The Warlock's Curse

by Hobson, M. K.

  “Why have we come back here, William? This is a terrible place—”

  He seizes her. The worry in her eyes becomes something different as he kisses her hard, roughly.

  “Stop it!” She tries to pull away, but Cowdray holds her fast. His body is strong, strong and young. Her struggle fires it.

  “Your hair smells like snow,” he says, “Like cold air and ice on the water. I want to know what your skin smells like.”

  With a cry, Jenny pulls away, whirling to the other side of the room, pressing her back against the wall. Cowdray lets her go. This is just the first salvo, the first foray. He is assured of victory. There is no need to achieve it too soon.

  “I want to leave,” she says. She is breathing hard. She is trembling.

  LET HER GO, the boy moans. PLEASE.

  Cowdray removes his coat. He does this very slowly. Once his coat is off, he removes the key from his vest pocket. He shows it to her.

  “The door is there,” he says. But as Jenny is moving toward him to take the key, the boy remembers something else. The boy is so very obliging. Cowdray pulls the something else out of his pocket, something that shines. A straight razor with a smooth tortoiseshell handle. The girl is forgotten for a moment as Cowdray unfolds the shining silver blade. It is a beautiful piece of steel. When he finally does look up at Jenny, he sees that she has frozen like a startled fawn.

  “You bought this for him,” he says wonderingly. Glee bubbles up within him. He is young, he is armed, and there is a beautiful girl at his mercy.

  “I bought it for you,” Jenny says, voice breaking. “Please. I want to go now.”

  Cowdray holds up both hands. In one hand is the key to the door, in the other hand, the open razor.

  “You can go,” he says. “If you can get the key before I can open your throat. But I don’t think you can.”

  Jenny withers like a dying plant. She collapses in on herself. Cowdray has seen this moment many times. It is the moment when someone realizes that they are going to die, and there is nothing they can do. Fire courses through his blood again, filling him with desire.

  Jenny creeps backward, away from the door, away from him. Cowdray steps forward exactly as many steps as she steps back, a lover’s dance.

  He shows her the key again, but she makes no move to take it. He puts it away with an indifferent shrug. But the razor he does not put away. He holds it in his hand, turning it over and over.

  “Who are you?” Her voice is miniscule. She understands now. She understands that something is very wrong. She understands that he is not the boy she knows, the boy she trusted.

  “My name is Aebedel Cowdray,” he says. “I have taken this body, and I will do with it as I wish.”

  “How?” The word is a soft moan. “How did you ... take it? Who are you? What did you do to William?”

  “I am an old warlock with an old grudge against his family,” Cowdray says. He takes another step toward her, watches her cringe. “The moon is full. His body is mine for the next five days. As is yours.”

  STOP IT! LEAVE HER ALONE! The boy’s incessant screams have become loud enough to give Cowdray pain. He touches his fingertips to his temples with annoyance.

  “You want this as much as I do,” Cowdray snarls, putting all the force of his power into the words, and the boy’s cries are silenced. But Jenny thinks he is speaking to her. She says, in a surprisingly clear voice:

  “I don’t want this.” She is trying to catch the boy’s eyes, trying to find him within Cowdray’s cold approach. “William, please. Please.”

  The words fill Cowdray with sudden fury. As if the boy, the pinned insect, another weak squalling Kendall in a lineage of weak squalling Kendalls, could do anything to help her. The very idea is a monstrous insult. With an ugly epithet, he lunges at her, catching the neck of her dress with the razor. It slashes with a very satisfying sound, the slither of steel on silk.

  And then she is the one doing the screaming.

  Will felt Brother Phleger and Ben holding him down, holding him hard. He was aware of his own body, consumed with anguish, thrashing insanely.

  “Trahern!” Phleger screamed. And in an instant Trahern was there too, his entire weight thrown across Will’s legs.

  “Cowdray’s too strong for him.” Ben’s voice.

  Will felt tears streaming down his face. The pain was unbearable. But it wasn’t the physical pain. It was the pain of memory, of Cowdray’s body against Jenny’s, his lips against her skin, his hands on her throat ...

