The Nimble Man

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Morrigan ascended the staircase, her voice as she called to her acolytes like the shrill cry of a carrion bird drifting over the fields of war. Hidden in the darkness of that side room, it took every ounce of restraint Ceridwen could muster not to explode into the corridor to attack. Her mind was filled with images of what Morrigan and her followers had done to the Fey as they attempted to topple the ruling house, and her blood was afire with rage and hatred. The ice sphere atop her elemental staff glowed more brightly, responding to her fury.

Daniel Ferrick squatted before her, peering into the hall through the narrow gap they had left between door and frame. He glanced up at Ceridwen, his demonic features illuminated in the icy blue light of her staff. The voices of their enemies drew closer and it was clear that Danny was worried that the glow from her staff might give them away. Before she could respond to his concerns, the boy acted, reaching a clawed hand toward the pulsing orb.

Ceridwen watched with wonder as the substance of shadow within the room responded to some unspoken command from the boy. Strips of writhing umbra flowed from the gloom, wrapping themselves around the body of the orb, diminishing the light, like storm clouds blotting out the sun.

And suddenly she understood why Conan Doyle had shown such interest in the young man. There is enormous potential here, she thought, watching as the boy, satisfied that his action had guaranteed their safety, turned back to the crack in the door. Potential for good, but it not properly nurtured, could be used for great evil instead. If they survived this current threat, they would need to be vigilant, for while Daniel Ferrick and his place in the greater scheme of things was currently undetermined, it would be up to them to prevent him straying into the embrace of shadows. But that was a worry for another time.

Morrigan passed by their hiding place with nary a glance. She was clothed only in a cloak of scarlet, her lieutenants — Fenris and Dagris — nipping at her heels. Ceridwen recalled the council meeting where the fate of the twins was to be decided, and how it had been her merciful vote that had prevented the insane brothers from being put to death for their murderous actions against the citizens of Faerie. Seeing them here, serving the likes of Morrigan, was enough to ossify what remained of her once compassionate heart.

At the end of the hallway, Morrigan and her lieutenants stood before the door so familiar to Ceridwen. Painfully, she remembered the numerous times she had used the passage from Faerie to earth and back again. She found the memory of that final pass through it, her lover sealing it up behind her for what was supposed to be forever, particularly unpleasant.

"I have to be certain," she heard Morrigan say, motioning for one of the twins to open the door. "I have to be sure that Conan Doyle has not somehow found a way to reestablish a passage between Faerie and the Blight."

Obediently, Fenris pulled open the door, filling the upstairs with the screaming wails of the yawing abyss.

Ceridwen could feel Daniel's eyes upon her, as if he were looking for someone to validate what he was seeing. She had to remind herself that despite the boy's appearance and blossoming talents, he still perceived the world as a human would, and sights such as this were still far from the norm. She reached down and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly.

The shrieking void pulled hungrily at Morrigan and her lackeys. Fenris and Dagris used the open door as a kind of shield, hiding behind it to avoid being sucked inside. Morrigan, however, stood defiantly before the doorway, staring into the maelstrom. Seemingly satisfied that her hex was still intact, she gestured for her lieutenants to seal it up again.

The mournful cries of the maelstrom ended abruptly, the hallway plunged into silence as the twins succeeded in closing the door.

"Do you see, Mistress?" Fenris asked, breathing heavily from his exertion. "Your fears are unfounded."

Dagris nodded. "Your magnificent agenda proceeds as planned."

Morrigan drifted away from the door and her lieutenants, pulling the cloak of scarlet around her. "And so it does," she agreed, looking about as if searching for something to satisfy her suspicions. "But I did sense something, and when things as important as this are in motion, one cannot afford to be complacent."

Ceridwen drew Daniel further back into the darkness.

Fenris and Dagris left their place, moving to eagerly stand beside their mistress.

"He'll be here soon, won't he?" Dagris asked, an idiot's grin forming on his pale, angular features.

Morrigan smiled dreamily, reaching out to stroke his cheek. "Yes, he will."

Daniel turned to Ceridwen, confusion in his eyes. He was looking to her for some kind of explanation, but she had no more idea what they were talking about than he did.

Then, as if in answer to her silent question, Fenris spoke again.

