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

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Brains!”

  “Come closer, we won’t bite… much!”

  I shut my eyes, trying to concentrate despite their catcalls, but this was way worse than the demonic rats, way worse than anything, and the smell. Oh my God, the smell. There was something about seeing decaying humans coming toward me with their teeth bared that made me scared on an intrinsic “Please don’t eat me” level. Even still, I swallowed hard and cried out with everything I had in me.

  “Ignis!” The word burst from my lips like a thunder crack in the night sky. My tattoos went nuclear as hellfire burst from my palm and exploded outward, filling the whole of the hallway with flaming death. The only problem was, while it burned the shit out of the creatures, it didn’t seem to do much else to stop them. That’s when one horrific little factoid became crystal clear. Flaming zombies were way worse than the normal non-burning kind. For one, they smelled like rotting, burned steak. For two, they were on fire, and anything trying to eat you while on fire is at least ten times more horrifying.

  “Try again,” Ricky cried, half-carrying me out of the hallway and toward the door leading out of the alcove. That was pretty much when I spied the oxygen tanks littering the rest of the gear in the room.

  “Alright, but you need to get us out of here now.” I pointed my hand at the tanks. “Ignis!”

  Ricky leapt through the door as the fireball left my hand, just not far or fast enough. The explosion sent us flying backward through the air. We crashed into the whale tank, and the cold kiss of water enveloped me as I started to sink into its depths. The only upside was that I no longer saw zombies chasing me, although that might have been because my vision was turning black.

  Chapter 21

  Something dark and monstrous swam through the water beside me, shocking me back to consciousness before the cold embrace of the water could render me lifeless. My eyes shot open, and I swiveled my body around in time to see an Orca the size of an SUV coming toward me, jaws wide.

  I tried to dodge, but I needn’t have bothered because the super predator went rushing by me as bodies started splashing over the side of the pool above me. I grabbed onto its dorsal fin as it passed by, hoping to catch a ride to the surface, but as we went upward, I realized those bodies were moving. Damned indestructible zombies. Couldn’t they have the decency to die and stay dead? I mean, seriously.

  I pointed my water logged Glock at the closest creature and fired even though I knew it’d be significantly less effective underwater. The bullet burst from my gun in an explosion of bubbles before slamming into the skull of the closest zombie. Even though a cloud of brain and bone filled the water, the creature kept coming. Stupid underwater bullets. The orca surged upward, jaws wide, and actually bit the zombie in half. Evidently oceanic super-predators were much more effective than guns when underwater, who would have thought.

  We broke the surface a moment later, and a scream shattered my hearing as the Orca shifted and brought its huge tail down on a legless zombie, splattering its head and torso like a watermelon in a Gallagher show. The whale snorted a huge blast of water from its blowhole and swam around the tank in a flurry of motion that sprayed salt water every which way. I managed to hold on, but just barely.

  Another scream filled the night, and I realized we were barreling toward the sound. A whole throng of zombies had Ricky and were pulling her broken, struggling body from the water. Huge chunks of flesh were missing from her left arm as she tried to beat the creatures off. A cry tore from my lips as I emptied the Glock into the horde of undead. Heads burst, but it did nothing to stop the creatures from swarming over Ricky like overly aggressive ants. For every single one I took down, two more appeared to propel her thrashing body back toward the blown up storage room.

  “No!” I cried, reaching out toward her in a desperate attempt to rescue her despite the several meters between us. Still, I couldn’t let them take her. I just couldn’t!

  The whale reached the side a moment later, and I was throwing myself over the edge of the tank before we’d even stopped moving. My waterlogged body hit the blood splattered floor a second later. The zombies were already retreating with their prize, which was a little messed up if you asked me. I mean, I had brains too right? Evidently, the zombies disagreed. The bastards.

  “Thanks, Shamu,” I said, glancing back at the whale and wishing I had a fish for it. Not that I’d have had time. I needed to get to Ricky before the zombies escaped.

