Page 42 of Warlocks Don't Win
He glowered at me, eyes glowing brighter. “You dishonor your mother and refuse to destroy her killer? Vengeance is required by her blood!” His voice was so awful, nails on chalkboards and death knells of doom, not to mention the English, so broken it was practically unintelligible.
I cleared my throat again. “I killed her so…Nope. Just looking for advice on breaking a curse tied to Sage House. How can the curse come from our house when no one was here?”
He stared unblinking with those glowing eyes while he considered. “You killed her? Why?”
“Because I fell in love with a Warlock she was going to kill.”
His eyes flickered brighter before he shrugged his shoulders. “Love is a curse.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed wholeheartedly.
“Moridia Fleur is a much more interesting curse. It’s tied to energy exchange, something you understand well. Are you certain your mother didn’t spell the curse in her death throes?”
“I didn’t,” my mother’s ghost protested.
He hmphed. It was like old times. For some reason, hearing my parents like this made me want to burst into tears. Whycouldn’t I be normal? Or at least not have murdered my mother? I grabbed the bottle of vodka and took a swig. It burned and I choked and coughed before I got it together.
“Father, would you mind explaining the curse to me in simple terms I can understand?”
He stepped down from the altar, lines of darkness spreading with every footstep. He stretched out his arms and lines of flickering light appeared between his hands like a lightning cobweb.
“Energy must have a source. Sage House is based on the original explosion of violence, magic, and hatred. Some places of power are based on other feelings, love being one of them. Not many of those.” He flexed his fingers and the white lightning turned red like blood. “Moridia Fleur is the death flower, the flower of death, a curse that grows, feeding on the victim’s life and magic while it feeds the surface level of strength. I knew one who used Moridia Fleur on himself in order to increase in strength and vitality before he cut off the curse.”
“He was able to cut off the curse? How?”
Those eyes flickered at me while he flexed his fingers. “He created the curse, he fed the curse, he stopped feeding it to kill it.”
“You’re saying it’s an organic curse that grows and feeds on the host.”
“Casting Moridia Fleur is usually death for the caster, as that’s where the root is.” He shook out his hands and the light show disappeared. The next thing I knew, he was stealing my bottle of vodka and pouring it down his throat, soaking his robe.
I sighed. Once he started drinking vodka, there wasn’t a lot of useful information you could get out of him.
“Because the house started dying as soon as it cursed her. So I should burn the house down.” I was saying words that I didn’tunderstand, but that’s usually how it went when one descended into the box of bones.
He took a break from vodka long enough to say, “Burning the house will only hasten the curse. Moridia Fleur feeds on flames.” His eyes sparked brighter green and then he tipped back his head and drank.
“What about secret societies of evil? Any way that’s connected to anything?”
He kept drinking. I leaned against the stone door and waited until he’d drunk enough to sprawl back onto the stone altar, bottle falling from his bony fingers.
I flexed my magic and it wrapped around him, sucking the life away and leaving him nothing but ashes and bones.
I gathered up the bottle, put it in line with the others and then headed for the door. He’d given me more information than I’d expected. I should consider it a win. Unfortunately, I still had absolutely no idea how to end the curse.
I took a deep breath and headed out. I had things to do. I was still a bit blurry from the vodka. Strong stuff. Good stuff. That’s why he was so helpful instead of trying to kill me. Of course, I was Rasputin’s daughter. Killing me wasn’t easy.
The second I came out of the mausoleum a fireball came out of the darkness. If I ducked, it would hit the family mausoleum. No more family reunions with vodka and stench.
I formed a barrier with my hands, something Rasputin had taught me when I was just little. This time it was strong enough to not only block the fireball but send it rebounding towards the thrower. A scream and a gurgle came before a figure encased in flames raced away from me.
They’d attacked my family mausoleum. No one got to do that. I brought the poisonous cemetery garden to life, vines snapping at attention and wrapping the person in its coils, putting out the flames and dangling them in the air.
Naturally, the garden’s next target was me. I didn’t have time to check out the victim when I was running for my life. My magic was strong, and it’s a good thing because I had to use the knife edge of it to cut my way through the yard to the kitchen door. Once inside, I collapsed on the floor, heart pounding, lines of blood on my cheeks from the whipping tentacles of greenery.
My skunk climbed through the window over the sink, landing in the basin and gripping the edge while she studied me with her big eyes.
Now what?
