“You going to be okay?” she asked.
I scraped some loose strands back. “Sure.” At least until the first time I saw Lily and Rohan together. “You know me. Besides, now we can go trolling for boys together.” She didn’t answer. “Unless of course you’ve caught one?”
“Catch and release, but what a spectacular expedition.”
“Do tell.” I twisted my ponytail into the elastic band.
“Kane and I bonded,” she said meaningfully.
I stabbed my head with a bobby pin. “Huh? But he…? What about Ari?” I couldn’t figure out which part of her statement to get more indignant over.
She snorted. “I went out with Kane and Ari. Drinks were had. Kane decided he loved me.”
“Bitch. I’m his love bug.”
“Tough titties. You’ve been displaced. He introduced me to a friend of his.”
“Who?”
The fridge open and shut on her end. “A Lucas, Marcus, someone. Maybe it was Jason. What’s important is that I could pick his manaconda out of a police line-up.”
“Never use that word again.” I tightened my ponytail. “How were my boys?”
“Ari is playing hard-to-get. He’s got game. When did that happen?”
“No idea. But it’s about time.”
Rohan came out of the shower, hair damp, but dressed and ready to go.
“Gotta run. Schmugs, babe.”
“Schmugs,” she said and hung up.
“Schmugs?” Rohan asked.
“Leo. It’s an old goblin word for good-bye.”
“You are so full of shit,” he said.
“Good thing I’m cute. Come on, Rasha, let’s go make sure Gelman’s all right.”
Her trashed hotel room and signs of struggle proved that nothing was all right. I sank onto the bed with a low moan. “This is my fault.”
Rohan sat down beside me. “Nava, we don’t even know what this is. There could be any number of explanations for what happened. Gelman is a witch. Who knows what else she was involved in? You don’t know much about her.”
“You’re wrong. This was on me.” I walked over to the window, fingering the torn curtain dangling precariously from the broken rod to peer outside, as if I’d catch her down on the street strolling back to the hotel without a care in the world. When I released the fabric, my hand was sticky. I grabbed the edge, twisting the curtain into the light.
“Oh.” The fabric glistened with a familiar silver substance. It trailed down the wall, hardening in a small pool on the carpet.
Rohan caught me before my knees hit the ground. “What?” He inhaled in a hiss when he saw the secretion.
I looked at him bleakly. “The Brotherhood is using demons.”
26
I sat on the floor, next to the gogota’s slime. I couldn’t stop poking at it. If I did it enough times, maybe it would become something else. Take away the fierce sting of hurt. I’d barely been Rasha for any time at all, and still, the magnitude of this betrayal stole my breath away.
We killed demons. We didn’t modify them to be more effective and send them after our enemies. Except, it seemed we did. Someone in the Brotherhood did and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who’d be able to pull something like that off.
If I was devastated, Rohan was shell-shocked. He stood in the middle of the room, just blank. It scared me. “You’re right,” I babbled, watching him desperately for signs that somebody was home in there. “I didn’t know much about her. This could have been anyone–”
With a silent roar, Rohan tore down the curtain rod. He threw it like a spear, the decorative tip embedding itself in the wall across from me.
I flinched.
Rohan raged. Overturning the mattress, punching furniture until his fists turned bloody. All in a silent, cold fury.
I curled up into a ball, my hands thrown up protectively around my face. He wasn’t going to hurt me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get injured from the fallout.
Eyes wild, Rohan spun around the room, looking for another way to vent but there was nothing left to destroy. He stood there, panting, his blades out.
I waited. I wasn’t going to leave him alone but I didn’t think I could get through to him yet. I counted guests coming and going on the floor outside. I’d gotten to seventeen before the savage light left Rohan’s face and something resembling him returned.
I grabbed the edge of the windowsill above me, using it to pull myself up. With hands up placatingly, the same way I’d treat a feral animal, I spoke. “What you said before about not knowing–”
“Stop.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. His eyes practically sparked and I could feel the wildness emanating from him. Rohan was still very much lost in the dark.
