Wardbreaker: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles) (3 page)

I waved him off because I already knew generic human monster hunters shared notes. It was a little sad because if we prepared them better, they wouldn’t die as much. Some of the other Dioscuri had argued for better training for hunters with writs because it’d lead to fewer monsters, but we simply didn’t have the resources for that any more. Not since the last civil war had taken the lives of so many Dioscuri, including his sponsor Dirge Meilan. Besides, who wants to teach a monster hunting class? I sure didn’t.

“You know, I haven’t actually agreed to help you yet,” I said even though I was leaning toward it. If what I said got spread out among a lot of hunters, it might save lives both by keeping hunters from getting killed and by helping them stop monsters from harming innocents. I ought to do it, but what if someone found him and asked how he found out what he did?

“You know you want to help me,” he replied. “I can see it in your eyes, Lillim. You’re a good person. Good people don’t let others get killed when all they have to do is eat a nice breakfast for free and share some information.”

I glared at him. How did he know I was a nice person? I wasn’t. None of the Dioscuri were nice people. We were demon hunters, trained from birth to kill. It sounded high and mighty, but I’d done some dark things. No, he had no right to call me good. Still, maybe sharing my knowledge him would help, maybe not a lot, maybe just the barest sliver, but if it did, shouldn’t I try?

“Go ahead and ask your questions, but if anyone asks, tell them you learned it from Dirge,” I said as the waitress came over and slid several plates onto the table before leaving in a huff of annoyance. I got the distinct feeling she wasn’t especially pleased with her job, although I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like she had to contend with werewolves trying to eat her liver on a monthly basis.

The smell of the food made my stomach rumble again, and it was all I could do to keep from tearing into the meal. “But you may need more food.”

He nodded at me as I grabbed a handful of crinkled meat from my plate and shoved it into my mouth. It was like heaven. “What is this?” I asked around the mouthful as he made a note in his book.

“Bacon,” he replied, smirking at me. “Good, eh?”

“Bacon, where have you been all my life?” I said, picking up another piece and chewing on it.

He laughed and shifted in his seat. “Anyway, maybe this would be easier if you could just give me a rundown of very basic supernatural knowledge.”

I shrugged as I stabbed something that looked like an egg with my fork and shoved it into my mouth. I chewed and swallowed before taking a sip of my coffee. The beverage seemed a lot better with food.

“Um… okay.” I shrugged, trying to think of the best way to start. “Let’s begin with vampires since that’s what you claim has invaded your town. There are a couple of kinds, the ones who drink blood and the ones your kind refer to as succubae.”

“How do you kill them?” he asked, staring at me intently. Ah, the million dollar question.

“Cut off their head or light them on fire. That will kill most things. When in doubt, cut off its head
and
light it on fire.” I was about to say more when a tall, thin man in a green jacket that reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of American military sauntered and casually set one hand on the edge of the table. He had a scraggily beard I was pretty sure had never been combed and long greasy black hair. He sort of reminded me of the homeless people that used to live around the Dioscuri city before the war.

“Jean Luc, why are you here? The master said you weren’t allowed within the city anymore,” the man in green growled, his teeth flashing in the low light of the restaurant as I stared at him, trying to figure out what it was about him that was off. That’s when I realized what it was. He was a vampire. He wasn’t very old, not old enough to have lost his human quirks and gestures like the really old ones had.

I sniffed, and the creature glanced at me before turning back to Luc who had a weird smile on his face. The vampire smelled of death, but not enough for me to think he was even a year old. Usually vampires didn’t come out in the open like this, so what was a young vampire doing here? Was he just too new to know any better? And why did he dislike Luc so much? He seemed nice enough…

“Ralph, I’d like you to meet my friend—” Luc was cut off when the vampire slammed his hand down on the table hard enough to crack the cheap wood. The coffee pot bounced, and my water glass fell over and spilled its contents into my lap. It was cold enough, it almost stifled the rage boiling up inside me.

“Leave,” Ralph the vampire said as he turned and pointed one slender pale finger toward the door. “And take your friend.”