"The Nimble Man," the madman whispered in reverence. "The Nimble Man is coming." And he then began to giggle, clapping a pale hand over his mouth.

Ceridwen felt a searing pain in her lungs and realized that she had stopped breathing. She and Conan Doyle had known the situation to be dire, but this…

Danny flinched away from her, tugging his shoulder from her grasp. Ceridwen realized that in her shock she had tightened her grip enough to hurt him. She cast an apologetic glance toward him in the darkness, but all the while her real focus was on the conversation that continued in the corridor.

Morrigan spoke about the Nimble Man with a passion that barely fell short of arousal. "Trapped between Heaven and Hell," the witch said. "But now I have the power to set him free. And when he is delivered into this world, he will build a kingdom of his own, and make war upon all of those who betrayed him, angel and demon alike."

The twins bowed their heads and then dropped to their knees before her. "And you will be his bride," Fenris whispered, his grin hideous.

"No," Morrigan snarled, a cruel smile snaking across her face as she shook her head. "Not his bride," she corrected her lieutenants with a waggle of a clawed index finger. "I shall be his queen."

Razor sharp fragments of the puzzle floated about inside Ceridwen's troubled thoughts, beginning to come together. She shuddered. The Fey sorceress left Daniel by the door, and moved deeper into the shadows of the room to stand before a window, its shade drawn against the darkness. There was more to learn, but first they had to escape this room undetected.

Daniel watched her curiously, but did not dare break the silence to ask what she was doing.

Ceridwen brought the head of her staff near her lips, whispering to the darkness that still enshrouded the orb. The shadow Danny had summoned dissipated. The sphere pulsed with restrained power and then a single tongue of flame emerged from its icy surface to dance in the air before her. Ceridwen asked of it a favor. The fire obliged her, sensing the severity of the situation, flowing between window and sill, out into the crimson mist.

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the world beyond the house, guiding the fiery elemental spirit upon its mission. And through the bond she shared with it, the sorceress found the distraction that was needed.

The car was parked haphazardly on the side of the street, its driver lost to the evils of the bloody fog. Ceridwen directed the flame, urging it to crawl up inside the vehicle's belly, to seek out the fuel that powered its internal mechanisms. Finding what it sought, the fire bit into the fuel tank, puncturing the metal.

The explosion was a clap of thunder, the flash and flames cutting through the scarlet fog to briefly illuminate the unnatural darkness.

Ceridwen silently thanked the fire elemental for its assistance, and returned to Daniel at the door.

Morrigan and the twins were already on the move, bounding down the hallway toward the staircase.

"It came from outside," Fenris snarled, drawing a curved dagger from a scabbard at his side.

Dagris's fingers crackled with a spell of defense as he looked about nervously.

Morrigan remained eerily calm, pulling the red cloak tighter about her as they rushed to investigate this disturbance.

"Quickly now," Ceridwen whispered in Danny's ear, pulling open the door and stepping stealthily out into the hall. "We'll need a cloak of shadow," she told him, peering over the banister. "Otherwise we might be discovered before we can reach him."

"Reach who?" Danny asked, even as he did as she asked, drawing the darkness around them. "Shouldn't we be thinking about getting the hell out of here?"

Ceridwen ignored the question. She ushered him into the hall, the shadows coalescing around them. It was dark in the townhouse and they merged with the gray gloom as they went quickly along the hall and then down the stairs into the foyer. There was pandemonium in the house, Corca Duibhne responding in panic to the explosion outside. Ceridwen and the boy waited at the bottom of the steps, a shroud of darkness concealing them from their enemies. The front door was open and the red mist swirled eagerly over the threshold as the Night People swarmed out to investigate.

Unnoticed, Ceridwen led Danny down the corridor toward what had been a ballroom in long ago days. She could feel the pulse of the magick of Sweetblood in the air. It beckoned to her.

The doors to the ballroom were open, but once they were inside, Ceridwen closed them quietly.

"We won't be needing this anymore," she said, using her elemental staff to burn away their cover of shadow.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Danny asked.

But she was no longer listening. Her focus had been captured entirely by the crystalline sarcophagus lying in the center of the room. That, and the fact that they were not as alone as she had thought.

"Oh, shit," Danny whispered.

