The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (41 page)

Until he noticed Ceridwen. Then his lips parted and he
smiled, revealing hooked black fangs and a mass of coiling serpentine stingers
where his tongue should have been.

The Nimble Man did not speak to her. Instead, he simply
hissed.

Morrigan stood and clung to him and he gazed at her with
inhuman, slitted eyes and caressed her.

All the strength Ceridwen had felt restored to her now
seemed to slip away.

"Well, it appears I'm just in time for the festivities
to begin."

Ceridwen's heart leaped at the familiar voice and she
glanced over her shoulder to see Conan Doyle stride into the ballroom, long
coat unwrinkled, every hair in place, as gallant as ever. Tendrils of magickal
energy streamed from his eyes and his fingers and he paused, ten feet inside
the door, prepared to fight.

A moment later, one of the windows on the far wall shattered
and Eve leaped into the room, landing in a crouch. Behind her, outlined within
the window frame, was a wiry, powerful-looking demon hybrid that must have been
Danny Ferrick. The air beside Ceridwen shimmered and the ghost of Dr. Graves
formed itself from nothing. One of the mirrored walls exploded inward, and in
the dust rising from the rubble, she saw the massive form of Clay.

The Menagerie had arrived.

"Yes, come!" Morrigan cried, turning to face them
as she rose to her feet. "You have all saved me the trouble of finding
you."

Her face was filled with rapture. Behind her the Nimble Man
stretched as if waking from a heavy sleep. His ravaged wings caressed the open
edges of the dimensional doorway behind him. He surveyed the room, the
individuals arrayed there, and he smiled. But when his gaze touched upon
Sweetblood's chrysalis — shot through with cracks from which magick
issued in radiant waves — he flinched.

"Now, my friends, keep him still!" Conan Doyle
shouted, pointing at the Nimble Man.

They reacted immediately. Eve leaped at the Nimble Man, more
feral than Ceridwen had ever seen her, fangs and claws extended. She landed
upon him, clung to his back, and raked her talons across his throat, barely
scratching his flesh. Clay was upon him in almost the same instant, but in
between one step and the next, he made a transformation that was breathtaking. His
arid, fissured flesh shifted, smoothed itself, and began to glow. Wings
sprouted from his back, but his were perfect, with feathers of pure white. His
skin was alabaster, and his face glowed with such warm light that it was
difficult to look at, and yet almost impossible to look away from.

An angel
, Ceridwen thought. Arthur had told her about
such things.
This is what an angel looks like
.

The ghost of Dr. Graves flitted across the room, taking up a
defensive position at the door. Most of the Corca Duibhne were likely destroyed
or had fled in terror, but this had obviously been Conan Doyle's preventive
measure, in case any of them should muster the courage to return.

Morrigan uttered a mad little laugh. "Are you all that
stupid? Or has Conan Doyle mesmerized you? Are you really that anxious to die? Why
don't you run?"

"Run from you?" Ceridwen asked. "I think not."

With both hands she held her elemental staff before her. With
a single, guttural sound she called a frigid wind that churned across the space
separating her from her aunt. Ice formed in Morrigan's hair and over her eyes
and for just a moment she stiffened. Ceridwen still felt some of the power of
Sweetblood inside her. It did not give her power she had never had, but it
amplified her own magick tenfold. With a grunt she banged the base of the staff
on the floor and sketched the air with her forefinger.

Lightning crackled from the ballroom ceiling and struck
Morrigan. The Fey witch trembled as it raced through her and then she fell to
her knees again, but this time it was in pain rather than supplication. She
raised her hand to retaliate, but quickly spun to her left and barely succeeded
in throwing up a ward before Conan Doyle's spell struck her. It dissipated
harmlessly, but she was off balance.

"I'll leave the family squabble to you, shall I?"
he called across the ballroom.

Ceridwen nodded grimly and advanced upon her aunt,
blue-white mist spilling from the sphere atop her staff.

Conan Doyle left Ceridwen to deal with her aunt. Even as he
passed them, Morrigan was struck by a spell that seared the air between the two
Fey sorceresses, and she stumbled backward. So much of her power had been used
to summon The Nimble Man, Conan Doyle hoped that it would give Ceridwen the
edge.

