Marked: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 2) (21 page)

“I’ll take it from here,” I said, and the zombie’s face went slack and empty.

The creature turned on its heel and walked off toward the other werewolves, none of whom was dead. They were only unconscious or maimed, but they’d all lived, and knowing their healing powers, after visiting a Home Town Buffet, they’d be as good as new. How nice of Todd.

“Hello,” I called, squatting down next to Bobby so the two of us were eye to eye. His left arm had been gnawed nearly to the bone and his right eye was drifting to the side in a way that made me think he’d broken some important muscles in his face. “Remember me? I’m the guy you sucker punched and left in a room full of monsters with a bomb strapped to his chest.”

“How are you here?” Bobby slurred, his words mashing together in a way that made me think concussion. “You’re supposed to be locked away.”

“Focus.” I smacked him upside the head. “Why did you do it, Bobby?”

“Because you’re a Cursed.” He nodded at me like it was answer enough. “If you’re here with Ricky, it means she owes you something, or she likes you.” He stretched out the word like, but I wasn’t sure if that was because his brain was half bashed in or because he was being cute. I poked him in his gaping abdomen wound anyway. Screw the benefit of the doubt. He screamed, and the sound made me feel bad in a “why am I enjoying causing him pain” sort of way so I stopped before I did more. I pushed it out of my mind and followed my own advice. I focused on Bobby.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked, wondering why I was bothering with Bobby at all. I ought to be racing toward Pierce, but instead I was here with this jackass. It wasn’t even a revenge thing, really. If it had been that, I’d have just shot him in the face and moved on. No, it was something I couldn’t put into words. I needed to know why he’d done it.

“Ricky never had the best taste in guys.” His gnawed hand flopped in my general direction like a dying fish. “You’re not a good guy. I know that better than anyone. You’re all sorts of fucked in the head. You were bad for her even before you hooked up with Lucifer.”

“I’m fucked in the head?” I cried filled with the sudden urge to kick his teeth into his brain. “You strapped a bomb to my chest.”

“You snuck into my room when I was a little kid to stab me to death, you stupid fuck.” He shook his head, and it wobbled like one of those bobblehead dolls. “If you think I’d let my sister anywhere near you, you’re on drugs.” He leaned his head back against the glass. It made a none to pleasant squishing sound.

“Right now, your sister is being brought to a plane by Pierce Ambrose. He’ll take her away and do horrible things to her.” I grabbed him by his stupid red hair and dragged him to his feet. It was harder to do than I expected since even emaciated, I was pretty sure he weighed more than me. “I’m the only one who can save her.”

“So why are you here then, Mac?” He smiled at me, revealing a mouthful of crimson teeth. “You should be going after her, but you’re not. You’re messing with me. Why? If you’re such a hero, why are you here?”

“You know, I have no idea.” I shrugged. “I guess, I wanted to know why you did it.”

“It’s because you want me to approve of you.” He smiled at me in that same douchebag way he had when he was a kid making one of my friends eat a worm.

“Nah, I’m far past wanting your approval, Bobby. Far past that.” I shook my head and tried to push down the urge to tear him limb from limb. No matter his intentions, he’d cost me valuable time. “I just wanted to know why you did it. I can sort of respect the big brother protection racket, but if you’d had another reason, well, I might not be so lenient.”

Then because I had no soul, I pushed him backward over the railing. He fell toward the shark tank, and just as his legs were about to go over the railing, I grabbed hold of his ankles. His sudden stop nearly jerked my arms from their socket, but I held on anyway. “But if you ever do something like that again, you’ll be sleeping with the fishes. Capiche?”

He made a half-strangled squawk, I didn’t understand, but that could have been because he was too busy watching his blood hit the water. Huge, dark shapes swarmed through the tank beneath him, and I wondered idly how far sharks could leap out of the water. Hopefully, not far enough to eat him. If they could, I’d sort of feel bad since I didn’t want to kill him. Ricky would probably frown on me doing so, especially since she’d braved Pierce to try to save him. I let out a sigh. It was Bobby’s lucky day because even without being here, his sister was making me a better person. But not that much better.

