The Dark Matters Quartet

by Claire Robyns

  “Finneston Road, m’lord,” bellowed the driver of the hackney carriage. “There ain’t no place to stop up on the other side and ‘tis on ten minutes to the afternoon tram.”

  “We’ll be less than five,” Kelan assured him. He slid his hand beneath Lily’s arm and guided her over the pair of iron rails that ran along the right hand side of the road.

  “The Tram and Track services the industrial district,” he explained, releasing her arm as he delivered her onto the walkway, “carrying goods from the factories and warehouses to the docks, and is notoriously punctual.”

  Lily wrapped her arms around her waist as she glanced across the busy street. Brick, limestone and plaster were all reduced to the anonymity of the black soot and grime that covered the buildings and even seemed to coat the individual particles of air she breathed in. The building she’d seen the demon exit from in her vision yesterday, however, was distinctive by its gigantic brass sign arched above the frontage like a tiara perched on a princess’s hair. Precision Steam Works.

  “That’s it,” she murmured, her legs suddenly weak. “That’s the building.”

  The demon could be inside there right now, a stone’s throw from them. Kelan had defeated the last demon she’d come up against, and she had no doubt he could take on this one if required, but it was still impossible to anticipate an encounter without misgivings.

  Kelan stared across the street for a few moments. Then he slid his hand beneath her arm again, attempting to steer her back to the carriage.

  “Wait.” She fixed her gaze on the building and expelled a slow breath. Imagined she were dispelling her fears, tension and whatever else might be blocking her ability. “Perhaps I can pick up a vibration or lingering scent.”

  “You’ve verified that this is indeed the Steam Works from your vision,” Kelan said, tugging her along unceremoniously with his long strides. “I have everything I need for now.”

  Once she’d been handed into the carriage, Lily scooted to the far end of the bench and turned on him. “Do you ever consider anyone else’s needs beside your own?”

  “Whenever possible, yes.” He rapped up against the roof of the carriage and the driver took them off the rail track with a lurch and into the flow of traffic.

  “I’m not a soulless automaton, Kelan, to be shaped and readjusted and fine-tuned in systematic detail as you bring together all the parts of your grand scheme.”

  He folded his arms and looked at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Her jaw pulled tight. “I’ve read every word written by a McAllister on demonology and I’ve danced blisters around your silly Strobe machine.”

  “I know,” he said. “Armand keeps me informed of your progress.”

  He does?

  “How nice for you,” she clipped out. “Do you want to know what would be nice for me? To learn how to command my visions, instead of the other way around. But where have you been? Goodness knows! Even when you are around, you invest no time or interest in helping me.”

  “I’ve had pressing matters—”

  “More important than me being able to identify all the demons that have risen?” she said. “So you can send them back,” she added with emphasis, “and seal the tear and end this misery?”

  For the life of her, Lily couldn’t comprehend why Kelan wasn’t pressing harder to unlock the advantage of her visions. Unless…

  “Do you not want to succeed?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as the thought took seed. “Demon hunting has been your life, after all. What will you do when the last demon has been hunted down and banished?”

  He went absolutely still. And yet she could sense his muscles loosening. She’d seen this before, how he appeared to relax in indirect proportion to the increasing tension. And the last time, he’d gone from seated to drawing a sword across Greyston’s throat in the blink of an eye, without spilling a drop of the whiskey in his glass.

  “You couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said, his voice low and perfectly restrained.

  Lily decided to trust her instincts and refrained from any more prodding. She swept her gaze outside, watching in silence as the grime and soot gave way to an open field. They crossed a wide road and it was akin to crossing into a different city. Groomed crescents were lined with elegant Georgian terraces. Walls of black iron railings separated carriageways from the main road and landscaped gardens separated the carriageways from the townhouses, which were set far back in spacious affluence.

  The McAllister townhouse was the end terrace of a block that was particularly grandiose with its ornamental wrought-iron balconies, engraved colonnades and arched windows.

