Seized: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 4) (7 page)

“So we’re going to jump through a portal at the Empire State Building and wind up in Beleth’s hideout?” I shook my head as I tried to process that. “That sounds crazy, and besides, what is to stop her from watching the entrance?”

“No one uses the Empire State Building entrance,” Jenna said, her smile returning as the Devil twinkled in her eyes. “No one will be watching, and even if someone is watching, it won’t be more than we can handle.” Her eyes moved to the shotgun in my hand and the AK47 slung over my shoulder. It was when I realized she’d kept the pilfered AK too.

“And where exactly is Beleth’s lair?” I asked, hoping I was wrong. “Since you said the border is thin, I’m guessing that means we won’t be on Earth?”

“Hell, Mac. We’re going to Hell. Well, a tiny subdivision of Hell. Like the suburbs,” Wendy said from the front seat. Judging by the lack of cheer in her voice, she didn’t seem terribly thrilled about it. “That’s what is on the other side of this particular thin place. That’s why they didn’t just come out and say where we were going.” Her cold, empty eyes glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and as she stared a hole in me, I realized she was telling the truth. We really were going to Hell. Fuck.

“Awesome,” I said, hoping my stolen weapons would be enough because it didn’t seem like it would be enough to storm Hell. “Just fucking awesome.”

Chapter 7

Thankfully, we weren’t plagued by gun-toting nuns on the train ride to Manhattan. Less fortunately, we’d had to ditch all our guns, by which I mean Jenna and I had to ditch our guns since we were the only ones carrying them. Not having a weapon made me feel naked and exposed, especially since there weren’t many problems I couldn’t solve by shooting them in the face.

When we emerged from Penn station, the air was surprisingly brisk. As we walked along Thirty-Fourth Street toward Fifth Avenue, I found myself glad I had a trench coat instead of a suit jacket. No suit would have been able to withstand this kind of chill. Still, it made me feel like a little bit of a wuss since girls were walking around in short skirts and t-shirts. Whatever, at least I was mostly warm.

“So where is the thin place?” I asked, glancing at my entourage and sighing. We looked like the racially diverse cast of a sitcom. “I know you said it was at the Empire State Building, but that’s a pretty big building.”

“Around the eighty-fourth floor,” Wendy said, glancing up at the building while shielding her eyes from the glare with one hand. She mumbled to herself in what sounded like Latin and nodded once. “Yeah, the eighty-fourth floor.”

“And how do we get to the thin place on the eighty-fourth floor?” I asked, hoping we weren’t going to have to scale the building from the outside or try something even crazier.

“We take the elevator, Mac,” Wendy said, glancing at me like I was a total idiot before stepping into the building. I let out a sigh. Of course we would be taking the elevator. Man, I really needed to stop hanging out with the supernatural. I’d totally expected to be whisked up via magic.

The others followed after the girl like she was some kind of thin place smelling bloodhound, which based on her earlier actions, seemed likely. I guess we all had our roles to play after all. I was, obviously, a Cursed, and Jenna was clearly a badass mercenary. Vitaly was our fearless leader who was also some kind of mutant vodka-gulping werebear.

Wendy was the big question mark. Other than bicker with her creepy “talking” doll, I hadn’t seen her do much of anything. Sure, she’d come out of the diner carrying a severed head and covered in blood, but I hadn’t seen her tear the head off the nun, who owned it, or anything. For all I knew, she was just eye candy.

However, being able to spot the thin place leading into Beleth’s lair seemed like as good a reason as any to have her along, and it certainly seemed like she could do that. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that her ability to find thin places was just a bonus and not because she’d walked out with a decapitated head.

After all, pretty much everyone in our party seemed more than capable of going all sorts of “bull in a china shop” on our enemies. No, she had to be here for another reason. There was definitely more to the girl than met the eye, and I wished I knew what it was. Despite being an ardent believer in expecting the unexpected, surprises had a way of, well, acting in an unexpected way.

