Blood and Treasure_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  “That’s my boy,” he muttered, taking it in. The look of pride on his face caused bile to rise in my throat.

  “Never,” I answered through an almost entirely clenched jaw. “I’ll never be yours.”

  “Royce,” he answered, shaking his head and letting his tone fall into a less combative range. “You were always mine.”

  He reached forward again, though this time a flare of red energy appeared around him. I tried to pull back again, but found myself unable to move. His hand slapped against my shoulder and his fingers dug into me.

  Pain shot through me as I felt myself grow tired, grow weak. My vision started to blur, and confusion filled my brain, and not in the peaceful, sweet way it did when I heard Sadie speak. This was a destructive force. It was burning me out from the inside.

  With a sickening lurch of my heart, I realized exactly what I was feeling. My father was ‘eating’ me. He was doing what I had done to so many murderers, thieves, and perverts over the years. He was doing what I had done to Bandhal.

  This was what it felt like, this horrible thing. This was what I had done to so many people. This was the pain I’d caused. This was what my legacy was.

  “Stop,” I said and found I could barely whisper. That was how weak I’d become.

  Instead of taking more, he pulled me forward, jerking me hard toward him until I felt his breath on my ear.

  “Since the minute I put you in your mother’s belly, you belonged to me. You can try to run, try to pretend you’re something else, that you’re pure and different. But you’re mine, Royce. Fucking warlocks and the fucking ways in which they tried to raise you could never change that.”

  He pushed me hard, and I fell back into the water. The sand felt coarse and raw against my hands and the water burned as it rolled around me.

  “You can leave because you don’t belong here,” my father growled, looking down at me with a sort of fierce disgust in his eyes. “You haven’t been condemned to this place. So you’re free to go if that’s your choice.” His eyes grew red now too. “And it should be your choice, Roy. Because, if it isn’t, then the thing I sent to your friends will dig its way into their brains and find the things that terrify them the most. Then it’ll use that to bring them the death they always feared. Their last moments will be the worst they’ve ever experienced. Then when it’s done, it’ll bring their souls to me. It’ll bring them here.”

  “You’re a monster!” I cried, looking up at him through the coarse sand and burning water, and feeling as useless and impotent as I ever had before. “You think I don’t know what’s going on here? The nightmare thing, he’s the last of his kind. You want me to kill him to finish the spell, to break you out of here.”

  “To start,” he answered, a gleeful smile appearing on his face. “But you’re not looking at things the right way, son. I’m giving you a gift. Your little girlfriend is the last of her kind as well, Roy. I could just let my nightmare monster-as you call him- tear her apart. Either way, as far as I’m concerned, the result is the same. But it would hurt you, son, and that’s not what I want. So I’m giving you a choice. I’m giving you the option to choose which of them dies. Kill the nightmare before it kills your girlfriend because I won’t allow it to stop beforehand. Otherwise, she’ll die and her soul will be used to open that portal for me instead.”

  “Just use me,” I answered, half-weak and half-defiant. “Just use me to do it.”

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t work either Roy. Your actions have made sure of that,” he answered, his eyes flickering from me out to the ocean. “Now, if you wish to save the woman you love and your friends, I suggest you move quickly. You don’t have as much time as you think you do.”

  5

  Now that my body was literally submerged in water, it felt like it was on fire. Each inch I swam sent spasms of pain through me, making me question my decision again.

  I should have stayed there, stayed in that dungeon and starved to death…if starving to death was even possible in a place like this.

  At least then I wouldn’t have felt this pain. I wouldn’t have been lost in an ocean of hurt.

  Then, as if the physical pain wasn’t enough, things got worse.

  Turning my head too quickly, I swallowed a mouthful of the burning water. It felt like gin going down, minus all the wonderful numbness and fuzzy bliss the liquor always provided. It fell into my gut and the pain went away, but it was replaced by something more destructive.

