Hardboiled: Not Your Average Detective Story (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 5) (11 page)

“Sorry for throwing your beta into the pool,” I replied, feeling my own cheeks start to burn. I still wasn’t quite sure why I had done that. I mean, I
knew
why. I’d been jealous. There, I said it. But I didn’t know why I’d been jealous… at least not why I’d been
that
jealous.

“She’s not my beta.” He shook his head. “She’s my sister.”

I sighed. “So let me get this straight. You let your friend date your sister? That’s like a huge no, no. And let me guess, you neglected to tell him you were both shifters?”

“Uh… duh?” he said. “Us city wolves don’t exactly like people knowing what we are. That’s all sorts of bad.” He shrugged. “I tried to warn my sister, tried to tell her it was a horrible idea, but well, Connor’s rather persuasive when he wants to be.”

“Still.” I sighed and shut my mouth. I could see his point. I wasn’t exactly fond of the idea that people thought I was a freak either. I mean even among the other Dioscuri, I was something of an outcast… but then again, I wasn’t going around dating normal people either.

“Anyway, I shouldn’t have attacked you,” he said, shaking his head. “I just got scared because my mom always tells us stories about the big bad Dioscuri who…” He stopped talking then, and I didn’t ask him to finish because I was pretty sure the rest of his story probably went “killed my family member.”

How many monsters had I killed that were just like Thes? Ones that were in the wrong place at the wrong time? Hell, I knew Caleb had accidently beaten up a werewolf who had been trying to stop a vampire kidnapper. Why? Because when he showed up and surveyed the scene, it looked like the werewolf was accosting an innocent couple.

“It was my fault,” I said. “Since I broke my swords, I’ve been feeling all sorts of weird.”

“That may be, but you have a reputation,” he said, looking away from me and staring at his shoes. “My Alpha says you’re one of the toughest Dioscuri, and well, he isn’t afraid of anyone.”

“Is that so?” I said, feeling my cheeks flushed. Part of me hated that I ‘had a reputation’ as it were. The other part of me was secretly happy. It made it easier to deal with monsters without actually getting beat up. I mean, we’ve all heard the stories where the expert boxer gets knocked out in a bar fight by some scrawny guy in nerd glasses. Sometimes being a demon hunter was like that, only a billion times more dangerous.

“Yeah.” Thes shifted his gaze so he was staring off into the distance, which was a little silly because it was just stone walls for miles and miles. “So when you showed up… I got scared because my Alpha left me in charge while he was gone. Can you imagine how bad it would be if something happened while I was in charge? I could get kicked out of my pack.”

“Who is your Alpha?” I asked, glancing at him as thoughts played across his face in the dancing firelight of the torches set into the walls every few meters. “Maybe I could put in a good word?”

He glanced at me. “I don’t want to tell you,” he replied with a shrug. “You’ll get a big head.”

“Okay then,” I replied, smirking. “So when Custody said she was going to get the Alpha, was that why you told her not to?”

“Yes,” Thes replied. He was about to say more but evidently thought better of it because he shut his mouth and said nothing.

“Would that be so bad?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. Yes, it would have been bad. Even if his Alpha had come over, and we’d just talked, Thes would have lost face in front of everyone. I glanced up at Thes as he moved beside me, no longer the angry football player. His shoulders were slumped as we moved through the endless maze, thoughts playing through his dark eyes.

Even if we got back, Thes was still going to be in a world of trouble. As the one left in charge, he was supposed to protect his people, and who knows what had happened after the magician had zapped us into this place? For all I knew, we were going to return home amid a field of corpses.

Then again, we had to get back for that to matter. I looked around as we passed the zillionth wall sconce. A soft sigh escaped me. Escape seemed unlikely.

“How long do you suppose Connor has been unconscious?” Thes asked, interrupting my thoughts as he stopped and leaned the still unmoving Connor against the wall. He slumped there boneless, chest rising and falling in quick breaths, eyes flitting back and forth beneath his eyelids.

“Too long for it to be good,” I said. I’d been trying to ignore it for a while now, but now that Thes had said it, the unconsciousness became harder to dismiss. Humans and magic didn’t exactly mix well, and I had no way of knowing what the magic eating magician had done to Connor. I was less worried about the others left behind because, in the real world, magic would fade away pretty quickly, but here, inside whatever magical realm this was, I had my doubts.

