Pursuit: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  “Hey, I’m good for it,” I replied with a shrug. I got the impression he was smiling at me as the rest of them removed their hands. As soon as the last one had relinquished his hold on the gate, it began to fade in color, losing that neon glow of energy that had warped and twisted its shape. It slowly bent back into its normal, white picket form as though it had never been touched at all.

  “I really need something like that back at home,” I said with a smirk as I pushed on the gate. It opened easily on squeaky hinges, pushing out toward them. Well that was odd, hadn’t it swung inward last time?

  “Don’t gates normally swing into a yard?” asked the guard.

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” I said as I stared at it. I moved to take a step out, and as I did so, I felt the magical energy of the place sucking at me, trying to keep me inside. I shut my eyes for a second and concentrated on taking a few steps forward. The moment I crossed the border, I felt it like waking from a deep sleep.

  I shook my head groggily and opened my eyes. Royal Guards surrounded me from every angle. There were so many. It seemed hard to believe that there were this many of them. One of them made a move to grab my arm, and without thinking, I lashed out with my wakazashi. The flat of the blade caught him across the chest, knocking him backward against his friends. They seemed to stand there unmoving for a moment before reacting to my attack. Well… that was odd.

  “You know what’s strange?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the lead guard. “That there’s so many of you. There probably aren’t this many Dioscuri in the whole of Lot right now, and even if there were, I doubt that there’d be this many Royal Guards.” I smirked and took a step forward, pointing my katana at the leader.

  The leader looked down at my katana and snorted. The sound coming out of his voice modulator reminded me of a struggling computer. “Lower your weapon Lillim Callina, you are under arrest,” he said, raising one hand toward my blade to push it away.

  “Yeah, that’s not happening,” I replied as I leapt forward. I hit the leader in the chest with my knees, driving him backward under the full force of my weight and riding him down to the ground. His head struck the sand with a wet-sounding thunk.

  I was able to stand and dust myself off before the other guards even reacted to my presence. They came at me all at once, movements jerky like wind-up toy soldiers. I dove to the left, passing through the ring of guards with ease and smirked.

  “Okay Charlie Thompson, I know you’re out here, just stop before I figure out which one of these duplicates you actually are and feed you to Grover,” I said, jerking my thumb toward the open gate.

  “How did you know it was me?” called a lone voice from the back. Despite the modulation, it cracked half-way through with that characteristic screech of a teenage boy.

  “Um… how many other Dioscuri have the ability to duplicate themselves?” I asked with a shrug.

  “Well… none,” came a reply a moment later.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  The images around me faded out one by one, disappearing in a rush of steam. Soon, I was standing there looking at one Royal Guard. So they’d sent all of two people to come find me. Neat trick, I’d have been scared otherwise.

  “Lillim, I still need to take you in,” he said walking up to me, his weapon in hand. It was still bespelled with glamour so it looked like a non-descript axe. “If I don’t, Masataka will be very upset with me.”

  “Charlie, I’m…” I swallowed and shook my head. It was time to face my fight. “I’m going to go with you, but not as a prisoner.” I shrugged, sheathing my weapons as I sauntered over to the fallen Royal Guard and moved to remove his cowl. “Now let’s see if your friend is okay.”

  “Don’t!” Charlie screamed as I yanked the fabric away.

  There was an explosion of light and sound as I was flung backward. I hit the sand hard on my back, my breath whooshing out of me as I clutched my burning hand to my chest. The spot where the Guard had been was now a smoking crater. No trace of the Dioscuri remained.

  “Well… I guess that’s one way to keep your identities secret,” I murmured as I willed power into my hand and tried to shut out the pain throbbing through it. Good thing most of the blast had been centered inward on the Royal Guard.

  “If we try to remove our uniforms in the field, our Vajra’s detonate. It’s to keep them from falling into the wrong hands,” Charlie said as he knelt down by the blackened scar in the sand. “Why’d you go and do that?”

  “Um… it seemed like a good idea at the time?” I ventured.

