They stared back at me gobsmacked, all color drained from their faces. Rohan’s hand snaked protectively in front of his crotch as my eyes met his.
That’s what he took away from this?
I pushed to my feet. There were a million snarky remarks I could have made except I didn’t trust my voice right now. I couldn’t get my ribcage to unconstrict and I was shaking so hard, I’m amazed my brain didn’t plop out.
Ignoring the tiny abrasions on my soles, I strode off without a look back, my breath coming in furious gasps. I entered the house via the back door in the kitchen, searching for a woman’s washroom until I realized there wasn’t one because they all sucked and then barricaded myself in the one bathroom I was able to find. For something used by all men, it was a clean enough room with the dark wood vanity/white counter combo all in vogue.
Expression stuck in a snarl, I pumped soap onto my hand, wincing as it hit my cracked bleeding skin from my demon-inspired obsessive hand washing. Kicking the vanity door didn’t help. It hurt my toes and did nothing to make me feel better.
What kind of sick sadists threw a total newbie into proving herself like that? Those two would have let me die and chalked it up to my incompetence. I grabbed some toilet paper and blew my nose.
Forget the demons, these people were the monsters.
There was a soft rap at the door. “Nava?” It sounded like Kane but I wasn’t sure so I didn’t answer. “Babyslay, let me in.”
I debated ignoring him some more, but I was going to need an escort to get out of this place unharmed and Kane seemed like my sole ally. I tossed the toilet paper into the bowl and unlocked the door.
The first thing I noticed was his terrible taste in shirts. A paisley pattern in lurid purples, it was a bold look. A look that slapped itself on the crotch and said, “Here I am.” I respected that about it.
The second thing I noticed was the compassion in his eyes.
The third was the Gatorade he held out to me.
I chugged half the bottle in one go, before pressing it in sweet relief against my forehead. “I don’t even like this shit.”
“Doesn’t matter. Your body craves the electrolytes to recharge after using your power. You’ll learn to keep stashes handy.” Kane leaned back against the closed door. “Our powers don’t manifest the second they do the induction ceremony. I don’t know if anyone told you that.”
“I’ve been told very little about this process.”
“It means that a lot of us find ourselves in extremely embarrassing situations when it shows up.”
“Was yours bad?” I asked.
He laughed mirthlessly, his hip braced against the door. “Dad had this vintage Ferrari convertible. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. He’d take me out for rides.” Kane’s expression grew dreamy. “We wouldn’t even talk. It was all about feeling the curve of the road. The sun on our faces and the wind in our hair.”
The past tense of this didn’t sound good. “What happened?”
“After I became Rasha, my parents were so thrilled that Dad said I could take her for a spin. So long as I washed her first, she was mine for the rest of the day.” A wistful look came over his face, as he leaned back against the door. “I think I was more excited about that than fighting demons. Picture it. This perfect summer day. This perfect specimen of a man washing this perfect car.”
I gave the requisite smile.
“Do you know the effects of water and salt on iron?” he asked.
“Rust,” I replied, confused at the change in topic.
He nodded and held out his arm. “Look, but don’t touch.” His flesh broke out in an oily sheen. An iridescent purple flecked with tiny white crystals. “It’s a salt-based poison.”
I would have guessed that from the smell alone. My mouth watered bitterly. I raised my eyes to his and gasped. Even his face was coated with it.
“One bad touch and the demons die,” he said.
I peered at his flesh, fascinated. “What about if a person touches it?”
“Trust me. You don’t want to know.” The sheen disappeared from his body.
I reached out to touch him but he flinched away, shaking his head. “Wait.” He turned on the tap and dispensing a good handful of liquid soap with his clean hand, washed where the poison had been. “Until I clean off, I can still burn you.”
“I’m sorry.” That seemed like it might be a lonely existence.
“It’s always the pretty ones you have to look out for.” He shrugged. “I can control it. Now. But the poor, wet car? When my powers showed up?”
