Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (38 page)

"You don’t mean that," Conan Doyle said, as he
started down the slope toward the enormous corpse. "What about Eve? Do you
want to leave her here?"

"Eve can handle herself," Danny replied, but Conan
Doyle could hear little conviction in his tone.

He stopped his descent and turned to look at Danny and
Ceridwen, who were still standing on the crest of the hill of bones. "But
she will not have to, for we are going to assist her."

Danny shook his horned head. "No way. I can’t do it
anymore, it’s just too much." He gestured toward the body of Hades in the
black soil valley below. "Do you see that?" he asked, his voice
growing higher with panic. "It’s a giant fucking dead guy!"

The boy turned, and for a moment Conan Doyle thought he was
about to walk away, but he spun around to reiterate his point. "It’s been
one thing after another since coming here — since hooking up with you."

"And you’ve become a welcome part of our motley tribe,"
Ceridwen said, as she calmly stroked the back of his head.

Danny quickly stepped away from her touch. "I’m sorry,
I just can’t."

There was a tremble in the boy’s voice and Conan Doyle was
certain that he was about to cry.
This will not do, not at all.

"You asked for this, boy," he said coldly. "You
begged
to be a part of it."

The boy squatted and buried his face in his hands. "I
know, I know, and there’s a part of me that’s starting to get used to it."
Danny laughed, raising his head. There were tears in his yellow eyes. "Can
you believe that? I’m sixteen years old and I’m starting to get used to this
shit. When we’re in the middle of it, the blood and monsters and shit, there’s
a part of me that even likes it. Do you have any idea how much that scares me?"

"Get hold of yourself, Daniel," Conan Doyle
snapped. "Are you not part of my team, of my Menagerie?"

Danny wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "It’s
just that . . . I was inside the belly of a fucking sea monster . . .and now
this." He again gestured to the corpse that filled the valley below, the
remains of a god. "I just don’t know if . . ."

"Damn you, boy! Answer the question!" Conan Doyle
bellowed. "Are you not a part of my Menagerie?"

The young demon looked as though he’d been struck, rocking
back slightly on his haunches, and then his expression began to change. Conan
Doyle recognized the anger, which was exactly the response he was hoping to
get.

"Did you hear me, Daniel Ferrick?" he continued. "Or
was my question lost in the sound of your pathetic blubbering?"

The youth rose to his feet and Conan Doyle could have sworn
he saw a flicker of crimson flame erupt from his eyes.

"No, I heard you just fine," Danny growled. "And,
yes, I am part of your fucking Menagerie."

"Excellent," Conan Doyle said, reaching up to
casually stroke his mustache. "Now follow. We’ll see this through. Eve
would sacrifice immortal life for any of us. You’ve never served in the
military, Daniel, but still you should understand. We don’t leave one of our
own behind. Not ever." The mage turned and continued down the hill, off of
the bone-strewn hill and onto the fine black soil of the valley.

Danny pushed past him, quickening his step. "What’re we
waiting for?" he growled. "The sooner we find Eve, the faster we can
get out of here."

Ceridwen fell into stride beside Conan Doyle, one hand
raised, stirring the wind so that the air, thick with the stench of decay, was
more breathable. He had noticed that after the shattering of her elemental
staff, she had not attempted to repair it using the dark, corrupt wood of the
Underworld. She had summoned the roots and made the trees do her bidding in
building a raft for them to cross the Styx, but had not made herself a new
staff. It was clear she had established a rapport with the elements of this
place, but it seemed she did not want that connection to be any more intimate
than was necessary.

"Are you two coming?" the demon boy called.

"We’re right behind you," Conan Doyle said, taking
Ceridwen’s arm. "Every step of the way."

Ceridwen stood before the body of the fallen god and
marveled at its enormity. From inside the great, decaying corpse there came
faint sounds of life. Her gaze traveled over the incredible sight of the dead
giant, rotting remains whose breadth was greater than all but the largest
villages of Faerie.

Conan Doyle stood on her left, Danny on her right, all of
them awed into silence until the demon boy shook his head, swore under his
breath, and began to utter a mad little laugh.

"What do you think happened to him?" Danny asked. "By
the looks of his throat, I’m guessing shaving accident."

She ought to have been reassured that the boy’s twisted
sense of humor had returned, but there was that lunatic edge to it that only
made Ceridwen more concerned for him. She gazed down at the dark, powdery earth
beneath her feet, then knelt and pushed the tips of her fingers into the
tainted soil, gasping at the images flooding her mind. Conan Doyle joined her
and she took hold of his proffered hand as she tried to sort through the
tainted memories of earth.

"Hades took his own life," she said, withdrawing
her hand from the soil. She wiped her fingers on the hem of her cloak. "He
knew it was only a matter of time before they were forgotten, and without the
memory of the mortal world, they would cease to be." The very ground was
saturated with the melancholy of the gods, and it threatened to overwhelm her. "The
constant thought of it drove Hades mad, and he slit his own throat with a
dagger that was a gift to him from his beloved Persephone."

"I’d slit my throat if I had to live here, too,"
Danny muttered to himself, still gazing in disbelief at the remains of the god.

Conan Doyle still held Ceridwen’s hand and gave it a gentle
squeeze. "And Eve? Can you sense anything of her?"

Ceridwen nodded, dredging up that particular piece of
imagery from the countless others shown to her. She saw the hideous Gull and
his followers, and she saw Eve, kneeling before the vengeful Furies. "Yes,
they were here," she gasped. "As were the Erinyes. They’ve all gone
inside."

