Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (17 page)

Eve still held a severed Hydra head and proudly showed it to
Danny before tossing it away.

"Don’t know if that was such a good idea," he said
breathlessly, looking back at the beast.

She began to ask what he meant, when suddenly she
understood. The muscular stump was writhing in the air, the scaly flesh of the
monster beginning to morph. And suddenly, from the stump, there emerged another
head, growing quickly.

"Did you know it could do that?" she asked him,
tensing to throw herself at the monster yet again.

"Saw it in some movie once," Danny explained, not
taking his eyes from the hissing beast. He was breaking away a layer of
solidified Hydra ash that had collected on his arm and chest. "Thought
it’d been made up. Guess not."

"Thanks for sharing," Eve said. "I really
appreciate the intel."

There were nine heads again, and she wasn’t quite sure how
much longer she and the kid could keep this up. The Hydra was taking stock of
its prey again, careful, heads weaving around, preparing to strike.

Eve was about to lunge again when a familiar voice boomed through
the ashen forest.

"Hold!" Ceridwen cried, her staff raised above her
head. A storm of electricity churned around the sphere of ice at the top of the
staff.

Eve felt the air crackle. "Back up!" she shouted
at Danny, just as a bolt of lightning tore through the heavens, cleaving the
sky as it descended to Earth to strike the Hydra. The monster shook with the
power of the storm as the lightning surged through it, smoke rising from the
soil beneath. Eve and Danny were thrown backward, hair singed, skin prickling.

Danny rubbed his eyes as he regained his feet. "Damn. I
guess Ceridwen’s okay."

Eve knew otherwise. Danny had been momentarily blinded by
the brightness of the lightning, but Eve saw the elemental sorceress crumple to
the ground, like a marionette with severed strings.

The Hydra, its skin blackened and charred, yet far from
dead, reared up from the ground, parts of its serpentine form still smoldering
with fire. Nine mouths screamed out its rage, surging forward to continue its
attack.

"Come on!" Eve cried out as a head bent forward,
mouth agape. "What does it take to kill this thing?" She took hold of
its upper and lower jaw as it struck, preventing it from biting her.

The other heads had driven Danny to the ground, and he was
snapping off fangs and gouging eyes, trying to keep himself from being bitten
in two, doing whatever he had to just to keep himself alive.

A thick, noxious cloud of ash plumed from the mouth of the
Hydra as Eve struggled, the substance clinging to her face, momentarily blinding
her. She let go of the monster’s head, throwing herself back and away, bouncing
off what could only have been the side of the Range Rover. She tumbled to the
ground, clawing at the hardening ash on her face, tearing most of it away
before it could solidify.

Eve watched in horror as the blackened body of the Hydra
loomed above Danny, each of its heads preparing to strike at the boy. She
attempted to get to her feet, but excruciating pain exploded in her side, and
she was driven again to her knees
.

She could only watch as the Hydra’s heads dipped and Danny’s
hands rose instinctively to protect his face. But then something happened that
at first Eve could not begin to explain. The Hydra’s attack was stopped.

No,
she thought, watching carefully,
not stopped,
slowed down.
As though in the space around the demon boy and the Hydra,
time itself had become disoriented.

"Amazing," she said, ignoring the grinding of
broken ribs in her side, and getting up from the ground. Conan Doyle and
Ceridwen strode side by side toward the monster, their hands extended, trails
of sizzling magical force leaking from the tips of their fingers. Their faces
were etched with strain and focus.

"Eve, if you wouldn’t mind, this is far from easy,"
Conan Doyle said, a slight tremble in his voice. "Kill it."

"Haven’t you been paying attention?" she asked. "That’s
what Danny and I have been trying to do, no help from you."

Conan Doyle grimaced, turning his gaze briefly to a broken
tree limb on the ground. "The branch," he began. Fat beads of sweat
had begun to collect on his brow from the strain of the spell that had slowed
time. "Use it to pierce the Hydra’s heart. Much like yourself, it’s the
only way the monster can be . . ."

His voice trailed off, but she had the information she
needed. Eve raced to grab the branch, then ran at the monstrosity that still
towered over the boy. Whatever magic they had used, it only affected those who
were in the vicinity when it was cast. But the Hydra and Danny would not be
slowed like this for long.

