‘Ceri? Is that you?’ It was Kate’s voice and it sounded like she was outside.
‘Yes,’ Ceri replied. ‘John asked us to call in case we could be useful.’
‘Hospitals have been overrun with both normals and supernaturals injured in a number of incidents throughout the city,’ the TV presenter reported. ‘In Child’s Hill, the small church of Saint Hammond’s was demolished when a creature described as “Great Cthulhu himself” by one witness smashed into it. The assault took place during an All Saints Blessing service. Four parishioners and the parish priest were killed and another twelve injured. Several private homes were invaded by lesser demons as wards failed.’
‘We’re at a club on Eastcastle Street,’ Kate said. ‘A place called Blood Culture. They were holding a sort of rave down here for vampires last night.’
‘Demons got in?’ Ceri asked.
‘I wish, this is plain weird.’
‘Hang on,’ Ceri said into the phone, ‘you’re on TV.’
‘…at the well-known “Blood Culture” night club a group of vampires celebrating Samhain have become trapped inside the building. Humans with them have been able to leave, but the vampires themselves are stuck behind an impenetrable barrier.’ The voice over was running over live footage of the building. Ceri could see Kate outside the door talking on the phone.
‘That’s weird, I agree,’ Ceri said. ‘You want us to come look at it?’
‘If you could, I think it’d be useful. There’s some sort of magic going on here, but I have no idea what and we’re stretched pretty thin.’
‘We’ll be there in half an hour or so,’ Ceri said, hanging up the phone. ‘Come on, love. We’re going to go rescue some stuck vamps.’
‘Blood Culture?’ Lily asked, rising to her feet. ‘Can’t we just leave them in there?’
Fitzrovia
Blood Culture looked a little incongruous with its bricked-up windows covered in black paint and large sign covering the entire frontage featuring red lettering with the name of the club on it. The rest of the street seemed fairly normal, aside, perhaps, for the church down the street. What was definitely not normal was the police cordon and the horde of press surrounding the place. Ceri and Lily showed their warrant cards to one of the uniformed officers at the cordon and passed straight through to where John and Kate were standing outside the door.
They were talking to a man in dark sunglasses with a very pale complexion who was standing on the inside. Ceri put him down as thirty when he died, and he had not been dead for that long. John nodded as they approached. ‘Ceri, Lily, this is Eric Broadwell, the owner.’
‘Bloodaxe,’ Eric said. ‘Broadwell’s just my modern name.’ He was putting on a fake Scandinavian accent which he obviously practiced, but if he was trying to make out he was a Viking he picked the wrong people to try it on. The leather gear was all modern, and heavy on the silver chains.
‘It’s the name the club’s registered under,’ John said, clearly trying to keep his temper in check. ‘We don’t know why they can’t get out, but they’re stuck in there…’
‘Bloody demons must’ve done something,’ Eric said. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you people…’
Since Eric had interrupted John, Lily felt no issue with doing it to him. ‘There’s no hint of demonic magic around here.’
Ceri blinked her Sight on and started looking around as Eric started to protest. ‘Well what else could it be?’ the vampire asked indignantly. Everything was fine when we came in last night. People were coming and going before nightfall. We try to leave this morning and we can’t.’
‘What exactly happens when you try?’ Ceri asked. There was something there all right, but she agreed with Lily, it was not demonic.
‘Well, that’s just it,’ Eric said, ‘we can’t try. It’s like we don’t want to leave. I can’t even think about leaving. And the humans left this morning as soon as the doors opened. No one even wanted to stay with us.’
‘Has anyone tried walking in to see if they can get out?’ Ceri asked.
‘Uh, no,’ John said.
‘We don’t want to go in,’ Kate said, looking annoyed about it.
Frowning, Lily waved at Eric to step back and then walked through the door. Ceri raised an eyebrow at her and she shrugged and walked back out again. ‘No problem,’ Lily said.
‘It’s some sort of compulsion spell,’ Ceri said. ‘It keeps vampires in and humans out. Lily’s neither so it doesn’t affect her.’ Deciding not to mention, at this point, that it did not seem to affect her she looked around, narrowing her eyes to take in the magic surrounding the club. ‘It looks like it doesn’t extend too far outside the walls, but you’d better make sure no vampires come down this street for safety’s sake.’