  “You didn’t have to kill him,” Charlie said, turning his head toward me. “He was my friend…” and the moment the words left his lips I felt my heart break for him because he’d trusted me, and I’d killed his friend. Even though it was an accident.

  “What was his name?” I asked and Charlie stared at me for a long time, saying nothing. “You don’t even know his name, do you?”

  “Well, no,” Charlie said with a sigh. “I always called him Rudy in my head.”

  “You’re making me feel bad,” I said, walking up to him and patting his shoulder awkwardly.

  “You should feel bad. You just killed him!” Charlie shouted, standing up and throwing off my hand. “We were just following orders, and you killed him!”

  “Look, I said I was sorry,” I replied, taking a step back and glaring at him.

  “No you didn’t,” Charlie snapped.

  “Oh…” I said sheepishly and stared at my feet for a second. “Well… I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, cocking his head at me. “I don’t believe you’re sorry at all.” Which, sadly, was kind of true. I didn’t even know who the guy was, only that he’d been there to bring me back to Masataka and certain doom. It wasn’t enough to endear me to him, fellow Dioscuri or not.

  “Charlie…” I said, reaching out to hug him because regardless of whether I liked the dead guy or not, I did like Charlie. “I’m sorry, really. I wasn’t trying to kill anyone.”

  He let me put my arms around him and pull him close, which was hard because he was a head taller than me. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around me, crushing me against his body. He leaned his head on my shoulder, and I felt his warm breath on my neck. It brought back memories of him breathing on me from class. How long ago was that? Four years ago? Had it been that long since I’d seen him last?

  “You really need to stop breathing on me,” I said. “You know I don’t like it.”

  He chuckled into my neck, the sound of it rough with modulation. “Yeah, I remember,” he said. He released me and took a step back. “It’s good to see you, Lillim. I wish the circum—”

  Chapter 8

  Joshua stood behind Charlie’s body as it slumped the ground, knocked unconscious in mid-sentence. We both looked at the fallen Royal Guard before looking back at each other. Joshua quirked his lips into a grin as he stepped toward me, arms at his side.

  “Do I get a hug too?” he asked, standing there unsure of what to do.

  “No,” I replied, and he seemed to deflate a little, shoulders slumping in defeat. “I only hug people I like,” I added because I was feeling particularly snotty.

  “Look Lillim, I’m sorry about the dragon thing,” he said, glancing past me and staring at some fixed point in the distance to the left of my head.

  “You can’t even say that without looking away like a liar. And besides, you just knocked out Charlie. He was harmless,” I snapped.

  “He was here to take you back to Masataka,” Joshua said, an incredulous look plastered across his face.

  “For reasons,” I said, waving off his comment. “You ran away from him. How do you expect me to believe you’re here to save me when you ran away at the first sign of trouble?”

  Joshua shut his eyes and clenched his hands into fists for a moment before very slowly opening his eyes. “Look, we don’t have time for this. Anyone keeping tabs on these two buffoons will have seen that Vajra e
xplode. If I’m right, Masataka will be on his way here right now. We need to leave,” he said, reaching out and seizing my wrist in his hand. His flesh was cool and clammy against my skin as he tried to tug me forward.

  “So how did you find me?” I asked, resisting for a moment before allowing him to pull me away from Charlie’s unconscious body.

  “I’m a demon. You’re in the demon home-world. This is like the one place I would be able to find you,” he responded with a shrug.

  “Okay… Let’s say I buy that, which I don’t, but let’s say I do. That doesn’t explain how he found me,” I said, pointing at Charlie.

  “The fates pinpointed your location. As soon as they couldn’t find you anywhere it correlated you last known position with that of Ordain’s and posited you could be here.”

  “So how’d they get here then? You said it yourself, this is a demon world.”

  “Well…” he trailed off for a moment. “That’s the thing. Masataka has been doing some bad stuff back home. He got your mom to open the gate. He tried to get me to do it, but I escaped before he could manage that. Your mom was ordered by the council to open the gate here.”

