It’s my legacy.
The words were accompanied by a deep sorrow and a tickle of fear that I’d miss something important if I let myself be consumed.
Baruch and Raquel were bringing former enemies into our fold to create a better world. They were moving forward inclusively, while the other Rasha and witches fought together, building a new future together.
Purpose, community, happiness.
In my mind’s eye, the world grew darker and darker, acrid smoke streaking the sky. Parts of me dropped away in ashy heaps that swirled around my ankles like a river. I burned bright and brilliant, old as the stars, but this time, I knew how to stop it.
More importantly, I wanted to stop it. I touched the lighter in my pocket.
The flame burns brightest in the darkest night.
This was a good run, but it was time to kiss my magic goodbye.
“No! You accepted my magic. You are mine.” The words were spoken clearly inside my head. Lilith was no longer a barely-there spark, or tangled and lost beneath our combined magic. She’d bided her time and gathered her strength.
She was back.
Chapter 26
“Blah, blah, blah. Rage all you want,” I told her. “The only way you’ll claim me is over my dead body. And oh, wait. We ran that script already. You didn’t get me then and you won’t now. I am my parents’ daughter. I am my brother’s twin. I am Rohan’s girlfriend. I am friend to my friends. But above all, I am myself. I am Nava Liron Katz and you can’t have me.”
“Lilith?” Ro said.
I nodded.
Lilith shut down my muscular system with a snap that almost broke my neck.
“I need to get the ring off Mandelbaum’s sausage finger.” I wrestled control of the magic and my body away from Lilith.
“You can’t touch him,” Ari said.
“I have to. There’s no other way to get that ring and stop Gog and Magog.”
The rabbi stood up. There was dust all over his suit and blood streamed down one side of his human face. He lurched toward me.
The witches did their best to slow him down.
“Let someone else do it,” Rohan said. “Someone who’s lost their magic already.”
“No,” I said. “This was always going to come down to Mandelbaum and me.”
“You’ll lose all your magic,” Rohan said.
“My magic isn’t the same as my happiness. Esther’s message to me was that the flame burns brightest in the darkest night. The flame isn’t my magic. It’s me.”
He smiled at me. “You’re the goddamned sun.”
“Told you.”
“What do you need?” Ari said.
“Babyslay?” Kane yelped as my mouth sealed shut.
Fucking Lilith.
Ari held out his hand.
I wrote four letters on it, just like in our games of old trying to sneak messages past our parents.
“Bait,” Ari said. “She needs bait.”
Kane raised his hand. “Allow me.”
“No way,” Ari said. “Your stupid hero impulses will cost you your magic.”
“Ah, but that’s the point, darling boy. I’ve had my kills and I can still fight the good fight with my brilliant coding. I don’t want to be toxic anymore. Well, one last time.”
Leo arrived while Ari and Kane bickered and I spasmed wildly, fighting Lilith for control. Again.
“You people are hopeless,” Leo said and charged the rabbi.
Drio caught her at the last second. He was so fast, all I saw was Leo jerk backward like she’d been caught around the waist with a hook. He deposited her on her feet alongside the rest of us.
She smacked him. “You had no right.”
“You are insane and suicidal,” he snapped.
She glanced at Mandelbaum. “I could have been human.”
Drio regarded her gravely. “You are human.”
Leo reached for him, then dropped her hand abruptly, marching off in the opposite direction. A look of shock and extreme anguish crossed over his features as he watched her leave him, then he flashed out the other way.
Kane smirked at the two of them. “We’re still cuter.”
Ari grabbed Kane’s head in his hands and kissed him. It was adorable, but ewww, still my brother. “I love you.”
Kane jutted out his chin. “Obviously. I’m eminently loveable.”
I gained the upper hand with Lilith, at least momentarily. “Do your thing, Poison Prince. Distract him so I can surprise him and get the ring.”
Kane tangled his fingers for a brief instant with Ari’s. “I love you, too.” He jogged toward the rabbi, his hands up. “Parley!”
The witches halted their attack.
