Ceridwen frowns. There is no fever. Somehow she knows this.
“I was not speaking of your charms, Lady, significant as they are,” the dark man says, gesturing toward her bare breasts. “I refer to your endurance. I always admired you, Ceridwen. Now I see my interest was well placed.”
“Who are you?” she manages to rasp.
The water in the stone bath is no longer cold. It seems, in fact, near to boiling.
“Don’t you know?” His smile is thin, a surface thing, so fleeting, hurried away by the grimness of his nature.
And she does know. “Sanguedolce. Sweetblood.”
He executes a courtly bow. “Indeed.” The twinkle in his eye lasts only a moment. “The damage is done, now. The evil, the darkness . . . it will come no matter what you do. I should let you all die for your part in this foolishness. But there may come a time when I need you. So a word of advice, sorceress.
“You are a channel, a conduit. She’s using you to tap my power. Your pain is that you are fighting it. Stop fighting. Take some for yourself.”
Sanguedolce crouches at her side. He bends to kiss her. His lips are soft, but hers are dry and cracked and they burn.
Not with fever, but magick.
“Wake up,” he whispers.
Ceridwen woke hissing air in through her teeth, filling her lungs hungrily, and a part of her knew that she had momentarily ceased to breathe. Her eyes opened wide and though the light inside Conan Doyle’s defunct ballroom was brilliant, she did not turn from it. Her teeth gritted, the pain in her back and neck and down her legs excruciating. Blisters burst as she moved. Shards of the chrysalis beneath her cut her skin.
It was striped with cracks, fissures through which the mage’s magick spilled. Morrigan’s ritual had locked the two together, married Ceridwen’s flesh to Sanguedolce’s crystal sarcophagus. The agony had blinded her, shut down her mind. But now there was the pinpoint spark of knowledge in Ceridwen’s head. She could feel more than pain. In the magick that seared her, that burst from her flesh and raced through her veins, she could feel power.
She could taste it.
Like bile, it rose in her throat again. Previously she had let her jaws gape and vomited up that power, that magick.
This time she clamped her mouth shut with a clack of teeth. Her lips curled back and she sneered. The magick surged up within her.
But Ceridwen did not let it go. She caught it. Take some for yourself, Sanguedolce had said in her fever dream. And so she did.
The face of her mother was clear in her mind. The sound of the river that rushed down from the mountain citadel of her uncle, King Finvarra, in the heart of Faerie, was in her ears. She brought both memories into her heart. Words in the ancient tongue of the Kings of Faerie formed silently upon her lips and her pain receded. Her flesh healed. The magick of Sweetblood the Mage spilled into her, just as it had before. But Ceridwen was no longer the conduit.
She was the vessel.
With a sneer, she broke her bonds and sprang up from the chrysalis. It popped with the sound of ice breaking on the lake in springtime, and the fissures deepened and widened. She could see Sanguedolce’s face deep within the amber encasement. His eyes were still, and yet she was sure he was watching her.
Tensed to defend herself, she found that Morrigan had not even noticed her. The cunning bitch was on her knees in front of a shimmering portal, a slit in reality. Even as Ceridwen took it all in, realizing what it was, she saw a tall, lithe silhouette reach the dimensional doorway from the other side. Cloaked in clouds of gray, it put one foot through, into this world.
The Nimble Man, Ceridwen thought, her heart racing with panic, her mind whispering the doom of all creation. But she would not have it. With Sweetblood’s power coursing through her, she held out a hand and in an instant, a sphere of ice coalesced in her palm. A finger pointed at the floor, she summoned the spirits of the wood, and in the space between heartbeats a new staff grew up and into her free hand. Its tip spread into fingers to receive the ice sphere, she set it into place and blue-white mist began to swirl around the orb. Then a tiny spark ignited within, becoming an ember, becoming a flame. It started to glow.
Morrigan had taken or destroyed her elemental staff. Ceridwen had created another.
As the elemental magick pulsed from the staff, Morrigan seemed to sense it. She twitched, obviously reluctant to turn away from the spectacle of The Nimble Man’s arrival. Then she did turn, and Ceridwen was pleased to see the look of fury and wretched hatred on her aunt’s face.
