My dad clapped me on the shoulder, shaking me from my panic enough for me to realize I was still standing there like a complete dolt. I glanced at him and he smiled warmly at me before steering me toward the nurse. “I’ll be waiting here for you when you’re done. Afterward, we can go get ice cream, okay?”
I nodded numbly as the nurse took the Apophis figurine from my hand and tossed it into the corner. It struck the wall with a loud thwack. As I turned my head toward it, she ushered me past her and into the hallway.
The walls were so oppressively yellow that I had to blink a couple times to figure out where I was. I tried to twist out of her grip, to move back toward the waiting room, but before I could manage even a single solitary step, the door slammed shut and the magnetic lock snapped into place with a whoosh of finality.
I was left staring through the tiny glass window in the center. My father was watching me, his face checkered by the wire running through the pane. He waved at me and tossed me a brave smile. I smiled back as well as I could.
“Lillim, is there a problem?” the nurse asked in a voice that made me think there was in fact a problem and it was me.
“No,” I replied, shaking my head as I turned around to see her staring at me with pursed lips. “I was just distracted.”
“Okay.” She nodded once and moved forward, leading me through the twisting hallway. Only we didn’t turn when we should have. The nurse moved me straight past the right turn that would have lead toward Dr. Emile’s office.
“Um, don’t we turn there?” I asked, gesturing at the doorway as she passed by it, hoping despite the sinking feeling in my stomach, they’d just decided to move Dr. Emile’s office.
“I’m taking you to the yellow room for a while,” she said with a shrug. “Dr. Emile thought it might be good for you to see some of your friends for a few minutes.”
“I feel like you should have mentioned something like that before,” I said, and the worry must have shone through my voice as I spoke because she stopped and turned toward me.
She quirked one magnificently manicured eyebrow into the air and stared at me, her dark eyes gleaming. “Is there a problem, Miss Callina?” I tried not to take notice how she’d suddenly gotten incredibly formal with the usage of my name.
“I’m just surprised is all,” I said even though I was worried as hell I’d been tricked and was getting locked back up. But no, that wasn’t possible, right? Surely, my parents wouldn’t trick me into coming back. Then again, this could all be some ploy by Jormungand. Either way, fear settled over my shoulders like a cloak.
“No one mentioned it to you?” she asked, stepping forward and taking my hands in hers. Her flesh was so warm, it almost startled me. She leaned in close to me which was quite a feat because she was quite a bit taller than my five-foot-nothing and smiled somewhat genuinely. “They should have. It’s standard procedure for patients coming in to spend time in the yellow room before meeting with Dr. Emile.”
“Is that so he can watch my interactions with other patients?” I asked because that sounded insane. Why on Earth would they want recovering patients mixed in with the even crazier patients? Couldn’t that trigger an episode or a relapse?
“It’s so the other patients can see how well you are doing and hopefully progress,” she said, staring at me like the idea wasn’t totally ludicrous. “There’s no sinister motivation, Lillim.” So we were back on a first name basis. Good to know.
“Ah, I guess that makes sense,” I replied even though it didn’t really.
“If you think it’s a problem, I can take you back to the waiting room,” she said, pausing for a moment, and I wondered if she was waiting for me to speak. When I didn’t say anything, she nodded slightly and continued. “I’d take you to Dr. Emile’s office to wait, but he is with another patient right now. So it’s either the yellow room or the waiting room, I’m afraid.”
“The yellow room will be fine,” I said, trying to keep the panic in me from rising to a fever pitch because I did not want to go back in there for any reason. Already my palms were sweating, and my breathing had quickened to a pace just shy of a runaway locomotive, but if the nurse realized this, she said nothing of it.
“Okay, Lillim,” she replied and stood. She began walking forward, still clutching my hand in one of her too warm ones. We reached the door to the yellow room after what felt like hours later but was probably only a few seconds later.
The door opened to reveal several teens around my age, most not paying attention to much of anything. The nurse placed her hand between my shoulders and gently pushed me inside. I made it about three steps when Caleb spied me from the couch. He ran a hand through his flop of blond hair and fancied me with a strained smile.
