Rose of Jericho (Lilith Adams Series Book 2)

by Jenny Allen

There was an obvious lack of blinding security lights which indicated another small airfield. The only beacon in the night was a lone street lamp shining over two black extended town cars. It looked like they probably had opposing bench seats in the back, maybe even a minibar. A girl could hope. After this hellish day, she could definitely use a drink or five.

  Chance was still playing it cool, letting the men guide him toward the cars with a relaxed half smile on his face. Sure he could get frustrated and act like an ass at times, but he was far from the brainless jock-bodyguard stereotype. He wasn’t some short-sighted renegade that always resorted to violence when pushed. Beneath his occasionally hot temper, he was an intelligent strategist, except when she was involved apparently.

  She knew all this, but was still surprised at his calm exterior. Why did she keep expecting him to hulk out on people? Maybe because part of her wanted him to. Then again, maybe it was because thinking of him as a whole, complete, real person meant facing a host of scary things she just couldn’t wrap her mind around right now. It was easier to peg him as the muscle.

  Lilith was right in the middle of her silent debate when she heard lyrical, lilting tones coming from the plane. Her heart thumped violently in her chest and her jaw clenched tight as the very first tone rang painfully in her ears. The emotional jolt was about as subtle as an Epi-pen to the chest and Chance definitely noticed.

  “Your chariot awaits!” Lilith slowly turned around and got an eyeful of the platinum blonde striking a pose at the top of the stairs. Her voluptuous curves were tightly wrapped in the same white dress, threatening to burst a seam if she made a wrong move. Her blonde curls bounced against her shoulders as she sauntered down the stairs, light as a feather. Even the harsh lighting seemed to bend to her will, making her flawless pale skin glow.

  Great, not only was she some man-enthralling demon, she was auditioning for a role on the next incarnation of Desperate Housewives. What a purely delightful combination. All Lilith could think about was landing a swift punch to her throat. She’d like to see her try and sing with a crushed larynx.

  Chance caught the look on Lilith’s face and was completely mystified. His head turned slowly and for a minute, Lilith just held her breath. What was she really hoping to see in his face when he saw her? Disgust, hatred, fear? Anything but that blind adoring worship.

  There wasn’t a single spark of recognition on his handsome face. There was no adoration, none of the lyrically-enhanced attraction. In fact, there was barely a glimmer of any normal attraction. Lilith released the breath she’d been holding as relief washed over her. Maybe the creature had to sing to enthrall him, or maybe it was a matter of control, her choosing not to pull at his strings. Knowing more about how her trick worked was something that would definitely be of use.

  Chance turned back around and slowly inched toward Lilith with his armed escort. “Who the hell is that, Lilith?” His hazel eyes held hers, searching them for answers. He knew something was going on by the deep scowl on Lilith’s face, something she’d conveniently forgotten to mention on the plane.

  “Lily? Is that the woman you mentioned earlier? She doesn’t look very dangerous unless she’s a secret ninja world-famous for chucking stilettos with deadly accuracy.” The sarcastic comment would have been funny if his tone hadn’t been deadly serious. He knew with clear certainty that Lilith was keeping something extremely important from him and he wasn’t precisely happy about it.

  There was a lump in her throat that just kept her staring at his chiseled face with its fine stubble. She couldn’t even meet his eyes. She needed to tell him about everything, he needed to know how dangerous she was, but she knew that as soon as she told Chance what really happened in his apartment, it was going to be a disaster.

  There was genuine worry pulling at his features beneath the stern aggravation. Not only could she see the tension in his lean muscled body, she could feel it coming off him like a six foot three wall of steam. Lilith darted a look up at his green flecked eyes and threw every pleading look she had at him. “Not now. Please.” Her voice was a bare whisper of vulnerability and it took Chance completely by surprise. He nodded roughly as if he wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to do.

  “Oh. You haven’t told him?” That slightly musical voice was quickly becoming the most annoying sound on the damn planet. Lilith just closed her eyes and took in a deep steadying breath. She actually found herself wishing they could just get in the damn car and race off to their deaths already.

