“Long story,” said Marlow.
Something was still tugging at Pan’s mind, something important.
“No, wait,” she said. “Marlow did a deal with the Devil. The real Devil.”
“He what?” said Charlie.
“What kind of deal?” Herc asked.
“A deal to come home,” Marlow replied. “A deal to save us.”
“In return for what?” Pan asked. “What did you give it?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It didn’t ask for anything, not even my soul. It just…” He looked back the way they’d come, gulping like a fish out of water.
“Just what?”
“Nothing,” he said again. “I mean…”
“Marlow,” she said, glaring at him. “What were the exact words you used?”
“I said I wanted to go home, all of us to go home, me, you, and Night.”
“Night?” said Herc, looking for her. “She’s here?”
Pan shook her head, watched him deflate again.
“And I said that the door should close behind us,” Marlow went on. “Not just close, but be destroyed. As soon as we were through, the gateway to hell would be sealed forever. I mean, I thought about it, Pan, I made sure it couldn’t follow us.”
“What couldn’t?” said Herc. “The Devil?”
Marlow nodded
“Behind us,” Pan said. “Behind all of us?”
“You weren’t there,” he snapped. “You didn’t see what I saw, Pan. You didn’t see what it could do. It … It was going to kill you.”
“Big deal,” she said, jabbing a finger at him. “Death didn’t matter down there, I could have handled it.”
“I didn’t have a chance to think,” whined Marlow. “It was too quick.”
“You never think,” she said. “You never think about anything but yourself.”
“Whoa,” said Charlie. “Hang on, what are you talking about?”
He was answered not by Marlow but by something else, something that rumbled up from deep beneath them—louder even than the howling storm of the Engine. There was another noise, too, a deep, bone-shaking uhuhuhuh that might have been laughter. Pan’s blood seemed to boil away, leaving her too light, paper thin.
“Oh no,” she said.
“What?” said Herc. “Would somebody tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Behind all of us,” Pan said. “You said the gate should shut behind all of us, me, you, and Night.”
And she remembered Patrick lifting the girl up, sinking those tombstone teeth into her face. Night was still in hell.
“I got us out,” said Marlow. “I got us home.”
“Yeah,” said Pan. “You got us out of hell, Marlow.”
She heard the roar get louder, felt the whole building shake beneath the force of it, and that laughter rising up above everything else.
“You got us out of hell, but you left the goddamn gate wide open.”
HEARTBREAKER
“What have you done, Marlow?” said Charlie.
He couldn’t answer, he just stood there like a fish out of water, gulping air.
What have I done?
Mucus was building up in his lungs, fast, making up for lost time. He coughed to clear it, breathed in with a wheeze. This couldn’t be happening, because he’d been so careful, he’d made sure the gate would close behind them.
Behind all of them.
And it made a sudden, awful sense, what the watchmaker had said. By making the deal, Marlow had united the Engines—this Engine, and the one in hell. He’d united them and opened the gates between worlds.
“It’s not my fault,” he croaked, and was on the verge of pleading his case when the stairwell bucked like a mule, a crack ripping open the wall beside them and unleashing a storm of dust. It lurched again, as if they were riding a train, Charlie almost tumbling down the stairs.
“Okay,” said Herc, grabbing the banister with a white-knuckled hand. “We can talk about this later, but we need to get out of here.”
That subterranean growl was growing louder and Marlow couldn’t help but picture a shark beneath them, rising through the dark ocean, its jaws open wide.
“I’m with Herc,” said Charlie, bounding up the steps. Pan followed, Herc waiting for Marlow to pass before bringing up the rear. Marlow’s body felt like an unoiled machine, every joint grinding, his thirst unbearable.
That wasn’t the reason he stopped, though.
He clung onto the banister, knowing that there was something he was missing. Everything had happened so quickly, he’d been through so much, that his thoughts were nothing but shrapnel. He couldn’t make sense of them.
“Hey,” yelled Charlie from the next flight. “You insane? Come on.”
