“Herc!”
Marlow ran, colliding with Pan. Somehow he managed to keep his feet, both of them skidding to a halt next to the shattered mirror.
There was no glass left in that twisted frame, but the view was identical—the same room, the same shrouded mirrors. Herc was nowhere to be seen, but Marlow could hear the old guy screaming, the crunch of something toppling, the muffled growl of a demon.
“Herc!” Pan screamed. She pressed her head through the gap and Marlow grabbed her shoulder. She turned, shoving him away. “Don’t you dare,” she said.
The frame was shaking, something pushing its way out of the inner edge. The face mounted on the top opened its mouth, its jaw twisting in agony, those dead eyes rolling in their puckered sockets. Glass was growing inward, the sound of it setting Marlow’s teeth on edge.
It was repairing itself.
“We have to move now,” Pan said, and she didn’t wait for a reply before throwing herself through the shrinking gap.
Here we go again, Marlow said. He took a hit on the inhaler, coughing the dust and fear from his lungs. Then he stepped after her.
It was like walking into a freezer, so cold it burned. He chased a cloud of his breath into the room beyond, wrapping his hands around his torso. Pan was to the left, running toward a thrashing pile of limbs that could only be Herc and the demon. The creature had Herc in its jaws still, shaking him like a dog with a rabbit. The old guy’s Desert Eagle was halfway across the room.
Marlow stopped, frozen by fear. What the hell was he supposed to do against a demon?
Demons.
There were howls coming from outside the room, like a pack of wolves was out there. Behind him, the mirror was sealing up fast. Charlie threw himself in, then the French girl, Claire, stumbled through, then Truck was there, trying to squeeze his bulk through the jagged edge. He was too big, the glass tearing through his clothes, blood running thick.
“No!” he yelled. The glass looked like it was growing through him. If he didn’t move one way or the other he was going to be cut clean in half.
“We’ll open it again,” Marlow said. “Get back, we’ll find another way through.”
Truck was still pushing and Marlow ran at him, shouldering him out of the gap. Truck staggered back like a wounded bear, clutching the wounds in his flank.
“We’ll find another way,” said Marlow.
“I could have gotten through,” Truck said, pounding on the glass, on the frame. “Dammit, Marlow.”
Jaime was there, too, pulling something from her pocket. It glinted in the light when she threw it through the basketball-sized gap and it clattered on the floor.
A dagger, the one she’d conjured demons with.
She opened her mouth, yelling something, but the last of the glass had grown over the open wound. It sealed like an airlock door, the pressure making Marlow’s ears hurt. Jaime’s words were completely silent, Truck’s fists not making the slightest sound as he pounded on the glass. Both of them were slowing down, their movements creeping almost to a halt as if Marlow were watching a slow-motion replay.
No time to think about it. He turned, seeing Herc on the floor, the demon still tearing into him. Pan was throwing punches at it, Charlie running for the gun. Marlow scooped up the dagger and ran across the room. He studied it as he went, the iron blade etched with symbols. It was heavier than it had any right to be. There was no doubt it was something from deep inside the Engine; it gave off that same bone-numbing hum.
“Get off!” Herc roared, punching the demon in the side of its head. It didn’t even seem to feel it, those jaws snapping shut around his torso again.
Gunshots, Charlie holding the Desert Eagle and popping off rounds. Two missed, thudding into the walls. The third glanced off the demon’s shoulder.
The beast reared up, roaring, and Charlie shot it again. The round punched into its chest, knocking it back.
Pan had her hands under Herc’s armpits, hauling him across the floor. The old guy was clutching his ribs, his face bloodless and etched with pain. The demon shrieked again. Every inch of it glistened like it had no skin, only thick cords of muscle. Its eyeless face sniffed at the air, that raw red throat ready to swallow them all whole.
Charlie fired again, a bullet ripping off a chunk of the demon’s cheek. The demon charged at him like a tiger, jaws churning at the air. With a crunch of its powerful legs it was airborne, Charlie swearing as he dived to the side. The demon missed him, its claws gouging canyons in the wooden floor as it turned. It charged again, Charlie rolling in a panic, too slow to get up.
