Chapter 18
“Lily,” he said, blinking rapidly. Then he kissed me without warning, crushing his lips to mine as if he’d forgotten how to breathe and I was oxygen itself.
This felt like my Dante.
Like my Virtue, the one with the caustic humor and stubborn protectiveness.
“Dante,” I breathed when he finally released me. Overwhelmed, I leaned closer to him and cupped his cheek.
Need wrenched at me, but before I could close the remaining distance and kiss him again, Dante stiffened, his moment of lucidity already fading.
No.
He grabbed my arms, holding me in place as he put distance between us. It was only a few inches, but it felt like miles.
Dante’s lashes fell, shielding his gaze from me.
“Dante, look at me,” I whispered.
I shouldn’t have asked.
His gaze flashed up to meet mine, his orange irises rimmed in Hellfire.
“Why are you here?” he asked, voice cold and flat.
“Dante, I—”
His hands fell away and he turned, leaving me to stare at his broad shoulders, the tattered remains of his t-shirt revealing muscled, scarred flesh beneath.
“You should go,” he said over his shoulder.
“No, Dante. This isn’t you.” Shaking my head, I lifted a hand to touch him.
He flinched away. “You shouldn’t have come back, Lily. Just go before I hurt you.”
“Dante…”
“I said go!” he shouted, and Kaito drew his katana blade, a magicked weapon that he could summon due to his powers as a Kami.
Dante laughed at the threat. “Go on, old friend. See if you can cut me before I rip your head off.”
“Stop it!” I snapped. “You don’t get to do this, Dante. You don’t get to let Cole win.”
His lips curled in response. “I don’t get much of a choice in anything, lately.” His gaze slid to my wings. “Do you know why that is, Lilith?”
Anger unfurled in me. I knew that Dante would try to get under my skin right now, he knew me better than almost anyone and he knew what would hurt me most.
“Don’t,” I commanded.
“It’s because I was stupid enough to make a deal with Cole to protect you.
You left us, Lilith. You played us all right into Cole’s master plan and now we’re paying the price.
” Acid dripped from his words, so thick and caustic that I blinked away furious tears.
“All of this started with you,” he growled, throwing all blame at my feet. “You’re the one who needs to end it.”
“I’m trying to end it,” I said, trying to keep my trembling voice steady. “But you need to let me help you.”
“Help?” he asked, his voice turning hysterical. He laughed, a humorless sound that echoed in my chest. “You want to help? Then get out of my sight.” He gestured to Kaito. “The both of you.”
Kaito held his katana steady, his gaze locked on Dante, but I knew he wouldn’t move, not without my order.
Dante was one of us, but he had too much rage for Cole to work with.
“You need to let go of the past,” I said, desperate to find a way to free Dante from Cole’s clutches. I’d deal with the demon, but first I needed to make sure he didn’t have anything to hold over my head.
Like Dante’s sanity.
I’d seen a glimpse of it. My Dante was still in there, somewhere, I just had to help him come out.
Danger flickered in Dante’s eyes. “If you won’t leave, I’ll force you to leave, Lilith.” He approached me and Kaito readied his blade.
“Not yet, Kaito,” I told him as Dante backed me against the wall.
Dante wouldn’t harm me.
I refused to believe it.
My Hunter ran his fingers over my chest, wrapping them around my throat. “You should fear me,” he warned, his molten gaze rimmed in red.
“I will never fear you,” I growled. “You are my Virtue. You belong to me.” I spread my wings, curling them around us like a shroud. “I came back from the dead, Dante. After that, what do I have to fear? Not you, surely. I returned to you.”
He sneered. “You don’t get it, do you? You shouldn’t have come back. You should have stayed dead.”
I stared at him, stunned.
The scent of blood and roses made my nostrils flare. Numb and blind to everything else, I hardly registered Hendrik had finally found us.
“Dante,” he growled. “That’s enough.”
Cold, metallic magic unwrapped the Hunter’s grip from my throat, forcing him away from me.
Dante snarled at the Dark Mage. “Stay out of this, Hendrik. You can’t protect her from the truth.”
“And what truth is that?” Kaito asked, the silver tattoo running along his cheek shimmering with a faint tint of red.
Dante pulled down his collar, showing the old scar that ran across his throat. “Do you know how I got this one, Lilith?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked, curling my arms around myself.
He grabbed my wrist and forced me to run my fingers over the harsh groove. “Surely you remember.”
My stomach twisted.
“I don’t remember anything,” I muttered softly, but that was a lie. Dante’s violence registered a distant memory, one I had buried along with the rest of my past.
“Then let me paint you a picture,” Dante said. “What’s the first thing you remember after the mind wipe?”
I’d been covered in blood and made my way to Cindy’s door, the Mother of Monsters and a recruiter of Monster Academy.
She was probably here, now that I thought of it, along with allied Demonspawn like Jess.
They’d probably wisely stayed away from me during the whole Cole dilemma.
I had my fair share of demons right now.
Dante had told me about when I had wiped my memories.
I thought it’d been because I’d slit his throat… but I hadn’t really known him at the time.
Now I wondered if there was more to that story.
When I recounted as much to Dante, he laughed. “You want to go over that again? Yes, you were covered in my blood. Not just because I pursued you, but because you just… reacted.”
My eyes went wide. My gaze shot to Hendrik, then to Kaito.
Flat expressions.
No reaction.
“So it wasn’t self-defense?” I asked, hoping for someone to give me an answer.
Kaito lowered his Katana. “You slit Dante’s throat on his first attempt to bring you in… when you’d been half-crazed after…” His voice trailed off and he swallowed hard.
