Tears of the Furies

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Though only in small measures, Ceridwen could indeed feel that she was growing stronger. The deeper they progressed into the Underworld, the more acclimated she became to the nightmarish place. The process was equal parts relief and concern. Although glad to be regaining her strength, she had to wonder the cost. Already she had begun to feel a certain, disturbing sense of belonging, the simplest thought of returning to the land of the living filling her with uneasiness. What that meant, she did not know. But it troubled her deeply.

They had reached the shores of the swiftly flowing Styx and were awaiting the ferryman to take them across. Danny and Conan Doyle stood at the river’s edge.

"Where is he?" Danny asked, attempting unsuccessfully to skip a stone across the river’s turbulent surface. "The Cyclops dude said that Charon’d just show up after we got here." He threw another stone, waiting for Conan Doyle’s reply.

Arthur remained silent, staring out over the Styx, trying to see through the thick, undulating clouds of gray vapor. Ceridwen did not like the expression on his face.

"An excellent question." Conan Doyle turned his gaze from the river to the black sand of the shore. The sand had been disturbed. There was no doubt that Gull and his operatives, along with captive Eve, had arrived first. He removed one of the two gold coins the Cyclopes had provided them to pay Charon and began to play with it, dexterously rolling it back and forth across the knuckles of his hand. It was a trick he had learned from Harry Houdini, a friend from long ago.

"What have you done now, Gull?" Conan Doyle whispered, lost in thought as the coin danced atop his hand.

As if in response to his query, the Underworld answered.

Ceridwen could feel it in the elements around her; from the granules of sand beneath her feet, to the mournful whistling of the wind that caused the skeletal branches of the trees along the shore to click and clatter. The Underworld was attempting to speak to them, and only she had the ability to hear.

She closed her eyes and listened. Then she wandered across the sand, closer to Conan Doyle and the boy, closer to the river’s edge.

Conan Doyle watched her as she approached. "What troubles you, Ceridwen?"

She did not respond, his voice added to the cacophony of the elements as they attempted to communicate. The river was the loudest voice of all, and she found herself drawn to its flow. This was the place from which the answer would come: the Styx, eager to share with her what had transpired. Ceridwen squatted down at the shore and extended her hand toward the hellish waters.

"No!" Danny yelped, his alarm cutting through the static inside her head, and she looked up into a face wracked with worry.

"I don’t think you want to do that." He turned his nervous gaze out over the water. "There’s something… not right about it."

Conan Doyle had moved closer as well and she tried to assuage their fears with a smile. Then she gently touched her fingertips to the agitated water.

Ceridwen and the River Styx were one. Her body went rigid, her mind filling with rapid-fire images detailing what had come to pass, what the river had seen. Most of it was monotony, the ferryman in his launch and its countless journeys, transporting the dead to their final destination. Faces flashed across her mind, wan and bewildered. So many faces. But then her mind’s eye settled upon the most recent passengers, including the twisted, ugly visage of Nigel Gull. Ceridwen witnessed what had transpired from the river’s point of view, as though she were looking up from beneath the water. Gull had committed a terrible crime, a most foul act. Ceridwen saw the murder of Charon, saw Gull set his body adrift upon the river.

She drew her hand from the water with a gasp, stumbling into Conan Doyle’s waiting arms, the violence seared into her mind.

"I told her not to touch it," she heard Danny say, concern in his voice. "What did it do?"

Ceridwen opened her eyes and looked up at them, pulling back from Arthur’s embrace. "The ferryman is not coming. Gull and his people were here with Eve no more than two hours ago," she said, seeing the ghastly image reenacted in the theatre of her mind. She closed her eyes and shuddered even though the temperature was oppressively hot.

"What has he done?" Conan Doyle asked, eyes stormy beneath salt-and-pepper brows.

"He’s killed Charon," she said, trying to force the images from her mind. "And they’ve taken his boat across on their own."

Conan Doyle clenched his fists in anger, turning his back upon them and walking away. She understood his frustration. Their enemy was besting them at every turn. This was not something to which Arthur Conan Doyle was accustomed.

"So we’re screwed, then. Game over," Danny muttered. "How do we help Eve now?"

