A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (Dark Matters) Read online

  “Aether messaging was originally implemented as an emergency communication. The hospitals were amongst the first establishments fitted with Aether Signallers.” Greyston slid lower in his chair. “Sending a message now will do as much good as mending the fence after the last cow has escaped.”

  He sounded more tired than cynical. And he was right, of course, now that she thought about it. Still, it was better than doing nothing at all. She gave him a sharp look. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

  “You should eat something,” was his response.

  Lily wasn’t the least bit hungry, but she drained the tea from her cup and selected a warm roll from the sideboard. Who knew when she’d be needing her strength? And what for? They’d discussed Lady Ostrich at the supper table last night and Kelan had confirmed, somewhat enthusiastically, that they were dealing with a demon.

  Once she’d finished her meal, Greyston agreed to take her to the laboratory to look in on Ana. “Did Kelan find out anything more about Lady Ostrich?” she asked as they walked. He’d mentioned looking into the demon’s genealogy, although she had no idea what that might entail.

  “We’d probably be the last to know if he did.”

  “He did give us unsupervised access to the laboratory,” she pointed out.

  “Opening one hand so that nobody notices what they’re hiding in the fist behind their back is a McAllister trait,” Greyston said. “When Duncan wanted to keep our celludrones secret, he sold an inferior patent for public manufacture.”

  He doesn’t trust Kelan at all, she realised. She wasn’t sure she did either, and that bothered her. Accepting hospitality from a gentleman, placing your safety into his keeping, hoping to high Heaven he’ll have a magic plan to fight your demons for you, and all without the bond of absolute trust. It seemed like a recipe for doom.

  When she said as much to Greyston, he stopped walking and turned to her.

  “Kelan won’t share anything with us that doesn’t serve his own interests and I’m doubtful of his motives,” he said. “But he does think we’re instrumental in his demon war and we damned sure need his help with Lady Ostrich. That puts us on the same side.”

  “And all in the same place together again,” she murmured, thinking on what Kelan had said about coincidences and the Cragloden gas explosion.

  The image of Forleough, caught in a web of white fire, flashed inside her head and her throat went dry. Kelan’s knowledge of demons, his training, skills and relaxed confidence, his promise of a safe haven, all suddenly meant a whole lot less than it had a second ago. None of that had helped Duncan McAllister the last time a demon had descended on Cragloden. “There was no gas explosion. Cragloden was destroyed by a demon, maybe even by Lady Ostrich herself.”

  “That does seem most likely,” Greyston said smoothly, giving the impression he’d mulled this over thoroughly and reached the same conclusion long before she’d arrived at it. “Considering the nature of Duncan’s army, of his work, who else would gain from wiping it out with one clean swoop?”

  “History’s repeating itself and what has really changed? You saw what Lady Ostrich did to Forleough. She’ll come for Cragloden.” Lily felt it in her bones. They hadn’t escaped the demon witch. They’d simply delayed the inevitable. “We know how this ends.”

  “I’ve changed.” His jaw tensed. “At the age of fifteen, I couldn’t time-run, so there’s a new advantage. Every time we escape a demon, earns us another chance to learn from our mistakes.” He brought his hand to her face, as if to stroke her cheek, or perhaps brush away some of the many curls that had escaped her inadequate braid.

  She looked into his eyes and saw concern there, the intent to offer her a little comfort or reassurance with his touch.

  But he swung his arm back to his side without so much as a fleeting stroke. “Cragloden has changed, too, learnt from the past. The protection shield covers Cragloden like a bubble and that’s more than science.”

  “Whatever it is, didn’t keep us out.”

  “Kelan said something about weaving protection from the ruins of the old castle.” He started moving again, taking them down the steps to the tunnel.

  Lily’s nose crinkled. “A spell?”

  “The McAllisters are scientists, not witches.” He glanced at her. “Maybe he found a way to harness residual demon energy from the ruins and turn their own power against them.”

  “That’s the worst case of wishful thinking I’ve ever heard,” she said, smiling at the ridiculousness of it.

