Lilith's Amulet Page 6

  My snakes will never betray me. It wouldn’t cross their minds.

  Serpents squeezed her limbs, as if sensing her distress and trying to cushion her from the cruel sight.

  A heap of bones sprawled together where the nest had first met flame. A line of other bodies made a trail across the debris to a stone precipice. The mountain of corpses, perhaps fifty-strong, had been rummaged through. Bones lay askew, paw prints in the dust. Teeth had scratched past the meat.

  Scavengers had come.

  Lilith took a breath and instantly regretted it. Ash coated her throat and clung to her tongue, rocky and sour. She’d have given anything for a cup of blood to rinse the flavor of broiled death from her mouth.

  Haniel trudged beside her, limping with each step. Despite his insistence that Maggie wouldn’t have died upstairs, he examined all the remains. Lilith didn’t speak. He didn't seem to want help deciding which bones mattered.

  Maggie is dead, she screamed in her head.

  Glass shards pierced her soles, biting past the shoes. The nip of pain irritated her. The filth of the scene settled on her. Soot stained her chemise gray. Damp, black ashes caked her legs and fingertips.

  For all she knew, Lane’s remains were muddled in the sludge.

  Her throat tightened, and she wanted to snap at Haniel to hurry it up, that it was all pointless. She didn't want to look anymore. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t regret seeing.

  His brimstone-babies frolicked in the soot, throwing femurs like javelins and packing phalanges into their cheeks like demonic chipmunks. Five-horn hunkered over a skull and scraped his teeth on it like a blacksmith sharpening steel on a whetstone.

  A three-horned minion—trihorn? No, Lilith decided it should be called Triceratops—broke rib bones like a girl plucking petals from a flower.

  Haniel growled. “Where are the goddamn stairs?”

  Lilith tipped her chin at the hole where a staircase led down. His eyes spanned the dark, but he clearly couldn't see it. Useless human-creature. If not for him, she wouldn’t be here. Hostility radiated through her body, riling her serpents, and they hissed at him as she passed.

  The mouth of the stairs had caved, and she kicked aside some of the debris, dislodging stones with her toes, stomping on bricks, happy to have something to abuse. Haniel’s minions leapt in, chucking material aside like it was a game.

  Old smoke billowed up in black plumes. Nothing had survived down there. Nothing that needed to breathe, at least. The stairwell was dark, the stones slick as she stepped down. Although she could discern the steps, Haniel’s footfalls slowed and became clunky, agitated by his limp and weakness of sight.

  She could have taken his hand and led him carefully into the basement, but she didn’t. If he fell and broke his skull open, she figured he’d deserve it for being a pain in the ass. With her luck, she’d probably slip in the spilled brains and fall down the rest of the steps.

  “I’m holding out my hand,” she said. “I’m going to touch you, and if your legion bites me for it, I’ll splatter your brains on these here steps.”

  He harrumphed and blindly held his hand out. She didn't want to touch him, not even a little. He’d been an angel once and still carried the air of indignation and self-righteousness. His heaven wanted her dead. Yet if she wanted to move forward, she needed to push fear aside.

  She choked back her anxiety and touched his naked hand.

  It was rough. His palm boasted calluses and his knuckles were hard as stone. He was humanly warm. Not minion-hot or vampire-tepid. It gave her pause. Her hunger pinged off her stomach and ricocheted through her veins.

  Another danger occurred to her. Could Haniel, an ex-angel, communicate with heaven? Could he send out some sort of angelic beacon and summon all the angels? If so, Lilith didn't have the power to stop him until she cast the spell and unleashed the amulet’s power. Then, nothing on heaven or earth could threaten her or control her in anyway.

  She nibbled a lip. No, she decided, if Haniel could speak to heaven, he would have called in the troops to help find Maggie.

  “Lilith?” Haniel said.

  She started. She’d been standing there, holding his hand, in a trance.

  “Careful,” she whispered. “It’s slippery.”