My badass brother was blushing and staring at Kane with a totally besotted look on his face.
“We’re going to have to up our cute factor,” I told Ro.
“No shit.”
Ari smirked.
I turned to Leo. “I’m sorry for what I did. It was temporary insanity.”
“It was Lilith,” she said.
This was my get-out-of-jail-free card. I could blame Lilith and be absolved. “No. Her magic. My ‘drunk on power and ego.’ I lost sight of what mattered. I love you and I choose you. Every day.”
“Jeez, Nee, don’t tell me right before you’re gonna die.”
“I’m not gonna die.”
She winked at me. “Prove it.”
Kane met the rabbi halfway. “We’d like to discuss terms of surrender.”
“You were one of my best, Kane. You made a poor decision, but you can still join me. Be a leader in this new era.”
“Oh. No. You’ve got it wrong. I meant your surrender. I’m sticking with the girl kicking your ass.” He waved at me.
The rabbi grabbed Kane.
Kane’s skin turned a purple iridescence and the bitter stench of salt flooded the plaza.
Witches gasped and dabbed at their eyes.
Purple magic poured out of Kane. He didn’t resist, a beatific smile on his face. The poison ate at Mandelbaum’s skin, spreading across his body in black spidery veins.
Mandelbaum doubled over with a roar.
The plan was to portal in behind him, except Lilith aborted it halfway. At least this time I didn’t end up on an eight-lane highway, but she’d paralyzed my legs forcing me to drag myself on my belly to Mandelbaum, who openly laughed at me, despite the spasms racking his body from Kane’s poison.
The world blurred. Drio sped me to the rabbi and then kind of launched me at him. I barreled into Mandelbaum and we both hit the ground, with me on top.
“Cowgirl? Here I had you pegged for doggie style, Rabbi.”
The rabbi grabbed me by the throat and ripped my powers away.
Magic surged out of me and the world turned gold. “Take it, motherfucker! See if you can handle being the sun.”
My magic winked out of me, gone forever. Even though it was what I’d intended, I shivered, hollow with the despair of losing this essential piece of myself.
Mandelbaum threw back his head and laughed, glowing with power. “Kneel before your Mashiach!”
His skin cracked, magic rolling and bubbling under it in grotesque eruptions. The rabbi screamed, a high, thin wail that jackhammered against the base of my skull.
I rolled us over and put him in a chokehold. No more magic meant no more Lilith. My body was mine to control. I scissored his thrashing body with my legs and, holding him fast, grabbed onto his ring finger. Bending it backward, I tore the ring free.
Gog and Magog flew from his body. No longer a shadow wraith, they’d eaten enough magic to be fully corporeal. The demons stood fifty feet tall, blotting out the sun, their shared body covered in hard scales. Their nails were three-foot-long pointed spears, and their legs bulged with muscles piled on muscles.
Mandelbaum slumped to the ground unconscious.
Hex Factor, which had fought in the demon realm, did a pretty good job of remaining calm. Sienna’s b
unch shied away from the demon, while Mandelbaum’s men and the Israeli soldiers openly trembled.
One soldier ran at Gog and Magog screaming and discharging his machine gun.
The bullets bounced off the demon, who didn’t even register the hit.
Jezebel grabbed the soldier. “You can’t kill it. You’ll just make him mad.”
I slipped the ring on. “Gog and Magog, I call you. Gog and Magog, I bind you.”
“Gog and Magog are dead. You’re dealing with me now.” The heads spoke with Lilith’s voice. She walked around the plaza, testing out her new demon body.
Everyone scrambled out of range of her feet.
“How?” I held up a hand to stave off any magic assault from my side.
Lilith sneered—both heads. “Magic eaters. So predictable. They only had one trick. I have a bag full of them, and you fell for them all.”
I surfed the tremors she produced with each step. “‘If you’re alive, I stay alive.’ What did it mean? Was it about the gold magic or about your magic signal and having the demons come after me?”
Lilith laughed. “Always about you. The signal was my presence in the world. My final beacon, but when we were in the Tomb, when I was dying, I sensed the wards and saw a better way to return. I just needed you to accept that magic.”
