“What?” I was trying to unscrew Georgie’s water bottle with one hand while juggling an infant, which was no easy task. Now Mattoc was pestering me instead of helping.
“You need to see this.”
“In a second.” I got the bottle under the water and managed to balance it with my chin long enough to get the cap back on. I threw a glance at Mattoc. He was standing at the window, looking out with an odd mix of surprise and horror plastered on his face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“No, seriously, words can’t explain this. You need to look.” He tapped the glass but it made no sound.
Now, I’m not one to get really nervous or anything. Problems? Well, I tend to just smash my way through them. But when I looked out my window and saw, much to my horror, what appeared to be an asteroid the size of a cement truck suspended in the sky miles above my tiny apartment, I froze. Well, I don’t know that it was targeting my place exactly, but, with my luck, it sure seemed that way.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” I watched the enormous stone hang in the air. Thankfully it didn’t seem to be moving. So it was a magical space rock. Even better.
“I don’t suppose you can stop that?” Mattoc asked hopefully.
“Nope,” I said doubtfully as I turned and began hastily trying to gather up my hedgehog, new baby, and various other objects. “What’s the ETA on that thing?”
“No way to tell. It isn’t moving at the moment.” The voice struck me sort of odd. I knew it wasn’t Mattoc’s voice, but it was strangely familiar at the same time. A man with skin like alabaster stepped through my doorway, as though all of the wards meant nothing to him. Then again, most of the creatures I’d dealt with recently seemed to be capable of bypassing my wards. I was definitely going to have to get a more advanced book on the subject or a better lock.
“Sit down and calm yourself, Lillim Cortez Callina,” he said whimsically, but even as he did so, a rush of power sent my body toppling into a nearby chair with a hedgehog in one hand and a baby in the other. The wards around the room flashed so brightly that it nearly blinded me as they burned themselves up under the stress of his power.
He had walked though my barriers and hadn’t even pronounced my name correctly. In fact, I was pretty sure he’d said it wrong on purpose because it’d sounded like one of those fake computer voices. Saying my name that way shouldn’t have given him any power over me. Since he was not invited inside, my wards should have kept him out. But instead of protecting me, they had been overwhelmed by his voice. This guy had some serious mojo.
I sucked in a breath and was glad that his spell wouldn’t let me tremble. It’s hard to look tough when you’re shaking like a leaf.
He sauntered around my apartment in his tattered blue jeans and mismatched socks, opening drawers and cupboards and generally making a mess of things. He shouldn’t be so damn powerful. He hadn’t done anything yet, and I was powerless to stop him in my own house.
He ran a hand through his scruffy black emo-rock star hair and smiled, revealing a mouthful of perfect porcelain. A series of puncture marks ran the length of his neck as far as I could see beneath his Led Zeppelin t-shirt. It looked like he had been bitten by a dinosaur. I imagined that those puncture marks probably trailed across his back and chest as well.
“You’ve got a few days before that asteroid hits. More than enough time to find out who is summoning it and stop them if you were so inclined.” He shrugged. Evidently he didn’t care very much about it. “Quite a nice disappearing act back in Germany. I wasn’t expecting that. You didn’t need to hit me though.” He smiled, the corners of his mouth turned into a wide grin as his eyes, so dark that they were nearly black, flashed with amusement. “If I said you didn’t hit like a girl would you be offended or take it as a compliment?”
I narrowed my eyes, somewhat surprised that his spell didn’t affect my facial expressions. That’s where I’d heard his voice before. He’d been the guy to pull me through the stone. How had he gotten here so quickly? I swallowed. If he was already here, when would the others arrive?
“So what do you want?” I tried vainly to push myself up from the chair. This was surprisingly difficult to do with a baby in one hand and a hedgehog in the other. A thin bead of sweat trailed its way down my forehead.
“I’m going to watch the First Son for a while. I’ve already spoken with his father. He will leave you alone for now.” He took the baby I had worked so damn hard to get and smiled at him. The baby smiled back as the man cooed. “Don’t worry though. Once you stop Valen I’ll bring him back safe and sound. That’s a promise.”
