The Magic Within: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Found Magic Book 2)

by J. A. Cipriano

  The door behind me finally slid down in a sheath of sparks locking me in the room with the soldiers. There was only one problem. The exit was on the other side of them. I took a deep breath, my mind snapping into focus as I drove forward in a burst of energy. Soldiers went flying as I punched and dodged and kicked. The exit grew closer, and with every step I took, more agents fell around me, but the only thing I saw was Donovan’s smirking face.

  7

  The blood of the fallen agents smeared my face and clothing as I stepped over their unconscious, broken bodies and out into the corridor. The door I’d come from was still sealed, so I wasn’t really worried about being shot in the back just yet.

  The first thing I noticed about the shiny chrome hallway was the temperature. It was freezing. The cool air swept over me, making me shiver even beneath my fancy jumpsuit. Flashing lights were going off, but thankfully there were no sirens. That would have been too much, anyway. They obviously knew I was here already.

  I knew from my quick jaunt through the agency’s files that the flit’s ritual chamber wasn’t very far from my current location. Since I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be very long before other soldiers came to stop me, I pressed some explosive jelly against the wall and hit the button on the detonator. I took off sprinting in the direction of the flit mainframe.

  An explosion rocked the hallway, nearly shaking me from my feet as I tore down the hallway. Hell, if I hadn’t known it was coming, it probably would have knocked me to the ground. A furtive glance over my shoulder made me suck in a breath. There wasn’t even a hallway anymore. It had been reduced to a twisted mishmash of metal and wires. Steam filled the corridor, spewing from a broken overhead pipe. I swallowed. That was a little much…

  “How many people do you think you got with that blast?” Donovan asked, “Ten, twenty? You’re really racking them up.” He glanced around curiously. “You’d think I’d have an armada with me by now.”

  I ignored him and focused on finding the flit’s chamber. If I didn’t hurry, not only would I be overwhelmed by reinforcements, but I’d start to think about Stephen, and if that happened… I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go on. Sure, he might have survived being shot in the chest because he was a vampire, but did he survive the bomb? Did I even want him to survive?

  He had betrayed me, but something told me that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t his fault. He’d clearly been captured by the agency, and they had to have done something to him, right? They just had to have…

  An agent stepped out from the corner, gun leveled at me, but before I could even think, I fired at him. Two quick bursts that took his legs out from under him. My heart slammed in my chest as I ran up and soccer kicked him in the head. The faceplate on his helmet cracked as he flopped bonelessly on his back. “How dare you people force me to… to…” I kicked him again, my foot hitting him hard in the stomach.

  “To kill Stephen yourself, in cold blood?” Donovan offered behind me. “It shouldn’t bother you. I know you thought he was different from me, but he wasn’t.” Donovan’s smile made me trembled because I was worried he was right. “I mean, okay, I’m a werewolf and he was a vampire, but we’re both people too…”

  “You don’t know that,” I replied, turning away from Donovan and stepping over the body of the fallen agent. “You don’t know why he did what he did.”

  “I don’t need to know that,” the ghost whispered in my ear. “It’s either that, or you killed your true love when he could have been saved.” His voice brightened. “Oh, I hope it’s the second one.”

  “He was far enough away from the blast. He should be fine…” Even as I said the words a tremble overtook me and I had to grab the wall to help my shaking knees support my weight. Stephen had to be okay, and what’s more he had to be under the agency’s influence…

  “Just keep telling yourself that.” Donovan sidled up next to me as I began walking, one hand leaning on the wall as tears rimmed my eyes. “Don’t worry. I know you will, so I’ll bring this up again, later.”

  The elevator in front of me was huge and daunting. I was pretty sure it was used for hauling supplies, but it looked like it could fit a couple elephants. I pressed the down button, but unfortunately, there was no response. I hadn’t been sure if I was actually going to take it or not, but I’d been going to cross that particular bridge when it opened. Now that option was decidedly off the table.