"Arthur?" Ceridwen called. He was standing with his back to them at the edge of a forest of black, skeletal trees, again lost in thought, but this time she suspected she knew what occupied his mind. It was the way he eyed the copse of trees that gave his thoughts away.

The sorceress was far from Faerie, far from anything the Fey might think of as nature, but she had begun to establish a rapport with what passed for the elements of this barren place. Her strength was returning. Her magick as well, though tainted now by the Underworld. Yet Arthur did not know that. He must have sensed that communicating with the elements here was not as debilitating for her. He had, after all, only just witnessed her forging a bond with the River Styx. But he could not know how far she had adjusted.

This is a test for him in a way, she thought. Conan Doyle was a man of both thought and action, and he prided himself on practicality. What must be done, he would often say, must be done, and damn the consequences. Yet in their battle with the Hydra, his fear for her had caused him to become distracted, endangering the lives of the others and the success of their mission. He had promised it would never happen again.

But here was a similar situation. Will he ask it of me when he knows it will cause me pain?

Ceridwen was about to take that responsibility from him, when Conan Doyle turned to face her. The steely look on his face told her all she needed to know.

"Gull has thwarted us for the last time," he announced, walking toward her. "These trees," he motioned to them with a wave of his hand. "We have no time to build a raft, nor anything to lash them together. You must coerce them into taking on the shape of something we can use to get across." He walked past her to stand again at the river’s edge, gazing out over its broad expanse. "We must act with haste."

Danny strode angrily toward him, his features more demonic than ever. "What is wrong with you? You know she can’t do that. This place is bad for her. Using magick here hurts her. It’s obvious you don’t give a shit about people when it comes to getting what you need, but I figured if there was anyone, it’d be — "

Conan Doyle turned and glared at him, nostrils flaring, and the boy was silenced. Ceridwen wanted to speak up for him, but if they were going to survive, they would have to rely upon one another. Part of that was working out their own conflicts.

"Have you given Eve up for dead, then?" Conan Doyle asked, every word a dagger. "Abandoned her to her fate?"

"Of course not," Danny growled.

"Nor have I. Whatever Gull’s intentions here, they are likely sinister. Even if they were not, he has manipulated us throughout this fiasco, and now Eve’s life is in the balance. I ask what is required, nothing more."

When Conan Doyle spun to face Ceridwen again, Danny seemed about to argue, but then fell silent once more. The sorceress did not blame him. Arthur was correct. In truth, she was relieved that he had chosen their purpose over her comfort.

"Can you do this?" he asked.

And how could she deny him?

They walked upon a surface of bones.

From a perilous mountain path, they had descended into a broad expanse of what Eve at first believed to be limestone. But as they grew closer, she had begun to see pieces of dry, yellow bone scattered on the dirt. In matter of minutes, no matter where her foot fell, the soles of her Italian leather boots landed atop the remains of something that had once been alive. Some of the bones were human, yes. She recognized those readily enough. But from what she could see there were bones there belonging to just about everything in creation.

"Am I the only one who’s a little freaked out by this?" Eve asked, turning to face her captors.

"It’s the bloody Underworld," Hawkins snarled. "What do you expect, a field of poppies?" He reached out, placed the flat of his hand against her back, and shoved. "Keep moving."

Eve stumbled, still under the sway of Nigel Gull’s magick, then turned to look into Hawkins’s eyes. She prided herself on the way she evolved with the world, but in her were all the women she had ever been, all the ages she had lived, and now in her fury she fell back on the Eve of another era.

"Mark me," she said. "You may do your best to forget who it is you trifle with, but I shall not forget. I have bred legions of monsters, and slain even more. Your bones will join these others beneath my feet before long. One way, Mr. Hawkins, or another."

Hawkins tried to smile to show her that he was not bothered by her words, but he could not quite manage it. Instead he gestured as if to push her again, but she was already turning to forge ahead. The path gradually angled upward as they approached a hill. Eve wondered what new thrills the Underworld had in store for them on the other side.

Calmer, now, she shook off the remnants of the past, summoning the sardonic swagger that had become so much a part of her survival as an immortal. Eve glanced over her shoulder at Gull.

