'Eumenides, please accept our obeisance and lend me your ears.'
The mage turned his misshapen face toward Hawkins, who nodded quickly and knelt, his weight puffing black dust around him. Jezebel gazed at the sisters as though she were a foundling at last discovering her true family. Her eyes were bright with hope and she ran her tongue over her lips, a tentative smile on her face. The Erinyes trailed their whips in the black dust, barbs dragging on the ground, and the things moved and darted with their own life. Jezebel followed the movement of the whips.
'It’s you,' she whispered, and the words carried to Eve. 'It’s really you.'
Eve pitied the girl.
Gull put a large hand on Jezebel’s shoulder and forced her down. She turned a fiery glance upon him, but then realized what he wanted and she nodded, chagrined, and knelt quickly, the mage falling to his knees beside her.
'Down,' Gull demanded, and Eve had no choice but to comply.
The four of them were on their knees as Tisiphone, Megaera and Alekto came nearer. The ethereally sheer cloaks that draped their forms moved, like their whips, of their own accord. Now that she was on her knees, Eve heard more than just the hiss of the tiny serpents twined in the sisters’ hair. There was another sound.
A chorus of weeping and cries of despair.
Eve pushed her fingers in the fine, black sand beneath her, eyes downcast. Her heart felt vulnerable to attack and she imagined herself becoming part of that dead land’s soil. What would grow in her, she wondered? What deathless sapling would take root in her ancient dust?
She thought for a moment that the weeping was that of the Erinyes, the source of the bloody tears upon their cheeks. But there were too many voices by far, some sounding very distant and muffled and others a whisper in her ear, so nearby that they seemed almost to brush past her.
Just at the upper edge of her vision she saw one of the sisters step in front of her, the hem of the Fury’s cloak swaying. Eve would have tumbled backward then, tried to leap up to her feet and protect herself, but the voice of Orpheus controlled her. Thus far the Erinyes seemed to be studying their visitors, curiosity drawing them slowly closer. But the air of sorrow that emanated from them was stifling, smothering Eve. Where are their victims? she wondered. Where are the damned of Hades’s netherworld?
The voices grew louder. Eve blinked, and then she knew. She understood. Her gaze narrowed and she focused on the hem of the punisher’s cloak. The fabric was unlike anything she had ever seen, shifting and unstable as though woven of mist… but even as she studied it Eve knew it was neither fabric nor mist. There were faces in the texture of the cloaks of the Erinyes, with eyes and mouths open wide in cries of agony and endless despair. Damnation.
Fingers that seared her flesh with a touch lifted her chin so that she was looking up into the Fury’s face, and then she saw those eyes and she knew they were not really eyes at all. They were tiny pools of blood that spilled like tears, and yet though the creatures’ faces were streaked, not a drop fell.
Eve tore her gaze away. Now that the thing had touched her, she felt some of Gull’s control lift. Eyes narrowed, muscles tensing, she turned to discover what he had done. The mage wore a hideous grin where he knelt on the ground with his operatives. Hawkins had his eyes downcast but he breathed evenly. Jezebel was still gazing at the Erinyes in adoration. A sickly golden light crackled around Gull’s hands but he kept them crossed before him, as though he was kneeling for some sort of prayer service. Which Eve realized he was.
What the fuck are you waiting for, Gull? She thought. They’re just going to kill us. You did all of this, planned the whole thing, just for this?
'Eumenides, will you hear my plea?' the mage said at last, and when he raised his chin and looked up at them, his eyes glowed with the same strange light as his hands.
They drifted toward him, then, all three moving like ghosts to encircle him, and as they gazed down upon Gull, Eve felt the oddest mix of relief and disappointment. She watched the twitching and slithering ends of those barbed whips and she felt… loss.
What are you, an idiot? You don’t want anything to do with these things. They’ll rip you open.
Her gaze was drawn again to their cloaks and she had to force herself to look away, to concentrate on the Erinyes themselves and the way they glared down at Gull, ignoring even the worshipful Jezebel.
'We are those who walk in darkness,' announced the one who stood directly in front of Gull. She dragged her whip slowly upward and it coiled itself around the mage’s throat. 'Speak.'
That sickly golden light sparked and danced in his eyes and he stared up at her. Hawkins muttered something at his side, some curse, but Gull seemed not to notice. He seemed more hideous than ever in that moment, for Eve saw something in his face that made her realize he had not been lying earlier. His expression was one of utter desperation. He had said he had orchestrated all of this because of love.
'Oh, shit,' she whispered.
It was true.
'Those who walk in darkness,' the mage echoed, 'I am called Nigel Gull. Even for such as you, who have seen the ugliest in humanity, the most abominable fiends, the twisted and the damned, you can see I am cursed.'
He ran a hand in front of his face, illuminating the folds of his skin with that golden light. For the first time, Eve felt a measure of sympathy for him, but it was fleeting. From what she knew he had always been a monster, and been given the face to look the part.
'But it is not for my sake that I come to you.'
One of the Erinyes had turned from Gull to gaze down on Jezebel. The girl looked so very eager as the punisher, the purveyor of madness, reached down to stroke her hair and caress her face. The terrible, beautiful creature took a fistful of Jezebel’s hair and pulled the girl toward her, turning back to Gull and dragging Jezebel behind her. The girl submitted willingly to this treatment and Eve winced.
What did you ever do, she thought, that you feel you deserve this?
'You appeal to us for her?' asked the Fury who had spoken.
Gull shook his head. 'The girl’s my… ally.' He nodded toward Hawkins. 'As is the gentleman. They are in my service. It’s not for either of them that I’ve come to you, but for the heart of my heart, for one whose curse is even graver than my own. To heal her, I must have you weep, Eumenides. I must have the tears of the Furies.'
The sister who held his throat with her whip tightened it so that the barbs cut him, and Gull hissed in chorus with the serpents in her hair.
'We weep for all sinners, even as we punish them. The dead and damned come to us, and we give them what they have longed for. Correction. Pain. Retribution.'
Eve remembered the tales of the Erinyes. As long as there were sinners in the world, it was supposed that they could not be banished
… and yet here they were, banished along with all the other relics of Olympian myth, hidden away to survive the birth of a New Age. Even so, they were terrible, and Gull was a fool to think he could coerce them.
Unless… coercion was unnecessary.
'Fuck.' Eve hung her head again, understanding at last. So she did not see Gull respond, but she heard his every word.
'The goddess Athena placed a curse upon my love, upon Medusa,' the mage said, his deep voice creeping up Eve’s spine. 'Only your forgiveness will release her. In exchange for that forgiveness, for your tears, I offer you the greatest prize the Third Age of Man has to offer. I bring you the woman who damned the entire human race twice over, who stained Adam’s bloodline with sin, who laid down with demons. Give me what I desire and you shall have the ultimate sinner to put to the lash.'
The hesitation before the Erinyes spoke was eternal damnation all its own. When they spoke, it was all three in unison.
' Eve,' they said, and there was pleasure in their voices.
Then the one who had been speaking with Gull continued. 'There is a bargain to be struck. But not here. Enter our home, the caverns of the damned, the halls of torment. There, we will speak of Gorgons.'
The whip cracked the air.
Eve lurched to her feet, struggling against Gull’s control. Her muscles were slow and pained, but they obeyed, and she staggered away. The whip caught her around the neck, barbs digging into flesh, and the punisher pulled Eve off her feet. The creature turned, dead souls crying out in unending sorrow from the fabric of her cloaks, and dragged Eve behind her, tearing out the vampire’s throat as the Erinyes returned to their home.
