He reminded himself of all of these things as he marched along Thalou Street. It was barely past breakfast and yet already the restaurants were preparing for lunch. His stomach grumbled at the scents of souvlaki and loukanika cooking. Yannis began to plan his own afternoon repast, musing lovingly over thoughts of dolmodakia and a tyropitta as a small after lunch snack. A little cheese pie never hurt anyone. He smiled at the thought.
His smile was erased the moment he turned on to Pittakou Street. The sun did not reach this far. The tops of the buildings hid the place away. Though the sky was blue and clear as the Aegean, down along this short road it was as gray as the black heart of a thunderstorm. Nothing but shadow. The scents of the food seemed to disappear. He could still see the faces of the tourists passing by, and the smiles of shopkeepers as they tried to draw people into their stores. It was the Likavitos Festival in Athens, now. A time of jubilant celebration, of music and wine, drawing families from all over Europe.
Bad luck, he thought. Bad luck and bad timing. Not that there was ever a good time for horror to slip from the darkness and taint the world of daylight. Murder was never good for business. Athens had more than its share of crime, mostly theft. But the murder of tourists was very bad for business. By lunchtime he would have his captain breathing down his neck. By the end of the day, the mayor would be laying it on Yannis as though he himself were the murderer. The newspapers would be starved for crumbs of information. But that was nothing to what he would face if the international press became involved.
CNN, he thought grimly. Sewer rats.
Yannis paused to push wispy strands of gray hair away from his face. Again he mopped his forehead, and he took a moment to rest. He lay his hands upon his belly as though he might relieve himself of the burden of carrying it for a moment. His father had been skeletally thin, but his mother… from her he had inherited his bulk and his shambling gait. She had been proud of it, the old witch. As though her size had been her greatest ambition and proudest accomplishment. Yannis was as heavy as he had ever been and was still half the weight that had finally killed his mother.
Water, he thought. He needed a drink of water. Although coffee would be an acceptable substitute.
At last, having no way to put off his venture into that gloom-dark street, he started on again. Halfway along there was yet another turn, this one barely an alley. It was a curving, cobblestoned path that at first glance could have passed as a delivery entrance for some of the buildings on Pittakou Street. At the end of the path was the Epidaurus Guest House.
There were a few people out in front of the place, but not as many as Yannis would have expected. He grunted to himself. Would you want to stand out here in the shade, with all the buildings far too quiet? The answer was no. The sounds of the Plaka could be heard from here, even distant music, but it was as though he had stepped into another world and the way back to the other might be gone when he tried to return.
Ha! he thought. You’re getting morbid in your old age.
His mouth twisted as though he had sucked on something bitter. Yannis had reason to be morbid. He had been witness to the monstrous and the terrible far too often in his life.
An officer in the uniform of the Athens police nodded to him and waved him in. Yannis did his best to hide the exhaustion he felt after wending his way through the maze of the Plaka. He said nothing to the officer, asked him nothing. The young ones hardly knew enough to fill an ouzo glass.
The Epidaurus was like many guest houses in the area. On the outside it was kept up reasonably well. The interior was barely passable. Its location near to the Acropolis brought in tourists who would consider it quaint, but though clean, the place was in disrepair. The walls needed painting and the wooden floors were scuffed and faded. There was nothing beneath those high ceilings to bring beauty to the place. No art on the walls, no elegant furniture or drapes on the windows. The prices were too high, but people paid them, and the owners spent not a penny to improve their lodgings.
Yannis thought the owners were miserly and their guests were fools. But he had a low opinion of most people. He was a curmudgeon, well-liked only by other detectives, and only then because, despite his appearance, he was skilled at his job.
There were two other detectives there when he arrived, but Yannis had seniority. The two men, Dioskouri and Keramikous, were pale and seemed nervous. When they noticed him they immediately broke off conversation with a pair of uniformed officers and a crook-backed old man who must have been the owner, and came to him instantly, faces etched with relief.
