Fossil Hunter

Fossil Hunter

This is a story built on an entry into the 2025 750 Word Challenge. Many thanks to Erozetta and Jupiter Ripley for their assistance

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Constructive criticism is very welcome

~~

Glad = a member of the Gladius Novum, the official name for the prosecutors of the New Inquisition

~~

A Match Made in Heaven

Encounters

Daniel

Friday

I considered it one of the perks of my job that I was able to walk to and from work. At the end of the day the thirty minute stroll was a good way to unwind. However, it was fearfully hot this afternoon and despite shucking my jacket and rolling up my sleeves immediately on leaving the office, a stop to rehydrate proved to be a necessity. Fortunately, the Fiddler's Elbow was not much out of my way and offered the unfussy facilities I was looking for.

Weaving my way through the tables on the pavement outside to the shade of the interior, I set myself up with a pint of IPA. Absently I rubbed the condensation off the side of the glass while I took in the general humour of the place. There were a reasonable number of patrons dotted about, chatting to friends or studying their phones; doubtless all post-work like me.

The first pint didn't touch the sides, and I got another while debating whether to get some food. I was inspecting the menu and wasn't facing the door when it happened. The vibe changed when she came in, and my Spidey-sense came on full alert. Around the place the men all perked up. No one was yet inebriated enough to wolf whistle, but I sensed it was a close call.

I'd have put her at between thirty and thirty five years old. 1.8m in her heels - that's an inch shy of six feet in old money. Dark wavy hair to her shoulders, full lips and clear grey eyes. Professionally I don't allow my gaze to drift below the jaw line but then I wasn't on the clock, was I? I was enjoying a quiet pint in the boozer on my way home.

Anyhow, back to the matter in hand. A fitted blouse emphasised a generous bust before coming in to show off an enviable waist. A pleated skirt flared over her hips and was short enough to display shapely calves. In short, a complete knock out. What on earth was she doing in here? I needed to take detective mode offline. Still...

She surveyed the bar for a few seconds before walking across to stand about a metre away.

"G and T, ice and a slice, please," she instructed the bartender.

American accent. Probably a tourist seeking an 'authentic' experience. I turned my attention back to my pint. I vaguely registered the clink of ice cubes in a tumbler and then a few seconds later a hand rested lightly on my wrist.

"Do you smoke?"

Her voice was a husky contralto. And why did it feel like she was propositioning me?

"I'm afraid not," I said, keenly aware that things were stirring down below. "You'll have to smoke outside. That's the rule in this country."

"I ain't much about rules," she murmured, putting a fancy neon pink cigarette back in a box containing more of the same in harlequin shades.

I rolled my eyes. "Rules maintain order, prevent chaos. That's generally a good thing."

"I guess," she said carelessly. 'I'm going to people watch outside. Care to join me?"

She was quite bewitching, and I confess my curiosity was piqued. I followed her as she strolled outside to sit at one of the tables in the shade of the awning.

"What brings you to London?" I asked.

"Oh, this and that. Some sightseeing, some shopping. Harrods is an eye-opener."

I grimaced and she chuckled, a low warm sound that had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. "I'm guessing you're ambivalent about tourism."

It wasn't the near continuous flood of sightseers so much as the ostentatious display of naked consumerism, from the peddlers of cheap tat to the gold plated taps in the aforementioned establishment, that made London expensive for its own people.

I shrugged and the conversation moved on to more pleasant topics.

"I feel like introductions are in order," I said. "My name's Daniel, Daniel McGill."

"Caroline Gaston," she replied and offered her hand over the table.

I took it, and she held it for a fraction of second longer than might have been decorous. A shiver ran across my shoulders, and I struggled to maintain my composure. Caroline exuded that peculiar magnetism that draws attention. Thing was, it was difficult to identify any one characteristic that stood out, it was the complete... package. Which was a crass way to talk about a beautiful woman but there was the whiff of easy virtue, a tart on the pull. I shook my head; my thoughts had detoured into the gutter with astonishing rapidity.

"What do you do, Caroline?" I asked.

"Do?" she replied, blowing a plume of cigarette smoke into the air.

"For a living," I said, conscious that the investigator part of me was refusing to stay in its box and was instead sitting up and sniffing the air.

"I have an income."

An income? What a very old-fashioned thing to say.

"Must be nice."

She shrugged. "What about you?"

"I work for the police."

Was it my imagination or was there the minutest stiffening of her spine?

"Are you a policeman?"

"No." And there it was, the slightest relaxation in her posture. Now I was on full alert. What for was yet to become apparent.

The light slanted and turned golden as another round of drinks came and went. There was a tiny Thai eatery a little way up the street, and I suggested we go for a bite to eat. Thirty minutes later I was rather regretting my choice of a Pad Kra Pao which was delicious even if I had to neck a slug of cold Tsingtao every couple of bites.

Caroline asked to try some and then spent five minutes theatrically clutching her throat while I laughed. She'd opted for a massaman curry with duck, and I found my eyes following the trajectory of her fork as it made its way from her bowl to her full red lips.

Over the next hour Soho came alive in the gathering dusk. It was one of my favourite places to be. Human beings traded their brief lives for an ebullience that baffled and bewitched in equal measure.

Caroline's eyes were very big in the semi dark, and I could feel the growing tension between us. I wasn't averse to mixing with citizens working in the grey economy and I wasn't held to the same standards as my mundane brethren.

When I settled the bill, she turned to me and fingered my lapel. She was well inside my personal space, and I got a good lungful of her perfume.

"The evening is still young, Daniel. Do you have anywhere you need to be?"

"What do you suggest?"

"I live not far from here. There's good wine and the view from the balcony is exceptional."

In fact, it was barely a five minute walk before we were standing outside a modern looking building in concrete, glass and black steel. The metal of the window surrounds was variously exposed or recessed in a way that suggested some pretension to modernism. The front door was enormous, a great slab, maybe fifteen feet high and six or seven feet wide, patterned in chequerboard oblongs of white, bronze and chocolate.

When Caroline tapped a code on the panel to the side, the door smoothly whispered open, bringing with it a waft of cool air, scrubbed of any scent other than inoffensive cleanliness. I followed her inside and across a highly polished but otherwise spartan lobby to a lift.

The lift accelerated so gently I was almost unaware of us moving except for the discreet green numerals counting upwards. When it stopped, the doors opened to reveal a small hall with a set of stairs leading still further up to the most enormous open plan living area. I stared about at the high-end furnishings as I trailed Caroline to the small gallery kitchen where she paused briefly to scoop two wine glasses and a bottle of red wine off the worktop, before exiting the door on to a vast rooftop terrace. In the distance was the distinctive outline of the former Post Office Tower.

"This is all yours?" I asked as she offered me a glass.

She raised an eyebrow. "Is that so hard to believe?"

"When you said you had an income, I was thinking of something a little more modest. What on earth were you doing in the pub?"

"Reconnecting," she said, wistfully. "This place is lovely, but I do feel a bit like I'm in the highest room of the tallest tower."

We sat in some raffia chairs and looked out over London as the sun went down. I couldn't say what we talked about because it was the unspoken questions swirling underneath that occupied my thoughts.

'Do you like me?'

'Am I going to make a massive fool of myself if I ask and you say no?'

'What do you really want?'

Some of those questions were answered when she got up from her chair and came and settled herself on my lap. I chuckled as she put her arm around my neck and drew me in for a kiss.

"I amuse you, Daniel?"

"I can assure you that I am simply grateful that you didn't make me ask."

Her lips were warm and pliant. My arm slid around her waist, and I rested my hand on her ample hip. It was hard to tell for sure, but I was almost certain that she wasn't wearing any underwear. This idea in itself was enough to dial up my libido and I knew she was aware of my erection pressing into her thigh. Our tongues slipped together, and she nibbled on my lip.

Abruptly she stood up and pulled me to my feet. She was a lot stronger than she looked - and somehow heavier. Unfortunately, the combination of alcohol and lust stopped me from fully registering this fact. Besides, she was unbuttoning her blouse, and the view was spectacular. Perfectly shaped breasts confined by the most delicate lace brassiere and underneath the dark circles of her areolae. I reached a hand in to caress the bare skin of her waist, and she shuddered.

"I like a man that doesn't rush things," she murmured and drew me in for another kiss. Then her fingers were unbuttoning my shirt and suddenly we were skin to skin. The sensation was dizzying. I hadn't felt like this with a partner in years, possibly decades.

She discarded her blouse and turned around. The invitation was obvious, and I busied my fingers with the fastening. As she shrugged it from her shoulders, I reached round to take the soft warm weight of a breast in each hand. Her nipples were hard little points between my fingers, and I pinched them gently as she ground her spectacular arse against the hard ridge in my trousers. I leaned forward.

"I don't think you're wearing any underwear, Caroline."

"I thought you said you weren't a policeman?"

"You don't have to be a detective for that."

In reply she lifted the hem of her skirts to reveal a long length of creamy white thigh. I took my hands from her breasts and pushed the fabric up over her lower back to reveal the generous orbs of her buttocks. I quickly undid the button of my trousers and pushed both trousers and my boxer shorts down around my ankles. My cock rested in the valley between her immaculate globes, and she chuckled as she reached round behind her to take my shaft in her cool fingers.

"Caroline..." I murmured as she made little stroking motions around my crown.

"Yes, Daniel?"

Somehow, her throaty southern accent dialled up my need and I found I couldn't speak. She turned her head slightly and husked, "I think you oughta fuck me, Daniel. Bend me over that railing and fill me up with this lovely hot cock of yours."

Which is exactly what I did. She laughed again as I nudged her feet apart and then she arched her back to offer herself to me. There was none of that awkward fumbling where you try to line everything up, instead I eased in at the first attempt, eliciting a gasp from her as I stretched her with my girth.

"Oh! You are a big boy!" she purred and then straightened up, twisting my cock into a new orientation and bringing her head back next to mine. I brushed her dark hair to one side and made love to her long neck while she crooned and gently swayed her hips side to side.

I am quite generously endowed, and I wondered if she wanted to take things a little easier to begin with. It also meant that it brought her breasts back within reach and I took full advantage of that to gently massage them while I continued to kiss her neck. She was starting to breathe deeply, and I felt that it was time for things to become a little more physical. After all I hadn't yet withdrawn even once. I dropped my hands to take firm hold of her hips and jerked my own forward, driving myself that little bit deeper.

Her answering gasp was very satisfying, and she leaned forward again to rest her forearms on the railing at the edge of the balcony. I thrust myself deep inside her and she let out a groan that reached some primal part of me and I lost the power of rational thought. If there had a been a moon I would have howled at it. My true nature hovered dangerously close to the surface, my shoulders itching with the desire to let my wings unfurl. The change seemed to provoke a corresponding reaction in Caroline. Perhaps she grasped a little of exactly how dangerous I could really be. Some people like to play with fire...

I fucked her hard, great long violent strokes where I pulled almost all the way out and then rammed forward as hard as I could. My head was pounding, my vision seemed to be going black at the edges and some part of me dimly wondered if I might be about to have a heart attack.

My climax arrived to save me, and I roared like some primitive as I emptied gouts of thick hot seed into her. She did something with her internal muscles that almost felt like she was milking me for the maximum yield. I rested my head on her back and took great gulps of air.

Slowly, very slowly, normality leaked back in to leave two half-dressed people still joined in sexual congress on the night shrouded balcony of a London apartment. After a couple of minutes, she chuckled, the vibrations buzzing pleasantly against the side of my head.

~~

Caroline

Saturday

Fuck, but he was good. The mind melting shag at the apartment had completely exceeded my expectations. He didn't look like a sex god. He didn't act like a sex god; but he'd easily make the short list if he ever auditioned. We'd had two more volcanic... encounters in the last week or so. I didn't have the words to describe what we did. 'Fuck' sounded drearily workmanlike for such raw physicality that he made me forget myself completely - and he likewise if I was any judge. Post coitus we'd regain our senses and give each other slightly wary glances as we rearranged the furniture and cleared up the breakages. And then the last time I had lain with my head resting on his chest, empty of thought and wonderfully content and possibly... happy. This curious state of affairs was enough to dissuade me from drinking of his essence, for the moment at least.

To try doing something other than mindless copulation (although nothing wrong with that, I say), he'd suggested a walk in the local parkland. I mean, yeah, NYC had Central Park but the Royal Parks in London were very different. Only partly managed and dripping with history, all human life was there. He'd laughed when I brought a parasol. He wasn't laughing half an hour later as the sweat started to stick to his shirt. Eventually I took pity on him and invited him to unfurl the travel rug so that we could sit down and take in the stupendous view. We could see clear across the city to where the iconic tower blocks of the Shard and the Gherkin jostled with their more orthodox neighbours.

I cosied up against him to rub shoulders and he hummed contentedly as the tension ramped up between us. Physical contact of the slightest kind seemed to end only one way. We found a slightly more excluded spot.

Ten minutes later I'd already had one stupendous orgasm when he'd pushed me up against a tree and while I looked up to where the sunlight lanced through the leaves, he'd fallen to his knees and lifted my skirts to bury his head in my sex, his agile tongue licking and probing, sucking my stiff little clit into his mouth to nibble it lightly with his teeth until my legs began to buckle, only for his hands to grip my arse and hold me in place. Lord, but he was strong! Not that you'd know it to look at him; all 6'1" of well-tailored, well spoken, mid-level bureaucrat. I loved his accent, precise and cultured, the very epitome of what the outside world thought of as the prototypical Englishman.

And under all that charm was this powerful animalistic man! Now fucking me with short savage thrusts, trying to drive me through the back seat of the car to which we had returned after our woodland tryst. It was fortunate that we were down a quiet side street, but I don't think it would have stopped us if we'd been parked slantwise in the middle of Tower Bridge.

"When you suggested going for a walk in the woods, Daniel," I panted out between thrusts, "I didn't think you meant this."

"How little you know me," he grunted.

And that was true. He'd proved very adroit at deflecting questions about his life, his job or his past. I understood that working for the police could be sensitive but beyond noting that he didn't wear any rings - from which I deduced that he was unmarried - I knew next to nothing about the man other than that he was extraordinarily well versed and well read, able to hold a conversation on seemingly any subject. However, this anonymity led me to look for him on the internet. Unfortunately, his name was not unusual, or not unusual enough to make a positive link. I resorted to the palace's more esoteric sources. He was not a member of the regular police administration or force. Diplomatic protection or counterterrorism perhaps? Whatever the reason, he ghosted through the modern surveillance society leaving nary a trace.

If I was being honest with myself, I found his insubstantiality intriguing, otherwise I would have had my fun and moved on. Instead, I was being reminded of his very real physicality roughly every three-quarters of a second, as he withdrew and then rammed home again. His cock was perfectly proportioned, just a little thicker and a little longer than I was prepared for so that it stretched me in just the right way. Whatever the mechanics, it was making the sparks go off in my head and it had been a long time since any man had done that.

As my climax approached, I briefly pondered the recurring puzzle that an orgasm induced by a partner was so much more powerful than one self-administered. And now the moment was here! I exploded. There was no other word for it. I lost my sense of identity in a blizzard of white light.

When I came to, Daniel was lying across me breathing heavily. I ran the tips of my fingers lightly across his back.

"What are you thinking, Daniel?" I whispered.

"If you'll pardon the vulgarity," he murmured as I chuckled, "you are without doubt the most amazing fuck I've ever had."

I burst out laughing and after a moment he joined me, the car now rocking to a different tempo as we howled and clutched at each other.

It couldn't last, of course.

~~

The Invisible Woman

Daniel

Wednesday

To my surprise, for all that I had known her less than two weeks, Caroline increasingly occupied my thoughts. I thought about her when I was with her, and I thought about her when I wasn't. I mean, it was a just sex thing, wasn't it? Just two people that enjoyed each other's bodies, right? Because beings like me weren't supposed to be vulnerable to the softer emotions. We were hard and cold and ruthless! But, beyond the purely carnal, there was a rightness to the way my hands moulded themselves to her voluptuousness, to a breast, a thigh, a hip. Or the way her hands knew my skin, the interplay of joints and muscles, the ins and the outs. Or the way we spooned together, wriggling to maximise contact, sleepily mumbling badinage and affectionate insults. And occasionally, rather than take my arm, we held hands as we walked along. Like lovers do.

~~

The weather had turned distinctly autumnal. I took shelter from the rain under the modest porch over the door to Caroline's apartment building as the wind gusted and blew newly fallen leaves down the street. I buzzed up to the penthouse. I knew the combination of course but I wouldn't have presumed to be so familiar. To my surprise a man's voice answered.

"Yes?"

Taken aback I stepped away from the intercom and pulled my phone out.

'There's a man in your apartment!'

The text showed as delivered and almost immediately showed as read. I waited for a reply. And I waited. After a minute or two I phoned. It went to voicemail. My detective brain was shaking its metaphorical head sadly and I buzzed the intercom again.

This time the man's voice sounded slightly irritated. "What is it? What do you want?"

I held my ID up to the camera and heard an intake of breath. The door made the gentle 'thunk' sound of the maglock releasing and swung open.

Up at the penthouse I made the acquaintance of Georges Herrault, a French businessman and entrepreneur. He was tall, slim and well-spoken with just enough of an accent to be very appealing.

I showed him a photo of Caroline on my phone.

He whistled. "Never seen her before. And I would remember her! What's all this about?"

A little bit of me broke. The banal reality of a long life was that it was always going to be too good to be true. 'Back on your heads, lads', as the old joke went.

I collected myself. "Have you been here long?"

"No, just flew in today. I've been in Geneva for the last three weeks."

"Does anyone else have access to this apartment?"

"Just the concierge and the cleaning crew."

"Thank you for your time, M'sieu Herrault."

He laughed. "Aren't you going to tell me what this is about?"

I gave him my best don't ask combined with my best you don't want to know, and he put up his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay!"

As he showed me to the door he turned and said, "Seeing as you already know my name and where I live, feel free to drop by when you're off duty."

I thanked him politely, filing that information away under 'possibilities'.

~~

Friday

A couple of days later I tracked her down in one of the seedier parts of the capital. To her credit, she didn't bat an eyelid when I tapped her on the shoulder.

"So, this is where you are," I said.

She simply raised one impeccable eyebrow. "This is where I am, Daniel."

She was now blonde and somehow, subtly different. Was she taller?

"What's the story with Mister Herrault?"

"Who?"

"The man that owns your apartment."

"I never said it was my apartment."

I laughed out loud. "No?"

"I imagine you have to have excellent powers of recall in your line of work."