“Your brother, my uncle, always underestimated you, Morrigan,” Ceridwen said, her words clipped, her magick steaming from her every pore, spilling off of her just as Sweetblood’s had from the chrysalis. “But you, aunt, always underestimated me.”
Morrigan laughed. “Perhaps. Perhaps, Ceridwen. But no matter. The time has passed for your presence to be of consequence.” She smiled and for the first time Ceridwen understood the full extent of her madness. “The Nimble Man is here.”
Ceridwen had been about to attack, to destroy Morrigan and attempt to disrupt the flow of magick from the chrysalis to the doorway. But Morrigan was correct. It was too late.
The Nimble Man had come.
Ceridwen had never seen a being more beautiful, nor anything more terrible. His skin was golden and smooth as glass, but shot through with scarlet traces as though his body was tainted. Infected. His form was flawless, and yet unsettling. His hands were too long, and tipped with curling claws. Jutting from his back were the tattered remnants of black-feathered wings, only strips of muscle and cartilage now. They had been torn from him, and as he stepped into the ballroom, into the world, three black feathers fell from the vestiges of his wings and drifted to the floor.
His hair was as black as those feathers, and fell around his shoulders, and his face was breathtaking. Simply stunning. Angelic, of course.
Until he noticed Ceridwen. Then his lips parted and he smiled, revealing hooked black fangs and a mass of coiling serpentine stingers where his tongue should have been.
The Nimble Man did not speak to her. Instead, he simply hissed.
Morrigan stood and clung to him and he gazed at her with inhuman, slitted eyes and caressed her.
All the strength Ceridwen had felt restored to her now seemed to slip away.
“Well, it appears I’m just in time for the festivities to begin.”
Ceridwen’s heart leaped at the familiar voice and she glanced over her shoulder to see Conan Doyle stride into the ballroom, long coat unwrinkled, every hair in place, as gallant as ever. Tendrils of magickal energy streamed from his eyes and his fingers and he paused, ten feet inside the door, prepared to fight.
A moment later, one of the windows on the far wall shattered and Eve leaped into the room, landing in a crouch. Behind her, outlined within the window frame, was a wiry, powerful-looking demon hybrid that must have been Danny Ferrick. The air beside Ceridwen shimmered and the ghost of Dr. Graves formed itself from nothing. One of the mirrored walls exploded inward, and in the dust rising from the rubble, she saw the massive form of Clay.
The Menagerie had arrived.
“Yes, come!” Morrigan cried, turning to face them as she rose to her feet. “You have all saved me the trouble of finding you.”
Her face was filled with rapture. Behind her the Nimble Man stretched as if waking from a heavy sleep. His ravaged wings caressed the open edges of the dimensional doorway behind him. He surveyed the room, the individuals arrayed there, and he smiled. But when his gaze touched upon Sweetblood’s chrysalis—shot through with cracks from which magick issued in radiant waves—he flinched.
“Now, my friends, keep him still!” Conan Doyle shouted, pointing at the Nimble Man.
They reacted immediately. Eve leaped at the Nimble Man, more feral than Ceridwen had ever seen her, fangs and claws extended. She landed upon him, clung to his back, and raked her talons across his throat, barely scratching his flesh. Clay was upon him in alm
ost the same instant, but in between one step and the next, he made a transformation that was breathtaking. His arid, fissured flesh shifted, smoothed itself, and began to glow. Wings sprouted from his back, but his were perfect, with feathers of pure white. His skin was alabaster, and his face glowed with such warm light that it was difficult to look at, and yet almost impossible to look away from.
An angel, Ceridwen thought. Arthur had told her about such things. This is what an angel looks like.
The ghost of Dr. Graves flitted across the room, taking up a defensive position at the door. Most of the Corca Duibhne were likely destroyed or had fled in terror, but this had obviously been Conan Doyle’s preventive measure, in case any of them should muster the courage to return.
Morrigan uttered a mad little laugh. “Are you all that stupid? Or has Conan Doyle mesmerized you? Are you really that anxious to die? Why don’t you run?”
“Run from you?” Ceridwen asked. “I think not.”