"So, are we there yet? I’m bored."

Gull was walking with Jezebel, a protective arm around her waist. There was something untoward about the intimacy between them. The mage was not her father, but regardless Jezebel was still only a girl. Even if there was nothing sexual there, still it was troubling. Jezebel was powerful, and with her red hair and green eyes, and her sensuality, stunning. But she was so obviously broken inside, clamoring for Gull’s approval. And he twisted her around with his words just the same way he wrought magick with his contorted fingers.

Throughout their trek, Jezebel had grown quieter and now she appeared to be a little shaky — not really digging the whole bone carpet thing.

"Damn, the girl doesn’t look well. Maybe she’s just realizing what I figured out the second we arrived. This is a place the wandering souls go. The damned, right? I figure we all belong here. It’s like coming home. Can’t be easy on the kid."

Jezebel shuddered at her words.

"Shut your mouth," Hawkins barked, but he did not touch her. "D’we need this, Nigel? Think I liked her better when she couldn’t talk."

"That will be enough of that, Hawkins," Gull said casually, as though they were all just taking a pleasant Sunday stroll through the park.

They reached the base of the hill, the bone path leading upward, and Eve again considered what awaited them on the other side. Jezebel stopped to rest for a moment, taking a seat on an enormous skull that could only have belonged to something monstrous.

"In answer to your question, Eve, I would wager that we are close," the hideous sorcerer said. He stroked Jezebel’s hair as if he were calming a nervous house pet.

She leaned into him, closing her eyes, lost in his attentions. "I think I would like to go home now," she whispered in a tiny, little girl’s voice that trembled on the brink of tears.

"There, there, pretty Jez," Gull comforted, continuing to stroke her fiery red hair. "It won’t be long now."

Eve didn’t like the sound of that and wondered where she fit into the mage’s plans. Throughout her time as his prisoner she had fought against the enchantments placed upon her, but she was still incapable of directing her own actions. Eve would be free. Of that, she had no doubt. A moment would come when she would have the opportunity to free herself, and then she would kill them all. She would need patience, however, but Eve had lived almost forever and had learned patience very well indeed.

"Won’t be long until what?" she asked Nigel, as she squatted to the bone floor and retrieved the skull of what could have been a crow. She used its beak to clean away some of the grime that had collected beneath her fingernails — a manicure was definitely in her foreseeable future. She looked up into the sorcerer’s eyes, the only part of his body that hadn’t been twisted by magick. "C’mon, Gull, the suspense is killing me."

"We’d best hurry, then. You’ll need to survive at least until we can deliver you." Gull smiled, and it was wretched to see. The mage hauled a dozy Jezebel from her seat. "On your feet now, girl," he commanded, no longer sounding quite so fatherly. "We have places to be."

Jezebel did as she was told, hugging her body as if cold.

"Hawkins, see to her," Gull instructed, and the man moved to stand beside the girl, ushering her gently along.

The sorcerer moved toward Eve, gesturing for her to begin the climb up over the rise. She didn’t care for the implications of his words, but they came as no surprise. He had kidnapped her for some reason, and she doubted that her scintillating conversational skills had anything to do with it.

Eve had difficulty maintaining her footing on the shifting slope, and she used her hands to pull herself along. The pieces of bone were sharp, but the pain kept her focused.

Gull had begun to climb as well, eagerly matching her progress, his breathing becoming labored as they neared the top, perhaps more from anticipation than exertion. Eve found herself increasing her pace, eager to reach the summit before her captor.

"Last one to the top is a deformed fucking freak," she snarled. "Aw, too late." She went up over the rise…

And froze. After all she had seen in her excruciatingly long lifetime, she had never seen anything quite like the sight that greeted them over the top of that hill.

Gull joined her, fury twisting his features all the more horribly. "There were times when I actually felt a sense of guilt over what I was going to do with you. But now I believe…" Then he, too, stopped and gasped.

"Just when you think you’ve seen it all," Eve said, eyes riveted to the valley below her.

