Fatal Ties: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 7) (3 page)

“
I
s that all
?” I asked even though the sight of the massive ship Naglfar scared the bejeezus out of me. I knew it was supposedly made from the nail clippings of the dead, but looking at it, I didn’t see how that was possible.

The ship was so massive, I almost mistook it for an island upon first sight. I mean, I’d seen pictures of aircraft carriers and stuff before, but this boat could eat a fleet of aircraft carriers for breakfast and still be hungry. Vikings more numerous than the sands of the Sahara sat upon the deck in rows as they heaved massive oars into the churning ocean waves. From here, they weren’t much bigger than ants, but I could tell they were decked out in everything from glinting iron armor to furs and pelts.

Fighting through that many people didn’t seem possible. Even if they were only as strong and fast as a grade school cheerleading team, it wouldn’t take long for them to overwhelm us beneath the sheer weight of their bodies. Unfortunately, these weren’t cheerleaders. They were undead Vikings, and while I wasn’t sure what the extent of Connor’s magical abilities were, if he was anything like me, a well-placed axe to the face would kill him just as quickly as it’d kill me. I wanted to avoid such an outcome if possible, only I wasn’t sure how.

Sure the smart play was to turn around and run for the hills, but I needed to get my sword back. I could feel it pulsing like a heart below the decks of Naglfar. I couldn’t just abandon the weapon, not if I wanted to have any hope of stopping Ragnarok.

Thankfully, we had time to plan an attack because we were largely obscured by the gray storm clouds, which was good because from the look of the catapults mounted to the deck of the zombie ship Naglfar, it would be hard to avoid that many incoming objects.

“I knew you could handle it. This ain’t no thang.” Connor smirked at me. “I’m going to do my awesome superhero landing in the middle of the ship and fling them across the deck with a surge of pure awesomeness, and while they’re still stunned, you challenge Hrym to single combat.” He glanced at me in a way that suggested he was one hundred percent serious. Only, he couldn’t be serious because what he’d said was absolutely insane.

“Um, what?” I asked, searching the deck for any sign of the giant. He was nowhere to be found, or if he was, well, I couldn’t pick him out of the crowd. I was assuming he was supposed to be huge though. Maybe he wasn’t? Either way, landing in the middle of the boat sounded like suicide. It would take them less than a second to swarm us, and I did not want to be swarmed by a billion guys with muscles the size of my head.

“The Vikings have this thing about single combat.” He shrugged which was altogether disconcerting since he was holding me around the waist about a thousand feet in the air above a ship filled with people who’d slit my throat for fun.

“You want me to fight an ice giant in single combat?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him because he had to be out of his frigging mind. “I thought you’d want me to do something tough.”

“Well, if you feel like it’s beneath you, I could take a crack at it?” The hint of eagerness in his voice made my stomach churn at the thought. I wasn’t sure why, but he wanted to fight the frost giant. It made me wonder how powerful he was, especially since he didn’t have a magical weapon of any kind. What would he do? Pummel Hrym to death with his fists? That hardly seemed practical.

“No,” I said, shaking my head for effect. “I’ve got this one. After all, I’m the trained warrior and you’re...” I clamped my mouth shut, cutting off the hurtful response about to spill from my lips.

“I’m what?” He wasn’t looking at me. Rather his gaze was locked on the ship down below. Holy crap, he was expecting us to go down there so I could challenge Hrym to a duel. I was so going to die.

“You’re not going to retrieve
my
sword. It’s mine. I’ll get it back.” I smiled at him, relieved I’d come up with an excuse to keep him from unleashing whatever darkness was pent up inside him. I mean, okay, I felt that way anyway, and he didn’t have to know I’d been about to call him an untrained computer jockey. For all I knew, he’d been fighting monsters for the last several months.

“Fair enough,” he replied, swinging in a wild arc around the ship. Wind whipped through my lavender hair in a way that made me glad I hadn’t bothered to try to style it. If I had, it’d have just been ruined. Besides, it wasn’t like I did my hair, anyway. “When we get down there, make sure you challenge Hrym to Hólmgang, and not Einvigi. It’s important.”

I thought about asking why since I was unfamiliar with both terms but decided against it. If I couldn’t trust the guy flying me across miles of ocean, I wouldn’t be living in this world much longer anyway. “What makes you think the giant will accept?”

