Either way, I was going to have to find Warthor Ein. Not only did I want his help with Sharkface, I also wanted to keep him from doing something crazy. While completing ridiculously insane tasks was something my former master did for fun, that didn’t mean his methods were all kittens and sunshine.
Voln was right. Warthor probably did have a plan. Warthor would have come up with one before he had even become a Dragon Knight. I was equally certain I wouldn’t like his plan. Not one bit.
I glanced back at Voln and swallowed. The damn vampire also had another point. I didn’t have to do this alone. I could go to my mother for help. I could go crawling back to her and… I stopped for a second and eyed Voln suspiciously.
“What would you have me do?” I asked, and as I did, immediately clamped my hand over my mouth, hoping he hadn’t taken it as me offering to do something for him. Old creature’s tended to take things like what I’d said pretty literally.
“I told you before. I want your help with a trifle. You will perform this tiny, insignificant task for me, and I will lead you to Joshua.” Voln’s smile reminded me of a crocodile’s, full of wicked intentions and sharp teeth. “Are we in agreement?”
I let out a sigh. I wasn’t sure that I really needed Joshua, but then again, he would help me find Warthor. Either way, something about this felt off, especially since I didn’t have time for this right now. Still, what was my other option? Go home and ask the Dioscuri for help? Screw that.
“Goddamnit!” I cursed and wondered if I could glare the vampire to death. “Fine, what do you want?”
“There is a clan of werewolves,” Voln said as he psychically forced the image into my head.
“I know the place,” I murmured because I did. I remembered seeing it on a map back home.
“I know. I just showed you.” Voln smiled for a moment. “Go there and retrieve a box for me. If you gain possession of the object before the other vampires do, a very bloody border dispute can be avoided. You might say such a task is right up your alley.”
I took a deep breath as I stared at a box in my head. It resembled a golden cradle. If what Voln was saying was true, and it probably was, I really should step in and help. If a bunch of vampires raided a werewolf camp and stole a prized object, the consequences could be all out war. While I wasn’t sure I cared if a bunch of vampires and werewolves killed each other, it could spill over into the normal world. That would be bad.
If I did steal whatever this thing was, it’d be more like the USDA raiding a small Amish farm over some bad milk. People might complain, but in the end, the repercussions were going to be minor. Going after the dragon was going to have to wait. Besides, I was all about stopping vampires if I could.
“Yeah, I suppose I can do this. However, I’m going to need some monetary compensation as well,” I said just as my stomach grumbled. “And lunch. I’m going to need lunch.”
As long as you remembered to ask, supernatural beings tended to have no problem throwing in money, food, or anything else non-magical. A lesson I learned a while ago.
“Of course you do.” Voln made a gesture, and a pouch materialized in front of me. “One does not often find a Hyas Tyee who sells herself so… easily.”
“A girl has to make a buck.” I scooped up the pouch, glanced inside long enough to make sure I’d be eating this month, and stared at him. “What about lunch?”
“What sort of food do you think I have here?” he asked, gesturing around the room. “I’m a vampire.”
To be fair, it was an excellent point, so instead of arguing with him, I turned on my heel and headed toward the door. I knew this time I’d be transported to the location he had shown me. Collect a box? How hard could it be?
5
Apparently, getting a treasure box from a bunch of werewolves could be very hard. The snow-covered plain in front of me was filled with like a million log cabins. In the very center of the village was the building Voln had pointed out. It was the only structure that seemed to have been made from stone. Even from my perch at the top of a giant pine tree it looked enormous as though someone had built it with the intention of rivaling the very planet.
If those cabins were filled with humans, I could hide myself with magic. Werewolves were a different story altogether. They could find pretty much anything if they put their noses to it. If they caught me stealing a precious object from them, I’d have one hell of a fight on my hands.
Sure, I could take a werewolf or three, but they were fast and healed almost instantly. So unless you could kill them outright in a single blow and then say, burn them to ashes, well, they tended to not stay dead. To make matters worse, it was getting close to dark, when they would be strongest. Then again, they were mostly nocturnal. Perhaps now, during the waning hours of daylight, they would be groggier than normal.
