Malik scuttled back a step, his hands raised in supplication. “There is a ritual. A cleansing. With half a dozen drops of your blood, I can remove all trace of the human, leaving nothing but Lilith’s essence, Lilith’s magic, in this shell for you to use as you see fit.”
“I don’t have her magic,” I snarled.
Satan considered our words. “There is no sense of Lilith. How do you know this will work?”
“The magic the human now possesses was passed from Lilith to her daughter. This one is a direct descendent, and as such, you can breed her with the same results. Your succession will be assured by the greatest demon progeny of all time. Allow the ritual and you won’t be inconvenienced by the human while you carry out your will.”
Satan eyed me. “Half a dozen drops?”
“Yes, master. Barely anything. We could perform it here and now. I could instruct one of your trusted guard through the process.”
Satan motioned for a zire to hand him an empty chalice. He elongated his nail and slashed his palm. Six fat red drops plopped into the cup which he handed to Malik. “Release her.”
The zire stepped off me.
I glanced at the monstrosity of a chuppah one last time. So much had been taken from me: dance, a normal life as a Rasha, Rohan, the list went on. But I would not let them take this, would not let them twist the one good thing I’d found and hoped for into something vile.
I unsheathed the small iron knife I’d hidden in my boot.
“Fuck you,” I said, and slashed my throat.
Chapter 22
ROHAN
A drizzly rain spat down on us.
Blades slick with demon blood, I scouted the perimeter of the forest, satisfying myself there were no more ambushes. The uneven forest ground was treacherous now that my left thigh had been ripped open like ground beef. I let the pain of each step sing, joining the howl of rage that had bounced inside me since the moment Malik had taken Nava.
I limped over to Ari and the witches he’d been working with, veering around one of our fifteen dead. Their blood stained the rich earth, drenching all other forest smells in a coppery bite that caught at the back of my throat. I added that note to the discordant melody in my head.
“Why the delay?”
Ari lay a thin wire around a pile of mulch. “We need to recalibrate. Malik opening the portal made something happen to the Hellgate set-up.”
I laughed bitterly.
Nava had happened. Why should the set-up be spared? She had this way of making everything sound so logical. Team up with Malik to take out Satan. No really, Snowflake, it’ll be fine. Sweeping me up in her certainty. Like an idiot, I went along with her every time, because that girlfriend of mine always landed on her feet somehow. Impossibly coming out on top. Constantly bending this world into her vision of what could be.
Except one day her luck, her will, wouldn’t hold and I’d lose her.
“Fix it,” I said.
“It’s delicate,” Ari said. “Give us a minute.”
“I appreciate the precision instruments, but we don’t have time. Nava’s in there unaided. She’s facing Satan alone.”
Shadows wove and danced around Ari. “Nava’s my twin. She’s been life-or-death important to me for years before you even knew she existed. We’re doing this right so that we don’t fuck up and lose our one chance of getting to her. Got it?”
Kane muscled between us and jerked a thumb from me to Raquel. “Get that leg healed. Babyslay needs you at full strength.”
Ari turned coldly away to focus on his task.
Favoring my right leg, I hobbled over to Raquel, one of the witches healing those of us who’d survived.
A shaft of sunlight pierced the cloud cover, filtering through the fir tree branches, but it was weak and cold, taunting us to take it as a beacon of hope.
Jezebel closed the eyes of a dead friend. “We should turn back now. Leave Nava to her fate before more of us die. This isn’t our problem.”
Raquel had to pin me in place with her magic. “Stay still,” she snapped, healing my thigh.
I leveled a furious scowl at Jezebel. “I’m so fucking sick and tired of your whining. Every single thing we face is your problem as much as it’s ours. As much as it’s Nava’s. Unlike her, you were born with your magic and you turned your back on your obligations. Nava was thrown into all this and has fought for what’s right every step of the way. You witches have just sat with your thumbs up your asses.”
I didn’t give a shit that she could blow me up six times over.
Raquel prodded my leg and pulled her magic out of me. “Stop it. We don’t need to fight amongst ourselves.”
“Come on, paesano.” Drio led me away. His green shirt was stained black with demon innards. “You think it’ll help?”
I tested my weight. My jeans were still ripped up, but my thigh was solid. “She’s alive. Of course, going through will help.”
“I meant,” he said, crushing a twig under his boot heel, “killing Hybris.”
“No.”
“Great talk. Grazie.”
A pair of fuzzy rabbits hopped past and my first instinct was to find Nava to show her. I looked blankly around the forest for a moment before reality kicked in and everything inside me hardened.
Drio watched me.
“I asked Nava that same question after she killed Oskar,” I said, picking up the threads of the conversation. “She said it had for a second, but it didn’t give her closure. Didn’t bring Esther back.”
“Killing Hybris is supposed to quiet this.” Drio tapped his head. “Sort me out.”
“Dude, fuck your survivor’s guilt.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re shit at cheering someone up.”
I glanced over at Ari. “Try me later.”