“He’s Norse. They’re all about honor. Vidar, one of the Nordic warrior gods who has been helping us stop Ragnarok has assured me no Viking worth his salt will back down from a challenge to single combat. If Hrym does, he risks his men not following him. If you haven’t heard, they’re not the most trusting sort to begin with.” Connor smirked in a way that almost made me think he had everything all figured out, and maybe he did, but I hadn’t lived this long by letting other people push me around like a pawn. At least not willingly, anyway.

“Naglfar is filled with oath-breakers and worse. Why would they care about honor?” I asked, but instead of responding, Connor tore into a dive straight toward the center of the ship that made my heart leap into my toes.

“Come on, Lillim, what, do you want to live forever?” The words slipped from his lips right before he crashed into the center of the bow, splintering the deck of the massive ship and sending a shockwave of power rippling outward. Black smoke streamed off of him as a tsunami of energy threw everyone around us for several dozen feet in every direction.

His power rubbed up against me as he set me lightly on the shattered deck. It felt like oil and emptiness, and as it washed over me, it sucked at my aura. Connor took two steps away from me and planted his fists on his hips, and that small distance between me and him helped me to ignore the devastating thrum of his power. Somewhere I’d remembered hearing about something like this, but as I tried to reach for the memory, it dissolved under the boom of Connor’s voice.

“Hello, Vikings,” he called as the sails of the ship dissolved into streams of black smoke. “I come in peace.”

Men and women who looked like they’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed for a millennia or two fixed us with glares that would have made lesser people run and hide. I didn’t do that because the idea of hiding in a zombie ship made of human fingernails didn’t strike me as particularly smart or hygienic. Not that there was any kind of smart to this plan, whatsoever.

Instead, I readied my katana and hoped Connor’s plan was way less stupid than it seemed right now. Because right now, it seemed really freaking stupid.

“Hrym! It is I, Lillim Callina of the Dioscuri,” I called, trying my best to project my voice outward. I even kept the tremor out of it. Nice. “You have taken something that is rightfully mine, and I have come to challenge you for it.”

The ship beneath me groaned and listed as something immense below decks moved. The sound of booming footsteps filled my ears as a voice so deep it would have shaken a stadium echoed up from the lower levels of Naglfar.

“What is it you seek from me, Lillim Callina of the Dioscuri?” Another creak grown caused the ship to list the other way, and I struggled to maintain my balance. “If it is death, I shall happily oblige.” Laughter filled the words. “Destroy them.”

As the crowd surged toward us, I glanced nervously at Connor. The look of hunger on his face nearly made me forget where I was. He wanted them to attack us, to give him an excuse to lay waste to those before him. I almost let him do it, except, I was standing next to him, and even if he was going to wade through them like Ares himself, I was pretty sure this many Vikings would ruin our day really goddamned fast.

“Hrym, I challenge you to Einvigi!” I called, trying to remember what Connor had said, and as the word left my lips, time seemed to stop. The Viking charge halted before it began, and Connor turned toward me, fear swimming through his eyes.

“Lillim.” He swallowed hard as he met my gaze. “You just challenged Hrym to a no holds barred fight to the death.”

“Isn’t that what you told me to do?” I asked as a sudden snake of fear coiled in my gut. Was I seriously going to go one on one with a frost giant with only one of my swords? I mean, hell, I was still pretty out of it from being asleep for months. How could I have thought this was a good idea?

“No!” Connor shook his head. “I told you to challenge him to Hólmgang! That’s combat to first blood and has rules.”

“Pfft, Hólmgang is for wimps,” I replied, turning my back to him and tightening my grip on my katana as I drove down the fear rising in me with sheer willpower. I’d killed lots of things before. Hrym would be no different. Besides, after everything I’d been through, if my story ended here, it’d be pretty sad. “So what’s it going to be, Hrym? Will you face me or are you too chicken?” Then I made a clucking noise because I was incredibly mature.

“I am not scared, Dioscuri.” Hrym’s voice boomed across the deck of the ship like a cannon blast as a huge, bearded shape stepped out from the hatch leading below.

He was both way bigger than I’d expected and way smaller. I’d expected him to be taller because he was a giant, but he only stood about twenty feet tall. Unfortunately, he was built like a frigging tank and while his torso was bare, his legs and arms were wrapped in enough steel chain to have strangled a blue whale. His arms were easily a couple feet in diameter, so he sort of reminded me of a super-sized iron dwarf from World of Warcraft.

“Prove it. Accept my challenge,” I replied, taking a brazen step toward him because I was scared out of my gourd, and if I took even a second to think about what I was doing, I’d run away. Man, I really shouldn’t have gotten out of bed today.

