Dreamleaf Blues (The Book Wielder Saga)

by Sean Davies

  Genevieve sniggered beneath her blanket of freshly manifested hair as she imagined the disastrous attempt of magical hair growth repeated on her pubic region.

  Sasha fetched her a catalogue of styles, and Genevieve flicked through them as they gossiped and joked about this and that. Genie was tempted by the teen princess Marissa Aluniana’s ultra-long chestnut waves, but remembered that she wanted something unique, partly for herself and partly to shake her resemblance to Seth’s sibling. She eyed a shoulder-length cut with a side shave, and an angular bob cut, and was torn between the two.

  “I can merge those pretty well,” Sasha said confidently, sensing Genevieve’s indecision.

  “Do you think it will suit me?” Genevieve asked worriedly.

  “Well, if it doesn’t, you can just make more hair and we’ll try again, silly!” the Mage chuckled as she plugged in some clippers and grabbed a pair of scissors.

  Genie went red, embarrassed that she’d forgotten already.

  “So who you with, anyway?” Sasha asked, making small talk as she chopped away at Genevieve’s ridiculously long hair.

  Genevieve stopped herself from answering honestly. “No one, really…”

  Sasha studied her intently. “Really? I thought you were the newbie in the Golden Fangs!”

  Genie groaned loudly and readied herself for the price increase. “Yeah, that’s me. Genevieve Jameson,” she sighed miserably.

  The excitable Mage grabbed the salon chair and wiggled it in merriment. “I thought it was you! You’re Kaylie, Tanesha, and Varsara’s friend, aren’t you?! Why didn’t you say sooner? You get the friend-of-a-friend discount on everything! Those girls are the best!”

  Genevieve laughed cheerfully. “Thanks. How did you know who I was, though?”

  “They described you pretty well,” Sasha explained with a wry smirk. “They talk about you a lot! For girls of their profession to get a crush, well, you must be something special in and out of the sack!” the Mage giggled cheekily.

  Genie turned as bright as a beetroot. “They… really?!” she stuttered.

  “Uh huh,” Sasha nodded. “Apparently you really know how to touch a girl – not surprising, considering you are one, but then I’ve never hooked up with a chick, so what do I know? Although, the hubby’s always gone on about a three-way. Maybe I’ll treat him for his hundred and thirtieth…” She sniggered at her own gossip.

  “There’s plenty of… experienced clients, I doubt I really am that good,” Genevieve said, finding it hard to believe.

  The Mage shrugged. “Well, they also go on about how much you stand up for them, treat them like actual Supernaturals and not blow-up dolls, hang out with them, party with them… so on and so on. So, which one is your fav?!”

  Genevieve flinched from the unanticipated question. If she was forced then it would be a tough call between Tanesha and Kaylie, but Genie was worried about replying as she expected the gossiping Mage would almost certainly pass it on. “I really couldn’t say, I like them all. And why choose when you can have all three, right? Sometimes at the same time,” she added in an attempt to sound nonchalant and slightly sex mad.

  Sasha’s big sparkly eyes went even wider as she swallowed Genie’s fake bravado. “Wow, you are an insatiable minx! They’re going to love this ‘do, by the way!”

  Genevieve watched intently as Sasha buzzed away one side of her new bob, leaving only a few millimetres of neat stubble, and was distracted only momentarily by another series of off-road jeeps steaming by the salon.

  “This would make a kick-ass place for a tattoo,” Sasha said, indicating to the shaven side of her head. “Something flowery, like roses… maybe I should start doing tattoos too?!”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Genie laughed in admiration of Sasha’s endless enthusiasm. “Do you think red and orange would look good on this style, like fire?”

  Sasha tilted her head from side to side as she envisioned the dyes. “Red hot passion bursting from the roots into orange fiery fury at the tips, maybe a few yellow highlights for intensity…”

  Genevieve thought it was a question at first, but the Mage had already begun gathering her dyes, along with a few potion vials, and continued talking to herself about the colours and their arrangement. Sasha even fetched Genevieve a glass of blood-spiked wine in-between her one-way conversation, as she got everything ready and began applying it all to Genevieve’s hair.

