Thaumatology 12: Vengeance

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘So we still have someone else out there, maybe a dragon, working for one of the Ancients,’ Ceri agreed.

  ‘That puts you three in danger,’ Lorna said. ‘I mean, Lo Chan and Braun seem to be after me. Lo Chan may want revenge on John for breaking up his drug ring in Newcastle, but neither of them would have a reason to hurt you unless you come after them. This enchanter…’

  ‘If he is a dragon, he may have reason to dislike us,’ Gwyn said. ‘Until we know who it is, it is impossible to say.’

  ‘One problem at a time,’ Ceri said. ‘The immediate threat is Lo Chan. Hildegard may just be reacting to him and she’ll go back to being quiet when he’s out of the picture. We can worry about our unknown sorcerer when we have to.’ She sank the remainder of her glass of wine and then said, ‘Two… one…’

  ‘More drinks?’ Lily asked brightly as she appeared beside their table.

  ‘Just like clockwork,’ Ceri commented, grinning.

  April 18th.

  ‘It’s quiet,’ Lily said as they headed down the steps into Tottenham Court tube station.

  ‘It’s kind of the middle of the night, love,’ Ceri pointed out, though she understood what her demon was saying.

  ‘It’s quieter than usual,’ Lily added to make sure everyone else did.

  They walked into the ticket area and that was empty. No sign of anyone on duty, but that was not unusual in the early hours. But…

  ‘There’s no one at the ticket desk,’ Ceri said. ‘Let’s keep moving. I want to be behind my wards as soon as possible.’

  They were through the ticket barrier when Michael turned and sniffed at the air. ‘Undead,’ he said. ‘Not Lorna, and… I’m not sure where from.’

  ‘Crap,’ Ceri grumbled. ‘I’m glad we paced the drinking. We move quickly.’ She started for the escalators. ‘Ishifa, keep an eye on our rear.’ The fairy was, as usual, riding on Michael’s shoulder and she twisted around to do as asked. ‘If we have trouble we put a defensive cordon around Lily, Michael and Lorna.’

  ‘I can fight!’ Lorna snapped.

  ‘You can fight anything that gets past Gwyn, Mei and me, assuming Michael doesn’t rip its head off first.’

  Wind came at them from below, driven through the tunnels by a train, and Michael growled. ‘Below us. Definitely.’

  ‘There are more at the top of the moving stair thing,’ Ishifa said. ‘They’re staying there at the moment.’

  ‘Great,’ Ceri said. She reached out a hand to touch Lily’s shoulder, drawing power through her to fuel the ball of orange light growing in her right hand.

  There were six of them, standing at the end of the landing area with its tunnels leading off to the platforms. They all looked young, fairly newly turned, but they seemed confident in their abilities. The tallest of them, a slim man with pale skin who really looked the part of undead lord of the night in his leather duster, took a single step away from the wall as the group reached the bottom of the escalator.

  ‘We don’t want a fight,’ he said. Ceri was pretty sure he was lying. ‘Give us the vampire and you get to walk out of here.’

  Ceri smiled at him. ‘Clearly some form of compromise is available since we also don’t want a fight. Well, maybe Lorna and Michael do, but I like this dress. So, you leave, right now, and you get to keep your skin.’

  The vampire smiled, showing a lot of fang. ‘You don’t seem to understand. You’re surrounded by vampires…’

  ‘Uh-huh. You have us exactly where we want you. Offer’s got an expiry date. Last chance.’

  ‘Get them!’ the vampire growled.

  Ceri swung her arm forward. ‘Catch,’ she said and the orange ball flew down the room, missing the vampire by a couple of inches and hitting the wall behind him. Fire exploded from the impact point, engulfing half the room in flames and blasting heat past Ceri and back up the stairwell.

  Gwyn raised her arms and Ceri felt the power washing out of her, and a wall of flame lifted up from the tiled floor to the ceiling, dividing the room in half. Ceri could feel the heat from it on her skin even from five yards away. One of the vampires, recovering from the blast, charged at the wall. He let out a shriek as the flames licked at his flesh, but he pushed through and two more of his friends began to follow.

