'What’s the matter Eve?' Danny asked, his voice strained. 'Door a little heavy for you?'
'It’s a good thing I like you, kid,' she said letting go of her door and reaching across to grab Danny by the ear. The boy growled as she pulled him toward her, and the two tumbled to the ground in a heap upon the cave floor, as the twin doors slammed shut with a resounding echo.
Eve landed astride the demon boy and smiled down on him. She grabbed hold of the leathery flesh of his cheek and gave it a pinch. 'I could have left you outside on the ledge,' she said, crawling off of him. 'And maybe you’ll wish I had.'
He smiled back as he climbed to his feet. She could feel him watching her as she wiped the dust and dirt from her pants. For effect, she took her time, then glanced up at him.
'Take a picture. It’ll last longer.'
Danny just scowled and made an obscene gesture. Eve laughed softly. She found it flattering, enjoyed the fact that even at her age she could still make the young ones sweaty.
Now she surveyed their surroundings. It was not as dark as she had expected. They were in a cave with a ceiling perhaps twenty feet high, but it grew wider and taller as it tunneled deeper into the rock, into the earth, and where the tunnel turned out of sight, a kind of orange glow illuminated the depths. A thick, rotten egg smell, riding on gusts of warm air, wafted out to greet them.
'That’s nasty,' Danny said, holding his nose and looking about. 'Where’s Mr. Doyle and Ceridwen?'
'Where do you think?' Eve asked, moving toward the orange glow. 'Stink central. Where else would they be?'
The sides of the rounded cave walls were smooth and warm to the touch. The deeper they went into the widening tunnel, the warmer it became.
'It’s hot in here,' Danny commented from behind.
'Figured that out all by yourself?' Eve sniped, a feeling of unease beginning to creep through her.
The tunnel curved, descending toward what looked to be an exit into a much larger chamber beyond. Eve emerged from the tunnel and stopped dead in her tracks, overwhelmed by the sight before her. Danny kept right on walking, slamming into her back.
'What the fuck?' he uttered in astonishment, and she had to agree. What the fuck, indeed.
They stood on a ledge with a breathtaking view over a valley — a landscape that could have given the Grand Canyon a run for its money — but where the canyon was breathtaking in its majesty, this place filled Eve with a creeping dread that made her bones ache and her stomach churn. Every muscle in her body screamed for her to run away.
'Ah, I see that you’ve finally decided to join us,' came a voice, and Eve nearly jumped out of her skin. Conan Doyle appeared from the shadows to the left, with Ceridwen trailing behind. He wiped moisture from his brow with a white handkerchief. 'I was beginning to think that you hadn’t made it.'
Eve gazed once more out over the hellish landscape. 'And, boy, am I glad I did.'
'Come now, Eve,' Conan Doyle said as he joined her. 'What did you expect from the Underworld? Rolling fields of grass? Apple orchards? Rose bushes, perhaps? It isn’t supposed to be Eden, my dear.'
His last comment was like a jab in the ribs, and Eve gave him a hard look. Conan Doyle was well aware of how sensitive she was about her early days and often used such references to help her to focus, but this time it only made her angry. This was the sort of place she expected to end up in for what she had done. The ultimate punishment for her sins.
'So where are we, really?' Danny asked, moving past her, closer to the edge. 'Is this really it? Really the Underworld?'
'Close enough,' Doyle said. He tucked his handkerchief back into his suit jacket pocket. 'Think of a bubble, or better yet, a garbage can containing the refuse of another age, a sanctuary away from a world that has mostly forgotten that this age had ever truly existed.' He stopped suddenly and looked around, cocking his head slightly to one side as if listening.
'What is it?' Eve asked.
They were all looking around now.
'It’s nothing,' he said, turning away. 'There’s a path over here that will take us down,' he said, and started in that direction, clearly expecting them to follow.
Eve’s upper lip curled back. 'Goody.'
Silently, they descended deeper into the Underworld, Doyle, Ceridwen, Danny, then Eve. The walls themselves seemed to glow with an otherworldly light, as though fire blazed on the other side of each stone surface, and it was burning through in spots. The sulfurous smell came and went on the strange winds of that place. The terrain was awful, and they had to be cautious, for the stony ground was pitted with soft places, where the rock would suck like a quicksand mouth as they stepped past.
Hideously twisted things flew along the roof of the cave, but they blended so well it was difficult to determine their size. They seemed harmless enough, though their eyes glowed white, and Eve wondered what they fed on here. There was little other sign of life, either current or past, though they came once to a long stretch of dusty plain at the base of a craggy hill where calcified bodies jutted from the ground as though they had fallen there in death long, long ago, and sediment had settled around them.
Those whose mummified skulls were exposed had their jaws open as though they had died screaming.
After a while Eve stopped thinking about leaving and started to wonder what Nigel Gull and his people could possibly want in a place like this.
'So what do you think, Doyle?' she asked, breaking the silence. 'Why are we here? What’s Gull up to?'
The landscape had grown even bleaker. Smoldering rock, skeletal trees twisted and gnarled, dead for what looked like centuries, but she guessed it was probably longer than that. Much longer.
Other than the twisted things that had flown by, they were the only signs of life in this place.
'I gave up trying to figure out Nigel Gull a long time ago,' Conan Doyle said as he helped Ceridwen circumvent a large, black boulder that blocked their path. The Faerie sorceress had been doing her best to cover it, but Eve noted a falter in her step. Her skin was pale and marbled with blue veins, but there was a greenish tint to her flesh now and her eyes seemed somewhat disoriented. Ceridwen looked decidedly unwell. Eve wondered if it was an effect of the Underworld and made a mental note to watch Ceridwen’s back if things got wild.
Conan Doyle was looking around again. 'I sense something here. Something other than Gull’s passing, something oddly… familiar.'
Danny had continued on the path and was half a dozen or so feet ahead of them, bounding down the rocky slope as if he were some kind of mountain goat.
'Hey, kid,' Eve called out, the bad vibes getting to her. 'Wait up.'
He disappeared around a bend and was lost from sight.
'Fucking kid,' she grumbled and Conan Doyle smiled.
'Boys will be boys,' he said, putting his arm around the ailing Ceridwen and continuing their descent.
Upon a narrow plateau, Eve paused to ask if the elemental was all right, but her question was interrupted by a chilling scream. Danny bolted out from behind the cover of some large rocks, a look of absolute terror on his usually fearsome demonic features.
'Run!' he shouted, on the verge of hysteria as he scrambled up the sloping path toward them.
From what? she wanted to ask, but never got the opportunity, because her question was answered when she saw that he was being chased.
It was the biggest dog she had ever seen, about the size of an elephant, and scrabbling across the rocks in hot pursuit of the boy. Its ferocious growl sounded like the rumbling of a diesel engine.
It had three heads, each of them snapping after Danny, hungry for a piece of him.
The large black cat stared at Julia Ferrick from the middle step in front of Conan Doyle’s brownstone, its wide, jade eyes assessing her as she began to climb the stairs. She didn’t remember Mr. Doyle having a cat, so assumed it belonged to one of the neighbors.
'Hey, kitty,' she said offhandedly as she placed the shopping bag she was carrying at her feet and began to fish through her pocketbook for the key that Dr. Graves had given her.
The cat continued to watch her with curious eyes. She found the key and pulled it from her bag.
