Blue Curse (Blue Wolf Book 1)

by Brad Magnarella

  “What’s in here?” he demanded.

  My breaths panted in and out. “I said I was leaving.”

  “What’s in the case?” he repeated, drawing his pistol and pressing it under the brim of my hat. The barrel mashed against my right temple. “You make me ask a third time, and I’m popping you in the fucking head.”

  It only took me a heartbeat to gauge my immediate surroundings. Eight other enforcers, most of them now congregated opposite their leader. The weapons they drew were Beretta M9s with fifteen round capacity magazines. The leader was holding the same against my head.

  Which meant I would have all the shots I needed.

  In the instant it took for the leader’s eyelids to slide down into a half blink, I seized his gun hand, shoved his finger from the trigger guard with my own, and jerked him in front of me. When his lids popped back up, his weapon was aimed at his fellow enforcers, and he was covering me like a flak jacket. Not comprehending what had just happened, the enforcers hesitated.

  I didn’t.

  The shots banged out in a chain as I pivoted the leader’s arm around, rapid-flexing my trigger finger. The enforcers dropped in a circle, red blooms spreading across their chests. In two seconds and a cloud of smoke it was over. Only the final enforcer had had time to get off a shot before he was struck twice. I felt his bullet slam into his leader’s spine and stop.

  I released my protection and watched him collapse to the casing-strewn sidewalk. Ironically, his once-deadened eyes now showed desperate glimmers as he struggled to hold in the life that was leaking from him.

  “Never grab another man’s gun,” I said, holding up my case.

  I emptied the Beretta’s final shots into him, then tossed the spent weapon onto his stomach. The wolf in me swelled at having answered his challenge with lethality. But I’d also caused a god-awful commotion, which the ringing in my ears was just one testament to. In the park, the Tai Chi session was breaking apart in chaos while game pieces clattered from picnic tables, the old men fleeing as fast as their aging limbs could carry them.

  Only one option now, I thought, turning to the roll-down door.

  I opened the gun case and hastily assembled the M4. I slammed in a mag, chambered the first round, and slung the canvas strap across my body. I then expended precious seconds finding and inserting my foam plugs into my ears—but it was about to get loud.

  Jamming the claws of my left hand into the edge of the steel door, I grunted and peeled it to one side. Shots from inside spanked what remained of the door and sparked from the metal frame.

  Need to approach this like any operation, I thought. Can’t use my quick healing as an excuse to get careless.

  I craned my M4 around the door and fired off a suppressive burst. A glimpse inside showed me a room that had been converted into a garage. Three gleaming cars were parked in a line. The gunfire had come from a short set of steps beyond. Automatic weapons. Nine millimeter rounds. Two shooters—for now. I had to assume more were coming.

  I fired another burst, then entered low, using the luxury cars as cover. Answering fire cracked and caromed overhead.

  Still high from dominating the enforcers, the wolf in me wanted to rush the men. But I could tell they weren’t practiced. Instead of coordinating their bursts, they were firing simultaneously—and wasting a lot of ammo. I waited until I heard the click of an empty chamber, then popped my head up and down. The other shooter reacted predictably, emptying his own mag. Too easy. I leapt onto the car and in two quick bursts from my M4 dropped them both.

  Shouts sounded from a large room beyond the flight of steps, and a door of thick security bars began to descend. Still on top of the car, I bounded forward, the impacts of my giant feet crushing rooftops and hoods. The door was halfway down by the time I cleared the steps.

  I slid into the doorway on my knees, my left hand catching the descending door and bracing against its hydraulic power as though I were attempting a one-armed military press. I released a tight arc of fire, cutting down the four men running toward me across the two-story room. Stray bullets cracked into a giant LCD-screen television and a wall of high-end stereo equipment.

  Two more men had hung back, Colt Model 635s at their shoulders. Their initial bursts were wild, the recoil jerking their barrels around. Even so, two bullets hit me before I could release the door and move behind a pillar on the room’s near end. One bullet slammed into my chest plate, the other buried itself in my thigh. I grunted in pain as the security door ground to a broken slant behind me.

