003

"Stab thine eyes," Thune wheezed. "Five hundred years buried in darkness only to be rescued by a man afraid of bridges. The gods make a mockery of me."

"I'm not afraid of bridges," Frank said. "I just don't do heights. Always had a stunt guy for heights."

"What is there to fear? The black depths are endless. Gazing into them is like closing thine eyes."

"Not helping."

Another violent tremor shook the cave. Red dust fell from above. Frank stumbled but managed to stay upright.

"Heed my warning, Frank Farrell. Until now, thy greatest fear may well have been tall heights. But when the godling appears, thou willst know true fear. I myself would rather suffer the abyss. I would endure a fall for all eternity rather than face capture by that living curse. It knows no compassion. It knows no mercy. Its only language is suffering, and its only pleasure is –"

"Okay, okay." Frank's palms were sweaty now. His legs were numb from the knees down. "Time to be a problem, Frank."

"What didst thou mutter?"

"Something I learned in acting school."

"Thou art a mummer? Excellent, time to act the part of a man."

"I'm gonna act the part of a placekicker and boot you over this fucking bridge if you don't shut up."

Thune fell silent.

Be a problem, Frank.

That's what Mrs. Grady, his instructor at Grady's Stage and Dance in Brentwood had taught him. Charlotte Grady had been a Vegas Showgirl, a Broadway actress, and a star (well, guest star) of soaps and sitcoms for three decades. She was in her seventies by the time Frank met her, but spry as hell and still drinking men half her age under the table. A tough old broad, she had a reputation as a demanding teacher, with a deep respect for the process, and not one to coddle the tenderhearted.

But that wasn't because she didn't like her students. She loved them, in fact, each and every one. No, Mrs. Grady was hardnosed because she knew the showbiz secret her starry-eyed students hadn't yet learned.

Hollywood eats its young.

And if you didn't want to be food, then you had to show your teeth.

Be a problem.

Her first rule of auditioning was to assume you wouldn't get the part. More than that, assume everyone you met in the audition room – casting directors, producers, costars – all wanted someone else. They'd made up their mind already, kid, and it wasn't gonna be you.

Now, go in there and be so good, so undeniable, they had to rethink everything. They didn't want to, of course. They wanted their guy. But they'd seen you, and now they had a problem on their hands.

"You're a problem, Frank," he whispered, the same as he had before stepping foot in every audition room in his career. Something about the ritual of it, spoken like a prayer, calmed his nerves. He began to believe he could do this. And then, as sure as day follows dawn, he started walking.

The strange bonework that made up the bridge was smooth beneath his bare soles, and surprisingly warm. He stared down as he walked, focusing on his feet, aware of the sheer drop on either side of the ten-foot span but refusing to acknowledge it. He could feel the depths below him though, and that was enough to make him dizzy.

His ears were ringing. His throat was tight. Every step felt like trying to balance on a tightrope with a headful of ketamine. But he was moving. And if he could just keep doing that, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, he could be over this bridge before long, and out of this terrible dungeon and, hopefully, back home.

He was two hundred feet out onto the overpass when he spotted a rucksack ahead of him. It was made of wool and hung with various items: a length of rope, a bedroll, a net, a stone hammer, a bronze knife. They were crude tools, clearly old and well-used, but salvageable. Good stuff to have if you were trying to make your way out of dungeon.

It was the first bit of good luck he'd had since hatching from that egg. And like Mrs. Grady used to say, better to be lucky than good.

He shifted course, aiming himself at the rucksack. He was moving on an angle now, instead of straight down the middle, but the rules of the bridge were the same. Head down. Eyes on feet. Don't think about how close you are to the edge. In fact, don't think about the edge at all.

"Just a walk in the park, Frank," he said to himself.

The bag hissed in response.

Frank froze.

At first, he thought he'd imagined the sound, like the ringing in his ears. But as he watched, the rucksack started to shake.

"Proceed with care," Thune said. "There are –"

The rucksack tore open and something leaped out. It was three feet long and tubular, like a ferret but hairless and wet, with four clawed feet. Its skin was the oily, no-color of steak fat, and it had a massive, unblinking eye, as big as a tennis ball, atop its flanged head.

