Moonshine

Chapter 14

Abbagor dwelled in a labyrinth of tunnels under the Brooklyn Bridge. Where else would a troll live? How long he'd been there, I didn't know, but it didn't really matter. From the housewarming on, he'd made the place his own. It was his hunting ground and playground all in one—think about that the next time you haul your butt over to Brooklyn. Night was the worst. It was the time Abbagor ranged the length of the bridge, looking for food… looking for pets. Better to be food. If your car stalled there some night late, you'd better keep your ass inside with doors locked and pray. Pray hard.

Not that anyone seemed to be listening.

Behind a shielding abutment rested the door to Abby's summer, winter, and forever home. Last year when we'd come seeking information about the Auphe, there had been a heavy layer of mud over concrete around the entrance. And the smell… I hadn't hurled, but it'd been a close one. It was better this time, the ground hard and dry at our feet. The grate we had dropped through was back in place and secured with a shiny padlock. I looked down at it and kicked the lock, saying fatalistically, "Maybe it's a sign."

"If only." Robin pulled his wallet out and teased out a small piece of metal. In less than three seconds the lock was history. Goodfellow with a lockpick was faster than I was with a key. "There," he offered with a healthy dose of self-conceit. "It's the least I can do."

I cut him some slack; he wasn't nearly as smug as he normally would've been. Niko and I were going below, but Robin was staying behind. My arm and sore ribs were bad enough, but Goodfellow couldn't run. That crossbow bolt had torn up a good chunk of his leg muscle when we were attacked in that alley. I still wasn't sure who was behind that, although I had some ideas. It was either another one of Caleb's happy little tests to prove we were tough enough to take on the Kin or a dark and twisted game of the Auphe. There was no real way of knowing one way or the other, but from the rambling of our attacker, I was betting Caleb. "He said and you came," the guy had said. "He said…" Caleb appeared almost human. He was a "he." Faced with an Auphe, I doubted two things: that the man would've been at all coherent about what the Auphe said, and that he would've called an Auphe "he." Your average human with both feet in the mundane and normal world would've gone with "it," combined with a few throat-tearing screams for punctuation. Besides, when the Auphe subcontracted, they did a whole lot better than a nut job with a crossbow.

Since Robin couldn't run, a high priority when in Abbagor's lair, he was sitting this one out up top. Moral support in five-hundred-dollar sunglasses. The lawn chair he had carried from his car had cost considerably less. I watched as he unfolded it and took a seat. Lacing fingers across his stomach, he leaned back and turned his face to the sun. "Comfy?" I inquired caustically.

"Nearly." He yawned. "Have Abby send up a margarita, would you? Frozen with salt."

"Yeah, sure," I snorted. "No problem." As Niko bent, hooked his fingers in the grate, and tossed it aside, I rubbed at weary eyes. Through my own dark glasses the sun seared my retinas with the pain and brilliance of a laser. I'd slept another night, despite my dismal expectations, but it had left me feeling hungover and a headache throbbed steadily at the base of my skull.

"Ready?" Niko prodded.

I pulled off my glasses, tossed them in Goodfellow's lap, and grunted, "So where's that bazooka?"

"You've one good arm left, little brother." Niko crouched on the lip of the opening and scanned the darkness below. "I'm quite sure you can arm-wrestle Abbagor to his death if it comes to that." With that, he slipped over the edge and disappeared from sight.

I sighed and trudged to the reeking black square. "Have a good nap, Loman."

He waved me off. "Scream if you need anything." Unfortunately, if it came to that, there wasn't a single, solitary thing Robin could do to help us. He knew that as well as we did, and if he wanted to pretend this was going to be a walk in the park, who was I to screw up his sun-worshipping, margarita-chugging psychological defense mechanism? Facing Abbagor was going to suck, no two ways about it, but the helpless waiting, that was no picnic either. We all knew, from past and current experience, that waiting was a special hell all its own.

"Screaming I can do," I said with grim cheer as I sat on the opening's edge. "See you later, Goodfellow. Don't forget the sunblock." I jumped down, the midcalf-deep muck softening the landing just as it had done the last time. No matter how dry it was above, here it was always wet, always a swamp. And it always stunk to the unseen heavens. The stench of rotting flesh and old blood, the smell of a slave master wallowing in his own filth—it didn't exactly qualify as aromatherapy. But this time I came prepared. Pulling a small tube from my pocket, I deposited a minute amount of astringent muscle-ache ointment on my upper lip. That opened the sinuses like a fire hose, but it was a much more acceptable smell, one I could deal with.

