Seized: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 4)

by J. A. Cipriano

  Until this moment I hadn’t realized how much I had begun to rely on my magic. Hell, when I had started this mission, I had gone in guns blazing, and now I didn’t even have a gun. I’d confronted most of the things around me lacking one, and worse still, I didn’t have any other equipment, like a lock picking kit, or even a fucking bobby pin and a credit card. I just assumed I’d be able to unlock anything with my magic and blow threats away. Well, clearly that strategy was fucked. Once this was over, I was going to go back to keeping a kit filled with the basics on me at all times.

  “Yeah, that’s what the dragon said after he dropped you like a bad habit, but I figured it wasn’t a big deal because you were Mac Brennan.” Jenna swallowed hard. “You always expect the unexpected.”

  “Well, not this fucking unexpected,” I snarled, suddenly pissed off at her. “I don’t know where we are, and I’m tied to a table—”

  “Nng!” the nun growled, leaping to her feet. She waved her book at me and made a “zipping her lip” motion.

  “What was that? I can’t hear you with all the mumbling,” I snapped, pissed off at my own inability to move, but as soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t because it’s always a bad idea to piss someone off when you’re tied up like a goddamned invalid.

  All the color drained from her winkled face and her eyes got so narrow, I wasn’t sure she could actually see me. She slid a cotton candy pink bookmark into her book and set it down very carefully on the table before moving across the room and out of my frame of vision. There was a scraping sound as something got dragged across the floor. The nun appeared back in my sights holding a pair of jumper cables. She touched the two copper clamps together, and they cracked with electricity.

  She raised an eyebrow as if to say, “go on, motherfucker. Say another word, I double dog dare you.”

  I shut my goddamned mouth, and she nodded briskly before putting the cables down next to me and patting them lightly. She returned to her chair and began to read once again. Well, this was just perfect.

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure how long we waited there in silence when the sound of footsteps filled my ears. The nun must have heard them too because she looked up, dropped her feet off my knee and onto the floor, and went back to reading. Still, from the way her shoulders stiffened, it reminded me of a cubicle worker when his boss decided to stroll “casually” by.

  “Why if it isn’t Mac Brennan,” said a high-pitched male voice so close to my ear, I could feel his icy breath prickle my skin. “It’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintance.” The sound of him padding away was loud in the silence of the room too. “And you too, Jenna Carmichael.”

  “Who are you?” Jenna asked, and the amount of steel in her voice was surprising. I turned to look out of habit and found myself barely able to glimpse a slender man about seven feet tall dressed from shoes to top hat in solid white. He leaned over Jenna as he spoke, one boney finger lightly rubbing the back of her strapped-down hand.

  “I am Sepulture,” he said, standing back up. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  “You were a bone dragon,” Jenna said, and he began to laugh.

  “My dear, there’s no such thing as dragons. That was merely a monster I created with my mind.” He tapped the side of his head with his index finger before moving back a step or two so he could look at us both. He had a gaunt, pasty face, making me think of a clothing store mannequin wearing a bone-white Richard Nixon Halloween mask. “That’s neither here nor there, though. What is important is that I also have another name. Do you know what that is?”

  “Douchebag?” I offered, and he lowered his white sunglasses and glared at me with the empty puckered black pits where his eyes should have been. The sight of the ragged holes in his face made my stomach clench in sudden, inexplicable hysteria, but I fought it down. Barely.

  “They call me the love doctor,” he said, drawing out the word love like a radio talk show host. “See, Beleth can’t touch people who are in love, and she very much wants to touch the two of you.” He raised his hands as if to say “what are you going to do?”

  “Jenna, you’re in love too?” I asked, wondering who she might be in love with. I swallowed hard. Was it me? I really hoped not, but if I had to go back and replay all of our interactions, I knew there had to be a chance, and it wasn’t exactly small.

  “Yes, is that so hard to believe, Mac?” she snapped, glaring at me. “Is it really?”

