Darkling Mage BoxSet

by Nazri Noor

  The god laughed. This close I could smell him, a mingled scent of olives and sweet wine. “Please, mortal. Dispense with the formalities. We’re friends. You may call me Dionysus.”

  “Y-yes,” I said, politely refusing the stuffed grape leaf a passing serving girl was attempting to feed me with her mouth. “And I’m Dustin.”

  “Dustin. A fine name. Ah, but where are my manners? You do not have a cup.”

  I looked around for the omnipresent serving girls, not wanting to be rude, when I realized that they’d all given me distance. In fact, the music had stopped as well, and dancers and revelers alike were all watching the divan. I held very still.

  “Was I supposed to bring one myself?”

  “Well, no,” the god said with exaggerated care, a hand on his chin. “I would have offered you one similar to the goblet I’m using. It never empties, you know.”

  “I see.” The silence choked me. I eyed the hedge of vines blocking the exit from the entity’s realm. The waitress at the Amphora on her own had been just the one maenad. I looked around, realizing too late that every last person in this room was a bacchante, a worshipper of Dionysus. One snap of his fingers and the frenzy would take them. The ruby-red tinge of the domicile started to make sense.

  Dionysus inched closer on the divan, so uncomfortably close that I could feel the warmth of his god-breath on my cheek. The wreath tattooed to his temples moved of its own accord, as if rustled by an invisible breeze, but the marvel of it did nothing to soften the menace of the god’s expression.

  “I wonder, Dustin,” Dionysus said. “Have you seen my Chalice?”

  I looked around at all the gleaming red faces, finally regretting my decision to leave Vanitas and my backpack outside, not that I had a choice. Forcing the tremble out of my voice, I finally spoke.

  “I can explain.”

  Chapter 5

  “Now tell me, in plain language, exactly what happened.”

  “With all due respect,” I said, speaking around a mouthful of vines, “that might be easier if you let me down from here.”

  Dionysus was not amused. The vines around me tightened, and I grunted against the discomfort that was slowly, surely turning into pain.

  It happened much too quickly for me to react. All the god did was wave his hand, and a swarm of vines erupted from the ground, wrapping around my limbs, simultaneously restraining and suspending me in what I might generously describe as an unpleasant position.

  I was tied up with my arms and legs splayed out, in short, with vines as thick as my wrists binding so much of my body that I couldn’t do very much more than speak or breathe. And both of those activities were getting more and more difficult by the minute.

  “I was sent out to find your Chalice,” I said. “It was at an orgy full of normals in some mansion. The Chalice did something to them. I mean it made lots of wine like it was supposed to, but it affected the normals, made them violent. There were twelve dead.”

  Dionysus’s face remained stony, but I spotted the twitch in the corner of his eye. “And why were you after my Chalice? Are you one of those dogs that works for the Lorica?”

  “Hounds,” I sputtered. “Was. Used to be. Now I work for someone else.”

  “And what does ‘someone else’ want with a Chalice that belongs to the god Dionysus?”

  “He studies them. I don’t know why, exactly, but he collects artifacts for his own purposes.”

  Carver liked to get his leather-clad mitts on arcane relics, leaning on his web of contacts to tip him off on new leads. As an enchanter, he was endlessly fascinated by everything magical. Every artifact was an opportunity for study and research, and if their acquisition meant keeping another powerful item out of the Lorica’s hands, well, that was just a bonus.

  Of course, the dirty work of actually stealing stuff was left up to me. One of the vines restraining me squeezed over a particularly sensitive area. I yelped. If I lived through this, I needed to remember to ask for a raise.

  “Ah,” Dionysus murmured. “And I suppose it wouldn’t be difficult for you to convince your employer that the Chalice’s rightful owner wants it back.”

  “Ah. About that.” My heart twinged with the littlest stab of panic. “You know, this would be so much easier if you’d just let me down. It’s getting hard to breathe.”

  Dionysus stared at me for a long half minute, utterly motionless, apart from the tattooed wreath on his temples that shifted as if blown by wind. “Here’s what’s going to happen, mage.” Dang. Demoted to mage. “You tell me what I want, or I snap my fingers and my maenads tear you limb from limb. We’ll send you back to your friends in a box.”

