Crashing Paradise Read online

  Lightning arced down from the shifting black sky, the storm eager to please this mistress of the old ways. But Duergar was fast—far faster than something of his size should have been—avoiding each strike with an animal litheness, as if somehow sensing where the wrath of the storm would fall.

  The half-Drow creature danced among the lightning bolts, a hideous barking laugh joining with the growls of thunder, as he made his way closer to her.

  “Come now, princess, this is not the reunion I’d hoped for,” Duergar called, his coppery skin beginning to smolder; for even though the lightning had not found him, the ground beneath his feet was charged with the storm’s fury.

  Ceridwen leaped into the air, and the wind gusted behind her, carrying her toward him with such speed that even Duergar could not ward her off. She descended upon him and whipped her staff around to strike his face with such force that his head snapped viciously to one side.

  Duergar caught her delicate ankle in one huge, filthy hand. Blood like tar trickled from a vicious cut above his urine-colored eyes. She reared back with her staff, ready to strike him again.

  “So strong, so beautiful . . . and yet so soft and frail.”

  The monster sneered, savagely yanking her from the sky and flinging her away before she could do him further harm.

  She crashed against rain-slick rocks, and the air was knocked from her lungs. Bright explosions of pain danced before her violet eyes, but she climbed to her feet. The slightest moment of weakness would mean her death.

  Duergar was almost upon her, his large hands covered in thick, yellowing, dirt-caked callus, eagerly reaching.

  Ceridwen crouched, laying her own hand upon the earth, beckoning to the dirt, rock, and sand beneath her fingertips to answer her call.

  The spirits of the earth responded, flowing upward and grasping at the monster’s thick legs, stopping him in his place.

  “Come now, princess,” Duergar barked. With a grunt, he tore his legs free from the solidified ground. “You can do better than that.”

  “True,” she snarled.

  Ceridwen jammed her staff into the dirt and a formation of rocklike gigantic shark’s teeth exploded from the ground beneath the half-breed’s feet, hurling him into the air. The instant he was aloft, she called upon the winds, which swept around him, pummeling the half-blood creature as he hung in the air.

  Duergar roared in pain. Ceridwen orchestrated the storm, exacting vengeance for the torture, rape, and murder of hundreds of her kin and other races of Faerie. She had no intention of stopping until he had paid for his crimes in full, and only then would she allow him to die.

  A voice called her name. Ceridwen turned to see three of her human sisters emerging from behind a newly birthed formation of rock. They were soaked to the bone and shivering from the maelstrom that she had unleashed. Their eyes were lit with fear, but they had steeled themselves against it and now bravely sought to join the battle. Ceridwen was about to tell them to seek cover when she felt searing pain explode in her right shoulder.

  Her concentration shattered, disrupting her magic.

  Duergar tumbled from the sky and landed with a grunt, twenty feet away.

  Ceridwen cried out, reaching back to find the handle of a dagger jutting from the meat and muscle only inches from the top of her spine. Had the blade struck true, it would have been the end of her.

  The half-blood rose to his feet, a savage smile upon his primitive features. His terrible strength had been such that he had thrown the knife, even with the storm beating against him.

  “I believe you have something of mine,” he said, reaching out a beckoning hand.

  Ceridwen positioned herself between her foe and the three women who had been unable to reach safety, her gaze never leaving his. She reached back and tugged the blade from her flesh.

  “This, abomination?” she asked. “Have it, by all means.”

  She hurled the blade back to its owner riding on a ferocious slipstream of air. Duergar was swift, but even he could not dodge entirely. The blade cut off the tip of one of his pointed ears. He turned his head slightly, blood streaming down the side of his face, watching the knife as it rocketed past him.

  “My father gave me that blade,” Duergar said, casually bringing his fingers up to his ear, his squared-off fingertips coming away covered in gore. “Just before I cut his throat. Sentimental value, it had.”

  Ceridwen raised her staff and whispered summonings to the elements, preparing for a final assault. Movement drew her attention, and she glanced over to see Guinivere, Kiera, and Moya taking up a position to join the attack, to aid her in this struggle.

