Cursed: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “We go get Sera,” I replied and dropped Loraine. The next few moments were sort of a blur as Ricky dove for the falling girl while I leapt for the elevator. Her hands grasped empty air as she hit the ground on her chest and slid half out the shattered window frame. She turned, rage painting her face into a gruesome mask as the elevator doors closed, and we lurched downward.

  Chapter 13

  “So that happened,” Jack said as our elevator rocketed downward like an express straight to Hell. “Your mother never really taught you how to converse with people, did she?”

  “Is this where you tell me you were excited to walk into a dark hallway in a wolf’s den?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I reloaded the Beretta with the extra 9mm rounds I’d pocketed from the downed cultists. It wasn’t as many as I’d have liked. “Let’s be real here. They weren’t going to tell us squat. They were going to lead us into a nice dark room, probably with cement floors for easy cleaning and quietly kill us before dumping our bodies in a dumpster.”

  “You give them too much credit. They’d have totally eaten us. Well, not us, but you for sure.” Jack’s lips curled into an amused smile as he reached under his shirt and pulled out a revolver with a four inch barrel and eyed it to make sure it was filled with cartridges. “They don’t much like the taste of vampire meat. We taste too much like garlic evidently.”

  Before I could digest his words, the elevator dinged. We’d reached the lobby in record time. I spun my gaze toward the already opening elevator doors. A hand wreathed in thick fur the color of chocolate burst through the opening and gripped me by the lapels of my trench coat.

  My face was slammed into the metal doors with enough force to shatter my nose and make my vision go twelve kinds of blurry. I wasn’t sure how I managed to raise the Beretta, but I did, pointing the barrel through the crack in the still opening doors and firing as quickly as I could. The explosion of sound within the tiny elevator splintered my hearing into irreparable shards.

  The Beretta clicked, signaling I’d run out of shots as the hand gripping me loosened a fraction before slamming me back into the doors. Thankfully, they’d opened wide enough for my nose to miss the metal, but my shoulders weren’t so lucky. I was torn free of the elevator, my bones screaming in pain as they impacted the slowly widening doors.

  A ten foot tall nightmare of fur and teeth glared at me with cold amber eyes. Froth dripped from its jaws as it hoisted me into the air like I weighed less than a deflated balloon. Hot, fetid breath sprayed across my face as the creature spun on its heel and flung me like a rag doll. I slammed into the empty receptionist’s desk with a crack that made stars flash across my eyes.

  The room swam as I put my left hand against the cool white tile and tried to hoist myself to my feet. I’d scarcely managed to move in the time it took the werewolf to cross the thirty-foot distance and wrap his large, clawed hands around my throat. The half-man, half-wolf lifted me into the air, cutting off my air supply as my feet dangled uselessly in the air.

  The crack of gunshots exploded across the huge lobby, and a spray of steaming blood hit me in the face. It was hotter than I’d expected, and I tried to scream as it scalded my flesh. Unfortunately, I couldn’t breathe enough to make more than a peep. My lungs ached from the lack of oxygen as another shot took the creature in the same spot, and this time the hold loosened enough for air to rush into my throat like a freight train made of fire and razor blades. It burned all the way down, but the dimness in my vision was held at bay enough for me to lift my empty Beretta and put the barrel against the chest of the wolf.

  “What do you plan on doing with an empty gun?” the creature asked, voice a strange mix of barks and rage as it spun in one slow circle so my body was between it and Jack. The vampire stood just in front of the elevator, hastily reloading his revolver. Two werewolves lay on their backs on either side of him, their heads split open by gunshots. Even still, they crawled toward him like broken cockroaches. He had maybe ten seconds before they were on him, good as new.

  “I plan on shooting you with it,” I squawked, unsure how I managed to make words come out of my mouth. Admittedly, I knew it wasn’t much of a plan since the gun was out of bullets, but I was really hoping I could use my demon powers to make it shoot hellfire at him or something.

  The werewolf’s mouth opened to reveal a mouthful of shark-like teeth, and its tongue snaked outward. It scraped against my cheek with that same scratchy texture I associated with a cat’s tongue. A shiver ran down my back as my left hand fell uselessly to my side.

