The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (36 page)

"Lots more," Danny added, his voice a rasp.

The corpses ambled out of the concealing fog, up onto the
sidewalk and through the open gate that encircled the statehouse steps. One of
the dead, little more than dirt-covered bones, tilted back its eyeless head and
opened its mouth in a silent scream. Rich black earth, rife with squirming
life, spilled from its gaping maw, and Conan Doyle prepared to summon another
incantation to defend against this latest incursion.

He never released the spell. Just as he was about to raise
his hands again, there came the shriek of rubber on pavement and the roar of an
engine, and his limousine erupted from the bloodstained night, riding up over
the curb onto the sidewalk, colliding with the zombie horde, splintering bones
and scattering bits of their decaying corpses.

"Sweet," Danny said as the limo came to screeching
halt in front of the gate.

The driver's door swung open and Eve emerged. Clay exited
the back seat and Dr. Graves floated out through the roof.

Conan Doyle clasped his hands together behind his back. "I
was beginning to worry."

"We would have been here sooner," Eve said,
slamming her door. "But traffic's a bitch."

"Where's Ceridwen?" Clay asked, shifting the
mummified skull of Eogain from one arm to the other as he came around the car.

Conan Doyle studied the faces of those who had gathered
beneath the banner of his cause, his Menagerie. Denizens of the weird, but
warriors, each and every one, sharing the common goal of staving back the
encroaching darkness. It was a precarious battle, one that might as easily tip
the scales toward shadowy oblivion as to the embrace of light. But it was a war
that he had sworn to continue, one that he believed was worth fighting, even if
it meant the deaths of those loyal to his mission.

No sacrifice was too large, for it served a greater good.

"Ceridwen, I'm afraid to say, has been captured."

The words hurt him, each of them barbed, sticking painfully
in his throat as he struggled to speak. The others appeared taken aback,
knowing only too well the level of power the Fey sorceress was capable of
wielding as well as his emotional involvement.

"Here's an idea," Eve said, sweeping her raven
black hair away from her exotic features. "How about we go get Ceridwen
and kick Morrigan's Faerie ass? That sound like a plan?"

Conan Doyle looked out over the heads of his comrades. The
dead were still out there, but now they seemed loathe to come closer — some
primitive survival mechanism had been stirred to life in them, though he did
not know if it stemmed from his own magick, or from the arrival of his
Menagerie.

"If only it were that simple," Conan Doyle
replied. "We now know why Morrigan has sought the power of Sweetblood. She
wishes to free the Nimble Man."

He waited a moment, allowing them to digest the severity of
the situation.

"Which, from your tone, I guess should have me shaking
in my boots. And maybe I will when you tell me why," Eve said, obviously
unfamiliar with the legends.

It always amazed him how a creature as ancient as Eve could
sometimes be so oblivious.

Clay stepped closer to the rest of the group, red mist
swirling around his malleable features. "A fallen angel," he said,
his expression grim. "But not like Lucifer and the others. He escaped the
Almighty's wrath but was trapped between Heaven and Hell. In my wanderings, I've
encountered entire religions based upon him, with the ultimate goal of freeing
him, but no one has ever had the level of power needed to accomplish this . . ."

"Until now," Eve finished, the situation becoming
clearer.

Conan Doyle nodded. "With her own witchery and
Sanguedolce's power, Morrigan has enough magick now to tear a hole in reality. If
she knows what she is doing, she could free the Nimble Man."

Dr. Graves was a strange sight in that fog. His own ethereal
form was a mist of its own, churning in upon itself, but a breeze blew the red
fog so that it caressed him. He was a cloud standing still in a tempestuous sky
as the rest of the storm moved on.

The ghost was troubled, and his form solidified a bit as he
moved toward Conan Doyle. "You said that Morrigan needed the Eye of Eogain
to focus Sweetblood's magick if she was going to try to leech it, to use it. And
as you can see, we did not return empty handed. How can she release The Nimble
Man now? Haven't we already won?"

