Perfect for fighting mages stronger than you.
As I went to grab the handle, Itabimori’s hands seized my own, head tilted downward, she refused to let go.
“You sure you’re all better?” she asked.
Tabi was easy to figure out. Sincere and straight arrow. I put my free hand on her shoulder and squeezed softly.
“I meant it when I said thank you for saving my life.”
Itabimori leaned in, her eyes darting around as her lips whispered, “Uh, we should…”
My cell rang.
“We should answer the phone,” I said.
Click.
“Demon monger,” spoke a familiar voice.
“Cazador,” I said, dragging a palm down my face. “Of course it’d be you. Something had better be on fire with--”
“It is,” Cazador said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Tell me.”
“Our agents in Cancun have been discovered and are under heavy attack by enemy forces. You’re the closest warlock to their location. Protect the archaeology team at all costs.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Archaeology team? You son of a bitch. We had the missing team all along, didn’t we? But filthy warlocks like me are on a need to know basis until shit hits the fan.”
“This is bigger than protocol,” Cazador retorted. “We cannot lose access to them. Address uploaded to your phone. Get down there and protect the team at any cost.”
I hung up and looked up the address. I felt a pair of eyes staring at me expectantly.
“Let me guess,” I said, without looking up from my cell. “You want to come with.”
Itabimori nodded stubbornly.
“You know where this is?” I asked, showing her the address.
“Ten minute drive.”
I threw on a shirt and a Kevlar vest, crammed my wand into my shirt pocket, and loaded my pistol. “Take me there.”
Chapter 14
When all you drive is fancy cars, you forget the sort of speed a middle range Nissan Altima can pull when there’s a hot blooded, snake woman behind the wheel.
The city center was gone in the blink of an eye, and the tiny cramped dwellings and cheap stalls gave way to more fancy villas. This was where the rich and the famous kept their distance from the peasants.
Gated communities, sprawling mansions and chic boutiques flew past us in a blur, until at last I caught sight of the address mentioned.
The place had its own grove of tropical trees growing inside its walls. It looked like an overgrown ruin itself, though the multiple satellite dishes on one of the roofs gave it a modern edge. So this was Nine Tower’s Cancun base, huh?
A pair of zombie thralls guarded the front door. Riot helmets obscured sightless eyes and M1A1 rifles hung limply at their side. So it was the Mabinoya that found us out. It’s like the bad guys were taking turns roughing me up or something.
“Park it,” I said.
“You said you were in a rush, right? Hang on.”
I never expected such maniacal driving from someone like Tabi. Instead of parking the car, she slammed on the gas, and plowed through the main gate like it was nothing. The thralls didn’t even have a chance to raise their guns.
“Uh, hang on harder!” Tab shouted as a contingent of thralls loomed up ahead.
Tab slammed the car into neutral and pulled left, drifting sideways at a little under mach speed and hitting the regiment of thralls like a bowling ball.
Strike.
I kicked open the door like it owed me money, pistol and wand sword in hand. If I remembered my enchanting right, all these zombie thralls didn’t come without magical upkeep. Scrambling to get up, I found just the man I was looking for.
Tall, wiry, the Mabinoya Magus scrambled to figure out what just hit him. Before he could cry out a command to his troops, I sunk my wand-sword into his chest. The thralls fell limp. Without magic to animate them they were just sleeping people.
“This is the rear guard. More to come. Ready?” I asked.
You know, given how nice Itabimori is, it`s easy to forget her great grand daddy was a bloodthirsty demigod. She was on the ball, looking for trouble with magic pooling into her open palms as we entered the courtyard. The Magi there were waiting for us this time.
“Well well, looks like that Baron wasn’t talkin’ outta his ass after all,” spoke an accented voice. Vaguely Jamaican.
In the center of the tropical tree grove stood a man with a staff in his right hand and a rod in his left. The Kevlar he wore was shored up with a rib cage made of animal bones that likely served as both a spell ward and intimidating decoration. Of course he was flanked by zombie thralls as well.
