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

by J. A. Cipriano

  “What the hell is this?” Lisa Ann asked, reaching out and fingering a charred circuit board. She jerked it free from a tangle of wires and stared closely at it. “I’ve built circuit boards before, for radios and stuff, but this board is weird…”

  “Eh?” I asked, glancing at the blackened bit of green plastic in her hand. “What’s so weird about it?”

  “Okay, Abby,” she said, pointing to one of the gizmos embedded in the board. “Usually on boards, you have all sorts of things like capacitors and resisters and stuff. This board doesn’t have any of that as far as I can tell.”

  “Then what are all those things on it?” I asked, peering closer at it.

  “They look like crystals… I’d have to put this under magnification to be sure, but I think every one of these boards has crystals where the circuits should be. That doesn’t make any sense…”

  “So what?” I asked. “What does it matter if there are crystals in place of capacitors and the like? It all seems like magic, anyway?”

  “So we don’t have things like this.” She shook her head once. “This can’t exist.”

  “Earth to Lisa. We’re in the headquarters of an Agency that employs vampires and werewolves. They had a pet demon that takes over your brain and makes you do its bidding.” I turned away from her and plodded through the room. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like there were any obvious exits, which made sense. I’d hoped maybe the grenade had weakened one of the walls, but it didn’t look like it had.

  “That’s not an excuse for having something that shouldn’t exist,” she replied, shoving the board in her pocket and approaching me. “And before you ask, yes, I am aware I was mind controlled by a killer demon, and no, I don’t want to talk about what it was like.” She shrugged at me. “So how do we get out of here?”

  “I have no idea,” I replied though I felt a little silly. I hadn’t even thought to ask her what being controlled by the flit felt like. Some friend I was. “Like I said before, I’m pretty sure the elevator is the only way out.”

  “Nonsense, those pipes have to come from somewhere.” Lisa pointed at the pipe spewing coolant into the room. “There’s probably a wire way up there where they laid the pipe. If we can get in there, maybe it’s big enough for us to crawl out.”

  “How are we going to bore a hole in the wall ten feet above our heads before they get the elevator open?” I asked, still staring at the spot.

  “Don’t you have a blowtorch in that pouch on your belt?” she asked as the sound of shearing metal filled the hallway outside.

  “No,” I replied, pushing past her and peering around the edge of the doorway. The elevator doors were only open about six inches, but as I watched it expand centimeter by centimeter, a canister rolled out of the opening. Green gas began to spew from it, and something told me, I didn’t want to breathe it if I could help it.

  “Damn,” Lisa said from behind me and turned to hurry toward the back of the room. “Come over here.” She pointed up toward a vent above her head where the foggy coolant looked like it was being sucked out. “This still seems to be working, we’ll have the best chance to avoid the gas’ dispersion behind the filtration system.”

  “You’re too smart for your own good,” I replied as I backtracked to her position and crouched down behind the wreckage and leveled my gun on the door. “Hopefully they don’t just decide to toss in a few more canisters once they breach the hallway.”

  “We need to get out of here before that happens, Abby.” Lisa was staring at me so hard, it made me wriggle under her gaze. What did she expect me to do? Make up an exit?

  “I know that. I just don’t know how to do it.” I glared at her, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore, she was staring at some kind of display next to the red-hot altar. Somehow, despite the screen looking like a windshield after an attack by a baseball bat, numbers were scrolling across it.

  I was about to ask her what it meant when a thought struck me like a kick in the teeth. Stephen had gotten into the hallway before me, but I’d been in the elevator shaft. So how had he gotten to me? He had to have gotten in here another way, right?

  I leapt to my feet and sprinted back toward the hallway. “There’s got to be a trap door or something in here. That must be how Stephen got here before me.” I glanced at the canister, but thankfully it’d stopped spewing gas. I fired a couple rounds at the elevator, and they pinged off the doors. I heard people throwing themselves to the ground as I reached Stephen’s corpse.

