Marked: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 2) (6 page)

“Get down!” I cried, dive tackling the werewolf to the ground, which let me tell you, was way harder than it sounded. It was like slamming into a small car made of flesh and bone. Or a pony. Yeah, let’s go with pony. Have you ever tried to knock a pony out of the way by hurling your body at it? It’s hard to do. But I did it. Because, I’m Mac Brennan. Hell yeah!

We crashed to the asphalt as the crazy Goth chick pulled a stockless Uzi from her blouse and unleashed a barrage of bullets that would have torn us to shreds. Even as it was, the shots passed so close to me the wind from them stung my eyes. Her gun bucked like a bronco in her hands as I leapt to my feet and threw myself at her. Let me just say this. Hitting her was quite unlike hitting Ricky. She went down like a drunk girl after prom.

The back of her head cracked against the street, and her eyes went glassy and far off. Her weapon went skittering across the street, and pausing only to kick the bitch while she was down, I scrambled over to it. A moment later, I had the submachinegun in my left hand. I whirled, my finger already on the trigger, and pointed it at the still stunned Maya.

“Hey, you know what’s cool? Not chopping off my arm,” I growled, approaching the crazy bitch while Ricky stood there watching me with a strange look of “oh, shit” on her face. It was weird because I felt pretty damned justified with myself right now. Especially since I was about to get some answers. Like who sent her and how did she know about me when I didn’t know about me.

“Don’t shoot her,” Ricky said way too quickly for me to think she didn’t have an ulterior motive, which was sort of reasonable given that she knew Maya. Maybe the girl had information?

“Why?” I asked then I shot the Goth bitch because there was no reason good enough to not shoot her. The bullet smacked into the Maya’s right shoulder, damned near spinning her around in a spray of crimson. That seemed to bring the bitch around because her eyes bolted open, and she screamed in a way that horrified me. Not because it was scary, but because I liked the terror in her scream. I was starting to see why I had chosen to be a hitman. I was really messed up.

Ricky’s toothy maw fell open in shock as Maya tried to get up, but evidently she wasn’t used to having only one usable arm because she lost her balance and fell back into the puddle of crimson slowly spreading around her body. I’d half-expected her to bleed more, but after she came out of her daze, the blood had just stopped flowing from her wound. Evidently, the girl had a few tricks up her proverbial sleeve. Well, we couldn’t have that.

I approached Maya and shoved the submachinegun up under her chin. “If you even twitch weird I’m going to rearrange your insides with bullets. Are we clear?” I said and my voice was low and empty.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice was defiant and angry. “But you should know—”

“Mac, we need to get out of here!” Ricky cried, running up to me in human form and pointing furiously ahead. I turned my head to see the strobing lights of police cars coming straight toward us. I wasn’t quite sure why they were here already, or who had called them, but at the moment it didn’t seem to matter since I had a submachinegun pulled on a tiny bloody girl in the middle of the street. She was right. We needed to get out of here, right now.

Chapter 7

“We’ll meet again, lover!” Maya called from behind me as Ricky and I raced away from her. The voice in my head had told me to shoot her, but instead, I’d listened to the stupid compassionate voice. Why? Because it had insisted on one crucial bit of information I couldn’t sensibly ignore. What was that bit of information, you ask?

That there was a huge difference between being spotted from far away with what might or might not be a submachinegun and shooting someone in plain view of the police. So I hadn’t shot Maya in the face, even though I’d really wanted to do it.

Even still, I didn’t feel like it was the smart play, more the less bad play. If dealing with supernatural bad guys had taught me anything, it was that second chances to put them down cost a whole heck of a lot more than first chances did and were twice as dicey. At least that’s what I told myself because if I dwelt on the urge to kill raging inside me, I might realize I had wanted to shoot her for other, darker reasons. That wasn’t something I could deal with right now. No, right now I needed to get the hell out of dodge.

“Ignore her. She was just trying to get in your head, and we can’t have that right now,” Ricky huffed as she rounded the corner just ahead of me. “We need to find somewhere to lie low. If we do, I can get us out of here, okay?”

