Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

Graves was a ghost. A wandering soul. If he chose not to be seen there ought to have been no way for her to notice him.

But she had.

When he fired those phantom guns it was not to keep her from escaping him, but to keep her coming any nearer. Gunshots echoed out over the ancient ruins of the theater as a new drama began to unfold. The spectral weapons jumped in his hands, ghost bullets seared the world of the living, intruding upon it. Medusa attempted to dodge but the first bullet caught her through the shoulder. The Gorgon screamed and black blood spattered white marble. The second struck her beneath the left breast. The third shot missed but the fourth grazed Medusa’s head, shearing off one of the serpents that grew from her scalp.

Faced with an enemy capable not only of resisting her cursed gaze but of hurting her, making her bleed, Medusa fled. She darted across the stage and leaped into the crumbling stone seating area. Graves felt almost sorry for this creature, so exposed now that she had discovered herself vulnerable. But then he remembered the dead, the vast forests of human statues, of those stone effigies of her murderous progress across Greece. He swept across the theater in pursuit, phantom guns clutched tightly in his hands.

Medusa scrambled across several rows to a grand stone staircase that would take her out toward the forest behind the theater. Once in the trees, she might easily elude him.

Clay came down from the sky with the screech of a night bird. He was an enormous white owl. Medusa turned to defend herself, claws slashing skyward, snakes snapping at the air. Her own scream tore across the sky and Graves though that if the ghosts of ancients lingered here, she would have woken them. The last time they had clashed, the Gorgon had turned Clay to stone. Now he took no chances. Even as he dropped down toward her, he changed shape. Medusa lashed out at the owl, but the owl was no longer there. Instead, he was a hummingbird, darting past her face. Then, in the space between heartbeats, he became a Bengal tiger, massive paws crushing ancient stone to powder beneath his tread. Clay sprang at her. Medusa reached for the tiger, prepared to fight it. One of her hands closed on its forepaw…

An octopus sprawled across gray stone, suffocating even as its tentacles wrapped around the Gorgon, crushing her. One of those tentacles wrapped around her throat, but Clay could not retain that form for long without endangering his own life.

Warping the air and light around him, he changed again, to the biggest mountain gorilla Graves had ever seen. Medusa had been taken entirely off guard. Now she at last got her claws into him, slashing his face and chest. Clay let out the thundering cry of the gorilla and grabbed her by the throat. Serpent hair darted down and bit his hands, even as he raised her above his head and then hurled her with all of his strength at the stone stairs. There came the crunch of breaking bone.

Medusa flipped onto her belly, managed to reach her hands and knees, preparing to stand in spite of her injuries.

Now that Clay was out of the line of fire, Graves shot her again. Two bullets struck her, one in the leg and another in the pelvis. She crumbled to her knees.

From the massive shadow cast by the lumbering gorilla, Squire emerged. The hobgoblin had retrieved the net they had planned to use for Medusa, and now he hopped forward, agile and brutal, and cast it over her. Squire swore loudly as he kicked the Gorgon, trapping her in the net. The snakes on her head hissed at him and the goblin hissed back.

Medusa thrashed against the net, trying to break free.

Clay, Squire, and Graves rushed to encircle her so that she could not escape. What she had become was not entirely her fault, but Medusa was a true monster.

She had to die.

A shrieking filled the Underworld, whipping around Eve and her companions on a tornado wind. The anguish of dead Olympus, the bitter sorrow and resentment of dead gods, echoed through the vastness of that death realm. Ghost-warriors, the armored remains of ancient gods, tore free of their mass grave within the massive corpse of Hades. Others forced themselves up from the black soot underfoot, rising from the ground where they had once fallen and been forgotten.

But there were more.

On the wind.

Those without bones, without armor or any other remains, simply soared through the air, many of them not attacking so much as taking the opportunity to give voice to their pain, and their madness. They screamed, those spirits, and where they flew and twisted around Eve, their touch scoured her flesh like rough stone. These were no ordinary spirits.

She had Ceridwen by the wrist and the two had begun to run up the long, steep hill that led back the way they’d come. But Eve glanced over her shoulder and saw that Danny was hauling Nigel Gull off the ground.

"Shit," she snarled.

As Danny got Gull to his feet, Nick Hawkins stood gaping like a fool at the gods in the midst of their resurrection. The nearest had been female once, and carried a quiver of arrows across her back. She was nearly out of the ground and Hawkins seemed unable to tear his gaze from her.

Eve raced back down to them. "What the fuck are you doing? Just leave them."

Gull was bleeding from a broken nose and a gash in his cheek and his eyes were glazed and disoriented. The demon boy got one of the mage’s arms around him and started hustling him toward where Ceridwen stood up on the black-earth hill.

"He’s still got serious mojo, even without the voice. We might need him," Danny said.

Eve stared at him stupidly for a moment. Of course he was right. "Shit," she snarled.

Someone started screaming behind her, in a voice that sounded like a little girl’s. She spun, claws out, to see that in the moment she was focused on Danny, the resurrected archer had reached Hawkins and was driving him down to the ground, throwing up a low mist of black dust. The goddess of the hunt snatched an arrow from her quiver with skeletal fingers and plunged its sharpened tip through Hawkins’s left eye. He twitched twice, and then lay still.

"Just my fucking luck," Eve muttered. She had been wanting to kill Hawkins since a few seconds after they’d met, and she felt cheated.

A trio of screaming ghosts whipped around her, spinning her, scraping her arms and face. Eve swore and snarled, but could not harm them. The others — the ones solid enough to tear apart — were scrambling nearer, but there were too many of them. Far too many.

She raced to Danny and they held Gull between them, hurrying toward Ceridwen. As they half-dragged the mage up the hill, Eve saw Ceridwen’s eyes begin to glow blue. A weird kind of steam issued from them, and then Ceridwen raised both of her hands. Eve felt a wave of frigid air blast past her and the screams of the disembodied gods were silenced. She glanced behind her and saw several of the giant, armored corpses freeze, ice forming upon them. One tumbled and shattered in the black dust.

Nigel Gull, still staggering along with her and Danny’s aid, began to chuckle dryly. When he spoke, his voice was a tortured rasp.

"We’ll all buggered now," he said. "They’ll take us one by one. No way any of us are getting out of here. It’s too far."

Eve fought the urge to shatter his chest with her fist and rip his heart out. She glanced over at Danny past the burden they shared and saw in his eyes that the words had cut him deeply. They did not slow him down, however. The demon boy hurried Gull along more quickly.

They had almost reached Ceridwen when the Fey sorceress pointed down the hill past them. She shouted something, but the howl of dead voices had returned and Eve could not hear her. Spirits spun around her again. Danny lashed out at one but his claws passed right through it. Eve was less interested in these things than in whatever had drawn Ceridwen’s attention.