Intangible (22 page)

He wasn’t entirely sure why she’d chosen him, and he knew his actions often angered her. But whatever small speck of good that still existed within her—and he believed it was there somewhere, however well hidden—kept her adoration of him so strong that she was unwilling to hurt him no matter what he did. She didn’t have that problem with anyone else.

She turned up her charms when he was around in an attempt to sway his will. But he would not allow himself to fall under her spell, under her power. He had a feeling it was one of the things she enjoyed most about him, in a twisted sort of way. The challenge he presented her, when there was so little, in this world or the other, to challenge her.

Her gleaming eyes appraised him now. She was all in black, as usual, which equally set off her pallor and red hair. She was long and lean to an extreme, at once repulsive and mesmerizing.

The old urges overwhelmed him for a moment—a sudden crushing need to grab her and kiss her—a need that was not his own. Her magickal charms. He waited for it to pass, for he was no longer charmed. He hadn’t been for a very long time. Still, her power surprised him. Every time.

Jonas took a deep breath, tried to look bored. “To which secrets are you referring, Lilith?”

“You failed to tell me about your new little friends.” And she was gone without a sound, though he felt there should have been a slight
pop
at her disappearance. She reappeared across the room behind a large, brutish thug of a vampire. In one quick flick of her hand he was decapitated, and his body burst into nothingness before it could hit the floor. Lilith licked the blood off of her necklace before putting it back on and then turned toward Jonas. He felt her glare from across the room like a blast of heat.

How was he going to talk her into being reasonable when she was this angry with him?

She was gone again in an instant. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a sudden movement by the cages. Two of them, large and made of black metal, stood to one side in the deep room. Each contained a human in different stages of torment. Lilith had reappeared next to a wide-eyed woman with long dark hair, who screamed and jumped back against the bars of the cage. She cried out as the bars singed her skin. Lilith shot a look across the room at Jonas who couldn’t hide his wince.

Lilith’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and a nasty smile spread slowly across her face. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Her human pets hadn’t bothered him much before. Hell, he’d even brought her some on occasion to fill her cages, keep her amused. But then, they’d deserved it. He’d never felt sorry for them as he was feeling for this nameless woman right now.

He clenched his jaw, forced his expression to go blank. He wouldn’t give Lilith cause to hurt any others when she really wished to hurt him.

Lilith turned back to the woman and beckoned her with a finger. The woman came willingly, ensnared by Lilith’s charm. Lilith ran one razor-sharp fingernail down the entire length of the woman’s arm from shoulder to wrist. A line of blood formed, seeping out in small rivulets. The woman screamed from the pain, but did nothing to move herself out of Lilith’s reach. Lilith licked the blood, taking time to squeeze the woman’s arm several times to get more. Each squeeze elicited cries of pain.

Lilith glanced over at Jonas again, her eyes calculating. Then she gently swept the woman’s hair away and sank razor-like teeth into her neck. The woman’s knees buckled and she moaned in pleasure.

A shiver ran throughout Jonas’s body. He knew exactly what the woman was feeling—unimaginable pleasure, like nothing he’d experienced anywhere else. Only in Lilith’s arms when she’d fed on him, before she’d turned him. Thankfully he hadn’t been one of her caged playthings—they were never turned, they were just tortured until she tired of them. And then she killed them.

Listening to her sounds of ecstasy, he could almost feel it again. Lilith’s bite had been like a drug he could never get enough of.

As he watched, aching to feel such pleasure, the woman tensed suddenly, her whole body rigid. Her moans turned to long screams. Lilith had stopped the flow of opioids, turned the pleasure to intense pain. She lifted her head off the woman’s neck and laughed.

The woman’s eyes were glazed. She whimpered and said, “Am I in hell?”

Lilith kissed the woman’s cheek, leaving a smear of blood on it. “Not yet,
cherie
. Not yet.” She glanced at Jonas, and was gone again.

Reappearing right in front of him, she spat out, “Why have I not heard about them from
you
?” She reached out a hand, fingers curled as if to strike, nails poised, but Jonas didn’t flinch. He kept his face neutral. She smiled at him then, and gently stroked his rough cheek.

“I didn’t think you were ever that concerned about any human,” he said.

“You know what I’m talking about. They are the Children of the Prophecy.”

“Yes.”

“They were supposed to be dead. You should have told me that they no longer were.”

“I am taking care of them.”

“No, you’re not. You’re protecting them.”

He just looked at her. “From what?”

“From me. And I. Don’t. Like. That.”

“I’m
watching
them. I’m keeping track of them. They are harmless to us.”

“They were not harmless to your Meghan.” Lilith crossed her arms over her chest, the movement carrying her scent anew to Jonas. “Oh, don’t look so surprised, Jonas. I know what goes on
everywhere
.” His mind started to cloud, and he could feel himself wanting to please her. He shook his head. He had to keep himself clear. He focused on Lilith’s words.

“They are a threat,” Lilith was saying, “and we must remove them. You know what the prophecy says as well as I do. They will destroy us.”

“They did not purposefully change Meghan.”

“Kill.”

“What?”

“They killed Meghan.”

“She’s not dead, she’s human again.”

“Same thing—she’s mortal. They took one of mine, I took one of theirs.”

Jonas paused, stared hard at Lilith. “What do you mean?” he said quietly.

“Their father.” She glared at him, as if daring him to challenge her, give her reason to hurt someone else.

“You ordered Xavier? Why?”

“Because I can.”

Jonas clenched his hands, but kept himself under control and his voice even as he spoke. “Meghan wanted to be changed. Meghan made it happen. She figured out who they were and set out to be changed back. The healer knew nothing about it. She was guilty of nothing. She didn’t realize she’d changed Meghan even after the fact. Hell, she didn’t even know our kind existed.”

