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

building. Even though I’d jumped out of an airplane before, this was quite a bit different since I didn’t have a goddamned parachute. As I careened through the air toward the swirling vortex with my eyes closed, I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen. I just hoped it wouldn’t hurt.
    I was wrong. Entering the doorway to Hell was like slamming into a brick wall face first. I cried out in pain as my eyes flashed open. I was lying on the floor of a stone cavern glowing with purple effervescent fungus and water dripping from stalactites overhead. As I crawled to my feet, Wendy burst through the emptiness behind me, but unlike me, she landed daintily on her feet. I sucked in a breath that tasted like cloves and cheap beer and tried to make my heart stop hammering in my chest. I ignored the adrenaline rushing through my veins as my brain slowly oriented itself to my new reality.
    “Well, looks like we made it,” Jenna said from a few feet away. “Where to?”
    I glanced toward her and my heart sank. The cavern split off into no less than ten darkened tunnels lined with stalactites and stalagmites so they looked like the mouths of a horrible beast.
    “We pick by eenie meenie miney moe. Is easy, yeah? You catch tiger by toe,” Vitaly said, moving past us and approaching the tunnels. The look Jenna gave him summed up my feelings exactly. It was a look of “Are you fucking serious?”
    “I kid.” Vitaly smiled, revealing a mouthful of teeth that glowed ominously in the black light cast by the fungus clinging to the cave walls. “Wendy, which tunnel do we take?”
    Wendy shut her eyes and reached out with one hand toward the tunnels. As she did, a fucking harpoon exploded from the depths of the cave furthest to the left, spearing Vitaly through the chest and hauling him backward into the darkness.
     

Chapter 8
    Without thinking, I sprinted after the big Russian. As I stepped into the yawning maw of the cave, I was suddenly blinded by flashes of color springing from the disco ball overhead. A smear of blood on the floor led from where I stood to Vitaly like a macabre snail trail.
    The big Russian was only a few feet away, but the distance between us was increasing by the second. Just below the disco ball stood a thing that sort of looked like a cross between Disco Stu from the Simpsons and Davy Jones from The Pirates of the Caribbean movies in that he was wearing a disco suit and had the head of a squid.
    “Alright, Disco Squid, drop him,” I said, getting ready to pump him full of Hellfire.
    The creature ignored me as it hauled backward on an invisible rope with his rhinestone-glove-covered hands. With every tug, Vitaly skidded across the dance floor beneath our feet because, of course, Hell would be filled with bad seventies' music.
    Disco beats pulsated through the air, slamming into my senses in a way I couldn’t explain because it was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It wasn’t just the bass crashing into my eardrums. No, I could taste the music like raspberry cream and chocolate, feel it like silk brushed over my skin. And you know what? Disco still sucked.
    I stood there like an idiot while the big Russian tried to tear the harpoon from his chest, but every time he managed to grip the weapon, his hands slipped off the golden-edged blade like they were covered in butter.
    “Put him down!” I cried, trying to raise my voice over the din. I took a step forward, and as I did, I slipped on the slick dance floor and crashed onto my back. Little tweety birds danced around my head as the Disco-dancing Cthulhu grinned.
    “Or what?” it croaked in a voice that was like a blast of lightning across my brain. My teeth clenched as I gripped my temples in my hands, trying to resist the fading sound of his voice. Hot, sticky blood leaked from my nose and ears as I tried vainly to crawl to my feet. It wasn’t going well.
    “Or I’ll shoot you,” Jenna said, appearing next to me and pointing her Baby Eagle at