The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (44 page)

I blinked up at Gillette, clearing my head in time to watch her cap the perfume bottle. She stretched her neck, and finally centered herself as her energy snapped back into her body like a regiment of well-drilled soldiers. The woman was a master, and I was utterly glad I hadn’t managed to make an enemy out of her during this process.

She held out the bottle, and I stood up to take it gingerly in my fingers. She stared at me with hard intent, her eyes probing me, thoughts cascading behind her pupils.

“Our business is complete,” Gillette finally said.

I stared at the bottle. It didn’t look any different than before. It was still the same stupid glass trinket as before. I couldn’t feel the first sign of energy within it. Of course, no decent soul trap would leak energy. Such a deceptive little thing.

I looked over to Elle, sprawled over Edgar’s torso. He cradled her carefully, bending his knees at an awkward angle to keep her from twisting uncomfortably. Wren rushed forward to help him, pulling her legs away from the table. The two of them lifted her off the table entirely, settling her on the ground between them.

“Baby?” Wren whispered, stroking the side of her face.

I saw her chest moving. She was breathing. More importantly, her eyes shifted behind their lids. This was a good sign. She wasn’t just breathing, she was dreaming.

“I think it worked,” I offered, setting the vial down carefully in the center of the table.

“It did,” Gillette corrected. “Wasn’t easy. This girl is a labyrinth.”

Edgar gave me a weary smile and looked to Gillette. “Thank you. You have no idea what this means to us.”

She nodded, then pulled me aside. “Listen, Lake. I know you’re used to Presidium double-talk, and assuming that everyone’s lying to you. But there is a world where we professionals treat one another with respect. You just have to escape this artificial world the Presidium has created to realize it.”

“Thanks, but I’ve heard how screwed up the outside world is. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

She leaned in and whispered, “I know it was Baker. I recognized her energy.”

I stiffened.

Gillette continued, “I’m tired of this. I can pledge her safety on one condition.”

I whispered, “What condition?”

“You continue her training. I watched your curse working. Looks like you retained Desiderio’s education well enough. You keep her from doing anything like this ever again, and I’ll suspend my judgment.”

I took a deep breath, then nodded.

She considered me for a moment, then sniffled. “I’ll collect Carmody.”

Gillette stepped around me for the stairs. As she took the first step onto the stairs, the light flickered again. She froze.

As did I.

Edgar whispered, “What was that?”

I looked over to Gillette, who turned slowly to me, her eyes wide.

“Lake?”

“Yeah?”

“Check that bottle.”

I turned to my work table. The vial sat still in the direct center of my Golden Spiral. I waved my palm over the bottle, palpating the energy.

The light flickered again.

More importantly, tiny needles of white-hot energy lanced into my skin.

“Oh, shit.”

Gillette rushed back into the room, and the two of us twisted away as the tiny vial of glass shattered on the table.

I brushed the glass off my arms, checking for blood.

“You okay?” I asked Gillette.

She looked up and down, turning around, his eyes scanning the entire space.

“It’s out,” she whispered. “What did you do?”

“What do you mean it’s out?”

“The bottle didn’t hold, obviously.”

“I said kill the thing if this was a problem!”

“Where’s your frankincense?”

I marched over to the shelf and grabbed the mason jar, jingling it in front of Gillette.

Edgar brushed past my shoulder and snatched the bottle from my hand. “Dorian?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s myrrh.”

I double-checked the bottle. And my stomach dropped.

I’d studied the hermetic arts since I was eighteen years old. I was taken under Emil Desiderio’s wing and instructed over the period of ten long, laborious years. He took no shortcuts. At times, I wanted to punch him in the face. The better years of my youth were spent not in dating, getting drunk and screwing, but in studying dead languages and memorizing correspondences within sacred geometries.

And surely somewhere along those years I learned the difference between frankincense, a powerful Veil-strengthening warding resin, and myrrh, another tree resin that served to blur the boundaries between the spiritual world and the mundane.

“Oh, fuck me.”

The light flickered aggressively, sending long shadows into the space. The temperature dropped rapidly.

“It’s drawing energy from the room,” I whispered. “Damn it. Everyone, upstairs. Now!”

Gillette and I gathered the Swains and almost literally shoved them up the flight of stairs. I was the last one to the steel door, and as I turned to close it behind me, I could have sworn for a moment that I caught two yellow eyes glaring at me from the darkened room below. It sent the hairs on my arms on end.

I closed the door and pushed against it with my back, catching my breath.

“Okay,” I muttered. “That was my bad.”

Gillette paced an impatient circle. “I did say frankincense, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Of all the reagents you could have mistaken for frankincense―”

“I know, Gillette. Thank you, though.”

The door was still and solid behind my back. Nothing of spiritual merit would be penetrating that door, and though the surrounding structure of the building was made of hermetically weaker material, the power of doors and corridors translated onto the other side of the Veil. Yet despite the comfort that door offered, I knew something horrible was in the basement.

