The Curse Mandate (The Dark Choir Book 3)

by J. P. Sloan

  Without really knowing what he was doing, Robert of Argyle was hanging names onto real entities in the Dark Choir.

  He gave them charming names. “Insinuous” for his evil version of Mixis. And the one which both Ches and I immediately recognized as key to our task at hand, the polar opposite for Horos.

  “Discursus.”

  I reviewed the following pages, slipping deeper into his book, wishing to hell the concept of the index had been invented prior to the Stuart monarchy. Without one, however, it took me half an hour to unearth Argyle’s specifics on how to turn a member of the Dark Choir against another. Such was the purpose Discursus served, it seemed. Even the agents of darkness had their disagreements, and good fences kept good neighbors.

  After translating the seventeenth century English into something I could act on, I replaced the book onto my shelf. I spied the dark-wood cabinet across the workspace. A deep curiosity stirred in my chest. If Argyle had a Netherwork tome in that cabinet, could it help us?

  No. Whatever the benefit, it wouldn’t be worth the risk.

  I pulled Ches’s stool over to the relatively dark corner by the reagent shelves and huddled up to close my eyes, ground and center.

  The racing thoughts were difficult to quell. What was I doing? I had no clue whether this was a good idea. I could be killing Ricky tonight. I could be inviting certain doom onto myself and Ches. All I was going on was instinct, and an annoyingly persistent sense of confidence I couldn’t seem to shake.

  And where was Malosi? He’d spent all day on his errand for Clement.

  The ghosts of my past and present hovered around my head. This was a time to clear my thinking and sharpen my focus. I willed it all away. Every bit of it. So what if I was running on instinct? So what if I felt confident?

  It was enough. It had to be, and therefore it would be.

  “Magician dictates parameter.”

  I said that last bit out loud. It sounded like Emil.

  Ricky and Ches returned after a space of time that had become meaningless to me. When I opened my eyes and stood up, both of them froze.

  I motioned for the workbench. “Ricky, sit.”

  He did so, without comment.

  Ches sidled up next to me, reaching out to touch my arm. She pulled her arm back inches away from my sleeve.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Ricky?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you prepared?”

  He nodded again.

  “Good. You have a curse cast upon you. This is a malevolent thread of energy which is destroying your life. Specifically, your family bonds. This curse was inflicted upon you by others, outside of your consent, and outside of the rule of Nature. As such, we require accounts be settled, and this curse, with its appetites and consequences, returned to the ones who brought its form into fruition.” I gave Ches a shrug. “Or, you know… some shit like that.”

  Ricky exhaled and smiled.

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  “I need you to relax. Try to keep your mind as clear as you can. Have you ever meditated before?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay. The key is not to fight your thoughts, but to let them wash over you, like rain off the hood of a freshly waxed Camaro. Thoughts bead off and fall away. Close your eyes. Think about your breath.” He did so. “Good. Now, imagine you’re in a dark, featureless room. It’s huge. Size of a football stadium. At the other end is a candle.”

  “What, like on a table or what?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Don’t think about the table. Just focus on the flame. You know, just one teardrop flame. Blue at the bottom. Orange in the middle. Bright yellow at the tip. Imagine how it moves and flickers. See the tiny centimeter of smoke as it dances back and forth. Left. Right. Left.”

  I gave Ches a look.

  She had her chin tucked down, watching as I moved Ricky into a semi-hypnotic state.

  I continued, “Left. Right. So far away. Can you see it?”

  “Yeah,” he whispered.

  “Good. Now, keep your eyes on that flame. It’ll get closer and closer. Slowly. It’ll only get closer if you pay attention. Any thoughts pop into your head, it’ll move back to the end zone. Don’t let that happen. Just relax. All you have to do is watch the yellow part of the flame where it turns into smoke. Where it dances. Left. And right. And left. And right…”

  His breathing slipped into a deep, rhythmic pattern, and I knew his energy would be solid.

  I whispered, “Ricky, your sister is a walrus.”

