The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (31 page)

Graves floated beside Clay, ignoring the carnage as the
shapeshifter tore and hacked through more of the dead. "There are already
too many of them for us to stop them. It would take hours. Maybe days. We don't
have that kind of time. It's not why we're here. And if we do the job —"

"There may be another way to stop them," Clay
finished.

Even as his lips formed the last of these words, they were
not lips anymore. He opened his beak and cawed loudly, and he spread his falcon
wings wide and thrust himself up into the air.

Dr. Graves kept pace. The ghost flew beside him. Clay
stretched out his wings and glided in through the front doors of the museum. The
huge foyer echoed with the shuffling footsteps of the dead. There were
shattered corpses on the floor, unmoving, and it was easy to follow the path
that Eve had taken. She had blazed the trail for them.

Up through the main hall Clay flew, the ghost of Dr. Graves
keeping pace with him. They turned and passed through arched passages and soon
they were moving through the collection of the Art of Ancient Africa. An
exhibition of Egyptian burial jars, sarcophagi, bracelets and necklaces, and
many other objects was ahead. Though the museum held some of the most beautiful
and most celebrated paintings in the world, it was these wings that had always
fascinated Clay. Paintings were only that. Art, yes, and some of it
breathtaking. But the objects that people held in their hands and lived with
thousands of years ago . . . those were memories.

The European collection was ahead. Signs announced an
exhibit called Life in the Middle Ages. The skull would be there, kept behind
glass so that spectators could view the oddity that was the Eye of Eogain, the
silver false orb with ancient words scrawled in the metal.

An artifact. Nothing more than that, or so the curators
thought.

Clay reveled in the form of the falcon, in the interplay of
air and wings, in the feeling of flight. He zipped lower across a vast hall,
through another arch, and then dipped his right wing to turn again.

Around that corner, none of the dead were still walking.

Eve marched toward him across a floor strewn with fallen
cadavers and the still-twitching parts of the resurrected. She had cleared
herself a path, but now she was retracing her steps.

"This doesn't bode well," Dr. Graves whispered,
his words reaching Clay as though the ghost had whispered in his ear.

Clay beat his wings, stretched out his talons, and even as
he alighted upon the tiled floor he transformed once more. Any reticence he had
to do so in front of his comrades was gone, sacrificed to the needs of the
moment. Bones creaked and shifted and his flesh undulated and pulsed as it
expanded. It happened with such speed that Eve took a step back and brandished
her sword toward him.

"Watch where you point that thing," Clay said.

Eve rolled her eyes and lowered the blade. Her gaze lingered
on Clay a moment, even as Dr. Graves' ectoplasmic form coalesced alongside
them.

"What happened, Eve?" Graves asked. "You
couldn't find it?"

She snarled, baring her fangs at the specter. "I found
where it's supposed to be, Casper. They got there first. These fuckers are
brainless. Morrigan's got to be controlling one of them directly enough to make
it her puppet. One of the dead took Eogain's skull, and the Eye along with it."

"Damn it!" Clay snapped. "We've got to get it
back! We've got to find the one that took it!"

At this, Dr. Graves raised an eyebrow. Eve stared at him in
disbelief.

"Look around, Clay," the vampire said, gesturing
toward either end of the hall, where the dead had begun to gather again,
staggering toward them. There were dozens, just in this hall alone. There must
have been hundreds in the museum and in the streets around it. "How are
you going to figure out which one took the Eye?"

"Split up," Clay said, already moving away from
them. "You find the one that moves with purpose, the one that's moving
away faster and more directly than the others, you'll find the Eye."

"Where are
you
going?" Dr. Graves demanded.

Clay gave them one final, grim look. "There might be
another way."

Morrigan ascended the staircase, her voice as she called to
her acolytes like the shrill cry of a carrion bird drifting over the fields of
war. Hidden in the darkness of that side room, it took every ounce of restraint
Ceridwen could muster not to explode into the corridor to attack. Her mind was
filled with images of what Morrigan and her followers had done to the Fey as
they attempted to topple the ruling house, and her blood was afire with rage
and hatred. The ice sphere atop her elemental staff glowed more brightly,
responding to her fury.

