Thaumatology 12: Vengeance (20 page)

Soho.

It seemed a little odd to be celebrating Michael’s birthday with a pair of Ancients in the city and people in the morgue from trying to catch one of them, but there was an additional motive for going to the Tir inna Nok so they had decided to do it anyway. Going out to celebrate meant that Lily was not coming home alone in the early hours of the morning and that seemed like a good reason.

And since Gwyn and Mei were both there, and Twill and Ishifa had been included in the little party, Lorna had come along too rather than be left alone in the house. It was a bit of a squeeze getting everyone on table one, but a couple of small chairs and a table were brought over for the fairies to sit at, on top of the bigger table, and since table one was near the bar, and one of Lily’s tables, it was convenient.

‘Despite the homecoming,’ Gwyn said, her long fingers curled around a glass of Carter’s best single malt, ‘you had a good break, Michael? You did not, I hope, spend the entire time in bed.’

‘Of course not,’ Michael replied, smiling. ‘There was the hot tub, the sofa in the lounge, the rug in the lounge, several fields…’

Ceri went crimson. ‘We did
not
spend the entire holiday having sex!’

‘I think she does protest too much,’ Gwyn commented, a smirk on her lips.

‘I just don’t like discussing my sex life with you. I don’t necessarily like admitting I have a sex life around you.’

‘My dear, we live in the same house.’

‘So? Anyway, we walked and talked to people. Michael’s brothers are doing well. Rhys has a nearly mate. It’s not official…’

‘But it will be,’ Lily finished, appearing beside them. ‘He’s all for it. She’s worried about what people will think since she just joined the pack. Have you been discussing sex? Ceri’s all pink and she only gets that way when Gwyn’s listening.’

