The Hatter is Mad: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 2)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “You know, there is a lot I want to tell you, about how it all started, about where it all went, about the heroes that fought and died in your kind’s stupid wars. But for you to understand, to rightly understand, I would have to start at the unmerciful beginning. I simply do not have time,” the Blue Prince said.

  “No,” I coughed.

  “Oh yes. You see this is inevitability at its best. I am going to finish the job Manaka started so long ago. This time even Warthor won’t be able to bring you back. You see,” the Blue Prince smiled, and it chilled me to my core, “I lobbied to end it all. Of course Rhapsody disagreed. She’s so trusting, so caring. She doesn’t know your kind like I do.” He shook me, and my heart leapt into my throat.

  “But I know what’s in your heart, Lillim. I know what is in all of your hearts.” He pulled me close, so close that I could feel the touch of his lips on my ear as he spoke. “It’s cowardice. It’s weakness and wretchedness.”

  He flung me across the building’s roof like a ragdoll. I rolled haphazardly across the surface as jagged lightning split the horizon above me. It illuminated my father’s features, dashing the darkness away that covered the scars he never tried to hide. His brow was furrowed into his perpetual half-brood, half-smile as he watched the rain began to fall.

  The Blue Prince smiled and raised his arms as he strode toward me. “I do so love the rain. Don’t you? Of course I know you don’t, but say what you will for the destructiveness of fire… I’ve never seen anyone put out a storm.”

  He leaned down so close to me that his nose touched my forehead. “Have you ever seen anyone put out a storm?”

  I gulped once. My heart was hammering so heard in my chest, I wondered if he could hear it.

  “Yes. Yes I can hear it.” He breathed in deeply through his nose. “I can smell your fear, too. It smells so… pathetic.” He stood and kicked me. My body bounced to the side. Sharp pain rang through me. It was the pain of broken ribs.

  I growled, a low sound that came from the back of my throat. I might die. But I wasn’t going to die like a mouse. Not after everything everyone did to bring me back. Even if it wasn’t me they wanted, it would be incredibly pathetic to just give up in the face of overwhelming odds.

  Dirge wouldn’t have given up. I gritted my teeth, and the taste of blood filled my mouth. She would have stood up. She would have drawn Shirajirashii. She would have charged, and she would have brought this jerk down with her. My swords were in my hands, and I didn’t remember drawing them.

  “You don’t even know it’s already over,” the Blue Prince said with a shake of his head. He flung his hand at me and a torrent of blue flame sprang at me. I threw myself sideways, barely avoiding the fire as it reduced the floor beneath my feet to cinders.

  “They say ignorance is bliss,” I said and charged. The twin blades of Shirajirashii whipped through the air, pure white flashing in the blue light like fish flitting beneath the waves.

  Thwack!

  “Pathetic.” The Blue Prince stared down at me from my father’s face. He caught my swords in his hands. He shook them, and I found myself losing my grip on my weapons. His boot flashed out and caught me in the solar-plexus. It was like being hit by a train. I sailed backward, skidding along the ground.

  “Do you think you could cut me if I didn’t wish it so?” He smiled and tossed the blades over the side of the building. He snapped his fingers, and my entire body lifted from the ground and slammed violently back down. Pain shot through me, and I struggled not to black out as my vision swam. “If I wished it, you would simply dissolve. You would simply cease to be.”

  He knelt down next to me and ran his hand through my hair like he was petting a cat. I tried to move but his knee pinned me to the ground. It was like having a tractor sitting on the small of my back.

  “Now, Lillim, let me tell you the story of why I don’t like you.”

  Chapter 31

  The scenery changed so abruptly, it took me a minute to realize I was watching myself stare down the barrel of a high caliber rifle. I swallowed once. This was when I gunned down Jiroushou Manaka in front of that hospital in Brazil. This was after he beat my father to a bloody pulp for the fun of it.

  Then he left, but not before my mother struck him with a billion volts of lightning. Dioscuri, even ones as powerful as the Ascended Jiroushou Manaka do not shrug that off.

