Mind Games: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 6) (8 page)

Without realizing what I was doing, I had walked off of campus. I was on one of the large main streets leading toward the center of town. How was that possible? I’d barely made the decision to do anything and suddenly I found myself miles away from my high school. How had I crossed so much distance so quickly?

I spun in a slow circle, my heart hammering in my chest as I realized I had no idea where I was. Cars raced by on the street, not paying much attention to me. The most generic houses I’ve ever seen were plastered along either side of the road. It looked like the same three houses built over and over. It was either the world’s most boring housing tract or whoever was manufacturing my dream world couldn’t be bothered for more than three unique building designs. Sadly, in this particular case, I was inclined to believe the first reason.

“This isn’t good,” I muttered to myself. I had been waiting for my mother. Now I was lost and had no idea how to get back to her. I spun on my feet, fear rampaging through me as I headed back down the other way, moving as quickly as I could.

Houses flew by me as I ran in the opposite direction I had come, but after a few minutes, I still hadn’t reached the school. Hell, I didn’t even see it. Ticky tacky houses stretched out in every direction and tears of frustration, fear, and failure tugged at my eyes. What was I going to do?

No, I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t just some helpless crazy girl. I was Lillim Callina, damn it. Even if I wasn’t a real Dragonslayer, even if I was just a little girl with a broken mind, I was not going to cry over being lost. I just wasn’t. At least, not yet.

“Last night I had a dream.” The sound of the substitute’s voice shook me to my core, and I whirled around to see him standing there beside a parked car the color of freshly spilled blood. He smirked at me and held his hands out toward me. “It was dark as night, so black, not even the stars shined.” He took a step toward me, and as he moved darkness seemed to wrap around his pale flesh, so it was like he wore a suit of shadow and ink.

“Who are you?” I asked, taking an unconscious step backward. Some part of me knew I shouldn’t be afraid, knew that, somehow, this person was a friend, an ally, but looking at him wrapped in the writhing night, I couldn’t help the fear settling over me like a thick blanket.

“I cannot say. When I speak my name, he hears me and comes to intervene. You must remember on your own.” He shook his head. “Only then can I properly help you. Even now, he is drawing out my essence, using it to feed his own power.” He let out an explosion of breath. “I won’t be able to hold him back for much longer, Lillim. Even I have my limits.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, edging backward again. My foot came off the edge of the curb, and I fell. I hit the road hard on my butt, and as pain shot through my tailbone, a screech of tires whistled through my ears.

I swung my head toward the sound to see a tan station wagon barreling toward me in a squeal of burning rubber. Smoke poured from the tires, but it wouldn’t matter. The vehicle was moving way too fast to stop itself from turning me into roadkill. I tried to get up, tried to get out of the way, but my limbs felt like lead, and my reactions were as slow as molasses.

The milk white man leapt in front of the car, throwing his shoulder down and out as the station wagon struck him. It broke, actually bent in his shape as darkness exploded out of him, engulfing the vehicle in a heartbeat and flinging it end over end into the car behind it. They collided in a shriek of tortured steel before both vanished into wisps of pale gray smoke.

The man spun toward me, golden blood dripping from his lips as he staggered a step. His entire side looked punched in, reminding me of a crumpled tin can. “Lillim,” he sputtered, lips spraying golden spittle from his mouth as he spoke. “You must remember the truth.”

“And what’s the truth?” I called as he faded before my eyes, becoming almost completely transparent before I even finished speaking.

“That you are Dioscu—” He disappeared, leaving me sitting there in the empty street like an idiot.

I wasn’t sure how long I remained there, completely immobile, but it must have been awhile because by the time I got to my feet it was nighttime. It was a little weird because no one had even stopped to see if I or the people in the cars were okay. I looked back toward the scene of the accident. The cars were gone, just gone.

Had I somehow imagined the whole thing? No, that was impossible. Right? I swallowed, my wrists aching as I got myself back onto the sidewalk. Cars continued racing by, completely oblivious to my existence. The streetlight overhead cast some light on the street, but it was still dark enough for a twinge of fear rise up in my gut and threaten to strangle me.

