Sienna expected an answer from me. Not any answer either. An answer that involved proving my undying loyalty to all witch-kind by taking her side against the Rasha. And if my undying loyalty involved my actual dying, she wouldn’t shed any tears.
I called Raquel on my burner phone to make sure she was on track to meet us, but it went to voicemail. I hung up and immediately received a text.
Rohan startled awake with a snort, jostling my arm. “What?”
I bent over to snag my cell from the floor. “That’s what woke you, dude who I’ve been shoving for an hour? You millennials. So tied to your phones. Pathetic.”
The text was from Rivka. “The funeral is on Thursday,” I said.
“Text back that we’ll be there,” Ari said.
My fingers hovered over the keys. I had yet to speak to her about Esther.
Another text came in. She left you something. You don’t come. You don’t get it.
I called Rivka. “You sound like your sister.”
“I was the original,” she said. “I’ll give you your inheritance when you come.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“I know. You’re still getting it. She was very clear.”
“Clear when?” I snapped. “She wasn’t an oracle. She didn’t know she was going to die.”
“Terminal cancer,” Rivka said gently. “She knew.”
“But she’d done chemo. She looked better.”
“She had months at best, so stop beating yourself up about this. She genuinely cared about you. Said you reminded her of her younger self.”
“Don’t ruin all my fond memories of her.”
Rivka barked a laugh and my heart clutched. She really sounded exactly like Esther.
“Thursday. Eleven o’clock at the Jewish cemetery in New Westminster. I’m hanging up before I get maudlin,” she said and did just that.
I cuddled into Rohan. “Thursday at 11. You’ll come with?”
“Of course,” he said.
“Esther said I reminded her of her younger self.”
Ari snorted. I reached over Rohan and punched my brother’s thigh.
“Not surprising,” Kane said. “Dr. Gelman was a total shit disturber when she was young.”
“How would you know?” Rohan said.
“I hacked into Brotherhood documents after her death. They had a huge file on her. There was this fifteen-year period they suspected her of killing all these big-time demons before the Rasha could. We’re talking dozens and dozens. She was legendary.”
“And instead of lauding her for it, she got a file,” Ari said. “Nice.”
“Exactly,” Kane said. “Rasha are a bunch of glory hogs. Present company all included. Tell me you can’t all score your kills.”
Ari and Rohan muttered their assent.
“Hang on.” I leaned forward to see them all. “You guys keep track of how many demons you’ve taken out? My God, why am I asking this question? Of course you do. Do you circle jerk the numbers or just whip them out one-on-one to compare?”
“Both,” Ari and Rohan said at the same time.
The first jeep in our caravan turned off the main road. Kane followed, raising his voice over the whine of the motor as we bumped our way through the desert. “Ready to be legendary, babyslay?”
“We’re all gonna be legendary,” I said. “Tonight we bring down the old regime and forge a brave new world where witches and Rasha work together. Now someone wake the bear up.”
As expected from our earlier reconnaissance, the jeeps reached the ridge undetected. The clock on our dashboard glowed 12:35AM in big blue digits.
Ari immediately left, shadow jumping to the top of the ridge with a pair of high-powered binoculars.
The rest of us stood silently waiting for his return. Well, most of us did. Kane looked decidedly fidgety.
The wind whooshed over the desert as loud as a rushing river, while the sky above was so stuffed full with stars that I swore I could reach up on tiptoe and grab one. It was cold at night, but we had lightweight warm gear that wouldn’t restrict our movements.
Ari returned and gathered us into a circle. “Six guards on the roof. No one on the ground. I checked around the compound. Nothing hiding out in the desert.”
“You good with that?” Baruch asked me.
I cracked my knuckles. “Child’s play. The plan is on track. I’ll take them out in waves. First the Rasha outside, then the ones inside. Make sure when you follow me in to secure the men, that you keep barriers between myself and all of you at each stage until I give the all-clear. Don’t want you hit with my magic. Once the Rasha are dealt with, I’ll track Sienna.”
