twice cursed mage 05 - claimed (6 page)

Gunfire chewed into the seat behind me, covering me in bits of leather, foam, and other miscellaneous debris. Jack jerked like ragdoll under the onslaught of bullets next to me, but even still, managed to keep control of the truck while reaching for something under his seat. Evidently, bullets didn’t bother him much.

I tightened my grip on the Walther PPK, although I wasn’t sure how I was going to chance a shot with so much gunfire filling the truck. I could wait until they ran out of ammunition, but I was pretty sure that’s when the real fun would start. For all I knew, they were getting ready to lob a grenade inside.

“Tueri!” I cried, and as the magic word left my lips, orange, purple, and crimson fire lit across my flesh, igniting a shield over my body.

I stood, pointing the Walther at my attackers as I did and fired off two quick shots. .50 caliber bullets slammed into me, throwing my aim off as I fired, but one of my shots still managed to catch the gunner in the arm. It bounced harmlessly off his body armor as he reoriented the Browning on me.

Sargent grinned, his red mustache spread wide by his lips as he held down the Browning’s trigger. It spat the rest of its payload at me as I dove through the open window, rolled across the hood, and came up on my feet just beneath the gun’s barrel.

I thrust my left hand up, knocking the machinegun up and causing it to tear an erratic path up across Jack’s truck as the sound of brass hitting the metal floor in front of me filled my ears.

All at once, the firing stopped, and I had half a second to contemplate the silence before Sargent’s boot collided with my face. I stumbled backward off the hummer and crashed into the pavement. I scrambled to my feet as the big man leapt down from the back of his Humvee like a lithe cat and backhanded me across the face.

It felt like I’d been hit by a wrecking ball, and as my feet lifted from the ground and I smacked into Ford’s grill, the only thing I could think was that a dentist was going to have a field day with my smile after this was over.

“Sorry about that, partner,” Sargent said, rearing back with one big fist. “You just have one of those faces that begs to be hit.” His fist came flying toward me, and as I tried to dodge, Jack came flying out of the truck like a vampire bat out of Hell.

His huge wings spread out behind him like a demonic cape as he crashed into Sargent. The two men rolled into the street. Sargent came up on top and decked the vampire in his horned face. Jack’s head smacked into the pavement with a sickening thud that cracked the street beneath him. To make matters worse, Jack was bleeding from what looking like a zillion bullet holes. I had no doubt the vampire was tough, but then again, he’d just taken who knew how many rounds of .50 caliber bullets. That’d put a hitch in anyone’s step.

I brought the Walther up, intent on blasting a hole in Sargent’s smug face, but as I did, tentacles of darkness exploded from the truck, knocking me to the ground. A steel nunchuck cut through the space my head had been selfishly occupying. I hit the ground hard, and as I tried to twist to see what was going on, the tentacles wrapped around my ankles and dragged me underneath the F250. It was a good thing too because that same nunchuck smashed through the asphalt next to me like it was tissue paper.

Sparks flew as I rolled out from under the Ford in time to see Maya standing on the hood of the truck with a lit, black as coal candle in one hand. Her other hand was outstretched in front of her, controlling a massive shadow squid that was doing its damnedest to fight off a sixty-year-old Bruce Lee looking motherfucker complete with yellow jumpsuit and nunchucks.

“You forget who trained you,” Bruce said as his nunchucks slashed through the air in a blur of steel, beating back tentacles as he took a step toward me, not completely focused on Maya, who had a look of horror and concentration on her face. That look told me a story I didn’t understand entirely because I didn’t know the whos and whats of her circumstance. It was a look reserved for someone who had known this day was coming but at the same time hadn’t actually expected it to happen. It was weird because I’d literally seen her disembowel a demon without batting an eye before.

Either way, I could see where this was going. Between Yosemite Sam beating the tar out of Jack and Bruce Lee’s wicked nunchuck skills, we had precious little time before things got really bad. So what did I do? The only thing I could.

I pointed the Walther at Bruce and pulled the trigger as quickly as I could, emptying the gun at the nunchuck-wielding psycho’s face, knees, and heart. He did exactly as I expected him to do. He whirled toward me swinging his nunchucks around to deflect the bullets, and as he did, I tackled him.

