I knelt down. “Come here, evil mop.”
The dog growled. The same “arr-ruff” sound I used to have my black panther stuffie Sebastian make when I was kid.
I wasn’t a demon dog person at the best of times. “Get over here.” I lunged for it but it bounded off, leading Rohan and I on a merry chase through the trash-strewn warehouse. After many frustrating minutes, we managed to corner it.
“All right, mutt–” I jumped back as the dog snapped at my fingers.
Rohan nudged me aside and knelt down, his hand outstretched. “Who’s a good dog?” he cooed, edging closer until he was able to scratch it under the chin.
The demon’s growls changed to happy yips as it licked Rohan with near-ecstatic fervor.
“It’s a she, isn’t it?” I said. Rohan smirked. “Just get the collar.”
“Already on–”
The room swung sideways with a sickening snap, and from one blink to the next, the warehouse disappeared, replaced by jungle.
“Is this an illusion or have we been portalled somewhere?” I asked.
The air was rich with rot and a heavy lushness. Twisted trees in a million shades of green jutted up from the ground, their gnarled roots protruding from the dark soil.
I tied my coat around my waist, a hot moist breeze washing over me.
“Illusion.” Rohan did the same with his leather jacket. “The dog was a cù-sith.”
Now Harry’s warning made sense. This particular type of demon dog would feed our fears to us before going for our souls. I scrunched my head into my neck, keeping my mind utterly blank. “You didn’t think to give me a heads-up it was mega hellhound level evil?”
Rohan steered me around a wide patch of mud. “No point. We need the collar. Like you said, this business could have consequences for Leo. If anyone has figured out how to bind demons we’ve got to put a stop to it.”
Rohan was supposed to be providing a myriad of reasons why I wanted him gone. Not this. “You are such an asshole.”
Rohan blinked at me. “Because I don’t want Leo hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Right. What a dick.”
I refused to laugh at his wry tone. “Be verwy, verwy qwuiet. We’re hunting demons.”
Rohan let out a bang-on impression of Elmer Fudd’s stuttering laugh. Double asshole. He tilted his face up to the sunlight filtering through the tree canopy, sighing in delight.
“Probably nice and hot in Los Angeles this time of year.”
He cut me a sideways look loaded with disapproval.
“What about your family? Your friends? Don’t you miss them?” I jumped a rotted log.
“I have friends all over the world.”
“Great. Go visit them.”
“I’m here until we find the spine. Deal with it.”
“Look, I may be biased against the Brotherhood,” I said. Rohan snorted. “But the rest of you have dedicated your lives to this organization. How much is that going to temper your need for answers? Or affect your actions if you can’t reconcile your loyalties with whatever we find out?”
“It won’t.”
“God, you’re infuriating.”
He gave a small smile, his eyes constantly scanning, keenly assessing our environment. “You’ve rubbed off on me.”
“No, that’s all innately you.” I sidestepped a leafy fern, unseen birds and monkeys calling out overhead.
We crashed through a dense press of trees and stopped. Before us lay a stone temple in the process of being reclaimed by jungle. The uneven, rust-colored flagstones were rough and pocketed with spongy patches of dark-green moss.
A bird screeched overhead.
“Why are we in Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Rohan said. “I barely remember the movie, much less was scared by it. You?”
“Nope. It’s one of my faves.” Repeated viewings with my dad was one of my happiest times with him. I pushed a sweaty curl out of my eyes. “How are you with spiders?”
“Why is that a question?”
“Replete-with-tarantulas-assistant, dude. If he shows up, you get to deal with him.”
“Don’t even joke about anything you’re scared of. Put it out of your head.”
We walked up to the open doorway, our footprints in the thick layer of dust as clear as tracks in the snow. Flaming torches cast flickering tongues of light, the corners falling off to cobwebbed shadows. It was just bright enough to see the row of bolt holes indicative of arrow traps for those foolhardy enough to cross the floor.
