“Like the Sephora Ultra Shine,” Rohan said.
“Is this knowledge from wearing or kissing?”
Rohan grinned at me.
“Gel. Man.” the demon rasped.
My stomach heaved. I looked longingly out toward the Vault and fresh air. The sooner we got this done, the better. “Hold him.”
Rohan pinned the demon down, frowning. “He’s not even fighting it.”
I repeated the paint job and spell on the metal spine and watched the colors cycle. “Be honest with me. If we learn the Brotherhood is behind it? What then?”
“I don’t know.”
The colors abruptly disappeared leaving the spine in its original state.
“No. It’s not possible.” I shook it. There had to be magic on it. I reapplied the vine pattern. “Galah,” I said more forcefully.
The same cycling. The same lack of a result. I smacked the floor.
“No magic.” I couldn’t tell if Rohan sounded relieved or disappointed.
“This demon didn’t just sit there and let the Brotherhood mount a two-foot spine on it, then happily bound off to do their bidding. If the spine wasn’t the binding agent, then something else was.” I painted the pattern on the gogota’s head. “Galah.”
This time when the rainbow cycling stopped, the gogota was purple.
So was one of Rohan’s hands. But the magic traces didn’t come from having touched the gogota, because his other hand didn’t show any magic. It was only visible on the hand he’d injured on the yaksas horn.
Rohan pulled the piece out. He traced the curve of the horn before closing his fingers around it for a second, then dropped it into my outstretched palm.
I submitted the fragment to the same spell. Same result.
“Purple is demon magic.” Rohan studied his hand. “When I cut myself on the horn, I must have gotten a residual trace.”
Unconvinced, I sprinted out of the room, not stopping until I got to my bedroom on the top floor. I tore through my closet, flinging hangers out until I found what I was looking for, then I raced back down to the iron room.
One more spell.
I clutched the coat that Gelman had magicked clean when we’d been in Prague. It still smelled faintly of rose petals, even all these weeks later.
The spell finished cycling colors and the coat glowed red.
“Witch magic is red,” I said, exhaling. Ari being right would have sucked in so many ways.
“Thus the simplest hypothesis is most likely the correct one. Demon magic is purple,” Rohan said.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was too simple. That there was no way the most underhanded agenda going on here was merely the Brotherhood’s modifications. I grabbed the gogota’s lone remaining hand and shocked it, hard. It tensed against me, too weak for its fingers to even close around my wrist. I pulled my hand away revealing the demon’s sticky, silver secretion and, with my free hand, picked up the paintbrush. “My hand should turn purple, then.”
Dipping the paint in the hawkweed solution, I painted the vine pattern on my skin and said the magic word.
Blue. Demon magic was blue.
The gogota yelped, a feeble pained cry. Rohan had sliced the metal spine off of the demon. The gogota’s fur rippled in tiny convulsions, blood tingeing it in patchy drops.
“Rohan!”
He flipped over the spine, and brandishing the paintbrush like a weapon, snarled the spell. A moment later, the wide swathe of the demon’s secretions that had dried to a hard resin on the underside pulsed blue.
Rohan shook the spine but it didn’t make the results morph from blue to purple.
“One demon in Prague and another in Askuchar with the same purple magic on them. Why? How are they connected? Whose magic is it?” Rohan thudded his head back against the wall. “If that attack in Askuchar was deliberate and my fucking Brotherhood had us bury it to hide something?” Pain etched his features. Rohan whipped the spine against the wall.
I flinched at the loud clatter, then lay my hand on Rohan’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”
The gogota raised its moist eye to mine.
Leaving the demon alive was a cruelty that I wasn’t capable of. Or maybe killing it was the cruelty I needed to enact. I sliced the tip of one finger off as purple proof before I killed it.
I barely needed any magic to finish it off.
23
Daniel finally checked in.
