Cursed: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  Chapter 7

  “Maybe I should go alone,” I said as the other minion from the laundromat threw open the door to the black van I remembered seeing in the parking lot of said establishment and glanced around. His eyes locked on me like a heat-seeking missile, and he charged like a bull.

  The big guy crossed nearly the entire block lot in the time it took for me to leap into her Dodge Neon. Fortunately, the brunette had completely ignored my safety and stomped on the gas before I’d landed, sending us screaming across the asphalt in a spray of smoking rubber and gravel. It was almost like she didn’t value my safety. Nah, couldn’t be.

  The car fishtailed as she swung it hard to the left, turning onto the street amid a blare of car horns. A black Buick barely missed our taillights as she swerved onto the street and gunned it. I would have been scared out of my mind by her reckless driving if the thug wasn’t nearly on top of us. His face was twisted into a snarl as his legs pumped like pistons, propelling him toward us with inhuman speed. Even though he was on foot, he’d be on us in a moment. I wasn’t sure how he was so fast, but I wasn’t going to wait around and ask him.

  I leaned out the passenger window and popped off two quick shots. While the first one missed him by a hair’s breadth, the second one caught him in the right knee, destroying cartridge, flesh, and bone in a spray of crimson. His leg gave out in an instant, and the big man tumbled head over heels with his own momentum before coming to lay face first in the street.

  He tossed a murderous glare in my direction moments before a jackass in a Mercedes swerved around the stopped work truck from earlier and took him out like this morning’s garbage. The driver didn’t even stop to see what he’d hit. Hell, he didn’t even so much as glance in his rearview mirror. I guess his phone call was a little too important. A sly grin crossed my lips. Thank God for douchebags in nice cars.

  I spun back around and placed the gun on my lap, partially surprised no one cared about the macabre scene behind us, but then again, we were already half a block away. The brunette swung us hard to right, taking us down yet another busy street and gunned the engine. It roared beneath us like a demon of Hell and shot forward as she nimbly bobbed and weaved between cars.

  “Yeah, so I’m starting to think that maybe those guys aren’t just random muggers. Care to explain what’s going on?” I asked, absently stroking the barrel of the Beretta with my fingertips. Something about the movement was strangely calming. Was feeling up a gun really my nervous tic? If it was, I had serious problems.

  Either way, I had no good reason for why I’d stroked the gun. I wasn’t planning on shooting her, but hey, it’d been an interesting morning thus far. Maybe I did things like that. My name was Mac Brennan, and the sky was the limit.

  She shot me a glance which was a little disconcerting because she was drifting like a street racer in a car older than the movie that’d made drifting popular and barely missed an eighty-year-old lady crossing the street.

  “The werewolves have been trying to get me to go see their alpha for a while now. They don’t understand no means no,” she said with a straight face, albeit angrily.

  “Wait, did you say werewolf?” I asked, barely believing the words coming out of my mouth. It sounded impossible, but at the same time, I did have an evil hand tattooed by one of Lucifer’s buddies. In a world like that, werewolves didn’t seem that implausible.

  “Yeah, those two meatheads, Dimitri and Jock, were werewolves. They’re lower in the pack, not omegas but not up to beta status either. I’d be surprised if they were even in the middle of the pack.” She shrugged.

  “And they were after you why?” I said trying to decide how I felt about that. Assuming she wasn’t lying about their status, I’d just fought two dudes capable of shrugging off gunshots, and they’d been the pansy werewolves. The idea of them sending their “more adept at kicking my ass” friends to find me because I’d helped her didn’t exactly instill me with a sense of kittens and lollipops. Maybe helping her had been a poor idea. The last thing I needed was to get my ass caught up in a supernatural turf war. That kind of thing could make a memory-addled bloke dead. Fast.

  “They are under the impression my ex left me something of incredible value.” She glanced at the rearview mirror before changing lanes into oncoming traffic to go around a trash truck. “They would be wrong.”