Niko was waiting on me with folded arms and a curious, tilted head. "Clever."

"Hey, I watch TV, same as anyone else." And if ever there was a crime scene, this made the cut. Finishing up, I reached back and retrieved the gun hung on my back. No bazooka, but a Browning semiautomatic shotgun. It probably wouldn't kill the troll. Could be nothing would. I'd emptied a clip in his skull the last time without much effect. Regardless, investing in a little more stopping power was never a bad thing, and this had more field of fire than the Magnum. I would've priced grenade launchers if we hadn't been headed underground.

I wrapped the leather strap around my arm and set the stock against my hip bone. "Well, fearless leader? Are we ready?"

"And what makes me the leader?" Forgoing the flashlight we'd brought, Niko began to walk, smoothly and unhindered by the mud. The faint glow of luminescent lichen on the walls shed enough light to just see his outline. It was more than we'd had last time. Someone was being awfully welcoming.

"You kicking my ass every time I say different ring any bells?" I slogged. Niko skated across the sticky surface like a water bug on a glassy pond, and I slogged. Preternatural genes didn't help worth a damn when it came to swimming through slop. Didn't it figure?

"I'm forced to do it so often I can't be expected to remember every occasion." Holding up a hand, he added softly, "Now, quiet."

"Why? He already knows we're here." Before us was a doorway I recognized. Carved through the concrete wall with diamond-sharp talons, it was a gaping eye socket to the troll's labyrinth. Beyond, maintenance tunnels had been expanded far into the earth and God help the potbellied city worker that stuck his nose through that door. A union card didn't carry much weight with Abbagor.

"I'm sure he does, but since we want his assistance, try for a minimum of manners." His sword already in hand, Miss Manners stepped through the doorway.

"You want us to show respect for the evil bastard? Jesus, Nik," I complained, but my heart wasn't in it. We'd do what we had to do, for George. If that meant playing nice with this malicious shithead, then that's what we would do. And if that didn't work, we could try chopping off pieces of him until he felt a shade more cooperative. Hey, I was flexible.

Subsiding into silence, I followed behind my brother as we retraced our path from last year… mentally and physically. I had better memories and not many worse. Niko had very nearly died in this place. No, that wasn't true. What had almost happened to him was worse than death, far worse. Abbagor killed, true, but he also liked his "pets." How he made them I couldn't begin to guess. I wasn't even sure of the end result; I hadn't caught more than a glimpse of them, but Niko said they were—God help them—aware. Reduced to bits and pieces, but conscious. And Niko would know. He'd been halfway to becoming one, swallowed whole by the roiling mass of tendrils that formed Abbagor's massive body. Every time that memory hit me, so did another. An anonymous hand… male, with a rose tattoo. It appeared between tentacles to stroke the gray pallid flesh with a reverential motion. Living… existing in the prison that was Abbagor, was a horror that was hard to grasp. I didn't want to and Niko didn't have to. And here we were, walking right back into his reach. Desperation… it could make you do some crazy shit.

Crazy.

Picking up the pace, I shouldered past Niko right as we entered the cavern hollowed out in a masonry tower. Maybe he could all but walk on mud like some sort of bargain-basement messiah, but it hadn't helped him last time. Abbagor had his own issues with me. If I could keep his attention focused on me, it would give my more mobile brother a better chance. A better chance to fight; if worse came to worst, a better chance to run. I'd take whatever I could get. I would die for George, but give up my brother? It wasn't a choice I could live with. Wasn't a choice I would make.

Of course, Niko would tell me it wasn't mine to make.

"Cal," he hissed under his breath with annoyance as I passed him, but before he could attempt to snare my arm Abbagor's voice came through the gloom.

"Auphelingggg." It was a wet burble, a last breath forced through a mouthful of blood.

