Demon in the Machine

by Lise MacTague

  “Ah yes, Heidelberg. That was my opportunity.”

  “How did you do it? I got a letter from you only yesterday.”

  “I wrote up a number of them and sent them with a friend. He posted them to you regularly, and in exchange he got to keep the money sent back with them. I transferred my ticket to him. I never even left London.”

  Isabella clenched her teeth on what she wanted to say. What would he do if she called him a conniving blaggard? He was the reason she’d had to do such things to her friends. He was the reason for all of it. It had been easier to swallow when she’d thought he was out bettering himself and moving beyond the problems he’d accumulated in London. Instead, he’d sent their money to someone else and kept to his same destructive ways without any consideration for the depths to which they’d had to stoop as a result.

  “I had to make do on my own, which was hard enough. You should have seen the flat I was reduced to renting on the money Mother sent me off with. Little more than a room under the eaves. There was only a tiny kitchen where I had to cook my own food, and I had to go outside to access the commode.”

  “So sorry to hear it.” Isabella forced the platitude past her gritted teeth and hoped he mistook her grimace for a smile. She needn’t have bothered. He didn’t even glance toward her.

  “Yes, yes. But my fortunes soon changed. I apprenticed myself to a magician who was more daring than Jean-Pierre and I was able to see a demon-conjuration for the first time.”

  Wellington frowned, furrows Isabella didn’t remember carving themselves deep in his brow. “He didn’t survive it, but Beruth thought I showed promise. She’s been teaching me ever since. In that time, I’ve become wildly successful, marrying magic and industry in ways no one else has had the vision to do.” He sighed.

  “Yes, you seem thrilled beyond all measure, brother.”

  “It’s true that not all is as well as it seems.” He was unaffected by her sarcasm. The look he shot back over his shoulder spoke volumes. “But it is as it is. Beruth’s new order will change many things.” He lowered his voice. “But not as she thinks.”

  If his dark look was supposed to mean something to her, Isabella missed its significance. She stared at him blankly.

  He stared at her, then shook his head. “All will become clear in time. Or not.” The resignation was back.

  They continued on in silence. The basement was labyrinthine, low corridors twisting and turning, then opening into rooms before continuing on. She’d been counting out each turn, but she wasn’t completely certain she’d committed it all well enough to memory. His revelations had been distracting enough, and she hoped she could make her way back on her own. She’d seen bands of imps, but not many. The further they got from the ritual chamber, the fewer of them there were.

  “Here we are,” Wellington finally said. They stopped in front of a large metal door that would not have been out of place on a bank vault. It was quite out of place in the dingy tunnels, gleaming as it did, all brass and polish. He produced a key from one of his pockets and turned it slowly. Tumblers gave way before it with muted thunks. He grasped the large wheel and turned it ponderously forward. More tumblers clanked, these decidedly louder. The small hallway echoed with the sounds of metal upon metal. The door popped open, swinging toward them much more smoothly than its bulk suggested. “You’ll be safe in here. The imps aren’t permitted.”

  Isabella looked in, trying to see what awaited her. She loitered too long in the doorway. Wellington placed a hand in the middle of her rig and shoved her hard, propelling her into the room with such force that she was halfway across it before she realized what he’d done.

  The door slammed behind her and the tumblers turned. She whirled on her heels and dashed to the door. The wheel on this side spun slowly. Isabella grabbed it and threw all her weight into resisting its closure, but it was no use. Inexorably, it spun closed, each tumbler falling into place, sealing her in. The lock engaged in a series of quieter clicks.

  She cursed briefly, then considered her options. Wellington didn’t know she was adept at picking locks, she recalled with some gratification. He hadn’t been home when Althea had taught her that particular skill. Of course, he hadn’t been as far away as she’d thought, either. Isabella growled deep in her throat, her rage at his selfish ways rising to the fore of her mind once again. The growl stopped when she took a closer look at her side of the brass door.

  There was no keyhole.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The darkness seethed with imps. Some were being herded by one of the black-skinned euronym, towering over their recalcitrant charges, but most were on their own. The larger demons looked like bigger, dark-skinned versions of imps and existed mainly to keep their small cousins in line. Briar found the presence of euronym troubling. If she were to compare the host of the Children of Pain to a human army, then they were the sergeants of the pain demons. Imps were too flighty, too undisciplined to work together on their own. If they’d had that kind of wherewithal, they would have taken over the infernal realm eons ago. The euronym were much less plentiful, which was a relief.

  Briar skirted a knot of imps being overseen by an euronym. She took care to avoid the demonic overseers. The last thing she needed was one of them to send her on an errand or worse to recruit her into its little band of imps that skittered to and fro before it. This one was enlarging its group by snatching imps out of the air as they flew past. The one in its grasp dared to protest, its wail like nails on glass. The euronym clearly thought so as well. With breath-taking casualness, it twisted off the imp’s right leg at the knee.

