Fatal Ties: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 7) (5 page)

“
S
o are
we not going to talk about what the frig just happened?” I asked, trying to twist so I could look at Connor as we rocketed across the horizon toward destination unknown. Okay, maybe that wasn’t quite true. I mean, I was relatively sure Connor knew where he was going, but I was still clueless.

Connor’s power undulated all around me as the wind whipped at my face, chilling me despite his magic being wrapped around us like a shield. Then again, maybe his dark power was the cause of the shivers racking my body. Every second was like huddling in a dark closet hoping the monsters wouldn’t get me. They wouldn’t because my job was to ruin the days of said monsters, but yeah… it wasn’t fun. Not by a frigging long shot.

“You want to talk about how you dropped a frost giant like he was the fat girl at prom?” Connor asked, glancing down at me and fixing me with a curious gaze. “I mean, we can because it was badass, but I was there.” He shrugged, and I got the distinct impression he was trying to change the subject. “It didn’t bother me to see you going Xena Warrior Princess on his ass if that’s what you’re thinking.” A grin cracked across his lips. “It was kind of hot, actually.”

I resisted the urge to slug him in his stupid, chauvinistic face. He thought I was worried about his feelings? Seriously? Did he even know me? As I had that thought, I realized he didn’t really know me. Not even a little. We’d spent a miniscule amount of time together, and most of that had been with me playing normal. He had no idea how my twisted little mind worked.

“No, you idiot,” I scoffed, my hands tightening into fists I had to consciously keep from pummeling him with. “I mean, holy mother of frig, man. You just tried to absorb a ship full of people with your power over darkness.”

Connor’s face fell like an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. “Oh.” There was a lot of emotion in that word. Anger, betrayal, fear, but mostly? Mostly, there was sadness. “So you’ve figured it out then.”

“Figured it out?” I asked, repeating him like a dumbass. “Figured out that you’re Nanashi and are destined to kill everyone on the planet?”

“Yeah, about that…” He reached up to rub his neck, which was scary as hell because he was holding me with one arm around my waist, and while he kept me completely stable, I felt ten kinds of insecure.

“You will put your other hand on me right now,” I growled, grabbing ahold of his arm with my hands and pulling it back into place. It was strange because the feel of him was both simultaneously revolting and exhilarating. God, this must be what hate sex felt like.

“Sorry.” He shook his head. “We’re almost there.” I got the feeling he was trying to change the subject. “Thes can explain better than me…”

Well, I wasn’t dropping this. Once we got to Thes, he might be able to explain it or he might not. Truth be told, we’d probably be neck deep in monsters, and I would never get my explanation. Unfortunately, I damned sure wanted one because if he was Nanashi and was going to obliterate us all, well, I’d try to kill him long before we reached Thes. After all, what use was it to save the world from Ragnarok, just to turn around and have Connor destroy it?

“How about you try, Connor?” I said, allowing the emotion to drain from my voice. He’d know that voice, know what it meant. My armor was already slipping into place, and once it did, one of us was going to die. “Try like your life depends on it.”

He heaved out a breath that seemed to physically hurt him. “You’re strong, but I don’t think you can kill me. I don’t want to find out either.” He closed his eyes for a second. “From what I’ve seen, you’re smart enough to do it, maybe.”

“Glad you’re taking this seriously.” The chill in my voice scared me a little. It was the same voice my mother would have used before walking across a battlefield like a vengeful god.

“Yeah…” he sighed. “I am who you think I am, Lillim. I absorbed the spirit of the destroyer to stop him from killing the entire Egyptian pantheon. Ask your swords. They’ll tell you.”

I didn’t have to do that because the throb in the weapons in their sheathes told me it was true. Part of me wanted to ask them to elaborate, but I didn’t. I’d played Diablo II, and I remembered exactly what became of the hero at the end of Diablo. He’d become the villain in the second game because he’d tried to trap the essence of Diablo within him, and okay, sure that was a video game, but it was an awesome video game, and the parallels to the current situation were pretty freaking sound.

“I don’t care why you took the darkness, Connor.” I swallowed hard. “I want to know how you plan to get rid of it before it crushes you into a mud puddle beneath its heel. I want you to give it up, Connor.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I cannot do that if we want to stop Ragnarok.”

