Marked: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 2)

by J. A. Cipriano

  A look of annoyance flashed across her face as she glanced from her ruined fist to me. She glowered at me like the gargoyle was my fault. Which maybe it was, I had no idea, but I hadn’t told her to punch it in the face either.

  “Why are you still wearing your seatbelt?” she asked, and the tone of her voice made me feel very stupid and useless. Before I could respond, she reached out with her non-shattered right hand and unfastened my seatbelt. “We need to get out of here before your buddy makes me punch him again. I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly fond of slugging it out with a goddamned statue.” She held up her ruined fist for emphasis.

  “Yeah, you should try wearing gloves or something. That’s what boxers do, you know, because they punch so hard, they’d break their hands without them,” I said, snapping myself out of my shock and scrambling up onto the seat so I could jump from the Corvette before we wound up in the lake. It wasn’t exactly an awesome plan, I’ll admit, but I was sort of under a lot of pressure at the moment.

  “When this is over, I’m going to punch you in the face,” Ricky said, and the tone in her voice made me think she was totally serious. Deciding not to increase my chances of an ass-whooping at the hands of a pissed off werewolf, I wisely kept my mouth shut.

  I tried to work up the courage to jump from the car as the gargoyle got to its feet and stared at us. One side of its face looked like it’d been hit with a goddamned sledgehammer, and as I leapt from a moving vehicle as it slid toward a lake, I realized I was about to have a whole different problem. I was about to be out in the open with a huge rock monster hell-bent on killing us. At least I think it was trying to kill us. For all I knew, smashing our car was gargoyle for, “I love you.” Either way, I wasn’t exactly fond of finding out the gargoyle equivalent of a hug.

  “Whatever you say, Stumpy,” I said before hitting the ground in a roll and coming to my feet covered in mud, grass, and slime.

  Ricky landed lithely next to me on her feet without disturbing so much as a blade of grass. She shot the monster a glance before backhanding me across the face with her good hand. My head snapped backward as I crumpled to the ground in a fit of throbbing pain. She smirked at me.

  “Don’t call me Stumpy, jackass,” she said, turning away from me while I rubbed my jaw and prayed my teeth weren’t actually loose. No, surely she hadn’t hit me that hard.

  As I got to my feet, the Corvette slid off the edge of the embankment and fell into the lake with a splash that threw water in every direction. My gaze swung toward it to see the poor Corvette sinking into the lake with a level of finality I couldn’t quite describe. I can’t say why, but even though it was an inanimate object, I felt bad for the car. It didn’t deserve to have walked the plank.

  Ricky barely spared it a glance as she sprinted toward the gargoyle, her neon pink running shoes a blur on the muddy ground. When she was a few feet from the lumbering monster, she leapt high into the air like she was Trinity from the Matrix. Time seemed to slow down around us as her right foot lashed out and connected with the monster’s dented face.

  The bones in her leg and foot shattered with a crack that made me wince in commiseration. The ragged ends of her tibia and fibula tore awkwardly through her skin in a spray of crimson as the creature’s head snapped violently to the side. It wobbled like a drunk who had just had a bottle broken over its skull. Then, before I could blink, the monster’s left hand snatched Ricky out of the air by the mop of short red hair on her head and flung her away like yesterday’s garbage. She hit the lake some twenty feet away and skipped across the surface before sinking into its depths.

  “Damn,” I muttered, hoping she wasn’t dead as I watched the concentric circles of water spread out from where she’d disappeared into the murky water. Ricky was a werewolf who’d just kicked a statue so hard she’d broken her leg. Surely, she could survive being thrown into a lake. Still, there was no way of knowing if she was even still conscious. If she wasn’t, there was a good chance she’d drown, even if she was a super-fast-healing werewolf. I needed to help her, and to do that, I needed to end this quickly.

