My heart beat like the clapping of hooves as the blood pounded in my ears. I could tell this was it. I was on the precipice of what I needed to know.
“While she had made what you now know as demons long before your father’s arrival, her death created two beings from the essence of her. Two young girls that much of the world believed held the true claim to the throne.”
“Lilith and Eve,” I murmured.
She nodded once. “Lilith and Eve. The Fae were born from Genesis’s demise, but they were only babies when your father took power.”
Suddenly things were beginning to make sense and I could understand why the people in this world might wish that I didn’t exist. Lucifer wasn’t from Hell either, but nothing stopped him from coming in and claiming it, meanwhile their true ruler died and left behind children that had been denied a birthright. “But now he’s dead…” I said hoarsely, my voice hardly more than a whisper.
“Now he’s dead,” Iona agreed. “And I can’t say that I’m sad, but I do pity you.” She fingered the flower lei around her neck and mine suddenly felt like a vice. Not just any flowers. Lilies…
Deep in my bones I knew it then. It was something I couldn’t explain because I only had pieces. Parts. They ran together in my memories. Every flash of a flowered white tattoo that was branded on someone meant to kill me. The imp. The blood magic. The silent she that lurked in the back, just waiting for the day to return to her throne.
Eve had come to Earth and died. She created a race of children to hunt demons. The stories of that were clear.
But her sister…
“Do you believe she deserves to rule?” I asked Iona. Emotions collided within me as I struggled to focus on what to think of this. What to feel. Was I truly Queen? Or was I an imposter?
Either way, the flash of surprise in Iona’s face couldn’t be masked.
She knew what and who I was referencing, still she said, “I don’t know who you mean.”
“Lilith,” I spat her name, causing several around us to look in our direction. Rysten’s hand appeared on my lower back and I knew he had moved closer. “Do you believe she deserves to rule?”
Her eyes were conflicted. “I…” She looked away from me, like my gaze was suddenly too much to handle. Guilt swam within in her, followed by regret. Whatever they had planned to do was already in motion, except it wasn’t demon magic I needed to truly watch for. No, it wasn’t demons at all—but Fae. “I don’t think it matters who or what I want anymore. It’s not going to change anything.”
The words had barely left her lips when a banshee’s scream made the ground shudder. My head split in two as Moira’s pain flooded me and whatever kindness I felt for the she-demon beside me dissipated.
Chapter 12
Blue flames rushed up my arms as I glared at Iona.
“Was this all just a distraction?” I asked, even though I already knew. How foolish I’d been thinking it was Iona I needed to watch. She’d lured me into a den of demons and I’d sang and skipped alongside her, all the while telling myself my eyes were wide open.
I was a fool, but a fool with power.
“There’s that Morningstar temper that your father was known for,” she murmured. I shook my head and took off through the crowd. Iona would have to deal. First, I needed to find—
“Ruby!” Rysten yelled, his fingers wrapping around my wrist and pulling me to a halt. I looked back at him and a sense of dread filled my stomach. Was he going to try to stop me? “Laran just disappeared. No one can get ahold of him.”
Fuck. I was really beginning to wish that I had just lit her ass on fire and been done with it.
“Find him.” We locked eyes and silently I was hoping—praying to the beast, to Lucifer, to the Sins, and the monster I knew—I prayed that someone was listening and we would all make it out of here alive.
Rysten nodded and then disappeared into the shadows.
Alone with only my fire and my wits, I ran, following that wisp of a string that tied Moira and I together as people. That bond that would forever keep her by my side.
“Moira!” I yelled, crashing through the crowd. My feet slipped on something liquid and I fell to my knees before her. The crowd jumped back as I waved my arms wide, shooing them away.
She convulsed sporadically, her head whipping side to side. Her eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched together, I looked her over but could find nothing wrong.
Across from me, Jax kneeled with his eyes closed and hands resting flat over her.
He would be the picture of serenity if I didn’t know that inside him a storm was brewing.
