Tears of the Furies

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Underworld was vast. And yet for all its size it seemed stifling and small, claustrophobic, and crowded.

Yeah, Danny Ferrick thought as he stared up at the one-eyed giant, the Cyclopes, that leered hungrily down at him and his companions. Crowded’s exactly the fucking word.

They had climbed over the ruins of ancient temples and trekked beneath the gaze of sentinel statuary. Fires burned in the walls. Every new tunnel, every change in the landscape, seemed to push them into the midst of another threat, into the lair of another monster. Then Gull shows up and it’s like this was what the ugly bastard had intended all along, that he wanted them to follow, that he needed Eve and had planned to take her. And he’d just done it, right under their goddamned noses, and there wasn’t a thing they could do about it.

Danny was sick of it. The whole time down here he’d been wishing for a minute to breathe, for their trail to lead them somewhere there weren’t ancient horrors lying in wait. Now he’d changed his mind. The Cyclopes started to laugh, glaring at him and Ceridwen and Mr. Doyle with that big, damp, bloodshot eye, and Danny was never happier to meet up with something that wanted to kill him.

"Come, my friends — " the Cyclopes began again, its voice like an earth tremor. The single horn that jutted up from its head gleamed in the blue light that misted off of Conan Doyle’s hands.

"We’re not your friends," Danny snarled.

With a grunt the demon boy leaped onto Conan Doyle’s shoulders, then sprang to the top of a stone ridge that had earlier hid the monster from view. He heard the mage shout in protest, but Danny wasn’t worried about hurting Conan Doyle. He wasn’t any ordinary man and could take a bit of shoving around.

His claws dug into the stone and he twisted his upper body, tensed to spring. The Cyclopes blinked its one eye slowly and the expression on its huge, leathery face was one of confusion and then amusement.

"What are you, young one? You have a satyr’s face, but I have never — "

Danny bared his razor teeth in a shout of frustration and rage and he sprang from the stone, powerful legs rocketing him at the giant monster’s face. The beast’s single eye went wide and it tried to turn away. The demon boy shifted his body in mid-air. He had been lunging at the monster’s face but managed now to land on the Cyclopes’ shoulder. Danny tore into the monster’s back with the claws of his left hand, just to anchor himself, and with the right he gripped its throat, beginning to tear the thick hide there.

Ceridwen and Mr. Doyle were shouting but Danny could not hear them. There was a red haze in his mind, a fury he had bottled up. If they were going to survive the Underworld this was the way they were all going to have to fight. Brutally and without hesitation, without reserve.

The Cyclopes roared and reached for him, one massive hand closing on Danny’s head. He felt pressure on his own small horns and then his skull, as the monster began to crush it. Danny shot out his tongue and its sharp tip punctured the skin of the Cyclopes’ palm. It flinched, withdrawing its hand long enough for him to reach out and grab thick handfuls of the thing’s filthy, matted hair. He hauled himself quickly upward and wrapped his arms around the Cyclopes’ horn, his legs around its neck. He felt himself keenly aware of the glistening softness of the monster’s single eye. Silent in his determination, he raised his right hand, flexed his clawed fingers, and swept them down toward the Cyclopes’ eye.

His hand froze.

Danny had just enough time to look at his fingers and see the white fire that blazed across his skin all the way up his arm before he was plucked from the Cyclopes’ back. His entire body went rigid. Danny hissed but could not even open his mouth; he tried to struggle but to no avail. Liquid white fire — cold enough to gnaw his bones — swept over him and he hung there in the air like bait as the Cyclopes turned toward him.

"Please accept our apologies," Conan Doyle said.

The Cyclopes touched its shoulder and throat, holding up its fingers to examine the black blood Danny’s attack had drawn. He glared at the demon boy and Danny had never felt so vulnerable. What are you doing, Conan Doyle? I’m a crunchy granola bar up here, as far as this thing’s concerned.

The one-eyed beast regarded him with a grimace as though it was trying to decide how to cook him. Then, slowly, Danny felt himself moving. Conan Doyle had caught him in a spell, a net of sorcerous fire, and now the mage drew him down to the stone floor of this Underworld cavern. When at last the spell dissipated he looked around to see Conan Doyle taking a step nearer to the Cyclopes. He was about to protest what the old guy had done when he felt Ceridwen’s hand on his shoulder.