  And then Lorna was there, screaming in anger as the damaged, smoking vampire came toward them. Her arm swung out, fingers stiff and clawed. Blood spurted from the vampire’s mouth as her toughened, elongated nails tore through his throat.

  Mei had been watching as a second vampire pushed through the flames, her hands dropping to her waist where she was wearing a rather unusual, for her, belt. A quick twist and a long length of heavy chain with a weight at each end was in her hands. She took a step forward, the chain swung in a fast arc, and the vampire’s skull was smashed open in a spray of bone fragments and gore.

  The last of the three appeared through the flames, took in the sight of his fallen comrades and Michael in the process of shifting, and turned, flinching at the thought of going through the barrier again.

  ‘Stop him!’ Ceri yelled and Mei’s chain snaked out again, wrapping around the man’s throat and bringing him to a sudden halt. He was stronger than her, but the blood flow to his brain was being cut off. He took another step toward the flames, but then Michael was there, grabbing the chain and pulling. The vampire fell backwards and Lorna was on him in an instant, her hand raised to strike again.

  ‘No!’ Ceri snapped. ‘We need one alive.’ She turned, looking up the escalator to where another eight vampires were starting to run down from the top. ‘But we only need one,’ she added, and launched a ball of fire up at them. The explosion roared down the tunnel leaving charred bodies and overheated metal in its wake. The escalators ground to a halt and, a second later, the sprinkler system sprang to life. The two or three survivors, burned and hurting, struggled to go back up the way they had come through the rain.

  Ceri looked around. The vampires beyond the flame barrier had gone and Gwyn was dousing the flames. The tiles were blackened through most of the back of the hall, and there was blood pooling on the floor where Lorna and Mei’s victims had fallen. The deluge was soaking through her dry-clean-only black dress.

  ‘Barry is going to be so pissed off,’ she said as water dripped off her nose.

  Westminster.

  ‘Tottenham Court Road station will be closed until the weekend,’ Barry growled. ‘We have two dead vampires…’ he frowned at the redundancy, but refused to let that stop him, ‘…and a helluva mess to clean up and…’

  Ceri got to her feet rather abruptly, which was enough of a surprise to bring his dressing down to a stop. ‘Okay, first of all… No, wait… First of all, John, your wife is an absolute beast when she gets her vampire on. You really need to stop treating her with kid gloves.’

  Both John and Barry looked at her as though she had gone slightly mad, but she was working on no sleep at all and a mild headache, so she really did not care.

  ‘Back to first… no. Second, Mei, where the Hell did you learn to do that chain thing? I mean, I thought it was a weird thing for you to be wearing it as a belt, but…’

  Mei seemed to be taking everything more or less in her stride. She and Gwyn were sitting in the conference room looking quite sanguine in fact. ‘I spent a few years in Japan after the Shattering,’ Mei said, as though that explained everything.

  ‘Right. Where was I?’

  ‘First?’ Lily suggested. Given that she was still in her waitress dress and desperately wanted a shower, she was looking fairly calm too.

  ‘Right, first off, they attacked us.’ Barry gave Ceri a nod of acknowledgement; the security cameras had verified that, before they were destroyed anyway. ‘Second, we had a chat with the vampire we captured. We know he was sent by Lo Chan, and we know where Lo Chan is hiding, and I’m very tired and I want a shower, and we’re going to have to queue up for the bathroom. Has anyone got any aspirin?’

  ‘You got him to talk?�
� John asked after shaking off the shock. ‘He hasn’t said a word since we got him here.’

  ‘He talked,’ Lorna told them. She glanced at Mei. ‘Between us we were very persuasive.’

  ‘He is using a condemned block of flats in North Greenwich,’ Mei said, her voice calm. ‘An area of the upper floor has been sealed against sunlight. His people have excavated a tunnel from the basement to the sewer system. It is only large enough to crawl through, but it provides an escape mechanism and allows unobserved access.’

  ‘All right,’ Barry said, still frowning. ‘This man took out an entire tactical squad on his own. The last time we had one of these Ancients in the city it took an angel to get rid of it, and none of those can enter London. How do you suggest we deal with him?’