  “Why don’t you just tell them that?” I asked, pretty sure I was only seconds from dying in a car accident the likes of which would shake the very planet.

  “I have. They don’t listen. That’s one of the reasons I’m taking you far away.” She shot me an apologetic look. “The werewolves have no doubt caught your scent in the laundromat.” She flushed harder. “To be honest, I’d hoped you’d lure them away from me for a while, but they found us too quickly for them to be tracking you by smell.”

  “So you wanted to use me as bait for werewolves?” I leveled my best “slow the hell down” gaze at her. “Then why did you offer to let me shower at your place? You should have sent me on my way right then.”

  “You saved me and got all bloody. I felt bad about it, okay?”

  I let her words sink in for a moment. She knew people who might be able to help me. But she’d wanted to literally throw me to the wolves to buy herself time to escape. That was definitely a negative mark against her. Still, she had copped to it. She hadn’t had to do that…

  “Okay,” I said, fastening my seatbelt. “But I’m warning you, if this is some kind of double cross, I’m going to be pissed.”

  “Look, if big strong you really wants to leave petite little me behind because you’re too scared to come meet my friends, here’s your chance.” She stomped on the brake, sending us skidding to a stop outside a convenience store boasting the largest drink on the planet for an inversely proportional price.

  “No, I’ll meet your friends, although I’m starting to think saving you was a bad idea,” I told her, letting annoyance fill my voice. “But it’d be nice if I didn’t have to beat up more people.” Even as I said the words, I was pretty sure they were pointless. I’d known her all of a couple hours, and I’d already shot a couple guys.

  It wasn’t like I was opposed to beating up the guys chasing her or anything. It was more that I needed to find out who I was, and I had the strangest feeling she wasn’t telling me the whole story. Which was smart of her. If she had told me everything she knew, I’d have left right now. As it stood, she had leverage.

  Part of me wanted to leave anyway, but I needed answers, and at the moment, she was the only one giving me answers. Man, was I a sucker. Hopefully, her inevitable upsell wouldn’t be more than I could handle.

  Chapter 8

  Half an hour later, I found myself staring at a rundown bar with a sign above it that said “Jack’s” only the J was half torn off so it mostly just said “ack’s.” The rest of the place wasn’t much better. Its cinderblock walls were covered in black and green graffiti and rusty bars covered the two big windows in the front. Only one of them had glass, but the view within was blocked by an ancient black sheet with a faded picture of a girl with bat wings riding a broomstick. The other was covered by a piece of cracked plywood held together with more graffiti and duct tape. To say I had high hopes for this place was an overstatement.

  “Lovely place but don’t you think we should find somewhere a little more inconspicuous to park?” I asked as she unfastened her seatbelt and got out of the car in one smooth motion. “We could park in the back instead of right in front.”

  I wasn’t sure where we were exactly, but it didn’t exactly feel safe leaving her super conspicuous cherry-red car out in front of the world’s most decrepit bar. If the werewolves didn’t find us, her Dodge would get boosted within seconds, even if it was a Neon.

  “Jack’s is a magical refuge. If the werewolves come here, they won’t be able to do a damned thing while we’re inside.” She shot me a devilish smile that made both good and bad chills run down my spine. Even since she�
�d told me I was bait, she’d made an effort to be nicer to me. I suspected it was because she felt bad about using me as bait.

  “So what? They’ll just kill us when we leave.” I stared at her hard, trying to figure out why she thought hiding in a place known to be a magical refuge was a good idea. If I’d wanted to get someone inside, I’d have just set the place on fire or something, forcing my prey to run out while I waited on the roof of the supermarket across the street with a high-powered rifle, but then again that was just me and I was Faust incarnate.

  Still, something niggled at my mind. I’d had a plan to take her out within a second, and not only that but several more. How could I have looked at this place for only a breath before having thirty different ways of getting someone inside, magical refuge or not? That wasn’t exactly normal. It made me wonder what I did before my deal with the Devil.

