Kill It With Magic: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  Chapter 18

  “Caleb, open the damn door, or I swear to god I’m going to huff and puff and blow it down,” I screamed at the door in our shoddy hotel room for the hundredth time. We’d been at the hotel for a couple hours now, and Caleb had long since locked himself in the bathroom like a little girl. He wouldn’t talk to me, and it was pissing me off.

  “You know what? I’m going to go swimming. I’m going to put on the tiniest, itsiest bitsiest bikini I can find, and I’m going to go lounge by the pool. If you remember that you’re a boy you’re more than welcome to join me.”

  Silence.

  I screamed and slammed my hand against the door. It cracked beneath my fist. Why was he being such a little girl? It wasn’t my fault that hearing Max talk about Caleb’s poisoning was getting me antsy. The last thing I wanted was to pull him into a fight that could very well get him killed. I’d die before I did that.

  If he wasn’t going to come out… well, I didn’t need him anyway. I stomped over to my duffel bag and dumped it out on one of the two lumpy queen sized beds. Their sheets practically glowed in the dark in their own bioluminescence. I blushed. Still, they could have been such nice beds.

  “What are you doing?” Mattoc asked me as I pulled on a pair of iron-toed boots a few minutes later. He’d finally come out which meant we were well enough alone. He didn’t like appearing when other people were around if he could help it. Every time we were around people he was forced to remain out of sight. He had done it so much on this adventure that I’d nearly forgotten he was there at all.

  “Putting on my fairy stomping boots,” I replied.

  “So, we aren’t really going swimming?”

  “Really? Is that why you asked about the boots? I’m wearing chainmail under my clothes and iron-knuckled gloves, too.”

  “You told Caleb you were going swimming. Besides, I hear chainmail bikinis are all the rage with you female adventurers. The boots seem a little awkward though. Plus, they don’t match the beret.” Mattoc shrugged. “Maybe a knight helmet with a feather?”

  “Shut up!” I growled.

  Ever wonder why most weapons, especially really old ones, are made of iron? Forget about smelting. Iron breaks up magical energy, and for lots of things, like spirits and faeries, which are made up of magical energy, iron cuts through them like nothing else.

  Frost was already strapped to my back, wrapped in a bed sheet. Initially, I had tried to put it in a guitar case, but apparently they don’t make them big enough. Finally, I put on a small silver ring with a large red gem in the center. If I looked closely I could see some strands of my hair there.

  Caleb had taken it from the Dioscuri storehouse before we’d left and given it to me. If I removed it, it would instantly transport me to my home. I didn’t quite understand how the ring knew where my home was, and Caleb hadn’t really bothered to explain it. Why weren’t they used by everyone? Apparently, they didn’t always work. The chance that it would malfunction upon use was “very high.”

  I wasn’t exactly super excited about yanking the ring off and having it crumble to dust, leaving me with no other means of escape, or better still, fiddling with it and winding up in my apartment by accident. Neither of those ranked very highly on my bucket list. Still, Caleb had given it to me, and since I was going to leave him here, I wanted something to remind me of him.

  “Should you really be leaving your backup behind when you go after the baby? Don’t you remember what happened last time?” Mattoc was irritating me. Mostly because he was talking sensibly, and I didn’t like it.

  “I don’t want him screwing it up,” I replied angrily though I could have said I didn’t feel like having Caleb die on my watch.

  “How about you sit down and take a break?” Mattoc smiled as he sat down at the table and gestured at an empty teacup.

  “I’m not making you tea you can’t even drink,” I snarled as I grabbed the phone and angrily punched in a number.

  “Well someone’s certainly got her granny panties in a bunch,” Mattoc croaked. I turned my back to him when someone picked up on the other end.

  “Mach Travel,” the grainy, overly professional voice on the phone said.

  “I need transport to Germany yesterday,” I said, absently hitting the ball against the table.

  “Please type in the address. Press pound when you are finished. Please do not tell me the address. Employees of Mach Travel are not allowed to know your destination.”

