The Scarlet Dagger Read online

  Corviticus University: Scarlet Dagger

  J.E. Cluney

  © 2021 J.E. Cluney

  All Rights Reserved

  First I’d like to thank you for purchasing this book. I hope you enjoy the story. I’d love if you could drop me a review if you do, it’d mean the world to me and it’d help me reach more readers.

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  Contents

  Glossary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Glossary

  About the Author and Other Books

  Glossary

  Arvo - afternoon

  Big W - store like walmart

  Bogan - is Australian and New Zealand slang for a person whose speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour are considered unrefined or unsophisticated.

  Bottle-o - Liquor store

  Chippy - Carpenter

  Esky - hard-cased cooler for drinks

  IGA - Grocery store

  Fortnight - two weeks

  Grog - Alcohol/booze

  Grog bog - alcohol induced defecation day after

  Grouched- get pretend cranky with

  Lounge - couch/sofa

  Nappy - diaper

  Op Shop - Second-hand store that donates money raised to causes

  Singlets - tank tops

  Skippy - Australian Kangaroo show (popular and known)

  Stubbies - bottles of beer

  Thongs - flip-flops

  Trackies - Tracksuit pants

  Verandah - Porch

  Woolies/Woolworths - Grocery store

  Ute - trayback truck

  1

  I stepped through the swirling portal, the power rippling through me and making me quiver. It was like passing through a bright galaxy and having it brush over you with insane energy. Too bad I couldn’t properly appreciate it. I pursed my lips as I found myself in the Maple Grove police station, and I gazed around the area quietly.

  “Wait here, I’ll find out what’s going on,” Lucas said as he moved off, while the male officer at the front desk gave us all a confused look.

  Surely he’d seen portals before if Mr Brady was the area Enforcer? Perhaps it was because Lucas wasn’t recognized as much.

  It didn’t help that Lucas was still wearing his pink singlet that had ‘Drama Queen’ scrawled across it in cursive, with a pair of purple board shorts. It was oddly nice to see him out of a suit for a change, not that I could enjoy that right now.

  “Here, sit,” Marcus murmured as he gently ushered me over to the vacant seats along the wall. Ollie and Skip followed, plopping down with us.

  “The scarlet dagger,” I murmured, mulling over it. It was tied to Walter’s father, and my mother wanted me to find it.

  Walter’s father was somehow alive.

  I shuddered at the thought.

  He’d been practicing necromancy, so I guessed it was no surprise. Still, it was awfully unnerving, and I bit my lip nervously as I played with my charm bracelet.

  My poor mother had hung around in the ghost realm to warn me, to do what she still could do to look out for me.

  I wished I could’ve spoken to her. I was still touched that she’d reached out, that she’d hung around.

  She’d clearly loved me more than I knew.

  Marcus slid a reassuring arm around my shoulders as I dwelled on it. At least she was moving on to be with my father now. Hopefully, wherever they were, they were happy and at peace.

  That’s all I wanted for them.

  But why did I need to find this dagger?

  “My father is collecting Claire’s parents to bring them in for questioning too. He’ll be interrogating Claire shortly. We’ll have to wait.” Lucas sighed as he returned from speaking with the officer at the front desk, who was giving us all a once-over from his seat. Lucas ran a weary hand through his hair, his diamond stud glinting in the fluorescent lighting of the station.

  The station was rather quiet, with a few officers doing paperwork or chatting by the coffee station.

  Maple Grove probably didn’t have a huge need for the station. I’d not heard of any real crimes since I’d moved in. Hell, the most I ever saw was the occasional lost pet on the Facebook community board and a few witches offering up tracking spells. Apparently, tracking something that wasn’t a supe and magical was rather easy, so most of the pets were found within twenty-four hours.

  From my seat, I could see five officers, including the one manning the front desk, who was now clicking away at his computer.

  I pulled out my phone, smiling softly at the background photo of my parents. A comforting warmth swept through me as I thought about how they had still been looking out for me.

  I flicked my gaze over to Skip, who was slouched in the uncomfortable plastic waiting chair, his arms folded as he stared hard at the noticeboard on the wall.

  Waves of guilt rolled off him, but I knew he was trying not to focus on it.

  This wasn’t his fault, and he knew that, deep down.

  ‘Please don’t blame yourself,’ I murmured into his mind as I leaned forward to look past Ollie at him.

  Skip gave me a sideways glance with a strained smile as he sighed heavily.

  ‘Easier said than done,’ he mumbled into my mind.

  I sat back, wishing there was more I could do for him, but my mind was still reeling with everything that was going in.

  We had something more pressing to deal with at this moment—a warlock who had turned his own son into a wendigo. If he was capable of that, what else could he do?

  I signed into the supernatural web, and Marcus peered down at my screen as I typed in ‘the scarlet dagger.’

  A few results came up, and I clicked the first link about ancient magical artifacts.

