Sorcerer's Creed Books 1-3

by N. P. Martin

  6

  Singed Eyebrows

  While I was standing in the kitchen drinking whiskey straight from the bottle (you know things are bad when you're drinking straight from the bottle), Blaez finally emerged from whatever dark enclave of the Sanctum he had been recuperating in. The big Garra Wolf paused in the kitchen doorway to look at me as if asking if the demon had gone yet. Despite being off somewhere else in the Sanctum, Blaez would still have sensed the presence of the demon in the place. If I were Blaez, I would have taken one sniff and said, "Fuck that noise. I've had my fill of dangerous demons for a while. I'm going back to sleep."

  Evidently, that's what Blaez did. I didn't blame him for avoiding Baal. The wolf was only getting over dying at the hands of another demon in the form of Mr Black. Why would he want to be around another who was probably more powerful and more devious than Mr Black ever was?

  "Hey buddy," I said, tilting my unshaven chin at him. "You just missed our guest. No blood left behind this time for you to lick up, but I have steaks in the fridge. You must be starving."

  Blaez padded into the kitchen as I went to the fridge, his claws clacking off the wood floor. I took two large steaks out of the greaseproof paper in the fridge and placed the meat on a dinner plate. Blaez made a noise in the back of his throat that indicated he couldn't wait to get his teeth into the raw meat. While he nearly devoured the first steak whole, I considered preparing a steak for myself as well, but after a moment's consideration, I decided I wasn't hungry. My mind was in too much of a spin to think about eating, and now that I had a case to get to work on, I was starting to feel jacked up. It happened every time I committed myself to a case, even though in this particular case I didn't have a choice in the matter. It was commit or die. But whatever my motivations, I was still committed, and that commitment kicked off an internal process in me that I still didn't quite understand. The effect of which meant that I wouldn't stop until I had closed the case. It didn't matter how, as long as I brought things to a very definite (but not necessarily satisfying) conclusion.

  In this particular case, that meant locating the witch known as Margot Celeste and handing her over to Baal. And by handing her over, I mean signing the woman's death warrant. In some part of myself, I was well aware of the callousness of such an act. Clearly, Baal carried a serious grudge towards the witch in question, which meant the witch's eventual torment and suffering would be great. Probably fucking monumental, to be honest. And I was going help force the woman towards all that pain.

  I had no idea what the witch had done to Baal to piss him off so much, but my initial instinct was to feel sorry for Margot Celeste, whoever she was. Whatever she had done, it was likely done out of desperation or just plain foolishness (like most human behavior). No one would try to cross a demon like Baal unless they didn't have a choice. But then, what did I know? I just knew that power (especially magickal power) corrupts and that people will do anything to get more of it, including crossing demons who shouldn't be crossed.

  But those were issues were incidental at that point. The most pressing matter was to find the woman first. Regardless of what she had done or how she did it--regardless of how innocent or guilty the woman was--the only thing that mattered to me at that point was preventing Leona from getting killed because of me and losing her soul to that that monster. There was just no way I was going to let that happen.

  Well, you'd better get fucking cracking then, eh? I thought.

  I left Blaez to his meal and headed into the Room Of Operations.

  The Room Of Operations could be accessed via a hidden door in the fireplace wall of the living room. I waved my hand over the wall, uttering a few words to reveal the door that was previously hidden with a Cloaking Spell. Then opening the door, I went inside the room.

  The room itself was large and square, and it didn't exist on the original plans of the brownstone. There were a lot of rooms inside the Sanctum that shouldn't have been there. In fact, if the hidden rooms existed in physical reality (instead of on a magickal plane as they did), the Sanctum would have taken up near half a block. Luckily, with magick, it was easy to keep things a little more contained and compact.

  The Room Of Operations was one of the few extra rooms in the Sanctum that I created myself, most of the rest having been created by Ray when he bought the place decades ago. When I began hiring out my services as a magickslinger back in the day, I decided I needed a place where I could go to work on my cases, and also store my case files. After every case, I wrote up a report and filed it in the Op Room. It was a practice I had maintained since my first case many years ago (when I was hired by the Crimson Crow to find her daughter). I figured the case reports would come in handy for future cases, plus I wanted to maintain some semblance of professionalism. Just because I dealt with magick and the supernatural, that didn't mean I couldn't be organized about things.

  The Op Room had white walls, most of them being covered by photographs, crumpled documents, and endless post-it notes, many of which were interconnected by string held in place by thumb tacks. One entire wall was taken up by shelves that were densely filled with folders containing case reports. Even though I did my reports on the computer, I always printed a hard copy as there was no substitute for reading words on real paper.

  Dominating the room was a large mahogany table that sat in the middle of the wood floor. Just about every inch of the huge table was covered by something, be it old case reports, maps, photographs, grimoires, potion bottles and various magickal instruments such as the Quill of Nostradamus, which had the power to predict the future if you wrote with it. Not always accurate, but it came in handy from time to time.

