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

white blades of Shirajirashii glinting in the storm light.
    Even with Shirajirashii, it wasn’t like I could kill Lang, since he was just being possessed by some body jumper. Maybe I could scare the body snatcher into fleeing? That’d work.
    I called upon their power, and it surged through me in the trinity of voices it always used. My wakazashi throbbed with Set’s chaotic presence. It treaded across the back of my brain like a cat stalking prey through the tall grass. I took a step forward and red light exploded from the blade, throwing off little wisps of crimson electricity that arced through the air and shrouded my face in sanguine shadow.
    “Finally!” Lang cried, shouldering the massive cyclops aside as he strode toward me. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to call upon Shirajirashii.”
    “Why is that?” I asked as Isis pulsed in my other hand, spinning across my mind like wisps of icy spider web. Magic crackled off the blade, blue-white tendrils dancing across its surface like electric blue ballerinas.
    “Because I need them,” he said and flung one hand out toward me. “Well, more precisely, I need Set and Isis.” Red lighting exploded across the gap between us, and as I blocked with my wakazashi, the blade… the blade turned on me. Searing pain exploded under my temples. I fell to my knees, my wakazashi, Set, thrashing in my hand like a living thing.
    “No!” I cried as the pure white blade exploded into a million scintillating shards that flashed through the air, swirling toward Lang’s outstretched hand in a cloud of crimson fairy dust.
    Before I could even recover, Lang’s boot caught me in the chest, flinging me onto my back. Isis slipped from my hand, hitting the concrete with an empty clang. As I struggled to get up, Lang reached down and trailed his fingers across the weapon’s edge. It shattered in a spray of blue light that whirled up into the ether like a rising tornado.
    Pain, like nothing I’d ever felt, ripped through my thoughts. I grabbed my head to silence the screaming, crying voice of the swords as they were yanked away from me. Their ethereal fingers clawing gouges in my mind. Thunder boomed above us as Lang smiled at me, an eerie grin that made me want to punch him in his stupidly smug face.
    “Well, that was easy,” Lang said, dropping the lifeless, snake-wrapped hilt of Isis to the ground besides its equally dead brother. He turned toward the huge cyclops and put his hand on its arm. “Let’s get out of here before she recovers. I think the master will be pleased, don’t you?”
    “What about the last one?” Polyphemus asked, gesturing toward the busted hilts of Shirajirashii with his hammer.
    “The master said he does not require the dark one.” Lang threw a glance at me, laughter in his eyes. “He is too chaotic. As long as she keeps hold of that one, it cannot interfere with his plans.” He grinned, his face breaking into a leer as he patted the cyclops. “And she won’t release him either. She’ll cling to him like a toddler hanging onto a favorite blanket. After all, he is the last vestiges of her power. She won’t give that up.”
    I wanted to say something, anything to keep him from escaping, but the only thing I could do was roll into a ball as the rain came down like angry tears. Lang threw me one last glance before he and Polyphemus vanished in a puff of sapphire smoke. Overhead, the sky cleared, all at once and so quickly, that I knew the storm had to have been summoned by Lang, or more accurately, whoever inhabited his body.
    That scared me. I’d only known two people who could manipulate storms like that and one was my father. The other was my mother, and she was dead.
    I crawled forward, my body heavy with rain water and fatigue. This felt so much different from the last time I’d broken the swords… so different from when Haijiku had left me. This felt like a hole had been torn in my soul, and I wasn’t quite sure how to deal