Read Online Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) by Thomas E. Sniegoski Christopher Golden - Free Book Online Page B

One and found it empty as he
had expected.
    He moved more quietly now, slipping out of the cab to the
ground. The rain was cold and cruel, punishing him as he crept slowly along
beside the tender until he reached the steps up onto the first Pullman. Hand on
the rail, he went up and then found himself before the ornate door of the car. Gull
muttered to himself a few words of ancient Aramaic, and the fingers of his left
hand began to burn with a tainted yellow light. For illumination, and for
defense, in case his instincts were wrong and the culprit remained.
    The door swung open easily. Gull moved into the car and
raised his hand, splashing a sickly golden glow across the car. His breath
caught. The opulence of the Pullman was startling. The floor was covered with
Oriental carpet, the windows curtained by velvet drapes. A trio of crystal
chandeliers hung from the high ceilings, and the windows were etched glass. The
wood gleamed richly.
    The car was empty.
    Gull would have sensed anything lurking in the shadows
through his light. There was nothing beneath the tables here.
    He hurried, now, moving through the Pullman as swiftly as
he was able. When he reached the door at the other end he paused only a moment
before drawing open the door.
    The dead girl lay on the platform between trains. Her
hair was dark, but might have been lighter were it not sodden with the rain. Her
body had been forced through an opening in the ornate railings and she was
splayed there, her arms spread out, her head hanging several inches from the
platform, thrown back, mouth wide open.
    She was unclothed, her flesh pale, save where arcane
symbols had been carved into her. The storm had washed the blood away. Tiny
puddles of rainwater had accumulated in the hollows of her eyes, and the storm
had filled her open mouth as well. Rain dribbled from one corner of her lips,
sluicing down her cheek and falling down into the space between cars.
    She was no more than seven.
    Nigel Gull knew his own heart. There was little therein
that was spectacularly noble. Yet the sight tore at him. The villain was gone,
the one responsible for the girl’s death, who had killed her in ritual
sacrifice as part of some spell to hide himself. He had attempted to murder
King Edward on this eve of his coronation, not expecting other mages to be there
to prevent it. Then he had fled here.
    Had he found the girl somewhere along the way, or kept
her awaiting her demise as a prisoner in the luxury of his private train . . .
just in case he needed her life? Gull found he did not want to know the answer.
    But he needed to know.
    And though it made him shudder to think of it, though his
spirit cried out that it was an abomination in itself, he realized he knew a
way to retrieve that information. Nigel Gull had learned from the greatest of
mages, Lorenzo Sanguedolce, the man many called Sweetblood, the literal
translation of his name. The mage’s other apprentice had been horrified, but
Sanguedolce himself had not passed judgment at all, when Gull had looked too
deeply into ancient Egyptian magicks that had been forbidden even to the high
priests of that age. He had acquired certain hideous skills on that night, at
the cost of his face, and he had never yet employed them.
    But this . . . it seemed almost as though his sacrifice
on that evening several years past had been in preparation for this. For one of
those skills was The Voice of the Dead.
    Sickened, stomach churning, but more determined now than
he had ever felt, Gull stepped through the opening in the railing and straddled
the platforms between the two Pullman cars. He clutched the railing and leaned
over far enough that he could slide his free hand beneath the dangling head of
the dead girl. Rain spilled off of her eyes, and some slid from her mouth. One
of the sigils sliced in her chest opened slightly, the wound resembled an
eyelid, leaking pink tears.
    Gull stared into her face. Perfect, shattered innocence. He
closed his own