Marked: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 2) (17 page)

The voice on the other end said something I didn’t catch, mostly because it was cut off when Ricky crushed the radio into chunks of plastic and metal with her bare hand. I was suddenly very glad I had brought her along, but that thought was almost immediately replaced by a horrific realization.

Pierce was supposed to be more powerful than Ricky. I wasn’t sure if it was an inches or miles sort of thing, but the idea of going after someone stronger than a girl who had just leapt twenty feet and torn off a guy’s arms so she could beat him to death with them lacked a certain appeal. Then again, I had guns loaded with silver bullets, and I was really good at shooting things in the face. I guess we all had our strengths.

Ricky sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring wide. She grimaced. “There’re more coming, and now that they know I’m the one here, they’ll likely be using silver ammunition, assuming they can afford it.” She sighed. “Let’s get a move on. Shamu is over there.”

“Why did you let them know you were here then?” I asked, jogging behind her. I’ll admit, it really wasn’t a bad angle to follow her from.

“Would you be scared if a werewolf just tore apart your entire team of highly-trained professionals in the span of a minute?” she asked, glancing at me over her shoulder before leaping over a rope leading to the section of the park that housed large aquatic mammals. “And then said she was going to eat you?”

“Okay, well, that’s an excellent point,” I replied because really it was. She was on my side and it’d scared me. I couldn’t imagine what it was doing to a bunch of guys who were being paid to hunt her. Probably rethinking their life choices. Still, it bugged me. Why were guys like that in here at all, and why were they normal humans instead of werewolves? If Pierce was this big bad ass werewolf, why weren’t his henchmen werewolves too?

Chapter 20

As Ricky pushed on the door labeled employees only, it opened with a screech of tortured steel. So far, we hadn’t seen any other bad guys even though I’d been on the lookout for them. Maybe Ricky’s whole “I’m a big scary werewolf” shtick had worked? It was either that or they were lying in wait to ambush us. Call me crazy, but I was pretty sure it was the second reason.

Ricky sniffed the air and evidently satisfied no one was going to shoot us, stepped in ahead of me, presumably because since bullets didn’t seem to do much more than anger her. That was fine. If she wanted to be all “I’m a modern woman” and make herself into my human/werewolf shield so I could avoid getting perforated by bullets, I was fine with that. Besides, she was wearing the flak jacket. See, I’m all about equal opportunities.

There must have been a motion sensor inside because as soon as she stepped inside, the light came on, revealing a plethora of wetsuits and assorted scuba equipment. Ricky mostly ignored it as she walked across the room toward a red steel door with the words “Danger High Voltage” written on it in black two inch letters. Without even bothering to try the knob to see if it was unlocked, she kicked it so hard the steel door folded inward like an accordion before tearing off the hinges and flying backward into the darkness. It clanged against the floor. As silence descended through the tiny room, a bunch of red dots lit Ricky up like a Christmas tree.

“Oh no,” Ricky said, before bullets came flying out of the doorway she’d just assaulted. They hit her high in the chest and sent her pitching backward across the ground toward me. I didn’t have time to see if any had penetrated her jacket as I opened up with my stolen M16, emptying the remaining magazine into the doorway while scrambling forward. I grabbed Ricky under the arms and pulled her out of the line of fire as cursory cover fire started to streak back through the doorway, taking chunks out of the surrounding walls.

The moment my gun clicked empty, more gunfire erupted from the hallway beyond. The cement pinged with the sound of ricochets as I dropped Ricky behind a huge steel table and fished out my grenade. I popped the top and flung it into the darkened room before leaping on top of the werewolf because, you know, she wouldn’t totally heal way quicker than I would. And people say chivalry is dead.

A deafening boom that reduced my hearing to a high-pitched whine shook the room, but the shooting also stopped which was good. I threw a quick glance at Ricky as I lifted myself up off of her. The few bullets that had struck her were already starting to push themselves out of her flesh, and while it didn’t seem like they were silver, there were a lot of them. I guess emptying fifty rounds into someone, werewolf or not, was effective. Good to know.

