Fatal Ties: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 7) (10 page)

“
L
oki
?” Thes asked, swallowing hard. Then before I realized what he was doing, he pulled a pen and autograph book out from the pocket of his gym shorts and held them out to the Nordic God of Mischief. “Can I have your autograph?”

Loki raised one black eyebrow as he looked from Thes to the book and back again. “Are you being serious right now?” I was inclined to agree with Loki, but Thes looked positively smitten. What the hell was wrong with him?

“Look,” Thes said, admiration oozing from every syllable. “I’ve met a ton of gods, but I never had anything to prove I met them. So when I came back from Egypt, I got this autograph book so I could get signatures.” He smirked. “Pretty cool, no?”

“No,” Loki said, swiping the book. He flipped it open, and as he started paging through it, his eyes got wider and wider. “You have some good ones.” Wow, was that admiration? It sure sounded like it. That was impossible though. I mean, this was Loki. L-O-K-I. He was the big bad of the Norse Pantheon. Hell, his title was the Prince of Lies.

“Yeah, for real, huh.” Thes pointed to the page Loki had stopped at. “I’m particularly proud of that one.”

“I would be too.” Loki let out a low whistle, and I wanted to see who it was, but I couldn’t since I was suspended in the freaking air like a caught fish. While they were busy looking through Thes’s godly autograph collection, my damned arms were burning from the strain of being held aloft. It wasn’t fair. This was madness!

After what felt like ever, Loki found a blank page about halfway through the book and scribbled something before glancing up. “Any special message?”

“Whatever you want to write, man. You get the whole page,” Thes said, leaning forward like an overexcited fangirl. I mean, Jesus, Thes, why don’t you have him sign your tits?

“Gotcha.” Loki chewed on the end of the gold sharpie for a moment before jotting something down and slamming the book closed. He offered both the pen and the book to Thes. “Don’t die. I want you to read that after this whole mess is over, okay?”

“Will do,” Thes replied, taking the book and pen and pocketing them. I wasn’t even sure how they even fit into the pocket of his gym shorts, but since I was reasonably sure they were magical because they hadn’t torn apart when he’d shifted, I was going to go with it. Life was just easier that way.

“So, why are you down here, anyway?” Loki glanced at me as he spoke and snapped his fingers. The tendril of power extending from my arms shattered into scintillating shards of light, and I found myself falling. I hit the mud puddle beneath me with a splash that threw dirty water down the back of my shirt and plastered my lavender hair to my face. Awesome.

“We’re looking for Hel so she can open the door to Nidhogg.” Thes blabbed like the Blabby McBlabberton he was. “I know it seems nuts, but we want to stop him.”

“And you’re aware I’m on Nidhogg’s side, right?” Loki raised an eyebrow at Thes who didn’t even have the decency to look sheepish. I mean, come on, couldn’t he have tried to lie? No, instead he was spilling his guts to the most devious bad guy in the known universe. I mean, seriously? What the hell was between his ears, a potato? I wasn’t sure, but either way, I was this close to just punching him in the face.

“Yup.” Thes leaned in close to the god and patted him on the back like they were bros. “But I have a feeling we can work something out.”

“Is that so?” Loki replied, eyeing Thes in a way that reminded me of a cat toying with a mouse. “Why would you think that?”

“Because I have this!” Thes pulled a bag of black cat fireworks out of his pocket and held them out to the Nordic deity. As the god’s eyes widened, Thes leaned in closer and covered his mouth conspiratorially. “I got them illegally, don’t tell anyone.”

“I am quite fond of fireworks,” Loki said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and I’ll admit it, my mouth fell open. “For a second I thought you were gonna pull out a weapon and be all like ‘you’re the enemy of the gods’ at which point I’d have to smite you.” He shrugged.

“Dude, you’re Loki.” Thes practically danced with excitement. “You’re like
the
Norse god. Sure, some people remember Thor, but let’s be real, it was mostly because of the movie, and if we’re being totally honest with one another, Tom Hiddleston made that movie.” Thes pushed the fireworks into Loki’s hands. “I mean, can you even imagine what Avengers would have been like without Loki? Boring.”

