Conan Doyle appeared at her side, as she spun around to face other enemies. A quartet of armored corpses were attempting to surround him, but Conan Doyle was not so easily taken. He wielded a pitted, ancient sword he must have taken from one of the fallen, but it was infused with a strange green fire that caused the dead gods to explode when they were cut by the blade. One after the other, he destroyed them.
"Enjoying yourself, Eve?" he asked, wearily.
"Oh, yeah, this might be the best field trip yet," Eve snarled, clawing at a black-eyed, hulking figure, spilling its viscera to the ground. "And to think, we owe it all to your buddy, Gull, and his hard-on for Medusa."
Conan Doyle muttered something beneath his breath and the soft, fleshy ground beneath their enemies’ feet turned to a bubbling, viscous fluid, swallowing six of the groaning, hideous dead before returning to its solid state.
"Gull and Medusa?" Conan Doyle asked, turning to her, a look of astonishment upon his blood-spattered face.
Eve twisted the head of an ancient god completely around with a loud, wet pop, tearing it from its roots. She rode the corpse to the ground and sprang up once more to fall in beside Conan Doyle. "That’s what this is all about. I figured you’d have sussed it out by now. Gull’s in love with Medusa and wants the tears of the Furies as some kind of cure to lift her curse. Ain’t love grand?"
Conan Doyle uttered a disgusted laugh. "Oh, that’s simply priceless." A shrieking god clad in tarnished armor forced his way past the children of the Hydra’s teeth, coming toward Conan Doyle with his spear lowered. Still deep in thought, the sorcerer did not seem to notice, and Eve moved to intercept the attack.
"Watch your — " she began, but a powerful hand wrapped around her ankle, sending her sprawling to the gore-soaked ground. One of her recent victims, it seemed, was not quite dead.
From the ground she watched it all unfold in slow motion, the spear- wielding zombie making his way toward Conan Doyle and he turned slowly, too slowly. The spear was poised for the mage’s heart, and there didn’t seem to be much that could be done to prevent it from finding its mark.
Then she heard it, rising above the din, a song as beautiful as any ever sung in her eternal lifetime. She watched in wonder as the resurrected god fell to his knees, spear clattering at Conan Doyle’s feet.
The scene was repeated all around the chamber as the song lifted through the air. The gods who had been stirred to battle by the cries of the Erinyes fell to their knees, enraptured by the voice of Orpheus.
Eve knew who was responsible, but was surprised that he had the decency to come to their aid.
Hawkins, the worse for wear and looking far less dapper, let loose a raucous cheer. He lifted a bloody battle-axe above his head as he watched his master step back into the vast cathedral of Hades’ heart. Eve almost began to believe that the spirit of camaraderie had taken hold of Gull, but the dark mage stumbled over one of the hundreds of bodies that littered the floor, and she caught sight of the demon boy behind him. At first she did not recognize the hellish visage as the boy she’d grown so fond of. Danny was changing. Quickly.
Eve felt a wave of relief. The boy reached down to haul Gull back to his feet. He pushed Gull toward them.
"It’s a good thing we decided to bring him, eh Arthur?"
Conan Doyle was looking about the room, distracted.
"Arthur?" she asked, catching his eye.
"Do you feel it?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Feel what?"
"Something familiar," he snapped, moving away toward an exit from the chamber. "Hold things here while I investigate."
Conan Doyle had felt it on at least two other occasions since arriving in the Underworld, a presence of power not native to this death realm, a presence that brought about a tingling sensation at the back of his neck, and the disquieting feeling that they were being watched, maybe herded in a certain direction. At first he’d chalked it up to his own, quite active paranoia, but each time he caught wind of it, his suspicions grew. He felt it now here within the corpse of Hades, a familiar electricity that drew him away from the safety provided by the voice of Orpheus to a passage that would lead him to the unknown beyond the chamber.
The feeling grew as he cautiously walked the winding path, the song of Orpheus growing fainter in the distance. As he rounded a bend, Conan Doyle stopped, a spell of defense ready as he saw a figure lying upon its side in the path ahead. Cautiously he approached, studying the crumpled figure for any sign of movement.