Eric’s eyes had widened, though it only showed in the eyebrows peeking over his glasses. ‘We’ll starve! You’ve got to get us out of here!’
‘I’m sure you all fed last night,’ Lily pointed out.
‘Yes, but…’
‘Practice some abstinence,’ the half-succubus told him.
‘Has anything odd entered the club recently?’ Ceri asked. ‘Especially last night.’
‘Odd? No,’ Eric said, and then seemed to reconsider. ‘Hang on…’ He vanished back into the club.
‘You don’t seem fond of this place, love?’ Ceri said.
‘Full of chew toys and vamps who love to live “the life,”’ Lily replied. ‘They wouldn’t know how to hunt if they had to. Tend to try to seem older than they are to impress the hufties. Nothing older than twenty years dead ever comes in here.’
Eric was walking back. He stopped just inside the door and held up a sheet of paper. ‘One of the God botherers down the road pushed this through the door last night,’ he said. ‘At least I think it was one of them. See the cross emblem in the corner?’ The sheet was covered in glyphs of some sort and, to Ceri’s eyes, it shone.
‘That’s Theban,’ Kate said. ‘Angelic script, some people call it. Uh… I can’t read that, what is it?’
‘Latin,’ Ceri said, ‘hang on… um… Qui comederit ullum sanguinem… eum de medio populi sui... Right, it says “Anyone who eats any blood, I will turn against that person who eats blood and cut him off from his people.”’
‘Leviticus,’ John said. ‘You’re kidding me?’
‘Put the paper down on the floor and back away from it please,’ Ceri said. Eric looked as though doing so gave him considerable pleasure. Ceri took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway into the club. ‘This is the source of it,’ she said. ‘I’ve no idea what kind of spell it is or how it was done so I’ll just have to neutralise everything…’ She focussed, keeping back from the paper, but raising her hand toward it. Light shimmered around the sheet and Ceri felt the resistance as the enchantment fought to maintain its integrity. Then there was a bright flash of light and the spell was gone. Ceri picked up the sheet of paper carefully by one corner. ‘You have any of those evidence bags? It might not lead anywhere, but we could get lucky.’
John stepped through the doorway holding out a bag for Ceri to slip the paper into. ‘It looks like London’s Finest have managed to free you, Mister Broadwell,’ the detective said.
‘Bloodaxe,’ Eric muttered under his breath as he walked back into the club to tell his clientele they could leave.
John was busy writing on the evidence bag while Ceri slipped out past him. Kate was looking at her and frowning slightly. ‘Something wrong?’ Ceri asked.
‘I get why the spell didn’t work on Lily,’ the witch said quietly, ‘but it worked on me, so why not you?’
‘She’s just that awesome,’ Lily said. ‘The important question is, were the three of you banging each other like a Salvation Army drum last night?’
The distraction worked perfectly; Kate turned several shades of scarlet and changed the subject. ‘The Chief has another problem for you, could you head back via HQ?’
‘Sure,’ Ceri said. ‘We’ll head o
ver there now.’ Smiling, she started off down the street toward the station, Lily taking a couple of quick paces before falling into step beside her. ‘Nicely done,’ Ceri said. ‘I didn’t really want to lie to her.’
Lily shrugged. ‘You are that awesome, but you’re missing the important point.’
‘I am?’
‘Uh-huh. If they were at it like priapic bunnies last night, it only took them a week! We were both wrong, so what do we do about the bet?’
Westminster
DCI Barry was in what the desk sergeant had described as “the incident room.” It was like a conference room, but with the usual table replaced by a set of consoles and desks. Three men sat in front of the consoles with headsets on, apparently talking to people out in the city. Barry was staring at a huge map of London which occupied one entire wall. It looked like it was printed onto some form of plastic since there were various pen marks all over it indicating events being dealt with by the Greycoats. There were a lot of pen marks.
‘Ah,’ Barry said when he noticed the two women, ‘excellent. Thanks for coming in.’
