Free Gallows at Twilight by William Hussey

Rach. Come on, Pandora’s waiting.’
    Rachel may have had her doubts, but Jake was speaking the truth. The memory of Nightfall’s Cup, whatever it was, had been snatched away from him. He gave the fountain one last troubled glance and set off towards the shelter of the arcade arches.
    It was cooler out of the sun, but not much. Sweat ran in tracks down Jake’s face and made his hair itch. The only relief came from the breeze that whistled through the teardrop-shaped holes in the wall. They passed a dozen or more, and Jake wondered whether these doorways all led back to London or if they were portals to other cities, maybe even to other worlds .
    They found Pandora leaning against a column halfway up a flight of sandstone steps. In front of her stood a door studded with vicious iron spikes and set deep into the wall.
    ‘You could’ve warned us!’ Rachel called.
    ‘About what, honey?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know: the crazy tunnel with the groping vine hands maybe?’
    ‘Oh. Yeah. Right. I sometimes forget how easily you humans get spooked. Sorry about that.’
    ‘Pandora, where are we?’ Jake asked.
    ‘This is a meeting place.’ Pandora tapped the ancient column. ‘A borderland staging post between the world of Man and the various worlds of us dark creatures.’
    ‘An in-between place,’ Jake said, ‘like the Veil.’
    ‘No. The Veil is nothingness—just an empty plain through which the dead travel on their way to whatever lies beyond. This place? I guess you could call it a rest stop. Creatures on their way to Earth— your Earth—stay here for a few days before moving on. And this is where they stay.’ Pandora climbed the steps and rapped six hands against the spiky door. ‘The Grimoire Club.’
    ‘That’s right,’ a voice snarled. ‘And you’re not getting in, Pandora.’
    The door swung open. With a low growl rumbling at the back of his throat, a huge creature emerged from the shadows.
    Rachel gasped and took a step closer to Jake.
    A pair of yellow eyes fixed on each face. Black lips curled over long canines.
    ‘Who’re your friends?’ the creature barked.
    ‘None of your business, Razor. Now, run along like a good doggy and tell Murdles I want to see him.’
    ‘What is he?’ Rachel whispered to Jake. ‘A werewolf?’
    ‘I don’t think so. He’s something else … ’
    Jake could hear the pages of his dark catalogue whisper to him as he took in the gigantic figure blocking the doorway. The creature that Pandora had called ‘Razor’ was a two metre tall slab of muscle, dressed in a pair of ragged jeans and nothing else. He had the body of a man, which, although hairy, could not be called animal-like. Razor stood bolt upright, his back straight, legs unbent. His hands ended in fingers, not claws. So far, so human. From the neck up, however, it was a different story.
    ‘I think he’s one of the Cynocephali,’ Jake said in a hushed tone. ‘The dog-headed people. There are stories of their race going back thousands of years. In the Middle Ages, monks used to include them as figures on some of the earliest maps of the world. The Cynocephali were drawn as existing at the very edges of the known world.’
    ‘That’s where Man drove us.’ Razor tapped one of his long ears. ‘No point whispering around me, man-child. Some say we were brothers once, Cynocephali and Humans—that our blood still runs in your veins, as yours runs in ours—but that was a long time ago.’ Razor’s muzzle curled into a smile. ‘Still, it’s good to hear of my kind talked about with such knowledge.’
    ‘And respect,’ Pandora put in. She gave Jake a sly wink.
    ‘A ferocious and noble race,’ Jake nodded.
    Razor bowed his head.
    ‘Wait here,’ he said, and disappeared behind the huge door.
    While they waited, Jake took his first proper look at the Grimoire Club. There wasn’t much to see from the outside. The one-storey building appeared to occupy the entire length of the arcade. Unlike the other sides