“I accept your challenge,” Hrym said. As he spoke, thunder crackled through the heavens. He craned his head toward the sky and snorted. “It seems the gods accept it as well. Maybe they think you’ll win.” He lumbered toward me, causing Vikings to scurry out of his way like frightened mice. He raised his huge hands in front of himself, clenching them into fists and then unclenching them.

Both of those hands were nearly the size of me, and the only thing I could think was I was really glad this wasn’t an arm wrestling contest. Still, large didn’t mean strong per se. After all, my mom had been smaller than me and she could bench press a tractor.

“Man, haven’t you heard about me?” I asked as I shifted into a two-handed, white-knuckled grip on my katana and dropped into a fighting stance. “I’m the star of this show. If I don’t win, it’d be pretty sad.”

“Everyone is always the star of their own show,” Hrym said, gesturing at the Vikings surrounding us. “Each and every one of these people thought they were too important to die. Yet, they all stand upon the deck of Naglfar.”

It was an excellent point, but I never let a little thing like logic stop me. Instead, I called upon my power and charged the huge giant before he could unsling the massive axe hanging from the leather loop on his hip. Because, you know, I was an attack first, think later kind of girl.

S
omething told
me the Santa-bearded giant didn’t expect a five-foot-nothing girl to leap fifteen feet into the air and plant her fist right between his huge sapphire eyes, but that’s exactly what happened.

Power rippled through my body, lending strength to the blow I’d never have been able to manage with my puny, atrophied muscles. Which was unfortunate because I’d been trying to kill him with a single punch. One Punch Man, I was not.

Still, the satisfying crunch of his nose was like music to my ears as the giant lifted from his massive feet and flew backward. His body carved a furrow through the ranks of the Vikings that threw men and women in every direction like tinker toys. I almost felt bad for the ones reduced to bloody smears beneath him, but I consoled myself with the fact they were already dead and were mostly horrible people anyway.

As Hrym looked up at me in surprise, I didn’t bother to hide the smile stretching my face to the limit.

“That was just my regular punch,” I said as I landed hard on the deck of the ship. Sapphire energy crackled around me as I drew in another surge of energy from Isis. “Just wait until I use my Super Serious Punch.”

The giant slammed into the mast with a thundering crash that caused the entire boat to sway drunkenly. I planted my feet into a wide stance in an effort to regain my balance and gripped my katana in my right hand. Blue sparks leapt from its surface as Isis lent me strength. Power surged up through me. It was time for one more attack, and this time, I’d finish it. He may have underestimated me to start with, but with each passing moment, that advantage would slip away like whispers in the wind. No, I had to end this now.

I tore forward like a comet, hoping to end the fight before the giant got back up. The muscles in my legs corded with effort as I sprang upward in the air in a flash of energy that turned the ground beneath my feet to ash.

As I sailed through the air, katana raised overhead so I could bring it down on the creature’s jugular, Hrym backhanded me, and since his hand was almost as big as I was, it was like getting slapped by a moving barn door. Stars shot across my vision as I crashed onto the deck of the ship and skidded several feet. My head pounded in pain as I shook myself in an effort to get my vision to stop spinning. It felt like every bone in my chest had broken, and even through my Dioscuri fighting suit, it felt like I’d been cut to shreds by the deck.

“You broke my nose. You’ll pay for that insolence,” the giant cried as crimson goo poured from his trashcan-sized nostrils and splashed against the deck. He tried to wipe the blood from his nose away with the back of one hand, but he seemed so woozy he mostly just wound up smearing it across his snowy beard. Good, that meant we were both still recovering. If he’d just shrugged off my blow, I’d be in trouble.

“That isn’t all I’m going to break,” I said, getting to my feet. “So you can just add it to my bill. Trust me, I’ve got loads of insolence left to spend.” My bones creaked and popped as I faced the still-recovering giant. What can I say, if there was one thing I was good at, it’s taking a punch.

“You dare mock me?” Hrym bellowed, fixing me with an icy stare that caused ice crystals to spread across my chest. Holy frig, that was nuts.

“It’s a thing.” I shrugged and met his gaze. It felt like someone had dumped ice water down my soul’s back.

“Maybe.” The ship listed beneath me as he spoke, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the crashing waves or from the giant hopping to his feet like a backup dancer at a Beyoncé concert. “But I’m starting to think you can’t beat me.” A smirk played across his blackened lips. “I don’t understand why you didn’t just stab me in the face when you had the chance, but I’m sure there’s a good reason.” He reached for his axe with one blue-nailed hand. “Who the hell punches people when they have a sword?”