A trio of Corca Duibhne sentries dropped from the ceiling and two large boggart beasts emerged from behind the sarcophagus, Sweetblood's magickal chrysalis, and charged toward them.

"Morrigan cannot be allowed to tap into Sweetblood's power. No matter what the cost," Ceridwen said.

There was no time for prolonged conflict, and again she called upon the elementals, summoning the spirit of the air for assistance. The atmosphere grew very still and then a primordial roar filled the room. The Night People and their fearsome pets were tossed away by screaming gusts of wind like so much chaff, their bodies striking the walls with a chorus of snapping bones.

"Remind me never to make you mad," Danny said, staring awestruck at the broken and twitching bodies of their enemies scattered about the room.

Ceridwen rushed to the chrysalis and knelt beside it. Already there was a breach in it, a tiny crack, yet enough that Sweetblood's magick was seeping out, emanating from that bizarre shell. Yet there was other magick here as well. Ceridwen waved her fingers, dragging ripples in the air, and she could feel what had been done. A spell had been cast — by Morrigan, she presumed — a hex that utilized the blood of an innocent. Morrigan had tried to break the chrysalis open. Ceridwen felt her stomach roil with disgust. The atrocities Morrigan would perform in the name of her dark faith knew no boundaries.

I shall have to move him, Ceridwen thought, glancing around. If she had the time, she might be able to remove Sweetblood from the townhouse, to bring him to Conan Doyle. If she could manage it, they would have the advantage over Morrigan. First, though, she would have to try to seal the breach in the chrysalis. She did not have the power to permanently restore the encasement created by Sweetblood's magick, but she could perform a temporary repair.

Ceridwen raised her staff. The orb glowed with the ferocity of a white-hot star and the sorceress began the process of undoing what her aunt had begun.

"Can I help?" Danny asked, standing nervously by her side.

Ceridwen felt the magick build, flowing from the center of her being up through her arms to be channeled through her staff.

"Just watch the door," she whispered. Then she bent closer to the strange chrysalis, peering at the figure frozen within. "But if you can hear me, mage, I could use your assistance."

Sparks of magick leaped from the ice sphere atop her staff, fingers of power that caressed the blood-stained chrysalis, seeking out imperfections — cracks upon its surface. The scent of the spilled blood permeated the room as it the chrysalis was cleansed.

"Aid me in repairing that which contains your power, which prevents your might from being used for ill. Time is short and — "

A crackling sound filled the air. Ceridwen glanced up just in time to see Danny tumble through the air and crash on the floor, clothes smoldering. She spun to see Morrigan framed in the doorway, elegant features made ugly by a hideous sneer. One of the doors had been torn nearly from its hinges.

"Time?" her aunt asked. "You have run out, I'm afraid."

Arcs of power erupted from her fingers and struck the surface of the chrysalis, creating a backlash of magick that whipped at Ceridwen. She cried out in pain as her connection to Sweetblood's magick was violently severed.

"Ceridwen?" Danny called as he began to rise.

Morrigan paid no attention to the demon boy, and that was best. Ceridwen did not want Danny hurt more than he already had been. The taste of her own blood filled her mouth, mixing with the bitterness and rage that she felt as she stared at Morrigan, and at the twin Fey warriors who now stepped with her into the ballroom.

"You won't believe this, but I'm actually quite happy to see you," Morrigan told her.

Ceridwen shot a glance at Danny. "Prepare yourself," she said, though she doubted that he understood the full meaning of her words.

The boy crouched down, a fierce gleam in his eyes. "Ready when you are." His voice was a rumbling growl, in tune with his bestial nature.

Morrigan and the twins moved further into the room, proceeding with caution. "I knew that something wasn't right. I could feel it in my bones, so to speak, but I just couldn't put my finger on it." She smiled, and Ceridwen wasn't sure if she had ever seen Morrigan's teeth look quite so sharp. "I thought that I might actually be going mad."

"Too late for that," Ceridwen spat.

With her free hand she wove a spell and a wall of fire blazed up from the floor, with Ceridwen, Danny and the chrysalis on one side, and Morrigan and her lackeys on the other.

Danny was at her side, then, nostrils flaring as he tried to see through the flames. "Nice!" he said. "But I don't think that's going to stop them."

