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

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Did you think I was going to stab you?” Danton asked, offering me his left hand while he shoved the silver knife back into his pocket. It was a little weird because it didn’t seem like his pocket was anywhere near large enough to accommodate the seven-inch blade or any of the other things he routinely pulled from it.

  “No,” I lied, taking his hand and letting him help me up. “If I’d thought you were going to stab me, I’d have shot you myself.”

  He glanced up at the bullet lodged in the ceiling and smirked. “Is that so?”

  “Are you trying to get me to shoot you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “Because I’d be happy to oblige.”

  “You don’t have any bullets left.” He glanced at my Glocks. “Magazines have, what, twenty bullets or so?”

  “These are fifteen round mags. Besides, if I was out of bullets, the slides would have locked back.” I looked at the guns and tried to count back. How many times had I shot? I couldn’t quite remember, but I ought to have somewhere around ten bullets left since I was pretty sure the magazines had been full when I started shooting people. Then again, I hadn’t loaded them myself.

  I popped out the magazines and horror filled me. One Glock only had the bullet in the chamber while the other had two in the magazine and one in the chamber. I only had four shots left, not the ten I expected to have. With a sigh, I pulled one of the bullets from the magazine and put it into the other, giving me two shots in each gun. I’d have to make them count.

  “Well, thanks for not shooting me then,” Danton said, scooping up the goo-covered rabbit’s foot and pocketing it which was sort of gross because I could see slime seeping through his pocket. “And good job getting out of the Devil’s trap. Not many people have the ability to disrupt the symbols and escape.” He pointed toward the symbol spray painted onto the ceiling with pink paint. It was no longer glowing, probably because a chunk was missing from where I’d shot the ceiling. “Normally, they just get stuck in there until someone like me comes along and kills them.”

  “It ain’t no thang,” I said, and he shook his head at me. Still, I could see the smile on his lips.

  “So, are you going to magic hand the door over there?” I gestured toward the door that had blasted me across the room earlier. “My trick didn’t work so well last time.”

  “You mean trying to explode a magical bank vault didn’t work out? Who would have thought,” he said, crossing the room and placing his palm against the door. White light spread across it in a weird crisscrossed pattern that sort of reminded me of tic tac toe. Acrid smoke burst from the metal like before, filling the air with a dense black cloud before vanishing in a sheet of golden flame. The door began to glow cherry red and worry filled Danton’s face. “Oh no.”

  With those words, the door exploded, throwing him backward in a flurry of debris. He slammed into the wall behind me with a wet thud and slid down to the ground, eyes rolled up in the back of his head. My gaze moved from him back to the door, and as my shitty luck would have it, a half-man, half-grizzly bear the size of Nebraska wearing black leather pants stood just behind the threshold of the door. I’ll admit it was a touch disconcerting, and that was before I realized he had nipple piercings.

  “Nice bear monster,” I said as the thing leapt at me, huge yellow fangs bared at me. I dodged, and it was a good thing too because when the monster landed it dented the steel floor.

  I whirled, putting my remaining four shots into its stupid face because I was Mac Brennan, and I was good at shooting bear monsters in the face. Its skull evaporated in a crimson spray that covered Danton’s unconscious body in all sorts of gooey bits. I spared a glance at my empty guns and shoved them back in my pants. I’d had half a mind to toss them since it seemed unlikely I would find bullets sans another gun, but hey, why take chances? Besides, it left the Superman defense on the table. You know, where after emptying their guns at the Man of Steel, the robbers throw their guns at him like it’s somehow more effective than the bullets they just fired.

  “What’s next?” I called, approaching the doorway. “A were-rhino? You got Bebop and Rocksteady in there?”

  A soft high-pitched squeak of a laugh filled my ears as I found myself staring into the face of a woman wearing an eyepatch over her right eye. She had a massive scar running down the right side of her face until it disappeared beneath the neck of her black crop top. Her silver-streaked black hair was put up in one of those pineapple dos women wore at the gym when they were about to get all sorts of serious in Zumba.