Ceri got redder.

~~~

‘Why is Sasha looking kind of dopy?’ Ceri asked Ophelia. The Sidhe had stopped off to wish Michael a happy birthday.

‘Oh… She invited me back to her place to thank me for the jewellery. I told her it was freely given, but she insisted that she should give me something in return since it was working for her.’

‘That doesn’t explain why she keeps watching you walk around the room. She’s looking your way now.’

‘Well… I figured if she was going to do that… and I knew she doesn’t normally… with women, I mean… I might as well make sure she had a good time… I think I may have broken her a little. She wants to go again tonight.’

Ceri shook her head, and then nodded. ‘Do it. There are some bad people out on the streets at the moment. Safer if someone takes her home.’

Ophelia grinned. ‘Well, if it’s a matter of safety…’ She strutted off toward where Sasha was standing beside the bar.

‘Since dangerous people were brought up,’ Mei said, ‘there is something we have not addressed.’ Ceri looked at her, raising an eyebrow. ‘It seems to me that the ban on angels has been enacted to allow one or the other of the Ancients free rein in the city, but I do not believe either of them could have created the enchantment.’

‘So we still have someone else out there, maybe a dragon, working for one of the Ancients,’ Ceri agreed.

‘That puts you three in danger,’ Lorna said. ‘I mean, Lo Chan and Braun seem to be after me. Lo Chan may want revenge on John for breaking up his drug ring in Newcastle, but neither of them would have a reason to hurt you unless you come after them. This enchanter…’

‘If he is a dragon, he may have reason to dislike us,’ Gwyn said. ‘Until we know who it is, it is impossible to say.’

‘One problem at a time,’ Ceri said. ‘The immediate threat is Lo Chan. Hildegard may just be reacting to him and she’ll go back to being quiet when he’s out of the picture. We can worry about our unknown sorcerer when we have to.’ She sank the remainder of her glass of wine and then said, ‘Two… one…’

‘More drinks?’ Lily asked brightly as she appeared beside their table.

‘Just like clockwork,’ Ceri commented, grinning.

April 18
^th
.

‘It’s quiet,’ Lily said as they headed down the steps into Tottenham Court tube station.

‘It’s kind of the middle of the night, love,’ Ceri pointed out, though she understood what her demon was saying.

‘It’s quieter than usual,’ Lily added to make sure everyone else did.

They walked into the ticket area and that was empty. No sign of anyone on duty, but that was not unusual in the early hours. But…

‘There’s no one at the ticket desk,’ Ceri said. ‘Let’s keep moving. I want to be behind my wards as soon as possible.’

They were through the ticket barrier when Michael turned and sniffed at the air. ‘Undead,’ he said. ‘Not Lorna, and… I’m not sure where from.’

‘Crap,’ Ceri grumbled. ‘I’m glad we paced the drinking. We move quickly.’ She started for the escalators. ‘Ishifa, keep an eye on our rear.’ The fairy was, as usual, riding on Michael’s shoulder and she twisted around to do as asked. ‘If we have trouble we put a defensive cordon around Lily, Michael and Lorna.’

‘I can fight!’ Lorna snapped.

‘You can fight anything that gets past Gwyn, Mei and me, assuming Michael doesn’t rip its head off first.’

Wind came at them from below, driven through the tunnels by a train, and Michael growled. ‘Below us. Definitely.’

‘There are more at the top of the moving stair thing,’ Ishifa said. ‘They’re staying there at the moment.’

‘Great,’ Ceri said. She reached out a hand to touch Lily’s shoulder, drawing power through her to fuel the ball of orange light growing in her right hand.

There were six of them, standing at the end of the landing area with its tunnels leading off to the platforms. They all looked young, fairly newly turned, but they seemed confident in their abilities. The tallest of them, a slim man with pale skin who really looked the part of undead lord of the night in his leather duster, took a single step away from the wall as the group reached the bottom of the escalator.

‘We don’t want a fight,’ he said. Ceri was pretty sure he was lying. ‘Give us the vampire and you get to walk out of here.’

Ceri smiled at him. ‘Clearly some form of compromise is available since we also don’t want a fight. Well, maybe Lorna and Michael do, but I like this dress. So, you leave, right now, and you get to keep your skin.’

The vampire smiled, showing a lot of fang. ‘You don’t seem to understand. You’re surrounded by vampires…’

‘Uh-huh. You have us exactly where we want you. Offer’s got an expiry date. Last chance.’

‘Get them!’ the vampire growled.

Ceri swung her arm forward. ‘Catch,’ she said and the orange ball flew down the room, missing the vampire by a couple of inches and hitting the wall behind him. Fire exploded from the impact point, engulfing half the room in flames and blasting heat past Ceri and back up the stairwell.

Gwyn raised her arms and Ceri felt the power washing out of her, and a wall of flame lifted up from the tiled floor to the ceiling, dividing the room in half. Ceri could feel the heat from it on her skin even from five yards away. One of the vampires, recovering from the blast, charged at the wall. He let out a shriek as the flames licked at his flesh, but he pushed through and two more of his friends began to follow.

And then Lorna was there, screaming in anger as the damaged, smoking vampire came toward them. Her arm swung out, fingers stiff and clawed. Blood spurted from the vampire’s mouth as her toughened, elongated nails tore through his throat.

