“Don’t break out the bubbly yet. We need to overcome an eon of misogyny and mistrust.” She pointed at Baruch. “Try and sideline us or relegate us to some kind of touchy-feely healer shit while you take all the good gigs, and we’ll own your asses. Clear?”
“Clear.”
Ms. Clara, who had silently been watching the proceedings until now, raised her hand. “Hi. I’m Clara.”
I gasped. Raquel rocketed to first name privileges and I was stuck at prefix level-friendship?
“I’ve been an Executive Administrator in the Brotherhood for six years now. I have skills and you need them.”
Kane covered his mouth in an aside to Raquel. “She’s also a dominatrix. She has skills and you need them.”
“Got any whips and floggers to co-opt for people who step out of line?” Raquel said.
“I’ve got all kinds of special resources,” Ms. Clara said.
“Good,” Raquel said. “Welcome aboard.”
“Where are we at on the Satan front?” Ari asked.
“Satan?” Cisco said.
“It’s not a party until the king of the demons shows up.” I gave the other Rasha a quick recap of the situation, refusing to allow any pitying glances or comments.
“A friend of ours is decoding a ritual to get Lilith’s magic out of Nava in hopes that gets Satan off her back. It’s slow going but she’s making progress,” Raquel said.
I continued my update. “One of the things we need is extremely powerful magic blood. Therefore, I’m gonna take care of two problems at once. Kill Satan and use his blood.”
“I like how you think,” Danilo said.
“That’s worrisome,” Bastijn said.
“How will you get close enough to Satan to kill him?” Cisco said.
“There’s a demon whose interests have aligned with mine for the time being.”
“Don’t you dare say Malik,” Kane said.
“Okay, I won’t. Any last questions?”
Baruch studied the matchbook. “We should leave for the club soon and find this Kyle. Nava, are you going to portal us all?”
They were all coming? These guys were the best. However, I took an extra moment to sulk in Ms. Clara’s direction.
“We’ll discuss it,” she said.
I grinned. “Then we can go.”
The power cut out, plunging us into shadow.
The line of windows behind the long wooden table imploded, showering us in a deadly rainfall of a thousand tiny glass daggers. Four black-clad figures on rappel lines swung into the room, machine guns strapped to their backs. They wore some type of modified night vision glasses.
Baruch flipped the sofa, and pretty much threw Ms. Clara and Leo into the crawl space underneath.
Bullets scattered like seeds of destruction. Wood chips flew and shredded books shot up into the air like confetti.
Every bullet made mockery of the ideals of togetherness, loyalty, and inclusivity that I held true. Mandelbaum had come after his own. I clenched my fists, my jaw rigid in the face of this violation. This wasn’t just some Brotherhood base; the chapter house had become my home and now it was being destroyed. My internal fire hissed through my body like poison, screeching for release.
“Nava!” Raquel froze two of the mercenaries in their tracks.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her, I dropped them to the ground like garbage.
Baruch tackled another mercenary, while Drio grabbed the fourth one in a choke hold and Ro sliced the tendons in the man’s wrist.
His machine gun tumbled to the carpet.
Tendrils of fog rolled in through the windows. It blanketed the back yard, a sticky mucus that curled around us, dirty and malicious. This was a demon’s work, which meant that the wards had come down. Demons couldn’t breach our property unless a Rasha had broken the wards.
I took shallow breaths, desperate not to swallow the molecules of gasoline and rancid slaughterhouse that permeated the air.
More gunfire crackled outside.
The men leapt over the detritus and jumped out through the empty window frames.
Raquel jerked her chin at Ms. Clara and Leo. “Want me to get them to safety?”
Before I could answer yes and dive into the fight, the world went dark, the magic fog sucking out all light.
Raquel and I tried to illuminate the library, but the fog smothered it.
There was another long burst of bullets. A red-hot piece of metal grazed my cheek and I dropped to the ground. I called out for my friends, but my words were stolen by the unnatural darkness.
Into the dense silence came the roar of actual fire. This wasn’t a gentle crackle that slowly built into something more, it was an instant inferno devouring the library. Water poured down over me from the sprinkler system that did nothing to dampen the blaze.
