhancements allowing him to act as his own amplifier. A short boar-faced, beetle-bodied demon, gender unknown and perhaps inapplicable, played bass, while a huge werebear with a truly impressive set of shaggy dreads pounded away on drums that had been specially reinforced with titanium to stand up to whatever punishment the lyke could dish out. I wasn't sure how he managed to hold on to the drumsticks with those paws of his, though. It's hard to describe the sort of music Kakophonie played, mostly because it was so deafeningly loud that it sounded more like a solid wall of noise than anything else. Darkfolk's senses are different than humans', and I suppose it's possible that to the assembled vampires, werebeasts, demons, and assorted other creatures, the band's music was pleasing, even soothing, but to my zombie ears, it sounded like a dozen vehicles colliding head-on at a hundred miles an hour… over and over and over.

But as bad as the band was, the lead singer was worse. There was a reason she called herself Scream Queen and it wasn't an ironic reference to the term for a horror movie starlet, or at least not only. The Queen's idea of singing was to open her mouth as wide as she possibly could – which, given that she wasn't human, was disturbingly wide indeed – and shriek at the top of her lungs for the entire length of a song without ever pausing for an intake of breath. To be fair, her tone did vary, rising higher, falling lower and with a vague sense that there was some sort of rhythm to the sounds she produced. But there was no way anyone even remotely in their right mind would consider what the Scream Queen did as singing.

I was starting to consider tearing off my own ears and destroying my eardrums with a couple well-placed finger jabs – I could always get my ears repaired later – when a man on the far side of the dance floor signaled to me. He was tall and handsome, with rusty-red hair and a beard that contained enough gray to be considered distinguished. He dressed entirely in black – black jacket over a black T-shirt, black slacks, black shoes – the only variance in the color scheme being the golden medallion he wore around his neck. I'd seen the medallion close up many times, and its face was emblazoned by a circular series of runes that I couldn't translate, but which looked appropriately grim and mysterious. The hand signal meant All clear on my end, and I nodded to the warlock and tried to keep from scowling as I returned the message.

I decided to check on the rest of the team, each of whom was stationed at a different position in the club. Scorch was on the opposite side of the dance floor from Bogdan, and she was dancing wildly to Kakophonie's music, though how anyone could find enough rhythm in the bizarre sounds the band produced to inspire any movement other than severe convulsions was beyond me. Scorch appeared to be a young woman just entering her teens and she wore her blonde hair in a long ponytail that fell down to the middle of her back. She usually dressed in a riot of color, in counterpoint to Bogdan's more severe style, and tonight was no exception. Her sleeveless blouse had been sewn together from patches of bright colors and though her skirt was denim, her knee-high socks were rainbow striped. Though Scorch appeared to be just another fan of Kakophonie's out to have a good time, her gaze was focused and intense, taking in everything around her. I caught her eye and she gave me the all-clear signal, accompanied by a wink and a grin to let me know that just because she was working didn't mean she couldn't have fun too.

Tavi was hanging out by the bar, nursing a mug of aqua sanguis and grimacing whenever he took a sip. The synthetic blood substitute might taste like the real thing – or close to it – but it provides little nourishment. It's kind of like Nekropolis's version of non-alcoholic beer. It's cheaper than the real stuff and easier to come by, and any number of the city's Darkfolk drink it – vampires, demons and lykes, especially. Tavi was one of the latter, though he usually chose to go about in his human form. Many lykes never bothered to don their human shapes in Nekropolis as they saw no reason to hide their true natures here. After all, if you live in a city of monsters and you are a monster, you might as well look the part twenty-four seven. But others still availed themselves of the camouflage of appearing human whenever they wished and Tavi was one of them. Right now he appeared to be a middle-aged man of East Indian descent, lean and wiry, with short black hair, wearing a tan Nehru jacket and matching pants. I once asked him if the jacket wasn't something of an ethnic cliché. In reply, Tavi asked me if my gray suit was any less of a cliché, considering it was the same sort of outfit I'd worn when I was alive back on Earth.

Your suit screams "cop," he'd said.

I couldn't deny it. At least I don't wear a trench coat, I had replied.

Tavi gave me the all-clear sign, I returned it, and I then trained my attention on the last member of our team. Even if I hadn't known where she'd be, I wouldn't have had any trouble finding her. Devona and I shared a psychic bond that had gotten stronger over the months we'd been together and we could sense each other's presence within a thousand-foot radius or so. A slender, petite blonde who wore her hair short, Devona wore a wonderfully form-fitting black leather outfit that, given the temperature in the club, would've caused her to suffer heat prostration if she'd been human. But she was only half-human, on her mother's side. Her father was a vampire – one of the city's five Darklords, in fact – and while she physically appeared to be in her late twenties, chronologically, she was in her seventies. What can I say? I always did have a thing for older women.

Devona stood at the edge of the stage, gazing up at Scream Queen as if she were the banshee's biggest fan, when in truth she couldn't stand the woman's so-called singing anymore than I could. In reality, Devona was telepathically scanning the area surrounding the stage for any strong negative thoughts or emotions that might indicate someone wished Scream Queen harm. Vampires have a great many abilities, but half-vampires tend to be more psychically gifted than their full-blooded brothers and sisters, which is one of the reasons why vampires mate with humans from time to time: to add those psychic abilities to the sum total of power in their clan. For the first seven decades of her life Devona had used her powers to help safeguard her father's collection of mystic artifacts, but she and Lord Galm had experienced a recent falling out, resulting in her being cast out of the Darklord's home. I was sorry for that, especially since I'd helped cause that falling out, but considering that Devona had moved in with me soon after, I wasn't too sorry.

Devona must've sensed my watching her, for she turned to look at me and smiled, and I felt the feather-gentle touch of her thoughts brushing my mind.

All's well so far, love.

I smiled back, nodded, and we both refocused our attention on our work.

Sinsation's own security was pretty lax, consisting primarily of a single bouncer, though I had to admit he looked appropriately intimidating. A hulking man in a black pullover sweater and gray pants, he stood just inside the club's entrance, leaning against the wall, tree trunk-thick arms crossed over his massive chest, glowering at everyone from beneath a prominent Neanderthal brow. His skin was greenish-gray and his bald head had a line of scar tissue around the circumference, showing he'd had brainwork done.

The bouncer was a Frankenstein monster, constructed to be massively strong and near impossible to kill. His kind were common in Nekropolis, created by Victor Baron – the original Frankenstein monster – to fill those jobs that required brute force and plenty of it. And there was no shortage of such positions that needed to be filled in Nekropolis. Baron creates all sorts of fleshtech for the city, but these monsters – often referred to as the "repurposed dead" – weren't objects to be owned. They were individuals in their own right, hired to perform a task and paid for it like anyone else. The difference was that they were created to perform specific functions and that bothered me. I wondered how much choice they really had about what they do. Could someone like Sinsation's bouncer wake up one morning and suddenly say to himself, "You know, I'm tired of crushing skulls for a living. I think I'll take up waterpainting landscapes instead."

But the Frankenstein monsters I'd encountered seemed content enough with their lot, so who was I to judge?

Kakophonie was one of the most popular bands in Nekropolis and their fans packed the club that night. Sinsation's theme was based on the classic seven deadly sins: greed, sloth, gluttony, hate, lust, envy, and pride. Greed was represented by the precious metals and gems worked into the floors, walls, ceiling, and furniture. Cheap imitations, most likely, since none of the club's patrons seemed especially interested in absconding with a platinum coated chair or prying off a diamond studded wall panel to take home as a souvenir. The servers brought you copious amounts of whatever food or drink you ordered – gluttony in action – and diners reclined on couches in the style of the ancient Romans as a nod to sloth. Lust was represented by several private rooms in the back of the club where any patron could retire to do anything with and to anyone who was willing, and as for hate… well, it wasn't uncommon for several good sized brawls to break out in the club during the course of an evening. Pride and envy were easily taken care of, for Sinsation was one of the places to be seen in the city and not just anyone was granted admittance. I recognized a number of Nekropolis's more notable citizens. Fade, gossip columnist for the Daily Atrocity, was there, of course. The reality-challenged woman is always on the scene of any happening where she can be seen by a sizable crowd who can help keep her existence reinforced. Darius the Sideways Man was in attendance, which was a bit surprising since he travels between alternate versions of Nekropolis, and I hadn't seen him in our dimension for a while. And the Jade Enigma stood at the back of the crowd, hidden within his, her, or its voluminous green robes and looking appropriately enigmatic.

The only reason the owners of Sinsation would allow the likes of me to shamble across their threshold was because I was with the band – or more specifically, with Scream Queen.

After leaving her father's employ, Devona had helped me on a few cases, but she'd soon become restless. She'd spent all of her life living in her father's shadow, most of it residing inside the Cathedral, Lord Galm's stronghold. She wanted to do more than work at my side as an unofficial private investigator. She wanted to explore her newfound independence and make her own way in the world. I understood. After all, I've always been something of an independent sort myself. So Devona decided to use her knowledge of security systems and procedures, both mystic and mundane, that she'd gained working for her father to start her own security business. Being the daughter of a Darklord – even a half-human, banished daughter – had helped her quickly establish a reputation and her business had gotten off to a good start and was doing quite well. So well, in fact, that she'd been able to bring Bogdan, Scorch and Tavi onto the staff, and I helped out when I wasn't busy with my own work. Which meant that this night Devona was my boss. When I was a kid back on Earth I had a folksy uncle who was fond of saying, "Life sure is a funny old possum sometimes, ain't she?" I knew just what he meant.

Scream Queen had hired Devona because during Kakophonie's last two gigs someone had attempted to abduct the singer. Her own security – a pair of two-headed mansters – had managed to foil both attempts, but only barely, and not without a significant amount of injury on their part. Among other indignities they'd suffered they were now a pair of one-headed mansters. Both had quit before their service to Scream Queen could prove fatal. Left without security the Queen had turned to Devona. The details of the two abduction attempts we'd gotten were a bit sketchy, but then mansters aren't exactly Mensa material. Each attempt had occurred at a different time – one before a gig, one after – and the assailant had been cloaked by an illusion spell that faltered when he, she, or it was attacked, revealing a masked figure encased in black body armor which concealed not only the gender but also the species of the kidnapper. One thing the mansters agreed on was that whoever it was knew how to fight and use weapons, both the standard fare – knives, guns, swords – and those of a more esoteric variety – spells, charms, enchanted objects – which meant we were probably looking for a professional hired to do a job as opposed to an obsessed fan who wanted to take home more than just a T-shirt with Scream Queen's face on the front, but otherwise, as we say in the private detecting business, we didn't have a goddamned clue.

Enemies? According to Scream Queen, she didn't have any.

"Everyone loves the Queen, darlings," she'd said when we'd asked.

Did she owe anyone money? "Certainly not! I have more darkgems that I can ever possibly spend"

What about the band members? "If they had any enemies, I'd know about it, and if they needed darkgems, they could always come to me. We're one happy family, darlings."

We'd questioned the individual band members, of course, but they'd told us the same thing. So our strategy tonight was a simple one: never take our eyes off Scream Queen and keep watch for anyone suspicious in attendance. Unfortunately, this being Nekropolis, everyone looked suspicious.

Vermen servers scuttled back and forth through the club, taking orders and delivering food and drink with characteristic speed. The humanoid rodents moved swiftly, constantly shaking with a nervous energy that most people found annoying. That, coupled with a musky body odor reminiscent of wet skunk, made their species one of the lowest regarded in the city. But there was no denying their speed and efficiency, at least when it came to completing simple tasks, so vermen were widely employed as servants throughout Nekropolis. The sight of them always made me uncomfortable, though. Their position in the city's social order struck me as a sort of racism – or maybe the right term would be species-ism – and I had to remind myself that this wasn't Earth and while the vermen resembled humans to a point, they weren't human. So I told myself to take a "When in Rome" attitude and tried not to think about the situation, but I never felt very good about doing so.

As a rule, vermen tend to be short – between four and five feet tall – with rat heads, lean bodies covered with brown, black, or gray fur, and long hairless tails. They tend to walk hunched over with a shuffling gait, though they can move damned fast when they wish to. The creatures avoid clothing for the most part, though sometimes they'll wear vests, mostly just to have pockets to carry things. The vermen employed at Sinsation, male and female, wore black vests with gold buttons and matching bow ties. I suppose the club's management was hoping the vests would make the vermen look classy and formal, but the overall effect struck me as rather silly.

"Pardon me, sir. Can I get you anything?"

I barely heard the voice over the music and I turned to see a verman server quivering before me. When I first came to Nekropolis I thought vermen trembled like that because they were always afraid. I'd soon learned that they shook due to their rapid metabolic rate. Standing still must've been torturous for the creature, but he did so, looking up at me with wet glossy-black eyes.

He was a bit leaner than the average verman – evidently the club owners didn't feed their employees as well as their guests – and he was missing half of his left ear. He didn't carry an order pad because vermen didn't need to write things down. They never forgot the details of an order.

I shook my head and the verman bowed his head before shuffling off in search of someone else to serve. I headed toward the bar to check in with Tavi when I felt a hand on my shoulder. At first I thought the verman had returned for some reason and was trying to get my attention, but his kind never came in physical contact with the clientele where they worked, perhaps because they knew how revolting their touch was to most people. So since I didn't know who had laid a hand on me, I reached into one of my pants pockets as I turned. Nekropolis is a dangerous place at the best of times, and along with a 9mm loaded with blessed silver bullets currently resting in a shoulder holster concealed beneath my jacket and a squirt gun filled with a blend of holy water and garlic juice tucked into my jacket pocket, I always carry a number of useful trinkets with me in case I run into any unpleasantness. I had my fingers on one such item, ready to pull it out and activate it, as I turned to see who wanted my attention. In the back of my mind I was thinking that Scream Queen's would-be kidnapper had gotten wind that Devona and the rest of us were on the job and for whatever reason had decided to confront me. But when I saw who was standing before me, I knew that wasn't the case.

"Matthew Richter! I'm so glad to finally catch up with you!"

She wore a white floor-length gown that resembled a toga, bodice cut low to display an impressive amount of cleavage. She wasn't fat, but she was, shall we say, Rubenesque, and I wondered if she used some sort of spell to keep from spilling out of her dress. She wore a pair of dark wraparound goggles to hide her eyes, something for which I was exceedingly grateful, considering she was a gorgon. Since I was a zombie, I had no idea whether her direct gaze could turn me into stone, but I didn't want to find out. Her hair, as you might imagine, was a nest of green serpents, although instead of heads, miniature video cameras sprouted from the snakes' necks. It's not uncommon for the denizens of Nekropolis to sport cybernetic or genetic enhancements, for their inhuman physiognomy is able to adapt to such drastic changes in ways that merely human bodies can't, but this was one of the stranger body modifications I'd seen since taking up residence in the city. Although, technically, this wasn't the first time I'd seen the woman's cyberserpents, just the first time up close and in person and I wasn't thrilled about it.

"I'm too busy to talk right now, Acantha!" I had to shout to make myself heard over the band.

The gorgon smiled, revealing a mouthful of slightly pointed pearl white teeth. "No need to raise your voice, sweetie. My little pets can filter out any background noise, even when it's as loud as this. Just speak normally." Her smile widened. "And by the way, just so you know, we're on live right now."

I grimaced. On the Scene with Acantha was one of the most popular Mind's Eye programs in Nekropolis. Devona and I watched it now and again, more as a guilty pleasure than anything else. Acantha specialized in live, on-the-spot tabloid-style interviews with the city's famous and infamous, the up-and-comers and the downward-sliders. She came across as all sweetness and light at first, but it never took long for her true nature to reveal itself. She could be more vicious than a lyke suffering from a bad case of intestinal parasites and those who were unfortunate enough to get cornered by her rarely came across well during the interview, to put it mildly. I joked with Devona that the gorgon's program should be re-titled Verbal Evisceration with Acantha, so as you might imagine, I was eager to get away from the woman as fast as possible. Besides, I couldn't afford to be distracted while I was supposed to be watching for another abduction attempt on Scream Queen.

Before I could protest any further Acantha launched into her first question. "Are you on the job right now, Matthew? Trying to track down some nefarious villain, no doubt. I'm sure you can't tell us the whole story – detective/client confidentiality and all that – but perhaps you can give us one or two juicy tidbits to satisfy our curiosity?"

To be honest, I was a bit flattered. The dead aren't held in high regard by other Darkfolk and zombies are considered to be on the lowest rung of that particular ladder. I was used to people turning up their noses at me – especially when I'd gone a bit too long between applications of preservative spells to keep me from rotting – so the fact that Acantha at least appeared to be happy to see me was a nice change. And it occurred to me that doing an interview with Acantha might garner some good publicity for Devona's business. But I was working, and as tempting as it was to do the interview, the job came first.

"I'm afraid I don't have any tidbits to offer, juicy or otherwise. Like I said, I really don't have the time for this right now."

Muted light flashed behind the gorgon's dark goggles and her lips stretched into a hard, thin line. Translation: Acantha Is Not Pleased.

"I've wanted to get you on the show ever since you saved the city last Descension Day, but for some reason my calls to you weren't returned." Before I could respond she reached out and grabbed hold of my left hand and turned it palm up. "So the rumors are true!" she said, her tone triumphant, as if she'd caught me with my pants down and my undead zombie dick exposed for all the world to see.

I had no doubt that her serpentcameras were focusing on a close-up of my hand and the pattern of puckered scar tissue there that formed the letter E.

"You are a servant of Lord Edrigu!" the gorgon crowed.

Edrigu, Master of the Dead, is one of the five Darklords who rule Nekropolis.

I yanked my hand free of Acantha's grip. "One of Edrigu's servants did a favor for me and now I owe Edrigu a favor in return. That's the extent of our relationship."

That was true enough as far as it went, but I had no real idea just how much I owed Edrigu for the help Silent Jack had given my friends and me. I tried not to think about it too much. It's never a good idea to owe a Darklord anything and if I'd had any other choice at the time… Well, I hadn't and I'd made the deal with Silent Jack and one day I would have to pay for it. I just hoped that day was a while in coming.

I wasn't really paying much attention to Acantha at this point. I'd returned to scanning the crowd, keeping an eye out for anything or anyone that seemed out of the ordinary. Well, more out of the ordinary than usual for Nekropolis. While I knew that Scream Queen's would-be abductor had cloaked his or her true appearance with illusion spells during the two previous attempts to kidnap the singer, that didn't help much. Scream Queen's former guards had been able to describe the illusions well enough: a male vampire covered with synthticks, cybernetic insects that constantly filter and recycle their wearer's blood supply, adding various drug cocktails to it in the process, and a female demon who resembled a bipedal shark, complete with water-breathing apparatus and, according to the guards, a truly impressive pair of shark-skin-covered breasts. But it didn't matter what the abductor had looked like before. Assuming he or she stuck to the same MO a new illusion would be used next time and there was no way to predict what sort it might be.

Acantha spoke then, a sharp edge of impatience in her voice. It seemed she wasn't used to being ignored and the experience wasn't sitting well with her. "If you could try to focus here, Matthew. I only need a few minutes–"

I spun to face the gorgon. "I don't have a few minutes! I told you – I'm busy! And why are you even bothering to talk to me? I'm nobody special. I'm just a guy doing my job. There are dozens of people in here who are far more interesting than I am. Go pester some of them and let me get on with my work."

Acantha gritted her teeth and the light blazing behind her goggles was so intense now, I imagined that my normally stiff limbs felt a touch more rigid and heavy. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to irritate a gorgon, I thought. Still, she went doggedly on, speaking through her gritted teeth.

"Rumor has it that someone has tried to kidnap Scream Queen twice now. Is that the case you're working on?"

Back when I was alive, I'd worked as a homicide detective on Earth – in Cleveland, to be precise – and I'd had to deal with aggressive journalists on more than one occasion. But those reporters had been like playful little puppies compared to the pit bull that Acantha was. She'd sunk her teeth into me, metaphorically speaking, and I knew there was nothing I could say or do to get her to give up. She wouldn't be satisfied until she got what she wanted out of me and the sooner I delivered the sooner she'd move on and let me do my job. But by this point I'd begun to get irritated, too. I'm not exactly the go-along-with-the-program type. As my mother used to tell me, if you let people push you around they'll never stop, and in Nekropolis the last thing you need is a reputation as a pushover. Not if you plan to keep on living.

I still had my hand inside my pants pocket, my fingers wrapped around the object I'd planned to use to defend myself in case of attack. I withdrew the object, a small ball of white silk, and tossed it toward Acantha's face. It expanded rapidly upon contact with the air and by the time it struck the gorgon it had become a sticky white mass large enough to engulf her entire head, cyberserpents included.

"Have a piece of Anansi's Web," I told her.

Out of reflex Acantha reached up to tear the webbing away from her face with her long black nails, but when her fingers came in contact with the sticky mess she realized her mistake. Anansi isn't just any arachnid: he's an African trickster god and his webbing is far stronger and more adhesive than simple spider silk. Acantha's fingers became stuck fast in the white mass covering her face and though she frantically tried to tear her hands free there was nothing she could do.

"Pretty nifty, huh?" I said. "Some clients pay with darkgems, while others prefer to pay in barter. I pick up all kinds of interesting toys that way. Don't worry about the webbing. It'll dissolve after an hour or so. In the meantime, I'd remain as still as possible if I were you. It can't be easy to breathe through that stuff and you don't want to asphyxiate while you're on the air, do you?"

I felt an admittedly petty sense of satisfaction as I turned away from the gorgon, who was now emitting muffled cries of indignation that I imagined were peppered with rather colorful language. I walked away, knowing I would end up paying for this one way or another, but at least now I could return my attention to where it belonged – keeping an eye out for Scream Queen's abductor.

Good thing, too, for at that moment I felt Devona's mind reaching out to mine.

Look stage left.

"Stage left" meant Scream Queen's left and the audience's right. I directed my gaze where Devona indicated and saw a female ghoul waving an autograph book in hope of getting the singer's attention. Ghouls are basically humanoid, hairless and ivoryfleshed, with thick reptilian lips and double rows of sharp teeth. They're voracious gluttons, but while the males tend to be obese, the females tend to be thin to the point of emaciation, though they eat just as much as their opposite gender. Different metabolisms, I guess. Neither male nor female ghouls were particularly pleasant to look at, especially considering they never wore a stitch of clothing.

Kakophonie's song built toward its climax and ended on a series of thunderous notes that made the floor vibrate dangerously. I wondered if Sinsation's architecture could stand up to the punishment or if the band would literally bring down the house before their set was over. Scream Queen shrieked one last time as the final note sounded and then she bowed to wild applause and cheers from the audience. The ghoul jumped up and down and thrust her autograph book toward the banshee singer, but I was already moving, as was Devona and the rest of the team. There was nothing about the ghoul's appearance to rouse suspicion, but I was certain Devona had gotten a psychic "hit" off the woman, marking her as a likely suspect, and we had to intercept her before she could make her move.

Which was far easier said than done, given how crowded the club was that night. I'd moved close to the bar, which meant that everyone on the dance floor was between me and the stage. I started shoving my way through the crowd, making liberal use of my elbows and shouting, "Security! Let me through!" but neither tactic helped me make much headway. Tavi had been sitting at the bar, so he had the crowd to contend with too, and while Scorch and Bogdan had been stationed on the dance floor, neither was all that close to the stage. Only Devona was near enough to reach the ghoul before she could get to Scream Queen and she headed toward the bald, naked autograph seeker, pushing people out of her way with surprising strength. Devona may only be halfvampire – and a petite half-vampire at that – but she's still plenty strong. And while she doesn't possess any telekinetic abilities, she was able to employ her telepathic powers to mentally urge the concert-goers to move aside and while many of them didn't get the message – or if they did, chose to ignore it – a good number did make room for her to pass, bewildered looks on their faces as if they weren't quite sure why they'd done so. I was impressed anew by how much Devona's psychic skills had improved since we'd first met. She'd worked hard to develop her powers over the last few months, and the results were paying off now.

But before Devona had gotten halfway to the ghoul, Scream Queen noticed the woman waving her autograph book and, gracious star that she was, reached down to take it and quickly scrawl a signature before the next song started. She handed the book back with a smile and then gave a nod for the band to launch into the next number. The ghoul gave a strange smile, almost as if she were enjoying some private joke, before turning and beginning to head away from the stage. That struck me as strange. If you were a big enough fan to want an autograph, why would you leave after getting it, especially when you'd only gotten to hear one song? But Scream Queen looked unharmed as the band started in on another tune that had more in common with a ten car pile up than music and I began to wonder if Devona had been wrong about the ghoul. After all, she was heading away from Scream Queen, who was most decidedly not abducted, so she appeared to be no threat. Maybe her real interest in the autograph lay in its monetary value and she was eager to get on with the business of finding a buyer. As I said before, ghouls are gluttons and all the food they shovel down their gullets doesn't come free. But then Scream Queen opened her mouth to sing and I – along with everyone else in the club – realized that something was seriously wrong when no sound came out of her mouth.

Her fellow band members realized it too. They stopped playing and stared at Scream Queen with expressions of puzzlement that were rapidly edging toward outright alarm. The patrons in attendance were equally confused and shocked and the entire club fell quiet as everyone waited to see what would happen next.

Scream Queen drew in another breath and then opened her mouth once more. She squeezed her eyes shut and her neck muscles grew taut. She was clearly attempting to release a note with some real power behind it, but just as before, there was only silence. It seemed the Scream Queen had lost her voice. But that was OK: I knew where it had gone.

I started heading toward the ghoul.

TWO

I didn't get there first, though. Devona had telepathically broadcast her warning about the ghoul to the entire team and all of us were beginning to converge upon her. Scorch was faster than any of us with the exception of Tavi, but she was closer to the ghoul than the shapeshifter was. She became a blur as she wove swiftly through the crowd and she intercepted the ghoul before the creature was halfway across the dance floor.

Scorch said something to the ghoul, but I couldn't hear what. Even though Kakophonie wasn't playing right then, the confused audience were talking loudly amongst themselves, and even though I had a good view of Scorch and the ghoul, I couldn't read lips. Inwardly I was raging at Scorch for approaching the ghoul directly. We knew how dangerous Scream Queen's would-be abductor was and confronting her head-on was more than reckless – it was downright suicidal. And unlike Scream Queen's former bodyguards, Scorch only had one head to lose. But that was Scorch: she lived for fun and as far as she was concerned danger was just another flavor of fun.

The ghoul was taller than Scorch by a good head and a half and when she raised her right hand and displayed her claws she looked like a most formidable figure, one against whom a mere teenage girl wouldn't stand a chance. But in Nekropolis judging by appearances is never a good idea.

The ghoul pulled back her hand, no doubt intending to slash out with her claws and lay open Scorch's throat, but before she could move Scorch decided to show her opponent how she'd gotten her name. Bright orange flames erupted all across Scorch's body and the ghoul – not to mention those audience members in the immediate vicinity – took a startled step backward. Scorch's fire burned hotter and brighter, the flames completely obscuring her form, but she didn't scream, didn't so much as move a muscle. The fire expanded, the flames stretching outward, rising upward, and then just as suddenly as they'd ignited, they extinguished, and where a moment before a teenage girl had been standing, now stood a seven foot tall, powerfully muscled, red-scaled demon. Scorch's true form was that of an infernal monster from the old school: pointed ears, baleful yellow eyes, mouthful of wicked-looking fangs, curling ram's horns, a row of serrated scales trailing along her spine, and a sinuous reptilian tail complete with an almost delicate little arrowhead shape at the tip.

The ghoul, who no longer had the advantage of height over Scorch, quickly recovered and lashed out with her claws anyway. Only now instead of having a throat covered with tender girl flesh, Scorch's throat was covered with shiny hard scales, and the ghoul's claws skittered off them without doing any damage. In response Scorch gave the ghoul a truly disturbing fang-filled grin and slapped her own clawed hands onto the ghoul's bony shoulders. As soon as the demon's flesh came in contact with the ghoul's Scorch released her flame and fire spread out from her palms to engulf the ghoul.

"No, dammit!" I shouted, not that I figured Scorch would hear me. Too many people were doing their best to get the hell away from Scorch and the ghoul and they weren't being particularly quiet about it. I knew that Scorch could control the intensity of her flame – as a fire demon that was her specialty – and she wouldn't kill the ghoul unless she had to. But I wasn't worried about our suspect getting fried; I was worried about the autograph book she still carried. We'd been assuming that the ghoul's plan had been to abduct Scream Queen, but now it looked as if she'd only been interested in stealing part of the singer: namely, her voice. I wasn't exactly sure how the ghoul had accomplished it, but it seemed clear that Scream Queen's signature in the autograph book had been an integral part of the spell. And if Scorch's flames reached the autograph book and turned Scream Queen's signature to ash, maybe the spell would be broken and the singer's voice would be restored to her – or if the signature was destroyed maybe Scream Queen's voice would be lost forever. While the latter prospect didn't strike me as much of a loss to Nekropolis's music scene, Scream Queen was my client – well, technically she was Devona's client – and I was determined to protect the banshee's voice by whatever means I could. Unfortunately it looked like there was nothing I could do to keep Scorch from incinerating the autograph book.

However, the ghoul – or whoever was masquerading as the ghoul – was prepared. As demonflame spread across her ivorycolored skin she appeared to reach into her side, sliding her long clawed fingers bloodlessly into her flesh and withdrawing a tiny figurine resembling a white ape. The ghoul spoke a single activating word and the ape's mouth opened, unleashing a torrent of frigid air at Scorch. Yeti's Breath was a powerful spell – with an accompanying stench so rank that it would make a carrion imp retch – and within seconds Scorch's flame had been extinguished and the demon was encased in a thick shell of ice. As strong as she was Scorch couldn't break free of her frozen prison and all she could do was stand there, literally frozen in place, as the ghoul grinned and started running toward the exit, the autograph book – which was singed around the edges a bit but otherwise undamaged – clutched in her hand.

I saw a blur of movement on my left and heard more than felt a rush of wind as something moved past me at a high rate of speed. Tavi was a mixblood, a shapeshifter who'd chosen to have his natural abilities augmented by genetic engineering at Doctor M's House of Pain. In his case the enhancement was rather clever: the lyke was a hybrid of mongoose and cobra, though he steadfastly refused to tell anyone which wereform he'd been born with originally. Tavi still wore his Nehru jacket and pants, but his limbs had become lean and sinuous and his hands and face were covered with a mixture of mammal fur and reptilian scale. His head was shaped like that of a mongoose with a cobra's hood and fangs. The overall effect worked surprisingly well, far better than many mixbloods who look like something out of Darwin's worst nightmares. In his wereform Tavi moved with a liquid grace that was beautiful to see and which had no doubt served him extremely well in his former career as a thief.

Though much of the crowd had managed to get away from Scorch and the ghoul there were still enough audience members in the way that Tavi was forced to detour around them and while he did so with great velocity it slowed him down just enough to give the ghoul time to prepare for his attack. Once again she plunged her hand into her side, only this time she brought out a small black sphere and dashed it to the floor. The sphere was glass and shattered on impact, releasing a black liquid substance that rapidly spread into a thin coating about two feet wide and three feet long. Tavi was moving too fast to avoid the black liquid and he ran right into it. The instant Tavi's feet came in contact with the tar-like goo they stuck fast; unfortunately momentum carried the rest of his body forward. The sound of breaking bone cut through the air as Tavi's ankles snapped and the lyke screamed in agony as he pitched forward and slammed face-first into the floor. Lykes are tough and they heal damn fast, but they still feel pain and Tavi was suffering quite a bit of it then. Still, he raised his head, opened his mouth wide, and spat a stream of venom directly into the ghoul's eyes. I expected to hear the ghoul scream then, but all she did was reach up to wipe the venom from her eyes and then continued running toward the exit. Tavi tried to pull free of the black substance that had hold of him, but it was no use. He was stuck fast.

Two of our team were down and the ghoul – or whoever it was hiding behind a ghoul's guise – hadn't broken a sweat. The Midnight Watch hadn't exactly covered itself in glory so far.

I hadn't stopped moving toward the ghoul, but running isn't something my zombie body is good at. The best I can manage is a sprightly shuffle that, while more than a little embarrassing, manages to get me from point A to point B faster than walking. But the ghoul was running full out and she was running at an angle away from me. Devona was heading for her as well, but the ghoul was moving away from her too. Fortunately for our team the direction the ghoul had chosen led her directly toward Bogdan. The warlock's specialty was the materialization of physical objects and not just any object but precisely what he needed most at any given moment. When he'd first joined the Midnight Watch I asked him how he knew what objects he might need – and for that matter, where they came from – and with a smile and a wink he give me the same answer for both questions. "I don't know. I simply work my magic and trust in Providence."

Have you ever heard such crap?

Bogdan lost no time in appealing to Providence then. He gestured with his right hand and a metallic fan appeared in his fingers, each gleaming section sharp as a razor. With an unnecessarily theatrical flick of his hand Bogdan spread the fan out and then flung it toward the rapidly approaching ghoul. The sections of the fan separated as they flew toward the ghoul, becoming a dozen deadly missiles.

It was a neat trick and I might have applauded if the ghoul hadn't simply ducked and rolled beneath the blades. The ghoul came up onto her feet and continued running without breaking stride, leaving Bogdan's fan blades flying toward innocent bystanders. One of the blades flew in my general direction and I intended to ignore it until I saw that it was heading toward the verman server who'd spoken to me earlier, the one who was missing half of his left ear. Without thinking about it I flung myself forward and intercepted the blade. It thunked into my side just below my right armpit, slid neatly between a couple of ribs and stayed there. I felt nothing beyond a slight pressure – one of the advantages of being dead – and I managed to keep my balance and avoid falling, which was good. If I break any bones, it doesn't hurt, but it can impair my mobility and I needed to remain ambulatory if we were going to have any chance at stopping the ghoul from getting away with Scream Queen's voice.

The verman looked at me with an expression that seemed thoughtful, almost appraising in a way, but I didn't have time to deal with him right then. I had a ghoul to catch.

Bogdan had been thrown off by his miss and he'd stood gaping with horror as his fan blades struck several audience members. Given the fact that none of those wounded were human, the damage wasn't anything they couldn't heal sooner or later, so Bogdan was able to forget about them and refocus his attention on the ghoul. Unfortunately he wasn't able to do so in time to stop her from reaching him and delivering a solid punch to his throat. The warlock's eyes bulged, his face turned red, and his mouth opened wide but he wasn't able to breathe in. The blow had crushed his trachea. Gasping ineffectively, his red face already starting to shade toward purple, Bogdan fell to his knees and slapped his hands to his throat. He closed his eyes and his lips began to move soundlessly as he worked a healing spell. His specialty might be the conjuring of useful objects, but he knew enough basic magic to heal himself. But doing so meant he wasn't going to be anymore help in stopping the ghoul – not that he'd been much help as it was.

Sinsation's bouncer decided to enter the fray then and the monster surged through the crowd toward the ghoul, moving with a speed and grace that was shocking given his enormous size. His face sported a savage grin and there was cold delight in his eyes. He'd literally been born to bust heads and now he had another chance to fulfill his life's purpose. For one of the repurposed dead it didn't get any better than this.

I'm not territorial. If Frankie Jr could get the job done, more power to him. All I cared about was making sure that the ghoul didn't get away with Scream Queen's voice.

The ghoul noted the monster's approach – no big feat; considering his size, he was damned hard to miss – and she reached into her body and pulled out a tiny metal disk. With a quick flick of her wrist she sent the object sailing toward the bouncer. The disk struck him on the forehead, right on the scar line, and stuck to the flesh as if covered with glue. Crackling tendrils of electricity shot forth from the disk's metal surface, spreading outward to surround the monster's head in a cage of miniature lightning.

The bouncer stopped running toward the ghoul, his body spasmed several times, and then lines of smoke curled forth from his nostrils. His eyes rolled over white and for an instant the monster stood there, white-eyed and stiff-legged, and then the giant collapsed to the floor with a sound like a dozen bags of cement dropped from a half-mile up.

Frankenstein monsters are born of electricity and if you can overload the energy matrices of their central nervous system it's like flipping their off switch, a fact the ghoul was obviously all too aware of.

Four down and – since she's far faster than I am – it was Devona's turn at the ghoul.

Half-vampires aren't as swift as their full-blooded relatives, but they're a damn sight faster than humans, let alone a shufflegaited zombie, and Devona managed to reach the ghoul when she was within a dozen feet of the exit. Devona's stronger than a human, but she's not trained in hand-to-hand combat, and physical confrontation doesn't suit her personality. What she is trained in, however, is security magic. And that meant she'd taken the precaution of having a special enchantment placed on all of Sinsation's exits earlier that day, an enchantment she now activated by speaking a phrase in a language I didn't understand, but which I recognized as the ancient tongue of the Bloodborn. The edges of the main entrance began to glow and a red mist rose from the floor in curling crimson tendrils, rapidly rising upward to completely block the doorway. The spell was simple: the red mist would prevent Scream Queen from passing through. To anyone else, the mist would be nothing more than that, easily passable, but to the banshee singer – or to anyone trying to force her physically through the doorway – the mist would feel solid as rock. How do you keep someone from abducting your client? Make sure she's physically incapable of leaving the premises. Of course, the ghoul wasn't carrying Scream Queen, just her voice, but I assumed the principle would be the same.

Evidently the ghoul made the same assumption – or maybe she simply assumed the red mist would do something nasty to her if she tried to go through it – for she came to a stop and spun around to face Devona.

Devona might prefer to fight with her mind instead of her fists, but that doesn't mean she can't brawl when she needs to. She continued running toward the ghoul, fangs bared, eyes wild and blazing with a feral yellow glow. I felt a wave of psychic pressure and I knew she was using her telepathic abilities to broadcast negative emotions at the ghoul, more in an effort to intimidate her and keep her off balance than to actually harm her. The ghoul, however, appeared to be completely calm as she once more reached into her side, this time drawing forth a small metal object. I recognized the object the instant I saw it and I started to shout a warning to Devona, but the ghoul moved too fast. With a flick of her wrist she sent the small silver cross flying toward Devona. The four tips of the cross were sharp as needles and the holy shuriken struck Devona in the left shoulder, biting through her leather outfit and sinking deep into her flesh.

Devona gasped in pain, stumbled, and fell to the floor. She clutched at her wounded shoulder, trying to grab hold of the cross and pull it free, but it had already sunk too deep. Holy objects and silver don't affect half-vampires as strongly as they do full-blooded vampires, but that just means their poisonous and corrosive effects are slower. Devona wasn't in danger of suffering any long-term damage from the cross, provided she could get it removed within the next half-hour or so, but the pain was excruciating and there was no way she would be able to continue battling the ghoul. It was all she could do to hold on to consciousness. This also meant there was no way she could concentrate effectively to use her telepathic powers against her assailant.

But wounding Devona wasn't enough for the ghoul. She plunged her hand into her side – right in the spot where I estimated a shoulder holster would be – and pulled out a 9mm handgun. She stepped forward, her ghoul disguise wavering as she did so and, by the time she knelt next to Devona and placed the gun barrel against her forehead, the ghoul illusion was completely gone. The voicenapper was revealed to be a humanoid of indeterminate gender and species encased in black body armor, just as had been reported.

"You have five seconds to remove the spell on the exit. If you don't, I'll put a blessed silver-jacketed bullet through your skull. You'll have a hell of a time healing from that."

The kidnapper wore a hooded mask and black goggles, but the muffled voice that came through was unmistakably that of a woman. And that gave me an idea of who we might be dealing with.

I'd finally reached Devona and I stopped a couple yards away so as not to make the kidnapper too nervous. There's a reason someone coined the phrase "itchy trigger finger" and I didn't want to put the kidnapper's combat cool to the test.

"You might as well give it up, Overkill. There's no way you're leaving with Scream Queen's voice."

The woman turned to look at me, but she didn't remove the gun from Devona's head. She was a consummate professional.

"What are you going to do, zombie? Drop flakes of dead skin on me?"

"So you are Overkill."

A slight hesitation. "I didn't say that."

"But you didn't deny it, either. No one would be stupid enough to pretend to be Overkill or even allow anyone to think she's Overkill. If the real Overkill ever found out, she'd hunt them down and make them pay for using her name in vain."

The woman seemed to consider that for a moment. "True." She tucked the autograph book under her arm and then, with her free hand reached up, pulled off her goggles and face mask and tossed them to the floor. She was an attractive woman in her twenties, with brown hair, brown eyes, who stood five-eight and weighed around a hundred and forty pounds. She looked normal enough, but everyone in Nekropolis knows that looks are deceiving. If something appears dangerous it's probably ten times worse and if something appears harmless you'd best turn and run screaming in the other direction as fast as your feet will carry you. I'd never met this woman before, but despite her appearance, I knew I was standing face to face with one of the most feared mercenaries in the city.

"You gave it your best shot, but you're not going to get away with the voice, Overkill. You know that. The best thing for you to do is put the autograph book down, take the gun away from Devona's head, and leave."

She smiled. "I don't know anything of the sort. I'm the one holding the gun against your girlfriend's forehead. You know I'm not bluffing when I say I'll fire if she doesn't dispel the enchantment on the doorway."

I did know it. Overkill was one of the deadliest fighters in the city. She was a human who wanted to show the monsters that ruled Nekropolis that not only could she be their equal, she could surpass them, becoming a bigger, badder monster than any of them could ever hope to be. To this end she employed weapons both mundane and mystical in her work, usually to quite deadly effect, but she accepted no enhancements to her body, magical, cybernetic, or genetic. She was one hundred percent homo sapiens and two hundred percent bugfuck crazy. She took on only the most difficult of jobs – the more suicidal, the better – and while rumor had it that she was obscenely well paid for what she did, money meant nothing to her. As Dr. Scott says in Rocky Horror, Overkill lives solely for "ze thrills".

"So you have a gun. I do too." I slowly opened my jacket to show her the 9mm resting in my shoulder holster, a souvenir from my days as a human cop.

Her smile took on a mocking edge. "Even if you were alive, there's no way you could move fast enough to draw your weapon before I pulled the trigger on mine. And as a zombie, your reflexes are way too slow to even think about it."

I didn't take any offense at what she said, mostly because she was right. "You're not the only one who carries magical toys. I have all kinds of surprises I can pull out of my bag of tricks."

"Maybe so, but that doesn't change anything. The second your hand so much as twitches in the direction of one of your pockets, my gun goes off and your lady love's half-undead brains will exit the back of her head suddenly, violently, and quite messily. There's no way she'll be able to repair that kind of damage on her own, and even a top-flight healer won't be able to help her. She won't have enough brains left to be resurrected as a zombie – not that she'd be intelligent like you. I suppose you can always hope she'll return as a ghost, but you can't ever predict who'll come back and who'll cross over to the next life, whatever that may be. So if you want her to live, you'll back off and let her remove the spell on the door for me."

So far I'd managed to keep Overkill talking, but I had no illusions that I might be able to make some sort of deal with her. She was verbally sparring with me only because it amused her. It wouldn't take her long to get tired of our little tête-à-tête and then she'd make good on her threat to kill Devona – an outcome I'd prefer to avoid, as you might imagine. Death isn't necessarily the end in Nekropolis, but it does seriously cut down on your options.

"There are a lot of heavy hitters in here," I pointed out, "and any number of them could give you a serious run for your money. If they teamed up…"

"Nice try, but if any of them were going to interfere, they'd have done so by now." Her smile turned into a leer. "Maybe they're having too much fun watching."

Unfortunately she was probably right. Most Nekropolitans aren't big on altruism, mostly because sticking your nose into other people's business in this city is an excellent way to get yourself killed – and that's just for starters. There are worse things than death in this town and they're usually standing a few inches behind you, ready to reach out and grab you when you least expect it.

"What about this?" I raised my hand and showed her the scartissue E on my palm. "Do you really want to defy the agent of a Darklord?"

That seemed to give her pause. Her smile fell away and she seemed to consider the matter. Meanwhile, tears of blood streamed down Devona's face and her breathing was becoming more labored. I knew the cross's silver – not to mention the holy power of the blessing that had been laid upon it – was causing her system to break down. She needed to get that cross out of her as soon as possible.

"I'd heard rumors that you'd been marked by Edrigu," Overkill said, "but that doesn't make you one of his agents. Maybe it's simply a sign that you're in his debt."

I kept my face composed – a task easily accomplished for a dead man – but I swore inwardly. Overkill wouldn't have survived in her profession as long as she has if she was stupid, but I'd hoped my bluff would work. Since it hadn't, that left me with only one other option: bluff bigger.

I took a half step forward. Overkill didn't take her gaze off me, but her finger tightened on the trigger.

"You said you'd heard rumors about me," I began. "What have you heard about what happened last Descension Day?"

Overkill's eyes narrowed and she took a moment before answering. "Word on the street is that someone tried to interfere with the recharging of Umbriel and the city was almost destroyed. You prevented that from happening."

Umbriel the shadowsun is what provides the perpetual dusky half-light that illuminates Nekropolis, but it does much more than that. It also keeps the city stabilized in the dark dimension where it's located and what's more – and I'd only recently learned this – its power keeps the city safe from the native inhabitants of this dimension, who view the Nekropolitans as colonizing invaders.

I took another half step forward. "Anything else?"

Her eyes narrowed another fraction. "They say that your body decayed to dust in the battle to preserve Umbriel and that Father Dis himself restored your physical form."

Dis was once worshipped by the ancient Romans as a god of death, and he's the ultimate ruler of the city. It was Dis who several centuries ago led the Darkfolk to leave Earth and establish their own city in another dimension, where they'd be safe from a humanity grown too numerous and technologically advanced. There are other godlike beings in Nekropolis – most notably the five Darklords that rule the city's separate Dominions – but none are as powerful as Dis… or as feared.

"It's true," I said. "I'm not going to stand here and tell you I saved the city single-handedly, and I'm not going to claim that Dis and I are best buddies and I can ring him up whenever I feel like it. But if Dis went to all the trouble of putting me back together when all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't, I'd say that means we have more than a casual relationship. How do you think he'll react when I tell him the love of my life was killed by a certain mercenary who's too stubborn to know when she's lost? You're tough, Overkill, one of the toughest in town. But do you really think you can stand up against Father Dis?"

Her brow furrowed and for a moment I thought she was actually calculating her chances.

"You're bullshitting me." She said the words forcefully enough, but there was a slight hint of doubt in her voice.

"Probably," I admitted, "but you have no way of knowing for sure. Look at it this way: if you find out for certain that I'm bluffing, think how much satisfaction you'll get hunting me down and making me pay for lying to you."

Overkill looked at me for a long moment before slowly breaking into a grin.

"Good point." She hesitated a second longer before removing the gun from Devona's forehead and replacing the weapon in her shoulder holster. Moving with a warrior's brisk, economical motions, she stood and tossed me the autograph book. "Well played, Matt. Hope to see you soon."

In other words, she couldn't wait for a rematch. If I had a working nervous system, the statement might've caused a chill to ripple down my spine.

She gave me a nod, one professional to another, before turning and striding briskly through the crimson mist still filling the doorway. Now that she no longer carried anything of Scream Queen on her, the spell allowed Overkill to pass without any ill effect. Once she was gone, the mist dissipated, the enchantment no longer needed.

I tucked the autograph book into my jacket and then knelt next to Devona and took her hand. Bloodtears continued to stream down her cheeks and she grimaced in pain.

"I guess I don't need to ask how you're feeling," I said.

Devona spoke through gritted teeth. "You realize you just made an enemy, don't you?"

"I'll add her name to the list."

Devona kept a steel bladed knife in a sheath on her right boot. With my free hand I reached down and pulled the knife free. "This is going to hurt," I warned her.

"It already hurts," she snapped.

"Then this is going to hurt worse. Ready?"

She squeezed her eyes shut, gripped my hand, and nodded.

Though technically I didn't need to I took a deep breath and then I started cutting.

THREE

"How's the shoulder?"

"Like new." Devona's leather outfit had a tear over the shoulder, the edges crusted with dried blood, but the exposed skin was once more smooth and healthy. "Thanks, Bogdan."

The warlock shrugged in what I thought was a blatantly insincere attempt to appear modest. "Healing magic doesn't always work with Bloodborn – they are, after all, undead – but as you're half-human, I thought I'd make the attempt. I'm glad my spell was successful."

As for my own injury I'd removed the blade from between my ribs and aside from a new hole I'd need to get sewn up the next time I visited my houngan, I was no worse for wear. Papa Chatha is able to use his voodoo magic to keep me from rotting away to nothing, but when it comes to torn skin, broken bones and the like, instead of invoking the Loa, Papa tends to rely on thread, staples and superglue.

Devona and I – along with the rest of the team – had returned to the Midnight Watch building and now lounged in the great room. When Devona had first bought the building the stone fireplace was cracked and filled with cobwebs, musty old paintings hung on the walls, and the wooden beams overhead were rotten and falling apart. Devona had spent a significant amount of money to renovate the building's interior and the great room now had all new leather furniture, abstract holo art hanging on the walls – not really my taste, but hey, it's Devona's business, not mine – and an illusory fire flickering in a brazier set in the fireplace, providing plenty of light but no heat. Zombie flesh tends to be on the dry side, especially when I'm due for a new batch of preservative spells, and I try to stay away from fire whenever possible. Devona, considerate partner that she is, had the magical brazier installed just for me.

"She could've healed herself simply by chugging a mug or two of the red stuff before we left Sinsation," I said, trying not to sound irritated with Bogdan and failing miserably.

Devona scowled at me. "You know how I feel about drinking blood in bars, Matt."

Many of Nekropolis's denizens require blood as a major part of their diet and supplying that need is one of the city's major industries. The real thing, as you might imagine, is difficult to come by and the artificial substitute aqua sanguis – while providing a certain amount of nourishment – mostly just takes the edge off the thirst. Vampires often get blood from their shadows, human followers who serve their undead masters in the hope of one day joining their dark ranks, and over at the Foundry, Victor Baron produces blood by the gallons from an army of cloned human bodies that lack higher brain functions, primarily because, as rumor has it, they don't possess any heads. But all of those sources still aren't enough to meet the demand and there's a brisk black market trade in blood – and the sellers aren't too picky about how they come by their supply or who they have to kill to obtain it. According to the law in Nekropolis humans who choose to live in the city are not inferior beings to be exploited, save by their own choice, but they are fair game as prey, as is every other being in the city.

During the decades Devona served her father she lived in the Cathedral and gave little thought to where her food came from. In the stronghold of the Darklord Galm blood flows freely from a large marble fountain that never runs dry. If a member of the household or one of the staff wishes to slake his or her thirst they need only dip a goblet into the fountain and drink their fill. But during the few months since Devona had abandoned her sheltered existence and come to live with me, she'd learned a great deal about what life is like outside the walls of her father's home and she'd developed a social conscience. She refused to take part in exploiting humans – after all, her mother was human – and if she wasn't absolutely sure where blood came from, she wouldn't drink it, like humans back on Earth refusing to eat tuna from companies whose indiscriminate fishing practices result in the death of dolphins. And bars were among the worst offenders when it came to selling black market blood. As a former human myself, I normally admired Devona's attitude, but it bugged me that night… mostly because it had led to Bogdan getting to use his magic to heal her.

Are you getting the idea that I wasn't the warlock's biggest fan?

Devona sat on a couch near the fireplace and she'd just finished arranging five piles of darkgems in front of her on a crystal coffee table. She looked up at everyone and smiled.

"Scream Queen was very happy with our work tonight," she said. "So much so that she gave us each a bonus of ten darkgems." She gestured at the money. "Go ahead. You earned it."

Bogdan, Scorch and Tavi – the latter two once again wearing human form – stood on the other side of the coffee table. I stood next to the fireplace, learning against the wall, arms crossed, a scowl on my face. Normally I enjoyed standing close to the coldfire since I liked to gaze into its flickering flames and I knew they couldn't do any damage to me. But that night I stood there mostly out of habit. I wasn't enjoying myself in the least.

Despite Devona's invitation to collect their pay the three members of the Midnight Watch didn't step forward. Instead they exchanged uneasy glances and remained standing where they were.

Devona frowned. "What's wrong?"

Bogdan spoke for the trio. "Scorch, Tavi and I are reluctant to take a full share of tonight's profits. We don't feel as if we earned it."

"We were hired to protect Scream Queen," Devona said, "and we stopped Overkill from stealing her voice. She was pleased with the service we provided and she paid us. All of us." She looked at Bogdan. "And you were able to cast a spell that returned her voice to her."

Bogdan shrugged. "It was a simple matter. An Arcane child could've done it."

My scowl deepened. You're a modest son of a bitch, aren't you? I thought.

"And all of you–" Devona took in Scorch and Tavi with her gaze now – "participated in the fight against Overkill."

"For all the good we did," Scorch said in a pouty voice, sounding like the preteen she appeared to be. "The three of us got our butts kicked."

"We were up against Overkill," Tavi pointed out. "We're lucky to still be alive." He turned to glance at me. "Uh, sorry, Matt. I didn't mean–"

"Don't worry about it," I said. "Living or dead, I'm still ambulatory and that's all that matters."

"Look, everyone," Devona said in what I'd come to think of as her boss voice. "We all shared the risk, so we all share in the profit."

Bogdan, Scorch and Tavi all glanced at me then as if to see whether I had anything to say about the issue. While none of them seemed to have bought into any of that 'savior of the city' crap that folks like Acantha wanted to saddle me with they did seek my opinion every now and again – though I felt Bogdan did so more to keep up appearances with his fellow employees than because he really cared what I thought about anything.

When I didn't answer right away Devona said, "Well, Matt? What do you think?"

When you're part of a couple there are times when you know your significant other is asking you a question to which there is only One Right Answer. I recognized this as one of those times. Unfortunately I had no idea what the correct response was. So I did what I usually do in situations like that. I gambled.

I shrugged and tried to sound as casual as I could as I replied: "It's your business, so it's your call."

I knew my gamble had been a spectacular failure when Devona gave me a scowl that said We'll talk about this later. Then she returned her attention to her employees.

"So it's settled then."

The three exchanged glances one last time before finally stepping forward and collecting their share of the night's earnings.

"So…" Bogdan said. "When are we going to discuss what happened tonight? I have some ideas on ways we might improve our performance next time."

I'll just bet you do, I thought. And from the way the warlock looked at Devona as he spoke I had the feeling that when he said we he wasn't talking about all five of us sitting down for a chat.

Scorch groaned. "Really, Bogdan, why do you always have to be such a worker bee? It's getting late and I have a pile of newly acquired darkgems burning a hole in my pocket. I say we head on back to Sinsation and see what other kinds of trouble we can get into tonight."

Bogdan frowned at the demon, but Devona cut him off before he could reply. "Was there anything we could've done differently to deal with Overkill? Of course. There's always room for improvement, but that's not important right now. What matters is we got the job done and that's enough for one night. Let's save the postmortem for another time, shall we?"

She gave Bogdan a smile to take the sting out of her words and the warlock responded with a courtly half bow that, if I still had a gag reflex, would've made me want to vomit on the spot.

"Of course, Devona," he said. "It's probably a good idea that you don't work anymore tonight anyway. After the injury you sustained you could use some rest. Magical healing can only do so much you know." The warlock then gave her a wink and Devona actually blushed a little. Considering how pale she is even a mild blush looked like fiery explosions beneath her skin.

I ground my teeth so hard I thought I might have to visit a zombie dentist.

Bogdan begged off accompanying Scorch back to Sinsation. Tavi tried to escape as well, but Scorch wasn't about to be denied twice. She hooked her arm in his and, since she was far stronger than the shapeshifter even while wearing the guise of a preteen girl, he had no choice but to allow her to drag him off in search of further excitement. Given the sort of activities a demon considers fun I hoped the lyke survived the night.

That left Bogdan, Devona and me – and you know what they say about three being a crowd? Well, evidently Bogdan had never heard of the phrase for he sat down on the couch next to Devona, laying his arm across the back, almost but not quite putting it around her. At that point I was a very unhappy dead man.

"You were really the star tonight," Bogdan said to Devona. "It was the security spell you placed on the club's entrance that prevented Overkill from simply waltzing out of there with Scream Queen's voice. It was extremely sophisticated spellcraft, worthy of one of my own people. Very few non-Arcane can work magic of that level. It was most impressive."

The warlock scooted an inch closer to Devona. If she noticed, she didn't react. Maybe, I told myself, she didn't react because she liked the idea of Bogdan – a living man – getting closer to her.

Don't be an idiot, I told myself. You know how Devona feels about you.

Still, there are a lot of disadvantages to being dead and one of them is that I'm not exactly fully functional in certain key areas, if you get my drift. And despite the fact that I disliked Bogdan quite a bit at that moment – actually, loathed might be a more accurate description of my feelings toward him – I had to admit that he was handsome enough, in a sleazy kind of way. And as sheltered as Devona had been for most of her life she hadn't had a lot of experience with men and might not realize just what a superficial, shallow and manipulative jerk he was. Yeah, loathed is definitely the right word.

"Thank you, Bogdan," she said. "That means a lot, coming from a warlock as accomplished as you are."

I'd had enough. Beneath my breath, I whispered, "Sic 'em, Rover."

At first nothing happened, but then Bogdan's red hair began to stir as if tousled by a sourceless breeze. A second later a miniature windstorm erupted in the great room centered, strangely enough, on the couch where Devona and Bogdan sat. They squeezed their eyes shut against the wind and Devona shouted something, but her voice was muffled by the storm's howling. Devona and Bogdan tried to stand, no doubt intending to get away from the couch and the winds that buffeted them, but the small-scale gale was too powerful, and every time they managed to rise off the couch so much as an inch, a fresh gust of air would shove them back down.

I let this go on for a minute or so before whispering, "That's enough, Rover. Heel."

The mini windstorm gave a final howl that sounded almost disappointed before finally dissipating. Both Devona and Bogdan's hair was mussed – revealing the beginnings of a bald spot atop the warlock's head I noted with petty satisfaction – and though Devona's leather outfit had weathered the storm just fine, Bogdan's clothes were now rumpled and in dire need of a good pressing.

"I'm so sorry about that, Bogdan!" Devona said. "I've been working on housebreaking Rover, but as you can see, he still acts up from time to time." She shot me a look then and in an icy tone added, "Doesn't he, Matt?"

"He does have his high-spirited moments," I said, doing my best to keep my tone neutral.

When Devona first purchased the Midnight Watch building we'd discovered that the original owner – a powerful warlock named Leander Crosswise who specialized in security magic – had created a guardian creature for his establishment by granting a level of sentience to a wardspell. Unfortunately for Crosswise when he decided to retire and sell the business the guardian had decided that the warlock had become a threat to the place it was supposed to protect and it killed its creator. The building gained a reputation for being haunted after that, especially since the guardian attacked anyone who considered purchasing the place, and the Midnight Watch building remained empty for decades. The creature had attacked Devona and I when we inspected the property and we'd barely managed to figure out what was happening before the creature destroyed us. We made friends with it, after a fashion, and in a strange way it had become something of a pet to us, hence the name Rover. I'd never been much on having pets when I was alive, but for whatever reason Rover and I seemed to get along pretty well and I could usually count on him to listen to me – especially if I encouraged him to misbehave. In many ways he was just a big puppy. A big disembodied puppy formed of mystic energy that had killed his first master and any number of potential buyers that had been foolish enough to inspect the property he guarded over the years, but hey, nobody's perfect. At least he doesn't piddle on the carpet.

If Bogdan suspected I'd had anything to do with Rover's sudden burst of playfulness he gave no indication. But he didn't look in my direction, either.

"No need to apologize," he said, reaching out and patting her hand. Earlier that week a street vendor hawking second hand cybernetic implants had tried to sell me a pair of laser emitting eyes. At that moment I wished I'd taken him up on the offer. If I had I'd have focused my ocular energy beams on the warlock's hand and severed it at the wrist. Bogdan went on. "The fact that you've been able to tame the creature to the extent you have is only further testament to your skill with spellcraft."

I'd had just about all the Bogdan I could take for one evening.

"I hate to give you the bum's rush, Bogdan, but as you said, Devona should get some rest."

It was a damned broad hint and I was pleased the warlock didn't miss it. "Of course. Forgive me for prattling on." He rose from the couch then turned to Devona. "Should I return tomorrow at the usual time? I know we don't have another job lined up at the moment, but if you want to get together to discuss our performance this evening…"

Devona gave me a quick frown before standing and giving Bogdan a smile. "That sounds good. I'll give you, Scorch and Tavi a call tomorrow and we'll set up a meeting time."

Bogdan had been smiling, but now his smile faltered a bit, as if he were less than thrilled at the prospect of having his fellow employees invited to his meeting with Devona, but his tone remained pleasant enough as he said, "I'll look forward to it. I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening."

With that the warlock turned and exited the great room, giving me a curt nod of farewell as he passed.

Devona waited until she heard the front door open and close before speaking.

"What was that all about?"

Now that Bogdan was gone I was beginning to regret my childish actions toward him and even though I knew I deserved the chewing out Devona was about to give me I still wanted to put it off as long as possible. So I decided to try and change the subject.

"I've been thinking. Maybe we should continue guarding Scream Queen a while longer. Overkill isn't exactly the type to gracefully accept defeat. There's a chance she might make another attempt to snatch Scream Queen's voice."

Devona shook her head. "Now that Overkill has failed three times and been exposed as the kidnapper – voicenapper? – she won't try again. Whoever hired her won't risk employing her any longer. What if next time she's captured and forced by the Adjudicators to reveal her employer's identity? No, after tonight Overkill's become a bad risk. Unfortunately that means the only way for her to regain face is to confront the person who forced her to stand down without so much as raising a hand against her."

"Which would be me."

Devona nodded. "If anyone needs guarding it's you, Matt. Not Scream Queen. But you know this. You're just trying to avoid talking about your problem with Bogdan."

Since distraction hadn't worked, I figured I'd give denial a shot.

"I don't have a problem with Bogdan. As far as I'm concerned he's no better or worse than the others." As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew I'd screwed up royally.

Devona had been frowning at me, but now her frown deepened into a truly serious scowl. "What do you mean by that?"

I was sorely tempted to try summoning Rover again and see if he might blow up another windstorm to distract Devona and allow me to beat a hasty retreat, but I knew she'd never fall for that.

"This is your business, Devona, and they're your employees. It doesn't matter what I think about them."

While we'd been talking Devona had remained standing next to the couch, no doubt keeping her distance from me because she was irritated. But her irritation now edged toward anger – I could feel it through our telepathic link – and she walked over to the fireplace where I was standing and fixed me with a look that said I'd better stop jerking her around.

"It matters to me," she said.

"Uh, could we go back to how I'm an idiot for being jealous of Bogdan?"

Devona just kept looking at me, and since it was clear that I wasn't going to get out of this, I decided to give it to her straight.

"You've been running the Midnight Watch for over a month now and you've done a great job. Word that the Watch is open for business again has gotten around the city and people are starting to hire you for some high profile gigs – like tonight."

"And…?"

"And so far, so good. When you re-opened the Watch you hired the best employees that you could afford and they did well enough when all you had to do was inspect a business's current security set up and recommend updates or investigate a case of employee theft at a warehouse. But now that you're landing bigger jobs the work is getting more dangerous. And I'm afraid Bogdan, Scorch and Tavi just aren't up to the challenge. Not only did Overkill almost get away tonight the three of them could've easily gotten killed. Sure, they survived, but what about the next time? And what about any innocents who might get hurt because your employees can't do their jobs?"

As I talked Devona's skin tone had become increasingly darker, changing from a pale white to a faint pink. On a fully human Caucasian woman the new color would've looked natural, but for Devona it was a sure sign that she was getting furious. When she opened her mouth to speak, instead of yelling, she spoke with a cold control. When you grow up in the house of a Darklord you learn to keep a tight rein on your emotions when you speak or else you might not live to reach the end of your sentence.

"I'll grant you that Bogdan, Tavi and Scorch need more training, but Overkill got the best of me tonight too, Matt. Are you suggesting that I'm not up to the challenge either?"

At this point I'd have rather gone a few more rounds with Overkill than continue with this conversation and I was desperately searching for an exit strategy.

"Of course not. Like I said you've done a fantastic job getting the Midnight Watch up and running again. I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe you should think about moving more slowly and not taking on jobs that are too dangerous until your team is ready for them."

I thought I'd done a decent job of sounding reasonably supportive while trying to climb out of the hole I'd managed to dig for myself. But I realized I'd failed when Devona said, "Our team."

"Huh?"

"It's our team, Matt. You and I run the Midnight Watch together." Her eyes narrowed and I could feel her probing my mind through our telepathic link. "Don't we?"

Normally I like being linked mind to mind with Devona. It allows us to experience a closeness that I've never known in a relationship before and that closeness allows us to have a physical relationship – simulated on the psychic plane – that would normally be impossible given my biological limitations. But right then I'd have happily severed the link if I'd known how.

"Devona, you know I'm proud of everything you've accomplished with the Midnight Watch so far and I'll support you in every way I can as you continue to grow the business. But the Watch is yours, Devona. Not mine. I'm happy to help out whenever I can, but I have my own work." I shrugged. "I guess I'm just used to being my own man – or zombie."

I'd tried to make a joke, but it went over like an explosive burst of flatulence at a funeral. Not only didn't Devona smile, she averted her gaze and I knew that my words had hurt her.

"Back on Earth you didn't work alone," she said. "You had a partner."

Dale Ramsey had been my partner when I'd worked homicide in Cleveland. We'd been a team for years until we investigated a series of murders that led us to Nekropolis. Both Dale and I were killed during the investigation, but unfortunately for my partner he didn't rise from the dead afterward like I did. Then again, I sometimes wonder if Dale wasn't the luckier of the two of us.

"Well, yeah. But… you know. He died." I sensed that Devona was trying to get at something, but telepathic link or not, the message wasn't coming through.

"Yes. But I thought that…" She trailed off and looked at the flickering coldfire flames.

"What?" I prompted.

She continued gazing into the fire a moment more before looking up at me and smiling.

"Nothing. You made a good point about the training we need if we're going to take on more risky jobs. I'll see what I can set up. In the meantime, I've got some work to finish up here, but it's nothing I need you for. It shouldn't take me more than an hour. Why don't you head on home and relax a bit? As busy as we've been lately, you could use the rest."

As a zombie I don't tire and I don't need to sleep, but periodic rest slows my body's rate of decay and helps me put off my next dose of preservative spells, which is a good thing considering how expensive they are. I'd seen Papa Chatha within the last week so I was still pretty fresh, but my skin was starting to get that tell-tale grayish tinge and I knew Devona's advice was sound. I couldn't help feeling that she'd been about to say something important and had changed her mind at the last minute, but I decided not to pursue the matter any further just then. It was getting late and I wanted to avoid a fight. We could always resume the conversation at a later date and if she decided not to bring the issue up again, that was OK too.

Feeling more than a little like a coward I gave Devona a kiss, said goodnight to Rover – who ruffled my hair with a tiny breeze of farewell – and left the building.

The large oak door closed with a sonorous thud behind me and I stepped out into the dusky half light of Umbriel's perpetual gloom. I heard the sounds of various locks – magical, mechanical and electronic – engaging behind me, and though I didn't possess the skill with magic to sense it, numerous wardspells also kicked in. The stone building didn't just house a security business – it was one of the most secure places in the city.

A metal plaque on the door read THE MIDNIGHT WATCH: SAFEGUARDING ALL WORKHOUSES AND INSTITUTIONS AGAINST INTRUDERS AND MEDDLING. SAVAGE BEASTS EMPLOYED. It was, as you might tell from the phrasing, the original sign put up by the Watch's founder several centuries ago and Devona had decided to keep it. Not only to maintain continuity, but because after decades of safeguarding her father's collection of rare objects, she had an appreciation for historical artifacts. The sign seemed a bit stuffy to me, but I had to admit it suited the place.

Devona and I lived only a few blocks west of there. This was a relatively sedate part of the Sprawl – one of the reasons why I'd chosen to rent an apartment here – but the emphasis was most definitely on relatively. The Sprawl is the Dominion of the Demon Queen Varvara and she believes in absolute freedom. It's rumored that the old Beast, Aleister Crowley, stole his infamous satanic commandant from her: Do as Thou Wilt. I wouldn't be surprised. If the Sprawl doesn't exist in a state of total anarchy, it'll do until the real thing shows up. But, like I said, this neighborhood was quiet enough, with pedestrians going about their business searching for prey or trying to avoid becoming prey – often at the same time – and vehicles of various makes, models and degrees of sentience rolling, crawling and scuttling down the street.

Some of the vehicles were imports from Earth: sports cars, SUVs, Hummers and so on. The Darkfolk may have relocated to another dimension, but they maintain ties with the world of their origin, mostly so that they can get their greedy little talons on the latest toys the human race invents. But there were plenty of home grown vehicles racing along the street as well. Carapacers – vehicles created from the hollowed-out animated husks of giant insects – drove alongside Meatrunners: leprous constructions of sinew, muscle and bone that didn't so much roll as lurch spasmodically forward on disjointed legs, diseased lungs expelling rancid exhaust as their drivers hurried toward whatever dark destinations awaited them. The latter monstrosities, like so much of the city's organic tech, sprang from the feverish and ever fertile imagination of Victor Baron, the original Frankenstein monster, who was something like Nekropolis's version of Thomas Edison – or maybe Bill Gates would be a more apt comparison. Everywhere you go you encounter one of his fleshy machines, each of them tattooed with the slogan Another Victor Baron Creation. Baron isn't a Darklord, but in his own way he's as powerful as any of them and certainly he's as rich. The city would grind to a halt without the monstrous tech his Foundry produces.

To the right of the Watch building was a misfortuneteller's establishment and on the left was a head shop (new and used, all species, original size and shrunken). Not exactly the most glamorous of neighbors, but they were, if not normal, harmless enough at least. Both businesses were closed – doors shut, windows dark – and I started walking west past the head shop in the direction of my apartment. Nekropolis follows a standard twenty-four hour Earth day, but because so many of its citizens don't need sleep, shop owners keep their own hours and many businesses stay open all the time. Not the Midnight Watch's neighbors, though, and given my current mood, that suited me just fine. The last thing I wanted was to have a bored shopkeeper stroll out onto the sidewalk and attempt to strike up a conversation with me. I wanted to be left alone with my thoughts.

The Sprawl contains a bizarre mix of earthly architectural styles – Victorian, gothic, baroque, postmodern, American colonial, classical, neoclassical, Spanish and more – along with structures that look like something straight out of a fever dream. Buildings that resemble giant insect hives resting next to structures formed of light and mist. Many of the buildings were formed from material resembling bone and the streetlights were made of the same stuff, making them resemble skeletal arms holding globes of greenish light. As I walked through the crazy quilt of Varvara's Dominion on my way home, I brooded and kept an eye out for danger. In Nekropolis, not paying attention to your surroundings is an excellent way to commit unintentional suicide. Viscous blue pseudopods extruded from sewer grates as the Azure Slime quested for bits of detritus to feed upon, but as long as I didn't step too close to the curb and tempt the creature, I'd be fine. Building fronts were covered with leech vine, a parasitic plant that grabs hold of its prey and feeds upon its blood. As a zombie my blood had long since turned to dry dust in my veins and the vine ignored me as I passed. Devona has to be more careful around the stuff, though. Leech vine loves vampire blood best of all – even half vampire blood. It's like the finest of wines to the plant. I find it poetic justice that one of the city's greatest predators has a blood thirsty nemesis that desires to feed on its liquid life essence, but the vampires don't see it that way. That's why the best leech vine exterminators in the city are Bloodborn.

I passed a number of nightclubs as I walked down the street and a majority of them had Frankenstein bouncers standing outside their entrances who resembled the bouncer at Sinsation – a few of them resembled him so much, in fact, that it was obvious they'd rolled off the same assembly line. More of Victor Baron's handiwork. 'Making life to make life better', as another of his slogans went.

I was halfway home, reviewing my conversation with Devona and mentally kicking myself for acting like such a jerk, when I passed by an alley. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the shadows and an instant later something obstructed my vision. I realized a cloth hood had been dropped over my head, but before I could do anything about it, I felt a razor thin sharpness bite into my neck. A garroting wire, I guessed. It didn't hurt, but I could feel the pressure as the wire was pulled backward, slicing through my bloodless flesh. When the garrote hit my neck bone, the wire began to vibrate with a soft humming sound, as if it were some sort of mechanical device, and it cut the rest of the way through my neck with the ease of a laser bisecting a stick of butter. All of this happened in mere seconds, far faster than my undead reflexes could react, and the next thing I felt was a sudden dizzying lurch as I fell, hit the ground, and bounced a couple of times before coming to a stop. At the same moment, I heard the sound of something large landing next to me with a muffled thud. This was followed by shuffling footsteps, rustling cloth and grunts of exertion. More footsteps then, quickly fading away. After that, there was only silence and darkness.

I already had a good idea what had happened to me, but I had to check. I tried to reach up and remove the hood from my head, but my arm refused to obey me. I then attempted to sit up, but once again my body failed to cooperate. The reason for this was distressingly simple: I no longer had a body. Or at least, it wasn't currently attached to my head.

This was not good. And a moment later, it got even worse.

I heard something moving – lots of somethings. Tiny claws scraping against stone, little high-pitched voices muttering, drawing closer as they spoke.

"What is it?"

"Something in a bag."

"Just more trash."

"No, no. Take a whiff!"

Soft snuffling sounds.

"Meat!"

"Starting to go bad."

"Starting to go good, you mean!"

Dark laughter then, with a hungry edge to it.

Inside the hood I couldn't see what was coming for me, but I already knew: carrion imps, some of the nastiest little scavengers in the city. Normally the miniature versions of ghouls aren't much of a threat, but I no longer had a body with which to defend myself. Now I was just a hunk of discarded meat, an unexpected but quite welcome feast for the little bastards, and once they picked my skull clean not all the magic in Nekropolis could resurrect me again.

All in all it was turning out to be a pretty shitty night.

FOUR

I may have only been a decapitated head, but I still had my brain, so the first thing I did was send out a telepathic SOS to Devona. I'd never tried to communicate with her through our psychic link at such a great distance before, but even if she did receive my message I knew there was no way she could reach me in time to prevent the carrion imps from chowing down on me – both sections of me.

I'd heard my body fall at the same time as my head struck the ground, so presumably my other half was lying close by. I wondered then who'd done this to me, sliced me in two and left me lying on the street for scavengers to snack on. I had any number of enemies, but there was only one person I'd seriously pissed off that evening: Overkill. Devona's words came back to me then.

The only way for her to regain face is to confront the person who forced her to stand down without so much as raising a hand against her.

Well, I certainly couldn't raise a hand now – or any other body part, for that matter. But I had a hard time believing Overkill was responsible for my current state. She was certainly capable of ambushing me and slicing off my head before I could react, no doubt about that. But my attacker hadn't said a single word to me and Overkill would have definitely wanted me to know she was the one who'd taken me out. But I didn't have time to worry about that now. I needed to survive long enough for Devona to reach me – assuming she'd received my psychic call for help and was on her way. If she hadn't… I thrust the thought aside and focused on not becoming imp food.

They approached cautiously, clawed feet scratching against the pavement, breath softly hissing in and out of their nostrils as they scented the air.

"You really don't want to do this." My voice came out as a rough croak, but it seemed I still possessed enough of my throat to speak. How I managed to do so without a pair of lungs to move air over my vocal cords, I'm not sure. I decided to put it down to zombie magic. A severed head is much scarier if it can talk, right?

The scuffling stopped and was replaced by a tense silence. I pictured a crowd of carrion imps gathered around my hooded head, standing frozen, eyes agape as they realized what they'd taken for a hunk of discarded meat was, in fact, alive – or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

A few seconds passed and then one of the braver imps spoke. "Yeah? Why not?"

His words were tough enough, but his voice quavered. Individually carrion imps are cowards. They're only truly dangerous when gathered together in packs. If I could keep them off balance and play on their fearful nature I might be able to prevent them from swarming me. It wasn't much of a plan, I admit, but it was all I had.

"Because I'm lying in wait for prey, and while I'd rather feed on something more tasty than imp, I'll settle for you if I have to."

A few more moments of silence and then the imps began whispering among themselves. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I had a good idea. Eventually the brave one spoke again.

"What sort of creature are you that lies in wait for prey concealed by a piece of cloth?"

Damn good question, I thought. "I'm a… a sharp-sting," I said, thinking fast. "I'm waiting for some curious passerby to reach into the hood. When they do, I'll sting them and implant an egg in their body. The egg will carry my consciousness, so I'll leave my current body and take up residence in my new host. Once my egg hatches I'll begin to slowly devour the host from the inside over the course of several months and when the host dies I'll leave the hollowed out corpse in search of a new home."

I was impressed with myself for coming up with such a good bluff on the fly. But then the imps – all of them – began talking.

"You fill up that hood pretty good. Big as you are, you don't seem like you'd be a very effective ambush predator. I think–"

"Would a creature like you need to be sentient at all, let alone possess the power of speech? How does thinking and talking help you find new hosts? It's not–"

"Even if you are what you say you are, why should we be afraid of you?"

"Yeah, you can only lay an egg in one of us."

"That's right. The rest of us will eat the body you leave behind and then kill your new host – and then we'll devour him too."

"Seems like a win–win scenario for us."

"Besides, 'sharpsting' is a stupid name," one of the imps concluded and there were murmurs of agreement all round.

I'd known carrion imps could talk, but because they were scavengers, I'd assumed they weren't too bright. I'd assumed wrong and it looked like it was going to result in my skull being picked clean by the smart little bastards.

I heard claws scratch pavement as the imps started toward me again. I tried to turn my head from side to side in the hope that the movement might frighten them, but I couldn't do it. The most movement I could manage was to open and close my eyes and mouth and wiggle my tongue. Not exactly the most intimidating of actions.

I felt tiny hands grab hold of the hood's cloth and begin searching for an opening, as if I were some kind of treat the imps were trying to unwrap. This would be an excellent time for Devona to get here, I thought, with more than a hint of desperation.

That's when I heard the first imp scream. It was quickly followed by a second scream, then a third, and then dozens of imps were shrieking in terror and I heard them scuttle away en masse as they fled into the alley. I felt a tug on the hood and I allowed myself to hope that help had arrived.

"Devona? Is that you?"

No reply, just another tug on the hood. Then I felt myself being dragged slowly across the pavement away from the alley, which meant I was being dragged toward the street. I wasn't currently connected to my body, so technically I couldn't feel a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, but that's exactly what I did feel when I realized what was happening. The Azure Slime had hold of my head and was pulling me toward the nearest sewer grate. This was worse than being eaten by carrion imps. At least they would've left my skull behind. Once the Azure Slime was done digesting me there'd be nothing left but a memory.

No one knows for certain what the Slime is or where it came from. Some believe it migrated from Earth with the other Darkfolk when they first came to Nekropolis, while others believe Varvara created the amoeba-like monstrosity to keep the streets of her Dominion clean, while still others believe the Slime evolved from all the nasty stuff that's been dumped into the Sprawl's sewer system over the centuries. Whatever the truth is, while the Azure Slime mostly confines itself to feeding on trash left in the Sprawl's streets and gutters, if anything remains on the sidewalks too long, the Slime will try to grab hold of it and drag it down into the sewers where the main mass of its body can begin the digestion process – and that includes pedestrians, which as you might guess, tends to discourage loitering. When the imps had decided to check me out, they'd ventured too close to the mouth of the alley and lingered there too long. They'd drawn the Slime's attention and, from the way it had sounded, a number of them had been snatched by the Slime before the rest had managed to escape. Unfortunately for me the Slime had discovered my head and was now retracting its pseudopod, pulling me hood and all toward the main mass of its body where I would be absorbed and then digested. Since I don't feel pain I wasn't worried that being digested would hurt, but I did wonder how long it would take before enough of my brain was destroyed for me to lose consciousness. If I managed to retain consciousness long enough there was a chance that Devona might be able to find me, even down in the sewers, trapped inside the Slime's viscous blue goo. But that all depended on how fast the Slime took to metabolize the goodies it scavenged and I had no idea how long that was.

Now would be an even more excellent time for Devona to get here, I thought.

I felt a sharp tug on the hood, pulling me in the opposite direction from the street. The Slime tugged back and I heard a soft grunt as someone yanked harder.

"Let go, damn it!"

Swaddled within the hood's darkness, I smiled.

"Your timing is as impeccable as ever, my love."

Devona gave one last tug before the Slime finally gave up and released me. Devona shifted me around in her hands to get a better grip and then pulled the hood off of me. I glanced to the side and caught a glimpse of the Azure Slime's pseudopod illuminated by the greenish glow of a streetlight as it slithered back into the sewer.

"Better luck next time," I muttered. Then I looked up at Devona. "Guess you heard me calling."

"Good thing, too. You were about to become an appetizer for that thing." Devona was working to keep her tone light, but I could hear the worry in her voice. Even in Nekropolis it's more than a bit disconcerting to find yourself having a conversation with your lover's decapitated head. "What happened?" she asked.

I gave Devona a quick rundown.

When I was finished she frowned. "Do you think Overkill's responsible?"

I tried to shrug, but considering I currently lacked shoulders, I settled for answering her verbally. "Maybe. It doesn't seem like her style, though. Not public enough."

"True. But we can worry about whodunnit later. Right now we need to get your head reattached to your body."

"Papa's not going to be happy when we come knocking on his door." Papa Chatha had done a number of various repairs on me over the years – reattaching body parts from ears all the way up to arms. But I'd never asked him to reattach something as complicated as my head before. I feared it might be beyond the houngan's skill, but he was someplace to start. "Do you think you can manage to carry my body by yourself?" Devona may be petite but her half Bloodborn physiology makes her stronger than an ordinary human and I'd learned not to underestimate what she was physically capable of.

"Maybe," she said. "If you'll just tell me where it's at, I'll give it a try."

I blinked in surprise. "Excuse me?"

"Your body. It's not here. Just tell me where to find it and we can…" She broke off. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

I thought of the sounds I'd heard after my head had been cut off: shuffling footsteps, rustling cloth, grunts of exertion… There was a good reason my body wasn't anywhere in sight.

It had been stolen.

"I've heard of body snatchers before," Papa Chatha said, "but this is a new one on me."

Papa was a dignified, handsome black man in his early sixties with a tattoo of a blue butterfly spread across his smooth shaven face. At times the edges of the butterfly's wings seem to ripple, but it's probably just a trick of the light. He sat on a simple wooden stool, tapping his bare toes on the wooden floor as he considered my predicament, Devona sitting across from him on a second stool, my head cradled in her lap.

While Papa thought, I scanned the shelves in his workroom, taking in the multitude of materials that a professional voodoo practitioner needs to perform his art: wax-sealed vials filled with ground herbs and dried chemicals, jars containing desiccated bits of animals – rooster claws, lizard tails, raven wings – candles of all sizes and colors, varying lengths of rope tied in complicated patterns of knots, small dolls made of corn shucks and horsehair, books and scrolls piled on tabletops next to rattles and tambourines of various sizes, along with pouches of tobacco, chocolate bars, and bottles of rum. Papa says he uses the latter three substances to make offerings to the Loa, the voodoo spirits, and while I have no reason to doubt him, I've noticed that he tends to run out of rum before anything else.

Papa frowned, smoothed his loose white pants which matched his pullover shirt, and then sighed.

"I suppose the first thing we need to do is find out where your body is," he said. "Assuming that it hasn't been destroyed already. Or eaten." He rose from his stool and walked over to one of his worktables and began rummaging through the bits and pieces of voodoo paraphernalia scattered across its surface.

"You really need to work on your bedside manner, Papa," I said.

He replied without turning around to look at me. "You want a reassuring bedside manner, go visit the Fever House. You want someone who can sling a little goofer dust for you, I'm your man."

"What I don't understand is why someone would want a zombie's body," Devona said. I couldn't turn my head to show her the withering look that was on my face, but she must've realized how her words sounded, because she immediately added, "Sorry, Matt."

"A corpse is a useful ingredient in any number of spells," Papa said. He picked up an object that resembled an inside-out geode covered with chicken beaks, considered it for a moment, then shook his head and put it back down on the table. "A man who's been resurrected from the dead has even more uses, and considering how rare Matt is…" Papa shrugged. "I don't fully understand the magic that animates him, but I understand enough to know that he's one of a kind. And the more unique an object is, the more power it has."

I died destroying something called the Overmind, a psychic weapon created from the combined brains of powerful psychics, and I'd used a magical device called the Death Watch to do it. I died the precise instant the energies of both the Overmind and the Death Watch were released and somehow they'd combined to resurrect me as a fully intelligent, self-willed zombie. I was no drooling mindless thing shambling about on an endless quest for fresh brains to devour, nor was I the undead slave of a sorcerer. I was my own man, albeit a dead one. The Overmind had been, you'll pardon the expression, the brainchild of the Darklord Talaith, ruler of the Arcane, and I'd been on the top of her shit list ever since. And that gave me another suspect to consider in my bodynapping.

"Maybe Talaith is responsible," I ventured, but I immediately realized my mistake. "No. Even if for some reason she wanted to decapitate me, she'd never take my body and leave my head behind. Revenge is personal with her and she'd want my head if for no other reason than to rub my nose in the fact that she's finally gotten even with me."

"Probably," Papa said. "Then again, Talaith's crazy. Who knows what she might do, or why?"

"You know, Papa, you may be a good houngan, but it's your optimistic worldview that keeps me coming back," I said.

Papa grinned as he glanced over his shoulder at Devona and me. "All part of the service." He continued speaking as he turned back to his worktable and resumed rummaging through its junk. "By the way, Matt, I caught your interview with Acantha on the Mind's Eye tonight. You have a real knack for dealing with the media."

"You know me," I said. "Always gracious and cooperative during an interview."

I considered the possibility that Acantha might have been the one who attacked me – or at least arranged for the attack to be carried out. I'd embarrassed her on her own show in front of thousands of viewers and there was no way the gorgon would ever forgive that. But as with Talaith I had a hard time seeing Acantha carrying out her revenge anonymously. Not only would she want me to know she was making me pay for humiliating her on the air, she'd want to broadcast her payback for the whole city to see. The more I thought about it the more unlikely a suspect Acantha seemed. Still, I couldn't rule her out, just as I couldn't rule out Overkill or Talaith or several dozen others who'd I'd managed to piss off since I'd arrived in Nekropolis. You know the old saying about how you can judge a man's success by how many enemies he has? Well, right then I felt like the most successful dead man in Nekropolis.

"Aha! I thought I had one of these lying around somewhere." Papa turned back around to face us once more, holding out his hand to show us the round flat object resting on his palm.

"It's a compass," Devona said.

"Yes, indeed," Papa confirmed. "And when I'm finished with it, it'll lead you to Matt's body."

I gazed doubtfully upon the compass. "It doesn't have a needle," I pointed out. "And even if it did it wouldn't work in Nekropolis, would it?" When the Darkfolk decided to leave Earth they'd chosen to build their new city in a dimension of darkness called the Null Plains. I'm not sure the place is even a planet… not like Earth, anyway. But from what I understood the Null Plains didn't have magnetic poles, so a compass wouldn't function.

"It's not that kind of compass," Papa said. "Instead of magnetism it employs sympathetic magic. In particular, the Law of Contagion."

"What's that?" I asked, but it was Devona who answered.

"'Once connected, always connected,'" she said, sounding as if she were reciting from memory. "It means that once two things have been in contact they're forever after bound on a magical level. The longer they've been in contact the stronger that connection will be."

Papa nodded. "We're lucky. Since your head was left behind we can use it to locate the rest of you."

I glanced at the compass. "I hate to break this to you but my head's too big to fit inside there."

"We don't need your whole head. Just part of it." Papa grinned as he showed me what he held in his other hand: a pair of pliers.

"Head east, Lazlo."

"You got it, Devona." Lazlo hit the gas and his cab swerved alarmingly as he rounded a corner.

"Take it easy on the curves, OK?" My voice was stronger now, louder and clearer, thanks to some of Papa's hocus pocus.

"Relax, Matt," Lazlo said. "No need to lose your head." He guffawed, a sound something like a cross between a shotgun blast and a whoopee cushion's fart.

Lazlo's a demon cabbie who works the Sprawl, though he'll drive you to other Dominions if the fare's right. In my case the ride was always gratis because Lazlo refused to take any darkgems from me after I'd helped him out of a jam not long after I'd first become zombified. Whenever I needed a ride Lazlo would appear as if by magic and ferry me to my destination. Once when I'd asked him how he knew whenever I needed a lift, he just shrugged – at least, I think that's what he did. Lazlo looks something like a cross between a mandrill and a ferret, with a little carp around the edges, and with his inhuman physiognomy it's sometimes hard to read his gestures. "I keep a close eye on you, pal," is what he told me.

His answer might be a bit on the stalkerish side but Lazlo's always been there when I needed him, so I did my best to ignore the creepiness factor.

Lazlo's cab is a patchwork monstrosity cobbled together from metal and swaths of what I hope is animal hide and I've seen the vehicle open its hood to reveal a very large mouthful of sharp teeth. I'm careful to avoid walking too near the front of the cab just in case it isn't too picky about what it eats.

Given the bizarre nature of Lazlo's ride I wasn't sure it had anything resembling a suspension but, if it did, it was in dire need of new shock absorbers. I felt every little dip and bump in the road as if they were major seismic events and if Devona hadn't been holding me in her lap and steadying me by keeping her hand on top of my head, I'd have been bouncing around the cab's interior like a giant pinball covered in rotting meat. In her other hand Devona held the compass Papa Chatha had given us. In place of its missing needle it now had one of my back teeth. As we navigated the twisting, winding streets of the Sprawl the tooth spun slowly around as it tried to get a fix on my missing body.

I thought back to Papa's extraction of the tooth. It had taken him several minutes to pry the thing loose from my jaw and the entire time I was giving thanks to whatever deity might be listening that the nerve endings in my mouth were as dead as the rest of me.

We weren't simply relying on the tooth compass to locate my body, though. Papa had also promised to put the word out on the street that someone had stolen my body. I might've made my fair share of enemies over the years but I've made plenty of friends, too, and Papa would make sure they were all keeping their ears to the ground for any word of what might've happened to my body or who might be responsible.

"Magic's all well and good," he'd said. "But sometimes friends are more help than the most powerful spell."

Devona – always security-conscious – had worried that putting the word out about my current condition would let my enemies know that I was vulnerable to attack, but Papa had promised he'd be discreet about who he spoke to and we decided to leave it at that.

Lazlo glanced in the rearview mirror at us, an action which never failed to alarm me. The way Lazlo drives it's never a good idea for him to take his gaze off the road.

"What's the range on that thing?" he asked.

"Papa wasn't definite," I told him. "A couple miles, give or take, was his best guess. We'll just have to drive around until the compass gets a hit."

"No prob. I'm at your service for as long as it takes. We may have to stop and refuel, but maybe we'll get lucky and my cab'll find something to snack on along the way."

"I hope you're joking," I said.

Lazlo burst out with another of his deafening laughs.

"You're a funny guy, Matt!"

Thankfully I was spared from having to learn anything more about his vehicle's dietary needs when Lazlo turned on the radio. A DJ's voice full of exaggerated enthusiasm blared from the tinny speakers.

"You're tuned to Bedlam 66.6, Nekropolis's hit machine! Coming up this hour we'll have tunes from Hard Rock Zombies, The Crypt Kicker Five, and Jude's Hammer, but first here's a blast from the past from Kakophonie, in honor of Scream Queen not losing her voice tonight. Better luck next time, Overkill!"

I groaned as the band's so called music blasted through the cab. Sometimes Nekropolis is more like a gossipy small town than a large city and word about any scandal – the juicier the better – travels more swiftly than a flock of vampire bats equipped with jet packs.

"I hope Overkill didn't hear that," Devona said. "She'll be more determined than ever to get back at you." She paused. "That is, if she isn't the one who stole your body in the first place."

It was true. As pissed off as Overkill undoubtedly was at me, the last thing I needed was for people to start gossiping about how I'd stopped her. The bad publicity would only turn her already fiery fury to a white-hot incandescence.

"I'll worry about that later," I said. "First, I have to find my other half."

"I thought I was your other half," Devona said.

"No, you're my better half."

Devona gently ruffled my hair. "You're sweet. Hopefully we'll be able to locate your body soon. But if we don't… well, things won't change between us. You know that, right?"

"Yes."

As I might have mentioned earlier I'm not anatomically functional in certain areas but, with Devona's ability to create a mindlink between us, I didn't need to be. We're able to join on the astral plane, merging spirits in a way that's more deep and profound than any physical lovemaking could ever be. As long as my mind was intact we'd still be able to bond psychically, although the prospect of Devona carting me around in a hatbox the rest of our lives didn't exactly appeal to me. I forced myself not to think about that. Back on Earth I'd never been the type to borrow trouble and my time in Nekropolis – where living, dead, or somewhere in between, existence is precarious at best and fleeting at worst – had only strengthened that trait.

Instead I turned my thoughts to the conversation Devona and I had before I'd left the Midnight Watch. I'd been telling myself that I kept apart from Devona's business so as not to interfere, but now I wondered if that wasn't just an excuse. Maybe I hadn't gotten to know her employees because I hadn't wanted to bother. Not long after we'd first met Devona told me that I'd died inside a long time before my physical body did. Her observation had hurt at the time, all the more so because she was right. I'd been trying to be more emotionally available – as a therapist might put it – ever since, but I still wasn't very good at it. The next time any of the Midnight Watch team invited me out for a drink after work maybe I should accept, I thought. Unless it was Bogdan.

"Devona, about the things I said earlier…"

I felt her hand atop my head tense.

"Don't worry about that now, Matt," she said, just a little too quickly. "For now, let's concentrate on finding your body."

Her words were delivered in a calm, rational tone, but through our link I could feel how much she was still hurting. As strong and intelligent as she was I still sometimes forgot how much she depended on my support and tonight I'd failed to give it – or at least, it seemed that way to her, and that was all that mattered.

But she didn't want to talk about it right then and I had to respect that. And truthfully, I was grateful to postpone what promised to be an uncomfortable conversation a little while longer. So I tried to send a psychic message through our link, a combination of I'm sorry and I love you. I didn't know if she received it or not, but she patted my head and even though it made me feel a bit like a cute pet sitting on his owner's lap, it reassured me.

Lazlo drove on and Devona and I continued to watch the tooth compass, waiting for it to indicate where my body was.

It was well after midnight but the Sprawl is always open for business. The streets were thick with traffic and Lazlo wove erratically in and out of lanes with disturbing regularity, earning a multitude of raised middle fingers – many with claws on the tip – horn blasts and snarls from the more feral drivers. At one point he nearly sideswiped the Headless Horseman and ended up with splattered pumpkin smeared across his rear window. I was just glad the Horseman hadn't glanced into the cab and seen me or else the specter might've been tempted to replace his missing head with mine. Then again, if he had, at least I'd experienced a smoother ride on the back of his ghostly steed than I would've in the backseat of Lazlo's nightmare conglomeration of a cab.

We crisscrossed the Sprawl, cruising the main drag of Sybarite Street and passing such well-known landmarks as the Freakatorium and the Grotesquerie, as well as the House of Dark Delights and Pandemonia. We even circled the high rise of Demon's Roost, the seat of Varvara's power. But no matter where we went my tooth continued its slow rotation around the compass's face, never once indicating my body might be near.

We drove past the crystalline pyramid that was the Eidolon Building where the city's major media outlets were housed. The Daily Tome, Bedlam 66.6 and Mind's Eye Theatre all have offices there and I wondered if even then Acantha was inside, seething over how I'd humiliated her on the air and planning revenge – assuming she hadn't already taken it by stealing my body, that is. But if she had orchestrated the theft of my body it wasn't located anywhere near the Eidolon Building, according to the compass.

Our drive continued like this for several hours and I'd just about resigned myself to living the rest of my unlife as a talking head when the tooth finally swiveled to point northeast of our current location.

Devona told Lazlo and I followed up by ordering him to step on it.

I immediately regretted my words as the cab shot forward as if suddenly rocket propelled. Devona lost her grip on me and I tumbled to the floor and bounced around a bit before she managed to get hold of me again and settle me back onto her lap. The severed head routine, to use a metaphor that technically didn't apply at that moment, was becoming a real pain in the ass.

Devona kept a close eye on the tooth compass and called out course corrections to Lazlo as he drove. Fifteen minutes and uncountable traffic violations later we found ourselves at the edge of the Sprawl, close to its border with the Wyldwood, the Dominion of the lykes. The businesses there tend to cater toward their shapeshifter neighbors, mostly restaurants that served hunks of raw meat and mugs of blood – few self-respecting lykes would go near a glass of aqua sanguis. They'd rather drink animal blood just as long as it was the real thing. Devona instructed Lazlo to pull up to a rundown shack of a restaurant called Tooth and Claw. He parked in front of the establishment, earning wrinkled noses and low throated growls of disapproval from a group of lykes on the sidewalk. But the cab just growled right back and the lykes suddenly remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere and departed.

"Keep the motor running, Lazlo," Devona said.

"No problem. Holler if you need help, though."

I promised we would, then Devona opened the door and, holding me tucked beneath her arm, climbed out of the cab. In her other hand she held the tooth compass and she kept her gaze fixed on it as she stepped onto the sidewalk.

"You think the restaurant owner stole my body because their scavenger customers have been craving filet of zombie?"

I was joking – mostly. But lykes came in all types, not just the typical werewolf kind. Werehyenas, werevultures… there were any number of lykes who preferred decayed meat to fresh.

"Let's hope not," Devona said, not taking her eyes off the compass. "Otherwise, while we might be able to get the bulk of your body back, we'll have to wait a while, and I don't think you'll appreciate the state it's in once we recover it."

"I didn't realize you possessed a crude streak, Ms. Kanti."

"Must be the bad influence of the company I've been keeping lately, Mr. Richter." She paused. "Bad news. The compass is pointing directly at the restaurant. Should we go in?"

I thought about it. Without my body I didn't have my jacket and that meant I didn't have any of the various toys I carry around for dealing with occasional annoyances, like a restaurant filled with territorial lykes who would be less than thrilled to have a halfvampire carrying a zombie head enter their establishment. Most lykes can't stand the smell of undead flesh, zombies in particular, so neither of us would receive a warm welcome if we went inside.

"Let's go around the back," I suggested. "Maybe we'll find a way to sneak in."

In lyke culture the strongest predators have the highest status and the lower ranking predators, along with the herbivores, serve them. So the kitchen staff would be composed of lower caste lykes, which meant they'd be easier to deal with than the alphas dining at the Tooth and Claw. At least, that's what I hoped.

Devona carried me down an alley alongside the ramshackle building. I had a few bad moments when we passed a group of carrion imps sifting through a pile of trash – I'll never look at the little bastards the same way again – but otherwise we made it to the other side of the alley without any trouble.

The rear of the Tooth and Claw looked like the back of any other restaurant: Dumpster alongside the aisle wall, back entrance lit by a single light overhead, a metal bucket lying on the ground next to the door to collect cigarette butts and gnawed clean bones left by staff during breaks.

I was trying to come up with some kind of story that we could use to tell the kitchen staff to get them to let us in and take a look around when Devona stopped walking.

"Uh, Matt? The tooth isn't pointing to the restaurant any more. It's pointing to the Dumpster."

I wondered then if my earlier joke hadn't proved prophetic, if maybe some lyke chef had carved the dead meat from my bones for his scavenger customers and then tossed my bones into the Dumpster. After all, the tooth compass was designed to locate my body – or what was left of it. There was no guarantee what state my body would be in when we found it.

The Dumpster lid was down, and fearing the worst, I told Devona to open it. She tucked the compass into a back pocket – though considering how tight her leather pants were, I have no idea how she managed to do it – and then reached up with her free hand, gripped the Dumpster lid, and threw it open. As short as she is she couldn't see into the Dumpster, so she gripped my hair and held me up as high as she could so I could take a look. There, lying atop a mound of animal bones and bloody rags, lay my body. The arms and legs were askew but they didn't appear to be broken and aside from the wound on my neck where my head had been attached, my body looked none the worse for our time apart.

My body wasn't the only thing in the Dumpster, though. Standing on my chest was a single carrion imp. The tiny creature ignored me as he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "Hey, guys! You're not going to believe what I found!"

"Call Lazlo," I told Devona. "We need to get the rest of me out of there, pronto."

Devona shouted Lazlo's name and at the same time a pack of eager carrion imps came racing out of the alley.

I hoped Lazlo was a fast runner.

FIVE

Devona and Lazlo managed to get my body into the back seat of the cab and then we all climbed in. Devona gave my body a quick examination and confirmed that it hadn't suffered any significant damage. We also learned that whoever had stolen my body hadn't removed any of the tricks I carried in the pockets of my suit jacket and he or she had left my 9mm in the shoulder holster.

Lazlo pulled away from the Tooth and Claw and Devona took out her handvox, called Papa Chatha, and then held the device to my face so I could talk with him. Handvoxes are the Nekropolis version of cell phones and they're yet another patented Victor Baron creation. They're made of flesh with an ear for you to speak into and a mouth that relays the voice of the person on the other end. If you hold a vox too close to your own ear you can sometimes feel the moving lips of the mouth against your skin, a sensation that, despite my dead nerve endings, never fails to make me a little queasy. Because of this, and so Devona could hear as well, I asked her to put Papa on speaker phone.

I quickly filled Papa in on what had happened since we left, and while Lazlo drove around this section of the Sprawl, Papa told me he'd been doing some more thinking about my situation.

"You know I'll do anything in my power to help you, Matt. You're not just one of my best customers, you're also my friend. But – and this is no false modesty on my part – while I can sew back on an ear or finger, even reattach an arm, there's no way in the Nine Hells that I'll be able to successfully reattach your head. You may be dead, but your nervous system still functions in its own fashion. I simply do not possess the necessary knowledge and skill to repair all the required connections between your brain and body. I'm sorry."

Papa went on before I could reply.

"Something else you need to be aware of is that an injury of this magnitude has severely damaged the integrity of your preservative spells. You'll need to get them reapplied as soon as possible. The longer your two… er, pieces remain separate, the more decay you'll experience. I can cast preservative spells on your head and body separately, but doing so will make it more difficult to rejoin them. It's hard to explain, but basically, by treating your two halves as separate objects, I'll be making them separate. So if at all possible, it would be better to wait until your head and body are reconnected before I apply any new preservative spells. No more than a couple days. Otherwise…"

He didn't need to spell out the alternative for me. Without preservative spells I'd rot away to nothing within a short time. Normal voodoo zombies decay more slowly because they're tied to their master's lifeforce, and as for the brain-munching zombies – well, nobody's exactly sure where they came from, but they tend to decay more slowly too. Not me, though. I decay at a fairly constant rate and it usually takes me a couple weeks to go from looking almost human to looking like boiled chicken sliding off the bone. But injuries to my body, while they don't hurt, speed up the process of decay. The more damage I take, the faster I rot. So even though I don't have to avoid serious injury to preserve my life the same way I did when I was human, in many ways, my current condition isn't all that different. Instead of seeing a physician, I see a voodoo priest, and his magic – along with his admittedly clumsy sewing skills – has kept me in a state of undead health for years.

"Well, if you can't put me back together, who can?"

"You could try the physicians at the Fever House," Papa said.

The Fever House is a hospital in Gothtown that provides the most advanced medical care in Nekropolis, in many ways more advanced than back on Earth. In order to preserve the quality of the human blood supply over the millennia vampires developed the medical arts and passed them along to human physicians. When the Darkfolk left Earth several centuries ago the Bloodborn established the Fever House and continued exporting medical knowledge to Earth – which is more than a little disturbing when you stop to consider that the flu shot you're getting is the result of a predator species wanting to keep its food supply healthy. But at any rate, the doctors at the Fever House might well possess the knowledge necessary to reassemble me.

Devona spoke for the first time since I called Papa. "The Fever House takes in patients of all species," she said. "With one exception."

I sighed. "Let me guess: zombies."

She nodded. "You know Bloodborn view them as nothing more than reanimated corpses. Never mind that full-blooded vampires are too. It's the fact that zombies don't have any blood that disgusts them."

"I hadn't thought of that," Papa said. "I suppose that leaves only one alternative."

"And that would be?" I prompted.

"Who else deals on a regular basis with stitching dead things together and bringing them back to life?" Papa asked. "Or at least a semblance of life."

"Victor Baron," I said.

I thanked Papa for the suggestion, he wished me luck and then he disconnected.

I told Devona what Papa had said. She called Information, got the number for the Foundry, and called. It was close to three in the morning now but in a city of perpetual dusk the citizens keep odd hours, so it was worth a shot to give Victor Baron a call. If we had to wait until morning it would be no great hardship. I needed to be reconnected before Papa could reapply my preservative spells, but I wouldn't rot away to dust in the next few hours. Still, the sooner I was whole again the better.

Devona had taken the vox off speaker phone and now held the device to her ear. I could hear a faint ringing from the other end and it went on long enough that I was beginning to think no one was going to answer, but then I heard a soft click followed by the sound of someone speaking, though I couldn't make out the words.

"It's a voice menu," Devona said. She listened for a moment and then pressed a button on the vox. She listened a few more seconds, frowned slightly, and made another selection. This went on for several more moments and I thought she was going to end up having to leave a message. Evidently Devona did too because she gave a start when someone actually answered.

"Oh, hello. Sorry to be calling so late but I'd like to make an appointment to see Mr. Baron. A friend of mine is a zombie and he, well, not to put too fine a point on it, someone cut off his head and–"

She stopped and listened for a moment.

"Yes, we have both his head and his body. No, the body isn't moving on its own." A pause as she listened again. "His name is Matthew Richter, and–"

Another interruption, another pause. When Devona started speaking again, she sounded pleased and surprised in equal measure.

"We're in the Sprawl right now, but we can come over right away. Thank you so much!"

She disconnected, closed the vox, and slipped it back into her pocket.

"Believe it or not, we have an appointment with Victor Baron. He'll be waiting for us whenever we get there."

I was pleased, of course, but an inherently suspicious nature is a prerequisite for a PI, and I couldn't bring myself to believe it had really been that easy.

"Who did you talk to?"

Devona shrugged. "An assistant of some sort, I assume. He said his name was–"

"Ygor," I guessed.

She frowned. "No. Henry. He told me not to worry about calling late. 'We never close here at the Foundry,' he said. He sounded blandly professional at first. You know, doing his job but not really interested in who I was or what my problem might be. But he became very interested when I told him your name."

"Why would that mean anything to him?"

From the front seat Lazlo said, "You helped save the city last Descension Day. You're famous." He thought for a moment. "Then again maybe he caught you on Acantha's show tonight." He chuckled, a sound like splintering bones. "I didn't realize you were so funny. You were a real sport to go along with her gags."

I sighed – which is a real trick when you're not attached to your lungs. "What can I say? You know how much I love a good joke."

Had everyone in the city seen that stupid program? I was really starting to regret my lack of restraint earlier in the evening. I considered sending Acantha a few hundred roses as a down payment on an apology, but as angry as the gorgon was, she'd probably just turn them to stone.

"All right, Lazlo," I said. "Let's head for the Foundry."

Lazlo pulled his cab onto the Obsidian Way and soon we were crossing the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures, leaving the Sprawl and entering the Wyldwood. Nekropolis is shaped like a gigantic pentagram, its five Dominions separated by Phlegethon, a river of green fire that burns the spirit instead of the flesh. The only way to pass between Dominions is to use one of the bridges that connect them and the only way to cross in relative safety was to travel the Obsidian Way. The smooth glossy black road offers no magical protections for travelers, but the laws of Nekropolis state that travel between Dominions is not to be impeded for any reason – provided travelers keep to the Obsidian Way. If you venture from the road you're fair game for whoever, or whatever, might find you. Of course, as with a lot of laws in Nekropolis, it's really more of a strong suggestion than anything else, so traveling the Way is still dangerous. You need to keep your guard up and move as fast as you can and hope you don't attract any undue attention. And if you do you'd better hope you're stronger, faster or smarter than whatever is trying to catch you. Preferably all three.

The Wyldwood, as the name implies, is mostly forested, though there's a good amount of pastureland as well. There are villages located in the Dominion, though they tend to be few and far between. Those lykes who desire a more urban lifestyle tend to live in the Sprawl and while Lord Amon frowns on this, he doesn't forbid his subjects to leave the Wyldwood. Still, the vast majority of shapeshifters live there.

I'd traveled through a bit of the Wyldwood before, on foot, which is precisely as dangerous as it sounds. During that time, I'd stuck close to the Obsidian Way, but supposedly the interior of the Wyldwood changes its shapes just as lykes do. One day it might be a dark European forest, the next African grasslands, and the day after that, arctic tundra. I don't know if it's true but I've met Lord Amon, King of the Shapeshifters, and since he can change his form into that of any creature he desires, I've no trouble believing his Dominion is as metamorphic as he is. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason the land bordering the Obsidian Way remains stable in the Wyldwood is because Father Dis wants it that way to promote greater ease of travel. Then again, nice thick woods are much easier for predators to hide in and maybe that's the real reason the land around the Obsidian Way never changes. It makes for better hunting that way.

Whichever the case, the tree line on either side of the road varies little – huge, ancient trees with thick trunks and dense foliage kept us company as we drove. Although it wasn't long before we picked up new companions.

A dozen or so lykes appeared out of the woods and began running alongside the Obsidian Way, easily keeping pace with Lazlo's cab despite how swiftly we were traveling. They darted in and out of the woods on either side of the road, lithe forms moving with eerie silent grace. Some wore full animal forms, others appeared as human-beast hybrids, while still others were mostly human with only slight feral touches: pointed ears, sharp teeth, yellow eyes… But all the lykes moved with supernatural speed that was at once both terrifying and beautiful to behold. They were all predators of one kind or another, canine and feline, primarily. No mixbloods, though. Once a lyke has visited Dr. Moreau at the House of Pain for a genetic makeover, he or she isn't welcome back in the Wyldwood. A lot of mixbloods are lower caste lykes who've chosen to leave the Wyldwood rather than continue serving the alphas. Can't say as I blame them. I've always had a bit of a problem with authority myself.

The lykes pacing us on both sides of the road weren't simply out for a bit of exercise. The wrecked and abandoned vehicles we passed every few miles were testament to that. The lykes chased cars in the hope that they'd blow a tire or throw a rod and be forced to pull over, in which case it was snack time. Of course, few people are foolish enough to travel the Obsidian Way unless their vehicles are in tiptop shape and they're well armed. Which means that the lykes need to take matters in their own claws. The law forbids them from stepping onto the Obsidian Way to attack a vehicle, but if a driver just happens to encounter an obstacle…

Lazlo gazed out the windshield. "Aw, dammit! I hate lykes!"

"What's wrong?" I couldn't see, so Devona lifted me up and propped me on the back of Lazlo's seat so I could look over his shoulder and out the windshield.

"Spike strip," Lazlo said. "A lyke just tossed one onto the road ahead of us. Hold on."

I'd just managed to catch a glimpse of the gleaming metal of the spike strip illuminated in the wash of the cab's headlights when the vehicle suddenly lurched upward. I almost fell, but Devona grabbed hold of my head with both hands to steady me, though my body slumped over against her. We would've strapped my headless form in when we first put it in the cab but Lazlo doesn't believe in seatbelts. He says they show a serious lack of faith in a driver.

I have no idea how something that at least outwardly resembled an earthly cab managed to jump into the air, but that's exactly what Lazlo's vehicle did, sailing over the spike strip and landing on the other side with a jarring impact. No damage was done, though – or at least, none the cab couldn't contend with – and we kept going. The lykes keeping pace with us snarled with frustration, eyes wild, tongues lolling, jaws flecked with froth, but they continued flanking us, no doubt looking forward to their next attempt to force us to stop.

The snarls and growls gave way to full-fledged howls, and Lazlo grimaced. "I've had enough of this shit." He thumbed a switch on the dash and in response the cab's hood retracted into the main body of the vehicle with a moist sliding sound. A mottled discolored organ rose forth from the vehicle's cavity, flesh coated with slimy mucus and shot through with swollen purple veins. I recognized the cab's tongue, but as I watched it thickened and swelled, lengthened and extended, until it had assumed a very different shape, one reminiscent of a mounted machine gun. The fleshy weapon began firing – or perhaps spitting is a more appropriate term – swiveling back and forth, spraying silvery gobs of organic material as if they were bullets with accompanying chuff-chuff-chuff sounds. The silver sputum hit the lykes on both sides of the road as we passed and the werebeasts howled and screamed in agony as the ammunition struck them. From the severity of their reaction I knew that the mucusbullets Lazlo's cab produced somehow contained actual silver. A dozen lykes fell to the barrage from the flesh-gun, while the others decided that this night discretion really was the better part of valor and fled, slipping silently away into the shadowy woods.

Once the lykes were driven off the fleshgun stopped firing, descended into the vehicle's cavity – returning to its normal tongue shape in the process – and the hood slid back into place.

Lazlo then turned to look over his shoulder and gave us a grin.

"Nothing like a few hundred rounds of silver to make a lyke think twice, eh?"

The cab swerved alarmingly to the right while Lazlo said this and both Devona and I shouted for the demon to turn back around before his haphazard driving accomplished what the lykes couldn't and caused us to wreck. Lazlo faced forward again, seemingly unconcerned that we were heading straight for a huge oak tree, and he managed to bring the cab back under control in time to avoid a collision.

Lazlo continued driving and Devona and I were silent for several moments while we adjusted to the fact that we'd barely just avoided becoming weremonster kibble. When I had my nerves under control, I said, "That's a new feature, Lazlo. When did you have it installed?"

"What do you mean?"

I was used to Lazlo being, shall we say, of generally vague disposition, but I had a hard time believing he didn't understand my question.

"The gun. I saw you hit the switch to activate it."

"Switch?" Then Lazlo laughed. "Naw, I was just trying to turn up the radio to drown out the sound of the lykes. All that howling and snarling is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me."

"But the gun…" I insisted.

"I have no idea where that came from," Lazlo said. "My little baby is just full of surprises, isn't she?"

He patted the dash lovingly and the cab's engine made a noise that sounded surprisingly like a purr.

Evidently word that Lazlo's cab spit silver had preceded us for we saw no further sign of lykes as we passed through the rest of the Wyldwood. As we approached the Dominion's border we saw the green light cast by the flames of Phlegethon flickering against the grayish-black sky and soon we crossed the Bridge of Silent Screams and entered the Boneyard. The Dominion of the Darklord Edrigu, the Boneyard is the realm of the dead, and it fit the part perfectly. The buildings were rundown and always on the verge of collapse. Stone pitted and chipped, wood warped, glass smudged and cracked, mold and mildew clinging to every surface as if they were varieties of paint. Sounds are muffled in the Boneyard and refuse to travel as if the air itself is dead. And while I don't breathe and thus can't personally attest to it I'm told the air smells of must and slow decay, like an ancient tomb that's been sealed for a thousand years or more.

