The Curse Mandate (The Dark Choir Book 3)

by J. P. Sloan

  I stood by, watching blandly as he emptied a packet of sugar into his cup. Finally, he gestured to one of the two chairs huddled with the table, and without looking up, said, “Sit.”

  And by all that is holy, I sat my ass down.

  He nudged the nearer cup toward me, still yet to grace me with eye contact.

  The aroma of coffee filled my nostrils, the earthy bouquet quieting down my nerves a couple degrees. Or was it him? I couldn’t tell. Any sense of centeredness was flushed right down the crapper the second I decided to confront this man.

  He took a long pull from his coffee and leaned back in his chair.

  “I’ve been watching you, as you well know.”

  I nodded and took a sip of the coffee. It was dreadful.

  His eyes lifted and latched onto mine, freezing me in a moment of panic and humility.

  “I decided it was time we spoke.”

  If his frame seemed feeble, his voice still possessed a hearty basso-profundo instead of the wavering lilts of an eighty-something-year-old.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “Your soul.”

  I set my cup down very, very slowly. “You don’t say.”

  “Mister Lake… oh, I do apologize.” He held out a hand, bent at an arthritic angle. “Felix Parrish. It’s time you made my acquaintance.”

  I shook his hand with the barest tips of my fingers.

  He gathered his cup again and continued, “You’re feeling well?”

  “Peachy.”

  “Flippant and arrogant, as expected.”

  I leaned back in my chair, balling my toes in my shoes. “I do that when I feel threatened.”

  “Let’s discuss your contract.”

  “The one Osterhaus burned? Sure. Let’s talk about that.”

  His eye landed on me, shrinking my spine a good inch. It was a polite means of letting me know I was pushing too hard.

  “The physical document was destroyed. And as Osterhaus chose a particularly crude method of binding souls to the literal parchment, your soul in particular was set loose.”

  “And the contract was broken.”

  The corner of his mouth flickered into the faintest of grins. “Hardly broken, Mister Lake.”

  “Come again? The damn thing was burned to ashes. No parchment, no spell, no contract.”

  He fumbled with his coat for a moment as he replied, “Indulge me, Mister Lake. What is the first law of affinity magic?”

  This was sounding sickeningly familiar.

  “As above, so below; as within, so without. Basic stuff.”

  He pulled a tiny black cylinder from his coat. It looked like a cartoonishly oversized cigar tube in black lacquer. Parrish twisted off the top, allowing it to dangle by a tiny silver chain before sliding out a tightly-wound document.

  “As you should well know,” he mumbled as he spread the document out on the table top, “any magical working exists on multiple levels of what we call reality.”

  I surveyed the document, and sucked in a breath. I nearly knocked over my chair as I stood up, putting space between myself and what appeared to be a perfect copy of Osterhaus’s contract.

  My soul contract.

  “How―how did you get that?”

  “I won’t bother with the specifics, Mister Lake. Suffice to say, you’ve brokered an agreement with beings that consider physical parchment to be clumsy but necessary tools in dealing with our course flesh.”

  I rasped, “What are you?”

  “I’ll explain, if you sit down.”

  I took in several breaths, looked up and down the street, and gathered enough poise to take my seat again. The contract looked identical to the one Osterhaus had scribed. Tiny, sloppy Greek calligraphy in what appeared to be dried blood.

  “This is a copy, then?” I asked.

  “In the sense that this is not the same physical document you signed with Neil Osterhaus. But don’t mistake this for a mere forgery. This is as equally binding as the original.”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “Isn’t it? Perhaps that is for your benefactor to decide?”

  My stomach clenched. “My benefactor?”

  “You wish to know what I am?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “I am a representative of interested parties, tasked with the re-acquisition of your contract.”

  “You’re an agent… an agent of the Dark Choir.”

