Past Life Strife (Rise of the Discordant Book 1)

by McMullen, Christina

  I pushed aside the unwanted, and uncomfortable, thoughts and concentrated on the reason I was there. There was a Discordant in the bar. Seth had felt it too and went to find the creature. That was the trouble with the Discordant. They were slick, yet cowardly, and hid themselves in plain sight. There was nothing I could do while it was in the bar. Seth would have to track and identify the creature, and then I would kill it once we lured it away from the prying eyes of humans.

  After a while, I began to get nervous. Seth was still tracking the beast and he hadn’t come to me for help. I was beginning to wonder if he ever would. He was supposed to, of course. Killing the Discordant was my job. He might have just been too intimidated, but I couldn’t help thinking that he seemed to be stalking this one. I didn’t like the implications of that. If necessary, I could have broken the rules. I could have left my post and simply done away with the creature if I felt it to be a threat. But I didn’t. The aftermath, especially without the help of a Guardian, would be messy. Not to mention that in doing so, I ran the risk of being involuntarily cycled if my justification wasn’t accepted.

  I put it out of my mind. Seth knew what he was doing. At least, I hoped he did. Instead, I went back to pouring glasses of liquid distraction for Blackbird’s many oblivion-seekers and did my best to ignore the overall unpleasantness of the place. I made a mental note to later ask Seth what had happened to make this town so attractive to the Discordant. The issues in Los Angeles were obvious. The whole area is rife with fear, jealousy, narcissism, and regret. We get the usual number of vamps, harpies, and sprites. Every so often, it gets bad enough to attract an angel, but I would say that by far, LA was the playground of demons.

  I’d dealt with my share of demons over the last couple of centuries. They ranged from mildly annoying to outright dangerous and thrived in places like LA, where skeletons outnumbered designer shoes in most closets. A place like Blackbird didn’t hold a lot of interest for demons, so when I caught an unpleasant whiff of something all too familiar, I got suspicious. Sure enough, a demon hovered at the far end of the bar. This one didn’t even have the forethought to glamour his ugly ass.

  “Something I can help you with?” I snarled, drawing myself up to my full height. I don’t know why I bothered with the intimidation move. Demons were typically short in stature and this one was smaller than usual.

  “Uh, yeah… um… Gin n’ tonic, please,” he mumbled, eyes downcast with a fedora slung low over his forehead to hide the pathetic stubs he called horns. I’ve met some dumb Discordant in my life, but this one was a special case.

  “Bogie, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Uh, oh… Hi there, Des,” he stammered, trying to act casual and failing miserably as he knocked over the drink of the person next to him. His red-rimmed eyes were as big as saucers and his clawed hands shook as he shoved them in his pockets. “Fancy meeting you here. Uh, how’s things?”

  “Bogie, I banished you,” I growled, leaning in to intimidate my quarry. It wasn’t too hard with this one. “I gave you one chance. I spared your pathetic life on grounds that you go back to Chaos and never return. I see I made a mistake.”

  “Uh… yeah, about that… um, ya see, Des… um, the thing is….” He reached up to scratch uncomfortably at his neck, looking everywhere but at me. Another second of his idiotic blather and I was going to shake whatever it was he was trying to say right out of him. “I kinda got banished from Chaos.”

  “You what?”

  “You know, because… you um… you banished me.”

  “You got banished for being banished?” Every damned time I think I’ve heard it all…

  “Yeah.”

  “And you just happened to end up here?”

  “Well, no,” he said, avoiding my eye again. “I, uh… I went to LA first, see...”

  “Uh huh…” I prompted when it became apparent that he was incapable of stringing together one coherent sentence.

  “Mickey told me you got reassigned.”

  “He what?” Mickey was another Warrior who I had thought was my friend. I was going to have to have a word with him. “Wait. Why the hell would you come looking for me? Is this some sort of revenge plot? Because I have to tell you-”

  “Wha? N-no, no. Nothin’ like that,” he stammered. “See, I just thought you might… well, seein’ as it was your fault and all…”

  “Thought I might what?” I growled.

