The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2)

by Sloan, J. P.

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  © 2015 J.P. Sloan

  http://jp-sloan.com

  Cover Art by Conzpiracy Digital Arts

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  ISBN 978-1-62007-822-8 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-823-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-62007-824-2 (hardcover)

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  This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother.

  From the tragedy of passing blossoms the promise of new life.

  So may it be.

  knew this wasn’t going to be the typical meeting with Julian Bright when, instead of the usual political organ-grinders at the campaign headquarters, I found a soccer mom duct taped to a chair, foaming at the mouth. Her grunting and growling echoed off the bare sheetrock walls of Julian’s office, vacant except for the three of us.

  I peeked through the blinds covering the locked storefront to make sure none of volunteers were back from the morning rounds. Satisfied we were alone, I turned to Julian.

  He waved his arm at the woman in a lazy circle. “So, this is why I called.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Amy Mancuso. You know her?”

  I shook my head.

  “She’s a volunteer. Her team was working Cold Spring by Loyola when she started swearing and spitting at the residents. By the time her team captain called me, she’d kicked someone’s dog. Terrier, I think. Or one of those purse dogs.”

  I winced. “Remind me not to hand out yard signs for you. Jesus.”

  “It’s not like we do background checks on volunteers. I figured she probably missed some meds or something.”

  “But you called me instead of the paramedics.”

  “Right.”

  “Why?” I asked as I took a step toward her.

  Amy’s grunting halted as she straightened in her chair. Her head swiveled slowly in my direction, and her eyes sent the creeping chills up my neck.

  With a nerve-rattling tone she growled, “Is that Dorian Lake I smell?”

  I’d never enjoyed the sound of my own name less.

  Julian turned a shoulder to me and whispered, “That’s why.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I slowly approached Amy, pulling my pendulum from my jacket pocket in a slow, non-threatening motion. Last thing I needed at that moment was to send a crazy person into a panic. I assumed she was crazy. My pendulum would determine whether she was unnaturally energized or the usual cat-shaving flavor of lunatic.

  Her eyes were dilated; her mouth twisted into the most unsettling smile one could imagine on the face of an otherwise average woman.

  “Have we met?”

  “Poor little Dorian lost his soul.”

  Okay, this was probably a legitimate problem.

  I dangled the pendulum in front of Amy. The little nugget of copper spun from the end of its chain in a perfectly Newtonian fashion. Nothing pulled it contrary to the laws of Nature. I couldn’t even feel a tug on the chain.

  She continued, “Lost his soul, he lost his soul. Dropped it down a rabbit hole.”

  “I suppose you think you’re being clever?”

  “Is he doomed or is he dead? Will he damn your soul instead?”

  This conversation had lost all of its charm.

  “Who am I talking to?”

  She sucked in a huge gulp of air and craned her neck at a painful angle toward the ceiling. A sick squealing noise leaked from her lips as her arms trembled. When she finally released her breath and sank back down into her chair, she simply chuckled.

  “We’re going to find it, you know. And when we do, we’re going to eat it.”

  I leaned in as close as I dared and whispered, “If you think I’m afraid of you, then you need to know something. I’m not impressed.”

  “It won’t be long now.”

  “Did someone send you, or is this just a courtesy call?”

  She smirked. “We’re going to enjoy this.”

  I was knitting together a clever response when a loud rip of tape crackled through the room. Her hand slammed up underneath my jaw, fingers clamping around my throat. My head filled with blood, and I tried to cough through the gag reflex. The harder I beat on her hand to let go, the wider that creepy smile got.

  I was close to blacking out when her palm arched away from my windpipe long enough for me to catch a breath. Her lips pulled back into a thin grimace as her body quaked. I jerked away from her grip, scrambling backward on my hands and feet.

  Amy groaned and slumped forward, unconscious. I followed a pair of wires from Amy’s back all the way to the Taser gun in Julian’s hand.

  I rubbed my throat and stood up as he pulled the prongs from Amy’s blouse.

  “You carry that thing all the time?” I coughed.

  “I’m running a campaign in Baltimore City. What do you think?”

  “Don’t carry anything more lethal than that, do you?”

  “Not today.”

  After catching my breath, I plucked my pendulum off the floor and gave Amy another once-over. “Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think she’s crazy.”

  “Is that good news?”

  “I think something was trying to make contact.”

  “With you?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. To gloat.”

  “This business about your soul―”

  “Forget about it.”

  Julian knelt down and checked her breathing. “So, is this over?”

  “How am I supposed to know? Not really my scope of practice.”

  “Well, we have to do something.”

  “I guess we should just wait and see if she comes to.” I snickered. “Interesting.”

  “What is?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever once run into a legit demon possession before.”

  “Demon, huh?”

  “Well, you can call it a demon. It’s as close as our culture comes to describing it.”

  “What would you call it, then?”

