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

by J. A. Cipriano

  The black bat things shrieked loud enough to shatter my hearing from several hundred away. They took flight in one huge black cloud, swarming upward and circling like some kind of strange bird of prey before disappearing into the clouds.

  The plane’s engines roared to life, and it started forward while the guards scrambled to get out of the way. While they didn’t seem worried about being left behind, they did seem to be worried about the nearly fifty zombies advancing on them from the shadows like they were following along the perimeter of a receding field.

  They started firing at the zombies who could do nothing much with so much distance between them. As the undead horde fell, what I could only describe as a giant tree monster smashed through the gate nearest them and shambled forward with several more like it trailing behind. Evidently, it was either undeterred by the zombie repellent field or it wasn’t concerned. I wasn’t sure where the creatures had come from, but I was glad they weren’t focused on me.

  “What are those?” I cried as I sprinted toward the plane. It was starting to move now, and there was no way I was going to catch it on foot. Still, I had to try, even though I had no idea what I was going to do even if I caught it. I had half a mind to try to take out the engines with Hellfire, but something told me that might end very badly for Ricky, assuming she was still alive.

  “Ents,” Todd replied, a note of smug satisfaction in his voice. “They’re for emergencies only, but I decided I really wanted to deploy my heavy units.”

  I was about to yell at him for treating this like a game except for him, it sort of was. Besides, if he wanted to play plants vs. zombies vs. guards, well, I could live with that… hopefully.

  The Gulfstream, on the other hand, was getting away, and the pilot didn’t seem particularly worried about running over zombies, which was sort of understandable. I wouldn’t care either, unless they broke the plane or prevented it from taking off. Then I’d care a lot.

  “I don’t suppose you have anything to stop the plane?” I cried, sprinting so hard my lungs felt like they were going to explode. It was no use. The Gulfstream would be a speck in the sky long before I even reached where it was now.

  “No,” Todd replied before he broke into a huge screaming fit. “No, no, no.” The sound of gunfire exploded through the radio, and the line went dead. A moment later, all the zombies and the two still-upright ents stopped moving. Damn.

  “Mr. Brennan,” said a husky, oily voice from the other end of the radio. “This is Pierce Ambrose. Cease your attack, or I’ll kill your friend, Todd.”

  “What makes you think I care even slightly about Todd?” I screamed into the microphone while throwing out my hand and concentrating.

  “It was worth a shot.” The line went dead. I gritted my teeth.

  “I’ll get him for you, Todd!” I growled and gathered all my magic. I flung it toward the Gulfstream, trying to visualize exactly how I’d used it during my fight with Van. My vision went hazy as oily, red sludge, sprang from my tattoos and shot out toward the plane. A reed thin tendril struck the outer shell of the G650 with flare of scarlet light. I had half a second to realize I’d succeeded before I was pulled off my feet and dragged toward the now ascending plane.

  Indescribable pain exploded through my arm as I was jerked upward into the air. I’m pretty sure I’d have been ripped to shreds by the runway if the tentacle hadn’t snapped me off the ground and into the air before I really picked up speed. As it was, I managed to only lose a single shoe. It was a pity since I’d rather liked that boot, but I could get a new one.

  Coincidentally, that was when I realized I was staring at the quickly receding ground, whereupon I also realized I was attached to a goddamned airplane by a thin tendril of magic as it climbed up into the wild blue yonder. I fought the urge to piss myself and instead focused on retracting my tentacle. The line snapped taut, jerking me forward toward the plane, which was good because I disliked flying through space, but bad because I slammed into the metal skin of the G650 hard enough to rattle my teeth.

  “Okay, Mac. Think,” I muttered to myself as my right hand grabbed onto the plane and held me there like I was Spiderman. “How the hell are you going to get inside?”

  The door inside was only about a foot away, but I had no idea how I was going to get it open since I couldn’t use my magic to unlock it. If I did, I’d risk falling a thousand feet to the earth. That seemed like a bad idea sans parachute.

