The Stone Demon

Two





Stepping quietly into Miranda’s impressive library, Donna surveyed the eclectic décor. In the evenings, the room was dimly lit by iron chandeliers that hung from the high ceilings. Paintings adorned the walls—canvases of all sizes, framed prints of esoteric symbols—and gilt mirrors shone with reflected candlelight. The library was one of the grandest spaces, and yet also one of the most intimate, in the impressive old house.

Although Donna had been in London for almost a month, she still hadn’t been shown anything that related to the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone—even though this was, supposedly, the main reason she’d been sent to London in the first place. The alchemists needed the Stone before they could set to work re-creating the elixir of life, which Donna had (unfortunately yet necessarily) lost. But beyond the dry alchemical reading she’d been assigned, her so-called apprenticeship seemed to consist mostly of polishing ancient equipment and listening to Miranda’s stories of “English Alchemy Across the Centuries.” Donna was beginning to think that Robert’s lessons on how to control her powers were actually more interesting, even if they didn’t seem to have anything to do with alchemy.

True, it hadn’t been all boring, but she wanted to know when she was actually going to learn the real secrets. Robert had quickly disabused her of that notion when he’d told her, “Alchemy is all about the individual’s journey to transformation. We each find a different path to the truth.”

“But how am I supposed to find that?” After having spent two hours cleaning out a closet of esoteric test tubes, Donna was tired of dust and even more tired of being told what to do.

Robert had grinned. “Use your initiative, Initiate Underwood.”

So here she was, using her initiative. Miranda had given her the keys to the library and told her to shelve books whenever she had spare time. Fine. She would shelve books. She would take great care to examine even the ones that she wasn’t supposed to touch.

There was a locked cabinet of antiquarian books against the north wall. Donna knew it wasn’t just secured with an ordinary key; there were magical wards placed on it so that Miranda would know if anyone had disturbed the Order’s most precious volumes. Donna remembered thinking that that was pretty strange, when Robert gave her a tour of the house on her first full day here. Quentin Frost, the Archmaster back home in Ironbridge, had never forbidden her from touching any of the books in the Blue Room, his own personal library. He’d loved to see her enjoy reading when she was a kid; it was something they shared.

Seeing books under lock and key—and protected by magic—gave Donna an uncomfortable feeling. It was as if they were dangerous in some way … as though, if allowed to go free, they could cause unknowable damage and destruction. Which was a weird thing to think, but nothing was outside the realm of possibility in her experience. Seventeen years on this earth had shown her plenty of danger already, and a whole lot of weird to go with it.

Before she could change her mind, Donna tugged off the black velvet glove that covered the ironwork on her right hand. She turned the small bronze key in the cabinet lock and rested her fingers against the mechanism. She had no idea what she was actually doing, but if she could open doorways between dimensions, surely she could open a freaking cabinet.

She examined her knuckles, willing something to happen. Anything. The iron tattoos that held her together—and which had bound her power for so long, as she’d recently discovered—were at peace for the moment, still and silent against her pale skin. Sometimes the silver swirls and markings would move, winding around her wrists and hands, up her arms to her elbows. Apart from how strange it was to see, the movement hurt her in a bone-deep sort of ache. Maker once told her it was because some of the iron was lacing together her actual bones. His alchemical magic had been the only thing that had saved her, after the Wood Monster’s jaws had almost destroyed her arms and hands.

Thinking about it still made her shudder, even after all these years.

As she hesitated, the key in the lock, Donna saw her tattoos begin to move. She held her breath—the strange sensation made it feel as though the bones themselves were moving, shifting position and reshaping themselves into something new. It was something that she had no real control over. Watching the tattoos twist and writhe, sort of like soundwaves around the small amount of pale flesh still visible, made her feel nauseated.

She watched in fascination as the shimmering iron across her fingers curled around her hands and seemed to flick toward the lock. Then there was a sharp click and a sudden release of pressure inside her chest, like a balloon had just burst. The cabinet door jumped open.

Donna’s ears popped and the tattoos stopped moving.

She’d done it! She’d actually managed to break Miranda’s protective wards. Donna was pretty sure she’d also alerted her mentor to what she was up to. Well, it’s not like Miranda doesn’t have more important things to think about right now, she thought as she carefully opened the door wider to examine the contents of the shelves.

She lifted down one of the heavy volumes. It was bound in cracked leather and the pages were yellow and musty. Flipping through, she was surprised to see that it was hand-lettered in a barely legible script. The ink was a rusty brown, and some of the pages were filled with columns of numbers and unfamiliar equations.

Turning another page, her attention was immediately drawn to a sinister line drawing of some kind of small creature. It was twisted and knobbly, a bit like a wood elf but even more alien. She’d never seen anything like it before, and she traced the word underneath the illustration with her finger.

“Homunculi,” she read aloud. She’d heard that term before, but this was the first time she’d seen an illustration. “Artificial life forms, based on human physiology, created with the aid of the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Donna shivered. Whoever the artist was, he or she hadn’t seemed to believe that homunculi were all that closely based on human physiology. The creature was weird and lumpy, and about as far from a person as it was possible to get while still having a head, a torso, two arms, and two legs. Yet Donna wasn’t surprised that the Philosopher’s Stone was needed to make these beings, just as the stone was necessary in the creation of the elixir of life. She hoped she’d learn more about the Philosopher’s Stone soon.

The book was arranged alphabetically, and she turned to the B section to look for “British Museum.” There was no entry for it, so she tried “Dee.” She found two pages of cramped, spidery text devoted to Dr. John Dee. Scanning the information, she came to a section that made her pause:

Dee’s Mirror:

A polished piece of volcanic glass (obsidian), used by Dr. John Dee to contact spirits and gain knowledge of Other Worlds.

