Maverick: A Supernatural Space Opera Novel (Witching on a Starship Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  The world seemed to stop. Not only had Zug contained a bomb able to blow up like a bazillion planets with the power of the Gideon Cube, but he’d killed Jeffry. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, okay, I’d just met the guy a few hours ago, but I’d sort of felt like we were friends, and his death ripped something out of me I hadn’t known was there. Sadness and rage swept up in me as I turned my eyes upon Zug. Oh, he was going to pay for that. No, not just pay. I was going to rip his stupid alien head from his shoulders.

  “Well, now that we’re finished with that unnecessary business, perhaps we can move on to something more reasonable?” Zug said before gills opened on the side of his neck and the smell of honeysuckle and jasmine hit my nose. My gut began to twist, and my head swelled as I tried to focus on anything but Lord Zug. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but I couldn’t focus on him well enough to stop him.

  Instead, I reached down, and allowed my own magic to surge up inside me. It hit me like a cool breath of air, and as it slipped through my veins, it pushed away the strange sensation, allowing me to focus on the Maverick.

  Suddenly, I could see the muscles moving beneath his flesh as his free hand went to the single button around the throat of his tunic. Beside me, Chloe let out a hungry gasp, and as I turned to look at her, I saw her body had reformed, but worse, her eyes had gone far off and hungry. Her nostrils flared, and as they did, I heard Zug’s voice loud and clear.

  “I want you two to fight to the death,” he said like he actually thought we would do it, which was totally insane. Even crazier, as his words slid over me, something deep inside me wanted me to obey, only I wasn’t sure why. Still, it was nowhere near strong enough to make me comply. Thank God.

  Unfortunately, one look at Chloe told me a different story.

  “Fuck,” I murmured as she lunged at me, transforming into a hideous rage beast mid-flight.

  25

  The werewolf bounced off of me as I threw my hands up, focusing my magic into a shield that burst out of me like I was Link (or anyone) in Super Smash Brothers Melee. Sparks tore from the magical sphere’s surface as Chloe’s claws raked against it, struggling to find purchase in the expansive energy bubble.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Chloe?” I cried, shoving her back with a force of will while she snarled at me, spraying frothy spittle in every direction even though I was starting to think I might need to use a lot more force to stop her. I really didn’t want to do that because, well, she really just needed me to help her and I just didn’t know how.

  Her claws gouged furrows into the steel like it was soft clay as she stopped herself in a truly awesome show of strength. Then the muscles in her legs tensed like she was about to pounce. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure the pounce was going to be me, and as much as I liked getting jumped on by a hot chick, I preferred them, well, less hairy and slobbery.

  As I spoke, Lord Zug gave me an odd look, and his ridged eyebrows twitched. “Why do you not obey me, human?”

  I didn’t have time to respond, let alone contemplate his question because Chloe chose that moment to spring at me, mouth gaping wide to reveal row upon row of glinting, deadly teeth.

  Fortunately, I was ready for it, and I teleported out of the way as she struck the spot where I’d been. I reappeared right above her and kicked out my leg before dropping it on the back of her head, slamming her face first into the steel with a crack that would have made me feel bad if I’d thought she wouldn’t heal it.

  Still, this was taking way too long. Not only was I fighting my teammate, which seemed like the world’s biggest no, no, I was also not completing the mission. Unfortunately, completing the mission was more important than Chloe. And as that thought sunk into my brain, I knew what I had to do. Put her down.

  “What’s that? Not ready for me to drop the leg?” I asked, vaulting to my feet, and as I did, the werewolf whirled. “Well, brother, whatcha gonna do when Hulkamania runs wild over you?”

  Chloe’s glinting claws flashed through the air, but they were way too slow to hit me, what with time being my bitch and all. I casually backed out the way as Lord Zug fixed his gaze on me. The gills on his neck flared open, revealing the pink flesh beneath the flaps, and causing more of that weird flowery smell to fill the air.