I looked up automatically. Last year Abbagor had descended from the three-story-tall ceiling like a bloated spider. Although at our level there was a dim light emanating from the glowing-slime-covered walls, above there was only infinite darkness. I strained my eyes but saw nothing. "I'm flattered as hell, Abby," I said laconically. "You remember me."

"I remember all," came the clotted gurgle. "And always shall I remember you." He appeared in the mud at our feet, the slow rise of a methane bubble rising through a fetid swamp. There had to be a dropoff, a pit dug to accommodate his mass. That was new. The muck covering him wouldn't have hidden us from him. He had no eyes, Abbagor, only shallow indentations in the knotted flesh, but he didn't need eyes to see better than we could. His back, a twisted terrain of tangled tendrils, surfaced last, preceded by floating arms and a misshapen head. The back of his skull was a mass of shattered bone forming jagged peaks covered by thick skin. I might not have killed him, but I'd messed up his pretty looks. Yippee.

"Where is the little goat?" Freed of the mud, the python mouth formed words mellow and clear as the ringing of the purest crystal. His voice was completely at odds with his hideous appearance and peculiar enough to send an atavistic shiver down my spine.

"Goodfellow had a previous engagement," Niko said, stepping up to my side. "He sends his apologies."

"Destined to forever be forsaken," was the doleful reply. It was accompanied by a sigh as mournful as the sound of crying angels. "That is my fate. My everlasting sorrow."

He'd said that before… that he was forsaken. But then he'd said it about the Auphe. Nearly as ancient as they were, Abbagor had the original love/hate relationship with the Auphe. He loved to hate them. Loved to mutilate… to rip limb from limb, whatever he could manage. And to his pleasure, the Auphe were a good match for him. Apparently, Abby had a problem with boredom, and he'd do anything to relieve it. That his own blood was often spilled in the battles didn't bother him at all. When we'd come to him for information before, he'd attacked in the hopes of provoking the Auphe. He'd known they wanted me badly and would come to retrieve me. But he'd been denied that festive little party and had ended up with a head only a mother could love.

"That's a different look for you, Abby." My finger was taut on the shotgun's trigger. "New hairdresser?"

For once Niko didn't bury a pointed elbow in my ribs. He knew that manners alone wouldn't bring us Abbagor's cooperation. The monster had to be entertained. A bored Abbagor would no doubt try to kill us, but an amused one might play with us first. Give us what we wanted to know. It would make our despair sharper when he took us… more enjoyable.

"A memento, Aupheling, keeping your memory forever warm in my heart." He continued to float with all the grace and charm of a corpse bobbing in the river.

"I don't know what pumps your blood, Abby," I gritted with disgust, "but it's not a heart."

Niko jumped into the conversation before I could "entertain" the troll further. "We're looking for something, Abbagor. A crown. Goodfellow says there is very little that passes in this world that you are unaware of."

After a long stretch of silent contemplation, Abbagor commented with melodious complacency, "True. All falls under my benevolent eye." He stood upright, in all his self-proclaimed benevolence. Nine feet tall and nearly as broad, he might have been vaguely man-shaped, but he towered over us like a tree. Granted, it was a flesh-eating tree from hell, but I stand by the analogy. The liquid earth cascaded off him, showing more of the twining slate-colored flesh than I wanted to see. The shifting and the rustling of the tendrils made my stomach do a slow nauseated turn. With every unnatural, sinuous movement, I expected to see a flash of pale skin… human skin. Slave skin. "You may describe it to me."

Okay, it couldn't be that easy; nothing in this life was. And neither was this. We'd come here expecting the troll to put us through our paces, and the game was already under way. Abby wasn't wasting any time in screwing with our heads. "I have a picture." Niko held up the sketch with his free hand.

"Ahhh, the Calabassa," Abbagor said with instant recognition. "Barely ten thousand years old. Modern trash," he added scornfully, "from a refuse race."

And now we had a confirmed name for it. That was just peachy. "And that would be?" I asked impatiently.

"The Bassa." The head, equally as massive as the rest of him, with the upswept ears of a bat, fixed me with its unnervingly unblind gaze. "Your kind, uneducated Aupheling, wiped them out not long after that crown was made. Every male and female, every child, every egg. .And then, if I remember correctly, you ate them." His jaw unhinged into a gaping grin. "Quite tasty the Bassa were, once the poison sacs were removed. The most tender of meat, sweet and mild."