“Connor—”

“Lillim, I know how stupid this is. It’s fighting darkness with darkness, fighting fire with fire. I know it doesn’t work.” His grip tightened around me, and I felt the strength within him, the inner core of goodness that was Connor, and it was cracking under the weight of the destroyer’s mantle. He didn’t have long. “But if I give this up, we’ll lose. That’s what your dad’s crazy computers told me.”

“My dad knows about this, and he let you live?” I almost couldn’t believe it.

“He was a hard sell.” He shot me a lopsided grin. “Look, I’ll fly myself into the sun before I let this power take me over. I’ve got this, Lillim. Maybe not for long, but for a while. Trust me.”

“I’d trust you a lot more if I had a bomb buried in your skull.” Connor laughed as I said the words, which seemed like the entirely wrong reaction because I was totally serious. I wanted to trust him, but I just couldn’t. Not with how strong he was.

“Trust me. I wish it were that easy. Only I wouldn’t let you have the trigger. Thes, maybe, but not you.” He shook his head.

“Why not me?” I asked, suddenly hurt although I didn’t know why. I mean, him and Thes were childhood friends. Hell, Thes had gone to Ancient Egypt to save him. Of course he’d trust Thes more than me. After all, I was the type of girl who would totally go back in time and shoot five-year-old Hitler in the face while he sucked on a lollypop.

“The same reason Superman didn’t give Batman the power to kill him in Injustice and instead trusted the rest of the Justice League with his kill switch. Because Batman would use it.” He looked like he was about to say more but stopped himself, which was good because I wasn’t sure if I could handle him elaborating on me being the Hitler-baby killing girl. I mean, it was one thing for me to think it and quite another for
him
to think it. “Anyway, we’re here.”

The bubble of darkness around us peeled back like a tin can, which was weird as hell. Sunlight burst through, nearly blinding bright, even though it hadn’t exactly been dark inside the sphere, which was also weird now that I thought about it. Man, everything about Connor was alien.

As I blinked in an effort to orient myself to the sunlit landscape, I found myself staring at a charred battlefield. I had no idea where it was, given that I hadn’t known where we were going. Definitely some nameless city. Shattered, burned husks of building dotted the torn-up streets. A half-flattened, overturned tank lay on its back beside a building that looked like it had been caved in by Godzilla.

One of those F-16 fighter jets was actually jammed into a blown out sky scraper as though King Kong himself had grabbed it while high up and shoved it through the windows.

Worse still were the bodies. So much blood had been spilled from their mangled forms, the streets ran red with it. I wasn’t sure how much there actually was, since we were several hundred feet in the air, but I was guessing it had to be a whole hell of a lot for me to be able to see it flowing into storm drains.

Werewolves clad in full battle dress stalked through the streets. Every once in a while one of the bodies moved, but before it could do more than twitch, a werewolf was on it. A head would fly, followed swiftly by a match and a gallon of lighter fluid. Whoever was dispatching these things was not taking chances.

Farther forward stood a wall of Dioscuri in a near impenetrable line, and my blood ran cold at the sight of them. They were doing that Spartan 300 thing. Three lines of over a hundred men and women stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking off what looked like a tiny command center. I hadn’t seen it done, well, ever, but I’d certainly been trained for. Those lines wouldn’t break, and if they did, the next would step up to fill in the gaps.

I wasn’t sure what was going on exactly, but one thing was clear, they were fighting an enemy they couldn’t beat. Why did I know that? Because the corpses of fallen Dioscuri and werewolves littered the battlefield, and there were far, far more of them on their backs than on their feet.

“Oh my God,” I whispered right before we dropped from the sky, plummeting straight down like a stone.

“It wasn’t this bad when I left to get you,” Connor replied, his voice a pulse of shadow on my neck. An eye-blink later we landed behind the lines, and while I’d expected Connor to shatter the asphalt, we landed so lightly, I almost hadn’t realized we were standing on the ground.

“Connor, thank God you’re back!” Thes’s voice struck me like a kick in the teeth, although I didn’t know why. Something about the sound of it had changed. It sounded, well… seasoned. It held power, sure, but it held something else too. It held loss. So much loss, my heart wrenched for him. That was my fault.

