But instead of ganging up on me, Drio tackled the other Rasha, leaving me gaping idiotically.
“Nee.” Leo rattled the cuffs, still looking shaky. “My pocket. Get the key.”
The Rasha threw Drio. I yelped and ducked under the table as Drio crashed into it, rolled onto the ground, then dove back on top of the hunter.
I raced over to Leo and rooted around in her pocket until I found the tiny key, then quickly uncuffed her.
Leo gave a full-body exhale and tossed the cuffs into the corner farthest from her.
Drio shouldered the Rasha into the Tomb, and muscled the door shut. “Now—”
I jammed the knife that I’d picked up off the floor a hair’s breadth away from his dick. “You hurt Leo.”
Drio tensed, practically flattening himself against the wall.
“Can you flash out before I stab you? One whisper of wind and your Italian Stallion days are over.”
“Pony club,” Leo muttered.
Drio snarled at both of us, careful to keep his pelvis tipped away from the blade. “It’s make-up. Leonie, tell her.”
Leo’s lip quivered. “He was horrible.”
I pressed the blade harder against the crotch of his jeans.
“Leo,” he snapped.
“Fine.” She tapped a finger against the bruise on her face. “It’s make-up. Asshole.”
“Idiota. I’m here to rescue you.”
I glanced at Leo, who nodded.
“Correction: we’re here to rescue you,” she said. “Double asshole.”
Dropping the knife, I shoved Drio hard. “I was saving myself, thank you very much. Until you barged in and bungled it. And did you really have to lock Leo up with iron cuffs, you dick?”
Leo stomped on his foot. “Especially since the plan was for metal ones.”
Drio winced. “Mandelbaum wouldn’t have believed anything else.”
“You could have warned me,” she said.
“Genuine reaction sells the moment.” He waved his hand at us in some kind of vague Italian threat. “Stop chattering. We have to get out of here.”
“Thank you for the mansplanation, but this ‘we’ only includes me and Leo for now. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you? Leo doesn’t like you, and I’m sure Ro can find another best friend.”
Drio shot Leo a worried look.
“You know something about Ro?”
“No.” Drio flashed past me, but I was closer to the door and I flung myself backward at it, catching him in the doorframe.
Swearing, he flickered in.
I twisted his collar. “What’s happened to Rohan?”
In all the time I’d been here, I hadn’t allowed myself to think of a worst-case scenario. Not that there was a best case when someone had been hit with dark magic. Just… not worst. Dark magic had killed Tessa. Literally burned her up from the inside, and granted Rohan wasn’t a habitual user of the dark arts, but he hadn’t built up any tolerance to it either.
Leo tried to pull me away.
“Tell me.” My voice was just shy of a shriek. “Is he dead?”
“No! I don’t think. No,” Drio said more quietly. “Raquel rescued him from the compound to heal the dark magic, but it’s still fucked up and he’s disappeared. I thought bringing your body back would draw him out.”
A rush of relief hit me that Raquel was okay. I clung to that feeling like a life raft.
“Luckily, an alive me is even better than my corpse,” I said, the laugh coming out oddly strangled. “We’ll go to Ro’s place and I’ll do a location spell.”
“Va bene.”
“Brace yourselves.” I took each of them by the arm and got the hell out.
We landed in Rohan’s backyard, which he hadn’t gotten around to landscaping yet. It was nothing more than patchy scrub and weeds choking a gently sloping hill.
The thrum of magic under my skin once more was both exhausting and exhilarating, while the simple act of portalling felt like a workout that left me stiff and sore but deeply satisfied. The feeling of freedom was even better, even if it was coupled with my dread that something was wrong with Rohan.
I shielded my eyes with one hand, my eyeballs sizzling like a well-done steak, having not seen sunlight in a while. The heat was a physical force pushing down on me, burning my lungs with each inhale.
The property was deserted, the windows and doors locked up tight. The last time I’d been here, the house had been full of laughter and camaraderie. And love. There had been so much of that. Now, it had a lonely, deserted air to it that no amount of sunshine could banish.
