The Stone Demon

The Stone Demon - By Karen Mahoney


One





The British Museum was on fire.

Donna gazed in horror at the television screen, which showed the entire museum complex ablaze. Hungry flames licked the night sky, staining it the color of dried blood. Firefighters were beaten back by a wall of heat, smoke billowed in choking black clouds, and sirens split the air like screams of terror.

She shifted on the couch in Miranda’s den. It was the homiest room in her mentor’s grand old Victorian house, which was serving as a temporary headquarters for the Order of the Crow. Grabbing the TV remote, Donna turned up the sound.

The newscaster’s voice shook as she attempted to report from the scene. Or, at least, from as near to the site of the devastation as the news crews were permitted to get. Donna had never seen so many police in one place; blockades were set up on multiple streets, and it was reported that neighboring buildings had been evacuated, with talk of the evacuation zone being moved out to a two-mile radius.

There was chaos on the streets. Panic on the faces of the few people who stopped to be interviewed.

Miranda Backhouse touched Donna’s shoulder, making her jump. The alchemist—Donna’s new mentor—smiled gently. “Sorry, I thought you heard me.”

She sat down on the couch beside her apprentice. The older woman’s eyes reflected the burning buildings. Shadows played across her strained face, both from the television and from the candles that flickered throughout the room.

Donna shivered. “This is messed up. They’re talking about a terrorist attack.”

“Yes,” Miranda said, her tone bleak. “A new 9/11.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

The alchemist shrugged. “Does that fire look like anything man-made to you?”

Donna remembered the Twin Towers. She’d watched the coverage as a child, from her bed in Ironbridge while recovering from one of the many magical operations that had rebuilt her ruined hands and arms.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I think people can do some pretty terrible things.”

Miranda fixed Donna with her clear blue gaze. “Of course they can. But can they also create flames that fly in the shape of dragons?”

“What?” Donna leaned forward, gazing harder at the ribbons of fire that coiled in the smoke-filled air. She narrowed her eyes, trying to see what Miranda saw.

That curl of smoke, like a tail. Tongues of flame, like giant wings. A column of fire that formed a neck, supporting a burning head with black eyes and nostrils that billowed some sort of noxious gas …

How had she missed it? Donna looked sharply at her mentor, raising her eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.

Miranda didn’t disappoint. “Before, you could only see what everyone else saw. That’s part of the illusion.”

Hope gripped Donna’s chest. “Illusion? You mean, this isn’t real? There aren’t really people who are hurt … or dead?”

“No, no, you misunderstand me. This is completely real. The only illusion is in hiding the true nature of the fire.”

Donna squeezed her iron-clad hands into fists, clenching the soft fabric of the gloves she always wore to cover them. “It’s the demons, isn’t it?” She tried not to think of how beautiful the Demon King’s voice had sounded the last time he’d spoken her name. She remembered the cruel turn of his mouth, and realized that in using dragon-shaped flames in his attack, Demian was mocking the alchemists. All the Orders, not just the Order of the Dragon, held the mythical creature sacred. For the alchemists, the dragon was a symbol of transformation.

“Yes, it seems that Demian has made his first move.” Miranda’s reply was so matter-of-fact, it chilled Donna to the bone. “He’s calling us out. Look—the image is changing.”

Now the flashing flames split off into multiple figures. This time they became smaller, winged creatures, their fiery beaks open as they swooped and soared in a strangely chaotic formation—a murder of crows.

“But why the museum? What the hell does Demian gain by attacking the British Museum, of all places?”

Miranda smiled grimly. “The alchemists have had many artifacts on display there over the years, especially in the Enlightenment Gallery.”

Donna turned back to the TV screen, watching as a wall crumbled and hit the ground in a cloud of dust and flying debris. There was no sound, just shaky camera images filled with a historic landmark’s destruction on a scale that London probably hadn’t seen since the Second World War. The silence made it even creepier.

She swallowed. “I don’t think the Enlightenment Gallery exists any more.”

“No,” Miranda agreed. “I don’t think it does.”



Banished to her room “for her own safety,” Donna tried not to dwell on how this was all her fault. But how could she not think about the way that the Wood Queen had tricked her into opening the doorway to Hell? She wanted to call her mom, but knew her mother would be part of the emergency meeting that was taking place upstairs.

The conference between the four alchemical Orders—of the Crow, Dragon, Rose, and Lion—was supposedly to figure out what the Demon King’s next move would be. They were communicating via Skype, of all things. Donna would have laughed at that, if she didn’t feel sick every time she thought about the people who’d died in the museum fire. While the news reports said there’d been minimal fatalities because the attack took place after closing, that hadn’t meant the building had been entirely empty; a handful of office workers, night security, and cleaners were still inside. Six human lives had ended. And of course even more people were injured, although those figures hadn’t yet been officially confirmed. Maybe a dozen. Maybe more.

Donna hated that she wasn’t involved in the alchemists’ discussion. Shouldn’t she be part of things? Sure, she knew it wasn’t All About Donna Underwood, but what was she even doing in London if they weren’t going to talk to her when Demian—whom she had released—attacked? It was crazy, although she should hardly be surprised given the super-secretive way the alchemists always acted. She’d just hoped things would be different in London. Even Robert was at the meeting.