  It was still warm, and a shudder ran through me as I flipped it onto its back. This wasn’t Stephen… no, this was an it, an inanimate object. That’s what I tried to tell myself as I began rifling through his pockets, looking for a keycard. I found it tucked under his vest, and as I pulled it out, what remained of Stephen’s mouth fell open in a silent scream. My heart leapt into my throat, and I fell backward on my butt with a shriek. Another canister hit the ground next to me, and I stared at it dumbly, my fingers clenched around the keycard.

  Gas began to spew out of it as Lisa kicked it, sending it flying back into the elevator. “Hurry, Abby!” she cried, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me away from the body. She snatched the keycard from my hand and waved it in front of my eyes. “Where do I use this?”

  “I’m not sure,” I whispered, slowly spinning around the room.

  “I’m going to just run it on the walls and see if something opens,” Lisa replied, pressing the thin keycard against the wall to my left and running it up in down in a sweeping motion as she moved down the hallway.

  I threw one last glance at the elevator and fired another salvo when a door whooshed open behind me. I spun to see Lisa standing in front of an open doorway with a staircase running up and down.

  “Up or down?” she asked, grinning at me, her cheeks dimpling like a fairy princess.

  “Up,” I said, “definitely up.” I moved next to her and stepped past her into the stairwell. It was so bright it made it hard to see. Fluorescent light spilled into the metal corridor, making it seem cold and antiseptic. I leaned in and peered down the stairs, somewhat surprised there was no one in here.

  “Why up?” Lisa asked, following me into the room. She swiped the card across a pad next to the door, and it slid closed, leaving us trapped in the stairwell.

  “Helicopters are on the top floor,” I replied, heading up the stairs. “I’m pretty good with those.” I shot her a smile, but she just shook her head and began following me, the keycard clutched tightly in her hand.

  “Something tells me a lot has changed since we last hung out,” Lisa said, quickly catching me. “Because I was pretty sure you didn’t even know how to drive.”

  “Just a little.” I shrugged. “Nothing to write home about.”

  We reached the helipad what felt like hours later. I wasn’t sure why we hadn’t encountered anyone. Shouldn’t there have been soldiers zeroing in on our position? Hell, shouldn’t there have been booby traps everywhere? Our escape should have been like an Indiana Jones adventure, instead it had been more like a horribly tiring jaunt on a gym Stairmaster.

  Lisa Ann slid the keycard on the mechanism to open the outer door and let us into the heliport. Three helicopters were parked there. Two were those crazy big military ones you see in the movies. You know, the ones with the chain guns being shot by the commando with a cigar in his mouth? The other one was a sleek silver number that was sort of bullet shaped.

  “So which one are we taking?” Lisa asked, looking at me as though she didn’t believe I could actually fly one.

  “The small one,” I replied, stepping out into the room and surveying it for guards. Only I didn’t see any guards, anywhere. That was weird, right? “Unless you have a cigar and a team of army men.”

  “I’m more of a pipe girl myself,” Lisa Ann replied, moving so close to me, she was like a second skin. For a girl who had shot Stephen in cold blood, she had stuck to me remarkably close since then. It was sort of like she was worried something bad wo
uld happen to her if she lost sight of me for even an instant. At least, I was pretty sure that’s what it was…

  It was a little weird because the idea of me being an elite protector was a bit laughable. The last time she’d seen me do anything athletic had been when we were playing badminton, and one of the boys had knocked the shuttlecock into my shirt while I swung the racket like a total spaz. If only I could go play them now…

  “Really, nothing?” Lisa Ann asked, shaking her head. “I gave that one to you, Abby.”

  “What do you mean?” I raised an eyebrow at her as we approached the silver helicopter. I’d never flown one like this before, but then again I’d never done a lot of things I seemed to be an expert on.

  “I’m more of a pipe girl? You should have had a witty retort or something.” She reached past me and slid the keycard over the door lock on the helicopter. The silver skin split apart as a hole appeared in its shell.

