Our magic wasn’t going to work. We were going to lose Benjy for good.
Unless…
My hand crept to the Bullseye pendant around my neck. Guaranteed extraction. No training required.
I clutched the pendant. The Bullseye was a one-shot deal.
So that was it, huh? Save Benjy now or save myself later.
At the wall, Rohan was bloody and his blades were mangled, still not any closer to making a dent as the digestive enzyme liquid rose higher. Any second now the way out would be underwater.
It was easy to be cavalier about the value of one life in the face of all humanity. But what about when it was one life versus another? When it was the life of a thin, pale child, whose glasses lay broken on the ground and whose foot was no bigger than my hand, against my own life?
If I didn’t use the Bullseye before Lilith broke free, I could kiss my happily-ever-after goodbye.
The stomach convulsed again.
Rohan lost his grip on Benjy’s foot.
Time slowed down to the naked desperation on my boyfriend’s face, a dirty Batman sneaker with blinking lights in the heel, and the solid weight of the pendant.
Rohan was trying to regain his footing, though it’s not like I would ask his advice on who to save: his girlfriend or a little kid.
It would be so easy to walk away. Say we’d done our best to help Benjy and keep this safety net in my pocket. I indulged in a brief second of a world saved and a long life fully lived at Rohan’s side, though ultimately, it was innocents like Benjy, like that little girl in Prague eating chocolate that I was doing this for. Embracing the darkness so they could have the light.
Fumbling the clasp open, I dumped the Bullseye into my palm.
Weirdly, it looked like a penny.
In for a penny. I pressed the artifact to the rock right about where Benjy’s chest was.
The Bullseye flared bright and shriveled in on itself, winking out of existence with a quiet pop. Failing to do anything.
“No!” I beat at the wall. How the hell could it do nothing? What kind of bullshit magic artifact was that and how, in every goddamn possible way for this to have gone, had I managed to choose the one path where everybody died?
All of a sudden, the stomach was silent and still. Even the air seemed to hang motionless. Then the world split apart.
Benjy flew from his fleshy prison.
Grunting, Ro caught him like a football to the gut.
A hole opened at the opposite end from the passageway out and the floor tilted. Everything was being flushed out.
Rohan hung tight to Benjy, who was sobbing but breathing, while I hung tight to Ro.
We fought the liquid and the backwards pull, heaving ourselves toward the way out. No way was I going to be expelled from some demon ass. For every torturous inch we won, we lost two. I cursed whatever magic was keeping me from portalling us out of here.
Sweat poured into my eyes and I felt like a brined turkey in this stomach fluid. I slipped, splashing down.
Ro grabbed my collar and hurled me up into the passageway, slogging up behind me. Finally clear of the stomach, we sprinted for the mouth.
My heart was in my throat, uncertain if we’d find a dead end with no way out, trapped by those jagged teeth. I was so slick with fear, that when I saw the pinprick of moonlight up ahead, my knees buckled.
I tripped over my feet but kept going.
The stalactite teeth pounded down with arrhythmic, bone-jarring thuds.
With those deadly gnashers just missing taking a chunk out of the back of his head, I could barely watch Ro jump through with Benjy. I wasn’t worried for myself. I had my death sentence and this wasn’t it.
I easily cleared the teeth, collapsing onto the cemetery lawn next to Ro who was holding Benjy, rubbing his back while he vomited mucus, but I scrambled up immediately at the sound of slow clapping, my magic at the ready.
There was no physical sign of Hybris and every sense of her presence.
Rohan hefted Benjy into his arms, the child hanging limply on him like a little monkey. “He’s safe,” Rohan called out. “We won.”
“Oh. You thought Benjy was the endgame?” No demon, just her disembodied voice. “So many assumptions you both make.”
A phantom finger traced the pendant.
“You knew about the Bullseye,” I said.
“I make it my business to hear the whispers in the wind,” she said.
I spun around, but she was still nowhere to be seen.
