Cursed (Codex of Enchantment Book 1)

by Briana Snow

  “You traitor!” Verity said in a cats’ scandalized howl, striking out with her hand to drag her nails down the Doctor’s face.

  “Argh!” He staggered back, blood welling up from under his hand as he clutched his features.

  “Penelope—run!” Verity said quickly, her hands reaching into her coat.

  Click. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Verity,” said a cold voice behind the woman, as Penelope turned to see a man with shockingly white and short hair standing there with a pistol held to the back of Verity’s head. He must have been waiting on the other side of the T-Junction, Penelope realized, as she clutched the suitcase to her chest.

  “And don’t think that I wouldn’t blow your brains out right here, Vorja,” the man said with a wicked grin. He would have been handsome, were it not for the vicious leer on his features, Penelope thought absentmindedly.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Verity hissed through pursed lips, at the same time as her two hands slowly came up in the universal gesture of giving up.

  “Oh, wouldn’t I, Verity?” the guy snarled. “Haven’t you heard—it’s almost the end of the world, and I think that means that special rules apply, don’t you? And anyway, the Templar run London. You know that. We run London.”

  “How could you do it, Shenk?” Verity said to the Knight-Researcher who was sobbing into a blood-stained handkerchief held to his forehead. “You know what’s at stake, and you hand us over to him?”

  “I—I had to…” he said miserably.

  “Verity…?” Penelope said uneasily. She felt out of her depth already.

  “Penelope, this is Darius Harp, your brother,” Verity said with a grimace, and Penelope felt an electric shock of recognition run through her body. It was true. The similarity in the cheekbones, in the eye color, the frame and build. Apart from the obvious similarity to any who bothered to look close enough, Penelope found that she couldn’t feel anything more towards the man who was supposed to be her long-lost brother.

  “Sister?” Darius’s eyes flickered over to her in interest. “So we meet at last, huh?”

  “You killed mum and dad,” Penelope whispered in horror at the man. “Your own parents. Our parents.”

  “I helped the world from a dangerous pair of lunatics,” Darius said tiredly, as if this were a conversation that he had had many times before, and he was altogether sick of hearing it ever again. “But I don’t expect you to understand that. Not yet, anyway. What else has this woman fed your brain with?” He gestured the pistol at Verity’s head.

  “No! Don’t hurt her!” Penelope said. “We’re trying to do the same thing that you are, to save the world, to stop the apocalypse…”

  “Are you now?” Darius drawled sardonically. “Is that why you brought the first volume of Luminaire minus Clavem all the way here to the British Library, to see its second?” Darius shook his head as if it were the biggest joke in the world. “Is that what this woman has told you, sister?” Darius Harp, Penelope’s brother, turned back to Verity and growled into her ear. “Don’t forget, Vorja—that I’ve seen what this manuscript can do. I was the one who carried the second volume back from Paris. I know the horror that awaits us.”

  “You’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, Knight,” Verity spat back. “If we allow those Luminaire grimoires to fully activate…”

  “Well, I suppose that I should be glad that at least we have the opportunity to keep them together now, instead of having to send our agents all the way to New York to do it.” Darius shook his head.

  “You must destroy them!” Verity said, the look of terror on her face sweeping to her mouth. “You don’t know what damage keeping them together will cause!”

  “I don’t care, either,” Darius said. “Not what you think will happen anyway. The Order of St, Agnes, and the Society, and all the rest of you cannot match the wealth of knowledge and research that us Knights have put into this. These grimoires are safer in our hands, Vorja, where we will keep them under lock and key and far, far out of the reach of you meddling sisters,” he said, his hand with the gun falling back to his side, as he nodded to the crowd of other Knights Templar on the other side of the women. “Seize them. Take them to the Vaults and keep them in the cells until the High Council decide what they are going to do with them.”

  “You can’t imprison us!” Penelope said. “What right do you have? We’re not slaves!” she said, aghast.

  “Like I said, dear sister,” Darius said with a shrug as hands seized the women’s shoulders. “The Knights own London. We can do whatever we want, to whomever we want—no matter who you are the sister of!”

  Penelope couldn’t believe how callous her brother was, and it made her feel oddly sick to see someone with her blood acting so cruelly. As she was dragged backwards by angry-looking academics and librarians, she wondered what had happened to him that had made him so uncaring.

  “Verity?” she whispered, looking over to where the Book Hunter was being manhandled with far greater ferocity than she herself was.

  “Just don’t let them hurt you, Penelope!” Verity said through gritted teeth. “And don’t give up the Luminaire!”

  Chapter XXI

  Penelope had never been in a prison before, but she had seen enough cop shows and movies to guess that they weren’t usually actually made out of iron bars. Apart from over the windows, perhaps. She wasn’t sure if the fact that her entire cage was made out of iron bars meant, technically, that it was all windows—and that the view just happened to be of another iron cage on the floor (holding Verity) beside her, and beyond that a cold and breezy concrete room.

  “You know, I wasn’t expecting the British Library to come furnished with cages,” Penelope said to herself. At least she had the suitcase to sit on, and not the uncomfortable iron bars that Verity had. A small part of her librarianship training was nagging at her, complaining that inside that very suitcase was a document which, despite the fact was trying to open a magical portal to hell, was also very old, and it should not be treated with such disrespect.

