The Nimble Man

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

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.

All of the worlds in existence would now be as they were meant to be. To Morrigan, her deeds were not cruel, but a mercy. She was not destroying benevolence and beauty, but shattering the illusion that they existed at all. She was setting things right.

The Nimble Man had once been denied. Now her destiny was entwined with his, and all would be as it should be. The Nimble Man would be free.

All strength left her and she collapsed to her knees, her heart near to bursting with bliss.

And inside that portal, The Nimble Man moved closer to this world.

Conan Doyle straightened his jacket and brushed ashes from his sleeve, then stepped over the charred corpses of a trio of Corca Duibhne. He closed the heavy oak door behind him and then glanced around the foyer of the brownstone.

He was home.

The Night People came from the parlor, several of them trying to squeeze through the door at once, clambering over one another to get at him like dogs on a fox hunt. Others appeared in the corridor that led to the kitchen, their clothes and faces smeared with blood, one of them holding a chunk of meat in his hand, two bones jutting from its end. Conan Doyle recognized them as the ulna and radius, splintered. It was the lower arm of a human being.

Others appeared on the grand staircase. Two, then a third. A fourth hung from the light fixture above.

There were eleven of twelve of them, all told.

Conan Doyle lifted his chin, nostrils flaring, and stood waiting for them to come. He narrowed his gaze and thought again of war. Not merely the Twilight Wars, but others as well, the conflicts that devastated Europe, that took his brother and his son, that crushed the hearts of so many mothers and fathers and young brides. So much of his early life had been spent in the exercise of his imagination and of his intellect. He respected the mind and the heart, the use of reason. But even then, he had known that there came a time when the basest nature of his enemies would prevail, and the time for reason was over.

"This is my home," he said, biting off each word with grinding teeth. "And I want you out!"

The Corca Duibhne raced at him, their claws scoring the wood floor. Some of them capered like beasts, others swaggered in their leather, modeling themselves after the darker impulses of mankind. Yet they were all nothing more than cruel, stupid animals.

Conan Doyle threw his head back, summoned the magick up inside himself and felt it surge into him as though he had been struck by lightning. A blue mist spilled from his eyes like tears of azure steam. The Corca Duibhne from the parlor were almost upon him. With a twist of his wrist, he laid his hand out toward him, palm upward, and a spell rolled off of his fingers. He barked a phrase in Macedonian, and the floor erupted beneath them. The slats of the wood floor became roots that reached up and twined around their ankles. Shoots split off from the roots and sunk into the Night People's flesh, and their bodies began to change. To harden. Bark formed upon their skin, and they screamed as tiny branches grew out from their flesh, sprouting leaves.

They made ugly trees, those four, rooted there in the foyer.

" Caedo tui frater," Conan Doyle sneered as he turner toward the trio rushing in from the kitchen. He drew a gob of phlegm up from his throat and spat it at them. It hit the ground not far from the nearest of them and a red line snaked from that yellow spittle across the floor, touching the creature's foot.

It turned on the others with obscene savagery, claws raking another Corca Duibhne's face, slashing its eyes, which burst with a splash of acidic fluid that scored the floor. The red lines on the floor touched the other two as well, and soon they were ripping one another apart, fang and claw, shredding flesh and clothing in a widening spatter of their own blood.

The trio on the stairs paused, hesitating now. They were capable of speech, but in battle and in fear, they rarely spoke. Now the rearmost among them took a step backward, and the others noticed and began to retreat as well.

" To haptikos Medusa," Conan Doyle muttered.

He widened his eyes and felt the blue mist that swirled there pour from within him. It furrowed the air and shot toward them, enveloped them, and when it dissipated, they were only statues. Frozen stone.

Only the one hanging from the light fixture remained. He stared up at it with disdain. It clung there, eyes closed, praying he did not see it. Conan Doyle ignored it, starting for the stairs.

