Prince of Blood and Thunder_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  I opened my eyes to find myself standing in the middle of a town square that sort of reminded me on Central Park in New York City. While the spot on which we stood was rather green and agrarian, skyscrapers filled every inch of space just beyond the edge of the square. Instead of being made of metal, glass, and concrete, they appeared to have been made from solid stone coaxed up from the earth.

  The slender, delicate buildings of gray and orange stone stretched into the dark blue sky along streets filled with vendors, bustling crowds, and muscle cars. The calls of barkers urging people to buy the latest mana potion or +1 amulet were loud in my ears as I spun slowly around the grassy square to look at walls of water just above the skyscrapers. I wasn’t sure where they’d gotten enough power to keep the awesome pressure of the sea at bay, but I could feel the pylons that powered that huge magical shield thrumming in the air like the low rumblings of a jet engine.

  Part of me wanted to approach the wall of water and touch it just to see what it felt like, but I thought better of it. If I touched it and it broke, I really didn’t want to be responsible for that. Besides, Tina stood a few feet away from me with a gigantic smirk on her face that told me she found my sudden awe amusing.

  As I settled my eyes upon her, she gestured casually toward where Justin’s unconscious body lay in a huge mud puddle. We’d wound up having to just toss him over when we jumped and hope his innate werewolf indestructibleness would keep him safe. I hadn’t liked it, but there really hadn’t been another way.

  A goat-like creature with silken pink fur and six legs stood near him. Its black tongue snaked out of its mouth like a butterfly’s proboscis and tasted his cheek.

  “Shoo!” I cried, waving my hands at the goat as I took a menacing step toward it, but if it had any fucks to give, they didn’t show. The damned creature didn’t even look up as it continued to lick the werewolf. Behind it, I could see a dozen other creatures, and what was worse, they were all licking people too.

  Unlike Justin, those people seemed to be conscious, and enjoying the procedure, so maybe it was a thing. Still, I had a hard time believing anyone would let a six-legged goat lick them.

  “Leave the goat alone,” Gordon, my brother said from behind me. “Its saliva can actually heal minor wounds.”

  I whirled, half in shock to find him leaning against a stone light pole a few feet away. He chewed on a toothpick like a tough guy in a western. Only my brother was decked out in an outfit that was a cross between Iron Man and Solid Snake. He’d even replaced his infinity gauntlet.

  “Found time to fix all you’re your gear after you murdered a billion people, eh?” I growled, glaring at him. It pissed me off to see him standing there all nonchalant like he wasn’t a mass fucking murderer. I wasn’t sure where he’d found the time to recover all his stuff, but it didn’t surprise me that he had spares. If I’d gone home instead of here, I’d have had spares too.

  “It was for the greater good, Annie,” Gordon said, walking toward me like he hadn’t broken his leg only an hour before. And not a tiny break. No, he’d had a whole “bone poking through the skin” break. “I thought, of all people, you’d know that.”

  “I understand why you think it was necessary,” I said, very slowly. The sad thing was, I did. I knew he’d seen his girlfriend killed by the werewolves, and I knew the kind of person he was. He hated feeling powerless, and I could easily see how a few steps one way, and a few nudges here and there would turn my loving younger brother into someone who might think the only way to clean up a mess would be to nuke it from orbit. That said, killing innocent people through a bloodline curse was never okay.

  “But you think I have just kicked a hornet’s nest and more will die, eh?” Gordon replied, and he seemed strangely smug in a way I didn’t understand. “That’s where you’re wrong. Everything is going according to plan.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. The Gordon I knew had never been a monster. He should have felt remorse, should have felt something. And that was when I realized what he’d done. Gordon had flipped his humanity switch. He’d turned it off, and as such, couldn’t feel anything about what he’d done. That… that coward.

  Part of me wanted to berate him, to make him understand what he’d done, but I knew that as long as his humanity was switched off, it wouldn’t do any good.

  “Gordon’s right, my child.”

