The Warlock's Curse Read Online Free PDF Page A

seized him by his blood-soaked hair.
    It took several strokes to hack off the warlock’s head. But as the last ragged sinew was severed, the maelstrom of magic calmed. Blood gouted from the warlock’s ruined neck; the girl who had been his voice, who had channeled his magic through her own Body collapsed—dead.
    The sudden stillness seemed even louder than the deafening thunder that had preceded it. Anson looked to where James lay on the ground—the boy was unconscious, but he was breathing. His son was alive.
    Anson Kendall lifted the severed head in his trembling hand, intending to cast it away into the darkest well of shadow he could find. Only then did he see that the warlock’s eyes were still open, glittering with moonlight and malice. And his lips were curved into a satisfied, mocking smile.
    Maledictus , the dead warlock whispered.

Part I: Waxing

Chapter One
    A Battle of Wills
    S ACRAMENTO V ALLEY , C ALIFORNIA
29 DAYS UNTIL THE FULL MOON
    W ill Edwards lay on his belly in a stand of dry grass, peering through field glasses at the old farmhouse nestled in the bowl-shaped valley. His bicycle rested where he’d dropped it, the click of its still-spinning rear wheel drowned by the susurration of cicadas. The day had been Indian-summer hot, but the sky was deepening purple and the chilled-ink shadows of late November were beginning to pool in the valley’s hollows. Soon it would be time to fire up the electric generator, to power the lights that would make the farmhouse seem the only warm place for miles beneath a cold, waning moon.
    Tonight, though, the lights would stay dark. Because Will was the only one in the family who knew how to coax the stinking old kerosene power-plant into operation. And he’d be damned if he lifted a finger to help any of them ever again.
    In fact, there was only one reason Will had staked out this observation spot at the top of the hill. It was Thanksgiving, and it was rumored that Ben might be coming home.
    Will had never really seen his brother Ben ... not that he could remember, anyway. Ben had left home before Will could even walk on two legs, and he’d never come home since, not even once. All Will knew of his brother was based on incomplete snippets of information overheard from his parents or bartered for from his older brothers. Ben had had a fight with Father. It had been a fight so bitter that he’d been sent away, far away, across the country to New York City. There he’d built a whole separate life for himself. He had studied at the famous Stanton Institute as a student. After graduation, the Institute had retained him as an employee.
    These unornamented facts did not suggest much common ground between Will and his older brother—save for one still-smoldering patch. They both thought that their father was an insufferable bastard.
    For Will had had his own fight with Father, on his eighteenth birthday, and it too was bitter enough to make him leave home (well, for three days at least—and not to New York, but rather to his buddy Pask de la Guerra’s neighboring spread a few miles over).
    On the surface, it was a fight about birthday presents. Which, when considered in such a way, sounded awful petty even to Will’s mind. But of course it was about so much more.
    He’d had no cause to complain about quantity , for Father had given him no fewer than three presents. It was the quality of these gifts that he objected to, for each one had turned out to be worse than the last. The first was mingy, the second superfluous, and the third ... well, the third one was downright intolerable .
    The mingy present was a silver dollar, almost fifty years old, a sentimental piece Father had kept on his watch chain for years. It was a nice piece of money—if one wanted to buy a steak dinner. But it was not enough for anything else. Certainly not enough for a train ticket to Detroit. Not enough to get free of this place. And Father knew it. It was nothing more than a pointed—and