Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (23 page)

"If I was a titanium mesh net where would I be?"
he asked himself, disappearing beneath a curtain of Doyle’s long winter coats.

"You’re in Greece?" she asked, immediately
curious. "What does Danny think of that? He’s always wanted to travel and —"

"He ain’t with us," Squire said, potato-shaped
head popping out from beneath the dark overcoats. "He’s with Mr. Doyle,
Ceridwen, and Eve."

A knot immediately began to twist in her stomach. "You
mean Leonard . . . Dr. Graves isn’t with him?"

Squire shook his head. "Nope, Casper’s with me." He
disappeared again underneath the coats. "Titanium mesh net, titanium mesh
net, titanium mesh net."

Danny’s in perfectly good hands
, she thought to
herself.
Sure, Leonard is elsewhere, but he still has Mr. Doyle, Eve, and
Ceridwen to look after him. There’s no reason to worry.

Is there?

"Got it!" Squire yelled. He crawled out from the
bottom of the closet hauling a thick net of what appeared to be woven metal. "I
knew I’d left it around here somewhere," he said, a victorious smile
gracing his grotesque features.

"So do you know if he’s okay?" she asked, trying
to keep the panic from her voice.

Squire shrugged. "Couldn’t tell ya, babe. The kid could
be pushin’ up daisies for all I know." The goblin laughed uproariously. "Just
kiddin’, I’m sure he’s fine. I wouldn’t worry."

Too late for that,
she thought, immediately picturing
herself on a plane to Greece, traveling to identify the body of her son killed
doing God knew what.

"Hey, listen," Squire said, bending down to again
go to the back of the closet. "I gotta get back to work. It was nice
chattin’ with you. If I see the kid I’ll let him know you were asking for him."

With those words, he was gone, disappearing inside a patch
of shadow, like a rabbit going down into its hole. Julia could do nothing but
stare into the closet, mouth agape. Closing the closet door, she stood in the
foyer, her mind a jumble. The thought of going home to her empty house, to sit
and wait by the phone until Danny got back and finally got around to calling
her was not appealing in the least.

She was going to wait for him to return.

Julia Ferrick left the foyer and walked into Mr. Doyle’s
study, going straight for the liquor cabinet. She was going to need all the
help she could to keep her wits about her.

She found the scotch and poured herself a double.

A terrible malaise had fallen upon Ceridwen. Her body shivered
with weakness and her vision was clouded as though cataracts veiled her eyes. Yet
she refused to allow Arthur to see how this transition to the Underworld was
affecting her. Faerie was her home, and her relationship with the elements
there, with nature, was nearly symbiotic. If her life did not precisely depend
on that rapport, her health could certainly be affected by it. Traveling from
Faerie to Arthur’s world — the Blight — was not difficult. For
millennia, the two realms had been connected, and their natures were not
dissimilar, their elemental forces kin to one another, sisters, in a way.

This horrid place was merely a distant cousin, and a
withered, sickly, and malevolent cousin at that. Cut off from the elements of
the Blight, she was weakened, and though she could feel the elements of this
place all around her, they did not welcome her. Nor did she relish their touch.
In truth, the moment she had entered the Underworld the flame had snuffed out
at the center of the ice sphere atop her staff, and then the ice had begun to
melt.

It was good to her now only as a walking stick. Though
Arthur had seen that she was unsteady, Ceridwen did her best to put her weight
on the staff rather than entirely upon him. He would have danger enough to
combat without worrying overmuch about her.

That had been her concern during their initial descent into
the Underworld, and the moment she heard Danny Ferrick scream, it became
reality. When the demon boy crested the ridge ahead, the look of terror etched
on his face forced Ceridwen to summon all of the strength and courage remaining
to her.

It was precious little preparation for the sight that
confronted her next. The three-headed dog scrabbled up the rocks in pursuit,
grunting, eyes glistening crimson in the gloom. The weight of its three heads
ought to have thrown off its balance, but its body was wide and built for that
burden, and it was agile enough. The hound came to an abrupt halt the moment it
saw that its prey was not alone.