He was so suddenly gone that it was as though I had imagined the entire situation. I hadn’t of course. The baby was really and truly gone. I relaxed as my body lurched up from the chair, no longer bent into its frame by the man’s will. I stared at my hedgehog before placing him back in his cage. Georgie yawned at me and crawled back into the small burrow he had made in the felt liner.
“I guess I’ll have time to search for whoever called for that asteroid. Eh, Matto?”
No response. There was no sound, no delightfully annoying spark of his ghostly voice. “Matto?”
Nothing. I quickly looked around and didn’t find hide nor hair of the ghost.
“Christ… where are you, Mattoc?” I began turning things over, flinging everything in my room into misshapen heaps. After several minutes I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. I was being stupid. The ghost was bound to me after all. I just had to feel for his soul chain. I’d find him. I took another deep breath, opened my eyes to the ethereal plane, and looked for the chain. I screamed.
When looking into the ethereal plane, stuff comes out as a true reflection of its soul. I’d expected to see the chain trailing off somewhere. I did not expect to see iridescent broken shards.
One of the thing’s hands held a ridiculously long sword of black flame. The other was clamped around Mattoc’s mouth. This thing had forcefully pulled my soulbound ghost into the ethereal realm. It had to be some damn good trick to reach out this far into the ethereal plane to pluck my ghost out of my home.
“You need to let him go or he’ll fade away without the soul chain,” I said.
“Now now, Bunny,” Warthor Ein muttered in a raspy, hoarse sort of way. “Is that any way to talk to your master?” Warthor flicked me between the eyes.
I staggered backward and fell to the ground. My ears were buzzing and my eyes couldn’t focus. With a whoosh both he and Mattoc were gone and my sight returned to the physical world. I shook my head and tried to reopen my ethereal sight, but I couldn’t. Something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.
Mattoc was gone. My ghost was gone. The baby was gone, too, though that was starting to become more of a reoccurring theme at this point. Unfortunately, after my last stunt, I was pretty sure Gib was on his way here, right now, to rip me in half regardless of what the mystery man had said. Maybe he really had done me a solid and let the werewolf know the kid was in good hands? Probably not. I didn’t have that kind of luck.
I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. I should probably go after the baby, especially if those vampires were working with Valen, the blood drake. Of course, I had no idea who Mr. Tall, Dark, and Scruffy was or how to go about finding him. Besides, if I stopped Valen he’d promised to give the baby back. Since I really needed to stop Valen anyway, I was content to ignore the baby for a while. Then there was Mattoc…
“Well at least I won’t have to deal with his icky ghostly presence anymore,” I said without cheer. My hedgehog stared blankly at me.
Georgie was not impressed. I sighed. “Fine, I’ll just go out into the nether and brave all those monsters that are way stronger in the nether by the way, just so you can have your friend back.” The hedgehog gave me one last glance and stuck his head back under his blanket.
You had to give it to Warthor Ein. I sighed as I moved over to a gun rack and took down a box of shells and a new shotgun. He really
knew how to make a bad situation worse.
Chapter 23
It was likely Warthor wouldn’t hurt Mattoc. In fact, I’d bet a fistful of hundreds that he merely wanted to see me about something and the ghost-napping was just guaranteeing I would show up. Then, when I arrived, I’d have to perform some cockamamie task only to be rewarded with what he’d stolen to begin with… which was patently ridiculous because he could have easily told me what he wanted when he was right in front of me.
If he’d just given me two damn seconds when he popped in to ghost-nap Mattoc, I could have told him about Valen and saved all of us a lot of trouble. Still, since I’d been meaning to talk to him anyway, going after him to retrieve Mattoc was sort of a win win situation for me. See, that’s the power of positive thinking.
I grumbled and slammed my fist against my desk. Even though I hated to say it, rescuing Mattoc was going to have to wait. The meteor… no asteroid… wait, what’s the difference? I shook my head again. The massive rock hurtling toward me from the earth’s atmosphere definitely required more immediate attention.
