The Celestial Kiss Read online

  The arm that caught my wrist was firm, but not excruciatingly so. I spun to see James and then promptly swung at him. Before it could connect with his face, he caught that wrist too, pinioned beneath a steely grip. Though his face betrayed no emotion, when he spoke he didn’t sound malicious. Just tired.

  “Where do you think you’re going to go, Lilith?”

  “Get your hands off of me!” I yelled, trying to jerk out of his grasp. But it was unyielding.

  James smiled, but it was sad and held the promise of disappointment. “I can’t let you go yet.”

  “What are you going to do to stop me?” Malevolence seeped into my voice, pouring out as a taunt. If I’d taunted Julius like this, he’d probably kill me plain and simple. Xian would silence me at any cost. But James? I didn’t know much about him, but I wasn’t so oblivious that I didn’t realize he was a rogue asset with everything to lose. He refused to kill me because of his morals, he refused to set me free because of his morals, and he refused to keep me because of his morals. He was backed into a wall with nowhere to go, and so any threat he could offer up was empty; we both knew it.

  “Whatever I have to.” It was a warning, but it lacked conviction. Despite the words, James looked principled as ever.

  I tore one wrist free and glared at him, wishing that my hatred could burn a hole right through him. “Try me.” I challenged, my chest swelling with arrogance. “I can do or say anything I want because it doesn’t matter what sort of punishment you come up with. Nothing could be worse.”

  James released my other wrist as though I repulsed him. “Worse than what?” He growled. I had hoped to touch a nerve—apparently I’d just torn one open. “Than being stuck here, being clothed and fed and having a roof over your head?”

  Whatever possessed me to tell him what I did, I’ll never know. The truth was my only hope of salvation; perhaps the fact that I hadn’t wanted the life I’d been given would grant me some sort of clemency in whatever followed this life. Besides, he didn’t get to act like he was offering me sanctuary. “Nothing could be worse than the seventeen years I’ve already wasted away. Just go ahead and try.”

  “Oh,” James choked on a cold, hard laugh. “You mean that nothing could be worse than returning you to your life of excess, where sin practically hangs in the air you breathe? Nothing could be worse for you than getting drunk all day and sleeping with every guy you see and draining humans of their blood just because you think it’s fun to watch the life slip out of their eyes? Don’t insult my intelligence.”

  He pressed me into the stone wall, and his words cut so deep that I didn’t even feel the exterior of the house scraping my arms. “You have no idea what you’re talking about!” My teeth ground around the hatred that was simmering within me. His assumptions infuriated me more than anything else that had transpired between us. “You think you know me because of what I am? You’re a child, sheltered by a life of promise. You can think whatever you want of me, but don’t you ever tell me how I feel about that part of my life!”

  He fixed me with an odd look that I couldn’t quite place, something between sympathy and disgust. “I know more than you might imagine. More than I care to know, if we’re being perfectly honest.”

  “Oh yeah?” The claim provoked me. “Prove it.”

  James laughed, and found his grip on me again; Fingers snug around my wrist, he began to pull me into the house. Defiance burned in my heart, reflected in the eyes I stared smugly at him with. I hadn’t come this far to give up now, and so I dug my heels into the dry stone. When he realized he’d have to drag me the whole way, something flickered within him, and I flinched away as his arms wrapped around me and I was thrown unceremoniously over his shoulder. “Let me go!” I screamed in his ear. I kicked my legs and pounded my fists into his strong back, but it was useless.

  My screams echoed all throughout the creamy marble walls. I spewed a litany of expletives and made every reference I could think of to call him a dirty dog, a wild beast, a worthless, entitled little boy. A few people poked their heads through the doors, wide-eyed as they watched us wordlessly. No one seemed bothered by my plight, least of all James. Where we were going was of no consequence, because I flailed until we reached a room where he locked the door and threw me down in a chair. I scrambled into myself, ready for the fight, but he turned his back on me and crossed to the wall, where buttery curtains draped the distance. Looking around, I realized the whole room was covered with them, floor to ceiling. When he drew them back I expected the evening to press in around us, but what it unveiled was a wall of books. Floor to ceiling, every little nook was full of them, their proud spines arranged in a multitude of jewel tones, embossed words glancing out at me with the hazy moonlight that poured in from the oculus upon the ceiling. This room on the main floor of the house easily stretched the height of the second story.

  I watched, breathless and confused, as he drew back all the curtains, revealing a study so vast, so loaded with books, that I felt they would swallow me—not that I minded. “Consider yourself lucky,” James said, disrupting my awed speculation. “This is the library of Eden, a place where no human, no vampire, and very few werewolves have ever been.”

  I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and tried breathing around it as the few things I’d ever heard about Eden tried to come to me. All my anger had dissipated. I didn’t have a place for it when surrounded by such exquisite beauty. “It’s amazing.” I said, nearly breathless. I wanted to examine the shelves more closely, to pluck a book from them and dive right in head first. But I couldn’t stave off the curiosity as to why James would bring me here, unless he figured it was so well isolated he could kill me without a witness.

  It was as though he could read my mind. “You want to know what I know? You’re here to learn.”

