Thaumatology 09 - Dragonfall

by Teasdale, Niall

  There was a soft splash from the pool and Ceri looked around to see her sometime boss pushing himself up from the water. For a man who had had his fifty-sixth birthday a couple of months ago, he was looking good. He had just done fifty or so laps of the pool, part of a fitness regimen which kept his body in very good shape. While he lacked Alec or Michael’s muscle there was plenty of definition in his abdominal muscles as they tensed to pull his legs up onto the pool’s edge. His ash-blonde hair was darker from the water, which now dripped down over his body. His thighs were tight and strong, and those trunks did little to hide the fact that he was not a hit with the girls for no reason. Of course, it was not the size that counted, but from what Lily said he knew what to do with it too…

  He was looking at her and she realised she was staring, and both of them looked uncomfortable for a second or two before she closed her eyes again and he moved off to settle onto a lounger beside Cheryl. Ceri became aware of the tightness of her nipples and tried really hard to sink into the concrete paving stones of the patio.

  The weird thing was that she was considering sleeping with Carter at all. She had, she thought, got over that. He was a good looking man, but he somehow felt it would be inappropriate, and that had been good enough for her. She had Lily and Michael, and occasionally others which her regular lovers did not mind since it was pretty much in their nature. Not bedding Carter was hardly going to break her and she had not even thought about it for months. Yet here it was again. Of course, there was her ankle chain; her fairy-silver ankle chain which showed her love for Lily, who wore an identical one, but had the side effect of increasing her libido. There was also the slight erotic charge which sat over the small gathering… Perhaps it was not that difficult to understand.

  ‘Hey, Ceri.’ Her introspection was interrupted by Alec walking out of the house with a pitcher of lemonade and six glasses. She looked across at him with a raised eyebrow. ‘Did you remember to bring your collar?’

  ‘It’s in my case.’ Which was still in the car, but would be taken out later because she was going to put clothes on for dinner. Oh yes she was.

  ‘Good. There’s miles of fields around here to run through.’ He set the tray down on a wrought iron table. ‘You’ll come too, Michael? You won’t have had this kind of space to run in since Wales.’

  Michael, laid out on a lounger near Ceri, opened one eye to look at Alec and grinned. ‘Try to stop me. When Ceri said we were coming out here the first thing I thought of was open space.’ The full moon had been two nights ago and the werewolves were still riding the high from it. The moon did not control werewolves as it did their ill-fated cousins, lycanthropes, but it did affect their mood. Full moon meant hyperactive, usually horny, wolves.

  Ceri pursed her lips. ‘We, um… We could all go. Maybe. If everyone wanted to.’ She felt Lily perk up on the lounger beside her; a sudden flare of bright enthusiasm.

  ‘All of us?’ Cheryl said. ‘That’s a lot of power, surely?’

  ‘I’ve got a lot stronger since the first time I did the spell,’ Ceri replied. ‘I can change three people for a few of hours without harm.’

  ‘I’d love to then,’ Cheryl said, sounding like she really would. ‘Carter?’

  Carter’s eyes remained closed. ‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘I am planning a rather large meal with us all sitting around a table and probably drinking too much. After that, I feel that growing fangs and fur might be… inadvisable.’

  Alec grunted. ‘He has a point. I’m helping with the cooking. We’re all going to be groaning.’

  ‘Quite,’ the playboy agreed. ‘Tomorrow night, however, is another matter. I believe I would find it fascinating, aside from anything else. I’ve never had my shape shifted.’

  ‘It’s… amazing,’ Cheryl told him. ‘The actual process isn’t too exciting, but it’s an experience. Being a werewolf for a few hours, though… I think you’ll see them a little differently.’

  Carter nodded and then looked up at Alec. They had been friends for a long time. Long enough that sharing Cheryl did not seem to bother either of them. ‘Yes. I’ve often wondered how you see the world, old friend.’

