Dragonfall

The Ninth Novel in the Thaumatology Series

By Niall Teasdale

Copyright 2012 Niall Teasdale

Amazon Kindle Edition

Contents

Prologue

Part One: The Containment Issue

Part Two: Science!

Interlude: Mayhew

Part Three: Lines of Power

Interlude: The New Lord of Grey Castle

Part Four: Friends and Family

Part Five: Power Politics

Interlude: Cheryl

Part Six: Draconis Cadit

Part Seven: Lilith

Prologue

I remain unclear about exactly how things have come to the situation I now find myself in. A year ago I would have been hard pressed to believe that things could go so wrong so quickly. I was in a relationship with a woman I loved. It was the kind of love you read about in romance novels; absolute, heartfelt, so complete that I would have literally given my life for her. Now, it seems, I will be doing just that, giving up my life to save her, even though she does not love me anymore.

So, this is where the story ends. I will walk out of the door and go to stop her. I will save her life, and stop her doing what she cannot be allowed to do, even though I know the cost. Because I cannot stop loving her, even though it seems her love for me is gone.

These will be the last words I ever write, and I doubt anyone will ever read them. All I can hope now is that she lives a happy life without me and that they never have the power to influence her again.

Goodbye.

Part One: The Containment Issue

Holloway, London, June 22nd, 2012

‘The problem,’ Ceri said, ‘is going to be optimising the power output.’

Cheryl looked at Ceri across her desk in the High Energy Thaumatology building at London Metropolitan University. As the chief thaumatologist, Doctor Tennant was in charge of all the projects there and Ceridwyn Brent was her research assistant, and her brightest student. Cheryl was the first to admit that Ceri was more intelligent than she was, and had a better intuitive grasp of the science of magic. It was hardly surprising; Cheryl was also Ceri’s friend and knew a secret about her which few other people did. Ceri was a sorceress; her DNA was a little different from most other people capable of magic. She was more powerful, more magically aware, and more dangerous than any other practitioner on the planet.

‘If we’re really going for powering the whole city,’ Cheryl said, ‘then I agree. You have an idea?’

‘Stonehenge.’

Cheryl grinned at her. ‘You’re going to have to give me more… No. You’re thinking of some sort of circular arrangement of generator units within a permanent containment structure. Like at Stonehenge.’

Ceri gave her boss an eager nod. She knew Cheryl thought of herself as the less bright member of their partnership, but she also knew her boss was brilliant. Cheryl had taught her a lot and had come up with some incredibly clever ideas in her time. Cheryl Tennant was one of the best thaumatologists in the world, and she had got there without any of the advantages Ceri had. She just loved it when they were on the same page and she could tell from the look on the older woman’s face, eager enthusiasm with a hint of caution, that they were.

‘You really think you can duplicate the structure?’ Cheryl asked. ‘Preferably without several tons of rock?’

‘I think Stonehenge is stone because that’s what they had to work with. We should be able to replicate it with… I don’t know. Maybe silver-iron posts. I need to work it out, but it has to be possible.’ She paused, her mind racing. ‘Maybe some sort of Super-magic field manipulation.’

‘All right.’ Cheryl leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms up to put her hands behind her head, leaving her looking up at the ceiling. The action pushed her chest out and Ceri gave herself a mental kick for licking her lips. Cheryl was going to be thirty-five in a couple of weeks and was looking good on it. She had a slim body, ample breasts, and her Scots-Irish ancestry came out in pale, freckled skin, red hair, green eyes, and a nasty temper. Most of her male students were equal parts afraid of her and attracted to her; some of the women too. Something of a control freak in the classroom, Cheryl had a distinctly submissive side which pressed far too many of Ceri’s buttons at times. Kind of weird, considering that Ceri was naturally submissive too. Ceri watched Cheryl’s large breasts pressing the lace of her bra against the thin silky blouse… and realised after a second or two that her boss was now looking at her. She was grinning too.

‘Sorry,’ Ceri said, feeling her cheeks heating, ‘did you say something? I was enjoying the view.’

It was Cheryl’s turn to blush. ‘I didn’t say anything, no. You concentrate on the field equations and how to build that structure, I’ll talk to the Ministry about construction. You know, you’re normally a bit more focussed.’

‘I know. I blame the weather. All this sun is over-stimulating my pituitary gland.’

Cheryl’s mouth twisted from grin to knowing smirk. ‘Are you sure that’s not Lily sunbathing on the roof that’s doing the over-stimulating?’

‘I admit she’s something of a distraction. But she’s not sunbathing this morning. She’s gone shopping, and we’re meeting for lunch.’ Ceri smiled. ‘I doubt she’d mind if you joined us.’

Cheryl’s head tipped to one side; she looked thoughtful. ‘I might just do that.’

Covent Garden

Lily was almost lying in a metal-frame chair at one of the outdoor tables outside The Witch’s Kitchen on Neal Street. Her long legs were stretched out, barefoot with her shoes resting under the table. Her miniskirt had ridden up a bit, revealing more of her toned thighs than was entirely decorous, but she was not the kind of girl to give much of anything about decorum, as was further indicated by her bare midriff and the tiny, flimsy, camisole top which was covering her large, gravity-defying breasts. Despite all her sunbathing, her skin was pale, porcelain-smooth, unmarked by any form of blemish. Her hair was a mass of chestnut which almost touched the ground with her head lolled back on her long neck. She had small, delicate features; pixie-like. She looked up as Ceri and Cheryl walked toward her, her dark eyes sparkling and her full lips curling into a bright smile.

‘You don’t mind me joining you two?’ Cheryl asked, knowing what the answer was going to be, but she was polite enough to ask.

‘Of course not,’ Lily replied. Her eyes scanned from Cheryl’s three-inch pumps to her knee-length pencil skirt, to her sheer blouse; her jacket was draped over her arm since it was far too hot for it. ‘Ceri’s in jeans. You’re better eye candy.’

Ceri pouted; she had worn the racer-backed, MIT T-shirt Lily had bought her in America especially. ‘Just for that you don’t get a kiss.’ She pulled out a seat across the table and sat down, stretching her own long legs out. She actually had longer legs than Lily, but that was partially by virtue of being several inches taller. Where Lily was toned, she also had a slightly voluptuous quality, but Ceri was all toned muscle, the result of martial arts lessons every Saturday. Her breasts were a little below average, her features a little too masculine to be pretty, but not at all unattractive, her hair was shoulder length and black with a red streak down the front edge on one side. Her eyes were a startling blue, one of the few really notable features about her, but people did notice her, even next to her stunning girlfriend; Ceri gave off an air of confidence these days, and to some an aura of power which compelled you to pay attention.

That left two chairs at the table and Cheryl started toward one of them only to have Lily shake her head and point at the one a little closer to her. Cheryl let out a soft chuckle and shook her head, but she took the indicated seat, sitting down and crossing her legs. Lily nodded and then looked across at Ceri. ‘See? Eye candy.’

‘You’d prefer I take my shirt off?’ Ceri asked. ‘You’re barely wearing one.’

‘Well obviously,’ Lily replied, ‘but I don’t think they serve you if you’re not wearing a shirt. How are you, Cheryl? Carter keeping you in dresses?’

‘And out of them,’ Cheryl replied, quite smoothly, as she picked up a menu and began scanning over it. Carter Fleming was a millionaire with a reputation as a playboy. He owned several night clubs, including the one where Lily worked and Ceri moonlighted, and he had access to a lot of attractive young women. Despite that he had an almost stable relationship with Cheryl. According to Carter it was nice to wake up beside a woman he could have a conversation with. ‘Are the salads any good here?’

‘All organic,’ Lily said. ‘It really is run by witches. They grow all their own fruit and vegetables.’

‘Organic with a little help from some magic,’ Ceri said. She looked up as a handsome young man in a spotless white shirt and pressed, black slacks appeared beside their table. ‘Glass of wine each?’ There were two nods in response. ‘White, please, and a couple of minutes. We just got here.’

‘Sure,’ the man said. ‘Take your time. I’ll bring your wine.’

‘He fancies you,’ Lily said once the waiter was back inside the building. Ceri raised an eyebrow. ‘Not everyone wants the walking sex doll look, y’know? And he’s a practitioner.’

‘Witch?’ Cheryl suggested.

‘Probably. I’m not that precise.’ Lily was a half-succubus, her father was an incubus, and her demonic heritage accounted for her looks and several supernatural senses, including the ability to read people’s desires and to detect magic around her.

Ceri’s senses were a little more specific and she turned her Sight on the young man as he returned with a tray of drinks. The air around them was full of magic; nothing extreme, just the natural field which was always there and the faint, almost ephemeral, aura which Lily projected to allow her senses to work. This way she could see their waiter’s medians, the two lines of energy which ran up his body at front and back. His Chakral median, running up from the base of his spine to the crown of his head, showed slightly more energy than that of a normal human. It was a pretty good indication that he practised magic. What kind was another matter, but he was likely into witchcraft or wizardry.

‘Are you ready to order?’ he asked once the glasses were on the table.

‘The Caesar Salad,’ Cheryl said almost immediately.

‘I’ll have the same,’ Ceri told him.

Lily gave a little giggle. ‘Make it three then. Easy to remember…’ She left a space for him to fill in his name and he obliged.

‘Ryan. I’ll get those for you. Enjoy your drinks.’

The wine was not bad; dry, but with a lot of fairly complex flavours to it. Cheryl took a sip and said, ‘English, I think. Carter’s been trying to educate me.’

‘I didn’t know there were any English wines,’ Lily said with a grin.

‘There are even some Welsh ones. Scotland is a bit too cold. Ever since the Shattering the weather has been fine for growing grapes, but it was done before then too.’

‘The Romans grew grapes here,’ Ceri supplied. ‘And rabbits. Probably not in the same places. Oh, do you fancy a trip out to Stonehenge on Monday? If we can borrow a car from Cater.’

‘Day trip? Sure. I’m sure he’d be willing. Work, I assume?’

Ceri nodded. ‘I want to have another look at the stones, but I figure it’ll be a nice trip out too.’

‘I’ll give the visitor centre a call this afternoon,’ Cheryl said as Ryan emerged to put down their meals. ‘I should be able to get you permission to enter the circle if you’re just looking.’ Her eyes strayed to the back of Ryan’s slacks as he bent to lay the plates down.

‘Enjoy your meals,’ the waiter said, flashing them a smile before heading back inside.

‘Talk about eye candy,’ Cheryl said.

Ceri and Lily burst into a fit of giggles.

Kennington

One glass of wine had turned into two glasses, and then three. It was a nice, warm day, almost too hot, and Cheryl had said she could not face sitting in her office for hours. Occasionally even the boss needed to play hooky, and by mid-afternoon Cheryl had made her call and was on the roof of High Towers, stretched out on a lounger with Ceri and Lily on similar, slatted wood beds beside hers. Each had a glass of wine beside them; Cheryl was well on her way to tipsy, which likely explained why Lily had had so little trouble getting her to sunbathe nude.

For Lily, the sun beating down on her bare skin was one of the reasons she loved the house. The roof was large and flat, with a railing around the edge which had bats worked into the design. Most importantly, with the loungers situated in the middle of the roof there was no way anyone could see them from the ground. Technically, they were overlooked by the tower blocks to the east, but those were far enough away that figures on the three storey building were distant smudges.

‘I could get used to this,’ Cheryl said. There was a slight slur in her speech though it was a little hard to tell whether it was from the alcohol or the heat making her sleepy.

‘I did,’ Ceri replied. This summer was different for Ceri. She had been joining Lily on the roof more often, and was doing so naked more often, because her skin had changed. The previous year, without sunblock, she would have burned to a crisp very quickly. She had never tanned, just burned, but then something had happened, she had almost died, again, and now her skin did not tan or burn, just like Lily’s. She was still a little unsure of what physical changes like this actually meant, and whether she liked them, but she could get behind not worrying about sunburn.

‘Always have, always will,’ Lily murmured. ‘Since I was a kid. Always loved hot sun on my skin. It feels like I’m recharging, even though that’s a load of bull.’

Ceri giggled. ‘Just makes me horny. It’s got a sensuous quality. The heat on my skin, warm and comfy. Being naked outdoors… You’d think I’d be used to it after all the time I spend with the pack, but it’s different when you’re furry.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Cheryl said. ‘It’s cultural. Hard to overcome that idea that it’s a bit naughty.’

Lily chuckled softly. ‘I’m not going to complain if you too are horny. The only time I’m not feeling that way is when I’ve got something more urgent to think about.’

‘You’ve got an excuse, love,’ Ceri told her.

‘It’s not really a very good one though. When you had your tattoos I went for five years without much sex. I’m quite capable of doing without.’

‘It seems somehow unnatural, though,’ Cheryl commented, ‘for a succubus, or a half-succubus, to do without sex.’

The lounger Lily was lying on creaked as she shrugged. ‘It was good for me. I didn’t do entirely without. I just cut back a lot, especially compared to the years before that. I enjoyed it more when I did get some.’

‘Too much of a good thing,’ Ceri said.

‘Familiarity breeds contempt,’ Cheryl supplied. All three of them burst into giggles and Cheryl sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the lounger and picking up her drink. She pouted a little. ‘My wine’s getting warm.’

Ceri raised her head, shading her eyes to look across at Cheryl. Her will focussed, energy surged through her Chakral median; a tiny exertion of her magical power which left a glittering sparkle hovering around the glass for a minute and then was gone. Ceri lowered her head again.

Cheryl sipped her now cold wine and smiled. ‘Perfect. Could someone do my back?’

Lily was up and moving before Ceri could respond, but she had been going to suggest Lily did it anyway. She had always really liked rubbing oil on Ceri’s back and was missing it. Ceri missed it too, and not entirely because it almost always ended up with them having sex. Cheryl let out a soft groan as Lily set to work smoothing the sun-oil into her shoulders and Ceri could almost feel the half-succubus’ delicate, strong hands working over her muscles. Cheryl would be quietly melting under those hands; Lily was very good at massage.

‘You should do this… professionally,’ Cheryl mumbled through her arms.

‘Mmhmm,’ Lily replied and there was silence for a few minutes aside from little grunts from the thaumatologist as Lily continued to work the oil into her skin. Then there was the tiny gasp, and then the moaning started.

Ceri smiled.

Highbury

Cheryl lived in a little mews-style house just off Highbury Grange. Somehow Ceri felt it fitted her perfectly, but was not at all what she had expected. The furniture was not new, but it had a nice, comfortable feel to it and it filled up a lot of the lounge making the whole room seem cosy. The front door led straight onto the lounge and there was a kitchen at the back. Upstairs there was a bedroom and quite a large bathroom. That was all there was to it; a simple little house for a fairly complex woman.

They were there because Ceri and Lily were going to work and Cheryl had decided that she would come along too. After an afternoon of drink, sun, and multiple long, slow, succubus-fuelled orgasms, Cheryl had decided that she might as well write off the rest of the day. She would go to the Jade Dragon, sit at the bar, chat to Carter and Alec, her other boyfriend, and probably end up in bed with one or the other.

‘Have you started on your presentation for the conference yet?’ Cheryl’s voice floated down the stairs as Ceri and Lily sat in the lounge waiting for her.

Ceri grimaced. “The conference” was the First International Thaumatology Conference. Last year it had been just as international, but held at Cambridge and the parochial nature of Cambridge’s Thaumatology department had still hung over it. This year it was happening in London, and jointly run by the LMU and the University College London, the two main universities dealing with magical sciences in the city. Pretty much all the best thaumatologists, cryptozoologists, meta-geneticists, and other esoteric scientists in the world, academic and commercial, would be attending, and Ceri was due to present her work on creating artificial ley lines.

‘I think I’m going to plot out the basic things I need to cover and then blind them with presentation.’

‘You’re going to do that “blackboard in the air” thing?’ The voice sounded closer and a second later Cheryl bounced down the stairs carrying a pair of heels and dressed in a short, black sheath dress in a fabric which had a hint of translucency to it.

‘Yeah,’ Ceri said as Cheryl bent over to put her shoes down while simultaneously hooking in her second earring.

Lily licked her lips. ‘I’m getting a day pass this time. Ted’s giving a paper on what he’s discovered about my genetics, and his mystery subject.’

Cheryl was still bent over doing up the ankle straps on her pumps. ‘Mystery Subject Ceri, yes. He still doesn’t know?’

‘No,’ Ceri said. ‘It’ll be interesting to hear what his latest findings are. With all that’s been happening I haven’t talked to him in a while.’ Her lips quirked into a smile. ‘If you don’t stand up soon Lily’s going to jump you and we’ll be late for work.’

Cheryl slid the tiny strap into place, straightened up, and then shimmied her dress back into place. Then she turned and grinned at Lily. Lily pouted back. Cheryl gave her behind a playful swat and said, ‘Didn’t you get enough of this earlier?’

The half-succubus slid smoothly to her feet and stepped over to stand right beside Cheryl. At that range her slightly elevated body temperature could be felt through Cheryl’s thin dress. ‘Never,’ Lily breathed and Cheryl’s breath caught in her throat. ‘But I’ll be nice and let Carter have you for the rest of the evening.’

For a second Ceri thought Cheryl was going suggest they played hooky again. Lily would not have gone for it; she was actually very professional, even if she was technically just a waitress. But it looked, briefly, as though Cheryl might actually crack. That was the thing about sex with a succubus, it was addictive. It was an incredible high and you just wanted more and more…

Ceri broke the spell by standing up. ‘Come on, we’d better get going.’ She turned and headed for the door, but something on the mantelpiece caught her eye and she stopped, reaching out and picking up a Welsh dragon craved from quartz. The base bore the legend “For Genius.” ‘This is nice,’ Ceri said.

‘A present from Ed,’ Cheryl said sounding a little flustered. ‘After I found the data on the thaumino I got that in the post. There was a little note saying that he thought I had done truly amazing work and he wanted me to know he thought so.’

Ceri turned the crystal dragon in her hand, watching the light refract through it. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She placed it back on the mantelpiece.

‘It is, isn’t it? And, you know, considering that he’s a dragon I thought it was kind of a nice thought.’

‘It is,’ Ceri agreed, heading for the door.

Soho

Carter Fleming had a smile on his face. As usual he was dressed in an expensive, perfectly fitted suit which showed off his physique. His ash-blonde hair was perfectly coifed. He was a handsome man wearing his half-century very well, and he exuded confidence. His premiere nightclub, and the one closest to his heart, was full again after recent problems which had seen most of London shut down for more than a week, so business was good. The smile, however, was primarily because he had five attractive women around him and that always made him happy.

Aside from Cheryl on a bar stool beside him, and Ceri and Lily, there was Sasha and Tess, the other two waitresses. Each of the Dragon’s waitresses was dressed in a garment which could only loosely described as a dress; high-collared, sleeveless, with an open panel over the chest and a skirt which consisted of two short panels to front and back, barely long enough to be decent. Each had a different colour and pattern making each girl unique, and while Lily was the best waitress, each girl had customers who favoured them whenever they visited. The Dragon was noted for its attractive, professional, and exceptionally good staff. It was the place to be seen and on a night like this, not long after the full moon, when the werewolves were still a little too depressed for partying, the club had a plentiful supply of people who liked being seen; famous people, who left big tips.

That was even more true currently because the city’s vampires were keeping their heads down. There were a few of them in, but not the usual numbers. An Ancient vampire had come to the city only a couple of weeks earlier and caused what had almost been a full scale war. The older vamps had sided with the normals and the other supernaturals against him, but there was still a degree of bad feeling against the undead. The fallout among the normals was still working its way out too, but that was primarily an issue with the government, police, and army, not the general citizens.

Inside the Jade Dragon, however, ill-feeling was forgotten. The people there were there to have a good time, perhaps even more so considering they might have all died a couple of weeks earlier. Ceri had noticed it; people were drinking a little more, partying a little harder. There was a hint of the kind of attitude people had had in war time. Enjoy yourself now, because there might not be another chance.

‘You know,’ she said after coming back from a drinks run, ‘I think people are starting to think the world might end this winter.’

‘That Mayan calendar business?’ Cheryl asked. ‘I thought there was plenty of evidence that the date was wrong, and the Mayans didn’t think of things ending then anyway?’

‘Popular culture,’ Carter grumbled. ‘People prefer a good story to facts. And we have had a couple of close calls recently. The severe winter and the werewolves two years ago. Then last Samhain was the worst since the Shattering. Monsters crushing churches tends to make people think. The mass arrival of a horde of angels during the Witch Hunter business, and now the vampires going off the reservation.’

‘Put like that, it is a little apocalyptic.’

‘I’d have thought we deserved a bit of quiet after all that,’ Tess said.

‘It would be kind of nice to go a month or two without the world threatening to end,’ Ceri agreed, ‘or someone deciding to execute witches, or…’

‘Ghosts seeking vengeance through the power of a Fury?’ Lily suggested.

‘I think we’re starting to run out of threats,’ Ceri said, grinning.

Carter winced. ‘Don’t tempt Fate, dear girl. I don’t think I can stand the stress.’

‘Of course you can, Boss,’ Lily said, ‘you’ve got all that wonderful stress relief sitting beside you.’ Her eyes flicked to one of the tables. ‘Sasha, twenty-eight.’

The blonde smiled and started toward her table. ‘Thanks, Lil.’ One of the reasons the Dragon’s waitresses were considered so good was that they always seemed to know they were needed before they were asked. That was thanks to Lily.

‘Indeed,’ Carter said, ‘but my stress relief is rather busy at the moment, between the upcoming conference and this power generation project. Not to mention that she keeps discovering fundamental particles governing the world’s magic field. Has anyone confirmed the thaumino data, since we’re on the subject?’ Carter was a wizard, and a moderately good one. His magic was practical, but he was an intelligent man and understood at least some of what Ceri and Cheryl did. He had helped finance the research.

‘We’re hoping that the delegates from MIT may have an announcement to make at the conference,’ Cheryl said. ‘The last I heard they were close, but it was going to be right up to the wire.’ She glanced at Ceri. ‘Barclay Macbay is coming over for the conference.’

‘Maybe he’ll have some news about their generator project,’ Ceri said, nodding.

‘Oh yes,’ Lily said, ‘can we borrow a car Monday, Boss? Ceri wants to go look at Stonehenge again.’

‘The Range Rover?’ Carter asked without a second’s thought. ‘Or would you prefer the Aston?’

‘The Range Rover,’ Lily replied. ‘I’ll be too tempted otherwise and we want Ceri in a fit state to work when we get there.’ Ceri grinned at her; she disliked travelling, and in cars especially, but she was a lot better than she had been. ‘Besides,’ Lily added, ‘the backseat is much roomier in the Rover.’

‘I thought you were working,’ Carter said, a knowing grin forming.

Lily gave a little shrug and smiled. ‘Well, you know what they say about all work and no play…’

Salisbury Plain, June 25th

A pretty, blue-eyed, honey blonde smiled warmly at Ceri and Lily as soon as they walked into the visitor centre. She was talking to a family who were there to see one of England’s most famous ancient monuments and they waited until she was finished before going closer. Helen Brazenold was the admin officer for English Heritage at the site and she was the person they had to talk to to gain access to the circle itself. Tourists were restricted from walking among the stones, but people doing research could get in, along with certain others for “ritual” purposes.

‘It’s nice to see you back,’ Helen said. ‘Doctor Tennant’s request for access went through with no trouble since you’re just looking. I can take you over now if you want to get started.’

‘Please,’ Ceri said and all three turned back toward the door.

‘Uh-huh,’ Lily said. ‘Get the work out of the way so we can enjoy the rest of the day.’

Helen pulled a pair of sunglasses from her jacket and slipped them on as they walked outside. ‘It’s a lovely day. I could do without having to wear this jacket.’

‘I won’t complain if you strip off,’ Lily replied smoothly. They walked into the shade of the pedestrian tunnel under the main road and the sudden cooling was quite startling. ‘Though not in here.’

The administrator let out a soft chuckle. ‘I’m supposed to look business-like at all times. It says so in my terms and conditions.’

Lily shrugged. ‘My business-like attire is a dress that barely covers my arse.’

‘Ah, but I saw you on TV at that ball at the Chinese embassy. That gown was incredible!’

‘She scrubs up nicely,’ Ceri agreed.

Helen giggled. They walked out into the sunshine again and the heat felt like a blowtorch for a second. ‘Oh, I want to show you something before we go in,’ Helen added, heading down the worn path to where a few tourists were standing in front of various plaques giving information about the stones. Helen took them to one which looked far newer than the others, waving a hand toward it and grinning.

The plaque showed a map of Stonehenge and the nearby Woodhenge with lines drawn around it showing different thaumic field strengths. The text explained that the magical field at both henges was higher than normal, that the two were linked by a ley line which empowered Woodhenge, and that “a team from London Metropolitan University lead by Doctor Cheryl Tennant had trialled an electrical power generation system there based upon the strong, natural magic field.”

‘If they get the audio tour,’ Helen said, ‘they can listen to that speech you did for the BBC. And we have video of it in the visitor centre.’

A year earlier Ceri would have blushed. ‘The map was mostly done by our post-grads and a student witch we had there with us who turned out to have a bit of a talent for the work. Cheryl and I were mostly working on the generator.’ She looked toward the huge, broken circle of monoliths. ‘Shall we?’

‘I’ll escort you in,’ Helen said, ‘then leave you to it. I’m sure I’ll just be a hindrance.’

‘Hardly,’ Ceri replied as they set off toward the stones, ‘but you’ll be bored to tears.’

‘What are you planning to do?’

‘Take measurements. Lots of measurements. I think I can replicate the containment mechanism, but I need some precise measurements to work out the mathematics.’

‘I remember you saying that this kind of thing was a lost art.’

Ceri smiled. ‘Then it’s about time we found it again.’

~~~

Ceri walked over to the last on the central ring of stones. She concentrated, aligning herself with Magical North and focussing her will to gather the information she needed. It was an almost miniscule exertion of power, a trivial task for her, but it felt rather good. She was using her magic for something very practical and, most important, non-violent. So much of what she did with her power involved violence that when she got the chance to do almost anything else with it she jumped at it.

Her fingers tapped over the screen of her tablet, noting down the information her spells gathered. Exact dimensions, orientation, position. Everything went down in a spreadsheet to be used later to model the circle. Then she took out a digital thaumometer and checked the exact reading at all four corners of the stone, noting those figures down as well.

Then she checked over her figures one more time and, satisfied with what she had, wandered across to where Lily was lying in the grass in a patch of sunlight. Grinning, she stood over the half-succubus as she put her tablet to sleep and packed it away.

‘You’re standing in my light,’ Lily said without opening her eyes.

‘You said that once the last time we were here.’

‘You were standing in my light then too.’

‘I’ve finished. We can go do… whatever.’

‘You know, I didn’t think of it last time, but we should have snuck in here after dark. Research purposes. What happens when a succubus has sex in a strong magic field, y’know?’

‘Uh-huh. Research purposes. You’re turning into a real scientist.’ Ceri looked around and sniffed. ‘Anyway, back then this place gave me the creeps and now it’d be like doing it with my parents watching.’

‘You can feel him?’ Lily opened her eyes and sat up.

‘Now, yeah. This whole place feels like dragon. It might be just Brenin’s skull buried under here, but it feels like dragon.’ She looked down, toward the centre of the circle where the skull of one of the dragons which had contributed to her ancestry, thirty or more thousand years earlier, was buried. Thirty thousand years and it was still a source of intense magic, the reason why Stonehenge had elevated thaumic levels. All those years and, now that she was used to sensing dragons, she could feel him down there, almost as if he was not really dead, just… ‘It’s like he’s dormant rather than a skeleton.’

Lily got to her feet and they started toward the visitor centre to tell Helen they were leaving. ‘You know, they put his skull down there, presumably to keep the radiation level down…’

‘Uh-huh. That’s the working theory.’

‘So where’s the rest of the skeleton?’

Ceri frowned, stopping just inside the circle. ‘Y’know, that’s a bloody good question.’

Avebury

If Stonehenge was probably the most famous ancient site in England, Avebury had to be a close second, and since it was not that far away, and it had a village which meant it had a tea shop, and Ceri had finished her survey pretty early in the afternoon, that was where they went.

Basically, Avebury was a village sitting on the edge of a huge ring of stones. The circle was a little younger than Stonehenge, and less complex, but huge. While Stonehenge was around thirty yards across, the henge, the ditch surrounding the stones, at Avebury was over four hundred yards in diameter. The village was pretty too.

And in a setting like this you had to drink tea. It was just the done thing. There were also scones, with strawberry jam and cream. They sat outside on chairs which were not terribly stable on the rough ground, and drank tea and ate scones.

‘I feel like a total tourist,’ Ceri said.

‘So?’

‘Nothing. Just saying. Where do you think the rest of the bones are? I mean, they have to be somewhere.’

‘I’m starting to wish I hadn’t said anything.’ Ceri had been going on about it since they had left Stonehenge. ‘Maybe Ed or Gwyn knows.’

‘Don’t think so. I don’t think they knew where his skull was until I found it.’

‘Maybe,’ Lily mused, ‘the rest of the skeleton doesn’t produce the same magical field, so it was buried somewhere and ignored. The skull was the dangerous bit, so that was taken away from the rest of the body.’

‘But then they dragged it up there to bury it?’

‘Would you want something like that near where you lived? The legends say that dragons produce really strong magic fields. Verging on wild magic levels. And given what happens when you push yourself too hard, I can believe it.’

‘Possible, I guess.’ Ceri took a sip of tea and sighed. ‘I think it’s mostly that I didn’t think about it until you mentioned it. I’m supposed to be the genius.’

‘No one’s perfect, love.’

‘Except you.’

Lily laughed, which resulted in the middle-aged couple at one of the other tables looking at them disapprovingly. ‘I’m not perfect. Far from it.’

‘Gorgeous, intelligent, elegant, fantastic in bed…’

‘But not perfect. I’m having distinctly imperfect thoughts about you and that pot of cream right now.’

‘There’s not much of it left.’

‘You’re right. We’ll stop off and buy some on the way home.’

‘Twill will murder you in your sleep if you get cream on the sheets. And you’re just doing this to get my mind off Brenin’s skeleton.’

‘Is it working?’

Ceri drained her tea cup. ‘Yes. Come on, I think I saw a grocery store on the way in.’

Kennington, June 22nd

The hallway at High Towers was the biggest room in the house with a high ceiling and a large floor area. They used it for martial arts lessons on Saturday and as the main room whenever they had a party, and Ceri used it when she wanted to work on something big.

Today it was full of Stonehenge. Not the real one, obviously, but a wireframe model built entirely from silver strands of light. Around the “stones” coloured bands followed the magic field lines which Ceri had taken from the plot they had made during the generator research the summer before, augmented with the measurements she had taken herself.

In the middle of it all, at the point where the field lines converged, which was right over where the dragon skull was buried in the real thing, Ceri stood and observed her work. Lily was sprawled on the stairs, naked. Ceri was busy so it did not bother her. Lily was a terrible distraction. She had stopped wearing clothes around the house soon after moving in and Ceri was technically used to it, but ever since they had actually started sleeping together Lily could get Ceri away from anything she was doing if she wanted. Except when Ceri was really concentrating, at which point she got blind and deaf to everything except her work. Which was good, because she would never get anything done otherwise.

On the step beside Lily was a four-inch high, nut brown woman with a cap of purple hair and delicate, blue-white wings growing from between her shoulder blades. Twill rarely wore clothes either, fairies just preferred not to and it was hard getting stuff in their size that did not belong on a child’s doll. She hated pink.

‘Music,’ Twill said.

Ceri looked around at her. ‘Huh?’

‘Well, perhaps harmonics would be a better word.’

Ceri looked back at the schematic she had built and saw what Twill had seen. She slapped her forehead. ‘I am so dense! Of course! They’ve set up a resonance system. It doesn’t so much contain the field as let it cancel itself out beyond the stones.’ She looked around at the two naked women on the stairs as though suddenly surprised. ‘I’m surrounded by genii.’

‘Your parents probably didn’t make you take music lessons,’ Twill replied.

‘So does that mean you can replicate it?’ Lily asked.

Ceri started for the stairs, walking past them. ‘I need to call Cheryl. She has to see this. I think we can build her generator cells up so they’ll actually do the job for us and generate the power, but I need to see what she thinks.’

Twill lifted up from the step, her feathery wings flapping rapidly even though it was really magic that held her aloft. ‘It’ll be three for lunch then,’ she said as she flew off toward the kitchen.

~~~

Ceri, Twill, and Lily sat on the staircase watching Cheryl doing the same concentrated stare that Ceri had been doing thirty minutes earlier, except that Cheryl was wearing a grin while she did it.

‘It’s sort of obvious once you know, isn’t it?’ Cheryl said.

‘Apparently music lessons help,’ Lily supplied.

‘Twill spotted it,’ Ceri added.

‘We’ll have to put you on the paper, Twill,’ Cheryl said, her eyes still on the model.

‘Oh, I’m not an academic…’ Twill began.

‘Musical consultant,’ Cheryl said; Twill was going down on the contributors list whether she liked it or not. ‘So, the idea is to place collector sets in columns around the circle rather than in the centre?’

‘As well as in the centre,’ Ceri corrected. ‘No sense in wasting a known area of power generation. We raise them over the line node on some sort of structure. We put columns around the circumference which should, if we get the geometry right, concentrate the field as well as containing it.’

‘Oh this is good,’ Cheryl said, her voice carrying more than a hint of awed enthusiasm. ‘This is really good. You don’t have an estimate yet on the potential output?’

‘I could give you a total guess, but that’s all it would be.’

Cheryl’s excitement was showing; she was almost bouncing. ‘No… No I’ll be good and wait until you’ve done the maths. You know that we get a royalty when this thing goes live? Carter arranged for the three of us to share ownership in the patents.’

‘Really, how much?’

‘Ah well, that depends on the amount of power we can get out of it.’

Ceri stood up. ‘I’ll start work on the geometry calculations now.’

June 27th

‘Have you seen this?’ Lily was sat on the sofa in the lounge, the TV viewing sofa, watching the evening news while she tightened the straps on her four-inch heeled sandals. She was dressed for work, while Ceri, sat beside her and focussed on her tablet, was dressed for going out to Battersea; it was a pack night.

Ceri looked up, her brain still full of resonance calculations, and tried to take in what was happening on the screen. There was a blurred, largely black image with a smudge in the middle and the presenter was saying, ‘…within the orbit of Neptune. Astronomers say that this is the first new comet discovered in the last ten years. They are now sure that this is either an entirely new comet, or one with an exceptionally long orbital period. Observations continue to determine the exact path the comet will take, but it is expected to be at its brightest in the latter part of the year. Amateurs wishing to look for it should find the constellation of Draco after dark tonight.’

‘Huh, a new comet. That’s kind of cool.’

Lily grinned. ‘Unless you believe the old stories about them bringing death and destruction.’

‘I don’t. Comets are just big balls of rock and ice flying through space. When they get close to the sun they heat up and leave a trail which is visible from Earth, and because they move fast and older civilisations thought the heavens were unchanging, they thought comets were angels of death and portents of doom.’

‘I dunno,’ Lily replied with enough sarcasm to indicate she was kidding, ‘Mayan predictions and now comets. That’s a lot of doom.’

Ceri gave Lily’s bare thigh a slap, laughing. ‘Mind you, the apocalypse nuts will be all over this.’

‘That settles it then.’

‘Settles what?’

‘Your birthday. Apocalypse party!’

Ceri buried her face in her hands, shaking her head. Mostly though, it was so Lily could not see her grinning.

July 28th

Ceri was in the hall working on a complex set of field equations in the air when Twill zipped in from the kitchen. ‘A man and a woman are coming to the door. Wizards.’

Ceri frowned. ‘Probably better make sure the coffee is fresh. I’m going to need some soon anyway.’ She turned and headed toward the big, double inner doors.

‘My coffee is always fresh,’ Twill commented as she flitted off again.

There were, indeed, two people standing outside the door, one of them raising his hand to knock. He was handsome, ruggedly so, pushing middle age but doing well on it. Ceri recognised him immediately, but his younger colleague, a pretty but bookish woman, she did not.

‘Do you have some sort of proximity sensor on the door,’ Avery Sachs asked, ‘or do the wards tell you when someone comes through them?’

‘I have Twill. I take it this is a business visit?’ Sachs was a member of MI5 and had never really paid a visit to their house for any reason other than business of some sort. ‘You’d better come in.’ She turned to let them in. ‘What time do you have?’

