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

by J. A. Cipriano

  I took a deep breath and spun so I could look at Stephen one last time. “I’m so sorry,” I blubbered as tears spilled down my cheeks and spattered on the cool metal floor. The sound of it deafening in the empty, lifeless room.

  The elevator doors behind me opened. It was now or never. I moved my thumb to the button on the detonator and began to press it down.

  “Abby, don’t.”

  I spun, my voice catching in my throat. Lisa Ann, my best friend in the whole world, was standing there in the elevator with a gun pointed at her temple. Tears were running down her cheeks, and her hair was all sorts of messed up. Had they taken her hostage to use against me? If they had… well I was going to kill them.

  A vision of Lisa Ann driving me to school in her beat up old car, the windows down as horrible boyband music blared so loud, kids stared at us as we sang at the top of our lungs.

  I took a step toward them and an image of Lisa standing in back of me as she fussed with my hair before we got ready to go to the Spring Fling, even though our only dates were each other.

  Behind me, someone got to his feet, and I turned my head. Stephen stood there, one hand using the wall for balance and smirked at me. “I wouldn’t do anything rash, Abby. You wouldn’t want us to hurt Lisa Ann, would you?”

  “How? How did you recover so much faster than everyone else?” I murmured as he moved past me to rejoin the soldiers, apparently unconcerned with the detonator in my hand, the button half-pressed. Still, he was out of the blast zone, right? Only, only they had Lisa Ann right now, and for some reason, the knowledge that Stephen had taken her filled me up inside, making everything go red and hazy. Stephen, my Stephen, had dragged Lisa Ann into this. Agency mind control or not, he had stolen my innocent best friend and brought her here to use as a weapon against me.

  “I know it’s confusing, Abby, but you have to remember I’m a vampire. We’re like cockroaches,” Stephen said, smiling at me with his stupid perfect lips. Lips I once thought were so kissable. Oh my God, I had let him kiss me. A profound sense of dirtiness oozed over my skin, and my own lips felt dirty. The urge to wipe off my tongue was nearly overwhelming.

  “Stop…” I said, and the words were strangely hollow and empty in my mouth.

  “try to behave rationally here. If you don’t surrender, I’m going to shoot your friend in the face. Let me be clear when I say this. This gun isn’t filled with rubber. No, it’s filled with warded bullets.” The vampire shoved the barrel against Lisa Ann’s head, forcing it to the side. She whimpered. “They could kill a werewolf, so I’m fairly certain your puny human friend will die.”

  “You were playing me the whole time, weren’t you?” I asked and for some reason, my voice reminded me of Donovan. I had the sudden urge to look around for him, but even as my eyes glanced around, I didn’t see him anywhere.

  “Is this where you say ‘if I hurt even one hair on her head’ you’ll make me regret it?” Stephen asked, grabbing a handful of her black hair and jerking her head sideways. Lisa Ann screamed as his fangs distended and he leaned in toward her.

  “No!” My vision turned several shades of scarlet as I charged forward, but before I made it even three steps, Stephen fired.

  The bullet didn’t hit Lisa Ann, but only because he hadn’t meant for it to hit her. It shattered the space in front of her eyes before pinging off the wall and ricocheting into oblivion. My heart hammered inside me as the realization that Lisa Ann was still alive filled me up. He hadn’t killed her, thank God, he hadn’t killed her.

  “I’d stay where you are, Abby, otherwise the next time we’ll be cleaning Lisa up off the walls.” He shrugged. “But that doesn’t matter to me. I won’t be the one to clean it up.”

  “What a jackass,” Donovan said before glancing at me and shaking his head like he was disappointed. “I can’t believe you were going to have sexy time with him.”

  “What do you want, Stephen?” I asked, my voice cracking partway through. “Why do you have Lisa Ann?” As the words left my mouth, I knew I would do anything to save her from him. I just needed a plan, a way to do that. She was my best friend, after all. It was my fault she was here. That made it my responsibility to get her out of this. I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down. I was going to save her, even if I had to take down Stephen to do it.

