A Sidhe was lying face down on the floor a few feet away. There was a wash of crimson on the stone behind him. His armor was silver, rather than gold. Kishi’s blast damn near torn him in half, and I was pretty sure he died instantly because the marble floor was visible through the hole in his back.
“Be careful, they can bend light around them and turn invisible. If you think you see something, just shoot it,” Kishi said. She released my hand and pumped her shotgun.
“That’s only good advice until you run out of bullets,” I murmured. The shadow was getting closer. Its head cast along the ceiling like a gaping maw. Huge, bat-like wings flowed like smoke around the walls of the tunnel. Either that shadow was getting bigger, or its owner was getting closer.
I pulled off my helmet and flung it at the creature. It passed through it like a rock going through a cloud of smoke. The face smiled at me, baring a mouthful of black teeth that looked a little too real for my tastes. I swallowed and took a step backward and bumped into Kishi.
“Down!” she cried, grabbing me by the arm and tugging me to the side with her. Fire smashed into the spot we’d been occupying, splashing flame and rubble at us. It clanged uselessly off the metal armor, and I was a little surprised at how easily the flames were warded off. Then again this was armor fashioned for the Sidhe of the Court of the Hot and Bright. It ought to shrug off a little fire.
Another fireball rushed toward us as I leapt to my feet. Without thinking, I reached out and smacked it away with my gauntlet-bound hand. It wasn’t even hot. The fire just melted away. Well… that was neat.
“The armor is fireproof,” I called to Kishi as another ball of flame hurtled toward us. I grinned and hit it again, this time purposely knocking it into the giant shadow looming behind us.
The fireball exploded like gasoline fumes. Fire whipped out in every direction as I shielded my face with my hands. The smell of burning hair and ozone filled my nostrils as I spread apart my fingers to peer back at the shadows. The looming creature was gone and a tiny, green-haired gnome was cowering in its place.
The gnome’s emerald eyes got as big as saucers as it saw me looking at. His once brilliant blue robes were spotted with char and burn marks, like someone threw a lit ashtray at him. He took a step backward, his curly white clown hair bouncing as he moved.
The roar of Kishi’s shotgun deafened the room again, and the last fireball died somewhere down the hall behind me, sputtering out before it reached us. Jeez, hadn’t these guys heard of cover?
I pointed my Beretta at the gnome and made a come here gesture with my other hand. The little gnome shook its head.
“Come here,” I said and could barely hear my voice over the ringing in my ears.
“No,” it said in a voice that was all nasal rasps. There was an explosion next to my left ear, and the gnome pitched backward in a cloud of blood and gore. Its little two-foot tall body bounced once and slid to a stop a few feet away. I dropped to the side, holding my hand to my ear, sure I was permanently deaf now. Kishi’s shotgun stood inches from my face.
“Was that totally necessary?” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“Yes. It wasn’t dead, and it was supposed to be dead.” Kishi’s voice was harder than ice and twice as cold.
Her eyes were flat and empty. They reminded me of a snake or a crocodile… definitely something reptilian. I swallowed and glanced away from her as she pumped her shotgun, ejecting the spent shell onto the floor before turning back down the hallway.
“Come on. We have more things to kill,” she said, opening the door at the end and stepping inside.
I followed her, and my eyes widened as I took in the room. It was huge, like football stadium huge, complete with gilded bleachers surrounding the center. An immense chair sat on a dais against the far wall… and it appeared to be made from solid gold. Silver filigree decorated the walls and chairs in the stands, in a series of concentric circles that had to have taken hours to craft.
To our left a huge door slid open and the room shuddered as a twenty foot tall golden dragon statue took a step toward us from the room, cracking the marble beneath its feet with its immense bulk. Scales the size of tower-shields glistened in the flickering light. About a hundred feet above our heads, a miniature sun blazed, shrouding the entire room in alternating bouts of light and shadow as it winked in and out of existence.
“I think you picked the wrong door,” I said with a gulp and glanced over my shoulder at the smooth silver wall where the door had once been.
