While both were a means of exerting control magically, compulsion was an innate ability done by a demon on a human, while binding, if at all possible, involved a spell done by a human on a demon. Ari believed binding to be an urban myth and that forcing demons to do our bidding was impossible, but the spine had to be indicative of something more than making it harder to access the kill spot.
Hmm. Dr. Gelman had told me that the first Rasha were created by witches. The magic we used to kill demons and that the rabbis used to induct us had originally come from them. Maybe there was some clue in that? I grabbed all the historical texts I could find and hauled them over to the table.
Six deadly dull books later, I shoved aside the heavy tome I’d been plowing through on the magnificence of King David. Not only was there no mention of witches in any of these books, there was no real mention of women at all, which was surprising since Jewish history was rife with important women playing a part in saving our people. From Judith, who hacked off the head of Holofernes, a massive evil asshat and enemy of Israel, to Deborah, a kick-ass judge, prophet, and warrior, to Yael, that sly babe who’d killed Sisera, the captain of the Cannonite army. While important Jewish male figures were mentioned on a regular basis in these books, the women were absent.
But nah, the Brotherhood wasn’t sexist and my suspicions couldn’t be right.
I opened the final text, inhaling a lungful of old glue and dry parchment, and struck a nugget of gold in one of the footnotes. Before David, it was still mostly men that hunted demons but, not having magic themselves, they’d needed witches to kill the spawn. David had decided to cut out the middleman. He made a deal with a powerful witch to create the first group of Rasha. Himself included. She’d agreed. There weren’t that many demons and so there weren’t that many men given the Rasha magic.
Apparently, witches weren’t all that into hunting demons, preferring to focus on keeping up the wards between our world and the demon realm and stave off a full-scale invasion instead of one-spawn-at-a-timing it. The author bitched about how, in typical suspicious, mistrustful witch fashion, she’d only given Rasha a fraction of the magic that witches had. Just the bit pertaining to killing demons and not a drop more. So much for gratitude.
I sat back, my mind blown. Wards on a global scale? Rasha magic only encompassing a sliver of what witches possessed? How powerful were they?
Hang on. Wards involved magic, as did the ritual Drio had performed when he was trying to make Samson King reveal his true form. So where were those spell books?
I studied each bookcase, the texts grouped by subject. Most of the space was taken up by all things demony, with a smaller section on history and… Aha! On the bottom of one of the bookcases was a slim volume on wards.
And a giant empty space. I knelt down and snatched up the only other book there: a tattered children’s picture book called “Witchy Witch and her no good, spooky bad spells!” featuring a crazy cartoon witch and her bubbling caldron. “Looking for something, partner?” was written in red pen across the cover.
“Rohan!” I charged out of the library but he was nowhere to be found. He’d even put a lock on his room so I couldn’t search it for the missing spell books. If Ms. Clara wouldn’t have killed me, I totally would have blown the damn thing off its hinges.
I was still fuming when I met up with Ari that night.
“Two of the bodies were already cremated so we can’t check them.” He tossed a couple of shovels into the trunk. “But there is one other one we have access to.”
“Who?” I’d spent the past couple of hours punching things in the Vault and the back of my shirt was plastered to my shoulder blades. No point changing just to dig up a grave. Letting Ari drive, I strapped in on the passenger side and rolled down the car window.
“Reuben Epstein was buried in the Jewish cemetery and Cantor Abrams is on the board that oversees it.” Ari turned down the volume on the upbeat pop song playing on the radio.
Moonlight swirled around the trees lining either side of the street. I lifted my hair off my neck, resting my head against the window frame. “No way he condoned exhuming a burial plot.” As Rabbi Abrams’ son, the Cantor may have been sympathetic to the Brotherhood but for sure he’d draw the line at desecration.
We skirted the edge of the city on a wide six-lane road, traffic practically non-existent as we left the boundaries of Vancouver proper.
“It’s a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” Ari said. “The board had recently changed the locks on the cemetery so I had to contact him and arrange for new keys. We usually have a set in our possession.”
