Marked: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 2) (20 page)

“Yes, but he was kind of a jerk.” The man pushed his flop of dark hair out of his face, and turned back toward the table, dismissing me. “If you don’t hurry and eat something, your body is going to start shutting down. You need to replenish the sugar in your bloodstream, give yourself some energy to replace what you burned up doing whatever magic you did.”

“How do you know so much about me?” I asked, trying to decide whether or not I could trust him.

“You are far from the first Cursed to visit my experimentation room,” he said, not even looking at me. “Just pass on through, I won’t stop you.”

“How kind of you,” I replied, moving toward him. It was harder than I expected since I could barely walk in a straight line. Every step made my vision fade in and out.

“Look,” he said, exasperation filling his voice. “You need something to eat, and there’s food in the next room. Go away.” He looked up at me with weaselly black eyes and an annoyed sneer on his thin, chapped lips. He had one of those too pale white faces that suggested he almost never saw the sun, and even when he did, the two weren’t exactly friends. “Just go get a sandwich or something, and you’ll feel better. I don’t have time to deal with this sort of interruption. I’m on the verge of a breakthrough.”

Despite him brushing me off like an insignificant insect, the whole not dying thing seemed like an excellent plan, assuming I could trust him, which I probably couldn’t. Then again, he’d barely even noticed me. He was way too wrapped up in whatever nefarious research he was conducting in the same facility that also housed a vampire winery and was owned by the brother-capturing Pierce Ambrose. Even if he thought he was trying to create something great for the world, the more likely outcome would be him creating a giant two-headed, man-eating monster. That wasn’t happening on my watch.

“Hey, is there a code or something to get the food?” I asked as I made my way through the creepy, half-grown bodies, and leaned against the door on the far end of the room for support.

“No, there’s just a fridge and shelves of snacks.” The scientist looked up at me and wiped his brow on one loose shirtsleeve. “There’s no lock. Just take what you want.”

“Awesome,” I said, punctuating the word with a quick squeeze of the M16’s trigger. The bullet caught the scientist in the forehead, pitching him backward across the room while his life dissipated into a fine mist. I felt no remorse though. No, I felt justified in shooting him because now his research would hopefully die with him.

I spun, and pushed the door open, and as I did so, all thoughts of the dead scientist vanished completely. The room was filled with virtually every kind of snack food I could ever want, and as I laid my eyes upon the rows of salty, sweet goodness, my stomach rumbled like the ocean. I leapt forward before I could stop myself, tearing into a package of Twinkies with my teeth and swallowing one in two bites. I could almost feel it traveling down my throat and settling in my stomach.

As I shoved the second one into my mouth, the ashen skin on my demonic arm began to darken, and my blurry vision settled just a touch. The scientist had been right. I guess I really needed to eat something to replenish my magic. And, even though time was of the essence, I decided to take a ten-minute lunch break.

Chapter 25

After I finished stuffing my face with Ding Dongs and Nutterbutters, I felt surprisingly better, and what’s more, my arm was back to its normal shade of demonic black. I’ll be honest, I never thought I’d think that previous sentence either. Still, the arm had grown on me, quite literally, and I was glad it was happy again. It meant I could blow stuff up. I liked blowing stuff up.

So what did I do next? I opened the door to the weird lab with the vats and blasted it five or six times until all that remained was a pile of smoking rubble that smelled sort of like skunk. Then I ate another bag of Doritos and washed it down with a can of rodent-dissolving Mountain Dew because I had an ironclad stomach. Oohrah!

“Alright, I’m ready to kick some ass and play some Xbox,” I said, discarding the can and Doritos bag and making my way across the snack bar to the only other door. It pushed open easily and no one shot me, so bonus points.

I’d sort of expected the room to be empty since I hadn’t exactly been quiet when reducing the lab to a charred husk. If anyone had been in there, surely they’d have heard the commotion and called security, or at least looked.

Turns out I was wrong. A massive black guy in a Jurassic Park T-shirt that could have been used for a boat sail sat at a desk with one hand on a keyboard and his other on a mouse. The monitor in front of him took up nearly the entire twenty-foot wall and was broken into a multitude of normal-sized screens containing images of what sort of looked like StarCraft with zombies. It was a little weird, but judging by the music I could hear emanating from his headphones, I was pretty sure he hadn’t heard me over the cry of his Rush album. Yeah, that’s right, he was listening to bad eighties rock. For shame. For double shame.