I searched my memory and to my amazement realised that she had never claimed ownership of the apartment, merely that she lived there.

"Touché," I murmured, and she turned such a blinding smile on me that I reeled in the glare. She ignited something in me. Something that had been dormant for so long I had almost forgotten it existed.

~~

We fell out of the pub and staggered down the darkened street. I was on fire and my cock was so hard it felt like a steel rod. Caroline panted in my ear. Her hair was mussed, and her cheeks were flushed. Another of the buttons on her blouse had come undone and the sight of her deep cleavage as her breasts heaved threatened to undo me completely.

"Down here," she husked, and tugged me into one of the narrow alleys that threaded this area. It was dark and a bit too redolent of the contents of the bins, but as she pulled me into a doorway and fastened her lips on mine, all that ceased to matter. I lifted the hem of her skirt to find that she was wearing stockings and as I explored the firm skin of her arse, I discovered that once again they were the only undergarments she was wearing. Unbelievable! Did she ever wear knickers? Impossibly, my ardour ramped up even further and I cupped her dripping sex as I buried my face in her breasts. She ran her nails down my back, and I convulsed. Taking my head in her hands, she kissed me again, her tongue spearing into my mouth. I freed my cock from my trousers and as usual found her at the first attempt. I buried myself in her and we both groaned. As I fucked her with the customary intensity, she continued to kiss me feverishly. I felt completely unmoored from myself, once again carried away on a tide of lust, all rational thought hostage to the assault on my senses.

In retrospect this should have been sounding alarm bells well before the point where I felt her start to feed. The psychic signature was unmistakable.

"Succubus!" I hissed as I staggered back.

"Oh fuck!" she gasped. Then, embarrassingly, she proved to have better powers of recovery than I did. She exploded out of the doorway and pushed me into the industrial metal bins nearby. My trousers tangled my ankles, and there was a sonorous 'bong' when I hit my head on a bin as I fell over. As I struggled to my feet, I could hear her running footsteps get fainter and then disappear entirely as she left the alley. Cursing my ineptitude I wearily forced my still rigid member back into my pants.

~ ~

Saturday

Of course, the following morning I had to report my humiliation to my Senior and wait for the bollocking that was surely my due. To my surprise, Paul Charlesworth did not administer said bollocking. Instead, he sat back in his chair, steepled his fingers and looked thoughtful for a minute. I sat on tenterhooks, wondering what sentence he might be about to pass down.

Finally, and without looking up, he said, "What do you think, Daniel?"

I had spent a fretful evening writing down all I could remember about Caroline and availed him of the dubious benefit of my assessment. After all, a succubus wandering around London, feeding on what she must have assumed was an easy mark? That wasn't the palace's style at all. So, what was going on? I marshalled my thoughts and offered what was pure gut without a shred of evidence to support it.

"I think the palace has got wind of something, but they don't yet know what, so they're trailing their hooks in the water to see what bites. And if that makes distractions for Enforcement then so much the better."

My Senior beamed. "So now what?"

"Find Caroline," I muttered.

"Caroline?"

I squirmed under his gaze. "The succubus. Caroline Gaston is what she's calling herself."

"To you, perhaps."

He leaned back in his chair and his demeanour softened. "You've been with us quite a while, Daniel. It's good to be reminded that you can't afford to become complacent."

He returned his attention to the papers in front of him. "Carry on, Mister McGill!"

I suppressed the most enormous sigh of relief and retreated in good order to contemplate my next strategy.

~~

Finding her proved less easy. Over the next week I chased the bloody creature all over London, sending my Lessers hither and thither to dens of iniquity, both high and low class. She was remarkably tricksy, giving us the slip time and again. On one occasion I was sure we had her, but she escaped on to the roof and jumped the five metre gap to the next building.

I stood between Walpole and Gladstone at the edge of the roof and peered cautiously over the edge at the four storey drop to the street.

"Fuck," I murmured. "Fancy your chances, Pete?" Walpole was our Action Man.

"In daylight, dry weather and a good idea of what I'm jumping into, I might," he grunted.

"Rather you than me," muttered Gladstone.

My respect for her went up considerably. I grudgingly conceded that she was obviously a seasoned inhabitant of the demi-monde. And fantastic fuck, my groin reminded me.

~~

Monday

Eventually, and quite by chance - not that I was going to admit that in my report - I lucked out on the pavement outside a classy joint on the edge of Kensington Gardens. This much past the equinox it was dark by seven o'clock. Early fog had slowly given way to thunderstorms, and the air was thick and humid. My clothes stuck to me. However, without the streetlights I might never have caught the glint of a vivid green cigarette end with a brilliant gold filter in the gutter. I reached down and touched the tip of a finger to it. It was still warm.

"Got you," I breathed.

I texted my Lessers and loitered outside to make sure she didn't evade me - at least through the front door - until they arrived. I sent Walpole and Pankhurst round to secure the back. Astor took my arm, and the others brought up the rear.

Once inside, Disraeli loitered by the front door and Gladstone covered the stairs while we forged further into the neon gloom. In the event it wasn't hard to find her. She was installed in a booth with another woman and two men. There were two bottles of cheap champagne upended in the ice bucket in the middle of the table, and they all appeared to be very merry. Her female companion clocked me which led me to think they were co-conspirators, and I nudged Astor.

"Yeah, yeah, I see her," Colette murmured, and I felt a little flush of pleasure that I had such an effective team at my back.

Caroline turned and caught my eye. "Well, well, if it ain't Mister Policeman!"

Astor broke into a slow hand clap in admiration of her chutzpah and Caroline gave her a small nod.

One of the men struggled to his feet. He looked a bit glassy-eyed, and I wondered whether my lovely demoness had been having a little snack. Before he could speak, I held up my warrant. His eyes focussed on it, and he paled. Possibly a target for my compatriots on the other side of the Service. Shortly the two women were on their own.

"Are you going to come quietly?" I asked.

"Well, you know I ain't much for fighting, Daniel. My skills lie in other areas." She gave me a sultry look and Colette snorted.

~~

William Street Containment Unit

The two of them regarded me sullenly from the other side of the steel desk. Caroline's companion identified herself as one Sue Wrigley.

I retrieved my warrant card from my jeans and held it up.

"I am arresting you under Section 3 of the Mundane Protection Act 1947. You have the right to remain silent."

"We were hungry!" whined Sue.

I eyed her. "Once the frenzy was on you, you'd have drained them dry. What are your real names?"

They struggled against the compulsion of the antagonist I'd slipped in the coffee they'd been given when they were checked in.

"Elspeth Bathory," mumbled Caroline.

Sue struggled for a few moments before yielding, "Kalika Lestat."

I frowned. "Does your mother know what you're up to?"

"We never get to have any fun," muttered Elspeth.

"Fun?" I said, sternly, "the kind of fun that has me chasing you around London doing damage limitation!"

"Can I sit up?" asked Kalika. "My wings are killing me."

I nodded and retrieved my phone.

"Ooh nooo..." moaned Elspeth. "Mother's gonna kill me!"

"Once you get out of jail, very probably," I agreed as I looked through the list of special contacts.

"How did you know?" Kalika asked.

I sighed ruefully. "You mean apart from when she started to drink from my essence? Alarm bells should have been ringing when the sex was too good."

Elspeth laughed. "You're telling me! I thought I'd never walk straight after that pounding you gave me in the back of the car." She eyed me. "What are you?"

I held my warrant under her nose.

"Demon Third Class," she sighed. "Just my luck."

I snorted. "Oh, come on! You know the risks when you go hunting in the demi-monde. What if I'd been a male of your kind? You'd have been lucky to survive!"

"Wait up! How can you hold us under the Act when you're not a mundane?"

"Because you thought and acted as if I was one. Nice try."

"That's entrapment!" squawked Kalika.

"Nope. She approached me, remember? Not the other way round."

"Then why am I under arrest?" she whined.

"Please," I said. "There are rules but they're a lot looser on our side of the fence."

"You had your fun though," Elspeth said, bitterly.

I paused and grimaced. "I did hope you were genuine. I like you."

Her blonde head came up with a hopeful expression. "Really?"

"Really, really," I smiled and then, unbelievably, the little bitch had another go.

~~

Elspeth

Our powers of ensorcellment fought for dominance and he grinned infuriatingly at me.

Dammit, I was the sex specialist! I orchestrated symphonies of lust, adagio, vivace, andante...

Even without the drug dampening my powers, I had no chance against his sleepy come-to-bed eyes, and he knew it. Now that I knew his true nature, I could imagine being wrapped in the achingly velvet softness of his wings during - or better still - just after sex, drowsing together in a tangle of limbs...

Kalika looked at me in disgust. "Focus, please. You're supposed to be seducing us out of a visit to the cells. These handcuffs aren't any sort of fun."

I threw myself on his mercy. Being a demon, he wasn't overly endowed with God's Grace, but we were all His creatures, so there was an outside chance that he was on the path to Redemption. He was a copper after all.

"House arrest?" I suggested, hopefully. He could visit; make sure I was behaving myself, stay for tea...

Kalika was appalled. "Ellie, he's The Filth! How could you?"

Daniel gave her a sardonic look. "Enchantez, Madame." Then he returned his attention to me, and I gave him my best doe-eyed maiden in distress.

He laughed at me. Bugger him, he laughed, as if I was some neophyte fresh from the hatching grounds.

"You don't give up easily, do you?"

I shrugged. "I am what I am."

Then he sobered and appeared to consider my proposal. Kalika watched him intently, willing him to go along with my idea.

"You'd save yourself a lot of paperwork," I murmured.

"Your mother is a Regent," he mused. "She could enforce the contract."

Enforce it? We'd have to hope she allowed us enough autonomy to feed ourselves. But we would at least be comfortable.

"And I suppose I could drop by from time to time... Make sure you were behaving yourselves."

I blinked. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? I allowed my tail to gently wrap itself around his calf, the tip caressing his thigh. He'd admitted he liked me, and I allowed myself to admit that I liked him in my turn.

He looked down at it. "Behaving yourselves should start before I pass sentence."

"Threesome?" asked Kalika, which was a bit of a turnaround from calling him 'The Filth'.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Well, if it was head you were looking for, you should have said," I answered, skimming the flat of my hand up the bulge in his trousers.

~~

An assignment

Daniel

Friday

On the first Friday of October, on a humid blowy morning, the Senior called me into his office. I stared at the pattern of the carpet. The pattern held a binding that meant I could either stand where I was or retreat, but I couldn't look up until I was given permission to do so. While I waited, I ruminated on the fact that it was exactly four weeks since I first met Elspeth and exactly two weeks since I had discovered who she really was. I had visited the palace once since I had delivered her to their security and outlined the terms of her confinement. And then I lamented the extent to which she occupied my thoughts. A cough from my Senior brought me back to the present.

Demon Second Class Paul Charlesworth was, to mortal eyes, a smartly dressed, well-groomed, middle-aged man with silver hair and mild brown eyes behind steel rimmed glasses. If I allowed myself a little latitude, I could sense his infernal form, not so very different from my own, if slightly more intimidating - and I could be pretty intimidating myself were it not for the Contract.

Paul indicated that I should sit and offered me coffee. I did as I was bid, and my Senior pottered about with cups and jugs like a scene from Yes Minister. Once we were suitably refreshed, Paul put down his cup and leaned forward on his elbows.

"We have received an unusual request, Daniel."

I raised my eyebrows in unspoken query.

"From the Holy See itself."

I failed to conceal my shock and hurriedly closed my mouth with a clap. My Senior took a moment to enjoy my discombobulation before murmuring, "Quite."

"What do they want?" I asked.

"They seek permission to send an Inquisitor to this country to retrieve something that has been stolen."

Now I was really baffled, and Paul chuckled. "Indeed. However, I have been asked to grant this request and to gather any necessary intelligence. Imagine, Daniel, an Inquisitor openly on these shores!"

I looked out of the window to where the wind was shaking the yellowing leaves on the trees on the far side of the memorial gardens. Over the top of the trees the London Eye was visible, sedately revolving little capsules of tourists up through the peak vantage point, 130 metres from the ground. I collected my thoughts.

"Let me guess," I said, "I'm to nursemaid the Glad, even if he doesn't want to be nursemaided?"

"You are correct. If it helps, your budget for this endeavour will be unconstrained."

For the second time in as many minutes my mouth fell open. Unconstrained!

"You may requisition any resources as necessary and your Lessers will be on overtime for the duration. Do you need anything else?"

I boggled. This meant that I was being given an extraordinary length of rope which, in the event of anything less than complete success, would be used to hang me. My Senior sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers as he watched me work through the ramifications. I looked back at him in mild panic, and he pursed his lips.

"This is a great opportunity, Daniel. Do well and you will be mentioned in Dispatches. You are a capable operative, and it is high time you had something to stretch you." His lips quirked. "You are not to use those resources to take Ms Bathory clubbing."

"Clubbing? Under the terms of her parole Ms Bathory is not permitted to even leave the environs of the Regent's palace!"

His gaze sharpened and I swallowed. "Indeed. I am perfectly well acquainted with the facts, D3C McGill."

I dropped my eyes in submission. Then the pressure of his authority eased, and I looked up in surprise. My senior could even be said to be regarding me with an avuncular expression.

"However, that brings me neatly to another issue I am going to task you with. I have been in contact with the Regent, and they have asked for our cooperation in a diplomatic matter. I am inclined to assent."

My surprise must have registered on my face. Cooperate with the Regent? What next, deportment classes with the Shade Council?

"You will accompany Ms Bathory to a function, Daniel. It will be an exercise in intelligence gathering."

His eyes flicked up and down my frame. "You will need to dress to a suitable standard. Here is the address of my tailor. He has been instructed to dress you appropriately. The details are on your desk. That is all."

And with that I was dismissed. As I walked away down the corridor, quietly seething at his put-down of my appearance, I suddenly remembered his comment about Elspeth. He surely didn't think I would compromise myself with a succubus. Or was this one of his not-so-subtle little warnings? We did want intelligence on the goings on inside the palace and the Regent had agreed to let me visit as part of the conditions of Elspeth's parole.

Back at my office I found manila and peach coloured folders sitting on my desk. I picked up the manila folder gingerly and settled into the armchair in front of the fire to read the contents. Inside the cover was a photograph of my opposition, one Matthew Riley. I sighed. He was a poster child for the Inquisition. Tall, broad-shouldered, jet black hair slicked back, piercing blue eyes, and, of course, immaculate tailoring. He looked like an understudy for James Bond; bit of a cross between Pierce Brosnan and George Lazenby.

At sixteen, he'd joined the army on a ten-year stint, and they were sufficiently impressed with him to put him through university. His application to join the Holy See's Guard was rejected in favour of an offer of an induction into the Inquisition. His star was most definitely in the ascendant. He made Inquisitor within six years when the average was more like twelve. He spoke five languages fluently. Latin - of course - his native Gaelic, English, Italian and Greek. I was impressed. I closed the folder, rang for coffee and pastries, and took the peach folder to sit by the window.

Clipped to the inside edge was a photograph of Elspeth and I confess my pulse quickened a little. I told myself sternly that this was to be expected. It was her nature, and I swear I could hear her soft suth'n tones murmuring 'I am what I am'. I smiled and turned my attention to the rest of the contents which consisted of a single sheet of paper.

The mission profile was brief and to the point and, when stripped of bureaucratese, boiled down to:

Collect Elspeth, accompany Elspeth to the reception, deliver Elspeth back to the Regent's care. Do not let Elspeth out of my sight. Harvest such intelligence as deemed important.

Great. I could easily visualise the unwritten 'don't fuck up.'

~~

Elspeth

I dutifully collected a load of laundry and made my way upstairs. Mother had decided that the two of us should perform domestic duties as part of our penance. When Kalika whined, Mother decreed that she serve her time in the scullery. I knew better than to talk back and I was put on to housemaid's duties. The palace was a lot like an old-fashioned country house with upstairs and below stairs and mop caps and nonsense. I strongly believed that Mother liked the whole Downton Abbey vibe - plus it helped to reinforce the hierarchy.

Of course, there was below stairs and Below Stairs. You wouldn't find Mother taking tea in the Drawing Room, no. If you were fortunate/unfortunate enough to be summoned to Her presence then you got to tramp down the Unnamed Stair, as the air grew humid, and the steps became treacherous underfoot. Down where the walls turned from brick to stone and then from stone to obsidian. Down to where the temperature and moisture in the air made it akin to breathing soup, and the vapours stared to interfere with your thought processes. Down to a lake that lay like a black mirror in a cavern that stretched in green gloom far farther than it ought.

Even thinking about it made me shudder. The lift reached the top floor, and I wheeled the trolley out on to the long landing. As I made my way down the corridor my thoughts turned to a certain D3C. I was a fortnight into my sentence and Daniel had visited precisely once, and that only to confirm the terms of my confinement. The bastard. How was I supposed to work my wiles on him if he wasn't here?

My phone pinged and my heart sank as I read the message. Dammit, I'd just been cringing over a visit Below Stairs. There wasn't anything to be done, I could already feel the compulsion tugging on me. With a heavy heart I went back down in the lift and then went through the special doors in the sequence that led me to the top of the flight. I fancied I could smell the sweet rot of the black lake. Already my feet were carrying me into the darkness.

It was impossible to tell how long the descent lasted or how far below ground we were or if, as I had long wondered, we were still on the mortal plane at all. As the eerie green glow of the cavern started to filter up the black glass stair, my apprehension grew and grew, and my insides knotted up. My head swam with the cloying stench, and I struggled to stay alert. Finally, I reached the bottom, and the Black Lake stretched in front of me, not a ripple disturbed the surface. I swayed on my feet.

And then Mother manifested above the surface of the lake, a monstrous half-seen thing with tentacles and eyes and a crushing presence. The following dialogue is the best I can do in rendering an exchange that was not spoken.

"I have a job for you, Elspeth."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I wish you to attend the reception being held at the Chinese Embassy on Friday night. Keep your eyes and ears open. I have arranged with Enforcement for Daniel McGill to accompany you. Report your findings on your return."

"But I'm a sex worker!" I wailed and then shut my mouth with a clap as I realised how it sounded. "Um, I mean, I work sex."

Mother rumbled amusement at my discomfort. "You have a talent for mischief, child. Haven't you ever wanted to put it to better use?"

There was a disturbing twirl of tentacles. "Then there is the matter of your dreams."

