Ceri grinned back. ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ she said. ‘Looking back on the nightmare, you looked really hot in that suit too.’
Lily burst into a fit of giggles. ‘We’re both totally sick puppies,’ she said.
‘Uh-huh,’ Ceri replied. ‘Do you actually have a suit?’
‘No,’ Lily said thoughtfully, ‘something to look into.’
‘I certainly won’t disagree that you two are sick puppies,’ Twill said, buzzing overhead on the way to the cooker.
‘You didn’t say that when I shrank Lily down for you last month,’ Ceri commented.
‘That’s different,’ Twill said as the cooker sprang into life, the fridge opened, and the fairy frowned at the available food. ‘Clearly you two are deviants. I don’t indulge in threesomes and make a complete mess of the sheets.’
Ceri looked at Lily, who looked back. They came to a more or less simultaneous decision, though it was left to Ceri to articulate it. ‘So you don’t want me to shrink myself and Michael as well next time?’
There was a clatter as a frying pan dropped the last two inches onto the cooker ring. A flicker of pink light burst around the tiny woman and she spun in the air to look at Ceri. ‘I think,’ Lily said before Twill could speak, ‘it would be easier to just wait for the North Hills pack to visit and then make Twill bigger.’ The flicker of light danced around Twill again as she looked, wide-eyed at Lily. ‘About four foot tall,’ Lily added, ‘and three wolves at a time…’ Twill vanished into a ball of pink light and sped out of the room accompanied by a sharp squeak. Lily giggled. ‘I guess we’re making breakfast,’ she said.
~~~
‘Say “ah,”’ Ceri said.
Lily raised an eyebrow and then opened her mouth and said, ‘Ahhhhh,’ while Ceri peered in. ‘That’s just silly,’ the half-succubus said.
Ceri grinned. ‘I know, but I’m playing doctor.’ Her lab coat was stained with ink and a few other, unidentified, marks, and there was a lacy, red teddy with open cups under it, but she was playing doctor; doctors needed a white coat.
‘If doctors looked like you, I’d be sick more often,’ Lily said, smirking.
‘You would say that. Now sit still, I need to examine your aura.’
Lily, still smirking, settled herself comfortably on the chaise longe, straightened her back, pushed her chest out, and waited while Ceri stared closely at the energy flowing around her. ‘Shouldn’t the wards be stopping anything that could be affecting me?’ Lily asked.
‘Yes,’ Ceri said, ‘but these dreams you’ve been having are… It’s possible that something subtle could be getting through. Especially something established outside the wards.’ Picking her way through the complexity of magic around Lily was always a challenge. She had never looked this closely before and it was fascinating.
The two medians, the metaphysical energy paths through the body, she was fairly used to, but paying as close attention as she was, Ceri began to see the little details which she generally missed or ignored. There were the indistinct patterns of the three joining points for one thing. Between the two base nodes was the “physical binding.” It was said that the bridging of the two medians at this level was what empowered the physical body. To Ceri’s Sight it looked like a vaporous belt made up of strands of red and white energy. It looked almost like a muscle. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary there, but the intense observation made the “muscle” twitch and gave rise to a sudden surge of energy in the Tantric Muladhara node; Lily was becoming aroused.
Smiling, Ceri moved her attention upward and found the bridge between the Anahata, or Heart, nodes. If the mystics were to be believed, this was basically Lily’s soul. To Ceri’s Sight it appeared as a thin ribbon of silver-white mist with faint flecks of duller colour in it. These, she suspected, were the marks of Lily’s teenage years, especially the latter part when her life had been spiralling downhill toward depravity. Ceri was rather happy to see that there was no black there, nothing to suggest real malice. ‘You’re not exactly a pure spirit,’ Ceri said, ‘but you’ve done nothing to leave a lasting mark either.’
‘But I took a poor, innocent thaumatology student and turned her into a hufty,’ Lily said. There was sufficient humour in her voice to show she was joking.