With both hands she held her elemental staff before her. With a single, guttural sound she called a frigid wind that churned across the space separating her from her aunt. Ice formed in Morrigan’s hair and over her eyes and for just a moment she stiffened. Ceridwen still felt some of the power of Sweetblood inside her. It did not give her power she had never had, but it amplified her own magick tenfold. With a grunt she banged the base of the staff on the floor and sketched the air with her forefinger.
Lightning crackled from the ballroom ceiling and struck Morrigan. The Fey witch trembled as it raced through her and then she fell to her knees again, but this time it was in pain rather than supplication. She raised her hand to retaliate, but quickly spun to her left and barely succeeded in throwing up a ward before Conan Doyle’s spell struck her. It dissipated harmlessly, but she was off balance.
“I’ll leave the family squabble to you, shall I?” he called across the ballroom.
Ceridwen nodded grimly and advanced upon her aunt, blue-white mist spilling from the sphere atop her staff.
Conan Doyle left Ceridwen to deal with her aunt. Even as he passed them, Morrigan was struck by a spell that seared the air between the two Fey sorceresses, and she stumbled backward. So much of her power had been used to summon The Nimble Man, Conan Doyle hoped that it would give Ceridwen the edge.
The Nimble Man as also not at his full strength. The process of being born into this world, of escaping the pull of his limbo prison, had drained him. Conan Doyle had no idea how long it would take for the damned one to recover, but while he was weakened, there was a chance the Menagerie could stop him. If he was given a moment’s respite, time enough to muster his strength anew, the world would pay the price.
Clay and Eve grappled with the Nimble Man. Despite his sluggishness, he seemed almost amused at their attack. A low, chuffing laughter came from deep within his chest as he struggled against them, but his lips peeled back and that mass of serpentine things in his mouth danced and writhed there, and Conan Doyle thought that his patience had worn thin.
Some of his strength returning, The Nimble Man began to grow. With a sound like a field full of crickets, the damned one stretched, sprouting in seconds to a height of nine feet, then twelve, with no sign of stopping.
No, Conan Doyle thought. I need more time. Just a few moments. It was up to his comrades to buy him that time.
“What the fuck is this?” Eve snarled, trying to hold on to her prey. As if she thought she might shrink him again, she opened her mouth, jaws distending, and tore at The Nimble Man’s throat. She slashed her talons down and tore at one of The Nimble Man’s vestigial wings, and for the first time, he cried out in pain.
Clay was at him as well, but The Nimble Man knocked the shapeshifter away and then, as if she were no more than a bothersome mosquito, reached up and snatched Eve from her perch upon his back and shoulders. He held her out in front of him by her arms, gazing at her as though she were some child’s play thing. Eve struggled but to no avail.
“Keep growing, asshole. You’re just a bigger target. You don’t know who the hell you’re dealing with he—”
The Nimble Man snapped both of her arms, the echo of cracking bone ricocheting around the room. Eve’s words were cut off by her own scream. Then the damned creature held her by her head as she hung limply in his grasp, and reached up to run one long claw across her throat. Blood spilled from the gash like a scarlet curtain down her chest. The Nimble Man threw her across the room.
Eve collided with the splintered chrysalis, its magick cascading now throughout the room and across the floor. The collision cracked it open further, so that in several places it had fallen apart completely. Sweetblood’s legs jutted out from the base of the thing. Eve lay in a tumble of broken limbs like some forgotten marionette.
“No!” Danny Ferrick screamed, as he raced at the gigantic Nimble Man.
Clay had recovered. Retaining his gleaming angelic form he darted at The Nimble Man, arriving before Danny. Clay placed one long-fingered, angelic hand over The Nimble Man’s face, and divine light seared his golden flesh. Conan Doyle could have helped them, but only if he had been willing to sacrifice the world. Instead—with the sounds of the combat between Morrigan and Ceridwen behind him—he rushed toward the shattered chrysalis and turned to face The Nimble Man, and the dimensional doorway that had been slit through the fabric of the universe. He could feel Sweetblood’s power coalescing around him. It caressed him as though it were a breeze that blew only for him.
