Modern Magic
Page 275
“Why have you come, Arthur?” she asked, her thumb tracing arcane sigils upon the corpse’s forehead. It was a ritual he had seen before, during the Twilight War, when an ally had been stuck down by infernal magicks. It freed what life energies remained within the confines of the body.
“To seek answers, and to warn you of a great evil on the rise,” he said, tentatively kneeling beside her. To be this close to her again was almost more than he could bear. “But I fear I have come too late.”
Ceridwen covered the twisted features of the fallen Fey, raising her head to look into Conan Doyle’s eyes. He would drown in those eyes, and there was nothing that could be done to save him.
“Who did this, my lady?” he asked, ignoring the urge to reach out and touch her face, to caress her alabaster skin.
She tore her gaze away and moved to another of the covered corpses. “I am your lady no longer, Arthur Conan Doyle. As to the hand behind this tragedy, that is a tale almost too sad to tell.” She drew down another sheet of silk to reveal the dead beneath. The countenance of this corpse was even more disturbing than the first. “This evil of which you speak has touched our world as well.”
“Who is it? Whose hand has done this?”
Ceridwen glanced up from her ministrations, her dark, soulful eyes again touching his. “It was one of our own,” she said, a tremble in her voice, and his heart nearly broke as he watched tears like liquid crystal run down her cheeks, to land upon the upturned face of a dead Fey warrior.
“Two hundred and fifty channels and not a damn thing on,” Squire muttered as he aimed the remote control at a thirty-five inch television monitor in a hard wood cabinet. The goblin flipped past countless images, each of them dishearteningly similar—another apocalyptic vision of the northeast United States, or static. Whatever the hell was going on outside was interfering with the digital cable signals.
He reached a stubby hand into the bag of greasy potato chips and brought a handful to his mouth. Squire lived for junk food: candy and chips, burgers and fries, cookies and donuts. Especially donuts. He loved food of all kinds, in fact. It was his greatest pleasure. But the sweetest and saltiest were his favorites.
Stopping at one of the all-news channels, the goblin watched a live feed from Virginia Beach, where the ocean had begun to boil and the fish were leaping up out of the water in a frantic attempt to escape death. Somewhere off-camera people had begun to scream.
“That’ll help,” he said, taking a swig from his bottle of beer to wash down his snack. “Nothing like a good shriek to calm everybody’s nerves.” Squire belched mightily, flecks of unchewed potato chip speckling his shirt and pants. Bored with watching fish die, he changed the station. Maybe a nice game show, he thought, flipping past channel after channel of the world in turmoil. He tried not to think about what was happening outside. Conan Doyle’s agents were in the field, and it was only a matter of time before things were wrestled back under control. That was how it always was. If there was anything Squire had learned in his many years working for Mr. Doyle, it wasn’t over until the fat lady shit in the woods.
On a pay station that hadn’t gone to static, he finally found a movie. A large grin spread across his face. A nice piece of Hollywood escapist fluff was exactly what he needed. His smile quickly turned to a frown when he realized the station was showing the abysmal Keanu science fiction flick that the actor had done before The Matrix.
As if Keanu wasn’t torture enough, Squire thought, continuing his search for something to amuse him.
He had clicked all the way to the end and was about to start over again when something on one of the local stations caught his eye. He leaned forward on the sofa, crumbs of potato chip raining to the floor. The handheld footage was shaky and made his eyes hurt, but he recognized the area. The camera was pointed toward a bunker-like structure in the midst of a sea of orange brick. It was the exit from the Government Center subway station, not too far away, and there were things not usually associated with public transit pouring from the underground and spilling onto the plaza.
“Corca-fuckin-Duibhne,” he growled, turning up the volume. There had to be hundreds of the coppery-skinned bastards. It was like watching a swarm of bugs emerging from their nest. Whoever was manning the camera was hiding behind a newspaper kiosk, peeking out from time to time for the disturbing footage. For some reason there was no audio, and Squire imagined that it was probably for the best.
