Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

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 sheepishly 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.

You're the one that's gonna be responsible for saving our asses, Squire had said. Crude, but not entirely inaccurate.

Conan Doyle only prayed that after all this time, he was still up to the challenge.

The air inside the study was thick and redolent with the aroma of Conan Doyle's tobacco. He drew it through his nostrils in long, slow breaths, lips holding his pipe tightly. His eyes fluttered slightly as he sketched in the air with his fingers. Yet these were not sigils or runes, not symbols of power he was using to draw hexes. His hands were not spellcasting, they were choreographing. There was much to be done, and all of his Menagerie would be called upon. It was up to him to determine how best to utilize them.

Conan Doyle opened his eyes. The study — he was amused by the modern fashion of calling such a room a home office, as if it were some new invention — was dark, and beyond the windows the crimson fog drifted along the streets. The sky was still black above the fog, but it was no longer merely that the sun had been eclipsed. Real night had long since fallen.

And what of the morning? Will dawn come at all?

He wished he could tell himself that the question was rhetorical. If he had spoken the words aloud and been overheard that was precisely what he would have said. But these were his secret thoughts, and he could not lie to himself. Ceridwen was powerful, and the forces she had brought to bear showed him he had underestimated her. The Corca Duibhne, the Dead, some of the Fey, and who knew what else had joined her cause. And Conan Doyle still had not a single clue as to what that cause was.

Power, you fool, he thought. Of course, it's power. Ceridwen tires of being the sister of the King. She wants something of her own to rule, to control.

Conan Doyle frowned, taking another breath of pipe smoke. Could it really have been that simple? Perhaps. History was riddled with those whose only lust was for power. Yet something about that did not ring true for him. Ceridwen had never been so bold, never acted out her malice in so conspicuous a manner. For her to take such a risk, to close the door on ever returning to Faerie as anything but a captive, he was certain she must have some other motivation. But no amount of rumination would provide him with a reasonable solution to that problem.

More information was required.

He exhaled a plume of smoke and as it clouded in front of him a flash of self-recrimination went through him. Yes, he had needed time to deliberate the next step, but undead horrors still marched across the city and he had no doubt that bizarre, apocalyptic phenomena continued to erupt throughout the region.

The time for thinking was over.

Mr. Conan Doyle rose from the armchair in Mrs. Ferrick's study and plucked his pipe from his lips. He inclined his head and blew a breath across it, a breath that contained the tiniest of spells, and the ember glow within the pipe died. He returned it to its case and left the study.

The hall was dark, but a glow of candles flickered upon its walls. The power had been unreliable at best and so Julia Ferrick had unearthed quite a collection of wax substitutes for electricity. Whatever Squire and Danny's mother had gotten up to in the kitchen, it had been the last time they'd depended on the electrical power in the house. Conan Doyle started toward the living room, where he had left most of his comrades, his agents, only to realize that the candle light now illuminated both the living room and dining room, and that the low voices he heard were coming from the latter.

Curious, he stepped into the living room. There in the silence, in the dim, flickering glow of burning wicks, Julia Ferrick lay sideways on the sofa, legs drawn up beneath her, sleeping fitfully. She muttered something and shifted, her anxious heart afflicting her dreams, but she slept on. Several feet away, Danny sat on the floor with his knees drawn up under his chin, watching over his mother. He still dressed the part of the rebellious child, but circumstances had brought them closer, it seemed, than they had been for some time. Danny's eyes glowed orange in the candle light.