Feet of Clay: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Clans of Shadow Book 2)

by J. A. Cipriano

  Of course, it was too perfect of a moment. Mr. Murphy didn’t like perfect things, even in a realm of near-absolute order. As she tilted her head up and I started to bend down, the plodding thuds of footsteps echoed down the side hall towards us, sounding way closer than they should have. If it was a human coming towards us, he was a real wide load, but I didn’t think it was a mere mortal.

  I was pretty sure it was Abner the Golem and boy, did I owe him too.

  Gabriela heard it too, and she spun to face the corner, not five feet away. I didn’t bother to pull the 9mm I had swiped. I had seen Mr. Play-Doh soak up bullets without even flinching.

  No, he was a golem, brought to life by ancient Hebrew magic with a soul straight from God or Yahweh or whatever you wanted to call him. Oh yeah, the Big Guy’s real, or at least there’s some entity that represents Him somewhere in this crazy universe we live in. Another one of those things my brain was still getting a handle on. The important thing, before I sidetracked into theology, was that whole “golem animated by magic” thing. I had the ultimate weapon against magic, thus Abner, beating in my chest.

  The doc’s fingers started to weave, the start of her spellcasting, but I halted her by pulling her back by one shoulder. I stepped forward as I pulled back, filling the space where Gabby had been. The heart thumped in my chest as my vision filled with gold, hands curled into claws to tear at the magic threads I knew I was about to see.

  One more thudding step and Abner came into view. Imagine, a big slab of blood-red clay, carved into a crude human shape. The face was the crudest part, blocky with huge brows, topped off by Hebrew script in the middle of his forehead. That walking lump was wrapped in robes, this time sparkling white as opposed to the black he had worn when he had infiltrated the Enders. He turned slowly, obviously having seen us, but moving as fast as you’d imagine a big clay statue would actually move.

  Before Abner could finish his turn, I was on him. I was moving before I could think, before I noticed Abner didn’t look like any magical thing I had seen before. Yeah, I never really had a chance to scope him out before. I was always distracted by more pressing problems or he was on my side at the time. When my hands came down, my fingers curling into the mystical weave inside Abner, I realized I was truly boned.

  You see, magic spells and enchanted items are patches on reality, “hacks” to use the kids’ parlance these days, stitched into the tapestry. People too are woven into the world, some people weakly and some people with thick thread and a double stitch.

  Tearing the stitches of magic was pretty easy unless I was dealing with a person. So far, I’d been unable to rip the magic out of anyone. Still, I’d thought Abner would be like any other enchanted gun or mystical force field or what not, but I was wrong. Oh, so very wrong.

  He wasn’t a magical doll. He was a person with a soul from Yahweh, as he’d put it, and was stitched in just as well as any other human I’d seen, maybe even better.

  My hands bounced off his chest, showing off my total lack of Tiger kung-fu. One of those blocky eyebrows raised slowly as he said in that hollowed voice of his, “Frank Butcher, Doctor Perez, I was coming to gather you. My creator wishes to see you.”

  Considering how things went the last time the big lug talked like that, I expected his big clay fists to start pounding little old me. I danced back, grabbing for my gun as Gabriela redoubled a chant in Latin. It might be worthless, but we were going to go down kicking and screaming. Bratty or heroic? I’ll let you decide.

  “We’re not going to see Rollie,” I growled as I took aim. “So back the fuck off.”

  Abner folded his arms slowly, maybe even condescendingly. “Why would you believe Roland Lambert is my creator?”

  4

  I hadn’t given it any serious thought before (too busy trying to escape danger), but Clayface made a good point. While Elder Roland Lambert was obviously a mover-and-shaker in the magical juju department, I couldn’t quite picture him as a Jewish rabbi. I knew several rabbis from my summers with the Goldmans (a really nice Jewish couple, Mom’s best friends) and Rollie just didn’t fit the bill. For one, I’d never seen Gandalf sporting a tallit or wearing a yarmulke, that was for damned sure.