  “I want you to surrender, Abby. Isn’t that obvious?” He gestured toward the men behind me. “We have big, big plans for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing back a sob as I depressed the button on the detonator. The explosion rippled outward, throwing me forward as the soldiers in the elevator scrambled backward. Stephen lost his footing as I crashed into him, tackling him to the ground. Lisa Ann pitched to the side, slamming down hard on the metal with a shriek.

  I started hitting Stephen, my hands coming down like a jack hammer on his face, chest, and arms as he struggled to cover himself.

  A foot struck me hard in the side of the head, knocking me off of him. I crashed into the wall, my vision spinning. Lisa Ann took a menacing step toward me, her eyes distant and unforgiving.

  “You’re trying to kill me, Abigail, aren’t you?” she asked in the robotic voice of the flit. Her hands clenched and unclenched as she stepped over Stephen’s bloody body. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

  “You can’t die. You’re just a demon! The worst that happens is you go back to Hell!” I snapped, getting to my feet as Lisa Ann’s hand lashed out. It caught me on my wounded bicep and stars flashed across my vision. Another blow came, and I stepped into it, knocking it aside with my shoulder and just as I was about to lash out with my elbow, I stopped. This was Lisa Ann… if I hurt her… No… I couldn’t.

  “So you will not hurt this body, interesting…” Lisa Ann grabbed me by belt and flung me like a rag doll. My back struck the wall, and I slid to the ground, leaving a glistening trail of scarlet in my wake. I struggled to pull air into my lungs as soldiers rushed out of the elevator, weapons pointed at me.

  “Why do you wish to destroy me, Abigail?” Lisa Ann asked, holding one hand up and signaling the soldiers to stop. They did. Well that was interesting. Did they have to obey the flit? Why?

  “Because you’re trying to kill me,” I snarled, getting to my feet just as her boot caught me in the stomach. I flopped onto my back, struggling to remember how to breathe as she stepped on my throat. She shifted, cutting off my air supply as I reached out, trying to grab onto her leg, my hands clawing uselessly at her jeans.

  “My orders are to bring you in. Not to kill you,” she said, and I swear she seemed annoyed. “So I do not understand why you are trying to kill me.” The pressure relaxed just a touch, enough for me to barely breathe. “Explain.”

  “It’s because she’s a human, flitty,” Stephen said, getting to his feet and wiping his face with the back of his hand, smearing blood along his sleeve. “It’s what humans do. They try to destroy things that threaten them, even if those things really mean them no harm.”

  His words rang in my ears, and I wondered how truthful they were because, at the core of it, I was trying to take down the Agency. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were all about, but I knew what my birth mother, Gabriella had been about. She had been about terrorism and world domination.

  The Agency, for better or worse, was the only thing standing between people like Gabriella and everyone else. And here I was trying to stop them, trying to take them down because they were treating me like an asset? Maybe, maybe I was being naïve. Maybe we did live in a world where people like Donovan were needed to stop people like Gabriella…

  “That is irrational and beyond the parameters of our engagement.” The flit regarded me through Lisa’s eyes. “Should I be trying to kill you too, Abigail?” Lisa’s head cocked to the side like she was studying me. It was odd because it seemed like a very human gesture. “How would you feel if I tried to kill you?”

  Instead of replying, I flung my last grenade with all my might. Stephen’s eyes w
ent wide as it struck the blown out hole in the wall and tumbled inside the flit’s ritual chamber.

  The flit stared at me, unmoving. “You say that I cannot die, Abigail. That I will be returned to Hell. But that does not—”

  An explosion ripped through the hallway for the second time, and Lisa Ann collapsed on top of me. The blast must have triggered some kind of alarm because deafening sirens began whooping. The elevator doors slammed together in a whoosh, trapping the soldiers inside, sealing them off from us.

  A cloud of freezing fog blasted from the ritual room, frosting the metal in our hallway as whatever automated system inside tried to fast freeze the dancing flames.

  I pushed Lisa Ann off of me as Stephen lunged at me, catching me in the stomach with his shoulder and pinning me to the ground beneath the force of his weight. My head smacked against the metal floor with a wet sounding thunk, and for a moment, I saw two of him.

