He nodded, his gaze raking her. "You can sit in mine, if you'd like."
She smiled. "No, darling. Business first, pleasure later, especially given the mounting tensions in level seven."
He nodded and found his seat opposite hers across the table. "How bad is it down there?"
"My dear, it's never good if they send me up after the harpies. You know I'm normally the final step before permanent detainment."
The chairman rubbed his hand across his jaw and then took an unsteady sip from another councilman's goblet. He forced a laugh after he'd swallowed hard. "Well, at least it's good to see that my father still observes the old protocols-giving a man one last indulgent sin before his reign is over." He set the goblet down, trying to keep his hand from trembling.
"My, my, my..." she said, making a little tsking sound with her tongue as she leaned back in the throne and released a long sigh. "It must be horrible, because you're not even picking up on what I said." She smiled broadly and opened her eyes, mischief glittering in them. "I saidnormally , lover."
"Speak to me, Lilith," the chairman whispered hoarsely. "In all candor, I am taxed beyond my endurance for mind games."
She sat forward and folded her hands on the table, leaning on her forearms. "Youcan't play mind games? How... impotent of you." She sat back quickly. "Do you want to get usboth exterminated?"
He held up his palm. "I'm sorry, but you can see how-"
"Listen to me," she said fast, cutting him off. "They've sent me to exterminate the Neteru, and I cannot fail, if she is still alive. The problem is, I cannot find her. Your father is truly displeased. Were it not for the coming Armageddon and his preoccupation with the creation of his new son, he would have come up himself. This is really bad, darling."
The chairman stood and put his hands behind his back, and walked a path behind his throne. "He would destroy our daywalker vessel, if she lives? Would eliminate our opportunity, which is only a mere six years away, cut off his nose to spite his face and banish my empire to complete darkness for another thousand years-simply because a few thrones were lost? Is he mad?"
She chuckled when he stopped and looked at her hard. "Absolutely out of his mind. But insanity has no bearing on genius; we both know that. You and I also both know that he has cut off his nose to spite his face when he's gotten into a real rage. But, alas, it does regenerate once he's calmed himself." She shook her head. "You've considered killing the Neteru yourself." She wagged her finger at him. "Did you already destroy her? Is our conversation moot?"
"I've only considered it. I have not acted upon the impulse."
"Good." Lilith reached for the goblet that she'd refused earlier, leaned back, and took a small sip. She wrinkled her nose with disgust, and ran her index finger around the rim of the goblet of clotted blood, then looked up. She gave him a sexy grin. "Even he won't go that far. I was just testing you. He needs daywalkers to assist in the final war. But he does want me to kill the male Neteru that they may have made. 'May' being the operative word." She sighed. "You also may not have six years to deliver, since we never know when my husband might want to begin the Armageddon."
The chairman paused and then slowly found the edge of the table to lean against. "There is no male Neteru. Only that infernal female one."
"Have you been so consumed by your own problems that you have not been watching the stars? Didn't Mars, the planet of war and male energy, recently pass the earth the closest it's come in sixty thousand years?" She took a healthy swallow from the goblet, then set it back down on the table hard and leaned back deeply into the throne.
"Yes, but with the female Neteru topside, our forces in tatters... I assumed that the forecasted war was the one waged against us already."
"There's a little ditty; toassume makes an ass out of you and me." She inhaled sharply, closed her eyes, and shuddered. "He's not at his apex yet, and I will most assuredly have to kill him before he does. The absolutely brilliant cunning this one possesses will compromise my judgment, if I don't get to him before he hits his prime. He's magnificent."
She opened her eyes slowly, her breaths coming in irregular spurts of raw desire. "Oh, Dante, how did you let him get away? I can see why the female Neteru completely lost it and got herself compromised for a bit. He would have beenso perfect for the job of impregnating her. I'm definitely going to have to f**k this one before I take his head off... I'll do it with tears of regret in my eyes, however, trust me."
"Who theHell are you talking about?" The chairman's voice thundered and bats began dropping from the rafters. "There's no topside element like that in my realms! There's not even any topside master vampires left-"
"He had a throne in your chambers, you foolish bastard!" She stood quickly, her black gown swishing as she approached the table and slapped the chairman's face so hard his nose bled. She pointed her finger at the throne she'd just abandoned, her fangs growing two inches as she railed. "Carlos Rivera was one of your masters! He was even a councilman, damn you! He was a dark Guardian, and you had him in your grasp, and you idiot, you allowed his soul to get snatched and dragged into Purgatory! Your own f**king councilmen tried to warn you, but you were blinded by ego, and if I dare blaspheme this chamber, by some misguided, twisted compassion-"
He grabbed her by both arms, halting her words, and pushed her away so hard her backside slammed against the table. "Bullshit! I did a thorough harpies inquisition on him, dredged his mind right over there on my walls," he shouted, pointing where Carlos had been tortured. "He was chained to the rocks, and demons impervious to light ate his innards until the sun came up!" The chairman came close to her in a flash, almost nose to nose as he yelled. "He burned with the sun for his betrayal. He was a dark Guardian, yes, but not a Neteru!"
Trying to wrest his dignity back from the outburst, the chairman took a deep breath. "Lilith, you tell my father that on this one, he's wrong."
She shook her head and laughed. "Oooohhhh, noooo. Inever tell your father he's wrong." Her gaze narrowed and her voice lost its amused tone. "Especially when he'sright ."
"Then how?" Unnerved, the chairman folded his arms over his chest.
"He went into the Light and came back," she said, studying her long, manicured red nails. "It's a hunch, but the Guardian team and the Covenant are rebuilding, adding more players to the game. Their behavior is peculiar. I haven't located him yet, but I can feel him somewhere very near. He's still-"
"No! Impossible!" The chairman raked his fingers through his hair and ripped his scalp.
"Love will do it every time." She smiled, but it was an evil one, as she looked up and held his stunned gaze. "The female wept for him. The angels heard that pitiful shit and responded. All they needed was a catalyst. He burned, Dante, reaching for her and calling her name-not begging for the pain to stop... not even calling The One who will remain nameless down here. He had diluted vampire lieutenants in his ranks. Some eighth- or ninth-generation near-imposter vampires that went down the side of a f**king mountain and collected a handful of his death ashes and gave them to her! He had two of them helping to collect his remains; in fact, and one was a cleric. They brought Rivera's ashes up to her and she wept into them, creating a trinity. She cast Rivera's ashes on fertile soil, took off a diamond ring that had a ten-carat stone in the shape of a heart... an engagement ring of betrothal for thehoped-for blessed union of holy matrimony one day-but prior to that, she was acouncilman's wife . Any of this frightening you, yet?"
Lilith sucked in a deep breath to keep from spontaneously combusting with rage. "And this ring-which you did not take back when you stripped his powers, because you were thinking like a man, not like a woman, because you lost focus... you wanted her to twist... didn't realize the strength of a woman's tears, so you let her keep the ring. It was a f**king crystal amulet, an ice-blue crystalline section of his actual heart that had all his hope and love for her in it when he gave it to her, you stupid sonofabitch! Normal quartz crystal is powerful enough, but a ten-carat diamond rock made from our DNA, are you insane?"
She folded her arms over her chest. "But you wanted her to keep it, because you thought you were getting even by letting her have something hurtful to remember him by. So, you left her a treasure that she could wrap warm memories around from her soul, something supercharged when he took her to the vanishing point." Lilith shook her head with disgust.