Free Wardbreaker: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles) by J.A. Cipriano

world, but I could sure as hell help with one tiny city. In the grand scheme of things, it wouldn’t be very much at all, but to the people here it would be everything. That had to be worth something, right?
    “We’re good,” I replied, glancing around the street, surprised no one had come to help or had called the cops. Another car whizzed by us on the street. It’d happened a few times now. Not super often or anything, but often enough that I’d have expected someone to stop at the scene of an accident. No one had even slowed to gawk.
    “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Lillim, how come sometimes the vampires dissolve when you kill them and sometimes they don’t?” Luc asked, staring at the body of one of the creatures.
    “They only dissolve if the death blow is struck from my swords. If they die in another way, they don’t disappear. It’s kind of lame.” I shrugged.
    “Too bad you can’t make ‘em dissolve before they die.” Luc smiled at me, and I just shrugged at him. It wasn’t like I had designed the weapons. I just used them. Still, it’d be awesome if they could do that. Monster hunting would be way easier if all I had to do was nick an opponent.
    “I’ll make sure I bring up your thoughts on my weaponry with Dioscuri management,” I replied with a smirk and Luc shook his head at me.
    “Let’s get out of here before someone sees the bodies you’ve so carelessly left behind.” Luc pulled open the door to the prison van and laughed a hearty chuckle that made me feel better. “No wonder no one’s come to help.”
    I glanced inside the door as he stood back and smirked. There was a ward drawn onto the van’s dashboard that positively glowed with purple light. It was the ward for hiding in plain sight. It was one I knew well because Dioscuri used it all the time to keep humans from finding out about monsters. It was way easier to paint a ward on a door that made everything inside seem normal and take your time killing the monsters within, than having to do it before the cops showed up.
    “Looks like lady luck
is
on our side,” Luc said, moving to close the back doors before sliding into the driver’s seat and pointing at the keys. “Even the keys are in the ignition.”
    “Swell,” I muttered, getting into the passenger seat and buckling my seat belt. “So what’s the plan from here?”
    “There’s a hive not too far from here. I say we go there, blow them away, and then meet up with my friend for dinner.” He shrugged as he started the van and rolled onto the street. “Unless you’d like to wait until nightfall. You know, when the vampires will be stronger.”
    “I’m starting to think you planned this from the start,” I muttered as I watched the corpses of the vampires fade into the distance. “That does not endear me to you. In case you wondered.”
    Yet, even as I said the words, I realized it sort of did endear him to me. Okay, he’d tricked me into helping him, but it had been for the right reasons. He wanted to save his town. I could respect that.
     

Chapter 7
    By the time we pulled up in front of the hive, I’d decided I was a fan of French fries and not because I’d eaten six orders of them. It was more because the combination of salt, carbs, and fat had helped me replenish my magical reserves almost as fast as some of the special concoctions we used back home. Only those tasted way worse.
    “Thanks for the fries,” I said, tossing the empty bag on the floor of the van and taking a sip of my soda. It was a little bubbly for my tastes, but it sure was yummy.
    “No problem,” Luc said, eyeing me as he backed the van into a parking space beneath a faded white, metal covering. He slipped the vehicle in park. “But I’m starting to get worried that if you keep eating like that—”
    “If you’re about to tell me I’ll get fat,” I stated, letting the emotion drain from my voice as I fixed him with the coldest stare I could muster. “I’m going to tell you