Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie)

by Thomas E. Sniegoski Christopher Golden

  Weird shit, Squire thought now. But it worked. He and Graves had followed Clay, and Clay had followed this invisible ghost-line that connected victim and killer. It had led them here, but unfortunately it didn’t stop here. The ectoplasmic trail that Clay was following stretched out across the water, which meant Medusa had left in a boat. She could probably swim, but even a creature of myth couldn’t stay afloat forever. Given her curse, the only way the ugly thing could have left the shore was with the help of someone else.

  Squire chuckled under his breath and took another draw on the cigar that was almost a sigh. He snorted the smoke out through his nostrils and chewed on the end a bit, rolling it in his teeth. As he did so he walked a bit closer to the docks. There were nighttime shadows down there, the moonlight throwing the space beneath and beside the dock in a darker shadow than seemed natural.

  "Seriously," he said. "How stupid do you think we are?"

  Even as he spoke, he turned, knowing he was swifter than any opponent would guess a creature so truncated might be. His right hand thrust inside his jacket and he pulled, snaps tearing fabric, brandishing the flail he had retrieved from Conan Doyle’s armory. Nineteenth-century Indian, the weapon was little more than an iron bar with two long chains attached to one end, a heavy metal ball dangling from each chain.

  Squire had the flail swinging even before he was certain of his opponent’s location. But his eyes were used to shadow and he saw Tassarian immediately. The resurrected assassin was all in black and a veil was drawn across his face beneath his sunken eyes. Tassarian moved with such swiftness and precision that Squire could not have evaded him.

  It mattered little.

  The walking corpse was a master of weapons, but so was Squire. Tassarian’s great advantage had been surprise.

  Tonight, he had lost that advantage.

  Squire swung the flail, darting toward the killer. Tassarian tried to block the attack — it would have been impossible for even him to dodge — but the iron balls struck his face, cracking his cheek as the chains wrapped around his arm. The dead man grunted and started to reach his free hand up to try to free himself.

  "No chance, dumbass," Squire barked, cigar still clenched between his teeth.

  He cracked the flail like a whip, snapping the bones in Tassarian’s arm with a loud pop. From the thin scabbard clipped to the back of his pants the hobgoblin drew an ornate, seventeenth-century Italian stiletto. He tugged Tassarian toward him. The assassin used the momentum to attack. Leather rustled as Tassarian shot a kick at Squire’s head. The dead man underestimated him again. Squire stepped in closer, hauled on the flail’s handle to use Tassarian’s own broken arm to block the kick. The dead assassin hissed in pain even as he stumbled, off balance from the conflicting momentum of the kick and the twist of his arm.

  Squire jammed the stiletto into Tassarian’s left eye. The blade plunged through the orbit and into the skull with a wet, sucking sound, spiking into the dead man’s brain.

  But the killer was already dead. He shot his hand out, fist striking Squire’s chest hard enough to have killed a human. The hobgoblin staggered backward, losing his grip on the handle of the flail. Tassarian took two steps nearer to him, silently glaring with his remaining eye. The dead man plucked the antique stiletto from the ruined eye, blood and white fluid dribbling out of the socket. With the black mask covering his face, his expression was unreadable. He snatched the end of the flail with his good hand and began to unravel it, ready to use it.

  "I wish we had time to really make a night of this," Squire said, smiling, twisted lips pulling up into a sneer. He’d kept the cigar between his teeth through all of this, and now he took a long puff on it, stoking the embers at its tip. "You got the drop on us last time. Hurt us. It’d be nice to take our time. But we’ve got places to go. People to see."

  Tassarian barely reacted at first. Then the dead man dropped into a defensive stance, head tilted to listen to the night around him. Squire did not even bother attacking him, but watched as Tassarian spun around to see the ghost of Dr. Graves shimmering into existence just behind him, phantom guns drawn. The assassin swung the flail but it passed right through the specter, and Graves pulled his triggers. Ghost bullets punched through Tassarian’s dead flesh and he jerked several times, staggering, forced backward.

