Storming Paradise Page 7

  “No, please,” Hercules pressed. “I need everyone to pay attention to this.” He glanced up at the sky, searching for the first hints of dawn. “You are in great danger. This party—”

  Something sailed towards Hercules then, striking the wall just behind his head and shattering. It was a clay flagon, and it broke as it met the wall.

  Hercules scanned the crowd, trying to see who had thrown the vessel. More of the crowd turned at the noise, and some jeered.

  “You’re losing them, buddy,” Iolaus pointed out helpfully, holding his hand before his mouth as he hissed the words.

  Hercules raised his arms, gesturing for calm. “Please, people, let’s all settle down. There is great danger here—”

  Another flagon came sailing towards Hercules, followed by a goblet, contents and all. Hercules ducked the first and batted the second aside. “Please listen,” he tried again, but it was no good. Already the crowd was bored with the measly entertainment he provided. They turned back to their games of chance, their dancing and their mayfly romances.

  Hercules glared at Iolaus where he stood at street level. “What do I do?”

  “Why ask me?” Iolaus replied.

  “You’ve talked your way out of a few situations in your time,” Hercules said. “How do you handle hecklers?”

  Iolaus shrugged. “Ah, heckle them back,” he said.

  Hercules glanced up at the sky, searching again for the first hint of dawn. The sky was lightening, the deep indigo of night turning paler, the stars were still bright. “No time,” he decided. He scanned the street, searching for some way to convince the unsuspecting victims of its curse. He could show them the effects of sunlight on the dancing girls, but only once dawn arrived, and that would be after the street was gone. It was hopeless. But there had to be something, there had to be.

  Hercules spied what he needed an instant later, and almost laughed as he leapt down from the table. He sprinted along the street, running Hades for leather towards the stable that abutted the street just two buildings away. Outside the building stood that two-wheeled cart, its yoke angled to the ground.

  Hercules grabbed the cart’s back plate and pushed, balancing it so that the yoke was raised a few inches from the ground, keeping the cart at a downwards angle.

  “Join the ride! Come on!” Hercules cried as he slammed the cart into a group of unsuspecting gamers who were huddled around a table littered with colored tiles. The players tumbled into the cart while the table fell to one side.

  Hercules kept running, pushing the cart hard as he swept up the next group, a line of dancers whose sense of rhythm had apparently deserted them some hours—which is to say, some drinks—before.

  Slam!—Another group was added to the heavily-laden cart, then another. More people every step, in ones and twos and whole groups, knocked off their feet and thrust onto the angled cart as Hercules ran the length of the street. In just a handful of seconds, the cart was host to over a dozen surprised passengers, and more joined them in tumbling piles. Some would sustain bruises, maybe even broken limbs, Hercules knew, but the alternative was far, far worse.

  “Room for plenty up top!” Hercules cried as he continued the incredible feat of strength, pushing the cart farther up the street as the party played on.

  Iolaus watched his friend with astonishment, momentarily applauding the combination of brashness and ingenuity that the legendary strongman was showing. But even Hercules could not catch everyone. There had to be fifty people on that street, including a crèche of babies. Iolaus began to trek along the street, gathering up stragglers and urging them, physically lifting them, or dragging the sleeping drunks out the near end of the street, always conscious that the sun was about to rise.

  It took four minutes and three journeys with the cart. By the third time, Hercules was starting to recognize some of the faces, and he saw a few people he knew had simply wandered straight back into the party at the siren-like beckoning of the musicians and dancers. The obvious strategy was to put those temptresses out of commission, but time was against them now, and Hercules—with Iolaus’ support—was hoping that simply wiping the street clean would be enough.

  After the third run with the cart, there were just a dozen people left on the street, nine of them identified as musicians and waiting staff who had doubtless materialized with the street.

  “Um . . . Hercules?” Iolaus called as Hercules turned the cart around for yet another run at playing taxi cab.

  Hercules turned to look at his partner who was standing just a few feet away penning some children behind a coral hastily constructed out of stacked tables. Iolaus was looking up at the sky to east, and Hercules followed. There, low on the horizon, a golden streak was glowing, as if a painter had run his brush across the sky. It was dawn, the first rays of the sun clambering over the distant fields.

  Before Hercules could comment, he felt the ground at his feet begin to tremble. “The street!” he told Iolaus. “You feel it?”

  Iolaus stepped forward and nodded. “It’s descending. So, what now?”

  Hercules stared up the mysterious street with its bunting and its tables stocked with foods and wines. “Stragglers,” he said, breaking into a run. “Guard the ends.”

  Iolaus looked at Hercules, then from one end of the street to the other, where groups of temporarily saved victims were milling about in confusion, many of them eager to rejoin the festivities. “What, both of them?” Iolaus asked incredulously. But Hercules was already gone, racing up the street away from Iolaus and the cart.

  Hercules identified the remaining victims by their level of inebriation. Whoever was behind this nightmarish trap had ensured that its staff—if that was the right word—remained sober. But the unsuspecting participants were plied with drink, enough that even the strongest will could not see through the sorcery in use that was ensnaring them. All around, the street began its slow descent into the earth, a gap of two inches appearing on all sides as it dropped away from the surrounding buildings and roads.