  “It would be prophetic justice, wouldn’t it?” Greyston’s grin echoed her amusement for a moment, then, as his grin faded, she saw the weariness sculptured into his face, clouding his eyes and burning deep. “The shield isn’t meant to keep humans out, only demons. Cragloden was the safest place I could think of to bring you and I still think it was the right decision.”

  “You’re not responsible for me,” she said softly, not sure why, but feeling a desperate urgency for him to know that, to believe it. “You didn’t involve me in this danger and if anything happens to me, it’s not your fault.”

  “I shouldn’t have gone to London searching for you.”

  “If you hadn’t, I’d be dead.” Then and there, Lily recognised the dull ache in her chest as regret and resignation. She’d already died once. She should have died with the other Cragloden children years ago, not her mother. The universe had sent demons after her for no good reason whatsoever. How many more encounters could anyone survive? “You didn’t start this and you’re not responsible, no matter how it ends.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you.” They’d reached the bottom of the steps and he strode on ahead. “I won’t let it.”

  “I know,” she said, allowing that truth to resonate between them as she followed. “But if it does,” she added, too quietly for him to hear, “it’s not your fault.”

  A slab of iron barred the tunnel entrance, smooth except for the three combination locks at the top, middle and bottom. Each lock was made up of five discs that rotated individually, each disc half an inch of thick steel with letters engraved all the way around.

  “BREAD FEEDS CRABS.” Greyston studied the middle lock. “The letters on each disc only goes up to ‘F’.” He rolled the discs with his thumb until the letters lined up to spell FEEDF and a dull grinding sound came from within the iron door. “That’s it. The letters not on the discs must be replaced with ‘F’.”

  Her gaze drifted over the full length of his body as he stretched to set the top lock. Warmth stole across her cheeks. She really couldn’t help it. Honestly, those leather trousers were practically decadent. He went down for the bottom lock and she stepped closer to peer over his shoulder, watching him set the discs to CFABF and inhaling his scent. The urge to run her hands through his hair strained at her fingers.

  The grinding noise of steel pins sliding into place chased her a few steps back, blinking furiously at her wayward thoughts. Greyston was her anchor when all else crumbled at the edges. He’d swung her into his arms once before and carried her to safety and right now she was cast so far adrift, she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her feet, much less walk on her own. But nestling the comfort of his strength and protective instincts to her heart was leaps and bounds from taking intimate liberties with his person.

  He pushed on the door and it swung open seamlessly. The electric lighting tubes along the walls flickered to life.

  “Where is Neco?” she asked as they passed into the narrow tunnel.

  “Investigating the lake.” Greyston glanced at her as they walked. “Salt water, apparently, is a demon’s nemesis. I’m curious to know if that lake is more deadly than ornamental.”

  “Have you asked Kelan?”

  “Some things, I prefer to determine for myself.”

  He’s just as bad as Kelan when it comes to hoarding secrets. The two of them covertly plot each successive move like opponents at a game of mental chess. Greyston, however, would never consider her a paw
n to be sacrificed, not even as the last stand in a losing game. The McAllisters, on the other hand, had already shown the lengths they’d go to.

  Which reminded her. “Did you discover anything of interest last night?”

  “Reams of scientific scrawling, mostly gibberish to me.” Greyston opened the door at the end of the tunnel and went through ahead of her. “Randomly choosing six children and hoping they’d manifest some useful ability doesn’t make sense, but I found no research to indicate why we’d been selected.”

  “Kelan didn’t even have any reference to our names, only that of the celludrones. Perhaps that part of Duncan’s research was lost with the castle.”

  Seeing Ana on the workbench with her chest peeled open sent Lily’s spirits plunging. She seldom thought of Ana as a machine, but that’s all the celludrone was in this moment. A lifeless skeleton with a cavity of intricate mechanisms and steel tubing, silver liquid bubbling in a glass cell instead of a heart.

  Lily sighed. “Duncan was right, though, wasn’t he? You’re able to rewind time and I suppose my visions could be considered an ability, if totally useless.”

