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Chapter Twenty-Four
“So it was you?” I asked, not bothering to play dumb.
“You can’t be as surprised as I am about you.” She walked with a confidence and gait that was downright impressive. If I didn’t hate her so much, I might have liked her. “I couldn’t see you before, just glimpses of this dark mist, just afeelingas you shoved the slivers of myself I left in others back, when you removed me entirely from that werewolf.”
“Are you wanting an apology for that?” I crossed my arms, knowing damn well that there wasn’t anything I could do if she wanted to kill me.
“I didn’t understand what you did or how, and when I heard Lucifer had a guest, when I heard rumors of him looking into the missing spirits, I’d though it might be connected. Of course, one look at you, and I put that thought aside. How couldyou, some useless mortal, be the thing plaguing me?”
I wasn’t so useless when I was fucking up your plans, was I?
“So you set up all of that out there just to get me alone?”
She shrugged. “I have my skills, but I’m not as strong as those bodyguards you had. Besides, this way things stay quiet. They’ll find your body, blame it on one of those poor possessed immortals, and no one will be the wiser. A good tactician knows her strengths.”
I took a step backward when she took one forward, a game of me trying to keep enough space between us for something else to happen. Anything. “Youknowwhat you’re doing could shatter the entire balance between the worlds, that you could destroy everything, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“So why do it? Because last I checked, youlivedin the world, too.”
She tilted her head, as if surprised by what seemed an obvious question to me. “I’ve lived a very long time, half-breed, and I’ve learned that just because somethingisdoesn’t mean it should be. This world was built on subjugation. From the start, when I refused to do as I was told, I was cast out and someone more biddable put in my place. From there it spread like an infection, and now the entire world is built in the image of kneeling, domesticated mortality.”
“So you want to destroy everything because you were a jilted lover? Really?”
Her eyes flashed, a moment of anger before it smoothed away. “Hardly. I just want to free everyone.”
“You take peopleover.You make them do things they never would otherwise. How is that freedom?”
“Because I don’t make them do anything. I don’t whisper in their ears or force them into anything. I take away that control, those rules they’d taught themselves to believe in. You say they’d never do those things because it makesyoufeel better, not because it’s true. What I make them is what theyreallyare without a lifetime of rules placed on them. I reduce them to their true nature.”
I thought back to Troy, to the way he’d snarled and roared, to how he believed her lies, that that was all he really was, down deep, and I rejected it. IknewTroy. What she’d done wasn’t freeing him—it imprisoned him. “You can use all the excuses you want, but you’re nothing but a kid who wants to flip over the boardgame because they’re losing.”
She let out a harsh laugh. “Do you know what ousted you? It wasn’t until I saw you in the arena, when I saw what you became. A reaper hybrid hasneverbeen before, but it took seeing that to make me realize you were the mist I saw, that you were the only one capable of doing what you did, of reaching inside a person and yanking out that sliver of me. Nothing else could sever that bond, especially without destroying the original spirit. If only you hadn’t tried that, I would have left, thinking you nothing important.”
“So what now?”
Lilith curled her lips into a chilling grin, one that made my blood freeze. There weren’t many options for whatthatmeant.
She lifted her hand, and a flame danced in her palm. “Hellfire,” she said. “You had a taste of mine before, didn’t you?”
Without meaning to, I touched the scarred skin she’d left me the last time she’d tried to kill me. Sadly, it was looking like this time would be far more successful.
“It won’t hurt for long,” she assured me, an almost sad tone to her voice. “It’s an unfortunate thing to have to destroy you, really. Killing something that has never been is a travesty, but you’ve left me no choice. I’ve spent too long planning for you to ruin everything, and you are the only one who could ruin it.” The flame grew taller in her palm, stretching up toward the ceiling, the temperature of the room increasing.
She lifted it to her lips and blew, the flame shifting like a blowtorch.
I covered my face with my arms—a useless reflex—but nothing burned.
I turned to find Gran between us, but she didn’t look like the old woman I knew. Instead, it was the glimpse I’d gotten before, her pointed ears, sharp cheekbones and bright green eyes. She held a hand up that diverted the flame around us both even as the air turned stifling and hot.
Lilith stopped and took a step backward. “Why am I not surprised to findyouin my way?”
Gran dropped her hand. “You know better than this. Iwarnedyou about this!” Her voice was that of a much younger woman, so different I’dnever have recognized it as Gran. Still, it fit with her true face.
“You told me nothing, like you always tell people nothing.”
“I told you what you sought would destroy you and everything you wanted.”
