Feet of Clay_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  I took a deep breath as I pocketed the wallet and tucked away what few weapons I had. It was critical to keep my priorities straight. Mom came first, but I would be worthless if I didn’t at least eat. I wouldn’t be saving anyone weak as a kitten, ya know? I also could probably use some more ammo, but first I had to figure out exactly where I was.

  Hoping I wasn’t going to stick out too badly in my Ren Fair knock-off clothes, I strode out of the alley, bold as brass. Part of me had hoped for a laundromat or something similar, but what I saw was almost better. Warrior needed food badly and a familiar sign beckoned out on the street ahead.

  I made my way toward the corner and hit the light. After what felt like forever, the “walk” symbol appeared, and I walked pleasantly across, much to the chagrin of the drivers who would no doubt have tried to run my happy ass over if I’d tried to jaywalk. I mean, what did I look like? An idiot? Everyone knows jaywalking in big cities was the fastest way to get turned into a street pancake.

  As I made my way across the parking lot toward a pair of familiar golden arches, I had a brief moment to wonder what the denizens of said establishment would think of my outfit. Then I decided I didn’t give a damn in the slightest and made my way inside.

  “Sorry for saying this, sir, but you smell horrible,” the pimply teenager at the McDonald’s counter astutely pointed out as I stepped up to order.

  “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” I said through gritted teeth. I’d been through enough today I certainly didn’t need some kid barely old enough to drive lecturing me on personal hygiene, even if he was totally correct. That being said, I managed to keep a lid on it. I was attracting enough attention as it was. It was only a matter of time before the White tried to find me and who knew what form that would take. No, it was time to stay on the down low so I ordered and waited patiently, even when the stern-faced mother standing behind me in line shooed her gaggle of children away from me.

  I grabbed the sack of greasy, beef-like sustenance and retreated outside. The rest of the patrons of that fine eating establishment, alongside most of the folks on the street, gave me a wide berth. Well, that was fine by me. It let me eat and think in some semblance of peace.

  My visit to the Golden Arches wasn’t entirely motivated by the need for fast food treats though. Like most other restaurants of any ilk, there were a few scattered newspapers around the place. It was as good a signpost as any as to where I was. Heading down the avenue, I began stuffing a burger into my face as I tried to flip open the paper I had made off with in my other hand, all while not dropping my bag of meaty treasure. Thanks to my elite APD training, I managed without too much fuss.

  As I scanned the page, I almost choked on the meat-like substance in shock. I hadn’t been thrown half-way across the country even though that would have been totally reasonable considering how things had been going recently. I was caught totally flat-footed by the sheer good fortune I was now experiencing.

  I had wound up almost exactly where I wanted to be. Not only was I still in the same state, I was on the outskirts of the San Diego suburb that Mom lived in. Frankly, I couldn’t have planned it better.

  Honestly, I was beginning to wonder if I should just give up on planning altogether and wing every single problem I faced. My smarter self realized that would be the exact point everything would go to shit again. Every good thing turns to shit eventually.

  I tossed the paper aside, almost making a perfect two-point shot into the corner waste bin. I wanted to grab the nearest cab and go straight-arrow to Mom’s apartment building. Fuck, I hadn’t even considered the Whites might go for the Goldmans too since they lived only a couple of floors down from Momma Butcher. My blood started to boil and la Corazon began to vibrate in response to that anger.

  I slapped myself in the face, an act that no doubt enhanced my image in the eyes of my fellow pedestrians all the way up to “Homeless Crazy Bastard.” Think, Frank! Running off half-cocked with one bullet and a scalpel would only get me killed. I might have been feeling pressed for time, but I could at least stop by a Walmart and buy some more 9mm rounds.

  After all, I wouldn’t want to come to the party without some party favors.

  11

  Chalk it up to my ego and vanity (both things my co-workers considered as big as my chin), but since I had the good Dr. Restov’s credit card, I decided to get out of my foul, stained, and stolen outfit. I exchanged it for something more, well, Frank. A t-shirt, sturdy work jeans, clean boxers, and thick, wool socks all got charged to the good doctor’s account. Despite the cliché, clothes don’t make the man, but they probably contributed at least ten percent, maybe even twelve depending on how you round the numbers.