Ari and I met him at an out-of-the-way diner. Despite his police uniform being neatly pressed, the cop himself looked rumpled. Bags under his eyes, his hair somewhat greasy, and the hand picking up his coffee cup jittery. “You never worked with Mara, did you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t.”
The chipped white mug rattled against the ceramic plate when he set the cup down on it.
I blotted the coffee that sloshed onto the table. “Do you maybe want some decaf?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Have you been home?” Ari and I were crowded into the tiny booth across from him. The red leather seats were a dull sheen, especially worn in the butt area.
“No. I’m staying with a friend.” Daniel fiddled with his unopened creamer.
“Good.” Ari dumped cream in his own coffee. “You need to keep away from Malik.”
“Yeah, keep away from the handsome, funny, smart guy.” Daniel rubbed his temples. “Not a guy though, huh? We spent hours at the museum and he taught me about all kinds of art. I watched him paint. Watched him create such beautiful pieces. How could someone with so much passion and vitality be a monster?”
Ari and I exchanged concerned glances. “There are a lot of monsters out there, Daniel,” Ari said. “Some are human, some… aren’t. Unfortunately, we can’t judge their insides by their outsides.”
“That’s for damn sure.” Daniel pushed his coffee away. “I thought he loved me.”
“He might have, in as much as something like him is capable of it,” I said.
Daniel’s eyes flashed. His fingers twitched down toward the gun holstered at his hip.
“No.” I waved my hands. “Do not go after him. I know you hate him but you’re not trained to take him down.”
“Top of my academy,” Daniel said. “I’ve trained plenty.”
“Not for this,” Ari said. “Trust that he’ll be dealt with and stay with friends or close to other cops until you get the all-clear from me, okay?”
Daniel didn’t look happy about it, but he agreed, then saying he needed to get to work, left.
“Poor guy,” I said.
“We need to kill Malik.” Ari tossed some change down to cover our coffees. “I don’t trust Daniel to stay away from him.”
We walked back to the car hunched in our coats against the cold wet wind. While Ari drove, I called Kane, explaining that finding Malik had reached a new urgency, and we were on our way back.
Kane made us wait another forty-five minutes before exiting his room, yawning. “Chill out, taskmasters, I have succeeded.” He handed me a piece of paper. “Address and phone number. It took a bit to untangle the shell company that owns it.”
I whistled. Malik had some swank real estate in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour.
“I also took the liberty of looking for any security systems on the place.” Kane jogged downstairs, calling for Rohan to meet us in the kitchen because he was convening the “War Room.”
Ari stopped on the bottom step. “Did he just take my mission away from me?”
“Naw, I’m sure you’re equal partners.” Smirking, I skipped off to join Kane and Rohan.
The two more experienced Rasha went over everything they knew about marids, scrutinizing our plan of attack down to the last detail. Had they not been able to give us a secret weapon to take down Malik, they would have insisted on accompanying us. Even so, it was clearly killing them to respect the mission and let Ari and me deal with it.
Kane was still frosty with Ari, mostly directing
his comments to me.
Once the men were satisfied with our plan, Ari and I tore the weapons room apart, looking for the small, flat, iron disc called an amplifier that they’d instructed us to find.
“Got it.” I backed out of a cupboard, brushing dust off my knees. I twisted the two-inch disc between my fingers. “It doesn’t look like much.”
“It’ll do the trick.” Ari held out his hand for it. “Make Malik solid so we can kill him.”
I stuffed the disc in my bra.
He dropped his hand. “That’s not gonna stop me.”
It was totally going to stop him and we both knew it. “If you have the best opportunity to kill Malik, I’ll give you the disc. Emet Hatorah.” Truth of the Torah and the phrase that our grandparents swore would bring God’s wrath down on us if we dared swear an oath on and weren’t truthful. I didn’t believe it but I didn’t not believe it and I’d never broken it.
“You don’t trust me to do the same?” he asked.
I patted the amplifier. “Not for a second.”
