The Nimble Man m-1

by Christopher Golden

  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.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Leonard Graves sat on the metal bench in the small, oval park in the center of the affluent Louisburg Square section of Boston's Beacon Hill. Its bow-front 1840's townhouses faced each other across a private oasis of green amongst the brick and still functioning gaslights.

  He had been there since early morning, surrounded by the first signs of spring in New England. The recently mowed grass was a healthy, dark green from April's cool rains. Forsythia buds were just starting to bloom and crocuses forced yellow heads up from the dark soil at the enclosure's far end. Graves had always loved spring time. It brought a sense of renewal he had always considered poetic; the cycle of life beginning again after a season of death.

  If only that was the case with all things.

  Dr. Graves gazed through the wrought iron fence at his current residence. The corner townhouse, which belonged to Mr. Doyle, had been built in 1846, one of the last homes to be constructed in this privileged neighborhood, or at least that was what he had been told by the original architect. With its brick, brownstone lintels, and granite steps, it resembled the other houses on either side of the square, but there was also something that gave it an air of difference. At times the townhouse felt alive, as if imbued with a spirit all its own by the powerful magicks wrought within its walls. Graves often thought of it as a great, monolithic animal, its windows open eyes gazing out upon a world in which it believed itself supreme.

  Doyle's was the first of a row of seven homes in front of him, and another six stood opposite them, all of the residents holding partial ownership to the beautiful park in which he sat. Graves doubted that Doyle had ever noticed the beauty just outside the front of his home.

  The magician and Eve had gone away late the previous evening, and he pondered the success of their mission. It had been this concern that drove him outside to the peace of the park in bloom. There had been no calls, no attempts at communication; even the spirit realm had been strangely quiet, and it made him anxious. In the old days, this would have been a call to action, a chance to strap on his guns and throw himself full bore into the thick of things, but now… There was no use worrying about it, he would know their accomplishments, or lack thereof, soon enough.

  He turned his face up toward the murky sunshine. The clouds were thick today with the slightest hint of gray, as if soiled, but the sun's beams did manage to break through in places. What he wouldn't give to be able to feel the sun upon his flesh again. He recalled how dark his already chocolate brown skin used to become when exposed to long doses of the sun's rays. What was it that Gabriella used to say to him? From mocha to mahogany.

  He smiled with the memory of his fiancee; she had loved this time of year as well. Graves looked down at the translucence of his hands, his smile fading. There were always so many reminders of the things he missed, simple things that he had once taken for granted. The touch of a cool breeze that prickled the flesh, the smell of a garden in bloom, the love of a good woman. The list was infinite.

  Irony there. He had eternity to miss infinity.

  Graves rose from his seat and strolled through the garden. Why do I insist on torturing myself? But he knew full well the answer. He liked the pain and what it did for him.

  It made him feel alive.

  The sound of a key turning in a lock distracted him from his ruminations, and he gazed
over to see an older woman, toy poodle cradled in her arms, letting herself into the park. She was from old money, her family having lived in Number Ten Louisburg Square since the 1830's. Not long ago he'd had a conversation with one of the bricklayers who had worked on the Number Ten's construction and didn't have very flattering things to say about the family then, or the generations that followed. Greedy bastards and bloodless crones, Graves believed the laborer had called them. He watched as the woman put the fluffy white dog — Taffy — down in the grass, and in a baby talk, urged the animal to relieve itself. Taffy looked in his direction, sensing his presence, and began to growl menacingly, or at least as menacingly as an eight-pound poodle could. The woman chastised the dog with more baby talk.

  Graves looked away from the pet and smiled. What had Eve called the animal when she saw it from the window of Doyle's parlor the previous night? A ratdog?

  Thoughts of Eve returned his mind to the task that had drawn her and Doyle out of the house. Graves wished he could have accompanied them, but they had little need of a ghost. After sixty-odd years, it still irked him that he had been taken out of action. The great Leonard Graves, explorer, scientist, adventurer extraordinaire, put out to pasture by an unknown assassin's bullet.

