CHAPTER ONE
EZRA
“Hold on!” the pilot shouted over his shoulder, the helicopter shaking so hard Ezra was sure he’d get bruises banging around in his seat.
Gray clouds and glacial winds lashed the metal body of the helicopter, frost and ice forming rough patches on the front windshield. It was the middle of summer, but the immediate area above the danger zone was experiencing unnatural weather patterns. He wondered how dangerous it must be to travel over land that taking a helicopter through a horrendous storm was the best option.
“Hold on to what?” Ezra shouted back, white-knuckling his gear and lurching in the harness as the helicopter tilted sideways while descending. He would have fallen out if he wasn’t strapped in. “Hecate’s spine, keep us from crashing!”
He hoped She was listening. He wanted to make it to the ground alive. The patron goddess of necromancy wasn’t particularly bothered about blasphemy.
Usually when he took a job, the transportation was on the rough side, but going into a curse-fueled blizzard by helicopter was a first for him. Five years of traveling the world and up until today, the roughest journey to a job site was by camel acrossa scorching desert. The camel he was given for the trip was fascinated by his hair and tried eating it whenever Ezra made the mistake of walking near the beast’s head.
The winds kicked up again and the turbulence increased, and Ezra almost called out to the pilot to turn around when the sky went calm and the horrible roar of the magical storm abated. The transition was so jarring he pinched himself to make sure he was still alive and not waking up in the afterlife.
A disconsolate meow from the leather and copper mesh carrier between his feet had him leaning forward in his seat as best he could with the harness digging into his shoulders. He stuck his fingers through the top screen to let his familiar sniff and complain with tiny nips to his fingertips. Thankfully the carrier was anchored by a spell to stay put in the turbulence.
“Sorry, baby. We’re gonna be on the ground in a minute.” He hoped.
The window of the sliding door to his left was covered in melting ice, but he was able to see greenery below, and headlights from what could be an encampment, vehicles waiting at a cleared-out section near the forest. It was just after sunset, though it was dark enough to be the middle of the night. From the files he’d been sent before taking the job, he knew it was nearly ten days since the affected area had seen sunlight or the sky, the storm overhead blocking out most of the light. If a solution wasn’t found soon, plant life would begin to die off and the area might never recover.
The helicopter touched down with a relatively gentle thud, and Ezra exhaled loudly as he clicked the harness release and rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension. The pilot shut off the engine and the rotors slowed as the door was slid open by a handful of soldiers in uniform. They reached in for his bags, and he let them carry his gear except for the carrier, for which hereleased the anchor spell and slung the strap over his shoulder as he hopped down to the ground.
“Sorcerer Ezra Redmayne?” a tall woman in a dark-green uniform asked loudly over the slowing whir of the blades overhead, holding out a hand. Ezra grimaced but shook, locking down his mental shields so he didn’t pick up anything from the casual touch. “I’m Major Joanna Grendel, Magical Emergency Response Squadron. Follow me.”
She held out an arm in the direction she wanted him to go and led him across a dark grassy field; what he had thought were headlights were actually tall, mobile light stations attached to generators around the MERS camp’s perimeter. Over the top of the huge tents, he could see trees backlit by an eerie blue-ish silver light deeper in the forest, though it was faint this far out. The epicenter was still miles away.
Major Grendel led the way into a large beige tent, one wall rolled up with the open side facing the distant trees. It was clearly a command center, with soldiers working at computers and people who he guessed might be scientists or support staff looking at tall glass monitors and display screens, topped off with a hum of soft but urgent conversations and constant background noise. He wanted to go to the big screen along the far wall that had a map displayed, but he was waylaid by introductions.
“This is Dr. Mitch Simmons and Dr. Haylee Myers, two archaeologists from the University of Alberta. They’re part of the archaeologist team that discovered the artifact.” Major Grendel pointed first to a tall, mundane middle-aged white man with a bald head and tanned skin, glasses attached to a leather cord that fell down his back, and then next to a younger woman with medium, red-toned brown skin and black hair in a high tail at the back of her head. She was around five-feet eleven inches,about the same height as Ezra, and had a hint of magic to her, but not enough for him to tell what rank she held.