How did Mother know about that? I hadn't told anyone. But probably unwise to question my progenitor as to the nature of her intelligence in her own domain. I knew some of the incubi and succubi speculated as to how we could be spawned by such a creature and then targeted at mundane humanity in such a way as to imply intent. Why were most of us - sooner or later - summoned to the shore of the Black Lake, never to be seen again? Who were our Seniors? Where were the intermediate ranks between us and... Her?

"Are you saying they're genuine precognition?"

"DON'T QUESTION ME, CHILD!"

I hurriedly abased myself on the cold glass of the floor. There was lengthy pause.

"I have a duty to nurture talent, even when it is as annoying as you. You have promise. Try not to disappoint me."

And with that I was released to stumble back up the interminable steps to the land of the living. If mundane humanity only knew, they would not query our desire to live on their plane.

~~

The Reception

Saturday

"You have a visitor," announced Kalika.

Her expression was delicious, equal parts resentment and envy. I rose with a smile, thanked her politely and glided past. It might have been my imagination, but I was sure I could hear the sound of grinding teeth.

When I came into the entrance hall, he had his back to me, and I paused to take in the view. Daniel looked astonishing and my devious little heart was quite undone. His broad shoulders filled out the dinner jacket and gave wonderful definition to the narrowing of his waist. The trousers showed off his taut ass to perfection. And the legs? Oh my...

He turned and caught my eye. I scuttled forward. "And who might you be?" I purred.

"The name's Bond, Basildon Bond," he preened.

As well he might. I habitually used a glamour to conceal and alter my appearance, but Daniel didn't have to. The Contract ensured that he looked fully human but enough of his demonic nature remained to give him a slight aura of menace, and the tux just finished the job. He looked so delicious I wanted to take a bite out of him. A little of that desire must have leaked out.

"Something troubling you, Ms Bathory?"

"Jes' thinkin' you's quite the belle of the ball, Daniel," I husked in my best Scarlett O'Hara.

He grinned and offered his arm. As we made our way to the door a Lesser brought me a fur coat for the nights had turned chilly. I had no idea if the fur was genuine or not, but tonight's glamour was that of a redhead with milk white skin, and as his eyes slid sideways to where my copper curls cascaded across my shoulders, I could tell the effect was not lost on Mister D3C.

"You look very lovely," he remarked as we advanced across the threshold to our waiting taxi.

I smiled at him. His compliment was unnecessary, but he offered it anyway. Deception is my middle name, but I fancied his feelings were genuine. For good or ill we liked and respected each other.

~~

The taxi drew up outside the Chinese embassy which was a very grand affair as well it might be in London, the world's major centre for diplomacy. Under the protection of the Contract, simply everyone was here. Diplomats, drug lords, oligarchs, party apparatchiks, royalty, they brought their families, their money, their connections, and their clout, real or imagined. A drunken Qatari princeling had once confided to me that 'there is no better place for your children to learn what kind of world we live in.' And, of course, we were here, the emissaries from - cue fanfare of dissonant brass - Other Dimensions! What might our interest be in this water world with its teeming billions?

And of course, for myself and my brothers and sisters, we would also like to know what we were doing here! It was whispered that we were crafted for intelligence gathering and we faithfully reported our findings back to the palace's administration. Mother was a respected knowledge broker - which was all very fine and dandy - but what for?

Pushing existential questions aside, I took Daniel's arm, and we made our entrance. There was a bit of a stir, but we were hardly the showiest peacocks in the room. We collected glasses of champagne from a bearer and started to work the room.

Two hours in and we were bored out of our skulls. I had had more than a dozen unimportant conversations with people that thought they recognised me. I varied my appearance at these functions. I always looked as if I belonged and a little of my allure helped smooth any unpleasantness. People always wanted glamorous women to enhance their parties and to have guests from the demi-monde, well! I took care not to be the most beautiful, but I added a dash of enigma. Daniel left it me to be the life and soul. He wore a bland expression and nodded politely at the right times.

Then the main attraction walked in and oh my how things perked up! Most everyone's radar came online simultaneously, male and female alike.

Alabaster skin clad in a shoulder-less canary yellow gown, jet black hair tied in a chignon to expose a neck that went on forever, dark eyes downcast in modest pose, she glided into the room as if on rails. The host immediately advanced to greet her, and I could feel another two dozen people that wanted to make more than her acquaintance.

"Wow!" Daniel whispered in my ear, and I nodded. Who was this person? A few discreet enquiries revealed her as Miss Chan, a relative of someone high up in the CCP. She appeared to have no official role which likely made her doubly dangerous. However, she was far too conspicuous to be a spy.

As we watched over the course of an hour, she made contact with all the consequential people in the room. However, the most interesting contact was with a young woman. They did no more than exchange pleasantries, but I felt the intensity in their contact. So did Daniel. He leaned in.

"Do I detect something more than 'Hi, how are you?'"

"You do indeed D3C McGill. They're lit up like Christmas trees."

I kept a watchful eye on Miss Honey Pot Chan as she made the rounds. Over the next hour, the band started to cook it up a bit and the plentiful booze was working its thing. Daniel was finally pulled on to the dance floor as the women got the courage to hit on him. It was funny. They tended to approach crabwise only to cross the last couple of yards in a rush before they lost their nerve.

"Oh, dance with them, Daniel!" I said exasperatedly. "You'll look odd if you refuse them all."

He grimaced and allowed them to cajole him out onto the floor. The thing is that dance is one of the arts that is linked with the devil. It's a little unfair. No-one ever said that Nureyev was in league with the Big Guy (another misconception but we'll get to that another time) but dancing is still considered sinful in parts of the world - generally those parts that consider any sort of fun to be a step on the road to damnation. But to have demonic heritage in any degree is to confer a facility with rhythm. I kept an eye on him, and I allowed myself a small smile.

So engrossed was I on watching him sway elegantly across the floor that it took several seconds for me to register that Miss Chan was no longer with us. She'd made such an entrance that it was a mark of her talent that she could disappear without exciting comment. Now, who else was missing? I scanned the room and didn't note any conspicuous absences as my gaze passed over the dancefloor. Daniel appeared to be engrossed in his partner so I went in search of the pulse of lust that I could feel coming from somewhere nearby. Besides it wouldn't hurt for him to discover that I could still get into mischief!

~~

I let myself out into a corridor that I'd spotted the serving staff using. I could pretend to be in search of the toilets if I was questioned. The corridor proved to be a good choice. As I slipped my heels off and padded quietly along, I could feel the intensity growing, partly because I was getting nearer and partly because the participants were becoming more heated in their passions. It took me no more than a minute to zero in on their likely location. Wondering whether I could make a discreet entry into the room beyond, I dithered outside the door, knowing that I now looked shifty. I walked quickly to the next door down the corridor and let myself into a storeroom. I was in luck; there was a connecting door to the room adjacent. As quietly as I could I opened it a crack and my luck held.

The two young women were locked in a passionate embrace. I grinned and started to film proceedings with my phone. The Chinese girl had pressed her conquest up against the wall on the far side of the room. The young woman's dress was round her waist, her breasts and sex exposed, her head tilted up, eyes closed in ecstasy, her paramour's fingers inside her knickers, her neck kissed up and down. Ooo... this was potent. Was she another from the demi-monde? The official position of the CCP was that such things were confected symbols of western decadence. Their official position...

Whatever, Ms Chan was an expert, administering Sapphic delights with her fingers and tongue. The other girl, whoever she was, was helpless in the face of her ministrations. And now Ms Chan was kissing her way down the other woman's torso until she knelt at the holy of holies. Such a pulse erupted that I fair swooned and I confess I broke protocol and took a tiny sip.

The aggressor stiffened and paused, and I ducked out of sight. I wondered again if she was a Sensitive? Or a player? You didn't have to use powers to seduce human beings, they were, in their delightful little phrase, gagging for it, desperate for some sort of validation in the face of their inevitable demise. Then I could feel she returned to her seduction. Tempted as I was to enjoy their display for a little longer, I checked the footage. Their faces were clear enough at intervals. This could be useful!

I put the phone back into my clutch and exited the storeroom. As I slipped back into the corridor a hand clamped down on my arm, another took my throat; I yelped.

"Where the hell have you been!" hissed the D3C. His face was very close to mine, his expression was... demonic. And scary. And... hot. Fuck.

With what I thought was great presence of mind, I whispered, "Get your fucking hands off me, Daniel, or I'll scream the place down and, might I remind you, we're on foreign soil!"

"Who was she, and who was she with?" he growled, the sound making my insides quake.

He was a creature from an unforgiving realm and even damped down by the Contract, his aura was frankly terrifying. However, I had survived more than a century here and I had a few tricks of my own. One of which is never let them see you're terrified. Even though what I was feeling was equal mixtures of (im)mortal dread and erotic charge. Fuck, but he was beautiful.

"I don't know and take - your - fucking - hand - off - my - throat!"

Some of the wildness left his eyes and he took a shuddering gasp.

~~

Daniel

I was rather enjoying being partnered on the dancefloor by a succession of seemingly eager women when I looked up to catch the eye of my probationer.

Who was missing.

I took advantage of a couple of rapid twirls to satisfy myself that she wasn't in the room and then abruptly left my disconcerted partner as I went in search of my runaway. Part of me did admit that it was very James Bond. The other part thought it might be in the mood to demonstrate why Enforcement merited the name.

There were nearly a dozen doors to the ballroom, and I had no clue which one she might have used. I took a moment to calm my breathing and think about the most likely choice. It wouldn't be the one to the toilets, and it wouldn't be the ones the serving staff were using. She was on this side of the room so it would probably be one within a short walk. If she'd had to walk any further, I'd have seen her. She could use glamour to change her appearance, but she couldn't deploy obfuscation the way I could. I chose the nearest only to discover it was some kind of cupboard. Gritting my teeth I did not slam the door to splinters as I dearly wanted to, instead calmly walking to the next which led to a deserted corridor.

I let myself through and closed the door behind me. I listened intently and heard a moan; it was faint but unmistakeable. (I have exceptionally good hearing.) Where there were moans there would likely be parole violators. A moment or two after that a door opened and being unobserved, I blurred down the corridor to find Ms Bathory backing out of it.

After we'd had an initial exchange of views and I'd had a few seconds to calm down, I looked her hard in the eye.

"What the fuck is this about?"

She squirmed and wouldn't look at me straight. "I am tasked with gathering information."

"Credit me with some intelligence, madam."

Despite being in my iron grasp, I could feel her vibrate with frustration.

"Then credit me with some of my own, Daniel! I was not apprised of the mission parameters. This is a fishing expedition in its purest form!"

I relaxed my grip. "And?"

She frowned and I confess my involuntary response was to smile. It was a one-eighty from my previous passion, and it was like the water behind a dam being spirited away. I was momentarily dizzy at the change she was able to effect in me. She was a succubus, and I was supposed to be immune to her allure, but I felt that something more fundamental was going on. Something that spoke to a more essential aspect, something down at the core, down at the Planck Length.

"I saw the Girl in Yellow seducing the young woman we saw earlier. She might be a player."

I shook myself. "A player?"

"One of us."

"The CCP are deploying supernatural agents? That's against their entire worldview!"

"Freelancers, I don't know. Power is power, Daniel. Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to turn it." Her eyes were a brutal stone grey.

"To place it," I corrected, and then I considered for a moment. "What say we split this joint?"

However, nothing afterwards happened to inform the events Elspeth had witnessed.

~~

Glad All Over

Complications

Daniel

Monday

The Monday after my debrief to my Senior, Inquisitor Matthew Riley presented himself to Reception. I sent Pankhurst down to get him. Out of all my Lessers, she was the least confrontational looking. I don't mean that the others actively glowered, well, perhaps Walpole did. Art (Gladstone) and Will (Disraeli) had default expressions that had been known to start fights in pubs. Astor had a penetrating stare that tended to make people uncomfortable. Pitt was the one I sent when I needed somebody younger. Younger? Get it? Oh, never mind.

Ten minutes later she showed him in and rolled her eyes at me behind his back. The Glad let himself down into the chair on the other side of my desk and sat exceedingly straight. He was very much off his patch and very much on mine. Officially I was obliged to offer him every courtesy. And I would. But it was bloody hard to be polite to a man who would banish - or worse - dispel me or any of my Lessers with extreme prejudice if the opportunity presented itself.

"How may I assist you Inquisitor?" I asked.

He shifted in his seat. To accept aid from my kind was a big step on the road to damnation as far as he was concerned. It's in my nature that I took a little malign pleasure in his discomfort.

"I have been tasked with retrieving a relic," he said, stiffly.

A relic? As in a holy relic? I kept my expression neutral. "And my role in all this would be?"

"We have been given to understand that it is being held in an Evangelical retreat."

I tried not to smile. From the Vatican's perspective this was little different from the Satanist temples that had sprung up here and there. More importantly the Evangelicals wouldn't accept any instruction from him. In which case why send him and not some secular authority with a suitcase full of cash?

Fanatics, eh?

"Do we know where?"

"Elkmere Castle in Ross-shire."

Bringing it up on a map I pursed my lips. "Well, it's isolated enough I'll give you that. What do you plan to do?"

"Break in, steal the relic and make my way back to Rome on the plane that will be on stand-by at Inverness Airport."

I stared at him. "I see. And what would you have me do?"

"Assist me."

~~

Thursday

The next couple of weeks were uncomfortable. He visited the office infrequently, preferring to operate out of the Vatican's embassy in Wimbledon. When he did bother to make contact, he was surly and priggish by turns. As the days went by, I was increasingly baffled as to what he wanted me to do. He kept his plans to himself, simply remarking that he would know more when he was in situ.

I discussed my concerns with my Senior.

"It's his show, Daniel, and therefore you are his monkeys."

"I get that, but he hasn't said a dickie bird about whether he wants us to hold a tea party or drive a clown car."

Paul Charlesworth smiled and said gently, "All in good time, Daniel. Remember Sun Tzu's famous dictum."

I sighed. "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

"Very good."

~~

One day it got to me, and I decided to poke the bear. Just a little. Apropos of nothing I turned to Matthew where he was bent over a sheet of printouts and remarked, "Have you ever noticed how if the Big Guy wants to punish someone, he sends an angel? On that basis would you ever want to see one?"

His jaw tightened. "I was warned that I would be tempted from the Path of Righteousness."

I shrugged. "I have not yet taken you to a high place."

"Vade retro me, Satana!" he hissed.

"Mark 8 verse 33, amongst others. But I'm not Satan. Just an ordinary fiend tryin' to get by the best he can. Now if you're all done being tempted, can we get on?"

I watched him closely as he hauled himself together. If he was going to implode every time he came across something that conflicted with his sacred ideology, then we weren't going to make a great deal of progress in his investigation, whatever it really was. There was the scent of deceit about things. We, um, Infernal creatures are well acquainted with it.

However, things came to an, um, head, shortly after that.

~~

Friday

Matthew Riley was just visible in a pile of limbs and torsos, thrusting and heaving at one another. That they were all male was somehow unsurprising. The bodies shifted and revealed that the Inquisitor was sucking enthusiastically on a stiff and quite large cock even as his nethers were being plowed by another. The room stank of sweat and semen, and they had obviously been at this for a while.

"Inquisitor Riley!" I bellowed into the chorus of grunts and moans.

This title did not go unheard and several of the participants ceased their rutting and looked round at me. I held up my warrant. Eyes focussed on it and then drifted south to where my phone was held up. It wasn't actually recording anything, but they didn't have to know that. Indeed, what they were doing was not illegal, but it would have considerable traction on social media.

Panicky scrambles broke out, and the more publicity averse fled the scene. Many of the remaining had suspiciously glazed expressions even as they continued their endeavours and that included my erstwhile (professional) companion.

With the other, err... members gone, I caught the unmistakeable whiff of a coercive and underneath that the piney scent of a disinhibitor. I sighed and motioned my Lessers forward. They gradually disentangled the remaining dozen or so and waved vials of smelling salts under their noses. Old fashioned but remarkably effective. The dishevelled and the naked shook their heads and looked about themselves. A couple grinned and I made a mental note to have further words with them in a minute. Half a dozen or so had expressions equally divided between shame and disgust. I pitied them. The chemicals used to seduce them had not imposed any of their desires upon them. Therapy was likely needed.

The last group looked almost catatonic. That it included the Inquisitor was interesting. Very interesting. He swayed on his feet, his eyes unseeing, and I gently probed at his defences. To my grim amusement they were absent. I left him to one side for the moment as I tackled the grinners.

They were near identical specimens of ripped gay fantasy and almost certainly hired for the job. Grinner 1 (shaggy blonde hair, blue eyes, above average cock) introduced himself as Marcus. Grinner 2 had brown wavy hair, hazel eyes and an improbable endowment. I looked at the enormous member and adopted a sceptical expression.

"Wanna try?" he smirked.

I shook my head. "Your name?"

"Cindi - with an 'i'," he giggled.

I gave him a long look. In order to maintain a form on this level, we had to allow most of our powers to be... suppressed is not quite the right word. However, I still had a soupçon of my abilities and sufficient supremacy to maintain order.

He blanched and shrank in on himself. "Jonathan," he mumbled, not meeting my eyes.

"Who hired you?"

"Dunno. They just wired us some money and pushed the instructions through the letterbox," said Marcus.

So that was a nonstarter. These two were low level imps, good for mischief and little else. The trouble with the Contract was that every supernatural entity capable of navigating and more importantly, persisting, now considered Britain to be open season. The more junior ones at least, the more powerful ones kept a low profile, wary of attracting the attention of the 'torch and pitchforks' brigade. Thankfully for humanity, the most powerful were unable to manifest outside specially constructed sites without being considerably diminished and therefore vulnerable.

"Dismissed," I said. "Get your clothes and don't come before me again."

Jonathan giggled at the obvious innuendo, and I frowned. Marcus had fractionally more sense and pulled his partner away. Eventually I was left with the Glad. He didn't look very glad in any respect. Haunted was probably the closest. Dressed in a large fluffy dressing gown he sat and stared glassily at nothing. Everything he had believed about himself was in pieces.

I growled deep in my throat and his training kicked in. Abruptly his eyes focused on me.

"And he's back," I said. "Do you know who did this to you?"

"Did this to me?" he repeated.

"Yes. I detected the use of at least three illegal instruments of manipulation on you. Someone must have administered them to you, probably in a drink, so think, Inquisitor Riley, what have you been drinking? What, when and where?"

He jerked slightly and I noted how his hair was so stuck together that it hardly moved. He badly needed a shower but first things first.

"I... I left the office... at..."

"At just after six thirty. I bade you goodbye."