  The imp screeched louder, then bit off its yells when the euronym transferred its grip to the imp’s arm. Its black skin stood out against the red of the imp’s, looking more like malevolent shadows than flesh and blood, but Briar knew from too-close experience that the euronym were physical beings. The imp ceased its struggles and a pained grin crossed its sharp features. The euronym shook it once in warning, then let it go. A handful of the other imps had snatched up the leg and clustered around it, gnawing away, though the toes still twitched.

  “Leave it!” the euronym boomed. “All parts are to be saved, upon orders of the Prince.” This euronym was male, by its deep baritone. Unlike the imps, these demons were not sexless.

  “Yes, boss,” one imp squeaked. It let go with alacrity.

  Two of the other imps dropped the leg, but a third held on long enough to try sneaking a couple more bites. It received a cuff to the back of the head that sent it airborne but which also had the desired effect of loosing its grasp on the wriggling leg. The euronym kicked the leg aside and directed the group onward. He showed no sign of having seen Briar, frozen in the deepest shadows a short way behind them.

  The Prince? Her mind raced as she did her best to keep out of sight, while also scouring the area for the next corner she could duck into without the euronym noticing. How did the inventor end up with a Prince of the infernal realm? That in itself wasn’t so surprising; they were occasionally summoned, though usually only by the exceedingly foolhardy or the very stupid. That the inventor had survived such a summoning was the amazing part. Princes weren’t known for being understanding to those who tried to control them.

  She’d never met the Prince of the pain demons, but she knew Beruth by reputation. The demons she knew looked down on imps in general and Beruth in particular. She wasn’t known to be overly bright, but she commanded grudging respect for the mass of demons she had at her beck and call. No demons were as populous as the imps. Briar suspected their manner of reproduction gave them an edge in that regard. If Beruth was there, who knew what mischief she might be up to. The Prince was a loose cannon if ever there was one.

  As soon as the euronym and his imps were out of sight, two imps swooped down and snatched the leg off the ground. They showed no sign of wanting to devour it. Instead they carried it between them as they flapped from the foyer. There was probably a propagation pit somewhere on the pre
mises. Briar shuddered. She would stay as far from that as possible.

  For the moment, she was alone at the junction of two hallways. There was nothing to indicate which way she should go. She’d given up trying to follow the glyph on the back of her hand. Every time she thought she was heading in Isabella’s direction, she hit a wall and had to track around. All she was sure of was where she’d been.

  Now she had three possibilities, none of which seemed more promising than the others. She was so turned around after making her way down the stairs and through the labyrinth of subterranean passageways to get this far. She couldn’t have told someone where north was, even if they’d offered to pay her handsomely for it. The one thing she knew was that however much she wanted to rush, now was the time for deliberate action. She would approach this logically and methodically. There was no way she could miss something, not if it meant passing by Isabella.

  She took the hallway that went off to her right. It ended in a small room. From the stench, the imps were keeping food in here. They had two preferred ways of eating their meat: still twitching or rotten to the point of putrescence. Opening the door quickly, Briar tried not to look too closely at the flesh decaying in heaps around the floor. She didn’t want to recognize anything. From the state of decomposition, they’d been storing meat down here for a while.

  What other horrors are down here? Briar wondered. This kind of scene was expected in imp enclaves in the infernal realm. She didn’t expect to see it in the mortal realm. It seemed orders of magnitudes more disgusting here, where it was so unanticipated.

  There were no other doors in the room. A drain in the middle of the floor had once allowed liquid to pass through but was now stopped up by bits of fat and gristle. Blood and worse floated in a thin pool above it. Briar was reasonably certain there was no trap door, not with the presence of the drain.

  That left two more corridors. She made her way back to the junction and chose the next hall over. This one was more promising. Lacking the tortuous ways of the corridor from the stairs, this one went straight on, the brick walls interrupted now and again by doors, some ajar, some locked tight. She peeked through the open doors, finding little of note. One room was piled high with imps, sleeping draped across each other. Some of those would die soon, of that Briar had no doubt. The very air of this world was inimical to many demons, and those of the lower orders found it especially intolerable. The euronym would be able to withstand it to a bearable degree, but even they would be weakened by exposure. The imps would all die, sooner or later. The labored breathing of the dying was audible among the snores of those who simply slept.

  The next door she came across was locked. Briar hesitated in front of it. Was it worth the time and aggravation to get beyond the door? What if Isabella had been captured and was being held somewhere? She could be behind this very door, and if Briar didn’t try it, she’d never know. You have to be methodical, Briar told herself sternly. Who knows what you’ll miss if you dash blindly on?

  A small band of imps fluttered past her. One of them spared her a sideways glance. Imps rarely walked if they could fly. It slowed down and turned toward her, hovering in midair. Briar bared her teeth and flashed it the rudest hand gesture she knew. The imp sneered back at her, but turned and flapped its wings heavily to catch up with its companions. Briar heaved a small sigh. Imps fighting in the halls wouldn’t be noted—she’d already passed more skirmishes than she could count—but it would slow her down.

  She licked her finger and sketched a rune on the door, then drew a circle slowly from right to left, mimicking how the key would turn in the lock. Nothing happened, so she tried it the other way. The lock snicked open and Briar let herself gingerly into the room.