  “You taste like arrogance,” the wolf replied, cocking its head to the side before flinging me across the room. I smashed into the big window at the front of the building. Like any good glass window, this one shattered under the impact of my body. Razor sharp glass shards rained down on me as I flew outside. While my trench coat thankfully kept most of the glass from slicing me open, my face and hands weren’t so lucky. I hit the sidewalk in a bloody heap, bounced once, and rolled into the street next to a black Toyota Camry that had been smashed flat by a falling body. A gob of warm, sticky blood dripped off the broken car and spattered against my forehead.

  I squinted my eyes, trying to block out the blinding sunlight as the werewolf bounded through the broken window and landed lithely next to me. It sauntered toward me, claws clicking on the cement like it was one of those raptors from Jurassic Park with each step. It grabbed me by the lapels, hoisting me back into the air as my hands fell uselessly to my sides.

  My eyes shot open to see the creature staring past me at Loraine’s body. A look of hatred rippled across its features as I tried desperately to raise the Beretta once again. Before I made it halfway, my arm gave out and fell limply to my side, the Beretta all but slipping from my grip. My pathetic attempt was met by derisive laughter, and then, almost as an afterthought, the werewolf reached down with its free hand and gripped my left wrist. It squeezed so hard, I felt the bones in my wrist threatening to break.

  “Go ahead and shoot,” it said, holding the gun against its chest, laughter in its eyes. “It’ll do about as much good as your bullets did. Then I’ll carve out your liver and eat it while you lay on the ground bleeding.”

  My vision swam and my gut lurched. Blood pounded in my temples as I shut my eyes, concentrating as hard as I could. The faintest glow began to emanate from my tattoos as something in the back of my mind stirred just a touch, like a lazy cat looking up from its post nap stretch and eyeing the surroundings.

  I pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Laughter filled my ears, making my throbbing head pound in pain. I stared up into the amber eyes as the werewolf licked its chops, its black tongue slipping around its gleaming yellow teeth. I pulled the trigger again.

  Click.

  “Guess you didn’t want it bad enough, eh?” the werewolf asked, opening its mouth wide as I pulled the trigger one last time.

  The werewolf’s head evaporated in an explosion of gore that threw it backward. I tumbled from its spasming grip and struck the concrete hard enough for everything to go black around the edges. I tried to get to my hands and knees, tried to crawl away from its body as a thick pool of crimson began to spread out from the werewolf. As I struggled, its wolfish body melted away into still more slime until all that remained of the creature was Jock’s headless form.

  I collapsed to the cement, my cheek slapping against the sticky, wet concrete as Duane ambled toward me with a shotgun over one shoulder. With practiced ease, the old man knelt down next to me and grabbed me by the left arm, pulling me to my feet with a grunt of effort. He threw my arm over his shoulder and began mostly dragging me toward Jack’s pickup. The old vampire was already in the truck, engine running.

  “Next time you decide to shoot werewolves, try using silver,” Duane whispered in my ear. His words thumped against my temples like a pair of baseball bats. “It’s a lot more permanent.” Then he flung me into the bed of the truck and leapt in after me. My head smacked
against the soil-covered metal as we raced off in a screech of tires that left the smell of burning rubber in its wake.

  Chapter 14

  Something slammed into the side of the pickup, throwing me across the bed as we fled the wolves’ den. I smacked into the metal wall and little tweety birds flapped around my skull singing mocking tunes.

  Duane crouched down next to me, his shotgun resting against one shoulder as he fired the weapon off to the side. The shriek of broken glass and screeching metal filled my ears before something rammed into us again. Duane lost his balance and toppled sideways into the dirt next to me. As our pickup fishtailed, the shotgun slipped out of his grip and slid across the soil-strewn truck bed.

  The truck’s back window exploded in a spray of glass that rained down on top of me. Jack cursed from within the cab of the truck before we whipped sideways, skidding across the road in a screech of rubber. The truck fishtailed, and I was thrown across the bed once again. I stuck my legs out to keep myself from crashing into the wall and the impact ran down my entire body. I slumped to the ground, my face in the dirt as I tried to orient myself to my surroundings. My head pounded so hard I could scarcely get a hold of myself over the crescendo between my ears.