Drio unlocked the door.
I hesitated on the front stoop. If I didn’t go in, I couldn’t prove that Ro wasn’t there.
Leo put an arm around my shoulders. “I’m right here for you.”
Nodding, I stepped inside with a determined stride. “Let’s hit his bedroom and find something personal for the spell.”
The house smelled like him, that combination of iron and musk a punch to my heart. I narrowed my eyes to slits as if that could block out the memories assaulting me. The first time he’d brought me here on the night of our fake engagement when he’d shown me the tap studio he’d installed for me. That same night that we’d both forgiven each other for all the hurt we’d caused, and in our fragile new state, he’d confessed that he’d never made love to anyone in his bed.
That he hadn’t wanted to until me.
The closer we got to his bedroom, the more I slowed down, until I stopped dead.
“Nee?”
“Give me a minute.” I was running on fumes, my nerves sharpened to daggers, dipped in the memory of Rohan screaming in torment while engulfed in dark magic.
“Wait here.” Drio flash-stepped past me into the room.
“I’m fine.” I started after him but he’d already returned.
“This will work.” He held out the bracelet with the Om that Lily had given Rohan.
I laughed bitterly and walked back into the living room. “Trying to tell me something?”
He placed the bracelet in my hand, folding my fingers over it. “I’m not being a dick. He’s had this for a long time. It means a lot to him.”
He was right and the bracelet should have worked to determine Ro’s location, but I got nothing except the sensation of dead air. I tried and tried, clutching the bracelet so hard that my fingers turned white.
Leo finally pried the bracelet out of my hands. “He was hit by dark magic. You don’t know how that screwed things up in terms of trying to find him.”
“Sure. Leo, can I borrow your phone?”
“He won’t answer,” Drio said.
“Seriously?” Leo said.
“I’ve left him fifty messages. He’s my best friend. He wouldn’t—” Flushed, he stomped out onto the balcony.
The balcony where laughing and breathless in a crazy storm, Rohan had vowed that he’d always come back to me. And he would. He had to, and I had to keep believing that, putting my faith in that promise.
But what good was that promise when here I was and Rohan was nowhere to be found?
Leo handed me her cell. “Hey, you doing okay?”
I nodded and gave her a thumbs-up, unable to find my voice.
“I’m going to wash off this make-up. Let me know if you need anything.”
I turned the phone over and over, then steeled myself and called him.
My fear of finding out that Rohan’s phone was no longer in service was held in check by my steely refusal to be denied holding his calloused hand in mine, feeling his pulse slowing as he fell asleep tangled up with me, or hearing the gravely smoke of his voice.
His phone went straight to voicemail. “It’s Rohan. Leave a message.”
My hand curled around the device like I could capture his voice and store it in my heart.
“Rohan Liam Mitra, you come back to me right this minute. I love you and” —I dragged in a shaky breath— “you promised you’d never
leave me, that you’d always come back. Well, I need you here because I can’t do this without you. I can’t exist without you. I love you. Come back to me. Please.”
Leo returned freshly scrubbed and in clean clothes. She took in my puzzled look. “We came here before the rescue to leave some stuff. Drio left messages for Rohan that this was our rendezvous point.”
“Ah.” My stomach rumbled. “Could you guys go get some food?”
It’s true that I was starving, but I needed a moment to catch my breath and figure out how everything had gone so wrong and what it would take to set it right.
Reluctantly, they agreed. Leo gave me her phone in case Rohan called back and they left on foot to a nearby sushi joint.
I eyed Ro’s liquor cabinet. If now wasn’t the perfect time to reacquaint myself with the joys of being blackout drunk, when was?
Two shots of premium-brand tequila later—my boyfriend did not stint on the amenities—I was feeling slightly less pain. No longer run-over-by-a-bullet-train agony, more thrown-off-a-rocky-cliff-and-hit-every-outcropping-on-the-way-down, Homer Simpson-style.
