Every Last Breath

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “Injured in any way that I cannot see?”

  When I shook my head, some of the tension, if only a teeny amount, faded from him. I started to raise my hands. “I—”

  My words ended in a squeal as he lifted me off my feet. Within a second, I was swinging through the air. I grunted as my midsection hit his shoulder. Out of instinct, I grasped the leather belt around his hips. He pivoted around and the elevator whirled as he stepped out in the lobby.

  “Roth—”

  “Don’t,” he growled.

  My grip tightened as he stalked forward. “Put me down!”

  “Not going to happen.”

  He turned toward the hall leading to the stairwell and I lifted my head. The lobby was empty with the exception of Cayman. He was by the couches and chairs, and his usually handsome face was marred with a variety of purplish and red bruises.

  I had no idea demons could even be bruised.

  Cayman grinned, but it looked painful.

  Smacking Roth’s lower back, I tried to get his attention. “Put me down. Now.” When he didn’t respond, I started to kick my legs, but his free arm clamped down around the back of my knees. “Roth!”

  “Don’t,” he said again as the door to the stairwell flew open, banging off the cement walls. I winced as the sound echoed. “Just don’t say another word until we get upstairs.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Don’t tell me not to talk!”

  He chuckled darkly, without any humor. “That’s what I just did, Shortie.”

  Telling myself I’d known he was going to be upset, that the anger had to be a result of him being so concerned over my well-being, I struggled to remain levelheaded. I really just wanted to kick him. “I know you’re angry—”

  The arm around my legs tightened. “You have no idea how angry I am. None whatsoever.”

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I counted to ten. I made it to five. “Okay. I understand. But you don’t need to carry me up the stairs.”

  Instead of responding, he put a little bounce in his step, jarring me as he took the stairs two at a time. When we reached the fourth or fifth floor landing, I’d had it. I got that he was angry, but this was ridiculous.

  Tapping into the strength I knew I had, I raised my hands and gripped his shoulders as I swung my weight back at the same time. The move caught Roth off guard and his arm loosened enough for me to break the hold.

  I slid down the front of his body and the contact sent a flash of heat through my veins. Ignoring it, I backed up, immediately putting a distance between us, which probably was one of the smartest things I’d done so far.

  Roth was furious.

  Anger poured out of every cell of his tightly coiled body and flashed behind his golden eyes. His skin was thinner, exposing the darker tone that existed beyond the flesh. My eyes widened. Not out of fear, because I would never be scared of him, but because there was more than just anger I saw in his features—there was stark anxiety. Yes, he looked fierce, but he also looked like he’d expected not to see me again.

  “Roth,” I said softly, and his eyes squeezed shut in a grimace at the sound of his name. “I know you’re upset. I’m sorry, but I had to go down there and I knew it wasn’t safe for—”

  “Yes, let’s talk about safety!” His voice thundered through the stairwell. “Do you even know how much you risked by going down there? How incredibly lucky you are to be standing here, unscathed?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “There isn’t a but in this, Layla. There are any number of extremely disturbed and twisted things that could have happened to you. And for what?”

  “For what? You knew I had to help Sam. That I couldn’t—”

  “I could’ve helped you if you had allowed me!” His eyes flashed an intense amber. “I know what can happen down there, and I don’t care what Cayman said to you, there was no way you could’ve been prepared. Any number of demons could’ve taken you, and they would’ve done things that would make you beg for death.”

  I shuddered at the thought, but forced my voice to remain soothing. “Nothing happened to me, Roth. I’m okay—”

  “I didn’t know that, now, did I? I woke up after that asshole snapped my neck and you were gone, Layla, into Hell, and I couldn’t go after you. I tried, but the damn elevator wouldn’t come up. I knew the entrance had been blocked, and you have no idea what that made me think. I didn’t know if you were okay. I spent a day and a half fearing the worst!” he yelled, and my stomach dropped, because I’d forgotten time moved differently downstairs. What felt like an hour tops to me had been hours and hours of uncertainty for him.

  I swallowed. “Roth, I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “If you didn’t want me to worry, you never would’ve conspired against me. I offered you my aid and you stripped that choice from me.” His jaw was set in a hard line. “And I was left utterly powerless when it came to helping you. Dammit, Layla, I want to throttle you.”

  “Well, that’s not really helping me.”

  His eyes narrowed, and I realized my lame attempt at humor had pretty much swan-dived down the stairs. “Do you think this is a joke?”

  “No,” I muttered, starting to lose my patience.

  He stepped forward, a muscle throbbing along his jaw. “You risked too much, Layla. You—”

  “I wasn’t going to risk you!” I shouted, my control stretching and then snapping. I stepped forward, planting my hands on his chest and shoving hard. He stumbled back only half a step. “Do you understand that? I had to go down there to help Sam, but I was not going to risk you and I wouldn’t go back and change that if I could. Sorry! You can be mad all you want.”

