Thaumatology 09 - Dragonfall

by Teasdale, Niall

  ‘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 mom
ent 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.