He took another step but stopped again, thinking back. The Devil was coming, yes. He’d left the door wide open for him, yes. But there was something else, something the watchmaker had said to him.
“Marlow?” said Pan. “What is it?”
The stairwell shook again, dust raining down from above. It made breathing even harder and Marlow pushed his hand against his chest, clawing in another breath. He could feel the rattle of his lungs through his skin, that and the frantic, erratic beat of his heart.
His heart.
And there it was, detonating inside his skull—the Stranger, a hole in its chest where its heart should be, pipes and tubes and machinery pumping poisonous blood through its rotting body.
Without its heart, it is just a devil. With it, it is a god.
“Holy…” He snatched in another breath, yelling to the others. “Wait, hang on.”
They were almost too far up the stairwell to hear him, and when Herc stuck his head over the banister he looked like a gargoyle on a cathedral spire.
“Huh?” he yelled down.
“We can’t go,” Marlow said. “There’s something we have to do.”
Even as he said it he hated himself. Because he could almost see daylight, he could almost feel the breeze on his skin. All he had to do was keep walking and he’d get to the Red Door.
But the Devil would follow.
“Just leave him,” he heard Pan say. “His problem, let him deal with it.”
And she was right.
He would deal with it.
He turned, clattering back down the steps. Another tremor shook the vault room as he ran through it, pieces of broken glass and metal dancing over the floor. Marlow had to stop, his heart feeling like a water balloon in a child’s fist, ready to pop as he burst into the madness of the Engine.
If anything, it was even louder in here than it had been, although the source of the noise had changed. A deep, thunderous bellow was pouring from the Black Pool, so thick and so loud it was almost like liquid—Marlow could feel it against his skin. Over it all he heard a roar, looked to see Ostheim on the other side of the cavern. His obese body had reared up in triumph as he understood that his job was done, that the gates were open.
Then he was moving this way, fast.
Marlow started down the steps only to feel a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, looking to see Charlie there.
“What the hell, dude?” Charlie yelled.
“There’s something we need to do,” he shouted back. “Something we need to find that will stop him.”
Ostheim was on his way across the Engine. For a second Marlow thought they’d been spotted, half expected Ostheim to scuttle up the stairs, for one of his bladed legs to punch into him. But he was running for the pool, plunging two of his tentacles into the boiling water like he was fishing for something.
“What are you talking about?” said Charlie. “What are you looking for?”
“A heart,” he said.
“A what?”
Marlow stared out into the Engine, into that mass of a billion parts. How was he supposed to find a heart in all of that? It would be easier to find a needle in a million haystacks. He wasn’t even sure the heart would be there, because what if Meridiana had t
aken it with her, hidden it somewhere else. It could be anywhere on the planet, anywhere in time.
Except hadn’t Meridiana told him, when he’d been here last, that the heart was right here, in this Engine? She had commanded him to look for it.
“What are you doing?” The hiss behind him was scalpel sharp. Pan was there, Herc looming over her, shrugging for an explanation.
“He’s looking for a heart,” Charlie went on. “Beats me.”
“There’s no time to explain,” Marlow said, still watching Ostheim, scanning the bus-size mass of bulging flesh. “You just have to trust me.”
He heard Pan spit out a laugh.
“Oh, sure, Marlow, I trust you completely.”
He ignored her, dread rising in him like a cold tide.
“We’ll never find it,” he said. “It could be anywhere, it will take—”
“Is that it?” said Pan, pointing at Ostheim.
Marlow squinted, seeing a glimmer of brass clutched in one of Ostheim’s eel-like limbs. It was a canister of some kind, the size of a propane tank, maybe, one that emitted a weird not-quite-light. And she was right, wasn’t she? It made perfect sense. Ostheim had been there, back when the watchmaker had taken the heart. He’d have known exactly what it looked like. And he’d have known the Devil would need it as soon as it shed the machinery that was keeping it alive and stepped back into the world.
