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Original art by conzpiracy - Deviant Art Site • Used with permission.

Chapter 1

Sometimes, I lead an exciting life.

I'm a private investigator, and yeah, sometimes that means serving notices, or taking pictures of things, or taking pictures of people serving notices, or following people around and taking notes on what they eat. For the most part, it's not terribly exciting. But . . . a couple years ago, I was within seconds of having my soul removed by a succubus. From hell.

That is excitement.

I didn't die, and my soul—however stained—is intact. I think. I still do a whole lot of what I did before. But like the poet said, the veil had been torn asunder. I knew for certain that there were things that go bump in the night, and I had spent many long nights since then tracking Evil to its lair, bumping back.

This night was not such a night. This night, I was sitting in my beat-up faded blue-and-rust 1984 VW Rabbit, watching the front door of a smut shop. Wednesday night is a slow night for pornography, and the only cars in the parking lot were mine and the clerk's. Every Wednesday that month, this store had gotten hit by the same guy at the same time in the same way, but since the store sat right on the city line, each of the law enforcement agencies involved would juggle it to their jurisdictional counterpart. No one in City Hall liked the owner much, I found out after taking the job. I didn't like him either.

I was dressed for work in South Texas Winter Thug Chic; dark grey BDU pants, light grey long-sleeved tee and a black leather jacket. Steel-toed boots and hair tied back, I should have been on the cover of P.I. Quarterly. Instead, I sat in a marvel of German engineering waiting for a porno stick-up man. I was also very sore. I'd gotten my ass handed to me the previous weekend by a group of teenagers dressed up like skeletons. Long story.

It was a good night for a robbery. The moon was bright but obscured by cloud cover. The wind was up, making litter tornadoes dance on the asphalt, shaking the bushes and trees. It was kind of relaxing. I sat back in the driver's seat and listened to Mike Patton on the radio, singing about how I might want it all, but I just couldn't have it. He was probably right. Bastard.

The music wasn't so loud as to cover the crunch of gravel under boots coming up from my left, so I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. Out of one squinted eye I saw a man pass my car, headed for the smut shop. He was tall, thin with a flat-topped crew cut, dressed entirely in black.

He had a big silver revolver in his right hand.

"That might be a clue," I said to Mike Patton, who went right on singing as if he hadn't heard me. The man in black went into the store and I got out of my car and followed.

I didn't want to spook the robber and get the clerk shot, so I waited outside the door. I didn't draw my own gun because I wanted the robber to think that I was just another customer, and maybe that way I could get the drop on him. I called a cop I knew and told him to head on out here.

At some point, it had slipped my mind that you could see out the smut door but not in. The door flew open and caught me right in my stupid face, reminding me.

"Who are you?" The robber stood over me with his gun, and the barrel pointed at my face didn't look quite big enough to fit my entire hand into. I'd had guns pointed at me before, though. I was still cool . . . ish.

"Don't shoot, I've got two wives and five kids," I said, then kicked him in the knee as hard as I could. As he fell backwards, his gun went off. Scattered asphalt cut the bridge of my nose. I sprung up and fell on him, landing with both knees in his midsection. All the fight went out of him, and as I got up he curled into a ball. I picked up his gun and held it on him until I heard the sirens. It took long enough that my arm was starting to tremble.

The clerk opened the door. "I thought he'd shot you, so I called the cops," he said and handed me a paper towel for my face. A patrol car pulled into the parking lot and its floodlight hit my face, so I tossed the gun away from me (and from the robber) and put my hands on top of my head, smiling. The cop I'd called pulled in right after.

"Exciting night after all," I said to the clerk. It felt good to be working again.

I sat with my feet up on the desk, feeling the wind go out of my sails. The day seemed darker than it had. Sounds were muted. Colors were washed out, greyed and pale. Tastes, smells . . . everything had a feel as if it all was being turned down by a giant, immutable, invisible hand.

I was looking at my bank statement.

This particular form of self-effacement had become a weekly practice for me. Kept me humble. Kind of. I turned the statement on its side to see if that made it look any better. Nope. That would just give me a crick in my neck.

"Sigh," I said to the empty office.

I had one last thing to try. I turned the statement around, away from me. That felt tons better, but then I couldn't tell how much ramen and powdered iced tea I'd be able to afford until my next job.

"Not that I'm planning on getting paid for it," I told my empty client chair. That was the truth. It was nearing the end of the normal business day on Thursday, and the smut peddler had yet to make good on his promise of oodles of immediate cash for stopping the robberies. I looked around at my bleak office and its spare furniture and thought to myself, This happens to me a lot.

About eight months before, I moved from my digs in San Marcos into near-identical digs in Austin. My furniture and files had been set on fire inside my rental van the first weekend I was here. That kind of set the tone for my stay, I think. I went to Goodwill and bought a couple of file cabinets, a desk, some chairs and a mini-fridge. Next day, I still had the file cabinets and desk. I went back to the Goodwill and (surprise!) bought the same set of chairs from the grinning clerk, left the fridge. Then I went out and got better locks.

Compared to those days, the office is now the lap of luxury, with three chairs, (one of them mine) a mini-fridge, a hot plate and a small AM/FM/CD/cassette stereo. All I needed to make this place an actual business was some clients. Preferably rich ones with low standards, not afraid to come into this neighborhood.

I checked my bank statement one last time. Pitiful.

I rummaged through the rest of the mail I had brought here from the Post Office, and under the stack on my desk was an envelope that hadn't been there when I sat down. It was addressed to me. No stamp.

Putting aside the stack of not-checks and bills I had no intention of paying, I held the envelope in my hands. I centered it on the desk and sat back. Poked it with a pencil. Mayhap I should open it, I thought to myself. I did.

Hey,
I'm sending someone to you, he's got your type of
problem, and I feel that your type of solution may be
warranted. His name is James, and he should be there
today. Try to be dressed when he gets there.
-SdA

"Ah," I said to the office. "Simon."

For the previous two years or so, Simon d'Argent had been my mentor of sorts, showing me what he could of the world beneath. I turned out to be an apt pupil. He frequently goes places and does Things, and because of that I'm largely on my own. And that's fine, because I'm really not a people person. I looked at the envelope and letter one last time. I needed to find out how he did that.

Waiting for James to show up turned out to be some sort of ordeal . . . normally, I'm pretty good at sitting around, but Simon had piqued my curiosity. I didn't really have any entertainment in the office, and I was all caught up on my foot dangling for the week. I didn't want to run out and try to find some entertainment and miss James. The only person that I could call that I knew for sure was in the city was John Chang, and he wasn't talking to me at the moment. He was one of the city's finest, Homicide, and the month before I'd had to, ah, homicide somebody, and I didn't call him before he found out it was me. So he's not talking to me.

There was one other person to call, but I wasn't sure I wanted to. Sonja d'Argent—Simon's daughter—was in town on a break from school, but Simon didn't like her talking to me. I didn't blame him, as the business can get . . . messy.

The public library had a new thing where you called up with your library card number, asked for a book, and they'd send a kid on a bike to deliver it. That would have been ideal, but I'd had a stack of library books in my apartment, which got fire-bombed the month previous (this coincided with me having to homicide somebody) and the books went up with everything else. So I owed the library money, and just like everyone else I owed money to, I didn't plan on paying them.

I sighed and put on a cassette tape of easy listening (Motorhead) and sat back in my chair. I closed my eyes and found that I liked the dark behind my eyelids, so I kept them that way for quite some time. Apparently, keeping your eyes closed like that is hard work, because it tired me out so badly that I fell asleep. I had a dream where I was fighting zombie cyborg sheep, and when I woke up I felt not at all refreshed.

The man in my doorway looked like he wasn't sure he wanted to be there. He was of slender build, with pale skin and red hair. His knobby wrists stuck out of the sleeves of his dark green suit jacket, and though I couldn't see them, I was sure that his pants would be too short.

His enormous Adam's apple bobbed once and he granted me a querulous "Hello?"

I smiled my most warming, welcoming smile at him and he took a step back. "James?" He nodded and came back into the office and shut the door. Already I liked him. Nobody shuts my door. I cleared my throat and motioned him to one of the chairs. "Simon sent you to me," I said.

He sat and nodded, his hands crawling over each other in his lap. This man was ill at ease. "Yes," he said. "I have—" he started, then stopped. "Uh, information has—" he cleared his throat. I sighed.

Simon was good with people. I am not. One more stop and I was going to reach across my desk and thump him.

"I'm a Druid," he blurted out. I shut my right eye tight, like the brain bits behind it hurt. "Well, I am," he said, "and the other night I received a warning from my brothers in England." As he gathered steam, his fidgeting went away. "I know people who know others, and they put me in touch with Mr. d'Argent, who in turn pointed me to you."

I forced my right eye open. "What kind of information?" I asked the question, but I thought that I already knew the answer, because I know Simon.

"Something terrible is about to enter our world, something from Outside." James looked at me, waiting for something . . . maybe disbelief or a lack of comprehension. He didn't get it. What he got instead was another sigh and a raised eyebrow.

"You're going to have to be more specific," I told him. "I'll need a where and a when, maybe even a what, if you can." I leaned back in my chair. "Tell me everything you told Simon, and we'll see what we can do."

He told me this:

A group of Druids in England kept watch on the Outer Dark. They also kept watch on those trying to contact the Outer Dark. The hits they get are few and far between, but when they get one, they act.

A couple of weeks previous, a beacon was lit and pointed at the Outside (this is all very metaphoric) and an emissary of the Chaos That Crawls was beckoned and a way was prepared. Nothing of the message sent could be deciphered, but that wasn't entirely necessary; any of Nyarlat's minions or aspects (different facets of himself, of which there are rumored to be nine-hundred, ninety-nine) loosed on this plane of existence could open the way for more, then even attract Himself, which was rare. We liked to keep it that way.

The Stonehenge Group was able to locate the crossing of the ley lines from where the message was sent, and they contacted their brother in the vicinity, James, who in turn asked around until he got to Simon.

"Well," I said, "do we know when the planets will be right for this thing to cross over?"

James nodded. "Next week. Tuesday night."

I started. "That gives us five days to prepare." James said nothing. "You," I pointed at him, "suck."

There really was no way I was going to be able to take care of something like that on my own, and I couldn't depend on Simon to show up if he was already working on a Something. That left me with Johnny the Cop, who wasn't talking to me. James cleared his throat. I looked at him and spread my hands.

"What?"

James looked uncomfortable again. "Simon told me you'd say that. He also told me that you'd need help, so he gave me this number to call before I came to see you." He showed me his phone.

It was my cousin's number. Io. Groan.

