Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

"That’s exactly what it is," Eve told Ceridwen. "Exactly."

Hawkins turned off the main road now and Eve followed slowly, very careful not to knock down any of the trees. The smell of the ocean came on the breeze through the window, but there were no other scents. Nothing.

"The forest is petrified," Conan Doyle explained, glancing back at Danny and then leaning forward to see out the window. "Nature as cadaver, if you will. In prehistoric times there was a great deal of volcanic activity here. Eruptions produced lava and ash that filled the air so quickly that instead of burning the vegetation here, it was coated instead with a layer of ash and preserved, just as you see."

Even for Eve the trees were haunting to look at, and they were deep among them now.

"So, the original trees are still under that ash?" Danny asked.

"No. Actually, they were fossilized from the inside out during that same process. You’re in a sort of fossil diorama at the moment. It’s a remarkable place, actually. A window on the past."

"I’m more concerned about the future," Eve said grimly. Up ahead, Hawkins had stopped the lead vehicle. There appeared to be some kind of clearing beyond.

Eve pulled behind and killed the engine. She was the first one out of the Rover. Conan Doyle and Danny got out. Ceridwen was slow to follow. The destruction of this primeval forest seemed catastrophic to her, or so her expression implied. The Fey sorceress reached out to touch a nearby fossilized tree, but she drew back her hand quickly and lowered her gaze in sadness.

"And this is where we will find the grave of Phorcys? The Gorgons’ father?" she asked as she looked up.

Conan Doyle and Danny were already walking toward Gull and his associates, all of whom were out of their vehicle. Eve was the only one who had waited for Ceridwen. She did not dislike the Faerie woman. In fact, Ceridwen had earned her respect many times over, and she appreciated that Conan Doyle loved her, and that the feeling was mutual. But they just didn’t have a thing in common. Despite the horrors she had seen in her life, Ceridwen remained in some way innocent.

Eve was the furthest thing from innocent. She was tainted, forever and always, by her sins and by the touch of unclean hands.

Yet Ceridwen always treated her with deference and a quiet camaraderie. So Eve waited for her, and it was she who answered the elemental’s question.

"Maybe we’ll find it, and maybe we won’t," Eve told her. "Phorcys was a myth. A legend. Some of them are true and some of them are bullshit. But even if he was real, and the story of the Gorgons is true, that doesn’t mean this is his grave right here. If there’s one thing I know about Nigel Gull, it’s that the truth is open to interpretation when it’s coming from his mouth."

"Yes," Ceridwen replied. "I had that sense."

She glanced once more at the tree she had touched and rubbed her fingers together as though some residue remained on her skin. Eve wore her jeans and boots and a long leather jacket over a green turtleneck. Her hair was perfect. Her dangling earrings, jade and amber set in gold, had come from a jeweler in Paris. Ceridwen wore a dress that was little more than a layered veil and a robe more suited to Medieval times. And yet there was no question that the sorceress seemed the more at home here, in this ancient place, despite what had befallen the forest.

"I think we’re going to have to work extra hard to keep your guy out of trouble this time," Eve told her.

Ceridwen’s violet eyes flashed defensively, but then she must have seen something in Eve’s own gaze, for she smiled instead. "Where would he be without us?"

Eve glanced around and laughed. "A fossil."

The two of them caught up to Conan Doyle and Danny, Eve noting with admiration that the kid was handling himself well. Hawkins and Jezebel were standing back from the others slightly, and so Eve also hung back to keep an eye on them.

"You are certain this is the place?" Conan Doyle asked, glancing around. Despite the heat, he wore one of his dapper, old-fashioned suits. Thus far his only concession to the weather had been to remove his tie. Any moment she expected him to doff the jacket and roll up his sleeves. But, then, he was locked in this battle of wills with Gull, and that might be construed as a sign of weakness.

It was all ridiculous as far as Eve was concerned. Gull was deformed because he played with magicks he should have left alone. She figured Conan Doyle ought to be satisfied with that as a victory.

"Am I certain?" Gull asked. His wide nostrils flared. "Would I have dragged all you lot out here if I wasn’t? You know me better than that, Sir Arthur."

Their mutual dislike and rivalry was buried beneath the chivalric code of another era, but it was there nevertheless.

"How did you determine this to be the site of Phorcys’s grave? What led you here?" Conan Doyle asked, his tone modulated, more reasonable, as he stroked his mustache.

Eve glanced around the petrified forest. The place was impossibly quiet. In that moment it seemed the whole world had been fossilized. Something was not right. She had felt the supernatural force growing here and had told Conan Doyle as much. It was obvious that something was here. But despite the look of the place, it did not feel like a grave to her.

It felt hungry.

And no one knew what hunger felt like better than she did.

"I’ve been mapping the real-world locations of mythology for decades. You know that well enough. In my travels I located stone statues… victims of a Gorgon’s eyes. The Gorgons were Phorcys’s daughters. That in mind, it wasn’t difficult to find a spell that would use the stone remains of his daughters’ victims to create a Divination Box."

He reached into the first Range Rover and withdrew a small wooden box with no cover. On its sides were markings similar to others Eve had seen once before, ages ago in Babylon. Gull held it low so that they could all see inside. There were bits of stone within that must have come from one of the Gorgon’s victims as well as the small bones of some kind of bird and several dark-shelled nuts.

Gull shook the box. The contents rattled and jumped a bit, and then all of them rolled of their own accord across the bottom of the box, clicking on the wood as they gathered in one corner.

"Good as any compass," Danny noted, standing between Eve and Conan Doyle.

Gull’s misshapen face beamed at the kid. "Precisely, my boy. Precisely."

The bones and stones and nuts began to rattle again. At first Eve though nothing of it. Then she saw the alarm on Gull’s face. An instant later the contents of the Divination Box slid up the inside wall and jumped out, flying to the ground and bouncing and rolling across the barren earth, as if drawn by a magnet.

The ground began to buckle and quake. Eve was thrown against the Range Rover. Her companions began to shout, but she ignored them all, her eyes searching the darkness among the petrified trees for the place where those bones and stones had gone.

The earth heaved, shattered, and sprayed, and then collapsed in upon itself, a massive hole opening in the ground.

From it came a noise… hissing, as if of a thousand snakes.

Then the first hideous head began to rise, sickly yellow eyes glowing in the night as it sought them out.

A Hydra.

Danny Ferrick didn’t need one of Doyle’s musty old books to tell him what it was that had emerged from the dry, barren earth, its multiple heads snapping and hissing. He‘d seen enough movies and read enough Greek mythology to know exactly what now attacked them.

"Holy shit. A fucking real Hydra." he whispered with awe, frozen where he stood. He could not take his eyes from the serpentine monstrosity, its nine heads swaying hypnotically, as if trying to decide which of their number it would strike at first.