The Lost Ones

A small boy slept beneath a freshly laundered blanket. His face was so beautiful in repose, cheeks flushed, lips open slightly. His brown hair was tousled and wild on his pillow. Lovely, heartbreaking innocence.

Halliwell was sickened to realize that the Sandman saw the same beauty in that innocence. He tried to grasp at any straw of hope that his imagination could muster. The child was sleeping. The legend of the Sandman spoke of him punishing only those young ones who were still awake when he arrived, claiming their eyes in return for their insolence.

But the monster had taken sleeping victims before. Simple enough to torture them to screaming wakefulness.

In a single stride, the Sandman stood beside the bed and reached long, narrow talons down to slowly draw back the covers. The blanket smelled of lavender soap.

The sleeping boy sighed and his brow creased, troubled, until he turned onto his side and pulled his knees up to his chest, his body aware of the missing blanket.

The Sandman went still. Awareness prickled. Somehow, he had heard Halliwell scream. Or felt it. Inside the monster, Halliwell could not move. His soul had gone rigid with fear unlike anything he had ever known—a terrible denial that would drive him fleeing into the darkened streets if only he had legs with which to run. Shame cloaked him, now, but he drew it tightly around himself as though it might shield him.

This was death and dream and anguish. How could he not flee?

After a moment, the Sandman moved once more, attention no longer turned inward. With the relief and release Halliwell felt there came bitter fury both at the monster and at himself.

This had to stop.

Then the voice, welling up from the depths of their shared psyche. Fool, said the Dustman. You have told him we are here.

The anger stirred in Halliwell again. Who the hell are you to judge? What have you done but hide?

For a moment, he thought the Dustman had gone. The terror that struck him at the idea that he might be trapped within the monster alone was almost worse than the attention of the Sandman. But then he spoke again. Halliwell could not see him—he saw only through the lemon eyes of the monster—but he could feel the Dustman coming closer and his memory supplied an image of the legend—the old London gent with bowler hat and thick mustache, the collar of his greatcoat turned up, the gray dust and dirt texture of his clothes and flesh identical.

Shut your gob and listen, the Dustman whispered in Halliwell’s mind. Come down into the dust with me, Detective. It’s time we had a chat.

The Sandman snatched the little boy from his bed, dangling the child by one arm. The boy’s eyes snapped open and grew wide with terror. He opened his mouth in a shriek, legs twisting and kicking as he tried to pull himself loose from the Sandman’s grip. The wraith only held him more tightly, and the child cried out in pain.

The bedroom door crashed open. The father stood silhouetted in the doorway, the mother in the hall behind him, both frantic with worry.

Then they saw the monster that held their son. The mother screamed. The father backed up a step, grabbed hold of the doorframe to steady himself.

Come, Detective, the Dustman whispered. Nothing you can do for them. Not yet. Turn away.

I can’t.

Turn away. The voice was insistent.

All along, Halliwell had been afraid that if he allowed his tenuous hold on the world—his view through the Sandman’s eyes—to go dark, he would be adrift forever in the swirl of darkness in the creature’s venomous heart. But the Dustman beckoned him deeper.

In the child’s bedroom, the father demanded that the Sandman release the boy. The monster’s laugh skittered along the floor like errant grains of sand. The mother rushed past her husband, hands raised, fingers hooked into claws to save her son. The Sandman let her come and, as her fingers dug furrows into him, covered her face with his free hand. Her scream was muffled. Sand filled her throat. His hand expanded, covering her face, scraping…eroding.

When he dropped his hand, the mother’s face had been scoured away, leaving only bloody muscle, gleaming bone, and screams. The monster batted her aside and held up the struggling boy as his prize.

“What do you want?” the father screamed.

The Sandman crouched low, holding the boy to him as though the child were precious.

“There is a secret place nearby,” the monster rasped. “A haven for Lost Ones and old legends. Twillig’s Gorge, they call it. I would know where it is.”

The father only gaped in despair and confusion.

“You’ve heard of it?” the Sandman growled.

“Yes. Of course,” the man said, desperate, trying to ignore the whimpers from his wife, trying to keep his son alive. “But I don’t know where it is.”

The Sandman narrowed his lemon eyes.

