The Nimble Man

CHAPTER THREE

A stray cat with fur the color of copper and one white ear trotted along Rue Dauphine, darting out of the paths of tourists strolling the New Orleans streets and sniffing at air redolent with the aromas of the city's famous cuisine. Most people did not even notice the stray. Despite the glitter of its later development, in its heart it was still an old city at heart, home to countless rats, and stray cats were not only inevitable in such an environment, but welcome. An old Cajun man sat on the stoop in front of a barbershop whose window frames were badly in need of a new coat of paint. He called out to the cat as it passed, almost as though the two were old friends. Otherwise the stray went on without interruption.

If anyone had taken enough interest they might have observed that the cat seemed far more single-minded than most of its species. Rather than wandering, lured by tempting smells or idle curiosity, it seemed to have purpose.

Most of the traffic in the French Quarter was on foot. Quickly, though, the stray was moving away from the core of the Quarter, and there were more cars rumbling by and fewer people on the sidewalks. There were children searching for summertime diversions, but none of the street performers who livened up the cobblestones of the Quarter.

Soon the stray left Rue Dauphine and began a winding journey that took it past buildings that had been beautiful once, their balconies and facades elegant and proud. Now they were falling apart, paint faded and cracked, and where there might once have been flower pots upon the balconies or outside of windows there were now cases of empty beer bottles and washing hung out to dry.

On a corner, the cat paused and perched on its haunches, staring first into the air above it at something visible only to its eyes, then across the street at a barroom called Charmaigne's. Only the first half of its neon sign was glowing, and even that was dim in the sunlight. A pair of police cars were parked askew in front of the place and across the street was a third car, this one with no police markings but with a blue light spinning behind the rear windshield.

No spectators had gathered on the sidewalk outside the barroom. It wasn't that kind of neighborhood.

The cat stared for a long minute at the grimy plate glass windows of Charmaigne's. The barroom door was propped open with a cinderblock but with the sunshine so bright it was only darkness inside. At length the stray set of across the street. It paused beside one of the New Orleans P.D. squad cars, then slipped beneath the vehicle. The cars had been there long enough that the engine was not even warm above the stray.

With a practiced, feline nonchalance, the cat went up onto the sidewalk and slipped into the steamy, fan-swirled gloom inside Charmaigne's. Two uniformed police officers stood just inside the door on either side, as though they were concerned someone might try to escape the stale beer and bad cigar stink of the place. A third officer stood in the center of the barroom with a man in a white shirt with rolled-up cuffs and a loosened black tie. His hair had been cut with a military severity and he wore a gun on one hip, a badge clipped to the other.

At their feet was the corpse of a boy, perhaps fifteen years of age, who lay on his belly in a pool of his own blood. His face was sideways, one cheek on the floor in the coagulating crimson, the other turned upward, the diffuse sunlight in the darkened barroom creating an otherworldly sheen upon his ebony skin. He was not the only corpse in Charmaigne's. Behind the bar there was a second dead man, a wiry former fighter named Calvin Traviligni, known to most as Trav. Trav had tended bar at Charmaigne's for seventeen years and had taken a bullet to the face, crashed into a rack of bottles and died in a puddle of broken glass and a potpourri of spilled whiskey, vodka, rum and gin. No liqeuers. Nobody in this part of town drank that shit.

At the back of the room a fourth uniformed officer sat with a young black girl who wore too much make up. Old before her time, Jaalisa had been on her way home after a long night on the only job she'd ever known, a job her father had first given her, and heard the shots. Saw a car tearing off down the street. She insisted to the officer that she had seen nothing more.

The stray took all of this in immediately and it darted across the room and slide along the base of the bar beneath the lazily whirling fans. The beer and cigar smells were ingrained in the wood, but the new scent of fresh blood hung in the air like a fresh coat of hell's own paint. The cat was skittish at the smell of blood but did not let its instincts turn it away. The plainclothes cop, a detective, noticed it, and the cat noticed him noticing, but they ignored one another.