Conan Doyle squatted down beside the body and was startled to see that it was the last of the Erinyes. She was quite dead, as were the snakes that had attempted to flee their host upon her demise. He rolled her onto her back and watched as a ghostly wisp of smoke trailed up from the fist-sized hole burnt into her chest. Conan Doyle reached down and touched the edges of the blackened wound, letting some of ash collect on his finger. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. It smelled of power.
An ancient and terrible magick had been unleashed upon the last of the Furies, a spell that he was certain had not been performed by any in his company, or even the enemy. By the acrid aroma of the residue, Conan Doyle knew this was magick of a darker nature, wielded with the utmost precision, that could only be attributed to a sorcerer with enough knowledge and strength to master such fearsome power — an arch mage of the highest order and discipline.
He could think of only one such mage.
The Fury had been struck down before the entrance into another chamber, the passage having been at one time covered in a thick membranous skin. The covering had been torn, and as he approached the rip, Conan Doyle could hear the sounds of movement from within the chamber beyond.
Stretching the opening wider, Conan Doyle forced his way into the room behind and gasped at what he saw. It was a workshop of sorts, but nothing like the hot, clanging place Squire worked his weapons. This was not a workplace for hobgoblins or even members of the human race. This was the workshop of a god, a massive chamber cluttered with the enormous tools of the metalsmith and laden with gigantic swords and armor that had been crafted for the true gods of Olympus. No sword was smaller than Conan Doyle himself.
The mage stepped farther into the vast chamber, marveling at the sights before him; an intricately carved golden throne obviously meant for a king, a winged chariot, beautiful jewelry spilling from countless metal chests, weapons, and armor. There was animal statuary so wondrously sculpted that he could have sworn they were living breathing things. Everywhere Conan Doyle looked there was something so fantastic that it nearly took his breath away.
Once upon a time, this workshop had been the pride of Olympus, its fires forming the treasure of the gods. But like the Furies, the craftsman himself had relocated to the corpse city within the remains of Hades.
This was the workshop of Hephaestus, god of fire and patron of craftsmen. Not the most powerful god in the Greek pantheon, but among the most respected and best loved.
There came the sound of clatter and the mutter of an angry voice from deeper in the workshop, and Conan Doyle remembered that he was not alone. Cautiously he made his way closer. He could feel it again in the air, the familiar crackle of primordial forces reminding him that he was in the presence of awesome power.
He came around the gigantic bronze sculpture of a bull to see the figure of man dressed in a charcoal gray suit, as if he’d come from a wedding or maybe even a funeral. The man’s back was to him, but Conan Doyle knew immediately who it was. It was as if the magick was saying his name over and over again.
Sanguedolce. Sweetblood. Sweetblood the mage.
"Lorenzo," Conan Doyle called out, but the man did not respond.
He continued to rummage about, grumbling beneath his breath as he furiously searched for something among the creations of Hephaestus.
"I should have known you had something to do with this," Conan Doyle said, cautiously approaching the man. "Gull couldn’t have come up with anything quite this elaborate on
his own."
Sweetblood slowly glanced up from Hephaestus’s hoard. "Ah, Arthur," the mage said with the slightest hint of a smile. "It’s about time you got here, I was beginning to worry."
Conan Doyle seethed. All of this, from beginning to end, had been a part of some scheme of Sweetblood’s. Even Gull, the poor, mad, twisted bastard, had been manipulated. Sanguedolce had been his teacher and mentor in the mystic arts until the man’s sudden disappearance in the early part of the twentieth century. Conan Doyle and Gull had both been his students. They knew better than anyone that Sweetblood was the most powerful mage in the world, but he was also cunning.
"What have you done, Lorenzo? What is it that you so desire that you had to orchestrate all of this?"
Sanguedolce waved off his inquiry, continuing to search. "Give me a hand, Arthur. I need you to help me find something." He picked up a bronze helmet, studied it momentarily, and then tossed it over his shoulder where it noisily clattered to the ground. "You’re good at that, aren’t you? Finding things that don’t wish to be found?"
Conan Doyle fumed.