Halliwell tried to look away. The Dustman called to him.

The monster’s rasp was barely louder than the scratch of sand upon the floor as the breeze rose again.

“Pity,” the monster said. “Now I will have to ask another father. Another mother.”

Hopeless, now, Halliwell surrendered. He released his hold upon the world and let his spirit drift down into the maelstrom of the Sandman’s heart, where the Dustman whispered to him of will and grit and bone.

The gods of wine and depravity lived in bloated torpor in the ruined cellar of a palazzo in the Latin Quarter. The openings that led down beneath the ruin were treacherous. Grape vines—half withered—had grown over some of the shattered columns and fallen arches and stone blocks of the palazzo.

“Here?” Kitsune asked.

The sky had cleared and the sun beat down on the stones and made the grape leaves curl on the vines. Her copper-red fur was a part of her, but it felt too warm now, too close. Still, she would not remove it. To do so would make her feel less the fox and more human, and she was feeling too damnably human as it was.

She hated the Atlanteans and the Myth Hunters for what they had begun. She wished she had never met Oliver Bascombe. More than anything, she wished she could tear out the love in her heart.

No. No more thinking about Oliver.

Easier said than done, however. Particularly when all of her efforts now sprang from having known him. She would like to think that she might have stood and fought against the enemies that would destroy her and her kin—that would shatter the Two Kingdoms and take down fair and wise monarchs—even if she had not met him. But Kitsune could not have said that with any certainty, and this troubled her most of all.

“Here?” she repeated, turning to Lycaon.

Not even the old gods, it seemed, could escape time.

“So much for Olympus,” Lycaon said, his voice a growl. He did not look at Kitsune, or at Coyote, who climbed across the rocks, trying to keep up with them.

Kitsune stared at the opening that Lycaon expected them to climb into. “There must be others whose circumstances are less dire.”

“None who’d welcome me, or see you because I asked,” the monster replied.

“Cousin,” Coyote began.

Kitsune silenced him with a look. He sighed and came to join her in the rubble. With a glance back at Lycaon, they started down. A slab of stone shifted under her feet. If not for her natural agility, Kitsune would have tumbled into the hole.

Just a few steps lower, however, they found the original stairs that led to the wine cellar. The stink of fermenting grapes rose from below, powerful enough that the small hairs on the back of her neck rose and she was forced to breathe through her mouth. Drunken laughter rippled up from below.

Before she had even seen them, she knew the wine gods would not join them in their campaign against the invaders.

At the bottom of the stairs she found a heavy wooden door, but it hung open. She glanced back at Coyote. In the gloom, his eyes gleamed with a hint of red and gold. He nodded, urging her onward. Beyond him, Lycaon hesitated. Kitsune wondered if he would betray them, but the beast would not have bothered to rouse himself from his kitchen just to lead them into trouble. No, that was the trickster’s nature, not the monster’s.

Pushing the black velvet curtain of her hair away from her eyes, she knocked loudly, but there was no reply.

“Just go in,” Coyote said.

His impatience seemed to free something inside of her, so Kitsune pushed open the heavy door and stepped through.

A dozen steps took them down into a cavernous underground chamber whose walls were lined with racks and old wooden casks. Many of them had shattered or rotted away, and the dirt floor of the cellar was muddy with old wine.

Fresh grapes grew in huge quantities in the dark, far corner of the cellar, as though they could survive in that sunless hole. They did survive, of course; the wine gods made sure of that. Blocks of stone that had once been a part of the palazzo upstairs had been brought down to construct a dais in the center of the chamber. Upon the dais, on filthy velvet tapestries that might once have been art, the two gods sprawled. Each must easily have been seven or eight feet tall when standing, but they looked as though they had not bothered to climb to their feet in some time. Bacchus and Dionysus, of the Roman and Greek pantheons, respectively, looked very little like gods of any age or culture.

They were naked and dirty, their beards overgrown tangles of gray. One of the stinking gods sniffed the air, taking in the new scents that had entered the cellar, and then sat up. When he saw their visitors, he grinned.

“What have we here, brother Bacchus?” he said, slurring his words. “A pretty thing come to the party. Strip off your garments, girl, and make your offering.”