Not that I could blame him, but seeing him like this freaked me out. Especially knowing it was my determination to see Ari inducted that had led to this horrific moment. I’d say anything to make Rohan better. “Gelman was a witch. An enemy to the Brotherhood. I don’t understand how they could use demons but if she was considered the greater threat…” I pulled my sweater sleeves down over my hands, shifting at the look he threw me. “What?”
“The first gogota. They sent it after you. A Rasha.” The rage in his voice was absolute.
I thought about the Brotherhood. “I don’t really count, though.”
“You count, Nava.” His impatience was palpable.
It triggered my own fury. I wrapped the emotion around me, drawing fuel from it. “No shit I count, Rohan. I’m not fishing for compliments and validation. My ego is fine, thanks. But I am a female Rasha and to the ones who would stoop to doing this,” I waved a hand around the room, close to tears and hating myself for having no other way to express my angry frustration, “bullshit to begin with? No. I. Don’t. Count.”
My outburst defused him. He got himself under control with a visible effort, his blades sliding back into his skin.
Kneeling down, Rohan examined the gogota slime again. Maybe he thought things would turn out differently this time. When that failed to happen, he pulled out his phone, clenching his hand around it. “We can’t even call any other Rasha in.”
“No.”
“Not even Drio? You still don’t trust him?”
“With my life? I do. With Ari’s?” I shook my head.
Rohan paced in a tight circle. “You really think the Brotherhood is behind this?”
“If you have another explanation, then please, lay it on me.”
“You don’t leave my side. I’m serious.”
I set an overturned table back to rights. “For how long? The rest of my life? That’s not realistic and we both know it. Look, I’m still alive.”
“Barely.”
“But I am. Whoever sent the first gogota after me, obviously sent this one after Gelman afterwards. She was still unharmed early yesterday. There’s been plenty of time to grab me or kill me since then. Maybe they want me alive and behaving for now.” I pushed the chair I’d sat in when I’d visited back up to the table, picked up Dr. Gelman’s sweater that had fallen, and carefully hung it over the back. “Meantime, I’m going to hope she’s still alive, she’ll phone me like she’s supposed to, and that we’ll know more then.”
Dr. Gelman was a powerful witch and I wanted to believe she’d escaped this and was hiding out. Safe. I added this to the growing list of things I couldn’t think too closely about. Not until Samson was dead. Maybe not even then.
“I need to call Ari.” There was nothing more to see here. Housekeeping would find the mess and report a missing guest to the police but this wasn’t something Rohan could cover up.
I used a hotel phone in the atrium to phone my brother. “Ari?”
“Nee, what’s wrong? Why do you sound like that?”
I took a shaky breath.
Rohan placed his hand on the small of my back. A tiny touch but enough to draw strength from. He wasn’t even watching me as he did it, intent on scanning the lobby for anything suspic
ious.
I closed my eyes against the sucky knowledge that him being with Lily was going to change everything. He’d be faithful to her, careful with his affections to any other woman. Especially an ex-lover. Touches like this, even in a comrade-in-arms moment would be history. Well, he’d be going back to Los Angeles soon and we’d never see each other again.
I clung to that uplifting thought.
“Thistleton, Ace.” Mrs. Thistleton had been a neighbor of ours when we were kids. If we disagreed with anything she said, even a difference of opinion on the weather, her face fell like we’d driven a knife through her heart. Plus, she’d always had a million “requests.” Help her with the groceries. Walk her dog. It was impossible to refuse her without feeling like the worst person in the world.
Ari and I had appropriated her name, turning it into a joke password between us. Whenever one of us wanted the other to do something, no questions asked, we said “Thistleton,” and the other had to obey or endure guilt galore. I’d used it most, usually to get my brother’s help in sneaking me in or out of the house.
“Fuck that. You sound terrible.”
“Thistleton,” I repeated. This time in a steely voice.
He sighed. “Thistleton.”
“Remember when you wrecked the Beamer? Go.”