  I’d heard of them. Hollow humans whose bodies were co-opted by infernal beings to act as their eyes, ears, and hands in the affairs of humanity. Tales of such agents were something of a campfire tale among Emil’s circles in London. Emil treated the subject with a degree of amusement and dismissal. He certainly never professed to actually believing in them.

  Hell, this was what I’d feared when Carmen had pulled the paternal wool over my eyes. A baby born without a soul? A perfect vessel for the Dark Choir to foster such an agent. Turned out, she was lying the entire time, but the sentiment was real enough to coerce me into signing that fucking contract in the first place.

  And now a real, honest-to-whatever-passes-for-God agent of the Dark Choir was giving me one staggering glare as I tried not to vomit.

  “If you will,” he muttered.

  “My soul… it’s not here. In the contract, I mean. Is it?”

  He shook his head. “Your soul remains itinerate. My employer finds this circumstance to be, shall we say, untidy? He wants it resident in the contract once again.”

  “Who is he, exactly? What… is he?”

  “You elected to receive Consideration for your contract, Mister Lake. Such an arrangement isn’t open-ended. A specific source of power remained in waiting until the contract was fulfilled. And you did receive your Consideration, albeit short-lived.”

  “Blood magic.”

  “Blood magic,” he parroted. “A particular specialty of your benefactor.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Names aren’t necessary for such beings as my employer.”

  “I know a Goetic on Charles Street who would disagree, Parrish. Names are everything to the Dark Choir.”

  He chuckled, a dusty noise resembling the scraping of a door over a warped wooden floor.

  “Mister Lake, I do believe you’ve confused the foot soldiers for the generals. Goetia is the sport of hedge magicians, throwing gossamer chains over imps and chamber-slags. It provides a degree of amusement to those of consequence on the other side, as well. Suffering is quite the universal diversion, it seems.”

  I glared at Parrish for an awkward moment.

  At length, he sighed and continued, “He is known. For thousands of years, he’s treated with the likes of Osterhaus. From the modern day to the first stirrings of the Golden Dawn, into the dark ages with its gallows swinging with over-anxious dabblers. Rome, the days of Iskandar, the blood rites of the Philistines and the Assyrians. The brilliant days of each of the Kemet Dynasties. The Akkadians. Eridu. Even the first practitioners of the Khambat Empire, such as it was, had benefit of his offers.”

  Less than half of that made sense to me, but as he rolled out the archaeological roll call like it was vacation slides, I began to realize how thoroughly screwed I really was.

  Parrish sipped his coffee for a moment, affording me a beat to gather my thoughts.

  I took a sip of coffee and cleared my throat to give my voice a touch more clarity. “If he’s so hungry for my soul,” I whispered, “then why bother coming to me? I can’t be that important. Seems like a lot of trouble.”

  “Less trouble, honestly, than trying to find your soul on our own.”

  “What, this benefactor can’t be bothered?”

  “Indeed. There is a hierarchy at play, here. The fewer who are involved, the less damage it will cause. Hence my coming to you.” He tapped the contract. “You have Consideration that remains unclaimed, Mister Lake. It’s been interrupted, but it can be easily restored.”

  “You want to give
me back the Blood Magic?”

  “It would make the requirements for your profession considerably simpler.”

  I scowled. “I don’t work in curses.”

  “Evidence to the contrary.”

  “That was one time.”

  Parrish waved a dismissive hand. “Nonetheless, an agreement was reached. Your benefactor has no interest in one-sided predation. It’s a waste of energy. Much simpler to work cooperatively. And as such, should you re-engage in a mutually constructive relationship, the resulting affinity will make the task of locating your soul that much simpler.”

  He was finally making sense. Two sources of intention working in concert created a total greater than the sum of its parts. This additional resonance was what he wanted. It was the foundation of all group workings… the more brains that focus on the goal, the easier it is to achieve that goal.

  I just wasn’t convinced I wanted to cooperate.

  “I’m just going to put this out there, Parrish. I re-sign this contract. You find my soul and trap it back in the parchment. What’s to keep me from executing my escape clause immediately?”