Stairs lead to a huge stone dais at the front of the cavern. Light glinted off the pink dog collar, now positioned on top of a boulder at the back of the dais. A plethora of deadly arrows waiting to be fired stood between it and us.
I toed at some dirt on the flagstones. “Thoughts on surviving the arrows?”
Rohan studied the bolt holes visible from our position. “Or the giant boulder?”
“That’s on the way out. Stick with the script, Snowflake.”
Rohan gave a half-grin, turning away like he didn’t want me to see it.
“What?”
“Hadn’t heard that nickname in a few weeks. I forgot how much I hated it.”
“Yeah, that grin screams deep loathing.”
He crouched down, slamming his fist down in the center of the one of the stones. An arrow shot over our heads.
“Follow me. Exactly.” He stepped onto the first stone with supreme confidence.
When nothing happened, I stepped on the same spot he’d just been.
An arrow narrowly missed my shoulder.
I jumped back, triggering some motion sensor that released the rest of the arsenal. Well, this sucks, I thought before I was ripped apart.
Or was saved by Rohan crashing me to the floor, blocking my body with his as arrows whizzed overhead embedding into the walls on either side.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he joked.
The edge of a flagstone jabbed into my shoulder blade, so I shifted, wanting up, but ended up pressed against Rohan instead. Our first full-body encounter since he’d returned. I arched up into him more and his leg shifted between my knees, the hard line of his body fitted to mine. My cheek grazed his, and I nuzzled into his neck.
My body sighed in recognition and something else I didn’t want to examine too closely. I ran my hands along his biceps, Rohan catching my fingers and gently squeezing them. Enveloped by him as I was, the only reason I noticed that the arrows had stopped was because I could now hear my thudding heart. “We should keep going,” I said.
Rohan pushed away from me, so slow and pained it was as if he had to physically snap our connection. The fiery gold of his eyes sparked an answering shiver of bliss in me.
He stretched out a hand and pulled me up, dragging a thumb along the inside of my wrist.
I stumbled up the stairs to the dais.
A beautiful mermaid dragged herself out of the shadows near the collar. Clump. Click. Her fish tail ended in bloody knives. They struck the flagstones off-beat with the haunting, ethereal melody she sang that made me yearn to offer myself up to her, even though I knew that would be the last thing I’d ever do.
Rohan looked at her. Looked at me. Opened his mouth. Shut it.
“That’s the Little Mermaid,” I explained.
“Why the hell would you think of her now?”
I planted my hands on my hips. “Way to assume I’m responsible.”
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t even know what she was.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You just Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man’d us. Death by mermaid. Bhenchod,” he swore in Hindi.
The mermaid clumped back and forth in front of the boulder, singing all the while. Beckoning us to come take the collar. If we could.
“I didn’t conjure her up.”
“Then why did she manifest? What’s her deal?” Rohan asked.
“The original story isn’t singing crabs and catchy melodies. It’s this graceful mermaid who trades her tongue for le
gs that feel like she’s walking on knives with every step.”
“It was you,” he said. “Your fears of losing the ability to dance.”
“Lived it already. Can’t happen twice. So nope. Not my fear.”
The mermaid stuck close to the boulder. Those knives of hers would do serious damage as soon as we got within striking range.
“How do we kill her?” Rohan asked.
“We need a prince who with a single rejection, which, let’s face it, is the most likely outcome, will turn her into sea foam.”
Rohan was staring at me with something suspiciously akin to pity. My face grew hot. No way. This wasn’t on me.
I stomped toward the mermaid.
Eyes blazing, she slithered over to us in an inhuman burst of speed, flinging drops of sea foam from her fingertips.
I barely had time to shoot a crippling bolt of magic. The mermaid lurched as my strike found its mark. Her tail thwacked the ground, the floor now visible through the impressive hole I’d created in her gut. Unbalanced yet undeterred, she roared, her stumpy tongue waggling at us, her knives flicking back and forth like a metronome.
