The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2)

by Sloan, J. P.

  “Thinking,” Gillette mumbled.

  Elle kicked again, landing a solid strike to the inside of Gillette’s thigh. She exhaled hard, and cleared her throat.

  “Rosemary,” Edgar offered.

  “Rosemary?” I echoed.

  “Strong protection reagent,” he explained. “Creates a barrier along the interior of the Veil. Plus it acts as a memory inducer thereby creating a cycling memory state for the entity―”

  “―which keeps it docile while in storage. Jesus, it’s so simple, it’s brilliant.”

  Gillette grunted, “So, now would be good.”

  I fished out a couple rosemary needles from another jar and dropped them into the bottle. The oil wasn’t thick enough to swirl. In fact, it only served to stick the needles to the side of the bottle. I fished them around the best I could, and as I reached for more grapeseed oil Gillette sighed.

  “Good enough. Bring it here.”

  I handed the vial to Gillette, who took it in her free hand. Her other hand maintained its hold on Elle’s forehead.

  Elle’s eyes swished left to right, and when they found me, they pulled up in the middle. It was panic. I couldn’t tell whose… Elle’s or the servitor’s.

  Gillette huffed three times in a row, and her energy rushed out of her crown chakra, cascading over Elle’s body. With a clench of her fist over Elle’s bangs, the energy shifted, almost crystallizing over Elle’s body.

  “Exu-de,” she chanted in a near-baritone. “Exu-de. Exu-de.”

  Elle’s body spasmed. Choking noises filled the room, and her hands flew up to her throat.

  “Hold her!” Gillette bellowed.

  I reached for one arm, and Edgar gripped the opposite from behind.

  Gillette continued her mantra as Elle’s face contorted into a mask of desperation. Elle’s throat throbbed, likely from her gagging and gasping, though it wasn’t hard to imagine something writhing up through her windpipe.

  “Her lips are turning blue,” Wren cried from the corner.

  “Almost over,” Gillette stated. “Exu-de! Exu-de!”

  Elle’s spine stiffened, then wrenched backward, pulling her head away from Gillette’s hand. Her eyes blinked rapidly behind her, searching Edgar for some kind of intervention. Her mouth drew open, gaping as hot breaths lashed out into the air. Gillette held the vial above her mouth.

  With one final shift, releasing the hardened energy into something blazing hot like molten lava, Gillette shouted, “Kata tropho!”

  I nearly blacked out from the incantation. It was as if the gravity in the room shifted to the ceiling and back again. Something sprayed against my face. It could have been spittle, possibly blood if we were very unlucky. Elle’s hand went limp in mine, and her body fell back onto Edgar, sending us both sprawling behind the work table to keep her from dropping to the floor.

  The single bulb light hanging in the work space flickered, settling back to a steady glow as I caught my balance.

  I blinked up at Gillette, clearing my head in time to watch her cap the perfume bottle. She stretched her neck, and finally centered herself as her energy snapped back into her body like a regiment of well-drilled soldiers. The woman was a master, and I was utterly glad I hadn’t managed to make an enemy out of her during this process.

  She held out the bottle, and I stood up to take it gingerly in my fingers. She stared at me with hard intent, her eyes probing me, thoughts cascading behind her pupils.

  “Our business is complete,” Gillette finally said.

  I stared at the bottle. It didn’t look any different than before. It was still the same stupid glass trinket as before. I couldn’t feel the first sign of energy within it. Of course, no decent soul trap would leak energy. Such a deceptive little thing.

  I looked over to Elle, sprawled over Edgar’s torso. He cradled her carefully, bending his knees at an awkward angle to keep her from twisting uncomfortably. Wren rushed forward to help him, pulling her legs away from the table. The two of them lifted her off the table entirely, settling her on the ground between them.

  “Baby?” Wren whispered, stroking the side of her face.

  I saw her chest moving. She was breathing. More importantly, her eyes shifted behind their lids. This was a good sign. She wasn’t just breathing, she was dreaming.

  “I think it worked,” I offered, setting the vial down carefully in the center of the table.

  “It did,” Gillette corrected. “Wasn’t easy. This girl is a labyrinth.”

  Edgar gave me a weary smile and looked to Gillette. “Thank you. You have no idea what this means to us.”

  She nodded, then pulled me aside. “Listen, Lake. I know you’re used to Presidium double-talk, and assuming that everyone’s lying to you. But there is a world where we professionals treat one another with respect. You just have to escape this artificial world the Presidium has created to realize it.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve heard how screwed up the outside world is. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

  She leaned in and whispered, “I know it was Baker. I recognized her energy.”

  I stiffened.

  Gillette continued, “I’m tired of this. I can pledge her safety on one condition.”

  I whispered, “What condition?”

  “You continue her training. I watched your curse working. Looks like you retained Desiderio’s education well enough. You keep her from doing anything like this ever again, and I’ll suspend my judgment.”

  I took a deep breath, then nodded.

  She considered me for a moment, then sniffled. “I’ll collect Carmody.”

  Gillette stepped around me for the stairs. As she took the first step onto the stairs, the light flickered again. She froze.

  As did I.