“It was the only door,” Kishi replied. This was true. When we reached the end of the hallway there had been a single door with a glittering amethyst knob. Kishi hadn’t even checked it for traps. Instead, she opened it and stepped through, and I, like a dumbass, followed her.
It had sealed behind us with a clang, leaving no trace that it had ever been there before. That’s when the golden dragon statue in the center of the room started to move. Smoke streamed from its nostrils as it reared back and roared. Actual swords gleamed in its mouth where teeth should have been.
“I know you’re here, Queenie. I can feel your presence like slime on my skin,” Kishi called, evidently unconcerned about the thousand tons of golden dragon statue.
The creature charged and almost without blinking Kishi threw her hand out toward it. Her eyes turned that opaque emerald color I’d seen in the vision of her fighting the porcupine. The air temperature dropped by several degrees, and my breath came out in a wisp of fog. Blue energy exploded from her hand, slamming into the golden dragon with a sound like a blizzard crashing into a car.
It stumbled backward on the ice-slicked marble, its golden tail thrashing as its spindly arms flailed in the air. Frost filled its seams, and the sound of screeching metal shrieked as the joints popped. Bits of metal broke off as the creature ground to a halt. Kishi whirled, the tattooed dagger sliding into her hand as she turned and flung it at the creature.
The blade sailed through the air, slamming into the statue, punching through it, and embedding itself in the wall. The statue throbbed, pulsing once as smoke and sparks erupted from the hole. It slumped forward, the metal of its front legs shearing off as the entire structure crashed sideways in a heap.
“Well that was impressive.” The Queen’s voice swept over my skin like caramel and hot chocolate.
“It’s a giant hunk of metal. You ever hit a frozen piece of metal with a hammer? It’s simple physics,” Kishi said with a sigh and shook her head.
Physics maybe… but I wouldn’t have been able to fast freeze a ginormous golden statue without batting an eye. To call up that kind of power in the heart of the Summer Court was really freaking hard to do. It was something I could have done, but I was a battle-hardened warrior, and to my knowledge, Kishi had never really been in the field. That she did it without batting an eye was a little scary.
“Physics? I am unfamiliar with that type of magic.” The Queen’s voice had that lilting quality that made me think of Gaelic folk songs. “You Dioscuri are always so interesting. Perhaps after I peel the flesh from your bones and build a tea set from them, I will study this physics.”
Fear struck me like a knife to the face and terror tore a scream from my throat. I stumbled backward, clutching my temples as blinding panic made me look frantically around, desperate for a place to escape. The Beretta slipped from my hand and clanged to the ground at my feet. Tremors ran down my spine, and my knees shook so badly that I collapsed to the marble floor. I tried to reach toward my gun but my hand was shaking so badly that it seemed impossible.
Kishi was on the ground a few feet away, curling her body into a tiny ball. The shotgun lay on the ground beside her. The Queen of the Bright and Hot leaned close to Kishi’s fallen form wearing a thin silver cloth that left little to the imagination.
Her hair was like polished sunlight as she reached out and trailed one hand along Kishi’s cheek. The Queen’s skin gleamed like amber, glowing from within like a fire flickering just belo
w the surface. Giant dragonfly wings that glittered like strings of opals were tucked down her back in a way that reminded me of a wasp folding up its wings.
“You killed my brother, the Breaker of Rage and Flame. He is the one I send to break my enemies, to crush their will and drive them from my lands. Now my brother is gone and all I have is you to make up for it.” The Queen turned and smiled at me with lips the color of flame.
She strode toward me and touched my chin with her hand. Burning heat exploded down the length of my body, tightening my muscles and forcing a small scream to escape my lips. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry, so dry. She bent her mouth toward me while effortlessly pulling me to my feet with her hand.
Her lips brushed against mine and electricity crackled in the air around us. It hit me like a crashing wave, shaking my knees so violently that I lost my balance and fell. She caught me, wrapping one of her arms around my waist and pulling my armor-clad body against her. The metal dented against her form, warping and bending in ways I didn’t know it could.
