Alchemist's Kiss (20 page)

Rise eadrom le mo tairisceana.

Ceangal agus teaghran seo dorchaadas

Tog m'anam ma ni mor duit, mar sin go bhfuil an olc scriosta.

Cosain an maith, an righteous. Scriosann an olc.

A gust of wind from an unknown source sent my skirts whipping about my legs. The golden net of aether pulsed with light, tendrils breaking off and wriggling through the air.

“Something's happening!” Rivensbrow yelled over the hum of the machine and the roar of the sudden maelstrom. “Maybe you got through to them!”

I leaned close to Icarus as the tendrils of light branched more and more, growing as the roots of an enormous tree might grow, spreading through the room. They crawled over every surface, and the demons began to howl and shuffle back from the intensity of the light.

“Whatever they're doing, it's working.” Orrin agreed.

I began to wonder when aether went from “it” to “they”. Perhaps in the moment that Rivensbrow's machine had shown us the humanoid forms they chose to take.

“This is not Death's Embrace.” Icarus wrapped his arm around my shoulders, careful to stay in his portion of the circle. It was only through our conduit that the aether was able to interact with the human world to do...whatever it was they were doing. He tucked his glowing left hand deep into the pocket of his trousers. “I have never seen a spell like this.”

A tendril of the light passed by my ear, and with it a whispered word.

“Imeact.” I said, and Machiavelli's head whipped toward mine.

“Depart.” Orrin said thoughtfully.

The aether pulsed more brightly, and I shielded my eyes against the glow. The tendrils grew faster and began to reach for the demon pack. The demons turned away, panic in their grunts and growls. They scrambled for the door, but the aether was faster, covering the way out with a bright web.

We watched as the tendrils wrapped around the demons, their skin smoking where the light touched.

“It's poison to them.” Icarus said, his eyes fastened on the demise of the demons. “The light is destroying them.”

The demons writhing on the floor of Rivensbrow's laboratory took me back to the night in Gettysburg, when poor Josiah Turnbull had died in much the same manner. I turned away now, too, and tried to block out the screams of the demons as the aether burned them to ash.

The magical pressure of the room lessened, and I knew all the demons were destroyed.

“Fascinating.” Rivensbrow knelt and studied the pile of ash just outside the circle.

The aether contracted, running as water might over glass, back to the dome around the circle. With a smudge of his foot to the perimeter of the circle Icarus released the aether from the conduit and it shattered into a billion particles of light once more.

“I am glad that you managed to sway them to our side, Jenkins.” Orrin grinned at me with Machiavelli's mouth. In an instant the raven's human body shimmered and with a pop he became a bird once more. He ruffled his feathers and flew around the room as Icarus pulled his glove on again.

“I wish I could say that my father will have given up, but that would be folly. He's most likely calling up an entirely new level of Hell with which to torture us.”

“We're off, then.” Rivensbrow tensed and stared hard at the door. Icarus and I followed his gaze and I gasped.

“Archie!” I flew from Icarus' side and into the arms of the man in the doorway.

He caught me up in his arms and held me close, his chuckle vibrating against me as I hugged him close. “What are you doing here?”

“He insisted that we find you and assure your safety.” Lucia Conti moved to stand on Archie's left as Bastion took up a position on his right.

“Are you well enough to be up and about, Archie?” I moved back to arm's length to study his face. The bruising was horrendous, but he grinned at me.

“Right as rain, Cora.” He nodded to Lucia with a roll of his eyes and a peculiar smile, “My bodyguard would not have let me leave otherwise.”

“He would have snuck off in the night like a thief and a blackguard.” Lucia sniffed, but there was a particular sparkle in her eyes that made me pinch my lips together to hide my smile.

“If we're to find Victor Kane and put an end to this nonsense once and for all we'd best get going.” Bastion crossed his arms over his chest. “London is our city, too.”

I saw the moment that the presence of the glowing aether caught their attention. Their eyes grew wide and their mouths dropped open in wonder.

“What is that?” Lucia held out a hand and the aether fluttered to her palm like a butterfly to a flower. She leaned in to look hard at the particles.

“It's aether, by God!” Bastion, too, peered hard at the aether as it fluttered around him. “You've made it visible!”

“Indeed.” Icarus smiled at Archie and shook his hand vigorously. “I'm glad you're on the road to well, my friend.”

Archie's gaze was sharp as he took in the change in Icarus. He no longer carried the heavy weight of guilt that had been burdening him so much these last months. “And you, Icarus.” He looked around the room at the machinery and the glowing aether. “We've much to catch up on, I see.”

“On the road, if you please.” Rivensbrow clapped his hands to gather our attention. “We can talk as we search.”

“What are we looking for?” Lucia asked, never taking her eyes off the aether in her palm.

“We are looking for my father,” Icarus said, straightening his lapels and holding out a hand for me. “And we are looking for the mysterious lack of aether that signals the presence of the dielectric.”

“Off we go, then.” Rivensbrow bowed low to Archie when he raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Rivensbrow, Lucan Orrin's man. And I believe you know the Grand Master and his familiar?”

Machiavelli landed on Rivensbrow's shoulder and Archie glared at him with comedic distaste. “We've met.”

“Gentlemen. Ladies. If you please.”

Bastion and Lucia looked at us with wide eyes as the Grand Master's voice issued from his familiar's throat.

“We have work to do.”

The world had become a land of fantasy. The aether shifted and moved around us, as thick as the London fog. It coated everything, and the humanoid shapes pressed tightly to us on the street.

“There's so much.” Lucia tried to touch a clump of aether on the windowpane, laughing when it fluttered away.

“Imagine what my father could do with unfettered access to all this.” Icarus followed the swarm of particles with his eyes as it joined the twinkling mass in the sky.

