Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (46 page)

She sprang at him, murder on her face. Sanguedolce put one
hand on the Forge of Hephaestus and simply gestured with the other, and Eve was
engulfed in flames. Her scream could have wrung tears from the damned.

Conan Doyle leaped between Sweetblood and Eve, his hands
clenched into fists that crackled with swirling golden light.

"That’s enough, Lorenzo. You’ve done far more than
enough damage by now."

Ceridwen raced to Eve’s side, fingers sketching the air, and
Conan Doyle felt the superheated air drop eighty degrees in an instant. The
flames that had momentarily touched Eve’s flesh were snuffed and frost formed
on her charred skin and scorched hair.

Danny tensed to spring, but Conan Doyle gestured for him to
stay back. The demon obeyed, but with obvious reluctance.

Sweetblood smiled at Conan Doyle. "That’s right,
Arthur. Call your pets to heel. As for it being enough, I concur. We’ve all
gotten what we wanted. Or, at least, what we needed."

His gaze shifted and Conan Doyle glanced over to see what
had drawn Sanguedolce’s attention. It was Gull, who sat on the stone floor of
the cavern with a glass vial of blood held up in his fingers, staring at it as
though it were the world’s largest diamond and he could study its facets.

Eve wasn’t so easily distracted. Her skin would heal, but
she would still feel the pain. Enough so that she abandoned the colloquial
jargon that was so much a part of her modern persona. "Hear me, o’ man,"
she snarled, baring fangs that gleamed in counterpoint to the blackness of her
charred flesh. "There shall be a reckoning."

Sweetblood sneered. "Oh, yes. But you won’t even be on
the battlefield by then, dear one. This is so far above you —"

"Shut the fuck up."

The words came from Danny, but it was clear from his tone
that they were spoken not in anger, but in fear. All eyes turned to him. The
demon boy had walked deeper into the tunnel, just past the place where the
Forge of Hephaestus sat, burning. Now Danny turned to take them all in with a
glance, his yellow eyes wide.

"Do you hear that?"

Conan Doyle narrowed his gaze, peering down into the tunnel.
He could see nothing save the same orange glow that had greeted them upon their
arrival here. But Eve had left off her rage at Lorenzo and she stepped past him
to join Danny.

"Screaming," she said, her voice low. Then she
turned toward Conan Doyle. "The ghosts are coming. The dead gods, the ones
that are nothing but spirit now, they’re coming after us."

Behind him, Nigel Gull laughed. "Or perhaps they simply
want
out
."

Conan Doyle swore under his breath. If the dead gods escaped
the Underworld, there would be catastrophe and slaughter. The specters were bad
enough, but he suspected that they would not come alone.

The Underworld was another realm, a twist of the fabric of
reality away from the world of Conan Doyle’s birth. A barrier existed between
dimensions, as it always did, but magick could open a portal or build a bridge.
The portal between the Underworld and his own world was represented physically
by two enormous stone doors, or gates.

He turned toward them now, glancing up at their height. "We’ve
got to get them open. Now."

"No more voice of Orpheus," Danny muttered.

"We’ve wasted time," Conan Doyle snapped, glaring
at Sanguedolce. "Come, Lorenzo. The gates must be opened, and then closed
again once we are on the other side."

The cave floor trembled slightly beneath their feet. The
distant wailing of anguished spirits came along the tunnel, audible at last to
the rest of them, and growing louder by the moment. Sanguedolce turned and
caressed the Forge of Hephaestus.

"Damn it, man! You didn’t come in here without an exit
plan!"

The ground shook so violently that Conan Doyle staggered
backward. Ceridwen steadied him and then leaned on him herself. The cave split,
a crack splintering across the floor and widening moment by moment, each time
with a sound not unlike the profound snapping that came up from deep ice
melting.

Conan Doyle glanced down the tunnel again. Nothing was in
sight yet, not monsters or resurrected gods, but it was a matter of moments, he
knew.

"Come on!" Danny snarled.

Eve held on to him.

Sweetblood shrugged. "My magick could free us. That was
my plan. But there is a faster way." He pointed at Ceridwen. In the gloom
of the cave her own slim, angular features seemed almost ghostly. "She is
tied to the elements, to nature. The gates are of this world, and of that. All
she must do is commune with the elements of our own realm, and the doors will
open for her."

