The Unlikeable Demon Hunter

by Deborah Wilde

  “The magic in the wards is the same magic that flows through a Rasha’s veins,” Rohan said in a clipped voice. “As is the blood used.”

  “So only Rasha can set wards?”

  “Yeah. And only Rasha can undo them.” Rohan clenched the steering wheel. “Montague let a demon enter a Rasha house.” Rohan curled his lip. “Asmodeus had to be close enough for us to hear the memory loss command.” The odometer needle inched higher and higher.

  I sympathized with his anger, but I didn’t want to die in a horrific traffic accident. “Speed limit,” I yelped, my death grip on the seat easing up as he slowed the car down. “You think Asmodeus used the sakacha and dremla attack as cover to buy time for Montague to take down the wards? Allowing Asmodeus to get close enough to compel you into forgetting me?”

  “Yes.”

  I rolled down the window, letting the breeze cascade over me. My concussion symptoms were gone and the burn on my arm was starting to fade. Too bad that my Rasha healing didn’t cover wounds of the emotional variety, because the painful needles of ice piercing my heart since I’d found out about Ari’s disappearance hadn’t eased up any.

  Rohan took a hand off the wheel to squeeze my shoulder. “We’ll fix this.”

  “How did Asmodeus even know how to find Montague,” I said, “if Montague snuck into town for this liaison?”

  Rohan braked at a red light, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Prince of Lust. He’d make it his business to know things like this.”

  I frowned. “I still don’t get why he helped Asmodeus at all.” How could he betray everything he stood for and help a demon? Even I wouldn’t do that and I’d just been Rasha for a few days. Protecting Leo’s identity wasn’t the same thing. “You think he was compelled?”

  “Probably threatened to take away his playmate,” Rohan said darkly. The light turned green and we shot forward. “The jax demon. There’s a secretion in its tongue that,” he made the sound of a bomb going off with the accompanying hand motion. “Provides a very good time.”

  “What is wrong with you men? You’ll strangle yourself, let demon cats lick you, all because you need a bigger bang.”

  “It’s insanely addictive.”

  I threw him a look.

  He threw me a look back. “So I’ve been told.” He slowed the car at the chapter house gate.

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “It’s not. And if Montague was still alive?” Rohan’s finger blades popped out and he studied his hand in a scarily casual way. “I’d kill him myself for the betrayal.”

  The gate opened, allowing Rohan to swing into the long driveway.

  “I made Ari bring my stupid sheets and then fought with him, stupidly forgetting that I’d told a demon out for revenge where I live.” I buried my head in my hands. “I should have at least been guarding him.”

  Rohan braked in front of the house and cut the engine. “You’d have gotten yourself killed fighting the minions off.” He flung open his car door. “As a new Rasha you couldn’t have taken those demons on your own, so quit beating yourself up about it. Which brings us to last night.” Rohan escorted me up the stairs. “Asmodeus learned about you and revamped his plan. That’s probably why he left the fight.”

  “No point killing me when he still planned to toy with me.”

  Rohan paused at the front door. “Make you hurt the way he does. I think you’re right and Ari is still alive. He’s worth more to Asmodeus that way.”

  “Great.” My mouth twisted. “My brother is being tortured because of me.”

  “Tortured isn’t dead.” A stricken expression flashed over his features. “You can come back from tortured.”

  “To live what kind of life?” I walked into the foyer, my shoulders hunched tight up around my ears.

  “That’ll depend on Ari.” His clasped my wrist with a feather-light touch, his brows drawing together with an expression of uncertainty. “Last night. It’s… blurry. I really spoke to you about my music?”

  He sounded so hesitant. So unlike himself. “You really did,” I said.

  Rohan stalked off. I didn’t understand the big deal and honestly, right now, I didn’t care. I needed to find my twin.

  We assembled in the library where Rohan caught Kane, Baruch, and Drio up on the situation, leaving out Leo’s identity, for which I was grateful. And surprised. Though they were super pissed at me for going behind their back with the snitch to begin with.