  “Have you had any more?”

  She realised she hadn’t told him about the one of Lady Ostrich in Forleough’s meadow right before she’d torched the Red Hawk, and did so now. “If the vision came to me with an hour’s—” she recalled the time limit on Greyston’s time-running and amended that to, “—half an hour’s forewarning, then it might be mildly useful. But as it is…” She shrugged. “I assume you’ve quizzed Neco endlessly. What does he say?”

  “He knows less than we do.” Greyston stood by one of the metal cabinets, flipping through a book lying on top. “He has no information on demons either, which is another oddity.”

  “That’s not the kind of information to be entrusted into the hands of a child,” came Kelan’s voice.

  Lily spun on her heel to find him standing in the doorway.

  “Consider the ramifications if you’d been found babbling about demons in the nursery,” he continued, stepping inside the room. “That information was supposed to have been loaded later. Come, I have something to show you.”

  Lily and Greyston looked at each other, then him followed to the shadowed alcove that turned out to be another room leading off the main laboratory.

  Greyston nudged her and pointed at the pattern carved into the wooden floor. Lily bent low to take a closer look. The outer circle covered most of the area, almost touching the walls and the threshold line where wood met iron. The points of the entangled triangles touched the circle circumference and inside one of the triangles was a curious oval shape that looked like an eye.

  “The rune to bind and keep,” Kelan said.

  Lily glanced up sharply, but Kelan had his back to her and one hand pressed to the wall. A rectangular section, about ten inches high and at least three times that in length, popped out from the iron wall.

  Greyston’s brows were drawn tight, his gaze fixed on Kelan. “I thought the ruins of the old castle were used to create a protection shield.”

  “Not ruins.” Kelan turned to them, holding a heavy leather-bound book he’d retrieved from the hidden drawer. “Runes.” He strode between them on his way to the outer room. “There are twelve runes. The rune to ward off evil is carved into the perimeter wall foundation and protects Cragloden.”

  “A drawing?” Lily hissed to Greyston. “A drawing is our protection from Lady Ostrich?”

  Kelan heard. “A rune carve is simple and precise with all the lines flowing into each other. The rune is empowered with blood—” He glanced at them over his shoulder “—pure blood, although not necessarily fresh—” He looked forward again, placing the book upon the table “—dropped onto any point on the pattern. It doesn’t matter where, the energy flow is continuous.”

  Lily pulled the chair out from behind the desk and sat. Greyston, arms folded, moved into place beside Kelan, both their heads bowed over the open book. From her upside down view, she couldn’t make out much more than rows and columns of tiny, slanted writing scrawled on the yellowed page.

  The book, Kelan told them, was a progressive history of demonology compiled by the McAllister clan over the last two centuries. He flicked through the pages with great care as he briefly inducted them into the McAllister realm.

  The Cairngorm Mountains stretched from the River Spey to the River Anon and down to the River Dee, and the tear in the dimension between the worlds extended across the entire elevated plateau. The first demon, Elibarbas, had crossed over near the end of the sixteenth century. Two further demons had appeared in the next century. Only the strongest demons, the kings of hell, had sufficient power to breach the tear. Unfortunately, those same demons kept reoccurring. A demon banished back into his world only needed a couple of decades to regain the strength to return.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  In the last fifty years alone, eight more demons had been documented; eight new curses had managed to claw their way across the tear.

  The breach was weakening, the rate of demon influx increasing.

  “You can’t kill a demon,” Lily said at that point.

  “And banishing them isn’t permanent,” Greyston grunted.

  “Until recently,” Kelan said, “the infestation has been contained to Great Britain. Their intolerance to salt water has contained the demons on the island. Even the proximity to seawater banishes them within a minute of boarding a ship. The McAllister influence in government has been beneficial in restricting dirigible access in England.” His gaze connected with Greyston. “The Scots have proved more of a challenge, but we do require registration of airships and attempt to monitor movement as much as possible.”

  “Maintaining a demon passenger manifesto doesn’t solve a damn thing.”

