“You can’t pick a favorite,” I said. “They’re books. They’re pieces of someone’s mind and soul. They’re almost friends.” I started back down the stairs again. “Sometimes a poet speaks best to what’s happening to you. Sometimes it’s a philosopher. Sometimes it’s a storyteller. Lately, I’ve been thinking of Kipling a lot.”
I felt Lara’s gaze on me intently. Her fear was fading. “ ‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same…’ ”
I smiled thinly. “Something like that. Yes.”
“Men are rare,” she said quietly. “I’m in a position to know.”
“Maybe it’s the circles you run in,” I said.
Something self-mocking came into her voice. “I’ve run in a great many circles.”
“Hah,” I said. “I know that feeling.” We reached the bottom of the staircase, and I turned to her. “We’re going to start walking past a lot of crystals soon,” I said. “Some of them are as big as a house. Don’t touch any of them.”
She tilted her head. “Why not?”
“Sometimes, if you do, the things inside make mental contact,” I said. “It would be unpleasant.”
She folded her hands beneath her armpits, frowning. “I see. Is that how you expect me to speak to Thomas?”
“I don’t know if he’ll be coherent enough for speech,” I said quietly. “I’ve checked on him a few times. He’s still asleep. He’s been provided with physical nutrients. The damage to his body has been healing. But at something close to human speed.”
She nodded. “His Hunger. Did you do something to it?”
I shook my head. “They aren’t really separable. It’s in stasis. You were right to liken it to a medical coma. When I wake Thomas up, I think his Hunger will wake up, too. I don’t know what will happen to him then.”
“It seems to me that he’s effectively in a cage with a hungry predator,” she said. “I should think it would start devouring him.”
I grimaced and bowed my head. “Yeah. Well. I’ll take steps if I have to.”
From very far away, something echoed through the dank, cool air. A cry, or shriek. It was answered by dozens of muffled sounds that shuddered through the walls of earth and stone. Some ululating. Some were basso moans. Some were smothered howls. All of them were alien and weird and full of rage and pain.
“Empty night,” Lara gasped. She pressed her arms closer against her torso, and her blue eyes flickered with lighter shades. “What was that?”
“I think…” I closed my eyes and communed with the island. “I think something is flying overhead. Over Demonreach.”
“Are we in danger?” Lara asked.
I looked back at her and said, “There’s a Titan down here, and other things, some of them maybe worse. If something tries to give us a hard time, I’ll bottle it and put it on the shelf right next to them.”
Lara held very still and then smiled slowly. “Dangerous.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said. “This way.”
—
I took her to the seventh tunnel of thirteen underneath the island. It was the quietest area of the supernatural prison, where I’d spent the most time. It was simply an enormous round shaft going down at a slight angle, and every few yards there was a large green crystal or a cluster of them.Some were about the size of a coffin. Others were as big as a house. The crystals put off a faint, constant luminescence—which showed a dark, ambiguous form inside each crystalline outcrop.
“What are they?” Lara asked me in a subdued voice, as we passed a crystalline tomb that contained something the size of a whale. She kept herself well clear of all of them.
“I only know some of them,” I said. “The…inventory system, I suppose, lists each resident, but the only way to know even a little about them is to touch on their essence, which I suspect is very bad for the average human mind. I only go through a handful at a time. Figure it will take me nine or ten decades to be familiar with everything I’ve got locked up.”
“Is…is the Titan in here?”
“She’s in thirteen,” I said. “The worst things are.” I paused and looked at Lara. “Not many people know what this place is. Imagine a hundred Ethnius, all loose at once.”
Lara looked very reserved and a little sick. “You could do that?”
“God, no,” I said. “I mean, I suppose I technically could. But it would take someone who is a bigger fool than me to try it. The things in here would probably eat me first if I turned them loose. Until I’m more familiar with this place, I’m going to assume that everything in here is here for a damned good reason.” I pointed at a crystal as we passed. “That one is this giant blob thing covered in eyes and mouths that devours sanity. It’s responsible for half a dozen mass hysterias. That one next to it is like a cross between a Komodo dragon and a giant beetle. It wants to poison all the fresh water on the planet with a disease in its saliva that would turn everyone into lizards. That little one there is a lizard-bat that feeds on newborn babies. I’ve got half a dozen of those shapeshifting things”—I rode out a flash of ugly mental imagery—“we fought at your place that one time in minimum security upstairs. These are the quiet ones.”