“I’m still eating,” I replied, my voice low and annoyed as cold water soaked into my crotch, making the urge to kill him rise to
totally
on my sliding scale of death. “I’ve barely eaten a third of my food and there is no way I am leaving it behind. I’ve never eaten anything like it before—”

“I. Don’t. Care,” the vampire snapped, glancing at me and narrowing his eyes. They had a scarlet sheen around the edges. So he’d just fed. Swell. Vampires were always so much more difficult to deal with when they had a belly full of fresh blood.

I sighed. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d wanted to avoid. Somehow, I’d run away from my life as a monster hunter only to wind up trapped in a diner with a vampire within a couple hours of being on my own. It was like karma hated me. Then again, it was
always
like karma hated me.

“If you keep being a jerk, you’ll ruin my breakfast, and I’ll be forced to kill you,” I said softly and took another bite of my eggs. “As it stands now, it will already be very hard for you to stay alive.” I chewed slowly as I watched his muscles tense beneath his skin.

Ralph snarled like an angry dog, but before he could do more, I drove my fork through his hand and pinned it to the table. He screamed, his inhuman shriek tearing out through the diner and forcing everyone in the immediate vicinity to look over at us. This was a problem for two reasons. One, it would attract attention, which was understandably bad, and two, most people couldn’t actually see monsters as such. They would just see me accosting a normal looking guy because their eyes would glaze over the fact he had fangs and red eyes. Then one of them would get the bright idea to call the police. We needed to be gone before that could happen.

I stood, throwing one last glance at my food before moving past the vampire as he tore his hand free in a spray of blood and gore. He turned his eyes on me and opened his mouth to reveal a fanged maw. Already, the damage I’d done was beginning to heal, and if I gave him enough time, he’d heal the wound entirely.

“Look, Ralph. I don’t want to kill you in front of all these people, but I’ll do it.” I shrugged as he swung at me, and I stepped backward, easily dodging his swipe. He was about fifty years too young to hit me with an attack like that. “I’m not sure why, but it seems like you want me to do just that.”

Instead of responding with words, the vampire’s legs tensed like he was going to spring at me. I let out a sigh and called upon my magic. Energy swirled around me, filling my muscles with strength and speed. As Ralph’s feet left the cheap linoleum, my left fist lashed out, catching him square in the nose. He flopped backward on his butt, clutching his face as dark viscous blood dripped through his fingers.

I took a step toward him and sighed. “Attacking a Dioscuri is punishable by death. You do realize that, right?” I asked, and though I’d been expecting some kind of reaction, I got nothing but hostility from the vampire. Didn’t he know who the Dioscuri were? He should have. The Dioscuri were the monster’s proverbial boogieman. We were what scratched outside their windows in the dark of night, the monster hidden beneath their beds, the shadow creeping across their walls.

“So what!” the vampire snarled as it scrambled to its feet, fangs distending from his mouth in a way that always reminded me of a snake.

“You wanted a lesson on vampires, right? Looks like you’ve found a volunteer,” I whispered, glancing at Jean Luc who stood transfixed on the vampire, his hands gripping the table. “Usually, they don’t want to draw attention to themselves. This one doesn’t seem to be worried about that. He must be some kind of dumbass.” I sighed and muttered a spell under my breath to keep the people inside from freaking out, well, more than they already were given the scene.

A strange calm melted over the denizens of the diner, and they stared off into space in a sort of slack-jawed stupor. It would only last a few moments, so I had to make this quick. As far as they would be concerned, we would just be normal people having a normal argument, which still wasn’t super low key, but better than the whole vampire thing.

The creature lunged at me, and just as its fist was about to make contact with my face, I stepped in past the blow, dodging under it and kicking the inside of his knee. A horrible snap filled the air as the joint broke, and the creature crumpled to the ground. His eyes flashed, the red in his eyes dimming as he started to get back up.

“The first thing to note is their eyes. The redder they are, the more recently they’ve fed.” I reached over and grabbed the steak knife from the table. “I’m not sure how they do it exactly, but blood is used like a fuel source. The more they have, the more magic they can do, like heal and make themselves strong and fast.” I drove the knife into the creature’s gut as it rose, tearing his stomach open. Blood exploded from the wound like I’d popped a water balloon. The creature deflated, his eyes fading to black in an instant as he tripped and fell on his back, clutching his stomach.

