The Lillim Callina Chronicles: Volumes 1-3

by J. A. Cipriano

  That’s the upside to killing people with a Dioscuri weapon, I suppose. There were never any bodies. They just broke up into harmless molecules and floated away, you know, assuming you hadn’t used a shotgun to kill them. Thankfully, my katana had delivered the deathblows, but the blood and gunk from the shotgun remained behind. Man, I really needed to get some kind of mob cleanup crew on speed dial.

  Still, at least I didn’t have to deal with the bodies. I’d long since thought Dioscuri weapons were designed to make the corpses of the fallen vanish because it made killing easier. It is a lot easier to wade through a battle field, slaughtering hundreds of people, if there aren’t any bodies left afterward. The horrors of war are much easier to forget when there is no feast left for the crows.

  My katana was glowing off-blue with several deep crimson ankhs etched down its length. Sparks of electricity danced along its surface. Without even thinking, I had charged it with energy. I stared at the weapon in my hand. Its hilt resembled a black serpent trying to swallow the sun. Its blade was so pure white, I almost had to shield my eyes.

  When it was sheathed it looked pretty normal for a katana but unleashed and charged up? Well, that was a different story because my katana was actually inhabited by the goddess Isis. Hey, don’t ask me why an Egyptian deity was fused to a Japanese weapon, it wasn’t my idea.

  Still, my katana, was better suited for protection, which wouldn’t do for what I had in mind because I wanted to wreck some havoc. For that, I’d need Set, my wakazashi, and yes, it was inhabited by the Egyptian God of the same name, which was why I didn’t take him out unless I really wanted to do some damage.

  I shook my head and wiped the sweat from my face as I crossed the tiny apartment to pull Set out of the cupboard above the sink. I was going to have to track down that drake and stop him. Heart or no, blessing or no, if he was going after Trius a battle was coming, and in this day and age there might not be much left afterward.

  3

  “I’m telling you, this is a bad idea,” Mattoc said. I don’t know how, but he had somehow changed into a blue Hawaiian shirt and jeans. I wasn’t quite sure where his ghostly wardrobe came from and had never asked. Mostly because I was pretty sure he just looked like whatever image happened to pop into his mind. It made watching him look through clothing catalogues hilarious.

  “And I’m telling you to shut up… again,” I replied.

  “I’m not listening.” Was Mattoc sticking his tongue out at me? I decided not to investigate.

  “Look, just because Warthor has sworn to protect Trius doesn’t mean you should go tell him there’s another dragon in town. On a scale from one to bad ideas, this is a terrible.”

  Mattoc didn’t particularly like the idea of me tracking down my old master. The other Dioscuri called him The Invincible Joker, but to me he was just Warthor Ein, and I owed him my life. Why? He was responsible for releasing millions of undead monsters into the world so I could be reborn. Yeah, he was the one who orchestrated that whole rebirth thing I talked about earlier.

  On one hand, I had to respect him for daring to make demands of the gods. My old master had threatened to tear the doors off of Hell and pull Dirge, along with every other creepy crawly, out of Hell if they didn’t bring me back to life. On the other hand, I kind of wanted to kill him for actually doing it when they called his bluff.

  Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to tell Warthor about the new dragon. Things tended to go all sorts of sideways when he got involved. Still, I wasn’t going to admit that to Mattoc because I didn’t have a better idea. Besides, this would kill two birds with one stone because Joshua always seemed to know where Warthor was. If I could track down Joshua, I could find out what he wanted and find Warthor.

  Okay, yeah, it was a bad plan, but what else was I supposed to do? Sit here and wait for my third monster attack of the day?

  My hands trembled as I grabbed the mirror off the wall and scooped up a bottle of vegetable oil. I spread the oil on the mirror and leaned it against my couch so it caught the light just right. I concentrated, allowing magical energy to build until the mirror’s face was a swirling mass of cloudy reds and blues.

