“Yeah, about that—”
My words were cut off because I suddenly had no mouth. My lips became a solid wall of flesh as she narrowed her eyes at me. “When I wish for you to speak, you will know it.” She turned her gaze to Vah. “I am Chshan’ukshna, Keeper of the Archive. How may I assist you?”
“Keeper of the Archive?” His ball of flame shimmered in the whiteness of the room. “You mean we found the actual archive?” His form rippled in what seemed like delight but really should have been abject terror. The last time I’d been here, she’d slaughtered a dozen lizard men without blinking for asking her a simple question.
“That is me,” she said, and as she made a strange movement I didn’t understand, I wondered what she looked like to Vah since she looked different to everyone. “How may I assist you?”
“I wish to conquer everything. To take vengeance for my people who were annihilated. For my students the Federation destroyed. I wish to take everything from them, to let them know what emptiness is. Then, when everything they hold dear has been reduced to a lifeless husk, I wish to laugh upon their afterlives.”
The archive cocked her head to study him, and for a moment, I actually thought she was going to blast him to atoms. It was her thing, after all.
“You are worthy,” she said after a moment. “You have paid appropriately for your request, and I shall grant it.” Blue fire extended from one of her hands as she stretched it toward him. Power crackled in the air, too much for me to think it’d be good for anyone. Vah was a psychopath, how could this be allowed?
I screamed, my wordless cry banging against the inside of my face, and she turned to regard me like a curious ant. “I understand why you object, Mallory Quinn of Earth, but alas, there are rules, and his sacrifice has been met.” Her eyes twinkled then. “Has yours? Do you wish to find out?”
As I stared at her, I wondered what she was offering me because it sounded like I could choose to sacrifice myself. While I wasn’t sure if that would do anything in the grand scheme of things, if it did, it’d be worth it to save my friends and my family. I wasn’t noble or honorable or any of those things, but at the same time, I’d pay anything to make sure my family stayed safe.
Besides, this was a non-choice. I might not like it, I might hate having to make it, but I couldn’t live with myself if I decided not to go through with it. I wasn’t nearly that selfish.
My lips unsealed, and I gasped for breath. Vah seethed next to me, and if looks from wisps of energy could kill, I’d have been dead.
“Yes,” I whispered, bowing my head. “Do not let him kill my friends and family. I will take it all.” I pointed to the blue fire. “I will take his vengeance.”
The archive regarded me thoughtfully. “That is an odd request, and one I have not heard in a couple thousand years. You wish to truly make payment for the crimes of your people? To balance the scales?” She rubbed her chin. “I am intrigued by the possibility.”
“No. She is but one woman. She cannot possibly—”
The archive waved one hand at Vah and emerald light surrounded him in a flash. “Quiet, adults are speaking.” She turned back to regard me. “I am curious…” Her eyes sparkled with malevolence. “I will allow you to take his vengeance. To pay for the crimes against him, but only after you know what you ask to take.” She held one hand out to me, and the blue fire seethed within it. “Do we have a deal?”
“Only if you ensure he cannot ever hurt anyone again,” I said as I stared at the dancing flames. This was it for me. I knew that, and while I’d been willing to make that sacrifice only minutes before, now the enormity of what I’d done hit me full on. Could I really do this? When it came to it, deep down, I wasn’t sure.
“I will make it so,” the archive said, nodding to Vah. “He will remain with me until time ends, and beyond.”
Tears streamed down my eyes as I thought of my friends on the Endeavor, of Captain Brand, of Chloe, Oliver, and Niko. I thought of Marty, my mom, and my dad. I thought of my casual acquaintances, of random people on the street, of the cute teller at The People’s Bank of the Republic, but most of all? Most of all I thought of Morg. What would he do?
“I will pay it gladly.”
“Very well, Mallory Quinn.” She reached out and touched me then. The blue fire hit me, and for a second there was nothing. Then there was everything.
Burning bodies, flayed corpses. Children, mothers, fathers all lain out to rot in the sun as Federation forces marched across the whole of the planet. Vah held powerless, unable to defend his people, his family. As it stretched out into a compounding eternity, I felt the rage, the pain of it, and in that second, I almost thought he was in the right.
Almost.
As the vision ended, I smiled up at the archive. I knew I had nothing but pain, but torment waiting for me, but that was okay.
“What will you do?” Chshan’ukshna, Keeper of the Archive, asked.
“Vengeance never does anything but create more vengeance.” I touched my heart, and it hurt for Vah, for his people. It made me cry for them with everything. “I will stop that cycle here. Let it spread no more.”
