Conan Doyle felt Danny’s hand tighten on his arm as they watched what was unfolding below. It was exactly as he had feared, Gull was giving Eve to the Furies, but for what he did not know. The hideous thing whose lash was wound about Eve’s throat yanked upon the whip, pulling her violently to the ground. The Erinyes converged upon their prize, their pale, spidery hands fluttering excitedly about her prostrate form.
"Will you grant me my heartfelt plea, most revered Eumenides?" Gull sang out in a voice not his own.
Danny leaned close and whispered in Conan Doyle’s ear. "We have to do something." The boy’s grip on his arm grew harder. "We have to do something now."
Conan Doyle studied the scene below them. They could interrupt the ceremony, but then the mystery of Gull’s request would not have been revealed.
And he needed to know. He needed to know what could drive a man to this.
"Will you grant my plea, revered Eumenides?" Gull sang to the sisters of suffering.
The Erinyes were not an easy lot to read, and Gull wasn’t sure how they would respond, but by the way they hovered around the vampire, he knew that his offer was at least tempting.
"It has been too long since last we punished a sinner such as this," one of the Furies proclaimed, leaning forward to sniff at Eve’s hair, as one would take in the scent of an especially delicious meal.
"And long has the daughter of Phorcys and Keto suffered for her slight against the goddess Athena," said another of the three, her robes — made from the souls of the tortured — flowing eerily about her.
The Fury whose whip entwined the vampire’s throat looked down upon her captive with eyes ripe with blood. "You have done much to deserve punishment, lamia," she said, pulling Eve closer. "Do you wish to stay with us? Do you wish to repent the sins you have perpetrated upon the Third Age of Man?"
Eve looked up into the face of the Fury and smiled defiantly. "Can I have my own room?" she asked, and Gull cringed at her impertinence.
The sister of darkness smiled, seemingly unfazed by her lack of respect. "I shall receive much gratification from your suffering," the Fury said as she bent forward to lay a gentle kiss upon the vampire’s head.
"Tisiphone," she said, never taking her bloody orbs from her prize, "give the heartsick magician what he so desperately desires."
Gull felt his heart leap within his chest. His prayers had been answered at last. All that he had done in the name of love, all the lies and betrayals — it hadn’t been for naught.
One of the Furies — Tisiphone — slowly glided toward him. "In what shall you contain this valuable gift?" she asked, hands as pale as alabaster folded delicately before her.
For a moment Gull was so overcome with gratitude that he did not understand the question.
"In what will you carry the tears of a Fury?" she screeched, infuriated by his silence.
His hands quickly went to his pocket and he pulled out a glass vial, presenting it to Tisiphone.
"Open it," she commanded, and he immediately removed the stopper.
Tisiphone brought one of her long fingers up to her face, and with the nail, she poked at the bloody orb engorging the eye socket, enticing it to weep a single tear of crimson. Gull was there to catch the drop of blood, trapping it within the glass vial. The other Erinyes did the same, each in turn crying a lone tear for the sorcerer as payment for what he had brought to them.
"Would you like me to contribute to that?" Eve asked, still on her knees before the sisters. "I haven’t taken a piss since getting to this fucking place."
Gull forced a smile as he gently pushed the stopper into the opening of the vial. "Thank you, but no," he replied. "I believe you’ve done more than enough for me."
He could not take his eyes from the container’s contents, holding up his prize for all to see. He’d never experienced such elation before.
But the feeling was short lived.
"Nigel Gull!" thundered a voice from somewhere above, a voice he knew only too well.
"We have come for our friend," Arthur Conan Doyle proclaimed.
Gull watched as the Erinyes encircled their newest prize, their bloody eyes searching the chamber for these newly arrived enemies.
"By all means, Arthur," Gull replied, a twisted smile spreading across his malformed features. "Come down and take her."
That’s new, Eve thought, turning her head to watch as her allies leaped down into the chamber from a ledge somewhere above. It looked as though they were riding on a current of air. Some hocus-pocus whipped up by Ceridwen, she imagined.
