Lilith (16 page)

“Hey, did I miss the threesome?”

Rhi laughed and got up from the bed. Wes followed her lead. But I propped myself up on my elbows and yanked my head in invitation. Dean flew from the doorway to the bed and landed hard at my side. His arm pulled me down and he kissed my neck noisily.

“Gross.” Rhi said from the doorway.

“We’ll be waiting downstairs.” Wes said on a laugh.

I nestled inside Deans arms and stared back up at the water stain.

“How was last night?” He asked.

I groaned.

“That bad.”

I sucked in a breath and said. “Worst. She cooked.”

He laughed and I elbowed him in the side.

“It’ll get better.” He whispered and kissed my head.

“When?” I said on a sigh.

“Today, every day, as long as you keep trying.”

My dad was downstairs waiting when Dean and I emerged from my bedroom. I was aware that my hair was messy and my clothes were wrinkled, but I didn’t care. The day he said he was sorry for his date staying over, I’d be sorry for making out with mine.

“Pacey.” My dad said.

I stopped as my fingers rea
ched for the shiny gold front door knob.

“Yea.” I didn’t turn to meet his face. I stared at the wood grain and squeezed Dean’s hand. He squeezed back in comfort.

“How long do you plan on being out?”

I took a deep breath and turned. Bridget was watching us from the kitchen. Her eyes were narrowed. I rolled my
own and then looked back at my father.

“I don’t really know, are you going to try to give me a curfew?”

My dad laughed. “Not hardly. I just…I worry.”

I met his eyes and felt my heart drop. He was sad, I could see the tears swimming in his eyes. I took a deep breath and took a step forward. I glanced at Bridget and smiled knowing full well that what I was about to do would put more distance between them. I dropped Dean’s hand and wrapped my arms around my father. His arms slipped around me and his body shuttered.

“I’m sorry baby.” He whispered.

“It’s okay daddy…I still love you.”

I drew back after a few minutes and wiped my eyes. Dean held out his hand and I took it, but not before I saw the look of anger on Bridget’s face. That wedge she was trying to create just got a tiny bit smaller. I finger waved to her and followed Dean out the front door.

Chapter Sixteen

Demon Hunters

By the time we got on the freeway, we’d already missed the morning traffic. The bad thing was that since it was a Saturday it didn’t really matter what time of day we left, traffic would be bad regardless.

While we were on the road. I practiced my second sight. Before I left the mental ward Ruthie had told me that one of the best ways to learn how to control my new gift was to practice on family and friends. On the people I could trust the most.

The idea was that if they tried to block me, I’d learn to navigate their minds without them realizing it. In the end I would get stronger, and learn how to sift through the overwhelming amount of data people kept in their heads.

So far, I’d learned about Dean losing his virginity to his dead girlfriend, and Rhi and Wes’s first kiss.

“Don’t think about Wes…Don’t think about Wes.”

I started laughing when I heard Rhi actively trying to block me from the memory.

“I can’t believe you guys kissed and neither one of you told me.”

Wes’ mouth dropped open and Dean laughed. “Way to go Rhiannon.”

Rhi surprised us all when she blushed.

“You’re not mad are you?” She asked.

I snorted and said. “Devastated I mean, why wouldn’t I love him, with his scaly feet and sweating palms. Don’t forget about that slight hump in his back I mean really. Didn’t I already go there.”

Wes let out a strangled sound. “Excuse me, I remember specifically that you had ice feet, and two webbed toes.”

“How dare you…Dean loves my toes.”

Dean gave me a smug look that said he didn’t actually love them.

Rhi laughed. “No wonder it didn’t work you guys are too much like brother and sister.”

And she was right, that was why it had never wo
rked in the first place. But maybe it could for them. I could tell she really liked him, maybe she had the entire time I’d dated him and I’d been too selfish to notice.

Time went by at a snail’s pace. There was only so much digging I could do in my friend’s brains before it became seriously invasive. We played a few road games but after a while silence settled around us and I couldn’t take it anymore.

“How much longer?” I whined.

Wes sighed and said. “Five minutes less than the last time you asked.”

Even with my strengthening gift, it was hard to be crammed in a vehicle with three other people. I could only hold out for so long before I wondered what they were thinking and then immediately regretted the decision to peek.