Conan Doyle nodded, then spun on Ceridwen. "Go. Do it."

She shook her head, confused. The cave shook harder, debris
and dust falling down from the roof above them. "I don’t know if . . .
I’ve had to adjust to the nature of this place. I am not certain if —"

Nigel Gull choked his hoarse laughter again.

Eve rushed across to Ceridwen, grabbed her arm and propelled
her the last few feet to the massive crack that went up toward the roof showing
the seam between the doors. "Just fucking do it. No time for doubts,
princess. Get us out of here."

The ground shook again and Eve went to her knees. Ceridwen
braced herself against the stone gates, her hands on either side of the seam. Conan
Doyle held his breath as he watched her trembling not from outside stimuli, but
from within. Her eyes lit up with a familiar blue glow, and they began to
change color. Green and fiery red and white-gray and at last, night-black.

Black mist leaked from the edges of her eyes. Purple-black
energy began to glow around her hands, spreading up her arms. It was tainted magick,
the same hideous shade as he had seen Gull wield from time to time, but this
was the base elemental nature of this place. Ceridwen was in tune with it,
sharing her nature with it.

She screamed in anguish and disgust and threw her head back,
her eyes oily black, her mouth gaping open. The gates in front of her began to
glow with that bruise-black energy.

"Ceri!" Conan Doyle shouted. He ran at her,
reaching for her.

His wrist was caught in an iron grip and he spun, raising
his free hand to attack, a spell coming to his lips. Then he saw that it was
Danny who had grabbed him.

"We’ve got to get outta here and get the door closed
from the other side," the boy said. "You know that. Maybe you should
focus on keeping us alive in the meantime."

His fangs were longer, now, and the horns had grown during
their time in the Underworld. Danny looked more the demon than ever, and yet in
his voice he was still the boy, unsure of himself, trying his best to face up
to the horrors that he had thrown himself into, to the truth of who and what he
was. Conan Doyle had let his emotions interfere with rational thought for a
moment, and he was ashamed of himself.

Ceridwen screamed again, but he turned his back on her.

"Come, then. Let’s buy her the time she needs."

With a crash, the ground shook again. Sweetblood stood
beside the Forge, his entire body engulfed in a crimson flame, staring back
along the tunnel. Eve grabbed Gull by his jacket and hauled him to his feet.

"Get up, asshole. We might need you."

Conan Doyle stood beside Danny and while Ceridwen was busy
trying to get them out, the five of them rode the cracking, undulating stone
floor of the cave and waited for the hordes of resurrected myths to attack. The
shrieks of disembodied gods grew louder, whipping with the wind through the
tunnel, and Conan Doyle narrowed his eyes as he realized that they weren’t just
voices anymore.

He could see them.

Like heat distortion above the blacktop on a July day, they
obscured the view of the far end of the tunnel, where it turned to the left and
downward. The spirits had just appeared but they were swift, streaking toward
the gates with malicious momentum. From this distance and in the gloom he could
not make them out as distinct from one another. Instead they were a wave of
spectral hatred, flowing upward.

The tunnel shook again. Debris showered down from above. A
shard of rock struck Conan Doyle on his left cheek and cut him. He hissed with
pain and put a hand to his face, glanced down a moment to see the blood on his
hand, and only when he had looked up did he see the shadow that had begun to
obscure the orange glow at the far end of the tunnel. A massive, skeletal hand
and a battle-axe. The shadow moved and in a moment had blocked all light from
that direction.

The dead gods still shrieked, hurtling up the tunnel at
them, but he could not see them any longer. The only light came from the Forge
and from the magick crackling around Sweetblood’s body and Conan Doyle’s own
hands. And from behind . . .

A blinding flash of blue lit up his peripheral vision,
illuminating them all in stark silhouette. So bright was the light that it
shone deep into the tunnel and for just a moment Conan Doyle saw the specters
of gods screaming nearer, perhaps a hundred yards away now, and deeper, the
march of an army of bones. With that image still imprinted on his retinas he
spun in search of the source of that bright flash.

Ceridwen shuddered as though she were having a seizure,
hands pressed against the high stone doors ablaze with purple-black light that flowed
like mercury over her upper arms and spilled like cloud-tears from her eyes. The
doors themselves radiated that same magick so that it seemed to be seeping from
the stone rather than flowing from Ceridwen. But that dark glow had diminished
somewhat, and the color was lightened by the bright blue light that blazed in
the crack between the doors. It swirled with shades of blue, ice and sky and
river, all shifting in the pure, brilliant glow that seemed only to grow.

