Corrupted Magic is the second book in the Grimoire Society of Dark Acts series. Episode 34 is up on my Patreon—it’s pay-what-you-like—and it’ll go up three days later on Kindle Vella. Here’s an excerpt from this latest episode.
Carmichael finds something important is missing, and the black slime’s origin is worse than Dark Acts feared.
In my Patreon post, you’ll get exclusive content, including the real handwriting that inspired Grimoire Assassins’s magic book’s handwriting.
What Corrupted Magic is about:
Grimoire Society of Dark Acts’s hard-won defeat of the brutal Harpe brothers should have been a relief… But through a forced double blood-binding, Gertrude disappears right in front of their eyes. The Ruin Rats, a vicious magical street gang, is out for Dark Acts’s blood. Knox calls on the deadly gang from his past for help, but is the physical cost too high to pay? As if that’s not enough, a new corrupt form of magic is throwing the entire magical universe off balance.
Episode 34: Tortured Memories
CARMICHAEL
Carmichael awakened slowly, finding himself lying down on his left side, barely aware of the room around him—if there was one. All he saw was black.
And then he felt it. Something cold and wet on his skin.
The blackness across his vision moved.
He jolted, his whole body stiffening even as it felt terribly weak, and the substance’s slimy texture slithered like a sickening blanket over his skin, tenting him under it.
What happened? How on earth—
His miniature Grimoire. Where was it? It wasn’t in his hand anymore. Cold panic ran through his whole body. He hurriedly tried to check his pants pocket, but the slime seemed to know his thoughts and tightened against his waist, preventing him from getting to his pocket.
Carmichael lashed out against the slime, his hand formed like a claw. He felt no tear in it, saw nothing in the blackness, but a moment later, fingernails scratched down his cheek. With a loud gasp, Carmichael touched his skin and felt the wetness of blood. That substance, the one that formed into Jack… It seemed impossible, but no hand had penetrated the surface of the slime to scratch him; it had to have been the slime itself, again becoming whatever it wanted.
Carmichael rolled onto his back, the substance immediately falling down onto his chest and down his body like a thick sheet. He turned his head so his injured cheek was toward the floor, feeling that grotesque slickness on the left side of his face. That was a mistake. I had more room in here on my side than on my back.
He tried once more to check his pockets, this time successful with enough room on either side of him to get to them.
No Grimoire.
Carmichael reached out to his right, feeling for Finnegan, but found nothing but rough, hard ground. Pulling himself forward, he kept inching along until his outstretched hand found Finnegan—or what he hoped was Finnegan. Carmichael grabbed a handful of what felt like the suit jacket at the small of Finnegan’s back and yanked.
“Finnegan,” he whispered, partially paranoid about the slime hearing him.
“Finnegan,” echoed around his head, but the tone was skewed from his own. It sounded like the word was laughing at him.
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© Christie Stratos 2023