Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

Eve hauled Tisiphone off the ground, rage and blood thirst driving her to madness. "This is for helping me remember what a vicious cunt I’ve been." And she brought her mouth down to the throat of the Fury, fangs plunging deeply into pale, alabaster flesh that reeked so pungently of misery.

Tisiphone wailed as she was driven to the ground by the ferocity of Eve’s attack, an unearthly shriek of agony that caused the souls in her cloak to disperse, screaming themselves, ghosts fluttering like bats into the shadowed eaves of Hades’ heart.

Conan Doyle had witnessed Eve’s savagery countless times in their long relationship, often during the insanity of battle, but it never ceased to disturb him. The Erinys flailed beneath Eve’s attack, her whip lashing repeatedly, tearing Eve’s coat to shreds and scoring the flesh beneath, but to no avail. Eve rode the bucking myth, mouth firmly attached to her victim’s throat.

The dying scream of the Fury was horrible, becoming nearly unbearable as her remaining sisters joined in, filling the cavern with ear-splitting cries of shared anguish.

Then the chamber itself seemed to react, the ground starting to undulate as if something long dormant had been awakened by the sisters’ plaintive wails.

Danny looked at Conan Doyle, panic in his eyes. "I don’t even want to know."

The walls began to tremble. They had been dry, flaking and chalky, but now they seemed damp and soft, very much like the floor. Conan Doyle was reminded of anatomy lessons at the University of Edinburgh and the first time he had seen the exposed musculature of a cadaver he would be dissecting. Hades’ heart was the size of a cathedral, but now it became living muscle. It began to pulsate, emitting a rhythmic, near-deafening throb.

The heart of Hades had been made to beat again.

Ceridwen gripped his arm as the floor thrummed beneath their feet. Conan Doyle gazed across the chamber at Gull. He had scrambled away from the Furies and was consulting silently with Hawkins even as he cradled Jezebel in his arms. She had all but fainted, tears streaming down her face, red hair filthy and matted. The girl was falling apart. Hawkins was almost there himself from the look of it. The dapper Englishman was not so dapper now, his eyes wild as he spoke to Gull. For his part, the misshapen mage seemed at a loss for once in his godforsaken life, panic etched upon his grotesque features.

Obviously, whatever was happening now was not in any way part of Nigel’s game plan.

"Come," Conan Doyle said, grabbing Ceridwen by the arm. The sorceress — his love — had been watching the surviving Furies, sickly green magick dancing from her fingertips. But the time for fighting was over. The time for retreat had arrived.

"Danny!" he snapped, gesturing to the demon boy, who was staring around at the beating heart of Hades with the same wild light he’d had in his eyes after he had killed Scylla. He squatted on his haunches, ready to move. At the sound of his name, he looked up, alert.

"We came for Eve. Let’s get her and go."

"That’s the smartest thing you’ve said since I met you," the boy snarled.

Eve who was still crouched over her prey.

Danny hurried toward Eve across the undulating floor of Hades’s heart, but as the demon boy reached for her, shegrowled and batted his hand away with a bloody claw. She did not want her feast interrupted.

"Damn it! If I was carrying a rolled newspaper I’d slap you across the nose," Conan Doyle snapped. He and Ceridwen ran to Eve. The sorceress pulled the demon boy away and Conan Doyle himself let loose a tendril of crimson magick that swirled around Eve and pulled her from her victim. "Take your damnable head from the trough and let’s go!"

Eve shook off his spell and landed on the pulsing ground several feet from her prey, fangs bared, her mouth and chin stained with gore. There was murder in her eyes, and Conan Doyle summoned a spell of defense in his thoughts, just in case.

"We’re going now, Eve."

At first he wasn’t sure if she even understood his words, but then he saw a glimmer of humanity return to her eyes.

"What a fucking rush," Eve whispered, burying her face in her hands. "Never fed on the blood of a deity before." She looked up at Conan Doyle, her eyes wide and radiant with a strange inner light. Then she smiled and wiped the drying blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Potent. Way potent."

"I can only imagine," Conan Doyle responded, but before he could say anything more the voice of Nigel Gull interrupted.

"Look what she’s done!" he screamed, and Conan Doyle turned to see the twisted little mage pacing around the fleshy chamber as it undulated and pulsed. "You’ve ruined everything!"

Hawkins swore at Gull, trying to lead him to one of the hollow blood vessels that would take them out of there. Jezebel was once more standing on her own, but she was a pitiful waif, stumbling after him, silently pleading.

Eve started toward Gull, but Conan Doyle grabbed her arm. Her bloodlust was sated and the violence was gone from her eyes. "Survival is our only concern at the moment," he said.

With one last, longing look at Gull, she nodded. "Let’s go."

Ceridwen lifted a glowing hand to illuminate their path. "This way," she said.

All four of them paused as the surviving Erinyes moved to block their path.

"You will go nowhere," Alekto and Megaera moaned in unison.

Hawkins had fallen in behind them, with Gull leading a muttering Jezebel by the hand.

"Oh, this is just lovely," Hawkins muttered.

"What do we do?" Danny asked.

Conan Doyle held Ceridwen’s hand tightly, preparing to destroy the Furies. But then Gull’s bitter laughter filled the chamber.

"Oh, dear Arthur, you’ve bollixed it all up for me now, haven’t you, mate? So simple, it was. A bargain, nothing more. And you had to interfere. You couldn’t just do your part."

As he raved, Conan Doyle turned to see what had set him off. There they were, the seven of them — intruders all — in the midst of Hades’ pulsing, stinking heart. But beyond Hawkins and Jezebel, beyond the cursing, twisted shape of Nigel Gull, there were other figures. And now he saw what had prompted the dark mage’s new tirade.

Gull’s eyes narrowed with hatred and his nostrils widened, snorting like a stallion’s. "If your damned nobility keeps me from Medusa, I’ll have your heart, you bastard. I’ll have your heart."

But no one was listening to Gull anymore. On one side they were blocked by the surviving Furies. And now other creatures entered Hades’ heart through pulsing arteries, gaunt, skeletal beings adorned in fabulous armor stained black by the passage of millennia. Conan Doyle had seen these creatures before, scattered about within the corpse of Hades, but in a far less animated state. Something had awakened the lesser gods and goddesses of ancient Greece.

"Another time, Nigel," he rasped.

"What the fuck is going on now?" Eve snarled.

Ceridwen’s violet eyes flashed with light. "At a guess? You slaughtered a myth, my friend. You spilled the blood of the Erinyes, and it has set Hades’ heart to beating again… and roused the dead gods who had made this place their tomb."

"Zombie gods," Danny said with a shake of his head. "Well, shit, it was only a matter of time."

Their numbers continuing to grow, the dead gods shambled closer. Many brandished ancient weaponry: swords, spears, battle-axes, and knives.

Resigned to whatever came next, Conan Doyle smiled sidelong at Eve. "This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into."

She grunted. Not quite a laugh, but it would do. "Wasn’t something I planned."

Gull pushed Conan Doyle out of the way, sputtering angrily at Eve. "You murdered one of the Furies! What did you expect?"