Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

An emaciated, eight-foot-tall creature covered in silvery scales surged toward Gull, wielding a trident of gold. One of the offspring of Poseidon, he thought. How sad that beings once so revered have come to this. Gull fired a single shot into the god’s bearded face and the flesh and bone and stringy hair collapsed inward and blew out the back of his head.

In the moment he had bought himself, Gull checked his inside coat pocket for his prize, the treasure whose acquisition had caused all of this insanity. The blood of the Furies was still there, still safe. He had to leave this place soon. His goddess, his love, awaited the cure for her affliction. Medusa would finally understand that his love for her knew no bounds.

Another god, this one clad in the skins of animals, attempted to decapitate him with an enormous club, but Gull would not oblige him. The club-wielding god died squealing, an entropy spell swirling about his once mighty form, consuming what remained of his flesh.

Everywhere the sorcerer looked there was ferocious battle, and the dead continued to stream into the chamber. From the teeth of the Hydra, Conan Doyle had managed to conjure the assistance of a small army, and it seemed that the blood-slick soldiers had managed to buy them all some time. But Gull knew the dead would soon overwhelm them again.

He would have none of that.

Again, he patted his breast pocket, feeling the glass vial safely nestled there, and decided that now was the time to take his leave. He felt a momentary pang of guilt for deserting those who had begrudgingly become his allies, but there was too much at stake for him.

Through the sea of conflict, Gull saw an exit in a wall of the fleshy chamber, throbbing and pulsing not twelve feet away. Holstering his gun, he spoke an ancient incantation that would clear a path to the door and surround him in a field of dark and terrible magick. Killing magick. The gods who attempted to stop him died screaming, their bodies exploding into flames on contact with the shimmering aura that now protected him. Gull smiled as he reached the throbbing door, chancing a final, quick look over his shoulder before leaving.

"Nigel?" he heard a squeaky voice, ragged and full of panic.

And then he saw her, Jezebel, her clothing torn and stained with blood. There was a sad, sweet smile on the girl’s face as she made her way across the battlefield toward him. Bursts of lightning leaped from her fingers, striking down any who attempted to block her path. He was her salvation, her oasis in this terrible sea of madness and violence — it had been that way since they met.

Gull remembered when he first found the girl, fourteen, shivering and wet, sitting at a campsite in the Sequoia National Park surrounded by the bodies of her family. Jezebel hadn’t wanted to go camping at all. She loved them, but hated them at the same time, like so many girls her age. Spoiled and temperamental, in a fit of rage she had whipped the elements into a fury to match her own, calling the lightning down upon her mother and father, burning them black, scorching the earth around them. Her brother — whom she had despised — she pummeled to death with a rain of massive hailstones, so that what was left of him was unrecognizable pulp.

Nigel Gull had felt the presence of magick and tracked it to that place. In the aftermath, Jezebel had been shattered by guilt, attempting to use her power to kill herself. Gull had seen the lightning flash, darting fingers of fire into the forest again and again in the same spot. When he had come upon her, he saw it strike her once, twice, a third time, with no idea how many times it had struck before he arrived. The girl was weeping, the lightning not harming her at all, arcing around her, tearing up the ground in a circle around her.

Jezebel had been a troubled child, but also a talented one. One with potential. Gull had gone to her, risking the lightning himself, and though she had at first shrunken back from his hideous visage, when he had pulled her into his arms and whispered to her that it was going to be all right, that they could never have understood her but that he could help, she had relaxed into his embrace and sobbed uncontrollably. Eventually she had fallen asleep in his arms and he had carried her out of the forest to his car, leaving the corpses behind.

They had been together ever since.

Now the immolation field that surrounded him crackled and hummed as Gull watched Jezebel make her way toward him. Her hair was whipping wildly around her in a wind of her own devising and there was a desolation in her eyes, a hopelessness he had not seen since he had first discovered her. The jeans and barely-there T-shirt she wore were streaked with filth and torn in places. She had many cuts, but the worst was a slash on her right side from which streaks of blood had spilled down to saturate the leg of her pants, blackening the denim.

"Nigel, wait for me," she called, desperate.

Gull had become her protector as well as her employer, her unique talents and childlike view of the world serving him well on many occasions. Jezebel had been a tremendous asset.

Now she was merely a hindrance.

He could not afford to have her draw attention to his departure. She called his name again, and he could see the tears streaming freely down her face. Gull opened his arms as if to welcome her into their loving embrace. Jezebel quickened her pace, nearly falling as she navigated her way over the piles of dead gods, of bones and armor, that littered the floor. Gull almost felt a pang of guilt as she at last reached him, hungry for his arms to be about her — protecting her as he had done from the start.

The twisted mage closed his eyes just as she touched the immolation shield that protected him. Jezebel was unable to scream as her lovely body was consumed by a searing flash of supernatural light. He opened his eyes again, the image of her at that moment before her demise burned onto his retinas. He would miss Jezebel, and when this quest was done, he would tell his beloved Medusa of her sacrifice. Perhaps then he would shed a tear for her passing, but now, there wasn’t time for sentimentality.

The exit quivered wetly behind him, and he ducked his head as he departed the chamber through the orifice. The shield of devastation waned and was gone, his strength nearly depleted. He would have to find a place to rest soon.

It was dark inside the passage, the stink reminding him of the London charnel houses from his youth. Gull carefully felt along the passage, the moist wall of flesh beneath his hand thrumming with life, or at least what passed for living in this infernal place.

"Going somewhere, Gull?" asked a voice from behind him.

Gull stopped, whispering a spell to illuminate his hand, and turned to see who had addressed him. The demon boy lurked in the shadows, his eyes glinting yellow in the faint light thrown by Gull’s hand.

"Ah, Daniel, I was following one of the Erinys and — "

The boy surged toward him. "Don’t give me any of your shit," he growled, and Gull saw that something dangled from the boy’s clutches. A head; the boy was holding the decapitated head of one of the gods he’d battled.

"Don’t you take that tone with me, boy," Gull began, taking a step back. A spell that would have solidified the air around the youngster, suffocating him, danced upon the mage’s lips, but the demon child was faster.

Danny charged, lashing out with the severed head, catching Gull across the face and knocking him to the ground. Nigel fumbled inside his coat for his gun, but the boy moved with frightening speed and was suddenly perched atop him. The demon gathered up the front of Gull’s coat in his clawed hands, pulling him close.

"I saw what you did to Jezebel," he said, giving him a shake, eyes ablaze and mouth twisted in disgust. "How could you do it?" he spat. "How could you do something like that to one of your own team?"