I broke out coughing and fell to my knees, groping around blindly but I had no idea where anyone was and I couldn’t call out because the smoke was choking me, flames snatching away my words.
There was a whoosh and a crackling downpour as if I was standing under a waterfall and a beam crashed to the floor by my hand, sparks cascading over me.
I portalled outside to track down the demon responsible for the blaze and kill it.
The chapter house was engulfed, a skeleton of flame sailing through the monstrous fog like a ghost ship.
The skies rained dirty ash. Mercifully, the trees on the property didn’t catch fire, which meant the fire was magic and targeted. The wind picked up, blowing my hair across my face. Behind me came a grunt and a thud. I whipped around, a ball of electricity at the ready.
Leo, covered in soot and bleeding, grappled with some kind of serpent demon. Its barbed tail caught her across the shoulder. She screamed, purple toxic fingers spreading along her flesh. Leo bashed the creature against the ground and twisted her grasp. The demon shriveled, black fluid pouring over Leo’s arms and legs, until there was nothing more than a papery husk that blew away.
She sat back on her calves, panting, one hand to the poison on her skin, drawing it out of herself with a pained hiss, and wiping the residue on the grass.
The greedy fog parted like curtains on a play in my immediate vicinity.
Before Leo could even catch her breath, she was sucked upward into the air, bent double.
“You killed my son, had me hunted like a dog.” Hybris stood in our backyard, in her Tia persona, outfitted in leather and studs. “Now it’s your turn.”
Leo hung suspended about fifty feet in the air.
Someone shouted from deeper in the backyard; there was an answering unholy howl that sent shivers up my spine.
“My friends are keeping yours busy,” Hybris said.
“You still have friends?” I said. “Guess we didn’t fuck your life up hard enough.” I blasted the demon. It wasn’t a killing blow because I still didn’t know her damn sweet spot, but it ripped her torso open from shoulder to waist. The first meaningful physical hit I’d scored on her. “Taste my power, bitch.”
Hybris fell to the ground in a pool of blood, screeching. Rib bones splintered out of her chest.
Leo plummeted.
I flung my magic out like a net to catch her, but she ripped right through.
Drio flashed onto the lawn.
“Drio! Help me!”
He flashed out again, but it wasn’t to catch Leo. He pounced on Hybris.
“No!” I ran for Leo, doing everything I could to slow down her descent. I opened my magic to ten, my skin burning and my heart alternating between thundering and stopping entirely. Finally, I tangled Leo in enough magic to wrap her, but she continued to plummet, her screams drowning out the sounds of Drio and Hybris’ pitched battle.
My vision swam in and out of blackness and my muscles spasmed. Digging deeper than I ever had, I poured all my power into making a cushion for Leo to land in. She hit the ground in a gentle bounce as I fell to my knees, pain spiking through me.
Gunfire echoed off the t
rees. I dropped to my belly, tasting dirt. The skin on the nape of my neck prickled that any second now I’d be picked off.
Air rushed away from me in a searing gust. Blackened, twisted beams lurched sideways against piles of ash and rubble. There was one final crackle, one more flare and the blaze winked out, taking all remnants of the mansion with it.
Demon Club was gone.
This was the place where I’d learned to become myself, where Rabbi Abrams had fortified the building so that we would be safe, where everything had shape and definition, where goals were clearly outlined. And now it was nothing. My heartbreak was the stabbing bite of broken glass, raw and jagged.
A shadow fell over me, blood spattering onto my clothes.
Hybris clutched her side, her eyes wild and furious.
Liiiiliiiith.
A gnarled talon brushed the back of my neck and I spun around, chest heaving, aflame with magic for one brilliant moment.
Hybris peered into the gloom, then, her face pinched with fear, vanished.
Liiiiiliiiith.
I pushed to my feet and amped up my magic as high as it could go. I tried to fight the fog, squinting through the ashy streaks on my face and the gloom to find the cow skull demon with the ram’s horns, but it was like taking potshots at a phantom.