I turned toward the big, placid zombie who had been poking Bobby and gestured for it to come over. “Can you hold him here for about twenty minutes? Maybe if he’s upside down for a while the blood will rush to his brain, and he’ll get smarter.”

The zombie gave me a thumb’s up and grabbed the werewolf’s ankle. I let go, and Bobby hung there upside down over the shark tank with a look of hatred and fear on his face.

“You can’t leave me like this, Mac,” he cried, staring into the zombie’s impassive, rotting face.

“Don’t worry. I know this guy.” I patted the zombie’s shoulder. “He won’t let you die.” Then I threw up the devil horns and walked down the bridge toward where the runway was supposed to be. “Probably.”

Chapter 27

I sprinted across the park, barely cognizant of the zombies taking down supernatural whoziwhatsits all around me while Todd gave me directions. I was starting to like the guy more and more with each passing moment, and not just because a zombie had body-checked a guard about to shoot me from the bushes as I approached the airport gate. That was just a bonus.

Zombies milled across the runway beyond the heavy wrought iron separating the private air strip from the rest of the park. The zombies, along with a bunch of flying bat creatures who were very interested in the plane’s engines, seemed to have kept the Gulfstream G650 from leaving. Even still, I could tell it wouldn’t be grounded for long.

A whole slew of guards raced down the runway in a hummer outfitted with a Browning M5. They were busily mowing down the mindless, shambling horde, while two sets of three guards on foot headed toward the wings of the Gulfstream.

“The zombies aren’t being super effective,” I muttered into the radio as the gate in front of me unlocked with a flash of green lights. I pushed through it, glad I had my own super hacker at the helm, even if his zombies seemed relatively useless.

“About that… There’s some sort of disrupter on the plane that extends around it about fifty feet in every direction. I’m not sure if they know I’m using the zombies to thwart them or if it’s just a normal defense mechanism they’ve turned on as part of some other system, but it’s eliminating my ability to control them.” Todd said something else, but I didn’t catch it because the guards blasted their flamethrowers in the general direction of the engines.

The black bat things shrieked loud enough to shatter my hearing from several hundred away. They took flight in one huge black cloud, swarming upward and circling like some kind of strange bird of prey before disappearing into the clouds.

The plane’s engines roared to life, and it started forward while the guards scrambled to get out of the way. While they didn’t seem worried about being left behind, they did seem to be worried about the nearly fifty zombies advancing on them from the shadows like they were following along the perimeter of a receding field.

They started firing at the zombies who could do nothing much with so much distance between them. As the undead horde fell, what I could only describe as a giant tree monster smashed through the gate nearest them and shambled forward with several more like it trailing behind. Evidently, it was either undeterred by the zombie repellent field or it wasn’t concerned. I wasn’t sure where the creatures had come from, but I was glad they weren’t focused on me.

“What are those?” I cried as I sprinted toward the plane. It was starting to move now, and there was no way I was going to catch it on foot. Still, I had to try, even though I had no idea what I was going to do even if I caught it. I had half a mind to try to take out the engines with Hellfire, but something told me that might end very badly for Ricky, assuming she was still alive.

“Ents,” Todd replied, a note of smug satisfaction in his voice. “They’re for emergencies only, but I decided I really wanted to deploy my heavy units.”

I was about to yell at him for treating this like a game except for him, it sort of was. Besides, if he wanted to play plants vs. zombies vs. guards, well, I could live with that… hopefully.

The Gulfstream, on the other hand, was getting away, and the pilot didn’t seem particularly worried about running over zombies, which was sort of understandable. I wouldn’t care either, unless they broke the plane or prevented it from taking off. Then I’d care a lot.

“I don’t suppose you have anything to stop the plane?” I cried, sprinting so hard my lungs felt like they were going to explode. It was no use. The Gulfstream would be a speck in the sky long before I even reached where it was now.

“No,” Todd replied before he broke into a huge screaming fit. “No, no, no.” The sound of gunfire exploded through the radio, and the line went dead. A moment later, all the zombies and the two still-upright ents stopped moving. Damn.

“Mr. Brennan,” said a husky, oily voice from the other end of the radio. “This is Pierce Ambrose. Cease your attack, or I’ll kill your friend, Todd.”

