The Hatter is Mad: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 2) (11 page)

I turned toward the rubble. This fight was over. It was more a matter of mopping up. This didn’t make any sense. Why would they have kept me from this battle? We won, right? I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and kept digging until I found the broken body of my mother. Maybe… maybe we didn’t really win.

She was still breathing. As long as she was breathing, she would live. Thank God for demonic healing. I pulled her free of the rubble and held her close to me.

“I know I don’t say this often enough, Mom, but I love you. So don’t die.” The words barely left my mouth when my father slammed into the ground next to me. He took one look at the woman in my arms and rushed over to me. He took her from me so unceremoniously it felt like he didn’t quite trust me with her.

“What have you done?” His words were cool, and for a moment, I thought they were aimed at me. I realized he was talking to the Blue Prince’s corpse.

“What was necessary?” the corpse answered, which, let me tell you shocked the hell out of me. I hadn’t even come to terms with the fact that I decapitated Melanie and now her decapitated head was speaking to us. I was going to need major therapy.

My father, Storm Eye Sabastin Callina, turned his body to the wreckage. “This was completely and utterly unnecessary. You have destroyed my home. You have injured my wife. You have hurt my daughter and slaughtered my friends. What possible reason could you have for this, Prince?”

The Blue Prince’s laughter filled the air, and I wondered how he managed to laugh without a body. I shook my head and took a step closer until I was standing next to my father. Blue blood pooled around Melanie’s corpse. Her eyes were opaque and lifeless. A bluish silhouette drifted listlessly just above her form. Ah… that was how he was talking. Ghostly resilience be damned.

“I needed a new host,” the Blue Prince said, gesturing toward the body on the ground. “That one was not powerful enough to contain me. She was starting to dissolve.” He grinned, an eerie smile that made a parade of icy bugs run down my spine. “You see, I’ve never been able to find someone with quite the right power level to be my host. That was why I wanted to use Manaka— which thanks to you— is no longer an option.” He rubbed his chin and his eyes opened in sudden realization. “Since you took the host I wanted, you must take his place, Lillim Callina.” Horror filled me, rising up inside my stomach like a serpent and strangling me from the inside. I did not want to have my body taken over by a crazy god. I had so much I still wanted to do, so many people I cared about…

“No!” my father said, stepping between us. “You cannot have her, Blue Prince.”

“I
must
have a host, Sabastin. You know this,” the Blue Prince said. “If I have no home, well… you know what happens when you rip the leg off a chair.” He leaned in close to us, covering his mouth with his hand conspiratorially. “Here’s a hint. It falls down.” The callousness of which the Blue Prince spoke about it chilled me to my core. It made me realize he was way beyond thinking about silly things like life and death. He was alien, and because of that, trying to relate to him was nearly impossible.

“I am aware of your status, Prince,” Sabastin Callina said with a shake of his head. “You still cannot have my daughter.”

“Then again,” the Prince rubbed his hands together as he spoke, “you could always volunteer to take her place. I suspect you will do nicely.”

“Hey!” I took a step forward to do… what? I wasn’t sure. How do you kill something you already decapitated?

My father shut his eyes and shook his head. He turned and handed my mother to me. “Take care of her,” he said in a voice so cold it very nearly stopped my heart.

“No! Dad! What are you doing?” I said as my mother’s body fell into my arms.

“The Blue Prince must have a host, you know that. If not, the rules of death will no longer apply,” he said as he leaned his scarred face toward me and kissed me on the forehead. His lips were rough and warm on my skin. “It cannot be you, my daughter.”

“But why does it have to be you?” I asked. “It could be anyone. He could pick anyone.”

“Get on with it!” the Prince said, snapping his fingers a couple times. “I haven’t got all day, Sabastin.”

“Tell your mother I am sorry,” my father said, turning toward the spirit of the Blue Prince and pushing me roughly behind his body. “Promise you will leave my family alone.”

The Blue Prince shrugged. “I have done what I needed to do. Only know that your sprat will not leave me alone, and I will defend myself.” He glared at me. “You only get to do that,” he pointed at Melanie’s corpse, “once.”

There was a loud whoosh and both he and my father were gone, leaving me standing over the headless corpse of my friend, and in that moment I knew two things. I had failed, and I would never get over what I had done to her. Not ever.

