Kill It With Magic: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

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…

Before I could acquiesce, the other gargoyle dropped downward, pulling me through the stone. I slammed my left hand into the rock, hoisting my upper torso above the cement as Frost came down on the spot where it had disappeared beneath the stone.

It was enough to make my grip on the rock slip, and the gargoyle yanked me into the stone along with it.

Chapter 20

I tried to suck in a breath, and my mouth filled with water. I gagged. The gargoyle had disappeared back into the foundation, leaving me in the lake beneath the castle with no obvious way of escaping. Awesome.

I flailed, my lungs burning for air. Frost cooed in my ears, humming in an icy voice that was like pinpricks on the back of my brain.

“How do you suppose the Dioscuri put down an army of rebellious merfolk?”
it murmured sleepily in its glacial voice. It was the first real sentence it had spoken into my brain. At least I thought it was. I wasn’t even sure. In any case, that was bad. That meant I was starting to become attuned to Frost himself. The last thing I wanted to do was wake up one of the most powerful dragons by drawing on the sword’s power too much.

Still, when you’re right, you’re right. The Dioscuri had put down an army of rebellious merfolk by inventing a pill that let you breathe underwater, and I had one.

My left hand dove into my pocket, and yanked out the small blue pill. I jammed it into my mouth and swallowed. It tasted like old socks, which probably had more to do with where it was kept than what it was supposed to taste like.

Gills manifested on my cheeks. I shook my head as I took a deep breath, allowing the magic gills to filter breathable air from the water. The gill pill, as I called it, had saved the lives of innumerable Dioscuri from drowning and was now a standard issue piece of equipment. I took another deep breath and Frost contented itself to a low murmur of satisfaction.

After what felt like hours, I crawled onto the muddy shore and banished my cheek gills. This time, I made my way up to the main doorway. There was no way in Hell I was going through another one of those gross side entrances. Something moved to my left and without thinking my hand went into my coat.

“Whoa there.” Danae casually placed her finger against the barrel of my shotgun and pushed it away from her face. “You know a gun with a barrel that size is illegal.”

“Write me a ticket,” I muttered, not bothering to lower the weapon. Say what you will about guns. Sometimes they were the most effective things to use against supernatural creatures, and since most of them didn’t use them in return, it was an advantage I couldn’t afford not to take. I just hoped it still worked after its little bath.

“Danae, I need to find Logan. Where is he?” My voice held the edge of harsh winter, cold and unforgiving.

She started to say something, and the air around her seemed to take a breath. Everything blurred and I took a step back. “Erm…” I murmured, forcibly pushing away some very awkward thoughts about girl-on-girl-vampire-sexy-time.

She placed a hand against my shoulder, and some of my energy disappeared into the warmth of her touch. Her lips moved close to my ear, and my heart began to thud violently in my chest.

“Lillim,” she cooed and I placed my free hand against the ground as I fell to my knees. “Wanna do me a favor?” Her voice was like chocolate and warm cream. It slid over my body and down my back making me tremble.

“Yes!” The words left my lips before I realized what was happening. My mind was swimming in a soupy haze, and I struggled just to breathe of my own free will.

“Logan is upstairs.” Her voice floated through the haze and some more uncomfortable thoughts welled up in me. “You need to go to him and protect him from—”

Everything around me snapped back to normal. It happened so quickly that it nearly threw me off balance. Danae was a mangled mishmash of flesh and bone at the feet of a werewolf. Her gut had been torn open, leaving her entrails splayed across the floor like grizzly modern art as one of her pale hands tried vainly to tuck them back inside. Blood pooled around her body, leaking out from so many wounds that there was no way she could be saved. She reached out toward me with her other arm, fingers straining to touch me. If she did that I would help her…

More of the werewolves came bounding in, encircling me, all flexing claws and snapping jaws. Apparently, they didn’t care that I was here to rescue their prince. If I helped Danae I was as good as dead. I reached back and ran my hand down the icy steel of Frost and let the cool breath of uncaring winter sweep over me.

“Please, Lillim, please…” She coughed and blood sprayed across the floor with her words.

I sucked in a breath and Frost pleaded with me to draw it, to release it from its sheath. To let it take not only this fallen vampire, but them all. To let it swallow them in a blizzard of unending, unyielding ice.

“No.” The word came out of my mouth in an explosion of white fog that made the werewolves back away from me.

I shook my head and stood, already firing, thankful that both barrels on the gun fired. The spray of buckshot dropped the two werewolves standing in front of me. They howled as the silver sliced through their flesh as though they were made of little more than soft cheese. Like most everything I used, the shells in my guns contained a variety of different metals. The likelihood that a supernatural baddie was weak against something in them was very high.

“Goodbye,” I muttered and whirled around, slamming the shotgun directly into the next oversized dog’s temple. It went down in a hiss of steam as my left foot came crashing down upon another’s knee. The mix of silver and iron rings attached to my boot tore through him like he was made of wet paper.

I ran past them and bounded up the stairs. Three followed me, and I didn’t want to think about what the ones who stayed behind were going to do to Danae. As I reloaded my gun, a gargoyle bounded down the steps in front of me. I raised the shotgun and fired. The blast caught it full in the face, and I wedged by the stunned creature and continued upward. A shriek of pain filled the stairwell behind me. Evidently it and the werewolves were not friends.

As I reached the top step, a faint smell that reminded me of blood and sulfur made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I swallowed and almost came to a stop. That was Logan’s presence. If I could smell him still lingering on the air, he couldn’t be far. Now I just had to pray that the child was with him. Really, I didn’t care what happened to Logan, but I’d be damned if I let something else happen to the child.

One of those steel security doors latched in place with metal bars loomed in front of me and without pause, I kicked it. To my great dismay it didn’t even budge and even worse, it hurt.