I ground my teeth together and took a couple slow breaths. This entire task was taking up valuable time that could be spent tracking down Warthor. At this rate, not only was I going to be very late to the party, but by the time I got there, they were totally going to be out of cake.
“Be careful, Lillim.” Mattoc’s warning made me jump.
I turned and glared at him, narrowing my eyes until they were almost slits. “If you are so concerned about my safety, why didn’t you warn me to shut my mouth around the vampire?” I sighed and let my face relax. “Of course I’ll be careful. You think I’m going to go strolling mindlessly—”
“Shut up and listen to me. They have ghost wards. I can’t go through them. If they have barriers set up strong enough that a soulbound ghost can’t pass through, they’re really trying to protect something, and my guess would be that something is what you’re trying to steal.”
“Noted.” My head hurt. This was going to be harder than I’d thought. God how I wished I had paid better attention in class. Maybe then I would be able to turn into mist or something. I sighed. I had to rely on speed, and the hope that my magic kept me hidden enough that they wouldn’t notice me. That was my brilliant plan: run and hope.
I leaned forward, testing the hang glider I had strapped to my back, and felt the resistance of the barrier around their town.
“Damn,” I muttered as a shrill siren pierced the air. My blood began to burn as I leapt from my tree, trying my best to ignore the fact I hadn’t even entered the town before an alarm had stripped away my camouflage and alerted the townsfolk to my presence. This was already going splendidly.
The tower loomed in front of me, growing bigger by the second. I released my harness and dropped to the ground, landing in a roll that brought me to a stop a few inches in front of the stone building.
The door was at least three times my height and so wide I could have walked through it with my arms fully extended and still had room left over. The wrought iron handle in the center glimmered in such a way as to suggest the door would open very easily if only I just took hold of it. As I reached forward, a spark of energy leapt from it.
“Yeah, it figures,” I grumbled and whipped out both my swords, Isis and Set. Their blades were as white as snow, and because of this most everyone referred to them as Shirajirashii which, loosely translated, meant pure white in Japanese.
I glanced around as I moved to the face of the wall. Why had no one accosted me? Was it just good timing on my part?
Not wanting to press my luck out in the open, I shook away the thought and forced some magic into my weapons. They began to glow with power as I slashed outward with the twin blades. Their glowing edges struck the stone, cleaving twin gashes into the wall. The sound of breaking rock was so loud, it had to have alerted the entire universe to my presence.
Still, it was going to take forever to cut my way through. Some more destruction was definitely in order, and with the alarm going off, I wasn’t exactly worried about making too much noise. I placed the tip of my wakazashi against the stone and concentrated. Power flowed out of me and into the rock, smashing against it like waves against a cliff.
; It was like watching a sheet of ice fall apart as cracks snaked across the wounded stone. Fissures splintered outward, causing great chunks of rock to slough off the surface and crash to the ground in a flurry of debris. I threw one last burst of power into the wall. The obsidian shrieked in agony and exploded inward in a cloud of black dust that covered me from head to toe.
I sighed and tried to brush myself off, but it was hopeless. Thankfully, people never seemed to enchant the walls. They always enchanted doors but never the walls… at least not against magical weapons. It was a good thing, too. The ward on that door looked like it could have reduced me to little more than a distant memory.
Besides, it wasn’t a large hole, only a few feet across, but it was large enough for me to clamber inside. I didn’t want to try to make it bigger, anyway. If I blew too big a hole in the structure, it might just come down on me. That was not something I was keen on experiencing.
There were too many shadows looming inside the hole for me to see anyone. Not that it mattered. I’d made so much noise everyone had to be onto me. I stepped inside and was surprised to see an ornate, dark-mahogany stairway to my left. It circled upward inside of the spire like a snake coiled against the wall.
