The moment I’d seen him standing in the alley those many months ago, I’d been intrigued. The moment he’d first kissed me, I’d been besotted. The moment he’d trusted me with Asha here, I’d fallen head-over-heels.
I pressed a hand to my side like I’d run a marathon and couldn’t quite catch my breath, but the bliss of this new-found knowledge was better than any runner’s high.
He was my person and I loved him with everything inside me.
Was it tacky to tell him here? Standing at his cousin’s grave? Maybe when we got back to the car?
We needed to get back to the car.
“Ro–”
“It’s him!” A dozen women cut through the row of trees lining the nearby walkway. Forget any semblance of privacy and respect in this place of mourning. It was like the running of the bulls as they charged us. They were led by Tia, who’d forgone her red leather trench for a demure sundress.
Bitch shouldn’t have stood me up.
“Can I have your autograph? I know it’s rude, but I’m your biggest fan.” Tia’s voice quivered. Oh, she was good. As she spoke, she drew closer and closer to Rohan, away from the rest of the group who’d hung back waiting to see how he reacted. She reached into her black purse and pulled out a pen and photo of Ro from his Fugue State Five days.
“Quite the secret identity, Rasha.” Only we could hear her. “I had no idea.”
“Now that we both know where we stand.” He trained a glittering smile on her.
“You could kill me.” She glanced back. “But do you really want to replace the adoring look in their eyes with the fear that nightmares exist? You’re supposed to keep them safe, not terrify them.”
She held the pen out to him.
Rohan’s mouth flattened and he snatched the pen away to autograph the picture. The move was the starter pistol, the other women rushing him.
Tia took her photo and disentangled herself from the mini mob. “Do you get off on being with the big bad hunter, sweetheart?”
This demon piece of shit was fucking with the man I loved. Defiling Asha’s grave with her presence.
I gripped her hip, letting my magic flare between my palm and her dress. “I get off on being the big bad hunter, sweetheart.”
She jerked away, her pupils dilated. “Fascinating. I suspected something was up with the interview request, but I never imagined this.”
Adrenaline flooded my system, but I’d only used my magic, not Lilith’s. My rage blew away some of my achiness. The hard part was not eviscerating Tia on the spot.
“Tia!” A petite Asian woman held up a signed photo, triumphant.
I jerked my hands behind my back, shutting my magic down.
“Way to go, D’arcy!” Tia said. “Told you he was a class act.”
“Holy moly.” A woman in a dress patterned with cats was standing on Asha’s grave. “Is this your cousin that died?”
“Please get away from there,” Rohan said, his voice strained, but still attempting to be gracious and finish signing autographs.
Tia raised her eyebrows and went to look. She stared at the grave for a very long moment, then started laughing. Doubled over, uncontrollable, gasping for air, belly laughter.
“What’s so funny?” he snarled.
“Ask Desiderio.”
Rohan froze, confusion morphing into horror. “No.”
Why would Drio know? Had this been a demon he’d hunted? But no, that was dumb. Drio always made the kill. After the demon who murdered Asha escaped, he’d honed his tracking skills and ruthlessly dispatched his assignments. His record since her death was flawless. I’d even creeped on his Brotherhood stats via Orwell one slow day, just to see it for myself. Every single demon he’d tracked, he killed. Every single demon he’d hunted was gone.
Every single demon except for one.
Oh. My. God.
The other women were murmuring and exchanging odd looks.
“Everyone needs to leave.” I clapped my hands together. “Yo! Now!”
“We don’t need to listen to you,” one snarked.
“Get out of here,” Rohan roared.
The women fled.
“She didn’t scream in the end. I’ll give her that.” Tia knelt down and petted the grave like she was complimenting a precocious student.
We were screened from prying eyes by the trees, plus, she had to die, so I blasted her, but she vanished before I hit her, reappearing behind Rohan and wagging a finger at me.
“You weren’t the demon Drio was tracking.” Rohan looked perilously close to short-circuiting, his left eyebrow twitching, and his body trembling like he was battling both shell shock and nuclear rage.