I moved over to the window as I slung the shotgun into its holster inside my overcoat, glad that it could hold a ridiculous amount of gear, and stared up at the asteroid. It seemed to be smiling back at me, muttering the unspoken question, “Wanna play?” And of course I did. I wanted very much to play because of all the things facing me, an asteroid was probably the easiest one to handle, and that was very, very sad.
I mean all I had to do was track down the caster and stop him, then the magical space boulder would go away. Right? Normally in this situation, I would ask someone’s opinion, but as I trailed my mental finger down the list of possible helpers I found that they were all either captured or I was ignoring them.
I walked outside and it was then, and only then, that I realized there was no one to be found. Doors hung open on hastily abandoned homes, and I reasoned that many people had evacuated like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
My hedgehog squeaked so loud that I heard it outside. It was a sound I was altogether unused to hearing. I walked back inside and peered at it curiously. It was unconcerned with the meteor, which was odd. Normally animals are the first ones to get out of dodge when bad things happen. So why wasn’t my hedgehog the least bit worried? Then again he was a hedgehog. Georgie couldn’t exactly see the outside sky from inside its cage, and where was he going to try and go anyway?
“You know I hate coincidences right?” I told the hedgehog. I picked him up and stuffed him in my pocket. He promptly curled into a ball and fell asleep. I glanced back at the space rock and all the blood drained from my face. There was a second one… and a third. This particular spell didn’t involve just a single asteroid. It was about flinging several asteroids, one after another, at the surface of the planet.
Whatever was doing this was seriously pissed off and either powerful enough or stupid enough to think that a cataclysmic event would not affect it much. There were only a handful of things that strong, and they pretty much all had god in their names.
“Okay…” I said aloud, more to have something to say than anything else. It was like the dinosaurs all over again. And whoever had done that was doing a much more thorough job this time. I felt very small and placing my hands on the handle of the shotgun made me feel even smaller.
I was going to need something a lot more powerful to go after someone who could summon asteroids. I walked over to my desk, pushed it out of the way, and pulled up the floorboard beneath it. There, in a small crevice, was a thin black sword with crimson butterflies etched along its length. I pulled it out and stared at it. The butterflies pulsed with life, and I swear, seemed to flitter around the weapon when I wasn’t looking.
This weapon was known as Haijiku, and when it had last been used, it had been inhabited by a being known only as The Emissary of Tragedy. After I’d killed the owner, the spirit had fled, leaving nothing but an empty husk. If I was going to try wielding this blade, I’d need someone to find The Emissary and convince him to return; otherwise Haijiku would be nothing more than a really pretty sword.
Fortunately, while I wasn’t really able to commune with the forces of darkness, Mattoc could and well, let’s just say being his anchor had its perks. I shifted my weight and very slowly traced my left index finger along the skin above my left breast. This was the spot where Mattoc was metaphysically bound to me. There was a sizzling sound as a sigil of a coiling serpent began to glow brightly on my flesh. I staggered backward and fell to my knees. The light drained from the room, leaving me in pitch darkness. Power as old as a thousand suns washed over me, pulling me down into a time before all things, before order and structure, to a time when there was only chaos.
I stood in a very small boat with the eye of a gigantic snake staring lazily at me. It was so dark that it was like looking at a black hole up close. The force of its gaze threatened to suck me into that swirling, endless darkness. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. The serpent was three, four-hundred meters maybe? I wasn’t inclined to try and figure it out since the snake could be as big as it wanted to be.
“Yes?” Apep muttered in a bored sort of indifference that suggested it had much better things to do than convene with me. This may or may not have been true, but like it or not, the creature had inhabited Hisen Mattoc’s Dioscuri weapon. Since Mattoc was bound to me, the least it could do was help me. Right?
I started to speak but it cut me off, its serpentine tongue flicking out over fangs bigger than my body. “If you have come to inquire about the status of Shirajirashii you will have to direct yourself to Isis or Set. They are your spirits. I’m more along for the ride.”
