Heart of Gold_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  My smug grin was only emphasized by my profoundly rugged chin. “Damned straight it will work. It’s a Frank Butcher plan. Those always come up aces.” I cleared my throat. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind clarifying some of those suggested details…”

  7

  Dressed in my APD uniform, I walked through the front doors of the Pendleton Building bold as brass with my mirrored shades gleaming. The plain, square package tucked under my arm was fully up to proper regulation. Nothing to see here, these are not the droids you’re looking for.

  The front reception was a dilapidated but well-kept affair, with a large oak desk dominating the scuffed marble décor. One half of the desk was obviously for the receptionist while the other was covered in monitors and manned by a huge monster of a man who reminded me of Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons. Was it sad that I was glad it was actually a man and not a red-clay golem?

  “Good afternoon, folks!” I said in greeting. “How are you doing today?”

  “You’re not the usual guy,” the big lug observed, rudely ignoring my very friendly greeting. “You’re also awfully early.”

  I put on my best pearly-white smile. “Sorry, Jack, this is a special delivery for Harrison and Jones, so they sent me early. Steve’ll be here for his normal rounds later.” Gabriela had the idea about the legal firm delivery, while my intimate knowledge of the APD’s inner workings supplied the name of the delivery guy for this particular route.

  “Oh,” The word rolled off his tongue in a way that made me think he didn’t quite believe me. He looked me up and down for long enough to make me glad my eyes were shielded by my favorite shades. “They didn’t tell me, but then again, it wouldn’t be the first time, you know?” Bluto shrugged, his wire-brush crew cut not even shaking an inch.

  I shifted the package underneath my other arm and clapped him on the shoulder. “I sure do. Us guys on the front lines don’t ever hear shit.” I tipped my cap. “Thanks for being so understanding. You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”

  “No problem, man.” The big brute grinned as he sat back down, glad he didn’t actually have to do anything. Hey, it wasn’t a bad thing, I was really lazy too. “You better get on up there. Mr. Jones is a real ass when he gets something late.” He pressed a button at his security console, triggering a loud buzz and a click from the nearest door. With any luck, it led deeper into the office building and not into a jail cell.

  With that, I was in. Well, I was past the first obstacle at any rate. It’s like they say, you know, the best way to hide is to look like you belong. The only thing making me nervous was my lack of firepower. I had originally wanted to get a box of flowers and hide my Mossberg in there all Terminator-like, but the Doc shot that down, noting the standard policy would be for the flowers to be left at the main desk to be picked up. Instead, I had to settle for my Glock nestled among the newspapers stuffing the box I carried.

  Luck must have been with me because the door led into a hallway. Just like the reception area, the interior halls seemed pretty normal for an aging office building. In fact, it reminded me of the White’s little hidey-hole’s “deceptive-shell-of-normalcy” fashion.

  In retrospect, I suppose it really would be easy to hide just about anything from public knowledge, especially with how little folks actually gave a shit about anything outside themselves. On second thought, that was me before this all went down. Hypocrite, party of me.

  The law offices of Harrison and Jones were on the third floor, but that wasn’t my goal. Instead, I ducked down a side hall, following Gabriela’s directions to the first floor restrooms.

  Despite the added security slouching around, the Pendleton Building had to keep to that outer mirage of a normal office building, which meant some rather convenient windows. Again, I’d have preferred breaking into an empty office, but Gabriela made a persuasive case about wizard-locked doors.

  While I could break through any enchantments, it might trigger an alarm. Besides, I had no desire to rev up la Corazon and tear out my stitches again. Anesthetic or not, getting stitched up, even by a lady as pretty as Gabby, wasn’t exactly something I wanted to keep repeating. I was still somewhat worried I’d break the heart and, you know, die.

  Whistling merrily, I bumped through the door into the men’s restroom, scanned around, and made my way to an empty stall. No cameras I could see (thank God for that; bathroom cameras are creepy as shit!) and no one taking a piss. Yahtzee!

