Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie)

by Thomas E. Sniegoski Christopher Golden

  "We’re coming up on it now," the driver reported.

  Gull raised an eyebrow. Jezebel did not stir, but Hawkins glanced curiously out the window. Gull leaned over Jezebel and caught sight of a row of well-kept brownstones on one side and a perfectly manicured little park on the other.

  "Which one is it?" Hawkins asked, his voice a rasp. He stared out through the glass like a caged lion, confident that one day he would be free.

  The brownstones had been built so that they shared a single face, and yet those faces had been individualized over the years. Some had flowers in window boxes. Bright curtains hung in the windows of one building. Another had the frames around every window painted a bright yellow, and a door of the same color. But at the corner was the one Gull was searching for. He could sense the magick emanating from it, could taste it on the air even more strongly than the salt of the ocean.

  "There," he said. "That one."

  Hawkins leaned toward the front seat and instructed the driver, and a moment later they parked beside the curb in front of the home of Arthur Conan Doyle. At last Jezebel came around. Her eyelids fluttered, and she turned to give him a sleepy smile.

  "That was fast," she mumbled.

  Gull patted her shoulder. "Rest a while longer, Jez. Think I ought to have a word before we drag out the luggage." He glanced at Hawkins, who nodded and leaned forward to explain to the driver. Gull paid little attention to the words as he opened the door and stepped out.

  For several seconds he only stood there, staring at the house. It was solid and respectable — precisely the sort of place Conan Doyle had always favored — but otherwise unremarkable, save for the magickal defenses around it. They were substantial. Gull thought that they might pose a challenge even to him, should he be inclined to try to force his way in. But he thought that he ought to try things the easy way first.

  Basking in the coils and jets of magick that swirled around the house he approached the steps. It was very much like walking under water. An ordinary man would not even have noticed, but Gull was a powerful mage and the defenses dragged at him. Had he any ill intentions they would already have immobilized him. Or he would have destroyed them, one way or the other.

  It was so much simpler to walk up those steps and knock on the door.

  He never got there.

  Even as he approached the stone steps, a lithe, dark shape darted across the front of the house, low to the ground. It leaped up onto the stairs, joined immediately by another from the opposite side. From around the far side of the brownstone was yet another. A fourth emerged from the sewer grating in the road and slunk over to join his brothers and sisters upon the stairs, blocking his way.

  Cats. Each of them black as midnight. Others darted for the stairs as well. One slunk out from beneath the limousine, as though it had been waiting there for his arrival. The moment it reached the steps — making nine of them in total — all of the creatures froze, focusing on Gull with their yellow eyes slitted in warning. As one, they hissed, fur standing up as they arched their backs.

  Gull paused five feet from the bottom step, regarding the felines. Their hissed warning bothered him not at all. What caused him to hesitate was the way the cats moved so intently and with such single purpose. They were spread all across the brick stairs, nine pair of jaundiced, cruel eyes. And then they began to change.

  It was subtle, at first. Their jaws stretched wider and the fangs inside grew longer, gleaming in the sunshine of the perfect day. The vicious pools of shadow began to grow, then, fur rippling like cornfields in the breeze as the cats stretched their backs and scraped claws on brick, doubling in size.

  The growth stopped them. It was startling, but not so much so that a passerby on the street would have believed he had seen anything impossible. Unsettling, yes. But not impossible.

  Until the cat in the center — Gull believed it to be the one that had slipped from beneath the limousine — stood up on its hind legs. Its bones and muscles popped as its body was altered. Gull’s breath caught in his throat. It was a terrible thing, the size of a panther but its eyes full of sentient malignance. Saliva slid in thin strings from its open jaws with their glistening fangs.

  "Well, well," Gull said, cautious and admiring. "Nice kitty."

  It appeared that Conan Doyle was not relying merely on spells and wards to protect his home.

  With a chorus of hissing, the cats started down the stairs toward Gull. Several of the others had started to grow againr, and their leader was becoming more hideous looking, more demonic with every passing moment.

