twice cursed mage 05 - claimed

by J. A. Cipriano

  The driver in the car behind us, a black Camry, slammed on his brakes. While he didn’t hit us, the car behind him was significantly less lucky and slammed into his rear end with a crunch of steel. I ignored it as Jack succeeded in pulling me back inside the car.

  “I repeat,” he said as the cars in front of him came to a stop and the sound of car alarms, horns, and shouting filled my ears. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

  “Yes,” I said, throwing open the door and leaping outside, shotgun in hand. It was time to finish that shapeshifting bitch once and for all.

  I wasn’t sure what people thought as I cocked another shell into place, but either way, no one tried to stop me. Despite recent statistics, guess none of them were concealed carriers after all, which was good. I’d hate to have to take down an innocent guy just trying to do what he thought was the right thing.

  The osprey lay battered and bloody atop a parked car. Because she was so huge, she had fallen with enough force to shatter the windshield. She didn’t appear to be breathing, but I’d learned the council members could take a fantastic amount of damage.

  “This is for Maya,” I said before putting the shotgun to her beak and pulling the trigger. The blast damned near evaporated her birdie skull, which made the whole lack of biting insects, frogs, and inexplicable darkness strange. “Odd…”

  I waited for a hair’s breadth before emptying the rest of the shots into her just so I could be sure she was dead. By the time I was done, there was nothing left of her birdie carcass, but there was still no weird event. That didn’t make sense unless… unless this wasn’t her.

  Before I could investigate further, Jack grabbed me by the scruff of my neck like I was an errant kitten and dragged me back kicking and screaming toward the truck. I’d forgotten how strong he was, and unless I wanted to try beating him with an empty shotgun, I had no choice but to let him carry me back.

  “That’s not Martha, dumbass.” He shook his head as he tossed me into the passenger seat. Already people were staring at us like I was the crazy one. Okay, I mean, I’d just gunned down a mutant osprey in the middle of the day on a crowded street, but fuck them, I don’t need to explain myself.

  “Who is it then?” I asked as Jack jumped into the driver’s side, twisted the wheel, and gunned the engine. The truck zoomed forward up onto the sidewalk and around the people gawking at us.

  “You’re real fucking lucky I don’t have license plates yet,” Jack fumed as we pulled onto a side street and raced away as the sound of sirens approached. “Otherwise, I’d have to ditch this, and it’s literally an hour old.”

  “Jack, who did I just wax?” I asked, ignoring his outburst as Just a Girl by No Doubt came blaring over the radio. It seemed odd considering the circumstances.

  “Who the fuck knows, but that wasn’t Martha, otherwise fire would have rained from the sky. Did you see fire rain from the fucking sky?” I shook my head, and he continued. “How about next time you go and do some stupid shit, you clear it with me first.” He gave me his best cowboy Indian glare, and I almost flinched. Almost.

  “How about you take me to Ricky before I get annoyed?” I growled back even though it wasn’t his fault. I was sort of angry at myself because I thought I’d been avenging Maya’s death, but apparent-fucking-ly, I’d been mistaken. I took my impotent rage out on the shells as I shoved them violently into the Mossberg.

  “Look, Mac. The last thing we need is to get arrested. I’m not sure how you feel about killing your way out of a police station, but I don’t want to do it.” He shook his heads. “In this day and age, they’ll have your happy ass plastered from here to DC by the time we hit the fucking street outside the door. I do not need that kind of heat especially since I don’t fucking age.” He touched his chin with one finger. “I’ll always look this good.”

  He was right, but I didn’t want to admit that aloud. So instead, I just busied myself looking out the window and trying to focus on what was to come. We had to siege an impenetrable barrier, and for some reason, I didn’t think it was inappropriately named. Well, I’d have to find a way. If not, Ricky would be trapped inside, and that couldn’t stand. Not by a fucking long shot.

  Chapter 21

  “So by impenetrable fucking barrier you meant a wall of solid fucking gold,” I said as I stared at the glittering, gilded dome surrounding the junkyard. It was almost too bright to look at in the noonday sun, but that’s why I’d stolen Jack’s sunglasses. “I mean, how do people not see that?”

