"Oh, yeah, fantastic," Eve drawled, glancing back and forth between Alekto and Megaera on one side and the resurrected god-corpses on the other. "Lot of good it’ll do us. I’ll settle for not dying, thanks."
Eve hissed at Alekto. The Fury cracked her whip almost as though she was trying to herd them toward the dead gods. Eve caught it in her hand, the barbs ripping her flesh even as she yanked it from Alekto’s hand. The Fury snarled at her and the two began to face off against one another.
"You’d better have something up your sleeve, Doyle," the vampire snarled. "We can kill these bitches, but we’d need a small army to fight the undead of Olympus."
Conan Doyle slowly reached into his pocket, searching for something he had nearly forgotten. "A small army you say." He pulled his hand from his pocket to reveal the teeth. The Hydra’s teeth.
"I believe I have just the thing."
The ancients attacked as one, a single wave of shambling necrotic flesh, archaic weaponry and furious cries of indignation. The two surviving Furies urged the legion of reanimated corpses to slay the usurpers — to make them permanent residents of this hellish realm.
Eve was the first into the fray, lunging into the dead warriors and tearing at them. She punched a fist through the chest of the first to come near her and tore off the head of a second. Through shared desperation, Ceridwen and Gull joined forces, conjuring a cloud of crackling energy hungry for the desiccated flesh of the dead. Inspired by Eve’s wanton violence, Danny Ferrick threw himself into the fray, many a decomposing god falling before his savagery. Hawkins proved himself deadly in hand-to-hand combat, shattering bones and crushing skulls with nothing but his hands. The girl, Jezebel, seemed to come truly awake and alive when at last the nightmare was about to swallow them. Her childlike qualities evaporated and only the weather witch remained. Lightning crackled within Hades’ heart, shattering gods and burning what remained of them.
All of it was merely to buy Conan Doyle time to bring his plan to fruition.
He knelt and dug his fingers into the ground, tearing away gobs of bleeding muscle. One by one he pressed the Hydra’s long, sharp teeth into the flesh of the Lord of the Underworld’s heart. The legend called for them to be planted in the earth, but in this place, here was the soil, here was the ground. With a prayer to gods long passed from this plane of existence, he stood back from his chore.
"What have you done, sorcerer?" Megaera screeched, dropping down upon him like a hungry bird of prey. She landed on his back, her claw about his throat.
Conan Doyle surged up from his crouch, spinning around in hopes of dislodging the loathsome creature from her perch. The Erinys held tight, her powerful legs locked around his waist as the grip on his neck continued to tighten. He heard the agitated hiss of the snakes that lived in her hair.
He spun to see the battle in the chamber and his hopes sank. The number of resurrected gods was growing, the corpses streaming into the chamber in endless numbers. His compatriots had to be growing tired, their sorceries and brute strength starting to wane.
"I feel your despair and sup upon it with glee," the Fury cackled in his ear as her grip upon his throat tightened even further. "Surrender yourself to me — do not delay the inevitable. For what you and your companions have done, your suffering will last for eternity."
Doyle felt his legs begin to weaken. It cannot end this way. A crude spell of conflagration leaped to the forefront of his thoughts and he brought it forward, feeling white-hot fire begin to swirl and grow in the palm of his hand.
" Surrender," the Fury hissed as he dropped to his knees, borne down by her weight.
Conan Doyle reached up behind him and placed the ball of fire into the creature’s matted locks. "Never," he wheezed, hearing the whooshing sound of dry, ancient hair igniting and feeling the hold on his neck lessen.
The Erinys screamed, beating at her blazing head. Serpents, their bodies afire and smoldering, leaped from their burning nest to land on the ground, startling Conan Doyle with their number. He was preparing another spell, something that would reduce the foul beast to ashes, when, from within her robes, she produced her whip, and with blinding speed, cracked the lash.
The barbed, leathery tendril wound around his still-constricted throat, closing his breathing passage off entirely. Images of the wrongs he had committed during his long life flooded his mind.
