Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie)

by Thomas E. Sniegoski Christopher Golden

  "Don’t be so rash. How many more will die before you finally stumble across the answers you seek?" Gull demanded. "Simply because you cannot put aside past animosity."

  Conan Doyle did not respond, so Gull stood, bending down to haul the still unconscious Jezebel into a sitting position. "Come along now, Jez, it seems the old boy’s even more arrogant than I remembered."

  The girl moaned, beginning to come around. Hawkins moved to assist Gull, slipping the girl’s arm around his neck and lifting her to her feet.

  "Thanks, Nick. She’s heavy for a little bit of a thing."

  They were ready to leave, and Conan Doyle struggled with his decision to let them go. He had the utmost faith in the team he had dispatched to Athens, but he knew that Gull was right. If his old adversary had information that could save the lives of innocents, how in good conscience could he let them leave?

  "A pleasure to see you again, Arthur," Gull said as he reached the door of the study.

  "Nigel? Crickey, Nigel, what happened to me?" Jezebel asked softly.

  Gull shushed her, reassuring her that everything was fine.

  It pained him, but Conan Doyle cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind his back. "If we were to work together," he began, drawing the attention of Nigel Gull and his operatives, "you would have to follow my instructions completely."

  Gull smiled. There was a twinkle in his dark, animal eyes, and for a brief moment, Conan Doyle could not help but feel as though he had stepped into the lion’s den.

  "To the very letter," he agreed. "My Wicked and I will be at your beck and call." And he bowed his wrongly shaped head in complete obeisance.

  "Fine," Conan Doyle agreed, nearly choking on the word.

  Gull strode back across the room and gripped Doyle’s shoulder with a gnarled hand. "You won’t regret this, Arthur."

  Doyle’s nostrils flared with distaste. "Time will tell. For now, you can begin by telling me everything you know about the threat we face in Athens."

  "Very well." Gull released him, turning to his Wicked. "Take Jezebel to the car," he told Hawkins. "Arthur and I will finish up here, and I’ll be down shortly."

  Hawkins did as he was told, helping the girl, who was still unsteady, from the study.

  "Don’t be long," Jezebel called over her shoulder, weakly lifting a hand to bid her master good-bye.

  "A charming girl once you get to know her," Gull noted.

  "Athens?" Conan Doyle prodded.

  "Of course," Gull responded, bowing his head again. "I was doing some research on the Greek Isles for a potential client, when I stumbled upon them — Gorgons, Arthur. There are Gorgons loose in Greece."

  Conan Doyle reached up to again stroke his mustache. Gorgons. It certainly was a possibility. "Those creatures haven’t walked the earth in millennia, why now?"

  Gull tilted his head. "That I don’t know. But the second I realized this, I knew I couldn’t deal with it alone, even with my operatives to back me up. There was a time when I had plenty of agents, but now there’s only Hawkins and Jezebel. Coming to you was the logical decision, but it had to be in person. You would never have trusted me if I’d just sent you a letter in the post or rang you up."

  Conan Doyle crossed his arms across his chest. "And I’m supposed to believe you’ve done all this out of some sudden nobility? You’ve always got an angle, Nigel. What’s in it for you?"

  Gull chuckled, turning away from the view to look at his friend. "Quite a bit, actually. Never claimed I was a model of virtue. I was trying to find the remains of a Gorgon. Then I stumbled upon the real thing. Point is, there are a few items I’ve got to acquire from the creatures. For a client, you understand."

  "What sort of items?"

  "Do you know how much a mere drop of Gorgon blood is worth on the black market? A lock of its hair? A claw? Or one of its eyes? Priceless."

  "You always were quite the humanitarian," Conan Doyle said with a shake of his head.

  "Do not condescend to me, brother," Gull said, leaving the window. "You’ll get what you want, yes? Another supernatural threat eliminated from the world. And I’ll have what I need as well. Everybody wins."

