Marked: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 2) (22 page)

“What’s going on?” I asked, pointing my M16 at her face. I had no idea who she was, but something about her was definitely off. She took another step, and my urge to shoot her so I could burst into the room beyond and rescue Ricky was nearly overwhelming. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure why I didn’t squeeze the trigger of my M16. Actually, that wasn’t true. I knew why. It was because even though she seemed like a sack of crazy, something about her struck me as helpless.

“Pierce sent me out here to stop you,” she said, and her words were breathless and angry. “I have to do what he says.” She swallowed hard as amber swirled up in her perfect blue eyes. “He is my Alpha. I have no choice.”

“What do you mean you have to do what he says?” I said, confusion filling my voice. “He can’t make you do anything.”

“He can. He is my Alpha, my dominate. He can make me do
anything
he wants.” She shook her head, and as she did so, I realized tears were gathering in the corners of her eyes. “Even now, I can feel his will like a warm breath on the back of my neck. It’s all I can do to not give in and tear you asunder.” She swallowed hard and things began to writhe beneath her flesh. She was going to transform any second. “You think I want to be dressed like this?” It was a reasonable point. I didn’t know many women who would want to model their normal mode of dress after the slutty version of a Disney character. Somehow, her dilemma made me want to make Pierce pay even more. I hadn’t even thought that was possible.

“You really can’t fight it?” I asked, bringing the M16 up and sighting it on her. I didn’t want to shoot her, but I was really sure she wasn’t going to give me a choice. Mind controlled or not, if she came at me, I was putting her down. Even if it made me hate myself.

“You don’t understand. When I’m with Pierce, everything in me wants to please him, to make him happy. I can’t imagine not wanting it to be that way.” She took another step forward so the barrel of my gun was pressed between her barely concealed breasts. “The only reason I can even think is because Ricky is fighting him, but that will end soon. Then she’ll be like me, just a mindless prop and part time sex puppet.”

The thought of Pierce making Ricky fall head over heels for him via mind control made revulsion and hatred swell inside me until I was about to burst. I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let that happen. Pierce Ambrose was going to die!

“That’s not going to happen to Ricky,” I said before unloading the M16 into her chest. The bullets weren’t silver, so they didn’t kill her, but they certainly threw her backward in a spray of blood and bone. She hit the ground like a broken doll and lay there. Her body was already working to sew itself back together, but it would take time. Still, if she was anything like Ricky, I didn’t have long.

I dropped the empty M16 and picked up the other guard’s still partially full one. It wasn’t like he was using it anyway.

“I hope you’re right,” she whispered as I stepped past her and hit the button on the side of the door. “Either way, when I get up, I’m going to try to kill you.”

I would have turned to her, would have offered her some kind of assurance, but the door in front of me opened, revealing a room straight out of an Arabian movie. It was filled with lush pillows with at least five scantily-clad women lounging upon them. Pierce stood toward the back, one arm around Ricky’s neck. Her face was twisted in rage and fear while a smug smile filled his goateed face. The son of a bitch was using her as a human shield.

“You’re just in time to see her break, Mac. Once she does, I’ll have the exquisite pleasure of watching her gut you.” He had one of those spoiled rich kid voices. The kind I could picture calling home to his oil tycoon father and wanting another Ferrari because he needed only one more to complete the palette of colors he already owned.

Similar to the girl I’d just blasted in the chest, Ricky was dressed in a pair of see-through pink pants and a matching top that left little to the imagination. I fought the urge to look away because if I did, I was pretty sure Pierce would shoot me with the Beretta in his hand. Then again, he was probably going to do that anyway.

A wave of fury washed over me, distilling everything down to his stupid, smug face. I was going to tear his goddamned head off.

“How can you do this to these women?” I snarled, barely able to recognize my own voice. I honestly hadn’t been sure what to expect from Pierce Ambrose being that I’d never actually seen the man before, but what I saw fit the bill of an oily, super-rich prick who desperately needed to get shot in the face. He wore one of those custom black suits from Milan, had perfectly tanned olive skin, and probably waxed his chest.