At the back of the bar the cat went to a corner booth that was draped in shadows, not far at all from where Jaalisa was being interviewed, squeezed for some vital detail that might make this crime more than a statistic. The stray leaped up onto the bench of that booth and sat down.

And then it changed.

The only sound was a low rush of air, like a man inhaling suddenly. Flesh rippled and bone stretched with impossibly fluidity. Where the cat had been, Clay Smith now sat staring at Sergeant John Brodsky, the uniformed cop who had called him down here in the first place.

Deja vu. Clay had first been in Charmaigne's forty-seven minutes earlier. He and Brodsky had a passing acquaintance based almost entirely upon Clay's reputation. He wasn't a private investigator, but for a wealthy resident of the Quarter he had found himself in the midst of enough murder investigations in recent years — and was invaluable in solving nearly all of them — that some of the members of the N.O.P.D. had come to rely upon him. Other cops, however, detectives in particular, despised him.

Clay didn't mind. It was never about being liked.

A call on his mobile phone from Brodsky had brought him to Charmaigne's before the department had sent a homicide detective down. That was better for everyone, politics-wise. He had talked to Brodsky, heard about Jaalisa's 911 call, the deaths of Trav and the kid on the floor, and nodded once.

Then he had gone to work.

Someone had gunned the kid in the doorway while Trav was getting the place cleaned up for business. The bartender always came in early to wash the floor, wipe down the tables, all the things that nobody wanted to do when they were closing up at 3 a.m. The kid — whom no one had identified yet — had obviously run in through the door and then been shot in the back. Trav had been a witness, and witnesses have a very short life expectancy.

Clay had examined both bodies without touching them. He had made a show of considering the crime scene. But that was just for the sake of the cops who were watching him, trying to figure out how he did it.

They couldn't see the tether.

The souls of murder victims never passed on to the afterworld immediately. Always, they clung to their victims for a time, crying out for vengeance, perhaps hoping someone will hear their anguish. If Clay reached the victim within the first few hours after their murder he could still see the tether, an ethereal trail of ectoplasm that stretched from the hollow shell that had been the victim's flesh all the way to the current location of the soul.

The soul that was attached like a lamprey to its killer.

Clay had followed the tether out the door of Charmaigne's and then on a twisting path through the French Quarter. Eventually, it had led him back here.

The voices of the policemen and the tired, hard-edged words of the prostitute seemed like church whispers as they drifted through the bar. Clay slid from the rear booth and stood up, black shoes scuffing the floor. He wore tan chinos and a simple, v-necked navy blue t-shirt and his hair was freshly cut. In this neighborhood he would have stood out, been noticed by everyone he passed. But nobody had noticed a stray cat with copper fur and one white ear.

Clay started toward the front of the bar.

Sergeant Brodsky looked up sharply from questioning Jaalisa, notepad and pen in his hands, and he frowned deeply, then stood up and moved to block Clay's path.

"I didn't even see you come in," Brodsky said.

The man had a round little keg of a beer gut and his slumped even when standing, but his eyes were bright and intelligent. He only looked the part of the fool. Even now there was something in his voice that suggested that he knew there was something unusual, even unnatural, about Clay Smith, but he would say no more about it.

"You weren't supposed to," Clay told him with a smile.

Brodsky processed that a moment, eyes narrowing. Then he nodded. "You find anything?"?"Yes. Your perp."

Closer to the front door, the plainclothes detective cleared his throat. "Sergeant, what the hell is this?" He strode toward them, shoes rapping the pitted wood floor. "Where the hell did this guy come from?"

The detective was pale, with dark circles beneath his eyes. He had probably not been drinking yet today, but the stale smell of alcohol exuded from his pores. There were sweat rings forming under his arms and the white shirt looked rumpled as though he might have slept in it.

