Dark Harvest (Darkling Mage 2)

Chapter 6

The maenad was waiting for me beyond the ivy hedge as I emerged from Dionysus’s domicile. Sterling and Gil still had their heads craned towards me – though I realized that was probably part of the domicile’s enchantment. I’d been gone for a quarter, at most half of an hour, but to them it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two.

“Welcome back,” the maenad-waitress said, her tone chirpy, her grin toothy as ever.

“Yeah. Hi.” I stabbed a finger over at our table, my other hand wiping at the cold sweat on my forehead. “I could really use another drink, like, now, if you don’t mind.”

She giggled. “Aww, it couldn’t have gone so badly for you. You’re still in one piece, after all.”

“Very funny.” I tugged on my collar. Was it hot, or was that my body changing temperature? Fuck. “Rum and coke, please. As dirty as you can make it. And cold. Very cold.”

The maenad winked, gave me a single-handed finger gun salute, then bustled off to the bar. I made a beeline for Sterling and Gil, pulling at my collar and sweating the whole time.

“Jesus,” Gil said, sliding over to give me a seat. “Dust, you okay? You look terrible.”

“I dunno,” Sterling drawled. “Looks about as sweaty as he always does.”

I swatted Sterling’s hand away from his goblet, hardly caring about his protests or how he bared his teeth when I tossed the rest of his wine back in one gulp. I did the same with Gil’s cup. There was definitely something warm building in my blood. I prayed that it was the alcohol, and not Dionysus’s poison working its way through my system.

“Right,” I said, wiping at my lips with the back of my hand, finally calming a little. “Right. I’ll start with the good news. We’ve got a lead on what happened to the Chalice. Dionysus says it was corrupted, that it wasn’t meant to behave that way, but now we’ve got a name. Organization called the Viridian Dawn. A bunch of cultists, looks like. Possibly terrorists.”

“Hey, you did good, kid,” Gil said. “But you need to calm down. What the hell happened in there?”

It was comforting, at least, to kno

w that someone was willing to lend a sympathetic ear. Good guy Gil. I couldn’t say the same for Sterling. He’d gotten over the annoyance of having his drink stolen from him and was leaning closer across the table, listening intently, watching like a bird of prey waiting to snatch at the first ragged morsel off a fresh carcass.

My cocktail showed up just in time. Gil stared at it warily, but nudged it towards me once he saw the thirsty look in my eye. I slammed half of it in one go, saving the other half for after I’d said my piece.

I wasn’t sure what I was doing chugging every liquid in reach, either, but maybe I thought that I could delay the poison’s effects if I could dilute it somehow. Presumptuous? Yes. Stupid? Most definitely. But at least I was getting a buzz out of the bargain.

“So,” Sterling said, his chin resting on the peaks of his fingers in an annoyingly precise impersonation of Carver. “About that bad news.”

“Yes. Well. Dionysus made it personal. We have three days to sort this out.”

Gil’s eyebrow hitched high up, like a bushy black caterpillar attempting to escape his forehead. “Don’t tell me you agreed to something.”

“Not exactly. He poisoned me.” I ran my tongue across my bottom lip, deciding whether to continue or finish my drink. But wasn’t that what got me into trouble in the first place? I raised my hand, showing them the brand Dionysus left on my wrist. “This says I have three days to live, and presumably I only get the antidote if we track the cult down and stop them.”

“Oh, Dustin,” Gil groaned, pushing his palm up against his forehead.

“Ohhh, Dustin,” Sterling crooned, much more gleefully. Far too gleefully.

“Look. He trussed me up in a bunch of vines, threatened me a little, then when I told him Carver smashed his Chalice, he let me go and offered me a drink.” I shrugged, simultaneously acknowledging my stupidity. “I guess I didn’t want to be rude. Communion etiquette, right?”

“Hmm.” Sterling rubbed his chin with all the wisdom and flair of someone who had a beard. The resultant effect was a light scritching of his fingers over bare skin. “To be fair, he could have absolutely killed you at any point throughout that meeting.”

“Right. Exactly.”

“Strangulation by ivy. Torn to pieces by the bacchantes. Thyrsus through the throat.”

“R-right. Yeah.”

“Dustin,” Gil said, his voice thick with meaning. “You’ve communed with other entities before this. Correct?”

Arachne the spider-woman was my first communion, and then there was Hecate, the Greek goddess of magic. I nodded slowly.

“Right,” Gil said. “And how many of them have tried to kill you?”