Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

At the end of the hallway, Morrigan and her lieutenants stood before the door so familiar to Ceridwen. Painfully, she remembered the numerous times she had used the passage from Faerie to earth and back again. She found the memory of that final pass through it, her lover sealing it up behind her for what was supposed to be forever, particularly unpleasant.

"I have to be certain," she heard Morrigan say, motioning for one of the twins to open the door. "I have to be sure that Conan Doyle has not somehow found a way to reestablish a passage between Faerie and the Blight."

Obediently, Fenris pulled open the door, filling the upstairs with the screaming wails of the yawing abyss.

Ceridwen could feel Daniel's eyes upon her, as if he were looking for someone to validate what he was seeing. She had to remind herself that despite the boy's appearance and blossoming talents, he still perceived the world as a human would, and sights such as this were still far from the norm. She reached down and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly.

The shrieking void pulled hungrily at Morrigan and her lackeys. Fenris and Dagris used the open door as a kind of shield, hiding behind it to avoid being sucked inside. Morrigan, however, stood defiantly before the doorway, staring into the maelstrom. Seemingly satisfied that her hex was still intact, she gestured for her lieutenants to seal it up again.

The mournful cries of the maelstrom ended abruptly, the hallway plunged into silence as the twins succeeded in closing the door.

"Do you see, Mistress?" Fenris asked, breathing heavily from his exertion. "Your fears are unfounded."

Dagris nodded. "Your magnificent agenda proceeds as planned."

Morrigan drifted away from the door and her lieutenants, pulling the cloak of scarlet around her. "And so it does," she agreed, looking about as if searching for something to satisfy her suspicions. "But I did sense something, and when things as important as this are in motion, one cannot afford to be complacent."

Ceridwen drew Daniel further back into the darkness.

Fenris and Dagris left their place, moving to eagerly stand beside their mistress.

"He'll be here soon, won't he?" Dagris asked, an idiot's grin forming on his pale, angular features.

Morrigan smiled dreamily, reaching out to stroke his cheek. "Yes, he will."

Daniel turned to Ceridwen, confusion in his eyes. He was looking to her for some kind of explanation, but she had no more idea what they were talking about than he did.

Then, as if in answer to her silent question, Fenris spoke again.

"The Nimble Man," the madman whispered in reverence. "The Nimble Man is coming." And he then began to giggle, clapping a pale hand over his mouth.

Ceridwen felt a searing pain in her lungs and realized that she had stopped breathing. She and Conan Doyle had known the situation to be dire, but this…

Danny flinched away from her, tugging his shoulder from her grasp. Ceridwen realized that in her shock she had tightened her grip enough to hurt him. She cast an apologetic glance toward him in the darkness, but all the while her real focus was on the conversation that continued in the corridor.

Morrigan spoke about the Nimble Man with a passion that barely fell short of arousal. "Trapped between Heaven and Hell," the witch said. "But now I have the power to set him free. And when he is delivered into this world, he will build a kingdom of his own, and make war upon all of those who betrayed him, angel and demon alike."

The twins bowed their heads and then dropped to their knees before her. "And you will be his bride," Fenris whispered, his grin hideous.

"No," Morrigan snarled, a cruel smile snaking across her face as she shook her head. "Not his bride," she corrected her lieutenants with a waggle of a clawed index finger. "I shall be his queen."

Razor sharp fragments of the puzzle floated about inside Ceridwen's troubled thoughts, beginning to come together. She shuddered. The Fey sorceress left Daniel by the door, and moved deeper into the shadows of the room to stand before a window, its shade drawn against the darkness. There was more to learn, but first they had to escape this room undetected.

Daniel watched her curiously, but did not dare break the silence to ask what she was doing.

Ceridwen brought the head of her staff near her lips, whispering to the darkness that still enshrouded the orb. The shadow Danny had summoned dissipated. The sphere pulsed with restrained power and then a single tongue of flame emerged from its icy surface to dance in the air before her. Ceridwen asked of it a favor. The fire obliged her, sensing the severity of the situation, flowing between window and sill, out into the crimson mist.

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the world beyond the house, guiding the fiery elemental spirit upon its mission. And through the bond she shared with it, the sorceress found the distraction that was needed.

The car was parked haphazardly on the side of the street, its driver lost to the evils of the bloody fog. Ceridwen directed the flame, urging it to crawl up inside the vehicle's belly, to seek out the fuel that powered its internal mechanisms. Finding what it sought, the fire bit into the fuel tank, puncturing the metal.

The explosion was a clap of thunder, the flash and flames cutting through the scarlet fog to briefly illuminate the unnatural darkness.

Ceridwen silently thanked the fire elemental for its assistance, and returned to Daniel at the door.

Morrigan and the twins were already on the move, bounding down the hallway toward the staircase.

"It came from outside," Fenris snarled, drawing a curved dagger from a scabbard at his side.

Dagris's fingers crackled with a spell of defense as he looked about nervously.

Morrigan remained eerily calm, pulling the red cloak tighter about her as they rushed to investigate this disturbance.

"Quickly now," Ceridwen whispered in Danny's ear, pulling open the door and stepping stealthily out into the hall. "We'll need a cloak of shadow," she told him, peering over the banister. "Otherwise we might be discovered before we can reach him."

"Reach who?" Danny asked, even as he did as she asked, drawing the darkness around them. "Shouldn't we be thinking about getting the hell out of here?"

Ceridwen ignored the question. She ushered him into the hall, the shadows coalescing around them. It was dark in the townhouse and they merged with the gray gloom as they went quickly along the hall and then down the stairs into the foyer. There was pandemonium in the house, Corca Duibhne responding in panic to the explosion outside. Ceridwen and the boy waited at the bottom of the steps, a shroud of darkness concealing them from their enemies. The front door was open and the red mist swirled eagerly over the threshold as the Night People swarmed out to investigate.

Unnoticed, Ceridwen led Danny down the corridor toward what had been a ballroom in long ago days. She could feel the pulse of the magick of Sweetblood in the air. It beckoned to her.

The doors to the ballroom were open, but once they were inside, Ceridwen closed them quietly.

"We won't be needing this anymore," she said, using her elemental staff to burn away their cover of shadow.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Danny asked.

But she was no longer listening. Her focus had been captured entirely by the crystalline sarcophagus lying in the center of the room. That, and the fact that they were not as alone as she had thought.

"Oh, shit," Danny whispered.

A trio of Corca Duibhne sentries dropped from the ceiling and two large boggart beasts emerged from behind the sarcophagus, Sweetblood's magickal chrysalis, and charged toward them.

"Morrigan cannot be allowed to tap into Sweetblood's power. No matter what the cost," Ceridwen said.