The floorboards lie cracked and buckled beneath him.

The golem’s head sizzles. Steam rises.

Mookie kneels down, pats Gorth on the shoulder. The golem will heal up eventually – the poor lunkhead will need to spend some time back down in the dark, patching himself up. But for now, he’s out of commission. And Mookie, chest heaving, body throbbing, nerves jumping like sparking wires, doesn’t see the Snakeface anywhere. The slippery sonofabitch must have gone up into a duct or something.

No more time to waste here.

He needs to find the Get-Em-Girls. He needs to find Nora.

11

The horror of the half-and-half is unparalleled. Consider it: you are a child with only one human parent. Your other parent is no parent at all, merely a contributor of darkly squirming seed, a mote of ill magic spawned in the cracks and crevices of the Great Below. It happens however it happens: a man stumbles into a storm drain or rocky grotto, is seduced by gobbos who to him look like lovely lasses with their bosoms bared. Or shadows creep up from the fraught fissures and take a woman in her bed – either by the lie of a human façade or by malevolent force. The result is always the same: a pregnancy. If it is the monster that is full with child, then that child will most likely be born down in the dark, and its humanity will forever be a liability. At its best, gobbos sometimes use such hybrid children as mules. At the worst, they are sacrifices to the deepest gods or test subjects for some strange new weapon. If it is a human mother whose belly has grown round with the dread energies of the Underworld, then she will most surely perish during birth; I’ve not yet heard of one who survived. The child is ever part human, yes – in all the weakest ways. And also part monster, in all the strangest ways. The design of the monstrous half cannot be predicted as it follows no discernible pattern nor does it seem related to the inhuman parentage. I’ve seen and heard tell of half-and-halfs who look like minotaurs or mermaids, or who have the flesh of reptiles or the insect limbs of pale cave crickets. One thing can be sure: they are embraced by neither world but possess the power and frailty of each. Our world sees them as human, but a human that doesn’t quite seem right. The world below sees them as human, too – a human that will never belong. It is a horror, to be sure, but in my most sleepless nights I wonder if I would’ve been better born among them. I feel as a man between worlds.

– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below

Werth’s phone rings. He fishes for it in his pocket, tilts it up–

It’s Mookie.

“Mook,” Werth says, answering.

“Where you at?” Mookie asks.

“Out.” He clears his throat. “And about.”