Neverwhere

He watched the Velvet pull Richard to her for the first kiss, watched the rime and the frost spread over Richard's skin. He watched her pull back, happily. And then he walked up behind her, and, as she moved in to finish what she had begun, he reached out and seized her, hard, by the neck, and lifted her off the ground.

"Give it back," he rasped in her ear. "Give him back his life." The Velvet reacted like a kitten who had just been dropped into a bathtub, wriggling and hissing and spitting and scratching. It did her no good: she was held tight by the throat.

"You can't make me," she said, in decidedly unmusical tones.

He increased the pressure. "Give him his life back," he told her, hoarsely and honestly, "or I'll break your neck." She winced. He pushed her toward Richard, frozen and crumpled against the rock wall.

She took Richard's hand, and breathed into his nose and mouth. Vapor came from her mouth, and trickled into his. The ice on his skin began to thaw, the rime on his hair to vanish. He squeezed her neck again. "All of it, Lamia." She hissed, then, extremely grudgingly, and opened her mouth once more. A final puff of steam drifted from her mouth to his, and vanished inside him. Richard blinked. The ice on his eyes had melted to tears, and they were running down his cheeks. "What did you do to me?" he asked.

"She was drinking your life," said the marquis de Carabas, in a hoarse whisper. "Taking your warmth. Turning you into a cold thing like her."

Lamia's face twisted, like a tiny child deprived of a favorite toy. Her foxglove eyes flashed. "I need it more than he does," she wailed.

"I thought you liked me," said Richard, stupidly.

The marquis picked Lamia up, one-handed, and brought her face close to his. "Go near him again, you or any of the Velvet Children, and I'll come by day to your cavern, while you sleep, and I'll burn it to the ground. Understand?"

Lamia nodded. He let go of her, and she dropped to the floor. Then she pulled herself up to her full size, which was not terribly tall, threw back her head, and spat, hard, into the marquis's face. She picked up the front of her black velvet dress and ran up the slope, and away, her footsteps echoing through the winding rock path of Down Street, while her ice-cold spittle ran down the marquis's cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

"She was going to kill me," stammered Richard.

"Not immediately," said the marquis, dismissively. "You would have died eventually, though, when she finished eating your life."

Richard stared at the marquis. His skin was filthy, and he seemed ashen beneath the dark of his skin. His coat was gone: instead, he wore an old blanket wrapped about his shoulders, like a poncho, with something bulky—Richard could not tell what— strapped beneath it. He was barefoot, and, in what Richard took to be some kind of bizarre fashion affectation, there was a discolored cloth wrapped all the way around his throat.

"We were looking for you," said Richard.

"And now you've found me," croaked the marquis, drily.

"We were expecting to see you at the market."

"Yes. Well. Some people thought I was dead. I was forced to keep a low profile."

"Why . . . why did some people think you were dead?"

The marquis looked at Richard with eyes that had seen too much and gone too far. "Because they killed me," he said. "Come on, the others can't be too far ahead."

Richard looked over the side of the path, across the central well. He could see Door and Hunter, across the well, on the level below. They were looking around—for him, he assumed. He called to them, shouted and waved, but the sound did not carry. The marquis laid a hand upon Richard's arm. "Look," he said. He pointed to the level beneath Door and Hunter. Something moved. Richard squinted: he could make out two figures, standing in the shadows. "Croup and Vandemar," said the marquis. "It's a trap."

"What do we do?"

"Run!" said the marquis. "Warn them. I can't run yet . . . go, damn you!"

And Richard ran. He ran as fast as he could, as hard as he could, down the sloping stone road under the world. He felt a sudden stabbing pain in his chest: a stitch. And he pushed himself on, and still he ran.

He turned a corner, and he saw them all. "Hunter! Door!" he gasped, breathless. "Stop! Watch out!"

Door turned. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar stepped out from behind a pillar. Mr. Vandemar yanked Door's hands behind her back and bound them in one movement with a nylon strip. Mr. Croup was holding something long and thin in a brown cloth cover, like the kind Richard's father had used to carry his fishing poles in. Hunter stood there, her mouth open. Richard shouted, "Hunter. Quickly."

She nodded, spun around, and kicked out one foot, in a smooth, almost balletic, motion.

Her foot caught Richard squarely in the stomach. He fell to the floor several feet away, winded and breathless and hurt. "Hunter?" he gasped.