  “Screw it.” I put the barrel of the M16 to the window above me and fired. The bullets punctured the thin glass in a shriek. I released my hold on the gun, letting it catch on the strap around my shoulder and shoved my left arm inside, reaching in to grab hold of the seatbelt. As I hoisted myself up, I saw two guards crouching for cover, but that wouldn’t last long. Shit was already starting to go nuts inside the cabin as the pilot tried to compensate for the added friction of the busted window.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, and let go of the magic sticking me to the side of the plane. The sudden strain on my left hand was nearly enough to rip my arm off my entire body, but there was no way around it. I gritted my teeth and reached out for the door with my right hand. The moment my fingers touched the door, I cried, “Resero!”

  The door opened in a flash of crimson light before getting completely ripped off the plane. I managed to duck out of the way as it went flying. The inside of the plane turned into a wind tunnel of doom, sucking everything out the door while I used another blast of tentacle magic to pull myself inside. It worked, but momentum being the bitch that she is, slammed me into the far wall just as one of the guards slammed his hand on a huge button beside their station. As I crumpled to the floor behind a pair of custom leather seats, little tweety birds flapped around my skull, armored metal sheets came crashing down over the window and the door, sealing off the airplane before more damage could be done. Evidently, this plane had been outfitted with extras. Good to know.

  The sound of the two guards rushing toward me was barely audible over the wind whipping around the cabin, and part of me wondered why they weren’t shooting at me. Was it because we were in a plane? Was it bad to shoot inside of planes? It was time to find out.

  A grin spread out on my lips as I came up firing my M16 until it clicked empty. The hail of bullets caught the guards in their chests, knocking them from their feet. I was already moving toward the door on the far end of the cabin. I wasn’t sure if it was normal for G650s to have two separate rooms, but this one did.

  I scooped up one of the fallen M16s, and as I stood up, a girl dressed like a slutty version of Princess Jasmine from Aladdin stepped between me and the door on the far side of the plane. She was beautiful in that Kansas Prom Queen sort of way, with long, blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. Her hands were curled into white-knuckled fists and her entire four-foot-eight-inch body trembled with barely controlled fury.

  “Stop,” she said in a half-strangled, barely controlled snarl. “I don’t want to kill you.”

  She bit her lip hard as a wave of darkness swam through her eyes, and even though it seemed like she was fighting it with everything in her, she raised her trembling fists took a step toward me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, pointing my M16 at her face. I had no idea who she was, but something about her was definitely off. She took another step, and my urge to shoot her so I could burst into the room beyond and rescue Ricky was nearly overwhelming. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure why I didn’t squeeze the trigger of my M16. Actually, that wasn’t true. I knew why. It was because even though she seemed like a sack of crazy, something about her struck me as helpless.

  “Pierce sent me out here to stop you,” she said, and her words were breathless and angry. “I have to do what he says.” She swallowed hard as amber swirled up in her perfect blue eyes. “He is my Alpha. I have no choice.”

  “What do you mean you have to do what he says?” I said, confusion filling my voice. “He can’t make you do anything.”

  �
��He can. He is my Alpha, my dominate. He can make me do anything he wants.” She shook her head, and as she did so, I realized tears were gathering in the corners of her eyes. “Even now, I can feel his will like a warm breath on the back of my neck. It’s all I can do to not give in and tear you asunder.” She swallowed hard and things began to writhe beneath her flesh. She was going to transform any second. “You think I want to be dressed like this?” It was a reasonable point. I didn’t know many women who would want to model their normal mode of dress after the slutty version of a Disney character. Somehow, her dilemma made me want to make Pierce pay even more. I hadn’t even thought that was possible.

  “You really can’t fight it?” I asked, bringing the M16 up and sighting it on her. I didn’t want to shoot her, but I was really sure she wasn’t going to give me a choice. Mind controlled or not, if she came at me, I was putting her down. Even if it made me hate myself.