  Hercules reached the first of the inebriated, a man in his twenties with the hearty, cracked complexion of a sailor, and grasped him by the front of his shirt. The man was holding a goblet and laughing as Hercules grabbed him, and he uttered a few words in confusion.

  “Sorry, friend,” Hercules said as he lifted the man off his feet, “no time to be gentle!”

  Then Hercules threw him, tossing the man fourteen feet into the air and backwards, drawing an arc from street level to the roof of a bunting-strewn house, even as the bunting fell away. The man landed with a thud, but was otherwise all right; alcohol numbed his landing.

  The next two proved a little harder. The dancing girls had finally cottoned on to what Hercules was doing, and they danced before him, blocking his way, moving gracefully but obstructively in time with the music. They were pretty and very enticing, Hercules realized, making it all too easy to become trapped in their spell.

  Hercules glanced at the edges of the street, saw that they had now descended two feet, and were dropping faster. “Sorry, ladies,” he said, leaping onto a keg of ale, “but I’ll have to sit this dance out!” Then he leapt from the barrel, over the heads of the surprised women and across to the last two stragglers on the street—two men engaged in an intense game of strategy that involved the movement of differently colored beads to entrap one’s opponent. Hercules landed beside the games table and, grabbing the men and table in widespread arms, hefted them off the ground and began to run for the street’s far end.

  Hercules’ feet pounded on the ground, carrying the mismatched group before him as he ran as hard as he could. The street was dropping further, already it was four feet beneath the ground and the buildings along the sides were beginning their eerie shift to enclose where it had been.

  “Iolaus, get ready!” Hercules called, not bothering to look behind him.

  The two games pla
yers seemed to wake up at that, suddenly realizing that they were being moved along with their game board. “What’s happening?” one asked.

  “Where are you taking us?” asked the other.

  “Change of arena,” Hercules said jovially. “Go, team!” Then he pushed the strange parcel of people, table and game board up over his head, launching it over the lip of the descending street and to safety. Whether the game survived, he did not like to guess.

  Hercules spun on his heel as the street continued its rumbling descent below the earth. The street was all but empty, only the handful of musicians and attendants remaining. Iolaus was standing at the far end however, high above the dropping street, penning in the people who had been trying to rejoin its sorcerous clutches. Those people had stopped now, leaving Iolaus on the high ground as the magic street traveled its strange descent.

  “Iolaus?” Hercules called. “Come on!”

  Iolaus looked down at the dropping street, and shook his head uncertainly. “Is this such a good idea?” he asked.

  “Come on!” Hercules urged.

  Up above, Iolaus watched as the street dropped another foot and the soil and surrounding buildings began to swallow it, erasing it from the face of the Earth. “Well, I suppose we did promise Phoibe,” he told himself, knowing he was about to do something he would regret. The next moment, Iolaus leapt down to the rapidly disappearing street as the earth above closed over it, sealing it below.

  Chapter 10

  The music kept playing, on and on, as the earth sealed closed above the sinking street, plunging the whole scene into absolute darkness. With that darkness came a feeling of claustrophobia, of being buried alive.

  Iolaus had landed hard on the packed earth that had formed the surface of the street, dropping into a roll to dissipate his momentum as the earth sealed above him like two stable doors, sealing him from the dawn’s early rays.

  The street was still shuddering, shaking as if caught in the fearsome turmoil of a quake, while the temperature had palpably risen by several degrees.

  Iolaus cursed as he lifted himself up from the ground.

  Hercules’ voice came from beside him then, resounding over the strains of lyre, pipe and drum. “Iolaus? Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” Iolaus said, looking around himself into absolute darkness. “Where are you?”

  As Iolaus said those words, the shuddering scene around him lightened just a little, painted by a deep red like a distant sunset—only this sunset appeared to be emanating from below rather than above. As the light increased fractionally, Iolaus searched once more for Hercules, found him standing just six feet away, a sturdy silhouette against the gloom.

  “Right beside you,” Hercules told Iolaus in answer to his question. He pitched his voice low, wary of being overheard despite the lyrical clamor of the musicians.

  Iolaus glanced from Hercules up the street, identifying the musicians and the dancing women, albeit only as shadows against reddish darkness. “Are we still moving?” he ventured. “Feels like.”

  Hercules nodded once. “It does.”

  The walls at the edges of the street were dark, with deep plant roots giving way to earth. As they sunk deeper, even the evidence of the burrowing creatures and insects disappeared, giving way to rocks and then to darkness, a sense of something there in the faint red-blackness rather than visible confirmation. Iolaus did not like it.

  Iolaus was about to ask where Hercules thought they might be going, but he realized it was pointless—his friend had just as much, or as little, knowledge as he did as to their destination. It could be that the street was already headed for its next appearance on another island, in another town, there to abduct more unsuspecting victims who would come to join in the party. But, just as easily, it might be traveling to another destination, a holding place like a stable, or even somewhere darker; there were stories about such things, deals made with the dwellers of the Underworld—Persephone had given fully one third of her life away to the darkness in just such a tale.