  “It figures,” I mumbled, reaching into my belt and pulling out a pry bar. I wedged it into the opening and pushed with all the strength my magic-fueled muscles could muster. At first the doors didn’t move, but as my skin began to glow with energy, they jerked open with a rush, so I was left staring at an empty elevator shaft through a two and a half foot space.

  I took a deep breath and stuck my head inside, but a quick glance up and down the shaft revealed no elevator, though that could have been because I couldn’t see more than a few feet in either direction. I pulled off one of my flares, lit it, and looked around one last time.

  All it succeeded in doing was making the narrow corridor dance with eerie red light. I dropped it down the shaft. It fell for so long I lost sight of it before it hit the ground. Well, at least there was no elevator that way…

  I reached out, grabbing hold of the cable a few feet away and tugged. Which was silly, I admit, but I still wanted to make sure it wouldn’t cause me to plummet to my death, even though I was fairly certain I weighed way less than the elevator it was designed to carry.

  My gut was somewhat satisfied when the cable didn’t come crashing down, but an uneasy feeling still made me wary.

  “Stop being a chicken,” I mumbled to myself before grabbing hold and swinging out into oblivion. A tense breath rushed out of me when I didn’t immediately plummet to my death. Then I began to scurry down the cable, going slow to avoid slipping.

  “You should have grabbed a pair of night vision goggles or a headlamp,” Donovan said as he floated upside down in front of me so that his long blond hair fell beneath him like an obnoxious golden wave. “You know better.” He tapped my forehead with his finger. “You have all those skills, remember?”

  “Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” I grunted as I shimmied down toward the level where the flit was located. I’d barely gone more than a floor, but my muscles were already starting to burn. “Now leave me alone so I can concentrate.”

  “How are you even going to tell which floor it is from in here?” Donovan asked, spinning around and examining a particularly nondescript wall.

  “You know as well as I do that the flit’s level was six floors down. We’ve gone two floors. Do the math,” I grumbled.

  “So forty-seven more levels?” Donovan asked, smirking at me. “Should I start counting out random numbers? Six, four, eleven, sixteen, blue forty-two.”

  “That’s not even a number,” I said, pausing to take a breath. I don’t know why I’d thought shimmying down an elevator cable would be a good idea. I had not had the physical training for something like this. Hell, I hadn’t even been very good at gym. I’d mostly been the last girl picked for any sport and was usually the one who was sat out the whole game, which honestly, had been fine with me.

  “You’re not even a number,” Donovan replied, sticking his tongue out me. “At least not yet. When some deranged psycho shoots you in the face, murdering you in cold blood, you get a delightful toe tag though. Then you become a number.”

  “Neat,” I said as the cable suddenly jerked taut, nearly throwing me off. I swallowed, my heart racing as the sound of a rushing elevator filled the shaft.

  “Oh, is that the sound of inevitability?” Donovan asked as I wrapped my legs around the cable, took a deep breath and started shimmying even faster as the sound boomed in my ears.

  I got to the floor just as the elevator popped into view overhead. I pulled out my crowbar and jammed it in the doorway. The elevator lurched closer, but it appeared to be slowing down… maybe it would stop above me?

  As I called
upon my magic to enhance my strength, I threw my weight against the crowbar, trying to pry it open while maintaining my grip on the cable. One inch, two. The elevator came closer. Three inches. Six inches.

  I could feel the cold unforgiving steel above me pressing the darkness down into the shaft around me, just daring me to go slow enough for it to crush me. When the opening was about twelve inches wide, I threw myself toward it sideways. Thanks to my supernatural reflexes, I weaved through the opening like a thread through a needle.

  My body slammed into the metal floor on the other side of the doors hard enough for stars to momentarily flash across my vision. As I scrambled forward, my side throbbing, and my vision a little black around the edges. I pulled my feet inside just as the elevator surged past with a sound that stole my breath away.

  That had been close. Too close.

  “Note to self,” I said as I got to my feet. “No more climbing down elevator shafts.”

  “Good plan,” Donovan said, popping into the space in front of me. “Now how do you plan on getting through them?”