  “Magic.” Jack glanced at me, shielding his eyes with one hand. “And it only looks like gold. It isn’t actually gold. You’d see that if you took off the shades.”

  “You’re just mad because I make these look good,” I said as I walked back and forth in front of the massive structure looking for any kind of vulnerability. “And you’re missing the point.”

  The dome didn’t seem guarded, which irked me considerably, but then again, why guard outside the barrier. The only way to hurt the people inside was to get inside with them, and at the moment, that seemed impossible. Even without touching the golden surface, I could feel the hum of energy coming off of it in a way that reminded me of those big electric substations with the fat power cables. You could feel the electricity in the pit of your stomach.

  “What’s the point?” Jack asked as he followed behind me, and for once he seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. I’ll be honest, I was so shocked by it, I took a bit longer to respond than I should have.

  “The point is this dome seems pretty obvious, and not just because it encompasses the whole dump. Shouldn’t people have noticed the dump is, well, not open?” I glanced at him, and he shrugged.

  “I’m not sure what you want from me. It isn’t like I regularly come here. Maybe it’s always empty?” he replied as I squatted down beside a random patch of dome and dug my fingers into the soil beside its base. As I pried some of the dirt away, I saw the golden surface extended beneath the soil line. Great. Just what I needed. “Well, I guess tunneling is out.”

  “Was that seriously an option?” Jack asked as he reached up and scratched the patch of forehead beneath the brim of the Stetson he’d stolen from Sargent. Speaking of which, where the hell was that guy? Actually, I didn’t want to know. The longer that bastard stayed gone, the better. I mean, okay, I’d gotten better at killing those council fucks, but at the same time, Sargent seemed to be a lot better than any of them.

  I was both intrigued by the possibility of killing the fuck out of him once and for all and frightened at what would happen if I lost. To be fair though, I didn’t really think I’d lose. I mean, okay he was a supernaturally charged cowboy straight out of Hell, but I was Mac Fucking Brennan, and my demon ate guys like his boss for breakfast.

  “Who knows? Maybe you’re friends with a mole man,” I said, reaching out and touching the dome with my left hand. I’d thought about using my demonic hand, but I didn’t want to set off some kind of booby trap attuned to Cursed like me. Chances were that even if this dome could blow normal people up, it wouldn’t because that would be messy.

  Even though my left hand wasn’t disintegrated, I almost wished I hadn’t touched the dome since it sort of felt like rubbing a wet toad covered in grape jelly. The gold seemed to ooze between my splayed fingers, and in moments, my hand was filled with the biting sensation of pins and needles. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I pulled my hand back and stared at it in amazement. The blood had completely fled from my left hand, leaving it pale and white. I mean, it was always pale and white, but now it was more pale and white.

  “Nah, molemen are dicks,” Jack said, staring up at the sky in a way that made me think molemen might actually be real. Then again, why wouldn’t they be. Everything else was.

  For a second, Jack looked like he was about to say more, but as he opened his mouth, a shadow crossed his face. I craned my head up to follow his line of sight and found myself staring at enough ospreys to blot out the godda
mned sky. Black mist wafted off their wing tips, filling the air with a darkening blanket of fog that quickly descended toward us.

  “Fuck,” Jack said as the birds turned toward us in one massive arc and dove.

  “That’s a lot of birds,” I said, grabbing the Mossberg from the strap and pointing it skyward. It felt about as effective as pointing a squirt gun at a sandy beach, but if I had a choice, I’d rather fight ninety-nine birds instead of a hundred birds.

  “I don’t think they’re all real,” Jack said, and as he spoke, the mass congealed into a huge blob of darkness. I fired at it anyway and got bupkis for my troubles. The buckshot simply passed through the black glob.

  As I pumped another shell into place, the torrent of darkness hit me in the chest with a wet smack that knocked me to the ground. My head smacked painfully off the ground and the shotgun slipped from my grip and fell limply against my chest. I tried to blink away the sudden haze, but before I could, Martha reached out of the darkness and latched both of her hands around my throat.

