They all stared at her in undisguised curiosity, even Caroline was burning up with deep interest as they all watched her eat.

  She asked faux innocently, “Did you all want something?”

  They were around the table, and all enjoying Carl’s fresh cooked breakfast of ham and cheese omelets, biscuits with gravy, and a fruit salad. The coffee was also as heavenly as always, but she was more than awake already. Her body was still tingling and sore from earlier, and she felt great. Also, a little mischievous, as she knew exactly what they all wanted to know.

  She still felt a little shaken about the memories coming back, but it was amazing what two hours of life-affirming wild sex could accomplish that way. She also knew she needed to be patient, in her mind he was already hers, but it would take him time to get to know the real Lilith. Except, she really did like being called Lily by them all.

  Meri gave her a look, “Spill, what really happened?”

  She teased, “Jacob and I spent the night together.”

  Meri scowled, and she giggled, which turned into snickering.

  She winked, “Fine, I’ll talk. I’d better before you all start to torture me.”

  She looked up thoughtfully for a moment.

  “In the beginning, god made the…” she trailed off with an oof sound, as Jace elbowed her in the side.

  She cleared her throat, “Right. So, in all seriousness, Adam and I did not get along. I don’t even know if the rib thing was true or not, but all I know is I was replaced with Eve, and then shown the door. Kicked off the island so to speak. I was young, beautiful, stubborn, and so very foolishly naïve. I was also alone in the world, doomed to live out my life in solitude. Unlike the legends, I was not cursed to roam the world for eternity, or anything stupid like that.

  “For a couple of years, I lived on my anger, and of course suffered in my naivety and loneliness. That of course, is when Samael came into the picture. I did mention naïve, didn’t I? He was powerful, unworldly handsome, and charming.”

  She looked apologetically at Jacob, and then continued.

  “He suckered me badly. I was taken in with his false support and sympathy on my behalf. My connection to Samael didn’t start with hatred and plans of revenge like the stories say, he fooled me. He seduced me slowly with caring and love, all lies of course, but as I said I was young, inexperienced, forlorn and naïve. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I fell for Samael, loved him. It was with joy that I became his mate, and he filled the days with wonders. To be fair to me, women have been suckered into bed by men a lot in this world, and he was an archangel, the father of lies, and he was good at it.

  “I was more than thrilled when I turned up pregnant. I felt loved, safe, and now we’d have a family. Everything was pretty great actually, for a long time. He even explained away the soul eater powers he’d given me, told me it was because he couldn’t bear the thought of me growing old and dying. I’d actually thought that was sweet. Of course, populations grow slowly, and it was several thousand years later before Samael’s true goals started to come into fruition. The sons and daughters of Lilith were hunting and killing the sons and daughters of Eve.”

  She sighed, “I confronted him about it. That’s when I learned the truth of Samael, and who he really was behind the beauty, white wings, and the charming smile. I was… devastated. I’d always hated Adam and Eve, but I hadn’t any grudge against their progeny, against humanity. In truth, I hadn’t even felt anger for that past slight of being kicked out of paradise in over a millennium, I was too happy to, you see, in my ignorance and stupidity.

  “When I repudiated what he’d done and his plans to destroy humanity, and tried to leave, he didn’t take kindly to that. That’s when I became his puppet. I was with him against my will for another thirteen thousand years, during which time he had the idea to create warlocks, and eventually after that he knocked me up with a witch.

  “I suppose god finally noticed his creation was being polluted by Samael’s hatred and desire for revenge. Or perhaps it was just a tipping point and he felt he had to do something. That’s when Uriel came, cut his magical hold over me, and took me to freedom. He also as the legends say modified the witch race in my womb, made them like humans, neutral between heaven and hell, good and evil.

  “Samael was terrified of Uriel, so didn’t try to get me back.”