When Ari was sixteen, he’d fallen in love for the first time. The boy in question didn’t deserve it. To be fair, he wasn’t ready to come out. He’d humiliated my brother. Hurt beyond measure, Ari had run away in my mom’s car, a freshly waxed BMW 328i with buttery leather seats and a finely tuned engine. There had been an accident. He was fine and not the driver at fault, but Mom’s brand new birthday present, the car she’d been not-so-subtly dropping hints about for years, had been totaled. Ari had fled to our older cousin Yael’s place. Third cousin actually and the perfect hideout now. Distant enough that no one would look for him there, close enough to the two of us that he’d be welcome in her fancy, security-heavy apartment building without question.
He was quiet for a moment. “Is someone watching your back?”
I glanced at Rohan, standing guard over me. “Yeah.”
“I’m gone,” he said and disconnected.
Now Rohan’s phone rang. “Drio?” He listened for a moment, his expression hardening. I hovered anxiously, but didn’t get to find out what had happened because my own phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Nava.”
Chills ran up my spine. “Samson.”
Rohan told Drio to hang on, motioning for me to keep the demon talking. He moved next to me and I tilted the phone so he could hear both sides of the conversation.
“You had me fooled with that little act of yours,” Samson said. Before I could say something glib in response he added, “I don’t like being fooled, Rasha.”
“Poor baby.”
“I’ll admit, you’re far more interesting this way. I’ve never met a female hunter before. You should have led with that.”
“But then we would have missed out on all our good times.”
He laughed. “The best is yet to come.”
“Quit jerking around, Adramelech,” I said. “Tell me where you are and let’s finish this.”
“Are you that impatient to end things with Rohan? Oh wait. That was an act, too. Should have known. You’re not exactly in his league.” I may have caused a scorch mark on the floor with the electricity that spat from my eyes, but I didn’t respond to his taunt.
Rohan snatched the phone from me and hung up, resuming his call with Drio. “Come get us. We’ll be out front.” He tossed me my phone and walked off.
I jogged after him, holding my questions until we’d gotten outside. The front of the hotel was busy, all tourists and luggage. No one paid any attention to us. Still, we stood off to the side of all the activity, speaking quietly.
“Samson killed the two Rasha who abducted him after his radio interview,” he told me. I had no doubt Rohan would make him pay for that.
I clutched his arm. “Mirek?”
“No. Two of the guys from the bar. I’d only met them a couple of times. Still.” He touched his glamoured Rasha ring, an expression of grim determination on his face.
There was nothing more to add. Two Rasha were dead. More death was a certainty.
Drio picked us up. He looked up at the hotel with curiosity. “What brought you here?”
“Later,” Rohan said. Drio didn’t press him.
We drove out of town once more. Given the importance of the job ahead, of keeping my shit together, now was not the time to brood over what we’d learned back in Gelman’s room. I failed. Spectacularly. I leaned forward to see if Rohan was doing any better up in the passenger seat. His jaw as he stared straight ahead could have been carved from granite.
Once again, we turned onto the dirt road leading to the farmhouse. The fact we came in mid-afternoon this time, when it was still light, wasn’t a plus. It was desolate out here. Even the sunlight seemed stark. Trees ran along both sides of the road, their naked branches stretching out like witch’s fingers, casting twisted shadows inside the car.
The light did nothing to enhance the deserted two-story farmhouse either. The stone work on the first floor was black with dirt and age, while the horizontal wood siding that had been added up top was leached of all color. The rotting roof looked ready to cave in at any second. Only one window on the upper floor still had a pane of glass; the others had been blown out through time or Rasha encounters.
I got out of the car, sidestepping a pile of loose rock by my foot. If there were neighbors, they were far away and on the other side of the woods that bordered the property on three sides. “Why would Samson give us the home court advantage?” I asked.
“He said he wanted to kill us where we’d killed the gemini.” Drio stuffed the car keys in his pocket. “I’m sure he does, since the other Rasha warded up the farmhouse, imprisoning him.”
