unless you can stop her… if I am freed, this is the fate of the world.'
Conan Doyle is cloaked in gray smoke again. Once more, furiously, he waves it away, but this time when it clears he is at his table at the Three Goats' Heads, and he is alone.
And he awakens.
The wind whipped Danny Ferrick's face with such ferocity that tears stung his eyes. It tugged at his clothing like ghost fingers and he felt himself spun around, feet dangling uselessly beneath him, a scarecrow in a hurricane. It was all blackness and wind, save for brief glimpses through the dark, eyeblink windows on the world, none of which offered the same view as the last. He squeezed his eyes closed.
A hard gust blew him upward, and as he floated downward again he felt solid ground beneath his feet. A spiral breeze kept him from stumbling. He opened his eyes upon a dark room. The curtains fluttered in the traveling wind and his hair was ruffled a moment longer, and then the breeze died, and all was silence in the room save for the settling of dust upon the wooden floor.
The canopy of the four-poster bed was the same ivory as the curtains. The carved wood of those posts was bone-white. A long bureau was against the far wall and a fireplace, dark and cold, was set into another. Other than these, the room was featureless, with no sign of any occupant. There were no lamps, no mirrors, no books or brushes, and only a single pillow on the bed.
Unless something had gone wrong, this was Mr. Doyle's house. Danny figured it was a spare bedroom, because it certainly did not seem as though anyone lived here. But… He frowned, glancing around the room. The door was firmly closed. He had followed Ceridwen here, let himself be swept along in the wake of her magic. So where the hell was she?
The darkness of the room felt comfortable to him, as though it was a robe he had slipped on. His eyes had always adjusted well to the dark. Danny moved soundlessly across the room and opened the door just wide enough to peer through, and pressed an eye to the crack. The room he was in was at the end of the hall, and the corridor outside the door only a wing. There were five other doors, two on the left and three on the right, and then a left turn. It was dark, but where the corridor turned there was a glimmer of distant light, perhaps from a room around the corner.
Ceridwen's shadow was on the wall at the end of the corridor, thrown by the glow of that dim light.
With no sign of anyone else, Danny slipped out of the room and pulled the door softly shut behind him. His nostrils flared and he smelled blood in the house. Somewhere. And it wasn't human blood. His forked tongue slid over sharp rows of teeth and he felt his lips pull up into a kind of smile, as if he had no control over his response to that scent at all. Then he realized that it wasn't a smile. It was a snarl.
Danny moved in silence through the dark corridor, still wrapped in shadows. He felt invisible. He had always been good at hide and seek as a child, always had an uncanny ability to sneak up on others unawares. For the first time he realized this was not an ordinary thing. He cloaked himself in darkness and slipped quietly down the hall, and this time when he smiled to himself it was genuine.
At the end of the hall he peeked around the corner, remaining out of sight, and when he saw Ceridwen he caught his breath.
This new corridor was far longer and halfway down its length was a balustrade, and a stairwell that came down from above and continued on toward the first floor. Danny had no idea what floor they were on now. The dim light upon the walls was from somewhere below. At the landing, just beside the stairs, were two creatures unlike anything Danny had seen before. They were stooped, hands twisted into claws, long talons dangling by their knees. Their skin was leathery brown and rutted with lines that might have been scars or wrinkles or grooves in tree bark. And yet he had the idea that if they stood up straight and hid their faces, they might have been able to walk the daylight world and pass as human.
Just the way Danny did.
But he would have seen them for what they were. He would have smelled them. They had the stink of raw meat and sewer on them, these things. Danny had heard enough from Conan Doyle and the others to know they had to be the Night People. The Corca Duibhne. Seeing them made him tremble, but not with fear. He shook with the urge to kill them.
Ceridwen was in the hall as well, only ten or twelve feet from the Night People. The ice blue sphere atop her staff glowed softly. Danny could not help but notice the way her long limbs moved beneath the sheer fabric of her dress. She was breathtaking. Her whole self seemed illuminated by the same ice blue light that glowed within that sphere.
Magic, he thought. For even as he watched she moved nearer the two hideous creatures, and neither noticed her.
With an elegant flourish, Ceridwen spread her arms and glided toward the Corca Duibhne; to Danny it almost seemed as though she were dancing. It was a strange moment of ballet, that ended with Ceridwen reaching out to touch the nearest of the two Night People. A blue light blossomed from her fingertips, blue-white mist leaked from her eyes in streams that floated on the air, and the sphere atop her staff flared with a moment of brilliance.
The monstrous creature froze, leathery skin turning that same ice-blue. A wave of chilling cold swept up the corridor and Danny shivered, staring at the scene that played out before him.
The second Corca Duibhne turned, shivering at the blast of frozen air, and its eyes widened. It opened its mouth, flashing yellow razor teeth, but before it could sound an alarm Ceridwen's free hand flashed out and gripped it by the throat. Her muscles were taut, but even in profile Danny could see her face was expressionless. Her eyes were as cold as the ice of her magic. The creature let out a single groan, but no cry of alarm came.
The ice formed first upon its yellow fangs. Then its eyes froze in its head. Moments later it was little more than an ice sculpture, just like the other.
'Holy shit,' Danny whispered from the shadows.
Ceridwen swept her staff around in an arc that shattered them both. Thousands of shards of ice cascaded along the floor of the corridor. Then she stood still once more, as though she had not even moved, and she held her staff before her in both hands.
Danny felt a warm breeze begin to ruffle his hair. A wind sprang up in the corridor. One moment it was gentle, even pleasant, and the next it whistled in his ears and nearly knocked him off of his feet, a tropical blast of heat that seared his lungs when he inhaled. His claws dug into the wall and he clung to the corner, knowing if he fell he would give himself away. He watched in awe as the frozen remains of the two Corca Duibhne swirled and eddied in the hot wind.
They melted away to nothing, leaving not a drop of condensation on the floor.
Gone.
The wind died and Danny held his breath, staring at Ceridwen. The Fey sorceress went to the stairs and glanced upward, and then leaned over the balustrade, getting her bearings.
Then she turned her icy eyes upon him.
Danny shuddered. He had cloaked himself in darkness, had felt sure that his stealth was part of what he was, one of the few benefits of his supernatural genesis. If this was to be his life — the life of a monster — he'd thought at least there might be something good to come of it.
'Come here,' Ceridwen said, and though she spoke in a whisper her words carried to him.
Abandoning any effort to hide himself, Danny hurried down the corridor to her. He glanced around at the many doors along the hall and at the stairs, worried that at any moment more of Morrigan's followers might discover them.
As he approached, Ceridwen grabbed his wrist and drew him up to her. Her fingers were ice upon his skin and that frozen mist still leaked from her eyes. She towered over him and he had not realized before just how tall she was. A shiver went up and down his spine but it was not the cold that made him tremble. Ceridwen was indeed beautiful, but it could be a terrible beauty, a cruel flawlessness.
'What do you think you're doing?' she demanded in a terse whisper.
'Helping,' he said. 'I wanted to help.'
'Arthur told you to stay behind.'
Danny had no response to that and so he said nothing. He felt his brows knit, felt his upper lip curl into another snarl, but could not prevent these reactions. They were instinctual. As much as he feared her, if Ceridwen did not let go of his wrist, he thought he might try to hurt her.