Sweetblood had secreted himself away in a hidden chamber, gone missing by choice, creating a magical chrysalis that would mask his power while he was entombed within. He claimed to have discovered a creature of unimaginable evil and power, out in the farthest reaches of space. The DemoGorgon. The evil had sensed him, had located him, and Sanguedolce claimed that his power would act like a beacon, drawing the DemoGorgon to Earth by its hunger to feed upon Sanguedolce’s innate magick. The sorcerer had hidden in hopes that that unimaginable evil making its way across the universe would lose interest if his power were not there to entice it.
For the safety of the world, and all those who lived upon it, Sanguedolce had not wanted to be found. But Conan Doyle had done just that, searched for his former mentor and located him. The chrysalis had been shattered in the process, the mage was released from his self-imposed confinement, and now, according to Sweetblood, his power was drawing the voracious DemoGorgon ever closer.
Conan Doyle knew Sweetblood blamed him, and he accepted some of the responsibility. But if the arrogant bastard had bothered to inform his students, they might have avoided the doom that now seemed inevitable.
"Since your revival, I’ve made frequent attempts to contact you, to discuss the impending threat and to apologize for my misunderstanding of your — "
"Misunderstanding?" Sanguedolce interrupted. "Is that what you’re calling it?" He moved away from a wall stacked with crates overflowing with golden chains. "An evil the likes of which this world has never seen moving inexorably toward the planet because of your.. misunderstanding."
The last word rolled off his tongue with disdain.
Conan Doyle longed to lash out against the his former teacher, to remind him that his own pursuits of forbidden power had been what had captured the attentions of the DemoGorgon in the first place, but he held his tongue. Now was not the time.
"What are you searching for, Lorenzo?" he asked again.
Sweetblood had returned to his objective, carefully moving about the room, delving into every nook and cranny. "Use your head, Arthur. What in Heaven’s name could I want here? With the DemoGorgon on the way, what might be useful to me if I want to create something, a weapon, anything that might prove useful in combating it?"
Conan Doyle understood. Even before his question had left his lips, he had come to the answer. The idea of it made him catch his breath. "You’ve come for the Forge of Hephaestus. All of this has been about the Forge, about fighting the DemoGorgon."
"Don’t worry," Sanguedolce said, laughing softly. "It’s not some sudden noble urge. When the evil comes, it is going to come after me first. If I can destroy it, the salvaging of this pitiable, corrupted world will be only a by-product."
He focused now on a particular section of bare wall, oddly free from clutter. "What have we here?" he asked, laying the flat of his hand against the wall — all muscle and membrane — tilting his head to one side as if listening. "Yes," the arch mage hissed, stepping back away from the wall and extending his arms. "This might very well be it."
Sweetblood weaved a pattern in the air and it took crackling, sparkling form. The pattern seared itself into the wall, and it fell away to dust, disintegrating in an instant. There was a room hidden on the other side.
"No secrets can remain hidden forever," Sanguedolce said with a twinkle in his icy blue eyes. "We’ve learned that, haven’t we, Arthur?"
Something moved swiftly within the darkness of the hidden chamber and Conan Doyle reacted instinctively, leaping across the room to tackle Sanguedolce, knocking him to the ground.
"Have you lost your — " The arch mage began just as the sword blade swung out from the darkness, cleaving the space where Sanguedolce had just stood.
"If the Forge is as valuable as you say," Conan Doyle said, climbing from atop his mentor. "Only a fool would assume it’s been left unguarded."
The creature that emerged from the hole in that wall was at least ten feet high. It was a warrior, but not of flesh and blood. Not of bone and sinew. The guardian of the Forge was fashioned from bronze, a mechanical man, and he wielded an enormous sword. Fire from Hephaestus’s Forge burned in the empty hollows of its eyes and mouth.
The creation of Hephaestus turned its head and let out a battle cry very much like rending metal, launching its attack upon them. The automaton moved stiffly, and Conan Doyle wondered whether the wondrous device wasn’t feeling the effects of time’s cruel passage.
