“My magic is way beyond that.”
We ate our way through the cookies.
I braced myself in case I had to emergency portal out, but I had to ask. “How could you take down that plane?”
“Wise up. All of the Executive was in on Mandelbaum’s plans. None of them were innocent.”
“Esther didn’t want Rasha gone,” I said. “She wanted hunters and witches to work together.”
“You talk a big game, don’t you, but when it comes down to it, where’s your loyalty? Is it to the Brotherhood who killed her?” She turned her palms outward and the air shimmered.
An image of Rohan, Ari, Kane, and Baruch in the bungalows with some unfamiliar Rasha popped up, like I was looking into a scrying mirror. There was no sound, but it was live.
She said something softly under her breath and everyone in the room froze. One of the men was partially squatting, not having quite sat down. Ari was about to catch a pen thrown to him by Kane, while Baruch tacked a photo up, his hand extended to Rohan who ripped off a piece of tape.
The image narrowed in on my friends and twin.
The hair on the nape of my neck stood on end. “Don’t touch them. Mandelbaum’s group is one corrupt element. These men are innocent.”
“There is no innocent when it comes to the Brotherhood,” she sneered. “The last innocent person was Esther and she’s dead. You think we have demon problems now? If we don’t rid the world of Rasha, the witch community will grow so small and so weak that the wards we’re propping up between our world and the demon realm will fail entirely. Then you can kiss humanity goodbye. But if we get that magic back, in fifty years not only will there be no more demons, we’ll have the power to cure disease, end hunger.”
“Esther didn’t think we’d grow stronger. She said that maybe in the beginning we could have reclaimed our magic by stopping the creation of Rasha, but too many years have passed. Rasha magic lives in the bloodlines and there’s no going back. Killing off hunters won’t transfer all the individual grains of magic into one big pile for us, it’ll simply mean that our small pile will be bunched with a large heap of magic gone bad. Magic that’s become unstable and unpredictable without its host.”
“Don’t act like you knew her better than I did.” Sienna choked me, lifting me off the ground without laying a finger on me.
I scrabbled at my throat, but there was nothing tangible to pry off me. My magic pulsed off my skin, rippling outward at Sienna.
It bounced harmlessly off an invisible shield, dissipating in the air a foot away from her.
“That entire organization is our enemy,” she said. “History has taught us time and time again that the men will not allow us to sit at the table. The Brotherhood doesn’t want harmony. They want war. Their entire existence is predicated on it. Maybe they’ll throw us a conciliatory bone and let us be healers. Keep the wards up. But let us have a say in our world? In our magic?”
My lungs were on fire and my vision kept swimming in and out of focus. “Then help me, in Esther’s memory, so I can do the right thing,” I croaked.
She closed her fist and I crumpled to the ground, dragging in shaky breaths.
I rubbed my throat, barely managing to stay upright. “When I… killed Oskar, his magic did something to me.” My eyes pooled with tears. “He blocked me somehow. You have to release it because it’s killing me.”
I placed my hand over my breastbone. Over the box.
Sienna stared at me suspiciously, then placed her hand over mine. Her brow furrowed. “There’s something there.”
I was enveloped in a warm light. It started as a tingle: in my toes, in the crook of my elbows, and the jut of my hips. I bound my own magic to Sienna’s as fast as I could. She gasped and tried to break free, but I was also drawing on Lilith’s magic.
Sienna screamed, her head thrown back and the tendons in her neck straining.
I fired all the magic inside me at whatever invisible barriers kept me from accessing the magic inside Lilith’s prison.
And that’s when I felt Lilith’s eyes snap open. Awake at last. Still trapped, but very much present in whatever plane she existed in.
The tingle became a trickle, a river, a rush of pure power.
I’d experienced a lesser version of this, when Lilith had amped me up to heal Rohan, but now? I canted my head back, bathing in the magic like it was rainfall.