I pushed the thought away. There were only two emotions on a job, fear and hope. If I succumbed to fear before we even started, I might as well put a gun to my head and pull the trigger now. Still, putting my hope in Vassago to assemble a team that would help me succeed in rescuing the kids stretched my ability to hope to the absolute limit. I didn’t doubt the demon wanted his payday, but I didn’t think he’d care about casualties. If I, or any of the children not specifically bought and paid for, became one of those casualties, well, I was pretty sure the demon wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

“You coming, princess?” Marvin asked, his wooden head poking out from Wendy’s black backpack like an angry cat. “Or you just going to stand outside and mope?”

“That’s his thing,” Jenna said, glancing at me from just beyond the threshold. “He gets all broody just before every mission. This is the part where he decides whether or not he can trust us. Newsflash, Mac. You can.”

I glared at her, and she gave me an evil wink. That was exactly what had been going on, and it pissed me off to think she knew me that well when I didn’t know a thing about myself or her. Well, when this was over, I was going to sit Jenna down for a long talk. Assuming, of course, we both made it through this mission alive. If we were really going to venture into Hell, even if it was just to the “suburbs,” there were infinite ways this could go south. The idea that our job would go off without a hitch was almost laughable.

“So where’s the elevator?” I asked as we walked toward a throng of people in line to buy tickets to the top of the tower.

“On the other end of that line, unfortunately,” Jenna said, gesturing at the snaking crowd while staring at her smart phone dismally. “It’s an hour wait too.”

“Is no matter,” Vitaly said, glancing at Jenna and heading over to the will call counter. “We aren’t paying.” He stepped into the much smaller will call line. A few minutes later, he emerged with several express VIP tickets to the top of the tower. As he handed them out to each of us, his eyes twinkled. “USA is good country. You can pay to skip line. Is closest thing to royalty.”

“Awesome,” Wendy said, the first hint of cheer entering her voice since I’d met her. “I always wanted to be first class.”

I glanced at the ticket in my hand as we made our way to the VIP entrance. I wasn’t sure how much these tickets cost, but even if it wasn’t a lot, I was really glad Vassago was footing the bills. It made me wonder how Vassago handled expenses. Was there a daily stipend or did you just turn in your receipts? I probably should have found out, but I didn’t have a single dollar to my name so I couldn’t have bought anything anyway. A stipend would have been nice though.

“Wait a second,” I said, waving the ticket in the air. “This ticket says the eighty-sixth floor. Don’t we need to go to the eighty-fourth floor?”

“Oh, so you can read. I was beginning to wonder,” Marvin said in a way that made me want to stuff him in the nearest trash can.

Jenna glanced at me, her sly grin returning. “We’re going to have to jump from the eighty-sixth floor. It’s the only way we’ll have enough distance to hit the thin spot.”

A shudder ran through me as I processed the idea of jumping off the Empire State Building. Despite my earlier “mind over matter” manifesto, there was no scenario I envisioned that didn’t end with me splattered across Fifth Avenue.

“You’ve got to be out of your goddamned mind,” I cried as we cleared the metal detector and approached a section where they took touristy pictures. I’ll just say it now. Ours looked ridiculous, and I totally wanted a copy, although I didn’t know why.

“There is no other way, Mac,” Jenna said, careful to keep her voice down as we were ushered inside an elevator with half a dozen other people. “Just use your magic to make sure you make it.” The rest of her words went unsaid, but I could fill in the blanks. “Unless you want to have a hard stop at the bottom.”

“Are you always this much of a pussy?” Marvin asked, peeking out at me once again. As he spoke, several other patrons gave us
the
look. You know, the “why am I on the elevator with a crazy person” look. I ignored them.

“I am not a pussy,” I told the doll before flicking him between the eyes. Take that maturity.

“Don’t touch him,” Wendy snapped, whirling around to glare at me with pixie-like rage. “I may smack him around, but you most certainly don’t get to do it.”

I raised my hands in capitulation. “Sorry.”

Thankfully, the doors opened before we could argue more, and we spilled out onto the Eightieth floor. Crowds of people swarmed around us as we were directed into another elevator. Before I could catch my breath, we hurtled upward, and were soon standing in the observatory of the Empire State Building.

It was surprisingly warm inside the building, but the moment we stepped outside, I started shivering despite my trench coat. I hadn’t thought about how cold it would be eighty-six stories in the air, but it made sense since it’d been cold on the ground, and it was always colder the higher up you went.

