The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Fall

by Wilde, Deborah

  “Good one.” She wiped her hands clean on the grass, pushing her luxurious fall of black hair over her shoulder. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Yeah.”

  Time to get this fight over with. Lamia were only moderately dangerous and in my mood, this was going to be a quick kill.

  I got to my feet, but before I was fully upright the front of my chest was slashed open. The demon hadn’t moved. Brushing aside the ruins of my shirt, I touched my fingertip to one of the three diagonal gashes across my boobs and hissed.

  “Lamia can’t attack from a distance.”

  “Yeah, demon daddy had some surprising genes. Gotta love being underestimated.” Jumping to her feet, the lamia flexed her fingers.

  Two of my ribs snapped. Her magic flooded me, a million spiky barbs ripping me up from inside. Paralyzing me.

  “Let’s wrap this up,” she said. “I’ve got a date. Gotta get back on that horse. Literally. It’s a kelpie.” She slashed at the air in front of her…

  …and sliced through my heart. I felt the pulpy mass goosh through her fingers, even though her fingers were nowhere near me. My heartbeat turned sluggish, trumpeting impossibly loud in my ears. The world buzzed in and out.

  The lamia licked my viscera off her fingers.

  Swaying, I crashed onto my ass. Blood streamed from my gashes; flaps of skin hung loose exposing my barely-connected fragments of heart muscle. I called up a red bloom of witch healing magic, trying to knit my mangled self back together.

  I attributed the sharp stab and loss of breath to my dying and not any kind of regret at the life that had been within my grasp.

  My witch magic pulsed faint pink and dimmed.

  I collapsed onto my back like a sack of flour slipping out of someone’s hold. My body was so cold, so heavy. My insides were fractured, my magic splintered like panes of cracked glass. So this was what death felt like.

  Something dark and powerful, a black wisp of something other, drifted inside me.

  Desperate, I hooked one of my magic splinters to it, and visualized tying the two together in a solid knot. My shredded chest began to knit itself back together so I reached for another wisp of Lilith’s magic and another, knotting faster and more furiously, my body repairing itself at warp speed.

  My magic re-up loosened the lamia’s hold on me. I reached overhead, grabbed her boyfriend’s femur, blasted the end, and hurtled the flaming bone at her like a javelin.

  Her hair caught fire with a satisfying whoosh, though it stank like mad.

  The lamia wasn’t expecting that, shaking her head like a none-too-bright puppy. Her mouth twisted, opening in a soundless roar that sent a flock of little brown bats soaring into the late afternoon sky like a rippling curtain.

  She dove to the ground with a high-pitched shriek that bottomed out into a ghastly moan, attempting to stop, drop, and roll. It just tangled the tiki torch up worse.

  I leapt on top of her, pinning her to the ground, and fired my electric magic into her kill spot deep inside her ear canal.

  She disappeared, dead.

  I beat the smoldering grass so the cemetery didn’t go up in flames, then marched back to my car, accidentally stepping on her ex’s remaining eyeball. His femur winked out of existence. Right. That meant he hadn’t technically been dead while she’d been eating him.

  My stomach heaved.

  Popping the trunk of my Civic, I got out the first aid kit and cleaned up my wounds. Then I chugged a Gatorade to replenish my electrolytes, checking in on my internal injuries. All was well. Strong heartbeat, repaired ribs. The dozen or so wisps of Lilith’s magic had dissipated, and while I didn’t perceive any other new wisps, I also didn’t feel any lingering effects of having helped myself.

  Esther had detected Lilith’s magic before, but I hadn’t. Would I be able to sense and use it again? Because that had been a handy little trick.

  I slid onto the hood of my car, soaking in the heat of the summer sun. Almost dying had given me some perspective. I’d spent the past month in limbo, waiting for Mandelbaum to make a move, for Sienna to show up, for Lilith to break free, and for Rohan to care.

  I was done being the girl who waited.

  The lamia had been right. I could be mad or I could own every fucking aspect of my life. If I was going to die, then I’d die trying for the version of my life that meant something.

