The Dark Matters Quartet

by Claire Robyns

  She snapped her mind out of the demon glass. These quick peeks left no side effect. The citric, rotting stench that gnawed the lining of her stomach only came after a minute or so.

  “Timothkin will be along shortly.” Lily bent low, shuffling in a wide circle as she used the dagger to scratch the rune to bind and keep in the dirt with deep, wide strokes so the lines wouldn’t easily be broken by a footprint.

  When it came to the intricate inner drawings, she held her skirts high off the ground with one hand and tiptoed between the lines to prevent scuffing the perfect angles. The drops of blood to activate the rune came from the silver locket at her throat, a gift from Kelan months ago for emergencies, since her demon-contaminated blood was ineffective.

  Once she was done, she held the dagger out to Ana, who knew what to do should anything go wrong. “Let’s hope you don’t need this.”

  “There’s a fifteen percent probability the demon will walk into your rune,” Ana said, taking the dagger. “That’s an eighty-five percent probability I’ll need to use this.”

  “On the days Timothkin walks along here, I’ve never once seen it stray off the dirt verge.” She’d drawn the rune large enough to catch any meandering except a deliberately wide diversion.

  She waved Ana to follow as she made her way to a narrow alley that ran along the back of one of the Customs Buildings. “You have those probabilities upside down.”

  “I factored in you, Lily. On each of those days, you weren’t here. Humans have the greatest weighting when it comes to affecting outcomes, more than weather, animals, routine or any other factor.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “I won’t have any affect, because Timothkin won’t know I’m here,” she reminded Ana.

  She’d recently come to realise that her demon glass was so much more than a visionary accessory. Tracking the demon step by step, being able to predict the exact place and approximate time it would put a foot down, was possibly their most powerful weapon.

  Still, her heart thudded with each passing second. She had little skill to serve her. All those hours practising with Kelan’s Strobe machine were a waste of time. She should have been learning how to throw a dagger. Thankfully, she had Ana. Hopefully, as she’d said and saw no reason to change her mind, she’d need neither.

  A damp breeze blew across the Thames, rustling a loose window frame nearby and probably responsible for the irregular squeaks that sounded like some metallic part from a factory funnel. Shades of darkness coated the far bank of the Thames, faded yellow lights shining from a few of the homes in the cramped suburb, coal smoke streaming from almost all, and no street lighting that Lily could ascertain.

  Between the smog, breeze and water, the only noise that reached them on the docks’ side of the river was a muffled hum.

  Not silence, but not nearly loud enough for Lily’s nerves. The quietness left her feeling exposed and vulnerable.

  No sooner had that thought crossed her mind, when something brushed against her skirts. She sucked in a yelp. The breeze. Only the breeze. But then it brushed again, around the other side.

  “What is that?” she hissed in a whisper, twisting to look around as she skipped away from the wall.

  A tiny shadow prowled between them.

  “A street cat,” Ana said in low voice.

  “So I see.” Lily flattened her back to the wall with a shallow breath.

  “Do you want me to get rid of it?”

  “No, just ignore the cat.” She pressed a palm to her thumping heart. “Timothkin should be in sight already. Any movement might distract it.” She put a finger to her lips, indicating their whispers were risky, too.

  She closed her eyes and reached into the demon glass. Timothkin was ambling at a slow, steady pace, directly on course for the rune circle with his head turned toward the river. No more than a couple of yards to go.

  She pulled out quickly and opened her eyes. The worst course of action now would be to make herself sick.

  The cat wound through her skirts, rubbing against her leg. Lily kept still, hardly dared to breathe. Another three yards? Two?

  The cat’s purr, soft and barely audible, started rumbling louder and louder until it sounded like a vibrating church bell. Her jittery nerves were exaggerating the noise, she knew no cat could possibly purr that loud, and yet…

  She pinched her eyes closed and dived inside her mind. This time, she snapped back instantly and put her mouth to Ana’s ear. “Timothkin has stopped to look this way.”

  “Street cats must be common in this area,” Ana whispered.

