Cursed book 1 in the ced.., p.21
Cursed: Book 1 in the Cedarstone Chronicles, page 21
“I said there was no weapon that could kill them. I think I’ve found a way though and that’s what I need your help with.”
“What is it? The way you’ve found?”
“I’d rather keep that to myself for now.” Arthur was starting to think that was Nick’s catch phrase, it seemed to be his response to a lot of questions.
“I thought you had followers, couldn’t they help you with your plan?” Arthur suggested.
“My disciples? If they’re still alive, it has been 54 years after all. But I need more power than that. I need a coven to join to my own,” Nick replied. Arthur didn’t much like the sound of that. Joining his coven to Nick’s.
“There’s nobody left in my coven though. Just three of us,” Arthur reminded him.
“Once the curse is broken sorcerers will flock back to you. This town is a supernatural hot spot.”
“How will they know the curse is broken though?” Arthur asked, making the most of Nick’s openness; it wasn’t often he was so willing to answer questions.
“You’ll send out a signal to call them home.” Arthur was about to ask what signal when Nick saw his face and answered. “I’ll give you a spell that should do the job.”
Arthur nodded. “So- Do you hear that?” He asked suddenly, interrupting himself and coming to halt. Nick stopped too and the look on his face showed that he did hear it. There was a low buzzing noise coming from the other end of the corridor, like a loud fly. It grew louder and as it did the light seemed to grow more intense. The light grew brighter and brighter as the buzzing increased in volume and then the light blinked out and the buzzing ceased. Then the next light went out too. The lights of the corridor all started to blink out, one by one, the darkness creeping towards them, until the only light left on was the one directly above Arthur and Nick.
“I’m going to assume it’s not a power cut,” Nick said. Before Arthur could reply another voice rang out from the darkness.
“Arthur Winters and Nickolas Blackwood. A member of one of the most powerful sorcerer families in the world and the last true immortal. What a privilege.” The man’s voice was high and had a certain snakelike quality to it. He sounded genuinely awed by the two men, rather like a crazed fan.
“Who are you?” Nick called into the darkness.
“Your number one fan,” the voice called back softly. A shadowy figure appeared just outside of the light but Arthur could only make out his outline.
“What do you want, an autograph?” Nick asked casually.
“What’s your name?” Arthur demanded, employing his most commanding voice.
The man in the shadows chuckled. “That doesn’t matter.”
“I presume you’re responsible for the curse?” Nick accused, staring intently into the darkness.
“I am. Are you impressed?” the voice asked coyly.
“Yes, actually, I am,” Nick confessed. “But I am going to need you to lift it.”
“I’m afraid that is quite out of the question. Your powers are my powers now.”
“If you’d absorbed all of our powers then someone would be picking your remains off of a wall somewhere,” Nick said. Arthur could see that he was getting angry.
“I’m working on that,” the voice said, he was practically whispering now.
“You’re going to complete the curse you mean?” Arthur said, looking at Nick to see if he understood.
“Yes indeed. I have you to thank for that Arthur. Mr Blackwood’s arrival in town has made it possible for me to complete the curse without killing myself,” the man in the shadows said. That didn’t make sense though. Alistair said that the council was planning to complete the curse before he woke Nick up. That was why he woke Nick up. Had Alistair got confused by one of Katrina’s visions, or was he in league with the council? He didn’t have a chance to think it through because Nick was on the move.
“Enough,” Nick said and marched towards the man. He only got two steps before he stopped. His face twisted into one of anguish and turned purple and he clutched his chest with both hands.
“What… What are you doing?” Arthur said quickly, he tried to move to help Nick but found his feet glued to the spot.
“I heard that you gave Waylon Royce a nasty heart attack,” the shadow man said to Nick. “I wonder, how would you like to experience that pain yourself?”
Nick screamed out loud enough to alert anyone in a ten block radius and fell to his knees with a soft thud. “When I… get my… powers… back… I’m going to… knock… your head… off…” he snarled at the man in the shadows. Beads of sweat were dripping down his forehead.
“It’s unlikely that you ever will,” the man said. Nick went to say something, grunted, and then fell face down into the carpet.
“Is he…?”
“Dead? Yes, Arthur, very much so. But don’t worry he’ll be up again in about ten minutes and then I might just kill him again.” The man’s tone made it quite clear that he was enjoying himself. “Now, I rather hope that I can dissuade you from this folly of trying to break my curse. You see, it simply can’t be done and all you will achieve is your own death in the process.”
“Don’t you dare threaten me,” Arthur warned, once again trying to move but finding himself unable.
“I don’t want to, but you give me little choice. In three days, my curse will have completed its course and I will leave your town for my next adventure. All you have to do is nothing until then. You’ve done it for thirty years, a few more days should be easy enough. Once I’m gone you’ll be free to do whatever you wish,” the man said.
“But I’ll be powerless.”
“Yes, but you’ll be alive.”