  The house fire had melted the winter orchard. Water sloshed down the steps and pooled throughout the dungeon. Wine bottles, shoes, and dead rats floated through the sewer-scented muck. Most of her serpents clambered up her body, but some slipped into the water to chase bloated vermin. The stone walls were torn, as if scored by a hurricane of claws.

  “Tell me what you see,” he ordered.

  “Dead rats.”

  He squeezed her hand in a punishing grip. “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t see any human corpses.”

  “Well, it’s a dungeon. Do you see any non-human corpses?”

  “No.” She moved carefully onward. “There are some cells here, but they’re all boarded up. I can’t see inside. I don’t hear anything that’s alive.”

  He slipped on something. His weight jerked her limb, shaking loose a few serpents, but she kept him from going down in the water.

  He’d barely righted himself when he slipped again. “Damn!”

  “What’s the problem?” Her shoulder socket ached from the torque, and she rubbed it with her free hand.

  “Feels like I’m walking on marbles,” he said.

  “That explains the walls.” She remembered he couldn't see well. “The stones are all torn up, pockmarked. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, in war. Maggie’s bomb probably contained ball bearings. Shrapnel. A lot, from the looks of it.”

  He smiled in the dark, looking truly sinister. “Good girl.”

  “Except she’s dead now,” Lilith said. And she helped kill Lane.

  Lilith wanted to grab Haniel’s face and hold it under water, drown him like a rat, and find a different way to use the amulet. Her grip on him tightened. Her snakes leaned toward him, venomous and close.

  “Lilith?” he said.

  She relaxed her grip. No need to be emotional. A homicidal tantrum won’t do me any favors. Yet.

  She led him farther down to where the dungeon spread out like a giant auditorium with a low ceiling. The water rose to her hip. She mightn’t even spot a corpse of girl-size proportions, not if it had blown to pieces and sank.

  “Send out your legion,” Lilith said. “Have them dredge the room for a human skeleton.”

  Red eyes flicked to life. All around her, the minions searched the water. Some splashed and frolicked while others moved silently with nary a ripple.

  Since he hadn’t spoken aloud, she realized he could control them or communicate with them, maybe with his mind. Or perhaps they were extensions of him, but she didn’t ask.

  The cretins returned with bones and dropped their harvest at Haniel’s feet. Lots of bones. As the pile grew and grew, Haniel slouched more and more. Surely, he was imagining that every bone belonged to his girl.

  Lilith could let it go at that. He’d believe he found Maggie, and they could all move on. Lilith didn't even need to lie; she could simply keep her thoughts to herself. If she thought it would work, she might’ve tried it. Eventually, though, he’d doubt whether or not Maggie was truly dead, and he’d resist helping Lilith.

  She reminded herself by giving Haniel what he wanted, she’d get what she needed.

  “Haniel, the bones are too old, leathery with bits of petrified skin, and scored by teeth. These remains are long dead.”

  His sigh of relief ruffled the hair against her cheek. Oddly, it made her recognize another, slower air current.

  “There’s a breeze,” she said. A subtle nudge of air drifted across the surface of the water. Now that she noticed, the answer was obvious. She scoured the dingy space. “There’s another way out.”

  His breath hitched, his heart pounded. “She could have escaped!”

  “Don’t get too excited,” Lilith said, ev
en as her own pulse throbbed. Could a mere girl have escaped the deathtrap while a hundred vampires scorched to death?

  Lilith dragged Haniel across the wide, squat dungeon, past the cell doors—some of which were ajar—and through the stew of rat corpses, fecal matter, and bone nubs. His palm grew damp and slick in hers.

  A living Maggie could provide so much more leverage than a dead one.

  And if Lilith was being honest, she liked the idea of a mortal girl defeating big, bad monsters. She couldn’t pretend her delight had nothing to do with her own predicament involving big, bad eternal deities.

  The opposite staircase up was greasy but not as damaged. At the very top, a double-paneled door was wide open to the night sky, which seemed bright as day in comparison to the pitch of the dungeon.

  “The door’s open,” Haniel panted.

  “Doesn’t mean Maggie’s the one who went through it,” she countered, dragging him along. He lurched and staggered against her. He was bigger than she’d first thought, dense, heavily muscled.

