Reaching out her left hand, Ceri stepped forward, her fingers and then her palm sinking into Julia’s chest. She closed her fist and stepped backward, and Julia screamed as something like a spider web of white, glistening material was drawn out of her. The strain showed on Ceri’s face as she pulled harder and the webbing stretched, tightened, and then pulled free with a snap. Free of Julia’s spirit form, the white net began to dissolve, slowly evaporating into nothing. Ceri lowered her staff, the light dying in the sphere, and Julia crumpled to the ground.
‘She’s free of Tisiphone’s influence,’ Ceri said. ‘Just Julia now.’
‘But couldn’t she get it back?’ Lily asked. She looked down at the curled up, now naked, form of Julia lying on the dirt, whimpering softly.
‘Possibly,’ Ceri said, ‘but I think “justice” has been served and… well, I think I’ve learned something about these paintings…’ She held out her hand to Lily. Lily took it and gasped as the world seemed to collapse around them.
Surrey, near Bagshot
‘The magic in it,’ Lily said, her eyes on the painting. ‘It’s like it’s just… shrunk to almost nothing.’
Ceri nodded and Lily frowned at her; she seemed subdued. ‘It’s basically a portal,’ Ceri said. 'Your spirit can pass through it into some sub-realm. Maybe it’s the Fae Otherworld, I don’t know. I pulled the door shut behind us when we left. No one’s getting in through there, or coming out.’
‘Her father…’
‘If he’s got enough energy left to survive, he’s got what he wanted. They’ll live forever in there.’
Lily looked up at the painting. ‘I think I’d prefer to die. Let’s get out of here.’
Ceri nodded as she summoned her power for the teleport; she agreed.
M3 Motorway, near Shepperton
They had been silent all the way to the motorway, and back toward London. The sun was coming up and the traffic was starting to get a little heavier.
Ceri looked at Lily, because it took her mind off speeding along at seventy and the feeling that, any moment, the car would decide to skid sideways off the road and kill them. The half-succubus had a frown on her face, and was not helping Ceri’s security by nibbling at the edge of a nail as she drove with only one hand on the wheel.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Ceri asked.
Lily glanced at her and then back at the road. ‘Well, I should be thinking that we won and Julia’s got some sort of rest, or maybe that we did a horrible thing to save ourselves…’ She glanced back again. ‘I don’t think we did, by the way. Anyway, that’s not what I’m thinking and I’m sort of irritated with myself.’
‘Oh,’ Ceri said, not sure how to take that. ‘Well, what are you thinking about?’
‘I’m thinking that I’ve never had sex in the back of a Jaguar.’
‘Oh… Well… I can see why you’d be irritated.’
‘Yeah.’
Ceri’s lips twitched and she clamped down on it. ‘I mean… I’ve never had sex in a car, never mind a Jaguar.’
Lily cut off a giggle. ‘You’re not helping.’
‘Displacement activity,’ Ceri said. ‘Your mind is trying to come up with something else to think about. And your mind only has one thing it likes to think about.’
‘Hey! I do not have a one-track mind.’
There was silence as the car exited the motorway and started into the city proper, though with Kempton Racecourse on the right it was quite a green city at first. The slower speed was enough to let Ceri relax a little since there were still few enough cars about that a crash was unlikely.
‘Well?’ Lily asked.
‘Well what?’
‘Well, do you want to find somewhere we can pull over?’
Ceri was too busy giggling to give a coherent answer.
Part Seven: Taking Care of Business
Kennington, London, September 4th, 2011
Lia was a kisser. Certainly Ceri had never been kissed three times just to say goodbye. It seemed to be a Dutch thing and Ceri was a little surprised that Lily seemed quite used to it. Right, left, right, seemed to be the order of the day. The thought passed Ceri’s mind that they were trying to out-do the French.
‘Back to the Netherlands tonight?’ Ceri asked.
Lia nodded. ‘The night ferry from Felixstowe. I always have trouble sleeping.’
‘Sea sickness?’
Lia giggled. ‘No, sailors.’
‘And you’re editing tomorrow, Tawni?’ Ceri asked through the laughter.