"This is going to hurt you a lot more than it does me,"
Eve said as she placed her hand against the charred scales of the monster’s
breast, feeling for the pulse of its heart.

Eve found what she was looking for. With all the unnatural
strength she could muster, the vampire plunged the jagged end of the makeshift
spear through the creature’s chest and into its heart.

She found the act strangely liberating.

The Hydra shrieked in agony out of all of its mouths, a
chorus of anguish so profound that Eve was almost moved to pity.

Almost.

When it crashed to the ground, throwing up volcanic ash in
clouds that spread in concentric circles around it, she strode over to the
monster and kicked it. "It wasn’t ever gonna be me in the dust, ugly. Not
today."

Ash clouded the sun above the petrified forest. The breeze
blowing across the island of Lesbos would soon clear away what had not already
clung to the skeletal trees or blanketed the ground. In the moments following
the death of the Hydra, Conan Doyle concerned himself with the well-being of
his associates. All of them were injured, yet Danny and Eve healed quickly.

"Let me have a look," he said to Ceridwen.

She had sustained several long gashes on her right side. But
even as he tried to see to her wounds he could feel a wave of cold emanating
from her hands where she touched her scored flesh. Ice formed on her skin.

"I’ll be fine," she said, curtly at first, and
then she caught herself and her features became gentler. "Truly. I will be
fine. See to the others. Or better yet, see to Gull. He and his friends weren’t
very much help, were they?"

Conan Doyle smiled bitterly. "Did you expect them to
be?"

"Son of a bitch!" Danny snarled.

Through the drifting, settling ash, Conan Doyle saw the
demon boy striding toward him with Eve at his side. Sunlight shone down in
patches but the bit of magick Gull had taught Eve to protect herself was
holding up for the moment. At least that had not been false.

"What is it?" Ceridwen asked, moving toward them
in concern, wincing at the pain in her side.

Conan Doyle did not have to ask, but he awaited the answer
to the question in any case. Eve spun around, her arms wide, taking in the
entire dead, petrified landscape around them.

"They’re gone!" she said.

"Bastards!" Danny added for punctuation.

Eve laughed humorlessly. "Can you believe these guys? Drag
us all the way out here to get answers and instead we get to fight the Hydra! And
now they’re gone! Took off while we were trying to stay alive. We have been so
completely punked."

Conan Doyle did not know the term, but its meaning was
clear. He only nodded. Rather than respond he set off toward the place he had
last seen Gull, Hawkins, and Jezebel.

"Arthur?" Ceridwen called.

Lost in concentration, he barely heard her. He had an idea but
wanted confirmation. The ash continued to settle, drifting, and he wiped it
from his eyes as he circumnavigated the corpse of the Hydra. He would have to
see to it before they left, some spell to disintegrate it, perhaps, so that it
was only more ash in the petrified forest. Certainly he had no intention of
reburying it.

Beyond the monster’s corpse he strode a hundred yards
farther to a place where the dead trees formed a kind of natural circle. Or,
rather, it appeared natural. Conan Doyle knew better. In the rough center of
that circle was a hole in the ground. Ash coated the earth but Conan Doyle fell
to his knees there and plunged his hands into the hole, sifting ash and digging
a bit deeper.

He drew out a human skull.

Ceridwen, Eve, and Danny had followed him at a distance,
observing. Now the demon boy swore aloud once more.

"So this is the grave of that dude? Forceps, or
whatever?"

Conan Doyle held the skull up. "This is human. Ancient,
but human. The father of the Gorgons was not human."

"Then whose grave is this?" Eve asked. "What
the hell was Gull up to here?"

He raised his eyebrows and stood, tossing the skull back
into the ash. "I should think that much would be obvious, my dear. Some
time in the past . . . perhaps as early as the very beginning of the Third Age
of Man . . . the Hydra was buried here to guard this grave, to destroy anyone
who came in search of it. My old friend Mr. Gull availed himself of our
services as bodyguards. He simply did so without informing us."

"Bodyguards?" Eve snarled. "More like bait."

