The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-3 (Nava Katz Box Set)

by Deborah Wilde

  “I’m glad we could meet tonight,” he said.

  “Me too.” I picked up the extensive menu. “Do you want to share some appies?” Cole laughed. I peered at him over the menu. “What?”

  “You are the worst sharer ever.”

  “That’s harsh, Harper.”

  He thrust his index finger out, pointing at a miniscule silver scar. “Onion rings, your teeth. Yes or no?”

  “I have no memory of that,” I said piously.

  Our waiter came over and we placed our orders, with separate appetizers.

  “What were you up to today?” Cole asked. “Spa date? You look pretty relaxed.”

  Well-fucked will do that. I fiddled with the vinegar bottle, lining it up neatly with the napkin dispenser. “Some work stuff. You?”

  “The frat had a mixer with our sister sorority, but I bailed early.”

  “And dozens of women deflated with disappointment.”

  He pressed a hand to his heart. “You wound.”

  Is Rohan okay? I forced a grin. “What exactly does one do on a mixer? Not being of the Greek persuasion.”

  “We were handcuff bowling today. Plastic handcuffs,” he added. “It’s harder than you’d think.”

  Try fighting demon dogs and insane mermaids. Or seeing dead bodies. “Sounds fun. Did they mind you ditched them to come see me?”

  “Nah. Everyone’s pretty cool. You? Your job must be pretty intense. It seems you’re always working. Anyone give you grief?”

  “Not even a little bit.” I downed the last third of my beer, and motioned to the waiter for another before pushing my plate closer to Cole. “Potato skin?” He looked at me suspiciously so I made a big show of leaning back, hands up, and mouth firmly closed. He snorted, took one and then spun his plate to me so I could eat all his calamari with legs, since he only ever ate the ones that were ring-shaped.

  Over burgers, we caught up on old friends; he told me about a river rafting trip he’d taken. Our conversation was light and easy. Easy was good, right? A refreshing change where I didn’t have to wonder about ulterior motives or power plays. Cole was an open book. Adorable. The perfect transitional.

  “I heard you were at UBC for a while. After…” Cole dragged a fry through the blob of ketchup on the corner of his plate but didn’t eat it. “Should I be talking about this?”

  I scooped up the fried onions that had fallen off my burger, stuffing them back on the fat grilled patty. “After what? After I almost permanently messed up my leg trying to dance on it when I knew I couldn’t take it? After you dumped me when I needed you most?”

  He took my hand. “I’m not that guy anymore and I promise you, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  I don’t trust your promises. But that didn’t matter, right? I smiled, looking up at him through my lashes. “Regardless, I think you should make it up to me. Take away the hurt.”

  “You weren’t the only one hurt.”

  I yanked my hand away. “Excuse me?”

  “You shut me out. And I’m not using that as an excuse to justify my behavior. I’m just saying, there you were, going through one of the worst things ever and I went from being the guy you shared everything with to getting nothing from you. No matter how I tried to engage.”

  “Oh, forgive me for not being articulate and considerate of your needs when my life was crashing down around me.”

  His face suffused with pity. “You never used to be this sarcastic.”

  “And you used to be smart enough to differentiate between sarcasm and truth. Guess we’ve both changed.” I hastily wiped my fingers off and grabbed my purse.

  Cole caught my arm before I could get up. “You’re just going to run away? Can’t we discuss this like adults?”

  My body tensed with the urge to rip his hand off me and storm off except Leo’s accusations about me cutting and running trumpeted in my head. I slapped my purse back on the table. “Okay. Let’s discuss the fact that you were supposed to know that I needed you.”

  “I did, but I had no idea how to comfort you. It takes two people to be in a relationship and you weren’t there. I didn’t know how to express myself and it bottled up and what I did was awful. But I’m not the only one to blame for us breaking up.”

  I stared at my hands folded in my lap, rubbing my thumb over my knuckle in agitated strokes, my thoughts an uneasy jumble. This didn’t have to change anything. Mutual hurt, lack of trust, none of that mattered. Cole was perfect for what I wanted tonight. For what I needed. I didn’t want to be alone in the dark.