“Hello?” I said, poking the guy in the back of the head with the M16. On screen a pack of zombies took down a werewolf, while the rest of the werewolf’s pack ran down a ramp over a shark tank.

He spun around, saw the gun, and nearly shit himself. At least it certainly smelled like he did, but for all I knew that was a normal thing. Look, I’m not against gamers, fat or otherwise, but this guy struck me as a little off. Especially because he reminded me of the fat guy from Jurassic Park who had tried to steal the dinosaur DNA and wound up getting eaten by the poison spitting Dilophosaurus, though that might have been partially because of his shirt.

“Please don’t kill me!” he blubbered, one hand reaching up and pulling off his headphones. He clutched them to his chest like they might save him from a bullet. Maybe they would, but I sort of doubted it.

“What’s all this?” I asked, ignoring his blubbering as tears began to stream down his cheeks. I gestured to the screens. “Are you controlling the zombies from here?”

“Y-yes,” the guy stammered. “They have implants in their heads that let me move them around. From here, controlling them is just like playing an RTS game. It’s why I was hired. I was this close to beating Boxer in 2011.” He put his forefinger and thumb really close together.

“I have no idea what that means,” I said, shrugging as a smirk crossed my lips. “What other surprises are there?” I gestured at the rest of the conspicuously empty room.

“I don’t know,” the guy cried, dropping his eyes to the floor. “I just do the zombies.” He looked up, and his eyes were filled with hope. “Who you really want is Chaz. He does the automated defenses.” The guy looked over to an empty setup similar to his. The hope in his eyes died. “Wait, where’s Chaz? He was just here a minute ago.”

On screen a werewolf ripped a zombie in half and tossed it into the shark tank. The undead thrashed, spraying frothy crimson water every which way until a huge tiger shark snatched the struggling zombie and pulled it down into the water.

“He probably left since I let most of the monsters in the cages out.” I pointed to another screen which showed a battle royal breaking out in the halls. The word “warning” was flashing across the screen in front of the station. In fact, it was on all the screens except the ones in front of this guy. “They’re probably on their way here right now.”

His eyes roamed over the screens before returning to his own. He let out an annoyed explosion of breath. “I knew I shouldn’t have shut off the automatic notifications, but they always pop up at the most inconvenient times…” He looked like he was going to elaborate, but thought better of it. “Are you going to kill me?”

“I’m thinking about it,” I said because I was. If I did, maybe the zombies would just go dormant.

“I’ll make you a better deal,” he said, reaching over and snagging what looked like a ham sandwich off his desk and taking a huge bite.

“I’m listening,” I replied, watching him mechanically chew. A guy deserved a last meal.

“If you don’t kill me, I’ll help you get out of here.” He swallowed the bite and looked up at me like an expectant puppy. “Deal?”

“How do you know I want to get out of here?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Seriously, bro?” the guy said, giving me a look that suggested he wasn’t worried about me killing him anymore. It was weird because I was pretty sure my facial expression hadn’t changed. “I know you broke into this place to get Pierce.” He pointed to a screen where a guy dressed in a really expensive suit and surrounded by guards with M16s was heading toward an airplane hangar. “It’s why I’m here tonight. I’ll use my considerable skills to help you reach him before he flies off into the wild blue yonder.”

“And I believe you’ll do this why? If you help me, there’s exactly zero chance Pierce won’t kill you.” I stared at the screen, and my heart practically leapt into my throat when I realized Ricky was among the guards. She was wearing what looked like a straitjacket and bound in chains that glinted silver in the moonlight.

“He can’t do that if he’s dead.” The guy gestured around the room. “He left me here, alone, to deal with you. There’s not even one guard.” All in all, it wasn’t a bad point. Being left to die had a way of making people hate you.

“If you betray me, I will come back and kill you,” I said, making my “I’m totally capable of tearing out your larynx with my teeth” face at him.

“I have no doubt of that, Mr. Brennan.” He tapped a manila folder buried under a plethora of Monster cans. “It’s in the file.”