  When Lilith opened her eyes, the banshee had stopped next to Chance and was slipping a hand over the shoulder of his dress shirt. Whatever this woman’s game was she wasn’t pulling out all the stops. Every inch that her fingers moved made Lilith’s blood boil. She never considered herself a jealous person, but she definitely was a territorial Scorpio through and through. She wanted to break every one of that banshee’s willowy little fingers. With a smirk on her face, Lilith wondered if her screams would be musical too.

  Chance looked down at the woman’s hand and then glanced up at her rounded face with an openly hostile look. “If you expect to keep that claw of yours, you’ll take it off me. Now.” There was a feral growl in his voice that sent little tingles down Lilith’s spine and definitely not in a bad way.

  “Aww, we had such fun together earlier.” The woman’s soft face puckered into a pout that was all for show. She removed her hand and brought the full weight of her big blue eyes to bear on Lilith. “My, my, my. He is a feisty one isn’t he?” A conspiratorial grin split her plump lips as if they were just two girlfriends sharing gossip over coffee, but there was a dangerous look in her dead blue eyes. It just made Lilith want to punch her in the throat even more.

  Chance narrowed his eyes with a look that even made Lilith feel a bit small. “Feisty?” He actually chuckled at the demonic woman. Apparently he didn’t think she was all that dangerous. Of course he didn’t know her villain super power. “If you think I’m the feisty one, you sure as shit don’t know anything about her.”

  He swung back to look directly at Lilith with a mixture of confusion and raw anger. The banshee’s comment was definitely getting under his skin. “The last thing you want to do is piss this woman off. She’s got one hell of a temper.” His eyes finally left Lilith’s and swung toward the banshee with a dark glint. “You can ask Cohen about her right hook.”

  “Oh, you two are just adorable.” She clasped her hands together and flashed a moony little smile at them. Then a darker look clouded her perfect complexion, accentuating every vicious line in her face.

  “Mmm, my absolute favorite. There is nothing more exquisite than completely destroying every single shred of affection between two people.” Her full lips curled into a vicious smile and a soft humming sound slipped past her lips. It sounded like pins and needles to Lilith, but she could see the lost look already creeping into Chance’s eyes.

  His sly grin was slowly disappearing one tiny muscle at a time as if his entire personality was ebbing away. What made it worse was the simple fact that there was nothing she could do about it. The banshee slid her pale, white fingers along his cheek, turning his face toward hers, but the grin on her lips and the venomous look chilling her deep blue eyes were only for Lilith.

  “Maybe they’ll let me keep him. Assuming they leave me enough to play with that is. He’ll be an infinite amount of fun. I like it when they fight back. It makes the surrender so much sweeter.” The banshee kept her eyes locked on Lilith as she turned and brushed her plump lips against Chance’s.

  Without a single thought, Lilith lashed out with her cuffed wrists and slammed the chain into the bitch’s throat with every ounce of force she had in her. The guards immediately shoved Lilith back against the car, but the bombshell was left gagging, trying desperately to catch her breath as she crumpled to the ground. Oh yeah, this was one of Lilith’s favorite moments ever.

  Chance shook his head and blinked a few times as the humming abruptly stopped. Eventually his eyes c
aught on Lilith pinned against the car. Without a second’s hesitation, he slammed his fists into a guard’s stomach. Chance ran for the men holding Lilith with fierce determination and for a brief second, she sensed fear from the bookend henchmen.

  Before he could reach her, the “pacer” from the plane smacked Chance hard across the shoulders with a stun rod sending him skidding to the ground like a pile of bricks. His body twitched and convulsed enough to scare the hell out of Lilith. She could only watch helplessly as two men pinned him to the ground.

  His hazel eyes flew about panicked and unfocused as the men ground his face against the pavement. A strangled cry of pain and frustration escaped Chance’s lips. Lilith tried to break free. She shoved and pushed, even bit one of the men but they just slammed her back against the car with a bone rattling jolt, an arm against her throat.

  The commotion gave the banshee just enough time to recover. She was still rubbing at the angry red mark across her pale throat, but she’d made it to her feet. There was a confident anger in her stride as she stepped over Chance and strutted right up to Lilith. Each click of her high heels echoed ominously across the open runway. The woman held up her hand and shook it dismissively. The guards instantly backed away, abandoning Lilith and escaping the splash zone.