I ignored the yank of my chain. It wasn't news to me that in their day the Auphe had maimed, tortured, and killed anyone or anything that had crossed their path. They had; I hadn't. I didn't. I wouldn't.

Whether Flay agreed with me or not was a different story.

"I'm sure it was a hell of an all-you-can-eat buffet, but that's not what we want to know. If the Bassa are gone, where is the crown now?" Niko and I had decided it was best not to bring up the fact I'd already lost one. If there were two, we might luck out and Abbagor would know the location of the other. If we told him what had happened, he would no doubt lie out of pure capricious spite.

"Its purpose, if it has one, would be helpful as well," Niko added.

"Both hands out begging." The troll expelled a huge sigh, the scent of which nearly dropped me. The ointment on my lip didn't have a prayer of blocking that out. I smelled… God, so many things. Vomit and bile, blood and the adrenaline of hearts terrorized to their physical limits. Ripe decay and the sloughing of rotting skin. I smelled a graveyard of the half-dead, I smelled Abbagor's victims. Viciously, I bit my lower lip until I reached a precarious truce with my own bile.

He was looking at me. I don't know how I knew that, but he was. "You want and want, greedy little half-breed, but what do you give?" Tendrils began to loosen from Abbagor's torso with their questing tips twitching in parody of a sniffing motion as they hung in the air.

"I don't know, Abby. You have my charming company. What else do you want?" I demanded, baring teeth in a humorless rictus of a grin. He wanted to play all right. But for every minute he amused himself, George spent that same minute with Caleb. And that put a serious crimp in my Abbagor fun-and-games tolerance level.

"I want… I want…" he mused as the tentacles crept closer to us slowly and cautiously, showing none of the speed of before. "I want to touch. I want to taste. I want to know what I knew before. I want to know the part of me that is gone." The tendrils began to drift toward Niko and it hit me in an explosion of fear and rage.

Nik. He wanted Nik.

"No way," I snarled, immediately putting a pound of pressure on a two-pound trigger. "No fucking way."

"Be calm, Aupheling." Soothing, so soothing… not. "I only wish to touch. I've missed my fair-haired thrall."

I didn't need any college to know that "thrall" was a fancy word for slave. I'd have to remember to tell Niko that the next time he nagged me about higher education. "Then touch yourself, you piece of shit. Just wait until we're gone to do it." The shotgun was already cocked and I raised the muzzle to point directly at Abbagor's face.

Suddenly disinterested, the troll turned his head away. "That is my price. A touch for what only I know. Pay or no, I care not."

"I could make you care, you son of a bitch." The pound of pressure had gone to one and a half when Niko's hand closed on my shoulder.

"Wait," he ordered calmly.

"No, Nik. Absolutely not." I didn't have to hear the words to know what my brother was going to say. And I didn't have to hear them to say no.

"It's only a touch, Cal," he pointed out in his most practical tone. Reasonable, logical, and a complete and utter lie. The lightest of brushes from Abbagor's tendrils could and had resulted in less-than-innocent things. On our first meeting, he had dragged me at a breakneck speed by my ensnared arms and had cocooned Niko so quickly that my brother had disappeared right before my eyes. He had been lost inside Abbagor. He had been gone. A touch wasn't simply a touch with Abbagor, creepy PSAs aside. And no matter how composed Niko might appear on the outside, he had to be screaming on the inside. I know I would've been. Shit, I was, and I'd only seen what had happened to Niko. I hadn't lived through it as he had.

"No, Cyrano." I shook my head stubbornly. "It's not going to happen. So shut up and start chopping."

I had doubts, serious doubts, that there was anything we could do to Abbagor that would force him to talk, but I would rather give it a homicidal whirl than let him touch Niko.

The hand on my shoulder tightened. "It's a game, Cal. Only a game." Resolute and serene, but so what? Niko would've been resolute and serene at his own execution. "Besides, isn't it better to know that it's coming?"

He had me there. It was coming, one way or the other. I had no delusions that the troll was going to let us walk out of here with a smile and a slimy handshake. Then again, feeling that cold ribbon of muscle loop around you in the heat of battle was different from waiting for it, quiet and accepting. Considerably, horrifically different. I shook my head again. "No. Just… no."