The Nimble Man clutched Clay by the throat and tore one of his angel wings off, flesh and bone and cartilage ripping. Clay roared in agony and even as he did he began to change again, now a white tiger with black stripes slashing its fur. The Nimble Man crushed his jaws in one massive hand, and then slammed Clay into the floor with enough force to crack the woodwork. The shapeshifter returned to his arid, earthen form and did not move again.
In the strobing light from the magick erupting from the cracks on the chrysalis, Conan Doyle watched Danny Ferrick attack. When he saw the demon boy, the Nimble Man paused, a troubled expression on his face.
“You are horrors,” he said, in a voice wet with the moisture of the things writhing in his mouth. Though he was growing, and beginning to recover from his transition to this world, he staggered slightly, unsteady on his feet. “Why would you fight my coming?”
“Why?” Danny shouted, snarling the word. “’Cause this is our world! It’s got its problems, but it’s home. And you don’t belong here!”
Danny leaped up at The Nimble Man, driving his small demon horns into the damned creature’s abdomen. Once more The Nimble Man cried out. He glared down at the boy, opened his black-fanged jaws, and the mass of squirming serpent-things that filled his mouth spiked out, stretching to impossible length, and punctured Danny’s chest, punching out through the demon-boy’s back.
“Danny!” Conan Doyle roared, and for the first time he nearly lost his composure, nearly surrendered the calm that his next move required. The boy’s mother had entrusted her son to him, and Conan Doyle was afraid for him. If Danny was dead, he did not think he could face Julia Ferrick.
He bared his teeth, grinding them together. The magickal energy that trailed from his fingertips and spilled from his eyes seemed to dance with the power leaking from Sweetblood’s chrysalis. Conan Doyle felt the two embrace. The fissures in the amber encasement widened. With a loud crack, more pieces of the chrysalis began to fall away. Within that shell, Conan Doyle could see Sweetblood’s hand, twitching, fingers stretching.
“The boy was right,” Conan Doyle said, starting toward The Nimble Man. “You don’t belong here. You don’t belong anywhere save that gray limbo. And if you wanted to leave it behind, you should never have left the door open.”
Then, unable to resist a dramatic flourish, Conan Doyle passed one hand across his face, disrupting the glamour that had hidden his true countenance.
A spell struck Ceridwen on her left side, her face taking the brunt of the magick. Instantl
y her flesh began to soften, to melt. She felt her cheek droop, strings of skin dangling from her jawbone like tree sap. Morrigan had the advantage, and now her eyes blazed with malice. All of her fanaticism pulsed just beneath her features, but for the moment it had been usurped by her disdain for her family, for her people, for her land. The Fey witch rose off the ground, floating several inches from the wood floor, and she threw her arms wide. Streaks of oily black energy darted back and forth in front of her, dancing from finger to finger, from hand to hand, as though she were knitting some web of darkness.
“Stupid little girl,” Morrigan sneered.
The sensation of her flesh sliding from her skull was the most dreadful thing Ceridwen had ever experienced. She wanted to scream, but could not control the muscles in her jaw. Panic set in, her gaze locked on Morrigan, and she watched as her aunt raised her hands and prepared to hurl that web of black magick at her, to entangle her, to destroy her.
Morrigan attacked. With the crack of a bullwhip, the black net whistled toward Ceridwen. She had expended the power she had borrowed from Sweetblood and knew that if Morrigan meant to kill her now, she would not be able to defend herself.
With a grunt, Ceridwen clacked the base of her elemental staff against the floor. A mystical breeze gusted around her, a traveling wind that lifted her in half an eyeblink from the path of Morrigan’s attack, and set her down again just behind her mad aunt.
Fear gave way to rage. Ceridwen pressed the ice sphere at the top of her elemental staff against her face and felt the warmth of its energies spread through her. This was her magick, a simple object to channel her own innate power and to help her focus her rapport with the elements. Morrigan was Fey. She was family. Ceridwen easily countered the spell her aunt had cast, restoring her flesh, healing her face.
“You think you can run away from me?” Morrigan asked. Still floating, she spun in the air, glaring down at her niece. “From me?”
And for the first time, Ceridwen really saw the familial resemblance between herself and her aunt. The nose, the eyes, the lips . . . it made her feel sick.
Modern Magic Page 295