White Hot Kiss (22 page)

He gave me another quick grin. “I’ve told you. I’ve been watching you for months, years really.”

Years?
My brain couldn’t wrap itself around that idea.

He returned to staring at the plant. “I found you long ago, way before your most recent birthday, before any of the demons became aware of you. I guess the real question is, what makes you so special that Hell is looking for you? You’re half-demon. So what?”

For some reason, I started to feel lamer than I normally did. “Okay.”

“But—” he held up his hand “—half demons don’t really have any demonic power. They’re just bat-shit crazy. You know, the kids that pull wings off of butterflies and burn down their houses for fun? Usually while they’re still inside the burning house. Not the smartest bunch, but hey, it happens. Not everyone is created equal.”

I pursed my lips. “I don’t think I’m special.”

Roth looked at me again. “But you are. You’re a half demon that is also half
Warden.
Do you even know what they really are?”

“Well, people call them gargoyles, but—”

“Not what they’re labeled, but how they were created?”

I ran my fingers over the curve of the band. “They were created to fight the Lilin.”

He busted into laughter—deep, amused chuckles.

Embarrassment flooded me. “Then why were they created, smart-ass?”

“Don’t ever let them make you feel like they’re better than you.” Roth shook his head, still smiling. “They aren’t. They aren’t better than any of us.” He laughed again, sounding less amused. “They’re His big-ass mistake, and He gave them a pure soul to make up for it.”

“None of that makes any sense.”

“And it’s not my place to explain it to you. There are so many rules. You know that. Ask your dear adopted dickhead of a father. I doubt he’d tell you the truth, or has ever told you the truth, for that matter.”

“Not like you’re doing a good job of telling me the truth, either.”

“It’s not in my nature to do so.” Setting his cup down, he leaned back on his elbows and peered up at me through dark lashes. “Believe it or not, there are rules that even the Boss follows. Not all of Hell’s children follow them, but there are things I cannot and will not do.”

“Wait. The Boss—do you mean...?”

“The Boss?” he repeated. “Yes. The big one downstairs.”

“Do...do you work for him?”

He flashed another demure smile. “Why, yes, I do.”

Good God, what was I doing wanting him to kiss me earlier?

Roth sighed as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. “Say you had something I wanted? I can’t just take it from you.”

I shook my head, confused. “Why not? A succubus takes energy without the person knowing.”

“That’s different. The succubus isn’t killing the human. Just tasting their essence, and for the most part, the human doesn’t mind.” He winked. “But I’m old-school. Just like the Boss. Humans have to have their free will and all that nonsense.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in free will?”

“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean the Boss doesn’t.” He shook his head. “Look, we’ve gotten way off topic here. You know that I work for the Boss and that I’m here on a job, so to speak.”

Even though I knew there had to be a reason why Roth popped out of nowhere and started following me, sour disappointment still curdled in my stomach. What was I thinking? That he saw me chowing down on a Big Mac and just had to know me? “I’m your job?”

His dark gaze flickered to mine and held. “Yes.”

Slowly nodding, I let out a low breath. “Why?”

“I’m here to keep you safe from those who are looking for you. And by those, I mean demons a lot bigger and badder than what you normally deal with.”

I stared at him so long that I think my eyes crossed, and then I burst into laughter. So hard, tears tracked down my face, blurring his scowl.

“Why are you laughing?” he demanded. “It better not be because you doubt my ability to keep your ass—a very lovely ass, by the way—safe. Because I think I’ve proved that I can.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that you’re a demon.”

His expression turned bland. “Yes. I know I’m a demon. Thanks for the clarification.”

“Demons don’t protect anyone or anything.” I waved my hand dismissively, still chuckling.

“Well, obviously they do, because I’ve saved you multiple times.”

Wiping a few tears off my face, I quieted down. “I know. And I appreciate it. Thank you. But it’s just so...so ass-backward.”

Impatience flashed in his eyes, darkening them until the brown flecks almost disappeared. “Demons will protect just about anything
if
it’s in their best interest. Or namely, Hell’s best interest.”

“And why would protecting me be in Hell’s best interest?”