  I switched out for a fresh mag and worked the charging handle. I waited for a lull in the shooting to peek out. The men had taken positions behind two other pillars across the room. Firing off a burst with one hand, I dug into my coat pocket with the other until my fingers closed around a grenade. I flicked off the thumb safety, withdrew the pin, and lobbed the grenade across the room. I fired another burst, then ducked behind my pillar. The men shouted an instant before the grenade detonated in a rattling explosion, razor-sharp shrapnel flying everywhere.

  When I emerged, the men were down—one dead, the other well on his way. The explosion had also dropped one side of the wall-mounted LCD television, shattering the screen. I checked my six o’clock before sprinting past the spill of brass casings and up a flight of steps.

  I couldn’t help but appreciate Bashi’s ingenuity: converting what looked from the outside like a modest tenement building into one grand apartment. The question was how much security personnel he kept around him. I’d already dropped eight of them. And Nafid had mentioned the White Dragon would have bodyguards.

  The pain in my thigh dulled as I bounded up the stairs. I could feel the tissue healing from the bottom, forcing out the bullet. The flattened round dropped down my pant leg and clattered off behind me.

  I soon arrived at a corridor that gave onto several rooms. The White Dragon’s scent was drifting from straight ahead—an open room at the end of the hallway, where I could make out a large table. From the looks and smells of it, I had interrupted a dinner meeting in progress.

  I dug for another grenade, activated it, and hurled it the length of the corridor. It bounced off the table and rolled out of sight. I wasted no time, making quick checks of what turned out to be bedrooms and offices as I moved down the hallway. By the time the grenade detonated, I was in position to enter.

  I crouched low, peering through the smoke into each firing sector. The lavish dining room, which featured a gold-accented table and chairs as well as a huge chandelier, was empty except for the large koi fish in a pond that ran around the room’s perimeter. At the shrapnel-splintered table, I noted the scattered place settings. There had been three principals at the meeting: Bashi, Orzu, and someone else—a clean surface scent with a musky undertone.

  But where in the hell had they gone?

  The only other opening was over a small bridge that led to the swinging doors of a kitchen area. I could hear someone cowering inside, no doubt the staff. I had no fight with them. Anyway, the White Dragon’s scent didn’t lead there. It was trailing to the right—where there was nothing but solid wall.

  I dropped my gaze to the koi pond. A sheet of glass that would have been hard to detect with human vision stood over the water. A hidden bridge.

  Which means, I thought, my gaze roaming the paneled wall, there’s also a hidden door.

  I stepped onto the glass and pushed against the wall, looking for a seam, a switch—something. Though it had only been a minute or so since I’d ripped open the garage door, it was still a minute. And that time gap was swelling. I could feel the White Dragon slipping away.

  Stepping back, I raised a heel and drove it against the wall. My foot disappeared through the wood with a crunch. I tossed a frag grenade through the hole and took cover. The detonation shook the room.

  I returned and kicked out the hole until it was large enough for me to peer through. I was looking at a landing at the top of a spiral staircase. About two floors below, I coul
d heard a revving engine and a second later the scream of rubber over concrete.

  Damn, they’re taking off.

  I broke through the hole and sped down the stairs, landing in a small garage in the rear of the building. A black SUV that had just backed into an alleyway was lunging into drive, tires laying down rubber again.

  Bursting into the littered alley, I opened up with my M4. A cloud of white particles exploded off the vehicle’s back window, but the glass was made of a polycarbonate that the rounds could smash but not penetrate. I dropped the muzzle. Rounds flashed off the car’s plated body before nailing the rear right tire. Shredded rubber blew from the tire in chunks, but I was thwarted again—this time by a polymer donut that maintained the wheel’s form.

  I crouched as rounds cracked against a nearby cornice. Automatic gunfire from behind. I wheeled to find a pair of kobolds shooting from the cover of a leaking Dumpster, red eyes narrowed above their flashing barrels.