The woman answered, her voice clipped and precise. ‘Eleven-nineteen.’ She had long, strawberry blonde hair wound into a bun so tight Ceri wondered whether it had squeaked being pinned into place. She was in a dark blue suit with a pencil skirt and kitten heels. Her make-up was understated and carefully applied. She probably folded her knickers before putting them in the drawer. She also looked a little embarrassed to be entering the house of a woman wearing nothing but a large, man’s shirt.

Ceri nodded, closed the door, and followed them into the hall. Then she raised her voice. ‘Lil, put some clothes on, we’ve got visitors.’ A second later there was a creak from the upper stairs as Lily ran for their bedroom. Ceri grinned. ‘We’ll go up to the study. Would you like coffee?’

‘Please,’ Sachs said. He, like his colleague, were staring up at the floating banks of symbols, part mathematics, part something else entirely.

‘I’m working on the Battersea generator project,’ Ceri supplied. ‘Those are… Those will hopefully tell me where to place the generator pylons.’

‘I’ve never seen anyone work like this,’ the woman said.

Ceri smiled at her. ‘I like a big blackboard, Miss…’

‘Sorry,’ Sachs said, suddenly remembering his manners. ‘Doctor Ceridwyn Brent, this is Jennifer Mayhew, one of our analysts.’

‘At the Home Office,’ Ceri said with a slightly sarcastic twist.

Sachs gave her a hard look and headed for the stairs. Ceri smirked and went after him, with Mayhew following her. She took them up to the study on the north side of the house, got them a couple of chairs, and then sat down on her desk chair and crossed her legs. A second or two later Twill flew in followed by a tray of mugs; Mayhew’s eyes widened as she gingerly accepted her coffee from the apparently autonomous tray. Then Lily turned up in a tight-fitting mini-skirt and a bandeau top and Mayhew looked like she had walked into an insane asylum.

‘Good,’ Sachs said. ‘I need to ask all of you some questions.’

‘That sounds serious,’ Lily said as she sank smoothly onto the chaise longe, stretching out happily and ignoring the look of mild horror on Mayhew’s face.

‘I doubt it is,’ he replied smoothly. ‘I don’t think you’re involved in this, but we’re required to cover every possibility.’

‘Maybe you should get to the point then,’ Ceri suggested.

‘Indeed. Jenny?’

Mayhew was watching Twill come to a delicate landing on Lily’s stomach where she settled and folded her legs into a lotus posture. The analyst shook herself and pulled a file folder from her briefcase. ‘Yes, sorry. We have noticed multiple, anonymous postings of information on the Internet concerning the problems at the Home Office and Special Branch. The correspondent has a lot of sensitive information regarding the methods used to influence people and the extent of the infiltration.’

‘We don’t really know the extent of the infiltration,’ Ceri told her. ‘The Greycoats are treating it as need to know. I haven’t read the report on what the forensic practitioners found either. I know what I saw had been done to Lowell when he came here, but that’s about it.’

Ceri felt her scalp tighten slightly, then Lily burst into a fit of giggles and the sound of wind chimes filled the air as Twill did the same; Ceri just smirked.

‘Is something funny?’ Mayhew asked.

‘Was that a lie detection spell?’ Ceri asked.

Mayhew’s cheeks coloured. Sachs said, ‘I did tell her not to bother being covert about it.’

‘Kind of pointless too. If I were going to lie I’d have used countermeasures.’

Sachs nodded. ‘You’re not, I think, sufficiently good to lie to me without giving something away.’ He turned to Mayhew. ‘She’s telling the truth. I did say they would have nothing to do with it. No reason to.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Mayhew did not sound entirely happy about it.

‘No other suspects?’ Ceri asked.

‘It appears that no one is responsible for the leaks and we’ve had no luck tracing the Internet postings.’ Sachs did not look much happier than Mayhew about that. He pulled in a lungful of air through his nose. ‘That, however, is our problem. The second matter we came here for…’

Mayhew turned over a page on her notes. ‘We have received intelligence from the FBI in America and noted some odd traffic ourselves. There is a suggestion that a group of Scientists may be planning to disrupt your thaumatology conference.’

‘Why would scientists disrupt a thaumatology conference?’ Lily asked.

‘Scientists with a capital “S,” Miss Carpenter,’ Sachs supplied. ‘They are a radical, almost religious, group who believe that magic is not scientific. They consider the magical sciences to be a sort of secular heresy. There are a few sympathisers in this country, but they tend to content themselves with debating the subject at length with anyone who’ll listen. The Scientists in America have been responsible for a couple of minor terrorist acts in the past, but they’ve stepped things up recently. There was an attempt to blow up that big collider thing last month, and now this.’

‘Okay,’ Ceri said, ‘but why are you telling me? I’m not doing security for the conference.’

‘The FBI intercepted a specific email,’ Mayhew said, ‘which indicated a list of primary targets. You’re on it.’

Ceri blinked. ‘Cheryl?’

Sachs nodded. ‘Doctor Tennant is on it too. Malcolm Charles, Arthur Barnes, Barclay Macbay, a couple of others. Frankly, I’m not worried about most of them since they already have very tight security, but you and Cheryl Tennant…’

‘I’ll have Cheryl move in here,’ Ceri said. ‘If necessary I can have the pack provide bodyguards.’

Mayhew frowned. ‘I don’t see how that’s going to help. We just walked in here…’

‘And Twill knew we were on the grounds,’ Sachs interrupted. ‘Doctor Brent’s parents handled the wards on the reception area at Thames House, Jenny, and most of the wards the Greycoats use at their HQ. This place is likely one of the safest places in the country.’ He frowned slightly and looked back to Ceri. ‘That boyfriend of yours is certified as a Special Advisor now, yes?’ Ceri nodded. ‘All right. I’d suggest you do consider some werewolf bodyguards. As I recall, the Battersea pack is good at blending in. That could be quite effective. If we hear anything specific Mayhew will be in touch. She’ll be coordinating our end of this operation.’

‘Okay,’ Ceri said, and then she frowned as a thought struck her. ‘How come you lot are handling this leak anyway? Isn’t that Special Branch’s job?’

Sachs sat back in his seat and took a long drink from his coffee mug. ‘Yes, it is, but currently we trust them less than I trust you. Admittedly, my superiors were less trusting, which is why they assigned Mayhew to handle liaison with you rather than me. Apparently I might have fallen prey to your seductive charms and been compromised.’ His lips were twitching; Mayhew’s cheeks were colouring.

‘None of them have met Lily, have they?’ Ceri said.

‘No, they haven’t.’

Lily could resist anything but temptation, and this was too tempting. ‘She is kind of cute.’

Mayhew looked utterly mortified.

Part Two: Science!

Holloway, London, July 9th, 2010

‘How was your birthday weekend?’ Ceri asked as she sat with Cheryl in one of the main lecture theatres of the Holloway Campus. They were waiting for the opening speeches of the conference and Ceri was checking through the conference bag. It was pretty much the same as the year before. Pens, notepads, gimmicks, all with the logos of various sponsors, and a paper guide to the conference.

‘Very good. Relaxing. Tiring.’

Ceri snapped a memory stick from the bag into her tablet and, as expected, watched as a database of the conference events and lectures fired up. ‘How can it be relaxing and tiring?’

‘Friday night birthday party at the Dragon, go home with Alec and Carter. Saturday night second birthday party at the Dragon, go to Carter’s place at Winchester with him and Alec. Sunday by the pool… some of the time, with Carter and Alec. Alec drove me and Carter back to town this morning.’

Ceri contemplated the itinerary for a second. ‘So I should be amazed you aren’t walking bow-legged?’

‘And nursing a hangover.’

Ceri chuckled. ‘Well, same present as last year from me and Lily. Whenever you want to collect.’

Cheryl’s cheeks coloured slightly. ‘That club you go to…’

‘I assume you mean Demi-monde.’

‘You can take guests, right?’

‘All right, if that’s what you want. After the conference? When we’re not being threatened by mad scientists, sort of thing.’

Cheryl’s response was postponed as the Dean of LMU walked onto the stage and the lights dimmed. ‘Well, here we go,’ Cheryl said. Ceri just looked down at her tablet, planning which lectures she would attend.

~~~

Ceri felt Professor Edward Perry long before she saw him bearing down on the table where she was having lunch with Cheryl and Peter Mallow, a cryptozoologist and one of Cheryl’s friends. Ed was also a friend of Cheryl’s, a thaumatology professor from Aberystwyth who had met her at one of the first thaumatology conferences in Cambridge. However, as Athro, Ed was Ceri’s sorcery tutor, a dragon over thirty-thousand years old.

Cheryl got up from her chair to meet him. ‘Ed, you’re late.’

Ed gave her a hug and then threw up his arms in exasperation. ‘The train was late. I should be used to it. I would be used to it if it had been the local service, but this was the West Coast Line. Some sort of accident just south of Birmingham. Entire main line was halted for two hours and it took them time to get restarted.’ Ed was good at showing exasperation. His human form was tall, gangly and stooped, and he tended to dress in corduroy trousers and tweed jackets with elbow patches. His shirts were never ironed, except badly.

‘You’re here now,’ Cheryl said. ‘Do you know Peter Mallow?’

‘We’ve never met,’ Ed said, reaching across the table to shake Peter’s hand, ‘but I’ve read your work and of course I recall the… accident.’

Peter, who was a younger version of Ed in many ways, grunted. His “accident” had happened in France, but the tale had flashed rapidly around the entire academic community. Peter had been bitten by a lycanthrope while on a field trip. Hurt and feverish from the initial stages of the disease, he had been unable to get to a hospital quickly enough for anti-viral treatment and had contracted the condition. ‘It’s a good thing that the conference is this week and not last,’ Peter commented. ‘This time last week was the full moon. I would’ve missed the evening activities and I tend to be grouchy during the day.’

‘At least it was during the night,’ Ceri pointed out. ‘It could have been peaking during the day.’

Peter grimaced. ‘I really hate it when that happens. No change, but I feel like my skin is trying to crawl off my body all the time.’

Ceri grimaced. She knew more or less how it felt; she could shape-shift, she knew the odd, tingling feeling when she did it. Having it go on for hours though…

‘Well, you didn’t miss much,’ Cheryl was saying. ‘The usual opening speeches. Alfred said it was glorious to have such an international array of various different disciplines in one place. Barclay Macbay gave a little speech about it being fascinating to have so many different great scientists under one roof.’

‘Which is wrong,’ Ceri said, ‘since we’re using facilities at UCL too.’

‘Well, I didn’t think I’d be missing much,’ Ed admitted, ‘so I stopped off at my hotel and dumped my suitcase before coming here.’

‘I’d have had you stay at High Towers,’ Ceri said, ‘but Cheryl’s in the spare room and I didn’t think you’d appreciate the couch.’

‘I assume there’s some reason why Cheryl isn’t in her own home?’

‘We’ve been threatened with death by some mad American scientists,’ Cheryl said as though she were discussing the weather. ‘You may have noticed there’s more security than usual.’

‘There did seem to be more police than at Cambridge,’ Ed said, nodding. ‘Someone actually checked my badge. Why would scientists threaten you?’

Ceri grinned. ‘Not just us and they’re some reactionary types who think “magical science” is an oxymoron. Keep your eyes open, they’ve threatened to disrupt the conference too.’

‘I see.’ Something about the way he said it made Ceri frown. There was a hard edge to his voice she was not used to hearing from the man. ‘What’s new with your research?’ he went on, and the edge was gone so completely that Ceri was not certain she had not imagined it.

‘Ceri had a brilliant idea which might well make our generator system far more efficient,’ Cheryl said. ‘Based on Stonehenge.’

‘Based on Cheryl’s brilliant transducer design and Stonehenge,’ Ceri corrected.

Peter laughed. ‘Will you two just live with the fact that you’re both brilliant thaumatologists and stop trying to one up each other with praise.’

Ceri and Cheryl looked at each other. ‘No,’ they said.

Kennington

‘We’ve spotted three people we’re keeping an eye on,’ Michael said. He was sprawled at Ceri’s feet, in front of the big, wing-backed, leather chair she usually sat in. Lily was perched on the foot stool at Ceri’s right side, leaning on the chair arm. Cheryl sat on the other wing-back with the conference schedule book in her lap, though she had stopped reading it. ‘They aren’t particularly good, if it is these “Scientists.” They’re trying to look like tourists, but what tourist in their right mind takes snaps of the Holloway campus.’

‘You’re sure no one saw any of your people?’ Mayhew asked. She was sat, a little stiffly, on a straight backed chair near Cheryl. Her discomfort likely stemmed from the fact that neither Michael nor Lily were dressed.

‘They probably did,’ Michael said, ‘and then they forgot about it. People don’t take a lot of notice of beggars.’

‘If they’re better than you think they might notice people acting like beggars.’

Ceri smiled. ‘You don’t understand. They aren’t acting. The Battersea pack are street people. Beggars, hookers. Some of them do odd jobs. But they’re all trained observers and the Guards, like Michael here, are trained to military level at unarmed combat.’

Mayhew had been trying her best to avoid looking at Michael, but the mention of his name drew her eyes downward and she swallowed convulsively. He was a handsome young man with long, unkempt black hair, clear, blue eyes, and longish, straight nose. His body was tightly muscled from exercise and combat practice. There was an air of animal power about him, hardly surprising since he was a werewolf, and a fairly powerful one at that.

Ceri felt amusement from Lily and glanced at her. The half-succubus’ dark eyes were looking straight at Mayhew. The binding between Ceri and Lily’s demonic side let them feel each other’s emotions, and Lily found something about Mayhew funny. Ceri could guess what; Mayhew seemed like a rather repressed personality.

‘You’re not a field agent, are you Miss Mayhew?’ Ceri asked.

‘I’m an analyst. And you can call me Jenny.’

‘You don’t get out much?’

‘Uh, no. This is my first, well, my first assignment like this.’

Ceri smiled at her. ‘And they landed you with dealing with werewolves and a half-succubus. Did you kick Sachs’ puppy once or something?’

Mayhew’s cheeks coloured and she covered her embarrassment by picking up her notepad, though she did not seem to be reading from it. ‘We think the disruption on the rail lines was caused by the Scientists. A car was driven onto the line and then set on fire. There was a similar attempt to block the East Coast line, but that was spotted and dealt with before it caused problems.’

‘They really mean business, don’t they?’ Cheryl commented.

‘The profile of the kind of people they induct which the FBI sent us suggests fanatical personalities. Science has become a religion to them. They are usually atheists, many of them deluding themselves into thinking that supernatural creatures don’t exist.’

‘How?!’ Ceri said, bemused. ‘They don’t see what’s around them?’

‘They rationalise it. Vampires are people with blood disorders. Werewolves are deluded into believing they can change shape. Magic is trickery they can explain with science given the chance. I did say they were delusional.’

‘Huh. You study wizardry, yes?’

Mayhew looked up from her notepad. ‘I’m not particularly good at it. I know some information spells and I can set light to things. As you said, I don’t get out much.’

‘Everyone has to start somewhere,’ Lily said. ‘You’ve more talent than I have.’

‘Nothing like yours, Doctor Brent. I’ve read the reports on your, um, activities. You’ve come a long way incredibly fast.’ There was a shrewd look in the analyst’s eyes which Ceri did not like. Once again she wondered what the government really did know about her. Surely if they knew she was a sorceress they would have done something about it…

‘I make it up as I go along, mostly,’ Ceri replied. ‘Learn where I can, but there’s a lot of improvisation.’

‘She’s an exceptional thaumatologist,’ Cheryl said smoothly. ‘She understands the theory behind magic better than anyone I know which makes her improvisation better than most practitioners’ learned spells.’

Mayhew gave a short nod. ‘I have a degree in thaumatology and I couldn’t understand half the stuff you were working on when we met.’

‘Partially it’s the notation,’ Ceri explained. ‘Try to make time to attend my lecture at the conference. I’ll be explaining some of the terms there.’

‘I’ll try to do that, thank you.’

Ceri nodded back to her, smiling, but she was worried. She was worried that Sachs had an ulterior motive for assigning Jennifer Mayhew to this detail.

July 10th

Ceri opened her eyes, wondering why she had for several seconds before she felt it again. It was like a pressure on part of her mind; the house was telling her about someone trying to get onto the grounds. The light in the room grew brighter a second later as Twill swept into the room, but the tiny woman just nodded as she saw Ceri awake.

Climbing out from between Lily and Michael woke both of them up, of course. ‘Someone’s trying to get through the side gate,’ Ceri said.

‘And they’re failing,’ Twill added. ‘If the gate wards are stopping them, they have particularly malign intent.’

Michael nodded. ‘I’ll slip out the other side of the house and circle around.’

‘It’s stopped,’ Ceri said as he was moving for the door. She moved past him, heading for the stairs hidden away in a corner which led up to the attic, and then via a ladder to the roof. As she was lifting the hatch she paused. ‘They’re trying the front gate.’ She looked down at Michael. ‘Can you slip out one of the doors without being seen?’ He looked back at her. ‘Sorry, of course you can.’

By the time Ceri and Lily were up on the roof looking down there was no sign of anyone near the iron gate at the front of the house. At a motion from Ceri, Lily went to the northern side of the roof. A second or two later she was shaking her head; there was no one there either.

Ceri concentrated, focussing on Michael and working through the mental exercise required to link their minds. A second later she could see him near the front gate and knew instantly what he had found at the side gate. She turned as Lily returned. ‘Lil, go call the Greycoats. Tell them we need bomb disposal.’

Lily’s eyes widened and she headed for the roof hatch.

‘There’s another trip wire across the front gate.’ Michael’s thought was clear amid the jumble of other thoughts and impressions coming from him. ‘I guess they wanted to put them on the doors, but couldn’t get in. It’s thin wire, I doubt you’d have spotted it. I nearly didn’t. I’ve got a scent.’

‘Can you track it?’ she thought back. ‘I’ll be down in a minute to watch the gates.’

He looked up at her, and she caught an image of herself standing there on the roof and felt the flicker of attraction and lust which he could not supress even under the less than ideal circumstances. Not that she was going to blame him; she felt much the same way herself.

‘Glad to hear it,’ he thought at her before he ran off on the trail of the scent he had found, and she broke the connection before he noticed she was embarrassed.

~~~

‘Fairly basic booby trap,’ the man in the heavily padded suit said holding up something which looked vaguely like a metal pineapple. ‘They used M-thirty-six’s. That’s the basic fragmentation grenade the Army used up until about seventy-two.’

‘So they sourced them in this country?’ Kate asked.

The ordnance officer nodded. ‘Likely anyway. The US military have their own designs. These things were made by the bucket load and they have gone missing occasionally. They started making them just after the first world war. There were crates of them lost in Europe when the Shattering started.’

Ceri looked at the grenade with the length of wire tied carefully around its lever to hold it in place. ‘What would that thing have done if we’d tripped it?’

‘Well, the fragmentation on these was never that great. It’s a four second fuse… It would have trashed your gate and probably maimed you pretty badly. Unless you were standing right by it when it went off.’ He glanced at the arbour. ‘If you were filing through one at a time, one of you might have been killed. Badly hurt at least.’

Ceri gritted her teeth. ‘Thanks, Captain. If you ever come across a magical trap you need disarming, you know where to find me.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, Doctor Brent.’ He turned and headed for the armoured van he had arrived in, waddling a little from the ballistic padding.

‘Thanks for turning out, Kate,’ Ceri said. ‘You want to come in for a bit?’

‘I’ll need to make a report out for the spooks, so yes.’

They started walking toward the house. ‘HQ dragged you out of bed?’ Ceri asked.

‘Uh-huh. I told them to leave John in bed. No point in both of us being awake this early.’

‘You know, I didn’t expect either of you…’

‘We told dispatch that we should be contacted if something urgent came up and the Chief agreed. You and Lily are too valuable a resource to let someone blow you up.’ She gave Ceri a quick glance. ‘And you’re a friend I’m not willing to lose.’

Ceri smiled. ‘Thanks, Kate.’

Michael, Lily, and Cheryl were waiting in the hall. ‘The trail stopped at the station,’ Michael said as soon as the door was closed. ‘Northbound platform. It was a woman, smelled of violets.’ His nose wrinkled. ‘Rather a lot of violets. A body spray, I think. I’d guess she was trying to mask her own scent, which means they know you’ve got werewolves helping you.’

‘Which means they’ve done their research,’ Ceri said. ‘Though I expect they think you’re “a man with an amazing sense of smell.”’

‘You’d know the scent again?’ Kate asked. Michael just looked at her. ‘Sorry, of course you would.’

Lily patted Michael on the arm. ‘They’re going to start questioning my ability to seduce people soon. It’s nothing personal.’

‘Well, if Michael’s nose can keep an… ah, a nostril out for this one, maybe we can get a lead on these people.’ Kate grinned. ‘When I joined the police force that was not something I ever expected to say.’

Ceri smirked and started for the kitchen; she needed coffee. ‘I never thought I’d be threatened by militant fundamentalist scientists. We live in interesting times.’

Bloomsbury

Theodore Barrowman-Leigh was a geek’s geek. Tall, stringy, unfit, drastically in need of a good barber and someone to dress him in the morning. He stood on the stage at the UCL campus facing probably the largest audience for his work he had ever had, but that did not bother him. Ted had a very great need to concentrate on that audience and not think too much about his partner for the “show and tell,” as Lily had been referring to it. That was, of course, because Lily was his partner and Ted’s stutter went from mildly irritating to indecipherable when he looked at her.

Ceri, Cheryl, Ed, and Peter all sat in the front row of the lecture theatre. They had got there early on the suspicion that it might get crowded. Cheryl had suggested to the organisers that they should put the presentation on in the largest auditorium they had, but they had ignored her and now the back of the theatre was crammed full of people standing to see the lecture. Some hasty work with cameras had arranged for it to be seen on screens outside the room as well.

To be fair to the huge assembly, they were not all there to gawk at the attractive young woman in the simple, black, cotton tank dress who stood there with a smile on her face and her hands clasped behind her back. Metagenetics, the study of the rather peculiar genetic inheritance which happened when certain magical creatures had cross-species children, was a subject which had gone nowhere for a long time. Ted had got further in the last year by studying Lily’s genome than anyone else had in decades. Everyone was fascinated.

‘P-perhaps the most p-perplexing part of the genetic transfer,’ Ted said, his stammer becoming more noticeable as he prepared himself to actually look at Lily, ‘is that genes which have little or nothing to do with physical structure have affected L-Lily’s physical development.’

He turned a little and raised an arm, indicating Lily standing behind him and to the right without actually bringing her into his field of vision. ‘As I previously indicated, L-Lily has a partial trisomy of the second chromosome, which I have discovered does affect her perceptive abilities, l-likely providing her with the b-basic neural functions she uses to sense magic and d-desires. However, this cannot explain the obvious physical ad-daptations to her nature as a s-succubus. While one could suggest that she inherited her attractiveness from her human parents, there are several characteristics which appear to stem from the physical form her incubus p-parent took at her conception. Both her hair and eyes follow this p-pattern and so she appears to have inherited morphic characteristics which come from a t-temporary shape.

‘Beyond the specific f-features o-of course, are the other d-developments, p-primarily the highly exaggerated s-secondary s-s-sexual k-k-characteristics.’ As Ted’s stammer headed toward critical mass, the other reason why Lily was there became obvious, at least to Ceri. Her pupils glowed a dull red and Ted let out a slight sigh, visibly relaxing, as her defensive aura rolled over him at its lowest level. ‘Increased breast size,’ he went on without a hint of a stutter, ‘lengthened legs, wide hips. While these could be entirely natural, they are also an aide in seduction, the forte of the succubus. Our current theorem is that Lily’s development at puberty was heavily influenced by her brain, though unconsciously. Her unconscious mind pushed her body into a shape which would be more appropriate for her demonic side.’

Reaching forward, Ted pressed a button on the lectern and the slide behind him showing Lily’s genome switched to show another set of what Lily liked to call “wiggly worm things.” ‘I have also been lucky enough to obtain blood from another supernatural, though this one is a little less useful for study since the donation was anonymous. However, what we can see here is genetic donation resulting in a similar aneuploidy. In this case, however, it is a complete trisomy of the second chromosome. Interestingly, while the third strand here shows distinct non-human elements, it also shows more human components and complexes. We believe that the owner of this genome is more distantly related to their non-human ancestor than Lily is.’

Ceri looked up at the slide, at her own genome. Ted was right, of course; the third strand on her second chromosome had had thirty thousand years to drift away from the dragons who had provided it. Really it had not changed nearly enough in that time.

The questions, when they came, were actually pretty on subject, until the last one. A woman standing at the side fielded it. ‘Andrea Haversham, I’m a meta-psychologist from MIT. Most of the half-demons who have been born since the Shattering have drifted toward anti-social behaviour. Miss Carpenter seems very well adjusted. What’s her secret?’

Ted looked around. ‘I think that’s a question for L-Lily to answer.’ In her seat Ceri grinned; Lily had turned off her aura.

The half-succubus stepped forward so that she was closer to the microphone. ‘I have friends,’ she said. ‘I met someone who gave me a chance to get out of that downward spiral, and then I met the person I live with and she helped me keep out of trouble. We also discovered that I had a mental connection with my father which tended to push me toward more demonic behaviour. Things got a lot easier when we were able to screen me from that influence. I doubt most other half-demons have that luxury.’ She smiled. ‘And another part of it was learning more about my demon side. That’s why I offered to help Ted with his research, and for a girl who dropped out of school without taking her exams I’ve learned a lot. I even know what a trisomy is.’

That got a laugh. Ted leaned forward to the microphone. ‘Don’t let L-Lily’s appearance fool you. She’s an intelligent w-woman, learns quickly, and l-l-looks g-good doing it.’ Lily giggled and patted Ted on the shoulder while the audience laughed. Ted went a delightful shade of scarlet.

‘Put the paramedics on alert,’ Ceri muttered to Cheryl. ‘The last time she touched him he almost passed out.’

‘He seems to be surviving the experience.’

‘Wait until the adrenaline wears off. You ready for yours tomorrow.’

Cheryl smiled. ‘A walk in the park. You?’

Ceri smiled back. ‘I think I can wow them enough. Assuming no one blows me up before Thursday.’

Kennington

Lily tapped Ceri’s shoulder, drawing her attention to the TV. The presenter was reading from a sheet of paper rather than the teleprompter, which seemed odd.

‘Macbay was traveling from the Metropolitan University campus at Holloway to the American Embassy when his vehicle was attacked. Police have stated that he escaped without injury, but one of his Secret Service bodyguards was injured. Witnesses reported gunfire, possibly a sniper. Once again, this just in, Barclay Macbay, scientific advisor to the US President was attacked tonight by an unknown assailant.’

‘Crap,’ Ceri said. She started to stand, but Michael was already handing her the phone.

‘Mayhew.’ The analyst’s voice sounded stressed even over the phone connection.

‘It’s Ceri. How’s Macbay?’

‘Lucky. They used a fifty-calibre rifle with anti-armour rounds. Explosive incendiaries. Luckily he had good bodyguards. One of them bundled him out of the burning car, he was burned doing it. They used deflection spells to screen him while they got him to cover.’

Ceri frowned. ‘Where did they get their hands on that kind of armament?’

‘There are only a couple of possible sources. We’ve got people chasing them down now. If I could get back to it…’

‘Right,’ Ceri said. ‘Good luck with that.’ She hung up the connection. ‘The roof is off limits without me there to provide cover.’

‘High powered rifle?’ Michael asked.

‘Fifty-cal anti-tank rifle.’

His brows knitted and he tapped his chin thoughtfully; it made him look older. ‘Anita mentioned that kind of thing. They’re easily accurate enough that they could fire from the tower blocks. I doubt anywhere else would have a good enough view of the house.’

Everyone was silent for a second and then Cheryl said, ‘You don’t think they’d be that predictable, do you?’

‘We can always hope they are,’ Ceri replied.

July 11th

Ceri swept high in the air over Kennington park, black wings carrying her out over the trees before she curved back in a wide loop heading for the nearby tower blocks. It would be dawn soon, but for now she was a black bird swooping through the dark sky and she was pretty sure her opponent, if there was one, would not notice her. If they did, all they were likely to see was a raven.

Twill had woken them when she sensed someone on the grounds, but the wards had not triggered, indicating that the intruder’s intent was not so dangerous. This time, instead of going out to immediately to check on things, Ceri had gone out alone, transforming in the second kitchen and hopping around to the back of the house, out of sight of the tower blocks before taking to the air. She had seen someone in dark clothes heading for the station, but had ignored them. If they were right, there was easier prey to be had.

Swinging around the buildings, she came at the two blocks of flats from the opposite side. Sure enough, on the building closest to High Towers, a man was lying with his eye pressed to some form of night vision scope attached to a huge rifle. Beside him a woman knelt with her eye to a telescope. They had all the gear; there was even an anemometer to measure the wind speed attached to some form of computer. Ceri landed on the opposite side of the roof, unnoticed.

‘They should have been out by now,’ the woman said. The accent sounded like New York somewhere; northern rather than southern anyway.

‘Give them a couple of minutes.’ He had a weird twang to his voice; not southern, but not anything she recognised, even from movies.

‘The hit on Macbay was reported in the news. They may be expecting this.’

‘There’s a light on in the kitchen. We’ll give them ten more minutes.’

Ceri half-walked, half hopped to where she had some cover behind the roof’s access structure and reversed her shape shift. Up this high the wind was cold against her bare skin, especially this close to dawn. She looked around the corner of the building, checking the couple for any signs of magic. Considering their world view it seemed unlikely, but you could never be sure without looking.

‘I don’t like it,’ the spotter said. She sounded nervous. ‘Put a couple of rounds in through the kitchen windows. Maybe we can burn the place down.’

The sniper shifted his aim. Ceri was fairly sure of the structural wards, but there was no sense in testing them. Summoning up her power, she stepped around the little, brick hut and raised her hand. The woman keeled over backwards and the man sagged against his rifle. A second later the woman was snoring.

Grinning, Ceri made the connection to Lily. ‘Get Mayhew over here,’ she thought. ‘I’ve got two people she’ll be dying to talk to.’

Holloway

‘I understand you arrested a couple of my wayward countrymen last night, Doctor Brent?’ The speaker was clearly American, just from the accent which she had been assured belonged to the Bronx. Ceri was not entirely sure where the Bronx was, but she thought it was in New York or Chicago because Barclay Macbay sounded like a gangster. If he were a gangster he would have been one of the ones who wore a smart suit with two-tone shoes, even though the shoes he was actually wearing were just black. He was a slightly younger Carter; charming, attractive in an “aging well” way. There was some silver at his temples, but his body suggested regular workouts; Ceri would have bet he boxed at the local gym.

‘Probably the same ones who tried to shoot you yesterday,’ Ceri replied. ‘How’s your guard?’

‘Second degree burns to the left shoulder and arm, third degree to the legs. I’m assured he’ll pull through without too much trouble. Thank you for asking.’ They were walking between lectures, probably to the same one since Ceri was heading for Cheryl’s presentation. She was a little surprised the two agents trailing along behind them had allowed Macbay to speak to her. ‘You’re going to Doctor Tennant’s lecture?’ he asked, confirming her suspicion.

‘Yes, I know it all anyway, but they haven’t scheduled anything else in my field so I’m lending moral support.’

Macbay nodded. ‘This one and yours tomorrow are two of the main reasons I’m here. Would you mind if we sat together?’

The request came out of the blue and Ceri startled a little. ‘No, of course not. I’ll introduce you to Ed. He’s a thaumatology professor from Aberystwyth. Oh, speaking of Wales, how are the President and First Lady?’ It was not that big a leap, Eleanor Wilson, nee Hughes, had Welsh ancestry.

‘Well. Mrs Wilson in particular said that I should pass on their regards if we met. The President said I should say that “Katarina was proving a most useful contact.” He’s keeping it moderately quiet at the moment, but he’s initiated talks with the Nations. We may well get to go ahead with that power generation plan.’

Ceri smiled. ‘Wait until you hear what Cheryl has to say.’ They walked into the auditorium and Ceri spotted Ed near the front waving at her. ‘Ed’s saved me a seat. I suspect we may be able to persuade someone to move for you.’

As it turned out, there was no need since Ed had managed to fend all-comers away from three seats on the front row. ‘Professor Ed Perry,’ Ceri said as the two men reached for each other’s hands, ‘this is Doctor Barclay Macbay, scientific advisor to the President of the United States. And now you can tell me how you knew to save three seats.’

Ed smiled at her and sank into a chair on one side of the trio of empty ones. ‘You’re an attractive young woman, Ceri. You were bound to have picked up someone.’

Ceri slipped into the middle seat. ‘I do not go around picking up random men.’ Macbay sat down beside her wearing an amused grin; his guards watched from the doorway.

‘Of course not,’ Ed replied. ‘Why would you restrict yourself to men?’ Ceri opened her mouth to deny his assertion, but he stopped with a raised hand and stated that, ‘Cheryl’s beginning. Hush now.’

Cheryl’s presentation was in two parts. She spent the first forty minutes going over the design and use of the transducer system she had designed. She showed how the carefully arranged panels of silver-iron could be used to turn thaumic energy into electricity. She even put in a bit toward the end about using them in a circular configuration to maximise the output before moving on.

You could just tell that everyone was waiting for the second part. There was a tension in the room which grew as she began to finish her talk on the generator. Cheryl looked around at the array of expectant faces and smiled before pressing a button to change the slide on the screen behind her. The new image showed a mass of particle tracks, several of them highlighted in brighter colours.

‘This data was collected during the same experiment as the one in which we found solid evidence of the Null Thaumiton.’ Cheryl paused for just the right amount of time before adding, ‘This trail is not, however, a T-Null.’ She switched slides again, this time showing a bank of calculations. ‘What we have here is a fermion with a mass of one-hundred and fifty-one point three TeV. It decayed into a positive and negative thaumiton, and a photon, after three hundred milliseconds. As my colleague, Doctor Brent, put it when I showed her the data, I thought this was a thaumino. Continued analysis has so far only confirmed this suspicion and I’m privileged to be able to give you a first look at the data from MIT’s large collider which has been provided by Doctor Macbay.’

There was a general murmur of sound from the audience as the next set of slides were clicked through. They ended in another set of equations.

‘MIT have confirmed the mass to within three per cent,’ Cheryl said, ‘and we now have some solid figures to punch into the Super-magic Field Theorem equations.’ She flicked on the slide to show a graph. ‘The resulting predictions of thaumic field levels based on variation in the Super-magic field fit levels observed in nature to within zero point zero five per cent.

‘Aside from this rather startling indication that we have a good theory and experimental evidence that it fits with the observed energy of the thaumino, we also have some additional, more qualitative, evidence which fits the theory. Doctor Brent was able to observe the T-Null interaction at the edge of a null-magic zone and I did some analysis of what she saw there.’ A new slide went up with some more calculations on it. ‘Right at the edge there was a thin layer of higher thaumic energy. Putting the estimated boundary conditions into the theoretical equations gives us just that kind of result. At the boundary layer, which is about one tenth of a millimetre thick, the calculated energy release raises the level to just over one thaum. We’re hoping that this figure can be confirmed by careful analysis at some point in the future, though the narrowness of the field will require new instrumentation to allow accurate measurements.’

Cheryl clicked her control button once more and “Questions…” appeared on the screen. Dozens of hands went up and Cheryl smiled. ‘I can see we’re not going to have time for all these. My contact information is in the conference guide if you want to email me questions after. Let me see…’ She pointed at one of the people on the front row.

‘Maureen Orson, Newcastle University. You used an artificial ley line to feed into your generator in Holland. How was that created?’

‘You’ll want to attend Doctor Brent’s lecture tomorrow. She’ll be going over the process she used to create the tunnel. Make sure you’re well rested, it’s pretty advanced thaumatology.’ She gave Ceri a glance as she said it and Ceri tried her best to shrink out of sight.

‘Ben Waterman, MagiTech,’ the next questioner introduced himself. ‘You say that you have observations from a null-magic zone…’

Cheryl held up her hand. ‘Yes, we have, but I can’t discuss it much. The information is classified, I’m afraid. I can say that the zone was not in Britain. One more…’

‘Chelsea Hanford, MIT. Do you think there’s anything else left to discover now that you’ve found the thaumino, Doctor?’