“No. But he was on my radar. The ultimate hunter. The pride of the Brotherhood.” She wrinkled her nose. “It was such fun to take Desiderio down. And look! I got two for the price of one.” She leaned toward Rohan, inhaled and shivered. “You are going to be a delight to destroy.”
Rohan lunged for her, stumbling off-balance when he swiped at empty air.
She was gone.
“Nee!” Ari and Baruch were sprinting our way. My brother skidded to a stop and grabbed my arms. “What happened?”
“The demon we’re tracking. She killed Asha.”
A howl of unendurable pain ripped from Rohan’s throat. He stared into the distance, his eyes blazing with a fanatical intensity. “We’re going to burn her world to the ground.”
22
It was a tense and silent drive into the downtown core, and even the cool art deco buildings around Olvera street didn’t lighten Rohan’s stormy mood.
I met Baskerville in a wide-open plaza featuring a massive twisted tree with exposed gnarled roots situated across the street from this beautiful little church called La Placita, Our Lady Queen of Angels.
Hispanic families dressed in church finery poured out the front doors, headed for the parking lot next door. Chic parents held the hands of little girls in white poufy dresses and young boys in white suits. Even the grandmothers set a gold standard of working it, sporting dresses in bold colors that showed off their every curve.
Baskerville had glamoured his blue skin and snout and as a result, looked more like a bespoke Wallace from “Wallace and Gromit” than ever.
The two of us strolled along Olvera Street, a tree-lined pedestrian zone, flanked by Mexican restaurants pumping out hip-shaking salsa. Two long lines of red painted stalls in the center of the street hawked a variety of products: Frieda Kahlo T-shirts, gold jewelry, sugar skull printed wallets, Los Luchadores masks, candles with photos of the saints, embroidered dresses, and miniature guitars painted vivid blues, reds, and purples.
Too vivid. The riot of colors hurt my eyes, the music set my teeth on edge, and the scent of churros made my stomach rumble in disgust.
I presented the demon with the tzitzit I’d stolen from Rabbi Mandelbaum. “We good?”
He tucked it into a suit pocket. “It’s satisfactory.”
I jumped out of the way of a little girl barreling down the street on a ribbon-bedecked scooter.
Baskerville handed me a hinged pendant covered in engraved symbols, dangling from a silver chain. He stopped me from opening it. “Not until you’re ready to use it.”
I slid the chain over my head, but could sense nothing magic about it. It was heavy for its size and cool against my skin. “If you’re faking me out with some dud, I’ll kill you. Ooh. Avocado sauce. Let’s try that.”
“Thank you, no. I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t be rude,” Rohan fell into step with us.
“Hiya, babe. Good timing,” I said.
Rohan still had that feral quality from our Tia encounter, emanating the off-kilter energy of a man on the verge of going postal.
I hustled us all into the shack of a restaurant that Ro and I had scoped out before the meet-up as the best venue to conduct our business. Aside from the galley kitchen there were maybe eight square wood tables with benches. A family of six squished in t
ogether around a table at the front eyed us warily, but other than that, the place was empty, the dinner rush not yet begun.
Baskerville glared at me but he didn’t disappear because one of Ro’s finger blades was jammed in between the demon’s shoulder blades. One wrong jostle, even to portal out, could kill him.
Ro maneuvered himself and the demon so their backs were against the wall, facing out to the stalls.
I sat across from them and ordered the tacquitos with avocado sauce, thanking the waiter for our tortilla chips and salsa. My stomach turned over at the smell of food, but if it meant keeping up “all is well” appearances in front of the demon, I’d muscle the food down with a smile on my face and ask for seconds.
Rohan popped the tab on his iced tea. “Gotta hand it to you. You’re excellent at ferreting things out.”
“What on this green and vibrant earth could you possibly want?” Baskerville frowned minutely at the tortilla-chip-and-salsa sandwich I stuffed into my mouth. “And please, spare me the posturing and the theatrics. I’ve already moved everything of value in the warehouse, so it’s no good threatening me with that.”
