Demon in the Machine

by Lise MacTague

  “I’m very sorry.” Compassion warmed her voice and Isabella’s eyes prickled with heat. “That’s a lot to endure.”

  “Yes, well.” Isabella gripped the bridge of her nose and squeezed. She would not burst into tears in front of Briar. “It’s better than the alternative.” The display of sympathy threatened to undo her completely. There had been little time to consider her actions or their consequences. Briar’s quiet empathy had her thinking along lines that were easier to avoid.

  “And your mother is the one who taught you.”

  It wasn’t a question. Isabella couldn’t stop from looking up at Briar, guilt painted across her face. “How did you know?”

  Briar laughed, warm and genuine. The sound, coupled with the gloved fingers still around her arm, sent electricity coursing through Isabella’s center. She’d felt less jolted after touching one of her father’s ungrounded contraptions.

  “I’ve met your parents,” Briar said, seemingly unaware of the difficulties she was causing Isabella. “I have no problems envisioning your mother crawling through somebody’s window, though I imagine her bad leg would cause some problems. Not your father, on the other hand. It seems likely he’d be distracted by some object in the house he was trying to burgle. He would have been picked up by the authorities years ago.”

  I should really get my hand back. “I suppose so.” The words came out breathy and distracted. Briar looked down and realized she still held Isabella’s hand and dropped it with alacrity. Oh well.

  “Where did she get the experience?” Briar asked. The tips of her ears were bright red and she refused to meet Isabella’s eyes. “Was it during her time on the frontier?”

  How does she know about that? Isabella wondered. Mother never said anything about that. “She never really said.”

  “Is that so?” Briar examined the tips of her gloves. “It’s the strangest thing. I did some research on your family. Everyone agrees that your mother is some variety of American heiress, but no one knows exactly what she inherited. All they know is your father showed up with an American fiancée, married her in almost unseemly haste, then his estate was awash in money. It has even been speculated that she was pregnant during their wedding, but your brother wasn’t born until years later. Even then she walked with a cane.”

  Isabella stared at Briar with her mouth agape. Research? How had Briar discovered so much in such little time? She’d said nothing untoward, hadn’t even hinted at it, really; she’d simply laid her results out for Isabella to see.

  “You’ve been busy,” Isabella finally said.

  Briar smiled. “I find ways to pass the time.”

  “You certainly do.” Isabella turned to face Briar, crossing her legs and not caring in the least if her legs were exposed. “What I’m about to share, you must never tell another soul.”

  “Why would I?” Briar cocked her head to one side. “It would only open inquiries into how I come to know such things, which would expose your activities. I have no wish for you to end up in a jail cell. Unless you fail to get that grimoire, that is.” The last statement seemed tacked on, as if Briar had perhaps let on more than she’d meant to and was covering her tracks.

  “Very well.” Isabella took a deep breath. “My mother used to rob trains. She and her partner did quite well for themselves until the day they robbed a train with a couple of Pinkerton agents aboard. They shot her and my father concealed her. He pretended she was his wife. Her partner was also wounded but escaped. He was apprehended two days later. Mother and Father went straight to New York and took the first steamer back to London, but not without stopping first for the money she’d accumulated during her career.” She’d said almost the entire story with one lungful of air and was quite out of breath when she reached the end.

  Briar stared at her. Whatever she’d been expecting, this clearly wasn’t it. Feeling slightly offended, Isabella crossed her arms.

  “You asked. I answered.”

  “I did and you did.” Briar blinked a couple times. “That’s an amazing story. I would accuse you of making it up, but it’s too outlandish not to be true.”

  “I thought it was so romantic when I was small. He fell in love with her on the train when she demanded he empty his pockets. When she came limping back through, he pulled her into his berth.” They shared a smile, Isabella’s rueful and Briar’s amused. “So tell me about your mother. What is she like?”

  The smile on Briar’s faced drained away, leaving no traces of levity. “She’s like many mothers, I presume. She wants me to give her grandchildren.”