A werewolf came at me. I fired and almost clipped it before it leapt. I ducked, and the snarling creature slammed into the door with so much force that the steel seemed to deform before snapping back into shape with a loud clang.

I whirled, put the gun to the beast’s chest, and fired. Silver shrapnel tore through it, spraying me with blood and thicker bits. Not that it seemed to matter much. The werewolf did little more than adjust its footing before its left claw raked through the air. I scrunched back, trying to deflect the blow as much as possible. The force of it slammed me into the guardrail with a sickening thud. I tried to ignore the white-hot pain that exploded in my shoulder blade as I struggled to pull in a breath. I fell to my knees, and for the life of me, couldn’t remember how to stand back up.

The werewolf snorted and took a step forward. Its large claws clicked lightly on the tile floor as it stepped toward me. I grabbed the empty shotgun and pointed it at the creature. It was time for plan B. Magic.

“We both know you emptied that weapon in the stairwell, so what, exactly, do you plan on doing with an empty gun? Throw it at me? Is this a cartoon? Have you used all your bullets and now must resort to throwing your gun at me in one last, desperate attempt?” The werewolf sat back on its haunches watching me with humorless yellow eyes.

I reached back and gripped Frost with my other hand while squeezing the trigger of the shotgun. An explosion of light and ice lit up the room as a ball of burning blue energy burst from the gun’s barrel. It didn’t impact the creature so much as it shattered him into a pile of frozen meat and hair. The gun was covered with a solid white coating of frost.

There was a sound behind me; a sort of soft pitter pat, like a cat sneaking around on the furniture. I whirled and pointed my deformed shotgun at the stairwell. A werewolf stood there, unmoving. It held its paws out to me palms first and took a step back down the stairs.

This was good. I doubted the weapon would fire another bullet again, let alone another volley of magic, but the werewolf didn’t know that. Truthfully, I hadn’t been sure it was going to work the first time. I’d never actually tried to fire a spell through an object not expressly designed for that purpose. In fact, nearly everything here was tile, or marble, or pretty much anything but wood. Which sort of made sense because anything wooden could potentially be used as a weapon against a vampire. Briefly I wondered why I had been so stupid as to not bring at least one sliver of wood with me but had come fully prepared for werewolves. In retrospect, that hadn’t done me a lot of good, either.

“If you leave now, I won’t kill you,” I said, allowing the emotion to drain from my face. My voice held that harsh edge of a blizzard.

The werewolf stared at me, a mixture of anguish and fear in its eyes, as its tongue lolled listlessly in its snout. It changed, so quickly and completely that it took me a minute to realize that standing before me was a tiny girl. She couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old, with soft golden hair and eyes like giant emeralds. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she tilted her head back and exposed her throat to me. It was the universal sign of surrender among werewolves.

“How did you do that?” Her voice strained like a kite in a thunderstorm.

“I wanted it really badly.” I tried to smile but it must have come out more like a scowl because she turned and scurried back down the stairs.

Chapter 21

Silence descended around me, and I shook my head. I really hoped the first werewolf I killed wasn’t that girl’s mother or father. Maybe a mean older boy? Yeah, surely the one I’d turned into a puddle of goo was the werewolf equivalent of a schoolyard bully.

I approached the steel door and traced my hand along its surface. The metal was cool to the touch, but didn’t yield any interesting evidence. “Don’t suppose you’d just be unlocked?” I asked in a much more cheerful voice than I was aware I could muster.

More silence. I scowled and just as I was reaching to try the knob, a hand reached through the wall beside the door, grabbed me by the collar, and hauled me into the stone.

The next few things all hit me at once. It was very cold. There was someone holding me inside the floor with his hand over my mouth. I could see the entirety of the room behind the door.

It was an entirely different feeling from what had happened when the gargoyle had dragged me through the floor earlier. This was more like riding a scary rollercoaster. I was excited, exhilarated, and completely aware of everything, and I really hoped I didn’t throw up.

“You need to stop using that weapon or my brother will awaken,” a voice breathed gently in my ear. “Do you understand? Speak very softly or they will hear you.”

I nodded as best I could, but didn’t say anything when he removed his hand from my mouth. In the center of the room, Bob paced back and forth. Not only had he lived, but the arm I had destroyed during the fight had already grown back. It was all mottled and grotesque, resembling a regrown lizard’s tail.

Logan sat in the corner of the room with the baby curled up in his lap. Prince Dar’s head rested lightly on Logan’s thigh. I watched his little chest move up and down. The hilt of the Demonslayer poked up from Logan’s long coat. All around him candles blazed, and it was only then that I noticed organ music in the air. Already rot was beginning to spread along the flesh of Logan’s right hand. That wasn’t good.

“Who the hell are you?” I murmured, and the man holding me chuckled.

“Pretty clever trick don’t you think?” His voice rolled over me like warm honey on a winter’s day. It was a little too enchanting for my taste.

It was, in fact, pretty clever. I don’t know how I’d have managed to get through the door if this mystery man hadn’t pulled me through the stone. Now if he would just release me, I could get into the room. I thought about asking him nicely to let me go. I really did, right until I elbowed him sharply in the stomach. He released his hold on me with a gasp.

The stone spit me out like a sour candy. I lay on the stone floor and sucked in a breath. Now I knew what a spit-wad felt like.

“Well… look what the cat dragged in.” Bob glanced down at me but made no movement toward me.

The door behind me burst inward and Gib, the werewolf king, stepped into the room. His metallic armor gleamed like the sun. He snarled as he took a thundering step closer. An army followed in behind him. There were nothing but werewolves as far as the eye could see. I shuddered, glad I hadn’t been in the hallway thirty seconds longer.