Sevanouir: Rebirth (The Strange Tales of the Malefic Book 1)

by D'Artagnan Anderle

  The chief gave him a suspicious look. Had this man just admitted to smuggling? He removed a small towel from his belt and dabbed around his face and neck. This heat was beginning to bug him; he needed to check the furnace once he ran this moron out.

  “If you need to make a personal inquiry, then come back in the morning and talk to someone. Until then, get the hell out of my…of my…”

  The heat enveloped his entire body now. He fell to the floor, burning up. He was no longer just hot, he felt as if he were truly ablaze. He could feel flames surging through his veins and he wanted to scream, but no sound escaped. He wanted to thrash but his limbs would not respond. He down back to see that his legs were gone, turned to ash as the flames poured from him and crept over his body. He could see fire consuming his chest and incinerating him from within. His vision darkened.

  The stranger walked up to what remained of Zach and threw his finished cigarette on the ashes of his right arm. “I would have prolonged this conversation if you weren’t so grumpy. Your coworkers at least humored me for a time.”

  He turned around and walked away before stopping sharply and looking back. “Before you go, you wouldn’t happen to know where the shipping manifests are kept, would you?” he asked, grimacing as he saw nothing but the fading cinders of Zach’s corpse strewn on the floor. “Oh, well, so much for that.”

  The man walked up to a large metal container. He snapped his fingers and heard a satisfying pop as the lock fell off and the door opened for him. He walked inside and saw his prize: a chrome box with ornate detailing across the top and the emblem of a blinded snake eating its tail in the style of Ouroboros stamped on top. He stepped outside and took out a phone, tapping in a number. He began humming to himself as he waited for an answer.

  “Evening, it’s Salvo…” he began, leaning against the container door.

  “I’ve found what you asked. I really don’t need to lug this thing around with me, do I? You just need the box inside? Hold on I’ll check.” He snapped his fingers once more, causing another pop, and he looked back to see the chest open. Inside lay a small, featureless black carton.

  “Yeah, it’s there. Beg your pardon? Of course not; there won’t be a trace. I’m a professional psychopath and I take great care in my work!” he challenged. With a flick of the wrist, there was a large snapping sound, and an inferno was created in an instant, consuming the surrounding area. He retrieved the smaller cache and began walking out of the warehouse.

  “No, no trouble at all. I was a bit bored and played around with the staff a bit, but they were not too enthralling. Nothing like the crowds I used to have.” The fire began sweeping the rooms, devouring everything in its wake as Salvo walked with an almost dance-like cadence to the exit.

  “No, I am not being sentimental, just nostalgic; they are different things. No, I am not giving you lip. I am quite interested in living, as I always have been,” he grumbled as he stepped outside the building, now collapsing in on itself, and heard the wail of sirens approaching.

  “Hmm, the port? There may be some residual damage; depends on how fast the boys in yellow do their thing. This is Portland. If the name is anything to go by, they should be good at building a new one.” As he headed for the trails that would lead him to Forest Park, he looked back wistfully, “You should have come. The smell of a warm fire on a fall night is truly magical.” He could see the fire engines, ambulances, and police pulling up and hurriedly spreading out. Orders were barked and screaming filled the air as they rushed to put out the growing blaze.

  “But enough with my goings on, anything new at Ombre? Oh, really now? The doppel was destroyed? Leda usually makes such high-quality monstrosities. Either she’s slipping, or Raines’ kid is quite the swashbuckler.” He pondered to himself, “I vote you give her another shot, really let her work her magic. Give her some incentive; you’re quite good at that. Although with how frequently you follow up, it will leave us severely understaffed eventually.”

  Salvo heard a large explosion and looked back. The personnel were running to and from the fire; something had exploded, and they were trying to rescue those still trapped. He chuckled as he returned to his call. “Something ignited in the building; ten gets you twenty it was fireworks for the New Year. Should make the evening more festive.” As he continued down the path, the light of the fire faded at his back and the darkness of nature shadowed him in front.