  Hell, Julian knew enough about my peculiar vocation. He was ready for this. “The Dark Choir.”

  “Charming.”

  “It’s what my old mentor used to call the old beings. Older than God, or what we call God.”

  Julian wrapped the wires of his Taser around its barrel and sighed as he looked down at Amy. “How do we fix this?”

  It was a good question, and one I didn’t have an answer to. “Holy water and a cross?”

  “Well, I can’t keep her here.”

  Amy seemed to be breathing normally. Her breaths weren’t as ragged, wheezy, or filled with Hell as they were before Julian shocked the crap out of her.

  “Let’s give her a minute,” I offered. “If she doesn’t come out of it, we’ll take her to the hospital.”

  “I’m going to need a story, then. Maybe she had a seizure?”

  I leaned against a nearby desk, massaging my throat. “We can’t have a normal week for once, can we?”

  “Well, it is only Thursday.”

  “We have plenty of time to screw this up even worse, I guess.”

  “So, Dorian.”
>
  Here it came. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and braced for it. “Yeah?”

  “Monday.”

  “I know.”

  Julian arched a brow. “Where were you?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “That’s funny because our meeting was supposed to be in Baltimore.”

  “Look, I got caught up with some research, then I-95 traffic got me.”

  Julian stepped to the front of the office and peeked through the side of the blinds. “And your phone died, I guess? Because you didn’t call.”

  “It was, like, eleven at night before I realized I boned it. I’m sorry.”

  I could tell Julian was trying to force a smile, but was failing miserably.

  “Dorian, you know I try to work around your schedule. And it was easier before I brought you on salary.” He took a long breath. “It’s not the first meeting you’ve missed, either.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re late. You’re distracted. You’re pissing off the staff.”

  “They deserve it.”

  He paused, then shrugged. “Well, no argument there. But this isn’t the best time for you to start checking out on me, Dorian.”

  “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “This thing with your soul. Is that what’s going on with you?”

  I snapped, “I said not to worry about that, and I meant it.”

  Julian blinked and nodded.

  I had a good thing going with Julian before I screwed it up. I crafted charms for the Mayor of Baltimore, and Julian paid for it out of his own pocket. Not usually in the Deputy Mayor’s job description, but Julian believed in Mayor Sullivan the way most people believed in God. I liked Julian. He was always straight with me, and he always delivered, and he knew just enough about the hermetic arts to keep up in conversation. He had even convinced me to show him a few basics, but he proved unable even to execute the Lesser Banishing Cross, the first, most basic of exercises to clear a space of unwanted energies. The Banishing Cross anchored the practitioner in hermetic space through powerful thought bonds, often invoked as compass “quarters,” while filling the area with the individual’s personal charge. Julian couldn’t find a powerful enough image to connect with, and thus his energy only gushed around him like an unmanned fire hose. I figured his industry was better served in politics.

  Then he got the idea of putting me on salary, which would have saved him money and given me some kind of regular income. At the time, it was a clear win-win. But Julian was right; I had been distracted lately. Ever since my botched attempt at outsmarting a weasel soul-monger, my soul had been floating in the dusty crawlspace between the hereafter and the here-and-now. I had to locate it and find a way to shove it back into my meat sack before something else found a use for it. The prospect of serving an eternity at the vicious whim of the Dark Choir was something of a focus-breaker.

  Not that Julian fully understood what I was doing on my own time. I’d made an effort to segregate my business with Julian from the Craft. We’d made an arrangement, and I wasn’t holding up my end. I was the dick, here.

  Amy coughed in her chair. Her feet jerked a little, and she released a pitiful moan.

  Julian and I circled her, waiting to see who had the lights on.

  “What―happened?”

  Julian laid a hand on her shoulder. “You had an attack. You’re safe.”

  Amy opened her eyes and glanced up at Julian. “What?”

  “Some kind of fit. A seizure.”

  She dropped her head slowly and pawed with her free hand at the tape binding her wrist to the chair. Her eyebrows screwed together. “What the hell is going on?”

  I nodded to Julian. “I think she’s okay now.”

  He picked at the tape and unwrapped it from her skin. She winced and looked away, her gaze settling on me.

  “Do I know you?” she muttered.

  “No.”

  “I think I know you.”

  “Probably just from the seizure.”

  She squinted at me as Julian moved to free her other arm. “No. I feel like I know you. Like, I feel some kind of memory.”

  “A good one, I hope.”

  “No. Hate. I feel like I should hate you.”

  It was probably a leftover from her possession, but there was no way I was going to even try to explain that to her.

  “I have one of those faces people like to punch.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on. Who are you people? Why am I―”

  Julian interrupted with one final tug of the tape, “My name is Julian Bright, Miss Mancuso. You had an episode while canvassing for the Mayor’s campaign.”

  “Yeah, I remember that.”