Like me, he was trying to figure out what was wrong. His hands clenched into fists as he pulled away.
“It makes no sense,” he mumbled, more to himself than anything.
“What doesn’t make sense?” I snapped, clutching her thrashing head in my hands. I moved to place it on my lap, scared she might crack her own skull if this kept up. “What are you talking about?”
“Her!” he yelled. “She told me she wasn’t feeling well, then she collapsed. I assumed it was magic, but...” His words trailed off as the brand on her forehead began to glow. I had no idea what that meant, but I bet we were about to find out. “There’s no trace of magic on her. If there were, I could stop it. Whatever she’s fighting…” he swallowed and looked up at me. “I have no idea what it is.”
“Fuck,” I growled, wanting to smash my fists in the ground and set it all alight. The beast was already gnashing her teeth, begging to be let out, but I wanted to handle this—I needed to handle this—to show myself that I could.
With no Horsemen, no Bandit, and no fucking clue what I was facing, I had to come to terms with that fact that I was severely outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and out of my depth.
“Moira,” I rocked her head side to side. “I need you to wake up, babe.” Desperation wasn’t leaking into me anymore. It was pouring out of me profusely. “Wake up, Moira. Come on.” The fire from my hands engulfed her and the thrashing stopped. I had no idea what I was doing, only that last time my fire saved her and maybe it could again.
But nothing happened.
She burned. She breathed.
And yet, she didn’t wake.
I pulled away, letting out a frustrated growl. Jax remained silent, watching as I turned to the masked onlookers. “What did you do?” I asked them.
No one answered.
“What. Did. You. Do?” I repeated again, slower. Deadlier. Terror was eating at me. Terror over Moira’s unconscious body. Terror over Laran’s disappearance. I came down here to find answers and felt like I was going to find an early grave instead.
“They did nothing, Lucifer’s Daughter,” came a voice.
It was sweet and innocent and all things good in the world. Deception at its finest. Evil at its worst. Darkness that hides under a mask of light and beauty.
“Lilith,” I whispered.
“My, my, what a clever girl.”
“What did you do to her?” I asked, hating how weak I sounded. Wishing I was half as strong as the world seemed to believe.
She let out a trilling laugh, reminiscent of windchimes. “Much like your mother, not clever enough,” she replied sweetly, ignoring my question entirely. My blood boiled.
Moira’s head slid from my lap as I laid it on the ground and rose to my feet. Her footsteps were soundless, but the swaths of fabric from her dress brushed the stone. The pounding of my blood filled my ears as she came into view. The woman of my nightmares.
Was it a strange twist of fate that I was the Devil’s daughter and she looked like an angel?
Golden eyes blinked down at me and lips that were the palest shade of pink turned at the corners to form a smile. Her gown was made of the whitest gossamer I’d ever seen. So wholesome. So pure. Her hair blended into the billowy fabric as it swayed around her.
“You even look like her.” She nodded with the slightest purse to her lips. Disdain, I realized. “But your eyes,
those are all your father’s,” she said with a breathy sigh, moving closer to place two fingers under my chin so she could see them clearly
I shuddered against her cool fingers as her nails grew sharp.
The beast decided right then and there that she’d had enough, shoving forward long enough to light her ass on fire. Lilith’s grip didn’t falter as the flames licked up her fingers, over her hand, halfway up her arm, and the skin beneath remained unearthly pale and smooth.
I’d expected her to burn and this to all be over. I expected my gifts that made me powerful to not fail me. With a cold realization I came to the crux of this. I expected to always and forever be more powerful. To be invincible.
And in thinking that I forgot the very lessons that kept me alive all the years before I had any power to my name.
She cocked an eyebrow, a smirk forming on her face as I scrambled to hide the stricken expression on my own. The flames didn’t burn her, which meant I wasn’t just in trouble. This time, I was utterly screwed.