  I could feel all four of the guys in my mind, listening as I mentally read the text.

  The scarlet dagger was a weapon infused with powerful soul magic from a necromancer a long time ago, over half a millennium at least. The weapon was said to hold great power, although no one quite understood just what the properties of it were.

  It was locked away by the Council centuries ago for safekeeping and further study, but was lost in an internal battle of Council members with corrupt officials.

  “Wonderful,” Marcus muttered as he traced gentle circles onto my shoulder. I took comfort in the weight of his cool arm across my shoulders as I leaned into him.

  I chewed my cheek as I clicked on another article, this one written by someone who’d studied the artifact, believing it had a power over souls and spirits, but meddling with the magic within the dagger had resulted in him becoming a paralyzed vegetable, and after some tests, it was discovered his soul was lost.

  Tests on the dagger were carefully recorded and tracked after that, with only witches and warlocks allowed to research it, for fear of it affecting the souls of all others.

  ‘Doesn’t sound good,’ Ollie murmured into my mind uneasily.

  Despite all the articles, there was no inkling of where the dagger now resided, and I frowned as I tapped my foot impatiently. My chest was tightening, and I drew in a few steadying breaths to calm myself.

  What ab
out Ollie? What did Walter’s dad want with him?

  ‘That’s what I want to know too,’ Ollie admitted quietly as he played with a fraying strand off his singlet.

  “What’s Walter’s dad’s name?” Lucas asked as he pulled out his phone.

  Everyone did the same as I reached into my void, finding Walter still hanging around in there. Good, a name could help.

  ‘Joseph Murphy,’ Walter relayed before I eased back out of the void.

  I typed in his name and found a string of websites and articles relating to him.

  My stomach knotted at the various headlines like ‘Mass Murderer Kills Eighty,’ ‘Children Murdered at the Hands of Mad Warlock,’ and many more.

  This man was a true monster.

  I read through the various articles, discovering that Joseph had been branded as the ‘Death Puppeteer’ for controlling a wendigo and various animated corpses. He used a small horde of undead to overrun a town out west, killing seventy-nine people, including children, before stringing the mayor up on a flagpole, where he died a slow death. A wendigo was killing off witches and other supes as well in the area, and it was believed to be doing his bidding. The Council caught wind of it and sent out a team to put him down, although the wendigo was never found.

  There were reports of other ghastly experiments he’d been doing as well, and I felt Walter’s pain wash through my void as he learned of even more experiments.

  Some of the experiments included siphoning magic out of other supes, leading to their deaths to make him more powerful.

  He was like a wendigo in his own way, striving for more power and feeding off other supes by extracting their magic.

  ‘Wouldn’t they just become human without their magic?’ I asked my boys mentally.

  ‘No. Supes need magic to live. It’s an integral part of us, and all supes have it—our soul magic. It seems he was stealing and harnessing the very essence of souls,’ Lucas explained.

  Wonderful. This man was insane.

  It did go on to list some of his known powers and the things he’d done, including how he first cut off the town from outside support by demolishing the bridge leading into the town and putting up some horrendous warding. No one could escape with that warding in place.

  “How terrible,” I hissed, feeling for the town that had died at his hands.

  A mix of humans and supes alike. The humans he’d killed because he had an underlying belief that supes were the superior species and humankind was nothing more than food for some supes.

  I grimaced as I read that his undead army had quite literally eaten and torn apart the townsfolk.

  “Jesus,” Skip muttered as he shook his head.

  And this psycho was back. A man who’d wiped out a whole town. Sure, it was a small town, but still.

  I’d not heard of the town name either.

  Blackcreek. From what the articles said, the town had been abandoned after everything that had happened, since no one was willing to go there and restore the place.

  A cold shiver coursed through me at that, and I looked up at Lucas, who was standing before me with his arms crossed as he waited.

  He gave me a knowing look of worry.

  But he was thinking about how it was at least only a small town he’d wiped out.

  Maple Grove had a population of nearly two thousand.

  Could he do the same to our town? We were no large town, but compared to the tiny town of eighty, we were a step up.

  ‘Best not to underestimate such a man,’ Lucas growled.

  We definitely had good reason to be concerned. Hell, we should be scared.

  Joseph Murphy was not a man to be messed with.

  I sat on edge for what seemed like forever, having tucked my phone away to avoid stressing myself out even more. Not that I wasn’t doing that already. We’d sat in eerie silence, with only the sound of the few officers working away at their desks and the phones’ shrill ringing piercing the air.

  I felt Lucas’ wave of emotions when Mr Brady appeared across the room, and he headed right our way.

  I played with my charm bracelet, not having taken it off despite Ollie no longer being cursed. All the boys still wore their leather bands too, more as a symbol of their closeness.

  “You texted. What’s urgent?” Mr Brady asked in a hushed tone, weary lines marring his face. He looked rather haggard, which was extremely unusual for him.