“Why? We don’t bury demons.”
“There are some unmarked graves kept for us. Sometimes we need to bury other things.”
Like human remains from victims we couldn’t afford to be found? I swallowed hard, picturing Jane Doe’s face.
Unlocking the cemetery gate, hiking over to the correct grave, it was all fairly banal. Even the moon provided just enough light to see what we were doing but allowed us to hide if necessary. Ari stopped in front of a recently interred grave and handed me a shovel. There was no tombstone yet. Most of the Jews I knew unveiled the tombstone on the year anniversary of the person’s passing.
For the next little while, the only sounds were the crisp snap of our shovels hitting the earth, our laboured breaths sending puffs of white air into the cool night sky, and the occasional hoot of an owl.
The rhythmic digging was calming in a weird way, so long as I didn’t dwell on why we were doing it. By the time the plain pine coffin was exposed, our sweat-soaked T-shirts were streaked with dirt. I stretched out a cramp in my poor, pampered first world hands, which rocked massive blisters.
We pulled the lid off and scrambled out of the gravesite, hands clamped firmly over our mouths and noses. The stench wafting out of the bloated, distorted cadaver was redolent of rotten egg that had enjoyed a trip through Satan’s sphincter along with the aftermath of a large meal of beans then been steeped once more in a putrid eggy bath.
It was unfortunate that this was the moment my grade eight science teacher’s fact about how scent particles went up our noses popped into my head. Vomiting on the guy wouldn’t have hurt his appearance much at this point, but I still did my best to keep the splatter off him.
“The maggots are a nice touch,” Ari said, peering down at the body.
Poor Reuben didn’t look too hot after two weeks of decomposition with his blistered marbled skin, bugged out eyes and tongue, and his hair slipping away from the scalp.
“You okay?” Ari said.
I wiped off my mouth. “Yeah. It’s gross, but not freaky. Second body desensitivity?”
“Less human-looking.”
That too. Nose firmly plugged, I motioned for my brother to have at ’er.
“You need the field experience,” he said. “You do it. That’s an order.”
My hackles rose. “Make me.” I punched him in the arm.
Ari laughed, turning it into a cough at my scowl. “Oh. You were serious.”
“Skeerred?” I clucked at him.
He made a pffft sound and strode over to a stretch of grass. “Standard terms?”
These terms had been set when we were seven years old and our dad, tired of our complaining, had said that if we were going to fight then we had to establish rules and abide by them. Standard terms meant hits to Ari’s crotch and my face were off-limits, otherwise it was anything goes. At some point, we’d decided that there should be some kind of spoils of war to the winner.
“Standard terms,” I agreed. “When I win, in addition to you checking the dead dude, you drop the commanding officer bullshit and treat me as your equal partner.”
“Agreed. And when I win, you admit that I am the superior Rasha while you search Reuben.”
I ground my teeth hard enough to take a layer of enamel off. “Agreed.”
We crouched down facing each other. “One, two, three, four,” we chanted, “I decl
are a twin war.”
The words weren’t even out of our mouths before we both let our magic fly.
Our epic battle lasted all of three seconds. I knew that my brother would use his shadow magic to swipe my feet out from under me because knocking me flat so he could sit on me and pummel me was his favorite move.
Except he knew that my favorite fight tactic was throwing something into his eyes to blind him and get the jump on him.
So in a brilliant bit of reverse expectations, he wrapped his shadows around my eyes like aviator shades, blinding me, while I blasted his feet out from under him, pinning him to the ground.
“Say uncle,” I said, trying to pull the shadows off. Yeah, that’s not a thing. I spun too far and whacked my kneecap on the corner of a tombstone, resulting in a two minute run of my favorite curse word.
“You,” he said.
I could smell my magic singeing the hairs on his arms and legs, while the pressure on my eyeballs was growing to splat proportions. We released each other, panting in our respective corners. Then we attacked.