  She paused for a moment, and then took a sip of coffee. Everyone around the table looked enthralled at her story. It hurt to talk about, but she owed them the truth. They took her in no questions asked, added her to the team, and trained her. Protected her, and she was falling in love with the team’s alpha. To them it was a story about the start of the war they still fought for, that they had dedicated their lives to. For her… it was her life.

  She cleared her throat, “So. Where was I? Uriel saved my bacon. Uriel was cold, or maybe dispassionate would be a better word. He was power, one of god’s weapons of mass destruction. He brought me to the humans who fought back. We played that game for a mere two centuries, while I recovered from fifteen thousand years of a sham marriage, and I raised my daughter and watched her mate with humans, the witch genes being more powerful meant the third race got a good start. Still, it would be many centuries before they were really established.

  “I got off on a tangent there. My point was, Uriel and I were never lovers, and he has never been my mate. Let’s just say Mary wasn’t the first immaculate conception and leave it at that. Uriel and I decided the humans couldn’t keep up with both the warlocks and soul eaters, so he did some angel magic with god’s permission, and nine months later I bore the first shifter.

  “It was still another couple of thousand years, before both the witches and shifter races were established enough to take over the tip of the spear against the other two races. It wasn’t only through procreation either, a lot of the humans who dedicated their lives against fighting evil volunteered for the blood turn. They became witches or shifters.”

  She tilted her head, “By the way, Emil never could have taken my powers. Blood sharing with me leads to death if done against my will.”

  Allison asked curiously, “Against your will?”

  She nodded, “Even if I consent, I can only pass on one of the four, not all four. Anyway, that’s when the fight started in earnest. Uriel disappeared a few hundred years after that, and I took my first mortal mate. It would take forever to tell you about it all. Suffice it to say we fought the evil races in a never-ending war that lasted over sixty-five thousand years. More than one human civilization rose and fell in that time, a whole lot of them actually. In the end, we both lost and gained ground. Samael’s forces came close to wiping out humanity on several occasions, and we came close to ending all of the enemy’s forces as well. The good communities of soul eaters and even warlocks that refused to use their powers, which doesn’t seem prevalent now, they’ve forgotten who they are, that second group.

  “That was around the time Samael took a second wife, and he created the fifth supernatural race.”

  She paused then, knowing that would be a huge bombshell. None of the legends even talk about it at all. Probably because the fifth race is extinct, lost and forgotten in the past, simply because there was no need to remember them.

  Carl asked, “Are you bullshitting us?”

  She laughed, “No. I don’t know her name, or who she was, or her story. I don’t even know if she lived long after giving birth. The fifth supernatural race was given a different aspect of his archangel powers like the rest, they were given dominion over the dead. Necromancers. They raised armies of the dead, and they crossed over the world like a plague. All of human civilizations fell, quite frankly, we got our asses kicked, hard. If it wasn’t for the shifter teams, humanity would have ended thirty-five thousand years ago. It also explains the legends of necromancers the humans have, even if they’re out of context to what the truth was. Me and my team hunted down the last of them, but the damage had been done.

  “Still, we had hope that humanity would once again multiply and spread. I imagine what happened was the reason it took twenty-five to thirty-thousand years for them to recover, and start building civilizations again. Recorded history only started up again what, seven or eight thousand years ago? Although, I suppose the war could have knocked down a couple of more civilizations while I was buried and entombed here in the new world, America.”

  Allison blanched, “You were buried for thirty-five thousand years?”

  She nodded slowly, “Yes. The beginning was pretty bad. He’d buried me and ran off, and for thousands of years I worried the worst would happen, as I fed on the life forces of animals and explored the wilderness above me by hitching a ride on their bodies. I had no choice but to suffer it, his plan was to drive me mad, and when I took my own life I’d be sent to hell, to be tortured by him some more. That more than anything else gave me the strength to hold on in that dark time.