  I cautiously crossed to him with my arms folded into my chest, and we stood several feet apart at the only window, looking out into the night. I hadn’t realized there was water nearby, but I could see it clearly from my vantage point, an entire ocean spanning the coast. I wouldn’t have been able to see it but for the waves that crashed against the shore, large and wild, provoked by the rolling storm clouds above. The chaos of the sea fed off the chaos of the sky, and the sky fed the waves in turn.

  I could have stared at the assault on the shore for hours; it filled me with an unwarranted sense of peace, as if I were lending the waves all of the pent up fury from my own life. James drew my attention to a large gold-framed painting on the next wall, around which the bookshelves continued uninterrupted. The canvas work was made from oil paints in the vein of baroque art and easily stretched the width of my arm span. It was divided into three different panels, each one distinctive in its own color scheme: white, blue, and red. The one that caught my attention was the blue panel in the center—the airy afternoon light was clean and simple. Men and women clustered around a table in the midst of a lush garden, seemingly in the middle of a meal. It exuded tranquility and innocence. The panel to the left of it was white, but it was hardly boring. The same garden was the subject of the section, but this depiction was slightly less airy and more realistic. More earthy. It depicted a set of wolves, sitting on either side of the table, facing us with wise-looking eyes. The humans at the table did not seem to be aware of their presence.

  The last panel was the most contrasting, lit up with shades of orange and offering a much different scene. The humans that had been dining carelessly in the meadow now lay sprawled out across the length of canvas, little pools of red encasing their grotesquely arranged bodies. A figure in a cape knelt at the neck of a fallen man. I didn’t need that tell-tale cape to know what that figure was.

  “We are enemies, Lilith.” James cast a brief glance at me. “You and I. Not by our own discretion or the choices of our ancestors, but by the very birth of our races.”

  I looked at him with quiet disdain, secretly imploring him to state something other than the obvious. James shook his head the slig
htest bit, so that I wasn’t even quite sure that the gesture had really happened. “We are enemies because of our instincts…blood and bones. Since the first demon was created, the human legacy was put in jeopardy. The vampires, feeding upon the blood of the innocent, were a plague of Biblical proportions, which could be countered only by a protection of Biblical proportions. The Creator made my kind to protect the humans from the demons and to influence the humans to do good.”

  "Yes, yes, werewolves are good, vampires are bad.” I rolled my eyes, and found the painting again before muttering, “I know."

  To my surprise, James was shaking his head at me again. “It wasn’t pretty. The resentment that sprang up from this fueled the first war. The vampires would not heed our requests, causing the war between angels and demons, werewolves and vampires, which lasted nearly a century. In that time, the humans began to pick up on what was happening, and the truth became hard to hide. They thought us all to be evil creatures because they did not know the difference between a vampire and a werewolf. They couldn’t comprehend the threat a vampire posed, nor could they understand the protection we meant to offer. The humans began to hunt the vampires and werewolves alike. But the Creator was unhappy, for the humans were harming themselves even more by coming after us, and so he sent down his angels to convince the world that we were not real, not vampires or werewolves or anything other than humans. Since a majority of the town had been turned or attacked by that point, the remaining few families made it a point to ignore our existence. They were told that if they denied our existence, we would disappear. They’ve been looking the other way all this time.

  “Since the day of that accord, we have been bound by similar conventions. We do not live together happily, but we do coexist for the sake of the humans. We remain their vigilant guardians, protecting them from the devils children. Peace exists only because the humans do not believe in us. The cave paintings, the stories passed from ear to ear, the things that humans dismiss as legend...the fancies of a fool with far too much time on his hands. The ignorance of the humans is their shield.

  “Your being in town that day that I bit you threatened all of that security, all of their hard-won peace. You put lives in danger. I struck to defend the humans because I thought you were striking to destroy them. Your mere presence could have unveiled the truth and caused irrevocable damage.”

  Understanding dawned on me as I took in the picture again. The first panel was before the vampires came, when it was just the humans on Earth and God in Heaven with his angels. The second panel was life as it was today, with humans ignorant of the existence of werewolves and vampires. The third panel was what would happen if the humans found out the truth. But something to do with the last panel struck me as wrong.

  “And where are the wolves then?” I gestured to the panel in question. “In the human’s time of need, the wolves are nowhere to be seen.”

  “The wolves have been hunted.” James’ face was perhaps more grim than his voice. “Humans and vampires alike have pursued them, killed them, and chased them away. With the wolves gone, the humans will fall prey to the vampires and the Creator will have been failed by his children, while Satan’s spawn are left to take the world as their own.”

  I re-crossed my arms, trying not to feel so defensive despite the contradicting meaning of my body language. I felt suddenly like he wasn’t warning me so much as foreshadowing something dark…an apocalypse of sorts. “I know that since we are born enemies you feel very strongly about your level of hatred for me, but I think ‘spawn of Satan’ might be just a tad melodramatic.”