And I couldn’t let it just stay down there.

I looked over to the Swains, gathering Elle onto the futon. “Guys? Stay here.”

I marched across the front room and reached for the silver blade mounted over my mantel.

Gillette gave me a quizzical glance. “You’re going back down there?”

I held the darquelle up to my face. “This thing has been a pain in my ass long enough. There’s no way I’m just going to let it squat in my fucking basement.”

“You realize it’s consuming all of the latent energy built up in that room?”

I thought about Emil’s Library, and had to put faith that he had worked some significant natural wardings into the cabinet itself. If something incorporeal had managed to tap into the content of those texts, this thing could turn into a living nightmare in a big damn hurry.

“Sooner I deal with it, the better.”

A tremble vibrated the floorboards, and Wren snapped her head up.

“What was that?”

We all jumped as some kind of scratching crash erupted from the basement.

“That had better not be what I think it is,” I grumbled as I rushed into my kitchen and fished a flashlight out of the junk drawer. If that thing had gotten into Emil’s Library, this was about to turn into an even bigger nightmare.

Gillette leaned against the kitchen door frame, hands in her pockets. “Good luck.”

So much for Gillette’s cooperation. “Thanks.”

I turned to the steel door and centered myself.

One of us was going down.

I opened the door slowly, peering down into the darkness, gripped my flashlight and darquelle, and stepped into the shadows.

he light at the bottom of the stairs flickered back to life. A pall of dust wafted into view, clouding my line of sight into the work space as I descended the steps one-by-one. The air smelled of mold and gypsum, charged with a sharp twang of ozone. I waved at the dust in futility as I followed the wall to the Library cabinet. I ran a hand along the top and front. The doors were closed, and the wood felt unmolested. This thing hadn’t made a move for the texts. Good.

Something skittered in the distance, too far away to reasonably be within the same room. I waited for a moment, darquelle held out in front of me as the dust cleared. The bulb overhead streamed beams into the space, and soon a dark patch in the room presented itself. I advanced, energy centered, knife held tight. As more dust settled, I realized I wasn’t looking at a hellish thoughtform mutant, but a hole in my wall. I blinked against the remaining dust and inspected the damage. A single thickness of sheetrock and a frame wall separated my work space from an entire coal cellar I hadn’t realized existed. I had always assumed the basement was smaller than it ought to have been, but I never had the wherewithal to look into whether there was more to the basement than the work space. Now I knew.

I peered into the darkness beyond the hole. It was deep. The basement was as wide as the entire house, I figured, which left lots of room for this thing to lurk. Room without any light. I switched on my flashlight and scanned it back and forth. I found a nearby rock wall, most likely a footing for my fireplace, and a series of old steamer pipes that probably hadn’t been used for a half-century.

More skittering caught my attention, and I slowly embraced the uncomfortable fact that I was going to have to chase this damn thing in this pitch black coal cellar. Lovely.

I took my first two steps into the dark space, still partially illuminated by the bulb shining behind the hole in the wall, and steadied my footing as I inched through the drywall debris. The temperature dropped sharply the deeper I advanced. I wasn’t sure if that was a function of the coolness of the basement or the servitor sucking in more energy to power itself. The thing was removed from a soul source, now. It was going to starve itself back down to a thoughtform state if it didn’t find a new source to feed upon. Which was why I was bothering to hunt the thing down myself. Given time and opportunity, it would latch onto someone else, and I couldn’t vouch for the wardings on a cellar I hadn’t known existed.

A length of wood groaned to my right, and I shined the flashlight quickly to the side. Dust trickled from the joists, most likely unseated by my guests upstairs.

The skittering resumed, this time clacking against the stone floor rapidly toward me. I spun and slashed out with my darquelle. A sickening wheeze filled my hearing, and a subtle fog washed across my face.

I slashed again, but my blade only sliced through the fetid air.

The wheeze dropped into a growl.

White-hot trails of lancing pain sliced down my back. I yelped and stepped forward, shoulder-blades convulsing backward against the heat. I coughed and rolled my shoulders, trying to work through the pain as quickly as I could while getting my blade back in front of me.

A pair of yellow eyes glared at me for a split-second in the gloom before my flashlight shone on top of it. The eyes vanished, and nothing more than floor joists and a thick support post appeared in the beam.

The pain throbbed as something wet trickled down the small of my back. This thing had drawn blood. Amazing. It was a thought. A simple thought. And now it had enough power to open my skin.

I heard the skittering again, this time moving in a wide arc from right to left. The damn thing was circling me like a predator. I kept the silver blade centered on the noise and decided to go on the offensive. I plunged forward, swinging the blade into the air. There were no shrieks or wheezing. I hit nothing.