  The whale didn’t respond in words because it was a whale. Instead, it dove back into the tank, angling toward a zombie trying to dog paddle toward us. I didn’t bother to watch the inevitable conclusion to that particular match up because I was too busy sprinting toward the zombies. That’s right, I said toward them. Look, I never claimed to be particularly bright, okay?

  I shoved the empty pistol into my waistband and grabbed the still loaded one. But as I pumped round after round into the horde of undead, a contingent broke away and came rushing toward me. I got the feeling they were trying to keep me from reaching Ricky. That seemed a little strange though. Why would they care? Weren’t they just mindless undead?

  I pushed that thought out of my mind while I emptied the Glock into the undead. Headshots seemed to put them down for the count, which was good because I didn’t have time to dismember them.

  The Glock’s slide snapped open as I fired the last round, and I shoved the weapon into my pants before pulling the twin knives free. Dismemberment it was. Zombie hands tore at my trench coat as I cut through them, using the seven inch blades to sever their heads from their torsos. The knives bit into their undead flesh as I spun and thrusted through them in a desperate attempt to break through their defensive line.

  Gore spattered, I found myself on the other side of the still shambling horde a second later. I sprinted toward the room where they’d taken Ricky. I wasn’t sure what was down there, but I was going to save Ricky from it before she became dinner. I was still a little concerned with why the zombies hadn’t already eaten her, but mostly I was just thankful they hadn’t. If she’d gotten eaten, I wasn’t sure what I’d have done. Probably something needlessly violent.

  Even still, I was really hoping they weren’t bringing her to some kind of super zombie as tribute. I also tried to ignore the voice screaming in my head that the absolute last thing I wanted was a zombified Ricky coming after me. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  The zombies behind me turned in one seething mass and ran after me like they had only one goal, eating me. The sound of snapping jaws spurred me onward as I sheathed the knives and tried to reload my Glocks while running. It was way harder than it looked, but by the time I was through the door, I had managed to get a good seven rounds in the weapon. Hoping that would be enough, I snapped the magazine into the pistol and charged through the room I’d blown up only a few minutes prior.

  I couldn’t hear Ricky screaming, but judging by the contingent of zombies listing from side to side in the entry way where Ricky had kicked off the door, I was pretty sure I was in the right place. I put a round in their stupid rotting heads and passed by their still-falling corpses in a rush to my own certain doom.

  Surprisingly, there weren’t any zombies in the hallway. Even when I reached the door behind which I’d found them originally, there were only two more. I made quick work of them and shut the door behind me, leaning against it to block the zombies pursuing me while I reloaded my guns. I had one fully loaded and the other partially done by the time I they pushed on the door.

  I stepped forward, letting their own strength and momentum push the door open while I spun and peppered them with bullets, reducing the throng to twitching harmless corpses that would hopefully stay dead. Adrenaline surged through my veins as I sucked in a breath that smelled like rotting meat and tried not to gag. I took one last look around while I loaded the last of my bullets into the weapons but seeing nothing of interest, made my way forward.

  The hallway veered off after about twenty feet
or so, turning sharply to reveal a fork in the road. I took a huge gulp of air and decided to go left since it smelled most like rotting corpses. Unfortunately, after about fifteen more feet I came to a locked door, the likes of which would be unlikely to have been opened by shuffling zombies. I cursed under my breath and turned to see a mass of undead humanity shambling toward me.

  I’m not sure why I hadn’t heard them, but my heart damned near leapt into my throat with every lumbering step they took. Despite my propensity for headshots, my remaining bullets did little to slow them. When my Glocks went empty, I ignored the feeling of inevitability threatening to render me immobile. If I didn’t, there’d be no way for me to save Ricky, and I was saving Ricky. I shoved the weapons into my pants while cursing like a sailor. I was out of bullets, and there was no way I was going to get past thirty undead in a corridor about twice as wide as I was, even with knives. That left me only one option. The unknown.