  For whatever reason, that caused Chloe to go absolutely apeshit. Her amber eyes dilated down into pinpricks as rage swept over her in a wave of heat that hit me like a blast furnace. Well, not quite like that because I was still alive, but you get the idea. Jesus, it’s called hyperbole. Get over it.

  I stepped to the side as her razor-sharp claws flashed by me before reaching out and poking her in the chest, delivering the devastating maneuver Hulk Hogan had used to defeat Kevin Nash in the squared circle. The Fingerpoke of Doom.

  As my finger struck her chest, I poured magic into the attack. The result was obvious. Her body snapped backward with a staccato crack as she toppled head over tail to the ground and lay there unmoving for what felt like forever because I’d slowed down time.

  “I’m going to ask nicely, just this once,” I said, turning toward Zug and holding my hand out toward him. I’d seen what he could do with that thing, but for whatever reason, he was shocked by my actions, which might let me take it from him. Fortunately, even with the cube in hand, he seemed to be reacting slower than normal. Not as slow as I’d have liked, but slow enough to make our interaction feel, well, normal. “Give me the cube.”

  “I do not understand,” the Maverick said as his flaps spread wider and the cube glowed brighter. “Why do you not bow to my will?”

  “Because you’re a bad guy, and I’m a good guy, and us good guys never bow to evil. Besides, you’re just a jackass, and I’m firmly a ‘don’t listen to jackasses’ type of girl,” I cried right before Zug threw an enormous emerald fist made of crackling energy at me. “Dude, even Ryan Reynolds couldn’t make the Lantern’s green spandex work. What makes you think you can pull it off?”

  I dodged, barely, and as the emerald fist slammed into the steel where I’d been standing with enough force to cave in the metal, I pointed at him with my fingers. A bolt of lightning arced from my fingers, but before it reached him, my attack turned into chewing gum midflight. At least it looked like chewing gum. I couldn’t be sure since I didn’t stop to chew it. Still, as it fell harmlessly to the floor, I knew I’d have to switch tactics and fast.

  “Can you hear me, Mal’?” Oliver said in my head as Zug roared in rage and emerald fire exploded from the cube. It would have gotten me, but I managed to open a portal in front of myself in time.

  “Yeah, what’s up, Fish Face?” I asked as glinting green hellfire poured into the void.

  “The pylon’s down. We’re coming in hot. Oh, and Mal, one more thing. Be careful. Lord Zug has pheromones he can leak into the air and make you do his bidding,” Oliver added, his advice about as helpful as a popsicle in a snow storm at the moment. “It’ll probably affect Chloe the most and you the least on account of your, well, magic.”

  “Thanks for not letting me know earlier. Chloe and Jeffry are already down,” I grumbled as I teleported behind Zug and opened the other side of the portal. Zug’s own fire exploded outward, blasting him in the back and sending him flying forward into the room.

  He hit the ground hard, and the Gideon Cube slipped from his hand. The fire died away instantly, and as it did, the guys in the room shot at me.

  Now, I’m fast, but I’m not that fast. There was no way I could dodge all that fire and recover the cube.

  No. I had to do something different.

  As plasma bolts sizzled through the air, I pulled up my magic and flung it outward in an expanding sphere of pink flame. My spell engulfed the plasma, buying me a couple seconds as I reached out toward the cube with my magic. As my metaphysical fingers wrapped around it, Chloe hit me from behind, her shoulder driving into my back and flinging me forward. I hit the ground hard, and as my ears rang from the impact, my spells died away.

  The cu
be slipped from my magical grip as the remaining plasma fire pierced my weakened magic and came sizzling toward me. Damn.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, rolling beneath Chloe as she lunged for me. “But you’ll heal. Well, probably.”

  Blaster fire peppered the werewolf, turning her into a charred hunk of meat, but I didn’t dare think about that because I needed to survive. So even as the smell of Chloe’s cooked flesh filled my nose, I buried the fact that I might have killed her down deep inside me and dove for the Gideon Cube. I threw my hand out, trying vainly to force grab it as Zug scrambled to his feet, his body still covered in residual emerald energy.

