dismay upon his spectral features, and raised the spear to impale Morrigan again. Graves reached out and his ghostly fingers encircled her wrist.
He was a phantom, nothing more. He could not have forced her to stop. Yet somehow the next blow did not fall. Ceridwen looked down at her aunt, Fey blood bleeding out across the ravaged floor, tiny animal mewling noises coming from Morrigan's mouth, and she felt nothing. Yet she wished that Dr. Graves was more than a wandering soul, that in that moment he could have had flesh so that she could have touched his arm, leaned on him, just to feel something warm.
'Conan Doyle,' Graves began.
Ceridwen spun to go to Arthur's aid, but even as she did the remnants of Sweetblood's chrysalis exploded in a blast of magickal light that blinded her and knocked her back. It passed through her and she had to catch her breath, her every sense excited beyond reason by the touch of this power. She blinked, tried to see through the brilliance, but could not make out even the silhouette of The Nimble Man and the man she had once loved.
The pain in Conan Doyle's head was sheer agony, like nothing he had ever felt before. It was as though someone were hammering a railroad spike through his skull, a shattering bit of trepanning. He screamed even as the chrysalis burst, and he clapped his hands to the side of his head. In the orbit where his left eye had been, he felt the Eye of Eogain move and pulse of its own accord. It seemed to swell, pressing against the bones of his skull, expanding. He knew his head would crack wide open at any moment.
'Good God, no!' Conan Doyle cried, and he fell to his knees.
Another wave of power from the disintegrated chrysalis passed through him. The pulse of it nearly killed him. The Eye of Eogain gathered up all of Sweetblood's magick, and siphoned all of Conan Doyle's own magick as well.
' You are nothing!' The Nimble Man roared above the blaze of light and sound. ' You are only a man.'
Conan Doyle forced himself to look up at the damned one. The Nimble Man had grown so large that his head and shoulders had crashed through the ceiling above, debris raining down around him. His mane of raven black hair was swept back by some unearthly wind and several black feathers swirled and eddied on the floor. His ruined wings were still dying.
What will he be like when he has regained his full power?
Behind him, Conan Doyle could see the slit in reality, the door into that limbo world where he had been an eternal prisoner until now. Morrigan had cast the spells, performed the ritual, spilled the blood and the power to open it, but she had not had a chance to close it. And now Ceridwen was dealing with her.
Gray mist still clung to The Nimble Man, residue of that limbo, detritus from nowhere. And Conan Doyle saw that the wind that ruffled the damned one's ravaged wings and jet black hair did not originate in this room, or even from this world. It was a vacuum, the void of limbo, tugging at The Nimble Man, trying to draw him back to where he belonged, back to the place where the Creator and all the devils in Hell had abandoned him.
'Only a man?' Conan Doyle screamed into the maelstrom that now began to whip around the room, Sweetblood's power and the pull of that doorway merging, twisting together. 'There is no such thing as only a man! And you, pitiful thing, will never be free until the Lord himself wills it!'
All of the magick churning in the ballroom began to stream into Conan Doyle's body and he absorbed it, twitching, wracked with pain. He thrust it outward in a burst of magick that required no spell, only thought. His own magick enhanced with Sweetblood's power, Conan Doyle reached toward The Nimble Man, not with his own hands, but with fingers of glistening energy the hue of a forest's heart. Those tendrils of power lashed out, snatching at The Nimble Man.
But that was merely a distraction. For Conan Doyle's magick touched more than the damned one. Shimmering emerald energy whipped at the gray web of strands coming from that limbo realm. The Nimble Man had, all along, been in the process of extricating himself from its hold, as though dragging himself up from quicksand. Its grasp was still upon him, but it was weakening.
'Can you feel it, abomination? Can you feel your prison calling you back?' Conan Doyle snarled between gritted teeth.
He used his magick to strengthen limbo's grasp on The Nimble Man. The emerald energy that he wielded wrapped itself more tightly around the damned one and Conan Doyle tried to force The Nimble Man back into the dimensional doorway.
The Nimble Man began to laugh. He glared at Conan Doyle with savage eyes and bared his hooked, ebony fangs.
' Arrogant speck. You will exhaust your power soon enough. Mine only grows. When the one outweighs the other, we will have a reckoning, you and I.'
Even with Conan Doyle's assistance, the gray clutch of limbo was not enough to draw The Nimble Man back through the portal. It seemed he would need a bit of a push.
'I think not,' Conan Doyle whispered.
Surrendering to the pain that threatened to crack his skull, he sank to his knees. Swathed in the power of the greatest mage in the history of the world, with that mystic strength surging through him, he threw back his head and muttered a string of words in Gaelic. The Eye of Eogain burned in his face, as though his skull was on fire, and he released all the churning magicks within him in a torrent of warring colors, a stream of boiling energy that struck The Nimble Man in the center of his chest.
The damned one screamed in rage and pain and staggered backward. He glanced down at the magick that pounded into him over and over. Gray wisps of limbo encircled him, constricted him, binding his arms and wings. Conan Doyle screamed as the magick scraped the inside of his skull, scouring his eye socket. It pulsed as it jetted from the Eye of Eogain, pummeling The Nimble Man, knocking him back further. Closer to the doorway, to that slit in the fabric of reality.
The Nimble Man was smaller now. Shrinking.
It seemed to happen almost in an instant, then. Gray matter erupted from the doorway, sliding over The Nimble Man like a shroud, or a birth-caul. One of his arms broke free and those long, terrible claws grasped at the air, found purchase in the wood floor, and then scored long gashes in the wood as limbo swallowed whole this creature who had been cursed and damned by Heaven and by Hell.
There was a sound like paper tearing, and then The Nimble Man was gone, lost inside that limbo realm, gray clouds gathering at the doorway, obscuring any view within.
Some of his pain had subsided, but not all. The magick erupting from the Eye of Eogain ceased, but Conan Doyle could not rise from his knees. He barely managed to lift his hands and whisper. ' Goddef yr brath iachu,' he said in Welsh, exhausted. And then, as he crumbled to the floor, he added a Gaelic curse. ' Go n-ithe an cat thu is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat.'
The doorway closed.
EPILOGUE
The roiling energies in that room began to subside. Brilliant colors faded to nothing, and the room was enveloped in darkness. Conan Doyle blinked several times and then through his one good eye he found he could see light.
Moonlight, coming in through the windows.
Beyond the glass the crimson fog had departed.
Wincing with every movement, he glanced around. Morrigan was dead. The ghost of Dr. Graves hovered above her corpse, and Ceridwen knelt there, beside the remains of her aunt. When Conan Doyle looked at her, she smiled.
Clay sat against the splintered mirror glass of the far wall, recovering. He held in his hands the wing The Nimble Man had torn off, but even as Conan Doyle watched, it merged into his malleable flesh and he was whole again.
Eve lay on the floor, blood in a pool around her. Conan Doyle had seen her take terrible punishment before, and it always left him heartsick. Her arms were broken and her throat had been torn out. But even as he watched