"As you wish," Conan Doyle acknowledged. His
attention was still not fully on the conversation. He scanned the ground,
eyeing the fresh ash as he began to walk away from the grave. Silently he
counted paces in his mind, paused to glance deeper into the petrified forest,
then crouched and plucked from the ground an object that at first appeared to
be just a stone beneath the ash.

"No offense, Mr. Doyle, but you don’t seem nearly as
pissed off about this as I’d like you to be," Danny said. "I mean,
what now?"

Ceridwen sketched a symbol in the air, and a gust of wind
scoured the stone in Doyle’s hand clean of ash. Beneath it was a familiar box
whose sides were etched with sigils as old as human civilization.

Conan Doyle turned his face up to the sky. Now that the ash
had cleared he enjoyed the warmth of the sun. The back of his neck was sticky
with sweat, however, and that he could not abide. He longed for a luxury hotel
room with a decent shower.

"He’s not as upset as you are, Danny," Ceridwen
said in her lilting Fey voice, "because he knew this was going to happen."

Eve snickered darkly. "Of course you did. Of course you
did! Fuck!"

Danny shook his head. "I don’t get it. If you knew, why
did we even come?"

Conan Doyle frowned and spun on his heel to stare at the boy
in consternation. "Daniel, I’m disappointed. How else was I to discover
what Gull had in mind? Now, at least, we know where to begin."

"We do?" Danny replied, throwing up his hands. "Maybe
you do, but I’m totally lost."

Eve put a hand on his shoulder, smiling now, her own anger
and the last of her bloodlust leaving her. "Doyle’s never lost."

"Well," Conan Doyle said, allowing himself a small
swell of pride. "Never is awfully strong. Rarely, then. I’ll accept that
much." He cradled the Divination Box in one hand, and with the other he
reached out and let his fingers brush Ceridwen’s hand. When she allowed his
touch to linger he felt a wave of satisfaction. Though his concentration had
been elsewhere, part of his mind had been with her. He glanced at her, and she
nodded, her eyes gentle.

"Go on," she urged. "I’m curious."

Conan Doyle glanced deeper into the petrified forest. "Well,
to begin, they had another vehicle waiting for them not far from here, well
aware that they would be leaving us behind and that they would unlikely be able
to reach the Range Rover."

"Okay, but what about the grave?" Danny urged.

"Do you know the story of Orpheus?"

The demon boy nodded. "I think so. Something about
saving his girlfriend from Hell- Mom used to watch Xena."

"Hades," Eve said quietly. She kept glancing at
the open grave as though its nearness disturbed her.

"Hades. Whatever. Greek Hell," Danny muttered. "Okay,
go on."

Conan Doyle turned to Ceridwen. She was unlikely to know any
of what he was about to explain, and it seemed most important to him that she
understand what was happening.

"Orpheus was the son of Calliope and Oeagrus. Some of
the myths say his father was Apollo, but no matter. He was the greatest
musician written about in the Greek mythology. His voice could soothe wild
animals and lure the trees to dance. He appears in the story of Jason and the
Argonauts, but that is not the greatest myth of Orpheus. For his story is
intrinsically tied to love.

"His wife, Eurydice, died of a serpent’s bite, and
Orpheus was so stricken with grief that he would not accept her death. He
descended into the underworld and sang to Hades himself, his songs so beautiful
that the lord of that terrible realm agreed to allow Eurydice her freedom. But
not without condition. Hades instructed Orpheus that Eurydice must follow him
to the surface and that he must not look back. But the agony of being unable to
see her, to know for certain that Hades had kept his word, was too much for
Orpheus, and at the last moment he did turn, and Eurydice was drawn down into
Hades’ realm once more.

"Orpheus grieved for the rest of his days, and his
songs of mourning made the heavens weep. Yet his luck did not improve. The
Maenads were female followers of Dionysus, women who would dance in praise of
their god and become so frenzied that they would lose control of themselves. When
Orpheus refused to admire them, to lust for them, because grief still clouded
his heart, they attacked him and tore him to pieces."

Danny visibly flinched. "Damn, I don’t remember that
part being on Xena."

"Nice," Eve whispered.

Ceridwen only frowned, troubled, and said nothing.