"Lieutenant Pete Landry, meet Clay Smith," Brodsky said. "He's here to help."

The Lieutenant's nostrils flared and he stared at Clay. "You're him."

"Yes."

"He's got a lead on the perp," Brodsky offered, making a game attempt to defuse the tension.

"Oh, he does, huh?" The Lieutenant rolled his eyes and reached into his shirt pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes. He tapped one out, dragging the moment, and fished into his pants for a lighter. When he snapped it open and set fire to the end of the cigarette, he gazed at Clay through the flame, then clicked the lighter shut.

"So, give, genius. Who killed Travaligni and the kid?"

Clay did not smile. Instead, he stared at the wretched, silently screaming ghosts that clung to Pete Landry, tearing at him with insubstantial fingers. Trav the bartender was there. And the kid. But there were others as well. An attractive, middle-aged woman, a thug with cruel eyes, an old man whose spectral body seemed contorted somehow.

"Come on, Lieutenant," Clay said. "You did. You killed them."

The hand holding the cigarette to Landry's lips shook and dropped away from his mouth.

"Christ, Clay!" Brodsky snapped. "What the hell are you — "

"The kid had something on you, saw you do something else you shouldn't have been doing. Or maybe he was a runner for you. What are you supplying on this block, Pete? Crack? Heroin? He pissed you off, this kid. And the fool bartender, he should've slept in, just this once, but his work ethic wouldn't let him."

The other uniformed officers had begun to slide toward them now, drawn by the words and by the way the air in the bar had grown suddenly heavier.

The Lieutenant hesitated only another moment, then put the cigarette to his lips again and took a long drag as his colleagues watched him in confusion and doubt. He let a plume of smoke out the side of his mouth and then glanced around at the uniforms.

"Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Come in here, making accusations like that."

Clay glanced at Brodsky again. "I doubt he used his police issue. But I also figure he's arrogant enough not to have dumped the gun he did use. Check under the seats of his car, maybe the trunk, I think you'll find it. I also think if you check his hands you'll find residue."

Lieutenant Landry snorted and shook his head, tendrils of smoke rising up to the fan spinning above them. "You got some balls, you. But you watch too many movies."

Brodsky wasn't gaping anymore. The look on his face had gone from incredulous to darkly inquisitive.

"Then you won't mind if Gage and Caleb over there take a look in your car, right Lieutenant?" the Sergeant asked.

The man laughed. "Damn, boys, y'all can do whatever you want." He nodded toward the two uniforms in question, gestured toward the door. "Go on, boys. Have yourselves a time."

They hesitated only a moment, then glanced at Brodsky, who nodded once. Then the two cops went out the door at a run.

"Jaalisa," Brodsky said, "you want to take a look out the door at the car across the street?"

The prostitute did not seem at all tired anymore. Her eyes were wide and her chest rose and fell as though she were breathing for two. She stared at Pete Landry for a long moment and he took a long drag on his cigarette, its tip burning red in the darkened bar. Jaalisa shook her head.

"No, sir. I don't think I do."

The Lieutenant cleared his throat again, drawing Brodsky's attention. Clay watched as he took a step nearer the sergeant.

"Things ain't never gonna be the same for you after this, Johnny," Landry said, the words a grim promise. "Not ever. And this asshole's not going to find the Quarter real hospitable either. You embarrass me like this? Make a fool out of me? You're the damn fool."

Brodsky's partner, the only other cop still in the bar, had moved toward the door to watch Caleb and Gage. When he spoke it was so low as to be barely audible, and yet the words resounded through the bar.

"Son of a bitch, John. You might want to look at this."

The moment Brodsky glanced over at him, the Lieutenant snapped the strap off of his gun and slid it out of the holster with swiftness borne of years of practice. He brought it up, taking aim at Brodsky's temple. The sergeant was the nearest armed man. It only made sense that Landry would take him down first, Clay second, the cop at the door third. The hooker likely didn't even enter into his homicidal logic.