  Conan Doyle had heard enough. "I believe I’ve had my fill of your company for now, Nigel," he said, turning to leave the study. "You can show yourself out."

  "Will you be assembling your team?" Gull asked. "Your Menagerie?"

  Doyle pretended not to hear the question, continuing on his way.

  "I’m so looking forward to working with them."

  Yannis Papathansiou sucked on the end of a fat cigar, savoring the thick, oily smoke. It had been nearly six years since he’d last partaken of what his late wife had called a filthy habit. He had forgotten how much pleasure it gave him.

  Away from the city, the night was quiet except for the chirping of crickets. If he closed his eyes and cleared his mind, he could almost imagine that the world was a beautiful and sane place. Almost. But he doubted he would ever be able to convince himself of that again, not with the images of the victims at the Epidaurus Guest House seared into his mind.

  Yannis opened his eyes to gaze out over the field behind the Moni Pendeli monastery. It was used as a private landing strip for some of the wealthier visitors to the popular weekend retreat. Tonight, he waited for an altogether different kind of guest.

  He glanced at his watch. It wouldn’t be long now. He had received an in-flight call from his visitors, estimating that they would reach Athens’s airspace within the hour. He opened his car door, then switched on the headlights to better illuminate the grounds. Moths danced in the twin beams of pale white light, entertainment as he waited.

  He recalled the day that he had first learned of the shadowy group of investigators that dealt with only the most unusual cases. It had been at a retirement celebration for a fellow detective. The departing officer, Stavros, had pulled Yannis aside and asked if he would like to make some extra money from time to time. Of course he had been interested. A new detective on the Athens police force did not make a great deal of money. Even so, he had been cautious, asking if he would be required to do anything illegal. The retiring detective had laughed oddly and handed Yannis a worn piece of paper on which was scrawled an international phone number — one from America. In retrospect, he thought that Stavros had seemed almost happy to be rid of it. The old detective had explained that the number was to be dialed only when there was an unusual occurrence in the city. Something unnatural.

  At first Yannis had suspected that Stavros was pulling his leg, one last joke on the still-green detective before heading out to pasture. But there came a time not so long after Stavros left the force, when Yannis had an opportunity to dial the mysterious number. Someone had been digging up the recently buried in the First Cemetery of Athens, and feeding on the corpses.

  Yannis’s bulbous belly churned, sickly with the memory — the overturned earth, splintered coffin pieces strewn about the beautifully peaceful setting, and the condition of the helpless dead. The old man belched, the stifado, a spicy beef stew with baby onions that he’d had for supper, repeating on him. Popping the cigar into his mouth to free his hands, Yannis rubbed his large stomach in an attempt to calm it.

  Just the memory of the odor from those open graves was enough to make him feel queasy. The air had been filled not only with the stench of the disinterred, but with swarms of flies, feasting and depositing their eggs on the scattered remains. As he stood there with the other officers and the grief-stricken families of those whose graves had been violated, he had thought of the number scrawled upon the worn piece of paper in his wallet.

  Something unnatural.

  The hum of an approaching plane stirred him from his recollections, and he squinted into the nighttime sky. The plane descended in the distance, touching down expertly in the field that was once rife with olive trees. But that had been long ago, when Yannis still believed that the world was sane. He chuckled as he took another puff on his cigar, amused that he
could ever have been so naive.

  In that case, years past, he had called the number, and a strange gravelly voice had answered. In broken English, Yannis had described what was happening in Athens, about the desecrated graves and the cannibalized bodies. The voice on the other end had grown silent, the open phone line hissing in his ear, and for a moment, Yannis thought he had been cut off, but then the voice returned and said that someone would be along to help.

  Yannis took a final pull on his cigar, and for the sake of his upset stomach, tossed the remains to the ground. The plane rolled toward him, its landing lights pulsing as if to the beat of the craft’s mechanical heart, and again his mind traveled back through the years, to a time and place when he had met another plane.