The cavalry had arrived, but at that moment, with her throat entwined with the barbed lash of Alekto, Eve had started to entertain the notion that perhaps this really was what she deserved. Kneeling before the Daughters of Night, she remembered the sins she had perpetrated upon the Third Age of Man and wondered if the punishment meted out by the Erinyes, or any higher authority, would ever be enough to absolve her. She doubted it, but was certain that the sisters were willing to give it a try.
Her past sifted through her memory and she saw all of the sins she had to atone for, the betrayals and the debasements, the murders and the corruptions of the innocent. Eve had yearned for redemption so long that it no longer mattered if she achieved it. It was the quest that was her journey. Now, though, the recollections of her sins haunted her so profoundly that they sapped away her strength.
As Conan Doyle strode toward Eve and her captors across the heart of Hades, she gazed up at him reluctantly, knowing he could never understand the part of her that wanted to surrender. Despite the Furies, Conan Doyle was undaunted, and he approached with his head high, Fey sorceress and demon changeling flanking him. The Furies closed ranks around her, protecting their latest acquisition from these would-be rescuers, whom they must have considered thieves.
"You’re too late, Arthur," Gull called. "What’s done is done. Eve is no longer your concern. She belongs to the Furies now."
Conan Doyle turned his attention briefly to the deformed mage, his eyes blazing with a suppressed fury. "She belongs to no one, you fool," he said through gritted teeth. "And she was most certainly not your property to trade away. I assure you, we will deal with that grievous error of judgment soon enough."
He looked back to the Furies and bowed his head in reverence. Danny and Ceridwen did the same. "But now I must speak with the Daughters of the Earth and Darkness."
Eve tried to stand, but the barbed whip wrapped about her throat grew tighter, biting deeply, and she felt a fresh flow of blood cascade down her neck as she again dropped to her knees.
"There is nothing to say," Alekto declared. "A contract was established, a transaction made. This sinner is our property now, to punish as we see fit."
The other sisters nodded their agreement, the snakes that swam through the tresses of their hair hissing in agitation.
"Is there nothing we can do to change your mind?" Conan Doyle asked. There was sadness and sincerity in his voice and Eve wished that she could muster the strength to tell him that she wasn’t worth it, that she deserved to be left to their ministrations.
"A trade, perhaps?" he suggested. "Something that you might find of equal value and interest."
There was a flurry of movement as Gull surged toward the sisters. Eve saw a flicker of fear in his eyes.
"Don’t listen to him," the dark mage warned. "He is not to be trusted."
All three Furies moved with terrible swiftness and precision, lashing out at Gull with their whips. Eve crumbled to the ground as Alekto’s whip pulled away from her throat, tearing flesh, spilling more blood. The sisters attacked Gull, and the mage was driven to his knees, raising his hands to protect his malformed features. Each blow drew blood, but Gull did not cry out.
"We have heard enough from you, magician," the Furies said in unison, whips writhing menacingly on the ground only inches from the scarred and bleeding Gull. "We will now hear what this other has to offer."
With the touch of the Erinyes’
s whip gone from her throat, Eve felt her strength returning, but the remembrances of sins that had blurred with the passage of time were still as fresh and raw as newly opened wounds. It was as if they had been committed only yesterday. Yet now her guilt and despair were fading. She had dedicated herself to making reparations for her sins, and yet the touch of Alekto’s lash had brought all of her doubts and self-loathing to the surface. Rage began to burn away her regret and her longing for punishment.
Eve steeled herself, wondering what Conan Doyle was up to. The mage stood as though orating before a Victorian audience, holding the lapels of his coat with self-importance. It was a show, like the best snake oil salesmen had put on in their day.
"I propose that in exchange for our friend," the mage said. "We will leave the Underworld post haste, and you need never worry about us again."
Eve snarled, one corner of her mouth ticking up in amusement. She saw the Furies’ confusion, the lashes of their whips writhing about on the floor of the chamber like the tails of angry tigers.
Tisiphone, who seemed to speak for the others when they weren’t all speaking, slunk nearer to Conan Doyle and eyed him and his companions closely. Her talons hooked into claws. "And how would we benefit from this barter?"
