Rose of Jericho (Lilith Adams Series Book 2) (37 page)

“Did you hear me? I said it’s not the German! I chased him down. He’s dead, Lilith. Torn to fucking pieces in his hotel room. You have to get out of there!”

Lilith struggled to breathe as she dropped the heavy receiver, leaving it dangling by its curly cord. She stared at the doorway to the living room while backing up into the kitchen. She knew in her twisted gut that she wouldn’t see Gloria or her battered blue purse. Her skin prickled painfully as she forced her clenched muscles to move.

Her eyes swung across the living room slowly before finally resting on the wide-open front door. Blood pounded in her ears, drowning out Cohen’s tiny screaming voice from the swaying phone.

Suddenly, a face growled into the doorway, mere feet from Lilith, pulling a scream from her throat. She scrambled backwards, knocking into one of the kitchen chairs before falling to the floor. She tried to break her fall, but with her left arm in a sling, she fell awkwardly on her hip. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.

She backpedaled along the slick kitchen floor as Alvarez’s corpse lurched into the kitchen. His once warm, brown eyes were milky and vacant. His mouth hung open in an animalistic snarl that didn’t fit his face. His skin, which was once a warm tan, was now splotched with the blue and purple hues of early decay. The flap of skin under his chin from his sliced throat opened and closed with each move of his jaw like a ghastly second mouth. It was a sight straight out of her nightmares. It couldn’t be real. She had to be asleep. She had to be. It couldn’t be real.

Her mind kept skidding to a halt on that one thought, like a scratched record doomed to loop forever on the same note. Alvarez’s hollow shell suddenly broke out of its slow motion zombie lurch and lunged for her. It was like a splash of ice water to the face. This was real. This was happening. Lilith fought to get back on her feet, stumbling several times and slamming her broken arm into a cabinet before she was successful. She ignored the dizzy waves of nausea that accompanied the spike of agony as her whole left arm throbbed. She needed to get out. She had to get out.

Lilith awkwardly scrambled for the back door, but was stopped short. An iron-strong grip snatched at her ankle and Lilith whirled back to see Philippe on the floor, his familiar face contorted in a rage that wasn’t his. It belonged to someone else, his controller, his master. No! This was not Philippe! This was just his shell, nothing more!

The hand tightened with bone popping strength, stealing Lilith’s breath. She wasn’t going to die here, not like this and not by the hands of her own deceased partner. She squeezed her eyes shut, envisioning the zombie with the caved in head from earlier and kicked with everything she had, over and over and over. Tears stung her closed eyes as ragged screams tore up her throat in guttural, soul-bearing cries.  Bone crunching snaps and wet, squishy sounds filled the air as she kicked at the dead man. Hand, head, neck, it didn’t matter as long as he let go. The sounds just made her scream louder, trying to drown them out so they wouldn’t haunt her later.

Finally, Lilith broke free of the dead man’s grasp and fell to the floor from the momentum. She could hear bones rasping against the floor but she refused to look. She couldn’t. She pushed with everything she had left, forcing herself back to her feet and nearly colliding with the back door. Her hands slipped and trembled over the door lock anxiously as a gurgling moan sounded behind her.
Don’t look, just run
. She repeated over and over until she wrenched the back door open and then her heart seemed to just fall out of her chest, her breath stuck in her raspy throat.

Lilith stared right into a wide pair of deep blue eyes lit with a smug malevolence. Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. “Well, well. Fancy meeting you here.” The melodically lilting tones curled around her brain like red-hot razor wire. How the hell could she be alive?

Immediately, Lilith turned to run back through the house, but Peisinoe reached out, grabbing a hunk of her auburn hair. “Oh, no you don’t.” A violent yank and Lilith went spinning back into the door and, in the blink of an eye, the siren’s hand was curled around Lilith’s throat.

“See, now, if you’d played by the rules…” Peisinoe tilted her head to the side, her platinum blonde tresses spilling over one bare shoulder. Her pouty mouth curved into an evil cupid’s bow as those deep blue eyes studied her. “I could have kept my promise.” A malevolent grin split her lips with a throaty chuckle.

Lilith clawed at the hand around her throat, trying to pry the fingers back, trying to breathe, as the world around her started to spin. She choked and gasped, but couldn’t get any leverage with just one good arm.

“Tell me, kitten, where is your little bodyguard?” Peisinoe’s iron grip relaxed just enough for Lilith to take in a huge gulp of air, quenching the burning fire in her lungs. The siren watched in detached calculation as Lilith took in deep breaths, trying to regain her voice.

