Cursed (Codex of Enchantment Book 1)

by Briana Snow

  “A watch?” Penelope said hesitantly, and the seller just laughed.

  “What good is a watch down here? So we can count out the torment precisely?” She cackled.

  “Clothes,” Verity suggested. “Our jackets. Here, I have gloves too.” She took off her stylish jacket and handed it to the seller, nodding at Penelope to do the same.

  “Hmm. Well, you only want a rumor anyway, don’t you? That’ll do. People always want clothes. Now, where, who, or what do you want rumors about? I got all sorts here. I got rumors about the future, about the past, about lovers, wives, husbands and kings.”

  “Paris,” Verity said. “We want rumors about a city.”

  “Paris?” The seller looked at her like she was mad. “Well, that’s conjecture and opinion, not rumors. No, not at all. You want the Profane Lore Keepers for that,” she muttered irritably, but made no gesture to give them their coats back.

  “No, you don’t understand,” Verity said, her voice dropping low. “We want rumors about the souls who have traveled between Paris and here…”

  “Oh-ho, I see, I see…” The seller considered the dangling branches of her headdress, her eyes scanning first this way and then that, before alighting on one bottle that seemed to fix her attention. “Well, I can’t say much about Paris the city, and nor would I want to remember it, but I can tell you this: there are indeed those who have claimed to travel the routes between Hell and the realms above. Not that any believed them.”

  “Great, who are they? Where can we find them?” Penelope said.

  “That’ll cost you more, lady.” The seller cackled again. “You only asked for a rumor, and I gave you one.” She turned to go.

  “That was no rumor!” Verity said. “And we paid you two jackets, and my gloves in good faith—at best all that you gave us was a piece of gossip, nothing more!”

  “That was not gossip! If it was gossip I would have told you just that it was possible, not that there were those who had actually done it!”

  “Two jackets and a pair of gloves, lady,” Verity reminded her, but the secret-seller was adamant. Penelope was starting to see that this woman was damned for a reason.

  “Enough. You don’t know what you’re asking, do you? You’re clearly very, very new.” The seller laughed. “You’re asking me for information on a secret route out of Hell, the Underworld, damnation itself.” She shook her head. “As if every damned soul around here doesn’t also want to know that, right? As if this whole city would come to a grinding halt and tear itself apart to know where a route was supposed to be? You are lucky that I don’t demand one of your lives!”

  “Why, you little…” Verity moved her hand to her side in anger, where Penelope was sure that a gun was going to be hidden.

  “No wait,” Penelope reached out. “How useful would a lock of hair be?”

  “Pffft! You’re wasting my time.” The seller turned to leave them.

  “I didn’t finish,” Penelope reached out and clutched at the woman’s ragged arm. “A lock of hair from a soul who isn’t even damned.”

  “Penelope, no!” Verity said. “You have no idea what someone can do with something like that—especially down here.”

  “I’ve seen the movies,” Penelope growled in response. “Look at me. You’ll see that I’m not damned. I’m sure a fragment of something pure and unsullied by hell would be worth a whole lot to somebody down here, right?”

  “Hmm.” The secret seller cocked her head, stepped forward and appeared to examine the Librarian closely. “My word. You aren’t damned, are you?” A wicked smile crossed her mouth, as she drew from her belt a small, but very sharp dagger.

  “No. I forbid it.” Verity stepped in front of the woman. “I, too, am not damned. You can take my hair instead.”

  “No!” Penelope said, feeling like she had been robbed somehow.

  “You don’t know what it is that you are offering, Penelope. You haven’t been dealing with the supernatural realms as long as I have,” Verity said, turning back to the secret-seller. “Go on, look at me. I’m just as unsullied as she is. I still have a soul. Get it over and done with.”

  “Well…” The secret-seller did the same calculating look again between the two women, and then nodded to herself. “One is as good as another I suppose.” The woman moved quickly, plucking a handful of Verity’s hair from her temple and yanking painfully, causing Verity to hiss and wince.

