Hellbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 6) Read online

  Now, I’d made my fair share of deals with the devil before. After all, I’d traded my soul to a demon for my cursed arm and the magic that came with it. I’d bargained with Vassago, a prince of Hell, and was even in my current predicament because I’d bargained with Mammon. Deals with demons never ended well, but at the same time, I had absolutely no idea how to get out of here. If he could help us, shouldn’t we at least try? It wasn’t like we could get more screwed. After all, we were in Hell. Actually, scratch that. Murphy, if you’re listening, I take it back.

  “What do you say, Jenna?” I asked, looking from Sam’s outstretched hand to Jenna. She was still giving him that “I don’t trust you at fucking all” look she had. Jenna was pretty good with things like this. Her hunches were almost always right, so if she didn’t want to work with the guy, we wouldn’t. “Got any other ideas?”

  “Sadly no.” Jenna shook her head and let out a slow breath. “But we all have to get out.”

  “Then I guess we have a deal,” I said, shaking Sam’s hand. As I did, something inside me seemed to revolt in a way I couldn’t explain. My heart shuddered, and I halfway expected lightning to flash in the cloudless sky. Nothing happened though. People kept milling around, barkers kept barking, and pteranodons kept swooping.

  “Sounds fine to me,” Sam replied, smiling so broadly I knew we were fucked. No one who wasn’t trying to pull a fast one would be this excited about a deal like this. I mean, let’s face it. Getting out of Hell was probably this side of impossible. “Let’s get a move on. I saw what you did to Mammon. The barrier spell I cast on you won’t last much longer. Once it wears off, he’ll be on you like a fat girl on cake.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked as Sam threw his arm over our shoulders and began leading us away. He had one of those smooth gliding walks that seemed to put me at ease. “What do you mean by that exactly?”

  I found it hard to believe the reason Mammon hadn’t smashed me into a pancake was because this Sam guy had done something, especially since we’d just met him, but then again, who was I to say for sure? After all, I didn’t see Mammon anywhere. Then again, I also didn’t see any tigers, so maybe he’d repelled them too.

  “I mean, I felt you breach the void.” He nodded heavenward. “You’d be surprised how many living visitors we get down here, and well, I just happened to be nearby, and I thought to myself, ‘Sam, those two idjits are going to get eaten alive if you don’t help.’ and I’m nothing if not helpful.” He flashed us another grin, and while I couldn’t tell you why because that sounded like total bullshit, I almost believed him.

  As I pulled my gaze off his face, a bad feeling settled over me. Him being able to sense us enter Hell seemed ominous. I wasn’t sure how he’d sensed us, but I was willing to bet he wasn’t the only one who had done so. Was that how Mammon had found me? My eyes widened. Was that why Mammon hadn’t finished the job? Did he expect to be able to find us at any time and was just licking his wounds?

  Then again, there was the possibility Sam was telling the truth, in which case, he had been unable to find us because of whatever Sam had done. Either way, Sam was the lynch pin in our plan, and I didn’t like that one fucking bit. I hated relying on other people, especially hipsters I picked up on the corner in Hell.

  “You know, you’re not making me feel better about our deal,” I said as we reached the end of the sidewalk, and Sam paused to hit the walk button on the stop light. The street sign suspended next to the signal lights read, “Las Vegas Boulevard… in Hell.” Yeah, it even had those three dots.

  “Yeah,” he said, letting us go as he leaned against the metal pole and pulled a corncob pipe from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “I get that a lot. I’m not sure why. I always keep my promises.”

  3

  We made it about three steps into the street before one of the pteranodons attacked us. Hellish sunlight glinted off its razor sharp beak as it slammed into the ground in the middle of the street with enough force to crack the asphalt. It flapped its massive multi-hued wings, trying to balance itself on its two clawed feet before cocking its head at us and glaring at the three of us with one large, bloodshot eye. Its body was covered in mottled, leathery red flesh that reflected the light back at me in a way that made it hard to stare at the creature directly.

