Sorcerer's Creed Books 1-3

by N. P. Martin

  As it was, the demon didn’t seem too concerned at my lack of offering. “That’s okay. If you find who I’m looking for, that will more than make up for your empty hands.”

  “This person must be pretty important to you.”

  Gabriel focused his stare in front of him for a moment as if deep in thought. “They are.”

  He reached down then and lifted the shots of whiskey off the table, handing one to me, which I took resignedly, knowing I didn't have a choice. Then he grinned at me as he held his glass up, waiting for me to do the same. With a sigh, I clinked my glass against his. “To your success in finding who I’m looking for,” he said. “I sincerely hope you do not disappoint.”

  I downed my whiskey as I wondered what fresh hell awaited me around the next corner.

  Gabriel lifted his own glass slowly to his mouth and poured in the whiskey in a weirdly deliberate manner, closing his eyes for a second as he swallowed and then stared right at me.

  All I could think of was that it might as well have been my soul in the demon’s glass. For he owned me now, at least until I managed to get him what he wanted.

  If I managed to get him what he wanted.

  Either way, I knew I would come to regret ever dealing with the demon in the first place.

  Of that, I had no doubt.

  **The story continues in the next book, Blood Debt.**

  BLOOD DEBT (SORCERER’S CREED BOOK TWO)

  Copyright © 2017 by N.P. Martin

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Neal Martin

  Visit my website at www.npmartin.com

  1

  Family Reunion

  Staggering through the streets after being turfed out of the Wonky Shamrock at closing time, I could hardly stand up I was so inebriated from the copious amounts of whiskey I drank after Baal or Gabriel or whatever his fucking name was--the demon, the latest thorn in my side, the infernal pile attached to my rectum, the...fuck it, whatever--vanished from the pub after making sure I knew he had his claws firmly in me.

  In the words of Rudyard Kipling, I was as drunk as Davey's sow on a frosty night. I was doing my best to walk in a straight line, but it seemed like people kept getting in my way. And just when I thought I had the whole walking thing figured out, some other street walker would cause me to swerve, and the next thing I knew, I would be falling across the sidewalk in a dangerously uncoordinated fashion, having about as much control of myself as an alcoholic toddler. I was vaguely aware of being shouted at by a few people who I may have inadvertently bumped into. Someone might have pushed me into a line of trashcans. Or I might have fallen into them myself. I wasn't sure which.

  Not that it mattered. All that seemed to matter on my excruciatingly slow and labored journey home (it never occurred to me to get a cab, or to teleport, which was just as well for God knows where I would have ended up) was that I killed my own father. That and the fact that the rest of my family resided somewhere else in the universe and I was stuck here on shitty Earth all alone. Even Leona, the supposed love of my life, had abandoned me (I was sure she didn't think of it like that, but I did, melodramatic fool that I am).

  At some point, I came across a bag lady pushing a shopping cart full of junk up the street. I grabbed the startled woman's cart as her scraggly face blurred in and out of focus. "Why me?" I demanded to know from the old woman. "Why does everything happen to me, huh? Tell me!"

  "You take it!" the old woman screamed back (or at least I think she did... with the world spinning at hyper speed around me, it was hard to tell who was saying what). "Right in the ass you fucking scumbag cocksucker!"

  Now lying on the cold sidewalk, I thought the old lady was quoting Gordon Geko at me, and I thought, What a strange thing for the old lady to do. Except when my focus came back for a mere second, I saw the old woman was just staring down at me with a blank expression on her face as if she had said nothing at all. I think I quoted Gordon Geko at myself. Either way, the words seemed painfully apt for someone who hadn't long killed--fucking destroyed--his own father. It didn't matter that my father--good old Mr Black--had been trying to obliterate the Earth for his own gain. It only seemed to matter that I had killed him. I should have been jubilant that I took down a true monster, but all I felt was shame.

