the son of a bitch.”
• • •
The demon dog padded down the natural cave corridor, his large eyes having no difficulty seeing in the intense darkness. There was a small chamber just to the right of a bend that dropped off precariously to a sulfurous underground stream. For a moment the dog’s senses were overwhelmed by the hellish stink and part of him was reminded of another existence upon another world, so very long ago.
While another part recoiled in disgust at what it was forced to share.
“Baarabus, is that you?” an old voice called from the small chamber.
“Yeah,” the dog responded as he entered.
The old man squatted, completely naked, before a bowl. He dipped a cloth into the water, then began to clean his burned and blackened body.
The dog watched the old man scrub at the loose flesh of his spindly arm, hissing in pain as the dead skin sloughed away to reveal angry pink flesh beneath. Baarabus couldn’t recall exactly how many times he’d seen the old man perform this task, but he did know that it was a lot, and no matter how much skin was scoured away, he never seemed to heal.
“What can I do for you?” the man asked, dipping the stained cloth into water that had turned the color of blood-tinted mud.
“He’s awake,” the dog announced. The air was filled with the stink of rot and blood, and Baarabus felt his stomach gurgle with hunger. Remy wasn’t the only one who hadn’t eaten recently.
“And did you finish him off?”
“No,” Baarabus answered, lying down on the chamber’s stone floor. “But I wanted to.”
“Glad to see common sense prevailed for once,” the old man said, and he smiled, the charred flesh around the corners of his mouth cracking, a milky fluid bubbling up from the fissures. “Are you still convinced that he’s some sort of imposter sent to thwart us?”
“I don’t know what he is,” Baarabus groused, resting his chin between his paws. “He has no idea what’s happened to the world; it’s almost as if he—”
“As if it hasn’t happened to him—to his world—yet,” the old man finished, his eyes twinkling in the dim light thrown by the Coleman lantern.
“I can’t even wrap my brain around that idea,” Baarabus said.
The old man had moved on to his chest, the bloody cloth rubbing at the layers of black that fell away to reveal new flesh beneath. New skin that would soon blacken, and the process would begin all over again.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” the old man said, and began to laugh maniacally, his scrubbing becoming even more forceful, more violent.
“The Lord is dead,” Baarabus spat. “Or have you become too senile to remember?”
“Our Lord is dead,” the old man said, eyes wide. “Not his.”
“This shit makes my fucking head hurt,” the dog grumbled. He was quiet for a bit, watching the old man’s painful procedure.
“He asked about you.”
The old man stopped. “What do you mean? That shouldn’t be possible.”
“He asked why he wasn’t dead, and I said that somebody had spoken up for him.”
The old-timer paused before dipping the cloth back into the filthy water. “He’ll be asking more questions soon.”
“Can’t imagine he wouldn’t.”
Baarabus spied a hint of movement from a corner of the cave, a tiny rodent. His movements were a blur as he pounced upon the rodent, biting it in half before it could even realize that it was dead.
“I should think about introducing myself,” the old man said dreamily as he squeezed the foul water from the cloth and went to work on his spindly legs.
“Do you think he’ll remember?” the dog asked, crunching on the bones of his snack.
The old man thought for a moment. “If I’m right about where this Remy has come from, then I haven’t been seen in quite some time. Maybe he’ll be more understanding about what I did.”
“Let’s hope so,” Baarabus said. “’Cause if you’re wrong, and he isn’t so forgiving, he’ll probably try to rip your fucking head off.”
The old man smiled again, the skin again splitting and weeping.
“I suppose he would at that. Maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The forever man paced about the forbidden library, careful not to disturb Malatesta as he worked.
The demonically possessed sorcerer sat in the center of the crowded space, countless tendrils of ectoplasmic webbing excreted from his body connecting him to the numerous esoteric volumes on the shelves. Simeon wanted to know everything that had been collected by the Keepers, and this was the easiest way