Danny glanced up at her and felt all his anger dissipate. Her eyes had that effect. Even weakened, she had that effect on him. The Fey sorceress was ethereally beautiful — his opposite in so many ways — and yet it was not just her beauty that soothed him, but the benevolence that exuded from her.

"What the hell — " he began.

Ceridwen placed a pale finger over his lips and Danny hushed. Confused, but no longer angry, he turned to see what Conan Doyle was up to. The mage had both hands up, blue light still misting from his palms but making no movements the Cyclopes might interpret as hostile.

" — apologies for my young friend," Conan Doyle said, speaking loudly so that the giant might hear him. "This place is new to us and unsettling. We have met only enemies here and have had to defend ourselves many times. I believe he’d come to think there could be no kindness in this place."

The mage glanced back at Ceridwen and Danny. The sorceress kept a firm hand on the demon boy’s shoulder and an unseen wind blew through that ancient ruined world, that endless catacomb, and her linen cloak fluttered against him.

Danny shrugged, glaring back at Conan Doyle. What? he thought defiantly.

When the mage spoke again, he kept his eyes on Danny. "We have to adjust our expectations now that we have met you. We cannot confuse a hospitable invitation with a heinous threat."

Conan Doyle let his gaze linger on Danny a moment longer and the boy saw the mage sigh, chest rising and falling. Then Conan Doyle turned to the Cyclopes again.

"My name is Arthur. My friends are Ceridwen and Daniel. Please forgive us, and accept our thanks for your gracious offer."

Throughout this apology the Cyclopes had touched its throat and shoulder several times. The wounds had stopped bleeding. It did not even seem to be bothered by the cut he had made to its fingers, but Danny was not going to remind the monster either. Its single eye blinked and it had a sour expression twisting up its ugly face.

For a long moment the Cyclopes stared down at Conan Doyle. Its cooking fire crackled a hundred feet behind it, burning brightly, though the dead, black wood seemed to cry out as it surrendered to char and ember.

The monster looked at Danny, who flinched. He might have tried to defend himself but Ceridwen held him fast.

"That was an interesting attack, with your tongue," she whispered.

With Eve he might have made a joke of it. Even with Ceridwen, had he been feeling bold. But as the Cyclopes pushed Conan Doyle gently aside and took two long strides toward him, he could not have thought of a humorous retort if his life depended on it. His throat was dry. He ran his rough, sharp tongue across the backs of his teeth.

The Cyclopes crouched in front of him like a man bending to scold a puppy. The monster extended one long finger with its cracked yellow nail and poked him.

"That hurt," it said. "Don’t do it again."

"I… I won’t." It felt absurd, having this conversation. But it felt dangerous as well.

Then the Cyclopes grinned and nodded. "Good. Are you hungry, little satyr?"

And Danny realized that he was. The smell of meat cooking over the flames had his stomach growling. He glanced over at Conan Doyle, who nodded his encouragement, looking almost sinister in the shadows of this place.

"Um, well, yeah. I could eat."

"Excellent!" the Cyclopes rumbled. "Come!"

He moved back to his fire and picked up a long shaft of wood — a long tree branch to the rest of them but little more than a stick to the monster — and began to cook once more. At the end of the branch was some kind of creature but it was only smoking meat and bone now and Danny could not tell what it had once been. Nor did he want to know.

Ceridwen ushered him forward and the two of them strode up beside Conan Doyle.

"That was a near thing, Daniel," the mage said, brushing fingers across his mustache, unconsciously straightening it. He glanced warily at the Cyclopes.

Danny glanced at Ceridwen, then back to Mr. Doyle. "How did you know he wasn’t going to eat us?"

Conan Doyle stared at him for a moment, then gestured up at the tall rock Danny had leaped from. "He seemed surprised when you attacked him. Mystified by it. Perhaps even a bit hurt. Before that, I confess his invitation to dinner did sound menacing to my ears. Even now, I’m not completely certain of his motives."

"I am," Ceridwen said. They both glanced at her and she shook her head. "There’s no cruelty in him. His kindness is genuine."

Danny wasn’t convinced. Were farmers cruel to the turkeys before Thanksgiving? He didn’t think so. But there was such certainty in the way Ceridwen spoke that he thought her reasoning was from more than just observation, that she had a sense about the Cyclopes.

The one-eyed creature inhaled the aroma of his cooking and grunted appreciatively. "Are you coming, friends?"

"Yes, absolutely. Sorry for the delay." Conan Doyle nodded at them and started toward the Cyclopes’ cooking fire.

