The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (40 page)

The other two paused. They were staring upward, at Dr.
Graves.

Clay followed their gaze. The boggarts were snarling,
gnashing their teeth.

Dr. Graves floated in the air above them, a look of utter
disdain upon his face. He wore suspenders and a heavy shirt with the sleeves
rolled up. But now something else had been added to his attire. The specter now
wore a pair of pistol holsters, one under each arm. They had not been there
before.

Clay stared in amazement as Graves crossed his arms over his
chest and drew the guns from those holsters. Phantom guns. Ectoplasmic
manifestations of Graves's own soul, his own spirit energy. Ghosts had control
over their appearance when their souls remained anchored to this world. Many
times they could change their appearance, not the way Clay could, but in age or
attire.

Yet Clay had never seen anything like this.

"Boggarts are a damned nuisance," Dr. Graves
snapped. "You want a taste of me, dogs? I don't think so. You soul-eaters
may be able to hurt me, even kill a man who's already dead. But it works both
ways. If you want little shreds of my soul inside you, all right. But it's
going to be my way, not yours."

Graves pulled both triggers again and again, spectral
bullets tearing into the boggarts. The impact made their bodies shudder and
jerk and drove them back, and then fell over dead, gray blood oozing from their
wounds. The bits of soulstuff that had comprised the bullets lost their shape
and became streaks of ectoplasm that shot back across the room and coalesced around
Dr. Graves, reattaching themselves to him.

"It works both ways," Graves said again,
holstering his guns.

Clay gave him a quiet round of applause.

The two remaining Corca Duibhne stared back and forth
between the ghost and the shapeshifter, and then ran for the stairs.

Clay and Dr. Graves raced after them.

Before Danny could argue, Eve had abandoned him. She rushed
off to attack the Corca Duibhne and he was left alone on Conan Doyle's roof,
four stories above Beacon Hill. The crimson mist blanketed the building,
blotted out the night, and it seemed as though the brownstone was all that
remained of the city of Boston.

Atop the chimney, the fire drake spread its blazing wings
and rose up into the mist, into the blood-stained night. Danny had no idea what
to do. The thing was like some bizarre combination of dragon and phoenix. He
could not fly after it, could not defend himself from it. Eve was smart to get
out of its way. She was a vampire. The thing would incinerate her in an
instant.

Now it dipped one wing and started down toward him.

Danny wanted to run. He wanted to cry. He didn't have time
to do either.

The fire drake opened its mouth and a stream of liquid fire
erupted from its gullet, engulfing Danny Ferrick. The flames licked at him,
roaring in his ears. It burned. God, how it burned. He threw his head back and
screamed, thinking of his mother, thinking what it would do to her to know that
he was dead.

The stink of burning skin and hair was in his nostrils.

Danny blinked. His skin was hot and it stung as though he
had a terrible sunburn. But the flames were subsiding and he was still alive. The
red fog caressed him, cool and moist. When he glanced down at himself he
noticed his feet, first. His clothes were gone, nothing but black ash now,
eddying in the breeze. His toes had black claws instead of nails. Unable to
breathe, Danny looked at his legs, at his chest, looked at his outstretched
arms, and saw skin tough as leather but soft as silk, the color of burgundy
wine.

He reached up with both hands and felt his head. His hair
had been falling out, his skin flaking. Now his scalp was smooth, save for the
viciously sharp horns above his temples.

The fire drake let out a grunt and he looked up to see it
circling, ready to attack him again. The flames that comprised its body
fluttered in the mist and the dark. Danny smiled up at it.

"Bring it on."

The monster attacked again. This time, when the fire
engulfed him Danny did not even close his eyes. As the fire drake flew by he
crouched and leapt upward a dozen feet to snatch it by the throat with both
hands. The demon boy dragged the fire drake from the sky, fell to the roof on
top of it, and roared with pleasure as its flames licked at his legs and arms
and torso.

He slid his hands into its gullet and broke its jaws,
tearing its head in two. It felt incredible. It felt good.

In fact, Danny was terrified to discover exactly how good it
felt to kill.