  A dark feeling, a deep despair tinged with anger and bitterness rose up inside me. I knew it was the water. It had to be. Now it was screwing with my head. It didn’t matter though. Even though I knew my emotions weren’t making any sense, I still felt them, and worse, I was powerless to stop them.

  A torrent of memories, tinted by the pain, hurt, hopelessness, and anger, tore into me, threatening to stop me in my tracks.

  My entire life had been one giant fuck up after another. I had killed my own mother coming into this God forsaken world, after all.

  I was ostracized by the people who took me in, betrayed by the man I called my brother, left by the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and allowed to wander the earth like some new age Cain, forever alone, forever punished with solitude just for having the audacity to exist in the first place.

  What did they know? Who the fuck were they anyway? I was a kid. I was a child, and they’d ruined my life. They’d ruined me. They looked at me and seen a monster. So why the hell shouldn’t I give them a monster? Why not go back there and rip their throats out? Why not drain them of everything they had and make them rue the day I’d ever born?

  Stop!

  A semblance of rationality came back into my mind. Did I really just use the term ‘rue’ in serious thought?

  Turning my head upward, I took a long, deep breath of cleansing air. This water was playing tricks on my mind. It was making me angry, making me crazy. Sort of like the tequila down in Mexico. Only there wasn’t a hot ass bar tender making ten pesos off the top every time I downed it.

  The burning, combined with the anguish running roughshod through my insides, was insane. I wanted to die. No. That wasn’t it exactly. I wanted to kill something, but not just kill it. Oh, no. I wanted to feed on something powerful enough to make Bandhal feel like an appetizer.

  I clamped my eyes together. No. If I did that, it’d be a quick pit stop on the way to becoming the monster I truly was, the monster everyone had always told me I was.

  Anger and hurt surged up in me again, and I nearly stopped moving mid breaststroke. I wanted to stop. I wanted to sink down these waves and let that be the end of Roy Morgan.

  The water had different ideas though. As I started to give in to the burning pain, the heartsickness, and the overwhelming depression, and my body came to rest, a light shone from beneath me.

  A green circle illuminated the otherwise pitch black water beneath me. It growled like a stomach that hadn’t been fed in far too long, and the water surrounding me began to swirl in a cyclone around my body.

  “There,” I heard my father’s voice say inside my head. “You found it. Now do as I said, Roy. Do exactly as I said, and they’ll all li-”

  I had to assume the last word of his little diatribe was ‘live’, because the water was swirling so furiously and so loudly, I couldn’t even hear the voice in my head.

  Part of me wanted to try and swim away, but that wouldn’t have done any good. This thing was what I had been searching for. If it pulled me under the water and killed me instead of spitting me back out on earth, then I’d die knowing I hadn’t helped fulfill my father’s plan. Small victories, right?

  As that thought crossed my mind, the water reacted to it and something tugged sharply at my foot, pulling me underwater. The bright green light pulsated underneath as I flew downward like an anchor had been tied to my.

  The thing my father had alluded too was a giant spinning circle sitting in the dead center of the sea. It shone gree
n, and reminded me of one of those glow in the dark necklaces you get at the fair. This was obviously different though. It was dangerous and malevolent. As I fell closer and closer toward the thing, my lungs burning from both lack of oxygen and exposure to this mystical water, I realized it wasn’t a circle, at least not a perfect one. It was more oblong, more oval and-in its center- this thing had teeth.

  This was a mouth, a giant glowing mouth, and I was headed right for it.

  As panic surged through me, my arms began working feverishly to swim upward. I might have been resigned to die, but that didn’t mean I was cool with being swallowed by a giant underwater glow stick.

  Instinct took over and I pushed hard toward the surface. It was no use though. The force of this thing was too much. It was too great.

  As I neared it, hungry rumbling filled my ears. It was hungry, and I was going to serve as its meal.

  How’s that for irony?

