Wardbreaker: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “I’m not going to leave innocent people here to suffer,” he growled over his shoulder before turning the knob. It turned. I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing. Though I was sure I’d find out in a minute.

  “The word 'trap' means nothing to you, huh?” I said as Luc pushed the door open, evidently ignoring my concerns. What a jerk. Well, the next time something tried to eat him, maybe I’d let it.

  “Lillim…” Luc called, glancing back at me, his face pale and his lips trembling. “You need to come here…”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as apprehension flooded my senses. Every step I took toward him weighed on me because while I wasn’t sure what I was going to find in that room, I was pretty sure it was going to be really freaking horrible.

  I was right. Inside the room was a hole about six feet across. It was too dark to see into its depths, but I knew what it was anyway. A shiver racked my body as I stumbled backward out of the room, trying to catch my breath.

  “What is it?” Luc asked, peering over to the edge of the hole as the screams grew louder and more distressed. “I’ve never seen anything like it…”

  “A feeding hole,” I whispered, my voice so quiet I wasn’t sure I’d actually said the words aloud.

  “What’s a feeding hole?” Luc asked, turning and taking a step toward me.

  “It’s what the vampires use when a bunch of them are in an area and trying to stay under the radar. They’ll capture a family all at once and throw them in a hole for safe keeping. It makes the humans last longer since the vampires only take a little blood at a time from each of the people and has the added bonus of not requiring them to go out and hunt as often, reducing the chance they’ll get caught.” I shook my head. “A whole family is a lot less noticeable because most neighbors or whatever, just assume the family went on vacation or something.”

  “You mean to tell me there are humans in that hole, and the vampires have been feeding on them for who knows how long?” Luc asked, his voice cold and angry. When I nodded, his eyes blazed, and he spun on his heel and made his way back inside.

  Without another word, he pulled some thin cord out of his pocket and tied one end to the door before making his way toward the hole and shining his light into its depths.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, walking up next to him.

  “Rescuing them,” he replied, shooting me a glance that suggested he wasn’t going to listen to a word I said.

  “Don’t…” I swallowed before saying the words that’d been drilled into me. “Even if you take them out of the hole, they’re already dead inside. Very few people can come back from that and be normal. It’s not like there’s anyone for them to talk to about what happened. Hell, some of them might turn into vampires.”

  “What are you suggesting we do then, Lillim? Leave them here?” he asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Drop a grenade in the hole and move on.” He narrowed his eyes at me as I spoke. “It’s a kindness, I promise.” Just saying the words turned my stomach, but I’d seen those people, hell I had been just like Luc a long time ago. Every Dioscuri I’d talked to said the same thing. No one has ever gone on to be normal afterward. Then again, maybe this would be the time where everyone would be wrong? Was it worth the risk?

  Luc turned his back on me without another word and knelt down by the edge before dropping inside. The cord went taught as he shimmied down it. I sighed and turned to watch the door, hoping no vampire showed up looking for a snack, though part of me sort of hoped one did. Seeing things like this always pissed me off. The Dioscuri were supposed to keep monsters from harming innocent people, and we were doing a piss poor job.

  Lately though, it seemed like the monsters had gotten bolder and bolder. Hell, there was a veritable hive filled with captured werewolves and who knows what else right in the middle of a city in California. How had that not gotten picked up by the sensors back at the base?

  A few minutes later, Luc pulled himself out of the hole carrying a little girl who looked no older than ten. She had greasy black hair and bags under her eyes. Her white dress was covered in grime, filth, and blood. And, of course, her eyes had that vacant far off stare I’d seen across a million battlefields. The one that told me this child had seen too many horrors to count.

  “Tell her what you told me,” Luc said to the girl as he walked her up to me and shoved her into me.

  “There were five of us originally.” She whispered, voice so quiet, I could barely hear her speak. “The vampires took my whole family, and they pulled us out of one by one. Sometimes, one of us wouldn’t come back, but that wasn’t so bad.”

