White Hot Kiss (38 page)

She moved to stand beside Zayne, and I couldn’t help but think that they already looked like a family, especially with Izzy in Danika’s arms. I kind of wished there was black demon smoke in my eyes again. “What I don’t understand is how we’ve been unable to capture any Upper Level demons,” she said, smoothing a hand over the child’s curls.

“Demons know when to hide,” Abbot grumbled.

“It makes sense.” Zayne looked at me and then glanced away quickly. “All the Upper Level movement around the city, I mean. A demon trying to raise the Lilin is bound to bring others by the masses.”

“True, but foolish of them. They’re safer down below, where Wardens can’t get them.” Geoff sat down in one of the chairs and stretched out his long legs.

Hearing them discuss this seriously was odd to me, but I jumped in. “They want to start the apocalypse.”

Abbot muttered under his breath. “Child, the apocalypse—”

“Isn’t supposed to happen now, or only God knows when it will be. Yeah, I know. But here’s the deal. No one benefits from the Lilin being reborn, right?” With all the eyes on me now, I felt exposed sitting there having Jasmine fussing over my head like I was an invalid.

Ducking out of her grasp, I stood and moved behind the wicker chair I’d been sitting in. “When a Lilin takes a soul, the human turns into a wraith. Neither Heaven nor Hell gets the human. And that’s why even Hell doesn’t want the Lilin to be reborn.” I’d tried explaining this before, but everyone had been so angry with me I was sure none of them had listened. “But some of the demons want out of Hell. They want to be able to come topside and not have to follow the rules or worry about the Wardens. They know that if the Lilin are reborn, the Alphas will step in and go after every demon. They aren’t going to go down without a fight. Mankind is going to find out about demons. There will be a war, which will most likely move the apocalypse ahead of schedule.”

No one spoke for a few moments. Then Geoff broke the silence. “It’s risky, but demons have never been worried about that gamble before.”

Danika handed off the sleeping tot to Jasmine. “Kind of like the crazy boyfriend, right? If I can’t have Earth, then no one can.”

I almost grinned at that comparison.

“When can the incantation be complete?” Zayne asked.

“There is no set time.” Abbot picked at a leafy blossom from one of the nearby plants. “It can only occur after Layla turns seventeen. Or at least that is how the text has been translated.”

“I can’t stay holed up forever. I’ll go crazy.”

“You have no other choice,” Abbot replied.

Irritation coated my skin and I snapped, “Now you believe me?”

“I’m not sure what to believe at this point.” He broke off a dead leaf and closed his fist around it. “All of this is just theories. None of it is backed by evidence or truth.”

I threw my hands up. “It is the truth. It’s what I’ve been telling you since the beginning.”

“There is another way,” Zayne said before his father could unleash what was no doubt a verbal lashing the likes of which I’d never seen before. “We find the demon responsible and send it back to Hell.”

“I like that idea.” I folded my arms to keep from hitting something.

“That’s a good idea, but the problem is there are hordes of demons out there.” Geoff pinched the bridge of his nose. “We could start summoning them from the
Lesser Key,
but that would take us years.”

“The demon...” Zayne took a deep breath. “Your friend doesn’t know who the demon is?”

I knew how much it must’ve cost Zayne to call Roth my friend, and I appreciated it. “No. That’s something he was trying to find out, but no one is talking. Either there’re a lot of demons supporting this, or they’re scared of whoever is behind it.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Danika said.

Zayne’s brows arched in agreement. “We could see if he’s made any progress since—”

“Absolutely not!” his father thundered. “We are not working with a demon.”

“Father—”

“No, Zayne.” Abbot prowled to the door and stopped. Anger mottled his cheeks. “That is a path I am not willing to go down for any reason. History has proved that doing so ends in treachery.”

I knew then that no matter what Roth could do, or any demon, for that matter, Abbot’s views would never change. They were too deeply rooted in him, to the point of blind bigotry. Nothing short of a miracle would change his beliefs. Most Wardens were like that, especially the older ones.

My gaze fell to Zayne. He wasn’t ready to let it go. “Layla’s life is in danger. So are the lives of thousands, if not millions, of humans.”

