The Infernal Aether Box Set: All Four Books In The Series

by Peter Oxley

  “Of course,” said Joshua, “the big question is why he felt he had to keep this from us. I thought we were a team.”

  “So did I,” I said. “But it turns out he’s been doing loads of stuff without telling me—I mean us.” They both stared at me and I sighed. “All that stuff about Gus turning into a demon, the experiments… he didn’t tell me anything, even after all we’d been through. I thought I knew him, but…”

  “I’m sure he only meant to protect you,” said Joshua. “They really value you, you know.”

  I laughed. “Yeah.” It was the way it always had been, the only way I knew: me against the rest of the world. It was better that way so I didn’t get hurt by so-called friends. At that moment though, I needed to set things right so there would still be a world left to work against me.

  I went over to the door. “Where are you going?” asked Joshua.

  “To sort out some transport,” I said. “We need to go to St Albans.”

  “I want a little longer to look through a few things,” Lexie said. “There are some other items of interest here.”

  “We need to move fast,” I said. “The longer Max is gone, the greater the risk of—”

  “I know,” she replied. “But I don’t want us running off down another dead-end.”

  “You’ve got three hours,” I said. “I’ll see if I can get us some reinforcements.”

  Chapter 19

  I ran up the stairs to find Pearce bossing his men around. “I see you’ve been busy,” he said, nodding at Spencer and Bart, who were in the process of being walked out to a waiting carriage.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They say every backyard in London’s full of rats; turns out even Whitehall’s infested.” I raised my voice to shout at them: “Take care, boys. Don’t rush back, eh?”

  Pearce was glaring at me. “Care to tell me how they came to be here?”

  “I had a visitor,” I said.

  “Andras?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you were planning on telling us… when?”

  “I’m telling you right now, aren’t I?” I folded my arms. We were pretty close to a breakthrough in finding Max and there he was, telling me off like a naughty little girl.

  “Kate,” he said, “we’re supposed to be a team. But that’s not going to work if we keep stuff from each other.”

  “Funny,” I muttered. “That’s just what I was saying down there.” I sighed. “Look, let’s start again. It happened not that long ago and as soon as he’d gone I sent for your boys, which is clearly why you’re here, right? I would have asked Andras to sit around and wait until my friends and their guns arrived, but I’m not sure he’d have been too keen.”

  I told him what had happened and then watched as he sent guards out to scout around, just in case Andras was still lurking. “There’s more,” I said. “Lexie reckons she knows where Max has been taken: St Albans.”

  “Is she sure?”

  “She wants to do some more checking, but she seems pretty certain. I was heading up to sort out transport but now you’re here, maybe you and your boys would fancy joining us on a trip?”

  “Of course,” he said. “When do we leave?”

  “I told her I’d give them a couple of hours to double-check.”

  Pearce checked his pocket watch. “Very well. I’ll see you back here at four o’clock.”

  I busied myself by gathering together some weapons and supplies for our journey and checking up on Lexie and Joshua. Thankfully, they seemed to grow more and more certain as time went on. “We’re close to pinpointing it exactly,” explained Joshua. “There seems to be a certain set-up in the road design that accords pretty closely to a magical theorem I came across in one of Max’s texts a few days ago. A text that is now missing.”

  “Great,” I said. “So we can go now?”

  “Just a little longer,” begged Joshua. “I could save us a lot of wasted time searching randomly once we get up there.”

  I wandered upstairs as the clock struck four, surprised to see that Pearce was late. Humming softly to myself, I wandered into the backyard to check on the weather.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” said a voice from behind me.

  I spun round. “Andras. You’re back,” I said.

  “I understand you’ve had a breakthrough,” he said.

  “How did you…?” I asked.

  He tapped his ear. “I’m a demon. Enhanced hearing is one of my particular talents. I hope you weren’t planning to keep this information from me.” He wagged a clawed finger at me in a mock telling-off and I flinched without thinking.

  “It’s interesting that you had an instinctive reaction to my finger,” he said. “Tell me, does it still hurt?”

  I touched the scar on my cheek. “No,” I said, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. “Hardly think about it these days. It’s a part of me now.”

  He frowned and I thought for a brief moment that I could see a glimpse of the old N’yotsu. “You never were a very good liar, you know,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I feel… I believe the correct term is remorse.”

  I laughed. “I didn’t think that was something your kind was able to recognise, let alone experience.”

  He looked down at the ground. “I shouldn’t be able to but then I always have been somewhat unique. My talents just tended to be a mite more useful in the past. I do not know how you cope with all these emotions.”

  I looked at him, suddenly seeing him as a lost creature struggling with something he didn’t quite understand. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve changed. Got a bit more… human.”

  He whipped his head round to glare at me. “I’m still as dangerous as ever, never fear. I could snap your neck in two, hollow you out, devour your soul and then use your desiccated husk as my marionette.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because you’re still useful to me alive.”

