Thaumatology 02 - Demon's Moon

by Teasdale, Niall

  Ceri scowled. She hated enigmatic statements.

  December 16th

  Ceri turned over and looked at her clock. It was just after three in the morning and she had not slept a wink since going to bed at one o’clock. In retrospect, going to bed had been a bad idea anyway, she was too restless. She had spent the entire day going over every book she could find in her parents’ library on ghosts. Lily had worried over her all day and had finally gone to work for something to occupy her as much as to get paid.

  Pushing the blankets aside, Ceri swung her legs out of the bed and grabbed the shirt she had been wearing earlier. If she was not going to sleep then she might as well do some more studying. Lily would be home around half past four; then maybe her demon pet’s presence would still her mind enough to let her get some rest.

  Padding down the stairs, determined not to disturb Twill who would be asleep in her attic, she made her way to the study, turning on the desk lamp to read by. She was about to open a large tome called Haunting Spirits, A Field Guide when something drew her attention. There was something… wrong with the little wolf figurine which sat there on her desk. It looked exactly as it always did, a black figure of a wolf, it’s head raised in a howl, but it felt different. Gingerly, Ceri reached out to pick it up.

  Blood! Pain! Loss!

  She snatched her hand away, letting out a sharp cry, almost a sob, as the emotions and images washed over her. The jumble of impressions had been too quick and too intense for her to really get a picture of them, but it was bad. Steeling herself, she reached out again and wrapped her hand around the jet wolf.

  Still the images came too fast to fully comprehend. She saw werewolves and Remus wolves. Blood splashed her face and she smelled the metallic tang of it, tasted it on her tongue. A werewolf fell. Fire exploded near her and there was an image of a man she did not know. Pain lanced through her guts and she dropped the statuette, clutching at her stomach and half expecting to find it ripped open. There was no blood and the pain was a memory in an instant.

  Ceri looked down at the wolf, lying on its side now. Tabitha made them. Tabitha made them especially for people the pack considered to be friends, trusted allies. There was a little of the witch about Tabitha.

  She stood and strode purposefully toward the door. She needed to get dressed and go to the Jade Dragon. She needed Lily, and then she needed to find the North Hills pack, because she was as sure as Hell that they were in trouble and now she knew how to find them.

  Part Four: Ragnarök

  Soho, London, December 16th 2010

  The Dragon was almost empty, even for a Thursday night. Ceri’s purposeful stride slowed as she took in the empty tables and the waitresses with little to do standing around near the bar. The patrons who were there were quiet, mostly norms who sat in booths and kept their conversations to themselves. It was like someone had thrown an oppressive blanket over the place. She picked up her pace, nodding to the girls as she passed, but not stopping until she had reached the end of the bar where Lily and Carter were talking quietly over the counter.

  ‘Ceri?’ Lily said, surprised. ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’

  ‘I was,’ Ceri replied. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘So you came all the way over the river to visit our mausoleum?’ Carter asked sourly.

  ‘It’s… kind of quiet,’ Ceri said in acknowledgement.

  ‘It was like this last night,’ Carter said. ‘Lily taking the night off to help with your little exercise did not exactly stretch our capacity. The werewolves are barricaded up in their territories, or out fighting each other. The other supernaturals seem to know something is going on and are staying off the streets.’

  ‘Something’s going on,’ Ceri said, ‘that’s why I came.’ Both the wizard and the half-demon frowned at her and she continued. ‘That wolf figurine the North Hills pack gave me, it…’ She stumbled, unsure how to explain it. ‘I picked it up and it showed me things. Just images and feelings, but I’m sure they are in trouble. I think they were attacked by Remus’ wolves. I think Tabitha was hurt.’

  ‘You want to go after them,’ Carter stated.

  ‘How?’ Lily asked. ‘We don’t know where they are?’

  ‘The Law of Sympathy,’ Carter said. ‘The figurine is tied to the pack somehow, through Tabitha I suspect.’

  Ceri nodded. ‘And that means I can use it to find them.’ She looked at Carter. ‘I need to borrow a car,’ she said, ‘and Lily, for a few days. Either I bring them back after the Solstice or…’

  ‘Or the last thing I’ll be worried about is my missing Range Rover?’ Carter suggested.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ceri replied, ‘pretty much.’

