Tears of the Furies

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was a forest in Hell.

Ceridwen knew that this ancient Underworld was not the equivalent of the Christian hell, that it was a repository for all the dead souls of its age, not merely those considered damned. Yet its subterranean nature was enough to force comparisons to all Arthur had told her of damnation. Caverns and flame, barren landscape… and yet it was not entirely barren.

The Cyclopes had engraved his map on stone. They could not possibly carry it, but Ceridwen had no trouble committing it to memory. Weakened as she was, she was still capable of that much at least. While the caverns continued to slope downward, luring them farther from the surface world, the Cyclopes had suggested a quicker route to the River Styx, though the blackthorn forest. It was treacherous territory, a broad expanse of hard-packed earth from which grew grove after grove of twisted, unnatural trees. Their trunks and branches were thin and ebony black, ridged with dagger-sharp thorns.

Danny led the way through the blackthorns. Ceridwen had been hesitant at first. An elemental sorceress, she had a rapport with nature in Faerie, and had always taken for granted how easily she adapted to the nature of Arthur’s world, the Blight. But here she was cut off. The environment was so unnatural that her innate connection to the world around her was disconnected here and it sapped her strength.

She could not feel the trees. Could not touch or sense them. The blackthorn groves were to her like the ghost of a forest.

This was the path they must take. That knowledge had given her the strength to forge ahead, to ignore her trepidation and move amongst those deadly branches. Danny went first, his skin more durable than hers or Arthur’s, and searched for the easiest passage. He blazed the trail and Ceridwen followed. Arthur brought up the rear in silence, but Ceridwen understood. Ever since they had descended he had been attempting to make sense of this place, to understand what Nigel Gull’s purpose here was. Now that Eve had been taken, he was even more haunted. He prided himself on his powers of perception and observation. They were sorely tested here.

Ceridwen paused a moment and blinked. There were places in the Underworld where it was light enough to see easily, but here there were only shades of gray and sometimes the path among the trees was difficult to spy. She pushed back her linen hood and it coiled around her throat. Where was the boy?

"Danny?" Ceridwen called.

A rustle of snapping thorns and branches came from just ahead of her. Startled, she took a step backward. Her tunic caught on a blackthorn tree and the ocean-blue fabric tore as she tried to pull herself free. Her chest hurt as though a hole had been punched through it, this place where she ought to have felt the air and water and fire of this place, where the trees ought to have whispered to her. She felt empty. Drained.

Yanking herself from the thorns was too great an effort. Ceridwen stumbled sideways and fell to her knees, thorns cutting the marbled white flesh of her arm. She swore, mewling in pain, hating the weakness in that noise.

"Ceri!" Arthur cried.

Then he was beside her, blue mist spilling from his eyes. Though he was being affected by the nature of this place, clearly it was not so debilitating for him. He crouched by her and held her arm, plucking out a thorn that had torn loose of its branch and stuck there. She stared at the wounds in her flesh as if the arm did not belong to her, amazed by the searing pain. They would heal quickly enough, even as weakened as she was, but the pain had come so suddenly and it burned like a flame in her mind.

"I don’t understand," she whispered.

Conan Doyle caressed her cheek and she gazed at him a moment before he helped her up.

"What don’t you understand?" he asked.

Before she could answer there came a crack of breaking branches and Danny emerged from the blackthorn trees just ahead. There were scratches on his dark, leathery skin and thorns had caught at his clothes. A branch dragged from one of his sneakers. Yet he seemed barely bothered by the prickers.

"Found us an easier path up ahead," he said, frowning as he saw Ceridwen’s wounds. The demon boy glanced at Arthur. "Figured I’d clear you a trail to get there. The Cyclopes turned out to be a’ight, but he’s no thinker. Might be easy for him to stroll through here, but.. " He shrugged and met Ceridwen’s gaze. "You all right?"

"I will be," she said with an assurance she did not feel.

She rose to her feet with Arthur steadying her, took a deep breath of the dank air of the Underworld, and then together they continued on. He was by her side with one hand at the small of her back as they walked. Though Ceridwen did not really need the support, she did not break away. Down here in the blackthorn forest, in the midst of an ancient death realm, she was so far away from Faerie and from the Blight that the bruises he had once left on her heart seemed to mean very little. Despite his words, her pride had been preventing her from completely accepting that he still loved her, that perhaps his departure all those years ago from her world had been as difficult for him as it had been for her.