  Ches cocked her head, but I held up my hand.

  He didn’t respond. Didn’t even flinch.

  I gave Ches a wink.

  “He’s down.”

  “I’m a what?”

  “Had to check if he was letting outside stimuli interfere. He isn’t.”

  “Walrus?”

  I shrugged, and walked around to Ricky’s back.

  “Okay, step up in front of him.”

  She did so, giving me a questioning lift of her hands.

  I whispered, “Okay. Time to untangle.”

  “Great,” she replied in low volume. “How?”

  “We’ve been doing energy palpation for months, now.”

  “So?”

  “So, this is it. Palpate. Find the energy lines. They’re coming from outside of Ricky’s mainline. Locate them, then find their branches. Follow the branches.”

  “You do it,” she whispered with a hunch in her shoulders.

  “No, you’re the better choice. You have resonance.”

  “You’re better at this than I am.”

  “Not really. You’re his sister. You share most of his energy signature by virtue of your DNA. And you’re the one the Dead Dragons were trying to hurt with this curse. Ches, you are literally written into the program code of this curse.”

  She lifted a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know if I can―”

  “Stop thinking about it. Just palpate.”

  “Dorian―”

  “Really. Turn off your brain. Go on instinct. You can do this. I know your intent is pure. That’s huge. This is your brother, Ches. Save him.”

  Her eyes softened as she glared at me over Ricky’s shoulder, and she gave me a quick nod.

  Ches lifted her hands in front of Ricky’s chest, swaying as she sensed the distinct energies laced within him. She continued up and down, left and right, for what felt like an eternity. I periodically reached out to test Ricky’s energy myself. Not to toss in my guidance, but to ensure he wasn’t getting the life squeezed out of him by a desperate and vengeful curse thread.

  Ches’s eyebrows popped up, and she snapped her fingers at me.

  “I think I feel it.”

  I nodded. “Good. Heart chakra?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Family. Connection to children. It’s the heart chakra.”

  “Where do the tendrils lead?”

  She clamped her eyes shut, and lunged closer to Ricky’s body. I coaxed her along with a quick Lesser Cross visualization to broom away the ambient energy our conversation had dusted up.

  “Solar Plexus,” she whispered. “Into the spleen. Core. Starting in on his liver.”

  “That’s the addiction.”

  “I want to kill it.”

  “Good.”

  “Seriously, Dorian,” she growled with eyes shut and teeth bared. “It’s gonna die.”

  “Just ease it out. Unwind. Start deep, move shallow. It’ll start to fight you. Don’t let it.”

  The energy in the room snapped into a sudden chilly caste as Ches plunged directly into the working. Indeed, her energy became so terrifyingly focused I could barely sense her presence in the room. What I could sense, however, was Ricky’s mainline snapping in tiny breaks, like fishing line popping under too much tensions. It was at the same time alarming and exhilarating. We were making progress. Hopefully, for Ricky’s benefit.

  T
he process was slow. Remarkably slow, as it should have been. Ricky wilted time-to-time as fatigue set in. Each time I tapped Ches on the shoulder to let her know she needed to hold. I felt like the guardian at the watchtower, and the thought was exhilarating. I wasn’t playing the part of the grand master know-it-all. I was just giving a capable practitioner a heads-up on a shift in energy, and as an assistant, I coaxed Ricky back into a deep meditative state. Then Ches proceeded with the extraction.

  For that precious space of time, she was the alpha dog. It suited her.

  By the time the energy had snapped free of each of the secondary chakras, I realized I had forgotten a key piece in this ritual.

  My darquelle.

  I tapped Ches on the shoulder.

  She opened her eyes.

  “What?” she rasped. “Bad timing, dude.”

  “Keep him steady. I have to go upstairs.”

  Her eyes shot open.

  “What? The what? Where?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Her face drew into a dangerous scowl, but I just shrugged and stepped away gently. The energy bubble around the two siblings spliced together nicely, as I expected it to.