She turned her gaze to one of the many ragged, rotting holes
in the corpse of Hades, where strange, mournful sounds continued to waft out
from within.
They live there
, she thought.
Not only the Furies, but
others as well. The dead. The damned.
The gigantic corpse was like a city
of death.

Danny only laughed. "We’re going
in there
? Of
course we are!"

The rotting flesh of the god was stiff with rigor, but tore
with enough pressure, releasing the nauseating stink of decay. Conan Doyle was
surprised to find how simple it was to climb Hades’ corpse. Only the stench was
a deterrent. They scaled the mountainous corpse to one of the larger gashes at
the rib cage and slipped inside, walking on wounded flesh that seemed to have
moved from putrefaction to petrification. Inside, the corpse was so dry it
seemed almost mummified.

Conan Doyle led them within and found that pathways had been
constructed of repurposed flesh and bone. There were chambers and tunnels, and
quickly enough they found a makeshift bridge fashioned out of a rib bone. Conan
Doyle crossed that bridge and the others quickly followed. It was like they had
entered another world. Within the corpse it was dark, but what looked to be
stars twinkled from the ceiling above, suspended in a velvety black sky,
illuminating the strange landscape with the faint hint of twilight.

"They can’t be stars," Danny said, squinting up at
the ceiling. "We’re inside a body. . ."

The demon boy’s voice trailed off, arousing Conan Doyle’s
curiosity. "What is it, Danny?" he asked, looking up as well, but
unable to penetrate the inky black.

Ceridwen raised her hand, blue-green light springing to life
at her fingers as she attempted to illuminate the darkness above, but it was
impenetrable.

"Those aren’t stars," Danny said with a slow shake
of his head. "They’re eyes."

Conan Doyle squinted, but it was obvious that the youth’s
recent demonic metamorphosis had enhanced his night vision, for as much as he
wanted to, he could still see nothing.

"The entire roof, or whatever it is . . . it’s covered
in bodies, thousands of bodies, and they’re watching us." Danny shuddered,
looking quickly away.

"The spirits of those being punished by the Furies,"
Ceridwen said thoughtfully. "I saw it when I was tethered to the soil. The
Erinyes built their lair here, transformed Hades’ remains into a palace of
suffering for those condemned to their ministrations."

Danny looked up at the ceiling again, unable to take his
eyes from it. "It’s . . . it’s horrible," he whispered. "Their
mouths are all moving — they’re reaching out for somebody to help them."
He sounded very young.

Conan Doyle put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. "There’s
nothing we can do for those poor souls now. They’re the ghosts of another age. But
we can prevent Eve from sharing their fate."

This seemed to rally the boy’s resolve, and they forged
ahead, deeper into the body of the fallen god, the eyes of the damned lighting
their way. There were strange formations of what first appeared to be rock on
either side of the path they traveled. Upon closer examination, Conan Doyle
discovered that it was not rock at all, but the ossified remains of what could
only have once been other gods. They were huddled close, wearing masks of
sadness and misery, draped over one another as if they had been commiserating
when the end finally arrived. Minor deities and demigods, dressed in tarnished
armor and wielding pitted swords and axes. They had inhabited the corpse of
Hades at some point, who knew how many millennia before, and had died there,
forgotten. Dozens of them. Hundreds.

The Children of Olympus.

And yet Conan Doyle could not help wondering what had
happened to the others. Where were Zeus and Athena and Poseidon and their kin,
the key figures of Greek mythology? Surely they were not these withered corpses
whose remains had merged with the bones and dead flesh of Hades.

"This is where they fled," Ceridwen said,
interrupting his musing as she reached out to brush her fingers across the
remains of a dead god. She gasped, pulling her hand quickly away. "How
horrible," she whispered, clutching the hand to her breast. "They are
still alive — a spark of life still exists within these petrified shells."

"Come away," Conan Doyle said, taking her by the
arm and leading her back onto the path. "They are echoes of the distant
past. Relics. Their fate cannot be undone."

The demon boy hushed them, then, and Conan Doyle turned to
see that he had moved ahead several yards. He was crouched with his head
cocked, listening. When the mage and Ceridwen went to stand with him, they
heard faint voices chanting in ritual, the words indistinguishable but growing
louder.

They began to follow the voices. As they walked, the ground
beneath their feet became soft and yielding but not from rot, like the outer
flesh of the corpse. It was as though they were walking across a carpet of thick
moss. Conan Doyle wondered about it, but his musings were cut short as they
reached a new passage. The sounds of voices were louder now, and he could
distinguish that of Nigel Gull from the others. The sorcerer was pleading,
begging in song that his petition be granted. The other voices, women’s voices,
made the hair at the back of Doyle’s neck stand on end, and an icy chill run up
and down his spine.

The fleshy passage opened up onto a ledge that looked out
over an enormous chamber of dark, thickly muscled walls.

"The heart of Hades," Conan Doyle whispered to his
companions, marveling at the sight.

The three knelt and carefully peered over the edge.

Below them Nigel Gull stood before three terrible creatures
that could only have been the Furies. Hawkins and Jezebel knelt behind him in
reverence to the sisters, their heads bowed, as if to look upon the Erinyes was
to somehow incite their wrath. Eve stood obediently at Gull’s side, the lash of
one of the Erinyes wrapped around her throat like a leash. The twisted mage was
using the voice he had stolen, the voice of Orpheus, to entice the sisters of
night.

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.