Slowly, he brought a potato chip to his mouth, eyes riveted to the television. One of the Night People had seen the cameraman, its mouth opening incredibly wide in a silent roar. The gnarled, twisted, leathery thing sprang across the brick as though in a dance, needle teeth bared for attack. The picture turned to static, and an anchorwoman who usually looked too damn cool for the room came on as the broadcast returned to the studio. Her face was pasty, and she was sweating to beat the band.
“How long ago was that?” Squire asked the set, listening to the woman’s trembling voice. The goblin rose from his chair and went to the window. The red, billowing fog seemed to have grown thicker in the square below, practically hiding the park from view. There was a kind of glow about it now that reminded him of weird creatures that lived so far below the ocean’s surface that they had developed their own luminescence.
“No more than a fifteen minute walk from Government Center to here,” the hobgoblin grumbled, though his words trailed off as he noticed dark things moving in the blood red mist. “Shit!” Squire pressed his face against the glass for a better look. Corca Duibhne darted about the unearthly fog with an uncanny swiftness, converging upon the townhouse.
Conan Doyle’s valet stepped away from the window. There was no way that the Night People could get inside the townhouse. Conan Doyle had set up all kinds of magickal wards and barriers so that nothing that didn’t belong could find its way into the place. The image on the television screen again caught his attention. The anchorwoman was crying now, mascara running down her face in oily streaks. She was in the process of confessing her sins to the camera.
“I’ve got my own problems, sweetheart,” he said, reaching for the remote and clicking off the set.
A thunderous clamor came to him from the first floor, as if something were pounding on the door to get in, but of course Squire knew that was impossible. Isn’t it? Son of a bitch, it had better be.
He jumped feet first into a square of shadow thrown by the entertainment center, becoming immersed in a world of perpetual darkness.
The goblin scrambled through the shadowpaths toward an exit that would take him closest to the front door. Again came the pounding, the violent sound muffled within the realm of shadow. Squire drew himself out of a patch of black behind the refrigerator in the kitchen, the hot coils at the back of the unit pressing against his face as he hauled his body from the shadow, and squeezed out from behind the appliance.
Two Corca Duibhne scouts crouched in the center of the kitchen. He knew they were scouts because the symbol of their rank was carved into the dark flesh of their faces. No stars or stripes on lapels for these guys. Heads tilted back, eyes closed, their noses twitched as they sniffed the air in search of potential danger.
It wasn’t an instant before they got a nose full of him.
I knew I should have showered this week, the hobgoblin thought, scrambling across the tile floor to pull open one of the counter drawers.
The scouts began to shriek, a high-pitched, ululating sound that warned others of their stinking kind that there was trouble present.
Squire spun around, glinting metal cleaver in hand, meeting the first of his attackers with relish. It had been a long time since he had killed a Corca Duibhne, and as he buried the blade in the skull of his adversary he realized he was long overdue.
“Look at that, a perfect fit,” Squire growled, as the creature continued to fight. “What’s that? You’d like seconds?” He drove a stubby knee savagely up into the Corca Duibhne’s midsection, yanked the cleaver from its head
, and brought it down again. “What a greedy little piggy.”
The scout went rigid as the metal blade again shattered its skull, sinking deep. Finally hitting the tiny piece of fruit these shitbags call a brain.
The second of the scouts was across the room. It had been jockeying around, looking for space to attack. Now it pulled back its leathery lips in a ferocious snarl that revealed nasty black gums and needle sharp teeth. “He was my brother,” the creature snarled, its oily eyes shifting from the corpse of its sibling back to Squire.
“Sorry,” the hobgoblin apologized, bracing the heel of his foot against the corpse’s shoulder, and pulling the cleaver from its head with a slight grunt of exertion. “Did you like ’im much?”
The Corca Duibhne shrugged, its long clawed fingers messaging the air. “Not especially,” it hissed. “But blood is the strongest bond. I will take your life in exchange for his.”