My heartbeat mingled with the delicate patter of a bird’s heart on the windowsill outside. I scouted the savanna through the night vision of a tiger and blinked slowly at fuzzy light through a newborn’s eyes on the other side of the world.
I was a mote in an infinite spiral, fully alive and aware and rooted and universal for the first time in my life. I gasped, spinning around. Dorothy in Oz, seeing life in Technicolor when it had only ever been flat Kansas brown.
Sienna wrenched free, physically and magically. “What have you done? How is Lilith inside you?”
“Long story.” I laughed in wonder. “This is why you practice dark magic, isn’t it? Not to be evil. To return to this kind of power. The power our foremothers had before the Rasha took it.”
“Stole it,” Sienna said. “The way you stole my magic.” She blasted me.
I raised a hand, drawing on Lilith’s magic and yet still straining to keep Sienna’s power at bay. “Seems we have a stalemate.”
I’ll kill you, Lilith whispered. You dare claim my magic? You nothing. You human. I’ll be strong enough to be free in days and you’ll suffer. You’ll beg for death.
My arm wobbled, allowing a burst of Sienna’s magic to slash across my side. I grit my teeth, visualizing swiping inside the box for more of Lilith’s power.
“You really want to use that up on me, knock yourself out.” Sienna didn’t even look winded.
My magic flared brighter with the Lilith boost. “Scared you can’t hold me off?”
“As if. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. So long as Lilith is trapped inside you, her magic is static, which means you can drain her like a battery. No sweat off my back if you drain her dry.”
Was this true? I had no way to tell and Lilith wasn’t volunteering anything other than a pulsing hatred.
“Damn, you’re stubborn,” Sienna said. “Fine. Let’s stand here while you waste all the magic.”
I powered down, as did Sienna. “Why would you give me the heads up on that?”
“Esther cared about you and I’d rather not see you dead if there are other options. Though you’ve got a death wish. The human body wasn’t designed to get this much dark magic this fast. It’s going to kill you.”
“I don’t have a death wish. Quite the opposite.” I spread my hands in entreaty. “Can’t we find a way to work together? What if it’s a new regime of men who want to work with women?” My head reeled with the possibilities of women with this level of power ruling the world. We could be transformative. Usher in a new age, a new way of being with our male allies.
Humanity needed all of us, and I could show them the way.
“That will never happen. Don’t you get it? We witches render Rasha obsolete.”
“We kill them and we’re no better than the men who tried to do that to us.”
“We’re infinitely better, but you won’t believe me until you see it for yourself.” Sienna led me to the photos of the compound. She ripped a corner off the map and scribbled down a string of numbers. “Latitude and longitude.”
I clutched the paper tight. “The compound? If you know where it is, why haven’t you stormed it?”
“I can’t deal with all the variables inside on my own.”
“Sucks for you.” I stuffed the paper with the coordinates in my pocket. “Why would you give this to me?”
Her eyes flashed silver for a second. She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly and her eyes returned to their usual dark brown. “You have no idea how to manage the magic inside you. You want to save humanity? You want to live? You need me. Make the right choice.”
/> She vanished.
I cast my awareness around the magic box. It shuddered under the force of Lilith’s pounding, a constant buzz against my sternum. My brain throbbed with her sneering certainty that I’d be letting her out soon and then I’d face eternal torture.
“Bring it.”
Sienna said I needed her to live. Could she get Lilith out of me, even without the Bullseye?
I washed out Esther’s Tupperware, because it seemed rude to her memory not to. The water was steaming hot as I soaped up the plastic, turning my skin red, but it couldn’t thaw out the block of ice that my body had become. I’d amassed a lot of regrets in my life, like pushing myself too hard in dance after I was first injured, and how I’d pushed people away, but I didn’t regret doing the deal with Lilith to give Rohan back his magic.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to die for Rohan; I wanted to live with him.
I thought I’d destroyed that dream last night when I saved Benjy and used up the Bullseye. But what if I hadn’t? What if Sienna could help me?