Chapter 2

I dislike working with my cousin, Io. For starters, he's . . . roll back Simon d'Argent's clock about forty years and make him less subtle, and that's Io. He doesn't tell me shit until he thinks I need to know it, and sometimes not even then. The other thing is the magic.

Magic. Sigh. Simon says that Io is one of a hundred people in this hemisphere that can use magic solo. Not talismans or amulets, but actual, pull energy out of nowhere and make things happen magic. And he's good at it. He doesn't have to hold down a job for money, either. He says this is because he "aligned his plane of being with that of the luck plane." I thought that was just some Subgenius bullshit until one day I saw Io check his watch on the street and catch a pearl necklace. He got to keep it.

If Simon called Io into this, I would be way out of line to send him packing. I would totally need his help. I didn't want it, though.

As if thinking about Io had conjured him up, the door to my office opened and in he swept. He wore a white hoodie over dingy grey cargo pants, messenger bag slung over his chest. His hair was completely white, silver rings and one bullet woven into it. Round, rimless glasses perched on his fine nose over a smug grin.

He didn't shut my door.

Io put his bag next to my desk and plopped into the other client chair, folding his hands in front of him. Rings decorated each finger and swirling tattoos peeked out from under his sweater sleeves. He leaned forward a bit and smiled at me.

"Been a while," he said. "A year?"

"Since Chicago," I said. "Yeah."

"Good times. What's all this, then?"

I gave him a more brief version of James' story. He looked thoughtful. "I can see why Simon wants both of us. I'm crap at the boring detective legwork, and you're crap at everything but that."

I smiled. "Eat fuck."

"You sweet-talking devil. You have a place to start yet?"

"Io, he's only been here about an hour, and most of that was spent telling me what I just told you." He spread his hands and moved his head back. "No. That does not—"

"James," he interrupted, "do we know what they're calling this um, aspect with?"

"You mean, like an artifact or something?" I asked.

Io gave me a withering look. "Yeah, like an artifact. What, did you think they'd just pick up their cell phones and dial star six, six, six?"

Balls. He had a point.

"Er, there was something of a rumor, yes," James answered. "We got word that they've stolen the Zenig of Aphorat."

"There you go," Io said, "a starting point. Get to detectin', mister P.I. man!"

I dislike working with my cousin, Io.

"So, now we know where to start looking," I said to Io, who was opening his messenger bag. "Are you going to do some scrying? Perhaps use a crystal or . . .?"

"The internet," he said, pulling a laptop out of the bag. "I'm going to surf the web to see who had the Zenig of Aphorat last. Then you can go and bug them."

"Good. Five days isn't a lot of time to play with."

"No," he said, typing in his password, "it's not. But it's also far too long for me to fool around with this 'Thing From Outside' garbage. I have enough on my plate as it is."

James nodded, like that made all the sense in the world to him. I think I was slightly offended. "What the fuck does that mean?" I said.

Io shook his head. "You and Simon, always chasing after otherworldly threats and threads, moaning about how little help you have. I am one of a hundred, always dealing with terrestrial dangers." He started typing just a little harder.

"Seriously. There are far more things to worry about that are here, now, and they have to be taken care of. That's what I do, get it? These nebulous, maybe they'll come, maybe they won't Things are just whispers in the dark. There's so much . . . hold on, I got a nibble."

James and I gathered around the laptop to look. I didn't recognize the search engine that Io was using, but it worked.

"Here," he said, pointing and clicking. "The Zenig of Aphorat was last in Dallas, Texas, in the hands of a family of German settlers. They got it out of the Dreamlands and held onto it for a hundred and fifty years, until six months ago, when they put out this here e-bulletin."

"Sweet," I said. "We're off to Dallas. I'm driving." I thought about the state of my car. "Wait. Maybe James is driving. Yeah, James, you're driving. Io, you get shotgun, you lucky devil. Now, someone tell me what the fuck a Zenig of Aphorat is."

Io described what we were looking for as we rode north on I-35 in James' rental PT Cruiser.

"If my memory serves me, and you know it does, the item we're looking for is named for the man it came from. It's made from his skull. The poor bastard tried to reach Kadath, and I can't tell if he made it and was punished or if he failed and was punished. Either way, his skull is set in a ring and sat on the finger of someone that I will not name. I found it in Lovecraft."

"Yeah-huh. How long did the code take to break?" I asked.

Io shrugged. "Didn't. This is one of the rare instances I've found where there is no code; it's just how the story says."

I nodded. Nobody said anything else, especially not James. We sat like that for a half-hour and his stereo didn't work and we had another hour of traveling yet, and I could not take it.

"Alright, Io, I give. Tell me a little about the terrestrial terrors you and your uh, what did you call them?"

"The Century."

"Right, the Century. Tell me about what the Century does."

"You don't want to know," Io said, shaking his head.

"Oh, just fucking humor me. Or fix the radio. I need to be entertained."

Io sat and thought for a minute. Then he spoke.

"There's a guy, he lives on the coast somewhere. He's one of us. He's not very powerful, like yours truly, but what he does, he does very well. Once a year, when certain planets align, he takes a bucket of starfish out on his boat, carves them up with a special knife, and throws them in the ocean. If he didn't do that, we as a race would face disaster of epic proportions."

I made a face. Io caught it in the mirror.

"What? He gets paid an outrageous sum by a consortium of wealthy families and countries to do this. His family has done this for thousands of years. His teeny-tiny magic is all that prevents a mass starfish migration to one place in the South Pacific, which would be the end of everything."

"You know what?" I said. "Forget I asked."

"No, fuck that," Io said. "What was the first thing you thought when you found out that if you cut a starfish in half, soon you would have two starfish?"

"Um . . . I wanted to run right out and try it. A lot."

"Really bad, right? That's because, on some level, you remember. Your fucking cells remember. In the days before the Flood, out of the waters came a starfish. Not like you got in science class, but a big, bad motherfucker of a starfish. It laid waste to everything and everybody. Warriors came everywhere to fight this thing. Finally, they overwhelmed it by sheer numbers and cut it right in half. It was Miller Time. They threw the halves in the ocean and forgot about it. A year later, two giant starfish came up out of the ocean and ta-daa! Here we go again."

"Just like in science class, but writ large."

"Yeah. This goes on for some time, and each time there are twice as many starfish as before. You'd think someone would figure it out. Eventually, one of the mages of the time gets involved. He figures out the whole regeneration thing and orders the starfish (of which there are eight or sixteen, I forget) cut into hundreds of pieces."

"That right there sounds kind of stupid."

"On the surface of it, yes. But this guy, he figured out how much energy it took for these things to grow back, and how much of that energy is based on ah, proximity to the other pieces."

"Proximity . . . so what, he scattered the pieces? How?"

"I kind of hinted at it. The Flood."

"The Noah's Ark, Epic of Gilgamesh flood?"

"That's the one."

"Holy shit," I said. "He conjured the fucking Flood?"

"Yes. So now, starfish only get so big as long as this ritual is done. By one of us, the Century. If he stopped, starfish would migrate to one place and then holy army of giant sea-monsters, Batman."

I was quiet for a minute. "You were right," I said, "I don't want to know."

The rest of the way to Dallas, James bored us with his intricate knowledge of crop circles. I had no way of telling him that I didn't want to hear it without being impolite, and I didn't want him shutting down on us. In case we needed something he knew when we got there, or something.

James drove us to a very nice neighborhood on the northwest side of Dallas. Suburbia was quiet and clean and it gave me the willies. Bad memories. Our PT Cruiser stuck out a little, but not more than the dusty black Dodge Magnum that was parked across the street and two houses down from the address we stopped at.

"Io," I said, "can you tell me if we're being watched?"

"Yes," he said.

"Yes, you can?"

"No, yes we are being watched. How'd you know?"

"Trained investigative senses," I said. "Come on. Let's pretend like we don't know. Try not to look around, James."

He nodded and we all got out. James did pretty well until we got to the front door of the Kithcart residence. His shoulders were all hunched up like he expected to get knifed in the back any second. Whatever. He didn't look around.

Io rang the bell and it was a minute or two before anybody answered. Anybody in this case was an elderly lady, about four foot nothing, with thick glasses under grey hair in a tight bun at the top of her head. She wore an apron that said "Kiss the Cook" over a blue paisley housedress.

She looked at all three of us and decided on James. "May I help you boys?"

He stammered for a moment. Io put his hand on James' shoulder and handed the lady a card. "We're here about the missing item," he said.

She looked at the card for a moment and waved us in. The house was spacious. Filled with cabinets and knick-knacks without being cluttered. Over the entry foyer was a hand-carved wooden plaque with a Latin saying on it. I don't read Latin.

When we were all inside, she turned and croaked something at us, making a sign with her hand. Her fingers crooked in ways that made me cringe. When none of us burst into flames (I guess) she lowered her hand and smiled again. Io was frowning.

"Just checking, young man," she said. "The Kithcart household is insular for a reason. I'm Mrs. Kithcart. Earlier this week I sent some young man in a nice suit running with his eyeballs on fire."

I knew it.

"So we dress foul but seem fair?" I asked.

She shook her head. "You seem foul. You in particular." She pointed with her chin at James. "He seems fair. No, that's not it. No fire, no worries." She toddled off into a sitting room. We followed.

"Here is the vault where we kept it," she continued, kicking a six-by-nine rug out of the way. Spry old lady.

Evidently, their basement was their vault. A trapdoor with a recessed handle was set into the floor, surrounded by runes of warding and other, more ominous signs. Io pulled back his right sleeve a quarter of an inch and frowned even harder. I knew from prior experience that he had a tattoo there that glowed a pretty blue when he was in some sort of magical danger.

"Oh, it's not active," Old Woman Kithcart said. "No point to it now that the item is gone."

I pointed at the sigils. "How would one get past these . . . these things?"

She waved her hands. "Password. Unraveling the magic in the signs. Fooling them into thinking that you weren't even here. Although, I'd wager that not even that one," she nodded at Io, "could pull that off. These are very old spells, and very smart."

Io nodded, his frown now so deep I thought his eyebrows might get tangled with each other.

Wait.

"So representatives from . . . someone else was here, asking about the Zen—" Io elbowed me, "the, er, thing that went missing?"

"Yes, that's right."

"And you sent them packing with your hex." I paused. "Would someone strong enough in magic to overcome the spells here get his or her lunch eaten by that . . . sign, or whatever?"

She shook her head no. That didn't make a lick of sense.

"That," Io said, "does not make a lick of sense."

For the next hour or so, Io tried (in vain) to get some sort of reading off the vault, but he could find no traces.

"It's like the only people that have used magic on this door are the person that set the wards and me," he said.

