by May Dawson
I wondered if we were still in the building where we’d met Turner, or if we’d been moved to a secondary location. Really? Again? I bit down on my lower lip, feeling suddenly furious. I was almost as angry as I was scared. I hadn’t asked to be the Lilith. I hadn’t asked to be kidnapped twice in two weeks.
Whoever had us, though, wanted something from us. Was Turner going to sell us back to the Company? Had he already? Maybe this was where they’d locked us up this time, since I’d burnt down their last hell-hole.
Well, I’d burn this one down too. Just give me some time.
I took a few long, slow breaths. I needed to calm down. I needed some meditation and positive affirmations. Like I am the worst thing in the night. And I will thrive in the darkness. And I will make everyone involved in this eat their own eyeballs.
Feeling better, I opened up my eyes. The room was still gray and bleak around me. We were still trapped as rats. And I still didn’t know who owned the rats’ lab.
But I was the Lilith. Whoever was out there wanted us alive. And as I’d been told many times before, that gave us the tactical advantage.
We would get the chance to escape. We’d done it before. Last week, even.
My sense of bravado felt a little fake, but I still pulled it around me like the shirt I didn’t have as I crawled back across the floor to Jacob.
“Jake?” I asked, nudging him. He shifted slightly on the floor, as if he were trying to get comfortable, but his eyes didn’t open. “Jacob, wake up. I need you.”
He shook his head. Just faintly.
I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to his. My hair fell around us both, a dark veil blocking out the gray world around us.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Do you need me to heal you? Because if you don’t wake up right now, I’m going to kiss you. Blech, girls. Am I right? So show me a sign of life?”
His chest rose softly and steadily. He’d fallen back into deep sleep.
Maybe he had the right idea. I wouldn’t mind hitting snooze on this nightmare.
My nose traced over his as I found my way to his lips. I pressed my lips against his in a chaste kiss. I pulled back to take in his face, which was still. Unmoved.
I sighed. I hated to kiss someone who was unconscious; it was practical, given our ability to heal each other, but really. The prince in Sleeping Beauty must have felt like such a sleaze.
“Wake up,” I breathed against his lips, and then I pressed my mouth against his again. His lips were firm and cool, and I thought of my silly daydream the day before, kissing Jacob at the country fair when his lips were still cold from ice cream. I could just imagine it, the sunshine on our shoulders, me stealing his sunglasses, Jacob carrying that big stuffed toy for me and calling me Princess even though he was the one who had insisted on spending fifteen bucks in his determination to win the ball-toss. The daydream rose up around me, sweet like cotton candy and detailed like a memory, and I felt some of the chill burn off the room.
I frowned. The boys had told me that sometimes you remembered things from a Lilith’s past life. Those memories felt like déjà vu, but for us, they were real, not a mind’s trick. Had another Lilith gone to the state fair with… another Jacob?
And did Jacob in every generation call me Princess like an asshole?
God, I’d love to ask him. I wondered if he ever had any phantom memories of loving me. That must be a mind-fuck, when he just wanted to slip loose of all of us.
I kissed his plush lower lip, then the corner of his mouth, about to give up. His lips were lush and kissable above the firm stubbornness of that jaw. I kissed the faint dimple in his cheek, the one that he probably would have been annoyed by, if he’d known how much I liked the rare, quick flash of that dimple when he gave in and smiled genuinely. His smiles were rare for me. He always seemed to have an easier time with his brothers and Olivia.
But then, they’d always been fifty-fifty. He had just come to maybe trust me fifty-fifty.
And look where it had gotten us.
“Jacob, I wish you wouldn’t leave me alone,” I said.
He stirred slightly, raising his hands to cover his face, as if the light were bothering his eyes. I sat up on my knees in excitement, but I leaned back away from him, in case his first instinct on waking up caged was to lash out, still confused by the gas like I had been.