The white of her dress turned as black as the essence of her soul. Stripped of her ethereal beauty and cast in only glittering ashes, Lilith stood before me as the last of the fire winked out, and with it, my only hope.
Sin had stripped me of my telepathy. Lilith had taken the fire. Moira was down and Bandit was nowhere to be found. While the Horsemen weren’t accounted for, something told me they wouldn’t be showing up to save my ass just in time.
I was on my own and my enemy was literally the Queen of the Unseelie. She was about as ancient as it gets.
“Such fire, young one. Your father had that too.” She smiled fondly for a moment, her expression nostalgic as she disappeared into a memory. Whatever she was thinking, her heart beat for it. Before I could draw any conclusions her eyes sharpened again, and that same smile turned brittle. Disparaging. “And now that fire will be mine.”
“I hate to break it to you”—I paused, turning my cheek to wrench my face away from her grasp—“but that’s not possible.”
I’d never seen anything so beautiful or wicked like the look she gave me. I swallowed hard against the dryness in my throat. “There was a time when I thought so too, but then you were born and it changed everything.”
“What?” To my credit, my voice never wavered, but inside...the beast was silent. Watching. That worried me.
“Well, Lucifer’s Daughter, that story started a very long time ago. Back when I was just a girl and your father was just the King—the one who stole my title.” Her teeth were pointed and her nails were claw-tipped, but in that brief flash of a second, I saw a woman with mercury eyes and not gold. That realization came too little too late. Still, I kept her talking.
“You see, your father was not a demon as many believed, but a primordial. Just like Genesis. Just like God. One of the fun little quirks of their species is that they can bind themselves to a planet, and by extension its power. But when that being dies…well, so does the planet. Unless, there’s another primordial to bond to it.” That sense of dread was now magnified. It settled in my stomach and clawed its way up my throat, taking hold of my heart like a parasite—one intent on never letting go.
“Hell started to implode, just as it is doing now—except last time Lucifer bonded to it. He saved the planet and the people made him King. Not you.” Those last words were whispered like a goodbye.
If she was suggesting what I thought she might be...the muscles of my empty stomach spasmed as I fought the urge to gag up bile.
“You are clever,” she said and clapped happily, but it was all a farce. Did her followers see it too? “Yes. The original Six that Genesis made struck a deal with your dear daddy, and it was only after I got rid of my sister, Eve, that he even found me competent enough to become the Sin of Pride, reducing me to one of his whores instead of giving me my rightful place as Queen.” Her hand clenched into a fist and I wondered if she saw the way her pride truly did eat at her. If I had to guess, my father was probably not a good man, but I couldn’t see him being worse than this. Worse than her. “I spent centuries trying to convince him to get rid of the other Six, but your daddy—he just had too much love, as he would say. I waited, biding my time until he eventually knocked one of them up. In hindsight, I should have known it would be Lola. He always did want what he couldn’t have.”
There were so many things about this story that struck me as wrong, but I didn’t interrupt because I needed every second to try and find a way out of this situation. Chances were if she was immune to the flames, she was immune to other things too, and even if I could get her down, there were still hundreds of demons I’d have to fight off as well. I needed to think.
Think...think...a slight numbing settled over my skin. A fuzziness entered my brain as I tried to puzzle my way out of this one.
“Are you feeling alright, dear?” she asked, pulling me from my stupor. My pores clogged with sweat as the heat truly pressed down on me. “I must say, I was worried it wouldn’t work. But your father fell for the same trick.”
I tried to open my mouth but couldn’t form the words. My tongue lolled and my head felt too heavy. I squinted as the lights behind her flashed. My feet stumbled even though I was standing up… then my knees hit the cave floor and my heart began hammering into overdrive.
“Lilies grown in the soil of crushed pure black lotus on the Brimstone City will take on the same qualities, except it’s far more potent. One touch to the skin or inhaling its scent is enough to kill the average demon within minutes, which is why no one dares grow them. As it is, this will likely only incapacitate you for half an hour at most.” She paused to laugh…and laugh and laugh. There was a true madness to it and my stomach turned sour. I thought of the children who’d brought them to us. Their hands were bare.
