Darkest Misery

by Tracey Martin

  Jacques Maurice, our Gryphon magical expert, gestured wildly to us. “Silence! Je suis prêt.”

  I wasn’t sure why exactly we needed to be quiet given the hard part of what he had to do was already over, but I clamped my lips together and tiptoed closer.

  Rather than spray a counter-charm over the fragile parchment, Jacques Maurice had to create a kind of wand he used to brush it. It made me think of an eraser, something to wipe across the parchment and clean it like an old-fashioned blackboard. Each wand was made after he studied the magical energies on the parchment, and each was his best attempt to negate them. Running the wand over the parchment was merely the showy half of the attempt.

  Except none of the attempts so far had much to show for themselves. The parchment had remained unchanged and unwilling to divulge its secrets.

  But this time was different. I could sense something new was happening immediately, and I was back to holding my breath as I’d done this morning. The hairs on my arms bristled. There was a charge in the air, like static electricity, as powerful spells collided with other powerful spells. My skin tingled with the magic.

  Slowly, as Jacques Maurice drew the wand across the ancient document, the writing began to change. The ink became liquid once more, melting into the parchment in places. In others, it slithered like black snakes around itself, joining other trails, loops and straight lines, and reforming into new glyphs. The more of the parchment the wand touched, the darker it turned as the ink spread. By the time he reached the bottom, the top of the page was starting to settle. The squirming symbols stuck where they were, shortening lines in some places and lengthening ones in others until they fell still.

  I might have sworn. Even Tom’s jaw hung open, and Jacques Maurice rubbed his eyes in plain astonishment.

  “Is that what you want it to do?” he asked, switching to English.

  Tom raised an eyebrow. “I hope so. Time to bring Olga back to translate.”

  I insisted we get afternoon coffee while we let Olga work, and a couple hours later we were hunched around a table in the research room once more. The parchment was resealed and tucked safely away in the archive, and Olga had a large photo of the counter-charmed version on her laptop for us to look at.

  She pointed to a scrawling set of glyphs in the corner. “This is like the other two you gave me. It says this is the property of someone named Daniel. The rest of this writing resembles a journal entry. Essentially, it explains how five unnamed groups split up some magical objects so they could never be united again. Each group was meant to hide whatever the objects were so they would never be found. It says Daniel wrapped his object in spells to conceal it, then he gave it to someone named Narah to keep.”

  As the weird symbols on Olga’s screen meant nothing to me, I watched Tom’s face as she spoke, searching for signs that he understood more than I did. His emotions raced, giving me the sense of being caught in a windstorm, but I couldn’t discern much else from probing him with my gift. His excitement must outweigh anything else. Either that or everything was making perfect sense to him so he had no reason to be confused.

  I hoped to hell it was that.

  “The spell to unwrap the object is here.” Olga pointed to a new set of glyphs, these in the bottom right corner. “I translated the spell, along with the full text, but it is different than any I have seen before. Daniel apparently held on to the parchment, or he planned to do so. There is nothing else.”

  “What’s that?” Careful not to touch her screen, I gestured to a blob of ink beneath the spell.

  “Ah, that.” Olga smiled. “Thank you for reminding me. That…” She zoomed in on the errant blob, and it became clear instantly. It was a crudely stylized drawing of a gryphon. “Interesting, I think.”

  Tom thanked Olga and brought up the word-for-word translation file she’d given us to study. I read it with him, but I couldn’t not feel disappointed. Though interesting, the information didn’t seem to help much. And as for where the Vessel might be, we remained lost in the archival swamps.

  Tom acknowledged as much when I pointed it out. “It’s not as illuminating as I’d have hoped, but it gives us a new area to consider. The gryphon drawing ties this Daniel person to us, even if the Gryphons themselves hadn’t formed yet. It might actually be the first reference we have to our origins. We also know from Daniel’s writing that the Vessel was wrapped in some very strong magic, making it appear not to be magical at all. That’s impressive.”

  “Impressive, and it might only make our task harder.”

  Someone cleared their throat nearby, and I glanced up. Umut was wheeling his chair over, his expression sheepish. “I don’t know exactly what you are searching for or why, but I couldn’t help overhear you talking these past few days. I have a suggestion.”

  “We’ll take it,” I said before Tom might grumble about Umut’s lack of clearance.

  Umut tapped his fingers together. “You’re familiar with the story of Daniel the Dragon-slayer?”

  I’d heard the name, but was unable to recall anything, so Tom explained. “He’s one of the people credited with forming the temple that would later become the church that would later become the Angelic Order of the Knights of the Gryphon that would later become—”

  “You. Us. I get it. I remember from school.” I gestured for Umut to continue.

  “Finally the historian gets to be useful.” Umut grinned. “Daniel was known to have an apprentice, a woman. This was before the days when women were excluded from formal magical learning. Her name was Narah, though it’s been butchered in many texts to Nora.”

  “So that could be who these people are.”

