Demon in the Machine

by Lise MacTague

  She tinkered with the rig a little longer to make sure nothing was truly amiss. When she found a strap that had been almost severed, she shuddered. It hung on by a few threads. One of the imps had nearly managed to take her down. The accompanying laceration on her shoulder twinged when she realized how close she’d come to not making it to Briar and the carriage. That strap would need to be replaced, as would one of the valves that had been wrenched to one side, damaging the conduit there. That had likely happened after she’d used the last of the propellant in the tank. Otherwise, she would have gone winging off into the night at an odd angle and with little to no control. All things considered, she’d been very lucky.

  The next order of business was to see if the suit or any of its pieces could be salvaged. She looked around to see what her father was working on. He was embroiled with some small components on a bench of the far side of the workshop. Good. When she brought out the suit, she didn’t want to have to worry about him seeing the bloodstains.

  As she passed Briar, Isabella stopped. Briar was bent over the grimoire, her neck arched delicately as she flipped slowly from one page to the next as if looking for something. Strands of hair had escaped her rough bun and curled alluringly at the base of her neck. She glanced Joseph’s way again before dropping a quick kiss on the back of Briar’s slender neck.

  “Hmmm,” Briar said. Isabella made out the corner of a smile, though Briar never looked up.

  Cheered immensely, Isabella whistled as she retrieved her jump suit. While she was back in the cot area, she took a few moments to straighten up. There was no reason it had to look like they’d had a stupendous time enjoying each other’s bodies. She folded Briar’s clothes into a neat pile and did her best to corral as many of her dress’s errant buttons as possible.

  The first thing she did upon bringing the suit back to her bench was cut out the bloodstains before her father could see them. A nearby drawer of scraps was a good enough place to hide them. Once she finished the task, the suit bore more than a passing resemblance to Swiss cheese. There would be no salvaging it, so she bent to the task of extracting as many components as possible. She had a backup suit, but it had none of the tubing or thrust controls; she’d only made one set of those. As she worked, Isabella made a note to work up a set of backup controls as soon as possible. If she was going to continue spending so much time with Briar, it was likely she would need them.

  One of the rubber tubes that snaked down the left sleeve was shredded. That would need to be replaced, and Isabella set it aside. Without it, she’d be able to make simple jumps only; there would be none of the fine-tuning she’d normally be able to manage.

  That was it; she’d salvaged everything she could. All that remained was to transfer the working components to her backup suit and get to work on recreating what she hadn’t been able to save. Deep in her work, Isabella hummed to herself.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Caught in the same restless dreamscape that consumed most of his sleeping hours, he was nonetheless vaguely aware of his body. The irony of it all wasn’t lost on him, even mostly asleep. The more success he had in the waking world, the worse his sleep became. There were nights when he thought he might gladly trade all the trappings his achievements had brought him for a decent night’s slumber. Then he woke up and decided all over again that that would never happen.

  The creeping realization that he was no longer alone brought him into full wakefulness in the blink of an eye.

  “I told you never to come in here.” God, he hated the stunted things. They watched him with glowing eyes, waiting for the slightest misstep before running to report to their mistress. Mistakes were impossible not to make, and each one was roundly punished by her.

  “Sorry.” It wasn’t sorry, not with the wide smile cutting its brick-red face in half. It dry-washed clawed hands where it perched at the foot of his bed. The mahogany was already gouged and torn from the few seconds it had spent there. “Important.”

  “It had better be.” He threw the heavy covers back and grabbed his spectacles from the bedside table. Runes and inscriptions snapped into focus around him. “If it’s not, you’ll be mine.”

  “Someone took it.” It cringed, covering its head. “Someone took book.”

  “What?” This had better be some elaborate prank by the imps. Their sense of humor was crude at best. As a prank this was more than a little sophisticated for them, but the alternative was impossible to contemplate. “Do you mean to say my grimoire has been stolen? Which one of you miserable little pieces of excrement did it?”

  “Not us!” it wailed. “Someone else. Someone from outside! Tried to get back, but too strong. Lost hands and hands of family.” It spread both hands, fingers wide to demonstrate.

  “Impossible.” He bounded out of bed and grabbed the nearest pair of trousers from the floor. A shirt hung over the doorknob and he snagged that on his way out the door. He raced down the wide stairs, hollering for his driver to get the carriage ready. The imp flew after him, a dry fluttering of wings that rarely failed to send a chill down his spine.

  If the grimoire was gone, they wouldn’t be able to finish what they’d started. That might not be such a bad thing, part of him whispered. With the ease of long practice, he quashed the soft voice of his conscience. It rarely troubled him anymore, especially not when in his palatial home in London’s most fashionable neighborhood. She would not be pleased, not in the least, and her displeasure had serious consequences.

  The butler tried to stifle a yawn as he held the door open. It was hours before dawn, and yet the whole household was rousing in response to his shouted orders. The butler might be in his nightshirt and housecoat, but he still discharged his duty. He waited impatiently in front of the house, tapping one toe on the sidewalk until the driver brought around his horseless carriage.

