Cursed Mother: A Mongrelverse Book (Mother of Monsters 1)

by Paul C. Middleton

  If they felt there was a fall guy available, suddenly it was safe for them to help me. Andre greatly respected how I had raised Zak until a pack had figured out what he was. He'd said he couldn't think of many people who could have done what I had, or many who wouldn't have thrown such a child to the curb.

  "Enough, Alicia. He's offered to help me. Treat him like the offer is in good faith."

  "I am. I'm also giving him fair warning," she responded. Then she held out her hand. "Alicia Blackbow. I hope it's pleasant working with you." She smiled at him, a genuine smile.

  I will never understand some Weres. It has to be exhausting to shift their emotions so fast. Alicia took it to extremes though. I'd seen her defeat another Were in a status challenge early one night. Within the hour she was in a corner of The Menagerie, stuck to his face. Two hours later, she'd gone home with him. Her mercurial nature could be immensely frustrating, and as a Werecat she would never be accepted as an Alpha in Australia.

  Instead, she held a Beta's rank, but her role was one most Weres avoided. She was responsible for keeping clear lines of communication with distant packs. It gave her a kind of diplomatic immunity when she traveled without prior arrangement. Andre also had two Gammas in his pack who filled a similar role. Every pack had at least one Gamma, and usually one Delta, fulfilling that role. Omegas were never used. They couldn’t command enough respect, and using one would have been admitting to having a weak pack.

  Finally we got the vehicle. Due to Zac and Kate's nature, my family went camping quite often. I had purchased an ex-military troop carrier several years ago. I kept it well maintained, and it had just come back from a full service two weeks ago. I wasn't worried about breakdowns or anything. And because we went camping so regularly, I had lockers installed under the bench seats in the back. That meant we could put whatever Anslem needed to pick up—and I was assuming it was weapons and armor of some kind, probably illegal. Alicia had already placed all her stuff in one of the ones near the front of the car.

  It took us half an hour out of our way to reach Anslem’s lockup. We parked outside the sheet metal door, and I got out to see if I could help him. When he opened the door we found a disaster area inside. “What the hell?” I asked, as it seemed anything of use was either broken or gone.

  “I knew they’d find it. The best stuff isn’t here. Arrogant and sloppy, that’s what the church’s militant arm has become. He walked to the back of the locker and shoved his hand through a gyprock of the back wall. I thought about it. The outer walls had been made up of concrete blocks. It was obvious that the side walls were as well, I could see it through gouges ripped in the cladding. I now assumed that hooks or wall settings had been placed there and were ripped off with whatever they had held to the wall.

  It made no sense that the back wall was gyprock with a hollow behind it. I understood what he meant by ‘they must have gotten sloppy.’ After all, if they’d actually looked properly, it wouldn’t have taken much to find it. Very lazy of them really. He was right, anyone with half a brain would have looked at that wall after ripping off whatever else the others had previously held and seen the oddity in it.

  "So what was out here?" I asked curiously as he widened the hole he punched through the gyprock wall.

  "Armor, a couple of guns, dozens of other weapons. Swords, glaives, daggers, axes, that sort of thing." I nodded. One of the things I'd learnt was if you ended up hunting Supernaturals, you definitely didn't want to rely on bullets alone. Too many of the Supernaturals out there were completely immune to bullets, or required very specific bullets to harm. I walked towards him with one of the large canvas bags we used for camping gear. He started passing things back to me through the opening he'd made.

  As he passed them back to me, a corner of my mind was noticing a certain pattern. Illegal, illegal, needs a license, illegal, illegal but probably a collector’s item, illegal, by Kuu that's pretty. He turned to me as that last thought came to mind, gazing back at me with an odd expression. I blushed as I realized I must have been muttering under my breath. I knew who Kuu was. The Finnish goddess of the moon. But I didn't understand why I'd phrased it that way. I wasn't a Finnish pagan. I'd given up on the gods.

