The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie)

by Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Julia didn't understand the joke, unless it was simply that Eve didn't care for garlic. After she'd stubbed out her cigarette in a coffee mug, Squire brought plates for her and Danny and she thanked him, but could not bring herself to eat. Her son on the other hand, ate his own portion and then helped himself to hers as well.

  "How long do we give Conan Doyle to find us?" Clay asked as he brought his empty plate to the sink for Squire to wash. The little man now stood atop a chair and was cleaning up, the sink full of hot soapy water.

  Eve leaned in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, drinking her water. Danny could not take his eyes from the attractive woman, Julia noticed, and in a way, she could not blame her son. Eve was one of the most strikingly beautiful women she had ever seen, with the body and the fashion sense of a supermodel. In an ordinary woman, it might've made Julia envious. Yet there was something about Eve that made the hair on the back of Julia's neck stand on end. She wondered what her story was, what bizarre secret she kept in order to be associated with the likes of Squire, Clay, and Mr. Doyle.

  "We give him as long as it takes," Eve said, a dangerous edge in her voice. It was clear in her tone that she neither expected, nor would accept, an argument. "I'm sure he's figured out what's going on by now. We wait for him. Then we'll make a plan."

  Clay stood on the other side of the island across from her and folded his muscular arms. "And if he doesn't come back? If this Morrigan woman who's taken over the house gets the better of him?"

  "I forgot what a bundle of joy you could be." Eve scowled at him.

  "Conan Doyle will come back, don't you worry," Squire said as he scrubbed a plate clean with a sponge and placed in the strainer to dry. "It'll take more than that nasty Faerie bitch to put him down for the count." He turned atop the chair at the sink to look at Julia. "Pardon my French."

  She was about to tell him that it was all right when there was a thump on the front door. Julia jumped, placing a hand against her chest. She could feel her heart racing.

  Eve was the first to react, moving into living room and toward the door.

  "Could it be Mr. Doyle?" Julia asked, hoping it was. She had met the man, and whether or not she had to think about their claims about his true age and identity, his presence would be welcome. At least he seemed human enough. But she wasn't sure if she could stand another bizarre stranger the likes of her current guests.

  "It's possible," Squire said, jumping down off the chair, drying his hands with a dishtowel.

  Clay remained very quiet and still, positioning himself so that he could watch Eve as she went to the door. None of them moved out of the kitchen, however. Not yet. It took Julia only a moment to realize that Clay and Squire had remained where they were as protection for her and Danny. Yet for some reason, this made her even more frightened.

  There came another thump, only this one was much more violent, as if someone or. Heaven forbid, something was trying to get inside.

  "If it's the Jehovahs, tell 'em to screw!" Squire yelled, and Eve slowly turned to fix him in a menacing stare.

  "She doesn't like you very much, does she?" Danny said to the little man.

  "It's all a show," Squire told him. "She'd be lost without me."

  They all watched as Eve took hold of the knob, slowly turned it, and pulled open the door. Something growled at her from within the shifting red mist outside.

  Then it erupted from the bloodstained night, bursting through the doorway.

  The vampire lurched into the Ferrick house, arms pinwheeling, trying to regain its balance. It seemed more like the leech had been thrown into the house than any focused attack. Not that Eve cared. The thing was filth. She grabbed hold of the slavering, mad-eyed bloodbag and threw it to the floor, then dropped upon it, placing one knee in the small of its back. She grabbed a handful of filthy hair, yanking its head back toward her.

  "Hey Julia, ever seen this asshole before?" she asked as the leech screamed and thrashed beneath her.

  The Ferrick woman emerged from the kitchen practically hiding behind Clay. Squire and the demon boy came out after them. Julia shook her head, staring wide-eyed at the vampire. She kept shaking, like at any minute she was going to lose it completely.

  "Watch her," Eve said, eyes narrowed, gesturing to Clay. He nodded.

  Eve focused on the leech again. Its stink filled her nostrils.

