‘When you were taken by Gadriel, Gwyn taught Alexandra and Carter that scrying technique to find you. They were searching a huge area, the whole of southern England, for days.’
‘They had you as a focus and they were looking for a specific target.’
‘But you wouldn’t have to set your search so wide. He must be in the city. You’d need to cover… five miles radius?’
Ceri bit at her lips for a second or two. ‘Okay. We’ll go over to Battersea and see what Alexandra remembers of the spell.’
Lily grinned. ‘I’ll go put some clothes on.’ She bounced to her feet. ‘We got a plan!’
Battersea
There was an Archmage armoured transport sitting across the Queen’s Circus gate into the park and Ceri could see soldiers with guns patrolling along Queenstown Road and Prince of Wales Drive. Worse, they were stopped by men in combat fatigues as they walked in through the gate.
‘I’m sorry. The park is off-limits to humans. It’s not safe.’ The speaker was a mid-thirties man with a neatly trimmed, ginger moustache and little enough hair that it was entirely hidden under his scarlet beret.
‘Well,’ Ceri said, trying very hard to maintain her calm, ‘my friend isn’t human and I’m technically a member of the pack in there, so I think we’re safe enough.’
The soldier’s hand moved to his sidearm and Ceri saw the two men standing beside the Archmage shift their rifles to low ready. ‘I need to see some identification,’ the man said.
They had expected it and both girls lifted their warrant cards. ‘We’re also special constables,’ Ceri said, ‘we have the same powers… actually, Royal Military Police only have jurisdiction over military personnel, right? We have greater police powers then you do.’
The reaction was not quite what Ceri was expecting however. ‘Under the current emergency action, those mean squat. I have specific orders to arrest any member of the Greycoats attempting to contact the licks in here, so unless you want to spend the next few days in a cell, I suggest you piss off.’
Ceri frowned. ‘Werewolves,’ she said absently. ‘Licks are lycanthropes. Entirely different.’ She turned and started walking away with Lily trailing along beside her, confused.
‘You’re just going to give up?’ Lily said, keeping her voice low.
‘They’ve been given specific orders to arrest Greycoats trying to speak to Alexandra,’ Ceri said, not really answering the question, ‘and did you see the clips in those rifles? They’re carrying silvers, not incendiaries.’ “Silver bullet” was actually something of a misnomer; the rounds were hollow-point slugs, the cavity filled with powdered silver. Real silver bullets tended to make guns jam and were a pain to make. Military grade silver bullets were, however, just as bad news for a werewolf as a solid silver slug would be, but they were no worse than an ordinary bullet to a vampire.
‘Yes, but…’
‘We’re just going to get out of sight of those idiots, then I’ll port us onto the island, but I don’t like what’s going on here. Someone has determined that we need to be kept away from the pack. Or they’re trying to block the Greycoats off from the pack.’ Ceri looked around and then ducked into a side alley which probably lead to the rear of the expensive flats they were walking past. ‘Keep still when you arrive, I don’t want to bump into you.’ She reached out before Lily could say anything, power building in her hand as her mind went through the complex forms required to teleport someone. Lily’s mouth was half open when she vanished into thin air.
Ceri grinned and focussed her power again…
‘…would mean they had someone in the Greycoats,’ Lily was saying. ‘Damn! Now you missed half of what I said.’
‘I got the important bit,’ Ceri replied, grinning. ‘Yes, they have to have someone in the Greycoats supplying information. Or they’re picking the mind of someone, somehow. Raynor could do it, but it seems easier to have a mole.’ They walked out of the trees toward the oil drum in the middle of the clearing. Despite the fact that the park was surrounded by armed guards, Alexandra was pouring tea into two mugs for them.
Anita was walking over to her Alpha too, and just turning human as they saw her. ‘How did you get past our guardians?’
Ceri shrugged. ‘Bugger all can keep me out of somewhere if I know where I’m going.’
‘Huh. Did you talk to the pillock in the red cap?’
‘Yes. He told us he was under orders to arrest Greycoats trying to get in here.’
‘And he didn’t seem keen on letting us anyway,’ Lily added.