The fog nipped me hard enough to startle me.
A gift, the demon said.
The fog coalesced into a mouth poised over a silhouetted figure.
“No!” I screamed. I couldn’t tell who was friend or foe.
The fog mouth grew serrated teeth and clamped down on the head, popping it clean off the body. Then the fog convulsed, as if swallowing, and the body fell to the ground.
I shoved my trembling fist into my mouth.
Seven more times, it did that, curling around my legs each time to shift me in the direction of the next strike. Laying them out for my viewing pleasure, each assault a strangled scream, the sharp crack of bone, and a wet gobbling noise.
I bit back a scream. Had that been one of Mandelbaum’s men? My friends? Who? My attacks on the fog did nothing. There was no killing these cannibalistic shadows and I failed to find the evil puppet master controlling them. I was a helpless witness to the murder and mayhem around me.
Loooooook. Seeeeeeee.
An icy wind blew the last remnants of fog away.
Leo cried out.
Laying on the pool deck was a giant heart made of headless human bodies.
Satan sends his regards, the demon purred in my ear, and was gone.
Chapter 14
A yellow and black monarch butterfly glided past, briefly alighting on a crimson flowering plant, a splash of color against the burned-out lawn.
I pressed my hand against my stomach, focusing on my even inhales and exhales and not the bloody handprint on my clothes. One step for every breath, Leo leaving a trail of black oily footprints beside my white ashy ones.
Closer and closer to that abomination we drew, the ground seeming to rise and fall beneath my shaky legs.
Various malformed demon bodies, still twitching, still alive, splayed out from the heart like a shower of flower petals.
We stepped over them. I forced myself to look at the headless male bodies. There was brown skin, white skin, varying heights. Two had hamsa rings. The others didn’t.
Those were the mercenaries and I didn’t care about them.
I ran to the nearest hamsa-wearer, one with brown skin, and ripped the shirt open. No lightning bolt tattoo on his heart. Red dragon tattoos wound around his wrists, so not Mahmud, either. The relief was a sharp shock that seized up my lungs, stealing my breath away for several heartbeats.
I whirled around seeking confirmation from Leo that the other Rasha wasn’t one of ours.
She exhaled. “Not Ari. Not Drio.”
None of Danilo’s tattoos or Kane’s angel wings on the back. No ginger hair on the arms like with Pierre. Too short to be Baruch or Cisco or even Bastijn.
A disconsolate cry rose out of the woods.
I sprinted toward the back fence under a cloudless night sky, the birds in the trees resuming their twittering. Leaves danced through the forest on the breeze. I could almost pretend that this was a normal summer night until I reached the source of the cry.
Kane sat on the ground, cradling Bastijn’s head. A dark stain pooled in the dirt under Bastijn’s skull and his beautiful eyes were closed for the last time.
“A demon took control of the Rasha who’d summoned the fire. Bastijn tried to stop him. The idiot.” My friend swallowed hard.
A trail of ants jagged sideways to avoid the blood trickling in a lethargic rivulet and burrowing into the earth.
Kane continued to speak, but in my shock, his words transformed into a wind sound that was too close to that rasping demon whisper.
I swayed on my feet. The world warped in and out of view.
Footsteps crashed through the underbrush and arms came around me.
“Sparky. Oh fuck. Bastijn.”
I fought my way back from a deep, sucking darkness, clutching to my human lifeline. Movement, sound, my heart, all kicked back into gear. “I can’t fix him, Ro.” I looked around. I’d lost Leo, but she was alive. “Ari? The others?”
Rohan jerked a thumb out toward the forest. His neck and part of his shoulder were covered in pus-filled red welts. “With Baruch. Raquel and Ms. Clara are there, too.” He let go of me and I grabbed for his hand, catching air. “I’m right here. I just need to help Kane.”
Kane couldn’t be helped. That sassy, defiant light that always burned inside my friend had been extinguished, but Ro didn’t see that, or didn’t want to see that. He was busy issuing orders, telling Kane to help him carry Bastijn’s body back to…
His eyes flicked to our decimated chapter house and an imperceptible muscle jumped in his jaw. Snowflake was gone again and this time, there was no blaming the dark magic. How many times could I lose him before the vulnerable, loving part of him disappeared for good?
