He didn’t know how long he was floating. There was no sense of time there, in the dark. All his pain was gone – the burning penny in his back a distant memory – and he was warm and weightless in a way he hadn’t felt since he was a kid, when he would slip underwater during bathtime and lay with his eyes shut.

  He had no idea where he was now, but he knew he was safe, knew also he could stay there forever, safe and warm in the dark of this no-place, if only he chose to do so.

  Stop thinking. Stop being. Just float.

  It seemed a simple thing, but soon his thoughts intruded.

  Where’s my heartbeat, he wondered. And suddenly it was there, a slow, wet thump stirring in his chest.

  And where’s my head? And he became aware of that, too, bumping against something soft and rubbery.

  What about my lungs? And that’s when he realized he was drowning.

  Thick, salty brine filled his mouth and stung his eyes. The world became a wet, choking void.

  He thrashed about, punching and kicking and trying to swim to the surface of … whatever this was. But he didn’t know up from down, and all around him were tight rubber walls. No matter how hard he pushed, they gave and gave but didn’t break.

  His lungs burned. He knew to take a breath was to die. So instead, he exhaled, screaming until his chest was empty, a red, desperate scream that left the taste of blood in his throat. His body seemed to grow with the scream, straining and stretching until finally, something tore.

  He toppled over, landing in a shallow pool of dark water.

  He rolled onto his back, gasping for air. Around him lay the remnants of his prison. Except it was no prison at all, he could see that now. It was an egg – a man-sized egg with a rose-colored shell, slick and leathery, like something a snake would lay. Three identical eggs lay nearby, each of them partially submerged in the slimy water and all torn open. They smelled of sulfur and wet earth.

  He wiped the muck from his eyes. A quick check of his body showed that he was naked but whole, with no obvious injuries, no bleeding. But he’d just been shot. Hadn’t he?

  That’s when he noticed the scar. It was raised and round, like a flesh-colored speed bump where the bullet had entered, sitting just below his nipple and between two ribs.

  Two prominent ribs, he thought.

  He was practically a skeleton. The doctor had told him eating was as important to his recovery as the radiation (can’t land a plane without jet fuel, can you Frank?) but the medicine had turned his stomach sour. Even the smell of those burst eggs was enough to make him puke, if there had been anything in his belly to vomit up.

  Gagging, he crawled out of the shallow pool.

  At first glance, this place had seemed like a cave, black and damp and buried. But as he crested the muddy bank of the pool, he found himself on a floor of paved stone, at the heart of a massive chamber. The chamber was dimly lit by stone basins filled with coral-colored liquid. The liquid gave off incandescent light, like those glowing algae blooms in the ocean, but there were no electric lights, no sunlight either.

  The room was as long as a football field, the portion not hidden by shadow anyway, and about half as wide. The vastness of it was deafening. Its stone walls were covered in red, dripping vines and set with a multitude of alcoves, some bearing the basins of glowing liquid, some dark and hidden. The floor was made of ancient brick and coated in a wet film that looked like a scab and felt like warm turkey skin under his bare feet. Four massive pillars of marble supported a ceiling so tall he couldn’t see it in the distant shadows.

  His vision grew blurry and a wave of nausea spread through his belly, the precursor to another headache.

  “Not now, goddamn it.” He reached for his pocket instinctively – he never left home without the orange bottle of Imitrex – but realized, again, he was naked. A steady throb started behind his eyes. He was on the precipice now, he could feel a big one coming. And then, just as quickly as it started, the pain receded, like waves on a beach at change of tide.

  The pain stopped, and in its place, he felt a kind of openness in his head. It was hard to describe. The closest he’d ever come was the relief you got from dislodging a thick plug of earwax, a kind of unblocking, but this one inside his brain

  Come.

  He didn’t hear the command so much as he felt it. Something tensed at the base of his head – his brainstem, maybe – and before he knew it, he was turning. That’s when he saw the skull.

  It lay in the center of the room, blacker than the surrounding darkness. It was as big around as a compact car and must have come from a gigantic beast. Curled horns sprouted from its prominent forehead ridge, and its enormous mouth was filled with teeth the size of his forearm.

  Must be a dinosaur, he thought.

  But that wasn’t true. He knew it even as the thought came to him, knew it in the part of his brain too primitive for language, too practical for self-delusion.

  It was a dragon skull. That was the truth of it.

  “Dragons aren’t real,” he whispered, as though saying it out loud would be enough to convince him.