“This is my right as Alpha.” His dark eyes flashed with amusement as he leveled the gun at me. Those eyes told me everything I needed to know about him. He
always
got what he wanted. Well, it was time to change that.

“Your right as Alpha can go fuck itself!” I snarled as the blank faced girls surrounding us stood as one, and I suddenly realized I was in a room with five female werewolves who were all supposed to be alphas in their own right, and somehow, I didn’t think my borrowed M16 was loaded with silver. This was going to get really bad, really fast.

“You can think whatever you want, but they are mine to do with as I wish.” Pierce shrugged and gestured insolently at me with his gun. “And what I wish, is for them to kill you. Violently.”

“I’m a touch harder to kill than you’d think,” I said, and as the closest girl edged toward me, I threw a handful of hellfire at Pierce. He ducked, dropping Ricky in the process, which was what I’d hoped for since I was already sprinting toward them. If I got to her, I could get us out of here. I wasn’t sure how exactly, but I was confident that part would come to me.

The fireball hit the section of plane behind Pierce and blew out the wall of the plane. Almost immediately, we listed sharply, and unfortunately, I lost my balance and went careening toward the opening in the wall along with everyone else. Stupid wind tunnel effect. My M16 went flying from my hand as I slid across the plane and crashed into the cushioned wall.

As everyone scrambled to grab onto something so they wouldn’t get sucked outside, I tried to get my bearings, but my vision was a little too blurry and the floor a little too unsteady. Not that it mattered. Even if the pilots could land a plane with a hole in it, there was no way I was letting Pierce off this plane alive. If it came down to it, I’d take him, and everyone else, down with the ship. I just needed a way to make sure Ricky was safe first. Admittedly, the thought of killing all these women pained me, but not
that
much. If they were the price I needed to pay to take down Pierce, I’d pay it gladly.

“Mac,” Ricky called from across the plane. She was on her hands and knees near Pierce who was already leveling his Beretta at me. He had his other hand on the couch, holding himself steady in a truly amazing show of strength. “Make your phone call.”

With those words, Ricky threw herself backward. Her shoulder slammed into Pierce as he fired. The bullet flew by my head and buried itself in the wall behind me as the two of them tumbled through the opening I’d rent in the plane and disappeared from view.

“No!” I screamed, and even though it was the stupidest thing I’d ever done, I rushed toward the opening. As I did so, one of the women grabbed hold of me, stopping me before I could be sucked outside the plane. She didn’t seem very old, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and something about seeing her dressed the way she was made me physically ill. When the women had rose as one, their faces had held certain blankness, I hadn’t really registered, but as this girl looked at me, I saw recognition fill her features. Even a girl this young wasn’t safe from the mind control. The thought made my blood turn to ice.

“They’re both as good as dead. Even a werewolf cannot survive a fall from this high,” she said as I grabbed the parachute off the wall next to her before throwing off her steely grip.

“Then I’ll just have to catch her before the sudden stop at the bottom,” I cried, leaping out after her anyway.

Chapter 28

I slung on the parachute as I careened down through the air, thankful the straps went on easily enough, and the wind didn’t tear it from my hands. I snapped the buckles into place and cinched on the straps, tightening them as best as I could before lining my body up like a torpedo and heading straight for the flailing forms of Ricky and Pierce. They weren’t much farther down than me, only about thirty meters or so, but that might as well have been a lifetime in the air.

It was a little weird because it felt like I was falling forever, despite the fact it’d been less than a second since I’d leapt from the G650. As I torpedoed downward toward them, I tried to figure out how high up we were. If I had to guess, we were somewhere around three thousand feet in the air, well above the twenty-five-hundred feet most recreational divers jumped at. I was pretty sure I could save us both if I got to her before about a thousand feet, but anything after that would be pushing it since I wasn’t using a base jumping rig designed to deploy quickly, and I had no idea how this chute was packed. Hell, for all I knew, it wouldn’t open at all.

Ricky saw me then, and her entire body rippled with shock. Pierce must have seen me at the same time because he wrapped himself around Ricky like an octopus. I got the impression they had been fighting to keep from being the one on the bottom as though it would matter, but now Pierce had changed course. He just wanted to take Ricky with him.