  Another small convoy of muddy vehicles zoomed past as Genevieve was enjoying her drink, and she caught a flash of their passengers drinking and laughing jovially.

  She frowned with suspicion. “Sasha, what’s with all the off-roaders tonight?”

  The Mage glanced at the window and quickly returned to her work. “Oh, I think the Morriganigh are having some kind of big bash, celebrating something or some good news. I tried to pry it out of some of my clients earlier but they’re not the most talkative bunch, it’s like talking to a wall sometimes!”

  Genevieve froze with eager anticipation. “Do you know where they operate from?!”

  Sasha shook her head. “Of course not, no one does except for the Morriganigh themselves! They’re not as in-your-face as you Golden Fangs with your big castle, or as flashy as the Shadow Circle with the world-renowned Hotel Noir! Besides, if I did know then I’d be killing my customers by telling you, and that ain’t good for business, is it now?!”

  “I suppose not,” Genie answered half-heartedly. Her mind was pulling up images of the local area and wondering what location off the beaten path the crows were using.

  “I mean, it must be nearby if you think about it,” Sasha continued, despite what she’d just said, as though she was unable to separate her thoughts from her speech. “Maybe in the forests along the mountain range. You could hide a whole bunch of towns in the ones that run up to the coast…”

  Genevieve sat in quiet contemplation as she waited for the dye to set, which to her surprise didn’t take long due to Sasha’s special mix of Alchemical ingredients. She wanted to get up and run out of the salon to chase down the vehicles, but forced herself to stay calm and composed, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to take them all on by herself even if she could track them down. Sasha rinsed her hair, dried it with magical heat from her hands, and then straightened Genie’s new angular half-bob of fiery hair.

  “Wow…” Genie gasped as she studied her reflection, forgetting for a moment her urgency to leave. “I love it so much!”

  “I don’t like to blow my own trumpet, but I know my way around hair!” Sasha announced proudly. “You’ve got a good face for interesting styles! Now, do you want me to sort your makeup and nails, the full works?!”

  Genevieve extended her nails into daggers and retracted them in quick succession. “Better not, they’ll get ruined too quick in my line of work.”

  “Well, next time you need to get dolled up for a night out, or fancy a new look, you drop right in.” The hyperactive Mage brushed away the massive pile of hair from Genie’s path and guided her over to the till.

  Sasha charged a lot, even with the discount, but Genevieve paid every Credit gladly and would definitely visit again. The scatty Mage gave her a hug goodbye and asked her to pass on her love to the working girls.

  Genevieve walked to the far edge of town, where a steep road twisted down to the south and granted a great view of the lower regions of southern Imperia. She could see the large dark forest stretching along Rura’s curved mountain range which tapered off as they neared the coast. Lights from the towns, villages, and farms twinkled below, but the massive expansive forest and the smaller pockets of woodland were as black as the night’s sky above. When she strained her eyes, Genie could just about make out small groups of dots moving across the region’s backroads, dirt tracks, and fields; it was the off-road vehicles driving with their headlights turned off. They were all heading to different sections of the main forest that hugged the continent’s grassy mountains, in scattered timings and from widely diverse routes to avoid suspic
ion.

  “Got you,” Genevieve grinned gleefully to herself.

  She rushed back to her Woodsholme apartment and hopped onto her PC. Genevieve accessed the continent’s network and searched for maps of Rura that had been uploaded by the Capital Library, and presumably the Archivists. She spent hours flicking through different maps of the Nation of Imperia, working backwards through the ages. Each image took a lifetime to load, and in every map the forest seemed to have no significant features. It was when she was cycling through old maps from when Rura was divided into three main factions that Genevieve finally saw a landmark in the centre of the woods.

  “Koill Monastery,” Genie read aloud, and then searched the library’s database for more information. “Built and maintained by religious Gaellian refugees during Imperia’s conquest of Rura, fearful that the rising warmongering faction would put an end to the Church of the Twin Goddesses when they annexed the continent.” She read on, fascinated. “Koill was believed to be abandoned during the reign of Emperor Hagen the holy, where those sheltering in the monastery realised their beliefs were in fact safe, and presumably added their religious presence to the Emperor’s cause.”