The Nimble Man as also not at his full strength. The process
of being born into this world, of escaping the pull of his limbo prison, had
drained him. Conan Doyle had no idea how long it would take for the damned one
to recover, but while he was weakened, there was a chance the Menagerie could
stop him. If he was given a moment's respite, time enough to muster his
strength anew, the world would pay the price.

Clay and Eve grappled with the Nimble Man. Despite his
sluggishness, he seemed almost amused at their attack. A low, chuffing laughter
came from deep within his chest as he struggled against them, but his lips
peeled back and that mass of serpentine things in his mouth danced and writhed
there, and Conan Doyle thought that his patience had worn thin.

Some of his strength returning, The Nimble Man began to
grow. With a sound like a field full of crickets, the damned one stretched,
sprouting in seconds to a height of nine feet, then twelve, with no sign of
stopping.

No
, Conan Doyle thought.
I need more time. Just a
few moments
. It was up to his comrades to buy him that time.

"What the fuck is this?" Eve snarled, trying to
hold on to her prey. As if she thought she might shrink him again, she opened
her mouth, jaws distending, and tore at The Nimble Man's throat. She slashed
her talons down and tore at one of The Nimble Man's vestigial wings, and for
the first time, he cried out in pain.

Clay was at him as well, but The Nimble Man knocked the
shapeshifter away and then, as if she were no more than a bothersome mosquito,
reached up and snatched Eve from her perch upon his back and shoulders. He held
her out in front of him by her arms, gazing at her as though she were some child's
play thing. Eve struggled but to no avail.

"Keep growing, asshole. You're just a bigger target. You
don't know who the hell you're dealing with he —"

The Nimble Man snapped both of her arms, the echo of
cracking bone ricocheting around the room. Eve's words were cut off by her own
scream. Then the damned creature held her by her head as she hung limply in his
grasp, and reached up to run one long claw across her throat. Blood spilled
from the gash like a scarlet curtain down her chest. The Nimble Man threw her
across the room.

Eve collided with the splintered chrysalis, its magick
cascading now throughout the room and across the floor. The collision cracked
it open further, so that in several places it had fallen apart completely. Sweetblood's
legs jutted out from the base of the thing. Eve lay in a tumble of broken limbs
like some forgotten marionette.

"No!" Danny Ferrick screamed, as he raced at the
gigantic Nimble Man.

Clay had recovered. Retaining his gleaming angelic form he
darted at The Nimble Man, arriving before Danny. Clay placed one long-fingered,
angelic hand over The Nimble Man's face, and divine light seared his golden
flesh. Conan Doyle could have helped them, but only if he had been willing to
sacrifice the world. Instead — with the sounds of the combat between
Morrigan and Ceridwen behind him — he rushed toward the shattered
chrysalis and turned to face The Nimble Man, and the dimensional doorway that
had been slit through the fabric of the universe. He could feel Sweetblood's
power coalescing around him. It caressed him as though it were a breeze that
blew only for him.

The Nimble Man clutched Clay by the throat and tore one of
his angel wings off, flesh and bone and cartilage ripping. Clay roared in agony
and even as he did he began to change again, now a white tiger with black
stripes slashing its fur. The Nimble Man crushed his jaws in one massive hand,
and then slammed Clay into the floor with enough force to crack the woodwork. The
shapeshifter returned to his arid, earthen form and did not move again.

In the strobing light from the magick erupting from the
cracks on the chrysalis, Conan Doyle watched Danny Ferrick attack. When he saw
the demon boy, the Nimble Man paused, a troubled expression on his face.

"
You are horrors
," he said, in a voice wet
with the moisture of the things writhing in his mouth. Though he was growing,
and beginning to recover from his transition to this world, he staggered
slightly, unsteady on his feet. "
Why would you fight my coming?"

"Why?" Danny shouted, snarling the word. "'Cause
this is our world! It's got its problems, but it's home. And you don't belong
here!"

Danny leaped up at The Nimble Man, driving his small demon
horns into the damned creature's abdomen. Once more The Nimble Man cried out. He
glared down at the boy, opened his black-fanged jaws, and the mass of squirming
serpent-things that filled his mouth spiked out, stretching to impossible
length, and punctured Danny's chest, punching out through the demon-boy's back.