  He crossed his legs in his chair, swiveling to the side.

  “Have you read it?” he replied, tapping the contract with his finger.

  I leaned in to give the text a thorough examination. The script was relatively easy to follow, thanks to my having just drilled several dialects of Greek with Ches over the past couple months. By the time I reached the end of the text, I realized his point.

  “You’ve… redacted the out-clause?”

  “As you said, we’ve gone to great lengths already. More, perhaps, than you merit. We must recoup our investment.”

  “Then why in God’s Green Hell would I ever cooperate with you, or your boss? Seems like a no-win situation for me.”

  Parrish finished his coffee and set down the cup hard.

  “You have two outcomes. The first: you sign the contract and receive a considerable amount of power as your Consideration to enjoy for the remainder of your life in this world. The second: we find your soul without you, inconveniencing your benefactor in the process, and we come to collect without Consideration… or discretion. These are your options, Lake.”

  He fished a curious instrument from his pocket. Thin and silver, resembling a pen. At one end was the nib of a fountain pen. His thumb triggered a tiny lever along the side of the pen, and a vicious, serrated blade sprung from the opposite end. A handy tool for blood scribing.

  “Decide now,” he grumbled, setting the pen on top of the parchment.

  And thus it was presented to me. My choice. Repeat the mistake that had cost me my soul, an act that would grant me the same blood attraction I had used to manipulate Osterhaus, and would allow me to curse anyone, anywhere, without the need to collect a piece of their body. Or, I could flip the table, walk away, and begin a race in earnest to find my soul before the Dark Choir could.

  I stared at the contract for a long moment. Parrish, to his credit, didn’t prod me. He was a man of patience. Well, limited patience, it seemed. I could tell he despised dealing with me. And that thought was what made up my mind.

  “I think I’ll take my chances,” I answered, standing and running a hand over my shirt. “But I thank you for your offer.”

  He stared at me, eyes calm and level. “One more chance, Mister Lake.” He brandished his pen.

  I shook my head and shoved my hands in my pockets.

  With a long breath, he rolled up the contract and slipped it into his black lacquer canister, triggered the blade back into the pen.

  Parrish stood and turned away, taking his leave without another word.

  I called out, “I’m not as helpless as you think.”

  He stopped and swiveled on one heel.

  “In the coming days, you may reconsider that statement.”

  My brain fuzzed, and he vanished in a small crowd of pedestrians. I searched the street, but his glammer was back, and I was alone.

  Well, that was it. The starter pistol had fired, and I was already a step behind my dark benefactor.

  I checked my watch. I could deal with this after the press conference. Eternal debts could wait… keeping the lights on and the water running had to take precedence for the moment.

  ulian’s face melted with relief when he spotted me weaving through a couple press vans.

  “Dorian!” he shouted over a throng of overcoated men and women bearing serious expressions. “You’re very nearly late.”

  “Sorry. Had to see a man about a horse.”

  “Where’s Francesca?”

  “She couldn’t make it.”

  “Durning’s inside. Did you want to meet him? We probably have, maybe, twenty seconds.”

  I nodded, and we stepped through two lines of very tall men with bulges under their blazers and earpieces slithering from beneath their collars and into their ears. The inside of the Tavern was as crowded as I had ever seen it, though Ben was standing stiff behind the bar, arms crossed, probably bored as hell. It was just a little early in the day for the day-drinkers to start tipping pints, and most of this press circus would likely dissipate immediately after this announcement, leaving us our usual ghost town. It’s the coverage, Julian would argue. We get free advertising, even if no one buys a beer.

  Julian nudged me toward the front of the event room where the portly, dark-skinned Jerome Durning stood staring forward with echoes of his speech ricocheting inside his smooth, bald dome. Julian tapped his arm, jerking him from his thoughts, and gestured toward me.

  “Congressman? I’d like you to meet my partner, Dorian Lake.”

