Crashing Paradise

by Christopher Golden

  Conan Doyle stood beside a dark, cherrywood desk, going through his briefcase. The woman fell onto the bed, bouncing up and down as though testing it out, trying to get comfortable.

  They did not suspect a thing.

  His prey seldom did.

  From microscopic insect, the assassin assumed the guise of a Dire Wolf, one of the most ferocious beasts ever to walk the planet. His flesh flowed like water, bones popping and growing. In the blink of an eye he became a monstrous beast, jaws snapping. Clay sprang at his prey, anticipating the feel of the man’s neck in his mouth, his jaws breaking it, the gouts of blood as he tore into the flesh.

  It would be over in moments.

  The man spun as Clay descended upon him, one hand glowing as if aflame. The sorcerer’s eyes crackled with some sort of inner power as he uttered the words of an incantation.

  Searing, crimson light erupted from the target’s hands, hurling Clay backward toward the door. He snarled in anger and surprise, shifting fur and flesh to something that would absorb the brunt of the impact.

  Crashing against the door, he glanced down upon the dark brown shell that had replaced the thick fur of the wolf.

  Something reptilian, the killer thought, the bones of his body reconfiguring into a primordial creature.

  He scrambled to his feet, a hiss upon his tongue, a spiny tail waving furiously behind him.

  Conan Doyle stood defiantly at the center of the room, both hands now crackling with unearthly energy. The mage hovered above the floor, his feet not touching the ground.

  At least that part of the intel was right, the assassin thought to himself. A sorcerer without a doubt, but a dead man nonetheless.

  The woman—the unexpected witness—crouched on the bed, staring in shock. She seemed about to act, but Clay paid her no mind. She posed no danger. Her moment would come soon enough.

  He sprang, evading the dark power that arced from the man’s hands. He shifted from one shape to the next, from one size to another, leaping around the room with such speed that his intended victim could not get a bead on him. This adversary was good, a challenge. It had been too many years since an assignment had challenged him. It excited him.

  He clung a moment to the ceiling, then lashed out with hooked, bony claws. The sorcerer attempted to evade his attack, twisting as he summoned a blast of magical power from burning fingertips. But this time Clay was faster. Like the snap of a bullwhip, the bone claws raked across the man’s chest, clothing and flesh tearing away with ease, the smell of spilled blood suddenly filling the air.

  Conan Doyle fell.

  The killer dropped down from the ceiling, momentarily assuming his natural form as he stalked toward his prey. The bone claws exuded a powerful neurotoxin. It would be only seconds before the man was completely helpless.

  The sorcerer went rigid on the floor, his body going into spasms.

  Clay could not remember the last time his pulse had quickened during an assignment. He knelt down beside the man.

  “Thank you for the challenge,” he whispered, reaching out a powerful hand to crush the man’s throat, ending his life mercifully, and as quickly as he could.

  The sorcerer deserved no less.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Clay frowned. He’d been so caught up in the challenge of his prey that he had forgotten the room’s other occupant. The woman. He would deal with her next. Frowning, he grabbed hold of Conan Doyle’s throat.

  His arm was pulled backward with such fierce strength that he nearly lost his balance. He spun to face the woman, who now held his wrist in her hand.

  Not a woman. Something else. So much for intel.

  “I said no,” she said, and she twisted his wrist. The sound of breaking bone echoed in the room like a gunshot.

  He leaped away from his prey, cradling his arm even as he willed the molecules to flow, repairing the injury in an instant.

  The way the woman stood, the glint in her eyes, made him realize he was in the presence of a predator. Her hands had become razor-sharp talons, and she sneered at him, revealing pearl white teeth and long, razor-keen incisors.

  “Vampire,” Clay said, even as he transformed again, taking on the shape of a Bengal tiger. He sprang across the room, claws ready to match hers in combat.

  She met the attack full on, catching him in midpounce and flipping him onto the floor.

  “Do you know how much I hate that fucking word?” she snarled, raking her claws across his exposed belly.