  One thing was clear, however. As the street shuddered in the grip of its sorcerous movement, Iolaus and Hercules were made all too aware that when they had planned on tracking down the street they had never discussed what they would do once they found it. Saving lives was all well and good, but in Iolaus’ opinion no life was worth saving at the cost of his own. He appreciated that Hercules might think differently—his friend would on occasion display a little too much selflessness for Iolaus’ liking.

  The street continued to shake, the strains of the music echoing strangely through it as if heard in a cave. It was not really a street now, however; it was more like a long, narrow platform along the sides of which lay the stalls of food and drink, their contents spilled across the street as it continued its descent.

  Iolaus turned to Hercules in the red twilight. “I wish they’d stop playing that music,” he said. “It’s giving me the creeps.”

  “I quite agree,” Hercules said. “Why anyone would feel the need to play music during a platform’s descent is beyond me. It certainly won’t catch on.”

  As if they had heard the two companions—and perhaps they had—the quintet of dancing girls stopped their graceful movements and the music softened to a quiet lull.

  “How many did we snatch?” one of the women asked, looking around her.

  One of her companions laughed joyously. “I don’t know. Shall we count them?”

  “I need only thirty more for my release,” said the third, brushing a hand through her blond tresses. As she did so, the edges of her hair seemed to drift away, departing like ashes above a fire.

  “Thirty?” her laughing companion repeated. “I need but sixteen this trip.”

  As the women continued to talk, comparing numbers in this manner, Iolaus turned to Hercules and whispered: “Any idea what they’re talking about?”

  “The number of people they hoped to capture, presumably,” Hercules suggested uncertainly.

  “But why?” Iolaus asked. “And what’s that talk of ‘release’? Release from what?”

  Before Hercules could respond, an unearthly shriek echoed down the street from where the women were poised. The women were looking all about them and had clearly realized that something was amiss.

  “Where are they? Where are the people?”

  “They’ve left!”

  “They can’t have,” a third woman ventured. As she spoke she shook her head with such vigor that her dark hair cast a streak across the air like a stroke of paint. Then, the dark hair began to drift away from her head in the manner of steam above a simmering pot, creating a cloud behind and above her as she moved.

  Seeing this in the half-light of the Underworld, Iolaus frowned. “What in the name of Hades are they?”

  “Your dead companion,” Hercules ventured, recalling the first time that they had found this mysterious street. “The one you danced with. Remember?”

  “Oh yes, that’s a date I won’t forget in a hurry,” Iolaus assured him.

  The gaggle of dancing women had been joined by the few servers who had been dedicated to topping up drinks and clearing plates. “There was a man,” one of the women recalled, “using a cart to transport people.”

  “I thought it was a game,” one of the serving women said. She was dressed in longer robes than the dancers, with a colored ribbon tied around her waist. “They were all quite drunk.”

  “No,” the blond woman said, her hair now a fracturing blur about her shoulders. “He was clearing the street deliberately. He threw a man onto a roof, too.”

  “I thought that was a fight,” ventured her darker haired companion. “It seemed—”

  The whole group appeared to spot Hercules and Iolaus at the same instant, turning almost as one, like birds sighting a predator.

  “There!” one of the men who had helped serving drinks shouted, point
ing to Hercules and his companion.

  Hercules held his open hands outwards in a non-threatening gesture as the posse of figures approached in the red-tinted gloom. Behind them, it seemed as if the platform that was the street was changing proportions, becoming shorter and as it continued its journey down into the bowels of the Earth.

  “You!” one of the dancing girls spat as the group closed in on Hercules and Iolaus. “You did this!”

  “What is it that you want?” the dancing girl beside her asked, an accusatory edge to her voice.

  “I was about to ask you the same question,” Hercules responded jovially.

  As Hercules spoke, he saw the faces of the women for the first time, and his eyes widened in shock. Their figures were human, but their heads were something else. The long hair was fluttering away from each head as if made from gas, and the faces had no flesh on them—and yet, nor were they bone skulls. Instead, they were kind of formless, the features drawn there as if kneaded into dough. As Hercules and Iolaus watched, the faces seemed to become even less rigid, like features carved into a candle that is left to melt, eye sockets and noses and mouths drooping downwards as they lost definition. It was inhuman.

  “You!” the centermost figure shrieked. “You stole my freedom!”

  “Mine, too,” the decaying figure beside her howled. “All of ours!”

  Before Hercules could say a word in protest, the decaying figures of five dancing girls and a half dozen others rounded on him and Iolaus, closing them in on three sides. “Now, wait a minute,” Hercules said, trying to keep his tone light. “When you say ‘freedom,’ what do—?”

  The question was cut short as the nearest of the dancing girls lunged at Hercules, swiping at his face with the talon-like claws of her hand.

  Hercules sidestepped, raising his left arm to bat his attacker’s arm away.

  Behind Hercules, Iolaus suddenly found three of the monstrous figures reaching for him—two of them male waiting staff. “Hercules?” he called, stumbling backwards on the quaking platform.