Curse of Cain (Immortal Mercenary Book 2) Read online

  Curse of Cain

  Immortal Mercenary Book Two

  By Conner Kressley

  Myth Mountain Publishing

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  29. Author’s Notes

  Prologue

  Rome

  1200 Years Ago

  “You should be more willing to compromise, Callius,” the man told me, his eyes filled with fire and the blade of his sword pressed firmly against the softest spot of Garreth’s neck.

  One move, one twitch of the man’s wrist, and a boy I’d known since his infancy would bleed out in front of me. So, as I looked at him, playfully eating an apple in a nod to the series of events that placed—not only me—but every man, woman, and child who came from the poisoned loins of my parents in this purgatory of a planet. It occurred to me that the man may have a point.

  Of course, I wasn’t about to let him know that.

  “You know who I am, Marcus,” I said, tossing the half eaten apple on the floor, sure one of the servants would be around in due course to clean it up.

  “I know everything, Calluis. You’re well aware of that fact,” he sneered. “It’s why I’m here.”

  I smiled, careful not to betray any of the worry bubbling up in my gut. I didn’t dare flicker an eye to Garreth. Doing so would only be the slightest hint of weakness, but it would be enough for someone in Marcus’ position to know he had me over a barrel, so to speak.

  “True,” I conceded. “But, if that’s the case, then your actions here confuse me. You’ve seen the mark on my face. It’s as plain as the day in which we now reside.” I motioned to the mark, to the curse my creator had placed on me at the moment of my betrayal. Marcus, like so many others, couldn’t help himself. He looked at the red splotch which crossed through my eye and sealed my fate. There had always been a sort of morbid curiosity about it. One of these days, I was going to have to find a way to cover it up. But that was an ordeal for another time, ideally a time when a person I cared about wasn’t an inch away from certain death.

  “I have,” Marcus said, his breaths as even and calm as I could have hoped for, given the situation. “It is also why I’m here.”

  “Then put your weapon away,” I said, waving a flippant hand in his direction and motioning to a goblet in the corner. “Have a drink with me, and we’ll talk about this like adults. And, for heaven’s sake Marcus, let the boy go. He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “I cannot drink with you, Callius,” Marcus scoffed. “Not when poison would affect us so differently.”

  He was right. A mouthful of murder would barely graze me. Sure, it would hurt horribly, and I’d probably have the worst stomach ache of my endless life, but I would survive it, which was more than I would be able to say for him.

  “And this blade remains at the boy’s throat because holding it to yours would do me no good.”

  “That boy means nothing to me, Marcus. If you intend to use him as blackmail, I’m afraid your intentions are misplaced,” I said, keeping my voice light and my tone veiled. I had been lying for longer than there had been buildings in this great city. I knew what I was doing.

  Unfortunately for me, lying to someone who was blessed in the way Marcus was, turned out to be completely impossible.

  “You lie, murderer,” he said, using that tag I hated so much. Yes, I was a murdered. I was also a painter and an architect, and something of a sophisticate when it came to wines. Why did people never address me as that, given my creator had gone through such painstaking efforts to assure my name could never be used to call on me? “I have watched you. I have seen the pride in which you take his care. Blood may not bind you, but there is more to guide the heart than that of family.” His eyes narrowed. “I guess you infertile. Is that part of your curse, murderer, to never know the joy of spreading your line, of watching your seed grow and flourish?”

  He was smart. Those damn gifts he had inherited would make this battle of wits harder than I’d thought.

  “Tell me what you want,” I said through clenched teeth, finally allowing my gaze to travel to Marcus. He was afraid, terrified. My eyes said all my lips could not.

  I will save you, son.

  I will not allow this harm to befall you.

  He’ll die bloody before he hurts you.

  This, of course, did little to calm Garreth’s worry, and why would it? He had only been alive for twelve short years, a flash of nothingness in comparison to my endless being. He hadn’t seen what I was capable of, but if Marcus insisted on pushing this issue, he would.

  “You are cursed,” Marcus said. “The first of those cursed on this earth, but you are not the only.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” I spit back. “What you have isn’t a curse. It’s a nuisance. It’s a parlor trick to pull out at feasts. It makes you a jester, a fool who dances for coins. Nothing more. Do not dishonor yourself by laying your burdens alongside mine. Not when your neck could fit snuggly into a noose and end your suffering.”

  “Is that what you suggest, Callius, that I put an end to all of this?”

  “Doing so would only transfer it, Marcus,” I said. “It would only lay the fate you were served at the feet of another.”

  “Don’t you think I know that, Callius?” he answered, careful not to use the name we both are thinking. To call me by my name would bring this entire house down, perhaps all of Rome. “I know all. I have the Wisdom. I am the Wisdom. I know what happens when I die, and I know who it happens to.” He swallowed hard. “Why else do you think I would have left this orphan at your doorstep all those years ago?”