  This was the first time I ran away. I tracked down Manaka. I loaded this gun. Now, I was watching myself stare down the sights of that rifle. I knew what would come next. I knew that Manaka would come out in a wheelchair, pushed by a short pudgy nurse with long red hair. She would smile and move to help him up. He would sense what was going on as I fired.

  She would be pulled in front of the bullets. The first two shots would take her in the center of the back. They would tear huge sucking wounds the size of grapefruits in her body, pitching her forward onto Manaka in a spray of blood and bone. Her body would trip up Manaka as he struggled to free himself from the wheelchair in time.

  There would be so much blood. So much blood and screaming as Manaka fell on all fours. The next bullet would find itself in the back of his skull. I would continue firing until the gun was empty. That would be ten shots total. The gun would start to click because there were no more bullets.

  After the first shot, I wouldn’t be able to hear anymore. It was so loud it drowned out everything. After the second bullet, numbness took over my body. Something inside me snapped with those first shots, something that would never heal quite right. By the third shot I was hollow. I felt nothing, no anger, or guilt, or sadness. I was simply empty.

  It was still a few minutes away. I was not proud of this moment. This was the first time I killed someone and there was collateral damage. I killed that nurse, and at the time, I hadn’t even known her name. At that moment, I was too angry to be careful. Jiroushou Manaka had threatened my family and betrayed the Dioscuri. Someone had to make him pay.

  I was the only one who could do it because I wasn’t afraid to shoot him. Not even Dioscuri could survive multiple gunshots to the face. It made the idea of dying realistic. It made it a lot harder to charge into battle knowing you could be snuffed out from a thousand feet by a sniper in the distance. Even the Ascended Jiroushou Manaka could be killed by a bullet, but so far, no one had tried to take him out. No, we’d let him roam free to kill us one by one and rebuild his army. Well, that had to stop. And at the time, I’d thought anything was worth the cost. I had been wrong.

  “A good person would have said something, would have went to her family and made amends. Her whole life was snuffed out. All her experiences, all her memories, everything she was… just gone. Do you think that was her fate?” the Blue Prince asked. He was standing next to me. The scene before us was frozen in time.

  Good. It had stopped just in time. I didn’t need to watch myself kill that poor woman. I already saw her face in my nightmares nearly every night, but I knew seeing this scene unfold in front of me would shatter everything inside of me. After this, there would be nothing left to put back together.

  “I’m not a good person,” I whispered. My voice was so quiet I barely even heard my own words.

  “I know,” the Blue Prince responded, his voice smug and satisfied. “How did it feel for your mother to find you this way?”

  “Not very good,” I replied, tears stinging my eyes. “It felt pretty horrible, actually. She didn’t even say anything. Didn’t scold me about how bad I was. She just came and took my weapon away. She led my numb body back home.” I shook my head, falling to my knees as tears filled my eyes and my heart threatened to burst. “She… she put her hand on my shoulder and told me it was okay. She pulled me close and told me she loved me.” I looked up at the face of my father and nearly screamed. “Why did she do that? Why didn’t she tell me I was bad? That I was broken.”

  I pointed at the frozen face of the nurse. “I killed her. An innocent person. It was on my hands.”

  �
��We both know you didn’t mean to kill her.” The Blue Prince was staring at me with cold satisfaction from my father’s face. This moment was important somehow. He wanted me to relive this. No, he couldn’t send me back to a moment when I ate a giant ice cream sundae or when I learned to ride a bike.

  This bastard sent me back to the moment when I murdered two unarmed people in cold blood from a distance, back to the moment where my mother had found me broken and horrible.

  And what had she done when she’d found me looking through my scope at the carnage? She’d held me close and told me I was a good person. And she’d lied. Because no good person could do what I’d done. Why hadn’t she scolded me, punished me, done something?

  “She had a name, not that you’d know. She had two children as well. Whatever happened to them? Are you curious? I could show you.” The Blue Prince leered at me, and I knew it was a dare.