  The killer roared in pain, the wounds burning like fire.

  The tiger vanished in an instant as he shifted again, diminishing until he became a dragonfly. He flitted out of her path as she tried to claw him again.

  Before she could react to that transformation, he darted behind her and became a mountain gorilla, raising huge arms and smashing down upon her with bone-shattering force.

  Clay chanced a quick glance at Doyle, who had propped himself up against the wall, obviously still feeling the effects of the toxin in his veins. The sorcerer smiled, and Clay was filled with an overpowering sense of dread. He had to end this now. Glancing across the room, he was startled to see that the female did not lie in a crumpled heap against the wall, but instead clung there spiderlike.

  “My turn,” she said, springing at him.

  He became an enormous Kodiak bear as she leaped on him, roaring his displeasure as he attempted to swat the vampire away. She clung to his thick fur. The killer thrashed, driving his own body against a nearby wall in an attempt to crush her. She spun herself out of harm’s way.

  Then she was behind him. Her hands clamped on either side of his head with such strength that he thought she might tear it right off. Instead, the vampire pulled his head back, exposing his throat.

  He didn’t have a moment to react. She darted her open jaws toward him and sank her fangs through fur and layers of bear fat. Blood spurted into her mouth and onto her face.

  The vampire began to drink. No matter how he struggled, or thrashed, he could not dislodge her.

  The assassin felt himself growing weaker, unable to focus his thoughts or even rely on instinct to change his form. He stumbled around the hotel room as the leech clung hungrily to him, draining the blood from him. He felt the world around him begin to grow dim. His legs gave way beneath him, and he slumped to the floor.

  It can’t end like this, he thought, fighting to remain conscious—fighting to stay alive. He could hear her feeding, the awful sucking sound as she pulled the life from his veins.

  Just as he was about to slip into the abyss, it happened.

  It felt as if his mind had been encased in amber, and now it began to crack. He did not fight it. He allowed it to break—to shatter—and from within the shell they emerged, a deluge long kept dammed up, suppressed.

  Memories.

  He let them wash over him and immersed himself in the sea of what had been hidden from him for so long. The memories flowed around him, images of his past. He remembered his capture during the Second World War, taken by the United States Army from a French village that had been under his protection. They had thought him nothing more than a monster, something to be used . . . his talents exploited.

  Their scientists and their torturers had taken control of his mind and stolen his memories.

  Turning him into a weapon.

  A killer.

  But he was more than that.

  So much more.

  The assassin slumped to the floor, bombarded with the memories of the history he had lived before his capture . . . of the people he had known, the lands he had visited. He had seen the rise of civilizations and, in some instances, had a hand in their demise. He had invented himself over and over, warrior, hero, monarch, and serf.

  “Eve, let him go,” a distant voice said, and he felt the vampire’s fangs leave his throat.

  He lay powerless on the hotel room floor. Barely able to lift his head, he stared at the sorcerer—Conan Doyle—as he was hel
ped to his feet by the woman. Her lips were stained crimson with the blood she had taken from his veins.

  Involuntarily, he felt his body change, returning to its true, earthen form. It was like being caught beneath an avalanche, the eternity of lifetimes he had lived falling into place.

  And when it seemed as if he could take it no more, he remembered the Garden, and the hands of the Creator. He remembered what he was, the thing from which all life was formed.

  The Clay of God.

  His mind at last whole, and belonging completely to him, the Clay of God rose slowly to his feet, his eyes upon his would-be victims. The sorcerer stood unsteadily on his own, the vampire attentive at his side.

  Conan Doyle lifted his hand. The tips of his fingers started to glow with an unearthly light.

  “I believe this concludes our business,” the Englishman said.

  Someone started to pound at the door, voices on the other side demanding to be let in.

  Clay looked toward the window, his body shifting into that of a bird. Orange flames trailed from behind his wings as he sailed toward the closed window and crashed through the glass in an explosion of fire.

  He had taken on the form of the phoenix.

  For he had been reborn.