  “If Roland isn’t your creator,” Gabriela said from behind me, “why did you take us? Why did you bring us here just to take us somewhere else?” I knew she was still prepping a spell—my hairs were standing on end from the building magic. I couldn’t blame her one bit, even if I thought Abner might be through with the lying.

  “At the time, I did not realize how close the White was to the completion of their own ritual,” Abner the golem explained in his slow, hollow words. “As with my time under the Enders, to move too early would betray my intentions. Besides, having all three of you in one place makes my goals easier to attain.”

  Even though I knew it was probably useless, I still kept my gun trained on the big guy. He was still pretty close to the top of my list of assholes since he was going to kidnap us all anyway, but at least I was pretty sure he was still telling the truth.

  “Okay then, where’s Max?” I asked. “If shit’s about to get real, we need to get him far as fuck away from these guys. There can’t be a lot of time left.”

  Abner calmly folded his massive arms behind his back. “You surprise me, Bearer, to be so quick to trust one such as myself. Even fools can show sparks of wisdom, I see.” I bit my tongue and let the insult slide. “Unfortunately, Max is back on Earth. Fortunately, events have occurred and roadblocks have arisen in Master Lambert’s way. We may yet save the boy if we can hurry to my maker’s–”

  I pulled the trigger, the Beretta M9 shouting an explosive interjection in the middle of his speech. Though the weapon couldn’t hurt the golem, Abner still started a teensy tiny bit, which gave me no small satisfaction as the shot sped to the right of him, blowing one of the White soldiers off of his feet.

  A good half-dozen guys and gals in resplendent mail rushed in from behind Abner, ignoring the one flat on his back. Four more came from the hall to our right and the sounds of more from where Abner had come from. Everyone wanted a piece of us.

  Well, that was fine. I was getting sick of all this stealth-espionage-action anyway.

  Gabby saw the goons and was in motion before I sighted my second target. Since the doc’s baptism of fire when we’d faced down the Enders, the straight-laced, mild-mannered doctor had turned into a combat medic with hair-trigger reflexes, a fact she demonstrated with a Latin incantation and a flick of a wrist. Tourmaline energy flew past me and exploded into a solid force wall that spanned the entire hallway. We wouldn’t have to worry about Asshole Avenue for a moment, at least. Still, that left me to deal with Douchebag Road and Fuckstick Drive.

  To make matters worse, the guy I’d plugged wasn’t out, probably protected by magic, and while three guards sprinted toward us, two were drawing down in a show of uncommon smarts on their part.

  The doc was already chanting as I took cover behind one of Abner’s dumpy legs. They’d hopefully be hesitant to shoot with one of their own in the way or, if they’d caught onto Lumpy’s treachery, he was still the hardest cover available unless Doc threw up another protective field. Either way, I was more than happy to put him between me and them.

  From the unseen thugs closing in on Abner, a voice called out, “Abner, stand down and step away from the prisoners!” For a split-second, the big lug had me wondering if he’d do just that, pull a double-turn right then and there as he started to shift toward the oncoming guards. He had his arms spread, hands open to show he had no weapons, but then again, he was one huge weapon.

  Yeah, well, I couldn’t worry about that at the moment. Trusting he was being as duplicitous to them as he had been with us a few times, I tried to focus past the fear of the oncoming guards with those oh-so-sharp swords that’d cut me into sushi faster than you could count to one, two, three. It was plain as day everything these guys were wearing was buffed by magic. After all, chainmail is nifty,
but it doesn’t stop bullets.

  As la Corazon pounded in my chest, the world shifted to gold. To my joy, I realized I could see the threads of magic around them even through Abner’s leg. Each guard’s suit of armor, every sword, every gun was laden with mystical enchantments.

  Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if their suits would make them coffee and take out the garbage in addition to being bullet-proof and all the usual shit. In addition, as if it wasn’t fucking obvious, every inch of the stone walls was stitched together with magic, probably to shield it and the people inside from the crazy cold and diamond-dust storms outside.

  If it wouldn’t kill us all, I’d have pulled every string out I could see, but I contented myself with a quick swipe-and-twist at the goons’ enchantments, a subtle motion unlike the ones I’d used before. It was just as effective though and the threads around them tore.