A grunt of pain tore from his lips as the fire surrounding me, crawled over his clothing and melted it against his body armor. Unfortunately, that was about all it did. I wasn’t sure why, but my Hellfire was about as effective as spit wads and bubblegum against that armor.

As we landed in a heap on the ground, I reared back and brought my fist down in a haymaker that shattered his nose in a spray of blood.

“Maya, help Jack,” I called as Bruce curled his hand into a fist and let loose with a one-inch punch that nearly shattered my ribs through the magic shield of fire covering my body. I flew upward into the air, and as I hit the ground a few feet away, my vision hazy, I watched him hop to his feet, patting out the fire on his clothing with less concern than I’d have swatting away a dust mote.

He eyed me coolly and rubbed his nose with one burned fist before reaching out and making a “bring it” gesture. As he did, it felt like someone had doused me in cold water. My shield winked out, but thankfully, I could feel the spark of my power beneath the surface, ready to go. Whatever he’d done had brought down my defenses, but it was only temporary.

“Oh, it’ll get brought, motherfucker!” I cried, scrambling to my feet and calling upon my magic, but before I could restart my shield, Maya’s tentacles lashed out toward Bruce, wrapping him up in darkness like a tar baby. He struggled, and as he did, Maya glanced at me.

“I’ll take care of Pops,” she said, leaping down from the hood of the F250 and picking up his nunchucks. As she brought them up like she knew how to use them, the darkness around Bruce exploded in every direction as did the candle in Maya’s hand. She stood facing the guy, an annoyed look on her face.

“Get out of here, boy,” Bruce said, rearing back like he was going to backhand her across the face. Before he could, Maya lashed out with the nunchucks. The steel cracked against the back of his hand, and the nunchucks bent in half.

“Fuck!” she cried, and as I took a step toward her, Jack’s monstrous form flew past me and slammed into the driver’s side door of the Ford, cratering the metal and pushing it up onto its passenger’s side wheels.

I spun on my heel in time to see Sargent leveling his colt at me.

“Bang!” he said and pulled the trigger.

Chapter 8

Jack snatched the bullet out of the air millimeters from my forehead and before I could even blink, threw it back at Sargent. The Texan swatted it out of the air like he was smacking an annoying fly and grinned.

“Catch this,” Sargent said and emptied the Colt at us.

As Jack held up his hand to Neo the bullets, I dove to the side out of reflex. It was a good thing I did because none of the bullets stopped. Instead, they perforated the vampire. Silver flame sprang from Jack’s wounds as he slumped forward onto his knees, confusion spread across his face. Jack’s vampire form began to fade, sloughing off of him like wet clay as he tried to stand and failed. Damn.

“Here’s the thing about vampires. They always stand there like dumbasses thinking they can ignore bullets.” Sargent smiled and calmly began to reload his Colt like he had all the time in the world. Well, fuck that. “That’s why I warded my rounds. You can appreciate the irony, I’m sure.” He winked at me. Damn, news of how I’d dropped Baal with a warded bullet had spread.

Before he could finish reloading his Colt, I sprang to my feet and pulled myself onto the back of the Hummer. Maya was still fighting Bruce, but fighting might have been a subjective term. She was mostly dodging as Bruce punched dents into the front of the Ford. Still, she was holding her own in a way that suggested she had some ninja skills of her own. Good to know.

I grabbed hold of the Browning M2, spun, and let loose a blast in Sargent’s general direction. The Browning tore apart the asphalt behind him, along with a parked Dodge Neon and an abandoned ice cream shop as he leapt out of the way. He rolled across the pavement. As he came to his feet, his Colt came up. I swung the machinegun toward him, still holding the trigger down. Bullets sliced through the air where he’d just been as he sprang sideways, dodging my shots once again. It was like trying to hit a ghost.

“What sort of fuckery is this?” I cried right before Bruce back flipped onto the Hummer and swung a roundhouse at my head. I dodged, and it was a good thing I did because his foot demolished the Browning in a screech of shattered metal on its downward arc.

“Yata!” he cried, dropping down in front of me with his fists at his sides. He seemed to blur as he came forward, but before he could punch out my lights, Maya emptied her MAC-10 into his back. The shots tore through his yellow jumpsuit, revealing the body armor beneath and pitching him forward off balance.