Mei had been watching as a second vampire pushed through the flames, her hands dropping to her waist where she was wearing a rather unusual, for her, belt. A quick twist and a long length of heavy chain with a weight at each end was in her hands. She took a step forward, the chain swung in a fast arc, and the vampire’s skull was smashed open in a spray of bone fragments and gore.

The last of the three appeared through the flames, took in the sight of his fallen comrades and Michael in the process of shifting, and turned, flinching at the thought of going through the barrier again.

‘Stop him!’ Ceri yelled and Mei’s chain snaked out again, wrapping around the man’s throat and bringing him to a sudden halt. He was stronger than her, but the blood flow to his brain was being cut off. He took another step toward the flames, but then Michael was there, grabbing the chain and pulling. The vampire fell backwards and Lorna was on him in an instant, her hand raised to strike again.

‘No!’ Ceri snapped. ‘We need one alive.’ She turned, looking up the escalator to where another eight vampires were starting to run down from the top. ‘But we only need one,’ she added, and launched a ball of fire up at them. The explosion roared down the tunnel leaving charred bodies and overheated metal in its wake. The escalators ground to a halt and, a second later, the sprinkler system sprang to life. The two or three survivors, burned and hurting, struggled to go back up the way they had come through the rain.

Ceri looked around. The vampires beyond the flame barrier had gone and Gwyn was dousing the flames. The tiles were blackened through most of the back of the hall, and there was blood pooling on the floor where Lorna and Mei’s victims had fallen. The deluge was soaking through her dry-clean-only black dress.

‘Barry is going to be
so
pissed off,’ she said as water dripped off her nose.

Westminster.

‘Tottenham Court Road station will be closed until the weekend,’ Barry growled. ‘We have two dead vampires…’ he frowned at the redundancy, but refused to let that stop him, ‘…and a helluva mess to clean up and…’

Ceri got to her feet rather abruptly, which was enough of a surprise to bring his dressing down to a stop. ‘Okay, first of all… No, wait… First of all, John, your wife is an absolute beast when she gets her vampire on. You really need to stop treating her with kid gloves.’

Both John and Barry looked at her as though she had gone slightly mad, but she was working on no sleep at all and a mild headache, so she really did not care.

‘Back to first… no. Second, Mei, where the Hell did you learn to do that chain thing? I mean, I thought it was a weird thing for you to be wearing it as a belt, but…’

Mei seemed to be taking everything more or less in her stride. She and Gwyn were sitting in the conference room looking quite sanguine in fact. ‘I spent a few years in Japan after the Shattering,’ Mei said, as though that explained everything.

‘Right. Where was I?’

‘First?’ Lily suggested. Given that she was still in her waitress dress and desperately wanted a shower, she was looking fairly calm too.

‘Right, first off, they attacked us.’ Barry gave Ceri a nod of acknowledgement; the security cameras had verified that, before they were destroyed anyway. ‘Second, we had a chat with the vampire we captured. We know he was sent by Lo Chan, and we know where Lo Chan is hiding, and I’m very tired and I want a shower, and we’re going to have to queue up for the bathroom. Has anyone got any aspirin?’

‘You got him to talk?’ John asked after shaking off the shock. ‘He hasn’t said a word since we got him here.’

‘He talked,’ Lorna told them. She glanced at Mei. ‘Between us we were very persuasive.’

‘He is using a condemned block of flats in North Greenwich,’ Mei said, her voice calm. ‘An area of the upper floor has been sealed against sunlight. His people have excavated a tunnel from the basement to the sewer system. It is only large enough to crawl through, but it provides an escape mechanism and allows unobserved access.’

‘All right,’ Barry said, still frowning. ‘This man took out an entire tactical squad on his own. The last time we had one of these Ancients in the city it took an angel to get rid of it, and none of those can enter London. How do you suggest we deal with him?’

‘I have an idea about that,’ Ceri said. ‘I need to talk to Jehoel to confirm it. But first I need to sleep. I need a shower and then sleep. Brain need sleep for thinky thing. Does anyone have any aspirin?’

Barry shook his head and picked up an internal phone, stabbing at a couple of buttons. ‘Hecks? Get up here, I need you to organise a stakeout. And bring a bottle of aspirin with you.’

Kennington.

It was after six when Ceri stumbled into the kitchen, reaching for a mug and pouring coffee blindly into it with her eyes half-closed. She took a deep gulp, swallowed it, and let out a long sigh.

‘Good afternoon, Ceri,’ Twill said.

‘Nu,’ Ceri replied. ‘Wah mi whe munung.’ She took another gulp of coffee and then turned to refill the mug.

‘Let me do that, you spilled most of the last one.’

‘Sor… Wah upna mint.’ She glared at the mug, decided it now had coffee in and took another drag. Neurons began to fire. ‘Did I really interrupt Chief Barry to tell him off for telling us off?’ she asked, frowning.

‘You did cut him off mid-flow, but I wouldn’t say you told him off. I think he was just a little shocked by your incoherent babbling.’

‘Huh. Thanks, Twill.’

‘You’re going out to see the angel? There is less than two hours of daylight left.’