Heart of Gold: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Clans of Shadow Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Whatever it is, I’m going along,” Gabriela insisted. “As much as I would love to trust Max’s fate to your squad of grunts here, Roland, I can’t do that.”

  Casper the Unfriendly Ghost frowned deeply and Luna turned back to Gabriela.

  “I’m sorry, doctor,” Luna began, and the sympathy lacing her words surprised me. “It’s one thing to bring along a trained combatant like the Bearer, but you’re a civilian.” She shook her head. “While I’d love to have a healer of your prowess on our side, there are just too many possible issues arising from your lack of training. This isn’t going to be a stroll along the Thames, you know.”

  I hated that Luna had a point. This would be a warzone, and while I liked having the Doc by my side, I was somewhat relieved to think of her out of harm’s way. Call me selfish, I was okay with that.

  “I must concur with Luna. Let the professionals deal with such violent work.” Roland turned toward the far end of the chamber and motioned for the Doc to follow. “You can do more to help the situation here as we try to find another less destructive solution.”

  Gabriela frowned and took a hesitant step forward. She stole a glance back at me. “Frank?”

  I mulled things over a moment. To be honest, the prospect of going into the dragon’s den with a bunch of strangers (heavily armed and highly competent strangers, to be completely fair) was a daunting one. Almost every part of me wanted Gabby by my side. I could trust her, she was damned competent, and, well, I could trust her. After all, everyone else seemed to be focused either on their own agendas or just on being generally manipulative. Don’t blame me for wanting someone around to be a straight shooter!

  “I’ll be good, Doc.” I was kicking myself for being an idiot even as I said the words. Her mouth opened to protest, so I cut her off with my own big mouth. “Look, what good would going through all this shit do if something went south and you got killed in the process of getting Max out, huh?” I supplied my own answer. “It’d be worth a big fat pile of nothing, that’s what.”

  Gabby’s frown deepened and her brows knit, but she relented after a moment. “All right, Frank. Keep that in mind yourself though.” She poked me in the chest, right in the wound. Oddly enough, it didn’t really hurt anymore. Maybe it was healing better than I thought. “I didn’t go through the trouble of putting that in you for you to die.”

  Luna cracked a smile herself. “Don’t worry, doctor. We’ll make sure both Mr. Butcher and your son come out of this shipshape.” She put a gloved hand over her chest. “I understand how you feel. I’ve raised two boys and a girl of my own, and I’ve had to bury one of them. Trust me, I won’t let anything happen to Max.”

  Flashing my winning grin, I lightly pushed the Doc’s finger away. “See, Gabriela, Max and I are in good hands. You do your thing here, and we’ll wrap this up in time to catch the midnight showing of Goonies at the Metroplex.”

  “I’m holding you to that.” She stepped back, took a long, hard look at me, and followed after the drifting form of Roland. The clack of her shoes echoed in the chamber as their forms disappeared into the wisps of smoke and fog at the far edges of the room.

  Luna walked beside me and clapped me on the back. “Stiff upper lip, dear. We’ll get through this.” She nodded to the soldiers, already starting to break out of their relaxation and ready their kits. “The boys and I have been through plenty of tough scrapes, in this world and quite a few others. You and Max will be fine.” With a cocky wink (one I’d be proud of), she crossed her arms. “Besides, you’ve got la Corazon. What can go wrong?”

  A wiry black guy, the one who had perked up when Luna had called for Richter, strolled up with a duffel bag. His bandoleers were laden with grenades and demolition gear. “That being said, if you want to gear up before we shove our noses where they don’t belong, we’ve got plenty of ordinance to go around.”

  I looked from Luna to Richter and all the rest, and let out a deep sigh. “Well, fuck, if I’m in for an inch, I’m in for a yard.” I reached out toward Richter and what I guessed was a bag full of the best kind of goodies: the ones that go bang and boom. “Load me up, chief.”

  15

  My extensive knowledge of action movies filled me with preconceptions about how this assault would go down, preconceptions that my actual war experience had told me were a load of bullshit.

