Ceridwen gripped his arm as the floor thrummed beneath their feet. Conan Doyle gazed across the chamber at Gull. He had scrambled away from the Furies and was consulting silently with Hawkins even as he cradled Jezebel in his arms. She had all but fainted, tears streaming down her face, red hair filthy and matted. The girl was falling apart. Hawkins was almost there himself from the look of it. The dapper Englishman was not so dapper now, his eyes wild as he spoke to Gull. For his part, the misshapen mage seemed at a loss for once in his godforsaken life, panic etched upon his grotesque features.
Obviously, whatever was happening now was not in any way part of Nigel’s game plan.
'Come,' Conan Doyle said, grabbing Ceridwen by the arm. The sorceress — his love — had been watching the surviving Furies, sickly green magick dancing from her fingertips. But the time for fighting was over. The time for retreat had arrived.
'Danny!' he snapped, gesturing to the demon boy, who was staring around at the beating heart of Hades with the same wild light he’d had in his eyes after he had killed Scylla. He squatted on his haunches, ready to move. At the sound of his name, he looked up, alert.
'We came for Eve. Let’s get her and go.'
'That’s the smartest thing you’ve said since I met you,' the boy snarled.
Eve who was still crouched over her prey.
Danny hurried toward Eve across the undulating floor of Hades’s heart, but as the demon boy reached for her, shegrowled and batted his hand away with a bloody claw. She did not want her feast interrupted.
'Damn it! If I was carrying a rolled newspaper I’d slap you across the nose,' Conan Doyle snapped. He and Ceridwen ran to Eve. The sorceress pulled the demon boy away and Conan Doyle himself let loose a tendril of crimson magick that swirled around Eve and pulled her from her victim. 'Take your damnable head from the trough and let’s go!'
Eve shook off his spell and landed on the pulsing ground several feet from her prey, fangs bared, her mouth and chin stained with gore. There was murder in her eyes, and Conan Doyle summoned a spell of defense in his thoughts, just in case.
'We’re going now, Eve.'
At first he wasn’t sure if she even understood his words, but then he saw a glimmer of humanity return to her eyes.
'What a fucking rush,' Eve whispered, burying her face in her hands. 'Never fed on the blood of a deity before.' She looked up at Conan Doyle, her eyes wide and radiant with a strange inner light. Then she smiled and wiped the drying blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.
'Potent. Way potent.'
'I can only imagine,' Conan Doyle responded, but before he could say anything more the voice of Nigel Gull interrupted.
'Look what she’s done!' he screamed, and Conan Doyle turned to see the twisted little mage pacing around the fleshy chamber as it undulated and pulsed. 'You’ve ruined everything!'
Hawkins swore at Gull, trying to lead him to one of the hollow blood vessels that would take them out of there. Jezebel was once more standing on her own, but she was a pitiful waif, stumbling after him, silently pleading.
Eve started toward Gull, but Conan Doyle grabbed her arm. Her bloodlust was sated and the violence was gone from her eyes. 'Survival is our only concern at the moment,' he said.
With one last, longing look at Gull, she nodded. 'Let’s go.'
Ceridwen lifted a glowing hand to illuminate their path. 'This way,' she said.
All four of them paused as the surviving Erinyes moved to block their path.
'You will go nowhere,' Alekto and Megaera moaned in unison.
Hawkins had fallen in behind them, with Gull leading a muttering Jezebel by the hand.
'Oh, this is just lovely,' Hawkins muttered.
'What do we do?' Danny asked.
Conan Doyle held Ceridwen’s hand tightly, preparing to destroy the Furies. But then Gull’s bitter laughter filled the chamber.
'Oh, dear Arthur, you’ve bollixed it all up for me now, haven’t you, mate? So simple, it was. A bargain, nothing more. And you had to interfere. You couldn’t just do your part.'
As he raved, Conan Doyle turned to see what had set him off. There they were, the seven of them — intruders all — in the midst of Hades’ pulsing, stinking heart. But beyond Hawkins and Jezebel, beyond the cursing, twisted shape of Nigel Gull, there were other figures. And now he saw what had prompted the dark mage’s new tirade.
Gull’s eyes narrowed with hatred and his nostrils widened, snorting like a stallion’s. 'If your damned nobility keeps me from Medusa, I’ll have your heart, you bastard. I’ll have your heart.'
But no one was listening to Gull anymore. On one side they were blocked by the surviving Furies. And now other creatures entered Hades’ heart through pulsing arteries, gaunt, skeletal beings adorned in fabulous armor stained black by the passage of millennia. Conan Doyle had seen these creatures before, scattered about within the corpse of Hades, but in a far less animated state. Something had awakened the lesser gods and goddesses of ancient Greece.
'Another time, Nigel,' he rasped.
'What the fuck is going on now?' Eve snarled.
Ceridwen’s violet eyes flashed with light. 'At a guess? You slaughtered a myth, my friend. You spilled the blood of the Erinyes, and it has set Hades’ heart to beating again… and roused the dead gods who had made this place their tomb.'
'Zombie gods,' Danny said with a shake of his head. 'Well, shit, it was only a matter of time.'
Their numbers continuing to grow, the dead gods shambled closer. Many brandished ancient weaponry: swords, spears, battle-axes, and knives.
Resigned to whatever came next, Conan Doyle smiled sidelong at Eve. 'This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.'
She grunted. Not quite a laugh, but it would do. 'Wasn’t something I planned.'
Gull pushed Conan Doyle out of the way, sputtering angrily at Eve. 'You murdered one of the Furies! What did you expect?'
Eve stared at the creatures coming toward them and cocked her head to one side. It reminded Conan Doyle of a dog he’d owned in his youth, and how it would often tilt its head upon hearing something that he himself could not.
'No,' Eve replied, shaking her head. 'They’re not attacking because of what I did, they’re attacking because they’re afraid.'
'Afraid?' Gull exclaimed. 'What in the name of bloody Christ could the resurrected gods be…'
'They’re afraid that we’ll take the treasure hidden outside this chamber. Afraid that we’ll steal the treasure of Olympus.'
Conan Doyle looked at her quizzically, his hand slowly rising to stroke his mustache. The dead gods moved closer and he listened to their mournful groans.
'I drank the blood of a deity, boys,' Eve said. 'I know all kinds of shit about this place now.'
'The treasure of Olympus,' Conan Doyle repeated, as he dropped his hands to his sides, allowing the magick through him. 'How interesting. Who knows what wondrous things can be found here?'
'Oh, yeah, fantastic,' Eve drawled, glancing back and forth between Alekto and Megaera on one side and the resurrected god-corpses on the other. 'Lot of good it’ll do us. I’ll settle for not dying, thanks.'
Eve hissed at Alekto. The Fury cracked her whip almost as though she was trying to herd them toward the dead gods. Eve caught it in her hand, the barbs ripping her flesh even as she yanked it from Alekto’s hand. The Fury snarled at her and the two began to face off against one another.
'You’d better have something up your sleeve, Doyle,' the vampire snarled. 'We can kill these bitches, but we’d need a small army to fight the undead of Olympus.'
Conan Doyle slowly reached into his pocket, searching for something he had nearly forgotten. 'A small army you say.' He pulled his hand from his pocket to reveal the teeth. The Hydra’s teeth.
'I believe I have just the thing.'
