“You know what I am, yet you just stand here making dinner.”
He reached up to a high cupboard to remove a bright blue box of rotini. I was so angry with him, I almost couldn’t appreciate his tight ass and the way his back muscles rippled when he stretched out his arm. “I’ll worry when you actually know what you’re capable of.”
“You got your answer and your painting. Give me my name. Who’s binding demons?”
His doorbell sounded. I planted myself in his way, but he lifted me up and set me aside so he could pass.
I stomped into his living room while Malik greeted someone in Arabic. I sat down on the sofa, intending to crash his dinner party.
He led a gorgeous woman with lustrous black hair and lush curves who was maybe a few years older than me into the room. Malik was thousands of years old so talk about cradle robber. “Lila, Nava. Nava, Lila.”
She approached me, hand outstretched, more for me to kiss than shake, her eyes aglow. “You are not what I imagined.” Her lilting voice with its trace of a Middle Eastern accent made my nipples harden and a low lick of heat unfurl inside me.
“I never am. You’re the Lila that Malik painted.” I stood up, pressing her hand between mine. Everything about Lila was flawless, from her dusky skin to the gentle curve of her smile.
“Yes.” Lila regarded Malik fondly. “I see my reputation precedes me.”
No reason why I should be the only one.
Malik chuckled. “Always playing coy, Lilith. You put a lot of work into your reputation.”
I crashed back onto my ass. “Lilith? Like Lilith Lilith?”
She settled into the chair beside me. “Guilty as charged. I prefer Lila these days.”
I sputtered for a few minutes while Malik got a platter of olives and assorted cheeses from the fridge and Lila watched me like I was amusing but not too bright.
In the Garden of Eden story, Lilith was human, not a demon. She was supposed to be Adam’s first wife. Gelman had said she was a witch. It was only later mythologies that referred to her as a demon. Granted, those were written by men and being both a witch and a woman with a strong sexuality would have been enough to earn her the demon label, but at some point, had she truly become something other than human?
“How the hell are you still alive?” I said. “What are you?” Heat slashed across my mouth, searing my lips together. Panicked, I thrashed in my seat, struggling futilely to open my mouth.
“Lila,” Malik chastised.
Lila reached for an olive, taking three dainty bites to finish it. “I don’t like her tone.”
I clawed at my face with icy fingers, making pleading noises. I no longer had lips, just a smooth expanse of skin. Bitch had eliminated my mouth. I hadn’t even liked that scene in The Matrix. Living it now was terrifying.
The lid rattled on the pot of boiling water. Malik ripped open the box of pasta and dumped some in the water. “She’ll make that infernal racket all through dinner and ruin my excellent sauce.”
“That’s on you for letting her stay.” Lila glared at me. “Stop whining.”
My jaw fell open. I gulped down air, running fingers over my lips. “Now would be a good time for that wine you’re so fond of.”
Malik set the timer on the stove with a beep, plucked the bottle off the counter and procured some glasses.
“Can I safely ask some questions?” I took the glass Malik gave me with shaking hands. At least they were no longer burned.
“You may ask, but it will cost you.” She accepted the glass Malik held out to her.
My heart was hammering in my throat, my magic slippery and uncontrollable. Sparks jumped off my skin.
“Watch the furniture.” Malik sighed. “Every time you people come over I have to call in my decorators to fix it.”
Lila chuckled. “Not like that. I want to experience a passionate memory of yours.”
Cautiously, I powered down. “Steal it?”
“No. Simply experience it. Relive it through you. It won’t hurt you in any way.”
“It won’t,” Malik said. Was I really going to trust the word of one psycho that the other one wouldn’t hurt me?
I examined the proposal for all the ways it could go wrong versus this opportunity to get answers, but no matter how I turned it over the request seemed fairly benign. “Deal.”
Lila placed her hand on my shoulder. “Think of a pleasurable sexual memory.”
My body went hot and tight, assaulted with images of Rohan’s hands on me, his lips, his cock.
Lila inhaled with a husky gasp and a shiver.
“What did you do?” I whispered, wrapping my arms around myself. My skin was prickly and ill-fitting, my core cold and queasy.
“I told you. I lived your memory. The rush off that one small hit… You are a very lucky girl.”
She glowed with satiated vitality, but I ached with a deep sorrow. She was right that it hadn’t hurt–physically. It was one thing to enjoy public sex, even get off on someone watching Rohan and me. That was from the outside. Lila had come into my memory and experienced it as I had, and in doing so diminished and tarnished it. I felt violated.
I wanted a shower. And to curl up at Rohan’s side and let being with him make everything better. I wished he was here now. I’d gotten used to us working as a team. “My questions?”
Lila waved a hand at me. “Ask away.”
I visualized Snowflake sitting behind me, lending me the strength to get through this shit show. “Do the witches know you’re still kicking?”
“I don’t know and don’t care. I don’t concern myself with witches, but I’m willing to make an exception about this binding business since Malik asked so nicely.”
More sputtering from me, this time narrowly avoiding splashing my clothes with the wine. “You’re the one who can figure out the purple magic?”
“Did you not tell her anything?” she chided Malik.