"So much to be punished for," the Fury said, her burned and blackened visage grinning at him down the length of the whip.
She yanked Conan Doyle viciously forward, and he again stumbled to his knees. Sins of the past clouded his mind, making it difficult for him to concentrate. He grabbed hold of the barbed length of whip, using the pain in his bleeding hands to clear his addled brain. She was dragging him toward her, the sounds of battle in the background accompaniment to his struggle, inspiring him to fight on.
" Come to me, sinner," she hissed hungrily.
There were snakes all around her feet, but he noticed something else. In the area where he had planted the Hydra’s teeth, the fleshy earth was moving, startling the snakes and making them slither away. A geyser of blood squirted upward and from Hades’ very flesh there grew a soldier, brandishing a sword that looked to be forged from jagged bone.
Megaera spun to face her new foe, its body glistening with the blood that now pumped through the heart of Hades. She cried out for help from Alekto, and from the gods that had been called forth. But it was too late. The Hydra soldier brought his jagged blade of bone down through the thick muscle of her neck, sending her head spinning through the air before dropping to the floor.
Conan Doyle pulled the whip from around his neck, watching as more of the gore-covered soldiers climbed up from the fleshy earth. One soldier for every tooth, he observed, watching as they helped one another emerge from their birthing place. Before long they stood before him, fifty blood-drenched representations of man, their features unformed, mere holes for eyes and slits for mouths. They clutched their weapons of bone, waiting for the one who called them to life to proclaim his wishes.
"Fight," Conan Doyle cried, pointing to the battle being waged across the chamber. "Destroy these forgotten gods!"
The soldiers of the Hydra’s teeth surged obediently forward, an unsettling, inhuman cry of war escaping their unformed lips.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gull cut a swath of death through the resurrected gods, destructive magick spewing from one malformed hand, the gun that he had used to slay Charon firing from the other. And still they came at him, these once fabulous beings that had looked upon man from Olympus, manipulating the young race for their own amusement.
An emaciated, eight-foot-tall creature covered in silvery scales surged toward Gull, wielding a trident of gold. One of the offspring of Poseidon, he thought. How sad that beings once so revered have come to this. Gull fired a single shot into the god’s bearded face and the flesh and bone and stringy hair collapsed inward and blew out the back of his head.
In the moment he had bought himself, Gull checked his inside coat pocket for his prize, the treasure whose acquisition had caused all of this insanity. The blood of the Furies was still there, still safe. He had to leave this place soon. His goddess, his love, awaited the cure for her affliction. Medusa would finally understand that his love for her knew no bounds.
Another god, this one clad in the skins of animals, attempted to decapitate him with an enormous club, but Gull would not oblige him. The club-wielding god died squealing, an entropy spell swirling about his once mighty form, consuming what remained of his flesh.
Everywhere the sorcerer looked there was ferocious battle, and the dead continued to stream into the chamber. From the teeth of the Hydra, Conan Doyle had managed to conjure the assistance of a small army, and it seemed that the blood-slick soldiers had managed to buy them all some time. But Gull knew the dead would soon overwhelm them again.
He would have none of that.
Again, he patted his breast pocket, feeling the g
lass vial safely nestled there, and decided that now was the time to take his leave. He felt a momentary pang of guilt for deserting those who had begrudgingly become his allies, but there was too much at stake for him.
Through the sea of conflict, Gull saw an exit in a wall of the fleshy chamber, throbbing and pulsing not twelve feet away. Holstering his gun, he spoke an ancient incantation that would clear a path to the door and surround him in a field of dark and terrible magick. Killing magick. The gods who attempted to stop him died screaming, their bodies exploding into flames on contact with the shimmering aura that now protected him. Gull smiled as he reached the throbbing door, chancing a final, quick look over his shoulder before leaving.
"Nigel?" he heard a squeaky voice, ragged and full of panic.
And then he saw her, Jezebel, her clothing torn and stained with blood. There was a sad, sweet smile on the girl’s face as she made her way across the battlefield toward him. Bursts of lightning leaped from her fingers, striking down any who attempted to block her path. He was her salvation, her oasis in this terrible sea of madness and violence — it had been that way since they met.