  The vines constricted ever tighter across my chest. The god’s worshippers hadn’t moved a muscle since I’d been hoisted up on my glorified noose, yet it appeared as if they were huddled closer, so much that I could hear their breathing and smell the stink of their sex and sweat.

  “Well, my boss, you see, he discovered that the Chalice had been corrupted. It was doing stuff it wasn’t supposed to, you know? So he, uh. He destroyed it.”

  As crimson as the tinge of the chamber was, it went an even deeper red as Dionysus glared at me with eyes that burned like coals. The vines wrapped around me looked like they’d lost their viridian luster, gone red, not like the lush tendrils they were, but like arteries. Veins. I swallowed thickly.

  “Destroyed it.”

  “Yes.” I blinked as innocently as I could manage. In the back of my mind I used every expletive I knew in colorful combinations with Carver’s name. Seriously. Fuck that guy.

  The smolder in Dionysus’s eyes burned darker, ever more scalding, his lips pressing tighter and tighter together until – until nothing. He sighed, an exhalation that blew all the tension out of the room, and at once the crimson hue of the chamber faded into a verdant green. His worshippers turned away and went back to their bacchanalia, as if they’d lost interest. The vines wrapped around my body loosened, dumping me unceremoniously on the floor.

  “Ouch.” I rubbed at my wrists and my ankles, careful to keep the rest of my thoughts to myself. That encounter could have gone so much worse.

  “It’s as I thought,” Dionysus said, his voice lined with surrender, exasperation. “Something – or someone – is attempting to usurp my station. And failing that, they have seen fit to corrupt my symbols of power.” He held out his hand and his Chalice appeared out of thin air, filled to the brim once more. Dionysus drank deeply, sighed, then sat back on his divan.

  He patted the empty space by it as the domicile once again filled with the crash-bang of music. I approached slowly, unwilling to offend, but still wary. Once I was sure the furniture wasn’t lined with teeth or hiding yet more clumps of vines waiting to throttle me, I sat down again.

  “I apologize for the harsh treatment,” he said. “Can’t be too careful, not since the murder of our brethren.”

  He meant Resheph, the Canaanite plague king, and Lei Kung, a Chinese thunder deity, two of Thea’s victims. Slaying the gods gave her a portion of their power, and she used Resheph’s dominion to command Valero’s rats to inscribe a massive summoning circle around the city itself. Totally crazy shit, and none of us saw it coming.

  “Is that what you mean by usurping your power?” I asked. “Is someone trying to kill you?”

  “Not as such. As you’ve seen I’m very well defended in the Amphora. A group of mortals has banded together, thinking to siphon what they can of the gods’ abilities through artifacts we may have left out in your realm. Misplaced.”

  “Misplaced.” I blinked slowly, rubbing the circulation back into my wrists.

  Dionysus frowned and took another swig. “Fine. I was shitfaced. Is that what you want to hear? I got drunk and lost my Chalice. Which wouldn’t have been such a dilemma since, watch this.” He held up his free hand, clasping his fingers around thin air, and out of nothing a second Chalice appeared. “I can make another one any time I want. Here. A souvenir.” He thrust
it in my hands. It was an exact replica of the goblet I had found at the mansion. Just having it against my skin made me queasy.

  “You know, I never read about you and a Chalice of Plenty in any of the mythology books.”

  He shrugged. “You can’t believe all of those stories, can you? Plus, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a god. I have time and power enough to enchant whatever I want. The Chalice is one of my favorites. Losing it wouldn’t have been a dilemma if those idiot mortals hadn’t banded together and gotten their hands on the one that I left out in your world. No, not just any ordinary mortals. Cultists, I’d say.”

  “Cultists?” This shit again. I’d spent my time at the Lorica being lied to about a false cult called the Black Hand, and it turned out to be part of Thea’s deception all along. Cultists. Ugh. Just saying the word out loud – hell, just thinking it left a sour taste in my mouth.