The body of a giant lay splayed upon the valley floor, so enormous that it covered much of the valley. The corpse was larger than an aircraft carrier, large enough that a small town could have been built atop it. And corpse was the word. The giant was quite dead, of that she had no doubt, and had been dead for some time by the look of him. Desiccated skin hung loose and leathery from its monstrous skeleton. A wispy fog floated above the enormous cadaver, the smell blowing up from the valley on a breeze ripe with the stench of rot.

Jezebel started to cough and gag, the stink of the decaying giant nearly making her sick.

"It all seems to have a certain logic now," Gull said wistfully, the overwhelming stench seeming to have no effect on him. "The disorder and degeneration — the chaos."

"Someone you know?" Eve asked, bringing a hand to her nose. As the mist above the great corpse shifted in the breeze, she began to notice the details of its attire. The giant wore pitted bronze armor, tarnished green with the passage of time.

"In a sense. Think about it, temptress. One of your experience ought to be able to put the pieces together. Who can this be, a god so large that the Underworld itself is almost too small for him?" Gull asked, a hint of awe in his voice.

Eve couldn’t wrap her brain around the concept. How is it even possible? How is it possible for a god to end up this way?

"Hades," Gull said in a reverent whisper. "What sad fate has befallen you?"

When Eve began to descend the steep hill toward that extraordinary sight it was not only the voice of Orpheus and Gull’s command that drove her. She had to see it, this magnificent panorama of death, so enormous that she could barely contain the fact of it in her mind.

"So, if the Lord of the Underworld is dead," she rasped, "then who’s running the show down here?"

Gull did not look at her as he spoke, his eyes fixed upon the dead god before them. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre," he muttered. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

"When you start quoting Yeats, I’m guessing that’s code for you don’t have a fucking clue," she said, careful not to lose her footing on the slippery slope.

The closer they got, the more details she took in. The craftsmanship of the god’s armor was some of the most beautiful and intricate ornamentation she had ever seen. But what would one expect for a lord of the abyss? Hades’ face was a shrieking death mask, the withered flesh pulled tight against his skull. Strange birds whose feathers seemed to glint like metal in the faint light of the Underworld flew out of the god’s gaping maw in a shrieking flock as they approached, but her eyes were drawn to something else.

"Look at his throat," Eve said, staring at the dry, curling slash that had been cut across the leathery skin of Hades’ neck.

The ground in that valley was a black, fine soil, but on the acreage around the desiccated head of the dead god the earth was stained a deep burgundy. Though there were trees and other plant life familiar to the Underworld growing about the vastness of the deceased, Eve could see that nothing grew where the dead lord’s blood had flowed.

"All of the detritus of Greek myth had retreated here when their era came to a close. It was their only hope at survival," Gull explained, glancing at an awestruck Hawkins and a giddily grinning Jezebel. "They ought to have built a paradise down here to rival Olympus. Instead, they died, and the place fell to ruin. Entropy. The center could not hold. I wondered what could have happened to cause such chaos here." Gull spoke slowly, mesmerized by the sight before him. "I never imagined that it could have begun with the murder of Hades himself."

Who has the power to murder a god? Again Eve struggled with the inconceivable.

Hawkins trotted several steps ahead of them, trying to get a closer look at the wound, himself now a tiny figure dwarfed by the sprawling, rotting cadaver.

"Not murder," Hawkins said, and they all stared at him. Soldier, spy, and assassin, he was well schooled in murder. "Look in his hand. He’s holding a knife. I don’t think he was murdered at all, I think the poor bugger offed himself."

Eve looked at the dead god Hades, really looked at him; how he lay prostrate upon the floor of the valley, his mouth agape as if attempting to call to his brethren in Olympus above, and she knew that Hawkins’s words were true. Hades had taken his own life.

The closer they progressed, the more foul the stench of decay was becoming, almost palpable in its intensity. Eve found that even she was becoming affected, hacking and coughing with the others. And since she really had no need to, she made a conscious effort to halt her breathing.

That’s better.

Gull was gasping, a twisted hand placed flat against his chest. He had stopped his descent and was trying to catch his breath. Hawkins tied a handkerchief behind his head, covering his face and Jezebel appeared to be fighting the urge to vomit. Despite the revelation that loomed ahead of them, the sublime nature of the thing and the thoughts of divinity and history that it demanded, the two hovered around Gull protectively.

