Meantime, I sucked it up and forced one foot in front of the other, until I stood in front of the leader.
Main Grinch was broader and wider than the rest. Instead of a downy pelt, his green body was a thick crustaceous shell. The bulbous chamber on the end of his tail was so heavy with venom that it curved over to bob at my shoulder height.
The venom pouch was in direct sunlight, but with the shifting sunlight, I only had a couple of minutes to drain it before it would be in shadow and my opportunity would be lost. If I touched the pouch at that point, the demon would wake up, as would all the others, and I’d be fighting all of them in order to get the venom.
I was milking a scorpion demon like some kind of ruddy farming wench. A new low.
Catalina had provided me with magic-coated protective gloves, which ran from my fingertips to my shoulder. I uncapped the leather wine bladder hanging on a rope around my neck and positioned the container under the tip of the scorpion’s tail. Tamping down on my desire to run screaming, I squeezed the venom bulb, producing a few drops of a clear secretion.
Oddly, the secretion smelled like mint.
I kept one eye on sunlight and the other on the bladder.
As I drained the sac, the demon’s pulsing hunger mellowed out. A familiar musky aroma teased my senses. The demon bulb became engorged, the secretion turned milky.
Dear lord, I was giving a demon a hand job. Again. Nope. This was my all-time low. Catalina should have prepared me for this client like a good pimp. The bulb jerked in my hand and I shuddered. That’s it. Next time I had to jerk off a demon, I was getting an hourly wage. High-end escort pay, not “will blow for spare change.”
Only the tip of the venom bulb remained in sunshine. Just the tip, ma’am. It throbbed in my hand, then with a convulsion, gooshed all over my arm. I strangled my hysteric laughter.
The magic coating on my protective gloves flared, fighting the venom with a sizzle that stank of burned rubber.
The entire demon was now in shadow. Problematic since my glove, dripping with toxic demon cum, still gripped his limp bulb.
His eyes snapped open, a bright red fire swirling over them.
I portalled the fuck out, back to the school, where I cleansed the outside of the bladder of venom and tossed the gloves. I’d just helped a scorpion demon to a happy ending, which was bound to scar psychologically, but I had two of the three ritual ingredients.
It was a much-needed win and not the only one I experienced. The witches’ confidence was blooming on all fronts.
My group had been herded to the computer lab. These women knew their histories and old demon lore, and in sharing that, they found a renewed sense of purpose, ownership, and connection to their foremothers in this fight.
Pierre grabbed a slice of questionably-fresh pepperoni pizza from the mound of boxes on a table, his phone pressed to his ear. “Left or right?”
I peered over his shoulder.
“Elena’s grandmother,” he mouthed at me.
He typed “zire kill spot left side base of horn” into the new demon database. Originally called “Orwell 2.0,” all had agreed the name needed to be scrapped. Leo ended up christening the information system “Ada” after Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter and the computer science pioneer from the 1800s, and it stuck.
“Ladies, with me, please.” Leo beckoned my group over. She had volunteered to fight but also recognized that going into the demon realm might produce a less-than-desirable effect on her, so she’d committed herself to getting Ada off the ground, determining that’s where she would be of most use.
She set my group up in front of monitors with detailed questionnaires on the screens pertaining to various aspects of witch lore about demons and magic history.
I dragged a chair over to Kane, by himself at a desk in the corner, and sat down. “Working on Ada?”
“No.” He swore under his breath and deleted a series of commands. “Mandelbaum keeps his group constantly on the move. There’s no pattern to his relocations, and my money trail investigation is stuck one step behind him.”
“Sucks.”
There’d been no success finding the imprisoned Rasha either. Sienna had someone on her side who was just as talented a hacker as Kane and, as we learned to our chagrin, was deliberately creating intricate false money trails.
I patted his shoulder. “If anyone can find them, you will.”
“Obviously, babyslay. It’s me and my genius at work.”
We stuck to our schedules until a few days later, when Mahmud’s group destroyed a nest of demons fouling a critical water supply in Bangladesh. Hex Factor’s first big win.
Rasha had a good sense of the hot spots for demon activity and adding access to the demon dark web into our tracking gave us both a clearer picture of what certain demons were up to and where to find them. This streamlined the hunting process.
There was a big party that night at the boarding school in celebration where I actually got to spend time with Ari, who I’d seen precious little of. He looked tired, but he sounded really happy.
We all dined together as much as possible, the entire place run like a well-oiled machine by Ms. Clara. Raquel, that monster, used her name whenever possible around me, since I had yet to be given permission to just call her Clara.
The next morning, Hua approached me. “We want to step up our hunting. Put our training into action on more dangerous demons.”
The triplets nodded eagerly.
“Yay! Since I’m most familiar with Vancouver, I put together a map of potential demon hotspots for just this occasion.” I showed them the areas I’d identified and let the women decide where to hunt.
They were beautifully kickass. Together, we took out some kravel demons that had been living in Stanley Park in downtown Vancouver and preying on the homeless. The women were pumped and ready for more.
