The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (28 page)

Filled with anticipation, she gripped the knobs in her eager
hands, turning them and pushing the doors open. The boggarts bounded into the
room, howling and snapping at the air as if it were filled with prey.

A deadly spell of defense danced upon Morrigan's lips,
crackling arcane energies ready to lash out at any enemy present, but the room
was as she left it.

The twins, Fenris and Dagris, looked startled as they stood
above the sarcophagus of solidified magick that held the body of Sweetblood the
mage.

"Mistress?" Fenris asked, his voice filled with
concern.

They were still doing as they had been instructed,
maintaining the spell that would hopefully allow them greater access to the
magickal forces imbued within Sanguedolce's cocoon.

The boggarts continued to pace about the room, howling and
carrying on. Something had been there; of this she was certain. Morrigan strode
naked toward the chrysalis, wanting to see with her own two eyes that her means
to victory was still very much within her grasp.

She felt the twins' questioning eyes upon her bare flesh,
but she paid them no mind as she reached down to wipe away the blood of the
sacrifice that covered the mage's containment vessel, hoping to gaze upon the
visage of the one whose power she had so come to desire. The blood had
partially coagulated, and it sloughed off, plopping to the floor as she ran her
hand across the cocoon's chiseled surface.

Morrigan actually breathed a sigh of relief as she caught
sight of the form of the mage, still trapped within, but that relief quickly
changed to concern as her eyes studied the frozen countenance of the arch mage
all the closer. Something was different. If she was not mistaken, Sweetblood's
expression had somehow changed.

And he appeared very angry.

The sleek, black limousine cut through the billowing red fog
like a surgeon's knife through diseased flesh. In the driver's seat, the
hobgoblin Squire sat quietly, piloting the vehicle through the impenetrable
mist with an expertise that Clay found uncanny.

The shapeshifter gazed out his side window. Though morning,
he could see practically nothing other than the undulating clouds of crimson. Even
with the structure of his eyes changed, giving him the best possible vision, he
could still not make heads or tails of where they were, or where they going.

"How do you do it?" Clay asked Squire from the
backseat.

The goblin started, grabbing hold of the rearview mirror and
manipulating it so that he could see into the back seat. "You talking to
me?"

Eve shifted in the seat beside him, hugging herself as if
cold, leaning her head against the glass of her window. "No, the other
little twisted freak driving this car," she growled sarcastically. "Of
course he's talking to you."

Clay shook his head. Squire and Eve certainly shared an
interesting relationship. He was never quite sure if the two actually despised
one another, or it was all some kind of act to deflect attention from the fact
that they truly cared for each other.

"Hey, Eve, got a box of native earth in the trunk, why
don't you lay in it?" barked Squire.

"Miserable shit," she grumbled, slumping lower and
closing her eyes.

But then again . . .

"The driving," Clay said before Squire could
launch his second, venom-filled volley. He moved forward in his seat to speak
with the hobgoblin. "How do you manage to actually navigate through this
stuff?"

Squire shrugged. "It's really instinctual," he
said. "Kind of like traveling the darkness of the shadow paths." The
goblin explained further. "I can feel where I need to go inside my head. It's
weird, and hard to explain."

The vehicle suddenly banked to the left to avoid something
in the middle of the road. Clay got a quick glimpse through the side window as
the car sped past. If he wasn't mistaken, it looked to be nothing more than a
rotting human torso and head, writhing maggot-like across the center of the
road. Yet another of the pathetic things responding to the siren song that drew
the dead to the Museum of Fine Arts. Their destination as well.

"You see that?" Squire asked him as he expertly
steered the car back to the center of the road.

"Yeah," Clay answered. He could now see the shapes
of other animated corpses shambling through the thick fog of crimson within the
road and on either side. Squire managed to avoid them with ease.

We must be getting closer,
Clay thought.

"Hey, you know what that guy in the road would be named
if he were hung on a wall?" the hobgoblin asked.