Roth’s eyes narrowed. “I was going to try to break this to you gently, but screw it. I told you what your mother could do. I even told you her name.”

My humor dried up right then and there as I stared at him.

A bit of smugness seeped into his face. “And I bet you went through every stage of denial and then some, but Lilith is your mother.”

“You mean a demon named Lilith.” I still refused to believe anything else. It was just some random demon with an unfortunate name.

“No. I mean
the
demon named Lilith,” he corrected. “She’s your mommy.”

“That’s not possible.” I shook my head. “She’s chained in Hell!”

Now it was Roth’s turn to laugh like a demented seal. “And who started those rumors? The Wardens? Lilith was in Hell, but she broke loose seventeen years and nine months ago, give or take a week or two, which by the way, corresponds directly with what?”

I did the quick math, which put that date right around my birthday. My stomach roiled.

“She went topside, engaged in a little naughty action, got pregnant and popped out a pretty little baby that looked just like her.”

“I look like her?” My head got stuck on the wrong thing.

Roth reached over, picking up a strand of my hair, twisting the pale locks around his long fingers. “She had your coloring from what I remember. I only saw her once before she was taken care of.”

“Taken care of?” I whispered, already knowing the answer.

“When she escaped, the Boss had a pretty good idea of what she was up to. Where he has her now, she’s not getting out of.”

A dull ache pierced my temples. I rubbed at them, never more confused in my life. Should I feel better that Lilith wasn’t dead, being that she was my mother? But being trapped in Hell by Satan himself had to suck and my mom...she was Lilith. I wasn’t sure how to feel, and I knew it was about to get a whole lot worse.

“Have you ever heard of
The Lesser Key of Solomon?
” he asked.

Lifting my gaze, I shook my head. “No.”

“It’s the real deal—a book cataloging all the demons. It has their incantations, how to summon them, how to tell them apart, ways to trap a demon and all kinds of fun stuff. Lilith can’t be summoned.” He paused, watching me closely. “Neither can her original children.”

My head felt like it was about to explode. “The Lilin?”

When he nodded, my stomach plummeted like my popularity status. “But everything has a loophole, and there’s a really big one concerning the Lilin,” he continued. “In the original
Lesser Key,
it describes how one can create the Lilin. It’s like a seal that needs to be broken—an incantation.”

“Oh, my God...”

Roth was all serious at this point. “The incantation has these stages, like most spells do. We know they involve spilling the blood of a child of Lilith’s, and the—well, the dead blood of Lilith herself. There’s more—a third or fourth thing, but we don’t know for sure. Whatever those things are, if they’re all completed, then the Lilin will be born again upon Earth.”

My hands fell to my lap. Several moments passed. “And the child. That’s me? There’s no one else?”

He nodded again. “And the whole spilling-of-the-blood thing—well, not to be a downer, but since the Boss doesn’t know if it means a pinprick of your blood or your death, he’s not willing to risk it.”

“Gee. Tell him thanks.”

A smirk graced his lips. “The dead blood...” Leaning over, his agile fingers skipped along my wrist, eliciting a shiver in its wake. He worked my hand open, and the odd ruby-colored ring was exposed. “This stone isn’t a gemstone. It contains the dead blood of Lilith.”

“What? Ew! How do you know?”

“Because Lilith used to wear this ring, and only the child of Lilith can carry her blood without experiencing some seriously ill effects,’” he said, gently closing my fingers around the ring. “So we know where two of the things are, but the rest...it’s in the Key.”

“And where is the Key?”

“Good question.” Roth leaned back, closing his eyes. “Don’t know. And the Boss doesn’t know what the third and fourth things are, but he’s concerned that other demons—Dukes and Princes—may since Lilith was chummy with several of them. Getting out of Hell and having you was on purpose, her last big ‘eff you’ to the Heavens and Hell.”

Wow. That did wonders for a girl’s self-esteem.

“I don’t get it,” I said, curling my hands inward until my nails pressed into the flesh of my palm. “The Lilin are...they are insane and crazy scary, but wouldn’t your Boss want that? It would be Hell on Earth basically.”