  He put it to one side then continued gathering gear from inside the cavity. There were two rifles, four shotguns, four guns that I'd never seen before, the size of a large pistol, and about a dozen other pistols of various calibers. I knew how to use the shotguns and some of the pistols. Andre had insisted, and it wasn't like going to a gun range with an attractive man would be something that would even reach the gossip rags in Australia. They tried to keep guns out of them, considering the laws the government had passed against guns. I was somewhat ambivalent to those laws. I viewed them more as a knee-jerk, stopgap measure than a real successful policy.

  After all, the most likely group to commit suicide by guns—farmers—often needed them for their farms, for shooting pest animals or euthanizing injured animals. And they were still often legally allowed guns. But the biggest reason that was brought forth was the one that disturbed me the most. They justified the failure of a system to detect a mentally ill man getting a license and going on a rampage, in order to deny sane people guns.

  With some of the other laws they were bringing in, I could only see trouble on the horizon. For instance, making it legal to hold someone suspected of terrorism indefinitely without charge? I bet that law couldn't be abused, surely. Flipping idiots.

  There was also a wide assortment of hand weapons. Axes, swords, more knives and daggers than you could shake a stick at. Finally, he came out with a set of mail armor, and a smaller set of leather scale. The leather scale obviously wouldn't fit him. "Drake scale," he said. "It goes with the axe. Now tell me how that axe looks to you."

  "It looks like an axe with a polished handle, a roughened leather grip on the end. The blade is about the size of a hatchet head, a little larger I guess in the shape of a half moon. The circle edge is the blade. The blade has an iridescent pattern on it, like I've heard Damascus steel looks."

  He simply grunted, "More complications," and put the axe and the armor in an otherwise empty bag. He pulled the last bag, still empty into the hole and entered the cavity bodily. He started stacking it with boxes of ammo. Not store-bought crap, but hand-loaded, customized and probably for use against specific Supernatural types. Some of the ammo boxes had strange looking marks on them. Once that bag was full he struggled to the door with it and went to the back the troop carrier. Lifting the hinged seat he packed the bag into one of the boxes under the bench seats. I picked up the nearly empty bag and brought it to him. He carefully slid it along the floor of the compartment, then returned for the final bag, which he placed in the other rear compartment under a bench seat.

  “We better get moving. We’ll all want a good night’s sleep before we face one of the ancient Furies.”

  Once we were on the road there was silence for a while. Finally, Alicia cleared her throat. "So how did you come to leave the service of the church?" she asked Anslem, somewhat bluntly.

  "Bastards had me guarding the ashes of someone that had been cursed generationally. The church should never have been guarding them. The curse itself was against a treaty. Then after I was defeated by The Mongrel, they only grudgingly paid for my hospital costs. The arrogant cocksuckers. It wasn't like I'd chosen to stay alive. I told The Mongrel to kill me. I'd been bound to guard that urn, amongst others, for the last fifty years, and to be honest, I was sick of it. Sure, a half dozen times it needed to be defended against demons or necromancers, but the vast majority of the job was dead boring, if you'll excuse the pun. I still managed to get the occasional newspaper so I knew that the moral turpitude of the church was rising.

  "They'd become more worried about protecting the organization than doing the job. But a key reason I'd become disillusioned, apart from them throwing me out of my position and confiscating all of my belongings that they could find, was the evidence that they'd always s
uffered a level of moral rot. After all why else would they be hiding the ashes of someone who was wrongly cursed by an Angel? And now the evidence shows that they’ve been covering up kiddy fiddlers. Often enough, burying the SOBs in consecrated ground after they died, rather than in the crypt I guarded, improving their chances of reaching heaven by their own creed. Screw that. Besides, I was a doubting Thomas. Never really sure there was a god worth worshiping."

  It took me a while to digest that. "So you don't believe in God necessarily, but they still used you to guard a tomb on unconsecrated ground?" I asked in my confusion.

  "I believed in God, don't you worry about that. And belief is all they wanted. But I never worshiped him, and to be honest, I'm now happy to be working against him if it comes to it. "

  Alicia spoke up. "I thought those were all different gods they worshiped. At least some of their followers believe that."