‘Uh-huh,’ the actress replied, ‘the even more boring part of the business, but it has to happen.’ She stepped up to Ceri with a smile. ‘It was really great seeing you again, and… well, both of you saved my movie.’ She leaned forward and placed a delicate little kiss on Ceri’s cheek, just touching her lips.
Ceri turned her head slightly so that her own kiss was just as delicate, but on Tawni’s lips. ‘You don’t be a stranger, okay? I expect you at my birthday party this year. Jenny Li will be there too.’
Tawni grinned. ‘Just like old times?’
‘Probably a lot more sex than old times,’ Lily said.
‘I’ll be there,’ Tawni said quickly.
In the distance there was the sound of a phone ringing and the two actresses waved goodbye quickly so that Ceri could go answer it. The Welsh accent on the other end was thick. ‘Ceri? It’s Rhys. We’ve found something…’
Wales, near Senghenydd, September 5th
The little farm was out in the middle of nowhere and it seemed to be unoccupied. The windows on all the buildings were boarded over and no lights showed. Ceri was fairly sure that there were people in it, however.
For one thing, Hughes had told her and Lily that they had spotted several large four wheel drive vehicles entering and leaving the barn. It was well organised; no lights showed when they went in or out. The police surveillance had also spotted a few people moving between the buildings.
There was that, and there was Rhys and several other members of his pack who said they could smell the stench of the chemicals from the biggest of the barns. The pack had gone searching and they had found this place. Locally it was known as “that old farm of Jones’” and it had been disused since Old Man Jones had died two years ago. Croft had discovered that Jones’ death had been a little odd, and the alchemy ring had been running for a little over a year.
A black-fur dropped into the little foxhole they were lying in three hundred yards from the farm. Kai shifted as he dropped to one shoulder, a grin forming on his human face. Ceri heard Croft supressing a whimper. ‘They have alarm wires on all the close-in fences,’ Kai said, ‘and lookouts with night-vision glasses up on the top floor of the house. They’ll have even us spotted before we can get close. Your humans don’t stand a chance.’
‘Plan B then?’ Lily suggested.
Ceri nodded and looked around at Croft and Hughes, the latter looking a little uncomfortable lying in a ditch in a bulletproof vest. ‘Wait for the signal and then storm the place,’ Ceri said.
‘What’s the signal?’ Hughes grumbled.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Ceri said, ‘but I guarantee you’ll know it when you see it.’ Grinning she backed away from the hole, Lily following after her.
~~~
The two girls with backpacks gabbled constantly as they walked up the track to the farm. They were hardly dressed for walking at night, though one of them did have a large staff to walk with; which was useful since she seemed to be limping. The guards spotted them, of course, but two girls in mini-skirts were hardly a threat and it was better to stay quiet and hope they just passed by.
As they got closer, the taller one with the limp could be heard. ‘Aww look, it’s all dark. There’s no one here. You said we’d get help.’ The whine was almost painful.
‘Maybe the curtains are closed,’ the shorter one said. At this distance the watchers could see that this one was field walking in high-heels. How dumb were these two? ‘We’ll
go bang on the door.’
‘It’s gotta be almost midnight,’ the tall one wailed. ‘My ankle hurts. You said we’d get help here.’
‘Oh shush.’ The shorter girl gave an airhead giggle. ‘Maybe there’ll be some big, healthy farmer’s sons.’
‘All you think about is sex. Sex, sex, sex.’
Smirking, one of the watchers picked up a walkie-talkie and called down to the people on the ground floor. Normally they had to go into Cardiff or Caerphilly to get laid.
The door of the little farmhouse opened as soon as Lily rapped on it. The man inside smiled warmly at them. ‘Can I help you?’ He was tall, tanned, attractive in a rugged way, and heavy on the muscular upper body.
Lily smiled her very, very best “my brains are in my boobs” smile. ‘My friend’s hurt her ankle. We’ve been walking for hours. Could we come in and sit down? Maybe call a taxi?’
‘Sure,’ the man said stepping back so that they could walk in. ‘Well, taxis don’t come out here, but I’m sure we can take care of you.’
