Neverwhere

Reassured that he was alone, he allowed himself to relax. He stopped at the top of the spiral staircase and drew a deep breath.
An oily voice from beside him said conversationally, «Varney’s the finest bravo and guard in the Underside. Everyone knows that. Mister Varney told us so himself.» A voice from the other side of him responded, dully, «It’s not nice to lie, Mister Croup.»
In the pitch darkness, Mr. Croup expanded on his theme. «It isn’t, Mister Vandemar. I have to say, I regard it as a personal betrayal, and I was deeply wounded by it. And disappointed. When you don’t have any redeeming features, you don’t take particularly kindly to disappointment, do you, Mister Vandemar?»
«Not kindly at all, Mister Croup.»
Varney threw himself forward, and ran, headlong, in the dark, down the spiral staircase. A voice from the top of the stairs, Mr. Croup’s: «Really,» it said, «we ought to look upon it as a mercy killing.»
The sound of Varney’s feet clattered off the metal railings, echoed throughout the stairwell. He puffed, and he panted, his shoulders glancing off the walls, tumbling blindly downwards in the dark. He reached the bottom of the steps, next to the sign warning travelers that there were 259 steps up to the top, and only healthy people should even think about attempting it. Everyone else, suggested the sign, should use the elevator.
The elevator?
Something clanked, and the elevator doors opened, magnificently slowly, flooding the passageway with light. Varney fumbled for his knife: cursed, when he realized the Hunter-bitch still had it. He reached for the machete in his shoulder sheath. It was gone.
He heard a polite cough behind him, and he turned.
Mr. Vandemar was sitting on the steps, at the bottom of the spiral staircase. He was picking his fingernails with Varney’s machete.
And then Mr, Croup fell upon him, all teeth and talons and little blades; and Varney never had a chance to scream. «Bye,» said Mr. Vandemar, impassively, and he continued paring his nails. After that the blood began to flow. Wet, red blood in enormous quantities, for Varney was a big man, and he had been keeping it all inside. When Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar were finished, however, one would have been hard put even to notice the slight stain on the floor at the bottom of the spiral staircase.
The next time the floors were washed, it was gone forever.
Hunter was in the lead. Door walked in the middle. The marquis de Carabas took up the rear. None of them had said a word since leaving Richard half an hour earlier.
Door stopped, suddenly. «We can’t do this,» she said, flatly. «We can’t leave him back there.»
«Of course we can,» said the marquis. «We did.»
She shook her head. She had felt guilty and stupid ever since she saw Richard, lying on his back beneath Ruislip, at the audition. She was tired of it.
«Don’t be foolish,» said the marquis.
«He saved my life,» she told him. «He could have left me on the sidewalk. He didn’t.»
It was her fault. She knew that was true. She had opened a door to someone who could help her, and help her he had. He had taken her somewhere warm, and he had cared for her, and he had brought her help. The action of helping her had tumbled him from his world into hers.
It was foolish to even think about bringing him with them. They could not afford to bring someone with them: she was unsure that the three of them would be able to take care of themselves on the journey that confronted them.
She wondered, briefly, if it were simply the door that she had opened, that had taken her to him, which had allowed him to notice her, or if there were, somehow, more to it than that.
The marquis raised an eyebrow: he was detached, removed, a creature of pure irony. «My dear young lady,» he said. «We are not bringing a guest along on this expedition.»
«Don’t patronize me, de Carabas,» said Door. She was so tired. «And I think I can decide who comes with us. You are working for me, aren’t you? Or is it the other way around?» Her sorrow and exhaustion had drained her of her patience. She needed de Carabas—she couldn’t afford to drive him away– but she had reached her limit.
De Carabas stared at her, coldly angry. «He is not coming with us,» he stated, flatly. «Anyway, he’s probably dead by now.»
Richard was not dead. He was sitting in the dark, on a ledge, on the side of a storm drain, wondering what to do, wondering how much further out of his league he could possibly get. His life so far, he decided, had prepared him perfectly for a job in Securities, for shopping at the supermarket, for watching soccer on the television on the weekends, for turning up the thermostat if he got cold. It had magnificently failed