by Rick Wayne
The sequence of acts and reactions played instantaneously in my mind, like the memory of a dream. Kell humiliated. The shock of pregnancy. One lover seemingly abandoning her. Another getting murdered. The strange coincidences that kept her alone and on the run. The suspicions of the police. Then, the betrayal—the discovery that her best friend had been with the man she loved, or thought she loved. The death of the man who loved her, who might have saved her, had she let him. Her terrible, terrified face as she was dragged away. Her beatings and tortures, bloody-lipped and drooling amid tiny, helpless sobs. And finally, after there was nothing left of her to destroy, the brutal slaughter of Kelly Ann Sobricki, who died with the knowledge that her unborn child would die with her.
Everything that happened, all of it from the very beginning, wasn’t a riddle needing to be solved. It was a curse. A curse so powerful that even an innocent man, guilty of nothing but lending his phone to a stranger in a coffee shop, had his bones broken. After I had given them the number, Lykke’s goons beat and kicked him until they were satisfied he was telling the truth and really didn’t know anything about Kell or the dark treasure she’d taken. That was its power.
I looked down at the weapon in my hand. The blood on it disappeared into the blade.
Étranger was right. It was destruction incarnate. With no effort, it took everything from Lykke Raimi. It didn’t like being stuck in its stone coffin. It had waited for centuries. Now it was free and it radiated misfortune. After swallowing vast sums of Lykke’s money simply to be found, it disappeared from right underneath him, from his very home. It abandoned him to his death—killed by his enemies. Then it turned on my best friend. It poisoned her dreams, taunted her with fortune. It drove her from the house, from Bastien. It drove us apart. I think that was supposed to be the end of it, my betrayal. But our friendship was stronger than that. I found her. And in Darren’s apartment, Kell and I forgave each other for all our petty transgressions. And it couldn’t allow that. Even the most terrible evil has no defense against forgiveness. If she had simply left Lykke’s house, if she hadn’t sought revenge, it would’ve had no power over her. But she couldn’t. So it took her, too. In the worst way. Painfully. Helplessly. And utterly, utterly alone.
And now it had passed to me.
That’s what it wanted, I think. It had been locked away for centuries. It was weak. It needed to be wielded in sin. To be bargained in greed. To be stolen and loved. Over and over and over. To betray. To deceive. To kill. And with each vile, covetous act, to build into a great storm, stronger and stronger, until finally whole nations fell before it, as they had to Alexander. Before it betrayed him, too.
I held it in my shaking hand and tried so hard not to think of those I cared for, everyone I loved. I was terrified that merely bringing them to mind would cast them before it. But in having the thought, the inventory came.
Mom & Dad.
Uncle Wen.
The Suleiman family.
Kai.
My God, Kai.
I kept seeing his face. His smile. His eyes on the pillow next to me, watching me sleep, like all he wanted to do was stay there forever. And how he looked when I told him I was leaving. Not hurt. Just confused. Like it wasn’t what he’d been promised. I started hyperventilating as Bastien pulled me one-handed to my feet. He was bleeding badly and clutching his fist to his chest. I didn’t even remember falling. But I had. I was on my butt and he pulled me up and all the warmth in his face was gone and I had no idea if he was just scared or if it was all another enchantment.
“Cerise . . .” His voice was haggard. “Give me the dagger. Give it to me. Cerise!”
He lunged for it and I pulled away.
Was the curse starting already? Could it work that quickly? Before I even had a chance to catch my breath?
It wasn’t that its magic made false things true, I realized. Everything that was had always been. And yet I knew, if I hadn’t been cursed just then, things would’ve somehow been different. That’s magic. Real magic. The power to unfold the world as you want it without changing a thing. I didn’t know whether Bastien had come to salvage the fortune he had been promised, or whether it was to save himself from retaliation, or whether it was to save me. I only knew then that I couldn’t know, that any of those things could be true.
I tried to pull away, to run, when I felt the warm spray across my cheek. I felt Bastien pull hard against me, as if he were stopping me. But when I turned to look, I saw that he wasn’t pulling. He was falling. His head had been severed. It rolled away. And the rats came again. I turned and ran—Right into someone’s chest, like a wall. I felt strong arms encircle me. I was held fast. A gun was raised. A really, really big gun. It was aimed right at the sword wielder. The shot rang out and the bullet struck a passing crow, which didn’t have time to squawk before being obliterated on the wing. And the things kept coming, as if they knew they had nothing to fear from so crude a mechanism, as if somehow they knew every shot would miss. My savior wrapped both hands around my waist and pulled me, still clenching the dagger with white knuckles, down the stairs to the lot. There didn’t seem to be an escape. They were nearly on us when the avian swarm broke out in all directions—blindly and wildly, like a winged explosion. The force knocked our attackers to the ground, and the chef appeared, hands in his coat. He didn’t seem afraid, just annoyed—like he’d arranged a big dinner party and no one had showed. He walked down the steps after us as the monsters got to their feet.