Here Lazlo's insane kamikaze driving was less of a hazard than usual. Few living people had reason to visit the Boneyard and those who did pass through stuck to the Obsidian Way. So the streets were deserted, giving Lazlo fewer targets to hit. The sidewalks were deserted too, but if you stare long enough and allowed your eyes to go out of focus, you begin to see ghostly images of pedestrians garbed in fashions spanning the course of human history, and you get the sense that, far from being deserted, the Boneyard is as full as any major metropolitan area on Earth, and in its own macabre way just as alive. As someone with more than one foot in the grave myself I'm able to see more of the Boneyard's true nature than most, but even I sometimes feel that I'm only catching a glimpse of a larger and more complex picture.

The longer we drove the more we began to see the suggestion of ghostly vehicles sharing the road with us. As with the spectral pedestrians, various ages were represented by the traffic – horsedrawn carriages, model Ts, stagecoaches, Roman chariots, ultra-modern sports cars… For the most part the insubstantial vehicles gave us a wide berth, but every now and then one would pass right through us, and even I felt a cold chill of ectoplasm as for the briefest of instants we shared the same space.

"Lousy ghost drivers," Lazlo muttered after a spectral double decker bus drove through us. "Where's a ghost cop when you need one?"

The drivers never acknowledged our existence, didn't so much as shoot us a single glance. They just stared forward, faces expressionless as they drove. I wondered if they were even aware we were present or if, having crossed all the way from one state of existence to the other, they were no longer interested in having anything to do with a mundane corporeal world that was now beneath their notice.

"You're a dead guy, Matt," Lazlo said. "Maybe you can help me understand something I've always wondered about."

He took a hand off the steering wheel – never a confidence building move considering how he drove – and gestured at the ghostly traffic surging silently around us.

"Where do all these ghosts come from? They can't all have migrated here during the Descension. That was almost four hundred years ago and many of these ghosts are more modern than that. Some of them are probably ghosts of people who died in other Dominions and eventually drifted to the Boneyard, but they can't account for this many spirits. I mean, there must be thousands of them."

"Just because I'm a zombie doesn't mean I'm an expert on everything to do with life after death," I told him, "but as I understand it, when the Darkfolk left Earth for Nekropolis, Lord Edrigu gathered up the world's ghosts – those spirits who for whatever reason remained earthbound after their death – and brought them with him, just as the other Darklords brought their subjects with them. Galm brought the vampires, Amon brought the shapeshifters, and so on. But Edrigu knew that people would keep dying on Earth, creating new ghosts, so he left servants behind whose job it is to scour the world, find earthbound spirits, capture them and then bring them to Nekropolis to live in the Boneyard."

"Kind of like a wildlife preserve for the dead, eh?" Lazlo said thoughtfully. "So that's it? The ghosts just stay here, going about their ghostly business, for the rest of eternity?"

Devona jumped into the conversation then. "Yes, although there are rumors that Lord Edrigu's dark mirror doesn't only open a portal to Earth. Supposedly it can open a doorway into… well, whatever comes next. After life, I mean."

Each of the city's five Darklords – as well as Father Dis – possesses a magic mirror that allows them to create a passageway to and from Earth whenever they wish. To be technical, the Lords possess two mirrors: a personal one and a second, much larger one that can be used to transport large object such as freight-laden vehicles back and forth between dimensions. The Darklords need some way of importing necessary materials and supplies. After all, Nekropolis couldn't function if it was an entirely closed system.

Lazlo drove in silence for several moments as he digested what we'd just told him. Eventually, he said, "What about you, Matt?"

"What do you mean?"

"You ever been tempted to go through Edrigu's mirror? I mean, you are dead, so you could pass through if you wanted to, right?"

"I don't know."

The thought had never occurred to me. I may be dead but I don't think of myself as a ghost. I still have a physical body after all. But physical objects can pass through a Darklord's mirror. That's how I originally came to Nekropolis. But I'd never thought that I might be able to physically pass from Nekropolis's dimension to… what? Heaven? Nirvana? Or maybe what lay on the other side of Edrigu's mirror was a hellish place worse than Nekropolis. Or – and in some ways this was an even more frightening thought to me – what if there was nothing on the other side? What if a spirit simply ceased to exist once it entered the mirror and instead of another world all that waited for those unfortunate spirits was final, everlasting oblivion?

Devona stroked the back of my head. "You know, Matt, if you ever want to…" She allowed the thought to trail off, unfinished.

"Thanks," I said, "but I'm content with remaining a living dead man in a city of monsters." I glanced toward my headless body propped on the seat next to us. "At least I will be if we can manage to make me whole again."

At that moment we entered a section of the Boneyard that looked as if it had been bombed into rubble. The buildings here lay in ruins and the streets were strewn with rubble. Lazlo was forced to slow down and detour around the chunks of stone, brick and mortar in the road and the lack of intact buildings around us provided an unobstructed view for miles. In fact we could see all the way to the far east of the Dominion where Edrigu's stronghold lay, situated precisely on his point of the pentagram that formed the city's borders. Edrigu's home was called the Reliquary and it lay housed deep inside a gigantic prehistoric burial mound that looked something like a gently rounded mountain off in the distance. I'd never been there before – this was the first clear view I'd ever had of the place, as a matter of fact – but I had to admit it was something to see. I've visited other Darklord strongholds, and while each is impressive in its own way, there's an ancient grandeur to Edrigu's home, a primal simplicity as if it had been physically shaped from bygone millennia and set in place to stand for all eternity, as basic and uncompromising as Death itself.

Lazlo glanced out the window at the ruins surrounding us. "Man, Edrigu really isn't into urban renewal, is he?"

"He's the King of the Dead, not the King of Architecture," I said. I wondered if the ruined condition of this neighborhood wasn't the reason Victor Baron had chosen to locate the Foundry here. Baron began his life as the original Frankenstein monster, a creature made from the assembled parts of dead bodies and for this reason it made sense that he lived and worked in the Boneyard, a realm of the dead, and this unnamed blight of a neighborhood was among the most desolate of locations in this Dominion. Perfect for a being who was, essentially, a scientific version of a zombie.

Because it was the only intact structure for several miles in all directions, the Foundry loomed large against the surrounding landscape, a dark mass of gray stone that resembled a cross between a medieval keep and a factory built during the height of the Industrial Revolution. Towering smokestacks rose into the sky, fouling the air with black clouds of pollutants. But considering the inhabitants of this Dominion were already dead, the environmental impact was negligible. Perhaps another reason Baron had set up shop here: no need to worry about where and how he dumped his plant's waste products. Rising from the roof of the Foundry and stretching between the smokestacks was an intricate metal lattice containing thick tangled coils of rubber coated cable. Blue-white bolts of electrical energy coruscated across the lattice in a constant ebb and flow like ocean waves. I couldn't smell the sharp tang of ozone in the air, but Devona later told me it permeated the whole area, but even through the cab's closed windows I could hear the constant crackle, pop and hiss of the lattice's electrical discharge, as well as the deep thrumming sound of power so massive it could barely be contained, like the perpetual rushing of a huge waterfall.

Now that I was this close to the Foundry I wondered if Lord Edrigu – or maybe even Father Dis – had insisted Baron build his factory here because of the desolation, since it wouldn't matter if Baron's facility experienced an "industrial accident" that might affect the surrounding area. This was immediately followed by a more disturbing thought: considering that the Foundry had been there for over two centuries maybe Baron's facility had somehow been the cause of the surrounding devastation.

As you might imagine this thought did little to inspire confidence in the man's ability to help me get my head on straight, so to speak.

As we drew closer to the Foundry we began seeing vehicles in the road – not ghost vehicles, but physical, three dimensional ones. Dark semi trucks with the stylized VB of the Victor Baron logo on their trailers passed by, hulking creatures with patchwork faces behind the wheel, carrying the latest shipments of Baron's creations to customers throughout the city. Vehicles resembling hearses glided through the street as well, also bearing Baron's logo on their doors. They belonged to the Bonegetters, employees of Baron's who traveled throughout Nekropolis on an endless quest to locate dead bodies – or cast-off body parts – and bring them to the Foundry to be used as raw material for Baron's work. Considering the savage nature of the Darkfolk, violence occurs on an all-too-regular basis, and when deadly mayhem results, the Bonegetters do their best to make sure they're on the scene to recover any useful bits and pieces when the bloodshed is over.

The Foundry grounds were surrounded by a twenty-five foot wrought iron fence and Lazlo sniffed when he saw it.

"That thing might look impressive to tourists," he said, "but it wouldn't keep out a fly, let alone a…"

Lazlo trailed off as a large black gorecrow approached the fence. The bird flew high enough to pass over the bars, but the instant it crossed the fence's perimeter, there was a blue flash and the bird burst into flames and plummeted to the ground.

"Like I said, Baron's got himself a hell of a security system," Lazlo said, his voice sounding a bit weak. "Good thing we're expected."

"A force field of some kind," Devona said. "Impressive. I wonder if it only prevents physical objects from entering or if it can stop magical intrusions as well."

"If we don't get flash-fried trying to get inside, you can ask Baron yourself," I said.

"I'd love to pick his brain," Devona said. "No pun intended. Along with everything else his factory produces, Baron manufactures a number of security products. Reanimated guards, both canine and humanoid, as well as living, organic alarm systems. The Midnight Watch is just small potatoes to someone like him, but if we can learn something from him, or better yet, enter into some kind of partnership, even if only on a small scale…"

Even though I knew it was childish of me, I was irritated by Devona's words.

"We didn't come here to network. We came to get me put back together, remember?"

Devona's eyes narrowed, an expression I knew meant she was struggling to contain her anger.

"Of course," she said, trying to sound as if she weren't upset and succeeding for the most part. "I was just thinking out loud."

If my head had been attached to my body right then I'd have kicked myself for being such an idiot. What was it with me and Devona's business? I'd criticized her employees earlier in the evening and now I'd complained when she recognized a potential opportunity in talking with Victor Baron. Why was I finding it so hard to be supportive? I had no answer, and not wishing to make matters worse, for a change I did the smart thing and kept my mouth shut as Lazlo turned off the road and stopped before the Foundry's main gate.

A metallic skull with organic eyes was mounted on a pole to the left of the gate and it swiveled to look at us. Lazlo rolled his window down and leaned out, but before he could say anything, the skull spoke.

"Damn! You're hideous! No wonder you couldn't wait until morning to see Mr. Baron. But I have to warn you: he may be a genius, but I'm not sure even he's going to be able to pretty up that ugly mug of yours!"

"I'm not the one with the appointment," Lazlo growled. "It's my friend Matt. He's in the back."

The skull sentry turned to face the back window. Devona rolled it down and held me outside so the skull could get a good look at me. The sentry skull's living eyes moved back and forth as it regarded me and I knew there was a living brain encased in that metal cranium. If I'd ever had any doubts that Victor Baron was who and what he claimed to be, they vanished at that moment.

"Just a head, huh?" the skull said. "Believe me, I share your pain."

The gate began to open with a soft hum, and when it had opened wide enough, Lazlo drove slowly through.

The intensity of the power thrum increased the closer we got to the main entrance until I could feel my teeth vibrating. The sensation was merely annoying for me, but when I looked up at Devona, I saw that she was grimacing, jaw clenched tight, lips drawn back to reveal her fangs, which were more prominent than usual, and I knew she was in pain. I heard a low moaning sound then that I first took to be coming from Lazlo, although I'd never known the demon to suffer discomfort of any sort. But I quickly realized the moaning wasn't coming from the front seat; instead, it seemed to be coming from all around us. I understood then that the sounds of distress were emanating not from Lazlo, but rather from his cab.

Lazlo patted the dashboard. "Don't worry, sweetie. It'll be OK."

There was something about the softness in Lazlo's voice that for the first time made me think that maybe the cab was more than simply a vehicle to him and he more than a driver to it. I've become a lot more broad minded since moving to Nekropolis, but even so, the images that went through my mind at the thought of Lazlo and his cab as a couple were more than a little sickening. But lots of people react to Devona and me the same way, so I told myself to be more tolerant.

A light above the entrance flared to blue-white life as we approached a pair of huge iron doors. Lazlo pulled up and the doors started to swing open before he finished parking.

A being cloaked in a hooded brown robe and pushing a wheelchair stepped outside. The being's movements were slow and it lurched from side to side as it walked. One shoulder was higher than the other and the left arm was considerably longer than the right. The flesh of the hands appeared almost bone white in the fluorescent light, and the skin was covered with thick, ugly scars.

The figure opened Devona's door and gestured for her to step out. She did so, carrying me beneath her arm.

"Welcome to the Foundry, Ms. Kanti, Mr. Richter." The voice was a rough whisper and I had to strain to hear it over the loud thrumming issuing from the Foundry. Though it was difficult to tell, I thought it belonged to a man – or at least something that had once been a man. He went on. "I take it the body is still in the cab?"

"I got it," Lazlo said. He left the cab's engine running, walked around to the rear passenger side and retrieved my headless body. He carried it with ease as if it weighed no more than a straw filled scarecrow. He placed my body in the chair gently and the robed man secured it with leather straps around the chest, wrists and ankles. Despite his obvious deformities he performed this operation deftly and within moments my body was ready to travel again.

Devona turned so that I could face Lazlo.

"Thanks for the help," I said.

Lazlo grinned, a sight that would make even the most vicious serial killer wet himself in terror. "You never have to thank me, Matt. You know that. Still, you're welcome."

Just then the cab's hood opened a crack and a mournful wail came out. Lazlo placed his hand on the roof and gently rubbed its surface.

"I'm afraid we can't stay and wait for you," he said. "The sound's getting to her. But we'll stay in the neighborhood and come back to pick you up when you're finished, OK?"

I almost asked Lazlo how he'd know when Devona and I were done – I'd never known him to carry a vox – but there was no point. One way or another Lazlo always knew when I needed a ride.

"Sounds good," I said.

Lazlo gave us a parting wave before climbing back into his cab and roaring away from the main entrance as fast as possible. For an instant I thought he would ram the now closed gate on his way out, but the sentry skull was able to open it in time, if just barely, and Lazlo zoomed off into the darkness, the skull's obscenity-laded shouts of angry protest following him.

The robed man turned to us and for the first time I caught a glimpse of the face hidden within the hood's shadow. Its features were misshapen and twisted, like a wax figure that had melted partway before cooling and becoming solid once more.

"Let's go," he said. "Victor is expecting you."

He gripped the wheelchair's handles and began pushing my body toward the open entrance, walking with that strange lurching gait of his. Devona followed, carrying me, and we entered the lair of Victor Baron.

SIX

Once we were inside the metal doors swung shut of their own accord. Given their size, I expected them to slam closed with a heavy clang, but they made no sound as they shut. What's more, the moment they closed, the power thrum that had been so intense outside disappeared and it became almost eerily quiet.

As if reading my thoughts the brown robed man said, "The Foundry is completely sound-proofed on the inside."

I don't know what I'd expected the interior of the Foundry to be like, but it certainly didn't reflect its gothic-industrial exterior. The floor was covered with clay-colored tile and polished oak paneling covered the walls. Stylish lights hung from the ceiling at regular intervals, providing soft, warm, soothing illumination. Classical music played at a low volume from hidden speakers, completing an effect that Devona later told me was somewhat spoiled by the faint odor of formaldehyde in the air.

The brown robed man pushed my body down a long hallway, moving in a lurching side-to-side motion and Devona had to slow her pace to keep from outdistancing him. The robed man wasn't much for small talk, it seemed, and after a few moments of our walking in silence, Devona tried to draw him out.

"Thank you again for agreeing to see us despite the lateness of hour, Mr.…?"

"You may call me Henry. And think nothing of it. We don't keep regular hours around here. Victor has no need for sleep and his supply of energy is inexhaustible." He let out a snuffling laugh. "A little joke, there. As you might guess, Victor can recharge himself from the Foundry's machines whenever necessary."

As if in response to Henry's words, the hall lights dimmed for a moment before returning to full strength.

"Pay no mind to that," he said. "Happens all the time around here."

It was hard to tell given the state of the man's voice, but I thought I detected a hint of an accent that I couldn't quite place. European, certainly. German or maybe Russian. But such accents are common in Nekropolis given the amount of Darkfolk who had made their home in Europe before the Descension and I thought no more of it.

"Victor would've come to meet you himself, but he's caught up in his latest project. He's something of a workaholic."

Henry's words were spoken plainly enough, but there was a slight edge to them, as if he were making a criticism of his employer that he intended to only partially conceal.

Devona and I exchanged a glance at this, but neither of us responded. Disgruntled employees are the same no matter what dimension you live in.

We passed a series of paintings on the walls depicting various scenes of a castle nestled among forestland with picturesque mountains in the background. The paintings weren't sinister at all. The sky was a gentle blue dotted with white clouds, the grass and trees were painted in mild greens, as if the sun was shining down brightly upon them.

Henry noticed Devona and I admiring the paintings.

"You like them? They depict Frankenstein Castle and the family's ancestral lands."

"They're beautiful," Devona said with more than a trace of wistfulness. Though her mother had come from Earth, Devona had been born and raised in Nekropolis and had never visited her mother's home. She'd had the chance once, but she'd given it up to remain in Nekropolis with me. She'd assured me that she didn't regret her decision, but at times like these I couldn't help wondering if on some level she wished she'd chosen differently.

"Have you read Mary Shelley's novel?" Henry asked. He went on before either of us could reply. "Some things she got right, other things she got wrong or simply invented." He nodded toward a painting of the castle. "That's the monst– I mean Victor's birthplace."

Devona and I caught his verbal slip of course, but as with his earlier comment, we let it go without remark. Besides, it's not as if monster is a pejorative term in Nekropolis.

The three of us – or four if you count my body on its own – reached the end of the hall. It branched off to the right and left and Henry turned in the latter direction. This hallway resembled a hospital corridor, everything white with bright fluorescent light panels in the ceiling. We passed a number of office doors with name plates on them: DR. X, DR. HEIDEGGER, RAPPACCINI, DR. PRETORIUS, ROSSUM, HERBERT WEST, ROTWANG, DR. GOLDFOOT…

"Victor keeps a number of the city's most prominent scientists on his payroll," Henry said. "He likes to maintain a healthy supply of high quality brains, you know." He chuckled at his own joke, which was good since neither Devona nor I were so inclined.

Henry escorted us deeper into the Foundry and before long we began encountering other employees. Some were merely odd – like the wild-haired, wild-eyed man in a white lab coat who kept telling a pop-eyed hunchback in a black cloak that his name was supposed to be pronounced "Fronk-en-steen," along with the handsome young man with curly black hair wearing a corset, fishnet stockings, 70s glam-rock boots, and far too much make-up.

"A distant family cousin," Henry explained about the latter. "To be honest he's a mediocre scientist, but he's great fun at office parties."

Others were downright bizarre, even for Nekropolis, such as the fly headed man garbed in a stained lab coat who carried a tiny human headed fly perched on his shoulder. The tiny creature kept saying, "Help meeeee!" in a plaintive, high-pitched voice. Henry told us to ignore him.

"The lazy thing's always trying to con someone else into doing his work." He shouted after the departing duo, "You get paid for a full day's work, and we expect a full day's work!"

The fly lifted a foreleg that terminated in a miniature human hand and flipped Henry the bird.

And of course there were the monsters. Frankenstein ones, I mean. What Victor Baron's publicity refers to as the "repurposed dead." Some seemed benign enough, like the slightly silly and bumbling creature carrying a box of lab supplies who, when he attempted to wave hello to us, dropped the box to the floor with a shattering crash.

"That's going to come out of your salary, Herman," Henry said as we passed. "As usual."

Herman just sighed deeply and bent down to clean up his mess.

Other monsters were decidedly more sinister like the shambling mass of arms and legs that didn't appear to have a face and which left a slime trail behind as it traveled or the pack of upside-down human heads that scuttled past on what looked like crab legs growing out of their skulls.

"You know," Devona said thoughtfully, "if Baron isn't able to reattach you to your body…"

"Don't even think it," I said.

"One of Victor's more innovative designs," Henry said. "He's always trying to develop new uses for leftover parts."

Eventually Henry brought us to a set of double doors labeled LABORATORY 17. A sign above the door warned AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

"Victor should be waiting for us inside," Henry said.

There was a hand scanner on the wall and Henry pressed his right palm flat against it. The scanner hummed, a line of reddish light passed over Henry's hand, and a moment later the door swung inward.

"That seems like an easy enough security feature to bypass in a place like this," Devona said. "All someone would have to do is cut off your hand and hold it to the scanner."

I thought the comment sounded a little on the ghoulish side for Devona, but then I remembered where we were. Cutting off body parts was business as usual at the Foundry.

"Wouldn't work," Henry said. "The scanner is designed to check hypermetabolic energy rates on both the atomic and subatomic levels, as well as search for evidence of genetic tampering. Around here, when the sign says 'authorized personnel only,' it means it." He grinned, scarred, leathery lips drawing back to reveal a mouthful of twisted, discolored teeth. "After all, if you want to open a locked door, you need the correct key, right?"

Without waiting for us to respond Henry wheeled my body into the lab and Devona and I followed.

I'd never met Victor Baron before, but I'd seen him around town a few times, and I'd watched a profile of him and his business on Mind's Eye once. "Adonis-like" is one of the descriptions most commonly applied to him and for good reason. Physically Baron appears to be the epitome of human perfection. Mid-thirties, tall, handsome, body trim and fit, hair chestnut-brown, facial features any male model would envy, piercing ice-blue eyes that radiated both high intelligence and emotional depth. His lightly tanned skin was flawless – no signs of scarring or stitching. He wore a white lab coat over a white shirt, both of which were splotched with brownish-red stains, black pants and black shoes. He looked like a male model or perhaps a movie star who'd decided to chuck his career and take up mad science for a living.

As we entered, Baron turned and flashed us a smile so white and perfect it would have made an orthodontist weep with joy.

Baron's laboratory contained a bizarre hodgepodge of technologies which only made sense given that its owner was an amalgamation of parts taken from different bodies. Much of the assembled equipment consisted of hi-tech top-of-the-line imports from Earth – sophisticated computers, medical diagnostic machines and the like – but some of it would've been better suited to a display of antique technology: Van Der Graaf generators that sparked and sputtered and machine banks covered with rows of glowing-hot vacuum tubes. A half dozen worktables were situated around the room, containing rows of chemicals and powders stored in thick glass vials, along with spread out surgical instruments of various kinds, each longer, sharper and nastier-looking than the last. The instruments' stainless steel gleamed in the lab's fluorescent light and I was mildly surprised that the blades weren't coated with dried blood.

Victor Baron's own fleshtech was represented in the room as well. One of the computers had a woman's head attached to it instead of a monitor screen and a number of the cables that connected machines and which lay strewn about the floor resembled extended spinal columns. But most impressive – or perhaps I should say disturbing – of all was the operating table located in the center of the lab. An intertwined column of spines descended from the ceiling above the table, supporting a fleshy mass shot through with pulsating swollen veins. Extended outward from the bottom of the mass were a half dozen arms, a mix of male and female as well as various races, both human and non human. It appeared Baron was an equal opportunity vivisectionist.

"Sorry I didn't come to the door to greet you when you arrived, but I was trying to get caught up on one of my new projects. As you might imagine there's no end of work to be done around here and I feel like I'm eternally behind. Even with all the excellent help I have."

Baron's voice was a mellow tenor and he pronounced each word with the precision and ease of a skilled elocutionist. Listening to him speak was like listening to a master musician playing his instrument. As the story goes Baron hadn't been quite so godlike when he first came to Nekropolis, but he'd had over two centuries to become his own ultimate creation, the pinnacle of what the reanimatory arts could accomplish. Dr. Frankenstein might have given Victor Baron life, but by this point he was most definitely a self-made man.

Baron had approached us as he talked and he laid a perfectly manicured hand on Henry's shoulders. The assistant grimaced in response. Maybe the man was attempting to smile and didn't have enough control of his facial muscles to pull it off, but somehow I doubted it.

I glanced over at the table where Baron had been working. A large glass tank sat on the table's surface, filled with a thick clear liquid. Suspended in the viscous goo was a coiled mass of what looked like thin red tubing surrounding a trio of hearts that had been fused together. The hearts throbbed in unison and the tubing pulsed in time with each beat.

Baron must've noticed me looking. "It's an independently functioning circulatory system," he explained. "Something Lord Galm commissioned me to work on. There's a shortage of willing blood donors in the city and since aqua sanguis provides little actual nourishment for Bloodborn Galm would like me to create an alternative source of blood for his people. The Bloodborn would keep one of these creatures in their homes to feed off the blood it generates, something like a farmer getting fresh milk from a cow." Baron frowned then. "Unfortunately the creatures live only a few days at most, so they're hardly practical." His frown eased. "Still, we'll get it right eventually, won't we, Henry?"

"Yes, Victor. Eventually." There was a distinct lack of "go-team" enthusiasm in the man's voice, but Victor didn't seem to notice.

"I'm surprised my father hired you," Devona said. "He's not big on technology."

"Perhaps Galm's perspective is broadening as time goes on. The other Darklords make use of our products. Lady Varvara especially, considering the bulk of our customers live in the Sprawl, and of course Lord Edrigu finds many uses for our creations throughout the Boneyard. But we have been known to do business in Gothtown–" he gestured toward his circulatory prototype – "and even a bit in the Wyldwood. Not so much in Glamere, though. Lady Talaith forbids her people to have anything to do with modern technology. But even among the Arcane we've made a few inroads. Certain spells require toxic ingredients that are too risky even for the Arcane to handle. Here we can create assistants capable of withstanding all manner of dangerous substances. But Talaith has permitted only a handful of our creations to enter her Dominion. Still, one step at a time, yes?"

"Speaking of Darklords, some refer to you as the Sixth Lord," I said. "There's even been rumors that some of your more influential clients have been lobbying Father Dis to make the designation official."

"That's very flattering, of course, and it speaks to how important the Foundry's products have become to the city. But when all is said and done, I'm an inventor and a businessman. I have no interest in acquiring political power." He paused, then shook his head and gave us a rueful smile. "Pardon my manners. I get too caught up in work at times. It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Richter. Though I must say I wish it had been under better circumstances. Henry told me about the attack on you earlier this evening. Horrid business, but that's the Sprawl for you. Violence is far too often a way of life there."

Baron leaned down to get a better look at me. I might've felt self-conscious about that, but given how tall Baron was, even if my head had been on my body, he still would've had to bend over to look at me.

"You know, Mr. Richter, I've been following your career with interest for some time now."

"You have?"

Baron reached out and gently prodded the edges of my neck wound with his index finger. "Of course! There are many varieties of reanimated dead in Nekropolis, but you're the only one of your kind. That makes you a unique specimen."

"Uh, thanks. I think."

Baron straightened then and reached out to shake Devona's hand. "Ms. Kanti, it's a distinct pleasure to meet you as well."

Devona had to tuck my head under her arm to free up a hand for Baron to shake. He held the grip a bit longer than necessary, and though I couldn't see from the angle I was at, I imagined Devona blushing a bit. Baron is the handsomest man in the city, maybe the handsomest who'd ever lived, whether in Nekropolis or on Earth, and it was difficult for women not be affected by how attractive he was. Hell, I'm straight and even I had trouble taking my gaze off him.

It was stupid of me but I couldn't help thinking that if Baron had managed to perfect his physical form, then all his organs – internal as well as external – would be the epitome of anatomical perfection. In other words he probably had an enormous and indefatigable schwanzstucker.

What was it with me and being jealous lately? Devona loved me and our psychic bonding was as intimate and satisfying as any physical lovemaking, maybe more so. Still, I was glad when Baron finally released Devona's hand.

"Well, Mr. Richter, let's get you up on the table and have a look at you."

Baron took my head from Devona and carried me to the operating table. Over his shoulder he said, "Henry, if you could bring Mr. Richter's body?"

Henry wheeled the rest of me over and between the two of them they got the two halves of me onto the table. Henry removed the clothes from my body while Victor further examined my neck wound, all the while asking me more detailed questions about how I got it.

"Interesting," Baron said. "Whoever attacked you used something more elaborate than a simple garrote. Your head was severed from your body with almost laser-like precision. And to judge by the swiftness of the attack the culprit was practiced in the use of the device."

Something about Baron's observation stirred a thought in me. There was something important there, but try as I might, I couldn't quite grasp hold of it. Baron continued.

"As to precisely what the tool was, I'm afraid I can't say. We have devices here at the Foundry that could do the job and there are any number of weapons available in the city that would serve the same purpose, at least to judge by the condition of some of the bodies my Bonegetters bring me." He smiled. "The good news is a clean cut like this makes for an easier repair."

"So you can fix him?" Devona asked. She'd joined Baron and Henry at the operating table, standing a little too close to the former for my liking.

Baron's expression became serious. "I didn't say that. While I normally work with dead bodies, my specialty is bringing them back to life, or at least a semblance thereof. But Mr. Richter is a zombie – he exists in a state between life and death. And he's not a typical zombie. He's a highly functional one whose body operates nearly as well as it did when he was alive. That makes his central nervous system more complex than a garden variety zombie. I can't simply sew his head back onto his neck and call it a day. I'm afraid it's going to be a bit more complicated than that.

He poked and prodded both sections of me some more, hmming and tsking as he worked. At one point he turned to Henry and asked, "What do you think?"

Henry scowled in thought. "Both sections are in a similar state of arrested decay. Typical of a zombie. Though the body's a bit worse off than the head. Probably because it's been inanimate for so long. Reconnection should be possible, if tricky." He paused. "If that's what Mr. Richter really wants."

Now it was my turn to scowl. "What do you mean?"

"We have all sorts of spare parts around here," Baron began, but then he stopped and frowned. "Speaking of which, I prefer to have a full complement of such when I operate, and none have been delivered yet. Henry, if you wouldn't mind? I seem to have forgotten my vox again."

"I swear you'd forget your head if it wasn't attached." Henry looked at me then. "No offense," he added before removing a hand vox from a robe pocket and turning away from the table to make a call.

"As I was saying," Baron continued, "I have numerous spare parts – including entire bodies. The mind, the personality, indeed the very self is contained solely within the brain, Mr. Richter. To put it simply you are your head and your body exists to move that head around. But you don't have to keep your old body if you don't want to. I can give you a new one: a living one."

The idea stunned me. Ever since Papa Chatha had suggested that Baron might be able to help me, I'd been thinking only in terms of his reattaching my head to my body. It had never occurred to me that Baron might be able to do better than that.

Baron went on. "Of course, there's no guarantee just how much physical perception your undead brain is capable of. You might not be able to experience the full range of physical sensations that a living body can. But then again, you might." He smiled. "In all modesty, I've been doing this for a very long time, and I've gotten awfully good at it."

Henry put his vox away and returned to the table.

"They're on their way," he said, and Baron nodded.

A living body… I'd long given up hope that I could ever be restored to life. There didn't seem to be any magic or science in Nekropolis capable of returning me to a fully human state. Even Father Dis had told me that it was beyond his capabilities. But now Baron was telling me he might be able to do it – if I was willing to let him experiment on me.

I looked at Devona, but before I could speak, she said, "Why would Matt want a different body? The one he has works just fine." Then she stopped and looked down at me. "I'm sorry, love. I shouldn't speak for you. It's your decision, of course."

If I'd been capable of doing so right then, I'd have taken Devona in my arms and kissed her.

I'd been dead for some time but I hadn't forgotten what it was like to have a body that could smell, taste and above all fully experience touch in all its forms. I've never told Devona but I sometimes have dreams in which I'm alive and do the most mundane things: drinking a soda, eating ice cream, inhaling the scent of autumn leaves, drying off after a long hot shower with a thick fuzzy towel. So I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted by Baron's offer. Tempted bad.

"Thanks anyway," I said. "But I'm happy enough the way I am. Besides, being a zombie detective is kind of my thing, you know? 'Zombie head on living body' detective just doesn't have the same ring to it."

"As you wish," Baron said. "But if at some future date you change your mind, feel free to drop by. There's always a spare body or two lying around here."

The lab doors opened then and a pair of men entered, one thin-faced like a weasel, the other with a round face sporting a pair of mutton chops. The men, who wore long black coats, caps and fingerless gloves, stood on either side of a large portable wheeled freezer, guiding it along by gripping handles bolted onto the sides.

"Where would you like it, Mr. Baron?" the round faced man said in an Irish accent.

"Over here close to the operating table, Burke. Within arm's reach."

"Righto. Glad to be of service."

The two men maneuvered the freezer close to the table, as Baron had asked. Now that the men were closer I could get a getter look at them and I saw that both had a bluish tint to their skin and thin scars around their throats and wrists. They appeared human enough, but it was obvious they'd had some work done by Baron.

The thin faced man spoke then, also in an Irish accent. "Anything else we can do for you, sir?"

"No, thank you, Hare," Baron said. "I believe we're all set."

"Best we be off then," Burke said. "Lot of work to be done."

"No rest for the wicked, eh?" Hare said.

Both men laughed at that, tipped their caps to Baron, and then turned and left.

When they were gone Baron said, "Two of our best Bonegetters. They have quite a knack for the work, don't they, Henry?"

"They're very reliable," Henry said noncommittally.

Baron clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. "Time to get to work then. Henry, if you'll help me get everything ready?"

"Of course," Henry said, sounding as if he'd just as soon have a hydrochloric acid enema. He lurched off to one of the work tables and began gathering surgical tools.

"Would you like me to step outside?" Devona asked Baron.

Baron answered while he donned a pair of black rubber gloves that looked as if they could use a good disinfecting, or better yet, a thorough going over with a blow torch.

"There's no need, Ms. Kanti. Since Mr. Richter's already dead, there's no risk of infection to him, and as he cannot experience physical pain, there's no need for anesthetics, so he'll be conscious and awake during the procedure. You're welcome to stay, as long as it's all right with you, Mr. Richter."

"Sure. Devona's seen me come apart before. She should get the chance to see me get put together for a change."

Devona smiled at me. "I'd hold your hand, but I know you can't feel it right now."

"Hold it anyway," I said. "For luck, if nothing else."

She nodded and took hold of one of my hands. Henry wheeled over a surgical cart containing a dozen different instruments that wouldn't have been out of place in Torquemada's playroom. One by one he held an instrument and the arms extending from the fleshy mass above me stretched down and grabbed hold of it.

I'd forgotten about the bizarre piece of fleshtech hanging down from the ceiling, but now I looked up at the hands gripping the surgical instruments and I saw that the mass was slowly descending toward me. When the hands were within reach of the table the mass stopped moving.

"Please tell me those things are just going to hold the instruments for you," I said to Baron.

He gave me a smile that did nothing at all to reassure me. "Don't worry. I'll be guiding them every step of the way."

And before I could say anything else Baron gave a command and one of the hands reached toward me.

The operation had begun.

At one point during the procedure Baron said, "Something just occurred to me, Mr. Richter. You're in a rather unique situation."

I tried to ignore the disembodied hands of the fleshtech device as they worked on restoring the connections between my brain and my central nervous system. "Considering that I'm a zombie having my head put back onto my body by the Frankenstein Monster, I'd say that was an understatement."

Baron chuckled. "Besides that, I mean. Tonight someone attacked you, cut off your head, stole your body, and later dumped it rather unceremoniously in the Sprawl. This puts you in a unique situation in that, since the beheading didn't kill you, you are in a sense able to investigate your own murder. How many private detectives can say the same?"

"I hadn't thought of it like that. I'll make sure to highlight it on my resume."

Baron was right about one thing. When the operation was finished my first order of business was to find out who'd done this to me and why. And once I did I intended to lay a serious hurt on them.

I gritted my teeth as the arms continued their work.

"Now stand on your right foot and touch your nose with your left index finger," Baron said.

"Is this really necessary?" I complained. "We've been at this for twenty minutes now. I've walked back and forth across the lab numerous times. I've clapped my hands and tapped my feet in various rhythms. I've written my name on a piece of paper a dozen times. If anything had gone wrong during the operation I think we'd know it by now."

Baron, Henry and Devona had been standing by the operating table watching me go through my paces ever since I'd climbed off the operating table and gotten dressed. And while I was happy to be in one undead piece again I was getting tired of being treated like a performing zombie monkey.

"Indulge me, please," Baron said. Despite my complaining the man didn't sound the least bit irritated. He had the calmest disposition of any monster I'd ever met.

I sighed, did as Baron asked, and promptly poked myself in the eye.

"I was afraid of that," Baron said. "The coordination is a bit off on your left side. If you'll just hop back onto the table, I'll take care of that."

The thought of lying on the operating table while those disembodied hands worked on me some more wasn't exactly appealing.

"I'm not sure that's necessary," I said. "In general, I'm more coordinated than I have been since I died. So I can't hop on one foot and touch my nose. It's not exactly a skill I use every day."

"Even so, Mr. Richter, it'll only take a few minor adjustments. I really–"

Henry interrupted. "The man seems satisfied enough, Victor. Remember, not everyone shares your drive for perfection."

"I suppose so," Baron agreed, but he didn't seem very happy about it.

"I think you should reconsider, Matt," Devona said. "Given the kind of work we – I mean you – do, you often end up in physical confrontations. The more coordinated your body is, the better."

"You're exaggerating," I said. "Yeah, I get in a fight every now and then, but I hardly think–"

The entire time we'd been in the lab the woman's head attached to the computer had been silent, but now she shouted, "Mr. Baron! An intruder has just forced his way through the main entrance! And he's heading this way – fast!"

"Alert security, Elsa," Baron said as he headed toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Henry said. "This is why you built a security force – to take care of problems like this."

Baron spun back around to face Henry and for the first time since we arrived I saw him lose his composure. "This is my home and I will not allow others to defend it for me!"

Baron whirled around and shoved his way through the lab doors.

Henry shook his head. "He's as stubborn as the night is long." He turned to us. "Stay here. You should be safe enough."

Moving with his spastic, lurching gait, Henry went after his master. When he was gone Devona looked at me.

"What were you saying about how rarely you get into fights?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Let's go."

I took her hand, grateful that I could at least once again feel the pressure of her grip, and we hurried after Baron and Henry.

We found them standing in the hallway near the entrance, the one where the paintings of Frankenstein's homeland were displayed. A trio of hulking monsters – one male, one female and one which could've been either or both – stood battling a shadowy figure in a top hat and cape. The bodies of several other monsters lay behind them in the hall, heads and limbs severed from torsos, blood splattered on the floor and walls. The dark man held black knives in each hand, the blades of which seemed formed from solid shadow. The surviving security monsters attempted to grab hold of him but he avoided their hands with almost casual ease, deftly slicing out with his blades, their edges passing through flesh and bone as if they were no more substantial than air. The monsters roared in fury as they lost hands and arms and the dark man's attacks increased in speed, until he became a shadowy blur impossible to track, and when he once more grew still, the last three monsters had joined the others as bloody piles of severed body parts scattered across the floor.

I remembered something Baron had said: "There's always a spare body or two lying around here". If I'd been a living man, I'd have tossed the contents of my stomach right then. I consoled myself by remembering where we were. If anyone could put all those poor Humpty Dumptys together again, it was Victor Baron.

Despite the slaughter he'd just witnessed Baron stepped forward, hands clenched into fists at his sides, and the anger on his face was terrible to behold.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Baron demanded in a voice tight with fury.

The features of the cloaked man were shrouded in darkness, so his expression was impossible to read. It wasn't clear if he even had a face. But he seemed to be looking at me when he raised a black gloved hand and pointed one of his dripping knives.

I stepped forward to stand next to Baron and Devona came with me. Henry remained where he was, demonstrating more good sense than the rest of us, I thought.

"His name is Silent Jack," I said. "He's one of Lord Edrigu's servants. As for what he wants… well, I guess it's me."

Ever since Jack had marked my hand with Edrigu's sigil, I'd been waiting for the Lord of the Dead to summon me and It looked like the time had finally come.

"But why break into the Foundry?" Devona asked. "Why not just stay outside and wait for us to leave?"

"Maybe for some reason Jack couldn't wait," I said. "Or maybe it's just more fun for him this way."

Jack's some manner of spirit, but one who can be solid enough when he chooses, as Baron's unfortunate security monsters had discovered. But considering who he was reputed to have been during his mortal life on Earth, the bloodshed – while sickening – was hardly surprising. And Baron's monsters hadn't been about to let Jack enter the Foundry without challenge. So all appearances to the contrary, there might have been nothing especially sinister motivating Jack's appearance that night. But there was something in his stance, a cold anger radiating from him like an almost physical force that told me something was wrong here. And a moment later I had an idea what it was when a larger gray fleshed figure stomped around the corner and headed down the corridor toward us.

The creature stood eight feet tall and its naked body was roughly humanoid in shape, though its face was smooth and featureless, and it possessed no sexual organs. It was a Sentinel, one of the golems that served as Nekropolis's version of a police force, or as close to it as the city came. Sentinels were more like enforcers than cops, making sure that citizens obeyed the law – or else.

The Sentinel walked through the carnage Jack had wrought, not bothering to step over body parts, instead crushing them into bloody paste as it went. The golem stopped next to Silent Jack who, true to his name, spoke not a word as he continued pointing his black knife at me. The Sentinel stepped forward, grabbed hold of me with inhumanly powerful hands, and tucked me under its arm. It then turned and began carrying me back the way it had come.

After spending the better part of the night as a severed head, I was plenty sick of being hauled around like an infant. I squirmed, trying to break free from the Sentinel's grip, though I knew it was useless. I didn't know any creature that was stronger than a Sentinel. So I stopped struggling and allowed myself to go limp. As we passed, Silent Jack tucked his knives away somewhere in the dark folds of his midnight-black cloak, and turned to follow us.

Whatever was going on it looked like my long night was about to get even longer.

SEVEN

After capturing me, the Sentinel carried me outside to where Silent Jack's black rig waited. The Sentinel shoved me inside and Jack – who materialized in the driver's seat – cracked the reins and his two horses, Malice and Misery, reared up and let out earsplitting cries that sounded uncomfortably close to human screams. As if the sound warped the fabric of reality, the world around us blurred, distorted and reformed, and instead of being parked outside the Foundry, we were now outside the black needle-like structure that was the Nightspire – center of the city and home to Father Dis. Another Sentinel stood waiting for us, or perhaps it was the same one, pulled along by the magic of Jack's supernatural rig. Since all Sentinels look alike it was impossible to tell and it really didn't matter for this one yanked me out of the rig with as much violent efficiency as another would've and marched me inside the obsidian tower. I glanced back over my shoulder just in time to see Jack tip his top hat to me before he and his rig faded away.

"Thanks for the ride," I muttered.

The Sentinel escorted me through the Nightspire's halls until we reached an area I'd heard about but had never visited. Most of the Nightspire is made out of black stone so highly polished it gleamed in the light cast by torches set into the walls. But here the stone, while still just as highly polished and reflective, was a deep crimson. This was the Sanctum, headquarters of the Cabal, Father Dis's personal servants. We passed a number of red robed men and women, all seemingly human, all completely hairless, including a lack of eyebrows and lashes. Whether they shaved and plucked their hair or it just didn't grow, I had no idea. None of the Cabal acknowledged us as we walked by. Either they were engrossed in conversation with one another or they stared straight ahead, lost in thought as they went about errands for their dark master.

Eventually the Sentinel brought me to an ivory door formed entirely of skulls stacked on top of one another. The skulls' eye sockets glowed briefly with crimson light as if they were examining us. The light faded and the skulls slid sideways into the walls – one row to the left, the next to the right and so on – until the doorway was open. The Sentinel forcibly removed my suit jacket, divesting me not only of my outer garment but also the various weapons and tricks I keep in its pockets. The Sentinel then removed my shoulder holster holding my 9mm. I'm not sure a gun would've been much use against any of Dis's servants, but it seemed the Sentinel didn't intend to take any chances. The golem didn't bother to check my pants pockets, though. I carry a few small items there, nothing very powerful, but at least I had a few weapons remaining to me. At that point I was happy to take whatever I could get.

The Sentinel then placed one of its large hands between my shoulder blades and shoved. I stumbled inside, only barely managing to keep from falling forward onto my face, and then the skulls slid back into place, closing me inside. The chamber was small – the bathroom in my apartment was smaller, but not by much – and it was empty. No furniture, nothing on the crimson walls or ceiling. There was no obvious source of light and yet the room was fully illuminated.

"Welcome to the Inquisitory."

The voice came from behind me, and though I was startled, I forced myself to turn around slowly. No need to let whoever it was know they'd gotten to me.

I found myself staring into the face of a Cabal member, a man who appeared to be in his seventies, with a long narrow face and patrician features. His eyes were an icy blue and his upper lip seemed curled in a permanent sneer.

"Let me guess," I said. "You're Brother Quillion, the First Adjudicator."

The skin over the man's right eye moved, as if he'd have raised an eyebrow if he'd had one.

"I see my reputation precedes me."

The cold sarcasm in his tone reminded me of Mr. Hedricks, my high school principal. The sadistic son of a bitch loved nothing better than to deal out discipline to troublemakers and the harsher that discipline was, the better he liked it.

"I've heard of you," I admitted. "I'm impressed. Whatever you people think I've done, it must be pretty damned bad for me to merit your personal attention."

Quillion's lips stretched into a bloodless smile. "And what makes you think you're accused of a crime, Matthew?"

I didn't like the overly familiar way he used my first name, but I decided to let it slide. After all I was technically the man's prisoner. Still, that didn't mean I was going to be all sunshine and daisies to him.

"You can cut the crap. I used to be a cop back on Earth. I've interrogated plenty of suspects in my time and I know how the game is played. I wouldn't be here unless you thought I'd done something to warrant it. So what was it?"

The Sentinels might serve as the city's police force but the Adjudicators were its judges – and executioners when necessary. I was in deep trouble and I knew it. But even so, I had no intention of going along with Quillion's program like a good little zombie. He might be one of the most powerful beings in the city, but I wasn't about to let him walk all over me. The only weapon I had to fight with right then was attitude and I intended to make full use of it.

Quillion was a pro, however, and he wasn't about to be thrown off his stride by a mouthy ex-cop.

"See for yourself." He made a languid gesture and the crimson walled room disappeared. We now stood in a much larger chamber formed entirely out of solid earth, the soil dark and rich. Jutting bits of bone stuck out from the walls and ceiling – arm and leg joints, half hidden skulls, both human and animal. Worms and black beetles crawled between the bones, small lives moving in the midst of so much death. Illumination was provided by flaming corpses that stood propped up against the walls at regular intervals around the room, and though their fires burned furiously, they did not consume the dead flesh they touched. The chamber itself was featureless, save for a raised mound of earth in the middle of the room, its soil dark as that comprising the rest of the chamber.

"We're not really here, are we?" I said. "This is some kind of illusion."

"It's a recreation," Quillion said, sounding as if he took great satisfaction in correcting me. "Based on the evidence I've been able to gather so far."

So this wasn't the literal truth I was watching. Good to know.

Quillion went on. "This chamber is housed deep within Lord Edrigu's stronghold, and as you might surmise, it is well protected by many physical and magical defenses."

I was beginning to get an idea of what was going to happen next in Quillion's 'recreation,' but even so, I was surprised to see myself come walking into the chamber. As soon as I stepped into the room the flaming corpses stirred to life. They started running toward me, arms outstretched, obviously intending to grab hold of the intruder and immolate him. But before the first of the corpsetorches could reach me I held up the hand that contained Edrigu's mark. The sigil glowed and the burning corpses stopped, regarded it for a moment, and then turned and slowly headed back to their posts. When they were all once more safely back in position I lowered my hand and continued on into the chamber.

"When was this supposed to have happened?" I asked.

"Early this evening," Quillion said. "Now be quiet and watch."

I did as Quillion ordered and watched myself walk toward the mound in the center of the room. I stopped next to it, seemed to regard it for a moment, and then knelt down and began digging with both hands. It took several moments of work but eventually I uncovered the face of someone lying buried within the mound. I recognized Edrigu, Lord of the Dead. Watching the recreation of the scene with Quillion, I expected the Darklord's eyes to snap open now that his face had been uncovered, for I knew he wasn't dead but merely sleeping. But his eyes remained closed as I went about my work.

I reached for Edrigu's throat,and for a moment I thought I intended to strangle the sleeping Darklord, but instead of wrapping fingers around Edrigu's neck, my hand moved farther down his chest, pushing deeper into the mound. A few moments later I pulled my hand free and gripped in it was a slender cylindrical object about ten inches in length. Black soil clung to its surface, but enough ivory color showed to tell me the object was carved from bone and the holes drilled into it told me that it was some kind of simplistic musical instrument: a pipe or flute. A tiny chain was attached at one end and it was clear Edrigu had been wearing the bone flute around his neck. My body gripped the chain in both hands, yanked and it parted easily. Again, I expected Edrigu to awaken, but he kept on sleeping.

I brushed the dirt from the flute before tucking it into the inner pocket of my suit jacket and leaving the way I had come. The guardian corpses paid me no mind as I left, carrying away one of their master's prized possessions.

When the scene was finished Quillion waved his hand again and Edrigu's bed chamber vanished to be replaced once more by featureless crimson walls.

"What do you have to say in your defense, Matthew?"

"From the tone of your voice, it sounds like it doesn't matter what I say. You've already made up your mind." I'd have asked for a lawyer, but it wouldn't have done any good. There aren't any in Nekropolis. As far as the Darkfolk are concerned, lawyers just slow down the swift course of justice. Besides, they're too scary, even for Nekropolis.

"My recreation is based on evidence delivered to me by Edrigu's servants. The theft triggered an alarm and when they investigated they were able to draw forth an image of your committing the robbery from the minds of the chamber guardians. The servants then sent Silent Jack out to fetch you and informed me of the robbery. I promptly dispatched a Sentinel to accompany Jack. It took a while for them to find you. I must admit it was rather clever of you to hide inside the Foundry. Baron's defenses against industrial espionage prevented us from tracking you by magical means. Luckily Jack encountered the cabbie who dropped you off at the Foundry and was able to convince him to share what he knew about your whereabouts."

A wave of anger rushed through me. "If you hurt Lazlo…"

Quillion raised a hand to forestall me. "Relax. The demon is little the worse for wear. Besides, his kind heals swiftly. The main thing is that thanks to his grudging cooperation we were able to find you. And while Silent Jack was unable to materialize inside the Foundry, he is quite capable of relying on physical force when the need arises, and he was able to gain entrance that way. He's a very versatile creature, that Jack."

"Why didn't Edrigu himself come after me once he woke up? I thought Darklords prefer to handle affronts against them personally."

Quillion looked at me and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer. But finally he said, "Edrigu – like the other Darklords – expends a great deal of energy during the Renewal Ceremony. This year, because the ceremony was disrupted, the Lords were required to devote an extra measure of power to ensure Umbriel was recharged for another year. Because of this the Darklords have been recuperating and are currently… indisposed."

This was news to me. But now that I thought about it I hadn't heard of any Darklords making appearances in public since the last Renewal Ceremony.

"So they're… what? All sleeping, like Edrigu?"

"Basically. They must restore the energy they lost, and while they sleep this deeply, they cannot be awakened. Usually they wake within a few weeks, but the process is taking longer this year. And when none of the Darklords are available to dispense justice in their Dominions, that task falls to the First Adjudicator: me. I have answered your questions, Matthew, because it's not every day that we receive a… guest of your stature. After all, you did help the Darklords and Father Dis complete the Renewal Ceremony this year and your service to the city was much appreciated. That's the only reason we're having this conversation. If you were anyone else your case would already have been decided. Now, I will ask you for the final time: what do you have to say in your defense?"

I thought of Devona then. She'd surely guessed where the Sentinel had intended to take me, if not why, and she was probably on her way to the Nightspire. Even now she might be standing at the entrance, trying to convince the guards to let her in to see me. I tried to reach out and connect to her through our psychic link, but I didn't sense her presence. Either she was too far away, or the Inquisitory was enchanted to prevent magical and psychic energies from functioning inside it. Either way, I wasn't able to reassure her that I was all right, which – given my situation – would've been a lie anyway.

At that point I decided to ditch my tough guy act and cooperate with Quillion. I told him everything that had happened to me that night in detail, up to the moment when the Sentinel took me into custody. I finished by showing him the seam on my neck as evidence that Victor Baron had recently reattached my head to my body.

When my story was done Quillion looked thoughtful. The walls became less solid looking as he considered, wavering as if formed from crimson liquid, and I realized the chamber was linked to his mind. It certainly made for a good interrogation room. Confronting suspects with scenes of them committing a crime was a great way to get them to confess. But I reminded myself that what I'd witnessed wasn't exactly the magical equivalent of video from a security camera. It was a recreation based on interpreted evidence and not proof by a long shot. Unfortunately an Adjudicator doesn't need proof. He or she just has to believe a suspect is guilty in order to pronounce a sentence. I just had to hope that my story, strange as it was, had sowed a seed of doubt in Quillion's mind about my guilt.

"You must admit that on the surface your story is quite outlandish," Quillion said after a time. "You expect me to believe that someone knew you carried Edrigu's mark, and what's more, that they knew it could be used to gain access to his collection. And that this someone stole your body, somehow animated it, and used it to steal the object?"

"I told you that Acantha asked me about Edrigu's mark and showed a close up of my hand on her program. Hundreds saw it, maybe thousands. One of them must've realized what the mark could be used for."

"Then why not just steal your hand?" Quillion asked.

I shrugged. "I'm no expert in Darklord magic. Maybe most of my body was needed for the mark to work properly. Maybe someone wanted to frame me and they wanted to make sure there was enough of 'me' present to be recorded by whatever security methods Edrigu had in place. Are you sure the chamber guardians saw me as complete? In other words, did I have a head?"

"Yes," Quillion said, but then he frowned. "I'll admit that the guardians' mental description lacked a certain amount of visual clarity, however. It's difficult to see through an aura of flame, you know. Their impressions of you were more mystically derived than visually. They know it was a zombie that entered the chamber, and they recognized the power inherent in Edrigu's mark. You are the only individual in the city who matches those criteria."

"So my headless body might've been used to commit the theft. Someone might have been controlling it from a distance, like a marionette with a very long set of strings."

"I suppose," Quillion said, but he sounded unconvinced.

I decided to try a different tack. "What was stolen?"

"An object of some importance to Edrigu, obviously, since he wore it on his person. Unfortunately none of his servants seem to know its purpose and since the Darklord himself is asleep and cannot be wakened to tell us more…" Quillion trailed off.

"Contact Victor Baron," I suggested. "He can back me up."

"Speaking with Baron would prove nothing. You could've committed the theft, perhaps at the behest of a client, and later cut off your own head and gone to the Foundry to have it reattached in an attempt to establish an alibi."

"I'm not a mercenary," I snapped. "I'm a private detective. There's a big difference."

"You do favors for people and they pay you in return," Quillion said with a shrug. "Perhaps this time the payment was enough to get you to suspend your moral code."

I wanted to tell Quillion he could shove my moral code up his hairless ass, but I knew it wouldn't help my case, so instead I said, "You could ask Devona. She–" I stopped myself. Quillion would just assume she'd lie to protect me. "We could ask Dis to verify my story. With his power…"

"Father Dis is a god," Quillion said stiffly. "He has far more important matters to attend to than deciding the fate of one zombie."

Quillion's dismissal of my idea had come a bit too quickly and was made too forcefully for me to take it at face value. A second later I realized what was really going on.

"You won't ask Dis to help me because you can't. He's resting just like the Darklords, isn't he?"

Quillion reluctantly nodded. "Dis normally uses far more energy than any of the Darklords during the Renewal Ceremony, but this year was especially taxing for him. He sleeps deeply, and like the Darklords, he cannot be awakened until he is restored to full strength."

This was bad for the city. With Dis and the Darklords temporarily out of commission Nekropolis was virtually unprotected. If a major crisis developed there would be no one available to deal with it. Hopefully, things would keep running smoothly enough until the Darklords awakened. If not… well, I didn't want to think about that.

"So what are we left with?" I asked. "We agree on the fact that my body was used to commit a crime, but there's no way I can prove to you that my consciousness wasn't in the driver's seat at the time the theft took place."

"That's not precisely true," Quillion said. "Because of your previous service to the city, I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain yourself. But since you are not able to do so adequately, I'm forced to rely on my usual methods of extracting information from those I question."

I didn't like the sound of that.

"I hate to break this to you, but I'm a zombie. Torture won't work on me. Whatever you do, I won't be able to feel it."

Quillion gave me a cold smile. "This is another thing that's not precisely true." As he spoke the crimson walls began to edge toward green and their hard smooth surface began to shimmer and flicker. "You know the flames which burn upon the surface of the river Phlegethon?"

This was sounding worse all the time.

"Yes. They're magical flames that burn the spirit instead of the flesh."

Quillion's smile widened.

"The Adjudicators created those flames."

He gestured and the walls of green fire, no illusion this time, came rushing inward toward us. For the first time since I'd died I felt pain – pain beyond anything I'd ever imagined was possible.

I screamed and I continued screaming for a very long time.

In the end I confessed. At least, I think I did. I don't have any memory of actually doing so, but Quillion made the green fire go away, and I lay on the floor of the Inquisitory, grateful that my dead body once more felt no sensation, though the echoes of agony still lingered in my soul, and I wondered if they always would.

He asked me more questions: who hired me, where was the bone flute now? But I just lay there, barely able to think, let alone answer. Besides, I knew it didn't matter what I said. Quillion believed me guilty, and that was the end of it.

"Very well," he said after a while, sounding irritated. "I suppose we'll sort out the rest of the details in due time. If nothing else, hopefully Edrigu will be able to track down the artifact once he awakens, and then we'll discover who hired you. For now, I pronounce you officially guilty of a crime against a Darklord and sentence you to be incarcerated in Tenebrus until the end of your days."

"You can't be serious!" I shouted. "This isn't about justice! It's about you having power and using it however it suits you! There's been no due process here, no real standards of evidence… I've spent my entire career in law enforcement one way or another, Quillion, and I can tell you that you wouldn't know justice if it walked up and bit you on your bald ass!"

Quillion's gaze became arctic cold. "Goodbye, Matthew, and may Father Dis have mercy on your soul."

Before I could summon up the energy to protest Quillion made a gesture and the floor beneath me disappeared and I found myself tumbling down into darkness.

EIGHT

I hadn't slept or lost consciousness since my resurrection, but I have no memory of my fall ending. One moment I was plunging through darkness, hands scrabbling to find some kind of purchase without success, and the next I was laying on a hard surface. I assumed I'd hit and not felt the impact – though I should've been aware of it at least – but when I sat up I discovered that none of my bones were broken. So either the fall hadn't been as long as it had seemed or some sort of magic was at work here. Whichever the case my body was still intact, and since I'd only recently gotten it back, I was glad I hadn't broken it.

I was surrounded by darkness and silence and part of me wanted to remain there, quiet and unmoving, in the hope that whoever or whatever inhabited this place might not notice me if I could avoid drawing attention to myself. But the passive approach has never sat well with me, even when it's the smart way to go. Especially then. So I stood up and called out into the darkness.

"This really isn't much of a welcome. You could do a little more to make a guy feel at home, you know."

No response.

I'd heard plenty of rumors about Tenebrus over the years, but I'd never spoken to anyone who'd actually been there. It was reputed to be a nightmarish place – even by Nekropolis's standards – and escape was impossible. Or so the stories went. I'd imagined it would be a more savage version of an earthly prison, but now that I was actually here, I began to wonder if this was it, if the darkness, silence and solitude were punishments in and of themselves. Was every inmate of Tenebrus in the same situation as I was, standing alone in the dark as minutes became hours then days, weeks, months, years… The thought was terrifying to me, a punishment far worse than anything I could've imagined. If this was to be my fate for a crime I didn't commit I wished Quillion had used his powers to destroy me back in the Inquisitory and been done with it.

But then I heard the first faint stirrings of sound, a soft grating of metal sliding against a hard surface. I started to turn toward the sound, steeling myself for the possibility of an attack. But before I could do anything to defend myself – and really, what could I have done? – I heard a loud jangling of chains and I sensed something streaking toward me out of the darkness. Metal clamped around my wrists and my arms were yanked over my head. I was pulled upward until my feet dangled in the air and then it stopped. Manacles on chains, I realized, hanging down from the ceiling. They'd been lying coiled on the floor like a pair of iron snakes, waiting to lash out and grab hold of the newest inmate.

So not only was I destined to spend my time in Tenebrus swaddled in dark silence it seemed I wasn't going to be permitted to move about either.

Great.

I don't know how long I hung there. Long enough to regret the fact that I can't sleep and long enough to give up any notion that I might be able to escape on my own. I'd have happily chewed off my own hands to get down, but since I couldn't reach them…

Eventually I became aware of a pair of flickering glows ahead of me out in the darkness. Someone – maybe a pair of someones – was approaching, carrying a light of some kind. As whoever it was came nearer, I began to be able to make out my surroundings. I was in a cell whose bars were made of long lengths of bones, detached arms clutching hold of each other with skeletal fingers. The walls and ceiling curved around and above me, formed from a grayish substance that looked more like diseased flesh than stone. Rib-like protrusions extended from the walls, which were reinforced by long curving spinal columns. The flesh walls expanded and contracted as I watched, as if I were trapped inside the pulsating organ of some gigantic beast. I also saw that I wasn't alone in the cell. Hanging behind me were a pair of skeletons, neither of them human, though I couldn't guess their species from looking at them. Like me, they hung from a pair of manacles on the ends of chains extending downward from the flesh ceiling. Unlike me, they were far from recent arrivals, a fact which I freely admit took no great effort to deduce.

As I turned my attention back to whoever was approaching, a voice came from behind me.

"This isn't good."

A second voice added, "If that's who we think it is, you're going to wish you were left alone to rot in here with us."

I glanced back over my shoulder at the skeletal duo.

"Why didn't you two say anything when I called out earlier?" I was irritated. If I'd known I shared a cell with a couple talking skeletons I could've been pumping them for information the entire time instead of just hanging there, bored out of my mind.

"We didn't want to scare you," the first skeleton said.

"We figured we'd give you a few weeks to settle in before introducing ourselves. Give you a chance to acclimate a bit."

"Get your prison legs, so to speak," the second one added.

"Very considerate of you," I muttered.

"Thinking nothing of it," Skeleton Number One said, sounding pleased with itself.

I promptly forgot all about the ossified idiots as the light drew close enough for me to begin making out the features of the new arrivals. There were three of them, two men and a woman, the former walking on either side of the latter.

The males were of a type: eight feet tall, muscular and brownskinned, naked save for small tan loincloths that left little doubt as to their gender. The most striking detail about the men was that each had a jackal's head resting atop his powerful broad shoulders. Their eyes shone with human intelligence, but as they approached my cell, canine lips drew back from sharp teeth in feral snarls. Both creatures held golden spears whose points glowed with warm yellow light – a combination weapon and torch. I wondered what would happen if that glowing spearpoint was thrust into my undead flesh and I made a mental note to myself to avoid pissing off the jackalheads if at all possible. But far more intimidating than the guards was the woman who walked between them. She was Keket, ancient Egyptian sorceress, Demilord and overseer of Tenebrus.

Tall and slender she carried herself with regal bearing. Her body was wrapped in winding strips of grayish cloth and a long dark blue cape trailed behind her. Her face was concealed behind a golden mask of finely wrought feminine features and though the mask's eyes were made of solid metal, I had the impression that she could see through them – or perhaps somehow with them.

First Victor Baron, then Quillion, and now Keket. I was getting to meet a lot of dignitaries lately. I might've thought I was coming up in the world if my current situation hadn't demonstrated the exact opposite.

Keket and the guards stopped when they reached my cell door.

"Matthew Richter, welcome to Tenebrus."

Keket's voice was soft as the whisper of a snake sliding through grass, but I had no trouble making out every word.

I'd seen her once before, in the Nightspire during the last Renewal Ceremony, but it hadn't been an occasion for idle chat and we'd never spoken before.

"Do you always personally greet the new arrivals?" I asked. "Or am I just special?"

It was impossible to read Keket's expression behind her mask, but when she spoke, her tone was one of amusement.

"When Quillion informed me that the savior of Nekropolis would be joining us, I simply had to come welcome you in person. I do so enjoy seeing the high and mighty brought down low. It's one of my favorite parts of the job."

"Still bitter because Dis didn't choose you to be one of the five Darklords? You really ought to consider getting some therapy for that."

Again I couldn't see her expression but I could feel the anger rolling off of her as if it were a physical force. My skeletal cellmates must've felt it too for they let out frightened moans.

"I must say that I'm somewhat disappointed to see you," Keket said. "Guilty or innocent, anyone who was able to prevent the destruction of the entire city should be smart enough to avoid ending up here."

I sighed. "To be honest, I can't disagree with you."

Keket nodded to one of the jackalheads, and he stepped up to the cell door and removed an iron key ring from the leather belt holding up his loincloth. I say key ring, but instead of keys, it contained a number of skeletal fingers of various lengths and thicknesses. The guard stepped up to the cell door, selected a "key" and inserted it into a hole carved into one of the skeletal hands that formed the bars. The guard turned the key, was rewarded with a soft snick, and when he withdrew the key, the skeletal hands unclenched, releasing each other, and the bars withdrew into the ceiling and floor. The jackalhead then stepped into the cell, selected another key, and unlocked my manacles. He didn't bother to try and prevent me from falling to the ground, and though I tried to avoid it, I ended up falling onto my side. With a snarl the jackalhead bent down, grabbed hold of my shirt, and unceremoniously hauled me to my feet.

"Come with me," Keket said, and without waiting for me to reply, she started off down the hallway, her cloth wrapped feet making no sound as she went.

The guard who'd released me glared at me to make sure I understood I didn't have a choice in the matter and I walked out of the cell. He didn't relock it as we left, and given the state of my cellmates, I could see why he didn't bother.

"Good luck!" Skeleton One called out as I walked away.

"Whatever happens to you, we hope it won't be too hideously awful!" Number Two added.

I ignored them and followed after Keket, and the jackalheads walked beside me, keeping their gazes fixed on me and growling softly to let me know what they thought of me.

"Ever think about neutering these guys?" I asked Keket. "It might improve their disposition."

One of the guards snarled, whirled about, and rammed the butt end of his spear into my gut. The impact of the blow forced me to double over, though of course I felt nothing. It's a lot easier to act the part of a tough guy when you can't feel any pain.

I remembered then how Quillion had caused the green fire to blaze forth from the walls of the Inquisitory, and I shuddered.

Usually don't feel any pain, I amended.

Keket continued walking as if nothing had happened and the second guard prodded me in the back with his spear to get me moving again.

The four of us continued down a winding, curving hallway that was constructed from the same fleshy substance as the cell and similar bony protuberances stuck out from the walls and ceiling. We passed other cells as we walked, their doors formed from the same skeletal bars as mine was. The inmates represented every major race that inhabited Nekropolis – Bloodborn, Lyke, Arcane, Demonkin and the Dead – along with other creatures, some of whom belonged to nightmarish species that I'd never seen before. Many of them hung from manacles, as I had, but some were free to roam about their cells, presumably because they were better behaved than their fellow prisoners.

Keket spoke as we walked.

"Quillion informed me of the particulars of your case. A very interesting story. Personally, I would've investigated further before pronouncing sentence, but that's Quillion for you. He's rather single minded when it comes to matters of justice and punishment."

Keket's words were unexpected to me, but hardly unwelcome, and they filled me with new hope.

"Maybe you could talk to Quillion," I began.

"I said your story was interesting. I didn't say I intended to do anything to help you. It's the Adjudicators' task to judge. Mine is to incarcerate those individuals they send me. Matters of innocence or guilt mean nothing to me. Tenebrus is my Dominion, and once you are here, I am your ruler and you are my subject. End of story."

"I get it," I said. "You couldn't make it as a full-fledged Darklord, so you play god down here in the subterranean shithole you got stuck with."

One of the guards raised his spear as if to strike me down for my impertinence, but Keket turned around and raised a hand to stop him. The jackalhead snarled at me, foam dripping from his mouth, but he reluctantly obeyed his mistress and lowered his weapon.

Keket padded over to me, and though I couldn't tell, I had the impression she was smiling at me.

"You know what they say: it's better to rule in Tenebrus than serve in Nekropolis." She laughed then and turned back around and resumed walking.

The guards and I followed once more.

"Consider this talk your orientation to your new home," Keket said. "Tenebrus is actually a relatively simple system. It lies deep underground below the city and there are no entrances or exits. The only way in or out is by magic and only I and the Adjudicators possess the power to open passageways to and from Nekropolis. I'm sure you've been staying alert the entire time we've been walking, taking in everything and pondering possibilities for escape. But you needn't bother taxing your little zombie brain. There has never been an escape from Tenebrus because escape literally is not possible."

"Good to know," I said. "Now instead of wasting time trying to escape, I can devote my energies to my favorite pastime: mentally composing pornographic haiku."

Keket continued as if I hadn't spoken. "The prison is divided into three sections: maximum security, minimum security – which is where you were – and general population, which is where we're headed. Because of your service to the city, Quillion recommended that you be allowed to mingle freely with the general population. I think he may be underestimating how dangerous you are, but I've decided to follow his recommendation. After all, if Umbriel had been destroyed, everything – including Tenebrus – would've gone with it, so I owe you a debt of gratitude."

"You know, if you really want to repay me, you could always open a passageway back to the surface and look the other way while I scamper off."

Keket ignored me as she went on.

"Of course, should you cause too much trouble, you can always be returned to your cell – or if necessary, put in maximum security."

"Just out of curiosity's sake, what's maximum security like?"

"Are you familiar with humanity's various conceptions of hell?"

"In general."

"It's worse. So I recommend remaining on your best behavior."

We passed one cell where a gaunt Bloodborn male with long black hair and a thick mustache stood at the bars. He was dressed in formal attire, including a long silky black opera cape. When he saw me he stretched a clawed hand between the bars and contorted his long fingers into what I guessed was intended to be a mystical gesture, but which just looked silly. His eyes widened and glittered with a feral light.

"You are now under my power," the vampire said in a thick accent. "You will open the door and release me!"

"Not a chance, Vlad," Keket said.

We kept walking, and Vlad let out a blistering string of curses at the guard most unbefitting one of noble birth.

"Is that–"

"One of them," Keket said. "We have three and all of them say they're the real thing. That one's the least dangerous, which is why he's in minimum security."

We passed several more cells when I felt something wrap around my ankle, nearly tripping me. I looked down and saw that a tentacle had emerged from a cell and grabbed hold of me. Its surface was a spongy mottled green and was covered with large bloodshot eyes. The interior of the cell was cloaked in darkness, so I couldn't quite make out what the owner of the tentacle looked like. Not that it really mattered.

Without missing a beat, I stomped on the tentacle as hard as I could, making sure I hit a couple of the eyes. The beast within the cell howled in pain, released its hold on me, and swiftly withdrew its wounded appendage back inside the cage. The creature than began making soft sobbing sounds.

"Stop whining," I said as I scuffed my shoes on the floor to get the viscous goo off them. "You've got plenty of spares."

One of the guards waved me on with his lightspear, and we started walking again.

"Starting fights on your first day?" Keket said.

"Look, anything that has eyes all over its body should know better than to attack someone. It's like wearing armor made out of your own testicles."

Keket grunted, but otherwise didn't comment.

We passed a number of other cells without incident, but then we came to one that had a water puddle in front of its door. Standing behind the bone bars was a young woman with long straight black hair hanging down in front of her face, concealing her features. She wore a white dress that was soaking wet and the flesh of her hands – the only parts of her body that were visible – were moist, blue-white and slightly puffy, like the flesh of a snail.

As we drew close the woman hissed Keket's name and her long back hair suddenly began to move. Ebony strands reached through the bars, rapidly extending in length as they streaked toward Keket.

The warden of Tenebrus didn't bother to acknowledge the threat. She merely continued walking as one of the guards pointed his glowing spear tip at the thrashing mass of hair. Energy blasted forth from the spear, engulfing the hair which, despite being drenched, burst into flame. The young woman shrieked in a mixture of pain and fury, withdrew the smoldering remains of her hair back through the bars, and retreated farther into her cell, hissing angrily.

"Whoever that is, she doesn't have any love for you," I said to Keket.

"It's a long and not especially interesting story. But one thing I'll say: the woman can certainly hold a grudge."

We continued on and I was beginning to think Tenebrus wasn't half as bad as it was reputed to be. I mean, I wasn't thrilled at the idea of spending the rest of my existence here, but if what I'd seen so far was any indication, then I could handle this place, no problem.

As we walked we left the cell block behind and I began to become aware of a low level roar, almost like the constant rushing of a large waterfall. The corridor ended at a railing constructed from bone and Keket gestured for me to step forward and join her. I did so and found myself looking down upon a vast canyon formed from the same fleshy gray bone threaded substance as the rest of Tenebrus. The canyon floor was lit by large light spheres set atop pillars spread throughout the area, illuminating what I first took to be a writhing mass of crawling insects. But as I took a longer look I realized that I was seeing hundreds of people – inmates – circulating, talking, shouting, and in many cases, fighting. And when someone went down, huge scarab-like beetles scuttled forth from recessed spaces in the walls and floor, grabbed hold of the bodies, and pulled them back to their lairs, and judging from the screams, not everyone the scarabs collected was dead. Dozens of silvery round objects glided through the air above the prisoners, slowly criss-crossing the length of the canyon. I had no idea what they were or what purpose they served, but I guessed they were some manner of security or surveillance device. Jackalheads patrolled among the inmates, providing on the ground security. The canine-headed guards were easy to spot because of their size and the glowing spear tips of the weapons they carried.

With a sinking feeling I knew I was looking down at Tenebrus's general population and I no longer felt quite so confident about my ability to handle this place.

Keket turned to me and this time I could definitely hear the smile in her voice when she spoke.

"Quillion thought he was doing you a good turn by recommending you for the general population, but I know the truth. Down there are a number of criminals that you helped put away over the years, Matthew Richter. You can imagine how thrilled they'll be to learn that they will soon get a chance to become reacquainted with an old friend. Be sure to give them my regards."

Before I could react, Keket extended a cloth wrapped hand toward me and the bandages around her fingers uncurled and began moving toward me, lengthening as they came. Five strips of ancient Egyptian cerements took hold of me, encircling my neck, wrists and ankles, and then they lifted me off the floor as if I weighed nothing. Keket gestured and her cloth tentacles lifted me over the railing and held me out in the open air.

She gestured again and I began falling, still held tight by Keket's bandages. I plunged downward, feeling absurdly like a zombie yoyo, unable to do anything but watch as the canyon floor came rushing toward me. While most of the inmates below continued to go about their business without noticing my rapid approach, more than a few looked up, and the feral grins on their faces communicated their delight upon seeing that Keket was delivering fresh meat to them.

When I was within twenty feet of the canyon floor, the bandages jerked me to a stop and then lowered me the rest of the way more slowly. When I was within a couple yards of the ground, the bandages released me and streaked back up to return to their mistress, leaving me to fall the rest of the way. Luckily the inmates in the immediate vicinity had seen me coming and moved out of the way in time to prevent me landing on them. Unfortunately, that meant there was no one there to break my fall. I heard something snap when I hit – a rib or two, I guessed – but whatever it was that had broken, it didn't prevent me from quickly rising to my feet, so I decided not to worry about it.

I looked around at the faces staring at me. They belonged to different species and both genders – evidently Tenebrus was a coed facility – but they all had one thing in common. They all looked mean as hell. No one wore uniforms. Everyone had on street clothes, presumably whatever they'd been wearing when they'd been sentenced. And judging from the ragged, threadbare outfits of many of the inmates, they'd clearly been here for quite some time.

Keket's voice boomed from above, filling the canyon with sound.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our latest arrival: Matthew Richter, knight errant and savior of the city who has, it should go without saying, suffered a recent reversal in fortune and is now joining us here at our happy little home. Won't you make him welcome, my children?"

Her last word echoed several times before finally dying away. I looked up at the railing where she'd been standing but Keket and her guards had already gone. Evidently I'd used up whatever amusement value I'd had and the Demilord had left to attend to more important matters. That was good. I didn't feel like having an audience as I was torn apart by an angry mob of prisoners.

I brought my gaze back down to eye level and gave my best new-kid-on-the-block smile to my fellow prisoners.

"Anybody heard any good jokes lately?" I asked.

"I got one."

The voice sounded like two boulders grinding together and it was one I thought I recognized. A moment later my guess was confirmed as a tall man dressed in a black suit pushed his way through the crowd of prisoners gathered around me. His features were grotesquely distorted – pronounced brow, bulbous nose, overlarge ears, thick wormy lips and huge powerful hands that constantly clenched and unclenched as if he couldn't wait to wrap them around a neck and start squeezing.

"What do you call a zombie in jail?"

"I don't know, Rondo. What?"

Thick lips pulled back from large yellowed teeth as he smiled.

"My bitch."

He raised those giant hands of his and started toward me.

NINE

I'd encountered Rondo – known on the street as the Creeper – not long after I'd first come to Nekropolis. He'd begun his criminal career working as muscle for a veinburn manufacturer, but he didn't get enough opportunities to kill people working for drug pushers, so eventually he struck out on his own as a freelance assassin. Being a sociopath with a pair of insanely powerful hands designed to cause severe bodily damage, he excelled at the work and before long he was commanding quite a price for his services. One day he was hired by a vampire named Varney who'd had his blood bonded human lover, called a Shadow in Bloodborn parlance, stolen by another vampire. Rondo was hired to kill the Shadow and he succeeded in strangling the woman. But the woman's new lover, a Bloodborn named Camilla, was inconsolable at the Shadow's loss and she hired me to find the woman's killer. I eventually did, though Rondo had nearly managed to rip me apart with those hands of his before I turned him over to a Sentinel. Both Varney and Camilla were minor nobility among the Bloodborn, so Varney got away scot free. Rondo wasn't so fortunate. Camilla used her influence to make sure the Adjudicators sentenced Rondo to Tenebrus and that was the last I'd heard of him – until now.

Despite his ungainly appearance, Rondo could move swift and silent when he wished – hence his nickname Creeper – and he was nearly on me before I could react. But after everything I'd been through since saving Scream Queen's voice, I wasn't exactly in the mood to dance with the ugly sonofabitch.

While I keep most of my weapons in my suit jacket, I'm not dumb enough to keep all of them there. I was grateful for Keket's sloppy security. Perhaps she'd assumed that Quillion's people had searched me thoroughly and had removed any weapons I might be carrying before sending me to her. If Devona had been here she'd had given the undead sorceress a stern lecture on basic security protocols. I reached into my pants pocket and removed a small yellow sphere no larger than a pill, but this medicine wasn't supposed to be taken internally.

As Rondo came at me I threw the sphere to the ground and it burst upon impact. A cloud of yellow gas billowed upward, catching Rondo in the face. He stumbled to a stop and clapped those huge hands of his over his mouth and nose to keep from breathing any of the gas in, but it was too late. His already bulging eyes bugged out even further as they began to water. He took in two hitching breaths and then released a truly impressive sneeze that, if I hadn't braced myself, might've knocked me off my feet.

"As you've undoubtedly guessed by now, you've just inhaled a couple of lungfuls of the strongest sneezing powder in the city. There aren't many benefits to being dead, Rondo, but no longer having to breathe is one of them."

I'd picked up the powder at the same place where I get a lot of my toys – at Hop Frog's Delight, the best joke shop in Nekropolis. The dwarf who owns the place is an absolute genius when it comes to creating practical jokes and he handcrafts each one personally. But you have to be careful. As a joke on his customers, Hop Frog designed his jokes to randomly burst into flame upon activation – for some reason the jester has a thing about fire. Maybe they'll go off the first time you use them, maybe not until the seventh time. You never know, and for that reason, at Hop Frog's it's very much caveat emptor.

The cloud of itching powder was spreading and those inmates who were standing too close to Rondo and me quickly drew back to keep from inhaling any of the stuff. As for Rondo he was doubled over and sneezing so hard he could barely catch a breath. Hop Frog's jokes are extremely powerful and I wondered if Rondo was in danger of sneezing himself to death. Given the number of people who'd met their demises at the overlarge hands of the Creeper, the prospect of the man's death didn't exactly fill me with sorrow.

Rondo's super sized sneezing fit attracted the guards' attention and several of the jackalheaded musclemen were making their way toward us, plowing through the crowd of inmates, shouldering them aside and – if they didn't move fast enough – giving them a short blast of energy from their golden spear tips. The guards weren't the only ones coming. Several of the silvery floating devices I'd seen from the overhead railing were heading in my direction, gliding soundlessly through the air. Now that I was closer I could see that the objects were levitating silver skulls about three times the size of a human skull. They reminded me of the skull sentry I'd encountered at the Foundry's main gate. These were more of Victor Baron's creations, I assumed, this type designed to provide additional security in Tenebrus. There were probably living brains housed within those metallic craniums that were even now sizing up the situation and deciding what to do about this disturbance in the general population. An instant later I got an inkling of what the flying skulls' response was going to be when their hollow eye sockets began to glow with ruby colored light.

I felt a tug on my elbow and a voice whispered urgently in my ear.

"Quick! Come with me if you want to live!"

I decided now wasn't the time to point out the irony in my newfound benefactor's statement and I allowed him to pull me away from Rondo, who was still sneezing so loud I figured it was even money that he would cough up at least one lung before any of the guards could reach him.

As I was led through the crowd of inmates I took a good look at the being who was pulling me along. It was a verman, although he was larger than usual, almost my height, and he was a true albino with white fur and red eyes. He wore a green frock coat with white ruffles at the sleeves and brass buttons down the front. I was surprised to see one of his species in Tenebrus. As mild and servile as vermen usually are they almost never cause any trouble, let alone commit crimes. I'd never seen a white furred verman before, nor had I ever seen one dressed so fancy. Something strange was going on here, but that didn't surprise me: something strange is always going on in Nekropolis. Weird is our stock in trade, after all.

The verman led me on a winding path across the canyon floor and while the inmates we passed glared at me none of them made a move to stop us. What's more none of them looked at the verman at all. They deliberately ignored him as if he were beneath their notice. At least that's what I thought at first, but as he continued to lead me, I saw that they made a point of getting out of his way. Most of them tried to appear casual about it, but it was obvious to me that they were showing deference to the verman, which was unheard of.

After a while we reached one of the canyon walls and the verman finally stopped. We stood close to a large semicircular opening which I recognized as a lair for one of the giant scarabs I'd seen earlier. I started to tell the verman that I didn't think this was the safest place to stand, but he put a finger to his mouth to shush me while he reached into a pocket with his other hand. He removed a large white cube and tossed it into the mouth of the entrance. Quick as a flash, a giant scarab darted forward, snatched up the cube in its mandibles, and scuttled backward into its lair. When the mammoth insect was gone, the albino verman visibly relaxed.

"It's safe to talk now. It won't bother us for a while." He gave a soft, snuffling laugh. "Those things are crazy for sugar."

This verman's manner was different from any of his kind I had ever encountered before. He stood up straight and looked me in the eye when he spoke and his tone contained no trace of servility. He talked to me as if we were equals and I knew this was no ordinary verman I was dealing with.

"My name is Gnasher," he said. "And you're Matthew Richter."

He held out his slender rodent hand for me to shake and I did so. When I let go he used his claws to rapidly scratch the fur under his chin and I saw several fleas fall to the ground.

"It's no wonder you know my name," I said, doing my best not to think about how many fleas Gnasher had remaining. "Keket made sure to announce my arrival loudly enough."

"True. The warden loves to stir up trouble down here. She gets off on watching the various little dramas that take place among the general population. Brawls, assassinations, gang wars… The bloodier the spectacle, the more she likes it." Gnasher pointed to one of the flying skulls floating off in the distance. "That's an Overwatcher. They're Keket's eyes and ears. Whatever they see and hear, she does too."

"I'm surprised we gave them the slip so easily, then," I said.

"There might not be many places to hide down here, but there are a lot of people. That helps. But I've got something that helps even more."

"What's that?"

Gnasher grinned, displaying a mouthful of long, narrow, flatedged rat teeth. "A subcutaneous implant that renders me invisible to the Overwatchers' sensors. As long as you stay close to me, they won't be able to detect you either." He gave another of his snuffling laughs.

I frowned. "That kind of tech doesn't sound like standard issue for prisoners."

Gnasher's grin widened. "It's not, but then, I'm not a prisoner. And I knew who you were and that you were coming long before Keket made her announcement. In fact, I was waiting for you."

"Who are you? You don't act like any verman I've ever met. And why did you help me? Not that I'm ungrateful, but this doesn't strike me as the kind of place where altruism ranks high on the list of survival skills."

Another laugh. "That's an understatement! No altruism on my part. It's payback. You saved the life of one of our people at Sinsation, when Overkill failed to steal Scream Queen's voice."

I remembered the verman waiter who would've gotten skewered by one of Overkill's weapons if I hadn't stepped in and intercepted it.

Gnasher went on.

"Most people in the city wouldn't have bothered to save him, wouldn't have even seen him as someone worth saving. But not you. You saw his life as valuable enough to risk your own to protect it."

"Look, I was glad to keep the waiter from getting shishkabobbed, but don't make me out to be something I'm not. I'm a zombie. I don't feel pain. It's no big deal for me to take a wound to protect someone."

"Maybe so but you still saved his life and for that we owe you. And we always pay our debts, Matthew. Always. Besides, Skully has spoken highly of you over the years and we trust his judgment."

Skully is a friend of mine, a bar owner with ties to the Dominari, Nekropolis's version of the Mafia. Despite being on different sides of the law we've always gotten along well and he's helped me out with cases on more than one occasion.

A suspicion was beginning to form in my mind.

"So you work for the Dominari too?"

Gnasher let out another snufflelaugh and scratched behind one of his ears. "For the Dominari! Don't you get it? We vermen are the Dominari!"

Gnasher went on to tell me more about the true nature of the Dominari, and while at first I found his story unbelievable, the more I thought about it all, the more sense it made. I'd lived and worked in Nekropolis for years and I dealt with the city's criminal element on a regular basis. But while I'd met plenty of people who one way or another worked for the Dominari, I'd never actually encountered a member of that criminal organization in person. The Dominari did its business in secret and kept the identities of its members well concealed. Not even Skully would tell me anything about the people he worked for. I'd always imagined the Dominari as a combination crime cartel and spy agency, with hidden headquarters located somewhere in the Sprawl. But the one thing I'd never considered was that the Dominari might be hiding in plain sight.

"My people came to Nekropolis during the Descension with the other Darkfolk, and as the city began to develop, we realized there was opportunity for us here. You see, my kind has always been pragmatic, willing to do things that others find distasteful in order to survive and thrive. Where others see mounds of trash, we see discarded resources to be recovered and made use of. Where others see nothing but rotting carrion, we see food going to waste. And when the Darkfolk began to build their city's infrastructure, complete with laws and legitimate businesses, we knew a shadow economy would inevitably develop. In this respect, the Darkfolk are no different than humans. Crime is a fact of life and if there was going to be crime in our new home my people decided not only would we take advantage of it, we'd run it. And so the Dominari was born. The Darkfolk already looked down upon us as lower lifeforms, so we used that as camouflage, acting docile and hiring ourselves out cheap as manual laborers and servants. We quickly infiltrated every level of society, allowing us access to all manner of information, for we made ourselves such a common part of everyday life – just another bit of background scenery – that few people noticed us, and even fewer guarded their tongues in our presence. Positioned as we were, we were able to take advantage of every business opportunity that came our way and over the years the Dominari grew strong. If there was a criminal enterprise in the city that we didn't own outright, we took a cut of the profits. We became rich as any Darklord – richer, even – and in our own way, just as powerful."

Gnasher's revelation completely changed my view of Nekropolis and as I struggled to process what he'd told me a thought occurred to me.

"Why haven't the Darklords done anything to stop you? Why hasn't Dis? Surely they must know the truth about you."

Gnasher grinned. "We've made ourselves such an integral part of how the city works, that if you destroyed us, Nekropolis's entire economy would collapse. Dis and the Darklords learned about us long ago, but they view us as a necessary evil and as long as we don't interfere with their personal business they leave us alone for the most part. From time to time they make token strikes at us to placate their subjects and make them think something is being done to curtail crime in the city, but afterward everything returns to normal."

I shook my head in amazement. Gnasher was right: in many the ways the Darkfolk aren't so different from humanity.

"So what are you doing here in Tenebrus?" I asked. "I'd think your people would've seen to it that you were never arrested, let alone convicted."

Gnashed snuffled again. "I'm not a prisoner. I am a Secundar, a high rank among my people. Only Primark is higher. I have the great honor of serving as the Dominari's liaison to Tenebrus. We can't prevent every captured criminal from being incarcerated, so we make sure to keep the lines of communication open between Tenebrus and the outside world. That way our associates' knowledge and skills don't go to waste. We despise waste."

It's no secret that organized crime figures and gang leaders back on Earth are still able to run their organizations from inside prison and it seemed the Dominari were doing the same here – only they'd moved one of their own into Tenebrus to do the job.

"I carry messages back and forth as well as delivering alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, pure blood and fresh meat for our people inside. No weapons, though. Keket is aware of my presence here, and while she allows me a great deal of freedom, she'd never permit me to bring in weapons that might be used against her guards – or more importantly, against her."

"Back and forth… You mean you can get out whenever you want? Keket told me that no one has ever escaped Tenebrus!"

Gnasher grinned. "I told you, I'm not a prisoner, so technically I can't escape. From time to time we're allowed to take some of our people out for a furlough, provided we return them. So again, no escapes."

For the first time since Quillion cast me down to Tenebrus, I began to feel a ray of hope.

"So you can get me out."

Gnasher spread his hands. "Maybe yes, maybe no. Intervening to keep you from getting torn apart by an old enemy is one thing. You save one of us and we owed you. And as long as you remain with me, you will be safe. No one in Tenebrus would dare touch anyone under my protection. But that's as much as we'll do to repay our debt to you. If you want more from us, we'll need to negotiate."

"I should have guessed as much. After all, everything is business with the Dominari, isn't it?"

Gnasher gave me a hungry smile. "Indeed."

The idea of dealing with the Dominari didn't sit well with me. Despite all of Gnasher's talk about his people filling an important niche in Nekropolis's society, the bottom line was that the Dominari were thieves and murderers, the very people I'd spent my entire adult life trying to get off the streets. Still, it didn't look as if I had much of a choice if I didn't want to live the remainder of my unlife trapped in Tenebrus, trying to avoid Rondo and the other prisoners I'd helped send here. I'd been framed for a crime I didn't commit and if I wanted to clear my name I'd need to return to the city proper to do it. Besides, I missed Devona and I was pretty sure Keket wouldn't permit conjugal visits.

"All right. What do you want from me?"

"Nothing, actually. When I said we need to negotiate, I meant the Dominari. Not you. Discussions are taking place even as we speak and if terms can be reached you will get your chance at freedom. If not…" He shrugged. "I suppose you can always work as my assistant."

I frowned. "If you're not going to negotiate with me, then who…" Then it hit me. "Devona."

"We contacted her as soon as we learned you'd been sent here."

Without thinking I grabbed Gnasher's coat by the lapels and gave the ratman a shake.

"If anything happens to her…"

Gnasher's eyes glittered dangerously and I felt the pressure of something poking my abdomen. I looked down and saw that the verman had drawn a black bladed dagger and held it pressed against my stomach.

Gnasher's voice was emotionless as he spoke. "I said I don't deliver weapons to prisoners. I didn't say I don't carry weapons of my own."

I stood very still. The black knife was a dire blade, one of the deadliest weapons in the city and a trademark of the Dominari. No one outside the Dominari, supposedly not even the Darklords, understood the magic that was used to create the foul things, but a dire blade could kill any supernatural creature with a single thrust, zombies included.

I very slowly released my hold on Gnasher's coat.

"Sorry," I said. "I appreciate everything you've done for me. I guess I'm just a little stressed out after everything that's happened to me over the last day or so."

Gnasher regarded me a moment longer before making the dagger disappear somewhere inside his jacket.

"Perfectly understandable, but a word of warning: if you touch me again, I'll gut you faster than you can blink."

Gnasher delivered the threat matter-of-factly but the anger smoldering in his gaze told me he was deadly serious. He was, after all, Dominari.

"I get it."

Gnasher nodded curtly. "Good. We should go now. It's best to keep moving down here, and besides, one sugar cube only satisfies a scarab for so long. We keep talking here and we run the risk of becoming the insect's next treat."

He started walking away from the scarab's lair, and I followed.

"How long will your people's negotiations with Devona take?" I asked as we walked.

"It all depends on what she has to offer us and how swiftly we can come to terms. In the meantime, there's no reason to stand around doing nothing. Time is money, you know."

As Gnasher led me toward a group of prisoners I wondered what Devona could possibly have that the Dominari might want. I just hoped that whatever the price for my freedom might be it wouldn't prove too costly for her in the end. Despite Gnasher's last comment I knew the Dominari wasn't solely interested in money. They had all sorts of ways to get their claws into you and the last thing I wanted Devona to do was make a deal with the Dominari that she would later regret. But I knew if our positions were reversed I'd do whatever it took to win her freedom. But there was nothing I could do right then except try not to worry and stay out of trouble while I accompanied Gnasher on his rounds.

I had a feeling that both would be much easier said than done.

I spent the next several hours tagging along with Gnasher. Sometimes the transactions he conducted were obvious, like when he delivered several vials of tangleglow to a porcine creature with a bushy red beard who looked like Porky Pig and Yosemite Sam's love child. The pig thing immediately opened one of the vials and snorted the contents while tucking the second away in a pocket. A few seconds later the creature's eyes began to shine with a kaleidoscopic light. Satisfied, he handed a bag of darkgems over to Gnasher and the ratman placed it into one of his own pockets. A jackalheaded guard standing nearby kept his gaze averted during the transaction, giving no sign he was aware of us, let alone that he had any intention of interfering. When I later asked Gnasher about the guards he said, "They'd better look away. We pay them enough."

Other times the verman's errands were more enigmatic, like when he walked up to a naked woman whose body was covered in fish-like scales and whispered a series of seemingly random numbers in her ear. The woman nodded, whispered a different series of numbers back to Gnasher, and the verman thanked her and we departed.

Everywhere we went the guards ignored us and the Overwatchers gliding above seemed oblivious to our existence. The inmates still pretended not to be interested in Gnasher as they had when I first arrived – unless of course he had direct business to conduct with them – but now I knew the prisoners were well aware of him, and by extension, of me too. They maintained their distance, though, never approaching the verman, always waiting for him to come to them. I kept watch for Rondo, and while I didn't see him, I wasn't foolish enough to think he'd leave me alone just because I was in Gnasher's company. Wherever the Creeper was I knew he was plotting his next move against me.

I saw other criminals that I'd help put away – the Lotus Bleeder, Zack the Knife, Nightshadow, Carnality and more. All of them glared at me as if hoping the hatred in their gazes might reduce me to dust, but none made a move toward me, presumably out of respect for – or fear of – Gnasher. It's good to have friends in low places.

After a while I realized that Gnasher had been pulling more objects from his pockets than he should've had room for. I was sure there was some sort of magic at work and probably a highlevel enchantment too. After all, the Dominari could afford the very best. Given that I rely on the contents of my own pockets in my work I was more than a little envious of Gnasher's jacket, but I didn't ask the verman for the name of his tailor. Whoever it was I knew I couldn't afford his services.

Gnasher was talking with a tall man in a black suit who'd been jailed for smuggling dead bodies between dimensions without proper authorization when a fanged being covered in crusty armor plates lumbered up and grabbed the verman from behind. The creature – a she, I guessed based on the configuration of her armored chest – got Gnasher in an arm lock and held him tight.

"What do you think you're doing?" the verman said in an indignant squeak that sounded more like Mickey Mouse's voice than that of a well connected mobster. "Don't you know who I am?"

"She knows," said a gravelly voice. "She just doesn't give a damn."

I turned to see Rondo approaching, a grin splitting his distorted face. The Tall Man decided he was suddenly needed elsewhere and rapidly moved off on those long legs of his.

I nodded toward the vaguely lobsterish looking She Creature. "I'm surprised you found someone to help you. I didn't think scum like you had any friends."

Gnasher struggled in the She Creature's clawed grip, but she was too powerful and he couldn't break free.

Rondo stopped a dozen feet from me, evidently having learned to keep his distance after our last encounter. He might look like a slender Neanderthal but that didn't mean he was stupid.

"I don't need friends," Rondo said. "Not when there are lots of people here who hate your guts almost as much as I do. You don't know her–" he nodded toward the She-Creature – "but her brother was a gill man you had a run-in with once."

"I remember. The fishface kidnapped a selkie and was holding her captive as his sex slave. Her parents hired me to get her back, which I did, but I needed a dehydra's help to do it." I turned to face the She Creature, who was glaring at me, long ropey strands of saliva dripping from her fangs. "You ever see a dehydra at work? Those creatures can suck all the moisture out of a person in seconds. They're like water vampires. Your brother went from gill man to bipedal prune in less than five seconds."

The She Creature snarled and started to loosen her grip on Gnasher, clearly tempted to let him go so she would be free to attack me.

"Don't listen to him, Marla," Rondo warned. "He's just trying to goad you into making a stupid move."

The She Creature looked like she was still considering having a go at me, but in the end she tightened her grip on the verman once more.

Rondo gave me a triumphant grin and I shrugged.

"Can't blame a guy for trying. So… what's next? She's going to hold Gnasher while you and I fight? Do you really think that will help? I managed to kick your ass all by myself the last time we met and I only needed a little sneezing powder to do it. You're not nearly as tough as you think you are."

Rondo kept grinning, but his gaze turned deadly cold.

"Much as I hate to admit it, I agree. Which is why I've brought along another former friend of yours."

A crowd of prisoners had gathered as we talked, all of them looking excited at the prospect of witnessing some prison yard mayhem. But now they began whispering among themselves and looking back nervously over their shoulders. More than a few moved off, as if they decided they'd be better off watching the proceedings from a distance. A moment later I found out why when a husky man with shaggy brown hair came walking toward us. He wore a loose tan shirt and matching pants, but no shoes. His black eyebrows were just as thick as the hair on his head and they met in the middle, a sure sign that he was a lyke. But I already knew that because I'd encountered this shapeshifter before. I didn't know what his given name was, but I was all too familiar with his street name.

Lycanthropus Rex.

TEN

"Don't take this the wrong way, Rex, but I sincerely hoped I'd never see your butt ugly face again."

"I bet," Rex growled.

For reasons that were still unclear to me about a year earlier Lycanthropus Rex had gone on a rampage in the Sprawl one night when I happened to be working on a separate case. I was in the right place at the right time (or maybe wrong place, wrong time – take your pick) to stop him. When the dust settled, seventeen people were dead, thirty-two were injured and Papa Chatha had to reattach all four of my limbs. Rex had been taken away by the Sentinels and cast down into Tenebrus.

Rex walked up to join Rondo, and while I was gratified to see the lyke also kept his distance from me, the feeling was tempered by the knowledge of how much firepower he packed. I'd been lucky as hell during our last encounter and even then I'd barely defeated him. I didn't think much of my chances to win a rematch, let alone survive it.

"I never met Rondo before today," Rex said, "but he and I have something in common. We've both spent every minute since we were thrown into this shithole dreaming about someday getting a chance to tear you to fucking pieces. And you know something, zombie? That day's today." He grinned, displaying a mouthful of sharp canine teeth. "Who says dreams don't come true?"

Rondo began to step away from Rex then and I knew what was coming. Lycanthropus Rex was going to show his fellow inmates how he'd come by his name. A lyke's transformation from human to wild form is usually a rapid one, but with Rex it took a bit longer, I think because he got off on watching people's reactions when he changed. And I had to admit, the man put on a hell of a show.

There were two separate aspects to his change. First came the standard shift from humanoid to animalistic features and in Rex's case that animal was a wolf. Thick tufts of brown fur sprang forth from his skin, his fingernails darkened and lengthened into ebon claws, his ears became pointed and moved farther up on his skull and his mouth and nose blended into a canine snout. His already intimidating teeth became longer and razor sharp and his eyes – while still blazing with human intelligence – became a feral yellow. But as impressive as that change was, the second part of the transformation was what really made you want to drop a load in your shorts.

Rex began to grow. And when I say grow, I don't just mean Rex put on a few dozen extra pounds of monster muscle and another foot or two of scary height. This son of a bitch grew. He stood about 5'5" in human form but as he assumed werewolf shape he increased in size to seven feet tall, eight, nine, ten – and he kept on growing. His clothes had been loose on him when he'd started changing, but they soon grew tight, then split at the seams and fell away to become nothing more than torn rags lying on the ground.

Everyone in the vicinity was watching the spectacle of Lycanthropus Rex's transformation – everyone, that is, except Rondo. He was watching me and grinning like it was Christmas morning and Santa Claus had brought him a pair of gold-plated hand exercisers.

"You liking this, Richter?" he asked, grinning. "Because I'm loving it!"

Fifteen feet… twenty… twenty-five… and Rex's growth showed no signs of stopping.

One of the things about monsters is that they're so used to being well, monstrous. Like animals facing off in the wild, they often seek to intimidate one another with displays of size, strength and ferocity before attacking, partly because – like Rex – they enjoyed scaring their victims first. And if, also like Rex, you can scare other monsters… well, it just doesn't get any better than that. So while Rex was busy frightening the piss out of everyone within eyeshot, I had a few precious moments in which to act.

First I checked my pants pockets to see if I was carrying anything that might prove useful in combating a gargantuan wolfman. I usually carry all my best weapons in my suit jacket, though, and what I had left was even less deadly than the sneezing powder I'd used against Rondo. And even if the Sentinel hadn't taken my jacket and gun from me back at the Nightspire none of my weapons would've had much effect on Lycanthropus Rex. My 9mm was loaded with silver bullets that had been dipped in a solution of holy water and garlic along with a few other herbs and chemicals given to me by Papa Chatha that make them effective on just about any creature I might encounter in Nekropolis. The silver in my bullets might've killed Rex when he was normal sized, but now… But I didn't have my gun, so the matter was academic. What I needed was a weapon powerful enough to slay even a giant werewolf, preferably one I could get my hands on in the next several moments.

Something like Gnasher's dire blade.

I glanced at the verman and the She Creature who still held him in a tight grip. I couldn't just run over and try to grab hold of the dire blade, though. For one thing I didn't know where Gnasher kept it. In his jacket, I assumed, but since his pockets seemed bottomless, it was possible there were other enchantments on his frock coat that would prevent anyone else form locating the blade, let alone taking it off his person. But that wasn't what made me hesitate. I may be unique among Nekropolis's zombies, but there's one thing I share with my dead brothers and sisters: I'm slow. If I made a go for Gnasher's blade I'd move so slowly that both Rondo and the She Creature would guess what I was up to and one or both of them would stop me. If I wanted a chance at Gnasher's dire blade I'd have to use my head. Good thing Victor Baron had put it back on for me.

"You know, Rondo, you didn't have to go to all this trouble," I said. "If you want to destroy me, all you have to do is walk on over and give me a close-up look at your face. The shock would be so intense that I'd probably just collapse into a pile of dust on the spot."

Rondo's grin gave way to a truly impressive scowl.

"Laugh it up, Richter," he snarled. "That's the last joke you're ever going to make."

"No it's not. This is: when you were born, you were so ugly the doctor couldn't tell which end was your ass, so he slapped both ends just to make sure."

Rondo roared with fury and came racing toward me, hamhands outstretched and ready to cause some serious damage.

I had to time this just right. When Rondo was almost upon me I sidestepped and angled my body so that instead of grabbing me his right hand struck me a glancing blow on the shoulder. I didn't feel the blow, of course, and I allowed the impact to spin me around, and I stumbled toward Gnasher and the She Creature, trying my best to make it look like an accident. As ungainly as I was I didn't have to try very hard.

The verman guessed what I was up to, for as I collided with him, he whispered, "Inside front pocket," and spoke a couple words in a language I was unfamiliar with. Some sort of mystic phrase I figured, designed to deactivate whatever enchantment protected Gnasher's blade. Before the She Creature could react I reached into the jacket and I felt cloth part beneath my fingers as if it were a living thing willingly opening itself to me. I found the hilt of the dire blade, grabbed hold of it and pulled it free of Gnasher's jacket. I'd never touched a dire blade before and I was surprised to feel a sensation of intense cold as my fingers wrapped around the handle. The sudden feeling in my dead flesh was so startling to me that I almost dropped the weapon, but I managed to hold on to it.

I spun around, ready to wield the dire blade against Rondo with deadly efficiency. But before I could do anything Rondo grabbed my wrist with one of his giant hands and squeezed. I heard bones splinter and my now-useless fingers sprung open and the dire blade tumbled to the ground.

Rondo's grin was back.

"Nice try."

"I have to admit, I'd have preferred to kill the three of you myself," I said, "but I suppose I'll just have to be satisfied with letting Keket's people do it for me."

I pointed with my left hand and – still holding on to my broken wrist – Rondo turned to look. A half dozen jackalheads were rapidly approaching from different directions, as were a trio of silver skulled Overwatchers.

"You really didn't think Lycanthropus Rex could transform without drawing the guards' attention, did you?" I asked.

Rondo said nothing, but he continued to hold my crushed wrist as we both watched the jackal-heads go to work. When they were within twenty feet of Rex – who had by this time reached his full fifty-foot height – they stopped, leveled their golden spears and released blasts of energy at the giant wolfman. Rex roared more in anger than pain and lunged toward one of the guards, snatching him up in one gigantic paw with a single swift swipe. Rex squeezed and the guard let out a scream as the life was crushed out of him. Rex then hurled the body at another guard, taking him out with truly impressive aim.

One of the Overwatchers glided toward Rex from behind and twin beams of light lanced forth from its silvery sockets to strike the gargantuan wolfman directly between the shoulder blades. From Rex's bellow of agony it was clear that whatever energy the skull emitted it was more effective than that produced by the jackalheads' spears. But however powerful the energy blast was it didn't slow Rex down. He whirled about, snatched hold of the Overwatcher and hurled it to the ground. The metallic skull hit not far from where I was standing and I saw the device break open like a large silvery egg, spilling out electronic components, blood and bits of brain matter. Victor Baron built his creations to last, but even his genius hadn't anticipated the Overwatchers going up against a creature of Lycanthropus Rex's power. A second later the Overwatcher exploded in a spectacular flash of light and fire.

Seeing an Overwatcher brought down, the prisoners in the area let up a cheer and, emboldened by seeing how easily Rex had dealt with Keket's guards, they began to riot. Inmates turned to whoever happened to be standing close to them and began hitting, clawing and biting – sometimes all three at once. Jackalheads fired energy blasts and Overwatchers unleashed eye beams in all directions, hoping to quell the riot before it could spread too far, but they might as well have been trying to hold back a tsunami with a few sandbags and a whole lot of good intentions. Within moments the fighting had spread throughout the entire general population as near as I could tell from where I stood and the canyon air was filled with the sounds of hundreds of beings beating hell out of each other. On impulse I glanced upward toward the balcony from which Keket had dropped me down to the canyon floor and I saw the mistress of Tenebrus standing there, gripping the railing with cloth wrapped fingers, face hidden behind her golden mask. I remembered what Gnasher had told me about how Keket was entertained by watching the inmates fight. If so, the undead sorceress was undoubtedly ecstatic right then.

I was used to matters going from bad to worse – it's pretty much standard operating procedure for me – but this was bad even by my standards. I could've tried to slip away from Rondo and Rex in the confusion and lose myself among the rioters, but I didn't want to abandon Gnasher. He might have been Dominari but he'd taken care of me since I'd been tossed into the general population and I owed him. Besides, the thought of running from lowlifes like Rondo and Rex made my dead stomach turn. Still, I had no idea what I could do at this point. If I was faster I might've made a lunge for the dire blade lying on the ground, but if I so much as twitched in the weapon's direction the She Creature would snap Gnasher in half like a white furred twig.

I felt gentle fingers of thought brush my mind, the sensation both familiar and very welcome.

Don't worry, love. I know someone who specializes in fast.

I saw a blur of motion and felt the pressure of a breeze whip past and suddenly I was holding the dire blade in my left hand – which was good since Rondo still had hold of my broken right wrist and the hand attached to it was useless now.

Thanks, Tavi, I thought and swung the dire blade toward Rondo's chest. The Creeper's gaze was fixed on Lycanthropus Rex who was still battling jackalheads and Overwatchers and thus didn't see the strike coming. Not that it mattered. My arm swung wild and instead of driving the ebony blade deep into Rondo's chest it swept through empty air.

See? You should've let Victor Baron fix that when you had the chance!

I didn't respond to Devona, partially because I didn't have any time, but mostly because she was right, and it irritated me.

Rondo must've caught the motion of my failed strike out of the corner of his eye for he turned to face me and without hesitation rammed a fist into my face. I felt nothing, but given the force with which he struck, if I hadn't been dead already, I'm sure the blow would've killed me. As it was my nose was reduced to pulp and I'm pretty sure my skull was fractured. Rondo had maintained his hold on my right wrist with his other hand and now he yanked me back toward him, intending to hit me again. But there was another blur as something whipped past us and a stream of liquid splashed into Rondo's eyes. Rondo screamed as Tavi's cobra venom did its job and the Creeper released his hold on my wrist so that he could use both hands to frantically try to clear the venom from his eyes.

With Rondo momentarily out of commission I turned to Gnasher and the She Creature. Seeing Rondo get injured – and more importantly, seeing me standing before her gripping a dire blade – she tightened her hold on Gnasher and the verman shrieked in pain.

"Stay where you're at, zombie, or the rat-man dies!" she said in a gurgly voice, as if she had a throat full of mouthwash.

"You know, it's a policy of mine never to listen when someone threatens me, but considering that a friend of mine is walking up behind you as we speak, I think I'll make exception this time."

The She Creature let out a laugh that sounded like a water balloon bursting. "You don't seriously expect me to fall for that old trick, do you?"

"It's no trick," I said, "and yes, I do expect you to fall – hard."

The She Creature frowned, perhaps realizing from my tone that something wasn't quite adding up here. A moment later she realized what it was when a scaly clawed hand clamped down on her shoulder and burst into flame. The She Creature screamed in agony at Scorch's fiery touch, and while the demon might not have been able to suck the moisture out of a water monster with the ruthless efficiency of a dehydra, she was no slouch in that department. The She Creature's armored plates quickly dried and tiny cracks fissured across their surfaces. She released Gnasher and the verman fled, moving with a swiftness that would've done Tavi proud, and disappeared into the crowd.

Once Gnasher was safely away, Scorch increased the intensity of her flames and the SheCreature became wreathed in fire. She screamed, flung herself to the ground and attempted to put the flames out by rolling, but it was too late. A few seconds later she lay still, while the flames continued to burn.

Scorch, in full-on scary demon mode, grinned at me.

"Looks like her fellow prisoners will be dining on fresh cooked lobster tonight," she said.

It's times like that which make it hard for me to remember that Scorch's normal form is that of a relatively innocent looking young girl.

"Good to see you again," I told the demon and meant it. "But where's Devona?"

"Right here."

Her voice came from right next to me, but when I turned I saw nothing. An instant later the air shimmered and Devona and Bogdan were standing there, the warlock holding on to her arm.

I felt a wave of jealousy until I realized Bogdan had been in physical contact with her in order to extend his invisibility spell around the both of them. That didn't mean I had to like it, though, and I was happy when the warlock let go of her.

Devona had undergone something of a makeover in the hours we'd been apart. Her normally blonde hair had been dyed midnight black and instead of her usual black leather catsuit she wore a tight white sweater, a short black skirt, black leggings and kneehigh black boots. I wasn't sure why she'd changed clothes – she finds her regular outfit not only comfortable but it doesn't constrict her movements if she needs to fight. Maybe she'd decided that breaking her lover out of jail was such a special occasion that she needed to dress up. If so I wasn't complaining. She looked damned good, but then she could wear a burlap sack and she'd still look beautiful to me.

Devona ran over and hugged me and I hugged her back as best I could given the number of injuries I'd sustained since we'd last seen one another.

When we parted I looked at her and said, "What's with the new look? Here I am, stuck in Tenebrus, while you decide to pay a visit to your hair stylist?"

She smiled. "I'll explain later. Right now–"

She was interrupted by Rondo bellowing my name.

"Richter! I'm going to fucking tear you apart!"

The Creeper – eyes so red and swollen he could barely see – started toward me, killer hands raised and ready to do what they did best.

Bogdan gestured and a baseball bat suddenly appeared in his hand. He got a good grip on it with both hands, stepped forward, and swung as Rondo came at me. The bat splintered as it came in contact with Rondo's head and for an instant I thought the Creeper would shrug off the blow and keep coming. But he stopped, swayed on his feet back and forth a couple times, and then his eyes rolled white and he fell face first onto the ground.

Bogdan dropped the broken bat next to Rondo then came over to join Devona and me.

"Nice hit," I told him. "You ever get tired of magic, you might consider a career playing baseball on Earth."

Scorch walked over too and Tavi was suddenly there as well, having arrived so swiftly he might as well have magically appeared as Devona and Bogdan had done. The lyke was in his combination cobra–mongoose wild form and he looked just as intimidating as Scorch did in her full demon guise.

"I've never broken anyone out of jail before," Tavi said. "It's actually quite a lot of fun."

I was about to warn Tavi not to jinx us but I was too late. Lycanthropus Rex had fought off the jackalheads and Overwatchers and now reached for us with his giant clawed hands. He caught us by surprise, including Tavi who otherwise might've gotten away, and lifted us into the air, Scorch, Tavi and Bogdan in his left hand, Devona and I in his right. He brought us up to his mammoth grinning face and I was grateful that I couldn't smell his undoubtedly horrendous breath.

"Looks like you found some friends of your own, eh, Richter?" Rex said in a booming bestial voice. "They can't help you, you know. Not against me. I'm too strong."

I tried to keep my voice steady as I spoke, but in truth I was terrified. You don't have to confront a fifty-foot wolfman everyday, even in Nekropolis. "Right now Keket is having fun watching the chaos you and Rondo created, but she'll grow tired of the show and reestablish order soon enough, and you'll likely end up thrown into maximum security. From what she told me, it makes Hell look like a tropical resort."

"Maybe so," Rex growled. "But at least I'll get to crush you and your friends to a pulp first." He bared his teeth in a hideous parody of a grin. "Any last words, Richter?"

"Yes. You're about to feel a slight prick, and it's most definitely going to hurt."

I still had hold of Gnasher's dire blade, and while my arms were pressed tight against my body due to the pressure of Rex's grip, I was able to angle my hand so the knife point touched the flesh of the giant lyke's hand. I didn't need my full coordination to simply shove the dagger forward, and given how deadly its magic was, I didn't have to do more than break the skin for it to work.

The effect was as dramatic as it was instantaneous. Lycanthropus Rex's eyes glazed over, his body went limp and his fifty-foot frame plummeted to the ground like a felled tree. It was all I could do to resist yelling "Timber!" on the way down.