“I don’t know where we are,” I told him as his eyelashes fluttered open. He stared at the binds on his wrists, and then his gaze swept up, taking in the smooth gray ceiling and walls. “Turner kidnapped us.”
“I know.” He groaned, letting his head fall back against the stone with a thunk, closing his eyes again.
“You know Turner kidnapped or you know where we are?”
“I’ve been here before,” he said.
“Where are we?” I asked. If we knew where we were, we could tell Ryker and Levi when we got in touch with them at the treehouse. They’d come and rescue us. Everything would be okay.
“We’re in a demon case,” he said. He gritted his teeth, as if he were speaking with effort now. “The walls and floor—everything—it’s unmarkable. We can’t mark any symbols here. We can’t use magic.”
“Okay,” I said. “Demon case. That’s a nice, terrifying turn of phrase.”
“Not even with our blood,” he went on.
“I’m trying not to freak out here. And these details maybe not one hundred percent helpful.” I rested my hand on his arm. “How do you feel? Do you want me to heal you?”
“I want you to get the hell away from me,” he said.
17
I pushed myself back across the floor, believing the sense of urgency in Jacob’s voice. But he was scaring me more than waking up kidnapped and trapped in a demon’s case. My stomach was tight with anxiety. Once I’d put a few feet between us, I asked, “What is it? Are you okay?”
“No,” he said, his voice furious. “Just leave me alone. Don’t talk.”
I hadn’t heard that bite and rage from him in days. I stared at him as he gritted his teeth, rolling onto his other side, away from me, so I couldn’t see his face. He curled up with his knees drawn into his belly.
The silence stretched between us. I bit down savagely on my lower lip, holding back my desire to ask him again if he was okay. I could hear him breathing, loud and ragged. He groaned beneath his breath. Then the sound broke off, as if he had realized he had made a sound aloud and was holding it back. His head bowed forward and then back, as if he were trying to shake something off. Trying to hold on despite pain.
“Jacob,” I said. “What’s going on? Let me help you.”
“Stay away,” he growled.
I drew my own knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs with my cuffed hands in front of them. I found myself rocking slightly, trying to diffuse the restless tension that overtook me while Jacob suffered. What the hell was happening to him? Was it the gas we’d breathed in? Whatever was wrong, I was sure the energy between us could heal him, at least take the edge off his pain. If it worked in here. If he would let me try. But I could tell it hurt him every time he had to talk to me, so I stayed there, still and quiet and agonized to watch him suffer.
The door swung open.
I gasped, rocketing to my feet, as unsteady as I was with my bound ankles. “Jacob.”
He must have heard the edge of panic in my voice, because he started to roll over. I could’ve been cool if I’d still been in my affirmations phase—thinking about the eyeballs of my enemies—but his reaction had sucked away all my bravado. My legs trembled beneath me so desperately that I had to sit down again, sitting heavily on the floor. I pressed my back to the wall, feeling the cold seep through my skin. I was as far away from Jacob as I could get now. It had been what he wanted, but it felt wrong.
Jacob faced me now. His face was white and drawn. I tried to meet his eyes, but his gaze wasn’t on me; he was staring at the side of the door.
A boy walked into the room.
He didn’t look much older than me, if he was at all. His dark brown hair fell into his eyes, and he shook it back. He was tall and slender, like a basketball player, and his face was handsome. He sure didn’t look like a demon, and I glanced over at Jacob, confused. But Jacob stared back at him with his face steely, his jaw set, and I felt my uncertainty harden into fear.
He looked at Jacob, his eyes slowly traveling over Jake taking in everything, from the sweat beaded along his hairline to the way his long, bare feet were tucked up protectively close to his body.
“Well, look at that,” he said. “It looks like my work is done for me.”
He had a rough, boyish voice; it would have been cute if he weren’t, you know, evil.
He walked closer to Jacob, examining him curiously, his hands in his pockets. Jacob looked up at him, hate glowering in those golden eyes.