  Alec grinned back at him. ‘Well, now’s your chance. Hell, you own all this land, you should take the chance to run on it properly.’

  ~~~

  ‘At this point,’ Alec was saying, ‘the general guy is hopping around screaming “Sie schoss mir in den Fuß!” at the top of his lungs while clutching his boot.’ Giggles and laughter somehow seemed inappropriate, considering that they could all see how this story was going to come out, but it did not stop them. ‘So, yeah, I shot him in the head and he stopped moaning.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be funny,’ Cheryl commented, trying to stop giggling, ‘but somehow, if it’s a Nazi general, it is.’

  ‘I think it’s hilarious,’ Ceri said, ‘though I may be prejudiced after Raynor decided I was going to start the Fourth Reich.’ She had decided not to mention that Remus had told similar stories over glasses of wine; aside from anything else it might bring the mood down and Alec would not have appreciated the comparison.

  ‘It’ll put a crimp in your day, sure,’ Alec replied. ‘To be honest, back then it wasn’t funny, now it is.’ He pointed a fork at Ceri, then Lily. ‘I have you two to thank for that. I got my revenge on Remus, by proxy maybe, but I got it and I could put the war behind me at last.’

  ‘You helped, you know?’ Ceri told him, grinning.

  ‘Hindered more like, but fine.’ He lifted his wine glass. ‘A toast! To Ceri, the hottest world-saving sorceress this side of the Shattering.’

  Ceri looked around at the other faces at the table, feeling her cheeks heating up as they all called out, ‘Ceri!’

  ‘In that case,’ Ceri said, ‘too all of you because without you I wouldn’t be the “hottest sorceress this side of the Shattering,” and if I was, I’d be the deadest.’

  Carter grinned. ‘To friends.’ Everyone raised their glasses and intoned the toast, and drank.

  ‘I got told recently that I should rely on my friends,’ Ceri said. ‘No real change, but you have been warned. You’re going to be relied upon.’

  ‘Are we saving the world again, kid?’ Alec asked, his lips twisting into a smirk.

  ‘Looks like it. Probably from demons.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Carter said wryly. ‘I believe that calls for more wine.’

  September 3rd

  Of course, Carter had a library. It was quite a big room lined with dark wood shelves, which were in turn covered in books. There were two comfortable chairs to sit in while reading, and an oak desk with Carter’s PC on it and a phone. It was the only phone in the house; Carter really preferred not to be interrupted when he was away from London, but his business required at least some communication.

  Ceri was sitting in one of the big chairs in a tank top and the thong from her swimsuit, one leg hooked over the arm and a thick, leather-bound volume on alchemy resting in her lap. It was an interesting book, but it was not really going in. In truth, she was in the library because it was quiet and not very bright, and she was feeling a little delicate. They had had a lot to drink the night before and it was only Lily and Alec who seemed to be operating on full faculties.

  The sudden bray of the phone made her jump, which made her left temple throb. ‘Shit,’ she grumbled as she disentangled herself from the book and the chair. It was still ringing as she got to it and she picked up the handset. ‘Hello, Fleming residence.’

  The voice on the other end sounded hesitant. ‘Uh, is Alice there?’

  ‘I think you’ve got the wrong number. We don’t have anyone here called Alice.’

  ‘Right. Sorry to disturb you.’ The line went dead and Ceri put the handset down. Wrong number. Huh. Well, it did happen.

  She was about to go back to her chair when she spotted the photograph. It rested on the desk to one side of the computer monitor, framed in ornately carved silve
r. She picked it up and looked at it; more particularly at the three people in student’s robes who were in it. Carter really had aged well. He was obviously younger in the picture; his face looked less careworn. She realised that his hairline had receded a little since the picture was taken, but not much else had changed. He was smiling in a way he reserved for only certain people; Lily, Cheryl, Ceri herself. The other two people she recognised, of course. Neither of them had got to age as much as Carter had; it was easier to match memory to younger selves. Her parents looked as happy as Carter did. Carefree, that was how they looked. As though they owned the world and nothing could hurt them.

  ‘It was taken at the end of our second year at Cambridge.’ Ceri jumped at the sound of Carter’s voice. She looked around at him, somehow embarrassed to have been caught looking. His face was serious, but not angry, more like sad. ‘Well, my second, your mother’s first.’

  ‘You all look really happy.’

  ‘We were.’ He crossed the room and sat down in the seat she had been using. It faced her. She always found it odd to see him in casual clothes, but at least he was wearing more than a swimsuit. ‘Those were bright days. I have few photographs from then. That’s my favourite.’