“I like you,” Loki said, taking the fireworks and glancing at me as I pulled my proverbial jaw up off the floor. “Where’d you find him?”

“I wish I knew,” I said, wishing I could return the werewolf for a full refund. Clearly I’d gotten a defective model.

Thes began rummaging around in his endless gym shorts once more. This time, he pulled out a box of Sees chocolates.

“I also have these. I thought to myself, what are things I’d like to get if I was totally awesome.” Thes pulled the lid off the box to reveal a Starbucks gift card taped to the inner lid. “And I was like, I’d want chocolate and coffee.”

“Dude,” Loki replied, which, yes, was something I never thought I’d hear him say. The God of Mischief took his gifts and looked them over with smug satisfaction. I’ll be honest, I was a little excited too. What can I say, Thes’s rampant fanboyism was contagious. I mean, I’d been scared out of my gourd when I’d seen Loki, but Thes, well, he must have met a ton of gods to be acting like this. “You are officially the best mortal.”

Loki snapped his finger, and Thes was suddenly wearing a bright blue ribbon with the words “#1 mortal” stenciled across it.

“Sweet!” Thes replied, clapping Loki on the shoulder. “This is so cool!”

“So you want to visit my daughter?” Loki selected a chocolate and tossed it in his mouth.

“Yeah, that’s the game plan.” Thes turned a shade red. “I kinda wanna get her autograph too.”

Loki pushed the chocolate in his mouth into his cheek so he looked like a squirrel before responding. “I bet she’d like that. No one nice ever comes to see her.” He glanced at me. “You behave.”

“What?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at the god. Admittedly, part of me wondered if the god had forgotten what side he was on. I didn’t quite think so, but why else would he help us? It was suspicious to say the least.

“My daughter is very sensitive, so be nice to her.” He jerked a thumb at Thes. “I trust him, but I don’t trust you half as far as I can throw you. I mean, okay, I’m a god so I can fling you across the nine worlds, but you know what I mean.” He vanished and appeared in front of me. “If you make my daughter cry, I will
end
you.” Literal flames leapt from his eyes as he spoke. I believed him. Hell, I believed him so much, I thought I might just die on the spot from thinking about doing something to Hel.

“Um, okay,” I said, trying to take a step backward, but before I could create an appropriate amount of space between us, Loki had wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. It was weird because it was like being pressed against a cage of tigers.

“Now, click your heels together.” Loki demonstrated while urging me to follow suit. Even though I felt ridiculous, I did as he asked. Nothing happened.

“Um…” I said, but before I could say anything else. Loki started laughed. Great guffaws that reverberated in my ears like bongo drums hit me so hard the world went topsy turvy. I tried to reach out and grab onto the god for stability, but my hands passed through him like he was made of mist.

“Yeah, this was a trick.” Loki shrugged and took a step backward. “Ninja Vanish!” A cloud of black smoke exploded from the ground at his feet. It coiled upward, whipping out toward me and smacking me across the face. My head snapped backward, and I crashed to the muddy ground.

Thes leapt forward toward me, but before he’d made it three inches, a giant scaly hand reached from the smoke and grabbed him around the ankle, jerking him to a stop with enough force for the bone in his leg to snap with an audible crack. Then it flung him into the horizon where he disappeared into a very tiny pinprick. Great.

I
crawled backward
on my hands, trying to put some distance between myself and the writhing smoke monster, but wound up doing little more than covering myself in sludge. It came at me like this was a bad episode of Lost, and before I knew it, the thing was looming over me with all the kindness of a sentient tornado.

“Why do you seek me?” it asked in the voice of a twenty something business woman who would be endlessly concerned with subsection C, paragraph three, clause thirteen. “Usually mortals try to get away from me, but these are interesting times.” The smoke seemed to congeal into a vaguely human form, which squatted down beside me and solidified into the form of a woman. Well, half of a woman. The other half remained shrouded in thick, black smoke.

