Seized: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 4) (21 page)

“Run!” Vitaly cried, launching himself forward as cracks began to spider along the surrounding tunnel. Behind me, the sound of rocks falling from the ceiling and crashing to the floor filled my ears.

I took off after the big man, leaping across the cracks splintering the ground in front of me. As I landed, my toe caught an outcropping of rock as it jutted upward from a seismic shift. I tripped, crashing into Vitaly as he came to a sudden, inexplicable stop. My momentum barely moved him, which was good because as I recovered and looked past him, I realized we were standing on the precipice of a steadily opening chasm. Sulfuric smoke billowed up from the rent earth, and as it touched the ceiling a few feet above us, the hiss and pop of melting rock filled my ears.

“Duck and roll,” Vitaly said, grabbing me by the scruff of my trench coat like I was a bad kitty, and before I could even ask him what the fuck he was doing, he swung me around like he was an Olympic discus thrower and sent me flying across the cavern.

I landed hard on the other side of the canyon on my stomach, and the breath whooshed from my lungs. As I rolled into a fetal position, bits of my hair and clothing burned away and left the flesh beneath raw and angry. Thankfully, most of my body had been shielded by my trench coat. Otherwise, I’d have been burned in some very uncomfortable places.

As I tried to suck in a breath that didn’t taste like boiling acid, Vitaly vaulted across the widening chasm in a way that made me very glad he’d never competed against the USA in the long jump. He landed lightly next to me and shook his head. Patches of skin along his body had bubbled and burned away, but as he surveyed our new surroundings, they healed before my eyes. Stupid magical healing.

“Get up,” he said and not bothering to wait for me, took off down the cavern, Italian leather shoes pounding the ground with reckless abandon as he dodged and weaved past falling boulders. Not wanting to be left behind, I scrambled to my feet and sprinted after him, careful to trace his footsteps to avoid getting skewered.

We ran like that for so long, my lungs burned with the effort, and my heart threatened to explode in my chest. After sprinting what felt like three marathons, and avoiding near-death several hundred times, we found ourselves standing in front of a dead end. It was over.

“What do we do?” I huffed, grabbing the big man’s arm for support as I sucked in a lungful of burning oxygen.

“Pray?” he offered, turning to look back at the rubble-strewn tunnel. There was no way we’d get back through, and even if we did, where would we go?

“Are you being serious?” I said, glaring at him. “Do I look like I’m good at praying?”

“Yes, just not to right people,” he said, turning back to stare at the wall. Then, before I could say anything in response, he pulled his stupid key from his pocket and pressed it against the sheer black rock in front of us.

The room shook violently as the space in front of us exploded in a flash of silver light that sprayed us with bits of rock and debris. When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at a mirror just like the ones I’d seen in the forest of mirrors. I resisted the urge to punch it in a flurry of rage. Seriously? Another fucking mirror? That was absolutely the last fucking thing I needed right now.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said, glancing back at the way we’d come and wondering if there was another way out. It still didn’t seem likely, but if it was a choice between heading into the forest of mirrors and going back the way we’d come, well, I was a little more willing to chance it. “Journeying through mirrors never ends well.”

“Don’t be little girl named Alice then,” Vitaly said, touching the shimmering surface with his key. Concentric circles radiated outward from the key a second before the face of the Princess of Mirrors appeared before us. She pressed her face against the other side of the glass and made a face at us.

“Come on in, boys.” Her lips curled into a bemused smile. “The water’s fine.” Her voice hit me like a slap in the face, and I staggered backward. “I promise I won’t bite.”

“We can’t go in there,” I squeaked, fear twisting my guts as I turned to look at the cavern slowly collapsing around us. “And we can’t stay here.”

“I vote we beat up ugly lady,” Vitaly said, and without another word, he leapt through the mirror.

“I know, I’m going to regret this,” I said and followed him through the looking glass.

Chapter 23

As I emerged on the other side of the mirror, my body felt like it’d been torn to shreds, reassembled in the wrong order, and then blown up, you know, for funsies. I staggered forward, trying to remember how to breathe, but before I could even suck a single breath into my aching lungs, a fist hit me under the chin with the force of a Mack truck.

