Pursuit: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 4) (3 page)

“Um no,” I snarled as I got to my feet. “Everyone you hurt is your own damn fault!”

“Say what you want, but I know how you think, Lillim. They are all your responsibility.”

That was when I pulled out my Beretta and emptied it into his chest. The bullets threw his body backward. Even from here, I could see that he’d only superficially been hurt. Somehow, the Vajra had managed to absorb the impact of every single shot. Already he was beginning to stir. In another moment, he’d be on his feet. I was out of bullets and magic was worthless against him. Damn.

I shut my eyes drawing in on the power of fairy and stuffing it into my wounded leg like supernatural gauze. My eyes opened and The Keeper met my gaze. He smirked and waved at me. The pain vanished, and a strange numbness settled over me in its place. I glanced at Masataka flopped over onto his hands and knees, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“Go,” The Keeper said, his voice hanging in the air like the calm before a storm.

I ran, and this time, I didn’t stop.

Chapter 3

“And you came here? Are you mad?” Gib, the werewolf shaman of the White Alpine Clan, glared at me through narrowed slits as he spoke. “What makes you think
I
would help
you
?”

“Um… I saved your son from a dragon?” I offered, cheeks flushing. “That’s worth something, right?”

“You kidnapped him to begin with,” Gib replied and started to close his door.

He hadn’t actually let me inside. I was still standing on his porch. The werewolf shaman had only cracked the door a couple inches and looked out at me. In fact, if I hadn’t stopped him from closing the door by wedging my foot in the crack, he’d have slammed it in my face. Talk about a lack of respect.

“Okay, so maybe I owe you one,” I said with a shrug. “But who keeps track of those things?”

“Lillim, I am going to be very clear with you. I want you to leave my village and never come back. Ever. I’d rather you leave my continent, but I know you live in North America so I will allow you to stay on the continent. See, I can be gracious too.” Gib pressed on the door, and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out in pain as the wood pressed against the side of my tennis shoe.

“Please stop that or you’re going to hurt my foot,” I said, pressing my palm against the door and shoving as hard as I could. It was like trying to push a cement truck uphill on its rims.

A cursory smile passed across Gib’s lips, and the pressure on my foot lessened to just this side of painful.

“Lillim, the last time you offered to help, my son was almost killed, and I got burned to cinders by a flame demon. You are not the sort of person I am keen on helping.” He paused rubbing his chin with his free hand. “What’s that saying? Fool me once…”

“Gib, I’m being hunted by the other Dioscuri. I need to hide somewhere they won’t look for—”

Gib cut me off in mid-sentence. “You’re being hunted by others like you and you came here? Are you stupid?”

Awesome. Now we were stuck in a repeating conversation loop. I sighed. “Gib, I’m not asking you to come with me or protect me or anything like that. I just know that werewolves are some of the best trackers on the planet, and you’re one of the strongest werewolves I know. All I want you to do is tell me how to hide from someone who is probably on his way here, right now.”

Gib’s eyes widened, and he glanced over his shoulder and barked something. Literally, he barked… like a dog. So much for stereotypes being wrong. He turned back to me, swinging the door open and stepping outside into the cool night air. He was bare-chested, and his body glistened in the moonlight like spun silver. He’d added a new tattoo as well. A giant black dragon being impaled on a spike covered the upper right side of his chest and shoulder.

“Nice artwork,” I said a second before he grabbed me by the wrist and began hauling me into the forest.

“I want you to think about what you just told me. You just said a bunch of Dioscuri are on their way here right now. What do you think they will do when they get here and you are not here? Do you think they will take our word for it and leave peaceably? Or is it more likely they start hurting people until we admit we helped you?” Gib growled. His voice much deeper and bestial then it had been just a moment ago.

I swallowed and was about to reply when Gib started talking again.

“I know you’re going to say something ridiculous like ‘I didn’t think about that’ and that’s the problem. You never think. You just go about on your way, and the rest of us get screwed.” His voice had dropped a few more octaves, and when he glanced at me his eyes had taken on that wolfish yellow color he had when he transformed. Great.

