Corpse Curses Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Jen Ponce

  All rights reserved.

  Don’t copy this shit or your parts will turn green. It’s true, I know a guy.

  To all you stabby bitches.

  1

  KORRI

  There’s darkness inside me. It urges me to kill. It’s been there as long as I can remember … would you hate me if I told you I liked it?

  It was a fucked-up world we lived in when a magus couldn’t even walk home at night without carrying pepper spray in one hand and wearing brass knuckles on the other. The streetlights in this part of town all worked, there were Keepers patrolling the streets, and still there was a monster stalking the darkness, waiting for just the right moment to strike.

  The man wore a black trench, his expensive fedora pulled low over his forehead as if he was some sort of spy in a movie. His watch gleamed in the light, an expensive one by the looks of it, one of those timepieces given to the Master Theurge of a Conventus Lodge. Even if the watch hadn’t given him away, the three stacked triangles on his lapel labeled him a magus. They all wore them as if that made them special.

  I couldn’t complain; it made my job easier.

  I crossed the street, my soft-soled boots quiet on the pavement. Magi were confident in their safety; this, too, made my job easier. It also made it more fun. because people who thought they couldn’t die, died hard, and there was something inside me that enjoyed listening to them scream.

  And oh, how I was ready to hear this one.

  “Don’t get cocky,” my best friend and partner in crime said into my earpiece.

  Yeah, yeah.

  The magus—Oscar King—stopped at the next street corner, waiting for the light to turn green. I faded into the decorative bushes in front of a sandy-colored house that was a carbon copy of all the other houses on the block. Townhomes, most of them, with postage stamp yards, perfectly manicured shrubbery, and an utter lack of soul.

  Bolger was a city of three million people divided into magi and witches. The city itself was divided into parts too, to make sure the magi didn’t have to mingle with the witches more than they had to. I was in one of the ritzier areas, a district for magi like Oscar. Anyplace that didn’t have graffiti or smell like pee weirded me out. I’d been slumming too long, my grandmother would say. She hated that I spent much of my time in the Witches’ District—aka the WD or Hell’s Mudroom. “You’ll get a reputation.”

  I already have one, Grandmother. Hate to tell you.

  I walked in both worlds, born into a wealthy magi family, my mama a graduate of Conventud Academy, destined to become a third tier Conventus Lodge Magus. Then she met my daddy, a witch, had me, and disgraced herself and her family … at least according to my grandmother.

  This pairing gave me my dual-colored eyes, my daddy’s coloring and build, but my mama’s looks. My hair was half white, half black too, but that wasn’t a product of my DNA. No, my weird hair had come from a little incident when I was six that had killed my grandfather and made me who I was today.

  Whatever I was.

  Someday, I’d figure out why I was the way I was. Perhaps Oscar’s death would hold a clue.

  He crossed the street and after a minute, I followed. My hair was covered, I wore contacts to disguise my eyes, and I had on what was, for me, a conservative outfit: skin-tight jeans and a black leather jacket with blackjack fur around the collar and wrists. If the magus looked back, he’d see a party girl headed home from the club.

  At least, that was what I wanted him to see. I painted the runes myself, though it was my best friend who created them. Poppy Ballinger was an educist, which meant her talent was drawing magic into things. People who were educists could draw runes and even get them to do something magical some of the time, but Poppy’s were exquisite. Even a Master Theurge like the one I was hunting tonight wouldn’t be able to see through this suggestion unless he was looking for it. Kinda like how someone might only start looking for a zipper if the monster chasing them acted unmonsterlike.

  “Careful, he’s slowing.”

  I slowed too, and when he glanced back, I played the party-girl part; I staggered a little and giggled when I bumped into a lamp pole. His lip curled and he said something derisive, though I was too far away to hear what it was. Lodge members were a stuck-up bunch, thinking all their prudish, tight-ass rules should apply to the rest of us whether we were Conventus Magi or not. Whether they’d even let us darken their door with our presence or not.

