Curse of the Daemon Beast

by Francis James Blair

  They passed over a hill with only a single tree on it, burned out and dead from a lightning strike. Ruth tapped on Temperance’s shoulder.

  “The mine oughta be coming into sight soon. See how the path curves ahead? They got their buildings against the face of the mountain there. The entrance is a little ways past that. If we keep on we should run into the guards in a couple minutes.”

  “Guards?” Temperance asked. Astor lurched to a halt at the tone in her voice, flicking his head back to give her a cool look.

  “Yep, they got one or two men posted ‘round here all the time. Scared me something fierce first time I saw ‘em, but they’re nice enough. Usually just take the food and tell me to have a good day, is all.”

  Would have been nice to know all that before we got within spitting distance. Astor said somewhat dryly. Temperance ignored him.

  “Something tells me they won’t be pleased on seeing me with you. Any way we can get past them?”

  “We could climb down the cliff, but they’d probably see us doing it. Not much in the way of places to hide.”

  Temperance thought on that a moment. “Show me how to get to this cliff.”

  * * *

  The two of them slithered on their bellies up to the cliff’s edge, and Temperance leaned over just enough to see below. The area around the mine entrance formed a partial bowl, the cliff lines tapering away to either side as they drifted back into the forest. Directly beneath them, the miners had cleared the trees away for at least a hundred yards, making it impossible for anyone coming out of the forest to go unnoticed.

  There were two buildings almost below where they lay. One of them had the look of a barracks, while the other could have been a mess hall or storage or something else. Not much in the way of comforts out here, but at least the structures seemed solid enough to stand through the winters.

  At first Temperance saw nothing. Then a flicker of movement from under the building’s eaves caught her eye. At least one person must have been standing near the entrance. As good a place as any to keep an eye on the treeline.

  She nudged Ruth. “Looks like we’re hidden here. We might be able to drop a rope and get to the ground behind the buildings without being noticed. No idea how to cross past that though; it’s at least two dozen yards to the mine entrance, all anyone would have to do is glance that way to see us.”

  “Can’t you use a spell to knock ‘em out or something?”

  “Not really. I used up all my non-lethal shot months ago hauling a prisoner—”

  Temperance froze. Someone was coming out of the mines.

  They watched as first one, then two men darted out from underneath the building to greet the newcomer. When the figure emerged into the daylight, Ruth let out a little gasp, and Temperance wasn’t sure if she was surprised, or just angry in a different way than usual.

  Reverend Reynolds stood blinking in the autumn sunlight, then turned to speak to the two guards. Temperance realized that both the other men were Wenxi—same as Moshim, the man she had run into her second night in Shady Hollow. Hell, one of them might have even been Moshim, it was difficult to tell from up here.

  Three more Wenxi emerged from the mines behind Reynolds. When the reverend finished talking to the guards, he and the others set off down the path towards town. The remaining guards returned to their post.

  Once Reynolds disappeared into the trees, Temperance turned to Ruth. “Any idea how many people work here at these mines?” There was probably enough space in the buildings below for a dozen men, but she only remembered seeing half that many during the church service.

  Ruth frowned and looked thoughtful. “Only five, I think. I don’t know ‘em that well, but I never seen more than that together before.”

  So, likely the mines were empty at the moment. They weren’t going to get a better time to sneak inside.

  “I think I know how we’re getting in. Let me go talk with my horse.”

  * * *

  Temperance and Ruth watched as Astor trotted through the trees below and let out a little whinny. He paced a few more steps towards the building, snorted, and stood still.

  It took a moment, but the two men stepped from the porch, looking first at each other, then at the horse. One said something to the other in some language Temperance didn’t know. Wenxim, probably.

  They drew closer, and one of the guards appeared to be trying to talk to the horse in a voice too low for Temperance to make out. Astor snorted once and took a step back.

  The men got closer. When one of them was a few feet away, he lunged forward and caught at Astor’s reins. Temperance couldn’t help smiling, despite herself.

  Astor let out a terrified whinny and took off running. The man, either from foolishness or sheer terror, kept his grip on the reins. He ended up dragging in the dirt alongside the horse, trying to get one of his feet in the stirrups. The other guard ran behind, waving and yelling something incomprehensible to his associate. They reached the treeline, and disappeared from view.

  Temperance turned to Ruth. “Looks like we’re on.”

  They clambered down the rope Temperance had secured behind them. Once they were at the bottom she gave it a tug, and the rope slipped its knot and joined them below.

  “That was the easy part,” Temperance said, coiling up the rope. “Now let’s find out why a man of the faith is interested in a mining operation.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was no mine.

  For one, there were no tracks laid along the floor to use for hauling equipment or ore. While the men might just carry the stone out on their backs, there was another, more important, factor.

  The walls of the tunnel were unlike anything she had seen before. They were neither natural, nor did they appear the result of human efforts. The tunnel itself was circular, stretching from ceiling to floor in a perfect radius no matter how it twisted about. There were no wooden support beams, no lantern pegs bored into the walls, nothing that showed a chisel or pickaxe had ever touched them.