"It's not meant to," Ceridwen said, and she bowed her head, holding her elemental staff before her. A wind began to swirl around them and her cloak billowed behind her like the surge of an ocean swell.

"What are you doing?" the boy asked, as the whirlwind buffeted him. "Hey, you can't — "

"A traveling wind. Go to Conan Doyle," she interrupted. "Tell him what we've learned."

He started to protest, but his words were drowned out by the roar of the flames Ceridwen had summoned. The two of them glanced at the blaze, only to see that Morrigan was stepping through the fire. Her mouth was open wide and she was consuming it, eating the flames.

The traveling wind wailed around the boy, taking him back to where he had come from, and not a moment too soon.

Morrigan and the twins crossed the charred floor.

"All right, then. It's time, now. Time for us to settle family business. I promise you, it's going to hurt," Ceridwen said, extending her arms, the sphere atop her staff beginning to glow with menace.

Her aunt grinned, black smoke drifting from her mouth.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," she growled.

And the twins began to giggle.

Conan Doyle came awake with a gasp, as if during his trance he had been holding his breath. His lungs burned, and his heart beat against his ribcage like a caged bird. It was like awakening from a deep winter's sleep, his thoughts a jumble. He breathed deeply in and out, attempting to calm himself, to gather his wits.

His face felt strangely damp and he reached up to touch his cheeks. There were tears running from his eyes, and he recalled the dream he'd had of his son. Conan Doyle took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed at his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time that he had dreamt of Kingsley, or the last that he had cried for that matter.

Images from his psychic communication with Sweetblood flashed through his mind. The pictures in his head of what the future held in store if Morrigan succeeded were nearly more than he could bear.

"Dear God," he whispered, returning his handkerchief to his pocket with a trembling hand.

Yet amongst that jumble of images, certain facts surfaced. If he had understood correctly, some of the horrors he had been shown were not Morrigan's scheme, but a secondary result of her actions, unforeseen even by the Fey witch herself.

Footsteps marching across the floor above distracted him from his ruminations, and Conan Doyle realized that during his trance, Julia Ferrick had taken her leave.

He listened to her footfalls on the staircase. All that he had asked was for her to stand watch over his body while he was within his trance. "Blasted woman," he growled, indignant that she had left her post.

Julia raced around the corner into the dining room, a look of absolute terror upon her wan features.

"Was it too much to ask that you adhere to my wishes, or is that — "

"He's gone," she said, ignoring his reproach. "Danny's gone."

Conan Doyle stood, wincing as the bones in his spine and popped. It wouldn't be long before he had to partake again of the Fey elixir that staved off time's ravages. "Are you certain? Where would he have gone? I forbade him from involving himself with my operatives' assignments."

Julia laughed, a disdainful barking sound. "You forbade him," she said with a shake of her head. "Like that's going to mean anything to a fifteen year old boy. You forbid him. Give me a break."

Conan Doyle recoiled as if slapped. "Madame, please." He knew that he now lived in an age far different from that in which he had been born, but was still taken aback when such language was unleashed by a member of the fairer sex. "Get hold of yourself."

"You get hold of yourself!?" she screamed, starting to pace. "My son is missing, Mr. Doyle, and if you can't understand why I'm upset, I suggest you take a look outside the window."

He considered a spell of tranquility, but decided against it, choosing instead to steady the woman's nerves with words. "Losing your wits will not help you find your son, Mrs. Ferrick."

Conan Doyle reached out a comforting hand, and the moment he laid it upon her shoulder she seemed to collapse into him. All her fury disappeared, leaving only her fear for her son. She shuddered and began to cry.

"When was the last time you saw Daniel?" he asked.

Julia wiped at her leaking eyes, stifling the sobs, trying to compose herself. "It was right before you went into your trance. He said he was going up to bed."

Conan Doyle pulled thoughtfully at his gray beard. At that point, Clay and Eve had already departed on their mission. That left only Ceridwen, but he could not imagine that she would even consider allowing an inexperienced youth to accompany her.

"I… I know he's… different," Julia Ferrick stammered, "but he's still just a kid…" Her eyes began to tear again, and she pressed a fist to her mouth to as if she might stifle the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.

