“You will come with me, Lillim Callina.” He curled one finger toward himself.
“Hmm… I’ll pass. You’re a little old for me.” I pushed myself to my feet. I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but there was no way it would be good. If he came at me, I wanted to be on my feet. Lillim Callina was not going to die on her back. Then again, if I had anything to say about it, Lillim Callina wasn’t going to die at all!
“You ought to come quietly. You can’t run, and you can’t fight me. It would be a shame to have to kill you,” he continued in a steely voice. “I’m immeasurably more powerful than the last time we met.”
“Well that’s nice… considering you ran the last time we met.” I bared my teeth at him. “You know, if we were keeping score.”
“You will come with me.” My breath was suddenly cut off by his hand around my throat. My wakazashi moved through the air only to be caught barehanded by Sharkface. He tightened his hand around the blade. The metal screamed, denting beneath his fingers. He smiled, leaning close to me for our noses to touch. With no more effort than it would take to snap a toothpick, he shattered my wakazashi, and the pain of it exploded behind my eyes.
“You will join me.” He showed me his mouth full of endless teeth. “Or you will die.”
15
How do you respond to an invitation like that when the one who “asked” has a hand around your throat? It wasn’t like I was going to join him, and I was pretty sure if I refused, he wasn’t going to just let me go and be like “oh, my bad.” His hand, which felt like a vice covered in sandpaper, made his intentions pretty clear…
“Um…” I murmured right before the point of a massive broadsword ripped through Sharkface’s stomach and tore out its side. Greenish blood and gore sprayed over me as I fell to the ground and scurried backward.
Standing behind Sharkface, stood a Dioscuri I knew very well. The sight of him walking toward me like an Olympian God complete with tousled blond hair and a perfect smile was enough to make me both very grateful to my mother and hate her a whole bunch. Why? Because this was Caleb Oznek, my mother’s second in command.
“Thanks,” I squawked, but before I could get to my feet, the dragon grabbed me by my ponytail and dragged me backward. Apparently, being gored had little effect on him. Good to know.
A brilliant smile stretched the crisscrossing scars marring his otherwise handsome cheeks. He pointed his sword, Incinerator, at Sharkface and a lance of flame exploded from his weapon. The dragon darted out of the way, releasing me in its haste.
A devilish smirk flashed across Caleb’s face as he stepped between me and Sharkface. He held out his hand in a gesture of supreme arrogance. “Come with me if you want to live.”
Clang!
Caleb threw his arm in front of me. The shriek of steel filled the air as he blocked a blow with his gauntlet that would otherwise have smashed my skull to bits. I should have been paying better attention.
“Okay. I’ll come.” Even saying the words seemed to kill a small part of me. I didn’t normally admit when I needed help, at least not when I really needed help. To accept it from Caleb meant accepting it from my mother. To say it was upsetting would be like saying the ancient pyramids were big.
Caleb’s sword interposed itself between me and another attack, and the force of it sent a shockwave through my body. Sharkface was not really attacking Caleb, at least not yet. He was still trying to kill me.
“Do you have a way out of here?” My voice came out in a hoarse whisper that made small stars explode behind my eyes. I was going to have a word with the demolition crew in my head after this was over.
“The transporter feed is struggling to gather power.” Caleb moved like lightning, tearing Frost from the earth in a spray of dirt and swinging it at the dragon in one smooth motion. Evidently, its weight didn’t bother him very much.
Sharkface ducked as Frost cleaved through the air above his head, filling the air with the crackling sound of ice. A strange mix of horror and revulsion crossed his face as he took a couple steps backward and eyed the weapon.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off the dragon as he studied Caleb like he was seeing the man for the first time.
“There’s some big energy source trying to block it,” Caleb replied with a shrug.
Magical energy could easily cause most technology to malfunction. Granted most Dioscuri stuff was designed with this in mind, but that didn’t mean someone with enough spiritual chutzpah couldn’t block our stuff, too.
