Pursuit: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 4) (2 page)

Reath shook himself, the movement reminding me of a giant shaggy dog shaking water from his coat. He took a few steps toward me and stopped, apparently thinking better of it.

“Masataka, stand down!” Reath ordered as he turned to the nearest Royal Guard. “You, take Diana back to Lot and see that she gets treated for her injuries.” The guard didn’t move, ignoring Reath completely. “What are you doing? I gave you an order!” Reath howled and Masataka glanced at him, shaking his head.

“Councilor, these Dioscuri report only to me. My word is law. They will not do as you say.” Masataka grinned and nudged Diana with the toe of his boot. “Besides, she’ll be fine. She may look like she’s bleeding out into the sand, but you don’t need all the king’s men and all the king’s horses to put her back together again.” He turned back to me. “Isn’t that right, Lillim?”

“Yes,” I choked out, my throat tight with fury. I gripped my weapons so tightly that it actually hurt because I was seconds from killing them all. Sure, my mom could heal, but that didn’t mean I wanted to watch her get cut up by a maniac.

I took a shallow step forward, and the crowd around me seethed. I swallowed and shook my head. Mattoc would tell me to get back across the line in the sand. He would tell me to get the hell out of here as fast as possible. Yeah, he’d tell me to ignore my mother’s plight to save myself, and then he’d throw himself to the wolves.

“Masataka, you still report to me. You must do as I say,” Reath thundered, taking a step toward him.

“Councilor, know your place. If you take even one more step toward me or try to interrupt me while apprehending an actively hostile suspect, I will put you down for insubordination. I will take it to the council. Do you know who they will believe? They will believe the king’s brother. They will not believe some piddly little insect who’s only claim to fame is that his family has been here for a billion generations. No one cares about stuff like that anymore. Not after Jiroushou Manaka ravaged the royal houses and put you cowards down like the dogs you were.”

Masataka began walking toward Reath as he spoke. “The only person who took on Manaka, the only person who did any good against that bastard was Dirge Meilan.
You,
and your kind, only live because of the sacrifice
she
made. And what have you done with the gift she gave you? You poisoned her name among those she saved. You campaigned to rein in Dioscuri power. You blamed her for the destruction left behind
after
she gave her life to defend you.”

Masataka turned and pointed at me. “You let her live when every breath she takes is like spitting on Dirge’s memory!”

“Masataka, what you’re saying is the definition of insubordination,” Reath said, taking a step back and raising his hands in an open-palmed gesture. “Stop what you’re doing, right now!”

Masataka narrowed his eyes, and with one quick motion, drove his knife into Reath’s neck. Reath fell to his knees, clutching his throat, hands wrapping around the blade as crimson spilled from between his fingers. Masataka jerked the weapon free and kicked Reath onto his back. Blood spilled out around him filling the sand with an ever expanding pool of crimson.

“Then make a report,” Masataka said, turning from the councilor and drawing the bloody knife across his throat. “Kill her!”

“No!” I screamed, the word ripping from my throat like a roar. I swung, whipping Shirajirashii outward in an arc that cut through the first Royal Guard in a spray of blood and thicker bits. It gave the others no pause as they charged. I dove to the side as the dirt beside me erupted in a surge of earth and sand. Fairy wasn’t far, I could make it, but what would happen to my mother if I ran?

Masataka was clearly bat-shit insane. I mean he just killed a councilor in front of us. That meant one thing. Neither of us were going to live through this. If I ran, I was at best sentencing my mother, Diana Cortez, to her death… at worst… well, I didn’t want to think about what that scumbag would do with her. The thought made my heart very, nearly break. No… no I couldn’t let that happen.

I screamed, grabbing hold of my power and wrapping it around me in a swirling tornado of energy. The smell of maple leaves and roses filled the air as the cyclone flung the Royal Guards closest to me backward. They hit the ones behind them like bowling balls, and the cascading reactions knocked them to the ground in heaps.

My arms went up into the air like a conductor leading an orchestra. Roses tore from the ground, climbing around the fallen Dioscuri and wrapping around their limbs, cinching down on them so hard that blood flowed over the ground. The smell of the blood hit my nose like a thousand pennies as I whirled and threw my hands forward at Masataka.

