"Snakebites," Graves interrupted.
"Yeah," Clay said.
Squire strode across the small church, producing a stubby cigar from his pocket. He lit it from a candle and turned to face them.
"All right. But explain it to me. How come this means we don’t have to go looking for her?"
Graves studied Clay a moment, then looked at the dead priest, and finally gave his attention to Squire. "Our friend Mr. Clay has more than one talent, remember?"
Squire’s face lit up and he puffed on the cigar. The hobgoblin gave a short cough and nodded eagerly. "Right, right. The thing. The … the ectoplasm trail, or whatever. But you couldn’t see it before, because Medusa’s victims were all stone. It wasn’t working."
"No," Clay agreed. "It wasn’t." He looked upon the dead priest with sorrow, but also with grave determination. The souls of murder victims haunted their killers for a time, perhaps with intent but more likely simply because their lives have ended so abruptly that they cling to whatever’s nearest them when they die, afraid to go anywhere. To move on.
But the ghosts leave a trail, a kind of thin phantom line, a tendril that connected their ravaged bodies to their souls, no matter how far the souls traveled away from their husks. If he discovered the victim soon enough after death and he followed that link, that tendril, he could find the killer.
A faded pink mist clung to the dead priest, stretched like a rope out the front of the church and through the square, then farther up into the village. Into the hills.
Into the west.
"I’ve got her trail," Clay said. "It’s only a matter of time, now."
Her bones ached.
Eve drifted slowly up into awareness and though her eyes were still closed, her brow knitted in discomfort. She lay on her side already, her body rocking with some unknown rhythm, but now she pulled her legs up tight beneath her and shuddered with the cold. Her lips drew taut, pressed together and then she shifted uncomfortably.
Her eyes fluttered lazily open and she saw her hands, crossed at the wrists over her breasts. A thin sheen of crystal frost had formed on her flesh and a chill mist swirled around her. The rocking motion continued but only now did Eve have the presence of mind to recognize that she was in a boat.
Memories stirred and she remembered her circumstances. Rage washed over her, warming her icy blood, and her upper lip curled to bare her fangs even as she sat up. They were in a small boat, Eve at the prow. Nick Hawkins was nearest to her, smoking a cigarette, and the moment she was in motion he began to shift toward her, hands coming up in a defensive posture.
Eve was thousands of years faster.
She sprang at him, lunging through the mist and ignoring the sway of the craft or the rush of the water beneath it. Hawkins snarled, clenching his cigarette between his teeth, but he had neither the strength nor the swiftness to fight back. Eve clutched his throat with her left hand, the right gathering up the fabric of his jacket, and she drove him down beneath her. The back of his head struck the wooden floor of the boat with a solid thump. A guttural curse issued from his lips even as the impact knocked the wind from his lungs. Eve held him down as he bucked, attempting to throw her off, but she was too strong.
Her vision was far more than human. Her eyes saw through gloom and mist with utter clarity, and when she looked up she saw every line in Nigel Gull’s hideous features. He had been sitting behind Hawkins — beyond him the girl, Jezebel, had her hands in the water, somehow using her weather magic to propel the craft — and now Gull shifted forward, raising his hands. The old mage did not dare to stand in the small boat for fear they would all spill over into the frigid, rushing river.
"Not a fucking spark of magick on those fingers, asshole," Eve snarled, purposely flashing her fangs as she choked the man beneath her. "Or Hawkins loses his head."
Jezebel twisted around at the sound of Eve’s voice and her eyes went wide with alarm. "Nick," she said, her lips forming the name almost soundlessly.
The mist rolled across the water’s surface and the boat knifed through it. Gull was half-crouched, hands still contorted as if frozen in the act of casting a spell. His ugliness was made worse when he smiled, as he did now.
"Let’s not be hasty, pet," Gull said, lowering one hand to the bench below him in order to keep his balance.
Eve punctured Hawkins’s skin with her fingernails. "Call me that again, you pompous prick, and I’ll kill him just for fun, and to hell with what comes of it."