  My blood turned to ice in my veins as my eyes settled on Sheev, and I knew all the thanks I’d given for the past several years when he’d “died” at the hands of werewolves were all in vain. My master of almost twenty years looked older than ever, and as his opaque, blind eyes settled on me from beneath his black cowl, I shuddered. He’d been blind for as long as I’d known him, and probably millennia on top of that because even his wrinkles had wrinkles.

  Despite all of that, he always seemed to be looking right into my heart and sussing out my deepest darkest desires. Well, that or beating me senseless for failing to properly recite something in Latin.

  “Annie, it’s so good to see you,” Sheev said in his calm, gravelly voice that made me think of Obi-Wan Kenobi gargling with rusty nails.

  “I’d say it’s mutual, but it’s not,” I snapped as he glided toward me. The cross around his neck glittered in the light streaming from above. It was a little odd because a quick look around didn’t actually reveal the sun, which made sense since we were underwater.

  I’d sort of expected to see a light source of some kind, but there wasn’t one. It was literally like someone had walked into a little bubble beneath the ocean and said “let there be light,” and it had been so. Hell, for all I knew, it had been. Evidently, what I knew about mage culture could fit in a fraking shot glass. Man, this whole being among mages in a magic city thing was going to take some getting used to since I’d never really been around more than a few at a time. From where I stood in the square, surrounded by the glittering metropolis, I could see more people walking the streets than I’d ever met in Magic Alley.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, dear child,” Sheev said in that ‘epitome of reasonableness’ voice he always used in public. It was especially grating because I knew what he was really like deep down. Inside that chest beat the blackened heart of a devil. “But now is not the time for that. We must awaken your friend.”

  He moved past me to kneel beside Justin and put a hand on the pink goat. It made a sort of bark-meow that raked across my brain.

  “Please, dear friend, join your brethren. I will call upon you if I require your aid.” He scratched the goat behind the ears as he spoke, and as he finished speaking, the freaking thing nodded toward my heart-of-darkness master before loping off to lick a small blonde girl licking an ice cream cone.

  “Don’t touch him, Sheev,” I said, reaching down toward my lightsaber. I didn’t want to strike him down because I was pretty sure he would only grow stronger if I did, but at the same time, I was also pretty sure I could make death stick to him a bit better than the werewolves could. I had a lot more motive.

  “Whyever not, Annie?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me as he folded his hands in his lap and looked at me with his opaque white eyes. I felt his gaze probing me for weaknesses. Just like when I was younger, the gesture creeped me out. While he looked blind as a bat, he had some weird way of seeing despite the handicap. It was especially frustrating because I knew even if I drew my lightsaber, he’d knock it away before I could raise it against him.

  “I don’t want you to hurt him,” I said, moving forward, and as I was about to interpose myself between Sheev and Justin, Gordon put a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s okay, Annie.” He pulled me closer so his breath was hot on my ear as he spoke. “Sheev’s a bastard, sure, but he’s still a healer. You know that.”

  I growled, and the sound rippled out of my throat as I shut my eyes and counted to ten. Gordon was right. I’d seen Sheev heal everything from a paper cut to stage four cancer in the blink of an eye. Letting him examine Justin probably w
ouldn’t hurt. Still… I couldn’t trust him. Not after what he’d done to me.

  Gordon, I could trust. Sure he was a murderer, but he was one I could understand. He’d been out for vengeance, and after shutting off his humanity, hatched a plan to bring the werewolves down once and for all. I didn’t agree, but it made sense.

  Sheev’s motives, on the other hand, had never made any sense at all. He could go from your best friend to stabbing you in the back and back again in less time than it’d take me to drink a Red Bull.

  “Annie?” Sheev asked, smiling at me in a way that made me want to deck him. “What would you like me to do?”

  “Heal him,” I said, and the words tore out of me like glass and shrapnel. It felt like making a deal with the devil, and while I really wanted to hate him with every ounce of my being, I wanted Justin to be healed more. He’d been unconscious for a long time now, and since he was a werewolf, he should have been up in seconds. The fact that he wasn’t was troubling at best and downright terrifying at worst.