We waited until night to breech the penthouse, all curved glass with sweeping views of the water and city. Real estate in Vancouver was so crazy that I was convinced we were all suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, nodding our heads about what a good deal a shoebox ground floor suite with no view running upwards of half a million dollars was nowadays.
The tower was outfitted with a state of the art security system involving audio, video, a manned desk in the lobby, and regular sweeps by guards. Which begged the question: who else lived here? Former dictators? Satan?
Though security wasn’t an issue since Ari was going to shadow-port us directly into Malik’s apartment. The issue were the wards spanning across Malik’s floor-to-ceiling windows that we bounced off of. And by “bounced,” I meant ran into like a car hitting a cement wall. While being twenty-three floors up.
“You’re forgiven for abandoning me last time in the EC,” I panted, laying safe in a tumbled heap on the roof of the tower, thanks to Ari’s quick reflexes. “I wouldn’t make a good smear on the sidewalk.”
Rain misted down on me. Misting rain was the worst. Rain or don’t rain but commit, you asshole drizzle clouds.
“I didn’t abandon you. Oof.” Ari shoved my leg off of him and rolled himself free. “I lost you. I got to the final location and you were gone.”
“I’m telling Mom.” I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering violently as I checked out the roof. A lot of pigeon droppings. “There’s no way off. No door.”
“Give me a minute,” Ari said. “I’ll take us down.”
The world lit up with a blinding reddish orange fire, accompanied by a familiar acrid burning. By the time dots had stopped dancing in front of my eyes, Ari was gone.
I ran to the edge of the building and leaned over to see if there was a balcony I could jump down to. It was a sheer drop. Malik’s apartment was underneath me but without rappelling equipment and an open window, there was no way to get inside.
I had to get there. Malik had my brother.
I sprinted to the other side of the building and peered down. “Ah, man.” I clutched the ledge. I really, really hated heights.
I pulled out my phone and called Kane. “How long would it take you to arrange a helicopter to get me off this roof?”
“If one could even land there? It would take some time.”
“Damn it!”
“Uh, babyslay?”
“Ari’s not going to be tortured again. Forget it.”
“What?!”
“I’ll get him.” I hung up and stepped up onto the ledge. My heart pounded, icy claws squeezing my chest. Since I didn’t like jumping off anything higher than the low diving board, I was rooted to the spot, sweat pooling under my arms and trickling down my back. I dug my nails into my palms. “Move.”
Inch by inch, I talked myself off the ledge, my foot edging off further and further until momentum took over and I fell. My high-pitched scream cut off as I hit the outdoor pool two floors down. I smacked my feet on the bottom, but didn’t appear to break anything.
I swam to the surface, coughing at all the chlorine that was now up my nose, but glad I’d chosen lightweight pants and a turtleneck for this outing and not jeans and a heavy coat. I might die of hypothermia but at least I wouldn’t drown.
I sloshed over to the heavy glass doors and tugged. Locked tight. My magic made quick work of the cheap lock, then I exited the indoor lounge area, closed at this time of night, into the hallway. No doors were harmed in the process.
The elevator required a biometric scan to access the penthouse, so that was out, but the stairwell only needed a quick short circuiting of the scanner. Kane’s teachings had been bang-on. People spent a fortune guarding the bottom of a building and only a cursory amount on the top and inside access points.
Lucky for me.
Malik’s apartment was the only one up here. There was no camera that I could see and no point in worrying about it. I crossed my fingers that there was no demon ward on this door, and blew it off its hinges.
The city was a glittering jewel set against a midnight blue sky, laid out for my viewing pleasure through two walls of windows in the open-concept floor plan. The floors were burgundy concrete and the fireplace was inset in a single black glass column that supported a bottom corner of what I assumed was the loft bedroom. Being a demon was a lucrative gig, because if Malik made the kind of bank needed to afford this place solely off his art, he’d be all kinds of famous.
There was no sign of my brother or Malik, not on the low leather sofa custom-made to follow the curve of the windows, or in the high-end kitchen, where an open bottle of wine and two glasses sat on the counter.