  Stay and monitor the murmurings in the ether, Doyle had told him as he and Eve departed. Those same murmurings had alerted Graves to the potentially catastrophic situation in the first place, but since his comrades' departure, the voices had grown strangely silent, as if too frightened to speak.

  A sudden chill went through him. Graves wasn't sure how it was possible, for he had no real sense of feeling, but he knew, even before looking up at the sky, that something had happened to the sun.

  An unusual cloud of solid black, miles wide and thick, was moving across the sky, blotting out the burning orb. He studied the dark, undulating mass and determined that it wasn't an atmospheric condition, but something altogether horrible. A droning hum grew in intensity, caused by the beating of millions of insect wings. Flies blotted out the sun, more flies than he had ever seen. His concerns went to his compatriots, and their mission, when a screech cut through the air like a surgeon's knife through flesh, diverting his attentions yet again.

  The woman at Number Ten Louisburg Square was screaming, her hands clawing at her face as she looked down upon the grass in the grip of terror, her feet stamping the freshly cut blades as if in the midst of some wild, ceremonial dance.

  Graves drifted closer, and arrived just in time to see the last of the Taffy's fluffy, white fur disappear beneath a sea of glistening, black-haired bodies and pink, fleshy tails. Rats, many of them the size of housecats, had swarmed the dog, the sounds of tearing flesh and the crunching of bone perverse evidence of an unnatural hunger.

  The sky sun blotted out by flies, a dog attacked and consumed by rats. Graves again thought of Doyle and Eve, suspecting that he already knew the level of their success.

  It was enough to fill him with fear.

  Enough to frighten even a ghost.

  All shadows were connected.

  A twisting maze work of cold black passages entering into realms of further shadow, or worlds of light.

  Squire had parked the limousine, after their five-hour drive back from the Big Apple, inside the townhouse's private garage. Parking was at a premium on the narrow streets of Beacon Hill, and he thanked the Dark Gods that Doyle had the foresight to purchase the property behind his residence and eventually convert it from storage to garage space.

  Eve wasn't doing too well. She seemed better than she had when Doyle first helped her into the back of the car after their little scuffle at Grand Central, but still looked pretty much like a stretch of bad road.

  "I'll take her up into the house," Doyle told him as he helped the injured woman from the backseat of the limousine.

  She had been unusually quiet for most of the drive, telling Squire to shut his trap only once. He figured she must have been hurt pretty badly. There was quite a bit of blood on the back seat's upholstery, and he had made a mental note to have it cleaned when things settled down. If things settle down, he cautioned himself.

  "Go to the freezer in the cellar and bring her back a little something to help pick her up," Doyle told him.

  Leaving the two to make their way up into the residence, Squire found the nearest patch of shadow and disappeared within it. Hobgoblins traveled the shadowpaths. It was their gift and their greatest defense. This day he used them to reach the basement beneath the Louisburg Square townhouse. Squire had his pick of places to emerge, the cellar ripe with huge areas of gloom. It didn't matter the size or shape, a hobgoblin could bend and fold himself into just about any position.

  The drive had been exhausting, and he welcomed the ease with which he was able to enter the cellar. In Doyle's employ, things were rarely so easy. He emerged into the basement from a patch of darkness beside a shelving unit that held the burial urns of some of Mr. Doyle's closest friends and business acquaintances. You never know when you're going to need to talk to one of them again, the magician had told the goblin once, shortly after acquiring another urn for his collection.

  "Hey, guys," he said to the urns. "Got another bad one whipping up, you should be thankful that you're all dirt."

  The goblin did not need light. His eyes were used to navigating the pitch-black hallways of the shadowpaths. He slipped across the crowded storage room to the refrigeration unit humming in the corner. He tugged open the door, a cloud of frigid air escaping into the mustiness of the cellar. Multiple packets of blood hung within the unit, recently stocked by the boss for just such an emergency. That's the boss, always thinking ahead, Squire mused, taking what he needed. He wondered how far ahead Doyle had thought about the current situation.