He nodded. He looked up and to the left. If you believed NLP, he was accessing his visual recall, mentally retracing his steps.

"I stopped off at the Superdrug down the street for some ibuprofen."

"Did you take any?"

"Yes. Our work had left me with a bad headache."

"Where are the tablets? Can I see them?"

"They're in my jacket,' he said, and then his expression started to crumble as recent memories resurfaced.

"Eyes on me, Inquisitor," I said, gently. "Where did you go after the chemist?"

"I walked across the bridge to Waterloo to get a taxi to the Embassy."

Embassy? That was illuminating. The formal title was the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See in London. It was in Wimbledon, so no more than a fifteen minute journey. I pulled up a TfL map on my phone.

"Why didn't you order one from the office?"

"I thought a bit of fresh air would help clear my head." Plausible but more likely that he suspected we would have tame drivers on hand.

"Did you get a taxi?"

"Yes, right away... but I don't remember getting out of it."

"Do you remember any landmarks? Any detail of the journey?"

"We drove round the Oval Cricket ground, I know that. The cab driver pointed it out. Then we turned right on to a busy road."

"The Clapham Road, yes," I nodded.

He frowned. "I don't remember much more."

"At some point you would probably have driven across or alongside Clapham Common. Do you remember that?"

He shook his head, and I again registered the reluctance of his hair to move with it.

"Go and get a shower, Matthew. You have been traumatised, and you need both time and counselling. Is there anyone I should contact?"

He flinched violently. The very notion that any of this might get back to his... superiors? Colleagues? Friends?... Family? I realised I knew next to nothing about him beyond his official role.

One of my Lessers, Ali Pankhurst, stepped up to bring him to his feet, while I sat back and thought. That the abduction took place in a taxi - assuming the taxi didn't deliver him to the offices in Parkside - meant that we could get an idea of when and where. If it had dropped him off there it would be political dynamite, but unfortunately out of my jurisdiction.

'Who' would prove to be interesting. The presumed perpetrators of this were the evangelicals. However, the instruments used would require the assistance of someone (or something) from my side of the fence. You might think this odd given the attitude of the Christian faith to their demonic counterparts, but 'the enemy of my enemy' and all that, for there is no more vicious and sustained fighting than that between siblings. Jews, Muslims and Christians are all Abrahamic religions and have fought bloodily and enthusiastically over the centuries. Every fresh schism makes a new set of people to scorn. Witness the Popular Front of Judea. Splitters.

The Inquisitor suddenly turned back towards me. "Wait!" he said, wild eyed as he clutched my arm. I realised he was fearful that I had enacted this little power play to entrap him, "How did you know where I was?"

I adopted what I hoped was a reassuring smile. "Your office phoned, asking for you as you were late for a meeting. I placed a passive tracker on your skin shortly after you arrived - don't worry, it'll decay in a week or two - and it led us here. It took a little while to summon- "

He winced.

"-the troops and uncover the underground levels, but we got here in the end," I finished brightly.

I attempted encouragement. "Take heart, Inquisitor. At least your congress was with your own species."

His eyes became haunted again. Oh dear. Now Inquisitor Riley was imagining - by his standards - even more depraved scenarios. I had intended to be reassuring.

~~

The following day I arranged to meet my Senior to apprise him of events. I exchanged a smile of acknowledgement with Simmons as he exited Paul Charlesworth's office. Nigel looked harried, as well he might. He dealt mainly with the tiny Ifrit community who balanced their paucity in numbers by being an exceptionally quarrelsome bunch. However, D3Cs generally worked alone except for their associated Lessers so I had little idea of the particular burden he might be carrying.

Once inside and after I received permission to advance to the big partner's desk, I settled myself into the seat across from my Senior, and he got straight down to business.

"Well, Mister McGill?"

"The taxi was a plant. There's no record of the hire in any of the registered operators. He was not coerced into getting into the vehicle and the other taxis at the station didn't comment on unusual numbers of unfamiliar drivers."

"That speaks to a level of sophistication," Paul muttered.

"Quite. Anyhow, it appears that the passenger compartment was probably where he was drugged. The pain killers he purchased were clean and he took nothing else between leaving our office and boarding the taxi."

"No fancy umbrellas, eh?" my Senior chuckled.

He referred to the now infamous assassination of Georgi Markov in 1978 for which the British government decided to make an example of the offending Darzhavna Sigurnost by expelling the entire Bulgarian embassy. The Bulgarian government had quickly transited through denial, retaliatory expulsions, back-door diplomacy, sniping in the media and resignation (being the five stages of State grief), before begging to be reinstated, which they were - but not until twelve years later.

I shook my head. "The sex club was hired for the orgy and the staff didn't notice anything unusual in the attendees. We have CCTV footage from the entrance and Mr Riley seems coherent enough as he enters the building. Chasing down the other celebrants shouldn't be difficult. More than half were regulars. Payment for the room hire was in cash. I anticipate blackmail at some stage."

"Hmm. What about the imps?"

"The Regent brushed off our enquiry. I didn't expect them to be involved in any case."

"So, blackmail. Do you want to support the Inquisitor?"

I looked at him in surprise. "It's no concern of ours if the See's asset is compromised."

He chuckled. "Indeed not. But I'd still be interested to know who mounted such a professional operation and why."

"Enquiries are continuing but I think we've gone about as far as we can go."

"So, what should we do with our visitor?"

I shrugged. "We cannot return him broken and we do not have the expertise to mend him. However, I think we may be able to take advantage of our current situation."

His raised eyebrows invited me to continue.

"Ms Bathory is currently serving a sentence for actions that the Regent may have sanctioned and for which we have yet to determine a motive. It occurs to me that we could require a penance."

"Go on."

"Ms Bathory is by her nature skilled in the manipulation of emotions-" Paul's snort of amusement made me redden but I bore on, "and would, I think, be able to effect a repair, in the process creating a potential asset for both ourselves, and the palace."

He nodded and then looked at me sideways. "And you would see her more regularly!"

There was no denying it. "I like her, Paul," I admitted and glanced at my Senior, expecting a rebuke for my informality.

His eyes crinkled and the corner of his mouth ticked up. "All work and no play, Mister McGill! Carry on!"

~~

A Visit to the Palace

A little later the same day, I arrived at the gates to the vast pile that was known colloquially as 'the palace' but more formally as the County Palatine of the Regent i. e. Lady Rosier - or Mother as Elspeth would title her.

The gate swung silently open. I was expected, observed and recognised. Kalika Lestat was waiting in front of the imposing main entrance. She was wearing a pinafore and looked somewhat harried.

"Come on, I haven't got all day!"

I appraised her outfit, and she flushed before turning and darting into the darkness of the porch.

There was a moment of pressure as I passed the threshold, a subliminal message to the fibre of my being that I was now in something else's domain. However, it was fleeting and unthreatening, a bit like passing a 'Private' notice at the entrance to a property you were visiting.

The entrance hall was mostly white marble, vast and imposing - as it was doubtless intended to be. Two staircases flanked the second half of the room, black metal handrails leading up to a galleried landing with the most enormous painting on the walls and ceiling of the upper floor depicting vast numbers of semi-clad figures suffering torment at the hands of poorly imagined imps and devils. Straight ahead, a polished marble floor led to a short flight of steps down into a colonnaded reception. The atmosphere was possessed of a slightly hazy quality that rendered distances hard to judge. Frankly, it was all a bit overblown, designed to intimidate mundanes that dared to venture into the domain of an entity that was not a signatory to the Contract. I was most certainly not a mundane and I disdained such trickery.

I descended into the reception area and loitered near one of the columns while I waited for my grey eyed temptress.

~~

I put my proposal to Elspeth. "So, for an appropriate reduction in your sentence I will require you to rehabilitate the Inquisitor."

She considered me with calculating eyes. "What kind of therapy and how big a reduction?"

"Half of your sentence. The therapy you'll have to decide when you meet him. He'll have to stay here of course."

She laughed. "There's no 'of course' about it! An Inquisitor in the palace? The Regent will never stand for it."

"That's your problem but I put it to you that she might consider it a useful opportunity."

She pursed her lips and nodded. "I can only ask, I suppose."

I beamed at her, and she gave me a mischievous grin in return.

~~

Saturday

When I showed up to the palace with Matthew in tow, we were greeted in the reception hall by Elspeth.

"Why Daniel!" she purred, putting her hand on my arm, "who's this little treasure?"

I sighed. "Inquisitor Riley, Elspeth Bathory. Elspeth, meet Matthew."

She offered her hand and when he took it, to our mutual amazement, he lifted it to his lips. Trooper that she was, she didn't miss a beat.

"Charmed, I'm sure," she murmured. It must have been an effort not to flutter her eyelashes, but I was discovering that Elspeth was a great deal smarter than I had originally assumed.

First rule in my line of work: never assume anything.

~~

"Someone drugged him and seduced him to take part in an entirely male congress, almost certainly with the intention of perverting - don't laugh - his mission."

"Oh my," she chuckled. "Is there any footage?"

I frowned mock sternly, and she looked demure. However, I swore I could feel the tip of her tail stroking the back of my neck. It was an effort to concentrate. She leaned into me. I knew it was the very nature of her kind, but she was very soft, and she smelled amazing. My cock came to attention immediately.

"Leave your poor damaged holy warrior with me," she husked. "I hope you'll visit to discuss progress."

I laughed. She was wonderfully, delightfully, incorrigible. "I will drop by, from time to time, yes."

The tip of that tail abruptly came up between my legs to investigate the hard ridge in my trousers. I discovered that one of my hands was now curled round the gorgeous curve of her arse.

Reluctantly I pushed her away. "I need to go, Elspeth."

She stepped close to me again and her eyes glowed with such intensity that I was taken aback.

"Make sure to visit like you promised, Mister Demon Third Class, make sure you do. You wouldn't want me to get famished around Mr. Riley, would you?"

I turned away and discovered that I was uncharacteristically shaken.

~~

"You're not leaving me here?" he demanded, and I was quite pleased to see that he still had some fire in him. Some men would have been broken by the experience, although having been drugged may have helped.

"You need counselling, and Elspeth is in my not so humble opinion the best in this field."

The succubus looked at me in astonishment, her mouth in an uncharacteristic 'o'. I gave her a faint smile and inclined my head.

~~

Elspeth

In the days that followed, I watched Matthew Riley wander the environs of the Regent's fastness in something of a fugue state. Absently (which was how I deduced his detachment) he confided that to his amazement it often felt uncannily like his mother's kitchen. Women of all stripes bitched and gossiped as they carried out the many mundane tasks necessary for keeping the whole enterprise running. Almost all of them were human and there was a fair sprinkling of men; a tiny few of which were inhuman but far less than he'd expected.

After about a week, I judged that he'd had enough time to start the laborious job of getting him to integrate his personality, and I summoned him to one of the small parlours. I subtly downgraded my appearance. He sat as far away as possible, hunched into a corner of the sofa, glancing at me from time to time, possibly to reassure himself that I had not come any nearer.

I sighed. "Come, Matthew, let us review recent events."

He shied away from confronting the memories that lurked perilously close to the surface.

"You have been given a gift, Matthew. A part of you has been exposed in a way that you cannot deny, and you must accept it or die."

"Die?" he said, incredulously.

"Yes, Matthew Riley, Inquisitor from the Holy See. You will no longer be your true self and that is a death, is it not? To fulfil your purpose requires self-knowledge."

"What is my purpose?" he asked.

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"Yes," he responded, seemingly curious to know what answer I'd give.

Promptly, I responded, "To prosecute injustice," to his obvious astonishment.

"I thought I was doing that already."

"You were following orders."

"I was given instructions, and an objective."

"Sophistry."

He bridled and I smiled.

~~

A few days later, I had been out at another soirée until the small hours. Normally my parole didn't allow me to leave the palace, but Mother was making exceptions in her pursuit of intelligence. It might have helped if she'd given me the slightest inkling of what she was about. The woman that Ms Chan had seduced turned out to be the daughter of the head of security at the Italian embassy. But beyond that nothing.

However, to my great - but concealed - delight, this meant being accompanied once more by Daniel. Given our history, what greater pleasure could there be than to dance the pas de deux with my handsome D3C! A little while later, that wording gave me a qualm. My D3C?

My troubled Inquisitor was in the entrance hall as I came in after midnight. He was having trouble sleeping and he stared at me with an uneasy expression. I was fresh from a night of what I called revelry, and he would have called debauchery. I looked slightly dishevelled and because I was tired, a little of my glamour slipped to reveal me as utterly wanton. His desire surged.

I smiled slightly. "I imagine that will bring you considerable relief, Matthew."

The early hours can be an odd place, private and intimate and I sensed the Inquisitor was experiencing some of the feelings of the confessional. He nodded tightly. For all that I was a succubus, I was still very definitely female.

Once I had gained some of his confidence, he told me that I intrigued him. I looked different every day. No younger than about twenty-five and never older than thirty-five (and never what some called a 'cougar'. His lips twisted at the vulgarity.). Sometimes I was blonde, sometimes brunette and sometimes I was a raven-haired siren but to his eyes I was never more beautiful than when I was a redhead with porcelain skin. I varied from slim - but still curvy - to an opulence that reminded him of Neolithic fertility carvings. And in all this variety I remained ineffably and unmistakably me. It was the eyes, he said, chuckling. Always the same clear grey knowingness.

~~

Daniel

Monday

"Well, well, if it ain't Mr Demon Third Class," drawled Elspeth, languidly. There was something about the way she dragged out the word 'class' that found purchase in my brain, almost as if I should have got better marks at demon training academy. Today she was again like a grown-up version of Merida, a mass of red curls cascading over her shoulders to highlight her viridian green dress. The gown had a daringly deep vee neck notionally tied together with black leather laces. She was obviously braless and everything moved most delightfully.

I chuckled. "You never give up, do you?"

"Ah aiyam what ah aiyam," she whispered in a parody drawl as she dragged her fingernails up my arm. If I changed my perspective just a little, those fingernails might look more like claws and the feeling of her wicked pointed tail probing the crease in my buttocks was more than just my imagination.

I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. "How fares your patient?"

She scowled. "You'd think he'd be a little more accepting of my therapeutic techniques."

"Not got into his pants yet?"

"As if! I even offered to wash him, and he hit me with a 'Madame'. The nerve."

"His vows are an integral part of his personality. To break them would be an anathema. To his way of thinking, the orgy can be discounted because he was manipulated. You, on the other hand are a temptation and we well know what his kind think of that!"

"Would you like him back, since you clearly think you know the way through his defences better than I do?" She tapped her fingers on her forearm and arched her eyebrow.

Oops, it seemed I'd hit a nerve. The sternness of her clear grey gaze caused me to break away momentarily.

"No? Then you should consider that the orgy may have brought a private desire to the surface for Mr. Riley, and-" she paused long enough to look me up and down in a manner that made me feel like meat on a platter, "perhaps you're more his type, Mr. Demon Third Class."

Time to pour oil on troubled waters.

"I said that I thought you were the ablest practitioner in your field. I continue to have every confidence in you."

"Hmph," she snorted but I could tell my flattery had mollified her.

She wouldn't allow herself to believe I was genuine in my admiration. But despite the warning signs, I envied her strength, her intelligence and... her purity.

"It occurs to me that we should engage in combat," I remarked.

"Bedroom?" she asked and struck a slight pose. It was no more than a slight angling of the hips, but it sent my pulse racing, and she gave me an innocent look. Minx.

I exhaled noisily. "Do you play chess?"

"Oh." She looked slightly crestfallen.

~~

Elspeth

Friday

The Glad cast his eyes over the board.

"You're in deep trouble," he observed. "Knight to d7."

I turned to stare at him. "Inquisitor Riley, are you aiding a creature of the Abyss?"

He shrugged. "You are doubtless a spawn of Satan, but I can't stand idly by while you throw away a half decent position."

I turned back to the board and inspected the pieces. "A half decent position, you say?"

"Sure. Your bishops are well placed and your king's reasonably safe. Your queen side pawns are in a bit of a muddle but nothing too serious. You need to attack."

"Why Matthew! You're full of surprises!"

"We studied military tactics in my training," he said shortly.

I played the ingenue. "Goodness! What did they imagine you would be doing?"

He gave me a wry look. "Possibly something like this."

I shuffled to one side and patted the bench. "Show me."

He looked at me. What did he see I wondered? The easiest image to maintain for my mundane interactions was that of the adult child of wealthy parents; no longer an ingenue, just short of 30 perhaps. The sort of woman he might have met at ambassadorial functions, educated, mannered, flawlessly dressed, a lively conversationalist. No doubt his training and devotion screamed at him to summon his tools and his gifts and banish me back to the Abyss.

He sat down on the opposite side of the table. I pouted a little but said nothing.

"What was it you said? Knight..."

"d7. You were thinking Pawn f4 but that's a wasted move. He then does Queen e8 and you're in all sorts of trouble. The knight move threatens mate and he's got to counter that, probably with Rook d8..."

For a little while I thought he might be able to imagine that he was enjoying himself playing against his demonic liaison by proxy. For a little while he could forget about the slick, hot skin, the tongues that licked, the turgid flesh...

I put my hand on his wrist, and he stared at it. "The game, Matthew, the game," I said, gently.

He looked like he was on the verge of tears, and I could feel that he wanted to spill his shame and his forbidden desire in front of me. His eyes were very blue, and I ventured that van Gogh's eyes must have held the same terrible despair. Daniel was trusting me to ensure that the Vatican's foot soldier did not seek the same way out.

Instead, Matthew took a deep breath and visibly steeled himself once more against temptation.

"But you can counter that with Rook d1."

I patted his wrist, leaned back and studied the board.

I felt he was getting there, bit by bit. I just had to be ready for the crisis. He was a dangerous man and who knew what he might do in his desolation? Mother had been very sceptical about allowing the Glad into her domain. What was it she said? 'Don't fuck it up, Elspeth.'

No indeed.

~~

A couple of days later we were on our way to the refectory when we passed a doorway to one of the small parlours. Matthew stopped stock still and I backtracked to see what had caught his attention.

The door was not quite closed and through the crack two of the male house staff were locked in passionate embrace. I sighed and took hold of his elbow and forcibly dragged him away. Sensing the maelstrom of arousal and shame in his head, I pushed him against the wall of the corridor and leaned in close to whisper into his ear.

