Cursed: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 1) (11 page)

As I tightened my grip on her neck, hellish light spilled from my tattoos, and just like that, her healing stopped. A surge of energy rushed through me, bringing with it the scent of pine forest and brisk nights. I wasn’t quite sure how, but I was somehow directing her energy into me. My heart hammered excitedly as her eyes went wide in sudden fear. I shot her my biggest grin, and a shudder shook her bleeding body.

“See, I’m tired of doing things all crazy. You people helped them take Sera,” I said, lifting Loraine into the air and marching her toward the big window along the left wall. “That is not allowed.”

With an almost absent effort, I put a round in the glass. The sound of it shattering filled me with a sense of triumph, but the look on the werewolf’s face when I held her outside the window by her throat was positively priceless. It told me one thing. She hadn’t expected this. Good, neither would her alpha. Now, it was time to kick things up a notch. “Tell me where to find these Stars and Moons clowns, or I’m going to drop your second.”

“I’m surprised you knew I was here,” said a low, silky voice from just to my left. I didn’t even bother to look in her direction. It wasn’t like she could do anything to me before I flung Loraine out the window. Best case scenario right now was me joining the girl on the way down. Somehow, I was pretty sure Loraine couldn’t survive such a fall.

Loraine gasped, trying to say words that bubbled out of her mouth. It was a little surprising because I didn’t normally expect people with holes in their faces to talk, but hey, first time for everything.

“I’m going to guess this is where you threaten me. Well, I know a thing or two about healing, and while I’m not sure if your friend will survive the fall, I’m pretty sure if she does, she won’t enjoy the sudden stop at the bottom of twenty or so stories.” I relaxed my grip, allowing Loraine to slowly slip from my fingers. “But she is heavy, so I hope you’ll just hurry up and tell me.”

“Your friend is a dead man,” the woman to my left growled, and this time I gave her a quick once over. She looked no more than seventeen with short red hair, freckles, and a body that screamed “I’m just one of the guys.” Her white teeth were marred by braces with flecks of gunk sticking to them, but the snarl on her lips nearly made me want to go run and hide.

“Time’s a wasting.” I gestured at her with the gun. “Tick fucking tock.”

“You’re going to regret this,” the redhead said, taking a menacing step toward me. Her eyes absolutely filled with amber so it was like she was staring at me with a pair of solid-colored marbles.

I let go of Loraine, and she fell a few inches before I grabbed her by her stupid blonde ponytail. “Whoops. Guess she was slipperier than I thought. Still, I wonder how long her hair can support her weight. Give me Sera’s location, and we won’t have to find out.”

“Ricky, you should just do as he says. He’s a Cursed. You know what they’re like,” Jack pleaded, and his eyes were full of worry. I wondered if he thought we’d get out of this alive. I was giving us fifty, fifty odds.

“Go ahead, drop her. If you do, you’ll have zero leverage—” I cut Ricky off by putting another round into Loraine’s chest, spraying her insides out across the expanse of air.

“What was that?” I asked, tapping my ear with the Beretta. “I must have missed the part where you told me where to find Sera’s captor.”

Ricky snarled and bunched her hands into fists so tightly I could see blood dripping from her palms. Thought flashed through her eyes as she presumably weighed her options.

“Okay,” she said, slowly relaxing her fists before telling us an address. Watching the calm ripple over her features and settle there was one of the most unnerving things I’d ever seen.

“Do you know where that is, Jack?” I asked. When the vampire nodded to me, I let out a sigh of relief. “Good. Get the elevator will you?”

Jack did as he was told and hit the button beside the elevator without a word. Ricky continued to stare at me with flat, empty eyes and edged a hair closer, no doubt about to spring at me. Her movement made me wonder if she had expected me to see it. I was as good as dead in her mind, so it could have gone either way. That was fine. I could live with her wanting to kill me.

“So what’s your play now, Cursed?” Jack asked as the elevator behind him opened, and he stepped inside, keeping one foot out to block the door from closing. Well, that was nice of him. Part of me wondered if he’d just leave me here to die. I really hoped not because after we rescued Sera, I had another mother and son to save.

“We go get Sera,” I replied and dropped Loraine. The next few moments were sort of a blur as Ricky dove for the falling girl while I leapt for the elevator. Her hands grasped empty air as she hit the ground on her chest and slid half out the shattered window frame. She turned, rage painting her face into a gruesome mask as the elevator doors closed, and we lurched downward.