  “No, that don’t wash. You could use me even better if I was your puppet. Letting me run free, not being controlled by you, that’s not your style. You like to make people dance to your tune.”

  He paced over to the wall and kicked it. “I am not weak,” he snarled. “I act as I choose to.”

  I smiled, enjoying the show. “No,” I said. “No, you don’t. You miss being around me and the men. You’re more N’yotsu than you’ll admit.”

  He darted over to me, making me start as I suddenly found myself nose-to-nose with him. I was struck by his smell, like sweetbreads softly roasting over a fire. I forced my body to stand firm; I would not show him weakness. For a moment we stood there, locked in a dance that neither of us really knew how to end.

  “If you’re getting bothered by all those emotions,” I said, trying to keep my voice as level as I could, “why don’t you just do your magic and chuck them out into a stone or something, like you did before?”

  “I can’t. No, that’s not right. I could, but if I did so I would just end up as I was before, teetering on the brink of death. My kind are not meant to—”

  “That’s a lie,” I cut him off. “Me and N’yotsu had loads of talks about this sort of thing: it was the demon bit which you lot ain’t supposed to be separated from. Emotions are completely different: they’re not naturally a part of you, so you could happily run around without them.”

  He grinned. “Good old Kate, not quite as dim as they all assume, are you?” I bit back an angry response as he continued. “I guess you’re right. As insufferable as these emotions are, I cannot quite bring myself to undertake the change that would happen if I lost them.” He stood up. “Now, when do we leave?”

  “We? What do you mean? What makes you think we want you with us?”

  “Because I’m the only supernatural being on your side right now. If you’re planning to go into battle against Gaap and his cronies with your toy weapons, then you’re a bigger fool than everyone thinks. We don’t have time to mess around
here.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What’s the urgency? Aside from needing to find Max, that is.”

  “I have been asking around, speaking to a few demons who have lately come over to this realm. It turns out that the recent manifestations of high-level demons are not as random as we first thought. My people have been busy, pulling together a rather intricate plan to invade this world. And more to the point: to destroy me.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. When he sighed I folded my arms. “If I’m going to let you come along, I need to know you’re not hiding anything from us.”

  “When the Fulcrum takes place, it will create a rift in reality, but one that is naturally occurring, as opposed to Maxwell’s rather shoddy and violent effort from a few years ago.”

  “The one you used to try to destroy us all, you mean.”

  He tutted. “You have to keep bringing that up. But, yes, that is the one. While that particular portal was inherently unstable, this one would be a natural outcome of what is happening to the world and the Aether. Kicked off, ironically enough, by Maxwell’s original portal.”

  I stared at him. Did he really think all this waffle was an explanation?

  “It will be large enough and stable enough to allow an army to come through,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “It will act as a permanent bridge between your world and the Aether.”

  “So basically it’ll do what you tried to do last time,” I said. “Only this time you want to stop it?”

  “No. There is no stopping the Fulcrum: something Maxwell would have realised if he had not allowed his emotions to override his common sense. We cannot stop the Fulcrum and the portal to the Aether it will create, but we can delay it for long enough to find a way to stop them from coming through. You see, the Fulcrum can either be a slow, natural event or a big bang; it’s the latter that Gaap and his people want to create, a sudden rupture through which they can storm and overwhelm us before we have a chance to hit back. The key to all of this is knowing where the focus of the Fulcrum will be: the physical epicentre from where it will all flow. As far as I can tell, the demons have half of the equation, namely the point in the Aether on their side where it will occur.”

  “And Max will be able to tell them where in this world it will be,” I finished for him.

  “If he hasn’t already. So you see why there is a need for urgency. Especially as I suspect that there is more to Gaap’s plan than just this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is a politician,” he spat the word, “and will always have a back-up plan, just in case.”

  “Which is what?”

  “No idea. That is why we need to foil the plan we know about as soon as possible, so that we can flush out the next one.” He turned to look at me. “The Witchfinder man: Morley. Ever wondered how he fits into all of this?”

  I blinked. “I just thought he was another madman kicked out from under a rock by everything that’s been going on.”

  “No. Everything happens for a reason, especially when the likes of Gaap and I are involved. Morley knew exactly where to be when we got to Nottingham. And again, when you were in Portsmouth. I would put good money on him not being too far away when Pearce arrests me. What do you say, Captain?”

  I turned to see Pearce and his men in the doorway behind me. “Wait,” I said to him.

  Pearce ignored me. “You might recognise these,” he said, hefting his rifle. “You helped design them when you were N’yotsu as a way of stopping some terrible demon called… Andras. You. We have half a dozen pointed at your head. You can resist us if you want but if you do I promise it’s really going to hurt.”

  Andras snarled and for a moment I thought he was going to pounce on my friend, but then his shoulders slumped and he raised his hands in supplication. “Very well. I surrender, Captain.”

  “You are not going to fight us? No threats?” Pearce asked.

  “No. I suspect that running will be futile. And besides,” Andras glanced at me, “it may not be a bad thing for all of the attention to be focused on me for a while.”

