The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (26 page)

"I think I've been more than fair," Conan Doyle
replied, giving him a hard look. "There are those who would have killed
you in infancy, just to be safe. We shall see what your destiny holds, Danny
Ferrick. But not tonight. Not tonight."

He turned and left the room, and the Menagerie followed.

In the hall they were met by Julia Ferrick, who had
overheard at the very least the last few moments of their conversation. She had
woken from her sleep and wrapped herself in a blanket. Her face was etched with
sadness and she held one hand to her mouth as if to block a scream. When Danny
emerged from the living room, his mother went to him. Though he tried at first
to push her away, a moment later he relented, and she held him in her arms and
whispered a mother's love into his ears and kissed his hair, careful to avoid
scratching herself upon the points of his horns.

The crimson mist churned, a sea of red clouds that drifted
across streets and lawns and swayed trees, a dread wind rustling branches and
killing leaves, which fell and were carried away in the fog. The night sky
above was obscured by the blood mist, swirls of scarlet against the black
heavens. Somewhere in the night, not far off at all, dogs snarled and let out
unnatural cries as they tore at one another.

All along the street where the Ferricks lived, doors and
windows were closed. Some homes had electricity still, though it flickered
unreliably. Others glowed with the light of candles. But most of them were
dark, and things shifted in the shadows behind the windows. It might have been
people that moved within those homes, or it might have been something else.

Conan Doyle smoothed his jacket, then raised one hand to
brush down his mustache. His fingers crackled with static, and with magick, for
though his hands performed these idle tasks, his eyes were alert and he scanned
the red fog around the Ferrick house for any sign of attack. The way that
supernatural events were rippling across the area, there were certain to be
other enemies than Morrigan out there in the dark.

He spared a glance to his right. Ceridwen clutched her
elemental staff and stood at attention, the breeze ruffling her gossamer robe. A
soft blue glow emanated from the ice sphere at the top of the staff, and a cold
mist seemed to furl up from it, untouched by the bloody fog that swept around
them.

The two of them stood guard while Clay and Eve checked the
interior of the limousine, and Squire looked beneath it. There was no sign of
anything sinister, and so the goblin hitched up his pants and slid into the
driver's seat. Graves's ectoplasmic essence rippled as he passed through the
door and took the passenger's seat.

Clay held the door for Eve, who slipped on a long leather
coat she had retrieved from the trunk of the limo and then climbed into the
back seat. Hesitating a moment, Clay looked across the roof of the limo and
locked eyes with Conan Doyle. The two men nodded at one another, and then Clay
got into the car beside Eve.

Conan Doyle and Ceridwen waited silently as the limousine
pulled away. When its red taillights blended with the mist they retreated
together to the door of the Ferricks' home.

"I'll take the living room," she said. "You'll
take the dining room, I assume?"

"Fine," he agreed.

Danny and his mother were waiting in the living room. When
Conan Doyle and Ceridwen entered, Julia Ferrick drew in a quick breath, as
though she had to summon her courage or her self-control, or perhaps both. When
she spoke to him, her tone made it clear that her opinion of him had suffered
greatly these past few minutes.

"I understand you need my help," she said.

"I'm not sure I need it," Conan Doyle answered
truthfully. "But it is always wise to have someone watching over me when I
place myself in a meditative state. If there is an attack here, you could wake
me, and the same if I seem unduly troubled in my trance, if I convulse or
wounds begin to spontaneously appear upon my flesh."

Ceridwen sighed and the two females exchanged a meaningful
look. "In other words, he does need your help. He simply wouldn't choose
to phrase it that way."

"He must be loads of fun on a date," Julia
muttered.

Neither Conan Doyle nor Ceridwen responded to that. After an
awkward moment, Conan Doyle simply nodded to Ceridwen and then gestured toward
the Ferricks to proceed with him toward the dining room.