On the second floor landing he saw the mad Fey twins, Fenris and Dagris, waiting for him.

Conan Doyle started up toward them.

The twins drew swords from scabbards that hung at their sides, mirror images of one another. Conan Doyle held his palms together in front of him as he walked up the stairs. When he opened them, a shaft of razor-sharp, shimmering blue magick grew from the palm of his right hand. This would be his sword. But he would not need it for long.

Dagris moved first, stepping delicately down the stairs to meet him. Fenris came after, more cautiously. They had some skill with magick, these two, but Conan Doyle was pleased they had not chosen to attack him as sorcerers. It would have taken more time than he wished to waste with them.

"There are those who would argue that madmen cannot be held responsible for their actions," Conan Doyle said as he continued up toward them. "Perhaps. Perhaps."

With a lunatic gleam in his eyes and a sickening smile, Dagris swung his sword. "For Morrigan! For The Nimble Man!"

Conan Doyle parried his attack. Dagris deftly maneuvered his weapon again and again, and each time Conan Doyle turned it away. The azure blade crackled, the air redolent with the scent of cinnamon and other spices, the smell of magick.

Dagris thrust his sword. Conan Doyle knocked it away and slammed the Fey warrior into the banister, knocking him over the rail. He fell to the floor with a crack of bone, and did not move again. Seeing his brother killed, Fenris rushed in, but Conan Doyle was ready. He had choreographed this bit in his mind. Dagris was the madder and more dangerous of the twins. Fenris swept his blade down. Conan Doyle tried to dodge, but was only partly successful. The tip of the sword cut his arm and he felt the sting and the flow of hot blood.

But his own azure blade was buried deep within Fenris's abdomen.

Yet there was no Fey blood spilt. Fenris fell to his knees. His eyes were wide as he stared up at Conan Doyle, and his face lost its mask of lunacy. His features grew younger. His body smaller.

"This is the Sword of Years," Conan Doyle told him. "It is not a weapon, but a spell. It is the magick of second chances. Without the cruelty of your brother, we shall see what becomes of you."

The blade had drawn from Fenris nearly all of the years of his life, and so when Conan Doyle withdrew it from his flesh he was only an infant. The Fey child opened his mouth and wailed, a baby's cry. There was a thin line seared upon his belly where the sword had been, but he was otherwise unharmed.

"We shall see," Doyle repeated.

He carried the infant to the second floor landing and left it there, knowing the Corca Duibhne would catch the scent of the Fey upon it and leave it alone.

And he moved on.

The tea kettle began to whistle. Julia twitched, startled by the noise. For a moment she felt frozen to her seat, as though even the simple act of making tea was beyond her. She gazed across her kitchen table at Squire, who sat with a gallon of chocolate chip ice cream in front of him, eating right from the container with a soup spoon. When he wasn't talking, or following the instructions of his employer, he was eating. It ought to have been repulsive, but there was something oddly charming about it.

From the first moment she had seen him she had avoided looking directly at him, or allowing her eyes to linger. He was ugly. His nose too long and too pointed. His face was long and angular as well, and his mouth was too wide, as though its corners had been slit, so that when he spoke or smiled it seemed his head was about to split in two. His teeth were jagged and yellow. An animal's teeth. His hair was brittle and unkempt.

But his eyes were kind. It had taken her this long to notice that. The little man — she refused to think of him as a goblin or hobgoblin or whatever Danny had said he was — watched her with the gentlest, most expressive eyes. Squire cussed like a sailor and obviously enjoyed his verbal sparring with the others. And yet despite his appearance and despite his cutting wit, there was something tender about him.

"Want me to get that?" he asked, licking the ice cream from his spoon and nodding toward the tea kettle. Its whistle had become a shriek.

"No." She stood up. "No, I'm sorry. I was just… I feel a little numb. Just… preoccupied."

"Can't say I blame you," Squire said.

