“You killed your own friend, Mara,” Ari said.
Daniel’s face pulled tight with grief.
“They had lives. Families. You couldn’t fully possess them like a pure hantu so you took them over just enough to drain their life force.” Ari veered off to Daniel’s left, so I went right, forcing Daniel to pick a target.
He chose Ari. Was it wrong of me to feel relieved? Didn’t care. Gun barrels were fucking terrifying things to be on the wrong end of.
With Daniel’s attention focused on my brother, I sidled in until I was close enough to knock Leo away, pushing her behind me.
Daniel groaned, a low sound of raw anguish. “What I have become? I just loved him so much.”
“Let him stand trial,” I said.
“Are you kidding?” Leo asked.
“Yes,” Daniel said. “Make me face human justice.”
“Nava.” Ari shook his head.
I’d never had a problem killing a PD when they deserved it, and if anyone deserved it, it was Daniel. But his humanity was radiating out at me from behind his hope-filled eyes and I couldn’t do it.
“I guess we’re not equals after all, Ace.”
“You are. You have to be.”
“You mean I have to save my own skin.”
“That too.” Ari nodded sadly and tapped his left temple.
“What do you mean?” Daniel looked between us, confused. “Arrest me.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m so, so sorry,” I said, and zapped his kill spot.
Daniel’s eyes widened in surprise and he disappeared in a cloud of gold dust. Right as a big bang like a firework echoed through the apartment.
My shoulder splintered and I stumbled backward.
Out the window.
Chapter 24
Fall thirty stories backward into the night and tell me you wouldn’t scream.
Wind and my life rushed past. Blood streamed out of the bullet wound torn into my shoulder, hot drops flicking against my face. Being shot was exactly as horrible as seen on TV. Gripping my shoulder using my blood-slicked, non-busted wrist, my nerves locked in full-tilt agony, kept me busy for the first ten or so floors but thirty stories was a really long way to fall.
I had to take a break from my screaming because my throat was getting raw.
Closer and closer the ground came. I fired my magic, but lighting is not a handy spiderweb and gravity continued winning. To make matters worse, using my power had twisted me around so that I now fell face down.
Time to scream again.
Fifty feet… thirty… twenty… This was not going to be pretty.
I closed my eyes.
A hand hooked around my leg. The world snapped into EC, the night sky replaced with a deep green light. We crashed onto the grass, landing hard and rolling apart. Light morphed from green back to midnight blue, thin clouds drifting slowly overhead.
Ari whooped. “I wasn’t sure that would work.”
His cheek had a smear of gold on it and when I lifted my head, the bloodstains on my shirt were suspiciously sparkly. Damn PD death dust parting gift.
I lay sprawled on my back, breathing through the burn, tears streaming down my face and my hand cradling my shoulder.
“Are you two okay?” Leo’s voice reached us before she did. She skidded to a stop, having run out the front door of the building.
“If you’re being flexible with the definition.” I started panting.
Leo whipped off her sweater, pressing it against my shoulder. “Nee, hang in there. Ari, do something.”
“I don’t have the energy to jump us,” Ari said. “We have to drive. Can you stand?”
Perhaps if I hadn’t been dehydrated, failed to kill a marid, and blasted a window open to fall out a penthouse window, I might have managed. As it was, I laughed long and hard with a tinge of hysteria.
Leo prodded my shoulder.
I screamed and smacked her hand away. “Don’t touch it!”
“I don’t think our healing covers expelling bullets,” Ari said. “I’m calling Kane.”
“Nooo,” I wailed. “He’ll bring Rohan.”
Ari sat down beside me. “Then you have to let me pick you up and get you to the doctor.”
“Nope, “ I said through gritted teeth. “I’m just going to lay here indefinitely until you get me some freaking drugs.”
Between the two of them, they managed to prop me in the front seat, Leo’s sweater packed between my shoulder and the seat belt, my broken wrist cradled to my chest.