“Does she now?”

Jonas was silent.

“Oh, Jonas, you didn’t tell her?” She laughed, thoroughly delighted. “Come now. You’re not supposed to make this easy for me. She can’t know about us, Jonas. That’s an automatic death sentence right there. Now just tell me she can see the quaver and you might as well deliver her to me yourself.”

“She can’t see it.” In truth, he had no idea whether Sera could see that those of the Realm appeared to flicker in the Real world, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Lilith. “The prophecy says they are the Realm’s greatest protector or its greatest destroyer. It has yet to be determined which they are.”

“I’m not going to wait to find out.”

“Lilith, they are children.”

“They are a danger.”

“Not to me.”

“You are defenseless against them—we all are—do you realize that? If that healer were to put her hands on you, you would be changed. You would no longer belong.”

“She is good. She does good with her power. I won’t kill innocents. That shouldn’t be a surprise to you after all these years.”

She leaned close and stroked his cheek again. He braced himself for pain he knew she might give—a long cut down his face with her fingernail, her bite on his neck, something. But still she didn’t take her anger out on him.

Never on him.

She was suddenly gone again, reappearing across the room on the outside of the cages this time. The woman cried out in terror and Lilith laughed.

“Jonas.” She didn’t turn to look at him. “If you don’t do it,
I will
.”

He considered her for a moment, then said, “There’s one other thing you should know.”

Lilith turned around then, slowly.

“They are protected.”

“You mean other than by you?” she said. Jonas nodded and Lilith eyes widened slightly. “By whom?”

“Feyth.” Jonas almost smiled at the shock on her face. Almost. He wasn’t stupid.

“So, Faenial is involved.” Each word hissed out with effort.

“Yes, very likely.”

“Are they Marked yet?”

Not yet. But they better be soon. “I don’t know.”

“If they aren’t, there still may be time.”

“Lilith—”

“Jonas,
mon cher
, get out of here before I kill you. My good will only lasts so long.”

Jonas said not a word, but nodded at her and melted back into the shadows, out the door, and up to fresh air. He focused his energy on the lake, and was gone. But not before he heard air-rending screams coming from Lilith’s lair.

M
arc shivered as he walked toward the trees in the cemetery. Another moonless night. He’d found a note ordering an update on his progress when he’d returned to his motel room.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and nearly jumped out of his shoes when a raspy voice called out from the ink-black center of the pines: “What news, Marcus?”

Heart racing, he put his hand on his chest, willing himself to calm down and concentrate on what he was doing in the here and now.

Tell them as little as possible, get medicine, get the hell out of there. Now that he was focused he peered into the darkness at the heart of the trees. There were the three sets of glowing orange eyes blinking at him in impatience.

“
Well?
”

For a moment, Marc was frozen, mute, his instincts screaming at him to get away, get far, far away from these things. But he forced himself to ignore it and focus on breathing. He’d heard that was supposed to calm you when you were scared. It hadn’t worked so far, but he kept trying it in case it was something that took practice to get right.

“Not much news.” His voice sounded almost calm.

“Again?” They were less pleased than usual. He had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a good night.

“It’s been complicated. Things got in the way.”

“What things?”

“Well, their dad died, for one. I lost a lot of time because of that. And this can’t be rushed. I told you that this kind of thing takes time.”

There was silence. He hated when there was silence. Marc took another deep breath. Nope, still didn’t work, he was still terrified. He didn’t know what they were doing. Maybe discussing it amongst themselves so quietly that he couldn’t hear anything. Maybe they communicated by sharing thoughts. He opened up his mind to see if he could hear them, but was greeted with the usual silence. The only thoughts in his head were his own.

“Are they Marked?”

“The
fleur-de-lis
? I haven’t seen anything.” Marc shrugged. “But where would it be on their bodies? Maybe it’s someplace I can’t see.”

“If it was there, you would have seen it. Can one of them heal?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can one of them See?”

“I don’t know.”

“What
do
you know?”

Marc was silent for a moment, thinking. “I know they are special in some way. I can feel it. But I haven’t seen what you’re looking for yet. They are very protective—it’s taking time to gain their trust. But I’m getting closer, and I should know more the next time I report in to you.”

“It seems you have nothing new to tell us, Marcus. We find that very disappointing. Perhaps you are not trying hard enough. Perhaps you have forgotten what it was like before we found you.”

A bolt of pain shot through Marc’s head, knocking him to his knees. One hand stretched out to catch himself, the other clutched his head in a futile attempt to keep it from exploding. Pressure like he’d never known before pushed outward from his brain and he was sure he heard his skull creaking. It felt like it was expanding to the breaking point. Voices—thousands of voices—yammered in his head, drowning out all thoughts and sounds around him. He clamped his eyes shut and he wasn’t sure whether the pain of squeezing them shut wasn’t worse than the pain of letting in what little light there was, but he wasn’t willing to test that.

He couldn’t breathe. The instantaneous pain had pushed all the air out of his lungs. There was something blocking his throat, he felt, something that wouldn’t let any air in. He tried and tried, but it was no use, he couldn’t take a breath. His eyes bulged and he grabbed for his throat.

As soon as his eyes flew open, shards of light, like broken glass, sliced into his brain intensifying the pain, and he crumpled to the ground. His cheek scraped a gravestone on the way down, but he barely noticed. The cold touch of ground on his forehead offered slight relief, and he was glad for the first time that the weather was cold. The relief didn’t last long, though. A build up began at his core. He could feel goose bumps rising on his back and up his neck, his arms and hands tingled, and his mouth started to water. Before he even recognized the signs, he was vomiting all over the ground where he lay.