The boy had removed what remained of his tattered t-shirt and his muscles strained as he rowed. The demon’s flesh was continuing to evolve, growing more leathery, thicker, darker. There were blotches of color on his back that reminded the sorcerer of the burned orange of fall leaves on Beacon Hill.
'She’s doing fine,' he responded, marveling at the youth’s tenacity. To think that mere months ago he was living as a typical teenager, totally unaware of his true nature. He was proud of Daniel Ferrick. A normal youth his age would have been driven to the brink of insanity on more than one occasion with what the boy had witnessed in recent days. He was indeed a welcome addition to the Menagerie.
'And you?' Conan Doyle asked, his arms burning with exertion.
'I’m good,' the boy said between puffs of air. 'Getting a little tired, but I think I can hold out until we get to the other side. How are you doing?' The boy smiled, exposing sharp-looking teeth. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. 'Hanging in there, old-timer?'
He didn’t care for the boy’s lack of respect, but considering what they had been through, he decided to let it slide. 'Don’t concern yourself, boy,' he stressed, staring straight ahead, attempting to pierce the shifting gray vapor that hung over the river to the other side. They had to be getting closer. 'Focus on staying alive.'
Danny laughed and continued to paddle. The thick shroud of mist parted momentarily and something caught Conan Doyle’s attention. He set his makeshift oar down on the raft and climbed to his feet.
'What is it?' Danny asked. 'Are we close?'
'Stop rowing,' Conan Doyle ordered. His eyes had found the spot again, only to have his line of sight obscured by the drifting vapor. 'There’s something in the water ahead.'
Danny did as he was told, placing his oar down and getting to his feet. He peered over the side of the raft. 'We’re still moving.'
Conan Doyle saw that the boy was right. They were being drawn toward the area where he had seen movement uon the water. 'Ceridwen,' he called, looking over his shoulder.
She had removed her hand from the water and was clutching it to her chest, a look of shock on her face. 'There are things in the river,' she whispered. 'Things that hate us quite ferociously. And they mean us harm.'
'Holy shit. Take a look at that.' Danny pointed out across the water.
A whirlpool had formed in the Styx, a swirling maelstrom that was inexorably drawing them closer.
'Charybdis,' Ceridwen said, and Conan Doyle saw that her hand was immersed in the water again. 'The whirlpool is alive. I don’t understand how, but it’s a living thing. It’s called Charybdis.'
Danny couldn’t take his eyes from the spiraling vortex. 'Why does it hate us? What the hell did we do this time? Oh man I hate this shit!'
Gull, Conan Doyle thought. Somehow, his old adversary was responsible.
'It believes we’ve come to do it harm…,' Ceridwen began, her eyes wide and her expression dreamlike as she extracted the information from the turgid water. 'It has been told that we’ve come to separate it from its mate.'
'Who told it that?' Danny asked. He had picked up his oar and was attempting to paddle the raft away from the whirlpool, but to no avail. 'Was it Gull?' His voice was on the brink of hysteria. 'It was that ugly fuck, wasn’t it?'
They drew toward the dark, sucking center of the maelstrom. The raft began to rock and Conan Doyle and Danny were driven to their knees. Water surged up over them, soaking their clothes.
'Is there any way you can ask the river currents to pull us from the whirlpool’s grasp?' Conan Doyle shouted at Ceridwen over the roaring water, trying to clear his vision to have the comfort of the sight of her.
She looked up at him with eyes barely focused. 'I’m trying,' she croaked, shaking her head in the negative. 'But Charybdis is too strong.'
It tore at him to see her so helpless but there was nothing he could do. If they were to survive, all of their power and guile would have to be brought into play. He reached within himself, drawing upon the magick that resided there. Conan Doyle expected excruciating pain, but found only the slightest discomfort. Just as the nature of this place was adjusting to Ceridwen, the laws of magick were growing accustomed to him. He didn’t like that at all, but at the moment he was more concerned with Charybdis.
