“Tell your mother I am sorry,” my father said, turning toward the spirit of the Blue Prince and pushing me roughly behind his body. “Promise you will leave my family alone.”
The Blue Prince shrugged. “I have done what I needed to do. Only know that your sprat will not leave me alone, and I will defend myself.” He glared at me. “You only get to do that,” he pointed at Melanie’s corpse, “once.”
There was a loud whoosh and both he and my father were gone, leaving me standing over the headless corpse of my friend, and in that moment I knew two things. I had failed, and I would never get over what I had done to her. Not ever.
Strangely, the thought made me feel just the barest fraction better. It meant I wasn’t one hundred percent monster. At least, not yet.
Chapter 17
“When I heal, I am going to beat you within an inch of your life. Know this and be scared,” my mother told Caleb Oznek. It was the first thing she said after waking up from a three day coma.
Even still, I couldn’t stop myself from wrapping my arms around her and pulling her close. It elicited a cacophony of beeps from the various machines that were tied into her body. I was guessing they weren’t happy beeps.
“I love you too, Lillim,” my mother said, actually smiling at me. “I’m assuming that since you’re still in one piece, the Blue Prince is not.”
“Well,” I murmured and looked at the floor guiltily. “Sort of.”
“Let me guess. You killed him, and he took over someone else. Who is it?”
“Dad,” I said. I thought about lying or ignoring her, but honestly, she was our leader. She’d just find out anyway.
Her eyes narrowed for a moment. She looked up at the ceiling. “Ay dios mio,” she murmured to herself before falling back into unconsciousness. The sight of her like that filled me with so many emotions, I wasn’t quite sure how to explain them. I felt bad because she was hurt, anger because of what the Blue Prince had done to my family, and guilt beyond measure over Melanie. I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring at her, but it had to have been a while because Caleb started fidgeting.
I tried to think of what to do to make her feel better because the gift I’d brought seemed sort of pointless now. I sighed and put the box of chocolate covered donuts on the table beside her bed anyway. It was all I’d brought, but it didn’t seem like enough.
“Leave it to your mom to wake up from a coma just to yell at me,” Caleb said, putting a hand on my shoulder. It made my tummy do a little flip flop.
“Yeah. Well she did warn you beforehand,” I replied.
“But she should have known you wouldn’t listen to me,” he said with a sigh.
“How can I stand back when jerks come to destroy everything I know and love?” I asked him.
“Because you have spent so much time here, right?” Caleb replied, raising an eyebrow at me. “Seriously, you’ve done nothing but bitch and moan about this place since day one.”
“That might be true, but that doesn’t mean I wanted a god to come storm the gate with a bunch of orcs, put my mom into intensive care, and steal my father for a host. That was not on my list of things I totally wanted to have happen.”
To make matters worse, now everyone was going to talk about how I defeated the Blue Prince and how very damn scary I was. Which would be swell because that told even more powerful beings that Lillim Callina was ready for a new kind of threat. Beings like invincible orcs… beings probably way worse than invincible orcs.
“So… how do we find the Blue Prince and rescue your father?” Caleb asked as he sat down in the chair next to my mother.
“Hell if I know. I’m pretty sure guys like that are only found when they want to be found,” I grumbled. I wasn’t trying to blow him off or anything, but after everything that happened I was a little preoccupied. “Besides, he was just ‘all up in our grill’ and we couldn’t do anything to stop him.”
“I thought that was your thing now? Finding Supernatural creepy crawlies?” Caleb was smiling stupidly at me, and I wanted to smack him. “And there’s always a way to stop someone.”
“True. But situations like this are more designed for someone like Warthor or…” I paused for a second as a thought crossed my mind. “Well, we could ask Zef, Rhapsody, or Morgan. They are the other Lords of Death. If anyone knows how to stop the Blue Prince it will be them.”
“Look, I know you have some kind of weird relationship with Zef, The Black Prince, but I don’t think he’ll help you against Blue. Rhapsody, the White Queen, is a creepy five-year old who talks in riddles. Even if she tells us exactly how to stop Blue, I won’t understand what to do, will you?” Caleb asked, shaking his head and scowling into his hands.