But he found he could not leave Ceridwen to her work without
pausing. He stood at the arched entry that led to the house's main corridor and
looked back at her. Her fingers had begun to scratch at the air, to dart and
weave and paint sigils. The ground rumbled and shifted slightly beneath the
foundations of the house and the temperature in the living room dropped twenty
degrees in a matter of seconds, and continued to go down.

The ice sphere upon her staff glowed more brightly, and the
blue mist that wreathed it began to spin around it in a pulsing ring.

"Ceri," Conan Doyle whispered.

She started at the sound of his voice. Slowly, she turned to
face him, her features sharp as shattered glass, eyes bright with magick and
pain.

"Don't call me that," she said.

Conan Doyle nodded in apology and regret. "I just
wanted to tell you to be careful."

"I don't need you to worry for me, Arthur," Ceridwen
said coldly, snapping off each word. Instantly, she seemed to regret it. She
went back to preparing her spell, lips moving soundlessly, fingers sketching at
nothing. Then, without looking at him, she half-turned and she spoke again, and
this time her voice was intimate with the memories they shared.

"But I . . . I am glad that you do."

Julia Ferrick had stepped into a dream.

That was untrue, of course, and she knew it. Even so, that
thought ran through her mind time and time again. "It was like a dream."
How many times had she heard that expressiona? Hundreds? Thousands? It was
funny in a nauseating way, because there was nothing remotely dream-like about
the things she had experienced in the previous twelve hours.

There were monsters in her house. A vampire woman whose name
and comments implied she might be so much more. A man who could be anyone or
anything, wear any face. A goblin with a foul mouth, crass and yet somehow
comforting. An elf, or fairy or — and here an insane little giggle
threatened to bubble out between her lips — whatever Ceridwen was. Conan
Doyle . . . a magician. A real magician, who also claimed to be Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, a man who had been dead as long as Julia's grandmother had been
alive.

And her son. Her own son.

Daniel. Oh, sweet God, Danny.

According to Conan Doyle, he wasn't even remotely human. And
yet he
was
. He was her son, damn it.

Again that mad giggle tried to escape her lips and she
raised a hand to cover the smile it brought, not wanting it to be
misinterpreted. This wasn't a dream or a nightmare; it wasn't Julia through the
looking glass. She was wide awake, and there was no doubt in her mind that her
senses were reporting accurately. The things she saw and heard and smelled and
touched were real. All of her assumptions about the world — taught to her
by generations of human society — were wrong. Were lies.

Her mind wanted to reject it all, wanted to retreat to the
protection of ignorance. But the contents of Pandora's Box could never be
returned to their place. The truth could not be undone.

Julia blamed Conan Doyle for that. She knew it was absurd,
knew that the man was trying to combat the dark forces that were at work upon
the world. But he was also aloof and distant and had known the truth about her
son for years yet kept it secret from her. And the way he had spoken to Danny
in the dining room . . . Julia was glad Conan Doyle wouldn't allow Danny to
accompany the others; he was safer here. But Conan Doyle didn't know her boy. As
tormented as he had been in recent years, dealing with the physical changes
they had initially thought of as some kind of affliction, Danny was a good kid.
Conan Doyle's suggestion that Danny was not to be trusted because of what he
was infuriated her. What mattered wasn't what he was, but
who
he was.

Conan Doyle sat at the far end of the dining room table. He
had done away with the filthy pipe he had been smoking and now simply steepled
his fingers beneath his chin, leaning back in his chair. He almost seemed not
to notice her, his eyes closing, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that
gradually slowed.

"Mrs. Ferrick?" he said, sounding disoriented.

"Yes?"

"I wish things could have been different for you,"
he said, barely above a whisper, so that she was not at all certain if she had
heard him correctly.

And then, "Wake me at any sign of trouble."

Julia stared at Conan Doyle as his breathing slowed further.
His face seemed almost jaundiced in the candlelight. Soon he inhaled only once
or twice a minute, and his eyes were partway open, revealing only the whites
beneath.