“You look lost,” I said. “Not sure if you know, but this is Nine Towers country, neighbor.”
“Charles Locke, the Hellhound himself,” The Magus said. “I’m gonna go up three ranks and get a fancy title when I deliver ya head to the bosses.”
“I’m on a schedule. Cast havoc, or surrender. Pick.”
For the record, they never choose surrender. Something about magical powers makes Humans always overestimate themselves. The Magus pointed his rod towards me and the six thralls opened fire on me like they were giving away free bullets at the gun ranges. Unfortunately for them, I had a snake woman with me who could tap into the raw energies of primal life.
She had great reactions too. I didn’t need to say a word and a wall of thick palm trees matured in seconds. Bullets shot furiously into the stiff bark to no avail, and when cartridges emptied, I saw my chance to strike.
The problem with zombie thralls is that they require a hell of a lot of magical multi tasking to have them even do a little bit of what you want. Particularly in large hordes. Tell them to fire and they shoot the whole cartridge no questions asked. And they’ll keep firing too until you mentally will each and every one of them to reload, take aim, and fire again.
As I was about to break cover, the tree right in front of Itabimori exploded, stray cinders showering the grass. On the other side, I could see the Magus uttering a harsh incantation, retrieving a CD from a fanny pack.
“Are you kidding me?”
I was just fast enough to tackle Tab to the floor before he flung the disk, narrowly missing the snake woman and exploding impressively against a stone pillar behind us.
“Charles, why are Dvds explo--”
“He’s enchanting them. Overloading the disks to explode into shards of magma after they shatter. Fancy magic. He’s probably the lynch pin on not just these zombies but all the others in the compound.”
“Oh! That means that if we get him--”
I grinned wickedly. “I like the way you think Tabi. Cover me.”
“You can’t keep hiding forever Hellhound. Cower behind grass and I’ll burn it away. Dive into water and I’ll put thunder into a rock and toss it right in after you!”
I bolted out from behind the smoking palm trees and made for the pillars lining the right of the courtyard. Gunfire followed me, pattering angrily off the pillar when I reached my fresh cover.
While the thralls’ attention was on me, they completely forgot about Itabimori. At least until the ground suddenly started growing roots in the blink of an eye. Parched dirt grew fronds, mushing the ground into odd angles as they burst from below, knocking thralls forwards and backwards.
Just the distraction I needed. I rushed in for the kill.
“Fire!” the Magus shouted. The zombies obeyed, emptying clips into the open sky or ground where they lay. A look of fury formed on the Magus’ face as he realized the purpose of the rampant growth. Pointing both rod and staff towards me, he readied to blow me away.
In a burst of green, palm trees shot out of the ground like a wall just in front of the Magus and obscuring his line of sight.
“Ya think that’s gonna give me a proper scare?” The Magus asked. “Which way you gonna come? I got a surprise either way.”
Left or right, he likely had a rod or staff pointed each way. W
hich meant there was only one surefire way to get to him. I pointed my wand-sword strayed forward and thrust through the wall of trees.
I breathed heavily, as I kept my wand-sword jammed right through the bark of the palm tree. When I withdrew it, the tip was covered in blood. The Magus slumped to the ground along with the thralls. His sleep was a little more permanent though.
Tabi, exhausted but standing, caught up to me.
“Smart thinking,” I said. “With the veil of trees.”
“I didn’t think you’d go through them like that. I just wanted to buy some time.”
“You did perfectly. Let’s go get the archaeologists.”
Tabi followed me as I led deeper into the villa. When we finally found the basement, the place was littered with bodies. Most of them were thralls, some dead, some sleeping, but there was a pile of corpses with Nine Towers insignias on them.
I cursed when I opened the metal door to the safe room.
The archaeologists were there all right. Waiting in a neat row. All headless.
“Too late,” I muttered. “Again.”