It was like unwrapping your presents before Christmas, it took all the fun out of not knowing.
Besides, it was surprising how much people thought about silly unimportant things, like what they wanted to eat for lunch, or the lyrics to a song they couldn’t remember.

The brick building was devoid of people when we drove up. It’s tall impressive stature was imposing as I stared up at it. Somewhere inside that building was a person that might be able to tell me how to kill a demon.
A warm rush of hope blossomed in my chest.

The building itself was
worn by time. The bricks broken and stained. Green vines crawled up one side and branched out above the glass doors. Trees of various shapes and colors grew scattered around the exterior. A bronze plaque with three words stood out against the brick wall
Vincit Omnia Veritas.
Latin.

I’d taken Latin for two years before I finally got sick of it. It was a dead language, one I was sure I’d never use.
The significance wasn’t lost on me. It translated to
The Truth Conquers All.
I took a deep breath and got out of the car. Hopefully that truth found me inside.

The welcoming scent of mildew and worn books greeted my nose. The others milled around me quietly while Wes disappeared farther inside the library. A stooped older woman sat on a stool next to the front desk. Small wire
rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose, a silver chain circling her head kept them from falling to the floor.

She was everything you always expected in a librarian. Her shoulders were rounded as she held the book in front of her. Her body curving towards the book as if to shield it from prying eyes. We walked past her farther into
the library.

Half a dozen tables
were placed symmetrically on the right side of the room. Stacks of bookshelves encasing them. Wes was sitting with three other people at the only occupied table. Other than them and the woman at the front desk, the library was empty.

Two of the three were male, one was handsome in that tan boyish and
easygoing way. The other was harsh, solid, boxy, and forceful. He looked like he knew how to cause pain, and had probably been at the other end of it at one time. His head was shaved and his eyes so dark I wasn’t sure there was any way to describe them other than black.

The third person was female,
with bright red and magenta colored hair and very pretty. Books sat on the table surrounding her, and another one lay open in her hands. Her long hair piled chaotically on top of her head. She wore dark jeans, a tee shirt, and black thick framed glasses. She ignored the boys who sat with their heads close together whispering. Her jaw locked in annoyance.

Wes turned when he saw us approaching and stood. He held out a hand to handsome and said. “This is Kyle, my roommate.” He pointed at dark brute. “This is Alex, and this…” He paused to glance at the red headed female actively trying to ignore
him. “Is Charlie.”

Dean and I said hello in unison. Rhi faked a yawn. She wasn’t big on libraries or research really. I had a feeling she’d have been happier at home planning Lexie’s social murder.

Kyle spoke first marking himself as the trio’s unofficial leader. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.” He nodded at the others but his eyes stayed on me.

Brute, or Alex rather
, half smiled and raised a brow. He stood and sauntered towards me, his eyes on the scars visible on my neck.

“I don’t know what it is about girls with scars, but I’m finding myself very attracted to them lat
ely.” He turned towards Kyle. “What was that chic’s name again, the one back where you grew up?”

Kyle took a deep breath and frowned. “Lo.”

Charlie’s head shot up then. Her eyes drifting towards Alex then to Kyle, then back to Alex again…A look of uncertainty creased the furrow between her eyes.

“Hi.”
Charlie said when her gaze landed on me.

I walked past handsome Kyle, and brute Alex, and held out my hand.
Charlie took it and squeezed once before releasing it. The boys corralled Dean, Wes, and Rhi towards a different part of the library leaving me alone with Charlie.

“Take a seat.” She said with confidence. Making me realize at once that she
was their leader and not Kyle.

I took a chair across from her and tried to hide the shake in my fingers. Charlie’s eyes glanced down my face then paused on the scars at my neck.

“Did she do those?” She asked motioning towards the marks.

“Yes.” I said with a hiss.

I didn’t hate the staring as much as I hated what it usually implied. Pity, was something I’d never easily digest.

She reached out with one pale hand. “May I?”

I took a deep breath and shrugged. “Sure.”

She leaned across the table and moved my shirt sleeve up, inspecting the scars that were on my lower arm and then
my shoulder. Her fingers were cold and a shiver ran down my spine. I squirmed against the sensation and she withdrew.

“Do you have the weapon from the injuries?” She asked.

I frowned. Why would I keep the knife that had tried to kill me and successfully taken the life of my mother.

“It’s just, the weapon is powerful for you.”
She said.

My face must have scrunched in frustration, because her eyes softened and she tilted her head in understanding.