“Is the Tomb here?” Baruch said.
“It will be.” I had faith in Raquel.
“The terrain is rocky,” Ari said, “but the trucks should make it to the compound no problem.”
Baruch turned to Mahmud, Wangombe, Pierre, and Bastijn. “You have the C-4?”
“Ready when you are,” Mahmud said.
“Remember your assignments,” Baruch said. “Hard proof against Mandelbaum and his men to present to the Brotherhood gets loaded in the jeeps. Demon and blood samples in the lock-up in the armored truck, otherwise, everything gets destroyed. Be thorough.” He canted his head up to the moonlight. “Five minutes. That patch of clouds will provide some cover. Nava, get ready on my signal.”
“Will do.” I pulled Rohan aside for some privacy. “Technically, it’s tomorrow.”
Ro scowled at me. “Don’t you dare.”
“Rohan Liam Mitra, you listen up.”
This might not be a gazebo or the tap floor at his place, and it might not be as cozy as the two of us waking up together in bed to a rainy morning. Before, I’d hated that I could never find the perfect moment to say it. Now I’d run out of moments. I had to make this perfect by itself, even if the air was thick with tension about our mission and I’d found new places to sweat.
I kissed his knuckles, pressing his hand to my heart. “Being a twin, Ari’s always been my other half. But you make me the most myself I’ve ever been. The most complete as a person in my own right. You found me in the darkness and didn’t let me stay there. You pushed me to remake myself into someone better, someone who I am really proud of being. Being with you… it’s like living a tap dance all the time. I’m more awake and more alive and at my happiest. I know this seems like the worst moment to say it, but I never want you to wonder or doubt it. I love you, Rohan.” I spread my arms helplessly. “I’m yours.”
“Nava…” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
Oh. I guess all that stuff about saying it like it was a promise had just been an excuse. Well, I was not going to cry. Yeah, I’d hoped he’d still say it back. Yeah, it was stupid. But I was doing this on my terms, and I wasn’t about to put up with getting chastised for telling him the truth, for making sure he knew.
I held up a hand and cut him off. “I broke our agreement. Too bad. I said it. Deal with it.”
Rohan laughed, his eyes shining, and if somehow that laugh had gotten caught on his album, you’d replay that track over and over just to hear that sound of pure joy. “I love you, too.”
He actually blushed when he said it. His eyes flickered to the ground, then once more back to mine, a shy, besotted smile flitting free.
There was no breath left in my body.
“I’ve never met anyone so full of life and passion as you,” he said.
I kind of squirmed in sheer delight. “Yeah? Go on.”
“I love your jokes at the most inappropriate moments. I love how you’ve never met a boundary you didn’t take as a personal challenge. And I love how every time something stupid and inconsequential happens, my first thought is to find you and tell you because you’re the one person who’ll always get it. Because you always get me, even when you’re giving me shit.”
“Especially then,” I agreed.
He laughed. “That. Right there.” He clasped my head in
his hands, his fingers threading through my hair. “Nava Katz, you are complicated and infuriating and extraordinary, and everything I want. How could I not? You’re the spark that brought me back to life.”
“Damn you.” I sniffed, wiping my finger under my damp lashes. “I can’t charge in all badass if I’m weepy.”
He wrapped me in his arms, and I melted into him, luxuriating in this moment: the chirping crickets far away, the breeze ruffling his hair against my cheek, and best of all the feeling of being cherished by someone so special.
I stepped back, still holding his hands. “We’re only getting started, you and I. You and the universe should know that. This love story doesn’t end here, got it?”
“Got it.” He tugged me to him and kissed me. “I love you so much.”
“Back at you, Snowflake. Always and forever.”
Baruch cleared his throat. “Can we secure this compound or are you busy?”
“Let’s burn this fucker down,” I said.
Ro smiled. “That’s my girl.”
We could have waited for whenever Sienna’s next attack happened, but why do things on her schedule when we could do it on ours?