  The front door of the house opened with a clank of the latch and a creak as the heavy wood swung wide. Conan Doyle stood on the threshold and gazed down at his visitor. After a moment he made a gesture. All of a sudden, the cats were only ordinary things once more, at least on the surface. Just cats. They scattered, disappearing beneath cars and beside stairs, one of them running into the house.

  Conan Doyle did not seem at all surprised. He only stared, grim and unsmiling.

  "You might have saved yourself some trouble if you’d called before paying me a visit."

  "It’s no trouble," Gull assured him.

  Conan Doyle’s eyes darkened, flickering with promised danger like lightning in the night sky.

  "That, old friend, remains to be seen."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In Nigel Gull’s experience, there was an element of the surreal in living long past the ordinary human life span. He could not imagine what it must have been like to be truly immortal, but was not at all certain he would have liked to find out. Once he had outlived the era of his birth, it had begun in earnest. Gull was an anachronism, and he knew it. A man with the sensibilities of another age — a time both more genteel and more savage — and yet he was also hungry for evolution, for the experience of the future.

  Conan Doyle was the only one of his contemporaries still alive and one of the few men in the world who could have understood what he was experiencing. Once upon a time they had been like brothers, in both the best and worst sense of the comparison. Now they were estranged.

  How odd, then, to find himself sitting on the sofa in Arthur’s study — a room whose décor seemed designed to replicate the past — as though they had stepped back in time and were allies once more, fellow students of the great Sanguedolce, whom the British occult masters had called Sweetblood as a dismissive sobriquet, as though he were beneath them. They had all learned who was the master, but only Conan Doyle and Gull, dabblers in the craft, had become his pupils.

  Gull watched his old associate across the room. Doyle was fixing drinks, exuding an air of calm and civility as he acted the perfect host, though in reality the tension in the room was so thick, it was almost palpable.

  And this will not do, not at all.

  "Lovely house, Arthur. Bit of old King George, isn’t it?" Gull asked genially. "Getting nostalgic in your old age. And what were those delightful creatures that greeted me at your doorstep?"

  Jezebel snuggled closer to him on the sofa, resting her head adoringly on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed as though she were napping. She had a tendency to become clingy in the presence of strangers, but Gull didn’t mind. The girl was loyal to him. That was the vital part.

  "Were-kitties," she said into the crook of his neck and began to giggle.

  Conan Doyle crossed the room, a tumbler of scotch in each hand. "Actually, they’re Krukis, recently immigrated from Romania," he said handing Gull his drink. "It’s startling what one can employ for a warm saucer of milk and an occasional can of tuna fish."

  He took the other glass of scotch to Hawkins, who had stood since his arrival at the northernmost window in the room. As a former soldier and spy, Nick Hawkins could not help himself, and he glanced out at Louisburg Square every few moments, watching the main entrance to Conan Doyle’s home.

  "Thank you," Hawkins said as he took the tumbler from their host. Gull saw his eyes narrow as the man studied Arthur. "You having security i
ssues, Mr. Doyle? Mage of your stature, I find it hard to imagine there’s a lot you’re afraid of."

  Gull smiled as he brought his drink to his twisted mouth, careful not to dribble. Hawkins was a complete sociopath, and yet somehow managed to navigate complex dynamics well enough. Even now he was somehow mocking Conan Doyle, plumbing his current status, and massaging his ego, all at the same time.

  Well done, Nick, Gull thought, watching as Hawkins at last took a seat in a wing back chair in the corner of the room.

  "One must not fall prey to the curse of overconfidence," Conan Doyle said as he turned away from the liquor cabinet, having poured himself a scotch as well. "There was a recent incident that forced me to take a closer look at the brownstone’s defenses and —" He stopped mid-sentence, casting an icy stare at Hawkins.

  "Is something wrong, Arthur?" Gull asked.

  "Not at all," Conan Doyle replied, his tone clipped, his feathers seemingly ruffled. "I’ll just have a seat over here."

  Gull wanted to laugh out loud. So Hawkins is sitting on Arthur’s throne. The annoyance poured from the man in waves.

