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  FOR LISA.

  ONCE AGAIN BUT REALLY ALWAYS.

  CHAPTER 1

  When it began, there was light. A red flickering light. And a hint of smoke that stung his nose.

  Donny coughed and tried to rub the irritation from his eyes. His brain was still half asleep, but he knew there were at least three things wrong. One was the smoke. Another was that strange glow. Something’s on fire, he thought. The third was somehow worse. When he’d finally fallen asleep the night before, curled up in a corner of the top floor of this abandoned building, all he wanted was to wake up and find out that everything that had happened late yesterday was just a terrible dream. He wanted to open his eyes and see his room and his bed, and laugh about the crazy nightmare.

  No such luck. It happened, all right. His life was now a disaster zone.

  He sat up, put his chin on top of his knees, and shook his head as he remembered. His father had been speaking to some man who Donny couldn’t see. His father didn’t know Donny was home, standing just inside the front door. As Donny listened, he thought his dad was joking at first, talking like a gangster from some movie. But after a while the truth had become clear: his father, Benny Taylor, was a criminal. A violent, dangerous one. Somehow he’d hidden that from his son for all these years.

  Then things happened so fast. Getting caught eavesdropping. Running with his father at his heels, screaming for him to stop.

  It was crazy, picking this place to hide. But that was just the way it had worked out. His first instinct was to race to Kevin’s house. But his father was chasing him, and his best friend’s house was the first place Donny would be expected to run. So he kept on running, weaving between buildings and across the streets of Brooklyn. He finally managed to outrun his father after he darted through somebody’s backyard and hopped a fence. Suddenly the old empty brewery on Franklin Avenue was right in front of him. He knew the place. Kevin had brought him there a few weeks before and showed him how to get inside. Urban exploration, Kevin called it. He always wanted to go into abandoned places, boarded-up buildings, the creepier the better. They leaned a wooden palette against the brick wall and used it as a ladder to reach a broken window. The old brewery had been scary that day, with its cavernous first floor and dim, dusty upper stories. But it was scarier now because he had no home to go back to.

  It was still dark outside. Donny looked out a broken window. The skyscrapers of New York twinkled in the distance, always beautiful. The reddish light came from outside, reflected from the walls of the building across the street. As he watched, a tongue of flame rose up and licked the windowsill.

  “Oh no. Oh no, no, no.” He scrambled up and ran to the door that led to the stairs. When he pushed it open, smoke and heat gushed from the stairwell. He backed away, coughing and spitting. A pair of squealing rats shot through the opening and brushed past his legs.

  The stupid building has to be seventy years old, and it picks tonight to burn down! Think, he told himself. And then: Fire escape. There had to be one, even in a building this old. Where? He whirled, staring out every window of the wide-open floor, and finally spotted a rusty black railing. There was a door right beside it. He ran to it, yanked it open, and stepped onto the fire-escape landing. Just four stories to the street and he’d be out of trouble. But before he was down a single flight, fire billowed from the floors below, sifting through the grating and reaching for him. As he retreated from the blistering heat, he shouted for anyone to hear, “Help! I’m up here! Send help!”

  The room he’d left had filled with smoke. Idiot, he told himself. Should have closed the door to the stairs. The only option left was to climb all the way to the roof and look for another way down. The top of the fire escape ended in a wobbly, corroded ladder, bolted to the brick, which took him over the edge of the roof.

  Smoke flooded up every side of the building. He ran to each side and searched for any escape route. The drainpipes were long gone, and there was nothing to shinny down. The buildings next door weren’t close enough to let him jump. And it was a fatal distance to the ground. There were no options.

  He heard a roar somewhere below as the fire gorged on air. Flames lapped over the roof’s edge and forced him to back away. Of all the places to hide, he thought. A sensation he’d never known came to him: the certainty that he had only moments to live. He put his hands around his mouth and shouted again, “Help!”

  Suddenly he heard a voice close behind him. “Well. Someone sounds nervous.”

  He spun around. A girl—or a woman?—was standing on the roof. She looked like a little of both. It was hard to tell, as the sting of smoke forced him to squeeze his eyes almost shut. She stood there, a slim figure, her arms folded and, insanely enough, a sly grin on her pale pretty face.

  “We have to get out of here!” he shouted. It was a mistake to talk—the smoke sandpapered his throat, and he started to cough. He pulled the front of his hoodie over his mouth.

  “We certainly do,” she said. “Lucky for you, I’m willing to take you with me. As long as you’ll make me a promise.”

  “A promise?” he said through the sweatshirt. Great, he thought. Now there’s a fire and a crazy person.

  She stepped closer. “That’s right. But it’s a significant promise. You should think it over, but don’t take too long.” She stomped the roof with the heel of one of her boots. “This’ll burn through any second now.” As if she had prompted it, part of the roof nearby sagged and collapsed, and flames shot through the gap from the howling inferno below.

  “I promise!” Donny shouted. His eyes were closed for good now—the smoke was too intense.

