Cursed Couture

Cali looked up as I stumbled in, her brow furrowing at the urgency in my eyes. She looked exhausted, her bloodshot eyes a stark contrast to her usual confident demeanor. The garage was dimly lit, shadows playing off the walls, casting an eerie glow on the various tools and parts scattered around. The air smelled of motor oil and metal.

“Heavens, Jack. Get in here. Did you already feed?”

“Had a bit of a... lapse. But I stopped myself.”

She nodded, though her expression remained grave. She gestured for me to sit on a worn-out stool by her workbench. “While you were off lollygagging, I was up late trying to figure out how to help you. Got a book from one of my contacts.”

My stomach tightened. “You went to the Shadow Market for this, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. I’ve been going there for years. I’m a big girl, Jack. I can handle it.”

The Shadow Market was a labyrinthine world that shifted like a snake in the dark, entrances appearing and disappearing with the whims of the arcane. Only those who knew what to look for could find a way in or a way out, slipping through alleys and hidden doors. It’s where the Hexborn and Devil Kissed traded their secrets, spells, and forbidden goods. It’s also where the Midnight Council got their mail. The Market was as dangerous as it was alive—one wrong move and you were hexed, cursed, or worse.

Cali went into the back room and came back out with an ancient tome, its cover worn and faded, the leather cracked with age. The book looked like it had seen centuries of darkness, its pages yellowed and brittle. My stomach churned, not just from the sight of the book, but from the gnawing hunger that whispered Cali looked delicious—and not in the usual way.

Frank’s voice echoed in my mind, curious. Who’s this?

I sighed. This is Cali. We became friends shortly after I stuffed you away.

Introduce us.

I rolled my eyes. No. We have more important things to do.

Introduce us, Jack. Or I’m not helping anymore.

I breathed out through my teeth while Cali stared at me quizzically. Fine, Frank. But be nice. We like Cali.

“My jacket wants to meet you.”

She blinked. “Your jacket?”

Tell her my name’s Frank. With some respect, please.

“His name is Frank,” I said, trying to keep a straight face.

The jacket flapped in an invisible breeze, showing off.

Cali shook her head. “Cursed couture. Why not? When it rains, it pours.”

I explained the situation to her, summarizing the demonic binding. Cali listened, her confusion turning to resignation.

“Frank and I started working together during the War.”

She sighed. “Alright, Frank. Nice to meet you.”

Pleasure to meet you, Cali, Frank said in my mind, sounding almost smug.

Cali flipped through the pages of the massive book. “It’s a tome about the undead. It’s all written in old Abyssal, and I’ve been slowly translating it. So far, I’ve figured out two things.”

The pages she flipped through were filled with dark, twisted symbols and runes that seemed to pulse with an eerie light. Each one was like a little promise of doom.

I braced myself, sensing bad news. “Go on.”

“Eating people is bad,” she said.

I grunted, my body twitching as I tried to hold onto my sanity. The hunger chewed at my gut like a pissed-off dog, a relentless beast inside. “Well, that’s a revelation. What do I owe you for the advice, Doc?”

She rolled her eyes. “But it’s inevitable. If you don’t, you’ll go feral and lose yourself. And if you find a way to stop yourself fully, you’ll fall apart.”

“So, what’s the bad news?”

“Here’s the catch-22. The more you eat, the faster your hunger will grow. You’ll need to eat sooner and sooner after each... ‘meal’. Until it reaches a breaking point where you simply can’t catch up with the hunger. This is really a bad deal, Jack.”

“Probably should have stayed dead,” I muttered.

She grimaced. “Don’t say that.”

My heart sank. “So what do we do?”

“There are some things we can do to slow the process.” She pointed to a passage in the book, her finger tracing over the ancient, cracked leather. The page was filled with dark, twisted symbols. “Turns out health potions don’t work the same for you as they do for the living, but they aren’t totally worthless. They have a key ingredient that can help—black root. We need that. And a lot of it. I bought up all I could get my hands on this morning.”

She shoved a large cup of blue-black tar into my face. I noticed the piles surrounded by other dishes and a mess. It looked like a mad scientist had a field day here. The concoction hummed with a faint blue glow as she handed it to me.

“This will calm the hunger. Takes the edge off. But you’re going to need to drink this regularly.”

I stared at her, feeling the hunger clawing at my insides, more beast than craving. I drank it. It tasted awful, which was a surprise, as nothing had been tasting like much of anything lately. But I felt pressure easing off, and my mind stopped spinning.

Humanity Stabilized at 10%

System Integrity: 40%

She stared at me, tension radiating off her like a live wire. I let the silence stretch out, feeling my senses return. I allowed another beat to pass before I snarled and made my eyes go wild.