  Closing the stall door, I made a show of sitting on the pot just in case someone was watching before getting my Glock out of her package and tucking her into my waistband. Figured I’d give it a few minutes, make sure we wouldn’t run into any interference before hauling the Doc up through the window.

  Of course, after that, the plan was over. Our next step was up to Gabriela. Fact of the matter was I had now jumped into her world with both feet and had no idea what was going on. We were on her turf now.

  A quick glance at my watch told me it was about time. Frankly, I was starting to wonder if and when wizards had to use the crapper. You’d think somebody would have had to at least take a piss by now. Maybe they all had private magic potties in their offices? I opened the stall, took another quick sweep of the restroom to be safe, and went over to the window.

  As with many older buildings, the bathroom window was a bit on the small side, made of that shitty wavy glass you can’t quite see through, and set high up on the wall. Hoping I still had the ability to do some decent pull-ups, I hopped up and grabbed ahold of the window ledge. It took a wheeze and a grunt, but I managed to yank myself up to the window. Another few moments of effort later, I shoved the window’s rusty hinges open.

  “Doc!” I whisper-yelled. (Yeah, that’s a real thing!) “You out there?”

  With no immediate answer and no other sign of her, I tried to haul myself up for a better look. If Gabriela was fucking with me, we would be having a big talk about making me do so much grunt work! Of course, to add to my growing woes, that’s right when I heard the bathroom door swing open behind me.

  “Spirits above and below, what a day,” came the familiar, grumbling voice of the walking meat wall from the front desk. He must have noticed my tight, short-shrouded backside sticking out the window facing him and found it quite odd, as he then cried, “What the hell are you doing?!”

  Shit! I could only hope the Doc would get the clue as I let myself back down to the ground, making sure the window was closed on my way. “Well, uh, there was a bird. You know, a bird caught in the bathroom?” Slowly, I turned toward Bluto with my hands up and open. “So I was just doing a good deed before I, uh, used the facilities.”

  Goddamn, he seemed even bigger now, looking pissy and probably also needing to take a piss. “That’s a bunch of bull.” His eyes narrowed. “And it sure doesn’t explain why you’re packing all of a sudden.”

  Double shit! All bent over up there trying to look out the window, I should have realized my gun must have been sticking out. Also, triple shit because I heard a tap or scratching at the window. I had not one fucking clue how the Doc might have gotten up to the window, but I didn’t relock it when I hopped down. No doubt, she’d be opening it any second, just to make this situation even more difficult.

  Keeping my hands up, I slowly edged closer to the Juggernaut, moving to one side and hoping he’d keep his eyes on me. “Come on, buddy, I’m a delivery boy. You can’t begrudge me some protection.” I tried to smile disarmingly. “I should have told you, but then you’d have to frisk me, and neither of us needed that, right?”

  The only thing going right in this caper was that the big guy was indeed watching me very closely. “Maybe, or maybe you’ve got something else going on. I’m not an idiot, no matter what you might think.” Big guy’s brow tightened as we finished our slow turn. “Let me see your eyes, friend.”

  Was this a wizard thing? I didn’t know, but the window was opening up. The Doc’s head poked through. I know you probably think I have no faith in anyone o
ther than myself and, frankly, you’d be mostly right. I suck at trusting other people because, well, usually I’m the best guy in the room to handle anything. That said, I just had the gut feeling I could trust Gabriela to pull our asses out of the fire. I just had to buy her the time to do it.

  So I played along, slowly taking off my bitchin’ mirror shades, hoping to give Gabriela another few seconds to do something. “Sure thing, pal.” I blinked my baby blues at him. “See? No problem.”

  As he eyed me carefully, recognition dawned across his face. That’s when I realized what the eye thing was about. I could only imagine how much more gold had run through my veins after so many more hours, and even though I couldn’t see my own eyes, the look on his face made me think I was right. Fuck.

  “You’re the Bearer!” Mr. Hulk’s hand shot to his coat. I hadn’t seen the telltale lines of a shoulder holster, but he probably had a magic one because wizards. Likewise, I went for my Glock the moment he moved, but I could already tell it was going to be close. Real Wild West shit there!