  I still had no idea what Justin would say or do when he awoke. For all I knew, the famous werewolf rage would be on full display, but I had to hope that wouldn’t be the case.

  “Are you sure, Annie?” Sheev asked and malevolence twinkled in his blind eyes. “I’d hate to do something you didn’t really want.”

  “I’m sure, Sheev,” I said, taking a step back and releasing my white-knuckled grip on my lightsaber. “Heal him.”

  “Ask nicely, Annie.” His smile grew wider, and I had to resist the urge to deck him. I didn’t because I wouldn’t stop until he was a bloody smear, and that wouldn’t help anyone.

  Asking nicely sucked, it was like admitting I needed his help. It would be the first step toward coming back to him, the first step toward getting back under his thumb. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to help Justin without him. I shut my eyes and tried to think of another way, but everything came up empty. No. Sheev was the only way.

  “Please.” Saying that word was harder than any other I’d ever spoken. It broke things inside me I thought had been healed and made me feel weak. Man, I needed to get away from here. The sooner, the better.

  “Very well.” Sheev nodded to me before his gaze slid past me. “Madisyn, will you please take Annie to get something to eat? I can tell this is going to take a while.”

  “I’d rather stay here,” I said, but was cut off by a piping voice from behind.

  “Okay, master,” replied a girl who sounded about eight, and I whirled to see Madisyn. She had skin like dark chocolate and stood about four feet tall. She was dressed in the same mauve apprentice robes I wore when I was her age, but unlike me, her frizzy black hair hadn’t been shorn from her head. It made me slightly jealous of her, but mostly, it made me scared.

  Sheev had taken another apprentice. And she was a girl like me. Now, I know what you’re thinking. That Sheev had certain proclivities. It’s not true. So let’s not even go there. At least, he didn’t when I knew him. Still, as I stared at the young padawan, I couldn’t help but see myself in her eyes. And eight-year-old me had hated Sheev.

  “Let’s go, Annie.” Her lips spread into a grin. “Gordon says you’re good at games.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “I’m the best at Super Smash Brothers. I bet you can’t beat me.”

  “Is that so?” I replied, taking a step toward her. I still didn’t want to leave Justin, but at the same time, I didn’t want to make a scene. Besides, I could see myself in this girl. While she might not have suffered in the exact same way I had at Sheev’s hands, I was sure she was just as abused as I had been. If I could offer her an escape through video games, wasn’t I obligated to try?

  Gordon must have seen my hesitation because a moment later he was beside me, his huge bulk big enough to shield me from Sheev’s strangely prying eyes.

  “I’ll watch out for your wolf,” he whispered just loud enough for me to hear as he moved past me. And here I was, supposed to be the big sister. Sigh.

  “You killed a ton of wolves,” I said, over my shoulder. Still, I knew I could trust him, even with his humanity off. I could see he still wanted my approval, and besides, he had saved Justin before. I took a deep breath and tried to let go of what he was.

  “If this was Star Wars. and I’d just killed off all the Sith, you’d think I was a hero right now.” He smirked back at me and gestured at Justin. “Besides, I didn’t kill that one. I like his movies.” His smile broadened. “Do you think he’d sign my Werewolf Ninja poster?”

  “This isn’t a movie,” I growled, but before he could respond, Sheev cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “Gordon, I require your assistance. Please let your sister go.” Sheev’s voice made the smile fall off my brother’s face, and he turned woodenly to look at him. “She is entitled to her opinions, wrong as they may be.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Gordon said, and while he tried for levity, I could see from the way his shoulders tensed, he was anything but happy. Still, I was glad it was him and not me. The less time I spent around Sheev, the better.

  “Let’s go,” Madisyn whined, tugging at my hand. “I’ve never met another gamer girl before.” She gestured at Gordon. “I beat him all the time, but he said you’re a lot better.” Her voice slipped down an octave. “Besides, you’re a girl, and boys suck at games.”

  “How can I say no to an offer like that?” I smiled at her. “But I’ll have you know, I almost never lose. Why, I’ve beaten Donkey Kong.”