“Well, I’ll leave you to writhe in the corner,” the boy said cheerfully. “Ellis and I can get acquainted.”
“Stay away from her,” Jacob warned him.
The boy crouched in front of me. He had bright green eyes, the color almost supernatural, and he looked into my face like he wanted to know everything about me. “Hello, Ellis.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Nimshi,” he said. He snapped his fingers at the door. “Give me wire cutters. I want these off her.”
Someone threw wire cutters in through the door. They hit the shiny floor and slid across it. The door closed abruptly.
Nimshi grinned as he picked up the bolt cutters. “They don’t entirely trust you not to gut me with these and make your way out. Someone thinks you’re a real badass, don’t they?”
I stared at him, refusing to answer. I wanted to gut him with the wire cutters. But I needed my hands loose first.
And then I also needed to know how to gut someone with wire cutters.
I held my wrists out to him. He slid the cutters against my skin, the metal cool, and I winced as it snapped shut on the ties. The pressure on my wrist released. I rubbed the grooves in my wrists.
“What did you do to Jacob?” I demanded.
“I believe he’s having a flashback to his days in demon day care,” he said. “PTSD. The gift that keeps on giving. At least from my perspective.”
“Were you there?” Give me a chance, and I would kill him either way. But god, did I want to hurt anyone who had done this to Jacob.
“No, I wasn’t earth-side then,” Nimshi said. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “But I do love how you hate me. It’s adorable.”
I stared back at him. He couldn’t seem to resist going on.
“You’re gathering strength from wanting to protect him when I have the funniest feeling that you won’t be able to gather that strength to protect yourself.”
“What do you want from us?”
He rolled his head back and forth slightly, his eyes sliding back and forth, as if he was playfully considering how to answer that question. “All right. So in the long term? I want you dead. But there’s a long, long way between here and there.”
“Why?” My voice came out flat. I was proud of that.
“Don’t worry,” he promised me. “You’ll want to die long before you do. I’ll only be giving you what you ask for by then.”
“Yes, I get it, you’re very scary,” I told him curtly. “What I want to know is, what do you get from killing us?”
“The torture’s really the fun part,” he said. “I don’t want to kill you. But these fragile human forms don’t take all that much pain.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “Why did Turner sell us out to you for this?”
“Why do you seem disappointed that all I want to do is torture you?” he asked. “I’m a demon. What do you think we do for a living?”
I wondered if he knew who I was. After all, plenty of other people had wanted me because of my powers. I had to wonder if maybe he didn’t know, if he had just wanted the Nephilim and I came in a handy two-pack with Jacob. If he didn’t know, better to keep it my secret. Unless I needed to play that card to stay alive.
“Why did Turner do this to us?” I asked again.
“Oh, his story’s always been bull shit,” he told us airily. “His little ritual-plus-exorcism didn’t work. He made up a whole elaborate tale, but the truth is, the ritual failed, and he sold his soul to a demon. Clock’s a-ticking. You saved his soul, sweetheart.”
“That’s fine and all,” I said, “But he’s still going to Hell when I kill him, isn’t he?”
Nimshi grinned wider. “Oh, I like you.”
“Maybe we can not do the torture thing, then.”
“No, that’s just going to make it so much better,” he told me. He booped my nose, which was pretty hard to take from a terrifying demon-thing. “So you wondered, didn’t you, just how bad it is when a demon enters a human body? Well, kids, now you get to find out firsthand.”
18
“Give me those.” I held out my hand to Nimshi.
He quirked an eyebrow back at me.
“I just want my ankles cut loose,” I said. I nodded to Jacob. “And him.”
“Not a chance, sweetheart.”
“What trouble’s he going to be for you?” I said softly, because I didn’t want to hurt Jacob’s feelings.
“Angels are, by nature and profession, pains in the ass,” the demon said. “Even the half-bred ones.”
