The Warlock's Curse (42 page)

“Who is this boss you keep talking about?” Will snapped. “And how the hell would he know?”

“Oh for pete’s sake, will you just choose?” The man holding him down hit him hard across the face. Will felt blood blossom from his nose, trickling warm down his chin.

“Stop it, Trotter,” Bernays spoke with annoyance. “You know that never works. Mr. Edwards has decided to be stubborn. As we were told he might be.”

He went over to where Mrs. Kosanovic lay on the floor and lifted her to her feet. The old woman’s eyes snapped with fierceness and fear.

“In the bad old days, Mr. Edwards, in the early days of our nation’s history, when a warlock was accused of the crime of practicing magic, he was also required to make a choice. He was required to choose his plea—guilty or innocent. It wasn’t much of a choice, for pleading guilty meant death and pleading innocence meant a slower and more painful death. So some tried to get out of the choice all together, and they refused to plead anything at all. Do you know what happened to the warlocks who refused to choose?”

Bernays did not handle Mrs. Kosanovic violently at all. Instead, he just put his lips next to her ear and began to whisper. The whispered words, Will could hear, were in Latin. Mrs. Kosanovic began to tremble. Then she began to ... collapse. It was as if she were being sucked inward upon herself. Her flesh compressed as if she were being crushed by heavy stones.

“Stop it!” screamed Will, blank with terror. “Please!”

But Bernays just kept whispering, and Mrs. Kosanovic began making horrible squeaking sounds through her gag. The sound of bones fracturing into a million tiny pieces was like the pop and sputter of dry, burning wood. Blood welled from her skin in fat droplets like water being wrung from a sponge. She became smaller and smaller, crushed by the weight of Bernay’s words.

After a long, long time, Bernays stopped whispering. Mrs. Kosanovic was no longer there. All that was left of her was a dense lump of meat in a pile of bloody clothing.

Will must have passed out, because the next thing he knew, Trotter was slapping him hard across the face to wake him.

“You are
going
to choose,” Bernays promised him. “We can’t choose for you. It’s against the rules. But to
make
you choose—well, we can do anything we like to you.” He felt in his pocket and pulled out the little purple velvet box that Will had left on his bedside table. Bernays opened the box, looked at the silver dollar within, turning it to glint in the waning moonlight. “Or to your lovely wife, when she comes home.”

The bedroom door crashed open.

All of the warlocks turned, and Will saw Harley Briar standing in the doorway. His face was yellow and purple with days-old bruises, and his nose—badly broken—was still swollen to twice its size.

“Let him go!”

He had something raised in his hand—a two chambered pendant, filled with a dark liquid. The same kind that Irene wore.
A sangrimancer’s alembic. Briar muttered a command that made it glow faintly, warm and red.

Bernays did not smile, but rather regarded Briar with a low dark gaze. “Oh wonderful. A hobo sangrimancer.”

“Who are you?” Briar barked.

“I think you know who we are,” Bernays said. “I’m sure you’ve heard of us.” He touched the red orchid on his lapel.

Seeing it for the first time, Briar paled, his battered face going corpse-white beneath the bruises. The alembic in his hand trembled.

“I’m used to long odds,” Briar said. And then he barked a command in some kind of strange language. Jenny’s papers exploded into ash-fine dust, filling the room with a blinding, choking cloud.

Briar was at Will’s side in an instant, grabbing his arm, pulling him toward the door.

But Bernays simply muttered something in Latin, and a cold fresh wind blew through the room, dispelling the cloud. With the precision of three who’d always worked as one, the assassins attacked Briar in perfect unison, lifting their hands to sketch the same charms; chanting the same flawlessly matched Latin. Briar held the alembic high, screaming his bitter acrid spell words, both defending and attacking, summoning tendrils of light from the floor that lashed wildly at them. One of these searing whips caught Bernays across the throat, slashing it open. It staggered the trio for a moment, but only a brief one; Bernays choked an imprecation, placed his hand on the gushing wound and closed it with one curt command: “
Sanare
.”

Then, with a snarl, Bernays and his men intensified their efforts, their voices rising to unearthly volume. The same whips of magical light that had been lashing out at them now turned, wrapped themselves around Briar, held him fast. He struggled desperately as he dropped to his knees.

Will fumbled in his pocket for the razor. He knew that he could help Briar. Save him. The voice didn’t come back to his head, but whatever had been speaking to him then was how he knew it now.

Not quite sure what he was doing, Will used the razor to gash his arm. He rubbed the blood between his hands, and strange power tingled on his fingertips. Then he reached down into himself, to a place dangerous and only vaguely remembered. The memory of the charms on Jenny’s body filled his vision. Lifting his hands, he spoke unfamiliar words, words that tumbled out of him, words that he knew had never really existed until the very moment he spoke them.

He saw the look of shock in Bernays’ eyes as the warlock assassins were wreathed in cold blue flame. They all screamed—in perfect unison—and vanished, leaving behind nothing but the smell of sulphur and silence. Dead silence.