  “Why not?” Luc asked as revulsion rippled up my throat because I knew the horrible answer already.

  “Because…” the girl swallowed and looked away, tears filling her eyes. “Because then there’d be more to eat.”

  Luc glared at me so hard, it physically hurt. “And you still think you people are doing a good job protecting the innocents, Lillim?” he asked, but it wasn’t so much a question as an accusation. The sad thing was, I didn't really disagree with him. We weren’t doing a good job, not by a long shot. There were a million things we could be doing, but so far, all we’d done was try to rebuild our own ranks from the civil war. Anger flared inside me as I thought about the girl’s family and what had happened to them. Someone was going to pay for this. It might not mean anything in the long run, but it didn’t have to mean anything in the long run. Sometimes you did the right thing because it was the right thing. This was one of those times.

  Instead of saying anything, I turned on my heel and walked out of the room. Luc followed me a few minutes later, one hand gripping the child’s hand. I sighed. “You can’t take her with us, Luc. You have two options, you bring her back outside or you leave her here. I’ll admit, neither is ideal, but you can’t take her with us.”

  “Or I’ll take her with us, and if you argue with me about it, I’ll shoot you in the face, Lillim,” he said, eyes narrowed.

  “Do what you want. It’s not like I’ve been doing this for my past two lives…” I glared at him for a moment before deciding to let it go. He was right after all. We couldn’t just leave the girl alone. Besides, I wasn’t keen on getting shot in the face. “Just make sure she doesn’t give away our position.”

  “Whatever,” he said and tightened his grip on the girl’s hand. The look in his eyes told me exactly what he thought of me. He no longer liked me, even a little. My reaction to the situation had told him all he thought he needed to know about the Dioscuri, told him that what he thought was important wasn’t important to me. It made me realize he wasn’t looking at the big picture, but not just that, he didn’t care about the big picture because little girls were getting hurt. And sadly, I sort of agreed with him.

  “You don’t have to make me feel heartless,” I said, making my way across the room toward the far wall. There were more doors set into the concrete, and while I was pretty sure some of them probably contained more feeding holes, I was hoping at least one didn’t. The only problem was, I wasn’t sure which one would lead us toward the vampires. “I’m just worried about what happens when something tries to eat her and you’re forced to choose between saving her and stopping the monster.” I took a deep breath, leaving the, “Or if she winds up being a monster…”part of my sentence unsaid.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Luc said, voice just a touch softer than it had been a moment before.

  “That’s what everyone who ever sacrificed themselves said,” I replied, turning away from him and reaching out with my magic, hoping I could find something that would let me know which door we should open. “And you know what the problem with that is? Not only does no one actually want to get sacrificed for, but you’re dead afterward.”

  Luc opened his mouth to say something, but I held up my hand to silence him as power flowed out of me. The smells in the room became more intense as the scene lit up bright scarlet in my mind’s eye, but all I wa
s getting were vague impressions of the place. Damn.

  I swiveled my gaze around the room, regretting what I knew I’d have to do. No, there was no other way. It was either open every single door and risk finding something way worse than a feeding hole or use my ethereal sight to narrow down the nature of each door in a blink. The only problem was, I’d have the vision burned into my brain, and I didn’t need more nightmares. I wasn’t quite sure what the true representation of the feeding hole room would be in my ethereal sight, but I wasn’t excited to find out.

  “Just put on your big girl pants and do it,” I muttered to myself. My eyes snapped open, and I fought the urge to scream. Blood poured from several of the doors, gushing forth like they were obsidian fountains and surging along the ground like crimson rivers. The door farthest to the left was different though. It looked like the maw of a great beast, reminding me of a yawning dragon with huge jagged fangs.