  Isabella nodded in understanding. She’d heard similar things from many of her friends. Althea wanted to see her get married and save the family’s fortunes. On the subject of children, she hadn’t said anything. Her mother’s main focus was stabilizing the family finances before her father found out what they were up to.

  “She doesn’t want you to get married?” The question slipped out before Isabella could stop it. To even suggest such things before marriage was quite rude, never mind that she herself had engaged in activities that would be the source of much gossip if they were to be made public.

  To her credit, Briar didn’t seem offended. “She views such things as…negotiable. In her mind, the grandchildren are more important than a ceremony. Or my happiness.”

  Isabella didn’t think she was meant to have heard the last. She put her hand on Briar’s arm. The sleeve of Briar’s dress had ridden up, exposing a small band of skin between her glove and the sleeve. When Isabella touched it, Briar stopped moving. With a small gasp, her breathing cut off. Her eyes stared through Isabella, who yanked back her hand.

  Briar didn’t move. She stayed as still as a statue, not breathing that Isabella could see.

  “Briar?” There was no response. “Briar!” Isabella raised her voice to no avail. She reached out and grabbed Briar by the shoulder, tugging at her, trying to shake some sense back into her friend. Briar listed limply to one side and Isabella caught her before she could crack her head on the metal bedstead.

  She looked down into brown eyes that held hers. Isabella felt like she was falling forward into those chestnut eyes, which were now flecked with deep red motes that seemed to glow. No, she wasn’t falling forward. Briar was moving toward her.

  Soft lips touched hers, tentatively at first, then with more confidence when Isabella didn’t pull back. They moved over hers and warmth spilled through her, running from her mouth and pooling in her groin.

  “My god,” Isabella groaned. Briar took the opportunity to slide the tip of her tongue over Isabella’s lips, to dip gently into her mouth. Isabella ran the tip of her tongue over Briar’s, meeting her halfway and sending electricity tingling through her.

  Arms crushed her to Briar’s chest, and a hand tangled in her hair, pulling back her head and exposing her neck. Their lips no longer touched. Isabella moaned in protest, then gasped when Briar nipped her way from her jawline down the side of her neck. She fastened her lips at the base of her neck where her collarbones met. She sucked at the sensitive skin of Isabella’s neck, setting her aflame.

  “Briar,” Isabella breathed. “Oh god, Briar!” Nothing could have prepared her to deal with the lust that raged through her. She was tossed on a torrent of passion, helpless before it. Her body burned to be touched, to be possessed by this woman who was wringing such ecstasy from her.

  “Isabella.” Briar looked up at her. Her eyes glowed brilliant scarlet in the dim room. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry?” That made even less sense than the glowing red eyes. Isabella tried to force her passion-fogged mind back to some semblance of logic. “I don’t—”

  Thunderous crashing cut them off. For a moment, Isabella thought it came from within her. Her heart certainly was beating a nearly deafening rhythm on the inside of her eardrums. Briar looked away and Isabella realized someone was pounding on their door.

  The door shook in its frame when their visitor pounded upon it again.
r />   “Open up, for the love of god!” a man’s voice cried out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Isabella looked at her, then back at the door. The man was loud, but Briar heard no other disturbance. If there was a fire in the rooming house, surely there would be all sorts of accompanying commotion, and he wouldn’t be taking the time to pound at their door, he would likely be running for the street.

  “Should we let him in?” Isabella’s voice was a tad breathless. Briar felt a pang for their missed opportunity. She still ached for the beautiful burglar. It seemed like she’d been aching for her for days, weeks even. When Isabella had touched her bare skin and Briar had felt her desire as keenly as she felt her own, there had been no choice. She’d needed to feel more. She still did.

  The door shook in its frame again as Briar blinked stupidly at Isabella.

  “He’ll bring Tattersall up here to investigate,” Isabella hissed. Her eyes were sharp now, her movements crisp. She crossed the room in two long strides and threw open the door.