  Her nails dug into the tender flesh of my throat as she cut off my air supply. Tears filled my eyes as I tried to knock her off, but instead of being able to grab onto her, my fingers passed through her body like I was trying to grab ahold of warm Jell-O.

  “You killed my daughter,” she snarled, leaning in close to me so I could feel the fetid heat of her breath on my cheek. “Now you’ll pay—”

  She was knocked off of me by a cowboy boot to the side of the head. She flew into a nearby chain-link fence and tore through the twisted metal before hitting the road on the other side and skidding several feet.

  “You okay?” Jack asked while not stopping to help me. Instead, he marched toward her and stepped lithely through the new hole in the fence.

  “Yeah,” I muttered between gulps of air, but I don’t think he heard me because he was too busy stomping a mud hole in Martha’s ass.

  “Hey, Martha. How are things? Still a crazy bitch?” he asked after a particularly devastating seeming kick to the face that snapped her head backward. I wasn’t sure how he was hitting her, but at the moment, I was just glad he could.

  “Vampire,” she snarled, glaring at him through the mask of blood covering her face. “Still a blood-sucking leech?”

  “Yeah. I yam what I yam and tha’s all what I yam,” Jack said in a startlingly accurate rendition of Popeye before flinging her back at the fence. Her body punched through the chain-link, hit the asphalt, and skidded like a thrown motorcyclist on the freeway. Only, she got up.

  “You still hit like a bitch,” she said, wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of one hand. “Guess you forgot to eat your spinach.”

  Jack had half a second to look surprised at her quick recovery before he yelled, “Mac, shoot her!” The rest of his words were cut off as Martha flicked her wrist casually at him. A cloud of black smoke rose from the earth, wrapping around his limbs, throat, and mouth in a way that was eerily similar to what I’d seen Maya do with her tentacles. Had those spells run in the family? I wasn’t sure, but I remembered being caught in Maya’s grasp before. I’d heard the term “resistance is futile” before and being caught in that darkened void almost made me believe that term held true.

  Still, Jack didn’t need to tell me twice. I put the butt of the Mossberg to my shoulder and fired at the crazy bitch. The buckshot should have torn a trashcan-lid-sized hole in her, but instead, a wall of darkness rose in front of her like a writhing hurricane and deflected the shot back at me. I covered my face with the shotgun and leapt sideways as my own shot came flying back at me. Thankfully, most of it missed me completely and pinged off the golden barrier behind me.

  There was a flash of light from the barrier, and the acrid smell of burning plastic filled my nose, but I didn’t have time to properly appreciate either because Martha was on top of me. I wasn’t sure how she’d moved so quickly, but she stood there, looming over me with smoky tentacles writhing around her.

  “Boo,” she said and brought one sandaled foot down at my skull. I rolled sideways and her foot plunged through the earth up to mid-calf, making me glad my skull hadn’t been in the way. If it had, could you imagine the headache?

  I fired the Mossberg again, and again, the same thing happened. Buckshot sprayed back at me, but this time, as I got to my feet, Martha was already there. Her knee flew up, catching me in the nose. An audible crunch filled my ears as my head snapped backward and my vision went spotty. I collapsed backward, the shotgun slipping from my hands as little tweety birds danced around my skull.

  “I’m not sure what the big deal is about you,” Martha sneered as she stood over me wrapped in a kimono of darkness that sort of made her look like Ursula, the sea witch, except, you know, uglier. “You don’t seem terribly interesting.”

  “Well, I’m huge in Japan,” I said, getting to my feet. My vision was still hazy, and I could feel hot blood dripping down my face, but she let me get up, which was good, if a bit concerning. I’ll admit to being somewhat surprised she just watched me, but then arrogance is a thing, and as it stood, well, she had the upper hand.

  “Perhaps,” she pursed her lips as she spoke so the word popped like a gum bubble. “But either way, now that Lord Asmodai has allowed me to use all of my power upon you, well, you’re as inconsequential as the second half of the ninth inning when the home team is winning.”