  I released a burst to force them down, then dropped to all fours to chase the escaping SUV. The M4 slipped off me in the process, but I couldn’t go back for it.

  My hands and feet pounded through foul puddles as I sped past stacked crates and lines of trash bins. Up ahead, the gate I’d seen during my recon was sliding open—but slowly, allowing me to close the distance. The driver cut back and forth, trying to keep me from coming up beside them. I faked left and then sprinted right until I was even with the rear wheel I’d shot up.

  When the SUV veered toward me, I planted my outside foot and met the body with a lowered shoulder. The SUV fishtailed away, bouncing off a mini Dumpster in a burst of sparks, then slammed against the backside of a building on the alley’s other side. The approaching gate was fully open now, but the SUV was approaching the narrow space at a bad angle. The vehicle’s brake lights glared as the driver tried to adjust in time. He couldn’t.

  The angry keening of metal on metal sounded as the SUV ground halfway through the opening—and got wedged. Distressed shouts, one of them a man’s shrieking voice, sounded from inside the vehicle. The rear tires screamed, but the result was only a cloud of smoke. From the smell of burning rubber, a thread of the White Dragon’s scent leaked out.

  I pulled my pistol from my pocket and seized the rear door handle. Something nailed me in the left hip. A shout tore from my throat and my hand dropped from the door. I fell, writhing, onto my back. It was like someone had bored into my hip with a half-inch drill bit and then filled the hole with acid.

  From up the alleyway came the sound of footsteps. I flipped over to find the kobolds running toward me, tails slapping the pavement, weapons still firing.

  One of them had hit me, but with what?

  Rounds flashing from the asphalt and the pain spreading, I breathed between my teeth and raised my SIG. Two cracks. The rounds knocked the kobolds’ heads back and dropped their reptilian bodies. I craned my neck toward the SUV. In its struggles, it had shimmied enough to begin scraping the rest of the way through the opening.

  Can’t let him get away.

  I struggled to stand, but my wounded hip dropped me. Using my hands, I hobbled toward the vehicle. With a final keening, the SUV lurched out onto the street. It turned sharply left and began to accelerate away. I emerged behind it and rose onto one leg.

  The block was empty—everyone no doubt scared off by the shooting. I jammed a hand into my coat pocket and seized a grenade. My one chance was to heave it ahead of the vehicle and hope a blast into the undercarriage would cripple it. I activated the grenade and drew it back, but as my arm came forward, a voice bellowed from the other end of the block.

  “Vigore!”

  A force plowed into my back like a defensive end hitting a quarterback’s blindside. I was driven to the asphalt, the grenade tumbling from my grip and falling well behind the fleeing SUV. I squinted from the grenade, but the detonation was muted and no shrapnel flew past.

  The SUV squealed into a sharp right turn and disappeared.

  Heart slamming, the pain from my hip warping my mind, I sprang onto my hands and feet to face my attacker. From the end of the block, a man armed with a glowing sword and what looked like a short staff approached. A long coat flapped around his calves with each stride. I didn’t know who this son of a bitch was, but he’d just denied me a chance to destroy the White Dragon. As far as the Blue Wolf was concerned, that marked him as an enemy.

  With a growl I tore off my scarf and mask and sprang toward him.

  23

  I bounded my four-hundred pounds toward him, blood-red rage compensating for my disabled hip. From the man’s vantage, I must have looked like a nightmare: ears pinned, eyes blazing, lethal teeth bared. But instead of fleeing, the man planted his feet in a wide stance and shouted, “Protezione!”

  White light flashed from the end of his staff. Only yards from him, I rammed head first into a solid wall.

  I staggered back, his image blurring briefly, before I shook it off and lunged again. My pain and fury were driving me now. But the wall of light between us wouldn’t budge.

  “I’m assuming that pile of bodies out front is your work?” he said.

  I circled, clawing and ramming the wall, but it encompassed him completely. From a dim place I remembered the threads of light Nafid could create from her own staff. Was this man some sort of sorcerer?