  Briar’s mind cleared instantly when she saw what he held in his hand. It burned with a virulent green fire that reached toward her as if she were a draft pulling flames up the chimney.

  “It’s you!” the man cried.

  “Get him in here,” she said as she cast about for something—anything—she could use to bring him down.

  Isabella gave her a shocked look, then grabbed the man about the lapels and yanked him into the room. His eyes bugged wide open and he couldn’t contain a strangled yelp. Briar abandoned trying to find anything to hit the man, so she did the next best thing. She balled her fist, pulled it back, and let it fly with all of her strength. She connected cleanly with his chin and felt the power of the blow explode in her knuckles and shiver up her arm. He’d still been moving forward from Isabella’s yank when his face met her fist. With a crack she felt more than she heard, he went reeling back and collapsed in the doorway. His arms flopped above his head and into the hall.

  Briar grabbed him by both ankles and dragged him all the way into the room. “Don’t just stand there. Close the door.”

  Isabella started, then quietly complied.

  The man was heavy. A portly fellow not quite in his middle years, he had the look of a working man about him. His face was dark with dirt or maybe soot, but even so, Briar could see the bruise purpling rapidly on the point of his chin. She pried his fingers away from the object he held in his left hand. Calluses lay thick upon the skin, and he had the sunken knuckles of a boxer. It was a good thing they’d taken him by surprise.

  Now that she had the thing out of his hand, it no longer burned chartreuse; it settled into a fitful glow. Briar leaned forward to look at it. It was a compass, cheap both in parts and workmanship, but the needle pointed steadfastly in her direction, no matter which way she turned it.

  “We need to tie him up before he comes to,” she said, still inspecting the compass. The runes graven upon it were in a dialect she wasn’t as familiar with, and it took her a few moments to puzzle out what they were meant to do. The compass had been enchanted to bring its user to the closest source of “other” infernal energy.

  The use of other was an odd one. Surely there weren’t that many sources of energy. There was another rune that perplexed her until she realized it meant alive. This human had been sent out to find the nearest living source of infernal energy. The nearest demon. He’d been sent to find any of her half-brethren who might be sniffing around Mirabilia.

  “Is he tied up?” She looked over at Isabella. Somehow, she’d gotten the man onto the bed, but he wasn’t restrained. Were his eyelids fluttering? She flew to the bedside and snatched up the threadworn top sheet, tearing a long strip out of it. “Here,” she said, handing the piece to Isabella. “As tight as you can.”

  Frantic to make sure he’d be immobilized by the time he woke, Briar tore strip after strip off the sheet until there was nothing left of it. Isabella followed her instructions in bemused silence, and when Briar looked up with the last two strips in her hands, the man looked quite like an Egyptian mummy she’d once seen on display at the British Museum.

  “Perhaps he’s restrained enough?” Isabella said.

  “I expect so.”

  The man’s eyelids continued to flutter, though he showed no more sign of awakening. Briar took the opportunity to rifle through his pockets. A growing disquiet welled within her. Touching him put her quite on edge, even through her gloves. The man wasn’t alone. Something else lurked within him.

  “What’s going on,” Isabella asked. “Why did you knock him out like that?”

  “He isn’t what he seems, and he came here looking for me. I suspect someone in the factory knows we are here, that or they’ve prepared for people poking around and he’s the poor devil who was set to look into it.” Briar tapped her fingertips together. “We won’t know unless we ask them.”

  “Them?” Isabella looked about the room. “There’s only us and him.”

  “He has a…passenger, I suppose you could say.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’re about to find out.” Briar pushed up her sleeves and took off her gloves. “I need you to stay out of the way while I work.”

  “But—”

  “Isabella, please.” Briar held out her hand and braced herself. When Isabella took it, the inevitable welter of emotions and images tried to impose themselves upon her. Chief among them were the burgeoning fear Isabella held firmly in check and the arousal that still lingered from their kiss, even with her mounting anxiety. “When we’re done and we have the grimoire, I’ll explain everything, but for now I really need you to trust in me.” She looked into Isabella’s eyes, pleading with her to understand, to believe. “Please.”

