Thaumatology 02 - Demon's Moon Page 2

  Jasmine sniffed. ‘Especially around full moon?’

  Mallow blanched. ‘Yes, unfortunately.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jasmine said, ‘it’s got to be…’

  ‘Something of a curse,’ Mallow supplied. ‘One learns to control it. Or rather to contain it for a couple of nights a month.’

  ‘Must be hard though,’ Jasmine said. ‘Gotta be strong to deal with it.’ The compliment had the intended effect; Mallow stood up straighter and looked rather proud. ‘C’mon,’ Jasmine added, ‘Naira’s dancing. You’ll want to see this.’ She led the way through to the door which led to the main floor and around the screen which hid it from the customers.

  Up on the stage, lit by several bright spotlights, a jet-black furred cat-woman was swinging around the chromed steel pole. She was built like a gymnast; long muscles flexed as her body twisted into positions impossible for a human spine. Her long tail twisted with her, providing balance where needed, or simply curling sensuously to add to the effect. Mallow stood watching with his jaw hanging open. Cheryl and Ceri were a little more composed, but stood watching the girl writhe on the stage in amazement. Even Jasmine stood watching in silence until the throbbing music finally came to a finish and Naira came to a stop.

  Everyone clapped. Ceri’s attention was drawn to the sound of hands slapping together coming from one of the booths, followed a second or so later by Carter emerging from the shadows. He was less the playboy millionaire today, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, but he still managed to look like the smooth operator he was. His ash-blonde hair was elegantly and perfectly cut, the result of an expensive barber. For a man in his fifties, he was doing very well. There was a silk wrap draped over his shoulder and he placed it on the stage beside Naira. ‘Excellent, my dear girl,’ the club owner said. ‘Truly excellent.’

  ‘She’s amazing,’ Jasmine said. ‘She’s going to be really popular. Her boobs aren’t the biggest, but the way she moves… Customers’ll be queuing up for her.’

  Ceri was watching the stage. Her Sight was not as precise as the scanning equipment at the lab, but it was more portable. Naira had already begun the change process; Ceri could see the thaumic field starting to contract. As it collapsed completely there was the usual moment where woman and cat-woman existed in the same space, and then she was looking at a naked, attractive, dusky-skinned woman with a cap of silky, blue-black hair. She had features which suggested a native South American background, though her cheeks were narrower and there was a hint of some Spanish blood in the nose.

  Naira reached out and picked up the robe, standing to pull it on. ‘Thank you, Mister Fleming,’ she said. She had a soft, Spanish accent which gave her voice a purring quality. ‘Who are our guests?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Carter said, turning with a smile. ‘Naira, may I introduce Ceridwyn Brent. I mentioned her earlier.’

  ‘Yes, the lady who wants to study the way I change,’ Naira said, ‘I remember.’

  ‘And this stunningly attractive young woman is Doctor Cheryl Tennant,’ Carter went on making Cheryl blush profusely, ‘who I suspect is here with the excuse that she’s Ceri’s supervisor.’

  Cheryl nodded. ‘I could hardly miss out on meeting a were-panther and seeing you,’ she said. ‘And this is Peter Mallow, Professor of Cryptozoology at the Metropolitan. Technically, were-creatures don’t come under his auspices…’

  ‘But the cat-variants are simply too rare in Europe to miss the opportunity,’ Mallow said. He stepped forward, offering his hand to Carter. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mister Fleming. Obviously I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  ‘All of it bad, I’m sure,’ Carter said with a grin. He took Mallow’s hand in a firm grip.

  Mallow glanced at Cheryl. ‘By no means all of it has been bad, no,’ he said.

  ‘Peter and I have been friends for years,’ Cheryl said.

  ‘Shall we sit?’ Carter suggested, leading the way to one of the booths which ringed the outer edge of the room. Each had a low table set further away from the bench seats than seemed comfortable, designed to accommodate both drinking and table dances. Cheryl sat next to Carter, who placed an arm along the back of the seat and across her shoulders. Naira elected to sit beside Ceri, who was the one who she had actually been told was coming, while Mallow perched on the end of the bench diametrically opposite the dancer, looking slightly uncomfortable. And then Jasmine shoed him further into the booth and sat beside him, which made him look like a pot about to boil over.