  He also wondered when it was going to be his turn to grab a snack. Sure, Eve was injured. Her health had to come first. But his stomach had been growling since Hartford. A burger and a milk shake would be nice. Even just a bag of fries. Hell, he'd settle for a donut.

  Squire sighed. First things first.

  The goblin made sure that the door was shut tight and quickly turned away. Squire recalled the problems of storing blood in the past. Dry ice had been what they used way back when, but it didn't offer much of a shelf life. He painfully remembered how much Eve would complain when she was forced to drink a batch that had spoiled. He again praised the Dark Gods for advances in technology as he plunged head-on into the nearest patch of shadow.

  "What do you mean he was taken?" Graves asked, hovering above the oriental carpet in the formal sitting room of Doyle's townhouse.

  The sorcerer had placed pages of the newspaper on the sofa and was gently lowering the bloody and beaten form of Eve down atop them. "We were attacked and Sweetblood was taken." The mage sighed, looking worn and weary. He removed his coat, walking through the spectral form of Graves as if he wasn't there.

  Graves spun around, watching as Doyle hung his jacket on a wooden coat rack outside the parlor. "You're one of the most powerful magicians on the planet, at least that's what you tell us. Who could have managed to do that to you?"

  Doyle came back into the room rolling the sleeves of his starched, white dress shirt. "The Night People. The Corca Duibhne."

  The squat, misshapen goblin, Squire, suddenly appeared from the shadows of the fireplace, stepping out into the room with multiple, fluid-filled plastic bags clutched in his arms. "And we shoulda let 'em all get wiped from existence way back after the first Twilight War, that's what I say." Squire took care not to track soot from the fireplace onto the priceless Oriental rug. He gnawed on the corner of one of the blood packs to open it.

  "They attacked in surprising numbers," Doyle said. He gestured toward Eve, who lay unconscious upon the sofa, bleeding onto yesterday's news. "Eve was occupied with an antagonist of her own. The beasts overpowered us and made off with the arch mage's chrysalis. There was nothing we could do." The magician shook his head, gazing off into space.

  "
There's silence in the ether," Graves told them, crossing his arms. "That can't be good."

  Doyle walked to a liquor cabinet in the corner of the elegant room and removed a crystal decanter of scotch, and a tumbler. He filled half the glass with the golden brown liquid, placed the stopper back into the bottle and put the decanter away. "Not good at all," he agreed, helping himself to a large gulp of the alcohol. It was yet another sensory experience that Graves had come to miss since joining the ranks of the dead. He envied the magician's ability to enjoy the twelve-year-old, Glenlivet single malt, spirits of a different kind altogether.

  A low moan interrupted his thoughts, and Graves saw that Eve was awake. She sat up, wincing in pain, blood-soaked newspaper squelching beneath her. Her hand came up to rub at the back of her head, and came away stained with scarlet.

  "Shit," she muttered beneath her breath. A clot of thick, coagulated blood dropped from the corner of her mouth to land upon the front of her sweater, torn and stained from her conflict earlier that morning. "What's a girl got to do for a drink around here?"

  Everything hurt. Eve turned her somewhat blurred gaze to Squire, who appeared to be having some difficulty opening a blood pack. The goblin gnawed on the pouch's corner, but the plastic was proving too tough for the creature.

  "Give it to me," she demanded, reaching for the bag.

  Insulted, Squire handed it to her. "I was only trying to help," he grumbled. But he set the remaining packs in her lap where she could reach them. "All this drinkin' has made me a tad parched," the goblin said, ambling from the room. "I'm going to get a beer."

  Eve brought the pouch of blood to her mouth, careful to avoid the side that the hobgoblin had chewed. She felt her canines elongate with the promise of feeding, and she tore into the thick plastic container. The blood flowed into her mouth and her entire body began to tingle. Greedily Eve sucked upon the pouch, draining it in seconds, and tossed the empty container to the floor to start another.