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

came to points.
    "What? No speaky da English?" the ugly little man
asked, before bursting out in a braying laugh. "Don’t worry about it,
pally. I don’t speak Greek."
    Next off the plane was a handsome black man whose movements
reminded Yannis of someone moving underwater.
    "Pay him no mind, sir," the man said in a low,
tremulous voice.
    Yannis could have sworn that for the briefest of moments he
was able to see right through the stranger, but he blinked and the gauzy effect
went away. He told himself it must have been a trick of the light.
    "Yannis Papathansiou," called a strangely familiar
voice from inside the plane, and the police detective looked up to see another
figure emerging.
    The man looked exactly as he had more than twenty years ago.
Exactly.
    Something unnatural , he thought again. It was almost
funny. He called this man when the extraordinary presented itself . . . but who
was he to call about the passengers of this plane? No one, of course. They were
the solution, not the problem.
    "It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir," the
ageless man said in Greek, extending his hand, and Yannis remembered how he had
disobeyed this man’s instructions that night so many years ago.
    He had been dozing behind the wheel of the car when the
screaming began. It had been unlike anything he had ever heard, and he had immediately
reacted, climbing from his vehicle and running into the cemetery before he even
realized what he was doing. After all, he was a policeman.
    It had been dark that night, and he had strained his eyes to
see what was happening, and then the clouds parted for an instant, and beams of
moonlight shone upon the burial grounds. Then Yannis had seen what he would
never forget.
    The man he had brought from the airfield, the man whose hand
he now shook, had been in the midst of battle with a creature the likes of
which Yannis had never seen. Its body was covered in filthy, matted fur, its
eyes glowing red, like burning coals. Strands of dead flesh dangled from its
gnashing teeth. Yannis had never believed himself a particularly brave man, but
he had found himself moving toward the struggle, weaving around the tombstones
to help the stranger in his struggle.
    When he had been only a few feet from the battle, the man
had noticed his approach and ordered him to stop. Yannis had frozen in his
tracks and watched in awe the scene that played out before him. The creature
tore at the man with its claws, rending his clothing and flesh, but the man
seemed unharmed. Then he had begun to change, to grow, his body transforming
into something of great ferocity, his flesh as malleable as clay.
     
     
    The years have not been kind to Yannis Papathansiou ,
Clay thought. He was sitting in the front seat of the detective’s car as they
drove toward Athens. He remembered a much different man than the one beside him
now, but then again, twenty years had passed. The blink of an eye for Clay, but
not so fleeting for humanity.
    "So, Yanni," Squire said, leaning forward from the
backseat.
    "It is Yannis," the detective corrected, eyes
still on the winding road before him.
    "Yeah, yeah, that’s what I meant. So, you had any other
tourists turn up petrified?" the hobgoblin asked.
    Yannis shook his head, jowls wiggling. "No, the bodies
found at the Epidaurus are the only ones."
    "So far," Squire added, sliding back against his
seat. "But I’d bet we get a few more statues before this is over. Crap
like this is never easy."
    The detective grimaced at Squire’s words, and Clay wondered
if he was remembering the last time he had phoned Conan Doyle for assistance. On
that night, years past, he had specifically told Yannis to stay in the car. The
man was never meant to witness what transpired in the cemetery. Clay’s battle
with the corpse-eating Mormolykiai was not for human eyes, but Yannis had seen
it, and there was nothing Clay could do to change that.
    "What . . . what is responsible? What can turn a person
to stone like that? How