"What does it say?" I said, trying to peer over his shoulder. He hurried around the other side of the chest, so I couldn't.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm? reading!" he said testily. "Hmmm. Not a lot, actually. It's not just another hell gate, however. A hell gate is just a rather dramatic name for a dimensional door that allows limited travel between the various planes of existence. The Apocalypse Door… is far more than that. Oh yes. It opens the Gates of Hell, and lets out all that may be found there. The Dukes of Hell, all the major and minor demons, all of the fallen and all of the damned, from the very beginnings of Time. To do what they will upon the Earth. Even Satan himself will come forth, the ancient Enemy, to trample the cities of man beneath his cloven hooves…"
"Hell on Earth," I said. "Forever, and ever, and ever…"
"How is that even possible?" said Rafe, snatching the file out of William's hands, and studying it himself. "How could any material being release those imprisoned by God?"
"A disturbing thought, I'll grant you," said William, sneaking up on Rafe and grabbing the file back again. He pulled a face at Rafe. "No one knows how old the Apocalypse Door is, but it says here… that the Door was possibly created by one Nicholas Hobb, the Serpent's Son. Oh, we are definitely into legend here, rather than history. According to these handwritten notes… the Door has been passed back and forth for centuries, from one careful owner to another, its true nature largely forgotten. Most of its owners thought of it as little more than a curiosity, a charming fake, or just a conversation piece. The last known owner was… the Collector! I did hear he was dead; maybe that's how the Door came up for auction in Los Angeles."
"I don't think the Really Old Curiosity Shoppe people realised just how important the Door was," I said, just to show I was keeping up. "If they had, they'd have held a separate auction just for the Door, under much heavier security."
"Now this really is interesting!" said William, sitting precariously on the edge of the tea chest. "It's not just enough to own the Door, you see. Oh no! You need very specific and powerful magics to open it. Or it's just a door. There's nothing here, unfortunately, as to what those items might be… but I'm guessing they'd be very hard to come by. Don't look at me like that! I'm just curious!"
"Magic isn't really Doctor Delirium's area of expertise," I said.
"No," said Rafe. "But I did hear something about Tiger Tim breaking into the Infernal Museum in Vienna last year, and making off with a whole bunch of rare and restricted grimoires…"
"It's all coming together, isn't it?" I said. "And not in a good way. Presumably, Doctor Delirium will threaten to open the Door, unless all the governments of the world give him… well, everything he asks for. And he could ask for anything, because who would dare say no?"
"What if the world calls his bluff?" said Rafe. "How can it profit the Doctor, or Tiger Tim, to actually open the Apocalypse Door?"
"Indeed," said William, dropping the file carelessly back into the tea chest. "There's absolutely nothing in there about closing the Door again, or compelling the damned to go back through it into Hell again." He sniffed loudly. "Bit of a design fault there, if you ask me. Unless the Door's designer was having a bit of a down day. I get those."
"And if Doctor Delirium is pissed off enough at being laughed at and not taken seriously all these years…" I said. "Oh, we have got to get the Door back from him, before he does something silly that we'll all regret."
"Would Tiger Tim really let Doctor Delirium open the Door?" said Rafe. "I mean, he may be rogue, but he's still a Drood. Would he really allow the end of the world?"
"Probably," I said. "When we go bad, we go all the way."
"And Timothy was always so much more than just a rogue," said William. "I remember him, though I really wish I didn't. Not actually a sociopath, as such, but a long way down that road. When he set his mind to something, he wouldn't let anyone or anything get in his way. He tried to force the Armourer to open the Armageddon Codex for him once, so he could make off with the forbidden weapons. Half killed the old boy in the process. If Timothy hadn't been interrupted and driven out… He has no reason to love this family, or the world, or anything but himself."
"Janissary Jane once told me about a dimension where demons ran loose in the material plane," I said. "Hell got out, and slaughtered everything in its path, destroying civilisation after civilisation. Jumping from planet to planet, leaving worlds burning like cinders in the dark, and suns screaming as they died. Jane and the people she was with ended up having to destroy everything, to stop the demons. They used the Deplorable End, and wiped out a whole universe."
"Isn't that what you used?" Rafe said carefully. "To destroy the Hungry Gods?"
"Yes," I said. "And I don't have another one."
"I'm not sure whether I feel relieved or not," said Rafe.
William looked around abruptly, his eyes darting, listening to something only he could hear. The tension in his face and body was written so clearly it raised all the hackles on my neck. I glared around me into the golden glow, but nothing moved among the stacks, and the shadows seemed entirely still and empty.
"It's here," whispered William, standing very still. "I just catch glimpses of it, sometimes, out of the corner of my eyes. I can feel its presence, like a pressure on my soul. Feel it watching me… I think it wants to tell me something. Something I don't want to know…"
I looked at Rafe, but he just shook his head helplessly.
And then we all looked round, at the sound of approaching footsteps. Perfectly normal, human footsteps, making no attempt to hide themselves. We all relaxed, though not entirely, when Harry Drood appeared at the end of the stacks, accompanied by his partner, the half human, half demon hellspawn, Roger Morningstar. Harry smiled smugly at us, as though he'd done something clever. Roger's smile was rather more disturbing.
The hellspawn was tall,? slender, but powerfully built, looking entirely at home in an expensive Armani suit. He had an unnaturally pale face, dark hair, thin lips, and a gaze you didn't like to meet for more than a few seconds. Roger was an infernal creature, and it showed. He strolled towards us, following Harry, moving with almost inhuman grace, like a predator that had escaped from the zoo, and had absolutely no intention of ever going back.
I knew up close he would smell of sulphur and blood and sour milk, like all hellspawn. And as he sauntered along between the stacks to join us, he left dark scorch marks behind him on the wooden floor. (Though I couldn't help noticing that the burn marks quickly disappeared, as though the floor was healing itself. There's a lot about the Old Library we don't understand yet.) Rafe scowled at Roger and Harry with equal disapproval.
"We really are going to have to install some better security. And just possibly some flashing lights, warning sirens, and a whole bunch of concealed mantraps. It's getting so just anyone can walk in here these days."
Harry ignored him, and nodded briefly to me. "Thought I'd find you hiding out down here, Eddie."
I ignored him, to glare at Roger. "What are you doing here, Morningstar? I thought you were safely abroad, on some terribly important mission that kept you well away from the rest of us?"
"Harry contacted me," said Roger, in a voice that chilled the blood without even trying. "He told me about the Matriarch, and the witch. So I made a swift return, via the infernal underground. To support my dear Harry, in the hour of his family's need."
He didn't say anything about being sorry for my loss, for Molly, and the Matriarch. He knew no one would have believed him.