Major Grendel gestured with one arm to Ezra while with the other pulled out a chair at a large central table cluttered with maps, files, and various coffee cups. “This is Ezra Redmayne, the?—”
“–Ezra Redmayne, the curse-breaker,” Dr. Simmons interrupted. The sharp stare he got from Dr. Simmons was either confrontational, suspicious, or wary. Probably all three. He had a certain reputation. Though curse-breaker was a rather limited description of his skill set.
“Yes, hi, that’s me,” Ezra said breezily, dismissing the judgmental vibes coming from Dr. Simmons and looking around before deciding the table was the best place as too many people were wandering about in heavy boots and his familiar might get trampled.
He set the carrier on the table atop a few layers of maps and tapped the latch, the spell releasing. The hatch fell open and Lilith daintily stepped out, flicking her tail in displeasure, claws scratching over the papers. Major Grendel and Dr. Myers flinched at the sound but said nothing about the cat or her unusual appearance. She tended to get stares.
“Let’s skip the awkward pleasantries, the tossing about of blame, and the inevitable denials of said blame,” Ezra shrugged out of his leather jacket, tossing it on the table. He stretched his shoulders, rubbing at the back of his neck. Flying made him tense.
Now Dr. Myers was glaring at him and he shrugged, unconcerned. Dealing with people when they were alive was something that he rarely had the patience for—his single status was a testament to that. Cursed objects, inimical artifacts, and poltergeists were more his speed.
Ezra moved Lilith’s carrier just enough for him to look at the maps underneath. Nothing new since he got the file the evening before. He set the carrier down off to the side and gently nudged Lilith’s butt off some papers. Again, nothing new.
He sighed. When he looked up everyone was staring at him with varying expressions of displeasure, impatience, and confusion. He was used to that as well. Lilithmreowedand sent him a look that clearly said to focus.
“Oh, right, I was talking.” He cleared his throat and continued.“Weeks ago a team of archaeologists from the university began to excavate an early nineteenth-century settler town in northern Alberta territory, a town that until recently was considered merely local folklore, considering that it was reportedly buried in a freak snowstorm and considered wiped off the map for roughly one-hundred and fifty years.” He was reciting the facts from the file sent to him that was currently buried in the gear he’d brought. If there was anything new to learn, it would come from the people around him.
He lifted a sketch out of the mess of papers on the table, the charcoal lines sharp and clean, sparse but easily illustrating the stratigraphy of the trench the archaeologists were excavating. The deepest level showed a chest buried in the dirt with broken, rusted chains around it, the lid split down the middle with one piece falling aside. A charcoal sketch seemed an odd thing to find in a dig run by professionals, who rarely used that medium. The contents of the chest weren’t drawn in, shadows all the artist managed before a sharp mis-stroke trailed off the edge of the paper. The drawing itself felt as if it had gotten wet at one point and then left someplace flat to dry, the fibers broken down and warped on what was once high-quality charcoal paper.
He rolled the sketch up and stuffed it in a pocket of the cat carrier, ignoring the glares from his audience and continuing his breakdown of past events. “Weeks passed on the dig andnothing more exciting than a close encounter with a bear and some skunks occurred, though there were some interesting archaeological finds like tools and a latrine pit. But then in the seventh week of the dig, a chest was unearthed, discovered on the edge of the settlement away from any remnants of buildings. How that discovery was made is something we’ll get back to,” he glanced at the doctors, who shifted uncomfortably on their feet, avoiding eye contact. “By the end of that same day, half the research team was dead, including most of the graduate students from the university’s archaeology department. Of the fifteen-person team, only three were still alive by the time authorities responded the next evening after a satellite call was sent to the local government’s emergency services. Two of those were Dr. Simmons and Dr. Myers.”
“Yes,” Dr. Simmons gritted out. Dr. Myers crossed her arms and avoided looking at Simmons, lips thin, jaw tight.
“Where’s the other survivor, the graduate assistant Monica Blevins?”
“Mr. Redmayne, if we could get on with stopping the occurrence…” Major Grendel interrupted, slightly exasperated.
