The Nimble Man m-1

by Christopher Golden

  Charles Street had a string of old theatres and playhouses, some still used for traditional theatre and others as comedy stages. The Regency had once had a beautiful facade, but it had faded over time as such things did. Then at the twilight of the twentieth century it had been restored, not only outside, but within. The stage and the curtains and the beautiful art on the domed ceiling inside the theatre had all been brought back to their original beauty and luster.

  And then the blaze had ruined it all.

  Firefighters had been able to stop the flames before they had completely gutted the building, but the elegance of the place had been eradicated, charred beyond recognition. As the weeks and months had gone by, the hope that insurance would allow the owners to start anew began to dwindle. A police cordon still blocked the entrance to the Regency Theatre, but such things do not keep out homeless people searching for a place to shield them from the elements, willing to risk the dilapidated architecture crumbling on them.

  Nor did such cautionary postings keep out vampires.

  Insubstantial as the red mist — perhaps even more so — Dr. Graves passed through a boarded-up window and was inside the shadowy skeleton of the theatre. The place still reeked of burnt wood. Graves drifted above the balcony and looked around at blackened remnants of a once grand structure and he thought how fortunate it was that the place had been empty when the fire had started.

  The vampire had made its nest in the orchestra pit.

  For the most part, ghosts were intangible. But Graves had quickly learned that while it took phenomenal effort to touch a human being, he had no difficulty laying hands on supernatural creatures.

  It was a male vampire, a thin, filthy thing in stolen clothes with long, greasy blond hair.

  "Child of Eve," Graves said, floating down toward it.

  The vampire looked up quickly, startled, its jaundice yellow eyes glowing in the dark. It tried to fight him.

  Tried, and failed.

  For perhaps the hundredth time since the sky had gone dark, Katherine Matthews picked up the phone and listened to the hiss of dead air. There was no dial tone, nor any of the other signals the phone company sent when there was trouble on the line. No fast busy signal. Not even that annoying beeping it made if she left it off the hook. The first few times she had picked up the phone she had spoken up, asked if there was anyone else on the line. But there was no one there. Just that hiss.

  Yet if she listened for half a minute or so, couldn't she make out something inside that hiss? A kind of pattern, like the gusting of the wind. The hiss seemed tremulous, as though the dead air on her phone line was laughing at her.

  Katie Matthews had owned Lost and Found Books for seventeen years. It was not merely her business, however. It was her home. The shop was on the first floor of her house in Cambridge, just north of Boston, and she lived alone in a quartet of rooms in the second story. But for now she sat behind the checkout counter near the front door of the bookshop, where she had been ever since the darkness had fallen and the bloody mist had rolled in.

  She was used to being by herself in the store. As silly as it sounded, she always told people she could never really be alone there, not with all the books. Lost and Found was overflowing with hardcovers and paperbacks, new and used, of all types of genres. In the back there was even a section of antiquarian books. The typical customer never bothered to even wander into the rear of the shop, but there were always those discerning clients who knew precisely what they were looking for and would peruse those shelves.

  Katie had been tempted at first to retreat to the antiquarian section, but the only windows were at the front of the shop and the idea of being unable to see what was going on outside terrified her even more than the view beyond the windows. If anything worse happened, she would be trapped back there. From here she could at least run up the stairs to her apartment.

  Only to be trapped there.

  She didn't want to think about it any more, but there was no one to call, no one to talk to. The only escape she could think of was the one she had been using her entire life. Once she had hung the phone up, she picked up the copy of Cold Sassy Tree she had been delving into. It wasn't the sort of thing she usually read, but it was the first book she had laid her hand upon when she had reached for something to hang onto, somewhere to escape.

  Outside the mosquitoes were gone. All of them, as far as she could tell. And that was something, at least. But now… there were figures moving through the red mist. At first she had thought about unlocking a window and calling out to them, asking what was going on. The radio did not work and neither did the small TV behind the counter.