  As our guns came out, the big guy abruptly seized up, his finger jamming down on the trigger waaay before he brought his gun anywhere near me. The sink to my right shattered into chunks of porcelain, but I ignored it as I took aim at his head.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to pull the trigger because I could see the Doc’s thin-fingered hand holding an ornate bronze syringe jammed into the big lug’s neck. A moment later, his form went limp, and the hand cannon he had fired clattered to the ground as he fell to the bathroom floor.

  “Goddess, I didn’t think he’d spasm like that,” Gabriela said, concern thick in every word. “Are you all right?”

  I picked up the huge revolver and gave it a once over. It was a beauty, a well-kept .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda, fully loaded minus the misfire we had just had. “Yeah, I’m good, Doc, but things are about to get messy.” I shook my head, hoping more security wouldn’t be rushing in to investigate the gunshot. “I am getting a bitching case of tinnitus, though.”

  “Let’s hurry then.” The Doc moved to the door. “If Max is here, they’ll have him down below.”

  “Right.” I nodded and stepped up to the side of the door. Measuring the weight of the two weapons in each hand, I flipped the Colt in my hand and offered the handle to Gabriela. “Here, you’ll probably need this.”

  Gabriela looked at the weapon as if it were a particularly repulsive sewer rat. “No thank you. There’s only one thing guns are made to do.”

  “Yeah, blow away bad guys.” I shook my head as I tucked the Glock back into my waistband before pushing out of the bathroom, Colt in hand. A huge boom like Bluto’s cannon was going to bring every bit of security they had coming down on us. We were on borrowed time.

  Give a girl some credit. She had her convictions locked down. Right behind me, the Doc shot back, “No gun saved your ass, Frank. I saved your ass.”

  “Touché, Doc, touché.” I sighted both ways down the hall as all of the old Army training came back. For a half a second, I felt like I had never left Afghanistan. “Clear. Which way?”

  Gabriela was silent for just a moment. “The main stairs are right, but we’ll be going right into the viper’s nest. We go left and make for the back stairs.”

  “Left it is!” I agreed because what else was I supposed to do? Argue with the only person who had been here before?

  Breaking into a steady jog, I could already hear cries of alarm and heavy footfalls from the front of the building. Any second now, there would be shouts over intercoms and all kinds of alarms going off. Hell, maybe they already were. Just because I couldn’t hear them didn’t mean there weren’t creepy magic alarms going off in people’s brains.

  I wasn’t going to tell this to the Doc, but I knew before we had taken ten steps, our chances had gone from slim to a snowball’s chance in Hell.

  8

  Within thirty seconds of our trip down the hall, the otherwise quiet corridor was filled with two related but wildly different sounds, doors opening and clicking locks. Pretty normal reactions to shots fired, all things considered. I readied the hand cannon I’d stolen from Bluto as the Doc began whispering in Latin.

  The first of those open doors belonged to the very first office past the restrooms. Like the rest of the building, the door itself was old-fashioned, wood and wavy glass, with the business name painted straight on. Not that I had a chance to read that the nameplate before the door opened and a figure stepped out.

  Combat instincts took over, and I lunged, grabbing the figure by the scruff of his jacket. Fortunately for the guy I was now assaulting, instead of simply applying the Magnum to his temple and pulling the trigger, I shoved the rather shocked old man into the wall next to the door.

  “Gods, please don’t kill me!” Bald-headed and old as sin, the guy was actually shivering with fright. Still, how could I be sure he wouldn’t do something stupid? That’s the problem with all this magic shit, ya know? You can’t trust what’s real and what isn’t. For all I knew, this could be a trick.

  “Frank,” Gabriela said in my ear, one hand on my shoulder, “let Mr. Johnson go. He’s just an accountant.”

  “You’re lucky.” I glanced from the sweating accountant to Gabriela and back. “Normally it’d be for the common good to take out an accountant, but we don’t have time right now.”