"Danny!" Conan Doyle roared, and for the first
time he nearly lost his composure, nearly surrendered the calm that his next
move required. The boy's mother had entrusted her son to him, and Conan Doyle
was afraid for him. If Danny was dead, he did not think he could face Julia
Ferrick.

He bared his teeth, grinding them together. The magickal
energy that trailed from his fingertips and spilled from his eyes seemed to
dance with the power leaking from Sweetblood's chrysalis. Conan Doyle felt the
two embrace. The fissures in the amber encasement widened. With a loud crack,
more pieces of the chrysalis began to fall away. Within that shell, Conan Doyle
could see Sweetblood's hand, twitching, fingers stretching.

"The boy was right," Conan Doyle said, starting
toward The Nimble Man. "You don't belong here. You don't belong anywhere
save that gray limbo. And if you wanted to leave it behind, you should never
have left the door open."

Then, unable to resist a dramatic flourish, Conan Doyle
passed one hand across his face, disrupting the glamour that had hidden his
true countenance.

A spell struck Ceridwen on her left side, her face taking
the brunt of the magick. Instantly her flesh began to soften, to melt. She felt
her cheek droop, strings of skin dangling from her jawbone like tree sap. Morrigan
had the advantage, and now her eyes blazed with malice. All of her fanaticism
pulsed just beneath her features, but for the moment it had been usurped by her
disdain for her family, for her people, for her land. The Fey witch rose off
the ground, floating several inches from the wood floor, and she threw her arms
wide. Streaks of oily black energy darted back and forth in front of her,
dancing from finger to finger, from hand to hand, as though she were knitting
some web of darkness.

"Stupid little girl," Morrigan sneered.

The sensation of her flesh sliding from her skull was the
most dreadful thing Ceridwen had ever experienced. She wanted to scream, but
could not control the muscles in her jaw. Panic set in, her gaze locked on
Morrigan, and she watched as her aunt raised her hands and prepared to hurl
that web of black magick at her, to entangle her, to destroy her.

Morrigan attacked. With the crack of a bullwhip, the black
net whistled toward Ceridwen. She had expended the power she had borrowed from
Sweetblood and knew that if Morrigan meant to kill her now, she would not be
able to defend herself.

With a grunt, Ceridwen clacked the base of her elemental
staff against the floor. A mystical breeze gusted around her, a traveling wind
that lifted her in half an eyeblink from the path of Morrigan's attack, and set
her down again just behind her mad aunt.

Fear gave way to rage. Ceridwen pressed the ice sphere at
the top of her elemental staff against her face and felt the warmth of its
energies spread through her. This was her magick, a simple object to channel
her own innate power and to help her focus her rapport with the elements. Morrigan
was Fey. She was family. Ceridwen easily countered the spell her aunt had cast,
restoring her flesh, healing her face.

"You think you can run away from me?" Morrigan
asked. Still floating, she spun in the air, glaring down at her niece. "From
me
?"

And for the first time, Ceridwen really saw the familial
resemblance between herself and her aunt. The nose, the eyes, the lips . . . it
made her feel sick.

"I have never run from you," Ceridwen replied.

With a flutter of her eyelids and a tugging deep inside her,
an ache in her loins, she reached into the wood floor and drew it to life
again. Vines burst from the floor and twined around Morrigan's legs, reaching
up to encircle her arms, trapping them against her body. Thorns pushed out from
the vines, slicing her flesh. It would not hold her for long.

Ceridwen heard Conan Doyle scream Danny's name. She turned
her gaze for just a moment from her conflict with Morrigan. In horror, she
watched the demon boy impaled and then cast aside. She saw Arthur, grimly
determined, bathe himself in the magicks spilling from Sweetblood's chrysalis. As
Morrigan struggled to be free of her bonds, Ceridwen saw Conan Doyle passed a
hand across his face.

His features shimmered, a glamour dissipating, and Ceridwen
felt a stab of despair in her heart as she saw what he had done. Gore streaked
the left side of Conan Doyle's face, dried and crusted there. Where his left
eye had been there was now a small silver orb that crackled with magick.