Without looking up from his tablets, Alex gave me a lopsided grin. “Gamers adopt a lot of mythical creatures and then crossbreed them to get new creatures. The lillilend is a shape-changer.” He glanced up at me from under his too-long hair to see how I’d respond to the presence of another shape-changing creature in the world, besides weres and skinwalkers.
I sipped again, which he took as “No comment,” and went on. “It has a female human or elf-like form, one with legs and arms, but also has hybrid forms, sometimes winged, with a twenty-foot wingspan. When it’s in the hybrid shape, it’s been reported to have a humanoid upper half, or humanoid head, and a snakelike lower half, with coils that can reach twenty feet. And wings. When it’s in one of its hybrid forms, it can acquire a pure energy structure. Like a creature made of light, as seen through a prism.”
Light forms. Like what I saw in the gray place of the change? I thought back to the creatures I’d seen. I didn’t remember a twenty-foot wingspan, but if the wings had been made of light, or had been pulled in tight, then maybe I’d just overlooked them. And if they’d been half-furled, maybe they had looked like a frill. And maybe the one I’d seen wasn’t fully grown. A lot of maybes.
Alex went on. “All sorts of legends mention the lillilend, perhaps even the Adam and Eve story of the snake in the Garden of Eden, and even the apocryphal Lillith story. Similar creatures in mythology are the Fu xi, the Lamia, the Nuwa, the Ketu—which is an Asura, but none of them have wings.”
I had no idea what kind of creatures he was talking about but I nodded. I’d discovered that agreeing meant less time listening to explanations that I didn’t care a whit about. Listening to descriptions of things that weren’t what I was looking for seemed like a waste of time, and the Kid could run on for hours about gaming and mythological stuff.
“I’ve been compiling artistic renderings of all the mythical creatures, but—”
“But since they’re mythical, no one really knows what they look like,” I said.
“Right. Here.” He spun two of his three tablets and I pulled them closer, skimming through the paintings, the graphics, the friezes of snakelike creatures carved in stone from long-lost civilizations, the comic-book renderings of big-busted beauties.
“Nope. None of these match what I saw. In fact, if I had to describe it and didn’t mind the funny looks I’d get, I’d call it a dragon made of light or a spirit dragon.” I pushed the tablets back. “So, on to other things.” I filled them in on the minutiae of the vamp meeting, and finished with a question. “Where do we stand on the spike of the crosses? The Europeans want it. Leo wants it. And no, they’re not getting it. We need to find it first and toss it in the Mariana Trench or a volcano somewhere.”
“Poseidon, Pele, and Vulcan might think they’re being dissed.” Alex was grinning, teasing.
Too bad I couldn’t appreciate that. “Whatever. It needs to be destroyed.” Every magical implement used in black arts needed to be destroyed. The old saying about absolute power was totally true when it came to vamps. And witches. And humans. And probably skinwalkers, come to think of it.
“And what did you do with the other weapons of power?” Eli asked softly.
I turned to the former Ranger sitting across the rug from me, his legs stretched out, his fingers laced across his stomach. He looked deceptively relaxed, but I knew better. He could strike across the room almost as fast as a cobra, and he was always armed. Always. “Uncle Sam can’t have them,” I said flatly, my tone soft.
“So you’re the only person who has the right to them?”
It was an old argument, one we had been having for weeks, and we were stuck. “I’m the only person who won’t use them.”
“And if using one would save Angie Baby’s life?”
Angie Baby, Molly’s daughter, my godchild. I knew what he was doing. He was telling me that I would, eventually, find a need for the blood-magic. “Uncle Sam can’t have them,” I repeated. “Not now, not ever. We need to destroy them.”
“Stop it,” Alex said, his voice low.
Eli and I looked at him, but he was staring at his screens, his head down and his eyes hidden behind slitted lids. His lips curled up on one side, a smile so like one of his brother’s understated gestures that it shocked me. And then the half smile stretched into his own wry grin. “I don’t like it when Mommy and Daddy fight.”
I threw a line drive at his head. It would have been deadly had I used something other than a couch cushion. As it was, he did a good imitation of a bobblehead doll before he scooped the pillow off the floor and threw it back at me. And missed. Eli was grinning at our antics—actually showed a hint of his pearly whites. “Bro,” he said to his brother. “You throw like a girl. And, Jane, so do you.”
We both grinned back, Alex flipped him off, and on that happy family-time moment, I stood, stretched until something popped in my back, and said, “’Night.”
“What’s left of it,” the Kid griped.