In this place the distance she had kept between them seemed foolish, and she cherished the closeness they had in those moments. With Arthur beside her, Ceridwen had hope that she would see the flourishing forests of Faerie again. Yet she could tell by the furrow of his brow and by the silence in which he had been traveling before that he did not take the same comfort from her, or could not, for some reason.

"You’re thinking about Eve," she said.

Arthur nodded. "Of course." As he walked, the heavy coins in his pocket clinked together. The Cyclopes had left them by his fire for a time and returned shortly with a massive handful of them, meant to pay the ferryman that would take them across the River Styx.

"Gull would not have taken her only to kill her," Ceridwen said, hoping to soothe him.

"That is not my concern. Eve has survived enemies far more ruthless than Nigel Gull."

Ceridwen did not like his tone. There was a faltering uncertainty in it that was unusual for Arthur, and it unnerved her. "What is it, then?"

He hesitated, his head inching to the left as if he sought some specter than lingered in his peripheral vision. After a moment his attention returned to her. Ahead of them, Danny paused and looked back, impatient to move on. It was not the blackthorn forest, Ceridwen was certain, that had him so anxious. The boy did not want to pause anywhere in this world for very long. There was no telling what might menace them next.

"Arthur?" she prodded, her voice lower.

The pressure of his hand upon her lower back increased and they both quickened their pace. He glanced at her and a small, apologetic smile appeared upon his face, only to quickly fade.

"There are two things, truly," he said, his voice an old man’s rasp, no matter how young his body remained. "First, I have been attempting to deduce Gull’s purpose in bringing Eve to the Erinyes."

"Have you been successful?" Ceridwen asked, ducking beneath a thorny branch that overhung their path, then moving carefully between a pair of trees uncomfortably close together.

"I have a theory."

Ceridwen reached up quickly in spite of her sapped strength and tugged him by the ear, just as her mother had done to get her attention when she was a tiny girl. Arthur blinked in surprise and stared at her.

"I hate when you do that," she said. "Speak all, or not at all."

Her once and perhaps future lover nodded. "My apologies." He rubbed his ear. "I have told you of my history with Nigel. Of our rivalry — or at least his view of it. He chose to study shadow magicks, dark powers of ancient times that would have been better left to molder in the tombs of dead gods."

Conan Doyle glanced around, apparently aware of the odd resonance of his words. He stroked his graying mustache with his free hand and Ceridwen thought he might have shuddered.

"The cost for what he learned was his face. His features were deformed, twisted to reflect the deformity of spirit that resulted in his trafficking in such ugly sorceries. The Erinyes… the Furies, they have been called… might have the power to erase that taint, to undo the curse upon him."

Ceridwen shook her head. "I don’t know. Do you really think Gull would do all of this just to be handsome again?"

"You didn’t know him before. You did not see the change he underwent within and without. It would not surprise me."

"But why Eve?"

The ground had begun to slope down and the blackthorn forest to thin. To either side distant mountains could be seen, cliffs that went up and up, but were really only the walls of the cavern, rising toward that unseen ceiling, that stone roof that separated this realm from any other.

Arthur paused and studied her a moment, taking her hands in his. Without preamble he raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them, just once. Ceridwen did nothing to stop him, nor did she protest. Conan Doyle took a deep breath and then he turned to peer into the gloom, gaze hunting for Danny Ferrick and for the path ahead.

"This is not the Christian Hell. We’ve discussed that. But that does not mean that sinners go unpunished here. It is possible to be damned in the Underworld. And those sinners are given over to the Erinyes for their punishment. They are scourged for eternity — or for as long as this theological construct lasts, as long as the worship from the Second Age is not completely forgotten.

"If Gull wants something from the Erinyes, he’ll need something to give them in exchange. What better than the ultimate sinner?"

"Eve," Ceridwen whispered.

Arthur nodded.

Ceridwen took a moment to process that. After a moment she took his hand and the two of them began walking again. They emerged from the blackthorn forest only to find Danny standing at the edge of a steep hill. They joined him there, and found themselves looking down on the broadest, swiftest river any of them had ever seen.

The Styx.

"All right," she said, staring at the river. "You said there were two things concerning you. What was the other?"