“The children…” In my heart I knew my search would come up empty if I scanned the crowd for that small child called Elissa. My revulsion for this woman that wanted to crown herself a queen only deepened.
“Were orphans. Lower demons with no parents to care for them and no purpose of their own. I gave them a purpose. They were carriers of my crown.” Even as she said it, several faces in the crowd turned away. Iona was among them, her eyes glued to the ground. She’d so shamelessly scorned me for a father I never knew, and yet…
I gagged, but no bile would come up. Lilith scrunched her nose with disgust, rolling her golden eyes as she flicked a lock of white hair away from her face.
“You’re a monster,” I spat as best I could.
“I am,” Lilith admitted. “But aren’t we all?” She motioned to the demons beyond.
I shook my head and the very ground itself seemed to move. I gritted my teeth, panting hard through the wave of nausea that flooded me. The world had slowed to a crawl.
“Not like…you,” I rasped, struggling to make my lips work. Spit flew as I spluttered and shook.
“It’s almost time,” she said and smiled. “And here you thought I was talking because I wanted to entertain your childish notions. Pathetic girl.” She squatted down and put her face eye level to mine. “Unlike Eve and I, you were born with the beast. Your father knew that, so he bound your powers and the monster in a bid to hide you from me so that I would focus on him. It worked for a time, until I realized something. Why wait to control you when I could have the beast all the same?” In my steadily worsening state I saw the monster beneath her skin. The true Lilith—and it was a terrible sight to behold. “Well, I tried and I failed—killing both him and the beast in the process—but you, Ruby, are my second chance. I learned from him where I went wrong and brought you out of hiding at the same time.” She breathed in deeply, inhaling my scent before releasing it like a sigh of relief. “Now, I will have the power of the primordial and reclaim my throne, and you, dear girl, are the one who will help me.”
She pressed a chaste kiss to my lips that made me squirm. Her tongue slid over my teeth and she bit down sharply on my bottom lip, pulling back to smear my blood all over h
er bottom lip like it was the greatest of delicacies. I’d done something not so different with Rysten only hours ago, but the perverted way she went about it made my stomach turn again.
“Mmmm, you even taste like him too,” she mused.
Crazy. I didn’t know if Lilith was always nuts or —if like Eve—time had turned her, but I needed to find a way out of here right now. A gurgled cry of outrage slid from my lips as she stood to walk away.
In that moment it was do or die, and just like with Danny and the imp, I turned to my last gift.
Blinking once, I opened my eyes and sought out for her soul. It may work. It may not. I was out of options and the Horsemen clearly weren’t coming.
I focused on that swirling pit of black in her chest and reached for it—
Only to be blocked.
Impossible.
At least I thought it was. It seemed the more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew. Or how deep the bonds of betrayal could go. Out of the corner of my eye a second figure strode forth, and whatever hope I had of escaping fizzled out completely.
“Siiiin,” I moaned. Allistair had warned me. He said that Sin looked out for no one but Sin, and I’d foolishly believed her instead of him. I’d stupidly listened to the emotions I felt instead of the words I heard.
And now it was going to cost me everything.
She walked by without sparing me a glance and dropped to one knee. Her head bowed as she uttered, “Mother.”
Lilith smiled and it all became so clear. “My dearest one,” she purred. Her claw-tipped hands stroked Sin’s hair with undeniable fondness. “I knew when you were born that you would be the one to liberate me, and now, I will liberate you. Sinumpa, Heir of the Unseelie, Daughter of Cain, Child of Mine—you are released from your blood oath of service.”
Lilith sliced a cut from the corner of Sin’s eye to her cheek, leaving a scarlet tear. Blood welled on the tip of her claw as she cut her palm. The wound on Sin’s cheek glowed red and then hardened. A scar.
Brimstone Nightmares (Queen of the Damned Book 4) Page 12