It was a fair question. The answer was simple. I hadn’t known what to expect from him in the way of physical fortitude. Since drawing energy from Isis was the only thing keeping me on my feet, the absolute last thing I wanted to do was shatter her on his skin. My hand, well, that would have healed. Now that I knew he was squishy on the outside, I’d be more than happy to introduce him to the pointy end of my sword.

“I didn’t want this to be over too soon,” I replied, slashing my sword idly through the air between us. Blue light leapt from the blade, casting ominous shadows across the deck of the ship. “I’ve got a lot of issues to work out on your face with my fists.” I shrugged. “Besides, punching someone in the face is strangely satisfying. It’s why Superman still hits people even though he’s strong enough to throw the planet into the sun.”

“Has anyone ever told you, you’re annoying?” the giant said, and as his massive fingers closed around the tree-like handle, I sprinted toward him with all the speed my magic could muster. My footsteps resounded across the disgusting deck of the ship as lightning crackled in the sky above.

“I get that from time to time,” I said as he drew the axe and flung it at me in one smooth motion.

I dropped to my knees and leaned way back as I slid forward. The blade passed over me in a spinning arc of death as his foot came flying toward me. As it did, I drove the palm of my left hand square into the arch of his iron boot. I’m not going to lie. It hurt. A lot. Almost enough, I wished I’d had a better plan. Unfortunately, I didn’t. So as agony shot up the length of my arm, I released all my pent up energy in one explosive arc.

“White Sparrow!” I cried. Fire shot from my hand and swirled up around the frost giant, lashing him down with ropes of fire. He struggled, trying to pull himself free as white light burst from the clouds above and slammed down around Hrym, encasing him in a superheated cylinder of light. It solidified around him, causing flames hotter than the sun to roil around him.

The ice covering his brow melted in a flash of steam as he struggled to escape my spell. Unfortunately for him, every single time he tried to break through the cylindrical barrier of fire, he seemed to melt, reminding me of a green plastic army man left out in the sun for too long. As his melting fists pounded at the spell, I realized I had him beat. If I could keep channeling power into the hungry flames of my spell, Hrym was toast. Literally.

Which was probably why the Vikings charged me. Evidently, they didn’t like how this fight was going, which was fair enough. A wordless snarl echoed from their lips. The thunderous cascade of a million boots on the deck of the ship made my blood run cold, and as I held my hand out toward the spell, I tried to force more power into it. If I could take Hrym down before they reached me, maybe they’d stop. It wasn’t the best plan, sure, but I really hoped it worked because there were way too many of them for me to try to fight them off.

“Die,” I whispered as I forced everything I had into the spell. Sparks snapped and popped all around me as fire leapt from my outstretched palm. It slammed into my spell and made it go practically nuclear. As white hot flames danced across the deck, the ship began to burn, filling the air with acrid smoke. Still, I was forcing way too much power out given my current state.

As my vision went blurry, and I collapsed to my knees on the deck, Isis’s glow faded to a dull glimmer. Damn. I didn’t have much time left. I had to finish this now.

“Get back,” Connor said, his words whipped through the crowd like hurricane. An ocean of darkness exploded from his outstretched hand and flung the Vikings backward like they were made of toothpicks and he was a bowling ball. He took another step forward and drew his hand in a circle that tore the darkness out of the air around us. It fell across the clearing, sealing Hrym and me in a bubble of pitch black void.

I wasn’t sure what Connor had just done, but a sudden surge of icy terror rippled through my body, snapping my focus back into place. Thankfully, before I could freak out, Connor strode through the wall of darkness and shot me a cheeky grin. He looked less taxed by his weird shield of death than I’d look taking out the garbage, which to be fair, was pretty gross most of the time.

“Didn’t want them interfering. Do your thing.” He gave me a thumbs up, and I realized something. Connor was way beyond my ability, and that was no good.

The scent of death clung to his power, and as the darkness undulated around me, I realized who he was. When he said he was the destroyer, he’d meant Nanashi. Jiroushou Manaka had been practically a god amongst the Dioscuri, and he had been so scared of Nanashi, he’d given me Haijiku to try to stop him.

Manaka had killed me in my former life with less effort than it’d have taken to squash a gnat, and even after he’d moved to the great beyond, he hadn’t been scared of much. But he was scared of Nanashi. Actually, scared wasn’t the right word. No, he’d been filled by sheer hysterical terror at the prospect of Nanashi coming back.