Cheryl laughed. ‘I hope so. If there isn’t we’re out of a job. Since we’ve found the thaumino, Super-symmetry suggests that there should be analogous heavy versions of the T-Plus and T-Minus bosons. I think the large collider at MIT is going to be the best chance we have of confirming their existence. Those of us without big toys like those will just have to concentrate on working out where they might be and what they might do.

‘All right, that’s all we have time for now. Please come to Doctor Brent’s lecture tomorrow. I'm assured that it’s going to be spectacular. Ceri is a practitioner as well as a very good thaumatologist and her presentation is going to be quite unique.’

People began to get up, but Macbay turned to Ceri. ‘Unique?’

‘Yeah, almost unique. You’ll have to come tomorrow and see.’

‘Oh, I intend to.’

Kennington

‘No werewolf or succubus tonight?’ Mayhew looked rather relieved about it as she sat in the lounge with Ceri and Cheryl occupying the two wing-backs.

‘Lily’s at work,’ Ceri told her, ‘and I sent Michael with her since Cheryl and I are quite safe in here.’

Mayhew nodded. ‘The two Scientists you apprehended yesterday have given us nothing aside from a mild headache. We confirmed that the rifle was the one used in the attack on Macbay. Fingerprint evidence suggests the sniper was the same man. You made the Secret Service happy.’

Ceri chuckled. ‘I do that a lot.’

‘I read the report on your trip to America. Anyway, we traced our captives’ entry into the country. The sniper came over here two months ago, the spotter three weeks later. We’ve been over all the other passengers on the ships they used and cleared them all. Most have returned to the US.’

‘So they’ve been transporting people in for months,’ Cheryl concluded. ‘Never more than one or two at a time. You have no way to find the sniper’s colleagues by following his movements.’

Mayhew nodded, her expression sour. ‘We did track down their arms supplier. Unfortunately all that got us was a list of what they bought. Just the one rifle, ten pistols, a crate of grenades… and ten pounds of plasticised RDX.’

‘They’re building a bomb,’ Ceri stated.

‘We’re sweeping the two university sites, and we’ll do the same every day that’s left.’

‘The Green Room,’ Cheryl said. ‘The conference dinner is going to be held at the Green Room. Everyone under one roof on Thursday night.’

‘Yes, it does seem like a good target. We’ll be checking the building before the event.’

‘Cater has pretty good wards on his clubs,’ Ceri said. ‘I can’t believe someone could get a bomb in there.’

‘There are ways,’ Mayhew replied. Ceri raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Okay… your wards here work by intention, right? Someone intending to do harm is pushed away?’

‘Basically. I can instruct them to allow or deny access to specific individuals regardless, but yes.’

‘So, if someone walked in here with a bomb they didn’t know about…’

Ceri’s brow knitted. ‘That could work. Magic would be detected and blocked, but something mundane could get through.’

‘Exactly. These people have a lot of disadvantages without magic. You took two of them out really easily because they simply didn’t know you were coming. But they have some advantages as well. People tend to think of magic as the big danger and protect against it, especially if they’re supernaturals. The government thinks the same way to some extent. They put a huge amount of research into combatting supernatural threats because they aren’t as well understood. Ten pounds of plastic explosive though. It’ll make a big dent in your day.’

‘There’s a cheerful thought,’ Cheryl said. ‘I’m going to sleep so well tonight.’

Holloway, July 12th

Ceri stood behind the lectern in the lecture theatre she had been assigned and waited patiently for the noise to die away. There were a lot of people there. A lot. A year ago she would have been nervous as hell. A year ago she had been nervous and that was after spending hours and hours going over her presentation and making sure everything was perfect. Now she was just going to wing the whole thing and she felt… She narrowed her eyes; they were not calming down quickly enough for her taste. She moved, pulling herself up straight and doing nothing more than calling upon her inner dominatrix. Dressing in a pencil skirt, silk blouse, and heels had clearly been a good move this morning since the room fell into sudden silence as soon as she shifted.

‘Thank you all for coming,’ she began. ‘My name is Ceridwyn Brent and I am a Doctor of Thaumatology at LMU. I work with Doctor Cheryl Tennant, currently producing practical applications of her work on the Null Thaumiton. This spring we created a generator system which involved transferring thaumic energy from Hamburg, on the German Rift, to Groningen, in the Dutch Territories, where it was converted to electricity. Yesterday, Doctor Tennant went over the transducer, today I will be explaining the energy transfer system, a sub-membrane tunnel or “artificial ley line.”’

Ceri allowed the muttering which followed to die away again. Until she had done it, no one had acknowledged the ability to create a ley line. She had seen it done at Stonehenge, probably using demonic magic, but the people who had done it were not about to explain their method.

‘Before we start on the actual thaumatology behind the tunnel,’ Ceri went on, her firm voice cutting through the last of the noise, ‘I need to go over some processes and notations which I’ve created specifically for manipulating sub-membrane systems. The structures we are creating operate in six dimensions and I’ve found it useful to create some symbology which identifies common transformations and manipulations.

‘The first of these,’ she turned, waving an arm over her head to produce a large, silver glyph which hung in the air above the stage, ‘is this one.’ She had to raise her voice a little to be heard over the sudden chatter. ‘I pronounce it “Opari,” but you’re welcome to make up your own words too.’ She decided to plough on since the audience was amazed at a simple magic trick, but she set her voice a little more sternly and the noise died away again quickly. A twist of her hand, unnecessary, but somehow appropriate, and the glyph shrank and shifted off to one side, while on the other side of the stage a long and complex series of equations began to transcribe themselves into the air. ‘Opari can be transliterated into this field complex transform and it’s used in…’

The only sounds in the room were Ceri’s voice and people’s pens scratching rapidly on notepads as she worked her way through the equations governing the ley line and the processes used to implement it. She knew that what she was describing was not actually that complex, but it was very advanced. Few systems in thaumatology worked in more than four dimensions. Moving to six, and beyond, did not actually complicate anything that much, but it was a leap in understanding which some would find hard. The main reason they were accepting it without question was that, simply put, it worked.

‘The two main practical difficulties for creating tunnels of the magnitude we used for the pilot project,’ Ceri said as she began to wrap up, ‘were the conditions in the area we were starting the tunnel from and the initiating pulse required. I can’t recommend the Hamburg area as a vacation spot, but it is survivable if you know what you’re doing and the ambient magic field there does help with the necessary power. Smaller tunnels are far safer and easier to initiate.’

She glanced at the small clock on the lectern. ‘We have time for a couple of questions… Second row there…’

‘Alex Taylor, Bristol University. How did you actually survive walking into an area like Hamburg? I’ve been in that area myself and the magic there is exceptionally dangerous…’

‘Well, I did a military survival course which is designed for Army personnel going into that area. I’m also naturally tolerant of high magic fields and wild magic. We don’t know why, but I developed my power after being hit with a huge amount of thaumic energy. The working theory is that that jolt sort of acclimatised me to those conditions.’ Ceri smiled. ‘I was also accompanied by my partner, who is a half-demon. She’s naturally immune to wild magic and has a talent for spotting strong magic fields. Between us we were able to avoid most of the problems.’

Ceri pointed at someone else, a woman on the other side of the room. ‘Billie Farmer, MIT. Uh, you know we have the large thaumic collider working now, obviously. I was wondering whether you’d considered creating a tunnel like this in a circular form?’

Frowning, Ceri looked down at the front row where Cheryl was sitting. Cheryl looked back, raising her eyebrows. Ceri looked back to the MIT delegate. ‘I hadn’t. I’m not even sure it’s possible… I’d need to work on that. My email is in the conference booklet, Miss Farmer. Would you please contact me about this? That’s a very interesting suggestion.’

‘Well, I should say it wasn’t exactly my suggestion. There’s… a boy I met. He’s not officially at MIT yet, but he visited the LTC building and we got talking.’ Ceri listened to her talking and began to suspect she knew who this boy was. ‘When I said I was coming here he said he had read about your ley line technique and thought of doing this. His name’s Martin. He’s going to be a really amazing thaumatologist.’

Ceri nodded. Martin William Whitaker, the first sorcerer Ceri had ever come across beside herself, and at the time she had been in no position to talk to him. He had won a scholarship to MIT and she had infiltrated the award ceremony in New York. ‘Well, you get in touch with me and when Martin starts you get him to email me too. I’m sure Doctor Macbay there will be keen to help with anything you may need if the maths works out.’

‘I’ll be in touch, Miss Farmer,’ Macbay called out and the young woman went bright red and sat down.

‘All right, that’s all we have time for because that was all pretty deep stuff and I went on a bit long. If anyone has any further questions, you all know my email address. See you at the Green Room tonight.’

Mayfair

Michael’s tongue was hanging out. Since he was in wolf form, that was some serious tongue hanging, but he felt he had good reason since Ceri was standing outside the elegant building which was the Green Room, Carter Fleming’s restaurant. Ceri was wearing a slim, white, strapless gown which currently had streams of thaumatology symbols floating over its surface; it was made from magically sensitive fabric. Werewolves tended to have low impulse control, they were closer to their animal nature in wolf form, and Michael was applying every ounce of self-control to avoid clawing Ceri’s dress off.

Mayhew was also looking rather good in a short, black dress, her hair pulled up into a tight bun. Her look of evening elegance was a little marred by the earpiece wedged into her right ear, but she scrubbed up rather well for a girl who seemed to prefer “frumpy librarian” over sexy.

‘We have several field agents around the building,’ she was saying while she tried to avoid looking at Michael, ‘as well as the werewolves the Battersea pack has provided. They all know the scent of the explosives…’ She glanced at Michael and he dipped his muzzle in agreement. ‘…so if anyone gets near with a bomb, we should have some warning.’

‘You’ve told them not to engage?’ Ceri said to Michael. ‘I won’t have anyone blown up defending me. Let the agents deal with it.’

Michael gave a growl which said, Last resort.

Ceri nodded reluctantly. ‘I guess that’s okay. See to it that it doesn’t become necessary.’

‘You understand what he’s saying?’ Mayhew asked.

‘Wolf speech is less complex than human speech, but they can usually get the point across.’ Ceri grinned. ‘And when they can’t they can always change.’

‘Okay. Well, we should get inside. Uh… good hunting, Michael.’ Michael gave a soft growl before loping off down the street. ‘What did he say?’

Ceri turned and headed for the door to the restaurant. ‘He said you looked good in that dress.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, something like that, but a bit more, um, basic.’ Ceri was pretty sure that Mayhew was blushing behind her, but did not look to check. ‘Keep me informed if anything comes up. Otherwise I’m here to socialise.’

‘Of course. Enjoy yourself.’

Ceri smiled. ‘I intend to.’

~~~

The seating at the Cambridge conferences had always been on long tables with people arranged according to the rather cliquey nature of the Cambridge thaumatology teams. That had been changed considerably for this conference dinner. For one thing, everyone was on six-person tables and, while it had all been arranged so that most people sat near someone they knew, the organisers had mixed things up a fair bit. Ceri, Cheryl, and Ed were all on the same table, but with them were sat a young woman who had just moved into post-graduate work at Cambridge, and two rather wide-eyed men from the University of Paris. When the meal was over and the speeches done with, the woman slipped away to find her friends, but the two Frenchmen sat at the table in their hired suits still looking as though they were not sure how they had ended up where they were.

At least they were loosening up a little after two glasses of wine. ‘You’ll excuse me,’ Ceri said, ‘but I didn’t think any of the French universities studied thaumatology.’

The eldest of the two, a rather distinguished looking gentleman in his forties with a carefully waxed moustache under a rather large nose, was the most vocal. He had a fairly thick French accent which Ceri was trying hard not to think of as comical. His name was Adolphe, which did not help. ‘In truth, mademoiselle, you are not wrong. We here are the Département de la Science de la Magie of La Sorbonne. However, in the next year we will be beginning our first course pour étudiants. Before now we have done our study after the graduation, you understand?’

Ceri smiled. ‘Your English is a lot better than my French. So are the French finally starting to get over their fear of magic?’

‘Sadly, no.’ Adolphe really did seem rather sad about it. ‘The fées still hold sway in the east and are not uncommon, even in Paris. Our work is largely theoretical, but the government has finally decided that we must progress in the more scientific disciplines of magic to advance as a nation.’

Ceri nodded. France had been badly hit by the fae invasion which followed the Shattering. Its populace distrusted and feared magic; there were stories of witches being hunted down and burned which made it into the press in Britain every so often. The techno-magical advances which powered progression in Britain, the Netherlands, America, and Australia had never happened in France and it remained a largely agrarian society. Which was useful since they produced a lot of food which helped supplement the produce for the British, but they could have produced a lot more if, as the British did, they employed witchcraft to increase productivity.

‘And you Léonard?’ Cheryl asked the younger of the two. He was a handsome, if rather shy, twenty-something who looked like he should have been writing poetry rather than equations. He looked a little like Michael with his long, untameable hair, though he was more skinny than muscled. ‘How did you get into thaumatology?’

‘It is a fascinating subject,’ he replied. He spoke English with a far less noticeable accent; just enough to give a little exotic sexiness to his voice. ‘I studied physics and then became Professor Blanc’s assistant when I graduated.’ He laughed. ‘If I had known how much it scared off the girls I might have picked a different subject and, after seeing Ceridwyn’s presentation today, I have much to learn. That is never a bad thing.’

Cheryl grinned at him. ‘Get yourself an English girlfriend. They aren’t scared off by a hint of magic.’

‘Or Welsh,’ Ed piped up. ‘Welsh girls are better.’ He was wearing one his more mischievous smirks.

‘Hey!’ Cheryl said. ‘Ceri, come to my defence.’

Ceri smirked too. ‘Well, y’know, born in Wales…’

Cheryl huffed. ‘You’ve been living in England since you were practically a baby.’

‘Ah,’ Ed said, ‘you can take the girl out of Wales, but you can’t take Wales out of the girl.’

Ceri giggled. ‘I still use Welsh for a lot of my incantations. I’m not good enough for the flowery stuff I do sometimes.’

‘You seem quite the powerful practitioner,’ Adolphe said. ‘You find this helps with your science?’

Ceri nodded, but it was Cheryl who spoke. ‘Oh, it is. She has a far more intuitive grasp of the subject than I do. She gave me a glimpse of what she can see once, at Stonehenge, and that helped me optimise my transducer system.’

The older man nodded. ‘I have been attempting to persuade the university authorities to allow me to employ someone with the talent to assist our research. It is… an uphill struggle?’

‘Good luck then,’ Ceri said. She frowned at her empty wine glass. ‘I think there’s wine and dancing in the bar upstairs. Léonard, any good at dancing?’

Léonard went a little pink around the cheeks, but he rose to his feet, smiling, and offered Ceri his hand. ‘I would be honoured to do the best I can, mademoiselle.’

July 13th

The band was playing light jazz to wind down the evening when Ceri spotted Mayhew talking to her wrist at the side of the room. She headed that way, keeping her movement casual, and arrived just as the analyst stopped talking.

Mayhew looked up at her, frowning, and spoke quietly. ‘We found out what they did with the explosives.’

‘I haven’t heard anything blowing up.’

‘You wouldn’t. They packed it into a light plane. Looks like they were planning to crash the whole thing into this building.’

‘That would be suicide. The pilot changed his mind?’

‘No, he crashed into the river about two miles east of here. City Airport was tracking it, and starting to get worried since they couldn’t contact it, and then it just… fell out of the air. People on the site say it looks like the bomb wasn’t armed yet. It looks like something ripped the tail-plane off the thing.’

‘Weird. Structural failure? It is Friday the thirteenth.’

‘Unlucky for him, lucky for us. Even luckier, we think we have a lead on where he came from. We’ve got an armed response team headed for the location now. It’s an old farmhouse down near Maidstone.’

Ceri had a sudden urge to be in on that raid, but she had had more than a few glasses of wine and she doubted the AR team would wait. ‘So, this could all be over by morning?’ she said instead.

‘Yeah. Looks like the last day of the conference it’ll be safe.’

Ceri winced. ‘Did you have to say that?’

Soho

Despite Mayhew’s attempt to jinx the rest of the conference, the last day had gone off without a hitch. Ceri stood near the bar of the Jade Dragon, working her other job and oddly happy to be back doing something normal.

More or less normal. It was the thirteenth and a Friday, so Carter had organised an anti-bad luck party. Ceri was beginning to think he just enjoyed any excuse to dress his waitresses in less clothing. Actually, no, she was sure he took any excuse to do that, though she did not really mind that much. This time around he had had them covered in silver body paint, and they were wearing mirrored pasties and silver heels; mirrors warded off the Evil Eye. Apotropaic magic, Carter had described it as. Lily had suggested that he had made four good luck charms for perverts.

‘Ceri?’ Carter said as Ceri watched her tables. ‘Put them on table twelve.’

She looked around and smiled. John Radcliffe and his wife, Lorna, were standing at the lectern waiting to be seated. John was tall and attractive with short dark hair. He looked fit, strong, and kind of sexy in his black suit. Next to Lorna he just looked ordinary. Pale skinned, model-attractive, almost as tall as her husband, slim, but with a substantial chest, she was wearing a simple, white, sheath dress, short enough to show off her long legs. The one and only thing wrong with Lorna was that she was a vampire.

‘Good evening,’ Ceri said as she stepped up to the lectern, ‘I’m Ceri and I’ll be your ward against the Evil Eye this evening.’

Lorna grinned wide enough to show her fangs. ‘You’re very…’

‘Naked?’ John suggested.

‘I was going to go for “silver.”’

Ceri smiled. ‘No Kate this evening?’ She turned and started into the club, followed by the couple.

‘She decided she wanted an evening on the couch with some sort of romantic comedy,’ John replied. ‘She also said, “Take your damn wife out on your own for once, we see enough of each other.”’

Ceri gave a giggle and stopped at the booth which was table twelve. Vampires tended to prefer the booths since their eyes were sensitive to light; the booths were specifically set up to be more shaded than the tables in the main room. ‘What can I get you?’ Ceri asked as John slipped onto the bench seat beside his wife.

‘Red wine for me, and… Dragon’s Blood?’ Lorna nodded at his suggestion. ‘I also have a message from the Chief. We’ll be coming by High Towers in the morning. He wants you to take a look at something. Lily and Michael too. Kate was dropping in at Battersea to tell him on the way home.’

Ceri raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? What?’

‘He said not to tell you. Fresh eyes on the problem.’

‘Intriguing. I’ll be right back with your drinks.’ She strutted off toward the bar, picking up some empty glasses and tip money from table nine on the way.

Lily was there, leaning casually against the counter. ‘Something up?’

‘Something.’ Ceri looked across the bar to where Alec was waiting for the order. ‘Red wine and a Dragon’s Blood, please.’ Lily was obviously waiting for more. ‘Early morning tomorrow. We have police work to do. John wouldn’t say what, just that they wanted some fresh eyes on it.’

‘Intriguing.’

‘That’s what I said.’ Ceri grinned and picked up her tray. ‘Well, it’s something to keep us occupied on a Saturday morning and the weather’s supposed to be miserable.’

‘Oh well, in that case, bring it on. I’m sure it’ll be wonderful.’

Hollingbourne, Kent, July 14th

The farmhouse smelled of burned timber and wet ash. Ceri’s nose wrinkled as soon as she got out of the car; what Michael was feeling with his better-than-human olfactory senses she dared not think.

‘Mayhew said that they thought the Scientists were holed up in a farm near Maidstone,’ she said as she looked around. ‘I take it they put up a fight?’ DCI Barry, standing beside the other car, just looked at her. ‘This seems a little excessive, even for an armed response team… Why are we here?’

‘This is how they found it,’ Barry said. ‘Aside from the fact that parts of it were still burning and we’ve removed the bodies.’

‘Someone killed them before the ART got here?’

‘We were called in since it’s no longer a security issue, but it is still a Met case. Take a look around, tell us what you think. I don’t want to give you suggestions.’

Michael grunted. ‘The place stinks, but I’ll see what I can do. Is the structure stable?’ He began pulling off his shirt.

‘Fire department pulled down anything dangerous,’ John replied, ‘but be careful.’

The werewolf sat down on the back seat of the car to take off his shorts. ‘I always am.’

Ceri and Lily walked over to the front of the building. What had been a small, single storey cottage was now a burned out shell. The large front window was almost entirely gone, the door was a couple of bits of charred wood attached to the hinges, the interior and half the roof was blackened. The remains of furniture could be seen dotted around the room and there was another shattered door at the back, probably leading into the kitchen.

‘No sign of magic,’ Ceri said. She glanced at Lily.

‘Nothing,’ the half-demon agreed. ‘I’m sensing nothing at all.’

Ceri walked over to the window frame as Michael slipped into the room through the open door. He sniffed and then his lips pulled back from his teeth in a pained grimace, but he kept going. Ceri reached down and pulled a fragment of glass from the frame. It looked melted at the edge and, looking into the room, she could see more slagged glass littering the floor.

‘This would take… five or six hundred degrees to put the glass into transition,’ she said.

‘And there’s none on the outside,’ Lily said. ‘Something outside burned through the glass.’

Ceri nodded. ‘No explosion.’ She looked back toward the detectives waiting behind them. ‘Was there any sign of a fire-fight? These people were supposed to have guns.’

‘No,’ Barry replied. ‘We found guns. None near the bodies.’

Michael emerged from the house, shaking soot out of his fur and growling his disgust. Ceri looked at him as he changed. ‘Someone hit the place with a flamethrower?’

‘No scent of anything like petrol,’ Michael said. ‘Burned flesh and wood, chemicals from the foam in the sofa. No evidence of a flamethrower.’

‘Fire, but no fuel,’ Ceri said, ‘and no magic.’ She turned, looking around. ‘And what’s this?’

‘I noticed that,’ Michael said. ‘The ground’s torn up. Maybe a heavy tracked vehicle, but it doesn’t quite look right.’

Lily was frowning; Ceri felt the confusion over their bond and looked back at her. ‘There was something there,’ Lily said. ‘There’s a tiny residue, very faint. I can’t tell what it was.’

Ceri stared at the ground. Something had ripped up the surface, but there was a tiny hint of scattered magic. Traces of sand with flickers of thaumiton emissions. ‘A really intense magic field. Something was there, maybe for a short time, giving off a lot of magic.’

‘But not using it to burn the house,’ Lily added. ‘There would be thaumic residue on the ruin we could sense.’

‘A demon?’ Michael suggested. ‘A really big one? Some of them use fire, right?’

‘A lord,’ Ceri said. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure. A demon lord could explain the residue, I guess.’

‘The question then,’ Barry mused, ‘is why did a demon lord come here to roast a bunch of terrorists?’

‘If it was a demon,’ Lily replied. She was still frowning as they got back in the cars to leave.

Interlude: Mayhew

Millbank, London, July 16th, 2012

Jennifer Mayhew sat at her computer, her fingers dancing over the keys as she typed out her report.

The police report indicates that they are following up suggestions that the Scientists were killed by a demon lord. Brent and Carpenter were able to detect minute residue of a strong magic field having existed just outside the farmhouse for a brief period of time. Further analysis of soil taken from the site suggests that they are correct. The sand crystals were exposed to a field of around 30 thaums for a period of between 2 and 5 minutes.

She rested back in her chair and stretched. Something in her back made an alarming popping noise. She had spent the last four days cleaning up after the conference. Everyone wanted reports; her bosses, the US embassy, their Secret Service and FBI. The one going to the Americans had to be sanitised and checked prior to release. And then there were her private notes; the ones only she and Sachs would see. Sachs might decide to pass some of them on to others, but perhaps not yet. She leaned forward again.

The demon lord hypothesis holds some merit. Certainly it cannot be disproved and there has been evidence that a demon lord has an interest in Brent. The problem with it is that demon lords are not, generally, able to cross over without help and the diviners at Greycoat Street often detect their entry, even if not a specific location for that entry. No such event has happened recently. There may be a different entity involved. That entity may have been dispatched by the demon.

She looked out of the office window into the dark. Wrapping this report and getting home seemed like a really good idea.

The reason for this demonic interest is, I believe, the one our analysts have suggested. My own observation of Brent suggests too much power for someone who has developed magical talent relatively recently. She is immune to extreme levels of thaumic energy. She uncovered the dragon skull at Stonehenge, and has a remarkable ability to manipulate thaumic energy, as evidenced by her defeat of Remus. It is my strong belief that she is a sorceress. My recommendation is that she be questioned directly; by detention if necessary.

She closed the file and marked it for Sachs’ attention, and then began the lengthy process of checking herself out of Thames House.

Half way along Millbank, walking toward Westminster tube station, she stopped, looking around. She was almost to the Houses of Parliament and Victoria Tower Gardens was on her right, and something felt wrong. She was no field agent, but it felt as though she was being watched. Her eyes narrowed. Was there something there, among the trees?

A sudden shudder of fear ran up her spine and she turned to run back the way she had come. Something, a figure, tall and dark, filled her vision, and she let out a gasp. Strong hands gripped her arms, another hand closed over her mouth. Her vision went dark…

Part Three: Lines of Power

Mayfair, London, August 7th, 2012

Ceri walked into the club and waited while Lily and Cheryl followed her in. Cheryl’s visit to Demi-monde had been delayed several times as both she and Ceri found themselves buried up to their ears in work. Enquiries regarding their research had poured into their mailboxes, both electronic and traditional, after the conference. The Ministry for Supernatural Affairs had requested detailed studies on the proposed generator at Battersea. Finally, after almost a month, they had decided that they very definitely deserved a break, especially since they could both see yet another pile of work waiting just over the horizon.

The tall, distinguished man in the tuxedo who greeted them in the reception room did so with a smile. ‘Doctor Brent,’ Reynolds said, waving for one of the staff to come forward, ‘always a pleasure seeing you here. I see that you brought a guest.’

Ceri handed her coat to the small brunette in the leather body harness which marked her out as staff and moved over to the reception desk to sign in. ‘Yes, that’s Cherry. She’ll be joining us for the evening. I called ahead, did…’ Another attendant, this one male and therefore in leather slacks and bare-chested, stepped forward to hand over a set of leather straps. Ceri smiled. ‘Always efficient. Thank you.’

‘Room forty-six has been set aside for you,’ Reynolds said, handing Ceri a key with a small, copper tag attached to it.

Ceri took it and slipped it into one of her thigh boots. ‘Thank you, Reynolds. We’ll be having drinks first. Could you have two glasses of whiskey and a small glass of fae wine brought through?’ Aside from the boots, Ceri was dressed to impress. Lily had strapped her into a leather corset and she had on a black, silk thong which went nicely with the tooled leather.

‘Of course.’ Reynolds nodded to the attendant who had brought the straps and he gave a little bow before heading into the back rooms.

Lily had handed her coat over to the maid and Ceri saw Cheryl swallow hard as she saw what Lily was not wearing. The half-succubus was naked apart from five-inch heels, a collar with an O-ring over her throat, and a triple chain suspended from rings through her nipples. She stood waiting, her hands behind her back, one foot placed slightly before the other, eyes downcast.

‘Come, Cherry,’ Ceri said. ‘Give the attendant your coat. There’s no need to keep us waiting.’ They had given Cheryl the choice of going along in whatever role she wished and she had elected to play the submissive. She had said that she was not really sure she could be a good dominatrix, but she did want to play a full part in the evening. Lily had spent a couple of hours instructing her in what to do, but Ceri wondered whether she was now having second thoughts.

With another quick swallow of her nerves, Cheryl unbuttoned her coat, slipped it off her shoulders, and handed it over. Not having Lily’s absolute belief in her body, Cheryl was wearing more clothes. However, to give her credit, the quarter-cup waspie, little black thong, stockings and heels were not exactly concealing.

Ceri held out the straps to Lily. ‘Put this on Cherry, pet. Then we’ll go through to the lounge.’

Lily did as requested and the leather resolved itself into a collar which had a strap attached. This ran down Cheryl’s back where it was equipped with a pair of cuffs into which Cheryl’s forearms were fixed. Thus restrained, and with her back straight and her eyes wide, Cheryl followed Ceri and Lily through into the panelled lounge.

It was early and there were few people about. Ceri found a chair near the back of the room where they could have a little privacy once the young man they had seen earlier had brought them their drinks. Ceri sat down in one of the big, leather chairs, Lily sitting on a cushion to one side of her legs and Cheryl carefully arranging herself on the other side.

Ceri grinned. ‘Since this is Cherry’s birthday present, pet, I don’t want her to have to go to too much effort. You will be feeding her her wine.’

‘Yes, Mistress,’ Lily replied meekly.

‘I thought that a little fae wine would help with any lingering worries she might have.’

‘I’m sure it will, Mistress.’ Lily leaned across Ceri’s legs, picked up the wine glass, and placed it carefully against Cheryl’s lips. Cheryl took a large sip, then a second. A second later there was a flush starting in her cheeks. Fae wine had several effects, aside from making your taste buds sing; it never gave you a hangover, and it rapidly dissolved your inhibitions. Ceri picked up her own glass and sipped from it, letting the whiskey burn its way down her throat before speaking again. ‘What do you think so far, Cherry?’

‘This place is amazing,’ Cheryl replied, keeping her voice soft. ‘I didn’t expect it to be so… elegant. It’s like some sort of gentleman’s club.’

‘A gentleman’s club with naked people,’ Ceri agreed. ‘I don’t mind admitting that we couldn’t afford this place if Carter hadn’t gifted us a lifetime membership.’

Lily fed Cheryl some more wine; the flush on her cheeks started down her throat. ‘What happens next… Mistress?’ Cheryl asked.

‘You wanted to be the submissive. Once we’ve had our celebratory drinks we’ll go down to the dungeon and I’ll put my latest slave on display for a while. I think I can keep you amused down there for an hour or so. Then we’ll go upstairs… You’ll love the library, and then we’ll go to our room and I’ll let Lily loose on you for a while. Then we can relax in the baths before we leave. You’ll need to relax.’

Cheryl swallowed again. ‘Put me on display…’ Her voice was breathy. ‘Like I’m not on display already.’

Ceri’s lips curled into a knowing smile. ‘Oh, but Cherry, we’ve hardly started.’

~~~

The private rooms at Demi-monde came equipment with various useful features, the most flexible of which were the beds. They had attachment points liberally scattered over the four-posted frames allowing for any number of imaginative arrangements, but Lily had settled for a simple spread-eagle which left Cheryl quite securely immobilised and accessible.

Ceri sat in a large, comfortable armchair as her pet set to work on her boss, quite happy to just watch. Her pets were entertaining their Mistress, as was proper.

The thought floated through her head and she frowned. Her pets? The phrase had come to her without a second’s thought and yet now she was thinking about it and it jarred. Cheryl was not “her pet.” She might be playing at it for an evening, but Ceri had no right to think of her that way. If Cheryl belonged to anyone it was Carter, maybe Carter and Alec, but really neither of them. Cheryl belonged to herself. Hell, Lily belonged to herself no matter how much she tried to give herself to Ceri! Ceri accepted her friend’s need to belong; it was part of her nature. Ceri was a sorceress, a powerful mage with power which seemed to be growing. Lily was half succubus and they actually wanted to give themselves over to a power greater than their own. Cheryl was an intelligent, independent, human woman and no one’s property.

But she gave herself to me, of her own volition.

