Free Hardboiled: Not Your Average Detective Story (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 5) by J.A. Cipriano Page A

thinking. I reached out with my hand, focused my power around me like a rope and flung it at Connor. I grabbed at him with invisible force, jerking his floppy, unconscious body toward me in a surge of will that left little spots of color dancing in my vision.
    The moment my hand grabbed onto his arm, I spun my body and drove my other hand outward, smashing it into the wall of the building. There was a shriek of stone as I slid along the face of the building, gouging into it with all the strength my magic-fueled muscles could muster. My shoulder screamed in pain as we slowed, Connor’s body swinging below me like a macabre pendulum.
    A moment later, I kicked off the wall and we crashed to the cement below. I stared up at the grinning face of the cyclops as he clapped his hands together like an annoying five-year-old. Evidently, I’d amused him. Swell.
    “That was pretty cool,” Lang’s octopus voice said from behind me, and I whirled to see him standing there in the rain, shirt still unbuttoned and plastered to his skin. “I’d heard you were good, but I never imagined…”
    “Yeah, well, wait until I get really angry,” I said, trying to block Connor’s body from view with my own.
    “Then what?” Lang asked moments before the cyclops slammed into the ground between us, landing so hard he shattered the concrete. Cracks whipped outward along the walkway as he took a huge, looming step toward me, his hammer swishing through the air, absently swatting raindrops as he moved.
    “Look Polyphemus, you better back the hell off before I put you down,” I snapped, my eyes narrowing. I could feel Shirajirashii getting closer, it’d be here soon. I just needed to stall a few moments longer.
    “You… you know my name?” the cyclops asked, taking a step backward, awe cascading across his face as he inclined his head toward Lang. “She knows me,” he said, voice filled with glee. “The Dragonslayer knows me.”
    “Um…” I said, mostly because I’d just used the first cyclopean name that came to my mind, and in that second, I felt my eyes get as wide as trashcan lids. This was Polyphemus? The actual Polyphemus who had been tricked by Odysseus in Greek mythology? Seriously? I swallowed, and I’ll admit part of me wanted to ask for an autograph.
    Lang sighed, rubbing his face with his unbroken hand. “Okay, you’re famous, I get it,” he said. “Now go kill her already so we can move this whole thing along.”
    “But…” Polyphemus eyed me warily, hammer held loosely to his side, and for some reason, I think dropping his name had unnerved him.
    Before he could say anything, I held one hand in front of me, my fingers splayed out so that I was looking through my fingers. Very slowly, I lowered one finger.
    “Valen the blood drake,” I said, then lowered my second finger. “Jiroushou Manaka.” Next two fingers. “Sobek and Crom Cruach,” I closed my thumb so that I was holding a fist. “Do you want to be next?” I called a bit of power and released it so that it flitted around my fist like tiny iridescent fish. I took a step toward them, and Polyphemus shrank back from me, which was somewhat hilarious because he was a huge mountain of a cyclops, and I’m a five-foot-nothing—seventeen-year-old girl.
    “Polyphemus?” Lang asked, octopean eyes narrowing into slits above Lang’s own lifeless eyes. “What are you doing?”
    The giant cyclops glanced sideways at Lang and swallowed so hard that it was like a bowling ball moved within his throat. “I’m scared,” he said.
    “Be more scared of what our master will do to you if you don’t defeat her,” Lang said and lightning flashed across the sky like an angry exclamation point.
    The cyclops turned back toward me, hammer half-raised before him. Before he could do more, I felt the siren’s call of my swords. I reached out, a grin spreading across my face as the blades hit my hands with a familiar thunk. I took a menacing step toward them, the pure