Thaumatology 12: Vengeance (10 page)

‘Come, Ishifa,’ Twill said as she dropped to the end of the bar, ‘it’s not the most civilised of places, but Sean won’t let anything happen to us.’ She was speaking Low Fae rather than English, which was nice for Ishifa. Her English was still distinctly fragmentary.

As Ishifa landed, the tall, saturnine barman stalked toward them, a smile on his handsome features. He was Sidhe, you could just tell from the dark good looks and the slight glamour which hung around him like an aura of masculinity.

‘Mistress Wintergreen,’ Sean began.

‘Twill,’ Twill corrected. ‘My family has disowned me for one thing, and “Gloriandel” is too much of a mouthful.’

The Sidhe’s smile broadened. ‘Mistress Twill, then, always a pleasure to see you in my humble establishment, and who is your pretty young friend?’ Ishifa just about melted.

‘This is Ishifa Bushbottom, my fellow exile. Ishifa, this is Sean Finn Connell, and don’t let his charm fool you, he’s a rogue.’

Sean clutched at his chest. ‘You wound me, Mistress Twill. Make it up to me, let me show you…’

‘That trick you learned with a pencil eraser? I think not. Two glasses of mead, please.’

Still smiling, Sean dipped his hand under the counter to retrieve two small, fairy-sized glasses. ‘O’course, Mistress Twill, but the offer’s always there. Perhaps your friend would like to try?’

Ishifa let out a squeak and fought the urge to hide behind Twill. ‘N-no thank you, Mister Connell.’

Sean grinned at her and poured out two measures of mead while Twill unfolded a five pound note from her bag. ‘It’s Sean, kid. Only people who ever called me Mister Connell are long dead.’ He took Twill’s money and walked off to the till.

‘Twill?’ Ishifa asked.

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Why would he even want to…? I mean, how would I be able to… uh… well, satisfy him?’

‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know,’ Twill replied, lifting her glass and taking a drink.

‘Oh… Sorry.’ A little dejectedly, since she seemed to have upset her not-mistress-anymore, Ishifa tried her mead. Her head felt swimmy almost immediately.

Twill sighed. ‘I only did it once. A favour for a favour. It’s a lot of hard work and then you have to spend ages getting goo off your wings.’

Sean returned with the change, cutting off any reply, which was fine as far as Twill was concerned. ‘What brings you out to these parts?’ he asked. ‘If you’ll be begging my pardon, young Ishifa seems to be a little sensitive for the Dubh Linn.’

‘I’m seventy-three!’ Ishifa protested.

‘Oh well, all grown up.’ His tone implied otherwise, which was fair given the age fairies lived to.

‘More to the point,’ Twill broke in, ‘she’s been exiled here just as I have. I’m showing her around the town when I can and, strange as it is to say it, this is one place where a fairy can come if she’s in trouble.’

Sean gave a grudging nod. ‘The Lady wouldn’t let either of you come to harm here.’

‘The Lady?’ Ishifa asked. Then her eyes widened. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘The Dubh Linn… The Lady of the Black Pool lives here?’

‘In a way,’ Sean replied. ‘A rumour you might be interested in,’ he went on, apparently changing the subject. ‘Well, less a rumour and more a fact, really. Hildegard Braun was in here Tuesday night.’

Twill’s eyebrows went up. ‘Above ground? Her?’

Sean nodded. ‘First time I’ve seen her, or heard of her coming up, in a couple of years.’

‘Who did she kill?’

‘No one. Came in looking for information, as best I can tell. Questioned a couple of vamps and then left.’

‘Sorry,’ Ishifa said, ‘but who are we talking about?’

‘Hildegard Braun is a vampire,’ Twill replied.

‘Huh,’ Sean grunted. ‘She’s
the
vampire in London. Oldest one anyone knows of. She lives in the Underground pretty much all the time, but she’s got her fingers in everything vampiric going on in the city.’

‘If she’s come up, it must be for something pretty serious.’

‘Aye,’ Sean said, ‘and I’m sure you know someone who’d be interested in knowing about it.’

