Rohan sat down beside me, unimpressed.
The train started up smoothly enough. Narration about the plaza blasted out through the scratchy speakers. Rohan glowered at me, his hands clapped over his ears.
I laughed. Which escalated to manic hilarity at his death stares as the train clattered through the streets, winding back down the hill. There was no suspension on this beast and combined with the cobblestones, the two of us were flung around like rag dolls, our bones jarring. My teeth rattled hard enough to break. Tears streamed down my face and I was barely able to catch my breath for laughter.
A French family a few rows behind us made loud, disparaging comments about Americans. As a Canadian, I’d seen enough American backpackers sporting Canadian flags that I was happy to reinforce any bad perception of Americans abroad. Payback.
The train jolted over a bump in the road and Rohan gasped. “My balls,” he groaned, right as the woman seated ahead recognized him, and squealing, snapped a photo of him.
I lost it, clutching a pole for support.
Rohan glared at me. “I hate you.”
By the time the train pulled up in the square, even I had had enough of that ride. Not that I’d admit it. “I’m so happy.”
Rohan unfolded himself like an old man. “You don’t deserve dinner after that.”
Our fellow passenger shyly asked Rohan if she could take her photo with him. I approved of his behavior in complying.
Soon as she was gone, I grabbed his arm, pressing myself against his side. Not ready to let this interlude end. “You’re totally going to take me out, aren’t you? Do you need to check in with Drio?”
“Nah. He’s off sourcing what we need.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket with a text. “It’s from the Assistant Director giving me directions and call time for Samson’s scene tomorrow.” Even though Samson was the reason for our trip, I resented his intrusion on my time with Rohan today. “This is good. I can lure him to the ritual location.”
Since we were tired and Rohan insisted he was broken, we took a taxi back to the hotel. We agreed to meet in the lobby in an hour for dinner. The second I got to my room, I called Leo, putting her on speakerphone as I changed. “I’m so getting laid tonight,” I trilled.
“Been plying your wiles on him?”
I tossed my skirt on the bed. “Not even. But we were sightseeing so–”
“Since when do fuck buddies merit tourist time?”
“Since the assignment is in a momentary lull before the storm. We had a day off and–”
“You played boyfriend and girlfriend?” She sighed.
“Can’t we be friends? Friends with benefits. That’s a thing.” I rooted through my clothing for the right outfit.
“Ten seconds ago he was a fuck buddy.”
“Stop twisting everything.”
“You haven’t let yourself get close to anyone since the great Cole disaster,” she said. “Believe me, I get that Rohan is hot, and he fucks like a god, but guys like that don’t stick around. Remember how wrecked you were after Cole? What do you think Rohan leaving would do to you?”
I slipped into a cute purple dress made up of overlapping tiers of fabric that had a bit of a flapper vibe going for it. Best of all, no zipper. Pull on, pull off. “We work together. Fight together. It’s more than the sex.”
Leo made a strangled noise.
“Hence the friend status.”
“Nava, you’re going to hate me for saying this, but have you considered that maybe you’re falling for him and he doesn’t feel the same?”
I grabbed the phone, taking it off speaker. “Why not? What’s so wrong with me that he wouldn’t want me back? Not that I want him for a boyfriend but thanks so much for making me sound like some cast-off you’d find in the ninety-nine cent bin.”
There was silence for a moment. I sat down on the bed, wondering why I’d bothered to resume our friendship.
“Sweetie, I think you’re the bee’s knees,” Leo said. I snorted at her corny language.
“I mean it. Far as I’m concerned, you’re tops. But from everything you’ve told me, this guy is the master of mixed signals. Throw in his first love who has suddenly re-appeared in his life?” I’d forgotten about Lily. “I fear for when this issue-ridden boy blasts your world apart like an asteroid hit.”
I raked my hands through my hair. “It’s not like that. We’re reset back to easy and uncomplicated.”