“Rusted,” I gasped.
“Instantly.”
“What did your dad do?”
An unreadable expression flashed across his face. “That, dear girl, is a story for another day. All this to say: your. Power. Is. Fabulous!” His face brightened. “Do you know how many asshole dates I could have cut short with it?”
“I am not giving demon hand jobs.”
Kane pulled the hand towel off the rack and wiped his dripping face and arm dry. “While I can’t wait to hear the story of your first kill, Baruch and Rohan just did what they’d do to any new member.” His eyes widened theatrically. “Oops. Phrasing.”
I prodded the side of my head, wincing at the bright burst of pain. “Except I wasn’t trained my whole life for this. It was horrible. A super unfair trial by fire.”
He placed his hand on my shoulder with a sympathetic smile. “It’s your life now, babyslay. But it doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.”
No, it just meant that Ari had to. Still, I smiled back. “Thanks, Kane.”
“Anytime.” With a wink, he took my empty sports drink bottle.
Baruch was waiting for me outside the door. “I made you a sandwich.” Guilt food. Good. Those usually came with extra side dishes.
He led me into the kitchen, my stomach gurgling. On the large table by the sunny window, Baruch had laid out two plates along with big glasses of very cold iced tea from a blue glass pitcher.
There was a distinct lack of sides, but I accepted the peace offering of shaved meat, sliced bocconcini, and tomato on a crusty Portuguese bun. I sank into a chair, eager to dig in.
Baruch sat beside me. Even though his ass extended past the seat, it was so rock hard that it didn’t droop over the sides. I checked twice to make sure.
“So you were in Jerusalem before now?” I asked.
“No, Cairo. They needed extra hands with all the civil unrest. But I was in Chicago when I got the heads up about you.”
I bit into the pickle that Baruch had laid as garnish on the side of my plate. He’d given me the perfect segue. “If Rasha are needed,” I said, “all the more reason to make sure about Ari’s status. What if the ritual when we were babies determined that we were both initiates?”
Baruch picked up the other half of his sandwich. “And what if as your twin, Ari carried an echo of your potential, your magic, from sharing the womb, and that’s what Rabbi Abrams picked up?”
“How is that possible? Ari and I are fraternal twins. We don’t share DNA, we didn’t share a placenta or amniotic fluid, so why would sharing the womb matter?” Mom had versed Ari and me in all sorts of twin facts.
“If your brother did not carry the magic passed down through the bloodlines to the descendants of the original Rasha, then the reason Rabbi Abrams would have thought Ari did is because he felt the residue of your power on your twin.”
“Is that what the Brotherhood believes?” I squirted another dollop of spicy mustard on my sandwich.
He nodded. “If Ari was an initiate, re-running the ceremony should have worked. He would have become Rasha.”
The mustard lid snapped shut with a hard click. “But I’m a complicating factor. Hasn’t anyone thought of that? My existence could have screwed everything up that would normally work. You don’t just give up on someone you’ve invested in.”
Baruch bit into his roast beef, chewing slowly and
methodically before swallowing. “There is a way of things.”
I didn’t get a chance to further refute his argument because Rohan entered the kitchen and slapped a piece of paper down on the table beside me. “Your schedule.”
It was color coded to within an inch of its life. “Three entire meals a day? Wow. You really follow minimum prison standards around here.” I tapped the paper. “Where are my snack breaks?”
Rohan pulled a chair out, doing his straddle backwards thing again. “What are you, five?”
“I have a very fast metabolism.” I grumbled at the only eight hours of sleep he’d allotted. “You’ve accounted for every second of my day.”
“Yeah, and?”
Baruch pushed his chair back, carrying his plate and glass to the sink. “Five minutes then back to the Vault. I want to go over what you could have done differently in the fight.”
I nodded to show I’d heard. “What about free time?”
“For all your scintillating hobbies?” Rohan plucked an apple out of the fruit bowl on the table and bit into it.