  Duane crawled forward on his hands and knees, trying desperately to reach his weapon. We swerved again, and he lost his balance, sprawling in the dirt. Another burst of gunfire tore into the truck’s tail, blasting the tailgate open and revealing a black Camry similar to the one I’d crushed with Loraine’s body. This one, unfortunately, was filled with muscle-bound goons, three of whom were leaning out the vehicle’s windows and packing serious heat in the form of 9mm Uzis.

  I flattened myself against the debris-covered metal as they opened fire, filling the air with bullets as their guns jerked around in their hands like flopping fish. Jack’s swerving wasn’t the only thing that kept them from mostly missing the truck, but it was what caused Duane’s shotgun to fly across the bed and hit the wall next to me.

  I flopped forward on elbows, ignoring the pain that flashed along my forearms and snatched the weapon even though the tiny burst of movement made my guts revolt. I pushed down my nausea and concentrated on pointing the shotgun at the Camry. It swerved back into view, and I fired into the car’s windshield. The sound of busted glass filled my cotton swabbed brain. The car swerved sideways, clipping an old VW bug and tearing off its driver’s side mirror in a spray of sparks.

  “Good shooting,” Duane called, giving me a thumbs up.

  I tried to smile at him and wound up throwing up into the dirt. Thankfully, there wasn’t much inside my belly because a moment later, I found myself lying face down in the mess. Duane scrambled over to me and reached out for the gun clasped in my right hand. The moment he touched me, my tattoos flared to life and a surge of energy shot through my body, bringing with it the smell of oak and a vision of multicolored leaves dancing in fall breezes.

  The cotton filling my brain vanished as Duane snatched his hand away like he’d been bitten by a snake. Shakes overtook him in an instant, and his flesh paled.

  Before I could ask what the hell had happened, the Camry swerved back behind us. Adrenaline surged through me, and I threw myself on top of Duane, knocking him flat as a spray of bullets passed over our heads and smacked into the toolbox at the back of the truck before ricocheting inside the truck bed like a pinball machine of death.

  I don’t know how I avoided getting perforated, but I didn’t stop to find out. Feeling better than I had in a while, I cocked the old pump action and let loose another blast of silver buckshot into the shooter on the passenger side. It caught him full on in the chest. His Uzi fell from his hand, hit the asphalt, and disappeared under the tires of the Camry.

  As I tried to pump the shotgun again, we swerved around a school bus. I lost my balance and fell. The weapon slipped from my grip as I toppled ass over elbows toward the back of the truck. I hit the tailgate and kept going as the Camry veered back into view in time to catch me with its spider webbed windshield.

  Pain exploded through my back as I busted through the windshield in a spray of gummy safety glass and crashed into the dashboard. The movement made the driver slam on his brakes, and the car jerked to a stop hard enough for me to fly forward across the hood and fall to the pavement. I landed hard on my elbows, and even though my insides felt scrambled, I looked for Jack’s truck. It skidded to a stop several meters away, but I instantly knew they were too far away to possibly help me. I was on my own.

  That thought filled me as the car doors opened. A surge of anger ran through me as my arm flared bright enough to blot out the sun, and a sudden calmness descended over me. I wasn’t alone at all. A smile crossed my lips as I leapt to my feet, no longer bound by things like injuries and pain. My mind focused in an instant as I met the charge of the closest werewolf, tearing his Uzi from his hands and driving my right first through his chest with one blow. My knuckles punched out his back in a shower of gore as I whirled around, careful to keep the screaming thug’s body in front of me to block the spray of bullets coming toward me while firing my stolen Uzi at the shooter.

  My rounds caught the shooter in the chest, throwing him backward into the path of an oncoming minivan. The driver of the vehicle must have seen what was going to happen because she slammed on her brakes and tried to swerve around him, but it was no use. The blue Honda Odyssey smashed into the werewolf, pitching him up onto the hood and over the top of the vehicle with bone crunching force. He smacked into the pavement on the other side with a wet slap and lay there unmoving.