The baying of wild hounds filled the air as the ground in front of me split open like a ripe melon. Masataka grinned, and with a movement so quick I couldn’t follow it, drove his trident down into the moist earth. It felt like he stabbed me, and I staggered back.

My magic died away just a few feet from him as I reached down and clutched my stomach. Blood seeped from the wound, staining my clothing as Masataka withdrew his trident from the earth. Bloody dirt caked the points of the weapon as he pointed it at me, his face strangely calm and empty.

“Sekijun,” he said, and as the word left his lips, the ground around me shattered. I was flung to the side, and I hit the ground hard enough that my brain rattled around in my head. My eyes opened wide in shock as I stared at the spot where I’d been. A mass of stalagmites filled the area where I’d been just a moment before only now they were skewering my mother. She’d pushed me out of the way in time to save me, but she hadn’t been so lucky.

“Run, Lillim. Run!” she gasped as blood dripped down the rock and spattered against the ground. Above us, the sky began to darken, swirling with shades of angry black like the inside of a witch’s cauldron.

“No! I won’t leave you, Mom!” I screamed, turning back to Masataka and pointing my weapons at him.

“Good!” Masataka smiled, and his teeth glinted. “I had hoped you would stay here and die.” He vanished. He actually vanished. Something hit me hard in the back of my leg, ripping through my flesh as I toppled forward to the dirt.

Masataka stood over me and tore the spear-like back end of his trident from my thigh. He raised the weapon high as my other leg lashed out, catching him in the knee. A look of pain flashed across his face for a moment, though he had no other reaction. His trident came down, and I reached out, catching it on my wakazashi. He pressed down with his full weight, and my arm started to give. The points of the blade came down, pressing against the flesh of my face.

“Are you? Attacking? My girlfriend?” Caleb’s voice was so full of rage that if it’d have been directed at me, I’d have spontaneously combusted. Instead, I was shocked because while I was used to Caleb using his Blue Prince powers over space and time to pop in randomly, he hadn’t been there one freaking second before. I swallowed, trying to will my heart to stop trying to smash its way out of my chest as Caleb took a step forward, one hand clenched in rage.

Masataka glanced over his shoulder to see Caleb standing there. Blue flames wreathed his body, dancing along his skin like blue-white fireflies. Incinerator was in his hand, blazing like a freaking funeral pyre. The air around him was hazy with heat lines as he took a step forward.

“Blue Prince, this is none of your concern. This is merely an internal matter,” Masataka said, his lips curling into a sinister smile. “You are no longer one of us.”

Caleb pointed his huge broadsword at Masataka and flame split the air, stopping just millimeters from him. Masataka turned back to me, and his grin was even wider. “See, I knew the Blue Prince would see things
my
way.”

Behind him, Caleb fell to his knees. Incinerator slipped from his grasp. It hit the dirt with an empty thump as the flames went out. Caleb put a hand to his head, gripping it violently, his fingers digging into his own flesh as his eyes darted around. Was he losing control of the Prince? What the hell was happening to him?

A sharp pain brought my focus back to Masataka. My arm was straining so hard that he’d managed to push the trident down, just digging it into my skin. Blood welled from a wound on my forehead and dripped down into my eye. I blinked as my vision filled with a reddish haze.

“Goodbye, Masataka,” I said, and the roses that had crept up behind him lashed around his limbs, hauling him backward in a flurry of pink petals and green leaves. Thorns curled around his flesh as he hit the ground and was dragged backward through the dirt.

I wiped my face and tried to stand, but my leg hurt too much to put much weight on it. Unlike my mother, I couldn’t heal super-fast. I could take a lot of damage, yeah, but I wasn’t freaking Wolverine or anything. I staggered over to my mother in a sort of half-broken way and tried to pull away the rocks skewering her wrecked body.

My mother looked past me, and as I turned my head, a lightning bolt split the air behind me. Masataka’s body tumbled backward through the air. He hit the ground with a thud. More lightning split the sky, slamming down on the spot and turning the sand to glass. I turned my head away, shielding my eyes from the glare. Even still white spots danced across my vision.

“Lillim, I’m not going to say this again. You need to run,” my mother said, her eyes meeting mine. There was something in her brown eyes I’ve never seen before. My heart went thumpity thump in my chest. Was that fear? Was my mother, the vicious Diana Cortez, afraid?