  I followed Pearce and his men as they led Andras through the house. “Albert,” I said. “Where are you taking him?”

  “Somewhere he can’t do any more harm,” he replied. “I am under strict orders to—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. “He says he wants to help us stop Gaap.”

  “I think we can manage without help from the likes of this duplicitous creature.”

  “Such confidence from the humans,” mocked Andras. “Do you realise how powerful Gaap is? And if he has a Mage at his command as well, then yo—”

  “Be quiet,” snapped Pearce. “What did he say to you?” he asked me.

  “He says there’s something big brewing, something connected to what Lexie reckons she’s found in St Albans. Gaap’s going to create some big, everlasting portal to bring a demon army through and Maxwell’s the key to him being able to do that.”

  “Tempus fugit,” said Andras. “Time is fleeting… you know, your chances of success would be much improved if you had me fighting beside you.”

  “And then we just watch as you double-cross us once again?” Pearce sneered. “I think not.”

  “I would not do that,” said Andras.

  “You did it before,”

  “Granted, it would very much be true to form for me, but—”

  “Your words mean nothing here,” Pearce interrupted.

  “On the contrary, you would do well to listen. I am not the threat here. I have had no hand in what Gaap is planning, and I have always been opposed to him on a matter of principle. We are mortal enemies, and Gaap works for creatures who en masse are infinitely more dangerous than I could ever hope to be.”

  “Again, we have only your word for all of this.”

  “Agreed, but you can use the evidence of your own eyes. What about the increasingly bizarre decisions of your leaders?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For instance, your Queen creating the Witchfinder General posts, which have had the sole effect of confusing and scaring half the population, setting them against each other and actually getting in the way of your efforts to combat the demonic threat. And then there’s your very recent conversation with your Prime Minister.”

  Pearce blinked. “How did you…?”

  I looked from one to the other: Pearce was suddenly thrown off-guard, while Andras grinned back at him. “Albert, what’s he talking about?” I asked.

  He frowned at Andras and then turned back to me. “I went to the General to request troops for the expedition to St Albans, as we’d discussed. He was with the Prime Minister. I was ordered to stand down and tell you to gather more evidence before we proceeded. When we have enough information, the Prime Minister wants it to be discussed by a full committee before any action is taken.”

  “But that’ll take ages, surely? Doesn’t he know how urgent this is?”

  “Both the General and I tried to explain but we were given very firm orders.” He turned to Andras. “Do I detect your hand in this?”

  “Alas, no. I can influence people to do my bidding, but it needs to be in line with what they would otherwise do if they were given some firm and enticing incentive. I think even I would struggle to tempt Disraeli to put his country in mortal peril.”

  Pearce frowned at him, clearly still not convinced. “And yet you knew about our conversation. How?”

  “I am a demon,” he shrugged. “It surely is not beyond the realms of the believable to imagine that I can hear things you cannot.”

  “Let’s just say we do believe you,” said Pearce. “What could have made the Prime Minister behave in the way that he has?”

  “Do you remember when Augustus and I told you of our encounter with the Mage back in Sheffield?”

  I felt a cold chill run down my spine. “You think that thing is controlling Disraeli?”

  Andras nodded. “As well as your Queen.”

&n
bsp; Pearce frowned but before he could say any more there was a banging on the door. One of the soldiers went to answer and was roughly thrust aside as the door swung open to reveal a man in a dark cloak and tall hat.

  “Morley,” I hissed.

  “Ah, Miss Thatcher,” he said. “Strange how we keep bumping into each other in such circumstances. People would start to think there was something unusual going on that we needed to discuss.”

  “What do you want?” asked Pearce.

  “Your prisoner. I believe you are holding a certain demon here; I have a warrant that enables me to take possession of the creature.” He handed over a piece of paper.

  “Signed by the Queen herself,” said Pearce slowly. “But how did you know we had Andras here?”

  “I have my sources,” he said, starting to make his way past us.

  “No, but really,” persisted Pearce, moving to block him from passing. “I did not know until I arrived here that the demon was in this house, and it has been less than ten minutes since we apprehended him. No word has gone out from my men as to what is going on here, so how could you possibly know? Let alone arrange a warrant from the Queen?”

  Morley glared at him. “There exist protocols and intelligence that are beyond the wit of a mere army Captain,” he spat. “Just be satisfied that we are all working for the common good. Or do you wish to set yourself against us?”

  I looked from one to the other, suddenly feeling very lost. I did not trust Morley and I certainly was not stupid enough to even think about trusting Andras. The demon had tricked us before, turned plenty of people into his puppets and there was every chance he would try to do the same to me. But that being the case, what he had said did make a kind of sense.

  What if the Queen and Prime Minister were being controlled by a Mage? That would mean that they would try to make sure we didn’t get in the way of Gaap’s plans, which would mean that the last thing we should do is let Morley have his way. There was something about the thought of handing Andras over to Morley that just didn’t feel right.