by Jenny Allen
Chance frowned at her quick dismissal but he reluctantly nodded. His hand slid down her arm all the way to her wrist and stopped. His eyebrows knit together as he raised her hand and turned it palm up. “I should put something on this.” His fingers gently probed the gash in her wrist from her own bite, her desperate attempt to save her father. It had stopped bleeding, but the wound was still fairly deep.
A twinge of nervousness pulled at the back of her mind, but it was buried under the million other things on her mind. “It’s fine, Chance. It’ll heal.” Lilith sighed as he pulled it closer, inspecting the wound.
“I thought it would have healed more by…” Before Chance could finish his sentence, Lilith pulled her arm away.
“I said it’s fine.” The words were slightly more clipped than she’d intended which earned her a frustrated sigh from Chance.
“All right, Cher.” Without another word, Chance passed by her into the living room. Lilith released another sigh as she watched him walk away, the white noise of a headache snaking into her brain. She closed her swollen eyes for a moment, taking a few deep breaths and moved into the main room.
Cohen was still sitting in the same cream linen chair staring at his hands. When they both walked into the room, he leaned back with a forced confidence but he still didn’t meet their eyes. Maybe he found the whole thing just as awkward as she did. She definitely hoped so. There was still a smoldering ember of anger in her stomach just for him whether it was justified or not. Cohen may have had nothing to do with Farren and his decision to shoot her father, but it was his family and his kind that were ultimately responsible.
“I need to be real with the two of you.” Cohen hesitated, evaluating exactly what he was about to say next. Real. The thought just made Lilith laugh sarcastically in her head. She wasn’t sure if even Cohen knew what was real about himself and what wasn’t.
They both took a seat on the couch and Lilith noticed Cohen’s little jamming device lit up on the coffee table. “Even if they decide not to kill us…If they send us after that damn book or whatever it is they want…” His sky grey eyes glanced up at Lilith and she flinched. She’d noticed his eyes changing color before, but she’d always forgotten to ask how he did it. Seeing the color of her father’s eyes in his head, just unnerved her completely, forcing her to look away. “They will still kill us once they have what they want. Cooperating with them is just a stay of execution.”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, because I do. We get it. Doom, gloom and murder. But what the hell happened in that conference room and why didn’t you fill us in on your little family drama?” Chance was showing remarkable restraint much to Lilith’s surprise.
She was just grateful that he’d taken the lead while she tried to shake off the jarring sight of Cohen’s eyes. It made her wonder if he could control it and if so, why the hell would he choose to show her that of all things right now. It just made the ember of anger glow a little brighter.
“For one, we didn’t have time. Besides I didn’t want to give them any more ammunition than I had to. I wouldn’t exactly call you two skilled actors. I’ve already stuck my neck out far enough as it is.”
Lilith blinked in complete shock. “Stuck your neck out? Are you fucking serious?” It was just the excuse she needed to focus some of that anger and it happened to be a valid question. “How exactly have you done that? According to you, we are in the same boat so don’t act like you are swooping down to save the day out of the kindness of your non-existent heart.” She folded her arms over her chest as her eyes narrowed in on him. She wanted him to feel every little bit of her anger.
That hit a nerve. His fist clenched for a minute, his jaw tightening. He didn’t have to be an incubus to know she was pissed at him, but the fact that he seemed really bothered by it struck her as odd. Of course with Cohen, appearances were always deceiving.
“Yes. My grandfather expected to see a failure. That’s what he’s always seen in me.” Cohen took a breath and let it out slow. It was definitely an old, festered wound. “I needed him to see exactly what he expected. I need him to underestimate me. I couldn’t let you in on that because I needed your shock and outrage to be real. He would have felt it if you’d just…faked it. We are kind of like emotional lie detectors in case you haven’t noticed and like I said, acting isn’t your forte.”