  ‘You don’t like cars,’ Lily pointed out.

  ‘I don’t have a choice, Lil. If I start going wiggy you’ll just have to… club me unconscious or something.’ Ceri shrugged. The thought of driving for miles in a car was not something she was looking forward to. In fact, just the thought of it was threatening to drive her into a dark corner to hide. But she really did have no choice. If she wanted to save Alec and the pack she had to do it.

  ‘All right,’ Carter said, ‘you two head home now and get ready. I don’t think we’ll miss Lily for the rest of the evening, or until you get back if this keeps up. I’ll drive over with the car as soon as I can get away.’ He grinned weakly. ‘Besides, I’m investing in my business. If you can’t sort this out, I won’t have one.’

  A416, five miles east of Aylesbury

  ‘Oh God, what was I thinking of,’ Ceri moaned. Her right hand gripped the arm rest, her knuckles white. Her face was almost as pallid and clammy with sweat. Twill’s parting gift as they had left the house was a roll of plastic food storage bags and Ceri’s only happy thought so far was that, having been sick in three of them, she no longer had anything left to throw up.

  ‘You were thinking that we had to find the North Hills pack because they were in a lot of trouble,’ Lily supplied. They had been driving for about an hour and the sun was fully up. So far they had just been heading into North Hills territory without a specific aim, but the navigation system said that Aylesbury was dead ahead. As near as anything, that was the middle of their patch and some real directions would be needed.

  ‘If we come across a layby, pull over,’ Ceri said. ‘I could use the air.’

  Lily did not comment on the fact that the air conditioning was blasting out cold air at gale force in Ceri’s face. Instead she glanced at the navigation display. ‘We can turn off at the next junction,’ she said. ‘About half a mile. We should be able to pull over there.’

  Carter’s car was absolutely top of the range, black with jet coloured leather interior and walnut panels, a virtual instrument display, and a multi-function entertainment and navigation system. Ceri would have given anything to be anywhere else. She had been okay for about ten minutes, right up until the fact that she was going to be in the thing for hours had really sunk in. She had been struggling to hold herself together ever since.

  Lily signalled left and took the off-ramp, the car’s big, supercharged diesel engine not even changing pitch on the gradient. She went left again on the roundabout and drifted off down what the nav-system said was Tring Hill. As soon as she found a suitable spot, she pulled the car to the side of the road. Ceri was out of the door immediately and retching into the bushes. Lily checked nothing was coming down the road and then stepped out, walking around to pat Ceri gently on the back.

  ‘We need to pick a direction,’ the half-demon said. ‘Whatever magic it is you plan to work, now’s the time to do it.’

  Ceri spat into the bushes at the side of the road and nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s do this.’

  Opening the back door she reached into the bag lying on the seat and pulled out a small, cloth-wrapped bundle. She unwrapped the wolf figurine from it, holding it in the cloth. Taking a breath, she reached out and touched it. She let out a gasp of pain and Lily grabbed her waist, holding her up.

&n
bsp; ‘They… they’re somewhere big, open… rolling hills,’ Ceri said. She swallowed hard. ‘I need to cast…’ Light flickered around the wolf as she murmured words which did not make any sense to Lily. It seemed to take a long time, and then the light died away and Ceri opened her eyes. She turned slowly and then stopped, pointing. ‘That way,’ she said.

  Lily leaned into the car and looked at the navigation display, tapping the screen a couple of times. ‘That’s… Salisbury way,’ she said. ‘You said somewhere open. They have to be on Salisbury Plain somewhere.’ Ceri let out a groan. ‘We can stay here a little while,’ Lily said, ‘before moving on.’

  ‘No,’ Ceri said, ‘we go on. The less time I have to keep this tracking spell going, the more energy I’ll have to deal with whatever we find when we get there.’ She wrapped the figurine up again and stowed it away. Taking a second to gather herself, she closed the rear door and climbed into the passenger seat. Soon they were driving toward Wendover, heading south west toward where Ceri felt the pack was.

  A338, two miles south of Hungerford

  ‘Look,’ Lily said, ‘up ahead.’