  ‘So,’ Naira said, ‘Mister Fleming tells me that you wish for me to change while you record it?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Ceri said. ‘We discovered…’

  ‘You discovered, Ceri,’ Carter corrected her. ‘Don’t be modest.’

  Ceri smiled at him. ‘Okay, I discovered a couple of months ago that werewolves give off a very specific pattern of thaumic activity just before they transform. We ran a test here with Alec and Jasmine, and found the same pattern in werefoxes.’

  ‘We use a device here based on that discovery,’ Carter interjected. ‘It gives us advance warning when a were is getting… over-excited.’ He grinned. ‘It’s been a lot safer around here since we installed it. I’m rolling it out into the other clubs, Ceri. Worth its weight in gold.’

  ‘Glad to be of help,’ Ceri said. ‘Anyway, we have far more accurate, specialist equipment at the university and I want to do a full study of the effect, on as many weres as I can. Learn all about it. I scanned Alec yesterday, Jasmine and a couple of the other girls are coming in to do it, and I hopefully have a whole werewolf pack coming in to be recorded, and Professor Mallow is getting scanned on Sunday night. I’d really like to compare your results to the European species.’

  Naira glanced across at Mallow, frowning slightly. ‘You will pardon me, please,’ she said. ‘Brazil is not a heavily developed country and our education system is yet weak. I do not understand this “thaumic?” And the Professor is a werewolf?’

  ‘I’m a lycanthrope,’ Mallow said. ‘Ah, but the disease is not common in South America, you may not have heard of it.’ She shook her head and he explained. ‘The Reoviridae Lycanthropia virus. It’s a distant relative of influenza which brings about genetic alterations in the victim. Under high stress, or the light of the full moon, I turn into a wolf-man. It’s different from a werewolf. I remember little of what happens. I become little more than a beast until I calm down or the moon sets.’

  Naira shuddered. ‘That sounds terrible. There is no cure?’

  ‘Not currently. If caught quickly it can be arrested before the damage is done.’ Mallow gave a weak smile. ‘I believe they are working on gene-therapy treatments to reverse the effect.’

  ‘”Thaumic,”’ Cheryl said, ‘is just a posh scientific word for “magic.” Well, mostly for the energy used in magic. Ceri, show off for our new friend.’

  Ceri blushed and raised her right hand, the fingers slightly cupped. Concentrating, she summoned up a ball of soft, blue energy which sat in her palm gently shimmering. Naira’s eyes widened. ‘Thaumic energy,’ Ceri said. ‘In the fifties they discovered that this is composed of a lot of tiny particles called “thaumitons.” The ones magicians use are positively or negatively charged and have a little bit of mass. This same energy is what weres generate to make them transform.’ She closed her hand and the ball of energy vanished to the nowhere it had come from.

  ‘This is very new to me,’ Naira said, ‘this… science of magic. The Church in Brazil is very strong. They say “magic” is evil, something the forest tribes use, doing deals with the Devil. They say I am evil and then they come hunting me with magic they say is good because it comes from God. This is why I leave.’

  ‘We hear very little out of South America,’ Carter commented. ‘There’s some trade with Brazil through Rio, but the Church keeps the country beyond locked up tightly from what I understand.’

  Naira nodded. ‘They say that demons and horrors came from the jungle when the world shattered. Priests called upon God to s
ave the world and angels came, and since then the Church has been the State. They take young men for the army, to fight along the border. Church attendance is required, every day. Anything which does not fit in with their beliefs is hunted down and killed. It is no place for someone such as me.’

  ‘So, how did you end up in London,’ Ceri said, ‘and working for that reprobate?’ She waved a hand at Carter, who bowed his head in acknowledgement.

  ‘When my parents… died,’ Naira said, ‘I managed to get aboard a ship bound out of Rio harbour. I had no idea where it was going.’

  ‘She turned up in Southampton,’ Carter said. ‘Of course, she was arrested as soon as she got off the boat. Luckily for both of us, a friend of mine in Border Control contacted me and I sponsored her immigration request.’

  ‘Where did you learn to dance like that?’ Ceri asked. ‘I mean, it’s amazing, the grace, the sensuality. I just can’t believe you learned that in a church state.’

