Hellbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 6)

by J. A. Cipriano

  Even though I’d hit him as hard as I could, the blow did little more than knock his facemask free of his face. I almost wished it hadn’t because what I saw freaked me the fuck out. I wasn’t sure who or what he was, but if he was guarding this place, I certainly didn’t want to be here, let alone rob it.

  His skin was red. Not like sunburned red or lobster red, but like the pit of fucking Hell red. He had no eyes, only burning craters where they should have been, and as he opened his mouth, I realized he had hooked teeth that reminded me of jagged fishhooks. The stump of a tongue writhed in his mouth like a beheaded snake as a horrible rasp erupted from his throat. The sound made my teeth hurt and pain rip through my brain.

  The symbols etched into the obsidian temple flared with crimson light, and as it washed over me, I drove my fist into his fucked up face. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but from the way my spidey sense was tingling, I knew it wasn’t good. Call me crazy, but I’d seen enough of this guy to not want to fuck around anymore. I punched him again and again.

  Like before, it hurt to hit him, but I ignored it as I unleashed all my frustration and rage into his face one hammer blow at a time. I kept going until my chest heaved from effort and my fists were stained crimson. His chest had stopped rising and falling, but for all I knew that meant nothing. I hadn’t lived this long by living and let living. No, I was going with my old standby. Always cut off the head.

  I got to my feet and grabbed his obsidian katana. Dark malevolent energy rippled up the blade and into my fingers the moment I touched it. That was weird, especially since I was cut off from my magic. This was different from how my magic normally felt too. I could feel the weapon’s power wriggling across my skin like a handful of slimy worms. It almost made me wonder what it was made of and who had enchanted it.

  Actually, I didn’t care. I had a ninja to decapitate before he got up and sprung more surprises on me. As I jerked the weapon free of the stone in a spray of crimson sparks because King Arthur ain’t got shit on me, the power in the blade faded away, leaving me with no more than a really cool sword. Had it been charged up because it’d been embedded in the stone?

  Either way, this really cool sword would be more than up to the task. I reared back and brought the blade down on the freaky ninja, severing his head in a surprisingly small spray of blood.

  As I stood over him with a bloody katana, the smell of rotten eggs and swamp gas hit me, and I nearly gagged. I managed to hold the contents of my stomach in, grab my fallen Glock, and sprint up the stairs before being completely overwhelmed, but it only happened because I managed to hold my breath for the next several steps. Let me just say, sprinting up stairs while holding your breath is not fun. Not even slightly.

  When I finally stopped and sucked in a lungful, I was rewarded by clean air. I threw one last glance over my shoulder at the ninja, and my eyes widened in shock. The guy was burning. Holy fuck. Talk about a severance package.

  Crimson flames consumed his flesh like it was made of gasoline, but he didn’t so much as writhe or scream, which made sense since I’d cut his fucking head off, but you never knew with monsters.

  I turned away from the macabre funeral pyre and glanced up the stairs hoping I wouldn’t be next. The entrance was revealed to me now. It stood about twelve feet tall and was just as wide. Statues of eyeless warriors astride enormous fanged, hooded serpents sat on either side of the entrance. As I moved closer, the ruby eyes of their serpentine mounts seemed to follow me. Well, that was awesome. As if this place wasn’t fucked up enough. Still, I had a gun and now I had a sword. Things were looking up.

  “I don’t know if there are more of you fucks,” I said, raising my sword in the air as I ascended the stairs. “But now I’ve got a fucking katana. Ho, Ho, Ho, motherfuckers.”

  19

  I stepped into the creepy ass temple because why wouldn’t I? Okay, maybe common sense told me to run away, but I couldn’t. Seriously. I’d actually tried. Once I’d stepped onto the top step, I’d glanced over my shoulder. It was a long way down, and as I took an unconscious step downward, the temple stairs elongated so I didn’t actually descend. I’d tried a few more steps just for funsies but never made any headway, which was all sorts of fucked up.