  Durning’s face snapped into a well-practiced mask of telegenic charisma. “Oh, pleasure. Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” I answered with my own well-practiced charisma. “Thanks for having your to-do at our humble little hole-in-the-wall. Means a lot to us.”

  Julian muttered, “Not so humble.”

  “I was going for demure and grateful.”

  “No need to scrape,” Julian chided.

  Durning grinned. “Oh, it’s no accident that I chose to announce here.”

  “That so?”

  “Ms. Claye speaks so highly of you two.”

  Julian beamed, as I stood still.

  Durning continued, “Gentlemen, you must excuse me, my assistant is either having a heart attack, or I’m on.”

  He shook my hand again and slipped around us to the front door.

  I leaned into Julian. “Think he realizes we’re ‘business’ partners?”

  “After that display, I’m sure he’s thoroughly confused on the matter.”

  “So,” I asked, “who’s this Ms. Claye?”

  Julian smiled and stepped over to the front door, waving in the woman with whom he had been engaging his private court sessions in our event room.

  She was polished, her makeup reserved but expertly planned. Her hair slung over her face, flat-ironed to create an oval frame. Her eyes were sharp, and her posture straight, a real bucks-and-business air about her.

  Julian turned to his colleague with a smile. “Dorian, I’d like to introduce you to Deputy Mayor Ronetta Claye.”

  “Deputy Mayor?” I blabbed as she held out a hand.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mister Lake,” she chimed as I shook her hand.

  I mumbled, “Oh Christ.”

  “Thank you for your patience these past few weeks,” she added with a nod to the event room. “It’s been a sprint trying to reach the standards Julian set, but we’re getting there.”

  “Ah,” I said. “You’re the new Julian?”

  She half-shrugged with a grin. “Filling in more than my fair half while Sullivan finishes his search.”

  Julian interjected, “She’s been in City Hall as long as I have. Whereas I’d been wrestling with governmental affairs, Ronetta’s headed up public safety. Now David has her shoring up my old duties until they promote someone else.”

  “Th
ere’s more than one deputy mayor?” I asked.

  “Five, in fact,” Julian replied.

  Claye corrected him, “Four.”

  “Right.” Julian’s eyes drooped slightly.

  “Well, thank you again, Mister Lake.” Claye pointed a finger at Julian as she back toward the circus on the street. “Expect a call later, you.”

  Julian smiled and waved her off. When she was out of sight, his shoulders wilted.

  “She’s doing just fine,” he muttered.

  “Is that a statement or a question?”

  “A hope.”

  We stepped outside and fell in behind a clutch of onlookers, mostly aids and security, as the Congressman moved toward the podium nestled conveniently beside the Light Street Tavern window signage. I spotted Mayor Sullivan as he emerged from his car amid a police escort, intentionally dialed a degree toward the casual in his navy suit. He waved to the press corps as his wife stepped out, dwarfed beside her tall husband, but no less visually commanding in her light blue suit. He held her hand as she stepped to the sidewalk, reaching out to smooth a bit of her hair from beneath her pillbox hat.

  Julian turned to me. “Madelyn’s here? She never makes these events.”

  “Sullivan’s wife?”

  “Yeah. She hates the public eye. The election last year drove her nuts. Interesting.”

  We hugged the last available space on the narrow walk, roughly twenty yards away from the podium. The press corps had already hushed, their various recording devices forward, as Sullivan stepped up to the podium.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he bellowed in his hearty country-gravy voice. “Jack,” he added with a thrust of his index finger to one of the radio people, “nice tie.”

  He flipped his own tie out of his jacket, identical to the reporter’s, and a few nearby reporters chuckled.

  “Everyone here knows Jerome Durning.” Heads nodded. “The Congressman is a personal friend of mine. We were both Lambda Oh at UMD. We spent years together in Knights of Columbus, Habitat for Humanity. Had him over for Thanksgiving… he ate more than his share of crab cakes, I’ll tell you.”