“What makes you think I care even slightly about Todd?” I screamed into the microphone while throwing out my hand and concentrating.

“It was worth a shot.” The line went dead. I gritted my teeth.

“I’ll get him for you, Todd!” I growled and gathered all my magic. I flung it toward the Gulfstream, trying to visualize exactly how I’d used it during my fight with Van. My vision went hazy as oily, red sludge, sprang from my tattoos and shot out toward the plane. A reed thin tendril struck the outer shell of the G650 with flare of scarlet light. I had half a second to realize I’d succeeded before I was pulled off my feet and dragged toward the now ascending plane.

Indescribable pain exploded through my arm as I was jerked upward into the air. I’m pretty sure I’d have been ripped to shreds by the runway if the tentacle hadn’t snapped me off the ground and into the air before I really picked up speed. As it was, I managed to only lose a single shoe. It was a pity since I’d rather liked that boot, but I could get a new one.

Coincidentally, that was when I realized I was staring at the quickly receding ground, whereupon I also realized I was attached to a goddamned airplane by a thin tendril of magic as it climbed up into the wild blue yonder. I fought the urge to piss myself and instead focused on retracting my tentacle. The line snapped taut, jerking me forward toward the plane, which was good because I disliked flying through space, but bad because I slammed into the metal skin of the G650 hard enough to rattle my teeth.

“Okay, Mac. Think,” I muttered to myself as my right hand grabbed onto the plane and held me there like I was Spiderman. “How the hell are you going to get inside?”

The door inside was only about a foot away, but I had no idea how I was going to get it open since I couldn’t use my magic to unlock it. If I did, I’d risk falling a thousand feet to the earth. That seemed like a bad idea sans parachute.

“Screw it.” I put the barrel of the M16 to the window above me and fired. The bullets punctured the thin glass in a shriek. I released my hold on the gun, letting it catch on the strap around my shoulder and shoved my left arm inside, reaching in to grab hold of the seatbelt. As I hoisted myself up, I saw two guards crouching for cover, but that wouldn’t last long. Shit was already starting to go nuts inside the cabin as the pilot tried to compensate for the added friction of the busted window.

“Here goes nothing,” I said, and let go of the magic sticking me to the side of the plane. The sudden strain on my left hand was nearly enough to rip my arm off my entire body, but there was no way around it. I gritted my teeth and reached out for the door with my right hand. The moment my fingers touched the door, I cried, “Resero!”

The door opened in a flash of crimson light before getting completely ripped off the plane. I managed to duck out of the way as it went flying. The inside of the plane turned into a wind tunnel of doom, sucking everything out the door while I used another blast of tentacle magic to pull myself inside. It worked, but momentum being the bitch that she is, slammed me into the far wall just as one of the guards slammed his hand on a huge button beside their station. As I crumpled to the floor behind a pair of custom leather seats, little tweety birds flapped around my skull, armored metal sheets came crashing down over the window and the door, sealing off the airplane before more damage could be done. Evidently, this plane had been outfitted with extras. Good to know.

The sound of the two guards rushing toward me was barely audible over the wind whipping around the cabin, and part of me wondered why they weren’t shooting at me. Was it because we were in a plane? Was it bad to shoot inside of planes? It was time to find out.

A grin spread out on my lips as I came up firing my M16 until it clicked empty. The hail of bullets caught the guards in their chests, knocking them from their feet. I was already moving toward the door on the far end of the cabin. I wasn’t sure if it was normal for G650s to have two separate rooms, but this one did.

I scooped up one of the fallen M16s, and as I stood up, a girl dressed like a slutty version of Princess Jasmine from Aladdin stepped between me and the door on the far side of the plane. She was beautiful in that Kansas Prom Queen sort of way, with long, blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. Her hands were curled into white-knuckled fists and her entire four-foot-eight-inch body trembled with barely controlled fury.

“Stop,” she said in a half-strangled, barely controlled snarl. “I don’t want to kill you.”

She bit her lip hard as a wave of darkness swam through her eyes, and even though it seemed like she was fighting it with everything in her, she raised her trembling fists took a step toward me.