An open-air market on earth.
A row of Victorian-looking buildings flashed by on either side, with tables set up in front piled with wares, and people diving for cover. At least most people. A vendor nimbly danced out of the way, but his cart didn’t. And there was no way to avoid it with no steering and no brakes. And then it didn’t matter when we hit it head-on and were inundated with a wave of hot water filled with . . . pigs’ feet?
What had to be a couple dozen boiled pigs’ feet slapped us in the face as we barreled through the man’s big metal cauldron and kept right on going. Right at a bunch of kids who had been playing in the street, but who were now just standing there, mouths hanging open. Probably because they’d never seen a burning, speeding bed before.
I grabbed Rosier, who was trying to free himself by pulling the footboard apart, where it had been scored the deepest. “Shift! Shift!”
“Would you give me a minute?”
“No! Do it now!”
“We can’t do it now! We’re not clear yet!”
I didn’t ask clear of what, because there wasn’t time. I grabbed his head and forcibly jerked it up, pointing at the kids. “Now!”
Rosier’s eyes got big, maybe because we were close enough to see the whites of theirs, and he gave a little screech— And the next second, we were back in the Shadowland.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
I’d never been so glad to be in hell before.
Until a virtual hail of swords clanged off the bed frame from in front, hard enough to dent it. And a bunch of fireballs lit up the sky from behind. And the only question was, which group was going to kill us first?
The answer was neither, because we abruptly shifted back to earth again, Rosier shrieking and the bed burning and now sword-riddled, and speeding more than ever because it had just gotten renewed life from its brief stint on the hill from hell.
A lot of life.
Like a Mach 2 amount of life, or maybe that was just the impression conveyed by all the shrieking. And the clackity, clackity, clackity of the cobblestones. And the neighing.
Neighing?
We burst out of the pedestrian-only street, which I guess had been closed off for the market, into one filled with horses and carriages and buses and— And then our luck ran out. Or maybe it was the horse’s luck. I don’t know. I just know that I saw a flash of rearing horse belly and flailing hooves and the screaming white face of a cabbie. And then we were careening off course and heading straight for— Well, crap, I thought, as the fetid stench of the Thames hit my nose, right before we broke through a barrier and took a flying leap— Back into hell.
The bed hit down from maybe six feet up, hard enough to bounce me back up to the point where we’d flashed in, before I smacked down on top of Rosier.
Who dumped me onto the side of the street with a breathless snarl.
I just sat there for a minute, clinging to the now stationary bed. We’d passed down the hill and almost made it to the top of another, and the angle plus the bounce seemed to have absorbed our momentum. We weren’t moving.
We weren’t moving!
I stared around, half disbelieving. I was so dizzy that the street still felt like it was undulating beneath me. But it wasn’t, and that was good. And the lack of swords and fire and mayhem was even better.
It looked like the crazies had dispersed while we were gone, either following us back to earth or spreading out around the area. Because all I saw were dark, vaguely modernish buildings, like a back alley in a normal city. Because the Shadowland pulled images from your own mind to cover up whatever the heck it actually looked like.
But the illusion only went so far, because a very unearthly wail suddenly rent the air.
My head jerked around. “What was that?”
Rosier didn’t answer.
I looked up to see him frozen in place, dirty knees on the bed and the sword he’d pulled out of the footboard clutched in both hands. And staring in apparent dumbstruck horror at something down the street. I looked back around, but there was nothing there.
Except for another haunting, skin-ruffling howl that had me clambering back onto the bed really fast.
It came again, and our heads whipped around in unison, looking at nothing some more, because the top of the hill was in the way. And then it came from the left. Or maybe the right. Or maybe— I couldn’t tell. The buildings were closely packed and tall enough to act as an echo chamber. Which wasn’t fun when the echoes were like these. The horrible sound came again, closer now, and I felt all my skin stand up, preparing to crawl off my body and go find somewhere to hide.
I seconded the motion and grabbed Rosier. “What is that?”
“Hellhounds.”
“And those are?”
“Well, what does it sound like?” he snarled, and finally, finally, he was back with me. White and shaking, but back. Angry and scowling, but back. Chained to the bed, but back.
I shook him some more anyway. “So take us somewhere else!”
“Like where?”
“Like anywhere!”
“I’m not you! Without a portal, I can only take us back to earth—”
“Okay!”
“—and I am chained to a bed, in case you didn’t notice. An iron bed—”
“So?”
“—and we were headed for a river! I will drown.”
Damn it!
“Then give me the sword!” I tried to grab it, but he jerked it away.
“It’s our only weapon—”
“I know that—I just want to get the cuffs off you. Will you listen?”
But Rosier wasn’t listening. Rosier was freaking out again. Maybe because those sounds were suddenly a lot closer, and there were more of them, and they were coming faster now, a baying pack of something that had picked up a scent it liked— “Give me the damn sword!” I yelled.
“Get your own!”
And then a terrifying howl almost on top of us caused him to drop it.
We both went for it, but he grabbed it first, and I grabbed—
God, I thought, as something gelatinous and porky oozed up through my fingers.
And then it was too late.
A giant head appeared over the hill. And for a second, I thought it was the hill. Because it rose out of nothing, like all the darkness in the world had decided to congeal in one place. One great big slavering freakishly huge place. I’d seen houses smaller than that, only houses didn’t have evil yellow eyes and an enormous drooling maw and weren’t jumping for us— And then stopping, halfway through the motion. And gulping and swallowing. Because I had reflexively thrown the pig foot I’d been holding, like that was going to help somehow.
Only it had.
The hound had stopped and was just standing there, steaming and black and blocking the view of everything with its enormous face.