My head snapped back and stars shot past my eyes. My feet lifted from the ground, and I flew backward into a crystalline tree. I guess the adage about me being hard-headed was true because my skull shattered the tree into a billion scintillating shards that cascaded over me. As my vision narrowed into a dark, hazy tunnel, I tried vainly to roll myself into a ball, while the rain of broken glass sliced my exposed flesh to ribbons. Judging by the blood running down my face and hands, I was about sixty-three percent successful.

“What have we here?” the Princess of Mirrors said, her black stilettos clicking on the mirrored floor as she sauntered toward me. She rubbed her chin with one hand while dragging Vitaly’s unmoving form with the other hand like he was a sack of dirty laundry. I wasn’t sure if the big Russian was conscious, but since his tongue was lolling out of his mouth, I wasn’t going to bet on it.

“A soon to be dead bitch.” I held down the trigger of the AK47 in my hand, allowing the assault rifle to cut an erratic upward arc across her body. It didn’t even slow her down.

“Now, Mac. You wouldn’t want to hurt me, with sticks, stones, or words” she said as the bullets protruding from her flesh fell away from her like the ice off a launching rocket. “If you do, I might forget my manners, especially since your friend here started it.”

She tossed Vitaly onto the mirrored floor beside me and squatted down in front of me. Before I could blink, her ebony hands snaked out and grabbed the super-heated barrel of the gun. Her fingers tightened, denting the metal before she twisted her hands like she was wringing out a dish towel. The scream of tortured steel filled my ears as the once pristine weapon was rendered completely useless.

“Now, maybe we can talk like civilized people.” She smirked at me. “After all, I come bearing gifts. I promise you’ll like your gift.” Her coy grin reminded me of the exact look I’d seen splayed across the face of my own demon. I’m not sure why, but it both relaxed me and terrified me.

“Gift?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t a live rattlesnake. Then again, if she wanted to kill me, I’d already be dead. Clearly that wasn’t the case, at least, not yet anyway. “You’re not Greek are you?”

“I am not Greek.” Her jagged teeth flashed as she spoke, and the image of her tearing into raw flesh filled my mind.

I pushed away the bloody image and tried to concentrate on what she’d said, especially since she had me up a creek at the moment. I wasn’t sure what her gift would entail, but the possibility of me enjoying it seemed slim at best.

As it stood, I’d yet to meet a demon that was entirely on the up and up from the get go, and the last time I’d met the Princess hadn’t exactly been sunshine and gumdrops. Still, it wasn’t like I had a lot of options at the moment.

Yeah, I could try to blast her into oblivion with magic, but I was pretty sure she could twist my head off my shoulders before I could even get one word out. I wanted to avoid that outcome if possible. Once I created some distance between us though, it was going to be on like Donkey Kong.

“Okay,” I said, letting out a long, slow breath. “I’m willing to hear you out.”

“Excellent.” The Princess of Mirrors pointed to the mirrored tree directly to my left. “That mirror will lead you straight back to Vassago’s bar. You won’t pass go or collect your two-hundred dollars, but you will be one step closer to being home, assuming he keeps his deal, of course.” Her mouth twisted into a psychotic grin that reminded me of Heath Ledger’s Joker. “There’s only one problem. You can’t leave with your mission incomplete. To do so would invite his wrath. While you may be able to withstand it eventually, I do not have high hopes for you as it stands now.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, confusion filling my voice. “My companions escaped a while ago.” A sudden realization filled me. Maybe they were on their way out but had been disrupted by Beleth’s death like we were. If that was the case, she had an excellent point. Leaving emptyhanded would be tantamount to suicide. It would be like leaping off a pirate ship filled with bloodthirsty curs and landing in shark-infested waters. It would also mean Jenna, Wendy, and everyone else could be trapped in a maze of certain death.

