I pulled up the chapter house gate, expecting alarms to blare, and my flesh to boil when I passed the ward line onto the property. I crossed my fingers, hoping for the out, and gunned forward. There was no bouncing off the invisible shields, just a smooth slide onto the grounds.
“How’s Rohan?” Dr. Gelman asked.
“He’ll be fine.” Help me. I coughed.
“Are you all right?”
“Fabulous. Gotta go.” There’d be no help for what I’d done, but I could fix what was broken.
Unless Ro and Drio, sparring in the Vault, killed each other first.
They’d left the door open. We had an air conditioning system that did a pretty good job keeping the sweat stink at bay, but they’d propped open the door because it was steamy in there. I stayed in the shadows of the hallway.
Ro, wearing gi bottoms and a T-shirt, swung a thin curved blade mounted at the end of a long iron pole at Drio’s head. His pecs tensed and flexed with the movement.
The pole whistled over Drio, who’d flattened himself backward before springing back to his feet, a similar weapon at the ready. Drio’s gi bottoms encased his rock-hard thighs and his bare chest gleamed with sweat. Dude was so ripped, his six-pack had a six-pack. In a flash, he was behind Ro, his blade arcing toward Rohan with a hard whoosh.
I eeped at the ensuing decapitation, but Rohan had it under control. He sidestepped the weapon, not even flinching as it brushed by the end of his nose. He swept his pole under Drio’s and would have torn a chunk out of Drio’s side had Drio not blocked it with a ringing clang.
Both men strained, their weapons locked. Tendons popped on their arms, their teeth grinding, keeping each other at bay. Rohan stepped back, knocking Drio slightly off-center. Taking split-second advantage, he delivered a roundhouse kick to Drio’s thigh, hefted the pole high, and swung the blade down.
Drio blurred out, reappearing on the other side of the room.
The two circled each other. Rohan lunged suddenly, flipping the stick to knock Drio under the chin with the handle. Drio parried with his own weapon, sending Ro’s arm out of whack, but it wasn’t enough to block the hit entirely. Drio may have saved himself a pole through the underside of his jaw, but the blow still landed on the side of the head.
He staggered back, blood flowing from his ear.
Rohan went in for the kill. Even without his magic, he drove Drio to his knees.
“Basta,” Drio said. He pushed up off his knees, wrestling Ro’s staff to take it away from him. “Enough, Rohan.”
Ro’s hair was plastered to his forehead, his T-shirt soaked through. He grabbed the cloth wraps laying in a pile beside some discarded boxing gloves and began wrapping his knuckles. “What happened with the oshk?”
Drio grabbed his T-shirt off the floor and used it to staunch the bleeding. “Took her outside the wards again today, but if she’s calling the others, they’re not coming for her. I’ll try again tomorrow. Come upstairs. You’ve done enough training for today.” Drio spied me at the door and his jaw hardened, but his concern for his friend overrode his animosity towards me. “Talk some sense into him.”
“I’ll do better than that. Ro, come here.”
“Kinda busy.” Wraps on, he threw a couple of shadow punches.
“This is important.” I hugged him tight, laying my head against his chest.
He tensed, but his arms finally came around me. “What am I going to do?” he whispered.
“Not a damn thing.” I smiled up at him, reaching deep inside me for that magic Lilith had given me. This was no small sprig, but a massive rich bloom. I unfurled its petals, magic like dust motes flitting through me to fill my every inch.
Red magic shot out of me into Rohan, snapping my head back. Each dancing particle was visible; the world cranked to eleven. The floor wasn’t blue, it was infinite depths of the ocean. Rohan’s heart glowed pink through his brown skin, Drio’s hair shone like spun gold. Could have done without seeing the individual drops of sweat flying off the men, but the rainbow prisms refracted in them were pretty.
My amped-up power was a waterfall, a deafening roar lifting me off the ground, cool and pure and majestic. It lasted a single heartbeat and then turned off like a tap. I crumpled to the floor, mourning its loss. In that moment, I’d have agreed to anything to feel that way again.