  She looked me up and down, and from the twinkle in her one green eye, I got the distinct impression she was totally picturing me naked. Behind her, I saw two shirtless men with washboard abs wearing black leather pants similar to the ones on the bear I’d shot. I really sort of hoped that didn’t mean what I thought it meant, especially since they also had pierced nipples, but sadly, I was pretty sure I didn’t have that kind of luck, and here I was all out of silver bullets. Swell. Just swell. Next time I was only going to shoot the bear monster in the face once.

  “You must be Mac,” the woman purred in a husky Katy Perry voice as she stepped out from behind the bloody mish mash of flesh strapped to a metal table. “Ricky has told me so much about you. Mostly about how you’re going to kill me. She’s been quite insistent on that last point.” She pursed her lips and put one latex-glove-covered hand on her hip. I wasn’t quite sure why she was wearing Daisy Dukes, but it struck me a little odd, especially given our current circumstance. “I’m curious though, how do you think you’re going to manage that exactly?” As she said the last part, things began to writhe beneath the flesh of the two guys next to her.

  It was also when I realized the horrible carcass on the table was looking at me. Ricky stared at me with one bloody eye. Her red hair was stuck to her face with gobs of goo. It looked like Jinn had taken a page out of a high school dissection and sliced her open before cinching the flaps of flesh open with huge steel nails so the wounds couldn’t heal. More nails impaled her wrists and feet, pinning her to the table like a macabre butterfly.

  A horrified, sickening rage filled me with the sudden, intense need to crush the life from Jinn with my bare hands. When I was done with her, the wrath of an angry God would be a welcome alternative. My tattoos spewed flame from the forges of Hell themselves as my hands curled into white-knuckled fists. I was going to kill them all, tear them limb from limb. When this was over, there would be nothing left.

  “How dare you touch her!” I snarled, bringing up my demonic hand. “Ignis!”

  A blast of hellfire unlike any I’d called into being before exploded from my palm. It didn’t slam into the right goon so much as it reduced him to ash as he tried to leap out of the way on legs all bent and half-shifted. My second fireball stuck his compatriot in the chest. It burned straight through him and blackened the wall behind him. He charged at me anyway, still only half-transformed and trailing bits of flaming entrails.

  I ducked his attack, a wild swipe with a half-formed set of claws and drove my elbow into his chin. There was a loud crack as his misshapen jaw snapped together. My spider sense went nuts in my head as I stepped around, dragging the guy in front of me in time to catch a shotgun blast with what remained of his chest. The guy bucked like he’d been, well, shot, but I didn’t stay to watch what happened next because despite the ringing in my ears, I could hear the telltale sound of buckshot being pushed from his flesh and hitting the metal floor.

  The woman with the Elle Driver eyepatch calmly cocked her shotgun and fired at me again. Thankfully, I was already twisting away when she blasted me full of buckshot, otherwise it wouldn’t have struck my trench coat. Agony exploded through my side as I hit the ground like a broken doll. I lay there, the breath knocked from my lungs, but as she racked another shot, I realized one important thing. While I was pretty sure my ribs were bruised, I wasn’t full of holes. Evidently, my trench coat was bite-proof and bulletproof. Maybe the water in the pool had a lot less to do wit
h my survival this morning than I’d initially thought.

  I scrabbled across the floor and ducked behind a metal table as another shotgun blast exploded from her weapon, pinging off the metal behind where I’d been a moment ago. I surged to my feet, grabbing a steel chair and flinging at her it with all the strength I could muster.

  She lashed out with her shotgun, sweeping the weapon through the air in a blur of motion that caught the chair mid-flight. The shotgun hit the chair with so much force, the metal barrel bent with an earsplitting shriek. The chair went flying across the room and slammed into the far wall. It crumpled to the floor in a tangled heap of crumpled metal. She gave her gun a cursory glance before dropping the ruined weapon to the ground.

  “You can’t beat me, Mac,” she said, licking her lips as she sauntered toward me, her beach bunny sandaled feet slapping the steel floor with each step. “I’m way too strong.” Her hand shot out, catching my throat between her thumb and forefinger. She lifted me off the ground with ease despite me being a good eight inches taller than her. “And way too fast.”