The sensation was so familiar that for a moment Lilith thought she saw Spencer standing in front of her, clutching her throat. Lilith mumbled a hoarse whisper that Peisinoe couldn’t possible hear and then gulped in another deep breath.

“Aww, kitten. Are you hurt?” Peisinoe’s mouth pulled into an insincere pout as she leaned in a little closer. “I could just make you scream instead.” Her eyes never left Lilith’s as her free hand slammed against Lilith’s broken arm.

Her vision went black with the indescribable torment burning up and down her arm as a blood curdling scream lit the air. Lilith’s fingers went numb as the bile in her throat rose right up to the tipping point. Her legs buckled and the only thing supporting her was Peisinoe’s hand on her throat.

“There, there, kitten.” The siren propped her back up against the door and even straightened her makeshift sling. “Tell me where that bit of man candy is.” She batted her long eyelashes as if she was just asking her bestie for a guy’s number. It just made the knot of rage in Lilith’s stomach burn white hot.

Lilith slammed her head forward with every ounce of strength she had and a thunderous crack vibrated through the room. For a second, Lilith blacked out from the hit to Peisinoe’s face. She stumbled as the hand released her throat, the siren’s gargled groans filling her ears like sweet, sweet music.

“Fuck you, you tone deaf bitch!” Lilith screamed the words as she watched Peisinoe double over, covering her bloody nose. Lilith grabbed the siren’s Marilyn-esque curls with her right hand, nails scratching the scalp, and thrust her knee into Peisinoe’s face with a crack.

The siren collapsed to the floor as Lilith fell back against the back door. The whole room was spinning as a tidal wave of white noise filled her head. If she hadn’t had multiple concussions before, she sure as shit did now.

Lilith flung herself out the back door and stumbled across the back patio like a drunk, banging into everything. A chanting voice floated in the air, finally reaching Lilith’s ears and her skin prickled. Not Peisinoe, she was down for the next half hour at least. No, it was the pied piper of the dead, the voodoo queen. Logically, Lilith knew she had to be here if Alv…no, if the corpse was here.

With her heart beating like a caged rabbit, Lilith slammed against the wooden gate, her hand fumbling for the latch. She tugged and pulled but it was no use. She needed two hands to work the latch. The gate sat heavy on the hardware and you had to lift the gate up with one hand and work the latch with the other. Lilith tried to pull her left arm up, but only made it a few inches before the pain was just too much. The break had been bad enough before Peisinoe slammed her fist into it.

The guttural chanting grew louder, closer, making the panic swell to a fevered pitch. Lilith tried to reach the latch with her left hand again. She got a little closer before the piercing pain won out and her arm collapsed into the sling.

Lilith pulled on a determined grimace, tore off the sling and grabbed her left wrist with her right hand. After a few panting breaths, she shoved her left hand onto the latch despite the blindingly excruciating agony. She lifted the gate up with her right hand and poured everything she had into focusing on her left hand. Lilith willed her fingers to close on the latch and pull. Her fingertips twitched but wouldn’t close around the metal bolt.

The chanting grew louder, faster, deeper. The sound seemed to make the air darker, swirling about like a deadly tendril of sound. She could hear footsteps, several sets of them, padding across the kitchen floor. She had to get out of here. Lilith forced her focus back to the latch, her fingers loosely gripping the bolt. She felt like she was back in that alley, staring down a ten foot tall brick wall.

As hard as she tried, she couldn’t will her numb fingers to grip the bolt. Tears burned her eyes as feet crunched onto the back patio. Lilith dropped her useless left arm and slammed her back against the gate, facing down her enemies.

The voodoo queen’s full skirts swished as she wandered onto the wood planks. Her deep, chestnut eyes stared intently at Lilith as her lips continued her fervent chant to the odd, brown plant cradled in one hand. Flanking her were four nameless corpses in various states of decay in their funeral suits. Lilith glanced out at the small yard, hoping a plan might spring to her mind, but the only exit was at her back and might as well not exist.

She could only hope that whoever controlled the puppet master wanted her alive. Hoping to be kidnapped was a fairly sobering thought, but it beat being torn to little bite-sized pieces.