  Lily stepped from the carriage before Kelan could offer assistance.

  “Lily!”

  She ignored the irritation in Kelan’s voice and marched up the pathway. As she reached the porch steps, movement lifted her gaze to the window on the second floor next door. The day was grey and the room unlit, giving Lily no more than the woman’s matronly silhouette to stare at.

  She heard the click of the front door opening and Ana calling, “Lily, come inside. It’s starting to rain.”

  The curtain twitched and fell back into place.

  Lily started moving again, giving Ana a smile as she passed inside. “I wasn’t aware it had ever stopped.”

  Her snide wit was, as always, lost on Ana. The usual celludrone only responded to pre-loaded direct commands, but Ana was unique, created by Duncan McAllister to serve against the demon war. She could store and interpret new information. Learn, mimic and adapt to everything she saw and heard, which made her as close to human as one could get without a soul—and without a sense of humour.

  Lily tugged her gloves off and handed them to Ana.

  “You should keep your coat on for a while,” Ana said. “The house hasn’t warmed up yet.”

  Kelan joined them, closing the door behind him. “Where’s Armand?”

  “We only just arrived a few minutes before you,” Ana said. “He’s taken the luggage upstairs.”

  Kelan hung his hat and coat on the stand in the hallway, then turned to Lily. “Next time you have an itch to show a fit of temper,” he said coolly, “please wait to do so in private.”

  Lily’s jaw dropped. An itch? “I live in isolation, Kelan. When I do surface, it’s so cloak and dagger, I have to hide beneath a veil and travel separately from Ana for fear of recognition.” She threw her arms out. “You couldn’t even open your house properly for our arrival in case the town servants gossip.”

  “Armand is very efficient,” Kelan said. “You’ll want for nothing.”

  “I don’t care about the staff shortage,” she snapped.

  Kelan looked at her in silence, every second drawing her temper thinner and thinner. She’d never been a volatile person, but too much had happened and too little. She’d been raised on lies and there was no one left alive to answer any of her burning questions. Her blood was demon infected and she’d put her entire life not only on hold, but into the hands of Kelan, a man she suspected wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice her to his cause. And as for Greyston, he’d set her pulse fluttering with his kisses, charmed his way into her head and heart, and then he’d fled without pause or regret.

  She could take all that in her stride because, above all else, Lily considered herself pragmatic and no other choice presented itself. What she couldn’t handle was being shoved in the proverbial closet like a complicated toy until Kelan stirred himself to figure out how she worked.

  Kelan finally broke the silence. “I had no idea you were so upset about your current circumstances.”

  “You haven’t been around to notice,” she retorted, then sighed. “Perhaps it is unfair of me to blame my—Oh!” she gasped, reaching out blindly as she was swept from her surroundings in one flash and delivered to the entrance foyer of a stately home in the next.

  Her hand found Ana’s arm and she gripped tightly, welcoming the anchor while she adjusted to the scene
inside her head.

  There were two men in the voluminous reception area; one dressed in the formal black-and-white uniform of a butler and the other…at least a head shorter and blurred around the edges. Lily instantly recognised the demon with its unremarkable human features as the same one from her vision yesterday.

  “If you’ll come with me, Sir.” The butler turned to lead the way and the demon followed, their footsteps tap-tapping in tandem across the hardwood floor until they disappeared through a doorway.

  Lily couldn’t move with them. Her visions were a window that opened between her and the demon. She was an observer looking on from the outside, unable to direct any part of the scene or the moment when she’d be pulled out of it. She glanced around, searching for anything to identify the house, the owner, anything that could lead them back to this place.

  On the far end of the reception room, a wide, central stairway split onto the left and right wings of the upper landing.