Chapter 15
I took in a deep breath, and leaned against the dusty safe house wall.
Itabimori turned her head away from the carnage. “If only I’d driven faster or--”
“It’s not your fault. Nine Towers didn’t tell me about the archaeologists. To think we had them all along, and now they’re out of reach forever,” I spoke.
“Not exactly,” spoke a voice, little more than a groan.
I turned my gaze to find one of the Nine Towers sorcerers. She was so blood spattered and pale I didn’t think for an instant that she could possibly be alive.
“Samantha Pall, sorceress third class,” she whispered weakly, before offering a weak salute.
“Tab, heal the shit out of her. Ms. Pall, hang in there,” I shouted.
“This is important. The Magi have the archaeologists,” the sorceress said.
She must be delirious. Pall shuddered as Tabi pressed hands to her wounds.
“Ms. Pall, the archaeologists are all dead. The Magi didn’t take them, they killed them all.”
“Listen, just listen,” Veronika groaned. “There was a necromancer or something with em. The heads were reanimated, kept sane. I’d never seen magic like that.”
“And what, they have the heads as hostages now? All eight of them?” I asked, incredulous.
“Charles, don’t push her, she’s never gonna come off the brink if you--”
“There might be a chance if you catch them. The docks. They were going to the docks,” Pall said.
I nodded firmly as Itabimori finished her healing. Before the snake woman had a chance to even say ‘stabilized’, I grabbed her wrist and ran out of the safe house as quick as my legs could take me.
“Charles? Where are we running?”
“Hollywood car chase. We catch them, we take back the archaeologists’ heads. If they get to the sea, it’ll be all over.”
“You really know how to get a girl amped up,” Tab replied, “Breakneck car ride, causing trouble for the local hooligans, and even the possibility of getting soaking wet later on.”
“Quite the hazy line you draw there between life and death struggles and romantic dates,” I shot back.
She got to the car first and hit the ignition, the engine was already revving impatiently by the time I threw my seat belt on.
Safety first.
Tires wailed, rubber burned, and in the blink of an eye we were barreling down the main street on a collision course with downtown. Weaving in and out of traffic, we had made it down to the heart of the city by the time we caught sight of them.
It looked like a big rented moving van. The driver was what tipped me off though. Hanging his hand out the driver side window, I noticed his sleeve had magical runes stitched into. As I noticed him though, the driver noticed us.
Stuck in traffic in a bottle neck, the driver rammed into the car ahead of them, and squealed off amid a chorus of angry honks.
Itabimori swore in Spanish, turned to me and said, “Hang on.”
I nearly got thrown out the window when she took a hard right and blasted down a narrow alleyway. We lost both mirrors to the walls in the maneuver, and the sound of brick scraping metal going eighty miles per hour was not something you just tune out.
Another sound off of honking and hasty breaks greeted us as we exploded out of the other end of the alleyway.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “We’re going to actually catch them at this rate. Left at this intersection. We’ll cut them right off.”
“Swerving!” Tab shouted.
The look of horror on the faces of the Magi was priceless when they looked into their rear view mirror only to see us hot on their wheels again. The one in the passenger seat barked orders to the driver, then banged on the back of the truck loud enough to wake the dead.
“Lower the windows Tab. I think I know what they’re going to do.”
As Tabi obeyed, the back of the truck was kicked open by a particularly large thrall. A chain was coiled around the thralls throat like a dog’s leash, and at the end of the leash stood a small decrepit grandma with sunglasses and a white bandanna over her nose and mouth.
“That’s one of their specialists. Like the guy we fought in the courtyard,” I told the snake woman, “Prepare for evasive maneuvers.”
“Got ya,” Tab replied.
The elderly Magus in the moving van didn’t seem to be as excited about all this as Itabimori was. With a flick of a wrinkly wrist, all the Thralls that had been sardine canned into the back cocked automatic rifles and fired.
