Mind Games: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 6) (19 page)

“Why is that?” she asked, already moving toward me to encircle my body with her arms. It was a little awkward because every single time she touched me was like being branded by a heated curling iron. Still, I kept my whimpering to a minimum, despite what a lying Egyptian deity would claim.

“Because Zef told me to wait for the end of the world. I’m guessing that when Death strikes the killing blow, that will be my chance to overcome the serpent. Only, I don’t think the horsemen can beat him in a fair fight.” I took a deep breath before continuing. “So when the battle begins, I need to know about it.”

“Why?” Isis asked, staring at me like she already knew what I was going to say which was a little lame of her, honestly. If she knew, she shouldn’t need to ask.

“Because at that time, I want to distract him.” I gripped the katana tighter. “I need to make sure he doesn’t win.”

“Ah, well that won’t work,” she said with a shrug.

“Why?” I asked as a bad feeling swelled up in my gut. Had I missed something? It seemed like a good plan as far as plans went.

“Because the battle has already begun and the horsemen are losing.” She shook her head. “Badly.”

Chapter 22

A teenaged, redheaded girl with pale white skin speckled with bright red freckles swung her fist at my face. It was a little disconcerting because I wasn’t actually controlling my body. True to her word, Isis had thrust me into the real world in the midst of a fight that was not going well for my opponents. Scarlet flames licked across her flesh, so hot, I could feel the heat on my skin even though the magic surrounding me.

It sort of reminded me of the times I’d sparred with Caleb when I was younger. His body could quite literally become wreathed in flame, granted they weren’t the color of blood and didn’t quite remind me of hellfire like these ones did.

Without thinking, I stepped in past the punch and tried to drive my fist through her torso. Remarkably, she sidestepped. She was a quick little thing, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have missed if my fists weren’t weighed down from the claws I’d had on in the vision of Fenris. I wasn’t used to fighting with them, which was probably why I’d missed. Well, that and I didn’t actually want to kill her, I wanted to help her defeat Jormungand.

The redhead’s brown eyes were set in determination, but it didn’t matter, not really. She was hopelessly outclassed by my strength and speed. Her attacks were amateurish and untrained, if fast and strong. Fighters like this were common in my line of work. You’d be surprised how many monsters never bothered to learn even the most basic aspects of fighting, but then again, when you could throw a tanker truck around, it wasn’t always necessary. It was why the Dioscuri could win even against foes stronger and tougher. We trained harder.

Her palm came forward, and as I moved to dodge, a blast of scarlet fire from her other hand cut off my exit mid step. The heel of her right hand crashed into my ribs. Agony shot through me, so blindingly painful I knew in that instant they were broken. I tried to scream, but instead my body kept moving, stepping through her attack and driving my knee into her stomach.

The girl’s eyes bugged out of her skull as she reached down and I capitalized on the movement, driving my elbow into the side of her face and sending her sprawling across the ground. She hit with a thud and skidded across the tarnished landscape. I watched, my lips curling into a smile as I stepped toward her.

Blood leaked from her mouth as she crawled slowly to her feet and faced me once more. She wiped the blood from her mouth and glared at me. Flame spread out around her feet as she charged, crossing the space between us in a cloud of burning debris.

Her punch was predicated by a blast of heat. Funny how flame wielders never realized that heat was noticeable. I dodged past her attack with ease even as scalding hot fire liquefied the sand where I’d been standing. The girl kept going along with her momentum, flying past me as I stepped around her still moving body and drove the flat of my palm into the back of her head. She stumbled forward, dazed. The sound echoed across a courtyard that looked like it might have been nice at one time. Now, unfortunately, the earth was blackened and scorched. A giant statue of what looked like a Viking warrior had been blown apart and the one beside it was barely standing. Its base cracked and spattered with gore.

The sky above was awash with lightning and soot, and as the redhead whirled around to face me again, I caught sight of Ian. He lay unconscious on the ground, blood dripping from his mouth as his chest rose and fell in a way I wouldn’t consider quite normal. The boy Ian had fought during my earlier vision lay a little ways away from him.