The part I could see was beautiful, all pouty red lips and raven hair. She smiled disarmingly, and I felt disarmed despite my heart pounding like a drum corps in my chest. It really seemed like she meant me no harm, but if that was the case, she had a funny way of showing it. Then again, I wasn’t dead, so that had to count for something, right?

“Hel?” I asked because who else could it be? I mean, we were on our way to see her, and if we hadn’t bumped into Loki, we’d have no doubt run into her, eventually. No, it stood to reason this was the dark goddess. Besides, half of her was supposed to be hideous, so covering half her body in smoke made a certain kind of sense.

“That’s me,” she replied, drumming the crimson nails of her hand on the pale white flesh of her exposed knee. She wasn’t clothed per se, rather the smoke wrapped around her in a way that almost seemed elegant, which yes, makes no sense, I know. “Now then, why don’t you answer my question?”

“Um, I was hoping to find my way to Nidhogg.” I let out a sigh. “But your dear old dad just came and threw my friend into the distance.” I pointed. I wasn’t sure where Thes had gone, but I sort of hoped he hadn’t hit the ground. I had no idea what falling off Heaven felt like, but I was willing to bet that when he hit the ground this time, it would be a bit more than a distant second.

“Yeah, Dad’s kind of a dick.” Her eyes flashed with unspent rage. She began twirling her smoky hand, and as she did, a thin tendril of mist began to spin around it in a way that sort of made me think of someone making cotton candy. “Why do you seek Nidhogg? You cannot stop him.” She shook her head. “It is impossible.” Hel flicked her wrist and sent a tendril of smoke shooting off into the distance.

“Nothing’s impossible.” I tried to smile at her, but the look she gave me sent a surge of fear swelling in my gut. It was a look that said “no, this actually is impossible.”

Still, I’d killed things that were impossible to kill before, and it wasn’t like I had a choice, anyway. Ragnarok was coming whether we ran away and hid or not. The only way to stop this was to keep Nidhogg from getting free to wreak havoc across the nine worlds. For some stupidly silly reason, that task had fallen to me, and even though I wasn’t the most qualified person for it. I mean, “Hello, what the hell were Goku and Superman doing right about now?” I was going to give it the good old college try, so maybe someday I could actually go to college.

“It is interesting to me that you think that,” Hel replied, and her words felt considered. Did she believe I could do it? I almost thought so, but at the same time, she’d likely seen many heroes fall. Sigh.

Hel stood and stretched. Muscles rippled beneath her flesh in a way that made me think her body was built in a way completely unlike how mine was because no human body had muscles like that. Then again, she was a goddess, so yeah. Still, it was creepy as heck.

There was a thunderclap overhead, and as Hel turned toward it, Thes came flying out of the horizon atop a bolt of lightning. His smoking body slammed into the ground beside me in a shower of sparks. He bounced once, twice, three times, while throwing up a wave of mud that covered me and the goddess alike.

Steam rose off of him as he lay there, one hand clutching his autograph book, the other splayed out at an unnatural angle. It looked like it was broken from the impact, but it didn’t really matter. Already bits of bone writhed beneath his flesh, pulling itself back together way faster than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could ever hope to.

“Please tell me you didn’t ask Thor for an autograph?” I asked, half-glad that he seemed to be relatively okay and slightly irked that while I’d been here worried about him, he’d gotten another frigging signature. I mean, come on man. Priorities.

I wiped the mud off my face and glared at him as he got to his feet and shook himself like a great dog, thereby splattering Hel and me with more muddy water. Awesome.

Part of me was surprised he was still alive, but I was mostly just glad to have him back, even if I wanted to give him a good kick for spraying me with mud. Twice. What can I say, I liked having the big lug around. Yep, totally a character flaw. When this was over, I’d have to get my head checked.

“I got it,” he wheezed. Bits of hair and skin flecked off his body as waved the book at me. I was glad he was in wolf form because otherwise he’d be dead. “I just shouldn’t have asked for him to help me get back here. Let me say this. You do not want to ride the lightning.”