  “Perhaps that’s putting it lightly. What’s that word you humans like to use again, for people who like to spread fear and destruction? Ah. Terrorists. That’s closer to the truth of it. They couldn’t siphon power from my Chalice, and they ended up warping it instead. I don’t know if it was intentional, but I felt it when it happened, when the energies of my artifact were corrupted.”

  “Wait. So if you knew that your Chalice was corrupted out in the city – then surely you also knew that my boss destroyed it.”

  “Correct.”

  I threw my hands up, narrowly avoiding sloshing a full cup of wine all over myself. “Then why the whole thing with hanging me upside down and trying to wring a confession out of me?”

  Dionysus shrugged. “I wanted to test if you were someone to be trusted. If you were honorable.”

  “Pssh,” I said. Screw communing, and screw etiquette. That was probably the rudest I’d ever been to an entity, but I felt I deserved to express that much. I sipped from my own Chalice in what I hoped was a sufficiently defiant and grumpy display, but as soon as the wine touched my lips I felt my inhibition and annoyance rush out of my body. Whatever wine they served out in the Amphora was fantastic enough, but this? It was like tapping into the source of nature itself. The sun, the earth, pure water, and the finest grapes bursting in my mouth all at once. Every cell in my body was humming in sheer pleasure.

  “Holy shit,” I mumbled, chugging more.

  Dionysus tipped his goblet at me. “I know, right.” He sipped from his own cup, then tapped it against mine in a half-hearted toast. “But listen. These cultists, terrorists, what have you. My Chalice was only ever meant to provide endless bounty, never to incite the frenzy. That only I can do on my own. Something they did to corrupt the Chalice made it so that it bore an aura of destruction on its own, driving those around it to madness.”

  “Uh-huh,” I muttered. I knew all that stuff already, whether from Carver, or from Prudence’s spilling over brunch. Damn, that wine was amazing.

  “Now these people? They need to be stopped. Because twelve dead mortals is bad enough, and I don’t need the Lorica or your human authorities sniffing around. It’s bad for business, and well, less mortals in this city means less customers and worshippers for me.” He waved his hand. “And I guess the dead people bit. Imagine if these cultists laid their hands on another god’s artifact and twisted it to their own nefarious purposes. Mine was just a drinking cup. They might take a weapon next, then corrupt it. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Uh-huh.” I can’t lie, I’d probably chugged about two cups by then, and downing that much wine so quickly was taking its effect on me. I was only really half-listening to Dionysus at that point.

  “And since you used to be a dog – ”

  “Hound.”

  “Yes, a Hound. Since you used to be one, you will have the correct set of skills required to locate these people, find information on them, and stop them. The gods don’t need idiot mortals besmirching our good and holy names.”

  “No way.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The most I can tell you is that I can talk to my boss and see what he’ll have us do. But I can’t do much on my own, man. Like I can walk through shadows and shit, and I guess I have this sword that’s really good at cutting people up, but like – ”

  “You have three days.”

  I laughed. “Says who?”

  The smile creeping across Dionysus’s lips made my skin itch. “Says the poison you just consumed.”

  “What?”

  “I give you the freedom to choose, mage. You may die now at the hands of my servants, with your genitals stuffed down your throat and up your arse. Or you may take your chances at locating these cultists before the poison takes hold of your puny body and consumes you utterly.”

  I looked at the Chalice in my hand, then blearily up at Dionysus. I guess I was too stunned to even get properly pissed at that moment – or maybe I was just too drunk.

  “Dick move, bro.”

  “Indeed. My agents tell me that these idiots call themselves the Viridian Dawn. Start with that. You have three days.”

  He grasped my wrist, and I hissed at the immediate, searing pain of his touch. I pulled my arm away, but the god’s grip was far too powerful. When the sensation was intense enough that I thought I was going to pass out, he smiled, then released me.

  I looked down at where he had touched me. On my wrist was a tattoo of a flower, wavering slightly in the invisible wind blowing across my skin, precisely like the wreath of living ink Dionysus wore across his temples.

  With mounting horror I realized the flower had three petals – one for each day I had to accomplish his task. I set down my goblet, politely, because I decided that three days was still better than risking offending the god, getting ripped apart, and having bits of me torn off then shoved in various orifices.