"Listen to me, Matthew. This will be something you encounter repeatedly and if you do not come to terms with it then you will have to at best find a different career and at worst become a hermit because for good or ill half of your species are male. I have often wondered that the Ten Commandments advise against killing but make no mention of homosexuality. The movies on the other hand happily embrace murder whilst shying away from same-sex fun and games. I think your values are skewed, Matthew, and I think you will make a much more effective operator if you allow yourself to view your impulses as a natural desire to commune with another human being. To many of your kindred it is what is between their ears that matters, not what is between their legs."

His haunted eyes met mine and I could tell he still doubted me.

~~

Histories

Daniel

Friday

In one of my, ahem, supervisory visits to the palace, the three of us took tea in the morning room.

"How long have you been an Enforcement Officer?" the Glad asked.

I looked at him sideways. "Sixty years, give or take."

His eyebrows went up. "Sixty years!"

It suits us to let humanity think we're immortal. The truth is that time ticks more slowly for us here. Something to do with the environment being less stressful. In truth, mundanes would find our plane literally hellish. Human lives in my realm would be as mayflies.

"My application for this plane was conditional on a period of service. Twenty-five years to begin with. At the end of it I stayed on."

"Why?"

It was my turn to look at him in surprise. "Because I enjoyed it."

His expression invited me to continue.

"I was assigned Pitt and Disraeli to help me acclimatise and we got on well."

"I've been meaning to ask you about your... Lessers."

"DPs, officially. Demon Probationers. I can call them Lesser because they are subservient to me in the Hierarchy, just as my Senior, D2C Charlesworth, can address me. What's brought this on, Inquisitor?"

He looked slightly sheepish. "It's in the name. I was too busy being on my high horse and I should have been learning more about you. This country is nothing like what I was expecting."

Elspeth smiled wryly at me. "D3C McGill is not typical."

I must admit I basked in the warmth of her estimation.

"What do you mean?" asked Matthew.

She turned serious. "Not everyone that comes here likes it. There are plenty of Enforcement Officers just biding their time until they've fulfilled their commitment. They wouldn't lift a finger to help you."

"You sound as if you speak from experience!" he chuckled, and she ducked her head in acknowledgment.

"And the Probationers?" he said, returning to his original theme.

"They're here to serve me."

"You wouldn't know it the way they talk to him sometimes," Elspeth murmured.

"I admit I am less dictatorial than some of my peers, but I trust them to do as I ask and to let me know when I'm being a dick."

Matthew chuckled. Then he turned to Elspeth. "How long have you been in the, " he hesitated, "mortal realm?" he asked.

She mocked him. "That's not a question you ask a lady!"

He laughed. "But you're American. They're pretty strict."

Elspeth's expression changed and I sensed the subject made her deeply uncomfortable. The Americans could be said to be 'mob ready' where the demi-monde were concerned. I was on the verge of intervening when she raised her hand, ever so slightly, and I wondered what she was about to reveal.

"I was summoned in 1871 by a group of voudon practitioners in the Louisiana wetlands. The Bayou, they called it. Still water, tall cypress trees and curtains of hanging moss. A liminal place between the land and the sea, a place where the wall between the worlds is thin."

Her eyes were distant.

"If you were summoned, how is it that you are still here?" he asked in puzzlement.

Her face creased as if she was in pain. I frowned at the Glad and put my hand on her wrist. She gave me a crinkled smile.

"I had been summoned but not bound before I was 'rescued' by a party of former Union soldiers. I was able to hide my true nature, and they assumed I was a sacrificial victim. Or at least that's what I think they thought because I didn't understand a word they said, but they were really respectful and treated me with great courtesy - which was the opposite of what I thought I was going to have to do to extricate myself from the situation."

"Why didn't you return to your realm?" asked Matthew.

She and I exchanged glances.

"It's not like opening a door, Inquisitor," I said. "What happened to Ms Bathory was akin to being snatched off the street, driven a long way into the wilds and then dumped. There are no signposts, no roads and no one to ask for help. Not that any of our kind are exactly brimming with the milk of human kindness."

"Indeed," she replied. "The Unionists took me to what's now called New Orleans and there I was 'freed' to wander around and survive the best I could. In the end it was not the worst thing that could have happened to me. There were so many languages in use that it didn't seem odd that I couldn't make myself understood. What I feared the most was coming to the attention of local practitioners, so I kept a very low profile. I had one survival skill, and I used it until I figured out your realm's bizarre barter system."

"Barter system?" Matthew asked, puzzled.

"Money," she said succinctly. "The idea that bits of paper or metal or jewels equate to some notional quantity of something else like food or a room or a horse! Only humans would come up with such a concept. Anyway, I picked up enough patois to get by and then set about getting enough money to get out of New Orleans."

"How did you earn a living?" he asked.

"Weren't you listening, Inquisitor?" She shook her head. Then she smiled at me. "Wondering what else I have in the memory box, Daniel?"

I chuckled. "If anyone could claw their way out of the post Civil War southern states, it would be you. Where did you go next?"

"Upriver to St Louis, where I stayed for ten years while I paid for instruction in deportment and language lessons in English and French. I worked my way up the brothel chain until I ran my own house. Then I cashed it all in and caught the train to Chicago.

Chicago in the 1890s was a hell of a place - pun not intended - teeming with every kind of mortal, and a few others besides. I was wary of encountering anything from the demi-monde. Or mortal witchcraft. Unfortunately, it was flourishing in the immigrant communities, especially those from what is now the Balkans. Mostly they were fakes, but not all. I had some close calls. But by the turn of the century, I was rising up the social strata and gradually away from their clutches. Then in 1910 I had to move again."

"Why?"

"People started to whisper about my failure to age. Believe it or not, Matthew, I am a vain creature."

He snorted.

"I have moved every twenty years or so and reinvented myself, first in New York, then in Paris - until the Nazis showed up." Her expression turned feral. "I had fun with them, especially the SS, I drowned them in their hatred!"

The Glad looked shocked and I quickly moved to defend her. "Elspeth would have viewed a bunch of overconfident invading army officers as easy meat."

She sniffed. "Army officers indeed! The SS were a narcissistic death cult."

Matthew relaxed and Elspeth gave me a molten look from under her lashes before continuing. I watched her mouth move with exquisite precision as she enunciated every syllable clearly, the slightest of smiles ever twitching at her lips. For a few moments I found it hard to concentrate and missed what she said next.

"... by 1950 I was living in Los Angeles. I would have liked to live in London, but I feared the Contract."

"Why?" the Glad asked again.

She smiled. "You're getting a lot of information for free, Matthew. How ever are you going to repay me?"

He blushed furiously and I caught my bottom lip in my teeth. Oh my, did Elspeth have him in thrall?

"Be that as it may, it is kinda liberating to tell my story to the men in my life."

My mouth fell open and I stared at her. Her eyes slid sideways to me, and I comprehended a terrible vulnerability. She pushed her hair behind her ear and blushed as she looked away. I suppressed the urge to round that table and gather her into a hug. The Inquisitor seemed oblivious.

I'd been so intent on her voice (another hazard of listening to a succubus, but I could listen to Elspeth all day) that I'd also failed to register something she had said earlier. Enforcement were duty bound to keep an eye on the palace staff rotation. We'd established that none of the mundanes lived on site, therefore we concluded that everyone that didn't must be one of the Regent's creatures. Some we observed only once. Others hazarded a few missions beyond the palace gates but not to feed. We knew that a mundane contract to work at the palace meant regularly allowing some small amount of your essence to contribute to a communal pool for the demonic inhabitants. To venture off the estate to feed was expressly forbidden - which is why Elspeth and Kalika were in the doghouse.

Due to the prevalence of the succubus in mundane myth we'd long suspected that some, like Elspeth, had either found their way here by accident or been expressly summoned. D2C Charlesworth would be pleased to get confirmation of this happening before the establishment of the Contract. To be sure, I only had Elspeth's word for any of this but from what she'd said I was sure we could substantiate at least some of her movements prior to 1916. Result!

~~

Therapy

Elspeth

Thursday

We were back in the small parlour we had adopted for our therapy sessions. The rain beat against the window, and it looked grey and cold outside. Thankfully, the custodians had built us a nice fire, and the parlour was cosy and warm. We sat side by side on the overstuffed sofa and I pulled my thoughts together.

"Consider the process of creating a sword, Matthew. The raw material is gathered and purified. Then it's shaped and tempered. At each stage it is stressed. Perhaps your superiors were anticipating this very thing when they sent you here. There was no greater test they could subject you to. If you emerged from this ordeal with your faith intact you would become one of their most powerful and effective agents. I think that you are well advanced on that path."

He looked at me sideways. "Are you afraid of me?"

I grimaced. "Fighting is not my forte. I would run from lesser threats than you."

"Show me your true form," he said, matter of factly.

I was genuinely surprised. But then as he sat patiently with his hands in his lap, I took a deep breath and relaxed. "I'll have to undress first. Are you okay with that?"

He nodded shortly.

I stood and locked eyes with him as I slowly ran the zip down on my fuchsia-pink moto-style jacket, the front panel falling away to reveal the decorative lace around the top edge of my camisole and then the white silk below that. I shrugged the jacket off one shoulder and then pushed my chest out slightly as I slipped the other for the jacket to fall round my feet. Matthew's breath hitched and his eyes darkened.

My human form is slimmer than you might expect. It's easier to glamour something bigger, but much harder the other way round. My breasts are a comfortable handful I'm told, and I can go without a bra if I wish - as I was doing now, my nipples tenting the silk. I'll admit right now I was aroused. Stripping for an Inquisitor of the Holy See, who could banish me with his faith and a well-chosen Latin incantation... I was playing with fire, oh yes.

I put my foot on the sofa cushion beside him. He eyed the patent black stiletto. "Take it off," I commanded.

He carefully unfasted the dainty little ankle strap, trying to ignore the fact that my crotch was now perilously close. He just had to lean forward... He didn't, but his hands remained longer on my toned calf and my delicate bare foot than was necessary after the shoe was on the ground. I repeated the exercise with the other shoe but kept my foot on the sofa while I reached behind to the fastening and zip of my houndstooth tweed mini skirt.

Matthew's hands came up to grasp my hips and he drew me down to sit astride him. His eyes looked a little glazed and I knew I didn't have to use anything in my basket of supernatural tricks. I grasped the hem of the camisole and with practised ease I drew it up and over my head. His hands tightened on my hips, and I giggled at his expression.

"I gotta stand up, Matthew."

He nodded but for some reason seemed reluctant to let me go. I peeled his fingers from my skin and backed off his lap. Tempting as it was, I decided that the poor man did not deserve to have me turn my back on him so that I could bend from the waist to remove my thong. Instead, I ducked and quickly skimmed the thong down my legs. And on rising, suddenly a little shy, I stood before him in the classic Botticelli Birth of Venus pose with one arm across my breasts and my other hand dipping to cover my sex.

"I had no idea," he said faintly.

"About what, Matthew?"

"How beautiful you are."

I chuckled. "I hope you don't change your mind!" And with that I started my transformation.

There was the slightly peculiar sensation of my wings unfurling as if they were some kind of eldritch parachute. They're like those of a bat with near transparent membranes between the bony protrusions. Sharp ebony winding from the back of my skull heralded the arrival of my horns. My bones are black too, so my skin is shadowed wherever they are near to the surface, my cheekbones, my clavicles, my ribs. My nails are usually long, so it wasn't much of a change for them to narrow to points. While all this was going on, my tail wound down from the base of my spine and I lay back into the chaise.

His eyes feasted on my nakedness, and I could feel the lust gathering in the pit of his stomach.

He stood. "May I?" he asked.

I nodded and he proceeded to walk round and run his hands across the membrane of my wings. He absently batted away the tip of my tail as it quested up his thigh.

"Has a mind of its own, that one," I murmured, and he chuckled.

Finally, he leaned forward and ran the tips of his fingers up the smooth curves of one of my horns. I shuddered; the horns are a major erogenous zone for my kind. Then, like a dominant male, he grasped one to gently tilt my face up to him and he peered intently into my eyes.

"It's still you, isn't it? You change your form, but your eyes are always the same."

I reached up to cup his cheek. "It's still me in here, Matthew. Still me."

His face changed as he realised how vulnerable I was. For all the weapons at my disposal I was as frail as the next.

I smiled sadly at him, then patted the chaise beside me. "Come and sit."

He dutifully parked himself beside me and I took his hand. I circled the tips of my claws lightly on his palm and I heard his breathing hitch. Then I took his hand and placed it on my thigh. His hand trembled and I pressed it firmly into my skin.

"You're warm," he murmured.

I chuckled. "I think the word you're looking for is, hot.'

"Yes," he admitted. His gaze slid up to my boobs and I stuck my chest out provocatively.

He shook his head. "You don't have to do that, you know. You're already quite the temptress."

"Then how is it you're not all over me, Matthew!"

"I don't know," he admitted.

I confess a note of irritation crept into my voice. "Matthew, you want this. I can feel your desire singing in your veins! What is the problem?"

"I mistrust my feelings," he admitted. "You are what you are, as you are fond of saying."

I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes and held his gaze steadily. "Then know this, Matthew Riley, Inquisitor of the Holy See, I give my solemn word I will never try to beguile you. I am trying to heal you and by that, I mean that I am trying to get you to abandon your belief that you are fixed and unchanging, for the only constant in life is change. The river flows, Matthew."

"What do you mean?"

"Have you not heard the saying that you cannot step in the same river twice? The river flows and changes but it is still the river."

His eyes were big and dark and serious. And then with the tiniest relaxation of his shoulders I thought I might have a toe in the door. I took his hand from my thigh and curved it around my breast. Slowly, tentatively, his thumb moved to graze my nipple.

"I've got two boobs, Matthew," I reminded him and wonder of wonders, he moved his hand to my other breast and bent his head to roll my nipple gently between his teeth. I breathed a sigh of relief and ran my fingers through his hair before tilting his face up to mine. "I think you should take your clothes off, Matthew. Unless you want me to do it for you."

He bounced to his feet and wrestled himself out of his shirt while I undid the front of his trousers. His erection strained the front of his boxer shorts.

I thought back to when we'd come across two of the staff being intimate in one of the parlours. "Would you like one of the men to join us?"

There was a spike in his lust as he thought about it then he shook his head. "Another time, perhaps."

I drew him to me and my tail shredded his boxer shorts. Then I folded him into my wings. Enclosed in the warm intimacy, he kissed my skin feverishly. He was rushing it and I pulled him into a hug, stroking his back and quieting his ardour. Once he'd calmed down a bit I pushed him south. He got the message quite quickly and kissed his way from the bowl of my throat, between my breasts and across my belly. Then his tongue slithered in between my lower lips, and I let out a contented sigh.

He turned out to be quite good at pleasuring a woman and I wondered where he had picked up the experience. From what Daniel had told me, it had seemed a monkish existence in the Gladius Novum but Matthew was quite competent. He penetrated me with first one, then two, and finally three fingers as he swiped his tongue over my clit. He could have fisted me, and I wouldn't have objected, but he brought me to my peak before I could suggest it.

I brought him back up to kiss me and thought it was about time he fucked me properly. I took hold of his shaft and stroked it up and down between my labia to lubricate it. Matthew was starting to go a little cross-eyed with all the stimulation and he buried his cock into my cunt with what looked like profound relief.

A little later I teased his back passage with the tip of my tail, and he opened his legs in invitation. I was proved correct, his pleasure intensifying as I penetrated him, coordinating the muscular caress of my cunt with the rhythmic pulse of my probing tail. Remarkably, he was still able to think on some level.

"Why aren't you feeding?" he gasped.

I ran my claws lightly down his back, enjoying the way he arched and groaned. I licked his earlobe. "That would be a violation, Matthew."

He laughed even as he moaned. "A hellspawn with principles! Whatever next? I may have to adjust my worldview."

I smiled and kissed him. He was starting to get the picture. Then something truly extraordinary happened. He leaned back to look me full in the face and ran his thumb over my lips before reaching up to lightly grasp one of my horns. Then he whispered words that I could not have imagined would ever leave his lips.

"What if I asked you to?"

I stared at him wide eyed. He smiled faintly and nodded. He bared his metaphysical throat to me, and I sank my metaphysical teeth into it. Before, we had - by my standards- been dallying. Now we tore at one another in an animalistic frenzy. I rolled him on to his back and rode him while he mauled my breasts, tugging and pinching my nipples. His face was wild. We were fucking, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and it was one of the most intense experiences of my long life.

He pushed me off - which was no mean feat - and ordered me to my hand and knees. I scrambled to obey and reached behind my ass to hold my sex open for him. He sank into me and reached forward to use my horns as leverage. My lubrication ran down my thighs as he rammed me again and again to the liquid sounds of uninhibited carnal lust.

My consumption of his essence served to heighten my pleasure to the point of losing myself entirely and I had to restrain myself from simply sucking him dry, but the side effect of my feeding was to extend his endurance until finally, with a mighty roar, he emptied himself into me.

Afterwards we lay together in the shelter of my wings.

"I wish Daniel could have been with us," he said, quietly.

I chuckled. "I wondered if you had the hots for our hunky D3C. Well, there's no chance of that while I'm on parole and you two have official business to conduct. But I admit to being curious. What would you like to do with him?"

The Inquisitor went rather pink, and I laughed with delight. "You're embarrassed? After what we've just done?"

He went an even deeper shade of red and buried his face in my neck. "I'm still coming to terms with that side of myself."

I stroked his hair. "I know you are, Matthew, I know you are."

"You're still sort of female- "

I sat up. "Sort of female? Sort of female! I am the epitome of femininity!" I jabbed him in the chest with the tip of my tail. "There are women who would kill for my tits and arse, let alone my stellar sex appeal! 'Sort of female' indeed!"

He laughed and kissed my tail. "Yes, well, old Matthew wouldn't have had sex with a mundane woman, let alone carnal congress with an admittedly principled hellspawn with the most amazing tits and arse and tail! But Daniel?" He shuddered but in a hedonistic way. "He's so intense."

I chuckled, "Yes, your liaison is quite the dish."

He bent a quizzical eye on me. "Oh no, Elspeth. I think he is entirely your creature."

It was my turn to shudder.

~~

Back in the comfort of my own bed I settled down to sleep, but I couldn't relax. Something was happening inside me, my pattern was struggling to accommodate the essence I had taken from Matthew. It was like psychic indigestion, and much like regular indigestion, to try and fix it I got up and walked about and then sent for some green tea from the kitchens.

Sitting by the window and sipping the tea as I stared into the dark of the palace gardens, I wondered what was going on. Matthew's essence had some qualitative difference to every other human being I had drunk from. I couldn't put my finger on it until I realised with a start that in more than a hundred and fifty years on this plane, he was the first one to offer. In that moment we had transformed the predator prey relationship into something more like communion. I huffed a brief ironic laugh, I doubted he'd ever had such a profound experience with his god. Maybe the vampires were on to something.