  “What should happen if he lives? Well, I’ll leave what happens to Leda up to you, but should he continue to breathe against our kindest requests then I shall deal with him. I have a request to make, however. I know you seem just fascinated with the boy, but I, and only I, get to kill him. It wasn’t much fun that I was relegated to just being your clean-up crew with Raines…I still disagree; I could have killed him myself. I was just a little too green back in Seattle. One incident isn’t the entire story…sir.”

  Salvo looked up into the night sky, dark and tinged red by the flames, “If I may be so bold, you did find and acquire me so that I could deal with all those little pests beneath you in my own spectacular way.” He smiled as the screams erupted again, fading away in quick succession, then ended the conversation with a final thought.

  “So, all I ask is that you let me do what I do so well.”

  The voice on the other end agreed and told him to return to Ombre Falls, before disconnecting. Salvo put his phone away, and with graceful steps started dancing down the trail as if he were waltzing.

  He then began to sing once more, into the burning skies.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sylas first heard the soothing melody of smooth jazz sail over and around him in his semiconscious state. He recognized it: “The Masquerade is Over” by Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, a personal favorite. He shifted to his side and slowly opened his eyes—or rather, eye. He was in a room with amber wooden walls, and costumes strewn across the floor. There was a seat in front of a large mirror covered in lights— a changing room of some sort? He slowly ran a hand across his face and could feel bandages wrapped around the right side of his head, covering his eye.

  “First attack by an Ether-beast really knocked you on your ass, Sy.” A deep, guttural voice awakened him fully and he turned to see thick muscles hidden underneath a black and white vest and a shaved head with a full goatee; staring at him with russet eyes was his godfather, Bobo DeBeer.

  Sylas groaned as he attempted to push himself up, only to fall off the couch he was resting on and plop face down on the floor. A few moments of silence passed before another voice began to laugh. Izzy wasn’t particularly compassionate, it seemed.

  “So, you all tuckered out there, little devil? Maybe I can find some pineapple juice behind the bar and a warm blanket, and you can continue your nap.” Bo chuckled as he walked past Sylas and took a seat next to Izzy. “You know, given all the hell you raised as a kid, this is really cathartic.”

  “Was he really so raucous?” Izzy asked, crossing her legs atop her seat and sipping a red cocktail. “Seems kinda stone-faced to me.”

  “The sourpuss thing didn’t set in until he was in his teens; I chalked it up to the angst of puberty. But as a kid? Little hellion was always sneaking to the back, either to get a look at the girls or to mess around with my stock. Cost me a pretty penny when he knocked down four crates of booze looking for a Christmas present that wasn’t there.”

  “To be fair…” Sylas began, as he attempted to lift himself up again, “…you said you hid it in a place I wouldn’t reach or guess.”

  “The top shelf of my kitchen cabinet, not in my damned inventory!” Bobo huffed as he leaned back and shook his head. “I’ll get back to past headaches in a bit; how’s your current headache doing?”

  “Kind of you to ask, Bo,” Sylas croaked as he finally sat up, using the front of the couch to steady himself. “I think I’ll live, but can I ask something in return?”

  Bobo nodded, “Go ahead.”

  “What the fuck is going on? Just…in ge
neral,” he asked, head rotating from Bobo to Izzy. “Either one of you can speak up. I honestly don’t have a preference right now.”

  Izzy glanced at Bo, who looked back and sighed. “Go grab the kid some water. I’ll start, and you can fill him in on all the specifics.” Izzy hopped off her chair and exited the room. The beginning notes of another more upbeat jazz standard blared as she left, then became muffled when the door closed.

  Sylas looked at Bo expectantly, clearing his throat. “Think I have a deduction here, Bo,” he stated, melodramatically pointing a finger at him. “You in on all this shapeshifting, malefic, Ethereal, crossword puzzle word-of-the-day shit, too?” His hand dropped as he finished the question. Bo smirked as he gave a sarcastic clap.

  “Good to see those years in private school made you so sharp. Putting two and two together is a vital skill here in the real world,” he shot back.

