Dark Serpent

  ‘Vegetarian for all of us,’ John said. ‘We are all seeking the truth of eternal enlightenment and harmony, and consuming the flesh of animals dulls our spiritual purity.’

  Her smile froze. ‘Yes, well … I’ll see what I can do. Settle in, and if you need anything, just give me a shout.’

  ‘We may need you to help us with the locations we’re looking for,’ John said. He pulled one of his vintage psychedelic posters out of his back pocket and waved it around, enthusiastic. ‘This place is perfect for the spiritual gathering we’re planning, but we need to check with a druid or local shaman.’

  ‘A spiritual gathering?’ she said, eyes wide.

  ‘He means a folk music festival, don’t mind him,’ Simone said from the landing above us. ‘Ignore all the crystal and druid stuff, that’s just his way.’

  ‘Do you know something about druids?’ John asked Mabel, sounding even more excited.

  ‘No, there’s nothing like that around here. Holyhead’s a very boring place,’ she said. She patted him on the arm. ‘Good luck with your festival. It would do the town — and the island — a lot of good to have something like that to rejuvenate the economy.’

  ‘Peace and light,’ he said expansively.

  The stone leaned on the wall next to her and crossed his arms. ‘That’s an interesting surname, Defaoite. Is it French?’

  ‘Irish. It sounds fancy but it just means white.’

  ‘So you’re Irish?’ he said.

  ‘No, no, my people came over from Ireland a long time ago. I’m Welsh from way back; the surname is sort of a legacy.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ the stone said. He put on his most charming smile and moved slightly closer to her. ‘Do you run this place by yourself?’

  ‘No, my partner helps me,’ she said, brushing her hand through her hair.

  ‘What sort of partner?’ he said. ‘Strictly business?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘I see,’ the stone said, and moved back. ‘Shame.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ she said under her breath as she headed back down the stairs.

  After we’d sorted out our stuff, we went down to the main street to meet with the stone’s contact. To get there, we walked through narrow streets fronted by houses jammed close together with no front gardens. The cobbled main street was divided off with bollards to make a pedestrian mall, but the place was deserted and many of the shops were vacant.

  ‘That one,’ the stone said, indicating a café.

  We went inside. It had a scarred wooden floor and was furnished with wooden picnic tables and benches down either side. A young waitress stood behind the counter, listlessly flicking through a magazine. The place was completely empty.

  We sat at one of the picnic tables and Simone pulled the menu out of its stand. She quickly perused it, then searched the stand. When she didn’t find anything else, she turned back to the menu. ‘This can’t be right; they just have breakfast, baked potatoes, sandwiches and nachos.’ She flipped the menu over, then peered at the blackboard over the counter. ‘They don’t even have a proper coffee machine. And what the hell is a breakfast bap?’

  ‘Welcome to the boonies,’ Leo said, reaching for a menu from another table.

  The waitress came up to us; she had short blonde hair and a pierced nose. She scowled around at us and pulled out a notepad. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Salad sandwich,’ John said cheerfully. ‘Vegetarian if you could.’

  ‘Same here,’ Simone said. ‘And a Coke.’

  ‘Grilled ham and cheese,’ Leo said with relish. ‘And a black coffee.’

  ‘I’ll have a salad sandwich, same as the other guys,’ I said. ‘What sort of tea do you have?’

  The waitress looked up from her pad, seemed to see me for the first time and froze. She shook herself out of it. ‘Uh … black or white.’

  ‘White then. Jay?’

  ‘Just water for me, if you could,’ the stone said, putting on his best Charming British Gentleman.

  ‘Uh. Ok.’ The waitress looked completely flustered. ‘Um. I’ll be right back with that.’

  She nearly ran out the back door.

  ‘Heads up,’ Leo said, indicating me with a nod.

  ‘I know,’ John said.

  ‘Yeah. WTF,’ Simone said softly.

  ‘It’s here,’ the stone said, rising and turning towards the door.

