The Hatter is Mad: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 2) (3 page)

“Lillim, are you okay?” one of my neighbors asked, putting a hand on my shoulder and pulling his dog behind him. The dog was a small black thing that sort of resembled a pint-sized Doberman.

“Yeah, I’m fine, but all my stuff is going up in flames…” I sighed.

“Did you manage to save your hedgehog?” he asked, glancing around me, looking for the creature.

My hedgehog! My hedgehog Georgie was still in there, still in the burning building. I had forgotten all about him. I shook off the last of the effects from losing Haijiku and stumbled toward what remained of my door jamb. I concentrated, pulling what remained of my power around me like a shield. Red hot flames danced inside, destroying all the possessions, magical and otherwise, I’d accumulated since I first came here. Thousands of hours of work were just gone. You would think that after the first fire last year, I’d have prepared for this to happen again. I always meant to, I’d just never quite gotten around to it.

Georgie’s cage was nearly smashed flat by chunks of flaming debris, and the fire wards I spent hours etching into the plastic base of his cage pulsed like starlight. As flames licked toward me, I pushed toward the cage. I screamed and a wave of force ripped outward from my body, blasting the fire away from me.

“Oh, please…” I whispered into the empty air. Stinging tears filled my eyes as I rushed toward Georgie. I began throwing off charred wreckage, cursing loudly as my skin blistered and sizzled. Finally I saw him, wrapped tightly into a ball beneath his favorite red felt tent. A cry of horror ripped loose from my throat. I grabbed him and turning to run back out of the flaming hellhole was my home, I saw firefighters. I moved past them, even though they tried to talk to me, making it to the curb before I collapsed. The little ball in my hands was not moving. I couldn’t feel his tiny hedgehog heart beating.

“Ma’am” said an EMT wearing a scruffy old Yankees cap. I ignored the EMT, and as I looked at Georgie’s lifeless body, a shudder tore violently though me. Someone green was going to pay for this… with blood.

The EMT put his hand on my shoulder, and I glanced at him. Two large silver hoop earrings were stuck in his ear, and they flashed in the firelight. “I’m sure he was an excellent pet, but we need to check you out. Your friend is over there, too,” he added hopefully.

He smiled at me, his eyes beaming. As we walked, very slowly, toward the ambulance, I noticed how very blue his eyes were, blue like ocean water, and for a moment, I lost track of everything I was doing.

Melanie Stone sat on the curb with a blanket wrapped around her. A large blood-stained bandage covered part of her face. Her hair was streaked with blood and soot. Antonio was loaded into one of the ambulances. The paramedics slammed the doors shut and drove off.

I glanced from the speeding ambulance to Melanie. Why didn’t she go with him? Was she waiting for me? Part of me hoped that wasn’t the case because I wasn’t sad anymore. I was angry, very, very angry. Melanie was staring at me, looking as if she wanted to say something. I held up my hand to silence her and asked one, very simple question.

“Melanie, do you have any idea why that thing threw your car through my door?”

Chapter 5

“Antonio is unconscious, probably in a coma because I brought him with me to your stupid house.” Melanie blinked back tears, balled her hands into fists, and stood. My skin began to crawl. My vision blurred with rage as I looked from her to my hedgehog. I turned and glared at the firefighters spraying water into my home. If they would just leave, I could put the flames out myself without destroying everything inside.

“I’m sorry,” I said. The words rang false even to me. Even though it probably wasn’t her fault the orc decided to attack when she was here, something made me think it couldn’t be coincidence. Not when she handed me an envelope containing pictures of the Blue Prince.

“You don’t sound sorry,” she snarled, putting a hand on my shoulder and spinning me to face her. “You are the one who got into a fight with a giant whatever-it-was that hurt an actual person. He was an actual human being, Lillim, not some kind of spiny weasel. Perhaps you have forgotten you belong to the human race.” She took a step forward, letting her blanket drop and poking me in the chest.

I looked from her to Georgie’s tiny body, wondering what to think. I felt bad on a visceral level for Antonio. He was hurt, and it was probably my fault. Magical creatures that live eons do not exactly see human lives as important. It certainly looked like a case of wrong place wrong time, but that didn’t jive with me.