We thanked Mrs. Kithcart for her time and left. I told James again not to look around, and we all decided that it might be better if I drove. Especially if the shady characters in their black car meant us harm. The obvious black car gave me hope, though . . . if they were inexperienced enough that they'd use something eye-catching for surveillance, they might not be too great at the rest of the, ah, villainy they had planned.

I started the car. "So, what do you guys want to do? I think they'll follow us. We were in there for long enough. Do you want to try and lure them to us here, or something? We'd be kind of flying by the seat of our collective pants. Or, we could drive back to Austin, which will give us a couple of hours with which to hatch a plan."

James shrugged, having settled nicely into his "fifth-wheel" niche. Io looked thoughtful.

"I kind of like flying by the seat of my pants," he said.

"Yeah, me too. Let's do it here, before we chicken out."

I had Io, in full view of the bad guys, unfold a street map and point excitedly at some point on it before we took off. The black Dodge pulled away from the curb and didn't quite climb up my tailpipe. Excellent.

I was tempted to drive like a maniac, just to see if they'd try to keep up, but I didn't want them all worked up when they fell into our clutches. I did drive just a little faster than most folks on the road so it looked like we were in a hurry to get somewhere.

"Somewhere" was a dilapidated playground one or two suburbs over and down-scale from where we started. I parked the Cruiser in front of it and walked a block over to a mom-and-pop hardware store for a shovel and some rope. James took my spot behind the wheel. Io saw the shovel and caught my drift. He started waving me over and pointing frantically beneath a rusty swing set.

I jogged over, dutifully not noticing two guys get out of the black Magnum. Io and I got to a bare patch of earth around the same time. He pointed some more, and I started digging, my body turned so that I could watch the bad guys approach. The taller of the two wore a red flannel shirt over blue jeans, the other a grey turtleneck with a slight ruffle. I snorted.

While I was digging, Io had produced a crystal rod and palmed it in his right hand. I wondered idly if he was going to unleash some kind of force blast on these two. I hoped not, unless he'd fine-tuned it some. The last time I saw him use one of those, it took out a stone pillar, a telephone booth and a red VW Microbus.

The thuggy duo reached us. Flannel Shirt had his hand behind him, and if he had a gun, I didn't want him reaching it. I turned and hit him with the shovel. Io brought his crystal-fist around and clocked the other guy in the jaw. There was no explosion or fireworks or anything. Turtleneck just fell. He was still awake, so Io knelt down and hit him again.

"That's what you use that crystal for?"

Io smiled at me. "Oh, yeah. It's like a roll of dimes, or brass knuckles, only way more Zen."

Shaking my head, I waved James over. We used the rope I bought along with the shovel to truss our turkeys up while James drove the PT Cruiser up onto the curb and into the playground. I snatched a key ring off of Flannel Shirt before we tossed him and his buddy into the back of the rental car.

"Austin," I told James as Io got in with him. "My office."

He nodded and took off, and I ran over and followed him in the Bad Guy Magnum.

Chapter 3

One of the advantages to having an office in the sort of neighborhood where I have my office is that no one bothers you when you're moving bodies in or out of a vehicle. Even so, I had James pull around to the back of the building.

"To avoid any . . . Imperial entanglement," I told him. His face remained blank, but he moved the car. Don't Druids watch movies? Tree-huggers.

"I should say," he huffed as we prodded Flannel Shirt and Turtleneck up the stairs, "I'm not comfortable with any of this. Am I an accessory to kidnapping?"

"And assault," I said. "Or is it battery? I forget. Could be more before the day is out if these assholes don't co-operate."

Io nodded his head vigorously.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much, though," he said as I unlocked my door. "If it goes that way, neither of these guys will even remember their names." There was glee in his eyes, and I wondered how much of this was good cop / bad cop and how much The Punisher.

"No disintegrations," I said as we hustled our twosome inside.

We sat them back to back in my client chairs. We would have walked a slow circle around them, but my office isn't that big, and I'd have had to move my desk to do so. Would have ruined the effect. I settled for a baleful stare while Io went through their wallets.

"Louisiana?" he said. "I don't care how this goes, I am not going into any more fucking swamps. Period."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "Sorry, human race. We've all got to perish so Io doesn't get bitten by mosquitoes. Nice, man. Really."

"Gators," he said. I began to reconsider.

"De Dark One, he come," said Flannel Shirt, whose name was Robert. "He tell de boss, send these two get dat t'ing." He shook his head. "Me an' Jack, we got there late."

"You jus' shut yo trap, Bobby," Turtleneck Jack said. "You remember what happen to Boudreaux. De boss, he say he burn his eyes fo' failin'."

De boss be sneaky, I thought.

Io had a wry half-smile on his lips; he got it, too. James looked like he might be sick. I'd have to have a talk with him sooner or later. His goddamn problem, right?

Turtleneck Jack shut up firmly, a grim set to his jaw. We wouldn't be getting anything out of him without doing anything . . . distasteful. Robert, on the other hand . . .

Time to separate them.

"Jack," I said, "you're going to fucking tell us what we need to know. But not here." I looked out my window, doing my best to look furtive. "My walls are too thin. I don't need anyone hearing you scream." I gestured to Io. "If you please, sir."

"Certainly," he said, and knelt in front of Jack. He did something with his fingers and Jack grunted once and slumped over, out. Robert heard this and started to sweat.

"No, no," he said, almost frantic. "I'll tell you anyt'ing you wan'."

"Too late for that, Bobby boy," I said, picking Jack up in a fireman's carry with a grunt. "You're too scared. You'll just bleat out what you think we wanna hear. Jack here is a tougher cookie, and when he finally breaks I know it'll be the truth. James, the door."

The Druid opened the door and followed me out. When we got outside, I tossed him the keys to the Magnum and he opened it up. I dumped Jack in the back.

"Where are we going?" James asked, his voice shaking a little.

I looked at him. "Jack in the Box."

We drove around for a bit, chewing on bacon cheeseburgers. Whatever Io did to Jack, it put him out for a good forty-five minutes already. James was much relieved when he figured out that we weren't going to torture Jack or anything. His spirits were up and he had an appetite.

"So," he said between bites, "you guys do this sort of thing a lot, do you?"

"Not really," I said. "Well, not me. I'd say, in the past three years, I've only been involved with four or five actual, genuine, Things From Another World cases. Io, now," I laughed, "he's a tad more busy." I sucked down some iced tea. "You should ask him sometime to tell you about the flying head vampires from Down Under."

"I've always known about this kind of stuff," James said, "but being here, on the firing line, as it were . . . it's a bit unsettling."

I looked at him. The strain was evident in his face. Dark circles around his eyes crowned deep crevices on either side of his nose. He was wired and tired. I knew exactly how he felt. The gulf between knowing about things that go bump and having one living in your backyard is pretty deep.

When this was over, he'd look at almost everything with a fresh set of eyes.

My cell phone beeped. I had two texts. One was about the Magnum, the other was from Io. "Time to head back," I said. "Robert spilled all the beans he had."

James shifted in his seat. "I thought you said he'd just say what we wanted to hear?"

I shook my head. "Io has a built-in lie detector or some such," I said, waving a fry at James. "What I'm curious to know is, just what is it they think they're going to do once they find this thing they're looking for."

"The Zenig?"

"Well, yeah. It's like, ooh, there's a scary bit of stuff there, a skull set into a ring. It would make for a spooky fucking paperweight. But what else? What are they going to call into this world?"

James looked thoughtful. "Well . . . it was a ring worn by—"

"Shush," I interrupted.

"Right, sorry. Maybe that's who they want?"

"You said they wanted an aspect of Nyarlat."

"That's . . . what I was told."

I parked the car and thought about that. "I wonder how your buddies across the water came into the info they had?" I shook my head. "Whatever. Look, we're gonna keep the misfits separated until it's time to cut them loose. You stay down here and watch this one. One of us will come and get you. 'Kay?"

James nodded and I went upstairs.

Io was sitting on my desk, looking at a AAA map of Louisiana. "Good news," he said. "No swamps, no bayous. The area here," he pointed at a spot outside New Orleans, "used to be a swamp. This is the place where LeGrasse picked up that crazy statuette. The land was bought and developed by a company called Dreamlands Worldwide."

"Subtle," I said. "I made a call, and the Magnum that these guys were driving is owned by this same company."

He nodded. "Very subtle. Hah! They're some kind of multimedia outfit. Video games or something. This guy here is part of a team that's been buying or stealing minor artifacts across the United States for the past decade. I have a list of everything he could remember."

I took it from him. "Good. I'll run this stuff down, bounce the list off Simon's files and see if I can pick up a pattern. Did we get anything else from chuckles?"

"No. He told me everything he knew, but most of it was useless. I recorded our talk. Here," he said, slapping a CD down on my desk, "listen to it when you get a chance. Where's uh . . ." he put his hand across his neck.

"The body is downstairs," I said, and Robert, still tied up in his chair, but now in the far corner by the file cabinet, groaned. "James is watching after it. Why don't you go and take care of that while I," I shook the list of artifacts, "try to make sense of this garbage."

Io packed up his laptop and headed out. "Home," he said. I sat with the list, skimming it to see if anything there leapt out at me. And no, nothing did. Time passed as I looked through my own copy of Simon's notes. My stomach growled, even though I had just fed it something a half-hour before. My shoestring budget was starting to affect my work. No good detecting on an empty stomach.

I looked up at Robert. "You hungry?'

"Just don' kill me," he whined.

I knew I wouldn't get any work done if he started whimpering and/or crying. One, it would annoy me, and two, I have trouble eating if anyone in the room is having a breakdown of any kind. Fuckberries.

"Look," I said, "if you promise to shut up . . . no. If you promise to pay for pizza and shut up, I'll let you know something that will make you feel much better, okay?"

Robert looked at me with eyes wide, and I swore to myself that if his lip started to quiver I'd drop him out my window. Instead, he nodded and said, "There's sixty bucks in my wallet."

Oh, good.

"Alright, then. Your partner is okay. We separated you because he wasn't going to give anything, and you were. I didn't want his reticence hampering your information flow. He's fine, alright?"

Robert nodded. My cell phone rang and I answered it.

"Yeah. Uh-huh. No shit? Goddamn. Okay, I'll be right over there." I hung up the phone.

"Whoops. Jack is dead. Don't go anywhere."

I called Io as I pulled onto his block.

"I can't sense the gunman," he answered, "but that doesn't mean anything. If they know where I live, they may know who and what I am and have taken precautions."

"Have there been any more shots?"

"No."

"Okie dokie. I'm coming in."

I parked my VW at an odd angle across Io's driveway, got out and tried not to cower. Between the black Magnum and the garage door lay Jack. In the front lawn lay the top of Jack's head. A thin trail of blood led to the front door. I stepped over bits of blood, bone and brain and hurried along the trail. Io let me in.

