Marked: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

plan?” but before I could, a gargoyle leapt off the building next to us and broadsided our Corvette. The force of the impact sent our vehicle careening through the guardrail on our left in a squeal of tortured metal and a shriek of broken glass.
     

Chapter 4
    Have you ever been trapped inside a metal coffin while a two-ton living statue tried to splatter your skull like a casaba melon? I hadn’t before either, and let me tell you, it wasn’t nearly as fun as it sounds, and yes, I realize it doesn’t sound terribly fun. That’s sort of my point.
    As we slid down the muddy embankment toward the lake below, the gargoyle’s stone fist punched through the Corvette’s bulletproof hardtop ridiculously close to my skull. Its stone fingers wrapped around the metal and peeled the top of the car back like it was the lid on a sardine can.
    “Goddamn it!” Ricky cried while grabbing hold of her seatbelt and tearing it free of the car’s frame in one fluid motion. It was pretty amazing because I’d managed to do little more than stare dumbly up at the creature while it eyed me like I was a particularly tasty sardine. Yup, not done with that metaphor quite yet. It’s got at least three more uses left, I think.
    Ricky’s left hand lashed out in a blur of motion I could barely follow with my naked eye. She smashed her fleshy fist into the giant rock monster. A sickening crack that was equal parts bone and stone filled my ears as the gargoyle actually lifted off the hood of the car and hit the muddy ground like a bag of wet cement. The dazed creature slid backward across the embankment, throwing up a cloud of dirt and debris as Ricky’s hand flopped like a dying fish at the end of her wrist. Broken bones writhed and twisted back into place underneath her skin while blood oozed from the torn flesh on her knuckles.
    A look of annoyance flashed across her face as she glanced from her ruined fist to me. She glowered at me like the gargoyle was my fault. Which maybe it was, I had no idea, but I hadn’t told her to punch it in the face either.
    “Why are you still wearing your seatbelt?” she asked, and the tone of her voice made me feel very stupid and useless. Before I could respond, she reached out with her non-shattered right hand and unfastened my seatbelt. “We need to get out of here before your buddy makes me punch him again. I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly fond of slugging it out with a goddamned statue.” She held up her ruined fist for emphasis.
    “Yeah, you should try wearing gloves or something. That’s what boxers do, you know, because they punch so hard, they’d break their hands without them,” I said, snapping myself out of my shock and scrambling up onto the seat so I could jump from the Corvette before we wound up in the lake. It wasn’t exactly an awesome plan, I’ll admit, but I was sort of under a lot of pressure at the moment.
    “When this is over, I’m going to punch you in the face,” Ricky said, and the tone in her voice made me think she was totally serious. Deciding not to increase my chances of an ass-whooping at the hands of a pissed off werewolf, I wisely kept my mouth shut.
    I tried to work up the courage to jump from the car as the gargoyle got to its feet and stared at us. One side of its face looked like it’d been hit with a goddamned sledgehammer, and as I leapt from a moving vehicle as it slid toward a lake, I realized I was about to have a whole different problem. I was about to be out in the open with a huge rock monster hell-bent on killing us. At least I think it was trying to kill us. For all I knew, smashing our car was gargoyle for, “I love you.” Either way, I wasn’t exactly fond of finding out the gargoyle equivalent of a hug.
    “Whatever you say, Stumpy,” I said before hitting the ground in a roll and coming to my feet covered in mud, grass, and slime.
    Ricky landed lithely next to me on her feet without disturbing so much as a blade of grass. She