He looked out of it, but at the same time, he was still moving. Not a lot and not quickly, but moving nonetheless. The look in his eyes gave me pause. He meant to kill me, and while normally, I opposed that idea with extreme prejudice, this one time I was willing to make an exception. If it’d help take down Jormungand, I’d sure as heck help him. Suddenly, the desire to get myself killed felt oh so right.

She was going to attack again, I could tell, and not just by the way her body tensed but because she glanced toward my knee for a split second. I was already moving as her flaming foot lashed out. I sighed as she stomped down on the ground, sending up a cloud of dust. It was getting harder and harder to keep myself from outright killing her, especially given that I had razor sharp claws on my hands.

The redhead pivoted on the ground, spinning on the ball of her foot. Her next kick came flying at my head, so fast, I’d have been impressed if it hadn’t left her wide open to a dozen counter attacks. I drove my left hand into her neck with so little effort, it was staggering. She wobbled sideways as I lashed out with the three-pronged claw on my right hand. Darkness flowed off of it, trailing through the air like smoke and filling the air with the scent of sulfur. It was a little unusual since I didn’t ever remember my weapons manifesting a sulfuric smell. Then again, I’d never called upon them while under the control of a Norse god with an affinity for dressing me up in skin tight snakeskin.

The girl tried to counter, throwing up her hand to block, but what’s that saying? Don’t bring flesh to a knife fight? The blades of my claw tore through her hand, slicing her open and spilling her blood across the charred ground.

She screamed, and the earth beneath our feet shuddered and smoked. Her eyes went wide with pain, and she lashed out with her other hand like a frantic, wounded animal. I caught it in my free hand and squeezed. It took more effort than I’d expected, but not by much. The bones in her fist shattered as I called upon my power to strengthen my body, only there was more power beyond even my imagining. If I wanted to, I could crush them all like gnats. It was so intoxicating, I almost gave in, almost forgot what I’d come here to do, especially since I was a Dioscuri. I was used to fighting until the last of my blood had been spilt from my body and my bones had been ground into powder. I needed to lose, and with opponents like this, I’d practically need to lie down for it. That went against everything I was.

I tore my blades free of her hand as she struggled, trying to escape my grasp, but it was no use. She was hopelessly outclassed. Game over. I raised my weapon to finish her, and willed myself to stop with everything I had. My fist hung there, blood dripping off the blades as I held that position for less than a nanosecond. The thing controlling me took that time to spin its steely, serpentine gaze toward me and fix its sights upon little old me. The flutter of its realization surged across my mind, zinging through my brain like electricity.

Power slammed into me, so overwhelming, I could barely stand it. I felt myself slip backward, falling off the edge of the world as the place beyond my eyes faded into a distant speck.

My body slammed into the cold, salty ocean with a thwack that ripped through every ounce of my being. Cold, dark water swept over me, pulling me down as my lungs burned and seized within me. My fist tightened around the hilt of my katana, and a surge of power flitted through me. I kicked my leaden legs with everything I had, barely managing to break through the surface as the waves around me churned and raged.

Jormungand rose from the ocean, water cascading off of the serpent like a thousand drops of blood in the pale light of the moon overhead. It was massive, each scale like a skyscraper. Its body kept going up and into forever for, well, ever. The creature’s huge head hovered above me like a small asteroid hammered into the head of a rattlesnake. Its amber eyes met mine and narrowed menacingly.

“Do you know what you have done, girl?” Jormungand asked, and the sound of its voice sliced into my brain like a dagger, leaving me breathless and afraid.

I tried to find my voice, tried to figure out how to speak as I treaded water in the surging ocean. The katana in my hand flashed in the moonlight, and I felt Isis’s hands gripping me beneath my armpits. She raised me up and pulled me onto the surface. White spread out before my feet, not far, but enough for me to step upward through the air like a staircase as I moved toward Jormungand’s monstrous head, the goddess’s power flowing over me like warm rain.