  It wasn’t.

  Come.

  He was going to have to prove it. That was the only way.

  He’d have to walk over and touch the damn thing. He’d have to march over right now and slap that skull and see, once and for all, that it wasn’t real bone. Hell, it was probably clay or plastic. It was probably a prop.

  A prop! That was it.

  That explained everything.

  The skull was a prop, and he was on a movie set, one of the big studio lots judging by the size of this place. It all made sense now.

  He’d gotten drunk again and wandered onto a lot when no one was around. The robbery and the gunshot had been a bad dream. That part about hatching from an egg was just the tail end of a blackout. And he was naked because, well … because he was partying. Maybe he’d pissed himself. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  But all he had to do to put this whole mess behind him was walk over and touch that skull.

  Come.

  He made his way across the chamber, the stone floor slick under his bare feet and its tissue-like film squishing with each step. As he drew closer, he saw a black dais nestled inside the skull’s open jaws. The dais was etched with red lines, flowing and organic, like veins of precious metal in common rock. The lines seemed to move as he stared at them, pulsing like tiny arteries.

  He had the sudden urge to lay down on the dais.

  He didn’t know where it came from but it was direct and unambiguous. He wanted to stretch out on that dais and close his eyes and go to sleep. Then he’d be free of this nightmare. He’d wake up back in bed, probably dizzy and with the kind of headache only Jameson could fix, but at least he’d be home.

  All he had to do was step inside the dragon’s mouth.

  “Stay thy hand.”

  The voice came from one of the shadowed alcoves nearby. It was wheezy and weak, like the last strangled whisper of a murder victim, different from the voice that had called him to the skull.

  “Who said that?” Frank shouted.

  “The altar is trapped. Touch it at thy peril.”

  Frank stepped back, the strange urge to crawl inside the dragon’s mouth fading with distance.

  “Are you security?” He moved cautiously toward the sound of the voice, shielding his dick with his hands. “Did you follow me in here?”

  “I have been here for five hundred years,” the voice croaked. “I fear I shall never leave.”

  “Well, mind showing me the exit, pal? I’m a little lost.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “I will help thee, for a favor returned.”

  “Favors?” Frank’s eyes were adjusting to the gloom. As he drew closer to the alcove, he could make out a figure standing in the dark, wrapped in a gray robe. “You mean, like, money?”

  “I have no need of gold. I require assistance.”

  “What seems to be the –”

  Frank’s throat locked up as the figure in the alcove came into focus.

  It was a body, or had been once. Now it was a husk of dried, cracked skin pulled taut over yellowing bones. Its skeletal face seemed frozen in eternal terror, its open mouth filled with black teeth crowded over a purple tongue. Thin white hair hung like spider webs down to its bony shoulders, and heavy chains of rusted iron bound its wrists.

  But the most disturbing part was its eyes. They alone hadn’t succumbed to decay. They stared out from inside the skull – deep-set, gray, alive – like the hint of a face behind a mask.

  Frank screamed. Not a yelp or a sudden cry. But a long, loud howl of madness. The kind of scream that comes when you feel your sanity slipping away, when your brain is melting from the inside.

  He turned and ran. No destination in mind, no direction … just away. But he made it only three steps before his feet slipped on the wet stone and he landed face down, his cheek smacking hard against the floor.

  “Control thyself!” the skeleton commanded. “There are dangers about.”

  “Where am I?” He rubbed the side of his face, a swollen bruise already beginning to form.

  “This is the Temple of Blasphemous Flesh. A cursed place in the realm of Argos, itself a red and poisoned land. Danger lurks here.”

  “What kind of danger?”

  “That is the wrong question. The only question worth asking now is how to get home. I have that answer. But to hear it, thou must do as I command. So, I will ask once and only once, dost thou wish to go home, Frank Farrell?”

  “You know my name.”

  “Answer me!”

  “Yes.”

  “Then break these chains. And let us flee.”

  Frank pushed himself to his feet, his legs quivering like a newborn deer. All the strength had drained from his body. He felt light now, like his bones had been hollowed.

  What was going on here? He knew he wasn’t on a studio lot. No props were this convincing, no set this elaborate. Impossible as it seemed, he had to accept that he was somewhere else … somewhere dark and bizarre.

  You have to meet reality on reality’s terms.

  He’d learned that phrase at an AA meeting, court-ordered, of course. He’d never quite made it up those twelve steps, but that line had always stuck with him. Now, reality meant accepting he was on some strange world, trapped in a dungeon, with only a talking skeleton for help.

