Now she lay draped upon Sweetblood’s chrysalis. A surge of the ancient mage’s power rushed through her, and she cried out in excruciating pain. They had bound her atop that strange encasement, the sorcerous energies leaking from the cracks in its surface filtering through her body to be collected by the eagerly waiting Morrigan. Her cloak was in tatters, burned through, almost nothing left of it, and her tunic and trousers were smoldering.
“Do you see how wonderfully it comes together?” her aunt asked, manipulating the distilled power of the arch mage and sending it back into the sarcophagus, causing the size of cracks in its surface to increase. With each splinter of that amber glass, more of Sanguedolce’s magickal potency tore through Ceridwen, more power at Morrigan’s disposal.
“Fortune smiles upon me this day. It is unlikely that you will live long enough to witness my triumph, but let me assure you, it will be glorious.”
The magick coursed through her, the pain continuing to grow. The mage’s power was overwhelming. Ceridwen had heard tales of Sanguedolce’s prowess, but never imagined a mortal might be able to wield such might.
Morrigan droned on and on about her plans, but Ceridwen was no longer listening. To escape the pain, she fled to the past, remembering what it was that defined her, what had shaped her. There was pain in the past as well, but it was that pain that had forged her, as though in a blacksmith’s forge.
From her earliest days, sadness had been her companion. She could barely remember a day when it had not walked by her side. Her mother had been slain in the early days of the Twilight Wars, the victim of a Troll raid upon their forest home. She had been but a mere child, forced to watch her mother’s fate from a hiding place within the draping bows of an ancient willow tree. In that moment, she had sworn never to be helpless again.
There were times when the night was deathly silent, and in those quiet snatches of darkness she could still hear her mother’s screams. She would awaken filled with righteous fury only to find that there was absolutely nothing that she could do.
Ceridwen cried out now, agony wrenching her back to the present. Pain assaulted her as more fissures formed in the mage’s sarcophagus, allowing the flow of magick through her to intensify.
Morrigan laughed, amused by Ceridwen’s suffering, but this was nothing new; her aunt had always reveled in the torment of others.
Once more, to escape her anguish, she allowed her mind to drift into the past. Ceridwen recalled with perfect clarity that day, fifteen seasons after the murder of her mother, when the sorcerers of Faerie had taken her into their care, training her in the ways of elemental magick. They had sensed within her a certain fire, unaware that it was an inferno of rage and an unquenchable thirst for revenge. What an excellent pupil she had been, absorbing the intricate teachings as the forest drank the rain.
She saw the battlefield in her mind as it had been so very long ago, littered with the bodies of both friend and foe. The Twilight Wars were in full swing and a battalion of Corca Duibhne was continuing to advance on their position. That was when they had first set her loose, allowing her to use her fury over her mother’s murder to conjure up the forces to destroy the enemies of the Fey.
Her magick had been fearsome.
Ceridwen had reveled in their suffering, as the spirits of the wind tossed the enemy about the battlefield like children’s toys, stealing the breath from their lungs before the earth swelled up to swallow them whole. Those who did not meet their fate from earth or air were washed away on angry torrents of torrential rain, or burnt to cinders by lapping tongues of hungry fire.
Morrigan had laughed that day as well. Gazing out at the carnage that Ceridwen had wrought, her aunt had found the level of devastation and death absolutely joyous. There was no doubt that she would find the fate of the world beneath the ministrations of the Nimble Man amusing as well.
Ceridwen could feel the surface of the chrysalis splintering beneath her, the magick burning up into her body. She began to convulse, the sorcery too much for her weakened body to contain, and at last she found solace in a memory that brought bliss that was the equal of its pain.
She would never have imagined herself capable of the love she felt for Arthur Conan Doyle, a mere human. Their lives had become entwined, their love for one another blossoming soon after the closing horrors of the war. For a while, with him, she had almost been capable of forgetting the trauma of her mother’s murder—of the many lives she had taken in wartime. It had been as though she had been given another chance at life, an opportunity to wipe the past away and begin anew.
How foolish she had been to think that the fates would ever allow her to be truly happy. Happiness, she had learned, was the most fragile and ephemeral of things.
Sweetblood’s magick roiled inside her. Ceridwen opened her mouth in a silent scream, sparks of magick leaping from her mouth to dance about with dust motes in the air of the ballroom. She did not think that she had ever experienced pain so intense, but her sorrow when Arthur had abandoned her had been near enough. If pressed, Ceridwen would have had difficulty deciding which torment had hurt her more deeply.
She had wanted him to stay in Faerie with her forever, but that was not to be the case. He had tried to explain why he had to return to the world of man, that he was needed there, to protect it from harm. Ceridwen had pleaded with her lover, telling him that she needed him far more than those of the Blight, but her pleas had fallen upon ears made deaf by his commitment to the world of his birth.
Ceridwen felt her anger surge. Only her fury at Arthur had given her the strength to move past her sorrow. Her sadness had turned to bitter rage, and it had made her all the stronger.
But evidently not strong enough.
The sound was like the cracking of glacial ice. Shards of the chrysalis fell away to shatter upon the ballroom floor.