  “Do-over?” I said.

  “I’d like that.” In the warm glow of his eyes and the firm squeeze of his hands was a promise that he’d take care of me in all the right ways this evening.

  He called for the bill, pulling out his card to pay at the table.

  I wondered how our bodies would fit together now. If there were still secrets to be learned about each other. I smiled, picturing Cole above me.

  Gold eyes blazing. Rohan’s hard, hot strength pounding into me. The half-grin he’d given me when I’d come. His comfort and understanding at what I’d faced today.

  “Nava?” Cole tucked his wallet away. His anticipation turned to resignation when he looked at me. “Ah. Is this a rain check or so long, farewell?”

  “Rain check.” I gave Cole a peck on the cheek and called it a night.

  “How many did you take?” Ari set a fresh mug of coffee in front of me in the library the next morning. I held up one finger. “Lights on or off?”

  “On.” I cradled my hands around the mug, savoring the warmth and that first inhale of java.

  “I kept a flashlight in my bed after I saw my first dead body. Slept with it on for a week so no one would know.”

  “Did your nightmares get worse?”

  Ari looked off out the window, his gaze distant before he flipped his laptop open with a brusque gesture. “Social media profiles. Let’s start there.”

  Despite searching through a zillion selfies on all the major social media sites and several dozen more obscure ones, we didn’t find anything connecting our victims–not interests or even sexual preference. Though they’d all been attractive individuals in their own way.

  I stared at the list that Ari had written on a whiteboard. Of our six vics to date, Davide lived for rock climbing, Jakayla was big on animal rights activism, Reuben’s world revolved around pastry-making, Ellen was a moderately successful author busy with book signings and promo, and Max was a stockbroker who spent his downtime at flashy restaurants and clubs with different men. The Jane Doe remained the only question mark.

  Ari drew a line along the table with his finger. “Imagine this is the demon. It moves forward and at some point along this line, each of the victims comes into contact with it.” His hand closed into a fist. “Except we have nothing to anchor its movements except the victims’ deaths and there’s no pattern there.”

  “With that love symbol, I’d say maybe a dating app or site?”

  Ari tapped the blue dry-erase marker against the table. “Ellen’s sister told me she was still getting over a divorce. Not dating. Maybe a hook-up? Trouble is, a lot of those profiles don’t use real names. We could ask Kane if there is some kind of software he could run to search according to their photos but that’s going to take time because he’s away.”

  “She made a convincing Daenerys.” Of the multiple Daenerys cosplayers in the photo from the fan convention Mara had attended last weekend, she was the only one wearing Dany’s Dothraki riding outfit. I stifled a yawn as we scrolled back further, past Game of Thrones memes, and a series of photos of her and Daniel mugging at a pho restaurant.

  Ari rubbed his temples.

  I clicked to load more photos, going back about two weeks now on her feed.

  “Stop. Go back.” Ari stopped drumming. I scrolled up. “That one.”

  It was an innocuous photo of Mara at some club in front of a curved bar covered in silver mirrored tiles, like a giant dissect
ed disco ball. She’d captioned it “Playing wingman.”

  “She’s at Labyrinth,” Ari said.

  “The club Max was found at.” I opened another tab to pull up his profile, flipping back to photos of the night in question. He’d posted a number of them before he died. “What’s Electric Sands?” I pointed to a logo projected on the back wall of the dance floor in one of Max’s photos.

  “Holy shit.” Marker between his teeth, Ari grabbed the laptop, pulling up the club’s homepage. He jabbed a finger at the screen.

  “‘Labyrinth’s bi-weekly celebration of Arabic electronica, deep lounge, and trance with DJ Isra. Wednesdays,’” I read. I clicked back to Mara’s profile to see when she’d posted that photo. “Same night Max died.”

  Ari grinned at me and held up his hand for a high-five. This was huge. Two victims attending the same place on the same night. “Pull up our suspected demon list, then make a new column and add any demons of Arab origin that fit,” he said. “We don’t need to bother with ghouls or demons taking on animal forms. They wouldn’t have done this.”

