“Neither do I,” said Jackaby. “I do see something everywhere else, though. The whole ceiling is imbued with a tincture of religious faith, the walls have been saturated in history, the air around us has a fine mist of the mystical, and even the dirt beneath us is covered in trails and wisps of paranormal auras. Except there. It’s as though there is a sinkhole right there, maybe ten feet wide.”
Pavel knelt and dug his fingernails into the dust. “Cigar for the clever fellow.” He pulled up a plank of wood the same color as the dirt and leaned it up against the wall. The earth below appeared to have been fractured like a broken mirror; crumbling fragments of dusty brown drifted around the edges, suspended as though floating in an invisible pond. The center of the cleft was a glowing pool of pale green light. “I do believe that’s vial number two to me?”
Jackaby reached into his coat and retrieved a second glass tube of crimson blood. He tossed it to Pavel. “Fair enough. You were true to your word.”
Pavel’s eyes fluttered shut as he sucked down the sticky liquid. His whole body shuddered and he tossed the vial aside, licking his teeth. It broke against the rocky foundation. His face was still a mess of scar tissue, but by the light of the green glow it looked smoother already than it had when he first turned up on our doorstep, and it was fading to a pale pink and less of an angry red.
“Hits the spot,” he said. “I’ll have one more for the road, if you don’t mind, Detective.” His eyes looked dilated.
“You’ll have one more when I am sure we’re not walking into an ambush,” Jackaby answered. “After you.”
Pavel cracked his neck and gave Jackaby a smile that had gone rotten several days ago and probably should have been tossed out of the bushel before it spoiled all of the other smiles. “Once more unto the breach,” he recited, and fell backward into the verdant glow.
Jackaby approached the rend.
“I don’t suppose you can see what’s waiting for us on the other side?” I asked.
“I see nothing beyond the point of crossing. I couldn’t see the veil-gate in Rosemary’s Green, either, although I knew it had to be right in front of me. I can register earthly auras just fine, and otherworldly auras are quite vivid—but I think the overlap of the two creates a sort of anomaly my sight doesn’t know how to process.”
“So, we’re just going across blind?” I said.
“Looks that way.” Jackaby nodded.
“Through a portal we know has been frequented by our worst enemies?”
“That’s it.”
“Because we’re trusting a psychopath who has repeatedly tried to murder us?”
“Yes.”
“Just so we’re clear.”
Jackaby stepped off the edge of the dirt floor and into the emerald light as though he had just walked off the end of a pier wearing lead shoes.
Jenny coasted in after him headfirst.
I screwed up my courage and took the crossing with a little jump, bending my knees as I dropped out of our world and into the next.
Chapter Nineteen
The world turned upside down. One moment I was looking down at the emerald pool beneath my feet as I fell into it—and the next moment I was looking at the sky, as I fell away from it. I scrambled to right myself as a floor of stone tiles leapt toward my head. My arms crumpled under me, but I managed to roll out of the landing just enough to cushion the blow. I pushed myself up and looked around.
We had traveled so far beneath the streets of the city, deep under the buildings, and deeper still into the earth, only to emerge in the biting-cold fresh air high atop a towering citadel overlooking a strange and foreign land.
I had visited the Annwyn once before. The first time had been a smooth transition, like stepping from one room into another. This was something else. I was standing on the rooftop of a tower on the corner of a castle wall. As I peered timidly over the edge, I blanched. Had the rend dropped us ten feet from this spot, we would have fallen half a dozen stories before we hit the ground.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned with a start. Jackaby held a finger to his lips and gestured for me to follow silently. Jenny was a few feet ahead. The tower on which we found ourselves stood higher than the castle’s curtain wall. I looked where Jackaby was pointing just in time to see what appeared to be Pavel’s soiled rags slipping over the edge of the rooftop and dropping onto the castle wall below.
We slid along the tiles until I could hear voices coming from just over the parapet. Jackaby held a hand up in warning. We kept our heads low as we neared the edge. I could not see Pavel anywhere.
“It’s about the bits you carve off is what I’m saying,” grunted a deep, gravelly voice right below us. “If I cut off some guy’s arms and legs, you’d say he lost his arms and legs—you wouldn’t say his arms an’ legs had lost their torso.”
“Yes, exactly,” replied a second, scratchy voice, “but that’s my point. If I cleave clean through some sap’s neck, you ought to say that he lost his body, not that he lost his head. Body’s just meat.”
“Okay, but everyone knows that if you cut off a gremlin’s head, its little runt body runs around for a good hour, causing just as much havoc as when it was whole. Sometimes more. You lose your head, not your body.”
“That’s just a myth, the gremlin thing.”
“Isn’t. Seen it myself. ”
“You have not.”
“Hey! Who goes there?” the first voice suddenly grunted in alarm. There was a sickening crunch and then another, followed by a loud clattering and then two thumps like sandbags hitting stone.
Jackaby peeked tentatively over the edge, and then stood up. I followed suit.
The path that ran along the top of the castle wall was about six feet wide, bordered on either side by a short, crenellated wall. Two hulking bodies lay sprawled on the stones right below us. They were easily ten feet tall apiece. Poleaxes had fallen by their sides, and matching curved daggers hung on their hips. Their heads sat at unhealthy angles to their shoulders. Their necks had clearly been snapped.
“Such a waste.” Pavel sighed, looking down at the slain guards as he dusted off his hands.
“Friends of yours?” Jackaby asked, dropping down next to him.
“What? No. I don’t fraternize with the help. If I still had my fangs, I could have tucked into them before their hearts stopped pumping instead of just leaving perfectly good blood to congeal in their veins.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“I’ll get over it,” Pavel said, giving the brute’s head a kick. “Ogre blood is always sour, anyway. It’s really best if you have a pixie chaser to sweeten it up. Theirs is like syrup, pixies.”
“The Dire King will be none too pleased with you,” said Jackaby.
“That is the idea,” Pavel blustered, although his eyes were darting nervously up and down the wall.
“Where are we?” Jackaby asked, glancing out over the terrain. Surrounding the castle was a wide field bordered by tall pines.
“This is the Dire Council’s stronghold,” Pavel said. “Heart of the beast.”