  A small, round middle-aged woman with short red hair hurried into the café, smiling broadly. ‘About time you people got here, I’ve been waiting to hear from you.’ She hugged and kissed everybody as if they were long-lost relatives, pulling back to smile at Simone. ‘You’ve grown so much!’ She squeezed the stone around the shoulders. ‘And you, you old ingrate, you don’t look a day older.’

  ‘Neither do you, Ruby, you look terrific,’ the stone said. ‘Everybody shuffle over, make room.’

  Ruby sat on the bench and spoke through her huge smile. ‘There’s no one eavesdropping, but we may be watched, so you can speak freely but mind the special stuff.’ She glanced around. ‘Where’s that little blonde thing that runs the place when her dad’s on the piss?’

  ‘She had one look at Emma and took off,’ the stone said. ‘She obviously saw through her disguise.’

  ‘That’s not good,’ Ruby said. ‘Nice disguise, who did it?’

  ‘Me,’ John said.

  She studied John carefully. ‘Damn, your stone friend here wasn’t kidding. May I?’

  She held her hand out. John put his hand out across the table and she took it, concentrating. Her expression filled with awe and she pulled her hand back.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, then bobbed her head in Simone’s direction. ‘Sorry, love.’ She pointed from John to Simone. ‘This your daughter?’

  ‘I’m half-human,’ Simone said.

  ‘Nearly as big as he is, too.’ She studied Leo. ‘And you’re another one. I never thought I’d see your kind again.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to them here?’ John said.

  She shook her head. ‘No idea. I’m old enough to remember when they were drifting around causing trouble, and then one day, poof! They were gone as if they’d never existed. We stones spent some time looking for them, and in the end we gave up.’ She leaned on the table and put her chin in her hand. ‘It would be a hell of a relief to have them back, helping us out when the demons run out of control. Look at that stuff in London back in 2011.’

  ‘That was demons?’ Simone said.

  ‘Mostly, yes.’

  ‘Damn,’ I said.

  ‘And you,’ Ruby said, turning to me. ‘Something’s not quite right about you, but I don’t know what it is. It’s times like this I really wish we had them back.’ She studied me and I felt more than her eyes on me. ‘What’s your surname?’

  ‘Stevenson.’

  ‘I see. For a moment … Never mind.’

  ‘What do you know about the stone circles disappearing?’ I said.

  She dropped her hand and leaned across the table. ‘One of them was my parent,’ she said with venom. ‘When we find out who is doing this …’

  She stopped as the waitress returned with her father. He came to the table and stared around at us, then nodded to the stone. ‘Ruby.’

  ‘Jamie,’ she said with distaste.

  He reeked of alcohol, and was wearing a pair of tattered jeans and a stained grey sweater, ripped around the neckband. He glared at me. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it would be best if you cleared out right now.’

  ‘I’m researching my family tree,’ I said. ‘It led me here.’

  ‘What family tree?’ he said, swaying slightly. He peered at me. ‘What’s your surname?’

  Don’t tell him, John said.

  ‘Stevenson,’ I said.

  ‘Liar.’ His face twisted with anger. ‘You’re a fucking O’Breen.’

  ‘I’m not an O’Breen,’ I said.

  He jabbed his finger at me. ‘Yo
u’re one of those O’Breens who went to Australia.’

  ‘My last name is Stevenson.’

  ‘What’s your mother’s maiden name then?’ he said.

  I took a gamble. ‘Donahoe.’

  Dammit, Emma, John said.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Ruby said.

  The breath went out of Jamie in an audible gasp and he took a step back, his eyes wide. ‘You get yourself out of town right now. Leave. All of you.’ He focused on Ruby. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing consorting with these people, Ruby, but you know damn well what this one is, and she’s going to bring trouble to us all if she doesn’t leave now.’

  ‘What am I?’ I said.

  His watery eyes screwed up and he scowled. ‘Abomination. Get out of my caff.’ He raised his voice and pointed at the door. ‘All of you! Out! Now! Before I call the police on you. And you!’ He rounded on Ruby. ‘I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but it’s only a matter of time before everybody knows. We thought we could trust you, Ruby.’ He glared around at us again. ‘Get out of town before someone gets hurt.’