  I hit the ground just in front of the alien as he scooped it up, causing emerald fire to dance across his arm. As his eyes met mine, a cold sneer filled his face. He raised the cube toward me, and more fire began to gather all around him.

  “Die,” he said right before the ceiling of the place blew inward in a spray of molten metal, revealing the Starship Endeavor. Void Crushers were pelting its shields with blaster fire, causing them to warp and redden under the onslaught, but I was pretty sure the ship could handle it, or it wouldn’t have crashed nose first into the building.

  Besides, that didn’t matter either. Like Jeffry and Chloe, I couldn’t deal with the Endeavor’s fate right now. I had to get the Gideon Cube. If I didn’t, we were fucked, and as much as I liked getting fucked, I didn’t want it to be at the hands of an intergalactic space lizard.

  “No!” I cried, digging deep and throwing my power out at the distracted lizard king while bringing my hand up in an upward arc. “Wind Slash!”

  A torrent of razor-sharp air whipped from my outstretched fingers and tore through Lord Zug’s arm just below the elbow, severing the appendage in a spray of hot green blood that spattered across my face. Better still, the fire he’d been gathering died away as his still spasming hand hit the ground and writhed while still clutching the cooling Gideon Cube.

  “Bitch,” Zug snarled, staggering back as he gripped his ruined appendage. Then a new arm burst from the stump in a shower of gore like he was Piccolo in Dragon Ball Z.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot,” I snapped, grabbing his severed arm as the lizard lunged for it. “I'm a bitch, a lover, a sinner, and a saint. And you know what? I do not feel ashamed!”

  “Kill them all!” Zug cried as he grabbed his former arm and tried to wrench it free. His own claws pierced the appendage’s flesh, spilling slick goo onto the flesh and causing it to slip from my grasp. As it slid away, my fingers touched the cube, and the whole of the universe opened in front of me.

  26

  As infinity stretched out in front of me all green and unlimited, I suddenly felt small. Not like a gnat small or even an amoeba small, but like inconsequential small. And the universe? It was so fucking ginormous that not only did it simply not matter if my life was snuffed out in an awesome hail of gunfire, it didn’t matter if an entire millennium full of events vanished from history. Fuck, it didn’t matter if all of history evaporated from history.

  The universe was that big, and it didn’t give a handful of warm shit about anything. My hopes? My dreams? It was fresh out of fucks left to give.

  As that realization hit me, I got pissed. I might not have mattered to the goddamned universe, but I mattered to me. And, you know what? The universe could suck it sideways because it could gaze upon the field I’d sowed with the fucks I gave about it, and do you know what it would find?

  A barren field.

  More rage surged up inside me, and as it did, as time dialed it down so a second was an eternity, my mouth twisted into a snarl. Infinite or not, all of that power was contained in the Gideon Cube, and right now, my fingertips were just brushing across the surface. It was enough to burn me up from the inside out and leave me a charred husk.

  It wouldn’t even care.

  And that was bullshit.

  Because if I went down, the bad guys would win. And the bad guys couldn’t win.

  So what did I do?

  I put my big girl pants on and closed my hand around the Gideon Cube.

  If I thought I knew what agony felt like, I realized I knew nothing. The power of the cube slid into me dry and ran roughshod through my body. I smelled my hair melting, felt my skin tear open and my blood bubble away, and it’d barely been a femtosecond.

  For those of you who don’t know, a femtosecond is approximately one quadrillionth of a second. It was a lifetime and nothing, and that was fine because I only needed one more.

  I snarled again, spraying bloody spittle as I pulled in the power of the Gideon Cube. My cells exploded, my skin blackened and flaked away, and as it did, I flicked my power outward. I didn’t see it. Hell, I don’t think I actually moved much.

  All I knew is one moment I was standing there having a tug of war with an alien, and the next second, emerald flame was rippling out of me in an explosion of power. The blast threw me backward, wrenching the cube from my hands, and as it slipped from my grip and skittered across the floor, time snapped back to real time.

