Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

Three separate sets of rails ran through Clapham Junction. On the center track there sat a charcoal black steam engine with the number one painted on its face in silver. Rain pelted it, making it gleam even in the dark. No steam rose from the engine, but it seemed a watchful thing, just the same, as though it might burst to sudden life at any moment. Behind it was a single coal tender, and attached to that, two elegant Pullman cars with crimson wooden panels beneath each window and gilt stenciling above. It was a private train and spoke of powerful wealth.

Gull leaped from the platform into the rain. It streamed down his misshapen face, a moist caress that only served to remind him of his appearance. He shook off the rain and dipped his chin, feeling the storm at his back as he crossed the first set of tracks. The engine’s cab was dark but that was his first stop. Gull climbed up inside Number One and found it empty as he had expected.

He moved more quietly now, slipping out of the cab to the ground. The rain was cold and cruel, punishing him as he crept slowly along beside the tender until he reached the steps up onto the first Pullman. Hand on the rail, he went up and then found himself before the ornate door of the car. Gull muttered to himself a few words of ancient Aramaic, and the fingers of his left hand began to burn with a tainted yellow light. For illumination, and for defense, in case his instincts were wrong and the culprit remained.

The door swung open easily. Gull moved into the car and raised his hand, splashing a sickly golden glow across the car. His breath caught. The opulence of the Pullman was startling. The floor was covered with Oriental carpet, the windows curtained by velvet drapes. A trio of crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceilings, and the windows were etched glass. The wood gleamed richly.

The car was empty.

Gull would have sensed anything lurking in the shadows through his light. There was nothing beneath the tables here.

He hurried, now, moving through the Pullman as swiftly as he was able. When he reached the door at the other end he paused only a moment before drawing open the door.

The dead girl lay on the platform between trains. Her hair was dark, but might have been lighter were it not sodden with the rain. Her body had been forced through an opening in the ornate railings and she was splayed there, her arms spread out, her head hanging several inches from the platform, thrown back, mouth wide open.

She was unclothed, her flesh pale, save where arcane symbols had been carved into her. The storm had washed the blood away. Tiny puddles of rainwater had accumulated in the hollows of her eyes, and the storm had filled her open mouth as well. Rain dribbled from one corner of her lips, sluicing down her cheek and falling down into the space between cars.

She was no more than seven.

Nigel Gull knew his own heart. There was little therein that was spectacularly noble. Yet the sight tore at him. The villain was gone, the one responsible for the girl’s death, who had killed her in ritual sacrifice as part of some spell to hide himself. He had attempted to murder King Edward on this eve of his coronation, not expecting other mages to be there to prevent it. Then he had fled here.

Had he found the girl somewhere along the way, or kept her awaiting her demise as a prisoner in the luxury of his private train.. just in case he needed her life? Gull found he did not want to know the answer.

But he needed to know.

And though it made him shudder to think of it, though his spirit cried out that it was an abomination in itself, he realized he knew a way to retrieve that information. Nigel Gull had learned from the greatest of mages, Lorenzo Sanguedolce, the man many called Sweetblood, the literal translation of his name. The mage’s other apprentice had been horrified, but Sanguedolce himself had not passed judgment at all, when Gull had looked too deeply into ancient Egyptian magicks that had been forbidden even to the high priests of that age. He had acquired certain hideous skills on that night, at the cost of his face, and he had never yet employed them.

But this… it seemed almost as though his sacrifice on that evening several years past had been in preparation for this. For one of those skills was The Voice of the Dead.

Sickened, stomach churning, but more determined now than he had ever felt, Gull stepped through the opening in the railing and straddled the platforms between the two Pullman cars. He clutched the railing and leaned over far enough that he could slide his free hand beneath the dangling head of the dead girl. Rain spilled off of her eyes, and some slid from her mouth. One of the sigils sliced in her chest opened slightly, the wound resembled an eyelid, leaking pink tears.

Gull stared into her face. Perfect, shattered innocence. He closed his own eyes tightly and drew a breath to steady himself. Then he pulled her head toward him and placed his lips over hers in a grotesque kiss. Lifting and tilting her head all at once, he drank the rainwater from the mouth of the dead girl as though her skull was his goblet.

"Dear God, Gull! What are you doing?"

Startled, he let the girl’s head drop, leaving her wedged into the railing, and crossed over the small gap above the coupling to the second Pullman car, turning all in the same motion to face the figure who had appeared so suddenly behind him. The horror and disgust in the new arrival’s tone was engraved upon his features as well, but the man did not seem surprised. It was, rather, as though his discovery of Gull in the midst of such an apparently odious act only confirmed what he had always believed.

"Well, well, well…" Gull said, feeling the magick working within him, feeling the thoughts and feelings of the dead girl fill him. Her name had been Carolyn but everyone called her Cass. She was from Derbyshire. The sorcerer had stolen her from her own bed before coming to London to kill the king.

"Speak up, man!" the other demanded.

Even as Gull continued on. "If it isn’t Sir Arthur."

Conan Doyle flinched. Rain dripped from his mustache, plastering it to his face. Gull wanted to smile at the sight of the distaste in his eyes, but he was too connected now to the echo of the girl that was inside him. Still, he saw it. Even as he tried to make sense of what he’d found Gull engaged in, Conan Doyle was bristling at the insult. For during the coronation ceremony, he had been knighted by the king. The man had spent his life in service to his country as a doctor, a writer, and an outspoken private citizen, working tirelessly against the enemies of the Crown, but disdained the idea of a reward. In truth he had accepted only to avoid insult to the king, and the wrath of his aging mother.

Gull knew this, and it made him all the more bitter. Conan Doyle was his friend and his fellow apprentice to Sanguedolce, but he had not the other man’s station or experience. He would have sacrificed almost anything for such an honor.

"I’ll have an answer," Conan Doyle said, the suspicion in his gaze now burning with a crackle of blue magick. The energy misted from his eyes and sparked around his fingers.

"Ah, you think me the villain now," Gull said. "Of course. The freak, the twisted one, is tainted so he must be evil. You’re so very predictable, Sir Arthur."

"Stop calling me that!" Conan Doyle snarled.

A fight was in the offing. But Gull knew they could not afford the indulgence. The true villain was escaping, and the dead, violated flesh of the innocent he had destroyed was only growing colder.

"My name is Cass," he said… but it was not really Gull who spoke. His mouth moved, and he generated the words as if reading them from the echoes of the dead girl’s spirit that moved within him, but it was her voice.