Horrors of the Dancing Gods

performed a service; the Succubi used precisely the same techniques to suck out a man's soul and leave only corruption. Both indeed had precisely the same powers and worked them in much the same way; it was the purpose and limits on those uses that differentiated the good from the evil ones.

The Succubi got into waiting coaches with blinds drawn and roared off, but Marge wasn't off the hook yet. The next group off the boat was a small number of faerie males of much the same stripe. They had muscles on their muscles and the tightest of rear ends; their faces were totally masculine yet erotic, sensual, a male version of the Succubi, and the male organs showing through very tight pants almost as if they were naked were, um, impossible. They, too, were fliers, with wings that were far more pronounced as batlike but that when folded formed a kind of sexy and attractive cloak

'Incubi, the male version,' Poquah told Irving. 'Neither of the two sexes appears as you are seeing them to their victims, although they do much the same. Instead, they appear as the perfect dream combination, male or female, that the subject most desires or would desire if fantasies were reality. Even with faerie sight they are difficult to resist. Without it they are next to impossible to defend against, since they are the subject's sexual fantasy incarnate. Except for being too good to be true, most mortals would not even recognize them as faerie, let alone as a threat. They're not too common here, though, since any faerie race can see them for what they are and there is no power over us.'

They were, however, the beginnings of a parade of very scary sorts, most of whom seemed somehow not quite so frightening in this context. There were vampires and ghouls and beasties and things that went bump in the night and all sorts of scary creatures, as well as a number of quite ordinary-looking people who seemed physically out of place but not the least bit uncomfortable.

'Those are the most dangerous of all,' Marge noted quite seriously to Irving. 'They look and act just like everybody else, and they're friendly and trustworthy types you'd never look twice at. The vampires and ghouls can go after one or two at a time, but these people can corrupt or destroy whole nations, races, and ways of life, often with no more than a word, or a gesture, or simply a refusal to act. I'd rather deal with a vampire or a ghoul any old day.'

Had the Dark Baron once been a passenger like these? She wondered about that. Had he seen the misery and poverty around him here and found nobody but defenders of the system around his own people? He'd been a good man once; they all attested to that. In that sense he, more than anyone else, had been the epitome of the phrase 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.' That and the curse of the true intellectual searching for meaning and order in a universe that had little of them. Just one creeping thought, one blasphemous doubt, might well be enough for somebody like him. 'If God permits such suffering and misery, perhaps the Devil is right'

In the end the Baron had betrayed both Heaven and Hell, and where his soul had gone was anybody's guess.

All of a sudden it was as if it were yesterday, but with that additional element of doubt. If Joe could somehow survive, in some form, the fall into that lava, then why not the Baron as well?

No, no! That way lay madness.

'You are suddenly disturbed,' Poquah noted. 'Second thoughts?'

'Tenth thoughts,' she responded. 'Never mind. Just seeing this dark bunch of villains and knowing where we're headed now kind of brings up all sorts of dark thoughts out of the dim corners of the mind — ones better left where they are, I think. Forget it.'

Poquah nodded. 'I know what you mean. Wait here and keep an eye on the boy. I'm going to see if the Master did indeed arrange for our passage. I almost hope that somehow he did not.'

While Poquah made his way warily through the throngs of the damned toward the ticketing kiosk, Marge went over to Irving, who was simply sitting on the ground, half- reclined, looking at the assembled multitudes with a blank sort of expression.

'Worried?' she asked him.

He shook his head negatively. 'Not yet. Maybe when we really get into it, but not now. Sort of neat to see all those white folks in chains. Kind of poetic justice. The rest? Well, I've seen their type before. Ruddygore deals with demons, you know, and I've had some contacts myself. You got to be careful and you can't trust 'em but so far, but overall they're not nearly as scary for what they are as for what they can do to you if you let them.'

'Yeah? Well, most kids your age tend to think they're both invulnerable and immortal. The ones who survive to grow up learn different. The rest learn right away.'

'I don't think I'm invulnerable, but I don't underestimate myself, either. This is my trial. I don't have to go. I could hang back, and then I'd be just another human in Husaquahr, apprenticed to somebody for a regular job, pushing a pencil or a plow, living and dying a nobody just like most folks. One thing Ruddygore taught me that was important was that some folks — not all, but maybe most — come to some point in their lives, some time and place where they have to decide. They either take a risk, maybe even a superrisk, or they don't. If they don't, they're meaningless to destiny. Most folks don't. They either don't have the guts, or they talk themselves out of it or whatever and spend the rest of their lives tellin' everybody else and themselves what they coulda been. Or they take the risk. A fair number of the ones that do take that risk lose, that's true, but at least they took the risk. They went for it. And a fair number don't lose. A fair number win, too. They're the ones that change history, run things, influence the world, make a difference. That time's come a little earlier here than it does for most folks, or maybe not. Maybe if I'd stayed back in Philly, I'd be on the streets now, either dodging gangs or in one, dealin' dope or bein' shot by tops or rival gangs or who knows? It wasn't a good place where I was. I remember that.'

'Do you miss Earth, though?'

He nodded. 'Sometimes. Maybe a lot. I also miss my mom. She wasn't all that much, but she was my mother. But that was a bad neighborhood. I wasn't even ten, and I'd lost two friends in shootings. One was coming home from school and just got in the wrong place. The other was sittin' on the front steps one hot night gettin' some air, and a bullet just came and blew him away. You saw the cokeheads and winos and all sorts, and you saw the gangs with their big man leader of the month — usually dead after that. I couldn't even blame 'em. They didn't see any future; they just grabbed whatever present they could. So maybe I'd already be dead or in jail or something. Well, okay. I'm sixteen, and I've had a lot of education here and a lot of training. I'm not the greatest swordsman or archer or knife fighter in the world, but I'm fair at 'em. I'm definitely not a world- class sorcerer, but I know more than most folks. I'm a big guy now, and I'm in pretty decent shape. Now's my time. Now I have to decide to go or stay.'

'Well, you are going after your father, such as he or she now is,' Marge noted.

'That's not it. Kinda hard to get choked up about somebody you barely knew and don't really remember and who hid from you all this time. The only thing I can say is that he made his own decision at a key time and changed history. He saved the world, and it cost him. But he couldn't follow through. He couldn't save himself, too. I don't know if I'd be any better, but I kind of hope I would. It isn't a question of living up to my dad. It's a question of proving to myself and the world that I'm better than him.'

'Do you really hate him that much?'

He shook his head sadly. 'No, no. I don't hate him. It's impossible to hate a stranger, the same as it's impossible to love one. To me this Joe is just another common wood nymph.'

This was the area where she and Irving had always hit a wall, going round and round, and it was where she was determined to somehow break through. They would need total trust and confidence in the days and weeks ahead, and whatever barriers could be dissolved ahead of time, she knew, should be gotten rid of.

'Deep down inside that form is the same person who loved you, talked about nobody but you, and came for you when he could,' she pointed out.

'Yeah? Are you really the same person you were back in the real world, or are you just kidding yourself? Would anybody really recognize the old you inside? Do you ever feel the same, act the same? Do you even really remember what it was like to be human?'

'Listen, kid,' she responded, more than a little angry at his tone. 'No, I'm not the same person, and neither will you be in another five or ten years if you live that long. But I remember who I was and where I came from, don't kid yourself. And your old man — well, he's a damn