  His eyes went to Garreth, and so did mine.

  He left Garreth on my doorstep? He—

  Oh…oh no.

  “Marcus, don’t!” I screamed, but it was too late. The knife had moved, though not at Garreth’s throat. It slid into Marcus’ neck, blood spurting everywhere as the man fell to the floor.

  I rushed over to him.

  “What have you done?” I asked, trying to put pressure on the wound. It would do no good. He would be gone in seconds, and the horrible fate he’d suffered would be passed on to a boy I’d raised as my own.

  “Help him, Callius,” Marcus choked out, his face already pale. “Help him. He’ll need you now more than ever.”

  With those words, he drifted off into the next life.

  “Father,” Garreth said instantly, stepping backward and shaking his head. “Something is wrong. I feel different. I feel…strange.”

  “I know, son,” I said, standing to meet him and watching the change happen behind his eyes. It was done, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. “I know.”

  1

  I told Andy I didn’t want an office. Four walls, a desk, a window looking out into a city filled to the brim with problems; none of it held any interest to me.

  Besides, I had done the whole desk monkey thing before. Back in the ‘60s, I worked
for an advertising agency. Spent my days spouting nonsense, writing commercial text, and flirting with my secretary. It wasn’t perverted or anything. It was what you did back then. It was expected, like a Christmas bonus or something. Still, even with the footsy under the desk, none of it appealed to me. So I left the days of long, corporate lunches and scotch breaks behind me and vowed never to return.

  That was before though; before a coven of witches and my ‘supposed to be long dead’ mother sent me on a collision course with a half gypsy kid who might be the Antichrist and the very long prophesied End of Days.

  After that, it occurred to me that—if the world was going to end—I might want to do a little more than get my affairs in order. I had done a lot of bad crap in my life, the least of which wasn’t bludgeoning my kid brother to death with a rock because the Big Guy liked his present more than mine.

  No, I needed to stack the odds in my favor. No more world meant no more wandering, which meant the afterlife might finally be a real possibility for me. Suddenly, and for the first time in my entire life, the idea of where my soul might go after this world sunk into whatever Armageddon the Big Guy saw fit for it seemed really important.

  So what’s an eternal guy to do when he feels like he might be at the end of his impossibly long rope? Get busy getting better, of course. Be the best person I could be, make a difference by helping people. You know the shtick.

  So, with Andy’s help, I spread the word that my services were for hire. I didn’t need the money, of course, but you can’t have a business without having rates. No one takes you seriously otherwise.

  The office was Andy’s idea. You need a base of operations, he said. You need a place where people can come and see you’re for real.

  He didn’t add ‘You need a place so you can be easily accessible for all the folks who want to try and kill you,' but he should have. Seeing as how that’s exactly what was happening right now.

  “Do we really have to go through this?” I asked, looking at the woman holding the fiery sword and sneering at me.

  She had very rudely burst through my brand new door and right into my brand new office right off of River Street. It was a pretty startling experience, given I’d been here all day without so much as a hint of a client, and the door wasn’t even locked.

  “No, we do not have to go through this,” she said, swiping her fiery sword through the air in an effort to make the glowing blue blade look even more spooky. To say I was not impressed would be an understatement. The enchantment on that thing was pretty basic, the sort of crap they’d have deemed too rudimentary for Hogwarts if that place had ever actually existed.

  I rolled my eyes and looked at her. “You owe me a bolt lock, you know,” I said flatly. “Those don’t come cheap.” Crinkling my red brows, I added, “You know, nothing comes cheap anymore, actually. Inflations really gotten out of hand with these last few generations.”

  “Silence!” the woman said, waving her stupid sword around again, trying to scare me up.

  “Who the hell are you trying to fool anyway?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest. “What with that ‘Silence’ and that cheap knock off magic play toy.” I shook my head. “Nobody actually talks like that anymore. I get it. You probably saw a couple of movies when you were a kid, read a couple books, and now you think you know the way something like this goes down.” I leveled a glare at the woman, looking over her bright pink hair and nose ring right in the wall of her septum. “You don’t know how it works, kid. The truth is, you probably shouldn’t ever have to learn. I’m guessing you’re what—nineteen years old? You know enough magic to light a birthday candle and make a pencil float. Somebody, probably whoever sent you on this fool’s errand in the first place, gave you that sword and you wet yourself with excitement because you thought it was the biggest deal in the world. Spoiler alert, girlie, it’s not. Second spoiler alert, whoever sent you here isn’t on your side. In fact, I’m pretty sure they want you dead because they sent you to kill the unkillable and armed you with a glorified toothpick.”

  “This,” the woman shouted at me, swinging her sword again and, this time, slicing through the bookcase Merry gave me to ‘fancy the place up’ right in two. Thankfully, I don’t actually—you know—read books. So the damage was minimal. “Is the Sword of Agamemnon.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked, throwing my hands up in the air. “Do you even know who Agamemnon was?”

