Burned (16 page)

It was a little weird that they’d marked the spot, but then again, to the average Joe, it’d just look like a pile of rocks. It made me wonder how many other people were buried out here with only a couple of rocks thrown on top for markers. Judging by all the rock piles strewn about the desert, the answer was, “way too many.”

Once the last rock was cleared, I raised the pick and brought it down on the earth with all my strength. It tore into the sandy earth with ease, ripping a furrow in the dirt. I hadn’t been sure what to expect of the ground out here, but it seemed like, despite the sun, the dirt hadn’t compacted yet. Score. I could go right to digging!

I tossed the pick to the side, grabbed my shovel, and began to dig as quickly as I could. By the time I heard the clang of the shovel’s blade on metal, my hands were raw from popped blisters and my muscles ached from exertion. Even still, that sound sent a surge of adrenaline rushing through my veins. My next hurried scoops uncovered the metallic red sheen of a car’s roof. I dropped to my hands and knees beside the hole and pounded on it as hard as I could.

“Hello!” I cried, urgency filling my voice to the limit. “Can you hear me?”

When no one responded, I began furiously scooping away more earth, trying to make my way toward the windshield so I could see inside. They had to be alive. They just had to be! If they weren’t… no, I couldn’t let myself think that.

I had half a mind to try and break through the ceiling with my pick or even Hellfire, but I forced myself not to do that. I had no way of knowing where they were in the car. The risk of hitting them was too great. After everything I’d done to save them, the last thing I wanted to do was kill them in the process.

A few furious moments later, my shovel struck glass. The familiar sound of a cracking windshield filled my ears. I dropped the shovel and flopped down on my belly to see inside. I could just make out the top of my sister’s head slumped against the driver’s side door of the backseat, but from the look of things, she wasn’t moving. That wasn’t good. Not at all. I wasn’t quite sure how long she’d been in there, nor how much air or water had been available. No. I pushed the thought out of my head. She couldn’t be dead. She
wasn’t
dead.

Even though I wanted to just blow open the car with Hellfire, I couldn’t risk it. Instead, I grabbed the pick and slammed the blade into the exposed part of the windshield. I chipped away at it until the hole was large enough for me to put my hand inside and grip the roof of the car.

The muscles in my arms corded with effort as I called upon my power and pulled. Crimson fire leapt from my tattoos like gasoline tossed on hot coals. The metal shrieked as I squared my shoulders and jerked violently upward with the whole force of my magically-enhanced strength. The roof shuddered before ripping back violently like the lid of a sardine can.

Dropped back down onto my belly, I shimmied over to the hole. My nephew lay curled up on the seat next to his mother, but it didn’t look like either of them were breathing. My heart leapt into my throat as tears clouded my vision. Why weren’t they breathing? Why? Was I too late? No! No! No, they couldn’t be dead! They
weren’t
dead!

I shoved the thought out of my mind and reached toward my nephew. As dirt and debris fell onto them, I found myself dreading actually grabbing hold of him and finding him cold and gone. I knew I had to do it, but I really didn’t want them to be dead. If they were, after everything I’d done to get them back, I didn’t know what I’d do.

“I’m coming,” I called, but there was still no response. I steeled myself, trying vainly to keep my runaway heart from hammering through my chest. It sort of worked. “Just give me a second.”

As my fingers reached out to touch my nephew’s face, his eyes flitted open.

“Uncle Mac?” he asked, voice thick with exhaustion. “Is that you?”

“Joey!” I cried, triumph and relief surging through my veins. “Thank God, you’re okay!” My hand touched his cheek right before something struck me hard on the back of the head, turning my vision into a billion shards of jagged glass.

Chapter 24

I awoke to find myself suspended from the ceiling by my ankles. The chain they’d used had links large enough to moor the Queen Mary. My arms fared little better since they were firmly secured within a straitjacket. Whoever had done this was taking no chances. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Part of me was glad to be taken seriously for once, but most of me was pissed the fuck off. I’d been so close to getting my family back, and now I was here. Wherever here was.

Three of the walls were made from whitewashed cinderblock while the other was composed of glass with wire mesh running through it. The floor was concrete, but had no floor drain. Good, that meant they didn’t normally hose it off.