“That’s a shitty deal,” Nick said from the floor and the man moved in surprise. Nick capitalised on his shock and darted at him. He rammed into the man’s gut and he man stumbled backwards. The man lost his balance and toppled into the window. The glass shattered outward and as the pieces fell the man was carried out with them. Arthur and Nick ran over to the window and peered down but all they saw was shards of glass in the grass.
They left the town hall quickly. There was no point continuing their search. The man would have likely removed any evidence that had been there and there was the risk of him coming back for them. What they needed to do was figure out who the man was and what Alistair’s involvement was.
“You was wrong,” Arthur said once they was speeding away from the town hall in the comfort of his car. “You said that no person could have pulled it off, that it must be an object or something, blocking the power.”
“And I stand by that,” Nick snapped back. “No sorcerer could handle that much power, mine alone would have fried him, let alone the power from every other sorcerer that has entered the town in the last thirty years. The power must be going through the object and into him. I know what the object is, I suspected it before but now I’m certain he’s using my dagger. It’s the only object powerful enough to pull this off. What I don’t understand is how he’s managed to create such a wide radius for the curse.”
“He said that the curse would be complete in a few days, we need to stop him,” Arthur said frantically.
“He could only mean that he’s found a way to absorb the power fully without blowing himself up in the process, he said it involved me but I’ve got no idea what he meant,” Nick spoke fast, the words almost falling over each other to get out of his mouth.
“In three days it will be the full moon. I bet he’ll be drawing power from that to help him,” Arthur said.
“He’ll need more power than the moon can provide,” Nick said thoughtfully.
Arthur pulled out his mobile phone.
“What are you doing?” Nick asked.
“Calling Adam. He’s trying to figure out how the curse works so I think he needs to know that there’s a fully powered warlock running round town.”
After calling Adam, Arthur turned the car and headed back to the town centre.
“What are you doing?” Nick demanded.
“I need to talk to Alistair. He’s keeping something from me and I want to know what it is,” Arthur said through gritted teeth. He explained the situation to Nick.
“Hmm,” Nick said as he considered what he’d said. “It certainly is a bit of a paradox. It seems like Alistair wanted you to wake me up so that the council could get hold of me to complete the curse. The question is why, what does he get out of it?”
“A share in the power maybe,” Arthur suggested.
“I don’t think so. I think it’s more complicated than that. I think there’s more to Alistair than I originally suspected.”
When they arrived at the shop they found it locked up tight. Arthur pushed on the door as hard as he could but it would not open. He knocked, pounded and kicked it, but he got no response.
“We need something to force the door,” Arthur said. He didn’t care about Alistair’s ramifications anymore. He wanted the truth.
“We’re wasting our time. It’s sealed with magic, we’ll never get in,” Nick said calmly.
“But we need to,” Arthur protested. If he was right then that meant that Alistair had magic all along, he wasn’t cursed. What was Alistair’s game?
“No we don’t. We need to figure out where my dagger is and how the curses radius is set up. Once we know those things we’ll be able to break it. We’ve got three days and we can’t afford to waste them trying to break down this door.”
Arthur sighed, knowing that Nick was right, and followed him back to the car. He looked over his shoulder one last time and thought he saw someone peeking out the upstairs window, but when he looked again there was nobody there.
Nick went straight upstairs to Arthur’s study once they were home to search through his grimoires to try and figure out how the radius had been set up. There were few curses of such magnitude in history so it was unlikely he would find anything. Arthur wandered into the sitting room, in dire need of a very large brandy before he did any work. He’d been played by Alistair and he couldn’t figure out why. What was the old man up to? What did he want? When he got there he found his daughter, sitting in one of the leather armchairs, her eyes bright red from crying.
“Clara, sweetie,” he said moving toward her but she put her hand out and shook her head furiously.
“Don’t you dare… come near me,” she commanded.
He froze where he was in utter shock at the way she’d spoken to him. He’d never seen such hatred in her eyes before. He slowly lowered himself into the chair next to her. He had no idea what to say and instead just looked at her in silence. What had happened to her? Had she found James in the cellar? He eyed the drinks cabinet but didn’t dare move. He sat in silence waiting for her to explain what was going on.
“Maggie’s dead,” she said in a whisper, staring into his eyes the whole time.
It was the last thing he’d expected. “What?” Arthur said, knowing full well what his daughter had told him but not believing her.
“Murdered. Someone scolded her face. With an iron. The coroner thinks the pain caused her heart to give out,” Clara’s voice trembled as she fought back tears.
“Why would anybody murder Maggie?” Arthur said. Tears of his own were welling up in his eyes. He tried to fight them. He had to appear strong for his daughter. He had an idea who might want murder Maggie. This was the ramification Alistair had been talking about. But he couldn’t tell Clara that.
“I know, Dad,” she said slowly.
“You know what?”
“Everything,” she said and Arthur felt the room start to slip away. His world was disintegrating. No matter what happened from this moment on it was unlikely that things could ever get worse.
“Clara, I-”
“You lied. My whole life you lied. How could you do that to me? How could you keep me in the dark after all this family has gone through?” She looked confused and desperate and Arthur knew then that by lying to her he’d done more harm than good.