In a blink, a black car crashed through the barrier wall. Its tires spit dirt as it swung to a hard stop in front of us. The chef’s hostess was at the wheel. She looked like she knew what she was doing there, too. She had leather gloves and everything. The engine roared like a great cat. My savior threw me into the back as the chef climbed into the passenger’s seat. Our pursuers closed the distance in another blink and were reaching for the car with long-fingered hands as its spinning tires caught something solid under the dirt and we were propelled onto the road with whiplash force.
I shut my eyes. I could see bits of Bastien being carried away in beak and maw—an eye, a fingernail. There was nothing of him left. It was like he’d been erased from the world. One hand went to my mouth. I started shaking. I watched the big man cleaning his gun next to me, like it was just another chore he had to do. I was aware that my left ear was still ringing from the shot and I couldn’t hear anything out of it. The chef wasn’t even looking at me. It seemed like he was pouting, like things hadn’t gone his way and he was mad at everyone.
“What the hell?” I yelled in between gasping breaths.
I felt so cold. Not like cold in my hands and feet, but cold inside. I was shaking. I knew I was going into shock, but I was panicking and didn’t know what to do. And still I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go of it. Even though the muscles of my hand burned, I clenched it tight—cold and hard and unyielding.
The car roared down the street, turning left, then right. I saw the signs for the freeway to Jersey. The big guy who had been following me turned, expressionless. There was nothing. He was like a river stone—smooth and nonthreatening, but completely inert. It was eerie.
“Bastien . . .”
I pressed my free hand to my ringing ear, the same ear Irfan had struck. It hurt. I coughed. I had bile in my throat. I wiped my mouth. I coughed again and cried in slurping sobs.
“You lied to me!” I yelled finally.
The chef turned. “We could not afford a lengthy courtship, if only for your sake.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I have been doing this a very long time. No one accepts the truth or falsity of grand claims, like evolution or magic, on reason and argument. Especially not from a stranger.”
“But you could have said something!” I leaned forward and grabbed my scalp through my hair. I was angry. Furious. I wanted to choke the smug bastard. “This is my life! I’m not an ingredient in—in one of your stupid inedible recipes!”
<
br /> He stayed calm. He was always calm. “If I had come to you on the street that day and told you of the dagger, of its curse, of the stone table, of the Lord of Shadows and his Nameless gods, what would you have said?”
“Ugh.” I sat back. “Fine! Be right. You’re always fucking right.”
“Yes,” the hostess whispered from the front. She totally got it.
Etude scowled at her.
I could see my faint reflection in the dark glass of the car window. “Kell . . .”
I sniffed. I doubled over and started bawling. I clutched my stomach and bawled and heaved. I dropped it then. Finally. It hit the floor of the car with a thump. It seemed so harmless there.
“It’s started already. Hasn’t it?”
He nodded. “I’m afraid it will take everything from you. You will watch, powerless, as all you hold dear withers and dies like a flower in winter. And then it will consume you as well, and so be passed to another, and another, and another. And with each passing, the storm of ruin will grow.”
“Did you know?” I looked up. “Did you know what was going to happen?”
He shook his head. “I knew only that the mark of Death was upon you, not how or why.”
I sniffed again and wiped my nose.
“I . . . I—So . . .” I looked around in confusion. “So, I mean, what happens? I mean. What do I do? Where . . . Where can I go?”
My lips turned and I broke down again.
“I can’t go anywhere, can I? It’ll find me. Wherever I go, it’ll follow. I’ll hear about Uncle Wen or something and I’ll go home and I’ll find out Kai is married and has a kid and is all happy and he’ll pass me on the street and not even recognize my face, and I’ll call out to him and he’ll look at me like I was just somebody he used to know, and while I’m there, there’ll be a freak fire at the restaurant and my parents will burn to death in front of me while I scream helpless on the stre—”
I covered my mouth, if only to stop the words from coming out, words that did not feel like my own. A terrible thought came over me and I lunged for the dagger, desperate for a way out, for a way to save everyone, but the big guy yanked the weapon out of my hands after a short but intense game of tug-of-war.
The hostess gave a worried glance to the chef. “Do something,” she whispered.
“I am,” he said to her indignantly. Almost too indignantly, as if being scolded by her actually hurt, as if she were the only one who could do it. “The young lady and I made a bargain.” He turned and looked out the window. “Whether she intended to or not, I will honor it.”