‘You did nothing I didn’t want,’ Ceri replied, shifting her gaze upward to the most complex bridge. The mystics claimed that the spirit bridged three nodes; the two Ajna points, and the Sahasrara node which terminated the Chakral Median at the very top of the skull. There was, indeed, an indistinct, ghostly triangle of energy linking the three points. It flickered and danced as Ceri watched it, perhaps a metaphysical manifestation of the thoughts passing through Lily’s mind as she sat there. Ceri made out more detail the longer she watched. There were colours in the mist; reds, blues, shades of orange and yellow, and flickers of black. The odd thing was that the black seemed to push in from the edges. As a black patch appeared and moved inward, it would be surrounded by a shimmer of red which overcame it until it dissolved entirely.
Frowning, Ceri looked more closely and shapes began to resolve within the black specs. Faces, bodies, bodies intertwined with other bodies; all of them seemed to have some sexual aspect to them. And then Ceri spotted it; a black spec flickered into existence just outside the mist of Lily’s spirit and pushed inward, immediately being wrapped in red and corroded toward oblivion. At the point where the fleck had originated, there was a trail. It was very faint, almost invisible. It was the kind of thing you would never see unless you were looking for it, and even then you might dismiss it as a trick of the light, but it was there.
Ceri straightened up and blinked away her Sight. ‘Something or someone has some sort of psychic link with you,’ she said. ‘I think you’re seeing what they see. Or at least feeling it. That’s where the dreams are coming from. Your waking mind recognises the images as foreign and rejects them. When you’re dreaming, the images get integrated into your dreamscape because your mind is insufficiently aware to know they aren’t part of your memory.’
Lily frowned. ‘A mental link,’ she said, ‘at a really low level, almost too subtle to see?’ Ceri nodded. ‘Just enough to influence my reaction to things and give me wild dreams?’
‘Well, obviously.’
‘Crap,’ Lily commented. ‘Someone has summoned my father to Earth.’
~~~
Lily lay in the bath, a glass of wine in one hand. Ceri had added some lavender bubble bath to the water and the foam hid most of the half-succubus’ body; only her glorious breasts broke through though the sight of them was not having their usual effect. Ceri sat on a chair beside the bath, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.
‘What does he look like?’ Ceri asked quietly.
Lily’s lips quirked slightly. ‘Well, he’s an incubus so pretty much anything he needs to.’
‘Yeah, but you said once he always looked the same when he visited.’
‘Mostly. I think it was the shape he took when he and Mum… well, when I was conceived. Tall, attractive, but not, like, supermodel quality. He always had a half-day’s growth of beard, no matter what time of day it was. Mum liked the guy-next-door look, maybe like a student? I mean, she was one at the time. Good body, y’know? Muscles, but not bulky. Fit. Grey eyes with some flecks of brown and green if you got close.’
‘Close? He never…’
‘Oh God no! No, he never tried anything on. Mum would’ve freaked.’ Lily looked a little sheepish; she probably would have blushed if she were physically capable. ‘I’ll admit I had the odd fantasy. I mean, he’s a demon. My genetic material doesn’t really come from him. He just modified what he took off some guy at the party. It wouldn’t exactly have been incest, but we never did.’ She took a drink from her glass. ‘He had gorgeous hair. Thick, red-brown, kind of like mine. Not as long, of course.’
Ceri frowned slightly. ‘The man who was watching us in the park? When you went down in me under the tree?’<
br />
‘I remember.’
‘I think that was him. I couldn’t see him properly, but he looked… I don’t know, wrong. And he had a fair thickness of hair, like a mane.’
Lily shifted in the bath. The foam rose and fell, and then parted as she raised a leg up. ‘Could have been him. Could have been some random pervert. Or just some guy. I think I’d stop to watch two girls like us having sex under a tree.’
‘Who are you trying to convince?’
‘Huh. Me?’ She drained her glass. ‘So, someone summons my Dad and… what? Why’s he here? I’m his anchor. Because he sired me he can stay on Earth indefinitely, so once he’s summoned he can hang around until he’s banished. But if he wants to come see me, why doesn’t he? He was never shy before.’
‘Well,’ Ceri said, her face thoughtful, ‘the last time he was around, he screwed you up and your mother and her friends banished him. I’d steer clear if my aim was to stay on Earth.’
‘True, but then why come at all?’