With my new understanding there came some subtle realignment, my qi transforming to a new pattern, a pattern that bizarrely seemed like a better fit than what I had had before. What did this mean?

~~

Transformations

A Revelation

Sunday

Over the following ten days or so, Matthew and I had further... liaisons, but nothing that scaled the heights of that first time. Matthew had had a lot of baggage to clear out. He still hadn't quite plucked up the courage to engage with the male staff, though I could have told him there were more than a few that would have entertained him.

On the Sunday morning there was gentle knock at my door. I opened it find the Inquisitor, bag in hand. I smiled.

"I take it you're leaving, Matthew."

He shrugged. "I still have a mission to complete, and I now feel capable of carrying it out. Delightful as my stay has come to be, I must move on. Has there been any word from the apostolic Nunciature?"

"None." I eyed him. "Are you thinking this might have been an inside job?"

He shifted uncomfortably before finally admitting, "The Inquisition is not universally popular."

I laughed out loud. "You don't say!"

He gave me a look through his lashes, and I grinned. I was going to miss those piercing blue eyes.

"Yep, I think you'll pass muster, Inquisitor!"

He dropped his bag and gathered me into a hug. "Thank you, Elspeth," he whispered.

~~

Afterwards I was in the morning room getting something to eat. I was rather preoccupied with my thoughts and bumped into the back of our head of security who dropped what she'd been carrying and swore mightily.

"Clean that up!"

I put my hands up, "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. I've got a lot on right now."

Karla snarled at me. "Oh yes! Mother's precious one has duties for a change! How lovely!"

I stared at her. There was no love lost between us, it was true, but I wasn't used to this level of vitriol.

"Calm down, it's just a bit of food and drink. I'll have it cleaned up in a jiffy."

"It's what you should be doing instead of swanning around like you own the place!"

"Okay! I said I was sorry. What's brought this on?"

She jabbed a finger in my face. "You don't have to wonder how much time you have left before she takes you back below."

What was she talking about? "Yeah, but the clock's ticking."

Opsec laughed at me. "Stupid creature! She's never taken you back, she can't take you back, you're not one of hers!"

I started to feel like I had a tight steel band around my head. "What do you mean?"

Her features were twisted with sadistic glee. "You're her puppet, little one! Did you never think to question why you were never called below to offer up your essence for Mother? And what are you doing with all the essence you've harvested since you manifested on this plane?"

"I... I..." I stuttered, feeling my identity writhe and twist as she continued to laugh. Then, inside me a hot core of anger ignited, and suddenly I was right there in the moment, visceral and concrete and real. My hand lashed out to grab her by the throat, and in an instant her feet were dangling off the ground as I held her up. Her eyes bulged and her hands pawed ineffectually at mine.

I brought her face next to mine. Her eyes were just the right shade of terrified.

"Tell me, Karla," I hissed, "tell me what you know and maybe I'll let you live. Because if you're saying what I think you're saying, I'm an awful lot more valuable to Mother than you."

I dropped her and her legs gave way to leave her gasping in an untidy heap on the floor. I tapped my foot.

"I'm waiting."

She stared up at me sullenly. "All I know is that you're not one of her spawn. You're not even a succubus."

I snorted. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"Ask her yourself, if you don't believe me."

I turned on my heel and marched off, all righteous indignation outside and nervous uncertainty inside, the spilled food and drink still littering the floor behind me.

~~

Sitting in my room I thought about what she'd said. What if she was right? I racked my brains for anyone of similar generation to me. The oldest one I could think of was Ed Patterson and he dated from sometime around the turn of the Millenium! I'd been at the palace a full twenty years before that. Christ, that was getting on for half a century! (Where did the years go?) And why couldn't I picture anyone other than Mother from that time? I thought of the way the Black Lake clouded everything and shuddered.

I texted Daniel. I was willing to chance being apprehended by one of his colleagues. Karla's information outweighed the risk.

'Can we meet?'

His reply came almost immediately. That was one of the nice things about him. His job meant that his phone was virtually welded to his hand. He was - almost - always available.

'Sure. When?'

'Now'

' ???? sounds serious!'

'Is'

'Rat & Parrot?'

????

'Want me to come and get you?'

'No, I'll risk it'

~~

Twenty nerve wracking minutes later we were sitting across from one another in one of the little booths at one end of the lounge bar. Daniel had bought me a white wine and got himself a pint. He sat back and waited. I fiddled with the stem of my glass and wondered how to say what I wanted to say. In the end I decided simplicity was best.

"I might not be a succubus."

His eyebrows went up. "You certainly felt like one when you took a bite out of me!"

I waggled my head from side to side. "What if there are other creatures whose metabolism depends on the same mechanisms?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know," I said, miserably. "All I know is that the head of security at the palace hates me and told me that I wasn't one of Mother's creatures. When I thought about it, I'm the only other... person - apart from Mother, and she's not really in the palace, either - who's been resident in the place for more than two decades."

If anything, his eyebrows went up even further. "So, no one in the palace predates 2000 except for you?"

I nodded. "I don't know why I never realised. Ed Patterson first appeared around then but I've been there since 1979, and I'm even older than that - as you know."

"If you're not a succubus then why the palace?"

I grimaced. "Haven't you heard the expression, 'any port in a storm'?"

"The 70s were a bit rough as I recall. Winter of Discontent and all that but really?"

"I'd attracted the attention of a powerful practitioner called Célestine D'Orleans. Somehow, she'd found out about the original summoning, and she wondered what had happened to me. She tracked me down in Atlantic City in 1963 and made me the offer you can't refuse."

"Which is what?"

"To become her personal Ghede. Sort of like a succubus but very much their tradition. I'd have been under her complete control. So, I ran. First to NYC but she found me there in '65. I hopped on a plane and flew first to LA and then on to Honolulu. Should'a known better, there are sympathetic practitioners in Hawaii, so it was off to Tokyo. I lasted about six weeks. I couldn't cope with the Japanese, and I started to run out of money. With my remaining funds I managed to hide in Constantinople."

"Istanbul," he said, likely out of habit, and immediately apologised.

I smiled. "I like the old name better. More romantic. Anyhow, it was 10 years before she found me again, I don't know how, but she did, and I plucked up the nerve to fly to England. It took her nearly a year to wrangle a visa, but she got here in late '77. She couldn't pull any funny business with your lot around, but she made sure I knew she was there. I threw myself on Mother's mercy."

"What happened then?"

"As I understand it, she came and tried to buy me from the palace. Then she made the mistake of threatening Mother. She never came back from the Black Lake."

Daniel took a thoughtful pull at his pint. I was telling him a lot about myself almost in the way of a confessional. I was trusting him not to abuse my confidence. It would be to break something that I had come to treasure. He put his glass down.

"Tell me about the Lake."

"You access it via a hidden door, and no, I don't mean some sliding bookcase nonsense!" I said, looking askance at his grin. "You have to go through five normal doors in a particular sequence and then you find yourself at the top of the Stair. The Black Lake is at the foot of the Stair. It's a long way down."

"Is that where Mother lives?"

"It's where she manifests. The atmosphere messes with your mind. It's hard to think clearly. Afterwards it can be hard to remember. Mother tells you things..." I tailed off.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I guess I should stop calling her 'Mother'."

~~

The alcohol and Daniel's steady presence helped ground me and what with that and the conversation turning to more mundane matters I managed to undo the knots of tension that had settled into my shoulders and the base of my tail.

We had another round of drinks and then I felt that I needed to get back. Daniel got his phone out and ordered a taxi and then, gentleman that he was, he accompanied me back to the palace. He should have re-arrested me for parole violation, but he did no such thing. He was trying to be reassuring, bless him, and I felt warm inside.

~~

Tuesday

I came awake with a jolt; shaken by the intensity of the dream I had just had. It was so powerful and so vivid that I was more than half sure it was a vision. Even if it was full of wings. Wings don't work when the air is too thin. My wings are as impressive as all fuck but they couldn't lift me more than a couple of feet off the ground. Good for frightening the living bejesus out of people though!

Heartened by that thought I grabbed the phone from the bedside table and dialled the special number. The other end rang and then there was a moment of harsh static before the connection was made.

"Yesss?" trailed a hollow voice. Mother's aide de camp gave me the shivers. I was damn certain we didn't spawn from the same common ancestor.

"I need to speak to Mother."

"You know wwwwhhhere the Stair isss," it whispered, and I could feel icy fingers caress my wings.

"Dammit, it's important!"

"We are all dammmmned, sissster."

"Don't play games with me, you slimy little toerag!" One of these days I was going to drag the dreadful little homunculus out of its hole and show it who was further up the food chain.

There was the sound of mocking laughter before the character of the sound on the other end took on an altogether more ominous nature.

"Mother, what is Daniel doing with Matthew?" I blurted. There was a lengthy and worrying pause and I kicked myself for not being more respectful.

Eventually there was a sort of sloshing sound and then Mother rumbled, "Demon Third Class McGill? I assume that is whom you mean by Daniel. Are you developing feelings for him, child?"

"No!" I said, a little defiantly. "I've put a lot of time and effort into developing that asset and I don't want it wasted."

There was another rumble. "A Greater Power is starting to manifest. McGill has been tasked with aiding your inquisitor- "

"He's not my inquisitor," I started indignantly before remembering who I was talking to and closing my mouth.

Mother snorted indulgently. "Mister Riley, and his minder might be out of their depth. I think you ought to demonstrate your value to the judicial arm in a more tangible fashion. I am given to understand that his budget for the enterprise is unconstrained. Take what you need."

The line went dead, and I stumbled into the en-suite in a daze. For sure, this was another test. But of what? I was still on parole; I couldn't leave the palace without permission, and I'd taken a huge risk in travelling to meet Daniel at the pub. Some demons didn't care for this realm and would take great pleasure in my imprisonment.

And I couldn't help Daniel and Matthew from the insides of a cell.

I resolved to ask for help.

The first step in the process was working out how to contact Daniel's Senior. This turned out to be no more complicated than a phone call to his office whereupon a Lesser told me to get a letter of introduction and that the D2C would see me at 10am on Thursday. I frowned. That had been very easy. Too easy. Getting the letter of introduction was harder. I faced down the head of Admin when none of her Lessers would touch it and then I was required to meet head of Opsec. Relations were even chillier since the incident in the morning room.

"Since when have the likes of you liaised with Enforcement?" she said, icily.

"It was Mother's suggestion."

She sniffed derisively. "You? You can barely lever yourself out of your pit before noon and now you're wanting to play secret squirrel! Pull the other one? Is it your parole officer you're after? He should be along any day now to check that you've been a good girl."

I wanted to slap her stupid smug face off. "Would you like me to call Mother now?"

She laughed until I got my phone out and ostentatiously started to pick out the numbers on the keypad. Her smile faltered.

"You're not actually..."

I paused and looked at her with my head on one side and my eyebrows raised in question.

~~

Standing outside the entrance to Daniel's place of work, I felt a lot less brave. I should be reclining on some plush velvet while entertaining libidinous individuals, not preparing to embark on a possible rescue mission for a demon who had some kind of hold over me. Or, at least, not the kind of hold that I was prepared to admit, even to myself.

Announcing myself at Reception, I presented the official with the palace's standard letter of introduction. Within a few minutes I was invited to follow an usher to one of the upper floors. She escorted me to an anonymous door off a carpeted corridor and then showed me inside.

The waves of power that radiated off the mild looking individual sitting by the window were tangible and I had to summon my reserves to walk forward. It was like walking against a strong river current. He rose and extended his hand. I regarded it warily and he chuckled.

"I place no compulsion upon you, Ms Bathory. Please, sit. May I offer you some refreshment?"

I nodded, hoping that it might ease the tightness in my throat.

He rose and went to press a button on his desk. Leaning towards the concealed microphone he asked for tea and, with a sideways glance to me, coffee. I took note. This conversation would be recorded.

"And how may Enforcement assist the palace?" he asked.

I looked at him. Describing Mother's formal residence as 'the palace' was very casual. We might have been talking about a car park. His eyes twinkled and I suppressed a small hiss of frustration. I dealt with much more straightforward situations, such as 'how do you like to be fucked, and do you enjoy not being given a choice?'

I swallowed, collected myself and launched into a description of my vision and my fears for Matthew, Daniel and Daniel's Lessers. To my surprise D2C Charlesworth did not interrupt, scoff, or question anything I said, instead listening intently until I stopped talking.

"And you've informed the Regent of this?"

"She said a Greater Power is starting to manifest. It has something to do with what Daniel is doing with Matthew."

His eyebrows went up at my use of first names, but he passed no comment. I fell silent. He steepled his fingers, his brow furrowed, and he seemed deep in thought. Part of me wondered how Daniel handled these meetings. Did he simply sidle out quietly if it looked as if his Senior was in Deep Thought for the long term? I was unable to suppress a snort at the notion of my hunky D3C trying to become one with the wallpaper.

Paul Charlesworth looked up and said abruptly, "What does he see in you?"

I was momentarily nonplussed, then the ridiculous tension got to me, and I boiled over.

"See in me? See in me?" I snapped. "I'll have you know since I was summoned to this plane I have been pursued by Voudon sorcerers, Christian fundamentalists and SS officers, not to mention surviving at least three wars, and learning more than six of your ridiculous languages- "

I stopped suddenly, realising that I was shouting at Daniel's Senior in his own office.

He stared at me, and I stared back. Then he started chuckling and put up his hands, "Peace, peace! Now I know what he sees in you."

I was somewhat mollified. He was still talking.

"In the circumstances you'll need all the help we can give you." He pressed a button on his desk. "Send for Ms Astor and Mister Walpole, please."

~~

The next 24 hours were a frenzy of packing and preparing and frantic driving up the A1. None of the advance party's phones appeared to be getting signal but then they were in the arse end of nowhere, which is a great English idiom for remote, but not a good place for reception. Either that or they were already in trouble. My distress was a worrying novelty, and I tried not to fidget as Pete Walpole cursed obstructions and evaded speed cameras. As the hours rolled by our little convoy of three Range Rovers and three Mercedes people carriers crawled northwards on the map.

Our first refuelling stop was just south of Newcastle. We'd been on the road for nearly six hours, two of which had been spent in getting out of London. A Range Rover is a luxurious car, but we'd still been sitting in one position all that time and we unpeeled ourselves from the leather seats with a chorus of groans.

"Ten minutes!" bawled Pete.

~~

At the Castle

Daniel

On a bitterly cold day on the verge of midwinter, the Inquisitor, my two Lessers and I piled into a dubious and very battered ancient Land Rover that Matthew had acquired from a local farmer. We then endured a journey on single track roads over hills that hosted no trees. From time to time the wind would hurl rain at the car and we would have to stop to wait it out as the wipers were inadequate to the task. Neither my Lessers nor myself had any confidence that the Inquisitor knew where he was going but, as my Senior had observed, this was his circus, and we were his monkeys.

We approached the castle from the western side using a single-track road that a mountain goat would have declined. I clung on to my seat as Matthew swore in Latin and battled with the wheel. I could see one of my Lessers had his eyes closed and the other was doing something that looked suspiciously like praying.

"One thing's for certain," I murmured.

"What's that?" Matthew gritted, as the Land Rover lurched terrifyingly towards the vertical drop on the right.

"No one in their right mind would try this approach."

"Fortunate then that God is on my side."

There was another outbreak of swearing as we rounded a hairpin, and the back end drifted alarmingly.

Ten brown trouser minutes later I was half inclined to believe his claim as we stood beside the car at the bottom of the river valley. I looked back at the slope and couldn't imagine who had made the track or negotiated it as part of their routine.

The icy wind howled around us, and I wished I could bring a little more of my Infernal aspect forward to protect me from the cold. The only bright spot was that it wasn't raining. Yet. Gladstone and Disraeli huddled together and glared accusingly at me for dragging them along on this mad escapade. I couldn't even reassure them that their reward would come in Heaven.

"Now what?" Disraeli asked, dismally.

"Now we have to climb up there," Matthew said cheerfully. "After we've got across the river."

We were fortunate with the river. It must have been quite dry in recent weeks as it was barely more than ten feet wide and sufficiently shallow that it was possible to cross on stepping stones without getting wet feet. However, the wide strips of bare rocks to either side were testament that this must regularly become a churning cataract.

The cliff itself didn't look too bad. There were plenty of hand and foot holds and it was nowhere near vertical. No, the problem was the fifteen foot wall at the top and the observation turrets at the corners. We would never be able to scale the wall without being seen and would have to hope that the Inquisitor was correct in his assumption that the towers wouldn't be manned.

There was a feeling of apprehension gathering in the pit of my stomach. I glanced at my Lessers and knew they felt it too.

"What do you think, lads?" I asked.

Will Disraeli shook his head. "Something."

"Not sure," said Art Gladstone.

The Inquisitor was watching us. "What gives?" he asked.

"In the immortal words of Han Solo, I've got a bad feeling about this."

He grunted.

"Who wants to go first?" I asked.

There are times when the whole enterprise looks to you for leadership. Partly because you're sort of in charge and partly because it's your idea. Now, I was neither in charge nor was it my idea, but I had a certain moral authority and my Lessers were expecting me to put myself in the line of fire. I could have ordered them forward but the cost in goodwill wasn't worth it.

I took off my gloves and put forth a little of my demonic nature. From a certain angle the ends of my fingers might have resembled claws. It did cross my mind that if any mundane was watching then I would find the whole process much harder. However, Matthew was studiously looking away and my Lessers were already in the know.

Cursing my bulky cold weather gear under my breath, I scrambled up the brickwork to the top of the wall. As I poked my head over the top of the parapet my unease intensified. There was no one in sight. If it hadn't been for the incessant howl of the wind, I would have said the silence was eerie, which is not something my kind readily admits to. I motioned my Lessers to follow me and Gladstone brought up a rope so that the Inquisitor could make the ascent.

Once we were all astride the wall, even Matthew felt the strangeness and we had a quick conference about the next best move. Below there was a walled courtyard with two visible doors. In one corner a tower rose to overlook the courtyard. On the opposite side to the tower was a more modern addition to the castle, with rendered walls and conventional pitched roofs. If we made our way down, we would be sitting ducks if the doors were locked.

I looked at the tower. "Barad Dur, anyone?"

"Huh?" said Matthew while Gladstone and Disraeli chuckled.

"So, where do those doors lead to?" I asked.