  "You look at the legends of the creation of the Arab race, and the Bible says that Christians and Jews definitely worship the same God. Yes it's the same God. That's my belief, and I also believe that if He were really as powerful as He claims to be, and as loving as He claims to be, then the world wouldn’t be such a fragging mess. If He doesn't like how I feel then He can just kiss my arse. His human representatives vary from the good to absolute scum, but it seems to be the scum rising to the top. So yes, I'll fight them, and if it comes to it, kill a few angels and demons on the way.”

  He paused, and cleared his throat “Enough theology. Why is the pack suddenly willing to help her get rid of her curse?"

  Alicia was silent at that for some time before answering. “It wasn’t that we didn’t want to help her. It was that we couldn’t help her. I’m the only one with enough potential to find the Furies’ village. Sarah might be a competent Sorceress, but let’s face it, that just isn’t enough. She can’t suppress her own curse, no one can. Besides, who knows the full effects of the damn thing? She didn’t know enough about the Supernatural to take it seriously and memorize the wording, back when it was first placed on her.”

  I winced at that. Everyone who is involved in the Supernatural world knows two things about curses. The first is that the person to be cursed has to understand the curse being placed on them. If it's placed on an event, it has to be spoken within an area that event is likely to take place. The second is, remember the damned wording. It can be key to dodging or to having any hope of breaking the curse. It was also the reason I had little choice but to seek out Alecto. If I didn’t at least find out the wording, then I had no chance of breaking the curse.

  The other reason for approaching Alecto was that she could remove the curse without much effort, being the one who cast it. At least I hoped that was the case. Of course that depended on her mood. According to the etiquette of the Supernatural world if someone who had been cursed by you requested, without violence, the exact wording of the curse, you had to give it to them. It was simply bad manners not to, and I doubted someone with Alecto’s reputation and long life would be crass enough to commit such a social faux pas.

  Alicia said, in a mildly amused tone, “So one Were, even one who is also a Sorcerer like I am, is meant to try and get her out of there alive and both of us uncursed? You are, to put it bluntly, the fall guy. I’m just the plucky sidekick. I’m not gonna do any talking when we get there. I’ll leave it to you and Sarah. But if it comes to more than words or curses, I’ll back you up.” She continued, “The last thing any Were needs is another curse. Even if you’re a natural Were, the abilities are as much a pain in the arse as they are an advantage. Especially with the Compact. With that we can’t even tell someone we love if they’re normal human what we are until after we married. And if we get divorced, we have to pay to have their memory wiped. Puts a crimp in your relationship choices, let me tell you!”

  At that point both Anslem and I decided silence was the better part of valor for various reasons. Anslem had a grim smile on his face, I suspect he respected her blunt honesty about him being the fall guy. I was silent because I found myself glancing at Anslem, noticing more and more how attractive he was. I managed to damp down the rising tide of lust I felt, while cursing my weakness, after I put some music on to distract us all from the boredom of the drive.

  When we finally reached an appropriate place to stop for the night I was surprised to find that Alicia had booked it on the way up. It was called Bishop's Court, and the old servant's or priest's quarters had been converted into a bed and breakfast. As it was on the edge of town, Alicia informed us that she was planning on hunting something for dinner tonight. As soon as it was dark, she left the house in a light set of clothes. I knew she’d shortly be removing them and hiding them somewhere where they could be easily accessed by her animal form, yet would likely stay dry. She looked very cheerful at the prospect of going on a hunt. Being city bound was a strain on any Were I suspected. They needed to take their other form, to hunt, to be closer to nature.

  Although the servant's quarters were pleasant enough, the mansion and its grounds were covered in formal gardens. They seemed to be cold, and the multitude of statues, though beautiful, lent it a lifeless air.