The creature reared as it spotted Frank, hissing louder. It flashed a toothed funnel of a mouth, each tooth yellow and horn-shaped and dripping with venom.

Frank staggered backward, his fear of the beast overriding his fear of the edge. He lost track of distance. His foot landed awkwardly, his heel hanging off the lip of the bridge, and the sudden feel of all that great nothing beneath him shot terror through his body like cold saline in an open vein.

He glanced over his shoulder – big mistake – and gazed down into the yawning black pit.

The world spun. He lurched forward, more a fall than an actual step, and collapsed to his knees. He could hear the beast darting for him, the clattering of claws on bone drawing closer, but couldn't focus his eyes to see the bastard.

Then he puked.

It happened fast, just one forceful heave that fired a stream of bile across the bridge, where it landed wet and loud.

The clattering stopped.

As his eyes cleared, he saw the tubular beast reared up at the edge of the fresh puddle. Was it scared? Did it think this was some kind of self-defense mechanism, the way vultures vomit to scare off predators?

"Now," Thune shouted. "While it is distracted."

Frank staggered to his feet, still woozy with vertigo. He kicked at the beast, a slow, clumsy swing with too much momentum. He'd studied Jeet-Kun-Do for twelve weeks to play the bad guy in Fist Cop 4, a Hong Kong action comedy he'd booked to pay off a tax bill. But if he'd kicked like that on camera, they'd have fired him before the director yelled cut.

The kick missed wide and he slipped, landing on his back. The beast hissed again, leaping for his face. He punched up at it wildly, missing the beast in mid-air, but managing to hit it with Thune's skull.

The beast fell and lay stunned. It rolled over slowly, squatting low and appraising Frank for a time, deciding if this juice was worth the squeeze. Then it snatched the rucksack with its jaws and fled down the bridge.

"Bastard," Thune said.

"I know. The fucker stole all those supplies."

"Thou art the bastard, Frank Farrell. Thou. To use me in that fashion, as some ... blunt weapon. That is an indignity I will not soon forget."

"It was reflex."

"To breathe when asleep is a reflex. To pull thy hand from a hot fire is a reflex. To swing about a prince of Narit-Pthan, a magister in the Sons of the Shattered Mirror, like ... like some common flail is not a reflex. It is a violation. And it will not happen again."

"Sure," Frank said, "honest Injun." He held up three fingers in a Scout's salute.

"On thy feet. We are almost quit of this place. Just over the rope crossing and through the grand entrance."

Frank stood up, his head still swimming, and continued down the bridge. He saw no sign of the rucksack, no sign of the beast.

"What if it was a trap?" he said.

"What doest thou mean?"

"That snake-weasel. Maybe it crawled into that bag on purpose to lure someone in."

"Mayhaps," Thune said. "But who left it here? And why?"

Frank didn't answer. His mouth had gone dry. They'd crossed the first portion of the bridge and had now come to the rope crossing that connected its two broken halves. Here, he could no longer ignore the black expanse of the void. Fixing his eyes on the ground wasn't an option. There wasn't any.

The makeshift crossing was made of rope and wooden planks, the planks laid single file, end-to-end, each barely wider than Frank's foot. He'd have to walk heel-to-toe to cross, holding the ropes on either side for balance. That left no free hand to carry Thune.

"How do we get you across?" he asked.

"Grab my hair in thy mouth. Like a cat with her young."

"Thune."

"It is the only way."

Frank spat and then wiped his lips. He opened wide, placed a hank of Thune's long gray hair in his mouth, and bit down. The hair was brittle and tasted of smoke. But worse than that was the feel of Thune's head dangling against his bare chest, cold and clammy, like old lunch meat.

"Do not speak," Thune said. "Do not shout. Do not so much as yawn, else thou condemn me to the pit below."

Frank took hold of the ropes that made up either end of the makeshift bridge, finding them frayed and rough against his palms. He stepped onto the first plank and the entire bridge swayed, kicking up and off to the side like a skateboard trick gone bad.

He made to scream but checked himself, the sound caught in his throat.

"Carefully," Thune said.