  She seized him by the collar and drew his ear to her mouth. If she was afraid of the fire that was about to take the whole building down, there was no hint of it in her voice. “You don’t even know what I’m asking yet. Here it is: You work for me. And you do what I ask. For as long as I want. Promise me that, and I’ll save your life.”

  “But” was all Donny could say, and then he just went on coughing. The heat came closer. He felt it on his skin, and even through his jeans.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t make you do anything illegal. For the most part. And I don’t see what choice you have, honestly,” she said.

  He heard sirens growing louder. When he forced his eyes open for a moment, he saw bright pulsing lights in the smoke. The fire trucks, finally. But it was too late for him. More of the roof caved in, dangerously close.

  “Shake my hand,” she said. “That will do.”

  A powerful blast of hot air struck him like a wave of boiling water. He fell to his knees and put his elbows across his head. Pain was everywhere. He could feel it coming: his hair about to burst into flames, his skin about to fry.

  “I can’t tell if you’re demented or stubborn!” he heard her shout over the din of the fire. “I mean, you have seconds to live at this point, and it’s not a pretty way to go. I’m leaving now. Are you joining me? I’ll even accept a thumbs-up.”

  Donny felt his mind going dim. No air, he thought. The roof under his knees groaned and tilted, pitching him sideways. He thrust a hand out, and another hand was there in an instant, gripping his. Powerful arms lifted him easily. Someone else is here, he thought. It couldn’t be her�
�she couldn’t be so strong. He heard her voice again, whispering something he could not understand in some bizarre tongue. The fire built to a crescendo of heat, light, and howling wind, and then it was gone, switched off like a radio. Heels clacked on a hard surface, and then the strong arms set him down on a cool smooth floor.

  CHAPTER 2

  You know something?” the girl asked. “That was a terrible time to be indecisive. I’ll never get the smell of smoke out of these clothes.”

  Donny tried to respond, but it only triggered another coughing fit. He curled sideways on the stone floor with his arms across his stomach. His eyes and lungs still burned. He blinked and tried to focus, but saw everything through a blur of tears. All he knew was that they’d ended up in a corridor, away from the smoke. Only one other person was with him: the girl.

  She kneeled beside him. “Jeepers. You’re all singed,” she said. He could smell it: the stench of burnt hair. His nose wrinkled.

  It took a few minutes, but he was finally able to breathe deep without coughing. “How did we get here?” he asked quietly. “Is this the basement?”

  She laughed. “Not the basement.” Her hand gripped his arm, helping him sit up. “Can you see a little better now?”

  He blinked some more, then rubbed his eyes and looked again. The corridor came into focus at last. He saw smooth rock walls all around and an arched doorway ahead. Behind them, the corridor curved out of sight, but he saw a shimmering orange light on the walls cast by flames around the bend. “Wait. What . . . There was a tunnel under the building?”

  “Noooo,” she said, sounding a little impatient. Donny could see her better now. She was definitely pretty. Striking was more like it. There was something sly about her features. She had dark eyes, not quite black and maybe even purple, framed by lively eyebrows that angled wickedly down. Her hair was long, straight, and midnight black.

  She offered her hand. “Angela Obscura.”

  What a name, Donny thought. He shook her hand. The flesh of her palm was feverishly warm. “Donny Taylor,” he told her, adding another hacking cough at the end.

  “Pleased to meet you, Donny Taylor.”

  Donny took another look around at the floor and roof and walls of solid rock, the fiery glow behind and the arch ahead. “I don’t get it. Where are we? We must be under the brewery. But we were on the roof. How did we get down here so fast?”

  Angela pursed her lips and tapped her cheek with one finger. The other hand, Donny noticed, was clad in a tight red leather glove. Around that wrist she wore a thick timeworn gold band that looked like an artifact from a museum. “How do I break this to you gently?” she mused, almost to herself. “Let’s start with this. Donny, you are nowhere near that old building, which I imagine is a steaming pile of rubble with a load of hunky firemen standing around it right now.”

  Donny frowned at her. “Nowhere near?”

  Angela shook her head. “Far, far away.”

  Donny’s frown turned into a glare. He had woken not long ago with his life in ruins, and then been scared half to death. Now on top of that, this weird girl was messing with his head.

  “Don’t give me that look,” she said. She tugged at the bottom of her glove. It seemed like a habitual gesture. “Let me give you a hint.”

  Any other time, Donny would have been polite. But his nerves were shot, and that made it easy to be blunt. “I don’t want a hint. Just tell me.”

  “Trust me, this news is best received in small digestible portions. You are nowhere near that old building. In fact, you are nowhere near Brooklyn. How far, I can’t even tell you. We got here through a passage that was opened in the fire, because . . . well, because that’s how I get around.”

  Donny let out a laugh, which turned into another cough that took a minute to rein in. “Oh yeah. Of course,” he finally said. “We came through a magic passage.”

  “Was that sarcasm?” she asked, one elastic eyebrow arched high. “I love sarcasm. Good coping skill. Now, here’s the next thing you should know: on the other side of that door is a place you have certainly heard of, but you weren’t sure it was real. A place where sane people hope they never have to go.”

