Tears of the Furies (A Novel of the Menagerie) (9 page)

"My dear, you are welcome in my home from this night
until the last night of the world."

Her pale, blue-white marbled skin flushed slightly pink, but
only for a moment. Ceridwen nodded, softening. "I am pleased. We may be at
the forefront of a new round of Twilight Wars, and there is no one at whose
side I would rather fight."

The blush of a smile whispered across her face and in her
violet eyes he saw the innocent heart he had known, years before. It was gone,
then, hidden beneath the hardened wisdom of the time since, but as Ceridwen
nodded her thanks and then set off down the corridor away from him, Conan Doyle
found happy contentment in the knowledge that it was still there, within her. Regardless
of what might or might not happen between them in the future, he silently vowed
never to disappoint her again.

The roads were still slick with recent rain but the sky was
crystal blue, the kind of day that seemed like a gift. Nigel Gull did not like
the rain. It spoke to him with the voices of the dead, yet only in
unintelligible whispers. The ghosts of words he couldn’t really hear. Now he
sat in the back of the limousine and glanced at Jezebel, sleeping soundly where
she lay sprawled on the seat, and he cherished her. She was always looking out
for him, poor girl. Gull intended to return the favor.

The windows were down slightly, and there was a salty tang
to the air that blew in. A stranger to Boston, he had known it was near the
ocean but had not understood exactly how integral was the relationship between
city and harbor. Gull breathed in deeply, savoring the breeze.

"We’re coming up on it now," the driver reported.

Gull raised an eyebrow. Jezebel did not stir, but Hawkins
glanced curiously out the window. Gull leaned over Jezebel and caught sight of
a row of well-kept brownstones on one side and a perfectly manicured little
park on the other.

"Which one is it?" Hawkins asked, his voice a
rasp. He stared out through the glass like a caged lion, confident that one day
he would be free.

The brownstones had been built so that they shared a single
face, and yet those faces had been individualized over the years. Some had
flowers in window boxes. Bright curtains hung in the windows of one building. Another
had the frames around every window painted a bright yellow, and a door of the
same color. But at the corner was the one Gull was searching for. He could
sense the magick emanating from it, could taste it on the air even more
strongly than the salt of the ocean.

"There," he said. "That one."

Hawkins leaned toward the front seat and instructed the
driver, and a moment later they parked beside the curb in front of the home of
Arthur Conan Doyle. At last Jezebel came around. Her eyelids fluttered, and she
turned to give him a sleepy smile.

"That was fast," she mumbled.

Gull patted her shoulder. "Rest a while longer, Jez. Think
I ought to have a word before we drag out the luggage." He glanced at
Hawkins, who nodded and leaned forward to explain to the driver. Gull paid
little attention to the words as he opened the door and stepped out.

For several seconds he only stood there, staring at the
house. It was solid and respectable — precisely the sort of place Conan
Doyle had always favored — but otherwise unremarkable, save for the
magickal defenses around it. They were substantial. Gull thought that they
might pose a challenge even to him, should he be inclined to try to force his
way in. But he thought that he ought to try things the easy way first.

Basking in the coils and jets of magick that swirled around
the house he approached the steps. It was very much like walking under water. An
ordinary man would not even have noticed, but Gull was a powerful mage and the
defenses dragged at him. Had he any ill intentions they would already have
immobilized him. Or he would have destroyed them, one way or the other.

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."

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 décor 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."

Conan Doyle nodded at the memory, resting his tumbler upon his
knee. "A shame that I had to step in and prevent that transaction." He
straightened the crease in the leg of his dark trousers. "But as you well
knew, the phoenix was at the top of the endangered mythical species list, and I
couldn’t allow it to fall into the hands of some boastful Middle Eastern death
cult." He took another sip of his drink. "Your client did eventually
understand, did he not?"

Gull smiled knowingly and shifted his position on the couch.
"You killed them all, Arthur, down to the last mad-eyed lad. You and your
followers sent their spirits into the embrace of the Sumerian death goddess
they so devoutly worshipped."

Conan Doyle gazed thoughtfully over the lip of the tumbler. "I
guess we did at that. So long ago, I didn’t quite remember."

Like hell, Gull thought. But he kept the smile on his face. "No
matter," he said. "Since they were all dead, there was no need to
refund any money. It worked out for the best."

Hawkins chuckled darkly and lifted his glass toward Gull in
a toast, then polished off what remained of his drink. At her mentor’s side,
Jezebel cozied up closer to the nearest thing to a father she’d ever had.

Conan Doyle had finished his drink as well and balanced the
empty glass on the arm of the chair. He fixed Gull in his gaze.

"I’m certain this isn’t a social call, Nigel," he
said. "So why don’t we cease the rather uncomfortable pleasantries, and
you can get on with your business."

Gull leaned forward, placing his drink on the floor at his
feet. Jezebel frowned and sleepily opened her eyes, looking up at him with a
certain petulance. One moment she was full of sexual swagger, fully in charge
of her charms, and the next she was uncertain and awkward. He cherished her for
her complications.

"Not very subtle, is he?" Jezebel asked, her eyes
fluttering closed again as she settled back.