twice cursed mage 05 - claimed (17 page)

“I don’t think they’re all real,” Jack said, and as he spoke, the mass congealed into a huge blob of darkness. I fired at it anyway and got bupkis for my troubles. The buckshot simply passed through the black glob.

As I pumped another shell into place, the torrent of darkness hit me in the chest with a wet smack that knocked me to the ground. My head smacked painfully off the ground and the shotgun slipped from my grip and fell limply against my chest. I tried to blink away the sudden haze, but before I could, Martha reached out of the darkness and latched both of her hands around my throat.

Her nails dug into the tender flesh of my throat as she cut off my air supply. Tears filled my eyes as I tried to knock her off, but instead of being able to grab onto her, my fingers passed through her body like I was trying to grab ahold of warm Jell-O.

“You killed my daughter,” she snarled, leaning in close to me so I could feel the fetid heat of her breath on my cheek. “Now you’ll pay—”

She was knocked off of me by a cowboy boot to the side of the head. She flew into a nearby chain-link fence and tore through the twisted metal before hitting the road on the other side and skidding several feet.

“You okay?” Jack asked while not stopping to help me. Instead, he marched toward her and stepped lithely through the new hole in the fence.

“Yeah,” I muttered between gulps of air, but I don’t think he heard me because he was too busy stomping a mud hole in Martha’s ass.

“Hey, Martha. How are things? Still a crazy bitch?” he asked after a particularly devastating seeming kick to the face that snapped her head backward. I wasn’t sure how he was hitting her, but at the moment, I was just glad he could.

“Vampire,” she snarled, glaring at him through the mask of blood covering her face. “Still a blood-sucking leech?”

“Yeah. I yam what I yam and tha’s all what I yam,” Jack said in a startlingly accurate rendition of Popeye before flinging her back at the fence. Her body punched through the chain-link, hit the asphalt, and skidded like a thrown motorcyclist on the freeway. Only, she got up.

“You still hit like a bitch,” she said, wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of one hand. “Guess you forgot to eat your spinach.”

Jack had half a second to look surprised at her quick recovery before he yelled, “Mac, shoot her!” The rest of his words were cut off as Martha flicked her wrist casually at him. A cloud of black smoke rose from the earth, wrapping around his limbs, throat, and mouth in a way that was eerily similar to what I’d seen Maya do with her tentacles. Had those spells run in the family? I wasn’t sure, but I remembered being caught in Maya’s grasp before. I’d heard the term “resistance is futile” before and being caught in that darkened void almost made me believe that term held true.

Still, Jack didn’t need to tell me twice. I put the butt of the Mossberg to my shoulder and fired at the crazy bitch. The buckshot should have torn a trashcan-lid-sized hole in her, but instead, a wall of darkness rose in front of her like a writhing hurricane and deflected the shot back at me. I covered my face with the shotgun and leapt sideways as my own shot came flying back at me. Thankfully, most of it missed me completely and pinged off the golden barrier behind me.

There was a flash of light from the barrier, and the acrid smell of burning plastic filled my nose, but I didn’t have time to properly appreciate either because Martha was on top of me. I wasn’t sure how she’d moved so quickly, but she stood there, looming over me with smoky tentacles writhing around her.

“Boo,” she said and brought one sandaled foot down at my skull. I rolled sideways and her foot plunged through the earth up to mid-calf, making me glad my skull hadn’t been in the way. If it had, could you imagine the headache?

I fired the Mossberg again, and again, the same thing happened. Buckshot sprayed back at me, but this time, as I got to my feet, Martha was already there. Her knee flew up, catching me in the nose. An audible crunch filled my ears as my head snapped backward and my vision went spotty. I collapsed backward, the shotgun slipping from my hands as little tweety birds danced around my skull.

“I’m not sure what the big deal is about you,” Martha sneered as she stood over me wrapped in a kimono of darkness that sort of made her look like Ursula, the sea witch, except, you know, uglier. “You don’t seem terribly interesting.”

“Well, I’m huge in Japan,” I said, getting to my feet. My vision was still hazy, and I could feel hot blood dripping down my face, but she let me get up, which was good, if a bit concerning. I’ll admit to being somewhat surprised she just watched me, but then arrogance is a thing, and as it stood, well, she had the upper hand.