Pale flickers of torchlight illuminated the rooms. What, could they not afford electricity out here in the sticks? I tried my best to take in the room as shadows moved and danced across the walls. Any one could be a werewolf sneaking up on me, and the light was just dim enough I couldn’t be sure.
I swallowed and wiped my hands on my skirt. This was no time to be entertaining second thoughts. So why wasn’t I moving on? Why couldn’t I dismiss the nagging feeling that something was not quite right?
Either way, I needed to hurry. I took a step toward the stairs, then another, listening as hard as I could. When I reached the stairs, I took off running, sprinting up the steps two and three at a time. I was nearly breathless by the time I reached the third floor and found the room Voln had shown me.
It was bright, blindingly so. Torches lined the walls so closely together they banished every shadow from the room. Red and black drawings of werewolves killing all sorts of other monsters covered every square inch of the stone. The box stood atop a marble pedestal in the center of the room with a wind chime hanging over the top of it.
As I approached, the true brilliance of the box became clear to me. Golden filigree designs intricately depicting battle scenes stretched across its entire length. On the back of the box, red and blue gemstones the size of my fist were set in a circular pattern. The more I looked at it, the more interesting it became, and as I searched for somewhere to sit and ponder it, I realized the damn thing was trying to charm me.
That bloodsucking leech Voln wanted me to take a siren box and unless I knew the way to magically disarm it, I’d be under its spell the entire time I was within sight of it. It worried me, but now that I knew what it was, I could counter it. Still, it had been close.
I blinked several times, trying to shake the overwhelming desire to kneel before the box and behold its magnificence and instead, grabbed ahold of the air. Have you ever tried to grab air? It’s no easy task, let me assure you.
“Spirit pouch,” I began, and found it much harder than normal to focus my will. “Where the air splits, I cause you to tear and keep an item in your care.”
There was a soft whistling, like a summer breeze, and the air ripped itself asunder. While the ragged edges of the hole looked like torn wrapping paper, the insides resembled a black gelatinous pustule of space. I shut my eyes for a moment and inhaled, just looking at it was so unreal it gave me a headache.
“Okay, Lillim, you can do this,” I told myself as I moved to the other side of the siren box and kicked it with all my strength.
The stupid box sat there unmoving as I fell backward on my ass like an idiot. My leg throbbed, and for a moment, I was worried I might have broken something. I stumbled to my feet, and if my mother had been here, I’d have definitely had to put a few bucks into the swear jar. Fortunately, she was not here, and therefore the pain in my foot could be derailed by righteous cursing.
I glared at the siren box and snarled. The sound echoed across the empty room as I called upon my power. It welled up inside me like white-hot rage as I reared back and kicked the object again. My power exploded out of me in a geyser of force, catching the metal in the center and flinging it haphazardly into the spirit pouch. It hung there for a second like it was sinking into jelly. The box twitched once and vanished in a burst of purple light.
With its sudden disappearance, the strain of the charm dissolved. I smiled to myself and stretched my arms toward the ceiling. It felt like a thousand-million pound weight had been lifted off of me. With an absent flick of my wrist, I banished the spirit pouch back to wherever it was in the nether it lived, and I turned toward the door. A bare-chested man who had clearly spent a great deal of time in the sun stood in front of it, blocking my escape.
His chest was covered by a tattoo that looked like a diamond with peacock feathers. It was the mark of a werewolf shaman, and a high ranking one at that since he had what looked like nearly a billion feathers on his diamond. That was bad, very, very bad.
When most people think of shamans, they think of hippies who rely solely on elemental magic to get things done. Werewolf shamans come only from leaders of the war pack, which means they are the strongest, toughest warriors in the whole clan and they know magic. It was awesome because, you know, dealing with a twelve-foot rage monster with giant claws and super-fast healing wasn’t enough.
“Give the box back, or I will kill you and take it back.” His voice was so cold and hard it made my legs shake. His yellow eyes drilled into mine and made me swallow unconsciously.