  This room was different than the last. There were no imps in here, but neither was it empty. Slumbering figures lay on pallets piled high with fabric and fur. These had the brick-colored skin of imps but were much larger, though they were not as sizable as the euronym who were taller than even the rangiest humans. These were similar in height to humans, though no human ever had such wings. They could only be polygnots, the highest order of imps, below only the Prince’s circle. This was much more troubling than the presence of the euronym. Polygnots rarely left the infernal plane. They specialized in the magic of pain and wielded it to the advantage of their Prince. Only rarely had Briar heard of a polygnot being summoned by a human magician. They weren’t well-known enough to be summoned and were almost always brought over by accident.

  These were here for a purpose. And there was no way she could take them on. There had to be four—no, five—of them bunked down in here. A couple of other pallets were made up, but empty. Polygnots were rare enough in the infernal realm. Hopefully no more had been brought through. At the very least, Briar could make it difficult for these demons to leave the room if they were summoned.

  She drew the athame across her two fingers and started inscribing the wall to the left of the door. She would have to be careful and quick. As sensitive as polygnots were to magic, they would feel when the spell was kindled in their presence. That in itself wasn’t too worrisome—they would feel the workings of each other constantly—but her magic had a different flavor than theirs. If they remarked on that, they would know something was amiss, so she would have to inscribe the spells, then activate them, with little time to check for errors.

  The wall was rough under her fingertips, the mortar between the bricks soaking up her blood. She worked quickly, constructing the spell, then moving over to the door. To fool workers of magic, she needed to be clever. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to be smarter than even a higher-order pain demon. They were cunning, but hardly brilliant. The trick was to give them something to concentrate on and hide what she had done in plain sight.

  She finished the second inscription, then pushed the door open the slightest bit. Once she keyed the spells, she would need to slip out as quickly as possible. Force of habit caused her to cast a quick eye over the spells, but she shook her head. It was time to trust in her abilities. She slit open the fingers of her right hand and reached up to key both inscriptions at once. A door, identical to the actual one, shimmered into existence on its right, and the original one disappeared. While upstairs, she’d observed the glyphs used to hide the inscriptions upon activation and had worked them into this spell. Fortunately, it seemed to be working as she’d hoped. The time for experimentation was not in the field, but sometimes it couldn’t be avoided.

  One of the polygnots turned over, muttering in its guttural voice. “What goes on?” it asked. Other stirrings joined it.

  Briar didn’t turn to see which one addressed her. All it would see was an imp doing magic far too advanced for its capabilities. The confusion would give her time, and she made use of it by slipping through the door even she could no longer see.

  “What goes?” The voice thundered through the open door. It might not be visible, but it let sound through easily enough. Taking every pain she could to keep quiet, Briar pushed the door shut.

  And now to vacate the area. When they figured out what had happened, the trapped polygnots would be quite perturbed. Fortunately, one imp looked much like all the others. She suspected that the closest imp would become the victim of their anger at being tricked, and she wasn’t going to be within arm’s reach when that happened.

  Briar turned and collided with something in her path. A whoosh of air left her lungs in a loud gasp as she rebounded off it and went flying back. Thick legs the color of obsidian were all she could see. She looked up and up, then up some more, before finally locking eyes with an irritated-looking euronym.

  “Why do you tarry here?” the euronym demanded in the language of the infernal realm, her nostrils flaring wide across her face. Horns curled tightly back from her forehead, and she lowered them in what Briar could only interpret as a threat. “The Prince requires us all.”

  “Uhhh…” Briar had no response prepared. She supposed Isabella would have said something clever
to get herself off the hook she was now on, but dissembling wasn’t her forte. She did remember to affect the characteristic servile whine of the imps to one more powerful. Fortunately for her, imps weren’t smart. There was the chance the euronym would buy it.

  The euronym leaned in, her nostrils still flared, but no longer in anger. She sniffed the air around the head of the imp she thought was Briar. Though she saw an imp, Briar occupied half again the space above it. From her perspective, the euronym was sniffing about her belly button.

  This is not good! Briar’s entire being shrieked at her to move. She scuttled back before quelling the urge. Then she was surrounded by imps, their little bodies bouncing off her as they streamed past. They were so thick in the air that some were forced to run along the ground. Seizing her opportunity, she scrambled to her feet and allowed herself to be swept away by the tide of small demons. The euronym was left behind, shaking her head, but not for long.

  “Keep moving, grubs,” she hollered. She reached back for a straggler and tossed it forward into the surging mass of demons, toward what she undoubtedly perceived as an open space. It wasn’t one. Because of the size difference between Briar and her disguise, the space above her imp image looked empty when it was in fact still occupied by the upper half of her body. Briar ducked as the imp screeched past her ear.

  It was a good thing imps weren’t known for their social graces or the demons around her would have looked quite askance as Briar brushed away those who thought they could zoom through the opening left by the imperceptible top half of her body. She did her best to hunch over, trying to make herself a smaller target. At best, the imps bounced off the slope of her back; at worst, she had to swat them away. Imp dignity was an oxymoron, and Briar had never been so relieved that it was so. She was close to the center of the mass, which disguised her to some degree but was also making it impossible for her to leave.