Arthur stiffened a bit. She glanced over and saw that his nostrils were flared and his eyes narrowed. He turned to her and gently pulled her into an embrace. Over his shoulder she saw Danny’s eyes widen and the demon boy looked away. It felt awkward and yet startlingly good to be in Arthur’s arms. Part of her wanted to fight that feeling, but she surrendered to it. There were too many enemies down here. She felt his warm breath on her face as he whispered to her.

"Nigel and his agents are ahead of us with Eve. But I sense eyes upon us. Someone or something has been pacing us for quite a while, now. And we must assume this lurker in darkness is ill-intentioned. So be wary, Ceri. Be on guard."

Clay did not even know the name of the village.

They had continued on foot, just as Medusa would have had to. She had been traveling due west on the train and they knew that their chances of catching her now were slim. It was possible they would have to wait until she killed again. But logic dictated that if she were seeking out other ancient sites, she might well continue on to Corinth, and so they kept on in that direction, hoping to overtake her before she put too much distance between them.

If it became necessary to go back and fetch the car, that would mean they had given up hope of finding her today.

They walked along the train tracks, hurrying away so that the authorities arriving on the scene would not notice them. Side by side they set off to the west, toward the diminishing sunlight, as if they chased the day. Even Dr. Graves, who did not precisely walk, strode along intently, scanning the landscape on either side.

Six miles along the tracks they came to the village. The land to the north of the tracks sloped up into a low ridge of hills, and sprawled across them were dozens of whitewashed cottages that looked identical from a distance. Only as they set out from the tracks, finding the rutted road that led up into the village, did they begin to discover that each home had its own personality. Some had small gardens, others flags flying, and many of the structures were not homes at all, but proved upon closer inspections to be shops and restaurants.

Wooden doors, some that seemed centuries old, were set into the faces of buildings, and wrought-iron railings ran along balconies that overhung narrow alleys that split off from the main road.

The road led up the hill, winding through the village. Cars were parked along the sides of the street, but they were empty.

The nameless village was eerily silent, save for the wind.

A short way up the road they found a restaurant with the windows shattered. The smells that came from the place were exquisite, enough to remind Clay how long it had been since he had eaten, and how much he would have relished the opportunity. The scent of moussaka would have lured him toward that place even without the broken glass.

"Oh, son of a bitch," Squire muttered as the hobgoblin stepped through the window frame and into the restaurant.

The ghost of Dr. Graves passed through the outer wall, immaterial.

By the time Clay entered — through the door — he knew what he would find. As he stood there in the shadowed interior of the place his skin rippled and changed. No reason to wear a human face here. There was no one to see him, no one to frighten.

Only stone. Only statues.

He had never felt so empty inside. Clay had been intent on the mission, had determined that they would capture Medusa, but he was rapidly losing the heart for it.

"We have got to stop this," he whispered, and he turned and left, his heavy earthen feet crunching broken glass. He had to duck to exit, now that he had taken on this form. The closest he had to a true shape — the shape made of clay, dry and cracked yet malleable.

Out on the street he glanced up and down the hill. Now that he knew for certain what he was looking for, he saw them everywhere. In what was probably the village’s only taxi, idling at the curb, there was a figure frozen behind the wheel. People had come out onto their balconies to find the source of whatever disruption they’d heard. Statues stood there now.

In store windows — what he saw were not mannequins.

Clay began to walk uphill, deeper into the village. The taxi was still running and the moussaka was still fresh enough to give off that delicious aroma. How much farther ahead could she be? Could she have killed everyone in the village?

He began to run, not worrying about whether or not Graves or Squire could keep up with him.

At the top of the hill was an open park, a village square. Clay staggered as he entered it and nearly fell to his knees where the street had become cobblestones. He shook his head.

"No," he whispered.

There had been a festival going on. Some kind of celebration. Women in long dresses and headscarves gathered in groups of threes and fours. Children chased one another around the square. There was a circle of men who had been dancing, now forever frozen in the act, each of them having glanced over to see what had caused their wives and sisters and daughters to scream. The way they were situated, they all seemed to be staring right at Clay, at this monstrous earthen man who strode into the heart of their town.

Here, he thought, checking again the angle of the stone men’s stares and his own location. She stood right here.