  Sirens filled the air, and off in the distance, I could see at least one more Camry flying toward us ahead of the blue and red gumballs. Giddy laughter tore from my throat as I inhaled the smell of blood and death. Power leapt from the bleeding werewolf still stuck to my arm, healing me in an instant and my tattoos flared like star fire. I jerked my arm backward, ripping it free of the werewolf’s corpse in one smooth motion while I emptied the rest of his gun into the driver who was still struggling to get free of the seatbelt twisted around him.

  The cars were almost upon us now, but strangely, I wasn’t all that worried. I spun on my heel, dropping the empty gun onto the ground before sprinting toward Jack’s truck. I caught the flash of Jack’s eyes in the mirror and the wheels started spinning. I reached down, feeling for the power coursing through my body and leapt the last several feet. I crashed onto the bed and lost my balance, toppling over as the old pickup took off in a squeal of tires.

  “What the fuck are you?” Duane asked, mouth open in awe. “I’ve never seen someone move like that before, even a Cursed.”

  “Didn’t you hear? I exchanged my soul for power. It wouldn’t have been a good deal if it wasn’t for a lot of power,” I said sort of hoping the power thing was true.

  Before Duane could respond, Jack stomped on the gas pedal and sent us flying up onto the sidewalk and around the gawkers. We hit open road a second later as the other cars skidded to a stop behind the mess of cars we’d left behind, and somehow, I didn’t feel that bad about it. No, scratch that. I was downright giddy wondering how the werewolves, who had no doubt already healed, were going to explain a car full of automatic weapons.

  “Yeah, I heard, but I’ve seen lots of Cursed in my time. Buddy, I’ve never seen someone’s eyes go as dark as yours did. When I looked into them, it was like the void itself was staring back at me, threatening to rip out my soul just for the fun of it.” Duane kept his shotgun pointed at my chest as he slumped to the bed on his ass and braced himself against the sidewall. “It’s not cool.”

  “It’s a little bit cool,” I replied weakly. Inwardly, I was terrified he was right. I knew nothing about the demon who had given me this power. For all I knew it was Lucifer himself, and for Duane to be as scared of me as he was after everything we’d been through only reinforced my terror. What the hell had I done? And worse, why had I felt the need for so much power just to save one mother and her child? It didn’t make a
ny sense… unless the mother and child I was trying to save were being held by someone way more powerful than a centuries-old Cursed.

  “No, son, it’s not.” He didn’t even smile as he braced the shotgun against his knees so he could keep it leveled at me. The movement gave me the sneaking suspicion he didn’t plan on lowering it. “Not even a little bit.”

  Chapter 15

  It was dark by the time we reached the location Ricky had specified earlier, partially because we’d had to switch vehicles a couple times. Jack had been more than a little upset to exchange his classic Ford for a “Japanese piece of shit” as he called it, and his ensuing whining had been so annoying that when we’d stopped for gas, we wound up boosting a Dodge Charger, which evidently, was little better.

  Still, it was a good thing we’d switched vehicles because every time I saw a black Camry on the road, I was pretty sure it was manned by werewolves. I had seen a lot of them. Too many for it to just be coincidence.

  Now, I stood on the street outside a massive wrought-iron gate that blocked access to a hugely expensive looking gated community. A guard shack sat square in the middle of the gates, and even from here, I could make out several video cameras. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure how well trained the guards were, but being that I could see an honest to god Ferrari in the driveway of the first house beyond the gate, I was pretty sure they weren’t going to let me in even if I showed up with a van full of pizzas to deliver. No, this was the type of place where they escorted the pizza delivery boy to Mrs. Robinson’s door.

  “You got any way of getting in there? Or are we going to go with the whole shoot our way in thing?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at Duane. The druid stood there chewing on his lip and let out a slow sigh.

  “I do, but you won’t like it,” Duane said, rubbing his chin with one hand as his gaze swung back to a manhole cover a few feet away. “And shooting our way in probably won’t work. The cops’ response time to a place like this can be counted in seconds.”