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

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Well, shit,” I said as I threw myself to the ground moments before the air exploded with the chatter of automatic weapons fire.

  Molly had the same idea, but instead of dropping straight down, she threw herself forward. She did a neat tuck-and-roll, coming up right in front of the Ender. Despite the enhanced strength and weight of the suit, it still couldn’t keep its weapons from reacting to the growing recoil. Rounds sprayed up and away, and before the Ender could reorient on Molly, she lashed out, letting out a blood-curdling battle cry.

  The sparks of her knives joined in with the sparks flashing all around the car from the wild gunfire, lighting our little dance of death with an epileptic’s worst nightmare. For a split-second, I thought whatever magic was behind Molly’s knives would win out over Iron Man’s magical field, but just as they were about to puncture, they slid sideways with a shriek like nails on a chalkboard. Sparks cascaded around her as the blades turned cherry red and heat wafted off of them.

  “Shite,” she muttered and quickly shifted, trying to stab the goon through the weaker joints in his knees. I fired off another round, aiming for the dead center of the guy’s mass, hoping to keep the hunk of junk off-balance and distracted. My shot struck dead center with another explosion of sparks, sending an off-green ripple up and down the entire suit.

  Unfortunately, the Ender seemed pretty sure of his invulnerability and didn’t even flinch from the shot as the exoskeleton whined to compensate from the impact. Before Molly could plunge her blades into his knees, the goon swung down with a TALOS-powered backhand. She tried to turn away from the blow, but being right there, still on one knee, put her in a shit position. With a hard crack, Molly was sent sprawling. She slammed into the sidewall and slid down to the floor.

  “I warned you people,” the Ender shouted, “but you stubborn Whites never learn.” He raised his guns up again. “How about you, Bearer? You ready to listen to reason?”

  I mulled the proposition over for a second. I could see Molly still breathing, but I couldn’t tell how badly she was hurt. My guns weren’t doing shit, but I knew why. His magical shield kept deflecting them. Well, that was something I could deal with. Still, the asshole had the drop on me and I doubted he would miss twice. I certainly wasn’t going to win this with pure firepower. At least, not without a little Frank Butcher swagger.

  La Corazon began thumping in my chest and my vision turned golden as I dropped my rifle. “Okay, champ, you’ve made your point.” I raised my hands up as the threads of magic woven around him revealed themselves to me. The patches of enchantment that made the TALOS work on its own gleamed in my vision like loose threads on a sweater: the power generator on its back, the force field surrounding it, and all over the helmet for targeting and optics. “I surrender.”

  As the grunt stomped forward to take me in, Molly started to stir. The bruise on her jaw was impressive and blood leaked from her nose and her busted lip, but she was moving. She was one tough lady, that’s for sure, and I hoped she was tough enough to take advantage of what I was about to do.

  Still, there was a reason every soldier in the Army wasn’t outfitted with a TALOS suit, and it was a good one. Those things sucked down juice like crazy, and needed a direct power feed to function for more than a few seconds. These guys had overcome that small problem with magic, which made my plan obvious.

  As soon as he started to reach for my arms, but before he could do anything to stop me, I swiped my hands through the magical threads attached to his suit, tearing loose the magical weave generating the suit’s power force field. These enchantments were strong, stronger than the others I’d encountered, but I kept pulling, ignoring the manic thumping in my chest.

  Just as the Ender decided my assault was sufficient cause to switch from grabbing my hands to grabbing my throat, the magic surrounding him ripped to pieces in my fingers. “Nice try, Bearer, but I’ve got enough juice to keep going long enough to kill you and the girl.”

  As I found myself dangling in the air, the TALOS’ grip starting to crush into my throat, Molly got the rest of the way to her feet and wiped away the bloody mask covering her face. She’d lost her knives when she got knocked ass-over-tea-kettle, but she seemed to be gathering herself for something. I just had to buy her a moment.

  I decided to do so in a simple way, uniquely me. Spitting a nice loogie right into the TALOS’s faceplate, I croaked out, “Go blow it out your ass, you arrogant fuck.”