Blood pounded in my ears as I looked around, trying to identify my surroundings, but unfortunately, nothing but my splitting headache made itself immediately apparent. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself and figure out what had happened.

The last thing I remembered was reaching inside the car for my nephew. He’d been alive then, but what had happened after I’d gotten knocked out? Were they okay, or were they still trapped? I wasn’t sure, but just knowing he’d been alive was enough to make me calm down. If they were still trapped, at least they wouldn’t suffocate. If they weren’t, well, I’d find them.

I struggled, trying to free myself, but it was no use. I was wound up tighter than a monkey’s nuts. I glared up at the carabineer locking me to the large metal ring set into the ceiling. I couldn’t quite see my feet, but from the feel of the hard steel biting into my ankles, I was pretty sure I’d been shackled. This was definitely not awesome.

“You have exactly three seconds to let me down before I get angry, and trust me, you won’t like me when I’m angry,” I muttered to no one in particular, but much to my non-surprise, no one answered, even after my time limit expired. Well, that was fine with me. If they didn’t want to let me out, I had other ways. Like demonic magic.

Ignoring my pulse thudding in my ears, I reached out for my magic, desperate to escape, but as I tried, I found I couldn’t. It was weird, sort of like reaching into a darkened room for a switch you knew was there and finding only blank wall. Fear twisted up in my guts. If I didn’t have my magic, how was I going to get out of this? No. That was the wrong way to think. After all, I was Mac Brennan. I’d get out of this. I just needed to wait for my opportunity and pounce on it like a cupcake at a baby shower.

“I still think you should just sell him to Baal and be done with it.” Maya’s voice filtered in from outside the room. I looked up to see the dark-haired Goth girl who had tried to sashimi my arm and serve it up to the highest bidder. She watched me from beyond the glass like I was a lobster in a tank at a restaurant. One of her arms was bound up in a sling, presumably from where I’d shot her with her own Uzi. For some reason, I still didn’t feel bad about it.

As we made eye contact, her eyes widened a touch, making me think she was surprised I was awake. Before I could do more than blink, she shook her head just a touch. Was she telling me to keep quiet? Why would she do that? Maybe it was just a trick to keep me docile, but so far, she was the only person I’d seen. I decided to trust her. Yeah, it was stupid, but what else was I supposed to do? Start screaming and draw attention to myself? There’s no way that would end well.

“Look, we’re paying you to keep him subdued and powerless, not for your opinion on our plan,” replied a gruff, exasperated voice. I tried to look for the speaker, but the only person visible beyond the glass was Maya. The speaker appeared to be staying off screen for now. Well, I’d have to fix that. I guess, you know, if I needed to do so.

“Yeah, no one ever wants me for my mind, but in this case, you get it for free,” Maya said, inhaling sharply so her too tight Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt strained under the force of her unnaturally large breasts. “All I’m saying is that inviting an Alpha werewolf here while you hold her boyfriend hostage is a piss poor plan. The chances of someone disemboweling you are high.” Maya touched her lips with one lime green fingernail. “If you let me summon Baal, we can be done with this in the next ten minutes and be a million dollars richer.” She leaned her back against the glass, and as she did so, a loud sigh filled the air.

“That is not the plan.” A guy the size of a freaking dump truck wearing a red shirt and camouflage pants stepped into view. He narrowed his cold gray eyes at Maya. “The plan is to lure the Alpha here, kill her, and then send him to Baal.” He smacked one fist into his palm with a meaty thwack. “It’s a twofer.”

“It’s called getting rid of the bird in the hand for a chance at two in the bush,” Maya said, stepping toward the guy and lightly touching his forearm. If this was her way of helping me, well, it certainly sucked. Trading me to Baal was not going to help me in the slightest. Then again, I had no way of knowing if she was actually going to help me. Fuck. I was screwed.

He looked down at her like she was some kind of loathsome creature. “Take your hand off me unless you wish to walk around with both of your arms in slings.”

“Oh, don’t you like it when I touch you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and trailing her finger up his arm. “What’s the matter, not fond of my kind?”

“I will not ask you again,” he said, and as the words left his mouth, Maya pulled her hand back. It seemed like a wise move, even from my vantage point. The guy had one of those stone-cold killer faces that would just as soon disembowel you as offer you a cookie.