  Penelope tried to ignore that part of her as much as possible. It was the Luminaire’s fault that she was in this mess anyway, at least as far as she could see.

  “Hmm. You’d probably be surprised at the sorts of things that I have seen in libraries and private collections over the years,” Verity said from her huddled place against her own set of bars. “Darius was right you know, when he said that the Knights ruled London. They can do pretty much anything that they want.”

  “Including incarcerating foreign nationals and killing their own parents, it seems.” Penelope sighed. She still didn’t know how to put what she felt into words. It was a dull, animal-like hate towards Darius, but also a wary sort of pity for the man. He was clearly brainwashed by the Knight Templar, and the tragedy of it all was simply too much to bear.

  The two women had been dragged to their floor-cages what seemed like an age ago, taken down flights and flights of stairs past floors with signs reading normal-sounding library names such as ‘Collections A-H’ or ‘Collections: Eurasian History’. It felt like to Penelope that they had been underground for hours, days even—but she imagined that it couldn’t be so long. After all, she hadn’t started to get hungry or tired—but then again, perhaps being wrongfully kidnapped and imprisoned by a fantastical secret society does wonders for ones’ metabolism. Neither of the women had talked about what might happen when Darius and the ‘High Council’ of the Knights Templar had made up their minds what to do with them.

  “Maybe the Templar can keep both copies safe,” Penelope groaned. After all, they seemed to have access to some pretty inaccessible places…

  “You don’t believe that, and neither do I,” Verity said sadly, and Penelope knew that she was right. “No matter the firepower, the Archon will just walk through the main entrance to the British Library just like it did in the New York one, and straight down here. Even if the Knights found some way to stop it, or encased the books in concret
e and threw them to the bottom of the Thames, then they would still be active. Their power would still be churning up the spirits and the demonologists and the poltergeists. London would become a haunted necropolis,” Verity predicted morbidly.

  “Then what other option is there? That we destroy it? Why don’t we do it right now?” Penelope said, standing up from the suitcase.

  “You could try, but just like the Knights tried to take the second volume to the Vatican, you’d find that something terrible and tragic happened to you in short order. Maybe that is what Darius is hoping will happen so he doesn’t have to decide what to do with you. You’d unexpectedly fall over and break your neck, or the book would drive you mad as soon as you tried to rip one page of it,” Verity said. “It’s only when you have all three volumes together, and the portal is almost completely open that you have a hope of destroying them. The dark powers that made them were very clever in that. Lay a curse on them so powerful that they cannot be destroyed separately, but have to be brought together, when their power is also at its strongest!”

  Penelope felt sick, and cold, and tired. “So what choice do we have? Just accept what’s going to happen? Wait for either the Knights or the Archon to get here and kill us first?”

  “There is one way to get out of here, you know, but we won’t have long…” Verity said in a lower whisper.

  “Yes? Well what is it!” Penelope asked.

  “You won’t like it,” Verity warned her.

  “It’s the apocalypse! I don’t really think that it matters that much if I like it or not!” Penelope almost laughed.

  “Open it,” Verity said. “Open the Luminaire, just like you did in New York.”

  Penelope remembered the sudden disturbance that had ripped through her apartment like a miniature tornado. It had cracked glass and tiles, torn curtains and ripped books and televisions to shreds. But was it strong enough to break open the iron cages that they were in?

  “But… But I thought that you were always telling me not to open it, and not to think about it even. That it was leeching on my psychic power or something…” Penelope frowned down at the suitcase.

  “I know, and believe me, I wouldn’t ask you to do this if there was any other way at all. At all,” Verity hissed. “As soon as you open it, the spell contained in the grimoire will start again, and it will call to its sister volumes. You won’t have long until the volumes will complete their incantation, and the portal will be open.”

  “Why on earth would you ask me to open it, then!” Penelope said, just as their argument was interrupted by the clanging of a metal door in the darkness, and the clipping of shoes coming towards them.

  “Shenk?” Penelope said in surprise to see the figure of the Knight-Researcher appearing out of the darkness, with three livid red scratch marks across his forehead from where Verity had attacked him.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier. This is the first time I could get away,” he whispered, looking warily over his shoulder, back into the darkness. “The High Council are in turmoil, and they’re drafting everyone in, everyone,” he said solemnly, with round eyes.

  “Get out,” Verity said sullenly. “Don’t think that you can come down here with your fake sympathy and expect us to make you feel better for being a lying traitor to your friends,” she said, and Penelope had to kind of admit that she felt very similar, but Doctor Shenk protested, coming to stand in front of Verity’s cage and wringing his hands together.

  “No, you don’t understand—this was the only way to get inside. You see, it had to be like this,” he whispered, drawing from his pocket a long brass key.

  “Wait, you’re saying that you got us captured on purpose?” Penelope said.

  “Yes! Of course!” Shenk shook his head and started to slide the key inside Penelope’s cage. “Come on, we don’t have much time before the High Council comes to a final decision.”