  ‘Can you explain why you want us to leave?’ John said, attempting to placate him. ‘We have no idea what you’re talking about. What’s the problem with my girlfriend?’

  ‘No!’ he roared. ‘If you don’t know, I ain’t telling you. Get out of town. Now!’

  He spun and headed out the back door, the waitress cowering as he passed her.

  Ruby stared at me. ‘You’re related to a Donahoe?’

  I raised my hands. ‘It’s my last name.’

  ‘Jesus. You’re not Australian, are you?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Holy shit. We have to get you out of here before he comes back with a gun or something. Do you have transport?’

  ‘We have a kombi outside the B&B at the top of the street,’ the stone said.

  ‘We need to talk,’ she said. She glanced around. ‘Somewhere else. Let’s go for a drive.’

  We wound around the base of the mist-covered mountain and arrived at the quarry, now abandoned, where the stone had come from to build the breakwater. It was overgrown with spiny gorse and yellow heather, and fenced to hold the wild ponies that had been released to graze on it. Ruby led us to a park bench near some duck ponds. John gave up on the European look and settled back into his Chinese form with relief, and Leo took his usual African-American shape.

  ‘First of all, I’m only two thousand years old so I don’t know most of what happened firsthand,’ Ruby said, pacing up and down in front of us. ‘Most of the older stones have retired into stone circles, and they’re the ones that have been disappearing.’

  ‘How many have gone?’ my stone said.

  ‘Nearly a hundred,’ she said. ‘The humans don’t know about every circle that’s missing.’

  My stone blanched and staggered slightly. He rubbed his hand over his forehead. ‘We’re facing extinction.’

  ‘Not while the Grandmother lives.’ Ruby turned to me. ‘Here’s what happened. About two hundred years before I was born, the people of Rome turned into a war machine and started conquering everybody around them. They were very, very good at it.’

  ‘A little too good at it,’ John said.

  ‘Yeah. So the gods came up here, hid themselves offshore and built a powerful race that would stop the Romans. They mixed demon in as well as god and human, had a bunch of kids, gave them the abilities to really kick the Romans’ arses, and settled them in Ireland where they were well hidden. The children of this new race would join with the armies of the indigenous people and help them fight the Romans.’

  ‘Druids,’ I said. ‘Or Tuatha?’

  ‘The mixed-breed results were the druids. Tuatha are what the druids called the gods.’

  ‘But the druids weren’t nice people,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, they are, Emma — they’re all nature-worshipping hippies who wear white robes and perform silly rituals at Stonehenge,’ Simone said.

  ‘They never had anything to do with Stonehenge; that was built thousands of years before any druid,’ Ruby said. ‘That’s the romanticised version of the story, all propaganda. The truth is way uglier.’

  ‘Human sacrifice,’ I said. ‘Bloodletting.’

  ‘And sacrificial drowning and mass burning,’ Ruby said. She sighed with feeling. ‘They were losing, so they did the unthinkable to try to win. They used blood and death to enhance their power — and it worked. Each time they fought, it became easier to use blood to win, and eventually it turned into an addiction. They couldn’t fight without it, so they sacrificed prisoners.’ She nodded towards the mountain, still swathed in mist. ‘They’d prepare for battle up there — and that meant someone would die. They helped the Celts fight off the Romans, all right, but they exacted a price — in blood.’

  ‘The weapon they forged turned into a monster greater than the one they wanted to destroy,’ John said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ruby said. ‘The gods wanted to create a band of noble serpent soldiers, and instead fathered a race of nasty, cruel snake people. They gave up in disgust and pissed off, leaving us all in this mess.’

  ‘And that’s me,’ I said. ‘But you don’t hear of them being around any more; all the snake people were driven out of Ireland.’

  ‘That’s right, the Irish were so disgusted with them that they ran them off,’ Ruby said. ‘Right into the sea. Some of them managed to make it across to here, then they were squeezed on both sides — the people of Ireland killed them on sight, and the Romans were moving up through Britain set on destroying every last one of them. They did the only thing they could.’

  ‘Hide?’ Leo said.

