Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (5 page)

A waiter came over to refill their water glasses and inform
them that their lunch would be brought out shortly, before excusing himself
with a slight bow and a genial smile. Eve removed a packet of sugar from a
container on the table and began to play with it.

"I remember quite a bit, actually. Some things I’ve let
go of, but other things . . ." Her voice trailed off, and a look of
heartbreaking sadness flickered across her face.

Clay wished he had never brought it up, never caused her to
examine the memories she wished she could abandon. But as quickly as it had
appeared, the telling look was gone and Eve managed to summon a smile as she
changed the subject.

"So, tell me something else about him," Eve said,
taking a sip of water. "Something we couldn’t pull from a history book. Or
is his love of stuffed mushrooms the only thing worth knowing about the man who
once conquered the entire civilized world?"

Clay set down his fork and pulled the white napkin up from
his lap to wipe his mouth. "He was a pretty good dancer," he said
with a straight face. "Man, could that guy cut a rug."

Eve burst out laughing, almost spilling her water. An ice
cube had escaped over the rim of the glass and dropped onto the tabletop. She
plucked it up with her gloved fingers and tossed it at him. "Asshole,"
she said, a lingering smile on her face.

He could probably have counted on one hand the number of
times he’d seen this woman look genuinely happy.
It’s nice to see her smile
,
he thought, brushing the cube from his lap to the ground.

"You don’t believe me," he said, doing his best to
stifle his amusement. "Fine, be that way. I’ll just keep my candid
recollections of history to myself, though I think you might have been very
interested in Genghis Khan’s phallus-shaped vegetable collection."

When Eve glared at him, Clay couldn’t hold it back any
longer and burst out laughing himself. The life he led did not often give him
the opportunity for laughter, and he held on to the moment with both hands,
truly enjoying himself.

Eve grinned. "Think you’re pretty funny, don’t you?"
she said.

He nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes.

"We’ll see how funny you think it is when I stick you
for this bill."

Clay had regained most of his composure by the time their
food arrived. Two waiters brought their entrees: his the linguine with clam
sauce, and Eve’s a Caesar salad. They were silent through their meal, and he
could see by the way her brow furrowed, that she was thinking hard about
something. This happened too often when they were together, but for once they
were in a situation that allowed him to inquire about it.

"Penny for your thoughts," he said finally,
spinning the last of the linguine onto his fork.

Eve shrugged, placing her napkin on top of the table, and
pushed her salad plate away from her. "Don’t know what it is, but every
time I’m with you, I end up thinking about things I’d rather not."

"Such as?"

She glanced away. "It’s hard to explain."

"Then let’s distract you," Clay said, pushing away
his own empty plate. "How about some dessert?" he asked, removing a
menu card from the side of the table. "I hear they make an amazing brownie
sundae, and I’d even be willing to share."

There was a tinge of desperation in Eve’s gaze when she met
his eyes.

"I can’t remember . . ." she said. "I can’t
remember what the garden . . . what Eden looked like." Eve turned her head
away to watch the shiny, happy people stroll down the crowded sidewalks of
Newbury Street. "I often wonder if this is another way that
He
intends to punish me, to take away the memories of the things I cherish, one by
one, so only the bad stuff is left."

Clay was at a loss. The Creator had a gift for punishment,
there was no doubt about that. The punishment He had meted out to Eve had led
to the horror that had made her what she was now. She had been raped and
defiled and driven over the edge of madness by demons, and turned into a
monster. Wasn’t that enough?

"We’re old, Eve," he said. "Time steals
everything eventually, memories in particular. You forget. And, in truth, I’d
like to think that God has more important things to do with his time than to
keep fucking with you."

For a moment, Clay thought he saw the slightest hint of
anger bloom on her face, her canine teeth elongating to nasty points. But as
quickly as it was there, it was gone.

"Do
you
remember?" she asked him.

He didn’t want to lie to her. "Yes."

"Not right now," she said, "but maybe
sometime, we can talk about it . . . maybe jog my memory. It just seems . . . I
mean, to be unable to erase the memories I wish I could forget, and not to be
able to have even a glimpse of that in my mind . . . it just hurts."