  I hopped toward the steps and reached the ground level quicker than I had since I stopped jogging. The darquelle sat mounted on the front wall near the front door, within easy grasp should anything incorporeal come kicking down my door. Or corporeal, for that matter.

  I lifted Robert the Heretic’s darquelle off its wall mount and gripped it in my hand. This blade had taken a life. Probably some Roundhead, hell-bent on dealing God’s justice. It was a dark weapon. With any luck at all, it would serve me against the Dark Choir.

  I returned downstairs with a curious smell of wet dog filling my nostrils. I willed it away to return my focus on the task at hand.

  Ricky and Ches remained as I left them, a tight bubble of energy clutching them in its shell.

  I stepped into this bubble, a snap or two letting my decades-trained senses know it was unhappy, and gave Ches a go-ahead nod.

  She reached out with claws as hands, tugging in a pantomime at a thick, savage tentacle of ill intent that had laced itself into Ricky’s person. He shuttered briefly, and I resumed my guidance to bed him back into a receptive state. Ches continued to weave and untangle, and the longer she went, the more she gave into the sensory stimuli. Her hands moved with ease, and I felt no urge to speak up and direct her reach.

  Ches reached back with her hand, shaking it like a student taking a long essay exam. I moved for my minerals cabinet and pulled out a large hunk of hematite for her to grip. She did so without breaking focus on Ricky. With a few pumps of her fingers over the stone, she dumped the excess energy and continued with her work.

  And thus we continued for the next forty minutes. The line was laced deeper than I had imagined. Ches had to backtrack six times to tertiary chakras, making sure she could fully remove every branch and root.

  Ricky began to slump, either from fatigue or from having fallen asleep. Either way, he was losing his focus. I wrapped my hands in sage-soaked gauze I’d prepared for clearing ritual instruments, and took the curse line from Ches while the both of them rested. I clutched onto the pulsing tentacle of hatred, throbbing in my grip. It was raw and angry. I captured flashes of its originators. Not visual images, more like the emotional snapshot of the Dragons when they had cast this curse. The flashes were cold, mechanical, mercenary. There was no personal investment in this curse. It was a shot fired in a war, and that was all. The only angry thing was the curse itself.

  Ches moved upstairs to bring some water for herself and Ricky.

  He opened his eyes and glanced at me.

  “Just hold still,” I whispered, keeping as much focus on the energy in my hands as possible.

  “Is it working?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Doesn’t feel like anything’s―”

  “I have it right now. We’re almost there.”

  “Can you finish it?”

  I shook my head, trying to tune out his suggestion. I couldn’t sway my intent at that moment. Doing so could jeopardize everything we had accomplished, and snap the curse back deeper into Ricky’s mainline. He continued to ask questions, but I shoved his voice out of my ears. It wasn’t helping that the energy seemed to sense my focus had been interrupted, and was doing its best to slither free of my grip.

  “Yeah,” I replied to nothing in particular.

  He muttered something else. I shook my head.

  Before I could realize that I had become inadvertently drawn into a near-mesmerized state with my focus fully diverted, Ricky chuckled.

  “You’re shitting me?”

  I sucked in a breath. “What?”

  “You are in love with her. She was right. I swore you were just socially stunted, but no. She was right about you.”

  I gritted my teeth. Crap. He had me in a hypnotic trance, and went right for the jugular.

  “Ricky? I have to concentrate here. You read me?”

  He nodded. “No sweat, boss.”

  Ches returned with two glasses of water. She took her time hydrating as Ricky gave her a wicked smirk.

  “What? What happened?” she grumbled.

  “Nothing,” we responded in unison.

  “Both of you suck.”

  I called her over with a nod. “Break’s over. Let’s finish this.”

  She reached in and deftly snatched the curse from my control, and resumed her work. I didn’t have to work Ricky back down. Seemed he was pretty much opened up already. Nor did it take long until Ches took a step away, the curse energy still gripped in her clutches.