  Oh yeah, he was totally focused on killing me right then. Those armored fingers squeezed down and things were starting to go grey. Well, at least I was going to die like a badass, choked out by a super soldier in magical power armor. If there was a cooler way to die, I certainly didn’t know what it was.

  That’s when Molly let out a scream. It was no scream of distress, or even a scream of rage. No, this was (quite literally) the wailing of a banshee. Even protected by the power of the heart, it felt like my ears were about to start bleeding and my eyes were about to burst.

  The asshole in the armor wasn’t so lucky. Blood poured from his eyes and ears. I was a bit shocked the dick didn’t just immediately die. Then again, I hadn’t managed to tear loose all the enchantments from his helmet. He probably had some residual protection keeping him alive. Either way, as a scream tore from his throat, he loosened his grip long enough for me to breathe and concentrate.

  I took advantage of the oxygen returning to my brain to remember the Colt revolver at my hip. As the TALOS grunt whirled, firing wildly at Molly with his free hand in a desperate attempt to cut off her lethal screech, I whipped out the revolver, cocked back the hammer with my thumb, and stuck the barrel right in the asshole’s face. This time, when I pulled the trigger, there was no mystic shield to cover up the weak spot this time.

  The Colt boomed as my round shattered the TALOS’s visor into pieces, hopefully shattering those last enchantments as well. Unfortunately, the wild spray of gunfire perforated the wall around Molly as she took a bullet through the shoulder and one in her armored vest. Still, she kept screaming.

  The shock of having a revolver go off in his face made Iron Man drop me gasping to my feet. He staggered back and as he did, Molly’s cry seemed to amplify tenfold. The Ender’s head … well … let’s not beat around the bush. It fucking exploded.

  I’ve seen people die in some pretty horrible ways, but this surged pretty close to the top of the list, if not topping it. Blood, bone, and gooey bits sprayed out through the shattered faceplate and, for a moment, the TALOS staggered around like a decapitated chicken before collapsing to the ground. The elevator floor shuddered, and for a split second, I thought the entire thing was going to fail and send us plummeting back down the elevator shaft.

  Molly wiped the blood from her mouth, swaying dangerously as I pushed myself to my feet. “See, boyo? Nothin’ a little bit o’ song couldn’t fix.”

  I rushed forward to catch her as she collapsed into a heap from wounds and exertion. The girl was still breathing, which was good. Of course, one good thing always led to one bad thing in my life, because that was the exact moment the elevator let out a ding and the doors cranked open.

  19

  I cradled Molly, shielding her with my body as I raised the Colt and thumbed back the hammer. After all, if it had been good enough for cowboys, it was good enough for me. As the doors slid back, I was ready to put a bullet through the head of the first Ender on the other side. Sure, it was going to be a parting shot (in the most literal sense of the word), but it would be well worth it just to take out one more of the bastards.

  Now, despite how the Army might get depicted in some media, one of the first rules they teach you on the firing range is to sight and identify your target before you open fire. After all, in the middle of a war and the heat of action, it’s easy to make a mistake if you start spraying and praying, and mistakes made with a gun usually get your platoon mates (and your friends) killed.

  It was a good thing too because it would have made this entire
array of shit completely pointless if I’d popped a cap into Gabriela. No, seriously, that’s who was behind the doors when they opened up. She wasn’t alone, though.

  The Doc was pulling her enchanted syringe out of a guard’s neck. Behind her, two men and one woman were dolled up to the nines in battle gear. Fortunately, they were already out like a light, their bodies suspended from the ceiling by pulsing bands of force. As Gabby dropped her latest victim, he joined the others in the tangled web of the tapestry above.

  I had a million questions racing through my head, most of which were variations of “What the fuck was Gabriela doing here?” and “How did she manage to get to this particular spot when we’d been fighting for every inch of forward motion?” Hell, she didn’t even looked mussed. She could be classified as somewhat flustered but definitely not full-on mussed.

  Somehow, I smartly condensed all those questions and observations into one succinct sentence. “Doc, what the hell?!”

  Gabriela started, almost dropping her syringe. “Frank?! You can see me as me?”