Danny stopped him. "Wait, one last thing. How does he know English?"

Conan Doyle frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Ceridwen smiled, her grave features lighting up with fond amusement. "Oh, I see. You were speaking with him and you thought.. no, Danny. He wasn’t speaking English. You were speaking Greek. Very old Greek."

"What? But I — "

"It isn’t only you," Ceridwen told him. "It is happening to us all. When we first entered this place, it was draining me. Cut off from the nature of the world I know, with only the cruel, lifeless elements of the Underworld, I was weak. I’ve begun to regain my strength now, at least a little of it. And just as I adjust, as this place comes to think of us as — "

Danny scoffed. "A place can’t think."

Ceridwen raised an eyebrow. "No? All right. If it’s simpler, consider this. This is a place of magick. A place where the souls of the dead from the entire history of a grand empire came upon their death. Not all of them spoke the same language. Yet they had to understand this place and one another."

He felt sick. "So the Underworld is treating us like we’re dead? Like we’re, what, damned to this place?"

Conan Doyle put a hand on his shoulder. "Something like that."

Danny sighed and gave a small shrug. "I’m not gonna say I like the sound of that, but at least it makes sense. I was afraid it was just me."

"There are things about your nature and your parentage that are only beginning to reveal themselves," Conan Doyle said. "In this case, you’re not the only one affected. But at a guess, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that you could have understood the language here even without the magick present. Demons are ancient. Ancestral memory for you will be different from that of ordinary humans. I’ve no doubt you may discover you speak dozens of languages. Or, perhaps — " and he looked thoughtful as he said this "- all of them."

"Holy shit," Danny whispered.

Conan Doyle smiled. "Yes."

He linked one arm beneath Ceridwen’s as if they were strolling through the park and together they walked toward the Cyclopes’s fire. Danny hesitated only a moment before following.

"That smells wonderful, my enormous friend," Conan Doyle said. "Your hospitality is greatly appreciated."

As they sat on an outcropping of stone near the fire, the Cyclopes grinned at them, obviously pleased with the unexpected pleasure of socialization in this place.

"The pleasure is mine, Arthur."

Ceridwen gazed up at the giant. "It saddens us that we will not be able to stay very long. One of our number has been stolen from us by vile enemies. We know only that our enemies seek the Erinyes, the Furies, and so we must seek them as well."

The Cyclopes’s single eye narrowed and his expression was grim. He nodded heavily and regarded each of them in turn. "I am sorry you cannot stay. This is a bleak place and it is not easy to find friends. I hope that we will meet again. You will eat your fill and be on your way. And while you eat, I will make a map for you, to show you the safest way. The Erinyes are very cruel, though. Not like me.

"They don’t like visitors at all."

Squire missed driving.

The train had left Athens headed due west toward Corinth and there seemed no choice but to pursue it, pausing at each of its scheduled stops in dreadful hope that some catastrophe would have occurred to give them a clue as to Medusa’s actions. How long could she go unnoticed, after all? Whatever part of Dr. Graves’s spirit had tainted her when he had shot her with those bullets, Medusa had managed to extricate it. Perhaps she had pried out the spectral bullets. However she had done it, Graves could no longer track her.

They had to find another way. For now, following the train was the only solution. Their greatest concern was that she might throw herself from the train and disappear into the countryside or some village along the Aegean. There was also the possibility that they might actually overtake the train and manage to be waiting for it when it pulled into Corinth.

But with Clay behind the wheel, that seemed a distant hope. He drove like an old lady. Back home Squire had rigged Conan Doyle’s limo with foot blocks on the brake and accelerator so his short legs could reach. He loved to drive… and he loved to drive fast. It was torture for him to sit in the passenger seat.

They had driven through Megara a while back. Now the road had swung far enough south that the blue-green shimmer of the Aegean was visible, like some ancient paradise beckoning them to abandon the modern world.

"It’s beautiful, isn’t it?" Clay said, glancing out his window.

"Absolutely. So nice that we have time to appreciate the wonders of the Mediterranean. For Christ’s sake, just drive the fucking car! If you stop sightseeing, we might actually catch up to her."

He wanted something fried to eat. Onion rings, yeah, that would be perfect.

Clay gave him a sidelong glance, accelerating to a speed at which the car began to shudder. The shapeshifter grunted in amusement, but he wore a fond smile.