I nodded at him because even looking at him hurt somewhere deep inside. Our entire relationship might have been made up, but it felt real to me. He’d been very clear on the ‘no likey the Lillim’ front ever since I’d come to know that fact. I guess, I was like the little sister he’d never really wanted. It still hurt even though I tried to be a big girl about it.
“Hey, Lil,’ how’s it going?” Mitsoumi, the blue-haired king of the Dioscuri said as he sauntered over to me. Only in this world, his hair wasn’t blue, it was black. He also had both hands and well, wasn’t dead. He was dressed in the same blue scrubs as the rest of the patients. He looked me over, and his eyes rested on my chest for only a moment before reaching my face. It was a little weird because he had never looked at me like that before. “Outside world treating you well?”
“Yeah,” I responded, and his eyes flashed in the well-lit room. “I’ve been eating nothing but junk food.”
“It must all go to your chest then,” Kishi Al Akeer, the girl I’d left behind in fairy, said as she clapped me on the shoulder, forcing me to turn toward her. Even though I always pictured her like a tan goddess, her emerald eyes were sunken deep into her acne-covered face. Her greasy black hair flopped over one shoulder like a dead fish as she stared at me.
“It’s just the shirt,” I said, gesturing at her with one hand. “We both know you’re way larger than me.”
“Maybe,” she murmured and tugged at her own scrubs. They were designed in such a way as to make her look shapeless despite her considerable assets.
Mitsoumi put his hand on my arm and pulled me close to him. “Masataka is in therapy right now,” he whispered, mouth so close to my ear, I could feel his warm, wet breath on my skin. “Don’t worry.”
His brother, Masataka, had never really liked me, which was probably why he’d played a prominent role in my delusions as a bad guy. Even in this world, he was a jerk to me, but that could also have been because I was basing him on the real Masataka who had tried to kill me. It was sort of circular logic at best, I’ll admit.
“Lillim,” Caleb said, pushing past the other two teens and wrapping one arm around my waist in the way he had always done in the world where we were a couple. But he’d never once done it here. A shiver rippled down my spine as I felt myself falling into him like I’d done a million times when were together. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, staring up at him. His face had softened into the one I remembered staring into so many times. A blush filled my cheeks as his eyes searched my face.
“You need to break free of Jormungand before he succeeds in killing the four horsemen,” Caleb said, moving us away from the others with ease. “It’s the only way for us to stop the Norse god Loki from rising and bringing about Ragnarok. That will be bad because the world will end.”
“You’re talking crazy,” I said and stopped before I said anymore.
Caleb had been fused with a god. Was he actually here, talking through the dream Caleb? The last time I’d seen him was when the magician had captured him, but maybe even that wasn’t enough to hold him back now. Maybe he’d just needed time?
“I’m not crazy, and you aren’t crazy. You’re Lillim Callina of the Dioscuri, dammit!” He
gestured at the room. Everyone was staring at us. “This is all fake. You need to break free and save us all. Quickly.”
I swallowed and decided to go for it. “How do I force Jormungand out? He’s a god and I’m…”
“You’re the girl I fell in love with. You can do this.” With those words, he kissed me, pulling my body against his own. Power flowed into me, hot and scalding. In that instant, I knew he was right. This was a delusion, and I had to fight back, had to throw off the chains of this world before it was too late. In that kiss, everything was made clear to me. Jormungand needed a powerful body. I was powerful, and even better, my spirit, Apep, was similar enough to him that he’d be able to draw upon the Egyptian god’s power to fuel his own.
Caleb was jerked backward off of me. He hit the ground hard on his back as orderlies surged over him. His body flared as blue-white flames leapt across the floor, burning the tile to ash and swarming up over those touching him. He stood there, eyes bright with anger as fire writhed across his flesh.