  Clay was waiting. He darted forward, a small, sleek Persian cat, but the air rippled above him as he ran and by the time he reached Tassarian, he had transformed into a massive Bengal tiger. It shed the night like water as it grew, and then Clay leaped at Tassarian. Dr. Graves shot the killer again and the dead man danced as the tiger fell on him, tearing his left arm from its socket with a single swipe from its massive paws.

  The hobgoblin and the ghost watched as Clay tore Tassarian to pieces and scattered them throughout the shipyard and the docks. Squire would have liked to linger over the killing, but they had no time. Even the twenty minutes the task consumed was too long.

  When they had stolen the boat Squire had been eyeing, Graves took the helm and Clay stared southward, still following the ectoplasmic trail Medusa’s last victim had left behind.

  Squire stood at the back of the boat, Tassarian’s crushed skull in his hands. He waited until they were several miles farther down the coast before tossing it into the Mediterranean. It bobbed on their wake several times before slipping beneath the surface.

  "This time stay dead, you prick."

  Eve had walked the Earth a thousand times, had witnessed the birth of religions and the death of empires. She had studied the worship of civilization and tracked her vampiric offspring through the mythology of every region of the world. She knew precisely what these women were.

  Women. The word itself was entirely insufficient.

  The Kindly Ones. The Madnesses. Potniae. Praxidikae. They were the Furies, the Erinyes, and though she herself was ancient and cruel in her fashion, Eve could only stare at them in terrible wonder. The sisters had emerged from the gaping hole in the corpse of suicidal Hades, the armored remains of a god the size of a small town. They had crawled headfirst toward the ground, talons hooked into the rotting flesh of the lord of the Underworld, and then dropped the rest of the way, landing with uncanny lightness and ease.

  Megaera, Tisiphone, and Alekto. But though they did not look precisely alike, Eve could not tell them apart. The myths had not described them in detail, of course, for who might have gotten close enough to tell such tales and returned from this place to do so? Which had made her wonder, in that moment, if this was to be the end for her as well.

  The Erinyes were far taller than any ordinary women, thin and elegant, their features regal and beautiful. They were cloaked in strange garments, sheer and torn, that barely hid the pale flesh beneath. They had no armor, yet there was nothing vulnerable about them. They moved with a grace and power that was intimidating, yet they seemed cautious as well, not coming directly at their prey.

  Each held a whip in her hand, barbed all along its length, and the whips seemed to twist of their own accord with the menace of deadly serpents. When Eve heard the hissing sound she assumed that it issued from the whips and only as the sisters drew nearer did she see the tiny snakes nesting in the dark hair of the Furies.

  Blood streaked their faces in vertical stripes like macabre war paint. It took Eve several moments to realize the sisters were actually weeping blood. Their eyes were red orbs too large for their thin features and another part of their myth came to her, then. Gaea had been enraged at Ouranos, the Earth furious with the Sky, and she enlisted the aid of her son Cronos. Cronos attacked Ouranos, wounding him, and from the blood that was spilled, the Erinyes were born.

  Born of blood.

  "Erinyes!" Nigel Gull called as the women strode across the black, dead soil of the Underworld toward them. "Eumenides, please accept our obeisance and lend me your ears."

  The mage turned his misshapen face toward Hawkins, who nodded quickly and knelt, his weight puffing black dust around him. Jezebel gaze
d at the sisters as though she were a foundling at last discovering her true family. Her eyes were bright with hope and she ran her tongue over her lips, a tentative smile on her face. The Erinyes trailed their whips in the black dust, barbs dragging on the ground, and the things moved and darted with their own life. Jezebel followed the movement of the whips.

  "It’s you," she whispered, and the words carried to Eve. "It’s really you."

  Eve pitied the girl.

  Gull put a large hand on Jezebel’s shoulder and forced her down. She turned a fiery glance upon him, but then realized what he wanted and she nodded, chagrined, and knelt quickly, the mage falling to his knees beside her.

  "Down," Gull demanded, and Eve had no choice but to comply.

  The four of them were on their knees as Tisiphone, Megaera and Alekto came nearer. The ethereally sheer cloaks that draped their forms moved, like their whips, of their own accord. Now that she was on her knees, Eve heard more than just the hiss of the tiny serpents twined in the sisters’ hair. There was another sound.