I inhaled the last of the trail mix that I’d found in Rohan’s cupboard. It was the healthy, tasteless kind without chocolate chips or sugary content, but at this point, food was food, and knowing Ro, it was sure to be high in protein and nutrients or some such crap. Leaning against the balcony railing, I slid Leo’s phone out of my pocket and dialed Ro’s number again.
“The mailbox you have reached is full.”
“Don’t retrieve your messages. See if I care.” It didn’t mean anything. People forgot to delete messages after they’d listened to them.
The ground rumbled, like a lion shaking itself awake, before all went still. Crickets went silent and even the faraway traffic seemed to hold its breath. The air warped nauseatingly, then shredded around me with a sibilant hiss that shivered down to my toes.
I jerked my head up, thinking—hoping—it was Rohan somehow returned to me.
But why would the universe give me my boyfriend when it could give me a hole that had been torn into the fabric of reality? An in-between place, one unseen by normal humans, sat like an overlay over the backyard, and it was here that the whirling, dizzying rupture was visible. An ugly gash separated the soft twilight of Los Angeles from the throbbing malevolence on the other side.
I dashed out of the house to check it out.
About two feet high and a foot wide, the rift glistened wetly with a thick Saran Wrap-like barrier stretched across it like a low-budget hymen. Low-Budget Hymen was totally going to be the name of my band, with the first single “Use Both Fingers.”
A pulsing line about three feet thick traversed the ground in either direction as far as the eye could see. Most of it was dark green but under the rift it was black. This was the ward line between earth and the demon realm, and the places where demons opened rifts acted like poison on it.
Look at me being a veritable font of knowledge.
A misshapen head slammed against the barrier, making a duck face with its warty lips. It was ripped away by a wizened claw and a beaked demon took its place, trying to pass through.
A flinty smile curved my lips and magic danced quicksilver over my skin. Killing was waaay better than booze.
On a scale of one to ten, this power was a five. It would have been more like a nine or ten on my original pre-Lilith magic spectrum, though only registering about a two on the scale of her full power. A damn good baseline, nonetheless.
I laughed, shockwave after electric shockwave rolling toward the tear. My magic felt richer and deeper, the silver dazzling like a star show. However, the barrier prevented me from killing the demon horde on the far side and the rift itself wouldn’t seal.
I slowly cranked the magic dial inside me higher, up to a seven.
The rift reached out for me, wanting me to feed it, its hunger insatiable. Its magic snapped into me like fish hooks gutting my inside and refusing to let go. I’d just escaped from Mandelbaum’s clutches, could I not get a break? The universe was a sadistic fuck.
There had to be a way to free myself that wasn’t the magic equivalent of a bear eating its leg to escape a trap. Could disengaging be as simple as sealing the rift?
I gritted my teeth, the tendons on my neck standing out, straining to repair the hole before one of the many demons birthed itself into my world. My only piece of luck was that it looked incredibly difficult for the spawn to pierce the translucent barrier. Their expressions contorted in agony, their high-pitched howls making my ears bleed as they attacked. Little wonder that demons who did cross through tended to hang around earth instead of going back and forth.
Brute force wasn’t the way to go. I switched from a pummeling to a healing magic, the silver changing to more of a pure white light.
The rift softened and began to deflate.
Three humanoid demons with leathery wings and hate emanating off them like stink contorted their way through the barrier, much like beautiful butterflies emerging from their chrysalises. Except hideous and afterbirthy.
I shrunk the rift to a speck and it winked out behind the three spawn, much to the other demons’ enraged—and abruptly cut-off-baying. The black and green ward line disappeared as well, leaving only the patchy, weed-choked lawn.
The spawn thudded to the ground in a semi-circle around me. One slashed out with a razor-sharp wing. I leaned back almost horizontal, the tip whooshing past my nose. Their skeletal frames were infused with a hot anger, their dark, malevolent eyes swiveling to track me. A talon swiped hot and fast, lacerating my rib cage.
