The Celestial Kiss

  Special Thanks

  If I listed everyone who deserved credit on this page, then this dedication may be as long as the book itself. I must thank everyone who has led me to this point…the good and the bad…but especially the great.

  Thank you, dear reader. If you’ve gotten this far, then I appreciate you choosing Lilith as your companion for a while.

  Darlene Smith & Kelly Schalmo, who encouraged me every step of the way.

  Bill & Ruth McClintock, who taught me about love.

  Chelsea Markal, who taught me about the world.

  This book is dedicated with love

  For my parents, Andrew and Heidi Blackhurst who exemplify unconditional love. Thank you, especially, for not expecting me to get my head out of the clouds.

  For my sister, Mariah Blackhurst, who is the first to hear these ideas, the first to love these characters, and the first to drop everything and help me iron out the details. And for the fabulous book cover.

  For my husband, Brent Brady, who has supported me in more ways than I could have ever expected, even from day one. Thank you for putting up with me.

  For my angels in Heaven, Mary & William Blackhurst and William McClintock.

  Also, Vicki Shreve. I’m sorry I didn’t type faster.

  XO

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter twenty one

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter One

  The heart that Xian thrust into the air like a morbid trophy had stopped beating long ago, and yet it still dripped thick, dark blood on the flagstone ground. A body lay there in the midst of it all, vacant eyes still looking down at the hole in his chest. His face was forever frozen into a mask of surprise.

  The hall was deathly silent even in spite of the dozens of men and women who stood staring at their brother’s lifeless body. The only thing to be heard was the sound of my heart trying to escape from my chest. I tried to avoid looking at the corpse or the blood leeching onto the marble, but some part of me couldn’t tear my eyes away from the carnage. I couldn’t look away…at least not until Xian turned to one of my sisters gathered at the base of the steps and held the shriveled heart out to her.

  “I believe this belongs to you.”

  His voice alone sent chills down my spine, but the words rattled me on a deeper level. Gabrielle stood straight with all the dignity in the world, beautiful and serene as ever. She was a quiet woman…I’d only just met her a week ago. She had always blended in fairly well where others tried to stand out and managed to avoid calling attention to herself. Until now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She said calmly.

  I suspected she was telling the truth, just as I suspected that the dead man on the ground had been a scapegoat. The murder Xian had just committed was unfounded, but then that was Xian. He didn’t need an excuse to be vicious. Evil was in his nature, and violence was another part of his day-to-day routine. It had taken me a while to figure that out, but having suffered his cruelty first hand, I understood: the darkness in him had no bounds.

  “Don’t play stupid, Gabrielle.” My father sounded bored…the attention had strayed too far from him. Even I had forgotten he was there. I bristled as he stepped forward from the shadows, relishing the feel of everyone’s eyes upon him…probably because he’d had forever to come to terms with his gaunt face and lank hair. I imagined that when you had lived for a couple hundred years in the same unyielding body, you’d have to make peace with it eventually. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  He had a voice that was slippery and cold like silk, but not half as beautiful. Disgust burned in his infinite blue eyes—the only thing that he and I had ever had in common. He turned those same eyes toward Xian, the favored son whose word my father would take over his one true daughter’s. I had learned long ago that blood meant everything to these people…except where power was concerned.

  “You know the infraction of which I speak.” Xian had spent the past hundred years perfecting a distant, formal tone of voice. It had been a feature that once charmed me, fooled me into believing that he was a gentleman stilted by the mannerisms of an older time. Now I recognized it for what it was: pretentious. “I heard your scheming with my own ears. You and Michael intended to run away together. Such a romantic notion…alas, now he’s dead.”

  Gabrielle remained stone-faced, but my pulse quickened. I glanced at Xian and then back to Gabrielle. He knew.

  In all the years I’d been alive, nobody had ever even dreamed of running away, at least not until last week. It was no coincidence. Michael had nothing to do with any of this, and yet there he lay in a pool of his own blood, colder than the ground beneath him… Xian confirmed my suspicions when our eyes connected. It was one I’d seen several times over—I’m cleaning up your mess, again, Lilith. You’re welcome.

  Gabrielle remained impassive. She didn’t fear death; She looked it right in the eye, unblinking. Guilt knotted my stomach. I thought we’d taken every precaution. She’d come to me in the dead of night, and while I had been less than enthusiastic to see her, I’d sneaked her in my room and turned up the radio so we couldn’t be overheard. It didn’t take her long to persuade me to help her. When she left no more than a half hour later, I checked the hall to make sure nobody had seen us together. And yet Xian knew. Of course; he always knew.

  To my surprise, Gabrielle’s dark red lips twisted upward. “I’m certain that you misunderstood. I did intend to run away, of course, but I don’t need anyone’s help to do it.”

  The faintest glimmer of surprise flickered in Xian’s eyes. To anyone else, it would surely have gone unnoticed, but I knew him as well as anyone could… which wasn’t saying much.

  “So you confess then.” Father said. “You are guilty of treason?” His thin lips looked to be on the verge of a smile. He may not ever be as malicious as Xian, but they were cut from the very same cloth.