He was gone. And Julia found herself feeling more charitable
toward Conan Doyle than she had previously. For though his body was here, his
mind was clearly elsewhere, and without him the walls seemed closer and the crimson
mist more ominous. She was more aware than before that out there on the streets
of her city the dead were walking. Without Conan Doyle's reassuring presence,
she felt afraid.

It made her hate him all the more.

"Mom?"

Startled, Julia turned to see Danny standing in the
corridor, just outside the room. He had been silent since they had joined Conan
Doyle for this meditation, or whatever it really was. She smiled wanly at her
son, wanting to believe his assertion that the truth had made him happy. Plainly
there was more to it than that. To know that she and her bastard ex were not
his biological parents had to have hurt Danny, but she could understand that it
helped him to know that he was different for a reason. That he might have a
purpose beyond being the freak the other kids stared at in the high school
hallways.

"You look tired, honey," Julia said. "Why don't
you get some rest? Nothing else is going to happen until they come back."

"That's what I was going to say," Danny told her. "Yell
if you need anything, or if anything, y'know, happens." He gestured at
Conan Doyle.

"I will," she promised.

Then Danny was gone from the doorway and she was left alone
with the hollow husk of Arthur Conan Doyle and the flickering glow of candles.

Ceridwen was taken aback by how much it still pained her.

Standing in the center of the Ferricks' living room while
attempting to establish communications with the elemental forces of this
withered world, the sorceress was forced to deal with emotions she had thought
to be callused over long, long ago. They were feelings buried so deeply that
she had underestimated their devastating strength, believing that after all
this time, she had surely grown stronger than they, the overwhelming sadness
and fiery anger that had come as a result of Arthur Conan Doyle leaving her
life.

But she knew she had been wrong, feeling the effects of
seeing him again as if the decades that separated them were but the passing of
a season. Ceridwen had hoped she would be stronger than this, and at that
moment, wished in hindsight that she'd had the wisdom to partake of some spell
or magickal elixir that would have dulled the painful memories of what she and
Arthur Conan Doyle once shared.

The hurt of their lost love was a distraction, and that was
something she could ill afford at this time.

Ceridwen hissed aloud, suppressing the rabid emotion that
now bled from the newly ravaged wound of feelings, and forced her attentions
fully to the chore at hand. There would time later to deal with the trivial
pains of her failed relationship, when the fate of worlds did not hang so
precariously in the balance. Right now, she had to concentrate every facet of
her consciousness upon communicating with the elemental spirits that composed
the world of man — the world that the Fey had come to call the Blight.

With her staff, upon the parchment of open air, the Faerie
sorceress wrote the intricate spells of elemental calling that had been passed
down from generation to generation, as far back as the Fey could remember. The
forces of nature had always been at their beck and call, a symbiotic
relationship built upon a strong mutual respect.

The air grew steadily colder, her breath clouding from her
mouth as she uttered the names of the primordial spirits that comprised the
world. As she spoke the last of their names, she felt the frigid air around her
become charged with an eldritch energy that had existed since the explosion
that was the birth cry of creation. The floor beneath her feet thrummed as the
chilled air began to swirl. The flames of the candles, strategically placed
about the room for illumination, stretched, growing taller, leaning toward the
coursing air. She could feel the presence of those whom she had called, weaker
than the last time they had communed upon the world of man, but still a force
to be reckoned with none the less. Sadly Ceridwen wondered if there would ever
come a time when the elemental spirits would be too weak here to answer her
call, but that was a concern for another time.

"You have summoned and we have answered, child of
the Fey,"
said the elements, their wispy voices speaking in unison.
"What
task would you ask of us?"

Ceridwen bowed her head in reverence to the forces that
bound the universe. "Great and wise elemental spirits, this world in which
you reside is in grave danger, and I ask of you only one thing, to transport me
quickly, and stealthily to my chosen location so that I may deal with this
threat." She raised her head to see that a vortex composed of the elements
swirled about her: earth, wind, fire, and water. "Will you aid me?"
she asked of them.