Marlow put his head down and ran, the blade glinting in his fist. The demon sensed him coming, blasting out a cry that stank of charcoal. Then it was on the move, bouldering toward him.
What the hell are you doing?
He skidded to a halt, tried to turn around. The demon thumped into him like a car, knocking him across the room. He rolled onto his back. Everything hurt.
“Help,” he croaked, but the only thing to answer was the demon as it pounced. It was like looking into a cement mixer lined with metal shards, that mouth big enough to swallow him whole.
Marlow felt metal in his fist, knew he still held the knife. He thrust it forward, holding it upright. The demon was midleap and it seemed to know the blade was there, its body twisting to one side, another cry halfway up its throat.
But even the spawn of hell had to obey gravity. It thumped down on top of Marlow, the blade sinking into the soft, gristly flesh of its stomach. There was a sound like a wing being pulled off a roasted chicken, then the creature exploded like a bomb in a butcher’s shop The force of it slammed Marlow’s head against the floor and he sank into something black and cold.
“Hey, Marlow.”
It could have been a million years or five seconds later that the words dragged him up. He snatched in a crackling breath, barely any oxygen there. Pan was crouched over him, drenched in blood. It dripped from her onto him, as cold as lake water. The room was decorated with demon guts. Charlie was doubled over and spitting chunks from his mouth.
“Little warning next time, maybe?” Pan said, shaking a chunk of something wet and black from her hair.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “No worries. Next time I’ll send an e-mail, make sure everyone has time to grab an umbrella.”
He tried to get up, falling onto his backside. Then Charlie was there, grabbing his wrist and pulling him to his feet. The whole world seemed to be moving and it took him a moment to understand he wasn’t imagining it. There was a pulse of sound running through the space, everything shaking for a few seconds then falling quiet, shaking then quiet, over and over. It was a sound he’d heard before.
The sound of the Engine.
“Everyone alive?” said Herc, staggering up. He winced, clutching his side.
“Just about,” said Pan. “You?”
“Body armor took the worst of it,” he said. “Couple ribs broken maybe, but hell, I got plenty more where they came from.”
“What is this place?” said Charlie, walking to the mirror they’d entered through. Truck and Jaime were still there, but now they were frozen solid—as still as a photograph. He tapped on the glass and the sound boomed like a bass drum.
Before anyone could answer, something thumped into the wall on the other side of the room. Marlow heard the fluttering of leathery wings, the snap of teeth. Something else was growling, the sound so low that Marlow couldn’t pinpoint it. He gripped the knife in a sweaty fist.
“We should go,” said Herc, limping across the room toward the passageway that sat there—identical to the one on the other side of the mirror.
Whatever was outside was busy tearing its way through to get to them. Another demon was screaming above, plaster dust raining down as it tried to claw in through the ceiling. Herc was almost at the passageway when a shape appeared in it, a hulking mass of twisted flesh that was even bigger than the one they’d just killed. Its head scraped against the top of the door as it lumbered through, its eyeless face taking them all in.
Marlow retreated to Pan’s side, Charlie joining them. Claire was pounding on the mirror with her tiny fists, trying to smash her way back to the real world. It might as well have been armored Plexiglas.
“Well,” said Charlie, the pistol rattling in his hands. “It was nice knowing you all. Apart from you, Herc. You can be a bit of a dick.”
“Please,” Pan said. The demon stalked into the room on six legs that might once have been human arms, big, hairy hands flexing at the ends of them. Its face was a nightmare of moving parts, jagged rows of teeth leading toward the black hole of its throat.
“Somehow I don’t think please is going to cut it,” said Marlow.
“Please, Meridiana,” Pan said, louder now. The wall coughed splinters as another demonic face pressed through. “We need you. We need help.”
Nothing, just the throbbing snarls of the demons. The big one in the passageway hissed at the one in the wall, feigning an attack like a hyena squabbling for food. A chunk of timber crashed from the ceiling as the third tunneled its way down.
The knife in Marlow’s hand felt like a cocktail stick. Herc took the gun from Charlie and checked the mag.
