Thaumatology 03 - Legacy

by Teasdale, Niall

  ‘I wasn’t aware that there was any doubt?’ Carter replied. The man was rich, famous, handsome, very smooth, and looked more like twenty-five than his actual fifty-four. He regularly took women half his age to bed, but had never once made a play for Ceri. It did not stop him looking at her like he wanted to.

  ‘Amen to that,’ Alec added. The werewolf, who was older than Carter, but did not show his age either, had also never tried anything on, though whenever he was near her in wolf-man form his attraction was distinctly obvious.

  ‘She’s been feeling… a little frumpy since the pack left,’ Lily said.

  Both Carter and Alec looked at Ceri. She felt her cheeks heating up. Lily had changed her outfit, the teddy was rather more opaque, though it still had strategic strips of lace and mesh which give exciting glimpses of the body beneath it, and the skirt was a little longer, but made of a clinging fabric which showed every curve. Then there were the four-inch high-heels.

  ‘You don’t look frumpy,’ Alec said. He sounded a little confused.

  Lily giggled, pushed off from the counter, and headed for one of her tables. Ceri watched her walk away, her behind barely concealed by the ridiculously short dress which was her “uniform” at the Dragon. Ceri’s hand dropped to her ankle to play with the fairy-silver chain which decorated it. Lily had a matching one, Christmas gifts from Twill. The chains were a physical indication of their unconventional love for each other, and had the side effect of increasing Ceri’s libido. Technically it did the same to Lily, but you could barely tell.

  ‘I, uh, I’ve just been feeling a little…’ Ceri trailed off, not sure how to explain it. Remus, a complete monster, a psychopath, had been quite good to her when she had allowed herself to be captured by his people. The humans working with him had been less pleasant. She had been repeatedly raped in an attempt to get information from her. At first, with lots of friends around her, everything had been fine. As the house emptied, however, the nightmares had started. She would sleep without trouble if Lily was in bed with her, but if she tried to sleep on her own she would wake up screaming. She had taken to waiting up for Lily on work nights, coming up with ways to make it look like she was just busy with something.

  Carter’s hand came to rest on her other arm. ‘You had quite an adventure at Christmas,’ he said. Neither he nor Alec knew what had been done to her. ‘It’s only natural that you would be affected by it. You’ll get over it, I’m sure. I don’t think I’ve ever met a stronger woman.’

  Ceri gave a weak grin. ‘Well, I have to admit,’ she said, ‘today was an ego boost.’

  ‘I’m available for ego boosting any time you need it, kid,’ Alec said. ‘You look gorgeous, you’re a fantastic magician, powerful, and you saved my furry butt. You are the best.’

  Ceri giggled and sipped her wine, watching Lily progress back through the tables. The half-succubus grinned at her and then looked across the bar at Alec. ‘When you’ve quite finished chatting up my girlfriend, Alec, table six wants two white wines.’ Alec gave her a wolfish grin, his fangs showing, and turned to pour the drinks.

  ‘How’s the thesis coming along?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Finished,’ Ceri replied. ‘It went to the printer yesterday.’

  ‘It was that,’ Lily said, picking up her tray with the drinks for table six, ‘or I enact my threat to withhold Lily privileges. She’d proofread that thing six times.’ She started across the floor, adding, ‘She had Twill proofread it twice.’ Another couple of steps and, ‘She got me to proofread it, for widder’s sake!’ Her perfect behind proceeded off through the tables.

  ‘Well,’ Ceri said, ‘she speaks perfectly good English…’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ceridwyn,’ Carter said, the smirk barely showing, ‘a little healthy paranoia is nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Well Cheryl’s already lined up a moderator. We’re hoping to have the whole thing wrapped up by the end of next month, June at the latest.’ The very thought of sitting through an interview with the moderator made her stomach sink, but it was just one of those things she had to do to get her doctorate.

  ‘Who’s she got?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Doctor Perry?’ Ceri replied, a little unsure herself. ‘He’s based out of Aberystwyth.’

  ‘I don’t know the name,’ Carter said, and then added, ‘Don’t get me wrong, that’s probably a good thing. I’m glad she avoided the Cambridge crowd.’