“The bigger the ego, the more delicious the fall.” Her words drifted on the breeze.
“Nava?” Ro looked at me, confused, his eyes searching. He went still, reaching out to touch the open, and empty, pendant.
A strangled noise punched out of him.
“You guys saved me.” Benjy’s voice was hoarse.
I pasted on my brightest smile. “Sure did.”
“Like we’d let anything happen to you.” Rohan ruffled Benjy’s hair, but when he looked at me over the top of the boy’s head, his eyes were damp.
Using the last of my energy, I portalled all three of us back to DSI.
Benjy’s parents let out cries of relief, running to take him from Rohan, and crush all of us in hugs.
Snuggled close to his mom, Benjy reached for me, winding his thin little boy arms around my neck and pressing a kiss to my cheek. “I’m gonna be like you when I grow up.”
“I can’t wait to see it.”
I managed to keep up my happy facade until Ro took me into the other room and crushed me to him. “We’ll find another way. I swear to you,” he said. “You’re going to live.”
I lay my head in the crook of his neck.
Esther was dead, Hybris was gone, and I had no way to get Lilith out of me before she broke free and took me down in the process. Not to mention, I hadn’t told Rohan I loved him.
Not my best Monday. Even if it was potentially the last Monday I had left.
27
Ro left to make up one of the spare beds because we were too exhausted to leave the building. The chapter head rabbis that had flown in had opted to stay at a nearby hotel, and Mandelbaum had moved there as well, so we had our choice of rooms.
I collapsed on the couch, yawning like my jaw was about to disengage and swallow someone whole, and called Leo.
“Fuck you,” she mumbled.
“Did I wake you?”
Another slurred curse.
“Wake up, sunshine. I need instructions on how to get to the demon dark web.”
Silence.
“Leo!”
“Mmmgh. Fine.”
I smiled through the gaping despair hanging over me, picturing her doing her little wake-up wriggles.
“Harry is extremely pissed off at you for killing Baskerville,” she said.
“Boo hoo. Baskerville would have killed me otherwise and I’m full up on being a target. Harry can get over himself.”
“Yeah, well if you want access to the dark web, you need Harry’s password.”
“Which I’m sure you have. He’ll never know and even if he does,” I said, “you’ll still help me because you’re a good person.”
“I’m really not. Good talk. ’Night.”
“Hybris kidnapped a little kid tonight, Leo.”
“Tell me.” Leo was fully alert.
I explained my plan and she gave me very precise instructions involving four different router websites, Harry’s login, and balsamic vinegar.
“Everything about demons is stupid,” I said.
“Agreed.” She yawned. “Can I sleep now?”
“One more thing.” I told her about the Tomb of Endless Night.
She groaned. “That would have been a job for Baskerville. I’ll talk to Harry, but don’t hold your breath.”
My stomach twisted because I needed that tomb to contain Sienna. I needed to stop her in the little time I had left. “Do what you can. Schmugs.”
She mumbled something that may have b
een schmugs and hung up.
Rohan met me in the hallway, holding two laptops. He handed one to me. “Got it?”
“Yes.”
We didn’t have the printouts of the cold cases with us, but I still had the original emails. We each took half of the cases we’d connected to Hybris.
“Check who broke the stories,” I said. “What photos do we have of the victims’ moments of humiliation? Is she in any of them?”
“Your hunch was right,” Rohan said, a half dozen empty Coke cans later. He’d been crowded up against me the entire time, but I hadn’t complained.
I’d memorized the feel of him: the flex of every muscle with each tiny movement, the way that the more he focused, the more his posture went to shit, making him slump against me, and how he couldn’t go more than a couple of minutes without rubbing my shoulder or laying a hand on my thigh, almost as if assuring himself I was still there.
Rohan showed me the list he’d compiled.
Hybris, in her Tia Lioudis persona, had reported on all the cases that had made the news throughout history. She was even present in some of the photos of the main events like Capone’s arrest and Nixon’s impeachment. She didn’t care if she was seen, because even once the internet was a thing, she figured we humans were too stupid to put all this together.