“Is that so?” Squire asked, hefting his weapon, stained with stinking black blood. “I guess it’s good to have goals, even if they are fucking ridiculous.”
How is this possible? the goblin wondered. Conan Doyle’s magick was some serious mojo, but these bastards had breached the house’s supposedly unbreakable defenses. Not good. Not good at all.
The scout began to move and Squire prepared to counter its attack, but it lunged away from him and bolted through the doorway with a hiss, fleeing the kitchen. The goblin swore beneath his breath. Night People. Buncha pussies, he thought, hopping over the body of the dead scout in pursuit.
“Wait up,” he called, careful not to slip in the blood pooling upon the tile floor. “I’ve got something special for you.”
Squire did not have far to run. The scout had only fled as far as the corridor that led out toward the foyer. It stood, its back against the wall, holding in its spidery hand the crystal knob from Conan Doyle’s front door. The Corca Duibhne looked at him, and smiled an awful smile. Tendrils of crimson fog drifted into the corridor from the foyer. For the first time, Squire felt the draft, the breeze.
The door was open.
He could not see it from his vantage point, but it was clear these two scouts were not alone. Squire brandished his cleaver, ready to do combat with whatever else had invaded his employer’s home. From the foyer came the sound of splintering wood, and then the heavy, plodding tread of many feet. There was a solid thump and a muttered, feral curse, and in his mind he could picture a cluster of Corca Duibhne carrying something massive and heavy.
Squire was not going to let this happen.
Cleaver clutched tightly in his grip he started down the corridor toward that single Corca Duibhne, who now tossed the crystal knob idly into the air and caught it as though it were a lucky coin. Squire wanted to tear its heart out. But a moment later he came within sight of the foyer.
“Son of a monkey’s uncle,” he whispered.
Eight Corca Duibhne emerged from the red fog, grunting with exertion as they hauled what looked to be a large chunk of jagged rock between them. They looked like pallbearers carrying a coffin at a funeral. The failing light from outside glinted off the object’s surface, and Squire saw that it wasn’t rock at all, but a kind of amber, for he could see the shape of a man imprisoned within. At that moment, he knew how his enemies had gained access to the townhouse. It was all so frighteningly clear.
“Sweetblood,” he said aloud as the Night People let their load drop to the hardwood floor of the foyer.
A part of him wanted to stay, to defend the homestead from invaders, but another part of him, one far more intelligent than that stupid half, suggested that it might just be wiser to get the hell out of there. He began to search for an exit, a patch of shadow through which to make his escape.
“What, leaving us so soon?” came a voice as smooth as silk, speaking the tongue of the Fey.
Squire turned to see a statuesque female emerge from the scarlet fog. The Corca Duibhne cowered as she passed them, as if afraid she would slap them, or worse. The woman was dressed from head to toe in black leather, her hair covered in a stylish kerchief of red silk, as if to match the fog. Even though her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, Squire knew her at once.
“Morrigan,” he whispered.
“You’re going nowhere,” she said, a cruel smile gracing her colorless features. “The fun is just beginning.”
Fun like a heart attack, Squire thought as the Corca Duibhne rushed him, and he raised his cleaver in defense. Fun like a heart attack.
Chapter Seven
Finvarra’s kingdom seemed deserted, yet Conan Doyle knew it was not. The scents of a bounty of ripened fruit reached him as he strode amongst the trees and past a burbling stream along which dryads swam. But there were copses of trees that had been burned black, their charred remains a scar upon the land. The Fey were not gone, however, nor were they hiding.
They were in mourning.
There was no music in Faerie this day, only the sighing of the wind in the trees and the flapping of war banners adorned with Finvarra’s crest. From time to time as he followed Ceridwen on a winding walk through the forest, he could hear cries of bereavement. She carried in one hand a staff of oak, with finger-branches at the top that clutched within them a sphere that appeared to be crystal. Conan Doyle knew better. This was no crystal ball, but a ball of ice. At the center of that frozen orb there burned a flame, flickering as though atop a candle’s wick. This was Ceridwen’s elemental staff, a mark of her office and her skill.