“Yeah,” I said between gulps of air. I really needed to get on that whole cardio thing. This gig was starting to have quite a bit more running than I was used to doing. I mean, I wasn’t out of shape exactly, but here’s the thing about running. Running is what other sports do as punishment.

As I rounded the corner, I shoved the Uzi under my trench coat and wedged the weapon into the waistband of my slacks so it wouldn’t be immediately visible to the old guy staring at me from behind his walker. Which was also pretty much when I heard the helicopter.

It was still too far away for me to be one hundred percent positive from the sound alone, but I was giving it better than fifty, fifty odds, especially given my luck as of late. If the police had called in a chopper, we were going to be in even more trouble real fast. Ricky must have heard the sound of a helicopter too because her ears perked up a split second before she surged ahead, pausing only momentarily to snag a blue and gold sweatshirt and matching baseball cap off the display outside one of those kiosks that sold souvenirs. By the time I passed the kiosk a second later, she had them on, and oddly enough, looked like a completely different person, which was probably the goal.

I had half a mind to do the same thing, but unfortunately, I only made it about two more steps before the angry clerk, a bald-headed man in his late fifties with a cigarette in his mouth and skin the color of bad tea, came roaring off his stool, hollering in a language I didn’t understand. I took one look at him and decided I didn’t want to find out if the thing he was reaching for inside his kiosk was actually a shotgun.

Ricky didn’t even look back at him because she was too busy darting into the traffic-filled street. I followed behind her, hoping she had some kind of plan. Apparently, she did because a second later, she straight up clotheslined a dude right off his crotch rocket motorcycle. The guy wasn’t going fast enough to get seriously hurt because traffic was at a near standstill.

The rider crashed to the ground flat on his back, his black and white helmet smacking into the asphalt with a sickening thwack. Ricky didn’t even pause as she lifted the green Yamaha FZ-09 off the street and spun it around so it was facing oncoming traffic before jumping on. The whole thing had taken less than half a second.

“Get on, Mac!” she called, gesturing at me with one hand.

I did as I was told even though it meant I was riding bitch behind a tiny girl with braces who had just manhandled a motorcycle like it was a toy. My butt had barely hit the seat when she took off, gunning the throttle for all it was worth. I grabbed hold of her, wrapping my arms around her tiny waist as she weaved through the stopped traffic at a billion miles an hour. Part of me was glad she was driving because she had superhuman reflexes and we were on the run, but most of me was praying to any and all deities to not let me end up as a skid mark on the road.

Even with the Yamaha racing through the streets at breakneck speed, the sound of the helicopter getting closer filled my ears. I hazarded a glance over my shoulder and saw it coming across the horizon like a bird of prey. As it zoomed closer, a gut punch of fear and horror smashed into me.

“Um, Ricky, I have good news and bad news,” I cried even though I was only a couple inches from her ear. “That’s not a police helicopter. That’s one of those black helicopters you see in documentaries about the NWO. It even has a couple of guys hanging out of it armed with what look like belt fed Browning M2 machineguns. Those things can spit out over four hundred fifty rounds of .50 BMG a minute.”

“Talk about overkill,” Ricky replied, bearing down on the bike, causing the engine to roar like it was fueled by concentrated hellfire. It wasn’t enough. The NWO guys were gaining on us. Fast. Whoever their pilot was, definitely knew what the hell he was doing.

As I calculated the absolute limit on the effective range of my submachinegun, I grunted in anger. The helicopter’s guns would have us in range long before I’d even come close to being able to make my Uzi count, assuming it could even penetrate the helicopter’s skin. Under normal circumstances a bullet might be a bullet, but I was willing to bet that helicopter was all sorts of armored.

“Um, Ricky, you need to step on it,” I said. “If you don’t get us out of here in the next few seconds, those guns are going to tear us to shreds.”

“I’m giving it all she’s got, Captain!” Ricky yelled in a pretty good imitation of Scotty from Star Trek. It made me smile even though this was supposed to be a serious situation with serious consequences which was probably her goal.