Clay wasn't quite sure what the diminutive chauffeur was
talking about. "What?" he asked. "I'm not sure I . . ."

"Art," Squire answered, stifling back a guffaw. "Get
it? His name would be Art. He would be hanging on a wall? Art? It loses a lot
if I gotta explain it."

Graves was sitting in the front seat and now the ghostly
figure turned to look at the driver. "Maybe it would be wise if you just
concentrated on your driving and ceased all attempts at humor," the ghost
said coldly, the first words he had spoken since pulling away from the Ferricks'
home in Newton.

Squire shook his gourd like head in disgust. "Jeez, try
and lighten the mood a bit, and suddenly I'm treated like the friggin' bastard
child of Carrot Top."

Clay leaned back in his seat, letting the uneasy silence
again hold sway over the inside of the car. It was obvious that Graves did not
appreciate Squire's attempts at levity, preferring the somber silence. Over
years, Clay had seen the different ways in which soldiers prepared themselves
for battle; no two warriors doing it in quite the same the way. He'd always
preferred a little quiet reflection before the war, reviewing the multitude of
shapes that he could possibly manifest in order to combat and defeat the threat
he was about to face.

Clay gazed at the back of Graves's head, able to see right
through it to the windshield in front of him. He didn't know the adventurer all
that well, having worked with him only a handful of times, but he had been a
man of science in the days when he was still amongst the living. Clay could
only imagine how disconcerting it must have been for the man to be confronted
with the existence of the supernatural.
How do you prepare for something
that you spent your entire living existence believing didn't exist?
Clay
understood why the spirit would have no patience for Squire's stupid jokes.

"I'm just pulling onto Huntington Ave," the
hobgoblin said from the driver's seat. "It's only a matter of time now."

The road had become dense with the reanimated dead, and the
chauffeur continued to do as well as could be expected to avoid hitting them,
but the closer they got, the harder it was becoming. Clay flinched as the front
of the vehicle struck the body of a woman, the impact spraying a shower of a
thick, milky fluid across the expanse of windshield.

"Whoa, that's gonna leave a mark," Squire said
beneath his breath, hitting the button to cover the windshield with cleaning
fluid before turning on the wiper blades.

Squire dealt with his tensions of the coming conflict with
humor. It was something that Clay was familiar with. In an age he now recalled
only through the veil of time, he had known a great Sumerian warrior called
Atalluk, who would gather his fellow soldiers the night before they were to
wage war against their enemies and tell humorous stories about his childhood
and his ribald adventures with members of the opposite sex. Clay smiled with
the ancient memory. The men loved those tales; the stories helping them to
relax, and to relieve the tensions they were most likely experiencing in regard
to the approaching combat.

Atalluk had been a gifted warrior, but gifted with wit as
well. Clay still carried a certain amount of guilt for killing the Sumerian
upon the battlefield, but there had been no choice. It was what he had been
paid by the opposing forces to do.

The limousine hit a slow moving cluster of ambling dead,
their dried flesh and bones scattering like dusty tenpins. "Strike!"
Squire roared, shaking a gnarled fist in the air under the disapproving gaze of
Leonard Graves.

Clay glanced at Eve, who still appeared to be resting. Here
was someone that he had fought beside on numerous occasions, who understood and
embraced the meaning of calm before the storm. She was a creature of infinite
patience, Eve was, and there wasn't another warrior that he would rather have
fighting by his side. When it was time to fight, she would be ready. He had no
doubts about that.

The dead had become even more numerous. Their horrible faces
crowded around to peer into the limousine as it began to slow.

"We're almost there," Squire said, gunning the
engine, plowing through the mass of decaying flesh and bones. "I want to
get you close enough so you're not bogged down. They can be a real pain in the
ass, these dead guys."

The goblin leaned on the horn, as if that would make a
difference. "Outta the way, you stinkin' bags of bones! Can't you see we're
trying to get through here?"