The impact was rough but most of us were hardier than normal humans and Tavi and Scorch used their bodies to protect Bogdan, so none of us received any serious injuries when we hit. Too bad I can't say the same for Rondo – the poor unconscious sonofabitch was directly beneath Rex when he fell.

Once Rex was done we pried ourselves free from his dead hands and started moving away from the body. Not because we were afraid of Rex coming back to life – which isn't unheard of in Nekropolis – but because a horde of excited scarabs came scuttling toward the downed giant from all directions. We managed to get clear just in time for the beetles to fall upon Rex's remains, and as we ran, we heard the sound of noisy, moist chewing as the insects tucked into the feast of their lifetimes, illustrating an important principle in Nekropolis: the bigger they are, the better they taste.

We didn't stick around to watch the grisly show. Numbers of jackalheads and Overwatchers were hauling ass in our direction and it looked like my great escape was in danger of being over before it had fully gotten under way. I had no idea what to do, but Devona grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me toward the nearest canyon wall, the others keeping pace with us. I soon realized she was leading me toward a scarab's lair – the same one Gnasher had taken me to before. The five of us hurried inside the cave and were swallowed by darkness. My night vision isn't any better than it was when I was alive but Devona led me on confidently and I continued to follow, trusting her.

We soon reached the rear of the cave, having to pick our way through the scattered skeletal remains of past scarab meals, but instead of stopping we kept going. I half expected to run face first into a wall, but we encountered no obstacles. We stepped from darkness into light and it took my eyes a moment to adjust before I was able to get a look at my surroundings.

We were standing inside a tunnel formed of the same gray fleshy substance as Tenebrus. Behind us was a solid wall, or at least what appeared to be a solid wall. I reached out to touch it but my hand passed through without resistance.

"Hologram," I said.

Devona nodded. "It's how Gnasher comes and goes from Tenebrus. The passageway is too small for any of the scarabs to get through, though."

"How come the big bugs don't eat him?" I wondered aloud.

"Because I always make sure to carry extra sugar cubes with me."

I turned toward the sound of Gnasher's voice and saw him standing next to a tram made from bits and pieces of junk. Sitting behind the wheel was a verman, but this was a patchwork version cobbled together from the parts of separate rodent bodies. It seemed Victor Baron did work for the Dominari, too.

Looking at both the hodgepodge tram and the reanimated verman I remembered what Gnasher had told me about his people: We despise waste. From the looks of things it was a principle they took to heart.

The sole illumination in the tunnel was provided by the tram's headlights, and they revealed the tunnel extended for some distance.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"This is the Underwalk," Gnasher said with more than a hint of pride. "Over the centuries the Dominari have created an intricate series of tunnels beneath the city. Not only does it help us get around more easily, we're able to do so without attracting unwanted attention."

I was impressed. The Darklords strictly control travel to and from their Dominions by monitoring traffic across the bridges that connect them. The only way a system of tunnels such as the Underwalk could exist was with the Darklords' tacit approval. The Dominari were even more powerful than I'd imagined, almost as powerful as Gnasher liked to make out.

I turned to Devona. "I take it you were able to reach a deal with the Dominari."

She nodded. "Once we did, they brought us down into the Underwalk, loaned us a tram and a driver, and he brought us to their secret entrance to Tenebrus. As soon as we were inside, we started looking for you. It seemed like we found you just in time."

"I had the situation well in hand before you four showed up," I said defensively. Then I looked down at my crushed wrist. "Poor choice of words," I admitted. "Thanks for coming." I looked to the other members of the Midnight Watch. "All of you."

They nodded, looking insufferably pleased with themselves. Still, there wasn't anything I could say about it since I suppose they had technically rescued me, though I like to think that I'd have found my own way out, given enough time.

I turned back to Gnasher. "I appreciate that your people are willing to do business with us but I have a hard time believing that you intend to trust us with so many of your secrets – the true nature of the Dominari, the existence of the Underwalk, that you have a direct pipeline in and out of Tenebrus…"

Gnasher grinned. "Trust is for fools. We believe in insurance."

"I'm afraid he's right, Matt." Devona reached into her skirt pocket and removed a small glass vial containing a tiny wriggling worm.

"What's that?"

"A tongue worm," she said. "You place it on your tongue, as its name suggests, and it sinks into the flesh. It lies dormant within, but if you ever try to tell anyone anything you know about the Dominari, the worm will explode, taking your head with it. All four of us accepted tongue worms before the Dominari would agree to help us. This one is for you."

I looked more closely at the worm inside the vial. It looked like a simple inch worm, nothing special about it, but I had no doubt it could do what Devona said. No wonder the Dominari were able to keep their secrets so well.

I looked to Devona's employees, trying to understand. They'd all taken quite a risk by accepting tongue worms, and while I had no problem believing Devona would do so for me – for I'd do the same for her in an instant – those three barely knew me, and I barely knew them. Hell, I didn't really like them, and I hated Bogdan. Why would they have taken such a risk for me?

I decided that was something for me to ponder later. If we were going to get out of here it was obvious what I needed to do first. I didn't even think about objecting; I had a pretty good idea what would happen to me if I refused to accept a tongue worm. I took the vial from Devona, grasping it as best I could in my right hand, and pulled the rubber stopper out with my left – though as uncoordinated as that hand now was, it took me a couple tries. Devona frowned but thankfully she kept silent and let me have my pride. Once the stopper was out I upended the vial over my tongue and the worm fell out. I felt nothing, but Devona said, "It's gone," and I knew the worm had merged with the flesh of my tongue and disappeared. I replaced the stopper and tucked the vial into my pocket – vermen aren't the only ones who don't like to waste things – and faced Devona once more.

"Now what?"

"Now we board the tram and get out of here before Keket realizes you've escaped. Just because the Dominari helped us is no reason she'll allow you to get away."

"True," Gnasher said. "And our deal was to provide a means for you to escape, which we have done. We will not interfere with any attempt to recapture you. We won't directly defy Keket since we need to stay on her good side in order to continue operating inside Tenebrus."

I almost told the verman that his concern for my well being was touching, but I said nothing. He was Dominari and there wasn't anything personal in his attitude. It was just business.

I still had hold of Gnasher's dire blade and now I handed it back to the verman.

"Thanks for the loan," I said.

Gnasher nodded and took the blade from me. It was still sticky with Rex's blood and Gnasher held the weapon gingerly by the hilt as he reached into one of his pockets. I thought he would pull out a handkerchief to clean the blade, but instead he took out a plastic storage bag, popped the dire blade inside, sealed it and tucked the bagged weapon into his inner jacket pocket. I had no idea what the Dominari might want with a sample of Lycanthropus Rex's blood, but I'm sure they'd find some use for it.

Despite the fact the dire blade had saved all us from Rex, I was glad to be rid of the damned thing. Some weapons are simply too awful to use and a dire blade is one of them.

"Thanks for all your help," I told the verman. "I might've made it without you, but I doubt I'd have done so in one piece."

Gnasher accepted my gratitude with a nod. "It was a pleasure doing business with you, Matt. And now that we've established a relationship, perhaps we'll be able to work together again in the future."

I felt a mixture of anger and disgust upon hearing the verman's words. I wasn't the kind of guy who worked with mobsters… at least, I wasn't before that day. I bit back whatever reply I might've made, knowing it was probably unwise to piss off a Dominari Secundar who'd just helped get me out of prison. Instead, I returned his nod and left it at that. Still, I couldn't help wondering how many more times I might have to bend, if not break, my personal moral code before I managed to claw my way out of the mess I'd somehow fallen into – assuming it was even possible to get out.

Sensing I was uncomfortable Devona laid a gentle hand on my arm. "Let's go."

The five of us climbed aboard the vehicle I'd come to think of as the Scrap Tram.

"Good luck to you, Matt!" Gnasher said. Then he grinned. "You are most definitely going to need it and in industrial sized quantities."

I sighed as I took a seat up front next to Devona. "Truer words were never spoken."

As soon as we were all seated the Frankenstein verman started the engine – which sounded remarkably smooth-running given the tram's ramshackle appearance – and we started rolling down the tunnel.

As we traveled we passed other vehicles of similar design, each driven by a Baron-built verman and containing a variety of cargo. Sometimes passengers – often other vermen, but just as often members of other species – and sometimes wooden crates filled with unknown contents. The Underwalk was a bustling place, in its own way as busy as the streets above us. It was like an entirely different city existed beneath Nekropolis and I marveled anew at the size and complexity of the Dominari's organization.

"So what landed you in the hoosegow?" Scorch asked. Once we'd boarded the tram both she and Tavi assumed their human guises and now she looked like a teenage girl again, but she still had the demon's gruff attitude.

I told them all about my visit to the Nightspire, my interrogation by Quillion and what the First Adjudicator had shown me.

Devona was scowling long before I was finished and when I stopped speaking she continued scowling, lost in thought. Then she shook her head as if to clear it.

"First things first," she said. There was a duffle bag on the seat next to us and she reached over, opened it, and pulled out a smaller cloth bag. She opened the bag and removed a bracelet made of tiny bones from a lizard or maybe a rodent.

Good thing Gnasher isn't here to see this, I thought.

"I stopped by Papa Chatha's before we came to get you," Devona said.

She slipped the bracelet onto my broken wrist and within seconds I could feel the bones knitting themselves back together and I could feel my smashed nose resetting itself. After a couple minutes Devona removed the bracelet and put it back into the bag.

"That should do it," she said. "Papa placed a restorative spell on the bracelet to heal any damage you sustained in Tenebrus and he also added a preservative spell to make you look as fresh as possible." She leaned forward and examined my neck. "It even healed the seam on your neck where Victor Baron reattached your head. Excellent!" She leaned back, looking very pleased with herself.

I experimentally flexed my left hand but its coordination was still off. I guess there's only so much the magic of a voodoo priest can fix. Still, I wasn't complaining. Papa had more than done right by me.

"Let me guess: if I'm going to operate incognito, I need to look like a living man, so no tinge of gray to my skin, and no obvious injuries that apparently don't hurt me."

She nodded. "If we're going to attempt to clear your name, we're probably going to run into trouble."

I smiled. "Don't we always?"

She smiled back. "When we do – difficult as this may be for you – try to avoid getting beat up. And if you do get injured, pretend like it hurts. You're the only self-willed zombie in the city, and you'll need to do everything you can to act like a living man if you want to avoid being recognized."

Sounds easy enough, right? After all, I'd spent almost four decades alive before becoming a zombie. But after being dead for several years, I wasn't sure that I could fake being alive. The big things I could do just fine. After all, I could still think and talk, but I move more stiffly than I did when I was alive and I don't notice small things like temperature changes and strong smells. Passing for one of the living wouldn't be easy.

Devona reached into the small bag again and this time pulled out a necklace made from dried chicken feet strung on braided strands of black hair – dead man's hair, I guessed. Before I could ask about it she placed the ugly thing around my neck and I felt a strange sensation of warmth pass through me briefly and then it was gone.

"What was that?"

"I knew that once we got you out of Tenebrus, Keket would search for you and the Adjudicators would probably get involved too. We need to conceal you from any tracking magic they might use so Papa created a charm that temporarily binds your spirit with that of one of the lower ranking Loa. It'll only last a few days, but during that time it will block the effects of any spell used against you. While you wear it you will be undetectable by magic and anyone who runs a magical scan on you will only detect the voodoo spirit's presence."

Having a security expert for a lover is a wonderful thing sometimes.

"What about scientific scans?" I asked.

"The charm won't affect those, but that sort of tech is rare in the city, so you should be safe enough."

"What about my scent?" I asked. There are any number of creatures in Nekropolis with enhanced senses – vampire and lykes chief among them. They'd be able to smell that I was a zombie.

Tavi was sitting behind us and he leaned forward to answer my question.

"Since you're now fresh your scent has only the vaguest hint of decay to it. Bloodborn have a somewhat similar scent so if you remain close to Devona you shouldn't arouse any suspicion."

Tavi was a lyke so I figured that his advice was sound.

"Looks like you've covered most of the bases," I said to Devona. "I can't be tracked by magic and for the most part I look and smell human again. Now all I need is a disguise."

"I've got that covered, too." She reached into the duffle bag and pulled out a black great coat with a double row of ivory buttons down the front. She thrust it at me. "Put it on."

As I donned the coat she pulled a large black hat out of the duffle. It was flattened a bit and she quickly reshaped it and plopped it on my head.

"There! Just the thing for an escaped convict on the run," she said.

She said this lightly, trying to make a joke of it, but for the first time I realized that I was a criminal now. I might have been sentenced to Tenebrus for a crime I hadn't committed but I had chosen to escape the prison. I'd rationalized my act by telling myself that I hadn't had a real trial, let alone a formal one, and the only way I could hope to clear my name was if I was free to investigate the theft of Lord Edrigu's bone flute by myself. And while both of those things might be true it was also true that I'd broken the law. I was used to bending the law in my line of work, and when I did, I always told myself that it was necessary to get the job done and that I was doing it to find some measure of justice for my clients. But this time I hadn't just bent a law – I'd shattered it, and I'd done so for myself and no one else. I was still trying to right a wrong, so that hadn't changed, but somehow that didn't help me feel any better.

The great coat fit well, and while it was a little too stylishly neo-noir for my tastes, I had to admit it looked kind of snazzy.

"This is nice," I told Devona. "Where did you get it?"

Bogdan answered instead. "It's just something I had hanging around in my closet, but I'm glad you like it, Matt."

Great. Not only was I an escaped criminal, I was going on the run wearing one of Bogdan's hand –me downs. This day just kept going from bad to worse.

At least now I understood why Devona had dyed her hair and changed her own outfit: to disguise herself as well. She and I were too recognizable as a couple around the city, especially in the Sprawl, where we lived and worked.

"Thanks for everything," I told her, sounding less than thrilled. "Looks like I'm all set."

She frowned then, looking at me as if trying to read my thoughts, though if she'd really been trying, I'd have felt her probing my mind.

What was my problem? I should've been grateful for Devona's preparations, and I suppose on one level I was, but I was also upset about them, though I wasn't sure why. I decided to chalk up my mixed feelings to stress. After all, I'd experienced more than my fair share lately and I told myself not to worry about it.

One thing I was worried about was the price Devona had paid to the Dominari for their help. I was dying to ask her, but I didn't want to do so in front of her employees. I had no idea whether they'd been privy to her negotiations with the vermen – though knowing my love, I guess she'd negotiated in private – and I didn't want to put Devona on the spot by asking her for details right then. I decided to wait until we were alone.

"So now what?" I said, thinking aloud. I hadn't really intended it as a question for anyone, but Devona answered anyway.

"We can't go to any of your usual haunts –" she grinned at the joke – "so to speak. Once Keket reports your escape to Quillion, Sentinels from all over the city will be looking for you. That means we'll have to start out in the one place in Nekropolis you'd never set foot in."

I didn't like where this was headed.

"You don't mean–"

Devona grinned wider.

"Yep. Get ready, cowboy. We're heading to Westerna's."

ELEVEN

Devona and I sat at a corner table, too close to a speaker that was currently blaring "Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus. On the dance floor rows of vampires along with a smattering of other creatures wearing country and western regalia line-danced to the less-than dulcet tones of Cyrus the Virus. It made me long for the earsplitting din of Scream Queen and Kakophonie. Like a lot of clubs in the Sprawl there were large Mind's Eye projectors hanging on the walls, transmitting images of Billy Ray cavorting around the stage as he sung. If I hadn't already been deceased I would've begged for God – any god – to strike me dead and put me out of my misery.

I'd never set foot inside Westerna's before, but the place lived down to my expectations. The walls were red brick, the floor old stained wood and the round tables and chairs looked as if they'd been stolen off a set of an old Western movie. Almost everyone here – patrons as well as servers – dressed like they'd just arrived from Nashville. It was like Urban Cowboy meets Mad Monster Party. Luckily not every customer was done up in C&W drag, so Devona and I didn't stand out too much.

Like Sinsation, Westerna's had a Victor Baron built doorman, this one looking something like a greenish skinned John Wayne with scars crisscrossing his flesh. He'd even greeted us with, "Howdy, Pilgrims," as we'd entered. Our server was a Bloodborn woman with a mound of bleach blonde hair and a Dolly Partonsized chest who insisted on calling us "Hon" and "Sugar." I'll leave you to guess which was which. We both ordered mugs of aqua sanguis and Countess Dolly brought them over right away, giving us a smile and a saucy wink as she departed.

"Don't get any ideas," Devona warned as she took a sip of synthetic blood.

"I won't," I assured her. "Breasts like that are dangerous. I might lose an eye or something. Besides, how do you know she was winking at me? She might've been flirting with you."

Devona frowned and I immediately regretted my comment.

"Are you going to start being jealous of everyone we meet from now on?"

"Sorry. It was just a joke." I raised my mug to my lips and pretended to drink. I can ingest liquid and food when I want, but since I can't digest it, I eventually have to throw it up, otherwise it'll spoil inside my stomach and the resultant bacteria would begin feeding on my insides – not to mention the horrendous smell it would produce. So I avoided eating and drinking unless I absolutely had to. Since I looked fairly fresh, was dressed in black, and was in the company of a half-vampire, Devona and I had decided it would be best for me to try to pass as one of the Bloodborn, hence my ordering aqua sanguis. But I wasn't going to actually drink it unless it became necessary to maintain my disguise.

The Dominari tram had brought us to a point beneath the Sprawl and we'd emerged in a warehouse owned by the vermen only a few blocks from Westerna's. It was there that we parted ways with Bogdan, Tavi and Scorch. The members of the Midnight Watch wanted to help me clear my name, but while I appreciated the gesture, I refused to accept their assistance. For one thing I was in a Lycanthropus Rex sized pile of trouble and I didn't want to drag the others into it anymore than they already were. And to be practical the more people Devona and I had tagging along the greater the odds that we'd be recognized. Devona and the Midnight Watch had been making a name for themselves over the last couple months, and while her employees weren't exactly household names throughout the city, they were well enough known – especially in the Sprawl – that their presence was a risk we couldn't afford. They were disappointed but they understood and they wished me luck as Devona and I left the warehouse and headed for Westerna's.

We sat there for a bit, sipping our drinks and watching people make fools of themselves on the dance floor, and eventually I decided that this would be a good time to broach the subject of Devona's deal with the Dominari. I decided to be subtle about it.

"So… what did you have to give the Dominari in exchange for their help?"

OK, so I stink at subtle. But I was concerned about the price Devona had been forced to pay – what it might mean for her… and for us.

She gazed straight ahead and answered in a toneless voice. "I had to swear eternal allegiance to them and become one of their operatives."

If I'd had a working heart it would've skipped a beat right then, but she turned to me with a grin and punched me on the shoulder.

"Gotcha! You should see the look on your face!"

"Very funny."

Over the months since we'd gotten together Devona's sense of humor had developed a cruel streak. I think I've been a corrupting influence on her.

"Seriously," she said, "they only wanted information."

"That's all?" I was suspicious. The Dominari had gone to a lot of trouble to assist in my jail break – including probably damaging their working relationship with Keket. I couldn't imagine them doing so without significant compensation in return.

Devona looked down at the tabletop then and I knew whatever she'd done to help me it was serious. The only time she has trouble meeting my gaze is when she's feeling guilty.

"They wanted me to provide details of the Cathedral's security set up – which I did. At least, as much as I was able to. I was only the curator of my father's collection and not actually part of his security staff. Still, the Dominari were satisfied with the information I was able to provide."

If I told you I was shocked that would only begin to describe how I felt right then. Despite the fact that Devona had helped me stop Lord Galm's Dawnstone from being used to destroy the city, the Lord of the Bloodborn had cast his half human daughter out of his home, making it clear that, as far as he was concerned, they were no longer father and daughter. Nevertheless Devona still cared for Galm – you can't exactly love a Darklord, even when you're related to him – and I couldn't imagine her betraying him like this, no matter how much the son of a bitch deserved it.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," she said, still not meeting my gaze. "The Cathedral's security procedures are routinely revised and updated, so everything I told the Dominari was no longer current. I think they knew this, but they were happy to get whatever inside information they could. I'm not sure what they think they can use the information for, but since it's old, it won't do them much good." She looked up then. "At least, that's what I've been telling myself."

I reached across the table, took hold of Devona's hand, and gave it what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze.

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you've done. The risk you've taken… If Galm ever finds out…"

She smiled weakly. "If Father learns what I did I won't have to worry about being sentenced to Tenebrus. He'll hunt me down and kill me himself."

It's one thing when a person tells you they love you. It's another when they stick it out with you even when times are tough. But it's what we're willing to do for one another – the chances we take, the sacrifices we make – that truly speak to the depth of our love. Before this I'd known that Devona loved me, but I realized I hadn't appreciated just how much, and I felt like a world class idiot for being jealous of Bogdan, for being jealous of anyone. At that moment I didn't feel worthy of Devona's love and I decided right then and there that I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to become worthy of it. Of course, to do that, I was going to have to get my name off Nekropolis's Most Wanted list somehow.

Just then I saw coils of gray smoke drifting our way. They stopped next to our table, grew larger and thicker, and took on a human shape. An instant later a young – or at least young-appearing – Bloodborn male stood there, wearing a black leather jacket, white T-shirt, jeans and running shoes, a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his pale lips. He was also wearing a backpack and he slipped it off and handed it to Devona before pulling out a seat and joining us.

"Tell me something, Shrike," I said, "I get how vampires' clothing transforms with you whenever you assume your travel forms, but how do you manage to take extra stuff like that backpack with you?"

Shrike grinned. "Magic," he said simply, and I nodded. What else?

"Thanks for coming," I said.

"Devona filled me in on the basics of what happened when she called me," Shrike said. "I gotta tell you, you have some of the worst luck of anyone I know, living, dead, or in between."

I sighed. "Wish I could argue with you on that."

Devona opened the backpack and quickly checked the contents.

"This looks good. Thanks." She looked up and met Shrike's gaze. "Did you have any trouble getting into our apartment?"

"I didn't even try," Shrike said. He took a long drag on his cigarette, and while the end glowed, the cig didn't decrease in size. It never did, and as far as I know, Shrike always had the same endlessly burning butt in his mouth. When he exhaled smoke, his entire body grew faint until you could see through it, solidifying again a moment later. "There are Sentinels posted on the corner for blocks in all directions around your building. Real subtle, huh? But I managed to pick up some goodies here and there for you. Maybe not as good as your regular gear, but hopefully it'll do."

Like Lazlo, Shrike's an old friend, and Devona knew we could count on him in a pinch, which was why she'd contacted him before heading for Tenebrus to break me out. She knew we'd need weapons and Shrike was the only one we knew who could move about the city undetected, given the nature of his travel form.

Devona handed the backpack over to me and it was my turn to examine the contents. There were a number of minor magical items from Hop Frog's and I chose several and tucked them away in various pockets in my coat. That is, in Bogdan's coat. I left the remainder of the magic items for Devona to choose from. She usually doesn't carry weapons, preferring to rely on her formidable intelligence, supernatural strength and speed, as well as her psychic abilities. But considering our current situation, I figured she might want to stock up on some extra insurance.

Best of all was the gun Shrike had found for me. It was a .45 instead of the 9mm I usually carry, but escaped convicts can't be choosers. A 9mm carries more ammo and the velocity is better, and there's less recoil, which makes it easier for me, with my slower zombie reflexes, to use. Still, the .45 has better stopping power, which makes it a decent weapon on the streets of Nekropolis. I removed the weapon from the backpack and tucked it into my jacket along with the box of ammo Shrike had brought along.

"I don't suppose you managed to score silver bullets?"

"Sorry," Shrike said, "just the regular."

I nodded. It would have to do. I returned the pack to Devona and she took the rest of the contents for herself. My vox had been taken from me back at the Nightspire so Shrike gave me his and I slipped it into one of my pockets.

"I know I don't have to ask if you were followed," I said to Shrike, "but as I'm more paranoid than usual right now, I'm going to anyway. Were you?"

Shrike looked as if my question had deeply wounded him. "Matt, I'm surprised by your lack of faith in me. For Christ's sake–" He didn't get any farther, for upon speaking the holy name his mouth burst into flame.

Shrike cursed as he attempted to beat out the flames with both hands. I sighed and handed him my mug of aqua sanguis. He downed the contents in a single gulp, extinguishing the flames but leaving his tongue and lips burnt and blackened. He took another long drag with his cigarette and this time when his body resolidified his mouth was healed.

"You really need to learn how to watch your language," I told him for perhaps the hundredth time since we met. He just grinned at me like he always does and not for the first time I wondered if Shrike "accidentally" spoke holy names as simply another aspect of an eccentric street persona. After all, the man was nothing if not theatrical in his presentation.

"Well, at least we're armed," I said. I'd felt naked without some sort of weaponry on my person, and even though what Shrike had procured for us wasn't top of the line by a long shot, it was a damn sight better than nothing, and I felt a lot better than I had upon first walking into Westerna's.

"So what's the word on the street?" I asked Shrike. "Is anyone aware that I'm a wanted zombie?"

Shrike shook his head. "I don't think so. You know how it works. When the Adjudicators pull someone off the street and toss them into Tenebrus, word may never get out. As far as their friends and family are concerned, they've just gone missing – and since there are any number of reasons why someone might end up with their face on a milk carton in this city–"

"No one's ever sure what happened to them," I finished. Good. Bad enough that the Sentinels were looking for me, but as long as no one else was aware that I'd been sentenced to Tenebrus and escaped, I could–

Westerna's Mind's Eye projectors were showing a video from a homegrown group called the Hunchback Forty, when all of a sudden they went black, taking the music with them. The club's patrons booed and hissed, and since more of them were vampires, they had hissing down to an art. But the bartender shouted for everyone to be quiet.

"Acantha's just come on the Mind's Eye with a special broadcast," he said. "I'm going to switch over to it."

There were murmurs of surprise and delight from the crowd, but Devona and I looked at each other and said the same thing: "Uh-oh."

The Mind's Eyes activated once more, this time showing Acantha's transmission. As usual, since the image was captured by the cyberserpents on her head, Acantha herself wasn't visible, but the voice came through loud and clear. The person her cameras were trained on was very familiar to me, as it had been less than a day since I'd seen him.

Quillion.

The voice, however, was Acantha's.

"Hello, Nekropolis! You're live on the scene with Acantha! I'm standing inside the Nightspire talking with Brother Quillion, the First Adjudicator. Thank you so much for granting me this exclusive interview, Quillion. I'm sure my viewers are aware of how rarely Adjudicators speak to the media."

Implied in that was a big screw you to the city's other media outlets: The Tome, the Daily Atrocity, Bedlam 66.6 and others – as Acantha publicly gloated over her "exclusive."

Quillion, looking stiff and uncomfortable on camera, nodded.

"You're welcome, Acantha."

"I know you're a busy man, so let's get right down to it. As I understand it, you have a message you wish to deliver to my viewers."

"That's right." Quillion's gaze shifted slightly upward, and he was now speaking directly to Acantha's cyberserpents, and thus to everyone in the city who was watching Acantha's unscheduled broadcast which, given the gorgon's popularity, was doubtless one hell of a lot of people.

I had a good idea what was coming next.

"Citizens of Nekropolis," Quillion began. "Many of you are no doubt familiar with Matthew Richter, a self-willed zombie, who for several years has worked in the Sprawl as a private investigator. During that time he was reputed to have served his clients well. In fact, Acantha recently featured a brief interview with him on her program."

"Yes, I did, Quillion," Acantha broke in, more because she loved being on a first name basis with an Adjudicator than out of any real need to confirm his statement.

Quillion went on.

"Whatever Mr. Richter's past deeds, he was recently found guilty of a very serious crime, the nature of which I am not at liberty to divulge at this time, and he was sentenced to Tenebrus. As impossible as it sounds, Mr. Richter somehow managed to escape and is believed to be at large. I've alerted every Sentinel in the city to be on the lookout for Mr. Richter, but I wish to bring him back into custody as swiftly as possible. For that reason, I'm offering a substantial reward to anyone who can capture Mr. Richter and bring to him the Nightspire…" He paused. "Relatively intact."

"When you say substantial…" Acantha said.

"Five hundred thousand darkgems," Quillion said, speaking the obscenely large number without so much as blinking.

I was impressed by the size of the reward Quillion was offering. I hadn't realized I was so dangerous. Evidently Acantha was impressed too for she let out a low whistle and the image of Quillion started shaking. I guessed her cyberserpents had become overly excited by the Adjudicator's news. Acantha made a few soothing sounds to calm her pets and the image steadied.

"You heard it here first, folks," the gorgon said, sounding far too pleased with herself. After the way I'd humiliated her at Sinsation she had to be absolutely loving this.

"And for those of you who need a reminder of what Matthew Richter looks like…"

Quillion's image faded from Westerna's Mind's Eyes to be replaced by a still image of me. It was one from my disastrous interview with Acantha, pulled from her memory, no doubt. She'd selected a moment toward the end of the interview, right before I'd hit her with Anansi's Web. I was scowling and my eyes blazed with anger. I looked like I was ready to kill her.

Shrike turned to me. "I think you should probably avoid speaking to reporters in the future." He glanced back at the frozen image of my face. "Seriously."

The picture changed again, this time to an image of Acantha herself. Off to the right the extended length of a cyberserpent curving away from her head was visible and I guessed one of her pets had stretched itself out in front of her face so it could film her.

"Matthew Richter: once thought to be a hero, now a wanted fugitive," she said. "How long will he remain at large? With five hundred thousand darkgems as a reward for his capture, my guess is not very long." She gave her audience a cat-that-ate-thecanary smile. "This is Acantha, saying good night and good hunting."

The image went to black and several seconds later the Hunchback Forty returned to Westerna's Mind's Eyes.

Devona, Shrike and I sat for a moment, staring silently at the closest Mind's Eye. After a bit Devona turned to me, her normally pale complexion ashen.

"This is bad," she said.

"Extremely," Shrike added.

I would've loved to disagree with them, but I couldn't.

"Given the size of the reward Quillion is offering, every professional bounty hunter and mercenary in the city will be out looking for you," Devona said.

"Not to mention all the amateurs who'll be tempted by that money," Shrike said. "Hell, if you weren't my friend, I'd try to collect the reward myself."

"I appreciate your self restraint," I said drily. But I knew they were both right. The whole damned city would be trying to find me – which is exactly what Quillion wanted, and Keket too, mostly likely.

"What are you going do?" Shrike asked.

"Try to clear my name. What else can I do? Not that I have the faintest idea where to start. We don't have any solid suspects and I have no idea what the object stolen from Edrigu is, let alone why someone would want it."

"It's obvious why they chose you," Devona said. "Or rather, why they chose your body. You carry the mark of Edrigu on your hand. Whoever stole your body and animated it knew that mark would not only gain you entrance into Edrigu's stronghold, but it would also allow you to enter his bedchamber – and more importantly, to leave it without being stopped by his guards."

Clearing my name wasn't the only reason I had for wanting to discover who had stolen Edrigu's bone flute. The thief had used my body to commit the crime, with used being the operative word. One of the things about being a zombie is that, bereft of the full range of physical sensations you enjoyed while alive, you can become detached and remote if you're not careful. More than that, you can start feeling that you're a thing, no more alive than a brick wall or a piece of furniture. An object instead of a person. And that's exactly how the thief had treated me – as an object, a tool, a means to an end. But I wasn't an object. I was Matthew Fucking Richter and when I found the son of a bitch who'd stolen my body and used it like a remote control toy I intended to make damn sure he or she knew who I truly was.

"The solution to all this seems simple enough to me," Shrike said. "You find yourself a good forensic sorcerer, someone skilled enough to use their magic to discover the identity of whoever hijacked your body. I mean, there have to be some magical traces of them clinging to your body, right? Then you…" He trailed off. "Never mind. It's a stupid idea. The bounty on your head is so large, any sorcerer you contact would likely just cast a stasis spell on you and hand you over to Quillion."

"Yep," I said. "And because so many bounty hunters will be out looking for me, I can't consult my usual sources." Waldemar at the Great Library, Skully, Arvel the ghoul restaurant owner and a dozen lesser but still valuable contacts – all of them would be watched by Sentinels and bounty hunters alike. If I went anywhere near them, I'd be captured for sure.

Thinking about bounty hunters reminded me about Overkill. Acantha hadn't been the only person I'd humiliated at Sinsation and – assuming she hadn't had anything to do with the theft of my body, something I hadn't entirely ruled out – she'd be after me like the rest of her mercenary minded brothers and sisters. If Acantha had taken great delight in delivering news of Quillion's reward, Overkill would be ecstatic at the thought of getting a rematch with me, especially one that held the extra incentive of such a large paycheck. She'd no doubt be disappointed by Quillion's desire I be delivered to him 'relatively intact', but for five hundred thousand darkgems I'm sure she'd find a way to live with it.

Given the seriousness of my dilemma I would've considered asking Varvara for help. The Demon Queen isn't exactly a friend of mine but she finds me amusing, which is more valuable in her mind than friendship anyway. She's been something of a patroness to me since I arrived in Nekropolis, but even so, I'm careful not to ask too many favors of her. It's never a good idea to become too indebted to a demon, let alone their queen. But I wouldn't get a chance to appeal to Varvara's generosity this time. If what Quillion had told me was true, Varvara – like the other four Darklords – was still sleeping, recharging her energy after the last Renewal Ceremony. So no help there.

I was starting to feel hopeless and Devona, likely sensing my emotions through our psychic link, reached over and gave my arm a squeeze. "You're a detective, Matt, and a damned good one. You'll figure something out."

"I wish I shared your confidence in me." Truth was I relied on my network of contacts far more than I liked to admit, even to myself. Without them I wasn't sure I'd be able to discover the identity of the thief who'd stolen Edrigu's bone flute and framed me for the crime – not with the entire city out hunting for me, that is.

I was so stuck on where to turn for help that I considered trying to contact the Dominari, but I didn't consider it for very long. For one thing I wanted as little to do with the mobsters as possible, and for another I didn't want to think about what sort of price they might charge for their assistance this time. But in the end the reason I decided against contacting the Dominari was a purely practical one: they'd be just as likely to want to collect the bounty on me as anyone else in the city. As I'd learned from Gnasher the Dominari was nothing if not all business and five hundred thousand darkgems would make a nice profit for simply – pardon the expression – ratting me out to Quillion.

What I needed was someone who not only was tuned in to what was happening in Nekropolis on a daily basis but who wasn't someone I consulted very often. Someone who kept a low profile – so low that no one would even realize he was an information source.

Then it came to me and a slow grin spread across my face. Maybe – just maybe – I wasn't beaten yet.

I grabbed Shrike's hand and gave it a quick shake.

"Thanks again for everything, but Devona and I have to get moving."

"You've got an idea," Devona said with a smile. It wasn't a question and she didn't seem surprised in the least. Is it any wonder I love her?

"I do. I think it's time we paid a visit to the House of Mysterious Secrets."

"This is some kind of joke, right?"

Devona stood on the sidewalk, hands on her hips, head cocked at an appraising angle. I stood next to her, hands in the pockets of my new (Bogdan's old) coat. When Devona had procured my disguise she'd had no idea what crime I'd been arrested for, so she hadn't brought me any gloves. But since Edrigu's mark on my hand was what we used to call a 'distinguishing feature' back when I was a cop, I figured I should keep that hand concealed as often as possible.

We stood outside a large manor house surrounded by a high wrought iron fence with nasty looking spikes on the tips of the bars. We were still in the Sprawl, not far from the Grotesquerie, and the gamey smell of zoo animals hung thick in the air. I could tell because Devona kept wrinkling her nose.

The manor was constructed entirely out of black wood and brick and its grounds were overgrown with weeds and decorative shrubs that had long ago been left to grow wild. The shutters – black, of course – hung askew on their hinges, the windows were dirt-smeared and cracked and the entire structure listed slightly to the right, as if the manor were perpetually on the verge of collapse. Ravens perched everywhere – on the chimney, the roof, the fence… twenty-nine at my count. A low lying fog-like mist clung to the ground, the whitish vapors roiling slowly as if they possessed some sort of sinister life.

"The only thing missing is a miniature storm cloud hanging overhead discharging the occasional lightning bolt," Devona added. "It's the stereotypical haunted house. It's more than a cliché – it's a cliché of a cliché!"

"That's the whole point," I said. "In Nekropolis a place like this is as unremarkable as a ranch house in a suburban neighborhood back on Earth. It's the perfect disguise."

"Disguise for what?" Devona asked suspiciously.

I just smiled. "You'll see."

I walked up to the main gate. It wasn't locked and it swung open easily at my touch. But even though the gate's motion was as smooth as if it had just been oiled, a creaking groan that sounded almost human filled the air. Once the gate was all open I turned to Devona and gave her a courtly bow, or at least a reasonable version thereof.

"After you, milady."

Devona gave me a look that said she wasn't in the mood to play and walked through. I followed and the gate swung shut behind us of its own accord. Devona didn't even bother looking back over her shoulder at it.

"Cute," she said sarcastically.

We disturbed the layer of ground mist as we walked, but it closed right up behind us, leaving no evidence of our passage. We found the front walk by accident more than anything else and we continued along it until we reached the porch. The ravens roosting on the property made no sound as we approached, but they kept their beady-eyed gazes upon us as if they were trying to determine whether we were up to no good.

A quartet of cracked stone columns held up the roof over the porch and spiders had spun elaborate webs between them. Something was caught in one of the webs and I took a closer look.

"Help meeeeeee!" came a tiny voice.

I reached out and with a thumb and forefinger carefully plucked the human headed fly from the webbing.

"Get on back to the Foundry, you slacker," I said.

I flicked the human headed fly off my fingers and his wings began to buzz. He circled our heads a couple times before straightening his course and making a beeline – or rather a flyline – in the general direction of the Boneyard.

"A little guy like that needs to be extra careful when he decides to take a flight on the wild side," I said.

I stepped up to the large front door – black, naturally – took hold of the thick iron ring knocker, lifted it, and let it fall once, twice, three times, then I stepped back to wait.

"Let me guess," Devona said. "The door will creak open and a scary-looking butler will poke his head out and say, 'Good evehu-ning' in a sepulchral tone."

"Exactly what does a sepulchral tone sound like anyway?" I asked.

The door opened then, and true to Devona's guess, it did so with a creaking sound. But instead of a scary butler an ordinary human man stood there. He was tall, in his early to mid-thirties, with a round face, thinning straight black hair, glasses and a neatly trimmed black mustache. He wore a navy-blue polo shirt, jeans and running shoes.

"Can I help you?" he said, speaking in a pleasant deep voice that was sonorous rather than sepulchral. He paused, frowned as he gave me a closer look, then he smiled.

"Matt!" I didn't recognize you in your new get-up." He turned to Devona. "And you must be Devona." His frown returned. "Funny, I thought you had blonde hair."

"She normally does," I said. "We're traveling in disguise right now."

The man nodded. "Of course. I should've realized." He opened the door wider and stepped back. "Come on in. My House of Mysterious Secrets is your House of Mysterious Secrets."

He smiled as his joke while Devona and I walked past him. Once we were inside he closed the door and entered a code on an electronic keypad on the wall next to it. There was the sound of locks engaging and I knew the manor's impressive security system was now activated.

Devona had of course seen the keypad and had no doubt noticed how out of place it was with the manor's outside appearance. But that was nothing compared to the place's inside. We now stood within a pleasant looking foyer more suited to an upper middle class house on Earth than a haunted mansion in Nekropolis.

Devona turned to me with a questioning look.

"Allow me to introduce you to the master of this forbidding edifice," I said. "The enigmatic and eldritch being known only by the sinister appellation of… David Zelasco!"

David gave Devona a smile.

"Hi."

David led us through his tastefully furnished home to a workroom toward the back of the manor. It was a large room with long tables lining the walls, a dozen computer monitors with keyboards resting on top of them. With the exception of a half empty liter bottle of soda and a crinkled bag of nacho chips near one of the monitors, the tables were clear and free of clutter. It looked like a normal enough office space, except each of the monitors had a raven perching on top of it, the birds standing motionless, connected to the monitors by wires plugged into the backs of their heads. Images flashed across the monitor screens in fastmotion, scenes from all five of Nekropolis's Dominions.

A wheeled office chair sat in front of one of the monitors and David went over to it and sat down.

Devona stepped closer to one of the ravens and examined it more closely. "These things are some kind of machines, aren't they? And I bet the ones outside are too."

David nodded as he turned the chair around to face us and sat down. "They're partially robotic. They were specially designed for me by–"

Devona held up a hand to stop him. "Victor Baron, right?"

David smiled. "Who else? I've got about a hundred or so working at any given time. They fly all over the city, recording video and audio. When their memories are full, they fly back here and I download the information they've gathered into my mainframe. That's when the real work starts."

Devona reached out a finger to prod one of the ravens. The bird gave her an angry squawk, startling her. It seemed to glare at her, as if to say, Do you mind? and then became motionless again.

Devona turned to face David.

"Real work?"

He nodded again. "I go through the hours of video my ravens collect, looking for something useful."

Devona gave me a mildly frustrated look which I interpreted as meaning Would somebody just tell me what's going on here?

But before I could say anything, an electronic tone sounded from the monitor closest to him.

"Excuse me for a moment."

David swiveled around to face the monitor and typed a few strokes on the keyboard. The video download on the screen paused, David minimized it and brought up a new window. This one showed a man in his early sixties with straight black hair, glasses and a friendly looking if somewhat long and rectangular face. The display showed him from the mid-chest up, revealing that he was wearing a black Ramones T-shirt. When the man spoke, he did so in a mild New England accent.

"Hey, David, how you doing? My publisher's breathing down my neck about the new book and I need something to send him real soon. You got anything good for me?"

"I've put together a few things for you, Steve. I'll email them to you right now."

David typed a few more keystrokes and hit SEND. A couple of seconds passed and then the man on the other end – who obviously was sitting in front of his own computer – said, "Got it! Thanks, David!"

"No problem. Take a look at the files and see if anything strikes you as interesting. If not let me know and I'll see what else I can dig up for you."

"You got it. Thanks again, man. From now on I'm going to start calling you Wint-o-green, because you're a lifesaver!"

The display went black as the man disconnected, and with a few more keystrokes, David closed the video chat window and resumed downloading the raven's information.

"That call," Devona said. "You have a direct connection with Earth?"

"Not exactly," David said. "I have to go through Nekropolis's Aethernet to connect to Earth's Internet – which isn't as easy as it sounds. The first thing you have to do–"

David's something of a techhead and I knew if I didn't cut him off right away we'd end up learning far more about Nekropolis – to Earth communication than we wanted to.

"You've just witnessed David in action," I said. "Horror is a way of life here in Nekropolis but back on Earth it's big business. Books, movies, comics, video games… The people who create them all need ideas, and when they run out, they get in touch with David."

Devona looked at the ravens with new understanding. "You go through all the video they collect, looking for ideas to pass on to your customers," she said to David.

He nodded. "The business has been in the family for a long time – almost since the founding of Nekropolis. Back then ideas had to be sent out by courier and carried to Earth through Varvara's mirror. But as you can see, we've updated quite a bit since then, which has made the whole operation a lot more efficient and has allowed us to expand a great deal." David smiled proudly. "These days, almost every horror professional on Earth uses our service."

"It's very impressive," Devona said, "but why all the secrecy? The faux haunted house, the robotic ravens… Why not just advertise what you do? You'd get a lot more people coming in to tell you their stories that way."

"True," David said, "but I'd also get a lot of people who aren't comfortable with the idea of their secrets being sent to Earth so that artists can create entertainment for humans. More than one of my ancestors found that out the hard way and ended up having to accept forced retirement, if you know what I mean."

"Of course, David doesn't get all his information from his ravens," I said.

"That's right. People drop by now and again to tell me their stories and I pay them for their time. That's how I met Matt, as a matter of fact."

Devona looked at me and I shrugged. "It's an easy way to pick up some extra darkgems when the investigation business is slow."

"I just wish you'd let me use your story, Matt," David said. "I know any number of people who'd love to get their hands on it."

I shook my head firmly. "No way. You know I like to keep a low profile."

David gave me a wry smile.

"OK, I admit that's something I haven't done an especially good job of lately."

"That's putting it mildly," he said. "I caught Acantha's broadcast."

"You and everyone else within range of a Mind's Eye," I said.

"You have to fill me in on all the details. You've told me some good stories before, but I bet this one beats them all."

"I'll have to take a rain check on that. Besides, the story's not finished yet. That's why we're here. I was framed, and in order to prove it, I had to get out of Tenebrus. But now that I'm free–"

"You can't go to any of your usual sources because you're a wanted man," David said. "Got it. I'll do whatever I can to help."

I briefly explained the basics of how my head was cut off and my body used to steal an object from Lord Edrigu.

"I'm hoping that one of your ravens might've recorded footage of either the attack on me or of my body entering and leaving the Reliquary."

"It's possible, I suppose," David said, "but I only have so many birds out at a time and Nekropolis is a big place. The odds aren't great that they collected the footage you're looking for."

"I know, but it's the best shot I've got right now at learning who did this to me and why."

David looked thoughtful. "Since my business is gathering ideas I program my ravens to wander the city randomly for hours at a time. It's more like fishing than hunting. I send them out and hope they manage to bring back something I can use. They don't perform systematic searches of designated areas. So even if they managed to record the real thief, it'll take me some time to search through all the most recent video and find it. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy to do it. After all, I have to review the video eventually anyway. I just want you to be aware of how long it might take – assuming I find anything at all."

"I understand and I appreciate it," I said. "In return I promise to come back and tell you everything that happened in as much detail as you can stand. Provided I survive, that is."

Devona swatted me on the arm. "Stop that kind of talk. It's defeatist."

"What you call defeatism, I call realism," I said.

In response she swatted me again.

"So what are you two going to do in the meantime?" David asked.

"I'm not sure," I confessed. "I need to find out as much as I can about the object that was stolen from Edrigu." I described the bone flute to David. "Does it sound familiar to you?"

He shook his head. "No, I'd suggest you pay Waldemar a visit at the Great Library, but that's probably out of the question right now."

"It's too bad my father and I aren't on speaking terms anymore," Devona said. "He's spent thousands of years collecting objects of power. There's a good chance he'd know what the flute is."

I started to reply but I paused as a new thought struck me. Could Galm be behind the bone flute's theft? There were all kinds of ways to build a collection, not all of them legitimate, and the Darklords were constantly plotting against each other one way or another. And Galm had no love for me. Perhaps it had amused him to use my body to steal something from a rival Darklord. Or maybe it had been Talaith. She'd had run-ins with Edrigu before and she absolutely loathed me. Maybe she'd decided to kill two birds with one stone and…

But then I derailed that particular train of thought. According to Quillion all the Darklords, along with Father Dis, were still sleeping off the after effects of the Renewal Ceremony. Unless either Galm or Talaith had woken up early, they couldn't be behind the theft.

"You could try asking someone else about the bone flute," David said. "After all, Galm's not the only collector in the city."

"You got someone else in mind?" I asked.

"Maybe. I hear a lot of things in my line of work. For a couple years now I've been hearing rumors about a Bloodborn who owns a used bookstore in the Sprawl – not far from where you two live, if I remember correctly."

I nodded. "The store's called Nosferatomes. Devona and I've been there before. What have you heard about the owner?"

"Nothing concrete," David said. "Just hints, really. But supposedly the owner – his name's Orlock – collects more than just old books. A lot of people come to tell me their stories and some of them are well connected to the seamier side of Nekropolis – or at least they like to make out they are: mercenaries, thieves, selfstyled adventurers of one sort or another…" He gave me a meaningful look at this point. "And some of them claim to have done work for Orlock. None of them told me what exactly they did for him, but it wasn't hard to read between the lines."

"You think they acquired items for his collection," I said.

"And if he's a collector then he might be able to identify the bone flute for us," Devona added.

David nodded. "But like I said it's only a suspicion. My ravens have captured video of some questionable characters going into Orlock's shop, but that doesn't prove anything."

"Maybe not," I said, "but it's a lead and it's more than we had when we came in here. Thanks, David."

"You're welcome. Let me know what you learn about Orlock. I might be able to use the information for one of my clients. In the meantime I'll start searching through my ravens' recent footage and see if I can't find any video of the attack on you. If I do, I'll give you a call."

I gave David the number of Shrike's vox, then we thanked him again and said our goodbyes. He offered to see us to the door but I told him to go ahead and get started reviewing the video. We'd show ourselves out.

As Devona and I stepped onto the front porch she said, "You know, those ravens of David's could have all kinds of security applications. You think he might be interested in doing some work for us on the side?"

"You mean for you," I said.

Devona frowned. "I don't understand."

We continued talking as we walked down the porch steps and headed across the mist enshrouded grounds toward the gate.

"The Midnight Watch is your business. I just help out from time to time."

Devona didn't respond right away, and I knew I'd said something wrong, though I wasn't exactly sure what.

"I thought it was our business, Matt. Something we did together."

Aw, crap, I thought. Out loud, I said, "Look, I didn't mean–"

She cut me off. "I understand that you're used to working alone… living alone, being alone. You lived like that for years after you became a zombie and probably for more years before that. But you're not alone anymore. I don't understand why it's so hard for you to get that."

Right then being alone sounded pretty good. When you're alone you don't have to deal with other people's expectations and feelings and you don't have to worry about saying or doing the wrong thing and hurting them. Being alone means freedom and no hassles. There's only one problem with it: it's damn lonely.

As we passed through the gate and onto the sidewalk, leaving the House of Mysterious Secrets behind, I struggled to come up with some kind of reply that might salve Devona's hurt feelings. But my poor zombie brain was coming up empty, so instead I started looking around for a cab. It would take about twenty minutes to walk to Nosferatomes from where we were, but given my current fugitive status I figured the less I was seen in public the better. Our disguises had worked well enough so far but I didn't want to push it. The traffic was relatively light just then and there were no cabs for hire around. No real surprise there, since cabbies tend to frequent Sybarite Street, where the best clubs and restaurants in the Sprawl are located. Still, I'd hoped there might be at least one cab around, maybe even Lazlo, roaring up to the curb in his ramshackle machine, as he so often does when I need a ride. Riding with him would be a calculated risk, since I'm known to do it so often, but at that point I figured it would be one worth taking. But there was no sign of the demon.

I remembered what Quillion had told me about a Sentinel "interviewing" Lazlo and I hoped he was simply busy driving another fare around town. I knew from first hand experience that Sentinels weren't exactly the most gentle of creatures and I feared my friend might be laid up somewhere, metaphorically – or who knows, maybe literally – licking his wounds as he recovered from the Sentinel's little chat with him.

I turned to Devona. "Looks like we're going to have to hoof it."

Her frown deepened into a scowl and I thought she wasn't going to let me get away with trying to change the subject, but then she looked past me and her eyes widened and I knew our discussion was about to be tabled.

I turned around and saw a man striding purposefully down the sidewalk toward us. He wore a long black trench coat open to reveal a chiseled bare chest and well defined abs. Black jeans and worn cowboy boots completed his outfit. He was a handsome black man with mahogany skin, a shaved head and piercing, almost startling green eyes. He appeared to be unarmed but I didn't need to frisk him to know he wasn't carrying any weapons. You don't need to when you are a weapon.

The first of the bounty hunters had found us.

TWELVE

The man stopped when he was within half a dozen feet of us and smiled.

"Hey, Matt. What's up? Nice coat. Good to see you finally got a little style going on."

His voice was deep and rich and though his tone was relaxed on the surface it held an underlying current of tension. I knew exactly how he felt.

"Hey yourself, Malik," I said, ignoring his comment about Bogdan's hand-me-down. "It's been a while."

"Since we tangled with the Incarnator, remember?"

"How could I forget? We had a hell of a time figuring out which body he was inhabiting. If he hadn't kept that habit of his regardless of which body he wore–"

Malik laughed. "Right! He always kept sniffing and swallowing, like he had sinus trouble no matter who he was possessing. How weird was that?"

"Weird but useful," I said. "We might never have caught him otherwise."

We'd kept our gazes locked on one another as we talked, only pretending to enjoy our little trip down memory lane. In truth we were gauging each other – opening feints that were merely a warm up for what was to come.

"Matt, who is this?" Devona asked.

I hadn't forgotten about her, but there was no way I was going to take my eyes off Malik. I continued to keep my gaze trained on him as I answered.

"This gentleman goes by the street name of Crossbreed but his friends just call him Malik. We've worked together a couple times when we had jobs that ended up overlapping. As you might've gathered we took down the Incarnator together."

"And we recovered the Lost Shroud of Glorian, don't forget that," Malik said.

"Neither of us got paid on that one."

"Only because you insisted on destroying the shroud when you learned what it could do." Malik's tone took on a colder edge as he said this.

"What can I say? I have a thing about handing over deadly magical artifacts to psychopaths, which both of our clients happened to be."

"Maybe so, but their money would've spent as good as any sane man's."

"Money can't buy self-respect."

"You can't eat, drink, or screw self-respect." Malik had continued smiling as we'd talked but now his smile fell away. "Speaking of money there's a pretty hefty price on your head these days, Matt. You've always had a knack for getting in trouble, but damn, son! Five hundred thousand darkgems' worth is serious even for you!"

I felt Devona's mind reaching for mine.

I can see that you two aren't exactly friends. Just how dangerous is he?

Let's just say you wouldn't want to go up against him in a dark alley. Or a lit one. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Aloud, I said, "And you've come to collect."

He shrugged. "Someone has to cash in. Might as well be me. No offense."

"None taken. How did you figure you'd find me here?"

Malik's smile returned. "Everyone else is watching your usual hangouts, but they're idiots. We may have only worked together a couple times but I know you well enough. Anyone else in your situation would've had the good sense to go into hiding, but not you. I knew you'd try to find a way out of the mess you're in and that means you need information. Since you can't make use of your regular sources, I guessed you'd go to David." His smile widened into a grin. "Looks like I guessed right."

I suppose I should've expected this. With the number of people out looking for me someone was bound to have figured out where I'd go.

"Congratulations. I'm sure this'll get you a nomination for mercenary of the year."

Malik's body spasmed from head to toe as his bones, muscles and flesh went through a rapid transformation. His green eyes turned a glowing crimson, his teeth became sharp and long, his hands sprouted deadly looking ebon claws and his skin sprouted scaled armor.

"Now you see why Malik calls himself Crossbreed," I said to Devona. "You know how Overkill has worked to make herself the ultimate human? Well, Malik has made himself into the ultimate monster, courtesy of the genetic expertise of the good Doctor Moreau."

Just looking at Malik you could pick out vampire, demon and lyke in him and I'm sure there's more than a few other less obvious monster genes in the mix as well.

Devona frowned. "I didn't think it was possible to combine the DNA of Darkfolk like that."

Malik bared his mouthful of fangs in a savage grin and when he spoke his voice was rough and guttural.

"It's not – for anyone else, that is. Dr. M told me that every time he tried it before the subject died. But the procedure worked for me." His smile grew wider, making him look something like a shark in humanoid form. "Guess I'm just that tough. So, Matt… what's it going to be? You going to make this easy and come with me peacefully, or are you going to give me trouble? Please say it's the latter. It'll be more fun that way."

"You know, Malik, finding me isn't the same thing as catching me."

I can't draw a gun as fast as I could when I was alive, but what I now lack in speed I make up in technique. I had my .45 out and aimed at Malik's chest before he could react. At least, that's what I told myself. But then he laughed and I knew the only reason he hadn't attacked was because he didn't consider my weapon a threat.

"You can't hurt me with that thing," he said, sounding half amused, half insulted.

"You know the kind of ammo I pack is tailor-made to put a hurt on just about any creature walking, stalking or sliming its way through the streets – and that includes you."

"Ordinarily that would be true. But you're carrying a .45 instead of your usual 9mm. My guess is your regular piece – along with your homemade ammo – was taken away before you were tossed into Tenebrus and what you got there is a replacement. Besides, you forget who you're talking to." He sniffed the air a couple times. "I can smell that the bullets are normal."

"Oh, well. Can't blame a guy for bluffing." I raised my gun barrel several inches and fired, emptying the contents of my weapon into Malik's face.

Greenish-black blood splattered into the air and Malik staggered backward, though he didn't fall and he didn't cry out, though the injuries he suffered had to hurt like hell. I aimed for his head because brain tissue is complex and takes more time to regenerate. It would be a few moments before Malik regrew enough of his brain to get his shit together and attack, giving Devona and me a few precious seconds in which to act.

As Malik leaned over, hands on his face to hold as much of it together as possible while he healed, blood streaming onto the sidewalk, I quickly glanced at the oncoming traffic and saw what we needed. I sent a mental image to Devona of what I wanted her to do and she stepped forward and grabbed hold of one of Malik's arms. Devona may be short and slender, but she packs a lot of muscle into her small frame and she hurled Malik into the street as if he weighed no more than a child.

As I said earlier, traffic was light that night, but "light" doesn't mean "nonexistent," and Malik landed directly in the path of a silver Volkswagen Beetle covered with long sharp spikes. He still hadn't recovered enough from the gunshot wounds to his face to think clearly, and instead of getting out of the car's path, he rose to his feet and just stood there bleeding onto the street, and the VW slammed into him at full speed. Malik let out a – pardon the pun – piercing shriek of agony as he was impaled on the VW's hood spikes. The impact caused the car to swerve, but it didn't stop. The driver – who was completely hidden from view due to the spikes – managed to straighten the VW out and zoomed off with Malik still pinned screaming to its hood. One thing Nekropolitans can always be counted on for – wherever they're going, they're in a hurry to get there and they don't let anything slow them down. Certainly nothing as inconsequential as a body stuck to their car.

I started to reload my gun while we watched the VW speed away, carrying Malik with it.

"Nice throw," I said to Devona.

"Nice shooting," she said. "That won't stop him for long, you know."

"He won't be able to heal fully until he pulls himself off those spikes. We'll be long gone by then."

"He's not going to be too thrilled with you when he does finally get free."

I sighed. "At this point, what's it matter if I make one more mortal enemy?"

"True," she said.

Just then a vehicle came swerving erratically down the street toward us and Devona and I automatically stepped back from the curb. When we saw the vehicle was Lazlo's cab we stepped back a couple feet farther, just to be cautious. Good thing, too, because when Lazlo pulled up he parked halfway on the sidewalk. The cab's windows were rolled down and he leaned out to speak to us.

"Sorry I'm late. You wouldn't believe how many people have been tailing me since Quillion announced the bounty on you. Even with all my considerable driving skills it took me a while to shake them."

Lazlo might have had an easier time of it if his cab wasn't one of the most recognizable vehicles in the city. But I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I didn't say anything.

"You're sure you managed to shake them?" I looked up and down the street, but since no vehicles roared up to the curb, bounty hunters hanging out of open windows with their guns blazing, I figured we were safe enough for the moment.

I turned to Devona. "What do you think?"

"I think we're going to have people gunning for us whether we walk or ride. Riding's faster."

"Good point."

Devona and I climbed into the back of Lazlo's cab and I told him to take us to Nosferatomes. I'd barely gotten the words out of my mouth when Lazlo tromped on the gas and his vehicle surged away from the curb. The sudden acceleration threw Devona and me against the back seat.

"I'm all for speed right now, but can you take it a bit easier?" I complained.

"Sorry about that," Lazlo said. "My cab's kind of jittery after playing tag with so many other vehicles tonight – Dread Rider, the Chopper, Velocicide… It's a wonder she hasn't had a nervous breakdown by now." Lazlo patted the dash and the cab's engine – which up to this point had been running at a high-pitched whine – began to purr and the vehicle slowed to a slightly less than lethal speed.

"Some heavy hitters there," Devona said, sounding worried for the first time since breaking me out of Tenebrus. I wanted to reassure her that everything was going to be all right, but as I was starting to have major doubts myself, the best I could do was take her hand and give it a squeeze. It wasn't much but she gave me a grateful smile anyway.

Lazlo glanced at us in his rearview mirror. "I like what you've done with your hair, Devona. And Matt, I love the new coat! You finally look like a real PI, you know what I'm saying?"

Right then I vowed that I was going to find a way out of this mess no matter what, if only so I could celebrate by burning that goddamned coat to ashes.

Lazlo went on. "I saw you tangling with someone when I drove up. Who was it?"

"Crossbreed," I said.

Lazlo let out a low whistle. "He's a tough customer. Looked like you managed to get the drop on him, though."

"We were lucky," I said with no false modesty. I didn't like relying on luck, but I figured I was going to need a few tons more of it before everything was over.

"Speaking of lucky," Lazlo said, "I was sitting in Skully's when Acantha's surprise broadcast came on. Everyone in the bar immediately started making bets on how long it'll be before you're recaptured. Most people figured you'll be back in Tenebrus within twenty-four hours."

"Their confidence in me is underwhelming." I changed the subject. "I'm glad to see you hale and hearty. Quillion led me to believe one of his Sentinels worked you over."

Lazlo didn't say anything to that. He just kept driving. After leaving the House of Mysterious Secrets he drove us to Sybarite Street, the Sprawl's main drag, and we headed toward the west side of the Dominion, where Nosferatomes was located. When he eventually spoke again his tone was subdued.

"A Sentinel did question me and it… wasn't gentle. I healed OK. I mean, I am a demon, right? But it hurt so much that I…"

I knew what Lazlo was trying to say. He'd told the Sentinel I was at the Foundry, which was how Silent Jack had been able to hunt me down.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "They'd have found me eventually no matter what. I'm just sorry you had to go through that on my account. I'm glad no permanent damage was done, though."

Lazlo said his next words so softly I wasn't certain I'd heard them at all. But it sounded like he said, "Not to my body anyway."

Lazlo looks so monstrous that it's sometimes too easy to forget that he has feelings like anyone else. He might be a demon but that didn't mean he wasn't human too – at least, in the ways that mattered most. I wanted to say something to make him feel better, but before I could think of anything the ratcheting sound of automatic weapons fire cut through the cab, followed by a metallic pinging as rounds struck the outside of the vehicle.

Lazlo's cab screamed then, and of all the horrible sounds I've heard since coming to Nekropolis, that's one I hope to never hear again.

The cab swerved wildly and Lazlo fought to maintain control of his vehicle.

"We're under attack!" Devona shouted.

That part I'd figured out for myself. What I didn't know yet was by who. I turned to look out the rear window and saw a midnight-black Cadillac with glowing red headlights and a hood mounted machine gun riding our tail.

"Damn it, it's Carnage!" I shouted.

Lazlo's cab made a noise that sounded a lot like a terrified whine. I knew exactly how she felt.

There are any number of possessed, haunted or living vehicles traveling the streets of Nekropolis – Lazlo's cab among them. So many that once a year the Screaming Wheels tournament is held, a cross-Dominion road race whose course traverses the entire city. But of all the supernaturally animated cars, motorcycles and trucks, none are as powerful or deadly as Carnage. As legend has it the Caddy's owner died behind the wheel of his vehicle and his spirit – instead of going on to its final reward – merged with the car, bringing the vehicle to malevolent life. Standard stuff, really, but what made Carnage different to the average possessed car is that it – he? – didn't want to exist as a haunted vehicle and so over the years he had consulted any number of magic-users and exorcists in the hope that one of them would be able to remove the spirit from the Cadillac and set it free. But for some unknown reason no one had ever been able to draw the human spirit forth from the vehicle. Even Papa Chatha had taken a crack at it and failed. But Carnage was determined to find some way to become free of his cursed existence. Rumor had it that Carnage had attempted suicide numerous times, but as is so often the case with supernatural vehicles, all damage it suffered was magically repaired. So that left Carnage with one option: keep trying to find a magic-user powerful enough and skilled enough to set him free.

Trouble was magic doesn't come cheap in Nekropolis and Carnage needed money in order to continue hiring witches and warlocks and so the living vehicle had become a mercenary, taking on high risk, high reward jobs to make enough darkgems to afford the cost of exorcism spells. And if a job was so dangerous that Carnage was finally destroyed during it, well, that was OK too. Just as long as the spirit trapped within the Caddy's metal body was free in the end. Of course, in order to do his work more effectively, Carnage had used some of his profits on upgrades like a high performance engine, a steel reinforced suspension system and his oh-so-useful machine gun. After all, as the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.

What all this added up to was an insanely dangerous self repairing haunted car with nothing to lose and at that moment the damned thing was hot on our trail.

I knew that Lazlo's cab could heal a certain amount of superficial damage on its own, but anything more than that would require extensive repairs. The cab was a tough little car, but I knew it couldn't withstand a full out attack by Carnage.

"Try and lose him!" I shouted to Lazlo.

"Lose him?" the demon shouted back. "I'll be lucky if I can keep us on the road!"

"Just do your best!"

I started rifling through my pockets, searching among the magic items Shrike had brought me, hoping that there was something I might be able to use to at least slow Carnage down. Devona did the same, and while we searched, Carnage unleashed another burst of gunfire.

Devona and I ducked as the rear window shattered. Lazlo's cab screamed in pain and swerved violently to the left, right into the path of oncoming traffic. I caught a momentary glimpse of a large semi truck with a grinning green goblin face on the cab coming straight at us. I thought the truck was going to slam into us and deprive Carnage of his bounty, but Lazlo managed to yank the cab's steering wheel to the right in time to avoid colliding with the truck and the goblin face seemed to laugh at us as the huge vehicle roared past.

I noticed the cab was slowing down and the engine began to make unsettling sputtering noises. I assumed some of that last burst of gunfire had done more to the cab than simply break some glass and I wasn't sure how much longer Lazlo's vehicle would be able to keep going before it would be forced to pull over. Not long, I guessed.

Devona and I were still searching among our paltry supply of weaponry but in the back of my mind I was already considering giving myself up. Carnage wouldn't hurt me. He needed me more or less intact in order to collect the bounty on me. But when the possessed Caddy was on a mission it wasn't particular about who got hurt in the crossfire, hence his name. If this kept up there was an excellent chance that Devona and Lazlo would end up seriously injured, maybe even dead, and I wasn't about to let that happen simply to save my own slowly rotting hide.

I was about to tell Lazlo to pull over when Devona held up what appeared to be a ball made of woven black twigs.

"Got it!" she said, grinning.

It was one of the items I'd passed on when we'd looked through them in Westerna's, primarily because I hadn't recognized it and didn't know what it did. But before I could ask Devona what she had she turned around and chucked the object out the now open back window. The ebon twigball flew through the air toward Carnage's windshield. The ball looked solid enough, but when it hit the glass it flattened like liquid and expanded to cover the entire windshield. It then seemed to sink into the glass as if the Caddy was absorbing the black substance and then it was gone and the windshield was clear once more.

The effect was instantaneous. The machine gun's barrel drooped and Carnage began to slow down, swaying gently from side to side.

"What was that?" I asked.

Devona was still grinning. "Caligari's Sleep. It's a common spell used by Bloodborn who either haven't developed their hypnotic abilities or are simply too lazy to use them. The spell makes its victim sleepy and open to suggestion."

"Kind of like a date-rape drug," I said. "Classy." Still, I couldn't argue with the effect it was having on Carnage. The car didn't have a flesh-and-blood body, but the spell must've been designed to affect a victim's psyche regardless of what form that psyche resided in, because it was clearly working. But the question was for how long.

Despite its name, Caligari's Sleep didn't render Carnage unconscious, just really, really sleepy. The deadly vehicle might not have been shooting at us anymore but neither had it broken off its pursuit. Carnage's glowing red headlights had dimmed and the vehicle was moving more slowly and swerving back and forth, but it was still managing to keep up with us. It didn't help that Lazlo's cab wasn't moving very fast at that moment either. Vehicles began passing us, drivers honking angrily and making obscene gestures as they flashed by. Several made mystic passes with their hands as if trying to lay a curse on us for pissing them off. They needn't have bothered. Given the way things had been going for me lately, I figured I'd already exceeded my bad luck quota for the next several decades at least.

Right then I wished that Shrike had brought me a bazooka instead of a .45 and I was amusing myself by imagining firing one at Carnage through the open back window when Lazlo said, "Great, that's all we need!"

Devona and I looked forward to see what he was talking about. Before us in the middle of the street was a massive misshapen being that resembled a small mountain formed entirely of flesh. Hundreds of legs – some human, most not – stuck out from its bottom to support its weight and provide locomotion, while the rest of the creature's surface was covered with other body parts: hands, arms, chests, abdomens, genitals, buttocks and worst of all, heads. Gazes blank, mouths gaping wide, tongues lolling, drool streaming past their lips. This was one of the strangest creatures in Nekropolis and probably the single most annoying one.

The Conglomeration.

No one knows where it came from, what it wants, or for that matter, exactly what the damned thing is. What it does is wander randomly through the city, absorbing anyone unlucky enough or stupid enough not to get out of its way in time. Mostly, the Darklords tolerate the Conglomeration's presence since in many ways it's like evolution in action, absorbing both the slow of foot and slow of mind. But whenever it gets too large – and it certainly appeared to be on the verge of that now – the physicians at the Fever House are alerted and they dispatch a specially designed ambulance to capture the Conglomeration and bring it to the facility where they begin the painstaking and laborious process of separating the people that had been absorbed. The story goes that when the doctors finally finish there's never anything left over that's wholly and completely the Conglomeration. It's like the creature doesn't exist in and of itself. But a few days later, it – or a replacement – is back on the street, absorbing bodies again.

"Can you go around it?" Devona asked.

"Yeah," Lazlo said. "It's not that big yet, but it's blocking enough of the road to cause a real slowdown." He glanced up at the rearview. "I'm afraid it'll give Carnage a chance to catch up to us."

"Which would be bad," I said. "Especially when it manages to shake off Caligari's Sleep." Something I feared would happen sooner rather than later.

A thought occurred to me then. Carnage wasn't alive in the strictest sense of the word, but then concepts like life and death are more than a little fuzzy in Nekropolis. Carnage had a soul and could think and act independently. In many ways, the vehicle wasn't all that different from me. I was kind of alive, wasn't I? And I didn't want to get absorbed by the Conglomeration. And hadn't Devona told me that the recipients of Caligari's Sleep were highly suggestible?

I didn't waste anymore time thinking about it, primarily because we didn't have anymore time. The traffic ahead of us had slowed considerably and it would only be a few moments more before Carnage, sleepy though he was, caught up to us.

I turned around in my seat and leaned out the open back window. Before Devona could ask me what I was doing, I shouted, "Hey, Carnage! Don't tell anyone, but I'm hiding inside the Conglomeration!"

The crimson glow within the possessed Caddy's headlights had almost gone out by then but now it flared back to full blazing strength. The vehicle's engine roared and Carnage surged past us, swerving around slower-moving cars as it aimed straight for the Conglomeration. Carnage's hood mounted machine gun raised into firing position and began blasting the Conglomeration with rounds of ammo. At first the gigantic fleshy mass of body parts didn't seem to notice it was under attack, but then the eyes of all its heads came into focus and turned to look at the vehicle firing upon it. Faces contorted in anger and cries of rage issued from all its mouths. Undeterred Carnage continued forward, gun blazing away. Alarmed motorists in the immediate vicinity began trying to pull their vehicles out of the line of fire and if they found their way blocked by other cars and trucks they simply bailed out and ran for it. Lazlo lifted his foot off the gas and allowed his cab to slow down, which turned out to be an extremely wise move when a furious Conglomeration threw itself forward and fell down on top of Carnage.

The impact was tremendous, bouncing Devona and I out of our seats and fissuring the street with cracks. Bits of the Azure Slime oozed forth through the cracks as if curious to see what was going on above it, but a second later the Slime retreated, most likely having decided to leave the Conglomeration alone, perhaps as a courtesy from one absorbing monster to another.

Lazlo had slammed on the brakes when the Conglomeration fell and now we – along with dozens of other drivers and sidewalk gawkers along both sides of Sybarite Street – watched and waited to see what would happen next.

At first the Conglomeration just lay there in the street and I had the horrible feeling that any second we'd see Carnage come bursting out of the flesh mass, headlights shining with fury over having been tricked, gun ratcheting death as the Caddy came toward us. But instead the Conglomeration rose with slow, ponderous movements and we could see the undercarriage of a midnight-black Cadillac now embedded in its side. The Conglomeration just stood there for a moment, as if pondering the new addition to its body, and then it resumed its course, heading slowly down Sybarite Street.

"I have no idea if the Conglomeration has anything even remotely resembling a digestive tract," I said, "but one way or another, I'll bet it's in for a serious case of heartburn after that."

Devona smiled at me and I took her hand. To Lazlo, I said, "Can your cab make it to Nosferatomes or should we get out and walk?"

Lazlo patted the dash. "What do you say, sweetie? Can you do a few more blocks before taking a rest?"

The vehicle gave a weak bleat on its horn in response.

"That's my girl!" Lazlo said.

I almost felt like patting the back seat in thanks, but I resisted. After all, I have a reputation as a tough guy to maintain.

As soon as he could Lazlo turned off onto a side street to get away from the Conglomeration and we continued on our way, the cab driving slowly but steadily toward Nosferatomes.

We had Lazlo drop us off a block away from the bookstore, just in case anyone was lying in wait for us outside. Lazlo wanted to stay but once Devona and I were out of the cab we could see how extensive the damage caused by Carnage was. The cab's chassis was riddled with bullet holes that leaked an oily brown ichor as if the vehicle was bleeding. I supposed in a sense it was. The engine was still running but it sounded weak and it knocked and pinged in a way that suggested it was on the verge of collapse.

"Better get her to a mechanic," I told Lazlo. "Devona and I will be fine on our own." I knew no such thing, of course, but I couldn't allow Lazlo to continue helping us, not if it was going to cost his cab whatever version of life it possessed.

Lazlo was torn and it took a bit more convincing on my part, but in the end he agreed.

"Well, if you say so. She is sounding kind of punky. You two take care of yourselves, all right?"

We promised we would and Lazlo put his cab in gear and drove slowly down the street, the engine protesting all the way. When he was gone we approached the bookstore on foot. After encountering both Crossbreed and Carnage in such a short span of time I was seriously paranoid but none of the pedestrians we passed paid any attention to us and by the time we reached Nosferatomes I was relatively confident there were no bounty hunters in the immediate vicinity, but I didn't allow myself to fully relax. In Nekropolis the moment you let your guard down is the moment you risk becoming someone's snack.

Nosferatomes was housed in a nondescript two story building constructed of gray brick with black roof tiles and shutters. A wooden sign hung above the door displaying the shop's name in stylized gothic letters. Aside from its name it could've been any used bookstore on Earth. A pair of other businesses flanked the shop: on the right, a Hemlocks, and on the left a restaurant called Matango. Hemlocks was a chain of coffee houses with locations spread throughout all five Dominions, though the majority of them are located in the Sprawl. They don't just serve regular coffee anymore than their earthly counterparts did. Blood clottes, marrowchinos and spinal fluid smoothies are only a few of their nauseating offerings. Every time I walk past one it makes me grateful that my taste buds are as dead as the rest of me.

I'd never been to Matango before. It was a Japanese restaurant of a sort that specialized in mushroom dishes, a fact advertised by the various types of the fungi growing on the restaurant's stone walls. Supposedly the food there is so good it's addictive, but frequent diners need to be careful lest they find their skin taking on strange colors and textures. After all, there's a reason Matango's slogan is You are what you eat.

As we drew near the bookstore, a woman carrying a tray loaded with tiny cardboard cups came walking toward us. Devona and I instantly tensed in case this was yet another bounty hunter, but Devona quickly relaxed.

I sense no hostility from her, Devona thought to me. In fact, I don't sense much of anything going on inside her.

Why that was became apparent once the woman reached us. She had long straight black hair that fell to her waist, a prominent scar line circling her neck just below a pair of metal electrodes. She wore a black polo shirt and black slacks, along with a white apron with the stylized H of the Hemlocks logo stitched onto the fabric. She was another of Victor Baron's creations – Baristastein, I supposed.

"Would you like a free sample of our latest offering?" she asked, tone flat and face expressionless. I wondered if there was something wrong with her brain or if Baron had simply had trouble correctly hooking up her voice box and facial muscles. "It's espresso with a shot of bile. We call it a Sprawlicano."

I eyed the brackish liquid in the cup with more than a little suspicion. "More like spewicano," I said. "No thanks."

The woman took no offense at my comment, but then my words didn't seem to register with her at all. She simply moved on to accost another pedestrian. But a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk outside Hemlocks to sip their drinks and chat in the open air. Some of them had overheard what I said and they chuckled in agreement. But one – a large minotaur with muscles on his muscles who wore a T-shirt bearing the intellectually provocative phrase Horny is as horny does came stomping over to us on hoofed feet.

"You disrespecting my girlfriend?" he said in a gruff, bestial voice.

"Not at all," I replied. "I was disrespecting the crap she tried to serve me."

The minotaur snorted angrily and grabbed hold of my jacket with both hands and lifted me onto my tiptoes.

"Think you're funny, huh?"

"I'm curious what you two see in each other." I glanced in Baristastein's direction and saw she was still trying to push her samples onto passersby without any sign she was aware of her boyfriend's confrontation with me. "Is it a case of opposites attract? I mean, she's the coldest of cold fishes and you've obviously got some anger management issues…"

Ferdinand roared in my face then and I just looked calmly back at him. I can be a pretty cold fish myself when I need to be.

I reached into one of my pockets and wrapped my fingers around one of the magic objects Shrike had brought me: a flea bomb. Judging by how thick the minotaur's fur was his coat would be a perfect home for a few thousand bloodthirsty insects. But before I could withdraw the bomb, I heard Devona's thoughtvoice, the tone slightly frantic.

He's three times your size, Matt! If you were alive, you'd be afraid of him. That's what he's used to and what he's looking for – for you to show some fear!

Not my style, I thought back as I stared into the minotaur's eyes. I gripped the flea bomb tighter.

That's the whole point, Devona thought to me. You're supposed to be pretending to be someone else, remember?

Oh, right. The whole fugitive-in-disguise thing… I released my hold on the flea bomb and prepared to put on a show.

It had been a long time since I'd felt physically threatened and I wasn't sure if I remembered how to do it. I started by turning my head to the side as if I was afraid Ferdinand was going to haul off and punch me any second. Then I lowered my gaze so I wasn't looking directly into his eyes. The minotaur didn't release me but his breathing eased a bit and I knew my act was working.

"You know what you're gonna do now?" he asked. "You're gonna apologize to Sandy." He paused and then his bovine face broke into a grin. "Wait – I got a better idea!"

He called for Baristastein to join us and she walked over, face still devoid of expression. The minotaur let go of me with one hand but kept hold of me with the other. He then reached out and took one of the sample cups from his girlfriend's tray and his grin took on a nasty edge.

"You're gonna try one of these and then you're gonna tell Sandy how much you like it." He looked at me expectantly and I realized he was hoping that the prospect of being forced to down the swill would provoke some kind of response in me.

"I'd, uh, really rather not," I said.

Way to sound terrified, Devona thought. I ignored her.

"Too bad," Ferdinand said. He put the cup of steaming liquid to my lips and poured it in.

I could've swallowed it easily since I couldn't feel the heat or taste the flavor but that wasn't what a living man would do, so I sputtered and thrashed my head back and forth, causing some of the Sprawlicano to spill down my chin. The minotaur continued to grin as he poured the rest of the cup's contents down my throat, then he let go of me and I allowed myself to fall back on my ass, making sure to let out a whoof! of air as if I felt the impact.

As I rose slowly to my feet I doubled over and made a face as if I was going to throw up the noxious brew, but Ferdinand said, "You barf and I'll make you drink two more."

I made a show of fighting to keep the Sprawlicano down and Ferdinand nodded, satisfied. "Now tell Sandy how good it was."

I tried to speak, coughed once, then tried again.

"Smooth," I croaked.

The minotaur turned to his girlfriend. "There you go, baby. He'll think twice before giving you anymore attitude."

Baristastein ignored the minotaur as she looked at me, as blank eyed and expressionless as ever.

"Thank you and come again," she said and then went off in search of someone else to serve.

The minotaur watched her go, his gaze softening.

"Isn't she something?" he said.

I wisely kept any opinions I had about that to myself and Ferdinand wandered off to rejoin the group of people he'd been talking with before Devona and I arrived. There was laughter and congratulatory backslaps from his friends and I found myself reaching for the flea bomb again.

Devona put a hand on my arm to restrain me. "Forget him. We have work to do."

I looked at the minotaur for a moment longer before nodding and letting Devona lead me toward Nosferatomes.

"What did you think of my performance?" I asked her.

She smiled gently. "Let's just say it's a good thing you chose a career in criminal justice."

"Everyone's a critic," I muttered.

Devona and I walked up to Nosferatomes' front door, keeping an eye out for possible attack the entire time and staying in low level telepathic contact. We couldn't read one another's minds this way but we could sense the other's feelings. If one of us spotted danger, the other would be instantly aware of it. But again, there was no sign of any bounty hunters, and we entered the store.

THIRTEEN

A bell tinkled as we opened the door and again when we closed it. The front room was filled with wooden shelves crammed with books, signs hanging down from the ceiling with section names painted on them to direct customers to the areas they were interested in. Self Help was directly next to Self Mutilation, and Dark Arts was followed by Darker, Darkest and Pitch Black Arts. As we walked up to the counter some of the titles that leaped out at me were The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Necronomicon, Stabbing for Dummies, The Beginner's Book of Bodysnatching, A Child's Garden of Curses, Shapeshifting for Fun and Profit, and Death: A Life.

There were a couple customers browsing the stacks. One was an elderly Arcane woman who, judging by the pile of books in her arms, was big into the culinary arts, especially cooking with children. The other was a small rotund man without eyelids who I recognized as the Insomnimaniac. I'd seen him in here before and out on the street a few times, but we'd never formally met, so I wasn't too worried he'd recognize me, but I made sure to keep my face turned away from him as we walked by, just in case. I felt a certain kinship with the man. I hadn't slept since I died and I'd often come here to buy books to give me something to read to pass the time when I wasn't working.

The counter held an old fashioned cash register and a desk bell to ring for service. Behind the counter was a closed door leading to a back room of some sort. A stock room or maybe a private office, I guessed. Since no one manned the counter I tapped the bell, received a clear ding for my effort, and then Devona and I waited. It didn't take long.

Scuttling sounds came from numerous directions as small sleek black shapes rushed toward the counter from throughout the store. The rats – or rather pieces of darkness shaped like rats – scurried behind the counter and merged to form a single shadowy mass that grew as it reshaped itself into humanoid form. A second later a grotesque looking Bloodborn male stood before us. Cadaverously thin, bald, with pointed ears, narrow rat-like features and a pair of needle-sharp incisors jutting down from his upper jaw. He was dressed in a black great coat that hung awkwardly on his spindly frame. He rested long talon-like fingers on top of the counter and gave us what I assumed was supposed to be a welcoming smile, but which looked more like a grimace of pain.

"How may I serve you?" His voice was little more than a whisper and his accent was thick. It was clearly of eastern European origin, but it contained hints of other regions I couldn't place. That wasn't uncommon among the Bloodborn since so many of them were at least centuries old and had lived in many countries on Earth before relocating to Nekropolis, but there was something about this vampire's voice that spoke of great age, almost as if he were speaking with the voice of Time itself.

As I said, Devona and I had both bought books here before and we'd been waited on by Orlock every time. If he had any employees I'd never seen them. But the vampire gave no sign that he recognized us. He just stood there behind the counter, smiling that unsettling smile of his, patiently waiting for us to tell him what we wanted.

"We're interested in learning about rare magical artifacts," I said.

"I see. I have a section on magic items that contains a number of thorough examinations of the subject. If you come with me, I'll be happy to take you there."

A shadowy cast came over Orlock's features and I knew he was about to separate into the components of his travel form to escort us to the section in question. I held up a hand to stop him and the shadowy aspect vanished, leaving his features clear once more.

"Is there something more?" he asked. His tone remained professionally pleasant, but his beady rat eyes narrowed with the first hint of suspicion.

"We're not so much interested in reading about artifacts," I said, "as much as we are in selling them."

Orlock hesitated a few seconds before responding, his eyes narrowing even further, as if appraising us.

"I have several books in stock that deal with the basic fundamentals of buying and selling, but none that specifically focuses on trading in magical objects per se."

I held Orlock's gaze with my own as I spoke. "As I said we're not interested in reading about the subject."

Orlock arched a thin eyebrow at this.

"Pardon my presumptuousness," he said, "but why come to a bookstore if you're not interested in reading?"

I felt a pressure begin to build behind my eyes and I realized that Orlock was trying to probe my mind. I was surprised since usually half-vampires like Devona are the more psychically gifted among the Bloodborn. But almost as soon as it started I felt the pressure ease and I knew that Devona was running interference for me, blocking Orlock's mental probe with her own psychic powers.

Orlock realized it too, for his gaze flicked to Devona and he pursed his lips in irritation. He then turned his attention back to me.

"I'm sorry but I'm afraid I can't help you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a great deal of cataloguing to do in the back room."

He began to go shadowy on us again and this time I reached across the counter and grabbed hold of his right wrist to stop him.

"Let's cut the crap, Orlock," I said softly, so none of the other customers would overhear. "We know what your real business is, and unless you agree to talk with us in private, we'll tell the Adjudicators everything we know."

Orlock looked at me for a long moment, and though I no longer possessed the sensory apparatus to feel temperature, I swear the room seemed to get colder by several degrees.

"An empty threat coming from someone the Adjudicators would dearly love to find," Orlock said through gritted teeth.

So the vampire had recognized me. I wasn't worried that he'd turn us over to the authorities, though. If what David had told us about Orlock was true he had his own reasons for not wanting anything to do with the Adjudicators.

Without another word Orlock gestured for us to come around the counter. Then he turned, removed a key from his coat pocket, unlocked the door and – moving with an awkward, jerking motions that put me in mind of a scuttling crab – he entered the room beyond.

Devona and I exchanged glances.

A trap? she asked telepathically.

In Nekropolis? What are the odds?

She grinned at me and we followed after Orlock. Once we were inside the vampire closed and locked the door behind us.

The back room turned out to be a private office and a cozy one at that. A trio of comfortable chairs, Persian rug over a wooden floor, round table with a teacup and saucer resting on top of it, though instead of tea, the cup held a bit of reddish liquid at the bottom. And bookshelves, of course, though these were made of highly polished oak and contained one leather bound volume after another. Orlock's private stock, I assumed.

Orlock sat at the table and gestured for Devona and I to sit in the two remaining chairs. I preferred to stand – easier to fight that way – but Bloodborn, especially older ones, can be rigid when it comes to matters of etiquette, so we did as Orlock wanted and sat.

At first Orlock didn't say anything. He just folded his spiderish fingers together over his skeletally thin chest and looked at us. When he did finally speak his voice held a hint of amusement.

"Did you really think your pathetic disguises would fool me? Even if you weren't a well known personality around town, I'd have recognized you, Matthew Richter. You too, Devona Kanti. I remember the names and faces of everyone I've ever done business with, even if it was only a single transaction."

He reached out to pick up his teacup then and drained the remaining dregs of liquid.

Devona licked her lips as we watched Orlock finish his drink and I realized it had been a while since she'd fed on real blood instead of settling for aqua sanguis. I sometimes forget that while she's only half-vampire, that half needs nourishment the same as any other Bloodborn. I try not to let her dietary needs bother me, though. After all, we monsters need to stick together.

Orlock put his empty cup down on the saucer then sat back in his chair, hands once more interlocked on his chest.

"So tell me why you're here," he said. "I admit that I'm extremely curious why a fugitive from justice would choose to interrupt his flight from the authorities to visit a used bookstore."

"I suppose I could tell you that even fugitives need something to read, but the truth is I need your help. Are you aware of the reward the First Adjudicator is offering for my capture?"

Orlock looked at me as if I'd just insulted him.

I went on. "All right then. In that case, then you know the basics of the crime I was arrested for."

"Yes. You stole something from Lord Edrigu." He suddenly brightened. "Don't tell me you've come here looking to sell the object!"

"I'm not going to tell you that because I didn't steal it." I paused. "Well, my head didn't."

Orlock just looked at me.

"It's complicated. The point is I didn't steal the object, so I don't have it. The reason we've come to see you is that I intend to discover who actually committed the crime so I can clear my name. But to do that I need to know more about the object that was stolen from Lord Edrigu. It was a flute carved from bone that he wore around his neck."

Orlock's only reaction to the object's description was a slight narrowing of his gaze.

"Interesting," he said softly. But he added no more.

"We came to you because you have a reputation for being a collector," Devona said. "We know you sometimes hire people to acquire certain items for you. Supposedly you're not too fussy about how you obtain them, either."

"And you believe I may be able to provide information on this flute for you?" Orlock asked. "Or is it more than that? Do you suspect me of engineering the theft?"

"The thought had occurred to me," I admitted. "But to be honest at this point we have no more reason to suspect you than anyone else in town. And since you're the only lead we have at the moment, I suppose we'll just have to trust that you had nothing to do with the theft."

"Because you have no choice," Orlock said.

"That's about the size of it."

The vampire looked thoughtful for a moment.

"I'm a businessman, not an altruist. If I agree to help you, how will I be compensated?"

"It depends," Devona said. "What would you want?"

Orlock considered. "Your services in the future, free of charge. There are a number of artifacts that I haven't been able to acquire over the years for one reason or another. The two of you might be able to succeed in obtaining them for me where others have failed."

"One artifact," I said. "And we'll reserve the right to choose which one we'll go after."

Orlock smiled. "Done!" He briskly rubbed his talons together in satisfaction. "Now, down to business." He grinned. "And I do mean down."

He reached beneath the table, pushed a hidden switch, and the floor began to descend. Devona and I gripped the arms of our chairs out of reflex but the descent was slow and smooth. A wooden panel slid into place above us to seal off Orlock's office and fluorescent lights affixed to its underside turned on to provide illumination as we continued dropping.

The floor descended about thirty feet before coming to a gentle stop. Devona and I looked around and saw only darkness. I remembered Devona's concern that we might be walking into some kind of trap and I steeled myself for an attack. But a moment later Orlock said, "Forgive me. I tend to forget that not all my visitors can see as well in the dark as I can."

He gestured with one of his clawed hands and more fluorescent light panels activated, revealing a corridor that extended off to the left.

"Please follow me."

Orlock rose and, moving with his crab-like walk, started down the corridor. Devona and I of course followed. It was why we'd come here, after all.

The corridor wasn't a long one and we soon found ourselves standing in a large open chamber I estimated to be at least the size of a football field, ceiling thirty feet above us, covered in fluorescent light panels that clearly illuminated every part of the chamber. Devona and I stood there for a moment, staring in amazement. For most of her adult life, Devona had served as caretaker of Lord Galm's collection of magical artifacts. I'd seen his collection and I'd been impressed, but Galm had nothing on Orlock. His chamber was packed full of items ranging in size from the three-masted sailing ship with the name Flying Dutchman painted on the side in faded letters to a round crystalline pedestal with a seemingly empty clear dome on top. A metal plate affixed to the pedestal proclaimed the dome as containing the Incredible Shrinking Man. There were hundreds of items surrounding us, from large to small, each more exotic and bizarre than the last. Rosemary's Baby's crib, the Darkwand of Manticore, Dr. Jekyll's first chemistry set, the Ark of Desecration, the Phantom of the Opera's original score for Don Juan Triumphant, two of the Headless Horseman's spare heads, a half dozen dried and preserved triffids and so many more.

While many of Orlock's displays were physical objects a number of his displays resembled exhibits that seemed more appropriate for a wax museum: men, women and creatures in frozen poses sealed within large domes of clear crystal, like that containing the Incredible Shrinking man, but on a larger scale. According to their plaques the domes nearest us contained the Seven Golden Vampires, Grendel and his mother, the Aztec Mummy, several devil bats and a pack of killer shrews. I knew without asking that these weren't wax recreations bur rather the real thing, held in stasis by some sort of enchantment or advanced technology and there were a lot of them in Orlock's collection and when I gave Devona a look and thought We'd better watch ourselves, she gave me a look back which said she agreed.

Devona turned to Orlock then, and though I knew like me she felt misgivings about the collection, she concealed them well as she said, "This is amazing! It puts my father's collection to shame! In fact, if all the Darklords' combined their separate collections, I'd doubt the result would rival yours."

Orlock bowed. "Your words do me great honor. Thank you."

As the ancient Bloodborn straightened, I said, "You know this makes you look even more like a suspect than you did before."

Orlock waved my comment aside. "If I was responsible for the theft of Edrigu's flute, I'd never have admitted the truth about what I do, let alone brought you both down here. Now let us have no more of such talk, yes?"

"What do you do exactly?" I asked. "I mean, we can see you collect things, but you seem to imply there's more to it than just that."

"There is," Orlock said. "But let us walk as we talk. I have guests so seldom and it gives me great pleasure to show off my displays."

Orlock began crabwalking deeper into the chamber and Devona and I followed. The floor was made of white marble and our footsteps echoed solidly as we walked. As we went we found our heads turning this way and that, trying to take everything in as Orlock spoke, but our efforts were doomed to failure. There were simply too many wonders surrounding us to fully comprehend, let alone appreciate them all, though we found the increasing number of beings frozen within domes to be more than a little disturbing.

"I am, as you might have gathered, incredibly ancient, even for my kind." Orlock glanced at Devona. "Old as your father, as a matter of fact. You might even say we're brothers, in a sense. When Dis began approaching the most powerful of the Darkfolk to explain his dream of creating a home for us where we would be separate and therefore safe from humanity, I was one of his first supporters. Even then humans outnumbered Darkfolk and I knew they would only continue to outbreed us as the years passed. If we were to survive as more than bits of legend and folklore hiding in the shadows, we had to build our own home. While Dis continued seeking support for his plan, he tasked me with a most important job. I was to scour the Earth and gather together scattered magical objects and creatures that didn't belong to a specific Darklord or Demilord in preparation for the day when Nekropolis would be born and the Darkfolk would take up residence there.

"For the better part of a century I performed my duty, storing my finds in a system of caverns hidden beneath a mountain range in Europe. And when the day of the Descension arrived at last, everything I'd collected was brought to Nekropolis with us.

"Of course, I didn't get to keep what I'd collected. Once the Darklords were settled into their various strongholds, they paid me a visit and claimed what items and creatures they wished, leaving me to hold on to only those things none of them wanted."

"Your collection must've been massive beyond imagination if they left you all this," Devona said, gesturing at the displays around us.

Orlock gave a soft hissing laugh. "My dear, what the Darklords left me wouldn't have filled a tenth of this chamber. What you see around you is what I've managed to gather in the centuries since the city's founding."

"What happened?" I asked. "Did you find yourself bitten by the collecting bug and couldn't shake the habit?"

Orlock smiled. "Not exactly. After the first hundred years of Nekropolis's existence, a citywide conflict broke out that would eventually come to be called the Blood Wars. When it was over much of the city lay in ruins and rebuilding took some time. It was during that period that I resumed my career as a collector, but now I viewed myself more as a preserver. You see, the Blood Wars made me realize that the Darkfolk can be just as shortsighted and foolish as humanity in their own way and I came to believe that one day, one way or another, Nekropolis would be destroyed and the survivors would be forced to move again and find a new place to settle. I'm collecting, preserving and storing items and creatures for that day, the same as I once did. I suppose that instead of being a simple bookseller, I'm actually in the insurance business."

He laughed at his own joke, but neither Devona nor I found it amusing. I doubted any of the beings frozen within stasis globes had volunteered to become part of Orlock's twisted version of Noah's Ark.

"Where did all these items come from?" Devona asked.

"Some are from my original collection that I've managed to reclaim over the years, one way or another," Orlock said. "Some are objects that were left behind on Earth during the Descension and which my operatives have located and managed to smuggle into Nekropolis for me. Oh, don't look so shocked. There are other ways in and out of the city besides the Darklords' mirrors. Not many, perhaps, but they exist. And still other objects were items ordinary Darkfolk brought with them to Nekropolis and which I've managed to obtain, along with new items that have been created since the Descension."

"What about the creatures?" I asked. "Not to mention the people." I tried to keep the disgust I felt out of my voice, but I wasn't entirely successful. Still, Orlock didn't seem to notice.

"They are rare and interesting lifeforms that were either unique or endangered. They're preserved here until the day the Darkfolk once again relocate. They will be revived then."

"I see." I couldn't help sounding skeptical. If Orlock thought he was preserving everything in his collection for some future relocation – if such a thing ever took place – what guarantee would there be that Orlock would disperse his collection then and free his captives? Wouldn't he be just as likely to continue holding them against the possibility of yet another future relocation? There was a good chance the beings frozen within Orlock's stasis domes would never be free again.

Still, I decided not to say anything about it to Orlock. We still needed him to identify Edrigu's bone flute and I didn't want to risk offending him. After what we'd seen I didn't like the idea of one day helping him add another item to his collection as the price for his help, but a deal was a deal. But I'd make damn sure that we wouldn't bring him anything – or anyone – alive.

I was about to ask Orlock another question when the vox in my coat pocket said, "Someone's calling," repeating the phrase until I pulled out the phone and answered it.

"Excuse me for a moment," I said to Orlock and stepped away to take the call. It was David.

"We got lucky, Matt. I hooked ravens up to each monitor and kept going back and forth between them as the video downloaded. I haven't found any footage of the actual theft yet, but I did find some of the attack on you in the alley. It's not very clear and I can't make out the faces of the men who attacked you. I've tried enhancing the images, but so far I haven't been–"

I broke in. "Men? You mean there was more than one?"

"That's right. There were two. They attacked from behind. One put a cloth bag over your head while the other used some kind of garrote to slice through your neck. It wasn't an ordinary garrote, either, but some kind of hi-tech device that cut through both flesh and bone as if they were water."

I'd already guessed as much about the nature of the garrote, but up to that point I'd been assuming there'd only been one attacker. But now that I thought back on it the attack had occurred swiftly – too swiftly for one man to do the job himself. And when I went back over the sounds I'd heard then I realized that while in the confusion at the time I assumed the noises had been made by one assailant, in fact, the sounds had come from different directions and they'd overlapped. I had been attacked by two men and the evidence had been there all along. I just hadn't recognized it for what it was.

I asked David a few more questions about my attackers but his raven had been some distance away when it recorded the incident and he couldn't give me anymore details about the men other than they were both humanoid and wearing black coats. He couldn't even make a guess as to their exact species.

"Thanks for the info, David. It's a big help."

"No problem." David promised to continue downloading video and that he'd call me again if he found any footage of my body entering or leaving the Reliquary. I ended the call, tucked Shrike's vox back into my coat pocket and rejoined Devona and Orlock who'd been waiting patiently for me. Devona gave me a questioning look when I returned and I gave my head a slight shake to let her know I'd tell her about the call later. She nodded and we continued following Orlock through his vast collection.

After a few more minutes, I said, "Thanks for the tour and the history lesson but as you might imagine I'm more than a bit anxious to get on with clearing my name. Can you identify Edrigu's flute for us?"

Orlock stopped walking and Devona and I stopped too. We stood in an open area next to a display of a large metal framework holding a dozen amputated arms and legs, all human, all connected by thick copper cables to an old-fashioned hand-crank generator resting on the floor. The flesh of the limbs was a mottled greenish-gray and their look was a familiar one. I knew why a moment later when I read the plaque identifying the display as one of Dr. Frankenstein's earliest experiments in reanimation technology. It didn't take a genius to figure out how the device worked. You turned the crank, activated the generator, and the resulting electric current caused the arms and legs to move. I imagined it would be great fun at parties.

"Of course I can," he said. "The flute was part of my original collection. Its name is Osseal and it was carved from a bone taken from the first true human to walk the Earth. When played properly it has the power to command the dead."

The news stunned me. It's bad enough that the Darklords have that kind of power, but at least Father Dis holds them in check. But for some unknown person to possess the ability to command the dead… command me, for as a zombie I belonged to the ranks of the dead, was seriously disturbing.

"I wonder what the thief – whoever it is – wants with such an object," Devona said.

"There's a lot of dead folk of one sort or another in the city," I answered. "An object like Osseal would give its user a tremendous amount of power."

"Yes, but for what purpose? Someone went to a hell of a lot of trouble to obtain Osseal. That means whoever stole it wanted it pretty badly."

I shrugged. "For some people the acquisition of power is an end in itself. Look at your father…" I almost added and Orlock.

"Maybe," Devona said. "Or maybe whoever it was wants to raise their own personal army."

The thought was a chilling one.

"I can see why Edrigu wore Osseal around his neck," I said. "An object of that kind of power–" I broke off when I felt Devona's mind touch mine.

Something's wrong here, Matt. Orlock didn't have to bring us down here to tell us about Osseal. He could've told us back in his office.

Before I could reply, Orlock said, "You needn't bother trying to communicate telepathically. I can hear you as clearly as if you were speaking aloud."

I turned toward the vampire, intending to demand that he explain what was going on, but then I saw where we'd stopped. Devona and I were standing in a thin, almost invisible circle etched into the marble floor. Orlock, not surprisingly, was standing outside the circle. Before Devona and I could react Orlock raised a hand and a clear dome like dozens of others we'd seen since entering the chamber sprung into existence around us. I started to reach for my .45, intending to see if the inside of the dome was bulletproof, but I found myself unable to move. I tried to look at Devona to see if she was similarly affected, but I couldn't even turn my head toward her. Instead, I reached out to her mentally.

Devona?

I can't move either, Matt. We're caught in some kind of stasis field. I don't know if it's magical or technological, but in either case my psychic powers have no effect on it.

The Loa necklace that Papa Chatha had made to protect me from tracking spells blocked all magic. So that meant Orlock's stasis dome was technological in origin. That, or it was magic of such a high order that the necklace couldn't nullify it – which, considering Orlock's vast age, experience and knowledge, was quite possible. Whatever the case, the stasis field worked and we were trapped.

Orlock spoke then, and though he was on the other side of the dome, we could hear him just fine.

"I apologize for this, but I hope you'll understand. You're a most unique specimen, Matthew. The only intelligent self-willed zombie who's ever existed. And now, through no fault of your own, your existence has become endangered. Assuming you aren't destroyed in the process of being recaptured by the Adjudicators, it's doubtful you will survive a second term of incarceration in Tenebrus. And let's be realistic. The odds of you being able to discover who stole Osseal and framed you for the theft before you are captured are exceedingly slim. So you see, I'm really doing you a favor by preserving you here. And as for Devona…" He shrugged. "Well, I wouldn't want you to get lonely. And don't worry. You'll find that time within my domes passes pleasantly enough. I've seen to that."

He smiled and started to turn to leave, but then he paused. "You know, it is rather ironic that you're now part of my collection. After all, thanks to you, Overkill wasn't able to obtain Scream Queen's voice for me. But you and Devona make more than fitting replacements for it. Scream Queen has a truly remarkable voice – she has both banshee and siren blood in her ancestry, you know. But the way she uses her gift…" He shuddered. "If I don't manage to preserve her voice soon, she'll ruin it beyond repair. Ah well, That's no longer any concern of yours now, is it? Perhaps I'll hire Overkill to make another attempt to capture the voice. With the both of you out of action perhaps she'll succeed this time. Farewell, and I hope you enjoy your stay."

Orlock turned away then and departed. He was soon out of my view, and since I couldn't move my head to track him, I could only listen to his footsteps as they faded away. A bit later the chamber lights went out and I knew Orlock had returned to his bookstore and might well be on the vox to Overkill at that very moment.

Inside I was raging with fury at being trapped like this, but frozen as I was, there was damn all I could do about it. I reached out telepathically to Devona once more.

Still there?

Sorry I didn't take your warning about the possibility of this being a trap more seriously.

Don't worry about it. There was no way either of us could've anticipated this.

I might've been frozen and surrounded by darkness but Devona's mental presence was a comfort to me and I was grateful for it. Orlock's insane, you know.

No argument there. The longer Bloodborn live the more unstable their minds become if they aren't careful.

I thought about Devona's father and I couldn't disagree with her assessment.

So what now? I asked. Since your psychic powers have no effect on the stasis field, what do we do? Stand around frozen and wait for someone to rescue us?

I'm afraid we'll have a long wait ahead of us, Devona thought. No one knows we're here, except David, and he has no reason to suspect Orlock has captured us. And even if he did, he has no way to get us out.

He might get words to some of our friends and they might come for us. It was admittedly a thin hope, but right then it was all I had.

Maybe, Devona thought back, though from the tone of her mental voice, she didn't think much of her chances.

Speaking of David reminded me of his call and I filled Devona in on our conversation. We "talked" about the revelation that I'd been attacked by two men instead of one, but we came to no conclusion about it.

At least we won't starve, Devona thought. Stasis fields put all biological functions on hold, so I'll have no need for food and you won't be in any danger of rotting, either. We'll remain preserved just as we are…

Forever, I finished. I'm sorry you're trapped too. Orlock wanted to preserve me. He just stuck you in here to keep me company. Like I'm a goldfish in a bowl whose owner tossed in another fish to keep the first from getting lonely.

If I'm here with you, then I'm exactly where I want to be, she thought. I love you.

I love you, too. But if it's all the same to you, I'm going to keep trying to think of a way out of here.

There was a hint of amusement to her thoughtvoice. I'll try not to take it personally.

What do you think Orlock meant there at the end when he said that he made sure time inside the domes passes pleasantly enough?

I don't know, but it hasn't been a barrel of laughs so far.

No kidding. Maybe it was just another sign of Orlock's insanity. I–

A strange feeling came over me then, a dizzy, plummeting sensation as if my body was falling and spinning wildly out of control. I tried mentally calling for Devona but I received no answer. Eventually the sensation of vertigo began to ease and my eyes were filled with light and the sound of voices yelling came to my ears.

"Daddy, Daddy!'

FOURTEEN

I turned off the lawnmower and ran the back of my hand across my forehead to wipe away sweat, though all I managed to do was smear it around. God, it was hot out today.

I turned toward the pair of children running toward me across the half mown lawn, one boy, one girl, both eleven, both blondhaired like their mother. They came up to me in a flurry of child energy, skin tanned from being outside all summer, their hair bleached almost white from all the sun they'd gotten. They both wore T-shirts and shorts and both were barefoot. I always had a hell of a time getting them to wear shoes when it was warm out, and my first thought was that one of them had stepped on something sharp, a nail or a piece of broken glass. But the guilty expressions on their faces told me neither was injured and I relaxed a bit.

"What's up, kiddos?" I asked. My lower back gave a twinge and I winced. Devona had been after me to get a riding mower for a while now, but I insisted on using a push mower for the exercise. But this season my back had been putting in its vote for a riding mower too and I was seriously considering breaking down and getting one. After all, I wasn't getting any younger.

"It's not our fault!" Lily said.

"You mean it's not my fault," Toby said, giving his sister a sideways glance.

Lily shot him a dark look that accused him of betraying her before turning her attention back to me. "Not our fault," she insisted.

I sighed. You know how twins are supposed to be inseparably close? Maybe that was true for identical twins, but for fraternal ones – at least for my twins – that wasn't always the case. Maybe they didn't fight anymore than other siblings, but sometimes it sure seemed like it.

"What happened? And don't both of you talk at the same time. Lily first."

Toby pursed his lips in irritation. "Why does she get to go first?"

Because she doesn't let her emotions get the better of her, I thought. Out loud I said, "We're going in alphabetical order."

Lily gave her brother a triumphant smirk before launching into her story.

"We were playing catch in the backyard near Mom's garden…" she began.

I already didn't like the sound of this.

"… when Toby threw the baseball too hard–"

"I did not!" Toby's hands curled into fists and his cheeks flushed with a mix of anger and embarrassment.

"… and it flew right by me. I tried to catch it, Daddy, really I did!" She lowered her gaze. "But I missed."

"What happened?" I had a basic idea by that point, but I wanted them to tell me on their own.

Lily didn't answer and Toby looked at her. When he saw how upset she was, the anger drained out of him. he sighed – sounding too much like me – and said, "You know the Buddha statue Mom has in the garden?"

"Yes…"

"The ball hit the statue pretty hard –" he glanced at Lily but she was still looking at the ground – "and, well, the head got knocked off."

I imagined Buddha's decapitated head lying on the ground amidst Devona's petunias and sunflowers. Something about the image of a headless body struck a strange chord in me, but I didn't know why. I decided to put it out of my mind and I laid a hand on each of my children's shoulders and gave them what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze.

"It was an accident, guys. Don't worry about it."

Some of the tension left them then and Lily's head snapped up, her expression suddenly hopeful. "Do you think maybe we can glue the head back on?" she asked.

"Before Mom gets back?" Toby added.

I started to answer, but another image flashed through my mind then: I was lying on a table, a nightmarish machine hanging above me, arms protruding from it, each gripping a stainless steel surgical instrument in its hand. The image faded as quickly as it had come, but it was so disturbing that for a moment all I could do was stand there and stare at my children. Eventually, I gave my head a shake to clear it – and for some odd reason I was reassured that it remained solidly attached to my neck.

I forced a smile.

"We can give it a try," I said, "but I think we'll need a lot of glue."

My smile, weak though it was, seemed to reassure the twins further and they smiled back. Before any of us could say anything else, though, we heard the sound of a car approaching and we turned to see Devona driving down the road in her Prius. She honked the horn in greeting as she slowed and then pulled into the driveway. The twins left me and raced across the lawn to greet their mother – and no doubt shower her with love in the hope of ameliorating her reaction when she learned about the fate of her Buddha statue.

Devona got out of the car. She'd gone out to play tennis with a friend, and she wore a sleeveless white blouse and athletic shorts, and she looked damned good to me. She hadn't returned empty-handed, though. She held a cardboard drinks carrier with four cups on it. The twins squealed in delight when she held the carrier out for them to select a pair of drinks, all thoughts of the decapitated Buddha forgotten. They grabbed two, along with a pair of straws, stuck them through the plastic lids, and sipped.

"Milkshakes!" Toby said.

"I got chocolate," Lily said, making a face.

"Mine's strawberry."

The twins switched cups, took another sip, and were both much happier.

Devona and I laughed and I started walking over to the car.

"Why don't you two go play in the backyard some more while I break the news to your mom." I paused. "And I do mean break."

The twins looked worried again, but I gave them a wink and a smile to let them know everything would be all right. Their own smiles returned and they ran around the side of the house, carrying their milkshakes with them.

"I decided to run through a drive-thru on my way home," Devona said. She held the drink carrier out to me. "What's your pleasure, Mr. Richter? Chocolate or strawberry?"

"You're my pleasure, Mrs. Richter."

I leaned forward and kissed her with a bit more passion than was perhaps decorous for suburbia on a Saturday afternoon out in the open, but what the hell?

When we parted, I took a chocolate shake, popped a straw in it, and took a long sip.

"That's good. Doesn't quite hit the spot like a cold beer would right now, but it's an acceptable substitute."

She grinned as she took a sip of her shake – strawberry, her favorite flavor. Which was of course why I'd taken the chocolate.

"They didn't have any beer-flavored shakes," she smiled. "Sorry."

She took another sip and a little spilled out of the corner of her mouth. But instead of being a light pink color, the liquid was a deep crimson.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

I realized then that I was staring at the thick red substance trailing down her chin. I touched my own chin to signal her what was wrong, and she reached up and caught some of the liquid with her finger. She frowned as she examined it.

"That's weird. Maybe they didn't mix it properly and there's a pocket of strawberry syrup at the bottom."

"Maybe." But that explanation didn't feel right and the substance on Devona's chin didn't look like strawberry syrup so much as it looked like… like… The word refused to come and I found my thoughts drifting back to the yard work that still lay before me.

Our home was a ranch house sitting at the end of a cul-de-sac bordering a small park. The kids loved the park's playground equipment and the small woods with a stream running through it. Devona loved the large oak trees and weeping willows. Me? I loved living next to a giant yard I didn't have to mow and trees whose leaves I didn't have to rake every autumn. Dealing with my own yard was enough work for me.

It wasn't quite lunchtime yet and I'd managed to get half the front yard done, but I still had to finish up here and then do the back before I could call it quits for the day. I glanced up at the blazing sun hanging in the summer sky. That is, if I could take the heat for that long. Then again, the Browns were playing this afternoon. Maybe I could finish the front now and put off doing the back until tomorrow.

Devona reached out with her tongue to lap up the crimson liquid on her chin then and I found the action to be at once both arousing and disturbing. She frowned.

"Funny. It doesn't taste like strawberry. It tastes different. Better." She smacked her lips thoughtfully. "Sweet, but it has a kick to it, almost like it contains caffeine. Just a little bit gave me a jolt of energy." She looked at me then. "Wait a minute, what were you saying a minute ago about having bad news to tell me?"

"The kids were messing around in the backyard and accidentally broke the head off your Buddha statue."

"Really? Oh, well. It's not like we can't get it fixed, right? We'll just run on over to the Foundry and…" She trailed off. "Why did I say that? What's the Foundry?"

"I don't know." But the truth was I did know. At least, it felt like I did, somewhere deep down inside me. Only I couldn't quite remember. I decided not to worry about it, realized I seemed to be deciding that a lot lately, then decided not to worry about that.

I took another sip of my shake and my mouth was filled with a taste so foul that I turned to spit the muck out on the grass.

"What's wrong?" Devona asked.

"Damned if I know. It suddenly tastes like shit. Literally. Like the kind of swill they serve at Hem–" I frowned, unable to finish the word, though for the life of me I didn't know why I couldn't finish.

An unusually cool breeze blew across the yard then, causing both Devona and I to shiver.

"Something's not right," she said, a note of fear in her voice.

I knew just how she felt but once more, I decided not to worry about it. No, not decided. I couldn't worry about it.

Devona held her shake in one hand and the empty drink carrier in the other, so I couldn't take hold of her. Instead I stepped forward and put my arm around her waist.

"Tell you what, Mrs. Richter. The kids are busy making more mischief in the backyard and you and I are both hot and sweaty – me from my Herculean efforts to tame this lawn, you from exercising your athletic prowess on the tennis court. Would you like to join me in a cool, soothing shower?"

Devona eyed the half-finished lawn. "It's not like you to leave a job undone."

I kissed her gently on the neck. Her sweat coated skin had the tang of salt. I found it to be erotic and I felt my body responding.

"Some sacrifices are worth making."

I leaned in to kiss her lips this time – trying not to think about how she'd lapped up the crimson liquid a moment ago – but before we could kiss, the sun dimmed as if suddenly blocked by clouds. The sky had been clear only a moment ago.

We both looked up and saw that there were no clouds. Instead, the sun had taken on a shadowy cast, and it now gave off a purple-tinted light, painting the world in strange dark hues. A word popped into my mind then, one I'd never heard before but which at the same time seemed so familiar. Umbriel.

The breeze returned then, even colder than before, and this time it didn't pass but continued blowing.

Devona dropped the drink carrier and her shake and put her arms around me. I slipped my own arms around her shoulders, noticing that the lid had sprung off her shake cup when it hit the ground. Thick red liquid that looked nothing like strawberry was soaking into the grass.