“I’d say we should go get help, but I don’t know where to go,” Thes said, angling his head toward the pink taffy stars. He sniffed, sucking in a deep lungful of air. “I can’t even smell anything, except… well…”

“Except what?” I asked, suddenly on edge because I didn’t sense anything. It was like someone had stuffed cotton in all of my magical senses.

“There’s a faint musk in the air that reminds me of this one time when I was in Mexico for the running of the bulls,” he replied, shaking his head, eyes distant as the memory played in his eyes.

“So you smell a bull?” I asked, glancing around the maze. “We’re trapped in a goddamn maze and you smell a bull? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged at me like he had no idea why that was important.

“Get Connor and let’s get out of here right now,” I barked, swallowing the fear that was uncoiling inside my stomach like a huge snake.

“We don’t know where we’re going, Lillim,” Thes said, glancing from me to Connor and back again. “Let’s just take a break and regroup.”

“Do you know who Polyphemus is?” I asked, walking past him and grabbing Connor by one arm. I huffed, pulling him onto my shoulders and wobbling forward.

“Um… no?” Thes replied as I hobbled away, Connor’s body draped over my shoulder. For a moment, I was worried he wasn’t going to follow me. Then I heard the crunching of his feet on the gravel that lined the floors of the maze.

“He’s from Greek mythology,” I replied. “Do you know what else is from Greek mythology, smells like a bull, and lives in a maze?”

“Um, can you give me a hint?” Thes asked, stepping up next to me, worry crossing his face. But it wasn’t the right kind of worry. It was the ‘I don’t understand, but I can tell you are upset’ worry, not the ‘oh I get it and am appropriately alarmed’ worry that it should have been.

I was still barely forming the word in my mouth when a ginormous golden axe smashed into the wall next to Thes’ face and sank at least six inches into the blue stone. I swung my head toward the direction it had come from as the giant bull-headed creature began kicking up dirt with one foot. Its head was angled toward us so that its wickedly long black horns glinted in the pink starlight like obsidian javelins.

“M-minotaur!” Thes cried, eyes darting from the axe to the creature then to me in a swivel that reminded me of a bobble head. Even from here, the minotaur looked immense, easily several hundred pounds of muscle. Its skin gleamed like polished sapphire, the firelight cascading off of it in scintillating waves.

I dropped Connor unceremoniously to the ground as the creature snorted, actual steam spurting from its nostrils and curled its hands into fists. I reached for the twin blades of Shirajirashii, only they weren’t there. Great. Just great. How was I going to stop a minotaur with bracelets?

“Okay, Thes,” I said, raising my fists in the most menacing way possible. “I hope you have a great trick up your sleeve.

“Yeah,” Thes said and wrenched the axe free of the wall. It hit the ground with a thunk, and as Thes hefted it in his hands, arm muscles bunching, the creature charged. “It’s called, ‘hit it in the face with a giant axe.’”

Thankfully, the minotaur was slow. I dodged to the side with minimal effort as Thes brought the huge gilded battle axe around in an upward arc. The blade struck the oncoming creature with a sound that reminded me of nails on a chalkboard and shattered into a billion shards of crystalline bronze.

Thes’ follow through carried the ragged edge of the broken weapon upward. The beast’s shoulder slammed into him, catching him full in the stomach and launching him backward. He skidded across the ground like a rock on a flat lake, the busted axe smacking into the wall next to my head with a clang that rang in my ears like a gong before falling to the floor with a strange finality. “What’s your next trick?” it seemed to say.

The minotaur whirled, and I barely managed to throw myself out of the way as its giant horns cleaved gouts in the blue stone behind where I’d been standing. It narrowed its huge golden eyes at me and stamped its hoof, throwing up a cloud of blue dust. Was it about to charge again? That wouldn’t be good at all. I threw a glance over my shoulder to see Thes lying in an unmoving heap several feet away.

“Uh… good bull,” I said, edging to the side so that if it did charge it wouldn’t trample Thes or Connor and was immediately annoyed because there was virtually no space between us. It sort of smirked then, huge flat teeth twisting into a wide grin as it raised one hand in the air between us and made a sweeping gesture.

