Demon in the Machine

by Lise MacTague

  * * *

  Isabella squeezed the trigger, firing again and again at the thing that lumbered toward them. She didn’t know where to aim, so she took aim at the center of the chaotic mass. The beast was a jumble of arms and legs, of torsos and heads. It was as if someone had taken a dozen imps and rolled them into an abhorrent ball. A bullet obliterated an imp’s forehead, and its head flopped forward against the torso that stuck from the mass Isabella might have considered a body, but its multitude of hands never stopped reaching for her.

  A cacophony of screeches issued from its mouths, a disharmony so intense that Isabella dazedly wondered why her ears weren’t bleeding. Johnson crouched beside her, his face twisted in pain. He lifted the hammer, readying himself for when the abomination got within his reach.

  The hammer on her revolver clicked once, then again when she cocked it and pulled the trigger again. Six shots weren’t enough; they weren’t even in the remotest realm of enough. With a Gatling gun she might have had some success. Only sheer firepower could triumph here.

  Johnson stepped forward, swinging the sledge in a long motion. It impacted with a wet thud, driving through the forehead of an imp, obliterating it beyond all recognition. The thing didn’t slow. Arms reached up and fastened themselves around the hammer, wrenching it from his grasp. He let go rather than be pulled into the struggling mass of demons.

  She grabbed Johnson’s arm and tugged. “Run!” she yelled, pointing away from the abomination.

  It was likely impossible to hear her, even as close as they were, but he understood well enough. He shoved her forward between the thick columns, racing hot on her heels, then passing her. Isabella did her best to keep up, terror putting wings on her feet and driving her forward. Ahead, Johnson ducked and weaved, then turned hard to the right. He almost went down, but saved himself with an outstretched arm. He disappeared from her sight around the corner.

  Isabella pounded after him and almost ended up with a faceful of imp for her trouble. It flew at her, arms reaching toward her. Allowing reflex to take over, she snatched the little demon out of the air and tossed it behind her. Frantically flapping wings kept it from hitting the ground and it shrieked, cursing at her in English and a language she didn’t know, before cutting off suddenly.

  Despite herself, Isabella looked back in time to see some of the thing’s arms pluck the imp out of the air and stop it in its tracks. The arms grappled with the imp for a second then slowly pulled it feet first into itself. The imp howled, a high thin cry that went on and on until its head disappeared into the mass. Even then, Isabella could hear the echoes of its screams. She gagged, harsh bile rising in her throat, threatening to choke her with its acridity. The thing kept pushing, the imp’s arms flailing. Suddenly, the arms stiffened then stopped waving. Isabella couldn’t help herself. She retched, vomit rising suddenly in her throat and out her mouth, running down her chin and onto her chest. The stench of acid turned her stomach even more, but she dared not look away, not even to clean herself. The thing looked at Isabella and a roar issued from a dozen or more mouths at once. The arms sticking out of its side reached toward her, as did those elsewhere in its bulk. The legs underneath got going, and again the beast came for her.

  Isabella took off once more and almost ran into a wall covered with imps. They reached for her, trying to tangle claws in her hair, promising to rend the flesh from her bones if she gave them the chance. A tug on her arm saved her from careening into them.

  “This way,” Johnson yelled in her ear. With his help, she backed out of their reach; they didn’t leave their perches to come after her.

  She turned back to face the abomination, waiting as it closed the space between them in a few bounds. Isabella dove out of the way. As she’d hoped, the beast was large and fast, but not maneuverable. Getting a dozen legs going in the same direction at once took time. It careened into the wall while the imps there scrambled to avoid it. Those that weren’t crushed outright did their best to avoid the grasping arms, but many weren’t so lucky. Imps were plucked off the wall and from the air to suffer the same fate as the previous imp.

