Tears of the Furies by Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski

out to pasture. But
there came a time not so long after Stavros left the force, when Yannis had an
opportunity to dial the mysterious number. Someone had been digging up the
recently buried in the First Cemetery of Athens, and feeding on the corpses.
    Yannis’s bulbous belly churned, sickly with the memory
— the overturned earth, splintered coffin pieces strewn about the
beautifully peaceful setting, and the condition of the helpless dead. The old
man belched, the stifado, a spicy beef stew with baby onions that he’d had for
supper, repeating on him. Popping the cigar into his mouth to free his hands,
Yannis rubbed his large stomach in an attempt to calm it.
    Just the memory of the odor from those open graves was
enough to make him feel queasy. The air had been filled not only with the
stench of the disinterred, but with swarms of flies, feasting and depositing
their eggs on the scattered remains. As he stood there with the other officers
and the grief-stricken families of those whose graves had been violated, he had
thought of the number scrawled upon the worn piece of paper in his wallet.
    Something unnatural.
    The hum of an approaching plane stirred him from his
recollections, and he squinted into the nighttime sky. The plane descended in
the distance, touching down expertly in the field that was once rife with olive
trees. But that had been long ago, when Yannis still believed that the world
was sane. He chuckled as he took another puff on his cigar, amused that he
could ever have been so naive.
    In that case, years past, he had called the number, and a
strange gravelly voice had answered. In broken English, Yannis had described
what was happening in Athens, about the desecrated graves and the cannibalized
bodies. The voice on the other end had grown silent, the open phone line
hissing in his ear, and for a moment, Yannis thought he had been cut off, but
then the voice returned and said that someone would be along to help.
    Yannis took a final pull on his cigar, and for the sake of
his upset stomach, tossed the remains to the ground. The plane rolled toward
him, its landing lights pulsing as if to the beat of the craft’s mechanical
heart, and again his mind traveled back through the years, to a time and place
when he had met another plane.
    He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the man who stepped
from the small private plane certainly was not it. He had imagined a
wild-haired scientist, with thick glasses and perhaps a German accent, but as
the man approached him, Yannis realized that perhaps he had seen too many
American horror films. The stranger was a fine looking gentleman, handsome as
far as Americans go, with dark, close-cropped hair and an air of authority that
seemed to radiate from him in waves.
    There had been very little by way of formalities. The man
had instructed Yannis to take him to the First Cemetery immediately, and once
there had told the detective to remain in the car no matter what he heard or
thought he saw. It had all seemed very unusual to Yannis, but he had accepted
the orders, especially since the man had given him an envelope full of cash
before leaving the car. For that kind of money he would have spent the entire
night there if need be.
    The plane’s engines whined down and he ambled toward the
craft, adjusting his clothing as he went. The bottom of his shirt had come
undone, the pull of the material across his expanse of belly making it
difficult for the last buttons to remain fastened. But he quickly lost interest
in his appearance as the door to the craft swung open and a set of collapsible
stairs unfolded from within.
    The first person to exit was very small, almost dwarf-like.
Yannis wasn’t sure if he had ever seen anyone quite so strange.
    "How’s it hanging?" the tiny man asked him in a
voice that could have been the one to answer that first call he had made, years
past.
    Yannis simply stared. The man’s eyes were a sickly shade of
yellow, and both his ears and teeth