After a few moments of silence, Cohen dropped the anger and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I know neither of you trust me and maybe I haven’t done as much as I could to prove otherwise, but I am on your side whether you realize it or not. I’m not used to all this.” He looked genuinely frustrated, but Lilith was still too angry to care about his behavior much less analyze it.
“Not used to what? Being in a tough spot? Actually having to work with people? Thinking about anyone besides yourself? Not sure you’ve excelled at any of those.” Lilith wanted to laugh at Chance’s little digs at the flustered detective, but they had real work to do. She rested a calm hand on Chance’s arm and turned her attention back to the true demon in the room.
“I’m not interested, Cohen. All I want from you is information. Your red-headed stepchild act had nothing to do with us. You were only protecting yourself.” Lilith crossed her arms again and settled back into the couch with a feeling of righteous indignation.
“Oh it didn’t have anything to do with you? If they underestimate me, it will give me more room to maneuver to help you. Besides, the two of you almost screwed us all.” There was that distant anger again. Either he was using personality tricks on them or he was honestly conflicted. Either way, it didn’t really matter.
“I told you not to speak about that again…”
Cohen rolled his eyes in patronizing frustration. “Not that. When the two of you were clinging to each other like frightened rabbits, you started feeding off each other’s energy. Precisely what I told you NOT to do. Farren sensed something was wrong and if I hadn’t gotten in his face, he would have realized what you were up to. If he knew that you had even a single drop of my blood in your veins, we would ALL be dead on the floor right now, just like Gregor. Period. It doesn’t matter what Farren wants from you. Carrying our blood is immediate death in his eyes, no matter the cost.”
“Watch your fucking words, Detective.” Chance growled as his hand tightened on the arm of the couch.
“Fuck your bravado, Chance. You don’t want to listen to me, then fine. Va te faire foutre, trouduc.” Apparently Cohen’s cold patience was at an end.
Chance was on his feet before Lilith even registered that he’d moved. Whatever Cohen said, definitely pushed him over the edge. Lilith leapt up in front of Chance and put a hand on his chest while he continued to stare daggers right over her shoulder at Cohen.
“Ferme ta gueule, démon.” Chance snarled the words with ease, leaving Lilith completely confused.
“Both of you, knock it off. Stick to damn English. Cohen, stop trying to pick a fight. If you want to cooperate then do something useful.”
“I’m tired of defending myself to your puffed up body guard. If we are going to work together, then he is gonna have to keep his attitude in check. Right now we have more important enemies than each other.” Cohen flipped a hand toward Chance and took a step back with a petulant look.
Lilith sighed heavily. “Are you two serious? I understand conflicting personalities, but this is fucking it. Chance, just drop it. Cohen, if you really don’t want to keep defending yourself than stop creating problems. You know exactly what you’re doing. This ends right now.”
Once Cohen grunted in agreement, she turned her full attention back to Chance. “He’s not lying about Farren. I saw a surprised look on his face like he had some unformed questions about us, just before Cohen picked that fight with him. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but it does make sense.”
“Thank you, Lily.” Without a single thought, Lilith turned on her heel and slapped Cohen right across the face with every bit of fo
rce she had in her. It was a deafening crack that even Farren might have heard. Cohen doubled over with the force and rubbed at his cheek before meeting her eyes with complete, genuine surprise. “What the…”
Lilith bent down, grabbing him by the neck. “YOU do not ever get to call me that. Ever.” There were angry tears in her eyes but she ignored them. “Just because I’m willing to hear you out, does not mean you get to use that word. I haven’t forgotten that your family just tortured and killed the last of mine.”
Lilith stooped down, bringing her face inches away from his as she got a firm grip on his tie. She looked him square in the eye with all the authority she felt at that moment. “Let me make this perfectly clear. We are not friends, we are not partners, we are temporary allies and if we make it out of all this alive, you’ll have to give me a damn good reason not to hunt you down and shoot you myself. Am I understood?”