“Very well, Mallory Quinn.” She spread her lips into a Cheshire cat smile, and as I descended into a living hell, that last fading remnants of it were all I saw.
EPILOGUE
“It’s been six months, Captain,” Jeffry said, looking up from his position behind the tachyon scope on the bridge of the starship Endeavor. “I still haven’t found a single trace of Mallory Quinn.”
“Well, keep looking,” Captain Nolan Brand said, turning to look at his first officer. “She’s out there somewhere, I can feel it inside me.” He absently touched his chest, feeling the spot where Admiral Vah had leapt from his body and into that of his witch, Mallory Quinn six months before. He hadn’t known it at the time, but that brief tethering between them had left him able to feel Mallory. He couldn’t tell where she was or how to get there, but he knew one thing to be true. Mallory was in Hell.
“I have nothing to look for,” Jeffry said, hand curling into a fist as he fought to control his rage. “Look, I miss her too. What she did was incredible, and I want to find her, but I can’t. No one can. It’s like she’s disappeared off the face of the universe.” He swallowed and this time instead of looking away, he met Captain Brand’s eyes. “It might be time to give up the chase, sir.” He swept one arm toward the panel to his left. “We have other missions, other duties. We cannot keep looking for her. The Federation is already pissed off enough—”
“The Federation wouldn’t exist without Mallory Quinn,” Captain Brand said, his voice filling with ice as he rose from his command chair. “I am Captain of this ship, and I will not leave a man behind. I don’t care that she saved the world. She was my responsibility, and must be found.” He heaved out a sigh of breath. “Besides, there’s one last place we can check.”
“No,” Jeffry said, shaking his head as he looked around the bridge for support from the crew. They were all there, Niko, Oliver, and Chloe. Even the orc had come along with them, which had required a whole new treaty in and of itself. None of them had been paid in the last six months, and at the end of the day, that was on him.
Even though he’d tried to dismiss them, to let him do this alone, they’d stuck by him. Only now that resolve was fracturing. Truth be told, he might have given up himself if not for one thing. He knew Mallory lived. Because of that, he had to find her. Somehow, someway. He had to find her. He owed her that much.
“Yes,” Captain Brand said, sitting back down and shutting his eyes. He’d been avoiding this decision for too long, when it should have been his first destination. He’d known, it would come to this, but had hoped there’d been another way. That foolish hope had cost him six months, but worst it had left Mallory trapped in Hell for six months.
That couldn’t stand. Not for a second longer.
“You’re making a mistake,” Jeffry said, turning back to the board in front of him.
“As Captain, it’s my decision to make.” He turned his head to the left as he summoned the ship’s new AI. The new Cortiri appeared in front of him, almost indistinguishable in every way from the original. In fact, if he hadn’t known it, hadn’t been there when the original AI had been destroyed, he might not have believed it himself.
“What course shall I set?” Cortiri asked, regarding him calmly.
“Ask Morg to prep the orcish light speed drive. We’re going to make a jump to Alpha Prime.” His fingers tightened around the chair’s armrests. “I want to speak to Zug. We need to know how to get the Endeavor to the archive.”
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Cursed
My name is Mac Brennan and that's the only thing I can remember about myself. Not why I woke up in a dumpster. Not why my right arm is as black as pitch and covered in glowing red tattoos, and certainly not why a vicious death cult is after me.
Actually, that last part isn't true. I know why the death cult is after me. It's because I saved that damned girl from them. I didn't know who she was at the time, but I'd have done it anyway. I just don't like it when girls get beat up, call me old fashioned.
Still, I can tell she's hiding something behind those devilish eyes, and if I want to find out what it is, I'll have to help her.
My name is Mac Brennan. I have no memory, and I'm a werewolf-hunting, hellfire-flinging version of Faust himself.
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CURSED
CHAPTER 1
The sound of punishing hydraulics snapped me from sleep. My eyes shot open, but I couldn’t see much of anything through the closed lids of the dumpster. The stink of rotten eggs and festering meat filled my nostrils, turning my stomach as I struggled to find my bearings but succeeded only in burying myself further beneath gobs of slimy debris. I reached out, trying to claw my way through the plastic trash bags piled on top of me as the whole world shuddered up and to the left, covering me in dirty diapers, rotten tuna fish, and moldy cheese.
My right hand lashed out with a mind of its own, trying to grip on the inside of the steel dumpster as it began to tilt, dousing the back of my neck in warm, sticky fluid that smelled of rancid beer. Bile rose up in my throat as my fingers scrapped against the paint-chipped metal, desperate for purchase that would not come.
