White Hot Kiss (The Dark Elements 1)

Abbot faced me fully. “Now he would, and he has good reason for his caution. A little over seventeen years ago he made the mistake of trusting one—a demon who claimed that she would rather be dead than be what she was. No one but Elijah knows the whole story, but one thing is certain. He lay with her, and in the end the demon got what she wanted.”

I opened my mouth, then clamped it shut. A cold wind swept down my spine. Denials formed on the tip of my tongue but no words came out.

“The demon he trusted was Lilith,” Abbot said. “And because Elijah trusted her, he helped create the one thing that could destroy the world. You.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I’d never been the passing-out kind before, but I almost kissed the floor after that little bomb was dropped. Shaken and a whole lot disturbed, I sat back down.

“Elijah’s her father?” Shock colored Zayne’s tone. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I am not.” Abbot took a weary breath. “He didn’t know the demon was Lilith until we found Layla in the foster home years later.”

I blinked slowly, but the room wouldn’t come into focus. “He knew I was his daughter?”

“He did.”

“But he...he hates me.” I sank back into the floral cushions. “He’s always hated me.” The moment the words left my mouth, I finally understood why. “God, I must’ve reminded him...”

“Of his lapse in judgment?” Abbot came to my side, his voice low. “He could never reconcile the part of you that was him.”

My head spun. “Didn’t he want to kill me when you all found me?”

Abbot looked away.

I sucked in an unsteady breath. “He did. Wow. I don’t even...” My eyes searched Abbot’s face for an answer. “You stopped him from killing me and you knew he was my father?”

Again, Abbot said nothing. It was Geoff who stepped forward. “The scar Elijah carries is not from a demon. Abbot stopped him that night and took you in. After all, you carry a Warden’s blood in you.”

“Oh, my God...” I shook my head. “This is...”

Too much.

Everyone’s eyes were on me, a mixture of surprise and pity. It was too much, learning all this and not having a moment to really let it sink in without an audience.

I stood and blindly made my way around Abbot. Someone called my name, but I didn’t stop until I was in my bedroom.

Sitting down on my bed, I stared at the spot on my wall. Nothing else seemed to matter at that moment. Elijah was my father—the Warden who hated me with the power of a thousand suns; the very same Warden who wanted me dead. He’d probably ordered Petr to kill me.

Oh, my God...

Nausea rose sharply. Petr had been my half brother. That disgusting son of a...

I’d taken my own brother’s soul.

Lying on my side, I curled into a ball and squeezed my eyes shut against the burning that had nothing to do with what had happened in school. A tremor started in my leg, working its way up to my fingers. I tucked them against my chest.

How did one deal with something like this? I doubted there were coping skills I just hadn’t learned yet. I didn’t know what sickened me more. That my own father wanted to kill me or that I’d taken my brother’s soul.

* * *

Over the next couple of days, I really didn’t come to any great understanding of everything that had been revealed to me. There was no comprehending it. The only thing I could do was not think about it. That didn’t work out so easily. It was like trying not to breathe. At the strangest moments, it would pop into my head and I couldn’t get it out.

My own father wanted me dead.

The knowledge overshadowed everything, leaving me numb to the core. Part of me could understand Elijah’s hatred because of what I reminded him of, but I was still his daughter. All these years I’d built up this fantasy surrounding my father, convincing myself that even though I was part demon, my father still loved me. That something unfortunate had happened to him and I had gotten lost in the tragedy.

Now that dream had been blown to bits.

The whole thing with Petr also weighed on me. The fact that he was my half brother didn’t change my opinion of the monster, but I wondered if, had I known who he was to me, I would’ve done the same thing.

I wasn’t sure.

Zayne had sneaked in my laptop the day after everything had gone down in the sunroom. I guessed I was still grounded, but he felt bad for me. After sending a quick email to Stacey letting her know that I was sick and didn’t know when I’d be back at school, I lost all interest in the internet.

I wanted to be stronger than all of this, but never in my life had I wished as badly as I did then that I could be something or someone else.

I don’t know what got into me Friday evening. I was standing in front of that damn dollhouse and I hated it.

Wrapping my fingers along the top floor, I pulled hard enough to tear the story right out of the house. It wasn’t enough. The back of my neck tingled as I grabbed the roof and tore it right off the sides. Holding it, I briefly considered swinging the section like a bat, taking out the walls.

“What are you doing?”

I squeaked and spun around. Zayne stood in the doorway, eyebrows raised. His hair was wet from the shower. I flushed. “Um, I’m not doing anything.” I glanced down at the toy roof. “Well...”

His gaze moved behind me. “If you didn’t want the toy house in your bedroom anymore, I could’ve removed it for you.”

Gently, I set the roof on the floor. “I don’t know.”

He cocked his head to the side.

I sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Zayne stared at me for what felt like forever. “Good.”

“Good?” The fact that he’d walked in on me going cray-cray on my toy house didn’t seem like a good thing.

“I have something for you to do. It involves ice cream.”

My eyes went wide. “Ice cream?”

A small smile appeared. “Yeah, I thought we could go get some.”

Excitement rushed through me like a summer storm. It was like Christmas Day. I could get out of the house and it involved ice cream. But the joy faded quickly. “Abbot will never let me.”

“He’s all right with it as long as I’m with you.”

“Do you think it’ll be okay?” I asked, too afraid to get happy again. “What if something happens?”

“A demon isn’t going to come after you while I’m with you.” The confidence in his voice erased any concerns. Zayne was right. It would be suicidal if one did. “It seems like an ice-cream kind of night. You game?” he asked.

When it came to ice cream, I was always game.

* * *

I loved riding in Zayne’s vintage Impala. The rumble it made, the looks it got. In a sea of Mercedes and BMWs, nothing stood out more than a 1969 cherry-red Impala. He’d let me drive it once, on my sixteenth birthday. Driving proved to be too much with all the shimmery souls serving as an epic distraction. I’d rear-ended a police cruiser.

I hadn’t gotten behind a wheel since.

We stopped at a convenience store to pick up a pack of Twizzlers. I puked a little in my mouth when Zayne brought them into the ice-cream parlor. “That’s so gross,” I muttered.