She was so warm, so hot, that it was like being swept away in a tide of molten chocolate. She bit at my ear, her teeth nicking me and spilling a little blood. I tried to scream, but she swallowed it with her mouth.
“You taste like power,” she cooed in that maple syrup and honey voice. “Do you want me to let my power sweep over you? I could make you enjoy this. I could make you beg me to eat your flesh, to taste your blood. Would you like that, Dioscuri?”
“No…” My voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
She leaned closer, putting her ear nearly to my mouth. “What was that? I can’t hear you.” Her breath was like spattering oil on my skin, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming. My hand fell to my side, my fingertips brushing against the pommel of Isis. A tiny spark leapt across the back of my brain like shattering ice, like crystalline spider webs crackling along the surface of a frozen pond.
My fingers wrapped around the hilt of Isis, and her soft dual voice of an old, aging crone and a defiant, young princess cooed in the back on my mind. “There is more to life than lust and heat and glistening, suntanned bodies. There is the dark, the gloom, and the tragedy. There is pain and terror. There is knee-shaking, gut-wrenching agony.”
I felt Isis reach out to me, running her cool, protecting hands over my too warm flesh, tightening my grip on my katana. Her voice was like the soft coo of fall in my ear. “No matter what happens, there is always Shikuhakku.”
“Shikuhakku…” I mumbled the word, and the temperature dropped ten degrees. A small breeze swept through the room, bringing with it the smell of pine trees and coming rain.
“What are you doing?” the Queen of the Bright and Hot screamed, stepping back as if bitten by a snake, holding her hands out like she was trying to ward off something evil. “You can’t do that here. You’ll unbalance Fairy!”
I looked up at the Queen, knowing my eyes had turned solid crimson. Sanguine fog coalesced above us, casting the sunlight that fell on us in a bloody hue as I pulled out the twin blades of Shirajirashii. The pure white blades glinted as I held them in front of me.
With a word, I could call on the fog to condense into clouds. It would begin to rain. Big, fat red drops would fall from the sky like a great wound had been torn across the horizon. When that happened, our darkest memories and thoughts would come to life.
I only used the power once before, when I was very young and vowed never to use it again. I did not want to see the darkness that lurked within men’s hearts. I didn’t want to see it when I closed my eyes, forever unable to unsee it.
Even Dirge, who had a far greater understanding of Shirajirashii than I did, only used the power a few times, and with each usage it broke her a little more. I was thankful I could not remember the details of what she experienced.
I didn’t know what it would do to the Queen of the Hot and Bright. I especially didn’t want to see the chain reaction of her worst fears and most terrible memories springing to life in front of me. I did not want to feel her agony and her despair.
But I did want to live, and she was scared. Wind whipped around us, carrying with it the scent of fallen leaves. I just had to say one word.
“Stop, Lillim!” the Queen screamed. Her voice was a cacophony of worry, but it was just a voice now. Behind her, Kishi started to stir. Had Shirajirashii banished her power entirely or had she become too frightened to overwhelm us?
“You know my name?” I asked a little surprised. This wasn’t the first time a mythical creature knew my name, but it was always a little disconcerting when one did. I mean come on, I was just a Dioscuri, and she was the Sidhe Queen of Summer. There were orders of magnitudes of difference between us.
“Yes,” she hissed. “I know of you and of Shirajirashii. I know of the Red Rain. You cannot use it here in the heart of Summer, or we will become unbalanced. It is a dark power, Winter’s power. Using it here—”
The Queen of the Hot and Bright’s face exploded in a cloud of red mist as the cry of Kishi’s shotgun shattered the calmness of the room. The Queen fell to her knees, her upper torso burst open like a ripe melon.
The room shook as I stumbled backward, trying to wipe away the blood that covered my face. The ceiling above us split. The sound of screeching metal ringing in my ears as I fell onto my butt. The power I’d gathered dissipated, the crimson fog evaporating as shadow fell across the room.
The sun above us winked out as though being hidden by a solar eclipse, leaving us in total darkness.
“What’d you do?” I called above the din, barely able to make out Kishi stumbling toward me.