  Going forward was the only way, and that’s what I was going to do. The inside of the temple smelled musty and ancient, making me think no one had been here in forever. To make matters worse, it was lit up like a bad Las Vegas strip club, all garish lighting throwing just enough shadow to properly hide the blemishes of the girls on stage. Only there weren’t any girls. Instead, I stared out at a large expanse of empty space. The floor, save a few huge stone blocks, was gone. As I peered over the edge, I couldn’t see the bottom of the pit. It was nothing but inky darkness below, and call me crazy, but I didn’t want to fall down.

  The walls were filled with brightly lit sconces that illuminated swathes of the room with crimson light. As far as I could tell, every inch of the room was covered in scarlet symbols. Some reminded me of the ones on my arm, but most made no sense to me. Still, while I wasn’t sure what they said, I was willing to bet it was something along the lines of “danger, get the fuck out of here you fucking nitwit.”

  I knew I’d come here to rob the place, but with every step I took, it felt like something was drawing me forward. While I couldn’t say why, I knew I had to cross the stepping stones of doom to find the heart stone.

  The stones ahead looked like they were only a few feet from each other, and there were only seven stones, so I’d be through the door on the other side in a jiffy. You know, assuming a giant rock didn’t fall on me or anything.

  I holstered my gun and took a deep breath. The air tasted funny. Sort of like moss and jelly beans, which let’s be fair, wouldn’t have been my first choice. Still, it was cool in here, almost too cool because gooseflesh had sprouted along my arms. It made me glad I had a long-sleeved shirt. I mean, I didn’t normally get cold because I was a Cursed, but then again, I’d been trudging through the jungle in the blazing sun for the past few hours. My body was probably going a little insane, especially since I was dehydrated.

  “Well, if at first you don’t succeed,” I said, leaping across the darkness and onto the first platform. As I landed on the smooth black stone, scarlet fire rippled upward in the space behind me, sealing off the exit behind a wall of flame. The creaking sound of gears filled my ears, and I suddenly had a horrible feeling. As the wall on to my left began to glow brightly, I realized I’d set off a trap. Fuck.

  Panic exploded through me as I leapt to the next stone just before a jet of flame turned the surface of the platform I’d just been on into slag. The stone bubbled and popped as the sound of more gears filled my ears. As I decided to just make haste across, a blade came swinging down through the space between this stone and the next like a pendulum.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I murmured, trying to count the seconds between each swing. I was going to go for it because what choice did I have? As I finally started to think I had the timing right, the wall of fire that had blocked me in began to inch forward. So it was a timed event. Awesome.

  I shoved my rising panic deep down inside me and turned back to the pendulum. I flipped it the bird and leapt. I landed on the next stone as the pendulum sliced through the air behind me. Boo-fucking-yah!

  More gears began to turn, but before anything happened, I leapt again. As I touched down on the fourth rock, the third one crumbled into dust. I took a deep breath and was immediately glad I didn’t hesitate, otherwise I’d have been lost.

  I turned my eyes toward stone number five, and as I did, my smile fell off my face. Standing upon it was another one of those ninjas, only this one wasn’t wearing a mask like the first one had been. He had a katana gripped loosely with his left hand. His other hand was extended toward me, and as my gaze fell upon him, he curled his fingers toward himself.

  So what did I do? I gave him my biggest grin and dropped my sword to the platform
beside me before raising my fists. The sound of the sword hitting the stone beside me seemed to echo through the air.

  The ninja nodded once, pleased, and dropped his own sword before settling into one of those Bruce Lee fighting stances.

  “Ready?” I asked, and as he fixed me with those cavernous holes where his eyes should have been and nodded, I drew my Glock and shot him in the fucking face.

  The .45 caliber bullet caught him square in the forehead and threw his head backward in a spray of blood and bone. As he collapsed to the stone, I re-holstered the gun before bending down and calmly picking up my katana. Good thing he hadn’t seen Indiana Jones, but either way, I felt strangely good about myself as I leapt onto the next platform and kicked his body into the abyss.