“You left out the Red Queen, Morgan. She’s Blue’s opposite, like how Rhapsody and Zef are opposites. She might help us,” I said with a shrug.
“Or we could come up with a plan that has a little less crazy to it,” Caleb replied, sighing. “No one has seen her in like five-hundred years. Besides, isn’t she still doing that whole ‘off with their heads thing’?”
“That’s just a fairy tale. Those aren’t real,” I said, grinning at him. “Those three have been in the same hosts for like ever. The only one who ever changes hosts is Blue. There’s got to be a reason why.”
“Maybe the reason is that he’s a god, and he’s crazy.” Caleb threw up his hands in frustration. “And Rhapsody and Zef both hate you, Lillim. They aren’t going to help us.”
“Rhapsody doesn’t hate me. She has more of a casual indifference,” I replied. Though to be fair, by casual indifference I meant she hadn’t actively tried to kill me before.
“She’s also the hardest one to find,” Caleb said, spreading his hands wide in exasperation. I could tell he didn’t like my idea, which was sad. I liked my idea.
“Well, what do you suggest?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips and staring at him.
“We go looking for your orc,” he said with an almost wistful look on his face.
“And why is that?” I asked.
“Honestly? Because I want to fight him.” He paused for a long time before continuing. “Well… to be really honest, I want his Death’s Edge.”
“The object that kills you when you lose it?”
“I’m already dying, Lillim. I could live a lot longer with that relic than without. Besides, it isn’t like I’m going to be tanking nuclear missiles or something just because I get the Death’s Edge,” Caleb said, standing up and looking at me. “It could keep me alive until we find a cure.”
I sighed and nodded. It wasn’t like cures to mystical poisons were falling into my hands every day. It wasn’t even that bad of a plan as far as bad plans went. It was at least one I could understand. Find the bad guy and hit him really hard. If he gets up, hit him again. Repeat as necessary.
It was a plan that wouldn’t work against the Blue Prince. He survived decapitation. Most things don’t do that.
“Besides, assuming your father, who survived being torn apart by demons for three days, doesn’t go crazy, it isn’t like the Blue Prince is going to actively try to destroy his new body,” Caleb added with a shrug. “The Blue Prince is likely going to go wherever it is he goes for a while to get to know his new toy. He could be doing that on Jupiter for all we know.”
I wanted to smack him for being so cavalier about the whole thing, but he was right. Even the fates couldn’t realistically track the Blue Prince down and without Zef’s, Rhapsody’s or Morgan’s help, we really didn’t stand a chance against him. The orc could be found because he was exactly the type of person the fates were designed to track down.
Briefly, I wondered if the orc could survive a bullet from my dragon-killing gun. Unfortunately, it was still buried under a thousand tons of rubble back at my smoldering apartment. Did he do that on purpose? I bet he did.
“Fine,” I said, glancing at Caleb. “But you need to be the one to kill Grollshanks. I’m starting to get a reputation.”
>
“And that’s bad why?” Caleb asked, and I thought he might actually be dense enough to be asking the question sincerely.
“Because, at this rate, I’m going to have someone with the word god in his name come challenge me next.”
Chapter 18
“You know you are going to be guilty by association anyway, right?” Caleb said.
“I really hope you’re wrong about that,” I said with a sigh. “I mean, It’s not like I don’t enjoy being known as the Dragonslayer or whatever else people are calling me. It is kind of flattering in a way. But I know how things like that are going to end.”
“Yeah… eventually you’ll get so hyped up you’ll be challenged by something that will obliterate you,” Caleb replied.
I nodded. It would never come to light that I was mostly just lucky. Sooner or later, something big enough and bad enough was going to come huff enough and puff enough to blow my proverbial house down.
That said, I didn’t see why we were venturing into the orc’s home world to find Grollshanks. I had, after all, made the completely reasonable argument that because I was wielding Shirajirashii again Grollshanks would come find me sooner rather than later. Still, the fates had said he was here so Caleb had smiled and promptly ignored me.
