Heart of Gold: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Clans of Shadow Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  These little bastards had something more than a camera though. A little metal tube with a glowing green tip was mounted alongside the motorized camera on each underbelly. Probably more magic, which might not hurt me, but who knew what that green shit would do to the Doc, especially since her back was still turned to them.

  I brought the Magnum up as I stepped in front of Gabriela and let off a thunderous shot that shattered my slowly recovering hearing.

  My shot should have turned the right drone into a pile of parts, but instead only tore through the back right engine as the speedy little shit dipped out of the way to avoid enough damage to ground it entirely, but the sudden impact sent it twisting in the air, spraying green snot wildly through the air.

  The other drone, unmolested as it was, was dead on-target, spraying a surprisingly large amount of the same goo over the both of us. I managed to take the brunt of the sliming, but despite my best efforts, some splattered across the Doc’s left shoulder and arm.

  Where the goop hit my chest, it shriveled up almost immediately, turning into a harmless, if disgusting, crust on my magnificent APD duds. Where it sprayed on Gabriela though, the stuff started to act, well, like the Stuff. You know, that crazy old horror movie with ice cream that animated and killed you? Just like that, the goo grew and swelled by the second, engulfing most of the Doc’s arms before I could even blink.

  “Fucking magic!” I growled under my breath. I was done with this shit, and now, it was game time. No more mister nice ruggedly handsome APD guy.

  As the wounded drone started to reorient itself, I blew it out of the sky with one well-aimed shot before neatly putting a hole straight through the second.

  I was done with this shit, and I wasn’t the only one who knew it. Like a sleeping dog that got poked too hard, la Corazon thumped hard in my chest.

  As I turned to Gabriela, my vision shifted like it did before. Her barrier, the slime that now covered half of her body despite her struggles, the syringe stuffed back into her pocket, and a dozen other enchantments woven into the walls and doors of the Pendleton Building itself leapt out at me. Each spell, like the ones on the van before, was a pattern stitched like patchwork over the world itself, and each had trailing threads I could grab if I so desired. Well, I fucking desired it.

  It took only a swipe of my hand to tear the slime apart, ripping its threads into tatters. Before I’d even completed the motion, the slime shriveled into a crust that crumbled under Gabriela’s movements. My hands started to curl into claws, my anger feeding the heart and vice versa. Fuck all of this shit, I was ready to tear it all down, thread by thread, until either it was all gone or I was as dead as a doornail. I didn’t even give a fuck that the End’s security goons were starting to beat on Doc’s barrier.

  Fortunately for us, Gabriela put those delicate hands on either side of my head, tearing my gaze away from the threads of magic and into her flashing eyes. “Frank, we only have seconds. Snap out of it!”

  Even with that reminder, I almost ignored her. Hate to say, I was sorely tempted to keep going at their magic like a Miley Cyrus wrecking ball. (Hey, don’t judge!) The only thing that stopped me was a sudden thought leaping to the forefront of my mind. How much of that was Mr. Frank Butcher and how much was the hunk of Aztec junk in me?

  As I twisted away from the magical threads, Gabby said something that brought me back to the situation at hand. “My son. We still need to find my son.”

  That’s why I was here. To help her save him, not knock the stuffing out of their magic. If there was one thing Frank Butcher held dear, it was family. I blinked my eyes hard, and as I opened them, the world went back to normal.

  “Right, I’m good!” My shout was as much for my benefit as hers. Hearing my own voice helped me find myself.

  Together, we turned to hurry down the stairs as bullets and fireballs alike started to buckle the magical wall behind us. Like the rest of the building, the stairwell was normal on the surface, but I couldn’t think about it the same way, not after what I had just glimpsed. There definitely had to be magic woven into every facet of the building.

  Regardless, we took the stairs two at a time, the Doc gamely keeping up with me as we descended into the basement. At the bottom of the stairs was a normal enough door. Without breaking a step, I hit it with a stiff kick aimed right beside the knob, throwing it open in a flurry of debris and depositing me into a rather abnormal looking hallway.