“It’s more fun not to.” He dropped into his chair, legs crossed. Lila tsked him.
My incredulity morphed into excitement. “Were you the witch that David made the deal with? To create Rasha?”
“The betrayer? Much to my everlasting regret.” Lila had only presented a beautiful human face up until now, but with that question, her eyes glittered with malice.
I hugged one of the sofa cushions to my chest, like that could protect me, seriously considering jumping out Malik’s thirty-story window.
Again.
“I told you she was entertaining.” Malik helped himself to some goat cheese and a cracker.
Lila hissed at him.
I sat very still, not stupid enough to access my magic in her presence. “Was it because he’d fathered a demon?” Apparently, I was stupid enough to ask her another question.
Sprawled in his chair, one foot propped on the coffee table, Malik raised his hand. “Can I take this one?”
Lila reached for another olive. “You’re annoying and you never have anything sweet on hand.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Asmodeus wasn’t a mistake, petal. David wanted demon pets. He thought that fathering one would give him an unexpected weapon in the fight against us. He always did think out of the box.”
“He was a hypocrite.” Lila’s lip curled in a sneer. “A man with big appetites and aspirations trying to justify them in a moral righteousness.”
Reeling, I slugged back the rest of my wine. Was this why Mandelbaum was teaming up with the witches? To fulfill David’s crazy idea? Why didn’t anyone else in the Brotherhood know about all this? I had to talk to Rabbi Abrams. “But–”
“One more question.” Lila stared at her hands, her shoulders drooping like my continued harping on the subject had sucked the fight out of her.
“Are you all right?” I said.
Lila’s turn toward me was slow and measured. “You would waste your last question on that?”
When she put it that way, no, but I’d already gotten invaluable information and taking back m
y concern was too rude, even for me. “Yes.”
“I don’t like reminders of that man. Mahlat was my favorite daughter.”
Whoa. My brain was one more revelation away from imploding. “If you did become a demon, when?” I said this more to myself. “It had to be before David because by the time he came around you’d be…” I counted off years on my fingers.
Lila smacked my hand down. “I have lived for so long that labels are irrelevant.”
The timer went off and Malik walked toward the kitchen. “As you can see, it’s a touchy sub–” He gasped, clawing at his throat.
I winced in sympathy. But better him than me.
“You may have a proper final question,” Lila said.
Malik jerking around, attempting to breathe was distracting. In a funny way, like a cat chasing after a laser pointer. Fireballs spurted off him, his limbs sporadically blurring into flame, but he couldn’t get past the hold that Lila had on him to lock into his protective fire form.
The timer continued to sound, a shrill beep.
Lila was more concerned with spreading the goat cheese onto her cracker than Malik, which was a pretty brutal way to treat a friend, or lover, or whatever he was to her.
I shook my head. “If you were so mad at David, why make the deal at all? Why hand over any magic to those men?”
“Demons still needed killing.” She shot a wry glance at Malik, releasing her hold.
He slumped over, hands braced on the counter, his chest heaving, and swore in Arabic.
I blinked. “But–”
“You had your questions.” Her tone brooked no further argument.
Malik silenced the timer and shut the stove off with a snap of the dial, sliding the pot off the burner. “Tell her, Lila, or I will.”
“I don’t want to talk about him.” The temperature dropped several degrees. Lila half-turned toward Malik.
Malik dissolved into flame. That familiar dancing blaze of gold and orange contained within a human outline with the merest suggestion of a face.
“If the Brotherhood is trying to repeat history?” he said. “Your peaceful isolationism is over.”
“I have survived much. These games mean nothing to me.”
“No? Not even if they carry out David’s plans? If your ex-lover wins even while in the grave?”
Eww. David had slept with both mother and daughter? Tacky.
The floor-to-ceiling window spiderwebbed with cracks. My wine was crystalizing. Shivering, I put the glass down in case it shattered.
It was an unholy showdown. Malik was pure flame. Hot. Bright. Awesome.
Lilith was a deep freeze. Winning in the scary-as-fuck department. She relaxed by degrees: the lowering of her shoulders, the looser clasp of her wine glass. “Like I said. These games mean nothing to me.”
“What games?” I had to say it twice because my vocal chords didn’t want to cooperate.
Malik became flesh again with nary a soot mark on his person or the furniture. Running the water in his sink, he dumped the pasta into a colander. “The deal with David was supposed to be a one-time thing. Get some more warm bodies to help fight us.” He snorted.
I inspected my glass and finding it unbroken after the mini ice storm, finished up my wine. “There’s a ritual to test babies. Initiate the next generation. That doesn’t imply single-use.”
“The ritual was to test David’s adult potentials. To see if they could handle the magic.” Malik took the water out of the colander. “David was a slick talker. He convinced another witch to create the initiation and induction rituals in order to keep the world safe for future generations. Witches are big on that.” He didn’t sound impressed.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“I like this world. I like my toys and my playmates. Make sure that’s not disturbed.”
“Make sure yourself. Help me.” I looked to Lila to include her in that, but she was gazing out the window, giving no indication she was listening.
Malik laughed and laughed, putting final touches on his sauce while I scowled at him, arms crossed. “Oh. You were serious.”