  “Where’s the key for these chains?” he approached the alcove again, trying to avoid eye contact with the skeleton.

  “The chains are made of impure metal. Rusted through and through. Only pull them from the wall and they will shatter.”

  Frank grabbed the nearest chain, the one attached to the skeleton’s left arm, and yanked. It broke free easily, the wall making a wet, sucking sound as it pulled loose.

  “Make haste,” the skeleton commanded.

  Frank reached for another chain, laying a hand on the skeleton’s shoulder as he did. Something snapped. He heard a sickening crunch, like a rotted branch breaking, and the skeleton’s head rolled off its body.

  It bounced twice and bumped to a stop against his back foot.

  “Stab thine eyes,” it said, glaring up at him. “Thou art a pitiful fool indeed.”

  “Your head –”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You’re body –”

  “That body has failed me,” the skeleton snapped. “I need it no more than I need an old pair of sandals. Leave it to turn to dust. But if thou wouldst avoid its same fate, we must move. Now pick me up.”

  “With my hand?”

  A roar echoed through the chamber, loud as a jet engine. Frank’s blood turned to ice in his veins.

  “I told thee,” the skeleton said, “danger lurks here. We must head north. Make every haste.”

  Frank grabbed the head, holding it by its cold, brittle hair, and ran.

  As he approached an archway leading out of the chamber, he heard a chittering noise behind him, a hundred staccato taps on hard stone, like the approach of a giant centipede. He turned to see what was causing that strange noise but then checked himself when he heard a call from the dark.

  “Father,” it bellowed, the voice low and plaintive, like a cow’s moo. It was a sound of pure pain. “Faaaather.”

  He didn’t look back then, too terrified to see what could make those noises. And later he never saw it coming at all.

  ***

  “What was that thing?” Frank said. They’d been fleeing for an hour before he got the nerve to speak again.

  “A godling,” the head said. “Once a child fed a drop of divine blood, now mutated into something more … and less.”

  “What does that mean?” Frank wheezed.

  He was exhausted. It had been too many years since he’d needed to be camera-ready. Too many beers, too many cigs, too many good meals. And now the medication on top of that. He’d grown weak.

  It hadn’t always been like this. He used to take pride in his body. He still remembered buying his first Gold’s Gym membership when he booked the audition for Sgt. Skulltaker. He’d fancied himself a serious actor as a young man – a BFA from Julliard, graduate work at the Actor’s Studio, a couple of lean years performing off-Broadway – but he knew Method Acting wouldn’t carry a role like this. He’d grown up watching action movies with his Dad and knew he needed to channel the greats if he wanted to make an impression. Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, Bruce Lee – real hero type shit.

  He still remembered Dad’s advice when he called to tell him about the audition.

  I used to read those comics when I was a kid. You’re a little light in the ass for a superhero, ain’t you Frankie?

  He’s a soldier, Pop. He needs to be athletic. Functional.

  Functional? He’s the hero. You gotta be larger than life.

  Ten weeks later, after busting his ass at the gym with Armand, personal trainer to the stars and the best steroid plug in LA, he had become just that. Larger than life.

  He still had some of that hero in him. Gone was the chiseled body of a twenty-five-year-old action star and what remained, at thirty-three, wasn’t so much a reminder as a ruin. You could still glimpse the foundation – wide shoulders, good back, long legs – but everything was in need of a renovation.

  Hell, when he looked in the mirror, he still saw the face of Scotty Skultiere looking back, the square jaw, the aquiline nose, everything but the hair. It was just a matter of bringing it out.

  That’s what he’d have to do now. Same as he did on set. Dig deep. Find the truth of who he was. Drag it into the light.

  That meant less talking, more moving. Not that he’d been taking his time and enjoying the sights. This whole place seemed like a fever dream, every room a fresh horror.

  To escape the godling, they’d crawled through pulsing tunnels that stunk of rotted meat and waded through underground streams of chunky, white sludge that clung to his legs like mucous.

  They’d crept through ossuaries with bones stacked waist high, where sepulchers carved into red, quivering walls held dead too numerable to count.

  They’d found a fountain filled with broken teeth and a hallway where human hair grew from the ground like weeds.