  With a few sudden movements, the seller had chopped the hair from her scalp and stepped back with a fist of the stuff held in front of her, which she pocketed immediately. “Ahh,” the woman sighed contentedly. “Today has been a good day. There is a man who calls himself Simeon Lighter, who lives, let’s see,” she orientated herself by looking up at the cavern around them. “On the Near-Wall side as we walk. He runs a small candle shop, and it is said that he has managed to get people out, and receive people,” she added darkly, before humming and cackling to herself. “But I wouldn’t take long, as the city is heading towards something big, or so we’ve been told. A big gathering of Hell.”

  “Amassing their armies,” Verity muttered to Penelope, scratching at the missing patch of hair on her scalp. She didn’t say thank you as she turned, grabbing Penelope’s arm towards where they could see the nearer section of cavern wall, and started threading their way through the city of the lost.

  Chapter XXIX

  The thing that was inside Special Consul Maximus was restless. It pushed at the pale, tightening skin of the man like a hand in a glove. Why were human bodies always so tight and constraining? None the Archon had been in through the long years and generations of its visits to earth had ever fit.

  The thing had walked the body of the FBI Agent out of the New York apartment and to JFK Airport. The thing had ransacked his memories for the appropriate actions to take, using the wallet, the gold seal of the badge, and even raising the corners of the man’s mouth in a sickly-looking twitch in what it thought approximated a ‘smile’.

  The Archon, inside the FBI agents body had then retired to the waiting room, where it had sat, immobile until one of the stewardesses came to collect them to take them to the next plane to London, England. The Archon didn’t say anything, but kept the rictus-grin on the FBI agents face all the way through the special measures departure lounge, and through the corridor to the plane itself, where he was seated at the back, on his own, and given a worried nod.

  The stewardesses couldn’t see Maximus’s blood shot eyes behind the shades, but they could see the pale, tightening skin as the foul spirit inside the human body started to burn away all of the vital resources that the still-living flesh had left. It took a long time to fly all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, and twice through the flight he was encouraged to stand up and walk around, to stretch his legs a bit—but he only made the human FBI Agent and Knights Templar nod in response that he had understood. The rictus grin never changed, and neither did the rest of him.

  When they finally landed, the team of stewardesses were only too glad to get rid of the creepy grinning American FBI agent at the back of the flight. Even if he had been especially chartered entry by some powerful fellow at the British Library. He was the first to leave the plane, ignoring the safety advice as he stood up and walked to the door whilst everyone else bounced inside their safety belts.

  After everyone had left the plane, and the stewardesses were busy cleaning up the aisles and downing coffee, one of them turned to another and said in a broad American accent, “Quite frankly, that agent gave me the shivers. Did you see the way he never changed his expression, all the way through? If he thought that he was being undercover then he really doesn’t know what he was doing!”

  Her friend nodded and carried on with her cleaning, as the first woman tried not to think about the fact that she had the disturbing notion that she had never seen the man breath.

  ***

  A little while later at the British Library, the Archon walked the Special Consul Maximus into the r
ed-brick squat building, apparently in turmoil. The Archon replaced the leering grin of charm and friendliness with a more serious frown as he marched past the welcome desk, and straight to the elevator that led to the hidden levels. Ransacking the man’s memories once again, the spirit punched in the number that would take the lift below the public and the private levels of the researchers and academics, and instead into the headquarters of one of the oldest occult-religious orders of the world: The Knights Templar.

  “Special Consul Maximus!” A nervous, thin-looking young clerk of the Templar said, rushing over to where the Consul had stepped out of the elevator. He had novitiate-apprentice written all over him, the Archon learned from Maximus’s brain. As one of the leading officers of the American division of the Knights Templar, his body far, far out-ranked this one, and so the Archon thought it safe just to increase his frown.

