Thaumatology 10 - The Other Side of Hell Read online

  The Other Side of Hell

  The Tenth Thaumatology Novel

  By Niall Teasdale

  Copyright 2012 Niall Teasdale

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Contents

  Part One: Aftermath

  Part Two: The Succubus in the High Castle

  Interlude: One Night in Bangkok

  Part Three: The Science of Hell

  Interlude: Cheryl

  Part Four: Fairy Tales

  Interlude: Twill

  Part Five: Wild, Wild South

  Interlude: Michael

  Part Six: The Castle of Bones

  Part Seven: Home Again, Home Again

  Part One: Aftermath

  Kennington, November 21st, 2012

  Ceridwyn Brent opened her eyes and let out a soft, contented sigh. The beautiful half-succubus in her arms shifted slightly at the sound and Ceri reached a hand up to stroke Lily’s soft, chestnut hair. Lily’s warm skin felt wonderful against Ceri’s, just like always. Lily’s demonic powers were fuelled by an internal thaumic reaction which gave off heat as a side effect. Sleeping against Lily was like having the sexiest hot water bottle in the world in bed with you.

  The sun was blazing in through the window; it looked like a beautiful day. It had been quite cool recently, but it looked so nice out that Ceri decided they should do something, go somewhere. The zoo, perhaps. Her parents had taken her there many times when she was a child and she had not been since. They could drop in and see whether the Regents Park werewolves were about; they tended to congregate just outside the zoo’s fence and they had not seen Catherine, their Alpha, in a while.

  ‘What do you think, Lil? Fancy a trip to the zoo?’

  Lily shifted, turning over and smiling. She had a cute sort of face with high cheekbones and a small, upturned nose. Her skin was a flawless, creamy white; so smooth. Her smile showed a lot of white teeth, and a pair of fangs. Being part demon had some odd expressions on the physiology.

  ‘I can’t, Ceri,’ Lily said, her voice soft, almost consoling. ‘You know I can’t.’

  Ceri pouted. ‘But it’s a beautiful day, and we don’t have anything else to do.’

  Lily reached out a hand and stroked Ceri’s cheek. ‘I can’t go out with you, Ceri. This is just a dream you’re having. I’m dead.’

  Ceri felt her heart sink. Suddenly Lily’s hand on her cheek was icy cold. ‘No,’ she whispered. The world seemed to twist around her, the sunny room falling away and taking Lily with it. She was awake, strong arms encircled her and she fell into them, sobbing uncontrollably against Michael’s shoulder.