‘No, they’ve basically isolated the entire park,’ Anita agreed. ‘On the plus side, since they’re isolating us in a confined location, we’ve got a military cop leading things and they’ve had to bring in food.’ She indicated a pile of crates on one side of the clearing. ‘Honestly, we might be eating better than usual at this rate.’
Alexandra chuckled as she handed over mugs of tea to the visitors. ‘Just make sure we keep an eye on that stuff,’ she said to Anita. ‘We don’t want fat wolves and problems getting more food.’ She smiled at Ceri as Anita nodded and turned away again. ‘And to what do we owe the visit?’
A pair of grey arms wrapped around both girls’ waists before they could answer, followed by a contented growl from Michael. Ceri giggled. ‘Obviously, we had to come see Michael,’ she said, ‘but I also need to know what you remember of that spell Gwyn taught you.’
‘You have some way to use that to find Raynor?’
Ceri’s nose wrinkled. ‘Not exactly, but it might give me a head start on working out what I do need to find him.’
‘I’m worried about the power requirements,’ Lily said. ‘That spell you used was a lot more efficient than the usual wide-area scrying spells.’
Alexandra nodded. ‘I’ll see if I can explain the principles behind it. I’m sure if Cheryl managed to explain it to me, I should be able to explain it to you… but if it’s a lot of power you want there is another way.’
‘There is?’ Ceri asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Yes, dear. We’ll get the pack around me and you can draw power from me, I think?’
A slow smile spread over Ceri’s lips. ‘Show me what Gwyn showed you. I’ll work through the maths and rework the spell, and then we’ll be back.’
Kennington, June 6th
Ceri stood in the big, high ceilinged hall of High Towers, looking around her at the equations and symbols hanging in the air. Occasionally she would walk from one group of patterns to another, purse her lips, and make an amendment with a finger, rubbing out one sigil and replacing it with another.
Lorna came up from the cellar and stopped in the doorway, her mouth dropping open. Her husband and Kate had already left the house and she had decided to stay “in bed” a while longer. She liked being in the cellar, in the pitch dark of the dungeon where a bed had been set up for her and John. She quite liked the hall though; it was not particularly bright in there either.
Spotting Lily sitting naked on the stairs, the vampire walked around the room, taking a wide path to avoid the mass of illusory characters floating in the air. Lily grinned at her as she sat down beside the half-demon. ‘What’s she doing?’
‘Thaumatology,’ Lily replied proudly. ‘She has to basically take a spell and re-craft it to do another job.’
‘Some people call it spell crafting,’ Ceri said, her tone absent as she examined a block of complex symbols which Lorna thought ought to be able to solve the national debt in a stroke. Or something like that. ‘Thaumatology is a wider discipline. I guess you’d call this “applied thaumatology.”’
‘What’s it going to do, when you’ve got it doing what you want?’
‘This is hopefully going to locate Raynor so we can go kick his arse.’ She gave a nod. ‘All right, I think I’ve got this.’ Her hands swept up, pulling blocks of glowing symbols from various areas of the room to line up along one of the walls.
Lorna looked at Lily. ‘Does everyone do thaumatology l
ike this? It’s amazing. They should get this on TV.’
‘No, most people don’t do this trick. In fact, she’s the only one I’ve ever seen do it.’
‘One of my teachers can do it,’ Ceri said. Turning, she waved a hand at the bulk of the symbols, leaving two ranks of glyphs and mathematical notations hovering near the wall. ‘There we go. That’s the spell.’ She nodded again. ‘Yes, that’ll work. Now we just need to…’
Twill burst out of the kitchen, a ball of blue-white light which swished once around Ceri before materialising into an angry looking, brown fairy. ‘Men, in the grounds. two are moving out toward the side doors, three are moving to the front door.’
Ceri frowned, but she picked up her tablet from the stairs and snapped a picture of her glowing notations before dismissing them. She was heading for the door when someone banged on it. It was not knocking; this was someone hitting the door with what sounded like a rifle butt. She opened the inner door and glanced back. ‘Lorna, go back down to the dungeon and stay there until we come get you.’ The vampire moved quickly across the hall as another banging sound came through the doors and Ceri moved forward to open the outer ones.