"Lieutenant," Dioskouri said, adjusting his glasses and running a hand over his wiry black hair. "You’ve got to come in and see this. We don’t know what to do."
It was all Yannis could do to sigh and not roll his eyes. Dioskouri was a broad-shouldered boy from the wine country, and his Greek was spattered with the dialect of his birthplace. It gave him away as young and naive, though he was past thirty.
Keramikous was altogether different. He was a tiny man, both thin and short, his stature barely that of a teenaged boy. Yannis was uncertain of his age, but he marked it at somewhere south of forty. Keramikous was balding, his hair already as gray as Yannis’s. He seemed fragile and withered, the oldest young man Yannis had ever met. But he was a good detective and a family man, and for that Keramikous had his respect.
"Niko," he said, studying Keramikous, surprised at the pallor of the veteran detective. Despite the summer heat that brought beads of sweat out on his forehead, the man shivered as though in a fever. "Niko, tell me the story."
The tiny man shook his head. "It’s useless to tell you." He spoke the Greek of a born Athenian, with the edge of the city in his voice. "Come and see for yourself."
His partner hesitated. Keramikous gestured to him, indicating that he should stay with the owner. The stooped old man seemed about to weep, his eyes red and moist, the skin beneath them swollen. The expression on Dioskouri’s face was enough to embarrass even Yannis. He had never seen a man look so grateful.
Coward, he thought.
But that was before he saw what was in the breakfast room.
Keramikous led the way. It wasn’t a very large room, just broad enough for half a dozen small tables and a sideboard laden with milk and juice, a bowl of fruit and boxes of dry cereal. There were pastries as well. This wasn’t breakfast as far as Yannis was concerned, but it was enough for tourists.
The glass floor-to-ceiling windows in the rear of the breakfast room looked out upon the guest house’s one bit of beauty, a large courtyard garden. The flowers were in full bloom, and their scent traveled in through the shattered windows on the breeze. Somehow the sunlight touched the garden, though it would not bless the street outside.
The only reason that Yannis had even a moment to notice any of these things was that at first his eyes could not make sense of the things that he saw in that room. His mind simply did not comprehend. Two of the tables, it appeared, had been given over to some strange artistic impulse. Seated in chairs were a trio of granite statues, intricately carved, startlingly realistic. There were cracks in the stone. One had a finger broken off and it lay on the floor. Another had a real coffee cup raised to its lips.
Yannis frowned, shaking his head, confused by this oddity. What sort of attraction did the owners of this place think this would have for their guests.
It was a matter of a second or two, only, while these thoughts capered in his brain. Then he frowned, deeply.
Where’s the body? Where is the murder that brought me here?
Next to the sideboard was another statue, this one of a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven. It had broken into half a dozen pieces, but mentally he rebuilt it, picturing what it would have looked like before it had broken, standing up.
It would have appeared to be reaching for something with its right hand. In its left it clutched an orange.
A fresh orange.
Understanding dawned on him. These were his bodies. The murders. Niko K
eramikous must have seen it in his eyes, for the younger detective nodded in confirmation, unable to speak the words, his revulsion plain on his face.
Yannis’s stomach churned. He thought he’d seen everything.
"Niko. Go and get the owner. I want to speak with him."
Keramikous sped from the room and closed the door behind him. Yannis cursed under his breath, the filthiest words he could dredge from his mind. He turned his back on the murdered family, on their stone faces, and reached into his pocket. The sweat on his back and under his arms was worse now, in spite of the breeze from the courtyard.
He withdrew his cellular phone and glanced around the room. There was too much sunlight in here. In a corner there was another door, and he opened it to find a closet used to store extra chairs. There were shelves of plates and glasses and silverware, but there was just enough room for him to step inside. He closed the door behind him, cloaking himself in near total darkness… in shadows. And he dialed a number.