Clay reached out and laid his hand atop hers. He was not
always comfortable with intimacy, but he could not ignore her pain. "I
remember that there were a lot of plants, if that helps you any."

He gave her a wink,m and they both laughed softly.

"Thanks," she said. "That’s a big help."

"Seriously. Any time. We’ll go somewhere humanity
hasn’t completely destroyed nature, and we’ll talk about it. I’ll share
everything I can recall."

Eve took a long breath and let it out. "That would be
wonderful." She fluttered one hand in the air. "Meanwhile, though,
back to ancient conquerors and penis-shaped vegetables."

"Actually, we were moving on to dessert. Now, about
that brownie sundae —"

He felt a sudden tug on the cuff of his pants and on reflex
shifted the skin on his legs to resemble that of a prehistoric sea urchin,
nasty spines rising up out of flesh as defense.

"Shit!" he heard a familiar voice hiss from
beneath the table.

Eve heard it as well, rolling her eyes, and they both bent
forward, carefully lifting the white linen cloth. From within a pool of shadow
under the table, the gnarled, leathery features of the hobgoblin peered up at
them. Squire was sucking on one of his sausage thick fingers, pricked by Clay’s
defensive metamorphosis.

"What do you want, you little creep?" Eve asked.

"Nice to see you too, bitch," he snarled, turning
to address Clay. "Sorry to cut into your lunch, but the boss wants you
back at the house right away." He scrutinized his finger, squeezing a bead
of blood from the wound. "Gave me a nasty prick there," he said,
placing the injured finger back into his mouth.

"How apropos," Eve remarked, dropping her side of
the tablecloth, finished with Doyle’s errand boy. "A nasty prick for a
nasty prick."

Danny Ferrick studied his reflection in the mirror over the
bureau. "I think they’re getting longer," he said, touching the
curved horns growing from his forehead. He turned to glance at his mother.

"What do you think?"

Julia didn’t
want
to think about her son’s horns, let
alone look at them, although it was impossible to ignore the black protrusions.
"Could be," she said offhandedly, taking an overlarge New England
Patriots shirt from the suitcase on the bed, folding it, and placing in a
dresser nearby.

Danny was almost completely unpacked, except for some cargo
pants and his toiletries, and she found herself slowing down, stalling, not
really wanting to complete the task.

"You’re not even looking."

Julia slid the drawer closed and reached for the cargo
pants. "I looked, trust me, I just can’t say."

Danny was suddenly at her side, his hand closed around her
wrist, pulling her away from her task. "Look at me."

Her heart skipped a beat as she let herself see him again. He
looked like something out of a bad dream; completely hairless, with horns
sticking from his scalp, skin the color of burgundy wine and yellow, hypnotic
eyes. This couldn’t be her child — her baby boy — this was some
kind of monster, a demon. But when he spoke, or looked at her in that certain
way, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that this was indeed the child she loved.

A changeling
. That was what Mr. Doyle had called him.
A demon child, left in place of a human baby at birth by mischievous devils. The
child she had given birth to was gone, long ago. Mr. Doyle insisted that her
biological infant had likely been dead since shortly after his abduction. The
weight of that knowledge might have killed her, the sheer black burden of it,
if not for the presence of the boy left in his place. A demon child, to be
raised as a human. How surprised those monsters would have been to learn that
she had done exactly as they planned, and that she did not regret it. She
grieved for the infant she had lost, but she loved her son, no matter how he
had come to be hers.

She loved him.

Danny Ferrick was a demon, but he would always be her son.

"I’m sorry, baby," she said, pulling him into her
arms and kissing the side of his bald head. His skin felt different now, like
the soft leather of an expensive car seat, and she was careful not to scratch
herself on his horn. "I’m being rude to you, even though I don’t want to
be."

He hugged her back, and she could feel a frightening
strength in those arms, but also a tenderness that proved she was loved,
despite what they had learned about his origins.