  ‘I have an idea about that,’ Ceri said. ‘I need to talk to Jehoel to confirm it. But first I need to sleep. I need a shower and then sleep. Brain need sleep for thinky thing. Does anyone have any aspirin?’

  Barry shook his head and picked up an internal phone, stabbing at a couple of buttons. ‘Hecks? Get up here, I need you to organise a stakeout. And bring a bottle of aspirin with you.’

  Kennington.

  It was after six when Ceri stumbled into the kitchen, reaching for a mug and pouring coffee blindly into it with her eyes half-closed. She took a deep gulp, swallowed it, and let out a long sigh.

  ‘Good afternoon, Ceri,’ Twill said.

  ‘Nu,’ Ceri replied. ‘Wah mi whe munung.’ She took another gulp of coffee and then turned to refill the mug.

  ‘Let me do that, you spilled most of the last one.’

  ‘Sor… Wah upna mint.’ She glared at the mug, decided it now had coffee in and took another drag. Neurons began to fire. ‘Did I really interrupt Chief Barry to tell him off for telling us off?’ she asked, frowning.

  ‘You did cut him off mid-flow, but I wouldn’t say you told him off. I think he was just a little shocked by your incoherent babbling.’

  ‘Huh. Thanks, Twill.’

  ‘You’re going out to see the angel? There is less than two hours of daylight left.’

  ‘Uh-huh. He’s at Acre Lane. Michael’s coming with me. Then we’ll go to Soho. I don’t want Lily coming home alone.’

  ‘Another late night? You’re supposed to be hosting that conflab at the castle on Sunday.’

  Ceri sighed and gulped down more coffee. ‘That’s why I want Lo Chan out of the way before then.’

  Brixton.

  Ceri had spent a day at Acre Lane Shelter before. Alexandra volunteered her time there, healing people who could not afford magical aid any other way, and Ceri had gone along to help.

  Andrea Clancy, the woman who ran the place, met them at the door. She obviously remembered Ceri, giving her a broad smile. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘we’ve got no one in with withered limbs at the moment.’

  Ceri grinned back. ‘I came to see Jehoel. I understand he’s staying here?’

  ‘Oh, that one. Yeah, we put him up on the top floor. We do have a couple of those Lost people in and he seems to calm them down. He’s a weird one. Came in here looking at people as though he didn’t understand why they were here. After a while he asked if he could help so he’s been making tea… Except I had to show him how to do that. He’s not human is he?’

  ‘Did you see on the news about angels falling to Earth?’

  ‘He’s one of those? The other one didn’t say much of anything, and then he left and never came back.’

  ‘Jehoel’s god sent him back in to keep an eye on things.’

  ‘Huh.’ Clancy turned, heading for the stairs. ‘Oh… he’s been looking paler lately. Is he sick?’

  ‘Dying,’ Ceri replied flatly. ‘It’s been about ten days so I’d imagine it’s starting to show. If he’s here another twenty or so he’ll be dead.’

  The top floor of the building was set aside as an infirmary where the more seriously ill could be isolated for their comfort and everyone else’s safety. There was one room set aside for those who had lost their souls to the drug Oblivion, and that was where Ceri and Michael found Jehoel. He was lying on a bed reading. The Bible, of course. What else would an angel be reading?

  ‘Ceridwyn Brent, and Michael,’ the angel said. ‘Is there news of a means to end this curse?’

  ‘I have one of the best thaumatologists in the country working on it, Jehoel,’ Ceri replied. ‘I’m sure he’ll crack the problem soon.’ Her Sight showed her the degradation in his medians. After less than two weeks she could see dark strands in his body bridge and the energy flow in his chakral median was fluctuating. His tantric median still seemed strong, however. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  ‘I am feeling…’ He looked down at the book in his lap as though it might give him inspiration. ‘I am feeling emotional. I feel that I am unbalanced. I find myself… worrying for these mortals. I wonder what will happen to me should I remain here too long.’

  ‘You can always leave. Come back again when you’ve recovered.’

  He shook his head. ‘I was told to stay.’

  Obedience to the bitter end. ‘Well, there’s something else you can help me with, and it might get us closer to solving your problem. We think we know why this was done. Someone working for an Ancient did it so he wouldn’t have to deal with angels while he took over the city’s drug trade. What do you know about Ancients?’