Conan Doyle ducked beneath a swipe of the sword’s blade and dove at a pile of weaponry, hoping to find something to stave off the bronze robot’s attack. He needed a moment to collect his thoughts, to summon a spell that would destroy the guardian. The blade he raised was little more than a dagger to the gods, but it made an unwieldy sword for an ordinary man. He managed to lift a piece of unfinished armor plating and use it as a cruel shield, blocking the bronze guardian’s sword as it come down toward him. The force of the blow nearly drove him to his knees. Conan Doyle lashed out with his own blade, hacking away at the metal man with little effect.
The guardian’s attack was relentless, and Conan Doyle could barely gather his thoughts enough to strike back. It was all he could do to defend himself. Magick was his only hope. When next the automaton raised his sword, Conan Doyle found the opportunity to unleash his spell.
The guardian roared, fiery sparks spilling from the sides of its open mouth as it brought the blade down again. Conan Doyle dropped his own weapon and raised his hand, shouting the final words of the incantation. The air bent and distorted as invisible power jumped the distance between them, and then the ancient machine was blasted backward into the many, carefully balanced crates of jewelry. The wooden boxes teetered and swayed, tumbling down upon Hephaestus’s bronze sentry, burying him beneath a deluge of handcrafted baubles.
Dust undisturbed for countless millennia billowed in the air and Conan Doyle squinted through the roiling haze for a sign of his foe. As the dust began to settle, he saw that the guardian had been buried beneath the avalanche; only a bronze hand sticking out from the rubble.
Conan Doyle dropped his makeshift shield onto a nearby pile of assorted weaponry and glanced about for Sanguedolce.
The bronze automaton erupted up from the wreckage, tossing it aside as if it were no more bothersome than collected raindrops.
The guardian reached for him, its large, segmented fingers closing in a vise-like grip upon his shoulders and neck. Conan Doyle gasped. Explosions of color danced before his eyes as his brain cried out for oxygen, and he feebly struggled to wrench those fingers from his throat.
A resounding clap of thunder filled the room, and Conan Doyle dropped heavily, painfully to the ground, precious gulps of air filling his greedy lungs. As his vision cleared, he saw that the mechanical man still loomed above him, arms extended, segmented fingers bent into claws, but now something was missing. Stunned, Conan Doyle gazed at the
empty space above the mechanical sentry’s shoulders where it’s head had been. All that remained was a jagged, smoking stump.
Conan Doyle picked himself up, rubbing the feeling back into his neck.
"Quickly now, man," he heard Sanguedolce call, and he glanced up sharply to find the arch mage standing at the ragged entrance. His hand still glowed white from the forces he had just released against the guardian of the Forge, and he gestured for Conan Doyle to join him.
"I’m going to require your assistance if we’re to take the Forge from the Underworld."
Conan Doyle stumbled toward the hole blown into the chamber. "Are you certain this is wise?"
Sanguedolce stood before a towering object made from blocks of stone that could only have been the Forge of Hephaestus. A pulsing orange glow like a miniature sun still burned from within the belly of the stone furnace, and Conan Doyle could feel its blistering heat on his face. There was something about the Forge, something that made him feel afraid. He could see by the expression on his former master’s face that he was not alone in these feelings.
"No, I’m not," Sweetblood confessed. "But I don’t believe we have any choice."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The drape of night still hung heavy across the sky when Clay rode into Sparta, but the eastern horizon was tinted to indigo, just the barest hint that dawn would soon arrive. Squire sat behind him on the battered motorcycle they had taken from an alley near the docks where they made landfall. Dr. Graves had wanted to leave compensation, or a note for the owner. Clay had dismissed the suggestion as impractical. They had no way of knowing if the owner would ever find the money.
"Besides," Squire had snorted. "We’re hunting a monster. It’s not like we’re the friggin’ Justice League."
Now Graves flew overhead, a silhouette barely visible against the night sky, and only to those who were looking. Clay maneuvered the motorcycle through the streets of Sparta with Squire clinging to the bike behind him and the forbidding shapes of the mountains looming in the distance. The nearer they had come to Sparta, the quieter they became. Even Squire had fallen silent now, with the dawn approaching. Clay wondered if he was simply tired or if he somehow sensed that they were at last gaining ground on their prey.
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