  That was probably what provoked them into opening fire. Even while Abner was trying to get something out of his clay mouth, Gabriela broke off her incantation to dive for cover behind his other leg. The first volley harmlessly thumped into his clay body, but “harmless” didn’t mean the attack didn’t piss the big guy off something fierce.

  See, one of the things I knew about golems from the legends is they have the tendency to flip their shit at the drop of a dime. No matter how calm Abner had seemed only a second before, he wasn’t calm now. His enormous bellow cut through the air like a siren.

  Our cover was gone in an instant as the golem pushed off with one leg and charged back from where he came, moving a helluva a lot faster than I thought he could. While my little trick had pissed the Whites off, Abner’s sudden fury caused the charging guards to stop in their tracks. There was a common “holy shit” look on their faces, which said it all.

  Not one to let an opportunity pass by, I started shooting as I pushed into a run behind the golem. No fancy trick shooting here, it was pure spray and pray. There were too many guards to actually fight, even without their magic, but if we followed the Incredible Clay Hulk, we had a chance. I tagged a few of the guards and put enough lead downrange to turn surprise into a temporary rout.

  Fortunately, Gabriela must have come to a similar realization as I had and was right on my heels as Big Red crashed into the Whites here like a runaway freight train, sending the first few of the half-dozen guys flying back down from whence they came. I had firsthand experience with how strong Abner was and that was when he was under control. I wasn’t surprised (though a little unsettled) when one of those poor bastards had his head separated from his body in a mess of gore.

  Abner roared and pressed forward. Some of the guards were the brave type, the ones who’d lay down on the grenade for their fellows, and those folks stood their ground. The others weren’t being paid enough for this shit and broke ranks. This was going to get really damned messy.

  Abner was definitely going to keep all the attention focused squarely on him, which was good. We only had to do two things: cover our asses and not attract Play-Doh’s attention.

  I kind of didn’t want to see the oncoming slaughter, so I glanced back to take care of the grunts behind us. Fortunately, Doc’s first wall was holding several back, but it would only be a few moments for the other guards to get their shit together.

  “Doc, please tell me you’ve got another wall in you.” I could tell from the look in Gabby’s eyes and the screams of terror that things were going as I’d expected. It’d be best to get her looking at something else too. Besides, another magic wall would save our butts especially since I only had a couple of shots left in the Beretta.

  She shook her head sharply, closing her eyes to tear her attention away from the meaty squelches. “Yes, I do but–”

  I knew where she was going, fueled by the inherent mercy of a healer, but I cut her off. “There isn’t shit we can do to stop him.” One of our pursuers had worked up the courage to poke his head around the corner, but a warning shot made him duck back in a hurry. “We can only try to save our skins so we can get Max.”

  Those green eyes snapped open and she nodded curtly. Without another word (in English anyway), Gabriela spun and wove another spell. I blew the last of my load on a frenzy of covering fire. The nagging thought in the back of my mind was that this was only some futile flailing. This place, no matter how light on personnel, was so big (like Death Star big) that there still had to be hundreds of these guys to hunt us down. It didn’t take General Patton to figure out that, now that our escape had been made, we were screwed.

  With one last twist of weaving fingers, Gabriela finished conjuring another wall of force, sealing us into this hallway with Abner and his playthings. The sound of his blocky limbs hammering into flesh hadn’t stopped as we turned toward our last open path.

  Goddamn, it was a fucking horror movie. Now, I’ve seen some shit in my time. War exposes you to some nasty, nasty things, but it didn’t really prepare me for what I saw. Abner was in the middle of stomping those huge feet of his down repeatedly on the chest of one poor fucker, splintering ribs and spine with each stomp. Strewn around that stomach-twisting scene were the broken bodies of the other Whites who had been brave and stupid enough to stand up to the golem.

  Some simply had parts of their body or their skulls caved in by overwhelming force. Another had his head knocked clean off so blood fountained from his neck and onto the rug. One poor bastard had been pulled limb from limb so his arms and legs littered the carpet like garbage. The hall was filling with the distinct smells of blood and offal. The ones that had run were still running, screaming like slasher movie victims. They weren’t that far off, I suppose.

