"We shouldn't remain still too long. It's dangerous. I suppose we should start walking."

"That would be my suggestion," said Shrike. Spyder didn't like the idea of being in the passages any longer that they had to. He looked back the way they had come and saw things moving in the darkness. Golden eyes glinted and slid along the floor. Spyder caught up to Shrike and made sure not to fall behind again.

After what seemed like hours, they were moving through a passage lined with old red brick and dry rot -timbers. A cool breeze touched Spyder's face. Sand had piled in miniature dunes where the timbers met the floor.

"Oh dear," said Primo leaning over a broken machine in the tunnel ahead. Twisted wheels lay on the bricks. Spyder could already smell the stink coming from the wreck. Melted rubber, gasoline and burned flesh.

"I'm guessing this is the tuk-tuk we were waiting for?" said Shrike.

"It would seem so," replied Primo. "Hmm. I don't believe this was a motor accident. There appears to be an arrow in the driver's eye. I wonder who could have put that there?"

"That would be us," came a croaking voice from the roof of the passage.

Four men (and the gender of the intruders was just a guess on Spyder's part) dropped to the floor. The men weren't holding anything, so Spyder wasn't sure how they'd been holding on to the ceiling. But what seemed more important to him now was the men's elongated faces and crocodilian skin. Each was dressed differently-one in a firefighter's rubber overcoat, another in priestly vestments, the third wore shorts and an I LUV LA t-shirt and the fourth was wearing a high school letter jacket. Spyder didn't want to think about where the lizard men might have acquired their clothes, but the rust-colored stains in the LA t-shirt gave him some idea.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said Primo and he gave the lizards a bow. "I am Primo Kosinski and I am conducting these guests to the abode of Madame Cinders. The Madame has negotiated safe passage through the Blegeld Passage for herself and all her guests."

"She didn't negotiate with us," said the lizard priest in a gravelly, hissing voice.

"That's because the compact is universal. No one may ignore or prevent…," Primo began. Shrike cut him off.

"What will it cost us to get through?" she asked.

"The pretty green. Piles of it. Do you have that?"

"You know we don't," Shrike said.

"Good," hissed the lizard in the letter jacket. He took a step toward Shrike. Just as she was bringing her sword up, Spyder saw Primo ram his shoulder into the lizard's mid-section, smashing him against the wall in an explosion of bone, blood and dry skin. Next, Primo rounded on the priest and back-fisted him, ripping off a good portion of the beast's face. Spyder was pulling Shrike back from the carnage. As awful as it was, he couldn't turn away. The first thing he noticed, aside from the fact that Primo had the last two lizards by the throat and was slowly choking the life from them, was that the little man's clothes were not longer loose on him. In fact, they seemed a little tight. His skin had turned a bright crimson and long, thorned hooks protruded from every part of his body, ripping through the fabric of his suit. Primo growled with animal fury as he crushed the throats of the lizards until their heads hung at odd angles on limp flesh. Dropping the attackers' bodies, Primo turned to Spyder and Shrike -asking, "Are you both all right?"

"We're fine," Shrike said. "Thank you."

The little man, for he was already shrinking back to his original size, approached them, cleaning his hands on the T-shirt he ripped from the body of one dead lizard. "Forgive me, please," he said. "You were under my protection and should never have had to even raise your weapon. You may ask Madame for my life, if you like."

"Don't be silly," said Shrike. "You protected us and we're grateful."

"I'm happy to be of service."

"You're of the Gytrash race, aren't you?"

"Yes, ma'am. Members of my family have been guides for Madame Cinders and her friends for over a thousand years."

"Your family should be very proud of you, Primo."

"Thank you. I believe they are. At least, they sit well with me."

Spyder felt Shrike's hand on his arm, quieting him until Primo had moved away to inspect the lizard men's bodies. When he was out of ear shot, Shrike whispered quickly. "The Gytrash are nomads and escorts for travelers. They are a very practical race. They eat their dead for nourishment, but also as ritual. It's their highest act of love and praise."

"We're almost there," said Primo. "Shall we continue?"

"Let's," said Shrike. Spyder walked beside her trying to decide which member of his family, in a pinch, he could eat.

Sixteen

The Birth of Monsters

When the world began, there were no such things as monsters. Demons were just fallen angels who, booted out of heaven and bored with Hell, wandered the Earth sticking little girls' pigtails in inkwells and sinking the occasional continent.

The word monster didn't really exist until the Spheres separated and the humans and beasts in the first Sphere forgot about their brethren in the other Earth realms.

In fact, most of what people call monsters are at least partly human. Many are the offspring of Romeo and Juliet encounters between mortals and races from the other Spheres. The first monster was the offspring of a man, Chrysaor, and Nyx, the snake queen. Their daughter, Lilith, was the first of the Lamia race. When she fell in love with another human, Umashi, and created the long-nosed Tengus. It wasn't just humans coupling with the older races. Earth was a romantic free-fire zone before the Spheres split. Old races mated with the new ones, which created still newer races, new cultures, new myths and new possibilities. Later, when mortals only saw the other races of the Earth in their dreams, they called these long-forgotten siblings monsters.

Of course, mortals weren't always tops on the invitation list for parties, either. A number of animal races, especially the ones in the oceans and air, didn't regard humans as truly sentient beings and considered mating with them to be the grossest kind of bestiality. This generally low opinion of humanity was widespread in the outer Spheres and didn't change for thousands of years, until certain mortal stories trickled out to the hinterlands. Gilgamesh, for instance, was quite a hit with the swamp kings and lords of the air. Other stories of reluctant heroes and re-born champions, characters such as Prometheus and the trickster Painted Man, elevated humanity in the eyes of the other races because in all those stories the heroes die or give up some core part of their being for their people. That humans could grasp the idea of self-sacrifice was big news in the outer Spheres. Humanity was cut some sorely needed slack from races that previously regarded them as a kind of chatty land krill.

Of course, while the creatures of the outer Spheres no longer thought of humans as vermin, they didn't really want to live next door to one, either.