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

“Why can’t I be more of a plain-dealing villain,” I growled to myself, casting one last glance at the tarped men before bolting for the exit. “Then I’d just kill everyone and walk away into the sunset.”

My still wet socks squished inside my cheap loafers as I ran out of the swap meet, slipping past the gate and into the open. One quick glance down the street revealed no vehicles trying to run me down, which was good. That would get old fast.

I spun on my heel, meaning to make my way to the corner and disappear into the adjacent neighborhood where I could hopefully borrow a car and begin to unravel a question I hadn’t properly given enough thought. “Who was Pierce Ambrose, and why did he want me dead?” I guess that was really two questions.

The clown from earlier clotheslined me. His huge black arm snaked out so fast, I didn’t even see it coming. My chest slammed into his arm broadside, and my feet went out from under me as I toppled onto my back. My head smacked into the concrete with a wet thwack. My chest felt like it had hit a steel girder, and my vision was filled with little black spots.

I tried to move, but before I could, the clown pinned my right arm beneath one size-twenty red shoe and peered down at me, his painted on red lips distorted into an eerie smile. Time seemed to slow down around us, and I swore, I could see each fleck of dust in the air coming to a stop.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” the clown mused, his dark eyes sparkling with delight. “You’re not really very good at the low profile thing, are you, Mac?”

“That means a lot coming from a seven-foot-tall black man in a bright yellow clown suit. Did you get it on sale or were you just really fond of the squirty flower? It really brings out your eyes,” I said while trying to wrench my arm free. I wound up doing little more than grinding my skin against the cement. I ceased before I got a horrible case of road rash, and fixed him with my best “I kick puppies” glare. “Now tell me one thing. How the hell do you know my name?”

“I’m here to see how you’re progressing on your hunt for Mr. Ambrose, but I’m guessing you haven’t succeeded or those asshats wouldn’t be after you,” he said, and while he hadn’t answered my question directly, he had given me a pretty good hint. He knew who I was because he was with the people who had abducted the woman and her son. Well, if that was the case, he was in for a world of hurt, Mac Brennan style.

He gestured at the Tahoe, barely visible through the slats in the chain-link fence surrounding the swap meet. “Call me when you get it done, and we’ll arrange for you to pick up your sister and her brat while they are still in one piece, or don’t, and we’ll see just how small a box I can fit them in. See, I just got a new wood chipper, and I’ve been just dying to test it out.”

I couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. The woman and her son were my sister and nephew? Was that why I’d gone and gotten myself Cursed, to save them? It was the only thing that made sense. I must have done it to save them from this guy and his thugs because I was responsible for their kidnapping.

With that horrific thought freshly plastered across my brain, he lifted his foot, releasing me. For a moment, I was tempted to try to take him down, and not just because he’d just threatened to put my sister and nephew into a wood chipper, although that alone was enough to make me wish I had a bullet to put in his brain.

If he was telling the truth about why he was here, it meant Ambrose was the target I’d failed to kill. That was probably why his goons were after me. I’d obviously attacked the man, failed, and tried to weasel out of the deal. Instead of letting me run off with my tail tucked firmly between my legs, my employer had sent his own goons to ensure I finished the job while Ambrose had decided to stamp me out before I could take another crack at him. Well, this just reeked of awesome.

I wasn’t sure who Pierce Ambrose was, nor why I’d been sent to kill him, but the realization made my blood run cold. Had I been some kind of assassin before I’d lost my memories? It would certainly explain some things, like why I knew everything there was to know about firearms, and why I could look at a building and think of fifty ways to get inside without breaking a sweat. Those were not typical skills, or at least, I didn’t think they were.

If I had been an assassin, I had killed people for money. How could that have been who I was? The thought of doing such a thing turned my stomach. I may not have been willing to say I was a hero, but I definitely wasn’t someone who could indiscriminately sell my skills to the highest bidder. At least, not this version of me.