Tab was already in the oncoming lane by the time they had a chance to draw a bead. The slow reaction of the thralls made it almost trivial to lead them around in circles. What I hadn’t counted on, was the fact that the grandma hadn’t gotten to that ripe old age by being mediocre.
The second we rushed to the oncoming lane, the elderly sorceress retrieved a pitch black orb from the folds of her robe, rattled off an incantation, then swung her hand towards Tab in a dramatic strike.
In that split second my mind raced to react. Lightning? Fireball? Poison mist? Asphalt elemental?
“I can’t see, Charles take the wheel!”
I cursed, leaping onto the driving wheel. I swerved back to the right before Thrall gunners got more than a stray bullet into the hood of the car.
“Blindness spell? How are you with dispelling magics?”
“No good. And I still can’t see. She must have enchanted my eyes to uselessness,” Tab cried out.
“Great. That means-- Shit! Grab on.”
The glance I stole at the Magi’s moving van was what sent me into panic mode. The enchantress had torn a grenade from the belt of her large thrall, poured magic into it as she cupped it in her hands, and then tossed the enchanted military grade grenade right onto the windshield of Tabi’s car.
I crushed Tabi into a bear hug and spat a desperate incantation just before the grenade went off.
Chapter 16
The good news was my quick thinking had saved us. The bad news was that I really wished my body had the good sense to go unconscious from all the hurt.
My brain rattled in my skull. My bones ached. I felt stinging all up and down my back. The press of Itabimori’s breasts against my chest did do something to ease my suffering though. Her eyes, shut hard, only slowly dared to open.
“Charles, what just… You’re wounded!”
“Tabi, you’re going to lose your voice announcing every time I happen to get mangled. Glad to see your eyesight’s back by the way.”
We were lying on the asphalt maybe a one minute jog from the dock. Battered, bruised, but otherwise fine. The acrid smoke of the wrecked Altima reached my nostrils. The distant blare of police sirens floated on the air like white noise.
“How are we alive? My vision came back just in time to see a grenade smack the windshield,” Tabi asked.
“
Enchanted grenade, actually. I know it’s easy to forget but I can do other things than just making a wand sword. I placed a lesser reflect on us at the last second. The second you enchant the grenade it becomes magical, therefore incapable of shattering the shield. If it hadn’t been enchanted, the grenade would have turned us into paste.”
Tab nodded, but looked about ready to cry. “I’m really glad we’re not dead but, I think it’s my fault that they got away.”
I turned up my eyes to see the truck unloading onto a large yacht. Thralls all done marching in, mooring cast off, and with a sputter the boat took off from the harbor and out to sea.
“I have an idea,” I said. “Get up and get down to the dock. Don’t make me wait.”
By the time we made it to the harbor, the yacht was long gone. There was only one chance to keep the chase going: Doing something ever so slightly not legal.
Me and luck rarely see eye to eye, but apparently today good fortune was willing to throw me a bone. Parked right down on the beach next to the dock was a man in police uniform writing a young couple a ticket. Right behind him was his jet ski, keys in ignition and totally unguarded.
Grand theft jet ski.
“What are you… oh no,” Tabi managed, seeing what I saw and connecting the dots.
In plain view of the two getting ticketed, and much to their horror, I mounted the jet ski and revved it.
Amid a litany of what I assumed was the Spanish phrase for ‘stop in the name of the law’, I drew the jet ski up along the dock, raising a hand and offering Tab the back seat.
“Charles,” she cried out. “This is so illegal-- You’re supposed to be the good guy!”
“Get the hell on the bitch seat!” I shouted over the engine and the screaming owner.
Itabimori jumped right on despite her complaints. Linking her hands over my chest, I gunned the engine and held on for dear life.
Jet skis are remarkably fast. No one was more surprised by this fact than the Magi manning the yacht. Gray clouds hanging overhead, storm front coming, I split the waves apart in my mad rush to catch up with the Magi.
Blood Hunt (Secret Magent Book 3) Page 6