  Something cold pressed into my ear, and I cried out as I flinched away from a bulky shape that was now looming over me like an escaped shadow demon. For a second I thought it was Mr Black, impossibly having returned from utter annihilation to wreak revenge on me. But it was only Blaez. The Garra Wolf had been walking behind me the whole time, keeping a respectful distance as if knowing I needed the space. Either that or he was just ashamed to have such a waste of space for a master.

  I could feel oblivion reaching out to grab me, and I let it, wishing for nothing more than a reprieve from the cruel world I was in. But before I fell into unconsciousness, I became aware of another, taller figure standing over me, and then a voice. "August," the voice said. "Let's get you home, my boy."

  The voice barely registered in me, but I still knew who it belonged to.

  Uncle Ray.

  I came to in the living room of the Sanctum, slumped into one of the chairs. Peeling my eyes open, I became aware of a dull ache in my skull as if my heart had shifted locations and was now beating hard in the place where my brain used to be. A long sigh escaped me, and I rubbed at my head. "Jesus Christ," I muttered, then looked up to see where the person who had brought me home was.

  Uncle Ray had probably teleported us both back to the Sanctum unless the old man had thrown me over his shoulder and carried me home, which I doubted. It wasn't that Ray didn't have the strength to lift me, it was because I knew he didn't stress himself if he didn't have to. Ray tended to use his magick for everything, even going so far as to compel the toilet tissue to wipe his ass for him (true story). "I have better things to do on the bog than wipe my own ass," he told me once. "I'm always in deep study with a book on my lap."

  Where was the old bastard anyway?

  It felt weird to know Ray was in the Sanctum somewhere. We hadn't seen each other in over ten years. We stayed in touch over the phone, or through the occasional psychic link, but we never met up. Partly because I had no interest in going back to Ireland, partly because Ray was always off on some adventure somewhere.

  "There you are." I turned my head to see Ray enter the living room. There was a reason I never heard him walk down the stairs. That's because he didn't walk down them, he floated down them. Even walking was too much trouble for Ray these days as he preferred to hover off the ground a few inches and float around everywhere. Not in public, of course, only when he was alone, or with those of an enlightened mindset like myself.

  Ray glided into the living room and floated just in front of me, a happy go lucky smile on his face as always. "You're a bit late," I told him, feeling grumpy from the hangover and the mess of thoughts and emotions still festering in me. Still, I shouldn't have been so curt with him. He was my only family after all. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

  "That's quite alright," Ray said. "You've been through the mill. I understand."

  "That's one way to put it."

  "Sorry I didn't make it in time for the big showdown. It seems you had everything in hand anyhow. Which of course, I knew you would."

  I raised my eyebrows. "Did you?"

  "No," Ray said. "I thought that bastard brother of mine would have destroyed everything by now, including you."

  "He almost did."

  "But you defeated him, and that's all that matters. Now stand up and give your old Uncle a hug. I haven't seen you in ten bloody years!"

  Smiling despite myself, I wrenched myself out of the chair and stood to give Ray the hug he was so eager for. When I sprea
d my arms, Ray wrapped his own burly arms around me and pulled me in tight, half knocking the wind out of me. I'd forgotten how bloody strong he was. A strength that only seemed to increase with age. "You're crushing me," I winced.

  He let go but kept his hands on my shoulders as he looked up at me. Ray was a few inches shorter than me and apparently the shortest in the McCreedy family. "It's wonderful to see you again, my boy. I've missed you." His thick fingers squeezed my shoulders, and I tried not to wince again.

  "I've missed you too, Ray."

  He didn't look any older than he did the last time I had seen him. If anything, he looked younger and still as exuberant as ever. His light gray hair, still thick and longish, was swept back across his head as if a gust of wind had blown it that way. He still wore the goatee beard I had always known him to wear, but it was slightly longer now as it seemed to spill down into his open shirt collar.

  Ray smiled, his blue-gray eyes sparkling as he gave my shoulders another shake, and then began walking around the living room. "Good to see you're maintaining the old Sanctum," he said. "I have many fond memories of this place."