‘He… wanted to check up on you?’
Lily gave a little grimace. ‘He’s a demon, Ceri. They aren’t noted for their glorious parental instincts and emotional depths.’
‘He’s an incubus.’
‘So?’
‘Most demons are emotionally detached… no, that’s wrong. They just don’t think the same way we do. They’re power hungry and empathy for others is an evolutionary mistake for them. Incubi, and a few other demons like them, they’ve evolved to prey on other creatures in a way that requires them to understand the emotions of others. You can’t do that without feeling something.’
‘All Dad used to feel was Mum,’ Lily said flatly.
April 27th
The sight of John Radcliffe and Kate Middleshaw standing on the doorstep came as something of a surprise when Ceri opened the door. John looked serious, and that was never a good thing.
‘Should I be worried?’ Ceri asked.
‘That depends,’ John replied. ‘Can you account for Lily’s whereabouts the last few nights?’
‘Well, yes, she’s been in bed with me.’ Ceri frowned and stepped back. ‘You’d better come in.’
‘Where is she?’ John asked as he walked past into the hall.
‘Still in bed. She’s been having bad dreams and she’s hard enough to get up of a morning anyway.’
‘We need to talk to her,’ Kate said. ‘Call it a consultancy.’
Ceri took them up to the study, and then went up the second flight of stairs to the top floor where the bedrooms where. Lily opened her eyes as Ceri walked into the room. ‘Visitors?’ the half-succubus asked.
‘Kate and John. They came to talk to you.’
‘Should I put clothes on?’
Ceri nodded. ‘I don’t think this is a social visit.’
Admittedly, the jersey-dress Lily chose to wear was not exactly lacking in allure, but she was not naked when the girls joined the detectives. John looked up and nodded. Kate, at least, gave them a smile. John did not really like the supernatural, an odd trait for someone who had chosen a transfer to the branch of the London police force which investigated supernatural crimes.
‘Detectives,’ Lily said, ‘what brings you to our neck of the woods?’ She continued walking, settling onto the chaise longe with Ceri settling beside her.
‘We’ve had a number of deaths recently,’ John said. ‘Forensics suggests, considering the circumstances, that a succubus was involved.’
‘And you thought of me?’ Lily said, her tone distinctly sarcastic. ‘How nice.’
‘Well since Ceri says you were with her the last few nights, you’re off the hook,’ Kate said, ‘but we had to ask.’
‘And since you’re the only succubus we know,’ John added, ‘we were hoping you could provide some insight. I realise you’re only demon on your father’s side, but…’
Ceri looked at Lily and the half-demon sighed. ‘My father’s probably in London. Though, to be honest, he doesn’t need to kill to feed. He never used to… As far as I know he didn’t do that the last time he was on Earth.’
John squeezed the bridge of his nose. ‘So we’ve got a shape-shifting killer wandering around the city, we don’t even know what sex we’re looking for, and if it’s your father then I think I’m right in saying he can stay here as long as he likes.’ Lily nodded. ‘Great.’
‘If it is Lily’s father,’ Ceri said, ‘then you’ve got a massive advantage.
‘Would you be willing to come in and help, Lily?’ Kate asked. John blinked at her. ‘Basic laws of magic, sympathy and contagion. Lily shares metaphysical qualities with her father, and spent a fair bit of time with him. She could give our scrying teams a big head start in finding him.’
‘Yeah, I can do that,’ Lily replied. ‘This afternoon?’
John grimaced. ‘Would you believe we need a search warrant to do that?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Ceri said, ‘legal awareness is part of the practitioner’s certificate. Pretty much along the lines of “using scrying on an individual in a private location will get you locked up if you’re discovered.”’
‘Same applies to us,’ Kate put in, ‘unless we have probable cause and no time.’
‘And we didn’t have a death last night, so probable cause is unlikely to cut it.’ John’s expression was sour. ‘Of course, we found three of them the night before, so he’s probably not hungry.’
Ceri and Lily looked at each other. ‘Three?’ Ceri asked.
‘Three men? In the same room?’ Lily added. ‘You don’t have pictures, do you?’