“Well you better tell the transporter to hurry up before we both get killed,” I said though part of me wondered what reaction we’d get back at HQ if it worked after Sharkface succeeded in killing both of us.
“That would be a pretty piss poor rescue attempt if we both died. Don’t worry. It just needs a little more power.” Caleb sheathed Incinerator and put both hands on the hilt of Frost. “I can buy us that much time.” He winked at me.
“Just because you came down here to rescue me does not mean I am going to fall all over you,” I said even though he was so drop dead gorgeous I almost wanted to, but what would he think of me if I did? No, that was so not happening. I don’t care how kissable his lips looked.
“It would be the traditional thing to do.” Caleb flashed me a wry grin as he dropped into a wider stance and raised Frost defensively.
I blushed. At one time, I had been friends with Caleb. Now things were different, allegiances had changed, and lines in the sand had been drawn. I shook my head, frustrated that he, of all people, had come to save me.
“I really can’t let you take her away. It won’t ruin everything, but it’d be more than a minor setback.” Sharkface’s mouth turned into a wicked smile that revealed several rows of jagged teeth.
He reached toward the sky, golden light filling his hands. He brought them down in a wide arc as he dropped to his knees in the dirt. There was a glimmer to the left. A blinding flash pierced the sky as spears of light split the heavens. One struck Caleb through the chest, and he stumbled backward, blood spurting from his lips as the spear in his chest exploded into a thousand scintillating shards of light.
The drake had cast the most reviled spell in all the Dioscuri record books. It was said that even talking about it could be grounds for exile… from living. I, personally, didn’t know much else about the spell, other than it was meant for one purpose and one purpose only, to destroy.
Spears continued to fall from the heavens as though the very wrath of God was coming down upon us. I reached out and seized Caleb’s arm, my hands wrapping around the golden transporter bangle on his wrist as he began to buckle. Blood gushed through his fingers, slick and steaming in the cool air.
If I didn’t do something fast he was going to die. I couldn’t allow that, couldn’t let him die. No, there had to be a way to save him. As I pulled his body close to mine, I realized I knew what I had to do. I had to take him back home, had to take him to the Dioscuri city of Lot. If we got there soon, he’d make it. Only, was I really willing to go back? For him? And as I heard his heartbeat start to slow, I knew I had to do it no matter the cost. Caleb would live, dammit!
I closed my eyes and pressed my lips against his even though I knew it was going to cost me the life I’d scrapped together over the last year. I breathed into his mouth, forcing my power inside him, as I triggered his teleporter and the world around us faded away.
16
Even though it was my third day waking up in the Dioscuri hospital, I swear to god a tiny little man with a jackhammer was still going to town on my forehead. I hated him, especially because no amount of aspirin-related bribery made him cease his infernal hammering.
I coughed and wondered who had taken a belt sander to my throat before fishing a large chunk of gauze from my mouth. It was little more than a lump of congealed blood and slime.
“Gross,” I muttered as I tossed the wad of goo in the trash. I picked up some ibuprofen and chased them down wi
th a glass of room-temperature water.
Then, I threw up in the sink. A little while later, I wiped my mouth and flopped down on the hospital bed. That was when I noticed a box of chocolate covered donuts sitting on the tray next to my bed. I picked them up and eyed the yellow post-it note stuck on the top of the box.
You looked a little thin. Love, Mom was written across it her loopy scrawl. A strange mixture of annoyance and anger settled over me as I eyed the donuts. I wanted them. They were my favorite, and my mom knew that. Still, if they were here, it meant she’d been in to see me while I was sleeping… and I was still breathing. How was that possible?
I stared at the unopened box, wondering if they would upset my already grumbling tummy if I ate them. Probably not, but then again, I didn’t feel like spending an hour on the treadmill trying to burn them off. I shoved the sugary treats away.