Ceri’s frown deepened and she sank a little into her chair. She focussed on enjoying the show; Lily was, at least partially, doing this to entertain her Mistress, that was true. Well, if she enjoyed it maybe her brain would shut the fuck up!

~~~

The baths in Demi-monde’s cellars were split into two main sections, quiet and not. Ceri lay in the water in the quiet pool, allowing the heat to wash away cares and worries along with various smears of bodily fluids she had collected over the evening.

Cheryl had lowered herself into the water a little gingerly and sighed while wearing a blissful expression once she was in. Now she was looking a lot more relaxed, balanced on one of the benches with her arms resting on the edges of the pool and her large breasts floating in front of her.

‘A little sore, Cherry?’ Ceri asked.

‘Mostly my muscles, Mistress.’ She was getting used to that form of address; Ceri wondered whether she would remember to stop. And that would be a bad thing? ‘I’ll be sore in the morning.’ She gave a tiny giggle, not wishing to make too much noise. ‘Walking back home may be hard.’

‘We can stay the night,’ Ceri suggested before her mind had caught up with what she was saying. And then she kept going because she had made the suggestion. ‘After two am the club goes into night time mode, there’s minimal staff and the cellars and public rooms are closed, but members can stay in an assigned room if they wish.’ She felt a burst of enthusiasm for the idea from Lily, and she could tell Cheryl was considering it.

‘All night… I’d be really sore in the morning… Yes please, Mistress. I’d love to.’

Ceri smiled, closing her eyes and basking in the heat, and ignoring the little voice in her head saying, All as it should be.

Holloway, August 8th

‘The basic concept is to add some extra runes to the terminal focus pole in Battersea,’ Ceri said. She was sitting alongside Cheryl so that she could point various things out on her boss’ monitor as she spoke. ‘They’ll redirect the tunnel’s output into a vertical arrangement. Essentially producing a polar aligned field which the transducer array will trap and convert.’

Cheryl looked at the array of glyphs on her screen and shook her head. ‘I’ll need to go over this carefully to understand it. The original ley line mechanics were hard enough.’

‘Oh this is easier. It sticks to three dimensions for one thing. It’s practically conventional thaumatology, just… a novel energy manipulation.’

‘How did you come up with it?’

‘From Ed, indirectly. One of the big practical lessons he’s been teaching me is thaumic energy manipulation. Apparently it’s something sorcerers should be able to do, and normal practitioners can’t. This is, basically, a translation of his lessons into the form of an enchantment.’

‘Huh.’ Cheryl peered at the screen again, trying to wrap her head around the symbology. She felt like understanding was right on the edge of her mind, waiting to drop in, but… ‘No, I’m going to have to sit down with a notepad and work through it. My mind’s not in it this morning.’

Ceri blinked. ‘That’s not like you. What’s wrong?’

Cheryl laughed. ‘I’m a little distracted.’

‘Why?’

‘We came straight from Demi-monde. I’m wearing a coat and a pair of high heels.’

‘So? I’m wearing a coat and thigh boots.’

‘And that’s not helping either!’

‘I guess I’m just used to it. You should go home. Work there. Now that I’ve given you this I’m going to go home. The weather’s improved, I’m going to lie on the roof with my tablet and work on that circular tunnel concept.’

Cheryl nodded. ‘That does sound like a plan.’ She locked her computer and turned the screen off, getting ready to go.

‘Aside from the distraction,’ Ceri asked, ‘you did enjoy it?’

‘Oh yes, Mistress.’ Cheryl stopped, half way out of her seat, and bit her lip. ‘I did enjoy it, yes, Ceri.’

Ceri giggled. ‘It’ll wear off eventually.’

Kennington, August 10th

Ceri was a little surprised to find Avery Sachs standing on her doorstep. He did not seem terribly surprised to see Ceri dressed in a pleated micro-skirt and string-strapped swimsuit top.

‘You just caught us,’ Ceri said because she felt some explanation was required. ‘Friday afternoon is pole dancing.’

Sachs’ face remained passive. ‘Pole dancing? I understand it’s good exercise.’

‘It is. You wanted to talk about something?’

‘Make a request.’

Ceri raised an eyebrow, but stepped aside to allow him into the house. ‘Dancing postponed, Lil,’ she said as she followed him into the hall.

Lily, standing at the bottom of the stairs dressed in a cropped T-shirt which barely covered her breasts and a pair of tiny hot-pants, pouted. Sachs had to be one of the few men Ceri had ever met who could stand up to that pout; he did not even flinch. Then again, he looked like he had not slept well recently. He looked like someone with a purpose.

Lily gave up on the pout, her brow knitting slightly instead. ‘What’s happened, Mister Sachs?’

‘You remember Jennifer Mayhew?’ Sachs replied.

‘Of course,’ Ceri said. ‘I was a little surprised she hadn’t followed up with some sort of debrief.’

‘She went missing on the evening of July sixteenth.’

‘You’d better come up to the lounge,’ Ceri said.

‘She was recorded leaving Thames House at ten-fifteen,’ Sachs explained once they were sat down. ‘She had been working on the reports being sent out regarding the Scientists. She checked out. Security cameras show her leaving the building and heading north. She used to catch the tube at Westminster, the Jubilee Line. She lived out near Swiss Cottage. She filed two of the three reports I was expecting. Those were sent for approval at about seven pm, so I believe the rest of her time was spent on the third report. That’s vanished off our computer systems along with all her personal files.’

Ceri frowned. ‘Don’t you have your own people for dealing with this? I mean, you know I know you’re MI5. I don’t see much point in keeping up the pretence. Surely you can investigate this yourself?’

‘Do you honestly think I’d be coming to you if I hadn’t tried everything else I could come up with in house?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You think I’ve been sitting on my hands for three weeks?’

‘No… I guess not. It’s just… This long after she’s vanished. I’m not sure what either of us could do?’

‘You realise she’s almost certainly dead?’ Lily commented, her voice carrying enough sadness that it did not sound callous.

‘I do,’ Sachs replied sourly, ‘but my superiors don’t. I think she was abducted and someone hacked our systems to delete her files. They think she took the files, deleted them from our system, and vanished herself.’

‘Don’t like the idea that someone cracked their firewalls?’ Ceri suggested. Sachs nodded. ‘You’ve tried diviners, of course.’ Another nod. ‘Did she have a travel card?’

‘Yes. It wasn’t used that night. I can’t find any taxi which picked her up either. It had to be a private car, and no one reported seeing a woman being bundled into a vehicle on Millbank that night.’ He sighed. ‘I realise this is asking a lot, but you’ve found people no one else could before…’

‘Did she have a boyfriend? Family who want her back?’

Sachs shook his head. ‘Her parents are both dead and you may have noticed she was a little shy.’

‘Yeah. The technique I used to find Naira when she was taken by the Witch Finder used peak emotional surges to break the scrying wards. I’d need someone with a strong emotional attachment for that.’

‘What about that vampire you located?’

‘That was a wide area search for concentrations of negative thaumitons. I wasn’t looking for him, I was looking for a large gathering of vampires.’ Ceri’s brow knitted. ‘Look, leave it with me. I’ll see if I can come up with something. Whatever I do, I’ll need a focus. Something she owned that she was fond of, or some hair.’

‘I’ll have something sent over.’ He rose to his feet, business concluded. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed your afternoon.’

‘That’s okay,’ Lily said. ‘I kind of liked her. Ceri will find her if it’s even vaguely possible.’

With Sachs gone and the door closed behind him, Lily started for the stairs. ‘I take it the dancing is off? You’ll want to think about that problem?’

‘Yes, I will, but we’ll still practice,’ Ceri replied, heading for the cellar door. ‘I’ve got no idea how to find her at this point so I’m going to have to let inspiration slap me in the face. Your dancing is very inspiring.’

Lily turned around and started to follow her. ‘I didn’t think it was that kind of inspiring though.’

‘Frankly, I’m going to need every ounce of inspiration I can get.’

Soho

‘What about when you found Julia’s body?’ Lily asked. ‘You used the emotion of her death to track her.’

No amount of sexy gyration around a pole had persuaded Ceri’s brain to have an idea, and now they were at work and Ceri’s brain was still refusing to have a brilliant revelation. ‘We knew exactly where she was attacked from the film, and we had a good idea of when. This time we have the whole of Millbank as a possible target area.’

‘Oh… true.’ Lily sounded dejected.

‘It was a good idea though,’ Ceri said, attempting to cheer her up. ‘Better than anything I’ve had anyway.’

‘It’s a shame it’s so long since she was grabbed. Michael could probably track her easily enough, at least until she was taken. Then you could probably track her down from there once you got her locked…’ Lily stopped as she noticed Ceri staring at her. ‘What?’

‘You’re a genius?’

Lily giggled. ‘You’re the genius. I have the occasional good idea.’

‘You’ve just been promoted.’

‘You’re not making sense, love,’ Lily said, grinning indulgently.

‘When we found Julia, I searched back in time for her. All we have to do is let Michael do the same with his nose and he can track her to where she vanished. Then, hopefully, I can latch onto her signature and try to locate her.’

‘Time sniffing? Awesome!’

‘I don’t think we’ll call it that. We’ll do it in the morning.’

Lily giggled. ‘I like it. Michael, Battersea pack Guard and Time Sniffer. Oh, and table thirteen.’

Ceri started for the customers in need of further intoxication. ‘I’m pretty sure Michael’s not a table.’

Millbank, August 11th

The sight of two women and a werewolf searching around the footpaths of Millbank did not go unnoticed by the people walking past, or a lot of people in their cars. There were even some yells from the top of a tourist bus as it drove past; Lily just waved to them.

It took them over an hour to work their way down the footpath nearest the river. Beside them was the expanding wedge of green which was Victoria Tower Gardens and they had managed to follow Mayhew’s scent trail for about four hundred yards before Michael stopped, casting around with his furry forehead furrowed.

Odd scent, he growled. Man smell, but not Man smell. Less smell of girl. Carried, maybe.

Ceri frowned. ‘Carried? Can you tell which way? Toward the road.’ Michael shook his head and pointed further up the street. ‘She was carried up the street by someone, past the Houses of Parliament, and no one noticed?’

Michael shrugged. More than one Man.

‘That makes no sense,’ Lily commented.

Ceri sighed and cast her spell further up the street, and thirty minutes later they were half way past the huge, gothic building which housed the nation’s politicians when Michael lost the scent entirely.

Stops, he barked. No scent after here.

‘It doesn’t go to the curb?’ Ceri asked, receiving a shake of the head in reply. ‘How can she just have vanished? And why here of all places?’ Then she noticed Lily.

The half-succubus was turning slowly on the spot, her arms held out from her sides, hands cocked upward as though she was trying to feel something. ‘Magic,’ Lily said. ‘There’s magic here, running out of the building and across the road.’

Ceri blinked her Sight on and, sure enough, there it was. Running along the ground, straight out of the Houses of Parliament and heading off across the road, was a ley line. Ceri snapped her fingers. ‘Of course! Watling Street ran through here. It followed a natural ley line. Or the line followed the road. No one’s ever come up with a valid theory on why they form.’

Michael was suddenly human. Ceri dug into her bag to hand him some knee length, khaki shorts and a T-shirt. ‘Watling Street?’ he asked.

‘It was the main Roman road going from east to west,’ Lily said. Ceri smiled; it was always kind of neat when Lily, a girl who had dropped out of school, demonstrated that she was not dumb. ‘A lot of ley lines run along old track ways, Roman roads, Neolithic trading routes. I didn’t know one ran through here, but I’m not surprised.’

‘Okay,’ Ceri said. ‘It’s not a particularly strong line, but maybe someone used it.’ She reached into her bag again, producing a small, carved wood jewellery box. According to one of the MI5 diviners, Mayhew had owned it since she was a child. Inside it there was a little model of a ballerina which turned on a spring while music, The Sugar Plum Fairy, played when the lid was lifted. ‘Both of you, put a hand on my shoulders.’ She focussed on the box, on its link with its owner. ‘This might not work…’ Then she felt the slight tug. ‘Oh shit. Take a deep breath.’

The world seemed to stretch around them, the buildings across the street suddenly shrinking into the distance and then snapping back toward them. They were moving, the world flashing past in a blur of buildings, then fields and trees. Ceri’s pulse was thudding in her ears, almost blotting out the roaring sound. Her lungs began to ache, begging for air, and then it stopped, just as suddenly as it had started.

‘Where are we?’ Lily gasped out. There were mostly fields around them. A few buildings were visible off the edge of the road they had stopped on, and a larger area of trees off to the east.

Ceri focussed her will again, this time on a simple location spell. ‘Wroxeter, Shropshire. Basically at the end of Watling Street. There’s another line joining it from the south, but it feels like Mayhew is…’ She pointed off toward the trees. ‘She’s that way. Not too far.’

They crossed the road and hopped the fence into a field, the ground hard-packed from the recent heat, and started walking toward the trees. Michael raised his head and sniffed as they got closer. ‘I smell water.’

‘The Severn should be around here,’ Ceri replied.

Sure enough, the trees were on a small, island-like bank in the river. The box led them onto the island over the narrow bridge of land which connected island to riverbank, and then deeper still until Michael suddenly held up a hand. His nose was twitching.

‘I think, maybe, we should call someone. I’m not sure we want to see what’s up ahead.’ Ceri looked at him and saw the grimace on his young face. ‘I smell… well, I smell rotting flesh. A couple of weeks old at least.’

Ceri swallowed. ‘We need to know.’ Stepping forward, she pushed through some undergrowth and came face to face with what was left of Jennifer Mayhew.

‘Oh shit,’ Lily breathed from behind her.

Someone had had a little fun with the analyst while killing her. There were strips of cloth lying around on the nearby bushes; the remains of whatever she had been wearing, though identifying what that had been was impossible. They had strung her up from a low branch by her wrists, her back to the trunk of a tree. Her legs were pulled apart by another rope strapped around the base of the bole, suggesting something sexual, but it was going to be hard to prove rape; her stomach was a gaping hole and there was no sign of any internal organs. Her once attractive face looked as though it had been beaten to a pulp before the flies and larger animals had got to it.

Ceri took her phone from her bag and dialled a number. Some part of her mind was thinking that she should be throwing up about now, and maybe she would get to that once the shock wore off. This was not the first horrifically mutilated body she had found; Michael had been with her when they had found one of the Witch Hunter’s burned victims, Lily had been there when they had discovered several of Raynor’s playthings in the dungeon at Demi-monde. But she had known Jenny Mayhew. She had liked the woman whose remains were now decorating a tree in front of her.

‘Sachs.’ The voice broke her out of her thoughts.

‘It’s Ceri Brent. We found her. Do you want me to get local CID in or will you deal with it?’

There was a long moment of silence and then Sachs spoke, his voice sounding hard even over the phone. ‘Where are you?’

‘A little island in the Severn, just west of Wroxeter. They used a ley line to bring her here and then…’

‘I’ll make some calls. Can you stay there until the police arrive?’

Ceri swallowed, tasting bile. ‘We’ll wait for them. At the edge of the trees.’ The call cut off without further comment and Ceri turned around. ‘Let’s get out of here. Sachs is sending the cops over and I don’t think I can stay here much longer without disturbing the site.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Lily said as they headed back for the field. ‘Why? Why would someone grab her, bring her here, and then do… do that to her?’

No one gave an answer; no one had one to give.

Kennington, August 12th

The sun beat down on the roof of High Towers, and the skin of Ceri, Lily, and Michael. Twill was down in the kitchen, putting together a meal involving a gammon joint and salad. Even Michael, who considered Sunday roast one of the high points of his week, had allowed that it was just too hot for a big meal. That, and none of them had eaten that much since finding Mayhew’s body.

They had given what little information they had to the local detectives, who were really just going to perform whatever tests they could, collect information, and hand it all off to Sachs and his people. Then they had gone back to the ley line and Ceri had tapped into it to get them home. Ceri had been glad to be working that night; it kept her mind busy rather than seeing Mayhew’s battered body everywhere she looked. Michael had gone back to Battersea and suggested that Anita, his Captain, take the night off with her boyfriend. He had wanted his mind kept busy as well.

Michael growled and sat up on his lounger. ‘That thing you did,’ he said as though he was irritated at not being able to stop thinking about it, ‘transporting us along the ley line? Could anyone do that?’

‘It was a weak form of teleportation. Anyone could do it, if they knew how.’

‘But it’s pretty unlikely that many people would know?’

‘A demon might,’ Lily said. ‘A fae, some of them anyway. Or a dragon, I guess, but I think we’d know if there had been a dragon on Millbank.’

‘There’s a lot fewer of them too,’ Ceri agreed. ‘You said the “people” who took Mayhew didn’t smell right?’

Michael gave a nod. ‘I’m not sure what they were. I’ve never smelled anything like them.’

‘You couldn’t get any scent of them where we found the body?’

‘All I could smell there was decomposing body. Neither of you could sense anything out of place there either.’ It was true, and annoying. Too much time had passed. Even if there had been magic used, and to Ceri it looked as though the damage to Mayhew had been purely physical, any trace of it would have faded.

‘Some sort of half-demon?’ Ceri suggested.

‘It… didn’t smell like demon,’ Michael replied. ‘Even Lily’s scent has a little of the same feeling as a demon. She smells a little of her father.’

Ceri nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose she does.’

‘I do?’

‘Not much, love,’ Ceri said reassuringly. ‘It’s like a background flavour.’

‘Fire and magic,’ Michael said, ‘and in your case, and Faran’s, a kind of musky, earthy scent. Sex. Earthy, basic sex.’

Lily gave a soft giggle. ‘I kind of like that. What about other demons?’

‘Devim are heavy on the fire,’ Ceri replied. ‘I’ve never smelled any of the others.’

‘Anita says Dakag smell like snakes,’ Michael supplied. ‘The things that took Mayhew were… There was heat to the scent, but not the same. More like hot meat. A lot of sweat, like a human after they’ve been running. Smoke… Yeah, a bit like smoked meat.’

‘Something new,’ Ceri said, her tone dark. ‘That’s unlikely to be good.’

Battersea, August 15th

Ceri pushed the bag with her clothes in it into the hole in the tree roots where she always hid it. Getting to her feet, she stretched and then reached for the leather, silver-studded collar around her throat; it and the fairy silver chain around her ankle were the only things she was wearing. A small push of power, a shimmering, tingling sensation that washed over her skin, and the world was different.

Of course, technically, it was Ceri who was different. She had black fur, a dog-like head, eyes which saw much better in the dark, and a nose which almost immediately caught Michael’s scent on the breeze. She estimated he was a hundred yards away, give or take a bit, which likely put him at the edge of the lake. He probably had not caught her scent yet and was possibly busy. Giving a soft snicker, she slipped through the bushes and out onto the footpath, staying low and trying to ensure she was not seen.

She spotted him as he was sending two of the Guards off on a perimeter run. Dropping down behind a bush, she waited for the two wolves to lope away before making her move. Michael was entirely oblivious until about a second before she tackled him. Then he let out a yelp which turned into a gurgle as they both went into the boating lake. They emerged from the greenish water spitting and coughing, and in Michael’s case growling. Ceri snickered.

Rolling his eyes, Michael waved for her to follow him and set off across the lake toward the island in the middle. She got the feeling Alexandra wanted to talk to her and she was not wrong. Michael shifted as he climbed ashore, and started toward the clearing. ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he huffed. ‘I just got dry.’

Ceri lifted her hand to her collar, shifting back to human and then running a couple of paces to catch up. ‘You were going to bring me here anyway. And you jump me every chance you get.’ They emerged into the clearing with its oil drum in the middle where Alexandra usually had a fire, though not tonight. ‘You’re just sore because I turned the tables on you.’

Alexandra, curled up beside the oil drum, lifted a mug of tea toward Ceri, who took it without a word. The old woman tended to know when she was going to have visitors; she was kind of annoying like that actually. ‘Of course he is, dear. You’re getting to be as good as him. He won’t be able to use training you as an excuse for al fresco sex in the bushes.’

Ceri’s cheeks coloured a little, but she smirked. The embarrassment was irrational; it was down to being caught out by Alexandra more than what she was suggesting. The Battersea Alpha was well over a hundred years old and her age was showing, just not nearly as much as it should have. She was a black-fur, like Alec was, and they tended to age slower than humans, or other werewolves. Alexandra was a picture of fading beauty made regal by age. She always held herself straight and her body, while not as perfect as it had been, was still attractive. Her hair, long and silver-white, gave her the look of a wise grandmother. Under a full moon her hair shone and she looked truly incandescent.

‘You wanted to talk to me?’ Ceri asked, curling onto the grass. Michael settled behind her, sliding in close and wrapping his arms around her waist. His chin rested on her shoulder and he nuzzled her neck. Werewolves had no idea of personal space and a very tactile view of affection.

‘I told you that my visions of the future had… more or less stopped?’

Ceri nodded. ‘Things were probably too uncertain for anything clear to come through.’

‘Well, I’m starting to get fragments. Little bits of dreams. Well, more like nightmares.’

‘When you said you’d lost sight of the future I didn’t think it was going to good.’

‘No. True. It’s not much, really, but it doesn’t seem good. I’ve been dreaming of battles between demons and dragons. It seems abstract. I don’t recognise the locations. I’ve seen no one in those dreams who resembles you, or anyone else I know. It’s as if I’m seeing cyphers. Two huge armies, lines of battle, a representation of a war rather than a prediction of one.’

Ceri frowned. ‘Demons fighting dragons. Do you think this is happening already?’

‘I think that it has been going on for some time, yes. I also think that things are changing. Lines are being drawn. Something big is going to happen.’

Ceri sipped her tea. ‘If the demons are planning something, there aren’t very many dragons in this part of the world to fight them. I mean, I know most if not all of them and none of them seem like they would be much use in a fight. Brenhines, maybe, but she’s pretty isolated.’

‘Perhaps,’ the old wolf said, ‘they need to become more engaged.’

Marylebone, August 16th

The front lobby of the Chinese embassy building was not quite as open and party-ready as the last time Ceri had seen it. Then again, neither she nor Lily were dressed for an embassy ball and they were certainly not there to party.

The official behind the simple reception desk looked up as they walked in. He said nothing, waiting for them to approach and speak.

‘I need to see the Ambassador,’ Ceri said, expecting some sort of objection. Instead the man simply reached into a drawer and removed two identity passes, handing them over. Ceri took them, handing one to Lily. ‘Don’t we need an escort or something?’

‘Do you remember the way?’ the man asked in a voice thick with Chinese accent.

‘I think so.’

The man nodded and pressed a button under his desk. A door slid open behind him, the first in an airlock-style arrangement which allowed them through into the main building. Ceri led the way down corridors which were heavy on the dragon decoration. Arriving at a door, she was about to knock when it opened, apparently by itself. Lily raised an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged before walking into the little lounge beyond.

Inside there were two loveseats facing each other across a small table, and an ornate cabinet upon which sat a statuette of a dragon, white stone with rubies for eyes. Ceri had something similar in the summoning room in her cellar. It allowed the dragons to manifest an image there to talk to her, though it was usually only Ed who did so. The rubies were dark this time; no one was watching. No one outside the room anyway; Mei Long was standing in a corner of the room, quite still, her face serious.

‘Good morning, Ceridwyn.’ The Chinese ambassador was a relatively short, exquisitely beautiful, Chinese woman with black hair that fell to her bottom in one, long, dark waterfall.

‘You were expecting me,’ Ceri replied; not a question.

A slight smile formed on Mei’s perfect lips. ‘I am the Sleeping Dragon, the Observer.’ She moved forward, all smooth grace, and settled into one of the seats, her arm extending to indicate they should sit. Ceri did, Lily stood behind her. ‘You came to see me, Ceridwyn,’ the dragon-lady prompted.

‘There’s a war of some sort going on between dragons and demons.’

‘Not a war. Not exactly. A… competition. A state of tension which has fluctuated for millennia. There was a war, long ago. Before even your ancestors were born.’

‘Alexandra believes it’s about to heat up. She believes that battle lines are being drawn. There have been some odd things happening. It seems as though the demons are up to something. I came to say that… I think it’s time you got off the fence. I need help if I’m going to stop them.’

Mei sat in silence for a second, her dark eyes on Ceri’s. ‘Answer a question for me. You come to tell me that you need help from dragons to fight against some unknown threat from demons, but you bring with you a demon. Why is that?’

Ceri looked up and back to where her friend and lover stood behind her, now wearing a frown. ‘Lily’s a half-demon. She’s my friend and I love her. I trust her with my life.’

‘You should remember that. You have friends and power. You don’t need us to help you. You must not rely on us for help.’

‘But… the power you have…’

‘Ceri,’ Mei interrupted, stopping Ceri in her tracks. ‘I have watched mankind for tens of thousands of years. You don’t need our help to keep the darkness at bay. All you need is yourself, and your friends. Trust your friends, Ceridwyn Brent.’ Her eyes flicked upward, over Ceri’s shoulder. Ceri felt it, the presence of something else draconic. If she had looked she was quite certain that she would have seen the statuette’s eyes glowing. ‘Thank you for dropping by, Ceri,’ Mei said smoothly. It was time to leave.

‘Thank you for your time, Ambassador,’ Ceri replied, rising to her feet.

Mei stood as well, almost as if lifted on wires. ‘You know that you are always welcome here, Ceridwyn.’

‘Thank you. We’ll see ourselves out.’ Ceri turned to leave and saw the glowing rubies out of the corner of her eye. Briefly she wondered who was watching, and why Mei had been so quick to wrap up the conversation when that observation had begun.

Lily did not speak until they were out on the street. ‘Why was she so keen to have us deal with this ourselves? Not involve the dragons.’

‘I think… I think it’s because they won’t. Maybe because they can’t.’

Lily’s reply came as an irritated hiss. ‘They’re bloody dragons, Ceri! They’re probably the only thing around that’s more powerful than you are.’

Ceri’s brow furrowed. ‘Ed told me once that I was more powerful than he was. Gwyn might have my power, and a lot more experience, but I think, maybe, most of the dragons aren’t as strong as they seem.’

‘Then I guess it’s up to you.’

Ceri looked at Lily and smiled. ‘Us, love. It’s up to us. You heard what she said. We draw the line in the sand. It’s up to us mortals to deal with whatever is coming.’

~~~

‘In other news, the comet discovered last month has been given a name.’ The newsreader was backed up by a blurry picture of a white smudge, presumably what could be seen of the comet. Ceri looked up as she heard the announcement; this was interesting news. ‘Draco Cauda, “Dragon’s Tail,” will be visible in the night sky later in the year. Astronomers are expecting it to be at its brightest around Samhain. Philip Hedley of Greenwich Royal Observatory reported that the orbital trajectory has now been plotted with enough accuracy that they are sure this is a new comet, to modern observers. The last time Draco Cauda was seen would have been around thirty-thousand BC, around the end of the period archaeologists refer to as the Toba Flare.’

‘Thirty-two thousand years ago,’ Lily said. ‘Wow.’

‘I wonder if Gwyn or Ed saw it back then,’ Ceri said.

‘Or the time before that. They would have been around then, right?’

‘Gwyn would. I’m not sure about Ed.’

‘Huh,’ Lily half-laughed, ‘you get a comet for your birthday. How cool is that?’

‘Kind of depends on whether you consider them signs of ill omen.’

‘Clearly,’ Lily said, ‘this one is not.’

Holloway, August 17th

Cheryl was wearing an odd expression. It was a combination of frustration, irritation, and excitement, and Ceri had to ask what was up.

‘I’ve had an order through from the Ministry,’ Cheryl said. ‘Technically, we have an order from the Ministry, I suppose. They want us to go ahead immediately with the construction of the Battersea generator.’

Ceri frowned. ‘We haven’t finished confirming all the maths.’

‘Well, we’re putting it all into the old power station and there’s work to be done to get that up to spec, but they want to get the ley line construction underway before that’s finished. They’ll have the majority of the posts placed by military engineers. You’ll be flown in to place the last one and initiate the line. Apparently the French have agreed to it running through their territory as long as we run it past Paris and put in a generator there.’

Sucking on a canine, a habit she had picked up from Lily, Ceri considered the plan. ‘We’ve got elections coming up next spring, right?’

‘Well spotted. They want this thing up and running before then. I’m guessing they want to initiate the ley line before the weather gets bad. They’ve said they want it up no later than mid-October. They want the specs for the Battersea post today, if possible.’

‘Mid-October… Well, that gives us a chance to spot problems at least. Two months.’ She sighed. ‘I feel my summer holiday slipping away.’

Cheryl grunted a response. ‘Tell me about it.’

Interlude: The New Lord of Grey Castle

Shilfaris, Demon Realm

Hiffy looked up at the sound of a horn from one of the gate towers. It was an alert horn, telling those below that the two huge gates were about to open, and it was not a sound heard very often at Low Gate. The gates were split with two smaller doors set within the larger ones, and there was usually no need for the big gates to move. As she watched, det of all sorts, as well as the few higher demons who had come down to the market, scurried clear; the gates were going to open whether there was anyone in the way or not.

The reason for all the activity became clear as the first of the Boradgi walked through the gate. Four times the height of a det and sporting long horns and a thick collar of bone around the neck, Boradgi made excellent beasts for haulage, and someone had trained four of them together to pull a huge carriage. Behind the animals, connected to the back of the last via an iron yoke, was something which looked like a castle on wheels. Hiffy had seen nothing like it, though she recalled her grandfather saying that some of the demon Lords travelled in such contraptions.

From what she could see, the carriage would have been able to stand up to assault from just about anything. The walls were built of wood which had to be two hands thick, bound together with heavy bars of silver-iron and smeared with black pitch. It appeared to actually be two storeys high, and with crenulations on top. Hiffy spotted at least half a dozen Devos looking down from the roof, eyeing the people below. On the other hand, the very back of the carriage was far more exposed.

The last pair of its eight huge wheels supported a flat platform upon which was mounted an iron cage. Within it were ten women, all identical. They had to be Lorril. Hiffy stared at them, wondering why all ten were the same and trying to work out what form of demon they were mimicking. They were pale skinned, tall, long in the leg, and possessed of firm bodies with obvious muscle definition, though they were still quite feminine. A lot of demons liked their females to have big breasts, Hiffy prided herself on her own substantial ones and liked to show off as much of her blue skin as she could when tending bar, but these succubi had relatively small breasts. All of them had black hair, very short, like a cap. It was only when one turned and looked straight at Hiffy that she saw the shock of red in the fringe on the right side. The face beneath was strong and attractive, but not especially pretty. The eyes caught her attention; pale, perhaps blue, though it was hard to tell at this distance. Most demons had dark eyes. Still, why would some Lord want ten of them?

The horn sounded again to announce the closure of the gates and Hiffy turned, heading toward East Ward. This was news she could spread. It seemed that the long awaited new lord of Grey Castle had arrived in Shilfaris. There might even be a few coins in it for her if she told what she had seen to the right people. Of course, she would have to tell them first. Her pace quickened and her tail moved around to lift her skirt a little so that she would not be hindered.

~~~

Sergeant Torn watched the huge battle-waggon being pulled in through the outer gates of Grey Castle with ambivalence. At least they would have a lord in the place again; without one things had been going downhill. With no one to keep them in check, the upper ranks were taking liberties they would never have dared to with someone watching them. The lower ranks were disgruntled from seeing the officers siphoning off money for their own use and getting the raw end of the lowered resources this resulted in. Between the two were men like Torn, squeezed between surly soldiers and lazy officers. That would change now.

On the other hand, new lords tended to take things to extremes to assert their authority. There would be a month or two of executions and strict adherence to arbitrary rules… Of course if they executed the right people then there might be opportunity for advancement. Devos did not wear boots, but they were happy to step into a dead man’s hoof prints when they could.

The carriage stopped in the outer courtyard and a door on the side of it was lowered to form a ramp. Four Devos marched down it, heavily armed and armoured; the Lord’s personal guard. Except that the “Lord” who walked down after them was not much of one. Not particularly tall, not particularly magical from what Torn could feel. The figure was mysterious, however. There was no face visible under the hooded, black cloak, but Torn could almost feel the eyes within as they swept over him.

‘You!’ the figure snapped and Torn felt a sudden pang of terror. ‘Get ten guards together and bring Captain Yodin and Captain Poriss to the audience chamber. Do not take no for an answer, captain.’ The voice had an odd, hollow resonance, and it certainly held a fair amount of authority. The man was used to being obeyed.

‘Yes, Lord,’ Torn replied. ‘I’m only a sergeant, Lord.’

‘Not when I’ve finished with Yodin and Poriss,’ the lord growled. He turned and moved toward the inner gate and Torn could have sworn there were no legs propelling him.

Yodin and Poriss were the worst offenders; the new lord must have had spies sent ahead to see what he was going to have to deal with. Torn smiled and started for the guard quarters. It looked like life under the new administration was looking up.

Part Four: Friends and Family

Chilcomb, Hampshire, September 2nd, 2012

The sun was already up as the two cars pulled up to the front drive of Carter Fleming’s “weekender” and disgorged their passengers. From the Vauxhall sedan which had lead the way, Carter, Alec, and Cheryl emerged, the latter stretching, but looking rather pleased to be where she was. The second car was a big, black Range Rover, and held Ceri, Lily, and Michael. Ceri also looked pleased to have arrived, but it was mostly down to her dislike of cars.

‘You know, Carter,’ Ceri said as she looked around at the building they had stopped beside, ‘I know you’re rich, but now I know you’re rich.’

The building was mostly fairly low; a large stone-built ground floor spread out before them in a vague C-shape wrapped around the circular drive. The main entrance portico stuck out a little with columns supporting the moulded roof. There were a lot of big windows on either side, all made up of small, glass panels in a grid-like frame. Ceri suspected that, while they looked like old, wooden window frames, they were all modern and double glazed. She could see an upper floor toward the rear of the building which looked more modern, mostly because it seemed to be glazed all the way around from floor to ceiling, though heavy blinds obscured the interior.

Carter smiled. ‘There are two pools at the back, one inside, one out, both with hot tubs. There are two main bedrooms at the top and I suggest we retire to them and get some sleep. The place is all ours until we have to go back on Wednesday, so there’s plenty of time for the tour.’

The interior of the house was as opulent as the exterior. The hall at the front had statues in alcoves at the sides and the inner door led into a wide hallway with various doors leading off it. Carter ignored them and headed straight up a flight of wide stairs at the back. The stairs led up to a corridor which separated the two rooms; Ceri suspected that was a soundproofing measure and smiled.

Carter pointed to the right. ‘You three young things are in there. We’ll see you… whenever we’re all out of bed.’

‘We’ll be late,’ Lily said before opening the door onto their room and walking in.

The room was big; rectangular, but with the outside corners rounded off. To the right, toward the front of the house, was a bathroom, screened off from the bedroom by a glass partition. Ceri could see a huge shower and a bath big enough to swim in. To the left was a smaller cubicle, this one with solid walls, which she guessed contained a toilet. There were two, wide wardrobes on the interior walls, but most of the room was taken up by a huge bed with four chromed-steel posts at the corners from floor to ceiling and, to Ceri’s amusement, a huge mirror mounted over it.

‘You know,’ Ceri said, ‘we should probably get the bags up from the car.’

Lily turned and looked at her before pressing a button on a small cabinet beside the bed. With a hum, the window blinds retracted sideways, opening up the windows to the sunlight and the view of miles of fields outside. She dropped the small bag she was carrying onto the floor. ‘I put a two-piece in my handbag for you to wear because I knew you wouldn’t want to be naked around Carter. If you think you’re going to need anything else tomorrow, you’re in for a surprise, and you’re certainly not going to need clothes before midday.’

Ceri smiled and started to undress. Of course, Lily was probably right.

~~~

Ceri lay on a sun lounger, her eyes closed against the sun. Well, partially against the sun and partially because she was having trouble coming to terms with the sight of Carter in a little pair of swimming trunks. Alec, Michael, and Lily were naked, and that did not bother her. Cheryl was dressed in a one-piece swimsuit which Carter had bought for her the summer before, thus explaining why it covered barely anything of her body, but that did not bother Ceri either. Carter in a tiny pair of bun-hugging briefs was too much.

Partially because Lily had said she would need something to wear, Ceri had come down to the side of the pool topless. This indicated that she was not afraid to bare her breasts in front of Carter, but also spared both of them the blushes involved in her being naked. Carter Fleming, playboy, millionaire, owner of clubs where women took their clothes off for entertainment, somehow found the sight of Ceri’s skin embarrassing. Ceri did not understand why, exactly, though she suspected that it had to do with her mother. Carter had been her mother’s boyfriend at some point when they were at university, before she had met Ceri’s father. Ceri was fairly sure Carter still carried a bit of a torch for Marion because he had never once tried to get Ceri into bed, even though he had shown plenty of signs of wanting to and she would have said yes if he had asked.

There was a soft splash from the pool and Ceri looked around to see her sometime boss pushing himself up from the water. For a man who had had his fifty-sixth birthday a couple of months ago, he was looking good. He had just done fifty or so laps of the pool, part of a fitness regimen which kept his body in very good shape. While he lacked Alec or Michael’s muscle there was plenty of definition in his abdominal muscles as they tensed to pull his legs up onto the pool’s edge. His ash-blonde hair was darker from the water, which now dripped down over his body. His thighs were tight and strong, and those trunks did little to hide the fact that he was not a hit with the girls for no reason. Of course, it was not the size that counted, but from what Lily said he knew what to do with it too…

He was looking at her and she realised she was staring, and both of them looked uncomfortable for a second or two before she closed her eyes again and he moved off to settle onto a lounger beside Cheryl. Ceri became aware of the tightness of her nipples and tried really hard to sink into the concrete paving stones of the patio.

The weird thing was that she was considering sleeping with Carter at all. She had, she thought, got over that. He was a good looking man, but he somehow felt it would be inappropriate, and that had been good enough for her. She had Lily and Michael, and occasionally others which her regular lovers did not mind since it was pretty much in their nature. Not bedding Carter was hardly going to break her and she had not even thought about it for months. Yet here it was again. Of course, there was her ankle chain; her fairy-silver ankle chain which showed her love for Lily, who wore an identical one, but had the side effect of increasing her libido. There was also the slight erotic charge which sat over the small gathering… Perhaps it was not that difficult to understand.

‘Hey, Ceri.’ Her introspection was interrupted by Alec walking out of the house with a pitcher of lemonade and six glasses. She looked across at him with a raised eyebrow. ‘Did you remember to bring your collar?’

‘It’s in my case.’ Which was still in the car, but would be taken out later because she was going to put clothes on for dinner. Oh yes she was.

‘Good. There’s miles of fields around here to run through.’ He set the tray down on a wrought iron table. ‘You’ll come too, Michael? You won’t have had this kind of space to run in since Wales.’

Michael, laid out on a lounger near Ceri, opened one eye to look at Alec and grinned. ‘Try to stop me. When Ceri said we were coming out here the first thing I thought of was open space.’ The full moon had been two nights ago and the werewolves were still riding the high from it. The moon did not control werewolves as it did their ill-fated cousins, lycanthropes, but it did affect their mood. Full moon meant hyperactive, usually horny, wolves.

Ceri pursed her lips. ‘We, um… We could all go. Maybe. If everyone wanted to.’ She felt Lily perk up on the lounger beside her; a sudden flare of bright enthusiasm.

‘All of us?’ Cheryl said. ‘That’s a lot of power, surely?’

‘I’ve got a lot stronger since the first time I did the spell,’ Ceri replied. ‘I can change three people for a few of hours without harm.’

‘I’d love to then,’ Cheryl said, sounding like she really would. ‘Carter?’

Carter’s eyes remained closed. ‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘I am planning a rather large meal with us all sitting around a table and probably drinking too much. After that, I feel that growing fangs and fur might be… inadvisable.’

Alec grunted. ‘He has a point. I’m helping with the cooking. We’re all going to be groaning.’

‘Quite,’ the playboy agreed. ‘Tomorrow night, however, is another matter. I believe I would find it fascinating, aside from anything else. I’ve never had my shape shifted.’

‘It’s… amazing,’ Cheryl told him. ‘The actual process isn’t too exciting, but it’s an experience. Being a werewolf for a few hours, though… I think you’ll see them a little differently.’

Carter nodded and then looked up at Alec. They had been friends for a long time. Long enough that sharing Cheryl did not seem to bother either of them. ‘Yes. I’ve often wondered how you see the world, old friend.’