  He walked on while I spent time where I was looking at my phone, waiting for Poppy to give me the go-ahead. She was linked into the security system and was my eye in the sky on this and every other mission I went on. She was the brains and I was the brawn. She was the heart, I was the dark, twisted thing in the shadows …

  “Okay, he’s gone down the next block. Up ahead, turn right.”

  I put on a little burst of speed, not wanting to get too far behind. I slowed before the corner so he wouldn’t hear fast footsteps coming at him. Even a Master Theurge could get antsy this time of night.

  “Fuck. He just went into a basement level apartment or something. Probably a speakeasy. You’ll have to wait him out.”

  Disappointment thrummed through me, disappointment and a curl of unease. I’d already waited too long to come out hunting. If he stayed too late, if he emerged with friends? Poppy and I wouldn’t get our revenge for what the magi did to her family, and I wouldn’t get the fix I needed. That would be … bad.

  Tamping down my panic, I crossed the street, hoping to find a nice, shadowy doorway to skulk in.

  Skulking in this part of town was frowned upon, but I was good at hiding.

  There was an upscale pie and muffin shop, with cardboard pastries on display, whimsical icing decorating everything. It was too well-lit for my purposes and besides, standing there staring at that shit would make me hungry. I chose the account’s office because it was done up in a rich guy’s idea of tasteful navy blue, which meant it was dark enough for me to blend in.

  I leaned against the door and wished I’d taken him sooner. Reckless, sure, but I wouldn’t have been standing here now, in for a wait of who knew how long. Man, I did not want to have to postpone the hunt until another night. The urge was so strong, it was digging at my guts. Blood. Screams. Terror.

  I eyed the door, wondering what kinds of locks were on it, what kinds of magical protections. I bet I could break it in. I could grab him right there, I could kill every last magi in the place. Because I would bet my favorite knife there were witches in there who didn’t want to be there. Magi weren’t above trafficking those they looked down upon and I doubted there was just shady gambling and drugs going on behind that door. “I’m going in.”

  “No!”

  I winced at her shouted response and whispered in return, “You know as well as I do there are people who need our help behind that door.

  “Yes, I know, and I hate it. But I’ve marked the spot so we can come back and do it right. I need time to link into their security. You need to spend time watching the place. We need to know more.”

  I wanted to kill now, though. It was eating at me, knowing my prey was in there and I couldn’t touch him, couldn’t send him to his gory death. “Fuck.”

  “Remember why we’re doing this. Remember who Oscar King is,” she urged, her voice low and dreamy.

  Almost immediately, my nerves settled and I leaned back against the door, my mind going over the charges against the Master Theurge. “He’s a Lodge member and a judge who has sentenced eight witches to prison for theft, extortion, hexing, cursing without the proper paperwork, creating runes and spells.” That last, especially made my blood boil. Regulating something so primal and natural was obscene, but the magi had done it. They didn’t
like the wild witch magic and they didn’t like the witches having access to any kind of power for fear of another uprising like the one in fifty-two.

  “He helps murderers get off without any punishment. He hides the magi’s crimes. You remember what he’s done.”

  I did indeed.

  “That’s why waiting is better than going in, Korri. Because this guy deserves what’s coming to him.”

  Oscar King had a dark past and it was time he paid the price for his sins. Perhaps it wasn’t how it should have been. Maybe Poppy and I were wrong for putting him on our kill list. Perhaps we were wrong for having a kill list at all, but if we didn’t take out the bad ones, who would? The magi weren’t policing themselves. They were only concerned with subjugating the witches, hiding their own crimes, and making sure they gobbled up as much power for themselves as they could.

  I knew the type of shit they were covering up and my knowledge only scratched the surface of the deep, dark, and disgusting well of secrets that lay below the magi world.

  “Who’s next?” I asked. “I need something to chew on to pass the time.”

  I heard papers flipping as Poppy dug for our list. “Harriet Lysander.”