  Using a selfie of Ro and me, I fired off a quick post on Instagram to all the followers I’d amassed during my party days, trusting those gossipmongers to do the heavy lifting. Can’t wait to be reunited with my guy. One more sleep, baby. #thatsmyrockstar #RoMantic

  Go big or go home.

  7

  I drove directly to Rivka’s house to update Esther on this new and exciting turn of events. She’d paused her light gardening to give me a quick check-up, then proceeded to subject me to a stern lecture about dark magic that essentially came down to “just say no.”

  My counterargument that my actions had been instinctual and I’d do the same again if it meant not dying failed to placate her. Neither did the fact that there was no spike of dark magic or any trace of Lilith that she could detect.

  “Allow me to list all the ways dark magic will destroy your life.” Esther pruned dead blooms off the rambling rhododendron in her sister’s back yard. “It starts with paranoia-inducing voices, then you’ve got hallucinations of giant insects out of the corner of your eye and itchiness where you scratch yourself bloody.” She jabbed the pruning shears at me. “And your growing debasement where you’ll do anything for the high, forgetting to eat, and screwing over your loved ones.”

  I picked up the discarded foliage with the puffy gardening gloves she’d given me and dumped them in the compost bin. “Is that what happened to Tessa?”

  “She skipped a couple stages and jumped right to the ‘burning up from the inside’ part.”

  I flicked an ant off my arm. “Lilith is inside me, which means, like it or not, this dark magic is inside me, too. Might as well use whatever is leaking out, assimilate it, and turn it into good magic by merging it with my own.”

  She snorted. “That’s conjecture, not sound logic.”

  “Tell me with absolute certainty that doing nothing won’t negatively affect me.”

  She pruned a branch with a hard snap.

  “Exactly,” I said. “You can’t. I’m trying to make the best of this situation and I’m happy to follow any advice you have.”

  “Focus on getting the Bullseye and interact with Lilith and her magic as little as possible.”

  “I will.” I lay my hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got a lot to live for. So I choose that.”

  It earned me a grumbled assent.

  Being somewhat busy, I ignored my boyfriend’s call in favor of a text that said we’d talk when I got to Los Angeles. We were doing things on my timeline now.

  Twelve hours later, I’d bought my plane ticket, requested intel from Pierre after tearing a strip off him for manipulating Rohan and me, packed, and was currently headed to the airport.

  “Emotions are going to be running high with you two right now,” Leo said from the back seat of the Honda. “Better to be in the same room with Ro for your next talk.”

  I popped another extra-strength Tylenol, wishing I hadn’t given in to my nervousness last night about this reunion and drank quite so much. Grabbing the bottle in the cup holder, I took a swig of water and swallowed it down.

  “Roll down the window if you’re gonna puke,” Ari said.

  “You are looking a little green,” Leo said. “I told you not to add coolers into the mix. What are you, sixteen and trying to seem grown up and cool?”

  I appreciated the teasing, since the coolers had been broken out at about 2AM. Why did the worst drinks always seem like a good idea at that unholy hour? As a result, my twin was still in pajamas, wearing the darkest shades he owned, and Leo was hiccuping softly, still tipsy.

  She reached forward to pat my shoulder. “Kane s
hould have come along for moral support so you could be distracted from how badly this could all crash and burn.”

  I shifted around to glare at her. “Your pep talk needs work.”

  “I don’t think you and Ro are going to crash and burn. I just know that neurotic brain of yours is envisioning all those scenarios. Like a little worker bee.” She hiccupped again and then stretched out across the entire back seat, singing some made-up song about bees.

  Ari eyed her through the rearview mirror. “There’s no room for Kane in the car.”

  I frowned at him. “Are you guys back to not speaking?”

  I’d asked Kane to come out with us last night, but he’d mumbled some excuse about demons that needed killing and taken off.

  Ari shrugged. “We’d have to be in the same room for that level of interaction. I’m refusing to buy into his issues, so Kane is avoiding me all together.” He pulled up to the curb at Vancouver International Airport. “You ready?”

  I unbuckled my seat belt. “Let’s go with ‘yes.’”