I should have gone to Egypt after Connor. It was my job to save people from monsters and the only reason he’d even got sent back was because he’d been escorting me to a party I shouldn’t have attended.

I’d been trying to ignore that non-insignificant face the whole time I’d been with Connor, but hearing Thes’s voice cemented it. By abdicating my duty to Thes, I’d let this happen to him. Worse still, I’d spent extra time in dreamland. If I hadn’t, maybe, just maybe I could have stopped what was very clearly a last stand.

Well, I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I would step upon this battlefield and use it as a stepping stone to victory. There wasn’t time for a pity party. No, I could kick myself, and brood, and go all sorts of Joss Whedon hero, later. For now, well, I had to take charge. So I put my big girl pants on, sucked in a breath, and spun to face Thes Mercer.

The sight of him striding toward us took my breath away. It wasn’t that he looked different, per se. He was still every inch the tall, long-haired football player. Sure, he’d somehow managed to pack even more muscle onto his dense frame, and it flexed and moved beneath his sun-kissed flesh as he strode toward us clad in only a pair of gym shorts.

A blush crept across my features. I knew he was dressed that way so he could transform into his hulking man-wolf form without tearing his clothing to shreds, but still, it made me want to reach out and touch him in the same way I wanted to run my hands across statues of ancient Greek Gods. Only Thes wasn’t Greek. He was Native American. I should have been able to come up with a comparison to a Native American deity or hero, but I couldn’t.

“Lillim,” he said, dark brown eyes flashing with anger before his gaze turned toward Connor so he wasn’t looking at me when he continued. “You’re awake. I’d heard it was true.” The rage in his voice snapped at me like a whip, and I probably would have taken a step away from him if Connor hadn’t stopped me by putting his hands on my shoulders.

“Thes, be nice,” Connor said. He let go of me as he spoke and took a step in front of me. He had one hand out, like he was ready to push Thes backward. I was about to tell him to get out of my way because if Thes wanted to throw a punch, well, he damned well could, but I realized he had one hand up toward me too. No, he wanted to keep us both apart. Interesting.

“I told you I didn’t want you bringing her here,” Thes snorted and looked away from Connor. “I don’t want her here.”

The way he said it made me wish I hadn’t come. Sure, the entire universe seemed to want me here, but at the same time, I respected Thes. He’d gone to Egypt to save Connor in my place. He’d done everything the right way, and now he seemed to hate me for it. I wasn’t sure how or why he did, but the absolute last thing I wanted to do was cause him pain.

“I told you, you’re a jackass, and I don’t care what you think.” Connor glanced at me, and his face softened. “Lillim is a badass, and we need all the badasses we can get.”

“The fates say she’ll fold at the end and kill us all.” Thes gestured at the battlefield. “We’ve advanced today. Not just held the enemy back but advanced. I do not want to throw all the lives we’ve lost today on the chance she won’t fold.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that statement. The computers back at base thought I’d fail? The ones inhabited by the fates? It seemed crazy, and if that was true, why hadn’t my dad mentioned that? You’d have thought it would have come up when he was trying to get me to run off and stop Ragnarok. Only, what good would that have done besides make me second guess myself?

No, I was going to stop Ragnarok if it was the last thing I ever did. I would not go down in history as the girl who folded under pressure. If Dirge could give her life to save the Dioscuri, then I could sacrifice mine to save the world. At least, I thought I could. I had to believe I could.

“Only two of them think she’ll fold.” Connor crossed his arms and the glance he gave me chilled me. He believed in me, but the Dioscuri super computers that predicted everything, didn’t. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. “The other thinks she’ll seal the deal. Isn’t it worth that chance?”

“I’m done taking chances.” Thes turned and began moving back toward the command tent. “The last time I took a chance, you became the darkness that killed all of Heaven.”

I opened my mouth to say something in my defense, even though I wasn’t sure what it was because I was too busy being torn between wanting to punch Thes in his smug face and wanting to run away and hide in case he was right. Fortunately for me, the world decided to screech to a bloody stop on its axis right then and take the focus entirely off our petty human problems.