“Aye tol ya. Dere is no runnin’.” The woman’s deep, raspy voice echoed through the air like a dark omen, resonating deep in her bones. The zombies lurched up to either side of Lilith, cutting off any chance of escape but keeping their distance. The voodoo woman dug into a pouch with her free hand as she strolled casually toward Lilith. “Dere is no fite-tin wit mae.”

To hell with that. Lilith hunched against the gate, tensing every muscle, waiting until the voodoo queen was close enough to pounce on. She had no intention of going quietly. Not for Alvarez’s corpse, not for Peisinoe and definitely not for this singer of the dead.

Before Lilith could move, the woman brought her palm up level to her lips and blew a cloud of dust into Lilith’s face. The powder burned in her eyes, nose and throat making her cough violently. She doubled over, gagging for breath as the dust scorched its way into her lungs.

Lilith fell against the gate, clawing at the wood planks, as her chest tightened painfully. Her vision swam over the black skirts swishing closer, the dirt-caked shoes of the dead man hovering over her. Blackness consumed her vision and she felt the ground vibrate. Her eyes struggled to open, the weak light of the backyard painfully bright. There were corpses on the ground. She caught the sight of bitter chocolate hands reaching for her and then the world went black again.

A horribly sickening thought trickled through her brain just before unconsciousness flooded over her. Gloria is going to come home to her husband’s mutilated corpse on her kitchen floor.

Chapter 30

S
omewhere
in the dark, a voice was calling her name. It seemed so far away, like an eerie whisper at the end of a long tunnel. Lilith struggled to open her eyes but they throbbed and ached. It felt like her eyelids were lined with sandpaper. When she managed to creak one eye open or at least she thought she did. Impenetrable, inky darkness surrounded her, suffocated her. A dart of fear stabbed at her heart, setting it racing.

The memory of her nightmares came surging to the front of her mind. She couldn’t do it again. She couldn’t see her undead father or Alvarez or Miriah or any of it. Why did her brain have to continually torment her with all the people she couldn’t save? It wasn’t fair. Lilith squeezed her eyes closed through hot, angry tears, refusing to move, refusing to participate in another hellish nightmare.

A long, drawn out groan echoed across the room like a heavy door opening on unused hinges. Lilith waited for the sound of footsteps, movement, skin-crawling moans, anything, but nothing came. As she tried to moved, however, she suddenly realized the rest of her body was immobilized. That’s when she felt the pressure across her chest, upper arms, wrists, thighs, and ankles and the coolness of metal at her back. Lilith struggled against the restraints, a teeth-gritting pain flaring down her left arm.

Once the roaring wave of pain receded, she craned her head in the direction of the sound. Her eyes darted everywhere, trying in vain to see something. Whatever made the sound was gone now. She was alone in the dark, strapped down like an animal, with only the dank sound of water slowly dripping to pierce the silence. This wasn’t a nightmare. It was real.

Lilith closed her eyes, taking small, deep breaths, quelling the panic that threatened consume her. She’d spent enough time freaking out and it never helped. If she spent less time in paralyzed shock and more time actually acting then maybe she wouldn’t be in such rough shape. Maybe there’d be a few less dead bodies piled on her conscience.

She needed to focus on something constructive, something to keep her mind busy so she didn’t rattle apart at the seams in the darkness. Lilith concentration on what she could remember from Gloria’s house.

Was it a coincidence that Peisinoe and the voodoo woman found her at the same time? Considering the fact that she only gave one person the address, she sincerely doubted it. Could Nicci have really betrayed her? Lilith shook off the question. She may not have known the woman long, but she found it really hard to swallow. There had to be some other explanation.

If Peisinoe and the voodoo chick were working for the same person, who was pulling their strings? The million dollar question. Farren? That didn’t make any damn sense. Why hire thieves with a sophisticated and elegant plan to steal precisely what you want, and then send a brutal, savage voodoo queen to make a mess of it? Why attack your own men? Why let Cohen, Lilith and Nicci escape?

Maybe it was all to throw off suspicion, an extremely elaborate charade. It definitely fit what she knew of their species. Cohen had been sure that Helton was behind the zombie queen, but he also said that Peisinoe would never cross Farren because he was holding something over her. It had to be Farren. That meant either Cohen was playing them from the start or he was as clueless as they’d been. What if that little heartfelt speech in the alley about his childhood was just to convince her that he’d never work with his monster of a grandfather and she fell for it hook, line and sinker?