“Nava isn’t dead. She’s like a cockroach.” Drio raised his hands against my glower. “I never meant it as an insult. She’s hard to kill. That chick is a survivor.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “She didn’t understand what I meant when I told her the cockroach thing. I should have…” He pushed my shoulder. “Don’t fuck it up.”
“How am I fucking it up?”
“You’re very rigid and your girlfriend just got mad power.”
“I’ve never had a problem with her power.”
“She’s known you as her leader, her babysitter, and a rock star. She’s had more magic but you’ve had higher status in all these other ways that mattered. Now you don’t and you’re gonna have to be chill about all this.”
“Like you’ve learned to be chill about your happiness?”
Drio gave me the Italian “up yours” salute.
Ari yelled that it was time to move out.
We were through in the blink of an eye, standing in an underground cavern, hewed out like the ant tunnel to end all ant tunnels. It was crammed with demons as far as the eye could see.
I swear I heard a record scratch as, in unison, they fell silent, staring at us.
The world swung sideways with a sickening lurch as Ari threw us all into the EC. His mastery of shadow transport was impressive. He bundled us through at light speed, the world a blur, his movements confident and his direction sure.
He brought us out into an enormous throne room, all marble and fountains. Water burbled in a soothing refrain.
The knot inside my chest loosened.
Nava was alive.
But instead of combat gear, she was dressed in a wedding gown. I never realized how much I wanted to see her like that until my gut twisted at the wrongness of her dressed that way for someone else. I was choked with a hot, tight possessiveness that warred with my revulsion at the entire spectacle.
At the far end of the room was a throne on which some supremely messed-up looking demon, presumably Satan, handed a gold, jewel-encrusted goblet to Malik.
This wedding would happen over my dead body. I broke into a run.
Nava glanced at the ugly-ass chuppah and brandished a small kn
ife.
“Fuck you,” she said, and slashed her throat.
“Nooooo!” I roared, a half-sob catching in my chest. The world fell silent, all music gone. The universe couldn’t be this fucking cruel, giving me the ability to finally avenge one woman, only to kill the other one who mattered right in front of me.
Satan half-rose off his throne, yelling orders to his guards.
Magic met magic, waves spilling through the room.
I pushed through everyone, blades out, slashing a path to Nava.
Malik was on his knees, his hand around her throat to staunch the blood squirting from it.
I grabbed him by the shirtfront and pressed a blade to his throat. “You’re dead.”
“No, babe. We need him.” Nava winked at me, tugging a tiny rubber pouch from under her arm.
She’d deliberately let me live my worst nightmare? I battled the urge to recoil.
Blithely uncaring of the hell she’d rained upon me, Nava grabbed the overturned chalice next to her and, scattering the drops of Satan’s blood on the floor, smeared her thumb through them.
There was a loud rip and the glamour on this room fell away. The demon court wasn’t light and airy, it was a dank cavern filled with smoky pits and dark rat-like creatures that flickered in and out of the shadows.
“I challenge you!” Malik roared and jumped on the throne.
Satan flamed higher, while the throne morphed from a white chair to the worst Hollywood cliché of bones and skulls. Their hundreds of red eyes tracked us, their toothless mouths leering.
Nava grinned. “Showtime.”
What the fuck had all this been? Had Nava and Malik been toying with us? My blood boiled. I jumped a zire, losing myself to the violence swirling in the aftermath of my misplaced fears.
It felt fan-fucking-tastic.
NAVA
Damn it. Snowflake was gone again, replaced by a very angry killing machine. Provided we all lived through this, I looked forward to fighting with him. Make-up sex was the best.
Satan and Malik were grappling on the throne, black tendrils seeping from the creepy skulls to wind around the demons. Satan looked unconcerned, but Malik recoiled every time the magic touched him.
“Fight, children,” Satan called out. “Slaughter each other and lay your bones at my feet.”
I could almost taste the swell of bloodlust as the battle amped up in a frenzy at his command.
“Malik!” At his quick glance, I made a plucking motion.
He yanked out one of Satan’s raven feathers and I jumped up to catch it.
Thanks to Malik’s heads up on Satan’s abilities, some crones in the witch community had been able to provide some antidotes.
Using the same smear of Satan’s blood on my thumb that had allowed me to break the ward around the throne, I rubbed it on the feather and fired it like a javelin into the barely visible walls at the very far end of this chamber. A sound barrier fell over everyone, good and bad alike, buffering them from Satan’s words.
His look of shock was priceless. Satan may have been ancient and powerful, but like lots of old entitled dudes, he’d gotten complacent and hadn’t expected me to strike back.
In order to get close to Satan, I was stuck on the wrong side of the barrier. I girded myself with a magic mental shield, then ripped off the silicon prosthetic that I’d bought at a make-up FX store in Hollywood, because it itched. The skin-like flap on my neck concealed a thin tube that ran into my shirt leading to a blood reservoir taped under my arm that I’d simply pumped to squirt blood after I’d “slashed” my throat with the prop knife.
All the ways that this could have gone sideways were staggering. Even though Satan only needed to buy my death for a second, that second still had to be convincing. And I’d had to time it to my friends’ arrival so they would be there to witness it.