  Bringing the picture with her, Ceri walked across the floor to the second chair and sat down, knees held together and the picture frame in her lap. ‘She… she was with you then, wasn’t she?’

  Carter sighed. ‘I think you probably deserve the full story. You’ve obviously heard parts.’

  ‘Fitzlawrence, the man at the British Library, he mentioned that she was the only woman who had ever left you. He seemed rather pleased about it.’

  A flicker of hardness passed over Carter’s eyes. ‘Yes, I’d imagine he would be. He lost two girlfriends to me.’ He paused, leaning back in his seat and looking upward. Air escaped his lungs slowly and then was drawn back in. ‘Your father and I met in our first week. We were lab partners. He was better with circles and such, I was a better practical wizard, and we both had a similar outlook. We worked hard, we studied hard, we played hard.’

  ‘My father?’ Ceri interrupted, her lips twisting into a slight grin. ‘Are we talking about the same man?’

  Carter looked down from the ceiling and smiled. ‘Having a child changed the two of them. They both became rather more serious than they were in their youth. Between us I believe we managed to bed every attractive woman in the student body and one or two of the post-grads during our first year.’

  ‘Huh. He used to tell me boys were only after one thing.’

  ‘He was speaking from experience, my dear. If I had a daughter I’d be telling her the same thing. In our second year the pace of work picked up and we were less inclined to go out every night, but we were doing quite well. I think we had managed to get through almost all the new intake, except that somehow we had managed to miss one Marion Preece. I saw her at a party someone was throwing toward the end of term. I think your father was working on some enchanting problem and couldn’t go. I thought she was probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on, and intelligent. We sat and talked. She was studying enchantment and witchcraft, and she had seen David before, but never spoken to him. Someone had told her about our reputation. Despite that, at the end of the evening, she asked me back to her rooms. I told her that I had had a wonderful evening, but she deserved better than a drunk. I invited her out on a proper date… You’d likely prefer not to hear about your mother’s teenage sex life.’

  ‘I think we can skip that part, yeah,’ Ceri agreed with a grimace.

  Carter chuckled softly and went on. ‘I dated your mother through most of my third year. David called me a “lucky bastard” for spotting her first, but he was good natured about it. The three of us hung around together, or double dated. David started working his way through a series of vacuous first years, but they tailed off as the year went on and we pushed harder toward our finals.’ Carter’s face straightened, his eyes going down. ‘Then it all went wrong. I was considering post-graduate work so that I could stay in Cambridge for Marion’s final year. I had graduated with a first class degree, I could do as I wished. She came to me one evening and told me that she had fallen in love with David.’

  Ceri blinked. ‘Just like that?’

  The playboy’s shoulder’s hunched and he frowned. ‘More or less. There was a lot of explanation which I’m afraid to say I didn’t really listen to. I sat there and said nothing as she tore my heart out.’ He looked up suddenly, catching Ceri’s eyes and her horrified expression. ‘I don’t want you to think badly of your mother over this. Love is a very mysterious thing. I don’t believe we have any control over it. I remember she was crying the whole time. Eventually she gave up trying to explain it and left, and I didn’t see either of them again until years later. I went downhill, joined the Order of Merlin, left them, got rich… Until I met Cheryl, Marion was the only woman I’ve ever loved. Cheryl reminds me of her, in some ways.’

  Ceri frowned. ‘I hadn’t thought about it, but… They are a little similar.’ She hesitated a second before adding, ‘So… that’s why you’ve never tried to sleep with me.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m sure you’re aware that I don’t find you unattractive. Somehow it seemed like… taking revenge and I couldn’t do that.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Or perhaps I was afraid that if I did take you to bed I’d fall for you just as I did for Marion.’

  ‘And you were busy falling for Cheryl at the time.’

  The sombre mood vanished as he broke into a laugh. ‘Let’s say I was a little conflicted for a few weeks. I’m happy things have worked out as they have.’ He got to his feet and started for the door. ‘I hope we’ll see you outside soon.’

  ‘My headache’s lifting. I’ll come out shortly.’ As he left the room, she got to her feet and took the photograph back to the desk. There was another one beside where it sat and she lifted it to take a look. This one was of Carter, Cheryl, and Alec, beaming at the camera somewhere out on the patio from the looks of it. ‘Yeah,’ she said to no one, ‘things worked out okay in the end.’

