Spirits from Beyond Read Online Free PDF

a whole army of dead Druids, perchance?” said Melody.
    “Exactly!” said Kim.
    “I’m going home,” said Happy. “Right now. Really. Watch me.”
    “I thought you wanted to fight for me?” said Kim.
    “Well, yes, but,” said Happy.
    “And there you have his entire character, in a nutshell,” said Melody.
    “Come along, children,” said JC. “Lovely night for a stroll in the Undertowen. We are going down!”
    “Of course we are,” said Melody.
    And then she broke off, as Happy produced a pill bottle from one of his jacket pockets. He studied the handwritten label carefully, put the bottle away again, and fished out another. He nodded over the label, undid the screw cap, and knocked back two of the pills quickly, swallowing hard. Melody stared at him, openly shocked.
    “Happy!” she said finally. “You swore you didn’t need those any more . . . You promised me you’d thrown them all away!”
    “I lied,” said Happy, meeting her angry gaze unflinchingly. “I do that sometimes. When necessary. To keep the peace.”
    “You don’t need pills any more!” Melody said fiercely. “You’ve got me!”
    “You make me feel safe,” said Happy. “But you can’t make me feel brave. To go down into a place like this takes more of me than I’ve got.”
    Melody turned to JC. “Do Something! Say something!”
    “He’s a grown man,” said JC. “He can make his own decisions. He knows what he needs better than you or I.”
    “Sorry, Melody,” said Happy. “But love can only take me so far. After that, it takes chemical courage to push me over the edge.”
    His eyes were already glassy, and his smile was a lot wider than they were used to seeing of late. Melody glared at him coldly.
    “We will talk about this later.”
    “If there is a later,” said Happy. He went right up to the edge of the great chasm and looked down the long steps into the dark. “Ooh . . . You’re right, Kim. They really aren’t steps at all, are they?”
    “What are you Seeing down there, Happy, that the rest of us aren’t?” said JC. And if he was as surprised and shocked as Melody at Happy’s return to a chemical crutch, he kept it out of his voice. He had a job to do.
    “Let’s just say . . . When I say
It’s quiet, too quiet
, that means something,” said Happy. “In this case . . . it means Something’s down there waiting for us. And not in a good way. Let’s go say hello!”
    He went clattering quickly down the stone steps, taking them two at a time, and the others had no choice but to hurry down after him.
    * * *
    The stone steps felt real enough, solid enough, under JC’s feet as he took over the lead from Happy. On the grounds that if you were heading into danger, the one leading the way should have at least some of his survival instincts still working. The small group moved steadily down into the depths, surrounded by a small pool of moon-pale light with no obvious source. JC couldn’t help noticing that none of their feet made any noise at all on the apparently solid stone steps. Without any landmarks, it was hard to get any real sense of descent, or time passing, until the stairway suddenly stopped without warning, and they were Somewhere Else.
    The catacombs stretched away before them: ancient stone galleries, with corridors and passageways, endlessly turning and branching. Rough stone arches, all of them full of shadows and darkness. Dusty openings and endless grey avenues led off in every direction. Old stone, without markings or character, constructed to serve a purpose and a function, not decoration. The silence was complete, hanging heavily over everything. JC looked at Melody, who was hanging on to her machine-pistol like a security blanket. She actually jumped slightly when he turned to her.
    “Yes! What? I don’t see anything!”
    “I was wondering. How big is London Undertowen supposed to be?”
    “How big is London?” said Melody. “They say you can find everything that