Clay moved with stunning speed, putting himself between Brodsky and that gun. The Lieutenant fired, the report echoing through Charmaigne's. The bullet tore through Clay's chest and lodged in his vertebrae, trapped there. He winced at the pain but already he was changing again. This time, however, there was no cat. Not even the human face of the man the people of New Orleans knew as Clay Smith. He could have taken the face of any man in the bar just by touching one of them.

Instead, he showed Lieutenant Pete Landry his own face. His real face. His clothes were gone, save for a scarlet ceremonial drape around his waist that hung nearly to his knees. Clay towered over Landry, nearly nine feet tall and as broad as two men across the chest. His red-brown flesh, from hairless scalp to bare feet, was damp and soft and run through with cracks.

"Go on, asshole," Clay rumbled, "shoot me again."

Wide-eyed and hyperventilating, the asshole did.

Clay ripped the gun out of his hand, breaking three fingers, and grabbed Landry by the throat, trying his best to avoid meeting the grateful gaze of the murderer's ghosts. He did it for them, but he could not withstand the sadness in those eyes.

He squeezed the Lieutenant by the throat until the man's eyes rolled up to white.

"Step away from him," Brodsky demanded.

Clay glanced over, saw that the sergeant had drawn his own weapon. He let Landry drop, gasping, to the floor and looked down at Brodsky. He smiled, and he knew it was a grotesque smile.

"John, my friend, you want to know how I track killers? I'll tell you over a beer some time. If you want other answers about me…" Clay paused and took a long, calming breath, staring into Brodsky's eyes. "Trust me when I tell you, you're not alone."

With that small, gasping noise he changed again, from towering clay figure to copper-furred cat. Brodsky shouted after him. The uniforms were all cursing, wondering what the hell was going on. Caleb and Gage had just stepped back inside with a small pistol in an evidence bag. One of them stooped and tried to stop the stray as it ran out the door, but he was too slow, too clumsy.

The cat darted into an alley, past a Dumpster, then along other streets until it came once again to Rue Dauphine. As it passed beneath the shading branches of a tree that grew up from the sidewalk, the cat disappeared and was replaced by Clay Smith once more. He had no bullet wound. Not even a tear in his crisply clean navy blue T-shirt.

He cut through to Bourbon Street and fell in amidst the swirl of tourists, the loud shouts of hucksters, the jazz band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" on the corner. Clay hated Bourbon Street, hated the cheap, carnival atmosphere of it, but he had walked that street at least once every day since he had come to live here. It was alive and vibrant and filled with color and at least for a handful of minutes it could make him forget the things he could not remember.

As he passed by a restaurant that was serving breakfast he heard people hushing one another inside. There was something urgent about their manner and so he ducked his head into the restaurant and saw that everyone waiting for tables had stopped to watch the newscaster on the television above the bar.

The visual cut away to a scene of the New York skyline.

Blood was raining from the sky.

Though the subway tunnel was abandoned, the roar of nearby trains thundered throughout the underground. The air was dry and chalky and there on a platform unused for decades, Doyle felt the shimmer of magic, as though their every breath disrupted cobwebs of time. This was a sensation he had felt recently, in the foyer of the brownstone where Yvette Darnall and her fellow mediums had died to keep Sweetblood's secret. This place had been frozen in time, had been hidden away from untrained eyes.

Until now.

"Doyle! Why don't you get what we came for?" Eve snapped.

His gray brows knitted together as he turned to glare at her. Her jacket was torn: the demon's claws had ripped through suede and cotton at her shoulder and blood was seeping into the fabric. The thing towered above her on the platform, its footfalls cracking the tile floor with every step. Even as Doyle glanced at Eve, the thing Sweetblood had set here to guard his hiding place bent once more and lunged for her. Distracted in that moment by her ire at Doyle, Eve could not avoid its ridiculously long arms and the demon snatched her by the throat, one of the sharp protrusions on its arm cutting a gash in her face that flayed her cheek to the bone.