Her pause stretched two seconds too long. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Lull before the storm. You’re right. Enjoy it.”
Our good-byes were a tad strained.
20
Leo was wrong. I knew what I was getting into with Rohan. Sex. The wolfish smile he conferred on me when I met him in the lobby confirmed it. All good. Still, I was quiet on the ride over to the restaurant located in an industrial complex filled with single story warehouses, most boasting foodie signs. Our destination, SaSaZu, didn’t look like much until we got inside.
The restaurant was enormous. A black-and-white patterned wall ran along the right side. The others were painted red, with black exposed pipes traversing the high ceiling. Various table groupings in browns, oranges, and greens filled the space. But the showstopper feature was the myriad of huge lanterns suspended from the ceiling that bathed the room in a warm, low light. Flanking the doors were a live DJ on one side and massive wall map on the other, with pins depicting all the cities that patrons visited from.
Our server explained the philosophy of the South-Asian fusion street food and how we should choose dishes from each of the five sections of the menu to be taken on a culinary journey. He didn’t need to tell me twice.
The food was incredible. Rohan didn’t ask me what was wrong, but he did make sure the conversation was light-hearted. I felt myself relax, any residual hurt from my talk with Leo disappearing in the enjoyment of the evening.
Ripping off a piece of naan, I dipped it in my lamb and eggplant curry. Some of the spicy sauce dripped on my thumb so I dragged the pad across my teeth, my tongue flicking out to catch the errant drop.
Rohan froze, the grilled shrimp in his chopsticks forgotten, his eyes on my mouth. He cleared his throat. “That curry reminds me of this street vendor that I kept going to in Delhi.”
“When was that?”
“I was about fifteen? Before the band hit. Mom was mixing an album for this group that blended traditional instruments like tabla and sitar with electronica. I’d grown up sitting in on her studio sessions but this was the first time she ever asked my opinion about something. Really listened to what I had to say and then incorporated one of my suggestions.”
His eyes lighting up as he recounted the story was the sexiest thing about him and trust me, there were a lot of options on the Mitra sex appeal drop down menu.
“Did Maya mix any of your albums?”
“No. She swore there wasn’t enough money in the world. Since her teaching me to ride a bike ended in bloodshed, Mom said our level of head-butting would lead to flat-out murder in one session.” He held out the last, tiny, tea-infused duck roll in his chopsticks for me to eat.
I leaned across the table, grasping his wrist to tug him closer. The muscles in his arms and chest tensed as he leaned in.
“Open up.” His voice was a husky murmur. He placed the roll in my mouth and I obediently chewed.
“Good?” he asked.
“Incredible.” I didn’t dare shift my weight, worried the sweat trickling down the backs of my thighs would make me creak against the leather seat.
“More tea?” Our friendly server broke the spell.
“Please.” I held out my ceramic mug.
Two sips of tea and one bathroom dash to splash water on my face later, I’d regained my composure enough to continue our conversation. “You have to tell me the bike story. Were you pushing her to let you ride it before you were ready?”
He ducked his head, the fringe of his sooty lashes fanned against his cheek. “Not
exactly.”
“Snowflake,” I prompted. “What did you do?”
He lay down his chopsticks. “I told her I wasn’t ready but she kept insisting that I was riding my bike just fine.” When it was clear I wasn’t going to let this drop, he huffed at me. “Okay, but laugh and die.”
I crossed my heart.
“To prove my point that I couldn’t ride, I rode my bike with expert precision into some very thorny bushes and then screamed bloody murder when I got all scratched up, yelling ‘I told you! I can’t ride!’”
“My God. Your control issues started so young.” I pressed my lips together but couldn’t help the laughter escaping me.
“You promised.”
I stuffed some noodles in my mouth. “Chewing,” I mumbled around a mouthful of food.
Rohan pointed his chopstick at me, an evil twinkle in his eye. “So. Dead.” Then he leaned back with an affectionate shake of his head.
