Afterworld (The Orion Rezner Chronicles Book 1) Read Free

spell book I’d need.
    All of reality is a frequency, a vibration. Just as a frequency can manipulate water to dance radically, or vibrations can cause sand to form intricate patterns, wizards use incantations to alter, or weave, the fabric of reality.
    The secrets behind the crafting and creation of the spell books are known by few and heavily guarded. All I have yet learned is that every thirty-three years a child is born with the mark of the star behind their left ear. They are the creators of the spell books; or rather, they are the scribes with the ability to set spell to paper. Only these Children of the Star can record a spell. All attempts by others always end badly. The books I possess were written mostly by Starchild Arrulas, as he was named. He was succeeded by Starchild Maximus. The cursed life of a Starchild scribe lasts only thirty-three years, and as one dies, another is born. There are never two.
    I cast a spell on myself, one that would give me increased strength, speed, and stamina. A wave of power washed through me and I nodded at Father Killroy. He kissed his rosary and turned down the hall. With one last glance at Old Ben, I followed.
    Lit by only the dreary glow coming through the heavy curtains in the living room windows, the hall looked the part of a dark passage to hell. A picture of the Last Supper hung on the wall to my left, and I blinked in surprise when the scene turned into one from a nightmare. Apostles tore at each other with savage wrath as the picture came alive and blood flew. I didn’t have to be a religious man to find it rather twisted.
    “Never mind his feeble attempts to weaken your resolve, my son,” said Father Killroy as he came to stand before the door. I knew he said it as much to himself as to me. He too had witnessed the carnage within the painting, and his sense of blasphemy must have been great.
    “ You all right, Father? I don’t think it was so much me he was trying to shake up there.”
    Killroy looked at me and blinked with a nod, as if reining in his emotions. He laid the sign of the cross over me, the door, and finally himself. And then, to my great surprise, he leaned back, bellowing a prayer in Latin, and kicked the door in like a badass.
    I followed him into the room with a sudden pep in my step. That pep quickly turned to a quaking as I beheld the demon-possessed boy. He was sitting up in bed, staring at us and chewing on something. I followed his right hand from his mouth to the mangled body of what looked like a cat. The boy continued to stare as if not seeing us. He reached into the kitty gore and came back with a bloody treat. My stomach rebelled and threatened to spill my lunch, so I turned from the boy and focused on the spells at hand.
    Father Killroy’s booming voice helped me to focus as he attempted to verbally bitch slap the demon back to hell. I went to work with the ritual while the demon enjoyed his pussycat. I was really only here to protect the father and allow him to do his work; it was his job to send the demon on its way.
    Shrugging my cloak to the side, I took from my jacket pocket the tool with which I would form the ward of imprisonment around the bed—a black Sharpie. The demon continued to ignore us, and I gingerly climbed onto the little bed and began to draw the heptagram for my devil’s trap on the ceiling. Father Killroy seemed in a trance as he recited the long, rambling prayers that would eventually banish our foe. The whole creepy business of demon exorcism is made all the more nerve-racking by the sheer amount of time it takes to successfully remove one. I had at my disposal two spells capable of trapping it in place, but if I could successfully create a devil’s trap instead, I would be able to preserve that much more energy. In fact, just holding the demon in place with a spell could tax me to the limit quickly, depending on its strength.
    I had connected six of the seven lines in the ward when a hand grabbed my ankle. I