Shut. Up.
Once they had us corralled in the middle of the room, Rohan leaning casually against the back door and Drio lounging in the doorway, blocking our escape, I was ordered to start talking.
“Baruch and Kane,” I said. “Where are they?”
“Here. You are who?” Baruch barked at me, lumbering in past Drio. The color drained from Leo’s face and she scooted back a few steps. Not surprising. With their height difference, Tree Trunk could drop kick her across the yard. Or snap her in two.
I squeezed her hand. “Get Kane,” I insisted. After me, he was the most invested in Ari’s well-being.
“He’s busy.” Rohan’s pose didn’t change. “Now, who are you?”
“I’m Nava Katz.” The guys exchanged a look at my last name. “Look, I know who took Ari.”
“Why should we listen to you?” Drio asked.
“If you don’t believe that I’m Rasha after seeing my power, maybe this,” I pointed upstairs, “will help convince you.”
“Power?” Baruch asked, but Drio had already allowed me to pass.
I led everyone up to my bedroom, showing them my stuff which was helpfully strewn across the room after my earlier phone search. “Rasha. I live here. See?”
“Lucky,” Leo sighed. She snapped her mouth shut as all three guys conferred identical expressions of barely veiled annoyance on her.
Drio poked at a lacy blue demi-bra.
I smacked his hand away. “I’ve been here training with you guys for almost a week. The Brotherhood thought Ari was the initiate all this time but when Rabbi Abrams did the second ceremony, it turned out it was me.”
They watched me blankly.
I straightened up with steel-spined determination. Remember me or not, all they needed to do was help me get my brother back. “Ari is my twin. You sent me to go pursue a lead,” I said, fudging the truth, “and I was ambushed by a bad guy.” Emphasis on the last two words.
“Nava is so hush-hush with her new job,” Leo joked. “I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you.” She broke into a snorting laugh.
I face-palmed.
“Thing is, you’ve seen her power,” Rohan said. “What do you know about that?”
So tempting to slap the re-appearance of rock fuck grin off his face. And hello? How come that grin had never made an appearance with me?
Leo batted her eyelashes at him. “I’m very good at keeping my mouth shut.”
An incredulous laugh that I didn’t exactly turn into a cough escaped me.
That earned me the finger. Behind her back, so her new friends wouldn’t see something so crass. “I wouldn’t do anything to endanger my best friend,” she said. “Even if she is astoundingly annoying.”
Her words made me think of my twin, also astoundingly annoying at times. And the person I wanted most safe in the world. I’d managed to forget about Ace for a quarter of a second and I hated myself for it.
I massaged my temples. “Hold me accountable if she blabs, you know where I live.”
Baruch waved a dismissive hand at my belongings. “This means nothing. There is no such thing as a female Rasha.”
I appealed to Rohan in desperation. “Last night. We talked about your music. About how incredible it was to sit down with the rest of your band and put all your bad feelings, all your dreams into words for the world to hear. What it was like having your lyrics come alive. You’ve got to believe me. We’re wasting time here.”
“Wow,” Leo murmured.
Rohan’s expression shuttered.
“Ro doesn’t talk about those days. With anyone,” Drio said. “Nice try.” He broke out the psychotic smile that tended to precede Torture Time and stepped closer.
My power didn’t convince them. The fact of me living here didn’t convince them. Recapping events of the past few days also a big fail. How could I prove I was telling the truth?
“Ari didn’t have a twin.” Perfect. Kane had shown up, sporting a fine scowl. “I was listening. Might want to do your homework before leading with an easily verifiable lie.”
“I’m not–” I stumbled, realizing he’d used the past tense in talking about my brother. I lunged for him, grabbing his shirtfront. “What do you mean ‘didn’t?’ I want to see his body.”
He took pity at the desperation in my voice though he pried my fingers off him. “There wasn’t enough of him left to see.”
“Ari’s not dead,” I protested. I’d have known. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Ari, while in danger, still lived. But for how much longer? I had to convince them.
