Tears of the Furies by Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski Read Free Book Online

and
then what?"
    She didn’t have an answer, so she folded her arms
defensively across her chest.
    "I go back to Newton and everything’s just fine, is
that what you think?" He laughed unhappily. "How long do you think it
will be before the villagers are surrounding the house with torches?"
    "Stop," Julia said. "Please, stop it." She
closed her eyes, listening to the pounding rhythm of the blood in her temples. She
was getting a headache; the kind that usually sent her straight to bed with all
the lights out and the curtains drawn, not quite a migraine, but a bad, return to the womb kind of headache, as her ex-husband used to say.
    "No, I won’t," he said defiantly. "Things are
different now — I’m different now." He pointed to one of the
room’s windows with a clawed finger. "I don’t fit out there anymore."
    She still had her eyes closed, the pain in her head growing
with every pulse of her heart.
    "Look at me!" Danny roared, and she had no choice
but to open her eyes. He stood before her, arms spread, displaying what he had
become. "Look at me and tell me I’m wrong."
    Julia didn’t know what to say. Deep down she knew he was
right, but damn it she couldn’t bear to let him go, to release her only child
into the care of Arthur Doyle, someone she barely knew — to become part
of his . . . what did he call it? His menagerie.
    "What do we actually know about this Mr. Doyle?"
she blurted out. "And the people who live here with him — don’t even
get me started on them. I’d just feel better if I knew . . ."
    "He saved the world, ma," Danny interrupted. "And
I helped." He touched the front of his Eminem T-shirt with a taloned hand.
"I really don’t think you need anything more by way of character
references."
    The world was pretty much back to normal since the bizarre
occurrences of almost three weeks before, when a crimson mist had blanketed the
region and the dead had crawled from their graves. Julia shivered with the
memory, the hair at the back of her neck prickling to attention. It was hard to
believe that everything that happened was anything other than a very bad dream,
but when she looked at her son, she knew it was real.
    "I want to stay here," Danny said taking a step
toward her. "I need to be here."
    There was a desperation in his voice that made her want to
cry, as if the answers to all of his problems were right here, and she was the
only obstacle standing in the way of his total fulfillment.
    "Danny, please." She weighed each word carefully. "Look
at this from my perspective."
    "This isn’t about you!" Danny bellowed, and Julia
could have sworn she saw sparks of orange flame leap from his eyes. He spun
away from her, bounding across the room, and brought his fist down on the
mahogany dresser, obliterating the toys.
    Julia was horribly torn. Motherly instincts told her to go
to her son, to comfort him, but another voice inside her head, more attuned to
self-preservation, whispered that it might be wiser to keep her distance. The
moment was broken, however, and her quandary solved, when a spectral figure
emerged from the ceiling, drifting down to float eerily in the center of the
room. The temperature dropped several degrees, and she shivered.
    No matter how many times Julia saw the ghost of Dr. Leonard
Graves, she couldn’t get used to it.. He was a kind man, and had been a noble
example of humanity while he lived, but that was the problem. Dr. Graves was
dead.
    "Is everything all right?" the specter asked, his
gaze shifting from Julia to her son, who now knelt before his demolished
dresser.
    "Danny?" Graves drifted closer to the boy, and
Julia noticed how much warmer it was without him near.
    "I’m cool," Danny said, reaching down to touch the
broken dresser. "My mom and I were just discussing how it would be best
for me to go back home with her and live in the basement."
    Julia sighed. "I said no such thing," she said
wearily, bringing her hands to her temples in an attempt to massage away