  Would Timothkin know cats purred when stroked or rubbed? Lily dipped in and out of the demon glass.

  “It hasn’t moved and is still looking at our alley.” Her heart thumped at her temples and her knees seemed to have lost all substance.

  She darted a glance over Ana’s shoulder. The alley petered into pitch-blackness and could be blocked at the other end for all they knew. Not that they’d get the opportunity to find out. Not even Ana could outrun a demon bolt.

  “The rune is between us and Timothkin,” she told Ana. No time to think. No time to panic. “I’m going to show myself.”

  “I cannot allow that, Lily.”

  “As soon as Timothkin sees me, it will step forward,” Lily explained. “It’s standing three feet from the rune.”

  “Then I will do it.” She pointed down the alley and spun Lily about. “Run.”

  Lily spun back again, grabbing Ana’s arm. “I need you here. As soon as Timothkin’s attention turns to me, throw the dagger. Aim for its neck. We’ll have a few seconds to haul it into the rune.”

  Without waiting for further argument, Lily stepped out from the alley.

  “You,” called Timothkin. “What were you doing in that alley?”

  “What’s that, Sir?” Lily didn’t stop until she stood directly across the rune from the demon. She jabbed a finger at her ear. “Hard of hearing, that I am, Sir. What did you say?”

  Timothkin put one foot forward. “I asked, what were you— I say, you were at the Autodrone exhibition this afternoon.”

  “I imagine many people were, Sir.” She prayed he didn’t notice the quiver in her voice. Every bone in her body shook, her teeth rattling in her gums.

  What had she been thinking?

  How the blazes had she convinced herself she could do this?

  “You were staring at me.” It came forward another step. “This afternoon, at the exhibition.”

  It took all Lily’s focus to not glance down at the rune between them. Only one more foot, surely? Please, Lord, please… “If I w-was, I’m terribly sorry, Sir. That would have been unforgivably rude.”

  “What did you see?” Timothkin demanded. “Why were you so interested in me? And now you’re here. That’s no…” It looked around and then froze, its gaze on the scratching in the dirt. “Clever, very clever.” A sinister, gurgling laugh echoed up its throat as it lunged backward. “But not clever enough.”

  Movement flashed from Lily’s periphery. She strained her eyes forward, scrambling for something to say, anything to keep Timothkin’s full attention on her.

  “Ah, Mr. Timothkin. Now I recognise you. And y-yes, perhaps I was staring, but you see my— No!” she screamed as Timothkin’s arm shot out to the left on a bolt of fire.

  The tip of the bolt lashed at Ana’s raised arm like a burning orange whip, flinging her off her feet on the recoil. The dagger flew from her hand to bounce against the wall behind with a reverberating clang.

  Ana was on the ground and not moving.

  The demon smiled at Lily. Then its hand came out.

  Without conscious thought, Lily lurched to the side. The bolt singed her cloak and the near-miss roared along the inside of her veins, lacing grit into her weakened bones and sending a rush of urgent, desperate energy through the rest of her.

  She ripped the ribbons from her throat and tossed her cloak aside. When the next fire bolt came for her, she threw herself out of the w
ay and scrambled to her feet a second later. Her slipper caught in the lining of her petticoat and she stumbled forward, turning that into a dive as the demon unleashed another bolt.

  Her reflexes were a law unto themselves, trained from all those hours at the Strobe machine and ruling her body with no help from her head.

  She didn’t think.

  She didn’t try and guess where the next fire whip would strike.

  Her eyes saw and her limbs reacted with nothing in the middle to slow them down. Her pulse raced and the demon’s fire had nothing on the fire in her blood. Damn these bloody skirts. Looking over her shoulder to keep her gaze glued to the demon, she grabbed handfuls of skirt clear off the ground and sprinted for the river.

  Another orange bolt.

  Her body bent backward, so far, her hair almost touched the dirt, and the fire skimmed the air less than inch from her stomach. She sprang forward again, had reached the embankment and almost tipped over headfirst into the gully below.