Killing me would do the trick. If I died, all objects in my spirit pouch, including the box, would spill to the floor. Even if he didn’t actually know that, he was seven feet tall and had one of those bodies that screamed, “I bench press whales for fun.”
His hair was pulled back in a long braid that swooshed back and forth behind his ankles as he walked toward me. His sun-kissed skin glistened under the torchlight as he moved, etching his body in shadows that accentuated each muscle. I wasn’t sure if he was doing it on purpose or if it was just one of those natural werewolf things, but the way he moved would have made him look really attractive if rage hadn’t painted his face with such hostility. I mean I don’t usually use the word smoldering to describe people, but in this guy’s case, I was willing to make an exception.
“No, I want it. It’s purdy.” I shook my head allowing my lavender hair to flutter back and forth, in what, I’ll admit, was an embarrassing attempt to use my feminine wiles to distract him. I really should have paid much more attention in charm class.
I hadn’t studied it mostly because I sucked at it, and it wasn’t something my mom had tried to pass down to me either. Her lessons were more along the lines of, “I’m going to tie you to a tree and hope you escape in time to stop the bloodthirsty vampire from tearing out your throat.”
To say my attempt didn’t work would be like saying the Grand Canyon was a tiny hole in the ground. His form shifted into a hulking creature with huge fangs and claws. He was still man-shaped, evidently preferring that half-man, half-wolf form that had made the wolf-man so popular.
For a moment, I wondered why his clothing hadn’t been ripped to shreds by his sudden increase in bulk. Then again, if you transformed regularly and hadn’t developed some kind of magical clothing, you’d be going through pants pretty quickly. That would get expensive fast, I’d imagine.
“My, what big eyes you have, grandma.” I smiled and reached for the hilts of my swords. My hands shook so badly it took me two tries to actually grip them.
His feral eyes narrowed, and he took an ominous step toward me, claws clicking against the stone floor. I don’t know how I stopped myself from running. Every single instinct in my body, right down to the last nerve ending, was telling me to run. I
f I did that, he would chase after me. It would make me prey. I most certainly did not want to be prey in the middle of a werewolf camp. I settled for backpedaling in the toughest way I could. My back struck the wall, and I shuddered. I had nowhere to go.
“Look, I don’t want to kill you, and you don’t want to be dead,” I said as menacingly as I could under the circumstances.
“But, I very much want to kill you!” the beast snarled. His lips curled back when he spoke, revealing a set of fangs so large, I wasn’t sure how they fit into his mouth. It was like hearing a voice that seemed totally disconnected from the mouth that had made it.
In fact, I wasn’t even sure how he could make human sounds with a mouth and tongue like that. Oh forget it. If I went on wondering how supernatural creatures did things, I’d probably go batty.
I ducked as one of his massive claws cleaved through the obsidian wall behind me like it was made of wet paper. The blow had come so suddenly, I don’t quite know how I managed to dodge it. Instinct I guess. I dove past him and tucked my body into a roll, which turned out to be a horrible idea. I came up from the roll on the edge of the stairs. My momentum sent me tumbling down the steps and crashing into the landing for the floor below. I swallowed, thanking my lucky stars nothing inside of me seemed to be broken as I scrambled to my feet.
The beast slammed into the ground in front of me. Evidently, he had just leapt the guard rail in his haste to get to me. I wondered if it had hurt. Even if it had, I doubted it would matter.
The floor swayed under his bulk as he took a step toward me, and as I edged backward to give myself space, he pounced. I drove my fist into his midsection.
The bones in my hand shuddered, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming. I wobbled a bit and tried to swallow my pain. I was reasonably sure he wasn’t made of iron, despite what it had felt like.
The werewolf grabbed me by the hair with such speed, I barely saw him move. Froth dripped down his muzzle as he lifted me idly in the air. As my scalp screamed in pain, I lashed out with my legs like a troublesome infant. That was when he flung me over the second floor railing.
The Lillim Callina Chronicles: Volumes 1-3 Page 4