A gob of sea foam hit Rohan square in the face. He grimaced and wiped himself off with his sleeve but he didn’t turn Hulk, freak out, or seem to be tripping balls, so that was good.
He partially extended his own blade along the length of his right leg and cut the bottom half of her tail off with a jumping spinning kick that was a thing of beauty in its execution. The tail fell to the stones with a meaty plop and a clatter of knives.
I jumped over her writhing body, snatched the collar off the boulder, and tucked it into my pocket.
Whoosh! Thump!
Rohan pressed down on my back, forcing me to duck, just as a volley of spears shot out of the walls, passing so close overhead that I patted my head to make sure I hadn’t been scalped.
A blood-curdling howl raised the hair along my arms. The mermaid raised her voice in answer, but wriggling on the ground as she was, she was the least of our worries right now.
The cù-sith were soul reapers. We had until the demon dog’s third howl to reach safety or our lives were forfeit, and since its baying could be heard for miles, it didn’t even need to face us, robbing us of the chance to kill it.
And if we didn’t kill it, we’d be trapped in this illusion forever.
We raced through the temple’s corridor, a now endless stretch of hallway, the exit elusive.
The mermaid had been left far behind, but my back warmed with the splat of sea foam, and then her whisper of a laugh shivered inside my head.
I grabbed Rohan’s arm, stumbling after him. He was going to leave me. I’d be alone and deserted and I couldn’t do this. I clutched his arm tighter, one last touch before he went back to L.A. and his life there. His loves there.
My knees buckled.
Rohan yanked me up. “What’s wrong?”
We weren’t going to make it. We wouldn’t outrun the cù-sith’s howls. I’d doomed my lover, my best guy friend.
I tried to pull free and curl into a ball.
The second howl set birds wailing in alarm.
I forced myself to run, one hand pressed against my burning side doing my best to ignore the insidious voice still gnawing away at me.
A pair of eyes glowed bright in the shadows to one side, then with a blink and a swish of a tail, were gone.
Positive I could feel the cù-sith’s teeth at my back, I sucked in a breath, feeling like my insides had hit a brick wall. After what felt like an eternity, we rounded a corner, the temple’s exit just up ahead. Fresh air and sunlight wafted toward us.
With a bone-rattling rumble, the earth rent apart into a jagged pit. Rohan and I stumbled to a stop at its edge, kicking small stones and loose dirt tumbling down into the dark void.
A skimpy vine hung down for us to swing across.
I stepped back.
“I’ll go first. Prove it’s safe.” Rohan grabbed the vine, tensed, then faced me. “Give me the collar.”
“No way.” He wasn’t leaving me. Wasn’t using me and then throwing me away.
“Come on, Nava,” he coaxed in a purr, “you might lose it. This isn’t the time for you to be stubborn.”
I slapped my hand over the pocket where it was stuffed.
He grabbed my arm with his free hand, yanking me close. “Hand it over.” His eyes were narrowed, a thread of panic lacing his voice.
A gigantic shadow flew up from the void. The demon landed on the ground behind us with a thud that almost rocked us off our feet. Pure white with shaggy fur and a densely muscled body, her muzzle was slightly open, revealing wickedly sharp teeth. As a dog, she’d been a mop of fur, now she was a monster. Bull-sized with a still-braided tail and massive paws, her red slits of eyes shone out of the avalanche of white. She trotted toward us, about to howl for the third and final time.
Rohan’s blades snicked out on one hand, five sharp points gouging my skin. “The collar.”
I fired into his hand; just a shock. Enough to break free, creeping sideways out from between him and the demon dog.
“I want it, Nava,” he growled.
I clutched my head, the voices hammering at me. This was what happened when no one thought you were worth keeping around. You went on and on until suddenly you died.
No. I was the one calling the shots. I wasn’t some loser that got left. I wasn’t going to die here. I grabbed the vine and jogged a few steps backward to get a running start to swing over the pit.
Rohan caught me in an ironclad grip. He raised his arm, blades out and swiped.
I whimpered.