  It wasn’t made from cinderblock, concrete, or any other normal building material I’d ever seen. Smooth and slick, the hallway looked shaped or grown as opposed to built by human hands.

  Honestly, it was more like a tube or an artery than a hall. Further ahead, it was intersected by what looked like more tubes as well as a few oval doors that looked more like valves than any door I had ever seen. A dim bluish glow illuminated the place just enough to see but not enough to see well. It was awfully damned weird, even when I considered all the weird shit I’d seen so far.

  I had to have been gawking because Gabriela had to push me into the hallway. “It’s okay. It’s actually stone, not anything strange.” I turned toward her, but before I could say a single syllable, she cut me off with a raised finger. “The material, I mean. The architecture is strange, even for us wizards, but it’s not going to eat us.”

  “That’s what everyone always says in every movie ever,” I said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. I had to get my shit together. I could already hear sounds from the top of the stairwell. If we didn’t hurry, whatever was up there would be down here, and I did not want to be here when that happened. “Whatever, don’t mind me, I’ve got it.” I glanced down the tube, wishing I’d stopped in aisle six for a chainsaw. “Where to?”

  She nodded to the right. “End of the tube.” Her jaw set with determination. “That’s where the cells are.”

  I arched my eyebrow as we started down the hall, our footsteps echoing through the curved stone. “Do I even want to ask why you know that, or why the hell they have a prison?”

  “I told you I’ve been here before.” Her fierce eyes narrowed. “The cells weren’t built by the Enders originally. They were made by the Peacekeepers.”

  My eyes and gun swept back and forth as we jogged. “Those guys who were supposed to keep shit under wraps? So we’re in an old wizard jail?”

  “Basically.” That edge was back in her voice, a combination of anger and sadness. “When the Enders killed them, they took the place over for their own purposes.”

  While I wanted to comfort her, I was stopped by the realization of what she’d said. The Enders had killed the magic police and were now using their jail to hold prisoners. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but it had me worried because normal jails were already hard to break out of. How hard would it be to break out of a magic jail? I almost didn’t want to find out. Besides, it was a bit late to have second thoughts. No, it was time to put on my big boy shorts, square my chin, and kick some ass. I could figure the rest out as I went.

  We stopped at one of those oval openings. It was barred by an iron-banded wooden door. On the plus side, we were cloaked by the near darkness of the room. Of course, that also meant I couldn’t see if those assholes were coming or not. I could hear movement through the gloom, but the stupid acoustics made it impossible to tell if they were near, far, or somewhere in between.

  “I hope they didn’t change the ward combination.” Gabriela’s fingers glided over the edge of the door, passing over minute engravings I hadn’t noticed at first. A minute or so passed with no obvious progress outside of a muttered Spanish curse or two.

  What put things back into high gear was the crack of a high-powered rifle. The bullet barely missed both of us, burrowing into the stone wall just to one side of the door itself. Even with the muzzle flash, I could barely make out a lone rifleman far off in the gloom, past the stairs.

  “Fuck it!” I punctuated my curse by firing off the last two shots from the Magnum. I probably wo
uldn’t hit anything, but I’d make the fucker put his head down. As soon as my gun was empty, I tossed it aside and, with one swift motion, spun toward the door and lashed out at it with my other hand.

  Every time I did this shit, it was easier to shift into that “fuck some magic up” frame of mind. I could see the web of threads across the door. They were woven like a net and seemed designed to catch anything foolish enough to step into it. My hand tore through it, ripping it into tatters with less effort than it’d take me to swat away a cobweb.

  “Open fucking sesame.” And just like that, the door opened.

  The Doc glanced at me as she began to move through the open doorway. “Thank you, Frank.”

  “Don’t thank me, just go!” I said, hazarding a glance over my shoulder. I still didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t already sighting a rifle on us.

  Gabriela nodded and was the first through the door, with me right on her heels. There wasn’t another echoing shot behind us, but I could hear boots hitting stone. We didn’t have long.