“All the judgment I’ve faced over the past few days got me thinking about how Hybris fancies herself the ultimate judge,” I said. “She preys on our pride, but what’s the one thing she’s prideful about? What’s most important to her?”
“Getting to judge without being judged herself,” Rohan said.
“Hybris believes herself infallible and you know what word is in ‘infallible’? Fall.”
“Nice one, Sparky.”
“I’m on-the-fly-clever that way.”
Using the copious demon intel I had access to, a fake profile, and a few well-placed, thinly veiled rumors about various dangerous spawn on the demon dark web that any demon with half a brain would attribute to Hybris, I slammed back a disgusting shot of balsamic vinegar, logged in with Harry’s password, and started rumor-mongering to set my trap.
Let the other demons track her. Rohan and I would follow that trail after she’d been smoked out of hiding.
Let her feel what it was like to be the one being judged. The one being hounded.
Hunted.
By the time we crashed, both of us were tapped out, physically, emotionally, existentially, you name it.
I peeled myself out of Rohan’s embrace and into something vaguely resembling a functioning human being late Tuesday morning. Fumbling for my phone, I fired off an impatient text to Raquel. I didn’t mention the Bullseye; it would just distract her from the more pressing task.
She texted back that they had a solid lead on the Tomb and were working on a safe way to access Lilith’s magic, but it didn’t look promising so did I have a Plan B?
I was a lot farther down the alphabet by this point, but yes, I did have someone else I could reach out to. I crept outside to Rohan’s car, grabbed Esther’s purse from the trunk, and crawled into the backseat. After rummaging around in her bag for a bit, I found Sienna’s bracelet, then I placed one of the spiky leaves under my tongue and tried to replicate the steps Esther had taken yesterday to magically call Sienna.
I infused my essence into the bracelet, but I couldn’t get it to latch. Without that subtle snap into place, I couldn’t push the magic out, letting it ripple back to her. If I pulled it off, she’d experience it as a sudden shiver, that “someone walking over your grave” feeling. It was the origin of the expression. Witches had made up the term as code and it had taken root in the non-magic consciousness.
Thanks to the amplification properties of the leaf, it was more someone stomping over her grave. Stomping sounded pretty good right now, my frustration rising with each failed attempt.
I spit out the leaf and set the bracelet to one side, taking ten minutes to run through a series of meditation and centering exercises that I had used back in my performing days. Stage fright had nothing on the looming end of my life.
I rubbed my eyes. I had to make the time I had left count.
With a fresh leaf and a fresh attitude, I tried again. This time, I felt the snap. I think. It was either incredibly subtle or a figment of my imagination. I’d try again after I’d dosed myself up with java.
I tucked the Ziplock bag and bracelet into my pocket and headed bleary-eyed into Demon Club’s kitchen, ready to rip the balls off anyone standing between me and caffeine.
Fingers crossed I’d find Mandelbaum.
But no, it was Rabbi Abrams standing in front of the small TV on the counter, speechless, his tea going cold in his hand.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
He raised the volume on the remote.
“We don’t know why the plane suddenly lost thrust.” The sleek-haired reporter stood on the beach, choppy waves crashing behind him.
“A plane went down?” I said. “That’s too bad.”
It didn’t explain the rabbi’s stricken expression.
Rabbi Abrams sank into a chair next to his half-drunk mug of tea, hunched in on himself. Everything about him drooped: his shoulders, his beard, even his masses of facial wrinkles seemed to puddle around his jawline. “Navela. It was the Executive.”
“What?”
“…about eight hours into the flight from Jerusalem to Los Angeles, going down in the North Atlantic,” the reporter said.
Back in the studio, the Asian American anchor with the carefully modulated facial expression cut in. “Ken, we’re getting reports that the crash was caused by seagulls flying into the engine. This is an incredibly rare occurrence. Can you confirm this?”
