Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (40 page)

Eve shook off his spell and landed on the pulsing ground
several feet from her prey, fangs bared, her mouth and chin stained with gore. There
was murder in her eyes, and Conan Doyle summoned a spell of defense in his
thoughts, just in case.

"We’re going now, Eve."

At first he wasn’t sure if she even understood his words,
but then he saw a glimmer of humanity return to her eyes.

"What a fucking rush," Eve whispered, burying her
face in her hands. "Never fed on the blood of a deity before." She
looked up at Conan Doyle, her eyes wide and radiant with a strange inner light.
Then she smiled and wiped the drying blood from her mouth with the back of her
hand.

"Potent.
Way
potent."

"I can only imagine," Conan Doyle responded, but
before he could say anything more the voice of Nigel Gull interrupted.

"Look what she’s done!" he screamed, and Conan
Doyle turned to see the twisted little mage pacing around the fleshy chamber as
it undulated and pulsed. "You’ve ruined everything!"

Hawkins swore at Gull, trying to lead him to one of the
hollow blood vessels that would take them out of there. Jezebel was once more
standing on her own, but she was a pitiful waif, stumbling after him, silently
pleading.

Eve started toward Gull, but Conan Doyle grabbed her arm. Her
bloodlust was sated and the violence was gone from her eyes. "Survival is
our only concern at the moment," he said.

With one last, longing look at Gull, she nodded. "Let’s
go."

Ceridwen lifted a glowing hand to illuminate their path. "This
way," she said.

All four of them paused as the surviving Erinyes moved to
block their path.

"You will go nowhere
," Alekto and Megaera
moaned in unison.

Hawkins had fallen in behind them, with Gull leading a
muttering Jezebel by the hand.

"Oh, this is just lovely," Hawkins muttered.

"What do we do?" Danny asked.

Conan Doyle held Ceridwen’s hand tightly, preparing to
destroy the Furies. But then Gull’s bitter laughter filled the chamber.

"Oh, dear Arthur, you’ve bollixed it all up for me now,
haven’t you, mate? So simple, it was. A bargain, nothing more. And you had to
interfere. You couldn’t just do your part."

As he raved, Conan Doyle turned to see what had set him off.
There they were, the seven of them — intruders all — in the midst
of Hades’ pulsing, stinking heart. But beyond Hawkins and Jezebel, beyond the
cursing, twisted shape of Nigel Gull, there were other figures. And now he saw
what had prompted the dark mage’s new tirade.

Gull’s eyes narrowed with hatred and his nostrils widened,
snorting like a stallion’s. "If your damned nobility keeps me from Medusa,
I’ll have your heart, you bastard. I’ll have your heart."

But no one was listening to Gull anymore. On one side they
were blocked by the surviving Furies. And now other creatures entered Hades’
heart through pulsing arteries, gaunt, skeletal beings adorned in fabulous
armor stained black by the passage of millennia. Conan Doyle had seen these
creatures before, scattered about within the corpse of Hades, but in a far less
animated state. Something had awakened the lesser gods and goddesses of ancient
Greece.

"Another time, Nigel," he rasped.

"What the fuck is going on now?" Eve snarled.

Ceridwen’s violet eyes flashed with light. "At a guess?
You slaughtered a myth, my friend. You spilled the blood of the Erinyes, and it
has set Hades’ heart to beating again . . . and roused the dead gods who had
made this place their tomb."

"Zombie gods," Danny said with a shake of his
head. "Well, shit, it was only a matter of time."

Their numbers continuing to grow, the dead gods shambled
closer. Many brandished ancient weaponry: swords, spears, battle-axes, and
knives.

Resigned to whatever came next, Conan Doyle smiled sidelong
at Eve. "This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into."

She grunted. Not quite a laugh, but it would do. "Wasn’t
something I planned."

Gull pushed Conan Doyle out of the way, sputtering angrily
at Eve. "You murdered one of the Furies! What did you expect?"

Eve stared at the creatures coming toward them and cocked
her head to one side. It reminded Conan Doyle of a dog he’d owned in his youth,
and how it would often tilt its head upon hearing something that he himself
could not.