Twill gave a nod. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something move in the shadows, or perhaps the shadows themselves moving. Sean was the medium, but it was the Lady who wanted the information passed on.

Soho.

‘Hildegard Braun on the surface,’ Carter mused as he personally served Twill and Ishifa on one of the small tables at the end of the bar. ‘I wonder what she could be looking for.’

‘Nothing good,’ Lily commented. ‘She didn’t even surface when Raynor was here. If she feels she has to deal with this personally…’

‘I feel like I am missing much,’ Ishifa stated sadly. ‘London is… much different from the Wintergreen… estates.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘And speaking English is hard.’

‘Would you believe,’ Carter said, ‘that it started out as a trade language? It’s technically far simpler than German or Dutch. Unfortunately, after a lot of centuries, it’s developed a lot of annoying exceptions to the simple rules.’

‘You’ll pick it up,’ Lily said, smiling. ‘As for the history, Raynor was an Ancient vampire, a part-demon, part-undead creature who tried to get the vampires here to rise up against the living.’

‘Was?’ Ishifa queried.

‘Ceri got him banished to Hell.’

Ishifa’s eyes widened. ‘She can do that?!’

‘With some help from an angel,’ Lily replied, grinning. ‘The angels have decided that they can’t damn all the intelligent undead for what they are, or they’ve been told they can’t, but Ancients are another matter. They
really
hate Ancients.’

‘Well,’ Twill said, ‘under the circumstances, I decided that we would come here and hitch a ride home with you tonight, Lily. If there’s something out there which Hildegard Braun is looking for, I’m not sure I feel safe.’

Lily shook her head, grinning as she did so. ‘Twill, you and Ishifa rode into battle with Titania.’

‘Oh that was easy, she did most of the hacking.’

London Underground, Northern Line, April 4
^th
.

Ishifa was more than a little tipsy. She tended to get giggly and a little flirtatious when she was drunk, and she was having some issues with hanging onto the collar of Lily’s coat. Sitting down on the tube train made life easier, but did not diminish the giggling.

‘Alec ish nice,’ the little black-haired woman slurred.

‘Yes, he is,’ Lily replied.

‘He ish a werewolf, like Michael.’

‘I know. Well, Alec is a black-fur, but they are both werewolves.’

‘Watsh that mean?’

‘Black-furs are the purest blooded of werewolves. Very little human in them. Michael’s father was a black-fur, his mother was human.’

‘Oh.’ There was a slight pause and then, ‘I wouldn’t mind some Alec in me,’ followed by a giggle.

‘I’m just glad there’s no one else in the car with us,’ Twill commented from the other shoulder.

As she said it, the train pulled into Embankment and Lily spotted two figures on the platform. She tensed, which made Twill look in the same direction. Generally vampires could be trusted not to be a bother, but sometimes the older ones could lose sight of their humanity enough to ignore the law or the younger ones could be stupid, and there was the fact that the oldest of them was out on the town hunting someone or something.

‘They look young,’ Twill said.

‘Uh-huh, so if they get fresh I’ll turn my aura up to full,’ Lily replied. ‘That should take them out until we can get off.’

It was not looking especially good. The vampires decided to skip down two cars to get onto the occupied one, but having done so they sat at one end and ignored Lily and her passengers. Lily relaxed, but kept her eyes on them as the train pulled out of the station.

Kennington.

Ceri was waiting at the entrance to Kennington station when Lily appeared at the top of the escalator with a fairy on each shoulder. Her smile shifted to a frown as she saw Lily look back over her shoulder and then quicken her pace across the concourse.

The reason for her haste appeared a second or two later, though the two vampires did not seem to be in much of a hurry, or to be particularly interested in the women they were following. They were both pretty young; neither of them needed glamour to hide the decay which set in in old vamps. If she had to guess, she would have said they were in their twenties and had not been vampires longer than five years.

‘You’re not normally nervous of vampires,’ Ceri said as Lily got closer.