  But there was something off, something more than a little odd, about the way those figures were walking. They moved in a kind of rhythmic stagger that felt like a warning to Katie. So she kept the windows closed and locked, for all the good the glass would do if someone really wanted in. And she kept quiet, and she read, and after every few pages she glanced up and hoped the mist would be gone and the sun returned, and she picked up the phone and prayed for a dial tone.

  Only to have the dead air laugh at her again.

  Her skin prickled with awareness that all was not right and her pulse raced, but she forced herself back into the book. She was past the halfway mark but knew she had only registered a fraction of what she had read. Much as she wished to get completely lost in those pages, she knew she was fooling herself. There might not be a book in the world that was powerful enough to help her escape from this.

  Katie read a few pages further and there was a creak in the old boards of her house. It was a familiar sound and late at night it gave her comfort. And old house moved with the wind. But there was no comfort in it this day. She glanced up at the sound and her eyes were drawn to the window once more. The bloody fog rolled past the glass, thick and damp, leaving a red film on each pane.

  With a sigh she reached out and lifted up the phone again, cursing herself for doing it even as she raised it to her ear. It was foolish to keep doing this. Obsessive-compulsive idiocy. But she could not help herself, though she knew what she would hear.

  Nothing.

  She told herself it was nothing.

  Another creak drew her attention, but this one was followed by a thump and a rustling noise, from deeper inside the shop.

  Katie could not breathe. Her lungs were frozen. Her eyes were open almost too wide as she hung up the phone and moved around the counter. There were only dim overhead lights at the back of the store, in the antiquarian section, but now a brighter light pulsed there, a blue-green glow that cast the entire section in its oceanic hue.

  Soft thumps issued from the antiquarian section.

  Katie's chest hurt from holding her breath but she felt as though she could draw no air. Her shoes scuffed the wooden floor as she shuffled past shelves overflowing with books. The musty smell of old paper filled her nostrils. That aqua glow pulsed, turning her clothes and her hands that same color, even as she moved deeper into the store.

  She paused a moment and closed her eyes. With all the concentration she could muster she focused on taking a breath, and soon she was shuddering as she inhaled sharply. She kept her eyes closed, trying to steady her breathing. When she opened them she glanced at the front of the shop again, saw that the view from her windows had not changed, and nodded to herself.

  Once again she began to move toward that glow, that rustle and thump.

  Katie felt a soft breeze caress her face and she gasped again, blinking in surprise. There was a scent on that breeze, the smell of earth and flowers and trees ripe with fruit. She shook her head and reached up to touch her face where the breeze had whispered past her.

  She was just at the arch that led into the antiquarian section when there came another small thump. Her gaze was drawn instantly to the left, to the third shelf from the top, to a leather-bound book that seemed almost not to belong here. Most of the books in this section had bindings that were dried and cracked and faded, but
the leather covering this tome was fresh and supple so that it seemed almost new. It gleamed in that blue-green light, and the way it sat on the shelf, it jutted from its place, as though someone had pulled it out several inches.

  And it moved. Ever so slightly, it moved.

  The book seemed to jump in its slot, there on the shelf, edging further out from the other volumes.

  It tilted, and then it tumbled, end over end, and struck the floorboards, falling open with a ruffle of pages. Katie let out a small cry and put a hand over her heart as if to warn it to slow down.

  That blue-green light flashed more brightly than ever and she had to shield her eyes. In that moment the breeze that had caressed her swirled around her again, tousling her hair, and the scents it carried were so delicious she thought she had been carried away, finally given the escape that she had longed for.

  Then the light retreated and she blinked away the shadows behind her eyelids.

  Two figures stood with her in the antiquarian section of Lost and Found Books. Once again Katie Matthews felt as though she could not breathe. One of them was a dignified looking man with a graying mustache and a wrinkled suit. Katie thought she recognized the man from century-old photographs.