“Get inside the armored trucks and wait for my signal,” I said. “I’m going in.”
I portalled onto the roof into the shadows and looked down. The guards were barely paying attention. An animal attack must not have been imminent.
I cast out my awareness. There were now eight Rasha outside, their locations pinpointed over the compound grounds by their pale orange life force lights.
Showtime. I reached into Lilith’s magic box, scooped up a generous amount and, binding her magic to mine to amp up my attack, flicked my fingers. Eight balls of lightening shot out, each one wrapping itself around a Rasha’s head. I didn’t even need to be physically near them, which was a hella cool new trick.
The electricity crackled and danced around their brains, the entire thing playing out in my mind’s eye like a magic HUD.
Eight men dropped to the ground, unconscious. Their life forces dimmed but weren’t extinguished.
Thank you for your contribution to the cause, I thought at Lilith.
I activated the tiny mic pinned to my shirt. “I’m going for the ones inside. Wait for my next signal.”
They’d hear me through the ear pieces we all wore.
I checked the Rasha closest to me to make sure he was still breathing, admiring the lightning bolt-shaped burn marks called Lichtenberg Figures that bloomed like vines across his skin.
As I portalled inside, I felt the oddest sensation, like when I’d been in rehab for my Achilles and the physiotherapist had been working on the knots up the side of my leg. He’d press down on a tight spot until I’d feel it kind of melt and give way. That’s what happened now for the briefest second, but across my entire chest.
From one blink to another, the sensation changed. I was gut punched from inside my body with the wind knocked out of me. I stumbled my landing inside the building and, doubled over, crashed my shoulder against a wall. Clutching my rib cage, I checked the box.
Lilith still wasn’t free, but one of the sides bore an imprint of a fist, like it had been Hulk-smashed from the inside. It had twisted the entire box.
Even worse?
The box itself had lost its matte black solidity. It was paper thin and translucent.
Lilith’s cackles filled my brain. Told you you’d let me out.
Accessing her magic had eroded the walls of her prison. One more use would blow it away all together.
Fuck! I tried to divest myself of her magic, but we were firmly bound together, a glowing silver spiderweb.
She didn’t like that anymore than I did, upping her threats on all the ways she was going to rip me free and destroy me.
“Freeze!” A couple of Mandelbaum’s Rasha stormed out of a doorway.
Could I use even the barest level of magic without releasing her?
Try it and find out.
I couldn’t risk it, nor could I even use my own magic because there no longer was my own magic.
I rushed the men in a flurry of punches, catching them off-guard. Well, that plus the detonation from my team blowing up the fences that rocked us all off our feet. Taking advantage of their distraction, I sprinted past them into the stairwell.
“Ran out of time on my magic,” I said into the mic. “Send in a team.”
I hit the second floor in a sprint, my progress lit by bursts of light from dozens of different magic outside.
I ran to a window and peered out.
The earth rumbled. Shadows slithered. Even Cisco managed to coax enough life from the cracked desert floor for his vines to trap our enemies who’d run outside at the explosion.
Tree Trunk alone was methodically pummelling any Rasha stupid enough to get on the wrong side of his fists.
Three of our team rounded up the men I’d taken out, imprisoning them in the armored truck that was parked diagonally near the front door.
My earpiece crackled to life. “Team Beta in the east wing on neutralization,” Rohan said. “Nava, you okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry. Change in plans,” I said. “Keep your men safe.”
He had Ari, Kane, Cisco, Danilo, and a dozen others with him.
“Watch your back,” Ro said.
I left the fighting to the rest of my team, bent on finding Sienna, though I found the lab before I found her. Thanks to our aerial photos and the expertise of a couple of our Rasha, we’d been able to pinpoint the most likely spots for it. The lab was cordoned off from the rest of the building by two giant sheets of thick, translucent plastic.
I brushed them aside and ducked through. The air temperature dropped to just above freezing and even with my high-tech clothing, I shivered.