  A howl that reminded me of someone sandblasting the side of a metal building filled my ears. I turned back around in time to see the gargoyle’s fist aimed at my face. I ducked, and tried to come in under its swing to judo throw it, but my feet slipped in the mud. I wound up toppling into the creature, and let me just say this, smacking your face into a gargoyle’s torso is decidedly unfun. Instinctively, I grabbed hold of its arm as I went down. It was probably the only thing that saved me from knocking myself unconscious.

  Undeterred by my attack, the gargoyle’s curled its hand around the back of my trench coat and hoisted me into the air like I was a particularly naughty kitten. Its huge stone wings began to beat the air with steadily increasing speed. My heart shuddered in my chest. Was it about to fly off with me? There was no way that was going to end well. It was time for one of my brilliant ideas.

  “Hey, Rocky, want to see a trick?” I reached up and gripped its wrist with my right hand and grinned as it lifted me even higher so I was staring into the beady black eyes sunk into its half-crushed skull.

  “Do not make me break you into tiny pieces, mortal,” the creature replied with its belt sander voice. “I will not hurt you if you do not make me.”

  I stuck my tongue out at it in a tremendous show of maturity. “Sorbeo.”

  Crimson light fissured up out of the gargoyle’s skin and traveled up my arm like electricity. My teeth snapped together, and the world entered a high octane spin. The creature’s rocky flesh began to fracture, and the sound of cracking stone filled my ears before the handhold I had on its arm disintegrated into power.

  I fell a couple feet to the ground as power swirled around me in crackling bursts of lightning. I curled the fingers on my right hand into a fist and let the gargoyle have it right in the kisser. The blow cleaved a hole the size of Denmark in its rocky skull. It stumbled backward awkwardly and fixed me with its one remaining eye. The look in that eye was not pleasant. I think it was rethinking that whole “not going to hurt me bit.” Well, I was fine with that.

  “Looks like today is the day, Alice,” I said as it lunged at me. I stepped past its swinging claws and gave it a solid uppercut to the bread basket with my flaming fist of doom. “To the moon!”

  My fist obliterated the monster’s torso. What remained of the gargoyle was thrown back across the muddy earth. It struck the ground just as a monster hewn less from dreamscapes and more from nightmares burst from the lake. It landed on top of the downed gargoyle with enough force to drive the monster deep into the mud. It raised one clawed hand over its head so its dark claws glinted in the sunlight before raking through the creature’s throat, severing the gargoyle’s head from its neck. Then, very slowly, it looked at me and grinned, showing a remarkable amount of jagged yellow, braces-clad teeth.

  “Seriously?” it said in a voice vaguely reminiscent of Ricky’s own, only, you know, more wolfish. “I leave you alone for three seconds and you basically kill the monster without me?”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, shrugging as the light surrounding me faded and my tattoos stopped glowing like I was embossed with neon lights. “You had your shot. Two actually.” I shrugged again because I knew it would annoy her. “But you know what they say. Third time’s the charm.”

  “Clearly you’ve never seen me actually try to hurt something,” she replied already back in her normal girl form which was good because talking to a werewolf wearing black yoga pants and a pink sports bra was a little weird. I still wasn’t quite sure why or how her clothes seemed to transform along with her, but I didn’t really want to ask about it because I was pretty sure the answer was either needlessly complicated or simply “magic.”

  Worse still, even though I’d been staring at her when she’d changed back into human form, I couldn’t quite pinpoint the where and when of it all. One moment, she had been a half-wolf, half-human monster, and the next, she was p
lain old Ricky complete with braces and a charming disposition. It was quite unlike anything I’d ever seen before and something about it gave me the willies.

  “I’m sure you’ll get the opportunity to prove how useful you can be,” I replied, offering her my hand. She looked at it like I was offering her a bag of shit so I took my hand back. “But we need to get out of here before someone comes down here to investigate why a huge moving statue threw us through a guardrail.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Normal people tend to dismiss the supernatural. They’ll just think there was a freak accident with a falling statue or something. They won’t have seen me change or the actual gargoyle.” She shrugged.