  “Not that I have any love for Bashi’s enforcers,” he went on, pivoting to keep me in front of him. “But still … a demon’s a demon.”

  Demon? I tried to say, but all that emerged was a savage bark.

  “Respingere!” he cried. The light encasing him exploded outward, blinding me and knocking me ass over end. I rolled for several yards, pain detonating through my lower left quarter each time my hip slammed into asphalt.

  Why wasn’t I healing?

  By the time I righted myself, he was above me, thrusting his sword down. The flashing blade clanged off the ballistic plate over my chest. He had been going for my heart. I roared and lashed a clawed hand at his face. My nails raked his light shield, spilling sparks. He staggered back.

  Sensing weakness, I hobbled to my feet. His eyes fell to my wounded hip. Blood had plastered my coat to my side, and I could feel it spilling down my leg.

  “Ouch,” he remarked, then shouted another one of his Italian-sounding words.

  The same force that had plowed into my back now rammed my left hip. The pain felt like a grenade going off. Roaring, I collapsed to my knees.

  I didn’t know who this sorcerer was, but he was determined to end me. Panting, reeling with pain, I crouched back to spring before remembering my pistol. I grabbed it from my coat pocket, took aim at his head, and fired until the slide locked open. Every shot sparked harmlessly from his shield.

  “Vigore!” he called.

  A fresh force lifted me and slammed me onto my back. I struggled to sit up, but I couldn’ move, could barely breathe. Light danced around my head—his light, I realized. When I tried to bring my hands to my head, I found it encased in a dome.

  Struggling, I pressed myself to my hands and right knee and began crawling toward him. My lungs seared with each breath while a pounding pressure built behind my eyes until I thought they would explode. Beyond the dome, his image flashed and wavered. My heart missed a beat, then caught up in a panicked gallop. He was suffocating me.

  I stretched an arm toward the sorcerer, then dropped into blackness.

  I peered down the church aisle, past the crowded pews, my pulse quickening in anticipation.

  Segundo, my best man, stood beside me, arms bulging beneath the sleeves of a black tuxedo jacket that I suspected he’d ordered small on purpose. Beside him stood Parker, then the other members of Team 5, all of them smiling. And I was smiling too, grateful I’d led them through our deployments and back home. Grateful they could all be here with me today.

  “Enjoy the moment,” Segundo whispered. “But then you’ve gotta get back to the fight.”

  I was going to ask what he
meant when the organ started and Daniela appeared at the end of the aisle. Her white dress gleamed as her father walked her past the sunlight pouring through the chapel windows. She was perfect, everything I could have wanted in a partner. I had never felt happier.

  And then her father was walking her up the steps to the altar, kissing her cheek, clasping my hand in both of his, and retiring to the pews with the rest of our family and friends. I turned to face my bride, taking her hands in mine. I smiled into her strong, trusting eyes. But as the pastor began the ceremony, her brow crushed down and her gaze turned hard.

  “Don’t do this to me, Jason,” she said.

  I peeked around. “Do what?”

  “Don’t shut me out.”

  My heart staggered. There was something familiar about her words—some truth in them, even—but I couldn’t understand why she would be saying these things now, at our wedding. The pastor continued the ceremony, speaking calmly, smiling beatifically, as though we weren’t having what sounded like the start of an argument two feet in front of him.

  “Whatever this is,” I whispered, “can we discuss it after we’re married?”

  The chapel dimmed, casting Daniela’s face in shadows. “Something’s happened to you—something awful—and you’re not telling me.”

  Before I could answer, the chapel’s rooftop disappeared in a roar of tearing wood and smashing glass. I looked up, expecting to see a tornado-black sky. Instead, I beheld an enormous white dragon, its malevolent face leering down at me. Daniela screamed, but not because of the dragon.

  When I looked down, my hands were covered in blue hair, and my black nails were punching through her skin. Blood soaked into the sleeves of her white gown as she struggled to pull away.

  Staring at my face in horror, she screamed again.

  Dreaming, I realized, my heart pounding sickly in my chest. I’m dreaming.