She turned her gaze to one of the many ragged, rotting holes in the corpse of Hades, where strange, mournful sounds continued to waft out from within. They live there, she thought. Not only the Furies, but others as well. The dead. The damned. The gigantic corpse was like a city of death.
Danny only laughed. "We’re going in there? Of course we are!"
The rotting flesh of the god was stiff with rigor, but tore with enough pressure, releasing the nauseating stink of decay. Conan Doyle was surprised to find how simple it was to climb Hades’ corpse. Only the stench was a deterrent. They scaled the mountainous corpse to one of the larger gashes at the rib cage and slipped inside, walking on wounded flesh that seemed to have moved from putrefaction to petrification. Inside, the corpse was so dry it seemed almost mummified.
Conan Doyle led them within and found that pathways had been constructed of repurposed flesh and bone. There were chambers and tunnels, and quickly enough they found a makeshift bridge fashioned out of a rib bone. Conan Doyle crossed that bridge and the others quickly followed. It was like they had entered another world. Within the corpse it was dark, but what looked to be stars twinkled from the ceiling above, suspended in a velvety black sky, illuminating the strange landscape with the faint hint of twilight.
"They can’t be stars," Danny said, squinting up at the ceiling. "We’re inside a body…"
The demon boy’s voice trailed off, arousing Conan Doyle’s curiosity. "What is it, Danny?" he asked, looking up as well, but unable to penetrate the inky black.
Ceridwen raised her hand, blue-green light springing to life at her fingers as she attempted to illuminate the darkness above, but it was impenetrable.
"Those aren’t stars," Danny said with a slow shake of his head. "They’re eyes."
Conan Doyle squinted, but it was obvious that the youth’s recent demonic metamorphosis had enhanced his night vision, for as much as he wanted to, he could still see nothing.
"The entire roof, or whatever it is… it’s covered in bodies, thousands of bodies, and they’re watching us." Danny shuddered, looking quickly away.
"The spirits of those being punished by the Furies," Ceridwen said thoughtfully. "I saw it when I was tethered to the soil. The Erinyes built their lair here, transformed Hades’ remains into a palace of suffering for those condemned to their ministrations."
Danny looked up at the ceiling again, unable to take his eyes from it. "It’s… it’s horrible," he whispered. "Their mouths are all moving — they’re reaching out for somebody to help them." He sounded very young.
Conan Doyle put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. "There’s nothing we can do for those poor souls now. They’re the ghosts of another age. But we can prevent Eve from sharing their fate."
This seemed to rally the boy’s resolve, and they forged ahead, deeper into the body of the fallen god, the eyes of the damned lighting their way. There were strange formations of what first appeared to be rock on either side of the path they traveled. Upon closer examination, Conan Doyle discovered that it was not rock at all, but the ossified remains of what could only have once been other gods. They were huddled close, wearing masks of sadness and misery, draped over one another as if they had been commiserating when the end finally arrived. Minor deities and demigods, dressed in tarnished armor and wielding pitted swords and axes. They had inhabited the corpse of Hades at some point, who knew how many millennia before, and had died there, forgotten. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
The Children of Olympus.
And yet Conan Doyle could not help wondering what had happened to the others. Where were Zeus and Athena and Poseidon and their kin, the key figures of Greek mythology? Surely they were not these withered corpses whose remains had merged with the bones and dead flesh of Hades.
"This is where they fled," Ceridwen said, interrupting his musing as she reached out to brush her fingers across the remains of a dead god. She gasped, pulling her hand quickly away. "How horrible," she whispered, clutching the hand to her breast. "They are still alive — a spark of life still exists within these petrified shells."
"Come away," Conan Doyle said, taking her by the arm and leading her back onto the path. "They are echoes of the distant past. Relics. Their fate cannot be undone."
The demon boy hushed them, then, and Conan Doyle turned to see that he had moved ahead several yards. He was crouched with his head cocked, listening. When the mage and Ceridwen went to stand with him, they heard faint voices chanting in ritual, the words indistinguishable but growing louder.
They began to follow the voices. As they walked, the ground beneath their feet became soft and yielding but not from rot, like the outer flesh of the corpse. It was as though they were walking across a carpet of thick moss. Conan Doyle wondered about it, but his musings were cut short as they reached a new passage. The sounds of voices were louder now, and he could distinguish that of Nigel Gull from the others. The sorcerer was pleading, begging in song that his petition be granted. The other voices, women’s voices, made the hair at the back of Doyle’s neck stand on end, and an icy chill run up and down his spine.
The fleshy passage opened up onto a ledge that looked out over an enormous chamber of dark, thickly muscled walls.
"The heart of Hades," Conan Doyle whispered to his companions, marveling at the sight.
The three knelt and carefully peered over the edge.
Below them Nigel Gull stood before three terrible creatures that could only have been the Furies. Hawkins and Jezebel knelt behind him in reverence to the sisters, their heads bowed, as if to look upon the Erinyes was to somehow incite their wrath. Eve stood obediently at Gull’s side, the lash of one of the Erinyes wrapped around her throat like a leash. The twisted mage was using the voice he had stolen, the voice of Orpheus, to entice the sisters of night.
Conan Doyle felt Danny’s hand tighten on his arm as they watched what was unfolding below. It was exactly as he had feared, Gull was giving Eve to the Furies, but for what he did not know. The hideous thing whose lash was wound about Eve’s throat yanked upon the whip, pulling her violently to the ground. The Erinyes converged upon their prize, their pale, spidery hands fluttering excitedly about her prostrate form.
"Will you grant me my heartfelt plea, most revered Eumenides?" Gull sang out in a voice not his own.
Danny leaned close and whispered in Conan Doyle’s ear. "We have to do something." The boy’s grip on his arm grew harder. "We have to do something now."
Conan Doyle studied the scene below them. They could interrupt the ceremony, but then the mystery of Gull’s request would not have been revealed.
And he needed to know. He needed to know what could drive a man to this.
"Will you grant my plea, revered Eumenides?" Gull sang to the sisters of suffering.
The Erinyes were not an easy lot to read, and Gull wasn’t sure how they would respond, but by the way they hovered around the vampire, he knew that his offer was at least tempting.
"It has been too long since last we punished a sinner such as this," one of the Furies proclaimed, leaning forward to sniff at Eve’s hair, as one would take in the scent of an especially delicious meal.
"And long has the daughter of Phorcys and Keto suffered for her slight against the goddess Athena," said another of the three, her robes — made from the souls of the tortured — flowing eerily about her.
The Fury whose whip entwined the vampire’s throat looked down upon her captive with eyes ripe with blood. "You have done much to deserve punishment, lamia," she said, pulling Eve closer. "Do you wish to stay with us? Do you wish to repent the sins you have perpetrated upon the Third Age of Man?"