Bone Gods

saw a pitted metal ladder leading down into night.
    “After you,” Tyrell said. Pete didn’t argue. He had her number—she didn’t have another bright idea if the Antiquarian wouldn’t help her. As she descended her center of gravity shifted, as if she’d passed through a sheet of running water. By the time her feet hit brick, she was seeing everything with a bleeding edge and hearing sounds down a long, convex tunnel.
    “Dammit,” she said. Her own voice came across like a wax record, warped and tinny. “What did you give me, Tyrell?”
    “Opened your eyes,” he said. When Pete looked at him from the corner of her vision, something much thinner and taller was in his place, and when she looked full on, he was the same grotty old man she’d cross the street to avoid.
    “I asked for help, not … not this,” Pete said. She reached out, grabbed at chipped concrete. “Where the Hell are we?”
    “Down the rabbit hole,” Tyrell said, and passed a hand across her neck with a chuckle. Pete felt claws, long multi-jointed fingers that could search through pages, or bones, with equal alacrity. An elongated jaw, yellow teeth made for slurping and grinding living flesh. Robes made from dirty grave winding cloth that concealed a body with more legs than two, with eyes that stared from between Tyrell’s rib bones, and soft insides that pulsed wetly behind an exoskeleton. Vast, unblinking hunger, but not for Pete. Tyrell wanted something much more, was trying to touch not her skin but the talent underneath, searching and seeking like a needle hunting a vein.
    Pete became aware that she’d fallen over when she tasted blood from a cut cheek and felt the cool of brick against her face.
    “See anything you like?” Tyrell crouched, and looked at her with his head twisted halfway round.
    “What are you?” Pete mumbled, feeling her face. Wet on her fingers, but her nerve ends were blunted. Her face was completely numb. She remembered the few times she’d tried acid in school, how her dirty laundry in the hamper had turned into a crowd of black, flapping things and the paint had begun to bleed and reform on the walls of her room into scenes from MG’s tarot cards. That had been dreadful, and this was ten times worse.
    “I told you,” Tyrell said. “I’m an Antiquarian.” He scuttled down the curved corridor ahead. Bare bulbs in cages hissed and spat above his head, and he stopped at a second metal door. “Coming?” he said, casting a look over his shoulder.
    All right, Petunia, Pete said. Get your arse up. You’ve had worse.
    She couldn’t remember when, but she got herself on her feet, and tried to ignore the ship’s-deck feeling of a bad trip rocking under her feet. “Where are we?” she said.
    Tyrell pointed to a faded seal on the metal door. Pete saw it was from the War Office, decades out of date. It also kept moving, skating from one side of the door to the other. “Bomb shelter,” he said. “Thin here. Lots of fear, lots of people all shut up together, feeding off one another.” He spun the hatch. “A bit of the lost Black, for the lost library.”
    “I can cross into the Black,” Pete insisted, knowing she sounded as if she’d drunk an entire pub’s worth of lager.
    Tyrell extended his hand to pull her through the door. “Not like this.”
    Pete ignored the gesture. Even wasted out of her skull, she knew better than to willingly touch Tyrell. She stepped through the hatch, and the bottom fell out of her stomach. The Black closed over her head, intractable as freezing water. Her head felt as if she’d left her skull floating a meter away, her brain flopping uselessly. The connection, to the currents and tides, was gone here. The Black was a bubble, trapped under glass, and Pete quivered under the psychic feedback.
    “I do enjoy this place,” Tyrell said. “The world rushes to and fro, and the Black creeps into every crevice like tar, but here…” He inhaled, nostrils flaring white. “Here, it bends to the Antiquarians.”
    Pete pressed a hand over her mouth, hoping the pressure would keep her together. Sweat chilled all over her bare skin.
    “If you’re going to vomit,” Tyrell told her, “kindly do it in the corner and not near me.”
    “This isn’t right…” Pete managed. All around her, the Black was screaming, rent open and bleeding magic into the void. She’d gotten sick the first time Jack had brought her over, but nothing like this. Something larger and more