Conan Doyle raised a hand above his head and sketched at the air. A sphere of dark blue energy coalesced around his fingers and then a lance of magick thrust across the river, causing a wall of water to erupt beneath it as it passed. It was a powerful enchantment meant to disrupt magick, to short-circuit the supernatural. Again and again he summoned that spell, and cast it out across the river to strike at the heart of the swirling water. The river began to froth and steam and a strange sound, the cries of some ethereal beast in pain, rose up from the water to fill the air.
The raft rocked upon the choppy water as the vortex started to falter, and from the corner of his eye Conan Doyle saw Ceridwen pitch to one side, coming dangerously close to falling from the raft. He scrambled to her, pulling the sorceress closer to him.
'I have you,' he told her as a wave of exhaustion passed over him.
'I think we beat it,' he heard Danny say excitedly, and he looked to see that the boy was standing at the raft’s edge, peering into the slowly calming waters. The raft was again at the mercy of the river’s natural flow.
Ceridwen was shaking off her stupor, trying to talk, but her voice was so soft that he could not hear. He bent his ear down close, attempting to decipher her whispering words.
'Charybdis,' she began. 'Charybdis is no…'
'Charybdis is gone,' he said, pulling her close in an attempt to comfort.
Her violet eyes flashed angrily as she pushed herself out of his arms, shaking her head from side to side.
'No,' she said, her voice stronger. 'Charybdis is not… alone.'
He recalled her words from before; that they had come to separate Charybdis from its mate.
Its mate.
The water in front of them began to bubble and churn, and again their raft was tossed about.
'What now?' Danny shrieked, losing his balance and collapsing.
Something exploded up from the depths, its skin catching the strange light of the hellish place, glistening with all the colors of the rainbow. Conan Doyle was reminded of a rainbow trout, but this was no mere fish.
Scylla, the mate of Charybdis, surged up from the bubbling black waters of the Styx, her voice raised in a scream of rage over what they had wrought upon her consort.
Once she had been a beautiful sea nymph, loved by Zeus and Poseidon in turn, until twisted by the jealousy of Circe into something monstrous. If one looked closely enough, past the slick, greasy skin and thick appendages that grew like tumors from her body, one could see that this had once been a creature of beauty, but that had been so long ago that Conan Doyle doubted even Scylla remembered.
The river beast surged toward them in a spray of water. Scylla grabbed the front of the makeshift raft in large, webbed hands, tipping it forward. Holding Ceridwen tightly in his arms, Conan Doyle dug his fingers into the wood, halting his slide toward the enraged beast.
'Hold on!' he cried out to Danny, but the boy’s clawing hands could not find purchase and he began to slide toward the monster.
Her tentacles darted at him with incredible speed, almost as if they had a sentience all their own. Conan Doyle watched in horror as the tapered ends of those appendages split open to reveal snarling faces, needle- toothed jaws snapping in horror.
Is there no end to the nightmares of this place? Conan Doyle thought as he plucked a spell from his memory. He thrust out his hand and began to utter the incantation.
The blast that streamed from his fingertips struck Scylla square in the chest and seared her flesh black. With an ear-piercing scream she dove beneath the water to recover. Danny struggled to climb back up onto the raft, and Conan Doyle was forced to leave Ceridwen’s side to assist him.
'Take my hand, boy,' he cried, extending his arm.
'What the fuck is up with this place!' the boy yelled, hauling himself out of the water with Conan Doyle’s help, and back up onto the raft. 'Does everything have to have multiple heads and a serious mad on for us?'
'It does appear that way, doesn’t it?' Conan Doyle sighed, taking a moment to catch his breath now that Danny was safe.
The waters of the Styx were becoming agitated again. He was about to tell the boy to hold on, when he heard Ceridwen’s cry of warning, and he turned just in time to see the elemental sorceress standing, her hands