She recognised one of the three on the doorstep as soon as she saw him. He was holding up a warrant card from Special Branch, but she knew him from when she had been arrested in January. Fit, attractive enough; his dark blue suit fit his frame well, his face was narrow, but strong-featured. He had short, straw-coloured hair, recently cut, and grey eyes which were glowing with a hint of triumph. The two soldiers behind him raised their rifle barrels a few inches as the door opened. A quick glance showed marks on the clips which suggested incendiary rounds.
‘Detective Inspector Lowell,’ Ceri said. ‘What can I do for you?’ Behind her, Ceri could feel the house wards starting to burn; that was not a good sign.
‘You can stand aside. We have reason to believe that you are harbouring a fugitive. A vampire seen attacking a shop last night. We’re here to search the building. That’s all. Are you going to let us in?’
‘The only vampire here is the wife of a cop and she was here last night, not attacking anything,’ Ceri replied calmly.
Lowell ignored her. Looking at him, Ceri could tell he was hoping she would resist. ‘Are you going to let us search your house, Miss Brent?’
Throwing both doors wide open, Ceri backed into the short porch between the two sets of doors. She threw her arms wide and said, ‘Enter without malice, leave without hindrance, Detective.’
Lowell stepped forward into the porch. Light flared from the circle in the floor, runes suddenly bursting into life as the detective’s foot crossed the threshold. ‘What the fuck?!’ The two rifles came upward and one soldier fired at Ceri, the bullets hitting the circle’s wall and stopping, pancaked against the magic.
‘It seems, Detective,’ Ceri said, a slight smile on her lips, ‘that you are not entering without malice.’ There was the sound of gunfire from the sides of the building; the troops there trying to affect an entry through the kitchen doors. ‘My parents made the wards here to hold back demon lords. The structural enchantments are as strong as the warding ones.’ Her face hardened and she raised her hands, blue-white energy building in both palms. ‘Get off my property, detective. Come back when you can act like a cop.’
Lowell backed up a short distance to the bottom of the steps. ‘Don’t just stand there!’ he screamed, almost hysterical. ‘Open fire!’
There was something just wrong about what was happening. Ceri could feel it and, when she opened her Sight up to look, she could see it. A miasma of… something, some sort of influencing energy, hung around the policeman and the soldiers. Ceri ignored the bullets splattering against the magic of the wards and focussed instead on Lowell. The detective stumbled back, blinking rapidly, as Ceri’s magic stripped away the suggestion which was controlling him.
‘What… what the fuck?’ Lowell looked confused. Very confused. ‘Cease fire, for God’s sake! Stop shooting! What the fuck is wrong with you guys? You’re firing on a civilian!’
The gunfire kept on going. The soldiers were still affected by whatever form of magic Raynor had cast on them and they were not going to stop because some policeman was yelling at them. Then Lily appeared beside Ceri, a wave of warmth swept out from her, and the rush of ecstasy overcame the other emotions.
Ceri grinned, letting the energy drain from her hands. ‘You’re getting really good at controlling that. Lowell’s still standing.’
Lowell was looking like he might have a fit any moment, however. ‘Would you mind explaining why I had the urge to come down here with troops, and then lost it?’
Ceri was working on undoing the spell on the troops as she spoke. ‘Someone, probably Raynor, cast a spell on you. A suggestion of some sort, I think. Pretty powerful. These men are just affected by something which is ramping up their aggressor responses, but yours was more complex.’
‘Magic? And who’s Raynor?’
Ceri looked up at him from where she was crouching beside one of the troops. ‘Raynor? Ancient vampire who’s causing all this. Didn’t you idiots read the reports from the Greycoats?’
Lowell looked confused again. ‘There was some directive came down… Uh, we were to ignore any reports or leads from extra-agency sources. Special Branch derived information only.’ He frowned. ‘Why would someone order that?’
Breaking down the last of the emotion control spells, Ceri looked across at Lowell. ‘Come here. Let me have a proper look at you.’ He looked hesitant, but he did as she asked, and Ceri’s brow knitted as she began to closely examine the man’s head.