Chapter 13

“So that happened,” Jack said as our elevator rocketed downward like an express straight to Hell. “Your mother never really taught you how to converse with people, did she?”

“Is this where you tell me you were excited to walk into a dark hallway in a wolf’s den?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I reloaded the Beretta with the extra 9mm rounds I’d pocketed from the downed cultists. It wasn’t as many as I’d have liked. “Let’s be real here. They weren’t going to tell us squat. They were going to lead us into a nice dark room, probably with cement floors for easy cleaning and quietly kill us before dumping our bodies in a dumpster.”

“You give them too much credit. They’d have totally eaten us. Well, not us, but you for sure.” Jack’s lips curled into an amused smile as he reached under his shirt and pulled out a revolver with a four inch barrel and eyed it to make sure it was filled with cartridges. “They don’t much like the taste of vampire meat. We taste too much like garlic evidently.”

Before I could digest his words, the elevator dinged. We’d reached the lobby in record time. I spun my gaze toward the already opening elevator doors. A hand wreathed in thick fur the color of chocolate burst through the opening and gripped me by the lapels of my trench coat.

My face was slammed into the metal doors with enough force to shatter my nose and make my vision go twelve kinds of blurry. I wasn’t sure how I managed to raise the Beretta, but I did, pointing the barrel through the crack in the still opening doors and firing as quickly as I could. The explosion of sound within the tiny elevator splintered my hearing into irreparable shards.

The Beretta clicked, signaling I’d run out of shots as the hand gripping me loosened a fraction before slamming me back into the doors. Thankfully, they’d opened wide enough for my nose to miss the metal, but my shoulders weren’t so lucky. I was torn free of the elevator, my bones screaming in pain as they impacted the slowly widening doors.

A ten foot tall nightmare of fur and teeth glared at me with cold amber eyes. Froth dripped from its jaws as it hoisted me into the air like I weighed less than a deflated balloon. Hot, fetid breath sprayed across my face as the creature spun on its heel and flung me like a rag doll. I slammed into the empty receptionist’s desk with a crack that made stars flash across my eyes.

The room swam as I put my left hand against the cool white tile and tried to hoist myself to my feet. I’d scarcely managed to move in the time it took the werewolf to cross the thirty-foot distance and wrap his large, clawed hands around my throat. The half-man, half-wolf lifted me into the air, cutting off my air supply as my feet dangled uselessly in the air.

The crack of gunshots exploded across the huge lobby, and a spray of steaming blood hit me in the face. It was hotter than I’d expected, and I tried to scream as it scalded my flesh. Unfortunately, I couldn’t breathe enough to make more than a peep. My lungs ached from the lack of oxygen as another shot took the creature in the same spot, and this time the hold loosened enough for air to rush into my throat like a freight train made of fire and razor blades. It burned all the way down, but the dimness in my vision was held at bay enough for me to lift my empty Beretta and put the barrel against the chest of the wolf.

“What do you plan on doing with an empty gun?” the creature asked, voice a strange mix of barks and rage as it spun in one slow circle so my body was between it and Jack. The vampire stood just in front of the elevator, hastily reloading his revolver. Two werewolves lay on their backs on either side of him, their heads split open by gunshots. Even still, they crawled toward him like broken cockroaches. He had maybe ten seconds before they were on him, good as new.

“I plan on shooting you with it,” I squawked, unsure how I managed to make words come out of my mouth. Admittedly, I knew it wasn’t much of a plan since the gun was out of bullets, but I was really hoping I could use my demon powers to make it shoot hellfire at him or something.

The werewolf’s mouth opened to reveal a mouthful of shark-like teeth, and its tongue snaked outward. It scraped against my cheek with that same scratchy texture I associated with a cat’s tongue. A shiver ran down my back as my left hand fell uselessly to my side.

“You taste like arrogance,” the wolf replied, cocking its head to the side before flinging me across the room. I smashed into the big window at the front of the building. Like any good glass window, this one shattered under the impact of my body. Razor sharp glass shards rained down on me as I flew outside. While my trench coat thankfully kept most of the glass from slicing me open, my face and hands weren’t so lucky. I hit the sidewalk in a bloody heap, bounced once, and rolled into the street next to a black Toyota Camry that had been smashed flat by a falling body. A gob of warm, sticky blood dripped off the broken car and spattered against my forehead.