Running my magic over the demon to my right, I searched for its kill spot. The demon kicked out at me with its powerful thighs. I ducked, but my reaction time was a hair too slow and the kick caught me under the chin. I tumbled into the dirt.
Time lost all meaning. The creatures’ growls, the dry grass snapping into flattened, powdery dust with each step, all was inaudible next to the harsh breaths ringing in my ears. The pain drilled holes in me, filling them with molten lava.
Steam rolled off my clothes, my wounds festering with a green pus that burned, but the demons failed to look any worse for wear.
I flared my magic to eight and was seized with a wild breathlessness. TV made wielding unholy amounts of magic look so easy, but I was locked down on a ride about to run off the rails with the emergency brake just out of reach.
My vision was tunneling, my ribs were bound by an iron vice, and my skin burned with a feverish intensity. The power hadn’t increased exponentially, I wasn’t anywhere close to Lilith’s full abilities, but my body was struggling. Did I just need time to recover from the torture, or given my death and resurrection, was I now overly-sensitive to magic use?
My heartbeat dropped out of rhythm. My heart had raced before out of fear or exertion, but never had it simply fallen away for a long terrifying moment. It was too vivid a reminder of dying.
I refused to ever feel that way again.
These demons were the A-Team; I’d never faced anything like them before. I’d killed demons all the time with my regular magic and yet I couldn’t get the upper hand even with my enhanced electric current. I reached inside me, coiling the magic up and snapping it out like a whip, but they dodged my assault with balletic grace.
My magic flared madly; I was on the verge of losing control. I grappled with it, dialing the power down notch by agonizing notch until, slick with sweat and limbs trembling, I was once more in the driver’s seat.
The trouble was, I didn’t have enough magic to fight them. I stomped down on the curl of fear in my belly. I was a witch and a demon hunter and I was going to nail these bastards. It couldn’t all end here. I had to save Ro. There was a world out there that needed me, and more importantly, I needed me.
My power sputtered out in a cascade of silver forked bolts.
Gathering every last drop of heightened electric magic left, I shaped it into a ball and hurled it at the demon closest to me,
nailing him in the translucent membranes between his wing bones.
He winked out of existence. Yes! Take that, sucker.
The largest demon grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, jerking me backwards. I peered blearily past him through my eye that wasn’t swollen shut, up into the vast, overcast sky that was a gauzy net of shifting shadows.
“Ssssomeone wants to meet you. You’re coming with me.” His forked tongue flickered disturbingly close to my face.
“Your boss and I had an agreement,” said a smooth, English voice. “Lilith is mine.”
The newcomer stood on the side with my swollen eye, but he sounded like Malik. Great. Let my day be complete.
The demon holding me danced back a few steps. “You weren’t fast enough.”
Still in my blind spot, the newcomer killed my captor’s sidekick and did something to the demon holding me that made him crumple to my feet in a broken heap, all in a matter of seconds.
“That fast enough for you?” He stepped into my field of vision. Malik’s fitted light-weight shirt and pants spoke of money, but there was no tailoring that could hide the primal wrath that rolled off him.
The injured demon on the ground gooshed out some fluid that splooged over my feet. I dredged up enough magic to light up one hand and finish the bastard off.
“No,” Malik said. “We need a messenger.”
He knelt down, his hands on his knees and spoke in an oddly gentle voice, one that had the soft lull of a mesmerizing cobra that you knew would strike and despite that, found yourself leaning in toward. “Tell him that I’m doing this my way.”
The injured demon opened his mouth, but whatever he saw on the marid’s face made him snap it shut, bob his narrow head, and hobble off into the night.
Malik pushed to his feet and dusted off his pants.
Chest heaving, I stood firm, throwing out my best “confident witch with an endless supply of magic at her disposal” vibes.
“Nice eyepatch, me hearty,” I said.
Generally, in our previous encounters, Malik had presented a veneer of civilized behavior. That had been ripped away, leaving an ancient cunning in his left eye, his right now a mass of scar tissue under a black eyepatch.
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