  The other was a stunningly beautiful woman of imposing height, clad in a cloak the color of the sea. She clutched in her hand an oaken staff, topped by a sphere of ice with a flicker of flame inside. An elemental staff. Her eyes were a bright violet.

  Katie's hands fluttered as though she had forgotten what to do with them, and a lightness came over her heart that nearly made her faint. Almost giddy, she went down on one knee and lowered her head. Once upon a time, years before, she had read the wrong book and opened the wrong door, and it had been Ceridwen who had closed it for her. She had pledged her loyalty to the Fey on that day, like a handful of others she had met in the ages since. But she had never seen Ceridwen in the flesh again.

  Until today.

  "My Lady Ceridwen," she said, her voice cracking, shaking with emotion.

  Ceridwen touched her head.

  "You've done well, Katherine. You are our loyal friend."

  Katie took a deep breath and looked up at Ceridwen, at the razor cut of her hair and the power in those eyes. This woman was everything she had ever wished to be, and yet rather than making Katie feel small, somehow Ceridwen lifted her up, gave her pride in herself.

  "Something terrible is happening outside," Katie said, forcing her voice not to tremble.

  "We know," Ceridwen replied, already striding toward the front of the shop, her companion hard on her heels. "Do not worry yourself, Katherine. You have done just as we asked, for so very long, kept that book safe and our secret in your own heart. I can do no less than keep you safe in return."

  At the door, Ceridwen turned and stared at her, and Katie felt blessed.

  "We will weave protections around the house. Do not step outside this door until the sun returns to the sky."

  Then Ceridwen and her companion went out the door, closing it tightly behind them, leaving Katie with only the delightful scents of Faerie floating in the air to mark their passing. After a moment she sighed happily and picked up the book from the floor. Its leather was not scuffed at all from the fall. She held it in her hands and then allowed herself a bittersweet smile before sliding it back onto the shelf.

  She would have given anything to reverse Ceridwen's trip, to travel through the pages of that book through to the other side, to Faerie. One day, she prayed that Ceridwen would grant her that wish. And she knew that if that day ever came, she would never want to come back.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A tiny ember of fury burned in Morrigan's black heart. She had not expected to find an errant phantom in Conan Doyle's home, but even had she known she would not have wasted a moment thinking on it. What was a ghost, after all, to her power? They were fragments, figments, the echo of a spirit. But whoever this ghost was, he had knowledge that he should not have, and Conan Doyle might well have other allies. The damned specter had escaped her, thwarted her, and Morrigan was not pleased.

  She was not concerned about it raising opposition to her. Nothing could stand in her way now. But just the idea that a damnable figment had escaped her was infuriating.

  No, she told herself. Enough. With great effort, she forced thoughts of the ghost from her mind. Triumph was at hand. Elation. Divinity. She was not about to allow a minor annoyance to spoil that. She had other, far more thrilling matters to attend to.

  Several of the Corca Duibhne vermin under her thrall scattered from her path as she strode down the corridor of Conan Doyle's home to a room whose broad double doors stood open to receive her. Morrigan swept into the high-ceilinged chamber and surveyed the room. It had once been used as a ballroom but now appeared to be a storage place for pieces of mechanical equipment that she imagined Conan Doyle and his lackeys used to keep their fragile forms physically fit. The exercise equipment had been pushed out of the way, up against the mirrored walls, to make room for the amber-encased body of Sweetblood the Mage.

  The chrysalis rested in the center of the room, and though that strange magickal sarcophagus stifled the mage's power, Morrigan could still feel it emanating from within. She had stationed several Corca Duibhne around the chrysalis as guards, but they kept their distance from Sanguedolce. Inert or no, he was so powerful a mage that their entire race feared him.

  Morrigan laughed softly, amused by their furtive glances toward the chrysalis. Their nearly primitive brains were incapable of realizing the potential that lay before them, the power that could be drawn from the ancient fool. But, of course, this was best. Such power was never to be wielded by the likes of these twisted little barbarians.