  James shook his head. “Do you know nothing of your own history?” When I transfixed him with a blank look, he continued. “The creator made humans, and he so loved them that he gave his only begotten son to die upon the cross for them.” It was a quote I’d heard somewhere before, though I couldn’t have possibly figured out where from. “The angels did not appreciate the favoritism he bestowed upon the humans, who were not to the angels but weak, insipid things. Lucifer, one of the most prestigious of arch angels, led the revolt that ensued. For that, he was cast from Paradise.”

  “I’ve heard this story before.”

  James continued without sparing me a second glance. “With his pride injured, alone, full of hate and rage he kidnapped Lilith, the first wife of Adam. He fed her the blood of babies, until she was twisted, a creature surviving only on blood, helpless against him. The union of Lilith and Lucifer gave life to creatures of the night. Her beauty spread among her offspring, camouflaging their ugly nature from the humans.” James looked at me sharply, like he meant to cut glass with that stare. “Unfortunately, they also inherited Lilith’s desire for blood and Lucifer’s hunger for violence. They thirst for it, for it provides the vengeance Lucifer has sought for thousands of years.”

  By the time he fell silent my stomach was in knots. I tried to grasp hold of any of it, but it didn’t make sense. I didn’t believe in God, or as James called Him, a Creator. I also had never really considered the devil. Perhaps James was lying, or maybe he was only telling me what had been told to him, but it couldn’t be true. Because if it was, then I was one step closer to figuring out who I was. Unfortunately, it would also bring me one step further from the person that I wanted to be…little more than a half-baked notion of decency.

  I didn’t want to believe it, but a part of me did. Either it was truth or a very well-constructed story. Regardless, I couldn’t deny one thing—it made sense. It explained the gravitational pull I’d always felt toward them, the reason I’d never been able to leave my father or Xian despite their flaws. It explained why, despite my best intentions, I couldn’t help the occasionally vengeful thought. It explained the voice that seemed to invade my brain sometimes with thoughts so sinister I’d never lay claim to them. It explained why even though I’d always tried to be different from them, good, I’d always known there was something instinctual within me that couldn’t be fought. Something evil.

  It was a bitter pill to swallow. It caught in my throat ‘til my face was red with the effort to breathe normally.

  “Everything depends on their blissful ignorance.” James said, though he’d already made his point.

  I turned away from him, not wanting to allow him to see the horror undoubtedly haunting my eyes, dancing across my face. “Lilith?” James’ voice stopped me before I could get far. I paused, bracing myself for whatever else he could throw at me. After that, not much could have phased me, but that didn’t stop him from trying. “Next time you want to challenge my intentions…don’t.”

  Chapter Seven

  I’d always felt like I was moderately intelligent, particularly for someone who had taught herself basically everything she knew. But as I walked through the halls and my footsteps echoed around me, I felt not only alone and lost, but also like I’d done something very foolish.

  Trying to run might not have been stupid if it had worked, but seeing as it hadn’t, I’d only made matters worse. Now James knew to watch me more closely. Now he knew that he couldn’t trust me.

  I couldn’t try to run again while the failure of that attempt was fresh. I had to wait for exactly the right moment to strike. The idea didn’t appeal to me in the slightest, but it was my only chance… my only choice. Besides, James was no fool. He’d meant to prove a point and he had. I don’t think even he had expected his story to affect me on such a deep level, but it had and I imagined it only made him all the more pleased with himself. Not only had he proven to me that he knew more than I knew about myself—not as a person, but as a whole—but he’d also managed to crush whatever hope I’d had of being something more.

  Those thoughts consumed me so that I didn’t realize I was no longer alone in the hall. Julius caught up to me in a few powerful strides and used his shoulder to lead me into the wall. Caught off guard, I turned and he stepped close to me, his dark eyes inquisitive. He didn’t say anything, just studied me for a few long seconds. I was so caught off guard t
hat I didn’t immediately shake him loose. “What is it about you?” He muttered. His words brought me back to reality, and I pulled out of his reach, rubbing my shoulder absently.

  I glared at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’re immune...” His voice was nothing but raw curiosity; His eyes roved over me as if my demeanor might offer him some sort of clue. “How do you do it?”

  “I don’t do anything.”

  Julius laughed, but it sounded contrived. His eyes lingered on mine for a minute, and then they dropped to my collarbone. “You’ve been bitten countless times, and yet you’ve never transformed…not really. It’s like something stopped it.”

  My mouth went dry; this wasn’t a discussion I wanted to have, particularly with him. I didn’t even understand it myself—it wasn’t as though hashing it out with an arrogant stranger would make it seem any less of a curse. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” He pressed closer and wrapped a hand around the top of my arm. It was firm, but not painfully so. Desperation danced in his eyes, made all the more wild by the torches that danced in their sconces every couple of paces. “What did you do to stop it?”

  I set my jaw, refusing to offer him anything. He appeared to be searching my soul for whatever it was that he wanted.

  “Julius.” James’ voice broke the tension, though he spoke it as a warning.

  Julius gritted his teeth, but took a step back without turning his head from me. “You aren’t the least bit curious to know how she’s doing it?”

  James looked genuinely confused. “What exactly is she doing?”

  “It’s what she isn’t doing,” Julius glanced at me. “She was bitten and she isn’t even changing.”

  “It’s too early to know that,” James dismissed. “Let it go, Julius.”