reluctant to turn away from the spectacle of The Nimble Man's arrival. Then she did turn, and Ceridwen was pleased to see the look of fury and wretched hatred on her aunt's face.
'Your brother, my uncle, always underestimated you, Morrigan,' Ceridwen said, her words clipped, her magick steaming from her every pore, spilling off of her just as Sweetblood's had from the chrysalis. 'But you, aunt, always underestimated me.'
Morrigan laughed. 'Perhaps. Perhaps, Ceridwen. But no matter. The time has passed for your presence to be of consequence.' She smiled and for the first time Ceridwen understood the full extent of her madness. 'The Nimble Man is here.'
Ceridwen had been about to attack, to destroy Morrigan and attempt to disrupt the flow of magick from the chrysalis to the doorway. But Morrigan was correct. It was too late.
The Nimble Man had come.
Ceridwen had never seen a being more beautiful, nor anything more terrible. His skin was golden and smooth as glass, but shot through with scarlet traces as though his body was tainted. Infected. His form was flawless, and yet unsettling. His hands were too long, and tipped with curling claws. Jutting from his back were the tattered remnants of black-feathered wings, only strips of muscle and cartilage now. They had been torn from him, and as he stepped into the ballroom, into the world, three black feathers fell from the vestiges of his wings and drifted to the floor.
His hair was as black as those feathers, and fell around his shoulders, and his face was breathtaking. Simply stunning. Angelic, of course.
Until he noticed Ceridwen. Then his lips parted and he smiled, revealing hooked black fangs and a mass of coiling serpentine stingers where his tongue should have been.
The Nimble Man did not speak to her. Instead, he simply hissed.
Morrigan stood and clung to him and he gazed at her with inhuman, slitted eyes and caressed her.
All the strength Ceridwen had felt restored to her now seemed to slip away.
'Well, it appears I'm just in time for the festivities to begin.'
Ceridwen's heart leaped at the familiar voice and she glanced over her shoulder to see Conan Doyle stride into the ballroom, long coat unwrinkled, every hair in place, as gallant as ever. Tendrils of magickal energy streamed from his eyes and his fingers and he paused, ten feet inside the door, prepared to fight.
A moment later, one of the windows on the far wall shattered and Eve leaped into the room, landing in a crouch. Behind her, outlined within the window frame, was a wiry, powerful-looking demon hybrid that must have been Danny Ferrick. The air beside Ceridwen shimmered and the ghost of Dr. Graves formed itself from nothing. One of the mirrored walls exploded inward, and in the dust rising from the rubble, she saw the massive form of Clay.
The Menagerie had arrived.
'Yes, come!' Morrigan cried, turning to face them as she rose to her feet. 'You have all saved me the trouble of finding you.'
Her face was filled with rapture. Behind her the Nimble Man stretched as if waking from a heavy sleep. His ravaged wings caressed the open edges of the dimensional doorway behind him. He surveyed the room, the individuals arrayed there, and he smiled. But when his gaze touched upon Sweetblood's chrysalis — shot through with cracks from which magick issued in radiant waves — he flinched.
'Now, my friends, keep him still!' Conan Doyle shouted, pointing at the Nimble Man.
They reacted immediately. Eve leaped at the Nimble Man, more feral than Ceridwen had ever seen her, fangs and claws extended. She landed upon him, clung to his back, and raked her talons across his throat, barely scratching his flesh. Clay was upon him in almost the same instant, but in between one step and the next, he made a transformation that was breathtaking. His arid, fissured flesh shifted, smoothed itself, and began to glow. Wings sprouted from his back, but his were perfect, with feathers of pure white. His skin was alabaster, and his face glowed with such warm light that it was difficult to look at, and yet almost impossible to look away from.
An angel, Ceridwen thought. Arthur had told her about such things. This is what an angel looks like.
The ghost of Dr. Graves flitted across the room, taking up a defensive position at the door. Most of the Corca Duibhne were likely destroyed or had fled in terror, but this had obviously been Conan Doyle's preventive measure, in case any of them should muster the courage to return.
Morrigan uttered a mad little laugh. 'Are you all that stupid? Or has Conan Doyle mesmerized you? Are you really that anxious to die? Why don't you run?'
'Run from you?' Ceridwen asked. 'I think not.'
With both hands she held her elemental staff before her. With a single, guttural sound she called a frigid wind that churned across the space separating her from her aunt. Ice formed in Morrigan's hair and over her eyes and for just a moment she stiffened. Ceridwen still felt some of the power of Sweetblood inside her. It did not give her power she had never had, but it amplified her own magick tenfold. With a grunt she banged the base of the staff on the floor and sketched the air with her forefinger.
Lightning crackled from the ballroom ceiling and struck Morrigan. The Fey witch trembled as it raced through her and then she fell to her knees again, but this time it was in pain rather than supplication. She raised her hand to retaliate, but quickly spun to her left and barely succeeded in throwing up a ward before Conan Doyle's spell struck her. It dissipated harmlessly, but she was off balance.
'I'll leave the family squabble to you, shall I?' he called across the ballroom.
Ceridwen nodded grimly and advanced upon her aunt, blue-white mist spilling from the sphere atop her staff.
Conan Doyle left Ceridwen to deal with her aunt. Even as he passed them, Morrigan was struck by a spell that seared the air between the two Fey sorceresses, and she stumbled backward. So much of her power had been used to summon The Nimble Man, Conan Doyle hoped that it would give Ceridwen the edge.
The Nimble Man as also not at his full strength. The process of being born into this world, of escaping the pull of his limbo prison, had drained him. Conan Doyle had no idea how long it would take for the damned one to recover, but while he was weakened, there was a chance the Menagerie could stop him. If he was given a moment's respite, time enough to muster his strength anew, the world would pay the price.
Clay and Eve grappled with the Nimble Man. Despite his sluggishness, he seemed almost amused at their attack. A low, chuffing laughter came from deep within his chest as he struggled against them, but his lips peeled back and that mass of serpentine things in his mouth danced and writhed there, and Conan Doyle thought that his patience had worn thin.
Some of his strength returning, The Nimble Man began to grow. With a sound like a field full of crickets, the damned one stretched, sprouting in seconds to a height of nine feet, then twelve, with no sign of stopping.
No, Conan Doyle thought. I need more time. Just a few moments. It was up to his comrades to buy him that time.
'What the fuck is this?' Eve snarled, trying to hold on to her prey. As if she thought she might shrink him again, she opened her mouth, jaws distending, and tore at The Nimble Man's throat. She slashed her talons down and tore at one of The Nimble Man's vestigial wings, and for the first time, he cried out in pain.
Clay was at him as well, but The Nimble Man knocked the shapeshifter away and then, as if she were no more than a bothersome mosquito, reached up and snatched Eve from her perch upon his back and shoulders. He held her out in front of him by her arms, gazing at her as though she were some child's play thing. Eve struggled but to no avail.
'Keep growing, asshole. You're just a bigger target. You don't know who the hell you're dealing with he — '
The Nimble Man snapped both of her arms, the echo of cracking bone ricocheting around the room. Eve's words were cut off by her own scream. Then the damned creature held her by her head as she hung limply in his grasp, and reached up to run one long claw across her throat. Blood spilled from the gash like a scarlet curtain down her chest. The Nimble Man threw her across the room.
Eve collided with the splintered chrysalis, its magick cascading now throughout the room and across the floor. The collision cracked it open further, so that in several places it had fallen apart completely. Sweetblood's legs jutted out from the base of the thing. Eve lay in a tumble of broken limbs like some forgotten marionette.
'No!' Danny Ferrick screamed, as he raced at the gigantic Nimble Man.