Eve guided the limousine through the tight, winding streets of Beacon Hill with a reckless skill, and Conan Doyle breathed sigh of relief when they arrived at their destination without plowing into something in the damnable red fog.
“This is close enough, Eve,” he told her, from his place in the rear of the limousine, where he sat opposite Daniel and Clay.
Eve immediately brought the limo to a shuddering stop, driving up onto the curb to keep from completely blocking the road. Conan Doyle silently applauded. Despite the supernatural horrors out on the streets this damnable, impossible night, he was sure there were police and fire emergency crews out and about. They might need to pass.
“As good a spot as any,” Eve said as she put the car in park. “Don’t forget to lock your doors, gentlemen. This neighborhood has gone to Hell.”
They exited the vehicle. Louisburg Square was down the street a ways, on the left. Up ahead, an SUV was burning, the flames and black smoke billowing from the wreckage starkly visible through the shifting crimson fog.
“We’ll approach on foot,” Conan Doyle told them, leading the way.
They slowed their pace as they passed the burning vehicle, all of them casually glancing inside the blackened wreck to see if there had been anybody inside.
“Ceridwen did that,” Danny said, motioning with his chin. “We needed a distraction to get Morrigan and her freaky henchmen off the floor we were on so we could get downstairs. She summoned some kind of fire spirit to blow it up.”
Conan Doyle said nothing, sublimating his fear for her, concentrating on the task that lay before them. When they reached the edge of the square, just outside the fenced park in its center, they all paused.
“So, how are we doing this?” Eve asked, casually picking the lint from the arm of her jacket, as if what they were about to attempt was no more important than choosing a restaurant.
“The time for subtlety has come and gone,” Conan Doyle said, searching the fog for a glimpse of his home. There had been a dramatic change in the sinister energies in the atmosphere just in the minutes that had passed since they had left the State House. If they had any hope of stopping
Morrigan, it had to be now. “We hit them from every side, and all at once.”
“Clay and Dr. Graves,” he said, turning his attention to the shapeshifter and his spectral houseguest, “the two of you shall enter the house from below, through the basement, and ascend accordingly.”
He felt a hand grip his arm and turned to face the demon boy.
“What about me?” Danny asked. “You’re going to let me help—aren’t you?”
Conan Doyle knew that the boy’s mother would not approve, but there came a time when the concerns of doting parents had to be set aside and matters of the world taken into account. This was such a moment.
“Daniel and Eve shall enter from above,” the mage instructed. “The rooftop door should provide you with access.”
The boy smiled, glancing toward Eve. “It’s you and me,” he said, clenching and unclenching his hands. “We got the roof.”
“You don’t say,” she teased.
“What about you, Conan Doyle?” Graves asked, his voice like the whisper of the wind through the dead leaves of autumn trees. “Will you be going inside?”
Conan Doyle was taken aback by the question. His home had been invaded and Ceridwen held captive inside. The fate of his world was in the balance.
“Of course I’m going inside, old friend,” he answered incredulously, stepping from the street to the cobblestones of the square. “But I shall enter just as I always have. Through the front door.”
Clay watched as Eve whispered something to Danny that he could not hear. Then she led the demon boy off into the thick fog. Just before it would have obscured his view of her completely, she glanced back at him.
“Meet you on the inside,” she said.
He nodded. The two of them had certainly had their share of conflict, but it was always reassuring to have her around. She was the only thing on the face of the Earth that was as old as he was. Or nearly so, at least.
Now he glanced at Dr. Graves. The ghost hovered above the street, and he was strangely reminded of the balloons of cartoon characters that were pulled down the streets of New York on Thanksgiving Day. For all of his eternity spent on this world, Clay loved the little things, the odd little details that had become such a part of humanity. Parades, for instance. He loved parades. He hoped the world survived so that he could see more of them.
Graves started toward Conan Doyle’s townhouse, and Clay set off after him, swift and sure, his boots all but silent on the cobblestones. The ghost paused beside the old house.
“So, we start from the bottom and work our way up,” Clay said.
The ghost nodded and began to sink into the street.
“Hey, what are you . . .”
“I’ll meet you there,” he said, just before his head disappeared into the ground. Then the ghost was gone, leaving him alone in the street.
“Son of a bitch,” Clay muttered, closing his eyes and thinking of a form he would need to take in order to get into the basement. He hated to be the last one into a fight, and he wondered, as he began to change, if the ghost somehow was aware of that.
Clay doubled in size, his body becoming powerful and squat. He was now covered in a fine, shiny fur, his domed head nestled firmly between brawny shoulders. Lifting his short, muscular arms, he looked down upon the four railroad-spike claws that adorned each paw.
The creature he mimicked was not a mole and not a bear. It was not anything human eyes had ever seen. For though the Creator had put upon the Earth a great many wondrous things, there were beasts he had imagined with his Clay, but then abandoned. Things no one in the world had ever seen. Unless they had seen Clay in action.
Happy with the shape, he dropped to his bony knees and began to dig, the claws making short work of the cobblestoned street and layers of heavy stone beneath. It took him no time at all to burrow a tunnel down under Louisburg Square, through a wall of brick, and into one of the sewers that ran below the townhouses.