  As if on cue, the double doors back toward the lobby crashed violently open, smacking the walls with enough force to let me know jack-booted thugs were certainly on their way. A quick glance revealed enough bodies beyond the doors to blot out the light behind them. That wasn’t good at all. The raised gun barrels in their hands just added to that sense of “not goodness.”

  Old Man Johnson was frozen in my grip, and I had no doubt they were going to open fire on us whether or not Grandpa was with us. After all, what was one accountant in the grand scheme of magical annihilation?

  Without a second thought, I yanked the old man away from the wall, pivoted a step, and shoved him through the open door to safety. Admittedly, part of me wished I was following him into safety, but when you have a chin like mine, you don’t get to duck and run.

  As the adrenaline pumped through my veins, time turned sluggish. I had just enough time to see my life start to flash before my eyes when the hallway erupted with more than enough gunfire to turn me into shredded beef.

  “PROHIBERE!” As Gabriela’s cry echoed through the hallway, a pulse of energy surged from the Doc’s outstretched hand. A shuddering vibration filled the air, stopping the bullets flat out like we were in the Matrix. The hail of gunfire fell lifelessly to the ground. It was so sudden everyone, bad guys included, stood staring.

  “Move, Frank,” Gabriela shouted, breaking into a run while grabbing me by the crook of my elbow. “I can’t do that again.”

  “Oh,” I responded using the full extent of my razor-sharp wit.

  I spun on my heel and followed the Doc’s example, but not before taking a potshot at the mass of gun-wielding thugs. There was a dull squishy sound as the bullet hit… something. Certainly something not human, a fact made more apparent as the first and largest figure lumbered after us, completely ignoring the bullet hole in his chest.

  It was the big Clayface beast from the clinic, now serving as a walking shield for the more human-looking security guards. Unfortunately, by Gabriela’s furious Latin whispers, I had a feeling we didn’t have a similar shield, at least not yet. That was doubly bad because we were in an open hallway with no cover and no way to duck out of the line of impending fire. If we were going to live a few more moments, I had to buy the Doc some time.

  As always, if I couldn’t dazzle them with dexterity (or gunplay), I would have to baffle them with bullshit. I dug into my pocket, hoping distance and the heat of battle were both on my side. If they weren’t, well, it wouldn’t matter ten seconds from now.

  I made a fist around a handful of change as I tried to keep my arm from shaking like a leaf and shouted, “Fire in the
hole!”

  Twisting back, I mimicked the motions of a grenade throw, hoping these guys had just enough combat experience to go for cover, but not enough to realize what a cheap ploy this actually was. At the last moment I could manage, I let loose the arc of glittering quarters and dimes.

  It was a stupid ploy, and I was sure none of them would buy it. Only one person did, but since it was the big mountain of clay himself, I counted it as a win. He yelled in Hebrew (a language I recognized from many nights playing cards with the Goldmans) and turned with surprising grace, sweeping his buddies aside and shoving them back with one mighty movement.

  We didn’t stop to watch the Keystone Cops caper descend into chaos. Gabriela and I made a break for it as she continued her chant. Was it bad I was starting to recognize this particular chant? It was one of those shield spells, I was certain of it. As we got to a crossroads of corridors, I knew she was almost done weaving her spell. Without skipping a beat, the Doc tugged on my arm and pulled me to the left.

  I took her cue and turned on my heel, barreling down the side hall. It was short, maybe ten feet at most and ended in a window. Fortunately, it also had one critical feature, a door to the back stairs. Bingo!

  While the Doc finished her incantation, throwing a glimmering barrier behind us to block off pursuit, I stepped up to yank the door open. As my fingers caressed the handle like a gentle lover, the window shattered inward. Shards of glass pelted the hallway, giving me a few extra cuts just for the hell of it as I ducked away from the blown out window.

  Before I could recover, the buzzing of small rotors filled my ears, and as I turned to look, I saw the buzzing was accompanied by something far worse. Drones.

  They were the little four-engine suckers you might buy at some upscale tech toy store, and normally, I wouldn’t give them much mind. I mean, all those things were “armed” with were video cameras. What were they going to do, take harsh videos of us?