Thaumatology 04 - Dragon's Blood Read online

  ~~~

  ‘It seems like it died at the end of the Toba Flare period,’ Ceri said. She was slumped in one of the camp chairs in Cheryl’s tent, looking tired. ‘The skull was brought here and buried at the time the first earthwork was created.’

  ‘To mark it?’ Shelly suggested.

  ‘That would be my guess.’ Ceri rubbed at the bridge of her nose and looked at Trudy. ‘You were right about it taking a long time. Eight hours! Eight hours I’ve been sat out there contemplating my navel.’

  ‘At least you got a date for it,’ Cheryl pointed out. ‘Now, the question is, did they mark it so they knew where to find it, or to warn people away from it?’

  ‘Huh.’ Ceri shrugged, not willing to worry about that now. ‘How did the reconfiguration go?’

  ‘Very well. We’re getting a seventy per cent efficiency improvement. Temperature is a little higher, but well within operational parameters. If we can work your ley line idea and beam power in direct like this, we should be able to build a really efficient transducer. Of course, it’ll need to be a lot bigger for what you have in mind.’

  ‘What do you have in mind, if you don’t mind me asking?’ Brian asked.

  Ceri looked at Cheryl, who shrugged. ‘Tapping power off the German Rift,’ Ceri said. Brian’s mouth opened, and then closed again. Trudy blinked repeatedly. Ant just stood with his mouth open.

  ‘Right,’ Shelly said, ‘so form a ley line from the Rift just like the one the one feeding Woodhenge. Fire it into a big version of your collector and generate electricity. That’s genius!’

  Ceri laughed. ‘It’s totally loony,’ she said, ‘but thanks for the vote of confidence. I don’t think anyone’s tried a metaphysical engineering project like this since they built Stonehenge. I’m not even sure it can be done. But if the collector system works then we might be able to get funding and resources to try building it. We would be looking at enormous quantities of free power.’

  ‘If you can build something like that,’ Brian said.

  ‘Yeah, if,’ Ceri agreed. She knew it was possible, she had seen it done, but she was not going to tell them how and besides, she did not know how Magnus and his team had actually formed the thing. She looked up at Cheryl. ‘So Boss, plans for tomorrow?’

  Cheryl frowned. ‘Well, I think we’ve more or less covered everything that needs doing. Let’s sleep on it. If anyone can think of anything which needs doing by morning, we’ll do that. Otherwise we pack up, you young folks can head home, and Ceri and I will wait for the Sappers to turn up on Sunday.’

  The only person who seemed unhappy about that was Shelly.

  June 10th

  Ceri opened her eyes. She could feel Cheryl’s body pressed against her back. For a thirty-something academic, the woman was pretty hot. Okay, so she was not really into girls, but… There was a fluttering in her stomach that worked its way down into her groin and sat there, gently throbbing. How much effort would it be to get Cheryl to come around. Ceri had learned a few things from Lily…

  Lily. That was the reason for the sudden burst of lust. If she concentrated, she could sense the foreign thoughts. Well, not thoughts, feelings, sensations. The sensation of something thick and long sliding… Ceri gave a little whimper and her hips shifted involuntarily.

  ‘Cer’ you a’right?’ Cheryl mumbled, still half asleep. ‘Nightmare?’

  ‘No,’ Ceri said. ‘No, not a nightmare.’ She tried hard not to let out the groan which was threatening to burst out. Was this what Lily had felt like when Ceri had been with Alec? Damn! And Lily was on her own, she was sure of it.

  ‘Ah…’ Cheryl said, ‘different kind of dream.’ She giggled softly.

  Ceri was not sure whether her cheeks were burning because she was embarrassed or because of what Lily was doing. There was a sensation like a wave of heating passing up her body from her groin, through her nipples, and into her head, and then she was relaxing again.

  ‘That was some dream.’ Cheryl sounded amused.

  Ceri moaned and hid her face in the pillow. She was going to kill Lily when she got her hands on her.

  ~~~

  No one had come up with anything overnight and by two in the afternoon everything had been disconnected, packed up, and Ceri and Cheryl were left on their own with only the two tents left in their camp. Together they had pushed the collector out of the centre of the circle so that the Royal Engineers would have a quicker job lifting it out on Sunday and then, with nothing much else to do, they had retired to Cheryl’s tent and opened a bottle of wine.