We took Leo home first. She’d snapped out of any remnants of her demon-inspired daze, but she was furious, sitting in the back seat vowing all kinds of painful retributions on the marid. Swearing she was going to call in every single favor from every demon client ever. She ran out of steam midway through a visceral description of how she’d start his disembowelment. Between one word and the next, all her energy left her and she sagged forward in a limp heap.
“Leo?” I mumbled.
“I’m fine.”
Ari pulled up in front of her place.
“You want me to come back and stay with you tonight?” I may have only managed every other word of that sentence, but she got it.
“No, thanks. I’ll call Madison.”
“I see.”
She gave me a cute pout. “Don’t be mad. She cheers me up with orgasms.”
“Eh. I’d take that, too.”
She flashed me a wavery grin. “Schmugs, Nee.”
“Schmugs.”
“Keep the sweater.” She opened the passenger door, half twisting back to Ari. “Thanks for deciding I was worth saving, asshole.”
Ari flung his door open, limping to catch up to her. I couldn’t hear what he said to her but she rolled her eyes at him and he gave her a giant hug.
Then I blacked out a bit until my brother slapped my cheek gently. “Nee, stay with me.”
The blur of lights as we drove past storefronts made me nauseous. I pressed my cheek against the cold window. “Do people die of shoulder wounds?”
“No.”
“I’m gonna be the first, okay? I was born second but sometimes I’m first. First in my tap competitions. First girl Rasha. First at blowing up my life in spectacular fashion.” That wasn’t as cool an accomplishment.
“You’re not going to die,” Ari said.
I shivered, which combined with a bullet wound was totally indicative of impending death. “Why didn’t you ever say anything about your sleep terrors continuing? Be honest. Since I’m dying.”
“Fucking hell,” he muttered. “I didn’t want to be seen as weak, all right? I was going to be the best hunter ever.”
My hands went clammy. “Ohmigod, I AM dying!”
“What?”
“You never share your feelings.” I thunked my head back against the seat, glad of the seatbelt locking me in place. Otherwise, between my swimming vision and mild sensation of vertigo, I’d have slid onto the floor by now. My Rasha healing had numbed my pain but it was fogging my brain up. Everything took on a dreamy cast. “Tell Mom and Dad, well, I can’t think of anything, but you’re good at that stuff so make something up. I’ve written the eulogy for you and there’s a playlist on my phone called ‘Nava, You Irreplaceable You’ for everyone to mourn to.”
Ari removed his hand from the steering wheel to clasp mine. “Any last words for Rohan?”
I let out a croaky eep.
“Breathe.” Ari slapped my cheek again. “I was kidding. You’re not dying.”
I pressed my palm against the wound hoping it would diffuse the pain. It didn’t. “Well then I don’t need to apologize for the position I put you in because I know how much being part of the Brotherhood means to you and I’m going to figure out what they’re up to. But I hope we’re always on the same side anyway because the alternative is unbearable.”
To me, the speech sounded highly eloquent, like one step removed from Evita on her balcony singing to the common people. Ari, however, l
eaned over me, his face scrunched up. “I think I got most of that slurfest.”
He pulled up the parking brake and tugged on his earlobe. Our twin code for “I have your back.” A code that had been noticeably absent on this mission.
Ari carried me up the front walk, kicking on the doctor’s door to get him to hurry up.
The doctor took in the full glory of my shoulder. “I just saw you the other day.”
“I lead a busy life,” I mumbled.
“Evidently.”
I lolled in and out of consciousness for a while after that, though I did come to with him standing over me, holding up forceps. “This is going to hurt.”
I blacked out again.
By the time I came to for good, laying on the back seat of our car, my shoulder was bandaged.
I watched dawn break through the back window. It wasn’t even one of the better ones, bathing the sky in pinks and soft blues. Nope, this one was the color and attractiveness of dryer lint. Strangely fitting.