"A fair assumption, Dr. Graves," Conan Doyle
agreed, "but another wrinkle has been added to the cloth." The mage
rubbed at his eyes, the continued exposure to the unnatural fog causing them to
itch and burn. "Without the Eye, Morrigan will most certainly decide to
forge ahead with a physical locus to channel Sweetblood's magickal energies. An
ordinary human would wither almost instantly with such power coursing through
them. We have kept the Eye from Morrigan. And because we have, I believe she
will have no choice but to attempt to use Ceridwen herself to channel that
power."

"Could that be done?" Graves asked.

Conan Doyle sighed, the consequences of this act of
desperation on Morrigan's part too horrible for him to bear.

No sacrifice is too large, for it serves a greater good.
The
words reverberated through his thoughts.

"It will most likely kill Ceridwen, as well as release
Sweetblood from his self-imposed imprisonment," Conan Doyle said. "But
the answer is yes. With Ceridwen as the . . . well, as the circuit breaker if
you will, Morrigan will be able to free the Nimble Man."

Ceridwen was back in Faerie, and her mind was at peace.

The warm winds caressed her face as she walked hand and hand
with Arthur through the royal gardens. She noticed her mother sitting on a
stone bench in the distance, and Ceridwen could not help but smile. Everything
was as it should be, not a detail out of place.

Upon seeing them, her mother stood, waving in greeting. But
Ceridwen's smile faltered when she saw that her mother's clothes were tattered
and stained with blood. It was then that she remembered that her mother had
been taken from her long, long ago. A shiver of grief went through her and she
turned to Conan Doyle for comfort, for some explanation of the dread she now
felt.

But it was no longer Arthur who held her hand, and the grip
on her fingers had turned cold and constricting.

Morrigan smiled and pulled her close, teeth as sharp as a
boggart's. "Fight all you like," she snarled, "but it will not
alter the outcome."

Her fantasy shredded, Ceridwen returned to reality. Pain
suffused every inch of her flesh and her eyes burned with unshed tears. And now
she remembered what had happened, the confrontation in Conan Doyle's ballroom
with her aunt, the savage Morrigan. She had sent Danny away on a traveling wind
and turned to face Morrigan and her lackeys alone. The battle with had been
swift and brutal, and she had been defeated.

Now she lay draped upon Sweetblood's chrysalis. A surge of
the ancient mage's power rushed through her, and she cried out in excruciating
pain. They had bound her atop that strange encasement, the sorcerous energies
leaking from the cracks in its surface filtering through her body to be collected
by the eagerly waiting Morrigan. Her cloak was in tatters, burned through,
almost nothing left of it, and her tunic and trousers were smoldering.

"Do you see how wonderfully it comes together?"
her aunt asked, manipulating the distilled power of the arch mage and sending
it back into the sarcophagus, causing the size of cracks in its surface to
increase. With each splinter of that amber glass, more of Sanguedolce's
magickal potency tore through Ceridwen, more power at Morrigan's disposal.

"Fortune smiles upon me this day. It is unlikely that
you will live long enough to witness my triumph, but let me assure you, it will
be glorious."

The magick coursed through her, the pain continuing to grow.
The mage's power was overwhelming. Ceridwen had heard tales of Sanguedolce's
prowess, but never imagined a mortal might be able to wield such might.

Morrigan droned on and on about her plans, but Ceridwen was
no longer listening. To escape the pain, she fled to the past, remembering what
it was that defined her, what had shaped her. There was pain in the past as
well, but it was that pain that had forged her, as though in a blacksmith's
forge.

From her earliest days, sadness had been her companion. She
could barely remember a day when it had not walked by her side. Her mother had
been slain in the early days of the Twilight Wars, the victim of a Troll raid
upon their forest home. She had been but a mere child, forced to watch her
mother's fate from a hiding place within the draping bows of an ancient willow
tree. In that moment, she had sworn never to be helpless again.

There were times when the night was deathly silent, and in
those quiet snatches of darkness she could still hear her mother's screams. She
would awaken filled with righteous fury only to find that there was absolutely
nothing that she could do.

Ceridwen cried out now, agony wrenching her back to the
present. Pain assaulted her as more fissures formed in the mage's sarcophagus,
allowing the flow of magick through her to intensify.