  Lily absorbed every detail as her gaze roamed the hall; the plush Persian runner that carpeted the stairway; the creamy, silk wallpaper and pale oak-panelled wainscoting; the portraits ascending with the stairs along the wall on both sides; a magnificent watercolour of a forest glade with a magical accent where the sunlight touched and sparked the rich browns and emerald greens; the flat silver plate on a pedestal table that held a stack of mail—she strained her eyes, trying to make out an address from the looping handwriting on the top envelope.

  Her sight blurred and the envelope, the table, the entire room shredded bit by bit…

  Lily blinked and her eyes opened on Kelan’s serious expression.

  In a series of brisk commands, Lily was ushered into the front parlour and ordered to recline on the sofa until the colour returned to her face while Ana was sent off to make a pot of tea.

  Lily refused to recline.

  She perched on the edge of the sofa and watched Kelan pace a short path in front of her. His lithe form and loose movements left the impression of a panther on the prowl. A powerful beast unfettered with the trivial indignities of lesser creatures; a category he probably lumped the rest of the human race into, including herself.

  He stopped his pacing to turn his undivided attention on her. “Ana said that one lasted longer than usual.”

  “It did?” Lily wondered if her desire to study the scene for clues had had any effect on the duration of her vision. Any visage of control would be an improvement. “It was the same demon I saw yesterday. It was visiting—”

  “This can hold until you’ve caught your breath.”

  Lily gave him a droll look and continued, recounting her vision down to the last detail. While she spoke, he took up his pacing again with the occasional glance thrown her way that betrayed no reaction to her words.

  A good few minutes after she’d finished, he was still pacing without comment.

  “That’s all,” she added, in case he’d assumed she was merely pausing to catch her breath.

  “Yes. Excellent.” He sounded as if his thoughts were miles away.

  “I know it isn’t much to…” She faltered as Armand appeared at the open doorway. Tall, with sleek black hair and sun-brushed skin, the Italian was elegantly attired in a suit that bore no signs of travel-strain from the day.

  “Forgive the intrusion, Lady Lily,” he said in his usual manner of threading the formality suited to a servant into the genteel familiarity of a peer. He’d come with Kelan from Florence and, as far as Lily could tell, was a curious hybrid of butler, scientist, demon hunter and confidante. “I trust you had a pleasant journey?”

  “As pleasant as might be expected,” she said with a smile.

  Armand stepped inside. “Ana mentioned the heating might need turning up and I wanted to check—”

  “The heating will have to wait,” Kelan cut in. “We have a lead and I need you to ride with me. Fetch the satchel and be sure to pack the Stylometor.”

  Interest flickered in Armand’s black eyes. “Do you think it’s ready?”

  “Hopefully, we’re about to find out.”

  Lily jumped to her feet. “Where are we going?”

  Armand turned to leave and the look Kelan set on her was telling.

  “No,” she said firmly. “Absolutely not. I’m done with skirting the edges and being left in the dark.” She notched her chin high and met his arrogance with a defiant glare. “By the time you’ve whittled your way through all the manor homes in Glasgow, the demon will be long gone. I could be of much more use in the field, Kelan, don’t you see? I may pick up on its presence, perhaps even channel a vision, if you’ll only give me a chance. You need me to ride with you far more than you need Armand.”

  “Lily, I’m starting to appreciate the depth of your frustrations—”

  “Then you’ll stop treating me—”

  “Sit.” The order was issued in a low, quiet voice and yet, so forceful, she almost did exactly that.

  Her backbone kicked in and Lily stood her ground.

  Kelan dropped into the armchair opposite her, squaring one leg over the other with elegant grace, and raised that disaffected brow at her.

  Feeling at once silly and pathetic, Lily sat.

  “Stobcross House,” he said. “George Winterberry bought the place from the Andersons three years ago and I’ve had occasion to visit a few times. That’s where the demon is right now.”

  An educated guess, perhaps, but, “You cannot possibly know for sure.”