She jumped back, yanking out a gun from who-knows-where, and pointed it right at my face. Her eyes were glossy with tears, but her hands were steady.

I threw up my hands, laughing despite myself. “I’m sorry! It worked, okay? I feel better!”

She narrowed her eyes, keeping the gun trained on me, clearly weighing whether or not to put a hole in my head. Finally, she lowered the weapon. As I started to breathe again, her fist came out of nowhere and clocked me in the jaw.

“Don’t you ever pull that crap again!”

I was on the floor, holding my jaw, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Alright, alright. Bad timing. It won’t happen again.”

You’re a bad person, Jack.

I snorted, rubbing my sore face. Calling the cauldron black, Frank.

She drew in a breath, squared her shoulders, and set down her gun—close enough to grab if needed. “Just drink your sludge and shut up, Jack.”

We sat in silence for a long moment. She flipped through the tome, each turn of the page revealing more cryptic text and illustrations of arcane rituals.

“And then there’s this,” she said, her voice low. “A line about Nightstone. Says it needs to be taken in—absorbed. Can help stave off the change.”

I nodded. Infernum may have kept the lights on, but Nightstone—Nightstone was the city’s dark heart. Thick as molasses and twice as treacherous.

“Tell me, Cali,” I said, a wry smile tugging at my lips, “should I plug myself into a battery or suck on an exhaust pipe?”

“Neither,” she retorted, her tone cool. “That wouldn’t even slow your decay. You need the raw stuff—unfiltered, unprocessed.”

When I thought of Nightstone, I pictured what most people did—the oily sludge that dripped slow and heavy into the tray before it was bled into an engine. The process was filthy, and the stench clung to you like a guilty conscience, but it was the only way to keep a car running. The exhaust spewed rift soot into the air—a dark stain that coated everything it touched. You could always spot the drivers by the grime under their nails and the cough that never quite left their lungs.

But what we were dealing with here wasn’t the usual sludge—it was the raw stuff, glassy and dangerous. When Infernum was compressed too long and too tight, it hardened into a black, reflective stone. This pure form of Nightstone was volatile, a concentrated force that didn’t just power a car—it could tear one apart. And after it was burned out, the charred remains got repurposed into Shadefire coal, another form of controlled destruction.

That’s why I smoked—it soothed the lungs and gave me the illusion of control over the chaos. I grabbed a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep pull. But there was no relief, not even the familiar taste of ash in my mouth. The smoke curled lazily.

“Great. So where the hell do we find raw Nightstone?”

She gave me a wry smile. “Where the city bleeds.”

I stared at her, deadpan. “You don’t cross rifts on the best of days, let alone the worst, and now you’re telling me to walk straight into one?”

“I’m telling you to stay alive—and to avoid going berserk in some quiet town full of grandmas.”

“Never trust a sweet old lady,” I muttered.

Cali sighed, exasperated. “You’re edging closer to full undead, Jack. Sooner or later, there won’t be enough of you left to crack jokes.”

She drew in a slow breath, steadying herself before pressing on. “Here, on our side of the rift, the dead are supposed to stay dead. But the Otherworld? It’s more accommodating to your new... constitution. You know how Full Bloods lose their minds when they step through a rift?”

“It’s the only thing that keeps the Demon Elders out,” I said.

“You’re in a similar boat now. The more you feed on humans, the closer you get to becoming ‘full blood,’ so to speak. But things from the Otherworld might, theoretically, slow that down. Buy us some time to figure this out.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure about this?”

She gave me a withering look. “Satan’s tits, Jack, of course I’m not sure. I got this book from a sketchy vampire in a dark alley at the Shadow Market. This isn’t exactly my area of expertise. Be glad I took a year of Abyssal in college.”

“Okay, Cali, I get it. So, let’s say we get the Nightstone, then what?”

“Then you find somebody who knows what they’re doing. There’s a lot here that doesn’t translate, Jack. Look at this.”

Cali was right. I expected too much from her—always had. She was the one thing I had left in this world I could rely on. She was a mechanic, not some Necrohacker or Caster. And honestly, thank the gods for that.

True Casters, like Pyromancers or Shadow Weavers, were rare as hell. The Hexborn had demon bloodlines, awakened by the Rift. The Devil Kissed sold their souls for power. But Casters? They pulled it straight from the source. No shortcuts, no deals. Most died trying. The few that survived? Well, they became insufferable. It took a special kind of stupid—or raw hunger for power—to let that stuff flow through you.

Gods, I was a hypocrite. What did that make me, anyway? Half-undead, half-cyborg. Damn near a walking contradiction. Hells.

She showed me the strange symbols bracketing the lines she’d read. “There’s no translation. Nothing in any of the books I’ve got. We’re in uncharted territory, Jack.”

I glanced at them, and a sudden twinge of anxiety rippled through Frank. “I might be able to help,” I said.