  CONAN Doyle breathed in deeply, inhaling the lingering scent of his lover. Ceridwen had just departed in the swirling embrace of a traveling wind, and already he felt the ache of her absence. He knew it was a liability, becoming so dependent on anyone, but he could not help himself. Nor did he wish to. He’d cast himself completely into the abyss of his love for her and would gladly pay any consequence. Come what may, he was hers.

  He flexed his hand, wincing at the pain that still ached in his reattached finger, but was glad to see that he had regained almost all mobility. The discomfort would pass over time, and he had other more pressing matters to concern him.

  All around the world, the Menagerie had been attacked.

  And now Eve had been abducted. In his mind, he drew together all the skeins of this strange web of events. Simple deduction said that the attacks were meant to be a distraction from the actual goal, which was the abduction of Eve.

  But for what purpose?

  The question rattled around inside the mage’s skull as he stepped into a patch of shadow thrown by a large armoire.

  “Squire, can you hear me?” he said, speaking into the shadow. “I require your presence at once.”

  He had attempted this form of communication with the hobgoblin several times already. As before, there was no answer.

  Conan Doyle felt a twinge of apprehension. Squire was the only member of his Menagerie who remained unaccounted for subsequent to the attacks. If whoever was responsible for choreographing them had been thorough, it seemed likely that Squire had been assaulted as well. Since he had not been at the brownstone when the ugliness there had unfolded, Conan Doyle could only surmise that he was likely at the forge, his workshop in the Shadowpaths.

  Another ripple of dread went through him as he wondered what enemy their unknown assailants would have sent against the hobgoblin. To say that Squire had ruffled a few feathers over the years would be an understatement. The only comfort he could take from this train of thought was that it seemed likely the shadow hound, Shuck, was with Squire at the forge. Perhaps together, they would survive.

  He went to his coat, hanging from the back of one of the wooden kitchen chairs, and fished around the inside front pocket for his pipe and tobacco. A smoke would help soothe his frazzled nerves and help him to think more clearly, or at least that was what he told himself.

  Stuffing the pipe bowl full, he lit the tobacco and eagerly began to puff upon the stem.

  If anything, the hobgoblin is resourceful, he told himself, pacing the small cottage floor. Conan Doyle recalled the numerous times that Squire had helped to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. His ability to travel through shadow was the perfect tool in their war against the encroaching darkness.

  “He’s fine,” the mage found himself speaking aloud.

  But as he stared off into space, a tiny voice in the back of his mind whispered back. What if he’s not? Conan Doyle quickly silenced the thought, turning back to the shadow beside the armoire. He went to it again, removing the pipe from his mouth to call down into the shadow.

  The darkness itself surged up to attack him, a roar filling his ears and driving him backward.

  Under attack from the Shadowpaths themselves, Conan Doyle whispered a simple hex and churning, crackling magic writhed around his fist, powerful enough to destroy almost anything emerging from the realm of shadows.

  He hesitated as he heard a snuffling noise, and the great beast—dripping in darkness—emerged from the pool of shadow. Conan Doyle stayed his hand. There was something familiar here.

  “Shuck?” he asked.

  The beast began to shake. Spatters of darkness flew from its body to dapple the floor and walls with shadows that quickly dispersed when exposed to the morning light. The animal made a soft, mewling sound as it fixed its dark gaze upon him, turning around to stare into the darkness from which it had just emerged.

  Conan Doyle’s pulse raced. “Where is he, Shuck?” the archmage asked, coming to stand beside the animal. “Where is your master?”

  As if on cue, a hand emerged from the darkness, followed by Squire’s large head. The hobgoblin gasped for air as Conan Doyle reached down to help pull him from the black pool.

  “Thank the gods,” he said beneath his breath as he hauled Squire out of the shadows.

  “Bet I had you worried there,” the hobgoblin said, gulping at the air as he wiped liquid shadow from his eyes and mouth.

  “Stuff tastes like shit,” he muttered, the spatters already dissolving to oily whips of smoke as it was exposed to the light coming into the room.