In the exact same way.
Three more times.
“I hit you first.” I lay on my back, probing the puffy, bruised skin around my eyes.
“Dream on.” Ari beat his smoldering arm into the pile of dirt we’d excavated. “We’ll do this together.”
I got to my feet and shuffled to the edge of the pit, a wary eye on Ari.
“One, two,” he said.
On three, each of us whacked the other person into the open grave.
“Aaaaahhh! I touched rotted corpse!” I squealed, hopping up and down and wiping my hand on my brother’s back.
He flinched, hip checking the coffin, and rocking the corpse onto his side.
We gagged at the fresh wave of putrescence unleashed at the movement. But it jiggled Reuben’s foot out of the coffin. There on the bottom of one heel was the drawn-on remains of the Arabic word for love.
“Mara, Jane Doe, and Reuben. That’s three,” Ari said. “I’m calling it an official link.”
“Works for me.”
Any lasting animosity between us was put aside in our mutual desire to close Reuben up and rebury him as quickly as possible. We patted down the last of the earth just as the moon disappeared behind the clouds, letting us know it was time to leave.
Pity that the ghoul who jumped us hadn’t gotten the memo.
Chapter 13
Pale with catlike features, the ghoul bared his fangs, hissing with a forked tongue that brushed my cheek as the demon caught me around the neck. I jabbed my shovel backward at his head, but he plucked it from my hands before I made contact and flung it away.
When shovels didn’t work, go with plan B. A wave of electricity rolled off my body. That dislodged the bloodsucking fiend.
Ari wrenched me into the shadows with him, backing us up against the cemetery fence. He wove the darkness up to bob in front of us like a living shield.
I peered through the gloom at the ghoul, batting at the shadows with his elongated claws like a cat with a toy. “That’s not a thing,” I told him.
“Smooth as a baby’s bottom,” Ari observed of the demon’s naked, humanoid form. “Even his balls are wrinkle free. It’s like he got a full-body Botox.”
With a satisfied shriek, the ghoul tore through Ari’s shadows, claws out.
There may have been one of him and two of us, but our resulting fight was bloody and brutal. Forty-five minutes later, two tombstones were broken, three of my ribs were cracked, and Ari’s left arm was dislocated at an awkward angle. Both of us were bleeding, which drove the ghoul into a bloodlust frenzy that sharpened his senses, yet we couldn’t get a hold on the slippery bastard with our magic.
Pain fogged my brain, slowing my reaction time. I tripped over the corner of one of the broken tombstones, my knees hitting the ground hard.
The ghoul jerked my head to the side and punctured my neck with his fangs.
My head lolled back. Oooohhhh, niiiice.
I had just enough presence of mind to remember that in seconds his blissful hold on me meant I’d let him exsanguinate me and wear a smile on my face while he did so. I snapped my elbow back in a vicious strike, breaking the demon’s nose with an audible crunch. He staggered back, then lowered his head and rushed me, breaking mine in payback.
“Owwww!” My blood spurted through the air, splattering on Ari like a Rorschach test. Hissing sharply, Ari jerked his hand to his own nose. Twin thing.
I wheezed through the rivers of agony bubbling along my shattered cartilage. That area had still been tender from our earlier twin war. Now? My entire face was a tight throbbing mass. Blue and white spots danced through my watery vision, my magic pulsing and crackling in starts and fits.
The ghoul backed away from me, taking a bite out of Ari’s dislocated arm. We both howled. I swore blood ran hot over my arm and down my wrist and it took a second for my brain to realize only Ari had been hurt. Still, I gagged as the demon chewed and swallowed my brother’s flesh.
Using our last reserves, the two of us managed to wrestle him to the ground and pin him there long enough to send Ari’s shadow magic to the ghoul’s kill spot, conveniently located inside his mouth. Yeah, universe, put the cannibalistic bloodsucker’s weak spot inside him.
I kicked the single fang left of him when he died through a hole in the fence, then we limped back to the car.