“What am I going to do?” I asked no one in particular as my mom’s green Honda pulled up in front of me and slid to a stop.

“Lillim! What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of the night?!” my father called through the passenger window. Both my parents were seated inside the car looking none too pleased. “We’ve been looking for you for hours!”

“You have?” I asked, not sure how that was possible. I’d just left school minutes ago, but then again, it was nighttime. Had I dazed the whole time and imagined everything? Surely, I had because there were no broken cars. Still, how could I have lost so many hours without remembering?

“Yes!” my mother snapped, the anger in her voice making me shiver. “We were supposed to have a nice night, but instead.” She gripped the steering wheel so tightly, her knuckles were nearly white. “Instead, we’ve spent the entire night out here driving around looking for you.”

My father exited the car before I could say a word and grabbed me by the arm. Not hard per se, but enough to show me he was angry, though he did a better job of hiding it than my mother did. “Get in the car,” he said in a voice so low it made my knees weak.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I was pushed into the back seat.

“You’re sorry?” my mother asked incredulously. “You wander off from school without a word…” She paused, taking a moment to calm herself, and I wondered if she was counting in her head because she shut her eyes and her lips moved, but no sound came out. She opened her eyes and turned in her seat to look at me. The anguish stretched across her face nearly broke my heart. I’d hurt her, but how could I do that if she wasn’t real? “Lillim, I know we haven’t brought it up, but you can’t just wander off. It’s not safe. You could get hurt.”

I looked down at my hands cradled in my lap. “I didn’t mean to wander off,” I said, swallowing back the dirty, traitorous tears threatening to spill out of my eyes and run down my cheeks like a river. “I was waiting for you, and the next thing I knew, I was here.” I gestured lamely outside.

“You wandered off without realizing it?” my father asked, concern evident in his features.

“Yes,” I squeaked, but I wasn’t sure how audible it was.

“I knew this was too soon,” my father said, turning to look at my mother. “I said this might happen.”

Instead of replying, my mother stared straight at me for so long, the silence in the car nearly became a living, breathing thing. It made me feel like the worst person in the world, not just for ruining everything, but disappointing them too.

“Maybe we should go see Dr. Emile tomorrow,” she said, turning back around and putting the car into gear before pulling away from the curb.

“Do you have the sick time for that?” I asked, suddenly feeling horrible because I was going to make her miss work again. I still wasn’t quite sure what she did for a living, but even still, she’d been back, what, a couple days? What kind of daughter does that? Not a good one, that’s for sure.

“No, but I’ll figure something out,” my mother replied, and my dad put his hand on her knee.

“I’ll take her,” he said, glancing at me. “I’ll just go in afterward.”

“Will that be okay?” my mother asked. “Don’t you have that big presentation every Wednesday?”

“I’ll make do,” he replied with a shrug. “Some things are more important than work.” And with those words, he made me feel lower than slime for thinking he wasn’t real. How could he not be after all? They had found me sitting in the street all by myself in a place I didn’t remember walking to. Sure, there had been the milk white man and the car accident, but where were the cars? As much as I wished it wasn’t true, there wasn’t any evidence that it wasn’t just a hallucination.

No, I needed to try way harder to ignore the delusions encroaching on my reality. It was the only way. If I didn’t, well, I didn’t want to think about that.

Chapter 10

“Lillim, are you hungry?” my mom asked. She stood in my doorway with a plate in one hand. She’d already changed for bed and was wearing an oversized white t-shirt with a kitten on it. The shirt hung down to mid-thigh, nearly concealing the pair of blue shorts beneath.

“No,” I replied, not even bothering to get up from my bed. I looked back at the ceiling, staring at the glow in the dark stars stuck up there. They weren’t glowing because the light was on, but that didn’t matter. I was still too embarrassed about getting myself lost all night. I’d caused everyone to miss dinner, which was sad because even though it was just going to be us sitting at home making pizza, I was upset I’d missed it.

Real or not, I’d never actually done something like that with my parents, or at least, I had no memory of the event if it had occurred. Nearly all of my memories centered on training to fight monsters, fighting monsters, and killing said monsters. It would be a lie to say I missed all the horror and blood, but at the same time, it had been
my
life. If someone had stolen that from me, I wanted it back, darkness and all.