  It was true. Lily had been dead for three weeks now. She had died saving Ceri, and the planet. But Ceri did not care about the planet, all she cared about was that her best friend was gone forever.

  ~~~

  Gwyn was making breakfast in the kitchen when Michael finally persuaded Ceri to dress and come down from the bedroom. She had turned up at High Towers five days after Lily had died, moved in quietly with no fuss, and begun taking care of the house. That was Twill’s job, but Twill was missing. Just one more thing to add to the list of disasters.

  ‘Would you like some of this?’ the dragon-woman asked. ‘Or are you planning to pick at it for an hour without actually eating. Again.’

  ‘I’ll have some coffee,’ Ceri said.

  Gwyn frowned at her as she put a plate in front of Michael. The young werewolf’s metabolism was still out of kilter from the spell-induced coma he had been put into by the dragons. He was eating a lot, especially in the mornings. ‘You’re going to be no use to anyone if you starve yourself to death, Ceridwyn.’

  ‘You’re not my mother, Brenhines,’ Ceri snapped, and immediately regretted it. ‘Sorry. That was…’

  ‘Accurate. I’m just your far distant ancestor. And I’m not Brenhines anymore. Just Gwyn.’ And that was yet another thing. Not many dragons had survived the destruction of the bridge to their world. Whatever Lily had done had… short circuited the Earth’s entire magic field through the bridge. For two days after the event there had been no magic on Earth, and it had risen back to its normal level slowly, over the course of around four days. The shock of the thaumic detonation combined with the sudden drop in power had killed almost all the dragons, and a significant number of unprepared fae. The dragons had survived by becoming human, or partially human anyway. Gwyn was still a powerful magician, a sorceress like Ceri, with millennia of experience at her fingertips, but she was mortal.

  A mug of coffee was placed in front of Ceri and she looked up, giving Gwyn a grateful smile. ‘Accurate, but not nice. You deserve better from me. You’re the only one of the dragons who even tried to help me…’ Her fingers strayed to the spot between her breasts where a silver pendant hung beneath her T-shirt. It had been a gift from Gwyn; a simple, rectangular pendant on a chain with a draconic design cut into the metal. That was the sigil of Brenhines and her mate, Brenin. Ceri had the same sigil marked on the back of her right hip. The necklace brought “insight” to its wearer, if that wearer belonged to a certain, fairly exclusive, club. Lily had hung it around Ceri’s neck on the night she had died. It was possibly the cruellest thing Lily had ever done to her, because when she had woken up, everything had been quite clear to her, eventually.

  Battersea, October 31st

  Someone was lifting her, turning her over. She felt hands at her throat, heard hushed, urgent voices she could barely understand. Some of them sounded like animals. Her head felt as though someone had smashed it in with a hammer and then filled the space with cotton wool.

  ‘We have to get her out of here.’ A man’s voice.

  The growl of a large dog, or perhaps a wolf… No! A werewolf, it was a werewolf…

  ‘If they find her here she’ll be locked up. We have to move her.’

  Another growl and then they were moving. She felt air rush past her face, felt bile rise in her throat and swallowed it down. She had no idea where she was, or where they were going, but there was something trying to force its way into her conscious brain and it eventually found form. ‘Lily,’ she croaked. All she got in reply was a growl and panic began to set in. She struggled, and got slung over a shoulder for her efforts.

  The new position made her head spin. Her consciousness spun out of control into blackness again.

  ~~~

  ‘There was no sign of her.’ The man’s voice again.

  ‘No, there wouldn’t be.’ A woman this time. She sounded old and very tired. The voice was familiar, but no name was coming to mind. There was a growl and the voice said, ‘I know she’s awake. Ceridwyn? Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?’

  Opening her eyes seemed like far too much effort; she gave up, but turned her head toward the voice. There was heat that way; a fire of some sort. Her voice sounded thick in her own ears. ‘I… I don’t know who I am? Lily. I have to find Lily.’

  ‘We’ll deal with that later. Your name is Ceridwyn Brent. You are a sorceress. You were at the centre of a magical event. Before that someone did something to you. Do you remember?’

  ‘I remember…’ She remembered voices. Voices chanting words she could not understand, over and over again. She did not want to remember the voices, but they were all that filled her mind. ‘I remember…’ Voices, deep, resonant, driving into her brain. She shook her head and managed to open her eyes. ‘I don’t remember. All I hear are strange voices.’

  She was surrounded by werewolves, mostly grey furred, a few browns. She felt she should know them, but there was nothing but the chanting in her head. There was a man, tall, muscular, and handsome, and a woman with long, grey hair. There was a flicker o
f memory when she saw the woman; that grey hair shining silver in the moonlight. But tonight she looked old, so very old, older than she ever looked…

  ‘Alexandra.’

  The smile she received in reply was gratifying, but weary. ‘Very good, dear.’

  ‘You’re tired,’ Ceri said, realising that she knew her own name. With the name came the power. Almost without thinking, she reached out with that power, feeding it to Alexandra. The old woman gasped, sitting up straighter… And suddenly there were two werewolves pinning Ceri to the ground. She felt claws at her throat.

  ‘No!’ Alexandra snapped out, her voice firm and full of authority. The claws moved back. ‘She was helping. Let her up.’

  There were growls which Ceri was sure she should understand, but the chanting was making it hard to concentrate. She was allowed to sit up, however, and when she did she noticed what was missing. ‘There’s no magic. The magic field is… practically nothing.’

  ‘It collapsed about an hour ago,’ Alexandra said. ‘They’re stuck in fur until it returns. They can’t generate enough power to turn.’

