Seized: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 4) (12 page)

“You want me to torture Mac?” Jenna said, and the confusion in her voice was underlined by steel. That steel told me one thing. She was seriously contemplating it. That was bad because now I understood Sepulture’s plan. It was hard to truly hate someone who you hadn’t loved, who you hadn’t felt betrayed by. I’d definitely betrayed Jenna, even if it wasn’t on purpose, and she was tough as fucking nails. I could see her flipping that switch on her humanity and deciding to make me pay for it, and the only thing I could do was hope she wouldn’t.

“I didn’t say that, but I could be persuaded to let you,” Sepulture replied, and the sound of straps unbuckling filled my ears. Was he really letting her go so she could torture me? “What do you say? Give it a whirl?”

“I’m not sure I should be doing that,” Jenna said, trepidation underlining each word as it left her mouth. “I mean, he’s a complete douchebag who should have told me, but torture him?” She swallowed hard. “I don’t think I could.”

A surge of relief shot through me as she said the words followed by a deeper sense of self-loathing I couldn’t explain. She still cared for me enough to not want to torture me, and yet, I didn’t remember her at all. It almost made me feel like I was taking advantage of her somehow, and I really didn’t want to be that guy.

“No wonder he forgot about you,” Sepulture said, disgust filling his voice as he spoke. “You’re weak.”

“I’m not weak,” Jenna said in a voice that could scorch the earth and chill the sun.

“Prove it,” Sepulture replied, jerking the towel off my eyes so I could see them both standing in front of me. Jenna’s hands clasped a gallon bucket of water as she looked at me, a strange mixture of emotions crossing her face. Just looking at her made my heart ache, and I barely knew her. Only, I was the cause of the pain in her eyes, and that struck me on a completely human level. I didn’t remember what we’d had, if anything, but in that instant, I wished I did.

“Oh, I’ll prove it,” she said, moving next to me and holding the bucket up with one hand. “I’ll prove it so good.” The tone in her voice let me know one thing. I was fucked, and the sense of betrayal that knowledge brought nearly broke me.

“Jenna,” I tried to say, but the word was lost against the cloth as she started to tip the bucket.

Jenna whirled, spinning on the balls of her feet. She slammed the nearly full five-gallon bucket into Sepulture’s glee-twisted visage at near lightning speed, spilling water down the front of his white suit.

The torturer stumbled backward, but Jenna wasn’t done. She grabbed the jumper cables off the table next to me and jammed their yawning copper mouths into his chest. Lightning exploded from their copper jaws as she clipped them onto his soaking-wet shirt. He jerked erratically under the force of the electricity flowing through his body.

The smell of burned hamburger filled my nose as the nun sprang to her feet. Before the Sister of the Black Flame could take more than three steps, Jenna had leapt over me and dropkicked the larger woman in the face. The nun’s head snapped backward with bone-shuddering force. As she crumpled into her lawn chair in a spray of blood, Jenna turned and began unbuckling me with trembling hands.

“Thanks,” I tried to say as the straps around my wrists came free. I jerked the towel off. “Thanks.”

“Shut the fuck up, Mac.” She glared at me with enough anger to boil an ocean. “If you start talking I’m going to regret my decision to help you. You promised—” she cut herself off with a wave of her hand and went back to work unfastening me. It was probably better that way.

Instead of saying anything, I let her work. She was almost done when Sepulture rose. Only that wasn’t quite the right word for it because one moment he’d been a twitching blackened corpse on the floor and the next he was upright. His smoldering hands grabbed Jenna by her blonde dreadlocks and with supernatural ease, flung her across the tiny room. She smacked into the wall with a thwack and slid to the floor, leaving a splash of blood on gray stone.

A surge of rage filled me, blinding me to everything. Jenna had just saved me, and even more, Sepulture was a huge bag of dicks. He had to pay. I grabbed hold of his arm as he stalked toward Jenna, and he stopped.

“What do you think you’re going to do?” White flame danced in the empty sockets of his charred skull as he turned to regard me. “You can’t get your legs free in the time it will take me to smash her skull into paste and you have no magic. You’re worse than useless.”

He made to shrug me off, and as he did, I begged my demon to come through while yelling with all my might. “Sorbeo!”