“Your move, Lillim,” it said in a metallic, gravelly voice that echoed out of its gullet like it was a huge cavern.

“How do you know my name?” I asked, swallowing my fear as I stepped around the creature so that my back was to the empty pathway behind me. Now if it charged it would head away from the others. There was, of course, the chance that something else would come from behind. Still, I was pretty sure the minotaur killed everything that entered its maze. That had to be good for something, right?

“Why wouldn’t I know your name?” it asked with a shrug. “You two have been talking for how long now? You think I haven’t heard every word within the labyrinth?” It laughed, and it was a horrible sound that rippled over my flesh and left gooseflesh in its wake.

“You’ve been spying on us?” I asked, suddenly annoyed with the creature. “You couldn’t have attacked us an hour ago? You know, before I had blisters the size of Texas on my feet?”

It shrugged again before tilting its head toward me in a gesture that clearly said, ‘your move.’ It began pawing at the ground with its hoof, throwing up clouds of blue dirt as I took a step back and readied myself for its charge.

“Toro!” I called out, shaking my hands like I had a make believe cape. The minotaur burst forward, but before it had taken more than a couple steps, something dark and furry leapt on its back and grabbed the bull by the horns. There was a horrible shattering sound, like stone sloughing off a mountain as the minotaur’s head was jerked backward.

The minotaur’s feet went out from under it, and it crashed to the ground as the werewolf leapt from the bull’s back. The wolf’s feet hit the wall, and it bounced off of it, using the blue stone as a springboard to launch itself onto the minotaur’s chest. It drove a pair of razor-sharp claws deep into the creature’s sapphire throat. It tore its claws outward in a blue spray that sent shards of sapphire flesh cascading against the stone with a sound like a million tiny wineglasses shattering. Blood gushed from the wound as the werewolf clamped its huge jaws onto the thrashing minotaur’s throat.

“Thes?” I asked, my eyes opening wide in shock as the werewolf tore away a mouthful of gore and howled, sapphire ichor dripping down its fur. The minotaur’s movements had slowed as blue fluid spilled out of its ruined throat and pooled into a steaming puddle around it.

The werewolf made a thumbs down gesture at the minotaur with one huge black claw.

“See, he wasn’t so tough,” Thes growled in a voice that was his, but deeper and hungrier sounding. The minotaur raised one hand, grabbing Thes around the leg before its huge fingers slipped off Thes’ fur and hit the ground with a thud.

That thud echoed up into the air, so much louder than it should have been as the ground beneath the creature opened up. A huge whirlwind exploded from the cavern swallowing the minotaur. Thes leapt backward, crashing into the ground beside me as the maze around us melted into the giant, sucking black hole.

Chapter 11

We fell for so long that it reminded me of the time the Blue Prince had flung me from the top of a building. When we’d finally struck the spongy pink ground below, we sort of bounced a couple times before the pink stone solidified. It had felt a little weird, less like a trampoline and more like what I’d imagined Jell-O would feel like.

It was a miracle we weren’t dead, but as I stared around the ominous pink cavern, I wasn’t so sure that was positive. It was filled with luminescent cilia that reminded me of brightly lit sea anemones. Their writhing tentacles cast dancing, ominous shadows across the walls. Every surface oozed with slick fluid that reminded me of the insides of some giant creature. The air itself was warm and wet. It gusted down the tunnel in regular bursts that set my nerves on edge.

“Well, at least the fall didn’t kill us,” Thes said, brushing himself off. He was only partially clothed, his jersey and jeans had ripped at the seams when he’d transformed. He’d since pulled his shirt off and wrapped it around his waist to shield his lower body. Still, that left his naked chest with all its touchable muscles in full view… and oh my god, I was a horrible girlfriend.

I turned away from him, a flush rising on my cheeks as I shook my head, biting my lip. I really needed to stop being around really hot half-naked men, or I was going to get some kind of complex. Besides, what would Caleb think? It wasn’t like I would be pleased if he was in a similar situation.

There was a huff of effort behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Connor slumped over Thes’ huge, shoulder. His muscles strained as he took a wobbly step forward and steadied himself on the uneven ground.

I swallowed a particularly naughty thought and averted my eyes as he stepped up beside me, grinning. “See something you like, Dioscuri?” he asked, voice low and, well, wolfish.