InterWorld (InterWorld 1)

“What?”

“As long as you’re fighting them, they’ll keep trying to destroy you. Just stop fighting them and they’ll let you go.”

“Why”—he gasped—“why should I trust you?”

“We’ve just been over all that. Now stop fighting them.”

And he did. He relaxed every muscle, and I could almost hear the tension fade. See? I told the sparks in my head, barely realizing I wasn’t speaking out loud. Now let it go.

The light began to glow more and more brightly, filling the room with a blinding radiance. I closed my eyes, screwed them up tightly, but the light filled my head and my mind. I thought I heard something say good-bye, but I might have just imagined it. Then the light faded, and Mom’s stone went out as well.

The whole room went dark.

“Take it,” said Lord Dogknife’s voice. Something sharp and cold was pressed into my hand.

“Thanks,” I gasped, without thinking.

Something flickered and a nearby candelabra erupted into flames. Lord Dogknife stood next to me. His breath was a pestilence, and the pure hatred gleaming from his eyes could have put the sun out. He bared his teeth, so close that I could see things, like tiny, almost microscopic maggots, crawling on them.

“Do not thank me, boy,” that ruined snout whispered. “The next time we meet, I shall chew your face from your skull. I’ll floss with your guts. You have cost me so much. So do not—ever—thank me.”

He put his head on one side, as if he were listening for something, and then he howled loudly, like a maddened wolf.

“My associates are coming,” he said.

“Open Hue’s prism,” I told him, “or I’m calling back the spirits.”

His sharp teeth glinted in the candlelight. “You are lying. You cannot do that.”

He was right, of course. I couldn’t, but he couldn’t be sure of that. I cupped the stone pendant in my free hand. “Let’s find out,” I said.

His red eyes burned into mine, but he was the first to flinch. The prism began to feel ice-cold, like the hull of a space shuttle must. “It will not open completely in my presence,” growled Lord Dogknife. He grabbed me then, lifted me off my feet. “So, sadly, you must take your leave, Walker.”

He threw me, like an Olympic javelin thrower might casually toss a twig. I flew the length of that huge room, hard enough to break half the bones in my body when I hit the far wall. Which, fortunately, didn’t happen, because Jo threw herself across my path, using her wings to slow us down. We landed softly on the deck, and an instant later the rest of my team had

surrounded me. I got to my feet, and would have fallen again when the deck lurched suddenly, if Jakon hadn’t grabbed me. Everything was shuddering now. I could see rivets cracking, and sections of the hull warping.

Dogknife howled again, and the far wall erupted into wood fragments. Something was hanging in the not-space alongside the ship, something that looked like a magic carpet upgraded to a modern day life raft. I could make out Lady Indigo, Scarabus, Neville and a number of other creatures who might have been HEX bigwigs on it.

Lord Dogknife growled and leapt for the raft, landing on it hard enough to catapult a creature on the edge of the raft screaming, out into the Nowhere-at-All.

And then, like a bad memory, the raft was gone, and the Malefic was tearing itself to pieces around us.

“Where’s the portal?” shouted Jai.

I was going to tell him it was below us, but then I realized it wasn’t below us anymore. It was somewhere to my right, a few hundred yards away. “It’s somewhere over there!” I shouted back, pointing.

Around about then, the ceiling started to come down.

We ran.

“Out!” bellowed Josef. “Let’s head for the deck! It’s our only chance!”

“Less talk, more running,” said Jakon.

The prism in my hand felt colder. Then it felt wet. It was a strange feeling, familiar, but I couldn’t stop to open my hand and look at it. I was running, trying to keep up with the rest of the team.

The prism began to drip from my hand as a liquid. It was ice, I realized with a shock. Nothing more than melting ice. I hoped it hadn’t been some kind of trick on Lord Dogknife’s part.