“Are you sure?” she asked, sidling into my room uninvited and sitting down next to me on the bed, but the mattress was so firm, I barely even felt it.

“Yes,” I replied, looking away from her even though it was a bratty thing to do.

“Even if it is for chocolate peanut butter cookies?” she asked, setting the white plate down on the bed next to my head.

I glanced at her, taking in her devious smirk, before fixing my eyes upon the plate. Two cookies sat upon it, all full of melted chocolate goodness. Just the sight of them was enough to make my stomach rumble audibly.

“You’re the devil,” I said, reaching out and snagging a cookie. “How dare you force me to eat cookies?”

She patted my thigh with her hand. “That’s my job.” And with those words, she kissed me on the forehead. “I love you, Lillim. Never forget that.” She stood and walked toward the door, but when she reached it, she turned and looked at me. “Don’t feel bad about what happened. It’s not your fault.”

Before I could respond, she vanished into the hallway, and I was left staring at the spot she’d just occupied. I bit absently into the cookie but didn’t even taste it. I knew my mother loved me. Even the version of my mother from my past had sacrificed herself to save me, had raised me even though I had taken the place of her only child.

And even though I knew something was off, I felt like I should try a little harder. But that was crazy, right? The white man had said I was being possessed by Jormungand. If I was really trapped in my own head with a being named Jormungand using my body like a skin suit, I should want to escape. I should be trying harder, only if I did that, it’d make this version of my mom feel bad. And while I was perfectly happy to upset delusions, I wasn’t ready to leap off the cliff into the void of that certainty quite yet.

For all I knew, everything about Jormungand was a hallucination. Was I really willing to give up my mom, my life here to believe everything was fake? What would that get me other than locked back up at Mercer & Mercer, hoping for the days where my parents came to play Scrabble so we could all pretend I wasn’t broken and everything was perfectly normal?

I sighed, letting out a breath and staring at the ceiling with its non-glowing stars. “I’m not sure why I care,” I whispered to myself. Only I did know. I
wanted
a relationship with my mother, a real one that wasn’t tainted with blood, fighting, and death. It was making this whole scenario hard to deal with. Which, I supposed, was the whole point.

“Well played, Jormungand,” I said to the stars, but they didn’t respond even though I half expected them to do so. Clearly, I was insane. Now, I just needed to figure out who Jormungand was, and why he wanted my body.

I’d been about to ignore the name completely, but even the redheaded guy from my dream had called the person possessing me Jormungand. It stood to reason that’s who it was. Only that was impossible. Jormungand was the world serpent from Norse mythology. The idea that he would possess me of all people was, quite frankly, ludicrous.

Still, maybe it was true? Maybe I was possessed by a giant snake god. If that was the case, how the hell was I going to win? I mean, seriously? Was I really so insane as to think I could match wills with a god?

And yet, I wondered about that. Surely there had to be a way to escape or overpower him or something. Why else would Jormungand have invented such an elaborate fiction to keep me down? No, he’d have just crushed my mind and been done with it. That meant I could win, I just needed to figure out how.

I gritted my teeth together as another thought burbled up from the black recesses of my brain. Did I really want to win? Let’s just say, hypothetically, that I was trapped in Jormungand’s version of the matrix. Did I really want to find the red pill? What would I be going back to if I escaped? A life of fighting? A life where my mother was dead? Staying here would be so easy, even if it wasn’t real, it was damned close enough. You know, assuming I could figure out the time slippage problem.

No. I shook the thought away. If I was being controlled by a giant snake god, he would eventually tire of me. If that happened, I’d be as good as dead.

I needed to get away. Now the only question was how? I ran through my brain trying to think of how Jormungand was defeated in mythology, but sadly, the only thing I kept coming back to was Thor and Mjolnir. During Ragnarok, the two were destined to fight and kill one another. I was reasonably sure I wasn’t Thor nor did I have his legendary hammer, Mjolnir. That left me stuck at square one. Damn.