I was about to remind Rohan of how we’d fought together when it hit me. The memory loss. “Asmodeus. He took Ari and he’s the reason you can’t remember.”
“Impossible,” Baruch said.
Somehow the demon had compelled the Rasha to forget me. The same way he’d managed to compel me to, well, forget myself. From Rohan’s thoughtful expression, he was turning the idea over in his head. How was it possible for a demon to alter someone’s memory? Because one, that was terrifying, and two, I was totally going to have words with Ms. Clara about my demon-punching contract not being more upfront about stuff like that.
I kicked Rohan in the head, intending to snap him out of the compulsion like I’d done in the park. It failed to work. He cursed, Drio and Kane tackled me, and I ended up facedown on the floor, sputtering about the demon through a mouthful of carpet.
What Asmodeus had done to me had merely been a taste, weak enough that my anger at Rohan’s assholeness had snapped it. Well, these guys were furious and that wasn’t snapping shit. Asmodeus had baked the memory loss into them.
“Lock them up,” Rohan directed. “Then meet us in the library.”
Drio seized Leo and me each by the arm.
Damn it! Why had I told Asmodeus to come after me?
“As your demon master isn’t here right now,” Drio murmured into my ear, “you’ll have to contend with me.” He shoved Leo and me out the door. “Resist me, access your power, I so much as feel your muscles tense, and I’ll make things very unpleasant for you.”
He frog-marched us down to the Vault.
“Drio,” I reasoned, half twisting around to face him, despite the pain lancing up my arm, “how could I wear this hamsa if I wasn’t Rasha? You think a demon would be able to wear the ring without repercussion? Isn’t the simplest explanation the most logical? That I am a hunter and you’re all suffering from some kind of demonic spell? I’m telling you, Asmodeus did this. You have to believe me.”
He slowed for a second then wrenched my arm up higher. “The simplest explanation is a human obeying a demon,” he countered. “Since female Rasha don’t exist.”
Trying to prove my hunter identity was pointless. I had history and misogyny working against me. I’d have to save Ari another way. Problem was, if everyone believed that Ari was dead, they’d no longer be looking for him.
I had to escape.
Leo broke into a coughing fit halfway down the stairs to the basement. While she looked like staying upright required her full concentration, I’d swear the coughing was fake.
“You okay?” My thoughts were occupied with how we were going to get out of this. Even if I lit up to attack, the chances of Drio zipping away before I could hurt him were high. Payback would not be pretty. I needed to catch him off-guard.
“No talking.” Drio tightened his hold on us.
Leo glanced pointedly down at her bag, slung across her chest. It took me a minute to clue in. The switchblade.
I gave the tiniest shake of my head.
Drio locked us up in the room where the kumiho demon had been. There was no longer any trace to show she’d existed. That was creepy and didn’t bear thinking about.
He left us there, sealing us in with only a dim bulb for light.
Leo sunk to the ground with a moan. I ran over to her but she held me off. “I’ll puke if you touch me.” She pressed a hand to her head, the skin at the corners of her eyes t
ight.
“It’s the wards,” I said. “I’m sorry. If Drio hadn’t pulled you through and you’d been outed?” Unable to punch the solid iron wall for fear of breaking my fist, I gave a loud “fuuck!”
“Forget it. I should have remembered this place was warded.” She gave me a faint grin through her pain. “Rohan distracted me.”
“He does that.”
“Why didn’t we take Drio down?” Leo asked.
“He’d have gotten away before you had the knife out. Then we’d really have been screwed.” I slid down the wall. “All I wanted was to keep Ari safe until I could give him back his destiny. I failed. Where’s the gray area now, Leo?”
She was seated with her arms curled around her knees in a tight ball, as if trying to make the least contact with all the iron, taking deep, even breaths. “Your brother spent his life training to be a hero. Not an insurance agent. He was never going to be safe.”
I leaned my head back against the wall, defeated. “But if he’d become a hunter he would have had magic. A fighting chance. He’s helpless against them.”