  Closing my eyes, I gave up the ghost and let the thing pull me down. The light of it blinded me, and as I crossed the threshold, new pain shot through me. The sharpness of this being’s teeth tore into me, snapping my bones, ripping through my flesh, destroying the last bit of my sanity with its raw, unadulterated pain.

  I opened my mouth in hopes to scream. Instead, I took in one last huge gulp of water. It ravaged me, sending my poor body into convulsions. More hurt, more anguish, more pain.

  Then, there was absolutely nothing. Sweet sleep, sweet release washed over me as I fell into unconsciousness.

  My last thought was of the people I cared about, of Gary, of Renee, of Scott, and even of Isa. They deserved better than what they were about to get (or, in Isa’s case, what she already got). A mental sickness had pulled something dark from the recesses of her mind, twisted her into something horrible, and forced me to kill her to end her suffering. It was a tragedy and something she didn’t deserve. They deserved a hero who could save them, who wouldn’t give up like this. Instead, they just got the pathetic monster.

  My eyes fluttered open as I took in another huge breath of air. My body hurt, but not like before. What was more, the only water around me came from above. It was raining, and I was looking right up at it. But looking from where?

  I slowly realized I was on the ground, on wet pavement. Looking around, I saw the moon, the real moon. There were also walls and lights, stars in the sky and buildings surrounding me.

  My God, it worked. I was back. I was on earth.

  Footsteps sounded, and though I was unable to really move, my eyes darted toward the sound. A figure stepped into view. It took a moment for me to recognize her, not because she was backlit or hard to see. I didn’t recognize her at first because she had changed so much.

  Renee’s hair was cut into a short bob. Her face looked harder, with more defined lines. Her body looked toned, bare arms carved with muscle, and her eyes seemed to look at me with something less than love.

  “I found it,” she said, her voice flatter and more matter of fact than I had ever heard it before.

  She was wearing some sort of gold and white armor. It glowed softly against the moonlight, magnifying the presence of the sword jutting from the scabbard on her back.

  What the hell?

  “R-Renee?” I asked, my voice cracking as I took another deep breath.

  Her eyes narrowed accusingly at me.

  “It knows my name,” she said, pulling the sword from its sheath on her back. It glowed like the armor as she pointed it toward me. The tip of the blade pressed against my skin, and a jolt of energy ran through my body, sending me back to sleep. Before the darkness enveloped me completely, I heard the love of my life say, “Let’s see what else it knows.”

  6

  I woke slowly. My body was less achy than it had been before, and I was dry, which was definitely a plus given all I had just been through. I wasn’t on my back though. I was sitting straight up in a chair.

  I moaned and started to wiggle around, only to find myself bound to the chair by ropes. My arms were tied behind my back, and my feet were chained to the floor.

  My mind raced, taking in everything around me and trying to decipher just where in the world I was. It was a room about the size of an average bedroom, and was covered in the sort of cheesy wallpaper that made it look like the entire place was made of logs even though it was probably just plaster.

  There was no bed, no television, and no desk. For an instant, I thought I was back in the dungeon where my father put me. Maybe everything I had just dealt with had been nothing more than an intricate and deliberately painful glamour meant to further bend me to his will. I wouldn’t put it past the old bastard.

  Unlike that room though, this one was filled with stacks and stacks of brown moving boxes. They were full and taped up. Black marker on the sides said-in sloppy handwriting- that the boxes contained things like ‘My Kitchen Stuff’ and ‘Crap I found in the Basement.’ There was one box my eyes were drawn to directly. Like a siren song, my gaze shot right to it. A box slightly larger than the rest sat at the bottom of the far pile. In faded marker and the same sloppy handwriting, it read ‘Roy’s Things.’

  I wasn’t sure why exactly, but seeing my name on that box sent worried flutters through my heart. Something about knowing my things were still in this world, still being held and cared for, made me feel sick to my stomach. All that was left of me, the only piece of me that still existed in this world, could be crammed into a box, and it wasn’t even the top box.