  There was a loud buzz and an automated message told me to punch in the address, which seemed a little redundant. I grumbled, flipped the eight ball over, and typed the address into the phone. A monotone voice repeated the address back to me. I pressed pound again to confirm. There was another buzz and the line went back to normal.

  “Do you actually need to go back in time or is this one of those figures of speech?” the voice asked. I cringed and rubbed my eyes.

  “Figure of speech.”

  “So to clarify,” the voice replied, “you would like a speedy transport to said address in present time. No time travel will be required?”

  “Correct.”

  “Do you have an account with us?”

  “Yeah, but I think it’s inactive.”

  “Noted. Name?”

  “Callina, Lillim.”

  “Your current status is listed as deceased.”

  I laughed a little. “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

  “Noted.” The voice on the other end appeared bored now. “Transport will begin momentarily.”

  “Ten four,” I muttered as the other end clicked off. “Stupid techs.”

  There was a flash of light, and I found myself standing outside. The sun sat like a discolored, over-easy egg in a sky-colored frying pan. The air smelled vaguely of cut grass and smog, and I breathed in deeply. There was something about real air that excited me.

  A green-blue lake stood sparkling before me in the noontime sun. Off in the distance was an immense island shrouded in mist. A massive stone castle was barely visible beneath the fog. I’d seen pictures of it before. Bear Cathedral… it was where Bob the Vampire lived when he wasn’t inhabiting that disgusting pit of sewn together bodies in Rome. Then again, a stone cathedral probably looked a lot less suspicious than a house made of bodies no matter where you were.

  I glanced at the sky and smiled at the sun. Good. Sunlight didn’t exactly hurt vampires so much as it made it a lot harder for them to use their creepy vampire powers. Holy water, garlic, silver… none of that worked either unless the vampire happened to already be affected by them in some way before being turned. Stakes worked but depending on how old the vampire was it could either kill or paralyze. However, a good old-fashioned decapitation worked just fine. Oh, and natural fire… that works, too. Fire fixes everything. When in doubt, kill it with fire.

  Still, the eight ball had said Logan was here, which meant I had to get inside if I wanted to get the baby back. I gulped and took off running toward the lake. With one great leap and a few choice magical words, I landed roughly on the island. I glanced back at the shore behind me and smirked. I really needed to try out for the Olympics.

  The same doorman from before looked up at me, and he’d scarcely opened his mouth when the ground to our left trembled and exploded upward. I stumbled and fell on my butt, and Frost’s massive blade dug into the ground. A gigantic volcano tore upward through the earth flinging gobs of magma into the air. It was then that I noticed the volcano had legs… and eyes… and a hideous gaping maw.

  Chapter 19

  The beast made a great sucking sound, and my black beret whipped off my head and flew into its charred gullet, along with the doorman and other miscellaneous debris. My feet skidded along the ground, and I was pretty sure the only thing that kept me from being eaten was Frost’s hold on the earth. The creature belched, smoke rising from it in thick plumes.

  It was a Qork, a beast with a near-limitless appetite. I’d only read abou
t them in books and hadn’t ever seen one before. It opened its mouth and two ten foot tentacles whipped outward from the opening. They swung lazily toward me as though they meant to draw me into its mouth, but not if they had to work too hard at it. I stood and took a small step to the side, allowing the tentacle to slap the ground next to me with a wet thud.

  The creature regarded me with the same semi-intelligent gaze that a cow might use. It turned its attention toward the fence posts, encircling one with its tentacles. The post seemed to shudder as supports cracked and bolts popped free from the foundation. With a wet slurp the Qork jammed the entire thing into its massive gullet.

  Another Qork burst through the front wall of the castle… then another… There were now at least five such creatures that I could see, varying in size from that of a large dog to a small car.

  Unfortunately, if Logan was in there, he wouldn’t be for long. Not with an old fashioned castle siege going on. I needed to get a move on. As I approached the front door, a massive gargoyle burst through the stone above. His enormous jaws slammed into the stone where I had been as I dove to the side. His body disappeared into the rock as though he had landed in water.