  “That sounds awfully convenient,” I replied, sighing. Was that why it seemed like people were inclined to ignore all the supernatural events that had happened around me? It seemed likely, but then again, I hadn’t explicitly done much more than throw the occasional fireball. Maybe people thought I was just a crazy guy with a Molotov cocktail. That made a certain amount of sense, otherwise, if Pierce was anything like Ricky, I’d have realized he was supernatural. At least, I’d like to think I would have. “Once we get out of here, I expect you to explain it to me a little better.”

  “Great, so you’ll help me get Pierce?” she asked, moving past me and heading toward the street several yards away. Evidently, she wasn’t super concerned with the loss of her Corvette. I was though, and not just because I had no idea how we were going to get from point A to point B now. No doubt Pierce’s thugs were on our way to get us right now.

  “Yeah, I’ll help as long as you tell me why are you so keen on getting Pierce Ambrose,” I said, and she stopped mid-step. She turned and looked at me and there was so much sadness filling her eyes I could scarcely stand to look at it. I turned away, suddenly finding my muddy shoes incredibly interesting. What can I say, I’m a wuss and seeing other people sad makes me feel bad.

  “He has my brother.” Ricky didn’t have to say anything else because those words hit me so hard I could barely stand. I immediately felt for her in a way I couldn’t describe. I also knew one thing. Even if I hadn’t been going after Pierce, I would have helped her get her brother back.

  “Where is Pierce keeping your brother?” I asked, my voice low and calm.

  Ricky stared at me for a long time before wiping the tears from her eyes. “You’re really going to help me, Mac? You don’t have to, really… I can find a way. Even though I can’t involve my pack in this.” Her hands tightened into fists. “I am Alpha. I can do this without them.”

  The look on her face made me believe her, but the fragility around her eyes gave me pause. There was definitely more to the story than she was letting on, and for all I knew, it could have something to do with the decision she’d made to let me go yesterday. Was I the reason she couldn’t go to her pack for help? I sure as hell hoped not, but for some reason, I couldn’t help feel partially responsible.

  “Ricky, I’ll help you.” I moved closer to her and put one hand on her shoulder before pulling her close to me and holding her tightly. She smelled like wood smoke, lavender, and soap, and the combination was strangely appealing.

  She relaxed and looked up at me with eyes rimmed in tears. “Really?” She swallowed hard, and a tear slipped free and dribbled down her cheek.

  It was all I could do to keep from shaking with rage as I held her. How dare Pierce Ambrose kidnap Ricky’s brother? What was it with all these supernatural jackoffs kidnapping people? Well, I might have been an ordinary overconfident assassin in my past life, but I wasn’t that guy anymore. Now, I was a guy who had made a deal with the Devil for magic. Now, I could make them pay. And I would.

  “Really,” I said, and the smile that spread across her lips was like watching a baby bird fly for the first time.

  Chapter 5

  “You don’t have to do this, you know?” Ricky wasn’t quite looking at me. Even still, I could tell from the way the muscles in her neck twitched, she really wanted to glance at me, probably to gauge my reaction for the billionth time. Just like all the other times though, she didn’t even look at me. Instead, her gaze remained fixed outside the window of the bus, watching as the cars passed us by.

  I’ll be the first to admit the bus wasn’t my first choice or even my third, fourth, or fifth choices. After we’d climbed the embankment and spied a bus pulling up to the stop across the street, it’d seemed like a great means of escape. We had run across the street flailing and screaming. The driver, an old black lady with bleached blonde cornrows had waited for us, bless her heart. So that’s where we were now, in the back of the number nine bus on our way to Little Tokyo. It wouldn’t be the quickest way, but who would find us here? Slumming assassins?

  Still, I was getting a little tired of Ricky’s continual barrage of reasons why I should leave her and her brother to their own devices. Even if I hadn’t been going to wax Pierce Ambrose like one of Mr. Miyagi’s old cars, I’d have wanted to help her. Besides, we both knew one thing to be true. She had come to see me to get my help. If she’d done that, she needed me. I wasn’t sure why, but that meant something.