  The little cluster of rooms we had stumbled into reminded me of a wing of the county jail, not that I would ever know what that looked like from personal experience. Honest.

  While the walls and corners retained the smooth finish of the hall we had just passed through, the floors were flatter and the four cell doors, closed off by impressively thick bars, were square instead of round.

  The bars were surprisingly modern looking, linked into a heavy steel door worthy of any prison. Each cell was outfitted better than the local lock-up. That was for sure. That said, the soft-looking cots, clean linens, and fully-outfitted facilities were nicer than some motels I’d crashed in.

  The big problem was that they were all empty.

  Gabriela frantically ran from door to door, checking and rechecking each cell as she went. “Max?” On to the next. “Max?!” That utter certainty had been kicked right in the balls, and the woman who had started this adventure as a grizzly mom on a mission was quickly devolving into a confused and hysterical person who was realizing she had made a colossal mistake.

  “Doc, he’s not here. We have to–” It was the very distinct pop of the spoon coming free from a grenade that cut me off.

  I grabbed Gabriela around the waist before conscious thought had caught up with me. As I started to pull her away from the door, there was the clink of metal on stone as a canister-style grenade landed in the center of the chamber.

  There was only one way we’d live through this. I was just hoping for a normal fuse as I kicked the thing, sending the grenade bouncing into the cell closest to the door. With a second or two left, I threw both of us into the cell furthest from the door. I swear to God or Zeus or whoever the hell looked over this place, I could hear the fuse spark out as I pulled the cell’s cot down over us.

  You never want to hear the sound of a grenade going off in close quarters. Trust me, even with the interposing walls and the cot pulled down on top of us, the shockwave snapped my teeth together and blew out my eardrums. Stone and shrapnel bounced into the cot with enough force to let me know if we had been any closer, we’d have been torn to shreds.

  As I struggled to push the padded mattress off of us, thankful we were alive and ready to fight another day. I would say fight again THAT day, but the only thing that greeted us as we looked up from cover was the growing cluster of men and women in robes and security guard uniforms pointing guns and wands at us, shouting shit I certainly couldn’t hear over the ringing.

  I glanced around, trying to find a way out of this, but even though desperation gnawed at the core of my being, there was no way out. We were trapped in a cell, and they had us dead to rights.

  We were shit out of luck, so I did the only thing I thought could help. I tossed my Glock out into the open and raised my open hands up. Maybe they wouldn’t tear my magic heart out until after I figured a way out of this. It was worth a shot, right?

  9

  Well, I’ll say this much for our captors, they were surprisingly polite about the whole “you’re-our-prisoner” thing. They didn’t even put manacles or handcuffs on us.

  The only thing the security guys, all human this time from what I could tell, did was take my Glock and put what looked like a fancy bead bracelet like you might get at a Native American tourist stop around the Doc’s wrist. Probably some magic-stopping mumbo jumbo.

  Of course, if you had four guys and gals with shotguns and semi-autos trained on somebody, you wouldn’t feel a need to put them in chains either. It put a damper on the whole breaking and entering thing we’d done.

  On the bright side, I was starting to get my hearing back from the grenade. Gabriela was in a bit of shock, probably still torn up at not finding Max, but I could see she was already coming back to herself.

  Any moment now, I was sure she was going to launch into plans B through Z. It was a good thing too because I had no idea what to do. I may have been shoved into this crazy world of magic, but at least my ally was tougher than a three-dollar steak and wilier than a coyote. See what I did there?

  “So are we going out for coffee and pie?” I smiled at my stony-faced watchers, while trying to ignore the fear coiling in my belly. I wasn’t sure what would be in store for us, but I was relatively sure it wouldn’t be coffee and pie. Still, can’t blame a guy for asking, can you? “I could really go for some pie right now. You guys like apple pie?”

  They didn’t have an answer for me, but Gabriela flashed a glare at them. “They aren’t taking us to coffee, but they damned sure are going to take us to Tabitha.”