  “Or ifrit,” I said. “They don’t glamour and winged fire beasts would not go unnoticed.”

  Ari swung the screen around to study the list. “Some subsets of daeva might fit.”

  “I still think we’re looking at an incubus or a succubus. Jinns pull that sex shit,” I said. “And we do have two victims connected by a nightclub.”

  “What if they’d been blackout drunk or high? Still unconscious and open to nightmares.”

  “Max maybe, but Mara doesn’t strike me as the type to go on benders. Sex though? Anytime, any place.”

  Ari ran his finger over the delete key but didn’t tap it. “You’d know.”

  “As would you lately.”

  He shot me the finger. “Male and female vics. I’m still bumping on an incubus and succubus working together. There’s a lot of enmity between those two.”

  “Unless we’ve got a bisexual demon.”

  Ari tossed a dry-erase marker up, catching it one-handed. “No such thing.”

  “There are exceptions to every rule.” I pointed to myself. “Exhibit A.”

  “True, but when it comes to incubi and succubi, they’re strictly hetero in their victim choices.”

  “Which brings us back to a team,” I said.

  “Maybe.” He tossed the dry-erase marker on to the table. “You up for some clubbing tomorrow night?”

  “Sounds like a plan. We can take the victims’ photos there, ask around.”

  “See who they were with,” Ari said. “Hopefully we’ll narrow things down more once we suss out the place. For now,” my brother stood up, cracking his neck. “Eat and get some rest. We won’t be going in to the cemetery until late tonight.”

  The second he left the library, I hit the shelves, bent on some spell-finding recon for my other mission. Once I had the gogota spine, I needed a way to test it for magic since binding would involve spellwork.

  I grabbed one of the huge demon overview texts off the shelf, lugged it back to the long table by the windows, and dropped it with a thud. No cloud of dust rose off the covers, though I coughed at the musty smell emanating from the pages. There was nothing in the index under “binding” and searching “compulsions” just got me a list of demons that had that ability in their arsenal.

  While both were a means of exerting control magically, compulsion was an innate ability done by a demon on a human, while binding, if at all possible, involved a spell done by a human on a demon. Ari believed binding to be an urban myth and that forcing demons to do our bidding was impossible, but the spine had to be indicative of something more than making it harder to access the kill spot.

  Hmm. Dr. Gelman had told me that the first Rasha were created by witches. The magic we used to kill demons and that the rabbis used to induct us had originally come from them. Maybe there was some clue in that? I grabbed all the historical texts I could find and hauled them over to the table.

  Six deadly dull books later, I shoved aside the heavy tome I’d been plowing through on the magnificence of King David. Not only was there no mention of witches in any of these books, there was no real mention of women at all, which was surprising since Jewish history was rife with important women playing a part in saving our people. From Judith, who hacked off the head of Holofernes, a massive evil asshat and enemy of Israel, to Deborah, a kick-ass judge, prophet, and warrior, to Yael, that sly babe who’d killed Sisera, the captain of the Cannonite army. While important Jewish male figures were mentioned on a regular basis in these books, the women were absent.

  But nah, the Brotherhood wasn’t sexist and my suspicions couldn’t be right.

  I opened the final text, inhaling a lungful of old glue and dry parchment, and struck a nugget of gold in one of the footnotes. Before David, it was still mostly men that hunted demons but, not having magic themselves, they’d needed witches to kill the spawn. David had decided to cut out the middleman. He made a deal with a powerful witch to create the first group of Rasha. Himself included. She’d agreed. There weren’t that many demons and so there weren’t that many men given the Rasha magic.

  Apparently, witches weren’t all that into hunting demons, preferring to focus on keeping up the wards between our world and the demon realm and stave off a full-scale invasion instead of one-spawn-at-a-timing it. The author bitched about how, in typical suspicious, mistrustful witch fashion, she’d only given Rasha a fraction of the magic that witches had. Just the bit pertaining to killing demons and not a drop more. So much for gratitude.

