Seized: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 4) (15 page)

Just beyond the doorway was a platform covered in black-and-white tile. I was pretty sure that’s where the king had stood, but now that the chess piece was dead, it was vacant. Well, that was good. At least I wouldn’t be stepping straight into lava. Still, I was glad I’d looked before I’d leapt.

I pulled my head back out of the fire world and sighed. “Unless you have some lava-resistant wading pants, I’m not sure what you expect me to do in there.” I pointed at the doorway. “It’s nothing but fire.”

“Correction,” Wendy said from within the backpack, but her voice was so muffled I couldn’t make out the rest of what she said.

Marvin grumbled and unslung the backpack. He unzipped it and pulled her out. “Would you repeat yourself, dear sister? I don’t think anyone heard you.”

“Well, if you wouldn’t zip me inside, people would hear me.” The tiny doll glared at him.

“And if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t bump their asses when they hopped,” Marvin replied solemnly.

“Anyway,” Wendy said, ignoring her brother. “There should be a lever inside there somewhere. All you have to do is find it, pull it, and the fire will vanish.” She nodded. “Easy as pie.”

“How do you expect me to find a lever in a room filled with fire?” I asked, staring at her incredulously. I wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not. She didn’t seem like she was kidding, but at the same time, it was a room full of lava. Did she actually expect me to venture inside and not die?

“It’s not fire. It’s Hellfire. Totally different,” Wendy replied, glancing up toward the ceiling of the chess room. For a moment, it looked like she might be about to detail the differences, but before she could, Marvin spun her around and glared at her.

“If this is where you’re going to detail the metaphysical differences between fire and Hellfire, just don’t. I don’t care. The chick with the gun doesn’t care. The big Russian bear guy doesn’t care, and I assure you, tall, blond, and stupid with the black arm most certainly doesn’t care. Just tell him how to get past the room so we can get this show on the road. I plan to be neck deep in Tijuana hookers by nightfall.” Marvin spun her back around and held her up to eye level with me. “Go on, sis. Tell him.” He shook her a little bit.

“You’re a pig,” Jenna said, turning away from Marvin and staring out across the chessboard.

“Hookers need to eat too,” Marvin said, a wry grin spreading across his face. “My penis.”

“Wendy, what do I need to do to find the lever since you think I can do this?” I asked, ignoring the urge to punch Marvin. Admittedly, part of the reason I didn’t was because I thought he might beat me up. I did not feel like getting beat up by an annoying Asian teen a foot shorter than me. No, I’d just have to wait until we were almost out of here and accidentally push him into an active volcano or something.

“You need to summon your own Hellfire to neutralize the stuff in the room. It’s residual Hellfire so it’ll be less pure than the stuff you can conjure.” Wendy smiled at me, which was really creepy because she was just a wooden doll.

“What?” I asked, trying to figure out what the hell she’d just said. It’d seemed like English, but I wasn’t exactly up on my metaphysics either.

“Sorry, I was getting complicated.” She stopped and waved her hand dismissively. “You’re a Cursed, right? Make a shield with your magic, walk to the other side, pull the lever.” She eyed me carefully. “You do know how to make a shield, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. Making a shield was one of the few spells I actually knew how to do, and now that she’d brought it up, it didn’t seem like that bad of a plan, assuming my shield could actually withstand Hellfire. I’d never tried it before, but it had held off Vassago’s green flames before, and he was a demon so ipso facto.

“Good. Just watch out for the guardian. He won’t want you to pull the lever,” Wendy said. I wasn’t sure how the doll managed to look concerned, but she did. “Just try to outrun him.”

“There’s a guardian?” I asked because charging through a room filled with lava wasn’t bad enough. No, of course there had to be a guardian.

“Do you see where we are?” Marvin asked like I’d just fallen off the turnip truck. “There has been a guardian in every single room. Why would that room be any different?”

“You make an excellent point,” I said, glancing at Vitaly for advice since he was our de facto leader. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what he could tell me, but at the moment any info would be nice. “You okay with this plan?”

“No, but only because your suit is ruined. You should have better suit to go die in.” He smiled at me.