“Stopping you from making me have to kill you,” Kishi’s voice called but it sounded so far away. “I’d rather not turn into a sobbing pile of angst while you sit back and watch it happen.”
I swallowed. “Yeah, well… it was either that or let The Queen suck the marrow from our bones,” I said, getting to my feet and sheathing my swords.
“Which is why I shot her in the face. Fairy Queen down!” She sounded closer now, and I glanced in the direction of her voice.
Fire exploded from the Queen’s body, erupting like a volcano in the center of the room. I shielded my eyes with my arm and turned away. Spots danced across my eyes as an inhuman shriek shook the room. The walls blew outward, like someone stuffing too much air inside a tin can, and I was thrown from my feet, tumbling backward and crashing into one of the gilded walls.
The Queen of the Bright and Hot stood, her body a living bouquet of flame. Her eyes burned like stars from within the piercing magma. She took a step toward Kishi, one arm outstretched. A gout of flame leapt from her fingertips. Kishi threw up her arms, and the fire bounced harmlessly off her armored form. The Queen screamed, and it was like a raging inferno. The temperature exploded, climbing upward so fast my sweat instantly evaporated.
Cloying heat filled my throat as I licked my dry, cracking lips. Kishi stumbled backward, hands reaching to her throat as the Queen smiled, her fiery lips stretched back to reveal a mouth full of flame.
I reached out with my power and muttered a word. “Come.” My Beretta flew through the air and hit my outstretched hand with a thud. I pointed the weapon at the Queen of the Hot and Bright and fired three quick shots. The first two hit her in the center of the back, pitching her forward. The third caught her in the back of the neck and blew out her throat in a flash of blood and ash. She fell to her hands and knees, fire exploding outward around her like a wall.
Kishi’s shotgun roared, and the Sidhe Queen was thrown backward out of the ring of flame. She rolled, coming to her feet in an instant and leaping into the air, giant dragonfly wings whirling like helicopter blades.
“Find cover!” I screamed, dropping the pistol and pulling the twin blades of Shirajirashii from their sheathes. “Shikuhakku Shirajirashii! Shikuhakku!”
Kishi dove underneath the wreckage of the dragon statue as sanguine clouds burst into being above us, manifesting so suddenly that the Q
ueen was caught within them. She screamed, an earsplitting howl that made gooseflesh rise on my skin and the hair on the back of my neck to stand at attention.
The first bloody teardrops fell from the clouds, splashing downward in great splatters of crimson. The Queen turned toward me, eyes wide in horror as she plummeted from the sky like a rock. The flame around her winked out as she slammed into the marble floor. I cringed away from her, awaiting the inevitable torrent of horror and emotion that was going to rip through both of us, giving me a front seat view on her own personal rollercoaster of horror.
Light came back in a rush as a pale, silver moon glinted in the sky where the sun had been. A woman descended from above. Her pale, nearly translucent form seemed more like an apparition than a flesh and blood being. Her hair was like spun moonlight, and her eyes were the pale blue of glacial ice. Her delicate, blue-white wings flapped leisurely, resembling those of a great winged bird rather than an insect.
As she drew closer, cool, damp air rushed through the room, bringing with it the smells of swampy earth. With a wave of her hand, she banished my spell. Shirajirashii went lifeless in my hands. The crimson clouds winked out of existence, the red rain vanishing mid-fall.
I don’t know how the Queen of the Hot and Bright managed it, but she turned and shrieked at the descending woman. She stood, her flesh knitting itself together beneath her sheath of flame and raised her hands in the air.
The room around us shrieked and tore itself asunder as hunks of superheated metal flew upward at the descending woman. She smiled, her pale blue lips revealing a mouthful of starlight as she held one hand out. A whirling dervish of snow and ice exploded outward around her, catching the melted gobs and flinging them away to shatter against the marble floor.
“No!” the Queen of the Hot and Bright screamed. “You cannot be here. This is the realm of Summer, the land of burning flame and glistening flesh. You have no claim here.”
Fairy Tale: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 3) Page 6