  She’d seen this show once and had no desire to view it again. Johnson yanked at her arm until it almost hurt. She wrested her hand away from him and ran on into the shadows. Imps flew at her from the dark, singly or in groups, sending her to one side or another to avoid them. Before long, she could again hear the ponderous bulk of the thing behind her as a dozen feet hit the floor in a heavy but steady rhythm. She had no time to plan, only to react. Isabella dodged claws and teeth, fighting against the ungainly weight of the jump rig that threatened to pull her over on more than one occasion. She ignored the stitch in her side and how her breath rasped in the back of her throat. The only thing that mattered was keeping her legs moving, staying ahead of the thing behind her and away from the imps that accosted her from the shadows.

  Green fire blinded her in one eye and she had no time to react to the figure huddled on the ground in front of her. She tried to jump over its hunched form but didn’t have quite enough height. Her toes dragged along its back and caught on something. Suspenders, perhaps? She tilted forward and yanked her foot free, trying to tuck herself into a ball and control her tumble. Her success was partial. She avoided landing on her face and breaking her neck, but she came down hard on her side. All the air drove out of her lungs with an explosive “oof” when the rig failed to take the brunt of her tumble. She stared at the ceiling, wondering why it was so light in here.

  A face swam into focus in front of her, gaunter than she remembered and with longer hair, but heartbreakingly familiar nonetheless. Even with the goggles, she knew this face better than she knew her own.

  “Hello, Isabella,” Wellington Castel said. He didn’t seem glad to see her, nor did he seem angry. “What on earth are you wearing?”

  Wearing? He’s worried about my clothes? Isabella shook her head to make some sense of what was happening.

  Another face joined his in front of her eyes. A beautiful woman with the cruelest eyes she’d ever seen smirked down at her. “Yes, Isabella. Hello.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Isabella sat up, rubbing the back of her neck. She’d bounced her head pretty hard off the stone floor. It was a good thing she was wearing her helmet. A blow to the head would explain some of what she was seeing. Even with her previous visit, the scene in the subterranean room beggared belief. A row of squat voltaic piles, each much smaller than the one above, took up one side of the room, casting their green glow against the wall. Someone had carved a circle into the floor. It had to be twenty paces across. At equally spaced points around its perimeter, braziers smoked and smoldered. To one side a raised platform with stone stairs running up it presided over the scene, and across the circle was what Isabella could only call an altar. It was a thing roughly hewn out of black stone that seemed to absorb what little light there was in this place.

  “Are you going to introduce me to this fascinatingly garbed creature?” the cruel-faced woman asked.

  Wellington’s jaw tightened slightly, but he complied. “Beruth, this is my sister, Isabella Castel. I have no idea what she’s wearing.” He gestured from Isabella to the woman. “Isabella, this is Beruth, Prince of Pain, Head of the Council of Agony, Lord of Torment.”

  Isabella resolved not to give the woman the satisfaction of seeming impressed by her litany of titles. She ignored Beruth in favor of giving her brother a hard stare. “There’s nothing wrong with my clothes. They’re what I need to get the job done. Too bad that seems to be you. So you’re Thomas Holcroft? I’d hoped it wasn’t you, but I knew you had to be involved after I saw your schematics.”

  “You’re the one who stole my drawings?” His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Then you must have taken the grimoire as well. Why would you do such a thing?”

  “We knew Holcroft was up to no good after we took apart one of your engines.”

  “You and Jean-Pierre pulled that off.” She’d thought his ey
ebrows couldn’t climb any higher, but they disappeared under his hair.

  “Sure.”

  “Jean-Pierre LaFarge? Father’s partner who can barely enchant his way out of a burlap sack?” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know that I believe you.”

  “Believe what you like,” she said, making a show of her nonchalance.

  “She lies,” Beruth noted clinically.

  “Of course she does,” Wellington said. “It was obvious almost from the beginning that Jean-Pierre didn’t have the power or the knowledge to help me. We know there’s someone else, someone from her realm.” He pointed to Beruth.

  “There’s only us,” Isabella said, her voice insistent. “The Earl of Hardwicke sent us here to find out what you were up to.”

  “Us?” Beruth walked around behind her to stop at the lump that had tripped her up. To Isabella’s horror, she realized that had been a person she’d tripped over. The demon lifted his head, and Isabella stared into Johnson’s slack face. His eyes were open, but insensible. “I don’t think this is the us you mean.”