The sound of a garbage truck’s crushing hydraulics filled my ears, reverberating deep down in my gut as a snake of fear twisted inside. I tried to scream, to cry out for them to stop as gravity, the bitch that she is, began pulling me toward my inevitable demise.
The lids beneath me fell open then, smacking against the metal side with a sound like a gunshot. The sudden glare of sunlight was nearly blinding, but it was the flash of a trash-filled pit that threw me into a panic. I scrambled to grab onto something, anything that could arrest my fall before I tumbled into the gaping maw of the trash truck.
As my feet cleared the edge of the dumpster and my fingers slid off the metal, a wave of rancid, curdled milk crashed against my face, filling my nostrils with fetid goo and cutting off my air supply. Without thinking, I opened my mouth to suck in a breath before my lungs exploded. Milk spilled down my throat, and while I tried to curse in rage and horror, the only sound that came out was a hoarse, bubbling gag that would never be heard over the noise.
Even if I could have managed to cry out, there was no way for someone to hear me scream over the roar of the punishing hydraulics destined to compact me into pulp. Not that it mattered. If I survived the fall into the metal jaws below, I was going to be pretty damned dead about a second later when the automated press punched my teeth through my brain.
If the driver saw me now, it would probably be too late for him to stop his truck from killing me. As the dumpster upended itself, I fell backward, scrabbling against the metal like a pathetic lizard as the lower part of my body cleared the edge. My heart hammered in my chest like a goddamned bass drum as I tumbled ass over elbows. My right hand shot up, reaching for one last desperate handhold. A stream of crimson light, so bright it was blinding even over the sunlight streaming into the alley from above, burst from the tattoos emblazoned on my arm.
With that last desperate lunge, my fingertips brushed at the edge of the heavy plastic dumpster lid, and I jerked to a stop that damned near dislocated my shoulder. A howl of pain ripped from my throat as I hung there, trash cascading down around me from the dumpster like rain from a hideous, disgusting storm cloud.
As I hung there, watching the metal jaws of the compactor crush the trash into the back of the truck, part of me marveled the driver hadn’t seen me. The other part of me was thanking any and all gods for letting me live, even though I wasn’t sure how that was possible. I ought to be dead.
I craned my head upward, shielding my eyes from the still falling trash as best I could. My right arm was as black as pitch. Scarlet symbols I didn’t recognize glowed with feverish light across its entire length, but what was even weirder was how my fingers clung to the heavy plastic lid like I was Spiderman. I mean, hey, I’m not complaining because I was pretty sure I’d been about to die in a hail of old beer bottles and half-eaten sandwiches, but still, it was a little weird, especially because the rest of my skin was so pale I could have blended in with a milk display.
Before I could begin to figure out what the hell was going on, the dumpster began to tilt back the other direction. Momentum and gravity took turns slamming me into the metal belly of the dumpster before the lids fell back into place, leaving me shrouded in darkness. My hand released its grip on the lid, and I fell against the steel bottom hard enough to make my teeth rattle in my skull. Agony shot through my back as a sickening crack of my spine against metal filled my ears. I lay there, struggling to breathe until well after the dumpster was back on the ground.
I was tempted to lay there and rest for a while, to try and figure out what the hell had happened, but what if I passed out? Sure, I’d somehow survived this time, but I might not survive the next time. Besides, the idea of being covered in garbage wasn’t exactly appealing. In the unlikely event people who regularly dumped trash in here decided to glance inside first, they would probably notice me taking a nap inside and call the cops. I was pretty sure I wasn’t exactly friendly with the police. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think cops looked kindly upon people who slept in dumpsters.
With all the willpower I could muster, I crawled to my feet and pushed the heavy black lid open. The sunlight greeted me like a punch to the face, and I was forced to look away and cover my eyes with my black hand. Thankfully, the tattoos along my arm weren’t glowing like they were radioactive anymore. I gave myself a moment to get used to the brightness before pulled myself over the metal lip. Even though I tried to land gracefully, I wound up collapsing onto the cracked asphalt. It hurt, but at least I was out of the dumpster.
I pushed myself to my feet, intending to walk off my recent debacle like a badass. Then I was going to go home and get myself a nice warm shower. I stopped mid-step. There was just one problem. I didn’t remember where I lived. Hell, I didn’t remember anything other than my name. Mac Brennan.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
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Also by J. A. Cipriano
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
&nb
sp; 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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
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Cursed
Planet Breaker: A Supernatural Space Opera (Witching on a Starship Book 2) Page 15