“Lots of on-call minions, huh?” Rohan said. “I want information. I get it, you live.”
“Information such as what?”
“Hybris.” I thanked the cook who’d placed a paper container with my two tacquitos drenched in avocado sauce in front of me, swallowed down the taste of bile, and cut off the smallest piece imaginable. “Where is she? We want every known hiding place of hers on earth, and a way to find her in the demon realm, too.”
“Oh, now I have no idea.”
Rohan jerked his hand on the kill spot and the demon flinched, all color draining from his face.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Baskerville insisted.
“Then who does? And think faster.”
“There’s an ooliach who frequents a, shall we say, less-than-top-notch establishment on Seventh Avenue called Deke’s. Go bother him.”
Something slithered against my leg and I yelped.
“Ah, yes. You might like to know that those are the poisonous barbs extending from my limbs. Pain upon pain, hellfire for days before you die. All if I so much as break the skin.” Baskerville smiled at Rohan pleasantly. “So it comes to you. Will you remove that very annoying knife or will poor dear Nava meet a slow and drawn-out end?”
Rohan retracted his blades.
“Bless your heart.” Baskerville stood up and straightened his cuffs. “And if it wasn’t already abundantly clear, please never call me again. My business is closed to you.”
I could only nod, busy forcing the tacquito down, but the moment the demon’s back was toward me, I nailed his kill spot with a thin current.
Buh-bye, Baskerville.
No one noticed the demoncide. The family had left, the cook whistled along to the mariachi music playing on his radio while he washed dishes, and the pedestrians were too pre-occupied with shopping to pay attention to what was happening inside the tiny restaurant.
Rohan raised an eyebrow.
“What?” I wiped sauce off my finger. I felt bad about killing him, but I wasn’t an idiot. I’d left Malik alive because he was too powerful and I was too drained at our last encounter to kill him. I’d pay for that when he next came after me, so I wasn’t about to look over my shoulder for another angry demon. “We couldn’t let him walk away. He would have retaliated and I’ve got enough on my plate.”
“No shit,” Rohan said, “but I thought I’d have to rationalize that fact to you after I’d killed him.”
“Yeah, we’re skipping the rationalizations now.”
Ro bussed our table, throwing out the garbage and placing the pop cans in a bin set out for recyclables. What a mensch.
My heart swelled two sizes. Maybe I could tell him now after he cleaned up my trash? Was that too weird? I mean, we’d change places before I said it. Hit the gazebo at the head of the street–that would be perfect. The thick ropy trunk of the sprawling tree with its deep roots would wave its leathery, dark green leaves at us in benediction and whatever mariachi tune floated over to us from the market would become “our song,” the one Ro would sing to me as he twirled me around the room, leaving me breathless with love and laughter.
I could tell him then.
When Ro came back, his features were grim. “I paid. Ooliach time.”
Or not.
Seventh Avenue ran through some nice areas but the closer we got to Matteo Street over in the Arts District near DSI, the more depressed it became. Various tent-cities occupied trash-strewn sidewalks in front of empty warehouses vying to be leased for film productions. Homeless people lay on the street watching planes rumble overhead, while the stench of grease wafted over everything from a nearby fast food chain.
Deke’s was down a couple blocks from the Greyhound Terminal, not far from the huge salmon pink factory that anchored the corner at Alameda. It was dark, dingy, and smelled like old Ripple chips. And that was on the outside.
The bartender looked surprised to see us enter, probably because the closed sign and locked front door were grimy with disuse. Also because he had two heads and, I’m betting, didn’t see a lot of walk-in human clients.
Sorry. Portal-in.
“Greetings and salutations, assorted spawn. We’re looking for an ooliach,” I said.
The various fanged, horned, and snarly creatures rose as one to their feet, hooves, and crab legs.
Ten minutes later, I’d decimated the bar’s pool of returning clientele with good old-fashioned magic lightning, discovered that kishi, these two-faced hyena demons were fucking batshit but would conveniently rip each other to shreds when they bled, and determined that yes, there was in fact booze too foul for human consumption.