  “You know… help me out. Since I’m stuck here and all.” He finally looked up at me with the saddest attempt at puppy dog eyes I had ever seen. It was all I could do not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

  As far as Discordant went, Bogie was one of the most pathetic, which is why I made the mistake of feeling sorry for him and banished his ass rather than killing him outright. Clearly, I was getting soft in my old age.

  “What exactly am I supposed to do to help you, Bog?” I asked.

  “Well, uh… see… I kinda need a job. Maybe a place to crash. I mean… I don’t… I know I ain’t the greatest demon out there, but I gotta have some skills you might find useful. This place… you could use a guy like me around here, Des.”

  “Are you out of your…”

  I stopped myself mid-laugh when I felt a decided shift in the temperature of the bar. Through the din of the music and conversation, I heard the back door slam. Neither Seth nor the Discordant he was tracking were in the bar any longer.

  “Fine, you want a job?” I threw the bar towel I was holding over to Bogie and untied my apron. “You’re a bartender, starting right now. Stick to the rules, don’t pull any demon crap, and maybe I’ll even pay you. If I come back and find a single lost soul, I will not hesitate to kill you this time, got that?”

  “Uh, yeah, got it,” he said, nodding his head so hard I thought it would fall off.

  “One more thing,” I added as I threw the apron and a basic binding spell in his direction. “Use a freaking glamour already. Your human disguise isn’t fooling anyone and I don’t want my customers driven off by your ugly mug.” I didn’t bother to wait for Bogie’s answer before I took off, slamming the back door behind me.

  Outside, it didn’t take me long to pick up the Discordant’s stench. I followed my nose for a few blocks and found them in the scraggly park just outside of downtown. The shadows of the towering Catholic Church on the hill in the distance added to the dramatic absurdity of the scene. Our Discordant was a vampire. Of course she was. Who else would have black hair, white skin, blood red lips, and dress like a trashy suburban Goth reject from the nineties? I’d dealt with more than my fair share of vampires back in LA. Annoying little bastards. Their need for drama, and to be the center of attention, was probably stronger than their need for blood and despair. This one was no different. Her expansive hand gestures and haughty tone grated on my nerves like nails on a blackboard.

  I slid a silver dagger from my coat pocket and crept closer. I could have hit her from where I was, but I was curious as to why Seth had followed her rather than coming to me, like he was supposed to.

  “Still following me around like a lost little puppy, aren’t you, Seth?”

  “I think you know why I’m following you, Amara.”

  Interesting. So Seth had a history with this vamp. Not surprising. Without a Warrior, there wasn’t much an Observer or Guardian could do about the Discordant other than keep them from stealing lost souls. I slunk behind a row of hedges and waited, listening to her ramble on about herself.

  “Mm, yes, I can smell the piousness of Order on you, Seth. I bet you think that what you do actually matters, don’t you?”

  “All that matters is that I’m not like you, Amara,” I heard Seth say defiantly, but there was something troubling in his tone. The vampire laughed. My fingers tensed around the blade I carried.

  “Oh you pathetic little monkey. You do think you’re special, don’t you? You’re nothing, Seth. You’re a pawn. You always were. I am the one who matters. I am the one who kne
w exactly what she wanted and exactly how to get it. Still do, for that matter. Why do you think I let you sense me?”

  “You say that as if you actually believe the Discordant have the upper hand. This is the world of Order, Amara. Leave here, and perhaps I’ll allow you to live.”

  “You know nothing, Seth, nothing. That you are even here right now shows me that nothing has changed. You’re nothing but a puppet. I won then, and I win this time. Don’t think I don’t know about your new plaything. Do you think a Warrior is any match for me? Perhaps if you’re a good boy, I’ll keep you both around as my slaves. Of course, your Warrior would know all about that, wouldn’t he?”

