"'Behold, a pale horse,'" Warren said. "Shit."
"'And the name of him who sat on it was Death,'" the little man replied. He pointed a finger at Jojola and said, "Only him. I'm sorry but the rest of you must leave."
Lucy started to object, but Jojola stopped her. "It's all right, Lucy. This is the part I need to do on my own."
"Let me come with you," she cried. "I know David better than anyone. If he's alive he wouldn't let me be hurt."
Jojola shook his head. "Can't do it, Lucy. I have a feeling we all have a part to play out in this, but this journey is mine." He looked at Ned. "Take her home, son. And Lucy, if something happens and I don't come back…tell my son that I love him and will see him down the trail."
Lucy nodded and allowed herself to be guided back down the stairs. The little man closed the door and locked it behind them. He looked up at Jojola's face, searching for a moment, then turned and led the way back through the museum.
They reached a stairway and headed down into the basement, past an ancient boiler and coal furnace, until they came to a wall. Jojola wondered why they'd stopped but then the little man tapped on the wall with a small stick. A portion of the wall then moved outward, and another man, only slightly bigger than his guide and dressed in a long, hooded robe, jumped out.
"This is Roger," his guide said and turned to go.
When he was gone, the new man looked up at Jojola from beneath the hood, which shrouded most of his face in shadow. "So, you're the up-worlder who killed the demon Lichner," he said. "Nice work. You must be pretty handy with the pig-sticker you have in your bag. You might want to keep that handy where we're going."
"Where are we going?" Jojola asked.
The man grinned. "Why, down under, don't you know."
"Is that where I'll find Grale?"
The man shrugged. "Who knows what you'll find. Maybe only death." With that the man turned and went back through the secret passage.
Jojola hesitated. He didn't want to follow this man. He didn't want to die where the sun would not find his soul. Pulling open his backpack, he removed the night-vision goggles, which he placed on his head, and his knife, which he attached to his belt.
"You coming?" a voice said from beyond the hole in the wall.
"Right behind you, Roger," he said and plunged into the dark.
They'd marched for several hours in the dark-Roger using a small flashlight, Jojola with his goggles. The paths they took varied. At first they seemed to follow some sort of passageway between buildings, with old bricks beneath their feet and lining the walls.
Then Roger squeezed through a crack and Jojola followed him into what appeared to be an ancient sewer system. "Built in the 1800s and abandoned," his guide explained. "This whole island is honeycombed with passages and sewers and subway lines-some of them working, some of them not and long forgotten. Some we have no idea who built them or why."
For a time they'd followed a subway track. "Stay away from the third rail," Roger warned. "Touch it and you'll disintegrate."
That path had led to a hole that went down a rickety old ladder that had obviously been taken from somewhere else-it looked as if it had once belonged on a fire escape-and into a narrow, damp passage carved from the rock. The passage plunged down, turned corners, rose again. Sometimes there'd be a roar and a subway train would pass overhead or to one side. Other times they'd march along with no other sounds than the dripping of water and the scurrying of rats.
At least Jojola thought they were rats. Roger sometimes paused when the scurrying grew louder in side passages. He seemed concerned, but all he'd say was, "We need to keep moving."
Although at times they kept up a good pace, other times the going was slow as they wound their way through the maze of tunnels, and even seemed to double back. At one point, after they'd plunged for what Jojola estimated to be a half mile, Roger called a halt.
"Sorry, need to catch my breath," he'd panted.
"You okay?" Jojola asked.
"Not really," Roger replied. "My liver's giving out on me. Used to be a stockbroker in the up-world, you know. Had a wife and kids, nice home in Mount Vernon. But, man, did I love the bottle. Lost everything, including my self-respect. Now look where it got me." The man laughed bitterly.
"Yeah? I had my own love affair with tequila and whiskey," Jojola said. "Spent a lot of time in gutters and jails. But why live down here?"
"Too hard to stay sober up there," Roger said. "And I guess this is my self-imposed purgatory to atone for abandoning my family, as well as myself. I did some pretty terrible things up there. At least here I'm doing some good."
"How's that?"
"Why, trying to keep the hounds of hell at bay so that the rest of the world can enjoy their Christmas dinners and PlayStations," Roger said with another bitter laugh. "Demon hunting, Mr. Jojola."
"Demon hunting?" Jojola asked. But instead of an answer from Roger, he was struck by a rock that came out of the dark, and then another.
"You're about to find out, Mr. Jojola. I suggest you get out that knife," Roger shouted, pulling aside his robe to produce a long knife of his own.
Then Jojola saw them. A dozen pale human figures with luminous eyes, flitting from crevice to crevice toward them. They brandished sticks and metal bars; occasionally one stooped to pick up a rock and hurl it in their direction.
"Show them no mercy, Mr. Jojola," Roger said. "They'll show you none." With that he shouted, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I commend your souls to hell," and ran to meet the attackers.
Jojola followed and found himself face-to-face with a large man in tattered clothing with fingernails like talons. "Stop, I don't want to fight you," Jojola said.
The man opened his mouth in a horrible leer but just hissed as he swung a huge club at Jojola, who ducked and stabbed for the man's chest. The blade sank deep and the man screamed and fell to the ground writhing.
Before he could turn, another of the attackers jumped on Jojola's back and sank his teeth deep into his shoulder. Reaching up, Jojola grabbed the man by the hair and pulled him off. Still holding him up, he slashed with his blade and nearly severed his assailant's head from his body.
The attack was over as suddenly as it began. Jojola and Roger had backed themselves against a wall with their blades out when one of the group barked some command and they retreated-though not before clubbing the first of Jojola's victims to death and dragging him and the other dead man off.
"Something for the old stew pot tonight," Roger said and laughed mirthlessly.
"What in the hell was that?" Jojola said, rubbing his shoulder where he'd been bitten.
"We like to call them morlocks, you know, after the creatures in H. G. Wells's book The Time Machine," Roger replied. "But really they are evil men-murderers, rapists, pedophiles, the criminally insane possessed by demons-who have fled into these lovely depths, though they venture out on dark nights to prey upon up-worlders. These, and others even more dangerous, are the ones we hunt, Mr. Jojola… What's wrong with your shoulder?"
"One of the bastards bit me."
"Hmmm, that's not good. They don't have the best dental hygiene, you know, and their bites tend to cause infection. We'll have to have it treated when we arrive."
"And when will that be?"
"Soon, Mr. Jojola. But I should caution you, we are in a very dangerous spot and not just from our hungry friends. We will have to go very slowly and carefully."
The troop of armed men had proved Roger right, but they'd run into no further problems by the time they reached their destination. Jojola's guide led him down another ladder, at the bottom of which stood a half-dozen men and women, all armed with a variety of weapons, from knives and spears to one or two guns.