“It’s not his fault that his father is an angel.” I pushed my ankles towards him. And then I held my breath. I could already imagine the bolt cutters scraping over my flesh, snipping off a piece of me. “No one picks their parents. Or are demons confused about how this whole human-thing works?”
Nimshi rested his hand, which still held the bolt cutters, on my bare thigh. The suddenness of the motion made me flinch back, my head slamming into the cool gray wall.
“Look at that fear,” he said. “I know exactly how humans work, sweetheart. That’s why it’s easy for me to take them apart and look at all the bloody pieces.”
His fingers, and the cold metal of the closed bolt head, traced their way down my thigh, over the curve of my knee, down my calf. I pressed my hands together, binding myself, resisting the impulse to lash out at him desperately. I couldn’t get us out of here. Not yet.
“Get away from her!” Jacob shouted. He was making his way towards us as best he could, still bound. I glanced at him. But then my gaze returned, unavoidably, to Nimshi’s hand on my body.
The bolt cutters slid between my ankles. They closed with a snap on the plastic tie. The plastic fell away.
Nimshi rose to his feet, quick and easy and agile, and turned towards Jacob. “Your turn. But I’d like to remind you that if you do kill me, you’ll never escape the case. My boys out there will lock this room and leave it. You and the girl will both starve.”
“You’re going to kill us anyway,” Jacob said.
“Yes,” Nimshi said. “But you’re still in that sweet, hopeful phase humans have. You don’t want to die yet, do you?”
I limped towards Jacob; my feet tingled with pins and needles, and it felt awkward to walk on the cool, slippery stone underfoot. I looked up at Jacob, whose gaze avoided mine at first, and then his gold eyes met mine. He gave one quick nod of agreement.
Jacob held his wrists out towards Nimshi. Nimshi knelt, quickly unsnapping the ties, and then stood again.
“I think that’s enough,” Nimshi said. “Never trust an angel.”
“I’m not an angel,” Jacob said.
Nimshi shrugged. “Close enough. Anyway, you can go back to rocking in the corner; it’s your girl I want to talk to now.”
“I’m not his girl,” I said.
Nimshi rolled his eyes. “You two are so… specific. But let’s be real here: I watched you two flirting outside the shop, and I watched the way he jumped to protect you when Turner threw his gas rocks on the flames. That was a nice trick he played on you, wasn’t it? I admired that. And you two are close enou
gh.”
“Close enough for what?”
“Close enough that hurting one of you is hurting you both,” he said. “At least until you get to the rat-mask phase. Torture him instead, it’s fine.”
My skin crawled.
Nimshi snapped his fingers. “Sit.”
I stared at him rebelliously. How dare he snap his fingers at me?
Jacob wrapped his hand around my elbow and pulled me gently towards him. “Come on, Ellis.”
I let Jacob pull me towards the wall. When the two of us were facing away from Nimshi, when Nimshi couldn’t see our faces, I looked up and met Jacob’s warm golden eyes. No matter how terrified he was, he looked down at me steadily.
“Just bear it as long as you can,” he said. “And don’t hate yourself for breaking. Just pull yourself together when you can and go on.”
And that was it. Dread settled through my bones, cold and heavy, as I looked up at him. His eyes on mine were steady and kind. A few days ago, I would have paid money to have Jacob look at me like this. Like I was human. Like it would hurt him to see me hurt.
Jacob sat with his shackled hands in his lap, his spine erect and shoulders squared to meet whatever came next. I sat beside him, close enough that my shoulder was against his.
“Adorable,” Nimshi said again.
I was going to hate that word if I ever made it out of here.
“What do you remember about the night you died?” Nimshi asked me.
I raised an eyebrow.
He sighed. “I can go old-school and torture you to tell me your deepest secrets. But I was hoping to save that for tomorrow.”
I stared back at him, my lips pressed tightly together. My secrets were one thing. But I was afraid of what I might give up that could hurt someone else. Better to say nothing.
Nimshi waved his hand impatiently. “I was just curious to see if you’d bother to lie. Here we go!”