Eve looked up into the face of the Fury and smiled defiantly. "Can I have my own room?" she asked, and Gull cringed at her impertinence.
The sister of darkness smiled, seemingly unfazed by her lack of respect. "I shall receive much gratification from your suffering," the Fury said as she bent forward to lay a gentle kiss upon the vampire’s head.
" Tisiphone," she said, never taking her bloody orbs from her prize, "give the heartsick magician what he so desperately desires."
Gull felt his heart leap within his chest. His prayers had been answered at last. All that he had done in the name of love, all the lies and betrayals — it hadn’t been for naught.
One of the Furies — Tisiphone — slowly glided toward him. "In what shall you contain this valuable gift?" she asked, hands as pale as alabaster folded delicately before her.
For a moment Gull was so overcome with gratitude that he did not understand the question.
"In what will you carry the tears of a Fury?" she screeched, infuriated by his silence.
His hands quickly went to his pocket and he pulled out a glass vial, presenting it to Tisiphone.
" Open it," she commanded, and he immediately removed the stopper.
Tisiphone brought one of her long fingers up to her face, and with the nail, she poked at the bloody orb engorging the eye socket, enticing it to weep a single tear of crimson. Gull was there to catch the drop of blood, trapping it within the glass vial. The other Erinyes did the same, each in turn crying a lone tear for the sorcerer as payment for what he had brought to them.
"Would you like me to contribute to that?" Eve asked, still on her knees before the sisters. "I haven’t taken a piss since getting to this fucking place."
Gull forced a smile as he gently pushed the stopper into the opening of the vial. "Thank you, but no," he replied. "I believe you’ve done more than enough for me."
He could not take his eyes from the container’s contents, holding up his prize for all to see. He’d never experienced such elation before.
But the feeling was short lived.
"Nigel Gull!" thundered a voice from somewhere above, a voice he knew only too well.
"We have come for our friend," Arthur Conan Doyle proclaimed.
Gull watched as the Erinyes encircled their newest prize, their bloody eyes searching the chamber for these newly arrived enemies.
"By all means, Arthur," Gull replied, a twisted smile spreading across his malformed features. "Come down and take her."
That’s new, Eve thought, turning her head to watch as her allies leaped down into the chamber from a ledge somewhere above. It looked as though they were riding on a current of air. Some hocus-pocus whipped up by 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."