  With an unexpected strength, the bombshell clamped her manicured hand around Lilith’s throat and slammed her hard against the car. Suddenly, Lilith was struggling to catch her breath as stars twinkled before her eyes. The world spun for a moment and then the banshee’s round face appeared in front of her. The smoldering temptress look was twisted into a sadistic sneer that almost made her unrecognizable. This was her true face, the real monster under the surface saying hello.

  The lilting Marilyn voice was gone. When she spoke, it was something darker and scarier than Lilith could have imagined possible. It made her blood run ice cold. “Oh you will pay for that. You think you can intimidate me?” She leaned in even closer with a menacing anger pulling at every muscle in her face. Her ice blue eyes studied Lilith, taking in every bit of her fear. Suddenly a smug grin split her full lips and she confidently eased back, keeping her strangling grip on Lilith’s throat. “Do you have any idea what I am capable of? Do you know what I could do to him?”

  If Lilith’s heart hadn’t been pounding furiously before, it sure as hell was now. Those words sent her mind racing, and none of it was good. Her eyes automatically fell on Chance. He was still pinned to the ground, eyes closed, but his chest was rising and falling. Fear tightened around Lilith’s heart like a vice lined with venomous spikes.

  “Oh? You’re quiet and docile now?” The woman tilted her head, blocking Lilith’s view and forcing her to look her in the eyes again. Her platinum blonde curls fell over her pale shoulder as her mouth set in an innocent little smile. The mannerism was cute but her voice was cold and icy. She relished the fear and panic in Lilith’s face, drank it in, consumed it. Suddenly, she reminded her of Ashcroft.

  “The next time you even think about raising your hand to me, I will enthrall him and make him choke the life out of you. He won’t resist. He will beg me to allow him to kill you just to please me. I’ll make sure he remembers every single second of crushing your throat. I’ll make it slow and memorable. Inch by inch watching the life leave your body. Then I’ll release him. He’ll be broken and haunted by the memory of turning you into a corpse for the rest of his long, long life and I’ll make certain that it’s as long as I see fit. Do you think fifty years of reliving the memory would be enough to break his mind? A hundred, maybe?”

  Lilith was frozen perfectly still, horrified. All the things that Ashcroft had threatened her with paled in comparison to this. Dying was one thing, Chance killing her and then having to live with it was something completely different. With a shove of force just hard enough to steal Lilith’s breath, the banshee stepped back. Lilith had just enough time to notice that the angry red mark was completely gone, leaving perfectly unmarred alabaster skin. Then the vicious woman sauntered away to the first car without a care in the world.

  Lilith rubbed at her throat with tears in her eyes as she looked down at Chance. He was awake now, but he couldn’t have heard anything the woman had said. He just stared at her and Lilith could feel the tears and pain he refused to show. All they’d lived through, all the things they’d survived, the fights they’d come out of and here they were in hot water again. The banshee was just trying to shake her up, but it worked flawlessly. Lilith was terrified and right now she felt completely defeated.

  The evil bitch was bad enough, but she wasn’t the one in charge. What was powerful enough to keep this chick under their thumb and happily working for them? Now that was a scary thought.

  When the guards finally moved Lilith into the second limo, she didn’t struggle. Obediently, she took a seat between two of the henchmen while she wiped at her teary eyes with trembling hands. She had to pull it together, but the banshee’s threat had definitely gotten under her skin. It was all she could think about.

  Chance, broken and mindless like Duncan chained up in that basement. In the end, her Uncle had simply seen too much horror. Watching your own daughter being slowly, excruciatingly tortured in front of you for nearly two days… he wasn’t even a person anymore after that. Duncan died a scratching, raving beast gnawing at his own limbs for blood. How the hell was Lilith going to protect Chance from that?