  “My mom wouldn’t help Masataka, not after what he did,” I replied and couldn’t keep the relief out of my voice as tears filled my eyes. It was the first good news I’d had in a long time because, despite the Royal Guards coming for me, Masataka hadn’t killed my mother after our squabble.

  Joshua spun, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me so suddenly that it surprised the crap out of me. I was raising my hands to throw him off when he stopped and looked at me with a mixture of pain and anger that didn’t fit on his normally aloof face.

  “Lillim, you don’t get it. You’re a fugitive from the Dioscuri and Masataka is forcing everyone who knows anything about you to help bring you in. He’s saying you murdered Reath Al Akeer.” Joshua’s voice was so angry that it made me shiver. I swallowed once, not quite looking at him.

  “But Masataka killed him. My mom was there, she saw it—”

  Joshua cut me off with another shake. “So what? That’s what you don’t get. Your mom is a prisoner in the dungeon. Nothing she says matters. Even your dad can’t get her out of holding. No one but Masataka is talking to her.”

  “How can that be possible? She’s the leader of the Dioscuri, the Sagalie Tyee!” I growled. “She’s the most powerful Dioscuri in Lot.”

  “And Masataka is the leader of the Royal Guard and brother to the King. You think Mitsoumi is going to stop Masataka? Mitsoumi won’t do anything to stop his brother, you know that,” Joshua said with a sigh that made my heart sink.

  That was true. For better or for worse, Mitsoumi would not interfere with his brother, even if it destroyed the entirety of the Dioscuri. I knew that, so why was I so surprised? Wait a second…

  “Why do you all keep calling Mitsoumi, King? I know he’s the heir and all, but when did he become King?” I asked.

  “It happened while you were in Fairy. His father died, hence Mitsoumi who was the heir, is the King,” Joshua said, looking at me like I didn’t know how succession worked.

  “I know how succession works. I hadn’t realized the king died… but he wasn’t that old, how could he just die?” I asked.

  “Age doesn’t matter when you’re stabbed through the chest by a spear,” Joshua said with a shrug. “We had a break in about a month back. The King was killed. Mitsoumi took over. That’s part of the reason Masataka can get away with whatever he wants. Like I said before, everyone knows Mitsoumi won’t overstep him, so everything he does is basically with the King’s authority.”

  “Still, it seems unreal that Masataka can put a chokehold on the entire Dioscuri. I mean it’s my mom we are talking about. No one tells Diana Cortez what to do,” I said, pulling myself free of Joshua’s grip and fixing him with my best glare.

  “Lillim…” he sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know how to make you understand.”

  “Make me understand what, Joshua?” I asked.

  “Everything that’s happened since you and Kishi went into Fairy. I know it’s only been a few days for you, but it was a couple months for us. Things have changed…” He looked up at me with such sadness that it actually made me take a step backward. His eyes opened wide for a split second before his face went completely unreadable.

  “What?” I asked, taking a step back toward him. “What did you think of?”

  “I think I know what I have to do,” he said.

  “Oh and what’s that?” I asked, but I had a sneaking suspicion what he was going to say.

  “Show you what’s happened,” he replied. Before I could move, he reached out and grabbed my face with both of his hands. Power exploded around us, tinging the air with the smell of fresh cut oranges as the scenery melted together in a swirl of colors.

  I staggered back, collapsing to my knees as the entire world spun around me. “What are you doing, Joshua?” I cried, trying desperately to find some part of the world to hang onto.

  “Showing you everything that has happened,” he said, his words fading like the last grin of a Cheshire cat.

  I was suddenly standing in the middle of the Dioscuri council building as Reath Al Akeer addressed the entire council. He was leaning across the oak pulpit in the center of the room, resting one huge arm on its surface. His massive bulk dwarfed my mother, Diana Cortez.

  She sat next to him in a small wooden chair because it wasn’t her turn to speak. Reath was caught in mid-gesture, frozen in time with one hand pointed accusingly at my mother. His face was curled into a snarl that my mother seemed to be ignoring, her face an unreadable mask of smug contempt.