  “You see, I’d assumed Samael would remake the race we’d almost been destroyed by, or perhaps father another much worse one. It wasn’t until I felt the first humans move into the area about ten thousand years later, the Native Americans, that I was able to really feel all hope wasn’t lost. If humanity had spread around the world, the shifter teams must have been holding the line and doing a good job at it. And of course, it wasn’t until you told me a few weeks ago, that I knew Samael was finally caught by Uriel and banished forever to the depths of hell. That Samael couldn’t come back here, not on his own power. It took Uriel fifty thousand years to find and banish him, too bad he couldn’t have done so a little earlier.”

  She shrugged, it wasn’t the archangel’s fault, Samael had hidden from him and could move anywhere in the blink of an eye. She supposed it could even have been Samael’s light show when he’d come to destroy her love and life, that finally led to his capture. Probably not, but the thought was appealing, that in some small way she’d been a part of his end in terrorizing this world.

  She cleared her throat, “I might, just might, be sort of responsible for the whole spirit animal thing. You know, the great bear, and all that. Or, maybe I just added evidence for the local tribes, I can’t be sure which.”

  Jace choked on his drink, and his eyes widened.

  She shrugged, “I was curious, and probably a little crazy at the time. I was often exploring the area in an animal, to stave off insanity. Sometimes a full lifetime of an animal. I still wouldn’t feed on humans, so left them alone in that way, but I missed having connections to people. I might have saved a child while driving a bear once, and umm, a few other things. I might’ve, just once or twice, answered a prayer or two.

  “Anyway, you know what happens after that. So, there was some truth in the legends, and some falseness.”

  Carl frowned, “Why didn’t you just use the communication spell, have them dig you up. You could have gotten out after ten thousand years, instead of thirty-five.”

  She blushed, “I tried, a couple of times. They were very superstitious, and a voice talking in their heads about unburying an immortal woman…” she trailed off and shook her head, “Let’s just say my burial place was marked as a place of evil, and the men I communicated with were killed in their attempts to sweat the evil spirit out. I just… couldn’t bring myself to try again after that.”

  Carl’s face fell, “Sorry.”

  She shook her head, “It’s okay. It was an obvious question.”

  “A lot of civilizations were lost?”

  She nodded, “High in the double digits. None of them so expansive and advanced as today’s civilization, the world is truly small now. On the other hand, after seeing my memories the possibility of Jenna ending it seems a lot more real in hindsight. The world would’ve melted down if she went from city to city, or state to state really, ten thousand demons would have easily destroyed Texas in a week, and probably northern Mexico as well. I know that threat’s over, but one just like it could come up at any time. The only thing we can do is be vigilant, and we can be sure one day this too shall fall. It’s inevitable.”

  Jacob frowned, “That’s kind of… pessimistic.”

  She sighed, “Realistic. I don’t believe we’ll ever lose, but you’ve had the upper hand for thousands of years now. That won’t last forever. Life is a struggle, perhaps god meant it to be so. I don’t know, maybe that’s just me trying to shift blame. It’s my fault after all, Samael sweet talked my legs open, and there’s been a war going on for a hundred and fifteen millennia or so. It’s why I fight, and why I’ll never give up. Humanity deserves to be protected from evil, even if they’re evil themselves at times.”

  Cinna tilted her head, “It’s not your fault. They have a choice, they are half human. I’m all the proof you need to see that. Even warlocks have a choice, to not embrace power and corruption, and live a good life. You’re not guilty of anything. Remember, the evilest of my kind comes from humanity. It is the human condition to be drawn by both evil and good, and their choice how to deal with it. Most born soul eaters are about seventy percent good. ”

  Cinna smiled a bit wickedly, “So… was he good?”

  Lily snickered, “Not saying.”

  Cinna glanced at Jacob, “Right, sorry. I’ll ask you later.”

  She blushed, and backtracked, “I get what you’re saying though, and I agree to a certain extent. Still, those evil men and women wouldn’t have power without my part in things. Their ability to harm would have been much more limited in scope. Of course, I do put most of the blame on them, and Samael himself. Without knowing he was evil, I don’t think any woman would have been able to turn him down though. He was… charming.”