  ‘Nowhere to hide, and they were just as sickened by themselves as everybody else was. They knew how much they were hated, and they saw how evil they’d become, so they decided to commit racial suicide. As long as they didn’t breed pure, their children wouldn’t change to snakes and wouldn’t crave blood. So they kept a careful lineage register — here in Holyhead — to ensure that they didn’t create any more of their kind. The snake lines have particular names, and they’re not permitted to have children together. The women keep their surnames after marrying so we know exactly who’s who.’

  ‘You mean everyone in Holyhead could be like Emma?’ Simone said.

  ‘And other places as well. Some of them left and hid in Scotland and England, and even other parts of Europe, anywhere the Celts were. Emma’s two ancestors did the unthinkable on the sly. Everybody hoped that the baby wouldn’t be a snake, but it failed the first test they gave it. Even after trying to breed themselves out of existence for two thousand years, first time they cross it comes out again. The townspeople couldn’t bring themselves to execute them — they couldn’t kill a baby, snake or not — so they were banished to Australia, where there were no snake people at all.’

  ‘They were banished by a MacLaren,’ I said.

  ‘That’s one of the names. Donahoe, Defaoite, O’Breen, MacLaren, Anathain.’ She smiled slightly. ‘“Before you have your way, remember DDOMA.” Jamie’s an Anathain.’

  ‘But the MacLarens are demons,’ I said.

  ‘Honey, you’re all demons to some degree or other,’ Ruby said. ‘Like I said, a mixture.’ She studied me. ‘That doesn’t explain you though. That all happened generations ago; it should be bred out of you.’

  John rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m a snake, Ruby.’

  ‘No, I can see you; you’re a big turtle thing.’

  ‘I’m a snake as well. I’m two animals. The Demon King is holding my snake part hostage.’

  She stared at him with disbelief. He met her gaze.

  ‘And how does that work for you?’ she said. ‘With your girlfriend along here, you’re automatically a threesome? Damn, I thought we stones were weird.’

  ‘That’s beside the point,’ John said. ‘Being with me has activated her serpent nature.’

  ‘And of all the places in the world you could have gone, you came here,’ Ruby
said. She rose and paced again. ‘If Jamie spreads the word, there’ll be a mob waiting at the guesthouse ready to string the redhead up.’

  ‘Our Eastern Demon King knows all about this,’ I said. ‘He’s been messing around with the bloodlines himself, infusing more demon into them. He crossed Ben O’Breen with a Chinese demon and made a male Snake Mother.’

  ‘What’s a Snake Mother?’ Ruby said.

  ‘A really big, ugly demon — back end of a snake, front end human with no skin,’ John said.

  ‘Lamia,’ Ruby said. ‘A male one? Where is it?’

  ‘He was run over by a London taxi the day before yesterday,’ Simone said, her voice thick. ‘We were attacked by Western demons and he changed. They’re after us too.’

  ‘Is Ben all right? It’s been a long time. His father died and his mother took him from Holyhead when he was a baby, before we could tell her what Ben was,’ Ruby said. ‘We tried to track him down later and talk to him, and couldn’t find him.’

  ‘His son killed him. The demon side of him took over and he couldn’t control it.’

  ‘So it’s happening again. This just gets better and better,’ Ruby said. She glared around at us. ‘Thanks so much for bringing your war to our peaceful island.’

  ‘The Demon King brought it here,’ I said. ‘We’re just following.’

  ‘I’m on a mission,’ John said. ‘I’m here to find the demons and establish what they’re up to. Emma came along to trace her family history.’

  ‘And I found it,’ I said. ‘This is the source. Can anyone here help me control my destructive nature?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ruby said. ‘But their solution is a bullet. The best thing to do is get out of town, like Jamie said.’

  ‘She’s leaving day after tomorrow,’ John said.

  ‘Leave now.’

  ‘She’s my fiancée. If the demons hold her, they have power over me, so she has to stay where she’s protected,’ John said. ‘An escort will be here in two days to take her home.’

  ‘If she survives that long,’ Ruby said.

  ‘We can camp out on the mountain,’ Simone said.

  ‘We may have to,’ John said. ‘But all our stuff is back at the inn.’