  The entire surface was also smooth to the touch, more like glass than stone. Temperance traced a finger along it. The wall felt warm to the touch, almost pulsing with a life of its own. As her finger touched the surface, a corresponding shiver ran down her spine. Not a shiver of fear, but more a sense of familiarity. Like meeting an old friend one hadn’t seen in a long time.

  Past the entrance, Temperance’s lantern provided a paltry light. Still, there was no need to worry over getting lost. There were no other branches or rooms, just a single path that wended ever deeper into the earth.

  Ruth kept glancing around as they walked, eyes growing wider and wider, her thoughts apparently echoing Temperance’s own. “How’d they get the tunnel so smooth?”

  “They didn’t. At least, I don’t think they did. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “Ohh. Maybe the colors have something to do with it?”

  Temperance stopped. “Colors?”

  She looked at the walls again. Lines of color, like paint layered on top of itself, streaked the surface of the tunnel. Temperance had seen something like this before, months ago, in a place called the Painted Caves. They hadn’t been this smooth, or circular, but now that she was looking again she realized that the colors and patterns were almost identical.

  The tunnel continued to wind into the earth, yet it remained pleasantly warm. It got to where Temperance started to unbutton her coat, but stopped herself at the last moment. No telling what was waiting for them up ahead.

  That thought reminded her. “Here,” she said, handing Ruth one of her revolvers. “Don’t fire it unless it’s life or death. A ricochet down here is as likely to kill you as whoever you’re aiming at.”

  Ruth took the gun and held it awkwardly in one hand. “What’s it loaded with?”

  “Mundane bullets.” Temperance took the girl’s other hand and guided it over the weapon. “Release the safety here, then pull the trigger, that’s it. And if you fire, tr
y to make sure I’m not standing too close. These guns let out shrapnel that burns like hellfire.”

  They moved through the tunnel, more cautious now. A few minutes later, Ruth let out a hiss. “What is that?”

  The dim outline of a shape appeared in the distance, foreboding and yet familiar. As they got closer, Temperance realized why: it was a door, though not like any she had ever seen before. It was made of some nondescript material, with no discernible brackets holding it to the tunnel wall. It had no knob or handle either, but looked as if someone had punched a rough hole through it to one side.

  On the wall next to it was a small metal box, whose purpose Temperance couldn’t determine. Perhaps it had held a key at one time? But why leave it next to the door? Why have a door here in the first place?

  She crept closer and tried to peer through the hole, but it was too dark on the other side. After failing to shine any light into it, she glanced back at Ruth. “Ready yourself, we don’t know what might be waiting for us.”

  Taking one last look into the inky blackness, she stuck a finger through the hole and pulled. The door slid open with surprising ease; Reynolds’ men kept it well-greased.

  Temperance stood in the doorway, holding the lantern before her. Ruth peeked over her shoulder and let out a low whistle.

  It was a room, perhaps a hundred feet across in any direction, with another door against the far side. The walls were neither the bare stone of a mining operation nor the smooth strata of the tunnel, but rather a plain white tile. The same tile coated the floor, while strange panels of wood or some other material covered the ceiling. It made the whole room feel both more enclosed, and more human. That was not its strangest feature, however.

  The room contained all manner of equipment. Tables were stacked with glass bottles, tubes, and other apparati that Temperance thought would have been comfortably at home on any physiker’s shelf. Larger glass jars, big enough to hold her and Ruth together, stood in a line through the middle of the room.

  Other things also lay spread about, things that Temperance had no word for. Hulking constructs of metal and glass and materials she couldn’t identify.

  “What . . . what is all this?” Ruth asked.

  “That’s what we’re here to figure out, I suppose.” This was far stranger than Temperance had suspected. Some part of her had known there had to be more than a mining operation in the hills, but this . . . this went beyond even her ability to conceptualize. What had she managed to pull her and Ruth into here?

  They advanced slowly through the room, Ruth keeping one hand on Temperance’s arm, the other holding the forgotten revolver loose at her side. They stopped at the first table, and Temperance picked up a stack of papers.

  “Looks like observation notes. They’ve got times listed, and some numbers that don’t make much sense.” There was scribbling in the margins. She held the paper close and squinted at it. “Says here: ‘first subject tested since containment breach. Did not survive phase two of testing’. Subjects for what?”

  After that, the writing changed to something incomprehensible. Scribbles, or perhaps the written Wenxim language, Temperance wasn’t certain. She set the paper down and picked up another. As she did so, something slid out from underneath. The breath caught in her throat. She flung the papers aside and picked the object up.

  “What’s that?” Ruth asked, looking up from her own pile of notes.

  “It’s a quicksilver tube.”

  “Quicksilver?” The other girl frowned. “Like the stuff they make hats out of?”

  “Not in this case. Right now, it’s holding in the essence of a daemon.”

  Ruth took an immediate step away from the table. “A daemon?”

  Temperance nodded. “An old one too, if the pitting and decay on the sides are any indication.” She ran a finger through a deep scar along the tube’s surface. “That don’t make a lick of sense, though. My grandpa always told me it would take decades before a daemon’s prison would start wearing down. Unless he caught this one himself, there’s no way for it to be this far gone.”