  He pointed down the corridor where six armed guards stood, their weapons pointed at me. A slow clap echoed through the corridor as Stephen stepped out, smacking his palms together. His shirt was still torn from where I’d shot him, but he looked otherwise unharmed. My heart leapt in my chest. He wasn’t dead, after all. Thank God, I hadn’t killed him. I could rescue him, could turn him back to normal after all.

  “I didn’t think you had it in you, Abby.” Stephen smiled, his perfect teeth flashing in the bright fluorescent light. “I should have realized you were a stone cold killer.” He shrugged. “Maybe you inherited more of your mother’s bloodlust than I’d thought. How else can you explain trying to blow me up?”

  “Stephen, I didn’t mean to… this isn’t you…” I murmured even as his words made my heart shatter in my chest and tears roll down my cheeks. I willed myself to my feet, and as I did so, the soldiers tensed. I took a step toward him, ignoring them, one hand outstretched. “Please… Stephen…”

  “Now, now, Abby. I wouldn’t go making any sudden movements.” He scratched his temple with the butt of his pistol. “You wouldn’t want one of them to get all twitchy and, oh, I don’t know, blow you away.” He licked his lips, and the gesture made me feel dirty inside.

  “You could kill them all, Abby,” Donovan said like the angry, annoyed devil on my right shoulder he really was. “You know you could…”

  “I could kill you all before you even pull a trigger,” I snarled, taking a step forward, my arms at my sides. “And I’m pretty sure you won’t kill me since you were using rubber bullets before.” I smirked, and a shiver ran through the agents, though Stephen seemed unfazed. “It’s about time the tables turned.”

  “Whatever,” Stephen replied, pointing his gun at me and firing. I threw myself forward as the muscles in his arm twitched, giving me enough of a head start to dodge the shot. It ricocheted off the wall behind me as the soldiers opened up, filling the corridor with rubber bullets.

  A couple hit me in the leg as I scrambled to my feet and my limb went momentarily numb as pain shot through me, exploding behind my eyes like a pair of firecrackers. Then it sort of vanished, pushed away under some sort of mental instinct I couldn’t quite understand as my skin began top glow like it was lit from the inside with moonlight. My focus intensified as I reached the crowd of soldiers. My hands snapped out, ripping the gun from a soldier and slamming the still firing weapon into his partner’s facemask.

  The mask shattered in a spray of black plastic as I whirled, dancing through their ranks like an avenging ballerina as I tore weapons from their hands and used them like high-tech clubs. A moment later, I was standing in a broken semi-circle of unconscious soldiers. My chest heaved as I sucked in oxygen. Stephen stared at me, that same stupid smirk on his face as he watched me down the barrel of his weapon.

  He fired as I got to him.

  The bullet zinged past my left ear.

  I hit him.

  Hard.

  So hard it hurt my hand.

  He fell.

  I stepped over him and approached the door to the flit’s mainframe.

  8

  I pressed my gloved hand against the frosty chrome door in front of me. It ripped heat out of my body, turning my breath to mist in the space of an instant. I tried to pull my hand away, but the blood on the palm of my glove stuck to the door. Which wasn’t really that odd since frost was running along the metal. For that to happen, the room on the other side must have been really cold. Then again, it was a massive demonic ritual chamber for a creature from Hell. It probably had a state of the art cooling system just to keep all that fire contained.

  I jerked my hand free of the glove, leaving it stuck to the door like macabre art and staggered back a couple steps. Blood dripped down my arm, collecting on my fingertips and spattering to the ground. I was bleeding. I hadn’t realized I was bleeding… How had that happened?

  My eyes traced the blood up my fingers across my hand and up under the sleeve. My uniform was stuck to my arm with sticky red goo. That’s when I saw the hole in my arm by my bicep. A good chunk of flesh was missing, not enough to disable my arm or anything, but enough to make my eyes go wide at the sight. How could I have ignored such a wound? Now that I saw it, pain flowed through me, making my vision swim and my steps wobble.

  God, what was I doing infiltrating a military base by myself? Was I crazy?