  I stepped backward until my back was pressed against the door and put the palm of my right hand against the cold steel. “Resero.”

  The door swung open, and as it did, I leapt into the room and slammed the door shut behind me. I took a look around and a bad feeling swelled in my gut. I was in a huge room filled with cages that stretched all the way to the ceiling which was slightly disconcerting because I was on a catwalk about a story off the ground. That was a lot of cages.

  A squeal of shuddering metal and a hiss of compressed air filled my ears as the lock on the door reengaged, locking me away from the zombies none too soon because half a second later I heard them beating against the metal. Well, that was lucky. I’d half-worried the door wouldn’t re-lock on its own. If it’d been up to me to hold it in place, I wouldn’t have had a chance.

  Chapter 22

  Hoping there was another way out of this creepy ass jail, I made my way toward the stairs. Piteous howls emanated from the cages surrounding me, reminding me of an animal shelter with particularly cruel custodians and almost no visitors. Before I could stop myself, I looked into one of the nearer cages to see an emaciated teenaged girl wearing a hospital gown.

  She was secured to a metal table with over a dozen thick leather straps. Plastic tubing stabbed into most of her major arteries. The other end of the tubes snaked up into a main line that ran the length of the cages before joining together en masse to flow into a huge pipe that disappeared through the wall. The way she was strung up reminded me of what Van had done to Sera only way more methodical and, well, evil. There was a level of cold efficiency to the place which horrified me on an intrinsically human level. Whoever or whatever had done this to these people was a monster.

  As I moved along the line of cages, my blood filled with ice. Almost every cage was occupied, and what was worse, most of them had two or three people in them. I wasn’t sure how they were organized, but there was definitely some method to the madness because the people in certain areas seemed similar, and as I examined the rat’s nest of tubes and pipes, I realized they were connected with valves that could force their contents into the various mainlines embedded in the walls. They were definitely separating the blood from the victims, but why?

  “So you’ve found where we keep the cattle,” said a voice from behind me. I spun to see a guy about seven feet tall with short black hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He gestured to the left set of cages with one alabaster hand. “That’s where we keep your kind, Cursed. As you can see, there aren’t many of you. It makes the price of your blood much more valuable.” He flashed a smile at me and his too white teeth glinted in the sterile light.

  “Wow, I didn’t even know they made lab coats that size,” I said, wishing I hadn’t emptied my guns into the zombies. If I had, he’d already be a slowly cooling corpse on the floor. “Is there a big and tall for lab geeks?”

  “Make all the jokes you want, but you’re never leaving this room.” He spat a gob of dark fluid onto the grated floor which was a little gross even though I was pretty sure the grating was so the refuse could drain away. It sort of made me feel bad for the people on the bottom floors, but then again most of them seemed fitted with catheters. Somehow, that thought made me shudder.

  “What the hell is this place?” I asked, trying not to gag as I sucked in a breath. The stench was unbelievable. The soul crushing mix of excrement and human suffering.

  “You ever met a vampire?” the guy asked, grinning at me in a way that revealed two huge fangs jutting from the upper part of his mouth. “Well, in some places it’s really hard to hunt, and no one wants to do that anyway, especially with disease and all that. I mean, vampires are already dead so it isn’t like they can catch HIV or anything, but still, diseased blood tastes bad.” He made a face like he’d sucked on a lemon. “And then there’s the more refined market. Connoisseurs will pay a lot of money for a few ounces of blood from this or that. I try to make sure I always have this or that.”

  “So you’re harvesting blood below Sea World?” I asked, hardly able to believe that was the case. “To sell to vampires?”

  “Bingo, except for the Sea World thing. We’re not owned by that company. They don’t treat their whales half as nicely as we do.” He shrugged like that somehow made up for the dozens and dozens of people locked in cages, having their blood pumped out so it could be sold to the vampire one percent. I mean, I wasn’t liking the whole “hunting innocent people on the street” thing much either, but that seemed like a better alternative to this.