  At the end of my shopping spree (add some deodorant, a pair of boots, and a sweet leather jacket they had on clearance – don’t judge me. This was justified!) and a short taxi ride, I found myself deposited in front of the Grand Arms Apartments, formerly the Grand Arms Condominiums and before that the Grand Arms Hotel, now currently the home of one Betty Butcher a.k.a. Mom. It was an old, stately building, an aging grande dame of the city’s skyline. She was still trying to hold herself together, to show off some grace and style in her decline, but the Grand Arms had seen better days.

  There wasn’t a trace of anything out of place to the untrained eye (or the trained eye for that matter) as I stepped into the lobby. For me, with the golden vision of the heart, I could see the preponderance of magic, multiple threads and patches tied together floors above. I mulled over my options as I ducked into a side alcove of the once-opulent front hall.

  There was the direct approach. I could march right up to Mom’s door, big steel balls swinging in the wind, and bust right in. That certainly sounded hardcore and badass. Maybe I could leverage my being the “Bearer” (a completely bogus line of hype if you asked Gabby about it) into making them give up before I spanked all their bad-guy asses. Of course, I would more likely get shot many, many times. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t exactly fond of getting shot.

  You see, while the Whites were prone to plenty of fantasy epic crap, they still had their own elite military group (that A-Team I mentioned before), a group of no-nonsense asskickers I had fought alongside against the Enders. Luna Ludell, the most badass grandma I’d ever seen, led a tight ship and that crew didn’t eschew the best in modern military technology. They just souped it up with loads of magic and enchantments.

  The smart money was to assume Rollie, the bastard that he was, would call in his best for this. He knew I’d come running the moment he dangled Mom in front of my nose (though he sure as hell wasn’t expecting what would happen because of it). Luna herself might not be up there, but Richter probably would be and maybe Molly too.

  Richter was their explosives guy. He seemed like a pretty cool dude, kind of like a cool kid brother when I’d first met him, but he had definitively thrown in with his commanding officer and the Whites. No matter how I felt about him, he was still dangerous as fuck. Magic or not, a grenade would make me dead as easy as anything.

  Molly, well, my feelings about her were a lot more conflicted. She was a fiery redhead with all the same anti-authority, “Devil-may-care” attitudes of yours truly. To say there was some lingering sexual tension between us would be a fucking understatement. While I had my torch burning for Gabriela (if you hadn’t already guessed that), I couldn’t deny kicking back with a bottle of whiskey and Molly was super tempting. Of course, the lass was thick as thieves with the rest of her buddies. I couldn’t let any of my own feelings keep me from popping a cap in her if I had to.

  Fuck it. I was wasting time mulling this shit over. The end game was simple. There would be some hard-as-fuck people waiting for me with more than enough gun-fu to turn me into Swiss cheese.

  There were some subtle approaches I could try too. I could talk to Riley, the eighty-going-on-a-million front desk guy, and see if he would help me try some diversionary stuff. False room service calls, housekeeping interruptions, even a call
for someone to come down to the front desk so I could thin the herd some, those were all possibilities … if I could talk him into it. Frankly, he didn’t like me much. I guess I had argued with him about the shit state of the building one time too many.

  My mind ran through a dozen scenarios, each more outlandish and more Die Hard and Raid-like than the last. When I hit the thought of going into the side building and doing some parkour-jump shit to dive into Mom’s window from across the alley, I knew I was going right down into a pipe dream.

  To hell with it. I was going in the front door. I had thrown away my last fuck and had no more left to give.

  I gave my neck a quick crack and went straight for the elevators.

  The slow ride up the decades-old elevator, combined with the droning muzak attack on my soul, drained every bit of anxiety from my body. By the time the car dinged and the doors opened up, I was doing my best to fight off the desire to take a nap in the corner. The harsh chime of the elevator snapped me back to my senses, and I staggered into the hallway.