  There were two rooms. A single, and a queen. I looked at Anslem, with a smoldering gaze. When I noticed what I was doing I shook myself. He went to the single room and firmly shut the door behind him. Damn it, I knew I had more control than that. For more than nine years I'd kept my lusts and desires at bay. Subsumed them, redirected them towards raising my children well. Now that I'd made a decision to take control over my life again, control over other aspects of it seemed to be slipping.

  It worried me. Still, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot I could do about it right now. There were one or two spells I knew that would enable me to redirect the unwanted feelings, but to use them I'd need to go back to my ritual space. I had a driving need to push forward, to confront my ex and his current wife, so going back wasn't an option for me. Besides, I feared that if I showed a lack of resolve, Andre would imprison me within the bounds of Sydney. That wasn't something I was willing to risk.

  I wanted to howl in frustration. There had to be a better way to deal with my frustration though. After I'd moved my bag and Alicia's bag to the queen room, which we were now obviously going to be sharing, I went for a walk. It was a walk with a very specific purpose. I was looking for a smooth-barked eucalypt, a large one. Once I found what I was looking for I started punching and kicking the thing. It felt good, like I was pounding away my frustrations. First I saw a superimposed image of the ex. I didn't hate him, but he was directly one of the causes of what had happened.

  Beating the crap out of an imagined vision of him didn't help at all. I knew, at a deeper level than I'd realized, that I was to blame for driving him to curse me. My actions, my lack of awareness of why he was working so hard. Even deep down, I blamed myself more than him.

  The next image I superimposed onto the tree was of the woman who’d cursed me. If she was as powerful as the Supe community seemed to believe, than it was best I get any anger at her out of my system before tomorrow. That was far more satisfying. As the person who actually put the curse on me, the anger towards her felt completely justified. Justified in a way that even my anger at myself didn't feel. After about half an hour, I heard something that broke my concentration. Even now I can't remember what exactly it was.

  I focused on the tree again, and to my surprise I found Anslem's form imposed on it. There was no anger or rage directed at him, but there was an immense amount of frustration. Hopefully beating the crap out of this vision of him would help me sleep tonight. I lost track of all time as I unsuccessfully beat up the tree. It must been hours later when I felt Alicia's cat form bump my leg. I almost collapsed when I stopped. I slowly lowered myself to the ground. Exhaustion took over and all the anger and frustration drained out of me. I felt a slight sting on my knuckles. I remember thinking they should have been bloodier. They hurt with a dull throb. The pain, and the trickles of blood, fel
t good. Cathartic.

  Alicia had changed back to human and gotten dressed as I was trying to get up. I failed to lever myself off the ground.

  She took one look at me and said "Well you overdid it, didn't you?" Then she looked at my hands. "By the moon, girl, you did a number on your hands. If you were a Were I wouldn't be worried, but we need to get you back to the room and get those knuckles cleaned and bandaged."

  She help me to my feet, and between her help and the little energy I had left we managed to get inside and get me on the bed. She quickly grabbed a towel out and put it under my hands as she worked on them.

  First she checked the bones in each finger and the rest of hand for breaks. "I've never seen someone mangle their hands this badly and not have at least some breaks. Even a Were would have some breaks." She looked at me somewhat suspiciously. "Are you sure there's nothing Supernatural about you apart from your limited sorcery and that curse?"

  Sleepily, I answered, "Nothing I know of." I winced as she washed each of the abused knuckles with antiseptic. I was asleep before she'd even finished wrapping my hands in bandages.

  Chapter 4

  I had the strangest dream that night and I still don't truly understand its significance. All I understand is that it was a turning point in my life. In it, the air seemed to roil with unseen power. The hair on my skin stood up as a red portal appeared in the center of the room I was standing in. It was calling to me. I felt I should know where the portal went, although I had no memory of it at all.

  Slowly, cautiously, I approached the portal, and extended my hand to touch the surface. As soon as I did, it was as if a multitude of hands grabbed me and dragged me through. Once through it, I found myself in completely unfamiliar surroundings. Wandering around the temple I now stood in were what looked like me, several different versions of me.