  ‘You think they’d be that vindictive?’ Ceri asked, frowning. The previous year, Ceri and her supervisor, Cheryl Tennant, had beaten the Cambridge quantum thaumatology team to an important discovery. Ceri had always figured that things would settle down after the paper had been published.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Carter told her. ‘They would be that vindictive. Old style academics can make politicians look like choir boys.’

  Ceri’s frown changed into a grimace. Then she shrugged. ‘It’s not like I have any plans to move there. What do I care if they don’t like me?’

  ‘A good attitude to have,’ Carter said. ‘I feel much the same way.’

  ‘To be honest,’ Ceri said, ‘all I really want is a quiet life. No vampire assassins, no psycho ancient Roman ghosts resurrecting dead wolf-gods, just a normal life with normal goals and normal things in it.’

  Lily walked back through the tables and settled against the counter beside her. Her eyes scanned the tables around the room, watching for unfulfilled desires among the customers.

  ‘That doesn’t seem an unreasonable request,’ Carter commented. ‘You can take your break any time you’re ready, Lily.’

  Lily smiled and nodded, and leaned over to whisper in Ceri’s ear. ‘I fancy a snack. Mufty can meet me in the toilets in two minutes.’ She pushed away from the counter saying, ‘Back shortly,’ out loud, and started toward the back of the club where the fantastically plush toilets were located.

  Ceri sipped her wine and waited for the two minutes to be up. Quiet, normal life… Yeah, that was never going to happen.

  Kennington, March 24th

  ‘So, did you have a good day yesterday?’ Twill asked as her utensils cooked an omelette for Ceri’s breakfast. Pans and spatulas moved of their own accord, supervised by the fairy, hovering in the air nearby in her “kiss the cook” apron.

  Ceri took a drink of coffee and leant back in her chair. She was dressed in an over-sized men’s shirt made of a shimmering, gold fabric which was fairly translucent. She usually dressed around the house, originally because she just did not do the naked thing, and now because Lily said it made her look sexier. ‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘I think that was the wildest day of my life.’

  ‘Considering that you have fought demons, demon-werewolves, magicians, and vampires, and taken two baths in enough magical energy to fry just about anything, that seems a little hard to believe.’

  Ceri shivered slightly. ‘She went down on me on the tube on the way home. Riding on the train down the northern line, hanging onto the overhead straps with Lily…’

  ‘I get the picture, dear,’ Twill said. ‘I take it you had a lot of sex then?’ A plate drifted across the kitchen to settle on the table in front of Ceri.

  Ceri grinned. ‘Yes, but it wasn’t just the sex. Lily’s had a nasty life, before she met Carter and then came to live here. I don’t think I know half of it, and I don’t think she’s going to tell me, but she takes it, and she turns it around, and she uses it. And she used it to make me feel so… erotic.’

  Twill smiled an indulgent sort of smile. ‘I’m glad you had a good day,’ she said, ‘now eat your brunch.’ Ceri gave another shiver, pushed the thoughts aside, and started eating. ‘Plans for today?’ Twill asked.

  Ceri made sure she swallowed before answering; Twill really hated it when you spoke with your mouth full. ‘I need to go into uni,’ she said. ‘I have a crisis council with Cheryl.’

  ‘A crisis council? That doesn’t sound good.’

  Ceri shook her head. ‘No. We’ve got a fundamental problem with the powe
r generation system which she wants to prototype.’

  ‘Oh?’ the fairy said. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Ceri took a deep breath…

  Holloway

  ‘All the math works out fine,’ Ceri said. ‘I’ve been over your equations, and the data we have from the T-Null experiment which almost blew us to bits, and we could generate upwards of three megawatts from the size of containment circle we have here.’

  ‘But?’ Cheryl asked. The head thaumatologist at London Metropolitan University could just tell there was a “but.”

  They were sat in Cheryl’s office in the High Energy Thaumatology building, a concrete annexe to the main university buildings on the Holloway campus. Cheryl was tall and slim, and Ceri knew for a fact that some of the students entertained fantasies about Cheryl and a bed which were never going to happen. She had the kind of early-middle-aged good looks that would get you classified as a MILF, but she could happily turn a student inside out if she thought they were not pulling their weight.

