Tantalizing for those who want to play ball. And tantalizing for those who see an opportunity to make a move against the king and knock that daddy-o off the board.

But they don’t know what he is. Skelly knows. And so last night she made calls. Calls to every contact she had: Bull Mosley of the Black Aces, Denton Lansdale of the Bruisers, Carly Espinoza of the Railroaders. She couldn’t get anybody from the Immortals, the Sinner Kids, the Black Sleeves. The Lantern Jacks told her to go fuck herself. So did the Bloody Nomads, the Killarney Boys, and the Devil Bitches. She didn’t tell them the truth. Not all of it. All she said was that she had intel that this was a trap.

By the look of the cars here, the only one who really listened was Bull Mosley. Maybe he believed her. Maybe he just didn’t give enough of a damn to show up.

It’s two hours after the meeting was supposed to begin.

She steps inside the warehouse, ducking out of the gray day into deeper darkness.

A minute later she staggers back outside, and pukes in a puddle.

A tremor shakes the ground. A furnace blast of heat scorches the air. Mookie jostles awake. Nora still lies asleep in his lap. Mumbling. Moaning. As though caught in the throes of a never-ending nightmare. He feels her stomach, lifts her shirt – the fabric peels away from the flesh with a Velcro rip, the dried blood sticking them together. Underneath it, no gunshot wound. Just a star-shaped pucker.

She’s healed.

Again the ground shudders.

He looks down at the pile of Caput Mortuum mushrooms. They no longer glow. The light, gone from them. Are they inert? Powerless now? He thinks, eat one anyway. You need to heal. But… Skelly. Werth. Others might need them. Mookie pockets the rest of the spongy skull-shrooms, then stands up.

He shuffles slowly toward the edge, arm dangling. Passes the cold campfires and strange goblin altars. Sees his cleaver again there, decides this time to pick it up.

The rocky shelf cracks. Splits.

A brand new problem.

He steps close to the edge, careful not to go sliding into oblivion–

His foot slips.

His ass hits the shelf. He starts to slide–

Cleaver. He uses the cleaver and drives it into the rock–

It buries. Catches. He holds tight. It stops his fall.

Mookie pulls his body back over the ledge. Climbs to his feet. Now he’s able to see. The orange glow burns brighter. The worm-gods are closer to the surface. A breeding ball of hell-snakes. Rising slowly to the mouth of the abyss. They’re coming up out of the Maw-Womb. To be born. To be vomited up.

He hurries back. Wakes Nora. She sucks a breath through trembling lips.

“Something’s different,” she says.

“I was just gonna say that same thing.”

“Something’s different with me.”

He blinks. “You’re alive.”