“So, it was true? The wards? Liron?”
“Yes. I birthed that little brat. She got to have all my power without any of my struggles. It wasn’t fair.” Lilith shrugged one of her monstrous shoulders.
“Mother of the year, that’s you,” I said. “So much for your sorrow or your desire to keep her safe.”
“Ah, but you bought the story. I didn’t want a child. I didn’t want to exist to fulfill a man’s desires. Yet those were the roles forced on me. My worth was measured in my subservience and ability to breed. Do you have any idea what that was like?” Her voice shook the heavens. “Now all will know my worth.”
“I’m sorry for everything that happened to you,” I said. “Everyone who judged you. You deserved better than millennia of narrow-minded misogyny and demonization. You deserved to be loved and respected because you burned bright, forging your own way, but you don’t live in the light anymore.”
“This world has plenty of shadows,” she said. “You forget that I know you, Nava. You don’t live in the light either.”
“I didn’t used to. I lived in the dark so that innocents could live in the light, but we hunters and witches are the light. We banish the darkness. And I’m banishing you.”
I wasn’t sure this was justice, but it wasn’t vengeance, either. I wasn’t angry at her. This version of Lilith was an extreme of the woman I’d have become had I not found purpose and community. Had I not found love—for myself and others. The dark angry fire inside me had been quenched, leaving nothing but forgiveness and a deep appreciation for where this journey had ultimately led me.
Had there been any way to rehabilitate her, I’d have done it in a heartbeat, but she was too warped. Our world, our magic, demanded balance. It wasn’t perfect, but it was ours to improve, not hers to destroy. So long as Lilith lived, she’d skew us to the darkness.
I’d mourn that fact for a very long time.
Lilith waved one of her pointed nails and the Ring of Solomon crumbled to dust. “No magic and no ring. You were saying?”
I pulled out Esther’s lighter and lit it up. “I tend the flame.”
I smiled at Rivka, who put her hand on my shoulder, sending her magic into me. It danced through me like liquid honey, down my arm and into the flame that glowed brighter.
“I tend the flame,” she said.
“I tend the flame.” Raquel placed her hand on Rivka’s shoulder. She added her magic and her voice, pouring it through me and into the lighter.
There was no pain, only a lovely warmth.
It all snowballed after that. Every Rasha and witch with magic added their touch, their power, and their voice to mine.
The fire in the lighter became a magic bonfire, reflecting red, orange, and gold on our skin. Smokeless, ashless, this fiery bloom unfurled, a brilliant vital force.
Rohan was the last one to join in. He placed his hand on my right shoulder. “I tend the flame.” Then he whispered, “burn, baby, burn,” into my ear.
“Hear us now, Lilith!” My voice rang across the plaza. “We are the flame that burns brightest in the darkest night and this world is not for you!”
Tentacles of flame licked out, lashing and binding Lilith. Rivulets of fire snaked along her demon body, growing hotter and brighter, claiming every inch of flesh. The Maliligog creature dissolved into a vortex of magic, spinning faster and faster, until with a final snap, it winked out and was gone.
There were no cheers, no crying and hugging, just a reverential silence that continued until a couple of witches cried out, and then a few more, their gasps rolling through the plaza.
Those of us without magic looked around, confused.
“The wards have been restored.” Elena waved her hand and the air shimmered, exposing the Zone and the fat ward lines under our feet that pulsed with a vibrant green. There wasn’t a speck of black. “Magic has been reset. There is demon magic and witch magic, and never again shall the two be combined.”
“Be’ezrat HaShem,” I said sarcastically.
Sienna let out the first whoop. If she had any regrets about losing her magic, they didn’t show.
We erupted into cheers, hugging and clapping.
It was over. The End of Days, Lilith, the target on my back, the wards, the entire crazy ride of the past few months.
All was right with the world for one brief instant until Mandelbaum came to, staggered to his feet, and stabbed me.
In the back. Typical.