The smile disappeared from Gull’s face. His nostrils flared and the mist that swept past his face seemed also to swirl behind his eyes. The mage began to hum, the sound low and guttural.
"I don’t think you want to do that, Eve," he sang in a voice that was not his own, the sweet tones of Orpheus. "You don’t want to move at all, in fact."
She tried to fight the influence of that voice, her every muscle strained and burning with the struggle, but there was nothing she could do. The power of Orpheus’s voice was too much. She felt her heart surrendering, her rage pacified, though in the dark depths of her mind her hatred still churned. A spark of panic ignited in her.
Once, long ago, she had been overpowered by a demon with the sweetest of voices. The memory seared her and she did not want to allow it to take root, yet she seemed as helpless in her mind as in her flesh. Eve collapsed in the prow once more, on her back this time, forced to stare at the distended face of Nigel Gull and to see the mad light of triumph in his eyes.
"Mother of two races, hunter of two races, ancient as evil’s kiss. Do you think I’d have you here with me without preparing to deal with you?" he sang to her.
The river rocked the craft, water sprayed over the side and dampened her face and hair, and Eve could only lie there with her eyes open as Gull sneered at her. In the rear of the boat, Jezebel smiled at her and then plunged her hands into the water again. The girl had paused in her propulsion of the vessel and it had begun to be swept along with the current, but now the boat rushed forward across the water once more.
Hawkins sat up, his gunmetal eyes hard as he glared at her. He reached up to touch his neck and his fingers came away bloody. With an unsettling laugh he licked his fingers clean and then crabwalked forward so that he was looking down upon Eve, prone and helpless.
"Just to be clear, I don’t care what you are. Just another sodding relic to me." He wrapped both hands around her throat and began to squeeze. "You don’t need to breathe, I know that. But I’ll wager you need your head attached to your body, yeah? If Mr. Gull didn’t need you . . . ah, but he does." Now Hawkins grinned. "Might sample a taste of your blood, next time, though. Play your little vampire game. So mind your manners, leech."
The wood was rough beneath her. Eve smelled blood but could not be certain if it was Hawkins’s or her own. Beneath that smell was another, one she was noticing for the very first time. The stink of the dead. Not the rotting odor of fresh death, but the dusty, brittle smell of the tomb. It lived in the wood of the boat and drifted with the mist. This place was a realm of the dead and so it did not surprise her, but it served to calm her. Though she had no desire to rest in the grave, Eve had to remind herself from time to time that she was, in essence, one of the dead. Creatures far more wretched than Nick Hawkins had done far worse to her than he would ever be able to conjure in his most depraved imagination.
Eve managed to sneer. But she would not give Hawkins the pleasure of a response. Instead her gaze shifted beyond him, to Gull. Focusing the entirety of her will, she managed to force her lips to move.
"You . . . need me?" she rasped. "Why?"
The mage nodded slowly. "Indeed." He placed a hand over his heart. "As to my purpose, I’m afraid you’d never understand. All of this —" he gestured around him, taking in Hawkins and Jezebel, the boat and the river, and the netherworld beyond. "It’s for love. I’ve orchestrated all of it for the sake of a woman." His face stretched into that horrid smile again.
"I’m a romantic, you see."
&
nbsp; Another spray of water came over the side and Eve blinked it away. On her lips, the droplets had the salt tang of tears.
"What woman would have you?" she asked. It was becoming easier to speak, though she still could not move her limbs.
Gull gazed out across the river, all amusement gone from his eyes, leaving only a melancholy emptiness behind. "The most beautiful creature in all the ages."
"I hope she’s worth it," Eve said. "The pain, I mean. Conan Doyle and the others — my friends — they’ll be coming for you."
The ugly man raised an eyebrow and stared at her. "I’m prepared for them, as well. I know what Arthur is capable of. Do you think I’d underestimate him?"
Gull settled into the craft as though it were a throne. He gestured for Hawkins to join Jezebel in the aft of the boat. The slender man moved carefully past the mage, then Gull turned his attention to Eve again.
