Free The Children of the Company by Kage Baker

evil.
    “What did you do?”
    “I just—broke the spell. In a manner of speaking. I’ll bet Brother Crimthann’s in there.” Lewis’s smile faded as he considered the thing he’d revealed to me. “Good Lord, a real abduction. What should we do now, do you suppose?”
    “You—you said you’d rescue him!” I sputtered.
    “I did, didn’t I?” He looked unhappy. “You wait here, then. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” To my astonishment, he turned without the least hesitation and proceeded down into the darkness, and I realized he had no weapon with
him larger than a penknife. I watched his back dwindling into the shadows a moment before I ran after him, calling on the power of Christ to shield me.
    “Oh—” He half turned as I caught hold of his cloak. “That’s all right, you don’t have to come. Really, you’ll be safer out there. I can see in the dark, had I mentioned that?”
    “No,” I replied, groping after him. There were strange smells in that darkness, but I didn’t want to be thought a coward; and wasn’t the power of Christ greater than anything that might be down there? It must be, mustn’t it? “I’ll bear you company.”
    “Well, that’s thoughtful of you. Be careful, Eogan; the passageway’s getting narrower, and there’s some kind of threshold we’re about to cross. Here. Step up with me now—”
    Then it was as though lightning had come down from Heaven into that black place, and I was struck and thrown like a spark from a smith’s anvil.
    Hours and hours later I heard Lewis saying, “Well, that was certainly stupid.”
    I sat up painfully, feeling as though I’d been beaten. We lay in halfdarkness, in an angle of corridor lined by panes of milk-white glass that glowed softly. Behind us, set into the floor, was a simple metal grating.
    “Eogan,” said Lewis, and he sounded almost embarrassed. “Eogan, there are people coming for us, and I’m afraid I have a problem.”
    “What is that?” How groggy I sounded.
    “I seem to be paralyzed.”
    I grimaced. “Your neck’s broken, then. I’m sorry, man.”
    “No, it can’t break, but—” He paused a moment and then spoke rapidly. “Eogan, I’d like to make a confession. Will you hear it? Will you be my anmchara?”
    “But you’re a pagan!”
    “I’ll convert. Will you? If I ask you in Christ’s name?” His voice was desperate.
    And of course I must say yes, and so I was bound to his secret. I leaned close in the darkness to hear Lewis, as he drew a deep breath and confessed.
    “You see … I’m afraid I’m rather more of a pagan than you thought. In fact, I’m not strictly what you’d call a human being.”
    “What are you, then?” I sat back to stare at him. He was certainly sweating like a mortal man, but we had entered a world where the sidhe existed after all, so what else might be true?
    “The word cyborg won’t mean anything to you. You’d call me a homunculus, I suppose, grown from a mortal infant but changed by, er, alchemy. The masters who created me live nearly two thousand years in the future, Eogan. I work for them here in the past, finding things they want and hiding them in places that won’t be disturbed until they’re needed. I’ve been functioning for four centuries now.” He swallowed hard and seemed to get his panic under control. “They made me immortal and indestructible; at least they thought so. They know everything—well, not quite everything, or I wouldn’t be lying here now, would I? I can’t die! Can I?”
    “I don’t know what on Earth you’re talking about,” I told him, trying even now to hold tight to my orderly rational world. “But I’ve seen men fall and lose movement down one side of themselves, or lose the power of speech. I think that’s happened to you, Lewis. I’m sorry.”
    “It is something like that, actually,” Lewis babbled. “When we stepped on that grid, it damaged me. Only my head is working. I don’t know how long my emergency