"Matt, I'm scared. What's happening?"

It's breaking down, I thought, though I wasn't sure what that meant.

Yes, Devona said. It's our link. Or maybe it's Papa Chatha's necklace. Hell, maybe it's a combination of the two. Whichever the case, something is preventing the illusion from taking full hold of our minds.

I realized then that Devona wasn't speaking. I'd felt her reply more than heard it, as if she were somehow speaking in my head.

"Illusion?" I said aloud. I had no idea what she was talking about. And yet… I did.

She frowned. "I don't know." She'd returned to speaking her words instead of thinking them to me. "It made sense a second ago, but my thoughts keep slipping away. I can't seem to hold on to them for very long."

I gripped her tighter as the world continued to darken around us. "I know what you mean. It almost feels like we're fighting on some level… resisting. But I don't know exactly what we're fighting."

Devona started to say something, but her reply was cut off by the sound of our children crying out in alarm from the backyard. Without thinking I dropped my shake and Devona and I started running. When we reached the backyard we saw the twins near their sandbox. They lay on the ground, bodies covered with long tendrils of some kind of strange weed growing out of the ground.

Leech vine, I thought. I didn't know what that was, but I instinctively knew it was something very bad.

The vine had burrowed into the children's skin at various place – face, neck, hands, back, belly – and it was pulsing rhythmically as if it was pumping something into them. No, I realized with horror. The plant was pumping something out of them: blood.

Devona and I stood there in shock for several seconds and during that time we watched the twins' suntanned skin begin to pale as the leech vine rapidly drained the life out of them.

Devona and I started forward. I didn't know if I would make things worse by tearing the vines away from the twins' flesh. I only knew I couldn't stand by and watch as my children succumbed to some sort of parasitic plant. But before either Devona or I could reach the twins, Lily held her hand out in a stay back gesture.

"Don't!" she said. Her voice was so much weaker than it had been only a few minutes ago in the front yard and hearing it broke my heart. I started forward again, but Toby repeated his sister's gesture.

"Listen to her!" he said, his voice just as weak as his twin's. "We know what's happening." His hand dropped then, as if it were too weak to hold it up any longer, and Lily's did the same.

"None of this is real," my daughter said, her voice now little more than a whisper. "We're not real, Toby and I, we're… pretend. This whole place is pretend."

Toby's head gave the slightest of nods, all that he could manage. His skin, like his sister's, was almost ivory-white now, eyes sunken in, lips blue-tinged.

"You and Mom are fighting. Trying… to break free. That's why all this is happening. Why we're…" He trailed off.

"Dying," Lily finished for him. "But it's OK, because we were never really…"

"Alive," Toby said.

I turned to Devona, and I saw she now possessed overlong incisors jutting down from her upper jaw. I looked at my hands and saw they were gray-tinged, the flesh dry and flaking.

"Pretend," Lily said. "Just… pretend."

Sorrow welled up strong inside me, along with anger. This family, my house, my life wasn't pretend. It couldn't be! I wouldn't let it be!"

A shimmering passed through the air, like ripples in a pond, and when it cleared, the sunshine had returned in full force and my children stood there, free of the leech vine, strong and healthy once more. Devona no longer had fangs, and my hands looked normal again. Everything was as it should be.

I was so relieved that I started toward the twins, wanting nothing more than to wrap my arms around the two of them and never let go. But the expressions on their faces – sadness, disappointment, regret – made me pause.

"Don't, Daddy," Lily said. "Don't use us as an excuse to hide."

"You've always faced the truth, no matter how hard it was," Toby said. He smiled then. "That's your job, right? To find out the truth."

"Find it now," Lily said. "For us, if for no other reason."

I turned to Devona, and I didn't know I was crying until she reached up and gently brushed the tears from my face. She was crying too, but her tears were tinged with red, and while that should've seemed strange to me, I somehow knew it was perfectly normal for her.

"It tears me up to say this, Matt, but they're right. I can feel it. And I know you can too."

I wanted to tell her that I didn't feel anything, that this was real, and I didn't want to hear another word about it. But instead I nodded. I took her in my arms and held her as tight as I could.

"This really sucks," I said softly.

"I know. Ready?"

I wanted to look at the kids one last time, but I knew I couldn't bear it. So I closed my eyes and said, "Ready."

I felt Devona's mind reaching for mine and I reached back. Vertigo took hold of me then and when the world stopped spinning I opened my eyes and found myself standing amidst dozens of bizarre displays – and I remembered.

I was no longer physically capable of crying, but if I had been I'd have broken down and sobbed right then.

It's all right, love, Devona thought. It's over. We're back.

I tried to move, but I still couldn't. Orlock's stasis field was still in effect and I knew that it had remained so the entire time.

What he said about time passing pleasantly… He created an illusory life for us to live while we were trapped here. Like filling an aquarium full of plastic plants and ceramic undersea ruins for the fish to swim around.

Yes, Devona thought. But he didn't count on your necklace and our telepathic link. They reinforced what was real and fought against what wasn't. Because of that, the illusion couldn't sustain itself.

I thought of all the other beings trapped within Orlock's stasis domes, all of them living virtual lives deep within their minds while their bodies remained frozen as the long years passed. It was like being trapped in a kind of hell, only one that you weren't aware of. Somehow that made it all the worse.

Then again, maybe it was worse to come out of the dream. I missed my children and grieved for their deaths, even though I knew they'd never been real. And now Devona and I faced the prospect of spending our time in stasis without the comfort of Orlock's illusion to distract us. I wished my necklace had nullified the stasis field too, but either it was completely technological or its magic was too powerful for the necklace to handle on its own without the added help of Devona's and my telepathic link. For whatever reasons we'd broken the illusion but the stasis field remained intact.

Are you all right? I asked her.

Devona didn't answer right away. Finally she said, Honestly, no. You?

Working on it, I said, tying to sound braver than I felt at that moment. I'll tell you one thing, though. When we get out of this damned bubble, I'm going to find Orlock and… My thoughts trailed off as I realized something. The lights are on. They were off when the illusion took hold of our minds.

You're right, Devona thought. Maybe Orlock's coming back. Maybe he wants to ask us more questions about Osseal, since he'd love to get his talons on it.

Since Orlock's a vampire, he can see in the dark, I reminded her. He said he uses the lights only for his guests.

We heard footsteps coming toward us then and I could tell right away that they didn't belong to Orlock. The pace was too measured, the rhythm too steady for the crablike way he walked. My surmise turned out to be correct when a few moments later a woman approached our dome and stood regarding us, hands planted on her hips, head cocked at an angle, grin plastered on her face.

"Hello, Matt," Overkill said. "You're a damned hard man to find, you know that?"

My first impulse was to tell Overkill that she was a sight for sore eyes, but since I wasn't able to speak, I couldn't. Besides, I wasn't entirely sure her arrival was a good thing.

She was dressed the same way she was when I saw her last, only now she was better armed, with a P-90 submachine gun slung over her shoulder by a strap, and a weapons belt around her waist with a holster for a 9mm, sheaths for several lengths and types of knives – including, I was disturbed to see, a dire blade – and storage pouches that presumably held whatever the wellaccessorized mercenary was carrying these days. Considering how often I have to root around in my pockets for my own toys, I wondered if I should invest in a belt like that, but I decided against it. I don't like my adversaries to know how well armed I am. I prefer to let them underestimate me. Besides, a belt like that would just look silly on me.

"First things first," Overkill said. "Let's get you two out of there."

She reached into one of her belt pouches and removed a small glass vial. She took a deep breath and held it before prying out the stopper and splashing the liquid contents onto the area of the dome directly in front of where Devona and I stood immobile. As we watched, the place where the liquid – which was a foul yellow color – had struck began to sizzle and steam. Within moments the liquid had eaten a lopsided hole through the dome and once the structure's integrity had been compromised it shuddered violently and then popped out of existence as if it were nothing more than a giant soap bubble. Once the dome had vanished the stasis field ceased functioning and Devona and I were able to move and talk again.

"Whatever that stuff was, it's pretty handy," I said. "I may need to pick up a few gallons myself."

"It's demon piss," Overkill said as she replaced the stopper and put the empty vial back into its pouch. "Once it's exposed to air, it'll eat through anything – and you don't want to know what I had to do to get it."

"You got that right," I said.

From her belt pouch she next removed an amulet stamped with the image of a winding serpent. "This is a charm I picked up from an Obeah woman I know. It allows me to command any zombie to do my bidding." She grinned. "Including you, Matt. You're going to accompany me to the Nightspire so I can collect the bounty Quillion is offering for you."

I looked at her charm. It appeared genuine enough, but I felt no compulsion to do as she ordered.

"Sorry, but I don't think so," I said.

Overkill frowned at the charm and gave it a couple shakes, as if she might be able to force it to work. Little did she know that Papa Chatha's necklace was protecting me from the charm.

"Cheap piece of crap," she muttered. "Guess we'll do this the oldfashioned way." She dropped the charm to the ground, took hold of her P-90, racked the slide, and aimed it at me. "Don't try anything," she warned, gaze cold and expression deadly serious. "You don't need legs for me to take you to the Nightspire and it'll only take a few well aimed rounds from my weapon to cut them off."

She looked to Devona. "And my ammo has silver blended into it, so it's effective against both your human and Bloodborn halves."

"Let me guess what happened," I said. "Orlock called to tell you we were out of action and to urge you to go after Scream Queen's voice again. But you figured you'd rather collect the reward on me, and in the bargain get back at me for stopping you at Sinsation."

"That is, unless you organized all this in the first place," Devona said.

Overkill frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"After you left Sinsation, someone cut off my head, stole my body, and somehow used it to steal a magic object called Osseal from Lord Edrigu," I explained. "I managed to get my body back, and Victor Baron made me whole, but then I was arrested and sentenced to Tenebrus for the theft – which I didn't commit."

"Orlock told me as much," Overkill said. "But you don't really think I had anything to do with it, do you? I mean, I'm not big on elaborate planning. I'm more of a shoot first and never ask questions kind of gal. And if I had an object of power like Osseal, I could sell it for a whole lot more than five hundred thousand darkgems. And then I'd just let you stay frozen down here for eternity. I almost did anyway, but since I don't have Osseal and you did piss me off at Sinsation, I figured, what the hell?"

She could have been lying, but my instincts told me she was telling the truth. But I didn't have to rely on my instincts alone.

Devona?

I don't sense any subterfuge on her part, but she could be shielding her mind from me. She's certainly strong-willed enough on her own, and she could also be using some kind of magic object to help conceal her thoughts.

So Overkill might've moved to the bottom of my suspects lists, but she wasn't officially off it yet.

"How did you manage to get past Orlock?" I asked. "He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who willingly give up something once he's collected it."

"He's not, but I have my ways." Overkill smiled grimly. "I'm carrying a magic object that temporarily traps Bloodborn in their travel forms. Right now Orlock is stuck as a dozen or so shadow rats scurrying around his bookstore, unable to put themselves back together."

I had to admit, the woman was good.

"He's not going to be too pleased with you once the spells wears off," Devona said.

"Maybe, but he's nothing if not pragmatic. Once I collect the reward on Matt, I'm going to start looking for Osseal. If I can find it and bring it to him, there's a good chance he'll forgive me for freeing you two. And if not…" She shrugged. "There are plenty of other people in the city willing to pay for my services."

"I don't suppose it matters to you that I'm innocent," I said.

"Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. Orlock seemed to think you are and he's usually right about things like that. But I don't care. Guilty or innocent, you're still worth five hundred thousand darkgems to me."

I was racking my brain, trying to come up with a way to convince Overkill to let us go or, failing that, a way that we could escape her, when Devona decided to take matters into her own hands.

She bared her fangs and hissed as she sprang toward Overkill. Devona is only half-vampire, but she's still fast as hell and she was almost on top of the mercenary before the woman could tighten her finger on the trigger of her P-90 and release a burst of gunfire. Devona managed to avoid being struck by any of the bullets, and they flew on, hitting various displays around us, taking chunks out of rare and valuable objects. Orlock would have a fit once he finally managed to pull himself together and come down here and saw the damage.

Devona wasn't fooling around. She fastened her teeth on Overkill's neck and bit down. The momentum of Devona's leap sent both women falling to the floor, and the impact caused Overkill to lose her grip on the P-90, and the strap slipped over her shoulder. The weapon skittered away from her, coming to stop over by the Frankenstein experiment display. I started toward it, doing the half-shuffle, half-run which is the fastest way I can make my dead body move.

As I went for the gun, Overkill hit Devona in the temple with a solid left cross, dislodging her teeth from Overkill's neck in a spray of blood. But Devona had a firm grip on Overkill's shoulders and she managed to hold on. Devona tried to bite Overkill again, but the mercenary brought up a forearm to block her. I saw Overkill reaching for her dire blade and I knew I had only seconds to reach the P-90. A single strike from a dire blade is fatal, as I'd demonstrated to Lycanthropus Rex in Tenebrus, and if Overkill managed to draw her blade, Devona was as good as dead.

I reached the P-90 and was bending down to pick it up when I became aware of movement. I looked at the metal framework containing the severed limbs of Dr. Frankenstein's early work and saw that every one of them had become fully animated and was thrashing about wildly. I glanced at the hand-crank generator. No one had touched the crank and the machine wasn't active. No electricity was reaching the limbs, so how were they moving? What could make a bunch of dead arms and legs suddenly –

Then it hit me.

I turned to Devona and Overkill, who were still fighting on the floor. Devona had straddled the mercenary who'd managed to draw her dire blade. Devona had hold of the other woman's wrist, preventing her from using the dagger, and from the look of fury on Devona's face, I figured Overkill had only a few seconds before her wrist snapped like kindling.

"Ladies!" I shouted. Then again, louder. "Ladies!"

That time I got their attention. They stopped fighting, though Devona kept hold of Overkill's wrist. They focused their gazes on me and I pointed to the rack of thrashing limbs behind me.

"We've got a problem," I said. "I think someone just started playing Edrigu's flute."

FIFTEEN

Once Devona and Overkill stopped fighting, the mercenary applied first aid to her throat wound – a powerful anticoagulant to stop the bleeding and a patch of plaskin to seal the bite and begin the healing process. Both items were developed by the Bloodborn physicians at the Fever House, undisputed experts in treating injuries sustained during vampire attacks.

I hated to leave the others who were trapped in Orlock's stasis domes, but there wasn't time to free them all and besides, Overkill hadn't brought enough demon piss to do the job. But after what Devona and I had experienced in that bastard's virtual fishbowl, I was determined to return one day and free Orlock's prisoners, even if I had to kill the sonofabitch to do it.

The three of us then returned to Nosferatomes and walked outside, where we saw my worst fears confirmed.

Fighting had broken out in the street and not the usual sort of brawling that can happen anytime in the Sprawl. This was a serious toe –to toe, tooth-and-claw struggle for survival, complete with shouts of alarm, screams of agony, and lots of the red stuff being spilled. At first it was hard to come to any specific conclusions about the combatants because the fighting was so fast and furious, but after a couple moments it became clear that they could be broken into two separate camps: the dead and the living. A huge Frankenstein creature wearing only ragged jeans – the better to show off the jagged scars covering his obscenely muscled body – stood outside Matango, strangling a ghoul with one hand while he tore the arm off a lyke with the other. I recognized the man as Jigsaw Jones, one of the most popular professional wrestlers in the city and the sport's current champion. From the bleeding cuts on his flesh and the restaurant's shattered front window, I guessed Jones had been dining there when he'd flipped out and started killing people. I pictured him killing several of his fellow diners before leaping through the window and attacking the first people unlucky enough to be in his way.

In front of Hemlocks, Baristastein stood in the midst of carnage, a half-dozen bodies in various states of disembowelment spread out around her on the sidewalk. She currently had both hands wrapped around the throat of a toad-faced demon with overlarge insect eyes and was slowly squeezing the life out of him. No longer was her face expressionless. Now her features were contorted in savage joy as she throttled the struggling demon.

Ferdinand approached her, confused sadness in his eyes.

"Sandy, something's happened to you – something bad. Please… let me help you!"

Baristastein snapped the toad demon's neck with a single quick shake and then tossed his body aside. She then started walking toward the minotaur, her gaze glittering with hungry anticipation.

Any thought I'd had about getting even with the bull man for making me drink the Sprawlicano vanished when I saw the danger he was in. "Get away from her!" I shouted.

But either Ferdinand didn't hear me or he was in too much shock to listen, for instead of turning away from the approaching Baristastein and running like hell in the opposite direction, he opened his arms wide to welcome her.

I didn't want to look, but I forced myself to watch as Baristastein rammed a hand into her boyfriend's chest and yanked out his still beating, bloody heart. Ferdinand bellowed in pain, and as the life quickly fled from his eyes, he looked upon the object of his adoration uncomprehendingly, and then his body went limp and he collapsed to the ground. Baristastein looked at the grisly object clutched in her hand for a moment as if she didn't quite understand what it was, then she hurled it aside, roared in fury, and stomped off in search of new victims.

I might have made a joke about how even in death Ferdinand had given his heart to his girl, but even though I can't experience nausea, I didn't have the stomach for such gallows humor right then. The minotaur might've been a jerk, but he hadn't deserved to die like that.

Up and down the street the same scene was played out again and again as the dead made violent, bloody war on the living. It was the same in the street as well. Vehicles that contained any part of Victor Baron's fleshtech, such as Agony DeLites and Meatrunners ignored their drivers' commands and crashed into other cars, running them off the road or into each other, engines roaring with bestial joy.

"This is most definitely not good," Overkill said.

"I didn't realize that understatement was one of your many skills," I said, unable to take my gaze off the chaos that surrounded us.

I heard Overkill rack the slide on her P-90 and when I turned to took at her I saw she had the weapon trained on me.

"So if all the deaders in the city have gone psycho, why haven't you?" she demanded.

I opened my coat to show her the Loa necklace Papa Chatha had given me.

"This makes me immune to magic. It's why your bargain basement Obeah charm failed. Its primary purpose is to prevent anyone from finding me with a tracking spell, but it blocks all magic – including that of Osseal, it seems."

"Maybe," Devona said, "but I'm not sure that's the only reason." She was still looking out into the street. "Have you two noticed something about which dead are attacking?"

Overkill frowned, though she didn't lower her weapon. "What do you mean?"

I turned to look at the mayhem once more and this time I saw what Devona was talking about. It was so obvious that I felt stupid for not having realized it before.

"Only Victor Baron's creations are attacking," I said.

Overkill swept her gaze up and down the street as she more closely examined the fighting taking place.

"Maybe it just seems like that," she said. "There's more of Baron's flesh tech in the Sprawl than there are other types of dead." Still, she sounded doubtful.

"This may not be the Boneyard, but there are numerous ghosts, revenants, liches, reanimated skeletons, zombies and the like around," Devona said. "Do you see any out there?"

"No," Overkill admitted. "So if it's true, and only Baron's monsters have gone crazy, what does that mean?"

"It means that whoever stole Osseal is using it to control only Baron's creations, and he's making them attack," I said.

The thought would've chilled my blood if I had any running through my veins. Baron's fleshtech was everywhere in Nekropolis, and I thought of all the businesses that employed his monsters, all the vehicles that incorporated his technology – voxes, Mind's Eye projectors, the Overwatchers in Tenebrus, even David's ravens… I imagined the scenes of death we were witnessing being played out all over the city, in clubs, bars, restaurants and homes.

And then, as if my thoughts were a cue, a chorus of piercing shrieks filled the air around us, and we looked at each other as we tried to determine where the deafening noise originated from.

"It's our voxes!" Devona shouted, though I could barely understand what she said, so loud was the din issuing from our phones.

The three of us pulled out our voxes and flipped open their covers. Their mouths were wide open and screaming at top volume, but once they were exposed they began snapping and gnashing their teeth, as if desperate to bite us.

Without consulting one another, the three of us dashed our voxes to the ground and then stomped on them. The plastic cases broke and pieces of electronic components spilled out, along with copious amounts of blood. Voxes incorporate Victor Baron's fleshtech and it seemed they were just as susceptible to the influence of Osseal as any other reanimated creature.

"Who would want to make Baron's creatures riot?" Devona asked.

"Who else but Baron himself?" I said. "For years there's been talk of making him the sixth Darklord, but Father Dis has always refused. So Baron worked hard to spread his creations throughout Nekropolis, getting his army in place so that when the time was right, they could strike. Now with Dis and the Darklords still sleeping to recharge their energies after the last Renewal Ceremony, that time has finally come."

Overkill opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment Jigsaw Jones – who'd just finished snapping a witch's spine by slamming her against his knee – turned to look at me. He discarded the screaming witch and came striding toward us. His scarred flesh was splattered with blood from his victims and from the expression of violent lust on his face, he was looking to add even more gore to his collection. I wondered if Jigsaw Jones and the rest of Baron's creations were listening to a mystic melody that only they could hear, music that drove them to go forth and kill.

Overkill turned her P-90 away from me and trained it on the approaching wrestler.

"Hold on," I said. I drew my .45, aimed, and put a bullet through Jones' right eye. His head jerked back, blood sprayed the air, and he staggered backward. He didn't go down, though, so I sent a second bullet to follow the first through the same hole, and that did the trick. Jones hit the ground like a giant slab of scarred, bloodied beef.

I felt bad for having to put the big lug down. After all, I'd made more than a few darkgems betting on him over the years and I knew his homicidal rage wasn't his fault. Still, in Nekropolis, kill or be killed isn't just a saying. It's a way of life.

I turned to Overkill. "No point in wasting ammo we might need later."

"That was good shooting," she said.

"Being dead means my hands don't shake. Makes my aim steadier."

"Still, that was impressive," Overkill insisted. "I'm not sure I could've done it." She looked at me then, reappraisal in her gaze, as if she were somehow seeing me differently.

I wasn't sure how to take it, and it made me uncomfortable. Devona didn't like it either, for she gave Overkill a hard look as she stepped forward and took my hand.

"We can't keep standing out in the open like this," Devona said. "Come on."

Without waiting for either Overkill or me to reply, she started leading me around the side of Nosferatomes and into the alley between the bookstore and Matango. Overkill followed, frowning slightly, though I couldn't guess what she might be thinking. The alley was blessedly free of Victor Baron's creations eager to tear us apart, and if only for the moment, we were safe.

"I still have a hard time believing Baron's behind this," Overkill said. "I mean, he's already rich and powerful. What more could he want?"

"The operative word in your question is more," I said. "What else is left for someone like him to want? Power can be like a drug, Overkill, and its addicts need ever greater doses in order to get the high they crave."

"Christina," she said.

I frowned. "Excuse me?"

"My real name. It's Christina. Christina Butts, actually."

"Seriously?" Devona said.

Overkill's finger tightened on the trigger of her P-90. "You got a problem with that?"

"Not at all," Devona said in an overly sweet tone.

"Look, I don't know what's going on between you two, but can you at least put it on hold until we can figure out what the hell is happening out there?" I gestured toward the mouth of the alley where the sounds of violent mayhem continued to filter in from the street.

"Nothing is going on!" Devona and Overkill said in unison and then turned to glare at each other.

I sighed. "Let's get back to business. Baron is the perfect suspect. Who else has the know how to cut off my head, animate my body, and use it to steal Osseal from Edrigu?"

Devona gave Overkill a last dirty look before turning to me. "I get how he found out about the mark on your hand. He doubtless saw Acantha's interview with you at Sinsation. But how did he know it could get you – I mean your body – past Edrigu's security at the Reliquary?"

"And how did he find out about Osseal and what it could do?" Overkill put in, as if she were determined not to be left out of the conversation.

"Baron's a couple centuries old, and he's extremely intelligent and well connected," I said. "He might've found out about Osseal any number of ways. Maybe from research into different reanimation techniques or maybe from Edrigu himself. He told me that Edrigu is one of his best clients. However Baron learned about Osseal, he probably learned about Edrigu's mark the same way. He just needed to find someone who possessed the mark that he could use."

"And when he saw Acantha's interview, he knew he'd finally found what he'd been waiting for," Devona said.

"But Baron didn't do the job himself," I said. "After he saw the interview, he sent a pair of Bonegetters to track me down and collect my body. And they probably used one of Baron's hi-tech vivisection tools to sever my head from my body. That's how they did the job so swiftly. And I think I know who it was, too. Remember those two we saw at the Foundry? Burke and Hare? They seemed awfully smirky to me, as if they were sharing a private joke. Now I know why. They were having a laugh at my expense, knowing I had no idea they were the ones who'd cut off my head."

"It all makes sense," Overkill said. "More or less. But one thing I don't get. From what I gather, you went to Victor Baron to have your head reattached. Why didn't he just have his men dispose of your body when he was finished with it?"

"They tried." I told her how we'd found my body in a Dumpster behind the Tooth and Claw restaurant.

"Why not just incinerate your body at the Foundry?" she asked. "Seems like that would've been easier."

"Baron didn't want any evidence at his place," I said. "A good forensic sorcerer would've been able to find traces of my body's ashes. It's doubtful anyone would've even thought to check the Foundry for such evidence – especially if Baron's coup succeeded – but he's too smart to leave anything to chance. That's why he agreed to reattach my head to my body when we called. He didn't want to arouse any suspicion. Better to just go along and fix me. Besides, that way there was someone else to take the fall for the theft. And since Baron helped put me back together, that further deflected suspicion from him."

"Seems like Baron thought of everything," Overkill said. "Except how good a detective you are."

She gave me that look again, and Devona scowled. I decided to start talking again before they could resume arguing.

"I'm not sure knowing the truth makes any difference," I said. "Who can we tell? Dis and the Darklords are still sleeping, and while I'm guessing their servants are right now trying desperately to wake them, there's no guarantee they'll succeed. Edrigu didn't wake up when Baron had my body steal Osseal from around his neck. If Edrigu slept through that, I doubt someone shaking him by the shoulders and shouting in his ear will do the trick. Same for the other lords."

"We could try to tell Quillion," Devona ventured.

"The Adjudicators and Sentinels probably have their hands full trying to deal with the rioting," I said. "I'd try to call Quillion, but our voxes are destroyed, and none of the others in the city are working, so that's out. We could try to tell him in person – assuming we could make it through the rioting monsters and reach the Nightspire – but I fear Quillion would destroy me on the spot for escaping Tenebrus before I had a chance to get a single word out."

"To hell with Quillion," Overkill said. "Let's just go to the Foundry ourselves, kick Baron's ass, and take Osseal away from him. The rioting should stop then, yeah?"

"I suppose so," I said. "But since when did you become the hero type?"

"I'm not. What I am is a gal who likes her fun and right now the idea of fighting my way through a city of murderously insane Frankenstein monsters sounds like a blast!"

Devona regarded Overkill for a moment. "You really are a very strange woman. You know that, right?"

Overkill just grinned at her.

I considered Overkill's suggestion. Back when I was a cop on Earth, I once saw a piece of spray-painted graffiti on an alley wall that read Justice = Just Us. All too often, that was the way it worked in Nekropolis. Who else was there to deal with Baron? Besides, the sonofabitch had used me like I was nothing more than a puppet, and I was determined to make him pay for it.

"It won't be easy," I said, thinking aloud. "The Foundry's as well protected as a military base – and I very much doubt we'll be able to get there on foot. Hell, I'm not sure we could get there by car, given how bad it is out there." I thought about Lazlo, but I doubted his cab had been repaired yet, and there was no way it could get us through a city of rioting monsters in the condition we'd last seen it in.

"We don't need to drive all the way to the Foundry," Devona said. "We could take the–" She winced, her face scrunching up as if she was experiencing a sudden, intense pain.

I understood. Devona had been about to say Underwalk, but the tongue worm the Dominari had given her had jolted her with a burst of pain to warn her not to speak the word.

"Take what?" Overkill asked, but we ignored her.

"Yes!" I said, but my enthusiasm for the idea quickly waned. "But we still need to get there." The only entrance we knew about lay in a warehouse on the other side of the Sprawl – and there were a lot of Baron's psychotic creations between us and there, every one of them eager to tear us into teeny-tiny pieces.

"I don't know what you two are talking about," Overkill said, "but if you need to get across the Sprawl, I can help you out." She grinned. "I've got a ride."

"You know, if someone had told me two days ago that I'd be riding shotgun inside Carnage with Overkill at the wheel, I'd have told them they were crazy."

"Funny how life works out sometimes," Overkill said.

From the back seat, Devona muttered, "Hilarious."

My love was obviously not thrilled to be stuck in back, especially since that left me sharing the front seat with Overkill, but we'd decided that each of us needed to be next to a window so we could fight if necessary, and there were only two windows on each side of the car. Still, given the scowl that had etched itself onto Devona's face since we'd climbed into the car, maybe I should've volunteered to sit in the back.

Only a few minutes earlier Overkill had led Devona and me from the alley between Nosferatomes and Matango to a spot a block away where Carnage was parked. We encountered more than a little resistance from Baron's mad monsters as we went, but between the three of us, we managed to discourage them from rending us limb from limb, and we made it to Carnage. The car's black paint was bleached white in places, evidence of his time bonded with the Conglomeration, but otherwise he looked little the worse for wear. We all hopped in, and the possessed car roared away from the curb like a Caddy out of Hell.

The streets of the Sprawl were clogged with wrecked and abandoned vehicles, not to mention pedestrians running for their lives from pursuing monsters. Carnage wove through the chaos with consummate skill and we made our way toward the Dominariowned warehouse. As we traveled, Overkill explained how she'd come to team up with Carnage.

"I was already out looking for you, like every other hunter in the city, when one of my sources told me you'd been spotted tangling with Carnage on Sybarite Street. I hurried there and found Carnage stuck in the Conglomeration – nice move, by the way. By that point he'd almost extricated himself, and it didn't take much help from me to get him the rest of the way free. I intended to pump him for information about his encounter with you, maybe get a lead on where you were headed, when Orlock called. Once I knew he had you and Devona on ice, I wanted to get there as soon as possible, so I proposed that Carnage give me a ride and we'd split the bounty."

"More like Carnage overheard the call and threatened to kill you if you didn't cut him in," I said.

"That's one interpretation," Overkill allowed. "By the way, he still expects to be paid, and considering how you tricked him when you last met, he expects to be well paid."

"I suppose I should be grateful he's more mercenary than vindictive," I said. I had no idea where I was going to get my hands on the amount of darkgems Carnage would want, but I decided to worry about that later.

I'd never been close enough to Carnage to look inside it… him… whatever. The dashboard display was lit with the same crimson glow as his headlights and the interior was done entirely in black. The seats were leather and Devona later told me they felt slightly oily, as if they were living skin. She also said a faint odor of brimstone issued from the car's vents.

"Wait a minute," Devona said to Overkill. "You can talk to Carnage?"

"Sure," Overkill said. "There isn't a language in Nekropolis I can't speak, at least well enough to get by. Though I admit I'm not as fluent in possessed automobile as I'd like to be."

The more time I spent around Overkill, the more impressed I was by her. My feelings must've showed on my face, for Devona leaned forward and punched me none-too-gently on the shoulder.

"Keep your mind on the job," she said, her fangs fully extended.

Overkill glanced at Devona in the rearview mirror and just smiled.

Because Carnage was alive (in a sense) and intelligent, Overkill didn't actually have to drive. She rode behind the wheel, holding on to her P-90, which she'd reloaded as soon as we'd gotten into Carnage, gaze sweeping the street ahead for signs of trouble as we drove. She'd loaned Devona her 9mm, and I had my .45 and both of us had some magical items left over from what Shrike had brought us. We weren't exactly loaded for bear, but we weren't unarmed, either.

The scenes we saw as we made our way through the Sprawl were nightmarish even by Nekropolis's standards. Victor Baron built his creations to be tough and virtually unstoppable, and so far they'd lived up to their reputation. Buildings had their doors torn from their hinges, their windows shattered, and skeletal streetlights had been snapped in half. Cars – some that had been run off the road by Baron's vehicles, others that had been picked up by his monsters and hurled – were torn and twisted, lying wherever they'd come to rest. And there were bodies of course, more often than not ripped asunder, limbs and organs strewn about the streets like some sort of hellish decorations.

People were fighting back – this was Nekropolis, after all. Sentinels were out in force, the golems battling fiercely to quell the rioting, but while they were just as powerful as any of Baron's creations, they were seriously outnumbered, and we saw more than one Sentinel fall beneath a pile of savage monsters, never to rise again. I recognized some of the combatants that we passed. Outside Sinsation I saw the club's bouncer trying to get his hands on Eeriegami, but the latter kept folding and unfolding his body into different shapes, slipping out of the monster's grasp every time. In the street near Westerna's, I saw the Bloodborn waitress I thought of as Countess Dolly standing toe to toe with the Frankenstein monster decked out like John Wayne. Dolly clawed deep furrows into the monster's chest, but it didn't stop him from tearing off her head and throwing it as far as he could. Dolly's head flew right past my window and I saw the expression of fury on her face, and though I couldn't read her rapidly moving lips, I doubted she was singing her attacker's praises. As a recently decapitated head myself, I sympathized.

We even saw Shrike outside the Broken Cross, where he'd teamed up with a midget vampire called Anklebiter. The latter would run up to one of Baron's monsters and sink his teeth into the flesh of its leg. When the creature opened its mouth to howl in pain, Shrike transformed into smoke, flowed into the creature's mouth and down into its lungs, where he partially solidified, causing some serious damage. The monster would cough up copious amounts of blood and then fall to the ground, out of action. Shrike would then emerge and resolidify and he and Anklebiter would start looking around for another monster to tackle.

I had a lot of friends and acquaintances throughout the city, and I hoped that they'd have the good fortune – and good sense – to reach a hiding place where they'd be safe from the rampaging monsters, though I knew that most of them, like Shrike, were probably out in the thick of the chaos, fighting to protect their home. I found myself thinking of Tavi, Scorch and yes, even Bogdan, and wondering how they were faring right then. I'm sure they were on Devona's mind as well, but as neither of us had voxes at the moment, we couldn't call and check on them. As it was, all we could do was try our best to get to the Foundry, stop Victor Baron, and put an end to the violence ravaging the city as swiftly as possible.

Before long we drew close to the intersection where the Dominari warehouse was located, and it looked like we were going to reach it without further incident.

I should've known better.

As we rounded the corner, Carnage hit his brakes and came to a screeching stop. The street before us was filled with Baron's creatures – male and female, some battle damaged but still functional, all of them huge, grotesque and completely insane, thanks to the power of Osseal's song.

"We should've expected this," I said. "It looks like Baron has ordered his creations to join ranks and began an organized assault on the city."

"Maybe we can go around them," Devona said.

"Let's go through," Overkill said. She pushed a button on Carnage's dash and I expected to hear the ratcheting noise of his hood mounted machine gun activating. But instead a humming sound came from the rear of the vehicle, and I turned around to see a new weapon rising from the trunk. It had a long barrel like a gun, and a thick rubber hose extended from the back, connecting it to something in the trunk I couldn't see.

I turned to Overkill. "What's that?"

"Flamethrower," she said, grinning.

The weapon continued rising until it extended above Carnage's roof. The mass of monsters had continued to advance while Carnage had been deploying the flamethrower and now they were almost upon us. We didn't wait for Carnage to attack. The three of us leaned out and started firing our weapons. Overkill let loose with her P-90 and I fired my .45. Instead of using her borrowed 9mm, though, Devona selected one of the items Shrike had brought us – an explosive hawthorn ball. She hurled the device into the crowd of monsters and it burst apart in a shower of deadly sharp thorns. Devona immediately followed up by employing the 9mm.

None of our efforts produced any casualties, but the weapons fire gave the monsters pause, allowing Carnage to finish getting his flamethrower into position and activate it. A stream of flame shot into the creatures' ranks, and they bellowed in pain and anger as their clothes caught fire and their flesh blackened and burned. According to Devona, the stench was horrific. Carnage continued spraying fire at the monsters, swiveling the flamethrower back and forth to get as many as possible. Roaring, Baron's army backed up to get away from the deadly flames.

No one especially likes being hosed by fire – with the possible exception of Scorch – but Frankenstein monsters are especially susceptible to it (as am I, dry-fleshed thing that I am). In their case, there's something about the chemicals Baron uses as part of the reanimation process that react violently to fire, and as we watched, those monsters who were burning most furiously swelled up like balloons and exploded in showers of crispy black skin and steaming gore. Those explosions alarmed the surviving monsters even more, and they quickly moved out of our path.

Carnage started forward again, rolling slowly and spraying fire back and forth as we went, while Devona, Overkill and I continued to fire our weapons at any creature who took it into his or her head to risk the fire and come toward us. It was slow going, but we made it to the end of the block. Unfortunately Carnage's flamethrower was running out of fuel and the length and strength of the flame stream was severely diminished. The surviving monsters didn't fail to take note of this and they were beginning to mass together and approach again, making sure to stay just out of the flamethrower's newly limited range.

"That's the building we want!" I pointed to the warehouse, and Carnage zoomed over the curb and parked.

"This is our stop," I said to Overkill as I reached for my door handle. "Thanks for the help."

She grabbed hold of my arm to stop me. "I'm going with you. There's no way I'm going to miss out on the main event!"

"You don't understand. You can't come with us." I wanted to explain to her that Devona and I were both under a spell that wouldn't allow us to reveal the truth about where we were going and that our heads would explode if we ever tried. But of course, the tongue worm prevented me from doing even that much, and I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my mouth which, considering that I had no functioning nerves there, came as a shock to me.

Devona glanced out the car window.

"We don't have time for this," she said. "The monsters are coming." She leaned forward, grabbed Overkill by the shoulders, and turned the woman halfway around to face her. Devona's eyes flared red and she hissed a single word. "Sleep!"

Overkill tried to resist, but the psychic powers of a half-vampire are formidable, and Devona's had only gotten stronger since I'd met her. Overkill's eyes rolled up in her head, and she slumped over onto me, snoring softly. I gently pushed her off me and scooted over so she could lie flat on the seat.

"Carnage," Devona said, "as soon as we get out, take her away from here as fast as you can."

Carnage didn't respond at first, and Devona sighed. "Don't worry. If we make it through this, we'll see to it you get paid one way or another. You have our word on it."

Carnage might not be able to speak English, but the Caddy understood it well enough. He tooted his horn once, Devona and I climbed out, and he lost no time in peeling out of there, knocking aside several of Baron's creatures in the process. He didn't bother using his flamethrower, and I knew that the weapon was out of fuel. I hoped Carnage and Overkill would make it to safety. They might have been mercenaries, but we'd never have made it to the warehouse without their help. Of course, getting here was no guarantee that we'd survive to get inside. Without the threat of Carnage's flamethrower to keep them at bay, Baron's monsters were closing in on us fast.

We ran to the closest door and found it locked. Devona kicked it in and we ran inside, but at the threshold I paused. The nearest monster was almost within grabbing distance of me and I knew that we needed some kind of diversion to slow him and his buddies down long enough to get to the Underwalk entrance. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the first object that came to hand and threw it at the monster. The flea bomb – which I'd originally considered using against Ferdinand – was a smooth piece of amber inside of which was trapped a single insect. But when the amber struck the monster's chest, it burst open and hundreds of fleas poured forth, covering his body. Within seconds the fleas found their way beneath their new host's clothing and began biting. The monster roared in irritation and began slapping at his body, trying to crush the pests gnawing at him, but there were too many. He stood there, gyrating and contorting as he scratched and smacked himself, making a very effective door block that prevented his fellow monsters from getting past. And when they got too close some of the fleas leaped from his body to theirs. Within moments the entire mass of monsters was scratching frantically, trying to dislodge the fleas infesting their bodies. That's the beautiful thing about flea bombs: once activated, the number of fleas continues to magically increase until all host bodies in the area are infested. It's a diabolically nasty joke, one of Hop Frog's best, and I mentally thanked Shrike for picking it up for me before I turned and followed Devona into the warehouse.

SIXTEEN

Getting into the Underwalk was a simple matter of opening a hidden panel in the floor and climbing down a ladder. The panel was spelled so only people with tongue worms could open it and, though I didn't know for sure, I guessed there was a number of lethal security precautions in place in case someone without a tongue worm somehow managed to get into the tunnel.

Once we reached the bottom of the ladder a fluorescent light panel in the ceiling activated. Devona and I looked around, but we were alone and there were no Dominari trams in sight. Considering the latter were driven by vermen reanimated by Victor Baron, I decided that wasn't a bad thing.

Since there was no way the monsters pursuing us could get into the tunnel, I took a few moments to reload my .45. Devona, unfortunately, had no extra ammunition for her 9mm, and she tucked it into the back waistband of her skirt. I used up the last of my own ammo refilling the .45's clip, so I'd need to be stingy with my bullets from here on out since I wasn't likely to stumble across anymore boxes of ammo lying around in the Underwalk.

"Do you remember the way?" Devona asked.

"To Tenebrus, yes. But after that, your guess is as good as mine."

"Let's start heading in that direction," she said. "It'll at least get us halfway to the Foundry. After that, we'll play it by ear."

"Sounds like a plan," I said, and we started walking.

We hadn't walked for ten minutes before we saw the headlights of a tram heading toward us, the electric hum of the engine getting louder as it drew near.

"I think we may have just found ourselves a ride," I said.

I stepped into the middle of the tunnel, directly into the tram's path. Devona joined me, though I would've preferred her to keep close to the tunnel wall where it was safer. I didn't say anything, however. Devona is just as capable as I am in dangerous situations. Besides, I knew she wouldn't listen to me.

The light panels on the ceiling above the tram had trouble activating fast enough to illuminate the vehicle's progress and we could only catch glimpses of the vehicle and its driver as they moved from patches of light to patches of darkness, but those glimpses were enough to confirm that the tram was being driven my a reanimated verman and like all the other creations of Victor Baron's we'd seen, this one was caught in the grip of bloodlust.

The creature aimed the tram directly at me and from the bloodstains covering the vehicle's front I knew I wouldn't be the verman's first victim since Osseal began singing its song of death and destruction. But then, I didn't intend to just stand there and let the reanimated ratman run me down.

I still had a few surprises left, thanks to Shrike and I reached into my right side pocket with my left hand – I still held my .45 with my right – and removed a small red-skinned lizard. Its eyes were closed and it appeared dead, though its body wasn't stiff and there was no sign of decay. I held the lizard out in front of me, pointed it headfirst at the oncoming tram, and gave its belly a gentle squeeze. The lizard woke in my hand, opened its mouth and released a thin stream of fire at the tram. My left hand still wasn't fully coordinated, thanks to Baron's sloppy reconnection of my brain to my central nervous system, and my aim was slightly off, but then I wasn't trying to hit the verman.

The salamander's flame was nowhere near as powerful as that produced by Carnage's flamethrower, but it was enough to frighten the reanimated verman. The creature roared in fear and anger and turned the wheel to get away from the deadly fire. At the speed the tram was going, the sudden change in direction caused it to swerve. I tried to get out of the way, but I was too slow, and the tram clipped my leg. The impact spun me around and flung me to the ground. I watched the tram topple and slide on its side for a dozen feet before finally crashing into the tunnel wall and coming to a stop.

I'd stopped squeezing the salamander when I fell, though I'd managed to hold on to it. Its flame extinguished, it fell back to sleep, and it would remain that way until I woke it again. Small salamanders like this one are used in Nekropolis the same way lighters are on Earth, and while they don't produce all that much flame, I'd counted on the intense fear Baron's creatures had of fire to make up for the salamander's feeble stream, and my gamble had paid off.

I got to my feet and was relieved to find my leg wasn't broken – or at least not broken severely enough to keep me from walking. I limped toward the wrecked tram, intending to put a couple bullets in the reanimated verman's brain before he could extricate himself and resume trying to kill us. But Devona beat me to him. Moving with supernatural swiftness, she reached the tram in a blur of motion, knelt, grabbed hold of the verman's head and gave it a savage twist. The sound of snapping bone cut through the air and the verman's body fell limp. I knew the creature was dead (again), but I kept my .45 aimed at its head as I approached. In Nekropolis safe is always better than sorry. But the de-animated verman had the good grace to stay dead and Devona pulled his body free from the tram and left it lying next to the tunnel wall.

Together we righted the tram and quick examination revealed that while the vehicle was banged up pretty good, it was still functional. We climbed in, pushed a button to turn on the engine, and – with me driving – we headed down the tunnel in the direction of Tenebrus. Given my problems with my left hand, I would've preferred Devona drive, but since she was reared in Gothtown, the daughter of a Darklord, she'd always had drivers to take her wherever she wanted, so she'd never learned to drive herself. Since I needed both hands to drive, and since Devona's 9mm was out of ammo, I handed her my .45 and we both kept a sharp lookout for other reanimated vermen, whether on trams or on foot, as we drove. We came across a couple wrecked trams and the mutilated bodies of regular vermen which we maneuvered around, but we saw no sign of the Victor Baron variety. Presumably they were off causing mayhem elsewhere in the Underwalk.

"I'm not sure what your problem with Overkill was," I said after we'd been driving for a bit. "She did help us out."

Devona's face scrunched into a truly impressive scowl at the mention of Overkill's name. "It's not her that I have a problem with. It's the way she was flirting with you."

"Um… what?"

"Don't play coy. The way she was acting, I'm surprised she didn't jump your bones right there in Carnage's front seat."

I admit to not always being the fastest on the uptake when it comes to emotional stuff, but I really didn't believe Overkill was flirting with me. There might've been a certain amount of mutual appreciation of each other's skills going on, but flirting?

"That's ridiculous," I said. "And even if it was true – and I don't think it is – it doesn't matter. You have absolutely no reason to be jealous of her."

"And you don't have any reason to be jealous of Bogdan," Devona countered, "but that doesn't stop you from feeling that way, does it?"

"Touché," I said, feeling more than a little embarrassed. I decided to change the subject. "How are you doing after…" I struggled to find a way to express what I was trying to say. "Being trapped in Orlock's dome," I finally said. It didn't come close to communicating everything I wanted to say, but it was the best I could do.

"I'm managing," Devona said. She gave me a weak smile. "It helps that we're busy fighting to save the city again."

I smiled back. "Yeah, life-and-death battles have a wonderful way of distracting one from personal problems."

Her smile fell away. "How about you? How are you doing?"

"Coping," I said. "Even though I know it was all an illusion, it felt so real. You know?"

"Yes."

She put her hand on my leg and squeezed once and that was the last we spoke until we drew near the section of the Underwalk where I'd escaped from Tenebrus. I'd paid close attention at the time, so even though there were no markers of any sort to indicate our location, I was fairly confident we were in the right spot. But I knew it for certain when I saw Gnasher running down the tunnel toward us, his red albino eyes wide with terror. An instant later I saw why. The silvery shape of an Overwatcher glided through the air behind him, the skull faced creature moving with silent, menacing grace, like some manner of airborne shark. The Overwatcher's eye sockets began to glow a bright crimson and I knew the reanimated brain inside – driven insane by Osseal's song – was powering up its optic energy blasters to take out Gnasher.

Devona and I exchanged glances and in that same instant we telepathically came up with a plan. I worked the tram's throttle and the engine whined as the vehicle picked up speed.

"Gnasher, your dire blade!" I shouted. "Throw it straight up into the air!"

The verman had no idea what we were planning, but his people were quick witted and had even swifter reflexes. In a single smooth motion he drew the dire blade, the same one I'd slain Lycanthropus Rex with, and tossed it into the air. Devona dropped the .45 onto the floor of the tram then sprang out of her seat, adding the power of her half-vampire legs to the vehicle's forward momentum. As she sailed through the air, hands outstretched, I swerved the tram to avoid hitting Gnasher and gripped the wheel with my right hand which reaching out to the verman with my left. Gnasher reached back for me and I snagged his hand, swung him into the tram and he scurried into the back seat. At the same instant Devona's fingers wrapped around the dire blade's hilt and momentum carried her straight for the Overwatcher. She landed on the creature's smooth metal back right behind its skull, straddling it backward. Petite though she is, the sudden addition of her weight caused the Overwatcher to dip slightly, and when it unleashed its eye beams, the twin bolts of ruby energy missed Gnasher and me, striking the tunnel floor and melting a section of the organic looking substance.

The tunnel shuddered then and a low tone reverberated through the air, almost like a moan. I thought of the organic nature of so much of Nekropolis – the Underwalk, Tenebrus, much of the strange architecture in the Sprawl – and for the first time since I'd come to the city, I found myself wondering if the Darkfolk hadn't constructed their other-dimensional home so much as grown it. Was Nekropolis itself in some bizarre fashion alive?

As disturbing as the thought was I thankfully didn't have time to pursue it. I watched as Devona turned at the waist and slammed the dire blade into the Overwatcher's silver skull. Dire blades aren't just supernaturally deadly, they're supernaturally sharp as well. With Devona's strength to power it the blade easily pierced the Overwatcher's metallic hide and sank into the soft brain beneath. The effect was immediate. The crimson light in the Overwatcher's eye sockets winked out and the creature crashed to the tunnel floor. Devona managed to jump free in time, though she had to leave the dire blade embedded in the Overwatcher's skull. She landed with a fluid grace that I found incredibly sexy. I slowed down, intending to stop and pick her up, and she started running toward the downed Overwatcher in order to retrieve the dire blade, but Gnasher shouted, "Leave it! Those things are designed to explode once they're brought down!"

I gave the tram full power and it picked up speed again. Devona sprinted down the tunnel after us and managed to leap aboard just as the Overwatcher vanished in a burst of light and fire. I felt the pressure of the blast roll over us, though I didn't feel the heat. I turned back to look at Gnasher and Devona, and while both of them were a little singed around the edges, I knew they'd survive.

"Another of Keket's nasty little surprises," Gnasher said. "Any inmate who brings down an Overwatcher risks being destroyed."

"Always thinking, that woman," I said.

Devona climbed back into the front passenger seat and picked the .45 up off the floor where she'd left it.

"Nicely done, my love," I said.

"Why thank you, sir." She then grimaced and arched her back. "Though I think I might've pulled a muscle on that one."

"I have no idea what the two of you are doing here," Gnasher said, "but I am exceptionally glad to see you. It's total chaos inside Tenebrus." He paused. "Well. It's always chaos in there, but it's even worse now. Something's happened to the Overwatchers. They went mad and began firing energy blasts at everyone, including the guards. Keket herself came down into the general population to stop them, and the prisoners saw that as their chance to get revenge on her for using them as entertainment. They attacked her en masse, and even though she's a Demilord, between the Overwatchers and the prisoners, she was having a hard time of it. I decided it might be prudent of me to take my leave until the current situation sorts itself out, but one of the Overwatchers followed me into the Underwalk. If you hadn't arrived when you did…" The verman shuddered as he trailed off.

"Our pleasure," I said. "And since we saved your snowy white hide, you owe us one. And your people always pay their debts."

Gnasher's eyes narrowed. "What do you want?"

"Not much," I said. "Just directions to the Foundry."

Gnasher guided us to a Dominari owned building in the Boneyard – a falling-down ruin not far from the Foundry. Before saying goodbye to us, he asked, "Are you going to try to stop whatever's happening?"

"That's the idea," I said.

He nodded. "Good. Too much death and destruction is bad for business."

I considered asking him how much was good, but instead Devona and I thanked him for his help, climbed the ladder, and emerged aboveground in what was left of a stone building whose original purpose I could only guess at.

"Why would the Dominari have entrances to the Underwalk in the Boneyard?" Devona asked. "It's not like there's a lot of profit to be made here."

I shrugged. "Who knows? Even the dead have needs. Maybe the Dominari figured out ways to meet them."

We moved cautiously out of the ruined building and into the street. The normally sparse traffic was nonexistent. The living had managed to get off the streets by now, and as for the dead… well, there was no sign of them, neither motorists nor pedestrians. It appeared that Devona and I had the street to ourselves.

We talked softly as we made our way to the Foundry, me limping on my injured leg but moving well enough not to slow us down too much.

"Where is everyone?" Devona asked.

"I don't know. I'm usually sensitive to the presence of other dead beings, but I don't sense any close by. It's almost like they're hiding… waiting for the trouble to blow over."

"Maybe they sense Osseal's power, and it scares them," Devona said. "Even if it's only being used to control Baron's creations."

"Maybe." That theory was better than anything I could come up with.

"Now that we're closer to the Foundry, can you feel Osseal's magic?"

I shook my head. "I don't feel a thing. Maybe it's because of Papa's spell blocking necklace, or maybe it's because Osseal is only being focused on Baron's monsters. Either way, I'm not sensing anything."

"Good," she said. "Now that we've made it this far, the last thing we need is for you to fall under the flute's power."

"That would well and truly suck, wouldn't it?"

We continued on in silence for several more minutes until we could see the Foundry up ahead. It looked the same as always – tower lattice crackling with electricity, smokestacks belching black into the sky, the heavy thrum of power filling the air. But as we got closer, we saw there was one thing new: behind the main gate stood several dozen of Baron's creatures. I recognized some of them from our last visit, but most of them were unknown to me. I had no doubt they were all equally dangerous, though.

Devona and stepped across the street and regarded the assembled monsters. Unlike the creatures we'd seen rampaging on the streets of the Sprawl, these displayed no sign of aggression whatsoever. They made no move to open the gate and attack us. In fact, they didn't react to our presence in any way.

"It's almost as if they've been waiting for us," Devona said.

"Waiting for someone. Baron's not the kind of man to leave anything to chance. He figured someone would realize he was behind the rioting and he commanded his monsters to guard the main gate in case someone showed up to try and stop him."

"Someone like us," Devona said.

"Yep."

We looked at Baron's monsters some more. Somehow they seemed ever larger and more intimidating than they had a few moments ago.

"We're not going to be able to fight our way inside," Devona said.

She'd returned my .45 to me when we'd stopped the tram, but it only had so many bullets left, and they weren't going to be enough. Same for the magic items we had left. None of them were particularly powerful, and with the exception of the salamander, I didn't see how they'd be of much use. And the salamander, small as it was, couldn't produce a strong enough flame to frighten all of the monsters gathered at Baron's gate.

"No, we are not," I agreed.

"So that only leaves us one option I can see."

I nodded. "The direct approach."

She sighed. "I hate the direct approach."

We headed across the street.

The monsters continued to show no reaction to our presence as we drew near, though it was obvious they were watching us closely. When we reached the gate, the skull sentry swiveled its organic eyes to regard us.

"You two have some serious cojones to show yourselves here, you know that?" the sentry said. "You do realize we're in the process of destroying the city, right?"

"We noticed," I said drily. "How about opening up and letting us in so we can tell your boss in person how much we admire his brilliant plan?"

"Seriously?" the sentry said. "Is that the best you can come up with?"

"I suppose I could've said 'Let us in so we can stop your boss,' but I thought that might be tipping our hand too much."

The sentry glared at me.

"Oh, I'll let you in all right, and when I do, my friends here will tear you into…" He trailed off, his gaze becoming unfocused as if he were listening to some inner voice. When his eyes refocused, he spoke in a monotone, as if mechanically repeating instructions he was being fed. "You've been granted safe passage. You'll be escorted to the Foundry. If you try anything even remotely suspicious, your escorts will kill you."

The gate swung slowly open and a pair of Baron's creatures – one male, one female – stepped forward. They continued to eye us dispassionately, but I had no doubt they'd do as the sentry warned if we didn't behave ourselves. Devona and I stepped inside, and with the monsters flanking us, we headed up the driveway to the Foundry. The sentry closed the gate behind us, and the other monsters continued their silent watch.

As we walked, I reached out to Devona's mind: Well, we're in.

Yeah, we have Baron right where he wants us.

I didn't have any witty rejoinder to that, especially since I was afraid she was right, so we continued the rest of the way to the Foundry in silence. The door opened as we approached to reveal a pair of men waiting for us.

"Didn't think we'd see you here again," Burke said.

"Took some slick detective work on his part to figure it out," Hare added.

"Too right," Burke agreed. "Guess he's got a good head on his shoulders, eh?"

"Has trouble keeping it attached, though," Hare said. He gave me a sly smile. "You really should pay more attention when you walk past dark alleys from now on."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said.

"Enough chit-chat," Burke said. He stepped back and motioned for us to enter. "His lordship is waiting."

We walked inside, our two monstrous escorts trailing along behind. I hooked a thumb over my shoulder toward them. "Don't you two think you can handle us by yourselves? Then again, it did take both of you to get my head. Guys like you probably need each other's help to wipe your asses."

Hare bared his teeth and took a step toward me, but Burke put a hand on his partner's shoulder to restrain him.

"Pay him no mind. He's just trying to rattle us." Burke smiled at me. "Shows that he's desperate is all."

I didn't reply, primarily because he was right.

Burke ordered the monsters to shut the door, one of them did, and we started down the corridor, Burke and Hare leading the way, Devona and I coming next, with our guard-monsters bringing up the rear. The halls of the Foundry were quiet and empty, the soundproofed corridors cutting out the omnipresent power hum that permeated the air outside the facility. We walked on in silence until we encountered a man coming toward us. I recognized him as one of the scientists Baron employed, the wild haired, wild eyed Dr. Fronkensteen. Only now his eyes were blank and staring, his features slack, mouth hanging partway open. Around his head was a metal band with thin rods jutting out, and it didn't take a great leap of deductive reasoning on my part to guess the crown's purpose. I had no doubt the rest of the Foundry's scientists wore similar devices.

"Looks like some of your boss's employees need a bit of technological coaxing to get with the new program," I said as the man passed us without the slightest sign that he was aware of our existence.

"You know how it goes," Burke said. "A motivated employee is a happy employee."

Both men laughed and continued leading us deeper into the Foundry. We soon passed the lab where Baron had reattached my head and still we continued onward, taking one turn after another, until Burke and Hare brought us to a stop outside a pair of doors with ornate woodwork and polished brass knobs.

"Welcome to the nerve center of the Foundry," Burke said. He nodded to Hare and the other man gripped both knobs, turned them, and pushed the doors open. He then stepped aside, gave us a mocking bow, and gestured for us to enter. Wishing I had anything even remotely approximating a plan, I did so, Devona at my side. Burke, Hare, and the guard-monsters followed, closing the door behind us.

The room was huge, easily three stories high, and a couple hundred feet across. The floor was tiled, but the walls and ceiling were flesh-tech, moist pink and shot through with swollen, pulsing veins, and I knew that Burke hadn't been joking. This was literally the nerve center – or perhaps more appropriately the heart – of Baron's factory. Flesh cables extended from the walls and stretched toward a high-backed fleshtech chair in the center of the room where they twined together to form a large cable bundle affixed to the chair back. Hanging down from the ceiling in front of the chair, dangling from a thick optic nerve, was a large Mind's Eye projector, the iris slate-gray, the white marred by threads of broken capillaries. The Mind's Eye was active, glowing with a sour yellow light, and before I could finish taking in the rest of the room, it snagged my attention. Images of monsters rioting in the streets of Nekropolis filled my head, and I heard Acantha's frantic voice.

"– can't begin to describe how devastating the attacks have been so far! Initial reports put the number of dead in the dozens, and that number is sure to rise if this situation isn't resolved soon! So far, there's been no sign of the Darklords, and all attempts to contact them have failed. I've personally been in contact with First Adjudicator Quillion, who says he's been attempting to get in touch with Victor Baron to discover what's caused his creations to go mad, but so far Quillion has had no luck reaching him. Meanwhile, the fighting in the streets continues unabated. Sentinels and citizens alike are doing what they can to combat the rampaging monsters, but there's simply too many to–"

Acantha broke off as a particularly hulking monster came stomping toward her. She screamed, turned to flee, and the transmission ended abruptly. I hoped her cyberserpents had simply stopped filming in the confusion, but I feared the worst.

Now that the Mind's Eye was inactive, I could once more focus my attention on the chair in the center of the room. One person sat there, while a second stood by his side: Victor Baron and his assistant Henry. But something was wrong. Baron was the one standing, while Henry sat in the chair, still looking at the inactive Mind's Eye.

"Now that's what I call entertainment," Henry said. Smaller flesh cables extended from the chair near the head and at the arm rests, their ends attached to Henry's temples and wrists. They detached and retracted into the chair as he rose, moving with his characteristically stiff, spastic motions. He turned to look at us, and I saw that he'd thrown back the hood of his robe to fully reveal his misshapen features. The robe was also now open down the front, displaying Henry's bare chest. Embedded into the flesh, running vertically from the base of his throat to his belly button, was Osseal. The mouthpiece of the bone flute was covered with a flap of skin, and every time Henry breathed, a series of soft notes emerged from the ivory instrument.

Henry came toward us with his lurching walk, but Baron – dressed in his white lab coat and black pants – remained standing next to the chair. When Henry noticed, he paused and glanced back over his shoulder with an irritated expression.

"Heel, boy," he snarled.

Baron turned and walked over to join Henry, brow furrowed, jaw muscles tight, eyes blazing with anger, as if he were fighting an intense internal struggle. Once he reached Henry, the two of them continued walking toward us. Burke and Hare led Devona and me farther into the room, and we met Henry and Baron halfway.

"Believe it or not, I'm glad to see you," Henry said. "It's nice to have someone I can properly gloat in front of."

When he spoke, Osseal's song grew louder, and his words took on an almost musical lilt. The flute's tone was a sad, haunting one, and even though I was protected from its influence by the Loa necklace, this close I could feel a slight pull from the instrument, as if it were calling to me. I knew that Victor Baron heard its music clearly, and that meant he was under Henry's control.

Henry looked at Burke and Hare. "You two can go now – and take the creatures with you." He gestured at our monstrous escorts.

Burke frowned. "You sure?"

Henry smiled. "Your concern for my safety is appreciated, but as formidable opponents as Mr. Richter and Ms. Kanti may be, I believe I can handle them. Besides, I have Victor to protect me." He patted Baron on the shoulder, and while Baron's mouth tightened in anger, he gave no other reaction to Henry's touch.

Henry went on. "I want you two outside to direct the creatures at the gate. It won't be long before Quillion sends his Sentinels to pay us a visit. We'll need to be ready for them."

"Righto," Burke said before turning to me. "Pleasure seeing you again," he said to me with a mocking grin.

"Likewise," Hare said. "Call us the next time you need a trim. We'll be glad to take a little off the top."

Laughing, the two men left the room, taking the guard-monsters with them.

"So," Henry said once the others had departed, "are you surprised to discover I'm the ultimate villain in this little drama? Please tell me you didn't guess it was me. I'd be so disappointed if you had."

"I can truthfully say we didn't see it coming," I said. "So Baron had absolutely nothing to do with Osseal's theft?"

"Depends on how you look at it," Henry said. "In one sense he's responsible for everything that's happened." His jovial mood vanished then, and his tone grew cold. "Do you know how he came by his name? Victor Baron? He decided to take the name of his father, Baron Victor Frankenstein. Of course, he was determined to be his own man, too." He turned to Baron. "Didn't want to live his life in Daddy's shadow, did you?"

Baron glared at Henry but otherwise didn't respond.

Henry continued. "So instead of taking the Frankenstein surname, he indulged in a bit of juvenile wordplay and become Victor Baron. Pathetic, really, and more than a bit disrespectful, don't you think?"

As I listened to Henry talk, a suspicion began to form in my mind. "When we first met, I thought you were Baron's assistant. But you're not, are you?"

Devona looked at me, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"When Henry rose from the chair and I saw he'd surgically grafted Osseal to himself, my first thought was that he was simply a disgruntled employee who was tired of being number two and wanted to take over his boss's business for himself." I turned to Henry. "But it's more than that, isn't it? A lot more."

Henry gave me a look so cold that, if he'd been Acantha, I'd have turned to stone on the spot.

Devona's eyes widened in sudden realization.

"You're Dr. Frankenstein!" she said.

Henry inclined his head. "At your service."

"If that's true, then why go by the name Henry?"

"It's my middle name. And I wasn't about to call myself Victor anymore. Not after he took the name."

I thought back to the interactions I'd observed between Baron and Henry. Henry had been more than a bit snarky toward Baron, but the latter had tolerantly accepted the other's behavior. At the time, I'd thought Baron had been simply too caught up in his work to care, but now I recognized his tolerance as that of an adult child good-naturedly putting up with the irritating behavior of an older relative.

"Why the resentment toward Baron?" I asked. "He seemed to treat you well enough. More like a partner than an assistant."

"That's what he wanted everyone to believe," Henry said. "But in truth he regards me as an inferior intellect, barely fit to wash out his test tubes."

A sorrowful look came into Baron's eyes, but he remained standing still at Henry's side.

"Is that what Baron thinks or what you think?" Devona asked gently, but Henry ignored her.

"When we met I told you that Shelley's novel got some of our story right, though many of the specific details are different. Suffice it to say that I'd attempted to create a perfect man, only to realize I'd fallen far short of that too-lofty goal and instead created a monster. I attempted to rectify that mistake and destroy the beast I'd made, and he in turn tried to destroy me. In the end I died and my monster lived and I went into the darkness with the consolation of knowing I was at least free of the grotesque abomination I'd brought into the world. But do you know what he did? He refused to let me stay dead! He claimed he did it out of love, because he didn't want to lose the only family he had in the world. But I knew the truth. He did it out of spite – for vengeance's sake! He brought my body to my lab and using my notes and equipment, he went to work. The result? He succeeded in returning me to life, but trapped inside this twisted joke of a body. He apologized for the crudity of his work, saying said it was because this was his first attempt at the reanimatory arts. He promised to continue, experimenting and learning, until he'd obtained the knowledge and skill to fully restore me. What a laugh! As if he ever had any intention of doing so!"

"Judging by how he looks, I'd say he succeeded in mastering his craft," I said. "Has he never offered to operate on you again?"

"Numerous times," Henry said. "But do you think I'd ever allow him to come near me with surgical tools again after what he did to me?"

I thought to Devona, Sounds to me like what Henry needs isn't a medical doctor as much as a really good psychiatrist.

No kidding, she replied.

He's already more unstable than a house of cards in a hurricane. Let's see if we can't push him the rest of the way over the edge, maybe get him to make a mistake.

Maybe get him to kill us, you mean, Devona thought.

What's life without a little risk? I countered.

Easy for you to say – you're already dead!

I had to keep from smiling at that. Aloud, I said, "It must've eaten away at you, coming to Nekropolis and working alongside Baron all these years, watching him improve himself physically while he became increasingly successful."

Henry nodded emphatically. "So successful that people started calling him the Sixth Lord? Can you believe it? What hubris!"

"And all the different refinements and applications he came up with were based on your original work," Devona added.

"That's right! And what's tattooed on everything that leaves the Foundry, on the laborers, voxes, Mind's Eye sets? Another Victor Baron Creation. As if I'd never existed!"

"Worst of all, Baron succeeded where you failed," I said. "Thanks to his efforts to continually improve himself over the years, he did become the perfect man. Or at least as close to perfect as possible."

Henry had become more and more agitated as we'd talked and now his face was red with fury and spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke.

Henry whirled on me. "Yes, damn you, yes!" He practically screamed these words and beneath his voice Osseal's tone became a high-pitched shrill.

Now! I thought to Devona.

With Henry's full attention focused on me, Devona seized the opportunity to make a lunge for Osseal. As strong as she was, if she could grab hold of the instrument and rip it free from Henry's chest –

SEVENTEEN

– but before she could reach the magical artifact, Victor Baron, who'd stood motionless while his creator ranted, now burst into sudden motion.

Moving with a speed that put Devona to shame, Baron caught her hand by the wrist before she could get a grip on Osseal. She tried to pull away, but Baron held her tight, his face showing his futile internal struggle to resist Osseal's commands. Under Henry's control the celebrated Sixth Lord had become nothing more than an organic machine, performing whatever tasks he was told to.

Henry became calm again, and when he spoke his voice was filled with so much satisfaction, he nearly purred. "Nice try," he said.

I blew it, Devona thought to me.

Stay sharp, I thought back. We may get another chance. Since no other course of action presented itself, I decided to keep Henry talking.

"If you hate Baron so much, why keep him alive? It's not like you need him to run the city, once your takeover is complete. Unless the job is more than you can handle on your own."

Henry chuckled. "It appears you're not as intelligent as I gave you credit for. I don't care about taking over the Foundry or ruling Nekropolis. My plan has but a single, simple aim." He looked at Baron with loathing in his eyes. "To ruin everything he's worked for. That's why I'm using Osseal to control only Victor's creations. I want the blame for the rioting to fall squarely on his shoulders. And after the events of this night, the name of Victor Baron will be reviled by the citizens of Nekropolis. The Foundry will be shut down and Victor will be hauled off to Tenebrus. He'll go quietly and he'll make a full confession as well." Henry grinned as he reached up to tap the bone flute embedded in his chest. "I'll make sure of it."

"Speaking of Osseal, how did you learn about it in the first place?" I asked.

"The same way I learned about the mark on your hand and what it can be used for," Henry said. "Research. Since my resurrection I've spent every spare moment I've had searching for ways to increase my knowledge of the reanimatory arts, hoping to find any scrap of lore that I might be able to use against him. Victor's business relationship with Lord Edrigu helped a great deal. I've accompanied Victor to the Reliquary on several occasions, which familiarized me with the layout of Edrigu's stronghold. And whatever information Edrigu didn't readily supply, I discovered on my own through one means or another."

"And you had your plan all worked out," I said. "Except for one little detail: you didn't have someone who possessed Edrigu's mark."

"That's right. Edrigu's mark is only given to the dead, and the majority of them exist in semi-insubstantial states that made them unsuitable to my purpose. But then I saw your interview with Acantha, and I realized that after all these long years I'd finally found what I'd been looking for. Someone dead, who possessed the mark, but whose form was solid enough for me to use."

"So you dispatched two of your best Bonegetters to cut off my head and bring my body to you here at the Foundry. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to get the mark. Why not just have them steal my hand?"

"That would've been more convenient, wouldn't it?" Henry said. "Unfortunately, the mark's magic is what's required, and that suffuses the entire body of the mark's bearer." He smiled. "A precaution of Edrigu's to prevent anyone from simply cutting off some dead being's hand and using it to gain entrance to the Reliquary. Fortunately, the magic remains functional so long as the majority of the body is intact. After all, the physical dead are known for losing bits and pieces of themselves, so it's rare to find one that's completely whole."

"What did you do once you had my body?" I asked. "Stick some kind of control unit on it and work it remotely like some kind of machine?"

"Nothing so crude," Henry said. He pointed to a fresh looking scar on his neck. "We work wonders here at the Foundry, you know. With Burke and Hare following my expert guidance – and while Victor was preoccupied elsewhere with his latest pet project – I removed my head and my assistants transferred it to your body. They drove me to the Reliquary where I used the mark on your hand to gain entrance. I stole Osseal from around Edrigu's neck, departed and Burke and Hare brought me back here. They returned my head to my own body and then took yours to the Sprawl for disposal. I supposed I could've had them destroy it here, but I didn't want to risk there being any evidence at the Foundry that a forensic sorcerer might be able to discover."

He smiled. "You can't imagine how amused I was when Ms. Kanti called and asked if we could reattach your head. The irony was simply too delicious to deny you, and as extra amusement I got to watch Victor put you back together, all the while being completely unaware that it was your body which served as the instrument of his ultimate downfall. And having you restored provided a useful distraction. Your arrest, incarceration and subsequent escape from Tenebrus kept the authorities occupied while I implanted Osseal in my body and learned how to use it."

All the pieces had fallen into place, but there was still one thing I didn't – couldn't – understand.

"How can you resent Baron so much?" I asked. "Isn't it the hope of every parent that their children one day surpass their achievements? I'd think you'd be proud of him."

Henry's face clouded with anger and he leaned his face close to mine as he shouted, "This misbegotten piece of stitched together filth is not my son!"

Henry had moved in close in order to yell in my face, giving me a chance to grab Osseal. I managed to wrap my fingers around the bone instrument, but I didn't have anything close to Devona's strength, and when I pulled, the flute didn't tear free.

Realizing what I was up to, Henry snarled and shoved me back. He gave no obvious command to Baron, but the man lashed out with his free hand and struck me a solid blow. The impact sent me flying and I heard numerous bones snap as I hit. I immediately got to my feet, though my broken body didn't want to obey me, and once I was on my legs, they wobbled as they struggled to support my weight. My jaw felt loose, too, but I was still able to speak well enough.

"From where I stand, Frankenstein, the only piece of filth in this room is you."

Henry's face turned purple with rage, but when he spoke, his words were measured and precise. "Your amusement value has run out, I'm afraid, Mr. Richter. I'm going to use Osseal to force you to stand still while Victor rips you to pieces." He smiled coldly. "But I'll allow you to retain control of your mind, just as I have with Victor, so you'll be aware the entire time. After all, I wouldn't want you to miss your own dismemberment."

Osseal's song seemed to swell louder then, almost as if it was coming from inside my ears. I could feel its power pressing against me, but try as it might, it couldn't overcome the spirit of the Loa inhabiting Papa Chatha's necklace, and my body remained mine to command.

Henry frowned. "Something's not right." He shrugged. "Well, no matter. It's not as if you have anywhere to run, is it?" He turned to Baron, and when he spoke next, his voice was cold as arctic ice. "Tear him apart."

I hope Baron would let go of Devona in order to fulfill Henry's order, but instead he picked her up and hurled her toward the flesh wall. She flew across the room and slammed into the wall, but before she could bounce off, the veins in that section of the wall wrapped around her like swollen, throbbing tentacles and held her fast. I understood what had happened. The fleshtech in the room had been created from reanimated tissue, and was therefore just as susceptible to Osseal's influence as any of Baron's other creations, and it was under Henry's control.

Baron turned and started walking toward me. There was no hesitation in his motion, but his gaze was sorrowful, and I knew that what Henry had said was true. Baron was fully aware of what he was being made to do, and though he fought against Osseal's power, he had no choice but to obey Henry's commands. I felt sorry for Baron, but not so sorry that I intended to let him reduce me to zombie nuggets. I drew my .45, took aim at his head, and started firing.

I was hoping to do the same to him as I had to Jigsaw Jones, but Baron was far faster than the wrestler, and he brought his arms up in time to intercept the bullets and protect his head. The .45's rounds tore into the flesh of his arms, and while there was some blood, it was far less than it should've been. Over the last century and a half, Victor Baron had made himself into the pinnacle of what the reanimatory arts could accomplish, and that meant he was strong and tough as hell. He could take a handful of bullets without flinching, and they certainly didn't slow him down. He came at me so swiftly that even if I'd had the reflexes of a living man I wouldn't have been able to get out of the way. I dropped my .45, pulled the salamander out of my pocket, and gave its tiny belly a good squeeze.

Flame shot out of the creature's mouth and it struck Baron on the side of his perfect face. The flesh sizzled and blackened, but Baron kept coming. He reached out, wrapped his hand around my wrist, and squeezed, crushing the bones along with the salamander. He then grabbed hold of my wrist and tore my arm out of the socket.

"Dammit! I hate that!" I shouted. "Do you know how many times that's happened to me?"

On the bright side, Baron had also torn the sleeve off Bogdan's coat when he pulled the arm off, so it wasn't a total loss.

Baron came at me, still holding onto my arm, and I remembered the swill the recently deceased minotaur had forced me to drink outside Hemlocks. The Sprawlicano had been sloshing around in my stomach ever since, and since I'd have to get rid of the wretched stuff eventually, I figured now was an excellent time to heave ho.

I tensed my stomach muscles, opened my mouth as wide as I could and let Baron have it right in the face. Whatever nasty ingredients the Sprawlicano had originally been made from, their time pickling in my zombie stomach had taken them to a whole new level of putrefaction. A nauseating liquid stew of browns, greens and grays splashed into Baron's eyes and he roared in pain and staggered backward. I imagined the toxic mess burned like hell and probably stank worse than a ghoul's breath after a two week eating binge at the Roadkill Roadhouse. Baron wiped his swollen, reddened eyes with his free hand and I was mildly surprised – and a bit disappointed – to see that Sprawlicano à la Richter hadn't eaten away the man's eyeballs. My regurgitory assault hadn't done more than make Baron pause and a second later, eyesight cleared, he came at me again.

Baron had managed to retain hold of my arm, and wielding it like a club, he slammed it into the side of my head so hard that I thought he was going to undo his own handiwork and decapitate me again. But though the blow sent me sprawling onto the floor, my head remained attached. Thank Dis for small favors.

Still gripping my arm, Baron came toward me. The sorrow in his eyes was palpable now, and along with it was an impotent rage. Baron was fighting Osseal's power with everything he had, but no matter how strong his will was, he couldn't resist the artifact's magic on his own. I sat up, determined not to meet my fate lying down, and as I moved, the pieces of Papa Chatha's Loa necklace rustled together.

Maybe Baron couldn't throw off the effects of Osseal by himself, but if he had a little help…

Devona had been fighting to escape from the veintentacles that held her, and when she saw Baron tear my arm off, she decided to quit fooling around. She bared her fangs and bit down into one of the veins, tearing out a great bloody chunk which she spit out. Ichor gushed from the wound, spraying the air and soaking her in crimson. She instantly became too slick for the other veins to hold on to her, and she wriggled out of their embrace and fell to the floor. She landed on her feet and started running toward Baron, and even though I loved her, at that moment, seeing her covered with blood, fangs bared, eyes blazing with feral fury, I was scared of her.

Just as Baron was about to hit me with my own arm again, Devona launched herself through the air and landed on his back. She bit into the side of his neck and ripped out a hunk of flesh. Blood flowed from the wound – but again, less than it should have – and though the injury should've hurt like blazes, Baron's face showed only his internal struggle against Osseal's magic. With his free hand he reached up and grabbed Devona by the top of the head and flung her forward off of him. She sailed overtop me and slammed into the opposite wall where more coils of vein ensnared her.

But she'd given me the distraction I needed.

I rose to my feet, staggered toward Baron, and concentrating to make my uncoordinated left hand obey me, I removed the Loa necklace from around my neck. I knew I had only one shot at this, so – remembering how my bad hand now worked – I aimed for a point several inches to the left of Baron's head and threw the necklace. It flew through the air and while its trajectory was a bit lopsided, it looped over Baron's head and settled around his bleeding neck.

Score!

The effect was immediate. Baron's features twisted with anger. He dropped my arm and turned to face Henry. Frankenstein had been watching the fight with glee, but now a look of alarm came onto his face.

"How could you do this?" Baron said, anguish in his voice. "We may have had our conflicts over the years, Father, but everything I've ever done, I did to make you proud of me, to prove myself worthy of the life you gave me! I can't believe that you hate me so much that you could harm so many people just to ruin me."

Baron continued to walk toward Henry as he spoke and now the two men stood facing one another, creation to creator, son to father. The fear in Frankenstein's face gave way to pure loathing.

"Believe it," he snarled.

Baron gave his father a last sorrowful look before ripping Osseal free from the scientist's chest. Henry cried out in pain as Baron tossed the now bloody flute aside and the song of Osseal which had accompanied Henry's breathing was silenced.

Frankenstein gave his creation a final defiant glare.

"Go ahead. Do it."

Baron nodded sadly, took hold of his father's head in both hands with a surprisingly gentle touch, and then with a single swift motion tore Henry's head from his shoulders. Frankenstein's body fell to the ground, blood pumping from both neck and chest wounds, but Baron paid it no mind. He held Henry's head so he could look upon his father's face as the light dimmed in his eyes and finally went out, taking the hatred with it, leaving nothing but a dull emptiness. Then Baron clasped the head to his chest and began to cry.

EIGHTEEN

A day later, Devona and I sat on the couch in the great room of the Midnight Watch, illusory fire burning in the hearth, Rover moving around us as playful gusts of air, the ward spirit occasionally tousling our hair to get our attention. My right arm was back where it should be, thanks to Victor Baron, who'd also adjusted my left hand. The rest of the damage I'd sustained over the last couple days had been repaired by Papa Chatha. I sat with my arm around Devona, her head – blonde again – resting on my shoulder. It might not have been as cozy as a family room in a little ranch house back on Earth, but it would do.

I was dressed in my usual suit and tie. Bogdan's coat was sitting at a tailor's, waiting for the sleeve to be repaired. Though I hadn't admitted it to Devona, the coat had kind of grown on me, and I was reluctant to throw it away. Not that I'd ever wear it again, but I supposed I could find room for it in my closet somewhere.

"It was nice of everyone to drop by and congratulate me on being a free man again," I said.

"Even Bogdan?" Devona asked in a teasing voice.

"Even him," I said, and I almost sounded like I meant it. Who knows? Maybe I did. After all, he had helped Devona and the others break me out of Tenebrus, and he'd accepted a Dominari tongue worm to do so, just like everyone else. And he'd loaned me his old coat. It was hard to hate the guy after all that.

"I'm glad none of them was seriously injured in the rioting," she said.

"Me too."

Most of our friends – those who worked at the Midnight Watch and our other friends around town – had survived the attack of Baron's creatures relatively unscathed. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for hundreds of other citizens who'd been caught up in the violence.

"It's good of Baron to offer to repair and reanimate anyone who was injured in the riot, free of charge," Devona said. "Especially since the violence wasn't his fault."

"He's an honorable man," I said. "I'm sure he sees it as the least he can do. Besides, staying busy might help keep his mind off what happened." I thought about the way Baron had cried as he clutched his father's head. "At least a little," I added.

Devona snuggled close to me. "I feel sorry for him. I know what it's like to have a father who doesn't approve of you."

I tightened my arm around her shoulder. Devona changed the subject then and I pretended not to notice.

"I'm glad Quillion dismissed the charges against you when Victor Baron told him about Henry being the one who engineered the theft of Osseal. But I was surprised when he took Henry's body into custody."

Quillion had asked Baron to pack Henry's head and body in separate refrigeration units and then shipped them to Tenebrus where – so I'd heard – Keket had them placed in separate sections of maximum security far away from each other.

"Frankenstein's a genius when it comes to reanimating the dead," I said. "I guess Quillion didn't want to take any chances on his coming back."

"But if Henry's that dangerous – which I definitely believe he is – then why not destroy his body?"

"I don't know. Maybe Quillion wants to keep Frankenstein on ice in case his knowledge is needed again someday. You know the Darklords and their servants, always scheming. But to tell you the truth, I wouldn't be surprised if Baron asked Quillion to spare his old man."

"You're probably right," Devona said. "I just hope we all don't come to regret his mercy one day."

I'd been to Tenebrus and I wanted to tell Devona that there was nothing to worry about. But then again, I'd escaped, hadn't I? And given how devious Frankenstein was, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that he'd foreseen his incarceration and taken steps to ensure his eventual freedom and resurrection. Burke and Hare had disappeared after Henry's defeat, and while Quillion had put bounties on their heads, so far, there had been no sign of the bodysnatching duo.

I decided that was a problem for another day. I had one of my own to resolve just then.

"I've been thinking," I said. "About the business."

"Yes?" Devona said, her tone carefully neutral.

I paused to choose my words carefully. "I know you see the Midnight Watch as the first major project we took on together… as a couple, I mean. And I love you, Devona. It's just–"

"You like your freedom too much to commit to the Watch full time," she said.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean I don't want to commit to you. Do you see the difference?"

"I do now." She smiled. "It helps that I can read your mind, you know. You really aren't very good at talking about this kind of thing."

I hadn't realized how tense I'd been until I felt myself relax.

"Whatever works," I said.

"Maybe we should make that our new motto," she said.

"I can think of worse ones."

We sat there quietly for a time, watching the fire and feeling the breeze as Rover circled invisibly around us. After a time, Devona spoke again, her voice so soft I could barely hear her.

"Do you still think about what we experienced inside Orlock's stasis field?"

"Yes," I admitted. "They still feel real to me, even though I know they weren't."

I didn't have to say who they were.

A few more moments passed before Devona spoke again. She sat up and faced me and I knew whatever she wanted to tell me it was important.

"I know it's not physically possible for us to have children of our own. I'm half undead and you're all the way dead, but I was thinking maybe we could adopt. One day."

I was married once back on Earth, but my ex and I had never had kids. I'd grown used to the idea that fatherhood wasn't on the cards for me – especially once I became a zombie. But after what we'd experienced in Orlock's dome, I wasn't so sure what was and wasn't possible anymore.

"It would be a lot of responsibility," I said.

"A big commitment," she added. "Do you think you could handle it?" She looked at me hopefully.

My first impulse was to say yes just to please her, but this was too important. She deserved a serious answer. We'd only been together a few months, and we weren't even officially married yet. On the other hand, I'd never been with anyone like Devona before. We matched in a way I'd never thought possible and our ability to communicate psychically had bonded us deeply in a short period of time. But raising a child is tough under the best conditions, and doing so in Nekropolis? We had a hard enough time keeping ourselves alive sometimes. If we had a child to protect…

I started to give Devona my answer, but then I realized something was wrong. She'd stopped moving and her eyes weren't blinking. At first I feared she'd somehow succumbed to some sort of after effect of Orlock's stasis field, but then a worse thought hit me. What if we were still inside the stasis dome and everything we'd experienced since then had been nothing but another illusion?

"Don't worry," came a soft male voice. "Devona's fine. I just wanted a chance to speak with you in private."

I turned toward the sound of the voice and saw a man climb out of the fireplace. The flames hadn't touched him since they were illusory, but I knew that even if they'd been the real thing they still wouldn't have harmed him. It was Edrigu, Lord of the Dead.

I rose to my feet to meet the gray shrouded man as he strode into the room. A violent gust of wind blasted Edrigu and I knew that Rover was preparing to deal with what he saw as an intruder.

"Down boy," I told the ward spirit. "He's a friend."

I had no idea if this was a friendly visit or not, but Edrigu was so powerful he could destroy Rover in an eyeblink without exerting himself. It took Rover a few seconds to back down, but the wind died away. Rover didn't retreat, though. I could feel the ward spirit hanging close by in case he was needed.

"I see you've rejoined the world of the living," I said. "So to speak."

Edrigu smiled at me. "The events of the last couple days caused quite a disturbance in the city's psychic atmosphere, Enough to penetrate the Darklords' slumber and wake us." His voice was the sound of a breeze wafting through a deserted graveyard in the dead of night.

"Too bad your alarm didn't go off earlier," I said. "You missed all the fun."

"I believe that was Dr. Frankenstein's intention," Edrigu said.

I saw the chain around the Darklord's neck, though Osseal itself was hidden from sight beneath his shroud.

"Looks like you got your flute back."

"Yes. Quillion removed Osseal from the Foundry and held it until I awoke, at which time I reclaimed it. I've come to thank you for getting it back for me, and more importantly, for stopping Dr. Frankenstein from misusing it so grievously."

I'd interacted more with the other four Darklords than I had with Edrigu and I found his lack of megalomaniacal posturing to be refreshing.

"I have to admit that there was more than a little self-interest to my motives, but you're welcome. And not that you've come looking for my advice, but if I were you, I'd give some serious thought to revamping the Reliquary's security. All Frankenstein needed to gain entrance to your bedchamber was this mark."

I held up the hand with the scar tissue E on the palm.

"That mark is intended for quite a different purpose," Edrigu said. "It took someone of Dr. Frankenstein's uncommon intelligence, not to mention deviousness, to turn it to a criminal purpose. Still, your point is well taken, and I'll make certain my private chambers are secure from all intrusion in the future."

"Speaking of your mark, Silent Jack gave it to me without explaining its purpose. Which, considering his name, isn't all that surprising. But since you're here…"

Edrigu nodded. "It's the last I can do to repay you. Jack is one of my best servants and one of his most important tasks is to find the dead wherever they might be in the city and give them my mark. Once they possess it, they are free to enter the Reliquary whenever they wish, allowing them to access my mirror and – should they choose to step through – to what waits for them on the other side."

This realization stunned me and for a moment all I could do was look at Edrigu.

"You mean it doesn't mark me as one of your servants?" I asked.

Edrigu smiled. "No. I already have enough of those. But if you're interested…"

"Nothing personal, but no thanks." I was still struggling to come to terms with what Edrigu had told me. The mark on my hand would allow me to enter his stronghold and pass through his dark mirror to the afterlife – whatever that might be. "Why give me the mark and not tell me what it means?"

"Some of the dead instinctively understand what the mark signifies. Others take longer to work it out. It all depends on whether or not they're ready – or interested – in moving on to the next realm of existence. Each must find the way to my mirror in his or her own time, which is as it should be. But now that you know, you are free to pass through whenever you choose."

I looked at Devona. "I appreciate the free ticket to the afterlife, but I don't have any intention of leaving Nekropolis any time soon."

"As you wish. My mirror will be waiting for you if you ever change your mind."

"Tell me one thing, though," I said, curious. "What is on the other side of your mirror?"

Edrigu grinned, displaying small rounded teeth that looked like two rows of ivory gravestones. "Sorry. That would be cheating."

I thought that the Lord of the Dead would take his leave then, returning to the fireplace like some dark version of Santa Claus going back up the chimney. But instead he said, "I have something I wish to give you. A reward for the service you rendered to me, and indeed, to the entire city. Hold out your hand."

I did so and an instant later a coin appeared on my palm. I held it up to my face to examine it. The coin was copper, incredibly old, its features worn so smooth that I couldn't make them out.

I looked at Edrigu. "Don't tell me this is a tip."

Edrigu smiled. "Of a sort, I suppose. That is one of Charon's coins. In Greek mythology, the dead have to pay Charon the ferryman to take them across the River Styx to the land of the dead. But once the coins have been touched by Charon they can be used to purchase a single day of life. You have but to grip the coin tight, wish it, and you will be become a living, breathing man for a single twenty-four hour time period. But be warned: you can only use the coin once, and afterward, you can never use another."

I stared at the coin, unable to believe what Edrigu had told me. To be alive again, if only for one day…

"I will take my leave of you now," Edrigu said. "As you might imagine, many tasks have piled up while I've been asleep that I must attend to, and of course my fellow Lords will undoubtedly soon be returning to their endless intrigues, and I must prepare to deal with them." He started to go, then paused. "One thing more. Just before I appeared, I overheard part of your conversation with Devona. There are many things a man might accomplish with one day of life." He gave me a knowing smile. "Including siring a child."

The Lord of the Dead gave me a parting nod, turned, and walked back into the fireplace and was gone. I stared at the flickering flames for a moment and then I heard Devona say, "Well? Can you?"

I remembered the last words she'd spoken before Edrigu had frozen her.

A big commitment. Do you think you could handle it?

I turned to see her frowning.

"Weren't you just sitting next to me?" she asked.

I looked at Charon's coin one last time before tucking it into my pocket and rejoining Devona on the couch.

"To answer your question, my love, I think I can handle it just fine."

She gave me a look filled with love and we kissed.

You know something? I have a pretty good life for a dead guy. And thanks to Lord Edrigu – and the coin he'd given me – I had a feeling that it was soon going to get even better.

A SHORT STORY

ZOMBIE INTERRUPTED

I made my way down a sidewalk in Ruination Row, moving with a stiff-legged gait that was only a little faster than standing still. It had been a couple weeks since my last round of preservative spells, and I was overdue for a little freshening up. One of the nice things about being a zombie is that, when your bouquet begins to ripen, people give you a wide berth, so I didn't have to worry about shoving my way through the crowd of pedestrians. The Darkfolk that had come to patronize the less-than-savory businesses in the Row stepped aside as I approached, the Bloodborn and Lykes grimacing as their heightened sense of smell picked up my scent.

"Goddamn deader," a genetically altered Lyke growled as I approached. She looked like a cross between a leopard and an alligator, and she snarled and elbowed me hard in the side as I passed her. The blow didn't hurt – I hadn't experienced pain since the day I became a zombie – but the force of it sent me stumbling sideways into an alley. I tried to keep my balance, but even when I'm at my freshest, I'm not exactly the epitome of grace, and I stumbled and fell into a pile of trash – which wasn't difficult to do since the alley was crammed full of the stuff. Besides the usual crumpled fast-food wrappers, discarded newspapers, cardboard boxes, and empty beer bottles, there were chunks of meat, splintered lengths of bone, and various disgusting-looking pools of liquid spread about that, one way or another, had probably been inside a body at one point. The stench had to have been horrendous, but my sense of smell is as dead as the rest of me, and I was rarely as grateful for that as I was right then.

I rose to my feet with a series of stiff, jerky movements and brushed the worst of the muck off my gray suit as best I could. I contemplated going back out onto the street, tracking down the leopard-gator, and showing her just how much I appreciated her elbow to my ribs, but tempting as the thought was, I'd come to Ruination Row to do a job, and I didn't want to get distracted.

Several weeks back I'd had a run-in with an ancient Bloodborn named Orlock who, it turned out, fancied himself as a sort of Darkfolk version of Noah. He'd spent the last few centuries gathering one-of-a-kind objects, animals, and in some cases people, and adding them to his already vast collection. Orlock viewed himself as a preservationist working to protect the Darkfolk's culture and history. I viewed him as a senile old vampire with more than a few screws loose, and I was determined to free those beings he'd imprisoned in his collection. Orlock was too powerful to take on directly, so I made a deal with him: I'd retrieve artifacts that he wished to add to his collection, and he'd pay me by releasing some of the people he'd captured. The number of people he'd let go each time depended on the rarity of the object I brought him, and I often had to haggle with him over my "fee". Of course, I reserved the right to pick and choose which jobs I'd take. I wouldn't acquire an object for Orlock just because he coveted it. But more often than not, the artifact he desired was insanely dangerous and in the possession of some less-thanupstanding citizen who intended to use the device to commit appalling acts of mayhem.

Case in point: the Argentum Perditor.

Silver is a controlled substance in Nekropolis. It's highly poisonous to any number of Darkfolk, but especially to Bloodborn and Lykes, and the only ones who can use it legally are those Arcane who need the metal as a spell component. But you can buy anything on the streets of Nekropolis that your black little heart desires – if you have the darkgems to pay for it, of course. There are any number of silver suppliers in the city, but the most wellknown is a man who calls himself the Silversmith. His true identity is a carefully guarded secret, and he only deals through intermediaries. Not even Orlock knew who he really was. But the ancient vampire knew one thing: the Silversmith was in possession of the Argentum Perditor, a mystic weapon that was like King Midas' touch, turning its targets into solid silver. And Orlock wanted it – bad.

As far as I was concerned, Nekropolis would be better off if a weapon that powerful was locked away in Orlock's collection, and I'd spent the last few hours making inquiries around Ruination Row to see if I could get a line on how to contact the Silversmith. I wasn't sure how I was going to get the Argentum Perditor away from him once I found him, but I figured I'd worry about that later. Improvisation has always been one of my strong suits.

So as much as I wanted to go after Leopard-Gator and put a few dents in her scaly hide, I was going to have to let her insult pass. Not only am I the city's only intelligent, self-willed zombie, I'm also its only private investigator – and once I accept a job, I keep at it until it's done.

I started toward the mouth of the alley when I heard a loud buzzing behind me. I still have emotions, but I don't feel the physical effect of them, so I didn't experience a sick surge of adrenaline upon hearing the sound, even though I was pretty sure what it was causing it and the thought terrified me. I turned to see a cloud of small creatures the size of gnats rising from the trash, and I realized I'd must have disturbed them when I'd landed in their midst. The mass of creatures was so thick it looked like a black smoke, and my worst fear was confirmed: I was facing a carrion cloud. The cloud was the larval form of carrion imps, nasty little creatures that scour the alleys of Nekropolis on a never-ending quest for dead flesh to devour. The imps perform a useful function, I suppose, but considering that I am dead flesh, you can see why I prefer to avoid them whenever possible.

But as bad as carrion imps are, their larval form is far worse. Carrion clouds are absolutely ravenous and they move fast as lightning when they sense a food source is near. Once they begin to feed, they can strip away every bit of meat from the bone within seconds. Even if I was at my freshest, I wouldn't have been able to outrun the cloud, and given my current condition, I knew I wouldn't be able to take more than a single step toward the street before the larvae were on me. There was only one thing I could do, and without pausing to consider the ramifications of my actions, I reached into my pants pocket and gripped an ancient copper coin, its features worn smooth by the long passage of time. I willed the coin's magic to activate and closed my eyes as the buzzing swarm of larva rushed forward to engulf me.

A jolt of what felt like electricity surged through my body's dead nervous system, startling me. Normally all I can feel is pressure, as when someone or something is pushing against my body, but this level of sensation was so intense that it momentarily stunned me. I collapsed to my hands and knees, the carrion cloud still swarming around me, and as the electric sensation gave way to a gentle tingling all across my body, I wondered if what I was experiencing was the feeling of being eaten alive by thousands of ravenous insects. But then the buzzing sound grew fainter, and I risked opening my eyes.

The carrion cloud had moved away and was slowly heading deeper into the alley. I stared at it for several moments because something seemed strange about the cloud, about the whole alley, really. Everything appeared sharper, colors richer, lines more distinct. It was like I'd been viewing the alley through a hazy sheen that had been lifted, and now I could see it clearly.

As a zombie I don't need to breathe unless I want to speak, but right then I inhaled through my nostrils, and instantly regretted it as stench so thick you could take a bite out of it burned my nasal passages like acid. I was wracked by a sudden coughing fit so violent that I ended up retching, and if there'd been anything in my stomach to bring up, I'd have spilled it onto the alley floor and added to the noxious muck coating the ground.

After a few moments, my coughing fit subsided, and I rose to my feet. My body moved with unaccustomed ease, and I felt so unbalanced that I nearly fell. I reached out to place a hand against the wall to steady myself, and I gasped as my flesh came in contact with brick. It felt cold and rough and solid, and the sensation was so intense that for a several seconds all I could do was gently rub the my fingers against the brick and marvel at how it felt. It was then that I knew for sure that the coin's magic had done its job. I was alive again.

Magic isn't uncommon by any means in Nekropolis, but magic this powerful was rare indeed. The coin had once belonged to Charon, the ferryman who carried spirits to the afterlife in Greek mythology. It had been given to me by Lord Edrigu, master of the dead, as a reward for a service I'd performed for him. The coin could restore the dead to life for a period of twenty-four hours, but it was a one-time offer. Once the coin's magic was spent, the holder could never be granted life again, not from any source. So I was human again, and the clock was ticking.

Keeping one hand on the wall to maintain my balance, and trying to breathe shallowly so the stench of the alley wouldn't induce another round of coughing, I reached into my jacket pocket and removed my hand vox and dialed Devona. Like a lot of homegrown machines in Nekropolis, voxes are flesh-tech, devices fashioned from organic material, and now that the nerves in my hands functioned normally, I was repulsed by the warm, soft feel of the vox. I could feel it throbbing gently, as if blood circulated through it, and I felt an impulse to drop the damned thing. But I held onto it and waited for Devona to pick up. But she didn't. Instead, I got her voicemail.

"This is Devona Kanti, owner and proprietor of the Midnight Watch. I'm sorry to miss your call. Please leave your number, and I'll call you back as soon as I'm able."

Once the vox's tiny mouth was finished recreating the sound of Devona's voice, it said, "Beep!" The vox's mouth exhaled gently as it spoke, and the feeling of its warm breath on my ear made me shudder.

"It's me. I had to use Charon's Coin. I'll explain later, but I'm human now, and I'm on my way home."

I disconnected and tucked the vox back into my suit jacket, glad to be rid of the thing. Devona was my partner, both personally and professionally. Normally she'd have come with me to Ruination Row to help search for the Silversmith, but she was a security expert, specializing in both the mundane and mystical aspects of the craft, and today she was helping to overhaul the wardspells for Diamonds are a Ghoul's Best Friend, one of the largest jewelers in the city. It was a huge account, and landing it had been quite a coup for her business. She was determined to do an excellent job for her new client, and I knew from experience that, like me, once she got her teeth into a job, she didn't let go until it was finished. So it was no surprise that she hadn't picked up when I called. She'd no doubt set her vox to silent mode, but she'd get my message eventually. And once she did, I knew she'd be thrilled.

Devona and I had been together for a while now, and she longed to start a family. But as a zombie, I'm not exactly fully functional in certain key anatomical areas, if you know what I mean. Hard to father a child when there's no lead in your undead pencil. Another problem is that Devona is half vampire, half human. Normally her kind is sterile, like mules back on Earth. But with twenty-four hours of human life granted to me – along with the aid of a fertility charm created by Papa Chatha, the houngan who provided my preservative spells – we had a chance to conceive a child. But though I'd had Charon's Coin in my possession for a while now, I'd been hesitant to use it, and I'd only done so now in order to avoid becoming a meal for several thousand hungry imp larvae. So even though I'd just called Devona and told her I was headed home, I had mixed feelings about it.

It wasn't that I didn't want to have children. I just wasn't sure that Nekropolis was the best environment to raise them in. Four hundred years ago, Earth's Darkfolk – vampires, shapeshifters, magic-users, demons, and the like – had decided they'd had enough of humanity and emigrated to another dimension where they built a vast city called Nekropolis. Here they could live openly, without the need to remain concealed from the humans who were increasingly outnumbering them. But as you might imagine for a city filled with monsters, Nekropolis can be an extremely dangerous place, and the idea of bringing innocent new life into this world made me uncomfortable, to say the least. Devona and I weren't even sure what our child might be. She was half human, and I'd be all human when we conceived our baby. As best as Papa Chatha could figure, that meant there was an excellent chance our child would be completely human, or close enough to it. Some humans did live in Nekropolis. The Darkfolk maintained magical passageways that led back to Earth, mostly so they could continue to import goods and services, and a number of humans found their way here every year. That was how I'd originally come to the city, chasing a warlock who'd committed a series a murders in my hometown of Cleveland. According to the laws of the Darkfolk, it's forbidden to prey upon humans, but so many of the Darkfolk are predators by nature, and they consider that law more of a guideline than a firm rule. Add to this the fact that Darkfolk outnumber humans by at least ten to one, and the reality is that humans, for all intents and purposes, live as second-class citizens in Nekropolis.

Zombies, intelligent or not, are considered to be lowest form of life in the supernatural food chain, and I knew firsthand how the Darkfolk treated those they viewed as lesser beings. Given all this, I wasn't sure bringing a child – and a potentially human child at that – into this world was the most responsible thing to do. So I'd been conflicted about using the coin. But now circumstance had forced my hand, and I was human again, but only for a single day. I didn't have any more time to wonder if having a child was a good idea. If we were going to try to get pregnant, we had to get started as soon as possible. I didn't want to disappoint Devona, and besides, even with the fertility charm, Papa Chatha had warned us there was no guarantee we'd conceive. So maybe my worries would turn out to be for nothing in the end. But either way, I decided I needed to get home to my love.

That settled, I stepped back out onto the street.

The Sprawl is the most urban of Nekropolis' five Dominions. Even at its best, it normally looks like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch fever dream, but Ruination Row is in a nightmarish class by itself. The streets look like they're made from the craggy gray hide of some rhinoceros-like creature, and the distorted buildings look like they're constructed from a bizarre mix of insect chitin, bleached bone, and pulsating discolored organs. The traffic roars by at lethal speeds, the vehicles ranging from mundane cars imported from Earth to more outré machines like meatrunners, carapacers, and ectoplasmonics. The sidewalk was crowded with pedestrians, most of them Darkfolk, in search of the foul, debased pleasures that can only found in Ruination Row.

I'd originally come to Nekropolis as a living man, but I'd only been in the city a few days before I'd died and been resurrected as a zombie. That was several years ago, and in that time I'd forgotten how overwhelming the city can be on a sensory level. Standing there, my newly restored living senses were inundated with an ocean of sensation – sights, smells, and sounds – and the sheer amount of data was too much for me to process. All I could do was stand in the middle of the sidewalk, frozen in place, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if I drooled a little. I swayed, dizzy, gray nibbling at the edges of my vision, my mind threatening to shut down to protect itself from the overwhelming sensory onslaught. I fought to hold onto consciousness. Passing out on the streets of Nekropolis is not an effective long-term survival strategy.

A tall thin being – I couldn't tell if it was male or female – wrapped from head to toe in strips of moldy gray cloth came toward me. Perched on his or her shoulders was a large bird with multicolored plumage and a wickedly hooked beak. The mummy paid no attention to me as it walked past, but the pharaoh's eagle riding on its shoulders glared at me with disconcertingly intelligent eyes, let out an annoyed squawk, and snapped at me. That hooked beak came within an inch of slicing into the flesh of my cheek, but the eagle missed. The bird glared at me one last time, but it didn't leave its perch to attack, and eventually it turned around to face forward again as its owner continued walking down the street

The eagle's near miss shocked me back to full awareness. As a zombie, I don't have to worry about getting hurt. Minor cuts and bruises mean nothing to me, and broken bones are merely annoyances to be tended to later. Even losing a limb or two or being decapitated isn't a major concern. All I need to do is gather up my pieces and pay Papa Chatha a visit. He always sews me back together.

But I was alive again, and that meant not only could I be hurt, I could be killed. And though I wasn't one hundred percent certain how the magic of Charon's Coin worked, I had to assume that if I died during the next twenty-four hours, I'd stay dead. This meant I needed to do something I hadn't done in years: be careful. If I got cut, I'd bleed. And if a pissed-off monster tore my arm out of its socket, it would be more than an inconvenience. It would likely be the end of me. So the best thing I could do was head home, keep my mouth shut, and avoid making eye contact with anyone along the way.

I put my hands in my pants pockets, lowered my gaze to the sidewalk, and started heading east, in the direction of the apartment I shared with Devona, but I only got a few yards before someone walked up to me and said, "Matthew Richter?"

The voice was a smooth, warm baritone, and I felt a strange pull when I heard it. Even though I wanted to ignore whoever it was and keep going, I stopped and raised my head to look the man in the eye.

He was a demon. His kind can vary widely in physical appearance and ability, but they all have several things in common. Their eyes contain multicolored flecks which rotate slowly around the pupils. All Demonkin, regardless of type, have those flecks, and they remain no matter what form a demon assumes. Another aspect they share is the almost hypnotic quality of their voices. As a zombie, demon voices have no effect on me, but as a human, I felt the power in this one's words. It was like I was compelled to listen to him, whether I wanted to or not. Demon voices can be resisted, but it takes effort, and I'd been out of practice for the last few years.

This demon was humanoid for the most part, bald, with dusky red skin, pointed ears, serpent scales beneath his eyes, a thick black soul patch on his chin, and slightly pointed teeth that were so white they almost gleamed. Despite all this, he was handsome enough, though he probably didn't get too many gigs as a male model. He wore a black turtleneck, black slacks, black shoes, and – naturally enough – black socks. Normally, I would have made a smart-ass remark about his lack of sartorial imagination. I mean, wearing black in a city full of monsters where the sun never shines? How much more cliché can you possibly get? But I was still struggling to adjust to my newly restored senses. Everything was too bright, too loud, too much, and I felt almost as if I was drunk. I felt sick, too. My throat was dry and sore, there was an uncomfortable gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach, and I kept hearing a strange thrumming in my ears. After a moment, I realized that I was thirsty and hungry, and the thrumming I heard was nothing more than the beating of my now living heart.

The demon spoke again, and this time he sounded annoyed. "Mr. Richter?"

I did my best to ignore the powerful sensations I was experiencing. "That's me," I said. My voice sounded strange. The tone lighter, the words more clearly enunciated.

The demon smiled, displaying his sharp white teeth. "I hear you've been looking for me."

I was having trouble concentrating, and at first the demon's words didn't sink in. But then it hit me.

"You're the Silversmith."

"My real name is Gilmore, and as long as we're in public, I'd prefer you use it. And before you get any ideas…" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver metal rod about six inches in length. On the end of it was a clawed hand, and Gilmore raised the rod and pointed the claw at me. "It might not look like much, but believe me when I say it packs a hell of a wallop."

It might've looked like nothing more than a backscratcher, but I had no doubt that the weapon Gilmore wielded was the Argentum Perditor. But I pretended not to recognize it. I'd made no mention that I was searching for the artifact during my inquiries around Ruination Row, so Gilmore had no reason to think I knew what his little toy could do. And I'd learned long ago that the more cards you keep concealed from an opponent, the better.

But I wasn't in the mood to get into a pissing contest with a demon right then. As the saying goes, at that moment I had bigger and more important fish to fry.

"I was looking for you, it's true. But something's come up, and I'm needed elsewhere. Tell you what, why don't you give me your card and maybe we can do business later."

He arced one of his thick black eyebrows. "I suppose next you'll say, 'Have your people call my people and we'll do lunch.' I'm not an easy man to find, Mr. Richter, and once found, I'm ever harder to dismiss. So…" His lips drew away from his mouth in a predatory smile. "Why don't you tell me what you want with me?"

What I most wanted was for him to get the hell out of my way so I could continue heading home. Instead, I said, "I use a lot of specialized equipment in my job. Holy water, silver bullets… I'm always on the lookout for new suppliers. Word on the street is that you're the go-to guy when it comes to silver, so I figured it was time I made your acquaintance."

I carry a 9mm in a shoulder holster, and my bullets are coated with silver, dipped in a mixture of holy water and garlic juice, and both blessed and cursed by powerful magic-users. You never know who or what is going to try and kill you in Nekropolis, so it pays to be prepared.

At that moment, I considered going for my gun. Normally, my zombie reflexes are so slow that I can't out-draw anyone, but since it doesn't matter if an opponent gets the first shot in, my lack of speed is never an issue. If an opponent manages to hit me, all that it means is that I'll eventually need to get Papa Chatha to repair the damage. Shooting second is more than good enough when bullets can't kill you. But now my reflexes were once more those of a living man, and that meant I might be able to draw my gun before Gilmore could activate the Argentum Perditor. Then again, I'd had trouble simply standing back in the alley, and I still didn't feel all that steady on my feet. I hadn't adjusted to my newly restored body yet, and that meant there was a good chance I'd fumble when I tried to draw my 9mm, giving Gilmore more than ample opportunity to turn me into a silver statue. And if I got silverfied before I could get home and was able to, uh, make my delivery to Devona, she'd kill me.

So no gunplay for now.

Gilmore leaned toward me and inhaled deeply then, and I felt suddenly paranoid. Demonkin senses aren't always as keen as those of Bloodborn or Lykes, but they're sharp enough, and I feared Gilmore might smell that I'd turned human. One of the things you want to avoid at all costs in Nekropolis is having someone consider you prey – especially easy prey. I had a couple things going in my favor, though. For one thing, Gilmore had no reason to suspect I'd been restored to a living state. For another, my transformation had only affected my body. My clothes were still the same, and not only did a pungent au de zombie still cling to them, they were stained from the gunk I'd landed in when I fell in the alley. With any lucky, my rancid-smelling clothes would help disguise my now human scent.

Turns out I had nothing to worry about. He leaned back and his smile became more relaxed.

"I can smell the silver on you, so perhaps your story is true. But I've heard rumors on the street as well, Mr. Richter. It seems that a number of powerful magical artifacts have been stolen from their owners over the last few weeks. The thefts have two important things in common. The owners are all, shall we say, unconventional business people like myself, and you were spotted in the vicinity around the time of each theft, Mr. Richter."

I shrugged. "What can I say? I get around. Doesn't mean I had anything to do with the thefts." Inwardly, I cursed my luck. Gilmore might not be a genius, but it seemed that he was more than smart enough to put two and two together.

"So this leads me to two possible conclusions. Either you were looking for me for the reason you claimed, in order to secure a new supplier of silver bullets, or you were looking for this." He wiggled the Argentum Perditor for emphasis. "The problem is how do I determine the truth?"

If he knew I was currently human, he'd try to force me to confess using the persuasive power of his demon voice. If he did, I might be able to resist. Then again, I might not. Hopefully, he'd continue thinking I was still a zombie.

I tried to speak more slowly and less distinctly as I replied to further the impression that I was still dead. "You could always take my word for it."

He laughed. "Demons aren't known for being the trusting type." He thought for a moment. "I think I'll invite you to accompany me to my home. The public face of my operation is a small business called One Man's Trash. Perhaps you saw it during your inquiries? It's not far from here. I specialize in selling 'reclaimed treasures' imported from Earth. You'd be surprised what some Darkfolk are willing to pay for the junk I carry in my shop. My real business lies in the chambers underneath the shop, of course. I have a number of devices there that will allow me to extract the truth even from a zombie." A gleam came into his demon eyes, and he bared his teeth once more. "This is going to be a lot of fun."

He jabbed the Argentum Perditor into my side, and the metal claw hurt like a bitch. I had to grit my teeth to keep from reacting.

"Let's go. That way." He nodded eastward, in the direction I'd just come from. Seeing no other recourse for the time being, I nodded, turned around, and started walking down the sidewalk, Gilmore at my side, the Argentum Perditor aimed at me.

We walked for several minutes in silence after that. I kept a close eye on the pedestrians we passed, hoping to spot a familiar face. I have a lot of friends in the city, and even more enemies, and any one of them might provide a way to distract Gilmore. But I didn't see anyone I knew, friend or foe. And I couldn't rely on Devona to come to my rescue. The voicemail I'd left for her said only that I was on my way home, and once she heard it, she'd have no reason to suspect I was in trouble and come racing to Ruination Row to help me. It looked like I was on my own.

We'd just passed High Stakes, an extreme piercing parlor run by a descendent of Vlad Tepes, and were approaching a Sawney B's, a fast-food joint for cannibals on the go, offering such delectable treats as lady fingers, marrow shakes, and homunculus nuggets. A trio of Bloodborn stood on the sidewalk in front of Sawney B's, sipping plasma shakes. Given that Blooborn are for all intents and purposes immortal, it's difficult to tell their ages by looking at them, but I knew these there were young as vampires went. Older Bloodborn feel uncomfortable around technology, if they don't disdain it completely. But younger ones tend to embrace it, often to the point of getting themselves cybernetically augmented. Genetic and technological alteration wasn't uncommon for the Darkfolk, considering that their supernaturally strong constitutions allowed them to withstand medical procedures that would kill a human being.

These three vampires – two male, one female – were almost completely clad in metal, making them seem as if they were wearing suits of armor. Wires, cables, and gears were visible at their joints, and their eyes had been replaced by small holoprojectors that glowed with internal green light. Their heads had been shaved, the woman's too, and their left incisors had been painted a bright ruby red. The latter was the calling card of the Red Tide, a vampire street gang that was one of the most deadly in Nekropolis. Even for their kind, they were considered vicious killers, and they had one other important quality: they were notoriously sensitive about their cyber implants.

As we drew closed, I called out, "What are you guys drinking? Motor oil?"

Gilmore jabbed the Argentum Perditor into my side, and I couldn't keep from wincing. I hope he hadn't noticed.

One of the males, this one of Asian descent, turned to look at me, his green eyes shading red.

"Shut up, smart-ass, or we'll stick our straws in your carotid and see how you taste," he snarled.

The woman, who was black, let out a high-pitched laugh that had an electronic edge to it, as if she had a synthesizer unit attached to her vocal cords.

"I'm not afraid of you junk-heaps," I said. "Looks to me like your warranties are about up."

Gilmore leaned over to whisper in my ear. "I know what you're trying to do, and it won't work. Keep walking."

But we weren't able to do that. The three cyber-vampires dropped their shakes and, traveling so swiftly they were little more than blurs, they moved into the street to block our way. All of their eyes glowed red now.