  Also on the table was a MacBook, which I mostly used to type up reports and access the internet. Despite my magick, I still had cause to go online from time to time, if only to access some of the resource sites that were tucked away deep in the Dark Web. Resources such as the Blackham City Online Grimoire, which not only listed every kind of supernatural being and magickal adept in the city but also their names and who they were. No one knew who maintained the site, and many of the names on it were not happy that they were listed, despite the fact that the site was only accessible to a handful of people, of which I was one. Access to the site could not be requested by anyone. Instead, it was granted to those who were deemed worthy or in need of it by whoever ran the site itself. I just happened to log into my computer one day to find a message saying I had been granted access to the site. My guess was that the site was run by some Cybermancer as the passwords had to be backed up with magick sent through your fingers and into the computer so your identity could be verified.

  Most of the time when I was tasked with finding someone who belonged to the occult and supernatural underground, the Online Grimoire was the first place I checked. Almost always, the person I was looking for would be listed there, and if I were lucky, there would also be other information about them, such as last known address or a history of the person. It was quite unbelievable the extent of the information to be found on the site. In many cases, there were pages and pages of background information attached to the names. Entire histories in some cases. I was listed on the site as well needless to say, but thankfully my background info didn't run too personal. It was just standard stuff like place of birth, family tree, current address and details about my job and some of the more notable cases I had worked on.

  As much as I found the Online Grimoire a useful resource to have at my disposal, there were many individuals and groups who were not happy about being listed. Most of the protestors didn't even have access. They had just heard they were included on the site. It pained most of them that they were unable to erase themselves from it. Although as far as I knew, no one had used the site for malicious purposes. It was like the webmaster behind it all knew exactly who they could trust with access. No one had a clue who ran the site, which made it nearly impossible to take it down. Many had tried (including some skilled Cybermancers and human hackers), but
most couldn't even find their way to the load screen. Just when they thought they had pinpointed the site's location, it would suddenly shift and disappear again into the depths of the Dark Web. And as a final security measure, approved users of the site would only be granted access if they were alone. If any non-approved users were present, you would find you had forgotten the address of the site, and it would simply be unreachable.

  Standing at the table and clearing some space for the MacBook, I logged onto the Dark Web via the Tor browser and keyed in the address of the site from memory. A moment later, a login screen opened up that asked for a sixteen digit password, which I typed in, again from memory. As I typed in the password, I allowed a small amount of magick to flow from my fingers into the keyboard so the site could verify my identity. It did this by scanning my magick the same way you would scan a fingerprint. Every Adept's magick was unique to them in some way, so it served as a unique identifier so you could access the site. If you didn't have magick, then your blood would do.

  The screen flashed a few times before finally granting me access to the site. The site was a simple design with just a few functions. You could search directly for someone if you knew their name, or you could browse the list of names that were stored in alphabetical order (which I sometimes did just out of sheer interest, and also to familiarize myself with any new players in town).

  In the search box, I typed the name of the witch I had to find: MARGOT CELESTE. When I hit enter, one search result was returned. "Well," I said. "At least she's on here."

  Clicking on the search result, I was brought to a black screen containing green text (very old school aesthetic, which I liked...no fucking annoying ads anyway!). "Right, Margot Celeste, let's see who you are..."

  Disappointingly, there wasn't much information on our witch. Certainly not as much as I hoped for, but I also wasn't surprised either. From what I could gather, Margot Celeste was a master at hiding herself from the world, which meant she would not be easy to find.

  She was listed on the Online Grimoire as a witch. And also as a known murderer. A multiple murderer no less. I looked away from the screen while I let that information sink in for a second. She had killed people. Her murders were verified, or she wouldn't have been listed on the site as a murderer in the first place. It was hard not to start thinking of the witch as being a bad or evil person having read that, but I knew there could be many reasons for committing murder, not all of them bad. But again, did I really care what kind of person Margot Celeste was? No, I didn't, not at that point anyway. I only cared about removing the gun Baal had at Leona's head (a gun she didn't even know was there). Everything else had to be secondary to that, including saving my own skin. So I moved past the murderer thing and went back to looking at the screen

  Her overall power was scored as a surprising and very impressive 8 out of 10 (mine was an 8.2 if you are interested, Sanaka's a 9.6) and her last known address was the French Quarter in New Orleans, which was...ten years ago. "Bastard," I cursed under my breath. Now I was going to have to find Margot Celeste the harder way. Through magick. Or good old fashioned detective work. Likely a combination of both.

  Underneath the scant background information (which just listed a few different previous addresses and some verified spells of note) there was a link entitled "Associations". I clicked the link and was taken to a different screen that had Margot Celeste's name in the center. Branching out from her name was a host of other names, people that the witch had associated herself with over the years. Predictably, many of the names belonged to other witches. The rest were a mixture of Adepts and supernatural entities (Sleepwalkers were not listed in the Grimoire). I recognized a few of the names on the screen and wrote them down on a post-it note as possible leads. If I failed to find her directly, I could always contact those associates and pump them for information.

  In the meantime, I closed up the MacBook and put it one side before unfurling a large map of Blackham City that was rolled up on the desk, using some paperweights to hold the corners down. The map not only detailed the geography of the city but also the surrounding areas. With no luck on the Online Grimoire, it was time to try a Location Spell.

