Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (39 page)

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!"