  Like the lobby, the halls of the Grand Arms was in that slowly tipping balance between refined and dilapidated. The entire building was a popular home for retirees, and the air was filled with that strange mix of antiseptics and perfume common to retirement homes. Again, there wasn’t a stitch of carpet out of place, but my hairs were standing on end as soon as I turned toward Mom’s door at the end of the first hallway.

  La Corazon kept time as I quietly strolled down the hall, trying to look casual as I kept hands clenched on the gun and scalpel in my jacket pockets. My vision was rimmed with gold and all the magic I had seen from below was much clearer now. I wasn’t sure what to make of it and that added urgency to my steps.

  Like I said, spells are like patches on reality. What I didn’t mention was those same spells leave threads behind when they go off. Like when stitches get ripped out of a piece of clothing, there are usually trailing strings, leftover bits of stitching, damaging to the clothing itself. It’s all obvious if you’ve got the eyes to see them and what I saw in Mom’s apartment was evidence of a lot of magic going off pretty recently and in one big cluster.

  Subtlety was gone as I drew the Beretta and clamped a hand on the apartment door. I smelled fresh blood now. Something had gone really bad here and my now-manic worry for Mom’s safety tossed all sense of self-preservation out the window as I threw open the door.

  12

  Betty Butcher’s apartment had seen several new additions since I had last been there a week ago now. It was still its usual cramped self, but the blindingly bright pink of everything had been muted by a Jackson Pollock spread of blood and guts. Gone was the intense smell of flowers Mom preferred, exchanged for that nose hair-curling stench of dying men and voided bowels.

  To top it off, I was sure it hadn’t been Mom’s idea to add the scattered corpses (or soon-to-be corpses, one or two were still gurgling and twitching) of paramilitary goons bearing the sigil of the White to help accent her new throw pillows on the couch.

  Panic tried to shove past my sense of caution, but fortunately my Army training took over. I stepped into the room, closing and locking the door behind me. My eyes snapped from body to body—no threats left here untouched.

  Their wounds hit me as instantly familiar. While a few bore bullet wounds or the telltale blood trails of punctured eardrums, slit throats were the predominant cause of death. If I had to hazard a guess as to who had done this, I’d have said sweet, little Molly was the cause of this mayhem.

  The big question was why.

  Fortunately, Mom wasn’t among the casualties. A little bit of my fear melted away and some of the tension wound out of my grip on my weapons. Things could still be bad, there were several more rooms to search, but there was a ray of hope now.

  Unfortunately, Luna and her elite crew weren’t among them either. I began to pick my way carefully through the room, trying to parse the crisscrossed trails of scarlet into some coherent pattern. La Corazon showed me the settling threads of energy from the combat. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes ago. It also showed me the trail all that magic had left behind. Thin, unraveling threads led me toward the open doorway and into the kitchen proper.

  The blood trail was as much of a clue as the magic. Someone who had been stuck good had come this way, so I was on high alert as I sidestepped through, presenting a minimal profile with my gun raised.

  Unlike the living room, Mom’s kitchen hadn’t received a Friday the 13th make-over. It was still neat and orderly, with neatly-scrubbed linoleum floors (well, outside the slick red trail on it) and faux-granite countertops Mom had always wanted to replace. The only things out of order were the wide-open liquor cabinet, the gore-coated trench knives littering the kitchen table, and the slumped figure fumbling with the top of a whiskey bottle.

  I knew who it was before I even picked out the shock of hair from the rest of the red on her uniform or noticed it was specifically an Irish brand of whiskey. It was also blatantly obvious that, while a good bit of that blood wasn’t hers, Molly was in far from good shape. Still ignorant of my presence, her normally agile fingers managed to pry open the bottle and sloppily pour a shot’s worth into a glass and about two more shots worth onto the bloody table.

  I squared my shoulders and took careful aim before I said a word. Yeah, maybe seemed pretty ungrateful based on the evidence so far, but I didn’t know if Mom was safe or not, and these assholes had stabbed Gabby and I in the back one time to many times for my paranoia to be ignored. “It’s a shame to waste a good whiskey like that, Molly.”