“Here we are now.” Rivensbrow waved us all into the motorcar. Bastion climbed up front, leaving Lucia and Archie in back with Icarus and I. Machiavelli landed on Bastion's shoulder as Rivensbrow started the motor with a word.

“Would you look at that!” Bastion pointed to the aether.

We watched as it moved into the engine, and I imagined the force of their movement turning the turbine within.

“I never imagined it like that.” Bastion studied the swarms around us. “That magic was a creature such as these.”

“A bit much to wrap about your brain, to be sure.” Orrin agreed. “And it serves to remind us that man does not control magic. It is a gift, not to be squandered or misused.”

“It is a relationship I have heard described once by a professor I knew. Symbiosis, I believe it was.” Bastion grinned as the car pulled away from the curb through a sea of aether that parted before us. “We exist only because we exist together. They cannot act on this world without us as a conduit. We use them to perform whatever tasks we require. A mutual benefit is achieved.”

“It's why dark wizards never fare well.” Lucia's voice went cold, and I looked at Icarus. He raised a shoulder, but could not disagree.

“The aether exacts a terrible revenge on those who seek to use it for dark purposes.”

I did not miss the way Archie leaned into Lucia, his big hand covering hers. There was a softness that existed between them that told me their past had tied them together in ways they had probably never imagined.

I stiffened as a flurry of aether blew, whirlwind-like, through the car. It fluttered around my face and though the barrier kept them from touching me I could hear the insistent whisper.

“We are being pursued.” I said, turning to look out the back window. A dark shadow obscured the light of the aether a few hundred yards behind us.

My companions were staring at me as if I'd grown two heads. Icarus was smiling at their astonishment.

“Did you not hear me? I said there is something following us.”

“The aether speaks to you.” Lucia tilted her head, staring at the aether that still clung to me as pollen to the flower.

“Yes. It always has. When I had The Hand it focused me, but I can still hear it even now.”

“Look at the way it caresses you, Cora.” Archie swiped a finger through the curtain of aether hanging about me, and it swirled for a moment before swarming close to me again.

“A question to study for another time.” I urged, pointing to the storm clouds that barreled toward us. “We'd best decide how to outrun a smoke demon.”

“A pack of smoke demons.” Orrin spoke up. He hopped down from Bastion's shoulder to perch on the seat between Icarus and I. “Drive faster, Rivensbrow. This is going to get interesting.”

***

Icarus could feel the rune on his palm come to life. It was the window, he'd begun to realize, between the aether's plane of existence and their own. When wizards allowed the aether to work through them they became conduits through which the aether could interact with the earthly plane. His connection was wildly different. The aether poured through the rune in his hand, a river in comparison to another wizard's raindrop.

While Cora could hear the voice of the aether, his interaction with it was deeper. Some part of it lived in him, bonded to him on that night eleven years ago. Now the rune was on fire, picking up on the presence of the approaching demons. He glanced at Cora as she leaned against the seat, staring toward the back of the auto. Archimedes was correct, the aether clung to her and she glowed with it.

“Grand Adept, have you any experience with smoke demons?”

Icarus looked down at the raven. “A bit. Archimedes and I cleared a nest of them from the upper city a few years ago.”

They all swayed as Rivensbrow gunned the engines and increased the flow of aether to the turbines. The auto sped up, mud spattering the windows as it dug through the soggy streets.

“A dirty deed, if I recall.” Archimedes' face was struggling for a frown through the puce and mustard-colored bruising. “Did we not expend nearly all our energy in the doing?”

“Nearly.” Icarus glanced over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching blackness that signaled the demons were close. “But we are significantly better equipped in this case.”

“We must be getting close!” Rivensbrow looked over his shoulder at them. “The aether is thinning out ahead. If we plan to work magic we will need to do it soon.”

“Slow the car a bit, Rivensbrow.” Icarus was formulating the plan in his head. With the skill of the wizards in the auto he had no doubt the spell would work.

Cora grabbed his hand, her gloved fingers tight over his. He squeezed to give her a bit of courage, though he sorely doubted she would need it. His Cora was nothing if not courageous.

“Grand Master, I'm afraid you cannot be of service in this matter.” Icarus chuckled as the familiar cursed it's master's words. “You're simply too far away to channel the aether properly.”

“Shall I sit with my wings under my arse, then, Grand Adept?”

Icarus grinned. “Rivensbrow will need a lookout. Fly up above the fog and guide us toward Croft. The rest of us will dispatch the demons.”

“As you suggest.” The raven was fast as it flew, circling higher to get above the London fog.

“And what is it we can do against a pack of smoke demons? One touch can dissolve flesh from bone.” Lucia raised a dark brow at him and Archimedes chuckled at her tone.

“Believe, dearest Luci. If any man can direct a group of wizards in the effort it will be Icarus.”

“I will believe it when I see it.” Lucia retorted, and Icarus found himself amused by the way Archimedes' face went red beneath the bruising. At last, he thought to himself gleefully, Archimedes might understand how a woman of strong will could vex a man!

“Join hands.” Icarus instructed, and Archimedes took Cora's and Lucia grabbed hold of his mangled copper hand, while Bastion joined the circle on Lucia's other side. The aether flared, the light brighter as the channel between them opened wide. Bastion raised an eyebrow at Icarus' left hand, glowing blue even through his glove.

“No offense, Icarus, but I believe I'll keep my hand to myself.”

“No need to finish the circle.” Icarus pulled off his glove with his teeth and put his left hand in the center of the makeshift circle. “We are simply going to be the barrel of the gun, so to speak.”

“They're closer.” Rivensbrow warned. He peered through the front glass to keep the Grand Master's raven in sight. “The aether continues to thin, and Machiavelli seems to think we're on the right path. Whatever you aim to do, do it now.”