"Don’t take it out on me because you’re too short to drive."

The ghost of Dr. Graves drifted forward from the back seat, moving his head between them and glancing at Squire. "Need I remind you, my friend, that you have the advantage of being solid?"

"Oh, so now we’re trying to top each other’s miseries? Next Captain Quint’s gonna show us his shark bite."

But Graves was right. He liked being solid, and not just because it meant he could drive a car. There were a few other of his favorite things he needed flesh and bone to do. Eating was up there, but it wasn’t number one. Much as he hated to admit it to himself, the ghost had given him some perspective.

Squire glanced at Clay again and grumbled. "Just drive."

The engine whined loudly, as though under the hood was not an ordinary car engine but something swapped out from a Honda motorcycle. Traffic was sparse and for all of Squire’s complaints, Clay was driving fast. The road hummed under the tires.

The hobgoblin reached out and clicked on the radio. He scanned the stations, finding a lot of static and too many voices speaking Greek. At one point he paused on a familiar song, Bruce Springsteen’s "Born to Run," but the reception was for crap, fading in and out, sounding muffled and tinny, and he gave up, cursing.

"Greek radio," he muttered.

"Yeah," Clay agreed. "You don’t get a lot of international pop stars out of Greece."

Squire snorted. "Exactly."

The hobgoblin punched the radio off with a stubby, leathery finger.

"Well, gentlemen," said the ghost in the back seat, "as much as I hate to miss a moment of this scintillating conversation, I think I ought to check on the train’s progress again."

Squire sighed and crossed his arms. "Yeah, well, I don’t see you jumping in with the funny anecdotes, Doc. I need to get one of them Game Boys. Or, hey, either of you guys know Mad-Libs? What I wouldn’t give for a Mad-Libs right now. I’m a riot with those things."

There was silence from the back seat. After a moment Squire frowned and twisted around to glance behind him, expecting to see the familiar features of Dr. Graves. Squire had to hand it to the guy, the 1940s adventurer look really worked for him. Tall, dark, and handsome, all that shit. Only problem was, he was too serious.

He was also gone.

"Son of a bitch," Squire muttered, shooting a glance at Clay behind the wheel. "Now that’s just downright rude. Here I am talking and he just… poof!"

Clay nodded. "Ghosts do that."

"Fucking ghosts."

"Sometimes Leonard just needs to be on his own," Clay added. He reached up a hand and brushed back his brown hair, fingers pushing through the single, odd patch of white. It wasn’t his real hair, or his real face for that matter, just the one he used the most often. Squire was not completely sure Clay had a real face, unless it was the formidable shape he often took in battle, the hairless, dried-earth creature that seemed made of actual clay.

"Still, he could have said something," Squire replied.

Graves had gone to check on the progress of the train eight or ten times already. They had agreed at the outset that he would not try to locate Medusa on the train, or to engage her. Clay could have shapeshifted into a falcon or something even faster on the wing and caught up with the train as well. If Squire knew where he was going along the shadow paths he probably could have found the train — saving them all the trouble of traveling in this crappy car and the uncertainty of their pursuit of the Gorgon — but he’d never been aboard the train, and it was in motion, and it might have taken him ages to find the right shadow. Never mind that he’d have to carry along all of the nets and weapons he’d gathered to catch Medusa. And they had agreed it was wiser if they were together when they located her again.

It soured Squire’s outlook considerably, knowing he was holding them back.

The road curved northward and soon they lost their view of the Aegean. Only then did Squire realize how much he had appreciated it. The sea was the only thing worth looking at from the road. Sure, they had seen little villages sprawled on either side of the highway, but there was not much chance to appreciate them while whipping past them at eighty miles per hour. The isthmus that connected Athens and its surroundings with the Peloponnese was a part of Greece that deserved a more casual approach. Squire would much rather have been meandering through seaside villages, sampling the local cuisine at each stop. At that moment a piece of spinach pie would have gone down very nicely.

But from the highway, and without the gleaming Aegean to remind them of their location, the landscape could have been a hundred other places.

Squire glanced at Clay. He was intent on the road, hands at ten o’clock and two o’clock like the poster boy for auto school. But the shapeshifter’s eyes kept moving, checking the rearview mirror. Every couple of minutes he would lean to one side and try to get a view of the sky out of his window. He wasn’t looking for the ghost of Dr. Graves.

"He can’t fly," Squire told him.

"Who?" Clay asked.