“Perhaps,” she pursed her lips as she spoke so the word popped like a gum bubble. “But either way, now that Lord Asmodai has allowed me to use all of my power upon you, well, you’re as inconsequential as the second half of the ninth inning when the home team is winning.”

“That’s sort of a convoluted analogy,” I replied, wiping away the blood streaming from my nose with one hand. Her words had chilled me, even though I tried my best not to show it. So far, the seven had been relatively formidable, and now, if I’d heard her correctly, she had been holding back? Did that mean the others were too? I really hoped not. If that was true, we were royally fucked.

“You take what you can get,” she said, taking a step toward me. As she did, darkness pulsed through the air like thunder before a coming storm. Jack screamed in the distance, and without thinking, I glanced in his direction. His body had a sunken, desiccated look to it as though she was quite literally sucking the unlife from him. Well, that was no good. No, kimono-wearing bitch was going to suck my friend dry. At least, not in this particular way.

A smile quirked across my lips as I raised my demonic hand in front of me and called upon my power.

“You hear that?” I asked while focusing inward. “This petulant human thinks she’s better than you and yours. Why don’t you show her why you’re a big deal?”

The cat growled within my head, and the sound caused a chill to ride up and down my body and the hair on the back of my neck to stand on edge. I wasn’t sure what I’d gotten into, but I was suddenly worried it’d been a bad fucking idea to get my cat so riled up.

“I am displeased with your statement, Mac Brennan,” she replied, and as she did, I felt her power wash over me, filling me up like a water balloon tied to a fire hydrant. “Now I must interfere or else risk having her think she is beyond me.” Her lips split into a wickedly cruel grin. “Clever though.”

The ground around me shuddered as I took a step forward. Flames leapt from the crimson tattoos covering my blackened right arm as a feline smile spread across my lips. A few feet away, Martha stopped dead in her tracks. Her lip quivered as her eyes flicked over me.

“You didn’t…” she murmured, her eyes wide with fright. Before I could do anything, she spun on her heel and took off in a dead sprint away from me. Well, that was curious, and not in a good way. No, in the way that told me she knew what I’d done and didn’t like it one fucking bit.

After all, I didn’t get the feeling she was afraid of me, nor that it would matter if she was. But as flame rode over my body and ash swirled around me, I got the feeling she might know who my demon was. If that was true, I couldn’t let her escape, and for once, the cat and I were in agreement.

Darkness swirled around her, spinning into a set of veined, serpentine wings as she leapt from the ground. Beside me the dehydrated husk of Jack collapsed to the ground, but he was already crawling to his feet. Good. I’d hate for the vampire to die. Well, again, I guess.

“Get over here!” I cried, raising my hand, and as I did, I unleashed a torrent of power. “Necto!”

The thin tendril of flame burst from my palm like a harpoon as Martha soared upward, her huge, black wings beating the air with hurricane force. Not that it mattered because my tendril hit her on the left wing like a fucking lasso and bit through the webbing. Flame rippled outward across her wing, burning into her shadowy appendage before snapping taut. I jerked hard. Her wing went out from under her in a way that made me think of lassoing a world-class runner’s right leg in mid-sprint.

She hit the earth like a fucking meteor, sending dirt and debris flying in every direction. I’ll give her credit, she was on her feet in an instant, and before I could take advantage of the situation, she wrapped one hand around the flaming tendril and yanked.

I came flying forward off of my feet, and as I did, she surged forward. Her elbow caught me under the chin, snapping my teeth together with an audible crack. My vision went a touch spotty, and I was instantly glad I wasn’t the only one in control of my body because while I was stunned, my demon didn’t give a rat’s ass about things like bodily injury.

My left hand exploded outward like a claw, slashing through the darkness swirling around her like it was tissue paper and catching Martha in the neck. My fingers closed around her throat and hauled her forward even as my head was snapping backward.

Her choking gasp filled my ears as I staggered backward, dragging her along with me. We collapsed into a heap, and as we did, my grip on her throat loosened, and her gaze met mine. In those eyes was a river, no an ocean of fear. Not just normal, “oh I’m scared” fear. No, this was, “end of the fucking world as we know it” fear, and something about it numbed me to the core because she wasn’t scared of me even slightly. No, she was scared of the cat in my head. Holy fuck.