  "So, Nigel," Conan Doyle began, swirling the golden brown liquid in his glass. "It’s been quite a long time."

  "A dog’s age," Gull agreed, and then chuckled. "Or an entire litter’s. When was it that we last saw each other?" he asked, knowing the answer well enough.

  Conan Doyle took a moment to think, and Gull felt his own ire begin to rise. Though it had been more than twenty years ago, he was certain that the arch mage had not forgotten. They were fencing, and Arthur had just parried.

  "Was it that tawdry business with the phoenix egg?" Conan Doyle asked finally.

  "I believe it was," Gull said with a nod and smile that he hoped appeared pleasant. "I can still see the look on my client’s face as you and your Menagerie stormed into his citadel to relieve him of his prize."

  Conan Doyle nodded at the memory, resting his tumbler upon his knee. "A shame that I had to step in and prevent that transaction." He straightened the crease in the leg of his dark trousers. "But as you well knew, the phoenix was at the top of the endangered mythical species list, and I couldn’t allow it to fall into the hands of some boastful Middle Eastern death cult." He took another sip of his drink. "Your client did eventually understand, did he not?"

  Gull smiled knowingly and shifted his position on the couch. "You killed them all, Arthur, down to the last mad-eyed lad. You and your followers sent their spirits into the embrace of the Sumerian death goddess they so devoutly worshipped."

  Conan Doyle gazed thoughtfully over the lip of the tumbler. "I guess we did at that. So long ago, I didn’t quite remember."

  Like hell, Gull thought. But he kept the smile on his face. "No matter," he said. "Since they were all dead, there was no need to refund any money. It worked out for the best."

  Hawkins chuckled darkly and lifted his glass toward Gull in a toast, then polished off what remained of his drink. At her mentor’s side, Jezebel cozied up closer to the nearest thing to a father she’d ever had.

  Conan Doyle had finished his drink as well and balanced the empty glass on the arm of the chair. He fixed Gull in his gaze.

  "I’m certain this isn’t a social call, Nigel," he said. "So why don’t we cease the rather uncomfortable pleasantries, and you can get on with your business."

  Gull leaned forward, placing his drink on the floor at his feet. Jezebel frowned and sleepily opened her eyes, looking up at him with a certain petulance. One moment she was full of sexual swagger, fully in charge of her charms, and the next she was uncertain and awkward. He cherished her for her complications.

  "Not very subtle, is he?" Jezebel asked, her eyes fluttering closed again as she settled back.

  Gull smiled. "No. He never was." Then he turned his focus back to Conan Doyle, placing a hand over his heart. "You wound me, Arthur. After all this time, you still cannot see the ties that bind us? We are brothers, not defined by biology, but by something far more powerful than mere parentage. We are brothers in magick."

  Suddenly, Jezebel bolted awake, startling green eyes wide in shock. "Why can’t you just leave me be!" she shrieked, jagged bolts of electrical force arcing from her fingertips.

  "Lovely," Hawkins muttered, dropping from his chair — Arthur’s chair — to the floor as the tendrils of electricity seared through the air above him, blackening the wall behind the seat.

  Gull placed a gentle hand on the girl’s cheek as she gazed around the room, wild-eyed.

  "It’s all right, Jezebel," he whispered. "It was a dream."

  She slapped his hand away. "Don’t touch me — don’t you ever touch me!" Her right hand shot out, a swirling ball of lightning collecting in her palm, and Gull instinctively began a spell to counter her destructive force.

  With a piercing scream Jezebel unleashed her collected power, but it did not travel far. Before Gull could stop her, he was staggered by a blast of magick that traveled past him and encircled Jezebel in a sphere, her own power exploding within the containment field. This had been a recurring problem, nightmares of her time before coming to join him. He thought that they had made better progress than this.

  Gull’s heart nearly broke as he watched the pretty young thing convulse, tossing her red hair around like fire. The elemental power that she had summoned struck at her like a cobra, trapped within the sphere with her, and after jittering for a moment with the shock of it, Jezebel slumped to the sofa, unconscious. He turned away from the disturbing sight to see Arthur standing in front of an upended chair, his hand extended and the residue of his spell still trickling from the tips of his fingers.

