Demon in the Machine

by Lise MacTague

  On the platform, the human looked up and glared at the turbulent mass of imps. He shouted behind him, but Briar couldn’t hear his words over the shrill voices raised in protest. Another figure joined the human. Even from a distance, she was obviously female and other than human. This must be Beruth, Prince of Pain. She didn’t look all that impressive.

  “Silence!” The order thundered from every corner of the hall. The brawling imps froze where they were; those on the wing hovered tensely in place before drifting slowly downward to settle back into the throng of imps. “You will remain where you are until the working is complete!”

  A collective sigh of acquiescence rose from the throng. Briar looked out across the crowd, noting the imp faces raised as one toward the Prince, like sunflowers following the celestial orb across the sky. She would have stood out among them, like a mountain among hills, had it not been for her disguise. A chill settled into her bones when Briar realized the only non-imps in the room aside from her were the Prince and her inventor. The euronym had disappeared. If there had been any polygnots in the mix, they were gone as well. All that remained were imps.

  Imps were expendable.

  And at that moment, so was she. She swiveled back, in time to see the first circle start to glow as the last drops needed to fill it dripped from the platform.

  She slit her thumb and pressed it to the paper, keying the final rune. A circle of protection sprang into life with her as the epicenter, sweeping imps before it as it expanded.

  In almost the same moment, a much stronger bubble burst into existence around the dais and those standing there. A mere breath later, the first circle burst into green flames so high they licked the ceiling, bending this way and that, but unable to burn any higher only because of the stones in their way.

  Snaps filled the room, silencing the shrieks of the imps. For a moment all Briar could hear was the roar of the fire that scorched the ceiling. Then more snaps split the silence. Long cracks filled with green fire formed on the ceiling, right at the edge of the flames and radiating outward, reaching toward the far wall. Briar shifted back, using her circle as a ram to move imps out of her way when she realized there were cracks opening over her head. More cracks were opening on the floor, visible only because of the space that had cleared around her. She moved swiftly, but carefully to avoid stepping on any of them. She was back almost to the wall before the fissures stopped moving in her direction. Above her head, a lattice of virulent green flame covered the ceiling. Chartreuse light spilled up from between the imps, rendering them into featureless shadows that flickered and shifted before the brightness.

  With a roar, the glowing crevices opened up. Chunks of stone and masonry rained from the ceiling while the floor gave way. The imps rose into the air like a murmuration of starlings at sunset. Some were immediately borne down by chunks of rock into the chasm that suddenly yawned below them. Debris continued to rain down for long moments. Those imps under the safety of the overhang moved back and ducked as those in danger flew toward them. Briar threw herself to the floor, flattening herself against the cold cobbles as imps flooded the space above her. Those who ran across the floor in her direction found themselves shunted to each side by her circle. Unlike the protection around the dais, hers was only a circle, not a bubble. She had no protection from those who did not touch the ground.

  Imps from the crush, caught on both sides by their fellows but unable to move forward because of her circle, found themselves flattened to death from behind. Soon, the front of her circle was bounded by the piled corpses of imps.

  Daylight filtered down through the dust and imps in the air. Briar squinted and looked up before realizing the spell had taken out not only the ceiling of the basement room, but also the factory ceiling high above. The cloud of imps wheeled and danced, but not as one. Collision after collision took place, and before long imps rained from the sky, some as limp bodies, others locked together in desperate tangles of fighting demons.

  Briar stood up slowly. The imps in flight had abandoned their attempt to fly deeper into the factory. Instead, they clawed it out above them, regardless of how the sunlight burned their skin. She turned her attention back to the raised platform. The human now stood straight without worry of hitting his head. There was no sign of debris in that area, but the ceiling above their heads was also gone. The circles were similarly unaffected. Johnson stared straight up at the sunlight that filtered through but stopped just short of him. The air seemed darker around the dais and the circle, a shadow that couldn’t be dispelled by the sun’s rays alone.