Ah. He needed our blood to break the ward and get free. “He couldn’t compel them into breaking the ward?”
“No,” Rohan said, as we tromped over the weed-choked front lawn. “The ritual affected that ability.”
“Then why not use the Rasha blood to break free once he’d killed them?”
Drio’s mouth flattened into a hard line. He pointed out into the field between the house and the woods. About thirty feet away lay two blackened lumps that I’d mistaken for burned hay bales. My hand flew to my mouth.
The stairs leading up to the front door were warped, twisting away from the house as if trying to escape. Smart stairs. A moldy sofa in a hideous brown velvet stood in the otherwise empty living room. Someone should have burned it and put it out of its misery.
A creepy whistled tune came from everywhere at once, as if broadcast on a state-of-the-art speaker system. There was a sick clutch in my stomach as I recognized the tune. “I’ve Got No Strings On Me” from Disney’s Pinocchio.
Drio flicked his eyes to the living room door. Rohan nodded. A flash of iron caught the weak sunlight as Drio flicked the ritual blade from some kind of wrist sheath. Then he zipped off. With his speed, he’d be able to search the house for Samson in seconds.
Rohan and I crept into the hallway, following it toward the center of the house where it opened up to the second floor with a wide staircase. While Rohan went into the kitchen, I glanced up at the cathedral ceiling and the grimy skylight.
In the second that it took me to look up, Samson appeared in human form. I shivered at the way his eyes tried to pierce my skin. Determined not to give him the upper hand, I called my magic up, letting it coat me in a bright blue glow. Lightning bolts slithered over my skin like animated tattoos.
Gathering electricity between my fingers, I played with the strings of crackling blue and silver current, twisting and stretching them like they were taffy. Then I flung my magic at Samson. The current caught him across the face and chest like a net. His glamour fell away in patches, revealing the ravaged skin of his
demon form, now bleeding from my attack.
Samson whistled a few more notes at me.
“Hardly a puppet.” With another ball ready to go, letting it dance over my fingers, I moved close.
Samson laughed. A cruel sound. “You have no idea how many people are pulling your strings.”
I chose to take his words as game playing of his own and not some demon intel about more people with me on their hit list. I patted his bloody cheek in mock affection. “I’d give a shit, Samson, but I ran out a while back and haven’t restocked.”
Red eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Come to save the damsel in distress?”
“Nah,” Rohan said from behind me. “Just watch your ass get pounded by a girl.”
The demon’s glamour fell away. As his peacock feathers majestically unfolded behind his humanoid demon form, there was a rush of air and a blur of motion. Adramelech flew across the room, smashing into the back wall hard enough to partially break through it.
I blinked. Drio now stood beside me, his fist still raised from the blow he’d dealt the demon. Note to self: being hit by speedster Rasha, bad.
Drio’s lips curved in a sadistic smile. “I didn’t want to miss any of the fun.”
Adramelech disappeared, leaving a demon-shaped imprint in the wall, and a handful of bent peacock feathers fluttering to the ground.
The damn whistling started up again. Rohan and Drio ran upstairs, while I retraced our steps here on the main floor. I’d cleared every room and skidded back into the stairway area when a commotion overhead caught my attention.
Adramelech managed to fight pretty well given the giant tail he carted around. He executed a low spinning kick, intended to take Rohan out, but Rohan jumped it, landing on the other side of the demon.
Drio blurred toward Adramelech but the demon judged the approach correctly, managing to jump up and nail Drio with a two-footed kick in the chest. The hunter flew backward, but recovered quickly, springing forward into two consecutive handsprings, his legs jackknifing out in front of him.
He caught Adramelech around the neck, twisting to pin him to the ground. The demon’s tail twitched once, twice, and then Drio’s skin started to bubble. Drio roared, trying to pull free as his arm burst into flame, but he was stuck until Rohan kicked him clear of the demon.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-3 (Nava Katz Box Set) Page 53