“So when you see eyes like that.” I pointed at the creature’s glowing red eyes. “You always try to puncture the stomach, then all the blood they’ve swallowed spills out of them, and they can’t use it.” People were standing now as I gave my lesson, and I wondered what they were seeing. Still, I didn’t hear anyone screaming which was good. I always hated when people screamed during jobs. It made everything so much more difficult. “Are you following?”

“Yeah,” Luc said, glancing around the room for a second before putting his eyes back on me. “Maybe we should continue this outside?”

“It’s your lesson.” I shrugged and reached down, grabbing the vampire by the ankle. I dragged his struggling body toward the door.

“Please,” the creature squealed as is fingers ground into the tile, carving grooves into the soft material. “I didn’t know what you were.”

“Do you know how often I hear that? And yet, somehow, your kind always uses that as an excuse. Like I’m going to forgive you for trying to kill me because you didn’t know you shouldn’t attack me. News flash, fang face, you shouldn’t attack anyone.” I pushed the door open and flung him into the parking lot like a bag of laundry. He hit with a wet smack and lay there unmoving as I stepped out to confront him.

Already the spell I had cast in the diner was starting to thaw. I probably had thirty more seconds at best before people came out to help, called the cops, or worse. Good thing I had magic on my side or that might be a problem. I’d just have to make sure I got the hell out of dodge before the other Dioscuri could find me. On the bright side, I was leaving anyway.

The door behind me chimed as Luc stepped followed me outside, watching me with amused eyes. When he saw me looking at him, he smirked. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“I wasn’t going to let you stop me,” I said as the vampire got slowly to his feet and turned like he was going to run away. Not that it mattered, he wouldn’t get far. “So as I said before, the best way to kill them is decapitation.”

I reached over my shoulder and pulled my magical wakazashi, Set, free from its hidden sling down the center of my back. It was designed to aid me in my monster hunting by acting as both a focus for my spells and a backup battery. With the blade in hand, I could call on more power and wield it better than I could without it. All Dioscuri crafted their weapons as part of their graduation from the academy.

My wakazashi was actually part of a paired set. Its sister was a katana named Isis, but she was way too long to keep on my body without someone noticing, so it was safely stowed away. Yeah, I know, it was dumb to have Japanese swords with Egyptian names, but I hadn’t picked the weapons, Dirge had, and she’d been Japanese. Blame her. I did.

The vampire glanced over his shoulder, probably wondering why I hadn’t chased him down. When he saw my weapon, he tripped and fell to his knees, bloody tears dripping down his cheeks as he held his hands out to me. “Please… I didn’t know,” he repeated like it made any difference at all.

“You were going to kill me for wanting to finish my breakfast. Since I was pretty hungry, that makes you pretty much the worst thing on the planet.” I pointed the magical blade at the creature. “Goodbye.”

An arc of crimson lightning leapt from the tip of the sword and smacked into the creature. It threw him several feet into the air before he hit the ground with a hard thud. Acrid smoke rose from his body as I sprinted over to him and with the same deft movement I’d done a million times before, took his head from his shoulders. I was always a little surprised at how little force it took.

The body began to dissolve into smoke as the symbols etched into the length of my sword glowed with red light. I sighed, turning away from the body because even though he was a vampire, I wasn’t especially fond of killing. The moment his blood had evaporated from my sword, I stuck the wakazashi back into its hidden spine sheath and approached Luc, not super worried about the monster’s remains because anything killed with a Dioscuri weapon would dissolve into the ether within moments.

“That was amazing,” Luc said, wide-eyed. “How did you call lightning, and how did you make the body dissolve? I’ve never seen a monster dissolve before.”

“Being a Dioscuri has a few perks,” I said, grabbing his hand and leading him back toward his car, an old black van that was more rust than metal. “Like being able to cast spells and use magic weapons for instance.”

He nodded dumbly at me, not getting into the vehicle as people started to exit the door and stare at us. “I suppose so…”