  Gabrielle’s silence spoke volumes. Her strength was admirable; if it had been me on that side of father with Xian throwing accusations like knives, I’d have wilted.

  Father turned to me and I buckled, anticipating the barrage of his interrogation. “Kill her.” He said, waving a dismissive hand as though the very idea bored him.

  They were only two simple words, but they couldn’t have made less sense. He may as well have begun speaking another language.

  “Father?” I looked at the man who stood next to me in his expensive suit, hardened by centuries of life. This man who had brought me into the world could so easily take people out of it. It made no sense, and yet I’d learned long ago not to question him. If father said jump, the expected response was to throw yourself off a cliff, because refusal to obey him was akin to suicide anyways.

  “We’ve been betrayed, Lilith.” His slippery voice danced around the hall, echoing my name against the cavernous walls. It cast a shadow over the crowd collected before us. They swayed as his words rippled over them, craning to whisper in each other’s ear about how I would fail this, as I’d failed at everything else. “You know the price for her sins.”

  Gabrielle ascended the steps, never taking her eyes off my father. She was accused of planning to run
away, but not from this. This, she would face head on.

  “Kill her.” My father said.

  The weight of everyone’s eyes suddenly upon me, their anticipation was like an anchor threatening to drag me into the abyss I’d only just clawed my way out of. “I...I can’t.”

  “Weakness is not a trait that you were born with. Somehow you taught it to yourself, in spite of my exhaustive efforts to make you strong. You can take your rightful place…you can be the person you were meant to be. Kill her.”

  I dared meet Gabrielle’s dark eyes, expecting to see hatred or fear or accusation. I saw none of those things. Instead, she fixed me with a pointed look, meant to convey something she clearly couldn’t voice. But whatever it was, it was lost on me. Was Gabrielle willing me to kill her, to release her from this endless sea of monotony, or was she urging me to continue on with the plan as we had discussed? My mouth was dry and my palms were sweaty, but I gathered the courage to look at my father. “I’m not going to kill anybody without proof of their guilt.”

  It was a silly thing to say, in retrospect. Father’s conviction was the entire verdict one needed. You could catch a guy red-handed committing a treasonous act, but if father pardoned them, they may as well have achieved sainthood. Likewise, he could condemn the innocent to an endless Hell with a mere snap of his fingers. “Proof?” My father fixed me with an odd look, as though he were trying to assess what he’d done to deserve a daughter who defied him. “Proof is relative. Xian was witness to her plans. My most trusted officer heard Gabrielle making plans with another to leave us. Is that not incentive enough for you?”

  Xian’s mouth formed a smile—one of those that’s really a smirk, which you only realize when you’re on the receiving end. My father expected Xian’s testimony to be all the evidence I needed. But my father didn’t know the half of what had transpired between his favored officer and I. If he had, both Xian and I would be long dead: Xian for injuring father’s pride and me for my pathetic weakness.

  “One man’s word shouldn’t be enough to end another’s life.” I swallowed and dared look at my father, though it proved unnecessary. His disappointment clouded the room.

  Gabrielle stepped forward so that she stood right before me. “Do it.” Her voice was a whisper, just loud enough for myself and father to hear. I shook my head automatically.

  Father sneered at her. “You think death will welcome you as I have?”

  Gabrielle gave him a sidelong glance. “Death is a far less formidable enemy.”

  “You believe so?” Father laughed.

  “You’re poison.” She spat. “And He…” She looked at Xian. “He is the devil. Hell must be peaceful with you above ground.” Xian took it as a compliment, never letting his smirk falter.

  Gabrielle turned to me. “I’d rather die than stay here. I’d rather try and fail then live another second as your prisoner. Do this for me and I’ll consider it a gift.”

  I moved toward her, to at least pretend I was considering what had been asked of me. But before I had taken two steps that beautiful face of hers slipped into shock. Her painted lips formed an ‘O’; I didn’t realize what happened until I looked down and saw the fist protruding from her chest, the only thing keeping her lifeless body upright. Xian stood behind her, and with one self-satisfied look assured me that yes, he knew all about the things Gabrielle and I had conspired over.

  In an instant, he pulled his fist back and held it up into the air in triumph, showcasing his second kill of the day. Gabrielle’s body, now lifeless, fell to the ground at my feet. A strangled sound escaped me, but it was lost in a sea of murmurs as the onlookers praised Xian. They grew hungry and excited at the scent of blood, tainted though it was. They seemed unable to tame their need for violence, shifting and laughing and whooping like a rowdy bunch of teenagers until Father left, seemingly satisfied.

  He didn’t so much as spare me a glance before disappearing up the stairs, and the room cleared quickly in his absence. Only I stayed, staring at the empty body before me, all that was left of my hope gone with her.

  “Close your mouth, Lilith,” Xian said, sidling up next to me with his blood-stained hands in his pockets, casually surveying his kills. “You know as well as I that she got what she deserved.”