Frank tightened his core, steadying the plank beneath his feet, his abs burning with the effort. It wasn't that long ago he could do a hundred inverted sit-ups with perfect form. Men's Fitness had named him the "best bod of the summer" two years in a row. Sure, there'd been a lot of beer and bourbon since then, but if he'd known six-pack abs would save his life one day, he'd have made them a priority.

The bridge settled back into a neutral position, and he advanced again. This time he kept his feet planted, sliding them along each plank instead of lifting them. It worked well at first, he even picked up speed, moving steadily past the giant stalagmite which had served as the support pillar for the broken section of bridge.

But the wooden planks were old and rotted, and each advance came at a cost. Splinters pricked his toes, piercing the balls of both feet. He took a particularly nasty one to his left heel, deep enough to make him yelp through gritted teeth, but he pushed on. Stiff upper lip, no crying in baseball, keep on truckin' – all that happy horseshit flashed through his head. But the one thing that really kept him moving was the thought of what was chasing him, its awful smell, the horrible noises it made. He hadn't even seen the thing, but he already knew he'd do anything to get away from it.

By the time he made it across to the far side of the bridge, his feet were raw and bloodied. Back on solid ground, he took a minute to pluck out a few of the bigger splinters and then gathered up Thune and continued on. He tried not to think about infections, about tetanus or MRSA or whatever other hellish pathogens called this place home. If he made it out of here alive, his first order of business was to soak his feet in a tub full of vodka, maybe drop a few doses down his gullet too, just to make sure the cure took.

Even thinking about a stiff drink seemed to warm him. In AA, they taught you not to view drinking as a reward, to never tell yourself that you'd earned that beer or that glass of wine or whatever your particular poison was. But goddamn it, none of those bores had ever crawled through the Temple of Blasphemous Flesh. If ever there was a man who had earned it, it was him, and it was now.

"Mind your step," Thune cautioned.

Up ahead, Frank spotted a section of bridge where the scabrous masonry had fallen away, leaving a hole in the bonework six feet wide and twelve feet across. He tried to circle around but found the floor on either side cracked and weak, groaning under his weight.

"Looks like I have to jump it," he said.

"So it seems."

"I'll need a running start. Might be easier if my hands are free."

"Do as thou wilt."

"Easy peasy," he said, taking a fresh grip on Thune and then lobbing the head across the hole underhanded, a granny-style free throw. Thune landed without so much as a grunt, rolled and stopped, staring up at the ceiling.

"You okay?" Frank called.

"I fear my pride will never recover."

Frank took off at a run, trying not to slip in his own blood, and then launched himself over the hole. As his foot touched down on the far side, he heard a snap – felt it, too – and the ground broke away.

He caught himself on the edge of the bridge as he fell, digging his fingers into the masonry, which was spongey and tough. He pulled, his sweaty arms slipping and his chest throbbing from the effort, but managed to claw up out of the hole. Back on his feet, he took inventory of his body.

His heartbeat was throbbing in his ears. His head was swimming. His back ached, his feet were bleeding, his chest burned. He was exhausted and sick. But up ahead, he spotted a tall archway leading out of the chamber, and suddenly the pain didn't matter.

The arch itself was made of curious, pulsing red brick, and beyond it, Frank could see a room with a vaulted ceiling and twin doors of black stone. From the small space between the doors came an unmistakable glow.

Sunlight.

They had made it. The worst was behind them.

Or so he thought. In truth, the worst was above them.

"Thou art a sneaky bastard indeed," Thune said.

"Who are you talking to?"

"The godling. It seems I was right. He did have a shortcut. He came through the ceiling."

Frank heard a crash from above, the sound like an avalanche, loud and calamitous and everywhere all at once. The bridge shook, and dust fell from above. He snatched up Thune and ran, the crashing noise drawing closer, rolling down the far wall like a cave-in.

The archway was a hundred feet away when he realized he wouldn't make it. He wasn't fast enough. The godling would be on them before he was halfway to the exit.

"It's too fast," he yelled.

"Back," Thune commanded. "Over the rope crossing. The godling is too big to follow."

Frank turned and ran. Gone were the cautious steps of his first trek across the bridge. He charged without hesitation now, leaping over the hole in the ground, the bonework groaning and cracking as he moved, a trail of bloody footprints in his wake.