Chapter 16

I was not planning on dying in a slime-covered dress shirt, that’s for damned sure. Okay, to be fair, I wasn’t planning on dying at all, but as I stood on the tiny checkered platform and stared out at the blazing room before me, I was having a hard time believing survival was a possibility.

For one thing, Murphy’s law and I don’t exactly get along. Every single time Murphy notices me, he punches me right in the balls. Kind of a dick move, right? But I guess that’s why he’s the big shot with the law, and I’m just the sucker who has to follow it.

This plan involved me using my barely understood magic to shield myself from boiling hot lava while searching for a lever I couldn’t see and avoiding a guardian of indeterminate strength, speed, and cunning. My chances at success were looking slim, and I just knew, Murphy was going to have a field day with this one.

Still, I was Mac Fucking Brennan, and I wasn’t going to die like this. Not here, and not with those kids still trapped in Beleth’s tender loving care. I was going to find the lever, goddammit!

“Okay,” I said as I knelt down on the platform and raised one hand to shield my eyes from the reflection of the neon purple lava. It was so hot, sweat didn’t drip down my face so much as it evaporated the moment it left my pores, leaving my skin a chapped, disgusting mess. Fortunately, if the last few days had taught me anything, it was that I didn’t even know how to function while clean. “Let’s do this.”

I shut my eyes and counted backward from ten, trying to draw upon my magic with each number. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but as I said each number, power steadily rose inside me, filling me up like a water balloon. By the time I reached one, I felt like I was going to explode like a kitten in a microwave. It was time. My eyes snapped open, and I said a single word.

“Tueri.”

Lava sprang from my tattoos and swarmed over my body, covering my clothes and skin in a sheet of bubbling crimson. As the heat of the room faded to a more tolerable level, a smile slipped across my lips. It was working! Now it was like being in a sauna minus all the naked sweaty Japanese men. It was a good thing too because I wasn’t a huge fan of old hairy balls.

“Do you know where the lever is?” I asked the demonic cat in my head, hoping she would deign to answer me. I got no response. Actually, that wasn’t true. I got a glare like I’d woken her from a nap. It was about the same in terms of helpfulness though.

“Fine, I didn’t want your help anyway,” I said in the same tone I imagined guys using on strippers who didn’t want to give them a lap dance. This time, I didn’t even merit a glare. Stupid cat.

“Well, I’ll just dive right in then,” I said, slowly lowering my foot into the lava so if something didn’t happen, I’d only lose my big toe. Still, it was pretty much the scariest thing I’d ever done. As my toes hovered above the liquid fire, my guts twisted in panic. If this didn’t work, I was going to be in a world of pain.

I didn’t have time to contemplate my horrible burning demise because instead of being solid in any way at all, my foot was sucked beneath the surface of the lava. I tumbled forward off the platform, my arms flying out in a vain attempt to grab onto the air for support. As my fingers closed around nothing, I crashed face first into the boiling magma and plunged beneath the surface.

Thankfully, I didn’t burn to a crisp. In fact, it was kind of cool, reminding me of a dip in a pool that’s been heated by a summer’s day, and even though I’d expected to feel my shield start to weaken upon contact with the lavender lava pit, the opposite happened. The demonic magic around me surged into my shield and strengthened it. Bonus.

Unfortunately, there was one tiny little quibble I’d neglected to account for. I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected actually, but I’d not even given a single thought to the whole breathing beneath the magma thing. I kicked my legs and swept my arms upward, thrashing my way to the surface like a dog that had been thrown in the pool.

As soon as I broke through the surface, I sucked in a huge gulp of air that tasted vaguely of pine tree and bubblegum air fresheners, which was a little weird. Shouldn’t it have smelled like sulfur?

Chalking it up to not being a super helpful thing to investigate at my immediate moment, I ignored the smell and began to tread lava to the best of my ability. I took a moment to look around, trying to figure out where to go. I’d had no idea where the lever was when I’d jumped in, which was part of the reason why I’d done so. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find once I was actually in the lava, but it had seemed like a good place to start. Unfortunately, now that I was here, I still didn’t see it anywhere.

Still, I’d originally wanted to check over by the door on the opposite side of the room. Since that seemed like as good a place as any to start my search, and having no better ideas, I decided to stick with my existing plan. I threw myself into my doggie paddle and plunged forward through the lava.