  The Keeper. She had helped bury what the magi had done to Poppy’s family so long ago. “Why didn’t we start with her?”

  “You’ve said that about every one of them on this list.”

  That was true. I was an impatient hunter. But once a name went on our list—and they didn’t get written in Poppy’s book until we’d thoroughly researched their perfidies—I was ready to end their lives. The starred ones especially. Those were the people who had hurt Poppy personally. Those were the ones who had been directly involved. The ones who had taken Poppy’s parents Earnest and Alma, who had killed Dana, Francis, and little Briana. A false charge of consorting with demons had been leveled on the family. The only reason Poppy had escaped was because she’d been staying with me at my grandmother’s home in the Prime District.

  It was why we had to be careful, why we sprinkled in other magi who had hurt witches but not Poppy specifically. We didn’t want to lead them to her doorstep. I’d already decided to take the blame if that ever happened. I wasn’t going to let Poppy go down for what I’d done. It would kill my daddy, I was sure, and probably my grandmother too, but for different reasons: Daddy because he loved me and Grandmother for what my being a killer would do to her reputation.

  Still. Poppy had had enough pain in her life. I wasn’t going to let her catch the blame for the murders, whether she’d helped plan them or not. She didn’t know that, of course, but it was what I’d decided when we first stayed up late and talked about how to make the magi who’d hurt her pay.

  Kyle Klein most of all.

  Kyle Klein, who had decided he wanted Poppy like a spoiled boy wanted another child’s toy. A spoiled boy with a rich father who thought nothing of giving his son whatever he wanted. And when Poppy said no?

  Well, we all knew what happened when a magus like Kyle was thwarted. He went running to his daddy and suddenly innocent people were dead.

  I couldn’t wait to sink my knife into his chest and watch him die.

  2

  After about an hour of talk from how we could kill Harriet Lysander to what we wanted to do for the solstice celebration, King emerged looking a little less stuck up than before. It confirmed my suspicion that there were witches in there being used to service the magi, being forced to sell their bodies either through sex or labor or both.

  There was so much corruption it was overwhelming.

  One dead body at a time, Korri.

  He wobbled a little now, which pleased me. He wouldn’t put up as much of a fight drunk and while I liked taking them on, I was antsy and anxious for the act itself. Fighting often took the edge off whatever made me the way I was, but tonight the only thing that would satisfy my craving was his death.

  When he passed in front of an alley, I struck, running into him full-force and knocking him into the shadows between the buildings. The alley didn’t even fucking smell like garbage in this part of town. It’d been swept, probably by an automaton, and there wasn’t a single rat running from the noise of the struggling magus in my arms.

  I stabbed him with a hexed knife before he could call on his power. The hex took effect immediately, cutting him off from his magic. He choked on the word that would have unleashed it and his eyes locked onto mine, widened, and then narrowed. He saw I was a woman, saw my green eyes and assumed I was a witch, thus an easy target. Didn’t matter that I’d just gotten the drop on him and that my knife was buried in his side; he was sure he’d win. These upright guys always thought they’d win, that they had their god on their side, that Ventus would stop whatever he was doing and help them because they were special … even though there were millions of believers.

  “You’ll pay for this,” he said, trying—and failing—to spell me.

  “How original. You think that one up all on your lonesome?” I twisted the knife and pushed it up into his liver. His lips curled into a snarl and he reached for the medallion around his neck.

  I swatted his hand away. “I don’t think so.” I pulled the knife from his side. He slapped a hand over the wound, blood pouring between his fingers. He staggered, almost went down, but managed to lock his knees.

  “You fucking bitch,” he growled.

  I tugged the disguise charm off to let him get a load of my hair. When he saw it, his eyes went back to mine. Realization dawned.

  “Korri Marchand.”

  “Korri Marchand Kronos. You people always forget my daddy, as if my mama conceived me via miracle.”

  His laugh turned into a groan of pain. He steadied himself against the wall with a bloody palm. “Your father was a witch. Therefore, he wasn’t of any consequence. How a woman like Isolde Marchand ended up with a heathen like that, I don’t know. But you can kiss your future goodbye. I’ll see you rot in prison.”