Every single animal in the orcish realm was made of spikes and poisons. And don’t even ask about the plant life. It all pretty much ate your face or boiled your blood. There wasn’t a lot about this place that wasn’t outwardly hostile. There were even dinosaurs. Living, breathing, eat you in one bite, dinosaurs. I suppose that did explain how the orcs rode them into battle.
Even the goddamned dirt was made mostly of diamond dust so when the wind blew, it hurt. It hurt so much that it could strip the flesh from your bones if you got caught in a good storm. Oh, and the temperature alternated between a billion degrees during the day and negative a billion degrees at night.
All in all, I could understand why the orcs were so damn aggressive. I’d be pretty pissed off if I spent my childhood playing pin the tail on not dying.
“Well, if I defeat Grollshanks in front of the other orcs, maybe you won’t be associated with the victory,” Caleb said a moment later.
“That does mean you need to win,” I replied as I looked off into the horizon.
Grollshanks worried me plenty. I had actually fought the big orc, and I wasn’t sure if Caleb could win. Still, I’d never seen Caleb really go full out, and he was considered one of the most powerful Dioscuri. Caleb was one of those childhood prodigy types and was raised in Lot under the tutelage of a Hyas Tyee. That had to count for something. Still, if it came to it, I was going to jump in and help before I let Caleb buy the farm. Reputation or not.
To my left a giant razor-beaked bird-thing snared some squirrel-creature with flippers out of a tree with tentacles. I shook my head. “This place sucks. Why can’t someone just live in the land of grape popsicles and cotton candy?” I asked.
Caleb stiffened next to me, and I glanced at him. He gestured at the mountain range in front of us. Lightning streaked through the sky. “I hope you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?” I asked.
“To fight. There’s no other way. Grollshanks will come eventually.” Caleb knelt and scooped up a handful of the black dust. Slowly it spilled through his fingers. “We fight. We fight until we can’t fight any longer, until the blood is spilt from our bodies and the flesh is torn from our bones.” He began to laugh. “No one starts at the top, but together we will fight until we not only stand on hell but heaven as well. He will come. He will wade through the fields of slaughter to challenge us.”
The footsteps of multitudes began to echo in the basin. Above me, millions of forms, some no bigger than pinpricks, loomed from the cliffs. Even from this distance I could feel the pulsating heat of their hunger, smell the oozing decay in their breath. My hands went instinctively down to the hilts of my swords. I gulped.
This was going to be bad. We were not going to live through this. Eventually, we would run out of energy, and the horde would be upon us. I could only hope Caleb was right. I could only pray that Grollshanks decided to interrupt this madness before we died. This was the dumbest thing I’d ever done… and to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure why I let Caleb talk me into it.
All I can say is that sometimes when Caleb talks, I forget how to breathe, and the thought of not being near him actually hurts. I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but when I’m with him, it’s like finding the last piece to a puzzle. Truth be told, it isn’t something I’m exactly comfortable talking about. Who would I even go to? My insane mother? My missing ghost? My decapitated former friend?
I never talked to other girls my age, and my mom never sat me on her knee and explained the ways of the world to me. Though, in retrospect, I bet she’d have tried if I asked.
“If we survive this, Caleb, remind me to have a long talk with my mother,” I said as I readied the twin blades of Shirajirashii.
“About what?” Caleb asked as he moved to cover my back, his giant sword, Incinerator, in his hands.
“About you.”
He began to say something but shook his head. “It’s time, Lillim,” he said after a long moment. He raised his sword toward the cliffs and a gout of flame licked along the blade. “Come on you orcs! I’ve killed more than this without even breaking a sweat!”
The orcs rushed at us. Orcs from the sky, orcs from the left and the right and up and down and every which way. No matter where I turned, everything was the gnashing of teeth and the scratching of claws.
