Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (47 page)

The roars of rage and cries of anguish from the open doors
echoed out across the water. The ground even here shook and loose stones
tumbled down into the sea. Then, with a crash, the sound was cut off. The
shaking of the earth subsided.

Conan Doyle spun to see Sweetblood hovering in front of the
cliff face, the Forge of Hephaestus floating in the air behind him. The doors
had been slammed closed. The arch mage had a single finger out and the fire
that poured from his body was sealing the gates, leaving only molten rock where
any entrance might have been.

But once more his attention was torn away from the crisis at
hand. Ceridwen fell to her knees in the water, waves washing around her, and
began to vomit. Black bile spilled from her mouth and dripped from her nose. Purple
tears slid from her eyes.

"Ceridwen," Doyle whispered, and he dropped to his
knees in the water beside her. "Are you all right?"

A foolish question, but it meant something else, of course. Not
was she all right, but was she going to be. Ceridwen nodded, trying to catch
her breath, marble complexion somehow even more pale, if that were possible. She
bucked and vomited again, hyperventilating between heaves. Her hands slipped
out from under her and she dunked face-first into the water, but the black,
unearthly stuff she had thrown up had already dissipated in the water.

When Conan Doyle drew her up from the sea, the waves still
washing over her, there was a kind of relief in her eyes and now at last he
realized what had been different about her complexion. Blue veins ran beneath
her skin, lightly visible beneath the whiteness of her flesh. They had been
more numerous and darker when she had first emerged from the Underworld.

"Is she all right?"

Conan Doyle flinched as he heard Eve’s voice. He glanced up
and saw the concern on her face, and he nodded. "I think so, yes."

Eve smiled, the expression cracking the still burned flesh,
and she sat down in the water herself. Some of the charred skin was flaking off
to reveal new, pink skin beneath, already healing.

Strands of seaweed had begun to wrap themselves around
Ceridwen’s arms and legs, but they were not attacking her. The sea was
caressing her. Nature was welcoming her back. This was not her home, not the
way that Faerie was, but this place her people called the Blight was far more
natural to her, its elements far more familiar. She could speak to them, rely
on them, and they on her.

When he looked once more upon Ceridwen’s face, she was
smiling.

"Uh, Mr. Doyle?" Danny called from the rocky
shore.

Conan Doyle turned and looked at him. The demon boy stood
with Nigel Gull, who seemed to have almost recovered from his injuries. Recovered
his dignity at least. He stood with his arms crossed, as though he were
impatient for them to conclude their business. It took Conan Doyle a moment to
realize why it seemed as though something was missing from the scene.

The cliff behind them was just a cliff, now. Stone. Nothing
more. The ground had ceased all shaking.

But Sweetblood was gone.

"I didn’t even see him go," Danny offered,
shrugging in apology.

Conan Doyle threw his arms up. "Gone. Of course he is. Slip
in, use the lot of us as his bloody chessmen, and then disappear before the
dust can clear, no regrets, no recriminations.
Bastard
."

He was stoking the fire of his rage, preparing for a proper
rant, when Ceridwen reached up from the water and took his hand. Conan Doyle
glanced down at her and saw that she was smiling fondly at him. His brow
creased in a frown and he turned to Eve, who had waded out a short way into the
sea so that now only her head was above water. Charred flesh drifted around
her, washed away by the surf.

Eve cocked her head to one side. "We survived. He
played us, yeah. But we made it out of there. Shit like this, well, let’s just
say whenever the ennui of being immortal starts to get to me, it’s good therapy
to have to fight for your life."

Conan Doyle pushed his fingers through his hair and then flattened
his mustache. He smoothed his jacket, trying to bring some order back to his
immediate surroundings. When he spoke, he let his gaze drift to Nigel Gull, who
was wiping drying blood from his face with his untucked shirttail. Gull had
seemed defeated, deflated, before they escaped. Now he stood as tall as ever, a
dark gleam in his eyes and a sneer set into that ugly face.

"We survived, yes," Conan Doyle confirmed, glaring
at Gull. "But I wonder if we would have been so fortunate if Sweetblood
did not think there might come a day when we might be useful to him again."

