Dark Harvest (Darkling Mage 2)

Chapter 1

Hi there. Dustin Graves here, purloiner of arcane artifacts, dead man walking, and handsomest thief in existence – or at least in the mansion that was my target for the evening. It was an easy generalization to make considering I felt like the only living thing for miles around. Unless you counted the talking sword strapped to my back, that is, but I wasn’t in that mansion to ponder philosophy and metaphysics. I was there to steal the most glorious cup in existence.

A Chalice of Plenty, or so they told me, and as someone who possesses the supernatural ability to step from one shadow to the next – it’s teleportation, basically – I was the mage for the job. The job, of course, being to steal magical artifacts, which I used to do for the Lorica, but which I now do for a man named Carver, for better pay, and slightly better benefits. I do have to live in close proximity to a vampire and a werewolf, though it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. But back to the cup.

According to Carver, the Chalice was ornately decorated, a finely crafted golden goblet studded with gems, its stem wreathed in fresh, leafy vines that never rotted or even turned brown. Now normally, I wouldn’t have been involved in a job if the item in question wasn’t magical, which, of course, it was. Turned on its side, the Chalice could produce any potable liquid known to man: water, wine, diet soda, you name it, the cup can make it.

And it wouldn’t stop producing said liquid until turned upright again, so a crazy person could conceivably fill a whole swimming pool with champagne and go nuts. Incidentally, you couldn’t bottle any of the stuff that came out of the Chalice, because then it would just disappear. Interesting, sometimes, how these relics came with their own failsafes, but that was the first question I asked Carver when he was briefing me for this assignment. My dreams of starting my own home brewery were immediately dashed.

“Shame about that,” I muttered as I maneuvered the mansion. It felt like I’d been walking for minutes, but I still somehow hadn’t managed to clear the foyer.

This was exactly the kind of place a crazy person who might fill swimming pools with champagne would call home. The floors were all marble, the high vaulted ceilings supported by those cheesy columns that were supposed to look all Greek, like they were taken right from the Parthenon. Someone – the decorator hired to deck the house out for the evening, no doubt – had wrapped the columns in plastic vines, to make it look like nature had started to overgrow the place.

That appeared to be the theme for the evening. Whatever space hadn’t been taken up by furniture was filled with plants embedded in freshly-laid turf, little trees arranged here and there, with spotlights set about to keep it all a little atmospheric and mysterious. Hidden speakers played nature noises on an extended loop, so that the mansion sounded like something out of the Amazonian rainforest: birds twittering, the distant, isolated chirp of tiny monkeys, and the soothing burbles of running water. Maybe it was the spotlights, or maybe they’d meant for it to be that way, but it was also steaming hot inside the house, just like a jungle.

So it was that kind of party. The theme was probably the great outdoors, or something like it, considering how the mansion had been transformed. And the party had either gone extremely well, or extremely badly. It was almost five in the morning, after all. Either everyone had gotten wasted and gone home, or they hadn’t shown up at all. The house was quiet.

“Too quiet,” a voice said.

“I know.” I looked over my shoulder, at the pommel of the sword slung across my back. “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

“You know better than that,” said the sword. He was probably right, too.

Though we’d only known each other a short while, Vanitas and I had been through the wringer together. That’s his name, Vanitas, and don’t ask how I know, but it’s a “he,” at least based on the voice I could hear in my head when he spoke. I swear to you that I’m not nuts – it was really how he communicated.

That, and by slicing people and monsters up in incredibly bloody ways, which I hoped wouldn’t be on the menu, but hey. That’s why I took him on my missions. You never know when you need a helping hand, or a helping blade, as it were. Plus, it was always nice to have someone to talk to. Neither of us had to actually to speak to get the point across since Vanitas employed a kind of telepathy to communicate.

The price, of course, was having to carry the weight of a broadsword across my back, but that was nothing some light stretching and a regular trip to the spa couldn’t mitigate. Or so I told myself, wincing and rotating my shoulder as I imagined the next time I could go for one of those full body massages, the ones where they beat the shit out of you but you walk out feeling so damn good.

I could afford those now. Carver paid me well, so a little spa day was a nice indulgence every so often. I’m not one to say no to the good life. I’ll try anything once, I always say, and I kept that in mind as I reached for a flute of something sparkling that someone had left out on a side table.

In my head, Vanitas tutted. “Drinking on the job, Dustin?”

The bubbles tickled my throat on the way down, at least the ones still left suspended in the liquid. It was faintly sweet, lukewarm, and had gone a little flat, a reassuring sign that everyone probably had gone home. That, or they were involved in an orgy somewhere upstairs. Who could say? The mansion was massive.

“Good stuff,” I said, tossing back the rest of the flute. “I like champagne, even if it’s flat.”

“Prosecco, actually,” Vanitas said, a hint of smugness in his voice. “Which is sparkling Italian wine. Champagne only ever comes from Champagne. In France.”

I grimaced, but didn’t retort. Don’t ask me to explain how, exactly, but the sword could pick up on experiences around him, living vicariously through his wielder. Me, in this case. He’d told me multiple times how he couldn’t actually taste or smell things, but it still never explained how he once nailed this one red wine I enjoyed down to its year and vineyard in Australia, or, for that matter, how he could tell that Sterling preferred to smoke mentholated cigarettes. Sterling’s the vampire, by the way. We’ll get to him later.