  “The professors didn’t mention demons playing dress-up with my father’s face or magical-ass sabers that dye my hair white and help me move around like I’m a bat out of hell. But I think I was well prepared to face the real world after all.” Sylas grumbled, before casting his eyes down and chuckling. “’Real world’ as a phrase has lost its meaning in the last twenty-four hours.”

  Bo laughed a bit himself, moving over to Sylas and sitting down next to him. “I gotta say, Iz and Roux were right. You have taken all of this pretty well. Most of us would still be dealing with the—”

  “With the screaming, yeah, Roux made the same joke,” Sylas sighed as he crossed his arms and shifted himself over to give them more space. “Really, Bo, tell me what is happening. They said that my father was a part of this, and now I am too. So, if I die from whatever this is, I want to know if I need to prepare to kick his ass when I get to the afterlife.”

  Bo leaned back, the humor in his face fading as his brow furrowed in thought. “To tell you the truth, I never thought I would be the one to give you this talk. With what your pops had planned, you should have never had to take up that sword. At worst, he would be here to guide you. Guess we got to make lemonade, huh?” he asked, looking over to his godson.

  “Guess so. Your lemonade was always too sour, anyway. Not much difference there,” Sylas said with a laugh.

  “I’m a purveyor of fine adult beverages, not a girl scout with a cardboard stand on the side of the road, Sy,” Bo replied, causing them to share the first honest laugh of the evening.

  As it died down, Bo nodded and spoke up, “I won’t try to give you the entire story in one sitting, but I’ll do my best to make sure you understand where you fit into all of this.” He stood up and moved across the room. In the corner, he picked something up and walked back to where Izzy had been sitting and sat down. He was holding the sheathed sword Sylas had used to kill the doppel.

  “This is Sevanouir. It has been a part of your family’s history since your great-grandad first came across it. As far as I know, it is older than any ghost you ever researched.” He drew it, and Sylas noticed it had gone back to its rusted appearance.

  “It, and any object like it, is called a malefic, an item of supernatural origins that is tied to the soul of the user.” He tossed it to Sylas, who snatched from the air. As he touched it a white light encased the saber and the rust and decay once again disappeared; the blade shone bright and gleaming in the lamplight. “Each one is unique; no two are alike. One maleficus, or user, cannot use another’s malefic. It’s useless in their hands unless it was inherited from a previous maleficus, like yours was.” Sylas looked over the blade. The same white light was etched into the mirror-like surface.

  “Father had this? Never figured him for the shining knight type.” He motioned for Bo to toss him the sheath. He did, and Sylas put the sword back in. For a moment he was still, eyes closed in contemplation. Then he asked, “I can take a guess, but how do you inherit one of these?”

  “That’s the where the fantasy ends, Sy.” Bo leaned back and produced a flask from his vest. Taking a quick swig, he offered it to Sylas, “You’re going to want a few hits for this.” Sylas took the flask and sniffed; the honey and spice aroma of Bo’s preferred vice, scotch, filled the air. He took a drink, the biting yet sweet flavor hitting him with an almost masochistic feeling. It wouldn’t take too many drinks for him to feel it.

  Bo continued, “Over the years, many malefics have been created through the use of the Ether. Ether is…honestly a little convoluted. The best way I can describe it to a layman is it’s the raw energy of the soul. Like when those old dinosaur bones have been pressurized for millions of years and become fuel? With Ether the soul is condensed, becoming a type of energy certain people can manipulate.”

  “So it’s magic then?” Sylas inquired as he took another, longer drink from the flask.

  “Magic, Chakra, Ki, Aura; all of those are derived from Ether. Some people can tap into small amounts of it and do the seemingly impossible for a moment. Most of us can use it often enough for the impossible to be normal.”

  Bo reached over and took a bronze miniature of the comedy/tragedy theater masks from a table next to the lamp. He held it while a small green glow seeped from his hand. With what seemed to be little effort, he crushed it in his grip. Sylas sat back, wide-eyed, as Bo put it back down. “That was an expensive demonstration; that thing cost me a few hundred dollars in Seattle. I hope you got the point,” Bo asked, looking back. Sylas nodded, then took another long drink.