"I don't know," Matthew replied. "This layout differs from the plans that I had access to."

"Terrific."

From inside his jacket Matthew produced a business-like looking handgun with a long silencer attached. "I'll cover you while you go down and check the doors."

My Lessers exchanged glances, and I snorted. "How about you go down and I cover you?"

"You can't touch this weapon, it's been blessed."

"Give it here," I said and took it from him. It was a tiny bit unfair as I interfered with his thinking for the moment it would have taken for him to react. He stared at the gun in my hands.

"You're not supposed to be able to touch that!"

"Sorry, Inquisitor. Some of what your lot do is just smoke and mirrors. Best not to rely on it, especially when you're on this sceptred isle." I handed it back to him. "Don't assume your special bullets will be any more effective than regular ones, either."

"How did you know about the bullets?"

"Special gun has special bullets, obvs."

Gladstone and Disraeli sniggered.

Before Matthew could escalate, I took hold of the rope and rapidly let myself down to the courtyard. There was a thick layer of sand over the stonework. A training ground, perhaps? Training for what? As lightly as I could I ran to the nearest of the doors and cautiously opened it. A spiral staircase led down into darkness, but it was otherwise silent. Across the courtyard, the other door opened to a corridor, likewise silent. Where was everyone? There was no sign of any of the castle's inhabitants, but my Spidey sense was tingling like mad. I motioned the others down.

Choosing the door to the corridor, we eased ourselves inside. The Inquisitor could move almost as quietly as the rest of us. I had to admit he seemed to have been well trained even if he had come a bit of a cropper in his first venture onto the unholy turf of Brittania. We played dirty. He'd learn. Or not. Once we were inside Will Disraeli closed the door and we were in darkness. If there were windows they were shuttered.

"Torches?" he whispered.

"Red light," I ordered.

He grunted compliance and a red glow did its best to reveal the corridor in front of us.

"Where is everyone?" murmured Gladstone.

"And why does this feel like an 80s dungeon crawl?" asked his creche-mate.

"I've got a bad feeling about this." I whispered.

"You already said that, boss."

"But it's a classic!"

Matthew looked at us in bewilderment.

"Defuse tension with humour, Inquisitor."

The corridor smelled old and dead. However, for something old and dead there was no dust on the flags. There were sconces spaced at regular intervals along the walls but no sign that they'd held anything recently. I turned to my comrades, the red light rendering their faces into unnerving bloody masks in the near darkness.

"This place gives me the creeps. I feel like I prised the dragon's mouth open and walked inside."

My Lessers nodded grimly. "Yes, guv."

The Inquisitor stared at us. "Could you be more specific?"

"There's something here. Something not of this... plane, dimension, whatever, and it's not friendly. And where is everyone? I hear no sound of human activity; I smell no human scent. You're sure this is where the artifact has been taken? And what is the artifact anyway? You've been very close-mouthed about it, Matthew. I think it's time we were allowed to know what we're dealing with."

He hesitated then visibly decided that we should be allowed to know what we were dealing with.

"A Shaligram."

"Fascinating. Care to elaborate?" I bit my words out. I was not happy being sandbagged at this critical juncture.

"It's an ammonite worshipped as an incarnation of Vishnu."

"Vishnu?" I exclaimed incredulously. "These guys are supposed to be Christians!"

Will and Art looked at each. This was above their pay grade. "Just remember the overtime," I murmured.

Matthew looked worried. "I believe the cultists- "

"Cultists?" I interjected, acidly. "Why this just gets better and better. I thought they were supposed to be Anglicans. Pray, go on."

"I believe the cultists wish to bring forth Kalki, the prophesied tenth and final incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu."

"And this is bad how?"

"It appears to be a perversion of the Revelation of St John the Divine. Kalki is destined to appear at the end of the Kali Yuga, the last of the four ages in the cycle of existence. And he comes on a pale horse..."

"Death," I whispered.

Matthew nodded.

Roundabout now you might be wondering what I (as a demon) had to fear from Death. The popular belief was that we couldn't be killed, merely (merely!) dispelled back to whatever foul Pit we had climbed out of. But what's perfectly obvious to any rational observer is that demons and the rest of the inhabitants that comprise the demi monde are simply living, breathing, talking creatures from different planes of reality - the multiverse if you like. We are generally tougher than human beings but a shot to the head or some other great trauma is perfectly effective.

To be dispelled or banished - however you like to phrase it - meant unwinding some of the subtle reconfiguration that allows us to remain on this plane and sends us back to the quote-unquote Infernal Realms. But it's fun in the mundane world! And none of us are particularly keen on being banished, partly because it takes so much time and form filling to get back.

But I digress. Death is one of the things that all societies, all sapients, believe in. But Death comes in many forms. There are artifacts, places, circumstances... where Death can be more than an abstraction; something that might feed off the entropic loss of information as an entity dies and decays. Don't ask me how it works, I'm only a D3C. What I do know is the more complex the entity, the larger the... meal.

"Well, fuck," I said into the silence. "What's the plan?"

"To retrieve the fossil and return it to a secure holding at the Apostolic Nunciature in Wimbledon."

"And this incarnation of Death won't have an opinion on matters?"

"I believe that the artifact is quiescent until the ritual is performed."

"You believe a lot of things, Inquisitor. I hope you have a good track record in being right."

He grimaced and after I nodded at my Lessers we moved on. I was wishing I'd brought the whole crew but had the uneasy feeling that we'd either manage with what we'd got or not at all.

~~

We came to a door.

"Can you feel anyone on the other side?" Matthew whispered.

I raised my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes. "Wait, the mists are aye clearing, are you there, Uncle Arthur, are you there?" My inaccurate Scottish lilt ended on an upward cadence as I raised my arms in supplication.

"What the fuck are you playing at?" asked the baffled Inquisitor and I gave him a dry look.

"I don't know what you've been told about me, but extrasensory perception is not in the toolbox. There's no light coming through the keyhole so either anyone on the other side is asleep or dead."

"Or waiting in ambush," he retorted.

"In which case, our blethering on has alerted them to our presence. Shall we go in?"

He scowled at me while my Lessers chortled.

The door was not locked and inside we found a dormitory for about a dozen inhabitants. It was the first sign that anyone was in residence. They were made of hardy stuff these Evangelicals or cultists or whatever they were; our breath plumed in the frigid air.

Gladstone smoothed the blankets with a hand.

"Cold. No-one here in the last hour or so."

"It's three in the afternoon!" exclaimed Matthew.

"They might have a watch system."

"Good point," I agreed, "but there hasn't been sight or sound or smell of a living thing in this place."

Will Disraeli frowned, and I raised my eyebrows at him in query.

"What about non-living," he murmured.

"We'd smell them for sure!" replied his creche-mate.

"Mm," I said. "Raising ghouls and things is a waste of time but these guys are working a corrupt version of Hinduism. What do they have in the way of non-living servants?"

Matthew shook his head. "I'd bet good money these guys are fanatics, warm blooded and breathing human fanatics. The undead have no use for bunk beds, do they?"

I ran my hands through my hair. "Yes, you're right, Inquisitor. I apologise. This place has us jumping at shadows."

"Right," he said, firmly, "then let's take advantage of their absence to locate the chapel as quickly as possible."

"You said the place had been remodelled?"

"If they're using the chapel for spiritual purposes they wouldn't want to tinker with it."

That sounded fair enough. "Right, lead the way."

We'd come in via one door and there was another at the opposite end of the dormitory. The hinges were well oiled, and it made almost no sound as Matthew unlatched it and pulled it open. The corridor behind was lit by LED strips. There were doors to either side, but Matthew marched to the spiral staircase at the opposite end.

I sent Gladstone ahead as point and summoning a little obfuscation, he slipped silently down the steps and out of sight. A minute or so later he reappeared and motioned us forward. We descended through another level and by my estimation we were either nearly at the ground floor or the floor above that. We emerged into a large hall and finally saw some real windows, not that the grey light filtering through did much to alleviate the gloom of cold stone flags and dark wood.

The Inquisitor grunted with satisfaction. "This is the main reception hall. The chapel should be just over there."

~~

The ammonite

As we opened the doors to the chapel, the temperature dropped still further even as the feeling of dread went up by an order of magnitude. Our gazes were all drawn to the altar, where, set in the centre of a wooden crucifix about forty centimetres in height (that's a whisker under sixteen inches in old money) was the black ribbed ceramic spiral of an ammonite. It radiated chilly malevolence.

"I guess that's what we're after?" I asked.

"Until a month ago it was in secure storage under the Holy See. I have not been told anything more than that it was a matter of great importance that it be returned. I have no intelligence as to its capabilities," Matthew said, tersely.

"Capabilities? Uh huh."

Now I was wondering what the ancient fossil was exactly, and how it related to Vishnu and the whole Death business, and how on earth we were expected to contain it, let alone transport it to the airport, doubtless with howling cultists in hot pursuit. Matthew produced a cloth bag.

"I suggest we cut the arms off the crucifix and then it'll fit in this."

I stared at him. This seemed an inappropriate time to start a comedy routine. "That being?"

"It has been warded against evil."

I put my hand to my forehead. "Which means it'll be about as much use as those magic bullets of yours. It's just a bag, Matthew."

Now I strongly suspected that the main reason for asking for our assistance was that his operational superiors knew that the tools he'd been given would be near useless against any real threat.

There was a bang in the distance.

"Well, fuck," said Will, and I heartily concurred.

"Best we get a move on," Matthew said cheerily, and strode down the nave towards the altar. "Come on," he shouted over his shoulder, but we had a bit of a problem.

Hoarfrost started to rim the altar and the crucifix. A terrible - for want of a better word - hunger emanated from the black spiral, as if it had just noticed us and thought we might be a tasty snack. I joined hands with Art and Will and lent them my compulsion to avoid taking the first step towards the thing. The only time I had ever experienced anything like it was in an encounter with one of the vampire elders that nested in Finchley.

Sensing we weren't following him, Matthew turned and stared at us. "What's wrong?"

"We cannot approach, Inquisitor." I forced out through gritted teeth.

He dithered for a moment and then turned to run to the altar and grasp the corrupt crucifix. The moment he did so, the thing switched its attention away from us and we almost fell on our knees. Matthew stiffened and I knew what he must be feeling but it appeared he had better defences as he bent down and lifted the leg of his trousers. From a sheath on his ankle, he drew a narrow vicious-looking stiletto. The Inquisitor inserted the point of the knife and neatly levered the fossil out of the wood and into the special bag. Abruptly the feeling of dread lessened still further, and we felt able to approach. I was impressed. Perhaps not all his assets were duds.

Then the main doors flew open and men in black robes burst into the chapel. To our mutual astonishment our Inquisitor performed another party trick by raising the crucifix and shouting, "Non transibis!"

Bugger me if it didn't work. The cultists reeled and cried out and covered their eyes.

"I thought he didn't do movie clichés?" muttered Gladstone.

"Forget that shit and find us another way out of here! Preferably one that doesn't involve getting any nearer to what's in that bag than absolutely necessary."

There were doors to either side of the altar and while Matthew did his hero stuff, we ran for the nearest. It turned out to be a sacristy and, more importantly, it had a small window that let out on to a terrace. Despite the restrictions of their clothing my Lessers were wasting no time in forcing themselves through the narrow gap, and I turned to retrieve our Inquisitor. However, as I re-entered the chapel, I realised the cultists had gone quiet and were standing aside to make way for something. Matthew was white in the face.

"You," he whispered.

"Matthew!" came the cheerful reply.

With only a momentary pause, Matthew drew his gun and started firing at the figure in the doorway. The muted thwap, thwap, thwap, of the silenced handgun were broken only by the laughter of the man Matthew was firing at, as he waved away the bullets to ricochet to all corners.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?"

"Vos eicimini!"

"Yet here I am!" and he spread his arms wide.

I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. The other man looked like a Secret Service agent, black tie, white shirt, dark suit, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. The Inquisitor's face was contorted in a snarl.

"Apostata!" he hissed, and I understood. This was a former colleague gone to the Dark Side.

Matthew held the crucifix up and started to chant in Latin. The other man smiled but came no further forward. "You'll have to draw breath at some point, Matthew," he said.

However, something was happening as the Inquisitor bit out the ancient words. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and I wondered whether this was a safe place for a creature of the Abyss, even if he was technically aiding the Inquisitor in his work.

"Matthew," I said, as urgently as I could, "there's a way out. It's time to go."

The newcomer started to back away. The cultists watched with concern as their champion seemed suddenly uncertain. A man unaffected by bullets was wary of a Glad with a crucifix?

"Those are words of power, Matthew. Do you really think you have the strength to- "

Whatever he was about to say was lost in the roar of the column of flame that enveloped him. It lasted no more than five seconds before it winked out leaving me with afterimages. Matthew grabbed my hand and tugged me to the sacristy door. The cultists were fleeing and of the man in the suit and tie, there was no sign.

"Impressive, Matthew, very impressive," I murmured.

"He'll be back," he muttered as we ran to the open window.

"Who is he, Matthew?"

"Originally, he was William Bonneville. I believe he now goes by the name of Bernard Gui."

"What's in a name?" I panted as I hoisted myself onto to the sill, preparatory to letting myself down into the courtyard.

"Vanity. Never read The Name of the Rose?"

Down below, Disraeli and Gladstone were hopping from foot to foot, anxious to be away. I was surprised and pleased at their steadfastness. I landed first and the Inquisitor called, "Catch!" as he lobbed the bag containing the Shaligram towards us.

We all danced away from it as it landed heavily on the flagstones. There was no way any of us was going to go near the thing, never mind catch it. Matthew swore and jumped to the ground and glared at us.

"Hate us later, but let's get out of this place!" I said urgently, certain that the cultists would be regrouping.

~~

Bullets whined past as we flung ourselves across the drawbridge. Frankly, cultists couldn't shoot for shit, but with the volume of lead in the air I thought our chances were vanishingly slim, and then suddenly, impossibly, Elspeth Bathory stood at the top of the slope above where the road turned left from the end of the drawbridge. Today she was blonde and slim, dressed in a lemon mini skirt above which was a shockingly wonderful amount of bare midriff before some kind of crop top under a light jacket. The ensemble was completed by shiny thigh high boots in similarly gaudy lemon yellow. Her hair was wound up on top of her head and she looked - no word of a lie - fucking amazing. The evil long barrelled black sub machine gun rested in the crook of her elbow only completed the picture. It suddenly occurred to me that she was channelling Barbarella, only much, much, better.

"Are you in trouble, Daniel?" she called.

"Fuck, yes!" I screamed.

She waved a hand over her head and two lines of flame lanced in the direction of the castle. The resulting explosions knocked us off our feet but at least the cultists weren't shooting at us anymore.

Dragging ourselves upright we stumbled the last few metres to the ridge and fell down wheezing and gasping, while Elspeth's shock troops trotted past. I rolled over on to my back and gazed up at my rescuer. She regarded me with a slightly pitying expression, then the corner of her mouth quirked up. "Are you trying to look up my skirt, Daniel?"

I did not trust myself to speak.

~~

We trudged away from the continuing sound of fighting at the castle - well, we might have trudged, but Elspeth never trudged anywhere. She'd slung the Heckler & Koch over on to her back and the long barrel rested between the globes of her divine arse. I say divine because I challenge any entity from that side of the fence to better it. The gun rolled gently from side to side as she sashayed along.

"You starin' at mah ass, Daniel?"

Matthew sniggered and I stiffened.

"Absolutely not," I declared in my best Civil Service tones. "I was actually wondering whether you knew how to use that weapon or if it was just to complete your outfit."

"Why, ah declare, ah am offended! As an all-American gal, I'll have you know ah hatched with a firearm in mah hand."

I groaned. "Please talk normally, you're not starring in 'Gone With The Wind'."

She chuckled and I swear that tail coiled affectionately around my upper arm

~~

We discovered that Elspeth and her shock troops - technically my shock troops, as they'd been paid for with my budget (and how the hell had Elspeth managed to get her mitts on that?) - had established a base in a sheltered spot amongst some sand dunes about half a mile back from the castle. I grudgingly admitted that it all looked very professional; and so it should have done, with two of my own Lessers standing to a debased sort of attention outside the command tent. They gave Elspeth ironic salutes as we plodded up and I gave them the side eye.

"Report," I muttered.

"Ms Bathory had a vision, and the D2C gave us permission to act on it," said Pete Walpole, cheerily, for all the world as if we were on a school trip. Break out the cucumber sandwiches and ginger beer while we're at it. Elspeth had her back to me, but it radiated smug satisfaction.

"Paul Charlesworth okayed it?" I said, incredulously.

"He was sweet," Elspeth said, dreamily.

"Gah." I needed to sit down.

Pitt brought over a small table and another camp chair. Elspeth slinked (how did she do that?) into the chair beside me, and we sat in silence for a while. I looked at her in her barely-there outfit while the rest of us looked like we were just back from a polar expedition. She seemed perfectly comfortable, and I recalled our conversation in the Rat & Parrot. If she wasn't a succubus, what was she?

"That's a great outfit, by the way," I offered. "Would you like a jacket?"

"Why, thank you Daniel!" she said with a pleased smile. "One likes to make an impact."

I cast one eye towards Matthew. "Indeed."

She put her fingers on my wrist, and I shivered.

"We've been through a lot together, Daniel. His recovery has been slow and difficult. We have been intimate - don't you tense up at that Mr D3C, you know my methods - and Mother tasked me with developing him as an asset."

I raised my eyebrows. "Have you succeeded?"

"The jury is still out, but I think the groundwork has been laid."

"You mix a fine metaphor, Miss Bathory."

She grinned and I couldn't help but smile back. Hers widened in its turn, and I felt something warm in the pit of my chest. Entities like us weren't often afforded the finer emotions and I wondered if she felt the same. Her eyes softened and she gave my wrist a little squeeze.

"Baby steps, Daniel, baby steps."

Matthew coughed discreetly. He was standing at the entrance to the tent and looking back towards the castle. We got up and went to stand beside him. The castle was out of sight over the dunes, but we could see smoke and hear the crack of small arms fire together with the occasional 'crump' of something heavier. It was going on for longer than I had expected, the cultists must be dug in deep. Then there was the small matter of Bernard Gui, whatever he was.

"Should we be looking to evacuate, given that this artifact needs to be placed in a secure facility back at the Nunciature?"

"All in good time, Inquisitor. We need a bit of a debrief first. We went into this nearly blind. You didn't tell us that these people were cultists, let alone armed cultists. You didn't divulge the nature of the ammonite."