  We stood in front of the bar for a moment longer, and I got the feeling something was making her apprehensive. Was she nervous about me meeting her friends? Maybe they weren’t too kindly to the Cursed. It was entirely possible.

  “What’s wrong?” I said when she glanced from me to the door of the bar and back again with a strange look in her eye for the third time in as many seconds.

  “You’re missing something,” she said, getting to her feet and walking toward me rubbing her chin. “Oh, I know.” She spun around and began rummaging in the laundry basket in her car. A moment later, she reappeared with a bright red power tie. “You need this!” Before I could stop her, she had it around my neck and expertly knotted.

  “What do you think?” she asked, taking a step back to survey her handiwork, even though I couldn’t see the tie since I was wearing it. Then she blushed again. “Oh, you can’t see it, huh.” She turned me toward the side-view mirror.

  “I think your ex must have been John Constantine,” I replied, pulling at the tie. Why she had washed a tie and also decided I needed to wear it was strange to say the least.

  “When he let me go, it was like he let life itself slip through his fingers,” she said, staring off past me into a memory I couldn’t understand but was incredibly uncomfortable sharing with her. She must have realized it too because a second later she looked away, her cheeks practically scarlet with embarrassment.

  “Sorry,” she squeaked, wiping at her face with the back of one hand as tears filled her eyes. “Let’s go.” And with that, she darted through the door, leaving me all alone on the sidewalk by myself.

  “What the hell?” I asked the empty air, but it didn’t respond. I suddenly felt bad for making the joke even though it wasn’t like her ex was a fictional demon hunter or anything. Demon hunter, maybe, but definitely not a guy from a DC comic. It irked me. And while I didn’t know much about myself, I was pretty sure I was the kind of guy who shot things that irked me. I touched the butt of my gun for a second before pushing the thought away and adjusting my jacket so the weapon wasn’t showing.

  It was time to meet her friends and get some answers, and even though I wasn’t going to be doing either of those things outside, it took me another couple of minutes to make my way to the door.

  “What if I don’t like what I find out?” I whispered to myself, hoping against hope I wouldn’t later decide I should have taken the blue pill. Then I cashed in some manliness points and opened the goddamned door.

  The inside of Jack’s was surprisingly well-lit in the antiseptic hospital sort of way. Fluorescent lights set into the ceiling cast sterile white light across the concrete floor. A couple of pool tables made of polished oak and covered with tournament grade Belgian Simonis cloth sat toward the back of the room. They must have cost ten times what the building had cost. Each.

  The wall behind them was filled with pool sticks, but they were covered in so much dust, I got the distinct impression no one ever used them. With tables like that, most players probably brought their own pool cues. Those were not the type of tables designed for frat boys on a beer buzz. No, those were serious tables for serious players.

  An Indian man, feather not dot, dressed in faded blue jeans, a white chamois shirt, and a tan snakeskin cowboy hat stood next to one of the far tables. He chewed on an unlit cigarette as he studied the pattern of balls laid out on the green cloth. I didn’t see anyone else near him. It made me think he might be playing by himself. He bent down, leaning across the table and aiming his stick at the cue ball.

  The cue stick itself was a marvel. Sleek black wood with a crimson Chinese dragon emblazoned along its length. Better still, it looked like the guy knew what he was doing. As his muscles bunched, the stick exploded in his hands like a rocket, smashing into the cue ball with a thunderous crack. The poor cue ball struck the blue two ball, sending it careening into a corner pocket.

  The cue ball, now misdirected by the two, struck the rail hard before spinning in an arc that let it kiss the orange five before dying abruptly in the middle of the table. Somehow, all of its momentum transferred to the five which shot off like a bolt of lightning, banking off the upper rail before dropping in the center left pocket.

  The guy looked up at me, caught me watching, and tipped his hat. “Like what you see, partner?” he asked, his chapped lips twisting into a grin. “I got plenty more where that came from if you’re man enough.”