  Also, Drio bristled like he wanted to eye-for-an-eye me for getting away on his watch. I stuck close to Rohan because if Drio didn’t remember me, he certainly didn’t remember his reluctant promise to protect me.

  “Pretty genius,” Kane said. “At best, the memory loss complicated things for you immensely, at worst, we might have killed you ourselves.”

  “Still might,” Drio said. “We only have her word about who she is.”

  “The ring and the power are proof,” I said.

  “We’ll see if the Executive thinks so.”

  “No!” I grabbed Drio’s arm as he stood. Baruch caught me with one hand and Drio with the other, pushing us back into our respective seats.

  “Maspik.” Given Baruch’s growl I figured he was telling us to knock it off.

  “Tell him not to tattle on me to Big Brother,” I said.

  “No one is tattling,” Kane said.

  Drio crossed his arms.

  “We done?” Rohan leveled a hard gaze between the two of us. I nodded and Drio sat there stonily, which was the best case scenario.

  “Do we know where the demons are holding Ari?” I asked.

  Kane’s expression gentled. “Ari isn’t–”

  “Yes,” I snapped. “He is. My twin is alive and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go find him.” I jumped to my feet. “Can we do that?”

  Baruch nodded. “We can, in fact.”

  Rohan’s hand came down on my shoulder. “That anger? Hold on to it. Don’t let it rule you. But let it fuel you.”

  Count on it.

  “It would have to be Riverview.” I peered through a copse of trees at the largely abandoned psychiatric hospital located about a half hour drive outside Vancouver.

  The looming stone buildings with their iron-barred windows were creepy enough when seen in all the various TV shows that shot here. Onscreen didn’t come close to capturing the eerie vibe while actually standing on the edge of the property under an ink-black sky with only the faintest trace of moonlight. Suddenly, that oppressive dusk seemed like the better option.

  I’d requested one of those crazy bright flashlights that Scully and Mulder always seemed to have on hand. Instead I’d been clothed in lightweight, fibrous clothing like an armor covering me from neck to ankle that would help deflect demon claws and teeth and given a tight scratchy black cap to tuck my hair under. I resembled a giant black sock with boobs.

  The four guys, on the other hand, looked like cool ninja assassins.

  It was a good thing I only got the vaguest sense of the buildings. Too much of a close inspection would have played havoc with my already fraught nerves. I’d heard rumors of voices here at Riverview and that was without a demon presence.

  Even knowing I was going in with the super mensches and my own magic abilities didn’t stop me from jumping at every little sound and obsessively checking over my shoulder.

  “Got an idea of what we’ll be faced with when we get inside? Based on all the successful demon raids you’ve led?” I whispered, creeping behind Rohan in the shadows.

  “Danger.” At a sign from Drio that he was zipping ahead, Rohan put up his own hand to bring the rest of us to a stop.

  “That vagueness doesn’t inspire confidence.”

  He flashed me a wry smile. “I rock improvisation.”

  We waited in tense silence. I sort of wished the demons would hurry up and rush us because the anticipation was awful. At long last, Drio returned, pointing to a building on the west side of the property. “In there
.”

  In another time and place, say on a sunny day in the Deep South, sipping sweet tea while rocking lazily on the front porch, our destination would have been a charming place to hang out. A long staircase led up to a row of two-story columns, supporting the wide balconies on each floor. Now, however, the once-white paint was streaked with black. Clumps of moss clung to the sides of the railings and ferns grew in wild abandonment over the windows.

  I shivered, very glad to have Baruch at my back as we stepped inside because my inner things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-o-meter was vibrating hard enough to snap. A coat of silver paint, probably from a film shoot, had been applied, now peeling in huge scabby swathes. Or rather, flaked like something with massive nails had tried to scrabble its way out through the walls. There was junk everywhere, from plaster, wood, and pipes vomited out of the structure itself and strewn around like a bomb blast, to an abandoned shopping cart sitting in an otherwise empty room.

  Drio kept zipping off ahead to scout. This time when he came back, he touched Rohan’s shoulder to turn us into a large room, then, motioning for Kane to come with him, left.