She gasped suddenly as Twill came sweeping out of the house, stopping suddenly to her right and lifting an arm. There was the rattle of automatic gunfire, but no bullets hit. Twill had spotted one of the troops coming around the side of the house. For a being who could barely lift a pan with her arms, she had hideously powerful telekinesis. Not that she had to hold the rifle up for long; one of Lily’s knife hilts impacted the soldier’s right temple and he went down like a rag doll. Ceri looked around, expecting to see the fourth soldier taking aim. He was there, but Lorna was standing over his fallen body.
The vampire looked over at them through her sunglasses. ‘He’s still alive. Promise. Might have a headache when he wakes up.’
Ceri grinned at her. ‘I told you to stay downstairs.’
‘I heard gunfire. I’m a wimp, but I’m a vampire wimp. Might as well use supernatural speed and strength for something useful.’
Lowell had gone pale. ‘She’s a vampire?’
‘Yeah,’ Ceri said. ‘You turned up saying she had been “attacking a shop” last night.’
‘Uh…’
‘But she was in my house, with me the whole time, and you wouldn’t listen when I told you that.’ She frowned, her eyes on Lowell’s forehead. ‘It’s hard to tell, but I think someone’s been screwing with your memory. There’s traces. They look a little like the way Lily’s mind looked when someone did it to her.’
‘The memo,’ Lowell said. ‘The one about other agencies. I mean, it doesn’t make sense, but I remember reading it and thinking it was common sense.’ He frowned, hard. ‘Damn! Someone’s screwing with…’
‘Special Branch,’ Lily said, ‘the Home Office, and the Army. Raynor has to have agents dotted all over the place!’
‘It seems… too much, too quick,’ Ceri said, frowning. ‘How could he have set all this up so quickly?’
‘What am I going to do?’ Lowell asked, derailing her train of thought. ‘If I go back to the office I’ll either get zapped again, or I’ll be the only uninfluenced person there.’
‘Go to Greycoat street. Tell them what happened and have them run a full forensic analysis on your head. Talk to DCI Barry, or DI Radcliffe. Maybe if they can get evidence that the people running the emergency operations are compromised they can do something about it.’
The tall, slim shape of Lorna Radcliffe appeared beside
them. ‘I’ll take him. Make sure he gets there.’
Ceri looked up at her. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s daylight. Raynor’s people will be under cover and I’m not helpless. If someone tries to take him, I can handle myself. I’m not as fragile as John likes to think.’
‘I know,’ Ceri said, smiling. She turned back to Lowell. ‘She’ll get you there safely. You can trust her. She’s the most un-vampiric vampire I know.’
‘Yeah, thanks, I think,’ Lorna said.
‘I just mean he shouldn’t worry about you biting him.’
‘Oh God no! I mean… I have taste. Come on, Mister Special Branch. You have a car, right?’ Lowell nodded and started for the gate, Lorna behind him. ‘Mind you,’ she said wistfully, ‘I haven’t fed in a couple of days…’ Lowell’s steps got faster very suddenly.
Battersea, June 7th
Ceri sat amidst the pack, her eyes closed and a constant stream of complex equations streaming through her head. Beside her, Alexandra sat with one hand resting on Ceri’s arm, feeding power through to her from the pack. And around them the pack sat in congress; a circle of Elders, then the Guards, then the rest of the pack, all of them concentrating on Alexandra, lending their power to her, and through her to Ceri. This was how they powered her defensive circles around the island, but now it had a different purpose.
In Ceri’s mind, the formula of the spell she had created repeated, and through that she sensed the thaumic field of the entire inner city. The power was incredible; she was having trouble keeping it bound to the spell. She knew she was drawing more than she had expected to need. Something was working against the spell; probably something Raynor had cooked up to stay hidden, though it seemed vastly wide-ranging. Manipulating such power gave her a new respect for Alexandra, though she could not express it, she was too busy processing all the data she was receiving.
Lily moved between them, bringing water where it was needed and looking worried. She could feel the power too, vast amounts of it flowing around and from the wolves. The last time she had felt anything like it was when Ceri had raised a huge barrier around the Black Fields null magic zone in America. Her head knew that this was safer; the load was being spread across a lot of werewolves instead of one sorceress. Her heart, though, was screaming that this was too much power and it was all feeding into Ceri.
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