"No," Eve replied, shaking her head. "They’re
not attacking because of what I did, they’re attacking because they’re afraid."

"Afraid?" Gull exclaimed. "What in the name
of bloody Christ could the resurrected gods be . . ."

"They’re afraid that we’ll take the treasure hidden
outside this chamber. Afraid that we’ll steal the treasure of Olympus."

Conan Doyle looked at her quizzically, his hand slowly
rising to stroke his mustache. The dead gods moved closer and he listened to
their mournful groans.

"I drank the blood of a deity, boys," Eve said. "I
know all kinds of shit about this place now."

"The treasure of Olympus," Conan Doyle repeated,
as he dropped his hands to his sides, allowing the magick through him. "How
interesting. Who knows what wondrous things can be found here?"

"Oh, yeah, fantastic," Eve drawled, glancing back
and forth between Alekto and Megaera on one side and the resurrected
god-corpses on the other. "Lot of good it’ll do us. I’ll settle for not
dying, thanks."

Eve hissed at Alekto. The Fury cracked her whip almost as
though she was trying to herd them toward the dead gods. Eve caught it in her
hand, the barbs ripping her flesh even as she yanked it from Alekto’s hand. The
Fury snarled at her and the two began to face off against one another.

"You’d better have something up your sleeve, Doyle,"
the vampire snarled. "We can kill these bitches, but we’d need a small
army to fight the undead of Olympus."

Conan Doyle slowly reached into his pocket, searching for
something he had nearly forgotten. "A small army you say." He pulled
his hand from his pocket to reveal the teeth. The Hydra’s teeth.

"I believe I have just the thing."

The ancients attacked as one, a single wave of shambling
necrotic flesh, archaic weaponry and furious cries of indignation. The two
surviving Furies urged the legion of reanimated corpses to slay the usurpers
— to make them permanent residents of this hellish realm.

Eve was the first into the fray, lunging into the dead
warriors and tearing at them. She punched a fist through the chest of the first
to come near her and tore off the head of a second. Through shared desperation,
Ceridwen and Gull joined forces, conjuring a cloud of crackling energy hungry
for the desiccated flesh of the dead. Inspired by Eve’s wanton violence, Danny
Ferrick threw himself into the fray, many a decomposing god falling before his
savagery. Hawkins proved himself deadly in hand-to-hand combat, shattering
bones and crushing skulls with nothing but his hands. The girl, Jezebel, seemed
to come truly awake and alive when at last the nightmare was about to swallow them.
Her childlike qualities evaporated and only the weather witch remained. Lightning
crackled within Hades’ heart, shattering gods and burning what remained of
them.

All of it was merely to buy Conan Doyle time to bring his
plan to fruition.

He knelt and dug his fingers into the ground, tearing away
gobs of bleeding muscle. One by one he pressed the Hydra’s long, sharp teeth
into the flesh of the Lord of the Underworld’s heart. The legend called for
them to be planted in the earth, but in this place, here was the soil, here was
the ground. With a prayer to gods long passed from this plane of existence, he
stood back from his chore.

"What have you done, sorcerer?"
Megaera
screeched, dropping down upon him like a hungry bird of prey. She landed on his
back, her claw about his throat.

Conan Doyle surged up from his crouch, spinning around in
hopes of dislodging the loathsome creature from her perch. The Erinys held
tight, her powerful legs locked around his waist as the grip on his neck
continued to tighten. He heard the agitated hiss of the snakes that lived in
her hair.

He spun to see the battle in the chamber and his hopes sank.
The number of resurrected gods was growing, the corpses streaming into the
chamber in endless numbers. His compatriots had to be growing tired, their
sorceries and brute strength starting to wane.

"I feel your despair and sup upon it with glee,"
the Fury cackled in his ear as her grip upon his throat tightened even further.
"Surrender yourself to me — do not delay the inevitable. For what
you and your companions have done, your suffering will last for eternity."

Doyle felt his legs begin to weaken.
It cannot end this
way
. A crude spell of conflagration leaped to the forefront of his thoughts
and he brought it forward, feeling white-hot fire begin to swirl and grow in
the palm of his hand.

"
Surrender
," the Fury hissed as he dropped
to his knees, borne down by her weight.

