Once In a Blue Moon by Simon R. Green Page A

it.”
    “Aren’t we all,” said Fisher.
    “At least I don’t lick my privates in public,” said Hawk.
    “You would if you could,” said Fisher. “Actually, I think I’d pay good money to see that.”
    The dog let loose with a quick series of bubbling farts, like a miniature rumbling volcano and almost as explosive. Hawk and Fisher both winced.
    “I’ll have the Alchemist whip up some more of those little blue pills,” said Hawk.
    “It’s either that or a bung,” said Fisher.
    “Are we really not going to talk about the demons?” said Hawk, putting his empty mug down on the bedside table.
    Fisher emptied her brandy glass and tossed it casually into a cushioned chair. “What is there to say? It’s just a coincidence. Has to be. There’s no one left alive who knows what we did. Who we used to be.”
    “Someone must have sent that demon assassin, pretending to be Patrick Chance,” Hawk said stubbornly. “They knew just the right name to get past our defences. Someone wants us dead!”
    “What can we do?” said Fisher. “Run? I don’t think so. No one chases me out of my own home.”
    “We were planning on leaving anyway,” Hawk said carefully. “Perhaps our mysterious enemy wouldn’t go after the new Hawk and Fisher. Our replacements.”
    “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” said Fisher. “I thought we were safe here. I thought . . . all that was over.”
    “The past is never over,” said Hawk.
    And then they both sat up sharply and looked around them. Something was wrong. They could feel it. Something bad was coming, coming right at them, from a direction they could sense but not identify. Something forcing its way into the world, from Outside. And then suddenly there he was, standing right in the middle of the room, grinning nastily at them from the foot of their bed.
    The Demon Prince.
    He looked something like a man, close enough to human to mock and discredit humanity with the comparison. He was unnaturally tall, and slender to the point of emaciation. His pale flesh had a lambent pearly gleam, unhealthy as leprosy, and he dressed in rags and tatters of purest black, as though he’d wrapped himself in snatches torn from the night itself. He wore a battered, broad-brimmed hat, pulled down low over his fiery crimson eyes; and from what could be seen, his features were blurred, uncertain, as though they could never settle on just the one face. He held his pale hands up before him, as though in mocking prayer or entreaty, and his long delicate fingers ended in vicious claws, from which dark, clotted blood dripped constantly. There was nothing human in his stance, in the way he held himself. He looked like a man because it amused him to do so. Once, he had looked like something else, and might again, but for now he lived in the world of men and shaped himself accordingly. If the word lived could ever be properly applied to something that had never been born.
    The Demon Prince, lord of all the demons in the Darkwood. Who had tried to wipe out all humanity in the Demon War and rewrite the living world in his own awful image.
    His presence seemed to bruise the air, and stain the light, to foul the room just by being in it. Slow creakings moved through the wood of the room, as though the old Tree was disturbed by the Demon Prince’s very existence. His feet burned through the rugs on the floor, and scorched the wood beneath. The Demon Prince smiled slowly at Hawk and Fisher, showing pointed teeth, and when he spoke, his voice was the one you hear in your very worst nightmares.
    “Well, well . . . hello again, my sweets. It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it? Did you like my little assassin, my calling card?”
    “How did you get in here, past all the Tree’s defences?” said Hawk. His voice wasn’t quite as steady as he would have liked.
    “You invited me in,” said the Demon Prince. In a voice like babies crying, like children dying, like a scream in the night. “You