  As family . . . as sisters would do.

  “Your courage gives us strength,” Guinivere said, and the air became charged with their accumulated power, little as it was. Their unity was like a thing alive, and Ceridwen added its strength to her own.

  Several of her other human sisters began to encircle Duergar, emerging from the storm. The monster stood perfectly still, blood still dripping from his ear onto his shoulder to stain the already tarnished mail of his tunic.

  “You cannot destroy us all,” Ceridwen said, gripping her staff. The sphere of ice burned as brightly as the noontime sun, dispelling some of the darkness of the storm.

  Duergar dropped to a crouch, grabbed up a handful of the muddy, red soil, and plastered it on his ear to staunch the bleeding.

  “Another time, pretty princess,” Duergar said.

  Pitching himself forward, he shoveled his hands into the earth. In seconds he was gone, tunneling deep into the stratum.

  Silently Ceridwen thanked the elemental spirits that had answered her call, even as her gaze found the broken body of Seraph lying lifeless upon the muddy ground.

  “Ceridwen,” Guinivere said softly beside her. “You’re hurt . . . let us . . .”

  She felt them try to move her away and stopped them with a glance.

  “That can wait,” she told them. “See to Seraph.”

  Some of the women responded, walking to where their sister had fallen.

  Guinivere remained beside her, assimilating the role of leader much quicker than she had ever imagined.

  “What are we going to do?” the woman asked, standing rigid and raising her chin. Sorrow filled her eyes, but Ceridwen saw no fear in her. She would lead the others well in the days to come. Ceridwen knew, then, that she had chosen well.

  “I need to communicate with Conan Doyle,” she replied, suddenly, irrationally—it is Arthur, after all—fearing for her lover’s safety. “He must learn of this at once.”

  An icy chill crawled up her spine, causing the fine, downy hair on her arms and the back of her long neck to stand on end.

  She needed to hear his voice.

  To know that he was safe.

  “WHAT’RE you, high?” Julia Ferrick heard Danny yell from down the hall. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  A horrible sound punctuated his shouts, like something very heavy being smashed against the floor. The impact had such force that she felt the thump in the wood under her feet, even though she stood in Conan Doyle’s den and her son was all the way at the front door of the brownstone.

  Julia looked wide-eyed at the ghost of Dr. Graves, who was staring toward the arched doorway that led into the hall.

  A scream of pain cut the air, then. Julia’s heart froze.

  Danny. She found herself running for the door. An icy cold numbness seized her upper arm, and she looked around to see Graves standing beside her.

  “Stay here,” he told her firmly, letting go of her arm.

  It took sheer focus of will for the ghost to grasp living flesh, but intensity was not something Leonard Graves had ever lacked. Twin guns materialized in their holsters under his arms. He drew the phantom pistols as he drifted toward the wall and passed through it to the hallway beyond.

  Straining to hear over the hammering of her heart, Julia listened. The house had gone deathly quiet. Despite the ghost’s w
arning, she found herself gradually moving toward the door.

  Maybe he’s just playing a prank, Julia thought, knowing she was wrong.

  Booming gunshots rocked the first floor. Julia let out a scream, running out into the hall. For a moment her brain couldn’t even comprehend what it was that she was seeing.

  Dr. Graves hovered in the air of the grand foyer, guns aimed, firing in rapid succession.

  But at what?

  The intruder changed its shape in rapid succession, the ghost’s ectoplasmic bullets rippling across constantly shifting flesh—feathers, fur, and scales. When she thought she understood what she was looking at, it changed from one species of beast to the next, sometimes the forms mingling together into something of nightmare.

  Something monstrous.

  Her son snarled as he threw himself at the thing, even as it shifted its form again. It became a huge, white-furred ape and roared as it spun to face him, its mouth opening wide to show rows of wicked teeth. Danny roared back, delivering a savage blow just as the intruder morphed into something huge and gelatinous. A thick, dark green tentacle whipped out and snared him, throwing Danny against the wall. The plaster buckled, and he dropped to the floor.

  “Danny!” she screamed, starting down the hall toward the boy, not realizing what she was doing until it was too late.

