The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (35 page)

Through the crimson fog they moved, and when the wind blew,
Clay could hear their moaning.

In their midst, right at the center of the road, four of the
dead were clustered close together. One among them held something in its arms. From
behind, Clay could not see what it was, but he could guess.

"Destroy as many as you can. I'll get the Eye."

Eve was preternaturally quick. Faster, even, than a lion. She
raced ahead of them, leaped onto the back of a gleaming new BMW, and launched
herself into the air. From the scabbard slung across her back she drew her
sword, and even as she landed in the midst of a crowd of the dead, she swung
the blade. It whistled through the air and the carnage began.

A ghost could move with unreal quickness, stepping through
space instead of across it. Dr. Graves appeared instantly amongst the dead. A
man in a gray suit walked between a woman in a dark green dress and a small
boy, all three of them holding hands. A family.

Graves plunged his fists into their rotting flesh and tore
their souls loose, set them free. It was a mercy.

The lion, the shapeshifter whose name sometimes was Clay,
bounded toward the quartet of walking dead who were escort to the Eye of
Eogain. He drove the first down beneath his weight, cracking its bones. One
massive paw lashed out and with a single swipe of his claws he tore away part
of the second shambling corpse's spine.

He began to change. But this time he slowed that
metamorphosis. It was painful, letting the flesh pause in between forms, bones
not set correctly, muscles half-formed. Clay grasped a dead woman by the
shoulders and opened huge leonine jaws, then snapped them closed upon her head.

The lion-man spat bits of skull and desiccated brain onto
the pavement.

Then he morphed again, and now he was just Clay. Just Joe. Just
a piece of the connective tissue of the world, touched by the Creator and
attached to the heart of every living thing.

The zombie holding the skull of Eogain continued shambling
in the general direction of Beacon Hill, toward Morrigan, as though the carnage
around it had not happened at all. Clay reached for its head, clutched it
around the neck with one hand, shoved his right hand into its mouth and tore
off the top of its head.

Eogain's skull — silver eye glittering in its socket
— tumbled toward the ground. Clay caught it before it struck the road. He
raised it up and stared at it, saw the symbols engraved in the silver, and
wondered what Morrigan would do without it.

"Eve!" he shouted, turning toward her. "I've
got it."

But the raven-haired beauty was otherwise engaged. More dead
had appeared. They came along the side streets. A manhole burst open and
clanged onto the road and several cadaverous figures dragged themselves up from
the sewer. Clay stared at them, wondering where they were all coming from.

Morrigan
, he thought.
She's sensed what we're up
to. And she's not giving Eogain's Eye up without a fight.

Dr. Graves and Eve were surrounded, but holding their own. Eve
was tearing out their throats, and Graves their souls. But Clay shook his head.
There was no way to know how many walking dead Morrigan could bring against
them, and he had the Eye. There was no reason to fight.

"Forget them!" Clay called. "Let's go!"

"Good idea!" Eve shouted back at him, tearing open
the torso of a dead man. "Where are we going? You've got somewhere there
aren't any dead guys?"

Clay looked around, searching for the best route of escape. Even
as he did, he saw that he was a target again. At least a dozen of the dead were
beginning to encircle him, slowly, as though ruled by one mind. And perhaps
they were.

"Hey, big boy!" a familiar voice called.

Squire crawled out from the darkness beneath the BMW fifteen
feet away. The goblin looked tired.

"Where the hell have you been, munchkin?" Eve
snapped at him.

Squire shot her the middle finger. "Busy. Now, listen. I
just shadow-walked back to the Ferricks'. Conan Doyle wants us all to meet up
with him in front of the State House, as soon as we can get there."

"Glad to hear it," Clay called, turning round and
round, ready to tear into the zombies that surrounded him. "How did you
plan to get us there?"

The goblin put his hands on his hips, the ugly, twisted
little beast looking almost comical. "The limo's right around the corner,
smartass," he said, pointing just up the street. "I've got to get
back to Conan Doyle."

And then Squire dove back into the darkest of shadows
beneath the BMW, barely avoiding the grasp of a dead girl who could not have
been more than eighteen when she breathed her last.