  She jumped down without a hesitant thought at the drop. The tide was out and she landed hard on the balls of her feet on the narrow stretch of sand. The embankment wall blocked the demon from her view, but it was there and she couldn’t risk hiding against the wall. She already knew how drawn to the edge this demon was.

  Her breaths came fast, dry and raw. The wave of energy that had brought her this far was panning out, more and more with each second now that the bolts had stopped coming.

  Remaining pressed to the wall, Lily lifted her skirts to waist level and yanked her petticoat off. She tried to rip the skirt from the waistband, but the material refused to tear. She kicked her slippers off and, holding her skirts up and keeping her body as low as possible, she ran for the water.

  Quick glances over her shoulder showed the demon hadn’t come all the way to the edge and the wall still blocked her from its sight.

  She made the first stretch in stealth finesse, but when the water reached her thighs, the wet material tangled her legs and dragged the whole of her into the icy cold water with a splash.

  She stayed down in a crouch and moved backward, deeper into the river, only her head bobbing above the water. Timothkin’s bowler hat intersected her angle of view first. She paused. It couldn’t see her. It hadn’t fired another bolt. She needed to keep going, but down the river instead of deeper?

  Logically, the greater the body of salt water between her and the demon, the better. But every instinct within screamed at the thought of placing herself in its sight again.

  Then the matter was taken out of her hands. A face appeared beneath the bowler hat, then the turkey chin, and then the white collar of Timothkin’s shirt as it approached the embankment edge with tentative steps.

  Her skirts folded heavily around her legs as she scrambled backward, getting nowhere. Damn, blast and damn!

  She sucked in a deep, shaky breath, quivering now from cold as well as renewed fear. Of course! She ceased struggling and floated the upper half of her body, weaving her hands through the water and pulsing off the bottom of the river with her toes. She’d never learnt to swim, but her skirts flowed along her legs and were more manageable this way and she could wade well enough to keep afloat.

  Timothkin’s gaze scoured the water, which mean it hadn’t seen her yet. She took a quick look at the opposite shore. No great distance, but she didn’t know how long she could paddle once her feet no longer touched the ground.

  The gentle current tugged at her and she didn’t fight it, letting herself drift downstream instead of wading any deeper.

  She hadn’t drifted far before Timothkin lost patience. A bolt of fire shot from its hand. The burning light whipped wide, well to her right. Her relief choked in her throat when the cord of fire remained connected to Timothkin’s fingertips. The flames sparked and bubbled, thicker and thicker into a flaming rope, and then thicker into an engorged snake of fire slithering above the surface.

  The free end of the snake arched up into a towering inferno with a blazing, bulbous head that swept a slow, searching circle.

  The head found her.

  As if there were eyes in that burning mass, she felt it watching her as it reared even higher, arching toward her now and the head had a mouth, a cavernous furnace with two enormous flickering fangs and flames bursting from a pronged tongue.

  Lily’s heart stopped, and then started again with a pounding ache inside her chest. She was going to die.

  This was it.

  This was how she ended.

  The head loomed closer as the fire snake slithered a loop through the air above her.

  She plunged below the surface and swirled onto her stomach, kicking and scooping water to propel herself to the bottom. Her blasted, sodden skirts worked against her, deciding now to bubble with air and rise instead of weighing her down.

  And then it didn’t matter. Her lungs were bursting and white stars danced along her inner eyelids and suddenly she felt lighter…and lighter…

  Her limbs too weak to keep her diving downward, she popped to the surface and had just enough strength to roll over again and suck in a gasping breath of air.

  Above her, the sky was on fire. But no, not the whole sky, just the snake swooping down on her like a giant finger of fire jabbing from the heavens.

  Lily didn’t close her eyes.

  In this last moment, she’d look death in the face.

  It wasn’t a conscious thought. There was no time for that. The decision formed from the courage Greyston had always insisted she possessed, from the strength she’d been so determined to build from the ashes of her timidity, from Kelan’s belief she could be trained, that even through his insistence that she needed male protection, he considered her a warrior who might one day be worthy of standing side-by-side with him in a fight.