  Ceri looked out through the windscreen. At first she did not understand what Lily was getting at. Then she spotted it, a patch of cloud, perhaps a mile and a half across, casting thick shadow onto the ground below. The rest of the sky was clear, but the patch of cloud remained where it was. ‘Remus and his wolves are creatures of darkness,’ she said. ‘Someone’s expending serious amounts of power to keep the sun off them.’

  ‘So… we head for that?’ Lily asked.

  ‘No… No, the pack isn’t there. Frankly, if they were we’d be wasting our time.’ She looked at the navigation display, guessing the position of the cloud against the map and the marker which tracked their position through a locator enchantment. ‘Keep heading that way for now. The packs won’t be too far away from one another.’ She slid her finger over the touch screen, tapping it to zoom in. ‘Stonehenge,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The cloud, I think it’s hanging over Stonehenge, or maybe a bit west of it.’ Ceri frowned. ‘Of course, “The Corruptor will come, seeking a place of ancient stones.” The henge is pretty hot. Basic field strength is around eight thaums. Not dangerous, but moderately high. There aren’t too many places in Britain with that much power. He’s going to do his ritual at Stonehenge.’

  ‘Huh, that’ll piss the Neos off,’ Lily said, though the laugh was a little hollow.

  ‘The neo-pagan festival is in the summer, Lil,’ Ceri replied.

  ‘Still, “our great ceremonial centre which we did not build, but claim our ancestors did, even though it’s bollocks, is being used to bring about the end of the world! Oh lorks!”’

  ‘Lorks?’

  Lily managed a giggle. ‘I heard it on some TV show. Sounds Neoy.’

  ‘Did one of them kick you when you were a kid or something?’

  ‘I’m just not real big into pseudo-religious arseholes,’ Lily said. ‘Or tree-hugging hippies either. Magic-using tree-hugging hippies I really hate.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Ceri replied.

  ‘No? Why?’

  ‘You hate them because your father wouldn’t have been summoned to impregnate your mother if she hadn’t been one, right?’ Lily nodded in response. ‘Yeah, well I happen to like you the way you are.’ She checked the time; it was almost eleven already and they had maybe another hour of driving before they would be close. She gritted her teeth and forced down the urge to scream.

  ‘Put some music on or something,’ Lily suggested.

  ‘Doesn’t help.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Being drunk enough to not know I’m in the car. Uh, being asleep, but there’s no way I’ll get to sleep.’ Ceri grinned weakly. ‘Not much really.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lily said. ‘Ceri, look at me would you?’

  Ceri turned her head to look before she had thought about it. Lily’s defensive aura did not, technically, operate through a victim’s optical system, but pretty much all of a succubus’ powers in some way required them to be seen, or through touch. She realised what Lily was doing as she turned and saw the bright red sparks in her pupils, but she was far too wound up and on edge to resist. ‘Lily, no, I…’ She trailed off into a long moan. Some part of her brain knew that the Ajna node on her Tantric Median was being stimulated invoking a catastrophic chain reaction through the whole median. The rest of her brain had just melted in ecstasy.

  Salisbury Plain

  Ceri opened her eyes, struggling to remember where she was. She was lying back and looking at… the ceiling of Carter’s Range Rover. They were stopped somewhere and it was… The sky was getting darker. It was almost four. She pulled herself upright and looked around. Lily was asleep in the still upright driver’s seat. Ceri grabbed her shoulder and shook it a little more urgently than she had intended.

  Lily’s hand moved with demonic speed, grabbing Ceri’s wrist. Lily turned, her lips drawing back from her fangs. She stopped, realising it was Ceri who had woken her. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I must’ve dropped off.’

  ‘Where are we? It’s getting late.’

  ‘Durrington,’ Lily said. ‘We’re a couple of miles from the henge. I had to stop because I didn’t know where to go and I figured I’d let you sleep a bit longer. You kind of conked out after I zapped you. You’ve been up for over twenty-four hours… I guess I dropped off. Sorry.’

  ‘No… it’s okay.’ Ceri patted her friend’s arm. ‘Neither of us have had much sleep. I know you need less than me, but you can’t keep going forever.’ She opened her door to get out. ‘I’ll need to cast the spell again,’ she said.