  “Helen. Her children are named Ray and Charlotte,” I muttered, picturing their tiny faces in my minds’ eye. “They live with their father. I guess they had a good life insurance policy so they’ll be able to go to college.”

  “Does that make it okay?” he asked. No, it didn’t, but I didn’t need to tell him no amount of money could bring back their mom. Hell, the kids were little more than toddlers at the time. They probably didn’t even remember their mom anymore. There was no way for me to make that right.

  When I didn’t respond, he stood back and regarded me, his curiosity stretching my father’s face into a vicious mask. It made me want to shudder, to turn away from the scene. Because, no matter what happened, I was sure my father didn’t know the details. If he was in there, seeing this, what must he think of his daughter?

  “No. It won’t bring her back. Manaka was evil. I didn’t kill him because he was evil, that’s true. I killed him because he went after my family. I have come to terms with my selfishness. I don’t have a lot of things, and he tried to take some away. He needed to die before he could succeed,” I said. “Still, if I could redo it, I’d find a way to save that poor woman.”

  “You know, you said the same thing about Dirge dying and wiping out half of Lot along with all those demons. How many times have you said you’d do better? So what did I do? I sent you back, and guess what, it still happened.” He shook his head. “Some deaths are simply… inevitable. Sometimes, good people die for the greater good.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay,” I replied, turning and staring into my father’s face. I stared right into the Blue Prince’s eyes. “I’m selfish, and impure and human, just like everyone else. I do stupid selfish things that get innocent people killed.” I shook my head and held out my hands. “I want you to take me instead.”

  “Do you think that will save your father?” The Blue Prince reached out and touched my face. It was a strange caress, and I wondered if it was partially my father. “You shouldn’t do that.” The voice was different this time. It was the voice of my father. “You think you are so bad, but you are not. You should not be dreaming of this event. You should be dreaming sweet dreams, my daughter.”

  “Dad?” I asked, and when he smiled at me, it was almost enough to banish the self-loathing from my thoughts. Almost.

  He glanced at the scene before us. “You know your mother never said what happened. She just said Manaka was dead. I didn’t know you killed him for all she talked about it. I suspected, but no one knew for sure. Every time I asked about it, she told me you would tell me when you were ready.”

  “He hurt you. That is not allowed,” I said. He pulled me close, and I buried my face in his chest.

  “He didn’t know any better,” my father said. “He was a very scared man, Lillim. People do bad things when they are scared.”

  “That’s not an excuse.” I shook my head as tears started to flood from my eyes.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t really matter though, since this is the past. No one can change the past. You, especially, ought to know that. You have so much baggage, my daughter. I think my time with the Prince has helped me to understand what it’s like to be unsure if your thoughts and memories are really yours. Even still my dear Lillim, no one can change who you are.”

  “What if who I am is just bad? What if I do all the wrong things?” I asked.

  “Then I’ll love you anyway,” he said.

  A hand seized the back of my collar and yanked me away. The face that looked up at me was still my father’s face. Unfortunately, the Blue Prince was back in the driver’s seat. He smiled at me, his face contorted into a twisted grin.

  “Touching. He really wanted a few minutes. He begged and pleaded for them and that is what he goes and does with them? Personally, if it was me…” The Blue Prince leaned down close to me and cooed in my ear, his breath warm on my neck. “I’d put you down like the filthy animal you are.” He swung my body around as he waved his arm in a frantic gesture. “It isn’t even your fault. You humans are all so broken. That’s why I voted for annihilation. Because your stupid kind would actually unmake the world to bring a single person back. Do you recognize how ridiculous that is? We ought to let you lie in the bed you made for yourselves.”

  The Blue Prince tapped the side of his head. “See, the difference between me and the others is I know all your dirty little secrets, all your twisted little thoughts. Your whole race is not a mystery to me. You are a wide open book. Truth is we’d be better without you, and I’m not just saying you personally, Miss Callina.”

  He flung me to the ground and put his boot on my chest. “Now, let’s see what Warthor will try once I extinguish you again.”