  "I'm sure you do." A weakness washed over me, and I half fell, half sat back in the chair again.

  "You alright? The hangover should go soon. I used a Sobering Spell on you as you were completely out of it by the time I got you home. I found you screaming at some old lady in your drunken state."

  "Rough night."

  Ray extended one arm and a second later the bottle of whiskey on the fireplace mantle came flying through the air and into his hand. "Hair of the dog?"

  My stomach rolled at the thought. "I'm fine, thanks."

  Shrugging, Ray opened the bottle and took a mouthful of the whiskey. Then he left the bottle hanging in midair as the top screwed itself back on. As he sat down in one of the other chairs not far from me, Ray made a small finger movement and the whiskey bottle floated over and placed itself down on the mantle again. Then, reaching into the pocket of his brown trench coat--a coat that was probably older than he was and which was scuffed and marked everywhere, having been worn on countless adventures--he pulled out a curved pipe and a pouch of tobacco. "So tell me," Ray said as he began filling the bowl of his pipe with the sweet smelling tobacco. "How did you defeat your old man in the end? I'm eager to know."

  God, do I have to talk about this now?

  To be honest with you, all I wanted to do was sleep so I could block out the world for a while. If Ray hadn't of been there, I would have made myself a potent sleeping potion and knocked myself out for several hours. My mind seemed to be conspiring against me, throwing up dark thoughts and expressions of woe and despair. I needed to shut that shit down for a while so I could then get some much-needed perspective on the state of things at present. But since Ray was there, I couldn't just fuck off to bed and leave him, so I would have to suffer the pain of dredging everything up again for his benefit. But regardless of how I felt, he had a right to know what happened. "My family helped me defeat him," I said, now eyeing up the whiskey bottle on the mantle, wondering if I should start drinking again, then looking away and deciding against it.

  "Your family?" Ray said, pausing his pipe loading for a moment to look at me. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean they appeared to me somehow. My mother, Fergal, and Roisin. They all came to me just when I thought all was lost."

  "Really? Well, that must have been a wonderful thing."

  "It was. I loved seeing them again. It was their strength--the bond between us--that made it possible for me to defeat Mr Black."

  "Mr Black?"

  "My father. It's what I called him before I knew who he was when he was just a psycho going around murdering people."

  Ray nodded. "I see." He popped the pipe in his mouth and gave a small laugh. "Mr Black. How very apt." A flame suddenly appeared on the end of his right forefinger, and he used the flame to ignite the tobacco inside the pipe. Although, once I caught a whiff of the thick smoke, I knew there was more than just tobacco in there.

  "Still mixing up the weeds, I see."

  After blowing out a long stream of smoke, Ray held the pipe out towards me. "Take it. It will relax you. You look like you need relaxing."

  I used my magick to pull the pipe through the air and into my hand. "It's been a while since I've smoked anything."

  "That's a special blend of mine. You'll like it."

  I drew on the pipe and inhaled the smoke, which was surprisingly smooth as it expanded out in my lungs before I blew it out again into the room, which by that point smelled like an exotic herb garden. "Nicely cured." I took another draw on the pipe and propelled it back into Ray's waiting hand. The smoke hit me straight away, enveloping me in a warm blanket of calm that caused me to sink further into my chair.

  "Told you," Ray said, smiling.

  I smiled back as my head began to buzz pleasantly from the smoke. "They never told me where they were."

  "Who?"

  "My family. They never told me what part of the universe they were in now. I could have traveled to see them."

  "They didn't tell you for a reason, August. They're in the afterlife now, and the afterlife is no place for the living. You'll see them again. Of that I'm sure."