  ‘What every angel does. They are an abomination before God.’

  ‘I was told that they were made by fusing a demon into a vampire.’ Jehoel gave a nod. ‘Is it a true fusion? Are they actually part demon? Or is it more like a possession?’

  ‘They are a melding. The demon is effectively destroyed in the process, though the exact form varies between Ancients. The… thing responsible for them liked to experiment. Each is a little different, caused by the means by which the fusion was performed.’

  Ceri smiled. ‘So the nature of the demon, rather than the actual demon, is transferred into the vampire?’

  ‘Aspects of its powers and some of its personality traits, yes. The personality aspects are the most variable.’

  ‘Thank you, Jehoel, you’ve been a big help.’

  The angel gave her a nod and, to her surprise, a small smile, before returning to his reading.

  ‘How does that help?’ Michael asked as they trooped back down the stairs.

  ‘Lo Chan, and Hildegard Braun for that matter, aren’t that much different from Lily,’ Ceri replied. ‘They’re part demon.’

  ‘So…?’

  ‘So spells meant to control and contain demons will work on them, just like they would on Lily.’

  Soho.

  Alec looked up as Ceri and Michael walked up to the bar, gave them a nod, and pointed toward the bottles at the back.

  ‘Not tonight,’ Ceri replied. ‘Maybe one before we go, but we’re on guard duty.’

  The werewolf gave a grunt of approval. ‘Gwyn called. Says your expert thinks he’s solved the cube thing. He’s catching a train in the morning.’

  ‘Huh, I’d better warn Cheryl.’ She looked toward Carter at the end of the bar. ‘Can we use your office, boss? We can’t sit here in jeans and I need to call Cheryl about Ed.’

  ‘You realise you might have to hold me off him as well?’ Carter replied. ‘I’ll come through with you, there’s something I need to discuss. Alec, you’ve got things for ten minutes?’

  Alec raised an eyebrow. ‘We need you here for something other than looking pretty?’

  ‘I pay the wages,’ Carter grumbled before starting for the back of the club.

  Ceri pulled her T-shirt off as soon as the door was closed. Carter closed his eyes and then turned his back. It would have been amusing, given that the man was known as a playboy, were it not for the fact that Ceri found it embarrassing to see him in any form of undress.

  ‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’ Ceri asked.

  ‘I’ve been hearing some rumours,’ Carter replied. ‘Our mutual friends f
rom the Archmage Club have been asking questions I don’t like the sound of.’

  Ceri paused with her jeans around her ankles. ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘Questions which suggest they’re trying to verify whether you have some form of power over demons. I think they may be trying to get leverage to break their deal. If they think you’re pacted…’

  Slipping her jeans off, Ceri held out a hand for the dress Michael was taking out of the bag he had been carrying. There were slightly more club-oriented jeans and shirt for him in there too. ‘I could live without them messing me about just now, but I’m not sure I’ve time to worry over it.’

  ‘Do you mind if I do?’ Carter asked.

  ‘No. I’ve got everyone except Alec working on something for me, why not you too? You can turn around now.’

  Carter turned. The dress was low-cut and very short, showing off her long legs. ‘I’m not entirely sure that’s much better,’ he said, smiling. ‘Ask Cheryl if she wants to come here to talk over Professor Perry’s return to our good graces.’

  ‘I will,’ Ceri said as she padded across the plush carpet to the desk.

  ~~~

  ‘To be honest,’ Cheryl said as she sipped wine at the bar, ‘I’m glad. I don’t have actual memories of what I went through. I know it could have been over faster if he’d said something, but all I really feel is that my friend is persona non grata. I wish he wasn’t.’

  Carter gave a grunt. ‘I suppose… If you’re willing to forgive him, I should at least be civilised about it.’ He looked across the bar to where Alec was cleaning perfectly clean glasses.

  ‘I promise not to rip his throat out,’ the bartender said. ‘That’s the best I can do at this stage.’

  ‘Very magnanimous of you, old friend.’

  ‘I figure,’ Ceri said, ‘that if I blame Ed for what happened to Cheryl, I have to blame Mei for what happened to me. And I do, sort of, but I put her up in my house…’