The Princess waved off my response. “I have a solution for your problem.” She pointed to my immediate right, and the crystalline tree swirled to life. An image of Jenna, Wendy, and the children making their way along a crumbling cliff face filled my eyes. “That mirror leads to your companions and your prize. All you’d need to do is reach through it and pull them here. Then they would be safe, and you could leave no muss, no fuss, and no coconuts.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I said, wondering about her definition of easy. Reaching through the mirror and pulling out nearly a dozen people didn’t seem easy. Well, okay, conceptually it seemed easy enough, but it still seemed like it might be a trick. “Aren’t you planning on killing me and playing jump rope with my entrails?”

“No,” she said, licking her lips as she spoke. “As appealing as it sounds, I don’t want to do that even a little bit. I’d get blood everywhere, and it isn’t like we have a cleaning service here.” She made a disgusted face.

“Okay,” I said, not sure how to take that. I sat up, and when she made no effort to stop me, I got to my feet because if she wasn’t going to kill me, I might as well stop sitting here like an idiot. Then if she changed her mind, at least I wouldn’t die flat on my back. She remained squatting before me as I stood, watching me like a hungry tiger. Even standing, I was only at eye level with her. “What are you planning to do?”

I watched her carefully. She didn’t look like she was going to attack me, but I still wasn’t sure what her game was. By all accounts, she should have already torn my spleen out. I mean, I was glad she hadn’t done that since I was sort of attached to my spleen, but yeah… this was getting weird.

“I am not done with my setup,” she said, standing up. She was over a full head taller than me, and as she stretched, her breasts pushed her fire-engine red crop top to its absolute limit.

“Fine,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and glancing past her at the mirror. I might be able to make it before she caught me, but what then? “What’s your play?”

“Your friends are still within Beleth’s little section of Hell, only without the demoness to keep it together, the doors within her domain are leading nowhere. The whole place is disintegrating.” Mirrors flickered to life all around me, and as they did, I saw the rooms we’d passed through earlier turning into molten piles of slag as they sank beneath a sea of lava. “I don’t think they’ll make it out in time.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, barely resisting the urge to shake her into action. If the world around them was going to end, we needed to get them out of there now. We definitely didn’t have time for this.

Admittedly, I was pretty close to trying to go in after them. The only problem was, I didn’t know what I’d do once I got there. I’d just be trapped along with them. If there was a way to save them, I needed to make her tell me what it was. Unfortunately, I was also pretty sure that when it came to the Princess of Mirrors, honey would catch me more flies than vinegar, especially since I doubted I could rip the wings off this particular fly and make it eat whatever I gave it.

“I want to make you a deal.” She touched my blackened arm with one finger and her lingering touch sent a tiny static shock zipping across my flesh. “Whoever gave you this just destroyed two of the most powerful demons in all of Hell. I’m not sure how or why, and I don’t care.” She shook her head. “I’m only a very small minnow in an ocean full of whales and sharks. I try my best to avoid the whales and sharks when they tussle because people like me tend to get dead fast when they do.” She paused and stared up at the reflective sky. “When whoever gave you that arm comes for the rest of them, and if it is who I think it is, she
will
come, I want you to remember something, Mac Brennan.”

“What’s that?” I asked as a bad feeling settled over me like a funeral shroud. The Princess of Mirrors could have split my skull like a casaba melon with little effort. She’d obviously been formidable enough to knock Vitaly’s block off before I’d even gotten through the mirror, and as she spoke, I realized she was scared. Not of me per se, but of the demon within me. The demon who had eaten Beleth and Baphomet.

Sure, my demon was temperamental as hell and only helped me when she wanted to do it, but she had still killed the siblings with no more effort than it’d have taken me to crumple a napkin. Whoever she was, she was bad news, and the Princess knew it. Interesting. Terrifying, but interesting nonetheless. Maybe it was something I could turn to my advantage.

“I want you to remember I helped you,” The Princess of Mirrors said, and her words struck a chord in me. This demon wanted me to remember she helped me? She was willing to save my companions for that? It seemed crazy given what I knew about demons, and because of that it was terrifying. It meant the cat in my head was that fucking bad.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “I will remember.”

“Good.” She reached through the mirror on my right as fire rained from the sky within and lava rose around Jenna and the others while they huddled beneath an outcropping of rock, looking desperately for a path that wouldn’t lead to destruction.