Gull remembered when he first found the girl, fourteen, shivering and wet, sitting at a campsite in the Sequoia National Park surrounded by the bodies of her family. Jezebel hadn’t wanted to go camping at all. She loved them, but hated them at the same time, like so many girls her age. Spoiled and temperamental, in a fit of rage she had whipped the elements into a fury to match her own, calling the lightning down upon her mother and father, burning them black, scorching the earth around them. Her brother — whom she had despised — she pummeled to death with a rain of massive hailstones, so that what was left of him was unrecognizable pulp.
Nigel Gull had felt the presence of magick and tracked it to that place. In the aftermath, Jezebel had been shattered by guilt, attempting to use her power to kill herself. Gull had seen the lightning flash, darting fingers of fire into the forest again and again in the same spot. When he had come upon her, he saw it strike her once, twice, a third time, with no idea how many times it had struck before he arrived. The girl was weeping, the lightning not harming her at all, arcing around her, tearing up the ground in a circle around her.
Jezebel had been a troubled child, but also a talented one. One with potential. Gull had gone to her, risking the lightning himself, and though she had at first shrunken back from his hideous visage, when he had pulled her into his arms and whispered to her that it was going to be all right, that they could never have understood her but that he could help, she had relaxed into his embrace and sobbed uncontrollably. Eventually she had fallen asleep in his arms and he had carried her out of the forest to his car, leaving the corpses behind.
They had been together ever since.
Now the immolation field that surrounded him crackled and hummed as Gull watched Jezebel make her way toward him. Her hair was whipping wildly around her in a wind of her own devising and there was a desolation in her eyes, a hopelessness he had not seen since he had first discovered her. The jeans and barely-there T-shirt she wore were streaked with filth and torn in places. She had many cuts, but the worst was a slash on her right side from which streaks of blood had spilled down to saturate the leg of her pants, blackening the denim.
"Nigel, wait for me," she called, desperate.
Gull had become her protector as well as her employer, her unique talents and childlike view of the world serving him well on many occasions. Jezebel had been a tremendous asset.
Now she was merely a hindrance.
He could not afford to have her draw attention to his departure. She called his name again, and he could see the tears streaming freely down her face. Gull opened his arms as if to welcome her into their loving embrace. Jezebel quickened her pace, nearly falling as she navigated her way over the piles of dead gods, of bones and armor, that littered the floor. Gull almost felt a pang of guilt as she at last reached him, hungry for his arms to be about her — protecting her as he had done from the start.
The twisted mage closed his eyes just as she touched the immolation shield that protected him. Jezebel was unable to scream as her lovely body was consumed by a searing flash of supernatural light. He opened his eyes again, the image of her at that moment before her demise burned onto his retinas. He would miss Jezebel, and when this quest was done, he would tell his beloved Medusa of her sacrifice. Perhaps then he would shed a tear for her passing, but now, there wasn’t time for sentimentality.
The exit quivered wetly behind him, and he ducked his head as he departed the chamber through the orifice. The shield of devastation waned and was gone, his strength nearly depleted. He would have to find a place to rest soon.
It was dark inside the passage, the stink reminding him of the London charnel houses from his youth. Gull carefully felt along the passage, the moist wall of flesh beneath his hand thrumming with life, or at least what passed for living in this infernal place.
"Going somewhere, Gull?" asked a voice from behind him.
Gull stopped, whispering a spell to illuminate his hand, and turned to see who had addressed him. The demon boy lurked in the shadows, his eyes glinting yellow in the faint light thrown by Gull’s hand.
"Ah, Daniel, I was following one of the Erinys and — "
The boy surged toward him. "Don’t give me any of your shit," he growled, and Gull saw that something dangled from the boy’s clutches. A head; the boy was holding the decapitated head of one of the gods he’d battled.
"Don’t you take that tone with me, boy," Gull began, taking a step back. A spell that would have solidified the air around the youngster, suffocating him, danced upon the mage’s lips, but the demon child was faster.