  I fixed him with a dark gaze. “Whatever happened to honor?”

  “Ah,” Dionysus said, lifting his finger. “I said I wanted to test if you were honorable. I never said anything about myself.”

  Chapter 6

  The maenad was waiting for me beyond the ivy hedge as I emerged from Dionysus’s domicile. Sterling and Gil still had their heads craned towards me – though I realized that was probably part of the domicile’s enchantment. I’d been gone for a quarter, at most half of an hour, but to them it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two.

  “Welcome back,” the maenad-waitress said, her tone chirpy, her grin toothy as ever.

  “Yeah. Hi.” I stabbed a finger over at our table, my other hand wiping at the cold sweat on my forehead. “I could really use another drink, like, now, if you don’t mind.”

  She giggled. “Aww, it couldn’t have gone so badly for you. You’re still in one piece, after all.”

  “Very funny.” I tugged on my collar. Was it hot, or was that my body changing temperature? Fuck. “Rum and coke, please. As dirty as you can make it. And cold. Very cold.”

  The maenad winked, gave me a single-handed finger gun salute, then bustled off to the bar. I made a beeline for Sterling and Gil, pulling at my collar and sweating the whole time.

  “Jesus,” Gil said, sliding over to give me a seat. “Dust, you okay? You look terrible.”

  “I dunno,” Sterling drawled. “Looks about as sweaty as he always does.”

  I swatted Sterling’s hand away from his goblet, hardly caring about his protests or how he bared his teeth when I tossed the rest of his wine back in one gulp. I did the same with Gil’s cup. There was definitely something warm building in my blood. I prayed that it was the alcohol, and not Dionysus’s poison working its way through my system.

  “Right,” I said, wiping at my lips with the back of my hand, finally calming a little. “Right. I’ll start with the good news. We’ve got a lead on what happened to the Chalice. Dionysus says it was corrupted, that it wasn’t meant to behave that way, but now we’ve got a name. Organization called the Viridian Dawn. A bunch of cultists, looks like. Possibly terrorists.”

  “Hey, you did good, kid,” G
il said. “But you need to calm down. What the hell happened in there?”

  It was comforting, at least, to know that someone was willing to lend a sympathetic ear. Good guy Gil. I couldn’t say the same for Sterling. He’d gotten over the annoyance of having his drink stolen from him and was leaning closer across the table, listening intently, watching like a bird of prey waiting to snatch at the first ragged morsel off a fresh carcass.

  My cocktail showed up just in time. Gil stared at it warily, but nudged it towards me once he saw the thirsty look in my eye. I slammed half of it in one go, saving the other half for after I’d said my piece.

  I wasn’t sure what I was doing chugging every liquid in reach, either, but maybe I thought that I could delay the poison’s effects if I could dilute it somehow. Presumptuous? Yes. Stupid? Most definitely. But at least I was getting a buzz out of the bargain.

  “So,” Sterling said, his chin resting on the peaks of his fingers in an annoyingly precise impersonation of Carver. “About that bad news.”

  “Yes. Well. Dionysus made it personal. We have three days to sort this out.”

  Gil’s eyebrow hitched high up, like a bushy black caterpillar attempting to escape his forehead. “Don’t tell me you agreed to something.”

  “Not exactly. He poisoned me.” I ran my tongue across my bottom lip, deciding whether to continue or finish my drink. But wasn’t that what got me into trouble in the first place? I raised my hand, showing them the brand Dionysus left on my wrist. “This says I have three days to live, and presumably I only get the antidote if we track the cult down and stop them.”

  “Oh, Dustin,” Gil groaned, pushing his palm up against his forehead.

  “Ohhh, Dustin,” Sterling crooned, much more gleefully. Far too gleefully.

  “Look. He trussed me up in a bunch of vines, threatened me a little, then when I told him Carver smashed his Chalice, he let me go and offered me a drink.” I shrugged, simultaneously acknowledging my stupidity. “I guess I didn’t want to be rude. Communion etiquette, right?”