Marked: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 2)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “I’m pretty good at darts,” I offered even though there was no way I was going to play that guy again. I couldn’t tell you why, but letting Danton know I’d beaten the demon once didn’t seem wise on my part. So I kept my mouth shut as I walked up next to him and reached out toward the doorway with my blackened hand. A strange tingle filled my mind, pushing the screams down under a layer of cotton as the cat who had given me my arm lifted its head and looked at me. The look on its face in my mind’s eye was pretty clear. It was annoyed with Vassago’s insolence.

  “Not as good as a demonic prince of Hell who rules over twenty-four realms and has played pretty much since the game was invented.” Danton said, the hopelessness in his voice clearly evident. It was the sort of tone that made me think he might be cutting his losses. Well, I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to save Ricky before forcing Jinn to give up Pierce Ambrose’s location. Then I’d shoot Jinn in the face.

  “So you can’t angel your way through his trap?” I asked, barely listening to him as I studied the door, looking for the spot where his magical portal melded into the door. I hadn’t found it yet, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. I shoved my gun into the waistband of my slacks and felt for the magic I knew was there. “Guess Gabriel isn’t as bad ass as I thought.”

  “I’m not sure what to do now,” Danton said, ignoring my comment. “When this happens, we have no choice but to turn back. Vassago is just too powerful to mess with. We’ll have to find another way.” He looked at his shoes. “I’m sorry for your friend. Even if we went through this door, and you beat Vassago, he’d stall us plenty long enough for her to already be dead.”

  Instead of responding to his tirade, I shut my eyes and concentrated. My demon had helped me beat Vassago before and clearly didn’t like the guy. Maybe she’d help us again, if only to piss off the demon prince. I know I would in her situation, then again, I was kind of a dick, and she was a cat, so there was that.

  “You want me to help you, don’t you?” the demon cat asked, and this time I got the impression I was standing in a huge open field while she watched me from the tall grass. It was disconcerting to say the least. I was going to have to work with her on the whole interaction thing.

  “Help is such an ugly word,” I replied, turning in a slow circle to see if I could find her, unfortunately, the only thing I saw was miles and miles of tall green grass. Where the hell were we, the plains of Iowa? “I merely wish to present you with the opportunity to piss off Vassago.”

  “Is that so?” the cat asked, and I saw a calico ear twitch in the distance. She wasn’t far off at all. Good. “That sounds like you’re trying to trick me.”

  “It’s not a trick,” I said, sitting down in the grass Indian style. “Look, I’m not going to lie. I need to get through the door, and you don’t seem to care for Vassago very much.”

  “He is a petulant worm so lowly, he should be scrubbing the dirt from beneath the toenails of my lowliest servant, not running twenty-four realms.” The cat appeared from the grass, eyes glowing with soft red light, and sauntered toward me with her tail raised in the air like a lazy exclamation point.

  “So teach him a lesson. Tear down his doorway. Teach the world how pointless he is.” I smiled at her and reached out my hand toward her.

  “I dislike you, Mac Brennan,” the cat replied, nuzzling up under my hand in the way cats do. “But you make an excellent point. I will do as you ask. Grab hold of his door, and I will shatter it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, but the scene had vanished, and I was left staring at the door. I could sort of hear Danton still chattering in the background. I didn’t even try to figure out his words because they were probably something like “I’m a giant wuss too scared to go up against Vassago.” Well, I’d done it before, and my thought process was simple. Screw that guy.

  The doorway glowed in front of me with eerie green light, and unlike before, now I could clearly see the seam where it was psychically tack welded to the frame. As I reached out toward it, my tattoos burst into literal flames. Hellfire leapt from between my fingers as I grabbed hold of the doorway and pulled. There was a sound like a thousand banshees screaming as the magical doorway flared and pulsed like a dying star before tearing free of the frame with an explosion of glowing emerald confetti.

  The green sparks danced through the air like tiny fireflies before settling down on my arm and vanishing inside my flesh. Power surged up my arm, flowing into me and sending my senses into overdrive. Ricky’s scent filled my nostrils as I took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway. Nothing at all happened.