There they were, perfectly helpless. Eve could have killed them all with ease, if not for the voice of Orpheus. Trapped by Gull’s magick, she could do nothing but wait for them to get their shit together.

The sorcerer finally caught his breath and pulled Jezebel to him. "Wind," he said, between gasps of the tainted air. "We need wind to take this foul odor away."

Her eyes were watering badly, trailing black mascara down her flushed cheeks like war paint. "I don’t know if I can."

"You must, sweet Jezebel." And despite his use of that endearment, his tone was clear. It was a command, with consequences if she disobeyed.

She nodded slowly, and took a deep breath punctuated by a cough.

Hawkins sidled up beside her. "Sometime today," he snarled, his voice muffled by the cloth about his face.

The two normally seemed so solicitous of one another — particularly Hawkins of the girl — but it was clear now that their camaraderie was a shallow thing. Scratch it deeply enough, and there was nothing underneath. Jezebel looked at Hawkins with teary, hate-filled eyes as he walked away.

"Proceed," Gull commanded, his breathing becoming more labored.

Eve wondered if the power of Orpheus would still hold should Gull be rendered unconscious. But it was too much to hope for. Jezebel closed her eyes, reaching down deep to call upon whatever mojo she commanded. Her hair whipped around her face in a wind that was not natural, and she winced. The process looked painful and for a minute it seemed she wasn’t going to pull it off, but the girl hung tough. Whatever it was that she was summoning was fighting her, and her body began to twitch and spasm, beads of perspiration breaking out on her brow.

Eve almost felt sorry for the little witch, but then thought better of it.

The girl fell to her knees with a gasp, and raising her arms, she turned her face to ceiling of the Underworld. Lightning snaked from her fingertips and eyes, erupting into the oppressive atmosphere. The wind swirled around them, growing in intensity, and then shifted in a single direction, a gale that swept the noxious fumes of the god’s decay away from them.

Jezebel slumped to the ground, curling up in a tight little ball. "I did it," she said over and over again in that little girl’s voice.

Hawkins yanked down the mask from his face and gave the girl a round of applause. "Now that didn’t hurt too bad, did it?" he asked as he bent down to help her up from the ground. "About time you earned your keep."

The man was begging to die, and as soon as she was able, Eve would oblige him.

Gull took a large gulp of purified air into his lungs. "Much better."

They descended farther into the valley in silence, the body of the fallen god looming larger and larger. They passed through small patches of skeletal wood and scrub brush. Jezebel’s manipulation of the wind had done the job for the most part, but the closer they got the harder the wind had to work to keep the stench from overwhelming them again. The rot had left gaping holes in the flesh, exposing muscle, sinew, and bone.

At last, they stood before it, marveling at its enormity.

"So is this it? Have we arrived?" Eve asked, interrupting their reverie. "Or are we going to have to go around this rotting carcass to get to where we’re supposed to be?"

Gull fixed her in a steely gaze. "I think I’ve had just about enough of you."

She was about to reply but he stopped her with a word. "Silence."

Eve had no choice but to obey.

"Now drop to your knees."

Once more she was forced to comply, and Eve found herself kneeling upon the damp earth before the body of the fallen Hades. Gull looked her over, then licked his thumb, reaching out to her face to rub away some blemish of grime that had stained her cheek. With his long, twisted fingers he combed the hair from her face, then stepped back and again studied her appearance.

"I guess that will have to suffice," he said. Gull looked to the god’s corpse. "The misery of the dead calls out from here. I can feel it. This is their place. It is no wonder Hades chose this valley in which to spill his blood."

Gull walked away from Eve then, toward Hawkins and Jezebel. "I would advise you to step back, my friends. I’ve no idea how they will react to our presence."

How who will react?

The Wicked did as they were told, leaving Gull to stand before the rotting corpse alone. The dark mage raised his arms, and in the booming voice of Orpheus, sang out. Although the song was sung in an ancient language that she had never known, Eve understood the words perfectly. It was a song of summoning, a song that called for the attentions of three sisters — Tisiphone, Alekto, and Megaera. They were the Erinyes — the Furies of legend. He sang of an offering, something to satisfy their unquenchable desire to see the guilty suffer for their sins.