  I sat back, my mind blown. Wards on a global scale? Rasha magic only encompassing a sliver of what witches possessed? How powerful were they?

  Hang on. Wards involved magic, as did the ritual Drio had performed when he was trying to make Samson King reveal his true form. So where were those spell books?

  I studied each bookcase, the texts grouped by subject. Most of the space was taken up by all things demony, with a smaller section on history and… Aha! On the bottom of one of the bookcases was a slim volume on wards.

  And a giant empty space. I knelt down and snatched up only other book there: a tattered children’s picture book called “Witchy Witch and her no good, spooky bad spells!” featuring a crazy cartoon witch and her bubbling caldron. “Looking for something, partner?” was written in red pen across the cover.

  I was going to kill him.

  “Rohan!” I charged out of the library but he was nowhere to be found. He’d even put a lock on his room so I couldn’t search it for the missing spell books. If Ms. Clara wouldn’t have killed me, I totally would have blown the damn thing off its hinges.

  I was still fuming when I met up with Ari that night.

  “Two of the bodies were already cremated so we can’t check them.” He tossed a couple of shovels into the trunk. “But there is one other one we have access to.”

  “Who?” I’d spent the past couple of hours punching things in the Vault and the back of my shirt was plastered to my shoulder blades. No point changing just to dig up a grave. Letting Ari drive, I strapped in on the passenger side and rolled down the car window.

  “Reuben Epstein was buried in the Jewish cemetery and Cantor Abrams is on the board that oversees it.” Ari turned down the volume on the upbeat pop song playing on the radio.

  Moonlight swirled around the trees lining either side of the street. I lifted my hair off my neck, resting my head against the window frame. “No way he condoned exhuming a burial plot.” As Rabbi Abrams’ son, the Cantor may have been sympathetic to the Brotherhood but for sure he’d draw the line at desecration.

  We skirted the edge of the city on a wide six-lane road, traffic practically non-existent as we left the boundaries of Vancouver proper.

  “It’s a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” Ari said. “The board had recently changed the locks on the cemetery so I had to contact him and arrange for new keys. We usually have a set in our possession.”

&nbs
p; “Why? We don’t bury demons.”

  “There are some unmarked graves kept for us. Sometimes we need to bury other things.”

  Like human remains from victims we couldn’t afford to be found? I swallowed hard, picturing Jane Doe’s face.

  Unlocking the cemetery gate, hiking over to the correct grave, it was all fairly banal. Even the moon provided just enough light to see what we were doing but allow us to hide if necessary. Ari stopped in front of a recently interred grave and handed me a shovel. There was no tombstone yet. Most of the Jews I knew unveiled the tombstone on the year anniversary of the person’s passing.

  For the next little while, the only sounds were the crisp snap of our shovels hitting the earth, our laboured breaths sending puffs of white air into the cool night sky, and the occasional hoot of an owl.

  The rhythmic digging was calming in a weird way, so long as I didn’t dwell on why we were doing it. By the time the plain pine coffin was exposed, our sweat-soaked T-shirts were streaked with dirt. My poor, pampered first world hands were cramped and rocking massive blisters.

  We pulled the lid off and scrambled out of the gravesite, hands clamped firmly over our mouths and noses. The stench wafting out of the bloated, distorted cadaver was redolent of rotten egg that had enjoyed a trip through Satan’s sphincter along with the aftermath of a large meal of beans then been steeped once more in a putrid eggy bath.

  It was unfortunate that this was the moment my grade eight science teacher’s fact about how scent particles went up our noses popped into my head. Vomiting on the guy wouldn’t have hurt his appearance much at this point, but I still did my best to keep the splatter off him.

  “The maggots are a nice touch,” Ari said, peering down at the body.

  Poor Reuben didn’t look too hot after two weeks of decomposition with his blistered marbled skin, bugged out eyes and tongue, and his hair slipping away from the scalp.

  “You okay?” Ari said.

  I wiped off my mouth. “Yeah. It’s gross, but not freaky. Second body desensitivity?”