“I was trying to protect you,” he stuttered.
“You’re going to use that old cliché?” she said with derision.
“It’s the truth. I thought it was right,” he said feebly, the words getting choked in his throat.
“You don’t know how to tell the truth,” she retorted.
“Clara, please,” he begged. She couldn’t leave him. He couldn’t be alone. Everything he’d done had been so that he didn’t lose her.
“Just answer one question, do you know who killed her?”
“Alistair,” he said at once. He wouldn’t risk telling more lies.
“Who is that?”
“An old man. He runs a shop, Wiccan Wares. He’s some sort of sorcerer.”
“Like us?” Clara asked.
“No, not like us. He’s a different kind of sorcerer. He had- has far more power,” Arthur explained. He wished in that moment that he’d taught Clara all of this as she was growing up. He realised that it wasn’t just her that had missed out but he had too. If he’d been honest then maybe she would be helping the coven right now rather than interrogating him.
“Why would he kill Maggie?” Her voice was no longer shaking. It was even and cold.
“I said I’d keep Nick away from him, but I didn’t,” he confessed, looking down at his feet in shame.
“Nick? As in Nickolas Blackwood, the notoriously dangerous immortal who you brought into our home?” she said pointedly.
Arthur nodded. “Yes.” He squeezed his eyes shut in shame and tears fell from beneath his lids.
“I’ve packed a bag. I’m going to stay with Bianca. I’ll be back to collect my things as soon as I’ve found my own place,” she said and walked out of the room. Arthur didn’t go after her or call her back. It was too late for all that now. He’d lost her, maybe forever. In one night his family had been taken from him and now all he had left was the tattered remains of his coven. He’d failed everyone else, he could not afford to fail them.
*
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It had been less than 48 hours but to James it felt as though he’d been locked up for a month. He couldn’t remember how he’d ended up in the cellar; the last thing he remembered was bumping into Nickolas Blackwood, getting into a fight and then… nothing. He’d woken up some time later with an unbearable pain in the side of his head and an undying need for a pick me up. But when he’d reached into his pocket he’d found that his speed had been taken. Everything was gone; keys, phone and wallet. His wrists had been manacled to the wall and although the chain was generous enough in length that he could walk at least half of the basement, it had been coated with some sort of acid that burnt his skin red raw whenever the metal came in contact with it. He’d spent the first hour of his captivity just trying to get it off. In the end he’d removed his socks and wedged them between his skin and the metal, alleviating the pain.
He assumed that he was in Arthur Winters’ cellar on account of the fact that Nickolas Blackwood had been working with Arthur. To be perfectly honest he didn’t really care whose cellar he was in, all he wanted was his speed, more so than he wanted his freedom. His head was pounding, his stomach felt like a bottomless pit and his body was void of all energy. He could barely bring himself to move. And on top of all that he felt so miserable. All of the feelings he’d been locking away with the assistance of his drug were now back in full force, guilt, despair, loneliness, all bearing down on him, threatening to crush him. Yet there was still something inside him that was fighting back. Something was there in the very centre of his mind, stopping him from delving into complete suicidal thoughts. Something was giving him just a glimmer of strength, just enough to survive, just enough to stop those emotions from coming down. But James doubted that that something would be able to help him for much longer and soon the depression would take him.
Why had he been so stupid? Why had he attempted to take Nickolas Blackwood on his own? He knew what he was up against; Benjamin had made that clear. He’d done it because he thought that Jonathan might let Clara live if he had Nickolas in his custody. But James had failed and now he was in Nickolas’ custody. He should have thrown in the towel as soon as things had started to go wrong. Jonathan was an idiot if he thought he could control things now. His days of sitting on top were done. James knew that, what he didn’t know was who would take his place. Connor? Victor? If Arthur could break the curse maybe even him. Maybe even Nickolas.
With all the enemies the council had to contend with would they even have time to help him now? Did they have the resources? James was their last remaining soldier and now he was a prisoner. There was nobody to rescue him.
After what felt like days of wallowing in darkness James heard the door to the basement swing open followed by the sound of heavy plodding footsteps on the concrete stairs. James hoisted himself into a sitting position in an attempt not to appear too weak. Feeling faint almost immediately, he pulled himself over to lean on the wall. As the person reached the bottom he saw that it was Nickolas. In his hand was a tray and for a second James thought that Nickolas had actually brought him some food but then he saw that the only thing on the tray was a beaker of water. Even water was better than nothing, he couldn’t even remember the last time he had a drink.
“You look like shit,” Nickolas said as he sat down cross legged on the floor in front of James. He rested the tray between them. James could easily reach him where he was sitting, but he knew that he didn’t have the strength to beat him. Unlike the last fight they’d had when James had been winning.
“I’ve been here for days, what do you expect?” James retorted. His voice was raspy and dry and he sounded like an old man.
“Actually, it’s only been a day and a half.” Nickolas picked up the beaker and took a sip of water before putting it back down. James should have expected that. “Oh, sorry, did you think that was for you?”