“Escape!” he boomed, tearing through the air with his hand. The world through the rent in space and time looked desolate and raw, reminding me of the orcish home world, only worse. I didn’t know how, but the sense of hopelessness pouring from it was enough to make me shiver. “Hurry!”
I took a step forward, knowing I wouldn’t be able to turn back. Cold wind blew from the portal before me as I reached out and touched it. The air jiggled in front of me like Jell-O, and I turned toward him.
“I love you,” I said and leapt through into the void. My body slammed into the red dirt with a heavy thud. I could still see the outline of the portal and through it the remains of the yellow room.
“I know.” Caleb threw me one last lopsided grin before the portal vanished completely, leaving me stranded in the weird alien world. I shivered and looked around. There was nothing but scarlet sand for miles and miles in every direction, and now that I was standing within it, I realized it was an almost exact replica of the demon home world I had traversed with Ordain at my side. Was I still in my head?
A roar exploded across the horizon, shattering my eardrums. I spun toward it as the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Speeding across the pink cotton candy sky was the head of a serpent large enough to blot out the stars. His mottled green-black skin gleamed in the light of a thousand shattered stars as the creature I knew to be Jormungand surged toward me.
“Oh, no,” I mouthed, resisting the urge to fall to my knees and whimper pathetically.
“I gave you everything, Lillim Callina. I rewrote the world for you,” Jormungand cried, and the sound was like someone tearing the wings off a screeching bat. It assaulted my brain like a belt sander and made my heart stutter. “And you can’t even have the decency to stay there?”
“Yeah, well, you’re being a pretty poor house guest,” I called back, balling my hands into fists. “Skin tight snake skin? Who wears that?”
Chapter 13
The world shook. The oceans churned. The sky shattered.
Jormungand struck the earth in front of me like a comet, throwing back a wave of crimson sand and blocking him from my view. As the scarlet dust swelled in front of me, the shadowy figure of a man walked through the debris.
“You better get out of my head before I break bones you don’t even know you have,” I said, my trembling hands clenched into fists as I stepped toward the cloud.
“Is that before or after I make you leap off a cliff to your death?” the voice was everywhere and nowhere, surging around me in an endless cacophony of agony. I staggered backward under the assault as he broke through the dust. “I can do that you know. Since I’m actually the one controlling your body.”
His skin was the color of tarnished copper, and his eyes were narrowed into serpentine slits of black glass. He stared at me with the soulless, flat gaze of a predator, his face completely expressionless as he raised one pudgy finger and tapped his forehead once. “You forget, Lillim. I know everything about you. Every last nook and cranny of your brain is an open book laid out before me. Sadly, it’s not a very interesting story.”
“That’s because you haven’t gotten to the part where I set you on fire,” I said, dropping back into a fighting stance because I was totally going to try to fistfight the human version of Jormungand, the world serpent, inside my brain like that wasn’t the worst idea ever. “It’s about time you slithered out from beneath the rock you’ve been hiding under, fang face. No more running. I’m right here, come and get me.”
He glowered at me, revealing a mouth filled with fangs much too large for his mouth. Green venom dripped off them, flowing down his chin and spattering onto the scarlet sand. The ground hissed where the droplets struck, filling the air between us with the smell of burning ozone.
“A lot of bark,” he said, reaching out toward me with one massive hand and making the ‘bring it’ gesture. “Come try to bite.”
I charged, sprinting across the sand with all the speed I could muster, and just as I was about to reach him, he vanished. My fist plunged through the empty space where he’d been, throwing me off balance. I stumbled forward, trying to right myself as something grabbed me by the shoulder and flung me across the earth like a rag doll.
I hit the ground so far away, it was hard to imagine I was still on the same planet. My shoulder throbbed from the impact, already turning blackish purple as I climbed slowly to my feet and looked around. Thunder crashed through the cloudless sky and lightning tore the heavens asunder.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I asked, looking around for any sign of the massive snake. You’d think being big enough to rival the planet Earth would make him noticeable, but sadly, it did not.
“No,” the voice of Warthor Ein said from behind me.