It was much later on that I realized how it really had b

een a good idea to bring Vanitas with me, because he detected the smell of wine before I did. Not the stuff I had out of the flute earlier, but something grander in scale.

“Red,” he said. “Sweet, and lots of it. Down that way.”

Vanitas tugged at my back. Rather, he shifted within his scabbard, straining slightly against his straps and giving me a general idea of which way to go. Useful trick, that. I always kept him close. I’d learned over the months that resonance was important for sentient artifacts, or at least it was for Vanitas.

He had gone dormant once, and it turned out that he needed to be attuned to my energy, staying in close proximity in order to remain awake. That hasn’t been a problem for a while now, since we basically spent half our days together. It could still get grating at times, though. I mean, you try being roommates with a moody, sassy talking sword.

Vanitas bucked again, struggling against my back, trying to nudge me through the archway.

“We’re not here for drinks, V.”

He snorted. “You could have fooled me. You chugged that flat stuff like it was water.”

“I was thirsty,” I grumbled. “And I’m not planning to drink more. Honest. We shouldn’t head that way. We’re here for the Chalice.”

“Which is exactly why we should follow the trail. The cup can make wine, can’t it? And there is a massive quantity down past that archway.” He tugged again. “Cabernet Sauvignon, twenty-thirteen. Napa Valley.”

“Show-off,” I muttered under my breath. Out loud, I realized too late, and I swung my head to look for anyone – or anything – who might have heard, but still our only companion was silence. Well, apart from the track of jungle and animal sounds piping in through the speakers, which only grew louder as we approached.

The archway Vanitas mentioned was one of the openings leading out of the foyer. The others, from a distance, led to the rest of the mansion, possibly a banquet hall, a living area, a shooting gallery, whatever the hell it was that rich people kept in their houses. The wine trail we followed took us into a huge room that could have fooled me into thinking we were outdoors, if it weren’t for the temperature-controlled interiors.

The far walls of the room, which was about the size of a tennis court, were shrouded in darkness. Perfect for a getaway, I thought, should the need arise, but considering the vast, aching emptiness of the house, it seemed unlikely. The walls were absolutely covered in trees and greenery, which thinned out as they approached the middle of the room, the centerpiece of which was a trellised gazebo.

Vines snaked in and out of the gazebo’s bare wood latticework, giving it the appearance of a large canopy overgrown with leaves and flowers. Also grapes. Lots and lots of grapes, enough that I could imagine the party overflowing with tittering serving girls. A whole squad of them, gliding around in flimsy togas and hand-feeding grapes to guests, like a good old Roman orgy. A bacchanalia.

And who was to say that we could discount that, exactly? Especially since the interior of the gazebo was so well shrouded. Great swathes of light, flowing silk draped over every entrance to the tent, affording some privacy. They moved gently, drifting as languidly as the rush of the water fixtures that had been installed to resemble the flow of a small stream.

These people were crazy. They’d paid for this ballroom to be stripped out and terraformed into a veritable Garden of Eden. There was soil here and everything, the tiny stream running around the gazebo driven by motorized pumps hidden among the bushes. I had to admit, there was something relaxing about the sound of the artificial brook babbling its way around the room.

“Whoa,” I said, or thought, rather, transmitting to Vanitas. “Are you seeing this?”

“Yes.” I had no way of explaining how that worked, either, but maybe it was part of how the sword could sense his surroundings through his host human. Hah, did I say host? Slip of the tongue. Vanitas wasn’t a parasite. I meant to say I was his wielder. “And I don’t like it one bit,” he said.

“What do you mean? I kind of like it. Sure, it’s totally insane, but someone clearly spent a ton of money to do this place up. Seemed like a fun party, and – ”

“Dust. Shut up. You don’t smell that?”

I wrinkled my nose. Now that we were closer I could pick up hints of all that wine Vanitas was talking about. “You mean the twenty-thirteen Napa you were bragging about?”

“Not that. The blood.”

What? I stooped closer to the ground, eyeing the shadows closest to me, just in case I needed to make an exit. That’s my talent, the reason I tend to specialize in infiltration and artifact retrieval. To the casual observer, shadowstepping looks unglamorous. All that happens is that I disappear into the darkness, then reappear somewhere else. I can assure you, however, that the in-between that involves moving through the Dark Room is anything but pleasant.

Beats me how I can do that stuff, but it all started when someone stabbed me through the heart, something which forced the latent magic in my bones to bloom. Now I can enter a dimension full of shadows, and as I recently found out, bring that same dimension into our reality, with extremely bloody results. Though that second part hurts like a motherfucker, which is why I try not to do it too much.

I discovered that my own murderer was the woman who used to be my old boss, and the man I thought was the bad guy was now my new boss. It’s less complex and way more interesting than it sounds because I ended the whole ordeal alive, in possession of a badass flying sword, and handsomer than ever. Did I mention that the sword could fly? Because in addition to talking, it could fight on its own and cut things up into tiny, bloody little pieces. Insane story, I tell you, someone should have written a book about it.

Still, a jaunt through the Dark Room beats getting stabbed in the back. Or the chest. Again.

“Watch my back,” I said. “Keep an eye out.”