"You call the police?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Not yet. Neighbors haven't, either. As soon as I got inside I cast a blanket over this block. No one remembers a shot, no one but us can see the body outside."

James sat on Io's couch, looking pale, holding a towel in place on his upper left arm. Io said, "The shot punched through his arm before killing Jack. I stopped the blood loss, but I don't have any healings in me at the moment."

"Sweet. I'm calling John Chang."

He picked up after the second ring. "If this isn't good, hang up now."

"Warm and inviting, Detective. Come to Io's house. There's a body in the driveway. Um, I didn't put it there. And bring Doc Khan, we've got a gunshot wound."

"Whatever," he said and hung up.

"Are the windows shielded?" I asked, and Io nodded. I went to the bay window in front and looked out. The only place in this neighborhood that would be a good vantage point to shoot from was the water tower. Access would be a bitch. On the other hand, the ladder was on the side opposite Io's place.

"Water tower, maybe?"

Io shook his head. "I doubt it. We were walking from the car to the door, so if that's where it came from, they'd have to have been there well before we pulled into the driveway."

"That implies scary foreknowledge," I said. "What about ah, a portal, or whatever?" I'd seen Io use a portal before. It had moved him from one end of the street to the other in a blink.

"That's even scarier," he said. "The ability to teleport is rare, and to be able to impart that into an amulet or talisman for others to use is rarer still. I think something more . . . mundane."

I shrugged. "The way Jack's skull came apart suggests a high-powered rifle. That's pretty worldly. Speaking of . . . hey, James? How about we take a look at that arm, huh?"

James looked up at me with hollow eyes. "How about not, huh? What the fuck is going on here? Would that guy's own people take him out?"

I considered this. "If they thought him a big enough risk, maybe. But how would they know?"

Io looked at my empty car, then me.

"Where's Robert?"

When Johnny showed up with the doctor, Io was sitting in the middle of his living room floor, Indian-style, with his fingers on his temples and eyes closed. He was sweating pretty hard. I let everybody in.

"Johnny," I said. "Doc Khan."

"Don't call me that, please," the doctor said. His name was Julio Garcia, but he bore such a striking resemblance to Ricardo Montalban that I wanted to hire him a constant midget sidekick. "Where's the patient?" he asked.

I ushered the Doc to the kitchen where James was drinking water and left them to it. When I stepped back into the front, Johnny motioned for me to follow.

"Who's the dead guy?" he asked as the front door closed behind us. His eyes moved from the head bits in the grass to the corpse in the driveway. "And why are his hands bound?"

I explained to Johnny what we were into, using key words and tricky phrases that Simon had taught me. Stuff like the jobs Simon and Io got into fell under a special set of directions that had no jurisdictional boundaries inside the state of Texas. Johnny started nodding. "You're lucky Io's in this. If this was just you, you'd be in some shit."

I grinned, as friendly as the Cheshire Cat. "Johnny, the Texas Rangers special directives—"

"Don't start with me," he said. "Just put the vic on ice and call me when you've got this sorted out. Oh, and sign this," he said, pulling an official Rangers document out of his inner jacket pocket.

I unfolded it and read it over. "How'd you know?"

Johnny grinned and handed me a pen. "I know Io. He gets a free hand as long as he keeps up and the Rangers reasonably up-to-date. You could take a lesson from that."

"And you," I said, filling the form out, "can fuck a goat. But thanks for the advice." I handed the paper and pen back and we went back inside.

Io was drinking orange juice. "Robert is no longer in your office," he said. "In fact, he's not even in the city. I'd expand my search, but I have a massive headache. Thanks for not bringing our only remaining lead. Hey, John." He got up and shook the detective's hand. "We clear on that mess outside?"

"Yeah," Johnny said. "Your idiot cousin filled out the paperwork. Just give me a call when the dust has settled."

"Right on. Orange juice?"

Johnny shook his head. "Where's the doc?"

Dr. Garcia and James were still in the kitchen. James' eyes were a little glazed.

"I gave him something for the pain," the doctor said. "The bullet passed through, but it started expanding inside the muscle. The bicep is pretty torn up, but he'll be okay as long as he doesn't move it around and keeps it clean. Anybody else while I've got my bag open?"

"I think they're okay, Doc," Johnny said.

"Let us away, then," Dr. Garcia said. He walked past me to the front door where he and Johnny bade Io goodbye.

"Nobody likes you much," James said, his voice a bit slurry.

I looked at him. "Nope."

I got back to the office to find the door broken into and Robert gone. What in the fuck is going on here? I flipped open my phone and dialed Simon. When his service picked up I left him a terse message and closed my phone harder than was necessary. This was just like him to get me involved in something where nothing made sense and I had no clues.

No, that wasn't right. I had a clue.

I opened my Yellow Pages and flipped to the entertainment section, and there was a listing for Dreamlands Worldwide. Io'd said that they developed video games, and this was a good town for that. Eclectic artist types flocked to Austin. There was even a Midway Games complex not two miles from where I lived.

After sending Io a text with the address and when I wanted him to meet me there, I set about the business of repairing the lock on my door. Then I set about the more serious business of taking a nap. Got to be good and rested to undertake industrial espionage.

I slept well. No zombie cyborg sheep.

Several hours later I was parked in my Rabbit, two blocks from the Dreamlands building. A cab stopped behind me and Io got out. I grabbed my bag and joined him on the sidewalk.

"What's the layout?"

"Security cameras," I said, pointing at the corners of the building, "and keycard access for the doors. Cars in the back lot suggest that nerds are burning the midnight oil. You got any security system circumvention juice, Mr. Mojo?"

He snorted. "You want them to go out all at once, or as we move along?"

"I don't want to be obvious. Can you trick the electronics into not seeing us instead?"

"Yeah, I can do that. Hold on a sec." he put down his messenger bag and reached up with his left hand, sorting through the rings woven into his hair, of which there were several. He found the one he wanted and said, "Alright. See my pinky sticking out? Grab it."

I did, and he closed his eyes and muttered something that hurt my ears. A second later, my skin felt odd, as if a piece of oily cloth had passed over it. The sensation passed and Io opened his eyes.

"That should shield us from the cameras," he said. "I don't think I can trick the doors into opening, but I can make the box fail. That work for you?"

"That's fine. Let's break and enter."

We jogged across the street to the front entrance. Io passed his hand over the card-swipe and uttered a sharp word. The box let out a pop and the door clicked open. "Entres vous," he said, waving me in first.

I unholstered my gun, a short Glock 9mm.

"You think we're going to need that?"

I shrugged. "Never hurts."

"Sweet," he said, pulling a nickel-plated .357 revolver from under the front of his hoodie.

I looked at him. "You are far too eager to use that."

"If your gun kicked as much ass as this one, you would be, too. Let's go, already."

Chapter 4

Inside the lobby on a helpful sign by the reception desk was a listing of departments and locations. The two places that caught my eye were "storage" and "development." I pointed them out to Io.

"A place to keep stuff and place to use stuff," I said. "Let's check the place to keep stuff first. If there are software geeks here now, they'll probably be in Development."

I didn't want to use the elevators if we could help it, so we took the stairs down. Storage was in the basement. When we got down there, the stairwell had a locked door on either side.

"A sub-basement, maybe?" Io suggested.

"There was nothing on the board. You think it'll be this easy?"

"Nothing ventured," he said.

I nodded and holstered my gun, putting down my bag. Out of the bag came a home-made lock pick gun and torsion bar.

"What the fuck is that? It looks like your electric toothbrush had sex with a swordfish," Io said.

"Oh, fuck you. I'm on a budget."

Despite the shady origins of my lock pick, the door opened in under a minute. I smirked up at Io as I put it back in my bag. "The bargain basement makes good."

Io led the way down. The stairs and walls were rough-hewn, out of keeping with the building upstairs. The way was also very dark after the door clicked shut behind us.

"Do we want to use a flashlight?" Io whispered.

We did. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a well-worn SureFire flashlight and shone it down. "Holy shit," I breathed.

The stairwell went down further than the beam from the flashlight would show, which was a long way. The walls glistened with something that looked like it wasn't just moisture. Farther down, the steps rounded off more and more until the way down became a slope.

"Yeah," Io said. "I'm not sure now's the time to just stumble around down here."

"Well . . . what would Chuck Norris do?"

"He'd go down there bare-chested and roundhouse kick the shit out of something. But we are not Chuck Norris. I vote for going back up and returning later, when we're more . . . prepared."

"What if we can't get back in?"

"We'll get back in," Io said. "I promise."

I nodded. "Back up it is, then. Let's see what else this building holds. Hopefully it won't be scary."

"What's wrong with you?" I asked Io as we tried to burgle the storage area under the Dreamlands building.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, earlier, you said that you couldn't heal James. You got a headache and all sweaty looking for Robert. Now, you talk me out of going down the long, scary stairway. What gives?"

Io was quiet as he rummaged through the inventory clipboard chained to a shelf. Everything down here had a place and it was all in it. Unfortunately, the storeroom was easily the same size as the entire building and would take us a week to search.

He finally spoke. "I, uh . . . I took a pretty big hit last week. Some ancient Eastern European fuckhead tried to turn Oregon into its new homeland. I had to object vigorously." He heaved a big sigh. "I dusted the fuckhead, but it took most of my oomph to do it. I'm still recuperating."

I put a finger in his face. "Information that would have come in handy yesterday," I said. "Does Simon know you're low on go-juice?"

Io shook his head. "None of his business."

"Bullshit! You know how he does things, how every little ingredient he throws in the pot is carefully measured and planned for. If he's counting on your magic hammer to get me out of a tough spot or bang close a portal, we are in some deep shit if you can't pull it off."

He waved his hands at me. "I'll be fine. We'll be fine. There's still four days, and by then I'll be up to anything."

"You'd better fucking hope so," I snapped. "And fuck this storage shit. Let's go upstairs and bully some geeks."

Gunshots and explosions greeted us as I opened the door on the third floor. I rolled my eyes at Io and shuffled out into the wide-open area. The entirety of the third floor was open, the only exception being the bathrooms next to the elevator bank. Support columns dotted the big room, each one surrounded by workstations, like gunships grouped around an aircraft carrier.

We stalked carefully in, but needn't have bothered. The four twenty-somethings in the room wouldn't have noticed us if we rode in on elephants. Io kept an eye on them as they played some kind of four-person war game. I looked around. My first impression was wrong. There was another door the same color as the wall, right behind a tight grouping of four workstations. These were different. I motioned Io over.

