Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

"No, Mom. It was the right thing to do. No matter what…" he glanced nervously at Conan Doyle, who had instructed him not to go. "It was the right thing. If I hadn't gone, Ceridwen might never have been able to tell us what Morrigan was up to. And besides…"

He took a breath, then closed his mouth. His tongue brushed against the backs of his jagged teeth. The skin his horns had torn through still itched and flaked, but he resisted the urge to scratch it.

"Besides what?" his mother asked warily.

Danny let out a breath through his nostrils, plumes of hot air as though from a furnace. "It felt good. For the first time, it felt like I was part of something."

Her expression was crestfallen, as though he had just broken her heart. But Danny could not run away from what he was, and neither could his mother.

Mr. Doyle stopped his pacing in the precise center of the room.

Danny and Julia Ferrick stared at him.

"Mrs. Ferrick, I am sorry to have taken advantage of your hospitality in this way. Rest assured, Squire will make an appearance shortly, after which I and my agents will no longer be a burden to you."

The words were simple enough, but Danny didn't like the sound of it. It sounded as though Conan Doyle was going to shut him out of it again. A flutter of anger went through him and another blast of hot air came from his nostrils. It burned coming out, as though he was some dragon-boy, but he doubted that fire-breathing was going to be one of the abilities his demonic nature was going to give him.

"Where are you going?" Danny asked. His mother said nothing. He figured she was just relieved to be quit of Conan Doyle and all of his friends.

Mr. Doyle rolled his sleeves back down and began to button them. He did this as though there were nothing at all in the world that ought to be worrying him at the moment. There was a fussiness about him as he smoothed the fabric and then took his jacket and slid it on again. He truly was a man of another age.

When he glanced up again, that purple glow steamed from the corners of his eyes and another glimpse of his fury flickered across his face.

"Where? To war, of course. To battle. There's nothing to be done for it now. If Eve, Clay, and Dr. Graves succeed, it will be helpful, but even if they do not, we must do our best. No matter the consequences. The alternative is unthinkable."

"The alternative?" Julia Ferrick asked.

Danny glanced at her, squeezed her hand, and nodded at Conan Doyle. "Come on, Mr. Doyle. We've been through enough of this with you. I think we've earned the right to know. Who is The Nimble Man? What's this all about?"

For a long moment, Arthur Conan Doyle peered down his nose at the Ferricks, frustratingly aloof. Danny wanted to hit him, but then he remembered the rage burning just inside the man, and knew he shouldn't push. At length, Conan Doyle's expression faltered and now Danny saw tragedy in his eyes, catastrophe in the twist of his lips.

"I made a mistake," Mr. Doyle said roughly. He cleared his throat and raised his head a bit, meeting their gazes with more assurance. "I made assumptions, you see."

"No. We really don't," Danny told him.

Conan Doyle nodded. "All right. Plain as can be. Morrigan has always been cruel and calculating. She rejoiced at the pain of others and schemed to get what she wanted. This was her nature. Arrogant cruelty, deceit, betrayal.

"When I learned from Ceridwen and her father Finvarra that Morrigan had turned upon her own people, had made a gambit for control of Faerie, I assumed she had simply reached the inevitable point where her spite and jealousy and her lust for power had eliminated what little caution and patience she might have had. Upon her defeat, she came into this world, and I thought all of this was about power, for her. About destruction and bloodlust and the pleasure she receives from others' pain, yes, but mainly about power. Having someone to rule. To subjugate.

"But it wasn't about that at all.

"It's about faith for her. She's a religious fanatic, not a dictator. And that is oh, so much worse."

Danny had been following him, at least for the most part, up until now. He shook his head. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"

Julia Ferrick sat a bit forward on the sofa, peering at Mr. Doyle with keen interest. "This Nimble Man. She worships him? He's… some kind of god?"

Mr. Doyle smiled at her as though he had seen her in a new light, and his expression revealed a newfound respect. Danny found himself oddly proud of his mother.

"Precisely," Conan Doyle said. "Or near enough. The myths of heaven and hell speak of the Fir Chlis, the angels who rose up against the Creator. They were defeated and banished, cast out of heaven and forced to build a new order for themselves in damnation.

"All but one. None of the myths record the name of this once-angel. They refer to him only as The Nimble Man. Somehow he escaped the full brunt of the Creator's wrath, but though he avoided hell, he could not return to heaven. He became trapped in stasis in the ether between those realms. Neither of heaven nor hell, he nevertheless could see both, could hear and sense them. He had the gifts of the Creator, and the fires of hell at his command, but also the desires of the damned, and the guilt of the sinful. Emotion shredded his mind.

"I've been misreading this situation all along. The omens and portents we've seen have been happening as harbingers his arrival. The Nimble Man has the powers of heaven and hell at his command, but he is utterly and completely insane. And Morrigan is trying to bring him to Earth."

Red mist had started to gather inside the museum, seeping in through broken windows and shattered doors. Clay raced through the museum with an ancient battle axe in his hand, hopes and suppositions coalescing in his mind. The dead had not deviated much from their purpose here, and so most of the exhibits and corridors were untouched. He ignored those undisturbed places. But where there were broken display cases or other traces of the passing of the dead, he paused to look around.

But he did not pause for long. He had an idea that he would find what he searched for back in the grand entry hall of the museum. Behind him, he heard Eve and Graves coming along. There were still some of the walking dead in the gift shop, of all places. Clay thought that perhaps they had gotten themselves stuck in the aisles or in a corner and were confused, like rats in a maze.

The dead could not think clearly. Their minds were muddled, their souls numbed by being forced back into flesh that was rotting. They were able to understand Morrigan's commands — go to the museum, retrieve the Eye of Eogain, and return to her — but little more than that. And some of them could not even retain that much thought.

As he raced into the grand hall he heard shouting.

"No! Get away from me!"

Beneath the final few steps of a circular stairwell that went up to the second floor, a night watchman had tucked himself away, hiding from the dead. Six or seven of the shambling dead, these so rotten that bits of flesh flaked off of them as they moved, had begun to encircle him. Their bodies were too far gone, their minds too desiccated, for Morrigan to continue to control them. Now they fell into the instinct of the walking dead, the hatred of the living, the hunger for supple flesh and hot blood, for life.

Even as Clay raised his battle axe and rushed across the room, one of the dead fell to its knees and tried to reach beneath the steps. Its skeletal fingers clawed the watchman's navy blue uniform pants and the man began to shriek, kicking out with both feet. Black shoes cracked dead fingers, and when the watchman saw this, he began to curse loudly again, fear replaced by fury. He slid out a little, landing a solid kick in the zombie's face that collapsed its skull like papier mache. But now that the man had moved, the others were able to get hold of his legs, and they began to drag him out.