The North Valley Grimoire Read online

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE - IMPOSSIBLE THINGS

  Prologue

  1. Note Ninja

  2. Protocols

  3. Pipe Bombs & Pom-Poms

  4. From the Ashes

  5. Imprisoned

  6. War Crimes

  7. Words for Elves

  8. Schism

  9. Mendacity

  PART TWO - OFF WITH YOUR PAST

  10. Cosmic Guillotine

  11. Method to Madness

  12. Fool’s Errand

  13. Control Room

  14. Brush Pass

  15. Keeping Friends Close

  16. Nonversation

  17. Cure for Obsession

  18. Game Changer

  19. ‘Tis the Season

  20. Absence of World

  21. Hard Stop

  22. Best Laid Plans

  23. Glittering Lure

  24. Just Desserts

  25. Where There’s Smoke

  PART THREE - WORLD BREAKER

  26. Tipping Point

  27. Compartmentalizing

  28. Greater the Triumph

  29. Storm of Fire

  30. Bridging Gaps

  31. Fortune Favors

  Epilogue

  By Blake Northcott

  with Sean R. Dyer

  Cover art by Roc Upchurch

  Thanks to Jeff Geddes, Rose Wheeler & Sean Molloy.

  Thanks to Imgur.com, and to every single Imgurian. I appreciate your love and support more than you know.

  Special thanks to each and every Kickstarter and Indiegogo backer for bringing this story to life. Without you, this book would have never been possible, and for that I am eternally grateful. You’re amazing.

  And to everyone who doubted me: suck it.

  You’re dead to me.

  Hugs & Kisses for Cassie Rayne and Cayden James.

  This is for you.

  Amazon Kindle v 1.13; 1/04/2019

  The North Valley Grimoire™ is © 2018-2019

  Blake Northcott and Digital Vanguard, Inc.

  (Ontario, Canada)

  TheNorthValleyGrimoire.com

  BlakeNorthcott.com

  I don’t lose sleep over climate change, pandemics, or the threat of nuclear war. We won’t last long enough for anything so quaint to finish us off.

  I’m convinced that when the Earth is reduced to a plume of vapor, it’ll be after some tourist stumbles across the wrong spell, and mumbles a few words of Medieval Latin.

  – A passage no one has ever read in the Auckland Grimoire

  Prologue

  THE RELENTLESS ELECTRONIC thumping of dubstep music was good for exactly two things: blocking out background noise, and focusing a Scrivener’s mind during spell crafting. If it had any other uses, Jackson Carter had yet to find them.

  It was a balmy October evening in North Valley, Virginia, which wasn’t a location synonymous with magick. Luckily, medieval castles weren’t a prerequisite for invoking the mystical; a two-story colonial in the suburbs worked just as well. And Jackson—a square-jawed high school quarterback with biceps carved from granite—wasn’t the prototypical magician, at least from an aesthetic standpoint. But that’s the way he liked it.

  Crouched over a drawing table with his ears encased in noise-canceling headphones, he sketched out the final details of his ritual. From the placement of the candles to the runes facing Magnetic North, everything had to be precise. Magick was a delicate latticework of art and science; the more advanced the spell, the more precision was required. One mispronounced syllable or carelessly-drawn sigil could turn a simple pillow levitation into a cottony fireball rocketing across your bedroom.

  Magick was designed that way for a reason, he’d always assumed. If it were easy, every assclown who stumbled across a spell on the internet would be casting and enchanting, reducing the world to a lawless mystical war zone. Not to mention that public displays of occultism would be especially shocking to the billions who had no clue that magick even existed.

  Thankfully, the barrier for entry was a lot more than Wi-Fi and a Sharpie. Magick required study, and focus, and endless hours of meditation … or at least it did, up until The Incident.

  The number of magickal adepts had skyrocketed in the year and a half since The Incident. Sparsely-trafficked dark web forums (the only places where Scriveners dared to converse online) were swamped with newcomers. Most were brooding teens, dipping their toes into the occult out of boredom, oblivious to the potential for real-life spellcasting they’d stumbled across. They were irritating, but harmless.