Cohen managed to look completely reserved, but she knew it was a mask. He nodded softly. “I am sincerely sorry. It was not my intention to upset you. Can we all sit down and make a game plan? I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry.” He kept his voice even and genuinely apologetic though genuine was a relative term with him.
After a tense few seconds, Lilith returned to the couch, sitting on the opposite end from Chance. It wasn’t that she wanted to be as far away from him as possible, quite the opposite. Still, she needed to focus and more importantly, Cohen needed to focus. “Now that that’s out of the way. Do you think they want us to find the book you were looking for?”
“They already know where the book is. That’s not what they sent me after.” Lilith just cocked an eyebrow at him, gesturing for Cohen to continue. “They sent me after the cipher. From a distance, they’ve been able to study the book but it’s an enigma. No one can crack it.”
“Then how do they even know it’s something they want?”
Cohen looked over at Chance and for once the look wasn’t overtly hostile. “It was written in the 1400’s. The original author has been unknown for quite a long time, but it passed through a lot of hands. One of my relatives, Athanasius Kircher, received a sample of the text in 1639 from Georg Baresch, an obscure alchemist in Prague. See Athanasius was a Jesuit scholar from the Collegio Romano who had deciphered and published translations of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Baresch thought my relative could translate this mystery book and he wasn’t entirely wrong.”
Lilith settled into her corner of the couch. She wasn’t expecting a history lesson but as long as it was relevant she’d listen. Cohen paused, obviously waiting for a comment or some kind of argument. Lilith just nodded and gestured for him to continue. With a hesitant look, Cohen continued his surprisingly interesting story.
“Athanasius wasn’t able to decipher the entire script, but he knew it had nothing to do with the crude plant illustrations or cosmic diagrams inside. They were merely a distraction. It’s not known exactly what he found that warranted his actions, but he sent a letter to my grandfather explaining that he believed the piece referenced something dangerous about our kind. My grandfather instructed him to purchase the book, retrieve it any cost. Athanasius tried everything he could, but Baresch wouldn’t give it up. The family had him killed and Jan Marek Marci, the rector of Charles University in Prague, got his hands on the book. He sent the book to Athanasius but it never arrived. It just disappeared.”
Lilith found all the history intriguing, but not particularly helpful so far. She glanced over at Chance, who was being surprisingly quiet. There was a dawning look of recognition on his face that was completely unexpected. “The Voyruich Manuscript.” The hushed tone of his voice made the words seem even more ancient and mystical.
Cohen blinked and just stared at Chance for a moment as if seeing him for the first time. “Uh…Yes.”
“Wait. Why does that sound so familiar?” She knew she recognized that name, but she couldn’t place where she’d heard it before.
“Miriah had a dozen books on the manuscript in her home office and Duncan had a few as well. I was flipping through them while we were there. Two years ago, Gregor and I…” Chance paused with a hint of sadness before forcing himself to continue. “We visited the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale Museum and Gregor pointed it out to me. He told me a lot of the history on it, without the succubus angle of course. I thought it was just something that interested him.”
“Oh god. Duncan’s journals.” It was Chance’s turn to stare at her in confusion. Cohen seemed to just be relaxed in his seat watching the epiphanies like a tennis match. “In one of the journals that I read he kept mentioning a book he’d written in a complicated cipher a really long time ago. He said it kept circulating after it was stolen and he couldn’t get his hands on it. That it ended up in a museum. That has to be what he was talking about.”
“What did his journal say about it?” Cohen leaned against the arm of the chair. He was definitely down playing his curiosity.
“It’s not complete.” Lilith wracked her brain, trying to remember exactly what it had said. A lot had happened since then and she really didn’t think his ramblings about a mystery book were important at the time. “He tore some pages out, the ones that were too dangerous, and then he put them and the cipher some place safe. “ Lilith glanced up at Cohen, suspiciously. “How did you know Duncan was the author?”
“I didn’t. I was sent to Tennessee to talk to Duncan about it. I wasn’t given a source paper or anything. I was just given orders.”