The real question was did any of it matter? No. It didn’t. No matter who was behind the comeback of the living dead, they obviously didn’t intend to make friends and play nice. If she was strapped down to a table it wasn’t for anything good. These people wanted something from her, something she wasn’t going to give away willingly. She was pretty sure that the story didn’t end with her walking away either. There was no rescue coming. Nobody knew where she was, assuming there was anyone left alive that would try to find her.

Lilith was knocked out her spiraling thoughts by a soft clattering from a dark corner, like small clay pots tapping against each other. She wasn’t as alone as she thought she was. Her heart picked up its pace but Lilith kept it in check, lying still and staring at the source of the sounds. The pattering sound of bare against tile echoed through the room accompanied by the whispering hush of fabric moving. The impenetrable darkness hid the source completely but it was coming closer and closer.

Finally, the footsteps stopped and Lilith felt eyes on her, studying her, which was impossible. Nothing could see in complete darkness. Of course, yesterday she thought reanimated corpses were impossible. Hell, two weeks ago she’d have had someone committed to the looney bin if they told her demons were real.

A hiss licked through the air seconds before the blinding light of a match had Lilith squeezing her raw eyes shut. The light danced a brilliant red behind her eyelids, flickering in and out before finally blazing tall. Slowly, Lilith peeked an eye open, the candlelight scorching at her retinas. Once her eyes adjusted they drifted away from the flame hovering next to her to see a face the color of bittersweet chocolate smattered with freckles staring down at her.

Lilith braced, but refused to let fear get the best of her. In the light, the voodoo woman looked younger than Lilith had thought. Mid-twenties, maybe early thirties. Her dark skin was smooth as silk with only vague hints at small creases around her eyes. She turned to the side, either unaware or unconcerned that Lilith was watching her. A large scar ran down her face from the corner of one eye back toward her ear and then blazing a trail down to her jawline. The scar was a ragged, puckered, angry badge of tragedy hidden by the thick dreadlocks cascading past her shoulders.

Then a thought occurred to her. If this woman was just an abnormal succubus like Peisinoe why would she have a scar? For that matter, why had Ashcroft been covered in scars? She’d actually watched in horror as he regrew half his damn head, so why would the scars of his torture not heal completely? Another damn riddle about Cohen’s kind that she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to solve.

The woman placed the thick, flickering candle on what looked like a medical instrument tray beside the table. The light flickered malevolently off sharp metal scalpels making Lilith’s pulse jump just a little. Immediately, her mind flashed back to the dark basement at Phipps Bend and Ashcroft. Miriah’s tormented corpse sprang to the forefront, covered in millions of precise torments by similar instruments.

Lilith reminded herself once again that Ashcroft was dead and this was not Phipps Bend. Here, in this new nightmare, the modern tools seemed completely out of place. They were at odds with the woman’s Marie Laveau vibe and it didn’t fit her MO. She’d used her undead minions to tear the hearts out of the two thieves, not surgical tools.

Soft murmurs fell from the woman’s dark lips in a quiet chant as the light glinted off something large and gleaming white swinging from her neck. At first, Lilith’s eyes couldn’t make sense of it and then the image finally clicked. A human mandible, freshly cleaned and bleached. A souvenir from New Haven. The jaw bone swayed rhythmically as she moved, bright white against her dark skin and clothing. It looked like some ghostly remnant, floating in thin air.

Lilith turned away from the grotesque sight and searched expectantly within the limited light of the candle. When the woman chanted, the dead came out to play. Lilith was waiting for corpses to start surrounding her, but she could only see the edge of another table near her and a few darker shapes along the floor. Nothing moved.

The voodoo woman pulled a black bird’s wing fastened to a string of leather out of the folds of her skirt. Her chanting rose in pitch, her dark eyes closing as she swung the wing over Lilith’s body. It created a breeze, prickling the hairs along her skin and making Lilith suddenly aware that she was wearing far less clothes than she remembered. She angled her head to look down her body and saw that only her bra and panties remained. There were fresh bandages on her forearm and shoulder and someone had ditched the makeshift splint. Guess they didn’t want her dead…yet.

“Where am I?” The words croaked reluctantly from Lilith’s sore throat, sounding impossibly loud in the still room. The woman continued her chant, fanning the bird’s wing down toward Lilith’s feet. Apparently, she was electing to ignore her question.

“How long have I been out?” Any information would be more than she had right now. Of course, she didn’t really expect a response after the blatant dismissal of her first question, but she had to do something. She had to try.