Roth choked out a laugh. “No one wins in this case. When humans are stripped of their souls, they waste away and turn into wraiths. They don’t go to Heaven or Hell. And the Boss knows he can’t control the Lilin. He could barely control Lilith.” Roth’s beautiful lips twisted in a wry grin. “And trust me, you haven’t witnessed a pissing contest yet if you haven’t seen Lilith and the Boss go toe-to-toe.”

I tried to wrap my head around this. “So...?”

“The last thing that Hell wants is for the Lilin to be running amok on Earth.” He tapped his fingers on his knee, brows knitted. “And so here I am, making sure your blood doesn’t spill and neither does the blood in the ring while trying to figure out what the other stuff is before
that
happens. Oh, and there’s the whole issue of trying to discover exactly who wants the Lilin to be reborn. I’m a busy demon.”

My mouth worked, but no words came out. We sat there for several minutes, the only noise the soft tapping of his fingers and the cars below. Mind. Blown. My mother was
the
Lilith. I was too tired to deny the truth to that. Mommy dearest apparently conceived me as a way to give everyone the middle finger. Blood spilling didn’t sound fun, no matter which way you looked at it.

“Why now?” I asked.

“It’s the timing of your birth. Supposedly the incantation can only work after you turn seventeen.” He paused. “The Boss wasn’t sure if Lilith had been successful in the sense that you...”

I stared at him, horrified when I realized what he was getting at. “That I wasn’t killed once...” I swallowed, thinking of what Petr had said. “Once the Wardens found me?”

Roth nodded. “No one knew where Lilith had gone or where you’d been born. The world’s a pretty big place. I’d found you before, but your birthday was still far off. When the Boss knew we were months away from your birthday, he sent me up again to see if you were still...uh, well, yeah.”

“Alive,” I whispered.

He plowed on. “When I reported back, the Boss ordered me to keep an eye on you. See, the Boss and the demons that Lilith hung with aren’t the only ones who’ve heard of the incantation. Others have, as well, and they see you as a risk. They know the Alphas will obliterate every demon topside if the Lilin are reborn. They want to take you out—the Seeker, the zombie and the possessed human.”

“So some demons may want me to raise the Lilin and others want to kill me because—” And it struck me then, with the force of a cement brick. Ice froze my veins just as a hot rush of betrayal swept through me like a rising tide. “Abbot has to know this.”

Roth said nothing.

I swallowed, but the lump in my throat refused to budge. “He must have known this whole entire time. I mean, there’s no way. The Alphas...and that’s why Petr tried to kill me. It’s probably why he and his father have always hated me, because of what I’m linked to.”

In the looming silence, tears burned my eyes. I clenched my fists until my knuckles ached, refusing to let them fall. At no point had Abbot believed that I deserved to know the truth about what I was, what I could become a part of. And if Zayne knew, I didn’t think I could ever get over that.

“Layla...”

Roth said my name so softly that I had to look at him, and when I did, our gazes locked. Part of me wondered at that very moment what he saw when he looked at me like that—like he wasn’t exactly sure what I was or what he was really even doing here. And this had to be confusing for him. He was a demon, after all. I also wondered why I even cared, but the last thing I wanted to be seen as was a girl on the verge of tears. Which I was.

Sucking in a shrill breath, I eased my fingers open, and the ring bounced around my loose fist. Because I had no other place to put it, I slipped it onto my right ring finger. Part of me expected the action to spark Armageddon, but nothing happened. Not even a weird sensation or a shiver.

How anticlimactic.

Slowly but surely, my brain started to turn everything over. It probably took longer than necessary, but I was proud to know that my eyes were dry even though my throat felt raw. “We need to find that Key.”

“We do. Knowing what’s needed in the incantation gives us a fighting chance. I have some leads.” He paused, and I could feel his stare on me again. “You can’t tell the Wardens about any of this.”

I barked out a short laugh. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to go home. Once they find out what I did to Petr—”

“They will never know.” Roth caught the edge of my chin, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were a furious shade of amber. “Because you will not tell them what really happened.”

“But—”

“You will tell them part of the truth,” he said. “Petr attacked you. You defended yourself, but it was me who killed him. You will not mention taking his soul.”

Stunned, I stared at him. “But they’ll come after you.”