I asked Baruch for permission to follow up some leads on the Ring of Solomon that Rivka and Shivani had provided. None of them panned out, though my group saw some combat action with Mandelbaum’s men and experienced another aspect of this fight. With the first lead we’d investigated, we ran into some Rasha who’d formerly been on our side and switched allegiances to Mandelbaum. It happened a few more times, no matter how stealthy we were.
We were being tracked, but no one could figure out how.
There were skirmishes, but no real injuries, and none of us found the ring.
Despite these setbacks, these were three amazing weeks, even if I missed Ro like crazy and my headaches continued. I was impatient to move on and step up the battle to win the war.
Too bad I forgot about that pesky “careful what you wish for” rule.
Chapter 20
I’d never been particularly superstitious about Friday the 13th and saw no reason to start when it rolled around this September. The bond between the Rasha and the witches had cemented over these past few weeks, confidence was at an all-time high, and Mandelbaum and Sienna had been quiet.
Our idyll was too good to last.
The day started with a barrage of increasingly annoyed texts from Malik. Texting seemed so mundane for the demon, but part of me couldn’t wait to get him on the throne so I could have Satan in my contacts. The contact photo possibilities alone were priceless.
Malik demanded an update on the ring and Hellgate. In person. I agreed to meet with him later, after my all-important reunion.
Rohan and Drio came home with a location where they’d be sure to find Hybris in three days. Wearing his Torture Time smile, Drio said that Durukti had “shared” that Hybris had been methodically hunting down the demons that had gone after her for the rumors we’d planted on the demon dark web. That’s why she’d been so hard to find. She’d given up human pursuits for demon ones and, in three days, she planned to complete her final demon vendetta.
Most witches returned to their homes and their families at night. The Rasha, however, stayed on the premises, and with the boarding school as our hu
b, during the day it was abuzz with activity. So when the guys arrived back at the school, the number of people waiting to greet them was huge. By this point, everyone knew what killing Hybris meant to Drio and Ro and they were besieged by friends wanting updates.
Unable to wait patiently a second longer and entirely uncaring of how girly and undignified it was, I ran at my boyfriend, jumping on him and kissing him. Rohan planted an awesome smack on me, to a soundtrack of hooting and whistling. His kisses ranked second-to-none, but even better was that first hug, when I was lost in his musky iron scent with his arms circling me like the haven they were.
“I missed you,” he murmured into my hair.
I tightened my arms around him, pressing my face into the crook of his neck and inhaling deeply. As busy and happy as I’d been while he was gone, having him back made the world a little brighter. My boyfriend and I had gotten very creative with FaceTime whenever he was in range in India, but it wasn’t the same as having him with me.
“Guess what?” he said.
I slid off him. “What?”
“I finished Asha’s song. The album is written.”
“Ohmigod!” I did a fancy high-five that left him laughing and staring at me like I was a goofball. “I’m so proud of you. What about things with your mom?”
He made a so-so motion with his hand. “We’re keeping our conversations to scheduling the rest of our studio time. We’ll get there. Dealing with my fears around the dark magic, finding peace with Asha’s death, that was the hard stuff, but I tackled it.”
“Because you’re amazing.”
He winked at me. “That too. But also because I had you in my corner, and it’s ‘fate of the world’ time. Being anything less than a hundred percent for this battle? It’s not who I want to be.”
It wasn’t who I wanted to be either. I kissed my boyfriend. “I have to go see a witch about a headache.”
I veered through the clusters of people making their way through the corridor on their way to training or back from hunting and meeting to debrief, finding Rivka with Shivani and Jezebel in the computer lab, discussing some archival note in the database.
I discreetly wiped off my sweaty palms, my pulse racing, and my entire body wanting to flee. My headache had reached epic proportions, between the memories flying fast and furious of having Lilith inside me, the yawning nothingness I’d endured in the Tomb of Endless Night, and my time with Mandelbaum that had left me losing my grip on reality. Even with all that, part of me was still rationalizing that I could tough it out and keep my head off-limits. I dug my nails into my palms, forcing myself to croak out the words.
“I need help.” The three witches looked up at me. I explained about the ongoing headaches that defied both magic and medicine.
“How long have you been suffering?” Shivani asked in her posh British accent.
“Weeks. And I was wondering…” I swallowed. “If, Rivka, you could check me out.”
She wasn’t Esther and she’d never hold the same importance as Esther had for me, but Rivka was her sister, and she’d become an ally and a friend of sorts. I’d trusted her with my parents, now I had to trust her with myself.
My headache pulsed more insistently, like it was weighing in.
Dizzy, I braced a hand against the wall.
“Maybe you should wait until the pain lessens a bit,” Jezebel said.
Rivka nodded. “Even the magic to examine you could make things worse.”
“There’s never going to be an ideal time to do this, and I want to be at my strongest for the fight ahead.” I’d dealt with my demons in making this choice; I’d handle any pain.
The three of them escorted me to my second-floor dorm room. Now that I’d made my decision, it was as if the last bit of my reserves snapped. The pain became so overwhelming that the tiniest bit of light was a red-hot needle piercing my skull. I kept my eyes shut and let them lead me. I couldn’t even muster the energy to be annoyed at Jezebel practically breathing down my neck as we walked.
