Doyle slowly focused his will, steadying himself, healing the gashes he had received. He caught a glimpse past his attackers and saw that Eve was up on her feet now, hair and eyes as wild as he had ever seen her, covered not in her own blood but in that of her enemies. She was snarling, having sloughed off any pretense at humanity, and when one of the Night People came near enough she tore its head from its shoulders.
Then the melee of ancient horrors attempting to kill him shifted and he could see her no more.
"That is enough!" Doyle shouted.
The burst of magic that erupted from him then incinerated all of the Corca Duibhne that had surrounded him. Shaken and weak, he staggered to his feet amidst a shower of rusty ash that had once been the flesh of the Night People. For just a moment he looked to Eve, but she was already regaining some of her composure. The handful of Corca Duibhne who remained was fleeing back into the shadows of the tunnels, slipping along the walls with impossible speed. Eve looked in disgust at her ruined clothes.
Doyle shivered as he saw the last of the Night People creep away across the ceiling of the subway tunnel. But it was not this sight that caused him to shiver. Rather, it was the absence of the tremor in the air he had felt before, the electric presence of the barely contained power of Sweetblood the Mage.
Even before he turned, Doyle knew what he would find.
The recess in the wall where the amber encasement had been was now empty. In the handful of moments in which he and Eve had both been overcome, the Night People had made off with the inert form of the most powerful sorcerer in the history of the world.
Outside the rain of toads had become a bloody drizzle.
CHAPTER FOUR
Leonard Graves sat on the metal bench in the small, oval park in the center of the affluent Louisburg Square section of Boston's Beacon Hill. Its bow-front 1840's townhouses faced each other across a private oasis of green amongst the brick and still functioning gaslights.
He had been there since early morning, surrounded by the first signs of spring in New England. The recently mowed grass was a healthy, dark green from April's cool rains. Forsythia buds were just starting to bloom and crocuses forced yellow heads up from the dark soil at the enclosure's far end. Graves had always loved spring time. It brought a sense of renewal he had always considered poetic; the cycle of life beginning again after a season of death.
If only that was the case with all things.
Dr. Graves gazed through the wrought iron fence at his current residence. The corner townhouse, which belonged to Mr. Doyle, had been built in 1846, one of the last homes to be constructed in this privileged neighborhood, or at least that was what he had been told by the original architect. With its brick, brownstone lintels, and granite steps, it resembled the other houses on either side of the square, but there was also something that gave it an air of difference. At times the townhouse felt alive, as if imbued with a spirit all its own by the powerful magicks wrought within its walls. Graves often thought of it as a great, monolithic animal, its windows open eyes gazing out upon a world in which it believed itself supreme.
Doyle's was the first of a row of seven homes in front of him, and another six stood opposite them, all of the residents holding partial ownership to the beautiful park in which he sat. Graves doubted that Doyle had ever noticed the beauty just outside the front of his home.
The magician and Eve had gone away late the previous evening, and he pondered the success of their mission. It had been this concern that drove him outside to the peace of the park in bloom. There had been no calls, no attempts at communication; even the spirit realm had been strangely quiet, and it made him anxious. In the old days, this would have been a call to action, a chance to strap on his guns and throw himself full bore into the thick of things, but now… There was no use worrying about it, he would know their accomplishments, or lack thereof, soon enough.
He turned his face up toward the murky sunshine. The clouds were thick today with the slightest hint of gray, as if soiled, but the sun's beams did manage to break through in places. What he wouldn't give to be able to feel the sun upon his flesh again. He recalled how dark his already chocolate brown skin used to become when exposed to long doses of the sun's rays. What was it that Gabriella used to say to him? From mocha to mahogany.
He smiled with the memory of his fiancee; she had loved this time of year as well. Graves looked down at the translucence of his hands, his smile fading. There were always so many reminders of the things he missed, simple things that he had once taken for granted. The touch of a cool breeze that prickled the flesh, the smell of a garden in bloom, the love of a good woman. The list was infinite.
Irony there. He had eternity to miss infinity.
Graves rose from his seat and strolled through the garden. Why do I insist on torturing myself? But he knew full well the answer. He liked the pain and what it did for him.
It made him feel alive.
The sound of a key turning in a lock distracted him from his ruminations, and he gazed over to see an older woman, toy poodle cradled in her arms, letting herself into the park. She was from old money, her family having lived in Number Ten Louisburg Square since the 1830's. Not long ago he'd had a conversation with one of the bricklayers who had worked on the Number Ten's construction and didn't have very flattering things to say about the family then, or the generations that followed. Greedy bastards and bloodless crones, Graves believed the laborer had called them. He watched as the woman put the fluffy white dog — Taffy — down in the grass, and in a baby talk, urged the animal to relieve itself. Taffy looked in his direction, sensing his presence, and began to growl menacingly, or at least as menacingly as an eight-pound poodle could. The woman chastised the dog with more baby talk.
Graves looked away from the pet and smiled. What had Eve called the animal when she saw it from the window of Doyle's parlor the previous night? A ratdog?
Thoughts of Eve returned his mind to the task that had drawn her and Doyle out of the house. Graves wished he could have accompanied them, but they had little need of a ghost. After sixty-odd years, it still irked him that he had been taken out of action. The great Leonard Graves, explorer, scientist, adventurer extraordinaire, put out to pasture by an unknown assassin's bullet.
Stay and monitor the murmurings in the ether, Doyle had told him as he and Eve departed. Those same murmurings had alerted Graves to the potentially catastrophic situation in the first place, but since his comrades' departure, the voices had grown strangely silent, as if too frightened to speak.
A sudden chill went through him. Graves wasn't sure how it was possible, for he had no real sense of feeling, but he knew, even before looking up at the sky, that something had happened to the sun.
An unusual cloud of solid black, miles wide and thick, was moving across the sky, blotting out the burning orb. He studied the dark, undulating mass and determined that it wasn't an atmospheric condition, but something altogether horrible. A droning hum grew in intensity, caused by the beating of millions of insect wings. Flies blotted out the sun, more flies than he had ever seen. His concerns went to his compatriots, and their mission, when a screech cut through the air like a surgeon's knife through flesh, diverting his attentions yet again.
The woman at Number Ten Louisburg Square was screaming, her hands clawing at her face as she looked down upon the grass in the grip of terror, her feet stamping the freshly cut blades as if in the midst of some wild, ceremonial dance.