  Rohan, Baruch, and I picked our way over fallen ceiling tiles.

  I looked up, then wished I hadn’t because the ceiling was rife with gaping holes, perfect for some demon to drop down on us. Say, a seven-foot-high wooden snowman demon, exploding out in a shower of ruptured tiles.

  I rocked sideways at the resounding crash of the demon hitting the floor.

  The demon’s head, the smallest segment, was a good foot and a half in diameter. His eyes took me a moment to find, since his skin was the consistency of weathered bark, but finally I saw the slowly blinking slits. He had no legs and stumpy T-Rex arms. It would have been comical except each of these tiny limbs ended in foot-long, blood-encrusted pincers. He slithered toward us with a scraping sound, each of his segments wobbling in different tempos.

  “Sakacha,” Baruch said. The pain demon.

  This atrocity was one of the creatures that Asmodeus ordered to kidnap Ari? Before I could light up, Baruch stepped in front of me to battle it. The foresty showdown of Tree Trunk versus Segmented Wood Block. Baruch ducked under the demon’s snapping left pincer to pop up behind him and snap his head off. He broke off that heavy chunk of wood as easily as if he was breaking off a piece of a cracker.

  Being headless didn’t deter the demon. The sakacha swiveled his head, now laying sideways on the ground, to watch the fight, turning his body accordingly in order to take Baruch on, like a remote control.

  Rohan grabbed my arm.

  My neck jolted sideways as he pulled me along. The reverberations of other thunks of wood followed us as we sped through the building, each hit managing to make the floor tremble no matter how far away we got.

  I threw a worried glance over my shoulder as we ran, praying Baruch was all right.

  “He’s fine,” Rohan said, as if I’d spoken, because he was a freak that way. “The kill spot is a knot in the center of the lower segment. Baruch has to take him apart to get to it.”

  “With his bare hands?”

  A finger traced down my back. I swung around throwing a voltage-heavy right hook that would have made Baruch proud. But there was no one there. Though I swear I heard a laugh. If that had been Drio with some sick joke, I’d kill him.

  I’d never been big on running, but I experienced a sudden deep love for flat-out sprinting. I vaulted down some stairs and skidded to a stop next to Rohan, my chest heaving. Oh. Whatever had touched me before hadn’t been Drio. He was otherwise occupied.

  Pillars dotted the large room in which we stood. The light coming through the warped window at one end threw slithery shadows that danced along the floor, turning Drio’s battle with the half-dozen sakacha demons present into an eerie ballet.

  Kane was nowhere to be seen. I crossed my fingers that he was searching for Ari.

  Drio used his flash stepping to dance and weave through their number, disappearing from beside one only to appear next to another. In the seconds it took for that sakacha to realize Drio was there, he’d used this small axe blade to slice a piece off it.

  Where’d he been storing that thing?

  Giant sakacha slivers flew to a soundtrack of axe whistling and wood scraping against the floor. Drio was doing an impressive job holding his own but he was still outnumbered and slicing them apart to get to their knots required time we didn’t have.

  Rohan pointed to a pillar. “Stay over there. You’ll be safe.”

  I planted my hands on my hips. “Excuse me, Tarzan?”

  “We’ll find your brother faster if I don’t have to worry about you. Don’t underestimate these demons.”

  “What exactly are you going to do against those wood monsters? Carve your initials in them until they beg for mercy?” I pushed Rohan back with a sweeping arm. “Stand back.” I struck the nearest demon with a bolt to his middle and like all dry wood, he burst into flame. His pee-wee arm sizzled away, sending his right pincer clattering to the ground.

  My smug triumph lasted about ten seconds.

  With a grinding noise, the sakacha demon transformed from wood to stone, dousing the flames and making his skin impenetrable.

  Houston, we have a problem.

  21

  “Um…”

  “Stone,” Rohan said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How they react to external threat.”

  “Like Drio’s ax is party time for them?”

  “It’s iron. It renders them incapable of–” He jabbed a finger at the demon. “That.”