  ‘We forgot about the containment circle,’ Ceri said.

  ‘What about it? You don’t think it’ll hold up?’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ Ceri said. ‘A containment circle needs a mage to keep it active and sealed. I’ve never heard of a permanent enchantment which can do the job and I haven’t been able to find anything in my parents’ books or notes to suggest it’s even possible.’

  ‘Bugger,’ Cheryl said, her brow creasing in a deep frown.

  ‘We can build the thing,’ Ceri said, ‘and prove the concept, but without some way of generating a continuous containment circle it’ll never be anything more than a clever trick.’ She tilted her head, thinking. ‘Well, if we could bring the size down on the accelerators we could probably have a pretty cool emergency generator system. The military would go for it, disaster support agencies, people like that.’

  Cheryl nodded thoughtfully. ‘Good for several hours of high power output in an emergency. That would probably give a return on Carter’s investment. I think it’s worth doing as an academic exercise anyway, but I would like to get something useful out of it.’

  Ceri smiled. Carter, playboy millionaire and owner of a highly successful nightclub chain, was one of their major sponsors. He also enjoyed Cheryl’s company in a rather more intimate manner, though neither considered the other as a partner in any way. Carter was a wizard and claimed that Cheryl was one of a very small number of women he took to bed who he could actually have an entertaining conversation with. Cheryl had been quite happy to accept Carter’s money to help with the discovery of the null thaumiton, but she had grown more concerned about him seeing some of it back as their relationship had gone from a casual fling to something a little deeper.

  ‘When do you want to try it?’ Ceri asked. ‘I estimate… three weeks work setting up the modulation control software for the power extraction system.’

  ‘I’ll have the new accelerator in next week,’ Cheryl said, ‘and it’ll take a little while to set up… So I think we start running tests around the nineteenth.’

  ‘Full moon, well, the night after it’s true full,’ Ceri commented absently.

  Cheryl grinned. ‘Most people, aside from astronomers, don’t know things like that off the top of their head.’ Ceri grinned back. ‘It’s a pack night tonight, isn’t it?’ Cheryl asked.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Ceri replied, ‘but it’s a waning moon. They’re always a bit quieter on the waning moon.’

  ‘A bit quieter?’

  ‘Yes, well, I missed last night because of Lily’s birthday.’ Ceri gave a sheepish grin. ‘Michael tends to get, uh, quite demonstrative when he hasn’t seen me for a while.’

  Cheryl laughed. ‘That’s an interesting euphemism. I’ve got a werewolf boyfriend as well, you know?’ Alec, one of Carter’s best friends, shared his taste in women, and they had shared Cheryl on at least one occasion. ‘I’m quite aware of how they can get “quite demonstrative.”’

  Battersea

  In truth, Cheryl did not quite know, because Ceri had a different sort of relationship with Michael. She had met him when she had decided to research werewolf pack behaviour by turning herself into a she-wolf and trying to join his pack. Their Alpha, Alexandra, had seen right through her transformation, but had allowed her to become a sort of honorary pack member anyway, and Michael had taken her as his “honorary” mate.

  Ceri walked into Battersea Park with a satchel over her shoulder, fully expecting to find Michael waiting for her under the tree they usually met at. There was no sign of him and she frowned slightly. Her hand went to the leather, silver-studded collar around her neck as she looked around the little clearing, seeing nothing. He was normally there. She shrugged; perhaps something was keeping him busy elsewhere in the park. Oh well.

  She stripped out of her clothes quickly. It was not a warm night and she wanted to be furry as soon as possible. Still she took the time to pack her clothes into the satchel and push the bag into a hole in the roots of the tree for retrieval later. Then she reached up and touched her collar again. It had been a present from the Battersea pack, and the wolf-goddess Luperca, after Ceri had killed Remus and freed Luperca of his influence. She gathered her power and invoked the collar’s enchantment. A few seconds later, in place of Ceri there was a black-furred wolf-girl wearing a collar and a silver ankle chain.