While I’d single-handedly dealt with the rest of the demons, Rohan had tracked the ooliach. Okay, found him face-down drunk on the bar. Given his human form was about five feet tall and a hundred pounds soaking wet, the two empty glasses in front of him constituted a bender.
The weaselly little shit–did I mention they were weasel demons?–took one look at Rohan and his Rasha ring, and sneered. “Go away. I’ve had a really bad day.”
Then he lost his balance and almost fell off the stool.
Ro steadied him–by the scruff of the neck. “It’ll be your last day if you don’t talk.”
The ooliach hiccuped, wafting pickles.
I took a large step back.
“Whaddyawant?” the demon slurred.
“Where’s Hybris?” I said.
The demon held up one of his two furry, twig-like fingers, then passed out, hitting the bar so hard, he snapped two whiskers off of his snout.
Ro grabbed his arm. “Portal us back to DSI.”
“What about your car?”
“Fuck the car.”
Fuck the car? Yikes. I portalled us.
We landed in a supply closet on the main floor. My best option for using portal magic undetected.
I was half-jogging to keep up with Rohan, hell-bent for the iron room, when he swung us into the stairwell and almost collided with Rabbi Mandelbaum.
“What’s this?” the rabbi snapped. Dude’s kippah was half-off his head and his bloodshot eyes looked one more sleepless night away from total unhingement. He turned to me. “Deal with your mission so I can have Rohan back helping me.”
Rohan bristled. “The demon on our mission killed my cousin. So I’m going to take as long as I fucking have to to find her. Got it?”
“Watch your tone, Rohan. Your disrespect has gotten out of hand.” Mandelbaum cut a sideways glance at me, before stepping aside to let us pass.
Yeah, yeah. I’m the bad guy for leading your precious hunter astray.
Dragging the limp ooliach by an arm, Rohan flung open a door, and tossed the demon inside.
Torture time had begun.
It was obvious Rohan didn’t want me to participate (and honestly neither did I) and his movements with the blad
e made it clear he took no joy in this, not like Drio had when I met him. I would have left Rohan to it, but when I reached for the door he stopped, words on his lips I didn’t need to hear to decipher: please don’t leave me alone, not in this darkness.
My ass went numb from the iron floor, plus weird green demon fluids that had missed the drain had soaked my shoes, but I stayed. If my boyfriend was going to lose it, I needed to be there.
We never got Tia’s location in the demon realm, and by the time the ooliach gave up the address of her son’s place in the valley, Rohan was bathed in sweat and there wasn’t a lot left of the demon.
Rohan pulled out his phone and hit a number, ignoring the twitching creature at his feet.
“How were the funerals?” On speakerphone, Drio sounded uncharacteristically somber, the usual sexiness of his Italian-accented English muted. I couldn’t help the small stab of loss at hearing his voice for the first time since he’d become, if not my enemy, no longer my friend, either.
There was a rustling on Drio’s end. “Say something, paesano. What’s up?”
“The demon Nava and I are tracking? Hybris. She killed Asha. It wasn’t the one you were after.”
Dead silence from Drio.
The ooliach jerked and splooshed out some more gross fluid.
“I need you here,” Rohan said.
“No. You have to kill Hybris.”
“Fuck, Drio.” Ro raked a hand through his hair. “You don’t need absolution. You have as much right to take her down as I do.”
“It’s not that.” Drio exhaled sharply. “If I come back, I’ll lose myself to the hate. I can’t keep living that way, Ro. It’s killing me.”
I closed my eyes against the quiver in his voice. Drio didn’t quiver. Drio was one of the deadliest people I’d ever met.
“It doesn’t mean I love Asha any less,” Drio said.
“I would never think that.” Ro sounded fierce enough to convince even Drio who gave a quiet, “okay.”
“Come back anyway,” Ro said. “You need to move on. There doesn’t have to just be one person.”
Drio’s laugh was harsh. “I wouldn’t go that far. I can’t stay stuck in the past, but maybe the present is good enough. Take that bitch down.”
Nava Katz Box Set 2 Page 52