  “How eager would you be to fly your ship over a sea of molten lava?” He didn’t give Greyston a chance to respond. “Air ships give demons the means to cross, but we don’t believe any have or would risk a great expanse of ocean. The narrow channel between England and France is more vulnerable and that’s why we’re more concerned about controlling Aether access over England. The only Aether Paths permitted are westbound across the Atlantic and tightly governed by my own people.”

  “This war of yours is still never ending.” Greyston shook his head, his lips curled in disgust. “You’ve involved us in a fool’s cause.”

  Kelan looked at him, thunder brewing on his brow. “The Black Fire of Manchester, 1622. Half the city crisped into a black shell, over five hundred recorded dead and more than twice that missing, in all likelihood burnt beyond recognition. That one was Elibarbas.

  “1685. The tenth of September. Every man, woman and child in the village of Toul Gharin marched to the peak of Cairn Toul and kept right on marching, clear off the edge, plunging to their death. The church declared the entire village had been possessed by demons. It was only one demon and its name is Raimlas.

  “1777. The port town of Cellaweste, at the tip of the Cornish coastline, reduced to a pile of white ash overnight. Superstitious folk claimed the Hand of God and likened Cellaweste to Sodom. The official report proposed a conglomeration of electric storms blowing in from the sea could have produced a clash of lightening with sufficient magnitude to incinerate a town. The truth is a demon named Flavith. Better known to you as Lady Ostrich.

  “1779. Raimlas again, this time a few miles north of London—”

  A soft knock jerked Lily from her horror-fuelled daze.

  Armand waited just outside the door. “A word, m’lord.”

  Kelan’s gaze came to Lily, piercing her with that blue, cold intensity. Mocking her personal concerns as frivolous, judging her on thoughts and fears he couldn’t possibly know. She sucked in a dry breath of air and lowered her head.

  His palm had flattened over the book. His fingers were long, his hand large, the skin crossed with thin, white scars.

  “If offering some respite, even for only a
few short decades at a time, makes me a fool,” Kelan said, his voice a rich, quiet timbre, “then so be it.”

  Lily’s heart gave a small kick and her eyes shot up. He’d turned to address Greyston and she caught a glimpse of him in profile, hair layered across his cheekbone and into the curve below his jaw, just before he spun away from the desk. Her gaze followed him to the door, her heart still not beating quite evenly and the strangest sensation of warmth pooling low in her abdomen.

  “Good God.” Greyston slammed his palms on the desk and leaned in, blocking her view and bringing his scowl right up to her face. “Don’t tell me you fell for it.”

  “Everyone knows about the Black Fire,” she said breathlessly, “and I’ve even heard the rumours of Cellaweste.” She pushed further back into her chair. “All those terrible incidents, and who knows how many others?”

  “He’s using emotion, damned female sentimentality, to recruit you.” Greyston slammed the desk so hard, the book shuddered. “Don’t you see that?”

  Their eyes locked, his filled with anger and concern.

  “And if he is?” She certainly agreed manipulation wasn’t above any McAllister, much less Kelan, who’d accused her of a hundred sins with just one look. And yet… “Does that make all the tragedy any less terrible? Less true?”

  “It’s not your fight.”

  “Neither was it Kelan’s, until he decided to make it so,” she said, not sure why she was arguing. It wasn’t as if she intended to don battle armour and go forth to war.

  “He’s not a bloody saint.”

  “No, he isn’t.” He was closer to an avenging angel, bent on a righteous path no matter the cost to himself or anyone else. It would be treacherous to her health, to her sanity, to start admiring the man now.

  “Don’t forget he’s been hiding out in Florence until very recently.” Greyston straightened and folded his arms as Kelan joined them again. “So, tell us, how many demons have you personally fought and banished?”

  “Once you’ve banished your first demon, perhaps we can share notes.” Kelan dismissed him with a raised brow and tapped the page he’d left the book opened to with his index finger. “Your demon first came through in 1776. Johnnie McAllister banished it after Cellaweste and then again in 1804 when it took the guise of a clergyman in the parish of Wirksworth.”