  “Okay, I’m down to the core I think.”

  I grabbed the darquelle.

  “Here’s the tricky part,” I muttered.

  Ricky cracked open his eyes, which flew open on sight of the blade in my hand.

  “Guys?” he moaned.

  “Take it easy. I’m just going to sever the energetic link from your body.”

  “And not, you know, my body?”

  I grinned. “Not unless you twitch.”

  The blade hummed in my hand as I slid it close to Ricky’s sternum, easing its edge up toward his chin.

  “This blade has been blooded. It’s killed in the service of Netherwork. Now it cuts on both sides of the Veil.”

  Ches asked, “You’re not going to leave any of it inside him, right?”

  “Don’t worry. This thing won’t want to stick around once it’s freed.”

  “When you sever the link, what happens then?”

  I gave her a measured look. “Not entirely sure. It might thrash on you like a crocodile. It might sit dormant. We’ll send it back to the caster with Argyle’s mantra. You got it ready?”

  She nodded.

  I raised my hand to count down three-to-one so we could chant the thing in unison.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  The two of us stumbled through the mantra. “Horos at agony sum Mixis. Horos at agony sum Mixis.” It took us about six repetitions until we got onto the same cadence, and another twelve before our vocal energies began to meld. That’s when the layered resonance took hold. Group workings weren’t something I made a habit of, but I had to admit the Wiccans were on to something when they pulled together in tight groups of like-minded practitioners. Wren would have been proud.

  The resonance compounded, and my darquelle positively rang with harmonics. The moment felt right. The stars were aligned. The hills were alive with the sound of music, and I was ready to end this fucking curse.

  I eased the darquelle up Ricky’s shirt, pausing at his chin, then gave the blade a swift twist away.

  The basement lights flickered.

  The room pulsed warm-to-cold, then back to warm.

  Ches froze, keeping her hands still.

  Ricky blinked rapidly, eyes still on my blade.

  And I inched away from the both of them, eyes o
n the ceiling.

  I could hear the others breathing. Panting, really.

  Finally, Ches wiggled her fingers.

  “Uh…I think, and I could be wrong here, but I think it’s gone.”

  I gave Ricky a look. “How do you feel?”

  He reached up and ran his hands across his chest, then shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered. “How do you feel?”

  “I’m okay. Ches?”

  “I’m good,” she responded.

  She lowered her hands.

  I sheathed the darquelle with a slow exhale.

  “I’ll be here all week, folks. Tip your waitress.”

  Ricky hopped off the workbench, holding out a flat hand.

  “Wait a minute. How… how do we know this worked?”

  Ches looked to me.

  I answered, “I suppose we’ll have to wait for some sign, an indication that―”

  A loud electronic chirp filled the room. My heart pulsed hard in my chest before I realized it was Ricky’s phone.

  He slid the phone out of his pocket as it continued to ring.

  “You had a cell phone in your pocket this whole time?” I grumbled.

  “Yeah.”

  Ches lifted a finger. “Wait. Don’t you have really awful coverage in this little dungeon?”

  “Actually, yes,” I replied.

  Ricky lifted the phone, and his face blanched.

  “What?” Ches whispered. “Who is it?”

  He swallowed, and with a lifted brow he replied, “It’s Susanna.”

  icky held the phone out like a dead rat.

  “What should I do?”

  Ches released a disbelieving huff. “Answer it, you moron!”

  He pulled the phone to his head.

  I chided, “Go upstairs. Don’t want to lose signal down here.”

  He nodded as he bustled up the stairs.

  Ches and I stood silent for a moment.

  “Wow,” I said to break the silence.

  “That’s something.”

  “It is.”

  “So, this means it worked?” she asked.

  “It has to. There’s no way this is a coincidence. The curse was meant to torment his family. His wife suddenly reaching out? That’s a good sign, I think.”

  She smiled. “You did it, magic man!”

  “We did it.”

  Ches took two steps forward and eased her arms around me, pulling me tight into a hug.