  Will fought now as he could not fight Cowdray then. Trahern, Ben, Phleger ... he fought them all.

  “We have to stop this,” Ben said. His voice was edged with panic.

  “But the snuffbox! It must be unlocked! He must—”

  “It will never be unlocked if he dies, or is driven mad!” Ben barked.

  Something was placed at Will’s lips. Glass, warmed by someone’s body. A phial. Liquid filled his mouth, bitter as death. He swallowed, and it filled his body with emptiness and chill. He felt himself subsiding and dying. He stopped screaming, and let himself fall gratefully into oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Will of God

  FOUR DAYS UNTIL THE NEW MOON

  Will woke to the sound of someone being beaten.

  “Devil! Devil, demon, filthy, foul, accursed!” A grunt, and the sound of flesh slamming against the wall. “Deceiver! Tempter!”

  Will opened his eyes slowly, cringing against the brilliant searing whiteness. Moonlight? No, a white room—a hideous room of snowstorm white, dominated by a blazing blood-red cross. The sanctum sanctorum, Will remembered. His head ached, but his throat ached more. His whole body ached. He wanted desperately to fall back into blackness. But someone was being beaten.

  “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can he do good who is accustomed to doing evil! A bad tree cannot produce good fruit! And whatsoever does not proceed from faith is sin!” It was the voice of a preacher, quoting indiscriminately from the Bible, and it made Will’s flesh crawl. He felt as though he might vomit.

  He turned his head just enough to glimpse Ben, and Brother Phleger. The back of Ben’s coat hung in shredded, bloody tatters—it looked as though he’d been lashed. The preacher’s face was purple with rage. Phleger clenched his fingers and lifted his hand, and Ben rose into the air. When Phleger struck the air with his fist, Ben slammed hard against one of the ice-white walls.

  “But now I see you, Satan! Old Scratch, monstrosity of evil! I know your works!” Spittle flew from Phleger’s lips as he stood with one hand raised like a claw, fingers pointed skyward.

  Ben hung suspended against the smooth wall. With a furious gesture, Phleger thrust his hand down, and Ben slid to the floor, his torn flesh leaving bloody smears. He slumped, dazed and half-conscious. Fat drops of blood fell from his bruised face, splashing the cold marble floor.

  Will stared at the blood. He remembered blood. He remembered so much blood. Everything he’d done to Jenny was in his mind, bright and sharp as the blade of the razor he’d held. He now remembered every moment of it.

  “You fooled me! You befuddled me with your magic, with your unholy prophecies. You have made me untrue to myself! You have made me betray my all-sacrificing Savior!” Brother Phleger stood over Ben, and as Ben tried to pull himself up to his hands and knees, Phleger kicked him viciously in the ribs. Ben collapsed again, curling over on himself.

  “Cowdray was too powerful,” Ben rasped, wiping blood from his lips.

  “I knew I should wait,” Phleger hissed down at him. “God told me I should wait, but you deceived me! You seduced me with your black sorceries like the snake in Eden! And now you account your work complete, do you not, son of Lucifer? You will see this great work fail, the works of the righteous trampled in sin and ignorance—”

  “There is still the girl,” Trahern interjected in a low voice. The bodyguard was rubbing his chafed knuckles, clearly having started p
hysically what Phleger had finished magically. “Shall I go and fetch her here?”

  “No.” Ben staggered to his feet, and the effort made blood stream from his nose. He spat it away weakly. “I understand Cowdray’s strength now! You must let me try again—”

  Phleger roared, a wordless scream of rage so forceful it made the walls shudder.

  “Get back, Devil!” The words rang with all the force of a holy judgment, and Ben was thrown backward against the wall again. And then Phleger seemed to go insane. He opened his eyes so wide the whites gleamed. He pulled at his hair until it stood on end, tore at his clothes. He reeled like a drunkard, coming to stand in the middle of the room, hands raised in wild supplication. “I am beset on all sides! How the devils surround me! Who knows how God will punish me now! Forgive me, Lord, for I have had fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness! Forgive your unworthy servant! I have been weak! Forgive me!”

