by Chuck Wendig
She loses her balance. Almost goes under.
When she comes back up, the spire has changed. It’s grown—a long protrusion, like an arm, an arm with a gun at the end of it that pushes into the mouth of a goblin and—
Boom.
Hrothk blows the back of the goblin’s head out like a party popper.
The spire shifts—stones grinding and grumbling, and then it stands, an arm thrusting out as the top of the rock crumbles to dust and leaves a head in its place, quartz eyes shining.
Hrothk roars.
And with that, all that’s left is the cleanup. Hrothk makes short work of the gobbo pack: lifting them up, smashing them, drowning them, ejecting their guts with rounds from his gun. Limbs splashing. Bodies bobbing. The river sucking goblins down into the deep to die.
17
The demon families betrayed the Great Below epochs and eons ago. They were the children of kings and worms, the blood of man and the blood of Hell commingling together—it was them who helped close the doors and seal off the worlds. And their bloodlines still run thick with the treachery. Bellbook. Candlefly. Glasstower. Gravehorse. Hogstooth. Lambskey. Woodwine. Wormsong. Liars and cheats and traitors. They will be made to see the error of their ways. It is predicted. And they shall be the ones shining the light on their failures. The snake slowly closes its mouth. Bites down on its own tail. All things come around.
— from the Histories and Mysteries of the Riven Worlds, by John Atticus Oakes
*
Oakes steps out as Pelsinade, in human form, draws herself up over the railing of the boat and onto the deck, muddy water cascading off her hair. She grabs lengths of her locks and milks them of the river muck, spattering it onto the deck.
“It’s done,” he says.
“Yes. I know. The koblyn-folk almost undercut our efforts.”
“Were they attacked?” Oakes asks.
She nods. “Yes. They almost lost that fight. But an unexpected ally saved them.”
The muscles beneath what would be his eyebrows rise in blood-slick arches. “The golem. The cultist.”
She nods. “Their savior.”
“And, I hope, not our undoing.”
“We will course correct as we must.”
He sighs, nods. “Too many uncertainties. Variables unanswered. This is treacherous ground. Threading this needle will take the steadiest hand if we are to see our efforts rewarded. And her father...”
Pelsinade walks over to him. Feet silent on the deck. She pulls him close—her hands are wet, cold, numbing. Her embrace is like having skin again, and in moments like these he cannot help but acknowledge that he misses his flesh, misses everything about being truly alive. He misses the blue sky. The sun above. The wind, the days, the nights, the cities, the towns, the trees, everything and anything, all of it a fierce weight that threatens to crush him with desperate, wanton need.
But she silences all of that. She opens her mouth. Her tongue slithers out, a creature all its own. It separates—from a single tongue to several tentacles, from fleshy pink to tarry black. She presses her mouth to his and his cheeks bulge as she explores his mouth with her tendrils. They caress his teeth. They suck at his tongue like hungry jellyfish. They force their way down his throat and he feels his esophagus swell to accommodate them, a warm and satisfying fullness.
She withdraws. He can breathe again but it’s like he can’t breathe, either—always the feeling when she pulls out of him.
“We will persevere,” she says, caressing his hot, wet facelessness. Where she touches, it tingles and burns, cools and warms, like someone pressing cold pennies to his face at the same time fire ants bite. Skinlessness is a wonderful thing. Such sensations.
“I hope so.”
“Hope is not a factor. Faith is what we have. We have had faith in you, and you in us, and see where it has gotten us? This confluence of events is not random. It has been orchestrated. We are the architects. The girl will see the way forward. The demon families will pay their part. And the worlds will overturn. No distinction between death and life. Between light and death. These are the opening moments of a new era.”
“Or the dying moments of an old one.”
She smiles. Kisses him. Wriggling tentacles. One slithers into his sinuses. His cavities feel heavy and thick and wonderful.
Once more the kiss ends. Once more he feels empty.
“Still,” she says. “The father is a rogue element. The first attack on him failed.”
“I have another way,” he says. “A more insidious path forward.”
“I like insidious,” she says.