According to mythology, the phoenix was reborn in a glorious fire, emerging once more with its brilliant scarlet and gold plumage to rise renewed. Not everybody got to be a phoenix. Standing in still-smoldering ash, I was surrounded by the wreckage of my home, with my dead friend at my feet and bodies littering the ground, and did not know glory or transformation. This was not rebirth, it was a hardening of my immutable self.
Mandelbaum’s men, Hybris’ demons, Satan’s minion, all had come to terrorize and weaken me. Burn me down to ash. But I would not be doused. I’d been tempered with fire and I was still standing.
“Get up, Kane,” I said.
Kane raised Bastijn’s head to reveal his grip was the only thing keeping the skull together. “I gave him a hard time when he was alive. I can’t leave him like this.”
I crouched down and touched the halves of Bastijn’s skull, fusing them together, wondering if I’d ever forget the sensation of his brain spilling through my fingers.
Rohan hefted Bastijn up into his arms. “I’m going to take him back onto the property. I don’t want him left here, exposed.”
Kane wiped blood onto his jeans. “If my car didn’t burn up, I’ve got salt in the trunk. I’ll use it to repair the wards.” Taking a steadying breath, he left.
“I’ll get the others and meet you. Third pile of rubble from the right.” I gave my boyfriend a grim smile.
Rohan leaned into me and kissed my temple. “One breath at a time.”
He rested his forehead against mine for another moment.
“Stay in the light, Snowflake.”
“You be my lighthouse, I’ll be yours.”
My throat clogged with emotion. He already was in every way that mattered.
“Deal.” I jogged deeper into the forest.
My friends weren’t just with Baruch. Ari, Drio, Pierre, Danilo, and Cisco held him down with all their might, red-faced from exertion.
Raquel knelt over Ms. Clara, laid out on the grass lik
e Sleeping Beauty.
I yelped and crashed down beside Ms. Clara, careful not to jostle her.
Mahmud squatted next to Raquel, holding a small silk pouch tied on a ribbon. He put a finger to his lips.
Raquel took a handful of herbs out of the pouch and sprinkled them over Ms. Clara, silently chanting. She pressed a hand to Ms. Clara’s throat and a hand to her heart. “Her respiratory system needs to heal. I’m leaving her in this magic coma.”
“The smoke inhalation?” Ari said.
“There may be damage to her vocal cords, but she’ll live.”
Raquel wobbled as she got to her feet, and Mahmud leapt to steady her. The heels had broken off her expensive shoes. She kicked them off, leaving them in the dirt. Like the rest of us, she was streaked with soot and burned in a dozen places on her skin and hair.
Baruch threw my friends off of him. “Thank you,” he said to Raquel, in a voice more gravel-filled than usual.
Raquel nodded, but didn’t take her arm away from Mahmud. “I cast a ‘nothing to see’ spell so we don’t get any visits from neighbors, cops, or firefighters.”
“Kane’s fixing the wards,” I said. “We need to get back on the property and figure out what to do next.”
Ari visibly relaxed at the mention of his boyfriend’s name. Hunters possessed an iron-clad will to see their jobs through before asking about loved ones.
“Bastijn helping him?” Danilo asked.
I hesitated too long and Danilo swore softly.
“Rohan is with Bastijn,” I said. “I’ll take you to him.”
Baruch gingerly scooped Ms. Clara up. “Lead the way.”
Our single-file procession to the back gate was cloaked in silence and misery.
Kane met me there. “My car is toast. There’s nothing to set the wards with.”
We’d be vigilant, but really, most of our enemies had already come calling.
Ari put his arm around his boyfriend. Kane’s Porsche had been one of the few things gifted to him by his jerk of a father and came with a lot of complicated emotions.
Drio sniffed the air. “Smoke?”
We broke into a run and I braced for whatever new horror I’d find. We’d gotten halfway back across the back lawn, when Ari stopped so suddenly that I barreled into him.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 160