  “Well, we’re in agreement then because that’s right where we’re taking you, Dr. Perez,” the biggest, ugliest, and no doubt smelliest of the guards grumbled. “You and the Bearer. Honestly, if you had identified yourself or tried to parlay, we wouldn’t have used lethal force.”

  “Yeah, buddy, and I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you,” I spat out. These guys had thrown a grenade at us and come out guns blazing long before we’d fired on them. No, it would have been just as easy to use rubber bullets and tear gas. They hadn’t done that. “Who the fuck throws grenades at people, anyway?”

  The guard shook his head. “You don’t know we’re at war, do you? You certainly don’t act like any of the White or anyone else in the know for that matter.” Honestly, he didn’t look particularly happy about any of this, but that didn’t make him innocent either. “When you’re at war–”

  “You do what you have to do to get the job done, yeah. I’ve been in the soldier business.” I shook my head. He was right, but he was also wrong.

  “War is no excuse for what your people have done,” the Doc half-snarled. “Taking my son? That’s over the line, even for you.”

  The guy’s eyes actually popped a little, but he recovered quickly. “I don’t know anything about that, doctor.” We rounded a last flight of stairs to the top floor. “You can ask Director Marlowe.”

  I nodded to Gabriela. “Yeah, you can bet your ass we’ll ask her.”

  The guards shut up at that point and walked us briskly through the halls. After what felt like forever but wasn’t actually that long, we wound up in a fairly typical looking office. Well, if you didn’t look too closely, that is.

  I was starting to get clued into the differences, the little things to watch for that signified a wizard’s stomping grounds. Odd writing on papers and computer screens, strange bits of crystal, and other bizarre little artifacts are all clues you could be in Wizard World.

  Mr. Head Guard opened one last door. The room on the other side was a nice, orderly affair, but the magic here was a bit more obvious. Two tasteful bookshelves filled with esoterica of all kinds lined the wall to our right. Yellowed scrolls hobnobbed up against Bullfinch’s Mythology, while an ancient Native American dreamcatcher was gingerly tucked next to heavily-bound leather volumes from the Renaissance.

  The two windows facing out over the street directly ahead had that off-color of privacy
glass and gave the light in the room a vaguely unnatural feel. That was compounded by my old friend, the walking hunk of red Play-Doh, standing over in the corner behind the executive glass desk. Sitting at that desk was, presumably, Tabitha Marlowe. You know, the gal who had been the talk of the last five minutes.

  If I had to describe her in one word, it’d have been tired. The woman’s brown bob cut was forged in a fashion salon, but the horn-rimmed glasses came from the geekiest corners of the world. Marlowe had just finished rubbing her thoroughly bloodshot dark eyes. It sort of reminded me of how I looked after an all-night bender, but I was betting she hadn’t had nearly as much fun getting hers. Ah well.

  “Gabriela,” she nodded to the Doc and gestured at the two cozy chairs in front of the desk (rich Corinthian leather, no doubt), “I’m sorry to see you like this.” Claymation Man grumbled something in Hebrew, but Marlowe silenced him with a raised hand. “I know he’s the Bearer, Abner, thank you.”

  Gabriela’s eyes narrowed as she sat down. I was directed toward the seat right behind her. Damned if all this excitement was making me miss the Army just a little. “What in the Sunken City are you doing, Tabitha? I know how far things have fallen but attacking the clinic? Kidnapping Max?”

  “Yeah, what she said,” I echoed. “Oh, and let’s add blowing me up, and what about my movies? Some of that shit is irreplaceable.”

  Marlowe raised her hands for patience, not that she was going to get it. “I’m sorry about the clinic, but that was done by my superiors. I didn’t have any say, aside from what people the Elder pulled in for the mission.” There was just a little hint of regret there, not enough to stir my sympathies, but it was there. “This is a war, and you picked your side, Gabriela. So did I. That being said, I can assure you we didn’t kidnap Max. As nasty as this has become, I wouldn’t allow that.”