  The shapeshifting monster noticed her. In a space of a heartbeat, it assumed a human guise—a face that she had become only too familiar with over the last year.

  “Clay?” she whispered, not believing what she was seeing, thinking that surely she had to be mistaken.

  With a snarl the intruder morphed into a silver-skinned animal the likes of which she was certain had never existed upon the earth.

  Dr. Graves darted in front of her, keeping the beast at bay.

  “Leonard, what’s going on?” she cried. “Is that Clay . . . what’s wrong with him? Why is he doing this?”

  Graves fired his phantom pistols into its face, driving it back against the broken door, which hung crookedly to one side on a single, twisted hinge.

  “Get out of here, Julia!” Dr. Graves shouted.

  The unknown beast slashed at the ghost’s immaterial form and Graves let out an anguished cry. The ghost drifted to the floor, clutching at his chest. A kind of translucent mist slid from the wound in the specter’s substance, and a tremor of panic went through Julia.

  Is he bleeding? Is that possible?

  “Leonard!”

  The silver-skinned beast loomed above the ghost, its bulletshaped head dipping down toward her fallen friend. Multiple arms unfolded from its flesh, and each was tipped with hooked barbs that rose up, prepared to strike at Graves.

  Julia snatched a vase from a small table in the foyer.

  “Clay!” she shouted. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  The vase shattered off the shapeshifter’s head. It reared back with an ear-piercing hiss.

  “Why are you doing this? Why are you attacking your friends?”

  Again it changed shape. With the liquid sound of flowing flesh and the loud popping of reconfiguring bones, it transformed into some kind of large, predatory cat—a sabertooth, maybe—something that hadn’t stalked the earth for eons. But here it was, and it was coming for her. It crouched low to the ground with a throaty growl, beginning to pad slowly toward her.

  She could tell that Clay enjoyed this shape.

  Julia kept her eyes on the great cat as she backed up. Its elongated canines glistening wetly in the flickering light of the hallway. From the corner of her eye she could see that Leonard was standing again, hand still pressed to his chest.

  Somehow Clay’s last form—the silver-skinned beast—had been able to injure the ghost, and it appeared that he was having great difficulty in recovering.

  The spectral adventurer raised a single pistol, firing into the great cat’s side.

  The animal roared and shot a warning glance toward the spirit, then continued down the hallway toward her. Julia could see the muscles beneath its fur bunch and tense, and she knew it was about to pounce. Julia thought about running, but knew it would drag her down.

  A throaty whine grew in the feline’s throat, its emerald green eyes locked upon her—its prey. Her whole body shook with fear and despair, but she steeled herself. She would fight, no matter how useless her struggles might be.

  Grave’s guns boomed.

  Julia and the shapeshifter both spun at the sound, and she stared in confusion when she realized that Graves was not firing at the great cat this time, but at her unconscious son.

  When those phantom bullets struck him, Danny’s eyes opened and he began to scream in rage, scrambling to his feet in a cloud of plaster dust.

  “Help your mother,” Graves hissed, slumping forward again and sinking through the floor.

  Danny snarled, twisting around and locking eyes with Julia.

  The cat leaped toward her. Julia screamed and jumped backward, stumbling and falling to the floor. The sabertoothed tiger landed mere inches from her. The beast lifted one of its large paws, its movement an orange blur as it swiped at her.

  The pain in her shoulder was excruciating; the front of her blouse tore away as the animal’s claws dug deep furrows.

  The smell of her blood filled her nostrils, and Julia felt herself begin to grow dizzy. If I’m lucky, she thought, maybe I’ll black out before it starts to eat me.

  The great cat’s face loomed closer. Its jaws opened, and its mouth began to descend.

  Danny slammed into the beast, tackling it and hauling it away from her. He struggled with the shapeshifter on the floor of the hall.

  “Get out of here!” she heard her son growl as he attempted to keep the beast from rolling out from beneath him.

  Julia staggered to her feet and leaned against the wall. Her head swam, and she could feel warm rivulets of blood as they ran down her skin beneath her tattered blouse. As she started down the hall, Danny and the great cat careened across her path, twisting on the wooden floor, blocking her way.