  There were markings across the surface of the tube, of a type Temperance had never seen before. Something to do with the Triarchy, perhaps? It would explain the reverend’s presence at the operation.

  She glanced up at Ruth. “Maybe that’s what this place is, somewhere the church is storing all the daemons that Pistol Warlocks bring in. Would make sense, having it somewhere remote. Even if one escapes, it’ll die long before it finds someone to use as a host.”

  “A daemon can die?” The girl looked equal parts intrigued and horrified by the idea. “What’d you need these tubes for, then? Ain’t it easier to just shoot one and be done with it?”

  “That’s only if it has a body to shoot. If I break this tube, the daemon that comes out will be non-corporeal—there won’t be any more to it than smoke. Rather hard to kill that.”

  Temperance looked down, and set the tube back on the table, far from where it had any chance to roll off. “But if a daemon spends too long outside a host, they’ll die on their own, just break apart into nothing at all. That’s why they make pacts; they need us far more than we need them.”

  They looked through more papers, and the further Temperance got, the less that made sense. If this was a church storage facility, why weren’t these daemons safely racked away? What was all the equipment for? She kept seeing the papers mention ‘experiment’ and ‘testing’, but surely the church wasn’t—

  “Temperance!” Ruth called from the other side of the room. “You ain’t gonna believe this!”

  Faster than she could think, Temperance had her gun out. She held it at the ready as she worked her way through the crowded space to Ruth’s side. “What is it? Something wrong?”

  The other girl shook her head and pointed at one of the gargantuan tubes lining the middle of the room. All the others had been empty, their surfaces milky white with dust and age. With a start, Temperance realized that the last tube in the line contained an occupant.

  A metal plate sealed the tube at the top, some clear liquid filling the inside. A murky shape floated inside, but Temperance couldn’t quite make out what. She stepped forward and pressed an eye to the glass.

  Inside was an enormous wolf, mouth hanging open, eyes glazed over in death. From the center of its back hung two small tendrils, no longer than Temperance’s arm.

  She stepped back, and gave herself a second to process this new information. Ruth looked at her with a worried expression. “Ain’t that the same creature attacking my town? What’s it doing here?”

  “This is some natural physiker’s lab.” Temperance could feel a sensation building inside her, familiar as an old friend. Anger, bright hot and needing an outlet. And she knew exactly where to direct it. “The reverend and his men have been doing experiments on daemons up here. They’re the ones that created that wolf creature.”

  “But why attack everyone?”

  “One of the papers mentioned a breach. Maybe a daemon escaped and is trying to get back at them for experimenting on it.” Even as she spoke, she knew that couldn’t be right. Why attack the Cullings or the Felts in that case? Why not go straight to the source?

  She shook her head. “I think we got all the information here we’re going to get. Let’s head back to town. It’s time for the reverend and I to have a little chat.”

  They turned to leave, but then Temperance froze in place so fast that Ruth knocked into her back. The girl rubbed her forehead. “What was that for?”

  “Why is the tank so dusty over here?” Temperance muttered, half to herself, half to answer the other girl’s question. “Reynolds and his men have been working up here for two years you said, right? They dusted everything else clean, so why is it still filthy over here?”

  She looked at the ground, and the sense that something was wrong flooded every part of her, right down to her toes. The tiles near the table were clean, but there was dust on this part of the floor, all the more ob
vious now that she could see footprints in it. Most of the metal constructs around them were equally dusty.

  “Ruth, listen to me. I want you to step exactly where I do. Don’t know why yet, but I got a bad feeling here.”

  The other girl nodded, and Temperance took a hesitant step into one of her footprints, then another. She turned in time to see Ruth placing a hand on one of the constructs to help get by.

  “Ruth, no!”

  Too late. The girl’s fingers brushed against the metal’s surface. Temperance heard a strange clicking noise. A second later a loud, high-pitched wail, like the screech of a dying cat, erupted into the room.

  “Run!” No longer mindful of their footprints, they dashed across the room, the screaming noise echoing in their ears. When they got to the door Temperance turned back and nearly choked. The metal constructs in the room were shaking. As she watched, one of them unfolded itself. It looked like a spider made of metal, almost the size of an orak, with razor-sharp blades at the end of its legs.

  The spider crawled over the floor at a pace faster than should have been possible for such a large creature.

  Temperance darted through the door and caught up to Ruth, who had stopped at the edge of the lantern’s light. “Keep going, keep going!” she bellowed, and the two of them scrambled along the tunnel while dozens of clicking, skittering noises grew behind them.

  The tunnel twisted and turned, the layered colors a frenzied blur as they ran along. All it would take was one sharp turn, one fall, and they would be lost. Temperance glanced over her shoulder. There were at least five spiders hot on their trail, closing in fast.

  “Here, hold this.” She thrust the lantern into Ruth’s hands and began fumbling at her bandolier. Loading a bullet while trying not to run into any walls was more difficult than it seemed, and after an agonizing few moments she felt it click into place. Spinning around, she aimed at the closest creature and yelled, “Hueno!”

  Lightning filled the tunnel with white-hot light. Temperance ran on, blinded but not willing to stop. When the flashes in her eyes faded she risked a look back.