“O cazzo!” Drio held the poles like a cross.
Rohan’s laugh bounced off the walls. Every single blade on his body was extended, his face lit up. I let his joy satisfy my craving for more of that magic. It was a salve, but it worked well enough.
I collapsed back against the padding and feebly fist-pumped. “Healing, bitches.”
He dropped to his knees beside me. “They said it couldn’t be unraveled.”
“Scientist witches. They had to find a solution.” Lilith allowed the lie.
“And you’re just that good.” Was it my imagination or did his eyes meet mine a little too pointedly? Was his smile a bit too wide?
I held out my hand and he pulled me up. “You better believe it. With a little help from my friends.” I coughed. “I’m going to take a shower.” I trailed a finger down his chest. “You could make me dinner in thanks.”
My stomach was knotted up and my mouth tasted like ash.
Drio still watched me with hostile suspicion, but he lowered the poles, disappearing into the weapons room.
My beautiful boy kissed my forehead. “You got it.”
As kisses went, it was a passing sweetness. I’d like to say that I’d have cherished it for the rest of my life, but the memory had already faded by the time I joined Ro in the kitchen forty-five minutes later, my hair loose and damp.
He’d laid out a candlelit table, which would have been romantic were the candles not pumping out a constant stream of smudgy smoke. Rohan presented me with crusty bread with olive oil and balsamic to dip it in, wine, salad, and fish.
It looked delicious. The taste, on the other hand? I poked at the halibut. “This salt-crust is really… salty.”
“Good, right?” Rohan ate with gusto. “It’s this Spanish recipe I’ve been wanting to try.”
I muscled another bite past my gag-reflex. Figured the last meal he’d ever want to cook for me was this disgusting disaster. “Yum.” I knocked back my wine, pouring more into my glass. Nerves steady, I pulled the fridge magnets that Yael had given me out of my terry cloth bathrobe. “You game?”
He laughed. “Smutty poetry magnets. Why not?”
I dumped the tiles out. Have. Give. Slow. Explore.
“Did you get burned when you healed me?” Rohan picked through the tiles for his selection.
I stopped rubbing the scar Lilith had given me to seal the deal. “I guess.”
Ro countered with: suck, stroke, quiver, throb.
“Jumping a few levels there, Snowflake.” Naked. Make. Me. Moan.
“I like this game.” We. Caress. Rub. Quiver.
“My turn.” Girl. In. My. Body. The tiles jerked sideways before he could read them, slipping to the floor. I doubled over in a hacking coughing fit, tears leaking out my eyes, my esophagus trying to escape out my mouth. All the words I wanted to say and couldn’t were a tight pinch, choking me.
It had been worth a try.
Rohan got me some water, patting my back until I waved him off. I dropped my head in my hands.
“Clusterfuck of a day, baby,” he said. “Come on. Let me take away all your tensions.”
I could close the fraction of an inch between us, let him lead me to the bedroom, rock his world, and wake up treasured in his arms the next morning.
I lay my hand on his cheek, not trusting my voice yet. Wishing there was any way other than this way outside-the-box plan. “I tried, but I can’t do this. I don’t want to be with you anymore. We’re done.”
Rohan jerked away. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m not kidding.” A maelstrom of jagged edges and burning gusts swirled inside me. Lilith voicing her disple
asure. My lawyer father would have hung his head in shame that I’d negotiated without reading the fine print about the consequences of breaking this deal. The section pertaining to my death. I grit my teeth. “There’s no separation in our lives and it’s too much. I can’t breathe.” For someone without blade magic, I fired those metaphoric knives like a pro. “We can’t be together.”
I stood up, crashing into the table, bent over double, feeling for my way out, wondering if I’d even make it to the door before the searing pain ripping me apart, consumed me. My vision tunneled down into a single dot.
“Nava! Come back here. Please.”
His pleading was wrecking me. One touch and I’d take it all back. I sped up so that couldn’t happen. “I’m sorry. This is how it has to be.”