  Edgar whispered, “What was that?”

  I looked over to Gillette, who turned slowly to me, her eyes wide.

  “Lake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Check that bottle.”

  I turned to my work table. The vial sat still in the direct center of my Golden Spiral. I waved my palm over the bottle, palpating the energy.

  The light flickered again.

  More importantly, tiny needles of white-hot energy lanced into my skin.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Gillette rushed back into the room, and the two of us twisted away as the tiny vial of glass shattered on the table.

  I brushed the glass off my arms, checking for blood.

  “You okay?” I asked Gillette.

  She looked up and down, turning around, his eyes scanning the entire space.

  “It’s out,” she whispered. “What did you do?”

  “What do you mean it’s out?”

  “The bottle didn’t hold, obviously.”

  “I said kill the thing if this was a problem!”

  “Where’s your frankincense?”

  I marched over to the shelf and grabbed the mason jar, jingling it in front of Gillette.

  Edgar brushed past my shoulder and snatched the bottle from my hand. “Dorian?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s myrrh.”

  I double-checked the bottle. And my stomach dropped.

  I’d studied the hermetic arts since I was eighteen years old. I was taken under Emil Desiderio’s wing and instructed over the period of ten long, laborious years. He took no shortcuts. At times, I wanted to punch him in the face. The better years of my youth were spent not in dating, getting drunk and screwing, but in studying dead languages and memorizing correspondences within sacred geometries.

  And surely somewhere along those years I learned the difference between frankincense, a powerful Veil-strengthening warding resin, and myrrh, another tree resin that served to blur the boundaries between the spiritual world and the mundane.

  “Oh, fuck me.”

  The light flickered aggressively, sending long shadows into the space. The temperature dropped rapidly.

  “It’s drawing energy from the room,” I
whispered. “Damn it. Everyone, upstairs. Now!”

  Gillette and I gathered the Swains and almost literally shoved them up the flight of stairs. I was the last one to the steel door, and as I turned to close it behind me, I could have sworn for a moment that I caught two yellow eyes glaring at me from the darkened room below. It sent the hairs on my arms on end.

  I closed the door and pushed against it with my back, catching my breath.

  “Okay,” I muttered. “That was my bad.”

  Gillette paced an impatient circle. “I did say frankincense, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of all the reagents you could have mistaken for frankincense―”

  “I know, Gillette. Thank you, though.”

  The door was still and solid behind my back. Nothing of spiritual merit would be penetrating that door, and though the surrounding structure of the building was made of hermetically weaker material, the power of doors and corridors translated onto the other side of the Veil. Yet despite the comfort that door offered, I knew something horrible was in the basement.

  And I couldn’t let it just stay down there.

  I looked over to the Swains, gathering Elle onto the futon. “Guys? Stay here.”

  I marched across the front room and reached for the silver blade mounted over my mantel.

  Gillette gave me a quizzical glance. “You’re going back down there?”

  I held the darquelle up to my face. “This thing has been a pain in my ass long enough. There’s no way I’m just going to let it squat in my fucking basement.”

  “You realize it’s consuming all of the latent energy built up in that room?”

  I thought about Emil’s Library, and had to put faith that he had worked some significant natural wardings into the cabinet itself. If something incorporeal had managed to tap into the content of those texts, this thing could turn into a living nightmare in a big damn hurry.

  “Sooner I deal with it, the better.”

  A tremble vibrated the floorboards, and Wren snapped her head up.

  “What was that?”

  We all jumped as some kind of scratching crash erupted from the basement.

  “That had better not be what I think it is,” I grumbled as I rushed into my kitchen and fished a flashlight out of the junk drawer. If that thing had gotten into Emil’s Library, this was about to turn into an even bigger nightmare.

  Gillette leaned against the kitchen door frame, hands in her pockets. “Good luck.”

  So much for Gillette’s cooperation. “Thanks.”

  I turned to the steel door and centered myself.

  One of us was going down.

  I opened the door slowly, peering down into the darkness, gripped my flashlight and darquelle, and stepped into the shadows.

  he light at the bottom of the stairs flickered back to life. A pall of dust wafted into view, clouding my line of sight into the work space as I descended the steps one-by-one. The air smelled of mold and gypsum, charged with a sharp twang of ozone. I waved at the dust in futility as I followed the wall to the Library cabinet. I ran a hand along the top and front. The doors were closed, and the wood felt unmolested. This thing hadn’t made a move for the texts. Good.

  Something skittered in the distance, too far away to reasonably be within the same room. I waited for a moment, darquelle held out in front of me as the dust cleared. The bulb overhead streamed beams into the space, and soon a dark patch in the room presented itself. I advanced, energy centered, knife held tight. As more dust settled, I realized I wasn’t looking at a hellish thoughtform mutant, but a hole in my wall. I blinked against the remaining dust and inspected the damage. A single thickness of sheetrock and a frame wall separated my work space from an entire coal cellar I hadn’t realized existed. I had always assumed the basement was smaller than it ought to have been, but I never had the wherewithal to look into whether there was more to the basement than the work space. Now I knew.

