The Nimble Man m-1

by Christopher Golden

  "I'm just pulling onto Huntington Ave," the hobgoblin said from the driver's seat. "It's only a matter of time now."

  The road had become dense with the reanimated dead, and the chauffeur continued to do as well as could be expected to avoid hitting them, but the closer they got, the harder it was becoming. Clay flinched as the front of the vehicle struck the body of a woman, the impact spraying a shower of a thick, milky fluid across the expanse of windshield.

  "Whoa, that's gonna leave a mark," Squire said beneath his breath, hitting the button to cover the windshield with cleaning fluid before turning on the wiper blades.

  Squire dealt with his tensions of the coming conflict with humor. It was something that Clay was familiar with. In an age he now recalled only through the veil of time, he had known a great Sumerian warrior called Atalluk, who would gather his fellow soldiers the night before they were to wage war against their enemies and tell humorous stories about his childhood and his ribald adventures with members of the opposite sex. Clay smiled with the ancient memory. The men loved those tales; the stories helping them to relax, and to relieve the tensions they were most likely experiencing in regard to the approaching combat.

  Atalluk had been a gifted warrior, but gifted with wit as well. Clay still carried a certain amount of guilt for killing the Sumerian upon the battlefield, but there had been no choice. It was what he had been paid by the opposing forces to do.

  The limousine hit a slow moving cluster of ambling dead, their dried flesh and bones scattering like dusty tenpins. "Strike!" Squire roared, shaking a gnarled fist in the air under the disapproving gaze of Leonard Graves.

  Clay glanced at Eve, who still appeared to be resting. Here was someone that he had fought beside on numerous occasions, who understood and embraced the meaning of calm before the storm. She was a creature of infinite patience, Eve was, and there wasn't another warrior that he would rather have fighting by his side. When it was time to fight, she would be ready. He had no doubts about that.

  The dead had become even more numerous. Their horrible faces crowded around to peer into the limousine as it began to slow.

  "We're almost there," Squire said, gunning the engine, plowing through the mass of decaying flesh and bones. "I want to get you close enough so you're not bogged down. They can be a real pain in the ass, these dead guys."

  The goblin leaned on the horn, as if that would make a difference. "Outta the way, you stinkin' bags of bones! Can't you see we're trying to get through here?"

  Clay felt his respiration gradually begin to increase, the beating of his heart quicken. It was as it always was for him, the response of his body to the battle that was sure to come.

  "Are we ready?" he asked.

  Graves turned in his seat to look at Clay, his death pale features nearly transparent. "As set as I'll ever be when dealing with things of this nature," the ghost said, apparently perturbed that he was again forced to face the facts that he had so vehemently denied in life. Graves drifted up and out of his seat toward the limo ceiling, his head passing through the roof.

  "I got your backs," Squire said, his large, dewy eyes reflected in the surface of the rearview mirror, and he cracked the door on the passenger side, ready to exit.

  Clay looked to Eve, the woman scrunched down in her seat, seemingly still in the embrace of sleep.

  "This is it, Eve," he said, reaching to shake her awake.

  The woman responded in an instant, gripping his wrist in her powerful grasp before his hand could fall upon her.

  "I'm awake," she told him, and he could see by the look in her deep, dark eyes that she was more than ready for what they were about to face.

  "Then let's do what we came here for," he said, letting go of her wrist and preparing to open his passenger door.

  As he did this, he heard the surprising sound of laughter, a pleasant sound, and one that he did not remember hearing too many times before. Clay looked across the back seat to see that Eve was giggling as she too prepared to exit the car.

  She must have felt his eyes upon him and turned her head to meet his gaze.

  "What's so funny?" he asked, completely in the dark as to what could have tickled her funny bone at that particular moment.

  "Yeah," Squire reiterated, a breathless tension in his voice. Even he did not see any signs of the humorous at the moment. "What's the joke?"

  "Art," she said and again began to laugh. "The guy with no arms or legs hanging on the wall. His name would be Art."

  Eve opened her door, stepping out into the billowing crimson mist that hid an army of the dead. "That's pretty fucking funny," she said, just before slamming the door closed behind her.