Gull snorted laughter, a fresh trickle of blood spilling
from his left nostril. "Come on, old boy, do you really believe Lorenzo
ever actually needs anyone."

Danny spun and marched toward Gull, then poked him in the
chest. "I’m so sick of you, dude. Talk to Mr. Doyle like that again and —"

Black light crackled in Gull’s eyes and that bruise-purple
energy began to coalesce around his fingers as he made a fist. "Don’t
press your luck, boy. You caught me unaware before. I’m quite alert at the
moment, I promise you."

The changeling laughed. "What are you going to do to
me? Burn me? Kill me? I’m not afraid to die, I’m afraid to —"

He left off there, quite abruptly, and Conan Doyle frowned
as he finished the sentence in his own mind.
I’m not afraid to die, I’m
afraid to live.
It would be good to get Danny home, and soon. The boy had
been through a great deal. He needed his mother’s comfort, and the counsel of a
soul more tender than Conan Doyle. Dr. Graves had formed a bond with Danny. After
this adventure, that would surely be put to the test.

Ceridwen rose from the water. She still looked a bit wan,
but a certain peace had returned to her countenance. The way her cloak and
tunic clung to her made Arthur’s breath catch in his throat. All of his
righteous ire evaporated in that instant and suddenly he was as grateful to be
alive as Eve was. They had survived.

He reached for her and, despite the presence of the others,
held her close. Ceridwen smiled as their lips brushed together and then he
pressed his cheek against hers, knowing his stubble was rough on her skin,
remembering that she had always liked that.

Survived
.

"Well, it’s been lovely, but I’m afraid I must be
going," Gull announced.

Conan Doyle turned toward him, still holding Ceridwen. Eve
was floating blissfully in the water and barely acknowledged him, but Danny
gaped in astonishment and looked to Conan Doyle for support.

"Come on!" the boy said. "This guy totally
played us. You’re not going to just let him walk away?"

Gull raised an eyebrow. "Isn’t he? We go back a ways,
boy. And Sir Arthur was never the sort to slay a man in cold blood. It’s one of
the obvious distinctions between the two of us."

For just a moment longer, Conan Doyle held on to Ceridwen,
gaining strength from her touch and her nearness. Then he pulled away from her
and strode out of the surf up onto the narrow, rocky shore. Gull cocked his
head and watched him curiously. There was no sign of fear in the man’s
countenance, but Conan Doyle had known him long enough to see a bit of
trepidation in his eyes. Only once before had they tested their skills against
each other in dire combat. The truth was, rested and ready, Gull might have had
more raw power. He certainly had dark sorcery at his disposal that Conan Doyle
did not. But like any other conflict, a magickal duel was equal parts strength
and cunning, and despite his conniving ways, Arthur felt sure that he could
best Gull if it came to that.

But he had no intention of dueling.

Still . . .

Conan Doyle stepped into the swing, slamming his fist into
Gull’s face with enough force that the other man staggered backward. One of his
knuckles popped. He kept after Gull, driving a left into his abdomen, then a
right, and even as the twisted mage tried to block, magick crackling around
him, Conan Doyle struck him one, final time with a blow to the chin that
knocked him off of his feet. Gull fell onto a ridge of rocks and rolled over
once, crying out with the impact.

Fuming, magick roiling around his hands and steaming from
his eyes, his mouth pulled into a sneer that distorted his misshapen head even
further, Gull pulled himself painfully from the ground, climbing to his feet.

Conan Doyle stepped up onto the rocks to glare down at Gull.
"I am not the man you once knew. I
could
kill you, Nigel. Don’t
imagine I’d feel any compunction about that. I have the will, and the capacity.
But I have been considering your sins ever since I discovered your intent. Others
have done far worse for love. No matter how misguided, no matter what you
nearly cost my friends, and me . . . I am inclined to accept that we have all
been equally manipulated. You were as much a pawn as the rest of us were. For
that alone, I will not prevent you from leaving. But after what you’ve done,
what you risked, and the callous way in which you threw away the lives of your
own associates . . . I could not allow you to depart without expressing my
displeasure."