  “Which is why he brought me, Jinn,” Danton said from the doorway.

  “Danton? I thought you were dead?” the woman said, turning her head toward him, and as she did, I slammed my fists down on her collarbones. She yelped in pain, instinctively releasing me, and I fell. My back smacked into the concrete in a way destined to make a chiropractor very rich, and even though I was lying there unable to do more than moan, Jinn ignored me. I was officially less interesting than Danton and strangely, was okay with that.

  As she stepped over my body, Danton threw a handful of purple rose petals at her. They fluttered pathetically through the room on lazy air currents before bursting into flames that congealed into an honest to God Chinese dragon. Talk about a switcheroo. The purple-scaled creature shook its massive head, snorted a gout of purple flame from its elephantine nostrils, and leapt at the woman with its huge, glinting claws.

  “Nah, love. The rumors surrounding my death have been overstated to protect the innocent,” Danton said, weaving his hands through the air in a way that suggested he was controlling a twenty-foot-long fire-breathing serpent. “Unfortunately, you’re none too innocent.” He tsked.

  The dragon’s jaws snapped just short of the Jinn as she stepped lithely back a single step and glared at the monster like it was an annoying insect. Then she punched the dragon right between the eyes, and it exploded into a cloud of flower petals that fell lifelessly to the floor.

  Chapter 16

  Horror spread across Danton’s face as he stared at the broken, burning remains of his dragon. “That was my best dragon, love,” he said, trying to crack a smile that died before it reached his eyes. He swallowed hard, rummaging in his pockets, and as he pulled something shiny and pointy free, he slowed, like he was suddenly a character in a movie played at a drastically reduced speed.

  Jinn hadn’t moved. She’d just looked at him, her single eye fixed upon his face. Danton stopped moving altogether. I’d been on the receiving end of some truly scary facial expressions before, but this one could have stopped a lesser man’s heart. Still, it was a little weird that he was literally frozen in place. How was she doing that? I sucked in a breath. Could she do it to me too? I hoped not. That would make for a rescue attempt even worse than Danton’s had been.

  “I’m a bit stronger than when we last met, Danton,” Jinn said, holding up the hand she’d just used to Mike Tyson a dragon. The skin was gone. Instead, her hand was covered by a glistening green chiton shell. She took a simple step forward, and her skin tore in a way that suggested it didn’t quite fit over her insides anymore.

  Bits of gooey meat splattered to the ground around her, and as she sloughed off her meat suit, what seemed like a grin spread across her mandibles. It was hard to tell for sure since I’d never seen a nearly six-foot praying mantis grin before. Let me tell you, it was one of the single most terrifying things I’d ever seen, and somehow, Danton still wasn’t moving. What the hell was wrong with him? Was this some kind of mantis thing? Wait, didn’t praying mantises eat the heads of their mates? Well, even if he had done the nasty with her, there was no way I was letting Danton get his head bitten off by a giant bug. No, if anyone was getting reduced to a headless corpse, it was her.

  She’d hurt Ricky. I forced myself to my feet even though everything in me felt broken. That demanded blood. Jinn loomed over the still statuesque demon hunter, her huge, hideous maw opened wide.

  “You are one ugly motherfucker!” I called in my best Arnold impression. While it was way worse than Ricky’s had been earlier, I was hoping she heard it, and it offered her some slight bit of comfort.

  The mantis formerly known as Jinn, swiveled her head nearly a hundred and eighty degrees to look at me with one red multifaceted eye. The other was still marred by that horrible scar, reminding me of a taillight with the bulb out.

  “Do you think you’re clever?” she asked in her husky Katy Perry voice. I could almost imagine her crooning about California girls and saying she was hot enough to melt my Popsicle. To say it ended the possibility of a teenage dream would be a major understatement.

  “No, I think I’m deadly,” I said, and her gaze swept over me. It hit me like a sledgehammer, and I stumbled backward.