  It sounded like a stupid question, which meant it was probably actually smart, so I played it cool. “Well, who else would you be?” Things seemed safe enough for the second, and I carried Molly out into the hallway.

  “Oh, of course,” Gabby replied in that academic tone of hers. “You can probably see right through the illusion charm.” It only took a moment for her to register the wounded redhead before she rushed over to my side. “Put her down gently, and I’ll see what I can do.” Gabriela was about to grab my wounded shoulder but stopped herself. “For you as well. Are we looking at bullet wounds or more arcane injuries?” She was a true pro, as always.

  “Mostly, yeah, but I think Molly might’ve strained herself doing some hefty Irish juju.” I set Molly down gently on the floor. We were back into more of the space age décor of the ground floor and the soft lights were almost sinister now that enough blood had been spilled in this place. “Can you spare the concentration to explain exactly what the fuck is going on while you patch up Molly? More importantly, do we even have time for this?”

  “I can do all the above.” Gabriela knelt down and laid a hand gently over Molly’s punctured arm. “I saw most of the security bunching up at the doors of the ritual chamber itself and these were the only other ones I’ve found on this floor.” Her fingers started to flex and sway in subtle motions, little weavings as opposed to the big windings of her usual spells. “As for Molly, if she expended too much energy, I don’t know if I can wake her up, but I can certainly stabilize her and get her on the road to wellness.”

  I reloaded the Colt Navy, anxiously glancing down both sides of the hallway. Despite Gabriela’s intel and the fact our current company was under wraps and sleeping like babies, I still figured it was only a matter of time before more came. “Right, fine, so what’s going on?”

  Gabby whispered a few incantations and a soft white light surrounded her hand and infusing the bullet wound. “Well, after Roland pulled me aside, it became obvious the Magus wasn’t working on any other plan to rescue Max. It had just been a line to keep me out of the field, something about how important I would be to the cause and was too vital to risk. As you’d say, Frank–”

  “It was a load of bullshit?” I flashed a painful smirk at her. My throat was killing me and my shoulder was on fire. I knew Doc couldn’t work any voodoo on me, but she was a damned sight better doctor than Molly was.

  “Precisely.” As Gabby murmured the word, Molly’s creased brow eased, and she seemed to slip into a peaceful sleep. The wound still looked ugly, but it had stopped bleeding and the flesh was starting to knit back together. “So I reloaded on magic and took matters into my own hands, which are obviously quite a bit gentler than yours, no offense.”

  “We all have our talents, Doc, but how did you manage getting this far without getting ID’d? Hell, how’d you get here so quickly?” Not that I wasn’t overjoyed to see Gabriela here and especially now, but my natural paranoia was starting to raise its ugly head.

  She had started to pull off Molly’s Kevlar vest to see if there were any serious wounds under the armor where she’d been shot, but my question made Gabriela’s head pop up and look at me oddly. “Quickly? It’s been hours, Frank. As for the how, well, working with both sides during the better days does give you an idea of how things work, not to mention the brunt of the security was focused on trouble elsewhere in the building than the front entrance.”

  “Hours? No fucking way, Doc, it’s only been minutes.” I massaged what I imagined to be deep red bruises forming on my neck as I contemplated her words. Was it really possible that hours had already slipped by? It didn’t seem likely, but then again, I had an ancient artifact where my heart should be. “A very busy few minutes, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes tops, but even getting out of the tesseract didn’t take long.”

  The Doc’s eyes flashed with realization. “Oh, well, that explains everything.” She went back to her work. “The tesseract warps space-time, remember? The key part of that is, of course, the time aspect. It may have felt like a couple minutes, but out here time passed by much quicker.”

  “Well, fuck me twice.” I got to my feet, ignoring the pain because time had to be running out. “We have to get rolling then.”

  Gabriela looked up from Molly, whose chest showed no sign of having a bullet wound. Damned good magic vest, there, must have been at least +3 versus guns. “What about Molly? She’s in too fragile a condition to carry, not that I would advise it anyway.”