  Worse were the morons who knew just enough to get themselves into trouble, but lacked the competence to become anything more than dangerous amateurs. Some posted videos of low-level enchantments that were laughed off as hoaxes, but threatened to expose serious practitioners who were less-than-enthusiastic about the population at large getting a glimpse behind the curtain.

  Noobs relentlessly spammed the regulars, offering cryptocurrency in exchange for amulets, and begging for the formulas of exotic hexes. The ones with a sliver of potential actually knew what to ask for, but the tragically clueless could be spotted from space. Anyone using Dungeons & Dragons jargon was a dead giveaway, especially if they mentioned a wand; little wooden sticks were Hollywood props, no more necessary than a bubbling cauldron or a midnight-black cat (Jackson did happen to own a midnight-black cat, but that was purely coincidental).

  As tourists crowded the boards, regulars disappeared. Jackson guessed they’d deleted their profiles for fear of being discovered, which was always a concern for legitimate practitioners. He tried to keep in touch with a handful of contacts, but his messages were met with radio silence.

  That was the hardest part of being a Scrivener: isolation. Having no one to share magick with made it less tangible, somehow. Less real. When Jackson wasn’t cloistered away behind his padlocked bedroom door he’d scan crowds of people, wondering who else might be secretly practicing the arts. He’d noticed a growing trend towards long-sleeved clothing during the sweltering summer months—a possible indication. Carrying around a Sharpie was another red flag, although that might’ve been his paranoia; a marker in the hand of a Scrivener was like a broadsword to a knight, or a rifle to a sharpshooter.

  Or, when brute force wasn’t the objective, a baton to an orchestra conductor.

  He stole a quick glance at his phone. It was nearly six, and it was a Thursday, which meant a large Hawaiian pizza would be arriving at his doorstep momentarily. He drew a pair of interlocking stars at the bottom of his page and encompassed them with a circle. When the loop closed his page shuddered, in danger of being carried off by a spectral wind. It clung to his drawing board by a few lengths of masking tape.

  A smile crept across his face. This is it, he thought, or at least as close to ‘it’ as he’d come so far. The mechanics were solid and the architecture checked out, but his ingredient list needed some fine-tuning. He knew the universe wasn’t going to let him pull off a ritual of this magnitude without some major bartering, but he couldn’t find a replacement for one thing: blood. His ritual demanded a lot of it, and from very specific people.

  There were spells even Magnus level Scriveners shied away from: physics-warping whammies that picked at the fabric of reality like a stubborn scab, threatening to open a wound too deep to mend. Going back to the earliest texts, blood was always the key, but calling on that type of power came with penalties. Things didn’t have to be that way. With a little more time, he could make the ritual work without archaic shortcuts.

  Jackson ripped the page from his drawing board and fed it through the shredder by his feet. It chewed the ritual i
nto confetti with a satisfying hum. He’d been so distracted by his work that a backlog of notes and photos had accumulated on the corkboard above his desk. After dinner there was a lot more shredding to do. He tore a fresh sheet from his pad and was in the process of taping it in place when a blast rang out.

  The hardwood quaked beneath his feet. His window rattled against the sill.

  Another blast followed.

  Jackson spun in his chair and ripped off his earphones, letting them clatter to the floor. It sounded like thunder—but did it come from inside the house?

  He raced to his window and threw open the curtains, peering down the darkened boulevard. Not a drop of rain; crisp white stars dappled a cloudless sky.

  Something caught his eye below. His cat blitzed across the lawn, disappearing into the shadows beneath a pine. A rectangle of light cut across the porch, spilling onto the walkway.

  The front door was open.

  “Mom?” he called nervously through his locked bedroom door. “Dad …?”

  Then a scream rang out. It sounded vaguely like his father, but Jackson couldn’t be certain. He’d never heard his father scream like that. He’d never heard anyone scream like that—shattering and raw, like it was the last noise they’d ever make.

  Something crashed up the staircase.

