Read Wardbreaker: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles) for Free Online Page A

sure what the vampires saw when they met my gaze, but let’s be real here, a vampire had just looked into my eyes and gotten scared. How could I not shiver at that?
    “I am Lillim Callina, Hyas Tyee of the Dioscuri.” I reached up, straightening my sweatshirt. “Hyas Tyee is our highest rank, in case you wondered.”
    “Dioscuri…” the one next to me said, rolling the word over in his mouth. He pulled off his glasses, revealing his blood-colored eyes and looked at me like I was some sort of mythological creature. “We’ve heard of you… but our creator said you were all wiped out a few years ago.”
    “Well, your creator lied to you.” I turned back toward Luc, ignoring the two vampires. “Get back in the car, Luc. Let’s get out of here. The Owls have a chateau a few cities from here. Let’s pay them a visit. If there’s a bunch of mooks like this,” I jerked my thumb at Dimitri and his counterparts, “doing things like this in broad daylight where they could get discovered by the humans, they will definitely put a stop to it.”
    Luc gave me a strange smile before opening his door, presumably to get back inside, when Dimitri put his fist through the hood and tore something important looking free in a shriek of tortured steel. Green fluid spurted into the air as he dropped the hunk of twisted metal to the ground with a thud.
    “No one’s going anywhere. We have a right to be here. We have an agreement with the Owls. We keep the wolves, the spooks, and the others out of here, and they let us do what we want.” He grinned at me, baring his fangs. “If you expect them to help you, you’re wrong.”
    I believed him because vampires couldn’t flat out lie. They could twist the truth like hell, and for all I knew, what he said wasn’t true, but this guy believed it was. Still, what he’d said made no sense. Why would the Owls, one of the most powerful vampire castes, align themselves with these scrubs?
    “Is that so?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “I find it incredibly hard to believe the Owls would make a deal with you or your creator. Most of them would find you less valuable than the gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe.” I looked at him, trying to suck understanding from his eyes and failing. Mostly because there was nothing there. Clearly, intelligence was a mostly foreign concept. “Unless your creator is a member of the Owls?”
    “That’s none of your damned business, Dioscuri. Now back the hell off,” Dimitri snapped before turning his attention back to Luc and ignoring me like I didn’t even matter. It was irksome to say the least. I was a Hyas Tyee of the Dioscuri dammit. Did he know how hard it was to climb to that rank? And he was ignoring me? The jerk would pay for that.
    “Are you seriously ignoring me?” I asked, and the next thing I knew, a hand was on my shoulder, squeezing hard enough for it to hurt, but not hard enough to break anything.
    “I say we find out what happens when we drink a Dioscuri. Remember when we caught that werewolf? That was intense…” the vampire gripping my shoulder trailed off, savoring the memory.
    “You die when you drink from a Dioscuri,” I replied, spinning as fast as my magic-fueled muscles would let me. I grabbed the vampire by the back of his shaved head and slammed him face first into the van hard enough to dent the metal. “I mean it isn’t instant or anything. See you drink my blood. I get pissed off and tear your undead heart from your chest and set it on fire.” I shrugged as I let the vampire’s stunned body slump to the floor. “That kind of thing. It’s more cause and effect, I’ll admit.”
    The rest of them were upon me in a heartbeat, but I’d sort of expected it after smashing one into the vehicle. I pulled Set from its sheath in one smooth motion and drove it straight through the heart of the closest vampire. He collapsed onto his knees gripping the weapon as it flared with red light. The smell of electrified