‘After what happened with Raynor’s feral kids, I’m a little more cautious,’ Lily replied, ‘especially when they make a point of getting on the same car as us and get off with us. And there’s something else. Hildegard Braun was at the Dubh Linn a couple of nights ago.’

Ceri frowned, but remained silent as the two vampires walked past them and turned toward Clapham Road. She watched them continue onward for a few seconds before turning and started toward the park.

‘As I understood it,’ Ceri said once they were across the road, ‘she doesn’t come out of her hole much. What was she doing?’

‘Looking for information,’ Twill said. ‘Sean didn’t know what or he’d have told me. The Lady wanted you to know about it.’

‘Oh this isn’t good,’ Ceri muttered. ‘This is not good at all.’

White City (the evening after).

Linda Prentice looked up at the clear night sky, sighed, and kept walking. Her feet hurt. The new shoes looked great, and she would probably get them worn in eventually, but maybe wearing them to work without trying them out properly had not been the best of ideas. At least she didn’t have to walk to far to her flat where she could pull them off and sink her feet into a bowl of hot water. The weather had been dry for a couple of weeks, so she could cut through Hammersmith Park. Her flat was right on the other side; ten minutes, tops, and she would be in footbath heaven.

She saw him as little more than a shadow, standing under one of the trees in front of her as she entered the park. Her breath caught in her throat as the sheer wash of animal heat hit her. She felt her pulse quicken even as her feet dragged her toward him of their own volition. Whoever he was,
whatever
he was, she wanted him so badly she could taste it. She almost ran the last couple of steps toward him, her hands fumbling at the buttons of her blouse as she went.

Part Three: The Secrets We Keep

Holloway, April 5
^th
, 2013.

‘The press are all over it,’ John said, his tone sour. ‘They found her body in Hammersmith Park. It’s right behind the BBC. Her head was ten yards from the Blue Peter Garden!’

‘Same MO as the last one?’ Ceri asked.

‘Pretty much identical,’ Kate replied. ‘Puncture wounds, evidence of intense but consensual intercourse, head pulled off. The coroner was pretty sure she was dead
before
she was decapitated.’

‘Overkill,’ Ceri said.

‘Just a bit,’ John agreed. ‘The tabloids are running with it in the late editions. They’re calling him “The Headsman.”’

‘Huh. Anything come of the semen analysis from the last one?’

‘He’s infertile. No sperm present. No DNA. No luck.’ He frowned with a distinct hint of worry. ‘It doesn’t help that this is not far from my place and…’ He stopped, his frown deepening.

‘He’s worried about Lorna,’ Kate stated flatly. ‘He thinks she’s been sneaking out while we’re on nights. He knows she can’t be seeing me on the sly, and I think we got over that anyway…’

John was blushing, though not as much as he might have been. ‘We have. And it’s not just that. She seemed a bit… distracted this morning.’

‘Not restless,’ Ceri asked, ‘like when Raynor showed up.’

The detective shook his head. ‘More like… a little vague. Almost like she was listening to two conversations at once.’

It was Ceri’s turn to frown. ‘See if you can get her out to the club tonight? You haven’t been since it was refurbished, have you?’

‘Uh, no, and we’re off tonight, unless our Headsman strikes again.’ He looked at Kate. ‘You up for it? Lorna could probably use a decent meal.’

The witch smiled back at him. ‘How could I refuse such a gracious offer?’

~~~

Cheryl peered over Ceri’s shoulder at the A4 drawings she was holding. ‘Those are beautiful. What are they?’

‘I asked Arabella’s designer to come up with some new clothes for me and Lily, for over there. These are what she’s come up with so far based on my suggestions.’ Ceri spread five sheets of paper out on her desk. There were three designs for Ceri and two for Lily.

‘Well,’ Cheryl said, ‘that one for Lily.’ She indicated one of the sheets. ‘I mean, she’ll look like a goddess.’

‘Uh-huh. I’m less sure about mine.’

Cheryl considered for all of a half-second. ‘That one,’ she said, pointing.