“I’m serious—” The rest of my words were cut off as gunfire erupted all around us. Hundreds of rounds tore up the surrounding vehicles as we bobbed and weaved through the cars because collateral damage apparently wasn’t a thing that bothered them. What dicks.

I had half a mind to see how they fared against a handful of hellfire, but I wasn’t exactly confident I could effectively fling fireballs while on the back of a motorcycle weaving through traffic. If I missed and hit a building or even an electrical pole, who knows what would have happened. Then again, they were shooting at us through a crowded street. Still, even though they were tearing the cars around us to shreds, they hadn’t put a single bullet through a windshield, or really any place where someone might get hurt. It was sort of incredible if you thought about it.

Ricky twisted the bike sideways, bringing us toward a parking garage that would provide us cover, and you know, leave us trapped like rats. Bullets chased us the whole way, ripping into the cement pillars supporting the building as we zoomed inside, straight toward those car spikes designed to give jerks going the wrong way a bad day. Before they could do the same to us, Ricky jerked the bike up into the air in a massive display of strength. The motorcycle lifted off the ground, and we shot over the spikes and landed hard on the other side unscathed just as the barricade barring unauthorized entry slammed down behind us. Our tires spun, caught the cement in a screech of burning rubber, and sent us rocketing into the depths of the garage.

“Well, this is fun. I can’t wait for our second date,” Ricky said, a touch of humor in her voice as she twisted the bike and headed upward into the depths of the building while I struggled to process what had just happened. It seemed totally insane. Had we seriously just been chased through downtown by the NWO?

More likely, those had been Pierce’s goons, but the guy had to be pretty ballsy to send a helicopter to shoot up civilians in the hopes of getting me. Even for him, there had to be some consequences for something like that. Well, maybe not him, but definitely someone who worked for him. I sighed. No, this would definitely fall upon the head of some poor schmuck just trying to do what his idiot boss had told him.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked, ignoring her comment about the date as I looked around to see if anyone had followed inside. No one had, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. If these guys were insane enough to shoot up traffic in the middle of the day just to get us, I put their compunction about blowing the hell out of this parking garage at right around zero.

“We find another vehicle and cruise out of here before more dweebs come inside and kill us,” she said totally using the word dweeb. I mean who says that? What the hell is a dweeb anyway?

“And if they just shoot every car that leaves?” I asked because I would totally do that if I was willing to shoot random bystanders to get my target.

“That, um, is an excellent point.” Ricky swallowed hard as we rounded another corner in search of a vehicle that would meet her needs. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure this place was fresh out of Abrams tanks. “I don’t know what to do then, but I’m open to suggestions.”

“We go with the best defense. Offense,” I said, a smile crossing my lips as I stared at all the shiny cars. “But we might need a distraction.”

“Okay, what do you want me to do specifically?” Ricky asked, slowing to a stop in the middle of the parking garage and looking at me.

“Take me to the roof,” I said only half paying attention to her because I was suddenly too busy wondering which car would be more likely to cause the bigger explosion, the Frontier or the Jetta. The correct answer was, of course, why choose?

“Isn’t the roof where they will have a clear shot at us?” Ricky said as she turned back around and gunned the motorcycle.

“Only if they expect us to be up there, and they won’t because that shit is suicide.” I smiled again and unloaded my Uzi into both cars until flames started pouring out. “Unless, of course, they are expecting the unexpected.” I shrugged, but I don’t think she saw it.

“Great. Now the Animaniacs’ theme song is going to be stuck in my head all damned day,” Ricky growled, not even bothering to ask why I’d just wasted all of my bullets on cars with no bad guys in them. Evidently, she trusted my judgment. Well, there was no way we could still be friends then. People who trust me can’t be trusted to make good decisions.

“They’re zany to the max,” I replied, squeezing her shoulder. “So just sit back and relax.”

“Have I told you how much I hate you?” Ricky asked as we neared the roof. The two cars below us in the garage exploded, causing the whole parking garage to shudder and sway. Good, anyone worth their salt would be trying to figure out what had just happened instead of watching the roof for insane people on motorcycles.

“See, I hear you saying hate, but what I think you really mean is love,” I replied while getting slowly to my feet on the back of the Yamaha.