I sprinted toward the doorway, careful to keep mostly out of the line of fire even though no one was shooting. Once I reached the cinderblock wall, I crouched and glanced around the corner. It was dark, but I could still make out what looked like pieces of assailants strewn about the hallway in bloody chunks. I gripped my pistol tightly, tried to push down the strange sense of satisfaction I felt at killing them, and made my way inside.

When no one immediately put a round in my chest, I breathed a sigh of relief… quietly. It looked like a massacre. Near as I could tell, there had been four guys in here, but then again, they were mostly splotches so it was hard to be sure. Still, the other team had been four guys, so that made sense.

Even still, I crept forward, keeping close to the left wall so I could shoot anyone who popped out with my right hand. I’d had half a mind to go along the right wall, and shoot left handed so I could keep my demonic hand free, but that might open me up to a heart shot. It wound up not mattering either way because no one shot me in the time it took me to reach the door at the end of the hallway.

No one had survived the grenade. They were all dead. I probably should have felt bad about it, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel good about it either. I mostly felt nothing but satisfaction for killing them before they’d killed me. Hey, at least I wasn’t reveling in their deaths. Baby steps.

At the sound of footsteps behind me, I whirled, gun at the ready, to see Ricky limping toward me. There were more holes in her shirt, but otherwise, she just looked pissed off.

“Next time, you can go first,” she said through gritted teeth, leaning one hand on the wall for support.

“Done and done,” I replied, turning back toward the door and gripping the handle. It twisted without much effort, and I held my breath as I pushed it open a crack. No one shot me, but the smell of the room beyond turned my stomach. It sort of reminded me of rotting corpses left out in the sun.

Ricky must have smelled it too because she started gagging. I twisted my head toward her, about to ask her if she was okay, when the door jerked inward while I was still gripping the handle. It pulled me off balance, and I tumbled forward into an honest to God rotting corpse. It opened its decaying mouth and lunged at me.

“Brains!” it groaned as I brought my Glock up and put two bullets into its brainpan. Goop that smelled even worse than the corpse splattered across the ceiling as the thing fell against me and slid twitching to the floor.

“Is that a zombie?” I cried, but before Ricky could respond, more lumbering corpses came shambling toward me. They weren’t fast, but there were a ton of them, and with each step they took, they grew more and more agitated. Even worse, I would run out of bullets long before they all went down. I was going to have to improvise then.

I dropped the two closest ones, with two quick shots, and like I hoped, their companions stumbled over them as I leapt back, slamming the door shut. The sound of them smashing into the metal a second later didn’t exactly give me high hopes for our escape. I grabbed the lever, trying to use it to hold the door closed when it started to twist in my hand. I grunted, my muscles cording with effort as I tried to keep it from turning further, but the zombies must have been stronger than they looked because it began edging downward like the second hand of a clock.

“Don’t let them bite you unless you want to become one of the living dead,” Ricky said rather unhelpfully.

“I’ll do my best to keep the zombies from eating me,” I cried, half-hysterical as the handle continued to slide open. There was no way I was going to hold it much longer.

Ricky reached past me and grabbed the handle. It helped, but not much. It was still inching open. Not good. Not good at all.

“Calm down, Mac,” Ricky said, but the expression on her face didn’t make me any calmer. She was clearly terrified. Awesome. The badass werewolf was scared.

“This is my calm face,” I cried as the handle snapped off in our hands. The door jerked inward, and the ravenous horde of undead came swarming out. Ricky wrapped one arm around my waist and threw us backward across the fifteen-foot hallway. It gave us a bit of breathing room, but not enough, not even close to enough. Why, oh why, didn’t I save my grenade?

“Use your magic, Mac,” Ricky said, pulling me through the door she’d kicked off earlier. Guess that probably didn’t seem like a good idea now either.

Heart racing, pulse pounding, I put my right hand up as the closest of the zombies started sprinting toward us on rotting legs while the rest of them screamed like a deranged cheerleading squad.

“Brains!”

“Undead girls don’t catch diseases!”

“Brains!”

“Come closer, we won’t bite… much!”

