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Samuel Branch
Category:
Fantasy
ISBN-10: 1481030612
Type: Fiction
Pages: 302
Copyright: Novermber 17, 2012
ISBN-13: 9781481030618
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
On orders from ancient and unimaginably powerful beings, Samuel Branch must try to stop a rising darkness.
Samuel Branch is a man capable of wielding the energy around him to devastating effect. In another time, he would have been revered and feared as a wizard. In an age of technological miracles, the world has no need of his services. When a dangerous messenger arrives with orders from the ancient and unimaginably powerful Lords and the Ladies, though, Samuel Branch has no choice but follow the trail of a rising darkness. To complicate matters, when the sister of a friend-turned-enemy goes missing, an old lover resurfaces demanding that he intervene. When it all comes down, Samuel Branch may find that a rising darkness is the least of his problems.
Excerpt
It started on a Tuesday, which is a bad day for things to start. I think it has something to do with process. Mondays and Fridays are natural breaks and that makes them good days to start things, but Tuesdays are good for working through things. In that spirit, I had spent the day purging the stray tendrils of foreign energy that accumulates on us all. Everything has energy and little bits of it shed off. Brush up against someone in line, you walk away with a bit of them and they walk away with a bit of you. Like pet hair, a little bit is harmless. Let it go for a month or year, though, and suddenly it's clogging everything and giving you respiratory problems. Most people, by which I mean normal people, can go a lifetime and never give it a second thought. All that stray energy just doesn’t impact their lives in a meaningful way. For someone who works magic, though, it can be fatal. Since I’m in no great hurry to bump up against fatal, I'm conscientious about dusting off that energetic pet hair.
So, given that it was Tuesday and I was cleansed, I thought it would be a quiet night. I mean, seriously, who expects to encounter an embodied primal force on a Tuesday? If I happened to be standing in an ancient temple that was built on a ley line, with monks chanting in background and the full moon shining down on me, during the height of the autumnal equinox, you better believe I’d expect to meet something powerful and dangerous. It just doesn't play out that way behind a coffee shop on Tuesday night. So, try to understand how deeply it annoys me that it did play out that way.
I stopped by Java Jossie's for a pick me up. I always need one before my weekly Why-I-Should-Give-Up-The-Magic-Game lecture series with Father Bradley. For reasons beyond my ken, he decided that he was going to save the sinning soul of Samuel Branch. Personally, I think there are better candidates than me, but it makes him feel better. So, I let him try to convince me that what I’m doing is wrong, but I can’t do it without a healthy dose of caffeine. Hence, my stop at the only place in a thirty mile radius to get a decent cup of coffee, at least if you listen to the caffeine aficionados. It was decorated under the rather bohemian and always in-flux sensibilities of the owner. She was a late blooming entrepreneur of a widow who had caught the enlightenment bug and liked to tell me I just had a bit of the devil in me. For the past few months, the customers had been soothed to the sounds of sitar music and presided over by small statues of Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva. Her fiercely loyal staff had seamlessly adapted to this latest fad and wore kurtas and saris, or retail approximations, as their uniforms. Evidence of previous fads were everywhere, ranging from the enormous dreamcatcher hanging from the ceiling and a pentacle mosaic set into the floor to a painting of a laughing Buddha on the wall. It wasn’t for everyone. One review referred to the décor as a life-sized tribute to existential crisis, but I liked it.
Java Jossie’s was seemingly immune to the social stratification that defined the customer base in most coffee shops. The place didn't discriminate based on age, gender, occupation or dubious status as a mortal human being. Walk in at the right time and you can find yourself in line with just about anyone. As I waited in line, I could see at least two power ties, a mohawk and a guitar case ahead of me. I laughed to myself a little as I a caught a snippet of conversation between the mohawk and one of the power ties.
“I doubt that,” said power tie.
“No, seriously man, there’s an app for that. Here, let me show you.”
So you understand just how good the coffee is at Jossie's, I had already waited in line for ten minutes to get my vanilla latte. For the record, I don't stand in line anywhere for ten minutes just to get coffee. Or ever. I’d spent more than a few hours of my life, and purchased an obscene amount of coffee, trying to work out just how they made their vanilla lattes taste that good. My current working theory was that they mixed ground vanilla beans with the coffee. My experiments at home hadn’t yielded great results yet, but I had high hopes. So, I hope you can understand the dilemma I found myself in when I finally made it to the counter and placed my order. It was just a flicker in my peripheral vision, but those things catch my attention. I turned my head enough to catch a blur of what looked like a teenage kid running past. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, a running teen just isn’t that unusual, but I got interested in a hurry when I saw Krin run past a few second later. Krin was a typical, small-time practitioner of black magic. I suppose he had a real, grownup name, but I didn't know it. People involved in the magical world get cagey about names. In the grand scheme of things, Krin had limited magical talent to go along with his limited intelligence. Unfortunately, he was also a big man and his mean streak ran a mile wide. In other words, he was more than dangerous enough to pose a threat to a teenage kid. I wavered for a split-second before I threw a ten on the counter.
“I'm coming back for that,” I yelled to the barista as I bolted out the door.
I sprinted after Krin. He disappeared around the corner. I put on a little more speed and nearly knocked an elderly couple over when I went wide around the corner. I apologized as quickly as I could, but Krin and the kid were out of sight. I took off again in the direction I had last seen Krin moving and had to double back to an alley when I heard a muffled yell. It was a rookie mistake to ignore the alley and I gave myself a mental slap to the back of the head. I stepped into the alley and I could see Krin. He had two fistfuls of shirt and was pressing the kid up against a wall. I try to be an open-minded guy, but this wasn’t my first rodeo with Krin. I’d never known the man to be on the right side of anything in the entire time I’d been aware of him. It’s hard to extend faith to someone who has no credibility.
The smell of old coffee permeated the air and I found myself simultaneously hoping and dreading that one of the Jossie’s staff would come out to put something in the dumpster. They were a socially conscious lot and would call the cops if they saw what was going on. That would give me a bargaining chip. On the other hand, Krin wasn’t above stalking, harassing and beating up people he perceived as having crossed him. I should know. He tried it with me. It ended with me giving him a short and brutal lesson in choosing your enemies, but not everyone has that as an option. I finally came down on the side of hoping no one came out while this went down.
“Krin!”
“Mind your own business, Branch.”
“You've got a kid pinned to a wall. What business do you think I'm in?”
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