“Get out of my body!” I cried, throwing all the power of Shirajirashii into my words. The sky above us shattered into green lightning that arced back and forth across the horizon as the ocean beneath me bubbled and spat. “Now!”

The serpent stared at me for a long time, unmoving and uncaring as it eyed me like I was a very tiny, very annoying bug. “If I leave now, you will die.” The space between us split open, revealing the scene from before, only now the boy from earlier had me locked up in a full nelson. I could see so many holes in the technique, it’d be easy to escape, if only I so wished it. It was too bad I didn’t wish it.

I waved my hand, banishing the image away. It shattered into a million fragments of amber starlight that flitted across the broken horizon. “So?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Why do you not fear your death?” the creature asked, agitation rippling down its body. Evidently, it hadn’t expected this reaction from me. Too bad because right now, I was willing to die to win. It was sort of funny because in this moment, I really understood what Dirge must have felt in those final moments when she sacrificed everything to win. Guess we weren’t so different after all.

“Dirge Meilan fell facing the creatures that sought to destroy Lot. She sacrificed herself to obliterate a massive raiding party,” I said, repeating the words etched into the bronze plaque beneath her statue that stood guard over the crater she’d created when she blew herself up to save everyone from the demonic army storming into the Dioscuri city. “If she can do it, so can I!” My lips twisted into a grin as I called upon Isis to grant me more power. It flowed over my flesh like burning dragon fire, and I felt my skin start to char and flake away.

“Stop!” the creature commanded, and I bared my teeth.

“No!” I replied as the katana throbbed in my hand, the blade warping under the pressure of the magic being pulled through it. Light cascaded off of the hilt like sparks of liquid magma. I stepped upward again, leaving behind a trail of golden light in my wake as I raised my left hand toward the sky above. My fingers beckoned, and the shattered sky replied.

A bolt of emerald lightning struck my outstretched hand and energy unlike anything I ever felt surged through me. My muscles seized. My teeth snapped together. Sparks leapt between the strands of my lavender hair. My katana splintered into a billion shards of white metal that wrapped around my arm like a living, breathing thing. Blue light enveloped my right hand. Blood dripped from my lips.

Jormungand came at me, fear filling his eyes as his mouth opened impossibly wide. His fangs were bigger around than I was tall. Green fluid dripped off of them, and where the drops struck the ocean, it burned and sizzled. I stepped into his lunge as the lightning in my left hand solidified and swung with everything I had left.

The lightning hit him on the roof of his mouth just before he swallowed me whole. The world behind me began to crumble as I fell through the slick, wet darkness inside his throat. I started to dissolve, my flesh melting away as I fell. Every part of my being was scraped away like an onion being peeled back layer by agonizing layer with a rusty chainsaw.

The metal wrapped around my right arm was the first to go, turning white hot and liquid as it trailed off of me drop by drop. Each glob that struck the creature’s massive throat filled my nostrils with the smell of burning viper. My clothes went next, catching fire and burning away from my skin until I fell naked and pink through the air. My flesh burned away then. It was unlike anything I had ever known as it smoldered and flaked away like burning paper until I was nothing but a falling ball of burning agony.

Memory surged up inside me, crinkling and yellowing around the edges, all real and all fake, memories Dirge had before I was born, ones I’d experienced myself. They all came at once, rushing through me like a whirlwind, and as I was lost in a sea of memory, I felt the very last touch of Isis, like the gentle brush of feline fur against my cheek. It was followed by the rustle of something dark and serpentine. The smell of snakes filled me even though I had no way to smell.

I gathered it all, gathered everything I was and threw it at Jormungand though I can’t say how. The world above me exploded into burning green flame. It swept over the sky, rippling across the horizon as the snake around me burned from inside out. I struck the ocean as it dissolved into steam, nothing of me left but the vaguest understanding of anything.

A voice tore out across my mind as I crashed into the smoldering bedrock below the ocean. It cracked into a million disjointed pieces. Sparks leapt from the words as they swirled around me like black cherry ice cream.

“Goodbye,” they said, and then they too were gone in a flurry of gold and sparrow song, leaving me alone with nothing at all.

Chapter 1