A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (25 page)

“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 pawn 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.”

From the amount of small writing on that page and the half of the next
page Kelan turned to, there were clearly detailed descriptions of these
encounters.

“I’d appreciate it if we could sit together later and add your
experiences with Flavith for future reference.” Kelan stepped back from the
table, his gaze including both of them. “We have the means to seal the
Cairngorms breach and be done with this
foolish
war. However, once the
tear between dimensions disappears, demons cannot cross through either way, not
of their own will and not by banishment.”