  I wondered how the interrogating had been going. Claire had pretty much admitted to everything, and there was enough evidence for whatever was needed. Although we’d left a few officers at the cruiser when Lucas had portaled us here. Mr Brady had portaled the officers out to us.

  I wondered if they’d call him when they were done gathering all the evidence?

  Lucas informed his father of Joseph Murphy and the scarlet dagger quickly as we sat in silence. Mr Brady’s expression only grew more perplexed at the news.

  He sighed, looking rather worse for wear as he closed his eyes.

  “This is quite extreme. Joseph Murphy committed a mass killing and was a dangerous man back then. If he truly is here now, we need to hunt him down and deal with him,” Mr Brady murmured, and I could see his tired blue eyes flicking side to side as he tried to figure out a plan of action. “I’ll have everyone alerted in the station, and the Council. What else can you tell me?”

  Lucas filled him in on the psychic with the future sight ability that Walter was working with in the ghost realm.

  I just closed my eyes, a wave of fatigue hitting me.

  This was all so stressful and taxing.

  So much for a fun camping trip.

  I’d avoided death, and now we had a mass murderer on the loose.

  “Oliver needs to be protected then if this involves him. Although I’d love to know why,” Mr Brady was saying as he discussed a plan with Lucas. From the sounds of it, he was going to call upon some local witches to help him cast a wide spell in hopes of revealing the old warlock if he was still in Maple Grove.

  There was always the chance he was no longer in the area too, which Mr Brady was mulling over.

  Who would he need to alert for the entire region?

  He’d inform the Council as well, as they’d most likely send someone in to deal with him.

  I rubbed my forehead as a headache formed behind my temple. Great, just what I needed to add on to this grand disaster.

  “Makes me wonder…” Mr Brady murmured as he looked over his shoulder.

  “What?” Lucas pushed.

  “Claire has some powerful magic lingering in her, like someone cast a spell on her. She’s very disorientated and is struggling to remember everything. I’m under the impression she was influenced with magic. Powerful magic too, which would correlate with the magic of a warlock,” Mr Brady said, and my eyes shot open as the wave of fear overcame me. She could’ve been controlled?

  “But why? And how would he have known Claire was in any way linked to all of us? How much does he know?” Lucas growled, voicing my own worries. If Joseph had used magic on Claire to make her come after me, what was his end game? And how did he know about me and the guys?

  Mr Brady suggested a unit be put on us, but Lucas waved it off. He was linked to us and could portal in seconds. Although they both agreed that we all needed some protective magic cast on us.

  Mr Brady ushered us into a side room, and I trudged in, glancing over at Ollie, whose face was a mix of emotions. Why us? Why him? What did it all mean? What did Joseph want?

  We had so many questions but no answers whatsoever.

  “Lucas and I will place a protective magic on all of you. This way if magic that is not our own is used against you, it will fail. This protective magic will only stop one or two attempts though, but hopefully, it will give you the chance to call Lucas for help or get away. This is just a precaution,” Mr Brady said, trying to reassure us, but it was of little use.

  Skip was awfully quiet, and I rubbed my arms as Ollie shifted uneasily. Marcus w
as silent and still, but I knew he was thinking over it all carefully and was just as worried as the rest of us.

  None of us spoke as Lucas and his father cast magic over us, their eyes glowing with their power before it coated us. I did feel an air of safety engulf me, but it did little to relieve my worry as Lucas gave me a harrowing look. He was deeply distressed about this, and that only freaked me out more.

  “I need you to inform me of everything. Anything else Walter discovers. I will call a meeting with the witches once I’m finished here, and we will do our best to find Joseph. I will also inform the other Area Enforcers, as we don’t know if he’s on the move or not. Lucas, I could use your assistance in trying to lift the magic on Claire. I’m hoping if we can remove it, she can provide us with some answers.” Mr Brady turned to Lucas with a stony look.

  He nodded, and we all headed back out into the main area of the station, while Lucas and his father went off down a hall to the side.

  “Poor Claire,” Ollie murmured once we’d all sat back down again.

  Marcus didn’t say a word as he stared at the floor, and I knew his brain was ticking away, trying to unravel why all this was happening and what Joseph wanted with us.

  Ollie just wanted to know why he was somehow caught up in it, but he was feeling oddly sorry for the girl who’d tried to shoot me.

  If magic had influenced her or forced her, then I wasn’t going to hold it against her. Well, I’d try not to.

  Skip was still deathly quiet, and it unnerved me to see his face so masked.

  “What now?” Ollie asked as the awful silence only grew more unbearable in the station.

  “I don’t know,” I murmured. Seeing Emma was a thought, but Walter had given me whatever information he could on the scarlet dagger. My mother had said that my life was about to take a turn, that things set in motion long ago were now coming to pass, and I must find the scarlet dagger and use it.