  “Nope, I’m not a pool player,” I replied even though I had no idea if it was true or not. Something told me it might not be since I could identify the make of the cloth on the table with only a glance, but either way, now was not the time to be distracted by billiards.

  “Too bad. I didn’t peg you for a woman.” He shot me another grin to let me know his words were all in good fun and turned his attention back to the table, his cigarette all but dangling from his lips.

  Instead of marching across the room and belting him across the face in an effort to show just how manly my fists were, I scanned the rest of the room. There wasn’t a single television in sight. The top half of the walls were painted sky blue and were completely bare. The lower half of the walls were covered in that overbearing white vinyl stuff used in places that expected to get sprayed down. I traced my eyes along the floor and, sure enough, found a drain in the center. So they did expect to hose this place off. That was curious and somewhat troubling. How many pool halls needed to get sprayed down?

  A large oak bar that matched the tables encompassed the entirety of the left wall. In front of it, a smattering of mismatched stools with names like “Butch” and “Oliver” stenciled onto their colored vinyl seats filled my vision. Bottles of various liquor filled the shelf behind the bar along with a smattering of weird trinkets that didn’t seem to fit together very well. An old wooden Indian sat next to a green army man and a model tie fighter.

  The brunette sat in the far corner, elbows on the bar with her head in her hands. She was no doubt waiting for the old man behind the bar to finish wiping out his beer mug with his stained white towel. From the look of things, he didn’t even know she was there, but I was reasonably sure the smirk on his wrinkled face was due to the brunette’s slowly simmering rage. I got the distinct feeling they’d done this particular dance many, many times. It made me wonder what the status of their relationship actually was, and if that was the reason for her reluctance outside.

  “Mac,” she said, shooting me a little wave. It was a little weird because we’d been separated for all of thirty seconds. Had she thought I was going to leave her this close to meeting the people she swore could help me?

  Before I could take even a step toward her, the old man turned abruptly and shot a lopsided grin at me. His dark hair was clearly a dye job, identifiable partially because he looked to be in his seventies and partially because the new growth along his sideburns was white as snow. I didn’t really see the point, but then again, my hair was pretty light. If a bit of silver speckled it, no one would be able to tell. Besides, I looked like I was in my late twenties or maybe early thirties. I wouldn’t have much gray to hide anyway.

  “Can
I get you something?” he asked, voice like a rough leather strop being pulled across a knife edge. He moved along the bar in my general direction, and the brunette shot the back of his head a glare that could have melted glass. It made me immediately glad she hadn’t turned it on me.

  “What do you recommend?” I replied, my mouth practically salivating at the idea of drinking something. I was so thirsty I’d have drunk pretty much anything, even light beer.

  “Real men wet their whistle with whiskey.” He raised an eyebrow to me. “But if you’re one of those yuppie pussies, there might be some Michelob Light in the back room somewhere. Want me to go fetch you one along with a little pink umbrella?”

  “So no Zima then?” I asked, and the look of horror on the man’s face was worth a thousand words. “Whiskey is fine,” I added before he could recover, almost relishing the thought of the amber liquid in a glass with a couple cubes of ice. “You’d better leave the bottle.”

  The old guy shook off his shock and turned to the counter behind him, grabbing a dark, dusty bottle with no label before snatching a glass from some unseen place. He set the glass down in front of one of the empty stools and poured a heavy dose of dark liquid inside. His lips separated into a wry smile that revealed a few missing molars along the sides.

  “Here you go, tough guy. One Zima.” He set the bottle down beside the drink. “I’ll leave the bottle here. Don’t go making me regret it. I swear to the Holy Mother herself, if you wind up spitting whiskey all over my bar, you’ll be mopping it up with your face.”

  Before I could reply, the brunette stood up abruptly, making her chair skid backward across the concrete floor with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. “If you guys are all done being macho assholes, maybe we can get this show on the road. I need to get back to my son.”