  The sight of him was like a sucker punch in the stomach. I’d never been able to reconcile the two Xian’s that I’d known, or rather, thought I’d known. Even after everything that we’d been through, when I looked at him I couldn’t stop myself from feeling first the flutter of excitement when I thought of the beautiful person I’d believed him to be and then the disgust as I remembered who he truly was. It was not a flattering truth that I still allowed myself to be drawn in by someone who’d caused me so much pain, even if those thoughts lasted only a fraction of a second. Besides, the worst of the pain hadn’t been physical; It was in realizing how naïve I truly was. Perhaps the worst thing you can do to another person is to make them fall in love with someone who doesn’t exist. And that’s exactly what he had done to me.

  “You’re a murderer.” I accused. It was all I could manage, at first. But I had to know why.

  Before I could ask, however, Xian answered. The scariest thing about him was not how quickly he could go from impassive to furious. It wasn’t how he could crush bones between his bare hands or rip a heart from the safety of its ribs. It was how well he knew me. You just couldn’t escape someone like that. “Call me anything you wish, but my hands are dirty so yours don’t have to be.” He offered me a small smile, brushing his knuckles over my cheek in what may have been meant as a gesture of affection. But my face only burned in the path that his long fingers trailed, sticky with the blood he’d left across my pale skin.

  I curled my fists into balls, willing myself to stay still, to act unaffected. It was always more satisfying to pretend he didn’t faze me, rather than let him know I felt any passion for him at all. There were a dozen things I wanted to stay, but they congealed in my throat. I swallowed. “This was… unnecessary.”

  “No,” Xian shook his head, his cold eyes sharpening on me. “It was vital. Think of it as a sacrifice. They died so I wouldn’t have to kill you. Your father would never forgive me for that, and he’d never forgive you if he knew you were in on it.”

  I looked at the floor to escape him, but the sight there threatened to turn my stomach. My eyes fluttered closed, and I allowed myself a few shallow breaths before opening them again. When I did, it was to Xian grabbing my chin between two icy fingers and forcing it in the direction of my broken siblings on the ground. “You may not have the blood on your hands, but rest assured, they died because of you.”

  I jerked out of his grasp, reeling to wipe away his touch. My skin crawled with it even after I had stepped away from him. “Why didn’t you just tell my father?”

  “You know why,” Xian’s lips tipped up in another smirk. “Because this is worse than any punishment he could have conjured for you.” He turned to go then, but seemed to think of something else. “Besides, you’re my favorite plaything. I told you I’d never let you go.”

  He disappeared down a darkened hall, leaving me with those words hanging in the cold air. At one time they’d been a promise whispered in my ear, which had made me feel safe. Now I recognized the threat, and I couldn’t have felt any more vulnerable. I looked down at Gabrielle again and had to close my eyes to stinging tears.

  Not long ago, this woman had been nothing to me other than one of my father’s retired girlfriends. Though I’d never known it, she was the person in my life who had cared about me the most. And now she was dead. I’d had a fleeting glimpse of that rarest form of consideration, and now I was alone again.

  I stooped down and grabbed the paper that was still pressed in her cold hand. Her curvy words leapt over the page, the ink bleeding through to the other side of thin, yellowed parchment. Small type was transfixed to the page, and the jagged edge assured me she’d pulled this from a book. I didn’t immediately recognize
any of the words on the translucent paper, but it was hard to pay attention to anything other than the single word that leapt off the page in bold black letters: Samuel.

  The word stirred something deep in my mind—a name.

  Gabrielle, who had never spoken to me before last Wednesday night when she came to my door, had entreated me with the words I’d needed to hear, almost as though she knew my innermost desires.

  You deserve to see the world. You should know what it feels like to sleep on the beach and dance in the rain. You should be able to go wherever you want and see things that exist far beyond this world, and taste a gourmet dinner, and wear a beautiful dress, and fall in love with somebody who will love you back. You deserve more.

  It was the sweetest thing anybody had ever said to me, aside from Xian’s manufactured affection. She won me over in that instant, but still I had to ask why she was doing this. Gabrielle smiled. “I’m a mother, despite being a terrible one. I made an unforgiveable mistake, one that can never be fixed. But I will do anything to get back to Samuel, if only to tell him I’m sorry.”

  I knew she regretted leaving her family and desperately wanted to be reunited with her son. I also knew that she was using me to help her escape, and that she would probably abandon me once we’d passed over the threshold of father’s property.

  Despite my skepticism, she convinced me of one crucial thing: that I deserved more. I believed her then, and I still did. It was why I wasn’t going to let her sacrifice be in vain. I would follow through with the plan, and I would get this seemingly frivolous piece of paper to her son, even if I died trying. I didn’t believe her last words were an accident…they’d been carefully considered to deliver a message to me. I’d rather try and fail, she’d said, then live another second as your prisoner. As fate would have it, so would I.

  Chapter Two

  Xian was no fool. When I stood beside him two nights later at the crest of the stairs, stationed between him and my father, he fixed me with a dubious stare. My father, too, looked at me with surprise but it quickly turned into a smile. “Look who’s decided to join us…” He offered Xian a nod of respect, as though he were single-handedly responsible for getting me here. In a way, he was.