Still, the idea of getting my family returned to me unscathed was nearly all encompassing, and if all I needed to do was kill Pierce Ambrose, the guy was as good as dead, assuming of course, he was a guy. Maybe he was a girl. For all I knew, I was an equal opportunity hitman. Then again, what was the saying about the shortest distance between two points being a straight line? I didn’t need to kill Ambrose if I could get this clown to tell me precisely where they had my sister. I could just break in, go all crazy demonic arm on her captors and walk out with Michael Bay explosions in the background. That sounded like a plan to me.

Before I could even get to my feet, something dark and monstrous swam through the clown’s eyes. Fear filled my gut, making me suck in a breath so hard it physically hurt. Could he read my thoughts? No, seeing my thoughts was impossible. Surely, I was just imagining things. Right?

As that question flitted through my brain, the clown chuckled at me, opening his mouth to reveal so many teeth it was almost like there was no end to them. There were hundreds, no thousands of teeth in that mouth. Teeth that stretched all the way down to Hell and back again.

“I’m starting to think you might be as smart as my boy said you were, Mac. Admittedly, I was a little skittish about hiring a normal guy to try to take one of my rival’s best pieces off the board, but he insisted you could do it. Of course he was wrong, but then again,” he gestured at my arm, “it looks like you went and got yourself an upgrade.” He flashed me a cruel smile. “Hope it was worth whatever you traded. I might have offered you a deal myself, but I don’t particularly like coming to Earth. I can’t stand the smells or the clothing, but after what you did to Vassago’s guy, I just had to come see you for myself, especially since you and I happen to be in business together.” He clapped his ham-sized hands together with a loud thwack. “Never did care for Vassago. He’s kind of a weird cat.”

“Glad, I could help you out,” I mumbled, trying to figure out why this clown seemed so pleased about me offing Vassago’s right-hand man. Sure, Vassago might have been the demon prince of twenty four realms of Hell, but I was under no illusions about my ability to take on the demon mano a mano. If Vassago wanted me dead, I’d be a smudge on the ground. I was just hoping the demon didn’t actually care enough to make that happen even though I’d spent all of yesterday thwarting his evil plans to kidnap a woman and her son.

“I appreciate your moxie, but that doesn’t change things between us, Mac,” the clown replied before spouting off a phone number that burned itself into my brain like a red hot poker. I cried out, clutching my forehead as actual smoke curled from between my fingers. As the pain subsided, leaving behind one hell of a headache, I glared at the man through my splayed fingers.

“You could have just wrote it down,” I growled as tiny invisible elves took turns smashing numbers into my brain.

“I did write it down. I just did it on your brain so you wouldn’t have some excuse later like you forgot it,” he replied before flipping me the bird and straight up vanishing from sight. The only trace he’d ever been there was a pair of molten footprints in the cement. I swallowed hard. Had he been a demon like Vassago? Or another Cursed? I’d seen both of them pull off a similar trick. Something about him made me think he might actually be a demon, and that wasn’t just because I sort of remembered a Cursed kicking my teeth in when my sister had been kidnapped. It was more because the guy had given me the creeps in that same icy water down the neck way Vassago had. Well, this was just great. Apparently, I had caught the attention of another demon. Today was fixing to go swimmingly.

I had half a second to let that thought roll around in my head as I climbed to my feet. The moment I was standing, time seemed to explode forward all around me. The Chevy Tahoe broke free of the tent in a squeal of burning rubber as the assailants let loose a flurry of bullets in my general direction.

Chapter 3

My arm went up instinctively to shield my body as the word, “Tueri,” burst from my lips. Red light spilled down around my body, forming a translucent shield over my delicate flesh just before a horde of angry bullets slammed into me. Thankfully, the bullets broke apart with little flares of star fire instead of reducing me to Swiss cheese. A guttural cry of anguish exploded from my throat. Each and every one felt like I’d been hit by a Roger Clemens’ fastball.

As I stepped off the curb, a spray of bullets caught me in the back of the left knee. My leg shot out from under me. My arms windmilled as I tried to regain my balance. Unfortunately, my right heel took this wonderful opportunity to slip off the sidewalk. I fell backward onto the cement, and my skull rebounded off the sidewalk like a basketball. Everything went dark and spotty around the edges. Well, screw this. Getting shot was no fun, even with a magical shield.