Ari sat in the front seat on the phone. “Yes. He’s dead.” There was a pause. “Thank you. Nava was instrumental–” He tapped the side of his fist against the window twice. “No, it was actually Nava who–” He shot the phone the finger. “Yes, sir. Thank you, again.” He tossed the phone in the cup holder. “Fucking Mandelbaum,” he said.
I smiled. After all I’d been through, getting the rabbi’s approval no longer mattered. I played possum so Ari wouldn’t have to apologize for the phone call and then at some point, I actually fell asleep because when Ari woke me, we were back at the chapter house.
He helped me inside.
Kane sat on the bottom step in the foyer waiting. He raked a cold calculating glance over the two of us. “Everyone hale and hearty? Excellent.”
“Stop being such an asshole,” Ari said. “You’ve pulled shit in our friendship, too.”
Kane stood up. “Which begs the question of why, exactly, we’re friends?”
“Whatever, man.” The two of them turned away from each other at the same time, Kane to go upstairs and my brother into the kitchen.
Gong. Show.
I headed up as well, going directly into my bedroom, and sitting down by my window. Physically, I was feeling a million times better. I stared out into the night, cocooned in silence, thinking about Daniel.
Thinking about me. I didn’t want to be a destructive force. Not with the people I loved.
Or had loved once.
I pulled out my phone.
“Hey, Cole. Did I wake you?” A good bet, given the time, but if I didn’t do this now, I was worried I never would.
“Nothing good ever happened in a 6AM phone call.” His voice was scratchy with sleep.
“I’m sorry that I shut you out.”
“Me too.”
This wasn’t a jettison, it was a mercy. Cole really was my past. He belonged to a Nava who didn’t exist anymore and trying to resurrect that relationship would end up as well as reanimating the dead.
My throat grew tight. It didn’t matter how I tried to convince myself otherwise. This was still a sacrifice. “Cole…”
“I know.”
“I’m glad I saw you again.” I drew a heart in the condensation on the window, then smudged it out. “I got closure.”
“Then I’m glad.” He yawned again.
“Go back to sleep. Be well.”
“Wait. Do you want your Twenty-One Pilots T-shirt back?”
I looked at the Fugue State Five shirt that I’d stolen from Leo, now folded on my pillow. “I’m good.”
And the biggest surprise as I hung up? I really was.
There was one more loose end to tie up.
As I stepped down onto the first stair, the skin between my shoulder blades prickled. Stair two: a sickening dread uncoiled in my gut. Stair three: my chest tightened.
Run.
I clutched the bannister, rubbing my palm over the polished wood like I could make a genie appear. A genie who could grant me three wishes, all of them ensuring that if I descended the staircase, and went down the hallway that I’d be safe.
There was a lot about my behavior that I refused to apologize for, but maybe I hadn’t been entirely fair to Rohan. Did he have control issues? Emotional issues? No kidding. But he also had my back. That part was good, but what about when he had my heart?
Run.
I sank down on the stair, my head buried in my hands. There was no way I could be in a relationship with him and not fall in love. And love was when things got twisted. Look at Daniel. Or, less demony, Cole. I’d loved him and I’d assumed he would stand by me but he hadn’t. Maybe teen love didn’t exactly set a high bar, but the principle was sound. The harder you loved, the more at someone’s mercy you were, and I wasn’t sure I could open myself up given the power I’d be handing over to Rohan.
Maybe I shouldn’t make these decisions until after I’d slept for ten hours.
Run!
I pulled myself up and was struck with a vision of myself at eighty having lived a safe, comfortable life, free of a certain infuriating alpha who made me laugh and gave me the greatest sex of my life and who, for all he pushed my buttons, also pushed me to be so much more. Or worse, not even having made it to eighty because I was too scared or too proud.
Ari was right. Humans were greedy. I’d been so committed to getting more and more fortifications to my emotional shields, so committed to living life on my precise terms, that I hadn’t clued in to how lonely that existence could be.
I ran down the stairs, skidding to a stop beside Rohan’s bed.