  "Goddamned vermin," she muttered as she twisted its head around so she could look it in the eye. "So nobody invited you inside. Must be hurting you pretty bad to be in here," she whispered in its ear, leaning in close. "Breaking the rules and all." Eve felt the bone structure within her hand begin to shift and change, fingers lengthening, nails elongating. She didn't need a wooden stake to slay the vampires of the world. Everything she required was at her fingertips.

  Her fingers became long talons, their tips like razors. With a flick of her wrist her claws could end a vampire's existence with dreadful swiftness. Just one of the perks of being mother to them all.

  Eve sliced a single talon across the leech's parchment-white throat, slitting the skin and teasing out a slowly descending curtain of blood that slid down its neck. She was careful not to get it on her clothes. This whole crisis had already ruined one outfit, and though she didn't care much about her pants, the top was nice. Expensive. And she'd never be able to get bloodstains out of it.

  "Mother's going to put you out of your misery," she whispered.

  The vampire shrieked and bucked with such force that Eve was thrown from its back. She rolled to her feet, snarling and cussing, but it was already up and fleeing toward the still open door. Eve started after it. Its speed was unnatural, but she was faster. Impossibly fast.

  She stopped three feet from the door.

  The filthy leech was trapped on the threshold of the house. It was lifted off the ground by invisible hands and dangled there, hissing and lashing out. But Eve could see the terror in its eyes. She arched an eyebrow in curiosity, for it was not her that the leech was afraid of.

  Beyond the door there was only the crimson fog, yet the vampire hung there, several inches off of the floor, feet kicking as though it actually needed to breathe. Slowly, a figure began to coalesce on the front stoop of the Ferrick house. The eyes were first, dark and mysterious, like tarnished copper pennies. Then handsome, angular features, and muscular arms. A hand, clutching the vampire's throat.

  "Eve," said the new arrival, "let's not have this pathetic animal running loose, all right? But make it fast. I owe it that much, at least, for being my hound, for leading me to you."

  The voice was warm and low, and yet a blast of frigid air churned up from the place where the ghost of Dr. Leonard Graves appeared.

  Eve smiled. "Of course, Leonard. A pleasure to see you, as always."

  She tore the vampire from his grasp and raked her claws across its throat, nearly severing its head from its neck. There was a moment where the thing's flesh crackled like damp wood in a fire, and then it exploded in a blast of cinder and ash, its dying embers drifting down to the carpeted entryway like gray snow.

  "That rocked!" Danny Ferrick said, only to have his mother shush him, her tension obvious even in that simple utterance. A package of cigarettes had appeared in her hands and she was tapping one out.

  "So how is it out there?" Eve asked, as Dr. Graves drifted into the house. "As bad as we think?"

  The ghost glanced around the living room, frowned as he noted Julia and Danny, and then paused just inside the doorway, apparently not wishing to cause the woman even more of a fright. "I wish I could put your fears at ease," he said, turning to gaze out into the night of swirling red fog. "But I've never been much of a liar."

  "Oh, Jesus. I'm in Hell," Julia Ferrick muttered to herself. The pack of Winston Lights seemed to explode, showering cigarettes onto the floor. She started to shake, as though she was going to fall apart entirely.

  "No, hey. Julia, listen. Listen to me. It's all right," Clay said.

  Eve
turned to find him shooting her a dark look and at first she did not understand. Then she became aware of her talons. She nodded slowly, willing her hands to resume their normal shape, their elegant human form. She strode across the room to Julia and held up both hands. The woman stared at her, shaking her head, mouthing some denial or other.

  "Mom, didn't you hear him? It's okay," Danny said, trying to reassure her.

  Eve felt sorry for the kid. But none of them could afford to have the mother fall apart. They didn't have the luxury of looking out for her at the moment. "Julia. Hey, Julia!" Eve snapped.

  The woman's eyes went wide, her nostrils flaring, and she glared at Eve.

  "We're a motley crew, aren't we?" Eve said, almost succeeding in keeping the amusement out of her voice. Almost, but not quite. "Yeah. A motley crew. You've picked up enough already that none of this is a surprise to you. Conan Doyle's a sorcerer. A mage, we say. Clay's a shapeshifter, but that's only the easy explanation for that. The same way 'vampire' is a convenient way to describe me. You won't believe me, but trust me when I tell you the rest of my story would fuck you up much worse than that one word. Dr. Graves, here," she said, hooking a thumb to point out the new arrival, the tasty-looking man with dark bronze skin that seemed translucent at times. "He's a ghost. But he's a friend. May be hard for you to take, but we're the good guys. We're on your side. Deal with reality, or don't. Up to you."