  “I don’t need to know who he was to know his sword has the power to destroy anything which crosses its path.”

  “God, you’re stupid,” I said, watching the splinters that used to be my bookshelf float to the floor. “Who sent you here, kid? Who’s doing this to you?”

  Her eyes flickered with something that looked like weakness. There it was. I was getting to her. Maybe, with a little patience, I’d be able to talk some sense into her.

  “Die!” the girl shouted, thrusting the glowing blade toward me.

  Or maybe not.

  I leapt out of the way as the blade sliced through the cherry wood desk; the one that used to belong to Andy’s father, the one I almost didn’t accept when Andy offered it to me.

  Anger rose in me. That was one of the only pieces of one of the best friends I ever had which still existed on this earth, and now it was garbage. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I said, my jaw tightening and my body snapping into action. I leapt to my feet, looking at the girl, and then at the garbage heap of a desk. “That used to belong to someone very important to me.”

  “Dead, I assume,” the girl said, tossing the sword from one hand to the other. “Don’t worry. You’ll be seeing them soon enough.”

  “I kinda doubt that actually,” I sighed. Even if the End of Days was coming, it wouldn’t be until Amber (the proposed Antichrist) grew up and set the events into motion. There was a whole thing after that, a war which stretched out for seven years, and then a climax and a whole other thing. It wasn’t a speedy process. So, this girl assuming I was headed off to the next life anytime soon was a bad miscalculation. Though, something told me she didn’t know that. “Do you have any idea who I am?” I asked, glaring at her.

  She moved toward me, obviously emboldened by the fact that I was moving to avoid the blade. “You’re some witch investigator. That’s all I need to know.”

  “Witch?” I said, my mouth turning down distastefully. “I’m no witch. I’m not even much of an investigator. What I am, is someone you don’t want to screw with.”

  She swung the sword at me again. I barely missed it, the tip of the blade snagging at my jacket and burning the end off.

  She smirked, but she still didn’t know everything. Just because I didn’t want to lose a thumb or worse, an entire hand out of this, didn’t mean things wouldn’t be worse for her. The whole ‘sevenfold’ part of my curse meant anything this pink haired chick did to me would come back to here and manifest as something a lot worse.

  Catching sight of an axe hanging on my wall, I got an idea. The weapon might not have belonged to Agamemnon, but it was more than effective for what I needed.

  I had run across this thing a couple hundred years ago while trekking through the jungles of Brazil. The native people had learned to harness some of the earth’s natural energies. Lucky for me, they managed to imbue that energy into things like rocks, streams, and ancient weapons immortal people would hang on their wall hundreds of years later.

  I leapt toward it. The girl’s eyes got wide. She probably thought I was going to use the thing to cut her in half, which would have been more than poetic given what she’d just done to my desk.

  I had no interest in hurting her though. This was more about stopping her from hurting herself.

  My hand touched it, and I ran my hand down the end of the blade, letting my blood activate it. The axe turned on, glowing bright white and doing its job.

  There was a reason I’d chosen this particular axe to hang on the wall of my office, and it wasn’t just because it made me look
like a badass.

  The energy imbued in this axe was that of earth’s natural siphoning, the way the planet can sometimes draw poison into itself and turn it into something beautiful.

  The axe purred to life, and went to quick work, pulling all the magic out of the ‘Sword of Agamemnon.'

  The girl gasped, as the blue energy flickered away from the sword, leaving it completely ordinary.

  “I can’t be killed,” I said quickly. “Whoever sent you here did so with the express notion of it ending with your death. I have a curse on me, a curse you’ve probably heard of. I killed my brother a very long time ago, and whatever name you give you God, that guy made me pretty much unkillable. And, as a kicker, whatever you do to me-”

  “Oh my God!” she shouted, and I realized she had probably pieced it together.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I-”

  “Oh my God,” she repeated. “What are you doing to me?”

  Her body started twitching, and she dropped the sword, as she shook hard.

  “I’m not—I’m not doing anyth—”

  The girl’s entire body lit with the same glowing blue fire which had covered the sword. I looked over at the axe as it began to churn again. It pulled the energy from the woman, but it was too late. The woman was already burned beyond recognition. Her dead body fell to the floor of my jacked up office and there—carved into her forehead—were the words ‘One Down.'

  2

  “I blame you for this,” I said, standing next to Andy and watching as the Savannah PD roped off my office with caution tape. If it was something else, I’d have never contacted the fuzz, but this girl was young and obviously lost. Now she was dead, and she deserved to be laid to rest like a person. Her family deserved to know where she ended up. They deserved a chance to grieve.

  “Not the office thing again,” Andy sighed, watching the much younger detectives look around the scene. He almost certainly had a thought or two about the way they were doing their jobs. Detectives were like chefs; I’d learned in my long lifetime. No two did things quite the same way, and all of them thought they were the only ones capable of doing it right.