Cali raised an eyebrow. “You studied ancient Abyssal?”

“No,” I replied, “but I know someone who did.”

I focused on the symbols, bringing Frank closer to the book. The ancient script twisted and turned, a dark, tangled language that seemed to writhe on the page. Frank went quiet for a moment, digging through the fragments of his memory.

He’d lost most of the important stuff when his skin was tanned and turned into a leather jacket, or so he says. You can never fully trust a demon, even one as... altered as Frank. But having him around had its perks. The only reason he hadn’t gone mad, as far as we could tell, was because he was already dead—a ghost trapped in his own skin. Creeps me out thinking about it.

Let me use your eyes. Frank’s voice whispered in my mind.

I relaxed, allowing the connection. My vision blurred for a second before snapping into sharp focus as Frank took control. My eyes darted over the page, following the twists and curves of the script.

Old Tongue, he said. Lower demon caste notations added later. That symbol at the start? It’s a warning. Says the information is from a dubious source. The one at the end? Tells you not to get your hopes up. Means the text might not mean what it seems to.

My vision snapped back to normal, but a pounding headache hit right after. I hated doing that—it felt like unleashing leeches in my brain. I gritted my teeth and relayed Frank’s interpretation to Cali.

She studied me for a moment, skeptical. “Frank told you all that?”

“He has his uses,” I replied.

Unlike you, Jack, I’m not just a tool.

Cali smirked. “If that’s true, it says a lot about the demon caste system. Demons with warning labels? How considerate.”

Not all of us are out to destroy, Frank interjected, demanding that I relay for him.

Ever been to the rougher parts of town? Yes, they’re dangerous, but you will also find some of the kindest people—because they have to be. It’s like sharing a lifeboat in a storm.

“He’s got a point,” I added. “There’s a weird bond in the worst places, an unspoken rule of survival.”

The Abyss beyond the Rift isn’t merely chaos. It has rules—a code. Even the damned look out for each other.

“A language built on survival,” she mused.

Precisely.

“Well, that’s comforting,” I added.

Jack, you know who we need to see about this.

“No way. I’m already too deep in her debt as it is.”

Even if we get the Nightstone, we’ll need someone who knows how to distill it properly.

“Not happening, Frank. We don’t even know if Mildred will help us or gut us. She’s not exactly my biggest fan.”

But she tolerates me, Frank insisted.

Cali watched me argue with Frank, who, as always, was only in my head. She didn’t hear his voice, but by now, she knew the drill.

“I hate to say it, but Frank’s right,” Cali said, breaking the silence. “She’s the best option you’ve got.”

“Mildred always gives me the creeps,” I grumbled.

Cali stepped back, a determined glint in her eyes. “Then it’s settled.” She tossed me a few bottles of her tar concoction. “It’s the best lead we’ve got, and we need that Nightstone, Jack. Sooner rather than later.”

I slipped some cash into her hands, more than half of what I earned from the Aylin gig. She tried to push it back, but I insisted. I was starting to think I got underpaid.

Out back, my car waited in the second garage—a ’55 Chevrolet Bel Air that had weathered the years with a quiet dignity. The once-shiny black paint now bore the scars of a life well-lived, the patchwork of dents and scratches a testament to countless close calls. Cali did a hell of a job fixing it up. Despite the wear, the curves and lines of its body still held a timeless elegance, a reminder of a world that hadn’t completely gone to hell.

As I approached, the scent of aged leather and old rift soot greeted me, stirring something deep within. The car’s red seats were lovingly maintained. The dashboard, a mix of chrome and polished wood, featured an array of analog gauges and dials.

We stocked up the car with a day’s worth of the gunk.

“It’s all I’ve got,” she said. “Whenever you start to get peckish, drink up.”

“Thanks, Cali. I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one,” she retorted, her tone light despite the tension.

I slid into my car, the engine’s purr a comforting sound amid the chaos. As I pulled away from the garage, Frank’s voice coiled around my brain.

She really cares about you, you know.

Yeah, I know, I replied, feeling a pang of guilt. But I can’t drag her into this any more than she already is.

The hunger pummeled my guts like a pack of sugar-jacked kids swinging at a piñata—except the piñata was me, and the candy was long gone. But Cali’s brew took the edge off, letting me think through the pain.

I felt like a model on a Hollywood diet, sipping lemon water to stave off the pangs.

Things were going to get a lot worse before they got any better.

“You even filled up the tank,” I muttered, gratitude washing over me.

Tires squealed as I pulled away from the curb, leaving the garage behind in the harsh midday sun. The Bel Air glided over the asphalt, its engine growling with power. The city blurred into streaks of color as I sped through the streets.

The wind whipped through the open windows.

I needed a weapon. Time to visit the Shop.