“Do you know who she is?” I asked, and the words barely slipped past my lips as the cat in my head turned to forcibly glare at me. Only she wasn’t in cat form. No, she was the angel of death. The corpse queen, and in those eyes was the threat of the fucking void laced with endless fucking agony. I wasn’t sure why she was so pissed off at my words, it was curious to say the least, but admittedly, at that moment, I didn’t care. No, I was instantly far more concerned she would rip me to shreds.

“Why do you ask her, Mac Brennan?” the cat asked, quirking an almost curious look in my direction.

Before I could respond to her, Martha clawed at me, her fingernails gouging into my flesh and pulling my gaze from the ethereal and back to her.

“You can’t make a deal with her. Whatever she promised you, break it. Lock her down before—”

The rest of Martha’s words were cut off as my grip tightened around her throat even though I desperately wanted to hear what she had to say. I didn’t know why, but something told me not remembering the terms of our agreement was going to bite me in the ass, and now that I’d bound myself closer to her, all bets were off.

Martha’s eyes bugged out of her skull as I tried to release my hold on her so I could hear what she had to say, but instead of doing what I wanted it to do, my body moved like a marionette on its strings. The cat demon was firmly in control, and as much as I wanted her to let me back in the driver’s seat, my struggles put up as much resistance as a cobweb did to a bulldozer.

I stood, dragging Martha upward along with me, and as I tried to let go, hell tried to do anything at all, I reared back and flung her like a sack of fucking laundry. She hit the golden barrier with a flash of light and heat that burned the flesh from her bones like something straight out of the nuclear explosion in Terminator 2 when Sarah Connor was holding the chain-link fence outside the park.

As Martha’s dying cry filled my ears, the demon’s hold on me released. I slumped forward, falling to my knees as fiery hail rained from the sky, covering the horizon with a sheet of writhing flame.

As I knelt there, trying to remember how to work my body, my demon reached out and caressed my cheek before pulling my chin violently up so I stared into her eyes.

“Do not defy me, Mac Brennan.” The look painted across her features let me know one thing. Defiance was a bad fucking idea.

Chapter 22

“Mac, are you okay? What’s going on?” Ricky’s voice snapped me back to reality, and I looked up to find myself staring at the golden dome. Only where it had once been a solid mass of metallic energy before, now there was a hole in its glittering surface about the size of Martha. Well, looks like Murphy was on my side this time.

Energy crackled along the ragged edges of the puncture, reminding me of air rushing out of a popped inner tube.

“Ricky?” I asked aloud even though her voice was coming from inside my skull. I wasn’t sure how she was doing the whole telepathy thing, but I wasn’t going to argue with her now. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just taking care of a couple things outside the dome.”

“So that big fucking explosion was you?” she asked as I got to my feet and made my way over to Jack. He’d stopped moving and wasn’t breathing, but I wasn’t sure if that was a problem since he was a vampire. He looked like a piece of jerky that had been left in the sun a few days too long. I didn’t know what Martha had done to him, but either way, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be infiltrating the junkyard, which made him pretty fucking useless.

“Do you even have to ask?” I said, dragging the vampire behind some bushes so he wouldn’t be immediately obvious to a random passerby. I wasn’t super worried about anyone finding him, but after having awoken in a morgue with a toe tag and everything, I didn’t want Jack to have the same thing happen to him. Especially because it was daytime and if they stripped off his protective amulet he’d burst into flames. I was betting that’d be bad for his complexion.

Besides, once I had rescued Ricky, she’d know what to do. After all, she was a fucking supernatural genius compared to me.

“Whatever you did pissed everyone off inside. They’re coming for you.” There was nearly a smirk in her voice, but it was drowned out by a note of panic. “They’ll kill you.”

“I’m pretty hard to kill,” I said, picking up the Mossberg and making my way toward the ragged hole.

“Mac—”

“I got this, Rick,” I said, cutting her off as I sprinted toward the gash in the impenetrable barrier. It was already starting to close, and I could tell if I waited much longer my entrance would vanish completely.