  “You don’t understand. When I’m with Pierce, everything in me wants to please him, to make him happy. I can’t imagine not wanting it to be that way.” She took another step forward so the barrel of my gun was pressed between her barely concealed breasts. “The only reason I can even think is because Ricky is fighting him, but that will end soon. Then she’ll be like me, just a mindless prop and part time sex puppet.”

  The thought of Pierce making Ricky fall head over heels for him via mind control made revulsion and hatred swell inside me until I was about to burst. I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let that happen. Pierce Ambrose was going to die!

  “That’s not going to happen to Ricky,” I said before unloading the M16 into her chest. The bullets weren’t silver, so they didn’t kill her, but they certainly threw her backward in a spray of blood and bone. She hit the ground like a broken doll and lay there. Her body was already working to sew itself back together, but it would take time. Still, if she was anything like Ricky, I didn’t have long.

  I dropped the empty M16 and picked up the other guard’s still partially full one. It wasn’t like he was using it anyway.

  “I hope you’re right,” she whispered as I stepped past her and hit the button on the side of the door. “Either way, when I get up, I’m going to try to kill you.”

  I would have turned to her, would have offered her some kind of assurance, but the door in front of me opened, revealing a room straight out of an Arabian movie. It was filled with lush pillows with at least five scantily-clad women lounging upon them. Pierce stood toward the back, one arm around Ricky’s neck. Her face was twisted in rage and fear while a smug smile filled his goateed face. The son of a bitch was using her as a human shield.

  “You’re just in time to see her break, Mac. Once she does, I’ll have the exquisite pleasure of watching her gut you.” He had one of those spoiled rich kid voices. The kind I could picture calling home to his oil tycoon father and wanting another Ferrari because he needed only one more to complete the palette of colors he already owned.

  Similar to the girl I’d just blasted in the chest, Ricky was dressed in a pair of see-through pink pants and a matching top that left little to the imagination. I fought the urge to look away because if I did, I was pretty sure Pierce would shoot me with the Beretta in his hand. Then again, he was probably going to do that anyway.

  A wave of fury washed over me, distilling everything down to his stupid, smug face. I was going to tear his goddamned head off.

  “How can you do this to these women?” I snarled, barely able to recognize my own voice. I honestly hadn’t been sure what to expect from Pierce Ambrose being that I’d never actually seen the man before, but what I saw fit the bill of an oily, super-rich prick who desperately needed to get shot in the face. He wore one of those custom black suits from Milan, had perfectly tanned olive skin, and probably waxed his chest.

  “This is my right as Alpha.” His dark eyes flashed with amusement as he leveled the gun at me. Those eyes told me everything I needed to know about him. He always got what he wanted. Well, it was time to change that.

  “Your right as Alpha can go fuck itself!” I snarled as the blank faced girls surrounding us stood as one, and I suddenly realized I was in a room with five female werewolves who were all supposed to be alphas in their own right, and somehow, I didn’t think my borrowed M16 was loaded with silver. This was going to get really bad, really fast.

  “You can think whatever you want, but they are mine to do with as I wish.” Pierce shrugged and gestured insolently at me with his gun. “And what I wish, is for them to kill you. Violently.”

  “I’m a touch harder to kill than you’d think,” I said, and as the closest girl edged toward me, I threw a handful of hellfire at Pierce. He ducked, dropping Ricky in the process, which was what I’d hoped for since I was already sprinting toward them. If I got to her, I could get us out of here. I wasn’t sure how exactly, but I was confident that part would come to me.

  The fireball hit the section of plane behind Pierce and blew out the wall of the plane. Almost immediately, we listed sharply, and unfortunately, I lost my balance and went careening toward the opening in the wall along with everyone else. Stupid wind tunnel effect. My M16 went flying from my hand as I slid across the plane and crashed into the cushioned wall.