  His fist came down and pain blossomed across my face. He brought his gun around to smack me with it, and I raised my hand just in time. The blow struck my forearm so hard I couldn’t see past the pain shooting across my eyes like Fourth of July fireworks.

  Stephen grabbed me by the collar and jerked my head up before slamming me back down on the ground. The fireworks exploded even brighter as my limbs lashed out, trying to fight him off. It didn’t seem to help. He smashed the back of my head into the metal again and something inside me crunched.

  “Goodbye, Abby,” Stephen said, his smile ominous even through my blurry vision. “The next time you’ll see me, you’ll be strapped to a table while doctors poke and prod you.” His words sent a chill down my spine as the image of him still wearing that smile as he stared at me from the other side of a glass window filled my head. That’s when the truth of our situation filled me. Maybe Stephen had been turned by the Agency somehow, but either way, this was what he was now, a cold, unfeeling monster.

  A gunshot ripped through the room. The sound loud and angry in the tiny hallway. Stephen looked up, startled, his eyes tracing toward the far wall. I tried to turn my head, but I couldn’t.

  “What are you doing?” he asked before a second gunshot exploded through the room. Stephen pitched sideways, falling off me and crashing to the ground in a spray of scarlet. He clutched at his arm as warm blood spurted into the air.

  Lisa Ann appeared in my frame of vision holding Stephen’s weapon. Her cheeks were puffy and red as she knelt down next to me and smoothed the hair out of my face. “Abby,” she said, but her voice was distant sounding, like a whisper at the end of a hallway. “Abby, we have to get out of here. Can you get up?”

  “Okay,” I mumbled though that wasn’t really the right answer. Part of me was too stunned to think. I was reasonably sure the flit had released Lisa when the ritual chamber went up, but if so, where had Lisa learned to shoot like that? I was about to ask her when a flicker of movement caught my attention.

  Stephen started moving slowly toward Lisa. He was crawling on his good arm while his bad one dangled uselessly at his side. His fangs were out again and blood covered the ground around him, leaving a crimson smear on the metal that reminded me of a bleeding slug. From the look in his eyes, I could tell he meant to feed on Lisa Ann, and since the flit had taken her over, I knew he could because for the flit to take her over, she had to be human.

  I swung my body around to intercept him. It was like trying to move through jelly. My fist caught him hard on the chin before slipping off. I fell onto my face as he crashed to the ground. It wasn’t enough to put him down, but it was enough to make Lisa Ann take notice. She bit her lip before moving over to him and putting the gun to the back of his head.

  “How’s it feel, jackass?” she asked, and before I could do anything, say anything, she pulled the trigger.

  9

  Blood and thicker bits sprayed across the metal as his corpse collapsed lifelessly to the ground. Lisa stood up, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe I thought you were cute,” she spat.

  Instead of getting up and doing something, anything. I couldn’t even breathe. As I watched Stephen’s blood leak out onto the cold, unforgiving steel, a small part of me died along with him. I know it was dumb, but well, I had been hoping the Agency had done something to him, had turned him somehow. I had held out the hope that I could save him, that I could bring him back to me… but now that was impossible.

  I tried to get to my hands and knees, but the room swam, and I had to grab onto the floor to keep from sliding off the world. My stomach sloshed and twisted. As Lisa Ann reached out and touched my shoulder, I retched onto the floor. There wasn’t much inside, so little came out, but my abdomen clenched up so hard that it hurt.

  “Abby, he was a bad guy. He…” She swallowed a sob. “He took me right out of school. Just walked into the classroom and grabbed me. No one even tried to stop him, to save me… Then I was here, and he was talking about using me as bait for you, Abby. God, I thought you were dead…”

  “You shot him. Just like that,” I mumbled as she pulled me into a sitting position. She glanced at the corpse on the ground and shrugged.

  “Yeah, I did. He was a bad guy, Abby. He was going to hand you over to these people.” She gestured at the smoking facility as white fog reached out of the flit’s ritual chamber like ghostly white tendrils. “Something tells me that wouldn’t be good.” She pulled me to my feet, and I let her do it though I wasn’t quite sure why. “We need to get out of here before they get that elevator open.”