Strangely, the thought made me feel just the barest fraction better. It meant I wasn’t one hundred percent monster. At least, not yet.

Chapter 17

“When I heal, I am going to beat you within an inch of your life. Know this and be scared,” my mother told Caleb Oznek. It was the first thing she said after waking up from a three day coma.

Even still, I couldn’t stop myself from wrapping my arms around her and pulling her close. It elicited a cacophony of beeps from the various machines that were tied into her body. I was guessing they weren’t happy beeps.

“I love you too, Lillim,” my mother said, actually smiling at me. “I’m assuming that since you’re still in one piece, the Blue Prince is not.”

“Well,” I murmured and looked at the floor guiltily. “Sort of.”

“Let me guess. You killed him, and he took over someone else. Who is it?”

“Dad,” I said. I thought about lying or ignoring her, but honestly, she
was
our leader. She’d just find out anyway.

Her eyes narrowed for a moment. She looked up at the ceiling. “
Ay dios mio
,” she murmured to herself before falling back into unconsciousness. The sight of her like that filled me with so many emotions, I wasn’t quite sure how to explain them. I felt bad because she was hurt, anger because of what the Blue Prince had done to my family, and guilt beyond measure over Melanie. I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring at her, but it had to have been a while because Caleb started fidgeting.

I tried to think of what to do to make her feel better because the gift I’d brought seemed sort of pointless now. I sighed and put the box of chocolate covered donuts on the table beside her bed anyway. It was all I’d brought, but it didn’t seem like enough.

“Leave it to your mom to wake up from a coma just to yell at me,” Caleb said, putting a hand on my shoulder. It made my tummy do a little flip flop.

“Yeah. Well she did warn you beforehand,” I replied.

“But she should have known you wouldn’t listen to me,” he said with a sigh.

“How can I stand back when jerks come to destroy everything I know and love?” I asked him.

“Because you have spent so much time here, right?” Caleb replied, raising an eyebrow at me. “Seriously, you’ve done nothing but bitch and moan about this place since day one.”

“That might be true, but that doesn’t mean I wanted a god to come storm the gate with a bunch of orcs, put my mom into intensive care, and steal my father for a host. That was not on my list of things I totally wanted to have happen.”

To make matters worse, now everyone was going to talk about how I defeated the Blue Prince and how very damn scary I was. Which would be swell because that told even more powerful beings that Lillim Callina was ready for a new kind of threat. Beings like invincible orcs… beings probably way worse than invincible orcs.

“So… how do we find the Blue Prince and rescue your father?” Caleb asked as he sat down in the chair next to my mother.

“Hell if I know. I’m pretty sure guys like that are only found when they want to be found,” I grumbled. I wasn’t trying to blow him off or anything, but after everything that happened I was a little preoccupied. “Besides, he was just ‘all up in our grill’ and we couldn’t do anything to stop him.”

“I thought that was your thing now? Finding Supernatural creepy crawlies?” Caleb was smiling stupidly at me, and I wanted to smack him. “And there’s always a way to stop someone.”

“True. But situations like this are more designed for someone like Warthor or…” I paused for a second as a thought crossed my mind. “Well, we could ask Zef, Rhapsody, or Morgan. They are the other Lords of Death. If anyone knows how to stop the Blue Prince it will be them.”

“Look, I know you have some kind of weird relationship with Zef, The Black Prince, but I don’t think he’ll help you against Blue. Rhapsody, the White Queen, is a creepy five-year old who talks in riddles. Even if she tells us exactly how to stop Blue, I won’t understand what to do, will you?” Caleb asked, shaking his head and scowling into his hands.

“You left out the Red Queen, Morgan. She’s Blue’s opposite, like how Rhapsody and Zef are opposites. She might help us,” I said with a shrug.

“Or we could come up with a plan that has a little less crazy to it,” Caleb replied, sighing. “No one has seen her in like five-hundred years. Besides, isn’t she still doing that whole ‘off with their heads thing’?”

“That’s just a fairy tale. Those aren’t real,” I said, grinning at him. “Those three have been in the same hosts for like ever. The only one who ever changes hosts is Blue. There’s got to be a reason why.”