"It's for Georgina." His eyes held mine, gray to gray. "She would do it for me, Cal. Allow me to do it for her."

Dirty pool. Honest and true, but dirty nonetheless. "Jesus." I lowered the shotgun muzzle fractionally and did my best to swallow the apprehension that was a noose around my neck threatening to choke me. "Fine. Do what you want, Nik. You will anyway. Play footsie with the monster all you goddamn please."

The corner of his mouth quirked at my ill-tempered surrender. "Love you too, little brother." Not a hint of sarcasm, not a whisper of irony—there was only tolerant affection. Not only had he gotten all the human genes in the family, but all the emotional stability too. How fair was that? "Very well, Abbagor," he continued, voice hardening to the unwavering blue of steel. "You have your taste. Ten seconds. Longer than that and you and your tentacle part ways."

"So bold. So audacious… for a human." Abby was entertained but good now. The mud sloshed around his waist as more tentacles shot into sight. The pit had to be five feet deep. If we tumbled into that… if Niko was pulled in, there would be no getting out of it. I hooked the fingers of my free hand onto the waistband of his black pants. It was probably futile as hell, but I did it anyway.

"Bold, audacious, and highly annoyed," Niko said flatly. "Get on with it, troll."

"Such an impatient race. Comes from being barely evolved, I suppose." As the words flowed, so did the tentacles, but they weren't alone. In his trench, Abbagor moved. Ripples of mud spread sluggishly from his path, releasing a smell of decay so strong that it rivaled the stench that already saturated the place. It wasn't the by-product of corpses, although I was positive there were plenty of those to be found below the bubbling brown surface. It was the smell of sickness, the putrescence of living flesh, not dead. Abbagor was sick. Maybe I'd done more damage last year than I'd thought. Or maybe Abby had picked up a really bad fungus down here in the swamp. Who knew? But from what I was getting a whiff of, he was rotting from the inside out.

I tensed as the troll approached, but stood my ground. He was moving slowly, cautiously… so careful not to scare the kiddies. He didn't want to ruin his good time, now, did he? "That's close enough," I warned with lips twisted in disgust.

"A true Auphe, king of all you survey." Abbagor had teeth. Fangs actually. I hadn't noticed that last time. Curving and black as the talons on his hands, they were full of poison, if the yellow dripping from the top two were any indication. "You are the word made law, and I obey."

That'd be the day… the day Abbagor was a particularly pungent fertilizer. Abbagor bowed to no one, not even the bygone Auphe. And a sick Abbagor was only that much more dangerous. I'd seen those nature specials when Niko had refused to turn over the remote. Predators tend to get cranky when wounded. When he'd previously tried to kill us, the troll had actually been in a good mood. I really didn't want to see a bitchy, disgruntled Abby in action.

Attention back on Nik, Abbagor murmured again, "A touch. Only a touch." But it wasn't a tentacle he extended toward my brother; it was his hand. Four or five times the size of a man's hand, it was held out palm up. And in the center of that palm was a mouth, a human mouth. Pale lips, soft and full. Not just human, but a woman's mouth. One of his prisoners. How they were dissolved within Abbagor, how they continued to live, I didn't know. I didn't want to know. If I did know, I had doubts that I would ever sleep again. Then again, the sight of a rosy pink tongue tip peeking between those lips might have just sealed that deal for me anyway.

It also happened to be the trigger to Niko's losing it.

Of course, a loss of composure and temper came off a lot better on my brother than it would have on me. Lips thinned to nothing and eyes dark with a cold fury, Niko said in a tone that would've been conversational if not for the razor edges lining every word, "Remove it from my sight or I'll remove it from you." His sword was already in motion, stopping to hover bare millimeters above the clay-colored wrist. The blade hung perfectly motionless, still and sure.

Personally, I was all for the chop. Yeah, big fan of the chop. But Abby gave in, the son of a bitch. "Very well," the troll sighed dolefully, pulling the hand back. "I bow to your prejudices, human." Right. "Prejudices," it would've almost been funny if not for the revulsion and horror that saturated the air like a dank humidity.

