Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (27 page)

The Sentinel hung there, heels kicking uselessly at the floor. His eyes bulged in terror, face turning red. Jez glared at him, a snarl on her face.

She could squeeze. She wanted to squeeze. The bones in his neck would crack like a bundle of twigs.

Then she lashed a fist across his face, and the Sentinel dropped in a heap, out cold.

She looked down at the man at her feet. A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. For once, she didn’t flinch.

‘Attagirl, Jez,’ said Malvery, and there was a warmth in his voice that she heard too rarely nowadays. ‘Attagirl.’

Eighteen

The Dark – Diagnosis – The Man In Black – Blame

C
rake felt the dark pressing close at his shoulder. Beyond the light of the electric lamps lay ghosts and dreadful memories. No matter how he tried to shut them out, they whispered at him from the blackness.

He hunched over the tome on his desk, ran his finger across the formulae to fix them in his mind. Then he stood up and took a breath.

There’s nothing behind me.

He turned around. No phantoms waited there. Only his brother, clad in a red silk gown, lying still upon a bench.

The summoning circle was ready. The air was taut with the barely perceptible throb of the resonator masts that surrounded it, throwing out a cage of frequencies that a daemon couldn’t pass through. This time, he was determined that nothing would escape.

He checked his instruments meticulously. An oscillator sat in the centre of the circle: a plain metal hemisphere, wired to a trolley rack outside the circle that held a modulator, a pair of resonator boxes and an oscilloscope. He scanned the array of gauges and dials on their faces, then checked the backup generator was running properly in case the electricity failed. Lying next to the oscillator, attached by wires to the second resonator in the trolley rack, was an iron band about a foot in diameter. He checked it was properly connected.

Lastly he glanced at the echo chamber, the great riveted bathysphere that lurked at the edge of the light. He’d not be needing that, he thought. It would take a lot to make him turn that damned contraption on again.

They’d shut the cellar up after the tragedy, and left his belongings virtually untouched. The law hadn’t been informed. The affairs of the Crakes were kept within the family: Father’s business was too important for scandal. And so Bess’s death was reported as a tragic fall, and the cellar door was locked, and the Shacklemores employed, who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. The servants knew, of course, but no one would take their word over a powerful aristocrat like Rogibald Crake.

For almost three years the wine cellar lay undisturbed. Waiting like some malevolent creature, crouched and patient. Waiting for him.

‘Stop it,’ he said aloud to himself. His voice echoed around the pillars and came back hollow. He wouldn’t bow to terrors of the past. Bess was dead. He’d accepted that. All that remained here were memories.

It had taken him most of the night to prepare. He pored greedily through his old books, intoxicated by them. It was a store of knowledge that he’d thought he’d never lay hands on again. So engrossed was he that for a time he forgot why he was here, and when he remembered, he was ashamed. Once, the Art had been an all-consuming passion, and though he’d turned from it after the tragedy, it drew him back like a moth to a flame.

His preparations complete, he set to work at the dials, searching the frequencies of the aether. His formulae gave him a range to search in. His instincts would do the rest. This wasn’t a particularly tricky summoning, but he’d never attempted it before. Ridiculous of him, really. Of all the many uses a daemon could be put to, he’d never used one to heal.

The doctors were baffled by this strange disease that put people into a coma. But doctors didn’t have the tools he did.

The first stage was the easy part. He’d bring in a daemon to diagnose the patient. Theoretically, once it had had been introduced to Condred, it would provide him with a set of frequencies that would enable him to bring a more powerful daemon to bear, one targeted to the illness. With luck, it would cure whatever ailed his brother.

Daemonist lore had it that the most appalling wounds could be healed this way, and maladies of the brain and nervous system that were beyond medical science. A skilled practitioner might bring somebody back from the brink of death. That, at least, was the rumour, but confirmation was hard to come by in the secretive world of the daemonists.

If only he’d been that skilled, he might have saved Bess. But he could save Condred. Perhaps.

