Yet Ceridwen always treated her with deference and a quiet camaraderie. So Eve waited for her, and it was she who answered the elemental’s question.
"Maybe we’ll find it, and maybe we won’t," Eve told her. "Phorcys was a myth. A legend. Some of them are true and some of them are bullshit. But even if he was real, and the story of the Gorgons is true, that doesn’t mean this is his grave right here. If there’s one thing I know about Nigel Gull, it’s that the truth is open to interpretation when it’s coming from his mouth."
"Yes," Ceridwen replied. "I had that sense."
She glanced once more at the tree she had touched and rubbed her fingers together as though some residue remained on her skin. Eve wore her jeans and boots and a long leather jacket over a green turtleneck. Her hair was perfect. Her dangling earrings, jade and amber set in gold, had come from a jeweler in Paris. Ceridwen wore a dress that was little more than a layered veil and a robe more suited to Medieval times. And yet there was no question that the sorceress seemed the more at home here, in this ancient place, despite what had befallen the forest.
"I think we’re going to have to work extra hard to keep your guy out of trouble this time," Eve told her.
Ceridwen’s violet eyes flashed defensively, but then she must have seen something in Eve’s own gaze, for she smiled instead. "Where would he be without us?"
Eve glanced around and laughed. "A fossil."
The two of them caught up to Conan Doyle and Danny, Eve noting with admiration that the kid was handling himself well. Hawkins and Jezebel were standing back from the others slightly, and so Eve also hung back to keep an eye on them.
"You are certain this is the place?" Conan Doyle asked, glancing around. Despite the heat, he wore one of his dapper, old-fashioned suits. Thus far his only concession to the weather had been to remove his tie. Any moment she expected him to doff the jacket and roll up his sleeves. But, then, he was locked in this battle of wills with Gull, and that might be construed as a sign of weakness.
It was all ridiculous as far as Eve was concerned. Gull was deformed because he played with magicks he should have left alone. She figured Conan Doyle ought to be satisfied with that as a victory.
"Am I certain?" Gull asked. His wide nostrils flared. "Would I have dragged all you lot out here if I wasn’t? You know me better than that, Sir Arthur."
Their mutual dislike and rivalry was buried beneath the chivalric code of another era, but it was there nevertheless.
"How did you determine this to be the site of Phorcys’s grave? What led you here?" Conan Doyle asked, his tone modulated, more reasonable, as he stroked his mustache.
Eve glanced around the petrified forest. The place was impossibly quiet. In that moment it seemed the whole world had been fossilized. Something was not right. She had felt the supernatural force growing here and had told Conan Doyle as much. It was obvious that something was here. But despite the look of the place, it did not feel like a grave to her.
It felt hungry.
And no one knew what hunger felt like better than she did.
"I’ve been mapping the real-world locations of mythology for decades. You know that well enough. In my travels I located stone statues… victims of a Gorgon’s eyes. The Gorgons were Phorcys’s daughters. That in mind, it wasn’t difficult to find a spell that would use the stone remains of his daughters’ victims to create a Divination Box."
He reached into the first Range Rover and withdrew a small wooden box with no cover. On its sides were markings similar to others Eve had seen once before, ages ago in Babylon. Gull held it low so that they could all see inside. There were bits of stone within that must have come from one of the Gorgon’s victims as well as the small bones of some kind of bird and several dark-shelled nuts.
Gull shook the box. The contents rattled and jumped a bit, and then all of them rolled of their own accord across the bottom of the box, clicking on the wood as they gathered in one corner.
"Good as any compass," Danny noted, standing between Eve and Conan Doyle.
Gull’s misshapen face beamed at the kid. "Precisely, my boy. Precisely."
The bones and stones and nuts began to rattle again. At first Eve though nothing of it. Then she saw the alarm on Gull’s face. An instant later the contents of the Divination Box slid up the inside wall and jumped out, flying to the ground and bouncing and rolling across the barren earth, as if drawn by a magnet.
The ground began to buckle and quake. Eve was thrown against the Range Rover. Her companions began to shout, but she ignored them all, her eyes searching the darkness among the petrified trees for the place where those bones and stones had gone.
The earth heaved, shattered, and sprayed, and then collapsed in upon itself, a massive hole opening in the ground.
From it came a noise… hissing, as if of a thousand snakes.
Then the first hideous head began to rise, sickly yellow eyes glowing in the night as it sought them out.
CHAPTER SIX
A Hydra.
Danny Ferrick didn’t need one of Doyle’s musty old books to tell him what it was that had emerged from the dry, barren earth, its multiple heads snapping and hissing. He‘d seen enough movies and read enough Greek mythology to know exactly what now attacked them.
"Holy shit. A fucking real Hydra." he whispered with awe, frozen where he stood. He could not take his eyes from the serpentine monstrosity, its nine heads swaying hypnotically, as if trying to decide which of their number it would strike at first.
Conan Doyle stood beside Danny, his hands held up, a spray of emerald light flashing from them and spreading in front of the two of them like some sort of shield. The old guy seemed way too proper most of the time, but the second the magic started to spark from his eyes and that weird nowhere wind buffeted his clothes and ruffled his hair, he was almost more frightening than any monster. Power simmered in him, flowing off of him in waves.
"Eve," Conan Doyle called. "If you would be so kind as to get off your behind and lend a hand…"
The vampire had been thrown back against the Range Rover when the Hydra erupted from the ground, and now she pulled herself to her feet. "Right away, boss man," she said, shooting him the middle finger. "I live to serve."
The ground shuddered again, a tremor that all of them rode out as though they were on board a ship. The earth collapsed around the Hydra, huge chunks of volcanic soil sinking inward, entire stretches of that dusty ground erupting upward as the Hydra bucked and hauled its body out of its den beneath the dead earth. Each head was as hideous as the first, jaws gaping over, slavering venom spilling out onto the ground to sizzle like acid as it touched earth. Beneath its scales moved thick, ropy muscles, and its nine tails thrashed on the dusty ground.
Danny started forward, despite Conan Doyle’s magickal defenses. The mage reached out a hand and grabbed his shoulder.
"Not yet, boy."
Eve cautiously moved toward the monster that now swayed on its thick, muscular trunk. She drew its attention, and nine pair of eyes focused on her.
"What’s she going to do?" Danny asked.
Conan Doyle ignored him, muttering an incantation under his breath, even as Ceridwen entered the fray. The elemental sorceress pointed her staff toward the beast, the sphere of blue ice atop it crackling with growing power. Her violet eyes sparked, and she raised her arms
The Hydra struck. Despite Eve’s distraction, one massive head turned away from the vampire, and its jaws opened wide, vomiting a gray, noxious vapor. Ceridwen tried to ward off the billowing cloud, but it clung to her, coating her in a layer of ash.
Conan Doyle shouted her name, his face etched with fury as he unleashed a bolt of pure magickal force. But he had been distracted, and even as he ran to her side, the blast went wild, missing the monster and shattering a fossilized tree nearby.