She snarled in pain, latched onto its wrist with both hands, swung her legs up and braced them against its body, and then used that leverage to break its arm. The grinding snap of bone echoed across the platform. Eve dropped to the tile and rolled away from the guardian, then turned to glare at him.

"What the fuck are you just standing there for?"

Doyle smoothed his coat. His own wardrobe had thus far suffered only the veil of dust that hung in the air and covered every surface.

"Merely wondering if you might be bleeding less if you concentrated on what you were doing rather than policing my own actions."

He raised an eyebrow as the demon raced at her again, roaring, cradling its shattered arm. Then he turned away, leaving her to the battle. Eve's face would heal, as it always had. All of her wounds would disappear. That was the gift and curse of her immortality. In comparison, his own extended life was merely a parlor trick.

Since the moment they had left Yvette Darnall's brownstone he had been trying to sense the power of Sweetblood. When they had entered Grand Central Station he had known they were on the right track. Had anyone but Sweetblood cast the glamour that hid the guardian's true nature, Doyle would have seen right through it. Not that it mattered now. The trail had led him here, to this platform, to the door that now stood before him.

Or perhaps not.

Though to Eve it seemed he was merely standing there, Doyle was searching for the emanations of the magic Lorenzo Sanguedolce had used to hide himself away. At first it had seemed to lead through that door, but now he frowned deeply, knitting those eyebrows once again, and turned to focus upon the tiled wall to his right. A tremor went through him and he felt something tug him, as though he were a fish who had just taken the bait. Quickly he strode across the platform.

Eve hissed loudly and Doyle glanced over to see her on the demon's back, her legs wrapped around it from behind. Its protective spines stabbed into her but she held on tightly as she tried to reach around to claw out its eyes. For just a flicker of a moment her gaze caught his but he ignored the continued accusation in her eyes as he approached the far wall.

Doyle felt his skin prickle and the hair rise on the back of his neck. His stomach clenched and he was forced to pause a moment to avoid spraying vomit all over the floor. With a flourish he crossed his wrists and then spread his arms in front of him and some of the magical seepage that had infected the air around him dispersed. Sweetblood did not want any visitors. It was too late for that.

"You must not disturb the mage!" the demon bellowed in its hellish, grinding voice.

Doyle whipped around to see it lunging for him, but in that same instant Eve plunged two long talons into its right eye. The sound was sickening and a spray of viscous gray fluid spurted across the cracked tiles.

"You're missing the point, Fido. Someone's gonna wake the old bastard up. Better us than the alternative," Eve snarled.

The demon shrieked and tried to reach for her, then threw itself backward, crushing her between its own body and the floor, impaling her on those terrible spines. Eve screamed.

Doyle ignored her.

He reached out toward the tiled wall. His fingers traced lines in the decades of dust and grime that had accumulated there. Despite Sweetblood's magic, this place had not been entirely untouched by time; not like the brownstone. Doyle thought this was all part of the ruse, part of the cover, in case another sorcerer should have gotten this far. He saw through the glamour as others might have, but he was skilled enough also to see past the diversion.

With a glance over his shoulder he saw that Eve was choking the guardian, though her own blood pooled on the subway platform. He saw the door that he had been about to enter and wondered what lay beyond it, what peril Sweetblood might have placed there to dispatch seekers who came too close to discovering his location.

With a blink of his eyes and a flick of his wrist, Doyle cast a spell that shattered the tiles on the wall. They showered down in fragments, revealing a stone wall behind them that he doubted had been part of the original plans for this location. A tiny smile passed over Doyle's features and he laid his palm upon the stone.

