“Nava…” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
Oh. I guess all that stuff about saying it like it was a promise had just been an excuse. Well, I was not going to cry. Yeah, I’d hoped he’d still say it back. Yeah, it was stupid. But I was doing this on my terms, and I wasn’t about to put up with getting chastised for telling him the truth, for making sure he knew.
I held up a hand and cut him off. “I broke our agreement. Too bad. I said it. Deal with it.”
Rohan laughed, his eyes shining, and if somehow that laugh had gotten caught on his album, you’d replay that track over and over just to hear that sound of pure joy. “I love you, too.”
He actually blushed when he said it. His eyes flickered to the ground, then once more back to mine, a shy, besotted smile flitting free.
There was no breath left in my body.
“I’ve never met anyone so full of life and passion as you,” he said.
I kind of squirmed in sheer delight. “Yeah? Go on.”
“I love your jokes at the most inappropriate moments. I love how you’ve never met a boundary you didn’t take as a personal challenge. And I love how every time something stupid and inconsequential happens, my first thought is to find you and tell you because you’re the one person who’ll always get it. Because you always get me, even when you’re giving me shit.”
“Especially then,” I agreed.
He laughed. “That. Right there.” He clasped my head in his hands, his fingers threading through my hair. “Nava Katz, you are complicated and infuriating and extraordinary, and everything I want. How could I not? You’re the spark that brought me back to life.”
“Damn you.” I sniffed, wiping my finger under my damp lashes. “I can’t charge in all badass if I’m weepy.”
He wrapped me in his arms, and I melted into him, luxuriating in this moment: the chirping crickets far away, the breeze ruffling his hair against my cheek, and best of all the feeling of being cherished by someone so special.
I stepped back, still holding his hands. “We’re only getting started, you and I. You and the universe should know that. This love story doesn’t end here, got it?”
“Got it.” He tugged me to him and kissed me. “I love you so much.”
“Back at you, Snowflake. Always and forever.”
Baruch cleared his throat. “Can we secure this compound or are you busy?”
“Let’s burn this fucker down,” I said.
Ro smiled. “That’s my girl.”
We could have waited for whenever Sienna’s next attack happened, but why do things on her schedule when we could do it on ours?
“Get inside the armored trucks and wait for my signal,” I said. “I’m going in.”
I portalled onto the roof into the shadows and looked down. The guards were barely paying attention. An animal attack must not have been imminent.
I cast out my awareness. There were now eight Rasha outside, their locations pinpointed over the compound grounds by their pale orange life force lights.
Showtime. I reached into Lilith’s magic box, scooped up a generous amount and, binding her magic to mine to amp up my attack, flicked my fingers. Eight balls of lightening shot out, each one wrapping itself around a Rasha’s head. I didn’t even need to be physically near them, which was a hella cool new trick.
The electricity crackled and danced around their brains, the entire thing playing out in my mind’s eye like a magic HUD.
Eight men dropped to the ground, unconscious. Their life forces dimmed but weren’t extinguished.
Thank you for your contribution to the cause, I thought at Lilith.
I activated the tiny mic pinned to my shirt. “I’m going for the ones inside. Wait for my next signal.”
They’d hear me through the ear pieces we all wore.
I checked the Rasha closest to me to make sure he was still breathing, admiring the lightning bolt-shaped burn marks called Lichtenberg Figures that bloomed like vines across his skin.
As I portalled inside, I felt the oddest sensation, like when I’d been in rehab for my Achilles and the physiotherapist had been working on the knots up the side of my leg. He’d press down on a tight spot until I’d feel it kind of melt and give way. That’s what happened now for the briefest second, but across my entire chest.
From one blink to another, the sensation changed. I was gut punched from inside my body with the wind knocked out of me. I stumbled my landing inside the building and, doubled over, crashed my shoulder against a wall. Clutching my rib cage, I checked the box.
Lilith still wasn’t free, but one of the sides bore an imprint of a fist, like it had been Hulk-smashed from the inside. It had twisted the entire box.
Even worse?
The box itself had lost its matte black solidity. It was paper thin and translucent.
Lilith’s cackles filled my brain. Told you you’d let me out.
Accessing her magic had eroded the walls of her prison. One more use would blow it away all together.
Fuck! I tried to divest myself of her magic, but we were firmly bound together, a glowing silver spiderweb.
She didn’t like that anymore than I did, upping her threats on all the ways she was going to rip me free and destroy me.
“Freeze!” A couple of Mandelbaum’s Rasha stormed out of a doorway.
Could I use even the barest level of magic without releasing her?
Try it and find out.
I couldn’t risk it, nor could I even use my own magic because there no longer was my own magic.
I rushed the men in a flurry of punches, catching them off-guard. Well, that plus the detonation from my team blowing up the fences that rocked us all off our feet. Taking advantage of their distraction, I sprinted past them into the stairwell.
“Ran out of time on my magic,” I said into the mic. “Send in a team.”
I hit the second floor in a sprint, my progress lit by bursts of light from dozens of different magic outside.
I ran to a window and peered out.