  “That’s it. We’re it.” Isabella pushed herself to her feet and stared down at the diminutive demon.

  “Hardwicke knows we’re here.” Beruth dropped Johnson’s head with a hollow thud and rounded on Wellington, her lips pulled back from her teeth, transforming her pretty face into a feral mask. She drove a finger hard against his chest, sending him back a step. “If he knows, then you can bet the Duke of London knows. I told you we should have left this place.”

  “And if he knows, then why did he send a girl and a servant to stop us?” He swept her finger away. “Think, for once.”

  “He expects us back shortly,” Isabella said. “If we don’t return, he’ll know something is wrong here.” If she could convince him to let them go, there was a chance she could find Briar and they could escape.

  “Those who oppose us are already hard-pressed,” Beruth said. She fixed her gaze back on Isabella, trying to pin her back with only the force of her stare. If she hadn’t been on the receiving end of Briar’s disapproval on more than one occasion, Isabella might have found herself intimidated. As it was, the attempt only added to her already prodigious anger. “If we add a little more, they won’t miss these two for quite some time. Long enough for us to prevail.”

  Isabella stared calmly back, trying to keep all trace of her rage from her face. This Beruth might think herself an important personage, but Isabella wasn’t her subject. There was only one woman she owed her fealty to, and she rather doubted the Queen was pleased with an incursion of demons into her realm.

  “She has some backbone,” Beruth said. She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling merrily. “I shall enjoy breaking her.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort.” Wellington moved to stand between them. “She may be aligned against us, but she is still my blood. Once you have your new day, I’m sure she’ll see sense and join us.”

  That was exceedingly unlikely, but Isabella kept her mouth shut on the retort. She smiled blandly instead, neither agreeing with nor refuting Wellington’s hope.

  “And still she lies about who she’s here with,” Beruth said. “Did you think I would miss that, little human?”

  Little human? Have you looked in a mirror? Beruth was four feet tall if she was an inch. Isabella wondered if she was wearing heels to reach even that slight height. “There’s nothing to miss.”

  “Is that so?” Beruth took to the air suddenly, her nose no more than a few inches from Isabella’s. Despite herself, Isabella couldn’t help but flinch backward. She could see every eyelash on Beruth’s face. When the woman’s eyes shifted green from eyelid to eyelid, relieved only by the slit of a pupil, Isabella pulled back even further. Beruth grabbed her by the upper arms, holding her in place while the pale cream of her skin was overtaken by the same brick red of the imps. She smiled, her lips pulling much further back than a human could have managed, exposing teeth as sharp as needles. Scales erupted from the skin at her jaw, overlapping their way down her neck until they disappeared under her collar. “Do you really want to test me, little human?”

  “Let go of me.” Isabella brought her hands up on the insides of Beruth’s arms, knocking her hands away. She scrambled to her feet to get away from the demon.

  “Isabella,” Wellington said, his voice sharp. “Stop fighting her. Tell us what we want to know.”

  “She won’t talk to you.” Beruth’s voice was soft. It reached down inside Isabella and caressed her, drawing out a shudder of revulsion when Isabella realized what was going on. That spot was meant for Briar only. “You’re her brother. She’s not frightened of you.” Her smile grew impossibly wider. “She’s not really frightened of me. But she will be.”

  “We don’t have time for your games, not if Hardwicke and the Duke are on to us.”

  Beruth hissed sharply, the tip of her pointed tongue protruding momentarily between her teeth. “I’ll pull the truth of the other out of her.”

  “Fine then.” He turned sharply away from her. “Waste your time on my sister and lose your chance to take down the Duke.”

  Sharp pain bloomed on Isabella’s scalp when Beruth grabbed a handful of hair and dragged her head down to her level. The demon-woman rubbed her cheek along Isabella’s, twisting her hand in Isabella’s hair as she did so. Her skin was dry, like that of a snake, but the edges of her scales were sharp. They abraded Isabella’s skin. Isabella couldn’t help but cry out as her hair seemed moments away from being yanked out of her head.

