The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (5 page)

Now, perhaps ninety minutes after sunup, she followed the
mage as they wound their way through the early morning commuters that seemed
paralyzed by the turn of events. Eve was careful to avoid any patches of
daylight coming in through Grand Central's high, ornate windows. Fortunately,
though the rain of toads had stopped, the more conventional showers continued
and the clouds outside meant she didn't have work on it that hard. She had
slipped her suede jacket back on, but been careful not to let it get wet.

Announcements were made over the stations PA system,
departures and arrivals, but nobody seemed to be going anywhere. The crowd
teemed with people unsure of what they ought to be doing. Should they go on
with their day-to-day lives? Go to work and ignore the fact that toads had
rained down from the sky? Exposure to the preternatural had that effect on some
people. When they had gone to bed the night before their perceptions of the
world had been solid and clear, but now all that had changed. They had been
shown just a hint of the truth that she, Doyle and certain other unsavory types
in the paranormal circles had known for most of their lives.

The world was anything but "normal."

Some tried to laugh it off. She could hear them among the
crowds that milled about. But beneath their levity she could sense the tension,
smell the fear as it took root and prepared to blossom.

Eve sympathized. They were in Manhattan, and thanks to all
the nasty shit going down she just knew she was not going to be able to stop at
Barney's for a little shopping expedition. It pissed her off. A visit to New
York always meant a Barney's trip for her. The last time she had picked up a
spectacular silk top and Prada boots that were totally out of fashion now. Doyle
dressed well, for a man, but this was because he was a product of his era and
not because he had any real appreciation for clothes.

It was a weakness for Eve. She might even have gone so far
as to call it an obsession. There was no sin in wanting to dress well, she
always said. So few people caught the irony. After all, without her own sins,
clothes might never have been invented.

Doyle stopped at the top of the marble staircase that would
take them underground, into the subway system.

"We're going down?" she asked, still fascinated by
the weird vibe she was picking up from most people within the station.

"Yes," he said, taking hold of the brass railing
and beginning to descend. She followed. "Despite Sweetblood's best
intentions, a link had been established between the medium, her psychics, and
the mage."

Doyle went around a random commuter who stood frozen on the
stairs, clutching the handrail as if for dear life. He had been very brief in
the car, giving to Squire only their destination, as if he had needed time to
process the information that he had obtained at the brownstone. Eve found it
particularly nasty that Doyle had to stick his fingers into somebody's brain to
find what he was looking for. Better him then her.

Not that she hadn't rooted through her share of viscera in
her time. It was only that brains were so grotesquely unpleasant to the touch.

"So you got Sweetblood's location out of the medium's
brain?" Eve asked.

"With some minor difficulty, yes," Doyle
confirmed.

"Don't you think that was kind of sloppy on your old
pal Lorenzo's part?" she asked him curiously. "Leaving that kind of
information lying around in somebody's head when he's supposedly all hot and
bothered about not being found?"

They reached the bottom of the stairs and proceeded through
a pair of double doors into the underground system.

"That is where Sanguedolce's arrogance worked against
him," Doyle said.

Eve thought he sounded more than a little arrogant himself. She
didn't know what it was with mages, all of them so full of themselves that she
was surprised they could fit their swollen heads through their front doors.

"He never believed that another mage would demonstrate
the skill necessary to actually track him," Doyle said, grim satisfaction
etched upon his face. "And, Heaven forbid that they did, he left a warning
that should have successfully ended the trail."

She looked about the platform. There were people waiting,
but not half as many as there should have been at this time of the morning. "But
Sweetblood wasn't counting on you being the one doing the looking, was he?"
she asked, playing with the man's cockiness.

Doyle's smile was fleeting. "He never recognized my
talents," the sorcerer said, walking to the end of the platform. A
homeless man surrounded with shopping bags full of empty cans snoozed against a
wall and Doyle was careful not to wake him as he peered down the tunnel into
the inky darkness beyond. "He thought me incapable of mastering the
weirdling ways."