“As do I, my love.”
Tongues and tentacles mingle.
PART THREE
MOOKIE
18
I looked into the Trog skull’s eyes. And at first I couldn’t see anything—just a citronella light, not bright but still like it was shining on the back of my eyes. Like, somewhere deep in my brain? Instant headache. Migraine, too, like the light shining in was now trying to shine out, trying to take my brain and my eyes with it. But then, suddenly, I saw. The migraine fell away like leaves off a tree in autumn. And this little movie started to play. Only way I can describe it. And I saw this golem’s life. All the way from his birth out of rock to his death at the biting jaws of a god-worm—that, fairly recently, and in a way I wonder if I didn’t have something to do with it. I saw his children, if you can call them that—did you know Trogbodies had children? They grow like crystals, little crystals that get bigger and bigger and begin to glow with light and awareness and then larger rock grows around them and that becomes the skull and... well. Who cares? That’s not the point of this. I’m not Oakes. This isn’t me mapping the highways and byways of Hell. The point is, I found my answer. I found the way forward. And the way forward—I can’t believe I’m even saying this—is to get married.
— from the journals of Eleanor Jessamyne Pearl, Living Dead Girl
*
“What’s buzzin’, cousin?”
Mookie lurches forward, gasping, sweating, feeling like he’s a drowning man yanked up out of the sea at the last possible moment—the moment before his lungs give out and fill with brine, the moment before the waves crush him and sharks come nosing around for blood. He licks his lips, shivering.
White room. Hospital room. A monitor hooked up to him goes beep, beep, beep—but faster now when his eyes fall upon Kelly sitting there at his bedside.
Hair dyed green the color of seafoam. Red ribbon with white polka dots tying it all together. Black and white-striped shirt stretched tight. She uses her Bowie knife to slice off bits of salumi—Mookie’s nose detects the sharp tang of fennel, maybe white wine. He groans, suddenly starving.
“Kelly,” he says.
“Skelly,” she answers. “I’ve gone back to that life.”
“Come back to me.”
“Can’t come back to a dead man.”
“I didn’t die. I’m alive.”
How is he alive? he wonders.
She laughs. “You want a taste of this?” she asks, gesturing to herself with the flat of the knife—like she’s a homicidal Vanna White showing off her serial killer wares. But then she sticks a bit of sausage on the end of the massive blade and leans it toward him.
He grunts, sits up, reaches for it, straining—
And she pulls it away.
“Mm-mm,” she says, shaking her head, clucking her tongue. “Meat is for good boys, and you most certainly are not a good boy.”
“Kelly, I think I got a problem—I’m sick or something, I... I dunno, and I think we’re all in some kinda danger—”
“I got something else for you,” she says with a wink, then pulls out a book. The cover a lattice-work of little bones. The pages crinkled and dark.
“The Maro Mergos,” he croaks.
“That’s right. I paid Lacey for it. Paid her in a knife across the throat.”
“Kelly—”
“Skelly.”
“Skelly, you didn’t have to do that, she was just a kid, just a thief—”
“I don’t abide traitors anymore, Mook. People who go against me, who can’t appreciate my value, well, then they gotta go. You’ve gone soft, big fella, but me? I’ve gotten hard. You’re coal dust. I’m diamond.”
“Don’t be like that,” he says. He tries to sit up. Everything hurts. It feels like he’s got a bowling ball rolling loose in the middle of his chest. He props himself up on pillows, holds out his hand, palm up. “Come here.”
“You want the book.”
“I want you, first. I...” His jaw tightens. He’s not good at this shit. “I love you.”
“You can have the book.”
“Skelly, I just said—”
She slams the book down on his chest. The air is blasted out of his lungs. She moves fast. Raises the knife up. Plunges it down, sticks it all the way through the book’s hundred pages, through the latticebone cover, through the parchment, and into his chest, splitting him like a log. Her face leers over him, wild-eyed, mad, stretched and screaming—and suddenly it’s not her anymore, but his daughter. Nora. Cackling. Crying. “Save me,” she hisses. “Come, Daddy, and save me...”