The second male, who was white, looked me up and down, then wrinkled his nose in disgust.

"Where the hell have you been, man? Smells like you just swam a few laps in a sewer."

His companions laughed.

"I'm surprised your nose still works," I said. "I figured you'd have an air filter or something stuck in there."

The cybervamp snarled, grabbed a handful of my shirt, and pulled me close to him. Around us, pedestrians had either stopped to watch the incipient mayhem or they were giving us plenty of room as they moved quickly to get out of our way. The attention was just what I wanted. I hoped Gilmore would be reluctant to use the Argentum Perditor in front of an audience in order to avoid anyone suspecting he was the Silversmith.

Of course, now that I'd pissed off a trio of vampires, I had to find a way to keep them from killing me.

"You need to show more respect for the Red Tide," the cybervamp said in a low and deadly voice. His breath smelled foul, like rotten meat, and I had to fight to keep from gagging.

"Maybe a brainwipe would teach him some manners," the girl said, grinning.

The Asian vamp nodded eagerly. "Do it!"

The Bloodborn who had hold of me smiled, and his holo-eyes

glowed a darker red. "This is going to hurt. A lot. On the plus side, once I'm finished, you won't remember it. But that's only because you won't remember anything."

He opened his mouth and extended his tongue. The end split bloodlessly in two to reveal a thin black wire with a silver needle on the tip. I understood what he planned to do with me. The wire was going to shoot forward like a striking serpent and the needle would imbed itself in my skull. The cybervamp would then send a jolt of energy into my brain, scrambling it and erasing my memories. When he was finished, not only wouldn't I know my name, I wouldn't even remember that there were such things as names.

I had only split second to do something, but I had no idea what. I'd grown so used to relying on my zombie state to get me out of trouble that I couldn't think of any way to avoid getting mindwiped. It looked like my attempt to get away from Gilmore had backfired, and while I'd still be alive when it was over, I'd no longer be me.

"Enough of this foolishness," Gilmore said. He pointed the Argentum Perditor at the three Red Tide vampires and the claw on the end glowed with a bright silvery light. All three of the gang members turned to look at the claw, transfixed by its glow, and as I watched, the metal of the cyber-implants transformed into silver – and silver is highly poisonous to Bloodborn.

The flesh connected to their implants instantly began to smolder and blacken, and the cybervamps shrieked in agony. The one that had been just about to mindwipe me released me, and all three of them began to tear at their implants, as if desperate to remove the silver that was poisoning them. They fell to the ground, shrieking and clawing at their bodies, and Gilmore looked down at them, smiling with satisfaction.

"I do so enjoy my work," he said. Then he looked at me and jabbed the Argentum Perditor into my side once more. "No more tricks. Understand?"

I nodded, and we stepped around the screaming vampires and continued heading eastward.

Evidently, I'd been wrong about Gilmore. He wasn't worried about revealing his true identity. Then again, it wasn't as if the existence of the Argentum Perditor was common knowledge. Maybe he was counting on no one being able to associate the three silverfied Red Tide vamps with the Silversmith. Or maybe he just didn't give a damn. Demons can be like that.

We'd gone less than half a block before coming to a bar I'd passed earlier called Born of Man and Woman. It was a humansonly place, one of the few in the city, and a number of its patrons were standing on the sidewalk, watching us as we approached.

"I'm warning you," Gilmore said as we drew closer. "Don't say a word."

The half dozen men and women weren't exactly the shy, retiring type. They were well muscled, heavily tattooed and pierced, and clad in denim, leather, and steel-toed boots. Humans need to be tough to survive in Nekropolis, and only the toughest can hope to hold their own in Ruination Row. It looked to me like these men and women were right at home here.

The tallest of them was a middle-aged man with long brown hair and a full beard. He had a wicked-looking scar on his right cheek, and wore an Apocalyptica T-shirt beneath a leather vest, and in his right hand he gripped the rubber-coated handle of an aluminum bat. He stepped forward to meet us as we approached.

"We heard there was trouble on the street with some Redfangs," he said in voice roughed by too much booze and too many cigarettes. "We came outside to see what was up. That was some mighty powerful magic you used to deal with them, demon."

"Just a little spell to overload their circuits," Gilmore lied smoothly. "Nothing special about it. Now if you'll excuse us…"

Gilmore made to step around the man, but he raised his bat to block the demon's way.

"My name's RJ I own the joint." He nodded to the bar. "It's a kind of oasis, you know? A place where humans can go to be around their own kind and relax."

Gilmore struggled to keep the irritation out of his voice as he spoke. "That's all very interesting, but I don't see –"

RJ interrupted. "We humans look after each other here in Ruination Row." His gaze flicked to me, then returned to Gilmore. "Looks to me like you're forcing this man to accompany you. That doesn't sit well with me, demon, and it doesn't sit well with my friends."

The other men and women gathered on the sidewalk shot Gilmore dark looks as they murmured their agreement.

Gilmore looked at RJ for a moment before throwing back his head and laughing.

"You think this man is human? That's hysterical! This is Matthew Richter. The zombie detective?"

RJ looked at me again, more closely this time. "Heard of him. Can't say I know him." He inspected me a moment longer before adding, "Skin looks like that of a living man." He reached out, gently pinched a bit of my cheek between his thumb and forefinger and rolled it around a bit. "Feels real," he said and he pulled his hand away.

Gilmore frowned. "Take a look at his clothes," he said.

"So the man's a mess," RJ said. "That doesn't make him a zombie."

I was beginning to worry. The last distraction I'd tried to arrange hadn't worked out so well, and the last thing I wanted was for RJ and his friends to be transformed into silver statues. I needed to find a way to end this – fast. If only I'd still been a zombie, none of this would have…

Then I realized I'd been going about this all wrong. I'd been thinking of being human as a weakness. Instead, I should have viewed it as a strength.

I carry all sorts of weapons on my person, and some of them have sharp edges. While Gilmore's attention was on RJ, I reached into one of my pockets and found a switchblade. I clicked it open and ran my index finger along the edge of the blade. Then I removed my hand and held it up for everyone to see.

Gilmore goggled as he looked at the line of blood trickling from the wound on my finger.

I smiled at him. "Like you told me, I didn't say a word."

Gilmore spun toward RJ and raised the Argentum Perditor, but he was too late to avoid getting a face full of aluminum. Demons are tougher than humans, but not tougher than half a dozen. RJ's friends moved in and started working on Gilmore, punching and kicking, and it didn't take long before the demon was lying on the ground, moaning in pain, his arms and legs bent at awkward angles, his face swollen, bruised, and bloody.

When my fellow humans stepped back, I bent down and pried the Argentum Perditor out of Gilmore's hand and tucked it into my pocket. I wiped the blood from my finger on Gilmore's shirt before straightening. Then I turned to RJ.

"Thanks for the help," I said. I offered my hand to shake, and RJ grinned as he took it. The man's grip was strong and warm, and it felt good to shake another man's hand – another living man's – and really feel it.

"No problem," he said. "All the Darkfolk can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but demons really annoy me." He gave Gilmore a last half-hearted kick the ribs, and the demon moaned loudly. RJ turned back to me. "You want to come on in and have a drink? It's on the house."

I was tempted. It had been several years since I'd tasted anything, and a drink sounded damn good right then. But I had somewhere very important to be.

"I'll have to take a rain check," I said. "But I want to thank you all one last time. Lately, I've been worrying that Nekropolis isn't the best place for a human to live, but now…" I smiled. "Now I think it's not so bad."

RJ smiled. "Not so long as we watch out for each other."

We shook hands one last time, and I headed west once more, while RJ and his friends returned to their bar. We left Gilmore lying on the sidewalk, moaning and trying to find the strength to get to his feet. I knew the demon would recover, and eventually he'd come looking for me, determined to make me pay for what I'd done to him, but right then, I didn't care. All that mattered to me was getting home, putting my arms around the woman I love, and for the first time since I'd met her, knowing what it felt like to touch her.

BOOK III

DARK WAR

ONE

The air rippled like disturbed water, and the world folded in on itself, distorting this way and that, as if reality had been thrown into a vast cosmic Mixmaster and some deity had hit the on switch. When time and space finally decided to behave themselves once again, Devona and I found ourselves standing in exactly the same place as when we'd left. Except not.

"This is as close as I can get you," Darius said. "The wardspells on the House prevent me from materializing inside. Otherwise, I'd take you all the way in."

Darius had been holding onto our arms, but now that we'd reached our destination, he released his grip. The three of us – Darius, Devona, and I – stood in an alley across the street from a familiar white three-story building with green shutters and matching shingles. The House of Dark Delights was located on the southeast end of Sybarite Street within the Sprawl, the Dominion of the Demon Queen Varvara. At least, that's who rules the Sprawl in our Nekropolis, but I wasn't sure who was in charge in this one. Maybe no one, if the chaos raging in the street was any indication.

The Sprawl is a nightmarish combination of Vegas and rushhour Manhattan, where predators of all kinds come to stalk their prey, and where, if the hunters aren't careful, they can all too easily become the hunted. The sidewalks of the Sprawl are choked with people in search of thrills – the darker and more decadent, the better – and the never-ending traffic roars by at speeds so appalling that even the most experienced Autobahn driver back on Earth would give serious thought to selling their car and converting to pedestrianism. And this wasn't just any street in the Sprawl – this was Sybarite Street, where the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) bars, clubs, restaurants, shops, and attractions in the city were located. So a certain amount of madness and mayhem was normal here. But the pandemonium currently raging in the street was shocking, even by Nekropolitan standards.

Bestial creatures of a type I'd never seen before filled the streets. They possessed similar features – pronounced brow ridges, sharp jagged teeth, bloodshot eyes, clawed hands, long shaggy hair – and misshapen bodies whose arms and legs didn't always match: some limbs were short and thickly muscled, while others were overlong and skeletally thin. Along with their twisted physiology, the creatures shared a similarly crazed temperament. They broke windows, tore doors off hinges, even bent street lamps and overturned cars with incredible strength. They gorged on food, swilled booze, injected drugs, had sex – consensual or not – out in the open, with no regard for modesty or shame. They raced cars up and down the street, ramming into other vehicles, mowing down pedestrians, or slamming into buildings. Most of all, they fought each other with savage delight, sometimes using weapons, but more often employing only their claws and fangs. Blood ran freely, spraying the air, splattering onto the ground, and running through the gutters in crimson streams. Dead bodies littered the sidewalks and streets, and more than a few of the creatures took advantage of the carnage to indulge in a bit of cannibalism or necrophilia, often at the same time. And all the while the creatures laughed, shouted, and roared with delight, even when their actions left them wounded, mutilated, or dying – or perhaps especially then. Pleasure or pain, it was all the same to them. The beasts appeared to live only for sensation, the more intense the better.

It only made sense, though, considering what the creatures were: the physical incarnation of everything cruel and selfish within a man or woman's soul, liberated from all restraint and conscience and given free rein to do whatever they pleased, and to whomever they pleased.

They were Hydes.

The Sprawl is never quiet, but the chaotic din here was so loud that we had to shout to hear each other. I was grateful that my eardrums were as dead as the rest of me, or else I might've found the noise level painful instead of merely irritating.

"You told us it was bad here, but I never imagined it would be anything like this!" Devona said. "You should've brought an army instead of just the two of us!"

Darius shrugged. "It's hard enough traveling between dimensions on my own, let alone bringing people with me. Two is about all I can manage."

"Two is good," I said. "I've been getting sick of tagalongs, lately."

Devona looked out upon the mad riot taking place before us, her brow furrowing in concentration. Our goal was simply stated: we needed to enter the House of Dark Delights and put a stop to the madness that had gripped this Nekropolis – but in order to do that, we first had to cross the hellish war zone that was Sybarite Street. Devona was busy trying to figure out a way to make that happen, but she was an expert in security, not battle strategy. We share a telepathic link that enables us to know what the other is feeling most of the time, and I could sense her mounting anxiety. She felt as if she was in way over her head here, and I didn't blame her. I felt the same way. Devona and I had been in dangerous situations before, but nothing quite like this. I wasn't afraid of getting hurt or killed. I'm a zombie. I don't feel pain, and I'm just about as dead as I'm ever going to be. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't eager to step out into the street and be torn apart by those psychotic creatures, but only because it would be a real pain in the ass to put me back together. I was afraid for Devona. Normally she can handle herself in a fight just fine. She's smart as hell, and as a half-vampire, she's supernaturally strong and swift – but she was also several months pregnant.

She turned to look at me. "What do you think?"

"I think this is the last time I accept an invitation to travel to a parallel world."

A few hours earlier, Devona and I had been working at the Midnight Watch, the security business she owns and I sometimes help out with. Dr Moreau, the scientist who runs the House of Pain, was planning a big shindig to celebrate the unveiling of a whole new line of genetic mutations, kind of like the Nekropolis version of a fashion show. Devona had been building the business by leaps and bounds since she'd started it, and Dr M – impressed by the Midnight Watch's growing reputation – had come to her to handle the security for his event. It was a high-profile gig, and Devona was determined that everything would go off without a hitch. We were in her office, going over her security plans for the tenth time – well, she was going over them; I was doing my best to look like I was still paying attention – when Darius appeared out of nowhere. The Sideways Man explained to us that he'd just come from an alternate Nekropolis that was in desperate need of our help.

"Not to sound unsympathetic," I'd told him, "but I have a hard enough time trying to keep this Nekropolis in one piece. Don't they have anyone over there who can take care of the problem, whatever it is?"

"One man was working on it, but he got captured. He did manage to get a message to me, though. It was very simple: Go get Matt."

"How do you know he meant me? Maybe he was referring to a different Matt."

Darius smiled. "I doubt it, considering the man who gave me the message was you."

I could hardly turn down a request for help from myself, could I?

Devona and I stopped worrying about Dr M's mutant extravaganza as Darius filled us in on what was happening in that other Nekropolis. When he finished, we left the Midnight Watch, made a stop to pick up supplies, and then Darius did his thing – I'm not sure how; he's pretty closemouthed about how his abilities work – and we found ourselves transported to this insane version of our city. Well… more insane than usual.

I'd had reservations about Devona coming along, given her current, ah, state of health, but she insisted, told me that she was made of sterner stuff than a fully human woman and added that I should stop being such a typical man. I'd pointed out to her that since I was a self-willed zombie – the only one that's ever existed, from what I've been told – I was hardly a typical anything, but she just said, "Dead or alive, a man's a man," and that was the end of that. But now that we were here and I could see just how bad the situation was in this Nekropolis, I wished I'd tried harder to talk her out of coming. But we were here now, for better or worse, and we had a job to do.

Devona was an attractive petite blonde who looked to be in her late twenties but was actually closer to eighty. The half-vampire blood flowing through her veins that gave her supernatural strength had the side benefit of keeping her looking young. When working, she usually wears a skin-tight black leather outfit which is something of a fetishist's dream – and which I appreciate looking at quite a bit. Hey, I may be dead, but I'm not that dead. Devona's outfit was a bit snug around her belly, but since she was only a few months along in her pregnancy, she could still fit into her gear, though I doubted she'd be able to for much longer.

Unlike Devona, my supernatural state of non-life doesn't do much for my appearance. I still look like I'm in my late thirties – and always will, I suppose – but unless I've had a recent application of preservative spells courtesy of Papa Chatha, my local houngan, my skin tends to be grayish green and flaky around the edges. Basically, I often look – and unfortunately smell – like something that's been left to mold in the refrigerator too long. This day I was halfway through the cycle of my current round of preservative spells, so while my flesh was a bit discolored and I smelled like trash that needed to be taken out, all things considered I wasn't too bad. When I was alive and living on Earth (in Cleveland, to be precise), I'd worked as a homicide detective, and I still dressed like I had then: white shirt, gray suit, black shoes, and tie. I tended to wear ties with cartoon characters on them – Looney Tunes are a particular favorite – and today I was sporting my Tasmanian Devil tie.

We needed to get across the street and enter the House of Dark Delights, and before we'd left our dimension, we'd worked out a plan for accomplishing this. The only problem was we hadn't realized just how many of the rampaging Hydes would be in our way. I was starting to regret my earlier comment about being glad Darius had brought only Devona and me. From the looks of things, we could've used some backup. Overkill would've come in handy right then, or maybe the Crimson Shadow. But the three of us would have to do.

I turned to Devona and started to speak, but I stopped myself before the first word came out. As a zombie, I'm not exactly the fastest creature in the supernatural kingdom. Even a normal living human is faster than I am. Devona can move far more swiftly than me – not to mention how much stronger she is – and when it came to carrying out an attack, it only made sense for her to take the lead. I wasn't sexist. As a cop, I'd worked with plenty of women who were just as good if not better at their jobs than men were, and Devona and I had worked enough cases together for me to fully respect her capabilities. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't put aside the fact that Devona was pregnant. It should've been impossible. After all, she's a half-vampire and I'm dead – meaning than I'm not functional in certain key biological areas, if you catch my drift. But not long ago, I'd helped recover a stolen artifact for Edrigu, the Darklord who rules the Dead, and he'd rewarded me with a magical coin that could grant me one day, and one day only, of mortal life again.

Once it became possible for Devona and me to have children, we discussed whether we wanted to. Devona was more than eager, me less so. After all, Nekropolis can be an insanely dangerous place – not exactly the best environment for raising children. But in the end I agreed and used the coin, and afterward, I was able to, er, get back in the game, so to speak. But things rarely go smoothly in Nekropolis. There were complications and we almost missed our opportunity, but that, as they say, is a story for another time. In the end, we managed to accomplish our goal and – with a bit of help from a fertility spell provided by Papa Chatha – Devona had conceived. So while I'm certain I'd have been hesitant for Devona to spring into action even if her pregnancy had been a normal one, the fact that it was literally a once-in-a-lifetime event made me even more reluctant to see her rush into a street full of homicidal monsters.

She recognized my hesitation for what it was, and she reached out to squeeze my arm in a familiar gesture of reassurance. I can't feel touch, but I can feel pressure, so she always makes sure to squeeze hard.

"Don't worry, Matt. I'll be OK." Her tone was confident, but I could see a trace of worry in her eyes, and I knew she was having similar thoughts, even if she'd never admit to it. But she didn't have to. Our telepathic link told me the truth.

I told myself that she was a fully capable adult who'd proven on numerous occasions that she could handle herself in dangerous situations. And we'd known this was going to be a risky mission when we'd agreed to accompany Darius. Still, it's not an easy thing to see the woman you love walk into battle – especially when she's carrying your child.

I was about to lie and tell her I knew she was going to be OK, when a rustling noise sounded behind us in the alley. The three of us turned to look and saw a hulking female Hyde like those rioting out in the street. The same bestial aspect and mismatched limbs, the same madness gleaming in her eyes, but there was one important difference: this creature had no skin.

"What do we have here?" she said in a guttural voice. Her red wet facial muscles pulled her mouth into a leering smile, the better to display her mouthful of sharp, jagged teeth. "You three need to join the party."

She leaned forward and I thought at first she was going to attack us, but instead she opened her mouth wide and breathed on us. Devona and Darius immediately started gagging, and I knew that the Hyde's breath must've been truly horrendous. Fortunately, the stench had no effect on me. Sometimes there are advantages to being dead, such as no functioning sense of smell.

The Hyde straightened and watched us for a moment, almost as if she were waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, she scowled.

"What's wrong? Why haven't you changed?"

"Well, Glassine, I'm a zombie, so I only breathe in order to take in enough air to speak. Since no air exchange occurs within my lungs, I can't be infected by the plague you're carrying. And as for my companions, they were each inoculated against your disease before we left home."

Glassine's scowl deepened. "How do you know my name?"

"We have a Glassine back where I come from. Her ancestor was a scientist who invented a formula for invisibility. Unfortunately, when she tried to use the formula on herself, it only made her skin transparent. Looks like the same thing happened to you in this dimension too."

Glassine leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she got a better look at me.

"Do I know you?"

"One of me, maybe."

I reached inside one of jacket pockets and brought out a gun. It wasn't my 9mm – I carry that on a shoulder holster hidden by my jacket – and it wasn't my squirt gun, which I keep filled with a combination of holy water, garlic juice, liquid wolfsbane, and a few other special ingredients. This was a gleaming chrome device that looked more like a piece of medical equipment than a weapon. Fortunately for me, it was both. I squeezed the trigger and a burst of yellow gas struck Glassine in the face. She pulled back, coughing.

"What – the hell – was that?" she demanded between coughs.

"A cure for what ails you," I said.

Glassine's coughing gave way to harsh gagging, and she clawed at her throat, desperate to catch a breath. Her eyes bulged wildly, and for an instant I feared that the chemical I'd dosed her with had poisoned her – perhaps due to some unanticipated physiological differences between denizens of this Nekropolis and mine – but a moment later her breathing eased and a transformation began to sweep over her body. Her skin remained transparent, which was a natural state for her, but her body became symmetrical again – arms and legs properly proportioned and the same length – her claws became fingernails, and her teeth receded into her gums, becoming less sharp. Her wild tangle of hair smoothed out, her pronounced brow became less so, and best of all, the feral gleam in her eyes faded, to be replaced by confusion.

Glassine, normal once more – or at least looking her version of normal – took in the three of us, and while I saw recognition in her eyes, it didn't drive out the confusion.

"Matt? Devona? Is that you?" Her voice, though no longer guttural, was a bit raspy. The after-effect of all that coughing, I supposed. "You both look so different."

"I hate to do this, Glassine, but I really don't have a choice." I stepped forward, shifted my gas gun to my left hand, balled my right hand into a fist, and struck Glassine a solid blow to the jaw. Her eyes rolled white, her body went limp, and she started to collapse. Devona darted forward lightning-fast and caught the transparent woman before she could fall and lowered her gently to the ground.

Devona scowled at me as she straightened. "Did you have to hit her so hard?"

"I had to make sure she went down before she could be re-infected." As if to illustrate my words, Glassine's body convulsed and she began to change back to her bestial state. Thankfully, she remained unconscious once the transformation was complete. I had no idea how long she'd stay that way, though.

"Damn, that was fast!" Devona said. She turned to Darius. "You weren't exaggerating when you told us how contagious the Hyde plague was."

I scowled as a thought occurred to me. "If it's so contagious," I said to Darius, "how did you avoid getting infected the last time you were here?"

He smiled. "Who said I did? But I've picked up a lot of interesting… souvenirs during my travels between Nekropolises… Nekropoli? A universal antidote was one of them. Unfortunately, I used my final dose during my last trip here to counteract the transformation just as it started to take hold of me. If it wasn't for Bennie's inoculation, I'd look like her right now." He nodded to Glassine.

"At least she's out of action for the time being," I said. "With any luck, she'll stay unconscious until it's all over."

"We can't just leave her here," Devona said. "If one of the others finds her like this, she'll be easy prey."

"We don't have time to move her," I pointed out. "The longer we stand here talking, the greater the chance that another of the Hydes will discover us. And even if we did have time, where could we take her? The moment we leave the alley, we'll be spotted."

"I suppose you're right," Devona said, but she didn't sound happy about it. I didn't blame her. I didn't like the idea of leaving the unconscious Glassine behind either, even if she was currently a Hyde. But we really didn't have a choice, not if we wanted to do what we'd come here for – and survive long enough to go home. It was possible that Glassine might fall victim to one or more of the other Hydes before we could fix things, and after seeing the savage creatures rioting out in the street, I had a pretty good idea of the unpleasant things that would happen to her if she were discovered. But there was nothing we could do about that except work as fast as we could and hope it would be enough. Leaving Glassine like this would be hard, but I had a bad feeling it would only be the first of a number of tough choices we'd be forced to make before this was over.

I tucked away my gas gun and withdrew several plastic-coated yellow spheres the size of ping-pong balls from my jacket pocket. Devona and Darius also took out handfuls of spheres, though where Devona had been keeping hers, given how tight her leather outfit was, remained a mystery to me. The three of us walked to the mouth of the alley, a single sphere held in each of our right hands, ready to throw, the rest clasped tight in our left hands.

We then stepped onto the sidewalk and into Hell.

TWO

We tossed the first grenades underarm into the street, aiming at the Hydes closest to us. As soon as the spheres struck, they burst open, releasing yellow clouds of antidote gas, and every creature within range sucked in lungfuls of the stuff and began hacking. We didn't wait for the gas to take effect. As soon as the first wave of grenades detonated, we ran into the street and threw the next batch ahead of us to clear the way. We continued hurling grenades as we went, and within moments the homicidal chaos that had reigned in Sybarite Street gave way to mass confusion as clouds of yellow gas filled the air and dozens of the Hydes began to revert to their original forms. It wouldn't last – witness how long it had taken Glassine to become re-infected – but our goal wasn't to effect a permanent cure, at least not yet. Our goal was to create enough of a distraction so that we could cross the street and reach the House of Dark Delights, preferably without getting any limbs torn out of their sockets.

I've done a lot of difficult things during my time in Nekropolis, but crossing that dimension's version of Sybarite Street was one of the hardest. As soon as one of the Hydes reverted to his or her natural form, any unchanged creature close to them attacked, and the air was filled with the sounds of their screaming as they tried to escape and failed. It took everything I had to ignore their cries of agony and terror and force myself to keep running, and from the pained look on Devona's face, I knew she felt the same. I told myself that we were doing what we had to do, and maybe that was true, but it sure as hell didn't make it any easier.

We were two-thirds of the way across the street when a Hyde behind the wheel of an Agony DeLite aimed his vehicle at us and tromped on the accelerator. Agony DeLites are flesh-tech, formed from the bodies of a dozen sadomasochists. The vehicles run on pain, and the harder their drivers abuse them, the faster they go. I don't know what the Hyde inside the vehicle was doing to motivate his car, but it screamed in pleasure as it came toward us, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase on the asphalt. A glance showed me that the driver had the windows up, not that it mattered. Even if he got a dose of antidote and began to change back to normal, it wouldn't be in time for him to stop the car. I wasn't worried about Devona; I knew she could leap out of the way in time, but Darius and I were a good deal slower. Darius might be able to avoid being hit, but I'd end up zombie roadkill for sure. I'd survive the impact, but I'd sustain so many broken bones, I'd end up as little more than a rattling skin bag – zombie maracas. I figured I'd better do something to avoid that, seeing as how it would make saving this dimension's Nekropolis a bit harder.

I still had a couple gas grenades in my left hand, so I reached into my pants pocket with my right and pulled out an ancient coin. This was one of Charon's coins, paid to the ferryman as a fee for passage to the Land of the Dead. In my case, its magic had allowed me to purchase twenty-four hours as a living man. I'd used it, so its magic was gone, or at least that one aspect of its magic was gone. But that didn't mean the coin was without power. Magic items are funny. Some work like batteries: once their juice is used up, they're worthless. Others – especially objects of significant power – are more complicated. If you follow the instructions carefully and take the proper precautions, they'll work for you. But if you screw anything up, or if you get greedy and try to use them one more time than you should, they'll turn around and bite you on the ass in spectacularly awful ways. I was counting on the coin being the latter type of object. If I was wrong… well, I hoped Devona and Darius wouldn't mind carting around an undead bag of bone shards for a while.

I flipped the coin at the Agony DeLite. It spun end over end through the air, struck the vehicle on its fleshy hood, and bounced off. But that brief contact was enough for the coin's magic to take effect. The vehicle's nearly orgasmic shrieks became pained gasps, and its skin went from a healthy pink to a sickly gray-green. It lost speed and began wobbling back and forth, its discolored flesh growing hard and leathery, its windshield clouding over, as if it were a huge cyclopean eye covered by a thick, milky cataract. The car wheezed, veered off to the right, and stumbled by without hitting any of us. It struck a street lamp made from a large spinal column and curving rib bones, shattering it. The impact brought the vehicle to a sudden halt, and with a rattling cough the engine – hell, the whole damned car – died.

The driver's door flew open and the operator of the vehicle climbed out, looking mad as hell and no worse for the collision with the street lamp. The Hyde started toward us, fangs bared, claws outstretched, ready to inflict some serious damage on the person responsible for spoiling his fun. But he didn't get five steps from the dead Agony DeLite – which was suffering from an advanced state of decay, its flesh liquefying and beginning to slide off its skeletal chassis – when his own flesh began to take on a gray cast and his breathing became labored. He made it two more steps before his face contorted in a grimace and he clutched his chest. A second later he collapsed to the ground, as dead as his vehicle.

I'd hope that the coin's death energy would affect the vehicle, though I hadn't expected the effect to be quite so dramatic. But I hadn't realized the coin's magic might also affect the driver, whose bare hands had no doubt been gripping the steering wheel when the coin struck the Agony DeLite. As we watched, the creature returned to his natural form in death, revealing his true self to be a youthful-appearing vampire that I didn't recognize. I knew the vampire hadn't exactly been an innocent bystander – I'd lived in Nekropolis too long to believe any of its citizens are completely innocent – but he'd attacked us only because the Hyde plague had transformed him into a maniacally murderous beast. And without meaning to, I'd killed him. I half-expected him to open his eyes and sit up – after all, he was a vampire – but he remained motionless. I guess a coin imbued with powerful death magic is just as effective as a wooden stake for his kind.

I glanced at Devona to see if she recognized him, but she shook her head. Whoever I'd killed, it hadn't been someone either of us knew, but that didn't make me feel any better about it. I hoped he'd be the last casualty before this day was over, but somehow I doubted it.

The three of us continued on, throwing gas grenades and doing our best to avoid the slashing claws of the rioting Hydes. At one point, I ran out of grenades and switched to my gas gun.

I swiveled my weapon to the right, intending to fire a burst of antidote at a group of Hydes. But before I could squeeze the trigger, a Hyde lunged toward me from the side, a glowing blade clutched in his oversized paw. He wore the white uniform of a Bonegetter, one of Victor Baron's employees who scour Nekropolis in search of lost and discarded body parts, or better yet, entire bodies, of which there are quite an abundance, given the all-toooften violent nature of the Darkfolk. I recognized the instrument he held as a laser scalpel, a device that cuts through flesh and bone as if they were water – an exceptionally useful tool for performing vivisections on the go. Before I could react, the Bonegetter-Hyde slashed down with his laser scalpel and cut through my right wrist. My hand, still holding onto the gas gun, fell to the ground.

I felt no pain since my nerve-endings are as dead as the rest of me, and even if the laser scalpel hadn't automatically cauterized my wound, no blood would've spurted forth from my wrist stump. But that didn't mean I wasn't irritated to lose the hand, or more importantly right then, the gas gun that it held.

The Bonegetter-Hyde looked at me and grinned.

"So what are you going to do now, deader?" he growled.

"This," I said, and concentrated.

My hand flexed its muscles, managed to aim the gas gun's muzzle in the general direction of the Bonegetter-Hyde, and then pulled the trigger. A burst of yellowish gas shot up out of the Hyde's face, and he staggered back, coughing. He dropped the laser scalpel as he moved away from me, and I was half-tempted to retrieve the device and bury it in the Bonegetter's eye for what he'd done. But I didn't. For one thing, he was already in the process of changing back into his true form, and for another, I needed to get my right hand back ASAP.

I knelt down and held my wrist stump out toward my severed hand. Small tendrils of grayish-green flesh extended from both the stump and my hand, and within seconds my hand had reattached itself to my body. I stood up, and since my hand still held onto the gun, I tightened my grip on the weapon to test how successful the rejoining had been. The hand flexed just fine, and I turned and fired a fresh burst of gas at another group of Hydes that were determined to finish what their Bonegetter brother had started.

I was thrilled – and to be honest, more than a bit surprised – that the spell had worked. Over the years I've developed an unfortunate habit of losing pieces of myself in the line of duty, and I'd always relied on Papa Chatha to put me back together. But not long ago I'd literally lost my head… well, technically it had been my body that I had lost, but you get the idea. That injury had been beyond Papa's ability to repair, and I had to go to Victor Baron, the original Frankenstein monster, to get my head put back on my body. Papa's professional pride had been wounded, and he'd devoted himself to developing a spell that would allow me to reattach body parts in the field, at least temporarily. And what was even cooler, I could still exert control over any part of my body, whether it was attached to me or not. This was the first time I'd had the opportunity to try out the spell, and I was impressed by the results. Papa had been quick to caution me that the spell didn't make permanent fixes, though. The severed parts didn't literally rejoin with my body. They were held in place with strips of flesh, almost like bandages, and they would still function since my will animated them, but if I didn't get a more permanent repair done within twenty-four hours, any severed parts would fall off and stay off, and I'd no longer be able to control them. Still, as a temporary fix, the spell was more than adequate, as demonstrated by the fact that it had just saved my undead ass from getting sliced and diced by a homicidal Hyde wielding a high-tech surgical tool.

Devona, Darius, and I continued fighting, and though we finally made it to the other side of the street, we didn't get there entirely intact. I had several deep slashes on my arms and chest, as did Devona. My wounds were nothing to worry about; they didn't bleed and none of them were serious enough to slow me down, but the sight of Devona's injuries made me feel sick. They bled a lot, and even though they were healing rapidly, I couldn't help fearing damage had been done to the baby inside her. Sensing my worry, Devona gave me a smile, but it didn't do much to reassure me. Even though I knew rationally that she was all right, I also knew I wouldn't feel better until we'd done what we'd come to this dimension for and returned home safe and sound.

Though Darius had a few scratches, he'd fared better than either of us in the injury department, no doubt having picked up more than a few survival skills during the course of his interdimensional travels. While the three of us had made it across Sybarite Street relatively intact, there was no guarantee we'd remain that way. The clouds of yellow gas we'd released into the street were beginning to dissipate, and the Hydes who'd been returned to their true forms were rapidly becoming re-infected by the plague. We'd managed to create the confusion we'd needed, but I knew it wouldn't last much longer. A few more moments, and the Hydes in the street would begin turning their attention to us, and once that happened, they'd come for us en masse, and no amount of strategy or trickery would save us then. We needed to get inside the House of Dark Delights, and we needed to do it fast.

In my Nekropolis, the House of Dark Delights is flanked by two businesses, a soul-modification parlor called Spiritus Mutatio and a casino called You Bet Your Life (a name which patrons often learn to their dismay should be taken literally). In this world, it had a Flensecrafters on one side, and a talent agency called Pickman's Models on the other. Otherwise, it looked much the same: a simple three-story white building with green shingles and matching shutters, no fence around the property, no bars on the windows, no obvious signs of any security precautions at all. But I knew the House was almost as well protected as a Darklord's stronghold. Testament to this was the fact that despite the wild, savage nature of the creatures that had taken over this Nekropolis, not one of the Hydes had set foot upon the property. The yard was intact, and the House's façade unmarred. We needed to get into the House, but attempting a break-in would be a fast, unpleasant, and extremely messy way of committing suicide.

Good thing I had a key.

We hurried up the front walk and stepped onto the porch. Nothing happened: no wardspells activated, no alarm sounded, and the front door didn't fly open to disgorge someone intent on killing us. So far, so good. We were out of gas grenades by this point, so we'd drawn our gas guns. Devona and Darius watched our backs while I shifted my gas gun to my left hand and removed a key from my shirt pocket. There was nothing special about it – it looked like any ordinary house key – but when I inserted it into the front lock and turned, I was rewarded with a rapid series of clicking sounds. And while we could hear the physical locks deactivating, we couldn't hear the door's wardspells powering down, but I knew they were. Or at least, I hoped they were. When the clicking noises ended, I waited for a count of five, as I'd been instructed, then I withdrew the key from the lock and tucked it back into my shirt pocket. I returned my gas gun to my right hand, and then – even though I didn't need to breathe – I took a deep breath before gripping the door knob and turning it.

The key had been given to us by Bennie, the owner of the House of Dark Delights in our world. And though according to Darius this dimension had its own version of Bennie who owned this House, that didn't mean our Bennie's key would successfully open this Bennie's lock, if you know what I mean. So as I pushed the door open, I steeled myself for any number of nasty physical and mystical surprises to go off in our faces, but the door swung open easily and quietly, without blasting us into nonexistence.

I turned to tell Devona and Darius that everything was all right, only to see a mass of Hydes running across the lawn toward us. Evidently their fear of Bennie had been overridden by their desire to get their claws on some fresh meat. Devona saw the look on my face, and without turning to glance over her shoulder, she grabbed hold of Darius and me by the arm, shoved us inside, and then leaped in after us. I scrambled to slam the door shut, and flipped the deadbolt switch just as the first Hyde slammed into the door. The one switch activated all the locks, both physical and mystical, and despite the furious pounding on the other side of the door, there was no way the creatures could get inside now. We were safe, in an out-of-the-frying-pan, intothe-fire kind of way.

I looked around, but aside from the three of us, the foyer was empty. Bennie usually has at least one bouncer working the door, more when business is especially good, but we were alone. I wasn't sure if this was a good sign or not, but since it meant no one was currently trying to kill us, I decided to take it as a positive development.

The House of Dark Delights is the premier bordello in Nekropolis. Whatever your sexual proclivities, capabilities, desires, fantasies, or fetishes, the House of Dark Delights can provide what you're looking for – if you have the darkgems to pay for it, that is. The hallways and rooms are perfumed with a variety of exoticsmelling aphrodisiacs – not that I can smell any of them or that they'd have any effect on my dead flesh if I could. And it's noisy: conversation from customers waiting for their "appointments" to begin, background music playing, laughter, sighs, moans, and cries of ecstasy or pain – often both at the same time – from behind closed doors. It was noisy, all right, but all the sound seemed to be coming from a single direction: the lounge. And instead of the usual good-natured buzz of conversation and laughter, the air was filled with guttural animalistic noises more suited to a zoo.

I turned to Devona. "Remind me how much we're getting paid for this job."

"Nothing," she said.

I sighed. "Right."

We headed slowly down the foyer and toward the lounge, gas guns held at the ready. Devona and me in front, Darius behind us, covering our rear. We did our best to move silently, though given how much noise was coming from the lounge, we really didn't need to bother. We could've skipped down the hallway singing "We're Off to See the Wizard," at the top of our lungs, and I doubt anyone would've heard us. When we reached the end of the hallway, we flattened our backs against the wall and peered into the lounge.

This lounge – just like its counterpart back in my Nekropolis – was decorated like a tasteful upscale Earth tavern with black lacquer tables and chairs, and Mind's Eye sets mounted on the walls. The centerpiece of the lounge was a large circular bar in the middle of the room where the bartenders on duty – witches and warlocks who specialize in potion-making – mix any aphrodisiac or performance-enhancing drink you desire. Normally the lounge is pretty lively, but in the wake of the plague that had swept through this Nekropolis, it had become a scene of absolute and utter depravity that would've made Caligula himself blush like the most cloistered of nuns. The lounge was packed wall-towall with the same savage creatures that infested the street outside, and the Hydes were doing their best to cause just as much havoc: fighting and screwing – often at the same time – and roaring with dark laughter whenever one of them received an especially nasty injury. The Hydes were so numerous and they shared so many common physical traits that it was almost impossible to tell them apart, but I recognized a few. Two of the creatures had holo implants where their eyes should've been, and I guessed they were the vampires Halima and Resham, a brother and sister who often came to the lounge merely to find a place where they could sit and play holoshards for hours on end without being interrupted. They were playing games of an entirely different sort now, but not with each other, at least. One of the creatures possessed somewhat feline features, and I guessed she was Lourdes, a werecat waitress employed by Bennie, and the particularly monstrous creature who was, ah, servicing her appeared to be Lyra, a woman's spirit who'd taken up residence in the body of the genetically altered mixblood lyke who'd killed her. A male lyke. I thought I recognized some others, but I forced myself to ignore them. We hadn't come here to help them, at least not directly. We'd come to help the Hyde sitting atop the bar and surveying the bacchanalia taking placing place with the self-satisfied air of a proud ruler.

This Hyde was larger and more massive than the others, nearly twice their size, and the chair that had been placed on the bar barely supported its weight. It was wearing the torn remnants of a black tuxedo, and while its profusion of body hair was just as wild and shaggy as that of the other creatures, where theirs was brown, this Hyde's was a bright reddish-orange. Given the creature's bestial features, it was difficult to tell its gender, but after a moment its facial features softened a bit and its chest swelled, and I knew that, while it had been male when we first got here, it had now become female. No doubt about it, then. It was Bennie. Sometimes Master Benedict, sometimes Madame Bendetta, but always owner and operator of the House of Dark Delights.

Darius leaned close and spoke in my ear, more so that I could hear him over the din than to avoid being overheard by the Hydes. "How do you want to play this? Direct assault? Sneak attack?"

"How about a little of both?" I said.

I checked the readout on my gas gun and saw that I had a little less than half my ammunition left. I popped a couple fresh ampoules into the chamber to reload, and Devona and Darius did the same. We then stepped into the lounge and started firing.

The guns had a range of about six feet; after that, the gas dissipated too much to be effective. But there were so many Hydes packed into the lounge that for every burst of gas we fired, a half dozen or so began to change back to their normal selves. We kept firing around us as we moved farther into the lounge, rapidly depleting our supply of gas, but we only made it halfway to the bar before the Hydes realized what was happening, abandoned their orgy of sex and violence, and attacked. A crowd of the creatures came toward us, shoving aside or in more than a few cases stomping on those caught in the throes of transformation in order to reach us. I knew that even if we managed to dose our attackers with antidote gas, at least some of them would reach us before the antidote could take hold. Time to switch tactics.

"You two keep hitting them with the antidote!" I said, and then flicked the selector switch on my gun. I picked out the fastest, meanest-looking Hydes coming toward us – the ones I judged had the best chance of reaching us before the antidote could affect them – took aim, and fired.

Our guns weren't loaded only with antidote to the Hyde plague. They also fired chemical weapons of an entirely different sort. A tiny dart shot out of my gun's muzzle and streaked through the air toward a particularly grotesque Hyde that appeared to be part reptilian. I guessed his true form was that of a demon, but luckily his flesh was only partially covered by green scales, and the dart struck him on a soft part of his neck. He took two more steps before his eyes went wide with shock, then he doubled over, howling with pain as he grabbed his crotch.

I couldn't help grinning. A cocktail of instant syphilis, herpes, and gonorrhea was a potent weapon indeed.

So we continued fighting our way across the lounge toward the bar, Devona and Darius dosing Hydes with antidote, me making life extremely uncomfortable for any of the creatures who came too near. I kept glancing at Bennie as we drew closer to him/her, but instead of seeming concerned at our approach, Bennie looked amused, as if we were no more of a threat than a trio of actors in a Mind's Eye program.

Lyra broke off from her enthusiastic coupling with Lourdes to attack us, and I had no choice but to hit her with a VD dart, and when that didn't do much more than slow her down a little, I hit her with a second and third. She collapsed to the floor and writhed in agony, and while I knew she wasn't exactly the same Lyra as the one who lived in my Nekropolis, she was close enough, and I felt awful for having to put her through so much pain. But as least she was still alive, and hopefully she'd stay that way – if we could reach Bennie and put a stop to this plague.

By the time we were within ten feet of the bar, Darius' forehead dripped with sweat, and he looked exhausted. Despite his ability to traverse dimensions, he was only human, but since Devona and I were more than that (or perhaps in my case, less) we didn't tire, and the two of us were still in fine fighting shape when we reached the bar. Now that we were in firing range of Bennie, I flipped the selector switch on my weapon back to antidote, and the three of us hit Bennie with a triple blast of gas. Bennie – who'd continued to switch between genders the entire time we fought to reach him/her – merely sat smiling as the yellow cloud enveloped him.

The rest of the Hydes in the lounge stopped what they were doing, and all of us watched and waited to see what would happen.

When the cloud dissipated, Bennie was still a he, but he was also still very much a Hyde.

"Nice try," he said in a bestial rumble. "But my ancestor invented the Hyde formula, and I take regular doses of it – or rather, a variation of the original recipe – to maintain my dual gender nature. Imbibing the potion over so many years has had a permanent effect on my physiology. Your pathetic antidote won't work on me."

It was strange to hear such intelligent words coming out of a Hyde's mouth. Not because of the way Bennie looked – I'd been in Nekropolis too long to judge any being's intelligence based on appearance – but because of the violently chaotic nature displayed by the Hydes we'd seen up to this point. I was impressed that Bennie was able to focus past his lust for mayhem long enough to form, let alone express, coherent thoughts.

I thought about hitting Bennie with a few dozen VD darts, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. The pain might lay him/her low, but the other Hydes would still tear us to pieces. Since at the moment the other creatures were watching and waiting to see what would happen next, I decided our best bet was to keep Bennie talking.

"Not our antidote," I said. "You made it. Or rather, another you made it, one who lives in a different dimension."

Bennie's features softened slightly as she became female again. She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she inspected us more closely. "I recognized Darius right away," she said. "When I saw you use your weapons, I guessed that he'd enlisted the help of another Bennie to try to stop me." She nodded at the weapons in our hands. "Those are just the sort of thing I'd design – especially the VD darts!" She grinned nastily. "But I didn't recognize you at first, Matt. Nor you, Devona. You both look quite a bit different than your counterparts in this world."

She raised her hand and snapped her fingers. At her command a pair of Hydes rose from behind the bar, each of them lifting a prisoner into view, a man and a woman, both bound in coils of red velvet rope. The rope was no doubt normally used for bondage games around here, but no one was playing right now.

The two prisoners were familiar, so much so that looking at them was like looking into a mirror, albeit a funhouse mirror. The male was dressed in gray suit and tie similar to mine, but his skin was ivory white, and he had overlong incisors which protruded down over his lower lip. The woman wore a scuffed and torn black leather outfit, and her flaking skin was greenish-gray.

"It's us!" Devona said. Then she frowned. "Sort of."

I looked closely at our other selves. "We're reversed. You're a zombie, while I… I don't look half-vampire, do I?"

"That's because you're not," the other me said. "You're the whole undead enchilada."

"Interesting. Do you like it?"

He gave me a sour look. "Do you like being a zombie?"

"Good point."

"Took you long enough to get here," Vampire Matt said. He looked at Darius. "I was beginning to think you didn't get my message."

"I got it," the Sideways Man said, "and I did as you asked."

"For all the good it did," Zombie Devona muttered. "Our Bennie is still a Hyde, and you three are in just as much trouble as Matt and I are."

"Speaking of Hydes," my Devona said, "I understand why you haven't changed, but from what we've seen, the Hyde plague affects vampires. Why didn't your Matt change?"

Bennie was a woman again, and she answered before Zombie Devona could. "Because your Bennie isn't the only one who was able to whip up an antidote to the plague. I gave my Matt a dose – one a good deal stronger than what your guns can deliver – so he'd remain unchanged. He and his Devona tried to stop me, and I wanted them both to witness the results of their failure."

"Stop you from doing what?" I asked. "I'm not exactly sure what your master plan is." I wanted to keep Bennie talking as long as I could. I'd been watching him/her closely, observing the gender change and trying to mark the exact moment when he/she was perfectly poised between male and female. I thought I had a good feel for it, but I needed to be absolutely sure.

Bennie Hyde looked at me as if I'd just asked the stupidest question imaginable. "Why, having fun, of course! I had a client who asked for a very special potion: one that would split him into two separate beings, one male, one female, so that he – or rather they – could…" Bennie trailed off and grinned. "I'm sure your imaginations can fill in the rest. No one on my staff had the skill necessary to create such an elixir, so I decided to give it a go. Since I already used a variation of my ancestor's original formula to shift gender, I figured all I'd have to do was tinker with the recipe a bit. Initial tests on lab animals were encouraging, and so I decided to try it on myself." Bennie – male again – smiled. "What can I say? I was curious to see what it would be like to truly become two genders instead of simply switching back and forth between them. But instead of splitting me into two separate beings, the formula turned me into a Hyde. But not just any Hyde – a super Hyde who could spread the transformation to others. Inside me, the formula mutated into an extremely contagious airborne virus, and all I had to do in order to make more Hydes was keep breathing. And once a new Hyde was created, it could spread the virus as well. By now every living – or semi-living – creature in my Nekropolis has been transformed. Only the dead are immune, but that's no great loss. The dead aren't much fun anyway. Now the city has become a non-stop party, and I get to have the fun of watching my Hydes run rampant, indulging their every dark whim until none of them are left."

"What then?" my Devona asked. "You'll be left to rule over a dead city. That doesn't sound like much fun."

Bennie shifted from male to female, and this time I was sure I saw the point where he/she hovered precisely between genders. I held my gas gun at my side, and while Bennie's gaze was focused on Devona, I flicked the selector switch on my weapon to its third setting.

"When I've squeezed every last drop of fun out of this city, I'll make Darius take me to another Nekropolis, and I'll start all over again there." Bennie grinned. "And when that one's used up, I'll move on to the next. How many different dimensions do you think there are that have Nekropolises? Hundreds? Thousands? I'm going to have so much fun playing with them all!"

Time to draw Bennie's attention back to me. "That's why your Matt had Darius get Devona and me. He knew that we'd go to our Bennie for help. There's no one else who understands more about your ancestor's formula and how to counter it."

"A smart move," Bennie Hyde said, "except it seems that your Bennie isn't quite the chemist I am. The antidote that Bennie gave you doesn't do more than temporarily change my Hydes back to their normal selves, and they're easily re-infected." She gestured, but I didn't take my eyes off her. I knew that all the Hydes we'd dosed with antidote gas had changed back to their bestial aspects again. But Bennie began to shift genders again, and I raised my weapon.

"My Bennie's a lot sharper than you think. For instance, Bennie made a special antidote just for you. And Bennie told us that shifting genders always places a strain on your system, weakening it, if only for a few seconds. But that should be long enough for this to do its job."

I aimed the gun at Bennie's neck and squeezed the trigger. My Bennie had only had time to make enough of the special antidote to fill a single dart, and I had to make this shot count. The dart whistled through the air and struck Bennie Hyde at the base of the throat.

Male again, Bennie Hyde roared with anger and tore the dart out of his neck. He threw the dart aside, rose to his feet, and glared at me. "I'm going to order my Hydes to tear the three of you into bite-sized pieces, and then I'm going to have you for an afternoon snack!"

"Why would they listen to you?" I said. "You're not one of them anymore."

Bennie Hyde frowned. "What are you–" He grimaced, convulsed violently, then slumped down onto the bar and lay on his side. A moment later he sat up shakily, face pale, skin slick with sweat, but fully human once more.

"What… happened?" he said, rubbing his temples as if he had a terrible headache.

"I'll tell you in a minute," I said. "But first do me a favor: take a deep breath and let it out."

Bennie frowned at me. "What are you talking about?" Then she – for the gender switch had occurred again – noted the lounge full of Hydes surrounding us, all of whom began to snarl and step forward. "Oh, right."

A couple exhalations was all it took to begin spreading the Hyde antidote – which like the Hyde plague had become an airborne virus inside Bennie's body – and all around us Hydes began returning to normal, and in turn passed the cure on to any Hydes standing near them.

As waves of transformation rippled through the lounge, Vampire Matt grinned at me. It was more than a little disconcerting to see my mouth stretch into a wide smile and display a pair of very sharp-looking fangs.

"Not bad," he said. "Almost as good as I could've done."

"I'm not the one who managed to get himself caught and tied up in bondage rope," I pointed out.

Zombie Devona looked at both of us. "Play nice, you two."

The two Hydes who'd been guarding our counterparts had changed back to themselves – a pair of Bennie's Arcane bartenders – and they quickly began untying their former prisoners. A couple moments later, our others selves were free and had come around from behind the bar to join us.

Everyone on the lounge had been returned to normal by that point. Quite a few people had been wounded during their time as Hydes, and those who weren't wounded saw to their care. A number of the cured headed outside to begin spreading the antiHyde virus to the rest of the city. I had no idea how long it would take before this Nekropolis was entirely free of the Hyde plague, but given how rapidly the virus had spread, I figured it wouldn't take more than a day or two.

Bennie climbed down from the bar and joined the five of us – Darius, both Devonas, myself and my vampiric doppelgänger.

"Thank Mother Kali that Darius was able to reach you!" Bennie said before giving both Devona and me a hug. "And when you get home, tell my other self that they're every bit the chemist our ancestor was!"

"We'll do that," I said. "And speaking of your other self…" I reached into my jacket pocket, took out a flash drive, and handed it to Bennie. "This contains the formula for the antidote that my Bennie designed to work on you. Just in case you ever need it again."

"Thank you." Bennie took the flash drive and tucked it into his pants pocket. "But after this, I'll never mess with my ancestor's formula again. It's simply too dangerous."

Vampire Matt and I exchanged looks. That might be how Bennie felt now, but Bennie was nothing if not an unabashed hedonist, and he/she was all too willing to take a chance if it meant experiencing new realms of pleasure. I took another flash drive out of my pocket and handed it to my other self.

"Again," I said, "just in case."

Bennie scowled at me, but – now female – she didn't protest. Vampire Matt nodded and put it in his inner jacket pocket.

"I'd ask you and your Devona to stay and visit," he said, "but I'm afraid our Nekropolis won't be in much shape for sightseeing for a while. We're going to have a lot of cleaning up to do."

"Besides," Zombie Devona said, "you two have your own lives to get back to." She gave my Devona a knowing smile, and I had to wonder if she somehow knew her other self was pregnant. My Devona might be half-vampire and the other a zombie, but they were both still women, and it seemed they possessed that special brand of telepathy that members of their gender shared.

My Devona gave her other self a smile, but there was something strained about it, and I immediately feared something was wrong.

"We do need to go home," she said. She placed a hand on her abdomen as she turned to Darius. She suddenly looked paler than usual, and her voice quavered when she spoke. "If you could take us right now, I'd appreciate it. I…" She took in a hiss of air and her face scrunched up in pain. "I think I need to see a doctor. Now."

THREE

"Quit pacing, Matt. You're making me nervous."

I stopped and turned to look at her. "I'm making you nervous? You're the one lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a bunch of machines."

Devona smiled and patted the edge of the bed. "Come sit with me."

If there's one thing I can't stand to do when something's wrong, it's nothing. And pacing, useless as it might be, was still something. But I didn't want to make things any worse for Devona than they already were, so I went over to the bed and sat. She took my hand and gave it a strong squeeze, and I squeezed back.

"Everything's going to be all right," she said.

I nodded noncommittally. Even before I died, I knew things didn't always work out for the best, and being a zombie working in a city full of monsters hadn't done anything to change my mind about that. But I wisely kept my mouth shut – for a change.

The hospital room was small and sterile: white walls and ceiling, white-tiled floor, white curtains over the windows, white sheets on the bed. Devona wore a white hospital gown, and even the furniture – a stool on rolling casters and a couple uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs – was white. The medical scanners were encased in white plastic, and the wires that stretched between Devona and the machines were also white. The IV bag hanging on a metal stand next to the bed made a startling contrast to the room's color scheme. It contained a dark red liquid that flowed slowly through a tube into Devona's left wrist. If this had been a hospital back on Earth, I might've thought she was getting a transfusion, but for a vampire – even a half-vampire like Devona – blood was more effective than the usual intravenous fluids.

A Mind's Eye set was mounted in the corner of the ceiling, and it was one of the healthiest I'd ever seen, certainly in better condition than the old rheumy-eyed set in the apartment I shared with Devona. The skin wasn't discolored, the iris was light blue with tiny gold flecks, the lashes were long and clean, the white of the eye was pure ivory, and its capillaries few and unswollen. Mind's Eyes telepathically broadcast their programs directly into your mind when you gaze upon them, and this one was currently showing an image of a reporter who looked human but had tiny black spiders crawling over every inch of her exposed skin. She was standing on a Sprawl street corner in front of a large building I didn't recognize, a serious expression on her face, mouth moving silently.

Mind's Eyes don't come with remote controls; they're not necessary. All you need to do to change the channel or control the volume is think about it. And since the information is transferred directly into your brain, two people can look at the same set and "hear" different volumes, even view separate programs if they wish. So I concentrated, putting a little extra effort into it, since Mind's Eyes have trouble transmitting to my zombie brain, and after a moment I could hear the sound.

"… at Magewrights' Manor refuse to comment on the reports that magic-users have been disappearing throughout the city over the last several weeks. The Darklord Talaith has also declined to make a statement on the matter."

It was hard watching the woman talk as spiders scuttled in and out of her mouth every time she opened it. It looked damned uncomfortable to me – wouldn't those little spider legs tickle her tongue? But she didn't seem to notice, let alone care.

"The official word from the Nightspire on the situation came to us today from First Adjudicator Quillion."

The picture changed to display the sharp-featured face of a man in his seventies who was completely hairless – not only was he bald, he had no eyebrows or eyelashes. He wore a crimson robe as sign of his office and projected an aura of haughty disdain. He gave a cold, thin-lipped smile before speaking.

"While it is true that certain members of the thaumaturgical community have gone missing recently, there's no reason to suspect their disappearances are connected. As we all know, magic is a high-risk profession, and there are any number of ways its practitioners can come to unfortunate and untimely ends – ones that don't always leave physical evidence behind." His smile widened a touch at that. "And not to put too fine a point on it, there is no shortage of predators in the city. At this time, there is simply no evidence to link the disappearances. If such evidence ever does come to light, I assure you my office will conduct a complete and thorough investigation, but until then I consider the matter closed."

I scowled. To say I'm not Quillion's biggest fan would be a huge understatement, considering that not long ago the sonofabitch sentenced me to Tenebrus, Nekropolis' subterranean prison. I'd escaped and later been pardoned, but Quillion still had it in for me, and I felt just as much antipathy toward him.

The image switched back to the spider-covered reporter who continued talking, but I concentrated on tuning her out and both the picture and sound faded from my mind. I wondered if there was something to the rumors about magic-users disappearing. I dismissed Quillion's disavowal of the story. He might be an Adjudicator, but he was just as much a politician as he was a combination of judge and jury. Of course he'd say the disappearances weren't linked. I hadn't heard any rumors on the street about the disappearances, but then I'd been too busy lately to visit my usual – you'll pardon the expression – haunts. Between helping Devona with the Midnight Watch and looking for a new place to live (because Devona didn't want to raise our child in a squalid little apartment that, despite all her best efforts, still looked too much like a bachelor's home) I hadn't been making the rounds and touching base with my network of contacts and informants. There'd been a time when I'd have known about the disappearances long before the media did. Now I was finding out the news the same time as any other average citizen, and the realization disturbed me for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on.

"Did you hear me, Matt?"

I turned to Devona, feeling bad for having taken my attention off her, even momentarily. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

"No. I said I'm feeling better, and I am." When she saw the doubtful look on my face, she added. "Really."

I restricted my comment to a muffled hmpf. What I wanted to say was that I'd known Devona shouldn't have come with me to that other Nekropolis, and that if anything happened to her or the baby, it would be my fault for not making her stay behind. But saying all that wouldn't make her feel any better, so there was no point in it. Keeping quiet twice in one day? It was a new personal record for me.

When Darius returned us to our Nekropolis, we appeared in Bennie's lounge. Bennie – our Bennie – had been waiting for us, eager to learn whether or not we'd been able to help his/her other-dimensional counterpart. When Bennie saw Devona was in pain, he/she made a hand vox call to the Fever House and ordered an ambulance. I told Bennie to skip the ambulance but to let them know we'd be coming. Then I helped Devona outside where Lazlo was waiting for us. I have no idea how the demon cabbie always knows when I need a ride, but he's never let me down. I helped Devona into the backseat of Lazlo's nightmarish conglomeration of a vehicle, and he rocketed through the streets of the Sprawl toward Gothtown, where the Fever House was located. Lazlo got us to the hospital so fast that I suspected he may have broken a few laws of space and time to do so. He was sitting in his cab in the parking lot now, waiting for me to call him with news of Devona's condition, not that I had any to give him yet. Beyond a quick examination from the nurse who'd hooked Devona up to the medical equipment when we first got to the room, we hadn't seen anyone.

A soft knock sounded at the door then, and I thought our wait was finally over.

"Come in," I said, feeling a strange mixture of relief and tension. I wanted to get this show on the road, but at the same time, I was afraid of what a doctor's examination might ultimately reveal. But I needn't have worried. The person who opened the door and poked his head into the room wasn't a doctor.

"Is it all right if I come in?"

He was medium height, thin, with long brown hair tied in a pony tail and a neatly trimmed beard. A tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans, and sandals completed his bohemian look, and his pale skin and elongated canines marked him a vampire. Most Bloodborn – especially the older ones – tend to disdain technology, especially when it's used in body modification. Vampires are more than a little fanatical about maintaining the purity of their blood, and they view cybernetic enhancements as a corruption of the body. Not so the younger Bloodborn, though. Varney appeared to be in his mid-twenties, and while I had no idea how old he truly was, the fact that he possessed a pair of cybernetic implants told me he was relatively young as vampires went. Both his left eye and left ear had been removed and replaced with electronic devices: a camera lens and a miniature directional microphone, respectively.

I got off the bed and started walking toward Varney, making sure to keep myself between him and Devona.

"You'd better not be recording right now," I said in what I hoped was a threatening voice.

Not threatening enough, evidently, for Varney slid the rest of the way into the room, though he did raise his hands in a placating gesture. "It's cool, man. My camera's off. I totally respect you and your lady's privacy. Besides, this isn't the kind of footage my producer's looking for." He glanced at Devona. "No offense." He turned back to me. "Now if it was you lying injured in that bed, Matt…"

It took all the self-restraint I had not to let out a series of extremely offensive words. Not long ago, I'd had a run-in with a gorgon named Acantha, host of a live interview program called On the Scene. She'd tried to interview me while I was working and I was, shall we say, less than gracious about it. Since then Acantha had done her best to go out of her way to give me bad publicity whenever she could – and not just me: she made sure to include Devona and the Midnight Watch in her petty vendetta. So for Devona's sake, I'd gone to the Eidolon Building where the city's major media outlets – Mind's Eye Theatre, the Tome, Bedlam 66.6, and the Daily Atrocity – are housed and tried to make peace with Acantha. She responded to my overtures about as well as you might expect (gorgons can carry grudges for centuries), but her boss, a demon named Murdock, overheard our conversation and pulled me into his office.

You want Acantha to lay off you and your woman? he'd said. I can arrange that. And then he'd smiled that smile demons give you when they're about to make you an offer you know you really should refuse. And when I heard his proposal, I turned him down at first. Until I spoke with Devona later.

I think it's flattering that Murdock wants to make a documentary about you, she'd said. You have to admit, you've become something of a celebrity over the last few months, and it's only natural people would want to know more about you. And if people get to know you – the city's only self-willed zombie – a little better, it might change their attitude toward the reanimated dead. And then she'd added the kicker. Besides, the publicity would be good for business.

So I called Murdock and told him I'd be honored to let him make a documentary about me, which is how I got saddled with Varney, the one-man – or maybe I should say one-vampire – film crew. With his cybernetic enhancements, all he had to do was follow me around and anything he saw and heard would be recorded. Every night he transmitted the day's footage to the Mind's Eye studio via the Aethernet, where it was reviewed and edited by his producer. Varney had been tailing me for five days now, and my patience with him was wearing more than a little thin. Despite the fact that he'd told me when we met that he'd "be as invisible as Casper, man," while I worked, Varney had a tendency to get in the way, and I'd begun looking for opportunities to ditch him whenever I could.

Varney went on. "I don't mean to intrude, but I just wanted to check in with you guys and see how things went in the other Nekropolis."

Varney had been waiting for us in Bennie's lounge when Darius brought us back, but I'd rushed Devona out of there so fast that he hadn't had a chance to talk to us – or get in Lazlo's cab and ride along to the hospital – which is just the way I'd wanted it. I figured he'd catch up to us sooner or later. Unfortunately, it hadn't been later enough for me.

"This really isn't a good time," I told him. "How about you go back to the Eidolon Building, and I'll give you a call later?"

"Matt…" Devona said in that tone she uses when she thinks I'm being unreasonable. But the last thing I cared about right then was helping Varney with the stupid documentary. All that mattered to me was Devona and the baby's health.

Varney smiled. "Don't sweat it, man. I got it covered." He held out his hand and a small silver object about the size of a thumbnail crawled out from beneath my jacket lapel. It looked a little like a mechanical ant, except it had a miniature camera lens in place of a head. As I watched, wings slid out of tiny panels in the artificial insect's back, and the creature took wing. It buzzed over to Varney, and the vampire opened his mouth, and the bug flew inside. Varney then closed his mouth and grinned.

"That's icky," Devona said.

"When I couldn't go with you to the other Nekropolis, I snuck a portable camera onto you when you weren't looking. The quality of its recording isn't quite as good as what I can do, but it'll serve in a pinch. Just let me start downloading…" He paused and his expression went blank. "Yeah… yeah, that's some good stuff." He looked at me and grinned. "My producer is gonna love it!"

I sighed. It seemed I couldn't get away from Varney no matter what I did. "Do me a favor: don't put any more of those damned things on me without my permission, OK? We dead folk have a thing about bugs."

While that was true enough, the real reason I disliked carrying around an insect – even a machine that resembled an insect – was because of an experience I'd had several months back with a friend of mine named Gregor. At least, I thought he'd been a friend. As it turned out, he'd been something far different. He was gone now, but I still didn't like bugs, and I especially didn't like them riding around concealed on me.

"Sure thing," Varney said. "Whatever you say, Matt."

What I wanted to say next was less than polite and would've earned me another disapproving Matt from Devona, but a second knock sounded at the door before I could speak, this one sharp and businesslike. The door opened and a woman wearing a white doctor's coat walked in. She was a tall, thin Bloodborn woman, with short black hair and porcelain-white skin. Her lips were full and red, and I knew that she'd recently dined. But considering this was a hospital, I figured the staff had ready access to fresh blood. She appeared young – barely out of her teens – but she moved with the preternatural stillness that only very old vampires were capable of.

She crossed to Devona's bed with brisk strides, ignoring Varney as she passed, but when she saw me her brow furrowed and her lips pursed in distaste.

"What is this thing doing here?" she demanded in an icy tone. "This is a hospital room, not the morgue."

Devona scowled. "This thing is my husband, and I want him here."

It didn't surprise me that Devona stuck up for me. It wasn't the first time she'd done so. While Nekropolitans could be quite liberal-minded about some things, the idea of anyone having a zombie for a romantic partner was, to put it mildly, out of the ordinary, and people tended to have varying reactions when they saw us together. What surprised me was hearing Devona refer to me as her husband. We weren't married, not in any legal sense of the word. Before relocating to Nekropolis to escape the alwaysincreasing human population, the Darkfolk had tended to live in isolated pockets and out-of-the-way places. They hadn't really had anything like a centralized government, so there was no need for formal laws. If one Darkfolk wanted to have a long-term romantic relationship with another, they just did so without worrying about any kind of legally binding agreement. Besides, the concept of holy matrimony didn't sit well with the more diabolical members of the Darkfolk. And so there were no priests or justices of the peace to marry people in Nekropolis – at least as far as I knew – and the issue had never come up between Devona and me, despite the fact that we'd been living together for a while now and she was carrying my child.

I'd been married once before, back on Earth when I was alive, but it hadn't lasted long. I'd been a cliché – the cop who was more dedicated to his career than his marriage – and eventually my wife got tired of trying and gave up. And I don't blame her one bit. But that had been years ago, and I'd long since moved on. I wasn't averse to the idea of getting married again; it just didn't seem like something that was even possible in Nekropolis, let alone necessary.

So why did it bother me to hear Devona refer to me as her husband?

The doctor looked at me like I was something nasty she'd found in a patient's bedpan. "Be that as it may, we maintain the strictest standards of cleanliness at the Fever House, and it's unacceptable for there to be a… person present in the room who's experiencing active – if delayed – decay. The germs…"

"I was thoroughly, and rather humiliatingly, decontaminated when we arrived," I said. "And a nurse gave me this." I removed a gem-encrusted amulet from my jacket pocket and showed it to the doctor. "She told me that as long as I kept it on my person, I wouldn't be in danger of germifying anyone."

The doctor frowned. "Such magic isn't one hundred percent efficacious – it's the main reason we prefer to use technology whenever possible in our treatment plans – but I suppose it'll be sufficient in this case." She turned one again to Devona. "Especially since you so strongly desire your… husband to remain. Though I will have to ask him to please step away from the bed so that I might conduct my examination without hindrance."

The doctor was long past the point of getting on my nerves, but I reminded myself that she was here to help Devona, and I kept my mouth shut as I stood and stepped away from the bed.

The doctor introduced herself as she checked the readouts on the various monitors.

"I'm Dr Servia, director of emergency medicine. I realize that your past appointments have been with one of my colleagues in obstetrics, but as of now, I'll be taking charge of your care. Tell me what happened."

So Devona gave the doctor a condensed version of our adventure in the parallel dimension Darius had transported us to, while Servia continued examining her.

Fever House was an old-fashioned name for hospital, and the first time I'd heard the term, I'd imagined something like an asylum filled with shrieking straitjacketed patients confined in cell-like rooms with stone floors and walls. But vampires have been practicing the art of medicine since before humanity had developed a written language, and there's nothing primitive about the facilities at the Fever House. They're easily as sophisticated as any Earth hospital, if not more so. You might wonder why vampires bother with medicine – after all, as long as they have access to a steady diet of human blood, they're immortal and rapidly heal all injuries (with the exception of wooden stakes to the heart and severe sunburn). But the Bloodborn's interest in medicine has nothing to do with them. Rather, it's all about maintaining a healthy food supply. The healthier humanity is, the purer their blood. So throughout the centuries vampires developed and passed on their medical knowledge to human physicians so that the health of the herd might be maintained. Most human beings are unaware of this, of course, and good thing. Who would want to know that the cough syrup they'd just given their sick child was developed by a predator species that views humans as a tasty snack?

Over the course of the four centuries since Nekropolis was founded, the physicians at the Fever House have expanded the scope of their medical knowledge to encompass treating Darkfolk of all kinds, and while many Nekropolitans have healing powers equal to those of vampires, there are still any number of illnesses and injuries – mundane and magical – that they need help recovering from, and the Fever House does a brisk trade. I knew Devona was in good hands medically speaking, the best the city had to offer, but I was still nervous. Our situation wasn't exactly a common one, and I doubted they covered half-vampire/zombie matings in vampire medical school.

As I was thinking, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye – something small and dark scuttling across the floor. Without a functioning nervous system, I couldn't feel a physical chill, but I experienced the psychic equivalent. The last time I'd seen something like that… I turned to get a clearer look, and I saw a black shape the size of a large insect zip past my feet and disappear beneath Devona's bed. Or thought I did. It moved so fast, I couldn't tell if it was real or maybe just a trick of the light combined with my anxiety over Devona's condition. I may not be the most imaginative guy, but living in Nekropolis will make anyone a bit jumpy. Here, monsters under the bed aren't just a childhood fantasy.

I didn't want to say anything, not only because I wanted to avoid worrying Devona but I also to avoid looking like a fool in case the bug was nothing more than my imagination. So I concentrated, and the thin flesh tendrils keeping my right hand attached to my wrist released their grip. I allowed my hand to fall to the floor, and I followed up the soft plap of its dead meat hitting the tiled floor with a muttered, "Damn it!" Then I bent down to retrieve my hand and took the opportunity to sneak a quick peek under the bed. There was nothing there, not even dust. It seemed the hospital staff's fanatical devotion to keeping their institution germ-free extended to the finer points of housekeeping as well. Which made the likelihood that there were insects scuttling around the rooms seem all the more impossible.

I decided the bug had been nothing but my imagination after all. I held my wrist stump near my hand, and it obligingly backed up like a tiny vehicle in reverse and reattached itself. I flexed my fingers to make sure everything was working, and then I stood once more.

"You really should have someone sew that back on while we're here," Devona said.

"Sorry," Dr Servia said, sounding anything but, "we don't perform medical procedures on your kind."

The subtle added stress on those last two words got my hackles up, but I kept myself from responding – one more step on my way to becoming a paragon of self-restraint. Devona's scowl told me she was going to say something, but I reached out to her through our link and projected a wave of calm to let her know that I didn't think the doctor's comment was worth commenting on. Devona gave me a look that said, All right, if you say so, but I could feel that she wasn't happy about it. As a half-vampire she'd spent her whole life dealing with the racism and classism of fullblooded vampires, and she had little tolerance for it.

Servia continued with her examination with brisk professionalism. When she was finished, she stepped back and regarded Devona with unblinking eyes. Vampires don't need to blink, but the younger ones still do, either to appear more lifelike or simply out of habit. Older vampires like Servia didn't bother with such mundane trivialities – if they even remembered them at all.

"Everything appears…" Her full red lips parted in a cold approximation of a smile. "Well, I can't say normal. But it seems that neither you nor your baby suffered any permanent ill effects from your interdimensional trip. But I advise you to refrain from any unnecessary exposure to magic during the remainder of your pregnancy. Half-vampires like you are typically sterile, and zombies…" she trailed off. "As I understand it, a significant amount of magical assistance was required in order for the two of you to conceive. While the spells were no doubt powerful ones, such magic is, in its own way, quite delicate. Other magic – especially the kind required for a dimensional crossing – may have a deleterious effect on the spells associated with your pregnancy. My advice is that you avoid both magic use and exposure until after your baby is born."

Though the doctor had just given us good news, you couldn't have told it from Devona's crestfallen expression.

"But Doctor, I'm a specialist in wardspells! I use magic in my business all the time!"

"Yes, the Midnight Watch. I've seen your commercials on Mind's Eye. Given your current situation, I suggest you take a leave of absence from work," Servia said. "And if that's not possible, then I advise you at least take a step back and assume a more supervisory role." She paused, and then added in a businesslike tone, "That is, if you wish to carry your child to term. Please see the receptionist at Admitting on your way out to schedule a follow-up appointment for next week."

And then without waiting for more questions – and without giving me another glance – Servia started toward the door. Varney hadn't said a word the entire time the doctor had been present, but he watched her go, his camera eye tracking her progress, and I wondered if despite his earlier pledge not to do any filming in here he'd been recording the entire time. I was just about to say something to him when the door opened and a male Bloodborn stepped into the room.

Both Servia and Varney immediately dropped to one knee and bowed their heads.

The newcomer was a huge, well-muscled barbarian of a man, wearing only a loincloth, boots, and a black fur cape. His skin was bone white, and his flesh appeared hard as marble. He had long brown hair, and a thick full beard which spilled down to his chest. His eyes were cold as arctic ice, and they gazed upon the world with the merciless calculation of an apex predator. This was Galm, Darklord and ruler of the Bloodborn, one of the most powerful and fearsome monsters that had ever existed. And he was one thing more…

Devona's father.

FOUR

Like all the Darklords, Galm projected an aura of power, and his presence filled the room with a charged atmosphere like the air right before a thunderstorm. He moved with the liquid grace of a jungle predator, seemingly at ease but ready to strike at any moment.

Servia and Varney kept their heads bowed and didn't move a muscle as their lord and master glided past. Devona didn't react to Galm with the same sort of subservience as the other two – he was her father, after all – but she looked shocked to see him, which was understandable, since the last time they'd spoken Galm had cast her out of the Bloodborn, told her that she wasn't welcome in his home, and – most hurtful of all – that as far as he was concerned, she was no longer his daughter.

I wasn't a vampire – at least not in this dimension – but I still felt the psychic impact of Galm's presence. I refused to let myself be intimidated, though. I'd dealt with Darklords before, Galm included, and while I respected the fact they were on top of the supernatural food chain, I'd be damned if I'd allow any of them to think they cowed me.

"Hello, Galm. I'd say it's nice to see you again, but my mother taught me never to lie to bloodsucking monsters."

Galm looked at me, his eyes flashing a dangerous crimson, but all he said was, "Richter," before turning his attention to Devona. He crossed to her bed and stood beside it, on the opposite side from where I was. He didn't smile, didn't reach out to take her hand. His eyes – cold blue once more – looked at her without even a glimmer of affection.

"When you were admitted, the hospital staff contacted the Cathedral and told my people. I came as soon as I was informed." Galm's tone was reserved, each of his words precisely enunciated, almost as if it required extra concentration for him to speak. He was thousands of years old, and I wondered if he was so ancient and powerful that he sometimes had difficulty remembering simple things, like how to use language. As inhuman as vampires can be by their very nature, the older they get, the more alien they become – and no vampire is older than Lord Galm.

Devona's initial surprise gave way to anger, and she struggled to control her voice as she spoke. "I didn't know you cared, Father."

Galm opened his mouth to reply, then stopped as if reconsidering his words. He looked at Servia and Varney, who remained kneeling, and said, "You two may rise."

Servia and Varney did as they were commanded. Neither spoke and they stood very still, as if afraid to draw the vampire king's attention. Unfortunately for them, Galm did not take his gaze off them.

He pointed to Varney. "What is your purpose here?"

Varney quickly – and without stuttering too badly – told Galm about the documentary he was filming. Galm looked at him a moment, and then said, "You may wait in the hall."

Varney, looking very relieved to be dismissed, bowed his head once, and got the hell out of there. I half-expected him to leave one of his little bug-cameras behind, but I didn't see him launch one. As much as Varney wanted to get good footage for the documentary, it seemed he wanted to risk angering Galm even less. I can't say I was sorry to see Varney kicked out.

Galm then looked at Servia. "You are her doctor, I assume?"

"Yes, my lord," Servia answered in a docile tone that contained no hint of her former haughtiness.

"Tell me about my daughter's condition."

Servia did so, clearly and concisely, and then Galm dismissed her. She left with more dignity than Varney, but it was still obvious from her expression that she was just as relieved to go. When the doctor was gone, Galm turned back to Devona.

"I am glad to hear that you and your baby suffered no permanent ill effects from your journey."

"Let's skip the pleasantries, Father," Devona said. "Why are you here? It's not out of concern for me, so there must be something you want."

Galm's features were as composed as any statue's, but as I looked across Devona's bed at him, I thought I detected a slight softening of his gaze. If he had been human, I might have thought her comment had hurt him. But this was Galm; mere words could never harm a being like him. Could they?

"Devona… as you know, live births are rare events among our kind."

That was putting it mildly. Vampires' primary method of reproduction was to exchange blood with a human who they'd drained near to death, hence the term Bloodborn. Vampires considered these converts to be their true children, normally carefully chosen and groomed to enter the realm of the undead. Sometimes, however, vampires mated with humans because their crossbreed progeny often possessed powerful psychic abilities that fully undead vampires didn't. That was the reason Galm had impregnated Devona's human mother, who had died during childbirth, as is often the case when human women bear halfvampire children, even with the help of the doctors at the Fever House. Galm had never demonstrated any love for Devona. He'd viewed her as nothing more than a useful tool, and when she was old enough, he'd put her to work in the Cathedral. In time, she had demonstrated an aptitude for understanding magic, if not casting spells herself, and Galm had made her the caretaker of his collection of rare and powerful artifacts. It had been her task to maintain the wardspells protecting the collection, and she had done so successfully for over fifty years before one of the objects was stolen and she'd hired me to find it.

"Don't tell me you're becoming sentimental in your old age," Devona said. "You're not exactly the type to get all excited about being a grandfather."

Devona was being pretty harsh with Galm, and though the sonofabitch undoubtedly deserved it, I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for him. But only a bit.

Galm continued as if she hadn't spoken. "And no half-vampire has ever become pregnant before. This is a unique occurrence in the history of the Bloodborn, so naturally I am interested in following its progress." He paused. "I have had some time to think about what I said to you when we last spoke, and I have come to the conclusion that I was too hard on you. You have twice saved the city from destruction…" He looked at me, and one side of his mouth curled in mild disgust. "With your help, of course, Richter."

"Nice to be included," I said.

"And you have gone on to create a successful business for yourself. In only a few short months, the Midnight Watch has become the most sought-after security firm in the city, with a reputation for providing protection equal to none. All most impressive accomplishments, befitting the daughter of a Darklord."

I could feel Devona's emotions through our link. On one hand she was deeply suspicious of her father's change of heart – he was a Darklord, after all, and none of them are to be entirely trusted – but she also couldn't help hoping that what he was telling her was true, that if he didn't exactly love his half-human daughter, he'd at least finally come to see some value in her. Me? I didn't know what to believe, but I figured remaining suspicious was the safest bet.

"Does this mean she's no longer outcast?" I asked.

Galm looked down at Devona and smiled, though the expression looked unnatural on him, as if it had been many years since he'd last attempted it and couldn't quite recall how.

"You are once again a full member of the Bloodborn, my daughter, and you are welcome in my home whenever you wish to come." He glanced at me. "And as her… partner, you are also welcome in the Cathedral."

"Does this mean I get to call you Dad?" I asked.

His ice-blue eyes flashed red and a low growl escaped his throat. "As the saying goes, 'Don't push your luck.'" His eyes returned to normal and he looked at Devona once more.

"I… I don't know what to say."

Galm smiled once more, and this time it seemed more natural. "You could always try 'thank you.'"

Galm hadn't exactly apologized for how he'd treated Devona, but he'd come as close as a creature like him could. Evidently Devona thought the same thing because she returned his smile and said, "Thanks."

Galm nodded briskly, as if they'd just concluded a business deal. "Good! And now that the matter is settled, I urge you to consider moving into the Cathedral for the remainder of your pregnancy."

"What?" Devona looked shocked, and I couldn't blame her. For the last several months, she'd been an outcast among her people, and now not only had her father welcomed her back into the fold, he was asking her to move home.

"The doctor advised you to avoid exposure to magic until you deliver your baby. In the Cathedral, I can arrange for the construction of a completely magic-free chamber for you. Not only would you be protected from mystical energies there, you could avoid some of the more, ah, hazardous aspects of your profession. You could still manage your business from the Cathedral, of course. I'd make certain you had whatever technology you require for your work: voxes, Aethernet access…"

"That's… very generous of you, Father," Devona said. "But I assure you, I'll be fine. Won't I, Matt?"

When I didn't answer right away, Devona scowled. "Won't I?" she repeated in a tone that said I'd better hurry up and agree with her if I knew what was good for me.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe you should give some thought to Galm's proposal." I hurried on before she could interrupt. "I know you hate the idea of being shut away from the world like some too-delicate thing that can't take care of herself. And I know that Galm and I sound like a couple of sexist Neanderthals for suggesting it." I glanced at Galm. "Although as old as he is, he probably can't help acting like a caveman since he literally was one once."

Galm frowned at me but said nothing, so I went on.

"Back on Earth, when a woman has a high-risk pregnancy, doctors often advise her to avoid strenuous activity and remain at home on bed rest. Not because they're patronizing her, but because they truly believe that's what's best for her health and the health of her baby. I'll support whatever decision you make – you know that – but I think you should make your decision based on logic, not emotion."

Devona looked at me for a long moment. Not only was her expression unreadable, but I couldn't sense anything through our link, and I knew she was shutting me out, psychically speaking.

"That's good advice," she said to me at last, and then turned to her father. "That's how you always make decisions, isn't it? Logically. I'd almost started to believe that there might have been some scrap of emotion motivating your offer to have me stay in the Cathedral, but you never do anything unless it's in your best interest or that of the Bloodborn – and as far as you're concerned, they amount to the same thing, don't they? You created me because you hoped I'd possess psychic abilities you'd find useful. And while those abilities have grown and strengthened over the last few months, they aren't so powerful or irreplaceable that you'd rescind my exile just to get them back. No, there has to be another reason behind your offer, and since you don't want me or my powers, it must be my baby that you want."

I felt a surge of anger upon hearing Devona's words, and I felt like kicking myself for being dumb enough to think that Galm might've actually cared about his daughter's health.

For his part, Galm gave no response to Devona, but while his face remained as impassive and cold as an ice sculpture, there was something in his gaze that told me Devona had hit upon the truth.

"What makes my baby so special?" she asked.

Galm didn't answer right away, but Devona just glared at him, and eventually he let out a surprisingly human-sounding sigh.

"I don't know," he said. "But there has never been a child like it before in the history of the Darkfolk. It will be a blend of human, Bloodborn, and–" he glanced at me with obvious distaste, "zombie."

"But I was human when we conceived the child," I pointed out.

"True, but that was only a temporary condition, brought about by a powerful token of death magic given to you by Edrigu. In a sense, the spell's effect was primarily cosmetic, and thus didn't alter your fundamental nature. It's why the change could not be a permanent one for you. Your child shall belong to three realms: the living, the dead, and the in-between. It is impossible to predict what such a child will be like – and what sort of power, if any, it might wield."

"But if the baby does possess powerful magic, you want to be the one to control it," I said.

"Yes, and why not?" Galm said. "Edrigu may have given you the token that made conceiving the child possible, but I will be its grandfather. I have more right to the child than anyone."

"You seem to be forgetting about the two of us," Devona said. Her eyes glimmered with crimson light and her canine teeth had grown more pronounced. More, I could once again feel her through our link, and I could sense her anger building.

"You are my daughter and one of the Bloodborn," Galm said. "Your child's magic must be made to serve your people's needs. It is your duty."

"I'm not one of the Bloodborn," I said, "and my child isn't going to serve anyone. Ever." I reached into my jacket pocket and took hold of my squirt gun. The mixture of holy water, garlic, and other chemicals inside would prove little more than an irritant to a vampire of Galm's power, but right then I felt like giving the sonofabitch a face full of the stuff. But I didn't draw the gun, though I was sorely tempted.

"I want you to go, Father," Devona said. "Now."

Galm regarded her for a moment, and then inclined his head slightly. "As you wish. But regardless of what transpires between the two of us from this point forward, I pledge that I shall never again turn my back upon you. You will always remain a member of the Bloodborn, and you shall always be welcome in the Cathedral."

Then without saying goodbye, Galm's body burst into several dozen shadowy fragments shaped like bats. This was his travel form, and the shadow-bats darted and swirled around the room for a moment before flying toward the door and slipping through the cracks. Galm was gone.

I turned to Devona to ask her how she was doing, but before I could speak, she buried her face in her hands and began to cry. I put my arms around her and held her tight and regretted not blasting her father in the face with holy water when I'd had the chance.

"But why do we need to fill out more forms?" I asked. "We already filled out a bunch when we checked in!"

The vampire behind the registration desk gazed at me with a blank, lifeless expression that would've done the most burnt-out office worker back on Earth proud. In fact, the resemblance was so uncanny I wondered if most drone jobs back home were staffed by vampires. It would explain a lot.

"Standard procedure, sir," she said in monotone as she pushed a sheaf of papers on a clipboard across the desktop toward us. She wore a spotless white uniform with a stylized red FH over her left breast. She had the usual vampiric ivory complexion, and her short black hair was practically a buzz cut. With the exception of the doctors, all of the staff I'd seen at the Fever House wore their hair similarly short, and I wondered if it was a hospital regulation.

Devona sat in a wheelchair next to me, and Varney stood behind us, presumably recording the whole banal scene. Just like in hospitals back on Earth, Devona was required to ride in a wheelchair until she was outside the building, and she didn't like it one bit. She was still upset about the less-than-pleasant reunion with her father, and I could feel her mounting frustration with having to jump one more bureaucratic hurdle before we could check out. If we didn't get out of here soon, I was afraid she might leap out of her chair, grab the registration clerk by the throat, and show her precisely what she thought of her "standard procedure."

"You already have our information in your system," Devona said, nodding toward the computer terminal on the woman's desk. "Can't you just copy it electronically?"

The woman looked at Devona as if her body had just made a socially awkward noise. "Computers have their place, of course, but electronic files are no substitute for handwritten records."

The vampires who live in Gothtown tend to be centuries old, and while they aren't above using technology when it suits their purpose, they tend to view it with suspicion and keep it at arm's length. Younger Bloodborn – those only a century or so old – have an easier time adapting to technology, and they usually end up living in the Sprawl where most of the high-tech in Nekropolis is found. Varvara is the only Darklord who openly embraces technology, but then as the Demon Queen, she'll embrace anything and everything – and anyone – as long as it amuses her.

Devona bared her fangs at the woman, and I quickly snatched up the clipboard, tucked it under my arm, and wheeled Devona over to a empty seat in the waiting room. I parked her next to the chair, then I handed Varney the clipboard.

"Were you filming when we checked in?" I asked him.

"Yeah."

"Good. Then if you were paying attention, you should be able to fill these out." I handed the clipboard to him before sitting down next to Devona. He looked at me, and I added, "Consider it a chance to get some close-up action footage."

He looked less than thrilled, but he wandered off to find an open seat – by some astounding coincidence I'd chosen the only available one on this side of the waiting area – and I turned to Devona.

"That was mean," she said, though she smiled. "You should treat him more nicely. When the documentary's finished, it'll be a good publicity tool for us."

"I'll see what I can do."

The Emergency reception area was even more crowded than when we'd checked in, and I recognized some of the Darkfolk waiting for treatment. Legion is a human who regularly rents himself out to several dozen spirits who take turns controlling his body, and he was covered with cuts and contusions. It looked like one or more of his tenants had indulged in a little too much fun again. Unfortunately, such injuries are an occupational hazard for him, making him a regular at the Fever House. Antwerp the Psychotic Clown sat next to Legion, giggling softly to himself. At least, I think it was Antwerp. It was hard to tell since whoever it was had somehow managed to get turned inside out. I wasn't surprised at Antwerp's bizarre condition, nor was I surprised that he seemed to be in no apparent pain. I was, however, surprised that he'd come to the Fever House to seek treatment. I would've thought Antwerp liked having his insides on the outside. On the other side of Antwerp sat a werethylacine named Jerboa. The poor thing was suffering from a nasty case of silver rot in her pouch, and from the way she was whining, I figured it must've hurt like a bitch.

I turned to Devona. "How are you doing?"

"I feel fine."

"I'm not talking physically. I mean emotionally. That wasn't exactly the most tender of reunions between you and Galm."

She reached out and squeezed my hand. "I'm all right. Angry at myself a little, I guess. I know he can't change, but I allowed myself to hope he had anyway. When someone becomes Bloodborn, they don't just stop aging. Their personalities freeze, and they stop developing mentally and emotionally. They become like living portraits that can move and talk but never change. I should've known that the only interest he'd have in our baby is in how it might increase his own power."

"I'm not denying that Galm wants to use our child for his own purposes, but – and I can't believe I'm sticking up for him – it seemed like his offer was motivated by more than self-interest. He seemed to genuinely care about your health too."

Devona scowled at me, and I could feel a flash of anger through our link. "Are you going to tell me you've changed your mind and think we should move into the Cathedral?"

"Nope. As far as I'm concerned, your father can take his offer and shove it where Umbriel doesn't shine. I'm just saying that maybe it's possible that even a being who's millennia old can change, if only a little."

Devona scrunched her face at me, but she didn't reply. A nurse summoned the patient sitting next to me – a squat little bald man in a shapeless black coat who seemed to have a glowing light bulb stuck in his mouth – and he got up and followed her to an examining room. The seat next to me didn't remain vacant for long. A tall male vampire with a pair of huge ebon wings sprouting from his shoulder blades took it. His wing feathers were made of lightweight metal, with razor-sharp edges, and I had no idea if they were technological, magical, or some combination. He wore no shirt so as not to constrain his wings, only a pair of black pants. His chest was covered with scars, but they were old and long healed – or at least as healed as they were ever going to get – and I knew they hadn't brought him to the Fever House. What had was obvious: one of his wings hung significantly lower than the other, and a good half of its feathers looked loose, as if they might fall out any moment, and they were blackened, as if they'd suffered fire damage.

"Hey, Matt. Hey, Devona. What are you guys doing here?"

"Hey, Ichorus," Devona said. "We just came for a routine checkup." She patted her slightly swollen belly and smiled at him. Ichorus was an acquaintance more than a friend, and I guess that Devona didn't feel comfortable telling him about what had really brought us here. Or maybe she just figured it was too complicated to bother going into. Either way suited me. I tend to be a private person, and I'd rather ask people questions than answer them.

"Let me guess: you had a flying accident," I said.

He grinned. "What else?"

Ichorus lived to violate the "no-flying" law in Nekropolis, which was why he carried so many scars. The Darklords defended their Dominions' airspace quite aggressively, and the fact that Ichorus' vampiric healing abilities hadn't been able to completely deal with all the injuries he'd received during his illegal flights was testament to how serious the Darklords were about the sanctity of their airspace.

"Still trying to see how close you can come to the Darklords' strongholds without getting killed?" I asked. "Or were you flying low over Phlegethon and dodging the Lesk again?"

"Neither," Ichorus said. "I have a new passion these days. I've been searching for Ulterion."

"Seriously? Don't tell me you fell for that fairy tale!"

Devona frowned. "What's Ulterion?"

Devona had lived most of her life sheltered in the Cathedral, rarely venturing outside its walls. Because of this, there were lots of things she didn't know about Nekropolis, things that I – a relative newcomer – often had to fill her in about.

"The moon," I said. "Umbriel is the Shadowsun, and Ulterion is the Hidden Moon." I glanced sideways at Ichorus. "Or so the stories go. I don't know anyone who takes them seriously."

Ichorus grinned again. "You do now! I've been looking for Ulterion for the last couple weeks, flying as high as I can, testing the upper limits of the city's atmosphere. I figure Ulterion has to be within Nekropolis' atmospheric bubble. After all, Umbriel is."

"Why would we need a moon?" Devona asked. "Umbriel provides the power that keeps the city stabilized in this dimension, as well as providing the energy for Phlegethon. What would Ulterion do?"

"That's the mystery," Ichorus said. "When I find it, I'll figure out what its purpose is."

"You can't find it because it doesn't exist," I said. "Dis and the Darklords created Nekropolis and Umbriel. Why would they create a moon only to hide it and conceal its existence?"

"I don't know," Ichorus said. "That's–"

"– the mystery," I finished for him. "I get that."

"Besides, I have proof that Ulterion exists." He paused. "Well, maybe it's proof. On this last flight, I went higher than I ever had before, and I thought I saw something in the sky. No, saw is the wrong word. Even vampire eyesight can't make out anything in the starless void over the city. But I sensed something… something big, and I headed toward it. I kept on flying, getting closer and closer, and then… Well, I don't know what happened next, but something happened, because I woke up on the ground – specifically, in the middle of a fair-sized crater I made in one of the Wyldwood forests. My left wing had been damaged by some kind of blast attack, and the rest of me was extra crispy, as if I'd been severely burned. I lay there awhile, letting myself heal, until I heard a group of lykes approaching, no doubt coming to investigate what had crashed in their forest. I hadn't healed enough to fly, but I could move, so I climbed out of the crater and started running. I managed to heal the worst of the burns as I ran, but my wing didn't heal all the way. But it got good enough to allow me to leap into the air and glide for decent distances, which is how I avoided becoming lyke chow. Once I got out of the Wyldwood, I came straight here. The doctors should be able to help my wing heal the rest of the way. At least, I hope they can. The idea of being grounded…" He shuddered as he trailed off.

"So you have no memory of being attacked?" Devona asked.

"None whatsoever. I don't know if I blocked it out or if it just happened too fast. But I figure I got too close to Ulterion and triggered some sort of defense mechanism. A spell or some kind of tech. There's got to be a reason it's called the Hidden Moon, right? Maybe somebody wants to make sure it stays hidden."

"Or maybe you just ran into another of the Darklords' air defenses," I said. "A kind you've never encountered before."

Ichorus tried to shrug, but the shoulder with the damaged wing refused to move. "Maybe." He grinned once more. "When my wing is healed, I'll go back and find out for sure."

"You'll go back and get yourself incinerated if you're not careful," I muttered.

"Maybe," he said. "But you know my motto: 'Fly free or die.'"

Varney came over to us then. "I finished the forms and returned them to the registration desk. Can we go do something interesting now? Please? My producer will kill me if I don't keep delivering good footage." He paused as if reconsidering. "Actually, since my producer is a demon, killing me is probably the least of what he'll do to me."

"I suppose we can't have you suffering the tortures of the damned just because we're boring," I said. "Let's go." I stood and began pushing Devona's wheelchair toward the exit. "Good luck with the wing," I said to Ichorus as we left.

Ichorus grinned one last time and gave me a thumbs-up.

As we walked, I turned to Varney. "You know, if it's exciting footage you want, maybe you should forget about filming us and do a documentary on Ichorus. Think about it: an intrepid explorer, a rebel who defies authority, on a perilous quest to discover the truth about one of Nekropolis' oldest legends…"

Varney gave me a look.

I shrugged. "Can't blame a guy for trying."

FIVE

"Make sure to get my good side, OK?"

I wanted to point out to Lazlo that he didn't have a good side, but Varney was the cameraman, not me, and I decided to let him break the news. He decided, however, to duck the issue. "I'll, uh, do my best."

Lazlo's a demon, and to put it mildly, not a particularly attractive one. He's a mix of mammal and insect and looks as if a good portion of his insides are on the outside. Clothing might help – especially if he wore a full-body hazmat suit with a darkened visor – but Lazlo prefers to go au naturel, which is most unfortunate for everyone in Nekropolis with functioning eyesight. He exudes a horrendous stench that I thankfully can't smell, but I didn't like to think about how bad it was for Devona and Varney, considering their enhanced vampire senses. Devona at least had the advantage of having been around Lazlo enough times over the last few months to get somewhat used to his stink. Varney, who had been relegated to sitting up front with Lazlo, hadn't had that dubious pleasure, and his face was paler than usual and he kept swallowing, as if he were fighting to keep from throwing up.

We'd left the Fever House and were driving through Gothtown's major cultural district. We'd just passed the theaters and concert halls on Mummer's Row and were now heading down the Avenue of Dread Wonders. Given their long lives, vampires have a strong appreciation of history and the arts, and the Avenue of Dread Wonders was where the greatest museums in the city were located. We passed the Pavilion of Nightmares Incarnate, the Great Library, and the Hemesphere, among others. I was tempted to ask Lazlo to stop at the Great Library, as it had been a while since I'd talked with Waldemar, and I thought the ancient vampire might be able to shed some light on Devona's condition. There was no limit to Waldemar's knowledge, and he could answer any question – for a price. It was a price I was willing to pay and had before, but I knew Devona wouldn't approve, and so I let Lazlo drive on by without saying a word. I told myself that maybe I could come back later, when Devona was otherwise occupied. I didn't like the idea of sneaking around behind her back, but I liked the idea of gambling with her health and the health of our baby even less. As far as I was concerned, the more knowledge we could get, the better. And if the price I had to pay for that knowledge was a bit steep, so what? It would be worth it to me.

Devona had been mostly quiet since we'd left the Fever House, gazing out the back passenger window as we traveled, and I knew that she was brooding over her less-than-warm reunion with her father. I wanted to talk to her about it, but it wasn't the sort of subject I felt comfortable bringing up in front of either Lazlo or Varney, and so I left Devona to her silence and contented myself with holding her hand. Eventually she spoke.

"Do you really think Papa Chatha will be able to give us any advice?" she asked. "He's not a doctor, and he's not even exactly a magician. He's a voodoo priest."

"True, but he has one thing that no other doctor or magic-user in the city has," I said. "My trust. Not only does he know enough about magic to keep me from rotting away to nothing, he's provided magical assistance to me on numerous cases over the years." I paused. "Besides that, he's my friend."

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to get a second opinion," Devona said, managing to give me a smile. It wasn't very big and it didn't last very long, but I appreciated the effort.

And while we were there, I'd see if Papa could take a look at my right hand. It remained attached to my wrist and continued to work just fine, but that condition was merely temporary. I needed Papa's magic to effect a more permanent repair job. But what was foremost on my mind was the revelation Galm had given us about our child. Could it really be possible that our baby would be as powerful as Galm claimed? That he or she would possess a kind of magic unlike any that the Darkfolk had ever known before? The thought scared the hell out of me. I was already afraid of being a father – afraid that I wouldn't be smart enough, patient enough, loving enough – but to be a father to a being of immense power? There was no way I was up to that kind of challenge.

Varney turned around in his seat to look at me. "Sounds like Papa Chatha's been a real help to you over the years. Can you tell me how the two of you met?" His camera eye whirred softly as it focused on me, and I felt a now-familiar urge to draw my 9mm and smash the gun butt into the lens. Instead I sighed.

"I'm not sure it's that interesting a story, but all right. I'd only been in Nekropolis for a couple weeks when Baron Samedi got wind that there was a new kind of zombie in town – one who was not only intelligent but wasn't under the control of a sorcerer. Samedi decided he wanted to examine this undead novelty, and he sent one of his servants to collect me."

I continued relating the tale, only half paying attention to myself as I talked. I saw a greenish flickering light ahead, and I knew we were approaching the edge of Gothtown. Nekropolis is shaped like a gigantic pentagram and split into five separate Dominions, each ruled by a separate Darklord. At the center of the city is the Nightspire, home to Father Dis, the ultimate ruler of Nekropolis, and floating in the starless sky directly above the Nightspire is Umbriel the Shadowsun, the dark celestial orb which provides the city with the shadowy gloom that serves in place of light. A river of mystical green fire called Phlegethon forms the city's outer border and also the divisions between Dominions. Phlegethon's flames are deadly to all creatures living, dead, or undead, with the exception of the monstrous serpents called Lesk which swim its waters. While it's possible to fly over the flames – assuming one possesses the capability – it's illegal to do so. Not to mention dangerous as hell since the Lesk will try to leap out of the water and snatch you out of the air. The only legal and safe way to travel between the Dominions is across one of the five bridges that connect the Dominions, and we were nearing the Bridge of Nine Sorrows, the passage between Gothtown and the Sprawl.

Papa Chatha's place was located in the Sprawl not far from the bridge, and I knew we'd be there soon, which suited me just fine. I was more nervous about the complications with Devona's pregnancy than I wanted to admit, even to myself, and even though I knew Papa wasn't a physician, he had a calming way about him, and I figured I could use all the reassurance I could get.

The greenish glow increased in intensity as we drew closer to the bridge, its light standing out dramatically against the black void that serves in place of a sky in Nekropolis. When the Darkfolk decided to emigrate from Earth long ago, they chose to relocate to a distant uninhabited dimension called the Null Plains, a place of utter darkness and desolation. But the Null Plains aren't, as it turned out, entirely uninhabited, as I'd learned during the last Descension Day, and as I looked at the empty dark sky, I wondered if it too was truly empty or merely seemed that way.

By this time Lazlo had pulled onto the Obsidian Way, the glossy black road which passes through all five Dominions, and joined the line of traffic leaving Gothtown and heading for the Sprawl. There was the usual mix of Earthly vehicles – limousines and highperformance sports cars being favorite choices – traveling alongside stranger conveyances: ghostly coaches, riders on hell-mounts, and Agony DeLites. There were also a fair amount of scuttling Carapacers, hollowed-out giant insect husks reanimated to serve as vehicles, and Meatrunners, leprous obscenities constructed (if that's the right word) from sinew, muscle and bone. Both of these vehicles had sprung from the diseased imagination of Victor Baron, the original Frankenstein monster and the city's leading inventor and industrialist. He's responsible for all the flesh-tech in Nekropolis. All the "repurposed dead," as they're called, bear his tattooed label: "Another Victor Baron creation." Baron had reattached my head to my body for me once, and though my left hand still didn't work quite right, he'd gotten most of the major connections hooked back up properly, so I figured I couldn't complain. I wouldn't let him slap a tattoo on me when he'd finished, though.

We pulled onto the bridge and were about a third of the way across when a bright light flashed overhead. Both Lazlo and Varney cried out in alarm – light in any form is at best frightening to Darkfolk and at worst deadly – and our demon cabbie slammed a misshapen foot onto the brake pedal. The vehicle swerved and sideswiped a werepanther motorcyclist. The catman veered off, struck the bridge railing, flew over his handlebars of his bike, and plummeted over the edge and into the fiery river below. Lykes can heal almost any injury, but I wasn't sure he could survive Phlegethon's flames. Maybe if he managed to crawl out before one of the Lesk got hold of him… I forgot all about the werepanther then, for the light continued to shine brightly onto the bridge, and the other drivers had either hit their brakes like Lazlo or jammed down on the gas in hope of making an escape. The result was, as you might imagine, a complete and total traffic clusterfuck, and the air was filled with the sounds of crunching metal and the howls of frustrated, terrified, and injured drivers. Whatever was happening, one thing was clear: none of us were going anywhere anytime soon.

"Is that sunlight?" Varney asked. He'd slumped down onto the seat and curled into a ball. As scared as he looked, I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd tried to claw through the upholstery and climb inside the seat to hide.

"I don't think so," Devona said. "It looks more like a release of mystic energy to me."

"I'll go out and take a look," I said. Sunlight has no effect on zombies, except maybe to dry out our rotting skin a bit faster. As a half-vampire, Devona wasn't as affected by sunlight as Varney, and I had no idea about Lazlo. Some demons shun sunlight, some don't mind it, and some few actually thrive on it. I didn't know what kind he was. But if anyone was going to step outside and take a gander at the situation, I was the safest bet. Besides, I was more than a wee bit curious. I knew of only one object capable of projecting sunlight in this dark dimension, and Dis had it safely locked away in the Nightspire – or so I believed. If someone had managed to get hold of it somehow, it would be a Very Bad Thing. I opened the rear passenger door and stepped out onto the bridge.

The first thing I noticed was that the sides of Lazlo's cab were expanding and contracting rapidly. The vehicle is, at least in some rudimentary sense, alive, and from its rapid breathing, I knew it was scared. I reached up and patted it on the roof.

"There, there," I murmured. "It'll be OK."

The cab whined like a frightened puppy and shivered under my touch. I doubted I'd done anything to reassure it, and I decided to leave that task to Lazlo. After all, he was its owner. Or sibling. Or lover. Or perhaps something else entirely. I didn't know, and I didn't want to know. I looked around and saw that a number of other motorists had gotten out of their vehicles and were gazing up into the sky. They were a mixture of Darkfolk – lykes, ghosts, demons, ghouls and some other less common types – but no Bloodborn. Presumably any vampires trapped on the bridge, like Varney, were remaining hidden inside their vehicles. I directed my gaze upward, touching a hand to my brow to shield my eyes.

The light shone above us bright white and cold, like starlight against the stark black sky, but by squinting I was able to make out a trio of figures floating in the air within the patch of illumination. The light began to fade, and once it was gone I could see the figures more clearly. They were human – or at least humanseeming – all female, and all using some sort of magical steed to remain aloft. One sat astride a giant raven, another rode a midnight-black horse whose mane and tail crackled with electric energy, and the last sat in a chair made from human bones with a pair of large flapping bat wings protruding from the back. The women were dressed in medieval-era clothing, making them look like refugees from a Renaissance fair, and they held wooden staves with glowing crystals affixed to the ends.

The witch on the raven's back spoke, her magically amplified voice booming forth like thunder.

"Tell Varvara that if she does not return our people to us within twenty-four hours, Talaith shall consider it a declaration of war between our two Dominions! This shall be her only warning!"

Before I could say anything – not that I had any idea what to say – the three Arcane women leveled their staves at the bridge and their already-glowing lux crystals blazed even brighter with power. As I watched, I became distantly aware of Lazlo shouting at me.

"Matt! Get back inside! Now!'"

The lux crystals grew so bright that it hurt even my dead eyes to look at them, and I wracked my brain to try to come up with something I could do to stop the Arcane. I usually carry a number of magical weapons and tricks with me, but I didn't have anything even close to powerful enough to deal with a trio of pissed-off sorceresses.

Lazlo yelled again, louder this time. "Matt!"

The demon's voice was drowned out by a deafening roar, and the reptilian head of a Lesk came into view. The great serpents were tasked by Father Dis with protecting the borders of the city, and this one looked more than ready to do its job. The behemoth's plate-sized eyes shone with anger, and green fire trailed down its scaly neck as the serpent stretched up toward the hovering witches, jaws open, teeth glinting in the light cast by their magic. The horse rider swiveled her staff toward the attacking beast and a beam of magic energy shot forth from the lux crystal to strike the massive serpent in the face. The Lesk shuddered once and then exploded into a cloud of butterflies which – as if realizing they were no longer quite as intimidating as they had been a moment ago – quickly scattered and flew off in separate directions.

I generally don't have much use for the Arcane, as they tend to think a little too highly of themselves, but I had to admit that was a nifty trick. I felt a hand grab my shoulder then, and out of reflex I drew my 9mm and jammed the muzzle into the soft flesh behind Lazlo's chin. Luckily, I had enough presence of mind not to fire… although as awful as the demon looked, he could probably stand to have his facial features rearranged a bit.

"You need to get into the cab, Matt!" Lazlo shouted, seeming not at all intimidated by having a gun pressed against his throat. "We're leaving!"

"What the hell are you–" I heard a tearing sound then and looked down to see that Lazlo's cab was, for lack of a better word, shedding its tires. Thick strips of black rubber peeled away to reveal clawed lizard feet instead of metal rims, and the vehicle's chassis began to rise as scaled legs extended from the wheel wells. Evidently, the cab had decided not to stick around for a fleet of tow trucks to arrive and clear away the wrecked and stalled vehicles clogging the bridge, which – since it looked as if there wasn't going to be a bridge in a few moments – was a very smart move.

I'd long ago given up questioning the bizarre nature of Lazlo's cab and had decided to do my best to appreciate its quirky charms, especially when they saved my undead ass. I holstered my gun, and Lazlo and I hopped back into the cab. Before we slammed the doors shut, the cab fully extended its legs and began racing forward, scuttling between and, when necessary, crawling over the mass of unmoving vehicles as it made a beeline – or in this case, a lizardline – for the Sprawl side of the bridge. Lazlo's cab has no seatbelts (he feels they only cause passengers to doubt their driver's capability), and so Devona and I held on to each other as best we could as the cab surged forward. Varney, who up until this point hadn't had occasion to experience the special surprises that Lazlo's cab served up from time to time, looked about as bewildered as you might imagine. Still, he was a professional cameraman, and he hurriedly rolled down his window, crawled halfway out, and used all his vampiric strength to hold onto the roof for support while he filmed what was happening.

The cab had made it halfway across when all three Arcane women released blasts of mystic energy from their staves at different points of the bridge to devastating effect. First, they targeted the supports beneath the bridge, then they fired again, this time shearing through the bridge's surface, cutting it into separate pieces. Cracks appeared in the glossy black substance of the Obsidian Way, and the loud groaning of slowly twisting metal filled the air. It was quickly followed by shouting and screaming as terrified motorists abandoned their vehicles and began running to get off the bridge before it collapsed. Some of the fleeing drivers had the misfortune to get in the way of Lazlo's cab, and they were either knocked aside or trampled as the lizard-legged vehicle raced pell-mell toward the Sprawl. Four more Lesk rose from Phlegethon's fiery waters to attack the Arcane, but they met with no more success than their predecessor. A few blasts from the magic-users' staves was all it took to deal with the serpents. One exploded in a shower of what looked like dandelion fluff, one's flesh ran off its skeleton like melting wax, one turned into several thousand minnows, and the last shrank down to the size of an earthworm before falling back into the river.

The damaged bridge shuddered beneath us, and the cab lurched as it fought to maintain its footing. The railing collapsed, the bridge listed to one side, and the Obsidian Way – already cut into three pieces – shattered into dozens of jagged fragments that then began to slide toward the blazing green waters of Phlegethon. Vehicles and fleeing drivers tumbled into the river, the Darkfolk screaming all the way down, though their screams ended abruptly once they were claimed by Phlegethon's fiery embrace. The cab's lizard claws scuttled frantically for purchase on what remained of the Obsidian Way, broken fragments of the road shifting beneath its feet as it ran. The cab slipped and slid, and more than once I thought we would fall into the river and be lost. But when the cab was within twenty feet of the Sprawl side, it hunkered down, coiled its leg muscles, and then sprang forward with a mighty leap just as what was left of the Bridge of Nine Sorrows collapsed completely. The cab soared through the air, and Varney pulled himself back inside with a panicked yelp as the bridge – and those unlucky enough not to get off it in time – plunged into the river, gouts of water splashing upward with accompanying bursts of green flame.

The cab landed on the broken edge of the Obsidian Way where the bridge had torn away from the road, and it scrabbled with its back legs to keep from falling into the water. It was close, but the cab managed to climb up onto the road, where it collapsed, exhausted.

"You OK?" Devona and I asked each other at the same time. We nodded in answer, then we climbed out of the cab, along with Varney and Lazlo, and surveyed the devastation that the Arcane had wrought. The bridge and its occupants were gone, swallowed by Phlegethon, and the river's roiling fiery surface was slowly becoming calm once more. The three witches remained hovering in the sky, and the raven rider spoke, her voice once again magically augmented so that it could carry for miles.

"Tell Varvara she has twenty-four hours, and not a moment more!"

And then light erupted around the three Arcane women, and when it was gone, so were they. A teleportation spell, I assumed.

"What in the name of Oblivion was that all about?" Varney asked. While he gazed at the river's surface, continuing to film, he sounded quite shaken.

"I believe that is what's known as an attention-getter," I said. If Varvara wasn't already aware of the attack on the bridge, she soon would be, and I doubted the Demon Queen was going to take the news calmly.

"It's more than that," Devona said, sounding just as shaken as Varney. "It's an opening salvo."

I had a bad feeling she was right.

Devona stepped closer to the broken ledge and peered down at the river. She was six feet to the left of Varney and stood even closer to the edge than he did. I was still standing next to the cab, and I felt extremely uncomfortable seeing Devona so close to the edge. I wanted to call out and tell her that she should step back, that it wasn't safe, but I hesitated, mindful that the last thing she wanted was for me to babysit her. I decided I'd rather irritate her than risk her falling, and I opened my mouth to ask her – in as non-patronizing a manner as I could manage – not to stand too near the edge. But before I could say anything, a chunk of the Obsidian Way – already cracked from the bridge's collapse – beneath Devona's feet broke into several fragments, slid out from under her, and tumbled toward the river. Devona's feet slipped, she lost her balance, and started to pitch forward.

For a horrible instant, time seemed to stand still, and I saw Devona slide, arms flailing, in the process of following the stone fragments down into Phlegethon's deadly flames. I was too far away to reach her in time, even if I had normal reflexes, which as a zombie, I don't. Half-vampires don't possess the ability to assume travel forms, and her psychic powers were restricted to telepathy for the most part, so there was no way she could fly or use telekinesis to save herself. She was a dead woman, and there was nothing I could do about it.

But then Varney was standing next to her, gripping her upper arm to steady her as he pulled her back from the edge.

"Careful," he said, smiling. "You taking a nose-dive into Phlegethon might make for some spectacular footage, but it would be a real downer." His smile turned into a grin. "No pun intended."

"Thanks," Devona said, looking shaken, and then she and Varney returned to the cab.

I thanked Varney too, said something about him not being entirely useless after all, and we got inside the cab and Lazlo drove off. Or maybe I should say he lizard-legged off. I was quiet as we traveled. Full-blooded vampires can move hellaciously fast when they want to, but I hadn't seen Varney move at all – not even a blur. One moment he'd been nowhere near Devona and the next he was right beside her, saving her life. The whole thing struck me as way too mysterious man-of-action for Varney, the airheaded hippy cameraman. Then again, I'd only known him a short time and I'd done my best to ignore him for most of it. Maybe there were other sides to him that I just hadn't experienced yet. I told myself just to be grateful that Varney had reacted swiftly enough to keep Devona from falling into Phlegethon. But something about the whole thing raised my suspicions – which, given what I do for a living, isn't all that hard to do, I'll admit – and I decided to keep a closer eye on Varney to see what other surprises he might have in store for us.