  Ceri sighed. She knew how to do this. ‘I can’t do everyone. We need to prioritise those we want to shift back. I can supply the power, I’ve done it before.’

  ‘You remember that?’ Alexandra asked.

  Pulling herself to her feet, Ceri looked at the black gown she was wearing. She looked like some sort of witch out of a fairy tale. Grimacing, she looked over at Alexandra. ‘No, I don’t. I just know I have. Do you think someone could get me some real clothes?’

  Kennington, November 21st

  ‘You need to at least start dragging yourself out of this funk, dear,’ Gwyn said as Ceri drank coffee, cupping the mug in both hands. The action made her draw in; she looked defensive.

  ‘I’ve lost my best friend,’ Ceri said. She knew it sounded like a whine; it was.

  ‘And I lost my species. I know I wasn’t exactly on the best of terms with most of them, but they’re gone. The only dragons left aren’t even dragons anymore. I am not a dragon anymore. I’ve come to terms…’

  ‘I hear you crying at night,’ Ceri said. She was glad it came out sounding compassionate because it was a nasty thing to say otherwise.

  Gwyn did not skip a beat anyway. ‘I have almost come to terms with my loss. Which reminds me, we’re going to have a guest tonight.’

  Ceri suppressed a wince; the last thing she needed to see was more people. ‘Who?’

  ‘Mei Long. She is engaged in seeking asylum in Britain, and… and she is taking the loss harder than I am.’ She held up a hand as Ceri opened her mouth to protest. ‘She did what she could to warn you what was happening. She was watched constantly and could do no more. She ran when she could rather than be forced to take part in what happened.’ She played her trump card. ‘Brenin trusted her enough to tell her how to escape the collapse of the magic field.’

  Ceri grunted in resignation. That had been another revelation which had come out when Gwyn turned up. Brenin, Ceri’s other ancestral dragon and Gwyn’s supposedly dead mate, had not died, he had… transformed. Thousands of years ago, when the Earth’s magical field had collapsed entirely and stayed that way for many centuries, he had stayed behind, his body had died, but not his spirit. The comet which had come around in time for the dragons to mount their attack actually carried with it some part of Brenin. Ceri knew that Gwyn was being stoic about that too. Her husband, lover, and friend was still alive, but she would certainly be dead by the time he returned in thirty thousand years.

  ‘We don’t have another bed,’ Ceri pointed out.

  ‘She’ll sleep with me. It’s a double bed, quite big enough, even for two dragons. Ex-dragons. She’ll want a shoulder to cry on and I’m the strong, regal type.’

  Ceri looked up at her. ‘Whose shoulder do you cry on?’

  ‘It’s called a pillow, dear. Why do you think I came here to look after you? Keeping busy was the best thing I could do under the circumstances.’

  ‘Yeah, I can understand that.’

  Battersea, November 1st

  Keeping busy was keeping her sane. As Ceri worked to turn werewolves from their man-wolf form back to human, she could feel fragments of memory joining up with other fragments. When they did, the result seemed to be far more complex than the parts should give rise to. She had always been good at taking two and two and making six out of it; now her brain was working overtime at it, no matter how much the chanting in her head tried to blot it out.

  A commotion drew her attention as she paused between wolves. She turned her head and suddenly there was a man holding her, a man pulling her into his arms and kissing her, a strong body pressing against hers. More memories gathered together, collecting at random and joining to make inferences.

  ‘Michael?’ she said when he let her breathe.

  ‘What happened? I was on patrol and I caught a scent like those things that took Cheryl and then… then I was waking up here and I can’t change, and something bad’s happened, hasn’t it? And where’s Lily?’ His voice was higher than usual, full of enthusiasm, excitement, and worry.

  ‘Lily? She’s…’ Where was she? No one had answered the question. Anita and Ray, who had been the ones who carried Ceri out of the power station, had found no one else there. They had said as much as she woke up. They had said that they could not find Lily. Lily was…

  Michael caught her as she slumped. She heard him yelling for Alexandra, but the old Alpha could not help. Ceri’s mind was full of clear, solid reality for the first time in what felt like months. Tiny things came together to mean so much. Sudden revelations jumped out at her, hitting her like rocks. Her entire life had been a lie, even from before she had been born.