  It wasn’t really, but I didn’t say that. I couldn’t say that. I mean, here was this woman who was probably in love with me and I’d totally fucking forgotten her. Worse still? I had a girlfriend who I loved enough to be able to thwart Beleth’s charms. Even if I wanted to try and figure it out with Jenna, I couldn’t because of Ricky. It sucked, and at the moment, there was nothing I could do to comfort Jenna either because she didn’t even know I’d lost my memories.

  “Anyway,” Sepulture said, sliding between us. He sat down on the table holding Jenna and drummed his fingers on her torso. As he did it, he stared at me with his empty eye sockets and licked his lips. “I’m here to fix Beleth’s problem. See, when I’m through with the two of you, well, being in love won’t be an issue.” He rubbed his hands together. “Ready to get started?”

  “How can you break a bond of love?” I asked, and the tremor in my voice scared me as much as the thought that Beleth employed someone to crush her victims’ love. Still, I wasn’t quite sure how it was possible, and even if it was, would it even work? After all, I had that whole imprint thing going on. Whatever Ricky and I had, it was definitely fueled by supernatural mojo.

  “Oh, it’s easier than you think,” Sepulture said, hopping to his feet. “First, I take this towel.” He whipped out his empty hand like a stage magician, and as he did, a towel appeared in it. “I place it over your face like so.” He covered my face with the towel. “Then I pour water over you to simulate drowning. That’s a very important word, simulate. Everything I do here is strictly aboveboard, and I would hate for people to think otherwise.” Then he started waterboarding me, cutting off my air supply.

  I tried to breathe, tried to claw at the towel and pull it off my face as my lungs began to burn. I couldn’t, it was impossible as water seeped through the towel and into my nose and mouth, cutting off my ability to draw even a single breath. I strained, bucking against the table as a scream tried to tear from my throat, only it couldn’t because you need breath to scream.

  “You might be wondering why I’m doing this to you, Mac, and I’m going to take a page out of every James Bond Villain’s playbook ever and tell you my diabolical plan.” He paused to refill his water bucket before pouring it slowly over my face. Panic leapt through me as I struggled to breathe through my drenched nose and mouth, but try as I might, I couldn’t. I tried to struggle, but all that succeeded in doing was bruising my arms and legs against the straps.

  “See, this isn’t for you, Mac.” He stopped pouring, and I tried to suck in a breath. Despite not being actively drowned, it was still hard to do. “It’s for Miss Carmichael. She cares for you a great deal. I mean, you don’t remember because you have no memory, but it’s true, nonetheless.”

  As the words left Sepulture’s mouth, the horrible realization that my big secret was out and the chickens were about to come home to roost flickered through my torture-addled brain. It was like the icing on a torture cake, and to be honest, I was good without the cake entirely.

  “What?” Jenna said and confusion filled her voice. “What do you mean he can’t remember?”

  “Oh, my poor dear. You didn’t know? Mac lost all his memories.” He made a “tsking” sound. “That’s why he doesn’t remember you even a lick. It’s too bad, so sad. Unfortunately, you remember him, don’t you, Jenna?” He dumped more water across my face, and a fresh wave of hysteria crashed over me. I jerked at the restraints so hard my muscles hurt with the effort. “Why would he forget you even existed? Well, it’s simple. Mac traded away all his memories for that arm. Willingly
.” He snatched the towel roughly off my face and leaned his elbows on my chest. “Tell her, Mac. Tell her the truth.”

  “Mac, what’s he talking about?” Jenna asked, and the quiver in her voice nearly broke me. Then again, that could have been because I was still reeling from the simulated drowning.

  “Go on, Mac,” Sepulture said, leaning in close to me and grinning. “Tell her the truth.”

  “I traded my soul for my arm. The memory thing was a side effect.” I swallowed hard. “I wasn’t supposed to forget everything.” I took a deep breath and even though I really hoped I was wrong about Sepulture’s game plan, added the next sentence just in case I was right. “I wasn’t supposed to forget you, Jenna.”

  The scream that tore from her lips was like a wounded animal. It ripped me down the center like I was a cardboard cutout. It left me raw and rubbed lemon on my wounds, which was exactly when the towel dropped back over my face. Water followed, and as I struggled to breathe through the torrent, the only thing I could hear was the sound of Jenna’s sobs. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I heard them over my own gagging and the endless stream of water, but I did, and it was like a knife twisted in my gut.

