Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (37 page)

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.

If the River Styx hated Arthur, and she could touch the
river, commune with it . . .

Ceridwen stopped fighting the current, let herself be swept
by it. The water was all around her and now her body shimmered with a dusky
light. The river hated Arthur, which meant it was aware of his presence . . .
she touched the water, and she searched for him.

There
. At the riverbank, but deep beneath the
surface, dragged along the edge and dashed against rock and black earth. Arthur.

The fire that glowed within the icy sphere atop her staff
flared once. Ceridwen had hesitated to connect too fully with this world, but
now she mustered all of her elemental magick. The current changed direction
around her, the water grasping her and propelling her toward the riverbank. She
rose to the surface and she burst up into the air to take several deep breaths,
caught a glimpse of the strange sky, the cavern ceiling so high it could not be
seen in the gloom.

Then she willed the river to drag her under again. It curled
around her, swept her to where Arthur drifted. She saw him kick feebly, trying
to swim to the surface. Weak, but he was alive. His hands reached upward and
she grabbed his wrists and though the river hated him, she forced the water to
propel them both upward.

The Styx erupted in a spout of water that tossed them onto
the riverbank. Ceridwen struck the ground hard and for a moment she could only
lay there, catching her breath. Her chest hurt as if there was something broken
inside, and she prayed it was only her need for air. She heard Arthur coughing
beside her with a wheezy rasp, but he was alive.

She turned her head, forced herself onto her hands and knees
and crawled to him. Finally she knelt and put a hand on his back as he caught
his breath, and then he fell into her arms and she held him, simply held him,
the way they had done so very long ago, when it hadn’t taken the threat of
death to make them see what they were to each other.

"Ceri . . ." he began.

"Sssh, no, Arthur." She pushed damp locks of hair
away from his forehead so that she could kiss him there.

Then she stiffened and turned toward the River Styx. Her
people were known for their passions in love and war, but not for their sense
of family. Nevertheless, they were fiercely loyal, and she had been ingrained
with that loyalty all of her life.

Arthur saw her alarm and then his eyes mirrored her own
concern. He sat up painfully, and they rose side by side.

"Danny?" he said.

Ceridwen shook her head. "I . . . I didn’t see him. I
could only think of you, and . . . the river let me find you. Gull did
something, but . . . I’m not even sure if I could —"

Then she was moving, running toward the water’s edge. She
had to try at least to locate Danny Ferrick. The boy had sacrificed himself
trying to save them. Ceridwen could do no less if there was a chance he might
still be alive.

"Ceri, wait!" Arthur shouted. She turned to see
him pointing back up the river. "Look!"

Out on the rushing river a section of the water was white
with the undulations beneath. She had no time to act before the Styx erupted
and the sea monster, Scylla, shot up from its flow, letting loose with a shriek
that caused her to clap her hands over her ears and stagger backward. It swayed
and rocked in the air, shaking and continuing to shriek as its heads swung
about.

Then it spotted Ceridwen and Arthur on the bank. It reared
up, whipping back and forth in a frenzy, maddened with rage.

Arthur came up beside her and raised his hands. Ceridwen
lifted her staff, but she knew that they were both depleted. She wondered if
they would be able to summon enough energy to destroy the monstrosity.

One final time Scylla shrieked.

Its belly swelled, inflating quickly. The thing’s jaws opened
but this time its scream was of silent agony. Scylla’s flesh tore, ripped open
from within, and a gore-covered figure emerged from its viscera.

Danny Ferrick leaped into the river and hit the water with a
splash only seconds before Scylla toppled in after him. Unmoving, the giant
beast floated half above and half below the water, and the current began to
drag it away.

When Danny climbed from the water, Ceridwen and Arthur ran
to him. He was hunched over, unsmiling, horns gleaming wet, and his eyes glowed
a perilous red. The boy had never looked more like a demon. There was so much
of Hell in his eyes that they stopped a few steps away, regarding him warily.

"Oh, man," Danny said, shaking his head and then
reaching up to cover his face. "That just totally sucked."

Ceridwen smiled and went to him, pulling him into her
embrace.

"Thank you," she said.

Danny shrugged, wildness in his eyes. "Any time. This
is why we’re here, right? All in all, I’d rather be watching TV. But if we
don’t do the dirty work, there won’t be any TV. So, I figure, we do what we’ve
gotta do."

Arthur clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, a bemused smile
on his face. "So, you’re fighting monsters and traversing the netherworld
to make the world safe for television?"

"Pretty much."

"Well," Conan Doyle said, "as long as you
have your priorities straight."

Their time in the Underworld had been a parade of the
astonishing, a mind-boggling series of sights and experiences unlike any they
had previously experienced. Conan Doyle had come to believe he had grown numb
to it, that there was nothing left that could surprise him. Now, standing on a
hill of bones, gazing down on the sprawling corpse of Hades, the mage realized
how wrong he had been.

"Y’know what?" Danny asked beside him, breathing
through his mouth to avoid the horrendous stench of decay that permeated the
air. "I’ve had enough. I’m going home."

Ceridwen moved up next to the boy and placed a comforting
arm about his shoulders. Conan Doyle knew the Fey were sensitive to the
emotional states of others. She could feel Danny’s turmoil and was attempting
to calm him. That was good, for he himself had no time for such mollycoddling. One
of his Menagerie was in grave danger, and he would move Heaven, Earth and the
Underworld itself to get her back.