Chapter 4 – Lilith
CHAPTER FOUR
LILITH
Morbius drives me to the edge of the village, the truck rumbling to a stop where the road dissolves into the dark line of the forest. Midnight creeps closer, the air heavy with winter and distant celebration.
He turns to me slowly. His eyes burn with a strange intensity, and his fingers drift through the ends of my hair as if committing the feeling to memory.
“You see what I have to contend with now,” he murmurs bitterly. “Silas poisoning the others against me. After everything I’ve done for that club.” He exhales sharply, shaking his head as though trying to rid himself of the injustice.
My chest aches seeing him like this. I lay my hand gently on his thigh and squeeze.
“You don’t deserve to be treated this way,” I whisper.
The devastation in his face twists something deep inside me. Without thinking, I climb into his lap. My hands cradle his face, forcing him to meet my gaze.
“You are the better person,” I say softly. “Don’t let Silas or the club drag you down with them.”
Something changes in his eyes then. Something deeper. Hungrier. His hands rise slowly, cupping my face as though I’m something precious.
“Oh, how I wish I could keep you for eternity,” he breathes, voice low and reverent, almost aching. “You truly understand me… understand what I must do.”
His lips brush mine, delicate at first, like a barely spoken promise.
“I will always be by your side, Morbius.” The confession spills out before I can stop it. My heart hammers violently. “I love you.”
The words hang between us.
He goes completely still. Panic blooms in my stomach, and I pull back slightly.
“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same,” I rush on. “I just… with tonight being almost midnight and everything that’s happened, I felt like I had to tell you.”
Slowly, a smile spreads across his lips. His eyes close, and when he speaks again, his voice trembles with something raw.
“You have no idea what you’ve given me by saying that.”
My breath catches.
“If what we share is love,” he continues quietly. “Then yes, that is what I feel.”
Relief floods through me.
“Do you give me your undying trust?” he whispers, his lips trailing along my neck. “Do you give yourself to me, body and soul?”
My pulse races beneath his mouth. My thoughts blur with desire and devotion.
“Yes,” I whisper breathlessly. “Yes, Morbius. You have all of me.”
His grip tightens.
“Come,” he growls softly. “Let’s bring in the millennium together.”
Before I can react, he lifts me effortlessly from the truck. I wrap my legs around his waist, laughing softly as my lips brush his throat. My senses are filled with him; the warmth of his skin, the smell of leather and smoke.
I’m so lost in him that I don’t notice where we’re going.
Until we stop.
“You are here.” The voice is deep. Cold.
My head snaps up. We’re inside the bar; my family’s bar.
Candles burn everywhere, arranged in strange patterns across the floor. Their flames flicker wildly, painting the room in restless gold and shadow. At first glance, it might almost look romantic.
Then I see her.
My mother.
Her eyes are wide with terror.
“Mom?” I breathe.
Tears stream down her face as a muffled cry escapes behind the cloth gag in her mouth. My heart drops.
Not just her.
My father. My sister. My little brother. All of them bound and gagged, kneeling helplessly in the centre of a wide circle of candles.
Panic claws up my spine. I slip from Morbius’s arms and stumble toward them.
His hand snaps around my wrist, hard.
I whirl on him. “My family,” I choke. “Why are they tied up? What’s going on?”
His expression is unreadable.
“Do you love me? Trust me?” he asks quietly.
The question slams into me like a wall.
“What?” My voice cracks. “Morbius, we need to help them!”
I try to pull free, but his grip tightens painfully.
“Just answer me,” he says urgently. “Then I will make sure it will all be over.”
“It must be now.” A cloaked figure steps from the shadows.
My blood runs cold. My heart pounds so violently it feels like it might tear itself apart.
Morbius leans closer, his voice dropping to something dark, almost threatening.
“Tell me. And I promise it will all be over.”
I look back at my family.
Their eyes plead with me. My mother shakes her head frantically through her tears. My father stares at me with desperate helplessness.
I turn back to Morbius.
“Yes,” I whisper, trembling. “I love you. Now please, please save my family.”
Outside, fireworks explode as the village celebrates the new millennium. The windows flash with bursts of colour.
Morbius closes his eyes. His face transforms with pure, blissful euphoria.
“With those words,” he murmurs reverently, “you have given me the ultimate gift.”
Confusion barely has time to form before another cloaked figure moves.
A massive, unnatural blade glints in the candlelight. In one impossibly swift motion, it slices cleanly through my father’s neck.
For a split second, the world freezes.
Then his head tumbles to the floor.
My mother and sister’s muffled screams rip through the room.
“No!” A feral scream tears out of me as the blade rises again.
Blood splashes across the candles, the floor, the walls of the bar I grew up in.
I fight wildly against Morbius’s arms.
“Stop! STOP!”
But his hold on me is iron.
My brother. My sister. My mother.
One by one, they fall beneath the blade. Their blood fills the ritual circle. Their bodies crumple like broken dolls.
My soul shatters.
The cloaked figure drags their bodies together and, with a flick of their hand, the candles flare violently. Flames erupt. Fire devours them.
The smell of burning flesh fills the room.
Released, I collapse to the floor.
“No, no, no…” I crawl toward them, sobbing uncontrollably. The flames roar higher, devouring everything. I reach for them anyway. Fire scorches my hands, blistering my skin, but I don’t care. Desperate cries tear from my throat as I try to reach them through the inferno.
Suddenly, pain explodes across my scalp. My head is wrenched backwards by my hair.
“A love,” a deep, unfamiliar voice whispers behind me, trembling with reverence. “A sacrifice.”
Cold metal touches my throat.
“An undying devotion.”
The blade slides across my neck.
“Servitude… for eternity.”
Agony rips through me. I try to scream, but only choking gargles escape as blood floods my throat. Warmth pours down my chest, pooling beneath me. My strength ebbs. The world tilts and blurs.
My final sight is the inferno consuming my family, their bodies turning to ash.
“Lilith!” a voice cries somewhere far away. Strong arms lift me. Hold me.
Morbius?
I drift in and out of consciousness, my life fading with each gurgled breath. A sudden, excruciating pain pierces the side of my neck, sharp and violent.
Then darkness swallows everything.
My last thought drifts through the void.
Please… let me join my family on the other side.