I shut my eyes, trying to concentrate despite their catcalls, but this was way worse than the demonic rats, way worse than anything, and the smell. Oh my God, the smell. There was something about seeing decaying humans coming toward me with their teeth bared that made me scared on an intrinsic “Please don’t eat me” level. Even still, I swallowed hard and cried out with everything I had in me.

“Ignis!” The word burst from my lips like a thunder crack in the night sky. My tattoos went nuclear as hellfire burst from my palm and exploded outward, filling the whole of the hallway with flaming death. The only problem was, while it burned the shit out of the creatures, it didn’t seem to do much else to stop them. That’s when one horrific little factoid became crystal clear. Flaming zombies were way worse than the normal non-burning kind. For one, they smelled like rotting, burned steak. For two, they were on fire, and anything trying to eat you while on fire is at least ten times more horrifying.

“Try again,” Ricky cried, half-carrying me out of the hallway and toward the door leading out of the alcove. That was pretty much when I spied the oxygen tanks littering the rest of the gear in the room.

“Alright, but you need to get us out of here now.” I pointed my hand at the tanks. “Ignis!”

Ricky leapt through the door as the fireball left my hand, just not far or fast enough. The explosion sent us flying backward through the air. We crashed into the whale tank, and the cold kiss of water enveloped me as I started to sink into its depths. The only upside was that I no longer saw zombies chasing me, although that might have been because my vision was turning black.

Chapter 21

Something dark and monstrous swam through the water beside me, shocking me back to consciousness before the cold embrace of the water could render me lifeless. My eyes shot open, and I swiveled my body around in time to see an Orca the size of an SUV coming toward me, jaws wide.

I tried to dodge, but I needn’t have bothered because the super predator went rushing by me as bodies started splashing over the side of the pool above me. I grabbed onto its dorsal fin as it passed by, hoping to catch a ride to the surface, but as we went upward, I realized those bodies were moving. Damned indestructible zombies. Couldn’t they have the decency to die and stay dead? I mean, seriously.

I pointed my water logged Glock at the closest creature and fired even though I knew it’d be significantly less effective underwater. The bullet burst from my gun in an explosion of bubbles before slamming into the skull of the closest zombie. Even though a cloud of brain and bone filled the water, the creature kept coming. Stupid underwater bullets. The orca surged upward, jaws wide, and actually bit the zombie in half. Evidently oceanic super-predators were much more effective than guns when underwater, who would have thought.

We broke the surface a moment later, and a scream shattered my hearing as the Orca shifted and brought its huge tail down on a legless zombie, splattering its head and torso like a watermelon in a Gallagher show. The whale snorted a huge blast of water from its blowhole and swam around the tank in a flurry of motion that sprayed salt water every which way. I managed to hold on, but just barely.

Another scream filled the night, and I realized we were barreling toward the sound. A whole throng of zombies had Ricky and were pulling her broken, struggling body from the water. Huge chunks of flesh were missing from her left arm as she tried to beat the creatures off. A cry tore from my lips as I emptied the Glock into the horde of undead. Heads burst, but it did nothing to stop the creatures from swarming over Ricky like overly aggressive ants. For every single one I took down, two more appeared to propel her thrashing body back toward the blown up storage room.

“No!” I cried, reaching out toward her in a desperate attempt to rescue her despite the several meters between us. Still, I couldn’t let them take her. I just couldn’t!

The whale reached the side a moment later, and I was throwing myself over the edge of the tank before we’d even stopped moving. My waterlogged body hit the blood splattered floor a second later. The zombies were already retreating with their prize, which was a little messed up if you asked me. I mean, I had brains too right? Evidently, the zombies disagreed. The bastards.

“Thanks, Shamu,” I said, glancing back at the whale and wishing I had a fish for it. Not that I’d have had time. I needed to get to Ricky before the zombies escaped.

The whale didn’t respond in words because it was a whale. Instead, it dove back into the tank, angling toward a zombie trying to dog paddle toward us. I didn’t bother to watch the inevitable conclusion to that particular match up because I was too busy sprinting toward the zombies. That’s right, I said toward them. Look, I never claimed to be particularly bright, okay?