The worst part of this whole hospital stay was that Caleb was hurt worse than me. That meant I’d had to fill out all of the paperwork at the Dioscuri Headquarters in Lot. Not that much remained of the great floating city, anyway.
No one had questioned us when I’d dragged in Caleb’s broken body since it wasn’t unusual for Dioscuri to come back from missions half-dead. Eventually though, word would spread that I was back and there would be questions. I did not want to be around for them.
Besides, now that Caleb was going to be fine, I hoped I could get out of here before I saw him. That was one awkward conversation I did not want to have if I could help it. If he asked me why I’d brought him back, what could I say? That I’d thrown everything away to save him because… Yeah, I didn’t even want to answer that question in my own head, let alone out loud.
My urge to leave was compounded by the fact I wasn’t exactly comfortable in Lot. Some of the people here still bore grudges toward Dirge, and fair or not, most of them directed that hatred onto me. Hey, what can I say, no one gets to the top without pissing other people off.
Hell, sometimes I could even see the revulsion in my mother’s eyes when she looked at me and remembered her old rival. Yeah, that’s right. In my past life, I had been rivals with my mother. She had hated Dirge enough for the two of them to come to blows just minutes before Dirge had died. It was a truly cruel fate that placed me in her belly a few days later. Maybe that’s why she taught me to swim by throwing me into a lake full of sea monsters. Then again, I was pretty sure that was how she’d been taught to swim…
Caleb had never done anything like that. He had always treated me like I was my own person. Maybe that was because he and Dirge had been on one too many adventures together or maybe it was for another reason entirely. Perhaps without his presence to remind me, I could forget that his cheerful smile made butterflies dance in my stomach. Perhaps I could stop thinking that maybe Dirge could have prevented the events that had left him poisoned. Or, even better, that I could find a cure if I left. Either way, I’d had to leave then, and I had to leave now.
When I opened the door to my room, Caleb was outside. “I figured you’d be leaving.” He glanced at his watch. “Took you a little longer than I expected. You’ve been here almost three whole days.”
Let me backtrack a bit so I can properly explain Caleb Oznek. I think the best way to explain the blond-haired giant is by telling a story. When I was barely into my teens, my mother brought me to what was left of the war torn Dioscuri Headquarters in Lot.
The embattlements had been ransacked, and the barracks were little more than burned-out husks. As she led me through the debris, we happened upon the old training center. Much to my surprise, it was teeming with people.
A bunch of old punching bags that looked like they were held together by little more than duct tape and sweat were piled in one corner. Across the room, several heavy stones sat mockingly on pedestals just begging you to try to lift them, if only because they knew you probably couldn’t.
When we entered, all eyes fell on my mother. Her glare swept over everyone like a winter storm, and I watched in amazement as everyone backed away from her. I could tell, even then, that these people feared my mother.
With stoic purpose she walked up to the weight rack leaning against the wall and grabbed hold of the rack with her left hand. Then she lifted the entire thing over her head. She yawned and patted her mouth absently with her right hand before dropping the rack to the ground.
The crash was deafening, like someone had dropped an entire orchestra. Metal clanged and shrieked as the rack bent awkwardly under stress it was never meant to take. Without even noticing, I had covered my ears and cowered away from it. I wasn’t the only one. With the din still ringing in my ears, my mother, the infamous Diana Cortez, turned toward the crowd.
“You can use your magic to do incredible things, but instead of focusing on training up that aspect of yourselves, you are in here destroying your bodies. And to achieve what? If I focused enough of my will into it, I could probably lift the entire building. Do you really think your physical strength matters that much?” Her eyes blazed like the sun and her voice was like the desert heat. It seemed to tear the life and will from you until you had no choice but to submit.
The room fell eerily silent except for a single sound, a sharp inhalation of breath that would have otherwise been missed. In this silence it seemed to fill the training center. It continued, growing louder and louder.
Very slowly, I turned to see Hyas Tyee Caleb Oznek holding what looked like a giant log with a handle carved into one end. He stood there, swinging that log over and over with such speed it was hard to imagine he could do it for long.