  “All right, so, magical spirit powers from beyond. Think I’m following so far.” Sylas stated as he lifted up Sevanouir, “So, then, going back to this. How does it tie together?”

  “Ether is unwieldy, even for the most accomplished practitioners. It acts per the will of the user to let them perform unnatural feats, but it can also backfire when misused or could simply not work at all in a novice’s hands.”

  Bo lifted his hands to show two metal rings with small green gems encircling them. “Most users have a focus that allows us to concentrate our Ether in a number of ways. Mine allows me to enhance my strength beyond even the capability of most Ether users. While someone like Izzy with her little metal bangle can use it in a more tangential sense.”

  “She created some sort of wall when we were attacked,” Sylas recalled, handing the flask back to Bo, who put it away. “But hers had a purple color to it; yours looks like it’s green.”

  “And yours is white, Frosty. I don’t know how it selects its color, but personal taste doesn’t seem to matter; I always thought green looked drab. It also seems to manifest itself on the user’s body in some fashion: yours and Roux’s hair, Izzy’s eyes, and for me…” Bo unbuttoned his sleeve and rolled it up, showing a detailed tattoo of a snake twisting along his arm. It shimmered green as waves of light rolled down it. “Got this back when I was rolling with some bikers. Always thought to get rid of it, but now it makes for a good bar story.” He smoothed out his sleeve and buttoned it back up.

  “Not everyone can use a malefic, partially because there are only something like seven hundred to go around, but also because not everyone wants to pay the price.”

  Sylas’ grip on his saber loosened slightly, “What price are we talking?”

  Bo sighed as he looked away from Sylas, a wistful look coming over him. “Almost every maleficus has to pay a tithe to actually use a malefic, a sort of Faustian contract. The instrument and wielder are tied to each other, for one. The other part differs from person to person. Roux and Izzy can tell you about theirs when they get back, but I knew one guy who aged twenty years in a day, and a woman from Japan who had her childhood memories erased.”

  Sylas’ mouth fell agape. He let go of Sevanouir as if it were about to take something from him that very moment. Bo snickered darkly before looking back at him, “Don’t worry, not all tithes are so grim, and Sevanouir’s tithe was paid in full long ago. Which brings me to you.”

  He crossed his arms with a weary sigh and said, “A malefic can be passed on to another, with no new sacrifice need
ed, but the previous user must conclude their contract and declare the inheritor’s name. Malefics are not alive, not as you or I understand it, but as they are tied to the maleficus. They are their spirit personified, and the ritual to pass them on makes that literal. They sacrifice themselves.”

  The two fell silent. A jubilant song played above them, almost insultingly. Sylas leaned back, eyes closed in thought, his chest moving up and down with ragged breaths; only the movement made him appear alive. He opened his eyes slightly and in a whisper asked, “Then, my father…killed himself to give this to me?” Bo nodded slowly. He looked sad as he let the revelation sink in for the boy.

  But that wasn’t what was making Sylas so listless. In fact, he could once again feel anger boiling to the surface. It hurt to know that his father was gone, that he was murdered. It brought some understanding, though, knowing that he was fighting for some cause, although not one that he knew about yet. That may have been why they had drifted apart.

  It also, for whatever it was worth, gave him some peace to know that his father was trying to protect him from real life. But he had now realized something, and it enraged him. If his father had died to pass this saber to him, then the mutilations to the body that had been recovered—the burns and the severed head—had been done after he was dead.

  It was done to desecrate him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Atop Camass Hill just outside of Ombre Falls stood a looming mansion. Originally an art-deco styled theater created by one of the town’s former wealthy socialites, it stood as a testament to where the originally humble town was headed; towards a glamourous future led by the many artists and trendsetters that both came from and were moving to the growing city. Then, like so many seemingly promising starts, it was stopped dead by a recurring theme in Ombre Falls—tragedy.