  As everyone scrambled to grab onto something so they wouldn’t get sucked outside, I tried to get my bearings, but my vision was a little too blurry and the floor a little too unsteady. Not that it mattered. Even if the pilots could land a plane with a hole in it, there was no way I was letting Pierce off this plane alive. If it came down to it, I’d take him, and everyone else, down with the ship. I just needed a way to make sure Ricky was safe first. Admittedly, the thought of killing all these women pained me, but not that much. If they were the price I needed to pay to take down Pierce, I’d pay it gladly.

  “Mac,” Ricky called from across the plane. She was on her hands and knees near Pierce who was already leveling his Beretta at me. He had his other hand on the couch, holding himself steady in a truly amazing show of strength. “Make your phone call.”

  With those words, Ricky threw herself backward. Her shoulder slammed into Pierce as he fired. The bullet flew by my head and buried itself in the wall behind me as the two of them tumbled through the opening I’d rent in the plane and disappeared from view.

  “No!” I screamed, and even though it was the stupidest thing I’d ever done, I rushed toward the opening. As I did so, one of the women grabbed hold of me, stopping me before I could be sucked outside the plane. She didn’t seem very old, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and something about seeing her dressed the way she was made me physically ill. When the women had rose as one, their faces had held certain blankness, I hadn’t really registered, but as this girl looked at me, I saw recognition fill her features. Even a girl this young wasn’t safe from the mind control. The thought made my blood turn to ice.

  “They’re both as good as dead. Even a werewolf cannot survive a fall from this high,” she said as I grabbed the parachute off the wall next to her before throwing off her steely grip.

  “Then I’ll just have to catch her before the sudden stop at the bottom,” I cried, leaping out after her anyway.

  Chapter 28

  I slung on the parachute as I careened down through the air, thankful the straps went on easily enough, and the wind didn’t tear it from my hands. I snapped the buckles into place and cinched on the straps, tightening them as best as I could before lining my body up like a torpedo and heading straight for the flailing forms of Ricky and Pierce. They weren’t much farther down than me, only about thirty meters or so, but that might as well have been a lifetime in the air.

  It was a little weird because it felt like I was falling forever, despite the fact it’d been less than a second since I’d leapt from the G650. As I torpedoed downward toward them, I tried to figure out how high up we were. If I had to guess, we were somewhere around three thousand feet in the air, well above the twenty-five-hundred feet most recreational divers ju
mped at. I was pretty sure I could save us both if I got to her before about a thousand feet, but anything after that would be pushing it since I wasn’t using a base jumping rig designed to deploy quickly, and I had no idea how this chute was packed. Hell, for all I knew, it wouldn’t open at all.

  Ricky saw me then, and her entire body rippled with shock. Pierce must have seen me at the same time because he wrapped himself around Ricky like an octopus. I got the impression they had been fighting to keep from being the one on the bottom as though it would matter, but now Pierce had changed course. He just wanted to take Ricky with him.

  His gun came up, and he fired at me. The bullet streamed by me, and I shut my eyes for a second, trying to calm myself even though I was falling through the sky a couple thousand feet above the Earth. Another bullet whistled by me, and I gritted my teeth.

  My eyes snapped open. I was only ten meters away now. As Pierce lined up his next shot, Ricky elbowed the smug bastard in the jaw. His head snapped to the side and what looked like teeth burst from his lips. Ricky struggled, trying to throw the man off as he put the gun to her side and emptied two quick shots into her abdomen. Blood burst out her body, spraying across the horizon as a cry of rage tore from my lips.

  Ricky stopped struggling, her body going mostly limp in his grip as silver light flared from the wound. The bastard was using silver. Ricky couldn’t heal it.

  “Ignis!” I cried before I could stop myself from trying to throw fire at my advisory while he was using Ricky as a human shield. Hellfire exploded from my palm as I flung my hand outward toward him. The fireball streamed through the air, catching Pierce’s gun hand as he tried to line up another shot and damned near blew his entire arm off.