  I mumbled Joshua’s true name under my breath. Nothing happened. I said it once more, a little louder, letting more of my energy flow into the words. It sparked as my breath touched the mirror and… nothing.

  As I pressed my palms against the mirror’s surface, the shimmering glass was like thick jelly against my skin. For a second, I could almost feel Joshua’s presence, but it was distorted somehow. It was almost like he was hiding from me, but how was that possible?

  “Why is it so…” I mumbled, pushing my hands deeper into the glass. I hated it. It was cold and slick, like massaging a wet frog.

  “Are you really going to go through the looking glass? That didn’t turn out very well for Alice, you know,” Mattoc asked from behind me.

  He was right. Traveling through the mirror toward Joshua would be a big mistake. The likelihood that I’d wind up in a dungeon or stuck in a mountain was incredibly high. I pulled my hands from the mirror. They were colorless as though my blood had fled from the flesh. I wiggled my fingers as the little needles that signaled returning circulation stabbed at them.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said with a sigh. Maybe there was another way to find Warthor without finding Joshua. I needed to focus on that. The dragon was a higher priority, and besides, it wasn’t like I wanted to see Joshua, anyway.

  Sure, he’d sent me the swizzle and maybe, just maybe, he really was in trouble. I doubted it though. Aside from the fact he was a nearly indestructible half-demon, he was Joshua. Even among my people he was feared. Still, I didn’t need his help to find Warthor.

  “There’s another way to find Joshua.” Mattoc leaned back on his heels, a smile on his face. “There is only one place he can get a candy swizzle. You could do some real detective work. You know, trace his trail back to the source.”

  Joshua could only get them from the Dioscuri. We both knew that, but that didn’t mean I was willing to go back home and nose around for clues.

  I settled one of my best glares on Mattoc. “Not gonna happen. I’d rather visit every single place in the universe before I go back home.”

  “They’re pretty good at finding people.” His voice sounded a little different, almost pleading. “And, you know, they might be interested in the whole ‘dragon on the loose’ thing.”

  I stopped listening to him because he was right and I knew it, but I was being stubborn, dammit. Instead of doing the smart thing and going home, I grabbed a cord of rope from my desk drawer.

  If I could enter the nether I could have used a spell to find Warthor directly. Unfortunately, without Joshua to lead me through Earth’s magical realms, I knew of only one entrance into the nether, and that was in the Dioscuri base camp. Although the Dioscuri would probably let me use it, I didn’t really want to be around them.

  It wasn’t just that the Dioscuri were now led by my psycho, overbearing mother. It was more that people kept comparing me to Dirge Meilan. I was not her. I would never be her. I was Lillim Callina, and for some people, that was impossible to understand.

  My past life as Dirge Meilan was always there in the background, like an invisible measuring stick I was always being held against. Dirge would have done this. Dirge wouldn’t have done that. Even when I accomplished things, people would say it was only because of who I had been. It was terrible. All my successes were attributed to her and all my faults, well, I got to keep those.

  No, I wasn’t going to them. I was going to do this on my own.

  I walked to my table, a tiny rosewood thing covered in deep white scratches from before I’d rescued it from a local thrift shop, and dumped everything I’d gathered onto it in a heap. I mixed the various ingredients together until, finally, a dash of monkey screams and a minor explosion later, my magic rope began to move all on its own. It would lead me into the closest entrance to the ne
ther.

  Without a word to my ghost, I carried the rope outside and shut my ruined door. I’d have to fix it when I got back, but for now, I settled on a spell that made it look locked. That done, I tightened my grip on the rope and took a deep breath as I called my magic. It surged up inside me, singing in my veins and flushing my skin.

  “Go,” I whispered, forcing a small amount of will into the rope.

  The rope jerked me to the side, whipping me around the corner of my porch and dragging me down the street, zipping left and right so quickly, I was sure my hands were going to be blistered and raw by the time I found what I wanted. Man, I really should have worn gloves.