“When someone like Lilith…hurts a mortal the weapon she uses absorbs some of her power. If the mortal survives, that’s you, your blood being spilled across it binds it and her power to you. It means simply that she cannot kill you with it, and that it and its power will only obey you and you alone.”

My mind raced as I tried to put the pieces together. The knife that had killed my mother, that Lilith had tried to kill me with…had power? Power that supposedly belonged to me, or was
useable by me. Did that mean that Lilith could be killed by it?

“It probably won’t kill her.” Charlie said, reading my mind, and I’d thought that was my trick.

“But it will hurt her, disable her for at least a short amount of time. If I’m right, that time should allow you to travel into The Hall of Mirrors and destroy her way of moving between worlds.”

Worlds
…

Before Dean, before Lilith and the
attack. I never would have thought I’d believe in such things as more than one world. For the next hour Charlie explained as much as she could to me about the power of the blood blade, and the mythology surrounding Lilith.

Charlie’s story was just as interesting. Her and the boys, handsome and brute, had a run in with a lesser lust demon. Since then they’d devoted their studies to mythology, religion and anything else they could use to fight demons. They were a group of Demon Hunters. And here I’d thought nothing could ever surprise me again.

Then came the even stranger more astonishing information, demons weren’t half of what mythical creatures actually existed within the realities of the mortal world. Shape shifters, fairies, they all really existed, even witches. In fact one of my new goals other than finding the knife that Lilith had tried to kill me with, was going to see a real live broom wielding, cauldron-stirring witch.

K
yle had contacts in the small mountain town of Pinecrest. It was just below the Yosemite line, and close to Grey Lake. I’d gone there camping one summer with my parents. It held its own mysteries and mythical creatures, and I’d never known. Not once the entire time I’d been up there had I realized that a town full of witches and everything else under the sun was nearby.

“The blood blade is your best bet.” Charlie said again.

The others had finally joined us, and sat nearby.

“Excuse me if I think her going after this demon chic is half stupid and all dangerous. Lilith has tried to kill her three times, twice with sharp objects, and once with what might have been a machine gun.” Dean’s voice rose higher with every word.

“Dean right?” Alex said with an even voice. “I get that you’re worried about your girl, but my girl is rarely wrong. She knows her shit. I think Pacey’s probably a lot tougher than you give her credit for. This mess did start because of you.”

A deep breath was drawn by everyone at the table. Dean’s face flushed and Rhi smirked. It wasn’t really his fault any more than it was mine. Lilith chose him not the other way around. But by the expressions on the people surrounding me, I was the only one who thought that way. They were all blaming him.

“Thanks I think.” I said sharply. “But Dean didn’t choose this anymore than I did.”

Alex chuckled. “You may be right, but one girl died before you because of him
, and how many other innocents have died since then, two, ten? How many more will it take before he accepts responsibility for what’s happened.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed at
Alex. A hot undercurrent rising in the air. It wasn’t fair to blame everything on Dean. That felt a little like blaming the victim of a rape for wearing a short skirt. If someone didn’t stop this soon it would get ugly. And my money wasn’t on Dean; he wasn’t vicious enough to cause the kind of damage Alex seemed to breathe.

“Charlie.” I said trying to break the tension. “Why did Lilith pick Dean, what does it mean to be a descendant from Adam, I mean, wouldn’t all men be?”

Charlie smiled before answering. “Popular Christian belief would say yes, that all men are descendants from Adam, but we know that’s not really true. A descendant means more than sharing blood. It’s about characteristics beyond simple genes. Looks and mannerisms aren’t just similar they are the same. As if Dean were sharing the soul of Adam reincarnated.”

Reincarnated
.
That meant that Dean, was the reincarnation of Adam, Lilith’s first husband. A husband that left her for a more subservient wife. No wonder she hated me. To Lilith I was no better than a husband-stealing whore.

“How come I can’t remember?” Dean asked.

Kyle opened his mouth before Charlie could answer. “All souls are cleansed thoroughly before they are reanimated. You won’t remember, but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel pulled in certain directions. Like to Pacey, this is a circle that has gone on for thousands of years. You are born, and when Lilith is aware of your presence in the world she comes for you. No one knows exactly why she punishes those around you and not you yourself, only that we think maybe she can’t hurt you physically. Like you’re charmed against her.”