Alec grinned back at him. ‘Well, now’s your chance. Hell, you own all this land, you should take the chance to run on it properly.’

~~~

‘At this point,’ Alec was saying, ‘the general guy is hopping around screaming “Sie schoss mir in den Fuß!” at the top of his lungs while clutching his boot.’ Giggles and laughter somehow seemed inappropriate, considering that they could all see how this story was going to come out, but it did not stop them. ‘So, yeah, I shot him in the head and he stopped moaning.’

‘It shouldn’t be funny,’ Cheryl commented, trying to stop giggling, ‘but somehow, if it’s a Nazi general, it is.’

‘I think it’s hilarious,’ Ceri said, ‘though I may be prejudiced after Raynor decided I was going to start the Fourth Reich.’ She had decided not to mention that Remus had told similar stories over glasses of wine; aside from anything else it might bring the mood down and Alec would not have appreciated the comparison.

‘It’ll put a crimp in your day, sure,’ Alec replied. ‘To be honest, back then it wasn’t funny, now it is.’ He pointed a fork at Ceri, then Lily. ‘I have you two to thank for that. I got my revenge on Remus, by proxy maybe, but I got it and I could put the war behind me at last.’

‘You helped, you know?’ Ceri told him, grinning.

‘Hindered more like, but fine.’ He lifted his wine glass. ‘A toast! To Ceri, the hottest world-saving sorceress this side of the Shattering.’

Ceri looked around at the other faces at the table, feeling her cheeks heating up as they all called out, ‘Ceri!’

‘In that case,’ Ceri said, ‘too all of you because without you I wouldn’t be the “hottest sorceress this side of the Shattering,” and if I was, I’d be the deadest.’

Carter grinned. ‘To friends.’ Everyone raised their glasses and intoned the toast, and drank.

‘I got told recently that I should rely on my friends,’ Ceri said. ‘No real change, but you have been warned. You’re going to be relied upon.’

‘Are we saving the world again, kid?’ Alec asked, his lips twisting into a smirk.

‘Looks like it. Probably from demons.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘Indeed,’ Cater said wryly. ‘I believe that calls for more wine.’

September 3rd

Of course, Carter had a library. It was quite a big room lined with dark wood shelves, which were in turn covered in books. There were two comfortable chairs to sit in while reading, and an oak desk with Carter’s PC on it and a phone. It was the only phone in the house; Carter really preferred not to be interrupted when he was away from London, but his business required at least some communication.

Ceri was sitting in one of the big chairs in a tank top and the thong from her swimsuit, one leg hooked over the arm and a thick, leather-bound volume on alchemy resting in her lap. It was an interesting book, but it was not really going in. In truth, she was in the library because it was quiet and not very bright, and she was feeling a little delicate. They had had a lot to drink the night before and it was only Lily and Alec who seemed to be operating on full faculties.

The sudden bray of the phone made her jump, which made her left temple throb. ‘Shit,’ she grumbled as she disentangled herself from the book and the chair. It was still ringing as she got to it and she picked up the handset. ‘Hello, Fleming residence.’

The voice on the other end sounded hesitant. ‘Uh, is Alice there?’

‘I think you’ve got the wrong number. We don’t have anyone here called Alice.’

‘Right. Sorry to disturb you.’ The line went dead and Ceri put the handset down. Wrong number. Huh. Well, it did happen.

She was about to go back to her chair when she spotted the photograph. It rested on the desk to one side of the computer monitor, framed in ornately carved silver. She picked it up and looked at it; more particularly at the three people in student’s robes who were in it. Carter really had aged well. He was obviously younger in the picture; his face looked less careworn. She realised that his hairline had receded a little since the picture was taken, but not much else had changed. He was smiling in a way he reserved for only certain people; Lily, Cheryl, Ceri herself. The other two people she recognised, of course. Neither of them had got to age as much as Carter had; it was easier to match memory to younger selves. Her parents looked as happy as Carter did. Carefree, that was how they looked. As though they owned the world and nothing could hurt them.

‘It was taken at the end of our second year at Cambridge.’ Ceri jumped at the sound of Carter’s voice. She looked around at him, somehow embarrassed to have been caught looking. His face was serious, but not angry, more like sad. ‘Well, my second, your mother’s first.’

‘You all look really happy.’

‘We were.’ He crossed the room and sat down in the seat she had been using. It faced her. She always found it odd to see him in casual clothes, but at least he was wearing more than a swimsuit. ‘Those were bright days. I have few photographs from then. That’s my favourite.’

Bringing the picture with her, Ceri walked across the floor to the second chair and sat down, knees held together and the picture frame in her lap. ‘She… she was with you then, wasn’t she?’

Carter sighed. ‘I think you probably deserve the full story. You’ve obviously heard parts.’

‘Fitzlawrence, the man at the British Library, he mentioned that she was the only woman who had ever left you. He seemed rather pleased about it.’

A flicker of hardness passed over Carter’s eyes. ‘Yes, I’d imagine he would be. He lost two girlfriends to me.’ He paused, leaning back in his seat and looking upward. Air escaped his lungs slowly and then was drawn back in. ‘Your father and I met in our first week. We were lab partners. He was better with circles and such, I was a better practical wizard, and we both had a similar outlook. We worked hard, we studied hard, we played hard.’

‘My father?’ Ceri interrupted, her lips twisting into a slight grin. ‘Are we talking about the same man?’

Carter looked down from the ceiling and smiled. ‘Having a child changed the two of them. They both became rather more serious than they were in their youth. Between us I believe we managed to bed every attractive woman in the student body and one or two of the post-grads during our first year.’

‘Huh. He used to tell me boys were only after one thing.’

‘He was speaking from experience, my dear. If I had a daughter I’d be telling her the same thing. In our second year the pace of work picked up and we were less inclined to go out every night, but we were doing quite well. I think we had managed to get through almost all the new intake, except that somehow we had managed to miss one Marion Preece. I saw her at a party someone was throwing toward the end of term. I think your father was working on some enchanting problem and couldn’t go. I thought she was probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on, and intelligent. We sat and talked. She was studying enchantment and witchcraft, and she had seen David before, but never spoken to him. Someone had told her about our reputation. Despite that, at the end of the evening, she asked me back to her rooms. I told her that I had had a wonderful evening, but she deserved better than a drunk. I invited her out on a proper date… You’d likely prefer not to hear about your mother’s teenage sex life.’

‘I think we can skip that part, yeah,’ Ceri agreed with a grimace.

Carter chuckled softly and went on. ‘I dated your mother through most of my third year. David called me a “lucky bastard” for spotting her first, but he was good natured about it. The three of us hung around together, or double dated. David started working his way through a series of vacuous first years, but they tailed off as the year went on and we pushed harder toward our finals.’ Carter’s face straightened, his eyes going down. ‘Then it all went wrong. I was considering post-graduate work so that I could stay in Cambridge for Marion’s final year. I had graduated with a first class degree, I could do as I wished. She came to me one evening and told me that she had fallen in love with David.’

Ceri blinked. ‘Just like that?’

The playboy’s shoulder’s hunched and he frowned. ‘More or less. There was a lot of explanation which I’m afraid to say I didn’t really listen to. I sat there and said nothing as she tore my heart out.’ He looked up suddenly, catching Ceri’s eyes and her horrified expression. ‘I don’t want you to think badly of your mother over this. Love is a very mysterious thing. I don’t believe we have any control over it. I remember she was crying the whole time. Eventually she gave up trying to explain it and left, and I didn’t see either of them again until years later. I went downhill, joined the Order of Merlin, left them, got rich… Until I met Cheryl, Marion was the only woman I’ve ever loved. Cheryl reminds me of her, in some ways.’

Ceri frowned. ‘I hadn’t thought about it, but… They are a little similar.’ She hesitated a second before adding, ‘So… that’s why you’ve never tried to sleep with me.’

He nodded. ‘I’m sure you’re aware that I don’t find you unattractive. Somehow it seemed like… taking revenge and I couldn’t do that.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Or perhaps I was afraid that if I did take you to bed I’d fall for you just as I did for Marion.’

‘And you were busy falling for Cheryl at the time.’

The sombre mood vanished as he broke into a laugh. ‘Let’s say I was a little conflicted for a few weeks. I’m happy things have worked out as they have.’ He got to his feet and started for the door. ‘I hope we’ll see you outside soon.’

‘My headache’s lifting. I’ll come out shortly.’ As he left the room, she got to her feet and took the photograph back to the desk. There was another one beside where it sat and she lifted it to take a look. This one was of Carter, Cheryl, and Alec, beaming at the camera somewhere out on the patio from the looks of it. ‘Yeah,’ she said to no one, ‘things worked out okay in the end.’

~~~

They waited until the moon was up before going outside after dinner. There had been wine; not quite as much as the night before, but enough to get everyone in a good humour and make sure neither Carter nor Ceri was too embarrassed about taking their clothes off in front of the other.

Michael and Alec were already in fur by the time the others were standing at the side of the pool. The full moon was gone, but the pair of them were acting like kids at the seaside; except that kids at the seaside tended not to grope so much. Carter looked pleased that he was immune.

‘All right,’ Ceri said, drawing people’s attention, ‘I’m giving the spells enough power to get us to around midnight. I think everyone knows enough werewolf to get by, right?’ Carter and Cheryl nodded; Lily knew more than a little. ‘I wouldn’t recommend trying to speak it, it takes young wolves a while to get used to the new vocal apparatus. Ready?’

‘Oh yes,’ Cheryl said, her eyes bright. She was almost bouncing with excitement.

Taking Lily’s hand, Ceri drew the power for Cheryl’s transformation through her demon. She was going to use a lot of power changing herself and three others; pulling some of it through Lily helped spread the load and made sure she was not going to put herself in danger. A shimmer of light danced around her fingers as she focussed on Cheryl, replicated the transformation field the werewolves themselves generated, and let it loose. Cheryl gave a little shiver and suddenly she was a tall, grey-furred wolf-girl.

Ceri turned to Carter. ‘Ready? It just tingles a bit.’

‘I believe I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.’

Ceri’s hand glowed again as she reached toward him, and Lily let out a little whimper as the power being pulled through her hit various of her buttons. Carter said, ‘Oh!’ and suddenly he was changed. He was a grey, though his fur was a slightly lighter shade than Cheryl’s. Ceri guessed it was an age thing; Alexandra’s black fur was greying a little in places.

Grinning, Ceri turned to Lily. ‘Okay, love, your turn.’ Lily always turned into a brown-fur. Blacks were the purest of the wolves, with the least human DNA in their ancestry. Browns were the least pure and their fur tended to look a little scruffy. Lily, however, was the finest looking brown anyone had ever seen. Her fur was thick, silky, and a gorgeous chestnut brown. She gave a little yip of pleasure once she was changed and ran a soft-skinned hand down Ceri’s arm.

‘We’d better get going before Lily just drags me into a corner,’ Ceri commented, and reached up to her throat where her collar was already fixed. A surge of power, a tingle that washed over her skin, and the night turned bright. Alec let out a howl, quickly joined by Michael, then Ceri, then all of them.

And then they were running. Of all the things Ceri loved about being a wolf, running with the pack was the best of them. It was exhilarating, a massive rush. Werewolves were fast, nimble, optimised for chasing their prey down over long distances. The six wolves ran, leapt fences as though they were not there, darted around each other and played like cubs. Exactly how long they ran for, Ceri was unsure and did not care. She ran through the darkness, going wherever her tiny pack went and enjoying every moment of it.

To her left she saw Carter, loping along like a teenager. Being a wolf-man seemed to suit him; the added muscle and longer limbs gave him speed and stamina he could not manage as a human. On top of that he was clearly feeling the exhilaration of running with the pack and enjoying it hugely. His muzzle turned slightly and he saw her looking his way. Letting out a bark of what might have been laughter, he darted across behind her and she felt his hand slap her behind. Well that was just not on. A minute later it had become a game for all of them as they darted about, dodging and leaping, and trying their hardest to tag their fellows. Michael seemed to be enjoying that one and Ceri could see a new pack game developing at Battersea.

Then there was the coppice of trees ahead of them and they tumbled into the light brush yipping and barking. Some of the sounds actually meant something, but most were just sounds of happy play. Ceri knew what was coming, and she was sure Lily did too. When Michael pounced her a second later, she was not surprised. Alec and Carter grabbed a snickering Cheryl with obvious intentions. Ceri found her muzzle between Lily’s legs. Becoming a werewolf physically did not make one a werewolf mentally, but it was easy to fall into their more intimate view of pack relationships, especially when the relationship was quite intimate to begin with. Ceri felt Michael enter her, gave a soft growl of lust, and began to lap hungrily.

September 4th

The light breeze felt cool against her skin, but Ceri ignored it, looking down over the edge of the cliff to check where she was. There was no car wreck on the beach below, but it was definitely the same shoreline. This was where her parents had died.

‘I still don’t know why I left him for your father.’ The voice came from behind her and Ceri turned to see her mother standing there. Usually when she had dreams like this both her parents were there, but this time only Marion was with her. She was an attractive woman and Ceri had to admit she had got more of her looks from her father. They shared the same bright, blue eyes, however, and while Marion had a bigger bust she had the same sort of lithe figure as her daughter.

‘You really hurt him, Mum,’ Ceri said. ‘It sounded like you just lost it. I mean, he didn’t seem to blame you, but what you did just about destroyed him.’

Marion nodded. ‘I know. It almost destroyed me too, but I… I was so in love with your father… and Carter… I…’ She trailed off, unable to continue. There were tears in her eyes which seemed to evaporate from her face as sparkles of light. She looked up, her expression suddenly fearful. ‘The thing we most feared is coming to pass, Ceri. They’re already here and they’ll use you to…’ Whatever she was going to say was lost as she turned her head to look around at something Ceri could not see, and then she was gone, vanished on the wind like a puff of smoke.

~~~

Ceri opened her eyes and looked up at the blue sky overhead. Her mind was trying to recall a dream she had just had, but it seemed to be refusing to coalesce into anything solid. She shook her head, trying to clear it. It was another nice, bright, late summer day. She had no idea what the time was, but it was light, and pretty warm, and her muzzle was itching. She reached up and gave it a scratch before moving her clawed hand down to her throat so she could shift back to human.

Sitting up, she found herself on a lounger beside the pool with Lily stretched out in the sun on another one nearby. Between them, Michael was curled up very tightly on a couple of cushions, which looked fairly uncomfortable, but he seemed to be happily asleep. Further over, on the grass, Alec was looking a little grey as the result of the dew which had formed on his fur and was now starting to evaporate along with the dew on the grass. Both he and Michael were still in wolf-form. Ceri vaguely remembered Carter and Cheryl stumbling inside since they were the only ones who did not have fur or internal heating. Ceri had woken up cold and damp in a field before, she could not blame them, though she suspected that Carter had ulterior motives.

‘You’re awake then,’ Lily said, her voice a soft murmur. Ceri thought there was a hint of amusement in it.

‘Uh-huh. So are you.’

‘I had a small bet with myself that we’d be up before the men. They looked a little tired when they finally flaked out.’

Ceri giggled. ‘Even Carter looked a bit worn out and he wasn’t as busy.’

‘Still didn’t touch you? Even furry?’

‘We talked about it. He won’t. He’s got good reasons.’

Lily sat up, swinging her legs off the lounger away from Michael. ‘We need milk. How about we get dressed and walk into the village.’

‘Who uses milk?’

‘Carter and Cheryl. On Cornflakes.’

‘Seriously? Okay, we’ll go get milk.’

~~~

Chilcomb was a tiny little village which mostly consisted of big houses owned by people with a lot of money. Carter’s little mansion was on the eastern extreme of the village while the southern edge was marked by a Norman church which actually held services once a fortnight. There was also a post office which doubled as a grocery store, though Ceri suspected it mostly survived on the subsidy the Royal Mail paid it.

The shop was a little, stone built building with a house on the upper floor. There were a couple of racks of produce, mostly tins, and bread in plastic bags, but there was also a freezer for ice cream and an upright, glass-fronted fridge full of milk and soft drinks. Ceri pulled one of the two pint plastic bottles from the fridge and they headed to the back of the shop where there was the little sealed cubicle which was the post office, and a counter which supplied any number of sweets and a liberal selection of tobacco products.

There was also a short, plump woman wearing a floral dress and an even more floral apron. She was not quite old enough to be someone’s grandmother, but she was working on it. Her face was working on it more than the rest of her; she had the look of a “kindly old lady” in the making, though she was probably only in her forties. According to the sign outside the shop, she was probably Mrs I. Herman. Ceri was guessing at Irene, but it was just a guess.

‘That’ll be sixty-two pence, dear,’ Mrs Herman said as they approached. ‘You must be the girls staying up at Mister Fleming’s place.’

Ceri grinned as she put the bottle down to get the money from her bag. ‘No secrets in a place this size?’

The shopkeeper laughed. ‘Not with Mister Fleming. He keeps his privacy by not hiding anything. Chilcomb’s got its secrets. Some very private people around here.’ She took the pound coin she was handed and punched buttons on the old, manual till. ‘Mister Fleming though, he’s a good one. My daughter cleans up at his place on a Thursday. You’ll see her up there this afternoon. She’ll be up to collect her pay.’ The till popped open and she carefully counted out change.

‘What’s her name?’ Lily asked.

‘Bella. I’m Irene.’ Ceri grinned at having her guess confirmed. Irene handed over the change. ‘You have a lovely day now.’

‘I’m sure we will,’ Ceri agreed. She picked up the bottle and they headed out of the shop. ‘I hope Bella isn’t easily shocked,’ Ceri said once they were outside.

‘She isn’t,’ Lily replied, smirking. ‘I remember Carter mentioning a local girl who liked to swim nude in his pool in the summer. Pretty sure she was called Bella.’

‘Huh. Well, she’ll have…’ Ceri stopped, frowning and looking around, as a slight tingle started down her spine.

Lily looked at her, raising an eyebrow. ‘Something wrong?’

There was no one to be seen around the road which wound through the village, but the feeling was still there… Then it was gone. ‘I don’t know. It felt kind of like a dragon, but not.’

‘Here?’

Part of Ceri’s dream resurfaced in her head. Her mother had told her something. Something about a fear and… They are already here… But who? The question went unanswered. Nothing I can do about it anyway. There’s no one here. She shrugged and started walking again. ‘We should get this milk into a fridge before we end up with cheese.’

Lily took one more look around and then hurried to catch up. There was nothing there, except maybe a feeling she could not put a finger on.

~~~

Bella had to have got a lot of her genes from her father. At nineteen she was six-foot tall, slim, and athletic, though she had an ample bosom and delicate, feminine features. She was also a natural blonde where her mother resorted to blonde highlights. The “natural” part was obvious as she pulled herself out of the pool and lay down on the side of it to let the sun dry her skin. Her tan suggested this was not the first time she had been naked in the sun this summer.

‘You need some oil putting on?’ Lily asked. She was laid out on the lounger and had not opened her eyes; Ceri wondered whether she had some sort of nubile young flesh radar.

‘Me?’ Bella responded, sounding surprised. ‘No, ma’am. I’m just drying off.’

‘I’m Lily, not “ma’am.” I’m a waitress, not some high-society socialite.’ There was the sound of a chuckle from Carter.

‘A waitress? You work for Mister Fleming?’

‘Uh-huh. Actually, the only rich socialite here is Carter. Cheryl works at a university, Alec tends bar, Ceri works at the same university and at Carter’s club, and Michael…’

‘I live in a park,’ Michael supplied. ‘Technically I’m unemployed and homeless.’

‘He’s a werewolf,’ Alec said. ‘More of an Old School one than me.’

It was Michael’s turn to chuckle. ‘Sure I am.’

‘Hey,’ Bella said, ‘you weren’t that scientist that was on the news last summer, talking about Stonehenge?’

‘That was Ceri,’ Cheryl replied. ‘I was there too, but she was there first and got to talk to the cameras.’

‘Did you see the news last night? Stonehenge was on it again.’

‘My dear Bella,’ Carter said, ‘we’ve been doing our best to avoid the news the last few days. Ceri, Lily, and Michael do some part time work for the police and the last thing we needed was to discover there was some murder in London under mysterious circumstances.’

‘No murders,’ Bella replied. ‘They were saying that the magic field up there is getting stronger.’

Ceri looked up, and then sat up. ‘I need to use your phone, Carter.’

The playboy sighed. ‘Well, we had a few days of quiet.’

~~~

‘I spoke to Helen Brazenold at the visitor centre,’ Ceri said as they sat around the dinner table with full glasses of wine. ‘The thaumic field inside the circle has gone up by about a quarter of a thaum, which isn’t much, but it’s still rising and it seems to be accelerating.’

‘Odd,’ Carter said. ‘As far as I know it’s been essentially stable since the Shattering.’

Cheryl nodded. ‘Since Ceri found the skull under there they’ve been monitoring the level at fifteen minute intervals round the clock. Fascinating data in a way, though not exactly exciting. The level fluctuates over a month by a hundredth of a thaum, highest at the full moon. It goes up by about a tenth of a thaum at the summer and winter solstices. Oh, and it went up almost a thaum last Samhain, but just about everywhere had a moderately large rise in activity then.’

‘That sounds like a quarter thaum is actually quite a lot then,’ Michael commented. ‘Compared to how it usually behaves.’

‘Yeah,’ Ceri agreed, ‘I guess it is. I just don’t get why it’s happening. And that skull belonged to my ancestor.’

‘So we’re going home via Stonehenge tomorrow?’ Lily asked.

‘It’s not a huge diversion,’ Carter said, ‘and it’s a nice place to visit in the summer.’

‘And,’ Lily said, ‘we can swing it so we get into the circle itself instead of milling about with the tourists.’

Ceri giggled. ‘That sounded terribly snobby, love. Are you sure all this high living isn’t going to your head?’

The half-succubus preened a bit and took a sip of her wine while holding her little finger out from the stem of the glass. ‘One has to know one’s place, and ours is clearly in the lap of luxury.’

‘Well, you’ll have to make do with Michael’s lap, or mine.’

Lily shrugged. ‘Works for me.’

Stonehenge, September 5th

Cheryl opened a cover on the small box resting beside one of the upright stones and examined the display inside. ‘Eight point five three,’ she said. ‘That’s over a half a thaum up from what you said it was yesterday.’

‘Smells stronger,’ Alec commented.

Ceri was standing at the edge of the inner circle looking in. ‘There’s a lot of random ripples. The field’s distorted like… heat haze. That’s the best way I can describe it. Lil?’

‘I can feel it,’ the half-succubus replied from the middle of the circle. ‘It’s like I’ve got ants crawling over me.’ She frowned. ‘Actually, it kind of feels like it’s pulling…’ She looked upward. ‘…or reaching for something.’

Ceri followed Lily’s gaze. There seemed to be a trail of thaumitons stretching upward from the centre of the circle, right over where the skull was buried. She frowned. She knew she was not seeing anything real, but to her it looked as though there was an image buried within the ripples of energy. It was like looking at one of those annoying “magic pictures” that were supposed to resolve into something, but no matter how hard you stared… ‘What the hell would Brenin want with a comet?’ she said.

Part Five: Power Politics

Battersea, London, September 19th, 2012

The engineers working on the power plant had been busy little beavers. Part of the roof over the B station had been removed so that the old equipment could be taken out via heavy-lifting blimps, and they were already resurfacing the area once occupied by the A station for the generator and bringing in new equipment to bolt to the floor.

Supervising Engineer Horace Torpen was a rotund man with a moustache he could use for straining tea. ‘That’s the grid-tie inverter being brought in now,’ he rumbled, pointing at some sort of machine being lowered slowly onto the floor of the building. ‘It’s responsible for…’

‘Converting the DC power from the transducers into AC,’ Cheryl said, ‘and synchronising it with the national power grid.’ Ceri could tell that her boss was getting a little irritated with the man’s somewhat patronising tone. He was showing them around the facility with the look of a man who had been pressed into leading the school tour.

Torpen grunted. ‘We’ll have all the control systems finished by the end of the month. Engineering should be finished with the… more traditional systems by the end of next week. According to our schedule, these transducer pylons of yours will be delivered and installed by the fifth of next month, and the central pylon will be in place by the tenth.’

‘And on the fifteenth,’ Ceri said, ‘I’ll be placing the last node and initiating the tunnel.’

The engineer nodded. ‘This thing’s safe, is it?’

‘The prototype in Holland has been running for several months without trouble,’ Cheryl told him. ‘No instability in the tunnel, constant power output from both the generators at Groningen and Bremen.’

Torpen did not look entirely convinced. ‘We’ll be ready when you are.’

‘If I were being honest,’ Ceri said once they were outside and away from the ears of engineers, ‘I’d be happier if we had been able to recheck the maths.’

‘You’ve got several weeks yet,’ Cheryl replied.

‘Okay, I’d be happier if you had rechecked the maths.’

Cheryl chuckled. ‘I haven’t found anything wrong yet. I’m still working through it. I think I’ll have it wrapped before we go live. Don’t worry, I have faith in you.’

‘Thanks, Boss.’

‘Are you heading back home?’

‘No,’ Ceri said, looking down the road toward the park. ‘It’s a pack night and since I’m here already…’

Cheryl nodded, turning toward Vauxhall. ‘Have a good time and give Michael one for me.’

‘Give him one what?’

Cheryl laughed as she walked away. ‘You know damn well what.’

~~~

Actually, only a few days after the new moon, Michael was not particularly excited about “you know what.” Ceri decided to owe him one until the weekend when his funk would have fully worn off. Instead they ran the boundary of the pack’s territory because running always cheered Michael up almost as much as it did Ceri.

And that was working fine right up until the last part of the loop. Ceri was looking up at the huge smokestacks of the power station again when the scent hit her and she came to a grinding stop just after Michael. It smelled a bit like someone had barbequed a pig somewhere nearby, except that she was good enough at discerning scents now that she was fairly sure it was not a pig.

For a brief instant, Ceri had the horrifying thought that there was another witch hunter at work. The last time she had smelled burned flesh like that was on another boundary run when they had discovered one of the victims of a witch hunter who burned his victims alive. She had a brief flash of the charred corpse they had discovered in Clapham.

Then Michael growled. Man things. Took woman. Same smell. He lifted his muzzle, sniffing, and then bolted off toward the river edge.

It was low tide and there was a huge expanse of gravel beach on show between the station and the loading dock which had been used to bring in coal when the station had been running. The night was not exactly bright, but with werewolf eyes and sense of smell, they managed to spot the black shape lying against the wall after a few minutes of searching.

It took longer to get down onto the beach, in fact, but they made it, and then they both shifted into human form because the stench was disgusting. Ceri had the advantage since Michael’s sense of smell was still better than human, but neither of them was happy.

‘You’re sure this is the same sort of scent as the things which took Jenny Mayhew?’ Ceri asked. The body looked like it had been underwater once already. Perhaps it had fallen in as the water level was dropping and had been beached before it could wash down river.

‘Pretty sure. There’s more burning in it, but it’s the same sort of scent. Ninety per cent sure?’

‘Good enough for me. Look, this has to be torture. Shift back, go up onto the banks and get some cops down here. They’ll need to record anything they want to quickly or this place will be under water again.’

He knew she was sparing him from standing around the disgusting smell, but it was also a good point. ‘Okay, but I’m coming back.’

Ceri nodded, giving him a smile. ‘I expected nothing else. Make sure they call in the Greycoats.’

He was already shifting. He nodded once his shape had reset and then bolted away across the gravel. Ceri turned to the corpse, blinking on her Sight.

It was a corpse. There was some residual magic about it, but nothing identifiable. It was more like it had been exposed to magic than that it was magic. She was moderately sure it had been male, tall and well built. There was hair, which might have been black, or it might have blackened in the… No, the corpse had not been exposed to fire. The hair would have burned. In fact, looking at the cracked, blackened skin, Ceri thought it looked more like the man had burned from the inside out. There were spells which could do that, but she would have expected to see more residue from such a destructive spell.

She let out a grunt of displeasure and stopped herself kicking the corpse-briquette. The stupid thing had buggered up her evening, probably kidnapped and murdered someone who was almost a friend, and there was nothing useful she could do with it. For all her talents, she could not find anything out about the dead man which the forensics wizards could not do. Grumbling under her breath, she settled down to wait for the police to arrive.

Westminster, September 20th

Avery Sachs was waiting in one of the conference rooms at Greycoat Street when Ceri, Lily, and Michael walked in. He nodded politely to them and said, ‘I asked to be kept informed if anything came up related to Mayhew’s case.’

Ceri nodded. ‘I expected you would be involved.’

‘Technically, I’m not “involved,” just interested. Once you found her and it was determined that she had not turned traitor it became a matter for the police.’

‘Unless, of course,’ DCI Barry said as he followed them in, ‘it turns out to have security implications anyway.’ He was, in turn, followed by John and Kate.

Sachs nodded. ‘And that is the official reason I’m interested. Frankly, however, I don’t take kindly to people killing my staff and I want the people responsible nailed.’ Ceri was not sure she had ever seen him express that much emotion.

‘Well,’ John said, ‘forensics have wrapped so we can tell you all what was found. Frankly, it’s not much.’ He glanced at Kate, who opened a folder on the table.

‘As Ceri suggested, there was minor magical residue,’ she said. ‘They are pretty sure that it is not spell residue. The body was exposed to a magic field of some sort rather than being attacked.’

‘Then… how was he burned?’ Ceri asked.

‘Technically,’ Kate replied, ‘he wasn’t. He was cooked, from the inside. It’s like he was microwaved. And slowly. They found evidence that his organs have been failing from heat damage for months. Eventually he overheated so much that he… charred.’

‘We’re sure he was human?’ Sachs asked.

Kate nodded. ‘They ran a heredity analysis. Except that something had to have changed because there’s no way a human could stand the internal damage this guy had. He would have dropped long ago.’

‘Some form of possession,’ Lily suggested. ‘Something that could animate the dying body, presumably while it was also cooking it.’

‘Not a demon though,’ Michael added. ‘There’s no scent of demon about the body, and there was none around the ones who took Miss Mayhew.’

‘Some sort of spirit then,’ Ceri mused. ‘Nothing I’ve ever heard of… I don’t suppose you’ve managed to track down an identity for Mister Crispy?’

‘Not yet,’ Kate said, her tone sour. ‘There are no fingerprints left and the diviners say they’re getting nothing from the body. Whatever killed him blanked him. We’ve taken a cast of the skull and sent it up to Manchester. There’s a guy up there does facial reconstructions for archaeologists. We’re hoping he can give this guy a face to identify. It’ll be laborious checking missing persons though.’

Sachs shifted in his seat. ‘I may be able to help with that. We have some new software we developed for scanning through large numbers of photographs attempting to match one face against another. It’s classified, but I may be able to get you access…’

Barry’s eyes narrowed at the agent. ‘You really are pissed off about losing this girl, aren’t you?’

Sachs looked back. ‘Ever lost someone under your command, Chief Inspector?’ Barry did not say anything, but he nodded. ‘Jenny wasn’t a field agent, but I needed her for this op. She was particularly suited and I persuaded her to do it. Then someone killed her because of it. Yes, I feel responsible.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Lily said, her voice gentle.

‘I’m aware of that, Miss Carpenter.’

Ceri could tell that whatever Sachs said, he still blamed himself. ‘I don’t understand why she was killed after the Scientists were out of the picture. It wasn’t them who did the hit. Whoever it was used magic.’

Sachs nodded. ‘She was killed for the report she never filed. That’s clear to me. She knew something which someone did not want known.’ His eyes were on Ceri’s as he said it and she shifted in her seat. What did Sachs know? He broke contact. ‘We’ll probably never know what it was.’

‘A shame,’ Barry commented. ‘If we did we might have some idea of who we were looking for.’

~~~

‘Can you read Sachs?’ Ceri asked as they headed back home on the Underground.

Lily shook her head. ‘Only very basic desires. And he’s very determined to find out who killed Jenny.’

‘You think he suspects what you are?’ Michael asked. ‘Maybe Mayhew was killed because she had figured it out?’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’ Ceri frowned. She did not like the idea for multiple reasons.

‘But then, who killed her?’ the werewolf said. ‘You didn’t, and you’re the one trying to keep it secret.’

‘There’s Molech,’ Ceri replied. ‘He came here last Samhain and protected our area from the other demons. Maybe he was actually protecting me and he’s still doing it. He might not be able to come personally in normal conditions, but he could send people to do it.’

‘The Order?’ Lily suggested. The Order of Merlin was a bunch of wizards who were heavily into making pacts with demons. They had tried to induct Ceri at one point and Carter had been a member for a time. They were more of an annoyance than a danger, however.

‘I think,’ Ceri said, ‘that they would have made some overt move if they knew.’

‘Not if they were just told what to do and not told why,’ Michael supplied.

Ceri frowned again. ‘I don’t think they would do it without some payback. Remus got them to work for him, but only by promising them power… So Molech tells them that he’s planning something big and that I need to be protected…’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t tell them why he’s got them killing someone,’ Michael said. ‘He just tells them it needs to be done.’

Ceri looked enthusiastic for a second and then fell back into a frown. ‘But there was no indication of demons being the killers.’

‘What about elementals?’ Lily said. ‘What if he taught them how to possess someone with a fire elemental?’

‘Okay…’ Ceri contemplated the concept. Elementals were semi-spiritual creatures, or spirits with a physical aspect. Air elementals appeared as swirling winds, fire elementals were living flames. She had never heard of one possessing someone, but it was not impossible that they could do it. ‘Maybe Ed knows how it could be done.’

Kennington

Ed’s image stood in the summoning room, wearing a frown. He gave good frown. ‘Encapsulating an elemental within a living human host… hmmm.’

‘It’s a working theory,’ Ceri explained. ‘I don’t know if it’s even possible, but a fire elemental inside a body might explain the evidence.’

‘Otheis worked extensively with elementals in the White City. He understood them better than anyone since, I believe.’

‘Otheis?’ Ceri was leaning against a wall in the stone-lined room. Ed stood in the middle, apparently on the large, granite block with a demon summoning circle carved into it. Of course, he was actually hundreds of miles away in Aberystwyth, on the Welsh coast. Nearby, the white stone statuette of a dragon which allowed him to project his image sat on its silver-iron transport case. Its eyes glowed red.

‘A student of mine. A Neanderthal, actually. They were more attuned to magic than the later homo sapiens species. That cost them when the Toba Flare ended and the world magic level dropped to near zero.’ Reaching upward, he began to mark out silver sigils in the air in front of him.

‘Are you saying they died out because the magic did?’

‘Uh… well, it’s a working theory. They were heavily adapted to the higher thaumic level. When they lost that advantage, they were unable to compete. I was not around when they died out so I can’t be sure.’

‘You know, anthropologists would love talking to you and Brenhines.’

Ed gave an amused grin. ‘This, I believe would do it.’

Ceri pushed off from the wall and walked around to look at his work. ‘That’s… pretty complex.’ She waved her hand at one portion of the gleaming set of equations. ‘That’s containment… this bit is control?’

‘Indeed,’ Ed replied, nodding. His expression had shifted to one of pride. ‘I doubt anyone alive on Earth could have worked this out. It relies on certain experimental elements, here… and here… which took Otheis most of his life to find.’

‘But a demon…?’

‘Demons, as you know, have been working with magic far longer than humans. Our universe is a maelstrom of wild magic. Theirs is far less active, but still consistently much higher than current levels here. They are generally less… scientific about their magic than we are, and you are, but they have had thousands of years to produce these effects by trial and error.’ He grunted; a humourless laugh. ‘They also have something of a disregard for the survival of their test subjects which makes things easier.’ That was true. Demons were essentially sociopathic by nature, aside from a few species who needed to understand and react to emotions because of their feeding patterns. Incubi and succubi fell into the latter category, but most demons simply could not allow their emotions to stand in their way and disregarded the feelings of others as a matter of course.

Ceri nodded. ‘Demonic magic. What are they up to?’

‘What they have always been up to?’ Ed suggested.

‘Yeah,’ Ceri said, grimacing. ‘That’s just great.’

Soho, September 21st

A slight hush fell over the nearby tables as Lily escorted Anita and Ray into the club. They made quite a couple. He was around six foot six in height, a mass of lean muscle with chiselled good looks and short, dark hair. He was actually wearing a suit, well, a shirt and a jacket, somehow Ray did not seem the kind to suit a tie. Anita, Captain of the Guard for the Battersea pack, was almost as tall as he was, and since she was wearing heels tonight she matched his height. She was an Amazon to Ray’s barbarian prince; tall, muscled, and attractive. Her dress was incredibly short with a cowled halter neck and no back. Just about every man in the club was envious of Ray, and the women were busy hating Anita. Carter had Lily sit them at one of the prime tables, in full view, because he was pretty certain they were something of a draw, and because he liked looking at Anita too.

Ceri barely noticed. Her head was a jumble of thoughts; thaumatology field equations and elemental containment complexes wrapped in worries over demons and what they might be doing.

‘Table fifteen, love,’ Lily said as she arrived back at the bar.

Ceri shook her head, gave Lily a quick smile and started off toward her table. She needed to get her head back in the game. She usually did not need Lily to tell her when a table needed service.

The two fae girls on table fifteen smiled sweetly at Ceri as she walked over. They were there with three humans, all men, none of them showing much sign of being practitioners. Ceri was not really sure what the fae were up to, but it could have just been an innocent night out with some co-workers. Somehow though, the smiles that they were giving Ceri suggested they were far from innocent.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ Ceri asked, smiling back. She had developed a really good professional smile in her time at the Dragon.

One of the two fae, a tall, slim blonde, looked up and her smile broadened. Ceri saw the woman’s eyes turn solid black and felt a warm dullness starting to spread through her body. ‘We need a third girl for the night.’ Ceri’s vision narrowed, her nipples tightened, and she felt a soft fog forming in her mind. The urge to say yes was almost impossible to resist.