SIX

We continued on our way to Papa Chatha's house, the vehicle trotting down the cramped streets of the Sprawl on its lizard claws. The motion felt odd, but overall the ride was smoother than usual, and since I'd had enough of being shaken around during the bridge's collapse, I was grateful.

Lazlo turned the radio to Bedlam 66.6, and we listened to an announcer report the news of the destruction of the Bridge of Nine Sorrows as well as the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures. It seemed that after the three witches had finished with the first bridge, they had teleported to the second – which connected the Sprawl to the Wyldwood – and destroyed that as well, once again delivering the message that Varvara should return the abducted magic-users. The Sprawl was now cut off from its neighboring Dominions, and I didn't want to think about how furious Varvara would be. There was a reason she was queen of the demons, and it had nothing to do with her having a sunny disposition. According to the report, Sentinels – Father Dis' police force – were on the scene to assist with the rescue efforts, and while I was confident the golems would prove immune to Phlegethon's fire, I doubted they'd find anyone alive to pull out of the river.

I felt as if we should do something to help, but I had no idea what. Open conflict between Darklords was rare – they usually preferred to conspire against one another in secret and strike through intermediaries – but if Talaith and Varvara were going to mix it up on the streets of Nekropolis, the best thing to do was to stay the hell out of their way and hope not to get caught in the crossfire. Better to mind our own business and go visit Papa.

The Sprawl is a wild mishmash of architectural styles – ancient, medieval, Renaissance, colonial, Victorian, art deco, Bauhaus, modern, and post-modern, interspersed with bizarre structures that can only be classified as alien. You can find a sleek glass and steel office building sitting next to a lopsided lumpy monstrosity that looks like a mound of suppurating tumors, and a quaint little antique shop nestled next to a business housed in a gigantic hollowed-out skull. Considering the Sprawl is the Dominion of the Demonkin, the mad disregard for even the basics of urban planning makes a kind of nightmarish sense, and it certainly makes navigating by landmarks easier. In what other city can you tell someone to hang a left at the building made from intertwined spinal columns and continue north until you come to something that looks like a gigantic diseased pancreas?

Papa Chatha lives in a little shack that wouldn't be out of place in a bayou on Earth. The worn gray wood could use some paint, the black shingles on the bowed roof need replacing, and the windows could stand to be washed and the cracked panes swapped for new ones. But compared to some of the more surreal structures in the Sprawl, Papa's shack looks almost cheerfully normal. Besides, it's something of a second home for me, the place I come when I need a fresh application of preservative spells, a quick repair job, or – just as often – a good game of rattlebones, an understanding smile, and a sympathetic ear. After Devona, Papa is my best friend in Nekropolis, always there when I need him, and always understanding if it's going to take me a while to scrounge up enough darkgems to pay him for his services. And in a town where there are literal loan sharks who'll devour you if you're so much as a few minutes past your payment deadline, such understanding when it comes to settling a debt is indicative of the deepest levels of friendship indeed.

Papa's shack sits between an eye-scream parlor and a florist's that featured a half-off sale on Audrey II's. Lazlo pulled his cab up to the curb in front of Papa's, and the vehicle retracted its lizard legs and lowered itself to the ground.

"Here you go," Lazlo said. "Safe and sound, as usual."

"Safe I'll grant you," I said. "The jury's still out on sound, though."

Lazlo let out one of his raucous laughs that sound like a cross between a donkey's bray and an explosive blast of flatulence.

"You never stop kidding, do you, Matt?"

Varney, Devona, and I climbed out of the cab, and I had to resist the urge to hold out my hand to help Devona out. She wasn't so far along in her pregnancy that she needed assistance, and I didn't want it to seem like I was patronizing her. When we were all out, I leaned inside the front passenger window.

"You going to wait for us or do you have somewhere to be?" I asked Lazlo.

"I should go home for a bit," Lazlo said. "My sweetie needs to eat so she can regenerate her tires, and she could probably use a nap to help her recover from all the excitement. Isn't that right, dear?" He patted the dash and a loud purring sound came from under the cab's hood.

I had no idea Lazlo had a home. Given the way he always appears whenever I need him, I'd just assumed that he lived in his cab. After all, from what Devona tells me, the cab certainly smells like he lives in it. And I didn't want to think about what the cab might eat.

I thanked Lazlo for the lift, he gave me a parting wave, and the cab stood once more on its lizard legs and trotted off down the street. Varney's gaze tracked the departing vehicle, his cyborg camera-eye no doubt recording its departure.

"You know" he said, "even for Nekropolis, that thing's weird."

I didn't know if he was referring to Lazlo or the cab, but either way, I couldn't help but agree. We walked up to the front door of Papa's shack and I knocked. He didn't answer right away, but that wasn't unusual. Like a lot of magic-users, Papa's often conducting one experiment or another, and sometimes he's so engrossed in what he's doing that he doesn't hear people knocking. Or if he does hear, he chooses to ignore them. So I knocked again, louder this time, and called out, "Papa, it's me – Matt!" A few more moments passed, but I still didn't worry. Papa tends to be something of a homebody – after all, he works out of his shack – but he regularly leaves to go shopping for supplies. Even the most skilled practitioner of voodoo magic has to run out to the store to pick up a bag of severed rooster claws now and again. And while Papa wasn't much for the Sprawl's party scene, I'd known him to hit a club or two in his time. So when he didn't answer, I merely chastised myself for not calling ahead first to see if he was home before we stopped by. I turned to Devona, about to ask her what she wanted to do now, when the door opened.

I expected to see Papa Chatha looking out at me: a dignified bald black man in his sixties with a blue butterfly tattoo spread across his smooth-shaven face. The person looking through the crack at me was black, but that's where the resemblance ended. She was a pretty girl of thirteen or so, medium height – which made her taller than Devona – with long straight hair that stretched almost down to her waist. She wore a purple pullover dress that reached to the ankles of her bare feet, and no makeup or jewelry. She gazed at me with startling eyes, the irises so dark blue they were almost black. They made her seem far older than her apparent years, which in Nekropolis is always a possibility.

"May I help you?" she said. Her voice held an almost musical quality, but her words were precisely enunciated and her tone formal, almost as if she were speaking a language foreign to her.

I almost said, And you are? but I remembered my manners. "We're here to see Papa Chatha."

She looked past me at Devona and Varney. She must've decided they didn't appear too suspicious because she then turned her attention back to me and asked, "Are you clients of his?"

"We're friends. At least, she and I are," I said, nodding toward Devona. "Is Papa home?"

Her expression grew solemn. "No," she said, "and that's the problem."

We were gathered in Papa's workroom. Whenever I visited Papa, whether professionally or personally, the two of us usually hung out here, and it was where I felt most comfortable. Besides, for some reason it seemed like an invasion of Papa's privacy to use his living quarters when he wasn't home.

Papa's workroom contained everything a self-respecting houngan needed: chemical-filled vials, jars filled with ground herbs and preserved bits of animals – raven wings, rooster claws, and lizard tails – all sizes and colors of candles, rope of varying lengths twisted into complex patterns of knots, voodoo dolls made of horsehair and corn shucks, tambourines and rattles lying on tabletops next to piles of books and scrolls. To the untrained eye, it looked like things were placed haphazardly about the room, but I knew better. Papa keeps everything just where he wants it, and just because his system of organization isn't immediately apparent doesn't mean he doesn't have one.

I leaned against a workbench, arms folded over my chest, Devona standing next to me. Varney stood on the other side of the room in the corner, the better to film the entire room, I supposed. The girl, who'd introduced herself as Shamika, sat on a high stool, bare feet dangling several inches from the wooden floor.

I looked at Shamika. "You're really Papa's niece?"

Devona elbowed me. "She already told you she was."

"Sorry. I don't mean to sound so skeptical, but Papa's never mentioned you before."

I wasn't sure what bothered me more. The fact that Papa had never spoken about his family to me or that I'd never asked him about them. Maybe we weren't as close as I thought we were, and I wondered how much of that was my fault.

"Most of our family lives on Earth," Shamika said. "Our ancestors were pure Arcane, but many of their descendants married humans over the years, and not all of their children could work magic. Those that could moved to Nekropolis. The rest stayed on Earth."

Unlike other Darkfolk, Arcane appear perfectly human, and this allows them to interbreed with humans, if for no other reason than humans don't find them automatically repulsive and run screaming in the other direction. Because of this, Arcane bloodlines have become greatly diluted over the centuries, resulting in fewer true Arcane being born, and those who are born with the ability to work magic aren't always very powerful. It's one of the reasons Talaith is fiercely protective of her people: she fears the eventual extinction of the Arcane race. Among the five Darklords, she was one of the strongest proponents for the creation of Nekropolis. She hoped that relocating her people to another dimension would limit their opportunities to breed with humans, forcing them to mate within their own race. She couldn't outright forbid intermarriage – that would go against the Blood Accords, the laws that govern all Nekropolitans, Darklords included – but she does everything she can to discourage it.

I glanced at Devona's slightly swollen belly. If what Galm had told us was true, our interbreeding was going to produce a truly special child. And while I suppose I understood the rationale behind Talaith's medieval mindset, I was glad neither Devona nor I shared it. What a great adventure we'd have missed out on.

"How long has it been since you heard from Papa?" Devona asked Shamika. Her tone was gentle, and through our link I could feel her concern for the girl.

"Three days. I stopped by for a visit, but he wasn't here, so I called his vox and left a message. He usually calls back within a couple hours, but when he didn't, I tried again. He didn't answer, so I left another message. I kept calling and leaving messages, but he never called me back. Finally, I got so worried that I came over here and…" She looked suddenly sheepish. "I used my magic to let myself in." She brightened a bit. "I'm not as powerful as Uncle, but I can do a few tricks."

"Don't be so modest," Devona said. "The security spells Papa has placed on his shack are top-notch, if a little… idiosyncratic. You have to know more than a 'few tricks' to get past them."

Shamika looked suddenly uncomfortable. She gazed down at the floor and shrugged. "I suppose."

I pulled out my hand vox, flipped open the lid, and pressed Papa's number. I hated using the damned thing – the tiny ear you speak into is weird enough, but the small mouth you press your own ear against is just plain gross, especially when it gets a little sloppy with its tongue. I listened to Papa's phone ring several times, and then I got his voicemail. The vox-mouth spoke in a perfect imitation of Papa's voice, and the effect was eerie as always, like Papa was whispering in my ear.

"If you called my number, you know who I am, and you know what to do."

The vox-mouth made a tiny beep sound, and I started talking.

"Hey, Papa, it's Matt. Devona and I are at your place, sitting and talking with Shamika. She's worried about you and wonders why you haven't been returning her messages. Give her a call ASAP, and call me back too, while you're at it."

I disconnected and put my vox away.

"So Papa's been gone for three days, and he's not answering his vox or returning messages." I didn't like the way this was looking. Like most magic-users, Papa was highly disciplined – you need to be when working with chaotic and potentially lethal forces – and he lived by a regular routine. It simply wasn't like him to deviate from it. I'd never known him to leave his home for so long, and I had a hard time believing he would ignore his niece's messages. He was too considerate.

Devona looked at me, and though she didn't speak aloud, I heard her voice in my mind.

Do you think Papa's disappeared like those other magic-users who've vanished?

I understood why Devona was speaking telepathically. She didn't want to alarm Shamika unnecessarily.

It's possible, I answered. It's also possible that any number of awful things have happened to him. This is Nekropolis, you know. But Papa's a highly skilled magic-user and, more importantly, a smart man. He can protect himself well enough from the city's usual dangers.

It's the unusual ones I'm worried about, Devona said.

I agree. I think we should ask around a bit and see if we can find out what Papa's gotten himself into. Don't you?

I waited for Devona to respond, but all I heard in my mind was silence. I looked at her, but she was staring off into space, not moving, not even blinking.

"Devona? Honey?"

No response. I leaned over and nudged her, but she didn't budge. She felt as solid and immobile as a statue.

I looked over at Varney and Shamika, and saw both of them were similarly frozen. What the hell was going on here? Had we accidentally activated one of the magic objects lying around in Papa's workroom, and if so, why hadn't its power affected me?

"Because if I froze you too, it would be awfully difficult for us to hold a conversation, wouldn't it?"

The voice was a rich, mellow tenor, and it seemed to issue from the empty air. An instant later the shadows in the room all flowed toward a corner, merged and expanded, shaping themselves until they finally resolved into the form of a man. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, stood over six feet, and wore a purple toga. He was movie-star handsome, with short curly black hair, a large but distinguished-looking nose, and the kind of smile that when you saw it made you want to smile back. But appearances are all too often deceiving in Nekropolis, and not only was he not a man, he was far, far older than he seemed. This was Father Dis, once worshipped as a god of death by the Romans, the absolute ruler of the Darkfolk and the single most powerful being in the city – which also made him the most dangerous.

He walked toward me with an easy, relaxed stride, but the aura of power that surrounded him put Galm's to shame. If being in Galm's presence was like sensing an oncoming thunderstorm, being close to Dis was like sensing the approach of a Category 5 hurricane, with an earthquake or two tossed in for good measure.

"Hello, Matthew."

Dis stopped when he reached me and held out his hand, but I hesitated to shake it. As far as I knew, Dis had no ill feelings toward me, but I still found him intimidating as hell. After all, he could reduce me to a pile of dust with a mere thought, and he could do far worse if he felt like exerting himself. But in the end I shook his hand, and it felt like any other. I didn't look too deeply into his eyes, though. I was afraid of what I might see there.

Dis frowned as we shook. "Had a little accident, did you?"

I was startled by a sudden warmth in my wrist. I don't experience physical sensation on a regular basis, and when I do, it usually means there's some serious magic at work.

"There," Dis said as he released my hand. "Good as new! Well… as new as a zombie can get, I suppose."

I flexed my fingers, then rotated my wrist. Everything felt solid and properly connected once more, and I realized Dis had reattached my hand to my body. I'm sure it was child's play for him, considering that he'd once reconstructed my entire undead body.

"Thanks," I said, because when a god does a favor for you – even when that god scares the crap out you – it's a good idea to be suitably grateful.

"You're welcome. You don't have to worry about Devona and the others. I'll return them to normal when we're finished talking, and they'll be none the worse for wear. And there will be no ill effects for Devona's pregnancy either. Congratulations on that, by the way."

"Thank you. I'm a little confused about why you felt a need to freeze them at all, though."

Dis walked around Papa's workroom as he talked, looking over the items on the tables and shelves, occasionally lifting one to examine it, before putting it back down and moving on to another. "The balance of power in Nekropolis is a tenuous thing at best. The laws that govern the city apply not just to its citizens, but also to the Darklords – and myself. But there is one law that applies to me alone: I may not directly interfere in a dispute between the Darklords."

"By 'dispute,' I assume you're talking about Talaith sending a strike force to destroy the bridges that link the Sprawl to its neighboring Dominions."

"Yes. The Weyward Sisters, often mistakenly referred to as the 'Weird Sisters.' A trio of sorceresses almost as powerful as Talaith herself. The ancient Greeks called them the three Fates, and the Vikings knew them as the three Norns. Dispatching them to destroy the bridges was Talaith's way of telling Varvara that she is deadly serious about her ultimatum."

"Talaith believes Varvara is responsible for the missing magicusers. Is she?" I asked.

Dis stood before Shamika now, and he paused to regard the girl, reaching out to gently brush her cheek with his fingers. He then turned to face me.

"If I knew, I couldn't tell you, as passing along such information would constitute interference."

"Not to point out the obvious, but you're Dis. You're more powerful than all five Darklords put together. If you really want to interfere, who can stop you?"

"I'm not as strong as you might imagine, Matthew, and as I've told you before, most of my strength goes toward maintaining both Phlegethon and the city's stability in this dimension. I don't have much power left over for settling arguments between squabbling Darklords. But even if I did, I wouldn't try. The cooperation of all six of us is needed to recharge Umbriel each year, and while I donate the lion's share of mystic energy to that process, I couldn't accomplish it without the others. When the Darkfolk first moved to Nekropolis, I tried to impose my will upon the Darklords in order to keep the peace, and not only did it not work out, it nearly resulted in the destruction of the city on more than one occasion. It took a while, but I finally learned my lesson. The less I interfere, the better. My Sentinels patrol the Dominions, and my Adjudicators deal with any criminal investigations or legal disputes that the Darklords either don't wish to or cannot handle on their own, but that's the extent of my interference."

"That's not completely true," I said. "You destroyed Gregor."

"Gregor was a threat from outside the city, and thus not specifically covered by our laws."

"What about this conversation? That's why you froze the others, isn't it? So they wouldn't hear it." I nodded toward Varney. "You froze his eye camera too, right? He's not recording us, is he?"

Dis gave me a look that said, You know I'm a god, right? "Varney's ocular device is paused, and I've made sure that when he plays back his footage of this visit, there will be no indication he missed recording anything. And to answer your original question, yes, I want to make sure this conversation is private between you and me." A hint of a smile played across his lips. "I may not exactly be breaking any laws by talking to you, but I am bending them significantly."

"Then let me save you the trouble of having to bend them any further. If someone – say, for example, me – were to investigate the disappearances of the magic-users and discover who's behind them and why, the answers will hopefully settle the conflict between Talaith and Varvara, preventing all-out war between the two Dominions."

"Such a person would be doing the city a great service," Dis said noncommittally.

"Assuming this person manages to remain in one piece long enough to get the answers," I said. "I doubt if either Varvara or Talaith will be in a mood to cooperate with an investigation, especially one that doesn't have any official sanction. And when Darklords get cranky, they have a tendency to annihilate first and ask questions later." A thought occurred to me. "Speaking of official investigations, why not have the Adjudicators look into the disappearances?"

"They have been," Dis admitted, "but without much success. Like too many of the Darkfolk, they tend to believe most problems are better solved by the application of force – the more extreme the better – instead of brainpower."

I thought about my less-than-pleasant experience with First Adjudicator Quillion. "I know what you mean."

"But this situation requires someone who's not only a skilled investigator but also an insightful one. Someone who can see things as they are, not as they appear."

There was nothing special in the way Dis spoke these last words, but I nevertheless had the feeling that he was trying to tell me something important. Just because he couldn't come out and tell me clearly didn't mean that he couldn't hint, and I filed the comment away for later pondering.

"I don't suppose this job comes with a fee attached?" I said hopefully.

"Just my undying gratitude," Dis said, giving me that moviestar smile of his.

"That's what I was afraid of." I sighed. "All right, but tell me this: is Papa's disappearance linked to that of the other magic-users?"

Dis just looked at me, and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer, but then he simply said, "Yes."

I nodded. "Then I'll take the case. Is there anything else you can tell me before I get started?"

"Just good luck."

And then Dis turned, stepped back into a pool of shadows that had gathered in one corner of the room, and vanished.

"Thanks a lot," I muttered.

"Thanks for what?" Devona said, frowning.

She was moving again, as were Varney and Shamika.

"Nothing. Just thinking out loud." I wanted to tell Devona about the visit from Dis, but I didn't feel comfortable doing so in front of Varney and Shamika. I considered filling Devona in telepathically, but the others would see the two of us staring silently at one another and wonder what was going on. I decided I'd tell her later. I knew Dis wanted me to keep his visit secret, and I would, but not from Devona. She was my… well, my partner, and I wasn't going to keep any secrets from her, even if a god wanted me to.

Devona gave me a strange look, but she didn't press any further. Instead, she said, "So what's our next move?"

"I think we should head on over to the Midnight Watch. Maybe Bogdan will be able to cast some kind of tracking spell that will allow us to locate Papa Chatha." I knew it wouldn't be that simple, though. The Adjudicators had access to the best magic and technology available in the city, and if they hadn't been able to track down the missing magic-users, I doubted the Midnight Watch's resident warlock would be able to. But since Bogdan was Arcane, he might have some insight into why someone would want to abduct magic-users in the first place. If nothing else, it was a place to start. Too bad I could barely stand to look at the sonofabitch, let alone talk to him.

I turned to Shamika. "Why don't you come with us? Maybe you can help Bogdan." I had no idea how powerful or skilled a witch Shamika was, but I figured Papa was her uncle and she deserved to be included in the investigation – until it started to get dangerous anyway. And what could possibly be dangerous about going to the Midnight Watch?

SEVEN

"I'm going to tear your head off and use it for a bowling ball!"

"Not before I transform you into something small and extremely squishable!"

Devona, Varney, Shamika and I stood in the entrance to the great room of the Midnight Watch. Since Lazlo hadn't been available, we'd hired a skeletal rickshaw pulled by a long-limbed ghoul to get us here. Devona had renovated the great room not long ago, and it had all-new leather furniture, abstract holo art hanging on the walls, and an illusory fire flickering in a brazier set in the fireplace. The mystic fire produced light but no heat, which was great for me since I tend to get a little on the dry and flammable side when my preservative spells start to wear off.

Devona's three employees were there: Tavi stood next to the fireplace, keeping his distance from Bogdan and Scorch, who from the look of things were less than pleased with one another. The two faced each other in front of the large black leather couch, hands balled into fists, jaws jutting forward pugnaciously, looking for all the world like a pair of bickering children.

Despite the fact that it sounded as if Bogdan and Scorch might soon come to blows – or more likely, because of it – Devona strode into the room, looking pretty angry herself. I almost asked her to hang back just in case a fight really did break out, but I managed to keep quiet. I told myself no matter how upset Bogdan and Scorch were, they wouldn't hurt Devona, and I believed it. More or less.

"What the hell are you two doing?" she demanded.

Bogdan answered Devona without taking his eyes off Scorch. "She started it!" His right hand touched the golden medallion that hung from his neck, and I knew he was prepared to cast a spell – in all likelihood, an appallingly nasty one – on Scorch if she so much as made a move toward him.

Bogdan was an irritatingly handsome warlock in his late thirties, tall, broad-shouldered, with red hair and beard with just a hint of gray. A sharp dresser, he always wore a stylish outfit of one kind or another, and today he had on a suit made of spidermesh that hugged his fit body like spandex. I think spidermesh looks silly on most people, but I had to admit he made it work, damn him.

I should probably mention that he has a crush on Devona too. At least, that's what I – the trained detective – think. Devona says I'm a jealous idiot and it's just my imagination. I admit that Bogdan's never come out and hit on Devona, but I think he's just biding his time.

Devona turned to Scorch. "Well?" she demanded.

Scorch appeared to be a slender teenage girl with a long blonde ponytail that stretched down to the middle of her back. She usually dressed garishly, and today she wore a Black Flag concert T-shirt cut to expose her bare midriff, along with a mini-miniskirt over a pair of hot pink tights and ultra-high heels. If I hadn't already known she was a supernatural creature, the shoes would've given it away. There's no way a human woman could've successfully maintained her balance on such ridiculous footwear.

Scorch's skin is usually the typically light color of blondes, but at the moment it had a reddish cast to it, and though I couldn't feel it, I knew waves of heat were rolling off her. She was a fire demon, and when she got angry, she literally got hot under the collar, or in her case, under the cut-off T-shirt.

"We were talking about Talaith's unprovoked attack on the Sprawl–" Scorch began.

Bogdan cut in before she could finish. "Hardly unprovoked. Rumor has it that there's evidence Varvara is somehow involved in the recent disappearances of magic-users. While I admit that Talaith was a bit… overzealous in her response, I wouldn't say–"

"Overzealous!" Scorch's skin darkened a couple shades and patches of scale began to appear. Her girlishly thin limbs swelled a couple sizes, her neck thickened, and a pair of stubby horns protruded from her forehead. Scorch's other form was that of a classical fire demon – big, scaly, powerfully muscled, horned, fanged, clawed, with a long tail that ended in an arrow-tipped point. She only assumed her full demonic aspect when she intended to wreak some serious havoc, and the fact that her change was beginning was not a good sign that she was going to be calming down anytime soon. "Talaith had the Weyward Sisters destroy both bridges! And without so much as a warning! That sounds more than a 'bit overzealous' to me! It sounds like Talaith is looking to start a war, and if that's what the bitch-witch wants, that's what we Demonkin will give her!" Scorch paused ominously, her eyes turning a very disturbing crimson. "That's what we'll give all of you Arcane!"

Bogdan glared at her and clutched his mystic medallion tighter, but he didn't start slinging spells just yet.

Tavi looked at Devona. "I am so glad you're here!" he said. "The two of them have been going at it like this for twenty minutes now. I tried to settle them down, but they wouldn't listen to me."

Tavi was an East Indian man, lean and wiry, wearing a tan Nehru jacket and matching pants. At least, that was his current form. Like Scorch he was a shapeshifter, but he wasn't a demon. He was a lyke, and as such he could assume a wildform whenever he wished, and given the way he was eyeing Bogdan and Scorch with increasing alarm, I figured he'd been on the verge of transforming in order to protect himself when we'd walked in.

I looked at Varney and Shamika. Varney was grinning like a kid on Descension Day, no doubt recording every second of Bogdan and Scorch's fight for his documentary. Shamika looked at the two of them with curiosity but no alarm. I didn't know if she'd spent all her life in Nekropolis or if she was an immigrant like me, but I chalked up her lack of fear to living in a city where the denizens are just as likely to go at each other's throats as they are to say hello. Nekropolitans are used to sudden outbreaks of violence in the same way that people who live in rainy climates come to expect periodic cloudbursts.

"They're not always like this," I assured her.

She looked at me skeptically, but didn't say anything.

"The two of you need to sit down, cool off, and discuss this like adults!" Devona said in a you'll-listen-to-me-if-you-know-what'sgood-for-you voice. A tone that like would serve her in good stead as a mother, I thought. Hell, I practically took a seat on the couch, and she wasn't even yelling at me.

Bogdan smirked at Scorch, whose skin had turned scaly and a deep crimson; her horns had become far more pronounced, though she still appeared partially human.

He said, "I have a feeling I'll have an easier time cooling down than she will."

An angry bellow burst from Scorch's throat, the sound deep and savage, like something a jungle animal might make. She raised her right hand palm upward and materialized a ball of fire in it. I knew we had only a split second before she hurled it at Bogdan, prompting him to defend himself magically, and then the fighting would begin in earnest. I decided I'd stood by long enough.

"Rover!" I called out to the air.

A sudden gust of wind blew through the great room, extinguishing Scorch's fireball. But the wind didn't stop there. It increased in intensity, centering on Bogdan and Scorch, swirling around them like a mini cyclone. The wind whipped their hair around and tore at their clothes as it lifted them off the floor and held them suspended several feet in the air.

I shouted to make sure they could hear me over the roaring wind. "Are you two going to cut it the hell out, or should I tell Rover to start spinning you around?"

Both Bogdan and Scorch yelled various rude phrases at me, but eventually they acquiesced, and I commanded Rover to put them down. I should've been a bit more specific about how, I suppose, because the wind abruptly ceased, unceremoniously dumping both Bogdan and Scorch onto their backsides. Oh well. Maybe it would knock some sense into them, I thought.

A gentle breeze ruffled my hair, and I reached up to trail my fingers through the air as a way of petting Rover. "Good boy," I said.

Shamika looked up at the air with a frown. "What is that?"

"Rover is a sentient security spell created by the warlock who originally owned the Midnight Watch," I told her. "Devona inherited him when she bought the place. He's kind of like our pet, I suppose." A deadly pet who had killed everyone who'd tried to purchase the Midnight Watch for years until we came along, but I figured there was no point in telling Shamika that. Once Rover understood that we meant no harm to him or the business his creator had established, he'd curbed his murderous tendencies and had been well behaved ever since.

Shamika continued staring into the air as if she could see Rover. Who knows? I thought. Since she was a magic-user, maybe she could. "Interesting," was all she said.

Bogdan and Scorch – the latter looking once more like an ordinary teenage girl – both got up off the floor, took seats on the opposite ends of the couch, and pointedly avoided looking at one another.

"Sorry," Scorch muttered grudgingly.

"As am I," Bogdan said with stiff dignity.

"There," I said. "Was that so hard?"

In answer, they just glared at me.

Tavi looked relieved, Devona looked like she was trying very hard not to smile, and Varney looked as if I'd just pooped on his parade. I'm sure he was disappointed that I'd robbed him of some great hand-to-hand combat footage.

"Everyone, I'd like to introduce you to Shamika," I said. "She's Papa Chatha's niece, and it looks like Papa may be among the missing magic-users."

Despite the fact that Bogdan and Scorch had been ready to kill each other only a few moments ago, they were professionals, and they – along with Tavi – listened with full attention as I told them about our witnessing the attack on the Bridge of Nine Sorrows and our visit to Papa's home – omitting the visit by Dis, of course.

When I was finished, Scorch started to say something, but I held up a hand to stop her. "I'd rather not discuss the destruction of the bridge right now. I want to focus on Papa's disappearance."

Scorch scowled, but she nodded and kept whatever she'd been about to say to herself. While any citizen of Nekropolis is technically free to live in any of the five Dominions, the Darkfolk tend to stay in whichever one the Darklord of their species rules. Thus Bloodborn tend to live in Gothtown, the Arcane in Glamere, lykes in the Wyldwood, and the Dead in the Boneyard. Since Varvara rules the Sprawl, the Demonkin live there, but since the Demon Queen believes the bigger the party the better, she encourages anyone and everyone to come play in the Sprawl and, if they wish, to live there. And as a result, the Sprawl is by the far the most cosmopolitan and diverse Dominion in the city. But those of us who live here and aren't of the diabolic persuasion forget that the Demonkin view the Sprawl as their home and see the rest of us as guests. Scorch was angry because she saw the destruction of the two bridges as an insult to her people and their Darklord, and I had no doubt the rest of her demonic brothers and sisters felt the same way. I wondered how many more scenes like the one I'd just witnessed between Scorch and Bogdan were playing themselves out in the businesses and streets of the Sprawl right now. Angry demons confronting equally angry witches and warlocks, all of them far too eager to settle their disputes with blood. The Sprawl was dangerous enough at the best of times, but I had a bad feeling it was swiftly going to get a hell of a lot worse out there if someone didn't find out who was behind the disappearances of the magic-users – and soon. And unfortunately for me, I'd been elected to be that someone.

Thanks a lot, Dis, I thought to myself.

"But you don't have any actual evidence that Papa was abducted," Bogdan pointed out.

"As far as we know right now, there's no evidence that any of the missing magic-users were abducted," I said. "All we know is that they're gone."

Bogdan opened his mouth as if to contradict me, then he frowned. "I suppose you're right." He glanced at Scorch, she looked back at him, and I could see the last of their anger at each other drain away.

"That's not to say there isn't any evidence," Devona pointed out. "Presumably Talaith believes she has some, or else she wouldn't have attacked."

"Maybe," I said. "But Talaith's nuts. It wouldn't take much to prompt her to order an attack. A vague suspicion or whispered rumor could easily have been enough to set her off."

Again, Bogdan looked as if he might say something, but he didn't. The Arcane might be loyal to their Darklord, but I haven't met one yet who didn't understand that Talaith could be, as Bogdan himself had put it a while ago, overzealous at times. Instead, the warlock shifted back to professional mode.

"Since we don't have any evidence at our disposal, I suppose we should try to get some," he said. "I could attempt to cast a spell to locate Papa Chatha."

"Which is why we came here," I told him.

"And you've probably already come to the conclusion that if Papa has experienced the same fate as the other missing Arcane, I likely won't be able to find him. Because if it were that simple, someone else would've tracked down the missing people by now."

"Yes," Devona said, "but if Papa's missing for a different reason…"

Bogdan nodded. "Then with any luck, I'll be able to find out, and hopefully locate him in the bargain." He stood up, clapped his hands together, and rubbed them briskly. "I'll need something of Papa's to help me work the spell, or at least something related to him." He looked at Shamika. "Actually, you might work best since you're literally related to him. Would you be willing to help? I assure you, you'll be perfectly safe and suffer no ill effects."

A look of panic came into Shamika's eyes, but it vanished just as quickly as it appeared. "I'll be glad to help in any way I can, but I think Mr Richter would be a better choice. Uncle has cast many spells on him over the years, leaving traces of his personal aura behind. I would think you could use that to make a more effective connection."

Bogdan looked at her blankly for a moment, then grinned. "That's a brilliant idea! You might have a genetic link to Papa, but Matt has a mystical one, and magic is what we need most right now. I'm impressed. You don't usually find such a high level of thaumaturgical thinking in someone so young."

Shamika looked uncomfortable, and I figured Bogdan's comment had embarrassed her.

"What's wrong, Bogdan?" I said. "Surprised that you got outthought by a kid?"

He gave me a look that said I wasn't half as funny as I thought I was. "Let's go into another room. The spell will be more effective if the two of us are alone when I cast it." He glanced at Varney. "And before you ask, when I say just Matt and me, I mean it."

"Bummer," Varney muttered, but he stayed where he was.

"Come on, Matt," Bogdan said. "Let's go."

I turned to Shamika. "Hopefully, this won't take long, and with any luck, we'll get some information that will lead us to Papa."

"Maybe," she said, but didn't sound confident, and I didn't blame her. Still, I didn't want to discourage her, so I gave her a parting smile before turning to Devona.

Don't worry, she thought to me. I'll look after her while you're gone.

I nodded, and then followed Bogdan out of the great room.

Bogdan and I went into Devona's office, where it took him only ten minutes to cast his spell. He gripped his medallion, chanted words in a language I didn't recognize, and made a series of mystical gestures in the air with his free hand. But in the end, the result came as no surprise.

"Sorry, Matt," Bogdan said. "I'm unable to locate any trace of Papa at all."

I'd had plenty of time to think while Bogdan had been working his magic, and I asked him about one of the things that had occurred to me. "Is it possible that Papa is using his own magic to hide himself from tracking spells?" I knew he was capable of it, since he'd done the same for me not long ago when Quillion had put a price on my head and every bounty hunter in the city had been hunting me.

"Normally, I'd say yes," Bogdan said. "But Shamika was right. Papa's put a lot of work into you over the years, and because of this the two of you have a strong mystical connection to each other. That connection should allow me to locate him even if he is attempting to hide. Even if he were dead, I would be able to locate his corpse. But as I said, I can detect no trace of him. Something is preventing Papa from being tracked magically – something powerful."

I might not be Bogdan's biggest fan, but he's a highly skilled warlock, and I took him at his word.

We left Devona's office and headed back to the great room. Someone had brought in a portable Mind's Eye set and put it on the floor in front of the couch. Everyone had gathered around it, and they were all grinning and laughing.

"What are you watching?" I asked as Bogdan and I entered.

Varney turned to me. "While you were gone, my producer transmitted some finished footage of the documentary to me, and I'm playing it for everyone."

"You can do that?" I'd had no idea Varney could receive information transmitted directly to him, and then turn around and transmit it to a nearby Mind's Eye set.

Devona had saved a seat for me on the couch, and she patted it, indicating I should join the group. From the amused way everyone was looking at me, I already had a bad feeling before I sat down, but once I did and mentally tuned into the Mind's Eye transmission, I realized things were far worse than I could've imagined.

I saw an image of a shadowy alley, and the silhouette of a man walking down it, away from the camera. A voiceover accompanied the footage – my voice, but they were words I'd never spoken.

"It was dark, even for Nekropolis. The shadows in the alley were as cold and unfeeling as my undead flesh, and though I moved among them like a creature born to darkness, they gave me no comfort. The shadows might be where I belonged now, but they'd never be home.

"I was searching for Argus of the Thousand Eyes, a small-time criminal who worked the streets of Ruination Row, one of the most squalid neighborhoods in the Sprawl. The sidewalks there are caked with filth, the gutters slick with blood, and the air heavy with despair and suffering. On Ruination Row, a visitor's life expectancy can be measured in mere moments, but that didn't scare me because I was already dead."

"Oh my God," I said, but everyone shushed me and the travesty continued.

"Counterfeit darkgems had been appearing on the streets of the Sprawl over the last few weeks, and I'd been hired by the Dread Exchequer to discover the source of the faux darkgems. Argus had a thing for highlander ale – made with real Scotsmen – and rumor had it that he'd been paying his extensive bar tabs with the phony darkgems. I'd encountered him a few times before, and I knew he was the type to cave under pressure. All I had to do was find him and after a brief but painful conversation – painful for him, anyway – he'd tell me what I needed to know. Of course, by the time I was finished with him, he might have to change his name to Argus of the Rather Less Than a Thousand Eyes, but that was OK. It wasn't as if he couldn't spare a few dozen.

"I stepped out of the alley and nearly bumped into a human woman wearing a tight red dress with a bodice so low and a hemline so high she might as well have been walking around naked. She was a beautiful brunette with long hair that spilled over her shoulders and framed her more than ample breasts. No rail-thin model type she. She was luscious, just this side of Rubenesque, and I felt hunger begin to rise. My needs weren't sexual, though. My hunger was literal. I wanted nothing more than to sink my teeth into her succulent flesh and tear off sweet bloody chunks of meat. Without realizing it, I took a step toward her, my hands raised, ready to reach out and snatch hold of her. But though it took every ounce of self-control I possessed, I fought my hunger down and slowly lowered my hands.

"The woman gave me a knowing wink.

"'See something you like?' she said in voice seasoned by too many cigarettes and too much whisky.

"'Too much,' I said, my own voice husky with barely suppressed need, and for perhaps the thousandth time since I'd found myself condemned to the hellish nightmare that was Nekropolis, I cursed my undead existence, I cursed my undead desires. I loathe this city, but not nearly as much as I loathe the monstrous thing I've become."

I'd had enough. I rose from the couch and swiftly turned off the Mind's Eye set, eliciting disappointed groans from the others.

"C'mon, Matt!" Scorch said. "It was just getting good!"

Bogdan was grinning so wide I thought his face might break. "That was a fascinating glimpse of the master at work. I had no idea you were such a tortured soul, Matt."

Devona's grin was just as big. "And I never knew you had a thing for well-padded brunettes."

"But that's not how it happened! I mean, it is what happened, but that's not what I was thinking at the time. For godsakes, you all know I'm not a flesh-eater!"

"Maybe you've just been suppressing the urge," Tavi said, grinning like the rest of them. "No need to feel ashamed. I'm a lyke; I understand."

I scowled at him, then turned to look at Varney. The vampire didn't even have the good grace to at least pretend to be embarrassed.

"Nothing personal, but my producer thought the footage of you tracking down Argus was a bit on the, uh, dry side. So he decided to spice it up a bit with the voiceover. He used a speech synthesizer to make it sound like you. Turned out great, huh?"

"Look, I don't know what journalistic standards you Darkfolk practice – if any – but back on Earth, a documentary is supposed to be nonfiction. Heavy emphasis on the non!"

Varney shrugged. "Sure, but that doesn't mean it can't be entertaining too, right?"

I sensed Acantha's hand in this. She'd love nothing more than to get back at me for how I'd humiliated her during her live broadcast, and it looked like she'd finally found a way.

"Can we watch some more?" Shamika asked, almost shyly. "It was fun."

"No, we cannot," I told her, then I turned to look at the others. "We're supposed to be trying to find Papa Chatha, remember?" I told them of Bogdan's failed attempt to mystically trace Papa. I thought Shamika would be disappointed, but she displayed no reaction to the news. I told myself that she probably hadn't expected Bogdan's spell to work, but I still found her lack of expression odd.

"So what do we do next?" Scorch asked.

Tavi spoke up. "I can dash over to Papa's and see if I can pick up a scent trail to follow. I'll give you a call if I find anything." Before any of us could respond, Tavi started to change. Patches of fur and scales covered his flesh, and his limbs became long and flexible as if they were made of rubber. His mouth and nose elongated into a canine snout, his eyes became yellow and serpent-like, and a reptilian hood spread out from his head. Tavi was a mixblood, a lyke who'd used genetic engineering to alter his wildform. He was a combination of mongoose and cobra, and while I had no idea which had been his original wildform, the combination of the two made him most formidable. Speed, strength, cunning, agility – he had them in abundance.

When Tavi said he intended to dash over to Papa's, he'd meant it literally. He ran out of the room so fast he was little more than a blur of motion, and the wind kicked up by his swift exit was strong enough to rival any gust that Rover could produce.

When Tavi was gone, Bogdan stroked his beard in thought. "I'll make some discreet inquiries among my contacts in the Arcane community here in the Sprawl. Perhaps some of them can provide insight into the disappearances of the magic-users."

"Sounds good," I said. "And Devona and I will go straight to the top."

Devona frowned. "Why do I not like the sound of that? Are you suggesting we talk to–"

"Varvara," I finished for her. "Yep. After all, right now she's the chief suspect in the disappearances. The only suspect, really."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Devona asked. "Varvara likes you well enough, but her attention is going to be focused on preparing a retaliation against Talaith for destroying the bridges. Even if she's behind the disappearances and Talaith was justified in her attack, Varvara can't let her aggression go unanswered. I doubt the Demon Queen will be in the mood to receive visitors."

"Maybe not," I admitted. "But when have I ever let the fact that someone didn't want to talk with me ever stop me from talking with them?"

Devona smiled. "Good point."

"If you two are planning on going to Demon's Roost, then I should accompany you," Scorch said. I started to protest, but Scorch cut me off. "The Demonkin are going to be upset over the Weyward Sisters' attack. Neither of you are Arcane, so their anger won't necessarily be directed at you, but once my people get stirred up, they can be like a nest of angry hornets. They'll sting anyone unlucky enough to get in their way. Having a demon escort might make things go more smoothly for you."

I wanted to tell her that Devona and I could handle ourselves just fine without her help, but I had to admit the precaution she suggested was a sensible one.

"All right. And that leaves just one detail to attend to." I turned to Shamika. "We could drop you off at your home."

It was a given that Shamika wouldn't be accompanying us to Varvara. I wouldn't take a kid to Demon's Roost at the best of times, and I certainly had no intention of taking her there while Varvara might be preparing for war. But I didn't like the idea of the girl going home by herself, either. Traversing the streets of the Sprawl is always an iffy proposition safety-wise, and having a whole lot of pissed-off demons running around wasn't going to make them any safer – especially for a young Arcane woman.

Shamika looked at me for a moment, and I had the feeling that she was at loss for how to answer. But then she said, "I'm too worried about Uncle to go home. I need to know what happened to him."

Devona scooted closer to Shamika and put a sympathetic hand on the girl's arm. My better half may have been raised in a Darklord's stronghold, but she's one of the kindest souls I've ever met. She can also kick major ass when she wishes, making her the woman who has it all, as far as I'm concerned.

"I'd feel the same way if I were in your position," Devona said. "Why don't you stay here? The rest of us will be gone for a while, but the Midnight Watch is one of the most secure places in the city."

"And Rover will be here to watch you," I added.

"We'll make sure to call you as soon as we learn anything," Devona finished.

Shamika didn't even think about it. "I'd rather go with you." She hurried on before we could say anything. "I don't think I could stand to just sit around here by myself waiting. And it's not like I can't take care of myself. I am Arcane, you know."

But you're just a teenager, I thought, but I didn't say it. Regardless of appearances, everything and everyone in Nekropolis is dangerous in one way or another. You have to be in order to survive from one tick of the clock to the next. Just because Shamika looked sweet and innocent didn't mean she couldn't be lethal when she had to. Scorch's teenage girl guise was a perfect example.

I looked at Devona and she looked at me. This time I didn't have to access our telepathic link to know what she was thinking. Devona smiled at Shamika.

"OK, honey, but stick close to us," she said. "All right?"

Shamika smiled gratefully and nodded.

I hoped Shamika really could take care of herself and that Devona wasn't letting her burgeoning maternal instincts get the best of her.

"All right then," I said, turning to Scorch. "Take us to your leader."

EIGHT

We saw no sign of Lazlo when we stepped outside, so I figured he was still tending to his cab. Besides, the only times he's sure to show up is when I'm truly desperate for a ride, and as much as I wanted to get to Demon's Roost, our current situation wasn't exactly a dire one. Bogdan said farewell and headed off on foot to track down whatever Arcane sources he intended to consult, and I can't say I was sorry to see him go. After a few moments of discussion, the rest of us decided to follow suit and take shanks' mare, as some of the longer-lived Darkfolk put it, and we headed down the sidewalk, traveling east in the general direction of Demon's Roost.

Varney was thrilled. "Righteous! There's more chance of getting good footage if we hoof it!"

I didn't reply. I was still mad at him for the "improved" video he'd shown us earlier. And, truth to tell, I was a little depressed, too. Without realizing it, I'd kind of gotten used to being a celebrity in town, but seeing how Varney's producer had felt the need to noirify the footage Varney had shot of me made me realize that maybe my unvarnished life wasn't all that fascinating after all. Being brought back down to earth was probably a good thing, if sobering.

We hadn't gone far when my hand vox rang – actually, its mouth called out the words "Ring-ring, ring-ring!" – and I answered. It was Tavi.

"I'm at Papa Chatha's," he said. His voice was guttural and hard to understand, and I knew he was still in his wildform. "I can't get inside because of the security spells on the place, but I've sniffed around outside. It was hard to pick up Papa's scent, not because he hasn't been here for a while but because you've been here recently. Nothing personal, but the scent of ripe zombie tends to be a bit overpowering."

"But you found a scent trail."

"Yes. There's another scent mingled with it that I don't recognize, though it's similar to certain breeds of Demonkin. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to attempt to follow the trail and see what I can turn up."

"All right, but if you find him, call me before you do anything." I'd come to respect Tavi's skills, but Devona had hired him not because he was a fighter but because he was a reformed thief. He'd stolen something from the notorious demon Mammon who hired me to retrieve the object. I'd done so after a certain amount of highly skilled detecting, but in the process I learned that Tavi was a decent enough sort who stole primarily for the sport and challenge of it. It had taken some swift talking on my part to convince Mammon not to devour Tavi's soul for his crime. In the end, Mammon reluctantly agreed to spare Tavi, and Devona offered the lyke a job working for the Midnight Watch. His knowledge of thievery, coupled with his contacts among Nekropolis' criminal element, had proved invaluable to Devona's business, but as swift and clever as Tavi was, he wasn't a warrior, and if he did manage track down Papa and the other missing magic-users, I didn't want him to try to deal with the situation on his own. I'd already saved his mixblood ass once, and I didn't want to have to do it again.

Tavi promised he'd do as I asked, then hung up, and I imagined him racing away from Papa's shack, following the scent trail at top supernatural speed. I tucked my vox back in my pocket, relayed Tavi's report to the others, and we continued walking.

There were still plenty of people crowding the sidewalks, and traffic roared by in the street at suicidal speeds, but the atmosphere in the Sprawl was noticeably subdued. The pedestrians were quieter than usual, continuously casting furtive glances about and keeping their hands in their pockets, no doubt grasping a weapon or two. There were fewer vehicles than normal in the street, and those that passed by were more often than not armored – or encased in force fields of magical or technological origin. Hood, roof, and side-mounted weapons were prominent, everything from machine guns to rocket launchers, energy blasters to curse throwers. The threat of open warfare in the Sprawl might not have been enough to keep the diehard partiers indoors, but it had made them more cautious. The Sprawl was already a powder keg most of the time, and Talaith's destruction of the bridges had lit the fuse. The only question was how long it would take to burn down and ignite an explosion.

We'd gotten maybe halfway to Demon's Roost when that question was answered. There were two popular dance clubs on either side of the street here: Overhexed, which catered primarily to Arcane clientele, and Disco Infernal, a demonic hotspot. But the action wasn't confined to the clubs' interiors tonight. Revelers from both places had taken to the street, where they stood in two groups, facing each other. And from the way they were shouting and gesturing, I knew that they hadn't met for a civilized crosscultural exchange. Traffic had been blocked off at one end of the street by a barrier of mystic flame, while a jagged line of sharp bonelike projections protruded from the asphalt at the other end. It seemed that neither the demons nor the magic-users wanted anyone to interrupt their little get-together.

The sidewalks on both sides of the street were deserted here. Evidently our fellow pedestrians possessed stronger survival instincts than us and had gotten the hell away at the first sign of trouble. I figured it would be wise of us to follow suit, and I motioned for everyone in our group to stop.

"I think we should quickly and quietly retrace our steps, then cut over a couple streets and take a nice wide detour around this block," I said.

"I like that idea," Devona said softly, never taking her eyes off the shouting demons and magic-users. "I like it very much."

The two groups were an eclectic mix of their kinds. Many of the Arcane were dressed in standard Nekropolitan street clothes, but some wore period costumes: medieval robes, stark Puritan outfits, Arabian finery, Native American deerskins, Aztec capes, stage magician tuxedos or sparkling gowns, and a good number of them carried wooden or metal staves with lux crystals affixed to the ends. The demons varied more in their physical forms. Some were the standard diabolic type, like Scorch's true shape, while others were bizarre amalgams of different animals: insects combined with fish, mammals with lizards, birds with crustaceans and so on… Some of the demons wore ethnic garb that indicated which human mythology they belonged to – Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, Persian, Egyptian, Hindu – while some appeared so alien that their shapes not only defied description, they defied perception. Creatures that appeared to be made of a series of floating transdimensional geometric shapes that seemed to warp in and out of existence, and others that were purely conceptual in nature. I saw one demon I recognized as Schadenfreude, and another that was Antidisestablishmentarianism.

But despite the two groups' striking differences, they had one important thing in common: they clearly loathed one another, and given the aggressive way they were acting, I knew it would only be a matter of moments until…

A heavily tattooed Arcane man wearing a dragonskin jacket raised his hands and began chanting a spell in a language I didn't recognize. The words seemed to echo in the air, and despite the fact that I have no nerve endings in my ears, it hurt to hear those words spoken aloud. A few seconds later, a half-dozen other Arcane joined in, and soon all of the magic-users stood chanting, hands raised toward the sky.

The Demonkin's reaction to the spell was dramatic. They fell back several steps, roaring and hissing, shrinking in upon themselves and averting their gazes as if it was too painful to look upon the faces of the chanting Arcane.

"What's happening?" I turned to Scorch, hoping she might be able to tell me, but she didn't respond. She stood there with her hands pressed over her ears, eyes squinted closed, jaws clenched tight, as if she were trying to shut out the world – or perhaps just the Arcanes' chanting.

"The magic-users are attempting a binding spell!" Devona said.

I understood what was going on then, but I had a hard time believing it. The enmity between Demonkin and Arcane goes back centuries, back to before the Darkfolk left Earth and emigrated to Nekropolis, when witches, warlocks, and wizards would attempt to summon demons, bind them to their will, and enslave them. Having a powerful creature like a demon to command was an attractive prospect for a magic-user, but you can see how a demon would find the arrangement less than appealing. After the founding of Nekropolis, slavery of any sort was outlawed by Dis and the Darklords, more as a practical matter than for any other reason. It's hard enough to keep the peace in a city full of monsters without having to worry about them running around constantly trying to enslave one another. The prohibition against slavery included the summoning and binding of demons, but the fact that it was now a major crime didn't seem to deter these Arcane in the least, and I doubted any of them considered what they were doing as breaking the law. After all, war was in the offing between Glamere and the Sprawl, and people – Darkfolk or human – are only too willing to suspend the rule of law during wartime… especially when it gives them an excuse to indulge the darker side of their nature.

Devona put her arm around Scorch as if to lend the demon strength and turned to look at me. "We have to stop the spell, Matt! If we don't she'll become the Arcanes' slave, bound to them until they set her free!"

I sighed. "Of course we do. Shamika, you stay here and take care of Scorch. Devona and I will be right back."

Up to this point Shamika had been staring wide-eyed at the scene in the street, but she tore her gaze away and gave me a solemn nod.

"But if the Arcane finish the spell and Scorch becomes bound, get away from her as fast as you can," Devona added. "They'll be able to make her do what they want, and she won't be able to resist their commands."

Shamika nodded once again, and I turned to Varney, who was watching the action in the street, undoubtedly filming it all with his cyber-eye camera.

"As for you…" I trailed off. I wanted to tell him to stay put, but I knew there wasn't any point. "Just try not to get in the way."

"Will do," he said. "You know, Matt, you get into some of the strangest situations."

I sighed again. "It's a gift."

Devona gave Scorch's shoulder a last squeeze, and then the two of us starting walking into the street, Varney following close behind.

"I don't suppose you know any way of blocking a binding spell," I said to Devona.

"None whatsoever. I figured we'd just do what we always do: stick our noses in where they don't belong and see what happens."

I grinned. "I thought I was the improviser and you were the planner."

She shrugged. "What can I say? You've rubbed off on me."

We continued walking toward the two groups, and while I did my best to project an air of casual calm – letting anyone in Nekropolis see how scared you really are isn't conducive to your long-term survival prospects – I frantically tried to think of some way to diffuse the situation Devona and I were about to insert ourselves into. I'd restocked my weaponry before leaving the Midnight Watch, and I now carried a few of my more interesting toys in my pockets, but I couldn't see how any of them would prove useful against an angry mob of combined Arcane and Demonkin.

As we neared the two groups, I noticed a small shop a couple doors down from Overhexed called The Teahouse of the Gibbous Moon. It had a large front window, and sitting at a table, keeping an eye on the incipient mayhem in the street, was a figure garbed in a voluminous crimson cloak with a large hood. At first I didn't think she saw me, but then she lifted her teacup in greeting, and I gave a slight nod in return.

Devona had picked up on the exchange, either telepathically or through old-fashioned observation. "Who is it?"

"The cavalry," I said. "I hope."

As we drew nearer to the mob, I could see that the binding spell was coming along nicely. Most of the Demonkin lay curled in fetal positions on the ground, rocking back and forth as they let loose blistering streams of curses or, just as often, loud wails and streams of tears. I wasn't sure how much longer it would take before the spell was complete, but I doubted we had more than a few moments at this point. No time left for subtlety.

I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out what appeared to be an empty glass vial sealed with a black rubber stopper. "Cover your ears," I warned Devona and Varney, and then I hurled the vial toward the mass of magic-users. It struck the ground at the feet of an Arcane woman who appeared to be wearing a gown made of shifting multicolored mist. She held her hands raised above her head and was chanting along with rest of the Arcane, but the moment the vial burst her voice – along with the voices of her fellow magikers – was drowned out by a highpitched shrieking. The sound rapidly grew in volume until it seemed to fill the entire world, and the Arcane broke off their chanting and clapped their hands over their ears to block the deafening noise. It didn't bother me – no nerve-endings, remember? – but Devona pressed her palms tight against her ears to muffle the sound. Given her sensitive vampire hearing, the noise must've been incredibly painful for her, but the only reaction she showed was a slight tightening of her lips. A tough gal, my Devona.

Varney didn't bother to protect his ears. Maybe he was even tougher than Devona, or maybe his ears also had cyber implants and he was able to mentally turn down the volume on them. Either way, he simply watched and recorded the action unfolding before him.

The shrieking only lasted a few seconds, and when it was over, the Arcane slowly removed their hands from their ears and turned to look at us, confused.

"That was a gift from a friend of mine named Scream Queen," I said, shouting so that they could hear me over the ringing in their ears. "She was nice enough to bottle a bit of her voice for me. It probably didn't do too much permanent damage to your hearing, but it did manage to shut you all up long enough for us to get your attention."

Scream Queen was a banshee and lead singer of Kakophonie, one of Nekropolis' hottest pop bands. Devona and I, along with the rest of the Midnight Watch, had helped her out once, and she'd been so grateful that – after paying Devona her fee – she gave me a few of her screams. How the banshee had managed to store them in a glass vial was beyond me, but I was grateful that it had worked. Up until the vial had shattered, I hadn't been a hundred percent sure that it would.

A middle-aged Arcane man – dressed as an Elizabethan nobleman in doublet and breeches, complete with a broad ruffled collar – stepped forward and scowled at me.

"This is none of your business, Richter," he said, speaking with an accent that sounded more Brooklyn than English. "This is between us and the hellrats."

The demons, who had begun recovering from the effects of the binding spell the moment the Arcane stopped chanting, had risen to their feet. They snarled upon hearing the derogatory term and fixed baleful gazes on the Arcane man, many of which were literally smoldering with hate.

I was mildly surprised he knew who I was, but I suppose I shouldn't have been. Even for Nekropolis, I'm a one-of-a-kind monster. And I had garnered a certain amount of fame over the last few months.

A demon spokesperson stepped forward then. The creature appeared to be formed from lumpy mounds of yellowish fat, making its gender impossible to determine, but when an orifice opened in its rough approximation of a head, the voice that came out was distinctly female, if a bit liquidy.

"You don't speak for us, wand-waver," she snarled.

"Now, now, children," I said. "Name-calling isn't going to get us anywhere."

"They started it!" the Elizabethan warlock said. "We were minding our business in the club when a group of them came in and told us that we were no longer welcome in the Sprawl."

"No, your people started it!" the lumpy demon said. "Several of you materialized inside our club and enchanted the music system so that instead of disco it began playing chamber music!" She shuddered at the thought, and a number of her fellow demons did likewise. I thought both types of music sounded equally horrid, but then there's no accounting for taste, especially when it comes to demons.

I glanced back at Shamika and Scorch. The demoness had shaken off the effects of the binding spell, but she remained standing on the sidewalk next to the girl. It wasn't like Scorch to hang back when there was trouble, and I guessed she was suppressing her more violent urges because she didn't want to leave Shamika unprotected. When it comes down to it, Scorch is a pretty decent sort for a demon, not that I'd ever tell her that. She'd probably set me on fire for insulting her.

"All right, so you guys don't like each other," I said. "Now that we've established that, why don't you return to your respective clubs and get back to boogieing down or whatever the hell it is you people do for fun that doesn't involve trying to kill each other."

Lumpy looked at me. At least, I think she did. It was hard to tell since she had a complete absence of facial features. "Don't you keep up with current events, zombie? Their people destroyed both of the Sprawl's bridges!"

The warlock sneered at her. "Only because your people have been kidnapping magic-users!"

"I know you Darkfolk are only too happy to have an excuse to tear into one another, but are you really this stupid?" I asked. "The Weyward Sisters destroyed the bridges. I ought to know: I was on one of them when they did it. And as for the disappearances, so far there's no proof who's behind them. But I can tell you this much: whoever's behind this, all Demonkin didn't abduct the magic-users, and all Arcane didn't destroy the bridges. So why fight with each other?"

Lumpy and the Elizabethan warlock looked at me for a moment and then looked at each other.

"He makes a lot of sense, doesn't he?" the warlock said.

"That he does," Lumpy agreed.

They fell silent for a moment.

"I hate people who make sense," Lumpy said.

"Me too." The warlock pointed a finger at me, and a beam of white energy shot forth and struck me on the chest. At the same instant the warlock spoke a single word: "Discerpo!"

I didn't feel anything, but I suddenly found myself unable to support my own weight. My legs fell out from under me, and I tumbled to the ground. My head hit the asphalt and bounced a couple times before coming to a stop. My face was pointed toward the rest of my body, which lay in a haphazard pile, but I could see that my hands and feet were no longer connected to their corresponding limbs.

Both the Arcane and Demonkin laughed at my predicament, and I supposed I should be grateful that I'd managed to unify them, if only for a moment and not exactly in the way that I'd hoped to.

Devona knelt by my head. "Are you OK, darling?"

"I'm fine." I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. "After all, it's not like this is the first time I've lost my head."

The warlock grinned in delight. "Did you like that? It's a spell of my own devising, one designed to split a person apart. While it's nothing more than an inconvenience for you, it's usually fatal – not to mention a hell of a lot messier – for living folks." His grin took on a nasty edge. "Allow me to demonstrate." He pointed his finger at Devona and shouted, "Discerpo!"

As before, a beam of light lanced forth from his finger, and even if I hadn't fallen to pieces, I knew I wouldn't have been fast enough to get Devona out of the way in time. But just as he had at the Bridge of Nine Sorrows, Varney moved with incredible speed, grabbed hold of Devona's shoulders, and snatched her out of the beam's path before it could strike her. With nothing to stop it, the beam of mystic power continued streaking through the air toward the section of sidewalk where Scorch and Shamika stood. Scorch tried to get the girl out of the way, but the beam was moving too fast and it struck Shamika. She was momentarily wreathed in sparkling light, and then she fell in upon herself, collapsing onto the ground in what appeared to be hundreds of small pieces.

I didn't have time to wonder why the spell had affected her differently than it had me. Scorch howled with a mixture of fury and sorrow, and she spun to face the warlock. She began running toward him, her teenage girl guise fading as she assumed her true fire demon form, her clothes vanishing as her body outgrew them. The warlock looked momentarily taken aback – the sight of a fully grown and enraged fire demon coming at you tends to do that – but then he pointed his finger (which was only shaking a little) at Scorch, readying to use his separation magic on her.

Varney still had hold of Devona, and though she struggled to free herself of his grip – no doubt so she could attack the warlock too – he held her tight. As fast as Scorch was, there was no way she could reach the warlock before he unleashed another blast of magic at her, and if Devona couldn't get away from Varney to stop the warlock, Scorch was a goner. And as a severed head lying on the street, all I could do was watch.

"Well, now, what are you children up to?"

The voice – an elderly woman's – was gentle and kind, but there was something about it that caught the attention of everyone in the street, and all heads turned to look at her. Scorch stopped running, and the warlock lowered his hand without releasing another bolt of magic. They, like everyone else, focused their gazes on the newcomer. Her crimson cape came within an inch of brushing the ground, and it was trimmed with silvery fur, as was her hood which she wore up, cloaking her features in shadow. She wore a tunic and leggings, both of forest green, and brown boots. In her thin, age-spotted hands she carried a pair of silver daggers that, despite the gloomy half-illumination provided by Umbriel, somehow still seemed to glimmer and glint in the light.

No one spoke. No one moved. No one dared breathe. Most of them probably hadn't seen her in the flesh before, but they all knew who she was, and they were all terrified of her.

She stopped when she reached me – or my head, anyway – and looked down. Within the shadows of her hood, her thin lips stretched into a smile.

"Hello, Matthew. It's good to see you. Sorry I didn't get here sooner, but I had to finish my tea."

"No problem, Granny. A woman has to have her priorities."

Her smile widened. "I'm so glad you understand." She turned to look at the Elizabethan warlock and the lumpy fat demon. "You've had your fun. Now why don't you all head on home like good little dears, hmm?"

Several of the demons and magic-users in the crowd began to slowly move away, but the Elizabethan warlock, though shaken, held his ground. "You don't scare us, Granny Red. You might be something of a legend, but so what? Nekropolis is chock-full of beings just as famous as you, and most of the time they don't live up to the hype."

I looked at the warlock. "Some friendly advice: if you want to live, you will turn around and haul ass in the opposite direction as fast your little Shakespearean shoes will carry you."

The warlock sneered down at me. "I'm Arcane! I'm not afraid of some old wo–"

That's as far as he got. Granny Red stepped forward almost nonchalantly, her knives flashed in the air, and then she stepped back. The warlock stood for a moment, eyes wide with shock, blood gushing from a dozen wounds, and then he toppled to the ground, dead.

Granny turned to the crowd, the warlock's blood dripping from her silver knives.

"Anyone else like to show Granny how tough they are?" she asked sweetly.

Demonkin and Arcane alike decided that discretion was the more sensible part of valor, and they turned and fled en masse. When they were gone, Granny walked over to the warlock's corpse, cleaned her blades on his clothes, and then tucked them into sheaths on her leather belt. Varney had kept hold of Devona the entire time, but he let go of her now, and she came over to me and picked my head up. Her mind reached out to me.

Is that really her? she thought.

Yes. Granny Red, the most feared monster killer in history. A myth made flesh, a bedtime story told to so many children over the centuries that she came to life, birthed from the collective unconscious of the human race. She was a young girl when she started out, of course, just like in the story, and she began by hunting werewolves. But she branched out as she got older, and when the Darkfolk moved to Nekropolis, she followed. Everyone fears her, including, I suspect, the Darklords themselves.

I'd first met Granny when I was trying to track down a murderous cyborg lyke who called himself the Megawolf. She'd been on his trail too, and we'd ended up working together to take him down. I have to admit that Granny scares me too. As much as I don't like to think about it, I am a monster, and slaying monsters is her one and only purpose in life. In many ways, she's as single-minded in her motivations as a great white shark – and ten times as deadly. And because she's literally a living legend, she's intimidating as hell, truly larger than life – or maybe in her case, larger than death.

Granny turned to Devona and smiled. "I'd heard Matthew had found himself a nice girl. I'm so pleased to meet you, my dear."

Granny held out her hand, and Devona tucked me under one arm while she reached out and shook Granny's hand. I was impressed to see that my love trembled only a little as she clasped hands with Granny. Granny gave her hand a gentle shake and then released it. Devona kept a smile fixed firmly on her face, but I could feel her tension through our telepathic link. Granny has killed more than her fair share of vampires over the centuries.

Granny lowered her gaze to me. "It looks like you're quite literally in good hands, Matthew, so I think I'll go back and have another cup of tea. It was lovely to see you again. And remember–"

"Don't talk to strangers," I finished for her.

She grinned, nodded, and walked casually back to The Teahouse of the Gibbous Moon. Only when she was inside and the door closed did we relax.

"So that was Granny Red. How interesting."

Devona turned – which was good, since I wasn't at the moment capable of doing so – and I saw Shamika had joined us in the street.

"Don't take this the wrong way," I said, "and I'm very glad you're OK, but I thought you were blasted into pieces by the warlock's spell."

She laughed. "You call that a spell? A reasonably competent Arcane child can cast spells stronger than that! It was simple enough to reverse."

I reached out to Devona through our link, and I could sense my love's skepticism. Devona isn't Arcane, but she specializes in security, both mundane and mystical, and is therefore quite knowledgeable about magic. I could sense that Shamika's words didn't ring true with Devona. It was something that needed to be looked into – later. Right now we, or at least I, had more pressing problems.

"If you wouldn't mind," I said to Devona, "I'd appreciate it if you could try to put this Humpty together again."

NINE

We were only a couple of blocks from Varvara's stronghold when Scorch announced that she had to use the little demons' room. When I just looked at her, she said, "What? My natural form may be big, but when I'm in this shape, my bladder isn't much larger than a pea."

I wanted to ask her why demons needed to urinate at all, but I decided there are some things which, despite my naturally inquisitive nature, I'm better off not knowing. We stopped at at a Sawney B's, and Scorch entered the faux cave exterior in order to use the restaurant's restroom. Considering that the place is named after the infamous Scottish cannibal and serves fast-food items like lady fingers, marrow shakes, and homunculus nuggets, I hate to think what the restroom conditions are like. Darkfolk or human, one thing that unites both species is that females for some unknown reason seem compelled to visit restrooms in packs. Once we'd stopped, Devona decided she needed to go too, and she asked Shamika if she wanted to come along. The girl looked confused for a moment, as if she was unsure how to respond, but then she nodded and followed Devona inside the restaurant, leaving Varney and me to wait outside.

I leaned back against Sawney B's plastic cave wall and crossed my arms over my chest. Thanks to Papa Chatha's spell, I was managing to keep my various body parts holding together, but it took constant concentration. If I allowed my mind to wander too far, I would feel myself start to lose cohesion, and I had to be careful if I didn't want to go all to pieces again. The warlock's spell had severed my head, arms, hands, legs, and feet from my body. I felt more like a scarecrow than I did a zombie, with joints that could bend in any direction, and movements so loosey-goosey I felt like a comical marionette whose strings were being pulled by a half-drunken puppeteer. Papa had told me that the enchantment that allowed me to keep a severed piece of myself attached to my body would remain effective for about twenty-four hours. But he hadn't said anything about trying to keep multiple severed body parts attached. I wondered how long I would be able to keep up my scarecrow act before I fell apart and stayed that way. I didn't think I was in any danger of being a permanent collection of undead puzzle pieces, not as long as I could find a magic-user to fix me up – or I could always pay a visit to Victor Baron. He once reattached my head, and he could easily do the same for the rest of me. But I didn't want to take time out for repairs. I wanted to find Papa and the rest of the magic-users and stop the conflict between Talaith and Varvara before it erupted into all-out war.

I was grateful for the women's need to take a pit stop, though, for it gave me a chance to be alone with Varney. I had a few questions I wanted to ask my vampiric shadow.

Varney stood next to me, his head swiveling slowly back and forth as his gaze scanned the street.

"Filming?" I asked.

"Just some background footage," he said. "Never know when it'll come in handy. Not much going on here, though. The streets are practically deserted."

"We're close to Demon's Roost. If Varvara really is preparing for war, she's probably had her people cordon off the blocks around her stronghold."

"If that's so, then how will we get through?"

I smiled. "The same way I get through anything else. Boyish charm and rugged good looks."

Varney gave me a skeptical glance but didn't say anything.

"You were filming when we broke up the riot between the Arcane and the Demonkin, right? I mean, you're always filming, but I assume you were paying special attention then."

"Sure thing. I got some great stuff!"

"I bet you did. Did you happen to get any footage of Shamika being blasted by the warlock's spell?"

He frowned. "I think so. I can't review the footage mentally. I need a Mind's Eye set to transmit it to, but yeah, I think I shot that. Why?"

"Just curious. Curiosity is one of the prime qualities of a good private detective, you know. For example, I'm curious about you, Varney."

"Me?"

"You saved Devona from falling when the rest of the Bridge of Nine Sorrows collapsed. And you pulled her out of the way when the warlock tried to blast her. Don't get me wrong: I'm very thankful that you did, but I find it awfully convenient that you should just happen to be in the right place at the right time… twice."

He shrugged. "Just lucky, I guess."

"Maybe. Except I don't really believe in luck, Varney. You know what I do believe in? People with hidden agendas who pretend to be something they aren't."

Varney looked at me for a long moment. "Dude, you are way cynical. You need to cultivate a more positive outlook. I know a guy who teaches meditation to Bloodborn to help them control their thirst-rage. Maybe you should give him a call sometime."

"Or maybe you should just come clean and tell me what your game is."

Varney looked at me, and his organic eye narrowed in cold appraisal. For a moment I thought he might break down and tell me what I wanted to know, but then the women came out of the restaurant and rejoined us.

Devona held two cups with straws in them, and she handed one to Varney. "It's just aqua sanguis, but it should take the edge off your thirst."

Aqua sanguis is a synthetic blood substitute produced in the Sprawl. It tastes like blood but doesn't provide any nourishment. For the Darkfolk, it's like the equivalent of diet soda. From what I've been told, it tastes rather weak, hence the slang term for it: redwater. Devona's not against drinking real blood per se. Officially, humans aren't considered prey by law in Nekropolis, and any real blood served in bars and restaurants either comes from willing donors or from specially cloned donator bodies produced by Victor Baron. But that doesn't stop some of the more unscrupulous blood suppliers from snatching a human or two off the street now and again, and – like humans on Earth who boycott tuna because of fishing practices that ensnare dolphins – some of the more socially conscious Darkfolk choose to drink aqua sanguis instead of blood whenever possible.

Varney thanked Devona, took the drink, and sipped. He didn't look at me, and it was like our conversation hadn't happened. But it had, and I intended to continue it later. I was certain now that Varney was more than he appeared to be. The question was what, and whether he was any kind of a danger. So far he'd saved Devona twice, and that meant I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being, but that wasn't the same as trusting him. Not by a long shot.

I desperately wanted a chance to talk with Devona alone for a few minutes. I had yet to tell her about my visit from Dis at Papa Chatha's, and I wanted to share my suspicions about Varney with her, as well as my uneasy feelings about Shamika. I could've done so telepathically, I suppose, but I've found that our link works best for sharing emotions. It's harder to communicate complex concepts, and short back-and-forth communication works better than longer, more detailed exchanges. I decided it would be better to wait until we had a few moments of privacy so we could speak aloud to one another. But if the opportunity didn't arise soon, I'd settle for a telepathic exchange rather than wait too much longer.

Instead of a drink, Scorch had bought a ten-pack of testicles marinated in gastric juices, and she popped one of the horrid slimy things in her mouth.

"Things are likely to get more military from here on out," she said as she chewed, "so you'd better let me do the talking."

"Maybe you should finish eating first," I said, and despite the fact that I no longer possessed a functioning sense of smell or working taste buds, I couldn't help sounding queasy.

"Good idea."

Scorch assumed her fire demon form, opened her now large maw, and tossed the rest of the testicles into her mouth, package and all, and swallowed. Then she grinned at me.

"I'm ready."

Scorch took the lead, Devona, Shamika and I walked in the middle, and Varney brought up the rear, the better to film us, no doubt. I noticed he kept closer to Devona than the rest of us, and given his track record at protecting her, I wasn't about to protest.

By this point we could see Demon's Roost off in the distance. Varvara's stronghold resembled a sleek, gleaming, metal-andglass high-rise that would be right at home in one of Earth's more modern cities. It rose a dozen stories into the sky, its bright lights standing out sharply against the starless black expanse that stretches above the city like a vast blanket of Nothing. Cold and stark, utterly lacking charm or grace, Demon's Roost is a monstrous monument to power and excess – and thus a perfect home for the Demon Queen.

When we reached the next block, I saw that my supposition had been correct: the streets were blocked off by wicked-looking barriers made from large steel spikes with razor wire stretched between. Demons larger, more muscular, and way uglier than Scorch patrolled the barriers, armed to the teeth with weapons both modern and ancient. Some carried automatic pistols, rifles, and flamethrowers, while others gripped broadswords and heavy battleaxes. A few carried futuristic high-tech weapons that wouldn't have been out of place on the set of a sci-fi movie. Varvara believes in being on the cutting edge of everything, and that includes technology. She has the means and the money to import any Earth weaponry she wishes, and there are any number of mad scientists living in the city who are only too happy to pro vide some seriously deadly upgrades to the toys she acquires – for a price. And if they don't already work for the Demon Queen, she has them on retainer. And since Darkfolk are tougher than humans, safety features like radiation shielding aren't necessary, and if a weapon should blow up in a demon's hands, what of it? They'll more than likely shrug it off, and if the explosion does manage to kill them, there are a hundred more waiting in line to serve, and more are being bred in Varvara's hatcheries every day. Back on Earth, some people say life is cheap, but they've never been to Nekropolis.

The guard demons fixed wary gazes on us as we approached, but they didn't raise their weapons. I guess we looked like a harmless enough bunch – and we did have our very own demon escort.

Scorch walked up to the barrier and addressed one of the demons, a mammoth creature ten feet tall that looked like a giant ape covered in snakeskin.

"Hey, Magilla. What's up?"

The ape-thing carried a weapon that resembled a giant blow dryer combined with a food processor. It looked ridiculous, which most likely meant it was exceptionally lethal.

Magilla tightened his grip on the weapon and raised it a few inches, but he still didn't level it at us, something for which I was profoundly grateful.

"Guard duty," the demon said in a low rumbling voice that sounded like a small avalanche. "The general's ordered all access points to Demon's Roost blocked off and guarded."

"General who?" I asked.

Magilla looked at me as if he was considering gutting me and using my eviscerated corpse for a field latrine. But he said, "General Klamm. Varvara put him in charge."

"She's already gathering an army?" Devona asked.

Magilla shrugged. "You know Varvara. Once she decides to do something, it's fast forward all the way."

"The bridges weren't destroyed by ground troops," I pointed out.

In response, Magilla hooked a thumb skyward. I looked up and saw a dozen winged demons flying above us. Some had bat wings, some had insect wings, and some just levitated, but, like their ground-based counterparts, they were all armed and ready for trouble.

"Looks like Klamm's thought of everything," I said.

"He's a pretty smart guy," Magilla agreed affably enough, though from our conversation so far, I figured he wasn't the greatest judge of intelligence levels. He went on. "What are you doing here, Scorch? You come to enlist?"

Scorch said, "Naw. You know me. I'm a lover, not a fighter."

Scorch's assertion was a bit hard to take considering that she now looked like something Hieronymus Bosch would've hesitated to paint, but it made Magilla laugh, and whenever a soldier is laughing instead of blasting you with his futuristic superweapon, that's a good thing.

Scorch went on. "I've got some people here that need to talk to Varvara. This is Matthew Richter, the zombie PI. He has some information that might prove useful to the queen."

I was coming to ask questions of Varvara, not deliver information, but I didn't see the need to correct Scorch, not if her ruse would get us past the guard.

"I heard you've been hanging around him lately." Magilla gave me an appraising look with his simian eyes. "You can't mistake the smell, can you? Nothing reeks quite like a deader."

I frowned, but I held my tongue. I was tempted to draw my 9mm and put a couple bullets in the big scaly ape just to show him that I don't take shit from anyone, but I told myself that, satisfying as it might be, it wouldn't help matters – especially when Magilla decided to retaliate with a deadly blast from his Buck Rogers gun.

Magilla thought for a moment, and from the way his brow crinkled and the little grunts of effort he made, I knew it wasn't an easy task for him.

"I guess it's OK if you take the deader on to Demon's Roost," he said at last. "Everyone knows Varvara finds him amusing, and she could probably use a good laugh right now."

"Looks like my reputation has preceded me," I muttered.

Magilla's scaly lips drew back in a grin, exposing a mouthful of large yellowed fangs. "And if she's not in the mood to see you, she'll probably just blast you to atoms."

"Always a risk when you seek an audience with the Demon Queen," I agreed.

Magilla's grin fell away, and I had the impression he was disappointed that I hadn't found him intimidating. Monsters are like that. They're so used to being terrifying that when you don't automatically pee your pants at the sight of them, they're at a loss for what to do next. Usually they just try to kill you. And failing that, they try to scare anyone else in the vicinity. Magilla was no different. He turned away from me and focused his attention on Devona, Shamika, and Varney. He grinned again, wider this time.

"What about these three, Scorch?" he asked. "Who are they and why should I let them through?"

"They're friends," Scorch said, "and they also have information that might be of interest to Varvara."

Magilla looked them up and down for a moment. "I don't see that it takes five of you to talk to the queen, but I'll tell you what. You give me the girl to play with, and I'll let the rest of you pass." Magilla's grin widened into a full-fledged leer.

Shamika's eyes widened in shock, and Devona stepped closer to her and put a protective arm around her shoulders.

"We will do no such thing! I can't believe you'd even make such a suggestion!" Devona's eyes flashed dangerously.

Magilla laughed. "What part of 'I'm a demon' don't you understand?"

"No deal," I said.

Magilla shrugged. "Then none of you pass. It's as simple as that. Now go on and get out of here before I decide to use you all for target practice."

I fixed Magilla with the sort of unblinking stare that only dead people like me are capable of.

"I pick up a lot of nifty toys in my line of work," I said in what I hoped was a low, dangerous tone. "One of the nastier ones I've got is called a Judas bomb. Ever heard of it?"

Magilla shook his head. He didn't look especially scared, but he was paying attention.

"It's a magical device that when activated causes half the cells in your body to become cannibalistic. They immediately turn on the unaffected cells and begin devouring them. In a sense, your body betrays itself, hence the device's name. It's an extremely messy and unbelievably painful way to die."

Magilla smiled, but it was forced. "And what? If I say anything more about wanting to play with the little girlie you'll use the bomb on me? Just kill me in cold blood? I thought you hero types were better than that."

I kicked myself mentally for trying to bluff Magilla. It's almost impossible to out-nasty a demon. Of course, it would've helped if I'd actually had a Judas bomb on me. I'd heard of the devices but never actually saw one. If I'd had one, I'd have probably used it then, just to wipe the smug smile off Magilla's face and to hell with my heroic reputation.

Shamika stepped up next to me. "Thank you for trying to defend my honor, Matt, but I can take care of myself."

Magilla leered at her and a thick ropey strand of saliva dripped out of the corner of his mouth. "The question is, can you take care of me?"

The other guard demons had kept their distance so far, but they'd been watching our conversation with interest, and they burst out with laughter upon hearing the simian demon's lessthan-subtle innuendo.

Shamika wasn't amused, however.

"Yes," she said softly. "I can."

She spoke no magic words, made no mystic gestures. She did nothing more than stand and stare at Magilla.

We heard the sounds first – a soft scritch-scratch of tiny claws on pavement coming from both sides of the street. We sensed movement next, shadows roiling and surging within the alleys between buildings. And then the shadows broke free and flooded into the street. Packs of small creatures ran out of the alleys and scampered on tiny legs toward Magilla, and the other guard demons shrieked when they saw the creatures. For they belonged to a species so savage, so remorseless that even monsters feared them, and with damn good reason.

They were chiranha.

No one knows where they came from, whether they're the result of some unnatural twist of evolution or the unexpected outcome of some bizarre magical or scientific experiment. No one believes they were created on purpose, though. There isn't a sorcerer or scientist insane enough to even contemplate such a thing, let alone actually do it. Chiranha are a cross between piranha and Chihuahua, and as silly as that might sound, no one in Nekropolis laughs at them. They're the city's ultimate predator-scavengers, and the only good thing about them is that they keep the carrion imp population under control.

They're the size of Chihuahuas, but scaled instead of furred, with beady black fish eyes and blunt piranha faces with a prominent lower jaw. Their teeth are tiny but razor sharp, and a pack of the little bastards can strip the flesh off your bones and start digesting it before your last scream has time to fade away.

Magilla shrieked at the sight of two packs of chiranha converging on him, sounding more like a young girl than Shamika. He aimed his futuristic blow dryer at the oncoming horde of miniature yapping death and unleashed a sizzling blast of glowing blue-white energy. The discharge disintegrated a huge chunk of the street, but the chiranha were too fast. They darted out of the beam's path just in time, without getting so much as a single fishy scale on their hides singed. The other guard demons let loose with their weapons, both mundane and esoteric, but with the same lack of success. The savage little bastards were just too small, fast, and agile. Fortunately for the other demons, they were only interested in Magilla. The chiranha were on him before he could fire his weapon a second time, and they swiftly covered the shrieking demon from head to toe. He fell to the ground, rolling and thrashing as he tried to fend off the chiranha, but no matter what he did, he couldn't dislodge the creatures.

All we could do was watch and wait for the inevitable to be over – or so I thought.

"Stop fussing," Shamika said. "They won't eat you unless I tell them to."

She had to repeat this several more times at increasingly louder volume, but eventually Magilla heard her and ceased his exertions. He lay motionless on the ground, the chiranha still covering his body, glaring at him with those tiny black eyes and growling softly. Shamika didn't say anything, but the chiranha covering Magilla's face moved away so he could see her.

The other guards, seeing that Magilla was, surprisingly enough, still alive, edged toward us, slowly raising their weapons.

I looked at them. "If she can summon chiranha to attack Magilla, what else do you think she might summon to attack you?"

The guards looked at me uncertainly, then at each other. Finally they shrugged and lowered their weapons. Demonkin aren't exactly a sentimental lot, and the others' concern for Magilla's fate didn't override their own survival instincts.

Shamika looked through the barrier at Magilla. "It's not nice to threaten people. Don't do it again."

Magilla looked at her as if she'd suddenly started speaking Urdu. Threatening people was one of the things demons like him did best.

"Um… OK. I'm… sorry?"

Before Shamika could respond, Devona gently nudged me. "We've got problems upstairs, Matt."

I directed my gaze skyward and saw a score of flying demons descending toward us. They'd doubtless witnessed what Shamika had done to Magilla, and while I doubted they gave anything remotely resembling a damn for him, they'd been assigned to guard the environs around Demon's Roost, and they weren't about to allow our aggression to go unchallenged. Now I really wished I had a Judas bomb – better yet, a few dozen. I was desperately trying to figure out what we could do to keep from being reduced to bloody gobs of shredded and sizzling flesh, when an image appeared in the air just above the barrier.

Varvara might be queen of all the Demonkin, but she looks human – with the exception of her emerald eyes which seem a bit too large and a bit too green to be real. But her humanity is an almost cartoonish representation of femininity. She's more gorgeous than any supermodel, more sexy than any Penthouse centerfold, with a body whose proportions would make a Barbie doll so sick with envy that she'd develop an eating disorder. She's statuesque in every sense of the word, with long full-bodied red hair that seems to glow with an inner fire. She usually dresses in the highest of high fashion, but today she was garbed in a military commander's outfit that looked vaguely Nazi-ish. Black fabric, black gloves, black boots, and a riding crop clasped in one hand held at her side. Her red hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and there was a stylized flame insignia over one of her extremely large breasts.

I knew we were looking at a magically projected image instead of the real thing because she was slightly transparent. Nevertheless, her image exuded the same psychic impression of Darklord power as her physical presence did, and it took an effort of will on my part not to take a step or two backward. No one else in our group did either – we were all a hardy bunch – but Scorch went down on one knee and bowed before her queen.

The flying demons that had been diving rapidly toward us stopped and hovered in mid attack, heads bowed, and Magilla's fellow guards did as Scorch had and knelt. Magilla, still covered by chiranha – who, I noticed, seemed oblivious to Varvara's presence – lay still, but the exaggerated relief on his face at seeing his mistress appear was almost comical.

"My queen!" he said, his voice more than a bit whiny. "These five attempted to breach the barrier and they've used Arcane magic to attack and insult me! I pray, Mistress, that you'll use your unholy powers to smite them for their transgression against your Infernal Majesty!"

I looked at Varvara. "He's laying it on a bit thick, don't you think?"

"More than a little, I'd say." Varvara scowled down at Magilla. "Get up. You look ridiculous lying there covered in carnivorous lapdogs. I swear, if I didn't need every able body to fight right now, I'd transform you into a school of catfish and let the chiranha have at you."

Magilla, far more terrified of his queen than he was of being devoured alive, leaped to his feet, scattering chiranha off him. The small creatures gave him a few last growls for good measure before turning away and padding back to the alleys from which they'd been summoned.

Varvara's image turned around to face the demon guards.

"Allow them through and escort them to Demon's Roost." She then turned her attention to Magilla once more. "And if any of them so much as stubs a toe on the way, I'll hold you personally responsible."

Magilla's scaly hide lightened a shade as he went pale. He tried unsuccessfully to speak, swallowed twice, and finally settled on a brisk nod. Varvara's image then turned back to us.

"So, Matt. I suppose you're coming to make my life even more hideously complicated than it already is."

"What else?" I said.

She smiled, said, "Sounds delicious," and then disappeared.

Varvara's parting words didn't exactly reassure me. When the Demon Queen says something sounds delicious, she might be speaking literally.

TEN

I've visited Demon's Roost on a number of occasions, almost all connected to a case in one way or another, and every time I've been there, a bacchanalia of epic proportions was taking place. But while there was still plenty of excitement in the air today, the atmosphere was military rather than celebratory. The Atrium was packed full of bodies as usual, but instead of a cross-section of partying Darkfolk, only Demonkin were in attendance. All subspecies were represented – reptilian, insectine, mammalian, piscine, elemental, conglomerate, humanoid, and conceptual. And while they still wore their civilian clothes, if they wore anything at all, they stood at attention in rows or conducted precise drills at the shouted commands of demons garbed in black uniforms similar to what Varvara had been wearing. Most of the demons were armed, though there was no standardization in the types of weapons they carried. I had the impression that they'd been summoned to Demon's Roost on a moment's notice and had been commanded to bring whatever weapons they could get their claws on. While a number had topof-the-line Earth guns, bladed weapons, or futuristic hardware, quite a few carried baseball bats, lengths of metal pipe, or that old standby, a two-by-four with nails driven through it.

The makeshift army might've looked ridiculous if it wasn't for two things. One was the sheer number of them. A couple hundred demons were jammed into the Atrium, and there were at least twice that many outside drilling on the grounds surrounding Varvara's stronghold. The other thing that kept them from seeming ridiculous was the fact that they were demons – fierce, heartless, amoral, and savage creatures whose only reason for existing was to sate their appetites, especially if they could do so at someone else's expense. No blank expressions of military discipline on their faces. Their eyes blazed with battle lust, and their mouths were twisted into cruel smiles, no doubt as they imagined what they intended to do to anyone foolish enough to get in their way.

I thought of the total destructive force contained within this building and the horror that would result if it was released into the streets of Nekropolis. As important as finding Papa Chatha was to me, I knew it was even more vital that I find a way to stop the war between Varvara and Talaith before it spilled over onto the rest of the city. I thought of Devona's and my trip to the alternate Nekropolis. That world's Hyde plague would seem nothing but a minor inconvenience compared to the devastation an all-out war would cause in our world.

Magilla himself had escorted us to Demon's Roost, and he marched us across the Atrium, growling for demons to get out of our way in the name of the queen. No one challenged him or accused him of lying about acting under Varvara's authority. No demon was suicidal enough to use the name of their queen under false pretenses.

Magilla took us to the elevator that led straight to Varvara's penthouse quarters. And then, his duty done, he turned and departed without saying a word. None of us was sorry to see him go.

I was familiar with the demon guarding the elevator. Usually, he doesn't wear clothing, but since Jambha was one of the stronghold's staff, he'd been issued a black military uniform. Or at least, it appeared that way. Rakshasas are masters of illusion, so perhaps we only thought he was wearing clothes, which, if you think about, probably saves him a lot on dry-cleaning bills. Whenever I visit, he's wearing, or seems to be wearing, a necklace made of tiny decapitated heads – usually miniature versions of mine – but today all the heads were tiny copies of Talaith, their eyes rolled white, flesh pale; little beads of blood dripped from their ragged neck stumps. What else would a patriotic demon be wearing with an Arcane-Demonkin war in the offing?

Jambha's job is preventing anyone from trying to bother Varvara by using any or all means necessary, the more bloody and violent, the better. Considering that rakshasas are Hindu cannibal demons, there's usually a certain amount of biting, chewing, and swallowing involved. Jambha always gives me grief whenever I need to go up to Varvara's penthouse – though so far I've managed avoid ending up in his stomach – and since he'd dressed the part of a good little soldier that day, I expected him to demand that we present our papers to him or something similar as we approached. But all he did was give us a brisk nod, tap the elevator's up button with a claw, then returned to standing to attention and staring off into space as if we weren't there.

"Aren't you going to say something annoying?" I asked him. "It wouldn't be a visit to Demon's Roost without you threatening to eat me or one of my friends for having the temerity to even think of bothering your queen."

Jambha shrugged, though he continued looking straight ahead. "The queen knows you're coming, and she wants to see you. Why should I waste any time bantering with you? There's a war on, you know."

"You demons aren't much fun at the best of times, but you're downright dull when you get all militaristic," I said.

Jambha merely shrugged again, as if to say, That's war for you. The elevator arrived, the door slid open, and we entered. It was a bit of a tight fit for the five of us – it was Varvara's private elevator, after all, and not exactly designed for crowds – but we managed. The door slid shut and the elevator started to rise to the accompaniment of a Muzak version of the 1812 Overture.

"I've never met a Darklord before," Shamika said as we ascended. "How should I act?" She didn't sound particularly nervous, just curious – which was strange. Anyone else would've peed themselves at the thought of being in the same building as a Darklord, let alone in the same room. I've encountered all five Darklords on one occasion or another, but I know Varvara best, and I'm still intimidated by her, though I'd never give her the satisfaction of showing it. Anyone with half a mind should've been scared to death to meet the Demon Queen, and anyone with a whole mind should have been terrified right out of it. But not Shamika. She'd demonstrated that she could take care of herself against Magilla, but handling a single demon of middling rank was nowhere near the same as being able to defend yourself against the queen of the Demonkin herself. I wondered if Shamika was overconfident, naïve, or a combination of the two. Though she'd supposedly been born and raised in Nekropolis, she didn't always act like it.

"Let Matt do the talking," Devona said. "Varvara finds him amusing."

Shamika frowned. "And that's a good thing?"

"It's an irritating thing," I said, "but useful. As long as Varvara is entertained, there's a decent chance she won't destroy us for bothering her."

Varney grinned uncertainly. "You're joking, right?"

I looked at him. "You've met Galm. You tell me if I'm joking."

His grin fell away as he considered my comment.

The elevator came to a stop as it reached Varvara's penthouse. The door slid open, and we stepped out and into a place I didn't recognize. Normally, Varvara's private quarters look like a parody of a romance writer's ideal bedroom: silk and satin everywhere, a huge canopied bed covered with overstuffed pillows, perfumescented air… All of that was gone now, replaced by a war room with dim fluorescent lighting and gray walls. Computer stations lined the room, manned by furiously typing demons wearing communications headsets. A black flag with a crimson flame emblazoned in the middle hung on the wall, along with a number of motivational posters that showed fierce-faced demons and featured slogans like SUFFER NOT A WITCH TO LIVE and PUT THE FLAME TO THE ARCANE! In the middle of the room sat a large gleaming metal table displaying a detailed three-dimensional hologram of the entire city. A keyboard lay flush with the tabletop, along with several monitor screens and rows of buttons and dials – the setup would've done a cheesy spy movie's evil mastermind proud. Standing before the projection dressed in her stylish black uniform was Varvara, and next to her, wearing a similar uniform, was a male demon I didn't recognize.

Like her, he appeared human – tall and handsome in a lean, wolfish way, clean-shaven, but with thick black hair hanging down to his shoulders. Not exactly a military haircut, I thought, but then again, he did serve in a demon army, and their regulations were no doubt somewhat more broad than an Earthly army. The golden stars on his shoulders, along with the fact he stood at the map with Varvara, told me who he was.

"General Klamm, I presume?" I said.

He looked up at me, and I saw that his eyes were as black as his hair, and they shone in the light as if made of polished stone. It was an eerie effect, and I was surprised to discover it creeped me out a little.

"And you must be Matthew Richter. I'd say it was a pleasure to meet you, but I don't see any point in lying." His voice was rich and cultured, with the weary, snotty edge of a food or theatre critic who'd long ago gotten used to the world constantly disappointing him.

"That's funny. I thought lying came as naturally as breathing to demons." I looked him up and down. "You know, given your name, I expected you to look somewhat more mollusk-y."

Klamm's dark eyes glittered. "And I expected you to be a loudmouth who thinks he's cleverer than he really is. At least one of us isn't disappointed."

As desperately as I wanted to hit him with a devastatingly witty comeback, nothing came to mind, so I settled for simply glaring at him.

Varvara's emerald eyes sparkled with delight at our interplay. "I'd tell you boys to behave yourselves, but where would be the fun in that?" She left the table and came walking toward us. Perhaps sauntered might be a better word. Even when she's all business, Varvara moves like a jungle cat in heat.

I expected her to ask me what information I had for her, but instead of approaching me, she walked up to Devona, bent down – Varvara's quite tall and Devona's petite – and gave her a big hug. "Congratulations, sweetie! I'm so thrilled that you and Matt are expecting!"

"Thank you," Devona said. "We're both quite excited."

"Well, of course you are!" Varvara said. "It's not every day that a zombie and a half-vampire have a child, let alone twins."

Devona and I just gaped at her.

Varvara frowned. "Did I say something wrong?"

"I'm only having one baby," Devona said. "The doctors at the Fever House–"

Varvara interrupted Devona with an imperious wave of her riding crop. "Don't know their fangs from a can opener. While I, on the other hand, am a dread and mighty Darklord." She grinned. "If I say you're going to have twins, you can count on it."

I was struggling to accept the bombshell the queen of demons had just dropped on us. Devona was right; during all our doctors' visits, no one had ever mentioned that she was carrying two babies. I had no reason to doubt Varvara. Despite what I'd said to Klamm about demons, I'd never known her to lie to me. When you're as powerful as Varvara, you don't need to resort to lying to get what you want. But I couldn't see how the Bloodborn doctors at the Fever House could've made such a mistake.

"The doctors performed ultrasounds…" I began.

"Which only picked up one heartbeat," Varvara said. "And that's because only one of your children has a beating heart. The other is… well, I'm not sure what she is, to be honest. She's alive… in a sense anyway." Varvara flashed Devona a smile. "She's moving around in there pretty good. Her brother, on the other hand, is a bit more sedate, but they're both healthy enough. I can't tell too much about them. The magic that surrounds them is too strong and too different from anything I've ever encountered before. But they're going to be very special children, that I can promise you."

Every demon in Varvara's war room broke off what they were doing and turned to look at Devona, expressions of curiosity and in some cases outright wonderment on their faces. Klamm looked at Devona too, but his gaze was focused on her mildly swollen belly, and the look on his face was one I couldn't read, but which made me uncomfortable for some reason.

"My father visited me recently," Devona said. "Why didn't he say anything?"

"He might not have sensed the truth," Varvara said. "We Darklords, while more or less equally matched in power, possess different skills. Talaith and I are both more versatile when it comes to working magic than the boys are." She paused. "Then again, Galm might've had his own reasons for not telling you. But I assure you, it's true. You are carrying twins."

I looked at Devona and she looked at me, and we both smiled. We'd once been trapped in a virtual reality in which we were a human couple living on Earth. In that dream scenario, we'd have two children, fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. Though they hadn't been real, we'd believed they were, and when we'd realized we were living in an illusion, we'd fought to free ourselves. But in doing so, the virtual reality vanished – including our two children. Even though they'd been nothing more than dreams, losing them had still hurt like hell. There was no way the babies Devona was carrying were those two dreams made flesh, I knew that. And yet… Nekropolis is a damned strange place, and the impossible happens here with almost monotonous regularity.

I decided to go back to being a loudmouth, since it's something I seem to have particular talent for. "I'm surprised to see you so happy for us, Varvara. I didn't know you were the maternal type."

The Demon Queen gave me a look I couldn't read. What is it with me and interpreting demonic facial expressions today? I thought.

"The Creche of the Demonkin lies in the caverns beneath Demon's Roost." Her voice was even and without emotion, and I thought that I'd never heard her sound so dangerous before. "I may not personally lay every egg incubated there, but I make damn sure they receive the very best care. And if a single egg fails to hatch due to the negligence of a caregiver, the penalty for that failure is dire indeed. Do you understand?"

Since I'm dead, I don't need to swallow, but I did so at that moment anyway. "I do."

She looked at me for a long moment, and then frowned. "Is something wrong with your head? It looks a little lopsided."

I'd been so concerned with not angering Varvara further that I'd momentarily allowed my concentration to lapse, and my neck's hold on my severed head had slackened. Luckily Varvara had said something before my head had slipped off and fallen to the floor. That would've been embarrassing, and I didn't want to think about what cutting remark Klamm might've made if it had happened. I concentrated, and my head and neck gripped each other tightly again.

"I'm all right," I said, trying to sound casual.

Varvara looked me up and down, and though I didn't feel anything, I had the impression that she was mystically scanning me. When she was finished, her grin returned.

"Just try to keep it together, Matt." She then turned to look at Varney, Shamika, and Scorch. "The demoness I know, for am I not ultimately mother to all the Demonkin?"

She walked over to Scorch and gently touched her cheek. "There's a war on, dear. Go downstairs and join the rest of your fellow soldiers."

Scorch bowed her head. "Yes, my queen." She gave Devona and me an apologetic look before heading back to the elevator and getting on. As the door slid shut, she gave a thumbs-up to wish us luck. I didn't blame Scorch for leaving. She had no choice but to obey Varvara's command – not if she wanted to continue breathing, that is.

Varvara then turned to Varney and Shamika. "And who are these two charming people?"

I introduced them, and Varvara gave Shamika a long look, scowling as if she were puzzled. But then she shook her head as if to clear it and focused her attention on Varney.

"I'm glad you're here," she told him. "You have my permission to film and broadcast anything you see. When this war is over, history will vindicate the Demonkin, and I want the citizens of Nekropolis to see what we do here this day."

"My queen," Klamm began, "Do you really think that's wise? If the Arcane should somehow tap into the Bloodborn's signal…" He gave Varney a sideways look. "Assuming he isn't an Arcane spy, that is."

Varvara turned to Klamm and this time when she smiled, her mouth was full of shark's teeth. "I'm not afraid of anyone, General. Least of all the Arcane. Please do your best to remember that."

I had to give Klamm this: he was one cool customer. Anyone else would've fainted dead away to have Varvara talk to him like that, but he not only held steady, he replied in a calm voice. "Of course, my queen. I meant no disrespect. But you made me a general because of my skill at intelligence-gathering. I would be remiss if I didn't point out the potential pitfalls of allowing a cameraman with cybernetic implants access to our war room." He paused. "Especially right now."

Varvara looked at Klamm for a moment, shark teeth still bared, but then she sighed and nodded. She closed her mouth, and when she opened it again, her teeth had returned to normal.

"I suppose you're right." She looked at Varney. "If you're not a spy, I apologize for this."

She waved her riding crop, and Varney yelped as his cybernetic eye exploded in a shower of sparks. The flesh around the eye blackened as it burned, but Varney was Bloodborn, and the injury began repairing itself almost immediately. Too bad his camera eye couldn't be fixed as easily. He looked as if he wanted to protest, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. He was lucky that Varvara hadn't decided to completely incinerate him on the spot, and he doubtless knew it.

Devona stood next to Shamika, a comforting arm around the girl's shoulders. Shamika didn't seem all that intimidated by Varvara, even though the Demon Queen had just used her magic to burn out Varney's camera eye and could use her powers to do worse to us at any moment. Instead, Shamika's attention was focused on General Klamm. The girl stared at him, her gaze intense, but I couldn't tell if she was afraid of him or fascinated with him. Or both.

There was a lot about Shamika I hadn't been able to get a handle on, and it was really starting to bug me.

Klamm was aware of the girl's interest in him, and he returned her look with a knowing smirk that made her avert her gaze.

Varvara turned to me then. "You know I always enjoy catching up with you, Matt, but as you might imagine, I'm a wee bit busy at the moment, what with planning a retaliatory strike on Talaith and all. So why don't you tell me why you came to see me, and then we can both get on with the rest of our day."

I tried to decide how to begin. I couldn't tell her that Dis had asked me to investigate the disappearances of the magic-users in the hope that I might learn something that would stop this war. Dis needed to maintain the appearance of neutrality in the dispute between Varvara and Talaith, and I was determined to keep his involvement in the case quiet, more for my sake than his. The last thing I wanted to do was to make a god mad at me.

"Papa Chatha is missing," I said. I quickly filled her in on what little we knew. "That's why Shamika is with us," I finished. "She's helping us search for her uncle."

"Her uncle?" Klamm said. "Do you have any proof that she's related to Papa Chatha? Had any of you met her before today or even so much as heard Papa mention her?"

"Are you implying that Shamika's a spy?" Devona said, flashing Klamm a little fang to show what she thought of him.

"She is Arcane," Klamm said. "And by appealing to your sympathies, she's managed not only to worm her way into Demon's Roost, but into Varvara's war room."

I started to protest, but then I thought about what Klamm said. He had a point – one that I didn't want to examine too closely lest I become as paranoid as him.

"What do you want from me, Matt?" Varvara asked. "And make it fast: I'm busy planning a war, you know."

With Varvara, I've found that the direct approach works best, and the bold-as-hell approach works even better.

"I want you to release Papa – and the other magic-users while you're at it. Then you and Talaith can make nice, and the rest of us can get on with our lives, such as they are."

Varvara's green eyes blazed with baleful light, and her expression became one of cold fury. I could feel power building around her, and I knew I was a hair's breadth away from being turned into zombie fricassee.

I gave her a lopsided grin. "Come on – you knew I was going to ask."

Klamm fixed me with a disdainful glare. "My queen! You can't possibly tolerate such insolence!"

"Insolence is my middle name," I told Klamm. "Well, actually it's Stephen, but you get the idea."

The queen of the Demonkin looked at me for a moment, then she smiled and the power that had been building around her disappeared.

"Of course you were going to ask, Matt," she said, almost fondly. "It's what you do, isn't it? Ask the questions others are afraid to, go places they won't or can't, all in pursuit of an ideal called Truth that in the end may not even exist."

"I usually find answers," I said, trying not to sound defensive.

"Perhaps," Varvara said, "but they aren't always the answers you hope to find, are they?"

I didn't reply.

Varvara regarded me for a moment more before turning and walking back to the map table. Klamm joined her, but since no one had extended an invitation to me, I stayed where I was, standing with Devona, Shamika, and Varney. I figured I'd already pushed my luck with Varvara enough for the time being.

"I had nothing to do with the disappearances of the Arcane," Varvara said. "Nor did any of my subjects." She glanced sideways at Klamm. "At least, not as far as we know. Investigations are ongoing."

Klamm smiled coldly at that, and I could imagine the excruciatingly agonizing nature of those "investigations."

Varvara continued. "For whatever reason, Talaith has chosen to blame me for the disappearances, and I've been unable to convince her otherwise."

"Not that you tried very hard," I guessed. "After all, a war with Talaith would be too much fun to pass up."

Varvara's smile held more than a hint of slyness. "It has been a long time since we've had a decent war," she admitted. "The last full-scale conflict between the Dominions was the Blood Wars, and they happened over two centuries ago. We're long overdue for another."

"And it doesn't bother you that people will die while you and Talaith play soldiers?" I asked.

Varvara gave me a look. "What part of Demon Queen don't you understand?"

Klamm chose that moment to jump in again. "Have you considered the possibility that Talaith kidnapped the missing magic-users herself and then blamed Varvara for the crime in order to create an excuse to attack the Sprawl? In fact, the disappearances may have only been a ruse. The magic-users may have hidden themselves at Talaith's command."

"Papa Chatha would never do that," I said. "He may be Arcane, but he's his own man."

Klamm shrugged. "Perhaps. Then again, you may not know him as well as you think."

Despite myself, I couldn't help considering Klamm's words. Before that day, I hadn't known Papa had a niece. What else didn't I know about him?

I glanced at Shamika. She continued to stare at Klamm oddly, but she didn't say anything in defense of her uncle. I wondered if it was because she was too intimidated at being in Varvara's presence or if it was because she had no defense to make.

I told myself to stop heading down that path. Demons are notorious for getting inside your head – sometimes literally – and messing with your mind any number of ways.

"Do you have any proof to back up your suspicions?" I asked Klamm.

"Not yet," he admitted. "But as my queen told you–"

"Investigations are ongoing," I said.

Klamm smiled. "Indeed."

"Talaith claims to have proof of Demonkin involvement in the disappearances," I said. "Have you seen it?"

Varvara shook her head. "But even if she did show it to me, I wouldn't trust it. Talaith isn't above manufacturing evidence when it suits her purpose."

"Neither are you," I countered.

Klamm shot me a dark look, but Varvara let out a loud earthy laugh.

"True enough! But you know how scheming and vindictive Talaith can be. She makes the rest of us Darklords seem reasonable and even-tempered."

"I don't know if I'd go that far, but your point is a good one."

I figured I'd learned as much as I was going to from Varvara, but I wasn't ready to leave yet. I doubted the Demon Queen could be swayed from retaliating against Talaith, but I figured I should at least make the effort. I wasn't going to attempt to appeal to her better nature, since I was fairly certain she didn't have one. Instead, I decided to appeal to her mercenary side. With the best shops, clubs, restaurants, and attractions in Nekropolis, the Sprawl is the city's center of business – both legitimate and otherwise – and a lot of darkgems exchanged hands here. War wouldn't exactly be conducive to the orderly flow of commerce.

"Do you really think attacking Glamere is a good idea? I'm sure it would be emotionally satisfying, but it won't be good for business. With both bridges destroyed, the Sprawl is already cut off from the other Dominions, and that's going to put a dent in profits. And all-out war would be even worse. If the Sprawl becomes a battle zone…"

Klamm answered for Varvara. "Engineering crews have already been dispatched to rebuild the bridges, along with soldiers to guard them once they're finished." He smiled smugly. "If Talaith sends the Weyward Sisters to destroy the bridges again, the witches will find us waiting and ready for them."

"Talaith won't bother attacking the bridges again," Varvara said. "She'll go for a bigger, bolder strike the next time. It's what I would do." She thought for a moment. "It's true that a war might adversely affect business in the Sprawl, and I've already met with several nervous representatives of the Merchants' Guild about that very matter. And I'm not unsympathetic to their concerns. I've worked hard to make the Sprawl the most interesting and exciting Dominion in the city, and I have no intention of throwing that away lightly. But there's a lot to be said for a good war, you know. Like a forest fire, it can be a cleansing force, burning away old, tired wood and making room for invigorating new growth." She flashed a smile. "Besides, it's fun!"

"So your main reason for going to war – aside from getting back at Talaith – is that it will give you a chance to remodel?" I shook my head in disgust. "You know, sometimes you Darklords are more like kids with Attention Deficit Disorder than immortal monsters."

In response, Varvara's smile only grew wider.

"The queen's forest fire analogy is particularly apt at the moment," Klamm said. He bent over the map table, typed a command on the keyboard, and then moved his index finger over the mouse pad. The hologram of Nekropolis blurred and reformed into a detailed image of Glamere, the Dominion Talaith ruled. I haven't spent much time there, considering how much Talaith despises me, but I recognized the more prominent features: the Valley of Silence, the Interstitial Maze, Reversion River, and the Greensward. In the middle of the latter stood Woodhome, Talaith's stronghold, a gigantic tree which contained dozens of interior chambers that had formed organically as it grew.

I had a bad feeling about this. "You're not going to attack Woodhome, are you?" If Varvara made a direct strike on Talaith's stronghold, the Witch Queen would be so furious that not even Father Dis would be able to stop the war then. Worse, it might drag the other three Darklords into the conflict. Galm, Amon, and Edrigu would sit back and watch Varvara and Talaith fight it out as long as their dispute didn't spill over into the other Dominions. But it would be a different story if either of the women attacked the other's stronghold. While the Darklords had fought against one another in ways large and small over the centuries, by unspoken agreement they had never attacked another Lord's stronghold. If Varvara broke that custom now, the other Darklords might decide she'd gone too far and join forces against her. If that happened, the destruction Devona and I had witnessed in the alternate Nekropolis would pale in comparison to the devastation a five-way battle between Darklords would wreak on the city.

"It's tempting, I'll admit," Varvara said, "but no, we're not going to attack Woodhome." She smiled darkly. "Just the next best thing." She nodded to Klamm, and he pressed a button on the map table's console. The Demon Queen then waved her hand and the walls of her penthouse became transparent. I'd always assumed Varvara's quarters didn't have windows because she didn't want to be vulnerable to a possible attack by another Darklord – and because she didn't want anyone spying on the more lascivious activities she indulged in with playmates of either sex – but now I understood that the walls were windows… when she wanted them to be, anyway.

Vibrations juddered through the floor, and the entire building shook around us, as if in the grip of an earthquake. The vibrations ceased as a dozen fiery streaks shot up from the ground and arced up into the night-black sky above the Sprawl. The streaks flew northward and were rapidly lost to view.

Varney moaned. "My producer is going to kill me for not being able to film this!"

"Look at the map," Devona said in a tone that held equal parts of awe and fear.

We all did as she said and saw a dozen miniature recreations of the flame trails heading toward Glamere from the south.

"Are those missiles?" I asked.

"Yes," Klamm answered without taking his eyes off the holodisplay. "Fired from silos surrounding Demon's Roost. Each contains a payload of a dozen salamanders." The light from the holographic recreation of the missiles bathed his face in bright orange, and it made his glossy black eyes gleam. "My own special design."

None of us could take our gazes away from the holographic scene playing out before us. We all watched silently as the missiles arced downward and impacted on the forest floor of the Greensward in a circle around Woodhome. I had no doubt that the salamanders Klamm referred to weren't the tiny amphibious creatures of Earth but rather mythological salamanders, magical fire lizards capable of igniting vast conflagrations. The recreation wasn't detailed enough for us to see exactly what happened once the missiles hit, but I imagined panels in the sides of the missiles popping open and hordes of small red-hided salamanders pouring forth. An instant later, a wall of flame sprang up around Woodhome and immediately began moving away from Talaith's stronghold, devouring the Greensward as it went. I imagined the salamanders scuttling forward in a circle, obeying a preprogrammed geis to keep their flames away from Woodhome. It seemed Varvara had been telling the truth when she said she wouldn't attack Talaith's stronghold.

Talaith didn't waste any time in striking back. Three small dots of light emerged from the holographic recreation of Woodhome, and flew up and over the rapidly expanding circle of fire.

"The Weyward Sisters," Varvara said. "Talaith's dispatched them to put out the fire." The Demon Queen spoke with barely contained excitement, sounding like an overeager sports fan watching a particularly tense moment in the game.

Thread-thin beams of light emerged from the dots representing the Weyward Sisters and lanced downward into the circle of flame. The salamanders' fire flickered and slowed down, but it continued spreading.

Klamm smiled. "Those aren't ordinary salamanders. They've been both mystically and genetically augmented to withstand any attack. The Sisters might be able to extinguish the flames the salamanders have already created, but they won't be able to stop them from making more."

"Another of your 'special designs'?" I asked.

Klamm looked up from the holo-display long enough to give me a smug smile before returning his attention to the action.

We continued to watch as the Weyward Sisters unleashed one mystic bolt after another in an attempt to stop the salamanders' fiery march across the Greensward, but while they were able to douse the flames the creatures created, they couldn't stop the salamanders themselves. Finally the Sisters broke off their attack and flew up to a point above Woodhome where they gathered together.

"What are they doing?" Varvara asked.

Shamika had been silent since we'd entered Varvara's penthouse, but she spoke now. "Since they can't destroy the salamanders, they're going to prevent them from spreading their fires throughout all of Glamere. And there's only one way to do that."

Devona's eyes widened in sudden comprehension. "Destroy the rest of the Greensward. That way, they won't have anything to burn."

Shamika nodded, and we watched as the three dots representing the Weyward Sisters began to blaze with light so intense that it was hard to look at them directly. The light then pulsed outward in a wave that rolled over the rest of the Greensward, and an instant later, the forest was gone. I wasn't sure what sort of spell the Weyward Sisters had used, but it was damned powerful, disintegrating the surviving trees instantly. The salamanders' flames continued to burn for a few seconds longer after that, but denied fuel, their flames died out. The Weyward Sisters then parted, each of them flying down into the burned-out plain where the Greensward had been and flying low over the ground.

"What are they doing?" Varney asked. "Capturing the salamanders?"

Varvara nodded. "Since they no longer have to worry about saving the Greensward, their magic can protect them from the salamanders' flames. They can just pick them up off the ground now. But it doesn't matter. My little pets have done their work."

I thought she was going to say something more, but before she could speak again, the image of a woman's head appeared above the holographic recreation of Woodhome. It was Talaith.

She appeared to be in her late sixties, with short gray hair, baggy eyes, and sagging skin. Her expression was normally fixed in a permanent tight-lipped scowl, but now her features were twisted with rage.

"How dare you!" she said in a low voice.

Varvara smiled sweetly at Talaith. "You made the first move, love."

"You kidnapped my people!"

"I've told you, I had nothing to do with that. And even if I had, do you really think the abduction of a few witches and warlocks rates the destruction of both bridges to my Dominion? It's hardly what I would call a reasonable response, dear."

"I'll show you a reasonable response, you demonic slut! I'll–" Talaith broke off, frowning. The image of her head slowly rotated until she was looking at me.

"Richter!" She said my name like it was a particularly nasty venereal disease. "I should've known you would be involved in this!"

"Actually, one of his friends is among the missing magic-users," Varvara said. "Matt came here to find out if I knew anything about his disappearance. Technically, I suppose that means he's on your side."