“Um… sorry, I… um… I didn’t…” I murmured, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand as I stared at the ground. He was right of course. I hadn’t thought about what would happen once the Dioscuri found out I’d been here. And, to be fair, normally the Dioscuri would just leave after questioning the wolves. But Masataka? He was clearly a few eggs short of a cake and… well it wouldn’t surprise me to see him raze the whole village. Dammit.

That said nothing of what he would do to my mother. Now that Masataka had her, he could be torturing her and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it because I was running away and endangering even more people. I swallowed, trying to push the thought away and failing. My mother had made her choice to stay behind, but these people hadn’t… they were going to be collateral damage for me. They hadn’t asked for that.

“I’m an idiot,” I added a moment later, and it was a struggle to keep my voice from cracking. “I’m sorry, I’ll go.”

“At least you’re sorry,” Gib growled and bent down next to me so that his mouth was close to my ear. His breath was warm on my skin as he spoke. “I am going to cut you now. I’m going to spill your blood on the ground. This will serve two purposes. It will allow you to be untraceable until the blood dries, which should give you something like an hour at this temperature.”

“And the other thing?” I asked.

“It will look like we fought,” he said as his right hand morphed into a fist full of claws and doom. “Ready?”

I nodded and steeled myself. His hand transformed, fingers elongating as brown fur flowed over it. Black claws burst from the tips so quickly that I couldn’t exactly put my finger on the where and when of it. One moment his hand was normal and the other it was something out of a nightmare.

Without a word, he slashed me, his nails cutting through the flesh on my right forearm. Four gashes welled with blood. It stung like hell, and I had to reach down and spend some tough girl points to keep from yelping, even though I could tell it was mostly a superficial wound.

Gib reached out and grabbed my bloody arm in his hand and began to rub my blood all over the nearest trees. The trees blazed, glowing bright green for a moment and I turned my face away. White spots danced across my eyes as he dragged me forward and sprinkled more of my blood over the grass. Then he took his index finger and scratched a thing that sort of looked like a stick-figure cat on the back of my hand.

He blew on it, and it blazed with green fire. The creature looked up at me from my flesh and yawned, its mouth opening to reveal several crude teeth. Okay, that was a little weird.

“When the marmot dies, the spell has run out of time. Good luck Lillim Callina. Don’t come back.” He released me and began walking away, his long braid swishing behind his ankles as he moved.

“Where am I supposed to go, Gib?” I asked, staring after him as he disappeared toward his village.

The werewolf paused, turning back to look at me. “There’s a guy in Antigua that used to be a Dioscuri. Maybe you should talk to him about hiding. He’s been at it a while.”

“Well that’s just swell. How the hell am I going to get to Anig-whatever?” I snapped, and I’ll admit it, stamped my foot on the grass.

Gib huffed before stomping back toward me, his feet slapping against the grass like a moody child. When he got to me, he reached out, pointing past my head. I turned, glancing where he pointed to see the tree still glowing. “Go ask the tree for help,” he said. “Or don’t. But either way, go away!”

I didn’t watch him walk off because I was too busy trying to approach the tree, one hand splayed across my face to help with the blinding green light. As I got closer, a tiny demonic looking chipmunk with blazing green fur leapt down from the branches and began chattering at me.

“Um… hi?” I said, as it bounded up to me and seized my pant leg.

“Where do you want to go?” it asked in a voice that reminded me of cartoon mice.

“To Antigua,” I said with a sigh.

“Okay,” it replied and scampered away, leaping up the tree and disappearing from my sight into the effervescent branches.

“Well, that was helpful,” I murmured. Then an acorn struck me in the side of the head.

“Hey!” I yelped, bending to pick up the nut. It glowed with eerie green light and the word “eat” was scratched onto it. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, but neither the tree nor the chipmunk responded.

I sighed, glancing around to make sure no one was watching me and popped the acorn into my mouth. The taste of acrid smoke filled my mouth, and I shut my eyes, swallowing as hard as I could.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing on a beach. The waves lapping at the sand so gently that it made me want to jump in. These waves were nothing like the ones back home in Huntington Beach.