Daniel Ferrick squatted before her, peering into the hall
through the narrow gap they had left between door and frame. He glanced up at
Ceridwen, his demonic features illuminated in the icy blue light of her staff. The
voices of their enemies drew closer and it was clear that Danny was worried
that the glow from her staff might give them away. Before she could respond to
his concerns, the boy acted, reaching a clawed hand toward the pulsing orb.

Ceridwen watched with wonder as the substance of shadow
within the room responded to some unspoken command from the boy. Strips of
writhing umbra flowed from the gloom, wrapping themselves around the body of
the orb, diminishing the light, like storm clouds blotting out the sun.

And suddenly she understood why Conan Doyle had shown such
interest in the young man
. There is enormous potential here,
she thought,
watching as the boy, satisfied that his action had guaranteed their safety,
turned back to the crack in the door.
Potential for good, but it not
properly nurtured, could be used for great evil instead.
If they survived
this current threat, they would need to be vigilant, for while Daniel Ferrick
and his place in the greater scheme of things was currently undetermined, it
would be up to them to prevent him straying into the embrace of shadows. But
that was a worry for another time.

Morrigan passed by their hiding place with nary a glance. She
was clothed only in a cloak of scarlet, her lieutenants — Fenris and
Dagris — nipping at her heels. Ceridwen recalled the council meeting
where the fate of the twins was to be decided, and how it had been her merciful
vote that had prevented the insane brothers from being put to death for their
murderous actions against the citizens of Faerie. Seeing them here, serving the
likes of Morrigan, was enough to ossify what remained of her once compassionate
heart.

At the end of the hallway, Morrigan and her lieutenants
stood before the door so familiar to Ceridwen. Painfully, she remembered the
numerous times she had used the passage from Faerie to earth and back again. She
found the memory of that final pass through it, her lover sealing it up behind
her for what was supposed to be forever, particularly unpleasant.

"I have to be certain," she heard Morrigan say,
motioning for one of the twins to open the door. "I have to be sure that
Conan Doyle has not somehow found a way to reestablish a passage between Faerie
and the Blight."

Obediently, Fenris pulled open the door, filling the
upstairs with the screaming wails of the yawing abyss.

Ceridwen could feel Daniel's eyes upon her, as if he were
looking for someone to validate what he was seeing. She had to remind herself
that despite the boy's appearance and blossoming talents, he still perceived
the world as a human would, and sights such as this were still far from the
norm. She reached down and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly.

The shrieking void pulled hungrily at Morrigan and her
lackeys. Fenris and Dagris used the open door as a kind of shield, hiding
behind it to avoid being sucked inside. Morrigan, however, stood defiantly
before the doorway, staring into the maelstrom. Seemingly satisfied that her
hex was still intact, she gestured for her lieutenants to seal it up again.

The mournful cries of the maelstrom ended abruptly, the
hallway plunged into silence as the twins succeeded in closing the door.

"Do you see, Mistress?" Fenris asked, breathing
heavily from his exertion. "Your fears are unfounded."

Dagris nodded. "Your magnificent agenda proceeds as
planned."

Morrigan drifted away from the door and her lieutenants,
pulling the cloak of scarlet around her. "And so it does," she
agreed, looking about as if searching for something to satisfy her suspicions. "But
I did sense something, and when things as important as this are in motion, one
cannot afford to be complacent."

Ceridwen drew Daniel further back into the darkness.

Fenris and Dagris left their place, moving to eagerly stand
beside their mistress.

"He'll be here soon, won't he?" Dagris asked, an
idiot's grin forming on his pale, angular features.

Morrigan smiled dreamily, reaching out to stroke his cheek. "Yes,
he will."

Daniel turned to Ceridwen, confusion in his eyes. He was
looking to her for some kind of explanation, but she had no more idea what they
were talking about than he did.

Then, as if in answer to her silent question, Fenris spoke
again.