"Who? The guy who’s got you so antsy. The reason none of us had been that talkative. Got you spooked, didn’t he, with his dirt from the Doc’s grave and whatever that thing was he did to you. Not only is he watching out for Medusa, protecting her, but he was expecting us."

For a long moment, Clay said nothing. Squire realized that he must really be a little spooked. That didn’t sit well with the hobgoblin after all. Clay was… he didn’t like to think about what and who Clay was. And if he was nervous -

"Hey, I killed the idiot once," Squire added. "We can do it again."

A car whipped by them on the highway doing nearly a hundred miles an hour, judging by how quickly it passed them. Neither of them bothered to comment. Clay gave Squire a sidelong glance.

"Over time I’ve learned that anybody who comes back to life after you kill them is usually much harder to finish off the second time around."

Squire rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. You’re a font of wisdom. I’m just saying he’s maybe hard to kill, but that doesn’t make him special."

"All right, then tell me about him. Tassarian. How did you kill him the first time?"

The hobgoblin grinned. He leaned back in his seat and put his boots up on the dashboard. "Now that’s a memory I cherish."

They passed a small town to the north of the highway but he could see nothing more than the sides of buildings and cars going by on the roads. It had been twenty years — more — but his recollections were crystal clear.

"Used to be, every couple of years Conan Doyle would send me on a little acquisition trip to buy — or, ah, otherwise get my mitts on — some ancient weapon or other. Some of ‘em he wanted because they had special attributes, enchanted swords, an ensorcelled quiver of arrows, that kind of thing. Others he just had his eye on. Of course the ones he just wanted he wouldn’t have me steal if they were in a museum. But the lion’s share of these beauties are owned by private collectors who didn’t come by them any more honestly than I did."

The car jittered over a section of cracked pavement, hitting a pothole that Clay did not even try to avoid. The shapeshifter glanced at Squire.

"That thing you’re doing right now? It’s called a tangent."

The hobgoblin shot him a gnarled middle finger. "Anyway, Tassarian worked for Nigel Gull. I’d met him a couple of times before that. Gull and Conan Doyle have history, obviously. Can’t stand the sight of each other, but they keep tabs. Run in the same circles, too. So it was inevitable they’d bump into each other now and again. Especially with Conan Doyle looking for Sweetblood.

"Gull and Conan Doyle, they have a lot in common. Gull likes pretty, shiny, sharp things too.

"So I’d been in Europe for about three weeks on what was probably the most successful acquisitions trip I’d made. I had some sweet stuff. Rostini’s Axe. The Helm of Kyth. Hunyadi’s Daggers. This perfect longbow from Germany, inlaid with gold, with a bowstring made of ectoplasm. A blind man with no arms could hit a gnat’s asshole with this thing.

"I’m in Prague in this little flat Conan Doyle rented for me for a month. I’ve got a whole room just laid out with these babies. I’d had a feeling a few times during my running around that somebody’d been keeping an eye on me. But Tassarian knows all that ninja bullshit and I really didn’t twig to him until I walked in on the guy trying to sneak off with an entire armory."

Squire shook his head. "Idiot."

Clay kept his foot on the accelerator. If anything he gave the car a little extra speed as he checked the rearview mirror again. "Okay," he said. "But how did you kill him?"

The hobgoblin laughed, thinking back on it. "Well, death and resurrection must have smartened him up some, ‘cause that time he sure hadn’t done his homework. I’m ugly, but I’m not stupid, and I’m pretty good with weapons. The moron came to steal my cache in the late afternoon. Maybe he got the whole shadow thing wrong, thinking he shouldn’t try it at night. Or maybe he figured I was out for a walk, or asleep. I don’t know.

"What I do know is, that time of day the shadows are nice and long. The sun coming in the windows threw huge distorted shadows off of every chair, bedpost and friggin’ doorknob. I had a couple seconds’ surprise on Tassarian and that was all I needed. I moved in and out of the shadows, kept out of his range, snuck up on him a dozen times. I must have hit him with every goddamn weapon in that room. Even broke the blade off one of Hunyadi’s daggers in the base of his skull. I killed the guy enough to snuff ten other guys. Just kept killing him until he actually laid down and didn’t get up again."

Another mile of road went by in silence before Clay glanced over at him.

"But Tassarian did get up again."

Squire shrugged. His gaze had drifted past Clay and out the driver’s side window, where the Aegean had come back into view. It was distant, but there. He smiled.