  His livid face drained of color, but the black slash across his cheek seemed to darken. He began to jerk and twitch, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed to the floor, writhing. Babbling, nonsense words poured from his mouth.

  “Brother Phleger!” Trahern cried, falling to the preacher’s side. He held the man’s head tenderly as he spasmed and shuddered. “He’s having a Vision, a divine inspiration from all-holy God!”

  Trahern held Phleger until his body stopped twitching and flailing. There was a long moment of silence as the holy man lay on the floor, panting. Finally, he reached up and clutched Trahern’s hand with the gratitude of a man just pulled from a sinking ship.

  “God has shown me,” he whispered. “God has shown me what to do.”

  He climbed slowly to his feet, his balance unsteady. He looked over at Ben, shaking his head sadly.

  “You poor lost soul,” he said softly. “I never needed you. I never needed your research nor your damned astrology. My weak human mind made me believe the answer was very complicated when really, I needed only what I already had. The all-sufficient grace of Jesus Christ our Savior.”

  Ben released a long breath then—a long, shuddering, defeated breath. He lowered his head, as if he could not bear to look at the preacher any more.

  Phleger turned toward Will. He extended a hand to him, helping him to sit up, then knelt before him. Will was surprised at how gentle and compassionate his gaze was.

  “I can chastise the demon that is inside you, my poor child,” he said softly, raising a hand to stroke Will’s cheek. “You have suffered so much under his cruelty. You, and Jenny.”

  The words were so tender that Will had to choke back a sob.

  “Tonight, at midnight, we will proceed as I originally planned. We will conduct the Consecration ceremony and fortify this Holy temple. And we will sacrifice the power of that miserable creature to the greater glory of the Lord. His will be done.”

  Then, slowly, Brother Phleger staggered to the far end of the room. He looked up at the giant red cross for a moment before falling, once more, to his knees. But this time he did not lift his hands. He made no extravagant gesture. Instead, he merely bowed his head and pressed his forehead to his clenched fists.

  “I am humbled by Your forgiveness, Lord,” he whispered, his voice soft and tremulous. “And I thank You. From the bottom of my sinning soul, I thank You.”

  Will knew that the prayer was more sincere than any the preacher had ever made. He knew it from the streams of light that were emanating from Phleger’s Body red and purple and gold and yellow, haloing his form with the brilliance of a hundred stained-glass windows. Phleger knelt like that, hands clenched, his body perfectly rigid, for a long time. And then he fell forward, sobbing.

  Trahern helped him to his feet. Phleger leaned on him heavily. Trahern helped the preacher walk slowly from the room, holding him up when he stumbled.

  Ben crawled slowly across the room to the low couch where Will was sitting, leaving a trail of blood droplets behind him. When he finally made it, he collapsed against the ottoman’s side, the wounds on his back smearing the white leather.

  “We’re in trouble, Will,” he rasped.

  The words made Will laugh. And not just laugh, but laugh hysterically. He collapsed backward onto the ottoman, shaking with humorless convulsions that made tears flow from the corners of his eyes.

  Memories burned in his mind like acid. The razor slicing Jenny’s skin. How it had made the smooth pink flesh blossom red, and how he had drawn his finger through it. How he had used her own blood to draw charms on her Body how he’d made her beg for mercy beneath them.

  You want this as much as I do, Cowdray had said.

  Yes, he had wanted her. He had wanted Jenny. But not that way. Not the way Cowdray had taken her. Will wanted to die. It made him laugh even harder.

  “William!” Ben barked. Fresh blood trickled down his chin, and he wiped it away. “Get ahold of yourself. You’re the only one who can save us now. Phleger is going to use you himself. He’ll vamp on you somehow. You have to stop Cowdray from—”

  “I can’t!” Will screamed at him. “I couldn’t make him stop hurting Jenny. I did everything I could to make him stop hurting her. I wanted it more than anything.” He stared up at the red cross. “I wanted it more than living. If I couldn’t make him stop then, how can I stop him now?”

  “There’s still a chance. There’s always a chance,” said Ben, though he clearly had to struggle to put any hope into the words. “Cowdray has the most power over you when the moon is full. But when the moon is dark, you have as much power over him. It’s only a few days until the new moon, Will. Maybe you’ll be able to use that extra bit of control to your advantage.”