  “Let me guess, you used the zombies to chase me down here so you could stick me in a cage and sell my blood to the highest bidder?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “You catch on right quick.” He spat another gob onto the grate and stepped into the light. His skin was so pale he was damned near bone white. “Cursed blood is like heroin to us undead.” He licked his lips. “Still, yours hasn’t aged nearly long enough, give it a few decades and your flavor will really develop nicely, especially since we’ll barrel age it in French Oak.”

  “Why the hell does everyone want to eat me just because I’m Cursed?” I growled in a sudden fit of anger, unable to believe I’d seriously stumbled into the lair of a vampire winemaker. How could that even be a thing?

  “Well, I’d eat you anyway. I’m equal opportunity that way.” The guy shrugged, and the movement made his glasses slide down his thin nose. He pushed them back up reflexively. “Now let’s get this over with so I can put you in a cage and go tend to the werewolf.”

  Fury and hatred exploded through me as the guy completely vanished from view. There was no way I was letting him put Ricky in one of these cages. I whipped my body around and ducked. His arm swung over my head from behind. I hadn’t been exactly sure what he was going to do, but judging by my dealings with supernatural flunkies, they always seemed to try to show just how fast they were by super speeding behind my back or going for my throat, both of which could be avoided by ducking.

  I surged upward with the full force of my legs and smashed my right fist into the underside of his jaw. His head snapped backward with a horribly satisfying crunch as his feet literally lifted from the ground. He crashed backward into the cage behind him and slumped against it clearly dazed. Admittedly, I was a little sad I hadn’t finished the job with one punch, but if I hurried, I’d get the chance to try again.

  Before I could take more than two steps, a clawed hand burst through the guy’s chest clutching his heart. The vampire’s face went completely white as the hand curled into a fist, crushing the heart in a way that made ichor spray out from between its fingers. As this happened, the dude in the lab coat turned to dust and crumbled to the ground. It was strangely satisfying but mostly gross because it filled the air between me in the cage with ash, and I had no desire to suck in a breath full of charred vampire.

  “Um, thanks,” I said, not sure what to do as I stared into the cage, trying to make out the occupant. I wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to get free when everyone else seemed stuck in a medically induced coma, b
ut hey, I wasn’t about to go looking the gift horse in the mouth.

  “We’ll call it even if you get me out of here,” croaked a strangely familiar voice from inside the cage. “I promise not to eat you.”

  “Alright,” I said, because how could I not agree to a promise like that.

  As I approached, I saw a man who looked remarkably similar to Ricky. He had the same red hair and green eyes. Bloody tubes trailed from his body, and his wrists and ankles looked like they’d been gnawed down nearly to the bone. Had he done it so he could slip off his bindings? It seemed reasonable if he was a werewolf since they healed remarkably fast. Still, it made me wonder how long he had been lying there on the table waiting for his chance to take out the jailer. From the look of how emaciated he was, it’d been a while.

  “Mac?” he asked, shock filling his voice as recognition flashed across his features. “Seriously? Of all the fucking people…”

  “Bobby?” I replied, my jaw literally dropping open in surprise at finding Ricky’s brother trapped down here, but then again, he had been captured by Pierce. Why wouldn’t he have been in the vampiric wine cellar?

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Hey, well, you know me. I like to stab people.” I shrugged and pulled open my trench coat to reveal the knife strapped to my right leg. “I figured this was as good a place as any to get my jollies off with Mr. Pointy.”

  “You’re one sick son of a bitch, you know that?” Bobby said, leaning against the cage in a way that suggested his energy levels were diminishing at a fantastic rate. “Still, I’m more than a little glad to see you. I didn’t know you were in the vampire hunting business.”

  “Actually, I came here with your sister to rescue you from Pierce,” I said, not feeling like explaining my current situation to a near stranger. “Now stand back while I get you out there. This is going to get bright.” I pointed my hand at the door to the cage.