  Julia did not look up at first, and Danny was at her side. "Mom?"

  Then the woman actually laughed. It was a dry, sort of unhinged little chuckle, but it was something. "A ghost," she said. "He'd have to be. I remember my father telling me stories about Dr. Graves when I was a little girl." Her gaze shifted toward Graves. "You were his hero."

  The specter nodded once. "I'm honored."

  "Honored," Julia said. She closed her eyes and shook her head. Then she dropped to her knees and began to collect her cigarettes. Danny got down and helped her, concern and regret in his eyes. When he handed her several of them, Julia sat back on her legs and looked up at Graves again, her hands full of cigarettes. Her eyes seemed somehow clearer than before.

  "You're honored," she said, gazing at Dr. Graves. Then she looked around at the rest of them and dropped all the cigarettes but one, which she tapped nervously against her thigh. "What a circus. I should have rented a tent. You're all monsters, then, right? All of you, monsters of one kind or another. My son . . . my son is a demon. Or something like that. But whatever you are . . . I know you don't mean me any harm. I know you're trying to stop this . . ." she gestured toward the window, where the crimson fog had begun to glow, just slightly.

  "Just tell me what I can do to help." Julia climbed to her feet, taking a long breath. She put a hand on Danny's shoulder and then glanced at the others again, holding up her lone salvaged cigarette. "And please, for God's sake, somebody get me a light."

  Eve had to hand it to the woman. She'd seen stronger people reduced to dribbling idiots over lesser things than this.

  Pleased that they weren't going to have to deal with Julia Ferrick losing her mind, Eve turned to the ghost. "All right, Leonard. Tell us something we don't know."

  Dr. Graves had a quiet dignity that seemed to make them all stand a bit straighter. "The townhouse has been overrun with —"

  "Know it," Eve interrupted.

  The ghost scowled. "A sorceress of unimaginable power —"

  "Know that, too. Her name is Morrigan and she's blood kin to our own Ceridwen."

  The air around the ghost became increasingly colder as his annoyance grew. "Perhaps you should be filling me in as to what's going on."

  "Is that all you have?" Eve asked him.

  "Are you aware that the souls of the dead are being pulled back to their remains, that they're being driven from their graves, and all of them seem to be drawn toward the same location in the city?"

  "Finally," she said. "Something I didn't already know."

  "Nor did I," said a voice from the depths of the night, from the folds of the bloody mist.

  "Jesus Christ, what now?" Julia whispered.

  Two figures emerged from the fog, stepping in through the door. Arthur Conan Doyle glanced around the room approvingly. Lady Ceridwen, elemental sorceress of the Fey, gave them each an icy stare. Eve admired her cloak, but the pants were completely without style. Ethereally beautiful she might have been, but her fashion sense was for shit. Earth tones, blues and greens, no patterns, nothing especially bright. No sophistication at all. But what pissed Eve off was that Ceridwen was still stunning, no matter what.

  "Excellent, you're all accounted for," Conan Doyle said.

  "Nice to see you're still amongst the living," Eve replied. She shot an amused glance at Graves. "No offense."

  "None taken."

  Conan Doyle stepped further into the living room, the stoic Ceridwen at his side. "It appears that the situation is most dire," he said gravely, making eye contact with them each in turn.

  "Now let us set the wheels in motion to effect a remedy, as swiftly as we're able."

  The lights were out, now. The fog had stolen them.

  The Ferrick woman had been kind enough to allow him the use of her home office for his ruminations. Conan Doyle sat in the darkness upon her black leather chair and attempted to relax, letting his mind wander. It was times such as this, when the tensions were high, that Arthur Conan Doyle felt the effects of his nearly century and a half of life. His back ached, and his bones creaked with only the slightest of movements, and he wondered quite seriously if he still had the inner strength to deal with problems of this magnitude.