  Umut held up a hand. “There is more to Narah. She was an excellent magical healer, and later became known as Saint Nora when religious fervor attached itself to the magical orders. In all the drawings of her, you’ll see she has a cup tied about her waist. It’s called Narah’s Cup, or Nora’s Cup, and no one knows what it was for. But it was considered important enough to be treasured as a relic after her death.”

  “Worthy of being preserved?”

  “For its historical value, not any magical value, yes.” Umut returned to his desk against the far wall. “Daniel had begun organizing his small group of magicians by then, and though he had died, the organization kept his treasures. They still have it—meaning we have it. It’s in our archives somewhere. I’ve seen reference to it.”

  I gawked at Umut, adrenaline seeping into my veins. This day had been filled with too many ups and downs. I refused to let my hopes rise, but my heart didn’t seem to care.

  Tom was already on the case, bringing up the archive’s database. “Umut, you’re a genius.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  I laughed, but my giddiness faded as the search result for Narah’s Cup popped up on the screen. “What does that mean?”

  The result showed no storage number and listed the item as not catalogued.

  Tom pushed his chair back from the table with a sigh. “That means exactly what it says. It’s not in the proper archives.”

  Marie, who’d been silent for a while, got up from her chair and clapped her hands together. “It means we are going to Paris.”

  There was no rest for the weary, not with an apocalypse breathing down our backs and the means to prevent it so close at hand.

  Against my arguments about a possible leak, Tom insisted on assembling a team. After much heated discussion, I gave up and we compromised by him agreeing to share as little information with the others as he could get away with.

  He also explained the Paris situation to me. The Gryphons’ original World Headquarters had been located in Paris and badly damaged during WWII. Once the war ended, rather than rebuild, the Gryphons moved their headquarters to Grenoble where they were better situated to keep expanding their worldwide operations. Most of the contents of their archives had
moved with it.

  Priority for the move had been given to their most valuable items, usually so designated because of their magical properties or the knowledge they contained. But over a thousand years of collected books and manuscripts, weapons, art and more had to be accounted for. At the same time, the Gryphons, always reluctant to hire non-Gryphon help for mundane tasks, had to get on with rebuilding and returning to regular work. Some objects, therefore, had been purposely left behind.

  Many of those items were of no magical value, but of artistic or historical interest, and they’d been permanently donated to museums. The rest had been gathered into a secure warehouse facility for later cataloguing and organization. But life happened and priority for taking care of those items was never high on anyone’s to-do list. Couple that with the lack of Gryphons willing to forgo their primary raison d’être and become researchers or librarians, and the warehouse’s contents remained largely untouched over the decades.

  It was to that warehouse we had to travel, and it amused me that the most powerfully magical item in the Gryphons’ possession had been left behind with what sounded like much of their junk.

  I should say it would have amused me because this was going to be a long trip. Tom didn’t want to wait, and neither did I, but eventually good sense won out. By the time Tom prepped a team for leaving, it was approaching six o’clock. The round trip alone would take about eleven hours, never mind needing to search a warehouse that was—by all accounts—not the best organized.

  Marie talked us down from our excitement-induced stupidity. After all, we didn’t know for certain whether Narah’s Cup was the Vessel. That was the whole reason for taking it back to Headquarters where we could attempt the parchment’s spell on it and find out for certain. The trip to pick it up, therefore, could wait until morning. It had been sitting in a secured location for decades.

  While I knew Marie was right, I remained eager to get my hands on this thing and bring it back to Grenoble. I was certain it had to be the Vessel, and although the warehouse was secure, it was not half as secure as World’s official archives.

  More to the point, once we had our hands on one of the Vessels, everything else we’d been doing should become unnecessary. Assuming, that was, our interpretation of history and the recent events that led us here were correct. The Pit couldn’t be opened without all five Vessels. Therefore, no matter how many others the furies got their hands on, we’d be safe. We could turn our efforts from fighting the apocalypse to fighting the furies who’d caused so much death and destruction in their quest to bring it about.

  Devon could tell I was extra jumpy about something that evening, but I refrained from discussing it until we were safely locked in his hotel room.

  “If the Gryphons have their Vessel,” he mused, “I wonder whose Vessels the furies stole.”

  “Does it matter?” I stretched out on the bed, yawning. With great excitement came great energy crashes later.

  “Maybe not, but it would be a bit embarrassing if ours was one of them.”

  I attempted to toss a pillow at him at him and missed entirely. “I don’t suppose you can fire your upper management for incompetence, can you?”

  Devon pulled out his phone. “There are two ways to get removed from the Upper Council, much like getting kicked off a domus council. The rest of the council votes to boot you or you die. Well, I suppose you could resign too, but I’ve never heard of that.”

  “So you’re stuck with Claudius until the end of time, or until I kill him.”

  “You’re not going to kill him.”

  No, probably not, but if he made a play for my body or soul again, I’d try. Fail, but try. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking up rental car companies. The Gryphons aren’t going to let me come with them, so I’m going to have to follow you.”

  I sat up and tucked my feet under me. “Your dedication is honorable, but Tom is taking a convoy with us tomorrow. It’s not exactly discreet, but he wants to be ready for anything. I’ll be surrounded by Gryphons.”