Yannis Papathansiou had been on the job a long time and had seen much of what lay within and beyond the surface of this ancient city. The Athens police wouldn’t have the first clue how to deal with something like this. But he knew someone who would.
Every shadow was a doorway. Not just anyone could walk through one, of course. To most people — humans in particular — shadows were simple things, patches of darkness created when an obstacle came between the available light and any surface upon which it might shine. A woman walking her dog in the park on a sunny day would cast a shadow upon the ground. So would her dog. A jacket hung on the end of a child’s bed might block enough of the illumination from her nightlight to throw a strange shadow upon the wall or ceiling. Yes, there were shadows everywhere. Beneath every bed and in every closet. On the far side of every tree. Under benches and buses and just around the corner of every building.
And every one… every single one… a doorway.
Beyond those doorways there existed an entire world, a gray-black warren of pathways and tunnels, an interconnected maze that seemed infinite and yet turned in upon itself again and again. There were vast empty spaces in the midst of that shadow world, dark and barren places. The footing was uncertain, and the darkness seemed to breathe and to be very aware of those who walked within it. No one stayed in the shadows for very long.
Humans gazed at the shadows and shivered. They perceived the splashes of darkness with trepidation, their unconsciousness, the ancient, shared memory of their species reminding them that anything might emerge from the darkness, which was a place of the unknown, a dangerous place from which, once upon a time, many things might have escaped. Most of them were extinct, now. There might be a Norse svartalf or two still roaming the darkness, and if any of the tengu awoke, it was possible they would seek refuge there. But for the most part, the shadows were the domain of hobgoblins now.
And there weren’t that many of them left, either.
All of which suited Squire just fine. He liked a party as much as the next ‘goblin, but when he was working, he liked it quiet. Plenty of space to move around in, nothing to disturb him, and time to think.
Hobgoblins had an innate ability to navigate the darkness. He could dive into a pool of shadows in England as though it were water, and emerge from beneath a baby carriage in Los Angeles moments later. Many of the ancient races of the world had died out or were in danger of doing so. His own kind was not thriving, but they survived. To Squire’s mind, this was because they were simply better at running away from trouble than any other creatures in existence.
Squire didn’t like to run away. Not normally, in any case. He was more a lover than a fighter, but that didn’t make him a coward. Fortunately, he spent most of his time around beings who were fighters. So aside from the occasional, unavoidable scrap, he could concentrate on the lovin’.
Well, that and the weapons.
One of the things about hanging around with fighters, and being employed by one, was that they needed weapons. Mr. Doyle had an unparalleled collection of weapons from every culture in the world, not to mention many from realms beyond it, and from every era in history. Some were museum quality and beautiful, others were ugly and efficient. When the muses called to him, Squire would forge new weapons of his own design. All of them needed caring for, and that was one of Squire’s many duties in the household of Arthur Conan Doyle.
Driver. Valet. Weaponsmith. Armorer. His name was his occupation. He was Doyle’s squire. And he loved his work.
Now, in his workshop in a lost corner of the shadow world, with the darkness pulsing around him, shifting and breathing, the gnarled little hobgoblin worked at the grindstone, pumping it with a foot pedal. The blade shrieked against the stone, and fiery sparks sprayed from the metal. The sound unnerved most people, like nails on a chalkboard, but Squire loved it. It was music to him.
He bared rows of tiny shark teeth in a satisfied smile as he held the weapon up, examining it in the illumination cast from the flames of his forge. The shadows did their best to swallow all light in this place, but the furnace of his forge was enchanted, and would have burned at the bottom of the ocean. The weapon was double-bladed… little more than a double blade, really. He had combined the concept of the ancient punching blade, katar, with the more Medieval double-headed battle-axe. The warrior grasped a handle in the middle of the two razor-sharp, rounded blades and thus could swing a cutting edge in any direction. The blades themselves were an iron-and-silver alloy that would have been impossible, save that his employer was an accomplished alchemist.