Frowning, John reached into his jacket to pull out his phone. A couple of button pushes and he was holding the device up to Lily. ‘That’s one of them.’
Lily swallowed convulsively. ‘He was in the dream,’ she said.
‘Ceri mentioned nightmares,’ Kate said. ‘You’re dreaming about the murders?’
‘I’m dreaming that I’m the one draining them. Like I did it. Every sensation.’
It was the turn of the detectives to look at each other, but their expressions were more eager than horrified. ‘Can you tell us anything about it?’ John asked. ‘Other than the obvious.’
Lily’s brow knotted. ‘It’s hard. It was a dream and it started fading… I, I mean he, picked them up in a bar in Mayfair. Sorry, I don’t know which one. It wasn’t hard. They were into their second or third round of drinks. Suggest they might like to gang bang a pretty, willing girl and it was back to their digs… Students, they were students.’
‘First years at UCL,’ Kate confirmed.
‘It’s odd,’ Lily said, apparently not hearing the detective sergeant, ‘when I used to go out for snacks I’d look for someone I figured I’d have a good time with. This is… There’s no pleasure in it. It’s like he’s doing a job. Just find a victim and suck them dry.’
‘Was there any connection between the victims?’ Ceri asked.
‘Well, the last three obviously lived together,’ John replied, ‘but we’ve found no common factor in general.’
‘So someone summons an incubus and sends him out to kill random people?’ Ceri’s tone suggested that she found that a little unlikely. Kate’s expression suggested she agreed.
John, however, shrugged slightly. ‘People have done stranger things. There was that guy a few years ago who went nuts and walked through his local shopping centre with a Japanese sword slashing at people who looked at him.’
Ceri blinked. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
The detective inspector smirked slightly. ‘That’s why they put normals in the Greycoats,’ he said. ‘Supernaturals tend to think everything is supernatural. There might be something sane behind this, but it’s just as likely it’s the magical equivalent of a mad man on a roof with a rifle.’
It seemed like such a simple explanation.
~~~
‘Are you absolutely sure you’ll be okay?’ Ceri said. Again. Lily looked at her until she was forced to look down at the
new copy of The Wednesday Witch and pretend she had not said anything. ‘Hey,’ she said, trying to cover her embarrassment, ‘Carter and Suzie Shore are in the gossip column.’
‘Of course they are,’ Lily said, ‘and you are not getting out of taking Michael to the Collar Club.’
Ceri ignored the comment, still trying to hide her worry over Lily. ‘They’re speculating that he’s slept with every eligible practitioner in London and is having to repeat a few until the next generation comes along.’
‘Rubbish. He hasn’t slept with you for starters.’
‘I’m ineligible. He doesn’t sleep with staff… generally.’
Lily grunted in response; Ceri was not sure whether that was a rebuttal of his staff-sex policy or a comment on her ineligibility. It seemed unlikely that Carter would sleep with Ceri anyway, no matter how much they both might want it. ‘When’s Michael coming around?’ Lily asked.
‘About seven,’ Ceri replied. ‘We need to get him dressed up before I can take him to the club.’
‘You need to get yourself dressed up too. You’re going to make him drool, right?’
Ceri laughed. ‘Not too much. Have you seen a drooling werewolf? It’s not pretty.’
‘Yes, several. Through most of January.’
‘Ah, point,’ Ceri conceded. ‘Well, I got Michael some black, leather jeans and a new, black T-shirt… well, black mesh T-shirt…’ Ceri felt her cheeks colouring. ‘And I bought him a new coat. He’s got nothing much in the way of human clothes.’
‘Black mesh T-shirt, huh?’ Ceri nodded in response and Lily said, ‘Just you make sure he comes here wearing that outfit so I can enjoy it too.’
‘Of course.’
Lily nodded and glanced at the clock over the kitchen sink. ‘So we’ve got an hour before he gets here? Time for a shower? You’re not going to get another Lily Fix until Friday?’
Ceri grinned sheepishly. ‘Yes, I know. I just hope I don’t get too shaky Thursday night. It’ll be embarrassing if I have to rush home for a quickie.’
Thaumatology 03 - Legacy Page 9