  Chapter 32

  There was a snap behind us, and the Blue Prince whipped around. Rhapsody stood alone on the rooftop, brandishing what looked to be a paring knife. The Blue Prince smiled and rose to his feet. I sucked in a deep breath, thankful that I could breathe as I rolled onto all fours.

  The scene dissolved back into the rooftop sans me murdering two people. I was glad. I survived that once, but I couldn’t watch myself do it again.

  Rhapsody glared at the Blue Prince and tears streamed down her cheeks. He regarded her carefully and bared his lips into a sort of half-snarl half-smile. Her knees were trembling and wisps of hair were plastered to her tear strewn cheeks. A nasty purplish bruise covered the flesh above her right eye.

  “I won’t let you hurt anyone else!” Rhapsody’s voice was shallow but defiant.

  “My dear, sweet little girl.” His voice was a low coo. “Why would I ever want to do that?”

  She squealed and took a quick step back, almost hopping. “You’ve always been bad. Even from the start.”

  He raised his eyebrows in shock. “Here, I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal.” He reached his hand toward her and gestured for her to come toward him. “And such a deal I have for you my little princess. We have worked together in the past, why would it be different now?”

  She took a couple steps closer to him. “What’s the deal?”

  He reached out and pulled her fragile body close to his. The movement was so quick, I scarcely followed it. “My dear, sweet little girl…” he whispered into her ear and held her close. “I wish it could be different.”

  She closed her eyes for a split second and opened them wide. She made no sound as she staggered backward along the length of my father’s weapon, Storm Heart. It was a spear as red as blood. Black and blue ribbons trailed down it, and I remembered seeing my father wield the weapon by just using the ribbons to fling it around. The crimson tip of Storm Heart plunged through Rhapsody’s chest and out her back. With a flick of his wrist, the Blue Prince yanked the spear from its fleshy confines and whirled around to face me once again.

  He strode forward, his feet sticking to the bloodied floor. My father’s spear dripped with blood as the tip of it trailed along the ground, leaving a horrible smear in its wake. Rhapsody curled into a ball as warm blood pooled around her. “You did this to her you know. This is your fault. It is all yo
ur fault.” My father’s voice was like a raging storm. “How does that strike you, Lillim?”

  I shook my head as I crawled to my hands and knees. “Nope. You did the stabbing. That makes you responsible,” I said. A boot to the face flung me backward. I toppled against the edge of the building. Was my jaw was broken? I resisted the urge to check. Even if it was broken, I couldn’t do anything about it.

  The Blue Prince gestured at Rhapsody. “In this realm, she is powerless. Even the White Queen cannot stand against me in my realm.” He smiled, and it looked very out of place on my father’s face. Behind him, Rhapsody flung her paring knife to me as the Blue Prince lifted me into the air by my throat. It clattered uselessly at my feet.

  The muscles in his hand tightened as he held me up over the edge. “I think this is about the time that this ends. I’m going to blot you out like the horrible mistake you were.”

  “She’s not a mistake. No one with friends like hers is a mistake. They wanted to unmake the world to bring her back.” Rhapsody’s voice fluttered through the air like a butterfly on the wind. “Can’t you see that?”

  “You should have let them unmake the world,” he called over his shoulder.

  He pulled me back from the brink and held me so that we were eye to eye. “They didn’t want you back anyway. They wanted Dirge. You are nothing but a disappointment.” He smiled at me. “I don’t think there’s anyone who will be willing to unmake the world for you, is there Lillim? I bet there are pets more loved than you.”

  I glared at him, my hands reaching up to choke the life out of him. I’d never hated anyone so much in my entire life. I wanted to smash him to bits. I wanted to hurt him in the way that he was hurting me. Mostly though, mostly I was afraid he was right. I was afraid that it was all true. I’ve said it before that Dirge’s power was in her friends.

  Well, when I died a few minutes from now, would anyone care? Would anyone even remember I existed a few years from now? Still, it made me sad to think I wouldn’t see any of them ever again. Their faces flashing through my mind. Caleb, Joshua, Warthor, Mitsoumi, my mother… even Zef.