He was snoring softly. That made me feel better because without it, he would have just been this too-beautiful mortal, artfully asleep in his tousled sheets, his dark sooty lashes falling across his cheeks and that one single lock of hair drooping across his eyes.
I ran a hand over his naked back and the tattoo across his shoulder blades of the word Kshatriya, the warrior caste, scripted in Hindi in midnight black ink. “Ro?”
He flung an arm over his head.
“Rohan.”
“Mmmm?” He snuggled into his pillow. Damn, he was adorable.
I shook his shoulder. “Wake up.”
He cracked his eyes open. “What?” His voice was thick and rumbly. He glanced at my bandaged shoulder and wreckage of a shirt. “Busy night?”
“I was shot.”
“Of course you were. Anything else?”
I shrugged.
“Bet you kicked ass.”
“I may have.” I dug my phone out of my pocket. “I want you to listen to something.”
“Nava.” He lifted his head to squint at the time on my phone. “It’s some ungodly hour.” He dropped his head back down onto his pillow. “Can we do this later?”
“No.” I scrolled through my music until I found the right song and hit play. The opening strains of “You’re the One that I Want” came on. I didn’t let myself watch him as he listened to it, but when the song faded away, I looked at him expectantly.
His expression gave away nothing. “Why did you play that?” He yanked on the sheet, forcing me to move.
I fluttered my hands, flustered. “Because the lyrics.”
“Yeah. I know what the lyrics say.”
“That’s why.”
“I hate to break it to you, Nava, but you’re not Sandy. You’re Rizzo.”
No one else had ever instinctively understood that about me.
I brushed my lips against his. A feather of a caress, my nerves stacked like crates at Costco.
He waited two heartbeats to speak. “You sure?”
“Yeah, Ro. I am.” I tugged on his hand. “Upstairs,” I said, hitting the bottom of the slippery slope and letting Rohan in to my life in every way possible.
His slow easy smile undid me. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 25
I flipped on my bedside lamp and took his hands, tugging him to face me. Stretching up on tiptoe, I kissed his eyelashes. His nose. Pressed
my lips to the underside of his jaw and scattered a million soft little caresses over his cheeks, splaying my palms against his chest to capture the warmth of his skin.
His eyes fell shut, his face tilting down to mine.
When I didn’t immediately kiss him again, he tensed and cracked open his eyes.
“Sit,” I instructed, walking him backward to the mattress. I kicked off my shoes and straddled him, sitting ramrod straight, my eyes drifting to his full, lush lips, trying to figure out the best angle to come at him. Like there was any approach that would keep my shields intact.
I grabbed a scarf from a drawer. “Can I blindfold you?”
His gaze licked across my skin. “Yes.”
Amazed that I only fumbled the knot once, I sat back on my calves. He was glorious, sitting back against my headboard, his chest bare, his hair sticking up every which way above the slash of pink and black fabric wrapped around his eyes.
Hands braced on the mattress, I leaned forward and ghosted my lips over his.
Rohan’s lips parted tentatively. His fingers dragged along my spine, down to the mattress, finding my hand. He stroked the pad of his thumb over my knuckles, upping the kiss, pressing his mouth more firmly to mine.
I stiffened, a wave of self-preservation rearing its head. Rohan released me and I attempted to get my panicky breathing under control. Hating my cowardice. Given everything else the two of us had done with each other, this kiss should have been easy. “I want to tie your hands up.”
His chest rose in a ragged breath and I’d swear his eyes were trained on mine, even through the blindfold. It took him so long to answer that I was convinced he’d refuse. “Do it.”
“Incredible. Even your agreement to submission is issued like the most imperious command.”
I expected a cocky smirk.
“When your life fell apart, you kept it together by shutting people out.” He skipped his fingers across the blanket, one, two, three. “I did it by thinking every decision three moves ahead. If I could bend everything, everyone to my will, nothing bad could happen. After Askuchar, I needed that more than ever. And you were a wild card.”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 83