  Once they’d come upon a pit so deep and black that staring into it was like closing your eyes. It was rimmed with living rock that undulated like lips. A pair of leather sandals stood at its rim, the sandals in good condition and about Frank’s size, but when he went to grab them, he heard whispers from the pit imploring him to jump and he abandoned the shoes where they lay.

  Sometimes he caught furtive shuffling in the dark and spotted red eyes watching from the shadows. But whatever creatures made this place home seemed equally terrified of the thing tracking him, and mostly he found the place empty but for the dead.

  It was impossible to tell how far they had traveled. The compound was dense and layered, with halls that crisscrossed one another and tunnels that sloped up and down. They might have been miles beneath the earth or inches from the surface, Frank couldn’t tell. He tried to remember the way they’d come but the corridors blurred together, shifting like organs in a living body.

  “How much longer?” he asked. They’d come to a domed chamber with walls the color of undercooked steak. In the center of the room lay a broken statue of a bloated woman, sitting cross-legged and naked and pulling a child out of her mouth head first. The child’s eyes had once been set with jewels but now were empty pits marred with chisel marks.

  “Not much further. We approach the vertebral bridge.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  The head sighed. “Thy japes and jests are not welcome.”

  Frank stopped, lifting the skull until they were face to face. “Look I don’t know anything about a vertebral bridge, or a godling, or why this whole place smells like an open wound. You’re the brains of the operation, no question. But I’ve got something better than brains.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Legs. So unless you want to roll your way out of here, stop barking orders and start treating me with a little respect.”

  “There it is.” The head smiled, the dried skin around its mouth cracking from the effort. “I knew a fire burned in thee. Trust it, feed it. It will keep thee safe in these brutal lands.”

  “How come you know me so well?”

  “Minds are an open book to me. Although, to my surprise, there is a shroud over thee, a dark veil that takes some effort to pass. If I did not know better, I would think thee a well-trained psion. Maybe a sixth or seventh level.”

  “I don’t know what any of those words mean.”

  “Another jape.” Thune flashed a withering smile. “Such a clever man.”

  “Thanks for noticing.”

  “It will not serve thee well here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being clever.”

  Frank stared into the eyes of the skull, trying to discern if its words were a warning or a threat.

  “Well, seems I’m already an open book,” he said. “So when do I get to learn about you?”

  “What wouldst thou know of me?”

  “How about a name to start?”

  “Magister Thune.”

  “How are you still alive if you don’t have a body, Magister?”

  “I have not been alive in centuries. But nor am I dead. I am cursed to this grey unlife, banished to the prison of my own skull.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “I was abducted. Tried for heresy and convicted by a cult whose law I never recognized.”

  “How do you know how to speak English?”

  “I don’t.”

  Suddenly the floor trembled and a loud crash sounded from above. The noise was everywhere … and close.

  “Quickly,” Thune said. “We’re almost there.”

  Rushing out of the domed room, they entered a massive cave, bigger even than the altar chamber. The oppressive feeling of something ancient and malevolent hung like moisture in the air, and a soft oppressive hum filled the room, like a forgotten echo from the depths below.

  Frank stepped out onto a balcony lit by two stone basins filled with iridescent pools of pink light. Before him, a footbridge began its precarious journey across a yawning chasm, the abyss so vast and black it looked like open sea on a moonless night. The bridge was flat and thin, like a knife stabbing into the dark, with no handrails, no sidewalls, nothing to keep you from falling off into the endless black below. It was made of bleached bone, veined in red scabrous mortar, and supported by a latticework of stalagmites jutting up from the abyss like jagged teeth in a demon’s maw.

  The middle portion of the bridge was shattered, with only a giant, red stalagmite, set halfway between the broken ends, to serve as reminder of what once stood there. A tattered rope bridge connected the two halves.

  “The vertebral bridge?” Frank said.

  “As magnificent as it is wretched. A thousand feet long. Mortared in the blood of thirty thousand slaves. Truly one of the nine vulgar wonders of the world.”

  “Did you know it was broken?”

  “It has been some time since I saw it last.”

  “Faaaather.” The anguished howl came from behind them, loud enough to shake their bones, echoing out over the void like a scream from the heart of the earth itself.

  “How did it catch up so fast?”

  “It must know a shortcut,” Thune said. “I suspect it crawled up out of the inquisitor’s tomb. But we can be over the bridge before it makes this room.”

  “Sure.” Frank didn’t move.

  “Didst thou hear me?”

  “I did.”

  “Then make haste, fool.”

  “Right. Haste. Just one small problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m scared of heights.”