  “I uh, I was told to expect you sire—but that was before…” His voice fell away into a muttered silence. Behind him, in the large foyer of the level he had walked out into, there appeared to be some sort of disaster happening. Other men and women were setting up camp beds, and carrying stretchers, and still more were on their mobile phones, and strapping armored vests to their chests.

  Maximus frowned.

  “I—I’m afraid that I cannot take you to Darius,” the clerk whispered, looking down at his feet. “I had orders to, but now… He is undergoing medical treatment. There was, uh, an incident you see.”

  Maximus continued to frown.

  “Yes, well, of course you have clearance. The ones you are tracking? They came here. Somehow, they escaped our cells, and managed to create a major incursion in the Vaults.”

  The Special Consul Maximus moved, shoving past the clerk as if he wasn’t even there. Of course, he could smell the trail that the Luminaire minus Clavem had left behind. It was written clearly on the surface of the world, like a golden thread that all he had to do was pull. It had been a torment to stand still and listen to the clerk prattle on, but he didn’t want every Knights Templar here to suddenly erupt into suspicion and seek to stop him as he marched through their stronghold. The Archon was lucky that it had managed to arrive at just the right time that all of the magical barriers and wards were down.

  Not that it really thought itself lucky. The Archon was beyond such considerations. Even if there had been magical protections and charms in place around this site, the spirit would have found a way in. It would have tunneled, dug, climbed, or simply waited outside the front door until an opportunity had arisen.

  As it had now.

  Chapter XXX

  The FBI Agent, Special Consul Maximus, and Archon of Hell walked through the busy corridors of the Knights Templar Headquarters, ignoring everyone in its path. It seemed that a strong demeanor was all one needed to ensure success in this world, as he passed by other Knights wearing body armor or even strapping gun holsters to themselves who saw the black-clad agent coming and stepped out of the way.

  He took the next stairs, and the next and the next, working his way deeper and deeper like a splinter into the heart of his victim, and the scenes around him became ever more frantic. The incursion that the two women had caused had disrupted every magical act, experiment, or artifact in the British Library. The wards were down, and the poltergeists and imps were loose. Centuries of protections around cursed books or sarcophaguses had been shattered by the opening of the two volumes of the Luminaire, and there were screams as people were attacked, possessed, or merely terrified out of their wits.

  None of the unquiet shades or curses sought out the Special Consul however. The spirits could clearly see that here walked one of their own: a prince of hell itself, and they fled before its burning spirit.

  At last, the Consul’s steps got to the bottom level of Vaults, to find teams of body-armored Knights in helmets and balaclavas guarding the cracked masonry and shattered tiles of the Luminaire vault.

  “Sir?” Word had spread by walkie talkies that the Special Consul was in the building, but still the man’s steps did not slow as he stepped over the metal barriers erected in case of monstrous incursion. “No, wait sir!” one of the Knight soldiers said hurriedly. “It’s not safe—we haven’t exorcised in there yet.”

  Good, the Archon thought, as it ignored the man and walked through the rubble of the half-collapsing tunnel and the room beyond. The spectral whirlpool that the opening of the two grimoires at the same time had caused had ripped through this level fiercely, cracking stone and damaging structural supports. The Knights Templar were not just afraid of any phantasms and hellish beasts tearing their way through the unguarded planes, but also of the very structural integrity of the building itself failing and collapsing in on them.

  The spirit that walked inside the Special Consul didn’t care if the building it walked under collapsed and squashed its flesh. It would be annoying having to return to hell and then crawl out all over again, and finding the first available body, and then a suitable body in which to inhabit as it picked up the scent of its quarry—but other than the functional annoyance of such work, the Archon didn’t care about pain or mortal death.

  So, imagine its surprise when it sniffed with eldritch senses around the room, finding traces of the women’s spirits still there, and winding through the most delicate crack between the spiritual realms—one that was rapidly closing and re-stitching itself, healing even now. The Archon wasn’t surprised at finding the trail, no, but the Archon was pleasantly surprised where it led.