We fought for what felt like hours. The ground was stained with the blood of the fallen. I was covered in the icky green stuff… worse yet, I was getting tired. I was beginning to wonder if this is what Dirge’s last stand would have felt like if Manaka had never shown up. Would she have put her back to Joshua’s back and fought with every ounce of her being? The only difference was… Dirge did it to save her people and I was doing it, selfishly, to help Caleb.
I was here, in the recently rediscovered orcish wasteland, fighting because I thought that maybe, just maybe, we could kill an immortal swordsman, bottle up his magic amulet and use it to save Caleb. It sounded selfish on my part. But knowing I could wake up and he would just be gone because of that stupid poison was something I couldn’t deal with. It made me feel almost empty when I thought about it.
I was slaughtering orcs and standing on their corpses and slaughtering more orcs so I could save a guy who left me in the middle of the night. That was a totally reasonable thing to do. It was totally reasonable because if I didn’t, I would wake up screaming because he was dead. The thought of it twisted up my insides and brought tears to my eyes.
“It’s like they think that if they just keep throwing bodies at us, we will die,” Caleb spat. We stood within a crater filled with so many broken bodies that they were as numerous as the stars above us and the sand beneath our feet. “The more energy we use to fight them off, the more that sense us and come running, requiring us to release more energy. It’s an endless cycle. Why do you keep trying to fight us when you so clearly cannot win?” he screamed as he drove a fist into another creature’s apish nose, causing its face to burst apart into a pus-like substance.
“One reason,” the voice boomed across the wasteland in which we stood. The blood red moon above us was almost grinning as a shadowy form approached. “Because they think you are strong.”
Chapter 19
“Uh oh,” I said as the voice brought back very real memories of horrible, physical pain. “I think you’ve gotten your wish.”
Grollshanks was there beside us, swinging his giant sword… at the other orcs. He moved lithely, twirling like a dancer through the ranks of the oncoming horde and leaving a trail of death in his wake.
“If you wish to face me, little human, attack. You have come seeking death, and I will be more than happy to give it to you,” Grollshanks roared as he turned and almost casually slammed the back of hi
s fist into the skull of an oncoming orc, sending it sprawling in the dirt. “Do you recognize how truly rude you are being?”
I gulped and took a step back from Caleb. The orcs around us were no longer attacking. Instead, they were circling like a pack of wolves. One would dart in here and there, and Grollshanks would defeat it so quickly, it was like he was everywhere at once.
That’s when it dawned on me. In this place, there were no rulers. Not in the traditional sense. The orcs fought and fought, and when they died, more came to join in. Battle brought them from miles away. We had kicked a goddamned hornets’ nest, and the only reason they were slowing down was because Grollshanks was stopping them.
“Do you realize how rude it was to come into our world and try to kill her?” Caleb asked, jerking his thumb toward me.
“That was a great honor. You should not have come here.” Grollshanks’ voice sounded weary. “My brethren would have continued to come for days. They would have come until there were none left or you were dead. There is no middle ground here. That is the way of the orc.” The bellows of the orcish horde resounded at his words and a chill ran down my spine.
Deep down, I knew he was right. It was probably why the orcs had been sealed away for millennia, why they had been gone so long that we thought they were extinct. If they were allowed into our world, we’d have been in real trouble.
To stop them we would have to commit genocide. We would have done it, too. The unfortunate thing wouldn’t have been the loss of lives. The unfortunate thing would have been how utterly pointless it would have been. To the orcs there was only victory. They would attack and if they were strong enough to win, we would die. If they lost, that was okay because we were stronger.
Grollshanks turned to look at the other orcs as he spoke. “You will stand down and allow us an honorable battle, friends. Do not throw your lives away on this.” Grollshanks gestured toward us.
A chorus of voices echoed around us as the orcs dropped into a kneeling position. In this place there was only one rule. Power. That was when I realized a problem. If we lost here we’d be dead, that was clear. However, unless we won with overwhelming force, we’d be dead, too. The orcs would only understand strength. It’d been bred into them for thousands of years. If they thought we cheated or won because of any reason other than unyielding force, they would resume their attack.
The Hatter is Mad: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 2) Page 9