From the mist, from the shadows, from the night they came. Of course they did. Morrigan would not have been so foolish as to leave the roof unguarded. The Corca Duibhne moved slowly, slinking across the roof, taking their time to circle around her, like hyenas stalking prey. She counted at least nine, but there might have been more, deeper in the bloody fog, or in the shadows.
"You don't want to do this," Eve warned them.
"Oh, yessss we do," one of them hissed. "You're the traitor. The hateful mother of darkness. There isn't one among us who wouldn't give his life for a change at tearing out your throat."
"It's been done." Eve grinned, baring her fangs. "I got better."
Danny scrambled up over the edge of the roof behind her.
The Corca Duibhne hesitated.
"You ready, kid?" Eve asked.
She did not have to see the smile on his face. She could hear it in the tone of his voice.
"Oh, yeah," Danny Ferrick told her. "I was born for this."
The strangest thing happened, then. The Corca Duibhne began to laugh. It was an eerie susurrus of giddy whispers that carried to her on the mist. Slowly, they began to pull back. Eve narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what they were up to.
And something moved atop the nearest tall chimney. Something large that crawled, lizard-like, up the brick and perched on top. Its wings spread, just a shadow in the scarlet night.
Then it burst into flames.
Spread its wings, its entire body consumed by the blaze.
A plume of fire jetted from its snout.
"What is it?" Danny asked, a tremor of fear in his voice.
Still, Eve did not look at him. Her gaze was on the creature, this thing that could incinerate her, could end her life. "A fire drake," she told him. "And it's all yours, kid."
"Get the fuck out of here," Danny snapped.
"Sorry. I've got the dweebs. The big burning motherfucker belongs to you."
Morrigan threw her arms upward, the power coursing through her, and she shook in ecstasy. It was like the caress of a thousand lovers. Her nipples hardened and her sex burned with the heat of her passion, wet as though to welcome a lover. And nothing was ever more true, for the only lover she would ever accept would arrive at any moment.
"Yes!" she wailed, tears of joy streaking her face. "Come to me!"
The ballroom was blindingly bright. The magick spilling out through the cracks in Sweetblood's chrysalis flashed orange and yellow and red, an inferno of color that played off of the mirrored walls and off of the chandeliers above. And upon that chrysalis, seared by the power as though by scalding steam, Ceridwen arched her back and screamed as she had not done since the day of her mother's slaughter, that day when Morrigan had held the girl in her arms and pretended to care.
The younger sorceress screamed again, eyes wide with the madness of her agony. Welts had risen on her blue-white flesh, and then blisters, which had burst. Pus ran from her legs and back where the magick seared her. Her mouth opened again but nothing came from it now but magick, power that spilled from her in a torrent of sparks and embers and a silver mist wholly unlike the red fog that had enveloped the city.
Morrigan danced across the room, twirling, stepping over the human sacrifices that her Corca Duibhne had brought. Their bodies were flayed, their chest cavities opened, their viscera strewn about the floor and shaped into the patterns and sigils that focused the magick she now siphoned from Sweetblood. Ceridwen was the key, though. The filter. Without her Morrigan might have died calling up the Nimble Man. Now Ceridwen would die instead.
The Fey witch reached her niece.
"Ah, sweet girl," she said. "You with your elemental magick. Your heart was with nature. You never understood that the true power is in the unnatural."
Morrigan ran her hands over Ceridwen's body, even as her niece bucked upward again, shrieking, crying tears that fell as water but struck the ground as crystals of ice. Her violet eyes misted. Her suffering was exquisite.
Then, abruptly, Ceridwen's eyes focused, and shifted to Morrigan. "You'll die."
"Yes, darling. But, first, I'll live."
Morrigan bent over her and brought her lips to Ceridwen's. They tasted of mint. Her tongue slid into Ceridwen's mouth and when the young sorceress bucked again, the magick spilling from the mage erupted into Morrigan's mouth. The Fey witch felt her knees weaken with the pleasure of it and she staggered back. Just a taste of Sweetblood's power was intoxicating, arousing. But soon, she would have that and so much more.
She wiped a bit of spittle from her mouth. "Oooh, that's nice."
"Mistress!"
The Corca Duibhne hated the bright light. It hurt them. They were terrified enough of Sweetblood, but with his magick coalescing in the room and the glaring illumination, they had fled to the corridor. Morrigan did not care. They were useless to her now except as a shield. All she needed them to do was see that she was undisturbed.
Yet now here was one, a pitiful thing it was, too. A runt. A lackey's lackey. It had called to her, and now it was pointing into the room, pointing at something behind her. Morrigan's instinct was to break it, to shatter the Corca Duibhne. But then she saw the wonder in its cruel eyes and she turned, holding her breath.
Ceridwen screamed her throat ragged, choking on her own blood. She whimpered, and cried for her dead mother.
Behind her, on the other side of the chrysalis, a slit had opened in the fabric of the world. The magick that Morrigan had leeched from the mage had begun to seep into that hole as if carried by some unseen current. It was a wound in the heart of the universe, and its edges were peeling back like curtains torn aside, or the folds of a new mother's offering.
Within that slit all was gray and cold and still. It was a limbo place, a nothing, a flat and lifeless void.
Yet in the gray, Morrigan could see a shimmering figure, a silhouette gilded with red. And it was growing more distinct, moving nearer to the passageway between worlds.
Morrigan could barely breathe. She could not speak. For here at last were all of her dreams. Here, at last, was her salvation, her happiness, and now she would drive all the souls of creation to their knees even as all of those who had thwarted her were forced to bear witness.
All of the worlds in existence would now be as they were meant to be. To Morrigan, her deeds were not cruel, but a mercy. She was not destroying benevolence and beauty, but shattering the illusion that they existed at all. She was setting things right.
The Nimble Man had once been denied. Now her destiny was entwined with his, and all would be as it should be. The Nimble Man would be free.
All strength left her and she collapsed to her knees, her heart near to bursting with bliss.
And inside that portal, The Nimble Man moved closer to this world.
Conan Doyle straightened his jacket and brushed ashes from his sleeve, then stepped over the charred corpses of a trio of Corca Duibhne. He closed the heavy oak door behind him and then glanced around the foyer of the brownstone.
He was home.
The Night People came from the parlor, several of them trying to squeeze through the door at once, clambering over one another to get at him like dogs on a fox hunt. Others appeared in the corridor that led to the kitchen, their clothes and faces smeared with blood, one of them holding a chunk of meat in his hand, two bones jutting from its end. Conan Doyle recognized them as the ulna and radius, splintered. It was the lower arm of a human being.
Others appeared on the grand staircase. Two, then a third. A fourth hung from the light fixture above.
There were eleven of twelve of them, all told.