In a sweeping motion he gestured toward Eve and the suspicion she had been nursing was revealed to be truth. She was his offering. Gull finished his beckoning song, hanging his head and resting his voice as he waited for their response.

He didn’t wait very long.

From one of the rotting wounds in the side of the corpse, a decaying hole perhaps fifty feet up the side of Hades’ rib cage, Eve saw the first hint of movement.

"What have you brought to us?" came a voice that issued from within that corpse, a voice that made the hair at the back of Eve’s neck stand on end. It was a voice devoid of warmth or emotion, a voice that promised only cruelty.

"Come out, dear sisters, and see," Gull sang, the enticing nature of his borrowed voice certain to draw them from hiding.

Eve’s eyes grew wide as the Erinyes emerged from the ragged hole in the side of the dead god, three sisters clad in robes of darkness. They eagerly clambered down the side of the great corpse to claim their prize.

As Ceridwen calmed the normally torrential currents of the Styx, Conan Doyle and Danny rowed the magickally-crafted raft through the dark water. Conan Doyle kept an eye on Ceridwen, who sat at the edge of the raft with one hand trailing in the fearsome waters. He watched as her mouth moved, words softer than a whisper escaping, as she attempted to bond with the elemental force of the river. The fact that they were actually making progress across the Styx was evidence that Ceridwen was succeeding.

Conan Doyle was worried about her connecting with a world usually reserved for the dead. Though she appeared to have regained nearly all of her vigor, he did not care for the distant look in her eyes, a look that hinted that the despair of the Underworld had touched her deeply. He feared what would happen when it came time to leave.

"How’s she doing?" Danny asked, paddling with all his might.

The boy had removed what remained of his tattered t-shirt and his muscles strained as he rowed. The demon’s flesh was continuing to evolve, growing more leathery, thicker, darker. There were blotches of color on his back that reminded the sorcerer of the burned orange of fall leaves on Beacon Hill.

"She’s doing fine," he responded, marveling at the youth’s tenacity. To think that mere months ago he was living as a typical teenager, totally unaware of his true nature. He was proud of Daniel Ferrick. A normal youth his age would have been driven to the brink of insanity on more than one occasion with what the boy had witnessed in recent days. He was indeed a welcome addition to the Menagerie.

"And you?" Conan Doyle asked, his arms burning with exertion.

"I’m good," the boy said between puffs of air. "Getting a little tired, but I think I can hold out until we get to the other side. How are you doing?" The boy smiled, exposing sharp-looking teeth. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. "Hanging in there, old-timer?"

He didn’t care for the boy’s lack of respect, but considering what they had been through, he decided to let it slide. "Don’t concern yourself, boy," he stressed, staring straight ahead, attempting to pierce the shifting gray vapor that hung over the river to the other side. They had to be getting closer. "Focus on staying alive."

Danny laughed and continued to paddle. The thick shroud of mist parted momentarily and something caught Conan Doyle’s attention. He set his makeshift oar down on the raft and climbed to his feet.

"What is it?" Danny asked. "Are we close?"

"Stop rowing," Conan Doyle ordered. His eyes had found the spot again, only to have his line of sight obscured by the drifting vapor. "There’s something in the water ahead."

Danny did as he was told, placing his oar down and getting to his feet. He peered over the side of the raft. "We’re still moving."

Conan Doyle saw that the boy was right. They were being drawn toward the area where he had seen movement uon the water. "Ceridwen," he called, looking over his shoulder.

She had removed her hand from the water and was clutching it to her chest, a look of shock on her face. "There are things in the river," she whispered. "Things that hate us quite ferociously. And they mean us harm."

"Holy shit. Take a look at that." Danny pointed out across the water.

A whirlpool had formed in the Styx, a swirling maelstrom that was inexorably drawing them closer.

"Charybdis," Ceridwen said, and Conan Doyle saw that her hand was immersed in the water again. "The whirlpool is alive. I don’t understand how, but it’s a living thing. It’s called Charybdis."

Danny couldn’t take his eyes from the spiraling vortex. "Why does it hate us? What the hell did we do this time? Oh man I hate this shit!"