  “Whatcha doin’ here, Sam?” the bow-tie-wearing pteranodon asked, its mouth clacking together as it spoke, making it really difficult to fathom how it made human sounds. In fact, it was so weird, it still took me a moment to realize it’d spoken English.

  “Nothing much, Slade,” Sam said, evidently having less of a problem with the twelve-foot-tall winged-reptile. “Just trying to escort a few friends down to the Hellagio plaza.” He gestured whimsically down the street toward where a smattering of vibrantly glowing buildings stood along the street like Hellish sentries. “New arrivals. You know how it is.” He stuck out his tongue and made a retching sound.

  “Is that really a talking dinosaur?” I asked, blinking a few times just to make sure I was taking things in correctly.

  “Pteranodons aren’t actually dinosaurs. They just existed at the same time,” Sam said, glancing at me and giving me the “Shut your fucking mouth and let me handle this” look.

  “I don’t mind being called a dinosaur,” Slade the pteranodon said as his gaze shifted from Sam to me. “It’s probably easier that way, truth be told.”

  “Good to know,” I said, and he looked at me for a long time, and I got the distinct impression it didn’t believe Sam even a little bit.

  Sam rubbed his face with his hand, and looked like he was about to say something when Slade snorted violently, adjusted its bow tie, and took a step forward. Its claws clicked on the asphalt as the walk sign behind it flashed to red. Cars began to lean on their horns but if Slade cared, it didn’t show.

  “Why do I think you’re lying?” Slade asked, one wing lashing out through the air as it spoke. “Oh, it must be because your lips are moving.” The horned tip of its bat-like wing stopped just shy of Sam’s throat. “If they were fresh meat, they’d be at orientation, not out here with you.”

  “That’s an excellent point,” Sam said, right before he kicked the huge reptile in its ridiculously huge nuts. Its eyes bugged out of its skull as it slumped to the ground clutching its groin, which was amusing and horrifying because an ear splitting shriek exploded through the air above us. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but now all the pteranodons in the sky were coming toward us, and they did not look happy.

  “Run!” Sam cried, grabbing Jenna’s hand and hauling her forward into the street. The lane of traffic not blocked by Slade’s thrashing body was moving at high speed. I wasn’t sure what Sam’s plan was, but either way, I was pretty sure standing in the open was asking to get eaten. I took off after the two of them as Sam reached the center divider and broadsided a dude on a Harley-style chopper.

  The big biker flew off the bike and slammed into the asphalt with a thud that made his eyes go glassy. This was also when I realized he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Instead, a thick ridge of bone surrounded his head along with a trio of horns that reminded me of a triceratops.

  “Get on!” Sam cried, swinging himself onto the chopper and stood on the pedals, leaning forward to give us room as the tricera-biker’s friends came to a halt all around us. Jenna leapt on behind him, and I followed suit.

  It was a tight fit, but I was more than willing to try to squeeze on the over-sized motorcycle if it meant not getting pounded into the pavement by bikers or eaten by dinosaurs. And oh my God, I never thought I’d think that thought.

  “Hold on to your butts!” he cried before jamming down hard on the throttle.

  We took off in a squeal of rubber as another pteranodon slammed down where we’d just been. It shook a winged fist at us before taking back to the skies. From the way it and its friends were gaining on us, I knew we didn’t have much time before we got dive bombed.

  I’d probably have cared more, but Sam s
werved hard. I had half a second to grab onto Jenna for dear life when a shotgun roared behind us. The back windshield of the fire-engine-red Corvette that had been in front of us shattered into a million gummy pieces. As the driver turned and glared back at us, tentacles of flame spread out from within the car, reaching for us malevolently.

  “Fuck!” I cried, glancing over my shoulder to see the bikers coming toward us. While they all had different kinds of guns, the leader was cocking a shotgun one handed like Arnold in Terminator Two.

  “Get down,” Jenna said, and as I ducked to accommodate her, she spun in the seat, sweeping one leg over my head in a sort of aerial cartwheel that left her facing me on the bike. Then she leaned forward and braced her forearms on my shoulders. The Baby Eagle in her hands barked right behind my head, blowing my hearing to kingdom come as she fired a pair of .45 caliber ACP rounds at the bikers.