  “Well, you got violent and assaulted someone’s dog.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Your team captain brought you back here, and you went into a seizure.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Hmm? Oh. I sent him home. I didn’t want him… I wanted to spare you the embarrassment.”

  Amy looked back and forth from me to Julian, her face stiff and guarded.

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Come on,” he said, offering her a hand. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”

  He helped her to her feet, and as they moved to the front door, she kept an eye on me. By the time Julian had unlocked the door and escorted her to the passenger side of his car, she was avoiding my face altogether.

  Julian closed the car door and trotted around to the driver side, giving me a pointed look.

  “We need to finish this conversation.”

  I nodded. “Druid Hill, tomorrow night?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Let’s make it Gordon’s, Monday morning.”

  I shrugged, but it bothered me that Julian wasn’t coming to the Club anymore. I met him at the Druid Hill Club, after all. He was one of the last regulars before it nearly went under. Thankfully the Club was on the rebound, thanks in no small part, I liked to imagine, to my renewed patronage. I knew the real reasons were far more complex than that, but the narcissist in me enjoyed co-opting reality from time-to-time.

  I watched Julian pull out of his parking space when I heard an engine start. A dark blue Chrysler was parked just across the grassy divide between the campaign office and the chain restaurant next door. The side window rolled up before I could spot the driver. Julian was out onto the main road before the Chrysler jerked out of its parking space and whipped around the rear of the restaurant.

  Lovely.

  I had grown more or less accustomed to the continuous feeling of the shadows staring down the back of my head. Ever since I’d lost my soul, I’d been plagued with the hungry interest the Dark Choir held for me. But the ephemeral nature of those nagging, little shadows and imp-like phantoms amounted to little more than the panic one feels after waking from a nightmare. They came rapidly and faded. Mystery sedans watching me from across parking lots, however? Not so ephemeral.

  My phone rang and broke me out of my cold sweat. It was Edgar Swain, probably the only real friend I had in the world.

  “Dorian, you in the city?”

  “Close enough. What’s up?”

  “Got lunch plans?”

  I checked my watch. How was it almost noon already? “Not really. Where are you?”

  “The Market. I got someone I want you to meet.”

  Edgar was remarkably well-connected. He was one of the most reliable suppliers of hermetic materials and reagents in the Mid-Atlantic. He was what people in my circle called a Collector, a practitioner who acquired and occasionally re-sold objects of esoteric value. This private collection of Edgar’s was rife with cursed objects and other items his wife would rather see dumped into the Chesapeake. That collection also earned him the notice of the Presidium, unfortunately. And that had become something of a cornerstone for our friendship. We were two sorry bastards small enough to operate directly under the Presidium’s nose, gambling with their mercurial sense
of what is and isn’t permissible. It was the business plan of Damocles, but at least we didn’t have any competition.

  “Sounds good. I’ll be there in forty.”

  exington Market was essentially the nerve center of what locals called “real Baltimore.” It had operated continually since just after the founding of the nation, and was about as far from the white-washed tourist mecca of the Inner Harbor as one could imagine. It was cramped, unsanitary, and reeked of fish. But on a busy day, it thundered with conversation and the odd jazz trio huddled in front of one of the grocery stalls.

  I’d made it a point to meet with Edgar every time he managed a trip to Baltimore. Edgar kept poking his nose around the Market, looking for some side-obscured stall with an old school Collector who had managed to avoid the Presidium’s all-encompassing attentions. Before 1812, when the Presidium effectively seized power in D.C., Lexington Market was the port-of-call for the European cabals trafficking in any kind of worthwhile hermetic interest. It had been Collector Heaven.

  I found Edgar standing in front of his favorite falafel cart. He sported one of his obnoxious floral print shirts. His head bobbed in conversation with a short man wearing a threadbare plaid blazer. The man was mostly bald with the remnants of a ginger mane mixing with silver ringing his ears. His face was wrinkled, his cheeks stubbled in white and red whiskers.

  “Dorian, man!” Edgar bellowed as he spotted me. He handed me a foil-wrapped falafel. I never had the heart to tell him I despised the dreck that stall called food. He was such a fan.

  “You really shouldn’t have,” I mumbled as I nodded to Edgar’s friend. “Hello.”

  Edgar announced, “Dorian, I want you to meet Del Carmody.”

  Carmody squinted up at me and thrust out a hand.

  “Dorian Lake? A pleasure, sir.” His spoke with a peppery British accent lurking beneath a husky tobacco-ravaged throat warble. “Gone these years, and never met you face-to-face.”

  “Hi.”

  “So, you’re Emil Desiderio’s magnum opus?”

  Christ. I always loathed when complete strangers recognized me as a student of Emil Desiderio. It rarely went well for me. Either they fell on the roster of Emil’s enemies and counted me an enemy by association, or they were old industry pals of Emil and blamed me for being the reason he effectively dropped off the face of the Earth. At the end of his life, I was Emil’s only friend. Admittedly, not a good one.