Thaumatology 101 (26 page)

‘No partner?’ Ceri asked as she took the detective upstairs to the lounge.

‘He’s in Newcastle,’ Middleshaw said. ‘Personal business.’ She walked into the lounge and sat down as though she would have fallen down if the chair had not been there to catch her. ‘The timing was sucky, but he’s got good reason. I can’t fault him.’

It was a curious thing to say, and Ceri suspected the detective’s fatigue was talking. ‘Do you want to ask me questions,’ Ceri asked, ‘or are you here to tell me things?’

‘Probably both,’ Middleshaw admitted. ‘Your vampire’s name is Andrea Leighton. We believe the brunette vamp with Barnes is her sister, Eleanor, but she’s vanished. Cambridge locals talked to Barnes this morning and he claims Eleanor had business in Manchester. None of his concern, not like she’s his slave, cue laugh, you get the picture.’

‘But Andrea must have…’ Ceri began.

‘Andrea’s in the secure facility at Greycoat Street under protective custody,’ Middleshaw interrupted. She looked up as a mug of coffee floated toward her, taking it with a deep sigh of relief. ‘Thanks, Twill,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been to bed yet.’ She took a gulp of coffee and went on. ‘The girl’s memory is a mess. It looks like breaking the Enslavement triggered some sort of curse. She doesn’t remember much of the last four years or so, and what she does remember has her curled up in a corner sobbing.’

‘Killings?’ Ceri asked.

‘Oh hell no,’ Middleshaw replied. ‘If she remembered killing people it would endanger her master. No, she doesn’t even remember attacking you. She remembers… various acts… with her sister.’

‘Oh,’ Ceri said.

‘Exactly. Is there anything you can tell me which would be useful?’

‘I thought it over,’ Ceri said, ‘and the answer is “no.” It’s all circumstantial, or my word against his.’ Middleshaw sagged, but nodded wearily. ‘Andrea only ever referred to her “Master,” and while I’m pretty sure it was him directing her, I can’t be absolutely sure, and you’ve only my word for it.’

‘Yeah,’ Middleshaw said, ‘I figured as much. The forensic thaumatology team say there’s no evidence the control spell ever existed. They’re working on cracking whatever it is that’s blocking her memory, but it’s apparently amazingly complex.’

‘Demonic magic,’ Ceri said. ‘They know more about working maledictions than any human ever and Barnes is in deep with them.’

Middleshaw paled. ‘Fuck! Are you sure?’

Ceri nodded. ‘He’s… I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like he’s riddled with dark energy. Like he’s… rotting.’

‘They do, eventually,’ Twill said. ‘They think it’s easy, taking power from demons, or ancient spirits, even from angels and some fae. The more they do it, the more they find it harder and harder to work normally, and the more they rely on their borrowed power. And the more they do it, the more it rots their spirit until it takes over entirely.’

‘I’ve met them before,’ Middleshaw said flatly and pulled out her mobile phone, flicking through the contacts. ‘I’ve had to deal with a couple. It wasn’t nice.’ Her attention turned suddenly to whoever answered her call. ‘Hecks? It’s Middleshaw. Expert here suggests the magic on the Leighton girl is probably demonic. Tell the forensics guys.’ She listened to the response, nodded, and hung up, sagging into her seat and gulping down more coffee. ‘See?’ she said. ‘You were helpful.’

‘Not in the way I’d like,’ Ceri replied. She looked up. ‘Morning, Cheryl,’ she said.

Wrapped in a long, silk and lace robe, the thaumatologist looked sleepy, but at least rested, unlike Middleshaw. ‘Ceri, Detective, morning. Any news?’

‘Nothing good,’ Ceri replied.

‘Morning, Doctor Tennant,’ Middleshaw said. ‘We’ve placed guards around your department at the Metropolitan. Will you and Miss Brent be going there later?’

Cheryl seemed to consider that for a second before saying, ‘No. I have my laptop with me. I have some procedural documents to go over. I recall some additional analysis runs Ceri was going to do. We’ll work from here today and make a fresh start in the morning.’

‘Fair enough. There’s a watch on Barnes. If he leaves Cambridge we’ll know about it. I’d better get back to the office,’ Middleshaw said, not moving.

‘I think,’ Ceri said, ‘that you should interview me for another hour. The lounger in the study’s actually pretty comfortable and I think a nap would improve your chances of surviving the car journey back across the river.’