As the seconds turned to minutes, his rhythm never slowed. After what felt like hours, he stopped all at once and dropped the log. It hit the ground with the heavy thud and rolled toward me. I nudged it with my foot. It didn’t move. Not even a little.
Ignoring everyone, Caleb walked over to the squat rack and placed an almost ridiculous amount of weight on it. As people gathered around him, he got under the bar and hefted the entire thing onto his shoulders. The bar bent obscenely under what had to have been twice what my mother had lifted earlier. He dropped down, his form impeccable, and raised it up, once, twice, three times.
My mother stood beside me, growing angrier by the second. Her entire body trembled with rage, and as she took a step toward him, he spoke.
“Not all of us are so fortunate enough to wield a weapon as light as a whip. If I had to face down an enemy much stronger than me, I know that even if my magic no longer worked, I could still heft my broadsword. I could still run for miles, and I could still throw one hell of a punch. Can you say the same, my lady?”
Caleb cleared his throat, shattering the memory. He had blocked my way with his massive body, and while I was happy he had recovered enough to come to my room, I wasn’t super excited to be trapped in my room by a hulking male.
Still, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, and he was wearing a navy blue tank top that stretched across his muscles in such a way that I had to resist very hard to not reach out and run my hands over his chest. He crossed his arms and the hem of his shirt drifted up just enough to make me wonder what the flesh beneath it would look like. Wow, I needed a cold shower.
I shook my head and looked away from him. I couldn’t be mad at him, could I? Caleb had come to rescue me even though he had been injured in the very same battle that had claimed Dirge’s life. He had been poisoned fighting a ravenous, snake-like creature that had called itself Jormungand. After that, it was said he only had about nine years to live before the poison did him in.
In the end, his condition had been one of the deciding factors in my decision to leave the Dioscuri. Things were hard enough without watching this beautiful, vibrant man fade away month after month. I couldn’t stand the idea of watching him turn into a shell of his former self. That was just too much to ask of me. Rather than feel the stab of regret and sorrow every time I saw him, I chose to leave.
“I have a dragon to stop, Caleb. I can’t stop it by sitting i
n bed. Besides, I don’t belong here.” I pointed out the window toward a large crater. It stretched so far into the distance I couldn’t see the other side. “That is Dirge’s legacy, not mine. Yet, in this place, I will share that legacy forever.”
Normally, when people are reincarnated, no one knows who they are when they come back, just like how no one remembers their past lives. Yet thanks to Warthor’s meddling, everyone knew who I was. I was the Dirge Meilan, reborn and in the flesh. My last act in that life had been to explode in the middle of town.
It didn’t matter that I’d sacrificed my life to obliterate an army of demons led by one of our former allies. To most people, it just mattered that I’d destroyed their homes and their friends in the process… which was pretty much true, if a very narrow way of looking at it.
“So?” Caleb moved, and pain flashed behind his eyes, raw physical pain that marred his beautiful face. He shifted his weight against the doorframe. I glared at him, but he silenced me with a single hand. “You never failed, Lillim. That’s your problem. You’re always thinking you have to prove yourself. You don’t. You just need to be yourself.”
“Even so,” I began, but before I could say more, Caleb curled his fist in anger. The room shuddered under the black cloud of hostility that exploded from him. I’d never seen him angry before. I’d heard when he was, it was the scariest thing in the world. I was now inclined to agree.
“Whelp!” The thunderous voice of Caleb Oznek rang in my ears. I took a step backward as his dark eyes burned into me with emotion I had never seen before. “I am sick of your angst. Always griping about how people treat you because of what Dirge did or how you need to do this or that. Get over it. Grow up. Stop using her name as an excuse every time someone looks at you sideways.” He let out a slow breath. “The people who care about how you compare to Dirge don’t matter.”
The Lillim Callina Chronicles: Volumes 1-3 Page 11