"I guess you showed him," Eve muttered, standing
by his side. She noticed that some of the commuters had begun watch then with
interest. "If you're thinking of continuing this little expedition down
into the tunnel you might want to use some of that mojo you're so good at so
nobody calls the transit police in to arrest our asses."

Doyle looked away from the tunnel and toward the small crowd
waiting for the next train. "Ah yes, prying eyes," he said, his own
eyes sparking with mystical blue energies. "Perhaps I'll make them see us
as workers from one of the utility companies," he said, a strange, lilting
spell upon his lips as he raised a hand, barely visible wisps of supernatural
manipulation streaming from his fingertips to work their magick upon nosey
commuters.

Eve heard the rustling of plastic bags and turned to see
that the homeless man had awakened from his slumber and was staring at them.

"You don't want to go down there," the man said,
his voice gravely and rough, as if not used to speaking. He hooked a dirty
thumb toward the tunnel entrance behind where he sat. "Some nasty shit
goin' on down there." The poor soul was covered in grime and was dressed
in multiple layers of clothing, the shoes upon his feet held together with
wrappings of electrical tape. A foul odor of misery wafted up from him, an
aroma he seemed perfectly content to wallow in.

Doyle had turned from the subway crowd. "A friend of
yours, Eve?"

"Just a concerned citizen," she told the mage.

The man brought his legs up to his chest. "Stuff not
meant to be seen by the likes of us," he said, beginning to rock from side
to side. "Somethin' bad's comin', I know," he said, his pale, green
eyes glazing over as he rocked. "And it ain't ridin' the train, oh no. It's
comin' in real style. That's it. Real style."

Doyle stared at the rambling man, then reached into the
pocket of his coat and drew out a small billfold. She wasn't exactly sure how
much money it was, but Doyle didn't even glance down to count it as he leaned
forward to present it to the homeless man. "Thank you so much for your assessment,"
he said. "We'll keep it in mind."

The homeless man took the money from Doyle and looked at it
briefly, before stashing it amongst the layers of his clothing.

"Coming, Eve?" Doyle asked as he stepped down off
the platform into space. There was a good seven feet to the tracks below, but
that didn't seem to hinder the mage's progress. It was if the air beneath him
had thickened and he drifted unharmed to the tunnel floor.

"Don't spend that all in one place," she told the
man as she followed the mage off the platform. Eve leaped down into the
darkness and landed in a graceful crouch, careful to avoid the electrical bite
of the third rail. Electrocution wouldn't kill her, but she doubted it would be
a very pleasant experience.

Able to see as well in the darkness as in the light, she
spotted Doyle waiting against the tunnel wall. He gestured for her to follow.

"Quickly now," he urged.

The subway was filthy and she made a conscious effort to
keep from making any contact with the walls. "Damn. This is not a place
for suede. I should have left my jacket back in the car." She had
purchased the coat only recently in Milan and did not want it ruined.

"Your clothing should be the least of your worries, my
dear," Doyle said as he held his hand out before him, a sphere of light
glowing from a space just above his palm, lighting his way.

"Are you trying to scare me?" she asked, watching
the rats scurrying about in the shadows, bothered by their presence. "Me?"

He stopped before an ancient metal door, its surface caked
with ages of dust, dirt and corrosion. It was also padlocked. "You mean
after all you've seen thus far you're not scared already?" He placed one
of his hands against its rusted surface.

A subway train squealed somewhere close by and she wondered
if it was coming their way. "I've faced the wrath of God," she said,
watching him at the door. "I've had more terrifying
dates
than
this."

A tiny smile played at the edges of Doyle's mouth. "Ah,
yes. Sometimes I forget." Doyle took his hand away from the door. "We'll
need to get through here," he said, pointing to the rusted padlock. "Do
the honors?"

Eve reached over and tore the lock free with a single tug,
rust smearing her palm and fingers.