“Maybe the reason is that he’s a god, and he’s crazy.” Caleb threw up his hands in frustration. “And Rhapsody and Zef both hate you, Lillim. They aren’t going to help us.”

“Rhapsody doesn’t hate me. She has more of a casual indifference,” I replied. Though to be fair, by casual indifference I meant she hadn’t actively tried to kill me before.

“She’s also the hardest one to find,” Caleb said, spreading his hands wide in exasperation. I could tell he didn’t like my idea, which was sad. I liked my idea.

“Well, what do you suggest?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips and staring at him.

“We go looking for your orc,” he said with an almost wistful look on his face.

“And why is that?” I asked.

“Honestly? Because I want to fight him.” He paused for a long time before continuing. “Well… to be really honest, I want his Death’s Edge.”

“The object that kills you when you lose it?”

“I’m already dying, Lillim. I could live a lot longer with that relic than without. Besides, it isn’t like I’m going to be tanking nuclear missiles or something just because I get the Death’s Edge,” Caleb said, standing up and looking at me. “It could keep me alive until we find a cure.”

I sighed and nodded. It wasn’t like cures to mystical poisons were falling into my hands every day. It wasn’t even that bad of a plan as far as bad plans went. It was at least one I could understand. Find the bad guy and hit him really hard. If he gets up, hit him again. Repeat as necessary.

It was a plan that wouldn’t work against the Blue Prince. He survived decapitation. Most things don’t do that.

“Besides, assuming your father, who survived being torn apart by demons for three days, doesn’t go crazy, it isn’t like the Blue Prince is going to actively try to destroy his new body,” Caleb added with a shrug. “The Blue Prince is likely going to go wherever it is he goes for a while to get to know his new toy. He could be doing that on Jupiter for all we know.”

I wanted to smack him for being so cavalier about the whole thing, but he was right. Even the fates couldn’t realistically track the Blue Prince down and without Zef’s, Rhapsody’s or Morgan’s help, we really didn’t stand a chance against him. The orc could be found because he was exactly the type of person the fates were designed to track down.

Briefly, I wondered if the orc could survive a bullet from my dragon-killing gun. Unfortunately, it was still buried under a thousand tons of rubble back at my smoldering apartment. Did he do that on purpose? I bet he did.

“Fine,” I said, glancing at Caleb. “But you need to be the one to kill Grollshanks. I’m starting to get a reputation.”

“And that’s bad why?” Caleb asked, and I thought he might actually be dense enough to be asking the question sincerely.

“Because, at this rate, I’m going to have someone with the word god in his name come challenge me next.”

Chapter 18

“You know you are going to be guilty by association anyway, right?” Caleb said.

“I really hope you’re wrong about that,” I said with a sigh. “I mean, It’s not like I don’t enjoy being known as the Dragonslayer or whatever else people are calling me. It
is
kind of flattering in a way. But I know how things like that are going to end.”

“Yeah… eventually you’ll get so hyped up you’ll be challenged by something that
will
obliterate you,” Caleb replied.

I nodded. It would never come to light that I was mostly just lucky. Sooner or later, something big enough and bad enough was going to come huff enough and puff enough to blow my proverbial house down.

That said, I didn’t see why we were venturing into the orc’s home world to find Grollshanks. I had, after all, made the completely reasonable argument that because I was wielding Shirajirashii again Grollshanks would come find me sooner rather than later. Still, the fates had said he was here so Caleb had smiled and promptly ignored me.

Every single animal in the orcish realm was made of spikes and poisons. And don’t even ask about the plant life. It all pretty much ate your face or boiled your blood. There wasn’t a lot about this place that wasn’t outwardly hostile. There were even dinosaurs. Living, breathing, eat you in one bite, dinosaurs. I suppose that did explain how the orcs rode them into battle.

Even the goddamned dirt was made mostly of diamond dust so when the wind blew, it hurt. It hurt so much that it could strip the flesh from your bones if you got caught in a good storm. Oh, and the temperature alternated between a billion degrees during the day and negative a billion degrees at night.

All in all, I could understand why the orcs were so damn aggressive. I’d be pretty pissed off if I spent my childhood playing pin the tail on not dying.