  Cambridge, England, August 16th, 1977

  Marion Preece could barely see as she staggered away from Carter Fleming’s flat. Her eyes were filled with tears, her stomach boiled, and she could taste bile in her mouth. She wanted to throw up, but she had eaten nothing for over a day. Still, her head was spinning because she could not quite understand why she had just broken up with Carter to be with David Brent.

  David was Carter’s best friend. They had been out together a few times, David generally with a new girl every time. Marion had considered him a playboy, a breaker of hearts. Of course, Carter had much the same reputation, but she had got to know him before she realised who he was. He had been a handsome man at a party and he had been charming, and she had fallen for him the first time she laid eyes on him. The fact that he had rejected her quite obvious advances that first night in favour of a later date indicated that he had felt the same way.

  So why was she turning away from the man she had fallen head over heels for in favour of another? It had just happened. Just like that. One morning, a week ago, she had woken up loving David. She had tried to rationalise it, tried to deny it, but the more she tried, the stronger it became. Her emotions were tearing her apart and she had seen no other choice but to break it off with Carter.

  He had just looked at her the whole time, saying nothing, as she babbled on trying to explain it and failing. Love was like that, right? Unexplainable? Except that she loved Carter too. She just… had to be with David. And that was it. And she knew she had destroyed the first man she had ever loved. She saw it in his eyes as she talked. She knew it in her heart. How could she have done that to him?

  Sobbing, Marion stumbled out onto the street. She never noticed the man watching from across the road, a smile of grim satisfaction on his face.

  But decades later, as her daughter watched her mother’s memory play out, Ceri saw the man. And she recognised a dragon when she saw one.

  Bala, Wales, January 1st, 1986

  ‘I want to try again,’ Marion said. ‘For a baby.’

  David looked down at his wife, nestled in the crook of his arm as they sat on the couch in front of the roaring fire. It was a new year, a time for new commitments, but… ‘Are you sure, love? Four miscarriages…’

/>   ‘I know, but I found some help. There’s a doctor in London who says he has a treatment, a spell, to help stabilise the pregnancy.’

  He sighed. ‘Last time you had your herbs, the time before that you slept naked in a field on the night of the full moon…’

  ‘Okay, so I tried a few… unconventional things,’ Marion snapped, swatting him on the arm and grinning to show she was not upset. ‘This is a doctor, a skilled practitioner. He says he could “stabilise the effect of the trisomy” or something. It sounded as much magic as science, but he assured me it was all using the latest in genetic research.’ Marion gave a pout. ‘Are you telling me you don’t want to practice making a baby with me?’

  David leaned down to kiss her forehead. ‘You know damn well I’ll “practice” that any time you like. I just don’t want to see you hurt again.’

  Marion smiled at him. ‘No, I think this time it’s going to be different.’

  November 10th, 1986

  Ceri realised that what she was seeing and feeling had to be some sort of enhanced memories, but the one which hit her next was the first she had actually been alive for. The others had been dragged from her “race memory” of her parents, but now she lay in the arms of her mother, a cold wind biting at her cheeks as they stood at the edge of a lake. The first time she had experienced this she had been ten days old and largely unaware of what was happening. This time she felt as though she were looking out at the world through tiny windows and could see very little, but she understood what was being said.

  ‘Name her for Ceridwen.’ The voice was female, smooth, resonant. That had to be the Lady of Bala Lake. ‘She will come into great power, as did that sorceress of old.’

  ‘I expect her to have talent.’ That was her father. ‘She comes from two strong lines of practitioners.’

  ‘More than you know,’ the Lady said. ‘She will need your protection, your tutelage. Take very good care of her.’

  ‘We will, Lady,’ Ceri’s mother said. Ceri felt them turning to leave.

  ‘Little Ceri,’ the Lady’s voice said, receding as though she was moving back into the lake, ‘when you meet my sister, do not fear her.’