“As if I don’t know that?” Abbot crossed the room in a flash, stopping in front of his son. “Is it desperate times call for desperate measures? We’ve been here before, on the brink of the world falling apart. This is nothing new. And trusting a demon will only aid in that destruction.”

“It’s not going to happen.” Geoff stood, placing his hands on his hips. “We’ve seen firsthand what trusting a demon will do.”

“That we have.” Abbot looked at me over his shoulder, his expression unreadable. “After all, Elijah foolishly trusted a demon once before.”

“What?” I laughed. “Elijah would kill himself before he trusted a demon.”

Abbot faced me fully. “Now he would, and he has good reason for his caution. A little over seventeen years ago he made the mistake of trusting one—a demon who claimed that she would rather be dead than be what she was. No one but Elijah knows the whole story, but one thing is certain. He lay with her, and in the end the demon got what she wanted.”

I opened my mouth, then clamped it shut. A cold wind swept down my spine. Denials formed on the tip of my tongue but no words came out.

“The demon he trusted was Lilith,” Abbot said. “And because Elijah trusted her, he helped create the one thing that could destroy the world. You.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I’d never been the passing-out kind before, but I almost kissed the floor after that little bomb was dropped. Shaken and a whole lot disturbed, I sat back down.

“Elijah’s her father?” Shock colored Zayne’s tone. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I am not.” Abbot took a weary breath. “He didn’t know the demon was Lilith until we found Layla in the foster home years later.”

I blinked slowly, but the room wouldn’t come into focus. “He knew I was his daughter?”

“He did.”

“But he...he
hates
me.” I sank back into the floral cushions. “He’s always hated me.” The moment the words left my mouth, I finally understood why. “God, I must’ve reminded him...”

“Of his lapse in judgment?” Abbot came to my side, his voice low. “He could never reconcile the part of you that was him.”

My head spun. “Didn’t he want to kill me when you all found me?”

Abbot looked away.

I sucked in an unsteady breath. “He did. Wow. I don’t even...” My eyes searched Abbot’s face for an answer. “You stopped him from killing me and you knew he was my father?”

Again, Abbot said nothing. It was Geoff who stepped forward. “The scar Elijah carries is not from a demon. Abbot stopped him that night and took you in. After all, you carry a Warden’s blood in you.”

“Oh, my God...” I shook my head. “This is...”

Too much.

Everyone’s eyes were on me, a mixture of surprise and pity. It was too much, learning all this and not having a moment to really let it sink in without an audience.

I stood and blindly made my way around Abbot. Someone called my name, but I didn’t stop until I was in my bedroom.

Sitting down on my bed, I stared at the spot on my wall. Nothing else seemed to matter at that moment. Elijah was my father—the Warden who hated me with the power of a thousand suns; the very same Warden who wanted me dead. He’d probably ordered Petr to kill me.

Oh, my God...

Nausea rose sharply. Petr had been my half brother. That disgusting son of a...

I’d taken my own brother’s soul.

Lying on my side, I curled into a ball and squeezed my eyes shut against the burning that had nothing to do with what had happened in school. A tremor started in my leg, working its way up to my fingers. I tucked them against my chest.

How did one deal with something like this? I doubted there were coping skills I just hadn’t learned yet. I didn’t know what sickened me more. That my own father wanted to kill me or that I’d taken my brother’s soul.

* * *

Over the next couple of days, I really didn’t come to any great understanding of everything that had been revealed to me. There was no comprehending it. The only thing I could do was not think about it. That didn’t work out so easily. It was like trying not to breathe. At the strangest moments, it would pop into my head and I couldn’t get it out.

My own father wanted me dead.

The knowledge overshadowed everything, leaving me numb to the core. Part of me could understand Elijah’s hatred because of what I reminded him of, but I was still his daughter. All these years I’d built up this fantasy surrounding my father, convincing myself that even though I was part demon, my father still loved me. That something unfortunate had happened to him and I had gotten lost in the tragedy.

Now that dream had been blown to bits.

The whole thing with Petr also weighed on me. The fact that he was my half brother didn’t change my opinion of the monster, but I wondered if, had I known who he was to me, I would’ve done the same thing.

I wasn’t sure.