  The inventor pointed toward her and Briar realized how visible she was. Beruth shook her head and grabbed the inventor, turning him around and pushing him toward the glowing green bottles that lined the back wall.

  “Who are you?” The question boomed throughout the room. Briar knew it was meant for her. “Why are you here?”

  Briar ignored Beruth’s questions. She keyed another spell into life, then balled up the paper and threw it at the platform. The paper caught fire in a flash of brilliant crimson that grew into a huge fireball that arced toward the dais.

  Imps shrieked and scattered, doing as much damage among themselves as would have occurred had they simply held still and surrendered to immolation. The fireball broke apart against the bubble of protection, drenching it in crimson flames for a moment before they were wiped out by answering green fire.

  “It matters not,” Beruth proclaimed. “Do it,” she said, turning to gesture at the inventor.

  He threw a switch on the wall and the tall piece of machinery above their heads whirred to life. Gears groaned and caught, sending up a racket as the top of the cylinder opened up. The liquid in the sides rushed to the bottom as the stacked pile rose, higher and higher until the exposed core stood proudly above the cylinder.

  The inventor threw another switch and the groaning and crashing of gears stopped, only to be replaced by a deep hum that Briar felt in her bones as much as heard. A beam of brilliant white-blue light split the gloom, vaporizing any dust in its way as it reached into the heavens. It speared ever upward in a split-second and the hum became a throbbing roar.

  The inventor threw one last switch. The stack started to spin, casting spears of white light against the walls and remaining ceiling as it opened up.

  Briar felt a tug toward the stack, then a yank. She leaned over and dug her fingers into the cracks between the stones of the floor, holding herself in place in defiance of the inexorable pressure that dragged at her. Around her, imps were being pulled toward the cylinder of brass and light. They seemed powerless to resist the force. Briar stared at the pile through slitted eyes that were stabbed nonetheless by the brightening light. First one imp hit the pile and disappeared in an explosion of brilliance, then another, then half-a-dozen. Before long, so many imps disappeared into the machine that she could no longer observe it, even with her eyes next to closed. Tears streamed down her face and she turned away.

  Beruth had left her place on the dais and had made her way across the circles to Johnson. She wielded a knife of obsidian that looked like a shard of shadow given form in her hands. It took no more than two swift strokes to open Johnson’s veins. The blood that had been trickling into the circles became a stream. The second circle was much larger, but it was rapidly filling in.

  Briar couldn’t wait any longer, but if she let go, she risked being borne over to the stack with the imps. The only place that seemed immune to its effects was the area around the platform and the inside of the circle.

  Briar let go with one hand. The pressure was there, but she didn’t feel as if she were about to take flight. If she could stay down and keep as many imps as possible between her and the machine, maybe there was still hope for her. As much as it galled her to do, crawling was the only option left to her.

  And so, on her belly, Briar made her way closer to the Prince of Pain.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Isabella sized up the wall. Would it have ki
lled Wellington to have left her a pickaxe or a shovel? At the very least a rock hammer would have been helpful. There was nothing you couldn’t do with the right tools. When those weren’t at hand, you had to improvise.

  As it was, the crumbling mortar and bricks gave her some hope. All she had to do was pick the weakest point, though somewhere close to the ground would be best. The wall’s thinnest part was high up where it met the ceiling. She made a note of it but kept looking. If nothing else panned out, that would have to do. She brushed at the loose mortar between two bricks close to the floor. A large chunk fell out.

  “Oh ho,” she said. “This looks promising.” She dug harder and more mortar fell away. The brick wiggled like a tooth not quite loose enough to fall out, but Isabella knew, like any child of five, that nature could often be trumped by determined wiggling. Eventually, the remaining mortar gave up its grip and Isabella popped the brick out. One above it seemed as loose, and she was able to pry it free as well. She bent down to look through the hole. To her disappointment, all she saw was more brick. It had been too much to hope that the wall was only one layer thick. Well, all she needed was one more brick, and she’d have a hole large for her purposes.