“You can’t.” That hadn’t been Rohan. That was Lilith, roaring up inside me. “Nice try. But you can’t get out of our deal that easy. I’ll take it from here.”
My consciousness was shoved to one side, manhandled into a tiny ball, and stuffed into a black box. I fought her with everything I had, but my efforts were laughable. You said I wouldn’t even know you were here.
“You won’t,” she purred and slammed the black box shut.
I woke up the next morning naked in my bed. The scar was gone.
I turned over to find Ro watching me. I cast about for the appropriate salutation after one had dumped one’s boyfriend and then been unconscious through body-possessed sex. “Have fun last night?”
“You tell me,” he replied in a bland tone that clarified exactly nothing.
Oh, how I wished I could. I stretched out my limbs, checked in with Cuntessa, tested for unfamiliar soreness. Nothing. Whatever had gone down last night, Lilith hadn’t been freaky. “About what I said last night?”
“Forget it.” He got out of bed and pulled on his pants. “We’re going to try contacting the other oshk again. Meet us out back.”
There was no good morning kiss before he left.
I pressed my fists into my eyes until I saw stars.
Rohan knew. I don’t know how, but he did. I’d broken up with him thinking it was my one way to save him, and instead Lilith had tricked me and fucked him and I’d lost him anyway. There was no point being mad at the duplicitous witch. My self-loathing, on the other hand, was endless.
My phone trilled merrily with my Word of the Day notification. Specious: adjective. Having deceptive attraction or allure; having a false look of truth or genuineness.
I deleted the app.
23
Drio deposited our oshk bait on a stump in the woods behind our back fence–outside the wards. Her body was wrapped in iron chains, not that she was in any condition to portal or fight back. Her sores hadn’t healed on her human torso, and her oshk skin had turned the color of rust. She was vibrating, emitting a sound like sizzling butter, and she smelled like mold.
The three of us were back in full protective gear from head-to-toe. Drio gripped one of the iron poles with the curved blade that he and Ro had been fighting with in the Vault, while Rohan had three canisters of liquid nitrogen, modified with spray nozzles. He’d volunteered for the position, saying that with Drio’s flash stepping and my magic wielding from a distance, we were better equipped to deal with the direct attack. For Ro to take this support position was huge. He’d always been ready to sacrifice himself for the people he cared about–like me on more than one occasion–which wasn’t healthy.
I was proud of him recognizing that fact and desperate to know if him not wanting to throw his life away in a fight he didn’t need to have was tied into our future at all, but he was sticking close to Drio. I could have pushed the point but things were so strained between us that any conversation was likely to explode into ugly truths and put the mission at risk.
I kept telling myself that was the reason, anyway.
Drio kicked the oshk. “Call the rest of your spawn squad.”
A laugh burst out of me, dying at the look of malevolence he fired my way. Situation normal all fucked up. I wouldn’t forget again.
I squatted down on the ground, scratching at a gnarled tree root through my gloves, not bothering to check for any support from Ro. Other than a quick glance when I’d first arrived, after which he’d pulled his mask down, my boyfriend hadn’t bothered with me. Though he might not be that anymore so… I snapped the root in half and kicked it aside.
A faraway truck backed up, its beeping drifting in on the breeze and a neighbor had left their dog outside barking, but no matryoshka.
The sun rose high in the sky. We’d pulled off our head gear and unzipped our suits, moving from shadow to shadow to stay cool. Waiting for the rest of the matryoshka to show was tense enough, couple it with the fact that the men barely acknowledged my existence the entire time, and I was ready to snap harder than that tree root.
The oshk’s torso became brutally sunburned, and still the other matryoshka didn’t show.
“This is bullshit.” Rohan drove the curved blade that Drio had tossed on the ground through the oshk’s heart. The demon disappeared, her chains slithering off the stump into the dirt with a rattle.
“Way to make a unilateral decision there, Ro.” Drio scuffed one foot back and forth in the dirt.
The forest stilled like a sound-dampening blanket had been tossed over it. The air shimmered and the remaining six oshk appeared.
We scrambled to suit up.