Almost. She pushed back on the effect, leaning forward as the blonde’s black eyes widened and returned to their natural blue. Reaching into the fae’s natural magical field and pulling the energy out of it was almost too easy. Ceri smiled back as the woman began to tremble. ‘You’re not from around here,’ Ceri said softly, ‘so I’ll go easy on you. We do drinks here, and the waitresses are off limits. And you will see to it that these guys have a fantastic night followed by a long life.’ She saw the fae’s eyes glaze for a second as the spell hit her.

‘O-of course,’ the blonde said.

Ceri straightened up, smiling sweetly. The men looked confused while the other fae looked like she was holding back anger. ‘Can I get you anything else?’

‘No, we’ll be going,’ the blonde said. ‘Come on, boys. We’ll go back to my place.’

Ceri watched them leave before picking up the fairly large tip the blonde had left. The thought passed through her head that the fae had asked for that. It was not exactly ethical, probably illegal, but it was poetic justice. Fitting use of power.

‘Trouble?’ Carter asked when she returned to the bar.

‘The blonde tried to recruit me to their little orgy,’ Ceri replied. ‘When it didn’t work, they decided to leave.’

‘Good.’

Ceri nodded and looked around, noticing Anita for the first time. The werewolf was really rocking that dress, but Ceri’s thoughts drifted away from that quickly. If using a control spell on the blonde fae was poetic justice, why had she not said anything about it to Carter? Because it’s none of his business what I do. Ceri frowned and pushed the traitorous thought aside. Stress; it was the stress of working on too many things at once. Yeah, that was it. She needed to relax.

Mayfair, September 22nd

Lily’s strong hands were very relaxing as they worked over Ceri’s shoulders and down her back. This was exactly what she needed, an afternoon at Demi-monde, lying on one of the massage benches in the baths, with Lily working all the kinks out of her body.

It was Saturday and the club was far fuller than it usually was when they visited on a Tuesday evening. On several of the other padded, stone plinths masters and mistresses were being indulged by their submissives. Ceri had decided on the side of the baths were they would be allowed to make some noise; she usually preferred the other side, the baths were for relaxation, but this time she felt like showing off.

Right now, however, Ceri was perfectly happy having the muscles down her spine dissolved as Lily worked over them. The firm, smooth pushing, out from the bone to the sides of her waist made short work of doing just that. Stress melted away, replaced by total relaxation, which slowly turned to heightened anticipation as Lily started working Ceri’s thighs. Those thighs parted, almost without Ceri’s conscious thought, and oily hands slid between them. Lily was, naturally, expert at that form of massage too. With the right contact, the half-succubus could feed like this, drawing energy from Ceri’s Tantric median and so prolonging the moment of climax as long as she wished. She did not do it, though, she just teased, slowly and carefully bringing her mistress to the point of orgasm and then easing back, only to raise the tension once more. Only when Ceri was almost ready to beg for release did Lily give her what she wanted.

The fact that she was having a very noisy orgasm in front of perhaps a dozen of the other patrons did not bother Ceri in the slightest. She was pretty sure they were all jealous of her and the attention just made the experience more exciting. Yeah, they were jealous, envious.

As they should be.

Battersea, September 24th

‘You’re quite sure all this will work as projected?’ Malcolm Charles said as they walked through the open expanse which was to become the transducer hall.

Ceri bit back on her irritation; Malcolm had never made her irritated before. ‘I’m quite sure of my calculations. The projected output is approximately seventeen gigawatts. It should be enough to supply the whole of Greater London on a constant basis.’

‘I’ve gone over Ceri’s geometry calculations,’ Cheryl added. ‘Eighty outer pylons, thirty-three inner ones, plus the central column. The equations work out perfectly. There will be almost no leakage outside the circle, a projected rise of two thaums at two yards. Inside the circle it will obviously be considerably higher, upwards of twenty-eight thaums. That is plenty to generate the power we are projecting and still within relatively safe limits.’

The Minister for Supernatural Affairs glanced around and lowered his voice. ‘I apologise if I come across as unsure of your abilities. The pressure for this to be successful is…’ He sighed. ‘Someone brings this project up at every cabinet meeting. If it isn’t safety, it’s cost. If it isn’t cost, it’s how to capitalise on a new, clean power source when the election comes around next year. We’re probably going to have the PM and some of the royal family here for the official opening. A lot of careers are riding on this.’

And I should care because? Ceri pushed the nasty little thought aside, but it left a lingering bitter taste in her mouth. She was giving them enough power to run one of the largest cities in the world and he was griping about the stress. What about my stress? She was doing all the work… She and Cheryl were doing all the work. Cheryl was putting in a lot of effort too. Damn, but she was getting self-centred. A weekend of well-earned stress relief busted by ten minutes with Malcolm bloody Charles.

In an effort to suppress the urge to set fire to Malcolm’s underwear, Ceri tried pushing her mind back to Saturday night while Cheryl did her best to persuade the minister that everything was going to go fine. Michael had been waiting for them when they got home from work, as usual. Ceri had dressed up, not as usual, but Michael had still been a little moonstruck and in the mood to be a little submissive. Lily was always in the mood. And I’m more often in the mood to be dominant. Which was true, and she was more dominant when she did it. When was the last time she had actually wanted to play the sub?

‘…but when it comes down to it,’ Cheryl was saying, ‘the trial versions work, the mathematics for the enhanced version work, and we’ve done everything we possibly can to ensure that everything works in practice.’

‘Have some confidence,’ Ceri suggested, putting all the confidence she had into it. ‘Have we ever let you down?’

Kennington, September 27th

Ceri felt, rather than heard, Lily walking up behind her. It was late, or very early, and she had been standing up on the roof since coming back from Battersea. Lily had just returned from the Dragon. Lily’s arm slipped around Ceri’s waist, Ceri’s hand lowering to rest on Lily’s forearm, and the half-succubus joined in the upward look.

‘Star watching?’ Lily asked, her voice hushed because it seemed like that was appropriate.

‘Yes, pet,’ Ceri said, just as softly. She lifted her other arm, pointing skyward. ‘You see it? There, under Ursa Minor is Draco, and there’s a smudge there near the tail?’

Lily squinted. It was a clear night without much light from the aurora, but there was enough atmospheric disturbance to make the stars twinkle. There did seem to be one “star” which was more of a line than a dot. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I see it. That’s the comet?’

Ceri nodded. ‘It’s weird. It feels like… I just looked up earlier and I saw it, like my eyes were drawn to it. It feels like it’s trying to talk to me.’

Lily smiled and tightened her arm around Ceri’s waist. ‘What’s it saying?’

‘I’m not really sure… No, wait, I think it’s coming through… Yes, it’s saying “take your gorgeous pet downstairs and have her do disgusting things to you.”’

Lily giggled. ‘I think I like this comet.’

~~~

‘What was Brenin like?’ Ceri asked. She was supposed to be concentrating on dimensional transition equations, but the question had been roaming around her head since the night before.

‘Wouldn’t you be better off asking Brenhines that?’ Ed asked in return. ‘She was his wife.’

‘Maybe, but I haven’t heard from her in ages, and you’re here.’ Reaching up, she marked out a set of symbols in the air, more to prove she was still attending her studies than to make the notation.

Ed sighed. ‘He was… loyal, generous, something of a practical joker, and a skilled leader. Brenhines was the great theoretician. Brenin was a great practitioner and understood magic very well, but his real talent lay in leadership and administration. He ran the city and rejoiced in his wife’s discoveries, and in her enjoyment of the discoveries of our students.’ His lips twitched. ‘He was quite the lover as well. He loved his wife, don’t get me wrong, but… Actually both of them enjoyed bringing home lovers, but he was just a little worse than she was.’

Ceri laughed. ‘I’m not sure I want to know that.’

‘If they hadn’t, you would probably not exist.’

‘True.’ She rubbed out a section of the equation she was working on and replaced it with some new symbology. ‘Why am I learning how to create trans-dimensional gateways anyway?’

‘You aren’t. Well, you are, but it’s an exercise in multi-dimensional field equations. I find people learn more easily with a practical basis behind their theory.’

‘I guess.’ Her eyes scanned the series of sigils and mathematical notations. ‘How’s that?’

‘That will produce a successful wormhole between two ‘branes,’ Ed said smoothly. ‘And if you happen to be a single photon it should work exceptionally well. Any transition through it would collapse it.’

Ceri frowned. ‘Well… uh… Ah! I need to increase the stability which should also broaden it to a viable capacity…’ Her hands went to work scribbling sigils in the air.

Ed stood back with a smile on his face, and a hint of sadness in his eyes.

Soho, September 29th

The Jade Dragon was on a raucous, lascivious high. True full moon was going to happen at around four in the morning and the city’s werewolves were already bouncing around like children. Since Anita had had a night out the previous weekend, Michael was doing the same this week. He was sat at the bar with a broad grin on his face as he watched his mate and his not-quite-mate-but-definitely-more-than-a-friend dodging through the tables and the horny werewolves sat at them.

Normally on nights like this, Ceri enjoyed the attention. Lily was enjoying herself, that was obvious through the link they shared. Ceri, for some reason, was finding it annoying. It was nothing she could put her finger on, just… She shook her head and strutted back to the bar, hips swinging, head held high.

‘You are looking very regal tonight, Ceridwyn,’ Carter said, his voice ebullient. He was enjoying the evening too.

‘I’m feeling regal. Oh, did Cheryl mention next Friday to you?’

Carter looked upward for a second, trying to remember. ‘Ah, yes, the tests at the power station.’

Ceri nodded. ‘I may be a little late getting here if it overruns.’

‘I believe we’ll manage until you do.’

‘Tests?’ Michael asked.

‘They’re going to have all the control systems and the rest of the heavy engineering completed. Cheryl and I will be there to observe the systems testing. Friday, and then all the next week.’

Michael nodded at her. ‘And then the week after you’re in Germany?’

‘Just on the Monday. Place the post, initiate the line, and come home to plaudits and adoration.’ Plaudits and adoration, that was worth smiling about.

‘You’ve got plenty of adoration anyway,’ Lily said, coming up behind her.

Ceri smiled. ‘Thank you, pet.’ She turned, spotted empty glasses and started away toward the table with a slight sigh. Her back was straight and her hips swinging as she went, however.

She did not notice the slight frown on Carter’s face as she went.

Holloway, October 4th

‘Everything a go for tomorrow?’ Ceri asked as Cheryl walked through from her office into Ceri’s.

‘It is. They’ve got a few last things to… I don’t know, bolt down or solder in. Torpen is not the most forthcoming of individuals.’

‘Misogynist arsehole?’ Ceri suggested.

Cheryl laughed. ‘I did get the impression he was not comfortable with intelligent women, but I think it’s more to do with the magic.’

‘He looked old enough to still hold some prejudice,’ Ceri conceded. ‘What are you up to today?’

‘Running numbers. I wanted to examine what would happen to the containment if the external thaumic level rises.’

Ceri frowned. She had never considered that factor. She felt certain that there would be no problem, but she should have considered it. Still, that was why Cheryl was the boss, and why they made a good team. ‘Good idea. I’ve been going over this circular tunnel concept. You know, I think we might be able to build something which would outperform the American system.’

‘Ironic, considering that it was their idea.’

‘Well, they’ve already got a big toy to play with,’ Ceri replied, grinning.

‘The phrase is boys and their toys, dear, not girls.’

Ceri pouted.

Battersea, October 5th

Ceri was bored. She had decided to wear her “interview dress” for the test sequence. It was short and showed off what cleavage she had pretty well, and combining it with some of her highest heels had produced some amusement as the largely male workforce tripped over themselves and tried not to look like they were looking. However, that had got old fairly quickly and she was left with the nagging thought that she was utterly wasted watching men who were perfectly capable of doing this job themselves do their job perfectly well. She was stuck, however, because the politics of the situation demanded it.

There was, Ceri thought, far too much politics about the entire project. There was some junior minister bustling around getting in peoples’ ways because the Ministry felt that everything had to be supervised. Ceri felt a pang of sympathy for Torpen over that since he had to deal with the little twerp far more than she did. Only a pang; the supervisor was taking out his annoyance on anyone who came within range. More politics, this time of the office variety. He had, at one point, rounded on Cheryl when she asked a perfectly reasonable question. Then he had bit back on his anger hard when he had caught sight of Ceri standing behind her. The Ministry pillock and Torpen both seemed kind of, well, scared of Ceri. She had been wearing a sour expression for most of the day, maybe that was it.

For something to do, she walked down to the floor where the containment system had now been finished, aside from the central pylon. Men were working on the construction of the central transducer, but she could examine the structures around it.

It looked like some form of modern art. Eighty gleaming columns of Cheryl’s transducer boxes surrounded another thirty-three. Each column had one hundred and sixteen carefully angled units sticking out from a central steel pole. The boxes themselves were silver-iron alloy. It had been known for some time that an alloy of silver and iron, with a few other minor constituents, could block magic by converting it into electric current. It had been the fae who had let the material slip out into public use; they referred to it as “cold iron,” a term which had been argued over among mythologists for years before the Shattering had made the material useful once again. Silver-iron was commonly used to screen large sources of thaumic energy, and for harming fae, but Cheryl had come up with the idea of using it to actually generate power. It was a brilliantly simple idea and it was the heart of the generator. Which would be no use without the ley line. Well, yes. It was Ceri’s sub-membrane tunnel idea which was the core of this generator and there was no point in denying that.

A wolf-whistle cut off her thoughts as she examined one of the transducer poles. She turned sharply on her heel and her eyes lifted to glare at a man on a high-lift. His leering grin turned to a sudden need to be looking anywhere but at Ceri and she turned back to the pole with a smile on her face. Yes, they were scared of her. Which they should be.

~~~

‘They’re bringing up the test generators now,’ Cheryl said as Ceri walked into the control room. The plan was to use a bank of diesel generators to put power through the various conversion systems, thus testing them under load. Not the load they would get when the system went live by any means, but the engineers claimed it would sufficiently test the system.

About time. ‘Good. I was starting to think I really would be late getting to the Dragon tonight.’

Cheryl shrugged. ‘They’re only bringing up one generator. Minimal load to check the system, but Torpen says they’ll spend hours analysing the data after that.’ She almost winced at the black look Ceri developed. ‘It’s necessary.’

‘My head is aware of this. I’m not sure it’s necessary for us to be here.’

Cheryl looked at her with a shrewd expression. ‘Technically it’s not. Politically it is. Unfortunately, we have to play the politics as well as do the science. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but if you want to progress up the ladder you’ll need to learn it.’

‘Maybe I’ll be happy leaving that to people with more talent for it. I’m not sure I want that much attention.’

Her boss gave a small shrug. ‘Too late, you’ve already got it.’

Kennington, October 6th

Ceri sat on the stone altar in the dungeon and watched Lily hanging on the Saint Andrew’s cross. The dungeon had been her mother’s summoning room, laid out for summoning spirits. The circle carved into the floor was, therefore, not a demonic circle, but Lily had still enjoyed the idea of being chained to a cross over a summoning circle.

Right now Lily was chained by her ankles and wrists facing the cross. Cords tied to two of the rings on the cross were pulling her breasts up by the rings on her nipples. Not enough to be painful, unless she moved, and Ceri had spent the last hour making sure it was hard to keep still. There was a vibrator inside her now, buzzing away and causing sudden twitches which pulled and produced little moaning yelps.

It had started off with pole practice, which usually happened on a Friday, but had been postponed due to boring generator testing. Ceri had said she needed the stress relief and Lily had not objected. Lily did not object to anything Ceri did to her. As a good pet should. The half-succubus had winced and yelped and cried out as Ceri applied first a soft leather whip, then a paddle, then a hard, studded tawse. But she had not objected once. She had mewled and moaned, and then screamed in orgasm as Ceri had applied vibrators and dildos. But she had not objected because Lily was a good pet. Maybe I should get her a collar to wear all the time. With a leash.

She had stopped twitching now. She was just hanging there in the cuffs, head rolled forward on her neck. It was time to get her down and heal up the red marks on her back and thighs. They would show with her in her work dress and that would not be good. Not yet anyway. Give it time for people to accept. Just a bit of time.

Battersea, October 10th

Ceri and Cheryl looked up at the finalised construct of the central column and then down to the concrete base in which was fixed the taller than usual post. It was dark grey granite, flecked with white and pink, carved into a hexagonal column over six feet in height. On each face, and on the currently invisible top, were carefully carved sigils which Ceri was about to go over very carefully.

‘It’s really kind of pretty,’ Cheryl said.

‘That’s what I thought when I saw the first one.’

Cheryl gave a little sigh. ‘Oh well. I guess you’d better get to checking the symbols.’

Ceri took out her tablet and powered it up. ‘This is going to take ages. And I’ll need a stepladder.’

‘Somehow, I think they have a stepladder around here somewhere. I’ll see to it.’

Nodding, Ceri stepped forward and started comparing the first rune against the design she had on her tablet. A second or two later she told herself that not thanking Cheryl was just because she was intent on her work.

~~~

Ceri climbed down the ladder and grinned wearily at Cheryl. ‘Definitely good enough for magic,’ she said. ‘Should I go ahead and lock it in?’

‘Might as well.’ Cheryl took a step back, giving Ceri room. She had seen the Groningen post primed and new more or less what to expect, but this one was a little different and with magic you never knew.

Ceri summoned up her power, a process which seemed to get easier and easier, and formed the mental image of an additional set of sigils above the post. She funnelled energy out from herself and in through the symbols. For a second or two they became visible, hanging in the air, and the runes carved into the post shone which a pale light. The post shifted slightly, pulling downward into the slot which had been cut for it. The twitch was no more than the thickness of one of Cheryl’s manicured nails, but it was quite obvious. The runes faded to darkness, or vanished into the air they had come from. Ceri nodded.

‘I’m glad the others have a less complicated initiation,’ she said. ‘It saves me dragging myself across half of Europe when the Army can get one of their enchanters to do it.’

Cheryl gave a nod. ‘On Monday, however, you’ll be flying out to place the last one.’

‘Sunday night,’ Ceri corrected. ‘They want to get us out as far as they can before dawn so we can have as much time as we need to walk into the city.’

‘A nice walk in the country,’ Cheryl said, her voice brimming with sarcasm. ‘I’m sure Lily is looking forward to that as much as you are.’

‘Yeah,’ Ceri said, ‘because the last time we walked into a place like that was a barrel of laughs.’

Fifteen-hundred feet above Reims, France, October 15th

The military transport airship was considerably less comfortable than the last one they had been on. Instead of a huge, luxurious bedroom, Ceri and Lily sat on canvas seats in the hold, which was large enough to hold a couple of armoured transport vehicles, though all it had in it was a pallet with the ley line post on it and their baggage. Ceri’s staff, almost six feet of solid wood topped with a bluish, crystal sphere, lay beside the granite rod. There was a survival pack which Ceri would be lugging, and a harness which would let Lily carry the post more easily, slung across her back. There was also a compact assault rifle which Lily had been checked out on. It came with several magazines loaded with anti-fae rounds; hollow-points with silver-iron flakes in the nose. Neither of them had even known such things existed.

They had left from City Airport just before dawn. It was a little later than planned, but it would still give them plenty of time. Neither of them had had much sleep, however, and despite their fatigue they were not finding it easy to sleep on the flight.

‘This could be more dangerous than the walk into Hamburg,’ Lily said. She was speaking at normal volume, but it was doubtful the soldiers sitting across the cabin could hear her; the noise from the turbofan engines was too loud.

Ceri nodded, but her voice was confident when she spoke. ‘Nothing we can’t handle. The reports say even the fae stay away from the city environs. Between the two of us, there’s nothing much we can’t scare off or take out.’

‘Are you really the same girl I had to force to go to the interview with Cheryl?’

Ceri gave a shrug. ‘A lot’s changed since then, pet.’

Lily’s hand drifted up to her throat and the leather collar encircling it. Her fingers touched the silver padlock which closed it at the front. She had been wearing it almost constantly since Ceri had put it on her the previous Tuesday before going out to Demi-monde. ‘Yes. A lot.’

‘Something wrong?’

‘No. I was just thinking about how much you’ve changed.’

‘For the better, I think. I’m far more confident than I was. Cars don’t bother me so much and flying… I think I actually like flying.’

‘Yes.’

Ceri glanced at her pet. She could feel nothing much over their link, but it seemed almost as though Lily was hiding something. Or suppressing something. She gave a barely noticeable shrug and turned away. Not that it matters.

Munich

The airship had lowered itself to ground level in an open space not quite three miles from the site they were aiming to place the post. Troops spread out quickly to surround the landing site, rifles aimed outward. They were less than five miles from the epicentre of the Munich bomb and the thaumic level was high enough to make the area hot. Not dangerous-hot, but certainly at high enough level that fae would have found it very comfortable.

Ceri marched down the loading ramp as though there was no danger at all and turned to the man in putative charge of the operation, a Captain Willard. ‘We’ll be about an hour getting in and selecting a site, ten minutes to initiate the line, and no more than an hour getting out. You think you’ll be okay to hold this location until then?’

Willard gave her a slightly insulted look which she entirely ignored, or failed to notice. ‘We have automatic weapons, four turrets with heavy machine guns, and a lot of well-trained men. We can hold it.’

Ceri gave him a nod and then started off toward the edge of the park. Lily gave the man a smile. ‘Thank you, Captain. We’ll see you soon.’

‘Your friend isn’t much of a people person, is she?’ Willard commented.

‘She’s… under a lot of stress. The Prime Minister is in Battersea waiting for her to start the line.’

Willard grunted. ‘You better catch up with her.’

Giving him an apologetic grin, Lily hurried off after Ceri.

~~~

Munich was not a lot different from Hamburg. The explosion had levelled a huge amount of the city, though the bomb had been further from the centre so there were still a few taller buildings visible in that direction. The areas Ceri and Lily were walking through had been reclaimed by nature with a considerable vengeance. Thick vines had grown over any structure left standing. Neither of them liked the look of the plants and they had decided to keep to the streets, which were just grassy scrub now.

There were ghosts among the ruins again; ordinary people doing ordinary things over and over again. Lily found them pitiful. They had died in terror, waiting for the Russians to overrun their city and instead being claimed by a bomb set off by their own Glorious Leader. It was sad. Ceri seemed to be entirely ignoring them. At least there seemed to be no ghostly soldiers around.

Ceri stopped as they entered another, more open area after crossing a wide stretch which looked like a major road. A small expenditure of the energy she had been collecting for the last thirty minutes and she knew exactly where she was. ‘We’ll go a little north and then plant that thing.’

Lily nodded. ‘It looks like some of those vines have grown up in this field. I think we should be careful.’

‘Huh. I was expecting fae to be the problem, not plants.’

‘Well, you know the magic around here can have some odd effects on the flora and fauna.’

Ceri smiled and started off across the field. ‘Don’t worry, pet. I’ll protect you.’

They had gone just over two hundred yards when the dragon thumped onto the ground in front of them. Neither of them had ever seen a full-sized one in its natural form. It was a pale brown in colour with a neck plate supported by long horns. Shorter horns jutted back from its lower jaw. Its legs were thicker than Ceri’s body and its bat-like wings seemed to spread out for miles. Huge, jet-black eyes regarded them for a second before it let out a rumble from deep in its throat.

‘Ceridwyn Brent, Ethilion Kephesit, welcome.’ The voice sounded in their heads, loud and clear, and sending a chill down Lily’s spine.

Ceri pulled herself up straight. She could feel a thread of fear from Lily, though the creature’s aura was not at full power. The awe, and even terror, that dragons were said to evoke suddenly made sense as Ceri felt the huge animal’s power washing over her. ‘You have me at a disadvantage, sir.’ The voice had sounded male.

‘You may call me Wächter. I dwell in the pit beyond here. I felt your presence and came to ensure your safety. The vines here will entangle you and leave you as a dry husk in under an hour. The fae call them Vampire Vines.’ He turned then, swinging his bulk around nimbly toward the direction they were going. His chest expanded and there was a sound like nothing Ceri had ever heard; a combination of forge bellows and jet turbine. Fire roared out, roasting a path through the plant life and leaving nothing but ashes. Then Wächter trotted off into the blackened track way leaving them to follow behind him.

‘There’s a dragon living in the bombsite in Munich and he’s heard of you?’ Lily said quietly just before their escort let out another burst of flame. The half-succubus’ voice still held a hint of fear even though it was clear that Wächter was here to help. Sickly green ropes of vine were pulling away from the burned path around them as they walked past, trying to escape the patches of grass which were still on fire.

‘Apparently there is,’ Ceri replied, ‘and apparently he has.’

‘And what was that he called you? Ethy-something?’

‘Ethilion Kephesit. Sounds like a title in draconic, but my draconic is… largely non-existent. Since he seems to be being nice I’m going to assume it’s not insulting. Hopefully it’s not the dragon equivalent of “cute little human girl,” or “looks good in pink frills.”’ She looked thoughtful for a second and then added, ‘Or “tastes good with ketchup.”’

Lily gave a nervous giggle. It was kind of useful to have a walking flamethrower to deal with their problems. Better to not look a gift dragon in the mouth; especially when that mouth was spewing forth a tornado of flame.

They continued forward that way for maybe another half mile before Ceri yelled, ‘That should do it Wächter. Here is fine.’ The dragon looked back, bowed his head, and stepped aside to give the two of them room to work.

Lily pulled the release tabs on her harness, allowing the huge rod to drop to the floor from her back with a sigh. She was stronger than Ceri, and had a slightly lower centre of gravity, and she would have declined if Ceri had offered to carry the thing. Last time they had done this, Ceri had offered. The two girls placed the rod with its point in the charred ground, at which point Wächter reached out a long arm, stretched out a finger, and tapped the top of the rod with a claw which could have ripped them open like tissue. The light tap drove the granite four feet into the packed earth, and almost took the skin off their hands as the stone whipped past.

Ceri turned her head and blinked at the dragon. ‘Uh, thanks Wächter. That was… good of you.’ She got to one knee and took a handheld radio unit from her pack, tossing it to Lily. ‘Let’s get London on the horn and get this done.’

It took a few minutes to connect through to the airship, and then for them to patch that connection through via long range radio to Battersea. Cheryl’s voice sounded distant and crackly on the other. ‘Are you two okay over there? Over.’

‘We’re fine,’ Lily replied. ‘Ceri’s ready to initiate the connection and…’ She paused as Wächter rumbled in the background.

‘What the Hell was that?!’ Cheryl squeaked, forgetting to say “over.”

‘We… have a, uh, well a guardian?’ Lily replied. ‘Apparently a local dragon found us interesting. Never mind that right now. Are you ready on your end? Over.’

There was a pause; Lily looked over at Ceri, who rolled her eyes. It seemed likely that the idea that a dragon had shown up to help was causing some consternation. ‘Uh, we’re ready when you are,’ Cheryl finally said. ‘Go ahead. Over.’

Ceri lifted her arms, raising her staff over her head. Her mind worked through the sequence of metaphysical equations needed to initiate the tunnel. Lily covered her eyes with her arm as light blazed from staff, rod, and the entire surrounding area, or so it seemed. Even Wächter turned away as the huge surge of energy needed to fire up the line caused the air to incandesce.

Lily hit the key on the radio. ‘It’s up. Over.’

There was another pause, then the sound of cheering coming over the connection before Cheryl spoke. ‘We’ve got twenty-five thaums within the circle and rising. Twenty-eight… thirty… dropping back… and holding at just over twenty-seven point five. External level is… one point eight-five. It’s working, just as you predicted.’

Lily looked over at Ceri, expecting to see relief. All she got was a short nod.

Wächter rumbled. ‘So it begins.’ Turning, he took too long strides, spread his wings, and lifted into the air.

‘Okay,’ Lily said into the radio, her voice more relaxed with the dragon gone, ‘we’ll head back and we’ll see you tomorrow. Over and out.’

Ceri was smiling when she looked back. ‘Come on, pet, let’s go home to some adoration.’

Interlude: Cheryl

Highbury, October 19th, 2012

Cheryl frowned at her laptop. The figures did not seem to quite add up and she was not sure why. She had continued studying the enchantment structures of the latest ley line, despite the fact that it seemed to be working fine. And now she had found something, or thought she had. Maybe it was just an error on her part.

Standing, she wandered to the kitchen area and took a bottle of white wine from the fridge, refilling her glass before walking back to her laptop. The dragon statuette Ed had sent her caught her attention; light from the candle beside it flickered through the crystal matrix and it seemed as though the little dragon’s eyes were glowing. She grinned; it felt as though Ed was watching over her.

Alcohol and careful consideration were not great bedfellows, but no matter how she tried, Cheryl could not get the equations to produce exactly the same results that Ceri had. To her it appeared that the energy output from the circle should be higher than Ceri suggested. Truthfully, that suggested that Ceri was right because the measured output from the circle seemed to be matching her predictions. She took a sip of wine…

There! It was there, hidden in the complex of equations governing the uppermost sequence of runes and their function. Ceri had said they operated only in three dimensions, reorienting the energy stream into a vertical fountain. They did, but there was a statistical component to them which would loop a small portion of the energy back on itself. Over time there would be a build-up of energy within the quantum probability field surrounding the central pole.

Cheryl took another slug of wine. How had Ceri missed this? What the Hell did it mean?

Another ten minutes of calculation and she was just more confused. The energy would build to a saturation level where leakage would limit its growth. If her maths was right, after around ten days the power output from the generator would rise as the threshold level was reached. There seemed to be no real danger, just a reservoir of thaumic energy sitting deep within the circle which would do, well, nothing.

Coming to a decision, Cheryl drained her wine glass and stood up. She would go to the Jade Dragon and talk to Ceri. That was the thing to do. Show Ceri her results and see what she thought. Except that she could not go to the Jade Dragon in some sweat pants and an old T-shirt. There was every possibility that no one aside from Carter and Alec even knew she had scruffy old clothes like this. She padded up the stairs to her bedroom to find a dress to put on.

Ten minutes later she came down in a short, black, sheath dress which she hoped combined business-like with club wear. She paused at the bottom of the stairs to put on her pumps, and that was when she noticed that her laptop was missing. Her heart thumped in her chest; someone had to be in her house, here in the room with her. She turned, frantically searching for whoever had taken her computer. Nothing. She turned back.

Something dark and vaguely man-shaped loomed in front of her. She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand blocked any sound. Strong hands with hot skin grabbed her arms and her world went dark.

Part Six: Draconis Cadit

Soho, October 19th, 2012

There were too many vampires in the Dragon. Ceri had a table of four younger ones and another with two more. The couple looked old, at least a century; old enough that they were more or less desiccated corpses under their glamour. They were not the only vamps in the club tonight either; all the girls had one or more groups. It seemed like the undead had decided on a night out for some reason.

‘We just need Lorna in to glam things up a little,’ Lily commented as she came back from the trio of vampires she had to look after.

‘I like mine,’ Sasha commented. ‘Theo always leaves me a big tip. And he’s never once tried to get his fangs in my neck.’

Lily smirked at her. ‘That’s because he’s been trying to figure out how to get his fangs in your thigh for two years.’

Sasha blinked. ‘My thigh?’

Ceri raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve never been with a vampire? They like the femoral artery. Inside of the thigh? And you have gorgeous thighs.’

The blonde waitress actually blushed. ‘Why’s he never asked?’

‘Vampires are just human,’ Lily replied. ‘Well, they were human. They don’t become super-confident seduction machines just because they died. He thinks you’re out of his class.’

‘But… he’s a vampire.’

‘And you,’ Lily said, ‘are a gorgeous blonde who struts around in a skimpy dress and, at least appears to be, ultra-confident and sexy.’

‘Oh,’ Sasha said. ‘Not that I really want to be bitten…’

Ceri chuckled. ‘Fang tease.’

‘I have fangs,’ Alec commented from behind the bar. ‘I don’t think she’s ever teased me.’

Sasha turned a mischievous grin on him. ‘Do you want me to tease you, Alec?’

‘Oh no,’ the werewolf said, holding up his hands. ‘If I want to be teased, I’ve got Cheryl to do it.’

Highbury, October 23rd

‘It’s the same scent,’ Michael said as he pulled his jeans back on. ‘The same things which took Mayhew.’

Ceri looked paler than usual, but panicking was not going to get them anywhere. Cheryl had failed to show up for a meeting at the power station, and the search had started two hours later when no one could raise her. She scanned the room again, looking for any clue and her eyes fell on a black plastic box beside the coffee table. ‘Her laptop. They took her laptop.’

John Radcliffe, hunting through the room with rubber gloves on, looked up. ‘You’re sure?’

‘The power block is here, the laptop isn’t. She used to put it away, with the block, when she wasn’t using it.’

‘Why would they want it?’

Ceri shrugged. ‘It has her research data on it… Uh, something to do with the power station?’

‘I’ll have security increased at the station.’ John pulled out his phone and hit a speed dial.

Kate walked in as he started to speak. ‘The neighbours remember seeing her come home on Friday. They neither saw nor heard anything odd, but they haven’t seen her since then.’

‘Friday?’ Ceri asked, receiving a confirming nod. ‘Right.’ She summoned her power and light flared around her fingers, growing in intensity as she searched harder.

Lily watched from where she was standing near the fireplace until the light was too bright to look at. ‘Ceri? Ceri! Stop, you need a better focus.’ The light cut out suddenly and Lily’s muscles relaxed from the tension which had been building.

Ceri looked angry, frustrated. ‘Nothing! I got nothing!’

‘A block?’ Kate asked.

‘More like… there was nothing to find, like she’d been erased.’ She looked at Lily. ‘What the Hell better focus can I get than her home and the place she was taken?’