  Of course the final brick did all it could to resist her. The other two had been so easy. Isabella wondered if the masons who had built the wall had mixed up a different batch of mortar just to frustrate her. She took a break from the wall and ran her hand across her forehead while listening closely. The room still vibrated.

  Her eye fell on the pile of building materials in the corner. A lever! Of course, with a long enough lever she’d be able to move pretty much anything.

  She sorted quickly through the pile. The rubber tubing would come in handy, but not for getting that last brick out. Isabella took the length anyway, wrapping it in a coil around her forearm before shouldering it while she visually inventoried the materials. Sadly, her quest for a nice long lever seemed to be coming to naught. Rubber tube safely out of the way, Isabella leaned forward and dug through the pile, paying little attention to the bits of sharp metal that caught on her gloves and sleeve, tearing small rents in the fabric. Briar was out there while whatever it was went on. There was no time to waste.

  Finally, at the bottom of the pile, Isabella found something useful. It was neither a hammer nor a lever, but she thought the drill might do the trick. Sure, its bit was worn down to next to nothing, probably why it had been discarded into the pile of odds and ends, but she didn’t need it to last very long.

  Isabella drilled into the mortar. Her forearms quickly ached from the strain of turning the tool, but the worn bit slowly ate into the stubborn substance. She ignored the pain in her arms and kept drilling, determined to get the last brick out of there. She threw her weight behind it, forcing the bit deeper into the mortar, and winding for all she was worth. It was almost there. She’d drilled four holes into the mortar of two sides and it was starting to crumble.

  The bit snapped. Isabella stumbled into the wall, trying to save herself from bashing her face into the bricks by throwing up her hands. She was partially successful but still managed to scrape her nose and cheek against the rough masonry. Her helmet saved her from a blow to the forehead, but even so her ears rang for a moment from the impact.

  She rubbed her cheek and stared at the brick. The end of the bit was barely visible in the hole she’d drilled.

  Will nothing go right? Isabella’s breathing picked up. She tried to slow it down, to force it out past the lump in her throat that threatened to cut off all air. She had to get out of there; crying wouldn’t help anything. Hot tears collected in her goggles.

  Isabella raised the drill over her head. She stared at the wall. Even though it wobbled in front of her, courtesy of her tears, she knew it was as solid as ever.

  “Give it up!” she screamed and brought the drill down on the offending block. Nothing happened. The brick simply sat there, smug in its cocoon of mortar. “I. Will. Not. Be. Defied!” Isabella punctuated each word with another smash of the drill, pulling her hands back over her right shoulder and letting fly with everything she had in her. She battered at the wall until she could no longer see through the tears of rage that clouded her eyes, until her shoulders ached from the violence of her attack, until the knuckles on her gloves wore through and blood collected in her palms.

  With heavy breaths, Isabella blinked to clear the last of the tears from her eyes. Somewhere during her tirade, the brick had snapped in half. Her airway was suddenly clear. She could breathe again. Would it be enough room? Isabella cleared as much detritus away from the opening as she could. It very well might be. She allowed herself some very cautious optimism. It wouldn’t do to get too excited, only to have her hopes dashed again.

  She shrugged the jump rig off her shoulders. One tank would probably do the trick, but she needed to shut them both off, or they’d both lose pressure. The small valve surrendered easily enough to her ministrations, then she unscrewed the left tank. They were both completely full, exactly as she needed. The remaining tank looked strange in the rig, but it might yet come in handy. She re-attached it to the tubing from the suit, then pulled it back over her shoulders. The weight was off, pulling on one side but not the other. She shrugged her shoulders in a vain attempt to settle it.