An especially plump tendril took the place of the hand. Deftly avoiding the naked blade, it rested gently on the back of Nik's hand. "Ahhhh, I remember. That piquant flavor, so unique. You taste of metal and blood, of green grass and blue sky. And, after all this long, long time, you still taste of… me." The tentacle didn't curl or grip; it didn't threaten in any way. At least, not physically. It simply… petted. A light caress, a soft stroking, harmless, right? Wrong. Niko's olive skin faded slightly as old memories came to a boil. It was the faintest of differences, nearly undetectable, but it was enough for me. And by God it was more than enough for Nik. "Okay, that's it," I snapped, knocking the writhing cord aside with the shotgun. "You've had your jollies. Now tell us about the Calabassa."

"That was hardly the agreed-upon ten seconds." As one, all the tendrils retreated with an unnatural speed to wrap themselves back into the whole of Abbagor. "Seven at best."

"Close enough, you bastard," my brother said with a deadly calm.

There was going to be a fight—we'd known that going in—but as it stood now Niko just might beat Abbagor to the first blow. And if he didn't, I was more than happy to move up in line. But at the last moment it looked as if the battle might be postponed for a minute or two. Abbagor was going to speak and there was nothing Abbagor liked more than showing off his knowledge. Funny, you never think of killing machines as being proud or full of an almost human conceit, but sometimes they can be.

A heavy, pregnant silence surrounded the troll like a poisonous fog. Finally, he pronounced with a rippling displeasure, "Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks." I recognized that it was a quote, but I couldn't identify it. Not much of a surprise, considering what I read in my spare time. Didn't you just hate it when monsters were more literate than you?

"Seek out your kind," he continued. "They have the Calabassa. They're quite enamored of baubles."

My kind. He knew. How could he know already? It was impossible. It had only been a little over a day. "My kind," I said between stiff lips. "What do you mean, my kind?"

"Not your kind." The venomous grin gaped wider and the large head tilted in Niko's direction. "His kind. Gypsies." Both of us, Niko and I, were half-Gypsy through Sophia, but my human half was easily washed away, it seemed.

"Gypsies? Which clan? And what is so important about the crown?" Niko asked, sword still in hand. "Does it perform some function? Is it especially valuable in any way?"

"One taste, one question." The mud sloshed as Abbagor took another step in our direction. It looked as if playtime was over. "But here is a question for you. I see all. I know all. I am all. Did you think the passing of the Auphe at your hand would escape me?" Another step, slow and ponderous. "Did you think I wouldn't know what you've taken from me?"

Ah, shit. I knew. We'd destroyed what he considered his only real rivals and, in an odd way, his only real love. At least, we'd thought we had. We'd taken away the battles, the blood, the happy-go-lucky massacres. Yeah, we'd ruined his good time. And now, after playing with us, he was about to ruin ours. Never mind that it turned out the Auphe weren't completely gone, although they'd apparently kept a low enough profile that even the troll who knew everything hadn't known about their survival. We could tell Abbagor his information was thirty-six hours out of date, but I sincerely doubted he would buy it. And why would he want to try when it was so much more fun to kill us? As much as Abbagor liked to talk, he liked to kill more. And killing us would be the best part of his day.

But first he had to catch us.

We ran, but not before I fired the shotgun. I didn't hope to kill Abbagor; I already knew the futility of that. I just hoped to slow him down long enough for us to make our escape. As hopes went, it wasn't a big one, but you took what you could get. I had time for only two successive shots before the troll was out of the mud and on us. The first shot shredded his neck in a spray of meat and viscous purple blood. The second tore away half of his face, revealing the bone beneath. It only made his grin wider as the flesh peeled away. "Aupheling, don't go," bubbled playfully through the blood. "You are all that is left to me now. The last of my nemesis. My companion in pain and pleasure."

Uh-huh. If only that were true. My shoulder ached from bearing the brunt of the shotgun's recoil, but I didn't let that hold me back… especially once I saw what the troll had been hiding under the mud. His once-mighty muscled legs were now green mottled bone wreathed in ligaments, tendons, and bands of naked muscle. They also were hosting the occasional chunk of putrefying flesh that stubbornly refused to release its grip. The legs of a corpse, yet they moved—and moved damn fast. It was like seeing long-flattened roadkill come to life and chase you.