“You’re aware that song is about getting executed via electric chair, right?” Hel asked, looking at him like he was a particularly interesting species of bug.

“Yeah, Thor told me,” Thes replied, turning to look at her for the first time. As he made eye contact with the dark goddess, his eyes got as big as saucers. “You’re Hel!” he squealed in a high-pitched voice that should never come out of a werewolf, a male, nor any combination thereof. The autograph book extended outward in a flash. “Will you sign this, please?”

“Dude, this is getting old,” I said, rolling my eyes at the werewolf. It really was, but before I could admonish him further, I decided to just let him have his fun. Besides, I was a little curious as to how Thor signed his autograph. Was it like a big impression of his hammer, Mjolnir?

As I had that thought, something curious struck me. Jormungand was dead, so shouldn’t Thor be dead too? I’d even seen Mjolnir before, and from what my dad had told me, it’d been left in that demon world. If Thes had just met Thor, what the heck was going on?

A bad feeling skipped down my back as I turned back toward Thes, intent on asking him just that, but before I could Hel stepped toward him, a gentle smile on her lips.

“I don’t do that,” Hel said, shaking her head. “You’ll just sell it on eBay.”

Thes’s face fell into the mud and wallowed there. “But, I won’t.”

“That’s what the last guy said, and he was a filthy liar.” She sniffed the air. “And you’re already filthy.” Hel turned away from him and sighed at me. “Anyway, I will take you to the dragon, but I warn you—killing him is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Thes said, shoving his autograph book back in his pocket like an angry, sullen toddler. I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

“That’s what she said,” Hel replied, smirking as she drew one perfect finger through the air before us in a zig zag motion. As she did, the air between us tore apart, revealing a slash the color of radioactive lime green Jell-O. “Good luck.”

She vanished, leaving us standing before the tear in space and time. I had half a second to wonder what would happen next when an eye the size of Godzilla peeked out from the veil and stared into my soul.

Terror clutched my spine with icy fingers as every defense mechanism in my body went absolutely haywire. This was Nidhogg all right, and compared to him I was nothing. I knew it in the core of my being and that scared me in a way I hadn’t thought possible.

There was no way I could even touch him. The power radiating off of him was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Even Connor wasn’t on this level. Hell, I’d fought dragons and gods before and this… this made Loki and Hel seem like a couple preschoolers. No, Nidhogg was something… primordial. He was chaos, pure and simple, the random throw of dice that came up snake eyes and caused life to form in a primordial soup.

His hunger, rage, and pain washed over me, and as it did, I fell to my knees in the mud. My stomach clenched and my throat closed, trapping the scream I’d tried to unleash in my lungs. I had to get away, had to escape before it was too late. I scrambled to my feet and turned to see Thes watching the dragon curiously.

He marched past me and stared deep into the eye, and a flicker of recognition went through the dragon. They knew each other, but how?

“Remember me?” Thes asked before kicking the dragon square in the eye. The blow caused a shriek unlike anything I’d ever heard before. The sound broke me from my trance, and as I watched the writhing, squirming creature, I realized it had used a spell to trick me. It wasn’t anything special.

Okay, yeah it was a big lizard, but it was just a big lizard. I could do this. No, we could do this. We could win.

I stood slowly, trying to ignore the sweat pouring from my skin. It had been using magic to scare me. The jerk. I wasn’t sure why Thes seemed unaffected, but he did, and I was incredibly glad for it.

“Come on, Lillim,” Thes said before leaping through the portal after the dragon. I sighed, knowing how stupid this was. Unfortunately, I was going anyway because I was really, really dumb.

As Thes’s body disappeared in a flash of green light, I pulled my twin swords from their sheathes and sucked in a breath that tasted like swamp gas and chili dogs which was an altogether weird combination. Magic thrummed across the edge of the blades, covering me in a dancing spray of blue and red light.

“Are you ready for this?” I asked the swords. They throbbed, humming with power and one single word reverberated through my brain as though spoken in unison.

“Yes!”

I nodded and leapt through the portal to kill a dragon.