  “How could you do that, Mac? You promised me always and forever.” I heard her strain at her bindings. “You promised!”

  “He lied,” Sepulture said, and the smile in his voice made me shiver down to the tips of my toes. “Now, what do you want to do about it?”

  “What?” she asked, the word a screech of agony as I struggled to breathe before my torturer could resume waterboarding me.

  “What indeed?” Sepulture said, and I heard him walk away. I strained, trying to see through the towel pressed over my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything but darkness. “Perhaps you’d like a try a bucket? You know, just to test the waters as it were?”

  “You want me to torture Mac?” Jenna said, and the confusion in her voice was underlined by steel. That steel told me one thing. She was seriously contemplating it. That was bad because now I understood Sepulture’s plan. It was hard to truly hate someone who you hadn’t loved, who you hadn’t felt betrayed by. I’d definitely betrayed Jenna, even if it wasn’t on purpose, and she was tough as fucking nails. I could see her flipping that switch on her humanity and deciding to make me pay for it, and the only thing I could do was hope she wouldn’t.

  “I didn’t say that, but I could be persuaded to let you,” Sepulture replied, and the sound of straps unbuckling filled my ears. Was he really letting her go so she could torture me? “What do you say? Give it a whirl?”

  “I’m not sure I should be doing that,” Jenna said, trepidation underlining each word as it left her mouth. “I mean, he’s a complete douchebag who should have told me, but torture him?” She swallowed hard. “I don’t think I could.”

  A surge of relief shot through me as she said the words followed by a deeper sense of self-loathing I couldn’t explain. She still cared for me enough to not want to torture me, and yet, I didn’t remember her at all. It almost made me feel like I was taking advantage of her somehow, and I really didn’t want to be that guy.

  “No wonder he forgot about you,” Sepulture said, disgust filling his voice as he spoke. “You’re weak.”

  “I’m not weak,” Jenna said in a voice that could scorch the earth and chill the sun.

  “Prove it,” Sepulture replied, jerking the towel off my eyes so I could see them both standing in front of me. Jenna’s hands clasped a gallon bucket of water as she looked at me, a strange mixture of emotions crossing her face. Just looking at her made my heart ache, and I barely knew her. Only, I was the cause of the pain in her eyes, and that struck me on a completely human level. I didn’t remember what we’d had, if anything, but in that instant, I wished I did.

  “Oh, I’ll prove it,” she said, moving next to me and holding the bucket up with one hand. “I’ll prove it so good.” The tone in her voice let me know one thing. I was fucked, and the sense of betrayal that knowledge brought nearly broke me.

  “Jenna,” I tried to say, but the word was lost against the cloth as she started to tip the bucket.

  Jenna whirled, spinning on the balls of her feet. She slammed the nearly full five-gallon bucket into Sepulture’s glee-twisted visage at near lightning speed, spilling water down the front of his white suit.

  The torturer stumbled backward, but Jenna wasn’t done. She grabbed the jumper cables off the table next to me and jammed their yawning copper mouths into his chest. Lightning exploded from their copper jaws as she clipped them onto his soaking-wet shirt. He jerked erratically under the force of the electricity flowing through his body.

  The smell of burned hamburger filled my nose as the nun sprang to her feet. Before the Sister of the Black Flame could take more than three steps, Jenna had leapt over me and dropkicked the larger woman in the face. The nun’s head snapped backward with bone-shuddering force. As she crumpled into her lawn chair in a spray of blood, Jenna turned and began unbuckling me with trembling hands.

  “Thanks,” I tried to say as the straps around my wrists came free. I jerked the towel off. “Thanks.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Mac.” She glared at me with enough anger to boil an ocean. “If you start talking I’m going to regret my decision to help you. You promised—” she cut herself off with a wave of her hand and went back to work unfastening me. It was probably better that way.