Thinking of Robert Lee made Donna remember how lucky they’d both been to escape from the Ironwood last month. They did make it out in one piece, but Robert had been barely hanging on to life when the alchemists admitted him to their super-secret, super-private wing of Ironbridge Hospital, back home in Massachusetts. Her home, that is. Robert was about as American as tea and scones.

It had taken him more than a week to be considered well enough to travel, but now that he was back in London, his recovery had been faster than ever. Once Donna knew he was out of the woods (so to speak), her relief had been overwhelming. Robert had helped her when they’d faced down the demon shadows, after all.

Lying on her bed, Donna wanted to cry, but she found herself unable to squeeze out a single drop of emotion. She was so frustrated it made her jaw ache, and she realized that she’d been grinding her teeth.

This was pathetic. She had to do something.

Deciding to take some sort of action calmed her down, at least enough for her to sit up and swing her feet off the bed. She sat down at her computer and jiggled the mouse, waiting for the screensaver to clear.

If she was responsible for letting all the horrors of mankind out of Pandora’s Box, well then … maybe she could find a way to put them back where they belonged—deep beneath the earth, in their Underworld home. Maybe there was a magical method of locking Demian up again. The alchemists had said it was impossible, now that he was free to roam once more, and that it had taken too much power when they’d done it two hundred years ago. But they didn’t know everything. And they didn’t have Donna’s ability to open doors to other realms, or teleport to anywhere in the world.

Of course, she needed to be able to control her new-found powers to be able to use them effectively. And she was learning how, thanks to guidance from Maker back home and intense “training” sessions with Robert. As a new alchemical initiate, Donna had hoped to be casting spells by now or at the very least mixing a few potions, but she’d spent much of her time in London either reading dusty old books with Miranda or locked in martial arts combat with Robert—which involved sweating a lot and falling over at the end of lessons because she was so exhausted. Robert seemed to be on a Mr. Miyagi–style mission to prove that plain old self-defense techniques were somehow going to help her with the wacked-out “Iron Witch” abilities that everybody seemed so afraid of.

Well then, maybe she could learn more about the demons. There were books on demonology in Miranda’s library, although she’d had been forbidden access to the darkest texts.

Donna smiled to herself, remembering the way Miranda had kept her out of the conference earlier. Fine. Let them keep her out of the loop. It seemed they still didn’t trust her, which wasn’t really surprising, considering what she’d done. And of course she’d grown up in the Order of the Dragon, which had been compromised, in the other Orders’ eyes, by Simon Gaunt’s machinations.

So, perhaps if she could get some insight into the nature of demons, she might be able to figure out a way to stop Demian and his hordes. She needed to look for weaknesses … or maybe even something that she could use to negotiate with the demons. It wasn’t like she didn’t have experience making deals with otherworldly creatures, after all.

And if she couldn’t put Demian back in his box, maybe she could figure out a way to kill him.

Donna wanted to be surprised by how easily she was even contemplating such extreme possibilities. She should at least be shocked at herself for wanting to end another being’s life. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t manage to feel guilty. Not when it came to protecting the people she loved. And the Demon King wouldn’t blink when it came to destroying human cities filled with millions of people. Among those people were Rachel Underwood, Navin Sharma, and Alexander Grayson—three lives she would do almost anything to protect.

She focused again on the computer screen in front of her. Another news update was the first thing she saw when she refreshed the BBC page. The fire was finally under control, but it was far too late to save the main buildings of the British Museum. Nobody could understand how the fire had spread so quickly and so totally. There were wild speculations about this in various comment threads and on Twitter, including talk of an “apocalypse,” but mostly people seemed pretty sure it was a terrorist attack. Which, Donna thought, it is. Only carried out by a vengeful Demon King rather than religious fundamentalists or political extremists.

According to the reports, there had definitely been some kind of explosion, but nobody could agree on what exactly could have caused it. There would be all the usual investigations, of course, but while various experts were wheeled out to outline their ideas, not a single one of their theories matched. The explosion—if that’s what it had been—was being classified as “mysterious” and “highly unusual.”

Yeah, Donna thought. A highly unusual demon attack.

She flipped over to Google, typing in “enlightenment gallery british museum.”

After scrolling past all the news reports about the blast, she came across several sites with information about the gallery Miranda had mentioned. The Enlightenment Gallery was where some of Dr. John Dee’s mystical equipment was displayed. Dr. Dee was the creepy sixteenth-century astrologer, mathematician, and Master Magus who had played a pivotal role—unknown to most academics and historians—in the founding of the current alchemical Orders. One of the collection’s centerpieces was Dee’s famous obsidian scrying mirror. The British Museum also held alchemical grimoires and other manuscripts, all of which would undoubtedly be nothing more than ash by now.

Sighing, Donna decided she’d had enough of staring at a computer screen. It wasn’t like she was learning anything useful. She headed down two flights of stairs to the library, hoping that the alchemists’ conference would last a good while longer. It was unusual for her to have some time to herself, and now she was glad of it.

There had to be some sort of weapon that could be used against Demian and his kind—she just needed to find out what it was.