  “I’m pissed off because I love you, Layla, and the idea of losing you fucking terrifies me!”

  “And I wasn’t going to chance losing you! Because I love you, you annoying, self-important and overcontrolling—”

  Roth shot forward, clasping my wrists in his. Pressing me back against the wall, he pinned my hands above my head. Our bodies were flushed, and my heart pounded erratically as he dipped his head.

  Roth’s mouth was on mine, and it was a raw kiss, one that brooked no room for denial. Not that I could ever want to deny him. The kiss was almost too powerful, too primitive. It ripped open the ball of dread that rested low in my belly, because it was the kind of kiss wrought from the fear of losing someone, and that made our situation all the more real.

  It made what I had done all the more painful.

  I kissed him back, just as hungrily and just as demanding. He gave. I took. And as we clutched at each other, I knew that there was more love in his words than there had been anger.

  After what felt like forever, he lifted his mouth from mine. Resting our foreheads together, he kept his hands over my wrists. He was breathing heavily, and I could feel his heart racing against my chest.

  “I can’t lose you,” he said in a hoarse mutter, his voice twisting up my insides. “I can’t.”

  “You won’t,” I whispered back, but those two words rang empty to me, even after what Grim had told me. “Are you still mad at me?”

  His breath was warm on my lips. “I still want to strangle you.” He paused. “But in the most loving way possible.”

  I pressed my lips together. “Okay then.”

  Roth’s lips brushed over my brow, and then he was stepping back, his hands trailing off my wrists and down my arms. His movements were stiff as he turned to the stairs, and while I could tell most of the anger had faded away, it wasn’t completely gone.

  He started up the stairs, and after taking a couple deep breaths, I followed him. We didn’t talk on the way up to his loft or when we stepped inside. He slammed the door shut behind us. “Bambi. Off.”

  The familiar left my skin immediately, and instead of floating toward him, the shadow darted under the bed.

  “I think you hurt her feelings,” I said, facing him. “And you failed to mention to me that the familiars are actually pe
ople. That’s a pretty big thing to forget, you know, that you have a grown woman crawling around on your skin.”

  He stopped, both brows raised. “Are you jealous? Because you have a guy on you right now.”

  I shuddered. “Thanks for reminding me of that.”

  He stared at me. “Seriously? You’re not jealous, are you?”

  Sighing, I walked over to the bench in front of the piano and plopped down. “At first, yeah, I was. But then I realized how stupid that was. And besides, she apparently has the hots for Zayne.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Bambi’s always had bad taste.”

  My lips pursed. “You could’ve told me.”

  Roth shot me a dark look as he crossed the room. “To be honest, it hadn’t crossed my mind. Silly me for thinking there’d be no chance of you taking a stroll through Hell.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Bambi made it sound like you let her take that form while she’s topside.”

  “Sometimes.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Not often enough that it’s something I think about.”

  “Still, it would’ve been handy to know. Imagine my surprise when they just popped right off me.” I reached down, to where Robin was curled along my hip. “I don’t think they like each other. All they did was argue.” I glanced at the bed. “I really do think she’s hiding.”

  “Of course she is,” he replied, eyeing the bed with a mixture of fondness and irritation. “She knew you were going down there, or at least suspected it. She should’ve stopped you.”

  I rested my hands on my knees, meeting his hard gaze. “When I said I was sorry, I meant it. I didn’t know Cayman was going to distract you in that manner. I punched him, if that makes you feel any better.”

  He arched a brow, looking unappeased.

  I went on. “But I had to try to help Sam. I had to.”

  Roth was silent for a long moment and then he exhaled loudly. “You saw Grim? Did you get what you were looking for?”

  “I got a whole lot of what I wasn’t looking for,” I said, sliding my palms along my knees. “He told me what the Wardens were before—who they were.”

  “Heavenly rejects,” he said, his face impassive. “It was never my story to tell. I wasn’t even sure you’d believe me if I did.”

  “In the beginning? Probably not,” I admitted, and then forged on. “He told me that some of them were never awakened, that they are still encased in stone. I never knew that. Did you?”

  Roth shook his head. “I had heard rumors, but some gargoyles are just stone carvings and nothing more.”

  “He also told me about Lilith. That she was never a demon.”

  His brows furrowed. “I think he was messing with you, Layla. Lilith is a demon.”

  I shook my head tiredly, and then explained everything that Grim had told me about Lilith. I saw the moment when Roth believed me, when I told him how the Boss had covered it up. “So, I feel like a demon. So did Lilith, but only because no one knew what we really were, and I guess with the Boss telling everyone that she was one, no one thought to question it. People see what they want to see. Even demons, I guess.”

  Roth had moved closer to me as I told him what Grim said, but now he knelt in front of me. “You’re not a demon.”