Iron was poison and pain to witches and the Fey. Silver was death to many of the creatures of the night. A good weapon. Squire was proud of it.
In the light of the forge’s blaze he could see his reflection in the blade. His tiny eyes flickered in the firelight. There was a blemish in the metal, and the leathery brown flesh of his forehead wrinkled in consternation. He reached out a yellowed, cracked nail to scrape at it, to investigate, and then he chuckled softly with a rattle in his throat from too many cigars. It was merely a cut on his face, reflected in the pure mirror of the blade.
Squire drew his thumb along the edge, barely touching, but it cut him like a whisper, drawing a thin line of blood from his flesh.
He nodded to himself in satisfaction. A job well done. Now he only needed to fashion the leather sheath such a weapon would require. It was not complete without it, for the dual blade was too dangerous to carry unsheathed.
But the leather would wait.
Squire set the weapon on the wooden worktable where he kept most of his tools, and stretched. He had been crouched over the forge, and then the anvil, and at last the grindstone. His back hurt like a son of a bitch, but it was worth it just looking at the beauty he had made. He sucked his injured thumb, but there was pleasure in it. To him it was only right that the first blood the weapon should draw would be his own.
"What am I going to call you?" he said aloud, brows knitting as he studied the weapon. The perfect symmetry of the twin blades impressed him. It was a nasty piece of work.
Twins, he thought.
"Gemini." That was the perfect name. It was a Gemini blade.
The hobgoblin patted the pockets of his coat and felt the reassuring bulk of his cigar case. He fished it out, spilling old candy bar wrappers into the shadows, then removed a cigar and set the case on the table. With great pleasure he bit the end off of the cigar and clenched it in his teeth, then went to the forge and leaned in, plunging the tip into the blazing furnace. The heat from the fire baked the skin of his face, but he was used to that. Hobgoblins had no particular fear of flames. Of burning to death, yeah. They weren’t stupid. But not of fire. A little scorching wasn’t going to do much damage to one of his kind.
With a sigh of pleasure he puffed on the cigar and glanced around at the shadow chamber. There were no walls, really, and yet the workshop did exist in a sort of void within the world of darkness. Black mist churned and pulsed all around, but there were
openings in that breathing shadow, pathways that would take him anywhere he needed to go. Once upon a time, Squire had been like other hobgoblins… daunted by the constant feeling that the shadows were aware of him, that the darkness sensed his every move and thought. It still unnerved him at times, but he had come to know this place, and there was no danger in it. Not for hobgoblins. Not unless other things roamed the shadows.
When that happened, he closed his workshop up and fled back to the world of light.
But at times like this, with a job well done and a fresh cigar in his hand, Squire could relax. He took several more puffs on his cigar and blew a cloud of noxious smoke into the shadows.
At peace.
A soft, electronic melody broke the silence of the shadows. The tune was The Beatles’ "Penny Lane." It was Squire’s ringtone.
He reached into another pocket in his coat — it had more pockets than was possible — and answered. "Squire."
He listened to the voice on the other end, cursing a couple of times. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. No, that can’t be good. You just sit tight there, spanky. Someone’ll be in touch."
Mr. Doyle strode along Hanover Street in Boston’s North End, enjoying the warm summer day. Once upon a time the neighborhood had been subject to a constant drone of noise from the elevated interstate that ran through Boston’s heart. But the city had done something extraordinary, burying the highway underground. It was quiet, now, in the North End. Or as quiet as the neighborhood would ever be.
The North End was a warren of curving streets, lined with churches, apartments, bakeries, and restaurants. Early in Boston’s history it had become the haven of the city’s Italian immigrants, and it still reflected the best of that cultural influx. The spring and summer seemed a parade of festivals honoring the Italians’ favorite saints, carnivals of food and music. This was a corner of the city — of the nation — that still enjoyed simple pleasures.
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