  “Look, Gabriela,” I caught her gaze and tried to look serious. “You’re being too good for your own, well, good. We don’t have much longer before the bad guys do their shit, and we have no idea what that shit will do to Max. I don’t want to put it like this, especially because Molly has put herself on my ‘people that I really like who saved my life a few times’ list, but you’ve got a son who needs you more than this patient needs a doctor. Right now, you have to make a choice. Is staying here with Molly worth losing your son?” Even as I said the words, I felt like an asshole because it was a shitty choice laden with guilt.

  I am loathe to admit it, but I was conflicted about leaving Molly to fate because she had saved my life a few times so far, just as I’d saved hers, and that meant plenty to a soldier like me. I sure as hell didn’t want to leave the kid behind for God knows what to happen, but somebody had to make the hard call this time. I figured it was time to grow up and be that guy.

  Gabriela let out a deep sigh and nodded. “You’re absolutely right, Frank.” She reached up a hand, which I took to pull her to her feet. “I’ll put my last illusion charm on Molly and hope it holds.” She pulled out what looked like a tarnished, old silver medallion and flipped it down on Molly’s chest and … nothing happened. Well, nothing I could see, but I just had to trust the Doc’s thingie did the, uh, thing it was supposed to. Meet Frank Butcher, master of words and description. Shakespeare didn’t have shit on me.

  The Doc and I locked eyes again and while I’d like to think, if things had been different (like we weren’t in the middle of a life-or-death situation in the middle of a skyscraper full of sorcerers with guns and robots and shit), it might have turned into a full-fledged “moment.” You know the ones where time slows down and seconds turn into hours while you stare into each other’s eyes and slowly lean closer together? Yeah, that kind. So what did I do? I blew it all to hell because we had a job to do and given our current situation, giving in to that right now would be a big mistake. Yeah, I know, I’m kicking myself too.

  I managed to pull out of the gaze and glanced to both sides. “Which way do we go, Doc?”

  Gabriela coughed and nodded. “The ritual chamber is down to the left. It’s not much further.”

  “Okay, let’s finish this thing.”

  “Oh, Mr. Butcher, I couldn’t agree more.” Yeah, if you couldn’t guess, it wasn’t the Doc that answered, but it was a voice I recognized, even if I’d only heard it once. I
t was Marcus Drakos, the big head honcho of the Enders himself, and the asshole’s voice came from right behind us. How, I don’t know, probably (you guessed it!) magic.

  We spun as one, Gabriela starting to chant as I leveled my Colt, but I’ll grant Drakos one thing: the bastard was ready. Before we could even finish our turn, the building itself sprang to life and defended its master. Drywall, electrical cables, plastic molding, and steel swarmed around us in the time it took my heart to beat, hog-tying us like, well, trussed hogs. To add that extra special touch, extra strands gagged Gabriela in mid-spell.

  “I certainly can’t allow you to commit any more violence, physical or mystical,” Marcus said in a cool, even tone. “It would be uncivilized and unnecessary at this point in events.”

  The man before us looked like your average European business man, well, at least what I always thought they looked like. Swarthy, tall, with slicked-back black hair and piercing blue eyes. He was dressed in a black turtleneck under a charcoal-gray suit, and if you didn’t know better, you certainly wouldn’t have figured he was the head of a stupidly powerful cult of wizards dedicated to eradicating all magic on the planet. Oh, and he was a kidnapper and murderer. So, you know, he was about as bad as the typical investment banker.

  I struggled, but even with the power of la Corazon, I couldn’t even budge a centimeter. While I could see the magic in the air as it swirled around Marcus in patches and weaves every color of the rainbow, I couldn’t move to tear at it and rip us free. Still, I wasn’t going to let Marcus know he had us up shit creek without paddles. “Oh, Marcus, my man, you haven’t even begun to see uncivilized yet!” Gabriela made a muffled sound I’m fairly certain was an emphatic agreement with my statement.

  “We’ll see about that, Mr. Butcher.” He pointed down the hallway past us, toward the ritual chamber, and the bindings obeyed, dragging us along. “We’ll see about that.”