  I threw a glance at the downed soldiers, and for some reason, my gaze lingered on Stephen’s fallen form. He was sprawled out on the metal floor, eyes clothes and lips half parted. A bruise was forming on his eye from where I’d hit him. Good. If he stayed unconscious until I was done with the flit, I could drag him out of here and rehabilitate him. I wasn’t sure how to do that exactly, but I had to try right? I couldn’t just leave him in the hands of the Agency, not after everything he’d done for me, not after everything he meant to me.

  “You know he was just playing you the whole time, right?” Donovan asked, kneeling down next to Stephen. “He’s just like me, after all.”

  “No, he’s not. The Agency did something to him.” Donovan just looked up at me and smiled until I turned away.

  “This is your chance, Abby. Stick the explosive to the door and blow it open, then toss a few more charges inside and get the hell out of here before anyone wakes up.” Donovan’s voice reminded me of my mother when she told me to do things I knew I should, but didn’t really want to do.

  “I know,” I replied because it was that kind of day. I turned back toward the chamber doors and drew the Egyptian symbol for power across the frozen steel with my bloody fingers. Then I focused my mind on it.

  I hadn’t really mastered much outward magic like fireballs and the like. For one, there hadn’t been time. For two, my kind of witch didn’t thrive on that sort of magic. No, our magic was more suited toward enhancing strength, speed, and that sort of thing, not flinging around fireballs.

  That didn’t mean it couldn’t be done though, and as I focused on the symbol I’d drawn, I bridged the gap between my power and the wards on the chamber itself. Sparks danced across the surface of the metal as my bloody symbol flared scarlet causing the wards along the entire surface to explode into a flurry of cinders.

  That done, I reached my stiff fingers into my pocket and pulled out a charge that reminded me of a tube of silly putty. I plastered it to the door and threw another glance back at the soldiers. “What if something happens to him?” I murmured. “He could get caught in the blast…”

  “Good riddance,” Donovan said, kicking Stephen contemptuously with one foot, which was a little funny because it didn’t actually touch him. “He’s the bad guy. It’s not your concern what happens to him, Abby. You kill bad guys. Don’t you remember?” He touched the hole in his forehead and showed me his bloody finger. The look on his face made me shiver.

  “Don’t kick him,” I snapped even though I knew he couldn’
t actually hurt Stephen on account of his being non-corporeal. Something about it pissed me off. I stepped away from the door and looked at it. I knew from my trip through the files there wasn’t a “way” into the room per se. It was sealed off with a combination of magical wards and good old fashioned technology. But maybe the files had neglected something? “And, I don’t kill people.”

  “There’s not another way,” Donovan said as though he’d read my mind. “You know that when they leave that room they actually weld the door shut. They get back inside with a torch and a crew of witches to take down the wards. The only way in there is with an explosive.” He shrugged. “Either way, you need to make a decision.”

  I shook my head, tears running down my cheeks. Stephen was definitely too close to the blast zone. I staggered forward, grabbed him by the arm and tried to drag him back toward the door and out of harm’s way.

  “Are you being serious right now, Abby?” Donovan tsk tsked at me. “By the time you move him to safety, reinforcements will be here.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Actually, at the rate you’re going, they’ll be here before Stephen is out of the blast zone. Your best bet is to leave him there.”

  “I know.” I swallowed as the truth of his words rattled around in my brain. “I know.” I glanced back at the charge and stared at the detonator clipped to my belt. I didn’t have time for this… But it was Stephen, I couldn’t really leave him in the blast zone, could I?

  “You know what he’d tell you to do right?” Donovan sidled up next to me, and put one hand around my waist, his other wresting on my hand as it gripped Stephen’s wrist. “He’d tell you to leave him, at least he would if he really cared for you, Abby.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as I let Donovan pull my hand free from his wrist. Stephen’s arm fell, smacking the ground with a thud of finality. I let him lead me toward the elevator as I pulled the detonator free and stared at it. Could I really go through with this? Could I really sentence him to death?