"The Nimble Man," the madman whispered in
reverence. "The Nimble Man is coming." And he then began to giggle,
clapping a pale hand over his mouth.

Ceridwen felt a searing pain in her lungs and realized that
she had stopped breathing. She and Conan Doyle had known the situation to be
dire, but this . . .

Danny flinched away from her, tugging his shoulder from her
grasp. Ceridwen realized that in her shock she had tightened her grip enough to
hurt him. She cast an apologetic glance toward him in the darkness, but all the
while her real focus was on the conversation that continued in the corridor.

Morrigan spoke about the Nimble Man with a passion that
barely fell short of arousal. "Trapped between Heaven and Hell," the
witch said. "But now I have the power to set him free. And when he is
delivered into this world, he will build a kingdom of his own, and make war
upon all of those who betrayed him, angel and demon alike."

The twins bowed their heads and then dropped to their knees
before her. "And you will be his bride," Fenris whispered, his grin
hideous.

"No," Morrigan snarled, a cruel smile snaking
across her face as she shook her head. "Not his bride," she corrected
her lieutenants with a waggle of a clawed index finger. "I shall be his
queen."

Razor sharp fragments of the puzzle floated about inside
Ceridwen's troubled thoughts, beginning to come together. She shuddered. The
Fey sorceress left Daniel by the door, and moved deeper into the shadows of the
room to stand before a window, its shade drawn against the darkness. There was
more to learn, but first they had to escape this room undetected.

Daniel watched her curiously, but did not dare break the
silence to ask what she was doing.

Ceridwen brought the head of her staff near her lips,
whispering to the darkness that still enshrouded the orb. The shadow Danny had
summoned dissipated. The sphere pulsed with restrained power and then a single
tongue of flame emerged from its icy surface to dance in the air before her. Ceridwen
asked of it a favor. The fire obliged her, sensing the severity of the
situation, flowing between window and sill, out into the crimson mist.

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the world beyond the
house, guiding the fiery elemental spirit upon its mission. And through the
bond she shared with it, the sorceress found the distraction that was needed.

The car was parked haphazardly on the side of the street,
its driver lost to the evils of the bloody fog. Ceridwen directed the flame,
urging it to crawl up inside the vehicle's belly, to seek out the fuel that
powered its internal mechanisms. Finding what it sought, the fire bit into the
fuel tank, puncturing the metal.

The explosion was a clap of thunder, the flash and flames
cutting through the scarlet fog to briefly illuminate the unnatural darkness.

Ceridwen silently thanked the fire elemental for its
assistance, and returned to Daniel at the door.

Morrigan and the twins were already on the move, bounding
down the hallway toward the staircase.

"It came from outside," Fenris snarled, drawing a
curved dagger from a scabbard at his side.

Dagris's fingers crackled with a spell of defense as he
looked about nervously.

Morrigan remained eerily calm, pulling the red cloak tighter
about her as they rushed to investigate this disturbance.

"Quickly now," Ceridwen whispered in Danny's ear,
pulling open the door and stepping stealthily out into the hall. "We'll
need a cloak of shadow," she told him, peering over the banister. "Otherwise
we might be discovered before we can reach him."

"Reach who?" Danny asked, even as he did as she
asked, drawing the darkness around them. "Shouldn't we be thinking about
getting the hell out of here?"

Ceridwen ignored the question. She ushered him into the
hall, the shadows coalescing around them. It was dark in the townhouse and they
merged with the gray gloom as they went quickly along the hall and then down
the stairs into the foyer. There was pandemonium in the house, Corca Duibhne
responding in panic to the explosion outside. Ceridwen and the boy waited at
the bottom of the steps, a shroud of darkness concealing them from their
enemies. The front door was open and the red mist swirled eagerly over the
threshold as the Night People swarmed out to investigate.

Unnoticed, Ceridwen led Danny down the corridor toward what
had been a ballroom in long ago days. She could feel the pulse of the magick of
Sweetblood in the air. It beckoned to her.

The doors to the ballroom were open, but once they were
inside, Ceridwen closed them quietly.