  ~~~

  They waited until the moon was up before going outside after dinner. There had been wine; not quite as much as the night before, but enough to get everyone in a good humour and make sure neither Carter nor Ceri was too embarrassed about taking their clothes off in front of the other.

  Michael and Alec were already in fur by the time the others were standing at the side of the pool. The full moon was gone, but the pair of them were acting like kids at the seaside; except that kids at the seaside tended not to grope so much. Carter looked pleased that he was immune.

  ‘All right,’ Ceri said, drawing people’s attention, ‘I’m giving the spells enough power to get us to around midnight. I think everyone knows enough werewolf to get by, right?’ Carter and Cheryl nodded; Lily knew more than a little. ‘I wouldn’t recommend trying to speak it, it takes young wolves a while to get used to the new vocal apparatus. Ready?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Cheryl said, her eyes bright. She was almost bouncing with excitement.

  Taking Lily’s hand, Ceri drew the power for Cheryl’s transformation through her demon. She was going to use a lot of power changing herself and three others; pulling some of it through Lily helped spread the load and made sure she was not going to put herself in danger. A shimmer of light danced around her fingers as she focussed on Cheryl, replicated the transformation field the werewolves themselves generated, and let it loose. Cheryl gave a little shiver and suddenly she was a tall, grey-furred wolf-girl.

  Ceri turned to Carter. ‘Ready? It just tingles a bit.’

  ‘I believe I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.’

  Ceri’s hand glowed again as she reached toward him, and Lily let out a little whimper as the power being pulled through her hit various of her buttons. Carter said, ‘Oh!’ and suddenly he was changed. He was a grey, though his fur was a slightly lighter shade than Cheryl’s. Ceri guessed it was an age thing; Alexandra�
��s black fur was greying a little in places.

  Grinning, Ceri turned to Lily. ‘Okay, love, your turn.’ Lily always turned into a brown-fur. Blacks were the purest of the wolves, with the least human DNA in their ancestry. Browns were the least pure and their fur tended to look a little scruffy. Lily, however, was the finest looking brown anyone had ever seen. Her fur was thick, silky, and a gorgeous chestnut brown. She gave a little yip of pleasure once she was changed and ran a soft-skinned hand down Ceri’s arm.

  ‘We’d better get going before Lily just drags me into a corner,’ Ceri commented, and reached up to her throat where her collar was already fixed. A surge of power, a tingle that washed over her skin, and the night turned bright. Alec let out a howl, quickly joined by Michael, then Ceri, then all of them.

  And then they were running. Of all the things Ceri loved about being a wolf, running with the pack was the best of them. It was exhilarating, a massive rush. Werewolves were fast, nimble, optimised for chasing their prey down over long distances. The six wolves ran, leapt fences as though they were not there, darted around each other and played like cubs. Exactly how long they ran for, Ceri was unsure and did not care. She ran through the darkness, going wherever her tiny pack went and enjoying every moment of it.

  To her left she saw Carter, loping along like a teenager. Being a wolf-man seemed to suit him; the added muscle and longer limbs gave him speed and stamina he could not manage as a human. On top of that he was clearly feeling the exhilaration of running with the pack and enjoying it hugely. His muzzle turned slightly and he saw her looking his way. Letting out a bark of what might have been laughter, he darted across behind her and she felt his hand slap her behind. Well that was just not on. A minute later it had become a game for all of them as they darted about, dodging and leaping, and trying their hardest to tag their fellows. Michael seemed to be enjoying that one and Ceri could see a new pack game developing at Battersea.