At first, I thought it was a really hard punch, but then the throbbing pain and nausea kicked in. A knife stuck out of my shoulder, blood gluing my T-shirt to my skin, and ruining one of the few items of clothing I had remaining.
I swear to God, someone owed me the greatest wardrobe makeover in history for the amount of clothing I’d lost in service to the fight against evil.
“You monster!” I battered him with a flurry of hard jabs. He tried to get a few jabs in himself, but I was Tree Trunk trained. I whaled on him, a freaking Krav Maga virtuoso.
My Rasha friends, led by Danilo, egged me on. They recognized that this was my fight.
“I was supposed to be the Mashiach.” Mandelbaum twisted the knife. Literally.
The pain was eye-watering. The world swam in and out of focus and I was perilously close to blacking out, but adrenaline rode me hard.
I grabbed his hand and snapped his wrist. “You killed your own son.”
“Sacrifices must be made. Our forefather Abraham taught us that.”
“No.” I lashed out with a hard kick to the back of his knees, doing a Tonya Harding on the petty little asshole. There was an audible crack and the rabbi fell moaning to the ground. “People aren’t sacrifices. They’re what we fight for.”
“Nava.” Baruch gave me one of his Zen eye blinks. “Show compassion.”
I stood over Mandelbaum, bleeding on him. “Say you misjudged my worth.”
Mandelbaum cradled his broken knee. “Never.”
I raised my leg like I was going to kick him in the balls. “Say it.”
“I misjudged your worth.”
“Aww. Guess what? I don’t care.” I walked away.
After a few steps I staggered, grabbing onto Ro for balance.
He swung me into his arms, careful of my wound. “Raquel! We need healing.”
An ache crested through my chest, radiating down through my legs. It might have been the knife wound and it might have been my magic loss. I had no way to process the myriad of emotions tangled up inside me, and I couldn’t get past the one thought that rankled more than any other.
I clutched Rohan’s shirt. “Ro?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I milked a de
mon for nothing.”
Chapter 27
I woke up in Rohan’s bedroom at his house, cocooned by his eight-hundred-thread-count bed linens, his mattress forming to the contours of my body like it was tailor-made, lying in a patch of sunlight. He’d put me in his favorite skateboarder T-shirt, faded and sheer in places.
Before me was a magnificent sight. No, not my boyfriend naked, all ripped and on display for me. That generally took top spot, but I was coming off some crazy powerful sleeping spell, and any sexytime participation on my part, while “willing,” would have been lacking the “able.”
My most favorite dominatrix sat on the bed holding a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Her arms in her sleeveless sundress were honed to a sleek line of muscle that I, with all my training, had yet to achieve.
She held out the heaping plate and I took a cookie. “One wave of this under your nose and you woke right up.”
“What day is it?” The fight had been on Monday. How many days had I lost this time?
“Wednesday.”
Tonight was Rosh Hashanah. It could happen without me. I’d had enough of judgment days.
I tried to eat in dainty little bites because Ms. Clara was so ladylike, but I pretty much shoved it in my mouth like Cookie Monster, minus the nom-nom noises.
Mostly.
She handed me another. “Munch away. They’re all yours.”
“Thanks, Ms. Clara.”
“Clara.”
I squeed. “Really?”
She wrinkled her pert little nose. “You saved the world. That gets you first name privileges.”
“Sweet!” I lowered the cookie. “Though it was a team effort.”
“Okay, doll, you’re right. Ms. Clara it is.”
“What? No! Oh. Ha. Ha.”
I’d have fist-pumped but I was too busy doing an anaconda impression in order to swallow my cookie whole. “How bad is it out there? Demons, magic, we blew that closet door open in a big way.”
“A lot of panic. Baruch and Raquel have been in meetings at the United Nations for the past couple days. Governments are issuing statements and demanding answers. The religious nuts are having a field day with this. There’s a coalition led by some extreme rabbis and televangelist preachers demanding Mandelbaum’s release, claiming he’s doing God’s work and this is evidence that our world must be destroyed and rebuilt.”
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