Conan Doyle reached up behind him and placed the ball of
fire into the creature’s matted locks. "Never," he wheezed, hearing
the whooshing sound of dry, ancient hair igniting and feeling the hold on his
neck lessen.

The Erinys screamed, beating at her blazing head. Serpents,
their bodies afire and smoldering, leaped from their burning nest to land on
the ground, startling Conan Doyle with their number. He was preparing another
spell, something that would reduce the foul beast to ashes, when, from within
her robes, she produced her whip, and with blinding speed, cracked the lash.

The barbed, leathery tendril wound around his
still-constricted throat, closing his breathing passage off entirely. Images of
the wrongs he had committed during his long life flooded his mind.

"So much to be punished for,"
the Fury
said, her burned and blackened visage grinning at him down the length of the
whip.

She yanked Conan Doyle viciously forward, and he again
stumbled to his knees. Sins of the past clouded his mind, making it difficult
for him to concentrate. He grabbed hold of the barbed length of whip, using the
pain in his bleeding hands to clear his addled brain. She was dragging him
toward her, the sounds of battle in the background accompaniment to his
struggle, inspiring him to fight on.

"
Come to me, sinner
," she hissed hungrily.

There were snakes all around her feet, but he noticed something
else. In the area where he had planted the Hydra’s teeth, the fleshy earth was
moving, startling the snakes and making them slither away. A geyser of blood
squirted upward and from Hades’ very flesh there grew a soldier, brandishing a
sword that looked to be forged from jagged bone.

Megaera spun to face her new foe, its body glistening with
the blood that now pumped through the heart of Hades. She cried out for help
from Alekto, and from the gods that had been called forth. But it was too late.
The Hydra soldier brought his jagged blade of bone down through the thick
muscle of her neck, sending her head spinning through the air before dropping
to the floor.

Conan Doyle pulled the whip from around his neck, watching
as more of the gore-covered soldiers climbed up from the fleshy earth. One
soldier for every tooth, he observed, watching as they helped one another
emerge from their birthing place. Before long they stood before him, fifty
blood-drenched representations of man, their features unformed, mere holes for
eyes and slits for mouths. They clutched their weapons of bone, waiting for the
one who called them to life to proclaim his wishes.

"Fight," Conan Doyle cried, pointing to the battle
being waged across the chamber. "Destroy these forgotten gods!"

The soldiers of the Hydra’s teeth surged obediently forward,
an unsettling, inhuman cry of war escaping their unformed lips.

Gull cut a swath of death through the resurrected gods,
destructive magick spewing from one malformed hand, the gun that he had used to
slay Charon firing from the other. And still they came at him, these once
fabulous beings that had looked upon man from Olympus, manipulating the young
race for their own amusement.

An emaciated, eight-foot-tall creature covered in silvery
scales surged toward Gull, wielding a trident of gold.
One of the offspring
of Poseidon
, he thought.
How sad that beings once so revered have come
to this.
Gull fired a single shot into the god’s bearded face and the flesh
and bone and stringy hair collapsed inward and blew out the back of his head.

In the moment he had bought himself, Gull checked his inside
coat pocket for his prize, the treasure whose acquisition had caused all of
this insanity. The blood of the Furies was still there, still safe. He had to
leave this place soon. His goddess, his love, awaited the cure for her
affliction. Medusa would finally understand that his love for her knew no
bounds.

Another god, this one clad in the skins of animals,
attempted to decapitate him with an enormous club, but Gull would not oblige
him. The club-wielding god died squealing, an entropy spell swirling about his
once mighty form, consuming what remained of his flesh.

Everywhere the sorcerer looked there was ferocious battle,
and the dead continued to stream into the chamber. From the teeth of the Hydra,
Conan Doyle had managed to conjure the assistance of a small army, and it
seemed that the blood-slick soldiers had managed to buy them all some time. But
Gull knew the dead would soon overwhelm them again.

He would have none of that.

Again, he patted his breast pocket, feeling the glass vial
safely nestled there, and decided that now was the time to take his leave. He
felt a momentary pang of guilt for deserting those who had begrudgingly become
his allies, but there was too much at stake for him.