*
Flatline.
Everything squeezed in a vice. Mookie’s head a pimple between two thumbs. His limbs like forcemeat squeezed into casings to make sausage. His heart is a pulped peach, overripe, leaking juices, crushed between closing fingers—
Suddenly, someone is standing over him. Two someones, then one again—his eyes gone blurry, his vision showing an echo of itself. A woman. Face pursed as if it has a drawstring attached and pulled tight as it can go. Sharp, severe hair. She lifts his shirt. He tries to struggle, tries to get this woman away from him, but his arms won’t move.
Another person. To his left. Hands something to the woman.
A little tin. A little teaspoon. She pops the tin with one thumb. The lid lands somewhere with a rattle. Then a dip of the spoon and a glimpse of something green—
And she shoves that spoon into his chest.
He feels a cold shock. Like an icicle that starts at his chest and ends at his back. Melting. Cold winter slush, dirty slush, running through him.
Next is a feeling Mookie knows all too well.
Everything slides. A footstep on melting ice. Slick, slippery. The world shudders like it just had an orgasm. Fingers of blue fire burn up the sides of Mookie’s everything. Cerulean. Peacock powder. Blue Blazes.
Then the sound of his flatlining heart takes a little jump. Then another. Then a steady third, fourth, sixth, tenth, blip, blip, blip.
He draws a deep breath. It hurts. It’s rough and shrill, like the sound of an amateur drawing a bow across a violin. And then he feels his heart, his limbs, his head—everything softens, eases. The tightness unclenches.
“That was very close,” the woman says. Her voice is short, sharp, British.
A second voice. Male. Gruff. Boozy. “Almost lost the big sonofabitch.”
“You are very crass, Mister Woodwine,” she says.
“And you are very boring, Missus Bellbook.”
“Miss,” she says.
“Well, I don’t like ‘Mister’ Woodwine. Mister Woodwine was my father, as the saying goes—though, let’s be frank, my father was a worthless turd. Point is, friends and enemies alike call me John Wesley.”
“And I am neither friend nor foe—”
“Jesus Christ,” Mookie says, his voice a guttering diesel engine. “Fuck are you people? What happened? Where am I?”
He tries to sit up. But his arms are stopped short by a pair of leather cuffs restraining him to the rails of a hospital bed. The woman says, “We had to do that because—”
He wrenches his arms upward. The bedrails pop off like they were attached with chewed gum and twist-ties. Mookie sits up, wincing past the pain, and rips the bedrails and cuffs off his wrists. He flings them to the ground. Clang clang.
When he sits up, he gets a gander of the room.
This is no hospital room.
It’s a library. Not a public library—the kind some rich motherfucker, some wealthy academic, might have. Tall shelves of red wood, shelves that go up past a wrought-iron catwalk. Shelves closed in by shined glass. Two wooden ladders, each carved with ornate scrollwork, on either side of the U-shaped configuration of bookshelves. A glass desk at the far end. A glass table closer. Above it all, a candelabra that doesn’t fit the rest of the room. Like something made out of old pipe and pipe fittings—rust and limescale corrosion, elbow joints, candles flickering.
They must see him looking at it.
“It’s from Below,” the woman says. “Broken pipes found in a goblin temple. No archaic or antiquary value. Just a human thing found in a monstrous place. A curiosity.”
“And ugly as sin,” the man says. Mookie gets a look at him. Flannel shirt. Big beard—the kind birds might nest in. A bit flabby. Older—Mookie’s age, probably, having crossed the boundary lines of his fifties. Lines in his brow deep enough to slot a penny and never see it again. “But this isn’t my house, so, oh well.”
Mookie’s hands tighten into fists. “You got ten seconds to tell me who you are or I start punching this place into little splinters.”
“Cool down, Punchy McGee,” the man mutters.
“We,” the woman says, at a high octave with a sneer and a side glance thrown toward the bearded man, “are the ones who saved your life. I am Minerva Bellbook. My cohort here is John Wesley Woodwine.”
Woodwine offers a casual nod.