I’ll be honest. I’m a little ashamed to say it, but I turned and ran. I sprinted past them toward the border of fairy. Already the Royal Guards were cutting themselves free of the roses. Without the magic of fairy to draw upon, the roses were little more than angry plants, and that wasn’t going to stop the Royal Guards for long.

Just as I was nearing the border, Masataka appeared in front of me. His uniform had been burned away, revealing his body armor. It writhed around him like a living oil-slick. I’ve heard about the stuff before, it was some sort of creature that absorbed magic. So that was how he was tanking all our attacks.

Masataka stepped to the left as I swung my blades at him. My injured leg gave out beneath me as I tried to pivot around him, which I suspected was his plan. His trident came forward like a striking serpent, snaking through the air as I twisted my body. It tore through the fabric of my sweatshirt as I landed hard on my shoulder and tucked myself into a roll.

I came to my feet and wobbled forward, trying to keep from falling back to the ground as my leg throbbed. I clenched my teeth, and tried to draw on the magic around me. It didn’t work. Something was blocking me and everything else. Something was ripping all the magic out of the air.

I opened my eyes to my ethereal sight, and glanced around, but I shouldn’t have bothered. Masataka’s armor seethed with neon-pink light. So that’s where all the power was going. That thing was taking all our power and feeding it to Masataka.

“Well, that’s cheating,” I called, pointing my weapons at him.

Masataka shrugged. “All the Royal Guards are equipped with a Vajra. How else would we be able to put down renegade Dioscuri?” His face twisted in rage. “If we had these during the war, maybe Dirge wouldn’t be dead, and you wouldn’t be here.” He made a fist, his hand clenching so tightly that I could see his entire arm strain with the effort even beneath the writhing creature. “Even Jiroushou Manaka couldn’t stand up to this.”

“Manaka couldn’t stand up to a bullet either,” I snarled, taking a step to the side so that if I darted left, I’d have a clear shot at the border. “An angry mugger could have taken him out.”

“Yes, I know how you killed Manaka,” Masataka Mawara snapped. “You took that from me too, Lillim. I should have been the one to bring him to justice, but you took that too.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Why won’t you just stop taking things from
me?
” he screamed as he flung his trident through the air.

It transformed into a huge net as I dove to the side. The fabric hit my legs, wrapping around them and sucking me back toward its center like a spider pulling me back into its web. I drove my wakazashi into the earth, and my progress halted with a jerk. My body strained as the net tried to suck me in. I slashed backward with my katana, slicing through the net and the sudden jolt of being free made me lurch forward a few inches.

Masataka charged, hands in tight fists. I surged upward with all the strength I could muster with one good leg, catching him around the stomach with my shoulder. He let out an ‘oomph!’ as we tumbled across the line in the sand that made up the border of fairy.

Power swelled over me in a crashing wave, and the smell of autumn pine trees filled the air. The sand beneath us opened up as I shoved Masataka down into the dirt. He struggled, throwing his hands upward and smacking me in the throat.

I fell backward and pain made my vision hazy. I was only disoriented for a moment but that was all it took for Masataka to stand. He dropped back into a fighting stance as the air between us split open, grey light spilling outward across the horizon, bathing the sand in silver.

The Keeper was just there, his long ebony hair dancing in wind I couldn’t feel. His huge antlers glistened like freshly polished wood as he reached one of his huge hands down and grabbed Masataka around the throat and hoisted him into the air.

Masataka’s feet dangled at least three feet from the ground as he reached up and gripped The Keeper’s massive wrist. “Why are you in Fairy, Dioscuri? You are forbidden passage.” The Keeper’s tone was gentle, almost concerned.

That’s pretty much when the Vajra surge forward like an angry octopus. Its black tendrils wrapped around the Keeper’s arm and pulled him closer. Masataka yanked The Keeper’s hand away from his throat like it was a cobweb. With an almost absent flick, Masataka sent The Keeper skidding across the dirt.

“How many people are you going to make me hurt to stop you, Lillim?” Masataka asked. “How many will I have to crush beneath my heel in order to bring you in? Every single person I hurt will be on your head.”