  And as Clay also left the vehicle, his body pulsing with the potential for violence that was to follow, he was forced to admit that the woman was right; it was funny.

  When you looked at it from a certain way, it was all funny.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Kingsley is dead.

  Conan Doyle, for that is how he is known to all and sundry, sits in the foyer of the Grosvenor Hotel with an unlit pipe propped between his lips. His eyes glaze as he gazes across the elegant foyer at ladies and their gentlemen, bustling to and fro. It is the middle of November, yet already the spirit of Christmas is in the air. Conan Doyle spies a small boy, perhaps five, running circles round his Ma'am's legs as his Da has an angry word with a bellman.

  The father often loses patience with the boy. Conan Doyle can see bruises on the child's inner arms, dark purple marks where his father's thumb and fingers have gripped too tightly. The mother loves her husband, but she holds her breath, hoping his temper is satisfied by berating the bellman, and quietly trying to calm her boy so that he does not draw his father's attention.

  The bellman is new to the job. Conan Doyle can see this from his shoes. The uniform is new, the buttons polished, but the shoes are badly scuffed, heels worn. The man had not been working at the Grosvenor long enough to have saved money for new shoes.

  And Kingsley is dead.

  The bellman has no money. The boy's father is far too rough with him. But Conan Doyle's own son, the pride of his heart, had been taken by the influenza. The wounds that Kingsley had received at the Somme had not killed him, but they had weakened him.

  Kingsley is dead, and now a fortnight later Conan Doyle sits in the foyer of the Grosvenor Hotel and frowns as he glances up at the woman who has just entered through the revolving door. She is a large woman, stern-featured and well-dressed, and she carries in each hand a tiny Union Jack, the flag of Britain. As if in a dream, she waltzes silently and alone, waving these small banners, and then she disappears through the revolving door once more, returning to the street.

  Moments later, a roar begins to build. Voices. Tears. Dancing feet.

  Armistice. The war is over.

  Kingsley is dead.

  "Peace," a voice says, dry and cold. It is not a greeting, but an observation, and even then it is more cynical than celebratory.

  Conan Doyle taps his pipe on his knee and glances up into a the face of Lorenzo Sanguedolce, his olive skin, fancy mustache, and Italian accent marking him as a suspicious character in these times of war.

  "Kingsley is dead," Conan Doyle tells him.

  Sanguedolce nods. "Yes. But he has not gone far, Arthur. Not yet. You may still be able to speak with him for a time yet."

  Ice forms around Conan Doyle's heart and he cannot meet Sanguedolce's eyes. "I think not."

  "No?"

  "No. If I speak with him, I may become too fond of the idea of joining him."

  When he looks up, they are no longer in the Grosvenor Hotel, these two men. Conan Doyle stands on Wandsworth Road, looking up at the face of the Three Goats' Heads pub. The name of the place is repeated on three signs, two on the building itself and one on a post in front of it, along with a faded reminder that one might also find Watney amp; Company's inside. The windows are filthy. Gathered in a small circle is a quartet of rough looking men in dar
k Derby hats.

  The war has not yet begun, will not begin for years yet.

  Conan Doyle enters the Three Goats' Heads. Ale spills from glasses as the barkeep slides them along a table. The air is choked with smoke, a fog that obscures his vision.

  In the center of the pub there is a table that is clean, save for a single pint of ale. Despite the crowd, no one goes near. Impossibly, there is a circle of clear air around and above the table, as though the wafting smoke is kept out by some invisible wall. Conan Doyle has come to the Wandsworth Road this evening in response to a note, a summons signed by Lorenzo Sanguedolce. He has heard of the man, of course, the one they call Sweetblood the Mage. He has dismissed much of this talk as merely that. Talk.

  One glimpse of Sanguedolce's eyes, like bright pennies, and the way he seems to exist separate from the world, even in the din and dirt of a public house, and he knows there is more to the man than talk.

  Conan Doyle sits across from Sanguedolce. He says nothing by way of introduction. They have never met, but still they know one another.

  "You're a fool," Sanguedolce says, voice dripping with venom.