  Home.

  The creature twitched and shifted, casting off shadows from around itself the way a reactor sheds radiation. The shadows concentrated, and the temperature in the room dropped, and dropped further. A terrible feeling of wrongness gripped the soldiers of the Knights Templar outside, guarding the rubble-strewn corridor, and they knew that something awful was happening. They wondered whether they should try to go in and ‘save’ the Special Consul—but none of them moved, the terror that clutched at them and rolled their eyes was just too great. They waited until they felt something invisible quiver and rupture, releasing yet another sense of terrible wrongness into the world, and an invisible breeze howled suddenly through the tunnels, for just a moment, and then it was gone.

  When the teams of soldiers recovered their courage and their senses, they argued over who would creep over the barricades to see what had happened. Had some creature suddenly torn its way into their realm? Wasn’t it their job to stop this from happening? They moved slowly and hesitantly, crouching over their rifles and handguns, treading as quietly as they could to save against setting off catastrophic vibrations in the building.

  When they got to the room that had been the most highly-guarded and warded vault of the British Library, they found it empty. Afterwards, the Knights Templar reasoned that something had torn its way through the realms, but that it must have seized the Special Consul Maximus and returned, either that or Maximus was a hero, forcing it back to the foul pit where it came, but himself dying in the process.

  Both theories were technically near the truth, but nothing like what had happened at all.

  Chapter XXXI

  The area of the damned city where Simeon Lighter lived was mostly built of stone, and appeared to be some older and forgotten part of Pandemonium. The streets were even narrower, and all of them made up of stairs leading back and forth, up and down, to tiny plazas with different abandoned shops opening out onto them. It was almost deserted, this side of the city, and it took Penelope and Verity a long time to see why.

  “There.” Verity pointed to where they came to another jagged rent in the fabric of the city itself. Snarls of streets ended abruptly, torn from their moorings, to reveal the distant floors and the tramping feet hundreds of feet below them. This side of the city opened out onto sudden drops and open air, and it appeared that the buildings were collapsing on each other or to the cavern of hell below every day. “This side of the city must scrape and hit the walls.” Verity pointed to whe
re the rising red-black stone was, only about as far away as they were raised up from the floor below. “That’s why no one wants to live here.”

  “No one but Simeon Lighter?” Penelope hazarded, pointing to where a set of steps led down to a tiny hexagonal plaza, where one of the stone buildings had a large amount of candles of all shapes and sizes sitting outside its narrow door and wall. All of the candles were an off-yellow and creamy-white, and just looking at them made Penelope feel sick. There were fat ones and thin ones, tall, short, rounded, edged and any combination of the above.

  “I guess that’s the man that we want,” Verity said, stepping down the steps and knocking on the door.

  There was a moment of silence, before they heard a muffled curse, and a clattering of pots and scraping chairs.

  “Blast it! Damn—go away!” a male voice inside shouted.

  Verity frowned, considered her options and instead said, “No. We’ve come to see Simeon Lighter.”

  Another series of clangs and crashes. “Well, maybe Simeon Lighter doesn’t want to see you?” the voice said irritably, but they could hear it getting closer all the same. After a second, the door was flung open and there appeared, on the other side an ancient looking man in a simple graying robe, and a straggling ashen, wiry beard. On his head there sat a cloth cone of a hat. “Yes? What do you want?” he barked, before choking on his own scorn as he saw the two women. “You’re, you’re…” he said in apparent horror or glee (Penelope couldn’t decide which).

  “Not damned. Yes, we know—although I don’t think that is going to stay true for long,” Verity said, extending a hand. “Verity Vorja, Book Hunter Esquire, and this is my associate, Penelope of the New York Library.”

  “New York Library?” The aging man’s eyes shot up in appreciation. “Ah yes, a very good institution. Actually, I happen to have an associate myself who doesn’t live too far from there at all. Are you friends with—”