  Genevieve couldn’t help but admire the Morriganigh for finding such an obscure location to call home, especially as every other gang was based somewhere within a populated area and therefore created a pattern of predictability that would throw their opponents off the scent.

  “But not me…” Genevieve said, commenting on her own chain of thoughts.

  She was ninety-nine percent sure that the Morriganigh were based at Koill, but all she had to go on was a very old scanned image of an archaic map that put the monastery exactly in the centre of the big forest, southeast of Taynulia and dead north of Gaelliard City. She very much doubted that it was geographically correct.

  Putting the skills that Gaius had taught her into practise, Genevieve hacked into some older, less secure files in Imperia’s World GOVT building hoping to get lucky. After a lot of password cycling and dead ends, Genie stumbled on a blue and white outlined map from the Great War. Marked in white squares, circles, and triangles to indicate their differing levels of strategical value, were the locations of every Imperian wartime weapon cache.

  Even though the world war had never touched the shores of Imperia, the aggressor nation, that hadn’t stopped the fiery Autocrat from creating defence strategies for every likely scenario. One of which was the mass militarisation of every man, woman, and child on the continent. Although it was never widely discussed with the masses, most people knew that in addition to concrete pillboxes, and massive coastal fortresses and cannons, there were deposits of weapons and ammunition dotted around the rural continent ready to arm the population in a minute’s notice. Genevieve smiled from ear to ear and licked her fangs in satisfaction when she saw the marker, and exact location, of a massive weapon cache in the forest, southeast of Taynulia.

  “The Imperian military repurposed the ruins of Koill Monastery into a weapon dump,” Genevieve said as her heart raced with excitement, “and the Morriganigh repurposed it once again into their headquarters…”

  Genevieve powered off her PC, grabbed her keys, and zoomed out of her apartment. She had them.

  Chapter 13

  Well-Received Disobedience

  Seth was lying on his bed, taking big swigs from a bottle of whisky and throwing darts moodily into the wooden doors of his antique cupboard when Genevieve rushed in. It was the early hours of the morning, but she didn’t care. She knew the news of her discovery couldn’t wait. The Golden Fangs needed the Morriganigh gone, and so did she.

  “Genevieve?” Seth groaned. “You look… different. I thought I told you to piss off for a while.”

  Genie ran over to his bed, grabbed his arm and forcefully led him away. “I got some info you’re gonna like,” she explained in a hurry. “Where’s Gaius?”

  “Probably taking out his anger on some poor fuck,” Seth shrugged glumly. “We had a little talk that he didn’t take too well,” he said with a hint of underlying anger. “So, what the fuck is going on?”

  Genevieve was practically dragging the leader of the Golden Fangs to his own War Room when she answered, “I know where they are.”

  “You said that before,” Seth interrupted bitterly.

  Genie pursed her lips. “Technically I helped choose between two preselected targets, neither of which was correct…”

  Seth stopped in his tracks, growled, and shot her a furious look.

  Genevieve plodded into the War Room regardless. “Hundred percent this time!” she called back as she entered. “Come on, let me show you!”

  Seth reluctantly followed her and stood by the map table as Genie excitedly tapped at the patch of woodland nearby Taynulia with a plotting rod.

  “They’re trees,” Seth said mockingly.

  “I saw off-road vehicles heading there-”

  “So?” he interrupted flatly.

  “There used to be a monastery there,” Genevieve explained, regardless of Seth’s icy stare. “I did a bit of hacking and found a war-time cache map. Guess what’s sitting in that exact location?”

  The leader of the Golden Fangs finally took an interest, and his eyes went wide with wonder when he answered, “There’s a weapon cache sitting under the ruins?!”

  Genie nodded, proud of her intel gathering. “A perfect location for a shady gang to settle. An obscure location, out of sight but within reach of their territory… and already furnished with oodles of guns and ammo.”

  “Yes.” Seth scratched his chin, staring intently at the carved forest beneath Genie’s plotting rod. “Yes, that’s perfect.”