Elspeth startled. "Ammonite?"

"Yes," I said, acidly. "It's a possessed fossil. It threatened to absorb me and the guys."

"Absorb?"

"As in, eat." Disraeli and Gladstone nodded in grim agreement.

"It wanted to eat you!" she chuckled.

The Inquisitor watched this to-and-fro with interest, and I suddenly realised that we were giving him free intelligence. I turned the exchange back to him.

"Would you explain the appearance of Bernard Gui, Inquisitor?"

"Who?" Elspeth asked.

"Matthew's real opposition. From the Dark Side. He was leading the cultists."

"The Man In Black!" she gasped. "I saw him in my dream!"

"Say what now?" I laughed.

"I had a dream, a really vivid dream. I told Mother and she said you might be in trouble. That's when I went to see your boss."

Me and the gang were looking at Elspeth with new respect. She flushed and looked bashful. I tore my gaze away from her and focused again on the Inquisitor.

He looked pensive. "It's a shame that the only witnesses to my use of holy fire are a demon and a bunch of heretical cultists."

"But on the plus side, Inquisitor, you must still be in God's grace to be able to use it!" I said, dryly.

His face brightened. "Hey, yeah!"

Elspeth rolled her eyes and put her hand on Matthew's arm. It rattled me. That was two shocks in a very short time.

Abruptly the noise from the castle subsided and then stopped.

"Surrender?" I said, hopefully.

"Unlikely where Bernard's concerned," Matthew replied.

"Then I return to my original question, Inquisitor. If Bernard Gui can withstand Holy Fire, then what are we dealing with? What is your relationship to him?"

He opened his mouth but before he could speak, there was suddenly the feeling of profound wrongness, as though the very fabric of reality was being torn and debased.

~~

Transformations

The daylight reddened and fluctuated and the shapes of things far away blurred and became indistinct. Elspeth clutched at my arm and judging by the gasps and startled cries I wasn't the only one feeling it. Then it was over, and the world snapped back into alignment like a sheet of rubber.

"What the fuck was that?" rasped Elspeth, rubbing her stomach and scowling.

I had my suspicions and looked at Matthew who had a most unpleasant expression on his face.

"Well, Matthew?"

"I rather think that will have been Bernard. He appears to have learned to Rend The Veil."

"Oh, now I can't wait." I hope I am managing to convey how much sarcasm was dripping off the end of that sentence. By rights it should have been burning a hole in the grass. I wanted to know exactly what we were up against, and I wanted to know now.

The Inquisitor turned to walk back into the tent. I motioned to my Lessers, and we all followed him inside. The others stood against the walls while Matthew, Elspeth and I sat down at the table. Her expression was as stony as my own. We waited for Matthew to start talking.

He put his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands for a moment before sitting back and looking into the middle distance.

"Bernard - or William as he was then - was a classmate when we enrolled with the Inquisition. We were never friends exactly, but we were often thrown together by virtue of being high performers. We respected one another, we served in operations where one or the other of us would be the lead. We grew to trust each other's judgment in critical situations. He was very capable, quick thinking, we saved each other's lives on more than one occasion."

"And then?" Elspeth said.

He sighed heavily. "And then his mother developed one of those awful autoimmune diseases. She died slowly and in agony over the course of a couple of years."

"And all his prayers and faith were to no avail," I said softly.

He nodded. "He disappeared from the Order. There was no intelligence for several years. Then there started to be rumours of a man answering his description interfering with the operations of the Inquisition. There were deaths. He exhibited supernatural abilities. It was feared that he had made an alliance with..." the Inquisitor hesitated.

"With us," I finished for him, and he nodded.

"The Holy See worried that you had found a way to operate outside the Contract."

"And so, you asked for our support. Your master's would then draw conclusions based on the way things went," Elspeth said, bitterly. "What now? Is the enemy of my enemy your friend?"

To his credit he looked ashamed. "I... I have had my prejudices challenged," he admitted.

"I should bloody hope so!" she said, and I beamed at her approvingly. Her eyes slid sideways, and her lips quirked.

I brought the conversation back on track. "Bernard. What do you think he is now?"

"I think he is an avatar for whatever is in that bag."

Our eyes all tracked to the innocuous looking canvas sack where it lay in a corner.

"And what is in that bag?" Elspeth asked.

"It's called a Shaligram," I answered. "But that's just a name for a fossil ammonite worshipped by some branches of Hinduism. I think there's something quite different trapped in it. Perhaps something tried to intrude on to this plane but was seduced by the fractal geometry of the ammonite spiral. I suspect it latched on to the conceptual promise of infinity but all things on this level are constrained by the limiting factor of the Planck Length."

When I stopped speaking, I realised that everyone was staring at me.

"Why Daniel, you have been hiding your light under a bushel," Elspeth murmured, and I flushed. How did she produce that trouser tightening sultry tone?

"Can we destroy it?" Disraeli asked.

"Who knows?" I said. "If we destroy the fossil matrix, we might set it free - whatever it is. You know what it felt like back in the chapel."

He shuddered. "Like facing Dracula."

All eyes tracked back to the bag.

"Wait," Elspeth said. "Where has it been up to now?"

"It was in a secure vault-" Matthew shook his head irritably at Pete Walpole's snort of derision, "-under the Vatican."

"So, what's the plan now?" she said.

He waved a hand at the open tent flap. "The plane is still on stand-by at Inverness Airport."

"And Bernard? You still haven't explained what Rend The Veil is," I reminded him.

"It's a powerful invocation that allows the user to access God's firmament."

"What does that mean when it's at home?" asked Jerry Pitt. I was pleased that my Lessers weren't too deferential. They were still demons after all. They could aspire to my station if they worked at it. And, let's face it, they had, if not Eternity, then a very long time by human standards.

I shrugged. "There are various iterations of reality that are stable. This is one, the Infernal Realms are another. It is assumed that The Great Upstairs is another. There are others that are more or less survivable. Then there are places where the variables are very closely matched. Call them nexi, call them ley lines, call them the Low Roads, call them what you will, but these are all just labels for conditions where there is not very much to tell the difference between this instance of space time and that one. If you know the right 'rituals' - for want of a better word - and have the brute force of will then you can open a doorway."

By now my Lessers were regarding me with varying degrees of awe and even Elspeth looked impressed. I confess her admiration made my heart beat a little faster. The Inquisitor inspected me thoughtfully.

"You know a lot about this."

"It's a hobby," I admitted.

"A hobby?" he said, incredulously.

"The realities of eternal life require that you must find something to occupy your time, Inquisitor."

Matthew looked round at Elspeth and the Lessers who were all nodding agreement and shuddered. Then he turned back to me. "What did you mean by 'more or less survivable'?"

"Some of the stable solutions are survivable for a period: hours, minutes, even as little as a few seconds. Then if you can formulate the next iteration before the bridging reality kills you, then it is possible to travel great distances at pseudo-supraluminal speeds."

Elspeth gave a nervous little laugh, "Pseudo-supraluminal! You are full of surprises, Daniel."

"If that's what Bernard was doing then it might explain the side effects," I surmised.

"So, he and the cultists are gone?" asked Gladstone.

"It would explain why it's all gone quiet back at the castle."

"But we've no idea where they've gone?" Matthew asked.

"They could be literally anywhere - and anywhen - but odds on they've not gone very far. To be able to travel at all requires you to maintain your own integrity in the face of an entire reality trying to make your very substance dance to a different tune."

"You sound as if you know this from experience, Daniel."

I gave him an ironic glance. "What do think the Contract is for?"

His mouth fell open as he started to comprehend the nature of the arrangement between the Powers and the British State. I decided to continue his education.

"There are a unique set of descriptors for sapients. In some way we are our own self-contained reality. We're not native to this plane and so our form needs some... adjustments, to be able to reside here. The more powerful ones of our kind cannot endure the process and must confine themselves to little pockets such as the Regent's Black Lake."

I grinned at my audience. "My personal set of metrics is unique, so I cannot 'meet' an alternative version of myself as I am the only version of me that is permitted."

"And thank goodness for that!" said Elspeth, to the laughter of my Lessers.

I smiled at her, and she smiled back, enjoying my demonstration of why I was a D3C.

"Thank you, Ms Bathory. The personal rigour is what allows passage through those other stable systems. But it is not without cost. Those cultists who went with Bernard will be paying a price. How high a price will depend on the plane he took them through."

Matthew sat silent for a moment or two and then said slowly, "Does that mean that they will be incapacitated for a while?"

"Almost certainly. It will test the sanity of some, and others might not make it at all."

"I had only ever been told of Rend The Veil before now. I did not understand why we did not use it other than we were told that it was against God."

I snorted. "For what it's worth it's also contrary to Section 2 of the Supernatural Powers Act (1974)," I said to general laughter, "but let's not get into that. But if you do ever find a way to access the celestial uplands I'd like to know."

Elspeth put the H&K on the table. "Let's keep it real. It seems to me that the best thing to do is get everyone back here and then hightail it out of here asap. Unless there's a better idea?"

There wasn't a better idea.

~~

The shock troops piled on to the two Mercedes people carriers except for the handful with, thankfully, minor injuries. They went into a couple of stretch Land Rovers that Elspeth had picked up in Inverness. The three Range Rovers I recognised as Enforcement assets: black and bulky with reinforcement.

"On loan from your lot," she remarked, and I again wondered at her influence with the D2C.

~~

I was so tense during the drive to the airport that it was something of an anticlimax when at a small crossroads, a goods van blocked our path. The roads in this remote rural area had high verges and were too narrow to allow us to simply drive around. These guys couldn't be the stooges from the castle because the Low Roads didn't allow that kind of specificity, in which case they had to be different stooges. The convoy screeched to a halt. A line of hired muscle, toting automatic weapons filed round the van.

I mean, machine guns. Did no one have any class these days? Then a man in crimson robes with a bald head appeared. He exuded tangible menace and suddenly our position looked a lot less favourable.

"Take cover!" bellowed Ali Pankhurst needlessly as we all ducked out of sight as best we were able.

"Fuck!" I hissed. "Is this why the Regent had you go to the embassy dos?"

Matthew cut in. "The Chen woman did seduce the daughter of the head of security at the Italian embassy. Was she after intelligence on my assignment?"

"You told him about that?" I said incredulously, staring at Elspeth.

"We couldn't just play chess and fuck all the time," she muttered, defensively.

Ali Pankhurst leaned in. "Focus, we have a situation."

She wasn't wrong. Trouble was our opponents had kettled us efficiently. Between the high verges there was nowhere to go.

A small man dressed in a formal grey blue Zhongshan suit stepped out from behind the supposed sorcerer.

"Surrender the artefact to me and you will not be harmed," he shouted in near perfect English.

"Over my dead body," gritted Matthew.

"Which is exceedingly likely if we can't get out of this mess!" snarled Colette.

"Overtime. Just remember the overtime," Art muttered.

Jerry Pitt looked sideways at him. "In order to remember it you've got to live to claim it."

"I thought your lot couldn't die?" Matthew said, and Colette frowned at him. At this rate it'd be blue on blue.

Art shook his head. "I'm not in any hurry to find out what being dispelled feels like, or why I chose to leave the other place." He paused and then, with his normal 'haven't a care' voice cracking with emotion, "But most of all, I like it here: working for Daniel, with you guys."

Ali punched him on the shoulder. "We've been in worse scrapes, Art; remember when you fleeced that Yakuza bloke at poker."

"I didn't know he was a gangster!"

Pete Walpole looked over his shoulder. "What, the tats and the missing pinky didn't give it away?

"He called me a cheat!"

"I won't repeat what you called him."

"Boys and girls," I cut in. "Mortal peril?"

"Yeah, yeah, guv," they chorused.

The party apparatchik advanced toward the lead people carrier.

"Hand over the artefact and no one needs to get hurt," he repeated.

"And if you believe that, I've got a great deal on some magic beans!" I murmured.

I dithered. There was no one in the people carrier of sufficient authority to take executive decisions. But if I exited the Range Rover then I would be exposing myself to significant risk. I heaved a sigh. These were the breaks.

"Perhaps I can negotiate," I said.

Elspeth put her hand on my arm. "Don't you be thinkin' about no derring-do, Daniel."

Matthew's eyebrows climbed. My Lessers exchanged glances and nodded smugly to one another, seeing our relationship confirmed to their satisfaction.

"Tell the Merc to sit tight and get ready to offer me cover," I said over my shoulder as I opened the passenger door.

The sun had broken through the clouds, but the icy wind ripped my breath away. Briefly entertaining a fantasy to have the British Isles towed about 1,200 miles southwest, I tugged my lapels together.

The opposition were atop a slight rise which put us at an even bigger disadvantage than I had initially realised. I skulked up to the people carrier and the tension inside was palpable. Past the driver, I could see people in the back clutching grenades and one readying a rocket launcher. I made calming gestures.

Squaring my shoulders I loosened the restrictions on my aspect. I couldn't manifest wings and horns, but I could intimidate with the best of them. I did work in Enforcement after all.

I rounded the corner of the van. Red Robe Man's eyes widened, and he spat something in Mandarin. It felt like a punch inside my mind, and then it all went dark.

~~

Elspeth

Daniel was lying prone on the ground beside the van. He wasn't moving and I was suddenly a mix of dread and incandescent rage.

"No! No! NO!" I screamed. I was out of the car at light speed, and I felt my crop top shred as my wings burst from my shoulders. They aren't much good as anything more than a stylish parachute in the thin atmosphere of this plane, but I was off the ground and in the air somehow. The sorcerer's mouth was a round 'o' of surprise. He hadn't been expecting aerial support.

Daniel's Lessers were a smart lot and beyond a few 'gawd blimeys' had taken my unexpected manoeuvre in their stride. Using the distraction, they darted forward and bless 'em, started laying down covering fire. I made a mental note never to piss off Colette Astor; her expression was intense. The sorcerer's goons recovered themselves and started to return fire.

I made a beeline for my enemy and felt him form an incantation of power. I didn't know what he was going to do but he was going to pay for harming my... my... The realisation made me falter and my lapse in concentration cost me dear. The sorcerer shouted something that any noob could have guessed to mean something bad and I was enveloped in white flame. I screamed and, in my agony, I fell to earth. (The symbolism of it made me grimace.) The fire penetrated every part of me, searing its way into each orifice, coating my bones. I writhed and spasmed in the pit I had made on impact.

Then, as eternal excruciating seconds passed, I realised I was not dying. My pattern was fusing my qi with the eldritch flame, and at the same time accommodating the tiny drop of Daniel's essence that I had taken in the alley all those weeks ago. I was changing. I stretched - and stretched - and stretched, shedding my skin, the fire becoming an integral part of me.

I rose on lambent wings, the winter sunshine sparking off my spines and claws. I uttered a primal cry. A sound that shook the belly and muddied the mind. A sound that gave every creature within earshot pause. A sound that made the legs of puissant knights tremble.

I was transcendent. I was one with the sun.

However, when the transcendent moment passed, I looked around to find our aggressors fleeing in panic and our guys staring up at me with their mouths open. Apparently, I was quite intimidating.

Colette (gotta admire the woman's balls) raised a hand to me. "Elspeth?"

I considered the name and found it acceptable. I also thought about landing and realised I was unfamiliar with the kind of flying where the wings were more decorative than functional. She seemed to grasp my uncertainty and quickly cleared the area underneath me. I thought she took rather too much pleasure in slapping some sense into the more awestruck.

Once down, and not as clumsily as I'd feared, I folded my wings across my back and looked around. We had a couple of casualties, but the exchange had been too brief for much more. To my great relief, supported by Jerry Pitt & Pete Walpole, Daniel was making his way over on shaky legs. My heart swelled at the sight of him.

"Fucking idiot," I grunted in a voice that sounded as if it came from the longest pipes on the church organ.

~~

Daniel

Elspeth was quite the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I somehow forgot my infirmity as I made my way to stand by an armoured foreleg. She inspected me with one opalescent eye.

"Oh! You're a girl dragon! I mean you're just reeking of feminine beauty! Does this mean I have to be Donkey?"

There was a rumble that I thought might be laughter.

"Are you an ass? If the boot fits, I guess. Although, from here you look more like Lord Farquad."

It was the most peculiar sensation. She might look like the terrible wyrm and her voice might be two octaves deeper and weirdly melodious, but she was still most definitely Elspeth.

"If I touch you, I'm not going to catch fire, am I?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"Where you touch me."

"Just to be clear, we are flirting, right?"

"Get a room," Ali Pankhurst said in disgust.

"You lot mind your own business," I said over my shoulder.

"Yes, Guv!" they chorused in happy insubordination.

~~

Aftershocks

Later

After all the drama north of the border my debrief with the D2C was a bit of an anti-climax. If I didn't know better, I'd think my Senior was paying me a compliment. Paul Charlesworth seemed to think events had turned out rather well. He ticked things off on his fingers.

"Let's see, Mister McGill. You have headed off the manifestation of a Greater Power, disrupted the plans of its cultists, taught the CCP not to poke its nose in our affairs, established liaisons with the Holy See and the Palace and you are now emotionally involved with a weredrake."

I squirmed. "Well, when you put it like that."

He smiled avuncularly and waved me away. "Carry on, Mister McGill!"

~~

Elspeth

I confronted Mother. "You knew!"

She made a most disturbing movement, the tentacle monster equivalent of a shrug. "A hunch. Nothing more."

"And now?"

"I hope half a century of decent lodgings have bought me some goodwill."

I laughed.

~~

I rested my head on Daniel's shoulder as we watched Matthew's plane leave the runway and climb into the air. His Senior had forgiven the rest of my sentence after the business at the castle. I was still living at the palace but was no longer subservient to the Regent. We'd managed to keep my true nature under wraps for the moment, but rumours were spreading out from the Chinese embassy like ripples on a pond. Enforcement had a dragon! Which wasn't true of course. I was my own creature! However, I thought me and Daniel made a pretty good combo.

"Do you think he'll be back?" I asked.

"We could invite him," he said.

I looked at him. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? "Then it won't be official."

"Everyone needs a holiday," he said, blandly.

There was silence for a bit while we watched his plane disappear from view and then we turned to go. I slipped my hand in his.

"He could stay with us." I said, diffidently.

"Us?"

"Herrault's place is up for sale. I have sufficient capital."

He thought about it for a moment and then gave me an admonishing look. "I assume you came by that money legitimately?"

I put on my best innocent face. "I may have a bit of a predilection for gold."

"The balcony view was exceptional," he conceded.

I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed mine back. Life was good.

~~