I wiped my brow with the back of my hand as the sun bore down on me. The air clung to me like a wet sweater.

“So this is Antigua?” I mused as I made my way from the beach and moved through the bustling streets. Evidently, fall was the busy time here. All around me, maniacs in cars older than my seventeen years darted through the too narrow streets. Everywhere I turned, people gave me one of two looks. The please don’t come talk to me look or the please come buy something from me look. There really wasn’t a third look. It made me feel sort of unwanted.

Still, it was tropical, and I had nearly an hour to myself. After that, Masataka’s goons would use the full power of Lot’s surveillance equipment to track me down and pinpoint my exact location.

I harrumphed and hugged myself despite the heat as a chill sauntered down my back. I stepped up to one of the local shops and glanced up at a sign that said Nelson’s Boatyard. Inside, there was nothing but swimwear and souvenir t-shirts.

“A little girl like you shouldn’t be walking around in bloody clothing,” an older female voice said from behind me. I spun, my heart leaping into my throat, to see an elderly lady with skin the color of melted chocolate. “I can make you a fine deal on some new clothes,” she added, grinning at me.

Well, that’s a good idea,
I thought, unconsciously picking at my bloody sweatshirt.

A few minutes later, I settled for a blue ‘I heart Antigua’ T-shirt that was authentically made in China because it had a jolly roger instead of a heart and a pair of pink board shorts with white stripes down the sides. Why? Because sauntering about in bloody clothing didn’t seem fun, and the only thing the shop sold was swimwear. I was just thankful that the lady had girl shorts in addition to bikini bottoms. I was about done fighting monsters in my underwear, water-resistant or not.

Now, as I stood between two giant pillars that had once been the site of an immense boat cleaning industry during the whaling years, I realized I had no idea who I was looking for. The “person” Gib mentioned could just as easily be a three-inch tall blue elf with a coloring book.

Then again, Gib had said the
man
had been a Dioscuri. Great. I was trying to find someone I’d never seen on an island full of people I’d never seen before. No problem.

“And do you know why it took several months to clean and repair a boat?” asked a tall, thin black man as he sauntered up to me, a bottle poking up from the paper bag in his hand. “Because they were all drunk.”

“Is that so?” I asked, glancing at him and sighing. He was wearing a loose-fitting red Hawaiian shirt with a nametag that said Joe pinned to it.

“It is so! What they’d do is get people drunk and ship ‘em over here.” He pointed at two huge stone doors that must have been twenty feet tall as he pulled up his baggy canvas pants with his other hand. “Then they’d shut those doors. Once you were inside, you were screwed.”

“Well that doesn’t explain why they remained drunk,” I said, glancing past Joe and toward what looked like a bakery. Even from here, the smell of fresh baked bread had my stomach rumbling. “What kind of treats do you guys have here?”

“They were drunk because they got paid in rum!” Joe exclaimed before he took a slug from the bottle hidden in his bag. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned at me. “And we have lots of local treats… if you like bananas and coconut.”

I sighed. “I’m allergic to both coconut and bananas,” I replied crossing my arms over my chest.

“Too bad. That bakery makes the best… erm… I’m not sure what they’re called actually. I usually just point at the glass.”

“Cool,” I said, making a move to walk past him toward the bakery. This was an island, islands had pineapple. They had to have something with pineapple, right? “Though I’d expect a tour guide to know things like that.”

He stepped in front of me, blocking my path. His face had lost its gentle, fun drunk look. Now he was staring at me, head tilted slightly to the side. He reached up and stroked his stubble-covered chin with one boney hand. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said with a shrug. “I’m not with a tour group or anything. I was just wandering around.”

The man grimaced, his yellow huge teeth glinting in the warm light. He reached up and ran his hand over his shaved head. “You expect me to believe that?” he asked, eyes sparkling with intelligence.

“Uh… yeah?” I said, suddenly worried because I’d stashed all my weapons in my spirit pouch, my very own portable interdimensional locker. I mean, I could probably take some drunk on the street but still… this guy was starting to give me the creeps.