Page 2 of That Mafioso Magic
“I’m not leaving yo—”
“Go. I will take care of this and catch up with you.”
I could tell Xavier wanted to fight me on this, but I gave him my serious look and he sighed, hanging his head dejectedly. “You better not fucking blow up on me, asshole.”
“I won’t. Go.”
He nodded, then continued on, being more careful where he placed his feet than I had been. I was scared shitless about the fucking mine, but if it did go off, I didn’t want it to kill Xavier as well. At that point, I wished I was a more powerful mage. But what I did know helped me help others and that had been enough. I scanned my knowledge of spells I knew I could use to deactivate or at least trick the device. I finally remembered one: “To freeze an object”. Lucky for me, it was a simple incantation that didn’t need any herbs, sigils, or relics to make happen. It would give me plenty of time to get free of the mine. I would only need a bit of magic syphoned from the earth, and voila!
“I invoke thee to freeze beneath me,” I said softly. It was a simple enough incantation; the more difficult spells required more creativity with rhyming. Most of them, I couldn’t do. Easier spells only required one or two words that expressed what you wanted to happen and you had to direct your magic at the focal point of your spell. As I said the freezing spell, I had gathered all the magical particles in the atmosphere around me, channeling them through my body to flow to where I wanted the magic to take effect. In this case, it was the mine under my foot.
I was sweating bullets as I slowly slid my foot off the mine, because if my spell didn’t work, I was fucked. I didn’t exhale until my foot was completely free and my body was still intact.
I dashed out of the way and leaned against the wall, still a little shaken from my ordeal. “Ooohhh shit,” I sighed, then wiped my forehead. I waited for the mine to go off, but it never did. The freeze spell would only work for a few seconds, so if the mine was live, it should have blown up by now. Well, you wouldn’t find me complaining about having stepped on a dud. After a few more deep breaths, I continued on my path down the hallway looking for Xavier. I was sliding my feet through the mud this time and was able to avoid two more mines. Whoever was using this place as a hideout sure as hell made sure to boobytrap the fuck out of it. Not only did we have to avoid mines, but tripwires too, which Xavier pointed out when I’d finally caught up to him through the winding maze that was this hellhole.
Carefully, we stepped over the tripwire and pressed forward until a bright light shined on us, stopping us in our tracks. “That’s far enough,” a gruff, male voice said from the darkness behind the blinding light. “I don’t know how you found me, but you ain’t leaving here alive.”
I had to take a chance that whomever this was, maybe he wasn’t aware mages existed. I also had to take a chance that this asshole was also human. “Shatter!” I said, causing the spotlight he had on us to do just that, sending glass falling in sprinkles to the muddy floor. That was when I heard the gun go off and saw the flash of light with each shot illuminating his face. He was shooting blind, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t get lucky. I had to put him down, and fast.
Shooting back would give away our position, but we had to take a chance. I fired off in the direction he was standing, but I could tell he had lunged out of the way. This was his playground. Light or not, he knew this place better than we did. Xavier fired too, and when he fired back in Xavier’s direction, I saw his position. I took the shot, and when I heard him cry out, I kept blasting away.
Xavier stood up, shining his flashlight in the direction of the groans, and I saw the son of a bitch crawling away from us to what looked like a metal door. “Oh, no you don’t,” I snarled and rushed over to him and placed my foot on his back. “Move and you get one in the back of your fucking head.”
“Do it!” he spat through missing teeth.
“And spare you the nice accommodations of prison? I don’t think so,” I snapped. I was so pissed off, my hand shook as I struggled to keep my finger off the trigger. “Where is Lacey?”
He laughed. “Dead.”
My lips turned up into a snarl and I had to bite back my anger, because I didn’t want to believe it was the truth. I didn’t want to think I had been too late. “You know, I can have my partner here cut off your cock and balls if you tell one more lie,” I threatened. Idle or not, I needed him to believe it.
“Oh, I would love to cut off this motherfucker’s junk. I’ll turn them into keychains,” Xavier added, his Spanish accent thickening just a bit in his anticipation, which meant he would totally do it. “If that little girl is dead, I’ll do it.”
“Fuck you!” the man snarled.
I took my foot off his back and kicked him as hard as I could in his side. I was sure I’d at least fractured one of his ribs. He growled and coughed, but managed to roll over onto his back. I shined my flashlight in his mud-smeared face and saw that he was an older man who looked to be in his late fifties. A long, scruffy-looking beard, missing teeth, and the ones that were in his mouth were pretty crooked. He was squinting up at me. I could see that his eyes were gray and he was a bit husky in his build. I wondered how much of that was muscle stock? The good news was, he was bleeding from two bullet wounds, one in his shoulder and the other in his abdomen.
“Check out that room,” I told Xavier while I kept my eye on the perp.
Xavier went to the door, but it didn’t bulge. “A little help?”
I closed my eyes to concentrate as I absorbed more magical elements from everything surrounding me. I slipped my flashlight into my pocket, then aimed my hand toward the door. “Release,” I commanded. We heard the lock give and Xavier gave the doorknob a turn and this time, it opened. I pointed my flashlight back on the perp. I wanted to make sure he didn’t try anything tricky. Good news, he was human. Bad news, he didn’t seem all that surprised I was using magic around him. Which meant he might know about the world hidden in the shadows.
“Why did you take Lacey?” I asked.
“Because… they were pretty.” He groaned again as more blood bubbled up from the bullet wound in his stomach, which also soaked and stained his dirty shirt.
“‘They’.” That little detail did not escape me. “How many girls have you taken?”
“Not enough,” he growled.
Again, I had to fight my urge to put a bullet right between his fucking eyes. I was literally seeing red. Now, I prayed we weren’t too late to save the kids this son of a bitch had kidnapped. I looked around the room and for the first time, I started to notice paraphernalia used with spells and conjuring. My pulse raced as I thought about what it could mean for the girls. Just what was this evil bastard trying to do?
“You know magic exists. What were you doing with all of that?” I asked, nodding toward the table with candles, a chalice, and a few stones and orbs on it. All things I recognized were used for very powerful spells.
“I don’t know… what you mean,” he said, panting heavily as he continued to bleed from his bullet wounds.
“You deserve to suffer for every deplorable thought in your mind. I swear to God, if you’ve hurt those girls, I—”