  He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the man who stepped from the small private plane certainly was not it. He had imagined a wild-haired scientist, with thick glasses and perhaps a German accent, but as the man approached him, Yannis realized that perhaps he had seen too many American horror films. The stranger was a fine looking gentleman, handsome as far as Americans go, with dark, close-cropped hair and an air of authority that seemed to radiate from him in waves.

  There had been very little by way of formalities. The man had instructed Yannis to take him to the First Cemetery immediately, and once there had told the detective to remain in the car no matter what he heard or thought he saw. It had all seemed very unusual to Yannis, but he had accepted the orders, especially since the man had given him an envelope full of cash before leaving the car. For that kind of money he would have spent the entire night there if need be.

  The plane’s engines whined down and he ambled toward the craft, adjusting his clothing as he went. The bottom of his shirt had come undone, the pull of the material across his expanse of belly making it difficult for the last buttons to remain fastened. But he quickly lost interest in his appearance as the door to the craft swung open and a set of collapsible stairs unfolded from within.

  The first person to exit was very small, almost dwarf-like. Yannis wasn’t sure if he had ever seen anyone quite so strange.

  "How’s it hanging?" the tiny man asked him in a voice that could have been the one to answer that first call he had made, years past.

  Yannis simply stared. The man’s eyes were a sickly shade of yellow, and both his ears and teeth came to points.

  "What? No speaky da English?" the ugly little man asked, before bursting out in a braying laugh. "Don’t worry about it, pally. I don’t speak Greek."

  Next off the plane was a handsome black man whose movements reminded Yannis of someone moving underwater.

  "Pay him no mind, sir," the man said in a low, tremulous voice.

  Yannis could have sworn that for the briefest of moments he was able to see right through the stranger, but he blinked and the gauzy effect went away. He told himself it must have been a trick of the light.

  "Yannis Papathansiou," called a strangely familiar voice from inside the plane, and the police detective looked up to see another figure emerging.

  The man looked exactly as he had more than twenty years ago. Exactly.

  Something unnatural, he thought again. It was almost funny. He called this man when the extraordinary presented itself . . . but who was he to call about the passengers of this plane? No one, of course. They were the solution, not the problem.

  "It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir," the ageless man said in Greek, extending his hand, and Yannis remembered how he had disobeyed this man’s instructions that night so many years ago.

  He had been dozing behind the wheel of the car when the screaming began. It had been unlike anything he had ever heard, and he had immediately reacted, climbing from his vehicle and running into the cemetery before he even realized what he was doing. After all, he was a policeman.

  It had been dark that night, and he had strained his eyes to see what was happening, and then the clouds parted for an instant, and beams of moonlight shone upon the burial grounds. Then Yannis had seen what he would never forget.

  The man he had brought from the airfield, the man whose hand he now shook, had been in the midst of battle with a creature the likes of which Yannis had never seen. Its body was covered in filthy, matted fur, its eyes glowing red, like burning coals. Strands of dead flesh dangled from its gnashing teeth. Yannis had never believed himself a particularly brave man, but he had found himself moving toward the struggle, weaving around the tombstones to help the stranger in his struggle.

  When he had been only a few feet from the battle, the man had noticed his approach and ordered him to stop. Yannis had frozen in his tracks and watched in awe the scene that played out before him. The creature tore at the man with its claws, rending his clothing and flesh, but the man seemed unharmed. Then he had begun to change, to grow, his body transforming into something of great ferocity, his flesh as malleable as clay.

  The years have not been kind to Yannis Papathansiou, Clay thought. He was sitting in the front seat of the detective’s car as they drove toward Athens. He remembered a much different man than the one beside him now, but then again, twenty years had passed. The blink of an eye for Clay, but not so fleeting for humanity.

  "So, Yanni," Squire said, leaning forward from the backseat.

  "It is Yannis," the detective corrected, eyes still on the winding road before him.

  "Yeah, yeah, that’s what I meant. So, you had any other tourists turn up petrified?" the hobgoblin asked.

  Yannis shook his head, jowls wiggling. "No, the bodies found at the Epidaurus are the only ones."