The earth rumbled. Shadows slithered. Even Cisco managed to coax enough life from the cracked desert floor for his vines to trap our enemies who’d run outside at the explosion.
Tree Trunk alone was methodically pummelling any Rasha stupid enough to get on the wrong side of his fists.
Three of our team rounded up the men I’d taken out, imprisoning them in the armored truck that was parked diagonally near the front door.
My earpiece crackled to life. “Team Beta in the east wing on neutralization,” Rohan said. “Nava, you okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry. Change in plans,” I said. “Keep your men safe.”
He had Ari, Kane, Cisco, Danilo, and a dozen others with him.
“Watch your back,” Ro said.
I left the fighting to the rest of my team, bent on finding Sienna, though I found the lab before I found her. Thanks to our aerial photos and the expertise of a couple of our Rasha, we’d been able to pinpoint the most likely spots for it. The lab was cordoned off from the rest of the building by two giant sheets of thick, translucent plastic.
I brushed them aside and ducked through. The air temperature dropped to just above freezing and even with my high-tech clothing, I shivered.
The lights were dim, gloomy pools of shadow ringing the corridor that stretched out impossibly long. Every footfall seemed to chime louder than a church bell, but no one came to investigate.
I reached the thick wooden door at the end of the corridor marked “Authorized personnel only.” Turning the knob slowly and silently, I slipped inside, sucked in a breath, and wished I hadn’t as a slaughterhouse worth of rotted meat gagged me.
Iron cages big enough to comfortably hold a Labrador Retriever rose from the floor to the top of the fifteen-foot ceiling, stretched out in two long lines on either side of me. Every single one was stuffed with demons. Not just one or two, multiples of them crammed in there, dazed and listless.
Mutated, burned, scarred, they
stared at me with glazed eyes. Scales, feathers, fur, no matter what they were covered in, they bore the telltale red streaks of iron poisoning.
The hot, swampy stench had so many notes to it from rotting flesh to fungus to excrement, urine to sulfur, that if demons bottled it and sent it into our nightmares, humans would be helpless in its wake.
I kept my sleeve over my mouth as I crept along the narrow pathway, my shoulder blades prickling from the weight of all these demon eyes tracking my progress. At least the noise covered my approach. Raspy caws, feeble growls, claws scraping bars, individually their cries of distress were barely above a whisper but hundreds of them together made the most unholy lullaby I’d ever had the misfortune to hear.
Lilith perked up, a silent fury rolling out of the box. Destroy these abominations.
With you on that. Except I couldn’t. Not unless I wanted to free her.
It got worse from there, because when I turned the corner, I found the active part of the lab. I ducked behind a metal shelving unit crammed with boxes of gauze and surgical supplies.
One wall held giant glass fridges of vacuum-sealed packs of liquids in various colors. Demon blood? The blood needed to bind demons on a large scale? The “blood to rule the might?”
Scientists in splattered surgical garb cut demons open with whining, spinning saw blades, plucked out eyeballs with dull hooks, and in one case, cranked the voltage to eleven, charring the bucking reptilian body on the metal gurney.
Its one fish eye blinked blearily at me, wordlessly begging me for mercy.
The most benign part were the two scientists discussing X-rays on one of those lit up viewers. I couldn’t begin to identify what physiology had made some of the shapes captured on film.
I bolted out of there, racing past the caged demons for the exit, and crashed into Pierre who’d burst through the door with his team. He stumbled sideways to avoid knocking into me, saw the cages, and launched into the worst flurry of swearing I’d ever heard from him.
“Mad scientists.” I pointed in the direction I’d come from. “Most are wearing gloves but the couple that weren’t didn’t have rings. Possibly not Rasha.”
I couldn’t use my magic, but I still had fists and legs and a battery of fighting techniques.
We spilled into the room, Pierre booming at the scientists to put their instruments down.
Most of the men tried to flee, but some kept at their horrific experimentation. I’d been right and they weren’t Rasha, so it was easy enough to round them up.
“The outside has been neutralized,” Baruch said over the mic. “Report.”
All the team leaders reported in. All had been successful. We’d secured the compound, but there was no sign of either Mandelbaum or Sienna.
I accompanied a couple of Pierre’s men to help transport the scientists down to the armored truck. Pierre and the rest of his squad stayed behind to document the demons and blood on camera, keeping a couple as proof then killing the rest before scouring the lab with fire.
The mood outside was festive as our team reunited now that Mandelbaum’s men were imprisoned. Yes, we still needed the rabbi, but we’d foiled his plans and had the proof to enact change.
Most importantly, we’d kept humanity safe from the rabbi’s nefarious agenda.
And even though, yeah, I still needed to stop Sienna, I was living in a world in which I had Rohan’s love and he had mine. No barriers. No bullshit. Sienna was going to help me keep living that reality.
Pierre and his remaining men came out with a few demons they’d contained that bore the worst marks of experimentation and a couple armfuls of equipment. Their hair was plastered with sweat and soot, but they flashed triumphant thumbs-ups.
We all cheered.
