Thaumatology 04 - Dragon's Blood Page 2

  ‘Nice meeting you,’ Ceri said, starting off toward the middle of the circle again.

  ‘Same,’ Karen replied, heading off toward her crew.

  Lily was on the phone as Ceri approached. ‘Who are you talking to?’ Ceri asked.

  ‘Twill,’ Lily said. ‘I’m just explaining how to record the evening news.’

  Ceri groaned.

  ~~~

  They were not allowed a fire in their small campsite, which was a little disappointing, but it was a warm night and the tent Cheryl had brought with her was large enough that five people could easily sit in the “communal” area around a folding table with a lamp on it. Tomorrow it would become the base of operations for the experiment. Tonight it was a comfortable location out of the wind where five friends could sit, chat, and drink the rather nice whiskey Carter had brought with him.

  ‘Good birthday, Carter?’ Lily asked, raising her glass to her boss.

  ‘Any three days where I don’t have to wear a suit are good days, my dear,’ he replied, ‘but in this case they have been exceptional, yes.’ Ceri found that a little difficult to believe. Carter was almost always immaculate. His ash blonde hair was always perfectly styled. His suits were always crisp and of the latest fashion. Now fifty-five, if he ever looked older than thirty he had had a rough night. The sight of him in faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt had been almost impossible to believe when he had pulled up with Cheryl in an Aston Martin DB9 earlier, but Ceri still had the feeling he should be just itching to get into a sharp suit.

  Cheryl, however, was grinning. ‘He didn’t actually put a shirt on until we went out for a walk yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Mmm, shirtless Carter,’ Lily said, giggling.

  Alec gave a rumbling laugh. The big werewolf was there to lend a hand with the physical work, at least until Wednesday when he and Lily would have to go back to work at Carter’s premiere nightclub, the Jade Dragon. He worked behind the bar, she was the head waitress. Except for the week just gone when he had been temporary manager as well. Carter rarely took time off, but for his birthday on Friday, he had handed the reins over to Alec much as Cheryl had handed over the final preparation of the experiment to Ceri.

  Alec was also there because Cheryl enjoyed his company as much as she did Carter’s. It seemed only fair to Ceri; she had a half-succubus and a werewolf for lovers, her boss had a werewolf and a wizard. Occasionally Ceri wondered how she had ended up in such a weird place, lifestyle-wise, but mostly she had just learned to go with it. She was at least moderately sure that things could not possibly get any weirder which had to be a good thing.

  ‘Fifty-five,’ Lily said. ‘I remember your forty-ninth.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Carter said. ‘Now that was a momentous birthday.’

  ‘Oh?’ Cheryl asked.

  ‘That was when we first met,’ Lily explained. ‘He hired me for the night and then offered me a job in the morning.’

  ‘And then we met in… October?’ Ceri added.

  Lily nodded. ‘And I moved into High Towers in November.’ She looked meaningfully at Carter. ‘Waitressing doesn’t pay quite as well as high-class prostitution.’

  ‘You get to stay dressed for work though,’ Carter replied blandly.

  ‘If you call what we wear “dressed,”’ Ceri said. The uniform dresses at the Dragon could barely be called dresses, but she was used to it by now.

  ‘Let’s not go into the special event costumes,’ Lily added, ‘and your recent fetish for body paint.’

  Carter was entirely unabashed. ‘When one gets to a certain age, one finds every opportunity to ogle nubile, naked young women. It’s just one of those things.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Alec agreed. Ceri did not exactly know old the werewolf was, but she did know he was older than Carter by a couple of decades at least.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Cheryl stated. ‘The pair of you are perfectly happy to ogle me and I’m neither young nor nubile.’

  ‘You’re younger than we are,’ Alec pointed out.

  ‘And I recall a fair bit of nubility,’ Lily said. ‘Is that a word? Nubileness?’ Cheryl’s cheeks turned scarlet.

  ‘I feel left out,’ Ceri said, grinning to show she was kidding.

  ‘I’ll make sure you’re not later,’ Lily replied blandly. Ceri did not blush; when you lived with a half-succubus people thought you were sleeping with her even when you were not. Now that she was, she felt no reason to be embarrassed about it. ‘I even brought a gag so you wouldn’t keep everyone awake,’ Lily added. That brought a little colour to Ceri’s cheeks.

  ‘I hear you’re a TV star now, Ceridwyn,’ Carter said, rescuing her.

  ‘Well, Cheryl wasn’t here and they wanted someone to do a piece for the news,’ Ceri said.

  ‘She was great!’ Lily enthused.

  Carter smiled indulgently. ‘Not something I would have expected from you this time last year. You’ve come a long way in a short time.’

  ‘I guess I have.’

  ‘It’s good practice,’ Cheryl commented, sipping her whiskey. ‘Once you’ve got your doctorate in November, we’ll be looking to have you doing some lectures.’

  Ceri went a little pale. ‘Lectures?’

  ‘Uh-huh, the Dean was quite keen on the idea.’ There was a round of laughter as Ceri groaned. ‘Oh and there’s the invitation to attend the Thaumatology Conference at Cambridge,’ Cheryl added. ‘They want you to give a speech on your thesis.’

  Ceri hid her face in her hands. ‘Just kill me now.’

  June 6th

  Ceri pushed the final six-pin military connector into place on the collector and began screwing the hood down to seal the connection. It was mid-afternoon and they had pretty much all the equipment in place. This was the final cable, the heavy duty power cable which would take power from the collector and channel it to the transformer outside the circle. Standing, she followed the cable out through the stones, trying her best to ignore the fact that the vast columns of rock were there.