Malik and Satan were two enormous flames, weaving and bobbing around each other.
The throne’s magic had eased off, hovering behind them as if waiting to see who to attack.
Satan got the upper hand and devoured a chunk of Malik, who sputtered, his flame dying down.
I fired my gold magic over Malik into Satan’s fiery form, turning my power into claws that pierced the heart of him. With him firmly in my clutches, I swung him off that ridiculous throne.
Malik’s fire engulfed the throne for a second and then he winked out, taking the black cloud of throne magic with him.
Oookay. Hopefully, that was part of the claiming process. The skulls lit up like a pinball machine, the light bouncing around crazily. Trusting all was well, I forced Satan away from the throne and the heated battle.
Witches moved in to hold a perimeter around the throne, taking on the rat demons that swarmed them as if killing demons down in the realm was just another workday for them.
I was so proud.
Now for the tricky part. No one knew where Satan’s kill spot was and magically, even with my new strength, I was no match for him.
He slipped my hold. A long, malevolent shadow slipped free from his fire form, undulating toward me like a tsunami.
I threw up a shield. The shadow crashed up against it, eating my magic in acidic spots that spread like spores. I fought my base instincts to patch my shield, allowing the acid to eat away at it, and bided my time. In the split second before my magic failed to be mine and I was at Satan’s mercy, I flung everything back at him.
The acid magic clamped down on him. Satan’s fire form crackled, hissed, and then was snuffed out, leaving Satan back in his muscled frame.
He rushed me, grabbing me and spearing me with fire.
I burned like a marshmallow in a fraction of a second, the smell of my charred flesh barely penetrating the searing agony that stole my breath. My body was yellow and black, the blistering skin burned to a crisp, flaking and curling, exposing the bone beneath.
The cavern swum around me. I panted through the pain, my pulse a weak flutter as it became harder and harder to breathe.
I barely had enough strength to slap one charred hand to the side of his raven’s head and pull Satan’s true name from his memories. Thankfully his name was at the forefront of the morass of evil in his brain, because there was no wading through that and coming out sane.
I slid the real Ring of Solomon onto my left hand. At least, I hoped it was the real ring. If Malik had screwed up and melted the wrong one before passing me this ring while he’d been pretending to stop my throat from bleeding, we were supremely effed.
“Rimazios. I call you.”
Satan flinched and I wrenched free, a blackened husk swaying precariously on my feet, clinging to the wave of magic working lightning-fast inside me to heal me.
“Rimazios, I bind you.”
He froze in his tracks.
“Rimazios, I command you to bare your kill spot.”
The demon cawed balefully at me, then tilted his head, exposing a single band of green on one of his feathers.
“Awesome. Thanks.”
Then I killed Satan.
Not gonna lie, that was crazy satisfying.
The chamber was empty. No demons, no Rasha, no witches.
No stupid wedding dress either. My normal clothing had been restored. I stuffed the ring in a pocket.
The skull-and-bone throne stopped flashing. Malik, in his fire form, slithered out of one of the mouths like a snake, then turned back into his human body and collapsed on the seat.
He wore the thin, gold circlet.
The court morphed back to its previous, charming incarnation.
As did Malik. Hearty, hale, and immaculately groomed as always, he even had two eyes, I was pleased to note.
“Looking a little rough there.” Malik looked down his nose at me. He didn’t inspire the same terror in me that the former Satan had. Not yet anyway.
I primped my curls. The dry hair broke and showered at my feet. My skin had sealed up over the exposed bone but that was about as pretty as I got. My healing magic
was working as fast as it could, given how exhausted I was. “I look delightful.”
Malik snorted.
“Where are my friends?”
“Not here.”
I planted my hands on my hips and flinched. I’d read somewhere that third degree burns were supposed to come with nerve damage that numbed the pain. How’d I get that part wrong?
“I threw them out,” he said.
I saluted him. “Lovely visit, but I’m off. You’re welcome, by the way, Malik.”
“Shaitan,” he corrected.
“Like I’m ever gonna call you that.” The air was like knives against my burned flesh.
He leaned forward. “Get out of here before I kill you.”
“Good luck. I still have the real ring.”
Malik glared at me.
“Which I would never use on you, o Imperious Evil One.”
“Which you could never use because you don’t know my true name and never will.”
I tapped my head. “Unless I do.”
“I told you, I didn’t trust her.”
I gasped. “You never told the woman you loved your real name? That’s stone cold, dude.”
“‘Dude’ me once more. Please.”
I grinned at him. “We’re going to have such fun.”
“Go destroy the ring.”
“Will do. Later… dude.”
Chapter 23
I emerged from the portal into the shadows of the German forest.
How much loss was acceptable for the victory we’d achieved? One person? Twenty? Or the thirty-three who’d died fighting because I’d asked them to? Was putting Malik on the throne the right decision, even in hindsight? Yes. But everyone who’d died had been a friend, a family member, and now there were holes in all those communities because of me. It was almost worse that none of the dead were my inner circle. Don’t get me wrong, I was beyond thankful that my people had made it, but it didn’t feel right. Why did I get to keep the ones I loved?
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 170