  “Sorry, guess I’m more focused on trying to get us out of here in one piece,” I replied, getting inside and sliding into the pilot’s seat. Lisa Ann took the co-pilot’s chair as my hands flew over the controls. The rotors started spinning, revving up before she even had herself buckled in. Guess I knew how this one worked too. Score!

  The helicopter drifted up off the helipad, and while I expected jets or alien UFOs to chase us down, nothing did as I set course for Gabriella’s closest base.

  10

  The next thing I knew, bullets were zinging through the air, pelting the silver skin of my helicopter like angry hailstones. I threw us sideways out of the line of fire to reveal one of those army choppers from earlier. Damn… if only I’d had some more explosives, or you know, the forethought to shoot a hole in the gas tank…

  The guy at the gun seat took out his cigar and gestured to me with it before sticking it back in his mouth and letting loose another spray of bullets that missed us completely. He was wearing a green bandanna and camouflage pants, but was otherwise bare-chested. He had huge rippling muscles and short cropped blond hair.

  “Are they being serious?” Lisa Ann asked as she stared out the window, her mouth hanging open. “That guy looks like an action hero.”

  “If it’s supposed to be intimidating, it’s not working,” I snapped, pitching our helicopter around so the front of it was facing the enemy chopper. I pressed a button on the control panel, and a missile spit out the front of our helicopter like a line of dancing fire. It tore through the enemy helicopter’s fuselage before exploding with enough force to throw me backward against my seat as the army chopper spun out of sight in a burst of flame and smoke.

  “Good going, Abby!” Lisa cried just before the back of our helicopter tore free from the rest of it.

  Wind whipped around us, ripping everything inside the chopper into the sucking void outside as we spun haphazardly through the air. Flame rippled along the metal as foam sprayed from the control panel in front of me, encasing me in some kind of safety system that was going to keep me trapped inside this tumbling metal coffin.

  I wiped the hardening foam from my face and grabbed the emergency parachute from the compartment above my head. I slipped the straps over my arms and cinched them to the snaps on the front of my jumpsuit before releasing my harness and throwing myself from my seat. I landed hard in Lisa’s foam covered lap, and my sudden movement sent the falling helicopter into a spin.

  That was also when I realized Lisa Ann was screaming. I smacked against the roof as we tumbled through the air, my sense of balance going out the window as my fingers latched onto her harness for stability.

  She looked up at me as I pulled myself down to her lap. The wound on my bicep tore open and pain shot through my arm. I shut my eyes for a second, and when they snapped back open, adrenaline surged through me. I unfastened Lisa’s harness and wrapped a tow strap around her belt.

  “Ready?” I squealed, and before she could respond, I kicked off the dashboard, throwing us out of the broken helicopter. She instinctively wrapped her arms around my waist as we plummeted for the space of a breath. It was good because when I pulled the ripcord, we jerked apart with so much force, I probably would have broken something if she didn’t have me in a death grip. Still, searing agony distilled everything away as the tow strap snapped taut.

  “You need to get into a better position,” I squealed through clenched teeth. “Otherwise, I think my arm is going to tear off.”

  “You’re lucky it didn’t rip you in half,” Lisa cried, maneuvering up my body and throwing her arms through the straps on the front of the pack and buckling them in place. How had she known how to do that? I was about to ask when the cockpit of our helicopter crashed into a swimming pool far below.

  Even over the sound of the impact, I could hear the blades of another helicopter behind me. I threw a glance over my shoulder to see one of the agency’s standard black helicopters keeping pace with us as we floated downward. I couldn’t see through the tinted windows, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like whoever was inside. Especially because they were probably smirking like jackasses.

  “Awesome,” I murmured, annoyed that I’d lost my gun in the dogfight. If I still had it, maybe I could take them down from here…

  “Abigail de la Mancha, prepare to surrender. If not, we’ll blow you out of the sky.” The chain gun underneath the nose of the helicopter spun for a fraction of a second. “Do you understand?”

  I nodded even though I wasn’t sure exactly how to surrender while hanging from a parachute in midair. Besides, what was I going to do, throw my boot at them?