Lily tilted her head to one side. ‘Her home, the spot she was taken, and Carter and Alec.’

~~~

Alec’s face was fixed into a grim expression which managed to convey his desire to murder someone better than any form of rage he could be flying into. Carter looked like a man who had not slept for a couple of days and was sure he would not start doing so soon.

Ceri held out a hand to each of them as soon as they entered the room. As they crossed to stand beside her and take her hand, Lily moved in behind Ceri. The hand she placed on Ceri’s shoulder would allow her to draw power through Lily. She was pretty sure that Ceri had pushed herself hard earlier. Anyway, Lily thought of Cheryl as a friend; while not as strong a bond as there was with Carter and Alec, it had to help.

‘I suggest closing your eyes,’ Ceri said, her voice soft but determined. Everyone did as Ceri readied the spell in her head and then… Lily let out a soft, gasping, moaning sound as Ceri pulled power through her, adding to the energy she drew through her own pattern. The light level rose to the point where Carter thought it might scar his retinas through his eyelids. Then it collapsed as Ceri let out a scream of frustration and, even when they all opened their eyes, the room seemed dark until their eyes adjusted again.

‘Nothing?’ Alec asked, a pleading tone in his voice. ‘A block? Something?’

‘Absolutely nothing,’ Ceri said, her voice hard, annoyed. ‘I’m not hitting a blockage or a ward. I’m just not finding her, not even putting out enough energy to blanket the planet.’ She saw Carter sagging to the couch, and Alec and Lily moving to comfort him. ‘She’s not dead.’

‘What?’ Carter’s voice had its own hard edge.

‘She’s not dead. Someone’s hidden her. Why hide her if they’ve killed her? They didn’t hide Mayhew. They’ve got her somewhere, for some reason. Something to do with the generator project…’ Her voice had trailed off into a musing tone and Carter’s eyes narrowed at her.

‘You need to find her.’ The playboy’s voice was cold now. ‘You’ve found people being screened by angels. Find Cheryl.’

‘I’ve tried!’ Ceri snapped. ‘I’ve just burned enough power to level a city. I used every trick I know to find her.’

Carter was suddenly on his feet. ‘Well maybe you need to try harder! Maybe you need to get some emotions of your own, Ceridwyn. Maybe you need to sort out where your head is at?’

‘Carter…’ Alec started.

‘What the Hell are you talking about, Carter?’ Ceri flared, cutting him off.

‘If we could just…’ Lily began.

‘You’ve been getting worse for weeks, maybe months,’ Carter growled. ‘You’re treating Lily like a slave. You call her “pet” all the time and now you’ve got a collar locked around her throat. You’re becoming callous. Do you even care whether we find Cheryl?’

‘Carter…’ Lily whispered.

Ceri’s jaw clenched. Her face reddened. Lily was sure she could see a flicker of blue light in her eyes as Carter involuntarily edged backward. Her pupils seemed to contract, the blue growing. ‘Right,’ Ceri snarled and Lily felt a sudden rush of power before the sorceress vanished.

Aberystwyth, Wales

The thaumatology department at Aberystwyth University was based out of a three storey, stone built building hidden away behind the railway station. Ceri had never been there, never seen it, except on a map, and teleporting there had been amazingly stupid. As she walked down the drive and around the building to the entrance portico, she wondered what the hell she had been thinking. That was the thing, she had not been thinking, she had been angry. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

And Carter had been right about Lily. After her birthday, Lily had suggested they might wish to make the Mistress and pet relationship more permanent and Ceri had declined. Now she was doing it. It was crazy! She was really starting to treat Lily as a slave for God’s sake. She wants it. Why not indulge her? Ceri bit down hard on the traitorous thoughts. No! When she got back to London she would take off that stupid collar and apologise.

There was no receptionist in the wide foyer with the huge staircase at the back. There were a number of students, however, and she walked up to one small group. ‘I’m looking for Professor Perry.’ She realised afterward that her tone sounded rather imperative.

One of the boys, looking a little bewildered, pointed toward one of the wings. ‘He has an office downstairs. That way.’

Nodding her thanks, Ceri started off through the double doors, finding a flight of stairs toward the end of the corridor beyond them. She trotted down into a wide atrium with doors leading in either direction and one leading to the outside. One of the inner doors had a plastic plaque on it, “Professor E. Perry. Thaumatology.” She walked up to the door and knocked.

‘Come in Ceridwyn.’ The voice from the other side of the door sounded distinctly unsurprised.

Twisting the handle, Ceri pushed open the door and walked in. The room was quite large, and more utilitarian than she had expected. There was a large table covered in books, lose papers, and folders, several large blackboards on wheels, and a desk with a computer on it, and Ed Perry sitting behind it. Ceri picked up a chair, carrying it over to the desk and sitting down on it. ‘Cheryl is missing. I need to find her.’

‘I… How do you expect me to…?’ He looked shocked, which was expected.

‘Brenhines taught Alexandra and Carter some methods of searching which let them find me when the Witch Hunter grabbed me. I’ve tried looking for Cheryl, but I’m getting nothing. It’s not like she’s warded or shielded, it’s like she’s not there. If she were dead I could find her corpse, but this is… It’s like she’s not there. I think she’s been taken out of this dimension. I need to search the demons’ world for her.’

‘You think demons took her?’

‘I think she’s your friend and it’s time you lot got off the damn fence and helped us mortals deal with them!’ Her fists clenched as she tried to control her temper. ‘Sorry. Things have got a little… emotional.’

‘Understandable. I think we should cut the emotional element and apply some reason.’ He stood, scurrying around the desk to clean one of his blackboards. ‘Enhanced search of a remote dimension…’ He picked up a stick of chalk and tapped it pensively against his lip. ‘Ah yes.’ Reaching out, he began to write on the board.

October 24th

Ed walked into his office to find Ceri bent over his desk, asleep. The sound of a coffee mug being put down in front of her had her jerking upright. She saw him and smiled, briefly, before she saw the serious look on his face.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Well, nothing which really affects us. It was on the news. An earthquake in the United States. Nine point three on the Richter Scale just off the north west coast. There’s a subduction zone there. Seattle and Tacoma are basically flat. Luckily neither city have high populations now. A tidal wave hit the Pacific coast of China and Japan. Over a hundred feet high. The death toll is… well, they aren’t sure how many died, but it’s a lot.’

Ceri thought of Katarina and Kangee, and the boy she had helped, Chayton. They were based well inland; hopefully they would be safe. ‘Damn,’ she murmured. ‘I think I have all the equations worked out. See what you think.’

Ed nodded and put a paper bag in front of her. ‘Danish pastries,’ he said. ‘Eat something and get some coffee in you. You’ll be no use if you can’t think for a growling stomach.’

~~~

The lab was on the top floor of the building, hidden away in one corner. The windows were blacked out and the lighting, such as it was, was subdued. The centre of the floor was marked out with a carefully drawn magic circle; a containment circle, but it wold serve their purpose.

‘We have the room for as long as we need it,’ Ed told Ceri as she began to prepare the circle; tracing over the marked lines with salt. ‘The Dean was a little iffy about it until I mentioned you did work for the Greycoats.’ Ceri smiled slightly and nodded. ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘It’s going to take a lot of energy.’

‘I know. I’ll be fine.’

‘You’ll be opening up your mind. Something could…’

Ceri stopped working and looked up at him, and Ed stopped. ‘I need to find Cheryl, Ed. I’m going to do this. Now step back and let me work.’

Ed nodded. He seemed more worried than she would have expected. He had trained her, he knew what she was capable of. Why was he so… nervous? She finished the circle and settled into the middle of it, cross-legged, settling her mind ready to work the complex magic she had worked out with Ed. The circle flashed into life around her, a column of magic which occupied only their reality. Its purpose was safety; if she used too much power, the circle would stop her irradiating the entire building before she died from internal injuries.

She gave a last look to Ed, standing on the circle’s edge. He had an odd expression on his face. Something like resignation. Shrugging, she drew in her power, set the equations in place in her mind, and opened herself to another reality.

Kennington, October 28th

High Towers was entirely dark when Ceri walked up into the hall from the cellar. She had ported into the summoning room for safety’s sake, but the house was too quiet. She stopped and looked around; there was no sign of anyone.

‘Lily? Twill?’ The names echoed through the hall and got no answer. Not until she heard a movement from the kitchen and a large, dark shape emerged.

‘They’re not here.’ It was Alec’s voice, flat and unemotional. ‘I’m not sure what happened to Twill. She’s not showing her face, I know that.’

‘And Lily?’ Ceri frowned. ‘Why are you here if they aren’t?’

‘I’m waiting for you to show up again. Where were you?’

Ceri opened her mouth to speak and the words she had been about to say caught in her throat. ‘I… I was… I went somewhere… I was looking for a way to find Cheryl.’

‘Did you?’ Her statement put a little extra warmth in his voice, along with far more worry.

‘I thought she might have been taken to the demons’ realm. If she was, I couldn’t find her. I’m sorry.’

He moved closer and she saw him nod. ‘Well, I have some more bad news for you. Lily’s not here because…’ He stopped, his voice catching, and Ceri’s heart began to hammer in her chest. ‘Michael was attacked. The Greycoats are sure it was a succubus. He’s in King’s Hospital, in a coma. They say the only thing that saved him was that he’s a werewolf and tougher than average.’

‘What?’ Ceri breathed. Her mind was refusing to take it in.

‘They have witnesses… They say… They’re saying they have witnesses who saw Lily leaving the corner of the park where he was found. Lily hasn’t been seen since. She’s on the run, Ceri.’

Ceri looked at him, her eyes not seeing him. ‘No,’ she said, and then she collapsed.

Denmark Hill, October 29th

Ceri had never seen Michael look so vulnerable. Even when his father had been dying, he had had a strength to him. Now he looked pale, ill; he even looked smaller. He was on an oxygen feed and a saline drip, and Alexandra was sitting beside his bed. She looked smaller too, withered. Even though it was the day of the full moon, her hair just looked grey instead of its normal silver. She gave Ceri a bleak smile and said nothing.

‘You can’t wake him?’ Ceri asked quietly.

‘There is more at work here than a coma. Something keeps his spirit wandering. There’s nothing to wake.’

‘Demonic magic? Lily isn’t capable…’

‘Some form of magic. If the Greycoats are right and it was Lily, she had help.’

Ceri frowned. ‘I can’t believe she would…’

‘No.’ It was rather a bald statement. ‘It’s Samhain in two nights time,’ Alexandra went on, apparently changing the subject. ‘Your birthday, Ceridwyn. I will be taking Michael to Battersea. It’s going to be a worse night than last year and he will need protection they cannot provide here. We all will.’

‘All…?’

‘Everything is in place. All the choices have been made. Everything which comes to pass must happen, Ceridwyn.’

‘You’re scaring me, Alexandra.’

The old werewolf looked at her and gave another bleak smile. ‘Don’t be scared, Ceridwyn. No matter what happens, don’t be scared. There is really no point.’

Westminster

‘The couple who found Michael saw “a very attractive woman with long, red-brown hair” leaving the scene,’ John said. He sounded tired, as though he had not slept well in a couple of days. ‘We showed them a picture of Lily and they identified her.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Ceri said. ‘Why? Why the Hell would she do something like this? And how? He hasn’t just been drained, something did something else to him that’s keeping him asleep.’ Her gaze swept between John and his partner Kate. There was not much sweeping to do; it was a small office.

Kate was looking slightly sick. ‘After you… left, Lily said she was going to look up some of her contacts. We know she went to the Dubh Linn. We found someone who said she had was looking for a demon to talk to, to confirm whether they had taken Cheryl.’

‘The bartender at the Dubh Linn said that the last time he saw Lily,’ John went on, ‘she was looking distracted, scared. She said she thought someone was following her. We think they got to her.’

‘Like last time,’ Kate said, ‘when her father was here.’

‘We fixed that,’ Ceri said. ‘She can’t…’ And I can’t feel her. Something’s blocking the bond. Or it’s been broken. ‘I have to find her.’

‘We’ve had diviners looking for her,’ John replied. ‘She’s hidden. Warded, or whatever you do to hide from scrying.’

‘Your diviners aren’t me.’

Kennington

The light around Ceri was almost blinding. Her body shone like a beacon and around her, shapes swam in the light, serpentine and western dragons looping around her like lovers caressing her skin. Ceri sat cross-legged in the summoning room, her chin tilted upwards and her arms raised as if in supplication. She looked calm, serene, but inside she was burning with frustrated anger.

The light collapsed and she let out a grunt of irritation. ‘Nothing!’ she shouted at the empty room. There had been nothing, no sign of Lily at all, and she could not understand why. She climbed to her feet and marched toward the door. She needed food.

‘I should be the perfect focus,’ she grumbled aloud. ‘She’s my demon. She’s bound to me. We’re connected. I know we’re still connected, I can feel it. I can feel the binding it’s just… It’s just going nowhere.’ She yanked the door open and stalked out into the corridor. ‘She’s still there, but I can’t feel her. I can feel the bond, but not her. It’s impossible. Unless…’

Demons had been working magic for millennia longer than humans had. They must have worked out how to screen a bound demon from its master. Even with all the power she had poured into the spell they were keeping her hidden. It would have taken a powerful demon, a demon lord, an old demon lord. ‘Molech,’ she growled as she walked across the hall. It had to be Molech. He was powerful enough to hold half the city against the other demons, he was probably skilled enough to work a masking spell like this. ‘But why? Why’s he doing it? What did he do to Lily?’

She came to a stop just inside the door to the kitchen, her appetite suddenly gone. What if Molech had not done anything to Lily? What if Lily was working for him of her own volition? ‘No.’ She could not believe that. Lily would never… Would she?

October 30th

Sleep had been difficult to come by and fitful when it had come. Ceri had memories of odd dreams where voices chanted meaningless words over and over. A ritual of some sort, she thought, but she had never managed to hold onto any of the words to determine what they were. When those dreams had slipped away, the nightmare had begun. She had found herself chained to the cross in the dungeon while Lily and half a dozen horned demons performed a ritual around her. She woke up screaming as Lily plunged a dagger into her heart.

She stumbled into the bathroom, running the shower cold and standing under it until she was shivering. She was still cold, even after she had run the water at almost scalding heat for five minutes, but at least she felt more awake and less shocked.

Just a dream. It was a dream and nothing more. It didn’t mean she was really…

Going down to the kitchen, Ceri made coffee and went through two mugs as she sat at the kitchen table trying to work out a way to find Lily. She had tried throwing power at it, but she was a thaumatologist, a theoretician. What she needed to do was think.

The trouble was that thinking seemed to be so hard. Her mind kept flashing over the nightmare. She saw the look in Lily’s eyes, the bright spark of red in her pupils, the glee as she had come toward Ceri with an ebony-handled dagger gripped in her hands. It was just a dream. But it had been Lily. Not the Lily she was used to, perhaps, but Lily. No hint of coercion. She had been Lily… No, Lilith. Her birth name was Lilith, like the Talmudic first wife of Adam. Her mother had liked the name, the sound of it, before she had really discovered the power Lily had. Lily had used it as a stage name when she had been acting in porn films, and she hated it. In the dream she had been every bit the embodiment of the demon she was named for. But it was only a dream.

‘Just a dream,’ she said to the empty kitchen. ‘It wasn’t her.’

~~~

Equations filled the hall, hanging in the air as streaks of silver. Ceri’s gaze swept over them and she let out an exasperated grunt of disgust before waving her arm and vanishing all of them. She was frustrated. She knew she was frustrated, but she could do nothing about the growing feeling of anger swelling through her. Nothing was right. She felt like an imbecile. Her power had got her nowhere, and now her magical theory was failing her.

And it’s all Lily’s fault!

She shook her head. It was not Lily’s fault. How could it be Lily’s fault? That was absurd. How could her failings be down to Lily?

She hurt Michael. Did she defend me against Carter? She’s hiding from me.

That was a ridiculous thing to think.

But Carter did turn on me, didn’t he? And Lily had said nothing.

Carter had been hurting, and Lily had tried to intervene, hadn’t she?

She’s the one using demonic magic. She’s the one concealing herself. She’s the one who’s on the run, wanted by the police.

‘No!’

Ceri bolted for the door to the cellar, almost falling on the stairs in her haste to get down. She felt as though her thoughts were not her own and she wanted to be somewhere safe. The summoning room, the circle.

She grabbed salt from the corner of the room and hurriedly formed a circle in the outer ring cut into the granite slab in the middle of the floor. It took almost no effort to raise the column of magic around herself, the salt shining silver as it formed, and then she collapsed onto the stone. For the first time in what felt like days there was nothing in her head but her own thoughts. She took a shuddering breath, letting it out slowly, and then pushed more power into the magic around her to keep it going for longer. Then she relaxed onto the cool stone.

The intention had been to think, isolated away from the rest of the world, but with her mind still and her body horizontal, her night of poor sleep overcame her and her eyes closed…

~~~

She was lying in a dark space which reminded her of another dream she had had. It had been a dream; she was sure it had. There had been pain there and voices, but here there was nothing. No sound, no light. She could not even see her hands in front of her face, but she could feel a smooth floor under her feet.

‘Do you really believe I would work for Molech?’

The voice came from behind her and she turned to find Lily standing there. It was like she was standing in a spotlight, and she seemed to be able to see Ceri. That was dreams for you. ‘Lil… I don’t want to believe it, but…’

‘But you’ve got all that evidence, and you’re a scientist. You think with your head, not your heart. The evidence says I’m working for Molech, or I’m being coerced.’

Ceri’s eyes dipped away. Lily was right, of course. What she knew was leading her to believe that Lily had gone bad somehow. She did not want to believe it, but what she had been told…

‘So, what evidence do you actually have?’ Lily asked.

Ceri looked up at her. ‘You’re on the run.’

‘I’m accused of almost killing Michael.’

‘There’s that. You were seen leaving the place he was found…’

‘But no one saw me attacking him, you haven’t talked to the witnesses, and you know how easy it would be make someone look like me.’

‘Then why are you hiding from me? Why not come to me? Talk to me? I can’t find you anywhere. You’re hidden behind some very powerful magic.’

Lily smiled. Her fangs showed. ‘Ah, now that’s the interesting bit, isn’t it? I love you, Ceri. I love Michael too, I’d never hurt him. So why am I hiding from you?’

‘Because…’ She stopped as Lily’s head rose, looking up as though startled. The light died and the half-succubus vanished. ‘Lily? Lily!’

Lights suddenly appeared around Ceri. She could see. Not just herself, but the surrounding room and the half-dozen Devos demons advancing on her. She turned and saw Lily again, standing at the back with a black-hilted dagger in her hand. Ceri let out a scream…

And woke up in the summoning room, breathing hard, with cold sweat running down between her breasts. She blinked and sat up. The circle she had raised had fallen while she slept and once again her head was full of fog and distant voices. The voices sounded louder now, she felt she could almost understand what they were saying. It sounded like some sort of chant, but the words were nonsense; nonsense with meaning which hung on the edge of her comprehension.

Shaking her head, she climbed to her feet and headed out into the corridor. On a whim, she stopped at the dungeon and looked in. It was dark, quiet, not occupied by Lily and six demons. Laughing at her own paranoia, she turned back into the corridor and headed for the stairs.

So, why was Lily hiding from her? There had been an implication in the dream that the half-succubus was actually hiding specifically from Ceri. That, whatever had happened, it was Ceri herself who was the problem.

Ridiculous.

But why would she hide from her Mistress otherwise? The Greycoats, yes, but Ceri?

She has fallen under the influence of Molech.

That made sense, of course, but what if Lily had not fallen under Molech’s influence? What if Ceri had…?

Ridiculous! She’s the succubus. She’s the one who almost killed me when her father’s influence affected her. She’s the one who tried to become my mistress. Now she’s denying me! She’s resisting me! She should be here, right now, so that I can determine her guilt and punish her…

Ceri stopped herself. What the Hell was she thinking?! If anyone needed to handle Lily’s case it was the Greycoats. Ceri was too close to…

Exactly. She’s my demon, my responsibility, mine to deal with as I wish.

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ she said aloud. ‘She’s not my property.’

Of course she is. She gave herself to me.

Confused, Ceri headed for the kitchen. She needed coffee. When had she last eaten? She needed to eat, keep her strength up. There was something important she had to do and it would be coming soon. She knew because the voices were getting louder.

October 31st

At some point it had become Ceri’s birthday. Since she tended not to celebrate that anniversary until the evening, she had not really thought about it, and it had been well after midnight when she had noticed anyway.

She sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee and trying to work out what she should be doing. All she could really think about now were the voices, they got louder and clearer with every hour that passed and she was starting to think she recognised the sounds.

At first she thought it was one of the demonic languages, perhaps Ctholnaraeic, the most ancient of their tongues. She had never heard it spoken, but she had seen it written down in the original characters and a phonetic notation. She thought she understood the basic sound of it, even if she could not really understand it.

Then the thought had occurred that it might be some ancient Earth language. Maybe ancient Egyptian or Aramaic, or something really odd like Assyrian or Babylonian. No one knew exactly how they were pronounced, as far as she knew, but there were definitely sounds like Egyptian in the sounds she was hearing. Something old, very old. Older than anything, just as Ctholnaraeic was the oldest of the demon languages.

Huanglong, the ancient patron dragon of the Chinese Empires, gave writing to the Chinese… And they call you Ethilion Kephesit, which sounds a bit Arabic or Egyptian…

Somewhere around three in the morning she realised she was listening to dragons. Dragons were chanting in her mind and she was now quite sure that what they were chanting was not good. She sat in the darkness, listening to the voices, unable to block them out or even move, but she was not scared. Alexandra had told her there was no point to being scared. What was going to happen had to happen, and the only thing left was to discover what that was.

~~~

The light was starting to go when Ceri wandered into her room, the room she normally shared with Lily and now seemed so empty without her. Someone had laid out an outfit on the bed. Ceri frowned, looking around and seeing no one, but she still had the feeling that there was someone there. She realised that she did not care; she had things to do.

Stripping off her clothes, she reached for the things laid out for her. The material was odd, black and shimmering, almost like it was made of a film of oil. The skirt clung to her hips and thighs and then fanned out. There was a corset that shrank around her waist as she put it in place and did not cover her breasts, but then there was a long-sleeved top with a tall, wide collar which made the outfit more or less decent, even if there was still a fair amount of flesh on display. Dressed, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked like the evil queen out of a fairy tale. Appropriate.

She headed out of the room and down the stairs. She could feel eyes on her as she crossed the middle landing; she ignored them, they were beneath her. She carried on down and across the hall, opening the front doors and leaving them for her unseen watchers to close behind her. The gate opened in front of her as she walked down the garden; another of her watchers, it seemed.

Down the street she could hear children laughing as they went house to house for candy. Ceri began walking threw the growing gloom toward Vauxhall. She was still not entirely sure what she was supposed to do, but she knew she would find out when she got to her destination.

No one paid her much attention as she walked past the tube station and past the cricket ground. She looked like someone going to a Halloween party. Normally, at this time, she would have been greeting the guests arriving for her birthday party. She might have even picked an outfit like this one to wear if she had known such a thing existed. She thought she looked beautiful in it, regal, every inch the evil queen. Which is what I am? The thought did not disturb her. Anyway, she was not evil, she was going to be a fantastic queen. She would rule with a firm, but fair hand. Wait… rule? Now that she thought of it, yes, wasn’t it obvious? She was the greatest magician on the planet aside from the dragons, and she was probably more powerful than most of them. Her heritage stretched back tens of thousands of years and she was the descendent of royalty older than any human nation. Who else should rule?

~~~

She saw the first of them as she passed the flower market walking down Nine Elms Lane. It was high up, probably above the power station, its wings spread as it soared and wheeled in the air. A second appeared a minute later, this one serpentine, and then there were more than a dozen of them and they were starting downward. Looking north across the river she could see another group descending toward the city centre. A few seconds later she heard an explosion.

It’s beginning. Whatever it was, it had started. The dragons were fighting. After the previous year’s demonic activity on Samhain, the government had moved heavily armed units into the city, but it would not be enough. The dragons had sorcery on top of tooth, claw, fire, and fear.

It was not long before she heard screaming and a couple of armoured cars roared past on the road. They were heading toward the power station. To their deaths. The thought did not disturb her, she had more pressing things to consider than the deaths of a few insignificant mortals. She laughed and got an odd look from another of the mortals running past away from Battersea. She briefly considered doing something about his impertinence, but it was not worth her time and certainly not worth the expenditure of energy.

The Royal Mail building was on fire. She watched as smoke poured from the northern side of it, smiled at the men in the armoured car out front, and turned down Cringle Street toward the station. She had gone maybe twenty yards before she heard screams behind her. Securing the area was important; they would want no one disturbing things once the ritual started.

The chanting was so clear in her mind now that her lips were moving to it. She could have repeated it in her sleep. She had been repeating it in her sleep. She had been hearing it every night since she had returned from Aberystwyth. She knew what it was, what it meant.

A dragon, black scaled and serpentine, curled out of the sky onto the road beside her, and she felt none of the awe Wächter had exuded. Instantly he transformed into a tall, oriental man in a long, black, form-fitting coat. ‘Good evening, Ethilion Kephesit,’ Huanglong said. ‘All is ready for you to begin.’

‘I’m ready,’ Ceri replied. She could feel power swelling through her as so many dragons congregated in one place around her. She did not feel the awe from the dragons because she was just as powerful. They were preparing her further, readying her for what was to come.

‘I know you are. We’ve been making you ready for decades.’

Ceri frowned. Some part of her wanted to know. ‘Why me?’

‘Your heritage, girl. The child of Brenin and Brenhines was meant to bring about our dominion over this world, but they never had a child and then Brenin destroyed himself. Your birth gave us the chance to begin again.’

Ceri looked upward. The sky was almost entirely dark now and she could see the comet, Draco Cauda, an arc of brilliance above the horizon. She could almost hear it calling to her, but it was drowned out by the chanting. What was he saying? She shook her head and walked on toward the towering shape of Battersea Power Station where the thaumic generator was still humming.

There were other dragons in human form waiting by one of the side entrances. They ushered Ceri and Huanglong into the generator room and then turned, transforming and taking wing. ‘They will ensure that we are not disturbed until you have established the bridge. Quickly now, this world’s magic field is growing with the darkness. We must begin, before the demons attempt to stop us.’

‘The demons, yes.’ All this time she had had it wrong. It was not the demons who were trying to enter the world, they were simply determined to defeat the dragons. Molech was trying to stop the dragons. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Ignoring the bodies of various technicians which had been gathered up and piled into a corner, Ceri marched toward the generator. Her Sight showed her the magic field twisting about the transducer columns, stronger now that the world around it was at a higher thaumic potential. She would need to be in the centre of it. ‘Leave me,’ she said, her voice soft, her mind full of chanting dragons. ‘I can manage this on my own. Lily will be coming for me.’

‘Your pet?’ Huanglong scoffed. ‘We have ensured that she is kept out of the way until you want her. She cannot…’

‘Lily is the only person on this planet who can stop me,’ Ceri said. She raised her arms to the central column and gathered her power. ‘She always has been, always will be.’ Light blazed in her hands and she began to chant, the same chant which had been echoing in her mind for days. A streamer of light lifted skyward from the tower before her as the stored energy in the centre post’s enchantment began to discharge and build the bridge.

Behind Ceri, Huanglong nodded in satisfaction and turned, heading toward the security room at the rear of the station. The column of light brightened and broadened as the bridge began to establish itself. Above them, in the sky, dragons began passing through from their own world and sweeping down on the unprepared city below.

And a single tear ran from the corner of Ceri’s right eye and down her cheek.

Part Seven: Lilith

Highbury, October 23rd, 2012

‘You need to find her.’ Carter’s voice was cold now. ‘You’ve found people being screened by angels. Find Cheryl.’

‘I’ve tried!’ Ceri snapped. ‘I’ve just burned enough power to level a city. I used every trick I know to find her.’ Lily felt her anger rising through their bond.

Carter was suddenly on his feet. ‘Well maybe you need to try harder! Maybe you need to get some emotions of your own, Ceridwyn. Maybe you need to sort out where your head is at?’

‘Carter…’ Alec started.

‘What the Hell are you talking about, Carter?’ Ceri flared, cutting him off.

‘If we could just…’ Lily began. Her heart was thumping; this was all going wrong.

‘You’ve been getting worse for weeks, maybe months,’ Carter growled. ‘You’re treating Lily like a slave. You call her “pet” all the time and now you’ve got a collar locked around her throat. You’re becoming callous. Do you even care whether we find Cheryl?’

‘Carter…’ Lily whispered, her stomach sinking. The sound of blood rushing in her ears was beginning to drown out the voices.

Ceri’s jaw clenched. Her face reddened. Lily was sure she could see a flicker of blue light in her eyes as Carter involuntarily edged backward. Her pupils were shrinking, the blue spreading. ‘Right,’ Ceri snarled and Lily felt a sudden rush of power before the sorceress vanished. It seemed as though someone had suddenly left a vacuum where Lily’s heart had been and she gasped, her hand lifting to her chest.

Carter was beyond noticing. ‘Where the Hell did she go?!’

‘Shut up, Carter,’ Lily said, and it was the pain in her voice which stopped him more than her words. ‘I can’t feel her. I don’t know where she’s gone. It’s like she stepped off the planet.’

‘I heard yelling.’ They all turned to the door where Kate had appeared. ‘Did you get anything? Where’s Ceri?’

‘She had to leave,’ Alec said, putting as much composure into his voice as he could manage. ‘She went looking for another way to find Cheryl.’

Somehow Lily knew that was true. ‘And I’m going to follow some leads of my own,’ she said, heading for the door. ‘Ceri thought demons took Cheryl. I’m going to follow that angle.’

Carter caught her arm. ‘Lily, are you sure you want to go alone? I could…’

She turned, eyes flashing. ‘You did enough. I’m a grown woman, Carter. I don’t need you looking out for me.’ Pulling away, she walked quickly past Kate and out onto the street beyond.

Mayfair

‘On your own tonight, Lily Girl?’ Sean placed a glass of red wine in front of her without her asking. ‘That mistress of yours letting you out on your own?’ Sean was fae-handsome, all dark hair and eyes, and with a hint of darkness about him which gave away his Unseelie heritage. Lily had known him longer than she had known Ceri, or even Carter. The man had given her a job behind the bar when she had first moved to London. She had been fifteen and too young to be a barmaid, but Sean was not the kind of man who cared about that kind of thing, and the police tended to keep their noses out of the Dubh Linn if they could help it.

‘We’re working different angles of the same case,’ Lily said, trying to believe it so that he would.

‘I see she’s got you collared.’

Lily felt her hand straying to her throat and changed it into reaching for her glass. ‘She’s my Mistress. She has the right.’ She sipped her wine. ‘How’s things in London’s most disreputable hole?’

The sidhe’s eyes shifted off to the right. Lily tried hard not to look, but she caught a shifting in the light in the corner of her eye. The Black Lady, the real owner of the Dubh Linn, was there somewhere, watching. Apparently she approved of Lily’s interest.

‘There’s some weird rumours floating around,’ Sean said. ‘A lot of the bigger fae are moving out of town, or going home.’

‘What kind of rumours?’

‘War, kid. There’s nothing too specific, but there’s war coming.’

‘Ceri thinks the demons are starting something. Alexandra suspects there’s some age-old war between the dragons and the demons. Ceri thinks it’s heating up, the dragons are staying out of it, and it’s up to us to stop it.’

‘What d’you think?’

Lily opened her mouth and closed it again. ‘Ceri’s smart, she’s probably right.’

‘Ceri’s intelligent. Brilliant. That doesn’t make her smart. What do you think?’

‘I… think the dragons are more involved in this than they’re saying, but the demons are more likely causing trouble.’

Sean nodded shrewdly. ‘I’ve not heard much about demons crossing over lately. It’s Samhain next week though, there’ll be more about then. Seems to me, if y’re wanting to know if the demons are up to something, you’re sitting in the wrong pub. Your father comes in here once in a while, but he’s no regular.’

Lily nodded and sipped her wine. She would go looking for Faran once the glass was empty. For the first time in years, since she had first come here as a wide-eyed teenage renegade, the Dubh Linn felt more like home than High Towers did. ‘How much is the wine?’ she asked, reaching for her purse.

‘It’s on the house, Lil,’ Sean replied. ‘You’re going t’ need it.’

Soho, October 24th

The throb of the music hurt her chest and she already had a mild headache from the dozen other places she had been before this one. She had not noticed a name outside, just a number of signs promising “Girls, Girls, Girls!” and “Hot Pussy on Show!” It seemed down-market, even for an incubus, but she had got a good feeling, or maybe a bad one, as she walked past.

There was an upper floor to the place. It had a stage with dancers; tired looking women doing the best to persuade horny ingrates to hand over cash. Lily felt for them; she had been up there at one time, though her natural talents made it far easier for her to draw out big tips. The house, she knew, was probably taking most of the cash. She had looked quickly around the room, seeing no one who drew her attention, but getting three propositions before she slipped back out and headed down to the rooms in the cellar.

Here the girls looked more tired, and were going table to table offering lap dances. Lily had been there too. It was a sweet deal for a succubus; she could even feed a little from the men she danced for, once she got them excited enough. She doubted her father was dancing however, or entertaining dancers. No, he would be looking for something else. She felt the pull from a corner booth and headed that way.

It had too occupants, a man and a woman. He was tall, good looking, a solid jawline and a slightly Roman nose, bright blue eyes and hair which looked jet-black in the dim light. He had the look of someone who worked out regularly; a strong, muscled body which showed well under the tight T-shirt and jeans. Lily ignored him and stared straight at the cute blonde he was sitting with.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Lily said.

The blonde smiled sweetly back at her. ‘Sure you won’t join us. I’m sure Mark wouldn’t mind a threesome.’ Mark’s eyes widened and he gave Lily a quick once-over, nodding enthusiastically.

‘It’s important,’ Lily replied.

The blonde sighed. ‘Sorry, Mark. I’ll have to catch you another time.’ She edged out of the booth and followed Lily out of the club leaving her potential victim sitting there like a kicked puppy.

By the time they were on the street, the short blonde had become a fairly tall man with shoulder-length chestnut hair. His clothes had shifted from a micro-skirt and cropped top to scruffy black jeans and a T-shirt with “Best Lay in London” printed on it in big, white letters.

‘Kind of unsubtle, Dad,’ Lily said, nodding at his chest.

‘And arguable,’ Faran replied. ‘You’re at least as good.’

‘Huh. I didn’t come looking for you for an ego boost.’

‘I gathered that. What’s up?’

He waited for the reply. They walked for fifty yards or so before she said anything, finally deciding that blunt was probably the best strategy. ‘Are the demons planning to invade this Samhain?’

‘If they were, do you think they’d tell me?’

‘There are rumours flying about. The Sidhe are vacating the area. Alexandra is having visions of a war between the dragons and the demons. I think you weren’t entirely honest about the rivalry there and I think you’d have heard something if there was something to hear.’

The incubus grunted. ‘Clearly working with those Greycoat detectives has made you far too good at connecting the dots. If there are plans for an invasion by demons, I’ve heard nothing. There is an expectation that Samhain will be bad this year, but no plans to use that beyond the usual playing.’

Lily considered that for a second. ‘Last year was bad and a demon lord Ceri thinks is Molech came to town and sealed off part of the city. The part High Towers is in. It was like he was protecting us.’ Faran did not reply and, after the silence had gone on a little too long, Lily said, ‘Dad?’

‘I need to make some arrangements. I’ll call you.’ He quickened his stride, pulling away from her.

‘Dad?’ she called after him. ‘What’s going on?’

Faran looked over his shoulder at her, but kept walking. ‘More than you know. Get some rest.’

Kennington

Home did not feel like home and Lily could not understand why initially. It was when she walked into the kitchen and there was no coffee in the pot that she began to realise what was missing; everyone.

She found a note in the attic, pinned to one of the rafters. Something has come up and I have to leave for a while. Keep Ceri safe. Your greatest challenge is to come soon, Lily. Hers will come later. All my love, Twill. Lily read it three times and then took it down to the kitchen where she put on a pot of coffee and read it again.

Why had Twill written the note to her instead of to both of them? How had she known Ceri was away? And where on God’s green Earth had the fairy gone?! It made no sense. Then again, very little seemed to be making sense lately.

Carter’s tirade at Ceri kept buzzing around Lily’s head. Ceri had changed. She had been changing for a couple of years now. It was to be expected after suddenly discovering her power. She had had to change to keep Lily’s demon in check. She had suddenly discovered that people found her attractive. Perhaps they should have gone slower. Was it my fault? I almost pushed her to be more my Mistress…

Lily shivered. Something felt wrong here. Something about the house felt… disturbed. She felt as though she was being watched. She looked around, trying to see something which might be causing her anxiety.

‘No,’ Lily said aloud, though she was not sure who she was saying it to. She turned off the coffee machine and started for the front door. High Towers was not her home right now. She needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else. The shadows here scared her.

Canning Town, October 26th

The building was just off Victoria Dock Road, a disused office building-come-warehouse which looked as though it had been used as a squat until the holes in the roof had got too big even for that. Faran pushed his way in through a door which had once been closed with a huge padlock and led the way in, winding through several litter strewn corridors until they reached a small back office on the main floor which still seemed to have intact walls and a door.

‘In there,’ he told Lily. ‘You’ll get answers. You might not like them, but you’ll get them.’

‘What’s going on, Dad?’ Lily asked, frowning.

He pointed at the door. ‘In there. Just remember that I…’ He stopped and then shook his head. ‘Never mind. Go in there and talk to him.’

‘Who?’

‘You’ll see.’ He pushed open the door and stepped aside. It was clear he would say no more so she stepped through and he pulled the door closed behind her.

There was a broken desk in the room, and two chairs which looked as though they had seen better days. A man was sitting in one of them. He looked to be about twenty, going on fifty. His eyes looked as though they belonged to someone much older and, as she looked closer, his features were far more weathered than his young face should have been. He was wearing a suit, but it had seen much better days, and he was wearing a coat which could have belonged to any homeless person you might meet on the streets around here.

As Lily approached he pointed at the other chair. ‘Good afternoon, Lilith. Please, take a seat.’

She remained standing. ‘It’s Lily. I don’t use Lilith anymore.’

‘Oh but Lilith suits you so much better. Please, sit.’ She moved around and sat down, fighting the urge to cross her legs and her arms. The man made her feel defensive. He nodded. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Molech, though I am currently occupying the body of one Alfred Truscott. He was a drug user. Oblivion. His soul degraded to nothing three years ago. These lost souls make such useful hosts and this is the only way I can come to this world, except for certain nights.’

‘Molech? You’re a demon lord. You’re after Ceri.’

The demon laughed; a mirthless sound coming from Truscott’s throat. ‘After her? I met her one night in Kennington Park. I saw her potential then, even though she had no idea of it. I knew her purpose, the reason she was born. I sent you to her. I sent your father to you. I protected you both from my brethren last year.’

‘No one sent me to her, I…’

‘Happened to go to Kennington looking for somewhere to live barely ten minutes after she put a card in the window of a local shop advertising for a lodger.’ He watched her jaw work as she tried to digest that. ‘When the Order of Merlin were trying to undermine her, I ensured that they would summon your father. I knew she could break his influence over you. I needed someone able to stay here and watch over her. Of course, he was most willing since he could help you, but his job here was to try to help Ceridwyn. Sadly he has failed.’