I wasn’t sure if Connor had become the
actual
destroyer destined to level the goddamned planet, but if he was, we were well and truly screwed. The destroyer appeared only in times of great imbalance. He had one goal and one goal only.

Quite simply, he was supposed to destroy everything and set the scales back to zero. He didn’t care about morality or innocent bystanders. No, he was the harbinger of the end. It couldn’t be a coincidence he was here now.

The only thing that kept me from a full blown mental breakdown was one thought. Maybe he was here to help us? Could that be possible? I mean this was Ragnarok, right? I wasn’t sure, but either way, I had to focus on the now. If Connor was inclined to help me right now, well, I’d kick that can down the road as far as I could.

Besides, Isis didn’t have much power left in her for me to draw unless I wanted to risk melting the damned sword, and on my own, well, I’d need at least a dozen pizzas before I could call enough strength to open an envelope, let alone, keep my spell going long enough to flash fry Hrym. If I wanted to beat the frost giant, I needed to do something fast because my power was going to dissipate long before the he melted away. It was sort of a staggering realization. Still, I’d melt Isis to ash long before I let that happen. I just needed another power source.

An idea struck me then, and as the full weight of my imminent demise settled around me, I did the only thing I could. I freaking went for it!

“Set!” I cried, reaching out with my left hand for the weapon, while funneling what little power I had into the cry. As I felt the ping of the god’s consciousness below deck, my vision tunneled. “Come!”

A spark of purple light leapt into the word as it left my lips in a fog of blue pixie dust as Hrym shattered my spell and glared at me with enough hatred to make me wish I was as completely insubstantial as I felt.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t completely insubstantial so when he bellowed, a blast of frozen air caught me in the chest and sent me skidding back across the deck of the ship in a flurry of ice and snow.

Frost clung to my eyelashes, and my teeth began to chatter as crackling ice spread out from Hrym’s half-melted body like a slowly crashing wave. It hit the ground in front of me, throwing white mist into the air and turning the deck of Naglfar into a winter wonderland. And here I was without my winter coat. Sigh.

As I struggled to get to my feet, a fist the size of Alaska came flying at my face. I managed to block it with my sword, but the force of the blow sent me flying sideways, anyway. I twisted in the air and landed on my feet, which turned out to be completely lame because evidently, ice was super slick. Who knew?

Thankfully, as I slid haphazardly across the icy surface, Hrym didn’t take advantage because the giant was too busy looking at his hand like he couldn’t figure out how he’d cut his fist in half.

“News flash, jackass. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t punch girls with swords,” I said, forcing confidence I didn’t feel into my words while flicking his blood off my katana. It spattered across the deck and steamed in the frozen air.

Hrym fixed his icy eyes at me and grunted. “I’m done playing with you, girl.”

The blood gushing from his wounded fist froze, solidifying his fist into a gigantic chunk of jagged ice which he drove into the deck of the ship because of course he would. A geyser of frosty water surged toward me, and I dove sideways as it crashed into the space where I’d been. Hoarfrost spread along the deck as I rolled, following me like a living, breathing thing.

As I came up on my feet, I reached out once more toward Set in one last desperate attempt to call the sword to me. My teeth chattered, my knees shook, and I was on the verge of collapse, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t been in this position before. No, I’d been here lots of times. I knew what this felt like, and the only way past it was to put one foot in front of the other and propel myself past it upon the back of my enemy.

“You know, I have a name,” I growled as ice began to cover my feet and crawl up my boots. “It’s Lillim Callina!”

Set burst through the deck of Naglfar in a spray of debris that revealed darkness pulsating beneath. Connor hadn’t just covered the deck in darkness. No, he’d sealed us in a bubble of void.

Before that thought could take hold, I stopped the surge of fear that welled up in me and turned my attention toward the wakazashi rocketing toward me. Arcs of scarlet fire rippled from its hilt like the tail of a comet as the wakazashi hit my outstretched left hand with a familiar thrum.

A surge of chaotic energy burst through me, filling me with the strength of the ancient warrior god who had defended Ra against the coming darkness. Set might be many things, but first and foremost, he was a warrior, and warriors fought. Forever and always.

Grabbing the weapon made a surge of confidence run roughshod through my veins. Now that the band was back together, this guy wouldn’t be more than a footnote. I was Lillim Callina, dammit. And now I had
two
magical swords inhabited by Egyptian deities. Hrym could suck it.

The frost giant’s mouth twisted into a grimace that made me think he’d sucked on a whole bushel of lemons, which was a little strange. I mean, why would he do that?