  At the end of the thick, rubber coated line was a bulky box; the transformer. The name was a bit of a misnomer, well, an understatement. The transformer did transform the power from the collector, low voltage and high current, to mains supply voltages. These were then used to run a set of big lamps around the camp, and the computers in Cheryl’s tent. It also had an array of monitoring equipment built in which recorded vast amounts of information about the electricity coming down the line and the temperature at various points on the collector. She carried on past it, following thinner cables toward the small camp.

  Yesterday night there had been two tents; Cheryl’s large one, and a much smaller one for Ceri and Lily. Now there were four. Brian and Ant had arrived in a van that morning just after Carter had left in his Aston. In the van, aside from the post-grads, were a large stock of cables, the transformer, the computers, and two girls. Trudy was a third year thaumatology student, and actually got most of what they were doing. Shelly, however, was doing applied witchcraft and herbal medicine, and had come to keep Ant company and because, well… Stonehenge! Lily had mumbled something about “bloody Neos” as soon as she had laid eyes on Shelly.

  Right now the Four Minions, as Alec had christened them, were standing near Cheryl’s tent with their backs to Ceri. She could not figure out what had their attention so fixed until she got closer and could see past them. Lily was stretched out on a towel, sunbathing. At least she was wearing a swimsuit; two-piece and very brief, but it was there.

  It was amusing; even the girls appeared to be mesmerised by the sight of the mostly naked half-succubus laid out in the sun. Then again, Ceri could understand it; she felt much the same. Lily’s parentage had gifted with unnaturally stunning looks. Her skin was smooth and flawless, her hair a mass of vibrant chestnut waves which fell down to below perfect breasts. Her waist was slim, her hips wide, and she somehow managed to look both incredibly fit and superbly soft at the same time. Clad in swimwear which consisted of a few patches of cloth held
on with string, she was… distracting.

  Ceri walked up to stand beside Brian, her eyes on Lily. The others did not even notice she was there until she spoke. ‘She’s here until Wednesday and the weather is forecast to be good all week.’ Four people suddenly discovered that they really needed to be doing something else, somewhere else, right now. Ceri giggled and walked up to stand over Lily.

  ‘You’re in my light.’ Lily said without opening her eyes.

  ‘I know.’ Ceri could feel it. Now that she was not concentrating on work, she realised that she had been feeling Lily’s warm contentment for a while. There was a link between them, not really telepathic, more like an emotional bond. It was part of the binding which Ceri had performed on Lily earlier that year to make Lily into her bound demon. It was two-way, Lily could feel what Ceri felt too.

  ‘Then move.’ Deep, black eyes opened and looked up into Ceri’s blue ones. ‘Unless you want to go in the tent and put the gag in?’

  Smirking, Ceri moved out of Lily’s sunlight, getting a pout for her effort. ‘It’s time to power up and see whether this thing actually works,’ she said. ‘We can save the gag for celebrating later.’

  ‘I’m going to hold you to that.’

  ‘Oh? You brought cuffs too?’

  Lily closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax entirely. ‘The arm binder,’ she replied.

  Giggling, Ceri turned and headed off to Cheryl’s tent. Stepping in through the unzipped flap, she grinned at her boss and said, ‘It’s all ready if you want to power it up.’

  Cheryl grinned back. Getting used to her boss in a pair of denim shorts and a slightly baggy T-shirt had been a bit of a wrench. Brian and Ant had been a bit dopy about that too. Field trips were a real eye-opener. ‘It was your idea,’ Cheryl said, nodding at the laptop.

  ‘Oh,’ Ceri said, ‘um, okay.’ She tapped a key to bring the machine out of its sleep mode and then punched up the control software for the transformer unit. There was a nerve racking pause while it negotiated communications and then… ‘Okay, instrumentation seems to be functioning. The temperature’s a little high, but that’s probably the sun.’ Her finger hovered over the mouse button. ‘Enabling power feed… now.’ She tapped the key.

  There was an almost immediate response; digital readouts climbed rapidly, a graph showing power output from the collector began tracing upward, and the laptop’s screen brightened as it suddenly got a mains voltage power supply through. Ceri waited, watching the readouts for any signs of instability.

  ‘Well?’ Cheryl said when Ceri had said nothing for over a minute.

  ‘Temperature is stable at thirty degrees Celsius. Power output is holding at five hundred watts with current load, no signs of instability.’ Ceri looked up and grinned. ‘So far, so good.’

  ‘Let’s turn the lights on outside,’ Cheryl suggested, ‘put a bit more load on it, and then soak test it until tonight. We can review the data tomorrow and decide on the next round of tests.’

  Nodding, Ceri headed out into the sunlight again. ‘Brian, Ant,’ she yelled, ‘go ‘round and turn the lights on, please.’ On hearing some affirmative-sounding replies, she headed back in to watch the readouts.

  The six big lights, mounted on six-foot poles, had been chosen because they required a fair amount of power to run and Ceri could see the output jumping upward as each of them was switched on. ‘Over a kilowatt and no sign of instability,’ she said. ‘Two kilowatts… three and a half. That’s all the load we’ve got currently. No temperature increase and steady current. Recorders are all active. Now we just wait.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Cheryl said. ‘Well, I have a supply of trashy romance novels to read and a dozing werewolf in the sleeping compartment. What are you going to do?’

  Ceri smiled. She could feel a warm, happy demon outside. ‘I’m going to get Lily to put sun screen on my back.’