  I didn’t hear his body hit the ground below, even though it vanished from sight pretty quickly. That seemed really bad, but then again, I wasn’t planning on falling either. Only two stones remained between me and the end, and the fire was only at platform three. The urge to leap across filled me, but I pushed it away. I had time.

  Since I didn’t see anything on this platform, I was guessing it was because I’d been supposed to fight a ninja. I decided to take a leap of faith and move on. As I touched down on the sixth one, a fucking flashbang went off, turning my vision into a white blur. As I reached up to my face in pain, I felt movement beside me. I dropped while lashing out with my katana and was rewarded by the clang of steel. Force reverberated down my arm, but I ignored it, opting to lash out with my foot in the direction of whatever it was.

  My foot caught air. Still, nothing tried to kill me, and as my vision came back, I realized why. A bone-handled spear as long as my body lay next to me on the platform. Two more were embedded in the wall on the other side of the room up to their hafts. As my gaze went from them to the spear at my feet and back again, a shudder ran through me. Had I seriously struck a spear out of the air while blind? I mean, I was good, but I wasn’t that fucking good.

  I blinked away the haze and stared at my sword. The symbols etched into it glowed, spilling neon sparks into the darkness, and I got the distinct feeling the weapon was pleased, which didn’t strike me as particularly good. Call me crazy, but when was the last time a glowing sword dropped by a creepy ninja was in any way positive?

  “Hello?” I asked it, and as I said the word, I felt a strange pressure at the back of my brain. It reminded me of being dead asleep in my bed and hearing a knock at the door. Only Michael Myers was doing the knocking.

  The sword throbbed in my hand, and as I peered closer at it, the blade shattered into a million crimson shards that buzzed around me like swarm of bees.

  “What the fuck!?” I cried, right before scarlet fire shot from the end of the hilt like a flamethrower. I dropped the broken, fire-spewing sword and took half a step backward in surprise, but managed to stop myself before I stepped off the platform and fell to my death.

  As the broken hilt hit the platform, it melted into a million globules of pulsing lava that splattered across the stone in front of me. The flames behind me died, leaving me pitched in darkness save for the swirling, swarming shards of molten katana dancing in front of me. The sound of stones grinding filled my ears as I sucked in a quick breath that tasted like sulfur.

  I wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on, but everything in me told me to make a run for it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t move forward because the spinning shards of the katana whirred through the air between me and the seventh platform. Worse, I couldn’t see a way to get back to the entrance. Whatever was going on had made it nearly impossible to escape.

  “Hello!” the strangely familiar feminine voice boomed within the space. It was so loud I actually fell to my knees clutching my ears in pain. It sounded like power. Like tidal waves and earthquakes. Like a meteor slamming into the surface of the planet and plunging straight through in a cataclysmic explosion.

  The blood drained from my face. Holy fuck, I was going to die. I was Mac Brennan. I’d killed virtually every kind of supernatural creepy crawly there was, and I was going to die because of a fucking gypsy. If it wasn’t so pathetic I might have laughed.

  The shards whirling in front of me settled into a featureless silhouette of a woman. Ragged wings stretched out behind her as she knelt down in front of me. It was weird, sort of like staring at a caricature of a cartoon devil lady in real time. Only I was pretty sure this one was going to eat me.

  “Who are you?” I asked, somewhat surprised my voice still worked. The sight of her was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I’d thought I’d been in the big leagues before, but this… this was so far beyond me, it was fucking ridiculous. I hadn’t been in the bigs… no, I’d been in the kiddie league. And not even the competitive one. No, I’d been in the one where they didn’t even keep score.

  “That is not a question I can answer for you. To do so would invite disaster.” Her lips twisted into an amused smile as she reached out with one hand and touched my cheek. I’m not sure what I expected it to feel like, but I hadn’t expected her touch to feel soft and comforting. A wave of tension fled from my body as she grabbed my chin and tilted my head toward her.

  Her glowing lips were only a few inches from mine, and for a second, I thought she might kiss me. Instead, she smiled, revealing a mouthful of teeth that stretched down into eternity. My stomach twisted in fear because I knew that smile. I’d seen it countless times before on the cat demon living in my head. Only she didn’t look like this when she appeared to me, nor did her voice sound quite like this ladies. So what the fuck was going on?