  I gripped the edge of the table nearest me for balance, and my fingers touched something slick and wet. I ignored it, trying to push off the force of her mind. Jinn clucked, and as she did so, I felt the cat demon look up, scoff with a noise that reminded me of a cat coughing up a hairball, and shut its eyes. The pressure dissipated. Well, that was pretty freaking awesome, let me tell you. Cat demon one, horrible mantis zero.

  “You aren’t even wearing shoes,” she replied, a strange mix of shock and annoyance on her face as she pointed at my sock-clad feet. It was true. My sodden loafers were still in the other room buried under a ton of bacon-flavored rabbit slime.

  “You make an excellent point.” I pulled my empty gun from my waistband and pointed it at her. “I’m going to need your shoes.”

  “Seriously? That isn’t even loaded. I mean the slide is clearly open.” Jinn shook her head at me and took a step toward me. It clicked ominously on the cement floor, summoning visions of roaches crawling over my skin. “Besides, if you’d had bullets, you’d have shot my compatriots. You did not.” She gestured to the still wounded werebear on the ground. He wasn’t moving, but that was likely due to the trashcan-lid-sized hole in his torso.

  “Ignis,” I said and threw a blast of hellfire at her with my other hand.

  She batted it aside with a silver-edged scythe-like limb. The blast struck the wall next to the chair, and while it turned the metal cherry red, it didn’t do much else.

  “The hellfire thing is so yesterday. Got any new tricks?” she asked, taking another step toward me and extending her scythe toward me at lightning speed. The point struck me under the chin with enough force to lift my head up and expose my fleshy neck, but not to pierce my skin. “What’s the matter, mantis got your tongue?” Her mandibles gyrated next to my throat as she leaned in close to me.

  A shriek of pain filled the room, and without thinking, I turned my head toward it, slicing open the underside of my chin in the process. As blood dripped down my neck, I saw Ricky forcibly tear herself free of the spikes, somehow rising, despite being a carved open Thanksgiving turkey version of her former self. The sound of her flesh ripping free of the spikes nailing her to the table made my gut churn as she leveled the eye that wasn’t swollen shut at Jinn.

  “Put him down,” she growled wetly, spraying blood and saliva from her lips. “Now!”

  “See, this is why I love bringing werewolves to my dungeon,” Jinn said, regarding Ricky like a pleasant surprise. “You can keep hurting them over and over again, and just when you think the party’s over, you find out they’re up for more.” She flung me like a rag doll across the room. I hit a steel table near Danton hard enough to make agony scream through my left hip
before crashing uselessly to the floor with said table on top of me.

  Ricky leapt on the creature, her hands formed into misshapen claws that dug into the mantid’s chiton with a sound like nails scraping off of sheet metal. Jinn stabbed her scythe-like arms through Ricky’s torso and tore them outward in an explosion of gore. Ricky fell to the ground in a steaming puddle of blood and guts, but that didn’t stop her from reaching up and grabbing onto Jinn’s ankle with one blood smeared hand.

  Jinn smiled wryly and drove one arm down through the back of Ricky’s neck. The tip burst from the front of her throat, and I watched in horror as Ricky’s hand slid off the creature’s ankle, leaving only a trail of scarlet painting the surface of Jinn’s armored leg in its wake.

  “No!” I screamed, flinging the table off of me before I knew what I was doing. The distant sound of it crashing into the wall was forgotten as I scrambled to my feet. My vision tunneled, focusing on the mantis. I suddenly didn’t care about finding Pierce or saving my sister. No, the only thing I cared about was stopping Jinn from hurting Ricky. That was not allowed.

  I threw myself bodily at Jinn. My shoulder collided with her insectoid back, and I wrapped my hands around her body. As she stumbled forward in an awkward twist because one arm was still impaling Ricky, she slipped on the werewolf’s entrails. Jinn’s feet came off the ground as I lifted with all my might.

  Her arm tore free of Ricky as I shifted my weight and drove her into the floor with all the momentum and force my body could manage. Jinn’s forehead bounced awkwardly off the concrete as I called upon all my power and rage. My right fist came down spewing magic and fire behind it like a comet. The blow struck the mantis between the shoulders and punched straight through her shell with a resounding crack.