An acrid burning smell redolent of a match when you’ve just blown it out lingered in the air. This wasn’t a hint of sulfur crossed with a soupçon of burning wood. More like a freaking quarry of the chemical shit hitting a blazing forest.
The back of my throat burned and my eyes watered.
I opened the trunk and unzipped the first aid kit that Dad had provided us with, wrapping Ari’s arm with a tensor bandage like a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding. The ghoul’s teeth marks were ragged gashes against his skin.
Using a package of baby wipes, I wiped the blood off me as best I could, yelping against the dozen little antiseptic stings.
I had no idea what had happened to our shovels, nor did I care. Whoever unlocked the gates could blame the same vandals they’d deem responsible for the broken tombstones. The damage would cover up any evidence of our gravedigging.
Despite my nose being four sizes too large, I had to drive because Ari’s arm was shot to hell.
“What the fuck?” I panted. “How does the ghoul fit into this? We deliberately didn’t include them on our list.” Ghouls were bloodsuckers who wouldn’t leave their victim with an unblemished corpse. Or potentially any corpse if one was feeling peckish.
Ari cradled his injured arm to his chest with his good hand. “They’re Arab. Beyond that, no clue.”
“That ambush wasn’t a coincidence.” Like much of this case, the pieces of the puzzle were taking their sweet time to fit together. I smacked my hand on the wheel.
My brother’s head lolled back against the seat rest, his exhale a soft pained hiss. He directed me to the home of a Rasha-approved physician to get my nose checked out in case it needed to be set. My healing abilities would fix the break but magic wasn’t exactly concerned with cosmetic appeal and I didn’t want a matching crooked nose to Rohan’s.
The doctor examined it then told me I’d been lucky. There was no displacement due to trauma. My septum was intact which meant I shouldn’t have any breathing problems and since there appeared to be no change to function or appearance, I could let my Rasha healing do its thing with no further intervention.
That was a relief. Exhausted and in pain, I pulled into Demon Club, hoping to slip inside without running into anyone. Best laid plans, right?
Rohan lay on the hood of his Shelby, staring up at the stars, earbuds in his ears, rolling the piece of curved bone between his index finger and thumb. The slight widening of his eyes was his only reaction to us. He swiped at his phone, removed the headphones and stuffed both in his pocket along with the bone fragment.
“
One twin that looks like a raccoon. And one that smells like he was set on fire.” He shook his head. “Is this normal for you two?”
“Ha!” I fist pumped. “I totally won our twin war.”
“Twin war?” Rohan looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Often hard to know with Nava,” Ari said.
“True,” Rohan agreed. “She’s very confusing.”
“What you mean boys,” I said, “is, ‘Aren’t we lucky Nava provides a certain je ne sais quoi to liven up our otherwise stultifyingly dull routines?’”
“‘Je ne sais quoi?’” Rohan said.
“That certain something? That elusive pleasing quality?” I waved my hand in a ‘get with it’ gesture. “Bilingual, Snowflake. Nevermind. Don’t tax yourself.”
“The French wasn’t the part I had trouble with.”
Ari braced a hand against the hood, his skin ghastly pale.
I pulled a package of ginger chews to combat nausea out of my pocket, and dropped one into the palm he’d outstretched without looking at me.
“Can I have one?” Rohan asked.
Ari and I cocked our heads to the right, blinking at Rohan until we both said, “Oh, the chews.” I gave him one.
“Freaky,” Rohan said. “I hadn’t seen your twin thing before.”
“We learned to tone it down,” I said.
“Unnerved the parents,” Ari added. We both snickered.
“Can’t imagine why,” Rohan said.
I brushed my fingers over Ari’s wound. “You want help changing that?”
“I’m good.” Ari shuffled up the back stairs, blood seeping through his bandaged arm.
I made sure that he made it inside okay, then planted myself in front of Rohan. “You’re a total bastard.”
“You’ll need to be clearer with your complaints than that.”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 70