  That alone was enough to get me to help her, even if I felt slightly guilty for not letting her in on my own little Faustian deal to take out Pierce. Well, I’d tell her later. You know, after Pierce was dead, and I had my family back. If, after this was all over, she wanted to call me a two-faced jerk and hit me with a werewolf-sized fist, I could live with that. Theoretically.

  “I know,” I replied, fighting the urge to comfort her. We definitely weren’t at that level of physical contact yet, and she might take it the wrong way. That was the absolute last thing I needed. I wasn’t exactly one hundred percent sure how a female werewolf fought off unwanted advances, but something told me it might reduce my overall quantity of limbs, and at the moment, I was pretty attached to them. Even still, the feeling to reach out and comfort her was nearly overwhelming.

  “You could get off this bus right now. We’re still a few stops away.” She hazarded a glance at me. Her eyes were red and puffy like she’d been crying. It was a little weird since I hadn’t seen her cry since we’d gotten on the bus. Then again, maybe it wasn’t weird. She was both a werewolf and a woman, and I wasn’t exactly an expert on either. Still, it didn’t look like she wanted me to leave, more like she felt obligated to give me an out.

  “The only way I’m getting off this bus is to kick some ass or dance a jig,” I said, grinning at her even though I felt like a car salesman saying he had to check with the manager before he could lower the price because the beater in question was already such a bargain. “And I’m a terrible dancer when I’m sober.”

  “Whatever, Mac,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “If that is your real name.”

  “Wouldn’t you know if it was my real name?” I smirked. “You knew me as a kid, after all.”

  “So you say.” She waved off my comment with one hand. The nubs of her nails had been bitten down so far, it was a wonder she wasn’t bleeding. Without thinking, I snatched her hand before she could go back to gnawing on her fingers. Her eyes widened as I reached out and brushed a lock of hair from her face.

  “I’m surprised you don’t remember me,” I said, my eyes roaming over her face. “I remember you. I forgot everything else, but I remember you.”

  “We were just kids,” she said. Color spread across her cheeks, making the smattering of freckles on her nose stand out.

  “Maybe if I had eyes like yours, you’d have remembered me,” I said, tucking the strands of red hair behind her ear. “I could never forget them.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked in a voice so quiet, I almost didn’t hear her.

  This was when I realized two things. The first was I had no idea what I was doing. The second was that our faces were really close together. Her lips were only a couple of inches from mine, and as I stared at them, I realized I really wanted to kiss her. The urge to pull her close to me and
never let go was almost overwhelming even though we were in the back of a bus heading toward our more than likely demise. There were probably worse things to be doing in such a situation.

  “The only thing I want to do right now is grab you up in my arms and never look back,” I said. Where the hell had that come from? It didn’t sound like something I’d say, but as the words left my mouth, I knew one thing to be true. I didn’t regret saying it. Somehow it felt right.

  Thankfully, she didn’t go all “pissed off werewolf woman” on me. She simply gazed back into my eyes, and I could have sworn that despite the sadness etched into her features, she wanted to smile.

  The seconds stretched into what felt like eons as her gaze moved from my face to our hands and back up to my face. The look in her beautiful eyes gave me the impression she’d seen things deep down in my soul.

  “You shouldn’t want to do that,” she whispered, and I had to strain to hear her speak. She bit her lip nervously but didn’t look away from me. “It’s not safe for you to want to do that. Not safe for either of us.”

  “Maybe I don’t care?” I offered, smiling at her as best I could even though my heart felt seconds from bursting. I couldn’t understand why I felt this way so suddenly, but at the moment, I didn’t care. I brushed her face with my knuckle, trailing it down her cheek. Her skin was so soft, so warm.

  “You don’t even know me,” she replied in a totally serious voice that sort of shocked me. Still, she didn’t pull her hand away. Instead, she looked down at our hands and took a huge gulp of air. “Even if I wasn’t a werewolf, and you weren’t a Cursed, you just think you like me because of adrenaline and pity. Neither of those things are a good foundation to form a relationship upon. Trust me on this one, Mac. This is all hormones.”