Morrigan laughed, amused by Ceridwen's suffering, but this
was nothing new; her aunt had always reveled in the torment of others.

Once more, to escape her anguish, she allowed her mind to
drift into the past. Ceridwen recalled with perfect clarity that day, fifteen
seasons after the murder of her mother, when the sorcerers of Faerie had taken
her into their care, training her in the ways of elemental magick. They had
sensed within her a certain fire, unaware that it was an inferno of rage and an
unquenchable thirst for revenge. What an excellent pupil she had been,
absorbing the intricate teachings as the forest drank the rain.

She saw the battlefield in her mind as it had been so very
long ago, littered with the bodies of both friend and foe. The Twilight Wars
were in full swing and a battalion of Corca Duibhne was continuing to advance
on their position. That was when they had first set her loose, allowing her to
use her fury over her mother's murder to conjure up the forces to destroy the
enemies of the Fey.

Her magick had been fearsome.

Ceridwen had reveled in their suffering, as the spirits of
the wind tossed the enemy about the battlefield like children's toys, stealing
the breath from their lungs before the earth swelled up to swallow them whole. Those
who did not meet their fate from earth or air were washed away on angry
torrents of torrential rain, or burnt to cinders by lapping tongues of hungry
fire.

Morrigan had laughed that day as well. Gazing out at the
carnage that Ceridwen had wrought, her aunt had found the level of devastation
and death absolutely joyous. There was no doubt that she would find the fate of
the world beneath the ministrations of the Nimble Man amusing as well.

Ceridwen could feel the surface of the chrysalis splintering
beneath her, the magick burning up into her body. She began to convulse, the
sorcery too much for her weakened body to contain, and at last she found solace
in a memory that brought bliss that was the equal of its pain.

She would never have imagined herself capable of the love
she felt for Arthur Conan Doyle, a mere human. Their lives had become entwined,
their love for one another blossoming soon after the closing horrors of the
war. For a while, with him, she had almost been capable of forgetting the
trauma of her mother's murder — of the many lives she had taken in
wartime. It had been as though she had been given another chance at life, an
opportunity to wipe the past away and begin anew.

How foolish she had been to think that the fates would ever
allow her to be truly happy. Happiness, she had learned, was the most fragile
and ephemeral of things.

Sweetblood's magick roiled inside her. Ceridwen opened her
mouth in a silent scream, sparks of magick leaping from her mouth to dance
about with dust motes in the air of the ballroom. She did not think that she
had ever experienced pain so intense, but her sorrow when Arthur had abandoned
her had been near enough. If pressed, Ceridwen would have had difficulty
deciding which torment had hurt her more deeply.

She had wanted him to stay in Faerie with her forever, but
that was not to be the case. He had tried to explain why he had to return to
the world of man, that he was needed there, to protect it from harm. Ceridwen
had pleaded with her lover, telling him that she needed him far more than those
of the Blight, but her pleas had fallen upon ears made deaf by his commitment
to the world of his birth.

Ceridwen felt her anger surge. Only her fury at Arthur had
given her the strength to move past her sorrow. Her sadness had turned to
bitter rage, and it had made her all the stronger.

But evidently not strong enough.

The sound was like the cracking of glacial ice. Shards of
the chrysalis fell away to shatter upon the ballroom floor.

Eve guided the limousine through the tight, winding streets
of Beacon Hill with a reckless skill, and Conan Doyle breathed sigh of relief
when they arrived at their destination without plowing into something in the
damnable red fog.

"This is close enough, Eve," he told her, from his
place in the rear of the limousine, where he sat opposite Daniel and Clay.

Eve immediately brought the limo to a shuddering stop,
driving up onto the curb to keep from completely blocking the road. Conan Doyle
silently applauded. Despite the supernatural horrors out on the streets this
damnable, impossible night, he was sure there were police and fire emergency
crews out and about. They might need to pass.

"As good a spot as any," Eve said as she put the
car in park. "Don't forget to lock your doors, gentlemen. This
neighborhood has gone to Hell."