Ro and I could take a road trip, staying in cheesy motels, or eat our way through Europe. We’d have a million more of our flirtatious, silly, hilarious conversations, and every night, I’d fall asleep beside him, his hand holding mine, and his even breathing a steadying presence.
I’d tell him I loved him for the first time and then tell him again every day for the next ninety years.
I shut off the tap, the container long since clean, and my fingers wrinkled prunes.
I didn’t regret having finally tapped fully into Lilith’s magic because I still believed that this was how we’d stop all the bad shit from coming to pass. It was just that faced with a dream of quiet, full intimacy, go big or go home had lost its appeal.
Chapter 28
I popped back to our guest bungalow to grab Rohan and a pair of binoculars.
He was standing outside on the path, but at the sight of me waving at him from the window, abruptly ended his chat with a couple of other Rasha and bolted inside.
He shoved me back into the bedroom.
“Not exactly the time,” I said.
He grabbed my shoulders and spun me to face the mirror.
My eyes were obsidian black. Shadows danced and slithered in my irises.
“What the fuck happened?”
“Oh.” I leaned in, kind of fascinated. “The short version is that I can now tap into all of Lilith’s magic.”
Rohan let out a stream of Hindi curses, while I held strands of hair up to the light. My curls had gone from dark brown to black.
“The good news is Sienna may be able to get Lilith out of me,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sure she’ll be really receptive once you foil her plans.”
“She will if I’ve got her stuffed in the Tomb and am holding her magic hostage. Here.” I dug in my pocket for the co-ordinates. “I know where the compound is. Wanna check it out with me?”
“All I ever wanted was a peaceful life,” Rohan said. “And then I met you.”
I grabbed a pair of sunglasses and slid them on. “You’re welcome.”
We landed along the side of the compound next to a chain link fence complete with signs proclaiming it was electrified and that this was private property and trespassers would be prosecuted.
“There.” Ro pointed to the high ridge of rock about a hundred feet from the back of the compound.
In a blink, I repositioned us. Crawling on our bellies in the fine yellow dust, we peered out from between two boulders, while I told Ro everything I’d learned.
The compound was a two-story, U-shaped building, painted a dull gray. A small militia guarded the place, their weapons magic, not guns. Some were patrolling the roof with clear sightlines. Others manned the gates in the front and back of the fencing, as well as the three doors we could see from our vantage point.
We’d caught a lucky break and hadn’t been seen when we’d showed up.
Rohan adjusted the binoculars. “I recognize some of those men. I’ve fought with them.”
“You think they’re always standing guard or is this something new?” I said.
“Because they’re expecting an attack?” Ro peered through the binoculars.
“Possibly. Ours or Sienna’s?”
He passed them over to me to have a look. “No clue.”
The more we watched the men, the more we got the sense that while they were there to guard the compound, it was more of a routine thing. There was no urgency in the way they strolled the flat roof and the grounds.
Until one of them checked his phone, pulled out a walkie talkie, and spoke in to it. All the Rasha ran to containers that had been placed around the property, donning protective helmets and gloves before taking up specific posts. Most manned the fence, while a few remained on the roof.
“No way.” I stuffed the binoculars into Ro’s hands. “Three o’clock.”
An unlikely pack of mountain lions, rangy coyotes, and sleek bobcats prowled their way toward the fences.
“There’s more.” Rohan lowered the glasses and pointed at the flock of raptors careening out of the sky.
It was an awesome and terrifying sight. Dozens of falcons, vultures, eagles, and owls swooped down at breakneck speeds.
The animal attacks hit more or less simultaneously. The compound may have been warded up against demons, but there was no way to ward it against wildlife.
“Sienna’s training them,” Rohan said.
“She’s compelling them,” I corrected.
“Not the animals,” he said. “The Rasha. They were expecting it. She’s conditioned them so that they expect attacks at certain times and relax at others.” He whistled. “Gotta hand it to her, it’s pretty brilliant. Fucked up, but brilliant.”