  The rig tank barely fit in the hole she’d made. She forced it in and hoped that nothing in the wall pierced the metal sides in the process. The scrape of brick on metal put her teeth on edge, but she wedged it in as far as it would go. Now all she needed was a remote ignition source. She unwrapped the tubing from her forearm and carefully stretched one end over the nozzle that usually connected to the tubing in her suit. Hopefully the tubing would be long enough. She didn’t really want to be in the room when she set off the tank. Isabella unrolled it carefully. It easily had enough length to make it to the little room with Wellington’s drawings.

  It was time to give it a go. Even with her in the next room, this could go catastrophically wrong and kill her a few times over. She didn’t think it would, but if she’d miscalculated on any of it, she would be a bloody smear on the brick and Briar would be quite on her own. Of course, Briar was on her own already, so at least she wouldn’t be any further behind, but if Isabella could lend her any advantage, she had to try.

  Isabella opened the valve on the tank and ran to the little office. She closed the heavy vault door as far as she could, but kept it open a crack to allow the tubing to come through. There was no avoiding that. Hopefully she’d be safe.

  She pulled a lighter out of one of her myriad pouches and struck it. She held it in front of the hose, waiting for the gas inside the tank to get to her. It wouldn’t take long, pressurized as it was.

  Seconds later a small whoosh was the only warning she had. The explosion that shook the room was easily as bad as any she’d been through in the workshop. The oil lamp toppled off Wellington’s drafting table and shattered on the floor. Broken glass and flaming oil spread everywhere.

  “Bollocks!” Isabella hissed. Now was not the time for a fire! Leastways, not in here. One leg of the drafting table, then another caught fire. The flames traveled straight up the varnished wood to the top. She lunged forward to save the drawings, but was too late. Greedy licks of flame devoured them and she had to retreat from the suddenly intense heat before it could blister her hands.

  Coughing from the smoke that already filled the small room, Isabella pushed open the door and slammed it behind her. The fire would burn itself out in there; aside from the desk, table, and drawings, there was nothing else to fuel it.

  She turned around and beheld chaos. She’d been hoping for a hole big enough to crawl through. What she had was one big enough for her and three of her friends to walk through with room left over. The wall had simply disintegrated where she’d planted the tank. Without the wall to support it on one side, the vault door listed out toward the hall. Wellington’s bed and scattered clothes were aflame as well. At least with the explosion it was im
possible to tell that the room had been a mess to begin with.

  Smoke tickled her throat and burned her eyes, sending Isabella into another paroxysm of coughing. There was no point in sticking around. Hopefully the fire on Wellington’s bed would be contained there.

  She stumbled from the room into the empty hall. The smoke was being drawn quickly down the corridor. Isabella hunched down and ran in the same direction.

  Briar, I’m coming!

  * * *

  Briar had made it almost to the edge of the largest circle before the Prince caught sight of her. She would rather have been closer and set before being noticed.

  “Let go,” Beruth shouted from inside the circle. “We need all of you, my children!”

  At least the demon Prince thought she was no more than a stubborn imp. Some of those still clung to various surfaces, shrieking their terror and betrayal for all to hear. Between the noise of the imps, the deep hum of the device, and the hissing crackles emanating from the wall of green bottles at the back of the room, the racket made it next to impossible to think. The large bottles no longer glowed, but rather shone with a brilliance Briar thought might be visible all the way to Halifax.

  The Prince was even worse to her “children” than Briar’s mother was. Briar was reasonably certain that Carnélie wouldn’t sacrifice all the lower order lust demons at her disposal into some great machine. Some of them certainly, if she could gain some advantage from it, but not all.

  She forced herself forward against the pull of the machine. Her hand slipped and came back covered with blood, but not her own. She’d finally reached the edge of the circle. She tried to grab hold but struggled for purchase on the blood-slick stones. If only she didn’t have those hard-soled boots on. They were quite fetching, but they allowed her to feel next to nothing with her feet. She scrabbled with her toes, lifting and searching for a crack to brace against. Yes! Her toe caught on something. She pushed back against it experimentally, and it went nowhere. Briar pushed harder against it, propelling herself into the circle.