  I turned stiffly to stare at the elevator doors. They were still sealed, but I could see them moving, like something was trying to pry them open. It wouldn’t be long. Somehow, that didn’t seem to bother me very much because I felt hollow and empty. Lisa Ann had killed Stephen in cold blood. The how and the why of it sort of blurred away as I stared at the spot he had occupied. I could have saved him. I could have brought him back to me.

  “No, you couldn’t have,” Donovan said like a snake in my ear. “He was evil. He was an agent like me. Our situations would have been reversed if someone just copy pasted our names in different spots in the mission docket.” His face loomed in front of me. “Would you feel this bad about me?” He grinned, showing his teeth. “Would you love, love, love me, if it was my job to save you and Stephen’s to betray you?”

  “That’s not true,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure I’d actually said the words because, well, what if Donovan was right? What if Stephen had been acting exactly as he was supposed to this whole time? What if everything was really a lie? What if it had been his job to make me fall in love with him? Could I really be that stupid to still believe in him? After everything?

  I turned my head from Donovan and stared at Lisa as a chill ran through me. I did not want to explore that now, I couldn’t, just couldn’t believe it was all a lie, but, but if it had been real, and the Agency had done something to him… well, then I’d have failed twice over and who could I blame, Lisa? No… I couldn’t blame Lisa. Still, for some reason, Donovan’s answer seemed more reasonable…

  “Abby… we need to get a move on,” Lisa said tugging on my arm with one hand.

  “Okay,” I whispered and wiped my mouth with my sleeve, leaving a glistening trail of slime on the black jumpsuit.

  Lisa smiled, a soft fragile sort of smile that reminded me of a china doll, and pushed Stephen’s gun into my hands. It was still warm. “You should probably take this. I saw you a minute ago, and it was amazing, Abby. How’d you learn to move like that?”

  “Someone tried to overwrite my brain, and it went wrong. Instead of taking over my body, it imparted a bunch of skills into me.” I smiled weakly at her. “The rest of it didn’t take.” I touched my head with one hand. “I’m too dense, I guess.” I smiled weakly, but it was hard.

  “So you know Kung Fu?” she asked, grinning at me. “That’s so cool!”

  “Yeah and like fifty other martial arts too.” I turned away from Stephen’s corpse and wound up
staring into Donovan’s face. Only it was unreadable.

  I was about to ask him what his expression meant, but I didn’t because he was a ghost and I was pretty sure Lisa Ann couldn’t see him. Besides, what if he started talking about Stephen again? I didn’t have time for that right now. We had to get out of here. It was important that we got out of here before the situation hit me fully. Otherwise I’d still be standing here when they rushed in. If that happened, bad guy or not, Stephen’s death would be even more meaningless.

  “Okay, Lisa, let’s head into the ritual chamber and pray there’s a way out because as far as I know, the only way in or out of this hallway is through the elevator. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little beat up, so I’d rather not try to take down a bunch of soldiers while keeping you safe from harm.”

  Lisa nodded and followed me as we made our way across the hallway, leaving the elevator and Stephen’s body behind. I fought the urge to turn and stare at him one last time as my boots crunched on the frozen metal. Icy fog spilled out of the blown up door as I stepped inside and looked around.

  The chamber wasn’t as destroyed as I’d have liked it to be. Sure there were bits of burned plastic and twisted metal jutting up from the center, but I was reasonably sure this mess could be repaired rather easily. For all I knew, there were fifty more chambers just like this. No, that wasn’t likely… if there were more ritual chambers, wouldn’t the flit be back already? Either way, it seemed like this wouldn’t buy me that much time. If only I had more explosives...

  A white pipe to my left was spraying misty coolant into the air, and while I wasn’t sure if it would hurt me, I was not inclined to find out. I approached the super-heated altar on the far side of the room carefully, not sure if something was going to leap out and try to kill me. For all I knew, this room was protected by demonic mice with lasers on their foreheads.