  “You’ll sing your pain to me soon enough, girl.” Beruth shook her hand free. “Take her away,” she called over her shoulder.

  A coterie of imps scuttled over to them. Small hands with palms as hard as beetle carapace grabbed her arms. Their claws pricked into her skin, scant hairs away from drawing blood. The warning was obvious. If she dared to struggle, her arms would drip with her blood.

  “And him?” Wellington pointed at Johnson’s limp form.

  “He’ll be more useful here. We’ll be opening the gate soon. His blood contains more than a trace of demon essence. It will charge the inscription more quickly. Unless you’d rather use your sister? She won’t be as potent, but there’s a certain symmetry to it.” At his reluctant head shake, Beruth shrugged. “I thought not.”

  Wellington strode toward Isabella. The imps parted before him like the pigeons in Trafalgar Square did before tourists. “I’ll take her down.” He grabbed her upper arm and hustled her away from the platform and circle. When she tried to get her arm back, he jerked it hard enough to rattle her teeth.

  “Don’t let her get away, and don’t tarry,” Beruth called after them. “We must move.”

  “We have time enough,” Wellington said over his shoulder.

  They passed the row of glowing batteries, the green light making her brother look sallow and painfully gaunt. The glass lenses in his goggles flashed the light back at her, making it impossible to see his eyes or to give her any idea of his feelings. Soon enough, they passed into a hallway with the ceiling so low it felt more like a tunnel. Isabella glanced back and caught the glimmer of a dozen eyes behind them.

  “They’re following us.”

  “Of course they are,” her brother said. “She doesn’t trust me, not even after all I’ve done.”

  “What have you done?”

  He shook his head. His wordless answer spoke more of resignation than defiance, however.

  “Why are you doing this? Whatever this is.”

  A grim smile split his face. “It was mostly to prove myself at first. The mechanicals were so limiting. You were already pushing them to their limits, which left no way for me to distinguish myself. When I thought of all we could do if we incorporated even more demoniac magic into our designs…”

  His voice trailed off and his eyes turned inward. “But Father wouldn’t go any further than what Jean-Pierre could offer. I saw the limitations of his pathetic talents soon enough. Truth be told, I think his
fear is more of a limit than his poor grasp of the magic is.” Wellington shrugged and Isabella jostled within his grip.

  “Let me go. I’ll behave.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll let them do what needs to be done.” He jerked his head toward their not-so-distant escort. There was regret in his tone, regret at what they would do to her, she imagined, but not at having to do it.

  “I’ll be good,” Isabella said.

  “Very well.” He dropped her arm and clasped his hands behind his back as he strode down the darkened corridor with its vaulted roof. His head almost touched the top. His hair, which had always been so carefully groomed, now stood up from his scalp at all angles. Some of the longer tufts bent where they brushed the ceiling.

  “Was LaFarge your first teacher?”

  “He was.” A ghost of a smile touched Wellington’s lips. “We had a good time for a while. He was so proud of his abilities as a teacher when I picked it up so easily.” The smile dropped away as if it had never been. “He was less pleased when I struck out on my own. That’s when he found me a more advanced teacher. You know what happened after that.”

  The last was practically spat at her. Of course Isabella knew about it. She’d been there when her parents found out from their solicitor that Wellington had forged their signatures to drain the family accounts of thousands of pounds. He’d practically put them in the poor house by spending more and more money on successively more expensive teachers. He hadn’t confined himself to demoniac magic, either. Some of the areas into which he’d dabbled had verged on mysticism. Isabella thought their father might have been able to forgive him some of it, but when he’d been forced to pay off an alchemist for Wellington’s lessons, that had been the last straw.

  “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, though.” Isabella struggled to keep the accusation she felt from her voice. Angering him was a foolish proposition, and yet she wanted to box him about the ears. “You kept sneaking out, even after they’d paid off your debts. Mother hid that from Father, but she knew they had to get you away from London, to send you where your habit couldn’t be supported any longer.”