Gull, Conan Doyle thought. Somehow, his old adversary was responsible.

"It believes we’ve come to do it harm…," Ceridwen began, her eyes wide and her expression dreamlike as she extracted the information from the turgid water. "It has been told that we’ve come to separate it from its mate."

"Who told it that?" Danny asked. He had picked up his oar and was attempting to paddle the raft away from the whirlpool, but to no avail. "Was it Gull?" His voice was on the brink of hysteria. "It was that ugly fuck, wasn’t it?"

They drew toward the dark, sucking center of the maelstrom. The raft began to rock and Conan Doyle and Danny were driven to their knees. Water surged up over them, soaking their clothes.

"Is there any way you can ask the river currents to pull us from the whirlpool’s grasp?" Conan Doyle shouted at Ceridwen over the roaring water, trying to clear his vision to have the comfort of the sight of her.

She looked up at him with eyes barely focused. "I’m trying," she croaked, shaking her head in the negative. "But Charybdis is too strong."

It tore at him to see her so helpless but there was nothing he could do. If they were to survive, all of their power and guile would have to be brought into play. He reached within himself, drawing upon the magick that resided there. Conan Doyle expected excruciating pain, but found only the slightest discomfort. Just as the nature of this place was adjusting to Ceridwen, the laws of magick were growing accustomed to him. He didn’t like that at all, but at the moment he was more concerned with Charybdis.

Conan Doyle raised a hand above his head and sketched at the air. A sphere of dark blue energy coalesced around his fingers and then a lance of magick thrust across the river, causing a wall of water to erupt beneath it as it passed. It was a powerful enchantment meant to disrupt magick, to short-circuit the supernatural. Again and again he summoned that spell, and cast it out across the river to strike at the heart of the swirling water. The river began to froth and steam and a strange sound, the cries of some ethereal beast in pain, rose up from the water to fill the air.

The raft rocked upon the choppy water as the vortex started to falter, and from the corner of his eye Conan Doyle saw Ceridwen pitch to one side, coming dangerously close to falling from the raft. He scrambled to her, pulling the sorceress closer to him.

"I have you," he told her as a wave of exhaustion passed over him.

"I think we beat it," he heard Danny say excitedly, and he looked to see that the boy was standing at the raft’s edge, peering into the slowly calming waters. The raft was again at the mercy of the river’s natural flow.

Ceridwen was shaking off her stupor, trying to talk, but her voice was so soft that he could not hear. He bent his ear down close, attempting to decipher her whispering words.

"Charybdis," she began. "Charybdis is no…"

"Charybdis is gone," he said, pulling her close in an attempt to comfort.

Her violet eyes flashed angrily as she pushed herself out of his arms, shaking her head from side to side.

"No," she said, her voice stronger. "Charybdis is not… alone."

He recalled her words from before; that they had come to separate Charybdis from its mate.

Its mate.

The water in front of them began to bubble and churn, and again their raft was tossed about.

"What now?" Danny shrieked, losing his balance and collapsing.

Something exploded up from the depths, its skin catching the strange light of the hellish place, glistening with all the colors of the rainbow. Conan Doyle was reminded of a rainbow trout, but this was no mere fish.

Scylla, the mate of Charybdis, surged up from the bubbling black waters of the Styx, her voice raised in a scream of rage over what they had wrought upon her consort.

Once she had been a beautiful sea nymph, loved by Zeus and Poseidon in turn, until twisted by the jealousy of Circe into something monstrous. If one looked closely enough, past the slick, greasy skin and thick appendages that grew like tumors from her body, one could see that this had once been a creature of beauty, but that had been so long ago that Conan Doyle doubted even Scylla remembered.

The river beast surged toward them in a spray of water. Scylla grabbed the front of the makeshift raft in large, webbed hands, tipping it forward. Holding Ceridwen tightly in his arms, Conan Doyle dug his fingers into the wood, halting his slide toward the enraged beast.

"Hold on!" he cried out to Danny, but the boy’s clawing hands could not find purchase and he began to slide toward the monster.