  "What?" Conan Doyle demands, taken aback.

  "Languishing in memories, in the comfort of the past," Sanguedolce explains. "You can't afford the luxury."

  All other sound in the Three Goats' Heads is abruptly silenced. The smoke thickens, becomes a wall of gray, and their small table is nearly in darkness. Beyond the table, things move in the smoke, and Conan Doyle is certain that they are not the patrons of the bar, not thick-necked men in dark Derbys, but others. Things that move in shadow, thrive in it, even consume it.

  He has been drifting inside himself. Lost. Sanguedolce is right. He is a fool. But somehow, despite it all, he has found the arch mage's mind, touched him. Even now Lorenzo's face shimmers and blurs. Morrigan's power interferes, as do the spells Sanguedolce used to hide himself, so long ago. Conan Doyle brushes a hand through the air, clearing some of the strange ash that hangs there, and he can see Sanguedolce more clearly.

  For the moment.

  "Quickly, then," Conan Doyle snaps, angry at himself, angry at Sweetblood. "Talk. What is Morrigan's plan? What does she want you for?"

  "Idiot," Sanguedolce says. "I was hidden for a reason."

  The arch mage draws back his hand to strike, but it never touches Conan Doyle. The smoke and ash coalesce around them and Sanguedolce seems a part of it, now, gray shadows enveloping him, erasing him.

  "No!" Conan Doyle cries. "Wait!"

  "This is not my doing. There is too much darkness between us, too much power."

  But his voice sounds distant, muffled, and diminishing with each word. Then…

  "Here." And a hand thrusts out of the smoke gray shadow, a fingertip touching Conan Doyle's forehead, a light tap just between the eyes.

  Slivers of pain lance through his head. His eyes burn. Bile rises in the back of his throat. Images erupt in his mind. Flashes of color, accompanied by the shrieking of children and the agonized wail of mothers. A city on fire. A highway lined with the dead. A barricade built of rotting, festering corpses. Charred flesh falling like snow from a dead black sky. Holes in the world, craters where entire nations had once been. A small, grinning girl with a bloody mouth and sharp teeth, looking up at her father with a knife in one hand and her mother's eyes in the other.

  Armies, marching.

  Disease on the wind. Red welts and yellow blisters, a crowd dropping one by one, like wheat beneath the scythe.

  And from the darkest corners of the world, hideous beasts begin to emerge. Demons. And worse.

  "My Lord," Conan Doyle whispers. "Morrigan doesn't have this kind of power. What does she call?"

  Now he feels himself choking on the smoke, the gray shadows sheathing his eyes, smothering him, crawling up his nostrils. Conan Doyle passes a hand before him and the gray withdraws only enough that he can see the outline of a face in the smoke. The lips move, but Sanguedolce's voice is in his head, not in the smoke.

  "You don't listen. This isn't Morrigan's plan. But she has already corrupted the sorcery of my chrysalis. My power is already seeping, drawing attention. It must be sealed again. The things you have seen.. they are inevitable unless you can stop her… if I am freed, this is the fate of the world."

  Conan Doyle is cloaked in gray smoke again. Once more, furiously, he waves it away, but this time when it clears he is at his table at the Three Goats' Heads, and he is alone.

  And he awakens.

  The wind whipped Danny Ferrick's face with such ferocity that tears stung his eyes. It tugged at his clothing like ghost fingers and he felt himself spun around, feet dangling uselessly beneath him, a scarecrow in a hurricane. It was all blackness and wind, save for brief glimpses through the dark, eyeblink windows on the world, none of which offered the same view as the last. He squeezed his eyes closed.

  A hard gust blew him upward, and as he floated downward again he felt solid ground beneath his feet. A spiral breeze kept him from stumbling. He opened his eyes upon a dark room. The curtains fluttered in the traveling wind and his hair was ruffled a moment longer, and then the breeze died, and all was silence in the room save for the settling of dust upon the wooden floor.

  The canopy of the four-poster bed was the same ivory as the curtains. The carved wood of those posts was bone-white. A long bureau was against the far wall and a fireplace, dark and cold, was set into another. Other than these, the room was featureless, with no sign of any occupant. There were no lamps, no mirrors, no books or brushes, and only a single pillow on the bed.