‘We?’ Ceri asked as they walked into a kitchen and found themselves surrounded by half a dozen men, all dressed in black, all holding automatic pistols. Ceri’s eyes widened and Lily put her hands up.
The door closed behind them. ‘Yeah, we. We’ll take really good care of you, won’t we, boys?’ There was a rumble of laughed agreement. ‘You girls want to strip, or are we gonna rip your clothes off.’
Lily turned around and smiled at the man at the door. ‘You know, there’s no need for guns,’ she said, slipping her rucksack off her back. ‘If you guys want to have some fun, you just had to ask.’ Ceri closed her eyes as Lily’s pupils lit up like fires; she could push Lily’s aura aside, even on full power, but it was easier to just not look.
When she opened them again, Lily was pulling her daggers from her fallen rucksack and then heading for the inner door. ‘Careful,’ Ceri whispered, but with her pet in the clear, Ceri could just drop an area-effect sleep spell over the group of gurgling would-be rapists and then follow.
The ground floor had been emptied of thugs to party with the two poor, unsuspecting “victims,” which left the guards upstairs. There were three of them and they were not expecting anyone to come up the stairs and disturb them… yet. In an hour or so when the others had finished with the girls, maybe, but not yet.
Ceri dropped the first with a sleep spell while Lily went into the next room and cracked the second over the head with the hilt of a dagger. It was a far more painful way of laying him out, but just as effective. The third heard one of them fall and stepped out of his room to investigate. He stopped dead at the sight of Lily, smiling sweetly at him, and therefore never even noticed Ceri pointing her staff at him. He was smiling vaguely as he slumped onto the floor and began to snooze.
Lily giggled. ‘The Power of the Boobs overcame them.’
Ceri winced. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘I know. Hey! Come see this.’ The half-demon turned and went back to the man she had knocked out, lifting a bulky-looking rifle with a huge barrel and a drum magazine.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ Ceri asked.
‘I think it’s a grenade launcher.’
‘That’s what I thought it was too. Think you can use it?’
Lily flicked off the safety. ‘I think we have our signal.’
Ceri giggled. Really they should have been being terribly serious, but this was fun! They opened the back door of the farmhouse. There was a clear view of the main doors of the barn. Giving Ceri a grin, Lily pushed the butt of the launcher into her shoulder, aimed it and pulled the trigger three times. There were three thuds as the projectiles hit the wood, a short pause, and then the front of the barn vanished into splintered wood. Lily put another round in through the smoking gap and a second later there was a huge explosion as a large car’s fuel tank took the full force of the grenade.
The front of the building was burning and one of the side doors burst open. Ceri’s staff glowed and the men swarming through the door keeled over, asleep. Some kept coming, one of them turning toward the farmhouse, fire burning in his palm. ‘Move!’ Ceri snapped as the fire bolt lanced out toward them. They ducked out of the way and the bolt exploded inside the room.
Ceri could hear the screech of tyres as the Special Tactics team arrived, but the practitioner with the fire spells was hers. A second bolt was winding up and she blocked it as soon as he launched it. Levelling her staff, she launched a bolt of light at him, hitting his leg, and he fell with a sharp cry of pain. A second or two later he was surrounded by men with guns and Hughes, Croft, and Kai were standing beside Ceri and Lily.
‘Some of them are running,’ Croft commented.
‘They won’t get far,’ Kai said. ‘We’ve got pack all around the farm. That was a hell of a signal.’
Lily lifted her grenade launcher with a grin. ‘We aim to please. Normally it’s Ceri that gets to set off the fireworks.’
Around them, police officers and werewolves were rounding up drug dealers and manufacturers. Another huge black-fur emerged from behind the farmhouse, shifting to become Rhys as he stepped forward. ‘Looks like you have them all,’ he said.
‘With some help from our friends,’ Hughes said. ‘Thanks.’ Ceri looked at him; that must have hurt.
‘We can’t have people like that on our territory, Detective,’ Rhys replied, nodding politely. ‘If you have problems like this again, you send word.’
Hughes nodded, hesitated, and then held out a hand to the Alpha. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said. Rhys looked a little surprised himself as he took the cop’s hand and shook it. Then the detective looked around at Ceri and Lily. ‘Mark can run you back to your hotel if you want. We can mop up here.’