"Yep. Guess I’m going to have to kill him some more."

The hobgoblin glanced over to see Clay smile broadly… then the smile disappeared. Clay’s eyes went wide and his arms locked into place on the steering wheel.

"What the hell?" the shapeshifter snarled, even as he jerked the wheel to one side.

Squire turned his eyes back to the road. The ghost of Dr. Graves stood in the center of the highway, one hand on the butt of a phantom gun and the other raised to wave them to a halt.

The tires squealed as Clay cut the wheel too far.

Squire shot a hand out and grabbed the wheel, straightening it out. "Run him down. He’s already a ghost!"

Clay slammed the brakes on and the car slewed to one side as it shuddered to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. A car barreled past them, the driver laying on the horn.

Squire popped his door open and clambered out, scanning the road for Graves. "Where are you, Spooky? I’ll wring your neck! What’re you trying to do, give me a friggin’ coronary?"

The ghost was nowhere in sight. Cursing under his breath, Squire turned and stared expectantly through the windshield at Clay, but the shapeshifter did not get out of the car. After a moment, the hobgoblin went to get back inside, only to find the transparent wisp of Graves’s ghost in his seat. In the interplay of sunlight and the shadowed interior of the car, the specter was nearly invisible.

"I’m sorry if I startled you," Dr. Graves said.

"Sorry!" Squire sputtered. "You couldn’t just have ghosted yourself back into the car like you did before?"

"I needed you to stop," the specter said. "We don’t have a great deal of time."

Clay narrowed his eyes so tightly that his flesh seemed to alter with the expression. "Has Medusa left the train?"

"Oh, I’m almost certain she has. And we’d best hurry if we want to search before the authorities arrive. It’s a matter of minutes, I expect."

Squire’s head hurt. "Search what? You lost me, Doc."

The ghost seemed suddenly more solid, and the expression on his spectral features was bitter. "The wreckage, Squire. The train has derailed."

Dr. Graves pointed to the northeast, where several columns of dark smoke were pluming into the sky. The crash sight was two or three miles away from the highway, but he and Clay had been caught up in conversation and had not even noticed the smoke.

"Damn," the goblin whispered.

Dr. Graves floated right up through the roof of the car and hovered above it. "I think we ought to leave the car here for the moment. We’ll reach the site faster by our own means."

"Agreed," Clay said. He put the car in drive and pulled further onto the shoulder, then locked it up tight.

"Any survivors?" he asked, just before he transformed, his flesh popping and rippling as it diminished. In a handful of moments, Clay was gone and a hawk hopped about the ground in his place.

Dr. Graves floated toward the crash site. "We’ll find out soon enough," said the ghost.

Squire went to the shoulder of the road. Beyond it were only olive trees and open ground, with some power lines in the distance. Clay and Graves flew toward the pluming smoke, just a bird and this blur against the sky that looked more than a little like a jellyfish, distorting the light that passed through it.

"Don’t wait up, guys," the hobgoblin muttered.

He went back to the car, glanced over his shoulder at the power lines, and then dove into the long shadow the vehicle cast on the shoulder of the road.

The darkness swallowed him. His senses spread out through the shadow paths, fingers on Braille, and he began to run. A short time later he emerged from the shadow beneath an electrical tower. He did not step into the sun, but emerging from the darkness he still had to shield his eyes from the brightness of the day. A quick scan of the sky showed him that he was slightly ahead of the hawk and the ghost. Not far from him he saw the railroad tracks. The crash had happened perhaps a mile east. The smoke was thinner, now, wispy.

Like ghosts.

Squire gauged the distance to the crash and slipped back into the shadows. The darkness caressed him as he slipped along the path, feeling the various conduits all around him, touching the shadows intimately. He knew them.

Even so, he almost missed the path he wanted. It was so dark that he did not notice it at first. Then he moved along it and let his instincts feel for the egress.

The hobgoblin slid from the shadows inside the wreckage of the train. The car was turned on its side, windows shattered and metal walls torn like paper. Seats had been ripped from their moorings. Squire breathed through his mouth, prepared for the wretched stench of blood and death.

But all he could smell was smoke and dust.

Confused, he looked around the wreckage. It took a moment for him to realize what he was seeing. There were no bodies. None of flesh and blood, at least.

Medusa had turned the passengers to stone.

The crash had reduced them to rubble.