Julia went to the stove and took the kettle off. The whistle died to a low hiss, like air leaking from a balloon. The kitchen was lit only by the tiny flames that flickered atop a half dozen candles she had set about the room. There were other places in the house that would have been more comfortable, but she felt the safest in the kitchen. How odd was that? She did not want to think about the answer. She only knew that it felt like a refuge. Like sanctuary. Like a place she might be busily toiling when her little boy came home to her.

Her lips pressed together in a tight line and she squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to cry. As she gripped the kettle and began to pour the steaming water into the two cups she had taken from the cabinet for herself and Squire, her hand trembled. She set the kettle down. In her mind she saw the next steps that were necessary. Get the tea bags from the cupboard. Milk from the fridge. Some cookies to go with the tea. Anyone else would have been happy with a gallon of ice cream, but she doubted Squire would say no to the cookies.

She leaned against the stove to keep from collapsing.

"Mrs. Ferrick," Squire said, his voice a harsh rasp in the flickering shadows. This little man… this little monster in her kitchen.

Her shoulders shook.

"Julia."

Slowly, she turned to face him. His eyes were wide and she saw such caring and intelligence there that she immediately regretted having thought of him as a monster, not to mention dozens of other uncharitable thoughts that had crossed her mind.

"He's going to be all right," Squire said, planting his spoon back in the ice cream container. It jutted upward like a flagpole.

Julia stared at him, slowly shook her head. "How… how can you be so sure?"

His gaze was intense. "I'm not sure. But you believe me, don't you?"

Her pulse slowed. She took a deep breath and let it out. A strange peace came over her. Amazed at herself, she began to nod.

"Yes. Yes, I do."

Squire grinned and leaned back in his chair, throwing up his hands. "See that! I've just got one of those faces, y'know! My work here is done."

Julia could not help but laugh. It lasted only a moment, but Squire had lightened her heart, and she was grateful for that. Also, the truth was that she did believe him. He seemed so certain of it. The little man believed with his whole heart that things were going to turn out all right. She knew she had to do the same, that she had to have faith.

Without it, she would never survive the night.

The Black Annis caught Clay by the throat as he was defending himself from the Corca Duibhne. He had one of the Night People in his own hands, its chest crushed, its eyes bulging as it breathed its last. But then the hag appeared, far swifter than he would have expected. She was a thing of legend, one of the dark creatures that prowled the shadows of Faerie. It was no surprise that Morrigan had enlisted her aid, and now the corpses in the basement made more sense. The Black Annis fed on human children. Morrigan had promised her a lifetime's supply.

The hag lifted Clay by the throat, sickening glee in her eyes. She stank like vulture's breath, a fetid carrion stench that billowed off of her with every move. Her claws could carve stone or bone, and she was only one of a family of sisters. Clay hoped there were no others in Morrigan's employ.

One, though… one he could handle.

With a single swipe of her free hand, she tore his stomach open. In the same moment, Clay changed. He shifted. Now the Black Annis saw not a seven foot earthen man, but a mirror image of herself. One of her sisters. Just as hideous, just as rank. The simple creature's eyes went wide and she threw Clay to the ground and knelt by his side, holding her hands over the wound in his gut.

Even as he retained the shape of a Black Annis, he felt his abdomen knitting together, healing. He was not flesh and blood after all. Not really. He could only mimic it.

He was Clay.

With one Black Annis hand, he reached up and grabbed the hag by her filthy, matted hair. He flexed his right hand; claws that could carve stone or bone. With a single swipe, he tore her throat out, all the way back to the spinal column.

Shifting once more to himself, to the face he knew as his own — not the human one who wore so often but the earthen body that had spawned the legend of the golem — he stood to fight the Corca Duibhne. The boggarts were after Graves, now, howling and snarling as they tried to reach the ghost. Only a few Corca Duibhne remained. Clay did not bother to alter his form again. One leaped at him and he drove it down to the concrete floor and crushed its skull with his fist.

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.