“What else is in the file?” I asked, reaching out for it. Thus far the only thing I knew about my past had been limited to a couple spotty visions. If these people had information on me, it was a hell of a lot more than I had.

“Psych evaluations on you since you got your arm.” He made like he was going to point at my demonic flesh but stopped himself. “It’s why Pierce is leaving with the girl. That file says you will kill him and anyone else who gets in your way.” He scooted his chair back until it touched the desk. “Look how out of your way I am.” He smiled shakily.

I glanced from the file to him and back again. “So it has nothing about my past?”

“As far as my information goes, you didn’t exist before yesterday.” He swallowed like he was afraid his words would get him shot or tortured. Maybe they would have, but judging by the screens, I didn’t have time to spend dicking with him, especially since he was probably right. He was some flunky. He probably didn’t know anything about me because if he did, I was pretty sure he’d tell me.

“Give me your radio. If anything stupid happens, I want you to stop it, or I’m going to come back.” I shoved the M16’s barrel against his forehead and pressed it into the flesh to leave a mark. “Do you understand?”

He started to nod, stopped himself, and swallowed hard. “Yes, Mr. Brennan.” He swallowed again. “The radios are over there. I’ll put it on channel six. No one usually goes past channel three so you’ll be okay. It also has a vibrating option to get your attention. I’ll use it if you don’t respond and something bad is coming.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I turned and grabbed the radio. It was a pretty standard walkie talkie with an earpiece. I clipped it to my ear and pocketed the rest of the device. I held out my hand to the fat black man. “Hi, I’m Mac Brennan. Pleased to meet you.”

He stared at my hand for a moment before reaching out and taking it in a rather feeble, oily grip. “Todd. Todd Barnes.”

“Well, Todd. How do I get to that bridge?” I wiped my hand on my jeans before pointing at the screen with the zombies and the werewolves. “I need to talk to the one with the red hair, so don’t kill him, okay?”

“Is this a no maiming thing, or is that okay?” he asked, spinning around in his chair so he was facing the keyboard. He took quick stock of the situation and his hands flew over the keys. For a moment it had looked like the werewolves might win, but like magic, the zombies started taking them down. It was pretty crazy how quickly the tables had turned.

“Maim away,” I replied as the zombies quickly regained the upper hand and forced the werewolves back along the platform so it seemed like the werewolves were walking the plank. Hell, maybe that had been the idea. “Nice job by the way.”

“I have uber micro,” he replied, already reaching for his headphones. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him, but I decided to play this one by ear. If he could help me, great. If not, well, there weren’t
that
many zombies left, and I was a pretty good shot.

“One more thing,” I said, glancing at him as I approached the exit, determined to find Pierce and kill him in a brutal, needlessly violent way. “Don’t let them fly away with Ricky. Or else.”

“The female werewolf? I’ll do my best,” he said, looking over and smiling at me. “Thanks for not killing me.”

“The night’s still young.” I pushed through the door, hoping the nerd in the cheese-covered sweatpants could keep them from escaping with Ricky. I gave it fifty, fifty odds.

Chapter 26

Thanks to Todd directing me through the complex, I arrived on the surface a few minutes later without having to fight even a single guard or monster. I was sort of glad too because I hadn’t had to climb up the elevator shaft outside the tech center. I mean, I’d have done it, but I was glad to have avoided it. The likelihood Murphy would smack me like a bitch in that situation was too high to fathom.

I emerged on the opposite side of the shark tank and smiled. All the werewolves appeared to have been incapacitated. A horde of zombies stood in the midst of the fallen werewolves milling about like grotesque, decaying guards. Evidently, Todd was very good at his job. It made me wonder how I’d been able to overcome the zombies, except I hadn’t really. They’d mostly just wanted Ricky, and if I hadn’t released the werewolves, I’d have never made it out of the wine cellar.

When none of the zombies tried to gobble me whole, I sprinted across the platform, trying my best to avoid stepping in the slimy puddles of ichor. Bobby was sitting against one of the glass walls of the bridge over the platform, trying to stuff his guts back into his abdomen. It was sort of funny because there was a big zombie poking him in the side of the head over and over. As I approached, it bared its teeth at me.