  If you were following movie logic, the set-up would be obvious. We had an elite squad of badass soldiers storming a wizard/arms manufacturer’s skyscraper fortress during the height of a sorcerous, reality-altering ritual. Obviously shit was about to get real and we were going to have an epic fight on our hands from moment one!

  In the real world, however, it could be a cake-walk where we stroll right past some sleeping security guards and break through in moments. On the other hand, we could get wiped out by snipers or set explosives the moment we stepped into the combat zone. Actual battle didn’t follow preconceptions of drama or storytelling or even fucking logic.

  Either way, our little prep party had moved from the mist-shrouded hall into something a bit more familiar to yours truly, a panel van. At first glance, it looked like a refuge from an eighties airbrush studio with a bitchin’ fantasy scene on both sides over a white paint job. Parked in an adjacent chamber that combined the mystic Far East vibe with a grease monkey’s wet dream, the oddness of the van became readily apparent once we got closer.

  The airbrush job wasn’t just a random fantasy scene. I could make out the esoteric runes and sigils I had seen on all the wizard shit I had been encountering recently. A quick glance through the power of the Heart verified my suspicions. This ride was loaded with magic.

  I let out a low whistle as Luna opened the driver’s door. “That’s a real mean machine there.”

  “Indeed,” she smiled. “We’ll need every little bit of that meanness to make it to our goal, dear.” She pulled herself into the seat as Richter opened the side door.

  “Just watch where you touch, Frank,” he said. “Those magic fingers of yours might tear another enchantment loose.”

  “Duly noted, chief,” I grinned back as I ducked through the open door.

  The problem, we discovered, with the gear Richter had offered me was that most of it was laden with magic. After accidentally tearing up a spell or two on a grenade launcher, we wisely decided to stick to non-magic gear for me. Still, the Kevlar vest was appreciated, as well as an old-fashioned, if fantastically well-kept, .45 Colt Single Action Army revolver, along with a gunfighter’s bullet belt. And a machete. Because, you know, machetes are fucking cool.

  It only took the crew a few minutes to pile into the Mystery Machine and get settled down. Luna looked back at us as she gunned the engine. “Right then, lads and lasses, we’re going for as quiet of an insertion as we can. The Magus added a top-notch chameleon spell to the van, but it certainly won’t hold up to the kind of inspection we’ll be under.” She turned back to the steering wheel. “Still, it should get us in the back door. Buckle up and keep a low profile, eh?”

  I glanced around the van as the crew buckled up. “Are we really going to try to waltz in there, all normal-like? Magic or not, why wouldn’t they turn us away?” I frowned as I buckled myself in. “I know I wouldn’t let anyone in to my building if I was about to take over the world or destroy all magic or whatever the hell.”

  Molly, the wiry Irish spitfire sitting next to me, elbowed me. “Yer not afraid, are ye?” She laughed. “Seriously though, the Enders are as much about keepin’ up appearances as we are. They can’t afford ta havin’ a bunch of arses armed to the teeth at the delivery doors.” She leaned back as the van roared to life. “No matter how nasty ye think we mages are, Frank, you mundies outnumber us a few thousand to one.”

  “Right, I’ll keep that in mind when you guys do whatever it is you guys are going to do once we beat these guys.” There was that freaky feeling of time and space warping as the van was engulfed by a flash of light. I was really wishing I had insisted Ga
briela stick with us. “Guess I’ll just keep my mouth shut until the bullets start flying, huh?”

  “That’d probably be for the best,” Richter nodded. “I don’t know for sure, but I bet the security guards will get suspicious if they hear your bitching and moaning and with your big mouth, I’m sure they will.”

  I flashed him a grin. “What can I say? I’m the best.” The two porthole-style windows in the back of the van let in the barest hint of early morning sunshine.

  “Both of you, please keep it down,” Luna chided in grandmotherly tones. “We’re coming around to the delivery entrance now.”

  Richter and I gave each other a glance and stifled our respective chuckles. With nothing else to do, I took a deep breath and kept a tight grip on my Mossberg. Though my new buddies were cool as cucumbers, I couldn’t help but be a shade nervous. I had come to terms with the fact me and magic didn’t get along, even if you discounted the Aztec rock in my chest, so I expected things to go to shit at any moment.