“Ate hours. De powd’r es pote’ent.” Her thick accent made the words almost unrecognizable, but when Lilith’s dazed mind finally deciphered them, her eyes went wide. Eight hours. Suddenly, her mind reeled with questions. By now Gloria had come home to see her husband’s mutilated corpse on the ground. Nicci would have shown up there as well, looking for her, assuming she wasn’t a traitor. Chance…

An eerie creak of hinges drowned everything out as a sliver of light spilled over the room. There was definitely another table close by with someone strapped down to it. Someone male. The light only fell over the stomach and hips, but it was enough to know it wasn’t Chance. No lily tattoo, just dark blue boxer briefs on a slim build with fine curls of blonde body hair.

“Isadora!” Peisinoe’s voice was commanding as her voluptuous frame filled the doorway. “What are you doing?” Purposeful footsteps with the hefty click of high heels pounded across the floor until Peisinoe’s Marilyn-style face popped into view. There was a bandage across her swollen nose and her left eye was puffed up and dark. Lilith couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

The voodoo woman ignored the question, mumbling a chant as she swung the wing over Lilith’s chest. In a frustrated huff, the siren stormed closer, heels cracking angrily against the hard floor. When she reached the table, her ocean blue eyes caught the smile curving Lilith’s lips, stopping her short.

Peisinoe’s hand swung, lighting up the left side of Lilith’s face in a sharp sting. “Wipe that look off your face.” Her voice oozed from her lips like venom, full of contempt and hate. It only made Lilith’s smile bigger. If she was still alive, that meant whoever truly controlled Peisinoe’s strings still wanted her that way.

The siren’s bright blue eyes narrowed and she leaned in close enough to be intimidating, but out of head butt range. Guess she learned her lesson. Pity. “The boss may want you alive, but I get to keep your little bodyguard.” A vicious grin crossed her lips making her mouth look like a knife wound across her face.  “I’ll torture him for years and years and I know he can take it. I won’t rest until he’s a gibbering mess like your uncle and then I’ll chain him to the floor and let him gnaw off his own limbs. I want you to die knowing that.”

Peisinoe pulled back after reveling in the faltering smile on Lilith’s face. How could she possibly know about Duncan? Farren may have known about Ashcroft’s death and Gregor’s crimes but how could she have known precisely what happened in that basement? The way she spat out the threat, it was like she had an eyewitness account… Either she forced every single detail out of Gregor, which seemed extremely unlikely, or…Cohen. Could it all have really been an elaborate act? Could he have been working with his grandfather all along? Her gut said no, but could she really trust it?

“Isadora, boss said not to do any of your mumbo jumbo bullshit on this one. We can’t let anything contaminate the ritual.”

The voodoo woman, Isadora apparently, stopped  chanting and glared at Peisinoe with a huge helping of contempt. Dissension in the ranks. “
Femin duol ou, bouzen
. Aye makin’ tings aight wit Baron Samedi. He’s none too ‘appy.”

Peisinoe’s blue eyes rolled dramatically as she tilted her head from side to side. “Blah, blah, blah.” Her eyes focused like a laser on Isadora as she snatched the bird’s wing out of the woman’s hand and shoved it against Isadora’s chest. “Boss said no. You want to chit chat with your crazy ass god, do it with one of the others.”

One of the others? So there were more people in here, but who? Lilith tried to tilt her head around to look, but she couldn’t see anything between the darkness and the damn straps holding her in place.

“
Mwen pral tranch gòj ke fanm la ak pipi sou nanm li…
” Isadora turned away, mumbling in another language, none of which Lilith understood but it certainly didn’t sound like a friendly apology. She picked up her candle and moved out of view, skirts swishing like an angry rolling tide.

“You forgot your miniature tumbleweed.” Peisinoe closed her finger and thumb on a leaf of the odd little plant and held it up like it was a contaminated piece of garbage.

Suddenly, Isadora reappeared, quickly grabbing the little round plant away from the siren and cradling it against her chest. “Dis es no tumbewed!” She spit the words sharply like verbal knives to Peisinoe’s face. Lilith definitely understood the sentiment.

“Dis es a resurrection fern. Tis da Rose of Jericho.” Isadora turned her attention to the little plant, coddling it like a precious living thing. Her voice moved through the air like smoke, whispering and twisting like something sacred or something evil, maybe both. “Gives life ta dose dat ‘ave no soul left in dere husk. Let’s mae sing to dere body.”