Between the large cats attempting to shred the chain link fence with their teeth and claws despite the voltage pouring through their bodies, and the raptors dive-bombing the men, the hunters had their hands full.
At some invisible signal, any remaining animals still alive trotted or flew back to their desert homes.
Taking the binoculars, Rohan paced the length of the ridge we were on, careful to stay out of view as much as possible.
“Well?”
He dropped down beside me, brushing dust off his pants. “If we turn off the main road a couple of miles back, we can approach this ridge without being seen. Especially if we come under cover of night. It’s the last hundred feet that expose us.”
“Unless we time it with one of Sienna’s attacks. She’s not powerful enough to take on all the Rasha and whatever’s inside on her own. She needs us.”
“It’s got to be demons in there,” Ro said. “We know Mandelbaum was experimenting on them. But we still don’t know Sienna’s endgame. Does she want to kill the demons or turn them on us when we’re conveniently in one place for her attack?”
I stood up, stretching out my cramped knees and held out a hand. “We’ll have to be prepared for every eventuality.”
Back at the bungalow, sunglasses firmly in place, I sought out Baruch. “How come you’re not at the rabbis’ meeting?”
“There’s no Executive to force out, and until we’ve gotten inside that compound and gotten proof against Mandelbaum, I’m holding off speaking to the other rabbis.”
“Speaking of the compound.” I slapped the coordinates into his hand. “Ro and I scoped it out.”
He put two fingers in his mouth and let out an ear-shattering whistle.
There must have been three dozen men crammed into the bungalow. All chatter and activity stopped. Either they’d been briefed about who I was or I’d been gossiped about. Either way, I was glad to be spared a bunch of questions right now.
Ari frowned and tapped his finger next to his eyes, cueing me to take off my sunglasses.
I didn’t.
“Listen up,” Baruch said. “We have the last piece of our plan. The location of the compound.”
Excited murmurs broke out.
>
“Nava, what can we expect to find there?” he said.
As one, the men turned to me expectantly. Sienna had been wrong. Witches and Rasha could work together. We didn’t need to make them obsolete, and there were those who would work with us without relegating us to nursemaid.
I rubbed my breastbone. Lilith’s incessant banging around my body was really tenderizing my organs, and she didn’t let up her insidious whispering.
I’m looking forward to our reunion. Lilith’s power flared up inside me and I absorbed it like the most refreshing water.
I also clasped my hands behind my back because my fingertips had turned black.
You think you’re so clever with your plans, Lilith whispered. You have no idea what’s in store for you.
Shut up, I silently told her. This is how we save us all. Together. Lilith seriously needed to watch some Sesame Street.
I cleared my throat and began my presentation. I’d only gotten as far as what Rohan and I suspected was inside the compound before Kane raised his hand. “Yes?” Okay, that was teachery and weird.
“Let me bring up a visual.” He rose from the laptop and flicked on a projector. One of the aerial view photos of the compound flickered onto one white wall. “Where exactly was everyone stationed?”
I spoke for the next twenty minutes without pause, including Sienna’s possible agendas in regards to the Brotherhood.
“Why did she let you live?” one of the hunters asked.
Ro shot me a worried glance but I shook my head. It was truth time. If I meant what I’d said to Sienna about Rasha and witches working together, then it had to start with me.
I fingered the arms of my glasses, took a deep breath, and whipped them off, bracing myself for a mass exodus at the sight of the black-eyed female with the insane power. “I’m a witch.”
At the sight of my eyes, pandemonium broke out. There was a lot of furious debate, some curious looks, though some indifference, too. Cisco slapped a ten into Bastijn’s hand.
“If we have Rasha, what do we need witches for?” The black Rasha didn’t sound antagonistic, merely curious.
“The Brotherhood has been around for centuries,” I said, “and there are certain demons that get away time and time again. Why? Because Rasha aren’t strong enough to kill them. Witches have that power.”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-6: A Complete Paranormal Romantic Comedy Series Page 142