The River Styx did not crash and churn, no whitewater foamed its banks, yet it ran deeper than imaginable, fast and steady and inexorable in its strength. To attempt to swim its breadth would be foolhardy. Suicidal. And though Nigel Gull knew his soul was likely damned — whatever that really meant — he did not want to discover what would become of his spirit if his body was destroyed here in Hades’ realm. There was the additional complication of Eve. Hawkins carried the vampire over one shoulder. The man was stronger than he looked, but no one was strong enough to swim the Styx carrying one hundred and thirty odd pounds of dead weight.

They had to cross the Styx. And according to both myth and reality, there was only one way to do that.

"This is it, then, huh?" Jezebel asked.

Gull glanced at her. She looked so small, so young to him now, this teenaged girl who had left her whole world behind for him. He wanted to protect her. But there were other things he desired more.

"Yes, Jez. This is the Styx. It only gets worse from here. We’ve been descending all along, but once we cross the river it will not be a simple thing to get back." He fixed her in his gaze. "In truth, we may not come back at all."

A flicker of fear went across her face but it disappeared quickly. "If you’re going, Nigel, then so am I. What are we waiting for?"

Hawkins shifted Eve from one shoulder to the other, spreading out the burden of her weight, and took a step past them, nearer the river’s edge.

"Isn’t it obvious, love? The ferryman. We’re waiting on the ferryman."

Gull nodded. "Charon."

Jezebel glanced past him and she flinched with a sharp intake of breath and pointed out across the water. "That would be him?"

A trickle of dread ran down Nigel Gull’s back and he shivered, even as he turned to gaze out over the river. In his long life the twisted mage had seen extraordinary things, impossible things. Hideous and terrifying things. They were in the Underworld, now and were about to cross into the land of the dead. Yet the sight of that small craft skimming across the top of the river gave him a chill that made him feel very small, as though he were a child again.

This was no nameless demon, no Slavic bogeyman, no trickster spirit. This was Charon, a figure unique in myth. Not a god, not a man. Not a monster or a demon. Simply Charon, who carried the spirits of the dead to a land of endless nothing, a place of waiting, where waiting was the only destiny, and at the end there was only more waiting. Gull had always envisioned this ancient vision of Hell, left over from the Second Age of Man, as an asylum filled with muttering, ghostly madmen, their eyes darting to follow imaginary pests, their bodies rapt with anticipation of something, anything, that might happen next.

But there would never be a next.

Not on the other side of the Styx.

The fabric of human faith had created entirely new Hells, new spirit destinations, in this Third Age of Man. Gull had reasoned that very few crossed the river anymore.

Yet Charon frightened him. That eternal asylum frightened him.

The ceiling of the cavern was so high above it was lost to sight, and though there clearly was no sky there, no sun, still a strange illumination cast a dim gray light upon the river and its banks.

The boat moved swiftly toward shore. Gull felt he could not breathe and both of his companions seemed equally unsettled. Hanging from the prow of the boat was a lantern whose jaundiced light shone upon the surface of that perhaps bottomless river. The current ran swift and deep and yet the narrow launch was uninfluenced by its power. No sway or eddy nudged that vessel from its course.

In the rear of the craft stood a solitary figure in dark robes the color of river silt. If the ferryman had hands, they were lost within those robes and whatever grim countenance might be hidden beneath his voluminous hood, there was only darkness.

So entranced was Gull by the ferryman’s progress that when the prow of the boat lightly touched the riverbank he flinched away as though he had been slapped. Jezebel watched him, gnawing her lower lip and twirling a lock of her hair in her fingers. Hawkins dumped Eve’s inert body on the shore, her arms flopping onto the damp black soil. The vampire’s eyes were wide and unseeing, but a glimpse of her heartened Gull’s resolve. He thought of all the planning that had gone into this excursion.

He thought of Medusa.

Gull brought up a hand and ran the pads of his fingers lightly over the contortions of his face.

He turned toward the ferryman and though a thin tendril of his dread remained, he ignored it.

"Charon, will you carry us?" Gull asked, and the river seemed to swallow his voice.

The ferryman was perhaps twenty feet away. Even this close no trace of a face could be seen beneath his hood. Charon was entirely still — as frozen in place as his craft — master and vessel unmoved by ticking seconds or by the rush of the unfathomable river. It was as though they had ceased to exist for him and Gull watched him for any sign of recognition. Even so, when it came he was startled.