There was nothing in his face to indicate he was lying, but Cohen was a master of masks. If it was a lie, there was no use pushing the issue. He’d just lie to them again. “Who gave the orders?”
“The council as a collective gave me my orders. If one of them knows more about it, it’s impossible to say which one. Theoretically, they share information openly with each other to arrive at plans of action. They are the oldest living members of the participating families.” It was completely unlike Cohen to just give up unsolicited information. Hopefully, this was him trying to cooperate.
“Wait. Participating?”
“Yes, Mr. Deveraux. There are some that chose not to take part in the organization of our kind. They believe that severing ties and hiding on their own is a safer course of action. The council keeps tabs and records on them, of course, to prevent incidents like, well, Ashcroft’s.”
Cohen turned his attention back to Lilith and she was relieved to see his eyes returned to a pleasant blue. “Ms. Adams, did those journals mention where he might have hidden the cipher?”
“No, but I think I might have a clue where to find it, and those missing pages.” Lilith remembered the loose papers from the tin she’d found in a secret compartment of her Uncle’s desk. She also remembered a filed down safety deposit box key. She might have been sitting on the answers the whole time. “Getting to it might be a problem though.” If the answers were where she left them, then they were in cold storage at Goditha Labs in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“If we can find it without my family getting wind of it, we might be able to figure out why they want this thing so bad. It might give us some leverage.”
“How in the hell are we supposed to do that?” Chance didn’t seem as quick to jump on the hope band wagon and honestly, she didn’t blame him. Ever since they got on that plane to Knoxville over a week ago, nothing had been exactly easy.
“I never claimed to be a religious man, quite the opposite, but you might consider praying for a miracle. Stranger things have happened.”
Chapter 8
A demon advocating prayer wasn’t exactly comforting. Lilith leaned forward on the couch, desperately trying to make her brain add together the scattered facts in her head. She looked up at the incubus in his polished navy blue suit, hoping for some help despite all her base instincts. Why did her head feel so scrambled right now? She’d been under life threatening stress for pretty much ten days now. That might have something to do with it. Maybe even vampires had their limits or
maybe it was some other side effect of Cohen’s blood that she didn’t know about yet. “Do you have any more practical ideas that don’t include rosary beads and candles?”
Cohen’s cool blue eyes looked over her carefully for the first time since she’d slapped the attitude out of him. “Perhaps…” He seemed distracted from his thoughts, like somehow staring at her was more important. It was enough to make her feel a little self-conscious even though the look in his eyes seemed to be purely clinical. “Are you all right, Lilith? You… uh, you look a little pale.”
Lilith blinked at the question, especially since it was the same exact one Chance had just asked. “What is it with you two? I’m fine. It’s not like things have been exactly normal lately.”
Lilith rubbed at her cheeks in a moment of self-awareness. Great. Now they were both staring at her like she was talking in tongues. It all just made her little headache worse. “For fuck’s sake I just watched Farren execute my father. I think I’m entitled to a migraine.”
Cohen didn’t buy it for a second. His calculating eyes were still watching her every movement. She could sure use some of his fake southern charm right about now. More specifically the kind that was too polite to keep asking damn questions and staring at her like she was a lab experiment. “Something is wrong. This is not just stress.”
Thankfully, a knock at the door saved her from any further scrutiny. Cohen swiftly snatched up his little jamming device, clicked it off and tucked it in his pocket. He glanced over at Chance with a concerned look. “Keep an eye on her, Deveraux. Maybe she’ll tell you what’s wrong.”
As soon as Cohen disappeared into the hall, Chance slid across the couch and rubbed a hand over her back. “Lily, what’s going on?” Even through her suit jacket, his touch seemed to ease her aching head slightly. Maybe they were right. Maybe something was wrong. She rubbed at her temples at a sudden little spike of pain that seemed to take her breath. “I…don’t know.”