The problem was that it made sense. She had distrusted her father, and it had been Ceri and her mother who had persuaded her to give him a chance. He had been playing the same game with Ceri since he had begun teaching Lily to be better at being a succubus. It made him seem somehow less threatening. He made a show of trying to seduce Ceri, she made a show of letting him try and rejecting him. It made them all feel secure in a warped way. And he had kept dropping hints…

‘I’d imagine you are feeling manipulated,’ Molech said. ‘Perhaps betrayed. Believe me when I say that my efforts have been as nothing compared to what the dragons have been doing to Ceridwyn.’

‘There’s a war,’ Lily said, trying to regain some control of the situation, ‘between the dragons and the demons.’

‘There was a war, thousands of years ago. The realm the dragons come from, their universe, has a fantastically high level of magic. It created them. They are a highly improbable event brought about by the random play of magic in a chaotic universe. However, that extreme level of magic is driving their universe apart. It happens in all universes, it is happening here. But what will take hundreds of trillions of years here, and billions of years in my world, ass happened in millions of years there. They realised they could not survive there and sought another world to live in. They attacked us and were driven back, now they are coming here.’

‘What does that have to do with Ceri?’ Lily was beginning to have a horrible suspicion that she knew, but she wanted to hear it.

‘They need someone from this world to create the bridge. The original plan was for two dragons to bear a child here.’

Lily nodded and swallowed hard. ‘Brenin and Brenhines, but they couldn’t.’

‘Didn’t,’ Molech replied. ‘They came to like humanity. He stayed behind when the magic field collapsed, sacrificing himself to stop the plan from ever working. But they had created half-human children and when the dragons returned after the Shattering, as you call it, they saw their chance. They arranged for a child to be born of both bloodlines. Ceridwyn owes her very existence to their plot to take this world. They provided her with the ideas which led her to construct the generator in Battersea. When night falls on Samhain this year, they will make her open the bridge. She will be their anchor here much as you anchor your father. She will be installed as their puppet queen. Ethilion Kephesit in their language. She will rule as tyrant over all the world, governed by the dragons and, if nothing changes, you will be her pet. For all eternity.’

‘I… I have to warn her. She can…’

‘It will do no good.’ At least the smile he gave her was weak. ‘Even now, as she believes she searches for your stolen friend, they are inside her mind, programming her to do as they require. The dragons have taken steps to neutralise you. The police are looking for you in connection with an attack on her mate.’

‘Michael!’ She was half way out of her chair before his voice stopped her.

‘He lives. Sleeps. You can save them both.’

Lily looked at him. Her heart was going like a trip hammer and she tasted bile in her mouth. ‘How?’

‘You must allow her to initiate their plan. I can give you… items. They were made during our war against the dragons and they can protect you from their sorcery and fire. If you are in the right place, at the right time, you can shatter their bridge, throw them back and stop them for good. Their influence over Ceridwyn will be destroyed. The spell upon Michael will be broken and he will awaken. But there is a cost…’

‘I’ll pay it,’ Lily snapped.

‘Without even knowing what it is?’

I can guess. ‘Yes. I don’t want to know.’

Molech gave her another bleak smile. ‘She has enslaved you. Her actions have grown ever more callous. It is partially their influence, but influence brings out only a side of the personality which already exists. She has done all this and still you would give anything to save her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Think on it. We can do nothing until Samhain. If you still feel she is worth the price, return here then as the sun sets.’

Feeling dismissed, Lily got to her feet and started for the door. ‘I will be back.’

He gave a grunt; perhaps a form of acknowledgement. ‘One more thing. They have servants, slaves. Lost souls like Alfred, but imbued with part of the spirit of a dragon. The fire within them eventually destroys them, but until then they are powerful. They took your friend the doctor. They may well try to destroy you. The police are also looking for you.’

Lily nodded, reaching for the door. ‘I’ll be careful.’ And with that she opened the door and walked out.

Islington

The hotel was small and cheap, and you could hire rooms in it by the hour. Lily knew it from when she had worked the streets and knew that they never asked questions about what their guests were up to and never worried over proof of identity. “Lulu Chilton” had checked in for three nights, paying in advance, and the money was all they cared about.

The room had a bed, a small table with a desk chair, a small TV set mounted on a bracket near the bed, and a sink in the corner. There was a phone on the desk, but calling outside the hotel was extortionately expensive. Lily did not really mean to use it anyway. Her mobile phone was off too; one thing she had learned from Kate and John was that they could localise a phone’s position if it was used.

The evening news was full of the earthquake aftermath in America. The regions affected were not highly populated, but hundreds of people had been killed that they knew so far, and thousands had been injured. Lily knew people who lived on that side of the country, though they were more toward the middle, thousands of miles from the epicentre off the north west coast.

Then the story changed. ‘Concern this evening for Chinese Ambassador Mei Long,’ the presenter said and Lily looked up to see a still of the beautiful Chinese woman showing behind the presenter. ‘Ambassador Long has been missing for two days and Special Branch have been called in to search for her.’ The still cut to a video of various oriental-looking people walking off an airship bridge. ‘Chinese officials arrived in London this morning to assist in the search…’

Lily stopped listening as she watched the video. She recognised none of the officials, but there were several heavy-set men with dour expressions with them. She had only ever seen their type before guarding Mei, or one other dragon, Huanglong. She knew that dragons did not need to assume the same shape when they became human, one of them could be Huanglong, but whatever the case, she was pretty sure that a large number of Chinese dragons had arrived in London today.

‘Well, that can’t be good,’ she said to the empty room.

October 27th

Lily opened her eyes, unsure why she had. It was dark. Again. She had spent most of the last day sleeping, then watched whatever was on TV, and then slept again. She was still sure she was going to do whatever was needed to save Ceri, but there was nothing she could do now and the frustration was getting to her.

She could feel that something was wrong. Something was different. Something had changed and the room did not feel safe, not that it had felt very safe anyway. Her fingers moved to the chain around her neck over Ceri’s collar. Her father had given her the chain before taking her to see Molech. It was supposed to stop her being found by scrying. The collar… She could have had the collar cut off, but it reminded her of Ceri, her wonderful Mistress… Her hand moved away from her neck and slid under her pillow.

Something she could not see clamped a strong, but humanoid, hand over her mouth. It felt hot, far warmer than a normal human hand. Another hand gripped her throat. Lily pulled one of her daggers from beneath her pillow and slashed it at across where the arm of her attacker would be if he were solid. The hand over her mouth retracted as the blade hit flesh and bone. Blood flew in the air, splashing her face, but the hand on her throat got tighter and she felt the pinpricks of claws digging into her skin. She had seconds before she blacked out, less if the thing tore her throat out. Her pupils flared red and her defensive aura burned out into the room.

The thing’s grip slackened and then fell away. Lily pulled in a shuddering breath and pulled the sheets aside, swinging her legs out of bed and kicking something lying on the floor. Even now, with the thing lying on the floor concerned only with the pleasure it was feeling, she could not see it. She could feel it, however, and she edged her way along the body until she found a neck shape. Her dagger slashed; once, twice, on the third stoke she heard the blade scraping bone and stopped, stepping back.

Blood was pooling on the carpet. As she watched, the source of it faded into visibility. A man, naked and powerfully built. The claws on his fingers evaporated into normal nails and, after a second, she was left looking at a corpse with unnaturally dry, almost burnt skin. This had to be one of the servants Molech had warned her about. She felt almost insulted that they had sent only one. Except that they would probably send more quickly enough if this one failed.

Moving quickly, she began to pack up the few things she had brought with her.

Mayfair, October 28th

Lily slipped into the Dubh Linn, checking the room and then the shadows outside, before closing the door and walking up to the bar. Sean watched her until she was half way there and then turned to his optics. As she sat down he placed a glass of whiskey in front of her. She sank it in one go.

‘You looked like you needed it,’ he commented.

‘How good are your wards? Especially your scrying wards?’

‘Very good, but that won’t help if someone walks through the door. I heard the Greycoats were looking for you.’

Lily glanced at the door, more nervous than Sean had ever seen her. ‘It’s not them I’m worried about. Well, if they lock me in a cell I’ll be dead by morning, but they’re the least of my worries.’

She had spent the entire day on the move. If it had taken the dragons some time to find her, then she figured that moving might keep them guessing. It had been a good theory, but she was jumping at every shadow. She needed somewhere to stay for a while. Specifically, she needed somewhere where she could be fairly sure she would not be found.

‘I need somewhere to hide out until Wednesday, Sean.’

The bartender sucked his teeth. ‘You burned a lot of bridges when you went off with the sorceress and joined the Greycoats, kid. I don’t know if anyone’ll hide…’

‘I will.’ The voice was soft, smooth, beauty on the ears, and it came from someone who had not been sitting on the stool to Lily’s left a second earlier. Lily looked at her and felt her breath catch. The woman was shapely and beautiful, it was just impossible to actually pin down exactly what she looked at. When Lily closed her eyes, all she could remember was a shadow. This was the Black Lady. ‘I will hide you, Lilith Carpenter, until you need to be abroad. There would be a price.’

Lily laughed, though there was little humour in it. ‘That seems to be a theme at the moment.’

‘A favour is all I ask. A favour to be collected when I need it.’

Lily nodded. She would have to pay Molech’s price before the Lady could ask her favour, and she very much suspected that would mean a future favour was worthless. ‘You’re sure that’s what you want?’

‘It is. We have a deal?’

‘We have a deal,’ Lily said and then gasped as darkness enveloped her. A second later Sean was clearing away the glass from the space where Lily had been sitting.

~~~

The room was dimly lit. Only a single candle mounted in an iron cage on one wall provided light, and that seemed to almost sink into the stone walls of the circular chamber. Lily found herself lying on the cold stone floor beside what seemed to be a short, curved wall. She was not really sure how long she had been unconscious; it could have been a fraction of a second or several days.

She pulled herself to her feet and then stepped away from the short wall to put her back against the side of the room. The circular wall was actually the edge of a pool. Within it was a thick, black liquid something like oil, and it was moving. Its surface shivered as she gained her feet and seemed to move toward her as she backed away.

‘The Black Pool,’ Lily said under her breath. That was what “dubh linn” meant, though as far as she knew no one knew where the name came from.

The “water” moved again, the centre of it rising up into a bulge which just kept on growing. As it did so it seemed to take on a shape. A head and shoulders formed, then a well-endowed female body. Features formed on the head, a nose, hollows for eyes, a mouth. Arms separated from the body. As the black liquid woman reared above Lily only its legs remained undifferentiated; there was an impression of two limbs there, but they never separated.

‘Welcome to my home, Lilith.’ It was the same voice. This was the Black Lady. ‘The Lady of the Black Pool,’ she corrected as though she had heard the thought. ‘Seven hundred years ago I was banished from the Unseelie Court to this place, to dwell forever within this pool. Be honoured, you’ll be the first non-fae to enter this room and leave again.’ Her head turned slightly to the left and Lily looked that way, noticing for the first time an iron-barred door in the wall. ‘It’s not exactly comfortable, but it is better than the floor.’

The little room beyond the door was clearly a cell. There was a hole in one corner which she guessed was what passed for a latrine, and there was a rough, wooden cot. There were no sheets and just folded blankets to lie on, but the Lady was right, it would be more comfortable than the floor.

She looked back at the woman in the pool. ‘Why would you have this here if this is effectively your prison?’

‘I was exiled and imprisoned, but my jailors were not entirely cruel. I am allowed… visitors from time to time. I’m a fae, Lilith, I have needs, even in this state.’

Lily looked back at the bed. ‘Right.’

A melodic laugh came from the Lady as she began to sink back into the pool. ‘Don’t worry, child. You’re a guest. There is such a thing as hospitality.’

Lily settled onto the bed, wishing she had brought a book or something, and thinking that hospitality did not seem much defence.

~~~

The wind whipped through her hair and cooled her skin almost to the point where her own internal heating could not cope. Her Mistress seemed oblivious to it, sat on her throne, looking out over the devastation below. From here, high up above the city, the people looked like ants and the fires like pretty lights, but she knew that they were far from pretty close up.

The chain connected to her collar jerked and she looked up. Not too far up, not at Mistress’ face. Far enough that she could see the long, black gown. ‘Is it not good, pet?’ her Mistress said.

‘Yes, Mistress.’

‘Are you not happy to be here, by my side, rather than down there?’

‘I am only happy when I am at your side, Mistress.’ She had learned not to fall into that trap.

‘I’m glad to hear it, pet.’ Mistress stood up and pulled on the chain again. ‘Come pet, I feel like going to see the puppy. He still isn’t house trained. I think I’ll have to whip him again.’

With no choice but to follow, Lily crawled after her Mistress, toward the iron cage in which Michael lay.

~~~

Lily at up in bed, gasping for breath. A dream. It had been a dream. She felt sweat on her skin; she needed a shower. Swinging her legs out of bed she started for the door.

Ceri was standing in the doorway. Her dress was long and black, and her eyes flashed an angry, vivid blue. There was a bullwhip in her hands with long silver barbs along its length.

‘Don’t think you’ll get away from me by simply waking up, pet.’

~~~

Lily sat up in bed with a cry. Her breath came in ragged gulps and she clutched at her chest. ‘Shit,’ she muttered when she could breathe again.

‘Bad dreams, Lilith?’ The Lady was there, a dark figure in the dim light. Candle light reflected off her skin giving her more animation than she showed naturally.

‘Yeah, bad dreams.’

‘Perhaps you will be able to stop them becoming reality. And thank you.’

Lily frowned. ‘What for?’

‘You trusted me enough to take your clothes off before going to bed.’ Despite herself, Lily laughed. ‘There, that’s better.’

Standing, Lily padded out of the cell to the side of the pool. ‘I expected you to be colder. I’m not sure why, you’ve always been good to Ceri.’

‘Ceridwyn is not someone to get on the wrong side of. Even if you are the most powerful Unseelie in the city. Cultivating her favour is good politics.’

‘She’s not that powerful…’

The Lady’s head tilted to one side, stopping Lily mid-sentence. For someone whose face lacked definition, she could be amazingly expressive. ‘Her power grows in leaps and bounds. If you save her from this you may have to save her again when she realises just how much power she has. You… I simply like.’

‘You do?’

‘You are… uncomplicated, open. You lack the deceit so common in humans. You are what you are and you are happy with it.

‘That’s because of Ceri.’

The part of the Lady’s face which was a mouth, or some analogy of one, smiled. ‘You do have some self-delusion, of course. Who doesn’t? She helped, gave you support, I’m sure. Your bond with her means your father’s nature can’t affect you. She has gained far more from your relationship than you have.’

Lily looked up at the black figure for a few seconds and then shook her head. ‘No. I gained the most incredible mistress any succubus could wish for. I love her. I’m not sure I can explain what that means to me. I don’t quite understand it myself. She’s part of me. I need her to be complete.’

The Lady’s face shifted; for a brief instant Lily could have sworn she saw surprise register on it.

~~~

‘Do you know someone named Gloriandel Wintergreen?’ Lily said it to the empty room, knowing the Lady would hear her and respond if she wished.

The shape of a woman formed from the oily water a few seconds later. ‘I know of her. I’ve met members of her family. The Wintergreens are a powerful family. Fairies. Many of them are high up in the Seelie Court. They are very adept at fae politics, which means espionage, assassination, and advantageous marriages. Gloriandel was to be the subject of the latter and chose to exile herself from court rather than go through with it. The rumours persist that she still lives and remains hidden.’

‘Rumour has it that she’s said she’d see any fae who harms Ceri dead.’

The Lady nodded. ‘Word reached my ears that she might return to the fold just to see that happen.’ There was a slight pause. ‘I also heard she would do the same for you.’

Lily looked at her; there was far too much coincidence in that statement. ‘You know where she’s hiding?’

‘I know where she was hiding. So do you.’

‘Shit,’ Lily said.

October 31st

‘Wake up, Lilith. It’s time for you to go.’

Lily opened her eyes and rolled off the little bunk. She said nothing as she gathered her clothes and started to dress. Time had no meaning in this place; she had had no idea of the time, or even the date. Somehow it did feel like it was time. The room felt magical all the time, but now that magic seemed stronger. Outside the sun was dipping toward the horizon and the world was preparing for a really violent Samhain.

‘Are you ready?’ the Lady asked.

‘Yes.’

‘For whatever tonight brings?’

Lily stood up and settled her bag on her shoulder. She settled her daggers in their sheathes on her hips and nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Very well…’

Darkness wrapped around Lily like a shroud and she felt herself lurching sideways.

Canning Town

Faran was waiting outside the office when Lily arrived. He looked more serious than she ever remembered him seeming before.

‘You’re going to do it then?’ he said as she walked toward him.

‘Did you really think I’d back out?’

‘No. But you’re my daughter and I’d sort of hoped.’ Lily gave a little shrug as a reply and Faran opened the door behind him and led the way inside.

There was no demon lord embodied in a tramp in the office this time. Instead an ornately carved wooden case rested on the table, its lid closed. It was around four feet long, maybe eight inches square. Beside it was a bundle of folded cloth and there were thick leather boots on the floor. Lily walked over to it and ran her hand over the reddish wood. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to carve and then inlay an arrangement of runes which looked like they probably belonged to the Ctholnaraeic language. Lily could not read them, but she could sense the power in them.

‘The runes ward and contain the contents,’ Faran said.

‘It’s dangerous?’

‘That depends on who tries to open the box. The smith who made it was a woman, only a woman can open it. The last man who tried was reduced to ash.’

‘Oh. Is that the only requirement?’

‘Only a woman, only a demon,’ Faran said.

‘I’m not…’

‘You’re demon enough, daughter. I didn’t train you to be more in tune with that side of yourself just to help you use your powers more effectively. Besides, the last requirement is the most important.’

Lily turned her head to look at him. ‘And that is?’

‘Only a woman, only a demon, only one worthy to wield the things within.’

‘And am I?’

He smiled at her, his fangs showing. ‘It’s hard to find a worth demon these days. Why do you think Molech went to all the trouble of getting you ready for this?’ He nodded at the pile of cloth. ‘The dress and bindings go with it, sort of.’

Lily looked down. ‘Does that come with dire warnings for the unworthy?’

He chuckled softly. ‘No. Just a dress, but it was made especially for you. I know how you prefer to avoid tight clothes when fighting.’

‘All right,’ Lily replied, reaching for the hem of her T-shirt. ‘You’ve been working for Molech the whole time?’

He paused before replying, perhaps assessing her mood. There was no anger in her voice; resignation perhaps. ‘Not exactly. He offered me a mutually beneficial deal, with menaces. You and Ceri were important to him, but Sally was not.’

‘He threatened Mum?’

‘He… suggested that she might come to harm if I were not here to assure her safety. He put a guard on her house last Samhain, if a more subtle one than his operation in London.’

Sitting down to take off her shoes and jeans, Lily was silent for a few seconds. ‘I guess I should be angry with you, but I guess he’s not a man you can say no to. And… well, Mum isn’t really anything to you. She’s a woman you impregnated at a party. I’m the one you need to keep you here.’

‘She’s… Yes, I suppose you’re right.’

Lily gave a grunt and got to her feet, padding across the dusty floor to the table, unfolding the dark red garment she found there. It was little more than a tabard with a cowl. There was a deep slash in the front which would show a lot of cleavage and, beneath the waistband, it was just too long strips of cloth. Lily pulled it on over her head, leaving the cowl folded down, and twisted a little to examine it. ‘Your boss has a kinky idea of combat-wear.’

‘He’s not exactly my boss. Certainly not my Lord.’

Lily was wrapping her forearms in bandages which matched the dark red… no, the blood-red colour of the dress. ‘Your patron then.’ With the wraps tied in place, she sat down again to put on the boots and then, taking in a deep breath, she got up to open the box.

The lid opened smoothly to reveal the three things within. A pair of ornately carved bracers made of a metal which had an odd sheen to it. Perhaps Ceri could have identified the alloy. The sword beneath them looked more normal, but she could feel the power from it. It was not normal at all. Whoever had made these things had been an enchanter of incredible power.

‘The sword is a dragon killer,’ Faran said. ‘I realise the bracers don’t look much, but they’ll protect you against sorcery, and fire, and with them on you’ll have skin that can stop dragon claws. Even now we can’t make things like this. The woman who made them was a genius.’

‘A lost art,’ Lily said. ‘Ceri said the same thing about Stonehenge, then she built it.’ She reached out quickly, before she could change her mind, and picked up one of the bracers. The metal felt warm, almost pleased to have her touch it. ‘I guess I’m worthy.’ She slipped the metal over her arm and started doing up the straps. Her father looked like he wanted to help, but was nervous about coming into contact with the enchanted metal.

With both bracers in place she picked up the sword. It had a hilt long enough to use two-handed and bound with black leather. The cross-piece was carved, its tips hooked forward around the first few inches of the blade, which was straight, but slightly broader toward the tip than the hilt; a weapon designed for chopping. A sudden surge of power pulsed through her as she completed the set. She shivered. ‘All right. Let’s do this.’

Molech was waiting outside the building. The real Molech; fifteen feet of purple skinned, horned, bat-winged, goat-hooved demon with a long tail ending in a barbed tip. He looked down at Lily and smiled a smile full of sharp teeth. His voice had a resonance which had not been there when possessing his puppet. ‘Lilith, you are looking every bit the dragon slayer. We need to move quickly. Even now Ceridwyn is opening the bridge.’

‘I need to go to High Towers first,’ Lily told him.

His angular features shifted into a frown. ‘There is little time and I cannot get you too close to the power station…’

‘There’s something important I need from the house,’ Lily said, her voice firm. ‘High Towers will be close enough for me to get there. You won’t need to go closer.’

The huge demon regarded her for a second or two, apparently deciding that she could not be moved. ‘Very well,’ he said and then his wings stretched out to wrap around her and the world twisted about them.

Kennington

There were dragons in the sky. They wheeled and turned, twisted in the air before diving to let loose a burst of flame. Lily could hear explosions in various directions. She looked across toward the river as they arrived outside the arbour at the side of the house and saw a missile of some sort lancing up into the sky; it looked like the expectation of another bad Samhain had resulted in the army being brought in. Whatever the projectile had been aimed at, it missed.

And high in the sky, brighter than any star now, the comet could be seen. The Dragon’s Tail, Draco Cauda; a curl of light in the heavens to mark the coming of the dragon army to Earth. Or was it? Somehow as Lily looked up at it there seemed to be a voice speaking softly in her head, though exactly what it said was not clear. It sounded, to her, almost pleading.

‘Be swift, and careful,’ Molech said to her, breaking her train of thought. ‘The bridge is partially open and their forces are growing. I cannot pass through the house wards, but they can.’

Lily frowned. ‘How?’

‘The communication focus they use, it allows them in.’

Lily headed for the side door of the house. The dragon statuette in the cellar. Obviously it did far more than allowing them to project images through it. Slipping into the second kitchen, Lily was struck by the realisation that that was how they had got to Cheryl; she had been given a dragon statue too.

There were three of the servants waiting for her in the hall. The magic of the armour apparently worked to reveal them. Equally obviously, they were unaware they could be seen. Pretending she did not know they were there, Lily headed for the stairs as they surrounded her. She was not used to a sword, but this one seemed to lend skill she did not have. The nearest of them was beheaded before he even knew she was attacking. The others faltered, which gave her an opening to run the second right through his chest. The last clawed at her throat and she heard a sound like nails on metal even as she felt the dull pressure on her skin. Yanking her blade free, she turned, slashing through the creature’s stomach, and then turned back to the stairs leaving it to die in a pool of its own blood.

There were no more of them, but Lily wanted to be out of the house as quickly as she could manage. The place she called home felt wrong, sick. It was as if, because its Mistress was not in her right mind, the house was suffering. She wished Twill was there. The fairy could have at least made the house feel right. But Twill was probably in the fae Otherworld now, wasting her freedom. Lily hoped that Ceri could somehow do something to help Twill once this was over, but for now there was nothing to be done.

The necklace was where Ceri had left it, on the bedside table. Lily lifted it by its chain, looking at the silver-metal rectangle suspended from it. Embossed into the surface was a stylised image of a dragon; a sort of tribal-style creature curled around, nose to tail. Ceri had the same image on the back of her right hip. It looked like a tattoo, but it had formed under her skin apparently of its own volition. This was the symbol of Brenin and Brenhines, Ceri’s draconic ancestors, and the pendant had been given to Ceri by Brenhines. The dragon had said it would bring insight and Lily hoped that it would work now. Tucking it away inside her dress, she turned and headed back the way she had come.

She walked out of the house into a scene of chaos. Molech was standing over the neck of a dragon, his clawed hands gripping its horns as he struggled to hold it down. He looked at her as she emerged and started toward them, his eyes glowing red. ‘Get to the power station,’ he growled. ‘You must drive the sword into the ground beside the central pillar. It will do the rest. Now go! Leave this to me.’

Lily’s fist clenched around the hilt of her sword, then she nodded and ran off toward Saint Agnes Place and the road to Battersea.

Vauxhall

Lily ducked into the shadows of an office doorway as an armoured car turned onto Nine Elms Lane from Vauxhall Bridge. She recognised the model, an Archmage like the one she had rode through Germany in with Ceri. This one, however, had a large launcher system mounted on it behind the upper hatch. She saw it swivel toward the river as the vehicle came to a halt, and then there was a deafening roar of exhaust as a missile blasted into the sky trailing a pair of thin wires.

Looking upward, she saw the reason for the attack as a dragon twisted in the air, dodging the wire-guided missile by a few inches, but a few inches was enough. The huge creature dropped quickly toward the road, fire roaring from its mouth. It could not penetrate the vehicle’s armour, but the wash of flame set the tires alight and stopped the people inside from reacting quickly enough. When Wächter had landed beside her in Germany, Lily had felt fear verging on terror, even though she suspected the dragon was holding back the aura the creatures wrapped themselves in. Now she felt nothing. A second dragon landed behind the Archmage, boxing it in, and the two creatures raised their heads and roared. Lily had no idea what they were doing until the rear door of the armoured vehicle burst open and the gunner staggered out, gasping and choking. Smoke of some sort followed him; the vehicle was supposed to be screened against magic, but somehow the dragons had breached its defences with a poison gas spell.

Lily saw the dragon at the rear raise one clawed forelimb, and then she was bolting forward, her sword rising. She was not fast enough. The dragon’s claws slammed through the man’s body, right through his armoured vest. Lily let out a scream of anger and brought her sword down on the dragon’s leg. There was a flare of bluish light and the dragon reared backward letting out a roar of pain.

Fire enveloped Lily, wrapping around her like a hot cloud. She barely felt it; the warmth was even pleasant. Turning, her hair swinging, she saw the first dragon charging at her. Ducking under its snapping jaws, she rammed her sword upward. Light flared again along the blade as it burned up through the creature’s throat. There was no resistance as it breached the base of the skull and slammed into the brain above. She twisted the sword free as the dead dragon staggered reflexively and fell.

She felt the wind of the second dragon’s wings as it beat into the air. Fire enveloped her again, but it was clear that the dragon knew it could not harm her. Rising higher, it flapped away toward the power station. Damn! Stupid… They would know she was coming now.

As she ran on, heading for the riverside walk to avoid the main road, Lily reflected that there was every chance that they had known anyway.

Battersea

The area near the power station was a war zone. Army and police rapid reaction forces were trying to get to the power station, and the dragons were quite determined to keep them away from it. Dragons looped through the sky and stood guard at ground level. There had to be hundreds of them already and more were coming in.

Streaming from the top of the station building was the bridge, a coruscating column of magical energy which seemed to stretch up into space, though Lily suspected it topped out in the upper atmosphere. Up above the city the aurora was shining brilliant green with sparks of yellow and red radiating out from the bridge. As Lily watched she could see a few dark spots amid the colours, each one falling and resolving into a dragon which arced away from the bright light and joined its fellows. There were enough of them now that they were beginning to spread out, widening the cordon around Battersea and spreading the destruction further afield.

It was not going all their way. The missiles did not always miss and Lily had run past at least one dragon who would not be celebrating their dominion over the Earth if she failed. There were also a number of serpentine drakes plunging toward the park and, from the way they flew back up and dropped again, fire tearing through the air as they went, Lily was pretty sure that Alexandra was holding them back from the pack. Another reason to hurry this up. I don’t know how long they’ll hold against that.

It looked as though someone in the army had called in heavy ordnance; the waste ground to the south of the station had some huge craters in it. Even so, crossing that ground was going to be impossible without being spotted, so Lily had edged around the site to the railway line running along its eastern edge. Around three hundred yards up from the main road past the station, the track was as close to the station walls as any other access point around it.

Her sword made easy work of the chain fence at the edge of the site and she dashed across the gap between the bushes at the side of the track and the wall. The huge walls loomed above her; concrete and steel stretching up into the sky like a living beast themselves. The dragons were busy with the human forces and failed to notice the single woman edging along the wall to one of the service doors. She found herself in the transformer hall, the section of the station which was converting electricity from the transducers into a suitable form to feed the national grid. The machines were still humming; the system continuing to provide power even though the generator was being used to fuel the bridge and the local substations had been taken out, plunging the area into darkness.

With the generator running at full power, the station’s interior was ablaze with light. Sneaking about was going to be largely impossible, but then again, it also seemed to be unnecessary. Whether through arrogance or lack of forces, there were no dragons in the room. They would have been easy to spot, and probably would have found it difficult to operate amid the bulky machines with their sharp edges and protrusions. From what Lily knew of the generator room itself, there was far more room to manoeuver in there, so perhaps that was where she would run into trouble.

She was running down the side of the hall toward the north section where the huge circle of transducers was located when the voice brought her to a halt. ‘Little Lily Carpenter, all dressed up and come to save her Mistress.’ It was resonant, obviously Chinese, easily audible despite being quite low, and she turned to see the tall figure of Huanglong standing down one of the aisles between the machinery. He was dressed in a long, straight, black coat, and he stood there, quite still, with his hands folded behind his back. ‘To think a simple pet could stop our grand purpose is beyond presumptuous, but tell me, what makes you think she wants you to save her.’

‘That’s really beside the point, isn’t it?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You didn’t come here in some misguided attempt to rescue her from her destiny?’

‘Of course I did, but it doesn’t matter whether she wants it or not.’ She turned, swinging her sword in an arc which sliced through the neck of a servant coming up behind her. When she turned back to face Huanglong he was glowering at her. ‘I can’t let you succeed, no matter what.’

‘We just want to survive,’ he said. ‘Is that too much to ask?’

‘Grow up. If that was what you wanted you could have asked nicely. There are plenty of places you could have been accommodated without mounting a full-scale invasion.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s what the problem was, wasn’t it? Back when Brenin allowed himself to die to thwart the original plot. You had a whole world you could have lived in without bothering humanity, but your kind wanted slaves. That’s what caused the split. That’s why Brenhines has been trying to keep Ceri out of your clutches. That’s why Mei Long has vanished. You’re nothing but a bunch of petty tyrants.’

His right arm swung around from behind his back, hand raised and fingers spread. Fire roared toward Lily, wrapping around her. She felt the heat, but there was no pain, no burning. She stepped into the jet, her sword swinging upward, and Huanglong let out a scream as his hand was tossed into the air.

Clutching his bleeding stump to his chest, the dragon-man ran back down the aisle. Lily ignored him, turning to carry on the way she had been going. She had more important things to do; in the next room, Ceri would be waiting.

The generator chamber was full of even brighter light than the rest of the building. Bands of colour twisted up from the centre of the circle, vanishing up through the ceiling far above. Wind roared around Lily as she walked in through one of the doors, pulling at her hair and whipping her dress’ skirt around her legs. She kept walking toward the huge outer circle of transducer poles, her eyes scanning around for any sign of dragons, or Ceri. Her senses screamed; the magic field within the circle had increased to truly dangerous levels with the rise in level outside. There was a pile of bodies in overalls in one corner of the room, but there was no sign of Ceri.

The wind died away as she stepped through the outer ring, becoming little more than a breeze, but the sense of intense magic was even stronger here. Something dark was visible inside the inner circle and Lily knew that this was Ceri. The sorceress did not move as Lily walked toward her. She remained standing in the blazing light from the central column, her arms raised. As Lily closed the distance she could hear chanting. The language was nothing she had ever heard before, but it had the same quality as the few words of draconic she had heard. Ceri probably did not understand what she was saying; she had been programmed with the spell necessary to open the rift between the two worlds. Now she was chanting it, repeating the same set of sounds over and over, with each repetition adding to the power in the bridge.

‘Ceri,’ Lily called out from just within the inner circle. ‘Ceri, stop.’

Somewhat to Lily’s surprise, she did. Ceri turned and smiled at Lily. Her eyes were blazing a bright blue, pupils shrunk to pinpricks, and the smile did not reach them. She was dressed in a black gown, or something like one, with a high collar. It was like something out of a fairy tale, the kind of thing worn by the wicked queen. The material flowed like liquid latex around her legs, hugging her hips as it rose up into a corset which stopped under her breasts. Indeed, the lower slopes of her breasts were exposed along with the space between them and most of her collarbones. Lily swallowed; her mistress was every bit the divine, dark Mistress. Hellishly sexy. Can I do this?

‘My pet! You’ve returned to me, and you’re still wearing my collar. We’re going to have such fun. I’ll have to punish you for running away, of course. You understand that, don’t you?’

Lily looked at Ceri, feeling an ache in her chest. She felt… empty. And there was her Mistress, waiting to fill that void. ‘I understand, Mistress.’

‘The bridge is almost complete,’ Ceri said, her voice soft. ‘Soon they’ll come, all of them, and I’ll be the queen humanity deserves. The mother they need. The bringer of the toughest love they’ve ever known.’

‘Yes, Mistress.’

‘Come closer, pet,’ Ceri said, her voice soft, almost loving. Lily moved closer, until there was barely a foot between them. ‘Kneel.’ The word was almost a whisper. Lily dropped to her knees on the bare concrete floor. ‘Do you love me, my beautiful pet?’

Lily looked up and saw the pain in Ceri’s eyes. There was still some of the girl Lily knew and loved in there, looking out and knowing what was happening to her. ‘Yes, Mistress, more than life.’

The wind rose, pulling at Lily’s hair. Ceri drew her arm back, hand held out flat, ready to strike. ‘Then why are you letting this happen?’

Lily moved, twisting around on one knee, pushing up with the other leg. Her sword swung around as she turned, arcing through the air as a blaze of silver light. Ceri’s eyes widened, but there was nothing she could do as the blade swung at her head. At the last instant, Lily twisted the sword and the flat of it smashed into the side of Ceri’s skull. There was a flash of bright, blue light and Ceri was thrown over, tumbling to the concrete to lie still.

Ceri’s pulse was still strong in her throat. Lily heaved a sigh of relief, and then pulled the necklace from her bodice, placing it around Ceri’s neck before climbing to her feet and almost stumbling over to the central column. Here the wind rushed upward, following the stream of energy toward the bridge. She raised her sword, gripping the hilt in both hands and let out a sob. ‘I’m sorry, Ceri,’ she said, and then drove the sword into the ground at the foot of the pillar. The concrete cracked as the blade passed through it and a shudder ran through the coloured stream of light.

Lily turned to look back at Ceri’s fallen body. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, and then her world became nothing but blinding, white light.

###

About the Author

I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.

Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.

I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still loved the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.

Writing, sadly, is not my main source of income. By day, I’m a computer programmer. I work for a telecommunications company in Manchester, England. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, and (recently) Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.

For More Information

The Thaumatology Blog: http://thaumatology.wordpress.com

Other Books in the Series

Thaumatology 101 – ASIN: B006IYIESW

Demon’s Moon – ASIN: B006JPN7A0

Legacy – ASIN: B006OKR8PK

Dragon’s Blood – ASIN: B0072S1DOU

Disturbia – ASIN: B007GNICZO

Hammer of Witches – ASIN: B007YG2I44

Eagle’s Shadow – ASIN: B008E17TYW

Ancient – ASIN: B00923F8AS

The Other Side of Hell – Coming December 22nd 2012

Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe

Tales from High Towers’ Study – ASIN: B006ZAJ7TY

Tales from the Dubh Linn – ASIN: B0080XPD88

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part One: The Containment Issue

Part Two: Science!

Part Three: Lines of Power

Part Four: Friends and Family

Part Five: Power Politics

Part Six: Draconis Cadit

Part Seven: Lilith