We moved around the platform in one giant mob until we were at the spot where you could clearly see the Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty in the distance. The view was spectacular, and even though I wasn’t here to sightsee, I sort of wished I had a camera to take some pictures.

As we approached the railing, Wendy pointed to nowhere in particular. “It’s right below us. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach.” She looked back at us, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was going to vomit all over us. If that happened, there was no way I was going to hold her hair out of her face.

“And even if I was crazy enough to jump off a building into nothing, how are we going to get around the gate?” I gestured at the huge wrought-iron fence surrounding the railing and quirked an eyebrow.

Before I’d even finished speaking, Vitaly had pushed his way to the front of our little group. He ran his huge hands along the cold, black metal and smirked.

“Okay,” Vitaly said, nodding at us. “I open way. You follow. Be quick. If it closes, you go splat.”

Part of me wished he’d left that last part out. I was already feeling dubious about leaping from one of the world’s tallest buildings, and now there was a possibility the door he opened would vanish before I got there. That was total bullshit. Still, I was Mac Brennan, and I never let a thing like falling to my death stop me.

Vitaly waited until we all acknowledged him before pulling a plastic key from his hip pocket that looked exactly like Sora’s keyblade from Kingdom Hearts.

It glimmered like freshly hammered silver in the sunlight, and as Vitaly touched it to the metal gate, the entire structure shimmered. Bronze sparks leapt from the tip of the key and raced along the bars, and as they did, the entire section of gate vanished into smoke that smelled like mint chip ice cream.

I was still in awe of how he’d done it with a magical toy key, when Vitaly climbed up on the cement wall and leapt through the hole like we weren’t eighty-six stories in the air. I rushed forward in time to see him thrust the key into the air a couple floors below.

Golden light streamed off the key as the air exploded in a flash of purple before tearing asunder with a sound like cracking thunder to reveal a pustule of black swirling clouds where nothing but empty sky had been before. The Russian’s body swirled in a way that reminded me of a cartoon character getting sucked into a hurricane before he vanished like he’d never been there at all. Well, that was new, and terrifying as hell.

“There’s no way I’m doing that,” I said, stepping back so I could flee. Kids or not, I was not leaping off this building so I could get sucked into Hell’s hurricane.

“We don’t have time for you to back out now,” Jenna said, grabbing my hand and pulling me onto the rail with her. Her hand was surprisingly warm, and as she squeezed my fingers, something about the gesture comforted me in a way I hadn’t expect. “It will close soon.” With that she released my hand and jumped. As she leapt into oblivion and left me standing by myself on the rail, people began screaming behind us and rushing forward toward us.

As Jenna vanished into the tear in reality, I gritted my teeth. It was so far down it was making me dizzy. I still wanted to run away, but I tried to push the fear back down inside me, and not because Wendy was giving me the “I will throw you into that hole” look.

“Here goes nothing,” I said before doing what any insane person would do. I shut my eyes and leapt off the top of the building. Even though I’d jumped out of an airplane before, this was quite a bit different since I didn’t have a goddamned parachute. As I careened through the air toward the swirling vortex with my eyes closed, I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen. I just hoped it wouldn’t hurt.

I was wrong. Entering the doorway to Hell was like slamming into a brick wall face first. I cried out in pain as my eyes flashed open. I was lying on the floor of a stone cavern glowing with purple effervescent fungus and water dripping from stalactites overhead. As I crawled to my feet, Wendy burst through the emptiness behind me, but unlike me, she landed daintily on her feet. I sucked in a breath that tasted like cloves and cheap beer and tried to make my heart stop hammering in my chest. I ignored the adrenaline rushing through my veins as my brain slowly oriented itself to my new reality.

“Well, looks like we made it,” Jenna said from a few feet away. “Where to?”

I glanced toward her and my heart sank. The cavern split off into no less than ten darkened tunnels lined with stalactites and stalagmites so they looked like the mouths of a horrible beast.

“We pick by eenie meenie miney moe. Is easy, yeah? You catch tiger by toe,” Vitaly said, moving past us and approaching the tunnels. The look Jenna gave him summed up my feelings exactly. It was a look of “Are you fucking serious?”