  “Donkey Kong?” Her eyes squinched up in her face as she led me out of the town square and toward one of the buildings on the far end of the street. It stretched up into the sky and had walls that glittered like pearls in the weird magical light. “That game is so old.” She shook her head. “No one plays that anymore.”

  I resisted the urge to bat her upside the head, but it was a near thing. Donkey Kong wasn’t old, and neither was I. At least, I didn’t feel old. I could still play games all night with the best of them… couldn’t I?

  3

  “I cannot believe you’re going to play as Captain Falcon,” Madisyn, said shaking her head in disgust as she hit the random stage select. “You can’t even wave dash and now this?” Madisyn let loose a huge sigh as the F-zero level loaded on Super Smash Brothers Melee. “I thought you were supposed to be good at games.”

  To be fair, the F-Zero stage was one of my favorite levels because it involved playing on a platform a few feet above the ground while racing over the track at breakneck speed. What happened to the track below the platform could be the difference between survival and death. It was one of the stages where a player’s skill didn’t necessarily matter as much as their awareness of what was going on around them. And luck. Luck had a lot to do with winning too. Just like in real life.

  “Sorry. I know people like to think I’m really good at every game, but it’s just not the case,” I said as the stage started, and I dropped to the platform clad in my favorite pink and white outfit. “Still, I’m pretty good. I played a lot with my friend Badger.”

  “I don’t see how it’s possible for you to be good when you can’t wave dash,” she said as her character, Falco, taunted me from across the screen. I sort of hated fighting against Falco players because his stupid blaster had the ability to stop my attacks, and he was so damned heavy, knocking him off the platform was really hard.

  “It’s possible to be good at games without mastering every skill. Sometimes it’s enough just to be better than the people you play,” I replied, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. All I needed to do was knock her character into the speeding platform below and his weight would play to my advantage because it’d carry him off-screen before he could react. “Besides, if you’re too good, people won’t want to play with you. My friend Badger can’t wave dash and he’s the one I play with most times.”

  “So you’re purposely staying weak because of your friends? Sounds like you need better friends.” Madisyn shook her head as she taunt
ed me again, trying to draw me close so she could get me with Falco’s speed and power. “No wonder Master Sheev says I’m way better than you at your age.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked, pushing Captain Falcon into a dead run toward her. If she wanted me to come to her, I’d do it. She taunted again, evidently unconcerned by my coming attack of doom. “Does Master Sheev really talk about me?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, rolling past my charge, and using Falco’s energy repulse to smash me from behind. “He says you had a lot of promise, but didn’t listen. He says ‘don’t be like Annie’ when I’m whining or not listening. It’s his way of getting me to pay attention.”

  “What a douche,” I said before I could stop myself.

  My avatar stumbled forward as hers spun, leapt from the ground, and kicked me in the back. I flew off the platform and plummeted toward the asphalt streaming by below. It’d happened so fast I’d scarcely been able to react.

  “You shouldn’t say bad words. Besides, Master Sheev is the best teacher, and I want to be strong.” She taunted me again, but it was her words that did me more damage. Her desire to be strong was so great that she’d endure Sheev’s abuse? It seemed crazy. Then again, I had no way of knowing what their relationship was like. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as he’d been with me.

  I mean, Gordon was working with him, and he’d hated Sheev almost as much as me…

  “Sorry,” I said, refocusing on my character’s impending demise. She was picking me apart. As good as I thought I was, I couldn’t match her speed when she was wave dashing so a straight out attack would be pointless. If I’d mastered the technique myself, maybe I could have fought her straight up, but as it was, I’d have to try something she wouldn’t see coming.

  As Captain Falcon’s face impacted the speeding track, the ground shifted, throwing me back toward Madisyn’s character, so I did the only sensible thing. I went for it. As I bounced off the track, I initialized Captain Falcon’s most devastating maneuver. The Falcon Punch. Flame began to ripple off my avatar as Madisyn, unconcerned, taunted me a second time.