  “Mr. Winterberry made his fortune from mechanical steam manufacture and export to countries with more lucrative technology laws than ours. He is the founding owner of Precision Steam Works. So, while half a dozen manor homes in and around Glasgow might fit your description, I do know, with one hundred percent certainty.” He uncrossed his leg and pushed to his feet. “As for you being of more use in the field, I’m in total agreement. Maybe next time.”

  Before Lily could think of a suitably indignant retort, he’d walked from the room and any further discussion on the matter.

  Two

  Kelan filled Armand in on the latest development as they walked the hundred yards to the mews where he kept two horses stabled. “The demon is courting Winterberry, or the other way around, but neither bodes well.”

  “Do you think this is connected to the problem in London?”

  One of the pressing matters that had kept him occupied this last month instead of at Lily’s beck and call. He’d been putting out fires and assumed it safe to leave Lily to simmer, when it would appear she was closer to exploding into a fireball than all the rest.

  “Not particularly.” He’d been instrumental in getting the Dirigible Restriction Act passed and it was proving increasingly difficult to preserve it. But not all irritants could be put on demons. “Lord Gervin is just the usual errant voice that pipes up from the Queen’s Council every so often to petition the D.R.A.”

  “Can’t say I blame them.” Armand slid a look his way. “The negative effect of the D.R.A. on Britain’s economy must be enormous, stifling business expansion and trade.”

  What the hell was Armand getting at? Seawater instantly banished demons back to their dimension, as the man well knew. Their only saving grace that contained the vermin to the Isle of Great Britain only so long as air traffic was restricted. “Scrapping it would unleash disaster on the continent.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything of the sort, m’lord,” Armand said. “But they make a valid argument that not even the McAllister power will be able to refute forever.”

  Which brought to mind another of Lily’s earlier protestations. The McAllisters strategize in terms of generations… Damnation, it wasn’t as if that were a personal preference. “I’m not asking for forever,” he muttered at Armand.

  “You may not even have a month,” Armand pointed out. “Not with a demon consorting with the country’s largest manufacturer of steam engines. Demon and dirigible co-inhabiting the same sentence can never be good news.”

  �
�They’re not, in this case…not necessarily. The application of steam engines isn’t limited to powering dirigibles.” Kelan gave that some thought, but no, he couldn’t see the logic. “I’ve had McAllister men stationed at Baston & Graille’s London dockyard since inception and not once has any demon attempted to board.”

  The Baston & Graille Dirigible Company operated a severely restricted service and were licensed only for inland flights and one London to New York mainline route directly west over the Atlantic. A short hop across the English Channel might be tempting, were it available, but no demon would risk the great expanse of toxic ocean. The sheer volume of seawater and duration of exposure was an iron-clad deterrent. If Kelan had had any doubt in this matter, he’d never have allowed for the more relaxed Scottish laws when it came to air travel.

  “Private air travel is forbidden in the English Aether and any attempt to cross the channel would be shot out of the sky,” Kelan said aloud. “I cannot see what use a demon might have for dirigibles.”

  They’d reached the mews and it took a further half-hour to get their horses saddled before they could be on their way. Stobcross House was set about a mile back from the exact spot where Kelan and Lily had stood on Finneston Road a short while ago.

  Instead of following the road, they cut across the field that spread from the busy manufacturing district to the River Clyde and came up on the east side of the manor’s perimeter wall instead of announcing their arrival on the approach road.

  Armand tethered the horses to a sturdy bush of gorse while Kelan scouted around the wall. Would the demon still be there? He should, perhaps, have allowed Lily the opportunity to pick up any demon vibrations or lingering scent when she’d wanted to.

  The rain that had been spitting on and off most of the day, turning the undergrowth to mud. Kelan’s progress was mostly achieved by slipping and sliding along the sodden grass in his flat-soled shoes. Long wet bushes slapped against his trouser legs, soaking him through to the skin. He hadn’t spared the time to change into his riding boots or breeches.