“Beings thought to be extinct for over a thousand years don’t coincidentally show up at the same time you give me pictures of the Blue Prince.” My voice was cold and empty. “It isn’t like the Blue Prince would have trouble reaching back in time to bring Grollshanks here. Why would the Blue Prince do that, Melanie? What have you found?”

Melanie was my friend… sort of. She didn’t deserve this sort of crap. She always tried to turn a blind eye to the supernatural. She knew it was there and had decided firmly it was my problem. That plan worked… until now.

Still though, I cared enough about Georgie that I was going to kill Grollshanks for this. I was going to rip off his stupid orc head. Greatest orc swordsman or not, I would see to it he didn’t have the Death’s Edge much longer. Then I would be able to kill him. All I needed to do was figure out where on his person he kept it. But, for all I knew, he could have hollowed out one of his bones and stashed it there.

“I unloaded an entire magazine from my .40 S&W into that thing at point blank range and it did nothing! You said guns work pretty well on supernatural creatures,” Melanie snarled at me. Great, she was still angry. This was going swimmingly.

“Melanie, I blew him in half and it didn’t stop him from nearly killing me. Things like that are scary. Really scary because you can’t fight them, and you can’t run from them. All you can do is try not to die.”

She shook her head and sighed. “Why do bad things always happen around you, Lil’?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, and she raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe if you dressed more… not like you do, things would take you more seriously.” She waved her hand at me. Yeah, I’ll be the first to admit that my pajamas didn’t exactly make me look like the most threatening thing on the planet.

“Well, my chainmail bikini was in the wash. Now tell me everything you know about the photo so I can track that bastard down and make myself some orc slippers.” The words barely left my mouth when the EMT stepped between us and put his hand on Melanie’s shoulder. There was a huge smile on his face, but his blue eyes were as cold as ice. It was almost like one of those mix and match pictures where someone put the happy mouth on the same face as the angry eyes.

“Miss, I think you should come with me.” The EMT held out his hand to help her up.

Melanie started to say something, but when she didn’t begin to move, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her roughly to her feet.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she gasped and tried to throw him off.

“I’m taking you to get some help. You’ve been through a lot and require rest.” He glanced at me, and a tremor ran down my spine. There was definitely something very suspicious about this guy.

“Sir,” I said, stepping forward to try and put myself between Melanie and him. Even as I did, he moved to keep me away.

“Miss, I am going to have to ask you to wait here.” He put a single finger against my forehead. His strange behavior unnerved me, and in only a second, he wrapped his arm around Melanie’s struggling form and moved very far away, impossibly far away.

I shook my head. Something wasn’t working. I tried to take a step forward, but felt like I was moving through gelatin. Before I could move even a few steps, the EMT pulled Melanie into the back of the ambulance and shut the door.

A flash of blue light exploded from the windows as I charged to the spot and stumbled to a stop, wind-milling my arms for balance. I swung the ambulance doors open, and a pile of ash spilled out onto the pavement. Inside, a charred body stared at me with burned out eye sockets. Was it Melanie?

“Melanie!” I screamed, my heart racing as I leapt into the vehicle, searching fanatically for Melanie, but finding nothing but ash and blackened bones as a sickly horror filled my gut. What if the corpse was her?

“Matto!” I yelled. “Is that Melanie?” I pointed to the body.

“Doubt it. This body is definitely male.” Mattoc was leaning halfway through the wall of the ambulance, and I was instantly glad no one without supernatural gifts could see him. Then again, anyone watching would think I was talking to myself. I wasn’t sure that was better. “Unless she has a secret we don’t know about, but even still, I’d put the guy’s height at around six-footish?”

“Well, where did she go then? I just saw a guy take Melanie into that ambulance and now she’s gone and there’s a pile of ash!” I snapped, fear gripping me as a horrible realization filled my brain. What if Melanie had been taken by the Blue Prince? What if the EMT had been another host and he had body jumped again?

“I can think of a hundred things that could do something like that without even trying.” Mattoc held out his hand as though he was going to start counting them off.

I pushed down my fear and slowly stepped out of the ambulance, somewhat surprised no one had come over to see what was going on. If that really was the Blue Prince, there was no way I was going to let him steal my friend’s body.

