It was so much simpler to walk up those steps and knock on the door.
He never got there.
Even as he approached the stone steps, a lithe, dark shape darted across the front of the house, low to the ground. It leaped up onto the stairs, joined immediately by another from the opposite side. From around the far side of the brownstone was yet another. A fourth emerged from the sewer grating in the road and slunk over to join his brothers and sisters upon the stairs, blocking his way.
Cats. Each of them black as midnight. Others darted for the stairs as well. One slunk out from beneath the limousine, as though it had been waiting there for his arrival. The moment it reached the steps — making nine of them in total — all of the creatures froze, focusing on Gull with their yellow eyes slitted in warning. As one, they hissed, fur standing up as they arched their backs.
Gull paused five feet from the bottom step, regarding the felines. Their hissed warning bothered him not at all. What caused him to hesitate was the way the cats moved so intently and with such single purpose. They were spread all across the brick stairs, nine pair of jaundiced, cruel eyes. And then they began to change.
It was subtle, at first. Their jaws stretched wider and the fangs inside grew longer, gleaming in the sunshine of the perfect day. The vicious pools of shadow began to grow, then, fur rippling like cornfields in the breeze as the cats stretched their backs and scraped claws on brick, doubling in size.
The growth stopped them. It was startling, but not so much so that a passerby on the street would have believed he had seen anything impossible. Unsettling, yes. But not impossible.
Until the cat in the center — Gull believed it to be the one that had slipped from beneath the limousine — stood up on its hind legs. Its bones and muscles popped as its body was altered. Gull’s breath caught in his throat. It was a terrible thing, the size of a panther but its eyes full of sentient malignance. Saliva slid in thin strings from its open jaws with their glistening fangs.
"Well, well," Gull said, cautious and admiring. "Nice kitty."
It appeared that Conan Doyle was not relying merely on spells and wards to protect his home.
With a chorus of hissing, the cats started down the stairs toward Gull. Several of the others had started to grow againr, and their leader was becoming more hideous looking, more demonic with every passing moment.
The front door of the house opened with a clank of the latch and a creak as the heavy wood swung wide. Conan Doyle stood on the threshold and gazed down at his visitor. After a moment he made a gesture. All of a sudden, the cats were only ordinary things once more, at least on the surface. Just cats. They scattered, disappearing beneath cars and beside stairs, one of them running into the house.
Conan Doyle did not seem at all surprised. He only stared, grim and unsmiling.
"You might have saved yourself some trouble if you’d called before paying me a visit."
"It’s no trouble," Gull assured him.
Conan Doyle’s eyes darkened, flickering with promised danger like lightning in the night sky.
"That, old friend, remains to be seen."
CHAPTER FOUR
In Nigel Gull’s experience, there was an element of the surreal in living long past the ordinary human life span. He could not imagine what it must have been like to be truly immortal, but was not at all certain he would have liked to find out. Once he had outlived the era of his birth, it had begun in earnest. Gull was an anachronism, and he knew it. A man with the sensibilities of another age — a time both more genteel and more savage — and yet he was also hungry for evolution, for the experience of the future.
Conan Doyle was the only one of his contemporaries still alive and one of the few men in the world who could have understood what he was experiencing. Once upon a time they had been like brothers, in both the best and worst sense of the comparison. Now they were estranged.
How odd, then, to find himself sitting on the sofa in Arthur’s study — a room whose decor seemed designed to replicate the past — as though they had stepped back in time and were allies once more, fellow students of the great Sanguedolce, whom the British occult masters had called Sweetblood as a dismissive sobriquet, as though he were beneath them. They had all learned who was the master, but only Conan Doyle and Gull, dabblers in the craft, had become his pupils.
Gull watched his old associate across the room. Doyle was fixing drinks, exuding an air of calm and civility as he acted the perfect host, though in reality the tension in the room was so thick, it was almost palpable.
And this will not do, not at all.
"Lovely house, Arthur. Bit of old King George, isn’t it?" Gull asked genially. "Getting nostalgic in your old age. And what were those delightful creatures that greeted me at your doorstep?"
Jezebel snuggled closer to him on the sofa, resting her head adoringly on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed as though she were napping. She had a tendency to become clingy in the presence of strangers, but Gull didn’t mind. The girl was loyal to him. That was the vital part.
"Were-kitties," she said into the crook of his neck and began to giggle.
Conan Doyle crossed the room, a tumbler of scotch in each hand. "Actually, they’re Krukis, recently immigrated from Romania," he said handing Gull his drink. "It’s startling what one can employ for a warm saucer of milk and an occasional can of tuna fish."
He took the other glass of scotch to Hawkins, who had stood since his arrival at the northernmost window in the room. As a former soldier and spy, Nick Hawkins could not help himself, and he glanced out at Louisburg Square every few moments, watching the main entrance to Conan Doyle’s home.
"Thank you," Hawkins said as he took the tumbler from their host. Gull saw his eyes narrow as the man studied Arthur. "You having security issues, Mr. Doyle? Mage of your stature, I find it hard to imagine there’s a lot you’re afraid of."
Gull smiled as he brought his drink to his twisted mouth, careful not to dribble. Hawkins was a complete sociopath, and yet somehow managed to navigate complex dynamics well enough. Even now he was somehow mocking Conan Doyle, plumbing his current status, and massaging his ego, all at the same time.
Well done, Nick, Gull thought, watching as Hawkins at last took a seat in a wing back chair in the corner of the room.
"One must not fall prey to the curse of overconfidence," Conan Doyle said as he turned away from the liquor cabinet, having poured himself a scotch as well. "There was a recent incident that forced me to take a closer look at the brownstone’s defenses and — " He stopped mid-sentence, casting an icy stare at Hawkins.
"Is something wrong, Arthur?" Gull asked.
"Not at all," Conan Doyle replied, his tone clipped, his feathers seemingly ruffled. "I’ll just have a seat over here."
Gull wanted to laugh out loud. So Hawkins is sitting on Arthur’s throne. The annoyance poured from the man in waves.
"So, Nigel," Conan Doyle began, swirling the golden brown liquid in his glass. "It’s been quite a long time."
"A dog’s age," Gull agreed, and then chuckled. "Or an entire litter’s. When was it that we last saw each other?" he asked, knowing the answer well enough.
Conan Doyle took a moment to think, and Gull felt his own ire begin to rise. Though it had been more than twenty years ago, he was certain that the arch mage had not forgotten. They were fencing, and Arthur had just parried.
"Was it that tawdry business with the phoenix egg?" Conan Doyle asked finally.
"I believe it was," Gull said with a nod and smile that he hoped appeared pleasant. "I can still see the look on my client’s face as you and your Menagerie stormed into his citadel to relieve him of his prize."