Maya threw her hand up in the air in the universal “I mean you no harm” gesture, only when she did it, a cloud of green gas exploded from her hand. It hit the guy full in the face, and he staggered back like he’d been struck across the bridge of the nose with a fire extinguisher. As he collapsed to his knees, he reached up and tried to bat the gas away. That’s when his eyes began to spew viscous yellow slime. It was kind of gross.

Maya ignored his convulsing body and turned toward me with a huge smile on her face. With a flick of her black hair, she sauntered over to the door set in the glass. I watched in amazement as it opened.

“Hello, Mac,” she said, not moving from her position on the opposite side of the threshold. “Remember me?”

“Like a goddamned toothache,” I replied, glaring at her as hard as I could. I wanted to do more, like kick her in the teeth and escape, but I couldn’t, not if I wanted her to help me. It was a longshot, sure, but at the moment, it was also my only shot.

She put her hand on her hip and smiled at me. “I do like to be memorable. Now if you’ll excuse me.” She glanced over at the guy writhing on the ground. “I need to summon Baal before his friends come down to check on us.” With that, she unslung a black backpack covered in patches for punk rock bands like the Ramones, Black Flag, and The Clash. She dropped it lightly to the ground, and it squawked, which seemed like a weird thing for a backpack to do.

“If you pull a severed head out of there, I’m going to be very upset,” I said as she got down on her knees and unzipped the pack. Instead of responding, she opened it to reveal a birdcage filled with parakeets. “What the fuck are those for?” I asked as she reached into the cage and grabbed a yellow and green-colored bird. She shut the cage and held the bird out in front of me.

“For summoning Baal. I know you don’t absolutely need the birds to complete the ritual, but when dealing with demons, it’s best not to take any chances.” She snapped the bird’s neck between her thumb and forefinger before and placed it before me like a cat offering its master a treat.

“I’m not quite sure I understand what is going on here,” I said as she pulled a piece of hot pink sidewalk chalk out of her pocket and started drawing geometric designs on the floor of the cell.

“Oh, it’s quite simple,” Maya said as she drew what looked like a pentagram filled with concentric circles around the dead parakeet. “I like money. A lot. Like pretty much more than anything. Baal is offering a million dollars for you, alive.” She looked up at me, eyes wide. “Do you have any idea what I could do with that kind of scratch?”

“Get larger breasts?” I asked in an effort to buy time. So far, she’d taken out the guard and opened the cell, which was good, but unless I could figure out a way down, it wasn’t doing me a lot of good.

“What’s wrong with my breasts? They’re the best money can buy.” She fixed me with a level stare, and I watched the gears in her mind turn. “Or was that some kind of joke? What’s next? Going to tell me I need my nose done?” She flicked at her nose with her thumb, smudging it with chalk. “I’ll have you know, this is Angelina Jolie perfection right here.”

When I didn’t immediately respond, she watched me long enough for it to feel really uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure how, but I was suddenly worried this route had crossed into territory I didn’t want to cross over into, and I had no way to respond to her. What was I supposed to do in this situation? Tell the crazy homicidal sociopath she didn’t need so much plastic surgery to be beautiful? It wasn’t like I could even bring up the whole inner beauty thing. Then again…

“Wait, are you going to sell me to Baal to get money for more surgery?” I asked, hoping that wasn’t the case, but also wondering what more she could possibly do. “Is that why you want the money so much?”

“You don’t know anything about me, Mac,” she said and went back to drawing.

“Maybe I’d like to know more about you,” I said, trying my best to sound sincere. I’ll admit, I didn’t sound very sincere, but then again, I was hanging upside down by my ankles while she planned to sell me to a demon.

“No, you don’t.” She didn’t even look up at me. “People always think they do, but they don’t. I’m a lot more complicated than one might think, which is why I try to keep things simple. I do jobs. I get paid. You’re a job. Befriending me won’t change that unless you can write me a check for a million dollars.”

“Fair point, but out of curiosity, what makes you think Baal will keep his end of the bargain?” I went to gesture at myself but couldn’t for obvious reasons. “The whole reason I’m in this mess is because Baal wanted to kidnap my family rather than just pay me to do what I do best.”