  The voice from outside came as something of a surprise. ‘Hello! Is anyone here? I want to talk to someone about this experiment. Hello!’ The owner of the voice was male, and he sounded irritated.

  Cheryl and Ceri looked at each other, shrugged, and then got up to go outside. A man was standing in the space between the two tents dressed in a grey sweatshirt, denim jeans, and black trainers. In his hand was a six-foot staff of twisted oak which was several inches taller than he was. He had a good sized, Roman nose, receding hairline, and a full beard which was shading from red to grey. His brown eyes took in the two women as they emerged from the tent and he immediately fixed on Ceri. ‘You! You’re in charge here, aren’t you? What are you doing? You can’t pollute this venerable site with your… your science!’

  Ceri sagged; he was a Neo-pagan. It was Cheryl who spoke. ‘I’m in charge, actually. Doctor Cheryl Tennant. I’d appreciate it if you would calm down, there are people here for recreation and, if I’m not mistaken, you are not allowed in this part of the site except for designated dates. This is not one of those dates.’ It sounded like Cheryl was as keen on Neos as Ceri was.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ the man snapped. ‘I have every right to be here. I want…’

  ‘Who are you?’ Ceri asked, interrupting him. She had found that that really irritated self-important people and she had a huge desire to irritate this man.

  He glared at her; that had worked then. ‘Wilson Smythe, Third Rank Druid in…’

  ‘The Ancient Order of the Elder Druids,’ Ceri said with a sigh.

  ‘Third Rank, huh?’ Cheryl said. ‘That makes you important, doesn’t it? Perhaps you can help us.’ That surprised him. It got a raised eyebrow from Ceri too; the Druids were not noted for their scientific, or even rational, view on anything about Stonehenge. ‘We’re looking into the mechanism the circle uses to generate and contain thaumic energy. What do you know about the people who built it?’

  Ceri managed to remain straight-faced; Cheryl was laying a trap. ‘Well,’ Smythe said, warming to his subject and obviously preening a little at being asked, ‘it was created by the ancient druids around five thousand years ago as a celebration of the beginning of Summer and to enhance their rituals.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Cheryl said, ‘and what rituals would they be performing?’

  ‘Harvest blessings, celebrations of the rising sun, the exact rituals vary each year of course and some are for members of the Order alone.’

  Cheryl glanced at Ceri; her turn. ‘So, setting aside the fact that the druids focussed their activities in Wales around the Dark Age Flare a good three thousand years after the first structure here, how does the circle generate power?’

  Smythe glared at her. ‘The ancient secrets of the order are known only to those…’

  ‘You don’t actually know?’ Ceri asked.

  ‘The positioning of the stones serves to amplify the natural magical field of…’

  ‘The stones form a containment circle,’ Ceri said. ‘They aren’t there to amplify anything. They’re supposed to stop it getting out.’

  ‘We’ll be publishing a note in the Journal of Thaumatology,’ Cheryl said. ‘It’s a fascinating discovery, really. Try to get a copy.’

  Smythe’s mouth opened, but Ceri beat him to it. ‘You mean you’ve been coming here all these years and you haven’t seen the way the field behaves?’

  ‘Now,’ Cheryl said, before he could get another
word in, ‘I think it’s best if you leave. Your rights to attend this site are restricted. It requires a licence to come here and I know you don’t have one. You wouldn’t want to cause an incident and have your Solstice licence revoked.’

  The druid looked conflicted. He had come, or been sent, to “have words” with the thaumatologists who were “desecrating” their ancient ritual site and was being kicked off the land. Then again, Cheryl was right. Ceri watched as his anger turned into a surge in energy along his Chakral Median; he was preparing a spell.

  ‘Do you really want to add common assault to trespass?’

  The confusion turned into another glare. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ The spell was still hanging, sitting in his mind like a toad under a rock.

  ‘That spell you’re hanging onto,’ Ceri said. ‘If you cast it I’ll be within my rights to defend myself. Since I don’t know what you’re attempting, my weapon of choice will be this.’ She raised her hand, showing him the ball of glowing, blue-white energy sitting in her palm. ‘I’ve blown the head off a Dakag demon with this, but I promise I’d aim for your limbs.’