“And there will come a time, more than one I bet, that you face demons when you’re helpless,” she said. I already had with Asmodeus. “Whose fault will it be then? The Brotherhood screwed up with Ari. Not you. Stop being so committed to your guilt over this.”
“How do you do it?” I asked. “Live in the gray and still have such a strong sense of yourself? You’re a good person and yet you still have to balance a demon heritage. No offense.”
“None taken. I’ve known what I was since I was tiny. The goblin used to come visit me when I was small, telling me who I was, what to expect. What I could have if I embraced it. I didn’t want it. I like being human. The trick has been figuring out how to use my goblin side to enhance my humanity. Just like you’ll have to do as a hunter.” She shrugged, her voice growing weaker. “It’s a work in progress.”
“I think you’re amazing as is.”
She swayed slightly and I caught her, propping her up with my hand on her back.
“Apparently this much iron and me don’t get along,” she whispered.
I wasn’t ready to absolve myself, but I was more than ready to save my twin and, more immediately, my best friend. I took stock of our surroundings. No windows, a bare bulb, nothing in here other than that chair bolted to the floor. One door that required–
I could have kissed Drio, that “females can’t be Rasha” nonbeliever, for putting us in here. Informing Leo I was letting go of her, I scrambled to my feet, blood pumping and pressed my ear to the door, straining to hear if he was gone, but the walls were soundproof.
“Here goes everything.” I lay my hand against the scanner, hoping my access had gone through and that I still existed for Demon Club administration.
After the longest second in the world, the light turned green and the door opened, releasing us back into the Vault. We crept up to the ground floor office level. It was slow going because Leo was still shaky but we made it to the outside door without mishap. “Go.” I whispered, one eye on Ms. Clara’s office.
Leo shook her head.
Still keeping my voice low, I said, “I can be found here. You can’t.”
“Nee, I told you, you won’t find Asmodeus.”
“I don’t have to. Do you need me to take you back across the wards?”
“No. I’ll be okay leaving. It’s entering that’s the problem.”
I hugged her. “I appreciate everything you did. Call me if you learn anything. Now get.”
“Call if you need me,” she whispered back, and left.
Soon as she’d safely made it across the yard to the trees, I inched my way up the stairs, holding the bannister so it would take most of my weight in case any of the treads were prone to creaking. I expected to be caught at any second, but no hand came down on my shoulder, allowing me to reach the library door, crouch down, and listen.
“I’m sorry about Ari,” Rohan was saying.
I peeked through the crack between the open door and the frame to see Rohan lay a hand on Kane’s shoulder. Yeah, he was the one who needed consoling.
“I’ll confirm the demons’ location. Then we do clean up.” That was Drio. I didn’t begrudge him his bloodthirsty tone, though I worried they’d be so focused on killing they’d fail to find Ari. Or worse, hurt him in the carnage.
“Meantime, I’m off to confront Montague.” By the growl of Rohan’s voice, this wasn’t going to be a friendly meeting.
“Nothing he says can justify betraying fellow Rasha,” Drio said. “Undoing our wards and letting Asmodeus in.”
A Rasha had taken down the wards?
Baruch’s blink of fury made my stomach plummet into my toes.
“Even though Ari wasn’t Rasha…” Kane trailed off.
“He was still a Brother.” Really, Baruch? Because he wasn’t when I’d been pleading my case to get Ari’s initiate status confirmed. Bogus death revisionist history.
Not that Ari was dead. Still, I’d had it with these guys.
“Ms. Clara tapped Montague’s phone for GPS inactivity,” Rohan said. “We’ve got his location.”
I didn’t stick around to hear more. Five minutes later, I was hiding on the floor of the cramped backseat of Rohan’s Shelby, curled tight into a ball and silent as a mouse, tagging along to go confront our rogue Rasha. Rohan leadfooted it to our destination, but despite being tossed around, I didn’t make a sound.