Conan Doyle wanted to tell her otherwise, to explain what little he knew about the creature that she had raised as her son, but he erred on the side of sensitivity. He could be a callous man, at times. He knew that. But he never meant to be.

"Mrs. Ferrick. Julia," he began. But his words were interrupted by a sudden roar that rattled the windows in their frames, and caused the pressure in the house to change so dramatically that his ears painfully popped.

"What the hell was that?" Julia asked, blinking, wincing as she opened and closed her mouth to relieve her own discomfort.

Conan Doyle was already in motion. The sound was familiar to him, and he knew that it signified answers. A traveling wind had arrived, but it would never have created such a thunderous roar unless it had been conjured quickly and carelessly.

"What was that?" Julia demanded as she pursued him from the dining room. "Doyle, answer me!"

He did not want to get her hopes up, choosing instead to lead her to the answer, and hopefully the relief of her distress.

Danny Ferrick knelt in the center of the living room, a puddle of vomit on the carpet before him. Conan Doyle glanced around the room, but to his dismay, Danny was alone. Ceridwen had not returned with him.

"Danny," his mother cried, kneeling at his side, throwing her arms around him. "I was so worried! Are you all right?"

The boy struggled from her embrace, pushing his mother away as he climbed to his feet. He lunged at Conan Doyle, gripping the man by the lapels of his jacket, starring wildly into his eyes.

"Danny?" Julia said, her voice hollow, crushed by his rejection.

"Ceridwen," the boy croaked, his breath stinking of spoiled milk. "She sent me away to tell you." The boy's legs were trembling, barely able to hold his weight.

"Then tell me," Conan Doyle urged, icy dread running along his spine. "What have you learned?"

"The Nimble Man," Danny said, wavering on his feet, a shudder passing through him. "She wanted me to tell you that Morrigan is trying to free the Nimble Man. I wanted to stay — to help her — but she made me come back to warn you."

Conan Doyle nodded wordlessly. The boy was about to fall down, so he steered Danny to the sofa and helped him to sit.

"Is it bad, Mr. Doyle?" Julia asked as she settled on the arm of the sofa, fussing over her son. She glanced up at him expectantly, waiting for an answer. "Is it bad?"

He wondered what he should tell them, just how much of the truth this woman in particular could stand. But Arthur Conan Doyle was not a man who minced words.

"Worse than you could imagine."

The smell of decaying flesh made her angry.

Eve wasn't sure why exactly, other than the fact that once the smell got on her clothes, it was hell to get out.

A rotting, undead executive type in a navy blue suit hissed at her, baring jagged Jack O'Lantern teeth that jutted from blackened gums. She and Graves had cornered four of the walking dead in the museum's gift shop, but this asshole was the feistiest.

"You can hiss all you like, Gomer," Eve snarled. "None of you are going anywhere until you tell me something useful."

A chill washed over her as Dr. Graves moved closer. He stood with his arms crossed and she imagined how formidable he must have been when he had been a man of flesh and bone.

"You don't think they'll just volunteer the information, do you?" Graves asked, hovering weightlessly in front of the gift shop doors.

"Sure," Eve said with a shrug. "They look like a reasonable bunch of dead guys. Why not?"

The executive lunged with a gurgling scream, hands hooked into claws and mouth open to bite.

"Then again," she said, driving her fist into the cadaver's face. It felt as though she had punched through a rotting melon. The corpse danced horribly at the end of her arm, its face and skull collapsed around her hand.

"That's just fucking gross," she spat, yanking her fist free with a wet, sucking pop. Further disgusted, she snapped a savage kick to the dead man's chest, hurling him backward into a T-shirt display. The corpse seemed to break upon impact, what was left of its head lolling obscenely to one side as it crumpled to the floor in a twisted heap.

"Quite effective," Graves said, slowly nodding his head. "Perhaps if you were to break them up into smaller pieces."

Eve flicked her hand at the ground, spattering the Linoleum with rotting brain as she tried to shake off the gray matter on her fist and arm. "Look, I didn't say I was an expert. I said that I've been known to be pretty good at getting information out of guys who didn't feel like talking. Obviously my technique doesn't work so well on dead folks."

The three remaining corpses began to circle around them, as though they had gained courage — or at least motivation — from the destruction of the fourth.