With our feet churning up the filth, Niko and I headed for a tunnel opening. It wasn't the one we came through, but any port in a troll-made storm. We were nearly there when the crude doorway crumbled instantly, collapsing in on itself. For a split second of confusion, I thought I actually had brought that grenade I'd been wishing for earlier. But no… a crumpled half of a steel beam was buried in the dirt above where the opening had been. Great. The troll was actually throwing pieces of the bridge at us now, as if the Brooklyn Bridge could spare any. God knew what else he had squirreled away in that pit of mud… a small Volkswagen maybe? I'd been accused more than once of having a hard head, but that much of a test I didn't want to put it to.

Both Niko and I whirled around and split hastily into opposite directions as Abbagor hit the now-solid wall where we had just stood. The blow shook the entire cavern, and more earth and rock showered down. The place was falling apart; a sick troll apparently wasn't much in the home-improvement-and-repair field. Swiveling, I backpedaled as I fired the shotgun again, this time hitting the monster in the back. If he'd been a man, he would've gone down as limply as cooked spaghetti. Of course he wasn't a man. He was a killing machine whose time had finally come. It was too bad that the extroverted son of a bitch wanted company on that ride.

Back twitching from the shot, he turned and literally exploded into a mass of weaving tentacles, several of which flashed across the expanse between us and wrapped around my legs with astonishing speed. Or it would've been astonishing if I hadn't seen it the last time Abbagor had tried to kill us. Dropping the gun, I scrambled for the knife that had saved my ass with the bodachs. We'd see if it stepped up a second time. I was aiming a quick slice to free myself when I was jerked bodily in the air and tossed. I landed squarely in Abby's keepsake box.

Drowning in mud is not something I recommend.

Drowning in mud that reeks of a thousand and one-slaughterhouses, not surprisingly, is even worse. The force of my fall took me completely under the cloying liquid, and I struggled desperately to find the surface. I'd thought the mud was five feet deep, but I'd thought wrong. It was deeper. The mud was thin, but it wasn't water and swimming was pretty much out of the question. It pressed against my nose, mouth, and blind eyes with the cool touch of the grave. Lungs burning, I continued to thrash frantically only to feel myself sinking deeper. Then the hard grip came on the back of my neck, and I was pulled upward, and yanked onto firm ground. As thanks to my rescuer, I rose to my hands and knees and promptly puked on Nik's shoes. That I'd made it this far without tossing my cookies was something of a miracle, but to be swallowed whole by the stench… there was nothing left to do but turn my stomach inside out. There were a lot of things to curse the Auphe over, but I never guessed their acute sense of smell might be the one that did me in. The filth on me, the air around me, it was all so noxious that I actually felt my nervous system began to short-circuit. It beat anything the government whipped up in their poison gas labs, hands down.

I could feel my brother's presence hovering above me, hear the hiss of his blade cutting through the air. Pieces of gray tendrils began to fall like rain around and onto me. Sliced, diced, and still moving with sluggish life. I did my best to ignore them and focused on trying to clear my darkening vision. Breathing would've been nice too. Instead I vomited again.

"Cal."

That reached me. Through fading vision and hearing that went in and out like a bad cable connection, it still reached me. Swallowing convulsively, I looked up just in time to see Niko disappear upward. I struggled up to a kneeling position to bring him back into sight. Dangled by the neck from a twisted tendril noose, he swung a deadly accurate sword only to be snagged anew before he dropped more than a few inches. The troll could've broken a comparatively frail human neck in less than a heartbeat, but where would be the fun in that? Now, watching my brother's face slowly shift from olive to lavender, then deep purple… that was entertainment. Or it would've been if it had gotten that far. I wasn't about to let it. I was halfway around the mud pit before I even realized I'd managed to struggle to my feet. It was more a drunken stagger than a run, but it took me where I needed to go and that was all that mattered at the moment. Spots were swimming across my vision, but I sucked in air fiercely and managed to clear the majority of them. When I reached Abbagor I could see well enough to pick out my target. My knife, although coated with mud, was still in my hand and I wasted no time in putting it to use. Diving under flying tentacles, I chopped at what was left of the troll's legs. The bone, as big around as my waist, was far too thick to make a dent in. Instead I focused on what I could damage. The tendons, the ligaments, the gray-green muscle—I tore at it all with steel and sheer rage. Bare seconds passed before I was snared again, but it was long enough. Decaying flesh disintegrated under my knife, and suddenly hamstrung, Abbagor fell.