  Danny looked her way, holding the snapping jaws of the cat away from his face.

  “Get ready to run,” he grunted. Then, with a roar, he drove the squealing animal back against the wall with all his might.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Danny screamed, holding the struggling monster even as it abandoned that form and changed into something else.

  Julia didn’t look to see what it was. Using the wall that supported her, she pushed off, running down the hallway as fast as she was able, hurtling toward the kitchen. At the door she turned to make sure her son was following her and screamed at the sight of a gigantic tentacle undulating toward her. Danny was in the midst of a struggle with a thing that could only have been some kind of giant squid, though how it survived out of the water she could not guess.

  She stumbled backward into the kitchen, crashing against the marble-topped island and knocking the wind from her lungs as she dropped to the floor. The tentacle slithered into the kitchen, and she watched in disbelief as a bulbous, bloodshot eye grew from its slick skin.

  It’s looking for me, she thought. But Clay could never do that.

  The orb saw her, and the tentacle reared back, preparing to strike. Julia grunted, the pain in her shoulder like fire as she forced herself to her feet, searching for a way to defend herself. A knife rack sat on the counter. Leaning across the cold marble, she withdrew a kitchen knife. Squire liked to keep the blades sharp. Julia spun just as the tentacle reached for her.

  She lashed out with the knife, gashing the thick tendril. A squeal of pain echoed through the house. The horrible limb recoiled, then tightened into a kind of fist.

  The air around her dropped to frigid temperatures, as though she’d been touched by some icy winter wind. Ghost hands gripped her for the second time that day and pulled her aside just as the muscular limb came down, shattering the marble island to pieces.

  Julia looked up into the gauzy eyes of Leonard Graves.

&
nbsp; “You’re all right?” she asked.

  “Better,” the ghost said.

  Now that the moment had passed, his hands passed through her flesh. She shuddered at his touch, and not only from the cold. Graves aimed one of his phantom guns and fired at the writhing tentacle, shooting the bulging eye.

  “Quickly, now, we need to get out of here.”

  He led her toward the cellar door, avoiding the thrashing limb as it withdrew from the kitchen.

  “What about Danny?” she asked, halting.

  The ghost turned on her impatiently, but she saw in his eyes a fear for her safety that made her catch her breath.

  “I’ll go back for him,” he told her. “There’s an exit at the back of the cellar. Get to your car. We’ll catch up.”

  They stood at the top of the stairs. She hesitated only a moment.

  “Be careful,” she said. “That thing can hurt you.”

  “Careful as mice,” he said in a whisper, disappearing into floating wisps of ectoplasm as he turned away from her.

  Julia hurried down the stairs. The basement appeared far larger than it should be, and it took her a moment to get her bearings. She moved toward the far wall, avoiding shelving units and boxes stacked to form aisles.

  Something started to hum nearby, and Julia instinctively jumped back, only to realize it was some kind of refrigerator.

  What’s that for? she wondered as she bumped up against a heavy, metal shelving unit, and she spun around to steady the shelves of what looked to be multiple burial urns.

  Moments later, she found the wooden door that Graves had been talking about. She slid the rusting metal bolt aside and turned the skeleton key. Taking a deep breath, Julia plunged into darkness, moving toward what seemed to be a speck of light in the distance and eventually coming to another wooden door. This too was locked, with a sliding bolt and key. She undid them both, exploding out the door into the brisk, spring night.

  The small backyard seemed to provide storage for gardening tools and trash barrels. Julia ran to a wooden gate, pulled it open, and darted down a narrow stone passage between Mr. Doyle’s brownstone and the neighboring home.

  Flowers of pain blossomed before her eyes as she ran, each step jostling her wounded flesh. As she found her way to the front of the brownstone, her foot caught upon something on the ground. She managed to catch herself before she fell, and glanced down at whatever had tripped her. The ground was covered with dead cats, their black fur making them nearly invisible in the dark. She had seen the cats roaming around Conan Doyle’s home upon her comings and goings, and felt a pang of sadness, wondering why anyone would do such a thing.