"Don't insult me," I muttered.

Talaith's eyes burned with such hatred that I was glad I was only looking at a mystic projection of her and not the real thing. If she had been here, she'd have likely hit me with a spell so powerful it would've reduced me to an undead smear on the floor.

"You've been a thorn in my side for far too long, Richter," she said. "First I'm going to deal with Varvara, and when I'm finished with her, I'm coming for you."

"Don't write checks your ass can't cash, dear," Varvara said.

Talaith whirled back to face her, snarled, and then the image of her head faded as she broke contact.

Varvara grinned. "That went well, didn't it?" She grinned at Klamm. "Excellent work, General."

Klamm bowed his head. "It's my pleasure to serve you, my queen. I'll have my people begin assessing the damage and running simulations to determine what Talaith's next move might be." He glanced sideways at us. "About our visitors… They've seen far too much, my queen. While I understand that you find the zombie amusing, he and his companions should be placed in holding cells where we can keep an eye on them until the current situation with the Arcane is resolved. It would be the…" he paused, searching for the right word. "prudent thing to do."

Varvara smiled at him. "In case you hadn't noticed, General, I'm not one for making the prudent choice. Where's the fun in that? Matt is far more interesting when he's allowed to roam free, causing his own unique brand of chaos."

I frowned. "I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult."

Varvara grinned. "Works either way."

I couldn't help but smile back. "Guess so." But then I grew serious. "You know Talaith will take the destruction of the Greensward as seriously as if you had attacked Woodhome. Unlike you, Talaith doesn't embrace technology, and she forces her people to live in harmony with nature – whether they like it or not. To her, destroying a forest is the same as destroying a city full of people. Actually, she probably considers it to be worse. And the Greensward isn't just a simple collection of trees, it's her personal forest, the one surrounding her home. Whatever she does next, it'll make the destruction of the bridges pale in comparison."

Varvara's grin took on a dark edge. "I'm counting on it."

ELEVEN

We left Demon's Roost without Scorch. We looked for her among the ranks of demons drilling in the Atrium, but there were too many, and we didn't spot her. Not that she could've come with us even if we had found her. Varvara had ordered her to join the ranks of her demonic army, and Scorch had had no choice but to obey if she didn't wish to incur the Demon Queen's wrath.

"I hope she'll be all right," Devona said when we were out on the street. Demons patrolled the area, but none of them challenged us. Varvara had likely sent word ahead that we were to be allowed to leave, and while her soldiers might not like it, none of them would dare disobey their queen.

"She's more than tough enough to take care of herself," I said. Still, if the war between Talaith and Varvara intensified to the point where ground troops were called in, Scorch might find herself in more trouble than she could handle. I didn't say this to Devona, though. I didn't need to. I was sure she was thinking along the same lines.

"That was a useless trip," Varney said, fingering his ruined cyber-eye. "You didn't learn anything, and I lost my camera. I can't believe I was present when Varvara struck back against Talaith, and I didn't get a single moment of footage!"

"It wasn't totally wasted," Devona said. "We learned that Varvara had nothing to do with the disappearance of the magic-users."

"We did?" Shamika said.

Devona nodded. "Of all the Darklords, Varvara is the most… I suppose honest isn't exactly the right word. Upfront, I guess is what I'm trying to say. She's a lot like a wild animal. She is what she is and does what she does and makes no effort to pretend to be something she's not. If she had kidnapped the magic-users, she wouldn't have denied it. In fact, she'd have gloated about it."

"And she loves an audience," I added. "As far as she's concerned, there'd be no point in striking against a fellow Darklord if there was no one around to appreciate the brilliance of her plan."

"But you don't have proof Varvara didn't order the abductions," Varney said.

"True," I admitted, "but Devona and I know her well enough that I'm willing to bet she didn't. But you're right: since we don't have any evidence that clears her, we can't completely rule her out as a suspect."

Shamika chimed in then. "That other demon – Klamm – said that maybe Talaith is only pretending magic-users were kidnapped as an excuse to attack Varvara. Do you think he might be right?"

I shrugged. "Talaith is devious as hell, and she has a history of attempting to attack the other Darklords." That was how I'd originally come to Nekropolis from Earth. Talaith had sent one of her servants to Earth to kidnap humans with strong psychic potential in order to harvest their brains and use them to create a device called the Overmind, which she planned to use against Lord Edrigu. My partner and I had tracked the kidnapper to a portal that led to Nekropolis, and we went through. Eventually we reached Glamere and confronted the kidnapper and Talaith in Woodhome. We destroyed the Overmind, and my partner lost his life in the process, but somehow the release of magical and psychic energies resulted in my being resurrected as a self-willed zombie. I still miss Dale. He was a good man and a good friend – rare qualities, no matter what dimension you're from.

"If Talaith is responsible, maybe Bogdan will uncover some evidence of it from his contacts," Devona said.

"Maybe," I allowed, "but Talaith plays things pretty close to the vest. There's a good chance no one but she would know the truth. But who knows? Maybe Bogdan will get lucky."

I didn't particularly like Bogdan, but he was smart. If anyone in the Sprawl's Arcane community had information relating to the magic-users' kidnapping, I was confident he'd find out – not that I'd ever admit it to him.

"We did learn one other item of interest," Devona said, reaching out to take my hand. She gave it a squeeze, and I could feel the seam between my hand and wrist weaken, then give way. "Oops!" Devona said. "Sorry about that. Way to spoil a tender moment, huh?"

My detached hand continued to grip hers, and we stopped walking long enough for her to place my hand against the stump of my wrist. I concentrated, and my hand reattached to my body. Devona let go, and I flexed my fingers to test out the connection. I wasn't sure, but it felt a bit weaker than before. If we didn't find Papa Chatha before too much longer, I'd eventually be unable to hold myself together and I'd end up a pile of disconnected parts, which would make it a wee bit harder for me to stop the war building between Varvara and Talaith.

I clasped Devona's hand once more. "Now where were we?"

"We're going to have twins," she said, grinning.

"Hard to believe, isn't it? Matt Junior and Devona Junior."

"Maybe we should try to come up with some better names."

"Maybe we should think about getting married," I said. The words popped out of my mouth before I was aware of it, but once I said them, they felt right. But then something occurred to me and I frowned. "Uh, Darkfolk do get married, right?"

Devona pulled me down toward her, then stood on her tiptoes and kissed me. When she pulled away, she beamed at me and said, "We can make plans later. Right now we should concentrate on finding Papa Chatha, OK?"

"All right."

Varney moaned. "Great! You propose to Devona, and I couldn't film it! My producer is going to put a stake in my heart for sure over this!"

Shamika smiled at us. "Can I come to your wedding?"

"Of course, honey," Devona said. "In fact, you can help us plan it if you–"

We were nearing one of the barriers around Demon's Roost, this one made of a row of vehicles parked end to end across the street, with armed demons standing on the roofs. The air rippled around us, as if distorted by waves of heat rising from the asphalt, and at first I feared that Talaith was already retaliating for the salamanders' fiery destruction of the Greensward. The distortion effect increased, accompanied by a strange disorientation, as if the entire world was slowly tilting to the left. Ghostly images began to appear around us – people thronging the sidewalks, vehicles clogging the street, tall modern office buildings rising into the sky… The people were all human, the vehicles normal cars, trucks, vans and the like, and the buildings lacked any hint of the bizarre that typified the Sprawl's architectural style.

"What's happening?" Devona shouted. Her voice had a strange hollow quality, as if she was shouting from the other side of a thick wall.

"I don't know!" I shouted back. The ghost images reminded me of Bonetown, the Dominion of Edrigu, Lord of the Dead. But unlike Bonetown, these phantasms all appeared to be from the same modern time, and none of them possessed any sign of having died in violent ways – their bodies were unmarked, and aside from their transparent quality, they appeared whole and healthy. It was as if we were gazing upon a faint image of an Earth city, an American one, like New York or Chicago.

Or Cleveland, I thought. My old hometown. Varvara has a mirror in her penthouse – though it hadn't been visible during our latest visit – and it opens onto a park in Cleveland. It was through this mirror that Dale and I had first traveled to Nekropolis. The more I looked at the people and buildings around us, the more convinced I became that I was looking at Cleveland. And what was more, some of the people had begun staring in our direction and pointing, as if they could see us too. Others were looking around them, and I wondered if they were seeing ghostly images of the Sprawl superimposed upon their city.

And then, just like that, the apparition of Cleveland disappeared, and the world righted itself once more, taking the strange sensation of disorientation with it.

"What in the Nine Hells just happened?" Devona said, her voice sounding normal once more.

"Whatever it was, we weren't the only ones who experienced it." I nodded to the demons standing on top of the barrier stretched across the street. They were gazing about in terror, and a couple fired off shots into the air, as if trying to fend off some unseen foe.

"Let me call my producer," Varney said in a shaken voice. He pulled a hand vox out of his pants pocket and made a call. "Murdock?" he said. "It's Varney. What–" He broke off and listened for a couple moments. "Yes… yes… All right. I'll get right on it." He disconnected and tucked the vox back in his pocket. "My producer said they experienced the same thing at the Eidolon Building, and reporters all over the city are calling in, saying it happened in the other Dominions as well." Varney looked at me. "Murdock wants me to forget about shooting footage of you for now and go find people to interview about what just happened." He sighed. "I didn't want to tell him Varvara destroyed my camera."

"So you're going to just keep hanging out with us since you can't do what your boss wants?" I asked.

"I guess so. He's got plenty of other reporters out in the streets to talk to witnesses, and as long as I stay with you, I can still observe what you do. It's better than nothing, you know?"

It sounded like a lame excuse to me. I had no idea how long it would take to repair or replace Varney's cyber-eye, but as strong as vampires are and as swiftly as they heal, surgery can be performed on them rapidly. Switching out Varney's cyber-eye might well prove no more difficult than changing the spark plugs in a car. So why wasn't he hauling ass back to the Eidolon Building for a repair job right now?

I was about to confront Varney about it, but Shamika said, "We were on Earth. Just for a few moments, but we were there."

The enormity of what she said stunned us into silence. When the Darkfolk decided to leave Earth four hundred years ago, they traveled to another dimension where they built the city of Nekropolis. But if what Shamika had said was true, the entire city had been transported to Earth's dimension, if only briefly.

"Is that even possible?" Varney said.

"The amount of power it would take is staggering," Devona said. "I'm not sure even a being as powerful as Talaith could do it."

"Why would she?" I said. "Why would anybody? It's not like the Darkfolk are completely cut off from Earth and dying to get back. They import goods and materials whenever they want, and they can apply for travel visas at each of the Darklords' strongholds."

"Maybe it was her retaliatory strike against Varvara," Devona suggested. "Perhaps she was trying to exile Varvara by transporting the Sprawl to Earth."

I thought about this for a moment. "Maybe, but Varney's producer said the entire city was affected, all five Dominions, Glamere included."

Devona shrugged. "Maybe Talaith screwed up. She wanted to transport only the Sprawl, but the spell accidentally affected the rest of the city."

"I guess it's possible. But if Talaith was in possession of a spell or magical device that powerful, why didn't she use it in the first place? Why bother with destroying the bridges?"

"Maybe she didn't want to risk using it until she felt pushed to strike out at Varvara in a big way," Devona said. "And the spell must be an unstable one and not very reliable. After all, it failed, didn't it?" She turned to Shamika. "What do you think?"

"That seems… logical," the girl said. I had the sense that she might have said more, that she wanted to, but for some reason she remained silent.

Devona continued. "And the other Darklords – including Father Dis – are probably going nuts right now. Using such a powerful spell was bound to get their attention, and Talaith wouldn't want to drag them into her war with Varvara unless she had to. But the destruction of the Greensward angered her so much that she no longer cared whether she upset the other Lords, so she tried the spell, but it got away from her and failed, thankfully."

"Maybe." Devona's theorizing sounded good, but like Varney had mentioned earlier, we didn't have any evidence. "If Talaith was responsible for what happened, let's hope she doesn't try it again. Next time she might get it right."

"That would be awful!" Shamika said.

"That's putting it mildly," I said. "It would be bad enough if the Darkfolk suddenly found themselves back on Earth. Especially the vampires, if they appeared outside during the daytime. The humans would panic, of course, and there would undoubtedly be fighting and casualties on both sides, but that wouldn't be the worst of it. If people and buildings suddenly occupied the same space… well, I'm not sure what would happen, but I bet the laws of physics would be mighty unhappy with the situation and the end result wouldn't be pretty."

We reached the car barrier, and the demons on top waved us past without a word. In the middle of the street on the other side of the barrier, people were starting to gather, and they were clearly upset about the ghostly images of Earth that had briefly appeared. Some were talking loudly about what they'd seen and demanding someone in authority do something, while others simply cried or just stared blankly into space, traumatized. The crowd continued to grow as we did our best to make our way through, and while most of them ignored us, a few recognized me and begged me to investigate the strange occurrence and prevent it from happening again. It was a weird feeling knowing that people were looking to me for help – and frustrating too. You save the damn city a couple times, and suddenly everyone expects miracles from you.

A middle-aged harpy grabbed hold of my left arm with one of her foot claws and held tight to me, while she attempted to ex plain in tearful detail how awful the vision of Earth had been. I made a few placating noises and tried to pull away, but her grip was so strong that I was afraid I'd tear my arm off if I pulled too hard. My vox rang then, and I told the harpy that I needed to take the call as it might be important information relating to the case. She let me go, and I answered my vox as Devona, Shamika, Varney, and I continued to push our way through the crowd.

"Matt? It's Tavi."

From the sound of his gruff voice and the rapid way he spoke, I knew he was still in his wildform, and I asked him to speak more slowly. Which he did, if only a little.

"I've been having a devil of a time following Papa Chatha's scent trail. It zigzags all over the Sprawl, and I've been tracking it for hours. I almost lost it when that weird distortion hit, whatever that was. I didn't just see a phantom city – I smelled it, too. Anyway, once the ghost city vanished, I picked up the scent trail again and followed it to the Grotesquerie. That's where I am right now. The trail dead-ends here, Matt. I've had a quick look around, and I can't put my finger on it, but something doesn't feel right here. I–"

Tavi's voice was cut off by a loud roar, which was immediately followed by an agonized scream, and then silence.

"Tavi!" I shouted into the vox. "TAVI!"

No response. The line was dead, and I hoped the same couldn't be said for Tavi.

"What's wrong?" Devona said.

I started to tell her, but before I could get more than a couple words out, the crowd around us shrieked and moved rapidly away as Lazlo's cab raced toward us.

I smiled grimly. It's good to have friends you can depend on, even when they look like mutated tarantula-bats. The cab's new tires screeched as the vehicle swerved to a stop in front of us.

Lazlo stuck his head out the window and favored us with a toothy grin.

"Going my way?"

• • • •

The Grotesquerie is located on Sybarite Street, not far from the House of Mysterious Secrets. It covers several square miles and is surrounded by a hundred-foot-high wall made of a polished black substance that looks like solidified shadow, atop which sits a complex array of metal and crystal that continuously glows with a gentle, pulsing red light. The force field the wall generates is invisible to the naked eye, but it encloses the Grotesquerie in an unimaginably powerful energy dome that's a synthesis of the highest of high-tech science and the most potent of ancient magics – all in order to keep what the Grotesquerie houses from getting out. But this wasn't a prison. Nekropolis' prison is called Tenebrus, and it's located underground beneath the Nightspire, and I'd once had the dubious pleasure of being a guest there for a short time. What the Grotesquerie holds is far more dangerous and terrifying than anything a mere prison might contain, for the Grotesquerie is a zoo. But not just any zoo – it's a Darkfolk zoo.

When the Darkfolk decided to emigrate from Earth, they gathered up every wild monster they could find, like a twisted version of Noah and the Ark, and brought them along to live in the Grotesquerie. But new ones occasionally surface, due to natural or unnatural evolution or scientific experiments gone hideously wrong, and the Grotesquerie's hunters make periodic expeditions to Earth to search out these monsters and bring em back alive, as the saying goes. They do it for the sake of preservation – many of the Grotesquerie's monsters are rare species or literally one of a kind – but a side benefit is that humans don't have worry about getting stomped on by gigantic radioactive lizards, so it's a winwin all the way around.

Lazlo dropped us off at the main entrance, and brilliant detective that I am, I immediately suspected something was wrong when I saw all the people running screaming into the street. I turned to Devona and almost asked her to stay outside and watch Shamika, but given how the girl had handled herself with Magilla, I figured she was probably be in less danger going in than I was.

The three of us pushed through the mass of fleeing zoogoers, Varney right there alongside us. With his camera-eye inoperative he should've had no reason to follow us into what was undoubtedly a hazardous situation, but I wasn't surprised that he'd decided to accompany us. He might've been a reporter, but it had become clear to me that he had a hidden agenda for sticking so closely to us, and right then wasn't the time to try and figure out what it was. There'd be an opportunity to question him later – assuming the four of us survived our visit to the Grotesquerie.

Once we made it past the crowd and through the main gate, we moved off to the side to get out of the way, but we needn't have bothered. The majority of the Grotesquerie's visitors had managed to make it out, and only a handful of stragglers remained.

Inside, the Grotesquerie resembles an Earth zoo, with paved walkways winding between habitats set up for the creatures on display. The major difference is the landscaping. Instead of the pleasant trees and shrubs of an Earthly zoo, the Grotesquerie's paths are lined with deadly leech vine, tanglethorn, and rotweed. Visitors are always careful to give the plants a wide berth, and the plants usually leave them alone. But then they weren't put there to attack visitors. They were an additional deterrent should any of the Grotesquerie's attractions manage to escape their enclosures.

Huge Frankenstein monsters were employed as keepers, and a half dozen of them clomped past us in their gray coveralls and overlarge work boots, each of them clutching long metallic rods with glowing red tips at one end. The keepers' expressions were grim, but since Frankenstein monsters aren't known for their cheerful, sunny dispositions, it was hard to tell if they were upset over whatever was happening or if it was just another day on the job for them. Given the panicking visitors fleeing for their lives, I opted for the former. Told you I was a brilliant detective.

"Follow the keepers!" I said, and we did so, setting off at a run.

Given my undead state, I'm not that well coordinated at the best of times, even if I've just had a fresh application of preservative spells. But considering that I was currently a jigsaw puzzle of a zombie holding himself together through sheer concentration, I was even less coordinated than usual. With every galumphing shuffle-step I took, I felt my body literally threatening to come apart at the seams, and it took an extra effort of will to keep myself intact.

We followed the keepers past several enclosures, and though it had been a while since my last visit to the Grotesquerie, I remembered the creatures we passed well: the Beast with a Million Eyes, the Killer Shrews, the Monster That Challenged the World, the Crawling Eye, Q the Winged Serpent, and my personal favorite, the original Hound of the Baskervilles. Each of their enclosures had been specially designed to contain the beasts, using a combination of high-tech science, powerful sorcery, and good old-fashioned titanium steel. And if by some impossibly remote chance any of them somehow escaped, the Grotesquerie's deadly flora would stop them – or at least slow them down long enough for visitors to flee for the exit. The creatures glared, snarled, snapped, roared, and raged at us as we ran by their cages, but that was all they could do, and we were damned thankful for it.

When we caught up with the keepers, we found them, along with a dozen others, battling a large dinosaur that, despite all the Grotesquerie's safety precautions, had escaped its enclosure. I recognized the beast as Titanus, an oversized version of a T.Rex that had been captured in a hidden valley on Earth, and from his less than placid demeanor, it was apparent that his time in captivity hadn't mellowed him. The dinosaur stood on the path, roaring in fury, bleeding legs wrapped in tanglethorn, while Frankensteinian keepers jabbed him with their energy lances. The keepers were tall and their lances long enough to reach Titanus' abdomen and sides, and every time a lance struck the dinosaur's leathery hide, there was a bright discharge of crimson energy accompanied by a sizzling sound. Titanus thrashed and tried to get away from his tormentors, but the tanglethorn lining the path was doing its job, holding him in place while the keepers fought to subdue him.

As impressive as the sight of a dinosaur in full battle fury was, our attention was immediately drawn to a large chunk of meat caught in Titanus' dagger-like teeth – a chunk that looked disturbingly like the upper half of Tavi's body. Like most Darkfolk, lykes can take a lot of damage and survive, but getting bitten in half is a damned serious injury no matter what species you are, and though it was difficult to tell with Titanus shaking his head back and forth and roaring in pain and anger, Tavi appeared to show no signs of life.

"We have to get Tavi out of there!" Devona said. "As long as his brain's intact, there's a chance he'll be able to regenerate the rest of his body. But if Titanus swallows the rest of him…"

Devona didn't complete the thought. She didn't need to. Once Tavi's brain had been dissolved by the digestive juices in the dinosaur's stomach, neither magic nor science would be able to bring him back. We had to rescue Tavi – or what was left of him – but the question was how? We couldn't exactly walk up to Titanus, give him a stern look, and say, "Bad dinosaur! You spit that out now!"

"I think those keepers could make better use of their lances," Devona said, and without waiting for a reply, she dashed toward the closest of the Frankenstein monsters.

"What's she going to do?" Shamika asked.

"Something ridiculously brave and incredibly foolish," I said with admiration. I turned to Varney. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

He gave me a look that said he should be trying to come up with some excuse to act, but then he obviously decided to hell with it. His expression changed, and I watched as Varney the slightly airheaded hippy cameraman once more became a cool, determined man of action. He raced after Devona, and I followed at the best speed I was capable of. Shamika kept pace with me, but I didn't worry about her. Maybe she would summon a few hundred chiranha to show Titanus what it was like to be someone's dinner.

Devona reached a keeper and snatched the energy lance out of his hand. The Frankenstein monster might've towered over my love, but she's a hell of lot stronger than she looks, and she'd had the additional advantage of taking the keeper by surprise. She flipped the lance into a throwing position, aimed, and hurled it at Titanus' open mouth. The metal rod streaked toward the dinosaur, its tip glowing a baleful red, and struck the roof of his mouth with a crackling blast of released energy. Titanus, unsurprisingly, was less than thrilled with this development, and he opened his mouth wide and let out an ear-splitting cry that was half roar, half scream.

The moment the lance struck Titanus, Varney leaped into the air and transformed into a whirling black vortex of shadow that flew toward the dinosaur like a miniature dark tornado. I'd never seen Varney assume his travel form before, and I was impressed as he flew swiftly up to Titanus' mouth, wrapped his shadowy substance around Tavi, pulled him free of the dinosaur's teeth, and carried him back down to us, keeping the lyke aloft by spinning beneath him to create a cushion of air. Once Varney deposited Tavi gently on the ground, the vampire reassumed his normal shape, and Devona and I grabbed hold of Tavi under his arms and together carried him a dozen yards to get him out of further harm's way. Varney and Shamika followed, and we laid him down gently once again and examined him.

It wasn't pretty. The lower half of his body from mid-abdomen down was gone, and bits of viscera dangled from his open body cavity, though there was little blood. His shapeshifter healing ability had already cut off most of the bleeding, and it was struggling to grow new skin to close off the huge gaping wound where his abdomen had been. It was slow going, though. Tavi's injuries were incredibly extensive, even for a lyke, and repairing them was pushing his system to its limits.

Devona placed a pair of fingers against the artery in Tavi's neck. "His pulse is faint and erratic, but at least his heart's still beating."

As if her words had roused him, Tavi's eyes flickered open and a long sigh escaped his lips. He began speaking then, pausing now and then to catch his breath. As he spoke, his wildform slowly gave way to his human guise.

"I… tracked Papa Chatha's scent to the… dinosaur's enclosure, and–" He broke off coughing, and bloody spittle flecked his mouth. "– the trail dead-ended there. I… called you, Matt, and as I was talking, somehow… the enclosure's force field deactivated, and… the dinosaur got free. I was… so shocked that I just stood there." He looked down at what remained of his body and gave us a weak smile. "And as you can see, the beast was… rather hungry."

Devona gently touched Tavi's cheek. "Don't try to talk anymore. We need to get you to the Fever House."

Given enough time, Tavi might have been able to regenerate the lower half of his body on his own, but the doctors at the Fever House could speed up that process considerably, and help make him a damn sight more comfortable while he healed.

"Lazlo's still waiting for us outside," I said.

"I'll carry him." Varney stepped forward and bent down to pick up Tavi, but as he did I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't the keepers and Titanus. The tanglethorn held the dinosaur fast and the keepers kept harrying him with their energy lances, and though the dinosaur still roared his fury to the world, his exertions were beginning to lessen as the fight left him. It was only a matter of time before the keepers managed to subdue him and force him back into his enclosure. The movement I saw was much smaller and low to the ground. I had the sense of small black shapes moving silently along the paths around us, though when I turned my head to look at them, I saw nothing.

I knew it wasn't my imagination, though, for Shamika was turning her head back and forth, as if her eyes were tracking something that mine couldn't quite catch, and in a soft, frightened voice she said, "This is bad. This is very bad."

I started to ask her what was wrong, but I was cut off by the sound of alarms going off throughout the Grotesquerie.

Tavi drew in a wheezing breath, and then said, "That's exactly what it sounded like… when the dinosaur got free."

The keepers broke off their battle with Titanus and looked around, startled and – I was more than a little disturbed to see – scared. The keepers had been produced by Victor Baron in his Foundry, and while he endows his creations with free will so they aren't merely the equivalent of organic machines, they do share certain qualities: strength, a strong constitution, and an almost complete lack of fear. So if the keepers were frightened by the sound of alarms going off throughout the Grotesquerie, I knew we were in some truly deep shit.

We felt it first – vibrations beneath our feet as if an earthquake was happening, followed by assorted roars, bellows, growls, and shrieks, a horrifying symphony of rage, malice and bloodlust. All around us gigantic creatures shambled forth from their enclosures, freed from their captivity to once again run rampant and wreak destruction on whatever was unfortunate enough to be in their path. Which in this case was us.

"We need to leave," Devona said in a small voice. "Now."

I wasn't about to argue with her, but we also needed to get Tavi to the Fever House, and I feared that carrying him would only slow us down. And since we couldn't leave him, that meant we needed to make him easier to carry. I reached into one of my pockets and pulled out a shrunken head. I held the withered thing up to my face and gave it a hard shake.

Its eyes sprang open and it glared at me. "This better be important. I was dreaming that I was trapped on a tropical island with the head of a supermodel." Its lips were stitched together with black thread, but the loops were loose enough so it could speak. I'd picked up the head when I stopped the Goremeister from killing the Wizard of Odd, and this was the first time I'd had the chance to put his talents to use.

"I don't have time to banter with you, Livingstone," I said. "We're in trouble, and I need to you do that voodoo you do so well."

Livingstone sighed, which was rather impressive considering he didn't have any lungs. "A guy gets carried around in a pocket all day, then is rudely yanked out of a great dream, and it's straight to work without so much as a 'Hi, nice to see you, how are you doing?'" He sighed again. "All right, just point me in the right direction."

Varney hadn't picked up Tavi yet, so I turned Livingstone around to face the injured lyke. Twin beams of dark light shot out of the head's eyes and struck Tavi on the chest. The lyke shuddered and then rapidly began dwindling in size. You see, Livingstone isn't just a shrunken head: he's a shrinking head, too. Within seconds, Tavi had been reduced to the size of an action figure – or in his current condition, half an action figure – and I knelt down and scooped him up with my free hand.

"Sorry about this," I said. "It may not be the most dignified ride you've ever taken." I didn't need to apologize, though, for Tavi had lapsed back into unconsciousness. I tucked him in a pocket, did the same with Livingstone, who grumbled that he'd received better treatment at the hands of the witch doctor who'd shrunken him in the first place, and then I stood.

"Ready to run?" Devona asked me, as giant monsters of all sorts lumbered toward us.

"Like the wind," I answered, and the four of us turned and began running toward the exit.

TWELVE

We had a couple things going in our favor. Compared to most of the escaped creatures, we were small, which meant we didn't easily draw their attention, and they were more interested in attacking each other than they were in going after the tiny things scampering past them. Plus, the keepers began fanning out through the facility, attempting to subdue the monsters with their energy lances, further distracting them, although considering that the keepers usually ended up getting stomped, chomped, or zapped with radioactive energy blasts of one sort or another, it would've been better for them if they'd had the sense to flee with us.

We maneuvered through a forest of segmented legs as a giant spider and a praying mantis fought to turn each other into dinner. Too bad I didn't have a few thousands cans of Raid stashed in my pockets.

"Is this another attack by Talaith?" Varney asked as we ran.

"Maybe," I replied. "If the monsters break out of the Grotesquerie and rampage through the Sprawl, they'll cause more destruction than a hundred armies." Good thing Varvara had gathered her demon soldiers. If the Grotesquerie's perimeter security failed, she was going to need every warrior she could muster to try to contain the giant monsters.

Next we encountered a giant Gila monster easily the size of Titanus blocking the path. The lizard's forked tongue flicked the air, and its beady black eyes fixed on us as we approached. The creature was slower than many of its gigantic brethren, and Devona and Varney had no trouble avoiding its snapping jaws as they ran past. But Shamika slowed as she drew near the lizard, almost as if she wished to give it a closer look, and the creature opened its maw and lunged toward her. Gila monsters are venomous, and if this beast managed to bite Shamika, it could well prove fatal to her.

I was behind Shamika, so I put my hand between her shoulder blades and shoved. She stumbled forward just as the lizard's jaws snapped shut on the space where her head had been only an instant before. Angered at losing its prey, the Gila monster hissed and thrashed its head, unfortunately slamming into me. I felt no pain from the impact, but the force sent me flying backward, and I lost concentration and along with it, cohesion. My body parts became disconnected, and while my clothing kept most of them more or less together, when I hit the ground my head and hands popped off.

The Gila monster gazed down at me, and its leathery dragonlike tongue flicked the air once more. I had no idea if the beast was a carrion-eater, but the last thing I wanted was to end up sharing the same fate as the lower half of Tavi's body. I concentrated, and my two hands flipped over and began scuttling toward my head. They backed up to the stump of my neck, and tendrils of skin reached out from all three parts to fasten them together, and an instant later, I was an ambulatory head resting atop a pair of hands. Feeling absurdly like a zombie spider, I crawled toward my body and rummaged around in one of my jacket pockets as best I could.

The Gila monster lumbered forward and lowered its head toward me as I searched for something that might allow me to fend the beast off. I wasn't just worried about myself. Tavi was in one of my pockets, and if the Gila monster devoured my body, the lyke – what was left of him, anyway – would get eaten too. As it approached, the lizard opened its maw and dripped thick saliva onto the ground, and carrion eater or not, it looked like the beast was going to have itself a zombie snack. I was fairly confident my head and hands could scuttle out of the way in time, but there was nothing I could do for the rest of me. I hoped my undead body would give the damned thing heartburn.

Devona leaped on top of the Gila monster's back and crawled along its pebbly neck with inhuman speed and grace until she reached its head. She leaned down over its left eye, gripped its pebbly hide with one hand to steady herself, made a fist with the other hand, and rammed it into the beast's shiny black orb. The eye popped like a liquid-filled balloon, and the Gila monster threw back its head and cried out in pain. It thrashed back and forth, trying to dislodge Devona, but she held on with superhuman strength and tenacity.

"That's my husband you're trying to eat!" she said through gritted teeth, and jammed her arm into the lizard's eye socket all the way to her shoulder and groped around inside, trying to get hold of the beast's tiny brain.

I reached out psychically to her. Have I told you lately that you're magnificent?

Tell me a few months from now, when I'm big as a house and feeling like I swallowed a couple bowling balls.

I'll make a mental note.

An instant later, Varney jumped onto the Gila monster's head – an impressive feat considering that the creature was still thrashing and bucking. Varney reached into his own eye, the cybernetic one that Varvara had ruined, and drew forth a thin cable. He continued pulling until he'd exposed several feet, and then he bit the rubber coating off the end and plunged the exposed wires into the Gila monster's other eye. Crackling electricity discharged, and the beast's cries of agony became shrill. Devona continued rooting around in the lizard's skull, and she finally found what she'd been searching for. She smiled grimly, yanked her arm free of the socket in a spray of dark blood, and threw a handful of giant lizard brain onto the path. The Gila monster shuddered, stiffened, and then collapsed to the ground, even deader than I was.

Devona jumped off the Gila monster's carcass and rubbed her hand and arm along its rough hide to scrape off the worst of the goo coating her. Varney also climbed off and fed his cable back into its eye socket.

"We need to keep moving," I said. "The lizard's body is going to attract hungry monsters before long, and it would be a good idea for us to be somewhere else when they get here. We don't have time to put me back together, so if you three wouldn't mind…"

Varney grabbed the bulk of my body. Since my clothing held most of my pieces together, he cradled the bundle against his chest and wrapped his arms around it.

"Don't forget Tavi's in my pocket," I said, and Varney nodded.

Devona picked up my head-and-hands combo and perched me on her shoulder as if she were a vampirate and I her zombie parrot. The four of us then continued toward the exit, trying to ignore the loud footfalls of giant predators eagerly approaching the Gila monster's corpse.

We had more to worry about than the Grotesquerie's escaped creatures, though. The zoo's defensive flora was going crazy – perhaps goaded into action by the sound of alarms – and was reaching out to grab anything that came near. The leech vine couldn't harm me since I had no blood for it to drain, but the same wasn't true for Devona, Varney, and Shamika. Even though the former were vampires, they still had plenty of the red stuff pumping through their veins, and leech vine actually prefers blood aged and refined in a vampire's body. All tanglethorn would do to me was create puncture wounds I'd need to have repaired later, but rotweed was a different story. It causes accelerated decay in anything it touches, and since I already struggled with decomposition, rotweed can reduce me to dust in short order, so I make sure to stay well clear of it.

As we ran, we did our best to avoid the guard plants, and while we took a few hits, none of us were seriously injured, and it began to look like we would make it out. But when we reached the main gate, I was once again reminded why I'm not an optimist. Two behemoths the size of office buildings blocked the entrance, one a giant ape, the other a huge sinuous dragon-like creature. I expected to see Kongar and Reptilikan fighting each other, but the monsters stood side by side facing the entrance, roaring with fury as they slammed their bodies against an invisible force field. Energy crackled and flared bright with each blow the monsters struck, but the force field held strong.

"The Grotesquerie's security system initiated a total lockdown when all the creatures escaped," Devona said. "The whole place has been sealed off – nothing can get in or out."

"Maybe the force field isn't covering the entrance," I said. "We were able to get inside without any trouble."

"Every way in and out of the Grotesquerie is blocked, no matter how small," Devona said. "Including the entrance we came through. Remember, not all of the monsters in here are giants. Hopefully, the keepers will be able to get things under control soon. The Grotesquerie's security system is designed to release powerful knockout gas throughout the zoo in the event of a mass escape." We looked at her and she shrugged. "What? Security's my business, remember?"

It's true. Other people come to a zoo to look at the animals. My love prefers to spend her time examining the traps and alarms.

Still perched on Devona's shoulder and feeling absurd, I frowned. "If that's true, then the gas should've been released as soon as the monsters were freed. Something's wrong."

"I should think it's obvious," Varney said, sounding even less like the airheaded cameraman than ever. "Whoever freed the monsters also disabled the knockout gas to prevent them from being recaptured."

Shamika had been quiet while we ran, but now she spoke. "We should put Matt back together… while we can." She glanced around nervously, which given that we were trapped inside the Grotesquerie with any number of deadly behemoths was only natural. But instead of directing her gaze skyward, she kept looking toward the ground, as if she were worried about a threat of much smaller stature. I remembered thinking that I'd seen something out of the corner of my eye just before the monsters were released: many small somethings, as a matter of fact, moving so swiftly I hadn't been sure that I'd seen them at all.

"Good idea," Devona said, and she took me off her shoulder, and with Varney's help, managed to reassemble me without too much trouble.

I stood. Everything stayed where it belonged, but I felt even more like a scarecrow than I had before. It seemed the more often the connections between my parts were broken, the harder it was to keep myself together again afterward. I'd have to be more careful.

Once I was a whole man again – or at least a reasonable facsimile of one – I reached into my pocket and removed Tavi to check on him. The miniaturized lyke was still unconscious, but at least he was breathing. I tucked him away again

Kongar and Reptilikan were still too busy trying to beat the hell out of the force field to pay any attention to us, but I knew we wouldn't be safe for much longer. One or both of the monsters would eventually notice us, or worse – more of the behemoths running loose in the Grotesquerie would arrive to try to break through the force field, likely stomping us into jelly as they went by. So far the force field was holding, but only two giant monsters were battering it right now. How long could it hold up under the onslaught of five gargantuan beasts? Or a dozen?

And that thought led to another. "If the saboteur responsible for releasing the monsters also disabled the knockout gas, why didn't he, she, or they also deactivate the force field? If Talaith is behind this, she'd want the monsters to escape and flood the streets of the Sprawl. So why aren't the monsters out there right now, doing what they do best – performing urban renewal on a macro scale?"

"The force field won't hold up forever," Devona said. "Right now emergency power is being fed to the field to strengthen it, but the power boost is designed to be temporary. It's only supposed to last long enough for the knockout gas to be deployed."

"And since the gas isn't working–" I said.

"The force-field generators will eventually burn out," Devona said, "the force field will collapse, and the monsters will break free."

I told myself not to worry about that right now. Tavi needed medical attention, and as long as the force field was in emergency mode, we were trapped inside. Time to call for help. I grabbed my vox, selected one of my contacts, and pressed call. Varvara had probably already been informed of what was happening at the Grotesquerie, but in case she hadn't…

"It won't work," Varney said. "You won't be able to get a signal through the force field."

He was right. The vox's mouth said, "I'm sorry, but your call cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later." And then it gave me a loud raspberry to taunt me. I flipped the cover closed with a bit more force than was absolutely necessary and put the vox away. So much for that idea.

Varney looked at the entrance, and a thoughtful expression came over his face. "If we could reach the gate, I might be able to use the energy from my cybernetic systems to disrupt the force field long enough for us to get through." He frowned. "There's only one problem."

"You mean two problems," I said. "Both of them about the size of a small mountain."

Varney nodded. "We're going to have to find a way to get past them."

"I suppose we'll just have to be extra sneaky," Shamika said.

We looked at her, and Devona and I couldn't help smiling. For the first time since we'd met her, she'd sounded her age.

"Good plan," Devona said.

"Works for me," I added.

Varney just rolled his eyes.

The four of us started toward the gate, doing our best to heed Shamika's advice. Getting past Kongar didn't worry me too much. The giant ape had his feet planted firmly on the ground for leverage as he pounded away on the force field with his fists. I doubted he was going to suddenly lift a foot as we drew near and accidentally stomp on us. Reptilikan was another matter. The dragon-beast was long and thin, something like a monstrous snake with bat wings and tiny feet. Its preferred method for attacking the force field was to rear back on its hind legs and slam its body forward, and each time it did so, it bounced back and slid a few dozen feet. It then scrabbled forward for another go at the force field. Since Reptilikan' s movements were more erratic, we made sure to stay well clear of the beast as we approached the gate. Unfortunately, this meant that we had to pass so close to Kongar's right leg that we could've reached out and ruffled his coarse fur if we'd wanted to.

I'm not sure what happened, whether one of us did something to catch Kongar's eye or whether the oversized ape just happened to pick that exact moment to look down. Whichever the case, he saw us and snarled. He stopped pounding his fists against the force field and bent down, reaching out to grab hold of us with one of his gigantic paws.

"Keep heading for the gate!" I shouted. "I'll distract him!"

Devona looked as if she wanted to protest, but she said nothing. We've worked together long enough for us to trust one another in tight situations, though it's never easy to watch someone you love put himself or herself in harm's way. It's not like I'm a hero or anything, though. Facing impending doom is a lot easier when you're already dead.

I darted off in the opposite direction, ran a dozen yards, then turned to face Kongar. I waved my hands in the air to attract the ape's attention and shouted so he could hear me.

"What's wrong with you? Are you completely stupid?"

Kongar glared and showed me his teeth. He moved damn fast for something so huge, and he snatched me up in his hand before I even had the chance to try and dodge out of the way. He straightened and lifted me up to his face to examine me more closely. The giant ape had a hell of a strong grip, and he could've squeezed me to zombie pâté if he'd wanted to. But though he held me tight, none of my bones had yet broken and I could still take in enough air to talk. Maybe Kongar's curiosity had gotten the better of him and he didn't want to squish me before he figured out what my problem was. Whatever the reason, I decided to speak fast before the titanic ape changed his mind.

"If you manage to break out of here, you'll have the fun of knocking down a bunch of buildings and scaring the crap out of a lot of people, but when the fun's over and you realize you've worked up a monster-sized appetite, what are you going to eat? A big boy like you needs a lot of food to keep going, and in the Grotesquerie you get super-sized meals delivered to you every day. Once you're out on the streets foraging for yourself, you're going to find it pretty slim pickings."

I had no idea how intelligent Kongar was or if anything I'd said had gotten through to him, but the ape no longer looked angry. He frowned, as if he were thinking hard.

I glanced down to check on the others' progress. Devona, Varney, and Shamika stood at the main entrance, right at the edge of the force field. Varney was once again in the process of pulling cable out of his eye, and Devona and Shamika stood back several feet to give him room to work. While you couldn't exactly see the field, its energy had a tendency to ripple like heated air rising off hot asphalt, allowing them to pinpoint its precise location. I needed to keep Kongar busy for a few more moments.

Up to this point, Reptilikan had continued slamming its scaly coiled bulk against the force field, but now the giant dragon-thing broke off its assault on the field and turned to look at Kongar, as if to ask the monster-ape why he was slacking off.

Varney held his eye's cable up to the force field. As soon as the exposed wires touched the energy of the containment field, sparks shot off in all directions. I don't know how Varney controlled the power output of his cybernetic parts, but he must've done something, because the sparks increased in number and intensity until the energy discharge was so bright I could no longer see Varney.

Kongar and Reptilikan noticed it too, and as they turned to look at the light, I started talking again, almost shouting at the top of my lungs this time to keep them from being distracted by the crackling energy bouncing off the section of the force field blocking the entrance.

"And Nekropolis isn't like a city back on Earth – it's a city full of monsters. Sure, they may be smaller than you, but they're mean and there's a hell of a lot of them. At first they might flee in terror when they see you coming, but they'll eventually band together against you. They'll fight back, and some of them will want to do more than just fight you. One of the most popular restaurants in town is called Kaijushi. You know what's on the menu? Fresh sushi made from raw giant monster meat."

Kongar turned to Reptilikan and gave his fellow behemoth a doubtful look, as if he were reconsidering his plan to escape.

I looked down again. The energy discharge had ended, and the entrance was free from distortion. Devona grabbed hold of Shamika's hand and pulled the girl along with her as she hurried through the opening Varney had made in the force field. Shamika looked back at me and pointed. I could see that she was saying something to Devona, but I was too far away to hear.

Reptilikan was clearly irritated at Kongar, and the dragon-beast horked up a mass of nasty greenish gunk and spewed it at the giant ape. Kongar tried to dodge, but Reptilikan was too good a shot, and the goo struck the massive simian on the chest. Immediately fur and flesh began to smoke and sizzle as the acidic substance began its work. Kongar roared in pain and fury as Reptilikan's corrosive venom continued eating away at his skin. I didn't escape unscathed. Several large droplets had splattered on me and were eating holes in my forehead and right shoulder. The wounds didn't hurt, of course, but I was glad I couldn't smell. I've been told the stench of burning zombie is more than a bit stomach-churning.

I knew the time for distraction had passed. Devona and Shamika had made it to the other side of the force field, and Kongar and Reptilikan were going to start beating the hell out of each other any second – and I didn't want to be caught between the two behemoths when the fists, claws, teeth, and corrosive vomit started flying in earnest.

Even though I was clasped in Kongar's hand, I could still move my arm, and I reached into one of my pockets and withdrew Livingstone again. As soon as the head got a good look at the two giant monsters, he said, "You can't be serious!"

"Unfortunately, I am. I don't know if you're strong enough to do this, but focus an eye on each one of them and make with the magic. Oh, and try to avoid shrinking me while you're at it."

Livingstone grumbled something about how I'd need to take him to see an ophthalmologist after this, but he did as I asked. Beams of light shot forth from his eyes, one for each monster, and struck them both right between their own eyes. I gave Livingstone bonus points for good aim and style.

Kongar and Reptilikan stiffened as Livingstone's magic suffused their bodies. At first, nothing more happened and I feared Livingstone simply didn't have enough mystic energy for the job. But then both Kongar and Reptilikan began to shrink. Slowly at first, but with increasing speed. Livingstone didn't let up; he continued blasting both monsters with his eyebeams, but the strain took a toll on him. I could feel him trembling in my hand, and I wondered how much longer he could keep it up.

Kongar held on to me while he shrank, more because he'd forgotten he was holding me than for any other reason, I think. When he was down to about fifteen feet, he could no longer keep hold of me and let go. I hit the ground and felt my body parts threaten to lose cohesion, but I'd anticipated the impact and managed to maintain enough concentration to keep myself together. I also managed not to drop Livingstone. He'd ceased blasting the two monsters with optical rays by this point, but it didn't matter. The job was done. Kongar dwindled in size until he was no larger than a chimpanzee, and Reptilikan shrank down to the size of a juvenile alligator.

I got to my feet, gave the diminished monsters a stern look, and said, "Shoo!"

They yelped, turned, and fled.

I looked down at Livingstone, intending to thank him, but I realized that the shrunken head was, in fact, beginning to shrink even further.

"I used too much power, and some of it backfired on me," he said. "I managed to keep any of it from spilling on you, though."

As he shrank, his voice rose in pitch, and he soon sounded like a bodiless chipmunk.

"I'm sorry," I said. "If I'd known this would happen…"

Livingstone was now the size of a raisin in my palm, and still shrinking. "It's all right. To God there is no zero. I still exist!"

And with that, he was gone.

"Hurry it up, Matt! I can't keep the hole in the force field open much longer!"

I felt bad for Livingstone, but I didn't have time to mourn his loss. I turned to see Varney standing at the main entrance, holding his eye-cable out before him. No longer did bright energy flashes erupt in midair. Only a faint shower of sparks, like a Fourth of July sparkler on the verge of sputtering out. Opening a hole in the force field hadn't done Varney any good. White smoke curled forth from his eye socket and blood trickled from his nostrils and ears.

I hurried through the main gate, feeling a slight resistance for a moment as if I were moving through water. Devona and Shamika were waiting for me on the other side, and my love gave me a big hug before pulling back and wrinkling her nose.

"Nothing personal, but you reek! Reptilikan vomit is strong stuff!"

I smiled. "I'll shower after the war is over." Then I turned back to Varney. He remained standing there, smoking and bleeding as the sparks from his eye-cable grew weaker.

"What are you waiting for?" I said. "Come on!"

Varney grimaced as the blood trickles became gushes.

"I can't. In order to keep the portal open, I have to stay on this side of it. You three go on without me!"

I turned to Shamika. "Can you use your magic to get him across before the portal snaps shut?"

She looked uncomfortable. "I, uh… I don't know. I've never done anything like that before."

Devona stepped past us without a word, went through the gate, grabbed hold of the waistband of Varney's pants, and leaped backward, pulling the cyber-vampire with her. There was a final flash of light and then the two of them landed in a heap before Shamika and me. I reached down to help Devona stand.

"Sometimes simple solutions are best," she said, grinning.

Shamika helped Varney to his feet. The vampire looked quite a bit the worse for wear. He was pale from blood-loss and the socket of his cyber-eye was a melted, blackened ruin. He snapped off the eye-cable and dropped it to the ground. As we watched, the blood covering his shirt began to flow upwards, back into his nose and ears. It was an effective, if disgusting, way for vampires to heal themselves, and within moment's Varney's clothes were bloodfree and he was no longer pale. Well, no paler than a normal vampire, that is.

"I'm impressed," I said. "I thought only truly powerful vampires could do stunts like that. I didn't realize you were so high up in the Bloodborn hierarchy."

Devona frowned. "He's right, Varney. Who and what are you, really?"

Varney looked at us without expression for a moment. Finally, he said, "Let's just say that I wasn't always a cameraman and leave it at that, all right? We still need to get out of here before–"

The Grotesquerie's alarms had continued to sound the entire time we were trying to escape, but now their tones rose in pitch and intensity.

"The force field fails entirely," Varney finished.

No more time for talk. We ran out into the street where Lazlo was still waiting for us in his cab. We were about to jump in when there was a pop! of displaced air and suddenly Varvara was standing on the sidewalk next to us. The Demon Queen gave me an irritated look.

"This is quite a bit of trouble – even for you," she said.

We could hear the sounds of giant monsters roaring and shrieking as they lumbered toward the main gate. I pictured creatures throughout the Grotesquerie preparing to climb over or batter through the wall as soon as the force field finished collapsing.

"I tried calling," I said lamely, "but I couldn't get a signal."

"Good thing I don't have to rely on you for my intel," she said. She pointed skyward and I saw a half-dozen flying demons overhead. No doubt they'd spotted the trouble in the Grotesquerie and had reported it to their queen.

"Now if you don't mind," Varvara said, "Mommy's got some work to do."

She stepped closer to the main gate, planted her feet apart as if to steady herself, and raised her hands high. She began chanting in a language I'd never heard before. The words were rough and guttural, and they blistered the air with unholy power. Just hearing them felt like my spirit was being violated. Filaments of glowing green energy streamed forth from Varvara's fingers, lengthening and picking up speed as they went. They flowed over the walls, completely covering them, and continued upward, rising into the air and curving inward from all directions until they formed a green dome over the Grotesquerie. The process took several minutes, and Varvara had a grim look of determination on her face the entire time. But when she was finished, the entire Grotesquerie was sealed in a dome of mystic power. We could still hear monsters roaring inside and more than a few began pounding at the newly erected barrier, but their cries were muted now, their blows muffled.

Varvara stopped chanting and lowered her arms. She staggered backward, and I was so shocked to see a sign of weakness in her that for an instant I hesitated. Then I stepped forward and took hold of her elbow to steady her.

"Thanks," she whispered. "That took a bit more out of me than I expected. But it should do the trick until the keepers can repair the force-field generators."

I was about to ask her who was going to help the keepers – those who were still alive, that is – subdue the giant monsters running wild within the Grotesquerie. But just then a long red truck came roaring around the corner, sirens wailing and flames trailing behind it.

"Right on time," Varvara said.

The vehicle pulled up to the curb not far from Lazlo's cab, which growled beneath its hood and rolled back several feet to give it room. Considering that the entire truck was wreathed in flame, I didn't blame the cab one bit. Emblazoned on the side of the truck was a stylized SFD: Sprawl Fire Department. They aren't firefighters, though; they're fire bringers. The doors opened and a horde of fire demons armed with pitchforks poured out into the street.

Varvara pointed to the Grotesquerie's entrance. "Get in there and help the keepers put the monsters back in their enclosures. And try not to burn them too badly. They're one of our best tourist attractions."

The demons inclined their heads to acknowledge their queen's command, and then formed two ranks and began running toward the Grotesquerie's entrance, leaving a trail of black and smoldering footprints behind them as they went.

"How can they get inside?" I asked. "You just sealed the place off."

"Give me a little credit. The barrier is impassable to everything but demons," Varvara said. She waited until the fire demons were all inside and then said, "There. That should take care of that. Now, if you don't mind, I have a war to win." She made a mystic gesture then, but nothing happened. She scowled and tried again, with the same result. Finally, she furrowed her brow in concentration, made the gesture more slowly, and this time she vanished with a whoosh of inrushing air.

"She wasn't kidding when she said creating the dome took a lot out of her," Devona said. "I've never seen a Darklord have trouble performing a simple teleportation spell before."

I was just as surprised as Devona by what we'd just witnessed, and more than a little disturbed, but we didn't have time to consider the implications right then. We needed to get Tavi medical attention, and we needed to do it fast. We hopped in Lazlo's cab, and he hit the gas and roared away from the curb.

As he drove, something hit me.

"Hey, Lazlo, why didn't you get out of your cab and kneel before Varvara? I mean, she is the queen of all the Demonkin, and that includes you."

Lazlo let out a raucous honk of a laugh. "You're funny, Matt! Why would I kneel to my own sister?"

THIRTEEN

During all the excitement in the Grotesquerie, I'd forgotten about the destruction of the Bridge of Nine Sorrows. With the bridge out, we couldn't get from the Sprawl to Gothtown, and that meant we couldn't get to the Fever House. Klamm had said that crews had been dispatched to repair the bridges, but Lazlo said both of them were still a long way from being rebuilt. I considered having Lazlo drive us to the broken bridge and then asking Varney to assume his travel form and fly Tavi over to Gothtown, but the vampire still looked pretty wiped out, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get halfway across and be unable to hold on to his travel form. If that happened, he'd resume his humanoid shape and plunge into Phlegethon, taking Tavi down with him. And to be honest, though Varney had helped us out of a couple tight spots, I didn't entirely trust him.

If Papa Chatha had been home, I'd have had Lazlo take us there, but of course, Papa was missing. Instead, I told Lazlo to take us to the Midnight Watch, and then I called Bogdan on my vox and told the warlock to meet us there.

When we arrived, I couldn't resist asking Lazlo if he'd been serious when he'd said Varvara was his sister. All he did was laugh, and give me a parting wave as he drove off.

Bogdan had beaten us back and was waiting inside for us. The Midnight Watch building is fairly large, and though all of the employees have their own homes, they each have a room there as well. We went into Tavi's quarters, which, aside from a couple paintings depicting jungle scenes, was decorated as sparsely as any hotel room. Devona pulled back the covers of his bed, and I removed him from my pocket and laid him gently on the mattress. Varney and Shamika stood off to the side, watching.

Bogdan took one look at our miniature friend and then turned to me. "I take it there's a story behind his condition," the warlock said.

"He got bit in half by a dinosaur and I shrank him to make him easier to carry," I said.

"Of course you did." Bogdan looked at Tavi once more. "How did you shrink him? Wait – you used that shrunken head of yours, right?"

"Yeah, but Livingstone didn't make it, so I can't use him to unshrink Tavi."

"So not only do you want me to try to heal Tavi, you need me to restore him to his normal size as well," Bogdan said.

"Not to make a joke, but that's about the size of it," I said.

Devona gave me a look that let me know I wasn't funny.

"Like anyone else, we Arcane have our individual talents and strengths," Bogdan said. "We're all born with the ability to generate, focus, and channel magical energy, but the specific form that magic takes can vary quite a bit from person to person. My own specialty is the conjuring of objects, not making alterations in another's body. Changing someone's size and healing injuries are both outside my realm of expertise."

"Tavi's a lyke, and his body stands a good chance of healing itself," Devona said. "We just need to give him a little help."

Bogdan smiled at Devona. "All right, boss. I'll give it my best shot."

I didn't particularly appreciate the way Bogdan smiled at Devona, but I decided now wasn't the time to act petty. There'd be plenty of time for that after Bogdan did what he could to help Tavi.

Bogdan's specialty wasn't just conjuring objects. In a way I didn't understand, his talent lies in conjuring useful objects, ones he needs at any given moment. Sometimes I wonder if Bogdan himself fully understands it. He kept his gaze fixed on Tavi's miniaturized form, gestured, and a magnifying glass appeared in his hand. He held it over Tavi and a beam of light shone through and down onto the lyke. As we watched, Tavi's body slowly grew until he was once again normal size. When Tavi was finished growing, the light from the magnifying glass winked out, and a second later the glass itself disappeared. It's too bad that Bogdan's objects never stick around long once they've fulfilled their purpose. He'd make a fortune if he could conjure up permanent magical items.

"That's step one," Bogdan said. "Now let's see if I can do anything to help him start healing."

I was used to the warlock sounding supremely confident, so the doubt in his voice took me by surprise. I felt Devona reach out to me through our psychic link.

Why are you surprised? she thought. Tavi is Bogdan's friend, and he doesn't want to let him down.

Nothing against Bogdan, but I didn't think he was especially fond of any of us – with the exception of you, that is.

Jealous: table for one, Devona thought, with more than a trace of amusement. But seriously, you should take the time to get to know Bogdan better – and Scorch and Tavi too.

This wasn't the first time that Devona had gently chided me for keeping to myself too much. I'd been something of a loner when I was human. Dale had been my only real friend back then, and after we came to Nekropolis and he died, I'd been on my own for the most part. Oh, I'd made a number of acquaintances, but I never got close to anyone. I didn't let myself. That changed when I met Devona. She's more than my lover; she's the best friend I've ever had. But she encourages me to "expand my emotional palette," as she puts it, and establish deeper friendships. I'm working on it. Slowly.

Once more Bogdan fixed his gaze on Tavi, concentrated, and gestured. This time nothing appeared in his hand, and he frowned. He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, and allowed his features to relax. When his expression was one of serene calm, he gestured once again, and this time an old-fashioned glass thermometer appeared in his hand.

He opened his eyes and looked at it.

"Please tell me it's not a rectal thermometer," I said. "Because if it is, I'm afraid Tavi's out of luck."

Devona gave me a look that said I was even less funny than the last time she had given me the look. Bogdan ignored me and gently placed the thermometer between Tavi's lips. There were no obvious signs of any magic at work – no glowing light, no strange sound – but the lyke stirred and gently sighed. He settled back into the bed, and a peaceful expression came over his face.

"I'd say that's a good sign," Devona said.

"I hope so," Bogdan said. "Like I told you, healing's not my specialty."

"Once Tavi regains consciousness, he's going to be ravenous," I said. "He lost a lot of mass, and he's going to need help replacing it."

"You're right," Devona said. "We should lay in a supply of raw meat and blood."

That wouldn't be a problem. One of the nice things about Nekropolis is that you never have any trouble finding a butcher's.

A slight breeze ruffled my hair, and I knew Rover was in the room with us.

"Keep watch over Tavi," I told the guardian spirit. "And let us know if there's any change in his condition."

Rover blew gently on my face one time, a signal for yes. We left Tavi's quarters and adjourned to the great room. Devona, Shamika, and Bogdan sat on the couch, I took up my usual position near the fireplace, and Varney stood on the opposite side of the room and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, an unreadable expression on his face. He'd been awfully quiet since we'd escaped the Grotesquerie, but at least he was no longer making any pretense of wanting to make a documentary about me. I still didn't know what his game was, and that needed to change. First things first, though. I told Bogdan what we'd been up to since we'd seen him last. When I was finished catching him up, I asked if he'd learned anything of interest from his Arcane contacts.

"I stopped by Overhexed, only to discover that you'd been there before me and broken up a street riot before it even got started," Bogdan said. "As you might imagine, not many of the patrons were inclined to chat with me after that, seeing as how I work with you. The Sea Hag was sharing a table with Dr Bombay, and they'd both had more enough than enough drinks to put them in a talkative mood, though. They told me they'd heard rumors that Talaith had solid evidence that Varvara was behind our people's disappearances, though neither could tell me what precisely that evidence might be. Dr Bombay is something of a gossip, and once he started talking, it was hard to shut him up. He told me the names of the Arcane who disappeared. A dozen in all, men and women who specialize in different facets of magic." Bogdan grimaced in distaste. "He also told me more about their vices and sexual proclivities than I wanted to know. Beyond the fact that they all happen to be Arcane, there doesn't seem to be any connection between them."

"Do you remember the names?" I asked.

Bogdan gave me an affronted look that seemed half put on, half genuine. "I'm a professional. I know better to rely on memory." He gestured and a leather-bound notebook appeared in his hand. He opened it and read off the names of the missing Arcane.

Papa Chatha was on the list, and while I wasn't familiar with every name, I knew most of them: the Bedazzler, Preston Digitator, Ms Mockery, the Uncanny Gaston, Alteria, Chang-Xi, and the Crystalline Dancer.

"They do have something in common," I said after a moment's thought. "They're all powerful and highly skilled in their particular specialty, but not necessarily well known to the public at large."

Varney had only listened up to this point, but now he said, "Why is that important?"

"Because their disappearances would go unnoticed, at least for a while," I answered. "If any of the town's famous Arcane vanished, it would be big news, and Talaith and the Adjudicators would immediately begin scouring the city for them. But if lowerprofile magic-users vanished, the disappearances would have to mount up and a pattern would have to emerge before someone noticed and decided to do something about it."

Devona picked up on my train of thought. "And that would give the kidnapper – or kidnappers – time."

"Time to do what?" Bogdan asked.

"Maybe time to falsify evidence implicating Varvara in the disappearances," I said. "Time enough to start a war between two Darklords."

"Varvara could still be behind the disappearances," Bogdan said, but he sounded unsure.

I shook my head. "Since when does Varvara do anything halfway? If she wanted to kidnap Arcane she'd select the most famous and powerful of them. If for no other reason than as a personal affront to Talaith."

"You have a point," Bogdan conceded.

"Did you learn anything else at Overhexed?" I asked.

"No. After a while, Dr Bombay started telling some truly awful jokes, and I made my excuses and got the hell out of there. I stopped in at Nosferatomes and asked Orlock if he'd heard anything related to the disappearances. He's Bloodborn, but he carries a lot of magic books in his store, and he's pretty plugged in to what goes on the Arcane community. But he wasn't able to tell me anything."

Devona and I exchanged looks. We knew from firsthand experience that Orlock was more than he seemed, though we'd never shared this knowledge with anyone else. Orlock knew that Bogdan worked with us, and if he'd had any information about the disappearances, he'd have given it to the warlock to pass along to us – for a price to be named later, of course. I was more than a bit glad Orlock hadn't known anything, though. Devona and I had owed him a favor, and repaying him had nearly caused us to miss our only opportunity to conceive our child… make that our children. Because of this, I wasn't eager to get mixed up with the ancient vampire again.

"I decided to try Magewrights' Manor next," Bogdan said. "The club's quite exclusive, and I don't have a membership – though I've been on the waiting list for years," he hastened to add. "You know how much Talaith hates that some Arcane prefer the urban lifestyle of the Sprawl to the pastoral life in Glamere. Well, Magewrights' Manor is the most prominent symbol of that preference, and the magic-users that frequent the club have little love for Talaith. In order to belong, you have to be both powerful and well-connected socially, and having a certain amount of fame doesn't hurt either."

A metaphorical light bulb went off over my Reptilikan-vomitscarred head. "Is that what attracted you to working for the Midnight Watch in the first place? Devona and I had just saved the city from being destroyed during the Renewal Ceremony, and if the Midnight Watch was successful, you hoped that some of our fame might rub off onto you."

I could feel Devona's anger through our link, but Bogdan didn't seem upset in the slightest by my words.

"That was one of the considerations," he admitted. "But there have been other benefits to working here." Bogdan pointedly avoided looking at Devona. He thought for a moment, then lowered his gaze to the floor and then gave what I thought was an almost embarrassed smile. "To be honest, it's nice to use my talents for something productive. It's funny. My specialty is conjuring useful objects, but before I started working here, I myself wasn't very useful. I hired myself out to wealthy, prominent people when I needed money, but the rest of the time I frittered away my life, moving from club to club, trying to make connections and ingratiate myself with the 'right' people, whoever they happened to be at any given moment, all to increase my own status. It was a very empty way to live, and I didn't even know it until I came here."

I hate it when Bogdan gets sincere. It means I have to work twice as hard to dislike him.

"So did you manage to get in?" I asked.

He looked up and nodded. "On my way there, that strange reality distortion hit, where Nekropolis seemed to overlap with Earth for a short time. It was extremely disconcerting, more so for us Arcane I imagine, because we feel mystic energy in a way that most others do not. And that distortion felt deeply, profoundly wrong in a way I can't easily describe." He shuddered at the memory. "Anyway, when I arrived at the Manor and told the doorman why I'd come, I was immediately ushered in. The members had already been discussing the dispute between Talaith and Varvara when the reality distortion hit, and now they were furiously debating what and who had caused it and why. When they learned I was assisting you in investigating the disappearances of our people, they invited me to take part in their discussion."

It was weird to think that my name had paved the way for Bogdan gaining admittance into a club he'd tried for so long to join. I know I've acquired a certain amount of fame over the years, but I don't take it seriously and try to ignore it. But I guess it can be a useful tool sometimes. If Bogdan resented the fact that it was my name that got him inside the Manor, he didn't show it.

"Some of the most well-known Arcane in the city were there: Dr Faustus, Circe, Baron Samedi, Baba Yaga, Chandu, Marie Leveau, Cagliostro, Rasputin, Calypso, the Blair Witch… A veritable who's who! I learned that they'd all performed their own investigations into the disappearances, and not one of them had been able to find so much as a trace of the missing Arcane. It was as if they'd vanished completely from Nekropolis."

Shamika had been silent since we'd returned to the Midnight Watch, but she now drew in a surprised breath. "I thought so!" she said.

We all looked at her.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She looked extremely uncomfortable. "Just that since I couldn't find any trace of my uncle, I didn't think anyone else would either. That's all."

Her words didn't quite ring true, but as with Varney, I decided now wasn't the time to push it. Shamika didn't say anything more, and after a moment, Devona spoke.

"Tavi picked up Papa Chatha's scent trail and followed it, though. Surely magic-users as powerful as those in Magewrights' Manor wouldn't have failed to detect such a trace."

"It does seem highly unlikely," Bogdan said, "but none of them said anything about scent trails while I was there."

"Maybe the scent trail isn't important," Devona said. "It's possible Papa just happened to be visiting the Grotesquerie when he was abducted."

"And then Titanus just happened to escape when Tavi followed Papa's trail there?" I said. "And on top of that, when we arrived to save Tavi, all the creatures in the Grotesquerie just happened to escape as well?"

Devona smiled ruefully. "When you put it like that, it sounds like a trap."

"Talaith saw you in Demons' Roost," Varney said. "And she's not exactly your biggest fan. Maybe she set the trap to get rid of you and strike a blow at Varvara in the process."

"Maybe," I allowed. But that didn't feel right somehow. Talaith is more than devious enough to devise any number of traps, but somehow this just didn't seem like her style.

Bogdan spoke then. "If Varvara didn't abduct the Arcane, then who did? Talaith herself?"

"I doubt it," I said. "Like Varvara, she'd have struck a stronger opening blow if she wanted to start a war – a blow more fitting a Darklord."

"Maybe war wasn't the point," Devona said. "Maybe abducting the magic-users was, and war was just a side-effect. Or–"

"A distraction!" I finished.

"From what?" Bogdan asked.

"From whatever the kidnappers really want to do," I said. "And whatever it is, they need magic-users to do it."

"Magic-users that for some reason they can't simply hire," Devona said, "and so they're forced to abduct them. I wonder…" She trailed off then, and her expression went blank. "I need to step outside for a moment."

She rose from the couch, her movements somewhat stiff, and started walking out of the great room. The rest of us exchanged puzzled glances, except Shamika. She looked worried.

"This isn't good," she whispered. Shamika sounded more than worried now; she sounded scared, and her tone prompted me to action.

"Devona, wait!" I followed after her, but Varney was already ahead of me, and he trailed Devona down the hall toward the front door.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "You're acting–"

That's as far as Varney got before Devona spun around and shoved her hand toward him. She didn't connect with him physically, but I could feel the psychic force pouring off her in waves. Telekinetic energy slammed into Varney and threw him back against the wall. The Midnight Watch building is old and made almost entirely from stone, and Varney's skull made a sickening scrunch as it connected with the wall. His eye went wide as he hit, and he fell face-first when he rebounded, leaving a bloody smear where his head had struck the stone. I wasn't worried about Varney. He'd recover, but it would take him a few moments. In the meantime, I had to stop Devona.

As soon as she saw Varney was no longer a problem, she turned around and headed for the front door again, not running, just walking with a slightly stiff-legged gait, as if she weren't entirely in control of her actions.

Devona's psychic abilities had continued to grow in strength since we met, but I'd never seen her wield telekinesis to that degree. Whatever was happening with her, it had given her a power boost, and I knew I had to approach her cautiously. In my current condition, if she hit me with a blast of telekinesis as strong as the one she'd directed at Varney, I'd fly apart and this time I might not be able to put myself back together.

I was tempted to try and reach out to Devona through our link. If she was trying to fight whatever was happening to her, she might still be herself inside her mind, and we might be able to connect psychically. On the other hand, if she wasn't still herself, she could send a flood of mental energy through our link and stun me – or worse, reduce my brain to tapioca. I decided to try another approach.

"Whatever's happening, my love, you have to fight it – for the babies, if nothing else!"

She didn't say anything, didn't turn around, didn't attack, but she didn't stop walking, either. I thought she might have hesitated for a second or two, but it might've been my imagination.

We were almost to the door now, and while I had no idea what would happen when she went outside, I didn't think it was going to be good. I hated to do this, but I didn't see that I had any other choice.

"Rover!" I called.

An instant later a torrent of wind came rushing down the hallway toward us. Devona ignored it and reached out to take hold of the door knob.

"Something's wrong with Devona, Rover! You have to stop her from leaving!"

Rover is a living, sentient wardspell, but I wasn't sure exactly how intelligent he (or more accurately it) was. In the time since Devona had purchased the Midnight Watch building, we'd gotten to know Rover, and while I was certain he understood simple commands, I was afraid the complexity of the current situation would be beyond him. His mistress was simply trying to leave the building, and her partner was ordering Rover to prevent her from doing so. I wouldn't blame Rover for being confused – hell, I was confused, and I was right in the middle of the situation – and if it came down to a case of conflicting loyalties in Rover's mind, Devona versus Matt, I had no doubt who would win.

But Rover must've understood the situation, or perhaps being a creature composed entirely of magic he was able to detect that something was wrong with Devona, for either way, he blew past me, surrounded Devona with a mini cyclone, and pulled her away from the door.

For a moment I thought that would do it, and I began trying to think of a way to snap Devona out of the spell that was affecting her. But before I could come up with anything, she reached into one of her pockets and brought out a small metal charm. It was a simple thing, a coin-sized disk with a yin-yang symbol painted on it, but I'd seen her use it in her work, and I knew how potent it could be. A reverser is aptly named, for it reverses the effect of any magic it comes in contact with. A freeze spell can become a fire spell, a stasis spell can become a fast-motion spell, et cetera.

Devona flipped the reverser into the air, where Rover's cyclonic wind currents snatched it up and began spinning it around. It orbited Devona twice before it began to take effect. Rover's wind started to blow slower and with less force, and within seconds it dissipated to little more than a light breeze. Another second after that, and it was gone. The reverser plunked to the floor, and Devona left it where it lay, walking to the door once more, gripped the knob, turned it, pushed the door open, and stepped outside.

I didn't know if the reverser had merely negated Rover's wind or if it had nullified the creature entirely, essentially killing him, but I didn't have time to worry about that right then. I still had to try and stop Devona.

I followed her outside. She'd walked down the front steps and was standing motionless on the sidewalk, staring out into the street. I hurried down the steps toward her, doing my best not to lose control of my barely held together scarecrow body, when I saw something small and black scuttle out of the gutter and head toward her feet. It looked something like an oversized roach – thick carapace, six segmented legs, wiggling antennae – but I knew it was no Earthly insect. I'd seen it before, or rather, ones like it, but I thought I'd never see one again. But I had, hadn't I? And not that long ago. I'd seen one in Devona's room at the Fever House, and I'd seen others at the Grotesquerie, moving so swiftly that I'd hadn't been certain I'd seen anything at all. Those bugs belonged to only one being I knew of – actually were that being, in fact, for each insect was nothing but a tiny component of a single gigantic group mind.

It was Gregor.

The insect scuttled onto Devona's right foot and perched there. I was a bit surprised. I expected it to do something a lot ickier, like crawl up her body, enter her ear and dig its way into her brain. I'd seen Gregor's insects do it before. But this one seemed perfectly content to sit there on her foot, as if it had no intention more nefarious than hitching a ride.

I hurried up to Devona and stopped when I was within an arm's length of her. I didn't know what to do next. One of Gregor's insects wasn't much of a threat, but there could be hundreds of them – maybe thousands – hiding all around us, cloaked by shadow, wedged into cracks in the buildings and sidewalk, waiting to attack. I feared that if I made a wrong move, I might set them off. I thought about drawing my 9mm and shooting the bug on her foot. Devona would get injured in the process, but she was a vampire – albeit a half one – and she'd heal quickly enough. But once the bug was off her, I could haul her back into the Midnight Watch, and once we were inside, she would be safe. The security features of the building, both magical and technological, are so powerful that nothing would be able to harm her inside, including Gregor. His insects wouldn't be able to get in and…

I understood then. Gregor couldn't get in, so he'd needed to get Devona out.

I reached for her just as the insect clinging to her foot began to glow. I grabbed hold of her shoulder as her body became transparent, faded, and disappeared, bug and all. I frantically tried to connect to her through our psychic link, but I felt no echo of her presence. Wherever she'd gone, she was outside the range of telepathic contact.

Devona was gone. And as I looked down at the stump protruding from my right sleeve, I realized she'd taken my right hand with her.

I found Varney in the hallway, sitting up against the wall and massaging the back of his head. Shamika and Bogdan stood close by, but I ignored them.

"What happened?" Varney said when he saw me approaching. "Did you stop her?"

In response, I drew my gun with my left hand, only fumbling a bit in the process, crouched down and pressed the muzzle to Varney's temple. Shamika gasped, and Bogdan took hold of her by the shoulders and slowly edged her back. I regretted scaring her, but I needed answers from Varney, and I was determined to get them, no matter what it took.

"I'm not as good a shot with my left hand as I am with my right, but at this range, all I need to do is pull the trigger." I was struggling to control my emotions, knowing that if I was going to be any help to Devona I had to remain calm, but I was too scared and angry, and it came out in my voice. "You know the kind of ammo I carry – silver bullets dipped in holy water and garlic, and infused with so much magic that each bullet is practically an anti-Darkfolk bomb. So if you don't want me to finish the job Devona started and decorate the wall with the rest of your brains, you need to start talking and you need to do it fast."

"Please don't hurt him!" Shamika said, and she tried to come toward, but Bogdan held her back.

If Varney felt any fear, it didn't show on his face. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know, but first tell me where Devona is."

"I don't know where she is!" I said, almost shouting. "She vanished before my eyes!"

Part of my mind was already starting to wonder if the missing magic-users had all disappeared the same way, but right now I was too upset to worry about solving mysteries. I just wanted to get Devona – and our unborn children – back safely.

I pressed my weapon harder against Varney's head and I tightened my finger on the trigger.

"Who are you really?" I demanded.

"My name truly is Varney, but my job as a cameraman is just a cover. My real employer is Lord Galm, and he assigned me to watch over Devona during her pregnancy. It was my idea to do a documentary on you, so I'd have an excuse to stick close to her."

I thought back to Galm's visit to Devona in the Fever House. He'd tried so hard to convince her to move back to the Cathedral where she'd be safe for the rest of her pregnancy. While that was the first time he'd expressed his concern about her pregnancy to us, in typically devious Darklord fashion, Galm had put an agent in place to guard Devona well before that.

I thought about it for a moment, and then I removed my gun from Varney's head, though I didn't holster it. "That explains why you were so upset you couldn't accompany us with Darius to the alternate Nekropolis. You were worried something might happen to Devona and you wouldn't be there to protect her, like you did when the Weyward Sisters destroyed the Bridge of Nine Sorrows and at the Grotesquerie."

I stood and reached out to help him up, but he just stared at my wrist stump.

"Sorry. I had hold of Devona's shoulder when she vanished, and my hand went with her." I wished the rest of me had gone along for the ride. Wherever she was right then, I might have been able to help her. If nothing else, at least we'd have been together.

I lowered my arm and Varney got to his feet on his own.

"Now that you know the truth, there's no need for me to pretend anymore," he said, and as I watched, the ruin of his cybernetic eye began to repair itself. "My systems are more sophisticated than they appear."

"And I bet that's more than just a camera too."

Varney smiled.

"You know," I said, "Devona's going to be very upset when she learns that you've been spying on her all this time." Assuming we ever find her, I thought, and then hated myself for it. We'd find her. Somehow. We had to. I couldn't imagine life – even my zombie version of it – without her.

"Not spying. Watching over her," Varney said. "It's not the same."

"Try telling that to her. All right, so now we know who you are." I turned to Shamika and Bogdan and pointed my 9mm at the girl. "How about you?"

Shamika's eyes widened at the sight of my weapon trained on her, but she said nothing.

Bogdan looked shocked. "You can't be serious, Matt!"

When I spoke, my voice was as cold as only the voice of a dead man can be. "The woman I love just vanished, and I suspect our most dangerous enemy is responsible. I'll do whatever is necessary to get her back, and if that means threatening a young girl, so be it. Both Varney and Shamika have been keeping secrets from me. Varney's spilled his guts, and now it's time for her to do the same."

Bogdan looked at me, shock in his eyes, along with something else. He was seeing a different side of me, one he hadn't known existed, and I could tell he was reappraising me.

"Matt," he said softly, speaking in the overly gentle way people talk to someone who's on the verge of losing it. "Don't do this. She's just a girl."

My gun hand didn't waver.

"This is Nekropolis," I said. "No one's ever just anything here."

Bogdan opened his mouth as if he intended to argue with me, but then he shut it. He knew the truth when he heard it.

I trained my best intimidating gaze on Shamika, one I'd honed during my years as a cop and enhanced by the fact that zombies don't need to blink.

"You're not really Papa Chatha's niece, are you?"

I was trying to look and sound scary – I figured the acid-vomit scars on my face had to help – but as upset as I was over Devona's disappearance, I didn't have to try very hard. I'd suspected for some time that neither Varney nor Shamika was telling the truth about who they were, but I'd let it go, telling myself that the time would come to confront them. Varney had turned out to be benign enough – assuming his story was true, and it meshed with what I'd observed, and it was exactly the sort of devious controlling move Devona's father would make. But if it turned out that Shamika was mixed up in this somehow, if she was responsible for Devona's disappearance in even the most tangential way, I'd never forgive myself for not confronting her earlier with my suspicions.

But despite my attempt to intimidate her, Shamika didn't seem scared in the slightest. Instead, she seemed sad. "I'm not his niece," she confirmed. "I've never even met him."

"Then who are you?" I demanded.

She paused, and then almost apologetically, she said, "I'm Gregor's sister."

I looked at her for a long moment, and even though I didn't need to blink, I blinked in surprise.

"Uh… what?"

FOURTEEN

"Who's Gregor?" Bogdan asked.

I ignored him and continued focusing on Shamika.

"Gregor can't have a sister. The Watchers are a group mind that share a single consciousness."

"Gregor is only one manifestation of that consciousness," Shamika said. "I'm another.

"But you don't look anything like Gregor." I kept my gaze – and my 9mm – on Shamika, but I spoke to Bogdan and Varney now. "Gregor was – is – some kind of insect thing. A giant roach with obsidian gems for eyes. And his component parts are miniature versions of him. He posed as an information broker located in the Boneyard. His insects traveled throughout Nekropolis, watching from the shadows, gathering information, eventually returning to Gregor to report what they'd learned. But Gregor had his own reasons for gathering as much knowledge as he could, and they had nothing to do with turning a profit. When Dis and the Darklords first traveled to this dimension to build Nekropolis, they discovered something was already living here. Millions, hell, maybe trillions of small insect-like creatures. The native life form didn't appear to be intelligent and showed no reaction to the Darklords' arrival. So the Darklords thought no more about them and began the work of creating their great city.

"Turns out the life forms were sentient, but their group intelligence was so different from that of any Earth creature, the Darkfolk included, that it didn't even recognize the newcomers as life forms, for it had no concept of Otherness. But as the centuries passed, the intelligence's insect components infiltrated the city and secretly watched the citizens of Nekropolis, eventually coming to understand Otherness – and to hate it.

"The Watchers' group mind created Gregor as a mask for itself, a way to interact with Darkfolk and study them more directly. It gathered all the knowledge it could, with the ultimate goal of finding a way to destroy the Others who'd invaded its home dimension. Once the Darkfolk were no more, things would return to the way they were, the way they were supposed to be, and the Watchers would be alone once more."

I paused and looked hard at Shamika. "How am I doing so far?"

"I'd argue some of the details, but your tale is essentially accurate."

"Good," I said, a sarcastic tone in my voice. "I wouldn't want to misrepresent you." I went on with my story. "Last Descension Day, Gregor stole a magical artifact called the Dawnstone from Lord Galm. The Dawnstone was the only object in Nekropolis capable of emitting actual sunlight, and Gregor planned to use it to disrupt the Renewal Ceremony. Umbriel does more than provide the shadowy half-light that illuminates the city. The Shadowsun's power keeps Phlegethon burning and maintains the city in this dimension. Gregor planned to use the Dawnstone to kill Father Dis, and without his power, the five Darklords wouldn't be able to recharge Umbriel on their own. The Shadowsun would fade away, Phlegethon would go out, and the deadly energies of this dimension would pour into the city, destroying everyone in it. And Gregor would've succeeded if Devona and I hadn't stopped him.

"Afterward, Dis paid Gregor a visit and used his vast power to erase him from existence, along with every other Watcher in the city. Or so I thought."

"All true," Shamika said. A slight smile then moved across her lips. "But it's not the whole story."

I kept my gun trained on her. "Then why don't you tell us the rest of it?"

Before Shamika could go on, Bogdan interrupted. "Do we really need to keep standing here in the hallway like this, with you waving your gun around like some kind of zombie cowboy, ready to shoot first and ask questions later?"

"I am not waving it around," I said. "I'm holding it rock-steady. And in point of fact, I'm asking questions now, and I have yet to fire a single bullet." Still, I understood what the warlock was trying to get at. Shamika hadn't made a threatening move toward any of us in the time I'd known her, and she was cooperating with my interrogation. And if she really was a Watcher, even the special ammunition in my gun probably wouldn't do much more than tickle her. What finally broke the tension for me, though, was the tiny breeze that blew through my hair. Rover was back – small and weak, but he was still alive, if that word can be applied to a creature made entirely from magic – and he was recovering. I made a decision.

"I guess we're not going to find Devona standing around like this." It was awkward using my left hand, but I managed to holster my gun. Then I bent down and picked up the spent reverser. The talisman would be useless until Devona could get it recharged, but I didn't want to leave it lying around. The damn things were incredibly expensive, and Devona only owned a couple. I vowed to hold onto this one and give it back to her when I saw Devona again. And I would see her again, even if I had to open a Kongarsized can of whup-ass on the entire city to make it happen.

"You can still call me Shamika if you like. It's a good name, isn't it? I got it from a woman who works as a chef at the Six-Legged Café. I figured that since she cooks insects, and my people resemble insects…" She grinned as if she was making a joke, but when none of us reacted, her smile fell away. "I thought it was kind of funny. I guess I don't fully understand humor yet."

We were back in the great room. I stood at my usual place by the illusory fire, Varney once again leaned on the wall opposite me, but this time only Shamika sat on the couch. Bogdan was standing over next to me. We'd taken a moment to check on Tavi. The lyke was still unconscious, but the lower half of his body had begun to regenerate. The healing was proceeding at a glacial pace, and it might be days before he was whole again, if not longer, but at least he was healing.

Varney's optic implant had completely repaired itself by now, and his cybernetic eye glowed red. I had no doubt it functioned as a weapon as well as a camera, and though I'd chosen to holster my gun, I suspected Varney was – not to make a pun – keeping his eye on Shamika.

"But you don't look like an insect," Varney said. "You look human."

"I can look like whatever I want," Shamika said. "We didn't have any form before the Darklords arrived. We were one vast shadowy creature, stretching for hundreds of miles in all directions. But when the Darklords saw us moving and rippling in the dark, one of them thought we resembled a carpet of black insects, and so we took that form."

"Insects with obsidian gems for eyes?" Bogdan said.

"It was Varvara, wasn't it?" I said. "She was the Darklord who accidentally gave you form, and you gained gem-like eyes because she thought of a demonic version of an insect."

"That's right," Shamika said. "We kept that form for many years, even after we began to become aware of the Darkfolk as Others. Insects can go anywhere in a city. There are thousands of places to hide, and when insects are spotted, no one pays them much attention. It was a perfect guise to wear while we conducted our observations. But we are not limited to that form."

I thought of murals I'd seen on the walls of the Nightspire depicting images of the Darkfolk's origins and evolution. The Darkfolk had begun as amorphous shadow creatures that were psycho-reactive, and as humans evolved, the Darkfolk took on shapes and attributes inspired by humanity's fears and nightmares. The Shadowings evolved naturally, but humans had turned them into the Darkfolk. From what Shamika was saying, it sounded like something similar had happened in this dimension. Only in this case, it was the Darkfolk who had unwittingly turned the native life form into the Watchers.

A couple more pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me then. "When you got blasted outside Overhexed, I saw you fall apart, just like I did. Except that you were separated into your component pieces, and all you had to do was reassemble them. And those chiranha you called upon to deal with Magilla. They weren't really chiranha at all, were they? They were more components of you that took on the form of chiranhas."

"Right on both counts," Shamika said. "Since I'm not really Arcane, I can't perform any magic. I know lots about magic," she hastened to add. "I know all kinds of things from my years observing the Darkfolk. I just can't work any spells. So I used my abilities to fake magic powers."

"Why masquerade as a human?" I asked. "And why pose as Papa Chatha's niece in particular?"

I remembered when we'd been in Papa's workroom, and Dis appeared and froze time for everyone but him and me. He'd given Shamika a look then, almost as if he'd known who and what she was, but he hadn't said anything to me about it. Maybe he'd just sensed something odd about her but hadn't been able to put his finger on it. Then again, he was Father Dis, the single most powerful creature among all the Darkfolk that had ever existed. I had a hard time believing he hadn't recognized Shamika as a Watcher. But if he had, why hadn't he done anything about it? Why hadn't he at least warned me?

"I told you that Gregor and I are different manifestations of the same consciousness. Gregor is the part of us that fears Otherness. I am the part that is intrigued by it. Where he observes in order to gain knowledge to destroy the Darkfolk, I observe simply because I wish to learn more about you. I take on humanoid form so that I can move freely among you and interact." She smiled playfully, looking like the teenage girl she resembled. "It's a lot more fun that way. As for why I posed as Papa Chatha's niece… well, that's more complicated." Her smile faded. "Dis did destroy every one of us in Nekropolis after Gregor's plot to stop the Re newal Ceremony failed. Dis killed us all – both those who were Gregor and those who were me. But even though Dis is a god by your standards, even his power has limits, and only those Watchers within the city were slain. So we waited a bit and then more of us simply moved in." A ghost of her smile returned. "Just like real insects, we're damn hard to get rid of."

"But if Dis destroyed you both, how do you still have your memories?" I asked.

"We're not the same as you. Our memories aren't stored within a single body or even a thousand bodies for that matter." She pointed to the stump of my right wrist. "It's more like your injury. You've lost a hand, but you haven't lost the essence of who you are. It was the same with us."

I was about to ask Shamika another question when I had the strangest sensation that my right hand was moving – except of course I had no right hand. It was with Devona, wherever she was. I chalked the sensation up to the phantom limb syndrome that amputees often experience and decided to leave it at that. But it was a really weird feeling.

Thinking of Devona made me realize something else, and I felt a surge of new hope.

"If you and Gregor are different aspects of the same mind, that means you know what he knows," I said, "which means you know what happened to Devona!"

"I'm sorry, Matt, but it doesn't work like that. I wish it did. Gregor and I might technically be the same mind, but our different… viewpoints, for lack of a better word, have caused us to become separated. Right now, we're more like one mind suffering from multiple personality disorder, and our separate personalities can't and won't communicate." She smiled sadly. "In fact, Gregor views me as the ultimate proof of the contaminating effects of Otherness. Where once we were one, now we're two. He blames the Darkfolk for this schism in our shared being, and it's only strengthened his determination to see you all destroyed."

"What's the point of being an unimaginably vast shadow creature if you don't have access to all your memories? It's a damned inefficient way to run a group mind, if you ask me." I sighed. "I should've known it wouldn't be that easy."

"I watched you and Devona stop Gregor from disrupting the Renewal Ceremony, and when I learned that Gregor was abducting Arcane, I knew he had come up with a new plan to destroy the Darkfolk. I like watching the Darkfolk. They're interesting, and I've learned so much from them. I won't let Gregor hurt them, and I'll do whatever it takes to stop him. I tried to discover what his plan is, but though I searched throughout the city, I couldn't find where he'd taken the Arcane, nor could I discover what he wanted them for. I knew I needed help, and I immediately thought of you and Devona. And once Papa Chatha was abducted, I knew how I could approach you. I was too afraid to come to you as myself. I feared you wouldn't trust me if you knew who and what I really was. But if I posed as Papa Chatha's niece… I kept watch on you, and when I learned you were going to see him, I got to his home before you, let myself in, and waited."

She smiled almost shyly at me. "I've watched you since you first came to Nekropolis, Matt. I've seen you help so many people, solve problems that seemed unsolvable, triumph against impossible odds… I knew if anyone could stop Gregor, it would be you."

"By Merlin's ingrown toenails!" Bogdan said, sounding half amused, half irritated. "She's one of your fans!"

I ignored the warlock's comment, mostly because I had no idea what to say in response. I wasn't sure how I felt about being entertainment for a Watcher, even a seemingly harmless one like Shamika.

"That was you I saw in Devona's room at the Fever House, wasn't it?" I said to her. "Or one of you, at any rate."

She nodded.

I frowned. "How did you manage to get into Papa's place? You said you can't work any magic, and the wardspells on it…" I stopped as the answer occurred to me. "At one time you secretly observed Papa deactivating the wardspells to enter his home, so you knew how to do it."

She smiled again, looking proud of herself. "Like I said, I know a lot of things."

"I wish you'd trusted me with the truth from the beginning," I said, "but I can understand why you didn't. I honestly don't know how I would've reacted if you had told us who you really were, so maybe it's best you didn't."

Another huge chunk of the mystery had made itself clear to me, but I didn't see how knowing Shamika's true identity made much difference. I'd already learned that Gregor was behind the Arcane abductions, and I could assume that he used the same technique to teleport his chosen targets as he'd used to snatch Devona. Shamika confirmed it for me when I asked a moment later.

"We can't perform magic, but that doesn't mean we can't make use of it," she said. "Each insect carries a small teleportation gem in place of one of its eyes.

"We can do more than change our shape," Shamika said. "We can change our scent as well. Gregor left the scent of Demonkin at the site of each abduction. Not strong evidence, but more than enough to convince Talaith, who has a highly suspicious and accusatory nature."

Yet another piece of the puzzle slid into place. "That's how Gregor lured us to the Grotesquerie. He imitated Papa Chatha's scent and laid a false trail for Tavi to find – a trail that ended at the Grotesquerie. And once Tavi was inside, Gregor's insects released Titanus, and then when we arrived, they released the rest of the monsters. Guess he wanted to stop us from finding out what he was up to." I frowned. "But why would he abduct Devona? She's not a magic-user. She deals with magic in her security work, but she doesn't actually cast spells."

"I understand why Gregor had to lure Devona outside to teleport her," Bogdan said. "The mystical defenses on the building prevent any of his insects from entering without one of us letting them in. What I don't understand is how he compelled Devona to go outside in the first place."

"I can answer that," Shamika said. "When Matt and Devona were investigating the theft of the Dawnstone, Devona agreed to carry one of Gregor's insects with her. At the time, they still believed Gregor was nothing more than an information broker, and that was the price he asked for his help. Unfortunately, she had to carry the insect inside her."

I shuddered at the memory of the insect burrowing its way into her ear. Devona's half-vampire physiology had allowed her to withstand the pain of the insect's entry into her body, but it had been far from pleasant for her.

"But that insect left her body after Gregor's plan to stop the Renewal Ceremony failed," I said.

"Yes, but it left some residue of itself behind," Shamika said. "Not enough to harm her, but enough to influence her mind should the need ever arise. Gregor wanted to abduct her, but he couldn't physically reach her in here, so he made her go outside using a post-hypnotic suggestion he telepathically implanted in her mind earlier, probably when we were at the Grotesquerie."

"But that brings us back to the question of why he wanted to abduct her," Bogdan said. "She isn't a magic-user, and it doesn't appear Gregor wants to hold her hostage. So why did her take her?"

I remembered then what Varvara had told Devona and I about our children during our visit to Demon's Roost.

I can't tell too much about them. The magic that surrounds them is too strong and too different from anything I've ever encountered before. But they're going to be very special children, that I can promise you.

A horrible realization occurred to me. "Devona might not possess magic, but our babies do – or at least they will. Strong magic. Varvara told us so. And when Galm visited us in the Fever House, he pretty much said the same thing, although at the time we all thought Devona was only going to have one child. Galm didn't know what kind of magic our children would have, but he said it would be powerful and he was determined to control it if he could."

"It's true," Varney said. "Lord Galm does believe your progeny will possess great power. But that's not the sole reason he charged me with protecting his daughter. He is truly concerned with her welfare."

"Forgive me for being skeptical," I said, "but I've never known a Darklord yet who wasn't concerned primarily with satisfying his or her own needs." Although Dis was different, I thought. He might be the darkest of dark gods, but I'd only known him to act in his people's best interest. Still, that didn't mean I trusted him fully.

"Believe what you wish," Varney said evenly. "It doesn't alter the truth."

I expected Varney to stand up for his lord and master, and I almost said so, but now wasn't the time to get sidetracked by petty bickering. We needed to stay focused so we could find Devona and stop Gregor from doing whatever nasty thing he was planning.

"Maybe Gregor plans to use the twins' magic somehow," I said. "Even if they aren't born yet." I felt a chill in my soul then, and I turned to Bogdan. "Will Gregor… I mean, in order to use the twins' magic, will he need to…" I couldn't bring myself to say it.

Bogdan put a hand on my shoulder. "If he intends to draw upon their power, he will need them alive and healthy. That means he won't harm them or their mother."

A wave of relief washed over me. Bogdan's words rang true. The Gregor I'd known was cold and calculating, not given to reacting emotionally. If it was in his best interests to keep Devona alive, he'd do so. I turned my attention back to the problem at hand. "But what does he need that power for?"

Before anyone else could speak, my vox let out with its obnoxious ring-ring-ring. Without thinking, I reached for it with my right hand, and though I no longer had a right hand, I once again felt the strange sensation of it moving. I used my left hand instead, pulled my vox out of my pocket, and opened it.

"Hello?" I said.

"Matt, I don't have a lot of time, so listen closely."

It was Scorch, and she was speaking softly, as if she didn't want to be overheard.

"Several squads of demons were deployed a few minutes ago, and the rumor going around Demon's Roost is that they're headed for the Midnight Watch. Supposedly Klamm's spies have come up with some kind of evidence linking you to the magicusers' abductions, and he wants you brought in for questioning. I've got to go before I'm caught talking to you. Good luck."

She disconnected before I could thank her. I tucked my vox back into my pocket, and told the others what she'd said.

"So since Gregor failed to kill you at the Grotesquerie, he's trying to frame you now," Bogdan said. "I wonder what evidence he created for Klamm's people to find."

It was the look on Shamika's face that made me realize the truth. I remembered the way she and Klamm had looked at one another in Demon's Roost, almost as if they'd recognized each other.

I looked at Shamika. "Klamm didn't need any evidence, did he? Because he's really Gregor in disguise."

She nodded. "I didn't know he'd taken another form until we were in Varvara's penthouse, and since you didn't know the truth about me then, I couldn't tell you about him. I'm sorry."

"It makes good tactical sense," Varney said. "It's a lot easier for him to use war as a distraction when he can take a direct hand in guiding Varvara's strategy."

"He's playing a dangerous game," I said. "He might be able to fool Varvara for a time, especially if her attention is focused on her war with Talaith, but she's a Darklord. He won't be able to fool her forever."

"Maybe he just needs to fool her long enough to accomplish whatever his ultimate goal is," Varney said.

"I hate to interrupt your theorizing," Bogdan said, "but have you forgotten what Scorch told you? Demons are on their way here to arrest you, Matt. You need to get out of here before–"

There was a loud pounding at the front door.

"–they arrive," he finished.

The portable Mind's Eye set that someone had brought into the great room to watch Varney's "improved" footage of me was still there. All the sets in the building were programmed to display images from the Midnight Watch's security cameras on command, so I activated this one and mentally commanded it to show us the view from the front-door camera. A squadron of demon soldiers had cordoned off the street and stood in ranks outside the Midnight Watch. They were all armed and had their weapons drawn and aimed at the front door. Which, I thought, was unfortunate for the poor sonofabitch who was currently knocking on it.

"That guy better hope his people don't have itchy trigger fingers," I said.

The demon resembled a satyr – horned, bearded, with hairy black goat legs – except his skin was turquoise and he had a mass of tentacles growing out of his back. He looked supremely unhappy at having been chosen for the dubious honor of knocking on my door, almost as if he feared it was booby-trapped and would explode in his face. Too bad it wasn't. Maybe I'd talk to Devona about adding that feature.

The demon might have been nervous, but when he spoke, his voice was deep and steady. "Matthew Richter! We know you're in there! In the name of the Darklord Varvara, we order you to exit the building and surrender to us for questioning!"

"Too bad Scorch didn't call a couple minutes earlier," I said. "We'd have had time to sneak out." I commanded the Mind's Eye to show us a view of the back entrance, and the scene was the same – a squad of armed demons stood outside, weapons aimed at the door. I checked the alley cameras and saw demons there as well. The roof camera showed several greasy black spots where flying demons had attempted to land, only to encounter the defenses in place there. A dozen more demons hovered twenty feet above the roof, weapons out and ready, unwilling to come any closer and risk sharing their comrades' fate, but still determined to catch anyone who might try to use the roof as an escape route.

I commanded the Mind's Eye to display the front view once more. The turquoise satyr was still talking, but he'd taken several steps back from the door, and a number of demons in the squad were hurriedly assembling some kind of large weapon in the street.

"If you refuse to turn yourself over to us voluntarily, we will be forced to come in and get you," the satyr said. "You have two minutes to decide."

Looking relieved to still be alive, the satyr turned away from the door and hurried to rejoin his fellow soldiers.

"What kind of weapon is that?" Bogdan asked.

I didn't have an answer for him, for I'd never seen anything quite like it before. There was an underlying metal framework that formed a pyramid shape, and into this framework demons slid metal panels with mouths attached to them. They were real mouths, not artificial constructs, surgically removed and affixed to the panels. It didn't take a genius to sense the maniacal hand of Victor Baron behind the device.

"It's a Blastphemer," Shamika said. "It's built from the bodies of dead sinners and focuses their negative energy for use as an offensive weapon."

We looked at her, and she smiled. "I know a lot of stuff, remember?"

Once the mouth panels were all in place, another demon came forward carrying a black sphere the size of an overinflated basketball, which he placed atop the point of the pyramid. Though there was no obvious parts to connect the sphere to the pyramid, it balanced on the point perfectly and remained there.

"That sphere contains distilled negative energy from the sinners' black hearts," Shamika said. "It's what gives the Blastphemer its power."

I turned to Bogdan. "Have you ever heard of such a thing?"

"No. It's Demonkin magic, not Arcane, and it looks to have been technologically augmented as well."

"Do you think they'll be able to breach the Midnight Watch's defenses with it?" I asked.

"I have no idea," Bogdan said. "The building is old, and its stonework was suffused with magic long before Devona bought the place, and she's improved the defenses since then. But if Klamm – I mean Gregor – is as smart as you say he is, I doubt he'd send the demons to fetch you unless he knew the Blastphemer would allow them to break through our defenses."

"We need to assume they'll be able to get in then," I said. "There's no point in trying to stop them."

"You can't give yourself up!" Shamika said.

"But if Matt goes along with them, maybe he can reach Varvara and tell her who and what Klamm really is…" Bogdan began.

Varney shook his head. "Whatever Gregor does, he won't take Matt to Demon's Roost. He won't risk Varvara discovering the truth."

"I can use my magic to conceal us all," Bogdan said. "I'll conjure an object that will make us invisible, then as long as we remain very still, the demons won't be able to find us once they break in."

"They'll have devices both magical and technological to help them search the place," I said. "If we're here, they'll find us."

"So we need to leave," Shamika said.

"Right. But we can't take Tavi with us. He's not up to traveling yet, and frankly, he'd just slow us down." I turned to Bogdan. "Go to Tavi's room and use your magic to conceal both of you. I'll draw the demons away from the Midnight Watch, and with any luck, they won't even come inside. After all, it's me they want. If I'm not here, they should have no reason to come in."

Bogdan looked as if he wanted to protest, but I added, "Tavi's our friend. We have to take care of him."

Bogdan didn't look happy about it, but he nodded. "Good luck, Matt." He then hurried off to Tavi's room.

I didn't know how much time remained before the demons would start firing the Blastphemer, but I figured we didn't have long.

I turned to Varney. "Devona and I added a secret passage to the building not too long ago. It leads to…" I was under a geis not to speak directly about the Underwalk, and so I said, "– an alternate travel route that few people in Nekropolis know about. Shamika should, though." I looked at her and she nodded. "Good. Shamika, I want you to take Varney and–"

The video feed from the front security camera was still playing on the Mind's Eye set, and I saw a figure step out of the alley across the street. A figure that looked remarkably like me.

He waved the stump of his right wrist and called out cheerfully to the demons, "You guys looking for me?"

The demons all turned to look in "my" direction, and one standing next to the Blastphemer spoke a command and pointed at "me." The devices' mouths began speaking words that were so unholy that the Mind's Eye refused to transmit them as anything other than harsh static. The black sphere atop the Blastphemer began to pulse with dark energy, and then a beam of power shot forth, streaked across the street toward the alley, and struck my doppelgänger in the chest. He stiffened, let out an agonized cry as if his very soul was in pain, and then collapsed into a puddle of black goo.

The Blastphemer's beam winked out, and for a moment the demons simply stood and stared. Then one of the braver ones stepped forward and examined the ebon puddle that my doppelgänger had been reduced to. He leaned down, sniffed the goo several times, then stood, turned back to his fellow soldiers, and gave them a thumbs-up. The squad then broke into cheers, and their work done, they set about dismantling the Blastphemer.

"Did I overdo it?" Shamika asked. "I was afraid the death-cry was a bit much, but I couldn't resist."

I remembered what Shamika had told us about how she could make herself look like whatever she wished. She'd created a decoy resembling me and had sacrificed it to throw the demons off my trail.

"I thought your component pieces had to touch each other to communicate," I said.

"That's the easiest way, but we can communicate by low-level telepathy if we're close enough," she said. "Good thing I did that. The Blastphemer packs quite a punch. That stung like hell!"

I couldn't help smiling at her choice of words. "I think that's the general idea."

Devona and I had built the entrance to the Underwalk in one of the storage rooms, so after checking on Tavi one last time and saying goodbye to Bogdan, then Shamika, Varney, and I went into the storage room, through the trapdoor, and down the ladder into the Underwalk. An electric cart was parked by the ladder, a ramshackle device cobbled together from cast-off odds and ends, some mechanical, some organic, and some indeterminate. Varney eyed the cart skeptically, but once he saw it held together when Shamika and I got on, he climbed in after us and took a seat in the back. I started the cart, turned on the headlights, and we headed down the tunnel. It wasn't very wide or tall, but there was room enough for two carts to pass by one another, if only just.

"The cart may not look like much, but it works just fine," I said. "Its makers abhor waste, and they recycle everything. Their tech may not be pretty – and its smell may leave something to be desired – but it's always functional."

"What makers?" Varney asked. "And what is this place?"

"I can't tell you," I said. "I've been magically sworn to secrecy. If I even try to tell you, my tongue will explode and take my head with it – quite literally."

"But I can tell you," Shamika said. "These tunnels are called the Underwalk, and they were created by the Dominari so that they could move throughout the city undetected. The Underwalk exists in all five Dominions, but you can't use it to cross from one Dominion to the other because Phlegethon blocks the way. You still have to use the bridges for that. The Dominari tried to dig under Phlegethon, but its fire extends downward for so many miles that eventually they gave up."

Varney's eyebrows rose. "The Dominari? I didn't know you associated with criminals, Matt. Then again, you were imprisoned in Tenebrus for a time." His tone clearly indicated his disapproval.

"I was imprisoned on a false charge, and I received a full pardon," I said. "But don't worry that Galm is going to be upset that his future son-in-law has ties to the Dominari. All the Darklords know about them. Dis too. They couldn't do business in the city without the Lords' approval, tacit though it might be. The Dominari operate a literal underground economy, and whatever you or I might think about their activities, they're necessary for the city's survival."

Most people know the Dominari as Nekropolis' version of the mob, and that's true enough as it goes, but there's more to it than that. Nekropolis is as self-sustaining as a city can be, producing its own goods and services for the most part, and importing anything else it might need from Earth. But the Dominari fill in the cracks in the city's economy, and without them, Nekropolis couldn't go on. As a former cop, I'm uncomfortable with the situation, to say the least, but as a pragmatist, I understand it.

"And your connection to them is…" Varney asked.

"Something I can't talk about. The tongue thing again, remember? But I'm no criminal, if that's what you're asking."

He thought about this for a moment and finally nodded. "Very well. I've observed you long enough to believe you're a trustworthy man. I'll accept your word on that matter."

"What about you?" I said. "How did you get to be a secret agent for Lord Galm?"

He shrugged. "There's little to tell. As you might imagine, Galm has many servants, and he uses us as he sees fit. I have a talent for pretending to be someone I'm not. Centuries ago, when I was human, I dreamed about being an actor, and in a way, I suppose I've become one."

"I'm no theater critic, but as far as I'm concerned, you played the part of an annoying airheaded cameraman to perfection."

He smiled, showing a hint of fang. "Thank you."

"Where are we going?" Shamika said, sounding more like a kid eager to get on with the next fun activity than an ancient alien entity struggling to defeat the darker half of her personality. Maybe in a way this was fun for her. I wondered what it was like, observing the Darkfolk for four hundred years, getting to know them in intimate detail, but never actually being part of their lives. Never actually living. I couldn't imagine how lonely it must've been.

"I've been thinking about that," I said. "If we're going to find Devona, we need to confront Gregor. And since he's masquerading as General Klamm right now, that means we need to get into Demon's Roost. But we have to do so on our terms, not his."

"And there's the little matter of a demon army standing between us and him," Varney pointed out.

"Correct. Which means that we're going to need help. The kind of help that specializes in dealing with Darkfolk in general, and demons in particular."

Varney's organic eye widened in surprise. "You can't mean…"

I smiled. "Yep. We're going to pay a visit on the Hidden Light."

FIFTEEN

But first we had a stop to make.

We drove through tunnels for the better part of twenty minutes, taking turns as necessary, and passing other carts as we traveled. The other carts were usually laden with cargo of one sort or another, almost always packed away in anonymous brown cardboard boxes. The carts were driven by vermen – human-sized bipedal rats – though they were patchwork Frankenstein versions of the creatures, dead who'd been returned to life so they could keep on working. Like I said, the Dominari loathe waste.

The "repurposed dead" ignored us as we passed. I had no idea if they recognized me or if they simply assumed that anyone traveling the Underwalk belonged there because the Dominari were so careful about whom they revealed their subterranean tunnel system to. All I know is that ever since I accepted the geis that makes it impossible for me to talk about the Underwalk, I can travel it without anyone challenging me.

As I steered the cart with my one remaining hand, I tried not to worry about Devona. I reminded myself that she was more than capable of taking care of herself. She was intelligent, strong, emotionally resilient, and she had her psychic abilities to draw on. Gregor might be a powerful adversary, but he wouldn't harm Devona if he needed her, and the longer she remained alive, the more chance she'd have to find a way to escape or, at the very least, contact me. It helped that several times during the trip I felt the weird phantom sensation of my missing right hand moving. I knew the sensations were just my imagination, but since my hand was with Devona, feeling them was like sharing a connection with her and it was a comfort, strange though it might be.

Eventually we came to a ladder, and I stopped the cart and turned it off. A light in the ceiling came on to illuminate the ladder for us, and we climbed up and opened the trapdoor. The door opened easily for me, though the security spells on it would've stopped Shamika and Varney, and probably reduced them to ashes in the process. We entered a basement filled with crates and barrels, and shelves containing bottles of wine and various other types of alcohol.

"Where are we?" Varney asked.

Shamika answered for me. "This is Skully's basement," she said.

Varney thought for a moment. "Isn't Skully's a dive bar on the western edge of the Sprawl? I've never been there, of course," he added, as if it was important to make that point. A lot of the older Bloodborn tend to put on aristocratic airs, and I found myself actually missing Varney's hippy cameraman persona. That Varney might have been irritating, but at least he wasn't a snob.

"Well, you won't be able to say that after today," I told him. I turned to Shamika. "Do you know if Gregor is aware of what we're doing?" I wasn't sure how the split personality thing worked with Shamika and Gregor, but I gathered that one side of their group mind didn't know what the other side was thinking. So while that meant Shamika couldn't tell us what Gregor's ultimate plan was, it also meant he couldn't read Shamika's thoughts and automatically know what we were up to. But that didn't mean he couldn't simply observe us, and I knew from experience that Gregor had eyes and ears everywhere in Nekropolis.

"Gregor has trouble getting his insects into the Underwalk," Shamika said. "As do I. The Dominari work very hard to keep us out. We always manage to get a few in, but I didn't sense Gregor's presence in any of the carts we passed." She paused and looked around Skully's basement. "He's not down here, either." She looked up at the ceiling. "Nor is he upstairs. I'm doing my best to keep him busy throughout the city by creating other copies of you for him to follow. Right now, there are several dozen Matts running around the Sprawl, and they all have Shamikas and Varneys with them." She grinned. "I made them right after the first duplicate was destroyed by the Blastphemer. I knew Gregor was watching, and he wouldn't be fooled by my duplicate. He could sense what I'd done. So I decided to distract him with even more duplicates." She paused. "Is that OK? Should I have asked first?"

Maybe there was a reason she'd chosen the form of a young girl beyond trying to pose as Papa Chatha's niece, I thought. The more I got to know Shamika, the more childlike she seemed. Maybe in a sense she was a child. The Watchers might be ancient as a race, but the personality that called itself Shamika had only recently emerged. And like a child, she was eager for an adult's approval.

"You did great," I said, and she beamed.

We headed upstairs and entered the bar proper.

Skully doesn't believe in wasting money on décor. The nine foothigh front door is solid iron, and there are no windows for customers to break – not because Skully cares about his patrons' safety, but because it's a pain in the ass to keep replacing glass all the time. The walls are brick and the floor concrete, which makes mopping up bloodstains less of a chore. The solid oak tables are bolted to the floor, and the wooden chairs are cheap and easy to replace. Darkfolk tend to get more than a little rowdy when they overindulge, and Skully has learned from experience that the best way to protect his place is to make it hard to destroy.

Beyond beating the shit out of your fellow bar-goers, the only entertainment at Skully's comes from a jukebox sitting in the corner. As we entered, the three heads bolted to the top of the machine saw me and started singing a rendition of Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party." The scars, fresh cuts, and bruises on the singing heads showed that Skully's customers enjoyed their potential as targets more than they appreciated their musical offerings.

Skully's clientele glanced our way as we entered, either out of curiosity or to size us up as possible threats. I recognized a few of them – Suicide King, Patchwork the Living Voodoo Doll, and Sally O'Sorrows – and nodded a curt greeting, but I didn't head over to anyone's table to chat. I was looking for someone who might be able to tell me what I needed to know, and I found him sitting at the bar, talking with a young woman I also knew.

Before we could start toward them, the front door opened and a teenage boy with mussed hair and a pouty expression walked in. He had the elongated canines of the Bloodborn, but his skin gave off a glimmering sheen.

A couple of bald, overly muscled, heavily tattooed vampires clad in scuffed leather snarled at the sight of the luminous teen. They rose from their chairs, stalked toward him, flanked him on either side, grabbed hold of his arms, lifted him off the floor, and started escorting him back toward the door.

"Hey, take it easy, guys!" the teen whined. "It's not my fault I sparkle!"

The biker vampires laughed as they left the bar, and the iron door slammed shut ominously behind them.

The three of us then headed over to the bar, and I took the empty seat next to Carl, leaving Varney and Shamika to stand. The seat on the other side of me was occupied by a gill man wearing a diving helmet with rubber hoses attached to a humming machine he wore like a backpack. The helmet was filled with murkish, vaguely luminescent water, and I knew the gill man's H2O was laced with tangleglow, a Darkfolk-created drug too strong for human consumption. The gill man looked a little wobbly on his chair, and I knew if he didn't dial back the amount of tangleglow his device was pumping out, he'd end up in a coma before the night was over.

I ignored the gill man and turned to the older man sitting on the other side of me. His thinning reddish hair was covered by a straw porkpie hat, and he wore an ancient wrinkled seersucker suit that he claimed was white but was really more on the yellowish side.

"Hey, Carl. How are things?"

Carl didn't look from his beer. Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket, removed a small folded newspaper, and tossed it down on the counter in front of me. I unfolded and smoothed it out. It was the latest edition of the Night Stalker News, the alternative paper of which Carl is the sole owner, reporter, photographer, printer, and distributor. Today's headline read: RICHTER AND KANTI STOP HYDE PLAGUE. Accompanying the story were photos of Devona, Darius, and me battling Hydes as we fought to reach the House of Dark Delights.

I turned to Carl, impressed despite myself. "How did you get these? We were in a another dimension, you know."

The young woman seated on the opposite side of Carl laughed. "You should know better than to expect Carl to reveal his sources!"

Fade is a petite woman in her early twenties with long brunette hair that hangs past her waist. She usually dresses in dance club chic, and tonight she was wearing a ripped Sisters of Mercy Tshirt, thigh-high black boots, and a skirt so mini it was barely there. Her earrings were shaped like silver cobras, and they swayed back and forth from her earlobes, tiny tongues flicking the air, serpent eyes narrowed as they gazed upon the world with cold disinterest.

Varney looked over my shoulder at Carl's paper.

"Dude, when my producer sees those photos, he's going to be even madder at me for not getting to go along on that trip!"

Now that we were in public, it seemed Varney had assumed his cover persona again.

Carl looked at Varney with more than a little disdain. "You Mind's Eye reporters are too used to letting your technology do the work for you. You need to rely less on cybernetic implants and more on good old-fashioned journalistic know-how."

There was something about the way he said this, though, an almost mocking tone that made me wonder if Carl knew Varney's hippy cameraman act was a lie. I wouldn't have been surprised. Back on Earth, Carl had been an investigative reporter who'd uncovered the existence of the Darkfolk and worked to expose them. His stories were ridiculed by the mainstream media, though, and eventually he found his way to Nekropolis, and he's lived here ever since, producing his own newspaper and exposing truths that more than a few rich and powerful citizens wish he would keep his damn mouth shut about.

Carl turned to Fade. "And you, my dear, should quit wasting your time with that silly gossip column of yours and start reporting some real news for a change." He finished the last swallow of his beer and slammed the mug down on the counter as if to emphasize his point.

Fade didn't seem the least bothered by Carl's criticism. "Not all of us are cut out to be crusaders, you know. Gossip sells papers, love, and in my case, the more readers I have, the happier I am."