  Jackson’s door spiraled off its hinges, and the thing that smashed it down slid through the splintered frame. It was a disembodied mass of tentacles, shuddering and convulsing, polluting the room with an acrid stench. It moved like death.

  Without thinking he lunged for his desk, snatched up a pen, scribbled a message, and finished it off with a sigil—two interlocking stars encompassed by a circle. He had barely enough time to intersect the lines.

  Tendrils darted from everywhere and nowhere, lashing out from the shadows, consuming his field of vision.

  Trying to steady his trembling hands, he drew a different sigil on his palm. If he’d been faster—just a heartbeat, just a fraction of a second—he might have blasted this nightmare with a column of flame, incinerating it on the spot. A tendril snared his wrist. Another circled his throat, choking off the word he was about to incant.

  As darkness swarmed in and his breathing slowed, Jackson’s fear gave way to regret.

  All his research, everything he’d learned … he was so close.

  He just hoped he’d left her enough to work with.

  Magick has remained a secret for thousands of years because, aside from myths and legends, its existence was impossible to document. But stone tablets and campfire stories have been replaced with online forums and camera phones.

  Someone has to be keeping all of this under wraps. It can’t be an easy job.

  – Passage in the North Valley Grimoire

  1. Note Ninja

  WHEN MRS. WALTON had finally shut up long enough to turn, pop the cap on her dry erase marker and start jotting notes on the white board, Calista made her move. A flick of her wrist sent the fold of paper sailing across the aisle like a shuriken, spinning to a stop in the middle of Kaz’s textbook. She was practically a black belt in clandestinely passing messages during a lecture, or as she’d dubbed herself, ‘a certified note ninja’.

  Kaz clapped his hands over the contraband and scanned the room, terrified one of the other students had spotted the flying stationery. As if anyone cared. The ass-kissers in the front row were riveted by Walton’s latest poli-sci rant, and everyone else was doodling or staring listlessly at the clock.

  Prior to writing the note, Calista had been awash in a daydream of her own. Her eyes wandered the soaring Gothic windows that dominated the classroom wall, stretching towards the ceiling in dramatic arches, topped with intricate tracery. The late morning sunlight lanced the dividers and painted her desk with fiery snowflakes. Then her gaze panned down to the football field: a riding mower sheared the grass with surgical precision, patterning the turf with alternating light and dark stripes; groundskeepers bagged every errant leaf that littered the area; and Coach Martinez paced the sidelines, warming his lungs for the big game by shouting at the maintenance crew with fist-shaking intensity.

  Kaz propped up his textbook as a shield and unfolded the message. WTF IS UP WITH JACKSON?! was printed in angry block letters.

  Of the twenty available seats—four evenly spaced rows in a room that could have comfortably fit sixty—exactly one of them was vacant. And it shouldn’t have been. Not on game day.

  And yet.

  Kaz added to the conversation and tossed the note back. It stopped mid-aisle and hovered like an autumn leaf before fluttering to her feet. His attempt at note ninjutsu was pathetic, lacking in both form and follow-through.

  Mrs. Walton spun back around to address the class. “Though terrorism has long been a part of the global landscape, recent events have forced many nations to enact heightened security measures. In America, our President took the initiative to …”

  Calista stomped on the fallen note with a tiny clop, concealing it beneath the sole of her combat boot. When Walton returned to the board, she scooped up the message and flattened it on her desk.

  Maybe he’s sick. Didn’t you see him yesterday after school?

  His penmanship was sublimely calligraphic, as if this scrap of paper would be archived for future generations.

  She scrawled a quick reply.

  I WAS UNDER LOCK AND KEY. KILLER ON THE LOOSE AND ALL.

  “And then,” Mrs. Walton continued, circling behind her small wooden desk, “came the tipping point: Gravenhurst. As you all know, a small town was irradiated when a chemical weapon detonated in rural Arizona, taking four thousand lives.” She ran a bony finger across her tablet, illuminating the classroom’s projector. A map of the world winked onto the board with the countries outlined in blue. Glowing red waypoints dotted the map where attacks had taken place, and a bio-hazard symbol plastered a swath of northeastern Arizona.