  Talk about stone-cold killer. Drio’s ax now did nothing on the demon, who had, in his rage, seized Drio by the shoulder with his remaining pincer, grinding his long claws into Drio’s flesh.

  I flinched at the loud snap of Drio’s shoulder breaking.

  The blood drained from his face and he grit his teeth so hard that the tendons in his neck stood out in sharp relief. His agony must have been incredible but the freak didn’t cry out. Using his good hand, Drio awkwardly attempted to jam the axe blade between his skin and the demon’s pincer. Like a lever, using it to try and pry the pincers open.

  The remaining sakacha converged on them but Rohan jumped into their midst, a human Ginsu knife of slicing and dicing.

  Right, his blades were iron.

  Three of the demons skittered back out of reach, but one suicidal fucker charged Rohan, the full force of his bulk nailing the Rasha in the small of his back. The jolt should have sent Rohan stumbling forward but the demon caught him by the scruff of his neck with a pincer.

  A sly, satisfied smirk spread over the sakacha’s face.

  I wanted to help but I was scared I’d make things worse. How could I free Rohan if I couldn’t use my power?

  Didn’t matter. Rohan freed himself by jerking away so hard that a chunk of flesh remained in the demon’s grasp. Blood streamed down his back. My stomach heaved at the strong coppery stench filling the room.

  Drio had yet to unseat his sakacha. One arm hung uselessly at the Rasha’s side while the other couldn’t get a proper angle to loosen the pincer from his broken shoulder. The demon wormed his claw into Drio’s shoulder with an expression of sadistic glee.

  A sheen of sweat dotted Drio’s face and given his wavery movements, he hovered on the edge of consciousness. Of all the people on Team Rasha, you’d think I’d be most okay with losing him, but I didn’t want him to die because I’d messed up.

  Thankfully, at that moment, Baruch charged through the door and ripped the entire pincer arm off of the demon torturing Drio. The pincer itself went slack and fell off. Drio’s arm hung at a nauseating angle from his broken shoulder, blood flowing from the gauges that the pincer had made. He ignored it to go help Rohan.

  In the trauma of losing his arm, the sakacha reverted to his natural wood state. My firebomb had done enough damage that once the demon transformed back, he fell apart like cheap particle board.

  Tree Trunk thrust his hand into the spongy
mass, grabbed the knot–about the size and shape of a large lima bean–and crushed it under his foot.

  All the remained of the demon was a pile of sawdust.

  With Drio’s help, Rohan was able to destroy the sakacha who’d injured him. Baruch seemed to be holding his own against the rest.

  As I wasn’t needed here, I raced deeper into the creepy building, past water-stained walls with their faint tang of mold, and under graffiti-tagged ceilings, on high alert for Ari.

  Having imagined my twin beaten, bloody, and caged, I thought I’d prepared myself for the state in which I’d find him.

  Imagining the scene was nothing like seeing it.

  Ari was a pulpy mess, his flesh a rainbow of bruising. He sprawled on the filthy floor of a small room so obviously broken that the demons hadn’t even bothered to chain him up.

  Tears streamed from my eyes as I ran over to him and hooked my hands under his armpits to help him to his feet. “I’ve got you.” My voice cracked.

  My brother couldn’t even support himself. I staggered under his weight until I managed to find my balance for the both of us. “I wondered when you’d get here.” He stared at me blearily, his blinks too slow, his expression too dazed.

  My heart stuttered. “Sorry to make you wait.” Sorry about everything I ever did to hurt you, intentionally or not. There’d be plenty of time to apologize once we were away from here.

  We shuffled to the doorway.

  Ari cradled the arm not slung around my neck against his body, his wrist puffy. Blood-encrusted scars were gashed diagonally along his chest and he sported a hell of a black eye. Walking seemed to be a shambling challenge but he wasn’t limping.

  Shafts of weak moonlight lit our way along the quiet hallway. My scalp prickled. Where was everyone, Fallen Angels and demons both? Being allowed to wander around unchecked had to be part of a massive trap.

  It took some time to backtrack but we made it to the large room where the sakacha battle had occurred. The floor was strewn with sawdust though the sakacha were all gone.