Clay glanced around at the zombies that were closing in on
him, clutching the skull of Eogain in one hand.

"Wonderful."

Mr. Doyle buttoned his jacket, smoothed his mustache with
fingers crackling with magic, and gazed down his ample nose at Danny Ferrick.

"I think not, Daniel."

Anger flared in the demon-boy's features. His chapped,
leathery skin flushed with color and tiny embers burned in eyes turned to
charcoal. Then he shook his head and despite his devilish features, Conan Doyle
could see the boy in that face again.

"Listen, Mr. Doyle, I know what you're worried about. I
know what you think. My mother . . ." Danny glanced over at Julia, at the
woman he had always thought of as his mother, and there was sadness and apology
in his gaze. "My mother doesn't want to accept it, but I know what I am. You're
not wrong about that.

"But you're wrong about
me
.

"Maybe my blood is a demon's blood. Maybe I'm not
human. But this is my world. This is my house. I'm still Dan Ferrick. I still .
. . I still love my mother, and my friends." He glanced at Julia again,
but then he turned his tumultuous eyes upon Conan Doyle.

"I can feel the darkness in me. It's in my head
sometimes. And it's in my heart. I laugh at things I shouldn't. Sometimes I
want to . . . hurt people. But I know it, Mr. Doyle. And I keep it reined in. The
darkness. That's got to count for something. I'm not going to let it control
me. And if I'm going to be able to fight it, you have to give me the chance to
do it for real, not just on the inside. You don't have a clue what it's like to
be me. To live now. Yeah, you're alive, but you grew up so long ago you might
as well be from Mars for all you know. You know all this stuff about magic and
other worlds. Whatever. You don't know much about this one. So you can't know
me
,
or what I've got going on in here." He pounded a fist against his chest.

"I'm not gonna let the darkness win. Not inside, or
out. So I need to be part of this. To remind me, all the time, what I'm
fighting against."

Mr. Doyle took a long breath and let it out slowly. He
pulled his pocket watch out by its chain, glanced at the time, and then slipped
it back in. They had to go. There was no more time for discussion.

Julia must have seen it in his face, for she began to shake
her head, her breath coming faster, in sharp hitches. "No. Not my boy,"
she said. Then she turned to her son. "You're wrong, Danny. Maybe part of
you is what he says. But there isn't . . . I won't believe there's some kind of
evil in you."

"That's just your mouth talking, Mom," Danny said
softly. "You know what's true. I know you do."

The two of them were gazing at one another, Julia's heart
breaking, when there was a soft whisper of noise, like the ocean in the
distance. It ceased as abruptly as it had begun, but Conan Doyle glanced
around, recognizing the sound.

Squire emerged from the shadows beneath the coffee table
into the flickering candlelight.

"Brought them the limo, and the message," he
reported.

"Thank you, Squire," Conan Doyle said. Then he
nodded toward Julia. "Now, if you'll keep Mrs. Ferrick company, young
Daniel and I have an appointment to keep."

Eve drove wildly down Beacon Street; wielding the limousine
like a weapon of war, running down the bothersome dead, crushing them beneath
its wheels. She couldn't have even begun to describe the satisfaction she felt.

"Tell me again why we let you drive?" Clay asked
from the backseat, as the corpulent body of a naked man suddenly covered the
windshield, pale rolls of decaying flesh pressed against the glass, obscuring
what little they could see of the road ahead.

"Think of it as a reward for the good job you did in
finding the Eye," Eve said, swerving the car in an attempt to dislodge
their passenger. The zombie held on, its nubby, yellow teeth scraping the glass
as it attempted to bite its prey.

"Fat son of a bitch," she growled. "How am I
supposed to see what I'm hitting?"

Graves did not precisely sit, but rather lingered in the
passenger seat beside her. Now the ghost leaned forward and reached through the
windshield, his ectoplasmic arm easily passing through the glass and then
through the chest of the obese man on the hood of the car. The animated corpse
went rigid as Graves tore out its imprisoned soul, the spiritual essence
writhing and wailing in his grasp. Graves let the soul swim free, but the
corpse remained on the windshield.