  Naira smiled, showing her fangs a little. ‘Oh, I did not learn. I have always danced. I would go out of our village into the forest and dance among the trees.’ She looked up at the stage. ‘The pole was something new, but Jasmine was kind enough to show me her dancing yesterday.’

  ‘She’s a natural,’ Jasmine said. ‘Of course, in cat-form her body can do things a normal human body just can’t do, but even in human form she picks up dance moves quickly and she’s really intuitive about sensing the music and going with it.’

  The were-panther shifted a little uncomfortably, her cheeks colouring. ‘You are too kind,’ she said. ‘I see how you dance. It will be long time before I am as good as you.’

  Jasmine laughed. ‘Hun, you won’t need to be as good as me. Trust me, the punters’ll be eating out of your hand as soon as they see you.’

  ‘We’ll start you just on the stage,’ Carter said. ‘There’s more money to be made on the tables, but you’ll need some training for that. I’m sure Jasmine will be happy to take care of that.’ Jasmine nodded, rather enthusiastically.

  ‘Thank you,’ Naira said, and then turned back to Ceri, ‘and I should be happy to help you with your experiment. I was told that my shape-shifting was the gift of the Devil, I should like very much to know what it really is.’

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best to show you,’ Ceri said, grinning and patting Naira on her hand, which was resting on the nearest thigh. The were-panther smiled back warmly.

  Kennington

  ‘Have you met Naira yet?’ Ceri asked. They were sat in the study, Ceri going over Alec’s scan data on her tablet while Lily just lounged and kept her company.

  ‘Not yet,’ Lily replied. ‘Jasmine says she’s an awesome dancer.’

  ‘She is,’ Ceri said. ‘Actually… I’m going to get a dance pole to put up in the dungeon.’ She said it in a rush so that she could not change her mind.

  ‘Really?’ Lily said, grinning wide enough to show her fangs. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I heard it was great exercise,’ Ceri said, ‘and it sure looked like it. I figured you could teach me and dance for me, and it’s something else to cuff you to.’ She grinned at the last part. The dungeon was one of the three rooms down in the cellar and had been her mother’s summoning room. Lily had turned it into a dungeon partially so that they could play dominatrix and sub down there, but also because she was able to lock herself in behind a door of magic resistant metal when she felt her demon side was getting too strong. It was Lily’s personal safety net for when her confidence failed her. So far it had worked very well since, knowing it was there, she had never had to use it.

  ‘That’d be great!’ Lily enthused. ‘I’d love to dance for you. I might be a little rusty though, I haven’t danced for a few years now.’ Before becoming the head waitress at the Jade Dragon, Carter’s most prestigious nightclub, Lily had seen a lot of the less savoury side of the sex industry. Pole and lap dancing had been some of the nicer things she had done for money before Carter had hired her for the night and ended up taking her under his wing.

  Ceri laughed. ‘Lil, hun, the way you move I can’t imagine “rusty” ever being a valid term for your dancing.’

  Lily was about to answer when they heard the sound of a motorbike engine outside. ‘Dane, you think?’ Lily asked.

  ‘I’ll go see,’ Ceri replied, putting her tablet down. Lily started to stand as well. ‘Uh, you’re naked, Lil,’ Ceri said. ‘I doubt Dane would complain, but the neighbours might.’ Lily sagged back onto her chair. ‘Besides,’ Ceri said, ‘it’s November.’

  It was not Dane. When Ceri opened the front door she saw two people walking up the path from the gate, a man and a woman. She did recognise them. The small woman with the slightly stocky, slightly boyish body and the mop of mid-brown hair was Tabitha. The rather scruffy looking man with a thin face and body, short hair and a day or so of stubble was Kort, her boyfriend. They were two of Dane’s pack and Ceri hoped their arrival did not mean that her request for help was going to be denied.

  ‘Kort, Tabby,’ Ceri said, trying to keep any disappointment out of her voice, ‘nice to see you. Come in. How’s the pack?’ She stepped back, allowing the two werewolves to pass through. The house had two sets of double doors on the main entrance, separated by a stone floored entrance hall. The enchantments on the floor did not respond to the newcomers; they were quite capable of stopping anyone entering the house with malicious intent.

  ‘They’re all good,’ Kort said. ‘Dane sent us down to see you, seein’ as we had some business in town. We’re headin’ back out to meet them tomorrow.’

