Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

"No, sir. I don't think I do."

The Lieutenant cleared his throat again, drawing Brodsky's attention. Clay watched as he took a step nearer the sergeant.

"Things ain't never gonna be the same for you after this, Johnny," Landry said, the words a grim promise. "Not ever. And this asshole's not going to find the Quarter real hospitable either. You embarrass me like this? Make a fool out of me? You're the damn fool."

Brodsky's partner, the only other cop still in the bar, had moved toward the door to watch Caleb and Gage. When he spoke it was so low as to be barely audible, and yet the words resounded through the bar.

"Son of a bitch, John. You might want to look at this."

The moment Brodsky glanced over at him, the Lieutenant snapped the strap off of his gun and slid it out of the holster with swiftness borne of years of practice. He brought it up, taking aim at Brodsky's temple. The sergeant was the nearest armed man. It only made sense that Landry would take him down first, Clay second, the cop at the door third. The hooker likely didn't even enter into his homicidal logic.

Clay moved with stunning speed, putting himself between Brodsky and that gun. The Lieutenant fired, the report echoing through Charmaigne's. The bullet tore through Clay's chest and lodged in his vertebrae, trapped there. He winced at the pain but already he was changing again. This time, however, there was no cat. Not even the human face of the man the people of New Orleans knew as Clay Smith. He could have taken the face of any man in the bar just by touching one of them.

Instead, he showed Lieutenant Pete Landry his own face. His real face. His clothes were gone, save for a scarlet ceremonial drape around his waist that hung nearly to his knees. Clay towered over Landry, nearly nine feet tall and as broad as two men across the chest. His red-brown flesh, from hairless scalp to bare feet, was damp and soft and run through with cracks.

"Go on, asshole," Clay rumbled, "shoot me again."

Wide-eyed and hyperventilating, the asshole did.

Clay ripped the gun out of his hand, breaking three fingers, and grabbed Landry by the throat, trying his best to avoid meeting the grateful gaze of the murderer's ghosts. He did it for them, but he could not withstand the sadness in those eyes.

He squeezed the Lieutenant by the throat until the man's eyes rolled up to white.

"Step away from him," Brodsky demanded.

Clay glanced over, saw that the sergeant had drawn his own weapon. He let Landry drop, gasping, to the floor and looked down at Brodsky. He smiled, and he knew it was a grotesque smile.

"John, my friend, you want to know how I track killers? I'll tell you over a beer some time. If you want other answers about me…" Clay paused and took a long, calming breath, staring into Brodsky's eyes. "Trust me when I tell you, you're not alone."

With that small, gasping noise he changed again, from towering clay figure to copper-furred cat. Brodsky shouted after him. The uniforms were all cursing, wondering what the hell was going on. Caleb and Gage had just stepped back inside with a small pistol in an evidence bag. One of them stooped and tried to stop the stray as it ran out the door, but he was too slow, too clumsy.

The cat darted into an alley, past a Dumpster, then along other streets until it came once again to Rue Dauphine. As it passed beneath the shading branches of a tree that grew up from the sidewalk, the cat disappeared and was replaced by Clay Smith once more. He had no bullet wound. Not even a tear in his crisply clean navy blue T-shirt.

He cut through to Bourbon Street and fell in amidst the swirl of tourists, the loud shouts of hucksters, the jazz band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" on the corner. Clay hated Bourbon Street, hated the cheap, carnival atmosphere of it, but he had walked that street at least once every day since he had come to live here. It was alive and vibrant and filled with color and at least for a handful of minutes it could make him forget the things he could not remember.

As he passed by a restaurant that was serving breakfast he heard people hushing one another inside. There was something urgent about their manner and so he ducked his head into the restaurant and saw that everyone waiting for tables had stopped to watch the newscaster on the television above the bar.

The visual cut away to a scene of the New York skyline.

Blood was raining from the sky.

Though the subway tunnel was abandoned, the roar of nearby trains thundered throughout the underground. The air was dry and chalky and there on a platform unused for decades, Doyle felt the shimmer of magic, as though their every breath disrupted cobwebs of time. This was a sensation he had felt recently, in the foyer of the brownstone where Yvette Darnall and her fellow mediums had died to keep Sweetblood's secret. This place had been frozen in time, had been hidden away from untrained eyes.

Until now.

"Doyle! Why don't you get what we came for?" Eve snapped.

His gray brows knitted together as he turned to glare at her. Her jacket was torn: the demon's claws had ripped through suede and cotton at her shoulder and blood was seeping into the fabric. The thing towered above her on the platform, its footfalls cracking the tile floor with every step. Even as Doyle glanced at Eve, the thing Sweetblood had set here to guard his hiding place bent once more and lunged for her. Distracted in that moment by her ire at Doyle, Eve could not avoid its ridiculously long arms and the demon snatched her by the throat, one of the sharp protrusions on its arm cutting a gash in her face that flayed her cheek to the bone.

She snarled in pain, latched onto its wrist with both hands, swung her legs up and braced them against its body, and then used that leverage to break its arm. The grinding snap of bone echoed across the platform. Eve dropped to the tile and rolled away from the guardian, then turned to glare at him.

"What the fuck are you just standing there for?"

Doyle smoothed his coat. His own wardrobe had thus far suffered only the veil of dust that hung in the air and covered every surface.

"Merely wondering if you might be bleeding less if you concentrated on what you were doing rather than policing my own actions."

He raised an eyebrow as the demon raced at her again, roaring, cradling its shattered arm. Then he turned away, leaving her to the battle. Eve's face would heal, as it always had. All of her wounds would disappear. That was the gift and curse of her immortality. In comparison, his own extended life was merely a parlor trick.

Since the moment they had left Yvette Darnall's brownstone he had been trying to sense the power of Sweetblood. When they had entered Grand Central Station he had known they were on the right track. Had anyone but Sweetblood cast the glamour that hid the guardian's true nature, Doyle would have seen right through it. Not that it mattered now. The trail had led him here, to this platform, to the door that now stood before him.

Or perhaps not.

Though to Eve it seemed he was merely standing there, Doyle was searching for the emanations of the magic Lorenzo Sanguedolce had used to hide himself away. At first it had seemed to lead through that door, but now he frowned deeply, knitting those eyebrows once again, and turned to focus upon the tiled wall to his right. A tremor went through him and he felt something tug him, as though he were a fish who had just taken the bait. Quickly he strode across the platform.

Eve hissed loudly and Doyle glanced over to see her on the demon's back, her legs wrapped around it from behind. Its protective spines stabbed into her but she held on tightly as she tried to reach around to claw out its eyes. For just a flicker of a moment her gaze caught his but he ignored the continued accusation in her eyes as he approached the far wall.