Ceridwen burns with fever. There is a cool breeze in the
trees above, but it offers no comfort. The water diverted from the river into
the stone bath is icy cold, flowing down from the mountain, and she can feel it
sting her skin, yet her blue-tinted flesh is now flushed with a rich pink, so
that her naked body seems painted with the colors of sunset.

That is not right. No, not at all. Her skin should not
look like that. She is ill. So very ill.

Her eyelids flutter and she lolls back into the stone
basin, the water flowing over her bare flesh. Her nakedness concerns her not at
all. She is still young. It will be some time before she has blossomed enough
for the men of the Fey to notice her. She is old enough that she has begun to
notice the boys, but even so, there will be no intruders here. This is the
citadel of her uncle, King Finvarra. Ceridwen's room is nearby. And her mother
—

Mother, she thinks.

As if summoned, her mother leans into her view, her
smile, her concerned eyes, blotting out the sky. The woman's features are
severe, her hair cropped closely to her scalp, but there is a gentleness in her
as she gazes down upon her daughter that most others will never see.

"Ceridwen. The fever has touched you. But do not
fear. I will remain with you, here at your side, until it has passed."

A calm passes through her. The fever still burns. Her bones
ache, her eyes are seared, her throat is swollen near to closing, her breath
rattles in her chest. But her mother is with her. Ceridwen lets her eyes
flutter closed as a soothing hand begins to brush her damp hair away from her
face. Her mother's touch caresses her cheek and the agony of the fever recedes
just slightly. For the first time, Ceridwen feels as though the icy water in
the stone bath is cooling her, its chill sinking into her flesh, and the
blazing fever abating.

Her chest rises and falls in steady rhythm and she
searches for a peaceful place within . . . only to discover that she is already
there. She can hear the breeze in the trees, the rush of the river, and the
song of birds, and yet they are all distant compared to the beat of her heart,
the sound of her breathing. She is deep within herself.

The stone bath is rough against her back. The water
envelops her, flowing over her, and its sting disappears.

"Impressive."

Alarmed, Ceridwen opens her eyes and stares incredulously
at the man standing over her. He has dark skin and hair as black as raven's
feathers. His chin is covered by a short beard, and he peers down at her with
eyes the blue of the deepest, most tumultuous river.

Confusion takes hold of her. Where is her mother? Who is
this stranger, this intruder into the King's citadel? She glances down at
herself, at her body, and sees that she had is in full blossom, her body
ripened to an age where men might do more than appreciate her. In her shame she
tries to cover herself, and the pain sears through her again. Her skin is
blistering with the fever, her breathing ragged.

Ceridwen frowns. There is no fever. Somehow she knows
this.

"I was not speaking of your charms, Lady,
significant as they are," the dark man says, gesturing toward her bare
breasts. "I refer to your endurance. I always admired you, Ceridwen. Now I
see my interest was well placed."

"Who are you?" she manages to rasp.

The water in the stone bath is no longer cold. It seems,
in fact, near to boiling.

"Don't you know?" His smile is thin, a surface
thing, so fleeting, hurried away by the grimness of his nature.

And she does know. "Sanguedolce. Sweetblood."

He executes a courtly bow. "Indeed." The
twinkle in his eye lasts only a moment. "The damage is done, now. The
evil, the darkness . . . it will come no matter what you do. I should let you
all die for your part in this foolishness. But there may come a time when I
need you. So a word of advice, sorceress.

"You are a channel, a conduit. She's using you to
tap my power. Your pain is that you are fighting it. Stop fighting. Take some
for yourself."

Sanguedolce crouches at her side. He bends to kiss her. His
lips are soft, but hers are dry and cracked and they burn.

Not with fever, but magick.

"Wake up," he whispers.

Ceridwen woke hissing air in through her teeth, filling her
lungs hungrily, and a part of her knew that she had momentarily ceased to
breathe. Her eyes opened wide and though the light inside Conan Doyle's defunct
ballroom was brilliant, she did not turn from it. Her teeth gritted, the pain
in her back and neck and down her legs excruciating. Blisters burst as she
moved. Shards of the chrysalis beneath her cut her skin.