Where the other workstations were cluttered with action figures and fantasy blades, these were . . . darker. Arcane symbols were strewn about on yellow stickies and there was a copy of Azazel's Otherworld on one of the desktops, right next to Philip Kenan's The Despicable Quest. Pencil sketches of tentacled horrors and bizarre landscapes covered another desk.

The door behind the workstations was the only one in the wall, so I was guessing that whatever was behind it ran the length of the building to the restrooms, at least. It was set with its own numberpad that I wouldn't have noticed if the corner of it didn't stick out from under an Automan poster. Io would be able to open it, but I didn't want to dip too deep into that well in case we had to come back. Neither did I want to tap him out if we needed a magical assist later. I waved Io over.

"You know computers pretty well, huh?"

He nodded.

"Good. I'll look through the desks. You check the computers for a clue as to what the passcode might be. And, you know, to what the fuck is going on."

Io shrugged and sat at one of the workstations. I started rifling through the stuff at the symbol-strewn desk first. All I learned there was that the desk was owned by a girl named Leah, and she had an unhealthy fascination for obscure magical texts and sloths. She was also the lead storyline developer for a game that took the player through obstacles to get out of the Dreamlands.

That looked promising. I showed the sheaf of papers to Io, who noted the file name at the bottom and ran a search for it. He gave me a thumbs-up and I went back to looking.

The artist's desk was less informative but more helpful. On a yellow sticky under the keyboard pull-out was a number. I grabbed one of his markers and wrote it on my hand. The sounds of video game in the middle of the room died down, and Io and I ducked under the desks we were at.

Less than a minute later we were in total darkness and the foursome of gamers had piled into the elevator. Io reached up and turned his screen back on. "Come and look at this," he said.

On the screen was a load of garbage. "What the shit is that supposed to be?"

"Sorry, ignore that one," he said. "Look over here, on the left. This is a tag list. When the engine needs information on an object, like its properties or whatever, it comes to this file. It looks like gobbledygook to you, but when you use this file," he clicked open another box, "it's stuff we can read. Look at the list."

I did. It read remarkably like the list we got from Robert. "Okay," I said. "But what do it mean?"

He put his hands up. "I'm just showing it to you. I'm copying all of it, we can look at it later. You find anything for the door?"

I showed him my hand.

"Good," he said. "Let's see what's behind door number one."

The door popped open an inch, bathing us in cool blue light. I pulled it open and stepped carefully inside, gun at the ready. Immediately to my right hung a plastic segmented curtain, like they have for the butcher's back room at the store. A cold fog rolled from under it, obscuring the floor.

To the left stood a bank of monitors and rack equipment. Shelves against the far wall stood mostly empty, small wooden crates on it here and there. On the wall opposite the monitors there was a dry-erase board split into four square sections, labeled Leah, Ramon, Doug and Matthew. I ignored what was on it. That curtain had gotten my attention.

I split it open and stepped through, Io right behind me. The long room was stuffed. Four gurneys stood along the wall lengthwise, monitoring equipment between them. Each gurney looked like an exercise in space utilization: platform shelf over each mattress, saddlebags on the side not against the wall, and a laptop on another shelf under each one. Those looked like they swiveled out. Each mattress was a tangle of wires and electrodes.

"Curiouser and curiouser," said Io.

"Yeah. If they have any of those things we're looking for in this room, could you sense them?"

"I don't know," Io said with a shake of his head. "I tried down in the storeroom and got nothing. But that doesn't mean anything. Either I'm more knackered than I think I am, or this stuff just doesn't register with me. Or it's not even here. Let's skedaddle."

So we did.

I sat at my desk reading Leah's story line for the game and its multiple possible paths while Io skimmed all the files he stole off the game server. There were large gaps in the middle of bits where obstacles had yet to be overcome, like the girl hadn't thought of a way around them yet.

"This is slightly confusing," Io said, tapping his Tab key. "It's like they're writing the game off a story that isn't written all the way yet."

"No shit?" I sat back in my chair. "I'm reading the story. It's not written all the way yet." I shook my fist at the ceiling. "What the hell?"

Io got a look on his face. "You know what? This part here, the first portion of the game, it reads like a how-to manual for starting a prison riot. Then there's a section for destroying a crystal sphere, and then it stops. It picks up again—"

"Crossing a raging, molten lava river?"

"Yeah, that's right."

I drummed my fingers on the desk. "What about the artifacts? There's nothing in the story."

He pressed a key, moved his mouse and clicked. "That's something else. A large portion of the list has attributes by items, but only a few of them have placement in the game."

Something about all of this clicked in my head. "We need to go back. We need to be there when those four are working on the game. If we squeeze them, we'll have it."

"Whatever it is." He rotated a map on his screen. "We also need to talk to someone that's been in the Dreamlands. Someone that's been there a bunch, really."

I threw my hands in the air. "How are we going to do that? It's not like people who voyage into the Dreamlands like that put that shit on their web logs."

A smile lit on Io's face. "Yeah, it is."

Io and I sat over chili dogs by the speakerphone at my place. "I do not believe we're even trying this," I said.

"It makes sense to me," James said from the dining room table. "The internet as a worldwide community allows for people from different countries who are fans of Huey Lewis to get together and talk, so why not astral travelers?" He bit into a cheese fry.

"Just dial the number," I said.

Io, through a series of internet searches and WHOIS lookups, had found us a well-versed astral traveler, one that had blogged extensively about her harrowing adventures in the Dreamlands, among other things.

The phone rang once, twice. Pick-up.

"Hello?" Whoever she was, she sounded hot. I needed to get laid.

Io noticed this too, I think. "Uh, hello," he said. "Is this Anita?"

"Who may I ask is calling?"

"My name is Io, I'm calling to talk about the Dreamlands?" He cringed as he said it, and it came out like a question. There was a good long pause, and I thought we screwed the pooch.

"Okay," she said.

"Just like that?" I blurted out.

"Well, yeah," she said. "My right hand has been itching like crazy for about an hour now, so somebody wants to talk to me. What is it you want to talk about?"

Io shrugged and dived right in. "We need to know if you've seen some landmarks, okay? There's a river of fire, or maybe it's like, a moat . . . on the inside of the wide curve of the river is a crystal sphere, a big one."

"Don't ever go there!" The girl sounded almost frantic. Fucking bingo!

"Why not? What's there, Anita?" I asked.

"There're monsters in there," she said. "Terrible monsters, and all they want is to get free and feed." Her voice had gotten very small.

"Do you, uh, often swing by there?" Io asked.

"No! Not at all, just that one time. You shouldn't either. If any of the Wardens catch you there—"

"Wardens?" I said.

"Yes. They watch the crystal prison and make sure nothing gets out." It sounded as if her teeth were chattering. "There are four Wardens. They're like, elementals."

Something occurred to me. "Do they keep people away, also?"

"No," she said, "but once you go in, you can never come out."

"That's one of the blank spots," I said to Io. "They haven't figured out the fucking Wardens yet!"

"What are you talking about?" Anita asked.

"Listen, Anita . . . we need a favor. A weird one," I said.

"Go ahead." She sounded doubtful.

"We need you, and maybe if you have other dream-traveling friends, to watch that sphere. Spy on it. We think . . . well, we think that someone is planning on breaking something out of the crystal prison."

"They'll never get past the Wardens," she said, "but this is just goofy enough that I'll say yes."

I gave her mine and Io's phone numbers, thanked her and hung up. "Now," I said, "we wait and watch. And break in again."

James, Io and I went over the game over once more, this time with an eye for how things were being used in the game. For each location there was a list of artifacts that would not work. Paths from one location to another were carefully detailed, and there was one shortcut that was highlighted and followed by several exclamation points.

"What bothers me is," Io said, "how do they find out how these things work? Do you think one of the designers goes to the Dreamlands?"

"Maybe," I said. "But I looked up this Leah, and she's in her early twenties. So are the rest of them."

"So what?"

"So, you said that Robert and Jack had been stealing these odd little things for ten years." I let that sink in for a second.

Io clicked on things on his laptop. "Huh. This text file was created back in '96. Updated yesterday."

"Who are the original designers?" James asked.

"That's a good question," Io said, tapping at his keyboard. "Write these down," he said, giving me two names. "You chase that down. I'm gonna try to hack into their database, see if I can find some more names."

"Be careful," I said, and Io rushed out.

One minute later there was a loud gunshot. I was out of my chair and running down the hall, taking the stairs four at a time. I got outside and there stood Io, leaning over a crumpled form on the sidewalk. He heard me and whirled around, his fists up and glowing.

"Easy, Sho'nuff. It's just me."

"Kiss my Converse," he said, putting his hands down. "I think I got the shooter."

"What happened?"

Io shrugged. "I got an itch, so I threw up a Shield. The shot whanged off it, and I did a Pull. It yanked this guy off the rooftop across the street."

I looked at the gunman. "He looks pretty rough for just a four-story fall."

Io grinned. "Whoops."

"This is okie dokie," John Chang said to the meat wagon guys. "Take it away." He turned back to me. "And Io?"

"He's off to get Jack out of the ice chest. That's a big ice chest. This kind of thing happen to him a lot?"

Johnny snorted. "You have no idea. Alright." He made to leave. "Thanks for the call. And you tell Io, watch his ass. There's still at least one more of these guys around."

"There is?" James piped up from behind me.

"Yeah," I told him. "While you were doped to your eyeballs, somebody snatched Robert."

"Oh," he said, and lapsed back to stillness.

"Given the timeframe, it couldn't have been this guy," said Johnny. "Unless this guy snatched Robert and the other guy shot you. Call me if you guys get him." Johnny climbed into his Camaro—which used to be my Camaro, until he won it in a card game—and roared off.

I looked at James and thought, Fuck. Should have asked Johnny to ferry James to his hotel. There was a lot of boring detective crap to do yet, and having James around was starting to annoy me. I opened my cell phone and scrolled through my contact list. It was very short.

Oh, fuck it. I dialed Sonja d'Argent. Simon will be pissed. Good.

"Hey, you!" she answered.

"Hey, Sonja. Um . . . you busy?"

"No," she said. "Why? You got something juicy?"

"More boring than that. There might be an out-of-state, possibly supernatural killer involved, though."

"I'm in. Don't tell Dad. Your office?"

"No, my apartment."

"Be there in fifteen," she said, hanging up.

True to her word, Sonja's big truck was parked on my street in fifteen minutes. James and I got in, and I filled her in as she drove us to get some chicken.

"So, what? You want me to protect the Druid?" she asked after she paid for the food. I loved it when she did that. "I've got this," she reached under her seat and pulled out a short, sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. Intricate carvings covered the stock, hex signs from all over the world and runes of ruin.

"Dad gave it to me," she said, smiling.