I spun in time to catch my former mentor’s fist with my face. I flopped backward on the sand as he stood over me, disappointment etched across his features. His longsword, Ymir, was clutched tightly in his left hand as he strode forward like the angry god he was. Every step left the ground behind him covered in a thick sheath of ice.
“You were always such a disappointment, Lillim,” he sneered, pointing his famed blade at me and making a face like he’d just bitten into something rancid. “I never should have brought you back.”
“Well, you did! No, take backs!” I snapped even though his words hurt me to the very core of my being. I knew it wasn’t him, knew it was Jormungand using his body to frighten me, but still, it hurt. A lot. Why? Because, deep down, I always wondered if Warthor thought that about me.
Instead of replying, he swung Ymir at me, the blade stretching impossibly to strike the ground at my feet. Fortunately, I wasn’t there. So, as a geyser of frozen water exploded from the spot, I closed the distance between us. It felt so good to sink my fist into his gut, I did it twice more.
He buckled under the force of my blows, but as I brought my hand back to strike him again, he changed forms, appearing before me in the body of the nurse I’d shot and killed when I’d finally succeeded in taking down Jiroushou Manaka so many years ago. I struck her anyway because I couldn’t stop myself. Her red-haired form flew across the sand. She hit with an empty thunk as I stood there, wide-eyed with shock.
“This is how you treat me?” she asked in the voice of a sweet old lady who would never hurt anyone for any reason. “You shoot me? Steal me from my children? You do all of this?” She raised one hand to her cheek and touched it tentatively with her fingers as scarlet spilled from bullet holes in her torso, covering her scrubs in hot, sticky blood.
“You’re not real!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. The sky above us flashed, and I took a step forward, ignoring her crises as I drove my knee into her chin, snapping her head backward. She hit the ground with a thud. “You can’t beat me with illusions, snake. Show yourself!”
The earth beneath my feet rumbled as the nurse turned into a swarm of flitting golden bees. I stumbled, falling backward on my butt as the ground split open like a ri
pe peach and spilled sulfurous smoke into the air. The scent of rotten eggs made me want to gag as I scurried backward on my hands.
A single hand came forth from the trench, impossibly big as it slammed down next to me, its silver flesh gleaming in the shattered night. Crom Cruach stepped forth from the abyss, his body a gleaming testament to all things godlike. His perfect abdomen glinted as he ran one finger across his stomach.
“Do you know what it’s like to die?” He smiled at me, his melodious voice bringing back the memory of fairy and slamming me over the head with it. “Of course you do. But perhaps not well enough.”
He struck me. It happened so fast, I barely saw it. My head snapped backward as I toppled across the bloody sand. I tried to rise, tried to get my feet under me as the world spun. He seized me by the throat with one hand and with a wicked gleam in his eyes, drove two fingers into the spot where Mattoc had been bound to me.
Pain unlike I’d ever felt ripped through me, scalding my insides and leaving me raw and empty. “Maybe I should remind you what it’s like to lose, all over again.”
Pikes sprung up all around us, but my eyes stopped after reaching only the first one. Skewered upon the weapon was my mother, her black Dioscuri fighting uniform torn open as blood dripped down the weapon plunged through her chest to pool at her feet.
He tugged on something inside me, and as he did so, everything inside me threatened to break. I smashed my forehead into his nose, and he tottered back in a spray of golden blood. His grip loosened a fraction as I reached up and grabbed his wrist.
“White Sparrow!” I cried because I was Lillim Callina, and I knew magic. And I was pissed.
Fire exploded from the sky, slamming down on Crom Cruach and encasing him in a pure white cylinder of burning death. I fell backward, his smoking, severed hand still clutching my throat. I tossed it to the ground, and it dissolved into a wisp of super-heated steam as I shut my eyes and concentrated. The smell of roses filled the air as rose vines exploded into being all around us, filling the scarlet dunes with their enormity. They wrapped the cylinder up as the form within writhed and tore at the cylinder.
Mind Games: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 6) Page 8