If he closed his eyes on a quiet night, somewhere near the heavens such as a mountaintop or the dome of a cathedral, he could almost remember what it felt like to be touched by the hand of God. In moments such as this, he did not want to. There was only darkness here, though the sun still shone on the horizon.

This is your will? Clay thought, eyes pressed tightly closed. He shook his head and swore under his breath.

A cold sensation passed through him and he turned to see the ghost of Dr. Graves beside him. The specter had a hand on his shoulder and though Graves was insubstantial, Clay could almost feel the weight of those fingers, the comfort of a friend.

"We will catch her," Graves assured him.

Beyond him, Clay saw Squire approaching. The shapeshifter shook his head.

"No. We won’t." He looked at the ugly, contorted face of the misshapen little hobgoblin, but saw only the light of gentle grief in his eyes. "I’m sorry, Squire. Sorry I made you go back and get the nets and all the rest of the equipment to take her alive."

Once more he glanced around the square, met the stone gaze of two dozen men who died dancing, and who stared at him as though they expected him to avenge them.

"It’s too late for that now."

Clay wandered away from them, needing a moment’s peace. A moment’s solace. At the far end of the square was a church. Heart torn by conflict, he forced himself to approach it, and then to step inside.

"All right, we’re with ya, big guy," Squire said, hurrying after him with a scuffle of his weathered boots. "But how do we find her? We could search forever now and not get any closer than this. Hell, she could be in one of these houses and we might never find her."

Dr. Graves crossed his arms and stood beside Squire. It was easy to see why he had been considered so formidable in life. The ghost wore a grim expression.

"We will search for her until we find her. I have eternity to look." The comment was meant to be halfway amusing but there was simply too much melancholy in it.

Clay was barely listening. He had glanced back at his companions but now he returned his attention to the church’s interior. Candles burned inside. Clay’s stomach churned. A warm breeze washed over him, causing the candles inside to flutter.

"We don’t have to search anymore," he said.

"What’re you talking about?" Squire asked.

Clay gestured for them to come forward, to see what he’d seen. Sprawled just inside the entryway of the church was the corpse of an Orthodox priest, his robes spattered with blood, his limbs jutting out at odd, impossible angles. Broken. His face was black and swollen and there were dozens of small puncture wounds on his cheeks, forehead and throat. One of his eyes had been punctured as well and had dripped vitreous fluid like thick tears.

The ghost of Dr. Graves whispered past Clay, floating down beside the corpse as if he were kneeling. In the combination of the church’s shadows and the light from the doorway, Graves seemed only partly there, a mirage. He shook his head, studying the body, then glanced up. Through him, Clay could still see the candles up on the altar.

"I don’t understand," Dr. Graves said. "Why isn’t he stone?"

Clay lumbered deeper into the church, his flesh flowing and bones popping as he walked. Wearing the face of the dead priest, he knelt by the corpse. He traced his fingers along the corpse’s face, then reached up to his own eyes.

Once again he shifted his form, taking on the appearance of the man known back in New Orleans, and in Boston, and in other places around the world, as Clay Smith. Clay Smith, with a unique skill at solving murder. Not a detective, but often of help to police departments in whatever city he called home.

"He was blind," Clay said simply. "He could not see her, therefore her curse did not affect him. So she killed him, probably infuriated. The marks on his face — "

"Snakebites," Graves interrupted.

"Yeah," Clay said.

Squire strode across the small church, producing a stubby cigar from his pocket. He lit it from a candle and turned to face them.

"All right. But explain it to me. How come this means we don’t have to go looking for her?"

Graves studied Clay a moment, then looked at the dead priest, and finally gave his attention to Squire. "Our friend Mr. Clay has more than one talent, remember?"

Squire’s face lit up and he puffed on the cigar. The hobgoblin gave a short cough and nodded eagerly. "Right, right. The thing. The… the ectoplasm trail, or whatever. But you couldn’t see it before, because Medusa’s victims were all stone. It wasn’t working."

"No," Clay agreed. "It wasn’t." He looked upon the dead priest with sorrow, but also with grave determination. The souls of murder victims haunted their killers for a time, perhaps with intent but more likely simply because their lives have ended so abruptly that they cling to whatever’s nearest them when they die, afraid to go anywhere. To move on.