"Put that away," I said. "Do you have a place to stash him? I'm not so sure his hotel room is the best place for him to hide out. Not in his condition."

As if to validate my point, James fell over in the backseat.

"See?"

"I have a place," she said, "but it's going to cost you. I ditched my friends because I thought there'd be some excitement."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said. She grunted and drove me to my office. I gave her the spare key to it and my apartment. "Come by here tomorrow around noon. Call first. Park in the back. If I get you shot, Simon will gut me."

She flashed me a smile and sped off. I went upstairs. The door to my office hung at an odd angle, and I sighed. I had spare locks and knobs in my cabinet, but no spare hinges. Bastards.

I went in carefully. All the stuff on my desk that we'd gotten from Dreamlands Worldwide was gone. My phone and AM/FM radio were both smashed. Savages.

My cabinet was overturned, drawers hanging out and empty. Something under a pile of papers beeped. I bent to check it out and found a cell phone. My vandal dropped his cell while ruining my office? I'll take that trade-off. Io still had all the electronic files anyway.

The phone beeped again, so I flipped it open and closed the alert there. The thought crossed my mind as I scrolled to the phone info and copied it down that the burglar might be back when he noticed his phone missing. I had his name from the phone. I grinned and sat in the dark.

I'd wait.

Chapter 5

The night darkened further and I waited. It was something I was good at if I knew what I was waiting for—un-aimed waiting seemed interminable to me. I didn't fall asleep, I didn't fidget, I didn't begin to whistle Dixie. I waited. The entirety of Pink Floyd's Meddle played in my head. When it was over I debated between Poe and Procol Harum. After finally choosing Poe's Haunted—alphabetical order, and all that—I heard the door at the end of the hall bang open.

"You're fucking stupid, that's why," a gruff voice said. "You begged me not to make you wait in the car, and what do I get for that?"

"But Sam," a reedy voice said, "how was I supposed to know?" Damn, that was a whiny voice. I'd make the owner of that voice wait in the car, too. I gathered myself into a crouch.

"You're not supposed to carry it around when we're doin' stuff like this. You're just lucky it's the middle of the fucking night."

The owner of the gruff voice nudged my door open with his boot. I sprang and side-kicked him in the middle. He went, "Oof," and doubled over, falling backwards.

The other guy uttered a "meep" and got into a stance. I pulled my Glock up from my waistband and said, "Stop." The tip of my gun rested on his chin.

Sam retched, then threw up on the floor. I'd kicked him good. I sighed and pointed to Larry, whose phone I had. "Get him up and get in here," I said. I turned to go back in. As I did, Sam reached out and grabbed my leg. I fell and he threw himself on top of me, clawing for my eyes.

I hit him once with the butt of my gun, and he swung his forearm and knocked it out of my hand. He reached under his jacket and I grabbed his wrist, pinning his hand there. Larry came in and started kicking me in the side. I pulled Sam to me and snaked my free hand inside his jacket. His fist thudded off my forehead.

I kept scrabbling for his gun while I blinked away stars. He hit me again as I wrapped my hand around the handle of his pistol. I pushed back, yanking it free. It went off as my head hit the ground.

Sam sagged on top of me and Larry wet himself. I pushed the bleeding man off me and held his gun on Larry. "Don't move," I said. "Don't even breathe."

"'Bout time you got here," I said as Johnny Chang walked through my ruined door. "That one puked and bled everywhere, and that one pissed on himself, and the smell is getting to me."

He looked around the office and out the window. "In this place? I'm shocked you can tell."

"Cute."

"You're just mad 'cause I'm right. Gimmie."

I told him what happened. He looked grim. "I should take you in."

"Oh, come on," I said. "You know this is the same thing Io's working on. Why are you being a hard-on?"

"I don't want you getting it into your thick head that you've got some kind of license for mayhem. You are not Io. You're not Simon. You don't have any discipline."

"Fuck you, Chang. I was disciplined enough when you needed help in San Antonio."

Chupacabra. Enough said about that. I'm still not sure I believe it.

Johnny shook his head. "You don't even . . . you know what? The hell with it. I'll clear you on this. But I find another body that belongs to you and there's even a hint that you're wrong, I will lock your ass up so fast you won't even remember your name."

"Thank you," I said. "And now I need a favor."

He stared at me for a second and began to laugh. "Holy shit. Go ahead."

"These guys didn't pick my name out of a hat. Someone sent them. If you can find anything in their call records that crosses with Io's shooter, I'd really like to know about it."

He nodded. "Sometimes I forget there's a functioning mind in there. Yeah, I'll do that. Have a nice night. And clean this place up, will you? It stinks in here."

The day caught up with me after everyone left. I still had some homework to do, but I had been tackled, kicked, punched and generally mistreated. I was tired. It would be a couple of hours before the sun was up and I could make any calls, anyway. And who's gonna answer my calls on a Sunday morning, anyway?

I went to sleep on my desk.

The sun shone in and found me cranky.

I had a crick in my neck and my right hand was asleep. I stood up and fell over. I guess my feet had fallen asleep, too. My cell phone began to chirp at me.

"Fucking what?" I snarled into it.

"You get your end figured out yet?" It was Io.

"Oh. Um."

"You went to sleep, didn't you? Where are you at?"

"The office," I said, and he hung up.

Io showed up a half-hour later with breakfast. He knows me well. He got to the door hanging on broken hinges and the bloodstain on the floor and stopped. He looked up at me.

"Still no excuse," he said, handing me a bag of Krispy Kremes, which I snatched away from him.

"I did alright," I said. "Detective Chang is chasing something down for us. Plus, I didn't get taken in for that," I finished, pointing at the stain on the floor.

"Well, let's just take the day off, then." He looked around. "Where's James?"

"Sonja has him."

"You brought her into this? Are you mental?"

I waved my hands and bit into a donut. "She'll be okay," I said through a mouthful of goodness. "You should see her shotgun."

Io dropped into a chair. "While you were playing Mike Hammer, I was working. Look at this," he said, opening his laptop. "I found all the people working on this game for the past ten years. Or, various iterations of it, with various game companies. I thought you'd like this."

I looked at three lists, tiled side-by-side. "Please tell me what I'm looking at," I said.

"I forget, you just woke up. Here, this file is developers and beta-testers. This one is missing persons. And this last one is people who never existed according to every database I searched. And I searched a lot."

I grunted. "The beta-testers never were, developers are missing. What the hell do we have here?"

"What we have," he said, "is a trail. Now, will you get off your dead ass and do what you're good at?"

The next two days passed in a blur. Tick-tock. Sonja called me several times, and I kept telling her to hide James. It took doing, but I finally made progress. I called Io to tell him. He was so happy, he forgot to be an asshole about it.

"Where are we headed?" he asked when I picked him up. I was still driving the Magnum, as my car is a pile of shit on wheels.

"Houston. I found one of the non-existent beta-testers." I pulled a folded up printout from my jacket pocket and handed it to Io. "This one is unknown to them but known to me. Adam Crabb. He was arrested in 1995 for being drunk in public in Florida. One of those backwoods townships that just got online, which is probably why it got missed when all these people disappeared off of the databases. The librarian found it for me."

He grunted.

"I got his prints and ran them against John Does in a medical database, got a hit at a psychiatric clinic here in Texas. I called, but they wouldn't tell me anything, so we're going to visit."

Io nodded. "And why am I here?"

"Well, he might not even be able to speak. That's even if they let us in. So, we've got to be subterfugous. And you may have to, uh, get into this guy's head."

"Absolutely not." Io closed his eyes. "It's crazy enough in my own head, thank you very much."

"This could be the break we're looking for."

He kept his eyes closed. "Maybe. Wake me when we get there."

I turned on some Megadeth and sped up.

"This is not going to work," Io said.

I smoothed my hair back. "Why didn't you say so before?"

"I did say so before." He squinted at the door, concentrating, then pulled open the fire-escape door. We were at the parking lot side of the Menninger Psychiatric Clinic.

"That part worked," I said, stepping into a cool stairwell. "Okay. No one would tell me what was wrong with this cat, but I know he's been here for a couple of years. They keep their basket cases and veggies on the fourth floor, so I think we should start there. N'est pas?"

Io gave a quick shake to his head and started up the stairs. "Do we even have a cover?"

Pointing at his messenger bag, I said, "I.T.?" I didn't mean it to sound like a question.

He snorted and kept up the stairs. "You are some kind of idiot. I must be too, because I keep on asking when I know better."

We took turns looking through the reinforced glass at the fourth floor landing. It seemed almost deserted. The middle of the hallway the door opened onto looked like a push-cart parking lot.

"I guess there aren't a lot of visitors on this floor," I said.

Io pulled the door open by way of reply. He cocked his head and closed his eyes. I'd seen him do this before, too. He was Listening. His eyes flew open and he waved me forward.

"Number 6639," I said as we reached the cart mess. Io found the right one and pointed to room 403. We drifted over and went in.

It was a small room, unadorned and impersonal. A man sat up in bed watching a court television show on a small color television. His black hair was cut short. Thick-framed glasses sat on his face, but his stare was vacant. I waved my hand in front of his face. I jumped a little when he turned to me, but he wasn't seeing anything.

"You're on," I told Io.

"I hate this," he said. "And I hate you. Lock the door."

I did. Io put his left hand on Adam Crabb's forehead, his right on his own. Immediately a sweat popped up on his brow. Adam started to frown.

Io's breathing came in quick snorts now, Adam's frown deepened. His right eye began to twitch. A soft mewling sound came from his closed mouth.

Io's lips pulled back into a snarl, his teeth grit hard. Goddamn. I should have asked what to expect before we started. He and Adam started groaning together, in time. Two-part harmony. Adam's eyes opened very wide, rolled back so only the whites were showing.

He took a deep breath. I shot forward and grabbed a pillow as he started to scream. I muffled it the best I could, but if anyone was in the hallway, they heard it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Io broke contact and sat back in his chair, heaving. Adam stopped screaming. Io raised a shaking hand to his forehead.

"We have to move. Now. Back to Austin. Drive fast, break laws."

Well, you don't have to tell me twice.

Once we were on the highway headed east, I opened up the Magnum. The needle pegged past 140.

"Now," I said, "will you please tell me why I'm breaking seven laws?"

Io was still pale. The shaking had stopped, but he didn't lean back and close his eyes like he usually did when I drove. He did once, then shot back up with a shout.

"Beta-testers get sent to the Dreamlands with an artifact. Somehow, the techs have figured out how to send people in at a predetermined spot. Anyway, they get sent in and they have a limited set of movements and abilities to get them from point A to point B."

"Like in a video game."