  “Penelope… Don’t trust him!” Verity hissed, throwing herself at the bars nearest to Shenk, but she couldn’t reach him.

  Clunk-thunk! The cage door made a loud clanking noise as it swung open, but Penelope didn’t move from her position on the other side of the enclosure, the suitcase at her feet. She watched as Shenk’s eyes flickered to the suitcase between them, and he licked his lips nervously. “Please, Penelope. This is your only chance…”

  “Penelope…” Verity said warningly.

  “How do I know that we can trust you?” Penelope said uncertainly, reaching down to the suitcase and slipping her hands through the handle.

  “I, I…” Shenk looked confused for a moment. “Well, I guess I don’t know if you can. But…” Shenk blushed. “I just don’t think that it’s right for Darius to have helped kill his—your parents. That’s not right what the Knights made him do.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Penelope said, picking up the suitcase and clambering out of the cage. For just the merest second, as she clambered out from under the door, there was a moment when Penelope’s aching legs seized up and she fell over the last of the iron grillwork. The battered orange and red suitcase fell to the floor and skidded a few feet with a loud thump as Penelope hit the deck.

  Doctor Shenk moved quickly, seeming to offer his arm or hand to help her with one hand, as he stretched out the other hand and stopped, freezing as it clasped the torn leather handle of the suitcase containing the Luminaire. Penelope looked up at the slightly bigger and broader man, knowing that he could wrestle it off of her if he had wanted to. She could see the hunger in the Knight-Researcher’s eyes, too, as he once again licked his lips in that hesitant and embarrassed way.

  “Oh, ah, I’m sorry.” He snatched his fingers back as if he had burned them. “No, I don’t want to hold that thing,” he whispered, even stepping back—but it had been enough for Penelope to see that he really, really did.

  “Get my friend out as well,” she said, her voice high as she breathed heavily and her heart raced against the walls of her ribs.

  “Ah yes, of course. What was I thinking?” Shenk almost chuckled to himself, turning to fumble with the key at the Sister of St. Agnes’s cage, and pulling the unlocked door a moment later with a loud creak.

  “Well, I guess I owe you a thanks, at least,” Verity said, tumbling out of the metal cage and rubbing her legs and elbows from the painful bruises. She still looked a whole lot fitter than Shenk did however, with his three claw marks across his face. “I’m sorry about that, as well.” Verity nodded to the man’s face. “If I had known that this was your plan all along…”

  “You would never have agreed to it,” Shenk said, nodding back towards the door through which he had come through. “Quickly now, the High Council could be ending their report any moment.”

  “Where’s the second volume?” Penelope asked. “Are you going to take us to it?”

  “You know,” it was Verity who spoke, looking at Penelope. “The Luminaires call to each other. A part of you will know where it is.”

  Penelope was about to protest that she knew nothing of the sort, but something like a static electric shock ran up through the carry handle of the suitcase into her hands, and she realized that she did know. “Down,” she said. It was like standing near the presence of a fire, you don’t need to see it or be looking at it to know that it is there. The only difference was, that it didn’t feel warm in Penelope’s mind. It felt like the nearness of something terrifyingly cold.

  “It’s below us, and…” Penelope pointed off to one side. “Over there.” It felt odd to know these things, but only odd to the normal everyday part of Penelope Harp, not the new Penelope Harp that hung out with secret societies and broke into National Libraries.

  “Oh, my dear heavens, she’s right,” their rescuer said. “In that direction is the Restricted Vaults, where they keep all of the most important and dangerous tomes.”

  “Good. Then let’s go,” Verity said, taking time to make sure that Doctor Shenk went first through the door.

  Chapter XXII


  The three would-be saviors of the world found themselves traveling downward through the layers of the city under the British Library, although Penelope Harp was sure that no National Library should ever look like this.

  The walls were made of a dirty white-stone that looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. Running along the edge of the walls were black and red stone mosaics, almost like they had wondered into a subterranean Roman ruin. The floor was mostly concrete until the next set of industrial metal gantry-like stairs downwards, but in a few places Penelope found their feet echoing over white and black tiles.

  “This would be a really terrible place to store ancient manuscripts,” she mumbled, unable to turn off the part of her head that was still a Special Collections Librarian. “So much dust, so much moisture in the air.”

  “There’s not even any air conditioning or temperature control,” Shenk agreed half-heartedly from the front of their small column. He was using a small pen-torch as a means to show the way forward, as there were no lights down here, it seemed. “But you know, this part was never meant to be attached to the Library upstairs.” He indicated the small rounded archways set into the floor, which looked to be air grates or worse, water run-offs. “London is built on top of older Londons, you see. This down here is one of the older Temple Lodges from the mid-eighteenth century, and underneath that is where the Edwardians tried to drive through the British Library tube station.”

  “There’s a British Library Tube?” Verity asked, surprised. Penelope felt secretly pleased that the woman could be surprised by any new fact at all.

  “Yes,” Shenk said with a slightly warmer, mischievous grin. “It’s all complete, tunnels and platforms and everything, only that there are absolutely no trains that run along it. It was closed because it could offer too much of a security risk with Whitehall and Parliament around the corner.”