  "So far," Squire added, sliding back against his seat. "But I’d bet we get a few more statues before this is over. Crap like this is never easy."

  The detective grimaced at Squire’s words, and Clay wondered if he was remembering the last time he had phoned Conan Doyle for assistance. On that night, years past, he had specifically told Yannis to stay in the car. The man was never meant to witness what transpired in the cemetery. Clay’s battle with the corpse-eating Mormolykiai was not for human eyes, but Yannis had seen it, and there was nothing Clay could do to change that.

  "What . . . what is responsible? What can turn a person to stone like that? How can it be?" the detective asked, steering the car around a sharp turn that would lead them to the first of numerous side streets in the crowded city.

  Clay gave him a reassuring glance. "That’s what we intend to find out."

  "You must suspect that it is bad," he said. "To have come with others." He fixed Clay with large, watery eyes.

  Clay had wondered if what Yannis Papathansiou saw those years past had changed him in any way. Looking into those eyes now, he had his answer.

  "Better to be safe than sorry." He glanced over his shoulder to see Squire looking out the window like an excited pet, happy to be off the plane and to have somebody else doing the driving for a change. Graves appeared lost in thought, but Clay suspected the ghost was probably already beginning their investigation, listening to the whispering voices of the dead prevalent in this ancient city.

  "We’ll try to get this done as quickly as possible," he reassured the detective. "You won’t even know we’re here."

  Yannis chuckled, a wet burbling sound that gave Clay the impression that the Greek was filled with fluid. "I will know," he said, taking a left turn in the Athenian West End, heading into the Kerameikos, the pottery district. "And I will not sleep peacefully until I know that you, and whatever it is that plagues this city, are gone."

  "Nice," Squire squawked. "Is that an example of Greek hospitality? No wonder I’ve been feeling all warm and tingly since I got here."

  The detective did not respond. Moments later he brought the car to a stop in front of a dilapidated building at the far end of a darkened street. All the other buildings around it appeared to be in an equal state of disrepair, but scaffolding had been placed around some of the structures, hinting that some form of renewal was on its way.

  "We are here," Yannis said, un
ceremoniously throwing open his door and extracting his large frame from the driver’s seat.

  "And here is . . . ?" Clay asked.

  "The man who owns this building is a former police officer," he explained, lapsing into Greek now. "He has allowed us to store the bodies here, away from curious eyes." The detective fumbled in his pockets and produced a key. "This way."

  They followed him to a padlocked door. Clay noticed that the man’s hands were trembling as he inserted the key into the lock.

  "I think we can take it from here," Clay reassured him, also in Greek.

  Yannis looked at him with those eyes again, tired eyes that had seen too much, and could never forget. "They are in the back — three of them — a family," he said as he tugged the key from the lock and handed it to Clay.

  "You look tired," Clay said.

  Yannis nodded, saying nothing.

  "Let me see about getting this taken care of so that you can sleep peacefully again."

  The detective took a long breath and let it out, then shuffled back to his car. "Lock it up before you leave," he called to them as he forced his stomach behind the wheel, turned over the engine, and drove off into the night.

  "Nice guy," Squire said sarcastically. "A real life of the party, bet he’s a hoot at funerals."

  "Give him a break," Clay said as he removed the padlock and pushed open the wooden door into complete darkness. "We deal with this kind of thing all the time, but ordinary people aren’t prepared for what happens when the nasties come out of the shadows."

  "Mewling babies," Squire growled, squeezing past him, having no difficulty at all maneuvering in the dark.

  The place smelled of dampness and rotting wood. Still standing in the doorway, Clay’s eyes shifted to those of a night predator, the darkness becoming as bright as day. Graves floated by on his right, eager to begin their investigation.

  "Yannis said they’re in the back," Clay told them, and they proceeded across the open space. The large room appeared to be used for storage. Clay noticed signs of decorations that would be used for some kind of celebration or religious festival, as well as pallets of building materials.