  The good thing about spending the flight knotted up in anxiety at this reunion was that it distracted me from my broken economy seat, my shitty entertainment selection, and the fact that I had to sell a kidney to buy some Pringles and a sandwich.

  I ponied up for the onboard wifi to see if Pierre had gotten the information I’d requested from him. It seemed likely that this demon had struck out at high-level people before Gary. Remembering the course my dad was teaching, I’d wondered if there were cold cases that fit its evil M.O. Other than the spawn possibly being attracted to cockiness, it was a fairly meagre demon profile, but I had to start somewhere and I’d bring a fresh set of eyes to it all.

  Pierre had emailed a PDF that was close to a hundred pages long, filled with a combination of handwritten scanned documents and computer entries. I opened the file, but I was shallow and curious and I drifted over to Instagram instead. My post hadn’t broken the internet, but it had cracked it. I ignored all the requests for details from my “very special friends,” meaning anyone who’d apparently been in the same room with me for more than ten minutes.

  Both #Rova and #Navan were trending on Twitter as possible celebrity names. Reaction over our coupledom was decidedly mixed. While some were happy Rohan had found love again, the nicest of the haters called me a small-town tramp.

  Vancouver wasn’t that small.

  I could have called them out, but why get bitchy when I could get my boyfriend back?

  I settled back against my seat, my knee jittering. As nervous as I was about this trip, I was way more excited to be winging my way to Los Angeles. Somewhere around my fourth hard lemonade last night, I’d had this epiphany about how amazing it was that I was going to get to publicly take my place as Ro’s girlfriend.

  I didn’t want us to exist in the shadows.

  I’d made a serious mistake letting him leave. He needed to remember how good we were together. And he would. It would have been nice had it been our choice, and given the mission, navigating our way to solid ground would not be without its challenges, but we could do it.

  We would do it.

  I’d been proud of my tap accomplishments and proud of how I’d handled becoming Rasha. Why shouldn’t I be proud of my status in this relationship? I was gonna be the chick that tamed Le Mitra. Take that, haters.

  But the best part of all?

  I was gonna be the girl who got to have Ro.

  * * *

  He’d sent a driver.

  The driver was very distinguished with silver hair, a chiseled jaw, and warm blue eyes. He had trim gold braid on his cap, white gloves, and the sign he held with my name on it displayed excellent penmanship. Had I been casting the role of driver, he would have been my number one pick, but it wasn’t quite the “Nava runs across the airport in slow motion, jumping into Rohan’s arms and crushing the bouquet he’d brought as he swings her around, lavishing kisses upon her” reception I’d fantasized while dodging fellow travellers.

  Not even close.

  Rohan Liam Mitra was a big fat coward.

  I wrestled the suitcase with the wonky wheel to a stop, managing to run over my own foot in the process.

  “I’m Nava,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Very good. May I take your bags?” The driver relieved me of my two giant suitcases, wheeling them smoothly out the doors of LAX and over to a fancy-ass limo parked at the curb.

  “Rohan sent a limo?” Fine. He was a coward with good taste.

  The driver opened the door for me. “Also his apologies. He meant to be here but there was a last-minute issue with his painters.” Painters? He was renovating? How permanent. “He decided it would be faster for me to get you and then meet him.”

  “Practicality. My favorite quality in a man.” I scrambled into the limo and the driver shut the door, enveloping me in air-conditioned silence. A massive bouquet of multi-colored gerbera daisies tied with a red ribbon lay on the leather seats.

  Guilt flowers. It was a start.

  I pulled out the card, pressing the bouquet to my nose. Welcome to L.A. Nope, he lost points for the generic message, though he gained a few for having a chilled bottle of prosecco and a glass ready for my drinking pleasure. But I was still alone because he’d prioritized some painters over me.

  His boyfriend karma was precariously in the red.

  I took a couple of deep breaths, shaking off my annoyance. I was in Los Angeles. That’s what mattered. Let the convertibles and palm trees commence.

  Yeah, right.

