Ceridwen, she imagined.
The cavalry had arrived, but at that moment, with her throat entwined with the barbed lash of Alekto, Eve had started to entertain the notion that perhaps this really was what she deserved. Kneeling before the Daughters of Night, she remembered the sins she had perpetrated upon the Third Age of Man and wondered if the punishment meted out by the Erinyes, or any higher authority, would ever be enough to absolve her. She doubted it, but was certain that the sisters were willing to give it a try.
Her past sifted through her memory and she saw all of the sins she had to atone for, the betrayals and the debasements, the murders and the corruptions of the innocent. Eve had yearned for redemption so long that it no longer mattered if she achieved it. It was the quest that was her journey. Now, though, the recollections of her sins haunted her so profoundly that they sapped away her strength.
As Conan Doyle strode toward Eve and her captors across the heart of Hades, she gazed up at him reluctantly, knowing he could never understand the part of her that wanted to surrender. Despite the Furies, Conan Doyle was undaunted, and he approached with his head high, Fey sorceress and demon changeling flanking him. The Furies closed ranks around her, protecting their latest acquisition from these would-be rescuers, whom they must have considered thieves.
'You’re too late, Arthur,' Gull called. 'What’s done is done. Eve is no longer your concern. She belongs to the Furies now.'
Conan Doyle turned his attention briefly to the deformed mage, his eyes blazing with a suppressed fury. 'She belongs to no one, you fool,' he said through gritted teeth. 'And she was most certainly not your property to trade away. I assure you, we will deal with that grievous error of judgment soon enough.'
He looked back to the Furies and bowed his head in reverence. Danny and Ceridwen did the same. 'But now I must speak with the Daughters of the Earth and Darkness.'
Eve tried to stand, but the barbed whip wrapped about her throat grew tighter, biting deeply, and she felt a fresh flow of blood cascade down her neck as she again dropped to her knees.
' There is nothing to say,' Alekto declared. 'A contract was established, a transaction made. This sinner is our property now, to punish as we see fit.'
The other sisters nodded their agreement, the snakes that swam through the tresses of their hair hissing in agitation.
'Is there nothing we can do to change your mind?' Conan Doyle asked. There was sadness and sincerity in his voice and Eve wished that she could muster the strength to tell him that she wasn’t worth it, that she deserved to be left to their ministrations.
'A trade, perhaps?' he suggested. 'Something that you might find of equal value and interest.'
There was a flurry of movement as Gull surged toward the sisters. Eve saw a flicker of fear in his eyes.
'Don’t listen to him,' the dark mage warned. 'He is not to be trusted.'
All three Furies moved with terrible swiftness and precision, lashing out at Gull with their whips. Eve crumbled to the ground as Alekto’s whip pulled away from her throat, tearing flesh, spilling more blood. The sisters attacked Gull, and the mage was driven to his knees, raising his hands to protect his malformed features. Each blow drew blood, but Gull did not cry out.
'We have heard enough from you, magician,' the Furies said in unison, whips writhing menacingly on the ground only inches from the scarred and bleeding Gull. ' We will now hear what this other has to offer.'
With the touch of the Erinyes’s whip gone from her throat, Eve felt her strength returning, but the remembrances of sins that had blurred with the passage of time were still as fresh and raw as newly opened wounds. It was as if they had been committed only yesterday. Yet now her guilt and despair were fading. She had dedicated herself to making reparations for her sins, and yet the touch of Alekto’s lash had brought all of her doubts and self-loathing to the surface. Rage began to burn away her regret and her longing for punishment.
Eve steeled herself, wondering what Conan Doyle was up to. The mage stood as though orating before a Victorian audience, holding the lapels of his coat with self-importance. It was a show, like the best snake oil salesmen had put on in their day.
'I propose that in exchange for our friend,' the mage said. 'We will leave the Underworld post haste, and you need never worry about us again.'
Eve snarled, one corner of her mouth ticking up in amusement. She saw the Furies’ confusion, the lashes of their whips writhing about on the floor of the chamber like the tails of angry tigers.
Tisiphone, who seemed to speak for the others when they weren’t all speaking, slunk nearer to Conan Doyle and eyed him and his companions closely. Her talons hooked into claws. 'And how would we benefit from this barter?'
Eve climbed to her feet, while Conan Doyle adjusted the sleeves of his jacket, as always, making himself presentable even in the most daunting of situations. Part of the show.
The sisters were distracted by his words and his manner and no longer noticed her.
To their peril.
'If you give me what I want,' Conan Doyle explained. 'There will be no reason for us to bring your rather gruesome domicile down around your ears.'
And with those words, the mage nodded to Ceridwen, and both he and the Fey sorceress raised their hands into fists, blazing with magic, uncast spells and deadly enchantments. Gull called out a warning. Hawkins and Jezebel seemed at a loss, realizing they ought to do something but too overwhelmed to act.
'Do you understand this benefit now, sisters?' Conan Doyle asked as he extended his arms, bathing the interior walls of Hades’ heart in eerie, dancing shadows.
'You dare threaten us in our lair?' Megaera shrieked.
The air crackled with the tension of impending violence, and Eve drank it in. Ever since she had been at Gull’s mercy she had nurtured fantasies of vengeance, of wanton bloodshed and savagery the likes of which she had not indulged in for far too long. The guilt the Furies had wrought in her had stung her deeply, had torn open the oldest wounds in the world. And beneath her rage and her lust for revenge was the specter of her bloodlust. Eve was a vampire, the mother of all such creatures, and it had been far too long since she had satiated her hunger.
For once, she let the hunger and hatred take over. With a throaty growl, Eve sprang at Tisiphone, knocking aside her sisters. Fingers tearing at the creature’s robes, at fabric woven from the souls of the tormented, Eve spun Tisiphone around to face her. A look of genuine surprise appeared on the Fury’s face as Eve stared into her blood- swollen orbs.
'You picked the wrong pet, bitch,' she growled, feeling her fangs slide out, razor sharp. 'I’m nobody’s doggy.'
Eve hauled Tisiphone off the ground, rage and blood thirst driving her to madness. 'This is for helping me remember what a vicious cunt I’ve been.' And she brought her mouth down to the throat of the Fury, fangs plunging deeply into pale, alabaster flesh that reeked so pungently of misery.
Tisiphone wailed as she was driven to the ground by the ferocity of Eve’s attack, an unearthly shriek of agony that caused the souls in her cloak to disperse, screaming themselves, ghosts fluttering like bats into the shadowed eaves of Hades’ heart.
Conan Doyle had witnessed Eve’s savagery countless times in their long relationship, often during the insanity of battle, but it never ceased to disturb him. The Erinys flailed beneath Eve’s attack, her whip lashing repeatedly, tearing Eve’s coat to shreds and scoring the flesh beneath, but to no avail. Eve rode the bucking myth, mouth firmly attached to her victim’s throat.
The dying scream of the Fury was horrible, becoming nearly unbearable as her remaining sisters joined in, filling the cavern with ear-splitting cries of shared anguish.
Then the chamber itself seemed to react, the ground starting to undulate as if something long dormant had been awakened by the sisters’ plaintive wails.
Danny looked at Conan Doyle, panic in his eyes. 'I don’t even want to know.'
The walls began to tremble. They had been dry, flaking and chalky, but now they seemed damp and soft, very much like the floor. Conan Doyle was reminded of anatomy lessons at the University of Edinburgh and the first time he had seen the exposed musculature of a cadaver he would be dissecting. Hades’ heart was the size of a cathedral, but now it became living muscle. It began to pulsate, emitting a rhythmic, near-deafening throb.
The heart of Hades had been made to beat again.