"Yeah. So they make it or they don't. Most didn't. They either ended up comatose or dead." He shuddered. "The set-up, the interface for the game controls they . . . they're fucking with people's brains. Opening the skull to implant things. We are shutting them down. Tonight."

"It's got to be tonight, anyway. New moon. And the Zenig?"

He shook his head. "Don't care about that. If we shut them down cold, it won't matter if they get it or not. Although," he made a face, "the group of testers that Adam was a part of thought that thing was the grail. It must be powerful."

"Wow. I cannot think of a more Byzantine way to go about this Dreamlands business."

"No shit," Io said. "Make haste. I'm going into the back . . . I have to get my juice back, now."

"You can do that?"

He tilted his head a bit. "It costs me. And it doesn't work as well as just letting it come back on its own, but I don't see where I have much choice. Try not to bother me. Or kill us both."

An hour and fifteen minutes later, I skidded to a halt in front of my apartment building and pelted up the stairs. Three minutes later I was back down and loaded for bear. I opened up the back and piled guns and explosives in with Io.

Back into the driver's seat. I'd just started the car when my phone rang. "What?" I answered.

"Help," a voice said. After a second, I recognized it as Sonja, but through a filter of terror. "Help," she repeated.

"I'm here, Sonja. Talk to me."

"You will come to me," a totally different voice said. "You will bring with you the Zenig of Aphorat, or the girl and the Druid die."

"We don't have the skull," I spit out, "but if you give me a location, I'll trade me for the girl."

A laugh. "I know you don't have the skull. Call Simon d'Argent. Relay to him my message. Meet me with the skull ring at eleven tonight at Dreamlands, Worldwide."

He hung up and I banged on the steering wheel.

Dialing Simon, I thought about how best to tell him. He'd be furious. Maybe homicidal. I'd find out in a minute.

"Simon," he answered.

"Hey, it's me. Listen, there's a . . . situation."

"I know. I've got the skull. When and where?"

I blinked. "You're not going to yell at me?"

"You are going to get her back, or you're going to die a horrible death trying. Either way, there's no point in yelling."

I told him what the voice told me and hung up. I looked at my watch. Three hours to kill. I put the car in gear and wandered towards my destiny.

The minutes passed with agonizing slowness. Finally, Io came out of his trance and sat up.

"Change of plans," I told him. "Bad guys have Sonja and James. Simon has the skull ring. We're going to trade. Or something."

"And it's just going to happen, isn't it?"

"I reckon so."

"So why are we even here?"

"Hmm? Oh, I don't know why you're here. I'm here because they told me to be here. You may as well catch a cab and beat it on home." I considered. "Or, better yet, take the car. I won't be needing it."

Io put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "You know I can't drive, idiot."

Maybe it wasn't a reassuring hand, then.

A knock on my window shocked me out of my seat. It was Simon. His startling blue eyes were blazing with heat, but the rest of his bearded face was serene. His overcoat and white hair were ruffled by a wind that didn't seem to be anywhere else. He had with him a bowling ball bag.

"Come on," he said.

The front door of Dreamlands Worldwide opened at my touch. A folded piece of paper sat on the receptionist's desk, "THIRD FLOOR" written on it. Each "O" was a happy face. Wonderful.

The elevator stopped on three and the doors slid open. I stepped out and looked to the right. The secret door was standing open. Io, Simon and I walked to it. I went through first.

The first thing I noticed was that the gurneys were all full. Each had one of the programmers lying on it. I knew this because their names were on the laptop screens perched over their torsos.

"Gentlemen," a voice said behind me, "so glad you could make it."

I turned, and there before the bank of monitors stood a man in a grey suit. His face was almost featureless, like a mask that had been hastily made.

"And I'm glad to see you again," he said, pointing at me. "This is the third time we've crossed paths. I've got to congratulate you on the frame-up in North Dakota. That was beautiful. And I know you didn't recognize me in Chicago, but you had other things on your mind."

"You have a new face. Looks like shit," I said, trying for bravado. I was scared shitless. This Thing was tremendously evil. The last time I saw it, it was wearing the face of a dead colleague. Before that, it used a group of college professors to call up the Haunter of the Dark.

"Nyarlat," Simon said.

"Hotep, if you please," the Demon said with a bow. "I worked very hard to earn that title." It stopped and looked from Simon to Io. A small smile tugged at the corners of its slash of a mouth.

"Close the door, please," it said.

Chapter 6

"Meet the team," the Demon said, waving me over to the gurneys. As I stepped that way, the entire room gave a lurch. "Ignore that," he said. "Shoddy craftsmanship."

Each of the programmers had a harness strapped to their heads like mechanical halos. I looked at Leah. The top of her skull had been peeled back and removed. Pins and electrodes were jabbed into her brain, an occasional Jacob's ladder of electricity arcing its way up them.

Black suction cups covered her eyes, fiber optic cable coming from them and strung to a box that was hooked to the laptop.

"Ingenious," Nyarlathotep said behind me. "Technology like this is why I got out of bed this millennium."

A window was open on her laptop, beneath the banner with her name on it. It was full of constantly-shifting lights and shapes. It was . . . hypnotic. I tore my eyes from it and faced the Demon.

His eyes were the same. I fought down a shudder.

"Where is the girl?"

Nyarlat help up a finger. "In a minute."

The room lurched again and he smiled.

"Here we are."

Every part of the wall that wasn't supporting equipment had risen up revealing a cavern lit by high-powered stadium lights. Just outside the confines of the room stood one more gurney.

"That one is yours," the Demon whispered in my ear.

"Not until the girl is safe," I said, quietly.

"How the girl does depends on how you do," he said. I could hear the grin in his voice.

"What do you mean?"

"No," Simon said. "I brought the Zenig, I'll go."

"Not on your long, long life, Simon," the Demon laughed. "Oh, you'd get the job done, for sure. But as delicious as that would be, this is so much better." He clapped his hands and started to loosen his tie.

"You know what lies in the crystal prison. But your little girl's life hangs by a thread. And there's not a single thing you can do about it. Do you have any idea what kind of fear you're feeding me?" The faceless figure shuddered. "Oh, it's so good. And that little spike when you heard that your barely-adequate student will have to be her savior? Exquisite. A cherry on top."

Nyarlathotep turned his oil-slick eyes back to me. "On the table." He turned back to Simon. "The Zenig of Aphorat, if you please, sir."

I sat on the table as Simon opened the bag. He removed from it a skull, weathered and beaten, mounted in an iron ring, clasped by clawed, platinum hands. I expected it to be grisly, but . . .

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" the Demon asked me. "This one is to be yours." He clapped his hands once, a sharp report that echoed in the cavern. "Set it up!"

Techs in white coats swarmed the room, distributing odd-looking bits of statuary and knick-knacks among the dormant programmers. One pair of men in surgical scrubs approached me, pulling a stainless steel cart behind them.

A mechanical halo sat on it.

"Where is the girl?" I asked again.

"Oh, fine," the Demon said with a grin. "Bring the girl," he said louder. A woman in a nurse uniform rolled Sonja out of the shadows in a wheelchair. She was awake, her eyes alive with fright. Io and Simon started forward.

Immediately they stopped.

"Nah-ah," the Demon tsked. "You stay put. Tearful reunions later. Set him up!"

The surgeons pushed me onto the table and strapped me down. One of them shaved the crown of my head while the other rearranged the tools on the cart. He started a saw and walked behind me. The pitch of the little machine changed and the top of my head began to burn. Then it got worse. I opened my mouth to scream and the other man jammed a rubber stopper between my teeth.

I could smell burning and then it stopped. The sawman stepped back to the cart and lifted the metal halo. He placed it on my head. I tried to squirm away, but I found that I couldn't move. The machine was cool on my skin. There was something sharp and everything went black.

And then . . . and then . . . and then . . .

Once in my life I had been in an isolation chamber. That's what this was like. Not warm, not cool. Silent and dark. It would have been kind of comforting if I didn't know there were electronics sticking into my brain.

A white ball of light coalesced in the distance. It moved towards me at an erratic pace, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, always forward. Finally it was close enough that I could make out that it was a cube.

It grew suddenly and enveloped me with a rush of white noise, then I was sitting on my ass in a white room. No black curtains.

I looked down at myself. I was dressed curiously like Indiana Jones. No fedora, though. I had a bad feeling about how much was about to be expected of me. A messenger bag (or was it a large gas mask bag?) sat by my side. I was pretty sure the Zenig of Aphorat was in it.

"A little weird, isn't it?" said a female voice next to me. It was Leah, dressed like . . . like . . .

"Tomb Raider," she said. "It's a bit silly, but I wasn't in charge of the costumes. One of the boys was. This," she waved her hands at the blank white room, "is the load point. Here's where you get equipped with your weapons and tools or whatever before being spawned in the Dreamlands."

I picked up the bag. "What in the fuck am I supposed to do with this?"

"I don't know," she said. "We never got our hands on it, so we don't know what it does or how to use it. The Boss says that it can be used to defeat the Wardens, and that'll be it."

"Do you know what we're about to loose on the world? Do you even care?"

She shook her head. "I . . . made a deal."

"I hope it was a good one. Where's everyone else?"

"They're in. You'll know when you've been passed the baton. One word of advice: don't die."

She winked out of the room.

Between one blink and the next, I felt a wrenching pain, and then I was kneeling on an outcropping of rock. Everything around me was tinged in oranges and reds. Off to my left was the source of the glow. I guessed it was the river of fire.

Then, in my mind, I could see the entire "map" of this part of the Dreamlands. I sat roughly halfway between the flames and the crystal prison. A small yellow bubble appeared in the lower right-hand corner of my vision. I looked at it.

"Alright, idiot," Io's voice said in my ear, "I've been allowed to help if I can. Pay attention. You are the key to the third stage of the, um, game, I guess. You'll know when you're on. The Wardens will be in from all four directions to kick ass on somebody. Your job will be to stop them."

"Uh. Okay?"

"That's good, confidence. Use the skull. Io out."

"That's just fucking great," I said. "Use the skull, right?"

That's right, the skull said.

I yelped.

Try to relax, it said. Was the voice just in my head? Yes, it answered. Oh, good.

And you are?

I am Zenig of Aphorat.

No, you're a piece of jewelry for some unspeakable god. Skull, platinum and iron.

Nonetheless, I remain Zenig.

Well, what makes you so fucking special? Were you some kind of wizard, or something?

No, just a traveler. But now I am power. I sat on the left hand of one that uses chaos the same way you use water to wash your hands. I am the result of your, what is it called? The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy always increases.

That's cute. But what good does that do me?

I will show you.

"Io, did you catch any of that?"

"Catch any of what?"

Sigh. "Never mind."

The ground under my feet began to shake.

