Forge, and he gestured for Conan Doyle to join him.
'I’m going to require your assistance if we’re to take the Forge from the Underworld.'
Conan Doyle stumbled toward the hole blown into the chamber. 'Are you certain this is wise?'
Sanguedolce stood before a towering object made from blocks of stone that could only have been the Forge of Hephaestus. A pulsing orange glow like a miniature sun still burned from within the belly of the stone furnace, and Conan Doyle could feel its blistering heat on his face. There was something about the Forge, something that made him feel afraid. He could see by the expression on his former master’s face that he was not alone in these feelings.
'No, I’m not,' Sweetblood confessed. 'But I don’t believe we have any choice.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The drape of night still hung heavy across the sky when Clay rode into Sparta, but the eastern horizon was tinted to indigo, just the barest hint that dawn would soon arrive. Squire sat behind him on the battered motorcycle they had taken from an alley near the docks where they made landfall. Dr. Graves had wanted to leave compensation, or a note for the owner. Clay had dismissed the suggestion as impractical. They had no way of knowing if the owner would ever find the money.
'Besides,' Squire had snorted. 'We’re hunting a monster. It’s not like we’re the friggin’ Justice League.'
Now Graves flew overhead, a silhouette barely visible against the night sky, and only to those who were looking. Clay maneuvered the motorcycle through the streets of Sparta with Squire clinging to the bike behind him and the forbidding shapes of the mountains looming in the distance. The nearer they had come to Sparta, the quieter they became. Even Squire had fallen silent now, with the dawn approaching. Clay wondered if he was simply tired or if he somehow sensed that they were at last gaining ground on their prey.
Medusa had stopped running. He assumed she needed to rest, because he doubted that this was her final destination. Clay clutched the handlebars of the motorcycle and focused on the tendril of ectoplasmic energy that stretched out ahead of him, the soul trail left by the passing of the monster and the spectral remnant of the last human she had slain. He had hunted many killers in his long existence and when he drew near to them he was always aware.
He could feel the murder in her heart.
The motorcycle’s roar shattered the predawn quiet, grinding the air even as its tires bit the road. It was as though Sparta itself slumbered and the engine startled it awake.
They passed a decrepit hotel and a cafe, then came to a crossroads where Clay brought the bike to a halt, engine grumbling, struggling to spring forward once more. Squire continued his recent silence and Clay wondered if the hobgoblin had somehow fallen asleep while straddling the motorcycle.
'What is it?' whispered the voice of Dr. Graves.
Clay glanced to his left and saw the ghost hovering there, a golden tint to his spectral form, as though the sunrise tinted not only the eastern sky but the adventurer’s wandering soul.
'We’re going to have to get off and walk soon. I don’t want the engine to give us away.'
Graves nodded once. 'At your discretion.'
Clay revved the engine and turned right. The road took them up into the hills, toward Sparta’s own acropolis. In the bustle of the day, Clay thought there must have been a great deal of traffic on these streets, but at this hour the only vehicles they passed were trucks he assumed were on their way to make early deliveries. Otherwise the city seemed abandoned.
For long minutes he navigated the motorcycle in pursuit of that ectoplasmic thread, moving farther and farther from the populated center of the city. At the base of the hill upon which was the Spartan acropolis, Clay pulled the motorcycle off the road and into a small gulley that ran along beside the pavement.
'Thank Christ,' Squire grunted as he dismounted the bike with some difficulty. 'My balls couldn’t have survived another mile.'
Clay couldn’t help it. He laughed. They had ridden fast and hard, daring disaster on every curve, and he had felt the tension of their hunt. Now they must be more cautious than ever, stealthy yet savage. The moment was not without trepidation. For perhaps the first time since he had known the hobgoblin, Clay found that Squire’s humor was precisely what he needed. All the time Squire had been silent he must have been gritting his teeth in pain.
'Oh, sure, laugh it up. I don’t see you walking like John Wayne.'
Squire staggered stiffly away, walking off his discomfort.
Dr. Graves alighted upon the ground several feet away. The ghost seemed barely an echo, almost entirely insubstantial. If Clay looked away, or tried to see the specter in his peripheral vision, he thought he might not be able to see Graves at all.
'You seem… less, somehow,' Clay said. 'Why is that?'
The pinpoint lights in the ghost’s bottomless eyes glowed more brightly and he narrowed his gaze. There was a tightness to his expression that belied the camaraderie that was usually between them.
'The night is ending. Dawn is near. Spirits are… thinnest then. I could manifest completely, but it takes more effort. I thought I ought to save that effort for Medusa.'
Clay nodded. 'I meant no offense.'
Graves waved him off. 'I took none. It just saddens me.' The ghost rippled in the darkness as though in the breeze and turned to look up the hill. 'She’s up there, is she? On the acropolis?'
'No.' Clay pointed to the west. 'The soul-tether leads this way, around the base. My guess is our destination is on the other side.'
The ghost drifted for several yards in the direction Clay had pointed and then seemed to realize what he was doing. With obvious purpose, Graves began to walk rather than float.
'Shall we?' he asked, glancing back.
Squire had gone the wrong way, but he had not strayed far. The hobgoblin had been watching them and now came strolling back, his gait no longer awkward.
'Game time, huh?'
Clay laid the motorcycle down in the gulley, hoping to come back for it. 'Yeah. And I don’t know if we’re going to get another shot at this, so — '
Squire bristled. 'You think I’m some amateur?'
'Not at all.' Clay shook his head for emphasis. 'Not at all. You’re Hell in a skirmish. But you get carried away sometimes, get loud. You like to talk.'
The hobgoblin took a deep breath and let it out. 'Not a sound. We’ll get her. Greece is nice, but I’m through with the scenic tour. We end it here.'
Clay looked at him a moment longer and then the two of them set off after Dr. Graves, the ghost visible only in silhouette against the indigo of the horizon. A glimmer of gold had appeared in the east, now, as though the edge of the night had begun to kindle into flame.
The corpse of Hades had become its own Hell, a city of damnation within the vaster Underworld. The Furies had tortured souls for an eternity in their lair, and the suffering screamed through the vast hollow caverns of Hades’ chest. The anguish in the very texture of the air was tangible and oppressive, and now it seemed to close in around Ceridwen so that she felt the weight of this darkest of realms fully for the first time.
A warrior sorceress of Faerie, a Princess of the Fey, she was tainted by this place.
She had to escape.
'Come,' she said, grabbing Eve’s arm.
Still nearly feral, the blood of gods staining her fangs and chin, the vampire spun on her, snarling. Then her face softened.
'Eve, we must go now.'
They had made their way back along the path that had taken them to Hades’ heart and now stood within sight of one of the dead god’s ribs, the massive bones that arced up the sides of the flesh city, columns that supported the dark heavens of this Hell. Even here the upper reaches of the cadaver’s roof were not visible, the sky
