Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

"There are too many to fight," Clay said.

He swung his axe, not to cut but to batter, and knocked away three of the dead who were clutching at him.

Graves could not be touched, but his expression revealed his frustration. Abruptly he tore his gaze from Clay and reached out to the two zombies nearest him. His hands, pure ectoplasm, reached inside the rotting corpses, disappearing within. Their spirits had been forcibly pulled from the afterlife, restored to dead flesh, to rotting brains and madness. Now, with a single tug, Dr. Graves ripped those souls back out of their bodies.

The ghosts screamed in torment, eyes wide with unspeakable agony. But in the moment before they shimmered and dissipated like smoke on the breeze, they gazed at Dr. Graves with profound gratitude.

"You're wasting time out here." Graves told him.

Clay frowned. "Eve?"

"Already inside," said the specter.

"Shit," Clay said, kicking a zombie in the chest as he started toward the stairs to the museum. "It's just second nature. Something like this happens… you know once they're done here these deadheads are going to look for more populated areas. That's what they do, zombies. They kill. I've never understood if they're hungry or just angry, but that's what they do. It doesn't feel right, leaving them walking around."

Graves floated beside Clay, ignoring the carnage as the shapeshifter tore and hacked through more of the dead. "There are already too many of them for us to stop them. It would take hours. Maybe days. We don't have that kind of time. It's not why we're here. And if we do the job — "

"There may be another way to stop them," Clay finished.

Even as his lips formed the last of these words, they were not lips anymore. He opened his beak and cawed loudly, and he spread his falcon wings wide and thrust himself up into the air.

Dr. Graves kept pace. The ghost flew beside him. Clay stretched out his wings and glided in through the front doors of the museum. The huge foyer echoed with the shuffling footsteps of the dead. There were shattered corpses on the floor, unmoving, and it was easy to follow the path that Eve had taken. She had blazed the trail for them.

Up through the main hall Clay flew, the ghost of Dr. Graves keeping pace with him. They turned and passed through arched passages and soon they were moving through the collection of the Art of Ancient Africa. An exhibition of Egyptian burial jars, sarcophagi, bracelets and necklaces, and many other objects was ahead. Though the museum held some of the most beautiful and most celebrated paintings in the world, it was these wings that had always fascinated Clay. Paintings were only that. Art, yes, and some of it breathtaking. But the objects that people held in their hands and lived with thousands of years ago

… those were memories.

The European collection was ahead. Signs announced an exhibit called Life in the Middle Ages. The skull would be there, kept behind glass so that spectators could view the oddity that was the Eye of Eogain, the silver false orb with ancient words scrawled in the metal.

An artifact. Nothing more than that, or so the curators thought.

Clay reveled in the form of the falcon, in the interplay of air and wings, in the feeling of flight. He zipped lower across a vast hall, through another arch, and then dipped his right wing to turn again.

Around that corner, none of the dead were still walking.

Eve marched toward him across a floor strewn with fallen cadavers and the still-twitching parts of the resurrected. She had cleared herself a path, but now she was retracing her steps.

"This doesn't bode well," Dr. Graves whispered, his words reaching Clay as though the ghost had whispered in his ear.

Clay beat his wings, stretched out his talons, and even as he alighted upon the tiled floor he transformed once more. Any reticence he had to do so in front of his comrades was gone, sacrificed to the needs of the moment. Bones creaked and shifted and his flesh undulated and pulsed as it expanded. It happened with such speed that Eve took a step back and brandished her sword toward him.

"Watch where you point that thing," Clay said.

Eve rolled her eyes and lowered the blade. Her gaze lingered on Clay a moment, even as Dr. Graves' ectoplasmic form coalesced alongside them.

"What happened, Eve?" Graves asked. "You couldn't find it?"

She snarled, baring her fangs at the specter. "I found where it's supposed to be, Casper. They got there first. These fuckers are brainless. Morrigan's got to be controlling one of them directly enough to make it her puppet. One of the dead took Eogain's skull, and the Eye along with it."

"Damn it!" Clay snapped. "We've got to get it back! We've got to find the one that took it!"

At this, Dr. Graves raised an eyebrow. Eve stared at him in disbelief.

"Look around, Clay," the vampire said, gesturing toward either end of the hall, where the dead had begun to gather again, staggering toward them. There were dozens, just in this hall alone. There must have been hundreds in the museum and in the streets around it. "How are you going to figure out which one took the Eye?"

"Split up," Clay said, already moving away from them. "You find the one that moves with purpose, the one that's moving away faster and more directly than the others, you'll find the Eye."

"Where are you going?" Dr. Graves demanded.

Clay gave them one final, grim look. "There might be another way."

Morrigan ascended the staircase, her voice as she called to her acolytes like the shrill cry of a carrion bird drifting over the fields of war. Hidden in the darkness of that side room, it took every ounce of restraint Ceridwen could muster not to explode into the corridor to attack. Her mind was filled with images of what Morrigan and her followers had done to the Fey as they attempted to topple the ruling house, and her blood was afire with rage and hatred. The ice sphere atop her elemental staff glowed more brightly, responding to her fury.

Daniel Ferrick squatted before her, peering into the hall through the narrow gap they had left between door and frame. He glanced up at Ceridwen, his demonic features illuminated in the icy blue light of her staff. The voices of their enemies drew closer and it was clear that Danny was worried that the glow from her staff might give them away. Before she could respond to his concerns, the boy acted, reaching a clawed hand toward the pulsing orb.

Ceridwen watched with wonder as the substance of shadow within the room responded to some unspoken command from the boy. Strips of writhing umbra flowed from the gloom, wrapping themselves around the body of the orb, diminishing the light, like storm clouds blotting out the sun.

And suddenly she understood why Conan Doyle had shown such interest in the young man. There is enormous potential here, she thought, watching as the boy, satisfied that his action had guaranteed their safety, turned back to the crack in the door. Potential for good, but it not properly nurtured, could be used for great evil instead. If they survived this current threat, they would need to be vigilant, for while Daniel Ferrick and his place in the greater scheme of things was currently undetermined, it would be up to them to prevent him straying into the embrace of shadows. But that was a worry for another time.

Morrigan passed by their hiding place with nary a glance. She was clothed only in a cloak of scarlet, her lieutenants — Fenris and Dagris — nipping at her heels. Ceridwen recalled the council meeting where the fate of the twins was to be decided, and how it had been her merciful vote that had prevented the insane brothers from being put to death for their murderous actions against the citizens of Faerie. Seeing them here, serving the likes of Morrigan, was enough to ossify what remained of her once compassionate heart.