I gave him some time after he cut the engine to get inside wherever we were before unfolding my stiff joints and scrambling out of the car. I was back in the Motel Shangri-Lola parking lot, site of my reunion with Leo last night. “Fuuuck!” I kicked at the car tire.
Rohan grabbed me by the waist. “How the hell did you get free?”
“I want first crack to see what he knows about Ari.” I jerked free. “Room 205.”
Rohan stepped around to face me, a dangerous flicker in his icy eyes. “You know this, how?”
I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut, not having a lie ready. If I said I’d met the snitch here, he’d demand to meet him. Her. I would too if I was Rohan. It was an awfully big coincidence on the face of things and I’d need to find out what led Leo to this case. But she was not the bad guy here.
Rohan pinned me against the hood, the warmth of the engine against my back at odds with the cool blade along his forearm pressed across my throat. “Explain.”
I swallowed. “You wouldn’t kill a fellow Rasha.”
“If this alleged Rasha posed a larger threat to the Brotherhood? Try me.” He looked a tad too willing for me to take him up on his offer.
“I met an informant here last night. A demon informant.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Call him.”
I jutted out my chin. “No.”
“I’m sorry?” Despite the barely suppressed fury in his voice, the blade wasn’t hurting me.
Yet.
Though the stress of the situation had brought my headache back like the cast of Stomp had set up shop in my skull. Screwing up my face, I fumbled in my pocket for the pills, holding them blindly out to Rohan.
He took the bottle, releasing me to pop the cap.
I slumped over the hood, my fingertips pressed to my throat but there wasn’t any bruising.
Rohan hooked an elbow under me to pull me up. He probed my black eye. “Where’s the demon that did that to you?”
“Dead,” I said viciously, jerking away from his touch. He’d been gentle but it still hurt.
“Good. He’s involved with Katz’s death how?” That question would have been brutal to hear spoken aloud if I wasn’t sure that Ari lived.
“His abduction,” I corrected.
Rohan tilted his head in acknowledgment. “His abduction.”
“I’m not sure.” I described the accident. “That’s how I know it was Asmodeus. He’s behind your memory loss, too.” I pointed to the pills. “Can I have?”
“You
shouldn’t need these.”
“Tell that to my head.”
“How many have you taken already?” Rohan pressed a tablet into my palm.
“I’m a good time on over-the-counter-meds.”
“Expired meds.”
I held out my hand for the bottle. “Aren’t expiry dates just a suggestion?”
“Surprisingly, no.” Rohan handed back the bottle, tugging on my ring one more time like he couldn’t believe I was actually Rasha. “Ari really is your twin?”
“I swear it with every fiber of my being.” I infused my words with as much sincerity as I could and while Rohan studied me, as if weighing their truth, he nodded, convinced. About my sibling connection at least.
Though he shot me one more hard look before stalking off across the parking lot. Gravel crunched under his feet. He still had the slightest limp, courtesy of his earlier injury. “Why do I get the feeling you are all kinds of trouble?”
I scurried after him. “Beats me.”
The front desk was unmanned, just like in my first visit, though I did hear a tinny TV set playing some soap opera in a room off back.
Rohan pushed me in front of him. “Lead the way.”
Lola didn’t reek of tuna fish this time, which was a good thing, but the many oddly colored stains on the cheap beige carpeting running the length of the hallways seemed more pronounced today. The walls were too closed in, the dingy green brocade wallpaper exuding wrongness, though maybe that was me projecting.
It was a good thing that housekeeping was so lax. And that magnetic key cards were an unknown technology in this dump, allowing Rohan to pick the lock. He shouldered open the door, both of us flinging our arms over our noses at the stench. Not from the body. There wasn’t enough of Montague left on the bed to stink: several gnawed-on bones, a curled-up strip of skin hanging off the bed like a discarded towel, and a brownish red squishy that might have been part of an intestine. No, the foul stench came from the giant pile of demon cat piss on a wadded up section of bedding. The creature had soaked half the mattress through with its ungodly urination.
“Bhenchod!” That sounded like an excellent curse. I’d have to ask him about it later.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 22