I raced past the six-foot-by-six-foot glass cube holding wine bottles in wood racks, taking petty delight in the trail of water I left. Around the other side of it was a small hallway.
Malik had my brother pressed up against a hanging black tapestry woven with abstract curves of flame colors. The marid trailed his finger along Ari’s chest.
My brother drew in a stuttery breath.
“Nava?” Before I could process why Leo was standing behind me with Daniel, Ari inhaled on a cut-off gasp, clutched his chest, doubled over, and collapsed.
Malik knelt down beside Ari and cradled his head.
“Don’t touch him.” I slammed my palm against Ari’s chest, shocking him, while concentrating a burst of electricity at the marid.
Malik burst into flame before it hit. Leo yelped at the transformation, but while the demon released Ari, he did so with an aggrieved sigh. “This is getting tiresome.”
“Then let’s shake things up.” I braved the heat pouring off Malik to press the amplifier to the flames in his shoulder region, attempting to defibrillate Ari with my other hand.
Malik’s flame nostrils flared.
I shocked Ari again, frantic.
The amplifier was working, forcing Malik back into flesh so we could kill him, albeit a billion times slower that I wanted. The marid’s right leg had become corporeal. The flames swirling around at his core flickered angrily but the disc prevented him from moving.
I should have been thrilled but all I cared about was the fact that Ari wasn’t responding to my defibrillation. I placed my hand on his chest.
He wasn’t breathing.
Malik’s neck solidified from flame to flesh.
I dug the disc deeper into Malik’s shoulder, his body now corporeal all the way up his left side. “Fix him!”
Malik’s fingers dug into the tapestry, white-knuckled and shaking, despite his level voice. “I can’t.”
“Then prepare to die.”
He closed his eyes, and fire cascaded down his right arm in a sheath. “You are such a bother.”
The disc flew out of my hand. I grabbed for it, then jumped back as flame spurted out of Malik’s palm and melted the amplifier into a useless iron puddle on the floor.
Smirking, the demon disappeared. Daniel
and Leo were gone as well.
I placed both hands flat on Ari’s chest. “Don’t you dare die on me, you asshole!”
One more shock.
After the longest moment in history, Ari wheezed in a breath.
I slumped against the wall, keeping a close eye on him.
“Where’s Daniel?” Ari’s voice was gravely. He waved off my offer of help, and using the wall, sat up.
“Why?”
“Because he’s the one who attacked me.”
“No. It was Malik.”
Ari shook his head. “Trust me. It was Daniel, not Malik. That wasn’t marid magic. My guess is Daniel’s a hantu.” Malaysian possession demon.
“But he’s a cop.” Silly me. Malik destroying the amplifier wasn’t us being fucked. No, our fuckification was reserved for a demon infiltrating those supposed to serve and protect.
“He’s also a PD.” Ari rubbed his chest, spearing me with a pointed look. “They all turn in the end.”
“This has nothing to do with him being a PD and everything to do with him being messed in the head.”
Ari grabbed my arm to lever himself onto his feet. We were silent for a moment, Ari recuperating, me feeling my brain explode into tiny splatting pieces.
“Daniel’s dad was a cop and with his training, he knows how to commit a crime and get away with it,” Ari said as we made our way out of the hallway into Malik’s main room, the lights impossibly bright.
I squinted against the glare.
“That’s why he isolated his victims first.” My brother stopped to catch his breath. “His human side was organizing the kills, even if his demon side was exacerbating his emotions and his need to get rid of the competition. So who’s the next victim?”
“Leo!” Daniel had brought her here and in the chaos, I’d forgotten about her.
“She’s fine,” Malik stepped into view, his arm draped around Leo’s shoulder. There was no sign of Daniel. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. Her voice was breathy, her eyes wide as she gazed upon him and only him. “Are you hurt?”
“Not even a scratch.” He smiled at her but his eyes promised me payback.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-3 (Nava Katz Box Set) Page 82