  I peered into the darkness beyond the hole. It was deep. The basement was as wide as the entire house, I figured, which left lots of room for this thing to lurk. Room without any light. I switched on my flashlight and scanned it back and forth. I found a nearby rock wall, most likely a footing for my fireplace, and a series of old steamer pipes that probably hadn’t been used for a half-century.

  More skittering caught my attention, and I slowly embraced the uncomfortable fact that I was going to have to chase this damn thing in this pitch black coal cellar. Lovely.

  I took my first two steps into the dark space, still partially illuminated by the bulb shining behind the hole in the wall, and steadied my footing as I inched through the drywall debris. The temperature dropped sharply the deeper I advanced. I wasn’t sure if that was a function of the coolness of the basement or the servitor sucking in more energy to power itself. The thing was removed from a soul source, now. It was going to starve itself back down to a thoughtform state if it didn’t find a new source to feed upon. Which was why I was bothering to hunt the thing down myself. Given time and opportunity, it would latch onto someone else, and I couldn’t vouch for the wardings on a cellar I hadn’t known existed.

  A length of wood groaned to my right, and I shined the flashlight quickly to the side. Dust trickled from the joists, most likely unseated by my guests upstairs.

  The skittering resumed, this time clacking against the stone floor rapidly toward me. I spun and slashed out with my darquelle. A sickening wheeze filled my hearing, and a subtle fog washed across my face.

  I slashed again, but my blade only sliced through the fetid air.

  The wheeze dropped into a growl.

  White-hot trails of lancing pain sliced down my back. I yelped and stepped forward, shoulder-blades convulsing backward against the heat. I coughed and rolled my shoulders, trying to work through the pain as quickly as I could while getting my blade back in front of me.

  A pair of yellow eyes glared at me for a split-second in the gloom before my flashlight shone on top of it. The eyes vanished, and nothing more than floor joists and a thick support post appeared in the beam.

  The pain throbbed as something wet trickled down the small of my back. This thing had drawn blood. Amazing. It was a thought. A simple thought. And now it had enough power to open my skin.

  I heard the skittering again, this time moving in a wide arc from right to left. The damn thing was circling me like a predator. I kept the silver blade centered on the noise and decided to go on the offensive. I plunged forward, swinging the blade into the air. There were no shrieks or wheezing. I hit nothing.

  The air to the left of my elbow chilled rapidly, and I ducked down on reflex. A wash of cold air and a growl flooded my ears. I rolled against the wounds on my back and slashed up above me. This time I connected. The servitor released a moan, almost baleful.

  Almost feminine.

  This thing was a manifestation of Ches’s thoughts. Before it became twisted by hate and starvation, it had been part of her very mind. And now it was a blend of Ches and Elle. It was difficult to imagine those two people stitched together into a being of hate and revenge, but here it was, lurking in the darkness with me. Wounded.

  Killing this thing became suddenly painful to me. But that was my thoughtform. Love of those two people. Granted, my love for Ches had diminished. No, it had vanished.

  Or had it?

  I took in as much of my surroundings as the flashlight would allow. No windows. No doors. No natural exits. The only exit was the hole this thing made in the wall. That, granted, was a feat. And it probably burned up most of its remaining soul energy to do that much. It was trying to escape, though, and probably couldn’t navigate through the wardings on the steel door frame. Creatures of energy, living and unliving, tended to follow architecture. Especially old architecture. There’s something about the planning and building and living in a house that imprints hard and fast boundaries on the other side of the Veil. Which was probably why such beings preferred forests and swamps and any
thing but cities.

  I backed swiftly to the hole in the wall. This was its only exit. Sure, given enough time, it may find a way out. Perhaps the plumbing leading up into the walls or down into the sewer. Perhaps some innocuous rat hole leading to the street. But it would take as much time to find as it would me. At least, that was my theory.

  I reached up behind my shirt and smeared my finger across one of the gashed in my skin. It stung like hell, but it gave me a potent warding reagent, and one which I didn’t have to charge. Reaching behind me, I painted four solar crosses on what I decided would be the four corners of the hole the servitor knocked through the sheetrock. It was quick and dirty, but the warding snapped into life with verve. This fly-by-wire magic wouldn’t last long. Hopefully I wouldn’t need it to.

  “There!” I shouted into the darkness. “You’re trapped in here with me, now.”

  I paused to listen for any more skittering, wheezing, or even a response.

  “You’re buried underground. You getting that yet?” Still no response. I had to try and rattle this thing to find it. “The first homo sapiens had this figured out. You trap a soul underground, it can’t escape to haunt the living. And that’s what waits for you here. Slow death and decay.”

  Something fell in the corner of the cellar. I moved the flashlight to see, and found an old tin can rolling on its side.

  “You’ve long outlived your purpose. Even your creator wants you dead.”

  Skittering shot across the space directly in front of me, and I stabbed forward with my darquelle, hitting nothing.

  “You don’t like that, do you? What’s the point in creating life if it’s meant to die? We all have an appointed time, and if we attempt to extend that time, the Cosmos responds with unspeakable cruelty. I’ve seen it happen.”

  The energy in the basement shifted. It was sudden and dizzying. I wasn’t sure what it indicated, but I braced for something to happen.