Dark Harvest (Darkling Mage 2)

I was tied up with my arms and legs splayed out, in short, with vines as thick as my wrists binding so much of my body that I couldn’t do very much more than speak or breathe. And both of those activities were getting more and more difficult by the minute.

“I was sent out to find your Chalice,” I said. “It was at an orgy full of normals in some mansion. The Chalice did something to them. I mean it made lots of wine like it was supposed to, but it affected the normals, made them violent. There were twelve dead.”

Dionysus’s face remained stony, but I spotted the twitch in the corner of his eye. “And why were you after my Chalice? Are you one of those dogs that works for the Lorica?”

“Hounds,” I sputtered. “Was. Used to be. Now I work for someone else.”

“And what does ‘someone else’ want with a Chalice that belongs to the god Dionysus?”

“He studies them. I don’t know why, exactly, but he collects artifacts for his own purposes.”

Carver liked to get his leather-clad mitts on arcane relics, leaning on his web of contacts to tip him off on new leads. As an enchanter, he was endlessly fascinated by everything magical. Every artifact was an opportunity for study and research, and if their acquisition meant keeping another powerful item out of the Lorica’s hands, well, that was just a bonus.

Of course, the dirty work of actually stealing stuff was left up to me. One of the vines restraining me squeezed over a particularly sensitive area. I yelped. If I lived through this, I needed to remember to ask for a raise.

“Ah,” Dionysus murmured. “And I suppose it wouldn’t be difficult for you to convince your employer that the Chalice’s rightful owner wants it back.”

“Ah. About that.” My heart twinged with the littlest stab of panic. “You know, this would be so much easier if you’d just let me down. It’s getting hard to breathe.”

Dionysus stared at me for a long half minute, utterly motionless, apart from the tattooed wreath on his temples that shifted as if blown by wind. “Here’s what’s going to happen, mage.” Dang. Demoted to mage. “You tell me what I want, or I snap my fingers and my maenads tear you limb from limb. We’ll send you back to your friends in a box.”

The vines constricted ever tighter across my chest. The god’s worshippers hadn’t moved a muscle since I’d been hoisted up on my glorified noose, yet it appeared as if they were huddled closer, so much that I could hear their breathing and smell the stink of their sex and sweat.

“Well, my boss, you see, he discovered that the Chalice had been corrupted. It was doing stuff it wasn’t supposed to, you know? So he, uh. He destroyed it.”

As crimson as the tinge of the chamber was, it went an even deeper red as Dionysus glared at me with eyes that burned like coals. The vines wrapped around me looked like they’d lost their viridian luster, gone red, not like the lush tendrils they were, but like arteries. Veins. I swallowed thickly.

“Destroyed it.”

“Yes.” I blinked as innocently as I could manage. In the back of my mind I used every expletive I knew in colorful combinations with Carver’s name. Seriously. Fuck that guy.

The smolder in Dionysus’s eyes burned darker, ever more scalding, his lips pressing tighter and tighter together until – until nothing. He sighed, an exhalation that blew all the tension out of the room, and at once the crimson hue of the chamber faded into a verdant green. His worshippers turned away and went back to their bacchanalia, as if they’d lost interest. The vines wrapped around my body loosened, dumping me unceremoniously on the floor.

“Ouch.” I rubbed at my wrists and my ankles, careful to keep the rest of my thoughts to myself. That encounter could have gone so much worse.

“It’s as I thought,” Dionysus said, his voice lined with surrender, exasperation. “Something – or someone – is attempting to usurp my station. And failing that, they have seen fit to corrupt my symbols of power.” He held out his hand and his Chalice appeared out of thin air, filled to the brim once more. Dionysus drank deeply, sighed, then sat back on his divan.

He patted the empty space by it as the domicile once again filled with the crash-bang of music. I approached slowly, unwilling to offend, but still wary. Once I was sure the furniture wasn’t lined with teeth or hiding yet more clumps of vines waiting to throttle me, I sat down again.

“I apologize for the harsh treatment,” he said. “Can’t be too careful, not since the murder of our brethren.”

He meant Resheph, the Canaanite plague king, and Lei Kung, a Chinese thunder deity, two of Thea’s victims. Slaying the gods gave her a portion of their power, and she used Resheph’s dominion to command Valero’s rats to inscribe a massive summoning circle around the city itself. Totally crazy shit, and none of us saw it coming.

“Is that what you mean by usurping your power?” I asked. “Is someone trying to kill you?”

“Not as such. As you’ve seen I’m very well defended in the Amphora. A group of mortals has banded together, thinking to siphon what they can of the gods’ abilities through artifacts we may have left out in your realm. Misplaced.”

“Misplaced.” I blinked slowly, rubbing the circulation back into my wrists.

Dionysus frowned and took another swig. “Fine. I was shitfaced. Is that what you want to hear? I got drunk and lost my Chalice. Which wouldn’t have been such a dilemma since, watch this.” He held up his free hand, clasping his fingers around thin air, and out of nothing a second Chalice appeared. “I can make another one any time I want. Here. A souvenir.” He thrust it in my hands. It was an exact replica of the goblet I had found at the mansion. Just having it against my skin made me queasy.

“You know, I never read about you and a Chalice of Plenty in any of the mythology books.”

He shrugged. “You can’t believe all of those stories, can you? Plus, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a god. I have time and power enough to enchant whatever I want. The Chalice is one of my favorites. Losing it wouldn’t have been a dilemma if those idiot mortals hadn’t banded together and gotten their hands on the one that I left out in your world. No, not just any ordinary mortals. Cultists, I’d say.”

“Cultists?” This shit again. I’d spent my time at the Lorica being lied to about a false cult called the Black Hand, and it turned out to be part of Thea’s deception all along. Cultists. Ugh. Just saying the word out loud – hell, just thinking it left a sour taste in my mouth.