Dynamite shattered my brain. A volcano erupted in my chest. Molten lead filled my veins. For a second, I thought I was dead. Only I couldn’t be because that would hurt less. Sparks leapt from Sepulture and flowed into me as his charred body went up in white phosphorous flames so bright spots danced across my eyes. Hellfire leapt from my tattoos as my flesh darkened until it was blacker than the hair on Satan’s ass. The rush of power was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Superman might not be real, but in that moment, I was sure I could move faster than a speeding bullet and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

“What are you doing?” Sepulture cried, his voice laced with panic as he struggled to pull himself free of me. A wave of magic slammed down on me like a sledgehammer to the skull. My head snapped backward as blood poured from my nose, ears and eyes. The fire leaping from my tattoos flickered, threatening to go out. That couldn’t happen!

“Eating you!” I cried, only it wasn’t entirely my voice. It had a dark, feline edge to it, and as I stared out at the writhing fiend in front of me, I realized the demon who had cursed me with this arm was staring out of my eyes. I felt her reach out through me, felt her hand on mine, and together we pulled Sepulture close.

“No! No it can’t be!” Sepulture cried, his body toppling forward in a still burning heap. “You were locked away? How—” My hand plunged into the inferno that was his chest. My fingers closed around something black and pulsing. With a twist, I tore it from the creature, causing Hellfire to spring from my demonic arm with a vengeance.

As I jerked the blackened lump up free of his burning corpse and held it in front of myself, Sepulture’s body slumped to the ground, broken.

“Excellent,” I heard the cat whisper in my ear as I stared at the veins crisscrossing the mass of mottled, steaming muscle. “Now finish him.”

I squeezed, and as I did, the thing in my hand popped like a water balloon, spraying viscous black blood from between my clenched fingers. One last surge of power rippled through me, and the cat demon gave me a well-sated smile.

“You’ve done well, pet,” she purred, and as those words hit me, I realized what I’d done. I wasn’t sure what Sepulture was exactly, but I’d killed him by tearing out his heart while my demonic master applauded. Only that wasn’t what bothered me as I stared at the unmoving corpse of Sepulture. What bothered me was that I’d liked it. A lot.

Chapter 13

“Jenna, wake up!” I said, trying to shake her awake. Her scalp was matted with blood, and she had a nasty-looking goose egg developing, but she looked otherwise unharmed, which was good because I was not a master of first aid. At least, I was pretty sure I wasn’t. It wasn’t like I’d tried to perform open heart surgery or anything. Maybe I was good at it?

Still, we had to get a move on. I had no idea where we were nor how we were going to get back to the kids. I gritted my teeth. While I had no doubt Vitaly and Marvin would try to finish the mission, I was also pretty sure that was all they would do.

If it was easy they might rescue every kid, but somehow, I could see the two of them ducking and running the second they had Angela Prescott in their hands. If the other kids stayed behind, well, that would be fine by them. It wasn’t fine by me, dammit. I needed to get there and make sure everyone got out alive.

“Mmm, five more minutes,” Jenna mewled, rolling away from me.

“Jenna, we have to get out of here before someone else comes to torture and kill us,” I said, shaking her again, but it was like trying to wake the dead. Actually, that might have been easier.

If this kept up, I was just going to throw her over my shoulder and carry her out, but I was really hoping to not do that. For one, I had no idea what was through the only door in the room, and for two, I was tired. Really tired. I also wasn’t sure how comfortable I was being this close to her after what had happened. Jenna was in love with me, and I didn’t want her getting the wrong idea. Then again, she knew I’d lost my memories, maybe she’d cut me some slack. Yeah, and if the Queen of England had balls she’d be a king.

“Mac, I’m tired. Come back to bed,” she batted at me with one hand, her fingers trailing down my chest in a way that felt strangely familiar.

“Jenna!” I shouted, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her to her feet. “Snap out of it. We need to go!” I threw her arm over my shoulder and began dragging her toward the door on the far side of the room. It was harder than I thought it’d be since she was mostly dead weight. I’d hoped she’d have snapped out of it and started walking, but evidently, that wasn’t happening.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, eyes fluttering open. She blinked at me vacantly, and I wondered briefly if she had a concussion. I really hoped that wasn’t the case. That would drastically reduce our infinitesimally small chances of survival. “What happened?”