  “Did you just do what I think you did?” Danton said, and I turned to see him standing there dumbfounded.

  “You mean rip Vassago’s stupid portal off the wall like it was made of tissue paper? Yeah, I did that.” I stabbed my chest with my still glowing thumb. “Remember that when you come at me in the dark of night.”

  “You don’t have any idea what that means do you?” Danton’s voice had a haunted quality to it.

  “No, and while I do want you to tell me, can it wait until after we save Ricky? The absolute last thing I need right now is to have you spooking me. Capiche?” I drew my pistol, turned away from him, and strode across the hallway.

  Chapter 14

  By the time I reached the doorway at the end of the hallway, Danton still hadn’t stepped foot inside. Part of me wondered if this was where we’d part ways, but I sort of hoped it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure why, but I still liked having him around, and you know, there was the whole Jinn thing. While I knew nothing about Jinn, it sure seemed like Danton did. Still, I didn’t have time to wait for him to come to his senses. I had to save Ricky, stomp a mud hole in Jinn, and confront Pierce Ambrose. Yeah, it was fixing to be a long night.

  The door in front of me was shaped like one of those metal portholes probably better suited to a space station airlock than a subterranean bunker, but I supposed it matched the hallway’s science fiction chic. Beside it was a hand reader which would probably fill the room with poison gas or death lasers if I tried to use it. So, I wasn’t going to do that. Instead, I placed my right palm flat against the airlock, and said one word.

  “Ignis.”

  Hellfire burst from my hand, blasting the door free of the frame in a spray of molten metal. The torn remnants of the door struck the steel floor a few yards away from me, splattering bits of red hot goo every which way. I spared a quick glance at my arm. My stitches were still holding. Good. The last thing I needed was to blow myself up.

  I counted a couple more seconds to see if anyone would shoot at me. When no one did, I took my chances and stepped inside, gun at the ready. The room was huge and empty, reminding me of the concrete one fifteen stories above. The only difference was this one was done in steel. The ceiling was filled with a series of grates, and I could hear the sounds of fans whirring beyond.

  “You didn’t have to blow up the door,” Danton said, appearing behind me in the room. His bunny hopped past him and sat down in the middle of the floor and scratched itself in a way eerily similar to a cat.

  “Yeah, I know, but blowing open doors is so much cooler than just touching the door and having it open.” I held up my still glowing hand and gave him the finger.

  Danton didn’t reply, which was fine because I was already mentally high-fiving myself and shouting “Oh snap!”

  He glanced from my hand to the door and back again before tossing the bunny another carrot. It looked up from licking its rabbit crotch, snatched the carrot, and scanned the room. The creature threw its head back and swallowed the carrot in one massive gulp before slowly getting to its feet and padding over to one of the spots in the floor and burrowing beneath the steel.

  “Did it just go through the floor?” I asked as Danton moved over to the spot and squatted down next to it. “Because I think it did, and I’m serious when I say fifteen stories down is pretty much my limit.”

  “Well, you better get over that soo
n,” Danton replied, using his hand of God to pull open a hatch in the floor, I hadn’t known was there. It hit the floor with a clang, revealing a ladder that headed down into the darkness. “Soon, you’ll be going a long way down.”

  With those words, he mounted the ladder and climbed down into the darkness while humming his weird version of Amazing Grace. I sighed, mentally kicked the imaginary kid yelling “Burn!” at me, and followed Danton down into the depths of Jinn’s evil lair while trying to ignore the kid’s double meaning. It sort of worked.

  Thankfully, the ladder only went down about a floor or so. Less thankfully, it put us in a sewer. The smell of rotting garbage and shit was enough to make me throw up in my mouth. Danton had his mouth and nose covered with a blue bandanna as he trudged through the sludge toward the glowing bunny rabbit. I followed along behind them, wishing I’d had the foresight to swap my loafers for waterproof leather work boots like Danton’s. Well, nothing to do about it now, but when this was over I was going to grab myself a pair of Wolverines, or maybe Red Wings, if I could find one of their shops nearby.