Ceri smiled. ‘You do actually pay us for this stuff.’
‘True. Good work at that club. John indicated it was part of this witch hunter business?’
‘Is that what we’re calling him now?’ Ceri asked. ‘Yes, well it was the same sort of MO. Biblical reference delivered to the target. In this case, that note was also the delivery method for a curse of some sort. It’s very sophisticated.’
Barry gave an irritated grunt and turned back to his map. ‘The reason I asked you to come here is this. Notice anything about the distribution of incidents?’
Lily had been examining the wall while they talked. ‘There’s very little south of the river,’ she said. ‘The events are far thinner and, if I’m reading the notation right, they’re mostly concerning spirit possessions.’
‘Precisely,’ Barry said. ‘After midnight we were fairly heavily stretched. We had special tactics units out trying to keep things bolted down as much as possible, but we were, frankly, out of our depth.’ He walked over to one of the tables and picked up a photograph, handing it to Ceri. ‘But one of the teams got some video footage of this on Vauxhall Bridge.’
Ceri looked down at the picture. It was a slightly blurry still from a video showing two major demons apparently doing battle. One of them was huge, bulky, with a mouth full of far too many sharp teeth. Despite the thing having an advantage in size, it appeared to be losing. Ceri recognised the other demon almost immediately.
‘The Devos-like one was outside High Towers last night,’ she said. ‘He seems to like the area.’
‘Interesting,’ Barry said. ‘We’ve had a number of reports indicating that a group of demons more or less carved out the area between Wandsworth and Rotherhithe, held it against any other demons coming in, and then… did nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ Ceri said, frowning in confusion.
‘No damage, no one hurt, no attempts to break wards.’ The detective shrugged. ‘Nothing.’
‘Demons don’t do anything without a reason,’ Lily said. ‘They had to be up to something.’
‘I was hoping you might be able to shed some light,’ Barry said, nodding in agreement. ‘With emergency services trying to keep a lid on things in the north we had very few people in your area.’
‘There was a demon lord walking around outside,’ Ceri replied. ‘Frankly we were making as much noise as possible to avoid hearing the sounds of things attacking the wards.’
‘We could check with Alexandra,’ Lily suggested. ‘They were in the open all night so they’re more likely to have seen something.’
Ceri nodded. ‘I’d like to check in anyway. Battersea it is.’
Battersea
There was a tree down near the boathouse on the edge of the lake, but aside from that there was no real damage in the park. As Ceri and Lily walked into the clearing on the island, Alexandra was making tea and looking quite relaxed. It seemed that things had been fairly quiet here as well.
‘Good afternoon, ladies,’ the Alpha said. ‘I’m just going to go ahead and pour two extra mugs, I know you’re thirsty.’
Ceri smirked. ‘I hate it when you do that.’
‘I know that too, dear.’ She smiled as she poured tea into three mugs. ‘It was far less of a problem here last night than I was expecting. There were quite a few spirits about, but those are easy to hold back. The demons just seemed to stay away. I hope you had a good birthday.’
‘Excellent,’ Ceri said, ‘but I came about the lack of demon activity. It seems a group of them basically walled off this part of the city. Kept all the other demons out and then just sat there and did nothing. The leader was a lord who seems… interested in me, but we just find it hard to believe they would go to all that effort without doing something while they were here.’
‘I’m afraid if they were, I know nothing about it,’ Alexandra said. She took a drink of tea and contemplated the sky for a moment. As she did so, Ceri was wrapped in grey furred arms and a muzzle brushed her cheek. ‘Ah, Michael,’ the Alpha said, ‘has anyone mentioned anything odd today? Strange marks on walls, evidence of demon activity?’ Michael growled a negative and Alexandra nodded. ‘Have word put out that people should keep their eyes open, please.’
Ceri felt Michael nod against her cheek. ‘Are you subbing for Anita again, love?’ she asked.
‘Indeed,’ Alexandra said, ‘and he’s doing well at it. Ray has a day off and Anita is spending it with him. Hopefully they won’t be indoors the entire time. She went dressed in that outfit you got her, however.’
‘I’d have trouble keeping my hands off her,’ Lily commented, ‘but Ray is quite the gentleman.’