  My blast tossed Lord Zug backward into the wall just as a shaft of light shot from one of the Void Crushers overhead, snatching him from the burning clutches of my magical backlash moments before it turned the world into fire.

  The soldiers all around me melted into slag heaps before that too was burnt away as the magic I’d unleashed rushed violently outward. The walls surrounding me ballooned like a can full of botulism before exploding with enough pressure to throw the spaceships overhead back into orbit.

  As I watched the Endeavor tumble away into space, still firing in a vain attempt to retarget Zug’s Void Crusher, the whole of the flames wrenched outward from me, charring the ground down to the bedrock and leaving nothing but scarred, blackened earth in its wake.

  The skies turned to dust as the atmosphere burned up. As I lay there, I realized I could no longer breathe. My wave of destruction continued outward, eating the entire planet alive one molecule at a time, and as it ate and hungered, I realized it wouldn’t stop until the planet was laid bare and empty. And maybe not even then.

  More buildings toppled as the metropolis in which I’d stood turned to ash that flaked away like memories of times forgotten.

  And the thing was?

  The truly sad thing was?

  The universe didn’t care.

  And neither did I.

  Because Zug was escaping.

  I could see the flames in his engines start to fire as the ship fought to stabilize itself. The emerald fire that had carried him and the other starships into orbit dissipated under the might of space’s vacuum, but still, the sky burned.

  That was too bad.

  I took a step forward, my lungs burning for breath. Then I realized I couldn’t feel my legs. I looked down and saw they’d been reduced to bloody stumps, and as that realization hit me, I wondered why I couldn’t feel it.

  No. That didn’t matter. If I could feel it, I’d just feel pain, and that wouldn’t help. The only thing that would help would be victory.

  Determination filled me as I pulled myself back toward the fallen Gideon Cube one bloody inch by bloody inch. I collapsed to the floor and reached out along the blackened husk of the planet as the fire continued to seep outward.

  I clawed at the broken, burned dirt and pulled myself forward as the skin on my fingers cracked and split, watering the ground with my blood.

  Then I reached out toward the cube.

  Let no one say Mallory Quinn was afraid to throw herself on a grenade to save her friends.

  Or her planet.

  My fingers touched the cube, and once again time stopped. Worse, I felt the gnawing, insatiable hunger of the cube. Like a black hole in front of an all you can eat buffet. I saw the world through the hunger of the Gideon Cube, saw how the planet would burn. Saw how the cube would go to someone else, how the cycle would repeat. Forever.

  Worse, I saw Zug escaping. Saw the Endeavor exploding into flames under the mig
ht of the Maverick’s starships before the greasy reptiles continued to Earth where they would scour the life from their planet like I was doing here.

  Then Zug would return and find the cube, and the galaxy would fall. Crushed beneath his reptilian heel.

  That could not stand.

  I pulled on the fire raging around me, willing the cube to take it back. The power screamed at me, clawed at my brain as my fingernails bubbled and melted away.

  I bit down, the taste of blood and death filling my mouth as I willed it to work, to bend to my goddamned will. My body buckled and things that I’d have rather stayed whole and inside me began to ooze from my body. I was dead. I knew that, but I had the power of the universe here, and I could do more than destroy.

  I ground my teeth down and pulled the power of the cube back inside. The flames ravaging the planet ripped back like they were on an elastic cord and slammed into me full force. They ravaged me, gouging furrows in my mind, and as that happened, I laughed.

  “Put it back together!” I snarled, and the cube shattered as I spoke though I couldn’t tell you why. “Put it all back together!”

  Like magic, the world spun backward on rewind. The world sprang back to life, the hungering flames’ destruction undone in an instant. Shards of the Gideon Cube flitted through the air as I stood, my body reforming like it hadn’t been sundered.

  Only that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t good enough to return this way because Chloe and Jeffry were gone.

  I’d failed them.

  Mallory Quinn might fail at relationships, she didn’t fail her teammates. Not in roller derby and not fucking now.

  I reached out with my power as the emerald glow of the world started to fade, and as the building around me started putting itself back together, I gathered what remained of the elemental fire and thrust it out with my will.