  "That will be enough of that," Conan Doyle said sternly.

  The magickal sphere dissipated as suddenly as it had appeared, and the unconscious Jezebel moaned in discomfort. Gull was relieved to see that she was not badly injured.

  "My thanks, Arthur," he said. "She has a bit of a problem with night terrors."

  "Still choosing the cream of the crop, I see." Conan Doyle glanced briefly at Hawkins, before returning his steely gaze to Gull. "Now, then, Nigel, no more foolishness. What do you want? And be quick about it, I grow weary of your company."

  Gull bristled, longing to reply with equal candor. But there were other things at stake here than his pride.

  "Right, then. How foolish of me to attempt to be polite. As you no doubt are aware, there are people dying in Greece from most unusual causes."

  He watched Conan Doyle’s face. A tick of familiarity danced at the corner of his old friend’s eye. Arthur knew exactly what he was talking about.

  "Go on."

  "I intend to stop these horrid killings, and I thought it would be best if we were to work together."

  Conan Doyle’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, and he brought a hand to his face, smoothing his mustache. "You haven’t the best record of selfless heroism, Nigel. What’s the catch?"

  Gull feigned surprise. "No catch. Simply put, I need your help."

  With Nigel Gull, there was always a catch.

  Conan Doyle had encountered him many times over the years since they had parted company and though Gull was not precisely evil, he had certainly been tainted by the dark magick he employed. Or, perhaps more accurately, he had become the epitome of the old adage that the ends justified the means. Deceitful, ambitious, and amoral, with Nigel Gull, nothing was ever as it seemed. The man referred to those in his employ as his Wicked. That was signal enough that he was not to be trusted.

  "I think not," he said with a shake of his head.

  "Oh, come now, Arthur," Gull replied. "I’m fairly certain I can learn to play nice. I’d assumed no less of you." The deformed man smiled and Conan Doyle was chilled by how horribly wrong it looked.

  Conan Doyle righted the chair he’d upended and took his seat once more, crossing his arms and staring at Gull. "Since when have you had a concern for anything or anyone other than yourself?"

  Seated beside the unconscious Jezebel, Gull
began to gently stroke her face, just as a father might have done. "You’re quick with the barbs, aren’t you? I’ve put the past behind me. Pity you can’t say the same," he said with a sad shake of his misshapen head.

  Conan Doyle was unsure if it was a symptom of the man’s malady, but he could have sworn that Gull was even more deformed than the last time they crossed paths. Perhaps the result of further dabblings in dark magick, he thought.

  The man named Hawkins stood and went to the liquor cabinet, distracting him from his musings. He gestured toward the decanter of scotch with an empty glass. "Mind if I help myself?"

  "Please be my guest." Conan Doyle wanted to focus on his verbal sparring with Gull, but could not help watching as Hawkins removed the glass stopper and poured the drink. There was an unusual tremble in the man’s hand.

  "Is something wrong?" Conan Doyle asked.

  Hawkins carefully returned the stopper to the bottle. "Not really. It’s just that the poor sod who made this crystal decanter died by inches, poisoned by his wife’s lover. That’s a terrible way to give up the ghost."

  Gull cleared his throat. "Hawkins is psychometric."

  Conan Doyle frowned. He didn’t like that. Not at all. A psychometric was able to read the psychic residue imprinted upon any object he touched. Having such a man in his house could be unpleasant and inconvenient. The invasion of his privacy made Conan Doyle even more sour.

  Hawkins sipped his drink, returning to the chair he had claimed as his own. "Not even going to tell you what I’ve learned about you sitting in this chair," he said with a disconcerting smile.

  Conan Doyle was not amused. "Perhaps that’s best," he said dryly, returning his attention to Gull. "I’m sorry, Nigel, but I’m afraid the answer is still no." He stood. "Now, if you will excuse me, I have a rather full agenda today . . ."

  He gestured politely toward the doorway.