The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (38 page)

It would have been wiser, perhaps, for Dr. Graves to lead. He
might have gone right through the basement door and into the main house, done a
bit of reconnaissance, and returned to give Clay the lay of the land. But Clay
was not the sort of man — not the sort of creature — to wait while
others put themselves at risk. Graves admired that about him. It might not be
the wisest course of action for the two of them to rush headlong up those
stairs, but Graves did not feel it appropriate to judge Clay by the standards
of human wisdom. He was unique in all the world. Touched by the creator. Immortal.
It was obvious that to Clay, strategy was necessary only when the lives of
others were in peril. When it was his own life at stake, it was full steam
ahead, and the consequences be damned.

And Dr. Graves, well, he was already dead, so what the hell
did he care?

"Do we have any plan at all?" Graves whispered.

Clay had adopted his fundamental form, the one Graves
assumed was his true self. He was a formidable figure, at least seven feet
tall, with dried cracks in his flesh as though he were made of arid,
hard-packed desert. The Clay of God. Someday, Graves would like to have heard
the story of this remarkable being's life.

But that was for another day.

"A plan? Of course we have a plan," Clay said,
hurrying up the stairs, which creaked beneath his bulk. "We kill or
incapacitate everything that tries to stop us from freeing Ceridwen, and we
make sure Morrigan doesn't set either Sweetblood or the Nimble Man free."

Graves did not bother to pretend to walk. He drifted up the
stairs behind Clay. He had willed his appearance to change, somewhat. Now he
was the younger Leonard Graves, in the early days of his adventuring. Heavy
boots covered his feet and suspenders crisscrossed his back. His sleeves were
rolled up, his huge fists prepared for a fight.

"It lacks a certain finesse," Graves told his
ally.

Clay laughed as he reached the top of the basement stairs. He
glanced back at Graves, eyes twinkling in the gloom. "Leave the finesse to
Conan Doyle. It's going to come down to magick. You know it, and I know it. I
resent being the muscle as much as you do. In our time, we've both led armies,
you and I. But this isn't about who can outsmart Morrigan. It's about who can
destroy her."

The words struck close to home. Graves had been a man of
science as well as a man of action during his life. It was with a certain
reluctance that he took the role of foot soldier. Yet with myriad worlds
hanging in the balance and time of the essence, he knew that all that remained
was to fight. And so fight he would. With all that remained of his soul.

"Let's get to it," he told Clay.

The shapeshifter turned toward the door. He reached for the
knob, but his hand paused an inch away from it. Clay sniffed the air.

"What is it?" Graves asked.

The door rattled and the stairs trembled with the pounding
of footfalls beyond that door.

"Boggarts," Clay said.

Graves hissed under his breath. "Son of a bitch."

Then the door exploded inward. Two enormous, hideously ugly
boggarts crashed through the splintering wood and leaped upon Clay, jaws
gnashing and claws tearing flesh even as the trio tumbled down the stairs in a
tangle of limbs.

Graves darted into the air, soaring near the ceiling of the
basement.
Boggarts
. He shivered. The Night People could not hurt him,
nor could the walking dead. Morrigan had been able to do so with magick. But
Boggarts were different. Boggarts ate ectoplasm. They could tear him apart,
gulp down bits of his spectral body as if he were still flesh and blood. They
could tear his soul apart, and eat it, and then there would be no eternal rest
for Leonard Graves.

The things attacked Clay, but already one of them had
scented him. It must have been how their presence was noticed in the first
place. One of the creatures raised its heavy head and turned burning yellow
eyes upward. Graves could have fled, but he would never have left Clay there
alone. For the boggarts were not the only threat to come through that shattered
door.

The first Corca Duibhne poked its head through the doorway,
and it grinned, exposing razor fangs. It scrambled down the stairs after the
boggarts, and then another appeared, and another, until there were six, no
eight of them.

And at the last, behind them came another figure, so tall it
had to stoop to get through the shattered doorway. It was a woman. Or a
nightmare contortion of what a woman might have been. Nine feet tall, the hag
had only opalescent orbs where her eyes ought to have been. Her hair was
filthy, stringy, and hung over the shoulders of the rags she wore, belted with
a chain of infant human skulls. Her teeth were long and yellow, her lips
crusted with dried blood.