“After what?” I demanded.
Dante leaned in, Hellfire burning in his eyes. “After you killed your angel mother, Silvia.”
My blood ran cold.
And then the memories slammed into me.
Because of the nature of my birth and the impact of the Bloodstone channeling Hell’s power, I had come into the world as a Demonspawn.
It had taken over a year to shed that form and grow into my gifts.
My mother knew the future that awaited me, but she also knew the sacrifice it would take to free me from Hell’s hold.
I needed to rule Hell, not the other way around.
Sacrificial magic was the most powerful magic in the universe. It was why the Blood Witches were so feared, why supernaturals like Hendrik could live forever.
But the cost… it ran too high.
“It’s my fault,” I said, my eyes burning with tears that I’d held in for far too long. My mother had loved the Incubus King, she’d lived on earth as an angel who’d given up her wings.
For me, she had returned to Heaven, shamed, but satisfied because I could live the life she wanted for me.
After I’d killed her.
“No,” I breathed as Dante stumbled away from me.
I crashed to my knees and my wings spilled around me like a cape as my throat caught on a sob.
Kaito’s weapon vanished in a whirl of magic as he grabbed Dante by the collar and yanked him back. “She wasn’t supposed to find out this way.”
My head shot up. “You knew?”
Of course Kaito had known.
He knew everything, and yet, he still kept secrets from me.
Kaito’s lips formed a hard line as Dante blinked at me. “Lily,” he said, coming out of his rage-induced haze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Hendrik smashed his fist into Dante’s face, making my Hunter lash to the molten ground. “You’re an idiot,” he growled. He hit him again and Dante let him.
“Defend yourself,” I screamed at him.
I couldn’t hate him for telling me the truth.
I had tried to kill him, just like I had killed my own mother, except Dante couldn’t die. Not by my hand. As my Virtue, and as a Hunter, he could survive almost anything, even a fatal wound across his throat.
Whatever rage had been in him seeped away and only misery was left behind.
Hendrik’s magic flared with it, like gasoline pouring onto an open flame. His pitch-black eyes glittered with power and he raised his fist to strike again.
I moved faster than I had in all my life. I caught his wrist and stopped him, supernatural strength billowing through my form. That had been the first power to come back to me after the mind wipe, a self-inflicted release of power to protect myself from the truth.
It was time to face it. Cole worked off of rage and deceit. If I made peace, if my Virtues could come together, we could take away all of his power.
And then he would be forced to make a decision. Stand with me, or get out of the fucking way.
A rim of red struggled around Dante’s irises as the three of us held our breath.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said, threading my fingers through his hair and forcing him to look at me. Searching his gaze, I mercilessly tore along our Virtue bond.
Dante gasped and arched, his skin glowing hot in retaliation of my intervention.
It would hurt.
But this was something that needed to be done.
“Where are you…” I clawed my way through his mind, searching for a deal that never should have been made.
A red thread, all but lost in the chaos that linked Dante and me, twined through the Hunter’s psyche. It pulsed with malevolence and tasted of Cole, of heat, of sin.
Traits I could relate with, and because of that, I would free him.
Power burned inside me on a level I didn’t recognize and it reached for that pulsing, angry red.
Dante jerked, then screamed, the noise stretching out as I sliced through that red with my magic. My new magic, the magic that came to me in my death and rebirth, along with my wings.
My magic as a fallen angel, as the future Queen of Hell, and as the Champion of the Third Echo of Calamity.
The angry red pulsed fiery hot. As Dante sagged against me, it exploded out of existence.
Wrapping my arms around him, I looked up at Kaito. The aftereffects of what I’d done still clouded my eyes, a haze over my vision, but it cleared when my mentor sank down next to me, surprise in his gaze, it disappeared entirely.
“I don’t believe it,” he murmured.
In my arms, Dante shuddered.
Hendrik crossed his arms as if waiting for Dante to retaliate.
I turned toward the Hunter as he eased back and lifted his head, terrified of what I might see.
The red in his eyes drained away as he held my gaze. “Lily…”
He touched my cheek, fingers gentle as he stroked my skin. A shudder wracked him and he lowered his head to my shoulder, dragging air in before looking up at me again. “He’s gone.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, afraid to hope for anything but more bitterness. I closed my hand around his wrist. Under my fingers, I felt the ridge of the scar—a reminder of another time when he’d torn himself open for me.
His fiery orange eyes burned into mine as he reached out and pulled me into a kiss. There was the sharp taste of blood on his lips, a remnant of the fight between him and Hendrik.
He tasted sweet.
He tasted like my Virtue.
With a greedy moan, I sank into his arms. With my free hand, I reached out, acutely aware of Hendrik and Kaito standing watch over us and burning with a heated need of their own.
No one ventured to this area of the street, not after the amount of power we’d unleashed.
We were alone.
And Cole had been driven out, the demonic cries in the distance fading as he retreated.
Hendrik’s hand closed around mine and he sank down to his knees beside us. “I think you actually did it, pet.”
Instinctively, I spread my wings wider so he could move closer, then curved them in as Hendrik lowered his head to my neck as Dante yanked my head back, his touch going hard and demanding.
Kaito joined us, his touch on me reverent.
Somehow, I’d severed the hold Cole had on Dante.
I’d done it.
Which paved the way for the next adventure Calamity had in store for me.
The sky parted and cracked as pure, golden light poured down. A reminiscent floral scent tinged my nose and I gasped, not believing it.
“What is that?” Dante asked, his gaze locking on the broken sky.
Kaito stood, a grin cresting his face. “That… is our secret weapon.”