Kitsune blinked. Then, unable to help herself, she laughed. At the sound, Dionysus gazed at her blearily. He seemed more confused than insulted. But Bacchus struggled to raise his bulk. He had a jug of wine in one hand and accidentally spilled it across his chest.

“Do you mock, girl?” Bacchus demanded. He sneered, but his head swayed with the muzzy numbness of the besotted.

Neither of the gods had even acknowledged the presence of Coyote or Lycaon. They were discarded deities, living in filth, and yet their arrogance remained. Perhaps it was all that had kept them alive.

“No, Lord Bacchus. I wouldn’t dare. I have come on an issue of dire importance, with news that threatens all of Euphrasia, an insidious evil that will find its way even here, in this haven you have made.”

Bacchus gazed doubtfully at her.

“We are gods, little fox, not merely legends. What might frighten the Lost or the legendary means nothing to us.”

Kitsune hesitated. She would have loved to correct him, to tell him that most of the beings that had once been gods were no more powerful, and sometimes far less so, than many of the legends she had met.

“Lord Bacchus,” Coyote interjected, perhaps sensing her pique, “Kitsune speaks the truth. Atlantis has betrayed the Two Kingdoms. They’ve coerced and deceived Yucatazca and murdered its king. War has begun. Invaders swarm into Euphrasia. If the races of Euphrasia don’t come together now, it will be too late.”

The Roman god belched loudly. Burgundy spittle ran down his chin.

“Get out,” Bacchus sighed.

“You’re not listening,” Kitsune growled. “You can’t just wait here to die.”

Dionysus laughed. The Greek god had apparently not forgotten they were there after all. He glanced at Kitsune.

“Little one, we’ve been waiting to die for a thousand years. Until then, we pass the time. But perhaps some of our brothers and sisters will take a greater interest in survival. They’ve lived this long, after all. So many have scattered throughout the Two Kingdoms and beyond—far beyond—and twice their number have died. But there are still a few who might listen.”

He glanced at Bacchus, as though for approval, but the other god ignored them.

“Lycaon,” Dionysus said.

The monster flinched. Strange to see the beast, the cannibal, so cowed. “Yes, Lord Dionysus?”

“You brought them?”

Lycaon lowered his head. “Yes, lord.”

“Good,” Dionysus said. “Each morning, go to Lycaon’s Kitchen and wait. If any from our pantheons wish to hear what you have to say, they will find you there.”

“Wait?” Coyote asked, taking a step toward the dais. “For how long?”

Dionysus laughed. “Until the gods deign to see you.”

CHAPTER 6

Collette Bascombe lay on the thin mattress that was all she and Julianna had by way of comfort in their cell. It stank and there were stains on it that she did not wish to consider, but still she was grateful. When she thought of a dungeon, she imagined sleeping on cold stone. That would have been far worse. Yet even that would not have been as terrible as her captivity in the Sandman’s castle, with the roasting sun above during the day and the creeping chill after dark.

Had they taken the mat away, she would have survived. But Collette was glad to have it, both for her own sake and for Julianna’s. Her friend—and her brother’s fiancée—had never been much afraid of anything in her life. But during the nights that had passed since their attempt to reach Frost, Julianna shivered with the cold and, perhaps, with fear that they would never leave those stone cells again. They’d had their chance at escape, and failed.

There had been periods of silence and some of tears. Conversations had been whispered, particularly those held across the corridor with Oliver. They were wary of being overheard. Not that they had developed any real plan, but the guards were cautious, now. What else could they do but wither here and wait to die?

Collette did not share these thoughts with her brother or with Julianna, but she knew her friend could see the doubt in her eyes.

The thought made her shiver. Julianna huddled close to her on the mat, sharing warmth. Collette wondered if she was awake or if the gesture was instinctive. She did not turn to find out. Sleep was a precious commodity recently, and if Julianna had managed it, Collette did not want to wake her.

Instead she lay there, trying to breathe through her mouth to avoid the stink. The bruises she had received from the guards were healing, but there was still an ache in her side where she feared their kicks had cracked her ribs. They would heal as well, but more slowly. The swelling on her face had gone down, but the flesh was still tender and Julianna had confirmed that her jaw still had a greenish-yellow hue. Her blood had stained the mat, but it had long since dried.