Harry glared at him. “There was no need for it to be that brutal!”
“Oh, no need,” said Roger. “But it was fun.” He smiled at me. “You can’t tell us you never dreamed of doing that, Eddie.”
“No,” I said. “I never dreamed of doing anything like that, hellspawn.”
“Oh well,” said Roger. “No point crying over spilled brains.”
“I could kill the hellspawn for you, if you like,” said Mr. Stab.
He might have been discussing the weather. Roger started to say something, looked at Mr. Stab, and thought better of it.
“Thanks for the thought,” I said. “But no.”
“We have to get to the tower,” said Molly, her voice cold and focused. “It’s not far. I can feel its presence with my magics.”
“Then lead the way,” I said.
We followed Molly through the maze of steel corridors, and down into the deepest part of the underground bunker, until we were in a great steel-walled chamber directly under the standing Stones of Stonehenge. And there it was, sunk deep into a pit hollowed out of the bare earth; tall and complex and unnaturally shaped, the last tower of the Loathly Ones. There wasn’t room to build it high, so they’d sunk it deep. We could only see the top twenty feet or so, a jagged structure of alien technology combined with flesh and blood. Metal and crystal seamlessly fused with living parts. We all circled slowly around the exposed top of the tower, our feet sinking into the wet earth. This close, there was no doubt the thing was alive, in its own awful way. It was alive and it was aware. It knew we were there…and it didn’t care. It was complete and it was activated, We’d arrived too late.
Already a gateway was forming, an opening to another place. I couldn’t see or hear it, but I could feel it on some deeper, primal leveclass="underline" like a great eye watching me, like a wound in the world, like a door into Hell. Like a great cold wind blowing right at me from a direction I couldn’t name, chilling me down to the soul. Slowly I became aware of sounds too. I don’t think I was hearing them with my ears. Voices; howling, screaming, laughing, coupled with the sounds of tearing flesh and great siege engines slamming together forever. All the sounds of Hell on earth.
Molly grabbed me by the arm and shook me fiercely, and I came to myself again. Harry and Roger and Giles and even Mr. Stab were still staring wide-eyed and entranced at the forming gateway, as strange energies swirled and coalesced around the tower.
“We’ve got to do something!” said Molly. “The gateway’s opening! They’re coming!”
“I guess Jacob and Jay never got through after all,” I said numbly.
“Eddie …!”
“I know,” I said. “I know.” I looked at her. “How do you feel, Molly?”
“I’m still me,” she said, meeting my gaze squarely. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”
“Then let’s do it,” I said. I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out Janissary Jane’s weapon of last resort, the Deplorable End. It still didn’t look like much.
“Do we have the right to destroy our whole universe, just to wipe out the Hungry Gods?” said Molly.
“Hell no,” said Roger unexpectedly. He’d torn his attention away from the tower and was now looking at the thing squatting on my palm. “Is that what I think it is? Eddie, you can’t use it. Not while there’s still a chance, any chance…”
I had to smile. “A demon who still believes in hope. Now I’ve seen everything.”
“I believe in him,” said Roger, looking at Harry. “I have to hope… that we can find a way to be together. Not even a half demon is automatically damned for all time. You have to save the world, Eddie, so we can have a place to grow old in.”
“If the Hungry Gods come through, they’ll destroy this world and everything in it,” said Molly. “And then move on, from world to world, until there isn’t a living thing left anywhere. That’s what they do. Cosmic locusts.”
“I have no intention of destroying this universe, or this world,” I said. “I never did. I think… I’ll wait till the gateway has opened enough, and then I’ll go through it into their universe, their world; and blow it all to shit before they can come through.”
“You’re not going in there alone,” Molly said immediately. “You’ll need my magics just to survive in their world long enough to press the button. I won’t let you die alone.”
“Molly…”
“What reason have I got to live without you?” said Molly. “What reason have I got to live, as I am?”
“And you’re going to need me,” said Giles Deathstalker. He had Harry and Mr. Stab by the arms, pulling them away from the tower. They were both shaking their heads, coming to themselves again. Giles looked at me calmly. “You’ll need me to help you survive and operate in an alien environment. You’re not used to that. I am.”
“Fine by me,” said Harry, blinking his eyes hard, careful not to look directly at the tower. “Roger and I and Mr. Stab will stay here, and…guard the situation.”
“Quite right,” said Mr. Stab. “I know my limitations.” He nodded briefly to me. “You, of course, are a Drood, and therefore have no limitations. Everyone knows that.”
I looked at Giles. “I didn’t bring you here, across thousands of years, just so you could die fighting for someone else’s cause.”
He shrugged easily. “I am a warrior. Fighting is what I do. And besides, this is about family as well as saving humanity. You took me in, made me feel like one of you. I never knew that before. Never really had a family, before. You taught me the worth of duty and honour and responsibility. You have shown me what it really is to be a man. To be a Drood, and a Deathstalker. So I will fight, and if need be die, for what you gave me. Anything, for the family.”
Roger looked around sharply, glaring at the tower. “It knows we’re planning something. It’s just put out some kind of call, or alarm…summoning something.”
We all looked around sharply as, from back inside the bunker, we heard something moving. The sound of bodies rising up, and slow dragging feet…and I just knew what it had to be. All the dead bodies in Truman’s base, raised up by the tower’s power, and summoned to defend it in its time of need. The dead, called to strike down the living. I grinned at Harry.
“Looks like you’re going to have to guard the situation after all. Hold your ground, keep those things back, for as long as you can. Just in case the three of us can find a way to come home. You never know.”
“I’ll hold this ground till you return, or Hell freezes over,” said Harry. “I may be a bit of a bastard, but I’m still a Drood. As long as there’s a fragment of hope left, I’ll wait here for you to return.”
The gateway opened around the tower, unfolding and unfolding like some monstrous alien flower. Its shape made no sense at all, but I could sense something behind and beyond it. Something becoming realer by the moment. I walked forward into the cascading energies, with Molly Metcalf on one side and Giles Deathstalker on the other, and the world fell away behind us.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
High Tension
The new place hit me like a hammer, driving me to my knees. Just the weight of the world was so much more than I could stand. It was like being inside a ghoulville, only much more and far worse. The sky blazed with a fierce light, blindingly bright, as though the whole sky was a sun. The air was packed with a hundred scents, so rich and foul and intense that they fought to fill my head. Sounds everywhere, sharp and cutting, deep and disturbing, shuddering through my flesh and reverberating in my bones, as though someone was scraping their nails down my soul. I hugged myself tightly to keep from flying apart. I looked down to save myself from the incandescent sky, and the ground beneath me heaved and squirmed, covered with overcomplicated shapes that might have been vegetation or insects or something else entirely. There was so much detail my eyes watered, trying to cope with it all. Everything in this new world beat with life, as if even the ground and the stones were alive and aware, everything pulsating with an appalling aggressive vitality. There was movement all around me, swift and sharp, as though nothing here ever rested, even for a moment.