  Location Spells could be hit and miss. In general, the accuracy of the spell depended on how much you knew about the person you were trying to find. Even better to have a personal item of some kind that belonged to that person. Unfortunately, though, all I knew about the witch was her name and not much else. That didn't give me much to go on, but it would have to do. Besides, I didn't hold out much hope that a Location Spell would work, no matter how much information I had on the target. If the witch could shield herself from a demon like Baal, it was unlikely her presence would be picked up by a mere Location Spell. Still, I had to try, if only for the sake of elimination.

  I held both hands over the map and shut my eyes while I conjured up the spell, entering the Chaosphere just long enough to direct the required amount of magick needed to fuel the spell. When I opened my eyes again, I lifted a small knife with a very sharp blade of the table and used the knife to make a thin cut in the palm of my left hand. Then I made a fist with my bloody hand and held it over the center of the map while I completed the words to the spell, emphasizing the name of Margot Celeste as I did so. Drops of blood soon flowed from out of my loose fist and splashed onto the map. After a few drops had landed, I took my hand away from the map, wrapping a grubby handkerchief around the still bleeding cut. Then I waited.

  As I had done the spell countless times before, I knew exactly what was supposed to happen if the spell was doing its job. The blood on the map was supposed to run across it and eventually stop at whatever location the target was at. At the very least, you would have a rough idea of where your target was at. Then you would go there and resume the detective work, but that bit closer to your mark.

  But in this case, nothing happened. Or at least not for a few moments, when the blood in the center of the map suddenly spread out in all directions at once and spiderwebbed over the entire surface. I shook my head. "Damn it," I said, not surprised at all that the spell was going awry since it was being fucked with by the magick of Margot Celeste. Her influence and reach were indeed substantial. Impressive.

  So was what happened next.

  The map exploded suddenly into flames as if the blood covering it was highly flammable. The flames were explosive and burst upwards past my face, singing my eyebrows and beard in the process. "Shit!" I exclaimed, jumping back.

  Then the flames died down just as suddenly, finally vanishing as if some hidden force had extinguished them. In the wake of the flames, there was a pile of blackened ash on the table. The remains of the map.

  After a moment, I couldn't help but smile. "Touché," I said as I smoothed over my singed eyebrows.

  7

  Drunken Bastards

  As I wasn't able to locate the witch using my own magick, I thought perhaps that the magick from a more powerful sorcerer might be able to. My first instinct was to call Uncle Ray since his magick was powerful and he was in town. When I tried to call him, however, his phone went straight to voicemail, and I knew right then that my uncle didn't want to be contacted.

  Probably too busy shagging the Crimson Crow or some other supernatural sexpot that he shouldn't really be with.

  Bearing in mind that Ray was over one hundred and fifty years old. He was no spring chicken as they say, but that didn't stop him from having his fun when he wanted to. He had always been one for the women, which was probably why he never married. That and his fondness for constant adventure made Ray bad husband material, but a hell of sorcerer and a fascinating storyteller.

  And hard to bloody contact.

  Ray could have his fun. I decided to seek help from Tetsuo Sanaka instead. The man was still my mentor after all. If I should have been going to anyone for help, it was him. Sanaka would likely disagree, mind. He liked to be left alone, and for the most part shared the same philosophy as my uncle, which was that every
man should beat down his own path and make his own mistakes. Even if that meant getting hurt or dying in the process. In fact, as far as those two were concerned (Ray more than Sanaka, it had to be said), the greater the risk, the greater the potential for learning. "August, my boy," Ray once told me. "A man will learn the most the closer he is to death's door."

  "That's not much if you end up dying anyway, is it?" I responded at the time.

  And it was true. Dying, or nearly dying, to learn a lesson (not matter what the lesson was), struck me as being foolish, to say the least. Why take risks if you don't have to? I learn more from avoiding death than running towards it, even though I run towards death on a regular basis. I'm all for accepting help and giving help when I can. It just makes more sense than going it alone all the time, which might be character building, but isn't always fun. In fact, it's not fun at all being alone most of the time. That's one lesson I've learned at least.

  I drove from the Sanctum to the park in Little Tokyo where Sanaka's own Sanctum was located, hidden away at the edge of the park in a small woodland, shielded by magick against prying eyes. The only way into the grounds of Sanaka's quirky little Sanctum was to teleport in, or else to know the correct magick sequence to create an entrance. I chose to teleport in as it was easier.

  As always when I landed in the place, I got that immediate sense of familiarity and the many painful memories that were associated with it. My live-in mentorship with Sanaka was like a season spent in Hell. I've mentioned the man's sadistic teaching methods before. Let's not dwell on them now.

  I didn't need to knock on the arched front door of the pagoda style Sanctum. Nearly a decade spent living there had at least earned me the right to return as I pleased, and to enter when I pleased. That's how I saw it anyway. Sanaka may have had a different view on the matter, though he hadn't turned me away yet. There was always a first time, however.