Thaumatology 04 - Dragon's Blood

by Teasdale, Niall

‘Hold them off!’ Ceri yelled. Her staff began to glow as she drew power through it.

  Barnes seemed to recognise the danger he was in; Hannah emerged from the bushes, raising her hands, and fire flared in her palms. A few more seconds… Lily’s dagger carved through Wren’s arm, his wrist flapping as the tendons were severed. Then she was turning, her foot lashing out to slam into Hannah’s ribs. The model’s mouth opened, but the roar of rage which came from it was from something other than a human voice. She turned, preparing to throw the flames at Lily, but the half-demon was faster, snapping a kick into Hannah’s face and toppling her backward. Wren’s still functioning hand slammed around into the side of Lily’s head with more force than his living body could have provided and Lily went down as hard as Hannah had. Except that it was the demon-possessed woman who lifted herself into a sitting position and raised her hand toward Ceri.

  Ceri lifted her arms, her staff held high. The crystal sphere buried in its head shone with a brilliant, blue-white light. ‘Gadael y byd hwn!’ she yelled out across the park and everything seemed to go silent. Hannah screamed, a long, drawn out wail of pain and horror, and then she collapsed. Wren took a faltering step toward Ceri and then he too collapsed, the spell animating him gone with the demon who had made it.

  Ceri ignored them, rushing to Lily and lifting her up to a sitting position in her arms. ‘Lil! Lil, are you all right?’

  Dark eyes blinked and looked up at her, and a half grin formed on her pet’s face. ‘I’m going to need a lot of rest and recuperation after this.’

  Ceri pulled her into a tight hug. She could hear voices drawing closer as people ran to see what had happened. ‘You can feed on me until you suck me dry,’ she said softly.

  Part Six: Trust

  Kennington, August 2nd, 2011

  The arrival of the large, black sedan and the disembarkation of Detective Chief Inspector Barry from it was not exactly unexpected. Ceri had been waiting for the telling off since the police had wrapped up the interviews and left them to sort themselves out on Sunday afternoon. She had expected to be summoned into Greycoat Street, not have the Chief arrive at High Towers with Kate and John in tow. However, she was rather solemn as she directed the three cops into the study after pulling on jeans and one of her favourite T-shirts, emblazoned with the London Metropolitan University logo.

  There was the slightly puzzling fact that Kate seemed to be trying exceptionally hard not to smile. The witch always had trouble looking mean and interrogative; Ceri suspected there was some Irish in her blood, especially considering the red hair and green eyes, and it was possibly fae. Either way, Kate was not looking like a woman who was about to witness a public, verbal flogging.

  ‘Miss Brent, Miss Carpenter,’ Barry growled. The man looked like a bear, an ex-military bear perhaps, but a bear all the same. ‘It seems that we can’t keep you out of police business.’

  ‘Not when it involves people dying because some psychopath wants me dead, sir,’ Ceri replied.

  ‘And you’re not going to reveal the source of information which led you to Chester?’ Barry asked.

  ‘I can’t, sir. The information was given in confidence and… revealing the source would put me in danger again.’ She did not mention that she had been willing to reveal that source to everyone to get the information in the first place, but she had to have a good sounding reason.

  ‘You leave me with little alternative,’ Barry said. Ceri put her hand on Lily’s arm as the half-succubus opened her mouth to object. Barry heaved a sigh. ‘I’m going to have to employ you,’ the detective said. Lily’s resurgent indignity died on the vine. ‘Both of you,’ Barry said, ‘since you’re joined at the hip and I don’t believe I can trust Miss Brent to act in a safe manner without someone to pull her back.’

  John was smirking now; Kate was beaming. ‘You’ll be required to undertake a short course,’ Barry went on. ‘Legal awareness, police procedures, etc, then we’ll be able to employ you as Special Advisors. You’ll have limited police powers, we’ll pay you a consultancy fee for each case you’re involved with… you’ll actually be required to do what I tell you occasionally.’

  Ceri looked at the big man with his crew cut hair and the slightest tremor of humour about his lips. ‘Any really major disadvantages?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll need to declare your income to the tax people so you’ll have a week of hell once a year filling in the forms,’ he replied.

  ‘Don’t I need… qualifications and stuff to do this?’ Lily asked. ‘I mean, I dropped out of school before my exams. I couldn’t even prove I can write English.’

  ‘I considered that,’ John said. ‘The qualifications required for Special Advisor positions do not say anything about numeracy, literacy, or anything else really. The main qualification is that you can handle the job, which is at the discretion of the Chief Inspector offering the position.’

  Lily looked at Ceri, grinning eagerly. ‘Can we?’

  Ceri laughed. Trying to say no to Lily when she was in one of her “girlish enthusiasm” moods was like kicking a puppy. Ceri looked around at Barry. ‘Do I get to call you “boss”?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll accept “Chief.”’

  ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’

  Bloomsbury, August 3rd

  Ted Barrowman-Leigh was distinctly geeky. You could probably focus the sun to melt lead with his glasses, he was out of shape, had no clue what fashion was, and needed a new barber, but there was a hint of a nice face hidden under the massive insecurity complex. Lily thought he was kind of cute, a fact which Ceri had firmly forbade her to mention near him for fear of his head detonating. As it was, Ted’s Adam’s Apple bobbed like a cork whenever he had to actually talk to Lily.

  Except today. Today his enthusiasm was outweighing his shyness. ‘Oh you have no idea how exciting this is,’ the sandy haired young man was saying. ‘I mean, seriously, this is going to break open the meta-genetics world like a… a…’

  ‘An egg?’ Lily suggested.

  ‘An egg! Brilliant! Yes, like an egg.’

  ‘Ted,’ Ceri said, trying to calm the man down. ‘Ted, what exactly have you found out?’

  ‘I got the full genome analysis back on L-lily’s blood,’ Ted said. Even operating on excitement and adrenaline he could not manage to get her name out without stammering. ‘I believe that I’ve discovered the primary mechanism for transfer of genetic information. It’s amazing. Really, really unprecedented.’

  ‘Ted,’ Ceri said. ‘Either you tell us, or Lily strips. It’s your call, but I don’t think your boss wants to have to redecorate after you head explodes.’

  Ted looked reproachfully at her. ‘I’m not that bad,’ he said, but he hurriedly tapped a keyboard several times, producing a display on a large monitor nearby which appeared to be of a number of worms lying on a sheet of paper.

  ‘Oh look,’ Lily said, ‘you’ve taking pictures of little worms. How do you get them to sit in pairs like that?’

  ‘It’s a karyogram, Lil,’ Ceri said. ‘I’d imagine it’s your genome.’

  Ted nodded. ‘Notice anything strange about it?’

  Ceri stared at the screen, trying to see what Ted was so enthused about. Basically it did look like pictures of small worms sitting there in twenty-three pairs… Except that, ‘There’s a partial trisomy of chromosome two.’ The second pair of worms was not a pair; sitting beside the two long worms was a shorter one.

  ‘Exactly!’ Ted exulted. ‘Partial replication of a third genetic source. We’ve sequenced that strand and it’s not like anything we’ve ever seen before. It appears to match no comparable human encoding, which is probably why she’s alive.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Foetuses with trisomy on the second chromosome don’t go to term,’ Ted replied.

  ‘Oh, right.’ Lily looked rather bemused. ‘I guess that explains why there aren’t many half-demons around.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Ted said, ‘and now I have two examples
.’

  ‘Two?’ Ceri asked, frowning.

  ‘Yes, Professor Mallow from your cryptozoology department sent us over a blood sample to check. We thought it was just straight human at first, but it has a similar aneuploidy, a trisomy of the second chromosome. It is a little different though, that one has a full strand and it’s drastically different. How that one went to term I’ll never know.’

  Ceri felt her blood running cold. Peter Mallow was Cheryl’s friend and a cryptozoologist, and no one would be worried about him having a genetic analysis done. The second sample was probably hers. ‘What does chromosome two code for?’ she asked, trying to keep the distress out of her voice.

  ‘Oh well, we’re pretty bad at that kind of analysis currently,’ Ted said. ‘We know of various conditions associated with genes in that group. Um, autism, various organ disorders, synaesthesia.’

  ‘I get various disturbances of brain function there,’ Ceri said. ‘And synaesthesia covers modifications of sense perceptions. I’d say that this third strand is responsible for the sense aspects of Lily’s power at the very least. It makes some sense.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to continue the analysis,’ Ted said. ‘Frankly, L-lily, you’re advancing our understanding of human-demon hybrids… Well, we just had some basic ideas before. I mean, I’ll be rewriting the textbooks! I’m so grateful for your help.’

  Lily giggled. ‘You’re welcome. You’re helping me understand my biology. It’s all good.’ Without really thinking about it, she leaned forward and gave Ted a kiss on the cheek. He was okay after about ten minutes.

  Battersea

  ‘So, Barnes is back where he belongs and you should be safe until someone summons him back?’ Alexandra said, handing Ceri a mug of tea.

  Ceri took it, though it was not easy with Michael almost draped over her. ‘Possibly longer. It depends on whether his Lord gives him another chance. I doubt they sent him here to kill me. He pretty much abused his time here.’ She took a drink of her tea. It was warm and wet, and not coffee, but… ‘I think I’m actually starting to really appreciate your tea.’

  Alexandra laughed her melodious laugh. ‘It does tend to grow on people. I believe it’s the setting and the company rather than the drink.’

  ‘You may be right. This is one place I really do feel comfortable.’

  ‘I’m glad you feel that way, dear,’ Alexandra said. Somehow Ceri did not like the way she said it, but it was a nice night and soon she would be running with Michael. If Alexandra wanted to be enigmatic, she would let her.