  Even as messed up as she seemed to be, those whip-sharp reflexes took over and she spun in her seat to face me, knocking over her glass as one hand searched for a knife. Her pale skin was ten shades paler than before and a nasty gash over her right eye was adding to the bloody mask that covered half of her face.

  Her enchanted Kevlar vest was littered with shrapnel and half-melted, probably from some fireball or other assorted magical insanity. To put it simply, Molly was seriously fucked up, and I was pretty sure only sheer stubbornness kept her hanging on. Kind of like me, ya know?

  When her one good eye managed to focus on my face, that searching hand relaxed, dropping the blade back to the table. “Oh, faith now, ye gave me a bit of a shock.” Her speech was slurred and since I hadn’t seen her down any whiskey, I was betting she was probably headed into shock. “I knew ye’d be comin’, Frank. I knew it.”

  I won’t lie. There was a part of me that wanted to throw caution to the wind and go straight to her side, to try to do something for those wounds before she kicked the bucket. I didn’t do that though. This could all be a big setup, and I still didn’t know where Mom was. “You just sit there all nice and easy and tell me where my mother is.”

  It took her a moment to process what to say as she vainly tried to wipe away the blood clouding her eye. “She’s safe, boyo. I’ve done some right awful things, but I ain’t goin’ ta murder a sweet Mamai like her.” I gave her a hard gaze, which seemed to prompt her to clarify things. “Before I did what needed doin’, I warded her into the bedroom, kept her safe and outta harm’s way.”

  Now, let’s be fair. I still had little reason to trust Molly. Okay, I had a little more than if it had been Luna or Richter in that chair, but it wasn’t much more. All the same, I was pretty sure she was being square with me. Maybe I was thinking with the wrong head, if you catch my drift, but I was pretty sure it had more to do with how hard it is to lie when you’re in shock from blood loss, if not flat out dying.

  I lowered the Beretta, still keeping it out and ready as I pulled up a chair beside her. “How bad is it?” I didn’t know if this was a lost cause or not, especially considering the medical supplies mom kept on hand amounted to a bottle of Aspirin and some Bactine.

  She gave me a grim smile. “Bloody bastards gave it to me good. I kinnae blame ‘em though. I was doin’ a mighty good job killin’ them.” Her good eye focused on the whiskey
bottle again, and she grabbed it without spilling any this time. “One of ‘em skewered me good, he did. Ice shard straight through. Blasted anti-magic wasn’t good for shite.”

  I reached out and steadied her shaking grip, helping guide the bottle to her lips. As she took a huge slug straight, I asked, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why? Why turn on the White after all this shit, huh?” We set the bottle back down together. “And don’t give me some shit about my kind, old mother. Betty Butcher is as hard as week-old biscuits, probably kicked one of your buddies in the balls when you decided to take her.”

  Molly let out a short bark of a laugh. Was it a trick of the light or was she looking a tiny bit less like the walking dead? “She did at that, Franky.” Without needing my help this time, she took another hungry belt from the bottle. Christ, she was going to die from drowning before she bled out at that rate! “I dinnae know what to tell ye precisely. Swear on my father’s grave, I wasn’t exactly pleased when the orders came down to keep yer Mam locked up as it was. After all, didn’t we just get through fightin’ side by side? It didn’t smell right, aye?”

  I frowned hard. “But you went along with it anyway.”

  “I suppose I did. Some daughter of the Morrigan I turned out to be. We’re supposed to be rebels, freedom fighters, and warriors, an’ there I was, followin’ orders that sounded like shite.” Her good eye was focusing better now as she managed to pour a shot without sending whiskey everywhere. I know it sounds like a really racist joke, but I honestly think the crazy lady had some enchantment that made booze heal her injuries. “But when old Rollie sent us word to be ready to kill her, well, I knew two things right then and there. I knew ye’d be comin’, that they hadn’t managed to stop you, and that I could nae look ye in the eyes if I had a hand in doin’ that to ye.”