Clearly Rohan and I were friends. Possibly better than friends. Friends plus. But why the pressure to quantify it beyond that? Funnily enough, something had shifted. Rohan had gone from being the most obtuse person about the two of us to the only other one to understand us. He did understand, right? I felt like the ugliness of the past couple days had blown things open and allowed us to settle in this happy easy place and hoped he did too.
Dinner stretched out and a delicious state of coiled anticipation about how this night would end grew. Every glance, every touch, every shared bite of food was underscored with the mutual knowledge of two people who wanted each other but wanted to prolong the wanting until it was almost painful.
Truth be told, much as I enjoyed the simmering build, it was time to get on with it already. This European vacation had been lax on the saucy antics.
“I don’t want dessert. You?” Rohan asked. He sat back in his chair, eyes hot, voice calm.
“I’m good.” My words were at odds with my jittering leg. Once again, he insisted on treating.
I stepped outside while he finished paying, thankful for the brisk wind on my very flushed cheeks. No one else was out here. The night was quiet and still.
Rohan joined me a couple of minutes later. “They called a taxi for us but it’s going to be about twenty minutes. Want to stay outside?”
Before I could answer, a demon bobbed into view under one of the parking lot lights. Roughly my height, fuzzy, charcoal-colored, and sausage-shaped, the demon boasted one cyclops eye and a red sneer of a mouth. Both its fingers and toes were long and sloth-like. A two-foot long external metal spine ran down its back with jagged spikes jutting up like a stegosaurus.
The demon swiveled its eye to look at me.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Most of it is a gogota demon,” Rohan said. He tossed his jacket on a bench beside the restaurant door, his forearm blade extracting. “Dumb as a sack of rocks, but it’ll focus on a task’s completion until it’s dead. The metal upgrade is new.”
“Vashar! Vashar!” The demon screeched in a high reedy voice. It wobbled as if not sure how to accommodate its additional weight.
Rohan swore. “Someone has deliberately messed with it. A gogota’s sweet spot is dead center of its back.” Where we could no longer access it thanks to the metal spine. “Get it into the shadows.”
Right. We didn’t want the patrons to look out and see this.
The demon charged us, a blur of motion for such a slug-like shape. Rohan jabbed the blade along his arm into the gogota’s belly, forcing it back into the dark reaches of the lot. The demon left a trail of sticky, silver goop that glistened in the moonlight.
Busy slicing and dicing, Rohan blocked the front of the demon from me, so I couldn’t blast the gogota without hitting Rohan. I also couldn’t sneak up from behind because the demon was backed up against the complex’s fence.
It threw Rohan off, angling its body to smash Snowflake’s head with one of its spikes. Rohan staggered back and, in that moment, the demon whizzed over to me, wrapping its fingers around my wrist. “Vashar,” it insisted. Less like it wanted me dead and more like it wanted me to do something.
Blasting it failed to loosen its grip.
The demon dug its fingers into my jacket pockets. Its hands wandered over my body, probing me.
“Get off!” Even though parts of the demon were starting to shrivel and fall off under my attack, it ignored my demands. The damn thing couldn’t even stand upright anymore but that didn’t matter.
It pressed up against me, its blobby body expanding, secreting the sticky substance to keep me pinned to it as it continued its exploration of my person. The more I blasted it, the more it expanded, gluing me to its body that much harder.
Rohan tried to rip me off of it, but I was stuck fast.
Closer and closer it pressed into me, smelling of baby powder and sweaty baseball mitt. Soon the gogota would suffocate me, leaving it all the time in the world to violate me with its creepy touches.
My eyes glued shut from its sap. I could hear Rohan’s cursing and labored breathing as he tried to free me. The metallic smell of my magic filled the air.
The demon’s finger entered my mouth. “Vashar!”
Gagging, I jammed my right fist into the gogota’s belly as hard as I could. Then I twisted my fist even deeper into it before firing a blast off my closed hand. A rumbled charge from deep inside me blew through my arm at the motion.