  I glanced around, looking for Joshua, but couldn’t find him. I knew he was a master of illusions, hell, I’d been trapped in a pretty devastating illusion when he stole my magic gun from me last year, but he had never used his power to show me one of his memories before. Of course, the whole thing could have been made up, but as I looked around, I sort of doubted it.

  All throughout the room, various councilors sat in the pews that lined the huge hall, but I couldn’t really make out any of their faces because the light coming from the candelabras was too dim. It must have been nighttime, otherwise sunlight would have flooded the room from the skylights overhead.

  Off to my left, Masataka was sitting next to his brother Mitsoumi in the Royal box. It wasn’t super ornate or anything. It was an ordinary bench that was reserved for the King or his representative. Mitsoumi had a look on his face that was a cross between annoyance and exasperation as he leaned his head on his good hand. He was wearing the purple and red cloak that befitted his station over a standard Dioscuri fighting suit, but had no other jewelry on.

  Masataka looked like he was wearing the standard black fighting suit too, only I could just make out the shape of his Vajra, frozen in mid-writhe. Most people who had attuned to a Vajra, and were authorized to use one, didn’t really wear clothes. Instead, their Vajra covered the entirety of their body like a living, breathing uniform. I’d been told that some Vajras could even mimic normal clothes, though I’d never seen that particular trick in action.

  “That’s why we need to send a force into Fairy! We need to rescue my daughter and bring her kidnapper to justice!” Reath snarled and his voice was so loud in the silence of the room that it made me jump. I swung my body around, glaring at him as he gesticulated at my mother. White hot rage filled me, so blindingly intense that my vision went a little hazy as I took a step toward him, hands curled into fists.

  “I didn’t kidnapped Kishi! She came of her own free will! In fact, it was her idea!” I snarled at Reath, but he didn’t react to me at all, which all in all, wasn’t all that surprising because I was just watching a scene from the past.

  “My daughter did not kidnap your daughter,” Diana Cortez said, her voice an ocean of calm serenity. “All accounts state that they left together.”

  “Lies!” Reath bellowed, pointing his finger at
my mother’s face from only a couple inches away. “My daughter would never leave the city. She knows better. Your daughter must have done something to her!”

  “Reath! Calm yourself and act like an adult,” my father called, rising from a bench at the back of the room and striding forward between the pews. I hadn’t even known he was there but now that I saw him, my jaw dropped. He was dressed in his formal judge’s robes, and they were so bright that I had to shield my eyes from the sight of them. They were sewn from solid silver thread and flashed in the light like an effervescent fish as he moved.

  “I will not calm myself. Your spawn has absconded with my daughter,” Reath cried, whirling to face Mitsoumi. “How can I expect Lillim Callina to be found when the person in charge of her investigation is her mother? How can I expect her to be appropriately punished for her actions if her father is the one judging her?”

  Mitsoumi quirked one eyebrow at Reath, but before he could say anything, Masataka put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  “I have a suggestion, brother,” Masataka said with a shrug.

  “What is it, Masataka?” Mitsoumi asked, glancing from Reath to his brother.

  “I can go retrieve Lillim Callina—”

  “Out of the question!” Mitsoumi said, cutting his brother off in mid-sentence. “You will not be the one to pursue her.”

  “And why not?” asked Reath, taking a step toward the brothers, hands clenched into fists at his sides. “If we were trying to find anyone else, we would send Masataka. Is it because Lillim Callina is their daughter?” he asked, whirling to point at my parents. They both stood there looking at him like he was a very annoying rodent.

  “No, it is not.” Mitsoumi rose to his feet and strode across the floor. His silver-green hair fell over his eyes as he moved, which was a little odd because he normally kept it cut short. It wasn’t exactly long either, more scruffy, as if he just hadn’t found the time to get it cut in the last couple months. “It is because I, your King, has declared it so.” Mitsoumi was nearly to Reath now.