  I shut my eyes, banishing my sight and stood like that for a moment longer as my heartbeat slowly returned to normal. Without even opening them, I pointed toward the dragon door with one shaking finger. “That’s the door we need.” I swallowed and shook my head. “And judging by how it looks like we’re going to be walking into the mouth of a dragon, I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be filled with kitties and cotton candy.”

  Chapter 10

  The door opened to reveal a hallway with plush carpet the color of freshly spilled blood. As I stepped foot onto it, I actually sank about half an inch which was a little weird. The white walls were filled with LED torches spaced every few feet to give the appearance of firelight without actually being, you know, fire.

  Paintings of old men with strangely birdlike features were displayed prominently between each set of torches, and as I trudged forward, their owlish eyes seemed to follow me. A chill rippled down my spine as I clutched my swords a little tighter. It was creepy in this room, and the paintings weren’t helping any. It was especially unnerving because the rest of the compound looked like it had been designed to get hosed off and sanitized at a moment’s notice. I doubted anyone would be doing that down here, what with the carpet and all.

  I barely made it three steps when the little girl gasped. I spun, my swords at the ready to see her practically wrapped around Luc’s leg. He had his shotgun at the ready, but I doubted it would do anything to stop the door from shutting behind us.

  It didn’t slam shut of anything, rather it closed with a soft click that seemed to echo within the soundless hallway, reverberating within my brain and making my stomach clench in fear. We were trapped in the dragon room, and while I wasn’t sure what that meant, it didn’t seem good.

  “I’m guessing that’s not good,” Luc said, still watching the door.

  “Oh no, it’s all part of the plan. You know, get locked in the dragon room with a little girl… That’s like step one.” I shrugged, trying to conceal my fear with snark. “Besides, I’ve never met a dragon before, maybe it’ll be fun. Everything I’d read makes me think they were pretty goddamned horrible, but hopefully this one will be more like the one from Honalee.”

  “Like Puff?” he asked, giving me a strange look, and I realized he thought I might be serious.

  “Yeah, you know, completely fictional.” A shiver racked me as I spun back around and stared down the hallway, wondering if it was too late to go back. The idea of fighting a dragon filled me with more dread than I could properly explain. It was even more unnerving because the hallway had to be almost fifty feet long. While it was four feet wide, the torches sticking out from the wall made it feel oppressive and narrower than it was.

  What looked like a carved marble banister was at the far end, so I was pretty sure we’d be heading downward again. Great, so this place was going to be subterranean after all. I took a deep breath to steel myself and crept forward as carefully as I could. My hands throbbed from clutching the twin blades of Shirajirashii so tightly, but I was reluctant to loosen my grip. Something told me that if I did, they’d be knocked from my hands. Then again, there didn’t appear to be anything down here, and well, I could call them back to me if I needed to do so.

  As I neared the banister, the room opened up, flaring outward to reveal a chamber on either side I hadn’t noticed before. A silver grizzly bear statue so lifelike, I could feel the hunger and rage coming off of it stood on our right. Its mouth was open in a snarl and one arm was raised overhead, sharpened claws glittering under a spotlight of crimson light.

  The left alcove was no better. An immense gold owl hung suspended from the ceiling, claws extended outward like it was about to snatch an unsuspecting mouse from the earth. Its ruby eyes glinted in the sanguine light. Standing between them was unnerving. I took a deep breath, trying not to freak out and let my mind play tricks on me. While scary, they were just statues.

  “What do you make of those?” Luc asked, pointing at the owl with his shotgun. His breath was low, like he was trying to keep the fear out of it. He mostly succeeded.

  “I’m guessing some kind of shrine to the two biggest vampire castes. The Owls and the Bears.” I shrugged and took a step toward the stairs. They were as black as soot. Even though I could see more of the LED torches going down, their flickering light made the stairwell seem dark and foreboding. Shadows leapt back and forth in the darkness, and I had the sudden urge to turn back around and run the hell away.

  “You’ve mentioned them before,” Luc said, peering closely at the bear. “I didn’t even know there were castes of vampires.”