  ~~~

  Between them, it turned out, Alec and Shelley were remarkably good cooks. Ceri was glad to discover that the wiccan was going to be good for something during her stay, because she certainly knew nothing about the theory behind the magic she was studying.

  The little scientific team ate as the sun was going down, around nine pm, gathered around in a circle outside Cheryl’s tent. The light from the big lamps meant that the twilight was having no effect on the camp, which was now very quiet with all the tourists gone for the day.

  ‘How are the results coming?’ Alec asked as he sat down with his large bowl of stew.

  ‘Within expected parameters,’ Cheryl replied in her best lecturer voice.

  ‘She means it’s working and there haven’t been any problems or surprises,’ Ceri elucidated.

  ‘Kind of boring,’ Alec replied. ‘I mean, not that I wish any problems on you, but doesn’t that kind of make the rest of the week superfluous?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Cheryl said. ‘We have extra load to add, and Brain and Ant will be conducting a detailed survey of the thaumic levels around the circle, and out beyond it.’

  ‘I thought they had those,’ Lily commented.

  ‘The last survey was done about eight years ago, love,’ Ceri said. ‘The instruments we have now are far more sensitive. Plus, I want to get a slit-scan array pointed at the catalysis core and see if we can determine how this thing generates its power. That’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow.’

  ‘Well,’ Alec said, ‘I have to admit I’m enjoying the fresh air.’

  ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ Shelley piped up.