  “Out,” he said. He scaled the side of the carriage, not waiting for his chauffeur, who had to jump down on the other side. There was a step on the driver’s side to aid in mounting and dismounting the tall vehicle, and he thought nothing of forcing the help to go without it. His chauffeur said nothing as he scampered out of the way to stand in the street in a cloud of dust as the carriage peeled away.

  No one knew these machines like he did. Even his own chauffeur didn’t know the limits to which it could be pushed. He looked up and beckoned the imp to land next to him. When it came close, he seized it by the neck and bashed its head against the sharp edge of the carriage top. It had been too long in the human realm and burst easily. He dipped his fingers in its black blood and traced a small inscription on the driver’s seat. The blood flared blue then disappeared, leaving crisp lines of pure demoniac energy behind him.

  The carriage leaped forward as he magically reduced the friction of the vehicle to the air. It could be a dangerous maneuver, but one that wasn’t so risky in the wee hours of the morning when the streets were practically deserted. The milk carts were about the only vehicles making their rounds. He cursed at one when it tried to pull out in front of him. He was upon it almost immediately but swerved in time to keep from clipping the side of the sturdy wagon.

  Usually his address was a point of pride, but today it was too far from the factory. The closer he got, the more signs he saw that something was seriously amiss. Imp corpses littered the route, already rotting and stinking. All that made them recognizable was the dark ichor, the same shade that painted the top of his carriage. Most humans wouldn’t even notice them until they were too far gone to be identifiable. Then they’d wonder how something could die and decompose to such a state without being remarked upon. Some of them might vaguely recall the terrible odor that had lingered for a few days, then shrug and go on with their day. Demons were inconceivable to much of humanity; their fragile little minds refused to recognize them. It didn’t stop visceral reactions such as fear or disgust when in their presence, but to truly perceive them, they needed exposure.

  His own exposure had been brief but intense. He saw
all the things humans couldn’t and knew he was the richer for it. Quite literally.

  Finally the tall stacks of his factory came into view between canyons formed by tall buildings shoved together on narrow streets. To his frustration, he had to slow down. Work started much earlier in these parts of town, and the streets had already filled up. One shift of human workers was leaving the factory, and the next one was coming on. It wouldn’t do for Thomas Holcroft to be seen charging in with his tail on fire. That would only lead to rumors, and they worked best by keeping a low profile. Or at least a normal profile. That meant no rumors.

  He kept to as sedate a pace as he could manage without wanting to kill something else and pulled into the spot reserved for him only. The workers might be here, but the clerks wouldn’t report for work for hours yet. He could still keep this under control.

  He bypassed the chassis plant and made straight for the engine shop. The door was almost never used and then only by him. It opened easily under his hand, though anyone else—demon and human alike—would find the handle impossible to turn. The door to his office from the chassis building was the same way. It wouldn’t do for the wrong human to interrupt him at an inopportune time. The only hand other than his that could open that door was hers.

  The scent of demons assaulted the inside of his nostrils as he entered. He had a breathing apparatus to filter out the smell, but it was in his office. The stench wouldn’t hurt him, but that didn’t stop his gorge from rising. He pushed down the urge to vomit with the ease of long experience.

  Groups of imps still gathered about the engines, with the larger eurynom keeping them on task. The infernal overseers were larger versions of imps with blue-black skin that appeared as a void in the darkened room; they lacked the wings of their smaller, more numerous brethren. They were still more than capable of snatching offending imps out of the air and twisting off a limb or two. Those imps would be out of commission for a short time as a new arm or leg grew back. From what he understood, the process of regrowth was as painful as the loss. It seemed an effective way of keeping the imps in line, and it provided a ready supply of blood for the polygnots who wandered among them, waiting to turn the engines from lifeless cylinders of metal to engines capable of powering a carriage.

  Watching them for too long turned his stomach. The chaos and casual brutality churned before him while still managing to turn out a steady supply of engines for the chassis being built next door. He didn’t need to know how their barbaric hierarchy worked, as long as it did.

  If he was going to be honest with himself, he would admit that the upset of his bowels was as much at the scene in front of him as it was for the impending confrontation with her. He had no illusions that she would try to lay this at his door, along with every other hiccup that had happened along the way. This time, he knew he was in the right. Her imps were the ones that had turned this into a dog’s mess.

  He mounted the stairs along the outside wall. His presence was noted and the shrill screams and raucous laughter faded. Hundreds of glowing green eyes followed his slow progress up until he stopped at the platform where his grimoire typically resided. It was too heavy to carry with him everywhere. The platform had been a convenient enough place for it to be stored, as that was where he did most of his magic work, and the chain should have been enough to secure it against casual mischief. Someone had gone to great lengths to make their way here to abscond with the grimoire. The chain was in a careless heap on the metal floor; there was no sign of the book. The only way into this side of the factory, aside from the small portal to the netherworld he’d created with her help, was the door from his personal office.