"I don't suppose you have anything that I could use to
wipe my hand?" she asked the mage as he went through the door. With a
sigh, she resigned herself to the fact that her wardrobe was going to be
ruined.

Eve wiped her hands upon her denim-clad legs and joined
Doyle in the tiny entryway. There was a metal staircase leading down into
further darkness, which her companion had already begun to descend, his eerily
glowing hand lighting the way. That staircase ended at another door, which led
to a cramped hallway that took them to another even older-looking door that had
been sealed shut with planks of wood nailed to the frame.

"Let me guess," Eve said as she grabbed hold of
the first piece of wood and ripped it from its moorings. "You want these
removed as well."

Doyle stepped back, giving her room to work. "Astute as
well as beautiful," he observed. "Traits not commonly found together
these days, I'm sorry to say."

Eve smiled. "When He made me He broke the mold."

The last board came away from the frame with a metallic
shriek as the old nails were torn from the wood, and the door stood revealed.

"Allow me," Doyle said, sliding back a corroded
deadbolt on the door with some minor difficulty. The rusted joints squealed as
he yanked the door open, a damp, ancient smell wafting out to greet them.

"Smells old," Eve observed, following the mage
through the doorway and out onto what appeared to be another, far more
antiquated version of a subway platform. "Even by my standards."

"It should," he replied, raising his arm to shed
further light upon the forgotten chamber. "It's been sealed up tight since
1899 when the major construction was begun on the subway tunnels above us. This
was part of the old Grand Central Depot."

There was definitely something to this place, Eve thought,
something in the air that hinted of a power as old as Creation. Whatever was
going on here, there was more to it than rains of toads or some antisocial
sorcerer hiding out. She walked the platform, her footfalls leaving prints in
the inch-thick dust that had settled there since the close of the nineteenth
century.

"Very good, Lorenzo," she heard Doyle say to
himself, his voice as sibilant whisper in the lost station. "But not good
enough."

She sensed movement close by, the stale air rushing around
her, and turned to see a shape shambling out of the darkness of the tunnel they
had just journeyed through. Eve tensed for a fight, but it was the homeless man
who had tried to warn them off before. She frowned. Doyle had cast a spell
before to blind people back on the platform to their presence. But this filthy
creature had seen them.

He leaped up from the tracks to the platform, where he
landed without making a sound.

"It appears there is more to our poor soul than meets
the eye," Doyle said. "I'd thought madness responsible for his
resistance to magick. Now it seems not."

The man strode toward them, his duct-taped shoes making a
strange scuffing sound upon the concrete-and-dust-covered surface of the
platform.

"What gave him away?" Eve asked, watching the
figure with a predator's gaze. "It was the seven-foot jump that clinched
it for me."

"I'll leave you to deal with this complication,"
Doyle said, his voice reaching her from somewhere on the platform behind her, "while
I endeavor to bring our search to an end."

Eve didn't respond to Doyle, choosing instead to keep her
eyes upon her would be attacker. "Don't want any trouble," she told
the man.

The homeless man stopped his advance, glaring at her with
eyes that now seemed to glow with an eerie inner power. "The Mage must not
be disturbed," he roared, in a new and terrible voice.

She wondered if he was possessed.

But then the man began to grow and his clothes tore as his
musculature was altered, bones twisting grotesquely along with his flesh. As
she watched the transformation, she doubted that this thing had ever really
been human at all. Spiny protrusions erupted from the new flesh beneath the
old. The creature reared back, stretching to its full height, and she saw that
it had more than doubled in size, torn skin hanging from its body in tatters.

"For nigh upon a century have I guarded this place,"
its voice rumbled through a mouth filled with jagged, razor teeth. "I
shall not fail in my duty now."

It came at her then with speed belying its size. She dodged
from its path, leaping onto the wall and clinging there, insectlike.

The demon fixed her in its gaze, head cocked, yellow eyes
glinting with surprise. It tilted its head back and sniffed the air as she
hissed. Eve sprang at it from her purchase upon the wall.