  “There’s more than the two, but the Bears and the Owls are the biggest by far. They have the oldest founders.” I shrugged. “Basically, they were founded so long ago, they’ve pretty much always been there. Others rise from time to time, but they tend to die out…”

  “Why is that?” he asked, scooching up next to me and peering down the stairwell. The little girl hung back just a hair, so she was standing behind him. Her eyes looked scared and sort of vacant, like what was present was afraid, but beyond the fear there was nothing.

  “The Bears are basically big, strong and fast. You’ve heard the stories about vampires throwing trucks around? Those vamps were probably Bears. It makes sense why they’ve been around forever. There isn’t a lot you can’t kill when you can toss a fire engine at someone.” I smirked. “The Owls though, they’re like magicians. Masters of blood magic. I’ve seen them snap their fingers and open wounds that had been healed for decades. You can see why that’d be particularly devastating among vampires. Imagine a vampire ripping the blood out of another vamp, or worse yet, a victim with a snap of his fingers.”

  “It sounds horrible,” Luc replied, glancing at the owl statue and shivering.

  “It is horrible,” I said, taking my first step onto the stairs and out of the statues’ combined gazes. “Thankfully, the two clans don’t work together much, but this?” I gestured at the statues. “This seems like they are working together, but what would make them do that?” I shuddered. “And what are they working on?”

  “Nothing good, I’m guessing,” Luc sighed before following me down into the darkness below. He was right of course, whatever the two most powerful vampire castes were doing together wasn’t good. I’d seen other, smaller castes work together in the past, but that usually ended when the Dioscuri stepped in and put down the leaders. Dealing with vampires was sort of like dealing with cultists in that way. When you took out the leader, the caste usually fell apart, and the ones that didn’t were typically neutered.

  I still wasn’t quite sure why we had let the Bears and the Owls get so powerful. I’d been told it was because they did a good job policing their own kind, and the anarchy caused by the power vacuum would be worse for everyone, especially since the founders of those castes didn’t do much. They were so ancient, nearly everything bored them. I suppose that by the time you’re a few thousand years old, you’ve done virtually everything you ever wanted to do.

  That’s what scared me about this. It seemed like
the castes were working together, and I doubted that would happen if the founders weren’t involved. Something had drawn the attention of Bob the Bear founder and Ariel the Owl founder. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I was pretty sure we were screwed. If both of them were involved, the only chance we’d have would be to call in the Dioscuri for backup and hope they had enough juice left to stand up to the most powerful vampires on the planet. Sadly, I didn’t like those odds.

  “Well, no use wondering,” I grumbled as shadows flittered over the walls. “We should find out for sure what’s going on, you know, before we burn this place to the ground.”

  “I can live with that plan,” Luc replied, his footsteps loud on the steps behind me.

  The air grew colder and wetter as we moved downward, like we were walking into a deep dark cave filled with chilly ocean water. I shivered despite myself, half-tempted to draw upon some of my power to ward off the chill. I wasn’t going to do that because I might need the power later, but I wanted to do it.

  After what felt like miles of stairway, we came to a landing with what looked like horizontal black sliding glass doors. The head of an enormous dragon was etched into the center so if the door opened it would be like entering the maw of the creature’s mouth.

  The sight unnerved me because this symbol was out in the open. Before I’d seen it, I could have assumed the dragon was just some kind of ethereal representation of something and didn’t actually refer to anything to do with an actual dragon. This symbol changed everything, and I immediately tried to recall if there were any castes with a dragon as their symbol. I couldn’t think of any, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Still, I doubted some tiny clan of vampires was going to have a place in a building with both the Bears and the Owls. Then again, tiny didn’t necessarily mean weak. Maybe a really old vampire had awoken? One who could make Bob and Ariel do his bidding? I sure as hell hoped not.

  “I really hope this dragon imagery doesn’t mean there’s a real dragon here,” Luc whispered.