Eve climbed to her feet, while Conan Doyle adjusted the sleeves of his jacket, as always, making himself presentable even in the most daunting of situations. Part of the show.
The sisters were distracted by his words and his manner and no longer noticed her.
To their peril.
"If you give me what I want," Conan Doyle explained. "There will be no reason for us to bring your rather gruesome domicile down around your ears."
And with those words, the mage nodded to Ceridwen, and both he and the Fey sorceress raised their hands into fists, blazing with magic, uncast spells and deadly enchantments. Gull called out a warning. Hawkins and Jezebel seemed at a loss, realizing they ought to do something but too overwhelmed to act.
"Do you understand this benefit now, sisters?" Conan Doyle asked as he extended his arms, bathing the interior walls of Hades’ heart in eerie, dancing shadows.
"You dare threaten us in our lair?" Megaera shrieked.
The air crackled with the tension of impending violence, and Eve drank it in. Ever since she had been at Gull’s mercy she had nurtured fantasies of vengeance, of wanton bloodshed and savagery the likes of which she had not indulged in for far too long. The guilt the Furies had wrought in her had stung her deeply, had torn open the oldest wounds in the world. And beneath her rage and her lust for revenge was the specter of her bloodlust. Eve was a vampire, the mother of all such creatures, and it had been far too long since she had satiated her hunger.
For once, she let the hunger and hatred take over. With a throaty growl, Eve sprang at Tisiphone, knocking aside her sisters. Fingers tearing at the creature’s robes, at fabric woven from the souls of the tormented, Eve spun Tisiphone around to face her. A look of genuine surprise appeared on the Fury’s face as Eve stared into her blood-swollen orbs.
"You picked the wrong pet, bitch," she growled, feeling her fangs slide out, razor sharp. "I’m nobody’s doggy."
Eve hauled Tisiphone off the ground, rage and blood thirst driving her to madness. "This is for helping me remember what a vicious cunt I’ve been." And she brought her mouth down to the throat of the Fury, fangs plunging deeply into pale, alabaster flesh that reeked so pungently of misery.
Tisiphone wailed as she was driven to the ground by the ferocity of Eve’s attack, an unearthly shriek of agony that caused the souls in her cloak to disperse, screaming themselves, ghosts fluttering like bats into the shadowed eaves of Hades’ heart.
Conan Doyle had witnessed Eve’s savagery countless times in their long relationship, often during the insanity of battle, but it never ceased to disturb him. The Erinys flailed beneath Eve’s attack, her whip lashing repeatedly, tearing Eve’s coat to shreds and scoring the flesh beneath, but to no avail. Eve rode the bucking myth, mouth firmly attached to her victim’s throat.
The dying scream of the Fury was horrible, becoming nearly unbearable as her remaining sisters joined in, filling the cavern with ear-splitting cries of shared anguish.
Then the chamber itself seemed to react, the ground starting to undulate as if something long dormant had been awakened by the sisters’ plaintive wails.
Danny looked at Conan Doyle, panic in his eyes. "I don’t even want to know."
The walls began to tremble. They had been dry, flaking and chalky, but now they seemed damp and soft, very much like the floor. Conan Doyle was reminded of anatomy lessons at the University of Edinburgh and the first time he had seen the exposed musculature of a cadaver he would be dissecting. Hades’ heart was the size of a cathedral, but now it became living muscle. It began to pulsate, emitting a rhythmic, near-deafening throb.
The heart of Hades had been made to beat again.
Ceridwen gripped his arm as the floor thrummed beneath their feet. Conan Doyle gazed across the chamber at Gull. He had scrambled away from the Furies and was consulting silently with Hawkins even as he cradled Jezebel in his arms. She had all but fainted, tears streaming down her face, red hair filthy and matted. The girl was falling apart. Hawkins was almost there himself from the look of it. The dapper Englishman was not so dapper now, his eyes wild as he spoke to Gull. For his part, the misshapen mage seemed at a loss for once in his godforsaken life, panic etched upon his grotesque features.
Obviously, whatever was happening now was not in any way part of Nigel’s game plan.