"Sit up," he commanded.
Jerking like a marionette, she complied. Somehow his instruction had freed her upper body, at least enough that she was able to glance around at the river.
"The Styx," Gull said. "And we come, momentarily, to the far shore."
Eve turned to see that he spoke the truth. They approached the bank of the river, where the ground seemed made not of soil but of cold, gray ash. She shot Gull a withering glare.
"You don’t think Conan Doyle will find a way across?"
"Oh, I’m certain he will. I’d be terribly disappointed otherwise."
Only then did Eve notice the activity in the rear of that small, ancient craft. Jezebel still had her hands thrust into the water, surges of white foam jetting out behind them as she forced the river to propel them. But now Hawkins knelt beside her, one hand on her shoulder. Despite the chill of the mist and the river, beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.
Gull saw that she had noticed them.
"Mr. Hawkins is a psychometrist," the mage said. "You know that. But he is capable of more than simply reading images and emotions. With enough motivation and focus, he can also communicate them. Jezebel is one with the river. Through her, Hawkins is pouring hatred for Conan Doyle into every drop of water, tainting all of the Styx with the single, unrelenting thought that Arthur is the enemy and must be destroyed."
A knot of fear twisted Eve’s gut. She had faith in Conan Doyle, but Gull seemed so confident . . .
Still, she did her best to hide her alarm. "Water? You expect the water to rise up and stop him?"
"Of course not," Gull replied. A sneer of satisfaction split his face. He dropped one hand over the side of the boat and let his fingers trail in the river. "Here there be monsters, my dear Eve. Here there be monsters."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Though only in small measures, Ceridwen could indeed feel that she was growing stronger. The deeper they progressed into the Underworld, the more acclimated she became to the nightmarish place. The process was equal parts relief and concern. Although glad to be regaining her strength, she had to wonder the cost. Already she had begun to feel a certain, disturbing sense of belonging, the simplest thought of returning to the land of the living filling her with uneasiness. What that meant, she did not know. But it troubled her deeply.
They had reached the shores of the swiftly flowing Styx and were awaiting the ferryman to take them across. Danny and Conan Doyle stood at the river’s edge.
"Where is he?" Danny asked, attempting unsuccessfully to skip a stone across the river’s turbulent surface. "The Cyclops dude said that Charon’d just show up after we got here." He threw another stone, waiting for Conan Doyle’s reply.
Arthur remained silent, staring out over the Styx, trying to see through the thick, undulating clouds of gray vapor. Ceridwen did not like the expression on his face.
"An excellent question." Conan Doyle turned his gaze from the river to the black sand of the shore. The sand had been disturbed. There was no doubt that Gull and his operatives, along with captive Eve, had arrived first. He removed one of the two gold coins the Cyclopes had provided them to pay Charon and began to play with it, dexterously rolling it back and forth across the knuckles of his hand. It was a trick he had learned from Harry Houdini, a friend from long ago.
"What have you done now, Gull?" Conan Doyle whispered, lost in thought as the coin danced atop his hand.
As if in response to his query, the Underworld answered.
Ceridwen could feel it in the elements around her; from the granules of sand beneath her feet, to the mournful whistling of the wind that caused the skeletal branches of the trees along the shore to click and clatter. The Underworld was attempting to speak to them, and only she had the ability to hear.
She closed her eyes and listened. Then she wandered across the sand, closer to Conan Doyle and the boy, closer to the river’s edge.
Conan Doyle watched her as she approached. "What troubles you, Ceridwen?"
She did not respond, his voice added to the cacophony of the elements as they attempted to communicate. The river was the loudest voice of all, and she found herself drawn to its flow. This was the place from which the answer would come: the Styx, eager to share with her what had transpired. Ceridwen squatted down at the shore and extended her hand toward the hellish waters.
"No!" Danny yelped, his alarm cutting through the static inside her head, and she looked up into a face wracked with worry.
"I don’t think you want to do that." He turned his nervous gaze out over the water. "There’s something . . . not right about it."