  As the rabbit took a turn past a particularly disgusting drain pipe oozing green slime, it vanished through the cinderblock wall. I was definitely starting to get the distinct impression it was messing with us. We’d been following it for a while now, and while I could tell Ricky was close, I had a hard time believing Ricky had been dragged through a goddamned sewer or that Jinn would purposely travel through one. No, there had to be an easier way. So why wasn’t the rabbit going that way?

  “Is your bunny screwing with us?” I asked as Danton did his magic hand thing to the block wall.

  As it crumbled before him, he shrugged, which was super helpful. “Maybe, maybe not. They don’t always travel as the crow flies, and you did kick it. They tend to not like that very much.”

  “I didn’t kick it. I nudged it gently with my toe, and it got goo on me.” I lifted my shoe to show him, but thought better of it because that was sort of pointless now that my shoes were covered in muck. “My point is simply this. We’re taking way too long. I have very specific deadlines so give it some more magic carrots or something. I don’t care what you do, just make it hurry up.”

  Part of me wanted to tell Danton I had to kill Pierce before the night was over or my family would die because I was sure it would make him hurry up, but I shook off the thought. The last thing I needed was for him to decide to take a pot shot at my family after I got them back. He was a demon hunter after all. No matter what he said or did, he was pretty much my mortal enemy.

  I settled on gesturing angrily at the rabbit who was staring at us with a rather excited look on its face. While the creature had looked bored initially, it had perked up when I’d mentioned additional carrots. I guess the way to its heart really was through its stomach. I was really starting to dislike following this particular rabbit down this particular hole and not just because I was worried I was going to be terribly late. No, I was starting to think the creature was a vengeful, spiteful little bastard. If that turned out to be the case, I wasn’t beyond kicking it in its stupid bunny head.

  “Fine, we’ll play it your way.” Danton tossed the bunny a few more carrots, which it hoovered up like a starving hyena before rolling on its back like a cat and shimmying in the slime. It was ethereal so nothing got on it, which sort of irked me.

  Thus far, I had not been so lucky. My pants and shoes were covered with fetid goo, and while most of the squishing my footsteps made was from my heels on the sewer floor, a distressing amount was starting to come from within my own shoes.

  “Go on,” Danton said, gesturing at me. “You heard the man, find the girl. You’re our only hope.”

  The rabbit hopped to its feet, made a weird bleep bloop noise, and took off like a bat out of Hell. We chased after it through the muck as it dashed through the maze of walls and pipes. There was no way we’d have been able to follow it for more than a few seconds if Danton hadn’t glowy-handed a path through several walls. The creature didn’t even seem to be trying to find doors and hidden passages anymore. No, now it was moving as the crow flies, which was fast in the whole straight line kind of way, but way less fast given the having to break down the walls of Jericho thing.

  After a few minutes, I was huffing and puffing so hard, I was sure my lungs would explode. Danton, on the other hand, seemed as right as rain. Maybe I needed to take up smoking? Either way, I hated him. A lot.

  I’ll be honest, when we finally wound up at a stainless steel security door that reminded me more of a bank vault designed to protect diamonds and gold than a door to a secret lair, I was suddenly less upset with the both of them. Even from out here, I could feel Ricky’s presence calling to me from inside. The beat of her heart thrummed in my ears, the smell of her skin hung in the air.

  The need to rush to her and pull her away from whatever was hurting her was almost overwhelming as I approached the big metal door, ignoring the blue bunny busily scratching at the steel like some kind of dog desperate to get through. I put my hand against the vault. Power flared along its surface, rippling across the steel like lightning across a darkened sky. Black tendrils of smoke leapt from its surface, filling the air all around me with the smell of rotten eggs and swamp gas.

  “Resero.” As the word left my lips, scarlet light exploded from my palm and hit the surface of the door like a blowtorch. Instead of opening, the metal turned red hot and four crackling arcs of blue electricity leapt from the corners of the vault and struck me in the center of the chest. I flew backward like a rag doll and struck the cement a few feet away. My vision went dim and little stars shot across my eyes as I tried to force myself to my feet. It didn’t work. There were four blackened, charred holes in my pink shirt, and my chest felt like I’d been sucker punched by a bulldozer.

