There would be children here.
Halliwell felt the thrill run through the Sandman, so much like lust. Were those terrible lemon eyes his own, he would weep.
The Sandman clambered up the side of the shop as though carried by the wind. His cloak billowed around him and then he collapsed into a flurry of sand, slipping through the open window. Once within, the sand skittered across the wood floor and the small throw rug at the center of the room. Grain by grain, he reconstructed himself, a shell that now housed three beings.
A small boy slept beneath a freshly laundered blanket. His face was so beautiful in repose, cheeks flushed, lips open slightly. His brown hair was tousled and wild on his pillow. Lovely, heartbreaking innocence.
Halliwell was sickened to realize that the Sandman saw the same beauty in that innocence. He tried to grasp at any straw of hope that his imagination could muster. The child was sleeping. The legend of the Sandman spoke of him punishing only those young ones who were still awake when he arrived, claiming their eyes in return for their insolence.
But the monster had taken sleeping victims before. Simple enough to torture them to screaming wakefulness.
In a single stride, the Sandman stood beside the bed and reached long, narrow talons down to slowly draw back the covers. The blanket smelled of lavender soap.
The sleeping boy sighed and his brow creased, troubled, until he turned onto his side and pulled his knees up to his chest, his body aware of the missing blanket.
The Sandman went still. Awareness prickled. Somehow, he had heard Halliwell scream. Or felt it. Inside the monster, Halliwell could not move. His soul had gone rigid with fear unlike anything he had ever known-a terrible denial that would drive him fleeing into the darkened streets if only he had legs with which to run. Shame cloaked him, now, but he drew it tightly around himself as though it might shield him.
This was death and dream and anguish. How could he not flee?
After a moment, the Sandman moved once more, attention no longer turned inward. With the relief and release Halliwell felt there came bitter fury both at the monster and at himself.
This had to stop.
Then the voice, welling up from the depths of their shared psyche. Fool, said the Dustman. You have told him we are here.
The anger stirred in Halliwell again. Who the hell are you to judge? What have you done but hide?
For a moment, he thought the Dustman had gone. The terror that struck him at the idea that he might be trapped within the monster alone was almost worse than the attention of the Sandman. But then he spoke again. Halliwell could not see him-he saw only through the lemon eyes of the monster-but he could feel the Dustman coming closer and his memory supplied an image of the legend-the old London gent with bowler hat and thick mustache, the collar of his greatcoat turned up, the gray dust and dirt texture of his clothes and flesh identical.
Shut your gob and listen, the Dustman whispered in Halliwell’s mind. Come down into the dust with me, Detective. It’s time we had a chat.
The Sandman snatched the little boy from his bed, dangling the child by one arm. The boy’s eyes snapped open and grew wide with terror. He opened his mouth in a shriek, legs twisting and kicking as he tried to pull himself loose from the Sandman’s grip. The wraith only held him more tightly, and the child cried out in pain.
The bedroom door crashed open. The father stood silhouetted in the doorway, the mother in the hall behind him, both frantic with worry.
Then they saw the monster that held their son. The mother screamed. The father backed up a step, grabbed hold of the doorframe to steady himself.
Come, Detective, the Dustman whispered. Nothing you can do for them. Not yet. Turn away.
I can’t.
Turn away. The voice was insistent.
All along, Halliwell had been afraid that if he allowed his tenuous hold on the world-his view through the Sandman’s eyes-to go dark, he would be adrift forever in the swirl of darkness in the creature’s venomous heart. But the Dustman beckoned him deeper.
In the child’s bedroom, the father demanded that the Sandman release the boy. The monster’s laugh skittered along the floor like errant grains of sand. The mother rushed past her husband, hands raised, fingers hooked into claws to save her son. The Sandman let her come and, as her fingers dug furrows into him, covered her face with his free hand. Her scream was muffled. Sand filled her throat. His hand expanded, covering her face, scraping…eroding.
When he dropped his hand, the mother’s face had been scoured away, leaving only bloody muscle, gleaming bone, and screams. The monster batted her aside and held up the struggling boy as his prize.
“What do you want?” the father screamed.
The Sandman crouched low, holding the boy to him as though the child were precious.
“There is a secret place nearby,” the monster rasped. “A haven for Lost Ones and old legends. Twillig’s Gorge, they call it. I would know where it is.”
The father only gaped in despair and confusion.
“You’ve heard of it?” the Sandman growled.
“Yes. Of course,” the man said, desperate, trying to ignore the whimpers from his wife, trying to keep his son alive. “But I don’t know where it is.”
The Sandman narrowed his lemon eyes.
Halliwell tried to look away. The Dustman called to him.
The monster’s rasp was barely louder than the scratch of sand upon the floor as the breeze rose again.
“Pity,” the monster said. “Now I will have to ask another father. Another mother.”
Hopeless, now, Halliwell surrendered. He released his hold upon the world and let his spirit drift down into the maelstrom of the Sandman’s heart, where the Dustman whispered to him of will and grit and bone.
The gods of wine and depravity lived in bloated torpor in the ruined cellar of a palazzo in the Latin Quarter. The openings that led down beneath the ruin were treacherous. Grape vines-half withered-had grown over some of the shattered columns and fallen arches and stone blocks of the palazzo.
“Here?” Kitsune asked.
The sky had cleared and the sun beat down on the stones and made the grape leaves curl on the vines. Her copper-red fur was a part of her, but it felt too warm now, too close. Still, she would not remove it. To do so would make her feel less the fox and more human, and she was feeling too damnably human as it was.
She hated the Atlanteans and the Myth Hunters for what they had begun. She wished she had never met Oliver Bascombe. More than anything, she wished she could tear out the love in her heart.
No. No more thinking about Oliver.
Easier said than done, however. Particularly when all of her efforts now sprang from having known him. She would like to think that she might have stood and fought against the enemies that would destroy her and her kin-that would shatter the Two Kingdoms and take down fair and wise monarchs-even if she had not met him. But Kitsune could not have said that with any certainty, and this troubled her most of all.
“Here?” she repeated, turning to Lycaon.
Not even the old gods, it seemed, could escape time.
“So much for Olympus,” Lycaon said, his voice a growl. He did not look at Kitsune, or at Coyote, who climbed across the rocks, trying to keep up with them.
Kitsune stared at the opening that Lycaon expected them to climb into. “There must be others whose circumstances are less dire.”
“None who’d welcome me, or see you because I asked,” the monster replied.
“Cousin,” Coyote began.
Kitsune silenced him with a look. He sighed and came to join her in the rubble. With a glance back at Lycaon, they started down. A slab of stone shifted under her feet. If not for her natural agility, Kitsune would have tumbled into the hole.