  Okay, it didn’t matter why they were out here. I didn’t have all night to listen to her narcissistic chatter and the bitch just hit one hell of a sore nerve. I drew back and locked onto my target.

  “I bet you would have liked to have been married in a church like that one, wouldn’t you have, Seth?”

  “All I wanted was to marry the woman I loved, Amara. The woman who I thought loved me in return.”

  Son of a…

  My shot went wide. The dagger landed with a heavy thud in the trunk of an ancient birch tree several inches off target. The close call spooked the vamp, who disappeared dramatically into the mist she had conjured. I hadn’t expected that last part of their exchange and the automatic slump of Seth’s shoulders as he watched her leave did not sit well with me. There’s having a history with a Discordant, it happens all the time. I had a history of dealing with a pipsqueak of a demon named Bogie. But then there’s having a history. Specifically, a history that begins in the Cycle. Those types of histories were dangerous. Those were the types that led to lost souls and I was pretty sure Seth had been operating without a map for far too long.

  “Seth,” I said quietly as I stepped from behind the bushes. “We need to have a little talk.”

  Chapter 3

  Love Sucks

  I stood silently to the side, averting my eyes as Desmond retrieved a silver blade from the trunk of the tree where it had landed. I shouldn’t have been happy that he had missed his mark, but I was. After more than a century, after a lifetime of torture, and after what she did to end my life, the fact that I still felt anything for Amara proved what the Creator had hinted at in our last meeting; that I was too damaged to continue as an agent of Order.

  “I think we need to have a little talk, Seth.”

  Desmond’s voice was hushed, almost gentle, but his words were heavy with meaning. Though we were both agents assigned to the task of maintaining the balance of Order, as a Warrior, Desmond was spared certain unpleasant aspects that came with the other roles. Specifically, he had no way of understanding the horrors that assaulted my mind day after day. This is the Observer’s curse. To feel, to experience, and to empathize, even with the enemy. I knew what he was going to say and I can’t say that I blamed him. I don’t know how much of our exchange he heard, but I’m sure it was enough to be damning and that wasn’t even the whole story.

  “You think I should return to the Cycle,” I said, stating what I assumed was obvious.

  “I…” he started, but trailed off with a heavy sigh. “I only know what the Creator told me and that wasn’t a whole lot. Why don’t you give me your side of the story before I make any declarations as to what I think?”

  I looked up at him then, taken aback by his judicious answer. Warriors were known for taking action, not for weighing the evidence presented. Though his nearly black eyes were just as calculating as ever, the frosty edge that was common to all Warriors seemed not as sharp. On an instinctual level, I was afraid of Desmond, but something, some small part of my psyche, trusted him completely.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, how long have you been a Warrior, Desmond?”

  “Nearly three hundred years,” he replied, stiffening slightly.

  “Were you married? I mean, before you…” I didn’t finish the sentence. Like me, Desmond did not die of natural causes. Administration and Facilities Managers, meaning agents who worked outside of the Cycle, were the only agents of Order who could still serve after living a full, natural life. To become anything else, Observer, Guardian, or Warrior, one must have been killed. In most cases, the Discordant had a hand in our deaths.

  “I was a slave, Seth. Property of a white man. I wasn’t allowed a wife. But yes, I had a love, if that is what you were asking.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like a complete idiot. Slavery had only been abolished a few years before I was born and Desmond was twice as old as I was. “I should have realized. That was foolish of me to ask.”

  “Perhaps, but I assume there is relevance to your question and you were not just prying into my life.”

  “There is, yes,” I admitted with a heavy sigh. “I was not married. But while I lived, there was a woman that I loved.”

  “A woman who happened to be named Amara?” Desmond asked with a wry tone.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” I replied with my own humorless laugh. “I’m guessing you were present during the Centralia portal disaster?”

  “Of course,” he said with a noticeable grimace. “I try not to think about it. None of us do.”