  “Abby, please tell me you have a plan,” Lisa squealed into my ear, voice so high-pitched that I was sure dogs could have heard it miles away.

  I was about to tell her I had no idea when a blue blast of energy slammed into the side of the black helicopter, ripping it apart in a burst of sapphire flame. The chopper sort of imploded in on itself, reminding me of Esmeralda’s anti-gravity implosion ring. I threw my hand up to shield my face from the heat of the explosion, only there was no heat, and for a moment, it was totally quiet.

  “Um… Abby, what’s that?” Lisa asked, pointing to my right. I shifted so I could look. What I saw made my heart stop in my chest. A huge man riding a broomstick with a glowing right hand was coming toward us like a bat out of hell.

  He was wearing a sky-blue suit and a motorcycle helmet with big white plates that hid his eyes from view.

  “What the actual frig?” Lisa said as the guy waved with his glowing blue hand. “Is he flying on a magic broomstick?”

  “It’d appear so,” I said as he pulled up in front of me and grabbed onto my harness with one meaty hand.

  Before I could protest, he fastened some sort of device to the straps and sliced the parachute away. We fell about a foot before whatever device he was using to hold us jerked us to a stop hard enough for my teeth to slam together. Still, I was glad the fall had been short because somehow my heart had managed to hop its way into my throat. If it’d been much farther, it might have come out my mouth.

  “Thanks for saving us,” Lisa called, looking up at the guy like he was our guardian angel, but I wasn’t so sure we should be thanking him. Even beneath his suit, he seemed familiar. Was he someone from our town, and if so, that would make him a bad guy, right?

  “Don’t mention it,” he replied. His voice was muffled by the air and his helmet as he pulled us off in some unknown direction, but I was sure I recognized it from somewhere. Only where?

  A moment later, we were sitting on a street corner next to a large van with ‘Joe’s plumbing’ written on the side next to a picture of a guy in a hard hat winking and giving a thumb’s up.

  “Get in, and I’ll take you to our safe house,” he said, opening the back door and throwing his broomstick inside. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. Hell, you can leave if you want,” he added, pulling off his helmet. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.” He turned toward us, smiling.

  “Roberto!” I screamed a
t the top of my lungs and backpedaled so fast I stumbled and fell on my butt. “How… I thought you were dead.” The last time I’d seen him, he’d been left bleeding and broken in Gabriella’s base moments before we blew the whole place up. So how had he survived?

  “I’m not dead,” he replied, staring at me with his intelligent, patient eyes. “Now get in, I’m not sure how long we have before more goons show up.” He slid open the side compartment of the van and gestured for us to get inside. “And take off your clothes. I don’t think you’re being tracked, but you can’t be too careful. You’ll find spare clothes inside.”

  He didn’t wait for me to get up as he pulled open the driver’s side door and jumped inside. Lisa shot me a look, and without waiting for a response, leapt inside the van. I swallowed, not sure what to do. Should I stay here running by myself or go with Roberto? Then a horrible thought struck me… if he was alive, was Gabriella alive too?

  “Is Gabriella alive?” I asked, getting to my feet and climbing into the van as it started up with a roar. Thanks for waiting for me…

  “No,” he replied, hitting a button on his dashboard that caused the side door to slide shut, locking me inside. A bad feeling swelled in my gut, but it was eased just a little knowing Gabriella was dead. “You saw to that, Abby.”

  “Who is Gabriella?” Lisa asked, and I glanced at her. She’d already stripped out of her clothing, and it was lying on a pile on the floor. The van lurched forward, and she tumbled into the seat still trying to pull on a pair of camouflage pants that looked to be just a tad on the big side.

  “Gabriella is Abby’s birth mother,” Roberto said, and his eyes bore into me from the rearview mirror. “Now get dressed and toss your clothes out the window.”

  The window next to Lisa rolled down as he spoke, and without a word, my best friend tossed her stuff outside even though she was wearing only a sports bra and camo pants. It sort of made her look badass, I’ll admit. Then another thought struck me. Had she really just stripped down in the back of a van like it was nothing?