  It was like reading your own obituary and having it end with the words, ‘He was cool, I guess.'

  Still, it gave me a little hope. None of these things were present in the room I had been in back in Hell, and unless this was still part of some elaborate ruse perpetrated by my father, it meant I had most likely made my way out of that place, and I was back home.

  The thought of being home send another stab of uneasiness through my mind. I had been sent here not only to protect the people I cared about, but also to complete a spell which would give my father an express ticket to ruin this place entirely.

  What would they think of me when they found that out? What would Renee think of me?

  Renee.

  The memory of seeing her back out in the rain came back to me like a bolt of lightning. She looked so different. She looked so hard. What had happened to her in the short time I had been gone, and what the hell was up with the sword and armor? Last I saw her, she was barely able to point a gun without the damned thing shaking like she was doing the hand jive, and now she was wielding a sword like she was Victor in the Hunger Games?

  Don’t get me wrong. If she was able to defend herself in a way she hadn’t been when I left, that was great. I was all for it, but it didn’t make sense, and I needed to get to the bottom of it.

  With the new resolution in my mind, the door swung open. My body tensed. These ropes didn’t seem tight, and though the chains on my feet might certainly prove to be troublesome, all I needed was my hands to cast a spell. If the people holding me here meant to harm me, they would soon learn as much.

  Blue energy- my warlock energy- began to swirl around my hands. They were hidden behind my back so, if trouble came through the doorway, it wouldn’t be able to see what I was preparing for it until it was too late.

  Trouble didn’t come through the door though. At least not in the way I was expecting.

  There was no vampire, no werewolves with a score to settle, or South African tribal leaders looking to even things up for what I’d done to one of their own. Instead, waltzing through the door like an awesome mirage in the middle of an oasis, was my brother.

  Scott, like Renee, looked different than when I’d left him. His hair was longer and there was a scar over his left eye, not unlike the scuff mark that still resided in my eyebrow.

  He wore a long trench coat that hung open and dragged the floor, making him look more like Dick Tracy or Jamie Madrox from his X Investigation days than the carefree warlock I’d left here just a short t
ime ago.

  “Scott,” I said, licking my lips and trying to get a little bit of moisture working. “What’s up, bro? What’s going on with the chains?”

  “Shut up,” he said flatly, twisting his hand and producing an influx of gold energy around it. A few of the boxes against the wall moved forward, skidding to a stop in front of me.

  Scott circled them before sitting on the box containing my stuff. Then he glared at me.

  “You’re on my stuff, dude,” I said, returning his glare with one of my own. “Not cool.”

  “If you speak again without being spoken to, I’m going to remove your lips. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Scott glared at me like I was his lesser, like I was some pissy little child he was talking down to.

  I balked, my mind racing to make sense of this. What the hell was my brother talking about? Remove my lips? Could he even do that, and if he could, why would he?

  I mean, we had had our share of arguments and there were definitely times when I wanted to shut him up by whatever means necessary, but this seemed a little over the top.

  “Do you understand?!” he shouted, a vein throbbing in his forehead.

  “Yeah. I just wasn’t sure if I was being spoken to or not, you jackass!” I spit back. “This is one piss poor way to welcome me back. I’ll tell you that!”

  “They got his pig headedness right this time. I’ll give you that much,” he said and twisted his hand again.

  Gold energy flew to my face, and I felt a pin prick around my lips, like they were being stitched up. I tried to speak, only to find I was unable to. My tongue hit against a wall of unbroken skin where my mouth used to be.

  I tried to mumble the word ‘motherfucker’ but I was pretty sure he didn’t understand.

  “I warned you,” he said flippantly, shaking his head. “I warned you, and you didn’t listen. Try to breathe through your nose until this is over.” He pursed his lips. “Trust me, it won’t take long, and once I find out what you really are, not having a mouth will be the least of your problems.”