  After a few blocks, I found myself face to face with a brick wall beside an overstuffed dumpster in an alley behind a sushi place. The rope died in my hand. As far as I knew, there were no entrances here, so why had the rope stopped moving? Then again, I guess if I’d known it was here, I wouldn’t have needed the rope. Still, it’d be nice to know what was on the other side because it could literally be anything.

  “Just not my day,” I mumbled, reaching forward to check the wall. It rippled as though I had touched the surface of a pond. Well, one thing was certain. This was an entrance to the nether all right. The only problem was that it was new. If it was new, someone had put it here.

  It spelled trap, but since I didn’t really have a better way into the nether, I decided to chance it. If something bad happened, I could always jump back through. Probably. You know, assuming I didn’t land in a pool of magma or something.

  Either way, I was a big girl and big girls don’t cry. No, we took our lumps and went on kicking. It was time to take my lumps. I took a deep breath and jumped through the wall.

  4

  As I emerged from the portal into the nether, I found myself exhaling a chilly breath of church air. Okay, so it wasn’t a pool of hot lava. Yay!

  I stood in what appeared to be an ancient Catholic church, which yes, was a bit weird, but not nearly as weird as what was toward the very front of the chapel. In the center of several bronze statues of what I think were saints, stood a freakishly thin vampire in a dreary maroon robe. I could tell he was a vampire because instead of having a vibrant aura, his was mostly black and dead.

  If we were in the real world, I wouldn’t have been able to see his aura without using some magic, but here, everyone’s auras were plastered on them like neon signs. Unfortunately, that also meant he could see mine, and that meant he knew I was a Dioscuri. Well, that was fine. I knew how to play the big, bad Dioscuri pretty well.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Lillim Callina, though you arrived a little before Joshua said you would. He didn’t think you’d come to find him quite this fast,” he said, turning to look at me.

  He had one of those pinched faces that always made me think of a bird, but otherwise seemed pretty normal looking despite his hair and wardrobe coming straight out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It was a little weird because usually vampires tried to look normal, but this guy was coming at it from the completely opposite direction.

  Normally, that would have made me think he was a newer vamp who had watched too many movies before getting himself turned, but power radiated off the creature like a winter’s breeze, pelting my skin with little frozen pinpricks.

  I had to fight the urge to shiver and hug myself. Instead, I steeled myself and settled my gaze on him. My stomach clenched, revulsion welling up inside me as I tried to focus on the vampire. It was harder than it should have been, and not just because of the power radiating off of him.

  Ever since my mom had tied me to a tree outside a vampire den during childhood, I’d never really liked vampires, even the “nice” ones. Being around this one was not making me like them any better.

  Vampire are really quite rude about the whole disemboweling and dismemberment thing. Given the chance, most vampires would gladly spill my entrails onto the ground and frolic in my hot, wet blood. This one was strong, visibly so, and how was I to know he was any different?

  “You’ve been expecting me? For what? What are you doing here?” I called and was pretty sure it didn’t sound as impressive as I’d have liked.

  “Lighting candles for the dead,” he replied as though it was perfectly natural for him to be in a church. Which it might have been… I wasn’t up to date on what all the cool bloodsuckers were doing. Maybe they hung out in churches now.

  “But you kill people!” I exclaimed. Behind him, an immense painting of Jesus and His Apostles caught my eye. Jesus’ gaze seemed to bear down on me, and without realizing it, I took a step back.

  “Then it is even more important for me to honor the dead.” The vampire turned toward me, his lips stretching into a crooked smile as he folded his hands over a silver crucifix. “If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here today.”

  I tried to keep the surprise off my face. I wasn’t sure how well it worked. I could deal with a vampire in a church… it wasn’t that odd, but a vampire holding onto a crucifix? That was a little strange. Now, I never claimed to quite understand faith magic. We’ve all seen movies where vampires and ghosts are incapacitated by crosses. However, there are just as many films where vampires and ghosts destroy those same crosses effortlessly.