  ‘I might just go for a run later,’ Alec mused.

  ‘You’re, um, a werewolf, sir?’ Ant asked. The slight nervousness in his voice suggested that he had not met many.

  ‘Yep,’ Alec replied, ‘and don’t call me “sir.” I feel old enough as it is with all you young humans around without being called “sir.”’

  ‘So not a young human,’ Lily said.

  ‘No, you’re a young pest.’

  ‘Pet,’ Lily replied without a second’s hesitation. ‘Young pet. There’s no “s”.’

  You could tell the separation of the team then. Ceri, Alec and Cheryl laughed while the younger ones looked slightly uncomfortable, and Trudy looked at Lily with a perplexed expression.

  ‘Sorry,’ Trudy said, ‘I thought you were just, well, a model or something. What are you?’

  ‘Half-succubus,’ Lily explained. ‘My father was an incubus.’

  ‘And you call yourself a pet?’

  Lily shrugged. ‘Well, I am. The demon side of a half-demon is quite often dominant. When Ceri turned out to be a pretty powerful magician, I fixated on her. It’s either I be her pet -and we convince my demon to play nice- or I’d be constantly trying to dominate her.’

  ‘Which is not half as much fun as it sounds,’ Ceri added, noting the slightly eager expressions on Brian and Ant. ‘I screwed that up for a couple of days and the both of us were miserable.’

  Lily nodded. ‘It’s much better this way. I actually have more control over myself because my demon knows Ceri’s in charge.’ They were keeping up the illusion that it was basically play acting for everyone. Binding a half-demon was illegal; the penalty was not worth thinking about. But the other option had been Lily going very bad indeed under the influence of her father, so they had done it by mutual consent. Also by mutual consent, they had told no one outside their house.

  Trudy was blonde and attractive, and pretty smart. She had likely never had to do anything in her life which she did not want to do. She lifted her head slightly, straightening her back. ‘I don’t think I could ever be someone’s pet,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe anyone should be owned.’ Brian, Ceri thought, had better take note. Though looking at him, she figured that Trudy had already made sure he knew.

  Lily seemed entirely oblivious to the slight insult implied by Trudy’s comment, and the note of condescension. ‘That’s because you’re human,’ she said happily. ‘You were brought up by liberal parents in a modern environment and you think your view
point should apply to everyone. It doesn’t matter what they think because, while you say you believe in freedom, what you actually believe in is that you’re right and everyone should agree with you.’

  Ceri nodded. ‘Humans make me sick half the time.’

  ‘You are a human, kid,’ Alec pointed out.

  ‘Not when I’m a werewolf.’ Ceri smirked at him. ‘I’ve stood and listened to people talking about me in wolf-form and Michael’s had to hold me back.’ Alec shrugged slight, conceding the point.

  ‘I’m a demon,’ Lily said. ‘Part demon anyway. That gives me an entirely different view on things. It’s taken me years to realise that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but aside from that demons have a mind-set which focuses on power. We either want it, or we want the most powerful person around to be our patron. And since my demon side is succubus in nature, I’d really prefer to be someone’s slave.’ Trudy blinked at her. ‘It’s in the name.’

  ‘Succubare,’ Ceri explained. ‘It’s Latin for “to lie under.” The definition goes through a late Latin word, “succuba,” which means, um, “strumpet” is probably the best word.’

  ‘I’m a demon hooker,’ Lily said, giggling.

  ‘Most humans wouldn’t find that funny,’ Alec commented.

  ‘No,’ Trudy agreed.

  ‘I didn’t mean that reflected well on the humans,’ Alec added.

  ‘Thing is,’ Lily said, ‘what’s important is being comfortable about yourself. If you’re constantly trying to change to meet other people’s expectations or, worse, you’re constantly expecting people to change to meet yours, you’re not actually being liberal or civilised, or whatever the latest fad word for forcing your views down other people’s throats is.’ Her smile turned a little mischievous. ‘Besides, you’ve no idea what you’re missing out on.’ Trudy’s cheeks went scarlet; Lily had put just the right amount of “and I’d love to show you” into the sentence.

  ‘Don’t tease, love,’ Ceri said softly. Aside from anything else, Brian was looking like his head might explode.