Drio grabbed the weapon and fist-bumped Rohan.
“Go forth and fucking conquer,” Ro said.
I wasn’t included in the rallying cheer.
With my own war cry, I bombed the shit out of the matryoshka, keeping them disoriented enough for Drio to slice and dice them open for one of us to reach their heart kill spot.
The ground became littered with oshk parts. Ro doused each one with liquid nitrogen, stomping it to dust beneath his feet so that it couldn’t reattach to the demons. The liquid nitrogen swirled around him like an eerie cloak.
Drio and I had whittled a couple of the oshk down enough that one more well-placed strike would open them up, but the two melded with each other, resulting in instant regeneration, before separating once more hale and hearty.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” I snarled.
The battle raged on, trampling saplings, overturning mounds of dirt, exposing startled spiders that skittered away, and decimating one long ant formation. Not only were we starting from scratch with the two regenerated demons, but we had to keep them all away from each other so that regeneration couldn’t happen again.
The outsides of our suits dripped from their secretions, eating away at the protective material. By the time we killed two more of them, I was slick with sweat, my limbs jerky from the magic I was expending.
That left four against three and we were tiring. The oshk weren’t.
The left-legged oshk drove me backward. For every hit of my magic on her skin, my suit took an equal blast of her secretion. Cool air blew across my thigh. I glanced down to see the tear in my suit, missed my footing and tripped over a fat fallen tree branch, falling on my ass.
The oshk glided toward me, wound some blobbiness around my leg like an evil Barbapapa and pulled me toward her now-grotesquely distorted mouth. I dragged my gloves along the ground, scrabbling for a hold on anything, magic flying off my body.
The oshk ducked and wove, avoiding my strikes. I went slack, letting her lift me up and position me over her fetid pie-hole, willing myself to remain still, remain calm even as the black hole of her mouth filled more and more of my vision. The demon lowered me, my toes brushing her lips. I held on another second until my foot was now inside her mouth, the hole closing around my ankle, and blasted my current out through my shoe, down her esophagus and into her body. It bounced around inside, lighting her up like a pinball machine before dinging her heart.
She disappeared, dead. I fractured my ankle with the ensuing fall. Better that than my nose.
Rohan and Drio weren’t far
ing much better. The last three oshks had forced them back-to-back and were taking their time circling in for the kill.
The demons flowed together to form a huge misshapen woman with a human head, a right leg, a left arm, and a whole lotta blob.
Drio fired his pole, impaling her in the heart but the iron weapon didn’t even stop her. She shook herself and expelled the pole without breaking her stride.
Drio grabbed Ro and flashed out.
Finding them gone, the huge oshk turned her gaze on me.
I scrambled back in the dirt using my one good foot, my magic tapped out. I let her come for me, trusting that while the guys were mad at me, and my relationship had been ground into dust, that at least for this mission, they had my back.
The oshk loomed over me, blotting out the sun.
Drio and Rohan appeared behind her. Drio swung, decapitating her human head with a meaty thwack.
The oshk fell apart into three separate entities and in the split second before they could regroup, Ro firehosed them with an entire canister, freezing them on the spot. I blew them up, demon blobs hitting the ground around us like hail.
Drio located each of the larger blobs that was their hearts and drove the iron blade into them. The pieces disappeared, the forest once more tranquil.
I tore off my face mask, unzipped my suit and rolled it down to my waist, exposing my sports bra and letting the breeze cool my fevered skin. My hair clung to my face in dank strands. The men had done the same as me, both equally sweaty and red-faced.
Rohan gave me an inscrutable look before he and Drio left, canisters and the bladed pole tucked under their arms. I sat down on a log, my injured leg stretched out and the fingers of my left hand digging into the rough bark, breathing in the rich dirt, cedar, and pine.
The mission was over for Ro and I, but the question remained: were we?
A hand tangled into my hair, yanking me up off the ground. Malik’s face edged in close to mine. “Where’s Lila?”
I stretched as far as I could for my tiptoes to remain on the ground, scrabbling at his fingers. “I don’t know.”
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