  The pain was less this time, but it was still there. Somehow it felt more like emotional pain than physical. Climbing back into the car, she looked at the digital map display as she strapped herself back in and raised the seat back. ‘Head along the Packway,’ she said. ‘Looks like they’re south of it, but I’d rather not get any closer to that cloudbank than we have to.’

  Lily nodded and started the engine. She pulled away, taking the next right turn down the road toward Larkhill. ‘Let me know when to stop,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ceri replied. Now that the end was in sight her nerves were calmer. She could cope with this. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s with the skirt?’

  Lily was decked out in what looked like a gypsy costume. The skirt was wide and layered, and shorter at the front than the sides and back. It looked great on her, but it was not something Ceri was used to seeing on the half-succubus. ‘Whatever you may see in films,’ Lily said, ‘skin-tight leather sucks to fight in. I can move properly in this.’

  ‘I’d have thought the leather offered more protection?’

  ‘Not really, and I rely on the bracers and dodging. Can’t dodge if you can’t move.’ She glanced at Ceri and grinned. ‘The guy I learned from used to wear a huge great Japanese robe thing to practice in. Never did him any harm.’

  ‘I’ll stick to blasting things,’ Ceri said.

  ‘It works,’ Lily replied, ‘though since you have that staff maybe we should see about you learning to use it.’

  ‘Me? Martial arts lessons?’ Ceri laughed.

  ‘Why not?’ Lily said. ‘You’re fit. You’re going to try pole dancing. Martial arts is a great way to keep fit, y’know? And the guy I learned from still likes me, which I can’t say for all my exes. He can probably put us in touch with someone who knows staff fighting.’

  ‘Uh… right.’ Ceri did not sound too convinced. ‘Pull over along here. I think we’ll have to walk the rest of the way.’ She looked at the map again. ‘No, that track there, drive down to the end of that road.’

  The land around them was agricultural and they drove down what was probably a farm track until they reached a small coppice of trees at the end and Lily squeezed the big car in against the hedge. Getting out, they collected their bags and Ceri’s staff from the back of the car, and started south. Ahead of
them was a larger area of trees perhaps a hundred and fifty yards away.

  ‘They’re up ahead,’ Ceri said, ‘in the trees.’ It was getting darker and, further south, she could see the cloudbank starting to break up. Remus’ pack no longer needed the cover, it seemed, which Ceri considered a bad thing. ‘Looks like we’re going to get there not a moment too soon as well,’ she said.

  There was track way until they hit the next fence and then just a barren field. Ceri was glad for the walking boots she had put on as they walked over ground which was at least dry. There was still enough light to see where they were walking, but ahead of them the trees were a mass of shadow. Anything could be hiding in there. Their only hope was that Alec and Dane were bright enough to stay out of sight of Remus and his wolves. And that they would realise who was approaching before they attacked.

  They were almost at the tree line when Lily stopped. ‘Something moved,’ she said.

  A dark shape lifted from the shadows in front of them and then became a human. ‘Good eyes,’ Alec said. ‘What are you doing here?’ Two more wolves, grey-furred instead of black, moved out of the bushes at the base of the trees. One of these was what Lily had seen.

  ‘We’re here to help,’ Ceri said. ‘I got called.’

  ‘No one called you,’ Alec snapped, ‘and we don’t need help. Get out of here before you get yourselves killed.’

  Ceri had had a bad day. She had not had enough sleep, she had driven miles in a car for the first time in over five years, she had felt the attack on the North Hills pack as though she was there, and now she was faced with Alec and his one man crusade against Remus. ‘How many did you lose in the attack, Alec?’ she said. ‘I know Tabitha was hurt. Stomach wound, right?’

  Alec glanced at the sky. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘they come out at night.’

  There was no fire in the little camp and only one tent, a small one off to one side of the clearing they had set up in. The disconsolate-looking werewolves were huddled together, for comfort as much as warmth. And there were not enough of them. Ceri could see only two of the females and five males. One of the males stood as Ceri and Lily entered the clearing behind Alec. There was an instant of man and wolf-man, and they then were looking at Dane. He looked terrible; his face was pale, almost sick.