That sounded familiar … she bit her lip and thought for a moment. Oh, right. John Dee’s scrying mirror was one of the alchemical artifacts stored in the British Museum. Did that mean it was gone now, thanks to the fire? She flipped through some more pages before putting the volume aside. It was full of alchemical terms and definitions, and perhaps it would be useful later in her studies, but for now she wanted demon intel.

There was a smaller book, at the end of the top shelf, that drew her attention. It had one of those stupid locks holding it shut, like on her very first diary, which you knew was never going to keep anybody out. Not if they really wanted to read it.

This lock had long since worn away and was hanging by a few cotton threads and a thin strip of leather. She fiddled with the rotting metal until she could open the book without tearing the binding.

A handwritten title page declared, Encyclopaedia Demonica. She raised her eyebrows. Interesting title.

She looked for “Shadows,” but there was no entry with that heading. Then she tried “Skriker,” just out of curiosity. Of course, that wasn’t in the book either. The Skriker was a fey creature, not a demon. But a couple pages further on, she found an entry that caught her eye:

“Strix,’” she read. “About the size of an adolescent human, these demonic birds are hunters, just like their counterparts in the animal kingdom. Often seen in folklore as a bad omen, particularly known to foretell death. In Roman mythology they were believed to nest in desolate area, abandoned buildings, and ruins such as castles. In the demon world, they are known to feed on human flesh.’”

Donna shivered and sat down on the floor, pulling the book into her lap and making herself comfortable.

Time slipped away as she read, flipping through various sections with foreboding subheadings and growing increasingly absorbed. No wonder Miranda kept these books locked away. There was some creepy stuff in them. Creepy and fascinating, in a car-crash kind of way. But useful? She wasn’t so sure about that.

Until she came to something marked “Demon Locales.” That sounded like it had some possibilities. Donna rubbed her aching back and shifted position, her eyes scanning pages more quickly. She half-expected Miranda to come bursting in at any moment, eyes filled with reproach for what she would see as her apprentice’s blatant disregard for authority.

“The Otherworld holds an unknown and potentially infinite number of different realms,” she read. “Commonly referred to as the Underworld in many world mythologies, the Land of the Dead is said to be the domain of the Demon King.”

This is it! Donna thought, only just managing to hold back her cry of excitement. It had to be what she was looking for. Well, she didn’t really know what exactly she was looking for—but perhaps she would find something useful here. Something that she could file away and use against Demian when the time came. The alchemists needed weapons, and one of the best weapons was knowledge. Quentin had taught her that. She hastily returned to the page, scanning parts that looked particularly interesting:

The Grove of Thorns:

Recognizable by its protective wall of black roses, the Grove of Thorns is believed to be the one part of the Underworld that even demons may not enter. Alchemical scholars cannot agree on what is hidden at its heart, but some ancient texts display crude drawings of a pear tree. The fruit of this tree is believed to be silver in color, and the tree itself has many names, the most commonly found being—

Crack!

Something sharp tapped at one of the high windows, almost making Donna’s heart burst through her chest. She dropped the book with a clatter as her mind flashed to a not-particularly-comforting image of demon-owls carrying babies in their beaks. Springing to her feet, she half-expected a reaper storm of demon shadows to smash through the glass and fly into the room.

All she could see, however, was a single crow. Or a raven? It stared in at her with coal-black eyes that glittered with disturbing intelligence.

Tap-tap-tap!

Donna jumped again, annoyed with herself for being so nervous about a stupid bird. She pushed aside disturbing thoughts of Edgar Allan Poe and climbed onto the carved wooden bench beneath the window. Her nose was just about level with the bottom of the glass, and she got a close-up view of the creature’s scaly talons as it gripped the ledge outside. What was a crow doing out at night?

Attached to the bird’s ankle was a rolled-up piece of paper or parchment, like a scroll. But the paper was black instead of ivory, or cream, or whatever color those things were supposed to be. Donna wondered if she’d fallen asleep over Miranda’s dusty old books. Was this one of those disturbingly vivid dreams she sometimes found herself having? Maybe the crow was a messenger from her subconscious. Or maybe she was just hallucinating.

The “hallucination” squawked loudly and almost seemed to glare at her through the lightly frosted glass.

“You’re not dreaming, Underwood,” Donna told herself. “You’re just going crazy.”

And now I’m talking to myself.

She rolled her eyes. Definitely crazy. Not that she’d admit it to Nav when she told him about this.

Telling herself to get a grip, she opened the window and tentatively removed the paper on the crow’s leg from its bindings. Her hand accidently brushed warm feathers. The moment the scroll was in her hand, the bird blinked once and then flew back up into the indigo sky.

Donna watched its inky wings blot out a section of stars for a moment, and then it was gone.

She unrolled the ebony parchment, but froze when footsteps sounded outside the library. Great. Either the meeting was already over, or Miranda was about to kick her ass for breaking into her secret book stash.

The scroll contained a simple but elegant invitation, and Donna quickly read it before her mentor entered the room. She could practically feel her face drain of color as she wordlessly handed the paper to Miranda. At least now, she was less likely to get into trouble for touching those forbidden texts.

It seemed that the crow-messenger had brought something far more important for the alchemists to worry about.





INVITATION

To: Donna Underwood, member of the Order

of the Dragon, care of the Order of the Crow

(London, United Kingdom—Human Realm)

His Highness Demian, King of the Demon Realm

invites you to a

Masquerade Ball

at

Pandemonium Crypt

(Beneath St Martin-in-the-Fields Church)

Time: Midnight. Tomorrow.

Dress: Formal. Masks must be worn.