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.
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."