  “You’ll forgive me if that doesn’t inspire confidence.”

  I flopped back on the bed. “No wonder you and Lucen get along so well.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  We left bright and early the next morning, right around the time Devon should have been falling asleep. I hoped he came to his senses and did exactly that after walking with me to World, but I doubted it.

  Once I met Tom inside, I didn’t have a moment more to spare for Devon’s decisions. Tom’s team had been briefed yesterday, so all that was required this morning was for everyone to arm themselves and the convoy to roll out.

  The sky was a gorgeous clear blue backdrop to the Alps as we drove away, the third car in a four-car caravan. Marie was at the wheel, and another member of the Le Confrérie rode shotgun. I was stuck in the backseat with Tom.

  Ours was the only car filled entirely with members of the Brotherhood. Me, the test subject, not included. The other three cars each contained one member who had been fully briefed on what was going on, despite my objections, and three nonmembers who were along for their tactical support. They only knew we were going to retrieve something potentially dangerous. The details were forbidden.

  The benefit for us, therefore, was that we could discuss strategy for searching the warehouse and what we would do when we got back to World. At least, that was the theory.

  Tom and Marie were perfectly willing to include me in the conversation, but the other Le Confrérie member didn’t seem so inclined. Mostly, he ignored any contributions I attempted to make and asked questions only of Tom. I would have written off his behavior to sexism, except the few times he did deign to address me, it was to wonder why I was along. The point of my existence, according to him, was to be a fighter. My brain was not needed for other tasks.

  Annoyed, when conversation lulled, I pointedly asked Tom about the status of Mitch and Grace. As I suspected, not much had changed with either. Mitch was still missing, and Grace, though she was improving with her training, was still hopelessly slow and skittish about magic.

  The Le Confrérie member sitting in front of me said nothing, but I could taste his bad mood and I savored it. If something went wrong today, he’d damn well better remember I was their only useful science project. I expected respect, or if nothing else, to be treated like a human being, or maybe a satyr, or a fuck-it-who-cares-at-this-point person. So long as it was an equal person.

  Countryside finally gave way to civilization, and civilization to unattractive urban blight, proving that big cities were all alike in many regards. The warehouse was located in an industrial area filled with many similar-looking buildings and heavily patrolled by private security.

  Marie put the car in park outside one of the ubiquitous gray façades. I reached for the door handle, but Tom shook his head. “Wait here.”

  I strained to see what was going on, but I was on the wrong side of the car. I could hear voices speaking French, a car door shutting once then twice. A few minutes later, Marie started the engine again and turned the car around.

  The warehouse’s ground floor doors were opening. We followed the first two cars in the convoy inside.

  This time when Marie stopped, she shut off the engine and everyone got out. The warehouse doors closed behind us, trapping us inside what amounted to a large staging area. More doors, wide enough to admit a single car, were closed before us.

  Tom and the others headed toward a set of stairs on the right, and I kept pace. Someone on the other side of the door buzzed us in, and we entered what appeared to be part security office and part old school library.

  The security appeared high tech—lots of monitors showing lots of camera angles, and computers that must control all the various locks. The library side of the room could have used one of those computers to organize the papers and—you had to be kidding me—an old-fas
hioned card catalog.

  I gripped Tom’s arm. “Do we seriously have to use that? I’ve seen one before, but I’m not sure I know how.”

  “Relax, you don’t need to use the card catalog.” He patted one of the large books on the table. “You need to use these indexes.”

  Fortunately, that turned out not to be as onerous as it sounded. We only had to look up one object, and it was an easy one to describe. The challenge came with finding it once we entered the warehouse.

  Unlike the official archive, where everything was neatly stored by shelf and row number, items in the warehouse were stored by section. Some had shelf numbers attached, but I was warned that disorganization reigned. Attempts to control the mess were haphazard at best.

  Then there was the complication that the Brotherhood wanted to exclude their nonmembers from searching. As a result, seven of the sixteen of us entered the warehouse proper once we had an approximate location.

  I’d been expecting something dark and dingy, like a giant attic filled with Gryphon junk, but I should have known better. Disorganized and neglected was in the eye of the beholder. The warehouse was climate-controlled like the archive, brightly lit and scrupulously clean, even if the shelves weren’t properly labeled and items sat on them without apparent consideration for age, use or value.

  Tom led us to the correct section of the warehouse, then we split up to cover the shelves and tables within it. My stomach growled, and I pulled on my windbreaker. After the hot sun outside, the A/C within was extra chilly. For the first time since we left Grenoble, I wondered where Devon was and how he was surviving the sunny day.

  Very few of the objects I came across in my search were labeled, or if they were, their labels were irritatingly vague. The Gryphons didn’t know half of what they had stored, but that was hardly a surprise. It was the reason I was here.

  Working my way down a shelf, I closed a box containing a stone figurine, and moved on to the canvas bag next to it. Whoever had tied it had done so tightly. I gritted my teeth, fingers digging into the leather strap and the leather strap returning the favor painfully. When it gave, I let out a breath of relief and yanked the bag open.