  Kennington, August 6th

  ‘Oh,’ Ceri said, ‘Aunt Sally’s dead.’ She was stretched out in the sun with her copy of The Wednesday Witch, a tactic which prolonged the period before she turned over and Lily began applying oil. It was almost teasing.

  ‘Who’s Aunt Sally?’ Lily asked. Her eyes did not open and, from the general feeling of warm contentment coming over their link which did not waver even a little, suggested that Lily was not terribly upset by this mysterious woman’s demise.

  ‘Sally Pendle was the first witch to ever play a witch in fiction,’ Ceri replied. ‘She was Penny Crabtree, the Ambridge Witch, in The Archers for… oh, she must have been in it for fifteen years. People called her Aunt Sally.’

  ‘I find it enormously hard to believe that you used to listen to The Archers.’

  Ceri giggled. ‘Mum used to. Because of Sally Pendle, I think. She was quite controversial when she was written in in, uh…’ Ceri ran her finger down the article to find the date. ‘…sixty-four. Wow, and she finally left in eighty-four, twenty years. Yeah, the BBC got a lot of complaints for having a witch turn up in the village and playing her as a nice person. And now she dies in a house fire. That’s kind of sad.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lily said, ‘fire would be a nasty way to go.’

  There was silence for a minute or two as Ceri flipped pages. Both of them had been close to death recently. Death seemed to have a habit of following Ceri around, licking its lips.

  ‘Suzie Shore’s done something silly again,’ Ceri said to break the mood.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘She was caught by the police having sex on a tomb in Highgate Cemetery.’

  Lily giggled. ‘I swear that girl’s either trying to drive her parents crazy or she’s got some sort of death wish.’

  ‘She’s a parson’s daughter, she’s probably taking teenage rebellion a little too far.’

  ‘At this rate she’ll be rebelling in her forties.’

  ‘More power to her,’ Ceri said. ‘I hope to be rebelling when I’m eighty!’

  Soho

  The tight, silk shirt showed off Michael’s muscles to perfection and Ceri had spent half the evening grinning at him as he fended off female attention from various women. He was a one-bitch wolf, which was great for her ego, but it was amusing to see women over twice his age flirting with him. At least he was not as embarrassed about it as he had been when she had first met him.

  The short, black dress Carter had bought for Cheryl showed off her figure rather well too. It was tight, which she had the body for, but what probably made it was the low-cut halter neck. She definitely had the figure for that. The male customers knew she was with Carter and there was no flirting, but she was getting some long, lingering looks.

  Walking back to the bar from a drinks run, Ceri put her tray down on the counter and settled between the two of them. She leaned slightly closer to Cheryl. ‘You gave that blood sample to Peter,’ she said softly.

  ‘Part of it,’ Cheryl replied. ‘He doesn’t know where it came from. Ted sent me the results yesterday.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Very interesting. He mentioned that it had relations to Lily’s genome, but the variant chromosome was more complete.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that,’ Ceri said. ‘I’ll ask Ed, or Gwyn, next time I see one of them.’

  Michael shifted on his stool. ‘Do you think you can trust them?’

  ‘I don’t exactly know,’ Ceri replied. ‘I think they have their own agenda, but that doesn’t necessarily make them bad. Any of them. All we can do is see how it plays out.’

  ‘We?’ Cheryl asked.

  ‘Me,’ Ceri said, ‘and the people I really do trust. And most of them are here tonight. We.’ Cheryl looked rather pleased that she seemed to have been included in that group and Ceri grinned. ‘I trusted you with what I was before Carter or Alec and you haven’t failed me.’

  Lily and Carter came back across the floor at the same time. Ceri shifted sideways toward Cheryl and Lily slotted herself in between Ceri and Michael. Carter moved to the other side of Cheryl, settling close beside her. Ceri could feel Alec behind them as well. She really did have just about everyone she trusted around her tonight. It felt good. She felt safe.

  So why did she feel like this was the calm before the storm.

  ###

  About the Author

  I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.

  Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a fe
w miles to the north around Tywyn.

  I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still loved the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.

  Writing, sadly, is not my main source of income. By day, I’m a computer programmer. I work for a telecommunications company in Manchester, England. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, and (recently) Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.

  For More Information

  The Thaumatology Blog: http://thaumatology.wordpress.com

  Other Books in the Thaumatology Series

  Thaumatology 101 – ASIN: B006IYIESW

  Demon’s Moon – ASIN: B006JPN7A0

  Legacy – ASIN: B006OKR8PK

  Tales from High Towers’ Study – ASIN: B006ZAJ7TY

  Coming soon: Disturbia – When a series of strange deaths require Ceri and Lily’s unique form of investigation, their path leads them down paths Lily has trodden before and would prefer to forget.

  Table of Contents

  Part One: Ancient Engineering

  Part Two: Chinese Whispers

  Part Three: Teachers of Men

  Part Four: Queen’s Gambit

  Part Five: Demon’s Wrath

  Part Six: Trust