But surely they wouldn’t get so lucky?
“That thing in his weird tentacle-hand-thing,” said Charlie. “Doesn’t look much like a heart.”
Not a heart, maybe, but the residue of the memories the watchmaker had led him through was still smeared on Marlow’s brain. He closed his eyes, looked back, saw the watchmaker locking the heart inside a mechanism of copper and steel.
“It has to be,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. And there was a brief flood of relief that he didn’t have to search the Engine, that he didn’t have to find it by himself. It didn’t last long, though, because what he had to do now was a hundred times harder.
He had to pry it from Ostheim’s greasy, lethal bug fingers.
“I’m so confused,” said Charlie.
The howls were growing louder, a tremor shaking the cavern so hard that pieces of stone were raining down from the ceiling. The Devil was on its way, and its heart was right here waiting for it.
Marlow turned to the others. “Look, I can’t explain how I know, but if the Devil gets here and sticks that heart back into itself, then we can say goodbye to everything. That heart, it’s like the Devil’s Engine, the real Engine, it’s what fuels it. It’s gonna be hell on earth.”
Charlie and Pan both pulled a face, but Herc—good old dependable Herc—just swallowed, then nodded.
“So we need the heart,” he said. “And that fat bastard is in the way. And we’ve got, what, a couple of minutes maybe?”
“If that,” said Marlow.
Herc reached down to his holster, patting it like he had just remembered it was empty. He looked left, then right, then behind him, walking to a locker in the corner of the room. He wrestled it open, pulling out two massive flashlights and a bright red pistol.
“Not much,” he said, running back to them. “But it might help.”
“A flare gun?” said Charlie.
“In case somebody got lost out there when they were mapping,” Herc said. “It’s a big Engine, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He popped the chamber, checked to make sure it was loaded, patted the spare flare clipped to the side. “You got two shots, make them count.”
He handed the gun to Marlow but Pan snatched it from him.
“He’ll just set fire to his pants,” she said. “I got this.”
They stood there for a moment in silence.
“That it?” said Marlow. “We just rock up and cap Ostheim in the ass, steal the heart? That’s the plan? You got nothing else?”
Herc shrugged.
“Run fast,” he growled.
Great. Once again Marlow thought about just turning around, making his way up to the Red Door, stepping into the sun. The idea of it was overpowering; he felt like he had to physically wrestle it out of his head.
No, this was his mess. He would deal with it.
Just give me a minute, he said to himself, rocking back and forth in a starter’s sprint.
“Dude, what is that?” said Charlie, and Marlow followed his finger down the stairs, across the platform, past the bulk of Ostheim to the bubbling surface of the Black Pool.
To the thing that was pushing out of it, blinking its spider eyes.
“Ah crap,” he said, and before he even knew what he was doing he was running, his arms wheeling, the roar of the Devil drowning out the sound of his feet. He missed the bottom two steps, lurching onto the platform, falling, rolling, scrabbling back up. The cavern was close to imploding, a hail of rock pattering down around him as he sprinted. Ostheim was ahead, a behemoth whose body oozed like a slug’s. A dozen of those tentacles whipped around him in a frenzy and Marlow had to follow them like a magician’s fingers, searching for that glimpse of metal.
There. Clamped to his side.
He cut right, running along Ostheim’s flank. The monster was too busy to notice him, plunging more of his limbs into the pool, wrapping them around the shape that floated there. Marlow caught a glimpse of a face made of moving parts. The Devil reached out with a stick-thin limb, wrapping its fingers around Ostheim, hauling itself up like a drowning man. Pieces of machinery were still attached to it, threatening to drag it back down. It opened its mouth and loosed a cry that might have belonged to a million newborns.
Marlow swore, his own fear burning star-bright inside him. He was close enough now that he could see the canister. He could feel it, a subsonic pulse that vibrated through his bones, through his soul. All he had to do was reach out and …
The Devil turned its eyes to Marlow, and even though they were just pits in its head, holes punched into space and time, he could see the alarm there, the understanding. It opened its mouth and howled out a warning. Suddenly Ostheim was turning, his limbs darting out. Marlow ducked beneath one, his fingers snagging on the canister.