  For me, it put the danger Abner represented into a whole new light. For Gabriela, it made her vomit all over her shoes. Couldn’t blame her one bit. I put an arm around her to try and steady her, and held her hair out of her face.

  Those screams finally reached the golem’s ears and his foot stopped at the apex of another stop. The constant shudder of incalculable anger ceased, and Abner slowly put his foot down beside the guard’s shattered body. I really didn’t want to say a word. Fuck knows I didn’t want to set him off again, but the sounds of sparks as the guards started to work on the barrier behind us spurred me on.

  “Hey, big guy, are you okay?” I did put on my best “things are totally cool and you should be cool too” voice, something I had practiced from talking down a few angry customers on my route. Gabriela managed to collect herself after having lost her entire last meal. Her entire body tensed beside me as I spoke.

  “I- I am sorry.” Those big red fists opened and Abner stared at his palms. “We must go. Many more will come.” He might have sounded calm, but that hollow echo of a voice had the hint of a quaver to it. Was he sorry about what had happened?

  “Abner, maybe I can–” Leave it to Gabby to try and help, even if it was pretty damned obvious she had no idea what to do.

  Leave it to me to be a dick and interrupt that good vibration. “No time, Doc. Abner’s right, we’ve got to go!” She shot me a scathing look, one I probably deserved, but my point was backed up by two things. What was it with bullshit in my life always coming in twos, huh?

  The first thing was the distinct sound of cracking glass behind us. Except it wasn’t glass, obviously. It was the sound of the magical wall covering our asses shattering under whatever spells the guards were slamming against it.

  The second thing was the battle cries echoing from down the hallway ahead of us. Looked like the cavalry was coming, except it was the cavalry for the bad guys. Damn.

  I scooped up a dead guard’s pistol in one hand and a sword in the other. Now, I have no clue how to use a sword other than “sharp end goes towards enemy,” but how could I resist having one when I was in all this fantasy get-up already? Plus it was better than nothing when I ran out of bullets, right?

  Gabriela looked behind us, then at me. She gave me a world-weary nod that mixed with Abner’s hollow sigh.

  I forced a grin. "Well, the b
ad guys aren’t going to kill themselves, right?" Collectively, we pushed forward.

  5

  I’d sort of hoped the rest of our escape from Castle Asshole would go off without a hitch, but if you’ve been following along, you know I didn’t have that sort of luck.

  Worse still, this was the real world with real combat, well, *a* real world at any rate. We were in another dimension after all. Still, my overall point stands. In the real world, three against a dozen or more (you start losing count after a time) rarely ends well, especially on the dozen’s home turf.

  The next wave wasn’t so bad and that should have been a warning sign right there. Though we were making decent time despite Abner’s lumbering pace, more guards should have caught up to us by now. Only they never did. Sure, we ran into more ahead, but no one came from behind. Even the four guys in front of us, while wearing heavier armor, some kind of fancy knightly stuff, and swords, didn’t seem up to the task of stopping me, let alone Abner. For one, they didn’t have a single gun between them. Let’s just say, after my dealings with Luna, Richter, and the rest of the White’s A-Team, something about that felt off.

  The four dudes tried hard, but let’s be real here, would you bet on four guys using magic against a super-strong lump of red clay, a wizard, and a guy who could turn that protection into nothing? I know I wouldn’t.

  Still, by the time we’d plowed over them, I was out six more bullets. A few more shots and the Beretta would be dry. Maybe that was why the guards were ditching their guns, to deprive me of ammo. I hoped not, if it was, that meant these guards expected to die.

  That said, without my gun, heart or not, I’d turn into more of an annoyance. Yeah, I knew the basics of hand-to-hand, any ex-soldier does, but modern warfare is all about the bang-bang-booms. Besides, the fine art of swordplay never came up in Basic and certainly at no point afterward. Gabriela, well, she might have learned how to handle herself in a fight, but she was still a healer and therefore very reluctant to blow people to kingdom come.