The Cursed Blood by Jeremy Craig

Author:Jeremy Craig [Craig, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jeremy Scott Craig
Published: 2020-06-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Fiendfire, prophecy, and a pot of chili…

Two things you have to understand about magic portals. The first is that it’s the only instantaneous way we Darklings can safely be magically transported from one place to another due to the effects we have on Fey and their powers. The second thing is that it takes a great deal of getting used to, usually leaving new travelers on their knees gagging up their lunch on the other side of one.

I was no exception for rule two. Staggering out the swirling vortex of reality warping in and out and round and round that left me heaving, dizzy, and the world spinning about me the moment my feet touched the grass. My knees buckled as fresh air hit my face like a cool spray.

To be fair, the rank smell really didn’t help me keep down my lunch or milkshake. The whole clearing was rank, eye burningly smoky and still somehow thick with the buzzing of flies. Never a good sign.

The Council stood, most eyeing me pityingly, clearly remembering their own first times, The Doctor again chuckling his grave dirt like laugh that only added to my discomfort as it sent creeps down my spine while he stepped out of the portal he had conjured and held open for us. The rest of the Council had preferred other magical forms of transport as even when one is used to portals, they still aren’t the most pleasant things.

“Poor dear,” Madam Mildred Maxine Del’Cove, or simply ‘Milly’ as she preferred, professed as she lit an exotic looking leafy cigar. “It’s a wicked day you’re having. It’s simply not fair. Tell me, dearest, how is your Grandmother Mary? It’s been simply intolerable enduring this council of ours without her guidance.”

“Umm, good for being a ghost, I guess… Grandma was on the Fey Council?” I asked. Gramps grumbled disagreeably, and Milly laughed.

“Ooh no, dear, no, no, no, no. Not that she wasn’t welcome, and we didn’t make overtures and such. She just found some of us…well, unpleasant company.” She pointedly didn’t look at any of her peers as she offered me her free hand and helped lug me off the muddy grass as if I weighed little more than a doll. She wiped my face clean with a fancy cream-colored lace napkin she conjured up, dabbing my face in a very embarrassingly mothering way.

“There,” she proclaimed as she fussed over my flannel, sniffing in obvious disapproval over Gramps’ choices of wardrobe. “Fit for fiddling and such as can be for the moment.” She straightened and gave me a wink as she took a pull from her cigar. “A nice big bowl of spicy noodles from Sam Kim’s in Detroit’s Feyish China Town would be just the ticket to stoke the blood after a young man’s first portal trip. Though sadly this mess of a destination does little for one’s appetite.”

She wasn’t wrong.

The scorched clearing appeared for all the world as though a cataclysmic bomb had gone off, leaving trees downed in neat rows in an almost perfect circle for hundreds of feet.

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