“Lila.” When she turned, I handed her the gogota finger still purple from the magic signature spell we’d cast. I’d retrieved it from Rabbi Abrams before going off for the painting. “What’s it going to cost me to find out who did this?”
“One night with your lover.”
“You’re not his type,” I said lightly, tamping down a hot flare of “over my dead body.” Who was I kidding? She was everyone’s type.
“You are though. I want to possess your body for one night, habibty.”
“No.”
“Why not? You’re the host. I’m just a passenger allowed to experience your passion.”
That cold calculating part of my brain said to pay her price if it meant answers. The rest of me recoiled.
Lila sipped at her wine, her eyes intent on mine.
“Even if I was willing, which I’m not,” I said, going with my heart and my gut, “he’d never agree.” I didn’t want her knowing me that intimately. Didn’t want her perverting a precious experience.
She stroked a hand over my hair. “He doesn’t get to know.”
“No way. That’s wrong.” I ducked out from her creepy touch and grabbed the gogota finger. It may have been my body, but I wouldn’t be alone and I’d never do that to Ro. I wouldn’t take his choice away.
Malik blocked my route to the door. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is nothing.”
The marid may have appeared as an attractive, civilized man but in the end, he was still a demon and he was old. To him, time and life were an impressionist painting where any of the individual dots failed to matter.
“It’s everything.” Magic erupted out of me. “Now get out of my way or so help me we’ll both find out exactly what I’m capable of.”
Hands up, he let me pass.
Chapter 15
I sped through the city, hell-bent for the chapter club, white-knuckling the steering wheel. Barely holding myself together from the adrenaline and yeah, fear, still pumping through my system. I’d texted Ro that I was coming back but hadn’t answered his questions on how the delivery had gone.
I curved onto my dead-end street, the car fishtailing. The trees on each side that afforded us privacy from our neighbors pressed in on me. I floored the gas pedal that final millimeter, my body straining forward in my desire to get home.
The gate was open, Ro waiting for me to slow to a stop. The stiffness in his pose wasn’t all from his injuries. He strode past the wards out to the curb, stuck his head into my rolled-down driver’s side window, clasped my face in his hands, and kissed me. Leaning further into the window, he pressed me back against the seat, his hum of relief vibrating down to my toes.
I gripped his wrists, refusing to be let go of.
“You’re giving me gray hairs, Sparky,” he murmured with a shaky laugh, before kissing me again.
I rested my forehead to his.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“Better now that I’m back.” I leaned across the car and opened the passenger door. “Get in. I’ll drive us up.”
An oshk materialized out of nowhere, denting the hood right as Ro walked past it.
I jumped out of the car and blew the demon back against the stone fence. While this oshk had the same blobby body as the one at the wreta house, instead of a single human arm, she had a fully defined female face with short blood-colored hair.
Her amorphous body expanded to deflect the impact. The oil slick pattern on her skin momentarily sucked all the light into it, creating the illusion of a massive void that was oddly hypnotic. I tore my eyes away, checking Ro for possible contact and repeat symptoms.
The glint in his eyes and hard set of his jaw was directed at the oshk, not me. He snicked out his blades as the oshk peeled herself off the fence.
I shoved him out of the way and blew a steady stream of electricity at the demon. “Are you kidding
me?” I made a mental note to get some kind of long folding switchblade.
“I can’t just stand here.” A muscle ticked in his jaw.
I respected him enough that this had to be his choice, even if getting another hit of secretion wasn’t worth him lending his magic to this battle. “Your choice,” I said.
“Stop being reasonable,” he snapped. But his knives went away.
The oshk curled in on herself, her flesh rising up over the gash I’d caused and sealing it. “Where is he?” Her screech was a broken rasp. “Where is Candyman?”
“We don’t know,” Rohan said.
“You killed Five.” Was that a name and were there four more like her? Her eyes flashed red.
I launched a new offensive, but she ignored my magic like the deadly voltage was a gentle mist, and flew at us.
Rohan pulled me behind the open car door, swinging it outward to collide with the demon. The oshk slammed into the metal hard enough to rattle the hinges and disappeared.
“Bhenchod!” Rohan stormed up the driveway.
I got back in my car, driving past Ro and giving him space.
Drio was home so I dragged him into the library, filling him in on what had just happened.
The front door slammed. Rohan marched in wearing a deadly smile. “Leo needs better intel. Oshks aren’t Unique. Time to have a little chat with her.”
Ro had covered for Leo at every turn since I’d known him. Was the oshk in front of the chapter house really the final straw? Was he just frustrated or was he done keeping her secret? I stepped forward, but Drio gripped my arm, expression bland.
“That’s not Leo’s job.” He waved a hand around the library, deceptively mild, but leaving no doubt whose job it really was. “An urban legend’s got to have documentation somewhere.”
Rohan returned Drio’s impassive smile. “It better.”
The first time I’d met Drio, there’d been a moment when I thought Ro was going to kill him. I’d never seen that again from him and I wasn’t freaked out because I was seeing it again now. What had my palms clammy and my heart galloping was that Drio looked a blink away from methodically dismantling my boyfriend over my best friend.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 103
