He could even explore those spaces between universes, although Crudford didn’t like hanging about there for long. Like everyone else in Hell, he had always felt that the Great Malevolence, the foulest, most vile entity imaginable—but probably a lovely demon once you got to know it, Crudford tried to believe—was the cherry on the cake when it came to beings of which one ought to be frightened.

But Crudford had come to learn that there were things in the gaps between universes that made the Great Malevolence look like a small flowery unicorn that pooed fairy dust. At least you knew where you stood with the Great Malevolence. Admittedly, that was on the edge of an infinite fiery pit or a cold, bottomless lake of ice, into either of which the Great Malevolence might plunge you if the mood took it, but there was no mystery about the old GM: it hated everything that breathed, especially everything that breathed on Earth, and ultimately it wanted to torment the living for eternity and turn the Multiverse into a realm of ash and fire. Fair enough, thought Crudford. Aim high. Everybody needs an ambition.

But between universes there were entities that didn’t feel anything at all, not even hatred. They had no form, and barely a consciousness. They existed only to bring about nonexistence. They put the “thing” in “nothing.” When Crudford came close to their nonkingdoms, he was aware of their nonattention coming to rest upon him, their complete and utter uncaringness, and even his relentless optimism would start to flag somewhat.

But the worst of the unknowable entities dwelt in the Kingdom of Shadows. They had taken the concept of nothingness—the aching absence of absolute emptiness—and added one simple ingredient to the mix.

Darkness.

And not just any old Darkness either, but a dense, suffocating blackness that coated the body and the mind and the soul, a Darkness like eternal drowning, a Darkness from which all hope of light had fled because it came from a place in which light had never been known. Even calling the place in which they lurked the “Kingdom of Shadows” was a kind of mistake because real shadows required light to form. The Great Malevolence, who had seen so much and recorded it all, had shown Crudford the fate of universes invaded by the Darkness, and it had always begun with shadows where no shadows should have been.

So Crudford moved carefully through the spaces between universes, and he watched every shadow. He listened, too, for Crudford could hear the rips widening in the fabric of space and time, just as he could see the light through the new gaps. Now, as he moved through the Multiverse to return to Hell with his shiny blue prizes, he became aware of a rhythmic, pulsing sound coming from somewhere distant. It was familiar to him.

It was a heartbeat.

Crudford’s senses were so keen that he could tell the beating of one heart from another, for each heart had its own unique beat. But this was a very special heart. He alone, sensitive beyond any other demon, had heard its secret rhythm in Hell. It was a human heart through which no blood flowed, only malice.