The Book of Doom - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,38

kitten. Zac recoiled when he saw the lump sticking out of the woman’s stomach. He recoiled even further when he realised the lump was a face.

“Oh, come on,” Zac groaned. “That’s just weird for the sake of it.”

“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again,” grimaced the extra head. Its rat-like features pulled into a sneer. “Thought you’d be well dead by now.”

“Oh, don’t mind him,” the woman said. She handed Angelo the cardigan and he slipped it on gratefully. The darker colours – the reds and greens – faded slightly, but they didn’t drain away like the black had in Zac’s room.

“Thank you,” Angelo said, fastening the cardigan. “It’s very nice.”

“Think nothing of it, dearie,” the woman smiled. She stepped aside, leaving the way to the portal clear. “Now off you pop to Hades, and thank you for visiting the Nether Lands,” she beamed. “We look forward to welcoming you back soon.”

Zac’s senses went into shock when he stepped through the portal behind Angelo. The green light filled his head like a flash grenade, blinding him and making his ears ring loudly.

A wall of cold hit him as he stepped out of the vortex. Dazzled, he stumbled, fell, and landed with a splat in a puddle of foul-smelling mud. He shook his head and blinked several times, until the glare behind his eyelids faded back to black.

He stood up and wiped away as much of the dark sludge as he could. His vision had cleared, but a piercing shriek still overwhelmed his ears. He’d emerged from the portal beside a wide river. A black, bubbling liquid babbled between its banks. It looked like tar or burned oil, but smelled like sewage. Whatever it was, he had no plans to go swimming in it any time soon.

The ringing in his ears was beginning to ease off, and he could hear another sound now. It was a low steady thumping, over and over again, three or four times a second. Dum-dum-dum-dum. There was a tss-tss-tss mixed in with it, faster than the thuds, but still somehow matching their rhythm. Dum-dum-dum; tss-tss-tss.

Zac turned to find Herya and Angelo standing just a few metres away. Like Zac’s, Herya’s front was smeared with wet dirt. Angelo, on the other hand, appeared completely clean, aside from his bare feet that were caked with squidgy mud.

“Is this it?” Zac asked. “Is this Hades?”

Herya looked around. A glimmer of doubt passed over her face for just a fraction of a second, but then was gone. “Yeah, this is it,” she said. “I’d recognise it anywhere. Welcome to the Greek underworld.”

Angelo was staring past them both, his gaze focused on a large skyscraper that stood on its own about half a kilometre away.

It loomed impossibly tall. Even at that distance, Zac couldn’t see the top floor, which was lost in the high clouds. He guessed there were around four hundred storeys below the clouds. How many were above that was anyone’s guess.

In all the sparse, barren landscape it was the only building in sight, and it seemed to be celebrating that fact.

Rows of flashing lights ran up the side of it, stretching all the way from the bottom to where the clouds blocked his view. They lit up in time with the sounds coming from within; sounds that Zac now realised were music. Or an attempt at music, at least.

Down the front of the building were six letters, each around twenty or thirty metres tall. They glowed bright red and flickered slightly as the music continued to pump out.

“Eyedol,” Zac read. “What’s that?”

“A nightclub,” explained Herya, with only a moment’s hesitation. “The most famous nightclub in Hades. In all the underworlds, actually. And the most dangerous.”

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,” Angelo said, putting on an old man’s voice. “We must be cautious.” The others looked down at him blankly. “Star Wars,” he said, grinning. There was still no reaction from Zac and the Valkyrie. “Oh, come on,” Angelo sighed. “Not even Star Wars?”

“What have you brought us here for?” Zac asked Herya.

“You want to find out about the tenth circle of Hell? You ask Argus,” Herya told him. “You want to find Argus? You go to Eyedol. He owns the place.”

“How do we know he’ll be there?”

“Well, because... he’s always there.”

“How do we know he’ll see us?” asked Angelo.

Herya glanced at the mud-slicked grass and the withered trees all around them. A cool breeze tickled the back of her neck. “Trust me,”