  “That’s sort of a convoluted analogy,” I replied, wiping away the blood streaming from my nose with one hand. Her words had chilled me, even though I tried my best not to show it. So far, the seven had been relatively formidable, and now, if I’d heard her correctly, she had been holding back? Did that mean the others were too? I really hoped not. If that was true, we were royally fucked.

  “You take what you can get,” she said, taking a step toward me. As she did, darkness pulsed through the air like thunder before a coming storm. Jack screamed in the distance, and without thinking, I glanced in his direction. His body had a sunken, desiccated look to it as though she was quite literally sucking the unlife from him. Well, that was no good. No, kimono-wearing bitch was going to suck my friend dry. At least, not in this particular way.

  A smile quirked across my lips as I raised my demonic hand in front of me and called upon my power.

  “You hear that?” I asked while focusing inward. “This petulant human thinks she’s better than you and yours. Why don’t you show her why you’re a big deal?”

  The cat growled within my head, and the sound caused a chill to ride up and down my body and the hair on the back of my neck to stand on edge. I wasn’t sure what I’d gotten into, but I was suddenly worried it’d been a bad fucking idea to get my cat so riled up.

  “I am displeased with your statement, Mac Brennan,” she replied, and as she did, I felt her power wash over me, filling me up like a water balloon tied to a fire hydrant. “Now I must interfere or else risk having her think she is beyond me.” Her lips split into a wickedly cruel grin. “Clever though.”

  The ground around me shuddered as I took a step forward. Flames leapt from the crimson tattoos covering my blackened right arm as a feline smile spread across my lips. A few feet away, Martha stopped dead in her tracks. Her lip quivered as her eyes flicked over me.

  “You didn’t…” she murmured, her eyes wide with fright. Before I could do anything, she spun on her heel and took off in a dead sprint away from me. Well, that was curious, and not in a good way. No, in the way that told me she knew what I’d done and didn’t like it one fucking bit.

  After all, I didn’t get the feeling she was afraid of me, nor that it would matter if she was. But as flame rode over my body and ash swirled around me, I got the feeling she might know who my demon was. If that was true, I couldn’t let her escape, and for once, the cat and I were in agreement.

  Darkness swirled around her, spinning into a set of veined, serpentine wings as she leapt from the ground. Beside me the dehydrated husk of Jack collapsed to the ground, but
he was already crawling to his feet. Good. I’d hate for the vampire to die. Well, again, I guess.

  “Get over here!” I cried, raising my hand, and as I did, I unleashed a torrent of power. “Necto!”

  The thin tendril of flame burst from my palm like a harpoon as Martha soared upward, her huge, black wings beating the air with hurricane force. Not that it mattered because my tendril hit her on the left wing like a fucking lasso and bit through the webbing. Flame rippled outward across her wing, burning into her shadowy appendage before snapping taut. I jerked hard. Her wing went out from under her in a way that made me think of lassoing a world-class runner’s right leg in mid-sprint.

  She hit the earth like a fucking meteor, sending dirt and debris flying in every direction. I’ll give her credit, she was on her feet in an instant, and before I could take advantage of the situation, she wrapped one hand around the flaming tendril and yanked.

  I came flying forward off of my feet, and as I did, she surged forward. Her elbow caught me under the chin, snapping my teeth together with an audible crack. My vision went a touch spotty, and I was instantly glad I wasn’t the only one in control of my body because while I was stunned, my demon didn’t give a rat’s ass about things like bodily injury.

  My left hand exploded outward like a claw, slashing through the darkness swirling around her like it was tissue paper and catching Martha in the neck. My fingers closed around her throat and hauled her forward even as my head was snapping backward.

  Her choking gasp filled my ears as I staggered backward, dragging her along with me. We collapsed into a heap, and as we did, my grip on her throat loosened, and her gaze met mine. In those eyes was a river, no an ocean of fear. Not just normal, “oh I’m scared” fear. No, this was, “end of the fucking world as we know it” fear, and something about it numbed me to the core because she wasn’t scared of me even slightly. No, she was scared of the cat in my head. Holy fuck.