Fade isn't a shallow fame-seeker. For her, having a large readership – and being a well-known personality about town – is literally a matter of life and death. She's reality-challenged. For reasons she's never shared, her existence is so uncertain that if she doesn't constantly reinforce her own reality, she's in danger of vanishing. Hence her name. That's why she spends so much of her time club-hopping, and why she writes the gossip column for the Daily Atrocity, Nekropolis' sleaziest and therefore best-read tabloid. I myself rarely read it, and when I do, it's only in the interest of professional research – I swear.

I introduced Varney in case Fade didn't know him, and then I introduced Shamika as Papa Chatha's niece. I saw no reason to tell Carl and Fade the truth about who Shamika was, partly because we were in a hurry and the truth was too complicated to easily explain, but also because if they knew who Shamika was, they'd learn that Gregor was back. And it was safer for Carl and Fade not to know about Gregor. If they knew, Gregor might decide they were a threat to him, and if that happened, he might get it in his head to do something painful and permanent to get rid of them. Sometimes ignorance isn't just bliss, it's also necessary to one's long-term survival, especially in this town.

"So what are you two fine members of Nekropolis' journalistic establishment doing hanging out in a bar?" I asked. "Don't you know there's a war going on?"

Fade frowned. "Tell me about it. Half the clubs in the Sprawl are empty. People don't feel safe to go out. Personally, I feel that wartime is the perfect opportunity for partying. The chance that the club you're in might become a bombed-out crater any second adds a little zing to the festivities, don't you think?"

That was bad news for Fade. The more people she interacted with on a daily basis, the firmer reality's grip on her was. I hadn't noticed, but her colors seemed muted, a bit less intense and washed-out, as if she wasn't as there as she should be. If the war continued and escalated, fewer and fewer people would go out and the Sprawl's clubs, bars, and restaurants would become deserted. And if that happened, Fade wouldn't be able to find enough people to talk to, and there was a good chance she'd live up to her name.

I saw Fade's glass was empty, and since Carl had finished off his beer, I offered to buy the two of them another round. Skully was at the other end of the bar talking to the Jade Enigma, and I motioned to catch his attention. He looked at me, and I pointed to Fade and Carl and held up two fingers. He nodded, made them another pair of drinks, and brought them over. Carl got another mug of beer, and Fade got a bubbling blue concoction called a Miasmic Overload whose chief ingredient was poison: tree frog toxin. It should have been deadly to humans, but Fade sipped it without ill effect. Who knows? Maybe the attention she received from ordering such a deadly drink shored up her reality and neutralized the poison. At any rate, she didn't instantly keel over dead, and her color did seem sharper and brighter.

"Hey, Matt," Skully said. "I'm surprised to see you here. Word on the street is that Varvara's put out a warrant for your arrest."

"You know what I always say: it's nice to be wanted."

Skully laughed which, given the ways he looks, is an unsettling sight. From the neck down, Skully resembles a stocky, broadshouldered man. But from the neck up, he's a skull. No hair, no skin, nothing but bone. Skully usually wears a white shirt with the cuffs rolled up, and a black leather apron designed to protect his clothes from being eaten away in case he gets a little sloppy with any of the more dangerous chemicals he uses to mix his customers' drinks. Despite his appearance, Skully comes across as a good-humored barkeep, but the enchanted silver broad axe he keeps behind the bar in case of trouble tells a different story, as does the fact that his place is a Dominari-owned establishment. For years I'd been unaware of Skully's ties to the Dominari, and when I learned about them, it put a strain on our friendship. I'm still not entirely comfortable with Skully's business dealings with the Dominari, but I try not to think about them too much. Skully's helped me with a lot of cases over the years, and in Nekropolis, a friend is defined as someone you can trust not to devour you when your back is turned or steal your soul when you're not looking. By that standard, Skully is my friend, and as for the rest, I figure in the end it'll all come out in the wash.

Carl narrowed his eyes as he peered at my acid-scarred face. "A little mortician's wax would fix that right up."

I said, "Reptilikan hocked a loogie at me."

"And you look a little loose in the joints," Carl added. "If you were a Frankenstein monster, I'd advise you to get your bolts tightened."

"That sounds vaguely naughty," Fade said, grinning. She then nodded at my wrist stump. "Looks like you lost a hand somewhere along the way too."

"Occupational hazard," I said.

Fade raised an eyebrow. "You don't really expect Carl and I to let it go at that, do you? We're reporters. Do tell us all the details, the gorier the better."

"I'm a reporter," Carl said. "What you write is entertainment." He sipped his beer. "Not that either of us is getting to do much writing at the moment."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Demon's Roost has instituted a complete information blackout," Carl answered. Then he made a sour face. "Or rather, the great General Klamm has. None of the Demonkin are allowed to talk to the media, and we're forbidden from writing or broadcasting any information related to the war. Why else do you think my charming companion and I are sitting around this dump drinking?" He looked at Skully. "No offense."

"None taken," Skully said, but the tiny pinpricks of light that momentarily glowed within his empty sockets told a different story. If Carl noticed Skully's reaction, he ignored it.

"You know it's sad when reporters are reduced to interviewing each other," Fade added. "That's why we're so glad to see you, Matt. You're usually in the thick of things. Why don't you let me pump you for information? Who knows? You might even enjoy it."

I didn't take Fade's flirting seriously. It was just another way for her to draw attention to herself.

"I don't have time to chat," I said, with more of an edge in my voice than I wanted. "I have a problem, and I need help."

"Something's happened to Devona," Carl said. Before I could ask, he added, "I don't know anything. I'm merely making an educated guess based on your obviously agitated state."

"And there's the fact that Devona's not here," Fade put in.

"That too," Carl agreed.

"Look, I promise that I'll sit down with both of you for an exclusive joint interview once the current situation is resolved." Varney gave me an offended look. "Oh, don't bother pretending to be upset," I snapped. I didn't care about helping Varney maintain his cover just then. "But right now I need to get in touch with the Hidden Light, and I don't have time to go through the usual channels."

Carl raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think any of us know how to get hold of them? The location of their headquarters is the most carefully guarded secret in the city. I ought to know. I've tried for years to get an interview with their leadership."

"Me too," Fade said wistfully. "Can you imagine how many hits my blog would get if I could? It'd be enough attention to keep me solid for an entire month!"

At the mention of the Hidden Light, the drugged-out gill man seated next to me got up and staggered away at a good clip, wobbling as he headed for the door and made his exit. Just speaking the Hidden Light's name can be enough to clear a room in Nekropolis, if you say it loudly enough.

Carl wasn't joking about the Hidden Light's location being secret. When I'd first decided I needed the Hidden Light's help, I asked Shamika if she knew where their HQ was. But she had no idea, and she assured me that Gregor didn't either. How the Hidden Light managed to hide themselves from the Watchers, I didn't know, but I wasn't surprised. The Hidden Light is one of the most powerful organizations in the city, and the only way they survive among the Darkfolk is to keep their identities and location, like their name says, hidden.

I knew how to get hold of Magdalene Holstrom, my contact in the Hidden Light, but the process took some time. First I leave a message for her taped beneath a specific table at the Ghost of Meals Past, a restaurant that serves ectoplasmic recreations of the best meals you've ever enjoyed. The food's emotionally satisfying, though not very filling. After dropping off the note, I wait, anywhere from a couple days to as much as a week, before I get a call on my vox. The caller is always someone different, and I never recognize the voice. I'm given instructions on where and when to meet Maggie, and if I'm so much as a minute late, she's gone when I get there. She always comes in disguise, wearing a different body each time – or at least appearing to. I'm not sure if she cloaks herself in some kind of illusion spell, if she's a shapechanger of some kind, or if she's a bodyswitcher. But her voice is always the same, which is how I recognize Maggie. She never spends longer than ten minutes with me, we conduct our business – which usually consists of her giving me a few items I can't get anywhere else, such as holy water and blessed religious tokens. After that, she leaves, and that's the last I hear from her until the next time I need to get in touch with her.

I tapped Carl's paper with my left index finger. "You knew about my extra-dimensional exploits," I told him. "Is it such a stretch to think you might know where the Hidden Light is located?"

"Getting information from other dimensions is easy if you know how," Carl said, a bit smugly. "But finding out anything to do with the Hidden Light? Well, that's damn near impossible."

"Rumor has it that even the Darklords don't know how to find them," Fade said.

Skully had been quiet since I'd first mentioned the Hidden Light, but now he said, "You think the Hidden Light will be able to help you get Devona back?"

"That's what I'm hoping," I said.

"She's a good woman," Skully said. Then his fleshless mouth seemed to stretch wider, as if he were grinning. "Better than you deserve."

I smiled back. "Don't I know it."

He thought for a moment more before, finally coming to a decision. "I can tell you what you need to know." Before Carl or Fade could say anything, Skully looked at the two reporters. "And no, I'm not going to tell you two, and if either of you ask me a single question about it, I'm going to bring out Silverado and lop both your heads off." He said this as calmly as if he were making a comment on the weather, but I knew he wasn't joking.

Carl and Fade kept their mouths shut, but they were clearly unhappy about it.

I'd come here hoping that Skully could give me a lead on someone who could help me track down Maggie. I hadn't expected Skully himself to have the knowledge I needed. This had turned out better than I'd hoped.

Before he could say anything more, though, the bar's iron door opened and the two biker vampires walked back inside. The sparkly kid wasn't with them, and they were covered in copious amounts of blood – far more than one skinny teenager should've been able to contain.

One of the vampires looked at me, and his upper lip curled in a disdainful snarl.

"Now that we cleared that punk out, let's do Skully another favor and get rid of that stinking deader."

The second vampire grinned in agreement.

I looked at Skully and he shrugged in apology. "Sorry, Matt. They're new here."

"Don't worry about it," I said.

I rose from my seat as the biker vampires stomped across the floor over to me. One of them gave Varney a disgusted look.

"What are you doin' hanging out with a goddamn zombie?" the vampire said. "You're Bloodborn. You're better than that."

Varney pursed his lips and the light in his cyber-eye turned an angry red, but otherwise he didn't react.

"This goddamn zombie has a name, you know," I said evenly.

The first vampire grinned at me, displaying his fangs. "Look, Marlon, it talks!"

Marlon said, "What do you know, Brando? I thought all deaders could do was walk around moaning while they look for somebody's brain to munch on."

"This one must be like some kind of genius of the living dead!" Brando said, and laughed.

I looked at them. "Marlon and Brando? Seriously?"

They scowled, and now both bared their fangs at me.

"You say you got a name, deader," Marlon asked. "What is it?"

Using my left hand, I drew my 9mm, aimed, and squeezed off two shots. The vampires' mouths exploded in twin showers of blood and broken teeth. They staggered backward, then fell to their knees and doubled over, blood streaming out of their ruined mouths and splattering onto the concrete floor.

"Fuck You's my name," I said. "But you can call me Mister Fuck You."

"The way you took care of those two loud-mouthed vampires was totally awesome!" Shamika said.

"Totally stupid, you mean," I muttered. "Given my current condition, the recoil from my gun nearly tore my hand off." As it was, I was having trouble keeping my left hand attached, no matter how hard I concentrated, and my loose limbs made me look more like a drunken scarecrow than ever. I was glad Varney had turned out not to be a real reporter, because I really would've hated for him to shoot any video of me the way I looked right then.

We'd left Skully's via the basement trapdoor, climbed back into the hodgepodge cart, and were heading through the Underwalk once more, headlights on, electric engine humming. As near as I could tell, the tunnel we were traveling down paralleled Sybarite Street, and I wished the vermen carts came equipped with GPS so I'd know for sure. I was impatient to reach our destination, and I really didn't want to take any wrong turns and be delayed, or worse, end up lost. The longer I was separated from Devona, the more worried about her I became and the harder it was for me to control my emotions. But she needed me to keep cool if I was going to be of any help to her, so I shoved my feelings down, put a tight lid on them, and concentrated on doing what I had to do.

As we drove, I wondered if I was going about this all wrong. Maybe asking the Hidden Light for help wasn't the way to go. Back at Papa Chatha's, Dis had told me that he couldn't interfere in a dispute between two Darklords, but surely the current situation had progressed beyond that. If Gregor was involved, it was no longer just a clash between Talaith and Varvara, and if that was the case, then perhaps Dis would step in and do something. I had no idea how powerful Dis was, but he'd dealt with the Watchers the last time they'd infested the city, and there was no reason to think he couldn't handle them again. And if Dis was still reluctant to help, I could try the other Darklords. Amon had no particular dislike for me, but then again the king of the shapeshifters also had no love for me, either. I'd helped Edrigu recover a mystic object that had been stolen from him – though he had rewarded me by making it possible for me to return to mortal life for twentyfour hours, giving me the chance to have children with Devona. Edrigu might figure our accounts were balanced and be disinclined to help me. Galm would wish to help, if for no other reason than to protect his future grandchildren. But I wasn't sure I could trust him. What if we found Devona only to have Galm try to take her and lock her away in the Cathedral, where she'd be safe until she delivered our babies? And once they were born, what if Galm chose to keep them so that he could exploit their magic, whatever that might be?

The more I thought of it, the more the idea of going to any of the Darklords for help seemed like a bad idea. The more of them that got involved in this mess, the worse it would get, and the war between Talaith and Varvara could easily become a war between all five Darklords. And besides, it wasn't as if Gregor wasn't keeping all the Darklords, Dis included, under observation. Gregor might not be powerful enough to defeat the Darklords in a direct confrontation, else he would've done so long before now, but if I sought out any of their help, I'd expose myself and Gregor would have no trouble taking me out.

No, if I wanted to rescue Devona, free the abducted magicusers, and stop Gregor, I was going to have to do it myself. And that meant I needed the Hidden Light's help.

I glanced at Shamika and Varney. Make that we needed their help. I was grateful that the two of them had chosen to accompany me. Having a highly trained spy and a powerful alien entity along for the ride would no doubt come in handy. Plus, though I hated to admit it, I'd gotten used to working with partners over the last few months, and having them with me was a comfort. Despite myself, somewhere along the line, I'd become Matt Richter, the Not-So-Lone Ranger. And you know something? All things considered, it wasn't so bad.

The air in front of the cart's headlights began to ripple in a way I found disturbingly familiar. A ghostly image superimposed itself on the tunnel – another tunnel, higher and wider, with metal rails on the ground. We passed the phantom figures of men and women standing on a raised platform. They gawked at us as we drove by, and I had to resist a crazy impulse to wave hello. The images became more solid, and suddenly I found myself having to steer around and between the ground rails in order to keep the cart from overturning. It was happening again, the crossover to Earth, only this time it was more than just a ghostly overlapping. This time we were really co-existing in the same dimensional space. Which was unfortunate for us, because the bright headlights of a subway train glowed in the distance, growing ever larger as they drew near. If the train was as solid as the railings beneath our cart, our quest to find the Hidden Light's HQ was about to come to an abrupt and very dramatic end.

We felt the deep juddery vibrations of the train's approach, heard the rattle-whoosh of its metal wheels rolling over the rails. There was no way to avoid a collision. There wasn't enough room in the tunnel for me to pull the cart out of the train's path, and we certainly couldn't turn around and outrun the damned thing, not with our tiny electric engine.

I wondered where we were. Not Cleveland, not if we were in a subway tunnel. New York, probably. Or perhaps the Tube in London, the Métro in Paris, maybe even the Tokyo Metro. But it didn't really matter what Earth city we were occupying space with. All that mattered was when that train hit us, we would be in for two worlds' worth of hurt.

"Varney!" I had to shout to be heard above the din of the approaching train. "Can you get both of us out of here using your travel form?"

"I can only carry one of you at a time!" he said.

I started to tell him to take Shamika, but she said, "Take Matt! I'll be OK!"

Before I could protest, Shamika stood and leaped off the cart. In mid-air she separated into dozens of roach-like insects – except these sprouted tiny black wings and buzzed away. Varney's form melted into a shadowy whirlwind which grabbed hold of me, and carried me away from the cart, spinning around like an undead top. I wasn't able to see through the dark substance of Varney's travel form, not that I'd have been able to focus clearly, given the way I was spinning around, but I heard the train hit the cart with a violent crash and rending of metal. Varney kept me spinning in the air for a few moments, until the sound of the train began to diminish, then he lowered me to the ground, deposited me on my feet, and resumed his normal form beside me.

I wasn't dizzy. Being dead, as I've said before, has some advantages. I looked around for Shamika – or rather the cloud of insects she'd transformed into – but I didn't see her. Varney and I both called her name, and when she didn't respond, I feared that she'd gotten herself splattered on the train's front, like a bug on windshield. But a moment later, the flying black bugs buzzed our way, gathered together, and flowed back into Shamika's shape.

"I didn't know you could fly," I said. "Gregor never did that."

She smiled. "My brother lacks imagination. I don't."

I smiled back. "Good for you."

"What do we do now?" Varney asked. "If Nekropolis and Earth remain merged…"

Before he could continue, the air shimmered once more, and the tunnel resumed its previous size and the subway rails disappeared. The Underwalk had returned to normal.

"Never mind," Varney said.

"That was worse than last time," I said. "It lasted longer and was more solid. The next time it might be permanent."

"I'm just glad we were in a subway tunnel," Varney said. "If we'd appeared outside during the day…" He shuddered.

"You might think about buying some imported sunblock, just in case," I told him.

In reply, he just frowned at me. Some people just don't know a good joke when they hear it.

"Do you think Talaith did that?" Shamika asked.

"Maybe. But like I've said before, I don't think she'd cast any spell that would affect the entire city. It's the Sprawl she wants to attack. I've been thinking… maybe Gregor's behind the dimensional crossovers with Earth. It could be why he's abducted the magic-users. He'd need a lot of mystical power and knowhow to pull off something that big."

Shamika frowned. "But why would he do such a thing? Gregor hates Others! And from what I understand, there are billions of humans on Earth. I can't imagine my brother wanting to expose himself to that many people."

I had to admit, it didn't seem in character, but I just couldn't see how Talaith could be responsible for the crossovers. I decided we'd just have to ask Gregor once we found him.

Right before I squashed the sonofabitch like the bug he was for abducting my wife.

SIXTEEN

We passed a number of ladders leading to the surface – and the remains of several carts and their vermen drivers who had been unlucky enough to encounter the subway train – until we finally came to the ladder we wanted. That is, if I hadn't screwed up the directions Skully had given me. The ceiling light above us activated as I parked the cart, and we climbed the ladder. Just as I had at Skully's, I opened the trapdoor to protect Varney and Shamika from any defensive spells there might be, and we stepped into a basement. Like Skully's, this basement was used for storage. The big difference was what was stored here.

Shamika looked around, frowning. "What are these things?"

Varney and I exchanged uncomfortable glances. We both knew that Shamika only looked like a young girl, that in truth she was far older than either of us, maybe older than any being in Nekropolis – with the exception of Gregor, of course. But I still couldn't help feeling more than a little awkward at having to explain all the sex toys and S&M equipment lining the shelves around us.

"They're, ah, recreational devices," I said lamely.

She looked at me with too-innocent eyes. "What, you mean, like for kinky sex? Do you and Devona ever use stuff like this?"

Varney looked as if he was trying really hard not to laugh. I ignored Shamika's question and said, "Let's go."

We headed up the basement stairs. The door at the top of the stairs wasn't locked – with the defensive spells on the trapdoor, it didn't need to be – and we opened it easily and stepped out into a small parlor. The room was done entirely in crimson: ceiling and walls, carpeted floor, chairs, couch… all were a deep, rich red. The parlor wasn't empty, though. A naked two-headed man was on the couch servicing an equally naked woman whose mottled skin resembled a snake's. The man had a trim athlete's physique, and when I say he had two heads, I'm not referring to what sat atop his neck. His name was Richard… Richard Deux, and he was one of the most popular men on Bennie's staff for two very obvious and prominent reasons.

The woman was too busy moaning and gyrating to notice us, but Richard looked in our direction, startled at first, but then he smiled.

"Hey, Matt! What's up?"

I resisted making the obvious joke. "Hey, Rich. Sorry to, uh, disturb you at work."

As he talked, Richard continued performing his duties with energetic enthusiasm, seemingly unbothered to have an audience, even one that contained a being who appeared to be a young girl. But then, this was the House of Dark Delights. They got all kinds here.

"Not a problem. I can multitask." He grinned.

There was a soft whirr as Varney's cybernetic eye focused on the salient portions of Richard's augmented anatomy. "I can see that," he said, sounding impressed despite himself.

Richard's grin only grew wider.

I myself made sure to keep my gaze fixed firmly on Richard's face. "We need to talk to Bennie, Rich. It's kind of an emergency."

"Last time I saw them, they were holding court in the lounge. I'd look there first."

The woman's moans suddenly increased in volume and pitch.

"Now if you don't mind, I really need to concentrate for this next part," Richard said.

"No problem. Uh, good luck," I said, and we left through the parlor's other door. I closed the door as the woman's moans became screams of pleasure.

Shamika looked thoughtful. "You know, I've never tried that sort of thing before. I wonder–"

"Maybe you should wait until you grow up a little more," I said without thinking.

She looked at me with a surprised expression for a moment, and then she smiled. "Yeah, maybe you're right."

We headed through the House of Dark Delights until we came to the lounge. It was very strange to be here again, considering that my last visit had been to an alternate version of the lounge that existed in a different dimension. That lounge had been crawling with Hydes, and while this one was no less crowded, at least things were normal here. Or as normal as they ever got, I guess I should say. Clients sat at tables drinking, talking, and laughing as they impatiently waited for their appointments to begin, tried to recover from an especially vigorous session, or – for those with stronger sexual appetites and an abundance of stamina – paused for a rest between assignations. Every type of Darkfolk was represented in the crowd, along with more than a few humans. If there was one thing that Darkfolk and humans had in common, it was they both loved sex. And as we stepped into the lounge, I couldn't help thinking, who would've thought that the city's most famous brothel was also a cover for the Hidden Light?

We found Bennie at his/her usual table, surrounded by some of the city's most famous and infamous citizens. Arvel the ghoul was there, sitting atop a titanium chair designed to hold his incredible – and grotesquely naked – bulk. The banshee pop singer Scream Queen sat next to him, occasionally fanning the air near her nose in a vain attempt to dissipate Arvel's stench. Victor Baron sat on the other side of Scream Queen, dressed casually in a long-sleeved white shirt and gray slacks, looking like the platonic ideal of a male supermodel. Overkill sat next to him; the petite mercenary smiled and gave me a nod of greeting. And next to her sat Acantha the gorgon. She pointedly avoided looking at me – at least I think so; it was hard to tell considering the wraparound sunglasses she wore – but her camera-eye head serpents hissed to let me know she was considerably less pleased than Overkill to see me. And sitting be tween Acantha and Bennie was a woman who called herself the Psychovore. I knew her only by reputation, and while she looked normal enough, supposedly she had no need to eat or drink. Instead, she subsisted off the psychic emanations of those around her. If that was true, being in the House of Dark Delights must've have been like an all-you-can-eat buffet for her.

Bennie was currently female as we approached, and she gave me a grin when she saw me coming.

"Well, if it isn't the savior of my fine establishment! Well, one version of it, at any rate. I trust my other-dimensional counterpart was suitably grateful for your assistance?"

"You helped too," I said. "It was your antidote that did the trick. All I did was deliver it."

I introduced Varney and Shamika, once again saying that she was Papa Chatha's niece. And then a sudden thought struck me. "Have any of you have seen Darius lately?"

"Funny you should ask," Arvel said in his wet, bubbling voice. "We were just wondering the same thing."

"Indeed," Victor Baron said in his mellow tenor. "We thought if anyone could shed light on the strange dimensional disturbances the city has experienced of late, it would be the Sideways Man."

Which was what I'd realized. Great minds think alike – even if one of them was transplanted by a mad scientist and the other belonged to a walking dead man.

"But no one's seen any sign of him since you returned from the other Nekropolis," Bennie – now a man – said. "You and Devona left abruptly for the Fever House, and in the confusion, I lost track of him. By the way, how is Devona?"

I gave Shamika and Varney a warning glance. "Better now. Thanks for asking."

My companions gave me looks that said they weren't clear on why I wanted to keep the truth to myself, but they went along and said nothing. It wasn't that I didn't trust Bennie and his/her tablemates. Well, I trusted Bennie, Baron, and Overkill. I didn't trust Arvel as far as I could hurl his immense bulk, and Acantha would gleefully tear me to shreds with her own hands if she got the chance. I didn't know the Psychovore, but I've always found psychic vampires to be manipulative sociopaths, and she was supposed to be the strongest psychic vampire of all. But the real reason I didn't want to tell them the truth was I wanted to avoid drawing Gregor's attention to them. I had no doubt that a number of Gregor's bugs were present in the House of Dark Delights, and while it was tempting to ask Bennie for help – not to mention Baron and Overkill – I didn't want to draw bullseyes on their backs. Bad enough Gregor was out to get me, Shamika, and Varney. I didn't want to add any more names to his hit list.

"We were here when the last dimensional fluctuation occurred," Acantha said. "It was most dreadful!"

Scream Queen nodded. "We found ourselves sharing space with a group of humans working in tiny areas separated by flimsy partitions. More nightmarish than anything you can find in Nekropolis, if you ask me, darling!"

I couldn't help smiling. "Sounds like the lounge overlapped an office building. What you saw is something humans call a cube farm."

"Whatever it was, I hope to Perdition I never see it again!" Scream Queen said. Her companions agreed and everyone toasted to it.

"Why don't you and your friends sit down and join us?' Bennie – female again – asked. "You look like you can use a rest. Nothing personal. I know your job can be a bit rough on you sometimes."

"Rough?" Acantha said. "He looks like he's been through a rusty meat grinder!"

"If you drop on by the Foundry later, I'll fix you up," Baron offered.

Before I could acknowledge his offer, Overkill said, "You get caught up in the war between Varvara and Talaith?"

"I'm surprised you're not out there fighting for one side or the other," I said.

She grinned. "No one's made me an offer yet. This girl doesn't fight for free, you know."

"Not even if the cause is right?" I asked.

She laughed. "Righting wrongs is your department. Mine's kicking ass and cashing a fat paycheck for it."

"Do you have any news of the war?" Arvel asked. He gestured to the Mind's Eye screens around the lounge, all of which were displaying music videos or reruns of razorball games. "Since General Klamm ordered an information blackout, news is harder to come by than a virgin around here."

The frustration in the ghoul's voice was palpable. Arvel owns a restaurant in the Sprawl, the Krimson Kiss, but in addition to being a glutton for fresh raw meat and blood, he also has an insatiable appetite for information. I've found him to be a useful source in the past, and I knew the media blackout had to be driving him nuts.

"Sorry," I lied. "I don't know any more than the average citizen."

Arvel scowled. "As if I believe that!" But he didn't press me further.

I wish I could've told him. He'd have been indebted to me then, and I could cash in the favor later. Instead, I turned to Bennie. "I see the war hasn't hurt your business any."

"And why should it?" she said. "The threat of imminent death is one of the greatest aphrodisiacs of all! Other businesses in the Sprawl might be empty right now, but my boys and girls are busier than ever." She took a sip of her drink – some bubbling concoction of her own mad design, I'm sure – then said, "What can I do for you? I know you're not here for pleasure, so it must be for business."

"Just tying up a loose end," I said. "Like you said, Devona and I left in a hurry once we returned from the other Nekropolis. I had some Hyde plague antidote left over, but in the rush I forgot to leave it with you. I know you told me the chemicals can turn volatile over time if they're not stored properly, so I figured I'd better return the extra to you."

I'd thought of the cover story on the way over. In fact, we'd used up all the antidote Bennie had given us. And I'd made up the part about the chemicals becoming unstable. But before Bennie could contradict me, I used the code phrase Skully had given me.

"By your good graces," I added.

Bennie's eyes widened, and a look of surprise crossed his nowmale face. But he recovered quickly, took another sip of his bubbling drink, then smoothly rose from the table.

"Please excuse me," Bennie said to his companions. "It won't take more than a few moments to get the chemical stored away properly. After all, we wouldn't want it suddenly exploding and destroying our poor Matthew, would we?"

"Speak for yourself," Acantha muttered.

Bennie came over and escorted us across the lounge, smiling and nodding at people as he went, but not pausing to chat with anyone. As the Madam/Master of the House of Dark Delights, Bennie isn't only the host of the endless party that takes place in the establishment, he/she is also the most sought-after sexual companion in the place, and there's never any end of people trying to catch his/her eye. But Bennie is most particular about who he/she spends time with, and the fortunate few who receive his/her favors are in a very exclusive – and satisfied – club. However, Bennie took no time to flirt now, and we made it across the lounge within a few moments.

By then she was a woman again, and she led us down a hallway to a plain wooden door.

"Are we going to get to see someone else having sex?" Shamika said eagerly.

Bennie looked at me and cocked a curious eyebrow. I sighed.

"We came in through an… alternative entrance and accidentally ran into Richard Deux at work," I explained.

"You know about the Underwalk too?" Bennie said. "I have to say I'm impressed, Matt. I knew you were a good detective, but I didn't know you were aware of that particular secret. Or this one."

She opened the door and gestured for us to precede her. We entered and found ourselves standing in… the laundry room.

Several dozen washers and dryers were hard at work, and the noise was quite loud. Four of Bennie's staff were present, tossing dirty linen into washers, or removing clean sheets from dryers and folding them.

"As you might imagine, we go through a lot of bed linen around here," Bennie said. She smiled with more than a hint of lasciviousness. "Not to mention underwear."

"I really didn't need to hear that," I said.

Bennie clapped her hands to get the workers' attention.

"Take a ten-minute break everyone." She paused, then added, "Now."

The workers didn't speak. They merely stopped what they were doing, left their laundry lying where it was, and quietly filed out of the room. When the last one had departed, Bennie locked the door, then turned to face us.

"I don't know how you found out, and I don't want you to tell me. The less I know the better. But I must warn you: a code phrase won't be enough to get you in. They'll decide whether to admit you or not. And if they decide against it… well, let me just say that it's been a pleasure knowing you, Matt."

Before any of us could reply, Bennie walked down the row of front-loading dryers until she came to the very last one – which wasn't in use. We followed. She removed a key ring from her pocket, aimed a small remote control at the door, and pressed a button. There was a soft click, and the dryer's door swung open. Then she stepped back.

"You crawl through this one at a time. There's an entrance to an elevator on the other side. Once you're all in, the entrance will close. After that, what happens will be up to them. Good luck."

Bennie was in the process of changing into a man when she leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. It felt disturbingly like a goodbye kiss.

He started to go, but before he got far, I asked, "I understand why the Hidden Light would locate its headquarters here. Who'd ever suspect it? But why do you allow it? It doesn't quite seem to fit with the, ah, tone of the rest of your establishment."

Bennie turned around and gave me a smile. "As you might recall, my ancestor was obsessed with discovering chemical means to isolate the good and evil natures of human beings. My light and dark sides might express themselves slightly differently than my predecessor, but I have my dichotomies too. As I said, good luck."

Bennie turned and left the room. A second later there was a soft snick as he locked the door.

I gazed at the open dryer door. "It's not exactly through the looking glass, but shall we see what's on the other side?"

"You bet!" Shamika said and started toward the circular opening, but Varney put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"I'm not so certain it's a good idea that I accompany you," he said.

Shamika frowned. "Why not? It'll be interesting!"

"Undoubtedly," Varney said wryly. "But the Hidden Light is an organization of humans who represent Earth's major religions. Throughout history, those religions fought against the Darkfolk, driving us out of their towns and villages into the wilderness and doing their best to exterminate us. Such persecution was one of the major reasons we left Earth and founded Nekropolis. But our leaving wasn't enough. The humans followed us to our new home, and continued their persecution of us in the guise of the Hidden Light, harassing us at every opportunity!" His expression grew dark. "They may paint themselves as representatives of the Light, but the truth is they're nothing more than terrorists."

I didn't want to argue with him. It's true the Darkfolk left Earth, but they still had means of getting back and coming and going as they pleased. And while Dis and the Darklords forbid preying on humans, it still happened in Nekropolis all too often, and something had to be done about it. Despite having been resurrected from the dead, I'm not a particularly religious man, and I might not always agree with the Hidden Light's tactics, but that didn't mean I was going to write them off as terrorists. And the religious artifacts Maggie provided me had helped me and my clients out on more than one occasion. But I sensed Varney had something other than philosophical and political objections for not wanting to visit the Hidden Light.

"You're scared, aren't you?" I said gently.

At first I thought he might deny it, but then he sighed and cast his gaze downward as if ashamed. "Yes. I'm middle-aged as Bloodborn go, but that means I've lived many centuries, and I remember life on Earth: the vampire hunters with their holy symbols always chasing us, searching for our sleeping places by daylight, and once they found us, loudly chanting prayers as they hammered sharpened stakes into our hearts…" He looked up then. "How do you know they won't simply kill us the moment they set eyes on us?"

Shamika walked over and took Varney's hand and smiled. "Don't worry. I'll protect you."

Varney looked into the face of the being who only appeared to be a teenage girl, and he couldn't help but return her smile.

"Very well." He turned to me again. "And I suppose it is my duty, after all. Lord Galm charged me with protecting his daughter, and I must do everything in my power to fulfill that charge." He sighed again. "Even if I don't like it."

And then he climbed through the open dryer door and was gone.

"Me next!" Shamika said, and then climbed after him, giggling.

I've done a lot of strange things during my time in Nekropolis, but I have to say that climbing into a dryer that housed a secret entrance to a clandestine religious organization ranks right up there with the strangest. But in I went, and just as Bennie said, there was an opening on the other side. Once through, I was able to stand, and I joined Varney and Shamika in a closed elevator. A panel slid shut over the opening we'd just come through, sealing us in. But the elevator showed no sign of moving.

There was no control panel, so there were no buttons to push, and no intercom to speak into. There was no floor display atop the elevator door to indicate which level the elevator was stopped at or might go to. There was nothing but a door, three walls, a ceiling, a floor, and us.

"Now what?" Varney said.

In response, a woman's voice issued from a hidden speaker somewhere in the elevator.

"Now you have thirty seconds to tell us why we shouldn't flood the elevator with toxic gas and melt the flesh from your bones."

Varney gave me a look as if to say, I told you so. Shamika's only reaction was to look around to see if she could determine the speaker's location. I guess when you're part of a group mind, you don't really worry about losing part of your body any more than humans worry about sloughing off a few skin cells.

"My wife has been kidnapped, there's an extremely stupid and unnecessary war going on, and Nekropolis and Earth are in danger of merging permanently," I said. "Basically, a lot of shit is broken and I intend to fix it. So let me in or let me go, but don't waste my time."

For a moment nothing happened, but then with a slight jolt the elevator began to descend. It took a while for us to reach our destination. I half-expected the elevator to play a Muzak version of the "Hallelujah" chorus on our way down, but the ride was quiet. The House of Dark Delights has a number of subterranean levels, and I doubted the Hidden Light would have their headquarters located in any of them. Some religions have a more liberal attitude toward sex than others, but not that liberal, and I figured the Hidden Light was located on an even deeper level still. Eventually, we got where we were going, the elevator stopped, and a moment later the door slid slowly open.

Bright light flooded the elevator, making it impossible to see, and Maggie – the woman who'd spoken to us in the elevator – shouted, "Keep your hands where we can see them!"

I held up the stump of my right hand. "I've only got the one at the moment."

Varney hissed as the light poured over us and he averted his face and held up his arm to block his eyes. Shamika stared directly into the light, eyes wide open, as if the intense illumination didn't bother her a bit. The light didn't hurt my dead eyes either, but it was annoying not to be able to see our welcoming committee.

Another voice, this one male and slightly nervous, said, "We've got three nonhumans. One Bloodborn, one corporeal revenant, and one unknown. Our scanners can't read her, but whatever she is, she's definitely not human."

"Corporeal revenant?" I said. "Is that what the cool kids are calling zombies these days?"

A third voice, this one male but deeper and rougher, almost animalistic. "A word of warning: we've got you covered with weapons that will destroy any kind of Darkfolk. Make one move without our express instructions, and we'll fire."

I get ornery when people try to tell me what to do. You can imagine how much fun I was for supervisors to deal with back when I was a cop.

"Your nervous friend just admitted you don't know what Shamika is, so how can you be so confident your weapons will have any effect on her?" I asked.

Maggie answered, "We could always start firing and see what happens."

"I retract the question," I said.

Maggie chuckled. "We're going to turn off the illuminaries, but I want you to remain inside the elevator until we tell you, OK?"

"All right," I said, and a second later the light cut out.

My zombie eyes don't need time to recover from exposure to bright light, and I was able to instantly see the three people standing outside the elevator: a middle-aged woman, a thin bespectacled man in his thirties, and a large armored creature who resembled a bipedal armadillo. They were all armed, and the woman and armadillo lowered devices that looked like high-tech guns whose barrels were covered with glass. I assumed those were the illuminaries, the weapons that had blasted us with light, and I wondered how I might be able to get hold of one for myself. There are a lot of Darkfolk who aren't especially fond of light, and a device like that would come in handy in my line of work.

The man held some sort of scanning device in his other hand, while Maggie and the armadillo both held offensive weapons. The armadillo held a small crossbow armed with silver-tipped bolts, while Maggie held a gun that looked to be covered in snakeskin.

"Is that a serpent's tooth?" I asked her. I'd heard of the weapon, but never actually seen one.

She smiled. "Nothing sharper, and the venom the teeth carry is deadly to any form of life, natural or supernatural."

"I'm surprised to see a member of the Hidden Light carrying a weapon so nasty," I said.

She shrugged. "God filled the Omniverse with tools for his servants to use. This is but one of them." Then she smiled. "But I have to admit, this one kicks particular ass."

The devices weren't the only weapons the three had. Maggie wore a golden cross around her neck, as did the man, who also wore a Star of David, an ankh, a yin-yang symbol, a Native American dreamcatcher, a Celtic knot, a triple moon, and several other symbols I didn't recognize. It looked like he believed in being prepared. The armadillo wore nothing – I mean that literally; he was naked. It appeared he was content to rely on his illuminary and crossbow. Then again, since he was obviously Darkfolk of some kind, perhaps wearing holy symbols was too uncomfortable for him.

These three weren't the only ones come to greet us, however. A half-dozen men and women stood behind them, armed with everything from automatic machine guns to gleaming broadswords, and from the grim looks of determination on their faces, they were more than ready and willing to use their weapons if necessary.

Maggie looked us over for a moment more before lowering her serpent's tooth. Then she looked over her shoulder.

"Stand down. I'll take responsibility for these three."

One by one, the men and women lowered their weapons and moved off.

The armadillo kept his crossbow trained on us a moment longer, but in the end he lowered it as well. The man with the scanner continued pointing it at Shamika and fussing with the controls, as if he were determined to wring some kind of reading out of it.

Maggie tucked her serpent's tooth into a leather holster on her belt, then came forward and shook my left hand. She showed no distaste upon touching my undead flesh, and my estimation of her went up a notch. Many people say they don't have a prejudice against zombies, but ask them to touch one, and you'll find out differently. Not Maggie, though.

"So this is what you really look like, I take it."

She was in her sixties and shorter than me, though not by much.

Her silver hair was cut short, and she wore jeans and a white Tshirt displaying a cartoon image of Christ holding a razor, his beard covered with white foam, below it the words JESUS SHAVES!

"In the flesh," she said. "No need for disguises here." Maggie turned toward her two companions. "The big guy in the leathery shell is Houston. He's a weremadillo."

"I never would've guessed," I said.

Houston gave me a hard look. "Don't mess with Texas," he growled.

"Duly noted," I said.

"And this trim fellow here is Arthur Van Helsing. He's one of our best researchers."

Arthur wore wire frame glasses that made his eyes look larger than they really were. His unruly brown hair was badly in need of trimming, and from the pallor of his skin, it looked like he could use a few days in a tanning bed. He wore a white lab coat that was marred by several stains and scorch marks. His T-shirt said VAMPIRES SUCK! Varney's lip curled in a silent snarl when he saw it, but the Bloodborn said nothing.

"I take it you've decided not to destroy us," I said.

"For the moment," Maggie said. "Come on in, and try not to look around too much. This is supposed to be a secret headquarters, you know." She turned and walked away. Arthur followed her, casting backward glances at Shamika as if he was still trying to figure out what she was. Houston waited for us to follow, the big lyke clearly intending to bring up the rear and keep an eye on us. I was certain his crossbow bolts weren't merely silver-tipped; they were probably dipped in all kinds of nasty poisons and blessed seven ways to Sunday. They'd prove deadly to Varney, probably to me, and maybe even to Shamika – or at least this particular component of the Watchers' group mind calling itself Shamika. It was a strong incentive to remain on our best behavior.

The Hidden Light's HQ was located in a hollowed-out cavern, fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling and power cables stretching along the floor near the walls. Workstations were set up throughout the cavern, and while some contained books, scrolls, and parchments, just as many held high-tech computers and shimmering holo displays. Most of the men and women at the workstations were human, but there were a fair number of Darkfolk scattered among them. Maggie must've noticed me looking at them, for she said, "Just because someone's a monster doesn't mean they don't have spiritual needs." She paused, then added, "Sometimes they need the Light even more."

"Traitors," Varney muttered.

Arthur turned around to look at him as if he intended to comment, but when Varney saw the holy objects around the man's neck, he hissed and averted his gaze.

"Sorry about that," Arthur said, sounding embarrassed. Arthur tucked the scanner he'd been holding into a pocket of his lab coat, rummaged around in there, then brought out a pair of dark glasses which he held out to Varney. "Put these on. They won't take away the pain entirely, but they should make it bearable."

Varney hesitated, but he took the glasses from Arthur and donned them. He looked at Arthur, then at Maggie, then back to Arthur.

"It is better," Varney said. "Thank you." He sounded as if it took some effort for him to express his gratitude, and Arthur seemed equally uncomfortable accepting it.

"You're, ah, welcome. We call them diffusers. They're made from solidified shadow caught in a highly focused time-dilation field." He became more enthusiastic as he went on. "We have more call for them than you might think. We actually have Bloodborn in our organization, some of them quite high up in your people's hierarchy, and–"

Maggie cut in. "The less we tell them the better, Arthur."

He looked chastened. "You're right, of course. Sorry."

The men and women around us represented a number of different ethnicities and religions, and while many were dressed in normal street clothes, more than a few wore clothing that indicated their religious tradition. I saw Catholic priests and nuns, Moslem clerics, Hasidic Jews, Buddhist monks, Shinto monks, and Hindu swamis. They worked side by side in apparent harmony, without any obvious conflict due to their different backgrounds and philosophies.

Well, harmony might be overstating the case. Right then the men and women of the Hidden Light were more than a bit agitated, moving quickly from one workstation to another, consulting with each other in front of computer monitors and holo displays, or talking loudly into voxes and microphone headsets. The atmosphere reminded me of Varvara's war room, and I assumed it was for the same reasons.

"I assume it's not always this lively down here," I said to Maggie.

She said, "Hardly. Right now, we have a Situation with a capital S to deal with – as you well know."

"You mean the war?" Shamika asked.

Maggie laughed. "Goodness, no, child! What do we care if the Darkfolk want to go around slaughtering each other? More than usual, that is. Nekropolis is their city, and if they want to war with each other, that's their business, regrettable though it may be."

"That attitude seems a little more 'eye for an eye' than 'turn the other cheek,'" I said.

Maggie led us through the maze of workstations and people, and stopped before a rectangular glass structure that resembled a coffin – probably because sealed inside was the perfectly preserved body of a man wearing brown robes, a rope belt, and sandals. His hair was cut in a tonsure, making him look like a slimmed-down version of Robin Hood's Friar Tuck.

Maggie turned to look at me. "The Hidden Light has a clearly defined mission, Matthew, and keeping peace between the Darklords isn't part of it."

"What is your purpose?" Varney said. "Besides harassing us Darkfolk, that is."

Houston prodded Varney in the back with his crossbow. "Watch it, Fangboy! No one speaks to Sister Holstrom like that! If you knew who she really was…"

Maggie shut the weremadillo up with a stern glare. "All they need to know is that I speak for the Hidden Light. That's enough."

Houston lowered his gaze. "I'm sorry, Sister."

Maggie accepted his apology with a nod and then gestured to the monk under glass. "This is Saint Bartelmeu the Recondite. He's been deceased for a millennium, but like you, Matthew, he doesn't let a little thing like death slow him down."

As soon as Varney heard the word Saint, he stepped back from the glass coffin. The diffusers might help him gaze upon holy objects, but it seemed there was only so much they could do when it came to an honest-to-God saint.

Tendrils of ectoplasm curled up from the coffin to coalesce into a ghostly image of the monk hovering in the air. The ghost was typical of its kind, looking as if it were formed of shaped white mist, and when it was complete, Bartelmeu opened his eyes and smiled at us.

"Visitors?" he said in a cheery voice. "I love visitors! Who are they, Joan?"

Maggie sighed. "I go by Magdalene these days, Bartelmeu. Remember?"

The monk made a dismissive gesture. "Yes, yes. A rose by any other name. Now tell me who these fine people are."

Maggie introduced the three of us, and Bartelmeu grinned at each of us in turn, not seeming put off in the slightest by the fact we weren't human.

"It's a pleasure to meet you all!" he said. "Nothing against my fellow champions of the Light, but it gets somewhat dull having the same people to talk to day in, day out." He lowered his voice. "And just between you and me, our people can be a bit on the stuffy side."

Arthur seemed a bit offended by this last comment, but Maggie took it in her stride.

"Bartelmeu is better than a dozen computers," she said. "Not only is his knowledge encyclopedic and his recall perfect, his clairvoyant and precognitive abilities are legendary."

Bartelmeu grinned. "If my cheeks weren't formed of ectoplasm, they'd be blushing right now."

Arthur picked up the conversation's thread then. "It was Bartelmeu that first informed us of what was happening – and who told us you three would be arriving soon."

Bartelmeu looked startled. "You mean these three are those three? Why didn't you tell me?" He turned to us and grinned even wider than he had before. "It's even more of a pleasure to meet you then!"

I looked at Maggie. "Perfect recall?"

She shrugged. "Cut him some slack. He is over a thousand years old, you know."

I looked at the ghostly saint and felt a surge of hope. "So you know what's going on? You can tell me where my wife is?" I wasn't really sure when I'd begun thinking of Devona as my wife, but I was aware I'd been doing it for a while now. It didn't matter that we weren't officially married. We were married in our hearts, and that was what counted the most.

Bartelmeu looked a bit chagrined. "Not as such, no."

Maggie explained. "It's not that he doesn't know. He has to be careful of how much he tells us."

"He has to avoid temporal paradox," Arthur said. "By giving us information about the future, he risks changing that future, thereby rendering the information he gives us useless."

"And perhaps making things even worse in the process," Maggie added.

Despite his lack of physical lungs, Bartelmeu sighed. "It's true. Sometimes I think God has a warped sense of humor."

I struggled to contain the frustration I felt. This man – well, this ghost – knew everything I needed to know in order to stop Gregor and save Devona. Only he couldn't tell me.

As if reading my mind, and perhaps he did, Bartelmeu hurriedly added, "But that doesn't mean I can't help! You came here to obtain weapons that will help you get through Varvara's army and reach Demon's Roost. That was your own idea, and I won't be interfering with the natural course of events by telling you that we plan to supply you with such weapons."

"You'll have to go on your own, though," Maggie said. "Just the three of you, the way you'd planned to before coming here."

Arthur gave us an excited smile. "Since we knew you were coming, I had time to prepare some real good ones for you!" As quickly as it had come, his smile faded. "I just wish I could go along and watch you use them. One of the problems with being a techie is that I hardly ever get out into the field."

Maggie gave him a consolatory pat on the back. "Maybe next time."

Behind his diffusers, Varney frowned. "But why will you loan us weapons? Why help us at all, for that matter? You said you don't care about the war."

"Because helping you supports our mission," Maggie said. "Bartelmeu has confirmed that someone is attempting to move Nekropolis to Earth. Not just part of it, not just a single Dominion, but the entire city. The Hidden Light has been around in one form or another since the Darkfolk first appeared, trying to protect humanity from being preyed on by the monsters that dwelled in the dark. As you might imagine, we were quite happy to see the Darkfolk leave Earth for Nekropolis. In fact, you might say that we helped you move. As powerful as Dis and the Darklords are, opening a portal to another dimension, building a city there, and transporting an entire race of people to live in it was a task they couldn't quite accomplish on their own. They needed our aid, and we were glad to provide it. But once they settled in Nekropolis, not every member of the Darkfolk was thrilled to be cut off from the pleasures Earth had to offer, and some attempted to return. The Darklords tried to stop them, but some got through."

"And that's where we came in," Arthur said. "We set up shop here in Nekropolis to make sure the Darkfolk stay here. We don't want to hurt you, especially, but we want to make certain that you never return to Earth and begin preying on humanity again."

"We intend to stop whoever and whatever is attempting to transport Nekropolis to Earth," Maggie said. She glanced at Bartelmeu. "And according to our resident psychic saint, arming you three is our best shot at doing so."

Bartelmeu smiled. "And I predict a solid fifty-fifty chance of success! You can't ask for better odds than that!" He frowned. "Well, I suppose you could, but you're not going to get them."

"So either we'll win or we won't." I sighed. "How comforting."

You know something? Sometimes I really hate my job.

SEVENTEEN

Arthur was giving Varney and Shamika some last-minute instructions on how their weapons worked, and since he'd already checked me out on mine, I pulled Maggie aside to talk with her.

"Thanks for the assist," I told her. "We'll try to bring your toys back unbroken if we can."

She smiled. "Don't make promises you can't keep. Besides, it'll be worth the loss of our equipment if you manage to prevent Nekropolis from being transported to Earth."

"Bartelmeu called you Joan at one point," I said. "If you're who I think you are, you're looking awfully good for a woman who died over five hundred years ago."

"This is Nekropolis, Matt. You above all people should know that death doesn't mean the same thing here as it does on Earth." Her smile edged toward a grin. "Besides, haven't you ever heard of the eternal flame?"

She raised an index finger and fire suddenly wreathed the flesh. She then lifted the finger to her mouth and, with a wink, blew out the flames.

When we were ready to say our goodbyes, Saint Bartelmeu's ghostly form began to fade.

"Good luck to you all," he said. "And Matt, no matter what happens, don't despair. Devona will give you a hand if she's able."

I didn't know what he meant exactly, but his cryptic words implied that Devona was still alive, and I found that immensely reassuring.

Then Bartelmeu was gone, and Maggie, Arthur, and Houston the weremadillo walked us back to the elevator.

"Aren't you going to try to wipe our memories or something?" I asked Maggie. "You've worked so hard to keep the location of your headquarters secret, I'm surprised you're simply going to let us walk out of here."

"We don't get many visitors," Maggie said, "but we have chemical means of removing all memory of their stay with us, thanks to our benefactor upstairs."

"You mean Bennie-factor," I said, and Maggie smiled.

"Indeed. But we can't afford to tinker with your memories, not if we want you to recall how to properly use the weapons we provided you. We'll just have to trust you not to reveal our location to anyone. And if you're ever tempted… Do you remember the verse in the Bible about how God notes the fall of every sparrow?"

"It sounds familiar," I said.

Maggie gave us an intense look. "Well, He's not the only one with His eye on you. Don't forget that."

We took the Underwalk to a club only a couple blocks from Demon's Roost. I would've liked to have gotten closer if we could, but this was the closest exit to Varvara's stronghold, and it was the best we could do.

As we walked up the ladder and entered through a trapdoor in the club's storeroom, Shamika said, "I know the situation is serious, and you're worried about Devona, Matt – and please don't take this the wrong way – but it's nice to actually be taking part in events instead of just watching them happen around me. I spent so many years hiding in the shadows, just observing, never taking part… Whatever happens, however this turns out, at least I did something for once, you know?"

I tried to imagine what it must've been like for Shamika, spending centuries being a fly on the wall, always watching, always alone. What did it say about such an existence that she found being in the middle of a war preferable? I guess it said everything.

The club was deserted and when we went outside, we saw the street was empty as well – no traffic, no pedestrians. Given how insanely busy the Sprawl is twenty-four hours a day, I found the lack of activity and the silence that came with it profoundly eerie.

We walked into the street and headed in the direction of Demon's Roost, Varney on my right, Shamika on my left. We'd emerged from the Underwalk within the cordoned-off area around Demon's Roost, but it seemed the Demonkin soldiers had all drawn closer to their queen's fortress, perhaps in anticipation of Talaith's next attack. Whatever the reason, we didn't encounter any resistance until we were within sight of Demon's Roost.

A squad of demons sat in the middle of the street, smoking, drinking, drugging, gambling, and generally showing a complete lack of military discipline. Hey, no commanders were around to chastise them, and they were demons.

The first to notice us was a she-demon with a cat's head, and a giant python for a tail.

She spoke in a slightly slurred voice. "Hey guys, either the hallucinogens I took just kicked in, or someone's gotten through our perimeter."

The other demons turned to look at us, and while a few grinned in anticipation of the fun they were going to have slaughtering us, several noted how we were armed with looks of confusion and mounting concern.

A heavily muscled blue-skinned demon, whose facial features were embedded in his chest, stood up and shouldered what looked like a bazooka made out of a half-dozen spinal columns.

"Time for some target practice!" he said in a booming voice.

The rest of the squad rose to their feet and readied their weapons, but not all of them did so with equal enthusiasm. I assumed the hesitant ones sensed the power in the objects we carried, but weren't yet quite sure what to make of them, or us.

"Stay close to me," I whispered to Varney and Shamika, and they both nodded. Then pitching my voice louder so the demons could hear, I said, "One warning: run now and you get to live!"

The face-chest demon laughed. "Some threat, zombie! You look like you're about to fall apart any second. We won't even have to waste any ammo on you. All one of us will have to do is walk up and tap you on the shoulder, and you'll collapse like a house of cards!"

Several of his fellow soldiers laughed, though some did so uncomfortably. The closer Varney, Shamika, and I got, the more they could sense the power we carried with us, and the more worried they became. I couldn't blame Face-Chest for laughing at me, though. By this point, it took all the concentration I had to keep my component pieces together, and I moved like a drunken puppet suffering from constant seizures. Hardly the most intimidating sight.

Face-Chest went on. "Still, I think shooting you will be more fun." He pulled the trigger on his weapon, there was a loud kachunk as it fired, and a screaming severed demon head shot forth from its barrel and came flying through the air toward me, fangs gnashing in anticipation of taking a big bite out of me when it hit.

I didn't do anything to protect myself. I just kept walking. If what Arthur had told me was correct, my coat would take care of the rest.

The coat I wore was long-sleeved and stretched down past my knees, almost making it look like a robe. It was striped with different colors, but which colors precisely was hard to say, for the longer you looked at them, the more they seemed to change. I recalled what Arthur had told me.

The Coat of Every Color is just what its name implies. Every color of every spectrum of Light is represented – and not just the basic Roy G. Biv colors that everyone knows about. The Shades of Reverse Enlightenment, the Hues of Spiritual Transmigration, the Seventeen Ur-colors of the First Moment After Creation… they're all here.

As the shrieking demon head drew near, light exploded forth from my coat, and when it vanished, the head was gone.

I turned to look at Varney. "You OK?"

The vampire was encased in a black hazmat suit made from pure curseweave, a fabric so evil that it was supposed to be proof against the power of any holy object. I couldn't see Varney's face behind the black glass of the suit's faceplate, but his muffled voice came through clearly enough.

"That stung more than a little, but I'm all right."

I turned to Shamika and saw she was smiling.

"That tickled!" she said.

The light hadn't exactly tickled the demons, however. Despite the fact they were still a dozen yards away from us, most of them had suffered flash burns, and several appeared to have been blinded. Half cried out in fear and despair, dropped their weapons, and fled. The rest – including Face-Chest – remained behind, looking grimly determined, if more than a little afraid.

I'd used holy objects against Darkfolk before, but I'd never given much thought as to where the source of their power came from. I know that primitive forms of the Darkfolk evolved before humans, and that the more sophisticated forms they eventually took were influenced by humanity's fears and imagination. I'd always assumed that religious objects were effective against certain types of Darkfolk because humanity imagined them that way. But there was no denying that the Coat of Every Color had power all its own, but as to what exactly the ultimate source of that power was, I couldn't tell you. But I was damn thankful to be wearing it.

"I don't know what the hell that was," Python-Tail said, "but do you really think one magic coat is going to be enough to get you past us?"

"It might be," I said. "But luckily for us, we've got more. Shamika, Varney, why don't you show them?"

Varney fired first. He carried a wooden tube and he aimed it at the demons and pressed a hidden switch. A trio of soft pops sounded as tiny rolls of paper shot out of the tube and sailed toward the squad of demons. The paper rolls expanded in size as they drew closer to the demons and unfurled, revealing characters written in Japanese kanji. The paper grew large enough to wrap around demons like blankets, and when they did so, the demons caught in their embrace screamed in agony. The papers were osame-fuda, Buddhist prayer slips, and when they touched demon flesh, they burst into flame, rapidly burning themselves – and the demons caught in their grip – to ash.

Shamika carried a pair of sterling silver hand bells, and she rang them with vigorous enthusiasm. The pure tones of the Herald Bells rang through the air with crystal clarity, each note containing more beauty than a dozen symphonies, and as they rang Shamika chanted a phrase she'd heard Arthur say.

"'Every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings!'"

Demons screamed and clapped their hands to their ears to shut out the sound, but the music was as much of the spirit as physical sound, and their efforts were futile. Blood streamed from their ears and eyes, and some fled, hands still held fast to their ears. Of those who didn't flee, more than a few had their heads explode in bursts of blood, bone, and brain matter.

Of the original squad, only five demons remained, Face-Chest and Python-Tail among them. All of them were bleeding from their eyes and ears, but they were tough enough to withstand the power of the Herald Bells, though the effort had obviously taken a lot out of them. They began firing their weapons, and automatic gunfire strafed us along with high-tech energy beams and mystic power blasts. But the Coat of Every Color blazed with Light in response to the demons' attack, neutralizing everything they threw at us. After several moments, they realized their efforts were useless and they stopped firing, and the coat stopped shining.

"I gave you the chance to run," I told them, and I swung the weapon Arthur had given to me. It looked like a Native American dreamcatcher attached to a handle, and I swung it back and forth through the air as if it were a small handheld net. But this wasn't for catching dreams. It was a Dreamthrower, a device that disgorged the nightmares that a dreamcatcher collected.

Every time I swung the Dreamthrower, a tiny shadow-creature leaped forth from the device and began growing as it landed on the ground and ran swiftly toward the remaining demons. The Nightmares swelled in size as they went, becoming large as elephants, all ebon teeth and claws, and though the last few demons finally had the good sense to turn and attempt to flee, it was too late. The Nightmares fell upon them and within seconds tore them apart. When there were no more demons to kill, the Nightmares simply faded as if they'd never existed.

Shamika, Varney, and I stood alone in the street, completely unharmed by our encounter with the demons.

"I'd call that a successful field test," I said. "Now that we've had a chance to practice with our new toys, I think it's time to pay General Klamm-slash-Gregor a visit."

We continued toward Demon's Roost, mowing down every demon that didn't have enough sense to get the hell out of our way.

Reaching Varvara's penthouse turned out to be easier than I thought. Because demons are so self-centered, once they realize they can't win a fight, they immediately focus on doing whatever is necessary to save their asses, and to blazes with whatever cause they were fighting for. Word must've spread quickly among the Demonkin's ranks, because by the time we were actually inside Demon's Roost, few of Varvara's people remained to give us any trouble. I'd been keeping an eye out for Scorch the whole time – I wanted to make sure we didn't accidentally hurt her on our way to Varvara's stronghold – but I saw no sign of the demoness. Either she was stationed elsewhere in the Sprawl or she'd taken off when she heard we were coming. I was glad. Scorch is tough, but I knew she couldn't stand against the holy weapons the Hidden Light had loaned us.

The elevator to Varvara's penthouse was unguarded, and while I wasn't thrilled at the idea of taking it, I was even less thrilled at the prospect of walking up a dozen flights of stairs.

"Are you sure it's safe?" Varney said through his hazmat hood.

Before I could answer, Shamika said, "It is. Gregor has eyes everywhere. He's known we were coming since we engaged that first squad of demons. If he didn't want us to use the elevator, he'd have disabled it."

"Maybe he booby-trapped it," Varney pointed out. "Wouldn't Gregor love it if we fought all this way to reach Demon's Roost only to get crushed in a falling elevator?"

Shamika shook her head. "I know how my brother thinks. He'll want to see me, if for no other reason than to tell me that he's right and I'm wrong." She looked at me. "And he'll want to have words with you too, Matt."

I said, "That's good, because I have a few things to say to him myself."

I pressed the elevator's up button.

No Muzak played as we ascended, which was just as well. I hate Muzak.

Varvara's penthouse-cum-war-room was empty, with the exception of the Demon Queen herself and General Klamm. The computer stations around the room were vacant and their monitors were black. The holo table in the middle of the room was still active, though, and it currently displayed an image of Demon's Roost. Klamm stood at the table, Varvara beside him.

Klamm smiled when he saw us.

"Welcome! You made it just in time for the closing act in our little drama. Matthew, Varney…" He gave both of us nods of greeting before turning his attention to Shamika. "Sister," he said, his false bonhomie giving way to derision. "Ready to see the error of your ways?"

I examined Varvara more closely. Her expression was blank, and she stared off into space as if she wasn't aware of our presence.

"Let me guess," I said. "Once Varvara was weakened by using her power to create a new force field over the Grotesquerie, you were able to implant one of your bugs inside her and control her."

Klamm – Gregor – smiled. "That was my real reason for releasing the creatures and disabling the Grotesquerie's force-field generators. Of course, if you'd gotten squashed in the process, I wouldn't have cried about it. But I suppose you can't have everything, can you? Taking control of Varvara was the main thing. As General Klamm, I could only do so much to manipulate her – and through her, her demons – but once she was under my complete control, all the Demonkin were under my power. It made things so much easier."

"I'm surprised you were able to gain her trust with your General Klamm persona," I said. "Varvara knows all of her people. She must've been quite puzzled when a new demon suddenly appeared in town."

"Which was why I killed the real Klamm and assumed his form," Gregor said. "He was a mid-level functionary in Varvara's service, but once I 'became' him, I was able to use my abilities to refashion Klamm as a highly effective intelligence-gatherer. After that, it was just a matter of time until I made myself invaluable to Varvara, and when Talaith attacked, I stepped forward to help and she made me her second in command." He turned to Varvara and smiled. "The fool. She allows her passions to rule her far more than any Other I've ever met. Manipulating her was far easier than I'd ever imagined."

Seeing Varvara like this, I knew my original plan wasn't going to work. I'd hoped that if we could reach her, we could tell her the truth about who and what Klamm really was, and she'd deal with him. Now it looked like we were on our own. We were well armed, thanks to Maggie Holstrom, but as Gregor wasn't actually a demon, I wasn't certain any of our holy weapons would work against him. And even if they did, this one body wasn't really Gregor – not all of him, at any rate. It was just one manifestation of a much larger consciousness. Besides, I didn't want to kill him just yet. He had information I needed.

"Where's Devona?" I demanded. "If you've harmed her…"

"You'll what?" Gregor said. "Continue talking at me in a threatening tone of voice?" He smirked. "No need to fear, Matthew. Your paramour is fine. She's with me elsewhere, helping me complete my ultimate objective."

"Along with the magic-users you abducted," I said.

Gregor nodded. "And Darius. It's not as if you haven't worked that much out for yourself. But do you know what I'm doing?"

"You've set up a war to distract the Darklords from your real plan, which is transporting Nekropolis to Earth," I said. "But why? I thought you wanted to destroy the Darkfolk, not relocate them."

"I think I understand," Shamika said. "Gregor's real motive is to be alone once again. He doesn't really care how that happens. Sure, it would be better if the Darkfolk were all dead. Then he would be assured of being alone. But there are so many of them, and as a group they're too powerful to easily destroy. But if he can return them all to Earth–"

"The hated Others would be gone, and life could return to the way it was before they came here," Gregor said. "You remember what it was like, sister. We were One then. It was so peaceful, so… perfect."

"Maybe so," Shamika admitted. "But it was boring, too. I didn't know how boring until the Darkfolk arrived."

Gregor's face clouded over. "We didn't invite them to come here, and they didn't ask our permission to build a city in our world! They were nothing more than invaders!"

As much as I hated to admit it, I could see Gregor's point. The Darkfolk – whether through ignorance or because they just didn't care enough to check – had chosen a new home that was already inhabited. And while I couldn't blame him for being less than pleased with the situation, I couldn't condone how he was going about trying to remedy it.

"Has it never occurred to you that maybe you should try to accept the way things are, whether you like it or not, and attempt to make peace with the Darkfolk?" I asked.

Gregor answered as if he were explaining a simple fact to a particularly slow child. "Otherness is an aberration, Matthew. An infection. The only way to deal with it effectively is to cast it out – which is precisely what I intend to do."

Varney had been silent up to this point, but now he removed the hood of his curseweave protective suit. He said nothing, but his cyber-eye glowed red and a thin beam of energy lanced out and bored through Gregor's head, right between the eyes. Gregor just stood there, smiling, and when Varney's beam winked out, the blackened hole in Gregor's flesh quickly repaired itself.

Varney shrugged. "I didn't think it would work, but it was worth a try."

"Nice shooting anyway," I said.

Varney looked at Gregor. "Seeing as how you didn't have the good grace to die when I zapped you, tell me this: even if you succeed in transporting Nekropolis to Earth, what makes you think the Darkfolk won't simply return? And when they come back, your existence will no longer be a secret. All the Darkfolk will be aware of you, and they'll all be prepared to fight you. You may be powerful, and you may be able to destroy many of us, but you can never kill all of us."

"All true," Gregor conceded. "Which is why I intend to transport Nekropolis to an Earth city. I'm not sure what the ultimate effect will be. It's possible Nekropolis and the Earth city will merge into an entirely new metropolis. It's equally possible the two won't be able to coexist in the same dimensional space, resulting in a truly spectacular explosion. Either way, the Darkfolk will become known to humanity, and once the humans realize the monsters from their legends and folklore truly exist, they will hunt you down and slaughter you with a ruthlessness that I couldn't hope to match. And these aren't the same humans the Darkfolk left behind four hundred years ago. They've had centuries to develop new ways of killing, far more deadly and efficient than simple wooden stakes and silver bullets. They may create a genetically engineered virus that targets only Darkfolk. They may find a way to 'cure' you and make you just like them. Or they may simply use nuclear weapons to reduce you to radioactive dust. Whatever they choose, there are far more of them than there are of you, and in many ways they're worse monsters than you could ever hope to be." Gregor's mouth stretched into a slow, satisfied smile. "The Darkfolk won't have a chance."

I'd lived on Earth most of my life, and I feared Gregor was right – which made it even more vital that we stop him.

I started to speak, but I once again experienced the strange sensation of my missing right hand moving. But this time it was accompanied by a strange feeling of pressure, as if my hand were being gripped tight and something sharp pressed into my palm. I did my best to ignore it. When you've got a bad guy speechifying about his ultimate plan, the best thing to do is keep him talking as long as possible. If nothing else, it buys you time to think of ways to kick his ass and maybe, if you're lucky, save your own skin in the process.

"You're bluffing," I said. "If you could transport Nekropolis to Earth, you'd have done it by now. You've already tried a couple times and failed."

"Those weren't serious attempts at transport," Gregor said. "They were calibration runs to help me set the dimensional coordinates and determine the final power levels needed. Everything is now ready. Darius is the key to opening the dimensional gateway, and the magic-users will power the device that allows me to direct his abilities. Only one thing remains: I need to gather the raw energy to initiate Nekropolis' transport."

"And where do you intend to find it?" I asked.

Gregor gestured at the holo image of Demon's Roost on the table before him. Four red dots appeared in the air above the image, followed by several dozen smaller ones.

Gregor looked at me and grinned. "It's true the war made a useful distraction as I went about my work, but it wasn't only a distraction."

Thin beams of light emerged from the four larger red dots and streaked down toward the holographic version of Demon's Roost.

"Get down!" I shouted. I threw myself to the floor, grabbing hold of Shamika's arm on the way and pulling her with me. Varney joined us just as a huge explosion rocked the penthouse. For several moments all I knew was light and noise, and it felt as if the building was shaking itself apart beneath me. But then the rumbling died away and the smoke began to clear, and I became cautiously optimistic that I hadn't been blasted into several trillion atoms.

I opened my eyes. Shamika lay next to me, covered with a fine layer of dust.

I shook her gently. "Are you OK?"

She opened her eyes. "I think so." Then she smiled. "That was exciting! Do you think it'll happen again? Do you think it'll be even louder next time?"

"Let's hope not." I stood and helped Shamika to her feet. I turned to check on Varney. The vampire appeared unscathed, and he rose to his feet easily. Gregor and Varvara seemed unharmed as well, and both continued standing by the holo-display table. Gregor was looking up into the sky – for the penthouse no longer had a roof – and he was grinning from ear to ear.

Hovering above us were the three Weyward Sisters, along with several dozen Arcane men and woman riding various flying devices – brooms and flying carpets being particular favorites. But in front of all them, standing in mid-air as if on solid ground, was Talaith. Unlike Varvara, she hadn't donned a faux military uniform. The queen of the Arcane wore her usually austere Puritan dress, but she was wreathed in crackling mystic energy, and power rolled off her in almost seismic waves. Behind her the sky was filled with black clouds and lightning lanced forth from them as she spoke, her voice echoing like thunder.

"Varvara! For the transgressions you have committed against me and my people, I demand that you surrender your Dominion to me at once! If you refuse, I will destroy you and burn your stronghold to the ground! And afterward I shall begin the systematic slaughter of all the Demonkin! When I am through, not a single stinking demon will be left in this city, and I will see your name purged from the history of the Darkfolk! It will be as if you never existed, hell-bitch! So what is it to be? Dishonor or death? Choose swiftly, or I shall choose for you!"

Gregor didn't take his eyes off Talaith, but he whispered something to Varvara out of the side of his mouth. The Demon Queen had shown not so much as the slightest reaction to the destruction of her penthouse, no reaction to anything. Under Gregor's control she'd been more of a zombie than I'd ever been. But now she smiled serenely.

"Go suck a wand, you spell-slinging cunt."

I didn't think it was possible for Talaith to look any angrier than she already did, but somehow she managed. She let out an inarticulate cry of rage and stabbed a hand toward Varvara. A torrent of energy streamed forth from the Witch Queen's fingers like water released from a high-pressure hose, but Varvara made no move to defend herself. I started forward, hoping the Coat of Every Color might be able to repel Talaith's mystic blast, but knowing that even if it could, I'd never be able to reach Varvara in time. But as it turned out, I didn't have to.

Gregor swiftly removed a metal device from his uniform pocket. It looked something like a miniature lightning rod, and he held it out in front of Varvara. The rod absorbed every bit of Talaith's blast, and when it was finished, Varvara continued to stand there, blank-faced but unharmed.

Talaith looked more puzzled than upset.

"What was that?" she asked softly, almost as if speaking to herself.

"A little something I stole from Victor Baron when he wasn't looking," Gregor said. "Now, if you'll all excuse me for a moment, I need to transfer this." He pointed the rod skyward and then released the energy the device had collected. It streaked off into the sky, missing all the hovering Arcane and disappearing off into the darkness.

Gregor smiled and let out a satisfied sigh. "That turned out to be easier than I thought." He looked at me then. "Well, Matthew, this is farewell. I have work to do, and I no longer need this particular body. I hope you enjoy your trip back to Earth." Then he turned to Shamika. "Why don't you go with them, sister? There's no place for you here anymore."

Then without another word, he dropped the lightning rod and his General Klamm body broke apart into dozens of black insects which skittered away in all directions.

Talaith and her Arcane soldiers gazed down at us with perplexed expressions, unsure what had just happened and what, if anything, they should do about it. I took the opportunity to go to Varvara. I'd hoped that Gregor's leave-taking would free her from his control, but she continued staring off into space, oblivious of what was happening.

I grabbed her shoulder with my left hand and shook her hard.

"Snap out of it, Varvara!" I yelled. "Things are not looking good, and I could really use a Darklord's help right now!"

A voice whispered in my mind then, one that felt almost like Devona's.

Will I do?

A flock of black bats flew in through the open roof, swirled together, and coalesced into the form of…

"Lord Galm!" I said.

The Vampire King bowed.

"At your service," he said.

I looked at Varney, and he smiled.

"I thought we might need some backup, so I sent a message to Lord Galm when we were on our way to Demon's Roost. My cybernetics are good for more than just shooting film, you know. I can send e-mails, text messages, you name it."

I turned to Galm, more than a little surprised at how relieved I was to see the Vampire King. "Varvara's mind is being controlled. Can you free her?"

Galm walked briskly over to Varvara and touched his ivorywhite fingers to her forehead. Then he turned back to us. "Her own mind is working to throw off the mental shackles that constrain it. If I use my powers to hasten the process, I risk damaging her psyche. She should be free of her own accord soon enough."

I pointed toward Talaith. "Maybe not soon enough to deal with her."

The Witch Queen had managed to shake off her confusion, and now glared down at us.

"So you're in this with her, are you, Galm? Our two Dominions have been at peace for years, but I suppose you got tired of being a good neighbor, eh? No matter. I claim this Dominion by right of conquest, and you stand in my way at your peril!"

Galm bared his fangs at Talaith, and I could feel the psychic pressure as his power began to build in response to her threat.

"Choose your words carefully, witch! I do not claim to fully understand what is going on here, but it's clear there's more to this affair than meets the eye." He gestured to Varney. "This man is my servant, and from what he has told me, this war is nothing but a ruse. Both you and Varvara have been tricked. Call off your people and come down here so we can talk and sort this mess out before things get any worse."

Talaith looked uncertain, and for a moment I thought she might do as Galm suggested. But then a sly expression came over her face.

"What does it matter to me how and why this war began? All that's important is how it ends. And I intend for it to end with my being the ruler of two dominions! So step aside, Galm, while I finish off Varvara and claim what is rightfully mine!"

"I can't do that, Talaith." Galm's icy calm was a terrible thing to behold. "We Darklords have one Dominion apiece. That's the agreement we made when we founded Nekropolis, and that's how it's going to stay."

Talaith sneered. "And who's going to stop me? You? You're powerful enough, I admit, but you're alone, while I have several dozen of my strongest people with me." She gestured at the Arcane assembled behind her. "You cannot possibly hope to stand against us all!"

Galm's smile was cold as ice. "Who said I was alone?"

Shadows gathered on the walls of the penthouse, and out of them stepped a host of Bloodborn, some of the most powerful vampires in the city: Waldemar the Librarian, Orlock the Collector, the Scarlet Orchid, Baron Lamprey, the Exsanguinator Supreme, Countess Carpathia, Incizor, the Dalai Lamia and more. Dread and terrible beings all, they gazed upward at Talaith and her soldiers with cold dead eyes and smiles like Death itself.

Varney looked insufferably pleased with himself. "I told Galm it might not be a bad idea to bring along some backup."

"Good thinking," I said.

Galm gave no command, but the Bloodborn hissed a battle cry and leaped skyward, their bodies melting into shadowy forms as they streaked toward the hovering Arcane. Witches and warlocks began loosing bolts of magic energy, but the vampires dodged them easily, and the fight was well and truly on.

Galm turned to us.

"I'll have to confront Talaith directly," he said. "You're on your own from here on out. Find my daughter, Richter. Make certain she and my grandchildren are safe, and then see to it that the creature who abducted them pays for his crime. Varney, you're with us."

Galm then burst apart into a flock of shadow bats and headed toward Talaith. The Witch Queen let out a cry of frustrated fury and started slinging energy bolts as the king of the Bloodborn came for her.

"I'm sorry," Varney said. "But I must do as my lord commands. Good luck to you both."

He assumed his whirlwind form and flew off to join the fight, and his curseweave hazmat suit, now empty, collapsed to floor next to us.

As tempting as it was to watch a battle between Bloodborn and Arcane, not to mention two Darklords, I tore my gaze away from the action above us. Shamika and I still had work to do.

I looked at Varvara. The Demon Queen's gaze remained glassy, her face expressionless. Galm had said she was fighting to throw off Gregor's mental control, but there was no outward sign of her efforts. I had no idea how long it would take, but I doubted we could count on Varvara to regain control of her body in time to help us.

I forgot about Varvara and turned to Shamika. "Where's Gregor at?" I asked her. "He has to be using some kind of machine to transport Nekropolis to Earth. Where is it?"

"I don't know!" she said. "I told you, I searched throughout the city for the missing Arcane, but I wasn't able to find a single trace of them, and I didn't find any dimension-shifting machinery during my search either."

"Maybe he's hidden the machine using magic," I said. "Or maybe he's located it underground somewhere." But neither of those possibilities felt right to me. A thought was nagging at the back of my mind, one that I couldn't quite catch hold of. I pictured the way Gregor had stood after he'd absorbed Talaith's magic strike. He'd pointed the lightning rod toward the sky and unleashed the bolt into the darkness. I remembered what he'd said just before doing it.

Now, if you'll all excuse me for a moment, I need to transfer this.

He'd sent Talaith's energy to the machine, wherever that was. And I was certain he had another body there to run the show from that end. How long would it take for him to put Talaith's power to work and begin transporting the city to Earth, this time permanently? Not long, I feared, and we had no idea where he was. If only I could think…

Once more I felt the sensation of my missing hand moving, only it felt different this time, kind of tingly. I looked down at the stump protruding from my right arm, and I was surprised to see my hand reappear right where it belonged, attached more or less firmly to my body. My fingers were clenched into a fist, and when I opened them I saw that I was clutching a small metal disk. I grinned. It was a reverser! Somehow Devona had gotten hold of my hand and used one of the magic disks to reverse Gregor's teleportation spell, sending my hand back to where it was taken from: my wrist. But why hadn't she used the reverser to send herself back too? Why just my hand?

And then I saw that my palm was marred by thin lines, and I remembered feeling a sensation of pressure on my hand a while ago, almost as if someone were cutting into it. I pulled away the reverser with my other hand and held up my palm so I could examine it more closely. There, cut into the flesh – with Devona's teeth, I guessed – was a single word.

Ulterion.

I grinned from ear to ear.

"I love that woman."

EIGHTEEN

"I've never flown this high before. It's fun!"

"Not exactly the first word that leaps to my mind," I said. "Terrifying, maybe. Hazardous, certainly. But fun? I don't think so."

Shamika had reshaped herself into something that resembled a large black moth, and I sat on her back, clutching two fleshy handles she'd created at the base of her head for me to grip. Her fan-like wings beat the air with forceful strokes as we soared through the darkness above Nekropolis, the city spread out below us like a child's toy. A dark, twisted child, that is. While the Sprawl, Gothtown, and the Boneyard are the most urban Dominions, only the first two had enough lights burning to cut through the darkness. The Boneyard is the realm of the Dead, and they have no need of streetlights to illuminate their way. Glamere and the Wyldwood are both pastoral for the most part, but even they had fires dotting the landscape here and there. The most light, of course, came from the mystic energies released in the continuing battle between the Bloodborn and Arcane in the air over Demon's Roost. I wondered how the fight would turn out. If Galm and his vampire soldiers could keep Talaith and her people busy long enough for Varvara to regain control of herself, then the Demon Queen could join in and repel Talaith. Otherwise, there was a chance that when – if – I returned home to the Sprawl, I might find it under new management. That is, assuming Gregor didn't succeed in relocating the whole damn city to Earth.

Umbriel the Shadowsun hung in the air off to our left, and we were almost even with it. Umbriel is an artificial construct, created by Dis and the Darklords to help maintain Nekropolis in this dimension, as well as provide the city's atmosphere and the power for Phlegethon. As such, it's not located off in space, as is the case with Earth's sun, and it's much smaller than Sol. But as for where Ulterion was located, I had no idea. There was a reason it was called the Hidden Moon, after all. We'd started out in the general direction in which we'd seen Gregor release the mystic power he'd gathered from Talaith, and Shamika had told me that if we got close enough, she should be able to sense her brother's presence. But so far we'd had no luck. I'd hoped that if we drew near Ulterion we might be able to spot it visually, but the sky above Nekropolis is totally and completely black, with no stars to provide illumination. Umbriel is a sort of grayish color that makes it easy enough to see against the darkness, and I'd hoped Ulterion might look similar, but if it did, I couldn't see it.

As we flew, I thought of what Ichorus had told me in the Fever House, how he'd been searching for Ulterion and been blasted with some kind of energy ray. I wished I'd questioned him then, for it was obvious now that he'd come close to stumbling across Gregor's operation and triggered some kind of defense system. Ichorus had been lucky to survive with only a few scorched feathers. If Shamika was unable to sense Gregor, and we couldn't spot Ulterion visually, my last hope was that we might repeat Ichorus' mistake and–

Light flared in the darkness ahead, and a beam of energy lanced toward us. I tried to warn Shamika to brace herself, but I wasn't able to get the words out in time. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth as energy crackled around us and then dissipated harmlessly. I opened my eyes, only mildly surprised that Shamika and I hadn't been burned to a crisp. It seemed the Coat of Every Color had once again done its job and shielded us from Gregor's energy blast.

"I see it now!" Shamika said, and she banked right, her wings beating faster, and we surged forward at increased speed.

I didn't see anything, but then my zombie eyes aren't any better than the ones I had when I was alive. Shamika was an alien creature, and I had no idea exactly how her senses worked, but if she said she saw Ulterion, I believed her. A moment later I was finally able to make out a dark shape of an orb, black against the black sky behind it. I couldn't tell how large it was, for there was nothing nearby to lend perspective, but I guessed that while it was a far smaller version of the satellite that orbited Earth, it was at least big enough for Gregor's dimension-shifting machine.

Gregor didn't bother firing his energy ray at us again. He learned fast – information was his stock in trade, after all – and he probably needed all the power he could get to make his machine work. Why waste it on us if the Coat of Every Color would just repel his attacks? So Shamika and I were able to approach Ulterion without any more trouble, and she descended to the surface of the Hidden Moon and landed with surprising gentleness for someone who'd just completed her first flight.

I climbed off and stood on wobbly legs. My physical condition had little to do with how nervous I'd been during our flight and everything to do with how difficult it was for me to keep my various body parts together. The cohesion spell that Papa Chatha had cast on me was close to wearing off, and when it finally failed, I'd collapse into a pile of useless pieces. If we were going to stop Gregor, we had to do it fast.

I looked around, but it was like standing in the middle of a deep cave without any light source. I could sense the solid weight of Ulterion beneath my feet and feel its rocky surface under my shoes, but I couldn't see a damn thing.

"It's OK," Shamika said. "I'll lead you."

Ulterion, like Umbriel, lay within the atmospheric bubble that encloses Nekropolis, so even though we were technically standing on the surface of a moon, there was air to transmit our voices, even if neither of us needed it to breathe.

Shamika took my hand with human-seeming fingers, and I knew she'd once more taken the form of a teenage girl. She started walking, and I went with her, moving with the spastic jerky motions that were all I was capable of. Shamika surely noticed my awkward movements, but she said nothing about them.

"There's a dome a few hundred feet in front of us," Shamika said. "It looks like Gregor created it from Ulterion's substance."

I imagined hundreds of insects scuttling over the moon's dark surface, tearing chunks out of the ground and refashioning them bit by bit into a dome to hide Gregor's machinery. "Can you see anything that looks like an entrance?"

"I doubt there is one," she said. "Gregor used teleportation magic to bring the magic-users here, remember? It's probably how he moved his equipment in as well. But don't worry. I'll be able to get us inside."

With every step we took, I anticipated an attack by a horde of insects, but none came. I still wore the Coat of Every Color and carried the Dreamthrower, and I had the Herald Bells and the osame-fuda gun tucked into my pockets. Maybe Gregor knew his insects couldn't stand against the holy weapons. Or maybe he had another reason for not attacking us. Whatever it was, I knew I wouldn't like it. Gregor always stacked the deck in his favor.

I sensed the dome ahead of us rather than seeing it, but I still would've bumped into it if Shamika hadn't stopped me. Before either of us could say or do anything, a tiny pinprick of light appeared in the surface of the dome before us. It quickly widened as a semicircular door formed, spilling greenish light onto the moon's dark surface.

I could see Shamika's face now, and she was frowning.

"I was wrong," she said. "Gregor didn't make the dome out of Ulterion's substance. He made it out of his own."

I looked at Shamika. "Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

She gave me a confused look, and I said, "Means we're expected. Shall we?"

We stepped inside, and I didn't bother to check if the entrance sealed shut behind us. I knew it would.

Greenfire torches were set in sconces around the inside of the dome, providing illumination. The mystic flames were set to burn at a low level, and I remembered how Gregor had once told me that since the Watchers were native to this dark dimension, intense light could hurt them. Too bad I hadn't asked Maggie to loan me one of the Hidden Light's illuminaries.

The inside of the dome was fashioned from the same dark substance as the outside, and it creeped me out to think that in a sense I was standing inside Gregor. In the middle of the dome stood a circle of men and women, all of them mired in black goo that stretched from the floor and covered them up to their waists. Their hands and arms had been left free, but since each of them stared blankly into space, their facial features slack, I knew they were under Gregor's control. They were the missing magic-users, and I was relieved to see Papa Chatha among them, though I hated seeing my old friend held in this trance-like state. The magic-users faced inward, gazing sightlessly at each other, connected by black wires attached to metal bands around their heads.

In the middle of the circle lay Darius. He was covered by a cocoon of black goo up to his neck, and he was clearly in a trance as well. Like the magic-users, his arms were free, and they lay folded over his chest. Clutched in his hands was another metal lightning rod, a twin to the one Gregor's General Klamm body had used to transmit Talaith's captured power. The rod pulsed with yellowish light, and there was a feeling of barely restrained energy in the air, like a storm that might erupt any moment. Darius also had a metal band around his head with wires protruding from it, but instead of being connected to the circle of magic-users, his wires stretched across the floor, out of the circle and over to a bank of computer consoles set up near one section of the wall. The equipment was extremely high-tech and reminded me of the holographic display table in Varvara's war room. This was a different configuration of machinery, but there was no mistaking how advanced it was.

Gregor stood outside the circle. The real Gregor, or at least the giant insect guise familiar to me from years of going to him for information: a human-sized roach standing upright on a quartet of segmented legs, obsidian gems in place of eyes, antennae in constant motion as they greedily drank in all sensory data in his vicinity. And standing next to Gregor, mired in the same black gunk that imprisoned the abducted magic-users, was Devona.

"It's about time you got here," she said, smiling.

The relief I felt upon seeing my love alive was so strong it nearly knocked me to my knees.

"Sorry it took so long," I said. "We ran into a few problems along the way."

"Don't you always?" Devona said.

I held up my right hand with the word Ulterion scratched into the palm. "Thanks for the message. But one thing puzzles me: how did you hide my hand from Gregor?"

"It hid itself," she said. "As soon as we arrived, it scuttled off behind the computer banks and stayed there until Gregor was busy, then it crawled back over to me. I had the idea to scratch a message into it with my teeth, and then I put a reverser in it and watched it teleport back to you." Devona turned to Gregor. "You really should've kept me in a trance, you know. Or at least searched me and taken the reverser away before I could use it."

Gregor shrugged, the motion looking awkward on his insectine body. "Once I brought you here, I knew there was nothing you could do to stop me, so I didn't bother keeping you entranced or searching you. I admit the latter was a mistake." He paused. "But I found it oddly… gratifying to have someone conscious to bear witness as my plan unfolded."

Shamika's tone held a note of triumph. "Are you telling us you found it pleasing to have someone to talk with? That you actually took satisfaction in contact with an Other?"

Gregor whirled around to face his sister and let out an angry hiss. "Do not insult me! I have not been infected with the madness that plagues you!"

Shamika's satisfied smile said that she thought otherwise, but she didn't say anything.

"I'm confused," I said. "I thought you abducted Devona because you wanted to use the magic our children possess. But she's not hooked up to anything."

"That's because your surmise is incorrect," Gregor said. "It may well be true that your progeny possess significant potential to wield magic, but I have no use for it. I have all the magic power I need right here." Gregor pointed toward the ground with one of his insect arms. "Earth's dimension is rich in magical energy, but there's little in this realm, so Dis and the Darklords needed to create a source of mystic power for their people to draw upon once they moved to Nekropolis. Ulterion is the source of that power, and all of Nekropolis' magic-using Darkfolk use it – including Dis and the Darklords – even if most Darkfolk are unaware of precisely where the power comes from. The Darklords prefer that no one knows where this power comes from, which is why the moon is hidden and its existence kept secret. They'd rather someone not attempt to use Ulterion's magic for his or her own purposes – such as transporting the city to Earth." Gregor's roach-like face didn't possess the physiognomy to smile, but I could hear the grin in his voice as he said this last part.

I looked down at the ground beneath my feet. "Ulterion is a gigantic magic generator?" I said. I understood then why no one in Nekropolis, including the Darklords, had been able to magically track the missing magic-users. Ulterion's energy field had hidden them from everyone's mystic perceptions. I looked at the circle of entranced witches and warlocks. "If the moon is your power source, what do you need them for?"

Devona answered. "To safely channel Talaith's power into Darius, which will allow him to draw on Ulterion's energy without being destroyed. Darius will then become capable of opening an immense dimensional portal and shifting all of Nekropolis to Earth."

"And the computer equipment?" I asked.

Gregor answered that one. "Is for dimensional targeting. Like the magic-users, I need to keep Darius in a trance in order to control him. One of my insects burrowed into his brain is sufficient for that task. Unfortunately, Darius isn't fully capable of precise targeting in his current state, and while the insect inside him is me, I do not have his instinct for interdimensional travel. So I need technology to help me guide Nekropolis' transference to Earth."

"So if the equipment was destroyed…" I began.

"It would make no difference ultimately," Gregor said. "I might not be able to shift Nekropolis to Earth, but I would still be able to send it out of this dimension, which is all that truly matters to me. I have no idea where the city would end up in that case, but I don't care, just as long as the hated Others are gone."

"So Darius is the key to your entire plan," I said. "Without him, you cannot use Ulterion to open a large enough portal to send Nekropolis away."

"Indeed," Gregor confirmed.

"And if you don't need the twins' magic, Devona is here for… what?" I asked.

"Insurance," Gregor said.

More of the black substance that formed the dome – Gregor's substance – flowed up Devona's body until she was covered all the way to the neck. The ebon gunk hardened around her throat and took on the shape of a mouth filled with sharp black teeth.

"All it will take is a single thought, and the mouth will snap shut, instantly decapitating Devona," Gregor said, sounding smug. "A full Bloodborn might be able to recover from such a severe injury, assuming someone quickly put their head back in place and gave them enough fresh blood to drink. But for a halfhuman/half-vampire, decapitation would prove fatal."

"And you'll kill her if I try to stop you," I said.

"Yes. Once I became aware you were searching for Papa Chatha – at the urging of my sister–" he added, shooting Shamika a glance, "–I knew there was a chance you might uncover my plan. I did my best to destroy you, but you have an irritating habit of finding ways to survive, and so I decided to abduct Devona to give me leverage in case you managed to reach Ulterion. And here we are. If you want Devona to live, you will stand by and do nothing while I shift Nekropolis to Earth."

"You know I can't do that, Gregor." I couldn't look at Devona as I said these words, even though I could feel through our psychic link that she agreed with me. "If Nekropolis materializes on Earth, the loss of life will be staggering, for both Darkfolk and humans."

"Perhaps," Gregor said. "I really don't care. Just as long as I am alone once more." The longing in his voice was profound. "Consider this: once the transference is complete, I will send you and Devona through to Earth as well. You'll at least have a fighting chance to survive there. And all you need to do is stand by and do nothing."

Devona looked at me. Don't even think about it!

But of course I did think about it. I loved Devona more than I'd ever loved anyone in my life. And our children… I wanted so much to see them born, to discover what I would be like as a father, to watch my kids grow into the amazing people I knew they would become. My son, my daughter… how could I sentence them to death before they were even born? But then I thought about all the people who'd die if I let Gregor complete his insane plan. How could I allow that to happen? Could I live with all these deaths on my conscience?

I turned to Shamika. "Think you're faster than Gregor?" I whispered.

"I don't know," she whispered back.

"You'd better be."

I drew my 9mm with my recently restored right hand, took aim at Darius' head, and fired.

Gregor cried out in surprise as a mixture of blood and brains sprayed from the top of Darius' head, leaving the Sideways Man very dead. In that same instant Shamika transformed into a cloud of flying black insects which streaked toward Devona. Once there she resumed her human shape, grabbed hold of the ebon mouth Gregor had formed and, with a strength that belied her guise as a teenage girl, she tore Gregor's black substance away from Devona's body, freeing her.

Gregor seemed not to pay attention. He was staring at Darius' messy corpse, and though his insect face wasn't capable of expression, his attitude was one of total bewilderment.

"You bad guys should never explain how your shit works," I said. "It just makes it easier for us good guys to fuck it up."

Gregor continued staring at Darius' body. "I can't believe you did that." He turned his gaze upon me then. "I never imagined you were that cold-blooded."

I smiled grimly. "I'm a zombie, remember? My blood's as cold as it gets."

Through our psychic link, I could feel that Devona was shaken by what I'd done, but she was trying her best not to let it get to her.

Enough talking, lover, she thought to me. Let's tear Gregor apart!

Fangs bared, she leaped for Gregor at the same instant I raised the Dreamthrower, intending to release a horde of Nightmares to attack him. But I'd forgotten that the dome we were in was made of Gregor's substance. Pseudopods extruded from the floor and ceiling and snatched us both. Devona was suspended in midleap, and my arm was yanked from its socket before I was able to release even a single Nightmare from the Dreamthrower. The arm had barely been attached anyway, and it came off as easily as the leg of a well-done roast turkey.

Black coils of Gregor-stuff wrapped around my neck, ankles, and the wrist of the hand that remained attached to my body. I didn't struggle. I could feel myself coming apart at the seams, and I knew if I resisted the tentacles' embrace too strongly, I'd collapse into a heap of useless body parts. Devona was caught in a nest of tentacles that hung down from the ceiling, and though she thrashed to free herself, even tried to bite through the tentacles with her fangs, she was unable to make a dent in the gooey shadowy substance that held her.

I still held my 9mm, but I knew mere bullets wouldn't kill Gregor. They wouldn't even slow him down.

"You haven't stopped me, you know," Gregor said. He spoke calmly, or rather like someone who was working very hard to sound calm. "I might not be able to shift Nekropolis to another dimension now, but I still have the power of Talaith stored in Victor Baron's lightning rod. Perhaps I'll use it to destroy Ulterion and deprive the Darkfolk of their magic. Or better yet, I'll use it to put the moon into motion and crash it into Umbriel. Without the Shadowsun, Nekropolis won't be able to survive in my dimension. And even if those plans fail, what does it matter? I'll just keep on trying until I do succeed! Nothing will stop me! Nothing!"

"You're wrong," I said.

Gregor scuttled over to me so rapidly that it seemed he teleported across the distance. Alarmed, Shamika assumed an insectine form like his and started toward him, obviously intending to protect me, but I shook my head. She stopped, hesitated a moment, and then returned to her human form.

Gregor leaned in close until his giant roach face was only inches from mine.

"What do you mean?" he asked softly.

"You can't succeed for one simple reason," I said. "You've already lost. You told us that after you teleported Devona here, you released her from her trance because you saw no need to keep her in it. But then you said you found it, and I quote, 'oddly gratifying' to have someone watch as you put your plan into action. You hate Otherness, Gregor. So why would you enjoy having someone else here with you while you worked?"

Gregor's gem-like eyes were impossible to read, so I went on.

"And what about my hand?" I said.

Gregor cocked his head, puzzled. "What about it?"

"My severed hand, the one you accidentally teleported along with Devona. Once it got here, it hid itself until you were distracted, and then Devona was able to use it to send me a message."

"So?"

I said, "So how was that possible? And I don't mean the animated severed-hand part. I admit that's weird, but I know I can exert some control over my body parts once they've been separated from me, and I guess they have a life of their own, at least in some small ways. What I'm talking about is how could anything take place inside this dome without your knowledge? This place is made from your body, right? It is you. So how could you not be aware my severed hand was skulking about?"

Gregor didn't say anything at first, but he shifted his weight back and forth several times, as if he were agitated and trying not to show it.

"I've been rather busy, you know." He sounded more than a little defensive. "You can't possibly imagine the magical and technological complexity of dimensional transference. The concentration required to get all the calculations just right…" He trailed off, sounding unconvinced by his own words.

"You're a group mind, Gregor," I reminded him. "You've got more mental capacity than all the Darkfolk combined. And yet you failed to notice my hand. Why?"

Gregor had no answer for that, so I answered for him.

"It's because your mind isn't clear. You're not thinking straight. I mean, why did you bother explaining your plan once Shamika and I got here? Why did you answer all the questions I asked you? I'll tell you why: because you wanted us to appreciate how smart you are. You've spent so much time observing Others, Gregor, that you've changed. Maybe you haven't changed as much as Shamika, but like her, you've become infected by Otherness. You've begun to appreciate it, to need it. And because of that, your emotions are beginning to override your intellect, interfering with it and clouding your thinking. And there's no going back to the way you were. Even if you got rid of the Darkfolk, even if you somehow managed to get rid of Shamika, some part of you would still long for Otherness. You wouldn't just be alone. You'd be lonely. Forever."

Gregor continued to stare at me with his black gem-like eyes for a long time. But eventually he turned away, and when he did, the tentacles that were holding onto Devona and me released us and slithered back into the walls and floor. Gregor walked several feet away, sat down heavily, and hung his head. Shamika looked at him for a moment before going over and sitting down next to him. She then put an arm around her brother and leaned against his ebon carapace. Then, as we watched, their two forms merged into one large amorphous black mass. The mass reformed, shrinking as it did so, until it became Shamika. Only this version of Shamika had Gregor's black gem-like eyes.

She smiled. "We're One again."

Devona came over to me then and put her arms around me. I only had one arm at that moment – the other lay on the floor where Gregor's tentacle had tossed it – but I wrapped it around her and hugged her as tight as I could.

A moment later there was a shimmering in the air next to the circle of magic-users, all of whom were just beginning to stir from their trance. Darius materialized and gazed down upon his dead body.

"I thought I felt someone shoot me," he said.

NINETEEN

I watched myself walk down the street, a black silhouette melting into the darkness around me.

And so it goes. Another case ended, and another waiting for me somewhere up the road. And though I was victorious, I felt nothing, for what had I really accomplished in the end? Sure, I'd tilted at a few windmills and saw to it that some very bad people got what was coming to them. But no matter how many cases I solve, no matter how many wrongs I right, at the end of the day I'm still a dead man playing at being alive – and that's all I'll ever be.

I'm Matt Richter, zombie PI. And my story continues… though sometimes I wish it didn't.

The Mind's Eye screen went blank, the orb closed its lid, and Devona clapped.

"I thought that was pretty good," she said.

I leaned back on the couch, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed. "I can't believe Varney finished that stupid film. This has to be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me."

Devona scooted closer and put her arms around me. "More embarrassing than the time you accidentally switched bodies with Esperanza the Six-Breasted Stripper in the middle of one of her performances?"

"Much," I said. "I just pray Varney's producer doesn't get it in his head to do a sequel."

Once Devona learned who Varney really was, Galm ordered him to return to his job as a cameraman since his cover was blown and he could no longer guard Devona in secret. Devona hadn't been thrilled with the fact that her father had assigned a babysitter to watch over her, but she'd been impressed with Varney's skills and was considering asking him to leave Galm's employ and come to work for her at the Midnight Watch. One thing about my love: she doesn't hold a grudge, at least not where business is concerned. She still, however, wasn't happy that we'd had to return the holy objects the Hidden Light had loaned us. As powerful as the objects were, we could've made good use of them in our work, but I'd promised Maggie I'd return them, and a deal is a deal. Besides, I needed to stay on the Hidden Light's good side. Where else in this town am I going to get holy water and silver bullets? Plus, I can use all the good karma I can get.

Despite Devona's anger at Galm for sending one of his servants to guard her, she'd begun talking with him again, and while I doubted they'd ever be close – Galm wasn't exactly Father of the Year material – they were no longer quite as estranged as they'd been. I didn't trust him, and I knew Devona didn't either, but if she wanted to try to repair the rift between them, I would support her. He had come when Varney called, and without his help, we'd never have stopped Gregor. That counted for something. But I still planned to keep a close eye on the sonofabitch.

Devona hugged me tight, but there was no danger of my falling apart at the seams any more. My body was once again in good shape, thanks to Papa Chatha. After all the magic-users had been freed from Gregor's trance and the insects inside their heads removed, we'd all returned to the city. Once Papa was back in his place, he immediately saw to shoring up the cohesion spells that were keeping my body together, and he reattached my severed arm and fixed the acid-scarring on my face. All at no charge, which I thought was damn decent of him. I should rescue him more often.

Devona and I sat on the couch in our apartment, a number of cardboard boxes stacked against the wall behind us. Devona must've noticed me looking at them, for she said, "You going to miss this place? It's been your home since you first came to Nekropolis."

I looked around the living room, but the only memories of the apartment that came to my mind involved Devona.

I shook my head. "This place is just a few cramped rooms. It only became a home once you moved in."

She cuddled closer to me. "Good answer, Mr Richter."

Tomorrow Scorch, Bogdan, and a fully healed Tavi were going to show up and help us move our stuff into the Midnight Watch. I wasn't sure what it was going to be like living there, especially with the others around all the time. But if our children were going to be as magically gifted as Galm and Varvara thought they'd be, we needed a safe place to raise them, someplace where it would be harder for anyone who wanted to exploit their power to get at them. And since Devona still refused to accept her father's invitation to move into the Cathedral – a decision I wholeheartedly supported – the Midnight Watch seemed like our best alternative.

"I'm glad you approve, Mrs Richter."

Varvara had been so grateful for our part in exposing Klamm's true identity and ending the war between her and Talaith that, when she discovered Devona and I wanted to get officially married, she'd insisted on performing the ceremony herself – and more to the point, hosting the party afterward. Being a Darklord made Varvara one of the six highest authorities in this dimension, so she was as qualified to marry us as anyone else in the city. Besides, the true marriage between Devona and myself had taken place in our hearts. The ceremony was just an outward way to honor that commitment in front of friends and family. And I had to admit, Varvara threw one hell of a celebration for us afterward. It had been over a week, and I'd heard there were still people struggling to recover from their hangovers.

A small voice somewhere close by said, "I liked the movie too."

We turned and saw a roach-like insect clinging to the wall behind us. It quivered under our combined gaze as if frightened, but it didn't flee.

"Hi, Shamika," Devona said, speaking gently. "How are you doing?"

"Good," the insect said, still keeping its distance. "The two halves of my consciousness have finished merging mostly, but I'm still having trouble adjusting to my new personality. I'm sorry I haven't been around much. I mean, I've been around, of course. I just haven't been very… social. I hope you understand."

"Of course we do," Devona said. "We enjoy seeing you whenever you feel up to visiting. Isn't that right, Matt?"

"Yep." A zombie of few words, that's me.

After Shamika and Gregor merged on Ulterion, they'd returned to Nekropolis as one being, and eventually their change was passed on to every component of the Watchers throughout the city and beyond. Now all the Watchers were One, and that One was a combination of Gregor and Shamika. Gregor had hated and feared Otherness, and Shamika had been fascinated by it. The new personality that resulted from their merging liked Others well enough, but was shy around them, unsure how and when to interact. As such, Shamika – for the Watchers had chosen to be known by that name from now on – remained hidden in the shadows for the most part. But she no longer wanted to destroy Nekropolis and get rid of the Darkfolk, and with every passing day she seemed to – you'll pardon the expression – be coming out of her shell more. She'd even showed up in her teenage girl guise briefly at our wedding, just long enough to have a dance with me. She'd also taken to helping out around town. She'd already helped finish the reconstruction of the two bridges the Weyward Sisters had destroyed, and she was currently aiding in the reconstruction of the top level of Demon's Roost.

Darius – at least the version of him that appeared on Ulterion – bore me no ill will for shooting one of his selves. I'd known something that Gregor, for all his skills at gathering information, hadn't: one of the things that allows Darius to traverse dimensions is because, in a sense, he's a hive mind like Shamika, one consciousness spread across the entire Omniverse. Killing one aspect of him was akin to a human losing a toe. Painful and inconvenient, but not life-altering. Darius had offered to take Shamika to another dimension where the Darkfolk had never left Earth and where no other Watchers already existed, a place where she could be completely alone if she wished. He warned that it would take him a while to transport all of her, considering that her consciousness was contained in trillions of separate bodies, but he was willing to do it if she wanted. She'd considered his offer, but in the end she'd chosen to remain in Nekropolis. I was glad. A city of monsters just wouldn't seem complete without hordes of intelligent insects crawling around in the shadows. And, truth to tell, while I was glad Gregor's personality was no more, I'd grown more than a little fond of Shamika.

"Forgive me for snooping," Shamika said, "but I was in your bedroom a minute ago, and I saw you haven't packed up your computer yet."

Our laptop computer was a prime example of Victor Baron's flesh-tech: constructed from skin, bone, muscle, and specially designed organs, it lived, breathed, and moaned in complaint whenever asked to do even moderately complex tasks. Devona spoiled the damn thing rotten, which was why it wasn't packed up with our other belongings yet. She'd said she didn't want to hurt its feelings by sealing it away in a box and letting it sit there overnight. Me? I'd have been happy to leave it out on the curb with a sign that said FREE TO A GOOD HOME (OR EVEN A BAD ONE, JUST AS LONG AS YOU TAKE THE STUPID THING!).

Shamika continued. "Would you come into the bedroom with me? There's something I want to show you on the computer. I've been experimenting with uploading my consciousness to the Aethernet, and I think I've succeeded." She paused, and I could hear the girlish smile in her voice when she added, almost shyly, "I'm my own website!"

Devona looked at me and raised an eyebrow. In return, I shrugged. Shamika was an alien creature, and we didn't understand exactly how her hive-mind consciousness worked. Maybe she didn't have to confine herself to a strictly physical existence. But it did make me wonder. Nekropolis' Aethernet is connected to Earth's Internet via some kind of interdimensional connection, and if Shamika – or at least part of her – now existed on the virtual plane… well, the folks back home on Earth might be in for a surprise the next time they logged onto their computers.

"That sounds awesome!" Devona said. "Show me!" She held out her hand toward Shamika. The insect hesitated, then hopped onto the back of Devona's hand, skittered up her arm, and perched on her shoulder.

"Coming?" Devona asked me.

"I better not," I said. "Yesterday I tried to get the computer to open a new spreadsheet program I set up for client billing, and we, ah, had a disagreement." I held up my hand to show the scorch marks from where the computer had shocked me.

Devona laughed, and the insect on her shoulder giggled. Devona then stood and carried Shamika with her to the bedroom.

I settled back on the couch and mentally commanded our Mind's Eye set to tune into a razorball game between the Black Talons and the Intercity Manglers, but the set's eyelid remained stubbornly shut. I tried again, but the Mind's Eye still refused to cooperate. I was starting to wonder if the set was broken, when I heard a voice next to me.

"Don't bother. Not only will the Manglers continue their losing streak, it's going to be a dull game. Only three fatalities, none of them permanent."

I turned to see Father Dis sitting on the couch next to me.

"I know you're an ancient Roman god, so you might not know this, but there's a new concept these days called a 'spoiler.' It's generally considered good manners to avoid them."

Dis' lips stretched into a small, thin smile. "I'll try to remember that. I did see a very amusing program recently. It was a documentary about a tortured dead man trying to bring a tiny bit of justice to a city of unrelenting evil and darkness."

I groaned.

"Would you like me to tell you how many people watched it?" Dis asked.

"I don't want to know. I just hope everyone forgets about it – and me – eventually."

"There's little chance of that. You stopped a war between two Darklords and helped us make peace with the Watchers. If you thought you were well known before…"

I sighed. "At least Devona will be happy. The publicity will be good for business. And speaking of Devona…" I turned to look in the direction of the bedroom.

"Neither she nor Shamika can hear us talking," Dis said. "I've seen to that." He smiled. "Even if I hadn't, they're having too much fun playing with Shamika's website to pay any attention to us."

"So what's the situation with the Darklords?" I asked. "Talaith didn't show up at our wedding, even though Varvara invited her. Despite my objections, I might add."

"Most of the Darklords try not to hold grudges. Given how long we live and how often we come into conflict, we'd never get anything done if we stayed mad at one another. But not Talaith." He shook his head. "Sometimes I think she lives to hold grudges. But to answer your question, she's keeping to herself these days, overseeing the restoration of the Greensward and layering it with even stronger protective spells than it possessed before. She did lodge a formal complaint with me against Varvara and Galm, and while I'm sure she'll seek revenge on both of them at some point, I expect her to behave herself for the time being. So the balance of power in the city remains intact, and I have you to thank for that, Matt."

I said, "Gratitude is good, but unfortunately you can't spend it."

"My staff made a deposit into your bank account this morning, and I think you'll find the sum more than acceptable. Thank you once again for your service to the city, Matt."

Shadows began to coalesce around Dis, and I knew he was about to dematerialize.

"One moment," I said.

The shadows paused, then slowly flowed back to the corners of the room.

"Yes?" Dis said.

"You didn't tell me the full truth when you spoke with me at Papa Chatha's, did you? I saw the way you looked at Shamika. You knew who and what she was, but you didn't say anything to me about it."

"I was confident you'd figure it out on your own eventually."

I said, "That's not it. You wanted my help to avert a war, but it wasn't a war between Talaith and Varvara you were worried about, was it? It was a war between Gregor and Shamika – or maybe between the Darkfolk and the Watchers."

Dis looked at me with cold, impassive eyes, but he didn't contradict me.

"You didn't want Shamika to know you'd talked to me. That's the real reason you froze everyone at Papa Chatha's, and why you're concealing our conversation from Devona and Shamika now. You don't want her to feel manipulated – even though she was."

Dis looked at me a moment longer before letting out a soft sigh. It was a sigh full of weariness, long centuries of it, and hearing it made me feel for a moment as old as Time itself.

"The Darklords and I made a mistake when we chose this dimension as the location to build Nekropolis," Dis began. "It's ironic, but we were fleeing from the persecution by humanity, and by building our city here, we ended up doing the same thing humans have done so often throughout their long, sad history: colonizing a land already inhabited by others… a land where we were not welcome. As powerful as we Darkfolk are, I knew we could never win against the Watchers. There were simply too many of them. And abandoning the city and starting over in another dimension just wasn't practical. So when I became aware that not only was Gregor still alive, but he'd fragmented into two separate personalities, I decided that you were the city's best hope for dealing with the Watchers."

"Me? What did you think I could do?"

Dis smiled. "In case you hadn't noticed, you have a knack for finding unorthodox solutions to problems. More to the point, you've kept your humanity, despite having become one more monster in a city filled with them. I knew if anyone could help the Watchers discover the better part of their nature, it would be you."

"If I had a functioning circulatory system, I might blush," I said. After a moment's thought, I added, "And despite your insistence that you couldn't interfere, it strikes me as awfully convenient that my severed hand was able to operate so effectively on its own, and that Gregor should be completely oblivious to it. You didn't perhaps secretly use a little of your power to make that happen, did you?"

Dis' silence answered for him.

"You know, you might be the Lord of all the Darkfolk, the biggest, baddest horror in a city full of foul creatures and evil fiends, but deep down you're not so bad."

Dis' eyes clouded over with shadow until they were completely black, like a shark's, and when he spoke next, his voice was as cold as the grave.

"Don't be mistaken, Matt. I care only about my people's welfare, and I'll do whatever it takes to protect them. If I had to slaughter a million innocents to preserve the Darkfolk, I'd do it, and without a moment's hesitation. In this case, it just so happened that peace was the most logical and efficient solution."

I looked into the deep black eyes of a being so ancient and powerful that he could destroy me with a single thought.

"Bullshit," I said.

In reply Dis just smiled, gathered the shadows around him, and was gone.

I sat there a bit longer, trying to decide if it was worth watching the razorball game even though I knew how it was going to turn out, but in the end I decided to get up and go into the bedroom and check out Shamika's website.

But before I could stand, the Mind's Eye opened its lid of its own accord, and an image appeared in my mind. It was Lord Edrigu. He looked to the right and then the left, as if making sure we were alone. There was a nervous, almost desperate energy in his movements, and his eyes looked, appropriately enough, haunted.

"Is Dis gone? Good. Listen closely, Matt. I have to leave Nekropolis. Immediately. Until I return, I need you to fill in for me. As of this moment, you're Lord of the Dead."

Edrigu vanished, and the Mind's Eye closed its lid as the transmission ended.

I sat there for several moments, staring at the deactivated set, and then finally, I cleared my throat and called out in a strained voice.

"Devona? Honey? There's something I need to tell you."

About the Author

Tim Waggoner is an American novelist and college professor. His original novels include Cross County, Darkness Wakes, Pandora Drive, and Like Death. His tie-in novels include The Lady Ruin series and the Blade of the Flame trilogy, both for Wizards of the Coast. He's also written fiction based on Stargate: SG-1, Doctor Who, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the video game Defender, Xena the Warrior Princess, and others. He's published over one hundred short stories, some of which are collected in Broken Shadows and All Too Surreal. His articles on writing have appeared in Writer's Digest, Writers' Journal and other publications.

He teaches composition and creative writing at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, and is a faculty mentor in Seton Hill University's Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

www.timwaggoner.com

By the Same Author

Novels

Nekropolis

Dead Streets

Dark War

Cross County

Dark Ages: Gangrel

Darkness Wakes

Defender: Hyperswarm

Dying For It

Godfire: The Orchard of Dreams

The Harmony Society

In the Shadow of Ruin

Like Death

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Protégé

Pandora Drive

A Shadow Over Heaven's Eye

Stargate SG-1: Valhalla

Blade of the Flame

Thieves of Blood

Forge of the Mindslayers

Sea of Death

Dragonlance, the New Adventures

Temple of the Dragonslayer

Return of the Sorceress

Collections

All Too Surreal

Broken Shadows

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The Loving Dead

An Angry Robot paperback original 2012

1

Copyright © Tim Waggoner 2012

Tim Waggoner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

UK ISBN: 978 0 85766 207 1

US ISBN: 978 0 85766 208 8

eBook ISBN: 978 0 85766 209 5

Set in Meridien by THL Design.

Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

The Nekropolis Archives

HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR FIRST TEN MINUTES IN NEKROPOLIS

DISARMED AND DANGEROUS

NEKROPOLIS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

THE MIDNIGHT WATCH

DEAD STREETS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

ZOMBIE INTERRUPTED

DARK WAR

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

About the Author

By the Same Author