Middleshaw smiled weakly. ‘I can’t, they’d want to know what I was doing and…’

‘We went over the nature of the magic I dispelled,’ Ceri said, ‘to determine whether there was any useful information to be gleaned from it and unfortunately concluded that there was not. Twill, see that Detective Middleshaw is comfortable, would you?’

The tiny woman buzzed across to hover in front of the detective, hands on hips. ‘I’ll use a sleep charm if I have to,’ she said.

Middleshaw laughed. ‘Okay, yeah, you’re probably right. I’ll be more use when my brain isn’t running purely on coffee and adrenaline. Chief’ll probably send me home as soon as I get in anyway.’ She climbed to her feet and allowed Twill to escort her out and across the landing.

‘They got nothing from the vampire you freed?’ Cheryl asked, replacing the policewoman in the chair.

‘There was some sort of curse backing up the control spell. Her memory’s got more holes in it than a colander.’ Ceri sighed. ‘How did Barnes get messed up enough to be like this? I mean, as far as I can see it’s “there but for the grace of God go I.”’

Cheryl looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It’s a danger,’ she said, ‘but I think you’re too aware of it to fall into that trap. From what I recall, Barnes always had it easy. He was clever, certainly, but his father over-indulged him and he got used to everything just coming to him. He started out in wizardry… I suspect the first time he wanted to try other things and wanted those to come without effort he turned to a demon to make it happen. He may be little more than a tool to them now.’

‘If that’s the case,’ Ceri said, ‘why would they want him to stop us finding the T-Null? That has to be his own professional rivalry, surely?’

Cheryl shrugged. ‘Perhaps.

The sound of a yawning Lily paused the conversation. The naked half-demon wandered in looking just as beautiful as always, despite the rubbing of her eyes and her gaping mouth. ‘Why’s Twill hovering over a sleeping detective in the study?’ she asked.

Holloway, October 15
^th

‘Damn! I didn’t get the rod recharged,’ Cheryl growled, picking the offending lump of iron alloy up and glaring at it. She looked around at Ceri. ‘It takes two days to charge the thing to capacity.’

Ceri looked around at the circle and then back at Cheryl. ‘You’ve got me doing this now, not Shane.’

‘You think you can raise something that big on your own?’

‘My father could’ve done it,’ Ceri replied. ‘His summoning circle back at High Towers is this size.’

‘Well, if you’re sure. You start on the circle and I’ll get the instruments ready.’ The doctor headed off into her cage to power things up.

Ceri got the salt and begin meticulously working on marking out the runes. She took her time, checking each one for signs of tampering as she went. After last time, she was taking no chances, but she found nothing wrong. As she filled the inner circle, Cheryl emerged to start up the accelerator systems.

‘What’s a “dark circle”?’ Ceri asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘You said the research Carl Bellamy was working on was into “dark circles.” I’ve never heard of them.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Cheryl set the power-up sequence going and turned around. ‘It’s a containment circle which isolates everything within. Nothing gets out, not even light, so the circle goes black.’

‘Okay,’ Ceri said, finishing off the inner ring. ‘That doesn’t sound too useful.’

‘I’m not aware of a practical application,’ Cheryl replied. ‘It was pure research. We’re set, do you want to start the outer ring?’

Nodding, Ceri moved to the northern point of the pentagram and began laying the salt, moving deliberately around until the circle was complete. Standing where she had started, she drew in a breath and focussed herself on the circle. Raising her arms was a pointless gesture, but it felt right. The salt in the circle glowed a brilliant white for a second and Ceri smiled. Her Sight showed her the shimmering cylinder she had created and it looked rock solid. ‘We’re ready,’ she said.

‘In the cage with me,’ Cheryl said. ‘You don’t need to be watching things out here and it’s safer.’

With both of them inside the silver-iron mesh, Cheryl stood before the main control console and typed in a command. ‘Resonance inducers coming up,’ she said. On the monitor screen for the cameras around the lab, Ceri could see the familiar light display as the coils began to resonate the magic of the circle. As it turned solid white, Cheryl typed another command in and said, ‘Initiating the pulse generators.’

Ripples of colour began to run across the surface of the cylinder like stones hitting a pond as the accelerators fired. Ceri’s eyes flicked to the data readouts from the sensors inside the circle. ‘I think this’ll be better than the last run,’ she said. ‘Look at those thaumic field readings.’

