Nava Katz Box Set 2

by Deborah Wilde

  “He won’t lose me,” I said.

  “No. You’ll do that all on your own.”

  She was right; I was a fuck-up. Why continue to live and torment myself with my existence?

  A choking rage bubbled up thick and black inside me. No. Hybris was nothing. She was no match for the righteous babes I was descended from and she wasn’t going to take me down.

  Standing tall, I reached inside me for all the wisps I could access, bound them to my magic, and poured all of it out toward her.

  My gold lightning was flecked with darkness, closing around Tia like fingers. “Where? Is? He?”

  “What are you?” she wheezed, her body spasming.

  “I’m your worst nightmare. You worried?”

  “Worried about you damaging some fragile business relationships of mine with this harassment.”

  “Then kill us,” I taunted.

  “Maybe that would damage some fragile business relationships, too.” She winked at me and slipped my magic net.

  Ro shook himself, coming to. He pushed to his feet, shaking with the effort, like he was being pressed against the ground with a heavy weight.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Hybris said. “Stop chasing me for good and I’ll show you to the kid. Come after me and no matter where I am, I’ll drop everything immediately to make sure the little snot dies horribly. Your call. Tick tock.”

  Rohan hesitated, busy tormenting himself about who to let down: Asha or Benjy.

  I clamped my lips together so I wouldn’t yell our decision because there was no real choice here, but Rohan had to say it, not me.

  “Benjy,” Rohan said between gritted teeth. “I’ll kill you later.”

  Hybris laughed, seeming to grow taller. “Keep going. I’m getting such a rush off you.”

  Ro and I exchanged a look. I flicked my gaze to the demon and he gave a tiny nod.

  I slammed Hybris with the full power of my electricity. Her body bucked and flew up into the air, bowed over backward like a string pulled taut.

  The second Ro reached her, I crashed her to the ground, but even scorched and brain rattled as she had to be, she blinked out a full second before his blades whistled past empty space.

  “Not even close.” Hybris popped up, standing on Asha’s grave, her left stiletto leaving a muddy smear on the stone.

  She was cut off with a strangled croak, Ro’s finger blades jammed through her throat.

  I’d portalled us to her.

  She cupped a hand to her ear, completely unconcerned with the blood burbling out of her. “Do you hear his little cries? Back off for good, or no kid.”

  She wasn’t anywhere close to being dead. The trachea kill spot was, sadly, simply a rumor.

  Rohan ripped his blades free with a curse, his features stark.

  Hybris flicked her fingers and, with a whisper of wind, opened a portal. A cluster of jagged, sawed-off stalactites hung down at the entrance like teeth in serious need of braces.

  “Have fun,” she said and vanished.

  We ducked under the stalactites and headed into the gloom. The farther we descended, the steamier the air grew. It smelled like rotting vegetation.

  I called up a ball of magic so we weren’t stumbling around in the pitch dark, but something in the air kept sucking the light out to the barest flicker.

  I’d never seen Rohan so grim, his body locked in some kind of death-march. He was still lost to his emotions, and I needed his rational brain back in control if we were going to get Benjy out unscathed.

  “Did you like the ‘I’m your worst nightmare’ bit?” I kept my words light, straining to see any release of his tension. “Because Hybris was pretty terrified.”

  Not in any reality.

  He remained silent for a moment before coming out with, “You realize that’s Batman’s catchphrase.”

  “Like I’d know that nerd trivia.”

  “You’ve Googled everything about him. And you know why?” He paused and then clapped his hands to the side of his head like the Bat cowl. “Because I’m Batman.”

  “No, you’re a majestic moose.”

  His look promised retribution. That I’d probably really enjoy so, there was that, plus he no longer was walking like he was about to snap. Those were the only upsides because the rest of this journey plumbed the depths of sucking balls. A ticking clock hung over us, the going was slow, and my portal magic didn’t work.

  The passageway narrowed. Fat drips fell on our heads, running under my neckline and leaving a slimy trail down my spine.

  Algae coated the floor. Ro skated along one particularly slippery patch, almost wiping out and taking me with him.

  We slid our way deeper and deeper underground. The wind turned phlegmy, the raspy, wet gusts reminding me of my breathing when I’d had pneumonia, while the ground beneath our feet rose and fell unevenly.

  I held my weak ball of light up to the wall. It had the squelchy consistency of mud, not rock, but was pink and fleshy.

  “Ro,” I hissed. “This isn’t a tunnel.”

  Rohan pressed his palm against it, the fleshy surface Hoovering it up. After a brief struggle, he freed himself with a wet gurgle.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  He sucked in a breath. “Alive.”

  We crept forward, literally making our way to the belly of the beast. Every footfall sank into the spongy ground. Warm liquid rose until it swirled around our ankles.

  We threw our arms over our noses to block out the smell of half-digested food.

  My magic light cast a hazy glow over the stomach. The walls were soft pink, fleshy coils that glistened with a thick film of mucus. They pulsed with a faint pink light.

  There was no sign of Benjy. Had we fought with Hybris for too long?

  A rumbling noise vibrated up from our feet. The stomach walls contracted, the coils spasming and pulsing. Ro and I hung on to each other for dear life, trying to stay upright and ride out the convulsions. When it had settled down, except for the continued bronchial breathing, a weak whimper reached our ears.

  Ro froze, his eyes darting around.

  Most of Benjy’s tiny body had been absorbed into one wall, though his right leg from the knee down was still free, as was his bony left shoulder. The outline of his face pressed up against a filmy covering like he was wrapped in saran wrap.

  Rohan sprung forward, carefully slicing away the thin film.

  The second his face was free, Benjy started coughing, trickling milky mucus.

  I wiped his eyes and mouth with my sleeve.

  Benjy’s eyes were totally dilated. “It hurts, Rohan.”

  Rohan smiled. I hoped Benjy couldn’t see how forced it was. “I know, little man. You’ve been so brave. I’m gonna cut you out.”

  The ground bucked.

  Ro and I staggered backwards.

  My shoulder hit the stomach lining, sticking to it like velcro. My head was yanked back as my hair was sucked into the wall and gelatinous, slimy flesh slithered over my arms and legs, trapping me.

  A flood of pink liquid gooshed from the walls, soaking my feet and ankles.

  Rohan roared, thrashing. Every time he cut himself free, the flesh wrapped itself around him, grappling with him.

  The liquid rose to my knees.

  Benjy screamed.

  I let my magic loose. I was so tightly trapped that it rumbled around like a pinball on tilt between me and the wet flesh before the monster cave spat me free.

  I landed on my ass, in the warm, tingly goo, utterly drenched.

  Ro ripped himself free, jumping away from the wall and grabbing my hand to pull me to my feet.

  The entire stomach convulsed.

  Benjy’s face and shoulder were sucked deeper into the walls.

  “No!” Ro stumbled his way over the bucking ground and grabbed Benjy’s foot before that last part of him disappeared. He slashed at the walls, but the flesh had hardened into some kind of adamantine rock and his blades bounced uselessly off.
>
  My first blast rebounded off the rock and almost took us out. New plan.

  The liquid rose to our waists, swirling around us and trying to drag us under.

  I planted my feet wide, one hand on the slick walls desperately trying to keep my balance.

  Rohan kept at the rock, iron chips flying as his blades lost the battle, his face contorted in pain.

  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 mor
e 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 been 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.”