  She hadn’t been any of those things in life.

  But, by God, she’d be that woman in death.

  The heat washed over her, scorching her face, and then the snake whipped aside as if leashed by an unseen noose.

  Stunned, Lily watched as the snake wrangled with an invisible foe, coiling this way and that, flung skyward and then lashing back down into the river. She wrested her gaze from the flaming show to look at Timothkin and then, only then, could she pump the air from her lungs, begin to believe she’d escaped certain death.

  Timothkin’s arm flailed, and the fire snake with it, as the demon staggered to its knees, one hand reaching around its neck to grab at something stuck there.

  Ana charged up from behind and shoved the demon hard, again and again until it dropped over the embankment wall. Then she jumped after and grabbed an ankle, yanking the demon into the water.

  Above, the snake fizzled into a firework of sparks that showered upon the Thames and then spluttered into nothing.

  Lily made her way to shore, dragging exhausted limbs through the wall of water. She was too dazed to bother with floating or wading. Sobs wracked inside her chest, but couldn’t seem to find their way up her throat.

  “Is it…?” she asked Ana as she neared.

  “The demon is gone,” Ana said. “Swallowed.”

  “Swallowed?” The shallow waves of the Thames washed over glinting metal. Lily stooped, collecting the dagger before it washed away.

  “A whirlpool came out of nowhere.” Ana glanced down at the water she stood in, then up again.

  “Thank you, Ana.” Lily looked out across the river. On the other side, quite a number of people had gathered. Shouts and shrieks and some calling out, asking if she were safe. She heard the word ‘witch’ thrown in too often to count.

  Her gaze returned to Ana. “You saved my life.”

  Ana simply nodded. “You’re shivering. I should get you home.”

  “Yes.” She took Ana’s hand in hers. “Let’s go home.”

  They made their way along the shore to the first set of steps they came upon. Lily put one foot in front of the other and, bit by bit, strength flowed back into her.

  Greyston w
ould be furious when she told him, but once he saw she was safe, once he realised what she’d done, he might even be a little proud. Kelan was another matter. He wouldn’t just be furious; he’d be absolutely livid.

  She set her shoulders back and took a deep breath.

  Kelan’s sole objective was his demon cause and he’d let nothing stand in the way of that.

  Well, her objective was people, keeping people safe. He’d simply have to understand and learn to appreciate her perspective.

  She was not the same woman coming out of this evening as she’d been going in.

  Tonight, she and Ana had banished a demon!

  She was alive.

  Ana was intact.

  No humans had died. Evelyn was safe. London was safer.

  And no matter how many more were out there, the world was surely a little safer with one less demon.

  DESIRE & DIRIGIBLES

  Lily is losing a battle with both the demons and her temporary husband. A King of Hell continues to elude her demon glass and as for Kelan McAllister, he seems set to invade the rest of her. Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except she's banished his sole demonic source and it would appear she's broken his household.

  She's always likened Kelan to an avenging angel, and now she has to deal with all that wrath as well as his intoxicating, dark beauty.

  A demon in the hand is worth two in hell

  Plans are being hatched in the alleys of London's dank and dismal underbelly. Lesser demons are two-a-penny and stirring mischief and mayhem on an international scale. Lily wants to banish on sight and her husband, naturally, is quite prepared to let the demons run amok and show their hand. But by the time they catch whiff of the master plan, it may already be too late to stop the approaching storm.

  ONE

  Lady Lily did not, as a rule, take breakfast in bed. Not even when she slept well past the breakfast hour, which she’d been known to do on the rare occasion. Last night, however, she and Ana had banished Timothkin. They’d sent a demon back to…well, whichever dimension demons crawled out from. The aftermath of excitement had kept her up well into the early hours of the morning and so, when Ana woke her with a tray of pastries and rich, creamy, hot chocolate, Lily was in no mood to deny herself the small indulgence.