“Nah,” I said. “I don’t have time to reforge Shirajirashii.” I showed him Haijiku, and the blade shimmered, little sparks of iridescent color leaping across its surface. “I’ve decided to wield Haijiku. I need you to contact The Emissary. I need him to bond with Haijiku once more.”
The creature nodded, its approving expression annoying me to an absurd degree though I wasn’t quite sure why. The tiny boat rocked as its body shook the water around me, almost making me lose my balance. My gut told me that I really did not want to fall into these waters. “Anything else the Great God of Darkness can do for you? Perhaps you need some dry cleaning picked up?”
I glared at him for a moment and sheathed Haijiku. “How can I find out who is capable of summoning an asteroid toward earth?”
The serpent scoffed and turned away. “Anyone could do that. A single asteroid is something even a human wizard could manage with little effort.”
“Well crap… I’m not talking about a single asteroid. Someone is trying to summon several asteroids.”
He swiveled his immense head to look at me for a long time. “No one on your tiny speck of a planet would cast such a spell.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am certain.” Apep turned its head to regard me and its tongue flicked out, so close that it nearly touched me. A tremor ran down my spine, and I barely resisted the urge to flee.
“But it could be done, couldn’t it? This is a tiny planet. How hard can it be to pepper it with asteroids?”
“Even I, the great darkness that swallows the sun, do not have the power to cast such a spell. I could not have done it even during the demon days in ancient Egypt. The power to cast such a spell would take eons to gather. Unless…” A shiver rippled down the length of its massive body.
Whoosh
A blow to my stomach caused the vision to shatter. I sank to my knees, too shocked to realize I couldn’t breathe. Logan stood over me, his fangs bared. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”
Chapter 24
“Are you freaking serious?” I grumbled.
“Yes.” Logan pushed my pink lamp off the bookshelf, and it fell to the carpet.
Nice. The world was about to end, and Logan was trying to kill me. I got to my feet and darted past him in an effort to escape th
rough my door, but before I made it out, the thick arm of Bob broadsided me. I fell backward on my butt as he stepped into the room. Bob waved his hand in an amiable greeting.
“Hello, Dioscuri. It’s been ages.”
“Bob, how’s the arm?” I slowly got to my feet. If they wanted me dead, it would be so.
“Glorious.” He smiled, revealing a set of razor-sharp teeth. Next to him Logan paced back and forth, agitated and concerned.
I threw my arm backward in a sweeping gesture. “How nice of you to visit my humble home.”
“Humble is a bit strong… perhaps filthy hovel would be more suitable a term,” Bob said, and his voice had an edge of ice to it. I glanced over my shoulder at Logan who was twirling the Demonslayer nervously through the air.
“It was a lot nicer before an unnamed vampire tried to burn it down.” I held my hands out apologetically. “Or if my wards actually succeeded in keeping unwanted visitors outside—”
“You are like a tiny dog. Always yapping, always barking.” Logan said, and I craned my head toward him.
“Look,” I said as calmly as I could, “I need to be doing important things.” I paused and pointed out the window. “In case you haven’t noticed, the sky is falling.”
Bob opened his mouth to say something, but I held up my hand to stop him. It worked, and for a moment, he just stared at me. “If you’re going to tell me how insignificant I am. Or how I ought to be glad a being as powerful as you has decided that blah, blah, blah, I swear to god…”
“You will what?” Bob raised an eyebrow. His dark eyes watched me, and it was almost as though a large shadow rose out of him, unfurled its leathery wings, and raged at me. My body quivered, and I bit my lip. I took a deep breath, and without breaking eye contact, pulled the shotgun free from its holster and unloaded it into him.
After the roar of the gun faded, there was no sound. Bob remained there, standing impassively. Some of the metal had bitten into his flesh, but most was lying at his feet. What had sunk into his skin was being pushed outward as the wounds healed. Granted I had known what to expect from him in the way of physical fortitude, but a blast like that should have done more damage. I knew this because I had done it only a few days before. So… that was a little weird.
Kill It With Magic: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 1) Page 13