“Sepulture tried to kill you so I killed him.” I shot her a strained smile, and she winced away from me, stumbling in the process. I steadied her with one hand.

“Do you have to shout so loud?” she whispered as the confusion on her face melted into a steely eyed glare. “God, it feels like someone is doing a conga line in my skull.” She rubbed the back of her head with one hand.

“Sorry,” I said, letting out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. She might be hurt, but I still didn’t think she had a concussion because she wasn’t vomiting, but for all I knew, that wasn’t a hard and fast rule. Still, I was going to take my wins where I got them, and for the moment, I wasn’t covered in vomit. “Thanks for saving me.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she murmured, pulling free of me and stumbling over to Sepulture’s burned out husk of a corpse on her own. “The night is young, and I’m still mad at you.”

“Can we put a pin in that until we’re out of here?” I asked, reaching for the doorknob. It turned. So they hadn’t locked us in. Cocky bastards.

“Yes, but only until we’re finished, Mac. You owe me.” She sighed and rubbed her head one last time before sweeping her gaze around the room. “After that, your ass is going to pay up. Believe that.”

“Fair enough,” I replied, not sure what I could possibly tell her that she didn’t already know. I had no memories. I’d lost them making a deal with a demon. I didn’t remember her or our relationship. What more was there to tell? Still, I wasn’t going to push it. The way this was going, we’d be lucky to both get out of here alive. If that happened, I’d tell her whatever she wanted to hear. Even if it was a lie. I owed her that much for saving me, knowing I’d forgotten about our past together.

I pulled on the door, and it swung open easily on well-oiled hinges. The dark hallway beyond was dark and lit with the same glowing flames as our room. Thankfully, the hallway was also empty for as far as I could see in both directions. Odd. Why were there no guards?

“You see anyone?” Jenna asked, picking her gun up from the table beside the nun. She popped the magazine, checked it, frowned, and popped it back in. She lowered the weapon, careful to keep her finger off the trigger and shrugged.

“No,” I said before gesturing at her gun. “Problem?”

“You never have enough bullets,” she said, a frown creasing her lips as she approached me. “I’ll just have to make the ones I have left count.”

I smirked, agreeing with her statement implicitly. As Jenna stopped just behind me, gun at the ready, I crept through the doorway, hoping nothing blew me up.

As I crossed the threshold, the scenery changed, leaving me stranded in the middle of a forest, only the trees were made of polished mirror. Mist wafted off a lake to my left, and as I stared at it in disbelief, Jenna came through the mirrored tree directly behind me.

“Fuck,” she said, eyes glinting with panic as she turned in a slow circle and surveyed our surroundings. “Double fuck.”

“Do you know where we are?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice as I watched Jenna scan the tree line like a mouse looking for cats. I didn’t see any cats, but I also didn’t see any obvious paths or doors. Where the hell were we supposed to go?

Aside from the ominous lake, everything looked exactly the same in every direction, reflecting outward in an ever-expanding sea of mirrors. Even the sky was just a reflection of the ground, so when I looked up, the multitude of images made my stomach twist with vertigo. I let out a slow breath, counted to ten, and stared at the only fixed point I could see. The lake.

The choppy silver water churned ceaselessly, crashing against the rocky bank in a way that made me hope we wouldn’t have to cross it, especially since I didn’t see any boats.

“We’re in the forest of mirrors,” Jenna said, swallowing hard in a way that made me think she was trying to quell her fear. “Obviously.”

“Okay, what’s so bad about the forest of mirrors?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Except for our voices, it was eerily silent in the way forests got when a major predator was around. It made me uncomfortable in a primal sort of way, but I tried to ignore it because, for all I knew, it was always this quiet.

I heard the roar of a motorcycle a moment before cruel, high-pitched laughter rolled over me like a desert storm and set my nerves ablaze. I gritted my teeth, whirling to see an ebony pinup girl sitting astride a cherry-red Harley Davidson motorcycle. She was clad in stilettos, fishnet stockings, a short black vinyl skirt, and a fire engine red crop top. She ran one perfectly manicured hand through her dark red hair, sending it fluttering behind her as if carried by an unseen wind.