  When the frigid wind blew against her cheeks, she let him go.

  The orchard looked like a second bomb had blasted through it. Half the trees laid in charcoal piles. The rest teetered upright, scorched, the fresh spring growth cauterized before the buds had a chance to open.

  Lane’s car sat on the curb.

  Her heart leapt.

  Lane’s alive!

  He might have returned to see what was left of his home. But then she realized the engine wasn’t running, and there was no sign of him or the driver. Hope deflated in her chest. She needed to accept the truth. Lane died, and a new dynasty had begun.

  Serpents slid from her dress and hips, circling down her dirty legs to slither on solid ground. She scanned the vestiges of the yard.

  “Do you see anything?” Haniel demanded, his voice fierce and desperate.

  “No,” she said.

  “But the door was open.”

  “I know.”

  He grabbed her hand and squeezed it as if he intended to break bones. “You wouldn’t lie.”

  It was a threat, not a question.

  She jerked away. “Only if the lie suits me. Currently, it would be more beneficial for me to provide a corpse—and closure—so we can get on with our mission.”

  He raked his hands through dark hair. A glint flared across his eye, almost red.

  She twitched.

  A demonic imp appeared and thrust something into its master’s pocket. Haniel swatted at the creature, and the object clattered to the ground. Haniel paid it no mind, but the other imps all lunged for the precious item. Their urgency dragged them through the veil. They sprouted claws and beaks and fangs and feathers, horns and tails. Their feet trampled her snakes. Snip, snip. The item spun toward the earth—

  But Lilith was faster. She got to it first.

  The prize fit in the palm of her hand. It was a teardrop shaped glass vial. Remnants of a wax seal encased the rim, but the vial was empty. Whatever it had once contained was gone, not even a frozen drop remained.

  Haniel ranted, kicked at a tree stump, and swore oaths against heaven—one which included a thrashing of someone’s backside.

  She quirked an eyebrow.

  The angel needs a lesson in threats and profanity.

  The legion reached for the vial in her hands, but she held it above her head. They swarmed around, stinking of matches and brimstone. Snip, snip, a couple more snakes were crushed underfoot. Lilith wound up to toss the glass away when she had an epiphany.

  “Maggie’s alive.”

  Chapter 8

  Haniel spun, his mouth agape, eyes begging explanation.

  Damn. Lilith should have kept the revelation to herself.

  Haniel’s voice rippled with velvet-swaddled murder: “Explain.”

  “You were there when Fate revealed her evil plan,” she said. “Fate said Maggie had a mortality potion and she’d drink it soon, then the basement exploded. However, we found the glass outside.”

  “I remember,” he growled.

  “Well, if Maggie drank the tonic before the explosion, thereby dying when the bomb went off, then Fate would have said so. That implies Maggie waited until she’d escaped the blast before she consumed the potion. She was alive, standing right here.”

  Haniel rushed Lilith as fast as a desperate mortal with a bum knee could. She didn't bother moving aside. As long as he kept his legion at bay, she wasn’t worried he’d hurt her. He clutched the straps of her chemise and pulled her close.

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  Good question.

  Maggie hadn’t taken the car near the road. There was no body. Had scavengers found her? Unlikely. Even werewolves with their commendable appetites left remains of some sort. Vampires usually left corpses.

  Perhaps the girl had wandered off or been taken.

  “If she walked away, there will be footprints.” Lilith swatted at his hands. He was so tense his knuckles cracked when he released her.

  “Spread out,” he ordered his minions. “Look for any trace of Maggie.”

  They materialized in droves and shuffled—

  “No!” Lilith surged forward, hand up. “Their feet will smudge the tracks. None should move, neither them nor you.” And her brood of snakes didn't advance any farther, either.

  “What can you see?” he asked before she even had a chance to look.

  She crouched down and examined the dead winter grass, matted and squashed by a season of heavy snow. Soot had worked into the roots, haloing densely from the mouth of the dungeon. Fluffier particles of ash settled across the entire yard.