  Fearful eyes upon her, she approached Sweetblood's cocoon and stared through the amber encasement at the still features of the mage. The energy that radiated from Sanguedolce was intoxicating, and she fell to her knees beside him, a collective gasp going out from the Corca Duibhne around the room. His magick, the wards around this chrysalis, were trying to repel her, but she held her ground, letting it wash over her, becoming almost drunk with its potency.

  Morrigan laid her hands upon the imperfect surface of the chrysalis and was jolted by a surge of magick that struck her, coursing through with the burning power of a lightning strike. She shuddered and moaned aloud, but did not remove her hands. Her teeth gnashed, pain spiked through her flesh, pushing up into her head. She bit her lip and blood dripped down her chin. Through the amber surface of the cocoon she stared down into Sanguedolce's frozen visage.

  She remembered the first time that she had ever laid eyes upon the magician, ages past, in Faerie. During the Twilight War the forces of the righteous had fought valiantly to stem the flow of darkness into the world of the Fey, and the worlds beyond it. She and her brother, Finvarra, had stood together at their father's side. The daughter of the king, she had been his trusted advisor and his personal bodyguard. In the midst of battle, Sweetblood had appeared, hovering above the battlefield, observing the conflict with a cold, unwavering eye, as if attempting to determine whether he should bother to become involved.

  This memory awakened others in Morrigan. Clearly, now, she remembered her physical response to the sight of Sweetblood on that day, the warmth that had tingled in her belly, the pulse of arousal that had begun to throb inside her. Now, as then, she felt a ferocious heat thawing the deep chill that normally enveloped any such urges within her. She had felt his potential for power then, as she did now, and it inflamed her lust.

  Sweetblood had not taken part in the Twilight Wars. Upon discovering the presence of Conan Doyle among the ranks of the virtuous, he had returned to the world of Blight in a flash of magickal exhibitionism. There were those among the Fey who thought Sweetblood had a rivalry with Conan Doyle, and would not fight at his side. Morrigan, however, had felt certain that Sanguedolce had simply deemed the conflict to be beneath him. She had never forgotten him, or the power he wielded; it had ha
unted her always. Here was the key to everything that she desired. With that power, her darkest dreams could be made real. She had sworn to have it for her own, at any cost.

  Now here was the power, beneath her very hands. Morrigan brought her face closer to the surface of the chrysalis.

  "You can't keep me out forever, my sweet," she whispered, running her fingers sensually across the jagged surface of the amber encasement, pressing her supple, leather-clad body against it, as if attempting to arouse the sleeping figure within.

  She began to mutter beneath her breath, words that were ancient before man had dropped from the trees to walk erect.

  "Moggotu sandrathar," Morrigan hissed. "Memaritus gosov iknetar shokkar-dos fhinn."

  Arcane power snaked from her clawed fingertips, flowing across the surface of the chrysalis, attempting to find a weakness to exploit upon its unyielding exterior.

  "Tann-dissarvar, Bottus, Nava-si, Tiridus valkinsu!"

  Morrigan spread herself across the cocoon. There was a flaw. She knew it. She sensed it. The chrysalis was damaged; otherwise, she would not have been able to feel Sweetblood's power leaking out. Already she had been able to use some of the magickal radiant thrown off by the chrysalis to strengthen her own sorceries, to shatter the wards Conan Doyle had set up around his home. Ironic, that the power of the master should be used to destroy the sanctum of the student. Morrigan had a taste of Sanguedolce's magick. But it wasn't enough, for she knew the full extent of what awaited her once the enchanted shell was breached, and she wanted it all. She lay atop the cocoon, letting her own magick flow outward, sensing, probing, searching for the flaw so that she might permeate the chrysalis.

  She writhed atop Sweetblood's amber sarcophagus, ancient incantations issuing from her mouth as she rubbed her body against its unyielding skin. Her magick slipped across its surface, hungrily searching for a way inside, and for a moment, she thought she had succeeded.