Rohan pulled me inside the foyer, into the darkness of the half-ajar front doors. “How about a celebratory kiss, love of my life?”
I wound my arms around his neck. “Say that again. And again and again.”
And as my lips brushed his, a voice boomed out over a bullhorn. “Put your hands up!”
30
Outside, every Rasha on my team simultaneously activated their magic.
“Give yourselves up,” the woman on the bullhorn commanded.
No one did, tension rolling over the courtyard like a blanket.
I peeked out through the half-ajar door in time to see the air around the compound’s property line ripple.
A dozen women ranging from their twenties to their fifties stood there, expressions alert and bodies coiled to spring. They wore identical black uniforms that seemed to suck all light into them.
Rohan was at my back, the heat of his body pressed against mine, whispering into his mic, asking if anyone was still inside.
“Give yourselves up or we will take action!” Standing slightly in front of everyone and holding the bullhorn, was a tall, broad-shouldered woman who could have taken Tree Trunk in a wrestling match.
I couldn’t see who she was consulting with, until she stepped aside.
Sienna.
She took the bullhorn from the other witch.
Fuck. She’d brought the Malfoy wannabes.
“Hello, Rasha,” she purred. “We have your rabbis. Don’t worry, they’re not harmed.”
So much for her inability to handle the compound by herself. I’d bet good money that Sienna had known exactly which Rasha I was working with. She’d arranged things so we were all in one place to be dealt with and the rabbis were left exposed.
My old frail Rabbi Abrams being taken like some kind of common criminal caused magic to crackle off my skin.
End them, Lilith crooned.
I grit my teeth and held my fire. I was not throwing away my shot.
“Thank you for your assistance in destroying the demons,” Sienna continued. “Now it’s time for you to come along quietly. The gig’s up. For all of you.”
“And if we refuse?” Kane, who’d been standing off to one side, strutted toward her. He struck a pose like a diva supermodel, hand cocked on his hip. “We going to have a good old-fashioned magic showdown like civilized people?”
“Oh, sweetheart, you boys might be the top Rasha, but your magic days are over. These fine women are here to make sure of it.” Sienna waved a hand at her allies.
The women began chanting, a low unfamiliar refrain.
The ground boomed and cracked. Brambles sprung up, their twisted branches studded with cacti-needles and tipped with wicked-looking thorns. The Rasha tried to avoid them, tried to cut them down or blast them away, to no avail. The brambles sought them out, forcing them into a stumbled huddle, the ground undulating under the hunters’ feet.
I grabbed onto the front door frame, knocked off-balance even inside the building.
The chanting grew louder, the witches now stomping their left feet in a percussive rhythm.
The brambles grew wilder, higher, herding the Rasha closer together, until they were so tightly packed there was no room between their bodies, the branches almost shoulder-height.
The chanting and stomping abruptly stopped, leaving an eerie silence.
“Fuuuuck,” Rohan whispered.
Instead of a brambly semi-circle enclosure, Kane had his own special contingent of steely-eyed witches keeping him apart from the others.
“Overkill much?” he said.
“We’ve learned to be cautious. Especially around men whose leader was planning to unleash demons out of some kind of misguided power play.” Sienna wagged a finger at Kane. “Not cool.”
Kane was not to be deterred. “Agreed. Which puts you and me on the same side.”
“When have your people ever reached out to mine?” Sienna’s lip curled. “When we were in trouble, when our magic was dwindling, when did a Rasha come to us and say we were on the same side?”
“Times change.” He prowled toward her, ignoring his guard.
The air snapped like an electric wire.
The witch closest to him, rocking an impressively spi
ked mohawk, made a fist, then blew on it, releasing a stream of icy vapor into the air.
It swirled around Kane, gathering weight and shape until a jagged icicle formed and sliced through his calf, pinning him in place, all in the blink of an eye.
She raised an eyebrow as if daring him to make another move.
He paled. Death was before him, but he didn’t cry out. His face was a mask of bravado, as it had always been, except for one moment where he glanced at my brother and pure sorrow broke through his features before it was replaced by gritty determination.
He cracked his knuckles, yanked the icicle from his bleeding leg, and took another few steps toward the witches.
Two massive icicles, about half of Kane’s height, coalesced out of thin air and slashed down at him.
Ari burst out of the shadows, grabbed Kane, and whisked him away.
The icicles shuddered into the ground with the force of Excalibur embedding in rock.
I screamed and Rohan grabbed me about the waist, keeping us hidden, his hand clamped over my mouth.
Everything outside the doors had literally frozen: the Rasha and witches powered up for a fight; the bright bursts of magic, showers of earth, weaving vegetation, all was motionless.
All, that is, except Sienna. She stepped forward, surveying the scene with a shake of her head, then flicked her fingers.
Everyone’s magic winked out.
Her eyes darted over the courtyard, then, finding whatever she was looking for, she made a “bring it” motion with one hand. “Someone has magic they shouldn’t.”
Ari and Kane reappeared outside the still half-open front doors, blinking dazedly like she’d plucked them from the shadows.
Nava Katz Box Set 2 Page 61