Within Conan Doyle there were many emotions at war. He felt sharp regret and giddy excitement at seeing Ceridwen, and the urge to help the Fey was strong. And yet he was aware that he was needed at home even more than he was needed here. In Faerie, death had come and gone, taking many souls with it. But in Conan Doyle’s world—the Blight—the reaper still walked.
Even simply being in Faerie brought conflicting emotions into play. This was the place he dreamed when he went to sleep, it was the paradise of his heart, and yet there had been much bitterness upon his departure so many years ago, and to return to it now when such grim events were at hand was dark irony.
Ceridwen paused at a door built of three massive standing stones, two upright and one laid across the top. There was no gate to bar it, but no one would pass through that gate without an invitation from a member of the royal family. He had lived beyond that gate, for a time. The memory made him hesitate.
“What is it, Arthur?” Ceridwen asked.
Conan Doyle gazed at her a moment, then glanced away. “Only echoes, Lady. Please go on.”
When he looked up again she was still watching him. Ceridwen frowned deeply and turned to stride between the standing stones. Conan Doyle followed and as he walked through that door his breath caught in his chest just as it had done that first time he had trodden upon this ground.
The year had been Nineteen Hundred and Twenty. The London theosophist Edward Gardner had accompanied him to Cottingley, a tiny hamlet in Yorkshire, to visit the home of the Wright family. Polly Wright had approached Gardner at one of his lectures with the most extraordinary story. The woman claimed that her young daughter Elsie and the girl’s cousin, Frances Griffiths, had befriended a community of fairies in a glen near their homes. Not merely befriended, but photographed the fairies.
The girls’ claims, and more especially their photographs, had brewed a storm of controversy, but by the time it had begun, and the world was scrutinizing the two girls, Arthur Conan Doyle had already found his proof in the glen at Cottingley. For in the glen he had seen the fairies himself, firsthand. Gardner had accompanied the girls and their parents home and Conan Doyle—who had already been a student of magic and spiritualism for some time—cast a spell of revelation.
The fairies had been wondrous, gossamer things, like lithe, flimsy women with wings like butterflies. Wherever they flew they left a sparkle, streaking the air with all the hues of sunrise. Never in his life had he seen anything so delicate, so ephemeral, and so beautiful. They had made no
sound at all but their motion was music.
Then one of them had hesitated, hovering a moment, and darted across the glen to beat its wings furiously just inches from his face. Its tiny, golden eyes had widened in shock as it realized that its suspicions were correct. He could see them. He had been watching them.
The vicious little thing had clawed his cheek, drawing blood. As Conan Doyle hissed and clapped one hand to his face, they had all darted toward across the glen to a large tree that lay on its side next to a brook, its roots torn from the ground and jutting like the antlers of a monstrous stag. The fairies had disappeared amongst those roots and Conan Doyle had taken a closer look, still pressing his fingers against the scratch on his cheek.
The spell of revelation had uncovered more than the presence of the fairies. The crown of jagged roots that circled the felled tree hid a secret. The tree was impossibly hollow.
Conan Doyle had dropped to his knees and bent low to look inside. Deep within that tree he had seen a glimmer of light. And he had crawled inside.
“Arthur!”
Fingers snapped in front of his face. He blinked several times and found himself gazing into Ceridwen’s violet eyes. His breath caught in his throat again and he breathed in the aroma of lilacs, the scent that came off her so powerfully it weakened him. She looked as though she wanted to strike him down with her elemental staff. It took him several seconds before he could glance away.
“You are not the magician I thought you were if you cannot enter the House of the King without it beguiling your senses,” she chided him.
Yet wasn’t there a hint of amusement, even affection in her gaze and her tone?
Conan Doyle dared a soft smile. “It has been a very long time. Even such sweet marvels as are to be found in Faerie fade when time and distance intervene. I confess I was so overwhelmed, simply being back here, that I did not steel myself for the way in which just breathing the air can spin one into flights of fancy . . . or memory.”