"You're on," Io said, and the crystal prison exploded.

Winged shapes poured out of the ruined sphere like smoke. Their faces were made up of horrible, fanged mouths, a black, slitted eye above and below. Four-armed bodies were supported by insectoid wings over scorpion tails. There were a lot of them.

Rising above the flying horde was a shape. Its skin was a shining black oil slick. It flexed giant arms, unsheathing claws out of its elbows and giant skeletal wings unfurled behind it. Sick green eyes opened in its face and it made a sound that chilled me to the bones. It made my marrow ache.

The thing laughed. It threw its arms into the air and howled its laughter to the void.

From the flaming river rose a wave of fire. A cold wind blew from above. A geyser fountained up out of the cracked earth, and the rock I was crouched behind began to shift.

"The Wardens are awake," Io said.

I stepped out onto the battlefield and pulled the skull from its bag. I was not noticed by the Wardens. The Flame Warden was busy slinging fireballs at the scorpion-tails. The Air Warden was herding the flying beasties to where Water could slap them down and Earth could bury them.

Through it all, the shining black beast sat and watched. Its eyes lit on me and it favored me with an almost-friendly wave. What? It knew me?

They've already merged.

How do you know?

I know a lot. I also know that this will end for me soon enough, and then I can rest. So get on with it. Take the Wardens out.

Wait . . . are you strong enough to take out that . . . thing?

Almost certainly. But don't you have dire circumstances to consider? The Beast is the objective.

I'm considering. I need more time. How do I even do this?

Just put me on like a mask. The rest should come naturally. And everything else, just ask me.

A shadow loomed over me and I looked up. Earth had pulled itself into a rock monster and was about to step on me. Now! the voice screamed at me. I lowered Zenig of Aphorat onto my head.

The back of the skull disappeared and the iron band shrunk to fit my head. And then I felt . . .

Power.

Every fiber of my being was made of unimaginable Power. Pure entropy rushed through my veins. I reached out with my mind, grabbed a little bit of the fabric of Time and Space to wrap my body in.

The rock monster's foot had stopped an inch from my head. It was pushing, but could go no further. I touched it with my forefinger and it went flying. The jumble of rocks exploded on impact.

That will not do it, Zenig said. All you've done is destroy his clothes. You need to channel me to cancel all four of them out. I will be gone and they will go with me.

"No," I said, grabbing Water as it sought to push me under a wave of itself. "There's got to be another way." I slung Water into Fire and they both exploded into steam.

"Keep that up!" Io yelled in my ear.

"How long before they find new clothes?" I asked.

"What?" Io said.

"Not you."

As if in answer, the ground opened beneath me. I fell into a deep crevice. Rocks landed on me and became hands holding me down. Air formed a vortex over the hole and funneled in parts of Fire and Water. I was being flash-cooked.

"Can we hold up under this?"

It weakens me, but does not diminish me. All four are here together. Now would be a good time to turn me loose and fulfill your role in this.

"Not yet. Io!"

"What the shit is going on?"

"The, uh . . . never mind. If you can communicate with that Beast, tell it that now would be a good goddamn time to get lost."

"Wilco."

Through the haze of air and steam I saw a black shape blur by overhead. The heat was starting to be more than I could bear, even with all the Power coursing through me. I needed to hold on for just a minute more, give the Beast time to escape.

Well?

I shook my head. "Thinking."

Too much more of this, and I have to retreat into the skull. Your body was not meant to withstand this kind of attack. If I have to go away and the Wardens don't go with me, you will not last more than a painful second.

I lashed out at the side of the crevice, spilling rock over me, protecting me from the heat. I held the rocks tight.

"Can you read what's in my head?"

I can.

Find the shortcut. I can't remember what the paper said, but it's in there somewhere.

I've got it.

"Use it! I need time and you've got explaining to do."

We disappeared.

Where are we?

This is a tesseract. It's the shortcut.

Funky. How come everything is so . . . stretchy?

We are bending Time and Space in ways that your brain cannot process.

Nice. Alright, now tell me . . . what did you mean when you said they've already merged?

They have. The Dark Demon and the Beast are one. They have Joined.

Well, who in the fuck is up there, calling the shots?

Ah. That is the Avatar. It is but a mirror, using the image and powers of another aspect. In this case, the Dark Demon.

So it holds no power?

Oh, it does. As long as there is power to reflect . . .

Bingo.

I stepped out of Nothingness into another battle. "Make us invisible?"

As you wish.

The Beast/Demon stood by while Leah battled a green tentacle beast. She rode atop what looked like a wooly rhino, a single and deadly black horn sprouting from the center of its head.

"Why doesn't the Beast fight? And how did it beat us here?"

It does not fight because, in order to escape the Dreamlands, it must reach the Gates undiminished.

"And us?"

Look and see.

I did. Behind the Beast lay a pile of smoldering bones.

"Is that . . .?"

That was Ramon. The Beast used all of Ramon's lifeforce to power its tesseract, and thus traveled faster. Matthew was used up destroying the crystal prison. You were to have been destroyed battling the Wardens, but the Beast knows not what you have done. The girl, Leah, will die battling this guardian.

"What, she's going to lose? How can you know that?"

I know this guardian. Watch.

The tentacled beast gave a roar as the rhino-corn dealt it a killing blow. Leah let loose a victory cry. It caught in her throat. From the ends of the dying guardian's tentacles shot green pellets. One of them lodged in her stomach, and she fell off the rhino.

As soon as she broke contact with it, the rhino shrunk and became a necklace with a horn pendant lying on the ground.

Leah writhed next to it. The Beast moved on. I could not. Her eyes and mouth shot open, a mask of white pain as her midsection began to bulge. It rippled and expanded, finally giving way as green tentacles burst through.

Slimy with gore, the new guardian pulled itself free from Leah's now-empty husk. It attacked the remains of the old beast, steadily increasing its bulk.

I turned and followed the Beast.

I caught up with the Beast as it finished feeding on Doug before the Gates. I hurled a blast of energy at it and shouted.

It turned to me. I could see confusion in one eye, amusement in the other.

The Joining is yet imperfect, Zenig said.

"This is your show, your power," I said. "Do your thing."

For me to embrace the essence of the Beast, you must distract it.

I nodded. "One major league distraction, coming right up." I closed my eyes and flexed, feeling the world shrink around me. Or was I getting bigger? Perception is reality. Perception is . . . yes.

I screwed my eyes shut tighter and re-envisioned myself. Spikes. Armor. Claws. Guns. I was a Japanese cartoonist's wet dream. One last thing. Flaming sword.

Roaring, I launched myself at the Beast, bringing my sword around in a savage arc. The blade bounced off a skeletal wing the Beast threw up. It snarled and raked its elbow claws across my middle, one, two, three times. I fell and rolled onto my back, launching blasts of plasma at it.

They took the Beast in the chest and face, and it fell back, reeling. I popped up and hit it with my spiked fist, once, twice in the head, then brought my other hand around, smashing it in the face with the pommel of my sword.

Vicious pain in my side. The Beast stabbed me with the point of its bony wing. Then again on the other side, pinning me in place. It pulled me in and impaled me on its elbow claws. Its maw opened wide, and I thrust the tip of my sword into it.

"Any time now!" I shouted.

A pair of smoky arms emerged from my sides and wrapped around the Beast. It went stiff, then began to thrash horribly as it realized what was happening.

It was too late.

I fell out of the armored body as it wrestled with the Beast. I landed on my back and lay there as both forms became intangible, smoky. They entwined each other and began to twirl.

My vision dimmed.

As the world got darker, I thought I saw a shred of darkness detach itself from the black tornado. Then there was a white hand before my eyes and the world went black.

I had a brief moment of wakefulness. The sky was rolling above me and Io was just in sight, pushing me along.

Then another. Io and Simon standing over me. Io's hand on my head, the other on Simon's shoulder, guttural sounds coming from his throat. His eyes went all white and his voice was louder than God.

Black, again.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital room. Sitting up. My head hurt. Io was sitting in a chair in the corner, reading a newspaper.

"What happened?" My voice sounded raspy, as if it'd been a while since I last used it. I didn't doubt that one bit.

"Long story," he said, folding his paper.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Point." He put down the newspaper. "Short version, it went like this: that blank-eyed Demon started going all static when you tackled the Beast in the Dreamlands. Simon did something, I'm still not sure what, and it disintegrated. Turned totally to dust. Then the skull ring did the same thing."

"Zenig cancelled out."

"Whatever. I did a number on the techs and the surgeons. Simon grabbed Sonja and James. A couple of hardcases came down the ramp with machine guns and all hell broke loose. I don't even know how, but you were out of the Dreamlands and screaming, so I took that you and that contraption on your head and wheeled you up the stairway."

"Dreamlands Worldwide?"

"Rubble. Simon did it with the hardware in the back of the car. You know what? The whole time, that fucker had the skull ring."

I nodded. "Simon mad?" I asked. Io gave me a look. Yeah, Simon was mad. And no surprise. I'd put his only daughter in grave danger by involving her.

I wondered how I made it out of the Dreamlands. Io didn't know? Hmm. My phone rang on the table next to me. Io handed it over.

"Hello," I said. It was Anita. She spoke, and I said, "That was you? I was wondering how I got out. Okay. Um, when I can," and hung up.

Io looked curious.

"That was Anita," I said. "She says I owe her one. Remember, we asked her to watch? Well, when everything went sideways, she followed me and got me out. I told her, 'When I can.' So . . ."

"When will that be?"

I nodded.

Io folded and unfolded the newspaper. "I don't know. There was a lot of . . . trauma to your head. The doctor didn't know what kind of damage the ah, device that they used on you did. As a matter of fact, your head is still open like a lotus flower."

"You said what?"

"Yeah. I think I can patch the bone up, but . . ."

"But what?"

"I don't want to. Not until a neurologist says you're clear."

I tried to shake my head, but nothing happened. I guess it was strapped in place. "No," I said. "Fuck a bunch of that. Close me up."

Io made a face. "I don't think—"

"I don't care what you think, just close my goddamn head!"

He shook his head. "You don't get it, do you? They fucked around with your brain, man. This isn't healing up a bullet wound. This—"

I cut him off again. "Close it up, or get the fuck out."

Io nodded. "Alright, then." Placing one hand on my forehead and the other in the air, he started mumbling, and his eyes rolled back into his head. It was getting hot in the room. I started sweating. Io’s murmur came was building louder, louder as the sky outside my window got darker, storm clouds gathering. I felt him inside my head, his words half-recognized. I began to feel woozy. Then, Io’s eyes flew open, and his voice was louder than God. Lightning flashed down through the window, striking his open hand, and that's all I remember.