  The door to the bridge between buildings was ajar. There was no more time to waste. The longer that grimoire was gone, the more chance there was that whoever had it would turn what they found within its pages against them. His heart in his throat, he pushed the door open and made his reluctant way into his office. She would be waiting for him there. He bit the inside of his lip until it bled. The taste of iron on his tongue calmed him somewhat. It was a natural flavor, far removed from the demonic stink he’d just left.

  She wasn’t in the bed chamber, which was just as well. Maybe she wasn’t there at all; that would be fine. He’d be able to get down to looking for the grimoire and perhaps getting it back before she was any the wiser.

  His faint hope was dashed as soon as he left the partitioned-off area with the bed. She waited for him in the chair at the end of the conference table. Somehow, the leather chair looked like a throne when she sat on it. Imps draped themselves across the leather. Dimly, he knew they had to be tearing it up with their claws, but he only had eyes for her.

  She wasn’t tall. Even in the chair it was easy to tell that, but it was so easy to forget. Every time he stood next to her and loomed over her small frame, he was surprised. She occupied so much mental space that it was easy to forget her diminutive stature. Her glamour was on in full force today. She looked as human as he did. There was no evidence of the wings or tail he knew were part of her true form. Like her height, it was easy to forget about those. She smiled, razor sharp teeth in full view. The glamour could have hidden them as well, but she’d chosen to remind him how dangerous she could be.

  “Dearest Holcroft,” she said. She ran her fingers down the bare scalp of one of her attending imps. It shuddered at its Prince’s touch and lost its grip, plummeting the short distance from the back of the chair to the floor. Another imp took its place, vying for the same attention.

  “Prince Beruth.” He gave his best bow. Flattery was one of the few things that worked with her.

  “How could you allow this to happen?” She turned her head to look an imp in the eyes. It slumped forward, straining to touch her with one outstretched hand.

  He laughed, and she turned to regard him levelly. The sound had surprised both of them, it seemed. “If you’re referring to the loss of my grimoire, then you place the blame at the wrong set of feet. It was safe within the engine chamber. Your servants failed to keep it secure.”

  “And yet the intruder came in through your quarters.”

  “Impossible. No human can come through the front door.”

  “And the window?”

  “The window?” The repetition sounded stupid, and he knew it. The window was more than twenty feet off the ground. There was no way someone could have gotten up there.

  “Yes, dearest. The window.” Beruth held up a newspaper open to an illustration he couldn’t quite make out in the gloom. “My pets tell me this one stole our book.”

  “My book,” he corrected absently. He’d inherited it from his old master and had added to it, just as his master had and his master before him. Beruth’s contributions didn’t make it hers. He got close enough to see the drawing but not close enough that she could touch him. “They saw Spring-Heeled Jack?” Imps weren’t noted for their intelligence. As far as he could tell, they ranked somewhere above the most well-trained dogs, though with powers of speech and far less discipline. Likely they’d seen the picture and decided this mysterious figure would make a convenient scapegoat. “He’s a myth, a fiction of the local rag. Something the lower classes made up to tell stories about on cold nights around the fire. The Times has let itself go if it’s reporting such drivel.”

  “Is that so?” Beruth didn’t seem convinced. “Then how else did someone jump twenty feet in the air to climb through your window?”

  “There has to be a better explanation.” He kept talking when she would have interrupted him. “Either way, the book was in the keeping of your imps and they let it be stolen.” Her glare seemed designed to melt a hole straight through him. “Fortunately for both of us, I have the means of tracking it.”

  “That shows some forethought. More than I would have expected for you.”

  He ignored the gibe and instead went to his desk. He pulled a scrap of vellum from a drawer. It had been part of the grimoire before he’d removed it for exactly this purpose. He’d
been more worried that one of the imps would make off with it at her orders than that a figure from local legend would break into his office, but in either case, it was what he needed. With a careless swipe of his arm, he cleared the top of his desk. His secretary could put it back in order when the man came in. He was useful for little else.

  A map of London joined the vellum scrap on the table. From a different drawer, one he kept locked at all times, he produced a jar of pig’s blood and a raven’s flight feather. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose then dipped the tip of the feather in the blood and started to inscribe his circle.

  “The scrap will be attracted to the point on the map where the book is. Like attracts like, and the grimoire is enchanted to reveal itself to me wherever it is. Then we’ll send in your imps to retrieve it.”

  Beruth stood at his elbow. She looked impressed despite herself. “I shall send a flood of imps to drown them in their own blood.”

  “Yes, yes.” He kept drawing. The spell was complicated enough without her distractions. A final flourish and the basic inscription was complete. He looked over the runes to make sure he’d used the right ones. Without the grimoire to refer back to, this part could be risky and he’d already learned his lesson about sloppy rune formation. Everything seemed to be in order. He dipped the feather into the blood once more and painted in the key-rune.

  The small circle flared to life. To his everlasting dismay, he still couldn’t see demoniac energy with the specs. Without some trace of demon blood in his veins, he never would. The world was terribly unfair sometimes. Most times.

  He painted a small circle on the scrap of vellum and sat back, waiting. The scrap rustled, then settled. It didn’t move.