  “Very well.” Isabella let go and arranged herself in the chair by the window. “But it needs to be everything.”

  “Done.”

  Briar knew what she needed to do, but it was a spell she had never performed herself. She took her time, tracing runes and lines on the man’s face and neck with one saliva-moistened finger. Dim magenta lines appeared as she traced them, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She had to pause frequently. Saliva didn’t last as long as blood did, and her mouth would be beyond parched by the time she completed the diagram. She had one rune left to place in the middle of his forehead, the key which would activate the entire spell, but she needed a little something else. Human magicians like Jean-Pierre LaFarge thought blood was the most important material for spell creation, but they were only half right. Any biological fluid could be used. Blood had the advantage that it was almost always created in conjunction with fear or anger, which was why the blood of slaughtered animals and especially humans was so much more potent than the blood of the magicians themselves. The fluid was one part of it, the emotion the other. Magicians might use their own blood under extreme duress, but the stresses upon them had to be enormous to impart the same emotion as was held in the fluids of others. Her mother’s people, the succubi and incubi, were also known to use other fluids. Briar’s mind shuddered away from the thought. There was certainly emotion involved in the release of those fluids, but they were so messy.

  Add in the runes and the diagrams for ritual, and you had your spell. All Briar needed was a dash of emotion, and she knew right where to get it.

  She crossed the floor to Isabella. “I need a favor from you,” she said. “I need you to kiss me.”

  “You need me to what?” Isabella’s eyes looked ready to drop from her head, but Briar thought she detected a hitch in her breathing before she’d answered.

  “Kiss me.” Briar raised one eyebrow. “Is that such a hardship for you?”

  “Good god, of course not!” Isabella surged to her feet and across the room in one bound. With unmistakable hunger, she pressed her lips to Briar’s.

  Briar was battered by Isabella’s arousal. She held on to enough of herself not to be dragged back into the maelstrom of need and desire, b
ut it was a close thing. She deepened the kiss, delving deep into Isabella’s mouth with her tongue. The moan Isabella released almost undid her, but Briar pushed through the haze of emotion. Isabella’s lips scorched hers, and her tongue branded itself upon the inside of her mouth time and again as Isabella explored her. How good would that tongue feel on other parts? Parts that even now cried out for completion, for the satisfaction she had long denied them.

  With a gasp, Briar ripped her mouth away from that of Isabella, who whimpered at the loss of contact. Her eyes closed, she clutched Briar’s upper arms with desperate hands. Briar looked down at her arms. Horror filled her when she saw grey opalescence shimmering back at her. She’d lost her shroud. She couldn’t let Isabella see her like this, but if she raised the shroud before she completed the current spell, the emotion she’d harvested from Isabella would be redirected and she would have to start over.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Briar croaked at Isabella. “Don’t open them until I tell you to, no matter what you hear.”

  On legs that trembled, though whether from the shock of losing her shroud without knowing it or from the intensity of her kiss with Isabella, she didn’t know, Briar made her way back over to the bed. She put her index finger in her mouth, though her lips still yearned for Isabella’s. The saliva that coated her finger should be more than potent enough to do the trick. She traced the key rune and sat back. One at a time, the glowing letters flared to brilliant red life. Blood would have been quicker, but with the man restrained, they had time.

  The man’s eyes popped open immediately. They burned from within, a vile green that made Briar’s stomach churn.

  “Half-breed bitch, let free!”

  Ignoring the thing’s demands, Briar closed her eyes. It started to scream, a high wailing cry that set her teeth on edge. Whoever was living downstairs thumped again on their floor. Briar thought she heard a muffled curse. She forced herself to tune out all distractions, even Isabella, who she could feel as a point of lust on her internal horizon. A kind of peace settled over her as the shroud covered her once again.