"If you'd like to give it a try, be my guest," Eve said, turning toward the shambling corpse of a woman so withered she seemed almost a scarecrow. Eve snatched her up by the front of her dress and hurled her into the others, knocking them all to the floor.

"Perhaps I will." Graves drifted from his place at the door to levitate above the undead that thrashed upon the floor, trying to stand. "I doubt I could do any worse."

One of the corpses untangled himself from the others. He had been a middle-aged man, obviously cut down in the prime of his life, his white shirt soiled from the grave. In his recent activity, the buttons had been lost, revealing the pale flesh of his chest and stomach. Eve noticed the serpentine stitching that writhed vertically from esophagus to navel.

The zombie leapt up at Graves with a hungry snarl, but his fingers passed harmlessly through the substance of the ghost.

"You'll do," Dr. Graves said.

The specter plunged one of his hands into the corpse like a magician reaching into his magic hat. The zombie froze, its decaying form snapping rigid. Graves pulled his hand free, withdrawing a white, writhing shape from inside the dead man's remains.

Eve watched, fascinated. "What is that, its soul?"

"Near enough," Graves replied, holding onto the squirming ectoplasm as its rotting shell collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The two other corpses grew still, staring at the ghost, as though they understood what he had done.

Eve was not sure if they were frightened, or envious.

The amorphous thing in the spirit's grasp writhed, vaguely taking on the shape of the man it had once been.

"Listen to me," Graves said.

Eve smiled. The man's voice just oozed control. It was damned impressive that even dead, the guy could still exude that much authority. She remembered how the world had been captivated by this man when he was still amongst the living, never really understanding the attraction. But as Eve watched him now, she began to see what she had not taken the time to notice before.

The ectoplasm retained the shape of a man, reaching up to the ceiling, but Graves prevented it from flowing to where it yearned to go. The soul moaned, not so much a sound that was heard, but one that could be felt, a low bass vibration the she could feel in the center of her chest.

"You will talk to me," Graves told it. "What was it that you sought here?"

"The Eye," said the soul, what passed for its head staring toward the ceiling.

"Did you find it?"

The spirit made another futile attempt to escape Graves, but the ghost held fast. "Want to go," it pleaded. "Need to be away from this place."

Graves yanked it down further toward him. "I asked you a question," he roared. "Did you find it?"

"Please," the soul begged, stretching toward the ceiling.

With a grunt of frustration, Dr. Graves drifted to the floor, pulling the ectoplasmic remains of the dead man behind like a child holding a balloon. The soul fought him, but to no avail.

"I will put you back in here," Graves growled, forcing the soul toward the rotting husk that it had been extracted from.

"No!" it shrieked, the intensity of its psychic cries causing Eve to wince.

Graves would hear none of it, pushing the panicking soul stuff closer to where it had been imprisoned. "Did you find it?"

"I searched," the man's soul answered pathetically. "But I did not find the Eye."

Graves floated toward the ceiling, letting his prisoner have a taste of where it wanted to go. But just a taste.

"Do you know who did?"

"One of the others," it responded. "One of the others found the Eye."

Graves yanked the soul down again, pointing to the restless corpses who lay on the floor below.

"Was it one of these?" he asked.

"No, it was not," it answered immediately, afraid of what Graves could do to it. "One of the others has the eye… one of the others out there."

With one of its willowy appendages, the soul pointed outside the gift shop, out into the museum.

Graves turned his attention to Eve.

"Oooh, scary," she said. "But what the hell. It worked better than my approach."

The ghost released that tormented soul and they both watched as it hungrily swam toward the ceiling, passing through the white tiles, and then disappeared into the ether.

"Not really," the ghost replied despondently, drifting down toward their remaining zombie captives. "We don't know any more than we did before."

Eve watched as the ghost tore the imprisoned souls from their cages of decaying flesh, releasing them to the ether as well.

"We can only hope that Clay has been more successful," Graves said, drifting closer.

"So what do you think?" she asked him. "Should we grab a couple more and hope we hit the jackpot?"

Graves folded his arms across his chest. "I suppose it couldn't hurt," he said.

"So many dead guys," Eve sighed, moving toward the glass doors, looking out into the museum at the straggling corpses that still meandered about outside. "So little time."