  Instead of saying anything, I let her work. She was almost done when Sepulture rose. Only that wasn’t quite the right word for it because one moment he’d been a twitching blackened corpse on the floor and the next he was upright. His smoldering hands grabbed Jenna by her blonde dreadlocks and with supernatural ease, flung her across the tiny room. She smacked into the wall with a thwack and slid to the floor, leaving a splash of blood on gray stone.

  A surge of rage filled me, blinding me to everything. Jenna had just saved me, and even more, Sepulture was a huge bag of dicks. He had to pay. I grabbed hold of his arm as he stalked toward Jenna, and he stopped.

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” White flame danced in the empty sockets of his charred skull as he turned to regard me. “You can’t get your legs free in the time it will take me to smash her skull into paste and you have no magic. You’re worse than useless.”

  He made to shrug me off, and as he did, I begged my demon to come through while yelling with all my might. “Sorbeo!”

  Dynamite shattered my brain. A volcano erupted in my chest. Molten lead filled my veins. For a second, I thought I was dead. Only I couldn’t be because that would hurt less. Sparks leapt from Sepulture and flowed into me as his charred body went up in white phosphorous flames so bright spots danced across my eyes. Hellfire leapt from my tattoos as my flesh darkened until it was blacker than the hair on Satan’s ass. The rush of power was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Superman might not be real, but in that moment, I was sure I could move faster than a speeding bullet and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

  “What are you doing?” Sepulture cried, his voice laced with panic as he struggled to pull himself free of me. A wave of magic slammed down on me like a sledgehammer to the skull. My head snapped backward as blood poured from my nose, ears and eyes. The fire leaping from my tattoos flickered, threatening to go out. That couldn’t happen!

  “Eating you!” I cried, only it wasn’t entirely my voice. It had a dark, feline edge to it, and as I stared out at the writhing fiend in front of me, I realized the demon who had cursed me with this arm was staring out of my eyes. I felt her reach out through me, felt her hand on mine, and together we pulled Sepulture close.

  “No! No it can’t be!” Sepulture cried, his body toppling forward in a still burning heap. “You were locked away? How—” My hand plunged into the inferno that was his chest. My fingers closed around something black and pulsing. With a twist, I tore it from the creature, causing Hellfire to spring from my demonic arm with a vengeance.

  As I jerked the blackened lump
up free of his burning corpse and held it in front of myself, Sepulture’s body slumped to the ground, broken.

  “Excellent,” I heard the cat whisper in my ear as I stared at the veins crisscrossing the mass of mottled, steaming muscle. “Now finish him.”

  I squeezed, and as I did, the thing in my hand popped like a water balloon, spraying viscous black blood from between my clenched fingers. One last surge of power rippled through me, and the cat demon gave me a well-sated smile.

  “You’ve done well, pet,” she purred, and as those words hit me, I realized what I’d done. I wasn’t sure what Sepulture was exactly, but I’d killed him by tearing out his heart while my demonic master applauded. Only that wasn’t what bothered me as I stared at the unmoving corpse of Sepulture. What bothered me was that I’d liked it. A lot.

  Chapter 13

  “Jenna, wake up!” I said, trying to shake her awake. Her scalp was matted with blood, and she had a nasty-looking goose egg developing, but she looked otherwise unharmed, which was good because I was not a master of first aid. At least, I was pretty sure I wasn’t. It wasn’t like I’d tried to perform open heart surgery or anything. Maybe I was good at it?

  Still, we had to get a move on. I had no idea where we were nor how we were going to get back to the kids. I gritted my teeth. While I had no doubt Vitaly and Marvin would try to finish the mission, I was also pretty sure that was all they would do.

  If it was easy they might rescue every kid, but somehow, I could see the two of them ducking and running the second they had Angela Prescott in their hands. If the other kids stayed behind, well, that would be fine by them. It wasn’t fine by me, dammit. I needed to get there and make sure everyone got out alive.

  “Mmm, five more minutes,” Jenna mewled, rolling away from me.

  “Jenna, we have to get out of here before someone else comes to torture and kill us,” I said, shaking her again, but it was like trying to wake the dead. Actually, that might have been easier.