"Come," Conan Doyle said, grabbing Ceridwen by the arm. The sorceress — his love — had been watching the surviving Furies, sickly green magick dancing from her fingertips. But the time for fighting was over. The time for retreat had arrived.
"Danny!" he snapped, gesturing to the demon boy, who was staring around at the beating heart of Hades with the same wild light he’d had in his eyes after he had killed Scylla. He squatted on his haunches, ready to move. At the sound of his name, he looked up, alert.
"We came for Eve. Let’s get her and go."
"That’s the smartest thing you’ve said since I met you," the boy snarled.
Eve who was still crouched over her prey.
Danny hurried toward Eve across the undulating floor of Hades’s heart, but as the demon boy reached for her, shegrowled and batted his hand away with a bloody claw. She did not want her feast interrupted.
"Damn it! If I was carrying a rolled newspaper I’d slap you across the nose," Conan Doyle snapped. He and Ceridwen ran to Eve. The sorceress pulled the demon boy away and Conan Doyle himself let loose a tendril of crimson magick that swirled around Eve and pulled her from her victim. "Take your damnable head from the trough and let’s go!"
Eve shook off his spell and landed on the pulsing ground several feet from her prey, fangs bared, her mouth and chin stained with gore. There was murder in her eyes, and Conan Doyle summoned a spell of defense in his thoughts, just in case.
"We’re going now, Eve."
At first he wasn’t sure if she even understood his words, but then he saw a glimmer of humanity return to her eyes.
"What a fucking rush," Eve whispered, burying her face in her hands. "Never fed on the blood of a deity before." She looked up at Conan Doyle, her eyes wide and radiant with a strange inner light. Then she smiled and wiped the drying blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Potent. Way potent."
"I can only imagine," Conan Doyle responded, but before he could say anything more the voice of Nigel Gull interrupted.
"Look what she’s done!" he screamed, and Conan Doyle turned to see the twisted little mage pacing around the fleshy chamber as it undulated and pulsed. "You’ve ruined everything!"
Hawkins swore at Gull, trying to lead him to one of the hollow blood vessels that would take them out of there. Jezebel was once more standing on her own, but she was a pitiful waif, stumbling after him, silently pleading.
>
Eve started toward Gull, but Conan Doyle grabbed her arm. Her bloodlust was sated and the violence was gone from her eyes. "Survival is our only concern at the moment," he said.
With one last, longing look at Gull, she nodded. "Let’s go."
Ceridwen lifted a glowing hand to illuminate their path. "This way," she said.
All four of them paused as the surviving Erinyes moved to block their path.
"You will go nowhere," Alekto and Megaera moaned in unison.
Hawkins had fallen in behind them, with Gull leading a muttering Jezebel by the hand.
"Oh, this is just lovely," Hawkins muttered.
"What do we do?" Danny asked.
Conan Doyle held Ceridwen’s hand tightly, preparing to destroy the Furies. But then Gull’s bitter laughter filled the chamber.
"Oh, dear Arthur, you’ve bollixed it all up for me now, haven’t you, mate? So simple, it was. A bargain, nothing more. And you had to interfere. You couldn’t just do your part."
As he raved, Conan Doyle turned to see what had set him off. There they were, the seven of them — intruders all — in the midst of Hades’ pulsing, stinking heart. But beyond Hawkins and Jezebel, beyond the cursing, twisted shape of Nigel Gull, there were other figures. And now he saw what had prompted the dark mage’s new tirade.
Gull’s eyes narrowed with hatred and his nostrils widened, snorting like a stallion’s. "If your damned nobility keeps me from Medusa, I’ll have your heart, you bastard. I’ll have your heart."
But no one was listening to Gull anymore. On one side they were blocked by the surviving Furies. And now other creatures entered Hades’ heart through pulsing arteries, gaunt, skeletal beings adorned in fabulous armor stained black by the passage of millennia. Conan Doyle had seen these creatures before, scattered about within the corpse of Hades, but in a far less animated state. Something had awakened the lesser gods and goddesses of ancient Greece.
Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) Page 29