Her tentacles darted at him with incredible speed, almost as if they had a sentience all their own. Conan Doyle watched in horror as the tapered ends of those appendages split open to reveal snarling faces, needle-toothed jaws snapping in horror.

Is there no end to the nightmares of this place? Conan Doyle thought as he plucked a spell from his memory. He thrust out his hand and began to utter the incantation.

The blast that streamed from his fingertips struck Scylla square in the chest and seared her flesh black. With an ear-piercing scream she dove beneath the water to recover. Danny struggled to climb back up onto the raft, and Conan Doyle was forced to leave Ceridwen’s side to assist him.

"Take my hand, boy," he cried, extending his arm.

"What the fuck is up with this place!" the boy yelled, hauling himself out of the water with Conan Doyle’s help, and back up onto the raft. "Does everything have to have multiple heads and a serious mad on for us?"

"It does appear that way, doesn’t it?" Conan Doyle sighed, taking a moment to catch his breath now that Danny was safe.

The waters of the Styx were becoming agitated again. He was about to tell the boy to hold on, when he heard Ceridwen’s cry of warning, and he turned just in time to see the elemental sorceress standing, her hands crackling with unrestrained power as she prepared to defend them.

"That attack will come from beneath us!" she cried out just as the raft was struck from below.

Then they were airborne, the raft propelled up and out of the water by the savagery of the attack. The raft was destroyed, reduced to wreckage floating upon the turbulent waters of the River Styx. Conan Doyle broke the surface, spitting the foul tasting water from his mouth. Its taste was like nothing he had ever experienced before, and it stirred memories of times and events best left forgotten. Times of sorrow. The water wanted him to surrender, to give himself over entirely to the flow and pull of the river.

But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would never surrender.

Shrugging off the influence of the river he began to search for Ceridwen and Danny in the choppy waters. In the distance he saw something upon the undulating surface and relief surged through him as he realized it was Danny, clutching Ceridwen with one arm and with the other clinging to a section of their decimated raft.

Swimming against the current, he went to them.

"I think she might have hit her head on something," Danny shouted over the rush of the river.

Conan Doyle helped him with Ceridwen. The sorceress had a gash on her temple, and she moaned fitfully as she struggled to regain consciousness.

"We have to get to shore," the demon boy said, his eyes wild as he searched the waters for any sign of further attack. "I can’t freakin’ stand this anymore."

Conan Doyle could offer nothing to allay the boy’s fears. They were being carried by the current, not near enough the bank to swim, only the wreckage of the raft keeping them above water. Conan Doyle racked his brain for a way to the other side.

Then he saw Danny’s eyes go wide with fear.

"Something just touched my… " The demon boy gasped, but never finished as he was yanked beneath the surface of the water.

"Danny!" Conan Doyle cried, illuminating one of his hands and plunging it down into the river. But he could see nothing in the darkness.

The boy was gone.

The water began to churn again and he readied himself for the conflict. Ceridwen was barely conscious so he could not depend on her for assistance. As he clung to a piece of raft, keeping his love from sliding beneath the river’s cold embrace, Conan Doyle brought forth a spell of defense and held it at the ready.

The turbulent waters exploded and the monstrous Scylla reared up from beneath the Styx, shrieking like the damnable thing she was.

But there was something wrong. Scylla was not attacking. She was fending off an attack.

Bobbing upon the roiling waters, Conan Doyle looked on in astonishment as Daniel Ferrick clung to the body of the raging sea monster. The lunatic savagery of his demonic birthright had overcome him, and there was nothing human about him now. His yellow eyes gleamed as he tore away chunks of the monster’s flesh with his claws and needle-teeth in a bloody frenzy of violence.

The river churned as though attuned with Scylla’s pain. It took everything Conan Doyle had to keep himself and Ceridwen above the raging waters. Scylla dove repeatedly beneath the surface and exploded upward in an attempt to loosen the hold of her attacker, but to no avail. Danny held fast, rending her flesh with wanton abandon.

The last thing Conan Doyle saw before succumbing to the pull of the Styx was the monster Scylla beckoning to the heavens as the demon boy dug into her chest with his claws, hunting for her heart. Scylla screamed as if pleading to the gods that had cursed her for mercy.