"Lorenzo," he whispered. "Can you hear me? Some choices are not yours to make. Your power can't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands." Doyle closed his eyes and summoned magic from a well of power he had accumulated within him over the years. Images like shards of broken mirror glass tumbled through his mind, of family dead and friends left behind, of grief and the wonder of discovery, of a man he once had been, and the trifle his meager efforts at entertainment seemed to him now.

This work, laboring in the shadows between the darkness and the light, was what mattered.

" Tempus accelerare," Doyle whispered, and his fingers went rigid as power surged up his arm. It ached to the marrow and he gritted his teeth. Friction heated the palm of his hand where it lay against the stone wall.

And the stone crumbled away to nothing in front of him.

There was an alcove behind it, a space in the wall perhaps ten feet high and equally broad. Within that recess was a block of amber, like a massive slab of rock candy. It was honey-gold with hints of red, and through it, Doyle could see a distorted view of the man encased within. Sweetblood's eyes were closed, his expression peaceful, as though he lay in a casket rather than frozen in a trap of his own creation. Though dulled by whatever substance encased him, Sweetblood's magic crackled like electricity in the air within that recessed chamber.

"Time to wake up, now, Lorenzo," Doyle whispered. "No matter how reluctant you may be."

The ground shook beneath his feet. He heard the sounds of Eve and the guardian in combat, the snorting, rasping of their breathing. He smelled Eve's blood and the fetid ichor of the demon. Trains rumbled elsewhere along the New York subway system, their growling echoing in the tunnels. But Doyle had stopped registering any of these things as he stared through that amber slab at the features of his former mentor, the man for whom he had searched for decades. A mage with enough power to scar the face of the world.

It was only when Eve screamed his name that Doyle realized something had gone terribly wrong. On instinct, he manifested a magical energy charge from his fingers as he spun around to see what had alarmed her. Even as he did so, they were already leaping up onto the subway platform.

Corca Duibhne. The Night People.

They were lean creatures with taut, ropy musculature and skin the color of rust, shaped like humans but no larger than a girl in her early teens. The Corca Duibhne were stealthy and swift, able to merge with shadows and creep along seemingly sheer walls. All of them, male and female, had black and spiky hair and eyes so oily-dark that they seemed nothing but pits of shadow in their heads. They had been called The Night People in a time when the only stories about them were told in a fearful huddle around the village fire. Yet now they had adapted to the modern world. They wore human clothing and sported bits of silver in their ears and noses where ordinary people might have piercings.

But the Corca Duibhne were not ordinary. They were not human.

Doyle began to shout for Eve but his voice faltered as he saw the Night People overrun her and the demon guardian Sweetblood had chosen to protect his hiding place. Both had been weakened by their combat. The guardian had a shattered arm and had been blinded in one eye. Eve was bleeding from multiple wounds, her clothes sodden with sticky scarlet, and the Corca Duibhne were strong and fast and far too many. She was ferocious and nearly impossible to kill, but Eve would not be of any help to him at the moment.

"Damn you, Lorenzo," Doyle muttered. "This is your fault."

The Night People lunged for him, first three, then seven swarming over Eve and the guardian to rush at Doyle. But he knew they weren't really racing at him. Their goal was behind him. Doyle placed himself in their path and he could feel the hole in the wall behind him, the magic that pulsed from the amber slab in which Sweetblood was encased. The Corca Duibhne gnashed their jaws, baring teeth that were jagged and cruel, and their oily eyes focused on him.

"Don't be an idiot," snarled the one in the front, its voice low and insinuating.

Doyle had waited long enough. He raised both hands, palms outward, and azure light flashed from his fingers throwing blue shadows on the high walls and a cerulean glow out into the tunnel. A wave of magic traveled with this light and the force of it slammed into the Corca Duibhne, cracking bone and ripping flesh, throwing the nearest of them sprawling across the floor in a tangled heap. But there were too many of them still swarming up from the subway tunnel.