“You should know better than to turn your back on me, you bastard!” Maya called as the gun clicked empty.

He spun his head as he stumbled forward, fixing Maya with a death glare. I took advantage and drove my elbow into the underside of his chin with the full force of my body. His head snapped backward as he fell off the Hummer and hit the ground with a wet smack.

Bruce had barely struck the pavement when my spidey sense went berserk! I threw myself backward Matrix style as a bullet zipped through the air beside my ear. Sargent was coming toward me, sighting me down the center of his Colt.

“No one to catch this one for you,” Sargent said, gesturing at Jack’s sprawled, bleeding form with his free hand. “Too bad, so sad.” A tiny tremor of fear lanced through me, partially for my own safety, but mostly for Jack. I wasn’t sure what was going on with the vampire, but he definitely seemed down for the count.

A grin spread across Sargent’s mustached mouth as he started to depress the trigger, which was when a tie dye VW Bus struck him in the side at over fifty miles an hour. The impact sent him bouncing across the street like a ragdoll. The passenger door flew open to reveal Ramon leaning over from the driver’s seat.

“Come on,” he cried, glancing at me from around a pair of pink fuzzy dice before gesturing toward the back of the van with his thumb. “We don’t have all day.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I jumped off the back of the hummer while Maya paused long enough to soccer kick Bruce in the head as he tried to get up. He slumped bonelessly to the pavement, and for a moment, it looked like she was going to kick him again, but before she could capitalize on it, Sargent started to get up, which seemed all sorts of unfair. As much as I hated to admit it, if we didn’t run like hell, he’d put a whole mess of holes in us. Call me crazy, but Swiss cheese wasn’t a good look on my delicate body.

“Maya, time to go!” I cried, scooping up Jack’s battered, bleeding body. The vampire was much lighter than I expected, which made dragging him toward the VW surprisingly easy. As I flung open the blue tie-dyed side door and leapt inside, a bullet punched through the side-view mirror, spraying bits of debris across my body.

“Hurry up, Mac!” Ramon called as another bullet smacked into the driver’s side of the windshield, punching a hole through the glass and turning the rest into a mishmash of spiderwebbing cracks.

Ramon’s head snapped backward in a spray of blood, but before I could be horrified about our getaway driver being turned into a headless corpse, Ramon reached up, plucked the bullet from beneath his eyes and flung it like Orel freaking Hershiser. It passed straight through the bullet hole in the windshield and caught Sargent in the chest before he could fire again. The force of the bullet threw the Texan from his feet as he slid back across the gravel.

“Fucker,” Ramon growled, turning to look at me. Blood dripped down his face, but the wound was already closing over the metal plate embedded in his forehead so it sort of reminded me of Wolverine. “I really hate getting shot. Really screws up the reception.”

Maya leapt into the passenger seat next to Ramon as Sargent got to his feet and pointed the gun at her. Judging by the look on the Texan’s face, he wasn’t about to stop shooting so he could figure out why Ramon had warded off the first shot. No, instead, he’d pulled a second Colt free and was coming toward us looking all sorts of pissed off hillbilly.

I slammed the van’s side door shut and dropped down onto the forest green shag carpet covering the floor. As bullet shattered the windshield, Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival came blasting through the bus’s strangely state-of-the-art sound system.

The VW’s tires screeched as we took off, and I looked up in time to see Sargent leap out of the way of our oncoming hippie-mobile. I was pretty sure we didn’t have long before he came after us, and as I turned to glance out the back windows, I saw the hummer explode into a shrapnel-filled fireball.

“Whoa,” I said, spinning back around as Ramon caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. Then he tossed the spoon of a grenade to me. Had he thrown a grenade at the Hummer? Points for him.

“I’m counting this as two saves, Maya,” he said, a smirk playing across his malformed features. I’ll be honest, my stomach turned as I thought about what those saves might cost. Ugh.

“I’m counting it as zero saves unless you escape that,” she said, stabbing one well-manicured finger at the passenger window.

I looked toward where she was pointing. I shouldn’t have, but I was a sucker. Still, there was something about a giant parade float of Peppa Pig barreling toward us that made me doubt my sanity. Even worse, bloody carnations trailed behind it, reminding me of a macabre flower girl at a wedding. Yeah, there was no way this was going to end well.