“Saved my life,” Mookie says, unclenching his fists. “I almost died?”
The woman, Bellbook, is about to speak but John Wesley jumps in. “Technically, you did die. Your body’s gone to shit. Couldn’t handle the stress of this life—or the Pigments you pump into it—anymore. And then you had to go and gobble down some Vermilion, fight a bunch of cultists, and then fall a hundred feet—”
“Hundred and forty-two,” the woman says.
“—to an outcropping of rock, where if you hadn’t been all beefed up on the Red, you probably would’ve shattered your spine like a candy cane dropped on the kitchen floor. Of course, if you hadn’t been on the Red, you might not have fallen at all.”
“If I hadn’t-a been on the Red,” Mookie growls, “they woulda had Nora.”
“Nora,” Bellbook says.
“Nora,” Woodwine says with a whistle.
“What?” Mookie growls.
“You wanna bite to eat?” Woodwine says. “Walk with us.”
“My daughter. What about my daughter?”
“Come,” Minerva says. “Let’s first get you out of this bed.”
*
Another room. He hobbles along to it, hemmed in on both sides by Bellbook and Woodwine. Mookie always knew this life would take its toll—really, it has all along, robbing his pockets every day. But this is the first time he really, truly feels it. Old in all his bones. His body no longer feels like a prime cut of filet—right now, all he feels like is a packet of old lunchmeat, loose, flabby, floppy.
They sit him down at a small sitting table by a window. The blinds are closed. Gauzy light shines through them.
They cut him slices of meat and cheese.
Nothing fancy. Store-bought calabrese salami and sharp cheddar. But it’s good. Real good. A little spice in the meat. An acid tang to the cheese. His jaw works itself sore chewing. Through it, he growls, “Talk.”
Minerva Bellbook sits. John Wesley hovers about.
“Your daughter is getting married,” Bellbook says.
Mookie stops chewing. A meatwad pocketed between gum and cheek. He starts laughing—it’s like an avalanche forming. Slow scree to sliding earth to bounding rock and soon he’s laughing so hard he’s almost crying. “Married. That’s a good one.”
But they’re not laughing.
So he stops laughing, too.
“Married,” Mookie says. “The fuck you mean, mar
ried?”
His two purported saviors share a look. She says, “We don’t have all the details. A couple weeks ago she showed up in the Prohibition tunnels beneath Los Angeles—”
“Hold up,” he grunts. “LA? A couple weeks ago? I just saw her.”
Another look shared.
“Brother,” John Wesley says, “you’ve been down here for a couple months.”
“Bullshit,” Mookie says.
Bellbook shrugs. “It’s true, I’m afraid.”
“We needed time to give you your new heart,” John Wesley says.
“New heart?” Mookie feels like something just sucked the wind out of his sails and now he’s floating in a dead sea with nowhere to go. Months gone by. Nora married. New heart. Almost dead. He clutches at his chest and—
He finds something there under his shirt.
A hard nub. A circle. Cold even through the fabric. His two attendants watch with some fascination as he starts to lift his shirt.
Bellbook says with a timbre of worry in her voice: “It’s a port—”
“It goes right to your heart,” Woodwine says.
Mookie peels up the shirt, and sees there a little iron ring. Affixed to the center of his chest with four little bolts and four little screws. The flesh around it is angry and red. The center of the ring is a little metal flap. Like what you’d find on a vent pipe or an exhaust port. An itty-bitty doggy door on a tiny hinge.
He grabs at it with his fingers—tries to pull it out. He growls as he works to dig his nails underneath it. Woodwine leaps in, wrestles for his wrist, but Mookie throws up an elbow underneath the man’s chin. Teeth clack. John Wesley screams around a bitten tongue as he staggers back. Bellbook yells in a volume Mookie would think uncharacteristic for her, “You need this to live. You need this to live!”
*
Back in the library. He sits on the end of the hospital bed. Bellbook tests each of the bolts with a small wrench. Behind her, Woodwine paces, holding a towel to his mouth, its white fabric now stained red. He grumbles as he walks a half-orbit.