But the ghosts leave a trail, a kind of thin phantom line, a tendril that connected their ravaged bodies to their souls, no matter how far the souls traveled away from their husks. If he discovered the victim soon enough after death and he followed that link, that tendril, he could find the killer.

A faded pink mist clung to the dead priest, stretched like a rope out the front of the church and through the square, then farther up into the village. Into the hills.

Into the west.

"I’ve got her trail," Clay said. "It’s only a matter of time, now."

Her bones ached.

Eve drifted slowly up into awareness and though her eyes were still closed, her brow knitted in discomfort. She lay on her side already, her body rocking with some unknown rhythm, but now she pulled her legs up tight beneath her and shuddered with the cold. Her lips drew taut, pressed together and then she shifted uncomfortably.

Her eyes fluttered lazily open and she saw her hands, crossed at the wrists over her breasts. A thin sheen of crystal frost had formed on her flesh and a chill mist swirled around her. The rocking motion continued but only now did Eve have the presence of mind to recognize that she was in a boat.

Memories stirred and she remembered her circumstances. Rage washed over her, warming her icy blood, and her upper lip curled to bare her fangs even as she sat up. They were in a small boat, Eve at the prow. Nick Hawkins was nearest to her, smoking a cigarette, and the moment she was in motion he began to shift toward her, hands coming up in a defensive posture.

Eve was thousands of years faster.

She sprang at him, lunging through the mist and ignoring the sway of the craft or the rush of the water beneath it. Hawkins snarled, clenching his cigarette between his teeth, but he had neither the strength nor the swiftness to fight back. Eve clutched his throat with her left hand, the right gathering up the fabric of his jacket, and she drove him down beneath her. The back of his head struck the wooden floor of the boat with a solid thump. A guttural curse issued from his lips even as the impact knocked the wind from his lungs. Eve held him down as he bucked, attempting to throw her off, but she was too strong.

Her vision was far more than human. Her eyes saw through gloom and mist with utter clarity, and when she looked up she saw every line in Nigel Gull’s hideous features. He had been sitting behind Hawkins — beyond him the girl, Jezebel, had her hands in the water, somehow using her weather magic to propel the craft — and now Gull shifted forward, raising his hands. The old mage did not dare to stand in the small boat for fear they would all spill over into the frigid, rushing river.

"Not a fucking spark of magick on those fingers, asshole," Eve snarled, purposely flashing her fangs as she choked the man beneath her. "Or Hawkins loses his head."

Jezebel twisted around at the sound of Eve’s voice and her eyes went wide with alarm. "Nick," she said, her lips forming the name almost soundlessly.

The mist rolled across the water’s surface and the boat knifed through it. Gull was half-crouched, hands still contorted as if frozen in the act of casting a spell. His ugliness was made worse when he smiled, as he did now.

"Let’s not be hasty, pet," Gull said, lowering one hand to the bench below him in order to keep his balance.

Eve punctured Hawkins’s skin with her fingernails. "Call me that again, you pompous prick, and I’ll kill him just for fun, and to hell with what comes of it."

The smile disappeared from Gull’s face. His nostrils flared and the mist that swept past his face seemed also to swirl behind his eyes. The mage began to hum, the sound low and guttural.

"I don’t think you want to do that, Eve," he sang in a voice that was not his own, the sweet tones of Orpheus. "You don’t want to move at all, in fact."

She tried to fight the influence of that voice, her every muscle strained and burning with the struggle, but there was nothing she could do. The power of Orpheus’s voice was too much. She felt her heart surrendering, her rage pacified, though in the dark depths of her mind her hatred still churned. A spark of panic ignited in her.

Once, long ago, she had been overpowered by a demon with the sweetest of voices. The memory seared her and she did not want to allow it to take root, yet she seemed as helpless in her mind as in her flesh. Eve collapsed in the prow once more, on her back this time, forced to stare at the distended face of Nigel Gull and to see the mad light of triumph in his eyes.

"Mother of two races, hunter of two races, ancient as evil’s kiss. Do you think I’d have you here with me without preparing to deal with you?" he sang to her.

The river rocked the craft, water sprayed over the side and dampened her face and hair, and Eve could only lie there with her eyes open as Gull sneered at her. In the rear of the boat, Jezebel smiled at her and then plunged her hands into the water again. The girl had paused in her propulsion of the vessel and it had begun to be swept along with the current, but now the boat rushed forward across the water once more.