"Great," Eve barked. "First I had a living
dead guy blocking my view and now it's just a dead guy. That's such an
improvement." Steering the car with one hand, she fumbled for her
seatbelt. "This calls for drastic measures," she said, as she snapped
her restraints into place. She shot Clay a glance in the rearview mirror. "Buckle
up."

"What are you going to do?" He knitted his brows,
clutched the mummified head of Eogain protectively beneath his arm, and
struggled to strap himself in.

Eve pressed down on the accelerator, rocketing down Beacon
through the blood-red mist. She watched the speedometer climb past eighty,
feeling the car shimmy and shake, listening to the bumps and thumps, as it
obliterated the obstacles in its path.

"Eve?" Clay asked again.

"That oughta do it," she hissed, squeezing the
steering wheel in both hands.

She could feel Graves' cold, spectral stare upon her. "Perhaps
you should slow down before —"

Eve stomped on the brake. The abrupt stop at that speed
threw her forward. In the back, Clay grunted as he, too, was caught by his
seatbelt. Graves was entirely unaffected. He studied her with cold detachment
as the brakes screamed and the car fishtailed, spinning them completely around.
But Eve had accomplished what she'd set out to do. The fat corpse flew off the
hood of the limo, a missile of decaying flesh that collided with other
shambling dead walkers, clearing a path through them.

"Extreme, but effective," Graves said, unruffled,
floating just above the passenger seat.

Eve grinned as she banged a U-turn in the center of Beacon
Street, crushing more of the dead beneath the wheels. "That's me in a
nutshell."

The dead staggered through the blood-red fog. Some of them
sensed the presence of the living and began to move toward the State House. On
the steps of that grand structure, Conan Doyle tugged out his pocket watch and
checked the time, wanting nothing more than to begin their attack, to get back
into his home and discover whether or not Ceridwen still lived. He cursed under
his breath and clicked the watch cover shut, then glanced out across Boston
Common, ignoring the dead.

Danny Ferrick stood beside him on the stone steps. "Holy
shit. Zombies," the boy said. "Real zombies. I mean, you
did
notice the zombies, right?"

The boy's voice cracked fearfully, but he held his ground as
the walking dead began to ascend the steps toward them.

"Yes. I noticed them," Conan Doyle replied. He
allowed himself a small smile. Danny was a brave boy. The rotting carcasses of
these decrepit creatures had been returned to life against their will. Conan
Doyle thought that perhaps when his own time came, at last, when the herbs and
magicks of Faerie would no longer keep him alive, it might be best to be
cremated.

The scent of the dead, the stink of grave rot, assailed his
nostrils as they moved closer. Close enough that Conan Doyle could see the
maggots that squirmed in their decaying flesh.

"Stand close to me, boy," he told Danny, and he
extended his arms, pointing his open palms toward the advancing cadavers.

The spell flowed from his lips in guttural Arabic. Symbols
etched in purple fire swirled up from his hands, increasing in number and size,
flowing in a crackling wave toward the dead things upon the stairs.

One moment they were ascending and the next, as the fiery
sigils touched them, they were no more, their decaying flesh and bone turned to
trails of oily black smoke that became lost in the churning, scarlet mist.

"Damn, Mr. Doyle. That is wicked cool. Do you think I
could ever learn to do something like that?" Daniel asked with admiration.

"Could you learn?" Conan Doyle repeated, "Yes.
Will I ever teach you? I seriously doubt it."

"Why not?" the demon boy asked. "Afraid I'm
going to use my super powers for evil or something?"

Conan Doyle simply stared at the boy. He could feel the
arcane energies still coursing through his body, leaking from his eyes. And
within Daniel Ferrick, he could sense an altogether different brand of Arcanum.
"There is nothing at all amusing about that, young man. Do not make me
doubt my decision to include you in this endeavor. We'll discuss your place in
the greater scheme of things another time."

The boy avoided eye contact, choosing to look everywhere but
at him. Conan Doyle watched at Danny's gaze grew wide and he pointed down the
steps at the sidewalk below.

"There're more of them," the boy said.

Conan Doyle saw that he was right. More of the dead were
appearing out of the mist, approaching the steps.