  Strong arms grabbed her from behind, pushing her against the trunk of the tree. She gasped as she felt something very male pressing against her behind and heard a soft growl. Her feet were pushed firmly apart, leaving her braced against the tree, balanced on her toes, panting. She tilted her hips back, letting out a soft mewl. There was answering growl, this one carrying undertones of deep lust, and then he was in her.

  When it was over and they were lying in the grass, cuddling and rubbing their muzzles together, Ceri reflected that her life was never going to be normal while she had one lover who was a half-demon and another who preferred to have sex while she was transformed into a she-wolf. Michael felt that he was not a particularly great human, but he was a good wolf. He had been made one of Alexandra’s personal guards and entrusted with the education and safety of one of the pack’s best and most important friends, Ceri. Still, there was no way she would give up on her odd relationships and if this were as abnormal as things got, well she was damn happy with that.

  Michael growled at her. You need be more watchful. Werewolf speech was not exactly eloquent. Their throats and jaw structures in changed form were simply not designed for much intonation. They made up for that with gestures and expressions, but still it was a very simple language and whenever they wanted to talk “properly” they did so in human form.

  She rumbled a reply. Man sense not Wolf sense. Not good. You good hide.

  His reply was a rumble of laughter. Miss mate night gone. Good time with demon? There was simply no way of describing what Lily was to Ceri, so they had settled on Lily being “demon,” which seemed to work in context.

  Yes. She was simply not going to try to explain what she had done with Lily. Michael was not jealous, but she just did not have the vocabulary. She was not even sure it existed! This night ours, she indicated. What we do?

  He rolled to his feet and offered her a clawed hand. A short bark said, Honour guard. Alphas meet.

  Ceri let herself be pulled to her feet, giving a sad little yip in reply. You busy then. She would stick around, but if he was doing something formal then she would have to sit tonight out.

  He looked a little confused for a moment and then jerked his muzzle up, barking a short laugh. You honour guard. Me honour guard. She was part of Alexandra’s guard unit? When had that happened? Come! His bark was urgent, and he was off and running before she could respond. Ceri gave chase, rapidly catching him as they hurried off through the park.

  They met three other wolves, two males and one female Ceri recognised as Anita, Alexandra’s head of security, the Captain of the Guard. They were down by the river, at the Chels
ea Bridge which was the north-eastern corner of the park, though their territory stretched further east, out past the power station to Vauxhall. Anita nodded her head to Michael and Ceri as they emerged from the trees, and indicated they should join the others waiting nearby. She seemed entirely at home with Ceri being part of her unit. Still wondering how, and when, she had gained the promotion, Ceri dropped into a crouch alongside Michael and the other two males, nuzzling briefly with both. Michael brushed against Anita in greeting and then moved to the males. Werewolves were very tactile creatures, and they had no idea of personal space at all.

  Anita checked over her little squad, rubbing muzzles with Ceri and sniffing around her neck before giving a little snickering grumble. It was not any form of word, but Ceri got the distinct impression that Anita was indicating that she knew what they had been up to to make them late. She was also indicating that she found it amusing. Turning, she moved closer to Queenstown Road, shifting to human mid-stride. Tall and limber with lots of long muscle, she seemed entirely unbothered by the cold, even without her fur, and equally unbothered by the looks she got from the pedestrians who noticed her as they walked along the nearby pavement.

  They had been waiting around ten minutes when Ceri’s nose picked up a scent she felt she recognised. She could not work out why until she saw the couple walking toward Anita from the bridge. It made sense, she had never taken wolf form around Catherine, so she did not quite recognise her scent. The Alpha of the Royal Pack was accompanied by Stefan, an ex-Marine who acted as her second in command and tactical advisor. Since the death of Catherine’s mate during the Remus incident, Stefan had also become her lover; Ceri considered it a good match and it was just a shame Alphas mated for life and Catherine could not make their relationship official.

  ‘Welcome to Battersea territory,’ Anita said as the two approached. ‘Alexandra is waiting for your arrival. We’ll escort you to her. There’s no need to change, we’ve arranged transport across the lake.’