  The spell died in Smythe’s head and Ceri closed her hand, the energy evaporating. ‘I’ll speak to the Master about your conduct here,’ he said.

  ‘And I’ll be discussing yours with Malcolm Charles,’ Cheryl replied.

  ‘You know the Minister for Supernatural Affairs?’ The disbelief in Smythe’s voice was thick.

  ‘I’m having dinner with him on Monday evening to discuss our preliminary results,’ Cheryl replied blandly. She looked at Ceri. ‘Actually, considering the new information, I’ll wrangle you an invitation. Have you ever been to the Green Room?’

  While the Jade Dragon was Carter Fleming’s best known and premiere club, the Green Room was his most prestigious. Part nightclub, part restaurant, it was known as a location where important, semi-social meetings took place. Ceri tried not to sound too shocked at the idea she might be invited to one of them. ‘No, I haven’t. That would be very nice.’

  Fuming, Smythe turned on his heel and marched off across the grass.

  Cheryl frowned. ‘They could be trouble,’ she said.

  ‘They’re harmless,’ Ceri replied.

  ‘They have more political clout than I like.’ The thaumatologist shrugged. ‘Never mind. Let’s get back to our wine.’

  June 11th

  The light hurt. Opening her eyes was a really bad idea, but the sun was beating down on the nylon tent and the temperature in the small sleeping cell was starting to become unbearable. Trying hard not to think about exactly why Cheryl was snuggled so tightly against her, and keeping her eyes as closed as she could while still being able to see, Ceri extracted herself from the bedding and crawled out into the main tent.

  The air flow was better there and it was a bit cooler. She found a five gallon water container and managed to get enough out to splash some in her face. It was lukewarm, but it helped. Then she managed to locate a pack of painkillers and a bottle of water in a cool box. Two pills and the entire water bottle later, and after lying curled up on the groundsheet for twenty minutes, the pain in her head had subsided enough that she could face going back for her boss.

  Cheryl groaned at her when she opened the flap. ‘You’ll need these,’ Ceri said, dropping the blister pack and a cool water bottle onto the air mattress beside her. Then she went to sit on one of the camp chairs with another bottle of water to sip.

  It took about thirty minutes for Cheryl to emerge, naked and squinting. ‘That second bottle was a bad idea,’ she croaked.

  ‘There’s more water in the cool box,’ Ceri replied. She was actually starting to feel human again.

  Cheryl retrieved another bottle and more or less fell into a chair facing Ceri. ‘Did we, um…?’

  Ceri nodded. ‘It’ll come back to you.’

  Cheryl frowned, winced, rubbed her forehead, and then tried to think without creasing her brow. ‘I remember pouring the last two glasses… and you saying something about most of the male students having fantasies about me…’

  ‘And you said that was silly,’ Ceri said, nodding and regretting it.

  ‘And you said it wasn’t and quite a lot of girls did too…’

  ‘Uh-huh, and then I took your shirt off.’ She looked down at the silver chain around her ankle. Stupid fae magic.

  Cheryl giggled. ‘I haven’t had drunken sex since I was a student. At least it wasn’t with a student.’

  Ceri joined her in the giggle. ‘Kind of silly of us though. You’re my boss, and you’re not really into girls, and…’

  ‘Something Carter told me,’ Cheryl interrupted, ‘and he really seemed to mean it. “Don’t have regrets.” As far as the university is concerned, you’re my assistant, but let’s face it, in practice you’re my friend and collaborator. It happened, I’m fairly sure I remember enjoying it, what’s the problem?’

  Well, there was the question of what Carter had regrets about, but if Cheryl was okay with it… ‘Well,’ Ceri said, ‘my head hurts.’

  ‘So does mine,’ Cheryl replied, managing to giggle and wince at the same time.

  ‘And I’ll probably want to do it again sober,’ Ceri added. ‘We don’t have to, I’ll just want to. It’s this anklet. Well, that and the fact that you’re hot.’