Gull strode several yards nearer to the cliff face, his back
to Conan Doyle. He reached into his jacket and withdrew the vial of blood he
had received from the Erinyes, the tears of the Furies. After examining it to
make sure it was still intact, he glanced back at Conan Doyle, nostrils
flaring.

"I shall not forget that indignity."

"Nor should you," Conan Doyle warned. "Nor
should you."

Eve at last surfaced and emerged from the sea, water
spilling off of her ruined clothes. Whatever designer had fashioned them would
have wept to see the way she wore them now. She strode up beside Conan Doyle
and Ceridwen joined him on the other side. Danny crouched on a nearby rock,
more at rest in that position now, it seemed, than standing upright.

All four of them stared at Gull silently for a moment.

"Are you going to tell him now?" Eve asked.

Gull bristled. "Tell me what?"

Conan Doyle nodded once and let out a long breath. The
magick Gull had been mustering had begun to dissipate. The time for war was
over, for now.

"When the first of Medusa’s victims turned up in
Athens, I sent agents to investigate."

The realization of what that might mean was instantaneous. Gull’s
eyes widened and he glanced about as though he might find some solution upon
the rocks. Then his gaze hardened again and he glared at Conan Doyle and his
companions.

"If she has been harmed —"

Conan Doyle raised an eyebrow. "She’s killed who knows
how many by now. I can almost assure you that if they’ve caught up to her, she
has been harmed. You may have put us all through this for nothing, in the end. A
bid to cure a monster. Yet you if anyone should know that it is not the face
that makes a monster, but the heart.

"Still, we shall see."

The morning sun had long since stretched across the water
and the shore. Conan Doyle left all of them standing on the rocks and walked up
toward the cliff. An outcropping of rock jutted from the craggy face of the
peninsula, and he stepped into the cool shadow it cast.

"Squire," he whispered into the shade. "Hear
me."

On the marble stage of the ancient theatre in the shadow of
Sparta’s acropolis, Clay let out a bellow that frightened birds from the trees
of the nearby woods. The shapeshifter had taken the form of a mountain gorilla,
and he felt the weight and the grim menace of the animal in his heart and soul.
If he had a soul. Somehow he doubted that in the midst of fashioning his
creations out of the Clay of Life, the Lord had seen fit to provide one for
him. He was a tool, after all, not a being.

Yet if he had no soul, how else to explain the horror he
felt so deeply within him at the horrors Medusa had perpetrated. He thought of
the hundreds who had been murdered just in the last twenty-four hours, and it
kindled a need for vengeance in him. Life was a gift. Clay had taken lives, but
he had spent far more time punishing those who had stolen that gift from
others, making up for what he had done, and attempting to bring some justice to
the world.

No, not for the world. Just for people. For the dead.

He thought about the children and spouses of the dead, the
parents who would not even have a corpse to bury but instead a statue. Stone. And
never an explanation for how such an atrocity could occur.

"She’s trying to free herself!" Dr. Graves
shouted.

The ghost darted through the air, morning light shining
through him, and fired his phantom guns at the Gorgon as she struggled against
the net Squire had thrown over her. The bullets made her jerk and twitch and
bleed black, but they would not kill her.

Squire kicked her again.

But they weren’t here to torture her. They were here to
end
her. And end the threat she represented.

With the lumbering gait of the mountain gorilla, Clay moved
in. His form was so enormous that it cast a massive shadow across the ground,
the darkness sweeping over Squire as he passed the hobgoblin. The shapeshifter
reached down with his enormous hands and grabbed up fistfuls of net, drawing
the sides together.

Medusa thrashed, attempting to tear herself free. One of her
arms slipped loose and Clay grabbed it, snapping the bones in her forearm. He
drew her into an embrace. She whipped her head around, eyes scarlet and
gleaming with hatred as she tried to turn him to stone. Clay had solved that
problem before by constantly shifting his flesh and bone, never holding the
same shape so she could not work her curse upon him again. Now he closed his
eyes even as his body began to stiffen, and his every molecule fought the
effects of her influence.