  She looked at me curiously, which was weird because if she was the cat demon, shouldn’t she know me? Either way, it wasn’t good, even the most interesting rat in the snake cage gets eaten, eventually.

  “Unless it’s cold,” the woman said like she’d just read my thoughts and was addressing them. For all I knew, she had. Holy fuck that was a scary thought. Well, at least I wasn’t picturing her naked… “Then the cold causes the snake to fall asleep, and the rat eats him alive.”

  “Cross, Mac Brennan.” She released me and stood, turning toward the seventh step. “I await you.”

  “What the fuck is going on?” I asked, but either she didn’t hear me or didn’t care to answer because all she did was wink at me before vanishing into the ether. The lights in the room came back on, the fire roaring to life behind me as I knelt there drenched in fear sweat.

  A crimson spotlight fell upon the last step. Standing in the center of the stone was an ornate wooden door like the kind you’d find on billion dollar mansions. It hadn’t been there a moment before. It was there now though, and as the heat of the fire breathing down my neck came closer, the door opened to reveal a void of absolute nothingness.

  “I am so fucked,” I muttered as I grabbed the spear the katana had deflected and stood. I wasn’t sure what was through that door, but one thing was certain. I couldn’t stay here. Not with the fire about to roast me like a marshmallow.

  So I did what anyone would do. I sucked in a breath and leapt for the next step. My feet hit the seventh pillar, and I was mildly surprised nothing tried to eat me, burn me alive, or disembowel me. Then a tentacle of crimson light whipped out from the doorway, grabbed me around the waist and jerked me inside. Fuck.

  20

  I came through the door already pulling my Glock free and ready to pour some lead into the first dirt bag I saw even if it was a kraken. Thankfully there was no kraken. In fact, there was nothing at all.

  As I collapsed onto the marble tile, the disembodied tentacle wrapped around my waist dissipated, leaving me kneeling there in a completely empty room. It was too long for me to see the end of, but at least it was empty of things trying to kill me. Even still, I kept the gun at the ready while gripping my stolen spear with my other hand. There was no way I was putting my weapons away.

  The walls near me were covered in the scarlet symbols I’d seen in the previous room. Only this chamber was way more intri
cately carved than the other ones had been. These were definitely done with precision, and in such a way, I scarcely believed it was possible. This place felt old in a way I couldn’t begin to describe. Whatever was in here had seen and done it all, literally. I wasn’t sure how this place could be created, even with magic, since I’d never seen anything like it. No, standing here was like digging into an Ancient Egyptian tomb and finding a space shuttle.

  “Come. We have much to discuss.” the same voice from before boomed, only this time the thread of power woven into it had lessened. Had it adjusted so I could withstand it? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that or if it was even true. Either way, I was glad the overwhelming power was weakened. Call me crazy, but I liked when the crazy demons were weaker.

  I still wasn’t sure who it was. It seemed like my own cat, but why hadn’t she recognized me? Then again, she was a cat demon and had used my name. Maybe she was fucking with me?

  “Who are you?” I asked, turning my head toward the voice. Pillars of scarlet flame burst to life, illuminating a pathway forward as a faint laugh slithered across my skin like a pack of slugs. A shiver I couldn’t hold in racked my body. Whatever was down there was bad, and I had no doubts it might try to kill me. Unfortunately, I was also pretty sure it would succeed if it tried.

  I mean, I was really good at killing supernaturals, but I didn’t actually have any powers to speak of at the moment. Besides, I had no idea who I was facing nor what she wanted. Hell, I didn’t even know if it was a she, or if it even had a gender in the traditional sense.

  Either way, standing around waiting wasn’t going to get me out of here. One way or another, this was going to end in the next few minutes. Hopefully with me having successfully slipped by her so I could find whatever it was I was supposed to steal. Sam hadn’t actually known what the heart stone looked like. He’d just said I’d know it when I saw it.