  A chorus of weeping and cries of despair.

  Eve pushed her fingers in the fine, black sand beneath her, eyes downcast. Her heart felt vulnerable to attack and she imagined herself becoming part of that dead land’s soil. What would grow in her, she wondered? What deathless sapling would take root in her ancient dust?

  She thought for a moment that the weeping was that of the Erinyes, the source of the bloody tears upon their cheeks. But there were too many voices by far, some sounding very distant and muffled and others a whisper in her ear, so nearby that they seemed almost to brush past her.

  Just at the upper edge of her vision she saw one of the sisters step in front of her, the hem of the Fury’s cloak swaying. Eve would have tumbled backward then, tried to leap up to her feet and protect herself, but the voice of Orpheus controlled her. Thus far the Erinyes seemed to be studying their visitors, curiosity drawing them slowly closer. But the air of sorrow that emanated from them was stifling, smothering Eve. Where are their victims? she wondered. Where are the damned of Hades’s netherworld?

  The voices grew louder. Eve blinked, and then she knew. She understood. Her gaze narrowed and she focused on the hem of the punisher’s cloak. The fabric was unlike anything she had ever seen, shifting and unstable as though woven of mist . . . but even as she studied it Eve knew it was neither fabric nor mist. There were faces in the texture of the cloaks of the Erinyes, with eyes and mouths open wide in cries of agony and endless despair. Damnation.

  Fingers that seared her flesh with a touch lifted her chin so that she was looking up into the Fury’s face, and then she saw those eyes and she knew they were not really eyes at all. They were tiny pools of blood that spilled like tears, and yet though the creatures’ faces were streaked, not a drop fell.

  Eve tore her gaze away. Now that the thing had touched her, she felt some of Gull’s control lift. Eyes narrowed, muscles tensing, she turned to discover what he had done. The mage wore a hideous grin where he knelt on the ground with his operatives. Hawkins had his eyes downcast but he breathed evenly. Jezebel was still gazing at the Erinyes in adoration. A sickly golden light crackled around Gull’s hands but he kept them crossed before him, as though he was kneeling for some sort of prayer service. Which Eve realized he was.

  What the fuck are you waiting for, Gull? She thought. They’re just going to kill us. You did all of this, planned the whole thing, just for this?

  "Eumenides, will you hear my plea?" the mage said at last, and when he raised his chin and looked up at them, his eyes glowed with the same strange light as his hands.

  They drifted toward him, then, all three moving like ghosts to encircle him, and as they gazed down upon Gull, Eve felt the oddest mix of relief and disappointment. She watched the twitching and slithering ends of those barbed whips and she felt . . . loss.

  What are you, an idiot? You don’t want anything to do with these things. They’ll rip you open.

  Her gaze was drawn again to their cloaks and she had to force herself to look away, to concentrate on the Erinyes themselves and the way they glared down at Gull, ignoring even the worshipful Jezebel.

  "We are those who walk in darkness," announced the one who stood directly in front of Gull. She dragged her whip slowly upward and it coiled itself around the mage’s throat. "Speak."

  That sickly golden light sparked and danced in his eyes and he stared up at her. Hawkins muttered something at his side, some curse, but Gull seemed not to notice. He seemed more hideous than ever in that moment, for Eve saw something in his face that made her realize he had not been lying earlier. His expression was one of utter desperation. He had said he had orchestrated all of this because of love.

  "Oh, shit," she whispered.

  It was true.

  "Those who walk in darkness," the mage echoed, "I am called Nigel Gull. Even for such as you, who have seen the ugliest in humanity, the most abominable fiends, the twisted and the damned, you can see I am cursed."

  He ran a hand in front of his face, illuminating the folds of his skin with that golden light. For the first time, Eve felt a measure of sympathy for him, but it was fleeting. From what she knew he had always been a monster, and been given the face to look the part.

  "But it is not for my sake that I come to you."

  One of the Erinyes had turned from Gull to gaze down on Jezebel. The girl looked so very eager as the punisher, the purveyor of madness, reached down to stroke her hair and caress her face. The terrible, beautiful creature took a fistful of Jezebel’s hair and pulled the girl toward her, turning back to Gull and dragging Jezebel behind her. The girl submitted willingly to this treatment and Eve winced.