  My hearing shattered from the sound of the blast so while I didn’t hear any shouts of pain from the bikers, I did hear the crunch of steel followed by the horrific sound of cars crashing into each other.

  Jenna’s lips twisted into a grin as an explosion rocked the space behind us with enough force to send me tumbling face first into her chest. Well, at least it was a soft landing.

  As I pulled myself away from her, she fired again and again.

  “I’m almost out,” Jenna said, glancing over her shoulder at Sam. “So I hope you have a better plan.”

  “Make yourself useful,” Sam said, jerking a gunmetal shotgun unlike anything I’d ever seen before from the holster beside the front wheel of the bike and offering it to me.

  “Will do,” I replied. As I grabbed it from his hand, my tattoos flared brightly. Runic symbols along the weapon blazed to life. Hopefully, this was a good development and not a bad one.

  Either way, I shoved the dread welling up inside my gut down as Jenna’s gun barked again. Sam juked hard to the left, and the shriek of brakes filled my ears as another shotgun blast tore into the rear end of the car we’d been behind.

  “Get ready to shoot the glass!” Sam cried as the bike came up onto the sidewalk and people scattered. Sam turned sharply once more and aimed us straight at the big window in front of a rundown casino with fading, cracked paint.

  As we raced to meet it, I pointed the shotgun at the window and pulled the trigger in an effort to shatter the glass before we hit it. Call me crazy, but hitting a glass window at high speed seemed like a recipe for lots of stitches and I really hated stitches.

  Instead of buckshot, pellets of crimson fire erupted from the business end of the shotgun, and the smell of swamp gas filled my nose. The blast hit the window and turned it into a slag heap that blew inward like it’d been struck by bazooka.

  We hit the smoldering hole a second later, and Sam twisted the bike into a sharp turn that somehow got us through without getting even a single molten drop on us. We landed hard on the dingy marble floor of the casino and skidded to a halt. We sat there for less than an eye blink before Sam leapt off the steaming, smoking hog and took off running toward a big burly guard who looked like a fucking ogre. His skin was mottled grey, and he stood at least eleven feet tall and had muscles so large, they made Hulk Hogan’s twenty-four-inch pythons seem tiny.

  Said guard was looking at Sam like the dude had sprouted a second head, and a bad feeling settled over me. I did not want to tangle with that guy if I could help it, especially since we had an armada of dinosaurs, excuse me, flying reptiles, and bikers after us.

  “We need to get out of here,” Sam called, snapping his fingers at the ogre. “Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  I hopped off the bike and glanced out the smoldering window while readying my shotgun. The bikers were pulling up, and they looked none too happy with us. The cries of the pteranodons were still echoing across the sky too, but I was less concerned about them at the moment. After all, they didn’t have guns. Either way, I really hoped Sam’s plan would work fast.

  “I have a bad feeling about this guy,” Jenna said as she grabbed my hand and pulled me behind a concierge desk for cover while I pumped a blast into the window that sent the bikers scrambling for cover. “He seems too much like the type who does whatever he wants and relies on his suaveness to get him out of it.” She glanced at me. “So I guess he’s like you, except we get to trade being suave for shooting things in the face.”

  “Hey, you have to do what works for you,” I replied as I racked another shell and fired at the slowest biker. Fire belched from the shotgun and hit the dude center mass with enough force to throw him backward into the street. It would have made me feel better if my blast wasn’t returned by the bikers’ own guns. Bullets pinged off everything, and I knew we weren’t getting out of here easily, if at all.

  After all, the bikers didn’t have to kill us necessarily. They just had to keep us pinned down long enough for the dinosaurs to get us. God, I was really starting to hate this place.

  “I don’t know, Sam. The last time I helped you, Mephistopheles got pretty pissed,” the big guy was saying as Sam continued to argue with him. Bullets whizzed around the two of them, and for a moment, I wondered why they weren’t dead, but a quick glance told me why. Blue energy swirled around the big guy, and as bullets struck the field, they flew off to embed in the ceiling, floor, and walls. Well, that was a neat trick.