His gun came up, and he fired at me. The bullet streamed by me, and I shut my eyes for a second, trying to calm myself even though I was falling through the sky a couple thousand feet above the Earth. Another bullet whistled by me, and I gritted my teeth.

My eyes snapped open. I was only ten meters away now. As Pierce lined up his next shot, Ricky elbowed the smug bastard in the jaw. His head snapped to the side and what looked like teeth burst from his lips. Ricky struggled, trying to throw the man off as he put the gun to her side and emptied two quick shots into her abdomen. Blood burst out her body, spraying across the horizon as a cry of rage tore from my lips.

Ricky stopped struggling, her body going mostly limp in his grip as silver light flared from the wound. The bastard was using silver. Ricky couldn’t heal it.

“Ignis!” I cried before I could stop myself from trying to throw fire at my advisory while he was using Ricky as a human shield. Hellfire exploded from my palm as I flung my hand outward toward him. The fireball streamed through the air, catching Pierce’s gun hand as he tried to line up another shot and damned near blew his entire arm off.

A scream of pain burst from his ragged throat, and he lost his grip on Ricky. Their two bodies drifted apart, and I redoubled my effort to catch her. We were closing in on what seemed like two thousand feet at an alarming rate. There wasn’t much time left. The ground was rushing toward me faster than I could really comprehend. Ricky’s eyes were open, and her face was a mask of pain. Even still, she reached out toward me with one hand, while trying to staunch the bleeding with the other.

“Almost there, Ricky!” I cried, stretching my hand toward hers. My fingers brushed against her hand as Pierce caught hold of her left ankle. He jerked her violently away. She went tumbling down behind him.

“Nice try, Mac!” he said, grinning at me. “But we’re all going to die here.” He pulled another gun from a holster beneath his jacket and aimed it at me. He was so close, there was no way he could miss, and worse still, Ricky was actually behind him now, blocked from my view. I knew Pierce was trying to keep me from reaching her with time to pull the parachute, and was now willing to sacrifice himself to make sure they both died, but something about him blocking me from her with his body made everything in me go cold and dark.

“Or, you can just die!” I cried, snatching the knife from my ankle holster and throwing it at him in one smooth motion. The silver blade caught him in the shoulder as he pulled the trigger. His bullet hit me in the right side of the chest. Breath wouldn’t come as the weapon slipped from his finger and fell.

I tried to ignore the pain in my chest, tried to ignore how I couldn’t breathe, and instead, called up one last handful of hellfire. My vision went spotty and dark as I threw it at Pierce with everything I had left. The blast hit him in the chest, sending him rocketing down through the air past Ricky’s tumbling body like a comet.

Air wouldn’t come. My vision was fading, but I fought it as best I could. Ricky was only a few inches away now. I could reach her. I had to reach her. Her hand came up. Her scarlet fingers reached for mine. Blood splattered across my face, but I wasn’t quite sure who it came from, me or her. Our hands touched, and the moment they did, I seized her wrist. Her warmth surged through me as I pulled her up into my body and wrapped my legs around her waist.

“Hang on!” I cried and tore open the cord on the parachute. It didn’t open. Instead, the cord came free in my hand. Had one of Pierce’s shots damaged it? God, I was really starting to hate that guy. The ground below surged up toward us, and I watched in horror as we got closer to what I judged was the fifteen-hundred-foot mark. I jerked the emergency cord.

The parachute opened, but as it did so, it seemed to get tangled. It opened, but not all the way, and even though it jerked us upward, it didn’t slow us nearly enough. If we’d been higher up, it might have worked, but at this distance we were going way too fast for any kind of survivable landing without the full chute. I tried to breathe, tried to suck in a single breath, but I couldn’t. Ricky’s arms wrapped around me, and I felt her pull me close as the strained parachute started to tear off the straps.

“It’s okay, Mac. You tried, and I love that you did” She kissed me, pressing her lips against mine as a strap ripped free, and we tumbled into a spin. I wound up upside down, her clinging to me like it’d somehow keep us from splattering across the pavement below. Five hundred feet.