I squinted my eyes, trying to block out the blinding sunlight as the werewolf bounded through the broken window and landed lithely next to me. It sauntered toward me, claws clicking on the cement like it was one of those raptors from Jurassic Park with each step. It grabbed me by the lapels, hoisting me back into the air as my hands fell uselessly to my sides.

My eyes shot open to see the creature staring past me at Loraine’s body. A look of hatred rippled across its features as I tried desperately to raise the Beretta once again. Before I made it halfway, my arm gave out and fell limply to my side, the Beretta all but slipping from my grip. My pathetic attempt was met by derisive laughter, and then, almost as an afterthought, the werewolf reached down with its free hand and gripped my left wrist. It squeezed so hard, I felt the bones in my wrist threatening to break.

“Go ahead and shoot,” it said, holding the gun against its chest, laughter in its eyes. “It’ll do about as much good as your bullets did. Then I’ll carve out your liver and eat it while you lay on the ground bleeding.”

My vision swam and my gut lurched. Blood pounded in my temples as I shut my eyes, concentrating as hard as I could. The faintest glow began to emanate from my tattoos as something in the back of my mind stirred just a touch, like a lazy cat looking up from its post nap stretch and eyeing the surroundings.

I pulled the trigger.

Click.

Laughter filled my ears, making my throbbing head pound in pain. I stared up into the amber eyes as the werewolf licked its chops, its black tongue slipping around its gleaming yellow teeth. I pulled the trigger again.

Click.

“Guess you didn’t want it bad enough, eh?” the werewolf asked, opening its mouth wide as I pulled the trigger one last time.

The werewolf’s head evaporated in an explosion of gore that threw it backward. I tumbled from its spasming grip and struck the concrete hard enough for everything to go black around the edges. I tried to get to my hands and knees, tried to crawl away from its body as a thick pool of crimson began to spread out from the werewolf. As I struggled, its wolfish body melted away into still more slime until all that remained of the creature was Jock’s headless form.

I collapsed to the cement, my cheek slapping against the sticky, wet concrete as Duane ambled toward me with a shotgun over one shoulder. With practiced ease, the old man knelt down next to me and grabbed me by the left arm, pulling me to my feet with a grunt of effort. He threw my arm over his shoulder and began mostly dragging me toward Jack’s pickup. The old vampire was already in the truck, engine running.

“Next time you decide to shoot werewolves, try using silver,” Duane whispered in my ear. His words thumped against my temples like a pair of baseball bats. “It’s a lot more permanent.” Then he flung me into the bed of the truck and leapt in after me. My head smacked against the soil-covered metal as we raced off in a screech of tires that left the smell of burning rubber in its wake.

Chapter 14

Something slammed into the side of the pickup, throwing me across the bed as we fled the wolves’ den. I smacked into the metal wall and little tweety birds flapped around my skull singing mocking tunes.

Duane crouched down next to me, his shotgun resting against one shoulder as he fired the weapon off to the side. The shriek of broken glass and screeching metal filled my ears before something rammed into us again. Duane lost his balance and toppled sideways into the dirt next to me. As our pickup fishtailed, the shotgun slipped out of his grip and slid across the soil-strewn truck bed.

The truck’s back window exploded in a spray of glass that rained down on top of me. Jack cursed from within the cab of the truck before we whipped sideways, skidding across the road in a screech of rubber. The truck fishtailed, and I was thrown across the bed once again. I stuck my legs out to keep myself from crashing into the wall and the impact ran down my entire body. I slumped to the ground, my face in the dirt as I tried to orient myself to my surroundings. My head pounded so hard I could scarcely get a hold of myself over the crescendo between my ears.

Duane crawled forward on his hands and knees, trying desperately to reach his weapon. We swerved again, and he lost his balance, sprawling in the dirt. Another burst of gunfire tore into the truck’s tail, blasting the tailgate open and revealing a black Camry similar to the one I’d crushed with Loraine’s body. This one, unfortunately, was filled with muscle-bound goons, three of whom were leaning out the vehicle’s windows and packing serious heat in the form of 9mm Uzis.