Michael Phelps, I was not. By the time I reached the door on the opposite side of the Olympic-swimming-pool-sized room, my arms felt like they were made of taffy and my legs were little better. Worse, on my brief head dunks in the lava I had learned a troubling fact. I couldn’t see the ground. If the lever was on the volcanic floor of this pool, there was no way I’d ever find it, assuming I could even hold my breath long enough to reach it. To say it was murky down below would have been a huge understatement.

Hoping the lever wasn’t on the volcanic floor a thousand miles down, I hauled myself up onto the amethyst platform in front of the door and lay there gasping for breath. While I might be shielded from the lava actually burning me, it still dragged on my clothes and trench coat. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to swim fully dressed while wearing a heavy ass leather duster, but it’s fucking hard.

“Well, this sucks,” I huffed, getting slowly to my feet while trying to will my heart to stop racing. It sort of worked.

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” said a scratchy voice from directly over my head. “You’re not the one who was rudely awoken from his century-long nap.”

A chill ran down my spine as a horrible thought filled my brain. Had I awoken the guardian? I really hoped not because even with my shield at full strength, I wasn’t sure what skills the guardian would possess. If he was anything like Sepulture, he could steal my magic and leave me as good as dead.

My gaze turned slowly upward, and I found myself staring at a two-foot tall bat covered in purple fungus wearing a red and white striped top hat. Its eyes flashed in the dancing flames lining the ceiling as it unfurled its mossy wings and dropped down in front of me. The creature landed lightly on the platform and stretched its huge purple wings. It yawned, smacked its lips a couple times, and raised one bushy gray eyebrow at me.

“Hello?” I asked the bat as it scuttled around me as if trying to figure out what I was doing here. That made two of us.

“Yes, you’ll do fine,” the bat cackled as it hopped in front of me and grinned. “I shall lay a curse upon you the likes of which will be foretold for ages.” It clapped its hands together. “Yes, your progeny will tell the tale of the Bat in the Hat’s curse for generations!”

“The Bat in the Hat? Seriously? Is that your name?” I asked, backing away from the winged rat. I only managed about two steps before my back touched the wall.

“You dare come into my home and not know who I am?” the bat cried, glaring at me with its beady eyes. “That cannot stand! Double your curse I shall! I mean, as long as that’s okay.”

Admittedly, I had half a mind to punt the tiny creature like a football, but since I didn’t know where the lever was, I was hoping I could get it to tell me before I kicked it in the face. Long shot, I know, but I had to try. Those kids were counting on me.

“To be honest, I’m all full up on curses.” I showed him my arm, and my tattoos flashed in the purple light so they looked like bolts of lightning stretched across my blackened flesh.

“So it would seem, but perhaps all is not lost,” the bat replied, leaping into the air and hovering in front of me while scratching his chin with his foot. “You’ve disturbed my nap, and must be punished, but you are already cursed. This is a conundrum.”

“I bet if you opened the lever and pushed me through the door, it’d end pretty horribly for me. There’s at least a ninety-percent chance whatever is through that door will want to break me open and suck out the juices,” I said, gesturing toward the door behind me. “And, bonus, you can go back to your nap without exerting yourself on some silly curse.”

“Why that’s a great idea! I will pull the lever and send you to your doom! Doom, I say!” the bat cackled, flapping around me like an excited dervish. “But you will still need to pay for your insult, and it will be a doozy!” It took off through the air, flying low over the lava and banking hard to the right. As it did, the magma beneath it began to swirl and churn like a whirlpool.

“What are you doing?” I cried as the platform beneath me rocked in the sudden swell of lava. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I fell in because I wasn’t sure I could keep myself afloat with that much chop, but I was going to do my best not to find out.

I reached back toward the door and pressed the fingers of my demonic hand against the cool crystal. As I did, light flared from my fingertips and my hand fastened itself to the glinting surface just before the platform beneath me shattered into a thousand scintillating shards of amethyst. I fell. My feet kicked, just barely above the lava as I hung there by my Spiderman-like grip to the wall. I’ll be honest, putting all my weight on my shoulder wasn’t exactly fun.