Charon extended his right hand, palm up. The skin was gray, colorless, and as dry as parchment. There seemed on that flesh the seared imprints of a thousand thousand coins, the images on that currency pressed into the ferryman’s very substance.

Gull hesitated.

The ferryman beckoned with his spindly fingers.

They were not dead. Not yet spirits. But apparently he was willing to deliver them to their destination. Perhaps with so few passengers Charon was not as discerning as he might once have been. Or perhaps the laws that governed this realm had withered away, just as the faith in old myths had, all of them losing their power.

"What are you waiting for?" Hawkins whispered.

Gull had never heard him afraid before. He glanced at the Englishman, saw Hawkins lick his lips. The man’s hands were shaking. Gull nodded twice. They were his people, Hawkins and Jezebel. His agents. He had brought them here. He was the catalyst for everything that was happening, everything that would happen.

Jezebel came up beside Gull and slid her hand into his as though seeking protection. There was ice on her fingers. "Don’t you still have the coin?"

"I have it," Gull said.

His throat was dry as he pulled the silver coin from his pocket. It had been struck in Mycenae in 1404 B.C. and bore the face of a ruler whose name had long since been lost to antiquity. Gull strode to the riverbank, hesitated a moment, and then waded in up to his knees. The water dragged at him and he could feel it leeching vitality from him. He felt unsteady on his feet, and not merely from the powerful pull of the current.

He placed the coin in Charon’s hand. The ferryman inclined his head, hood draping low, then that parchment hand disappeared once more within his robes. Charon once more gazed at Gull, or so it appeared, though it was impossible to know for certain when his eyes were lost in shadow.

The ferryman extended his hand again, palm up, thin fingers scratching the air, demanding.

A flame of anger ignited in Nigel Gull’s heart, burning away whatever trepidation remained.

"What is he doing?" Jezebel asked, coming to the river’s edge. "You paid him."

"Good sodding question," Hawkins agreed. He grabbed the still form of Eve by the arm and dragged her across the muddy bank to join Jezebel. "You said you did the research, that that coin would get us all across."

"I did, and it should have," Gull said flatly.

"Wonderful," Hawkins sneered. "Maybe the fuckin’ price went up. Inflation in the Underworld. Have you got some spell that’ll — "

"There isn’t any magick I know that would force a being like this to cooperate," Gull interrupted, glaring at those thin fingers, at the coin scars on that palm. The latest was the imprint of that Mycenaean ruler, whoever he had been.

Jezebel hugged herself and shivered, staring forlornly at the stark figure of the ferryman, holding out that wretched hand expectantly. "What do we do now?"

The ferryman simply waited, ominous and forbidding. Their transaction had begun. There was no way to know what would happen if they did not conclude it, what he might do. An unseen wind rustled Jezebel’s hair and caressed Gull’s contorted features, but the ferryman’s robes did not so much as shudder in the breeze. The river flowed. Charon remained motionless, implacable in his demand.

"Now?" Gull asked.

He reached beneath his coat and withdrew his pistol, a Robbins and Lawrence pepperbox. It was an original, made in 1849, a breech loader that carried five shots.

Gull put the first bullet squarely into the patch of darkness beneath Charon’s hood. The report exploded out across the river and was lost to the vastness of the cavern above. The ferryman’s head snapped back, but Gull kept firing. The second. 31 caliber bullet struck Charon in the chest, as did the third. The fourth struck the ferryman’s shoulder as he collapsed, spilling over the side of the boat.

He never fired the fifth round. Gull waded in to catch the creature — the myth — before he could slip into the water and be swept away. He holstered his weapon and drew out a khanjarli, a curved Indian dagger perfect for his purposes. He wrapped his arm around the ferryman’s head, unwilling now to look at the face hidden beneath that hood, and plunged the dagger into Charon’s throat, cutting flesh and muscle, grinding the blade against bone.

The ferryman’s head tumbled from the hood and splashed into the river.

"Oh, for fuck’s sake," Hawkins said, from up on the riverbank.

Nigel Gull let the body slip into the river. Even as he did so, the current caught the boat and it began to float away. Gull caught the prow, the lantern swinging, throwing that sickly yellow light back and forth. At last he turned to look at his operatives, there on the shore. Both of them watched him wide-eyed, Hawkins still standing over the unconscious Eve, and Jezebel hugging herself even more fiercely than before.

"What do we do now?" he echoed, staring at the girl. "We bloody well improvise."