  “There have been attacks upon the others, I was concerned that—”

  “Us, too,” the hobgoblin said, patting Shuck, who had dropped to the floor to rest. “Somebody sicced a fuckin’ shadow snake on us.”

  Conan Doyle frowned. “The Murawa? It hasn’t been seen for centuries.”

  “Yeah, well we’ve been jumping on and off the paths for hours trying not to get our asses eaten. So, apparently, it’s back.”

  Squire walked across to the window and into a pool of morning light. The oily, shadow stuff that clung to him began to dissolve.

  “Had to leave the established paths and swim through the primal stuff. Made a pit stop in the Orient. Obviously, I wasn’t walking home from there, so we dived back in. Shucky was the one that heard your voice and led us here.”

  Squire crossed the elegant living room and went to the kitchen, smiling as he spotted the refrigerator purring in the far corner. The shadow beast scrabbled to his feet, following his master.

  “Got anything to eat?” Squire asked, pulling open the door. “I’m famished.”

  “There’s no time for that now,” Conan Doyle replied.

  Squire emerged from the refrigerator holding a wedge of cheese.

  “What’s up?” the hobgoblin asked, taking a large bite from the wedge. Pieces of cheese dropped to the floor, where Shuck promptly licked them up.

  “I told you that we’ve all been attacked over the last few hours, a distraction I believe from the real objective.”

  “Which is?”

  “They’ve taken Eve.”

  Squire froze and looked up. Shuck began to emit a low, dangerous sound deep in his chest.

  “Who the fuck’s done that?” the hobgoblin asked, leaving the kitchen, Shuck trotting at his side.

  “A motley collection of enemies,” Conan Doyle said, continuing to puff upon his pipe. “A horde of vampires. A demon. An angel. All working together.”

  “That ain’t good,” Squire said through a mouthful of cheese. He gave the last bite to Shuck and wiped his grubby hands upon the front of his pants. “So what are we doing now?”

  “I’m awaiting Ceridwen’s return with C
lay. I need you to go back to Boston and see to the brownstone. Danny and Julia are there. You’re to stand sentinel there against further attacks. Bring what weapons you can.”

  Squire nodded in understanding. “What kind of attacks are we talking about? Anything special that I should know in choosing weapons?”

  Conan Doyle thought about Graves’s description of the brownstone’s attacker. “It appears that whoever is attacking us has acquired the cooperation of a shapeshifter. And not some ordinary were-beast. A true shifter.”

  “No shit,” the hobgoblin said. “Does Clay know about this?”

  “He does, yes. And there’s the twist, old friend. Dr. Graves, Danny, and Julia initially believed that it was Clay who attacked them. The shifter gained entry by wearing his face. But Clay was in France with Eve when they, too, were attacked and Eve taken.”

  “Beautiful,” Squire grumbled, rubbing his hand across the rough skin of his chin. “I don’t like the sounds of this one.”

  “No,” Conan Doyle said with a shake of his head. “Nor do I. You’d best hurry along. I’m aware the Shadowpaths are dangerous at the moment, Squire, but if you’ll brave them once more, we’ll find a way to destroy the Murawa as soon as Eve is back among us. Return to the house, check the wards to see if they’re still holding, and provide Danny and his mother with a means to protect themselves.”

  Squire looked away. “So I guess I’ll see ya in a while,” he said with some apprehension.

  “Yes, you will,” Conan Doyle said. His pipe had gone out, and he tapped the burned tobacco remains into his cupped hand. “That is, unless you’re eaten by a shadow snake.” The archmage looked up to fix him in his gaze.

  “Ain’t you a fuckin’ barrel of laughs,” Squire snarled, leaping into the pool of darkness, Shuck following right behind him.

  “Be careful, old friend,” Conan Doyle whispered, certain that only he could hear. “Be careful.”

  THOUGH she lay deep beneath the desert sands, she knew the sun had set. She could feel it.

  In the utter darkness of her daytime resting place, under the shifting dunes, Eve opened her eyes. The gnawing pain in her belly urged her to awaken.