As bullets ricocheted off the cement around me, I rolled off the sidewalk and into the street. Already I could see several men running toward me, firing their MP5s in quick bursts as they went. Definitely professionals. It made me wonder why they’d driven into the swap meet instead of perforating me from outside. It didn’t make sense unless they were trying to drive me back outside before unleashing their weapons.

Before I could answer that question, my spider sense went absolutely berserk. I tore my gaze from the machinegun-toting assassins and found myself staring into the grill of a black Humvee as it barreled toward me going well past the speed limit. It was so close, I could see the bald driver smiling at me over the wheel as a little hula dancer bobbed and weaved on the dashboard. They’d tricked me, chasing me into the path of the vehicle. Dicks.

I cried out in rage and frustration as I threw my arm out in a pathetic attempt to block the oncoming Humvee. The vehicle slammed into me an eye blink later and crumpled around my outstretched arm in slow motion like I was Superman. Time seemed to slow down as my feet skidded backward across the asphalt. Then everything went sideways. The light clinging to me flickered and went out, and I was flung backward under the force of the impact. I landed some thirty feet away, flat on my back. The horrible smell of gasoline and smoke filled my nose as the glow surrounding me faded completely. That wasn’t good.

No one was shooting at me, which was awesome because I was suddenly so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. The taste of blood filled my mouth as I tried to get to my feet, but it felt like my legs were made from Jell-O. The ground swam underneath me as I stumbled away from the ruined vehicle. Some of my attackers had broken off, rushing toward the vehicle, probably to try to pull their compatriot out before it exploded. How nice for him because plumes of dark smoke were already rising off of it and where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The others, unfortunately, were still coming toward me, albeit cautiously. Whatever. As long as they weren’t shooting, I was good.

I whirled to face them, wobbling like a punch-drunk boxer. I was pretty sure I didn’t have enough hellfire left in me to light a cigarette, but with any luck, they didn’t know that. I took a menacing step toward them that was really more of a drunken sway and held my right hand out to them, palm up. Then I slowly curled my fingers toward me like a bad ass.

“Come get some,” I tried to say, but wound up coughing so violently I was pretty sure my words were lost as blood sprayed from my lips. They lined up their weapons on me. Damn.

“Don’t try anything stupid, Mac,” said a familiar sounding voice I couldn’t quite place. It came from the closest of the black-suited nut jobs. This one was a little different in that he was wearing expensive tactical gear over his suit and tie. He gestured at me with his MP5. “I’m not sure what’s going on with you, but out of professional courtesy, I promise not to let them pump you full of lead if you come quietly.”

I was about to flip him the bird when a burgundy Corvette flew past the demolished Humvee like a bat out of Hell and skidded to a stop between me and the guys with the guns. The passenger door flew open, and Ricky sat there behind the wheel, wearing wraparound shades and a predatory smile. She leaned toward me and held her hand out to me.

“Come with me if you want to live,” she said in her best Arnold impersonation. It was surprisingly good, and I would have laughed if I had non-bruised ribs. Instead, I shot her a good-natured wince. Ricky was the werewolf Alpha I’d encountered while trying to rescue Sera and her son from Vassago, and even though she’d had me dead to rights, she’d let me go. I already felt like I owed her one, so even though I was happy to see her, I was sort of annoyed it involved her saving me yet again.

“Ricky?” I asked flummoxed. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one confused by her sudden appearance because no one had shot at us yet. “What are you doing here?”

“Saving you, obviously.” She raised one perfect eyebrow into the air and grinned so her braces caught the light and glinted. Which was also when the Humvee exploded into a fireball of death and debris. The shockwave sent me sprawling toward the Corvette. Her hand shot out of the opening viper quick and seized me by the collar of my trench coat.

Thanks to her werewolf strength, she hauled me inside like I weighed about as much as a swimsuit model after purge week while simultaneously flooring the Corvette. My feet were taken out from under me as the street roared by, but before I could let out so much as a single girly scream, she deposited me lightly in the seat next to her. She made a sharp turn as gunfire erupted from behind us, and the passenger door next to me swung closed.