  “Just do it, Clem. If you do, I’ll make it worth your while.” Sam clapped the big man on the shoulder and gave us a smile over his shoulder. “You know me. I always make good on my deals.”

  That was the second time Sam had declared his deals as good as gold, and it struck me a bit off. It was almost like he was trying to get people to trust him by saying so, but at the same time, usually trustworthy people didn’t have to declare themselves such.

  “Fine, Sam.” Clem waved one hand at the window and the blue stuff pulsing around him filled in the gap. The sound of bullets ricocheting outside filled the air right before solid steel security shutters slammed down around all the entrances, sealing us inside. Then the alarm went off.

  4

  “Well, I’m glad that unpleasantness is over,” Sam said unconcerned even though the alarm was going off and we’d been getting shot at less than ten seconds ago. He strode toward us from across the lobby as the alarm continued to wail. He flicked a red coin over his shoulder, and it spun a few times before landing in the big ogre’s outstretched palm. “Take care of that alarm, will you, Clem? It’s a touch overbearing, don’t you think?”

  Part of me thought it might be too good to be true. I mean, bullets and dinosaurs don’t seem like things that cower before a fucking fire alarm, but then again, Sam seemed really sure of it, and he’d paid off Clem, which was good because as per usual, I had exactly zero pennies to my name.

  Clem shrugged and walked off like he was used to Sam ordering him around. Not that it mattered because Sam wasn’t watching him anymore. Instead, the hipster lumberjack stopped in front of us and waited expectantly.

  “Well, come along. We haven’t got all day, now do we?” His grin chilled me in a way I hadn’t expected. Part of it was I wasn’t sure why he was so calm, but he was right. If no one was shooting at us, it was time to scram.

  “What’s with the siren?” Jenna asked as we got to our feet and moved toward Sam.

  “Oh, that. It’s no biggie. Just a security system that makes hellions fall into quivering puddles of goo. Well, most of them.” He shrugged as if to say, I’m obviously exempted. “Top of the line security. Can’t have people robbing the place.” He clucked a bit as he gestured at the casino. “Bad for business.”

  “You’re bad for business, Sam. Every time you come in here, stuff gets broken. Guests don’t like it when things are broken. Neither does management,” a short man with skin the color of coal tar and wearing a very expensive looking blue suit said as he clapped a bejeweled hand on Sam’s shoulder and steered him toward a cheap wooden door labeled Employees Only. I wasn’t sure where he’d come from, b
ut judging by the way Sam stiffened at the sound of his voice, Sam wasn’t exactly pleased to see him.

  I really hoped we hadn’t just run into one of Sam’s enemies because the absolute last thing I wanted right now was to get sucked into some petty squabble over who owns what rock in Hell. I didn’t have time for that kind of bullshit. I had to get both Jenna and I home. Still, that would be par for the course. If it was, I was going to just walk out.

  “Hey, Mephistopheles, how’s the family?” Sam asked, turning and flashing a thousand-watt smile at the shorter man.

  “We both know you don’t care.” Mephistopheles snorted. “Now take your humans and get out of here.” His dark, flat predator eyes raked over Jenna and me. “If they die, bring ‘em back. I’ll take the corpses off your hands for no charge. Until then, I’ll pretend I didn’t see you.”

  “Um… what?” Jenna asked as I stared at the tar-fleshed Mephistopheles. He looked like he’d already forgotten we’d existed as he stomped off.

  “He’s part crocodile. Likes to let the bodies rot before he eats them.” Sam shot her a wry grin. “He’s basically saying he’s going to eat you if you die, but you’ll be dead so that won’t matter.” Sam shrugged.

  “Uh, huh,” I said, shaking my head. Call me crazy, but even if I was dead, I didn’t exactly like the idea of him eating me. “That sounds tasty.”

  “No worries,” Sam said, smacking me on the back. “Once you die and get through processing, you’ll just pop up right back here to Hell, anyway. I mean, you’ll be dead so our deal will be null and void, but we could hang out.” He grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me close. “We could be besties.”