Rohan flinched at the sound, jerking his knives away violently.
The demon’s dirge of a third howl filled the sky.
Rohan trained horrified eyes on me. “Run.” He grabbed me around the waist and hurled me over the pit.
The howl abruptly cut off. The second my toes touched ground on the far side of the pit, I spun around, my heart encased in an icy grip, positive Rohan was dead.
Rohan had the cù-sith pinned to the ground, his expression caught in a tight snarl as he smashed his fist into the dog’s face over and over again. The demon emitted a single high-pitched whine before Rohan snapped her neck. He’d hit her kill spot because she disappeared.
Whelp, I wasn’t getting a dog that way.
With the cù-sith dead, the illusion’s power had been broken. The temple and jungle disappeared, leaving us in a deserted warehouse with rain sluicing down on us through the gaps in the roof. Getting soaked to the skin helped to clear my mind of the mermaid’s evil whispers, the means by which the demon dog had played on my fears. Well, cleared it somewhat. And speaking of fears…
“Rohan.” I stepped toward him, the collar spilling from my hand. “In the temple. The re-enactment of the betraying assistant by the pit. That was your fear, wasn’t it? What happened to you on that assignment?”
“Demons killed Rasha. I killed the demons.” He used his “don’t push it” voice.
Except I deserved better than that.
No, you don’t.
My hands balled into fists. “What. Happened?”
“What happened to you in the temple? You were holding me like you’d die if I left.” He prowled close, his eyes glinting dangerously. “Would you have?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” It took everything I had not to sprint when I left the warehouse.
Wind howled around me, dark clouds lending an ominous weight to the sky. My hair snapped in tendrils around my face. I hugged the collar to my body, half-hunched over, plodding toward the car.
Rain plastered my clothes to my body, my hair sticking to my skin in wet strands. Fumbling the keys in my icy fingers, I finally opened the car door and threw my filthy coat in the back seat.
Rohan’s hand came down on the door, preventing me from closing it. Water streaming down his scalp, he turned his face to mine, his expression bleak. “I need to know if everything I’v
e ever believed I was fighting for still holds true.” The pain in his voice punched into me.
I cupped my palm to his jaw. “Oh, Rohan.”
He framed my face with his hands. “I’m sorry.”
I winced at the cloth melted to his wrist from where I’d shot my magic into him. It had been more than a mere shock. “I hurt you worse.”
He gave a pained laugh. “Stop being so competitive.”
I couldn’t stop spinning the sensation of his fingers splayed against my cheek, a steady warmth offsetting the rain sticking to my lashes, and rolling across me in a million cold drops. The tenderness in his eyes sped my heart and made the tips of my ears tingle. I didn’t want tender. I wanted every part of him to fill me up, his hands pining me down, and a hungry focus on his face for me and only me.
I pushed him into the back seat, falling on top of him. His palm brushed the scratched skin of my hip through my torn shirt and I winced.
He stilled. “I’ll hurt you.” His lips compressed in a flat line, self-disgust etched on his face. “Again.”
“Probably.” I sucked on his neck and he moaned. “Right now I don’t care.” I rubbed myself against his erection.
“You’re going to kill me,” he ground out, fumbling at my scrubs. I helped him peel the wet pants off, Rohan growling and me laughing at his frustration. The second my legs were free, Rohan rolled me off of him onto the seat, his mouth hot and desperate as he kissed his way down my body.
The rasp of his goatee on my skin wound me tight, heightening everything into a honed, hard clarity that was almost too much to bear. I dug my fingers into his wavy locks, my fingers tightening against his scalp.
His fingertips dragged along a curve of muscle, his soft hair tickled my belly, and his lips skipped up the inside of my thigh. His touch stoked embers that I wanted to coax into an all-consuming blaze.
Rain pounded on the roof in a wild drumbeat, lashing across the back seat. I’d swear it was sizzling and turning to steam as it hit my skin, like the hiss of water over sauna rocks.
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Need (Nava Katz Book 3) Page 13