“Nava,” Shivani said. “We may have caught a break with that End Zone message. There is no start or end to the Zone. However, we’ve unearthed a very old tale of an unfinished corner of creation. A dark and barren place of earthquakes and bitter cold that God left unmade to challenge anyone who asserted that they were divine. The message may well refer to that.”
“Doubting it’s on Google Maps,” I said.
“The belief is that it was originally part of the Zone but early witches buried it in a kind of subsection,” Jezebel said. “No one knows for sure. We’re trying to verify it.”
Rivka was already going to examine my head. We could do a more thorough poking around and see if I had Lilith’s memories.
I took a deep breath and trusted: in Rivka, in the universe, and most of all, in my own ability to stay strong in the face of all this. I wasn’t at anyone’s mercy. This was my choice.
“My brain is your brain and may also have echoes of Lilith’s brain. See if you can find any memories of hers,” I said, cracking an eye to see their reactions.
The women exchanged a glance.
Jezebel pursed her lips. “I’m surprised you’re volunteering. You didn’t strike me as willing to die for the cause.”
You and I are never going to be friends, lady. “It’s war. I’m doing what has to be done. Which, FYI, does not include dying.”
Rivka sat me down and told me to keep my eyes closed. There was silence and then some rustling and the sound of the door shutting.
“It’s just you and me now,” she said. “Can you open your eyes?”
The room was dark. It helped. Kind of.
Four iron frame bunk beds flanked the single, wide window, now covered with an ugly curtain. Three of the beds were stripped bare, but I’d claimed a lower bunk. A poster of Taylor Swift hung by a single corner of tape above the scratched desk, a remnant of a former student, and one wall was covered in quotes written in black marker, like “We never really move on. We just get used to the pain.”
Emo Snowflake would love it.
“Lie down and get comfortable,” Rivka said
Comfortable was relative on the thin mattress. I’d named every lump in this bed after sleeping on it for almost a month, but I found a position that worked.
She spoke in a low, gentle voice, guiding me through a series of relaxation techniques to ease the examination. Should that prove successful, she’d attempt to pull out any memories Lilith had of the ring.
I yawned a lot, but I also fixated on whether all the magic fuckery in my life was going to end in a brain aneurism.
“You’re not relaxing.”
I shook my head and then gagged. Note to self. Don’t move.
Rivka sent a warm, comforting pulse of magic into me.
I screamed, a cross-hatch of ward lines inside my skull flaring like exposed nerve endings. They burned against my cerebellum and if they took root, my brain would be redrawn, irrevocably fractured.
Dimly, I heard her call for help.
Ready to go scorched earth, I coaxed my internal flame into an inferno to eradicate the wards before they could rearrange my synapses. While my fire didn’t hurt me, the ward lines hissed, burrowing faster and deeper in response, so I extinguished the flames.
The ward lines retracted, pulsing faintly.
I had all my motor functions, could think clearly, and didn’t appear to be missing any memories, but I had freaking wards in my brain. Why? How?
I opened my eyes to find Rivka, Catalina, Raquel, Elena, and Shivani hovering over me. No Jezebel, thankfully. The headache had subsided, but my anxiety hadn’t. “Seriously? Wards?”
Rivka nodded grimly.
“Can you get them out?”
“I think so, but we’re going to have to induce a magic coma,” Catalina said.
“And if you’re wrong?” I twisted the blanket. “Will I be a vegetable?”
“We won’t be.”
My apprehension must have sh
own, because Shivani lightly touched my arm.
“Do you want me to get Rohan?” she said.
“Please.”
Raquel sent me into the old, creaky shower to wash with unscented products and remove any trace of hair gel or make-up.
Clean and slightly damp, I returned to the dorm room to find Rohan waiting for me on my bunk.
I snuggled into the crook of his arm. “Welcome home.” I started laughing, then winced because my headache flared for a second. “I’m broken.”
“That’s not really a new development though, is it,” he said.
I laughed again and then swatted him. “Ow. Quit it.”
Ro moved over and sat on the floor next to the bed. He held my hand as I assumed my relaxation position on the mattress and Raquel put me under. There were no dreams, no fire. I woke up, certain it had failed.
The women were gone and the smudgy rays of dawn streaked the sky.
Rohan was slumped against the mattress asleep, still holding my hand.
“Ro?”
He yawned. “How do you feel?”
“Exactly the same.”
“Wait here.” He scrambled to his feet and hurried out of the room.
I sat up gingerly, but nothing hurt. I prodded my skull and swore because a patch of hair over each ear had been shaved off.
“We required bare skin to work with.” Catalina said. She was followed by my witchy healers.
“Did you fix it?”
“Yes and no,” Raquel said.
“We removed the wards.” Rivka ran her hand over my head. “They were like a net cast over your brain. Underneath we found a veil of sorts.”
“Is that veil hiding Lilith’s memories? Did Lilith put it there? Did she place the wards?”
“It doesn’t seem like either were placed recently. Both the wards and the veil are so entrenched that they’ve probably been with you your whole life,” Rivka said.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 167