It was striped with cracks, fissures through which the mage's
magick spilled. Morrigan's ritual had locked the two together, married Ceridwen's
flesh to Sanguedolce's crystal sarcophagus. The agony had blinded her, shut
down her mind. But now there was the pinpoint spark of knowledge in Ceridwen's
head. She could feel more than pain. In the magick that seared her, that burst
from her flesh and raced through her veins, she could feel power.

She could taste it.

Like bile, it rose in her throat again. Previously she had
let her jaws gape and vomited up that power, that magick.

This time she clamped her mouth shut with a clack of teeth. Her
lips curled back and she sneered. The magick surged up within her.

But Ceridwen did not let it go. She caught it.
Take some
for yourself
, Sanguedolce had said in her fever dream. And so she did.

The face of her mother was clear in her mind. The sound of
the river that rushed down from the mountain citadel of her uncle, King
Finvarra, in the heart of Faerie, was in her ears. She brought both memories
into her heart. Words in the ancient tongue of the Kings of Faerie formed silently
upon her lips and her pain receded. Her flesh healed. The magick of Sweetblood
the Mage spilled into her, just as it had before. But Ceridwen was no longer
the conduit.

She was the vessel.

With a sneer, she broke her bonds and sprang up from the
chrysalis. It popped with the sound of ice breaking on the lake in springtime,
and the fissures deepened and widened. She could see Sanguedolce's face deep
within the amber encasement. His eyes were still, and yet she was sure he was
watching her.

Tensed to defend herself, she found that Morrigan had not
even noticed her. The cunning bitch was on her knees in front of a shimmering
portal, a slit in reality. Even as Ceridwen took it all in, realizing what it
was, she saw a tall, lithe silhouette reach the dimensional doorway from the
other side. Cloaked in clouds of gray, it put one foot through, into this
world.

The Nimble Man
, Ceridwen thought, her heart racing
with panic, her mind whispering the doom of all creation. But she would not
have it. With Sweetblood's power coursing through her, she held out a hand and
in an instant, a sphere of ice coalesced in her palm. A finger pointed at the
floor, she summoned the spirits of the wood, and in the space between
heartbeats a new staff grew up and into her free hand. Its tip spread into
fingers to receive the ice sphere, she set it into place and blue-white mist
began to swirl around the orb. Then a tiny spark ignited within, becoming an
ember, becoming a flame. It started to glow.

Morrigan had taken or destroyed her elemental staff. Ceridwen
had created another.

As the elemental magick pulsed from the staff, Morrigan
seemed to sense it. She twitched, obviously reluctant to turn away from the
spectacle of The Nimble Man's arrival. Then she did turn, and Ceridwen was pleased
to see the look of fury and wretched hatred on her aunt's face.

"Your brother, my uncle, always underestimated you,
Morrigan," Ceridwen said, her words clipped, her magick steaming from her
every pore, spilling off of her just as Sweetblood's had from the chrysalis. "But
you, aunt, always underestimated me."

Morrigan laughed. "Perhaps. Perhaps, Ceridwen. But no
matter. The time has passed for your presence to be of consequence." She
smiled and for the first time Ceridwen understood the full extent of her
madness. "The Nimble Man is here."

Ceridwen had been about to attack, to destroy Morrigan and
attempt to disrupt the flow of magick from the chrysalis to the doorway. But
Morrigan was correct. It was too late.

The Nimble Man had come.

Ceridwen had never seen a being more beautiful, nor anything
more terrible. His skin was golden and smooth as glass, but shot through with
scarlet traces as though his body was tainted. Infected. His form was flawless,
and yet unsettling. His hands were too long, and tipped with curling claws. Jutting
from his back were the tattered remnants of black-feathered wings, only strips
of muscle and cartilage now. They had been torn from him, and as he stepped
into the ballroom, into the world, three black feathers fell from the vestiges
of his wings and drifted to the floor.

His hair was as black as those feathers, and fell around his
shoulders, and his face was breathtaking. Simply stunning. Angelic, of course.