  “I have the exact coordinates of the cache,” Genie beamed eagerly. She felt like a student again, winning favour from a teacher with her excellent work. “They’ll lead us right to the Morriganigh’s doorstep.”

  Seth chuckled menacingly. “Good, good… nice work, Genevieve. We’ll let ya know how it goes.”

  Genie frowned. “Wait, what?!”

  “You’re still benched,” Seth said sternly. “You confuse things. If this lead of yours pans out I’ll get you back on the front line. ‘Til then, kindly clear off.”

  Genevieve stared at Seth and went to argue the point, but the unstable fire in his eyes put her off immediately. She sighed angrily, dumped the plotting rod back under the table with a bang, and stormed out of the War Room.

  She drove back to her apartment, putting her pedal to the metal to beat the dawn, parked up aggressively, and slammed her door when she entered. Despite her foul mood she still took care not to smash the wooden door during her grumpy entrance.

  Genevieve looked around her living room dejectedly, unsure of what to do with herself. The wind had well and truly been knocked out of her sails. She grabbed a bag of Dreamleaf, rolling papers, and a variety of crisps and biscuits. Genie put the radio on and got comfy on her sofa. As the sun rose, Genevieve smoked herself silly and her mood transformed from outright fury to a form of relaxed defeatism. As she watched the air ripple around her record player, each note of sound creating a different pattern and colour, Genevieve mused over her predicament. She couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t be at Koill Monastery. She couldn’t accept that she’d come so far to only sit on the side lines, always wondering, and never truly knowing. Even though she was extremely stoned, Genevieve knew it was very unlikely that there’d be some shred of evidence that would definitively tie the Morriganigh to Annabelle’s demise, or that the elusive leaders would have even bothered with a lowly human dealer, but without going there for herself Genie would never be certain.

  She was unsure of when she’d fallen asleep, but Genie remembered drifting in and out of consciousness through the morning hours. The radio spoke of break-ins and robberies, and then her dreams caressed her with sweet relief. Her phone rang briefly, and then the tide of drowsiness carried her off once again.

  Genevieve finally awoke when she almost rolled off her couch and ont
o the floor. She managed to stop herself, but the momentary jolt of panic was enough to rouse her permanently. Genie stretched, causing a tide of crumbs to fall from her clothing, turned off the radio and made her way to the kitchen to get some blood.

  “I should get a pet human,” she joked to herself as she decanted a blood pack.

  Genevieve soaked in the silence of her apartment and felt quite lonely. Without a mission of sorts, something to focus her keen mind on, Genevieve felt rather useless. The details of her reality began to weigh down on her shoulders, reminding Genie that she would outlive her parents, she’d never lead a normal life, Annabelle would never return to her side, and no matter how hard she partied Genie would wake up alone trapped in a prison of pointlessness. Before she knew it, she was reaching for a bottle of spirits.

  “No!” she chided herself, and slid the bottle across her counter where it came to a stop beside her microwave. “No, I’m not going to waste this life. Anna would want me to make the best of it.”

  Genevieve found a large notepad and a packet of coloured pens. She sat beside her computer and wrote in a title in red fancy letters: ‘Genie’s Future’. Underneath, spaced evenly across the page, she wrote ‘Golden Fangs, Shadow Circle, Trinity of Old, Freelance Waster’, and drew a different coloured cloud around each one. Then, Genevieve began brainstorming the pros and cons related to each category to try and work out where her future life should reside.

  “Trinity of Old, pros: Jonathan and Chloe, safe,” Genie mumbled. “Cons: underground and boring. Shadow Circle, pros: closer to mum and dad, cool gang, wealthy, Veronica, Veronica…” she wrote twice with a cheeky giggle. “Cons: would have to fight the Golden Fangs, and Dean Savies is a prick. Golden Fangs, pros: already there, Gaius, and the girls. Cons: Seth is a fucking lunatic and everyone else is a bit of a knobhead. Freelance Waster, pros: plenty of time to get stoned and play the PC. Cons: would go mad from boredom and commit suicide to join Annabelle.”