  Maybe I was getting a break in the many layers of shit luck I had been having lately because the next few minutes passed in relative silence. Outside of the sounds of the van and the faintest hints of exterior traffic, it was strangely peaceful. The city was just waking up from its late night nap, ready to start a new day. Great … when the shit did hit the fan, there’d be plenty of people out and about to get caught in the crossfire. Well, assuming they even noticed. At this point, I wouldn’t have been shocked if these crazy wizards could cover up a nuclear bomb dropping on the building! Then again, if they could, I hoped that wasn’t their contingency plan.

  Craning my head forward, I caught a glimpse of roll-up doors ahead with the distinctive ‘ET’ logo of EnderTech LLC. Luna rolled down the window, something I took as reason to tuck back and look as invisible as I could manage. From my new position, I could hear the sounds of boots on pavement crunching toward the van’s door.

  “Morning, sir,” Luna said cheerily. “I’ve got a special delivery on board.” Well, the old dame had balls, that’s for sure.

  There was a flipping of pages. “Well, ma’am, I don’t have anything on the docket. Are you sure you’ve got the right day?” Huh, that voice sounded pretty familiar.

  “I’m quite sure.” She was talking a good game, but I had a feeling something wasn’t going right. “Mr. Rosenbaum is expecting this to arrive on the hour.” Luna turned to pick up a clipboard from the passenger’s seat and shot a sidelong glance into the back. Now, I hadn’t been with this team long, but I had been in enough units and on enough missions to recognize the ‘get-ready-to-improvise’ look from a commanding officer. She turned back to the window and offered up the paperwork to the unseen security guy.

  More furious flipping of papers followed. I could hear weapons starting to slide slowly out of holsters; Molly slid a pair of combat knives out onto her lap. While it would have been quite the light show to see the firefight start early, it would make getting Max out alive a thousand times harder. Wracking my brain for ideas, I undid my safety belt and stepped up to bat.

  It might have seemed stupid, considering I looked like a delivery boy Rambo loaded with ordinance, but it didn’t seem to be a problem for Luna and I certainly had a better gift of gab. Poking my head over the center console, I glanced out the window. Mr. Security Guard was just as I visualized him, because I had met him before. Once more, the wealth of knowledge granted to me by my APD career came through. Stanley here had been accepting deliveries at that very door for months and I had dropped off more than one package to him.

  “Stan the Man, how are you doing?” I offered jovially. “Still working the pre-dawn shit shift?”

  “Frank!” Stan was a bit of a roly-poly guy, and he smiled, pushing his glasses up on his nose with one pudgy finger. The paperwork was forgotten for the moment, distracted as he was by my friendly face. “Oh, I’m doing okay. Lost a few pounds, you know, trying that new diet and … wow, they let you guys drive around armed now?”

  Shit, whatever mumbo-jumbo was cloaking the unit’s gear was doing jack and shit for me. “Oh, well, APD is doing a new high-security courier service. One of our first runs, actually.” I smiled like an idiot and gave Stan a knowing wink. “So that should tell you something about what we’ve got on board, right?”

  It took him a moment to figure out my question. “Uh, that it’s really important?”

  “Bingo, Stan.” I flashed him a thumbs up while clapping Luna on the shoulder. “You know how dispatch loves to fuck things up for us, boss? I bet that’s what’s up here.”

  “Too right, Frank,” Luna agreed. “Still, Mr. Stanley, you know how much bloody trouble we’ll be in if this doesn’t get delivered on time.”

  “And, by extension, how much trouble you’ll be in, Stan, for not letting this get through over a hiccup in the paperwork,” I added for good measure.

  Stanley looked conflicted, which made him look like he had bad gas. “Well, yeah, but … well, you see, we’ve got orders about there being a security problem regarding anything from Mr. Rosenbaum. We’re not supposed to–”

  I turned up the dial of my wit from “charming” to “dazzling.” “Stan, Stan, Stan, look, I talked to Mr. Rosenbaum in person at the Pendleton Building.” I got straight A’s in my Bullshit classes in high school (shit, it was the only thing I made A’s in). “This is legit. Come on, you know me. You can trust me on this.”