The demon ripped free, fresh air cascading around me. I reached out blindly. “Rohan?”
He grabbed my hand. “Got you.”
I leaned on him, my legs rubbery. “Is it dead?” I had to pry my eyes open given the goop coating them. Once I had, it took me a second to figure out what I was looking at.
The gogota was stuck to a metal pole by its spikes. Not just stuck. Its spine was totally mangled, all twisted and melted, leaving the demon half-crushed in the deformation.
“Vashar!” Its fingers wriggled feebly in my direction.
“Why is it stuck to the pole? Is it glued?” Every one of my blinks was sticky with slime. I didn’t think I’d hit it hard enough to send it that far back.
“It looked like a giant magnet turned on. The demon shot off you, sucked backward to the lamp post.” Rohan approached the creature. Staying out of arm’s reach, he examined the spine. “It’s not the secretion holding it in place.” He pried the tip of one spike off and released it. It immediately clanged back against the lamp as though magnetically charged.
“Did I do that?” Was this some new facet of my power?
“Yes?” He extended a blade from his fingertips. Holding a bent piece of spine away from the demon’s body, he stabbed the gogota in the center of its back.
The demon gave one last cry and disappeared in a tiny whirlwind of gray dust. The twisted metal spine remained, attached to the post. Rohan tried to pry it off but it was stuck fast.
I stood there, chest heaving, doing my best to wipe off my face with the hem of my skirt. Beyond caring if anyone saw me with my dress up around my head. “It almost had me. It was unstoppable.” A wave of tremors coursed through me.
Rohan draped his arm around me. “It’s gone.”
“Was this an isolated attack? Did Samson send it? You think he’s on to us?”
Rohan scanned the darkness for any other threat. “Don’t go tomorrow.”
“I have to.” I shook my head at him when he looked about to argue. “Samson might not have sent the demon. In which case, standing him up is only going to annoy him. Even if he did send it, there’s nothing in his M.O. that shows him directly attacking or killing people. He won’t try to take a Rasha down with so many other witnesses around.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Rohan said. “All he has to do is work you into a depressed enough state that you take care of things afterwards.”
“Well,” I smiled up at him, “you could personally ensure I’m in a good enough mood tonight that it carries me through any bad vibes tomorrow.” I got an automatic smile
in return but I could tell I’d lost him. Rohan was already thinking through all the ways tomorrow could go wrong, instead of the ways tonight could go right.
The cab pulled around the corner of the restaurant, slowing to a stop before us. Rohan, preoccupied, climbed in. Way to kill sexytime, you dumbass demon.
21
I grew angrier and angrier all the way back because it was clear from the way Rohan handled me with kid gloves that sex was off the table. At this point, I would have taken any handling, kid glove or otherwise. He spent the ride back talking me through various scenarios for tomorrow, spoken in a low voice so the driver wouldn’t hear. My only break was when he had the driver stop at a store to get us each a couple of sports drinks, which I downed in no time.
I tried to concentrate on what he was saying but even being attacked by a demon mutant hadn’t killed the heady mixture of adrenaline and desire I’d felt in the restaurant. If anything, I needed that release more than ever. I crossed my arms over my boobs, trying to get some relief from their heavy sensitivity without it seeming too obvious what I was up to.
This time when I entered the hotel lobby, I had my shoes. That’s about all I could say for my appearance because I looked like an elephant had jizzed on me. Sticky silver slime cobwebbed between my fingers. It had hardened on my face and neck, matting my hair into unsightly white girl dreads.
Unable to help myself, I glanced at the front desk to see who was on duty this evening. Incredibly, it was a different employee, a stylish brunette. Given how she looked at me, like she wished she could snap my photo and pin it to a “do not allow” board, I’m guessing the staff talked. Let the haters hate. I had one objective here: get myself off. Inappropriate? Perhaps. Necessary? Understatement of the year.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-3 (Nava Katz Box Set) Page 47