  Unless something had gone wrong, this was Mr. Doyle's house. Danny figured it was a spare bedroom, because it certainly did not seem as though anyone lived here. But… He frowned, glancing around the room. The door was firmly closed. He had followed Ceridwen here, let himself be swept along in the wake of her magic. So where the hell was she?

  The darkness of the room felt comfortable to him, as though it was a robe he had slipped on. His eyes had always adjusted well to the dark. Danny moved soundlessly across the room and opened the door just wide enough to peer through, and pressed an eye to the crack. The room he was in was at the end of the hall, and the corridor outside the door only a wing. There were five other doors, two on the left and three on the right, and then a left turn. It was dark, but where the corridor turned there was a glimmer of distant light, perhaps from a room around the corner.

  Ceridwen's shadow was on the wall at the end of the corridor, thrown by the glow of that dim light.

  With no sign of anyone else, Danny slipped out of the room and pulled the door softly shut behind him. His nostrils flared and he smelled blood in the house. Somewhere. And it wasn't human blood. His forked tongue slid over sharp rows of teeth and he felt his lips pull up into a kind of smile, as if he had no control over his response to that scent at all. Then he realized that it wasn't a smile. It was a snarl.

  Danny moved in silence through the dark corridor, still wrapped in shadows. He felt invisible. He had always been good at hide and seek as a child, always had an uncanny ability to sneak up on others unawares. For the first time he realized this was not an ordinary thing. He cloaked himself in darkness and slipped quietly down the hall, and this time when he smiled to himself it was genuine.

  At the end of the hall he peeked around the corner, remaining out of sight, and when he saw Ceridwen he caught his breath.

  This new corridor was far longer and halfway down its length was a balustrade, and a stairwell that came down from above and continued on toward the first floor. Danny had no idea what floor they were on now. The dim light upon the walls was from somewhere below. At the landing, just beside the stairs, were two creatures unlike anything Danny had seen before. They were stooped, hands twisted into claws, long talons dangling by their knees. Their skin was leathery brown and rutted with lines that might have been scars or wrinkles or grooves in tree bark. And yet he had the idea that if they stood up straight and hid their fac
es, they might have been able to walk the daylight world and pass as human.

  Just the way Danny did.

  But he would have seen them for what they were. He would have smelled them. They had the stink of raw meat and sewer on them, these things. Danny had heard enough from Conan Doyle and the others to know they had to be the Night People. The Corca Duibhne. Seeing them made him tremble, but not with fear. He shook with the urge to kill them.

  Ceridwen was in the hall as well, only ten or twelve feet from the Night People. The ice blue sphere atop her staff glowed softly. Danny could not help but notice the way her long limbs moved beneath the sheer fabric of her dress. She was breathtaking. Her whole self seemed illuminated by the same ice blue light that glowed within that sphere.

  Magic, he thought. For even as he watched she moved nearer the two hideous creatures, and neither noticed her.

  With an elegant flourish, Ceridwen spread her arms and glided toward the Corca Duibhne; to Danny it almost seemed as though she were dancing. It was a strange moment of ballet, that ended with Ceridwen reaching out to touch the nearest of the two Night People. A blue light blossomed from her fingertips, blue-white mist leaked from her eyes in streams that floated on the air, and the sphere atop her staff flared with a moment of brilliance.

  The monstrous creature froze, leathery skin turning that same ice-blue. A wave of chilling cold swept up the corridor and Danny shivered, staring at the scene that played out before him.

  The second Corca Duibhne turned, shivering at the blast of frozen air, and its eyes widened. It opened its mouth, flashing yellow razor teeth, but before it could sound an alarm Ceridwen's free hand flashed out and gripped it by the throat. Her muscles were taut, but even in profile Danny could see her face was expressionless. Her eyes were as cold as the ice of her magic. The creature let out a single groan, but no cry of alarm came.

  The ice formed first upon its yellow fangs. Then its eyes froze in its head. Moments later it was little more than an ice sculpture, just like the other.