  An out of the way door caught my eye, so I started toward it in lieu of having any other obvious entry points into the castle that didn’t involve fighting my way through hordes of ungodly creatures. As I got closer to it, my feet began to sink into wet mud. Thick mist descended upon me, and I shivered.

  I trudged forward, but the closer I got to the doorway the less visible it became. The scent of decaying flesh filled my nostrils. I struggled to overcome the nausea that tackled my senses. My boots stuck in the reddish-brown sludge, and I fell to my hands and knees. The mud rose all the way to the tops of my elbows and visions of vultures ripping flesh from dead bodies flashed through my mind.

  I began to crawl through the mud until my head was scarcely above it. Several yards away, I could just make out the door. I took a deep breath through my mouth and willed myself to my feet.

  The door appeared to be made from decaying flesh. Several large vultures with crimson-stained, mottled feathers sat on perches next to the door and eyed me hungrily.

  I’ll admit it, my first instinct was to give up and run as far as possible in the opposite direction. Then the handle was in my hands, and I was hauling myself out of the mud and onto the step of the decaying door. I placed my hand in the center of the door, and when I tried to push it open, it oozed around me. Instead of opening the door warbled, trembling under my touch.

  A shriek exploded from my mouth as it sucked me forward. I blinked once. I don’t know what happened exactly, but the gate was behind me now.

  In front of me was a single hallway that curved to the left and behind me was the gooey door of flesh. I took the only logical course of action. I ran as far from the door as I could. A howl escaped the corridor behind me, and I knew I had only moments before one of those damn gargoyles were upon me, but at least I didn’t have to contend with mud and creepy vultures. I turned down another corridor and slammed into a swinging baseball bat at full force. The wood splintered as I crashed into the floor with a thud.

  My vision blurred and my chest ached from where the bat had struck me. Luckily my chainmail had deflected a lot of the power from the blow or I’d be dead. I’d read somewhere that in medieval times most soldiers didn’t die from being slashed or cut, but from being bashed to death beneath their armor. Sure, hardened steel might keep claws or swords from cutting you, but that force still had to go somewhere. I did not enjoy being that somewhere.

  “It has been a long time since someone has entered through the carrion door,” Jay, the vampire standing over me, said. He had watched way too many muscleman competitions. The bulging muscles, spray-tan, and little itty-bitty shorts that left little to the imagination were nauseating.

  “I like to change it up every now and then,” I said as I scrambled to my feet. The screeches of the gargoyles echoed down the hall behind me.

  “I like to change things up, too. So, perhaps I will throw you to the vultures instead of making you a snack for the fledgling vampires.”

  “I don’t suppose you would consider the possibility of just letting me pass.” I managed a weak smile.

  For the briefest of moments he appeared to think the idea over. Then he shook his head. “I like my idea better.”

  I gulped and tried to will my heart to stop trying to smash its way out of my chest as he took a step toward me. His black thigh-high boots scratched against the marble floor. I swallowed, and without realizing it, gripped Frost’s hilt. Cold rushed through me, surging through my fingertips and down the length of my arm. My next breath came out in a chilly white cloud as the vampire took another step toward me.

  I took a step back and raised my other hand in front of me. Cold surged through my veins like an icicle pressed to my skin on a hot day. Through my splayed fingers I watched the vampire crack a smile, though I wasn’t sure why.

  Scritch-scratch.

  The vampire took another step, cracking his knuckles as he did so. One meaty paw engulfed by his other. The sound was so loud that it echoed down the hallway.

  There was a nudging in me from the sword, an almost imperceptible pinprick from the weapon against my brain. A very tiny part of it was nudging me, begging me to release it, to let it fill the air with unyielding winter.

  The vampire was only a couple steps away now. His stink, like old, decaying copper and dirty laundry, washed over me. I swallowed and shut my eyes, focusing on the giant ice blade. It spread over the back of my mind like a spider-web, sticky and clingy and so cold it could shatter the flesh from my bones.