  Will shook his head in despair. It didn’t matter if the moon was full or dark. He would never be able to match Cowdray’s cruelty. Never.

  “Why did you tell me to think of Jenny?” he finally said, bleakly.

  “Because I hoped your love would be stronger than your guilt,” said Ben.

  At that moment Trahern came back into the room, striding toward them, his face dark with purpose. He dug his fingers into Ben’s jacket coat, pulled him to standing.

  “Praise Jesus, the Brother has finally seen the light about you, you smug charlatan.” Trahern gave Ben a hard shake. “I would kill you now, but he doesn’t want the Temple sullied by your unredeemed blood before the Consecration.” He smirked back over his shoulder at the gory trail Ben had left on the floor. “Any more of it, anyway.”

  Spinning Ben around, Trahern shoved him hard toward the door, following as he stumbled forward. “But just you wait until after the Consecration, Professor. Just you wait and see what kind of fun we’re going to have then.”

  Trahern did not return for Will until just before midnight. And when he did, he had changed into the long, pristine white robes of an usher. He did not speak, just set to work with gruff efficiency, lashing Will’s hands together before him with a piece of stout white cord. He bound Will’s ankles and gagged him with a piece of red cloth.

  Will did not resist any of this. He felt incapable of resisting. He felt incapable of caring. He just lay on the low couch, limp, staring up at the red cross.

  He had said nothing as Trahern drew the cords painfully tight. And he said nothing even when Trahern was finished and hissed in Will’s ear:

  “You’re going to make this work, understand? Or I will slice her belly open myself. I’ll hurt her as much as you’ve hurt the good Brother. That’s a promise. An oath.”

  Will let his eyes slide closed. The image of the red cross burned behind his lids. He felt Trahern lifting him, throwing him over his shoulder like a feed sack. And then Trahern carried him to the sanctuary.

  The sanctuary was already buzzing with energy and anticipation. While there was no sunlight to illuminate the stained glass, all the electric lights blazed. A team of Teslaphone technicians had set up their equipment in a corner near the front of the great room. They had hung a broadcasting microphone near the enormous electri
cal organ—where Little Sanctity Snow, in a frothy white dress of silken ruffles and lace, sat poking at the keys ill-temperedly as she waited for the power to be switched on.

  Another technician was laying a carpeted runner over the cord of a second microphone, on a slender stand of black iron that had been placed a few feet in front of the altar. Muttering a curt “Beat it!” to the man, Trahern placed Will in a kneeling position behind the microphone stand, facing the crowd.

  Bound hands clenched before him, Will stared out into the crowd. Phleger had not just filled the sanctuary, he had packed it. Every pew was crammed to capacity, and the faithful who could not find seats clustered at the edges of the broad aisles. And all of them were eyeing Will with a mixture of fascination and dread, whispering between themselves.

  They don’t know what Brother Phleger intends to do to me. And they’re dying to find out.

  As Will’s eyes roamed the vastness of the crowd, he saw that Ben had been put into a special seat in the roped-off front row. Ben’s battered face was puffed and purpling, and one eye was swollen shut. He was not bound—but what did it matter? There was nothing he could do to help. Not with Trahern and a hundred of his ushers, all dressed in white robes, having taken up positions along the sanctuary’s walls.

  Looking away from Ben, Will caught sight of Atherton Hart—and Jenny.

  Just like the petulant child at the organ, Jenny was dressed all in ruffled white. But her dress had a very high neck and very long sleeves, and Jenny sat so rigidly in it that the ruffles seemed chiseled, not draped. Hart sat next to her. He did not sit close, and he did not touch her, but there was something about his presence that encompassed her, enveloped her in his protection.

  Hart was not a bad man, Will realized, his heart breaking. He was a fool ... but he was not a bad man.

  As if sensing his gaze, Jenny looked at Will. Her blue eyes held his, and he saw the worry in them. But he looked away quickly, lowering his gaze to the deep red carpet. He stared at the carpet for a long time.