“Yes. As well as the many good works I do.”
He arched his eyebrow, miming giving a hand job.
“Are you ever going to let that go?”
He took another bite. “Not when there are still hours of fun to be had from it. You know you don’t have to jerk the demons off to kill them, right?”
“It was one time.”
He slapped the table. “Knew it! Baruch owes me twenty.”
I groaned at the fact that I’d just confirmed his suspicions.
“Don’t feel bad,” he said with a smirk, “I puzzled it out when reaching for the curupira’s dick was your first move.”
“I couldn’t not reach for Mount Phallus. He was hung like a horse.”
He held up his hands. “If that’s your kink, then hey, no judgment.”
Here we go. “No judgment, huh?”
“No way, Shaft.” Rohan’s composure cracked, his shoulders shaking as he hummed the Shaft theme music. “Though I wouldn’t rely on it as a kill tactic,” he said, now howling with laughter.
Bastard. “How about my thanks for taking me in hand, then?” I purred, leaning over to run my fingertips up his leg. “So to speak.” I was bluffing, but he’d already unsettled me so many times that I wanted to rattle him back and my arsenal of weapons was laughably small.
His hand clamped over mine, millimeters from his crotch. “Seems I didn’t need to go after Drio for his gratitude crack. Since you’re giving it away.”
“I’m not offering it to all and sundry, asshole.” I yanked my hand away. “That little tussle between you boys had nothing to do with me. And for the record, what I did to Josh was not intended as a fighting maneuver. It was grown-up time.”
“I’m a grown-up.”
“You’re more of a growth,” I said. “There’s a difference. And with that thing? Trust me, his dick was the last thing I wanted to touch.”
“Curupira,” Rohan repeated. “From Brazil.”
“It should have stayed there.”
“Next objection?” Rohan took the last bite of fruit then pitched the core across the room into the trash. Nice shot.
“Do we get paid for this?” I asked.
“Yes. You start at minimum wage.”
“What about danger pay?”
Rohan cocked his fingers at me like a gun. “That’s a good idea. I’ll talk to Ms. Clara about adding it while we’re stuck with you.”
I stood, snatching up my dirty dishes. “I may not want to be here any more than you want me here, but that doesn’t give you the right to treat me with a lack of respect.” I dumped them into the sink then whirled to face him. “Now,” I continued, “we’re going to set some ground rules. The first is, you’re going to remember that unlike the rest of you, I didn’t get to spend my entire life training and studying because Demon Club was so short-sighted, they couldn’t see that a girl was the chosen one.”
Rohan pushed to his feet in one fluid move. I was going to have to learn that trick. My standing up always involved weirdly jutting out body parts.
“Fine,” he said, getting in my face. “Then the second has to be that you shut up and listen. Yeah, we threw you in the deep end. There’s no time to pussyfoot around with you. Your magic is active. That means you need to know how to use it because I guarantee that demons are gonna be a regular part of your life now.”
“You still played dirty,” I said. “I get that I’m a huge target, but I thought you guys were supposed to have my back.” He opened his mouth but I held up a hand, cutting him off. “How far would you have let it go with the curupira before you stepped in to help?”
His hesitation told me everything I needed to know.
I slammed on the tap to rinse off my plate, my back to him.
“We would never have let it kill you,” he said in a low voice.
I blinked rapidly, my eyes hot and itchy. I gave myself to the count of five to compose myself and face him. “I’m still the special unicorn Demon Club wants protected. I can make your life very hard if I want to.”
“Back at you, Lolita.”
I bit back my retort for the sake of my Ari plan. “I better return to my training, then.” I’d almost made it to the doorway when something pointy hit my back. I turned around to see my schedule, now in paper airplane form flutter to the ground.
Rohan smirked at me, but I gave him a sweet smile, picked up the damn schedule, and left. I saved my outburst for my bedroom later that night, flinging my bag at the wall. The thunk that the demon primer made as the bag connected wasn’t nearly satisfying enough.