Conan Doyle had moved closer as well and she tried to assuage their fears with a smile. Then she gently touched her fingertips to the agitated water.
Ceridwen and the River Styx were one. Her body went rigid, her mind filling with rapid-fire images detailing what had come to pass, what the river had seen. Most of it was monotony, the ferryman in his launch and its countless journeys, transporting the dead to their final destination. Faces flashed across her mind, wan and bewildered. So many faces. But then her mind’s eye settled upon the most recent passengers, including the twisted, ugly visage of Nigel Gull. Ceridwen witnessed what had transpired from the river’s point of view, as though she were looking up from beneath the water. Gull had committed a terrible crime, a most foul act. Ceridwen saw the murder of Charon, saw Gull set his body adrift upon the river.
She drew her hand from the water with a gasp, stumbling into Conan Doyle’s waiting arms, the violence seared into her mind.
"I told her not to touch it," she heard Danny say, concern in his voice. "What did it do?"
Ceridwen opened her eyes and looked up at them, pulling back from Arthur’s embrace. "The ferryman is not coming. Gull and his people were here with Eve no more than two hours ago," she said, seeing the ghastly image reenacted in the theatre of her mind. She closed her eyes and shuddered even though the temperature was oppressively hot.
"What has he done?" Conan Doyle asked, eyes stormy beneath salt-and-pepper brows.
"He’s killed Charon," she said, trying to force the images from her mind. "And they’ve taken his boat across on their own."
Conan Doyle clenched his fists in anger, turning his back upon them and walking away. She understood his frustration. Their enemy was besting them at every turn. This was not something to which Arthur Conan Doyle was accustomed.
"So we’re screwed, then. Game over," Danny muttered. "How do we help Eve now?"
"Arthur?" Ceridwen called. He was standing with his back to them at the edge of a forest of black, skeletal trees, again lost in thought, but this time she suspected she knew what occupied his mind. It was the way he eyed the copse of trees that gave his thoughts away.
The sorceress was far from Faerie, far from anything the Fey might think of as nature, but she had begun to establish a rapport with what passed for the elements of this barren place. Her strength was returning. Her magick as well, though tainted now by the Underworld. Yet Arthur did not know that. He must have sensed that communicating with the elements here was not a
s debilitating for her. He had, after all, only just witnessed her forging a bond with the River Styx. But he could not know how far she had adjusted.
This is a test for him in a way, she thought. Conan Doyle was a man of both thought and action, and he prided himself on practicality. What must be done, he would often say, must be done, and damn the consequences. Yet in their battle with the Hydra, his fear for her had caused him to become distracted, endangering the lives of the others and the success of their mission. He had promised it would never happen again.
But here was a similar situation. Will he ask it of me when he knows it will cause me pain?
Ceridwen was about to take that responsibility from him, when Conan Doyle turned to face her. The steely look on his face told her all she needed to know.
"Gull has thwarted us for the last time," he announced, walking toward her. "These trees," he motioned to them with a wave of his hand. "We have no time to build a raft, nor anything to lash them together. You must coerce them into taking on the shape of something we can use to get across." He walked past her to stand again at the river’s edge, gazing out over its broad expanse. "We must act with haste."
Danny strode angrily toward him, his features more demonic than ever. "What is wrong with you? You know she can’t do that. This place is bad for her. Using magick here hurts her. It’s obvious you don’t give a shit about people when it comes to getting what you need, but I figured if there was anyone, it’d be —"
Conan Doyle turned and glared at him, nostrils flaring, and the boy was silenced. Ceridwen wanted to speak up for him, but if they were going to survive, they would have to rely upon one another. Part of that was working out their own conflicts.
"Have you given Eve up for dead, then?" Conan Doyle asked, every word a dagger. "Abandoned her to her fate?"
"Of course not," Danny growled.
"Nor have I. Whatever Gull’s intentions here, they are likely sinister. Even if they were not, he has manipulated us throughout this fiasco, and now Eve’s life is in the balance. I ask what is required, nothing more."
Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) Page 24