Clay felt his respiration gradually begin to increase, the
beating of his heart quicken. It was as it always was for him, the response of
his body to the battle that was sure to come.

"Are we ready?" he asked.

Graves turned in his seat to look at Clay, his death pale
features nearly transparent. "As set as I'll ever be when dealing with
things of this nature," the ghost said, apparently perturbed that he was
again forced to face the facts that he had so vehemently denied in life. Graves
drifted up and out of his seat toward the limo ceiling, his head passing
through the roof.

"I got your backs," Squire said, his large, dewy
eyes reflected in the surface of the rearview mirror, and he cracked the door
on the passenger side, ready to exit.

Clay looked to Eve, the woman scrunched down in her seat,
seemingly still in the embrace of sleep.

"This is it, Eve," he said, reaching to shake her
awake.

The woman responded in an instant, gripping his wrist in her
powerful grasp before his hand could fall upon her.

"I'm awake," she told him, and he could see by the
look in her deep, dark eyes that she was more than ready for what they were
about to face.

"Then let's do what we came here for," he said,
letting go of her wrist and preparing to open his passenger door.

As he did this, he heard the surprising sound of laughter, a
pleasant sound, and one that he did not remember hearing too many times before.
Clay looked across the back seat to see that Eve was giggling as she too
prepared to exit the car.

She must have felt his eyes upon him and turned her head to
meet his gaze.

"What's so funny?" he asked, completely in the
dark as to what could have tickled her funny bone at that particular moment.

"Yeah," Squire reiterated, a breathless tension in
his voice. Even he did not see any signs of the humorous at the moment. "What's
the joke?"

"Art," she said and again began to laugh. "The
guy with no arms or legs hanging on the wall. His name would be Art."

Eve opened her door, stepping out into the billowing crimson
mist that hid an army of the dead. "That's pretty fucking funny," she
said, just before slamming the door closed behind her.

And as Clay also left the vehicle, his body pulsing with the
potential for violence that was to follow, he was forced to admit that the
woman was right; it was funny.

When you looked at it from a certain way, it was
all
funny.

Kingsley is dead.

Conan Doyle, for that is how he is known to all and
sundry, sits in the foyer of the Grosvenor Hotel with an unlit pipe propped
between his lips. His eyes glaze as he gazes across the elegant foyer at ladies
and their gentlemen, bustling to and fro. It is the middle of November, yet
already the spirit of Christmas is in the air. Conan Doyle spies a small boy,
perhaps five, running circles round his Ma'am's legs as his Da has an angry
word with a bellman.

The father often loses patience with the boy. Conan Doyle
can see bruises on the child's inner arms, dark purple marks where his father's
thumb and fingers have gripped too tightly. The mother loves her husband, but
she holds her breath, hoping his temper is satisfied by berating the bellman,
and quietly trying to calm her boy so that he does not draw his father's
attention.

The bellman is new to the job. Conan Doyle can see this
from his shoes. The uniform is new, the buttons polished, but the shoes are
badly scuffed, heels worn. The man had not been working at the Grosvenor long
enough to have saved money for new shoes.

And Kingsley is dead.

The bellman has no money. The boy's father is far too
rough with him. But Conan Doyle's own son, the pride of his heart, had been
taken by the influenza. The wounds that Kingsley had received at the Somme had
not killed him, but they had weakened him.

Kingsley is dead, and now a fortnight later Conan Doyle
sits in the foyer of the Grosvenor Hotel and frowns as he glances up at the
woman who has just entered through the revolving door. She is a large woman,
stern-featured and well-dressed, and she carries in each hand a tiny Union
Jack, the flag of Britain. As if in a dream, she waltzes silently and alone,
waving these small banners, and then she disappears through the revolving door
once more, returning to the street.

Moments later, a roar begins to build. Voices. Tears. Dancing
feet.

Armistice. The war is over.

Kingsley is dead.

"Peace," a voice says, dry and cold. It is not
a greeting, but an observation, and even then it is more cynical than
celebratory.