The air in the sewer was thick with gases other than oxygen—most likely a mixture of nitrogen, natural gas and methane—and he altered his lungs so that he could breathe down there. His vision in this shape was poor, but his sense of smell was heightened to the extreme. Clay could smell the distinctive scent of the Night People.
He loped down the partially flooded passage, splashing through the filth until the aroma of the enemy was so strong that he knew he must be just beneath them. Clay dug into the wall, beginning a new passage that would take him into the basement of Conan Doyle’s townhouse.
Moments later he exploded up through the concrete floor into the room. His poor eyes located the drifting, translucent shape of Dr. Graves floating in the air.
“Thanks for waiting,” Clay rasped as he shifted back to his human form.
Now that his vision had returned to normal, he saw that Graves was focused on one particular corner of the room. At the same time, he noticed the stink in the basement, a smell he had become all too familiar with of late. He had been so focused on the Corca Duibhne, he had all but completely overlooked it. But in the cellar, it was overpowering. Choking.
The smell of blood.
“Good God,” Clay whispered as he looked upon the bodies stacked up against the wall like cordwood, and others hanging by their ankles from hooks on the ceiling. “What is going on here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Graves asked him. “They’re storing food. Using the basement as a larder.”
Danny’s eyes had become accustomed to the fog.
Bizarro, he thought, following close behind Eve as she made her way down one of the small alleys between the homes on Beacon Hill. It unnerved him, in a way, that he could make out the shapes of things through the thick, roiling mist. His vision was changing along with the rest of him, adapting to his environment. Which made him wonder what other surprises his body had in store for him.
He could make out a small wooden fence at the end of the alley ahead of them and was about to point it out, when Eve quickened her pace, vaulting over the obstruction with ease and grace. Danny clambered over the fence as quickly as he could, fearful that his companion would leave him behind. He landed in the small yard on the other side in a crouch, his new eyes scanning the fog.
“Keep up, slowpoke,” he heard her say, her voice carried on the breeze and swirling with the mist. He caught sight of her fluttering coattails as she went over another fence across the yard. It was sort of a shame that she’d put the coat on at all. The top she had on was nicely clingy and he liked to watch her move. Even with the coat, he could appreciate her . . . but without it . . .
Chill. Keep your mind on staying alive. Danny bounded across the small patch of grass, tensing the muscles in his legs as prepared to scale the next obstacle. The power in his jump took him by surprise and his arms pinwheeled as he tried to keep his balance while hurtling through the air. He cleared the fence with feet to spare and landed on all fours, unable to prevent the smile from blossoming across his face. Danny immediately thought of Mr. Davis, the track and field coach at his high school, and how the man would have shit his pants if he’d ever seen any of his track team make a jump like that.
“Decent,” Eve said, leaning against a brick building.
“Where are we now?” he asked, rising to join her. They appeared to be in another small yard.
“We’re at the back of Conan Doyle’s place. Figured we’d get less attention if we got to the roof from the back.”
Danny stepped back, looking skyward, up the rear wall of building. Though no taller than four stories, the top of the townhouse disappeared into the crimson mist.
“And we get up there how, exactly?”
Eve pressed herself flat against the building, sinking her long fingernails into the mortar between the bricks. “Silly rabbit,” she chided, beginning to climb. “As if there was any other way.”
The way she crawled up the wall, Eve reminded him of some kind of lizard, barely making a sound other than the faint scrape of claw upon brick.
&
nbsp; “Wait,” he hissed, on the verge of panic. He didn’t want to be left alone. Danny desperately wanted to be included, to belong. For the first time in oh so very long he felt as though he were part of something; that he truly mattered. He did not want that feeling to end.
Eve stopped midway, and maneuvered her body around so she could look down at him.
Not a lizard, he thought. A spider. She reminded him of a really big spider.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked.
He couldn’t believe she was asking the question. “I can’t do that,” he told her, growing angry.
Eve righted herself and began to climb again. “Bet you didn’t think you could make a six foot leap over a fence either,” she said as she disappeared into the mist.
She was right about that, he decided, approaching the wall and doing as he had watched her do. Danny placed his hands against cool brick, digging his fingernails—no, they were claws; his fingernails had fallen out months ago—between the bricks, as Eve had done. He attempted to pull his weight upward.
And succeeded.
Much to his shock and surprise, Danny was climbing the wall. Would you look at this, he wanted to scream, increasing his pace to catch up with Eve.
Fucking Spider-Man ain’t got nothing on me.
Conan Doyle stood at the bottom of the stairs that led up to his front door and cleared his throat. He knew they were there, crouching in the shadows, waiting for the opportunity to strike. He removed the pocket watch from his coat and saw that more than enough time had passed for his operatives to get themselves into position.
Taking the first step, he placed one of his hands upon the wrought iron railing.
“Who is this, my brothers?” came a hissing voice from somewhere in the shadows.
Conan Doyle stood perfectly still, gathering his inner strength.
“A fool, I’d wager,” responded an equally sibilant voice. “For who else but a fool would dare approach our mistress’s lair.”
Modern Magic Page 292