  Despite the fact that Cheryl did consider herself straight and fairly down to earth, she was still vain enough to preen a little at that. ‘I’m, uh, not saying I definitely wouldn’t…’

  ~~~

  Ceri sat beside one of the big stones near the middle of the circle. It was out of sight of the tourists trooping along the viewing path, and fairly close to the skull buried beneath her. She was not exactly skilled at drawing, but she wanted to get the basic shape and as much detail as she could of the skull down on paper.

  She looked down and then back up, comparing what she had on the page to the buried bone. The snout horn looked about right. She rubbed out the spikes coming from the back of the upper ridges and redrew them a little longer. The teeth looked sufficiently dagger-like and she thought she had captured the mean look the eye sockets were suggesting. She was no expert on anatomy, but the muscle mounts at the back of the jaw and the thick bone of the nose suggested that it had had a fearfully strong bite.

  Dragons, western ones anyway, were thought to be extinct. In China it was a different matter. During the Shattering, the Great Imperial Dragon, known as Huanglong, had awoken and proceeded to re-establish the Imperial state. While the Chinese empire, which now governed most of Asia as far west as the Caspian Sea, was technically run by the Imperial Bureaucracy, everyone knew that it was the dragons who were in charge. Hell, it was called the Dragon Empire. There had been some unsubstantiated sightings of a dragon, perhaps two, in Wales, and a report of one appearing in Ireland. The Sidhe, however, were not particularly keen on sharing news about happenings in Ireland, and the sightings in Wales had been distant ones, or from unreliable witnesses. If western dragons did still exist, they were keeping themselves to themselves.

  She looked down one more time, peering into the deep sockets where huge, reptilian eyes had once sat. Tens of thousands of years dead, the creature still evoked a sense of awe, and fear. She felt oddly connected to the buried monster. Dragons had a bad reputation. They were supposed to be avaricious, cruel, scheming… But that felt wrong somehow. The thing down there in the ground, it felt like an old friend, a kindly uncle. ‘Or are you an aunt?’ she said aloud. Thankfully, she got no answer, but the skull looked back at her as though it really was watching. ‘What are you?’ Ceri asked.

  The only answer was the light breeze stirring the grass.

  June 12th

  Far below, on the rock-strewn beach, flames licked over the fallen car. Oddly, Ceri did not feel the sense of dread that scene had once evoked in her. She looked back over her shoulder, finding what she had expected, and then turned so that she could see them properly; she did not fear the dream now, but the cliff still ga
ve her a hint of vertigo.

  ‘Do you really have to sleep in the nude?’ her father asked.

  ‘I haven’t worn clothes in bed since I was sixteen, Dad. You wouldn’t be comfortable with the flimsy stuff I can sleep in either.’

  Her mother laughed. ‘It’s not like he hasn’t seen it all before.’

  ‘When she was ten!’ David retorted.

  Ceri’s face straightened. ‘I haven’t dreamed of you two since I stopped Barnes. I assume you didn’t turn up to discuss my sleeping habits.’

  ‘Did you ever wonder why we went to Wales, dear?’ Marion asked.

  ‘You were going to see Aunt Branwen.’

  ‘Yes,’ her father said, ‘of course.’ His eyes moved from her to something behind her and she turned to see whatever it was he was looking at. The island of Anglesey was just about visible across the straits and something was visible wheeling in the sky above the cliffs. Swinging high into the air, it looped and then fell, swooping down toward the water before pulling up sharply, a plume of flame roaring from its jaws into the sky…

  Ceri opened her eyes. A dragon? Her parents had gone in search of… a dragon? Or had it just been a dream? She was still not sure that the dreams she had of her parents were anything supernatural. She had been thinking of dragons in Wales, and her parents had died there. Her brain was likely just making connections between disparate facts.

  Her musing was interrupted by a soft, female voice. ‘Don’t they look sweet?’ It was Lily. It was just about light, she had to have driven up straight from work with…

  ‘Huh, yeah,’ Alec said, just as quietly. ‘I might have picked a different adjective.’

  ‘The question is,’ Lily said, ‘do we split them up, or just join them.’

  Kennington, London

  The wards along the iron fence flickered with a faint orange light as Ceri opened the gate and walked through. She smiled; High Towers was welcoming its mistress home. She looked back at the people getting out of the big, black Range Rover and said, ‘She missed me.’