Seized: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 4) by J.A. Cipriano Page A

way through the gate that didn’t involve someone actually dying.” I shrugged as the toad statue watched me like he knew we were fucking with him but couldn’t do anything about it. Stupid toad.
    “The Mac Brennan I know wouldn’t give a flying fuck about having to sacrifice someone to get through that gate. Hell, he’d have brought some poor slob along for the sole purpose of marching him onto that scale and putting a bullet in his head, and he’d have done it while whistling.” She glanced at me, and if I wasn’t trying to ignore the truth of what she said, the force of her look would have made me look for somewhere to hide. “You’ve changed, Mac. I’m not sure if I like it.”
    “If that’s true,” I said, shoving down the idea that she was probably right about who I was because I definitely wasn’t that person anymore and deflected by raising my demonic arm. “I blame it on this.”
    “Maybe,” she said as we passed through the gate. “But those things tend to turn you into more of a douche, not less of one.”
    A smile I couldn’t help crossed my lips. Jenna clearly knew me from my old days, and unless I was way off, was implying I was somehow less of a douche now. Man, I must have been a real piece of work in my former life. It sort of made me glad I couldn’t remember.
    As soon as we crossed the threshold, we found ourselves standing knee deep in bones. It sort of reminded me of that scene in Lion King where they visit the hyenas and there’s just nothing but carcasses everywhere. The only thing was, some of these skeletons were huge enough to make me hope I didn’t run into whatever had killed them. I glanced over my shoulder, but instead of seeing the gate, all I saw was that same dense fog that had followed us through the graveyard. I wasn’t sure how we were getting back, but I’d read more than enough Stephen King novels to not want to venture into it.
    “Maybe? What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked as Marvin and Vitaly approached a large doorway jutting up from the landscape. A shiver went through me as I realized the doorway was crafted entirely from skulls. Their empty eye sockets stared out at us from across the skeletal wasteland, and as we moved, they seemed to watch us in the exact same way the statues had in the graveyard. Not cool. Not cool at all.
    “It means maybe,” Jenna reaffirmed unhelpfully.
    “Get ready,” Vitaly called, pulling out his glowing plastic key and touching it to the center of the door. The silver glow crawled across the door’s surface, and as it did, the bone piles surrounding us exploded, pelting us with fragments. A shinbone cracked me across the forehead as I grabbed hold of Jenna and pulled her down beneath me, intent on shielding her with my body.
    “Tueri!” I cried ignoring the blood dripping into my right eye from the cut on my forehead.
    As a shield of liquid flame danced over the both of us, a bone smashed into the back of my trench coat causing breath to explode from my lungs. To be honest, I hadn’t known I could shield two people with my magic, but evidently, I could. It was a good thing too because the idea of us both being skewered by flying femurs was definitely not on my day planner.
    “Come on,” Marvin called as the bone storm raged around us.
    “Are you out of your goddamned mind?” Jenna cried from beneath me, and from the way her gun poked into my ribs, I wasn’t sure if she meant me or Marvin. Marvin definitely got my vote.
    The door Vitaly had struck crumbled to dust, revealing a sucking purple void beyond. Marvin glanced at it for a second, but before he could do anything, a giant purple hand mottled with thick blue veins burst from the void and grabbed him around the torso. It jerked him roughly through the void, and as his body hit the surface, it exploded in a flash of purple fire.
    “That is our ride,” Vitaly cried before leaping through the void himself. It sort of reminded me of when a mosquito hits a bug