  “Fine, sword. Fine. Have your way,” I murmured aloud.

  There was a rustle of leathery wings in the back of my mind as something ancient and reptilian stirred from its long slumber. It had been asleep for so long that it couldn’t waken, not yet. Giant eyelids tried to rise, tried to fling themselves open, but sleep held them back… for now.

  My eyes snapped open and a blast of cold exploded out of my hand, ripping down the hallway and sheathing the stone in ice. The vampire tried to dodge, tried to throw himself out of the way, but lost his footing on the icy floor beneath his feet. It was like dousing him with liquid nitrogen. He froze in place, his arms stretched wide with one foot in the air like he’d just lost his balance.

  My hand slipped off the hilt of Frost, and I dropped to my knees. I sucked in a breath and tried to ignore the fact that I’d just allowed a legendary weapon to attack through me. Normally, I couldn’t have pulled off a spell like that. As I said earlier, when it comes to ice, I fail every time. That didn’t mean, however, that Frost didn’t have some crazy juju all on its own.

  A horrific screech startled me, and I turned to see gargoyles rounding the corner. As a rule, I hated the damn things… I mean, can you think of an easy way to kill something made of rock? Without even thinking, my hand gripped Frost and lashed out with the legendary blade.

  The blow flung the lead gargoyle backward into its companions. Ice spread across its rocky chest as it struggled and flailed, trying to scratch off the ice that swarmed over its body. That’s pretty much when bits of it started to shatter. First small pieces then larger and larger chunks of it broke off and disintegrated into powder. Blood burst from it in a cloud, sending the others into a frenzy of shrieking. They converged on the injured one, tearing into its flesh like a pack of ravenous sharks.

  I swallowed and stared down at my hand where it gripped Frost. I hadn’t even meant to attack, let alone with magic. It had been so reactionary, like the blade was part of me. As I stared down at the blade that had once felt so heavy, I realized it was weightless.

  CRACK!

  I swung around. The vampire had, somehow, shattered the upper half of his icy prison. He raised a hand toward me, and I took off running at full speed, racing past the pack of ravenous gargoyles.

  Something struck me like a sack of wet concret
e, sending me skidding across the floor. I rolled my body with it and wound up on my back with a gargoyle on top of me. It snarled. Breath like fetid meat on a summer’s day smacked me in the face. I struggled to keep my lunch down as its jaws latched down on my shoulder.

  Pain shot through me, and for a second, my vision blurred. I screamed, and in my frustration, a tiny voice whispered in the back of my head. Like a cold breath in my ears it asked to help, to allow it this one tiny thing, to simply allow it… to feed.

  My hand shot out, grabbing the gargoyle by the back of the head, and I flung it sideways in a flurry of snow and ice. It struck the wall like a wine glass, shattering into a million pieces. I stared at the spot for what felt like an eternity, unable to will myself into action. I took a deep breath and blew it out through my teeth. It came out in a small white cloud of ice and fog.

  Snap!

  I turned to see the battered and bloody vampire break free a support pillar and fling it at me. I sprang to my feet, and instead of running away, which would have been the smart thing to do, I charged.

  Frost leapt out like a striking serpent as two gargoyles burst through the ground and seized both my legs. The tip of the blade stood mere inches from the vampire’s chest. He stumbled backward and fell on his butt, eyes wide with shock.

  My face twisted into a devilish smile as I thrust Frost downward into the closest gargoyle, reaching past its stony flesh and into the ground beneath it. A rush of energy filled me as Frost drank in its essence. As power surged up the blade, the distinct sound of fluttering reptilian eyes echoed in the back of my skull.

  Normally, it is really freaking hard to steal something’s energy when it doesn’t want you to do it. Sure, redirecting the flow of energy into yourself isn’t that hard but stealing it? That will pretty much get you executed on the spot if you’re a Dioscuri and you’re caught doing it.

  Frost had taken it effortlessly and… what was worse… I kind of liked it. The blade thrummed in my hand like a living thing, begging, pleading with me to feed it, to let the hungering winter devour…