  “No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” I said, shaking my head. The mine fire that led to the abandonment of the community had been the direct result of an Order strike gone horribly wrong. “I, however, have only heard the stories secondhand.”

  “You weren’t there?” Desmond was understandably surprised by this revelation. Because of the size of the breech, all agents of Order who worked in North America were called to the scene. All but one, that is.

  “No,” I said, eyeballing and dismissing an ancient park bench. Instead, I crossed the park and went to sit on the crumbling steps that led to the waterfront path and floodwall. “I wasn’t allowed. In 1962 I had only been an Observer for eighty years.”

  “Wait,” Desmond blinked. “Are you saying…?”

  “I was born, raised, and killed in Centralia,” I confirmed.

  “Damn,” he said and let out a low whistle of appreciation. “Talk about lying down in the viper’s nest.”

  “Indeed,” I said with a short, derisive laugh. Centralia, along with most of north central Pennsylvania in the nineteenth century, was a hotbed of activity for the Discordant. It is theorized that those who began the war for New York had migrated from the mining towns after growing bored. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that we discovered the geological shifts caused by mining created a weakening in the wall between our world and the realm of Chaos. But by then it was too late. I was just one of the countless victims that led to the stories of hauntings and cursed land.

  Desmond circled around me and perched himself up on the floodwall, regarding me with both interest and caution.

  “What happened, Seth?”

  His tone was soft and held no prejudgment, but I could tell he was now treading lightly after my big reveal. I had already relived my life once tonight and the last thing I wanted to do was relive it a second time. But if I was going to be forced back into the Cycle, the least Desmond could do was hear me out before he sent me back.

  “From the time I was old enough to walk, I worked in the coal mines,” I began, looking out over the river to avoid his eye. “My father had worked the mines as well and I knew no other way. I expected to be a miner for the rest of my life, or until the ground swallowed me up as it had many other good men who I had known. All of that changed when I was sixteen. The Slavic immigrants were now coming to our predominantly Irish town, seeking jobs in the mine. One such man had come to town, bringing with him a wife and young daughter. She was a child. Only thirteen years of age, but I knew then and there that she was the one. That one day, I would marry her.

  “But Amara hated Centralia and she hated mining. She hated the fine layer of black dust that seemed to cover the whole town. And by extension, she hated me for passing her house every morning, a fresh faced young man w
ith a smile, only to return in the evening, a filthy, tired shadow that left blackened marks on everything he touched. As she grew into womanhood, she became more beautiful and I feared I would not be able to live without her approval. So at eighteen, rather than take the foreman position that was open to me, I quit the mine. I took a job with the railroad, transporting sacks of grain and other comestibles to our one and only general store. Still, when I walked past her house in the evening, Amara would wrinkle her nose, for I smelled of horses, the depot, and sweat.”

  “What did she expect of you?” Desmond asked.

  “She wanted a man of importance,” I explained with a bitter laugh. “One with the power to command others to do the loathsome labor. She saw me as base, the lowest of low, and I set about to change that. I managed to get hired on at the general store, starting out as a laborer and working my way up to cashier. When old man Johnson talked of getting too old to run the store, I convinced him to let me manage and he did. I, a young man now of nineteen, had procured a respectable position of authority over what was seen as the backbone of our small community. Surely now, I thought, Amara would see that I was worthy and accept my hand.”

  “And was that enough for her?”

  I laughed. It was a sick, mirthless sound. “Oh, she was impressed with the lengths I would go to in order to win her hand, but that was my downfall. She wanted to push me. To see how far I would go. Johnson had no wife. No children of his own to take over the shop in his stead. Amara believed that he would leave the title and deed of proprietorship to me upon his death. It is possible that she was correct. Johnson was fond of me and proud of the hard work I had put in at the store. But what Amara asked then was too much. She told me she would marry me when I took full ownership of the store. She also then told me there were poisons that would be quick and undetectable.”

  “Strange behavior for a vampire,” Desmond mused.

  “Amara was human at this point,” I corrected.