  Instead of answering, I slapped a sticker onto his cheek. Poppy had drawn a silencer rune on it for me. It wouldn’t muffle him completely because I did so like to hear them scream, but it would keep the noise down so as not to attract the wrong kind of attention. I tucked the hexed knife—now depleted—back into the false pocket in my hoodie and started listing the witches he’d sent to jail. Then I pushed him against the wall where he sagged because he’d lost enough blood to make him weak. Without his magic, with the blood loss, he was an easy kill.

  I didn’t want him to go too easy though. He deserved to suffer for the lives he took.

  “You’re going to die tonight, Oscar King. You’re going to die hard.” I pulled a filleting knife out of its hidden sheath in my boot and knocked him back against the wall when he tried to run. “Amelie Yager. Ring a bell? You sentenced her to fifteen years because she had the audacity to hit a Lodge member when they tried stealing from her shop. You said you could not tolerate violence of any sort, but you sent her into a place where she was brutally beaten. She hasn’t gotten to see her kids for two years. They’re growing up without their mama because you are a bigoted son of a bitch.” I unbuttoned his trench, batting away his hands as he tried to stop me. I shrugged it off his shoulders, then worked on his suit jacket—so many layers—then his tie, then his vest, then his dress shirt.

  He tried real hard to keep me from undressing him, but his skin was already pale, his lips were losing color, and he was no match for me, not pumped up as I was. I wanted him to be found flayed and naked, wanted him to be disgraced, to have people wonder just what he’d done to bring himself to such a brutal death and I told him so. “Everyone will wonder why you were naked in an alley. People will wonder what you were up to and there will be nothing you can do to spin the story any other way than how I want it to go.” I dropped a condom on the ground—used—there were always used condoms on the ground in Hell’s Mudroom. I kept it in a baggie in my pocket and tried not to think of who had used it or what diseases might be crawling on it.
/>   I didn’t touch it with my bare hands and it still squicked me out.

  I took the first slice of skin while he was still sputtering about how no one would believe he’d do such things. I hated to tell him that everyone would believe it, especially his tight-assed cronies because hadn’t he been fucking someone in that secret club not ten minutes ago?

  His scream delighted me and that hungry red nature inside of me whispered, More.

  I peeled off another slice while he screamed, working around the medallion with the crystal in it, liking the way the red of his peeled flesh contrasted with the paleness of his unbroken skin. Soon, soon I’d get to the part I’d been jonesing for, the moment when he gave up, when he breathed his last, when I would drink down his death spirit and revel in its high.

  I closed my eyes and breathed deep.

  Soon.

  I could almost taste it.

  “Why are you doing this?” he choked out. “You’re a Marchand, a magus …”

  “And you’re a bastard,” Poppy said. I knew she didn’t like watching me at work, which was why I hadn’t been surprised not to hear from her once I took Oscar down, but perhaps she’d made an exception for him because of the personal connection.

  And because she was listening, I decided I would answer him, because I knew she would be listening. “Ten years ago. Remember what you were doing?”

  He frowned, looking at me as if I were crazy.

  “I’ll tell you what you were doing. You were sitting on the bench in Tertie District. And you know what my friend Poppy was doing? Spending a summer with me in the Prime District at my grandmother’s home to get away from a prick of a magus who didn’t want to take no for an answer. And when she disappeared? He got mad, the spoiled bastard. He got mad and decided to hurt her because he didn’t get what he wanted. He accused her family of consorting with demons. And because he was the son of Kennedy Klein, her family was tried and convicted for a crime they didn’t commit. You knew the evidence against them was manufactured and you chose to convict them anyways. You sentenced five people to die. A mother. A father. Three children. Children!” I took another slice of skin, peeling him slow and making him weep and scream—quietly, because of Poppy’s excellent eduicst skills. “Remember the Ballingers?”