  “No. Not according to Grim, and it makes sense. You know, how the demons could never sense me in the beginning, not until recently—not until the witches gave me what they did.” Understanding flared deep in his eyes, and seeing that made it easier to tell him what else I’d learned. “They gave me the blood of one of the original fallen angels. The same thing they’d given Lilith. That’s why I look different now when I shift. I guess it overcame whatever Warden blood I had in me. And ever since then, I don’t have the same urges to...to feed. It’s still there, but it’s nothing like before. I don’t need anything to ease it. I can ignore it. Anyway, good news is, I’m kind of immortal, so you don’t need to worry about me looking like your grandmother one day.”

  He stared up at me in silence for a long moment and finally, when I started to worry, he said, “I fail to see where there is any bad news involved in what you’ve just told me.”

  I almost smiled. “Well, I’m kind of a bigger freak than you thought I was in the beginning.”

  “I don’t care if you grow a third boob when you shift or if you are part Hellion,” he said fervently. “Or if three days a month you end up needing to consume the flesh of the dead.”

  Um. That was hard-core.

  “I’m going to love you all the same.” He placed his hands over mine. “But knowing that I’m not going to have to make some crazy deal in the future to prevent you from dying of old age on me is the icing on my cake, babe.”

  I couldn’t even stop the smile from tugging at my lips. “You’re ridiculous, you know that? You really would make a deal?”

  His gaze was steady. “I would do anything for you.”

  “Ditto.” I watched him lift my hands to his mouth and pressed his lips to the knuckles of each one. “I didn’t get Sam’s soul.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and although his words were spoken low, I knew they were true. And I also knew that the only thing he truly cared about in this moment was that I was sitting in front of him, unhurt.

  I curled my fingers around him. “The Lilin still has Sam’s soul. Any soul that it consumes, it keeps. Killing the Lilin releases the souls, but Grim said he didn’t know if his soul would last much longer inside the Lilin.”

  Roth smiled, showing off one deep dimple. “Well, then that’s also not bad news. We plan on killing the Lilin anyway. That takes care of both problems.”

  I didn’t like to think about whether or not Sam was aware of what was going on while he was trapped inside the Lilin. “That’s been our plan, but how? I imagine the Lilin won’t be easy to kill.”

  “It won’t be.” Letting go of my hands, he rose and walked over to his dresser. Opening the top drawer, he carefully pulled out something wrapped in thick leather. He carried it to the top of the piano, where he placed it down and pulled the material back. “But we’ll do it the same way we’d kill any demon—with an iron stake.”

  Unable to suppress the shudder upon seeing three iron stakes laid out so innocuously, I glanced up at Roth as something occurred to me. “If I’m not a demon, then how did iron injure me before?”

  “Because, as far as I know, it’s fatal to the originals, too. While they’re not demons, they are still cursed in many of the same ways demons are. After all, they sinned in ways that were believed to be unforgivable.” He smiled slightly as he looked at me. “You’ve known about my little collection. This is all that I have left.”

  Roth didn’t handle the weapons, because they would sear his flesh. The binding at the thicker end of the stake only protected him for so long. It wasn’t that way for me before since I could handle them, which I had always thought was due to my Warden blood, but now I wasn’t sure.

  I reached out, quickly brushing my fingers along the cool metal before Roth could stop me. He uttered a harsh curse as he gripped my hand, yanking it back. “It didn’t burn,” I told him. “Same as before. I guess I’m special.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “That’s one way of putting it.”

  I made a face, and he chuckled as he folded the leather cloth back over the stakes. Warm, I pushed the sleeves of my sweater up. “We need to stop the Lilin. I know we’ve been saying that, but—”

  “What is this?” He took hold of my fingers, lifting my arm up in the air. At first I didn’t get what he was looking at, but as he turned my arm over, I saw the bruises, shaped like three fingers had pressed in. His eyes flashed from my arm to my face, his features tensing. “Did I do this?”

  “What?” I shook my head. “No.”

  Unease bubbled forth as his pupils stretched vertically. “Who did this?”

  “Um...”

  He tilted his head to the side. “To bruise your skin, someone would’ve had to
have gripped your arm with enough force that if you were human, it would’ve snapped your bone.”

  “My arm is fine.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I don’t think I need to answer your question, because you’ll flip out.”

  Roth’s lips thinned. “I’m totally calm. I would just like to know who marred your skin so that I can put a name and face to the creature I’m going to kill very slowly.”

  “I think we might have different definitions of calm,” I said wryly.

  “I’ve never been calmer in my life.” When I shot him a disbelieving look, his chest rose with a deep breath. “It was Grim, wasn’t it? Touchy, impatient bastard.”

  I didn’t answer. Not really. “I have a feeling you can’t kill him.”

  “I can try.” His voice was dead serious.

  “What good would trying do? We have enough problems without adding to them, and you going after Grim would be a major headache we don’t need right now.”

  Roth lowered his chin as he closed his eyes. “It is in the very