"Cerberus," Conan Doyle whispered at her side,
obviously in awe of the gigantic beast that now regarded them with three sets
of crimson eyes. Other than those few odd flutterings in the cave above them,
it was the first real sign of life they’d seen since passing beyond the gates,
but judging by the stink that radiated from the hound, she wondered if it was
truly alive at all. The great dog reeked of death and decay, and she could see
spots where the flesh was missing, exposing stringy sinew and yellow bone.

Danny ran toward Eve. She marched forward to meet him, the
bottom of her brown leather coat flapping behind her in a sudden gust of
sulfurous air from below.

"Stop running," the vampire snapped.

The demon boy brought himself up short upon her command,
moving to her side quickly, though his expression was dubious. "Do you not
see
the dog?"

"Yeah. And me without a really big newspaper," Eve
sneered. "There’s nowhere to run, kid. The only way to live is to win."

They all remained perfectly still, allowing the dog to
familiarize itself with their scents. It continued to growl threateningly as
each of its heads paused to study them individually. Ceridwen assumed that now
that it had more than one target, it was assessing their vulnerability,
deciding which of them it would try to catch and eat first.

Then its growl turned to a high-pitched whine and it tensed
upon its haunches, its hackles rising as it prepared to attack. She had already
noted the fragile wall to the right of the dog, where it crouched on the ridge
of steps leading up from the floor of the Underworld. Without a further thought
she put her own pain and illness aside and began to call upon the elemental
forces. Cut off from the elements of Faerie, or even the Blight, she was forced
to tap into the elements of the Underworld.

Ceridwen screamed. Unimaginable pain wracked her body as the
ugly nature of that realm fought her, for this was a place of death and it
cared not for the requests of the living. Then, abruptly, tainted brackish
water spun in a circle around the top of her staff and solidified into ice, and
a sickly yellow flame sparked to life within. She cried out once again, her
muscles tightening painfully as the connection was made, as the filth and death
of the Underworld seeped into her flesh and bone. A putrid orange light crackled
around her staff, and then elemental fire surged from the icy sphere atop it
and struck at the cave wall.

A portion of the wall shattered and thousands of pounds of
stone crashed down onto the ridge . . . but too late. Cerberus bounded toward
them as the rock wall fell harmlessly behind the hound. There was an ancient,
empty hunger in its eyes.

Nausea roiled in Ceridwen’s belly as she tried to summon the
elements once more, but she was met with painful resistance. She slumped to the
ground, sapped of strength, watching helplessly as Conan Doyle lunged forward
to meet the giant dog’s attack.

"Heeeyahhhh!" he cried out, advancing toward the
beast.

Cerberus paused, crouching low to the ground. But Conan
Doyle showed no fear, glaring into its eyes.

"Back off, you damned fool!" Eve shouted,
sprinting to his side.

Conan Doyle risked a quick glance toward the vampiress and
the dog sensed its opportunity. With a snarl that came not only from each
throat but from deep in their shared chest, Cerberus sprang at him. Ceridwen
wanted to close her eyes, but she could not look away.

The mage was a man of quiet dignity and propriety, but in
battle, he was fearsome indeed. He seemed almost to transform, bracing himself
in a warrior’s pose, his right hand burning like the sun. He met the attack
head-on and plunged his blazing fist into one of Cerberus’s open mouths. The
other two heads cried in agony, but the one assaulted by the magickal fire
burned horribly from within, its eyes boiling from their sockets as the flesh and
fur of its wide, heavy head burned away to reveal its flaming skull.

Conan Doyle stumbled away from the beast, clutching his
wrist and staring at his own smoldering hand in obvious pain. The spell had
been a weapon of incredible power, and there was always danger in magick. He
had burned himself badly.

But Cerberus was not going to give him time to recover. Its
injuries were horrid to see, but the two surviving heads were driven only to
greater madness. They frothed at their mouths, a yellow foam that stank worse
than the beast itself. Where its body was dessicated and the bone and muscle
showed through, fresh blood and pus flowed as it shook in fury. It had been
deciding which of them to rend and tear, but now Conan Doyle was its only
target.

"Arthur!" Ceridwen cried, damning herself for her
weakness even as she summoned the strength to stand. She would be too late.

But Eve was there.