  Highway traffic was pretty much what I’d anticipated, though we bumped pretty hard along stretches of torn-up asphalt, and the trash caught in the scrubby brush along the edges of the highway didn’t scream glamor. Neither did the grafittied off-ramp signs and overpasses. The street names like La Cienega and Hollywood Boulevard were familiar, but since that was only thanks to pop culture storytelling, I was starting to feel like I was on a giant film set, albeit one that didn’t have very good production values.

  This giant urban sprawl was fifty shades of brown. Much like my mood.

  The city wasn’t what I expected once we got off the highway, either. For one thing, there were a lot of strip malls. In fact, there were a lot of low-rise buildings in general. I hadn’t expected so many places that were only one or two floors. It was weird. As were the black traffic lights (versus yellow) and yellow fire hydrants (versus red).

  Where were all the cyclists and pedestrians? Weren’t there supposed to be beautiful people keeping fit? Had TV and movies steered me so wrong? The surrealness of the situation intensified when the limo wound its way into the hills under the Hollywood sign along narrow, twisty streets. The houses followed a palette heavy on coral and sand, but as we climbed higher, there were more hedges and fences and less actual mansions to be seen. No sidewalks anywhere and still no people. Creepy.

  The limo pulled up to a wrought-iron gate set into a long, curved white wall. Tall bushes had been planted for privacy, screening everything from view. The driver got out and spoke into the intercom, then the gates swung slowly open.

  We drove up a wide, tree-lined lane and my jaw fell open. The property was secluded enough that there was no sense of any neighbors and so enormous that it required groundskeepers.

  Groundskeepers! Had I stepped into Downton Abbey? Or, given Rohan’s past, the Playboy Mansion lite? I’d had it in my head that Ro owned some modest place, so either I was wrong or he was deluded.

  The limo pulled to a stop in front of a mid-century mansion, all white and natural stone accents with a flat roof, with nary a Bunny in sight.

  The driver opened the door and offered his hand to me. I sat there, paralyzed. What had I gotten myself into? I’d never seen Rohan in his natural element. Yeah, he was big game, but it hadn’t hit me on a visceral level the way it did now, with the California sunlight winking off two levels of floor-to-ceiling glass. This home had probably been designed by some famous architect and cited
in magazines and shit. You know who’d designed my family home? Neither did I, because normal people didn’t know those things.

  “Miss?” The driver prompted me to get out.

  “You’re sure this is Rohan Mitra’s house?” I swung a foot onto the flagstone, waving off his assistance.

  “No. This home belongs to Dev and Maya Mitra.”

  I whipped my legs back inside and slammed the door, making frantic “turn around” motions.

  The door opened once more and Rohan stuck his head in. Gawd, he looked gorgeous. His hair was that slightly-too-long length that curled around his ears and was perfect to thread my fingers into. His brown skin was darker than I’d last seen and made his gold eyes blaze. “Seeing as I’m staying here while Dad is recovering, you getting out, Sparky?”

  I crossed my arms, which worked to both bolster my displeasure and keep me from crawling up his body. I stared straight ahead. “I think not.”

  When he didn’t respond, I glanced over at him. Mistake number one. No, he wasn’t feasting on me, his eyes slightly wild. He was pulling out his tin of candy coated fennel seeds and popping one in his mouth. “You sure?”

  “Guess I can.” I shrugged. “Since I’m here already.”

  I got out of the limo like a goddess descending from on high.

  We didn’t touch, not while Ro collected my bags and brought them into the house, even though the small of his back where his T-shirt pooled would have been an easy target for my hand. And we didn’t touch, not while we thanked the driver and not while Ro shut the front door, his arms cording as he reached it, arms that had held me for entire nights, arms that I kept thinking it was okay to touch and having to stop myself like there was an invisible force field guarding him, exiling me from his space.

  Here we were, in the same place for the first time in a month, and all I could do was stand there like a beggar at a feast.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.” We both kind of laughed and moved in for a hello kiss which ended with us bumping noses, our lips half on mouths and half on cheeks.

  I squared my shoulders. At least he’d made physical contact. I guess that counted as a win. Had I made a big mistake in coming here without speaking to him first? I’d been positive he’d remember why we fit together so well and that we could work things out, but between the impersonal airport pick-up and this epic awkwardness, I wasn’t so sure.