Ceri felt a tongue brush her ear and giggled. ‘You’ve recovered from last night then?’
His growled reply said, Almost.
‘Both him and Lee were looking a little tired when they came back,’ Alexandra commented, her lips quirking. ‘I must admit I did assume the party had gone well before you confirmed it. Do you still have a house full of wolves?’
‘Dane and his people are leaving in the morning,’ Ceri said. ‘Oh, Aleena’s pregnant.’
‘Excellent news. They deserve some good things after the last few years.’
‘Yes,’ Ceri said, ‘they do.’
‘It’ll be another late night,’ Lily said, sipping her tea and smiling happily.
‘Yeah, probably.’ Ceri looked around at her mate. ‘That okay with you, love? I’ll likely be on all fours again before midnight.’
Michael gave a little rumble, something like a laugh. Of course. Hospitality.
~~~
Werewolves had a rather tribal view of hospitality. If someone was a guest in your territory, they were treated with respect and given a good welcome. Of course it was horribly impolite to abuse that hospitality, and generally it all balanced out.
With the North Hills wolves it was different. Ceri had known them longer than the pack she belonged to. A North Hills wolf, she was still not sure who it had been, had been her first werewolf when they had helped with her thesis. Even though they were not her pack, Ceri felt at home among them. In turn, they were nomads and when they got together under a roof with a warm fire things tended to become lethargic right up until the time people’s clothes started coming off.
But so far the only naked people were Lily and Tabby. The she-wolf had developed it as a habit when it was just the pack and the housemates in High Towers. The first time she had been surrogate Lily since the latter had been out at work. Now it was just because. So Lily was in her usual place on the footstool and Tabby on the floor, her head resting on Ceri’s thigh.
‘So this demon seems to have been protecting this area?’ Dane said. His tone was suspicious and disbelieving; hardly a surprise considering his experience of demons.
‘I find it difficult to ascribe protective tendencies to him,’ Ceri replied. ‘Let’s say he didn’t want an
yone else coming in to ruin whatever he was doing.’
‘But we don’t know what that was,’ Aleena stated. She was lying across the arms of the other wing-back, in Dane’s lap. ‘I doubt it was anything good.’
‘I don’t know,’ Ceri said, ‘which is what worries me. Maybe he was actually protecting the area. Maybe there’s something here he didn’t want damaged. Maybe he took the opportunity to do something while he was here and wanted it kept secret. I can’t believe any of those things would be good for anyone here.’
Lily gave a little giggle. ‘Maybe he heard it was your birthday and didn’t want the other demons disturbing the party.’
‘Right,’ Ceri said, her tone sarcastic, ‘we partied guarded by demons. I’m not sure I like that idea either.’
‘You prefer the idea of Shub-niggle-yoggle barging in through the front door?’
‘Depends,’ Ceri replied. ‘Does Shub-niggle-yoggle have lots of tentacles? I mean, that could work at an orgy.’
‘Oh yuck!’ Tabby giggled. ‘I don’t want some multi-tentacled something or other probing my sensitive bits.’
‘I dunno,’ Lily said. ‘I can’t imagine it’d be that different to what was going on last night. All those “tentacles” probing…’ She leaned forward and began “tentacling” Tabby's ribs with her fingers. When the giggles and yelps became moans and whimpers, Ceri knew the serious discussion was finished for the night.
Part Three: Pentateuch
Kennington, London, November 6th, 2011
On a rainy Sunday in November there was a great deal to be said for cuddling up in your lover’s arms on a couch and watching an Ealing comedy which was older than you were. The Ladykillers was, after all, an absolute classic and Lily had never seen it. Ceri had, in a hotel lounge, while they were on holiday in Tenby. She had been eleven, if she was remembering it right.
‘Never underestimate the ultimate power of batty old ladies,’ Lily said as the credits rolled.
‘Especially when totally oblivious,’ Ceri agreed. ‘They have angels watching over them or something.’
‘It’d have to be that, or she was really a witch. They certainly seemed to be under a confusion spell.’
Thaumatology 06 - Hammer of Witches Page 13