She pushed Conan Doyle out of harm’s way as the remaining
two heads, driven to the brink of madness, lunged for him with utter ferocity. One
of the still functioning heads snapped its jaws closed on Eve’s shoulder and
she roared in pain, baring long fangs. She spun and pummeled its snout, but
Cerberus flipped back its head, shaking her like a rag doll. Eve’s flailing
feet caught the still smoldering third head and it exploded in a shower of
blackened bone and red burning embers.

Danny was right behind her. The demon boy ran at Cerberus
and leaped into the air with uncanny strength. He launched himself at the hound
and sank his claws into its side. Where its flesh was rotting away, Danny began
to tear at Cerberus. Blood and pus drooled out onto its fur as he tore strips
of decaying flesh. Then he reached inside and clutched a yellowed rib. The bone
snapped off in his hands.

Eve screamed as Cerberus bit down harder on her, shaking her
still. Her own blood scattered the ground like scarlet rain.

Ceridwen climbed to her feet, ignoring the creeping numbness
that permeated her body. She picked up her staff and stumbled forward. The growling
of the dog’s heads and the screaming and cursing from Eve echoed through the
cave.

"I can’t risk hitting them," Arthur screamed over
the ruckus, his hand again radiating an unearthly light, his body trembling
with the effort.

"We’ve only just begun this. We’ll not die now,"
Ceridwen replied. Mustering all her remaining strength, she brought the heel of
her foot down on her staff, breaking the end so it now tapered to a jagged
point. She hefted the broken staff and threw it like a javelin with all her
strength, willing the wood — the only bit of nature from her own world in
this horrid place — to fly true.

The spear pierced the thick muscle of the dog’s chest. The
head holding Eve opened its jaws to yelp in pain, flinging her limp and bloody
form into a broken heap at the edge of the ridge.

Ceridwen and Conan Doyle ran to Eve, but Cerberus was
already on the move, the remains of Ceridwen’s staff protruding from its chest.
Conan Doyle sketched a pattern into the air and from it a spiral of blue light
erupted, rocketing at Cerberus. Danny still clung to its side, tearing at its
flesh, but he was not in the immediate line of fire. The hound was badly
injured but it still moved with uncanny speed and dodged that magickal attack,
thundering toward them.

"Take her," Conan Doyle ordered, moving between
the women and the slavering monstrosity.

Ceridwen grabbed Eve beneath the arms and began to pull her
away from the edge. She could hear Conan Doyle’s melodious voice beginning a
new incantation when another sound filled the air.

Screaming.

"Enough! That’s just enough of that shit!" Danny
Ferrick screamed.

Tearing into Cerberus’s body, he climbed the hound as though
to saddle it, then he grappled with one of its heads, gouging at its eyes,
scooping one of them out. The hound bucked and threw him forward. Danny landed,
rolling, and then rose again. He screamed, shaking as he confronted the dog
with such ferocity that it paused and took a step back. Danny seemed to be in
the grip of madness.

"I’m not afraid of you!" the boy bellowed, then
threw himself at the hound, claws flying, tearing and rending and pummeling its
remaining heads, driving the animal back.

"Daniel, be careful!" Ceridwen called out as the
boy rammed his new horns into the belly of the beast.

Cerberus reared up on its hind legs, attempting to use its
front paws to repel its relentless attacker, but to little avail. Danny drove
it back farther and farther until there was no longer any place left for them
to go.

And Ceridwen watched in horror as the two tumbled backward
over the edge of the ridge, disappearing into the Underworld below.

Tumbling down the rocky cliff, Danny tried to use Cerberus’s
disgusting body as a shield, tucking himself close so the putrid, matted fur so
that the beast could take the brunt of the damage. They crashed again and again
into the cliff and with each jarring impact Danny did his best to twist around
to keep Cerberus between himself and the jagged outcroppings of rock. Then
their painful journey came to an abrupt end with a whimper from the hound and
the splintering of bones inside it. An enormous rib bone shot up through it,
nearly impaling Danny, just before the impact sent him sprawling across the
ground. He rolled, grunting in pain with each bump, and at last came to rest against
the trunk of a gigantic tree.