"What the hell is it?" Dr. Graves asked aloud.

On the concrete floor, Clay hurled a boggart across the
basement to crash into the burner. The other was still focused on Graves
himself. But both ghost and shapeshifter stared at the new arrival.

"Black Annis," Clay said. "It's a Black
Annis."

Eve had spent eternity paying for her sins, both those she
had committed, and those to which she had given birth. Vampires. Her children. The
bastard offspring of an Archduke of Hell and the castoff queen of Eden. The
Lord might have made her, but the demon had
remade
her. Many times she
had thought of giving herself over to the sun, letting its light purify her,
end her damnation. But she would not.

She would not stop fighting the darkness until she had
expunged her sins. And she would not know when that time had come until the Lord
Himself whispered the words in her ear.

Come home
.

Until then, she would fight, and she would fear nothing. The
Lord would not allow her to die until she had done her penance.

Her knees scraped the house as she scaled the back wall. Another
pair of pants ruined. Her talons dug into brick, and she raised herself up
quickly, her body as light to her as if her bones were hollow. Such was the
strength damnation had given her. Eve could have quickened her ascent by using
window frames, but she avoided them, not wishing to be seen until a time of her
own choosing.

A glance downward told her the boy was keeping up. She
smiled, and as she did, her fangs slid downward, extending themselves. The
crimson mist swirled around her, the breeze rustling her hair. Eve ran her
tongue over the tips of her fangs as she watched Danny Ferrick climb.

If he lived to see another morning, the kid might actually
turn out to be worth having around.

Eyes narrowed, she began to climb again. Talons split
mortar. Her knees and the toes of her shoes gained purchase against the brick. She
was nearly there now, just a few more feet. Despite her speed, Danny was
catching up. She sensed him, just below her.

Eve reached up to grasp the edge of the flat roof of Conan
Doyle's brownstone. With a single thrust, she pulled herself up with such force
that she sprang into the air and landed on the roof in a crouch.

The red mist rolled across the roof, pushed along by the
breeze. It eddied and swirled around chimneys and vents and the tall box-like
structure that contained the door that led into the building. Eve took several
steps toward it, and then froze.

From the mist, from the shadows, from the night they came. Of
course they did. Morrigan would not have been so foolish as to leave the roof
unguarded. The Corca Duibhne moved slowly, slinking across the roof, taking
their time to circle around her, like hyenas stalking prey. She counted at
least nine, but there might have been more, deeper in the bloody fog, or in the
shadows.

"You don't want to do this," Eve warned them.

"Oh, yessss we do," one of them hissed. "You're
the traitor. The hateful mother of darkness. There isn't one among us who
wouldn't give his life for a change at tearing out your throat."

"It's been done." Eve grinned, baring her fangs. "I
got better."

Danny scrambled up over the edge of the roof behind her.

The Corca Duibhne hesitated.

"You ready, kid?" Eve asked.

She did not have to see the smile on his face. She could
hear it in the tone of his voice.

"Oh, yeah," Danny Ferrick told her. "I was
born for this."

The strangest thing happened, then. The Corca Duibhne began
to laugh. It was an eerie susurrus of giddy whispers that carried to her on the
mist. Slowly, they began to pull back. Eve narrowed her eyes, trying to figure
out what they were up to.

And something moved atop the nearest tall chimney. Something
large that crawled, lizard-like, up the brick and perched on top. Its wings
spread, just a shadow in the scarlet night.

Then it burst into flames.

Spread its wings, its entire body consumed by the blaze.

A plume of fire jetted from its snout.

"What is it?" Danny asked, a tremor of fear in his
voice.

Still, Eve did not look at him. Her gaze was on the
creature, this thing that could incinerate her, could end her life. "A
fire drake," she told him. "And it's all yours, kid."

"Get the fuck out of here," Danny snapped.

"Sorry. I've got the dweebs. The big burning
motherfucker belongs to you."