  “Lilith, are you all right?” She expected Chance’s Cajun-flecked voice, but this one was vaguely European yet somehow familiar. She lifted her eyes to see Detective Andrew Cohen sitting across from her. All the warm, southern charm of his Tennessee cover was gone. He looked more like a tired aristocrat and he seemed more defeated than she felt if that was possible. Even his sandy blonde hair seemed a couple shades paler and his almost handsome face was creased with lines of pure exhaustion that just seemed to accentuate his slightly weak chin.

  “Cohen? What the fuck is going on here?”

  Before he could respond, the last henchmen shoved Chance next to Cohen, crawled in, and closed the door. Apparently, Andrew was taking advantage of the distraction to say exactly nothing and it was pissing Lilith off. Anger was a much easier emotion to deal with. If she couldn’t direct her rage at the bitch in the first car, Cohen was a convenient substitute. It wasn’t like he was completely innocent either. She had plenty of valid reasons to be angry at him. A therapist would have a field day with all the displaced anger flying out of her mouth tonight.

  “Cohen!” Lilith snapped his name and it definitely caught his attention. His pale face swung toward her, obviously confused at her sharp tone. “You need to tell us what the fuck is going on. You make some cryptic call telling me to run and next thing I know, crazy SWAT guys are busting through the windows like some damn Nicholas Cage movie. Then that blonde shows up screeching like a banshee, making my ears bleed, which is apparently a turn on for some men. What the hell is happening?”

  The last bit caught Chance’s attention. He leaned forward in his seat, his hazel eyes trained on Lilith. There wasn’t a single flicker of amusement on his handsome face. Crap. “Could you repeat that, please?”

  In her anger, Lilith had just blurted out what she’d had trouble saying before. This definitely wasn’t the way she wanted to have this conversation with Chance, but it was too late to take it back now. “Ask Cohen. By the look on his face, I’m sure he knows more about that evil Marilyn impersonator than I do.”

  Chance turned his intense gaze on the Detective with open hostility. “What the hell is she talking about, Cohen? What is that woman?”

  Cohen sighed heavily as he stared at the pale brown liquid in the bottom of his glass. There was no trace left of his suave confidence, he just looked broken. That wasn’t a good sign, and if their lives didn’t rest on his cooperation she might have felt sorry for him...maybe. Unfortunately, he was the only one with the answers they desperately needed. She didn’t have time to patch up his confidence and his attitude was jus
t making her see red.

  “Andrew! What the fuck is going on? Say something!”

  The Detective ran his hand through his short sandy hair and drained his glass. Slowly, he raised his cloudy grey eyes to meet Lilith’s. “Welcome to my nightmare. Cheers.” His words were slightly slurred and his eyes were moving slowly. Great. He was drunk on top of everything else.

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say? Take your damn balls out of your mouth and say something helpful.” Chance and Cohen both cocked an eyebrow at her in surprise. It was just too much. It wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was the straw added to the huge ass pile suffocating the damn camel.

  Lilith leapt across the limo and smacked Cohen in his defeated face. The guards immediately grabbed her and hauled her back to her seat, but Lilith kicked and scratched every second of it. Rules and stun batons be damned. She wanted to wake Cohen the hell up. Apparently she still had a little fight in her after all.

  “What the hell, Lilith?” Cohen rubbed at his face while he tried to get away from her kicking feet. “Damn. Ow! Stop it! I’m not the enemy!”

  With a fresh surge of anger, Lilith shoved off the two guards and tried for Cohen again, getting in a nice right hook and a few more kicks. “The hell you aren’t! I haven’t forgotten about those big ass needles you shoved in my arms or how you were about to carve me up like a Thanksgiving turkey for Ashcroft. Where the hell is my father and what the hell is going on?!”

  Even when the two men had her pinned into her seat, she kept stretching and kicking. “Lily!” Chance’s voice rose above Cohen’s yelps of pain just enough for her to hear him.

  “No, Chance. If Cohen wants to get drunk and be completely useless then I’m going to kick the crap out of him until he says something fucking useful. I’m tired of his damn games. Why the hell are you defending him?”

  “I’m not. I’m defending you.” Chance gave her a significant look, his hazel eyes glancing to the guards and back again. That’s when she noticed the barely contained frustration pouring off the guards on either side of her. If she kept it up, that frustration would quickly turn into repercussions that she most definitely would not like.