In tendrils, the elemental magick of Earth slipped through
into the underworld and ran across the inside of those enormous doors, the
gates of the Underworld. Like lightning it leaped through the seam and touched
Ceridwen, merging with the black energy that consumed her, tinting the color of
her eyes and the magick she summoned. Through the clash of light and magick, he
saw that Ceridwen was weeping, but there was a beatific smile on her lips.

Swirls of blue light slipped into the dark field around her
and she was thrown back, away from the doors. Ceridwen fell to her knees amidst
a shower of debris from the ceiling of the cave. Sparks of conflicting colors
danced in her eyes and from her fingertips.

"Arthur!" Sweetblood shouted.

But he did not turn, this time. All the dead of Olympus
might be upon them in a moment, and he would not leave Ceridwen to suffer
alone. He ran to her side, stepping over a splintering crack that raced along
the tunnel floor, and he knelt by her.

Reached for her.

Ceridwen glanced up at him. Her chest was heaving and her
face drawn, sickly. The elements of two dimensions warred in her and the
conflict was churning inside her.

"Arthur," she said. "Time to go home."

She staggered to her feet, reached out her right hand, which
was swathed only in pure blue light. Though the light in her eyes was still
tainted, she had managed to summon a connection that was devoid of the
netherworld’s darkness. Ceridwen touched the doors.

They blew outward as though a hurricane had slammed into
them, and the light of dawn over the Mediterranean spilled in. Conan Doyle saw
the sea churning far below and relief washed over him. Despite the peril they
still faced he felt a smile stretch his lips . . . and then Ceridwen collapsed.

"No!" the mage shouted, reaching to catch her
before she could tumble to the stone floor.

With her in his arms he turned to call for the others, even
as the ghosts overtook them. Their screams were so loud that spikes of pain
shot through the sides of his head. Vicious spirits spun in the air, several of
them reaching for Eve, lashing at her. Where they battered against her, the
charred flesh of her arms and face was scraped away.

"Oh, you bastards!" she snarled.

Conan Doyle held out a hand and an arc of green, ethereal
light leaped from his fingers. When it touched the ghosts, they all ceased
their screaming, stopped their swooping attacks. Danny had been about to defend
himself when the spirits that had been diving at him began to drift aimlessly.

"Come!" Conan Doyle shouted. "They’re
mesmerized, but it will only last a moment! Danny, take Gull."

The demon boy snarled and leaped over to grab hold of Nigel
Gull. They joined Eve and the three began to run toward Conan Doyle, where he
stood with Ceridwen by the yawning gates of the Underworld.

Sweetblood still burned with crimson flame. He stood beside
the Forge of Hephaestus facing the march of the dead. Conan Doyle had
bewildered only a small number of the ghosts, the first to reach them, and now
the others were focusing their attention on Sanguedolce.

"Lorenzo!" Conan Doyle shouted. "We must
close the gates!"

The archmage glanced over his shoulder, a sly grin on his
face, as though this were the most enjoyment he had experienced in quite some
time. Then he raised both hands, fingers contorted in a pattern Conan Doyle had
never seen before, and he screamed as though he had been run through with a
saber. Crimson fire erupted from not only his hands but his entire body, spikes
of it thrusting outward to skewer each of the dozens of spectral gods that
surrounded him.

They had been shrieking in rage before. Now they cried out
in agony, were engulfed in that same red flame, and one by one they winked out,
snuffed from existence.

Sweetblood touched a hand to the Forge and it levitated off
of the ground. He turned to face Conan Doyle. "Go, you fool! What are you
waiting for?"

With that, Conan Doyle turned with Ceridwen and, supporting
her, hurried out of the Underworld and into the morning light of his own world.
They stepped onto the ledge below the massive stone doors and then leaped out
into the air, floating the twenty or thirty yards down onto the narrow, rocky
shore. Then they stumbled into the water together, knee-deep in the blue-green
Mediterranean. Eve, Danny and Gull were not far away . . . the vampire still
healing, and fortunately still under the influence of the spell Gull had given
her to protect her from the sun.