  I was rubbing my chest with my hand, unconsciously trying to massage the pain away, when I noticed a strange design glowing on the ceiling overhead. It hadn’t been there a moment ago, but it was certainly there now. It sort of reminded me of a pentagram, but it had a bunch of weird Nordic runic symbols emblazoned across it in burning pink fire. As I looked closer, I realized they were remarkably similar to the ones on Maya the Gothic Demon Butcher’s knife. There was no way that was good sign or a coincidence.

  Instead of helping me, Danton was desperately feeding the rabbit with a look of panic on his face. Evidently, the thing’s job was done, and judging by the fangs slowly extending from the creature’s maw, I was starting to think Danton may not have had enough magic carrots to properly sate the beast.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, getting slowly to my feet. It was way harder than it should have been. My arms and legs felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each. The symbol flared overhead, and as I tried to move toward Danton, slightly annoyed he hadn’t responded to me, I straight up smacked into an invisible wall. I wobbled backward and would have collapsed if my back hadn’t struck another less-than-visible wall. I was trapped within the perimeter of the pentagram. Well, that was just great.

  Danton tossed the entire bag at the bunny, and it snatched them out of the air as it padded toward him on paws the size of trashcan lids, saliva dripping from its shark-like maw. Its fur was much darker and much more corporeal than it had been before. It bared fangs that would have seemed more at home on a saber-toothed tiger and growled. The sound made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up, and it wasn’t even directed at me. Danton shuffled backward, his hands furiously searching through the pockets of his jeans. Hopefully, he had a bazooka in one of them.

  “Let’s see how bulletproof you are,” I said, pointing one of my Glocks at the symbol overhead.

  I fired. The bullet struck the outer edge of one of the pink squiggles and exploded in a flare of pink light that nearly blinded me. I raised my arm to cover my eyes from the glare as the bunny turned its head toward me and regarded me like I had carrots in my pants.

  With one great leap, the creature bounded across th
e distance between us before I could even let out a little girly scream of terror. I put six rounds into the bunny, each one punching huge holes in its furry body and splattering snot-like ropes of ectoplasm across the ceiling. It didn’t do any good. The bunny landed atop my chest with so much force my feet actually came out of my muck-sodden shoes. I fell backward, pinned beneath its massive bulk as the creature opened its huge mouth and screeched like the damned.

  Its teeth came at my face, and I threw up my demonic arm to block. My forearm struck it just behind its huge rabbit chompers, and even though I pushed with all my strength, the creature moved closer, its slavering jaws covering me with spittle as it tried to snap my arm like kindling. Thankfully, the tough leather of my trench coat kept its needlelike teeth from puncturing my flesh, but even still, the bones in my arm felt like they were going to break. I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the warm saliva spattering across my face, and brought my Glock up. I put a .45 caliber silver bullet right into its sapphire blue eye.

  The beast howled in agony and reared back. I curled my feet under me and kicked it in the chest with all my strength. The massive bunny rabbit lifted enough for the swipe of its massive paw to miss gutting me, but its claws tore through my shirt, shredding the pink fabric and tearing off the buttons. As my legs started to buckle under the weight of the monstrous bunny, I aimed my twin guns at the creature’s chest, ready to empty the weapons into it for all the good it would do when Danton swung a gleaming silver knife with a seven-inch blade at me.

  Chapter 15

  My hasty shot punched through the rabbit and sailed right by Danton’s head. It smashed uselessly into the ceiling as Danton’s knife came down, cleaving right through the rabbit’s ectoplasmic leg. There was a starburst of light as the furry blue rabbit’s paw went flying across the ground. A horrific shriek tore from the creature’s gullet as it slumped forward on top of me and exploded, spraying me with ropey gobs of ectoplasm. It was pretty horrible, barring the one minor factoid I learned from the bunny’s demise. Ghost rabbit slime tasted like bacon.