Will collapsed against the wall. He felt exhausted and unclean. Looking at the place where Bernays had been standing, he saw that the warlock had dropped something. The purple velvet box. With an angry cry, Will bent to snatch it from the floor.

Then he went to where Harley Briar lay, writhing and moaning in agony. Briar had used so much magic. And beneath his skin, black rivers of Exunge were beginning to blossom and swell.

Chapter Nineteen

The Tender Sangrimancers

S
EVEN DAYS UNTIL THE NEW MOON

W
ill didn’t know how he was able to get Briar to the Gores—he hadn’t eaten in five days, and hadn’t an ounce of strength left—but somehow, he did it. And when they arrived at Dr. Gore’s front door, Will didn’t bother knocking; he just threw it open and dragged Briar inside.

Briar had stopped screaming somewhere along Gratiot Street, and now just hung limply off Will’s shoulder, his feet dragging. As they collapsed together onto the tiled floor of the entryway, Irene fell to the floor beside them.

“Harley!” she exclaimed with anguish, bending over him. Her fingers traveled swiftly over his face, over the insane pattern of black writhing beneath his bruised skin. “He knows never to use so much magic!
What happened
?”

“We were attacked,” Will rasped, laying on the floor beside him, unable to move. “By warlocks wearing red orchids.”

Irene’s eyes went wide, and she looked up at her father, who had hurried in from the back room.

“There is no time to waste,” Dr. Gore said. “Irene, help me.”

“He’s
dying
,” Irene keened. “Harley—”

“If they’ve been followed, we’re
all
dead!” Dr. Gore bellowed, pulling a knife from his belt and kneeling at Will’s side. “Now. Quickly.”

Seizing Will’s arm, he used the knife to make another deep incision, drawing a fresh hot gush of blood, and both Irene and Dr. Gore coated their hands in it. Irene’s had her alembic at the ready. Clasping hands with her father, she held the alembic high as Dr. Gore spoke words in the bitter, pungent language that Will knew as the language of sangrimancy—the language Briar had spoken to banish the Agency warlocks. He suddenly realized that it was very familiar to him. It was the language the voice in his head had always spoken in.

Her father’s words made Irene’s alembic glow, and with it she began tracing patterns in the air. She sketched swift hexes over Will’s Body then over the doors and windowsills.

“What are you doing?” Will murmured.

“We’re sheltering you,” Dr. Gore said. “Hiding you. Quiet now. Rest.”

They proceeded around the whole house in this fashion, Dr. Gore chanting and Irene sketching, until finally they returned to where Will and Briar rested. Irene looked exhausted from the effort, but she did not stop for even a moment; she bent and lifted Briar up, carrying him into the receiving room and laying him tenderly on the table. Dr. Gore followed her.

Will lay on the cold floor, his own blood smeared on the tiles around him. He curled up into a ball and closed his eyes. And even much later, when a soft knock came at the door, he could not bring himself to open them.

The hem of Irene’s skirt brushed his cheek. She paused, and he heard her slide open the little viewing window. After a moment in which Will could feel her weighing her decision, she opened the door. Will felt cold air stream in over the threshold. He opened his eyes a crack, just enough to see a pair of leather shoes on the doormat.

“I’m looking for Will Edwards,” the shoes said. They were scuffed, Will noticed. Not polished. “Please let me in, I know he’s here—”

“You shall not enter here,” she replied in a calm, ceremonial voice. “Begone,
kallikantzari
. This home is fortified against you.”

“I’m not one of them.” A pause. “I swear it upon my blood.”

Irene weighed the shoes’ formal response for a long time.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Will’s brother,” the shoes said. “Ben.”

Chapter Twenty

Kala Christouyenna

S
IX DAYS UNTIL THE NEW MOON

H
unger woke him the next morning, gnawing at his gut with a ferocity even more powerful than his lingering weariness. The smell of food suffused the house—the scent of garlic and rosemary and roasting pork heavy in the air.

He had been put into a bed in an upstairs room. Climbing out of it, he stood for a moment on shaky legs, steadying himself. Winter sunlight illuminated the shade covering the window. He pushed the shade aside, looking out over the roofs and back alleys of Greektown, narrowing his eyes against the intense glare.

Then, slowly, he made his way downstairs. In the kitchen, Dr. Gore, wearing a long ruffled apron, was bent before the gas oven poking at a roast. An unfamiliar man was sitting at the kitchen table. Will stopped in the doorway, looking at him.

“Ben,” he said.

Ben was tall and slender, with walnut-colored hair and green eyes. He wore a rumpled suit—it matched his scuffed shoes—and the impression he gave was of a bank clerk in a very small bank with very few clients.

Ben rose quickly, and came over to where Will was standing. Without a word, he hugged Will. Will held on to him for a moment, steadying himself against his brother.

“It’s all right,” Ben murmured. “It’ll all come out all right.”

Will shook his head and pushed himself away from his brother’s embrace. But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he shakily crossed the kitchen to the table, steadying himself against the back of one of the chairs.