Danny charged, lashing out with the severed head, catching Gull across the face and knocking him to the ground. Nigel fumbled inside his coat for his gun, but the boy moved with frightening speed and was suddenly perched atop him. The demon gathered up the front of Gull’s coat in his clawed hands, pulling him close.
"I saw what you did to Jezebel," he said, giving him a shake, eyes ablaze and mouth twisted in disgust. "How could you do it?" he spat. "How could you do something like that to one of your own team?"
Gull was still groggy from the blow to his face. "It was nothing personal," he slurred, attempting to pull his wits together enough to summon a spell to allow him to escape from the demon boy’s clutches. "Just a sad fact of the job we do. Everyone is expendable."
The youth snarled with indignation and slammed Nigel hard against the ground before pulling him close again.
"You killed her," he spat, and flecks of spittle flew from the youth’s fanged mouth to dapple his cheek.
Gull nodded in understanding. "She was drawing attention. She drew yours, didn’t she? I should have been quicker. Even had I taken her with me, she would have slowed me down."
"Fucking piece of shit, I should bite out your throat right now."
"I only did what your beloved Conan Doyle would have done if faced with a similar dilemma," Gull said. "Do you really think he wouldn’t gladly sacrifice any of his Menagerie to get what he wants?"
"Mr. Doyle would never…" Daniel started, rearing back, but then stopped midsentence, as if something in Nigel’s words struck a chord of truth.
"Oh, he would, lad," Gull continued, a smile creeping across his twisted features. "But you keep on believing him, if it makes it easier for you to sleep at night."
The boy went wild, leaping up to drag him to his feet. "I don’t need to hear any more of your bogus bullshit," he screamed.
Gull reacted, sensing his opportunity. He bellowed a spell of incineration, thrusting his already illuminated hand into the boy’s face. He cried out, but his grip did not lessen. The smell of burning flesh filled the stagnant air of the passage.
"Nice one," the demon boy said, the skin of his right cheek charred to black. "As if I wasn’t pretty enough already."
The youth moved behind him, gripping his neck and pushing
the twisted mage back toward Hades’s heart, and the battle that still raged within.
"Got a little something you need to do before you go," the changeling growled in his ear. "And it involves that beautiful singing voice of yours."
"And if I won’t oblige you?" Gull asked defiantly.
The boy tightened the grip upon his neck, one of his clawed fingernails breaking the skin. Gull felt the tickling sensation of his own blood as it ran down the side of his neck to his shoulder.
"Then I’ll eat your heart."
"Fine," Gull responded, allowing himself to be maneuvered toward the doorway. "I just needed to know where we stand."
The blood of long-dead gods was rank in her mouth, but Eve was beyond caring. She sprang at one of the resurrected and buried her fangs in its throat. With a savage growl, she pulled her head back, pulling flesh and muscle away, her face bathed in gouts of foul, black blood. Again and again the vampire slaughtered these minor gods, the foot soldiers of Olympus, avoiding their swords, spears, and axes, feasting on their rancid flesh and foul-tasting life-stuff, but still it wasn’t enough. The dead continued their incessant march into the chamber. From the blood of the Fury she had feasted on, Eve had learned the names of each and every one of them, gods and demigods alike, and knew their sins as well. At that moment, they all shared a goal, to protect the treasures of Olympus at any cost.
The creatures born from the teeth of the Hydra were proving very helpful. She and her companions would have fallen to the deluge of the dead much sooner if not for their assistance. Quickly, she looked about the chamber. Ceridwen seemed to be holding her own, manipulating the elements of the Underworld to combat their relentless enemy. She wondered how much longer the Fey could keep it up. That fine-looking son of a bitch, Nick Hawkins was holding his own, not that she gave a shit.
Danny was nowhere to be found. That worried her.
She slammed her fist through the tattered remnants of the rib cage of a goddess, even as the tall, majestic creature tried to reach for her face. Eve tore her spine out through her chest.
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