But not before he threw Niko.

My brother flew through the air in a hurtling rush and hit the edge of the tunnel where we had entered. The packed earth gave way and he tumbled on through. He hit hard, hard enough that he lost his sword. It pinwheeled lazily through the air, silver and bright.

And then it was over, all of it. Abbagor hit the ground, bringing everything, including me, down with him. The impact was like a bomb going off, and the cavern began to fall apart. Dirt and concrete fell in massive chunks and the glowing fungus that lit the place began to flicker and die. I saw the doorway Niko had disappeared through cave in as the other one had. At least he was out. The tunnel was smaller, more stable. It would hold. It would. It had to.

"Aupheling."

Shit. When was enough enough? When the hell was it enough?

"Aupheling." The voice was still thick with blood, but now it was heavy with gloating as well. "Now we both pass this world, as it should be. Old rivals cannot exist without one another." The chuckle was fat with superior satisfaction. "And why would we want to?"

He had fallen close enough to me that I was covered in a blanket of tentacles, cool and heavy. They rippled over me, petting… soothing. Almost hypnotic. "Almost" being the key word. I tore at them with hands and blade, fighting my way free. It could be I was going to die, but if that was the case, it was going to be at the opposite end of this death trap from Abbagor. My bones weren't spending eternity intermingled with his. That was no kind of heaven and every kind of hell.

"There's no place to run, little Auphe. No place at all." The eyeless face watched me with an indulgent bare-bone smile.

I gave it a shot anyway. I ran, and Abbagor let me. Because, in his mind, where would I go? All the tunnels had vanished in an avalanche of earth. Okay, fine. I'd dig my way out. I had a few seconds, right? How hard could it be? A chunk of stone hit my shoulder and knocked me sprawling. Good answer. Yeah, good answer. More of the ceiling fell with a rumble that grew until it was the deafening scream of a jet engine. I pushed up and ran again. This time I didn't make it three feet before I fell again. It was a knot of metal rebar and it hurt like hell. Lying on my stomach, I could see what Abbagor saw. The dirt had been like rain. Now it was a thundering waterfall. I couldn't even see the walls, much less where the tunnels had been. My legs were already half-buried and I was beginning to choke trying to breathe through the falling debris.

Abbagor was right. It was over.

Try telling that to my spasming heart, my fingers digging into the ground beneath me. The fight-or-flight response didn't know anything about an inescapable fate. It didn't know resignation. And it didn't know shit about giving up. Move, it screamed. Move. But there wasn't anyplace to move to. No place to go. None. Fuck.

And then it happened.

I felt something twist inside as if two hands were clawing their way through my internal organs. My seizing heart turned over, then did its damnedest to burst. A blazing heat rolled through my body, frying every nerve ending. It was like being electrocuted; it was like dying. Dying before dying.

That's when the gateway opened.

It opened before me, ripping a hole of hellish light into space itself. It was a talent peculiar to the Auphe. It was how they traveled—within this world, out of this world, in worlds that couldn't be imagined. I should know. I'd been dragged kicking and screaming through a few myself. But this one… this one I had made. I'd felt its birth, felt it form in and of me. This door, ugly and raw, was mine. If I'd had the time or anything left in my stomach I might have been tempted to throw up again. Didn't I have enough monster in me already? Did I need more evidence that I wasn't human? There'd been a time I'd been sure that was all behind me. When the Auphe had all died… but that hadn't happened, had it? They were still here… I was still here, and more like them than I'd ever wanted to admit.

I all but felt the hard swat to the back of my head and heard an invisible Niko order at my ear, Whine later. Escape now. Even in my imagination, he was right. I had no idea where that unholy rip led to, but it didn't matter. Midair, underwater, New Jersey—it couldn't be worse than here. Taking a deep breath, I dived through headfirst. As I hit the light, I heard Abbagor scream. Maybe he sensed the gate or maybe he just smelled my sudden sliver of hope. Whichever it was, his incoherent fury and rage might be the last thing I ever heard.

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," it was not.