  Kaz returned the note, this time without embarrassing himself as much as he had during his previous attempt. At least it landed in her lap.

  Do you want to dip out of the pep rally and swing by his house?

  Walton continued. “As a result of that horrific event, the government had no recourse but to extend its purview in terms of data collection, both domestically—” Suddenly, she stopped. The class turned towards the back row, following her line of sight.

  Calista was in mid-toss, arm extended. She jerked the note back and tucked it under her textbook as discreetly as possible, but was a heartbeat too late. Apparently the note ninja needed to log a few more hours in the dojo.

  “Miss Scott?” Walton said, straightening her posture. “Is there something you’d like to add to our conversation? Some wisdom you’d like to impart on the entire class, not just Mister Hayashi?” She was tall and lean, nearly gaunt, and her blouse hung from her skeletal frame like the mast on a ship, fabric billowing with the slightest gesture. Her silver-grey hair was pulled into an impossibly tight bun.

  Calista cleared her throat. “I was wondering why it’s so great that the government reads our Emails and records our calls. It seems like you’re saying it’s fair to trade a lot of privacy for a little security.”

  The teacher clacked the lid on her marker. “Judging by your grades I realize the concept of academia must seem strange and unusual, but would you care to elaborate?”

  The remark elicited a smattering of giggles. Calista couldn’t tell who was laughing and who wasn’t, though it didn’t matter—the class full of carbon copies were virtually interchangeable: the same school uniforms, same patent leather shoes, same laser-whitened teeth. She’d often joked with Kaz that body snatchers had invaded North Valley; alien parasites who’d engineered a town full of over-privileged socialites. Being the two remaining outcasts, they’d surely be next (though if she was going to be assimilated, she hoped a trust fund and a BMW would be part of the pod people package—the only noticeable upsides of being a vapid cardboard cut-out).

  Calista motioned
to the projection. “We hear things like, ‘we’re only collecting data from the bad guys’, but how do we know they’re telling the truth? For all we know there’s a room full of people at The Pentagon going through our selfies and peeping through our webcams.”

  In her peripheral, Calista noticed Kaz pretending to follow along with the textbook, despite the fact that the lecture had ground to a screeching halt. The rest of the class had turned their attention to this impromptu debate, eyes darting between teacher and student like they were following the ball at a tennis match.

  It was Walton’s serve. “Miss Scott, while your conspiracy theories are fascinating, perhaps you can save them for creative writing class?”

  The room tittered again, this time a little louder. Calista felt the heat rise in her pale cheeks. She hoped her mane of unkempt platinum locks at least partially obscured the redness.

  “My curriculum is based on historical events,” Walton continued, perching on the edge of her desk, “facts that shape modern-day policies. I teach political science, not science-fiction.”

  “Where are these facts even coming from?” Calista fired back, a little more defensively than she’d intended. “We assume spying is necessary because lying politicians tell us so, but they never give us concrete information. They use the word ‘terrorism’, but don’t tell us who the terrorists are—or why they targeted a town in the middle of nowhere. How do we know what this threat actually is?”

  Walton pursed her thin lips and scanned the room. “Perhaps someone can assist Miss Scott?”

  A statuesque girl with sparkling green eyes and a dark ponytail bolted upright in her seat, jutting a palm overhead.

  The teacher pointed her marker with a flourish, as if she were making a royal decree. “Yes, Miss Covington. Please enlighten us.”

  If body snatchers had invaded North Valley, Whitney Covington would undoubtedly be their queen. She sat in the front row at the far left corner—closest to Walton’s desk, in perfect ass-kissing proximity. She turned to address the room. “We don’t know what the threat is, and that’s the problem. If they’d been collecting data prior to Gravenhurst, maybe the attack could have been prevented. As a nation, shouldn’t we take every precaution to keep ourselves safe? I just don’t see the big deal. Innocent people should have nothing to hide.” She delivered her answer in a tone typically reserved for weather reports and beauty pageant speeches.