“Please,” Pan said again. “We knew Mammon. We knew your brother. We’re here to fight Ostheim, but we can’t do it by ourselves. We can’t.”
The big demon started to run, the floor trembling with the force of it. If Meridiana was anywhere here then she didn’t care about them. And why would she? She was safe here, she was hidden. And she’d lost everyone now.
“We know how to save him!” The words were out of Marlow’s mouth before he even knew it, before he even understood them. “We know how to bring Mammon back. We can bring him back to you.”
The room shuddered, a subsonic noise that made Marlow’s bones shake. The demon stopped in its tracks, looking back like a dog that has heard a whistle. It snarled, then turned, bounding out of the room. The one in the wall disappeared just as fast, a sickly light pouring in through the hole it had made. The noise from the ceiling stopped, hooves drumming across the roof like thunder before fading.
Pan threw a look at Marlow, one part nice move to three parts what the hell do we do now? She knew better than to say it out loud, though. Instead, she ran across the room to the passageway.
Marlow followed, gagging on the rotting-flesh stench the demons had left behind. They walked into the front room of the shop—no mirrors in this version, just the same door, wide open.
Marlow hesitated. He felt like he was on a carnival ride, one of the haunted house ones where you ride a cart through dark rooms, where people jump out at you and animatronics howl with recorded laughter. There was always some fresh horror around the corner, but you could never turn back, you could never retrace your footsteps. You could only let yourself be ratcheted forward and hope that the next scare, whatever it was, didn’t make you crap your shorts.
Or, in this case, gut you, eat you, then crap you out into its shorts.
Nobody wanted to walk through the door, and in the end it was Claire who bit the bullet.
“I just want it to be over,” she said, sniffing as she went, still rubbing her stomach like she was about to be sick. Marlow wanted to be a gentleman, wanted to stop her so that he could check it was safe, but the mechanisms inside him had jammed. They started moving again only when she had turned around and looked back through the door.
“There is nothing here,” she said, scratching her wrist. “No monsters.”
Herc limped after her, then Pan. Marlow let Charlie go in front of him then stepped through. There was no Venetian street here, no cobbled road and chocolate-box houses. They were in a vaulted brick cellar, the walls slick with algae, puddles of water pooling around the fat columns that held up the ceiling. Candles were mounted on the walls, fluttering in a nonexistent wind. The shop they’d come out of sat alone in the huge space, slumped into itself like the last dude at a party. There were archways in all four walls, each leading into darkness.
“Eenie, meenie?” said Charlie.
Something growled from the arch behind them, a demon padding into sight. It put its head down, ready to charge, but another deep, almost imperceptible blast of sound brought it to heel. It thrashed in protest, snarling at them. Another demon appeared from the archway to the right—smaller, but with that same nightmare face. It staggered on three legs, its fourth just a ragged stump protruding from its shoulder.
“They’re herding us,” said Herc as the first demon lumbered closer, baring its teeth. He was right, the demons pushing them toward the archway to their left.
“Miney, mo it is,” said Charlie. He walked toward the arch, his sneakers scuffing on the uneven floor. Marlow followed. They all did. It wasn’t like they had any say in the matter. More demons were swarming from the archways like rats, fighting among one another. The weird call that seemed to vibrate in the air was the only thing holding them back.
The archway led into a corridor, as cold and damp as a sewer. Luckily it was short, ending with another arch up ahead. Through it seeped more firelight and that same pulse that seemed to resonate in Marlow’s soul. It had to be the Engine up there. Nothing else could make that sound, could it?
“It can’t have brought us back to the Nest,” said Pan. “No way.”
“I hope not,” said Charlie. “If we’re back at the Engine, then Ostheim will be here, too.”
Claire shuddered, backing up against the wall.
“In all my time in the Nest, I never saw a tunnel like this,” said Herc. “Not to mention a shop standing in the middle of the basement. No, this is someplace new.”
Behind them the demons pressed closer, spittle spraying from their open jaws. Meridiana might have had some control over them, but even the best-trained dog in the world cut loose when it smelled a free meal.
“Well,” said Marlow. “One way to find out.”
He stepped through the arch.