Hawkins sat up, his gunmetal eyes hard as he glared at her. He reached up to touch his neck and his fingers came away bloody. With an unsettling laugh he licked his fingers clean and then crabwalked forward so that he was looking down upon Eve, prone and helpless.

"Just to be clear, I don’t care what you are. Just another sodding relic to me." He wrapped both hands around her throat and began to squeeze. "You don’t need to breathe, I know that. But I’ll wager you need your head attached to your body, yeah? If Mr. Gull didn’t need you… ah, but he does." Now Hawkins grinned. "Might sample a taste of your blood, next time, though. Play your little vampire game. So mind your manners, leech."

The wood was rough beneath her. Eve smelled blood but could not be certain if it was Hawkins’s or her own. Beneath that smell was another, one she was noticing for the very first time. The stink of the dead. Not the rotting odor of fresh death, but the dusty, brittle smell of the tomb. It lived in the wood of the boat and drifted with the mist. This place was a realm of the dead and so it did not surprise her, but it served to calm her. Though she had no desire to rest in the grave, Eve had to remind herself from time to time that she was, in essence, one of the dead. Creatures far more wretched than Nick Hawkins had done far worse to her than he would ever be able to conjure in his most depraved imagination.

Eve managed to sneer. But she would not give Hawkins the pleasure of a response. Instead her gaze shifted beyond him, to Gull. Focusing the entirety of her will, she managed to force her lips to move.

"You… need me?" she rasped. "Why?"

The mage nodded slowly. "Indeed." He placed a hand over his heart. "As to my purpose, I’m afraid you’d never understand. All of this — " he gestured around him, taking in Hawkins and Jezebel, the boat and the river, and the netherworld beyond. "It’s for love. I’ve orchestrated all of it for the sake of a woman." His face stretched into that horrid smile again.

"I’m a romantic, you see."

Another spray of water came over the side and Eve blinked it away. On her lips, the droplets had the salt tang of tears.

"What woman would have you?" she asked. It was becoming easier to speak, though she still could not move her limbs.

Gull gazed out across the river, all amusement gone from his eyes, leaving only a melancholy emptiness behind. "The most beautiful creature in all the ages."

"I hope she’s worth it," Eve said. "The pain, I mean. Conan Doyle and the others — my friends — they’ll be coming for you."

The ugly man raised an eyebrow and stared at her. "I’m prepared for them, as well. I know what Arthur is capable of. Do you think I’d underestimate him?"

Gull settled into the craft as though it were a throne. He gestured for Hawkins to join Jezebel in the aft of the boat. The slender man moved carefully past the mage, then Gull turned his attention to Eve again.

"Sit up," he commanded.

Jerking like a marionette, she complied. Somehow his instruction had freed her upper body, at least enough that she was able to glance around at the river.

"The Styx," Gull said. "And we come, momentarily, to the far shore."

Eve turned to see that he spoke the truth. They approached the bank of the river, where the ground seemed made not of soil but of cold, gray ash. She shot Gull a withering glare.

"You don’t think Conan Doyle will find a way across?"

"Oh, I’m certain he will. I’d be terribly disappointed otherwise."

Only then did Eve notice the activity in the rear of that small, ancient craft. Jezebel still had her hands thrust into the water, surges of white foam jetting out behind them as she forced the river to propel them. But now Hawkins knelt beside her, one hand on her shoulder. Despite the chill of the mist and the river, beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.

Gull saw that she had noticed them.

"Mr. Hawkins is a psychometrist," the mage said. "You know that. But he is capable of more than simply reading images and emotions. With enough motivation and focus, he can also communicate them. Jezebel is one with the river. Through her, Hawkins is pouring hatred for Conan Doyle into every drop of water, tainting all of the Styx with the single, unrelenting thought that Arthur is the enemy and must be destroyed."

A knot of fear twisted Eve’s gut. She had faith in Conan Doyle, but Gull seemed so confident…

Still, she did her best to hide her alarm. "Water? You expect the water to rise up and stop him?"

"Of course not," Gull replied. A sneer of satisfaction split his face. He dropped one hand over the side of the boat and let his fingers trail in the river. "Here there be monsters, my dear Eve. Here there be monsters."