“Eat this, you ugly—” Pan’s voice, followed by a hiss, a roar.
A ball of fire thumped into Ostheim’s flank. It had to have been like shooting a bear with a potato gun but it worked, distracting Ostheim long enough for Marlow to grab the mechanism and wrench it free. It was heavier than it looked, slamming to the floor and bringing him with it. He scrabbled back up, dragging the canister across the platform. Where the hell were the—
One of Ostheim’s limbs cracked into the canister like a train, launching Marlow into the air. He let go of it, slamming back down onto the stone and rolling into the bottom step. The world was midnight dark, filled with a hurricane of noise, but there were hands on his arm, hauling him up. By the time he was on his feet he could see enough to make out Charlie next to him, Herc there too, hugging the mechanism against his chest.
“Move!” the old guy roared.
Ostheim was a blur of panic and fury, most of his limbs trying to pull the Devil out of the water. Pan was still there, the flare gun reloaded and pointing at his back. It wouldn’t do much good—the first flare had burned itself out—and she must have known it because she angled it up, aiming it at the fractured ceiling.
She pulled the trigger, the flare arcing up and thumping into the disintegrating rock. It wasn’t exactly a grenade launcher, but it was powerful enough, a chunk of ceiling breaking free and hurtling earthward. It thumped into the Black Pool like a fist, and Marlow wasn’t sure if it was Ostheim or the Devil that howled in outrage.
He shrugged Charlie away, limping onto the stairs. The cavern was disintegrating, another stalactite slicing down and shearing away the banister, almost taking out Herc as it toppled past them. Pan was racing up, barging past Marlow and Charlie, yelling, “Ladies first!”
Don’t look back, Marlow ordered himself, but he coul
dn’t stop, craning over his shoulder with every other step, seeing Ostheim haul the Devil out of the water, seeing him turn his bulk their way, seeing those limbs fire out like harpoons.
“Shi—”
Marlow tripped on the last step, the top of the door exploding into dust overhead. He rolled, screaming, Charlie falling on top of him. Something big dislodged itself, collapsing over the door, crushing the limb that had followed them in. Even then it squirmed, a brutal obsidian blade slicing through the air, feeling for them.
Marlow pushed past Herc, clattering up the steps until his calves burned so fiercely he thought he was about to spontaneously combust. Collapsing, he inhaled a wheezing breath, and when he exhaled he was surprised to find that it was a wild, spluttering laugh. And they kept coming, pouring from him so hard that he couldn’t get a breath. He had to wipe the tears away so that he could see, and the first thing that greeted him was Pan’s face, twisted into a look of annoyance. Before he could stop himself he was laughing even harder.
“You are such an idiot,” she said, passing him. Charlie took her place, offering a hand.
“You really are,” he said. “What are you laughing at?”
Marlow couldn’t explain, it had to be the relief, the insanity, the terror, the joy of being back on Earth. The emotions were so powerful that they’d reduced him to this.
The stairwell rocked as something exploded beneath them, and Marlow forced himself back onto his feet. He’d made it to the next curve before he heard Herc yelling at them from below. Staring over the banister, he saw the old guy struggling with the weight of the canister, hauling it up step by step. He glowered up, furious.
“Any of you lazy bastards want to help?” he roared.
And Marlow was laughing again as he ran back down the stairs.
BACK THROUGH THE RED DOOR
They stood there, the four of them. They stood there and stared like they were expecting it to open by itself.
And the Red Door just stared right back.
“You gonna do it?” said Charlie.
Pan wiped a hand over her face and it came away smeared with blood. Herc’s nose was bleeding too, something to do with the canister he cradled in his arms. It was pumping out a vibe of pure evil, a pulse that ripped through every fiber in Pan’s body.