  ‘We were kind of hoping we could camp in your garden,’ Tabby said.

  Ceri laughed. ‘You can sleep in a bed.’

  Tabby giggled. ‘Kort? In a bed? He’ll eat the pillows!’

  Any response from Kort was lost behind a gleeful, ‘Tabby! Kort!’ from Lily as she bounced down the stairs. The naked half-succubus threw herself at Tabitha, who was nearest, wrapping her in a hug. ‘Am I allowed to hug Kort?’ Lily asked once she had released her first victim.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tabitha replied, ‘I trust him. He’s a one-bitch sort of wolf.’ Kort still managed to look rather pleased with himself as he got to hug the sexy, naked girl.

  ‘The pack’s doing some work this week,’ Kort said once he had been thoroughly hugged. ‘Should finish up Monday or Tuesday next week, then they’ll come down and do your experiment thing.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ Ceri said, waving that they should follow as she went through to the kitchen. ‘You guys want anything? Coffee?’

  Twill was hovering over cooking pots again. ‘There’s coffee in the pot,’ she said, ‘and I’ve put more rice on. You two don’t have a problem with curry I hope?’

  ‘That’d be great, Twill,’ Tabitha said. ‘How did you know we were coming?’

  ‘I know when anyone enters the grounds,’ Twill said. ‘It’s a fae thing. Technically, the house isn’t my territory, but I sort of… sub-let.’

  ‘She’s the cutest doorbell ever!’ Lily said. Kort chuckled as he poured a drink for himself and Tabitha.

  ‘I will starch your underwear, Lily,’ Twill stated flatly.

  ‘I don’t wear underwear,’ Lily replied.

  Kort struggled to avoid snorting his coffee.

  ~~~

  Ceri found Tabitha standing in the study by her desk. ‘This is where you’ve got to,’ she said, wondering what the wolf-girl was doing there.

  Tabitha turned, a slight smile on her face and a small, jet carving of a wolf in her hand. ‘You keep it on your desk?’ she said. The wolf had been a present from the North Hills pack on Ceri’s last birthday, but Dane had said at the time that it was Tabitha who carved them.

  Ceri shrugged. ‘I like it,’ she said, ‘and I spend a lot of time at that desk.’ She looked at the statuette. ‘You make those, right?’

  Tabitha nodded and placed the wolf back where she had found it. ‘That’s why we were in London. I make the figurines and sell them to Baltzman’s s
tore. He sells them to the norms who go in looking for something magical. “Genuine Werewolf-made Talismans” he calls them.’ She giggled. ‘Not the wolves though, those are special. We only give those to people we can trust.’

  Ceri smiled slightly. ‘I wondered about that,’ she said. ‘Dane said it meant I was a friend of the pack. I mean, I’m honoured, but really you guys hardly know me. Alec asked you to guard me when Barnes was sending assassins after me, I invited you to my birthday party as thanks…’

  ‘Well,’ Tabitha said, ‘first off, Alec trusts you. That would be good enough on its own, but Dane trusts you too. He’s got an instinct for stuff like that. If he thinks you’re good for the pack then I think you will be, and that means we’ll be there for you if you need it. Simple as that. Werewolves aren’t complicated, y’know?’

  Chuckling softly, Ceri said, ‘If you say so. I’ve read a load of papers on pack behaviour and…’

  ‘Ha! Books. You can’t learn what a werewolf is from books.’ Tabitha was grinning widely. ‘You want to know about werewolves, you come out with the pack for a couple of weeks.’ She walked the few feet between them, stepping in a little closer than was entirely comfortable. ‘Maybe you can get Dane to stop mourning Aleena and get on with being alive.’

  Ceri looked into Tabitha’s eyes, not really sure what to say. She thought she knew what the she-wolf was getting at. ‘I, uh, thought Alphas mated for life,’ she said for something to say.

  ‘They do, but it doesn’t mean they can’t have a sex life after. Look at Alec. He lost his mate, but he was sure having a good time with Cheryl the night of your birthday.’ Tabitha’s face had lost its grin; she was quite serious and quite concerned. ‘We’re a small, tight pack. Dane was really close to Aleena, but she would hate to see him putting his life on hold like this. All the girls have tried to get him to go with them. He’s nice about it, but he always says no. And he likes you.’