The guardian demon was dead. Doyle saw one of the Night People greedily dragging its head away from the others as a keepsake. Eve fought alone, but she was not quite so buried as she had been in those rust-colored bodies. Her talons flashed and throats were torn and skulls crushed.

Still, there were too many.

Doyle inhaled deeply and rose to his full height, glaring down at the creatures that began to gather in a hesitant circle. They were wary of him now and he tried to adopt his most imposing air. Sparks still danced from his hands and his vision was tinted with blue as some of the magic contained within him leaked out his eyes. He focused his will and sensed the power of Sweetblood emanating from the amber slab behind him. I can feel it, Doyle thought. Perhaps I can siphon some of it.

He clawed the air in front of him, leaving shimmering streaks of light hanging there. The Night People hesitated once more, but only for a moment before they began slowly edging toward him again, closing in.

"Corca Duibhne. You have no idea who you're dealing with," he thundered, voice booming across the platform, echoing off the walls. "I am the only student Lorenzo Sanguedolce ever taught."

One of them, a female whose form was almost elegant in comparison to the others, shuffled several cautious inches nearer. Doyle tried to count them. There were dozens.

"We're not here for the student, but the master," she said, upper lip curling back, nostrils flaring.

Doyle raised his hands again, quivering as he began to draw on the magical energies within and around him. "You'll have neither!"

But even as he summoned the power to attack again he heard a click-clack from far above him. Doyle glanced upward in alarm, but too late. Corca Duibhne had skittered up the walls and along the ceiling and now they leaped down at him, limbs flailing so that he could not judge their number.

He released a wave of destructive magic from his hands and it burst upward, destroying those shadow-crawlers who had thought to surprise him. But the distraction was enough. The others on the platform leaped at him, talons tearing his clothing and his skin, preternaturally strong arms driving him down to the platform so that he struck the back of his head on the tile. For a moment he was disoriented and in that moment one of them pounced upon him. Its fetid breath was in his nostrils and its mouth gaped wide, jagged teeth dropping toward his throat.

" Ferratus," Doyle muttered.

The sound that filled his ears was a keening, static buzz, a nighttime field full of crickets, but it accompanied a crimson glow that enveloped his entire body. The creature attempting to tear at his throat was burned where it touched him. All of them were. And yet the Night People did not stop. Doyle was protected within the magical shield he had woven around himself but they continued to attack him, those behind forcing the others to pile onto him, though it burned their flesh. The Corca Duibhne attacking him began to scream and though his magic protected him from harm, it did not keep out the acrid stench of their burning flesh.

Doyle slowly focused his will, steadying himself, healing the gashes he had received. He caught a glimpse past his attackers and saw that Eve was up on her feet now, hair and eyes as wild as he had ever seen her, covered not in her own blood but in that of her enemies. She was snarling, having sloughed off any pretense at humanity, and when one of the Night People came near enough she tore its head from its shoulders.

Then the melee of ancient horrors attempting to kill him shifted and he could see her no more.

"That is enough!" Doyle shouted.

The burst of magic that erupted from him then incinerated all of the Corca Duibhne that had surrounded him. Shaken and weak, he staggered to his feet amidst a shower of rusty ash that had once been the flesh of the Night People. For just a moment he looked to Eve, but she was already regaining some of her composure. The handful of Corca Duibhne who remained was fleeing back into the shadows of the tunnels, slipping along the walls with impossible speed. Eve looked in disgust at her ruined clothes.

Doyle shivered as he saw the last of the Night People creep away across the ceiling of the subway tunnel. But it was not this sight that caused him to shiver. Rather, it was the absence of the tremor in the air he had felt before, the electric presence of the barely contained power of Sweetblood the Mage.

Even before he turned, Doyle knew what he would find.

The recess in the wall where the amber encasement had been was now empty. In the handful of moments in which he and Eve had both been overcome, the Night People had made off with the inert form of the most powerful sorcerer in the history of the world.

Outside the rain of toads had become a bloody drizzle.