  This was one of those times where I should have just listened to my mother and studied. Then I wouldn’t be relying on Hollywood’s version of the facts. If I got out of this alive, I was totally going to study. Well… I was going to think about studying. Baby steps.

  I shook my head and narrowed my eyes. “But you’re a vampire!”

  “Voln D’Lamprey.” He bowed his head.

  The chill that ran down my back was so cold, I was sure someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of my shirt. I knew that name. Voln D’Lamprey was very well known because he was really good at tricking people into doing his bidding. It was rumored he had been the driving force behind the Louisiana Purchase.

  “Forgive me,” I mumbled and bowed my head. He gestured above my head and said something in what sounded like Latin.

  “Don’t worry, my lady,” he said as I raised my head. “If I were still human, I might have reacted just as you did. I know you were expecting to find Joshua here, but, alas, it is only I who reside in this cathedral.”

  Actually, that wasn’t true. I hadn’t been expecting to find Joshua, so why did he think that? Unless… had Joshua put this entrance here? If so, why? Either way, I was going to play along and see if he dropped me some useful information.

  The vampire smiled, sharp white teeth flashing in the dim light, and my head started to swim. I couldn’t look directly at him. The hard lines that made up his features had blurred into a whitish mass of light. I shook my head and swallowed before continuing.

  “I don’t know how I wound up here.” I spread my arms to indicate the surrounding room. “I was looking for Joshua and ended up here. But I haven’t quite figured out why.”

  “Yes, Joshua told me you would help me with a task, a tiny trifle. In return for this small favor, I will relay to you Joshua’s exact whereabouts. How does that sound?” The vampire smiled at me in a way that reminded me of a sued car salesman.

  I shook my head in an effort to break his gaze. I had to stop myself from taking a step back from him. I hadn’t really dealt with something as ancient as Voln in a while and it scared me. Even just being in his presence made me feel small, and I knew there were things even older than him… things like dragons. My god… I must be crazy. What kind of person would go after something so old, so ancient, that Voln might as well be a puppy in comparison?

  Desperate to get out of his presence, I turned to leave. Voln spoke again. His voice was low and musical. “You won’t be able to leave from here so easily. Even if you did get through the doors, you would just be trapped in the swirling winds of the nether.”

  I hated when other people were right, especially when they came to a conclusion I had already decided to ignore. I turned back toward him, lowering m
y sunglasses so my eyes showed.

  “I don’t really have time for this. I’m trying to stop a dragon.” I fixed him with my hardest stare.

  “Why?” he asked, completely unaffected by my mean look.

  “Why stop a dragon?” Because I didn’t want any number of bad things to happen? Because I wanted to be the important one instead of Dirge Meilan. Because, maybe, if I could stop this all by myself, people would stop comparing me to my former self. As those thoughts flitted through my brain, I realized I was really pathetic. Sigh…

  “No,” he replied, waving off my question. “Why must you stop it? In the past, no Dragon Knight dared travel into the nether because all other dragons would seek to undo him. Yet your old master, Warthor Ein, has lived here for years, despite being Trius’ Dragon Knight.”

  Everyone knew that the easiest way to get rid of a dragon on our world was to kill his anchor, commonly called a Dragon Knight. Killing said anchor severs the dragon’s tie to our world. Then, without a person to anchor him into our world, the dragon would eventually have to retreat to the nether to recharge.

  That was how Warthor had defeated the last dragon. When the former knight betrayed our people and tried to destroy the Dioscuri, Warthor not only killed him but banished his dragon to the nether. Then he’d made a deal with Trius to anchor him here instead. Since that day, the other dragons had painted a giant target on Warthor’s chest.

  Still, Warthor was a bit crazy. As I said before, he’d been willing to unleash Hell on Earth to bring me back. No one wanted to be up against Warthor Ein, even the other dragons as evidenced by the fact that he lived in the nether and was still alive. That was really saying something if you think about it. No one wanted to attack an ancient, unstoppable dragon because they were scared of the human protecting him. Until now, at least.