Zayne had sneaked in my laptop the day after everything had gone down in the sunroom. I guessed I was still grounded, but he felt bad for me. After sending a quick email to Stacey letting her know that I was sick and didn’t know when I’d be back at school, I lost all interest in the internet.

I wanted to be stronger than all of this, but never in my life had I wished as badly as I did then that I could be something or someone else.

I don’t know what got into me Friday evening. I was standing in front of that damn dollhouse and I
hated
it.

Wrapping my fingers along the top floor, I pulled hard enough to tear the story right out of the house. It wasn’t enough. The back of my neck tingled as I grabbed the roof and tore it right off the sides. Holding it, I briefly considered swinging the section like a bat, taking out the walls.

“What are you doing?”

I squeaked and spun around. Zayne stood in the doorway, eyebrows raised. His hair was wet from the shower. I flushed. “Um, I’m not doing anything.” I glanced down at the toy roof. “Well...”

His gaze moved behind me. “If you didn’t want the toy house in your bedroom anymore, I could’ve removed it for you.”

Gently, I set the roof on the floor. “I don’t know.”

He cocked his head to the side.

I sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Zayne stared at me for what felt like forever. “Good.”

“Good?” The fact that he’d walked in on me going cray-cray on my toy house didn’t seem like a good thing.

“I have something for you to do. It involves ice cream.”

My eyes went wide. “Ice cream?”

A small smile appeared. “Yeah, I thought we could go get some.”

Excitement rushed through me like a summer storm. It was like Christmas Day. I could get out of the house and it involved ice cream. But the joy faded quickly. “Abbot will never let me.”

“He’s all right with it as long as I’m with you.”

“Do you think it’ll be okay?” I asked, too afraid to get happy again. “What if something happens?”

“A demon isn’t going to come after you while I’m with you.” The confidence in his voice erased any concerns. Zayne was right. It would be suicidal if one did. “It seems like an ice-cream kind of night. You game?” he asked.

When it came to ice cream, I was always game.

* * *

I loved riding in Zayne’s vintage Impala. The rumble it made, the looks it got. In a sea of Mercedes and BMWs, nothing stood out more than a 1969 cherry-red Impala. He’d let me drive it once, on my sixteenth birthday. Driving proved to be too much with all the shimmery souls serving as an epic distraction. I’d rear-ended a police cruiser.

I hadn’t gotten behind a wheel since.

We stopped at a convenience store to pick up a pack of Twizzlers. I puked a little in my mouth when Zayne brought them into the ice-cream parlor. “That’s so gross,” I muttered.

He gave me an innocent look. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”

“I’ll never dip Twizzlers into chocolate ice cream.”

Zayne shoved me playfully and stole my place in line. I shoved him back, but he didn’t move a centimeter. The souls around us were various degrees of pastel colors, soft and, thankfully, uninteresting to me. And no demons were in sight. Score. He ordered a bowl of chocolate ice cream and I got a banana split, the same thing I always ordered.

Pleasant temperatures for November had driven people to the shop in droves. Indian summer or whatever Zayne called it. We were lucky to find a small booth to squeeze into. This shop was one of my favorite places to go in the city, a mom-and-pop business shoved in the middle of a modern downtown, and it felt good being here. The floors were checkered black-and-white, the booths and tables were red and family photos adorned the walls. What was not to love?

It felt like a home.

I watched Zayne gleefully dip the ropy stick in his chocolate. He caught my eye and winked. “Sure you don’t want a bite?”

I made a face. “No, thank you.”

He offered the candy to me, a thick glob of chocolate syrup dripping off the end. It splattered against the table. “You might just like it.”

I took a bite of my banana split instead. Shrugging, Zayne popped it in his mouth and sighed. I studied him. “Do you think I’m pretty much going to be on house arrest until I turn eighteen?”

“Afraid so,” he replied. “Father isn’t budging on anything.”

“That’s what I feared.”

He poked my hand with a Twizzler he hadn’t dipped yet. “I’ll break you free as often as I can.”

“Thank you.” I forced a smile. “So...how are things with you and Danika?”

His brows knitted as he focused on his bowl of ice cream like it held the answers to life. “Good. She’s a...great girl.”