  Luna added on what I guessed was a well-practiced “harmless grandmother” impression and it finally caved in Stan’s stalwart defenses. “Well, okay. This is probably all a lot of nothing anyway!” He stepped back and called into his shoulder-mounted radio. “Open on up, got a special delivery coming in.”

  Luna rolled up the windows as the delivery door rolled up. “Good show, Frank!”

  I settled back into my seat and fingered the safety off of my shotgun. “Yeah, thanks, but I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet. I’m going to make a wild guess that ‘Mr. Rosenbaum’ is Abner, right?”

  “Well, assuming we’re talking about the same Abner, and I’m sure we are, then yes.” Luna edged the van forward. “And I think I know where you’re going with this. With Abner compromised and our credentials coming from him–”

  “–we’re going to have a firefight on our hands the moment Big Stan sends word up the line.” I glanced around and saw the true hallmark of professionals, a unit that knew when shit was about to go down and was getting ready as fast as possible.

  The van rolled slowly into the delivery bay. Everything looked normal enough, but the gooseflesh on my arms was telling me otherwise. Luna glanced around on all sides and moved one hand from the steering wheel to the ruby-topped rod at her hip.

  “All right, team, get ready.” Luna’s voice had shifted back to ass-kicker from grandmother. “They will want to stop us cold as soon as possible and they won’t have a better shot than now.” She was right, of course. Even with the cover of the van, we were still clumped up with no real way to maneuver or spread out. Just concentrate the heavy firepower on the van and BOOM! We were all dead.

  Molly slid out of her seat and knelt by the side door and Richter backed her up with a rune-carved grenade launcher. I huddled up behind those two and the other three grunts formed up on my six.

  The van started to slow those last few inches to a full stop. Luna brought up her rod slowly and it started to glow with a fiery glare. “Double wall deployment, my friends. Intel says the ritual needs to be performed on high, so we push for the stairs. Butcher is our top priority. He’s got to get up there.” As the van stopped dead, she glanced back. “Understood?”

  A unified affirmative grunt came from the soldier sandwich around me. It was infectious, that feeling of belonging to a unit, even if I was just an intruder, and I found myself grunting along with the rest.

  Luna responded with a curt nod as she slammed her open hand down on the ruby. A circle of roaring flames erupted from the concrete floor around the van in response. I might
have been new to the team, but I knew a “go” signal when I saw one!

  Molly threw open the side door and we poured out of the van, ready to meet whatever the Enders had to meet us!

  16

  As I stepped out of the van and into the magical flames, I was instantly glad I couldn’t feel heat from them. Still, they did a good job obscuring my sight. Considering Molly and Richter seemed to be moving fine, I ducked my head low and kept right on their asses. While I couldn’t see shit, I could definitely hear shit. The sounds of arcane energy and gunfire mixed together into a symphony of violence. How the hell had we lost the element of surprise so easily? Fuck, we were screwed.

  Though some of the sounds were new to my ears, there were more than enough familiar notes to make me feel strangely at home in the middle of it. Still, it wasn’t as intense as I expected. Though our entrance wasn’t as subtle as Luna wanted, we had obviously thrown off their security to some degree. There was frantic shouting back and forth on the other side of the inferno, though it sounded muffled, probably by whatever was saving us from bullets and blasts at the moment.

  “Shit, the Whites are loaded for bear,” came through clearly enough. It looked like there was at least one asshole smart enough to herd the cats. “Back up! Suppressing fire and form a line at the main elevator!”

  “Keep on. We’re on plan C, lads and lasses.” Luna’s direction came from behind as we moved to the right of the delivery bay, me still trying in vain to see past the fire. I glanced back, not having been briefed on fucking plans A and B, let alone C. The grandmother held her ruby rod high overhead, casting hellish red light across the room. “Bronson, Norris,” she called back to the two nearly indistinguishable grunts I hadn’t really been introduced to, “push back.”