A hum began to build as he moved through the frequencies, probing, searching for a nibble from beyond. There! The needle of one of the high-end gauges jumped. He set about penning the daemon, setting up interference patterns round it so it couldn’t slip away from him. His concentration sharpened with the thrill of the chase. He’d become good at this. No longer did he clumsily fumble about the aether. He was deft and decisive, trammelling his quarry and then shrinking the cage until it had nowhere to run to. After that, he found its primary resonance and pinned it, spearing it with sonics. Then he set about matching its vibrations with those of the visible world, pulling it into phase with what most people called reality.

The familiar sense of paranoia and unease sank into his bones. It was expected: the presence of a daemon unsettled people on a primitive level. But here in the wine cellar where he’d killed his niece, the feeling was particularly sharp. Ghosts gathered in the dark. Sweat trickled through his hair as he fought the urge to look over his shoulder.

She’s not there. There’s nobody there.

The daemon began to take shape inside the summoning circle. It was a wisp, nothing more. A barely conscious thing like a smudge on the eye. It curled and billowed this way and that, but the resonator poles kept it from escaping. Once he was satisfied it was stable, Crake turned to the second resonator, and set about matching the vibration of the iron ring to the daemon. The wisp was pulled, gently at first and then insistently, tugged closer to the object until it was sucked inside and disappeared.

Crake eased off both resonators steadily, keeping the vibrations matched until he was sure the daemon was securely thralled to the iron band. The paranoia receded as he did so. Finally he powered down the resonators and with that, the first summoning was done.

He reached into the circle and picked up the iron band. It looked entirely normal, but his tuned senses detected the daemonic life within.

Well, that had gone well enough. But that was the easy part. He switched round some wires so that the iron band was connected to the oscilloscope and carried it over to where Condred lay. If things went to plan, the daemon in the band would feed back readings to the gauges that he could record.

He looked down at his brother’s face, and was assailed with sudden doubt. Did he really want to do this? Would it be better if Condred never woke, if he was spared the pain of seeing his daughter’s murderer again?

He shook his head angrily at himself. That was cowardice talking. He was merely afraid to face his brother’s justified wrath. He’d save his brother, and face his punishment. It was what a gentleman would do.

He lifted Condred’s head and placed the iron band on his brow. Then he retreated to stand before the trolley rack. The daemon would already be working. Invisible tendrils were spreading through Condred’s body, seeking out illness and corruption.

Crake waited. The only sounds were the soft hum of the resonator and the buzz of the electric lights that stood on poles around him. Beyond that lay the swarming dark of the cellar.

One of the lights crackled and stuttered. It flickered for a moment, stabilised again. Crake glanced over his shoulder and frowned, then returned to the oscilloscope. He should have been getting readings by now. The first hint of doubt crept into his mind. Had he performed the summoning properly? Everything had seemed to go right, but it was always hard to be sure.

The light fluttered again. He scowled at it. What was wrong with the electrics in this place? And why was it so damned cold in here?

When he turned back he saw that the gauges of the oscilloscope had come to life, needles swinging back and forth at random. He watched them with growing concern. Surely some malfunction? He tapped the side of the machine, but the needles kept swinging with no rhythm or sense to them.

Suddenly Condred bucked as if hit by an electric jolt. Crake looked up in alarm. His brother bucked again, his body jerking with the violence of it, and then went still.

Crake’s mouth dried up. No, no, this was wrong! There was nothing in the procedure that could possibly harm him. The daemon in the band was as mild as the one in the earcuffs the crew of the
Ketty Jay
wore. He hit the switch to kill the oscilloscope and hurried over to Condred.

‘Condred? Can you hear me?’

Abruptly Condred began to spasm. His limbs shook and juddered. His eyes flew open and his face contorted into an awful grimace. Spittle flew from his lips and his heels drummed on the bench.

Crake grabbed the iron band and pulled it off Condred’s head, but the spasms only grew more violent. Crake tried to restrain him, but even in the midst of crisis, something held him back and he didn’t apply all his strength. He and his brother never touched; it felt wrong.