  What did you ever do, she thought, that you feel you deserve this?

  "You appeal to us for her?" asked the Fury who had spoken.

  Gull shook his head. "The girl’s my . . . ally." He nodded toward Hawkins. "As is the gentleman. They are in my service. It’s not for either of them that I’ve come to you, but for the heart of my heart, for one whose curse is even graver than my own. To heal her, I must have you weep, Eumenides. I must have the tears of the Furies."

  The sister who held his throat with her whip tightened it so that the barbs cut him, and Gull hissed in chorus with the serpents in her hair.

  "We weep for all sinners, even as we punish them. The dead and damned come to us, and we give them what they have longed for. Correction. Pain. Retribution."

  Eve remembered the tales of the Erinyes. As long as there were sinners in the world, it was supposed that they could not be banished . . . and yet here they were, banished along with all the other relics of Olympian myth, hidden away to survive the birth of a New Age. Even so, they were terrible, and Gull was a fool to think he could coerce them.

  Unless . . . coercion was unnecessary.

  "Fuck." Eve hung her head again, understanding at last. So she did not see Gull respond, but she heard his every word.

  "The goddess Athena placed a curse upon my love, upon Medusa," the mage said, his deep voice creeping up Eve’s spine. "Only your forgiveness will release her. In exchange for that forgiveness, for your tears, I offer you the greatest prize the Third Age of Man has to offer. I bring you the woman who damned the entire human race twice over, who stained Adam’s bloodline with sin, who laid down with demons. Give me what I desire and you shall have the ultimate sinner to put to the lash."

  The hesitation before the Erinyes spoke was eternal damnation all its own. When they spoke, it was all three in unison.

  "Eve," they said, and there was pleasure in their voices.

  Then the one who had been speaking with Gull continued. "There is a bargain to be struck. But not here. Enter our home, the caverns of the damned, the halls of torment. There, we will speak of Gorgons."

  The whip cracked the air.

  Eve lurched to her feet, struggling against Gull’s control. Her muscles were slow and pained, but they obeyed, and she staggered away. The whip caught her
around the neck, barbs digging into flesh, and the punisher pulled Eve off her feet. The creature turned, dead souls crying out in unending sorrow from the fabric of her cloaks, and dragged Eve behind her, tearing out the vampire’s throat as the Erinyes returned to their home.

  Inside the gigantic corpse of the lord of the Underworld.

  Icy currents tugged at Ceridwen, wrapping her in a shroud of her own cloak. For just a moment — or perhaps a handful of moments, not enough to steal her life — she had lost consciousness in the water. The Styx raged around her, pulling at her limbs, caressing her, as though the spirits of the river were fighting one another to claim her.

  She awoke choking, drowning, but then her violet eyes snapped open and she flailed her arms, kicked her legs, righting herself in the water. Ceridwen closed her mouth and swallowed the water that was in her throat, mind racing, blackness threatening the edges of her thoughts as her lungs cried for breath.

  Arthur.

  That was her only thought.

  Her hands were empty, so she thrust out her right hand and bright orange fire — unaffected by the river’s rush — arced from her fingers. This was no ordinary fire. It traveled through the water, darting in a lightning path, until it found her broken elemental staff being dragged along the river bottom by the current. Tendrils of sorcerous fire gripped the staff and drew it to her. Before it even reached her grip she was gazing around her in the water again, fighting the current, swimming.

  Scylla and Charybdis hated Arthur. In its way, the river hated him as well. Ceridwen had no idea how Gull had accomplished this, but that was a question for later. For now, she could use it. In the past when she had traveled from Faerie to the Blight, it had taken time for her to adjust. But despite the corruption of the human world, its soil and air, its water and vegetation, were not so different from Faerie. The underworld was something else entirely. Dark and twisted, things grew that should have been dead. Lifeless, terrible things that somehow thrived. Her bond with the elements had withered upon her descent into this nether realm but she had become acclimated to it. It sickened her, yet now she embraced it, for it was her only hope.