  His agents — his menagerie as he liked to call them — had seemed to breathe a sigh of relief upon his arrival, so he kept his doubts and fears to himself. He would do as he had always done. In the midst of chaos, he would find the skeins of order, and attempt to weave them together once more.

  This was the first time since early that morning that he'd had a chance to sit and collect his thoughts. In his mind he catalogued the date he and his agents had gathered. Nothing was too small or inconsequential. He analyzed the events of the previous days, considered the entire history of Sweetblood the Mage, and how Conan Doyle himself had come to dedicate himself to a search for his former mentor. The incident in New York, when he had failed to procure the amber-encased body of the mage, was a moment he examined thoroughly. Conan Doyle replayed every conversation, reviewed every action, but no matter how he tried, a discernable pattern had yet to emerge.

  Frustrated, he rose from the chair and began to pace. Is this the time? he wondered. The time when all of my resources will prove not enough, when my own ingenuity would result only in failure? Will this be Reichenbach Falls, for me? How many years can one man fight the darkness before the universe demands an accounting, before the pendulum must swung in the other direction?

  Conan Doyle pushed the thoughts from his mind; he was tired, not having slept since the brief catnap he'd managed on the recent drive to New York in pursuit of Sweetblood. He needed to sleep, but time was of the essence. Rest could wait; he needed to think. He might not yet have a plan of action that would halt the horrors going on in the streets. But that was because there were still too many questions in his mind. He was going to need to find some answers. His menagerie was depending on him. The world was depending on him.

  "Think, blast you," he muttered beneath his breath as he stared through the slats of the office window. Outside he could see nothing, the world totally obscured by that red mist. His thoughts had become like the whirling maelstrom left by Morrigan in place of the entrance from Faerie to the world of his birth, fragments of information swirling furiously about inside his mind.

  There came a knock upon the door.

  "Yes?" Conan Doyle called, turning his attention from the red-tinted night.

  The door came slowly open, a beam of light from outside cutting through the darkness to partially illuminate the room. "Didn't know if you'd still be awake," Squire said s
heepishly as he entered.

  "And now you do," Conan Doyle said, turning his attentions back to the window and the unnatural conditions beyond it. "What can I do for you, Squire?" he asked, annoyed that he had been disturbed, but at the same time grateful for the distraction.

  "Before leaving the townhouse, after I loaded up the weapons and shit, I made a stop in your study."

  Conan Doyle paused, raised one eyebrow, and turned toward the hobgoblin again. Squire stood at the center of the office holding something in his hands, a familiar red velvet case.

  "It was the last thing I thought of before I flew the coop. Thought you might need it," he said, holding it out to Conan Doyle. "Y'know, to help you think and all."

  Squire placed velvet case on the desk in front of the leather chair.

  "Thank you, Squire," Conan Doyle said warmly, touched by the gesture, and by the loyalty of his faithful valet. "That was most considerate of you."

  "Don't mention it, boss," the hobgoblin said, making his way to the door. "Least I could do, considering you're the one that's gonna be responsible for saving our asses." Squire grinned as he went out into the corridor. "Goodnight, Mr. Doyle," he said, closing the door gently behind him, plunging the room again into red-hued shadow.

  "Goodnight, Squire," Conan Doyle said under his breath, leaving his place at the window to approach the case left for him on the desktop. Conan Doyle reached down and took the velvet case in hand, slowly opening it to reveal its contents. He removed the Briar pipe, its rounded, ivory bowl giving off the faintest aromatic hint from the last time he had smoked, and a pouch of his favorite tobacco blend. Many a problem had been hashed out over a smoldering pipe.

  Conan Doyle lowered himself back down into the leather chair and began to fill the pipe, stuffing the tobacco into the bowl with his index finger. Finished, he brought the stem of the pipe to his mouth as he uttered a simple spell of conflagration to ignite the Briar's contents.

  The mage puffed upon the pipe, filling the room with the rich scent of the burning tobacco. He leaned back in the chair, a halo of smoke drifting about his head, already beginning to feel the soothing effects of his pipe, and attempted again to make sense of the swirling maelstrom that his thoughts had become.