Condred jerked and slipped off the bench. Crake only just managed to stop his head hitting the stone floor.

Spit and blood, not again!
he thought as he clutched his brother helplessly.
What have I done? What have I done?

The light that had been flickering blew out in a shower of sparks. His skin prickled with goose-bumps; fear crawled down his spine. He looked around desperately, as if there were somebody nearby that could help him. A small figure in a nightdress ran by, glimpsed at the edge of the light, gone in an instant.

His heart stopped in his chest. It couldn’t be her. It
couldn’t
.

Condred’s shuddering was becoming ever more violent. His fists clenched and unclenched and his eyes rolled up in his head. Crake searched his mind for anything of use but came up blank. He was no medical man. He didn’t know what to do.

A thin line of blood trickled from Condred’s nostril. He stared at it in horror.

From the dark came a wet clicking sound. He heard it distinctly. The sound a little girl fighting to draw breath into punctured lungs.

‘You’re not here!’ he screamed.

But this had happened before, and he was wise to the trick. He’d been tormented this way in the past. In another sanctum, beneath Plome’s house in Tarlock Cove. When he’d been trying to cage a daemon.

A daemon was here. Not that tiny spark that he’d brought from the aether. Something stronger, darker, worse. But where had it come from? It hadn’t been here before. Unless . . .

He looked down at Condred, eyes wide with horrified realisation. His brother thrashed and twisted, gurning and mugging blindly.

Unless the daemon was inside Condred.

Another lamp blew out, showering him in glass. He felt a dozen tiny sharp bites across his cheek and nape and the back of his hand.

There was a daemon inside his brother. It had awoken at the presence of the new daemon Crake had introduced, risen up to defend its territory. And unless Crake stopped it, it would kill its host in its fury.

A movement in the dark. He looked up and saw a bloody face, slack with anguish. The face of a little girl, gone in a blink. Crake felt his throat seize tight. He wanted to scream again.

But he didn’t. He knew this game. He knew how daemons played on a man’s fears, dredging up his sins and teasing out the thing that frightened him most. For Crake, that was Bess. Always Bess. Except her memory didn’t have the power over him that it once had. He’d faced the truth of what he’d done. It couldn’t break him now.

Condred needed him. He had to get the daemon out.

He cast around the sanctum for an answer. The summoning circle? No time. He’d have to recalibrate all the resonator masts. Condred was bleeding freely from the nose, his back arching fit to snap. No time. So what else? What else?

The echo chamber.

As soon as he thought of it, he was on his way, rushing over to the control panel attached to the metal bathysphere. He threw the switch to activate it. A sinister drone of suppressed power grew out of the silence. He returned to Condred and reached down to lift him up. Just for a moment it was Bess there instead, her white nightdress reddened and pierced with many cuts.

He squeezed his eyes shut.
Not here
.

When he opened them, there was Condred again, his lips bloodied and his eyes roving like those of a frenzied horse. Crake slipped his arms beneath his brother’s, encircling his chest, and yanked him along the floor, haste making him rough.

‘It hurts so bad, Uncle Grayther
,’ came a little girl’s voice from the dark.
‘Hurts so bad
.’

A cry escaped his lips then, forcing its way out through gritted teeth. But he took that grief and used it, and it gave him strength. He hauled Condred towards the open door of the echo chamber, the same terrible portal through which he’d once put Condred’s daughter. Condred slipped and pushed this way and that, but Crake was relentless. A hand hit him across the nose, startling him with pain. He didn’t let go. Muscles straining, he manhandled his brother through the hatch. Once Condred was halfway in, he seized him by the hips and shoved his kicking legs in after.

‘Hurts so bad
. . .’

He slammed the hatch on his brother. A bloodied girl’s hand slapped against the inside of the porthole. Crake recoiled, frightened. Then his face reddened in anger, and he surged towards the control panel. He twisted the dials, not caring where they went, building a chord of appalling disharmony.