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

white in Japanese and their blades were the color of freshly fallen snow. Even still, it seemed like a silly name to give weapons inhabited by Egyptian Gods so I mostly just called them Isis and Set.
    “Yeah, I don’t call them that,” I muttered, touching the pommels of the blades with my palms and feeling the familiar energy of the spirits within adding to my confidence. “They seem to like it better when I call them by their names. Besides, it tends to scare people when they know I’m wielding swords powered by Egyptian Gods.” I shrugged. Most other Dioscuri liked to hide who their spirits were, but ever since Dirge had died, everyone knew who hers were anyway. “It was a tip I picked up from my old mentor.”
    “What was his spirit called?” Luc asked, moving around the back of the van and swinging the doors open.
    “Ymir. You know, the original giant Odin slew? His body was used to create the world,” I said, but the blank look on his face told me he had no idea what I was talking about. “There’s a song…”
    “I must have missed that one. I’m more of a classic rock guy myself.” He shook his head at me and pulled a shotgun from the back of the van. While guns weren’t as effective as I’d have liked them to be on vampires, the undead still had to expend energy to heal the damage, and you know, contend with having their bodies ripped to shreds by bullets. I’d seen him load other weapons, but I wasn’t sure where they were hidden since he was wearing a dark blue leather trench coat, presumably to hide all his weaponry.
    I sighed and rubbed my temples. “I’m guessing you don’t take classes in Norse history?”
    “We call it mythology and… wait. Are you telling me all of that is real?” He paled, which was a little funny because I could see the wheels spinning behind his eyes. Evidently, I’d just thrown his world into a tailspin.
    “More or less.” I shrugged. “It’s all real, more or less.” He looked like he was going to ask more, but I held up my hand to silence him before gesturing at the sky. The sun was already getting low in the horizon. It wouldn’t be long before it started to fade completely from the sky. I didn’t want to be inside the building when that happened for obvious reasons. “Now let’s get going. We’re burning daylight.”
    Luc cocked his shotgun in response as we headed toward the building. Every step felt sort of foreboding, making the hair stand up on the back of my neck and my teeth chatter. It was always like this when I got ready for a mission. I never really got ahold of myself until I was in the thick of things. Then my training would take over, and I’d be fine, more or less, but the walking in part… well, that always sucked.
    “So why haven’t you just burned the building to the ground?” I asked as we approached the twin pine trees. Something about them was even more unnerving on foot, though I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like they were ents and would pull themselves from the ground and try to beat me into oblivion. I mean, that’d happened before, but they tended not to leave the black forest along the border of Germany.
    “I’d thought about it originally, but even though that looks like a pretty normal building, most of it is underground. It has these weird hatches inside that seal off and suck the air from rooms to smother fire in addition to a state of the art sprinkler system. That and most of the walls are solid concrete, so well, unless I have a nuclear device, I’m not going to kill much with explosives or fire. I can’t just fling a Molotov cocktail at it and tear away in my low-rider.” Luc shrugged.
    “I don’t know what half of the things you just said mean, but I’m going to assume it won’t work,” I replied, giving him a thin smile.
    Before he could respond, a branch shot out of the pine tree next to him and wrapped its wooden fingers around his throat. It hoisted him into the air like he was a toothpick. The