Cheryl followed her gaze and smiled. ‘This is excellent. You see the way the reading dips and then recovers? I’m fairly sure that’s an effect of recombination. If we have solid evidence of that then we’ve cracked the second element of the…’ She stopped speaking as the readings from the interior sensors died without warning. ‘Damn! We’ve lost the signal,’ she said. ‘Shutting down.’ Her fingers danced over the keys and the accelerators and coils fell silent.

Ceri stepped out of the cage, looking around at the circle, and came to a grinding halt. With the coils and accelerators off, the circle should have gone transparent again. Instead it was a boiling wash of colours. She summoned her Sight and things only got worse. Arcs of thaumic energy rippled across the surface of the barrier, never getting outside it, but snaking across the surface like undercurrents. ‘Uh, Cheryl, we have a problem,’ she said.

Cheryl joined her. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should drop the circle.’

‘I can’t,’ Ceri replied. ‘The field inside isn’t falling off. If I drop the circle, we get hit in the face with several hundred thaums.’

~~~

‘Okay,’ Cheryl said, ‘what do we have?’ An hour had passed and the circle was still going. The building had been evacuated, apart from Ceri and her boss. For the last forty minutes, Ceri had been alone while Cheryl had calmed down the Dean. For once the High-energy Thaumatology Building was living up to its reputation and people were nervous.

‘I’ve run simulations,’ Ceri said. ‘I think I’ve got this almost worked out.’

‘Go on then,’ Cheryl said.

‘Okay,’ Ceri began. ‘The system works by creating an intense energy field just inside the containment circle. A normal energy field, not a thaumic one. Null thaumitons enter the circle, strike the field, and some of them decay taking energy from the field to create the mass for a pair of positive and negative thaumitons which stay within the circle.’

Cheryl nodded. ‘But then we add in the recombination effect,’ she said.

Ceri nodded. ‘A T-Plus and a T-Minus hitting each other within the right vector range collapse back into a T-Null, releasing their mass as electromagnetic energy.’

‘Which reinforces the field the nulls can use in the decay process!’ Cheryl said exultantly. Despite the massive problem they had, she was positively glowing at the discovery.

Ceri nodded, grinning despite herself. ‘With the old circle, the leakage would prevent this from happening, and then we had the breach. The new version stops
any
thaumitons with mass from escaping, so the field builds up until the energy generated inside the circle is enough to make it self-sustaining.’

‘All right,’ Cheryl said. ‘How do we stop it? We’ve got a thaumic
bomb
in the middle of London at the moment.’

‘Ah, well if my figures are right, we don’t have to.’ Ceri tapped the screen of her tablet. ‘The excited energy field gives off light, which
can
escape the circle. That will bleed energy out of the decay field and, eventually, collapse the system.’

‘How long?’

‘According to the readings we got just before the sensors went down, estimating how much more energy went in before you killed the power, and taking an average for the frequency spectrum we seem to be getting out… another four hours.’

Kennington

It took four hours and seventeen nerve-racking minutes for the thaumic field to begin collapsing, and then another thirty-five minutes before Ceri was happy that they were not going to unleash a rain of frogs on the university, or turn everyone blue, when she dropped the circle. The instrument column on the inside of the circle had been a pile of molten metal when they could finally see it. Cheryl was, surprisingly, sanguine about it.

‘The data we have is remarkably good,’ she said as she went over it on her laptop back at High Towers, ‘and it’s not like we’ll be able to repeat the experiment.’

Ceri nodded. ‘Yeah, I think the Dean might blow a fuse. Okay, I think I’ve got this model right. The thaumic field in the circle reaches a natural balance at about four-hundred and fifty-two thaums. At that point, the radiant energy from the excitation field becomes large enough that it can’t grow. Not without external input anyway. It took a little longer to come down than I think it should have and I haven’t quite worked out why that is yet, but I have a good approximation working.’

‘Bad, but not too bad,’ Cheryl commented.

‘Yeah, like it would have levelled the university, but not the city,’ Ceri laughed. ‘You think this is what Barnes was trying to stop us finding out?’

Cheryl frowned. ‘If he had worked out that this was possible, wouldn’t he have published the theory? Besides, it’s interesting as an effect, but not exactly useful.’

‘Make a pretty good weapon.’

‘Barnes does get a lot of funding from the military for exotic application of theoretical techniques. One of his teams came up with the encrypted network system the Army started using last year.’ She frowned in thought for a second and then shook her head. ‘But no, it’s not big enough. There are perfectly good mundane methods of levelling a building. Even though nukes are banned under the Glasgow Accords, things like fuel-air bombs have as much punch without the issue of blowing a hole in the universe.’