"Did I do something wrong?" he asked, gently
removing himself from her embrace.

Julia laughed and shook her head. "If only it were that
easy." She again reached for the pants in the open suitcase and removed
them, refolding them. "I don’t like this, Danny, any of this; your
physical change, leaving home, living here." She turned toward the bureau,
feeling his gaze on her.

"But you talked to Mr. Doyle. It’s best that I’m here,
to learn about what’s happening to me, what I am. I thought you understood
that."

She pulled open the bottom drawer, where she had put his
jeans earlier, and shoved the cargo pants in beside them. "It’s not that I
don’t understand, Danny, I just don’t like it."

"What’s not to like?" he asked, his voice louder
now, his volatile teenage temper rearing its ugly head. "Look at me, Mom. These
people actually
want
me here."

She felt him move closer and, for the briefest of moments,
actually felt afraid, and this angered her.

"You don’t think I want you at home?" she
demanded.

He sighed. "You know that’s not what I meant. It’s just
. . . with the assholes at school, and the neighbors . . . you know I’m better
off here. It’ll be easier for both of —"

"I didn’t raise my son to become part of some freak
show," she snapped, turning to face him.

Danny chuckled humorlessly and ran a hand over his deep red
pate. His fingernails were black now, like the claws of an animal.

"Okay, so I don’t stay here, I come home with you, and
then what?"

She didn’t have an answer, so she folded her arms
defensively across her chest.

"I go back to Newton and everything’s just fine, is
that what you think?" He laughed unhappily. "How long do you think it
will be before the villagers are surrounding the house with torches?"

"Stop," Julia said. "Please, stop it." She
closed her eyes, listening to the pounding rhythm of the blood in her temples. She
was getting a headache; the kind that usually sent her straight to bed with all
the lights out and the curtains drawn, not quite a migraine, but a bad,
return to the womb
kind of headache, as her ex-husband used to say.

"No, I won’t," he said defiantly. "Things are
different now —
I’m
different now." He pointed to one of the
room’s windows with a clawed finger. "I don’t fit out there anymore."

She still had her eyes closed, the pain in her head growing
with every pulse of her heart.

"Look at me!" Danny roared, and she had no choice
but to open her eyes. He stood before her, arms spread, displaying what he had
become. "Look at me and tell me I’m wrong."

Julia didn’t know what to say. Deep down she knew he was
right, but damn it she couldn’t bear to let him go, to release her only child
into the care of Arthur Doyle, someone she barely knew — to become part
of his . . . what did he call it? His
menagerie.

"What do we actually know about this Mr. Doyle?"
she blurted out. "And the people who live here with him — don’t even
get me started on them. I’d just feel better if I knew . . ."

"He saved the world, ma," Danny interrupted. "And
I helped." He touched the front of his Eminem T-shirt with a taloned hand.
"I really don’t think you need anything more by way of character
references."

The world was pretty much back to normal since the bizarre
occurrences of almost three weeks before, when a crimson mist had blanketed the
region and the dead had crawled from their graves. Julia shivered with the
memory, the hair at the back of her neck prickling to attention. It was hard to
believe that everything that happened was anything other than a very bad dream,
but when she looked at her son, she knew it was real.

"I want to stay here," Danny said taking a step
toward her. "I need to be here."

There was a desperation in his voice that made her want to
cry, as if the answers to all of his problems were right here, and she was the
only obstacle standing in the way of his total fulfillment.

"Danny, please." She weighed each word carefully. "Look
at this from my perspective."

"This isn’t about you!" Danny bellowed, and Julia
could have sworn she saw sparks of orange flame leap from his eyes. He spun
away from her, bounding across the room, and brought his fist down on the
mahogany dresser, obliterating the toys.

Julia was horribly torn. Motherly instincts told her to go
to her son, to comfort him, but another voice inside her head, more attuned to
self-preservation, whispered that it might be wiser to keep her distance. The
moment was broken, however, and her quandary solved, when a spectral figure
emerged from the ceiling, drifting down to float eerily in the center of the
room. The temperature dropped several degrees, and she shivered.