  I sat there stoned wondering if he knew more than he was letting on, but I knew better than to question him on it. Ray always knew much more than he let on, but the point was that he firmly believed in allowing others to find their own way. Even if he did know where my family resided these days, he wouldn't tell me. "Anyway," I said, a heavy body stone coming over me. "I managed to tap into some powerful magick that Mr Black--my father, your brother--couldn't counter or stop. It was amazing really. I've never felt anything like it."

  Ray kept puffing on his pipe as his eyes smiled over at me. "You tapped that magick because you're a Master Mage, August, whether you believe that or not. Your family just steered you in the right direction." He paused for a second before continuing. "I could have made it over here in time to help you with Christopher. You know why I didn't?"

  I shook my head as I puffed my cheeks out. "No."

  He pointed his pipe at me. "Because I knew you could do what needed to be done. I've always had faith in you, August. Even when you didn't."

  "And what if you had been wrong? The whole world would have ended."

  "Then it would have ended. There's an infinite number of other worlds out there. Earth isn't that special."

  "And the seven billion people who live here? What about them?"

  "Same answer as before. Nothing and no one are special. Everything just is. That's all."

  "I think I need another puff if you're going to go all Nietzsche on me."

  Ray chuckled and propelled the pipe towards me. "I'll spur you."

  "Thank Christ," I said smiling.

  "Watch it, boy. I may be an old man, but I'm still fit enough to run rings around you."

  "I know you are." I took two more hits from the pipe and passed it back to him. Then we sat in stoned silence for a while. My headache had cleared up by that point, and I was starting to feel slightly better, physically anyway. Mentally, I had a ways to go before I felt like releasing the worry and anxiety that still strongly gripped my mind.

  "What's up, August?" Ray asked. "There's something you aren't telling me."

  Of course. I could never keep anything hidden for long from Ray. Not that I was hiding anything anyway. I just didn't feel like talking about the latest clusterfuck I was embroiled in. Out of respect for my uncle, however, I spilled my guts. "When Mr Black spelled me--"

  "It's odd that you call your father that," Ray interrupted.

  "Mr Black is a much more fitting name for the bastion of evil I went up against. If you'd seen him, you would understand."

  Ray nodded. "Of course. Carry on then."

  "Like I say, he spelled me. An effect of the spell was that my soul no longer recognized me and I had about three days before I became a ghoul."

  "Distastefu
l creatures, ghouls." Ray made a face as if he was thinking about a hunk of maggot infested meat.

  "Yes, I know. Which is why I didn't want to become one. But I did anyway, as it happened, though not for long. I made a deal with a demon, initially to break the spell. But payment was late and my soul had departed by then. Thankfully the demon was able to retrieve it."

  "But know you owe this demon. Again."

  I nodded. "Correct."

  "And what does the demon want from you?"

  "All I know so far is that he wants me to find someone for him. I'm awaiting further instructions."

  Ray snorted as he drew on his pipe. "I'll tell you this much. Whatever he asks of you, it will be more than simply finding someone. I know demons. They always have a hidden agenda. What's the demon's name?"

  "He calls himself Gabriel since he possessed a human body, but his real name is Baal."

  Ray almost choked on his pipe as he stopped mid-puff. "Did you say, Baal?"

  "I take it that's not good. I figured as much."

  "Not good?" Ray sat forward in his chair. "That's an understatement. Do you know who you're dealing with?"

  "I'm not sure I want to know, but tell me anyway."

  "Baal is the demon that other demons fear." The look on Ray's face was serious. When Ray had his serious face on, you knew things were bad. "He is the spawn of two very ancient primordial beings, the Things That Should Not Be as they are known. A dark experiment between two monsters to see what would happen."

  "And Baal happened," I said, not liking anything I was hearing. The demon was evidently much worse than I thought.

  "The creature was cast to the Underworld like a disused plaything by the Things That Should Not Be. Baal predates most of the beings in the Underworld, including the Fallen Ones. He rules that place from the shadows. How did you even learn his name?"

  "The Book Of Many Hells And Demons." I felt very stupid now like a clueless boy caught playing around with magick he didn't understand.