‘Thanks,’ Ceri said, ‘that’d be great.’
As they walked back to where the unmarked police car was waiting at the end of the track, Croft sighed. ‘I’m glad he sent me back.’
‘Oh?’ Lily asked. ‘I thought you were enjoying the werewolves.’
‘I was,’ Croft replied, grinning self-consciously, ‘but have you ever heard of a gay werewolf? I need a cold shower.’
Kennington, September 6th
Even getting an early train out of Cardiff it was afternoon before they were back in London and Lily could get to the roof. It was already September, the summer months were effectively gone, and these were the last days they could expect to get weather good enough to sunbathe in. Ceri did not begrudge her the warmth, but was determined to get some good quality coffee before joining her, which meant she was in the kitchen when Twill announced they had visitors.
John and Kate stood on the doorstep; John had his serious face on, but Ceri was learning to distinguish them and this was just his “I’m working” face. ‘We just got back from Cardiff,’ Ceri said. ‘If you think I’m getting Lily off the roof to talk to you two, you’ve been drinking.’
‘I’m sure we can manage,’ Kate said, before John could respond.
In fact John seemed fairly calm about the half-succubus laid out on her lounger, eyes closed and skin bare. He settled onto the third of the wooden seats with Kate settling beside him with his work face still happily fixed. Then his eyes started bulging and his cheeks flushed as Ceri started to undress. ‘So, for what do we owe the pleasure?’ Ceri asked, ignoring the detective inspector.
‘We read your report,’ John said, ‘and wanted to check a couple of things.’
‘And the Chief wanted to check up on that alchemical drugs ring in Cardiff,’ Kate added. ‘We got some evidence that they’ve been supplying into the Home Counties.’
‘They won’t be anymore,’ Lily commented from her lounger; she sounded very relaxed and her eyes did not open as she spoke.
Ceri finished undressing, sat on the edge of her lounger and starting smoothing oil into her skin. ‘Hughes is dealing with the details,’ she said, ‘but the Brecon pack managed to locate the manufacturing location, and we went in last night and arrested them
with extreme prejudice.’
‘I got to fire a grenade launcher,’ Lily said. ‘It was awesome.’
‘We’ll get in touch with Hughes then,’ John said, nodding and making a note in his book. The action gave him the opportunity to not look at Ceri. He flipped back a page, examined the notes there, and went on. ‘The Tisiphone painting is being transferred to secure storage, but we need to know whether there are any special handling requirements.’
‘That one should be locked,’ Ceri replied settling back in the sun and closing her own eyes. ‘I guess someone could unlock it if they tried hard, but if you have it secured it should be safe.’
‘What about de la Vasco’s other paintings?’ the DI asked. ‘There’s one hanging in public view in the V and A!’
‘That one’s safe,’ Ceri said. ‘Sylvia can take care of anyone going in there and I’m not sure why anyone would try to disturb her anyway.’
‘And the other paintings?’
‘That would depend on the painting,’ Ceri replied. ‘They’re fae magic, in effect. Capricious. It’ll be difficult to predict what they do, if anything, without seeing them. My guess is you’d need more evidence than “they could be dangerous” to confiscate them from private collectors.’
‘Yes,’ John confirmed, ‘we would. Though we may issue a warning concerning them. Some may want the artwork checked out, if you’d be willing to look at them?’
‘I have no objections if the owners want it done,’ Ceri replied.
‘What about the Holloways?’ Kate asked. ‘Alexander Holloway’s nurse found him dead this morning. They’re saying heart failure.’
‘It was just a matter of time,’ Ceri replied. ‘He gave up his spirit to persuade Tisiphone to empower his daughter. I think it was him who wanted revenge originally. When her ghost was infused with the power of an Erinyes she was corrupted by it. She wanted revenge for dying young and took it out on anyone she could. I hope they’re both in the painting and not too unhappy.’
‘I’m not sure it’s the kind of death I’d like,’ John said. Ceri wondered what sort of death he was going to get. His wife was a vampire; would she turn him eventually?
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