“Grollshanks should have set off some alarms back at the Dioscuri base. There should be like forty Dioscuri staring at a screen looking for just this sort of activity.” I snapped, suddenly annoyed with the supernatural task force I used to belong to. “Even if they didn’t actually notice the Blue Prince stealing my friend back at the base, Grollshanks should have sent them crawling out of the woodwork. There should be men here with swords and guns and gun-swords,” I snarled. “Where the hell is my backup?”

“The other Dioscuri don’t pay really close attention to what you’re doing. You know that. It isn’t like they are just falling all over themselves to help you.” Mattoc ran a hand through his black hair and shrugged. “Not since you ran away and failed to come back.”

I exhaled sharply in frustration. The Dioscuri weren’t monitoring my region as closely as they should. They had found me last year, but after I’d failed to return home with Caleb ‘I’m a huge jerk’ Oznek, they had pretty much stopped protecting my region. I knew why. It was my mother’s fault. She was determined to have me back under her wing. I didn’t pretend to understand her motivations, but it would be just like her to let me suffer.

My mother’s ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ philosophy meant she believed she had license to try and kill you. I mean this was the same lady who, on numerous occasions, left me alone in the middle of the woods with a pack of werewolves and called it ‘camping.’

Eventually, if things got bad enough, I’d to ask for help. But I could be stubborn too. I was pretty much determined to ignore the Dioscuri and my psychotic mother. It was impossible to get them to do anything, especially after the civil war tore what semblance of order they had to shreds.

Working with them was like getting stabbed to death with a push pin. Sure, the job would get done, but not quickly. Maybe that was why I took the matter into my own hands? If I didn’t take the rebel leader Jiroushou Manaka out, he’d still be out there trying to kill us all.

Unfortunately, only the Dioscuri monitoring my region would know who took Melanie, and if I was any kind of friend, I would talk to them if it meant getting her back safely, right?

Damn.

Chapter 6

I didn’t like the entrance to Lot because it was lined with statues of all the Dioscuri who achieved the rank of Hyas Tyee. As I walked closer, I began to recognize the faces of people I knew in my past life as Dirge Meilan, which was… a little weird. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but as far as I know, I am the only Dioscuri to ever be reincarnated.

As if growing up under the ridiculously huge shadow of my former life as Hyas Tyee Dirge Meilan wasn’t enough, I’ve grown up under the shadow of my mother as well. She’s the leader of the Dioscuri fighting unit now that the war is over. She is strong, smart, and ridiculously beautiful, once you get past all her scars and overflowing craziness. Growing up wasn’t what I would call lollypops and dandelions.

My mother’s statue stood next to the gate, one hand outstretched in that ‘bring it’ gesture that was so common in action films. Her face was set in a hard line, and her other hand gripped the bone-handled hilt of the whip coiled on her belt. I hated her statue because every time I approached the gate, it was like she was looking down into my heart, finding it wanting.

My dad was a different matter altogether, and I was slightly thankful his statue wasn’t out here too. Since he was on the council of judges, his statue was in the center of Lot by the great libraries. He’s always been kind to me, but sometimes when he looked at me he saw only pain. It was almost like I stole something from him, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to actually blame me for the theft. I knew that it had something to do with how I was born, but honestly, I didn’t want to find out what it was.

My dad made up for his distance with random acts of kindness. Like the random trip to the mall a month ago when he bought me the black beret I was wearing. He just showed up out of nowhere and offered to take me shopping. What can I say, I’m shallow. My love could be bought with nice things.

I was wearing it now because the beret was with the change of clothes I kept in one of the magically enlarged pockets in my overcoat. Sure, I might be willing to answer my front door in pink pajamas covered in silver, glittering ponies, but I was not going to come into the magical city of Lot wearing them. I was wearing a blue tee and jeans. Not the traditional uniform to be sure, but way better than my sparkly pony PJs.

The huge crater to my left made my heart race in my chest and my knees grow a little weak. It was big enough to fit an entire football stadium inside. It was the main reason I hated Lot. At its edge was a statue of a girl pirouetting, her hands over her head. Two swords slung low on her hips, just above the hem of an overcoat that was just a little too short for my liking because it didn’t seem like she was wearing anything underneath. I knew that in reality Dirge wore the standard tight black fighting suit underneath it, but that detail didn’t come out on the bronze statue. Beneath it was a small bronze plaque that said
Dirge Meilan fell facing the creatures that sought to destroy Lot. She sacrificed herself to obliterate a massive raiding party.