  Ash would have fallen throughout the day, even after the flames died. Possibly, whatever evidence she might find had already been obscured.

  Sighing, she looked even harder.

  The ground hosted a hodgepodge of debris, some from the fire, but most of the earth was obscured by untended weeds, rotten fruit, and layers of leaves. All the seeds, thorns, beetle detritus, fallen bird nests and crumpled eggshells, owl pellets, mouse burrows, and plastic blown off the street and caught in spidery branches.

  Maggie had been there less than twenty-four hours ago. Where was she? What happened?

  The faint, asthmatic breeze Lilith had followed up from the basement grew. Wind swelled, sweeping aside the smoke and smog, kicking up ash.

  “No, no, no,” she murmured.

  “Hurry,” he said. “Do something.”

  “I cannot stop the wind!” she hissed, then promptly ignored him. She didn't have time for chatter. This was no different from tracking a gazelle or human straggler who occasionally become a meal. Like her horned vipers, she was a hunter.

  I can do this.

  Wind blustered like it might blow the moon right out of the sky and make way for the brightness of day. While Lilith worried it would destroy all traces of Maggie, the wind uncovered something shiny.

  A brass casing sat twenty yards off into the night, half-buried in the ground.

  She pointed. “Look!”

  “What?” He stepped forward. “Where?”

  “Heaven help me, demon,” Lilith snarled. “If you stomp on a single clue, I wash my hands of this!”

  He froze in place, grumbling, but he seemed to realize too much was at stake. No doubt he’ll save his rebellion for a time when it will be even more inconvenient.

  She returned to her investigation.

  More bullet casings. A spot where dead grass had been flattened and twisted in a circle: heels pivoting. Then Maggie had fallen down, rump first. Pockmarks where she’d dug her heels in and scooped dirt into half-moons. Lilith stepped closer, cautiously placing her feet only where she was certain there were no marks.

  A matte gun lay discarded beside a bald blackberry patch. Lilith knew enough about weapons to see that the slide had locked back. Maggie had ran out of bullets, but she hadn’t given up. Finger-wide furrows revealed that she’d scratched a rock from the earth. It was the size of a
baseball, abandoned three yards behind the gun. The girl had been dragged four paces…

  Then her trail disappeared.

  Had she been swallowed in one gulp? Been airlifted out? Maybe transported to another dimension?

  Lilith turned to analyze the assailant’s tracks.

  “Talk to me, Lilith,” Haniel said. “I’m dying over here. I don’t jest. My chest might collapse.”

  “Leave off with the drama—” She glanced up, and the sight of his harrowed eyes withered her. He looked like he might have an apoplexy. She relented. “There’s no blood.”

  “Good. That’s good, right?”

  She shrugged and scanned the earth, watching how the wind-stirred ash settled here and there.

  A gathering of ash rimmed another footprint. The indentation was long as her forearm but unusually slender. The narrow-footed creature had stalked around the trees, flanking wide before heading straight for Maggie. It wasn’t a humanoid foot, unless the owner had four equally large toes on each foot. And claws. Fat, sharp claws.

  Not a wolf shifter with fat claws, and not a vampire with humanoid feet.

  What else would be lurking around Lane’s estate?

  She thought back to a previous conversation with Lane and groaned.

  Haniel wrung his hands. “What?”

  “Dragon.”

  He barked incredulous laughter.

  She glared.

  “Don’t lie to me, bitch,” he said.

  “I’m the mother of serpents. I’ve met and made innumerable serpents from every continent, even the icebound ones, and I damned well know what I’m talking about. And also, go screw yourself. I’m doing all this for you.”

  “You’re doing it for yourself,” he spat.

  She turned from him and followed the trail, cautious not to disturb the prints. The dragon’s stride was eight feet long, and she had to lunge to keep up.

  The claw marks deepened and kicked up more dirt, and then the weight shifted off the heel, leaving a wider, deeper indent under the ball of its foot. It leapt. Since Maggie’s tracks disappeared nearby, Lilith assumed the dragon snatched the human and flew off with her.

  It’s hopeless.