Morrigan threw her arms upward, the power coursing through
her, and she shook in ecstasy. It was like the caress of a thousand lovers. Her
nipples hardened and her sex burned with the heat of her passion, wet as though
to welcome a lover. And nothing was ever more true, for the only lover she
would ever accept would arrive at any moment.

"Yes!" she wailed, tears of joy streaking her
face. "Come to me!"

The ballroom was blindingly bright. The magick spilling out
through the cracks in Sweetblood's chrysalis flashed orange and yellow and red,
an inferno of color that played off of the mirrored walls and off of the
chandeliers above. And upon that chrysalis, seared by the power as though by
scalding steam, Ceridwen arched her back and screamed as she had not done since
the day of her mother's slaughter, that day when Morrigan had held the girl in
her arms and pretended to care.

The younger sorceress screamed again, eyes wide with the
madness of her agony. Welts had risen on her blue-white flesh, and then
blisters, which had burst. Pus ran from her legs and back where the magick
seared her. Her mouth opened again but nothing came from it now but magick,
power that spilled from her in a torrent of sparks and embers and a silver mist
wholly unlike the red fog that had enveloped the city.

Morrigan danced across the room, twirling, stepping over the
human sacrifices that her Corca Duibhne had brought. Their bodies were flayed,
their chest cavities opened, their viscera strewn about the floor and shaped
into the patterns and sigils that focused the magick she now siphoned from
Sweetblood. Ceridwen was the key, though. The filter. Without her Morrigan
might have died calling up the Nimble Man. Now Ceridwen would die instead.

The Fey witch reached her niece.

"Ah, sweet girl," she said. "You with your
elemental magick. Your heart was with nature. You never understood that the
true power is in the unnatural."

Morrigan ran her hands over Ceridwen's body, even as her
niece bucked upward again, shrieking, crying tears that fell as water but
struck the ground as crystals of ice. Her violet eyes misted. Her suffering was
exquisite.

Then, abruptly, Ceridwen's eyes focused, and shifted to
Morrigan. "You'll die."

"Yes, darling. But, first, I'll
live
."

Morrigan bent over her and brought her lips to Ceridwen's. They
tasted of mint. Her tongue slid into Ceridwen's mouth and when the young
sorceress bucked again, the magick spilling from the mage erupted into Morrigan's
mouth. The Fey witch felt her knees weaken with the pleasure of it and she
staggered back. Just a taste of Sweetblood's power was intoxicating, arousing. But
soon, she would have that and so much more.

She wiped a bit of spittle from her mouth. "Oooh, that's
nice."

"Mistress!"

The Corca Duibhne hated the bright light. It hurt them. They
were terrified enough of Sweetblood, but with his magick coalescing in the room
and the glaring illumination, they had fled to the corridor. Morrigan did not
care. They were useless to her now except as a shield. All she needed them to
do was see that she was undisturbed.

Yet now here was one, a pitiful thing it was, too. A runt. A
lackey's lackey. It had called to her, and now it was pointing into the room,
pointing at something behind her. Morrigan's instinct was to break it, to
shatter the Corca Duibhne. But then she saw the wonder in its cruel eyes and
she turned, holding her breath.

Ceridwen screamed her throat ragged, choking on her own
blood. She whimpered, and cried for her dead mother.

Behind her, on the other side of the chrysalis, a slit had
opened in the fabric of the world. The magick that Morrigan had leeched from
the mage had begun to seep into that hole as if carried by some unseen current.
It was a wound in the heart of the universe, and its edges were peeling back
like curtains torn aside, or the folds of a new mother's offering.

Within that slit all was gray and cold and still. It was a
limbo place, a nothing, a flat and lifeless void.

Yet in the gray, Morrigan could see a shimmering figure, a
silhouette gilded with red. And it was growing more distinct, moving nearer to
the passageway between worlds.

Morrigan could barely breathe. She could not speak. For here
at last were all of her dreams. Here, at last, was her salvation, her
happiness, and now she would drive all the souls of creation to their knees
even as all of those who had thwarted her were forced to bear witness.