The lights were dim, gloomy pools of shadow ringing the corridor that stretched out impossibly long. Every footfall seemed to chime louder than a church bell, but no one came to investigate.
I reached the thick wooden door at the end of the corridor marked “Authorized personnel only.” Turning the knob slowly and silently, I slipped inside, sucked in a breath, and wished I hadn’t as a slaughterhouse worth of rotted meat gagged me.
Iron cages big enough to comfortably hold a Labrador Retriever rose from the floor to the top of the fifteen-foot ceiling, stretched out in two long lines on either side of me. Every single one was stuffed with demons. Not just one or two, multiples of them crammed in there, dazed and listless.
Mutated, burned, scarred, they stared at me with glazed eyes. Scales, feathers, fur, no matter what they were covered in, they bore the telltale red streaks of iron poisoning.
The hot, swampy stench had so many notes to it from rotting flesh to fungus to excrement, urine to sulfur, that if demons bottled it and sent it into our nightmares, humans would be helpless in its wake.
I kept my sleeve over my mouth as I crept along the narrow pathway, my shoulder blades prickling from the weight of all these demon eyes tracking my progress. At least the noise covered my approach. Raspy caws, feeble growls, claws scraping bars, individually their cries of distress were barely above a whisper but hundreds of them together made the most unholy lullaby I’d ever had the misfortune to hear.
Lilith perked up, a silent fury rolling out of the box. Destroy these abominations.
With you on that. Except I couldn’t. Not unless I wanted to free her.
It got worse from there, because when I turned the corner, I found the active part of the lab. I ducked behind a metal shelving unit crammed with boxes of gauze and surgical supplies.
One wall held giant glass fridges of vacuum-sealed packs of liquids in various colors. Demon blood? The blood needed to bind demons on a large scale? The “blood to rule the might?”
Scientists in splattered surgical garb cut demons open with whining, spinning saw blades, plucked out eyeballs with dull hooks, and in one case, cranked the voltage to eleven, charring the bucking reptilian body on the metal gurney.
Its one fish eye blinked blearily at me, wordlessly begging me for mercy.
The most benign part were the two scientists discussing X-rays on one of those lit up viewers. I couldn’t begin to identify what physiology had made some of the shapes captured on film.
I bolted out of there, racing past the caged demons for the exit, and crashed into Pierre who’d burst through the door with his team. He stumbled sideways to avoid knocking into me, saw the cages, and launched into the worst flurry of swearing I’d ever heard from him.
“Mad scientists.” I pointed in the direction I’d come from. “Most are wearing gloves but the couple that weren’t didn’t have rings. Possibly not Rasha.”
I couldn’t use my magic, but I still had fists and legs and a battery of fighting techniques.
We spilled into the room, Pierre booming at the scientists to put their instruments down.
Most of the men tried to flee, but some kept at their horrific experimentation. I’d been right and they weren’t Rasha, so it was easy enough to round them up.
“The outside has been neutralized,” Baruch said over the mic. “Report.”
All the team leaders reported in. All had been successful. We’d secured the compound, but there was no sign of either Mandelbaum or Sienna.
I accompanied a couple of Pierre’s men to help transport the scientists down to the armored truck. Pierre and the rest of his squad stayed behind to document the demons and blood on camera, keeping a couple as proof then killing the rest before scouring the lab with fire.
The mood outside was festive as our team reunited now that Mandelbaum’s men were imprisoned. Yes, we still needed the rabbi, but we’d foiled his plans and had the proof to enact change.
Most importantly, we’d kept humanity safe from the rabbi’s nefarious agenda.
And even though, yeah, I still needed to stop Sienna, I was living in a world in which I had Rohan’s love and he had mine. No barriers. No bullshit. Sienna was going to help me keep living that reality.
Pierre and his remaining men came out with a few demons they’d contained that bore the worst marks of experimentation and a couple armfuls of equipment. Their hair was plastered with sweat and soot, but they flashed triumphant thumbs-ups.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 144