"Faaaaattthherrrr."

The air behind him shook from the godling's scream. It was a cry of madness, the word itself divorced of meaning or intellect, like the shriek of a caged parrot.

More cracking. The ground began to sway. He glanced over his shoulder to see the bridge breaking up behind him and caught sight of the godling.

It made no sense.

The main portion of its body was vaguely bull-shaped, although easily five times the size of a normal bull. It had a long, flexible neck like an ostrich, and its head was covered in a sagging hood of pink skin. Its limbs were a riot of arms and legs from a multitude of beasts, a chimera of random, suffering flesh. Human hands and squid tentacles and spider legs and pseudopods of gelatinous, nondescript meat. Dozens of limbs crawling and scrabbling and reaching independently of each other so that even though the beast was headed towards him, it seemed like it should be moving in ten directions at once.

The sight of the thing triggered a stab of pain in Frank's head. He turned from the monster in time to see the rope bridge ahead. Chomping down onto Thune's hair, he took the bridge at a leap, landing on the splintered planks, his hands clamped desperately onto the rope lines on either side. The bridge swayed wildly, but he kept moving.

He pushed along the planks without thought of his wounded feet. He was more than halfway across when he heard the crack of a whip behind him. The rope crossing bucked, nearly sling-shotting him out into the dark.

Glancing back, he saw the godling lashing out with a strange appendage that looked like a scorpion's tail. It struck one of the rope lines, instantly fraying it, and then pulled back for another swipe.

"Fuck," Frank shouted through clenched teeth. He started to run again and heard another whip crack. When it landed this time, the bridge didn't buck. Instead, the ropes in his hands went slack, and he was in freefall.

The rope bridge swung down to smash against a stalagmite. The impact knocked the wind out of him, and his mouth opened wide enough for Thune's hair to slip out. He shouted as Thune bounced and tumbled down his body. Before he could even grab for the head, a stabbing pain tore through his foot.

He switched his grip so that both hands were holding the same rope line and then wrapped his knees around it, same as he'd learned in Mr. Brown's gym class in sixth grade. He shimmied up the rope, cursing the entire way.

Five feet.

Ten feet.

Fifteen feet.

He could see the lip of the bone bridge now. He reached up to grab it, but a chilling hiss stayed his hand. A second later, the beast from the rucksack leaned over the ledge, snapping at him with its funneled mouth.

As the beast leaned down, Frank clamped a hand onto its large eye, feeling a satisfying pop as he squeezed. The beast shrieked, and with one swift motion, like tossing trash out of a car window, he hurled the beast over his shoulder and down into the dark.

He hoisted himself up onto the bridge, and only then did he see the cause of his foot pain. Thune had bitten down onto his big toe, dangling by the tips of his rotted teeth, his eyes wide with desperation.

"Thought I'd lost you."

Thune released him. "It would be thy grave misfortune if so. Thou wouldst never survive this land without me."

"What now?" he asked, hoisting the head from the ground.

"Back inside. We shall hide."

"And then what? The bridge is gone. How do we get out of this place?"

"There is an older path to the surface. Through the cloister of the Sarco Priests. It will be no easy trek. The path is crumbling and fraught with perils. It will take weeks to traverse. But it is our only hope now."

"Faaaaattthherrrr," the godling raged.

Frank turned his head and spat. "You said that thing was a kid once?"

"Long ago. Before black alchemy and cosmic sorcery turned it into the beast you see before you."

"Almost feel bad for the poor bastard."

As though enraged by Frank's pity, the godling stamped, shattering a section of the bridge and sending bone shards and scabrous mortar down into the black depths. Then it squatted low, its army of orphaned limbs working as one, and leaped into the shadows above.

Frank's breath caught in his chest. At first, he thought the godling had thrown itself into the abyss. But then he felt a putrid wind wash over him. He looked up in time to see the monster hurtling down from out of the shadows, its mouth hood peeled back to reveal a bird-like skull with open jaws wide as a doorway.

It landed behind him on the bridge, snatching him up with its beak and hurling him into the air. He cartwheeled through the dark, Thune slipping from his grasp with a desperate scream, and then gravity caught him and pulled him down into the monster's waiting mouth.