Ari poked his head in. “What happened?”
“They threw a demon at me.”
Ari’s eye bulge was gratifying. “On your first day? It took me years to get up close to one. Under major supervision.”
“Yeah, well.” I snatched up my bag, dumping the contents out on my bed. Perhaps a tad viciously.
Ari picked up the book, glancing at the cover with a soft laugh before turning back to me. “That was kind of shitty but they made sure it was a relatively harmless one, right? An imp or a–”
“Curupira.”
Ari stilled, turning an interesting shade of red. “A what?” His voice chilled me.
I tugged the book from his hands. “Ace.”
“No. You could have died.”
“I killed it. In the end.” He gave a choking cough like he didn’t believe me. I slammed the book down on my mattress. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, bro.”
Ari crossed his arms. “On your first day? You killed a curupira?”
I crossed my arms right back. “Technically, it was my second day. And my third kill.” You know, put that way, I had a pretty sweet success rate.
His eyes narrowed. “No one helped you?”
“Screw you. Is it so tough to believe I did it?”
“Yeah, all right? It is.” He slammed the door on the way out and I flopped down on my bed.
Even when I beat the odds and did well, somehow things overwhelmingly sucked. Thanks for nothing, universe.
Chapter 9
The next few days were a blur of training, training, and more training. I’d gotten to the point where no matter how Baruch lunged at me or otherwise tried to surprise me, I could turn my power on, going all shocktastic on him. With no more screaming and running. My defense was awesome, too. I was queen of blocking and could break most holds.
The first time I earned a “tov meod” or “very good” from Baruch for my efforts, I swear, cartoon birds danced around my head. I even had a new self-anointed superhero name–Lady Shock and Awe. Ari and his pop psychology could suck it.
On this drizzly Thursday morning, or as I called it, Nava’s Origin Story, Day Five: In Which Her Last Bit of Skin Gets Pummeled by Tree Trunk, I found my brother in the kitchen, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, asleep on his homework. Our paths had barely crossed since our fight the othe
r night, but even our brief encounters were enough to note his descent into depression. Careful not to wake him, I moved the binder out from under his cheek, finding a scrawled “I hate my life” at the top of his chem equations page.
I bowed my head, exhausted and frustrated at being no further along with my Ari plan. Rabbi Abrams had been detained on business and Ms. Clara, though sympathetic, was unwilling to put me in touch with the Executive. The one bright spot was my brother was too bummed to go out and fight demons himself.
I couldn’t let him keep spiraling downward. Dad always said to take emotion out of the equation and see what things boiled down to. The Brotherhood already owned my ass. Still, a hot start up garnered more attention and resources than a dud subsidiary. I needed a win. A big one. And the biggest potential win I could think of was already sending spider demons after me.
It was time to take my training to a new level.
Baruch showed up at my house moments later in a warded-up, reinforced Hummer. Not that you could tell from looking at it. Another benefit of the Brotherhood having a fuckton of cash.
I slumped on the leather passenger seat, stifling a yawn. “Why are you pulling chauffeur duty?”
“Asmodeus is intensifying his efforts to find out who killed his kids.” He shrugged out of his sweater, tossing it into the backseat. Ragged gashes peeped above the neckline of his shirt.
I stuttered out a harsh breath. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Baruch patted my head. Oddly, coming from him, this gesture felt sweet and did not inspire me to rip his condescending hand off. “I won’t let the demon get you. You’re my sister now.”
Aww. My jacked-up insides went gooey. The lack of any demons waiting to ambush us when we pulled up to the gate helped too.
Rohan bounded down the stairs as I dumped my jacket and shoes in the foyer. Our few encounters had been decidedly tense since our spat in the kitchen. One look at me and he sighed. “Baruch told you.”
“Yup.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder. “He’ll have to get through me first.” Sure, because he didn’t want to hear the Executive bitch about it if I died before they’d decided on my fate.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 10