  She shrugged, “But in truth, it was nothing like true love which I learned later in my life. There was always a lack there that I didn’t understand, until I learned the difference.”

  She took a sip of coffee.

  “Any more questions? We can always talk more later. I’m not going anywhere. I know I just hit the highlights as they pertain to legends of my past, but a hundred fifteen thousand years of personal history is just too long to summarize. There were rising and falling civilizations, wars, children, and the normal everyday things too. Some of its very ugly, but a lot of it was wonderful. I’ve had many good lifetimes of service against the enemy. By the way, it was the massacre that caused the missing memories. I supposed I was so drained, animalistic, and half-crazy already from hunger, that when the truth finally hit me I had no more mental resources to deal with the shame and horror of it.”

  Caroline said, “You and Adam didn’t get along?”

  She frowned, “It’s complicated. He wasn’t evil or anything, just… entitled. Although, that’s not exactly right either. It’s really almost impossible to explain it, the mindset back then, in the garden, was totally different. I don’t mean old-fashioned, I mean without knowledge of good or evil. Even innocence doesn't work, because to have a concept of innocence you need to understand the opposite, which didn't exist. My mind can’t really even grasp it anymore, the mindset in the garden, I just knew we didn’t work as a couple.”

  The others looked a little disappointed, but she couldn’t explain it better than that. Sure, she was there in the beginning, but she couldn’t see and know everything either. She couldn’t really help with any of recorded history either, she’d been buried the whole time. All she could do was tell them about people and civilizations that were long gone and unremembered.

  Meri said, “I have a question, I bet I could still knock you on your ass.”

  She giggled, “That wasn’t a question.”

  Meri winked, “It wasn’t?” she asked in challenge.

  She snickered, as they got up and headed for the work out room.

  Meri said in a low voice, “I’m glad you’re okay, I mean after getting your memories back.”

  She smiled, “Thanks. It was a bit rough this morning, but Jacob helped a lot.”

  Meri giggled naughtily, “I just bet he did.”

  It had been quite wonderful, but she kept that to herself. No shifter male was small, given they were shifters, and no shifter woman couldn’t control their bodies. And of course, their stamina was off the charts. Soreness wouldn’t even stop them, because they could shift it away like any other minor wound, though she enjoyed feeling some of that. She pushed it out of her head, or she’d be wanting more before later that night.

  Chapter Three

  They’d been going at it for a quite a while, and Cinna and Allison had joined them as well. Cinna’s attacks she didn’t even need to bother shifting her instincts anymore, pure force of will and her experience made Cinna’s attacks moot. She’d suffered far worse things than what the soul eater could throw at her.

  Allison too, was just watching now. The witch had tossed a few spells at her in the beginning, but when she caught them and flung them back at her she’d given up.

  Meri said, “You don’t seem any better. Are you holding back?”

  She shook her head, “No. Of course, I am holding back, just like you’re not shifting claws. Skill wise we seem about even, but only because we’re leaving magic out of it.”

  Meri’s eyebrows raised in challenge, as they exchanged another flurry of blows.

  She frowned, “It’s a bad idea. I don’t want to hurt you, and I prefer my blood where it is.”

  Meri laughed, and backed up, “Good point. What kind of tricks you got?”

  She reached out and tapped her finger on Meri’s arm, then danced away as the woman fell to the ground twitching.

  Meri demanded, “Magic?”

  She smirked, “Shifting, electric eel. Call it an ancient Taser, if you like.”

  Allison giggled.

  Meri frowned, “What else you got? Without hitting me with it.”

  She shrugged, “Lots of things. Most of them witch stuff honestly, you know how to shift animal aspects. I could grow poisoned spines on my fingertips, or you remember the tail? Still, I showed you the eel thing, it can be useful if you don’t have a Taser, or worse, if you are on the receiving end of one, shifting your skin to conduct electricity can negate the threat.”

 

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