  Donny stood and brushed a fine layer of dark ashes off his shoulder. “This is getting creepy.”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  “What the heck are you talking about?”

  “Exactly.”

  Donny opened his mouth to speak but suddenly couldn’t find any words. Angela stared at him, nodding. “Take a good look at that door,” she said, pointing over her shoulder.

  He swallowed hard, ignoring the pain in his throat. He stepped closer to the door. The scarred, knobby, blackened wood looked almost petrified. How old is this? he wondered. Words were chiseled deep into the stone above the door, in a language he did not understand. HIC ∙ INEST ∙ INFERNUS. Latin maybe? There was no chance he could figure out the phrase, but that last word: INFERNUS. That was familiar somehow, and he knew words like it. Infernal. Inferno. He took a sudden sharp breath, and it stuck in his nose. It brought a smell with it. It wasn’t just the burnt odor of his own hair—there was something new mingled in. A faint whiff of rotten egg. He leaned closer, and the smell was stronger, as if it had leaked through the cracks of the door.

  Donny knew that smell.

  Sulfur.

  And suddenly he was aware of how warm everything felt, even the stone under his feet.

  “You look a little pale,” Angela said. She leaned closer. “Have you guessed?”

  His voice fell to a whisper. “It can’t be that place. It can’t be.”

  “It is, though, Donny. This is the way into the Underworld. It’s had lots of other names, though. Infernum. Hades. Hell. Gehenna. Baratrum. The Abyss. The Land of Everlasting Torment. The All-Inclusive Resort for the Terribly Naughty. These days, we like to call it Sulfur.”

  Her hand rested on his shoulder and steadied him, because he was wobbling. “I know what you’re feeling,” she said. “You’re confused. You’re sick with fear. But I bet you’re curious, too. Are you ready to see what’s on the other side of that door?”

  Donny put a hand on his chest and felt it heaving under his palm. “I . . . I . . .”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, grabbing his wrist with her gloved hand. “You don’t have a choice anyway. I can’t leave you here. And I’m not taking you back. Let’s face it: you didn’t look like a boy who had someplace better to be, up on that roof. But you can tell me that story later. Now, before we go in—” She turned his wrist so his palm faced up, and pressed her other fist inside. She had a ring on that hand that he hadn’t noticed, with a black insignia inlaid in gold. Donny felt the ring push into his flesh, and then a moment of tingly pain. He yanked his hand away and stared at his palm. The ring had left an impression of whitened flesh on his skin.

  “What was that?” he asked, rubbing the spot with the thumb of his other hand. He thought he could massage the color back into it, but nothing changed: a symbol, an ornate fancy letter O with curling wings on either side, seemed to be there for good. “Did you just brand me?”

  “Sorry, had to mark you as one of mine,” she said. “You wouldn’t last long without it. We have rules about unauthorized mortals wandering around. Actually, one rule: kill on sight. Now, enough with the preamble.” She walked to the door. There was an enormous brass knocker mounted in the center, and she slammed it into the iron band below with three resounding clangs.

  Donny held his breath for a moment and watched the dark door. Moments passed with only the sound of Angela’s toe impatiently tapping the stone floor. A little rectangle of metal near the top of the door slid open and created a peephole. “It’s me,” Angela said. “Would you kindly let us in?”

  Whoever was on the other side slammed the peephole shut. Then there came another noise as heavy things ground together. The door swung inward.
Donny craned his neck to look through. A tall burly figure stood in the doorway, clad from head to toe in dented armor. If someone hadn’t just opened the door, Donny would have thought it was simply an oversize, oddly shaped suit of armor standing on display.

  Beyond the threshold was another, much shorter, tunnel. The opening at the far end was a rectangle with a rounded top. Like a tombstone, Donny thought with a shudder. The space beyond was orange-lit and, he was certain, immense. Angela stepped up beside him and slipped her arm inside his. “Come on, I’ll prop you up. It can make you dizzy the first time you lay eyes on it. I promise you, it’s not what you expect.”

  Donny gulped. What did he expect? Flames and creatures with pointy horns and pitchforks, he supposed. His joints felt weak, and tremors ran through his arms and legs. He might not have moved if Angela hadn’t tugged him along.

  Donny stared as they approached the armored figure. It was easily eight feet tall, and strangely proportioned with long arms and a grotesquely thick chest. It was so still and silent that Donny nearly shrieked when a cheery high-pitched voice rang out from within the helmet. “Lovely to see you, Angela.”

  “And you, darling,” she replied. She stopped and smiled up at the hulking figure.

  “Who’s your little friend?”

  “Oh, just someone I bumped into topside.” She stared up, still grinning, and rocked on her heels. A long, strange, silent moment passed, and then finally she giggled and opened her red bag. “You thought I’d forgotten it, didn’t you?” She pulled out an extra-large pack of beef jerky, ripped the plastic wrap off, and held it up. The armored thing squealed with delight and lifted its visor. A long pale tongue shot out, stuck to the jerky, yanked it from ­Angela’s hand, and pulled it back in. Donny clapped a hand over his own mouth to stifle a shriek.

  “Enjoy,” Angela said, and she tugged Donny along.