“Yes, Samantha. The black box has yet to be recovered from the private craft, but that is the speculation at this moment.” He touched his earpiece. “We’re receiving word that search and rescue teams are being called back in and recovery and retrieval teams are being dispatched instead. Our thoughts are with the families of the six men who perished.”
“Thank you, Ken. As our listeners may know, in emergencies, black box recorders…”
I snapped the TV off, white-knuckling the counter. I’d never met any of the Executive and had only briefly spoken to Rabbis Simon and Ben Moses, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact they were gone.
Rabbi Abrams rocked back and forth murmuring Hebrew prayers for men who had fallen from a great height and would not return home again.
Planes had extra fuel tanks, signals, all manner of technology that could save them. We were supposed to have engineered our way out of emergencies. But when it came to emergencies consisting of birds in the engine of the plane that happened to be bringing the Executive to Los Angeles?
There was no way to engineer our way out of magic.
I should tell someone, but who? Esther was gone and I couldn’t leave Rabbi Abrams here alone, praying. I poured myself a coffee, in order to feel like I was doing something.
The rabbi finished his prayer and motioned for me to join him at the table.
We sat in silence for a while, Rabbi A holding my hand in his gnarled old man ones. Water dripped from the tap into someone’s discarded oatmeal bowl.
“Rivka called me.” He spoke the words so quietly, I barely caught them.
Sienna had been there when Esther was killed. Rabbi Abrams and Esther had been friends for decades–he deserved to know the truth.
“Sienna was retaliating for Esther.”
“I’ve told Boris about Sienna,” Rabbi Abrams said. “It seemed likely she’d attack again.”
I struggled to find the right words that wouldn’t snap his head off. “Mandelbaum killed Esther and you’ve alerted him to the presence of a witch with dark magic?”
He stroked his beard. “I overheard one of his men speaking with him this morning. My Slovakian is rusty but apparently, maybe a month ago, Boris distributed photos of women who are leaders in the witch com
munity. Esther was recognized when Boris sent one of his Rasha to pick me up and the Rasha saw her. Apparently that Rasha is now missing.”
I choked down a strangled sob. If I hadn’t asked her to come to L.A. she would never have been recognized. Wouldn’t have been murdered because of a stupid chance encounter.
“You took precautions? With whatever may have been left at the crime scene?”
I dumped more sugar in my cup, even though the coffee was already cloyingly sweet. “Wasn’t there.”
He’d made his choice and as much as it killed me, I couldn’t trust him anymore.
Rabbi Abrams pounded his fist on the table. Once. Hard enough to rattle the honey spoon in its ceramic pot. “Those men on the Executive were my friends. Esther was my friend. This madness must stop before we destroy each other.”
I crossed my arms on the table and lay my head on them. “This is a disaster.”
“Sienna has to pay for what she did and Rasha are best equipped to apprehend her.”
“No, the witches should do that.”
“You can’t protect her,” he said.
Wearily, I lifted my head. “I’m not trying to protect Sienna. I’m trying to protect the Rasha who are the good guys. Sienna isn’t using demons against us. She’s using animals and, well, us. If she knows we’re coming for her, she’ll throw everything, everyone, at us. How do we protect ourselves when any living creature could be a threat? I can’t–”
I shivered, my entire body breaking out in goosebumps. I rubbed my arms briskly against the shuddering that I couldn’t stop. Sienna was calling me, but I had no way of magically picking up the phone.
The shivering grew worse, more insistent. My teeth chattered.
Rabbi Abrams maneuvered himself to his feet, holding tight to the table’s edge for balance. “Navela?”
“Quit it! I heard you!”
He stepped back in alarm. Great. Now he thought I was crazy.
“I have to go,” I said.
Nodding, he shuffled out of the room. “There are calls I need to make. The families…” He stopped in the doorway and turned back. “Maybe you should go home.”
“Is that a threat or concern?” I flinched at the hurt flashing across his face.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Fall Page 28
