The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Sting E-Book

Deborah Wilde

• Herausgeber: Te Da Media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Enjoy this urban fantasy series by best-selling author Deborah Wilde. Featuring a snarky heroine, kickass action, and spicy romance, this hilarious adventure sucker-punches you in the heart when you're not looking.

50% boobs. 
50% sarcasm. 
100% new breed of hunter.

After a bumpy start as the only female demon hunter in the top secret Brotherhood of David, Nava heads to Prague for her first undercover mission: unmasking a demon movie star. 

She’d be all kinds of thrilled if it weren’t for the fact that her fellow hunter-with-benefits, Rohan, has reclaimed his rock star status and assigned Nava the role of groupie.

Rejecting her “be a good girl and follow orders” directive, Nava unleashes an alter ego guaranteed to hook their celebrity target and drive Rohan crazy. 

No downside–until she finds herself up against Rohan’s past, the Brotherhood’s antiquated thinking, and her own identity issues, turning her personal life into a bomb that could blow up the entire operation. 

Sparkly and deadly; it’s a plan.

This sexy, funny, paranormal series is perfect for fans of Kate Daniels, The Hollows, Elemental Assassin, Arcadia Bell, Imp Series, Crossbreed Series, Midnight Empire, and the Guild Codex.

Binge this complete series now!

Leseprobe

THE UNLIKEABLE DEMON HUNTER: STING

DEBORAH WILDE

Copyright © 2017 by Deborah Wilde.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Cover design by Damonza

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Wilde, Deborah, 1970-, author

The unlikeable demon hunter : sting / Deborah Wilde.

(Nava Katz ; 2)

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-988681-01-6 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-988681-02-3 (EPUB).--ISBN 978-1-988681-03-0 (Kindle)

I. Title. II. Title: Sting.

PS8645.I4137U57 2017 C813’.6 C2017-900426-3 C2017-900427-1

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Excerpt from The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Need

Become a Wilde One

Nava explains awesome Yiddish and Hebrew words used in this series.

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1

“Shove it in already,” I said through gritted teeth. My back was freezing from the damp, flaking basement concrete I lay against, while the two-foot-long, rat-shaped demon pinning me down was doing shit for my front.

Rohan Mitra, rock star turned demon hunter, shook his tousled dark hair, his full lips puckering in obvious disgust. “I’m not putting my finger in there. You want it so badly, do it yourself.”

I slammed an elbow into the underside of the vral’s jaw, whipping her head sideways, intent on keeping the demon’s double row of razor-sharp incisors out of my shoulder. One bite and I’d be paralyzed.

And lunch.

“Now you’re going to get all pussy about sticking your finger places it doesn’t belong?”

“I’ll reconsider if she begs as nicely as you did, Nava.”

The vral snapped her teeth, the sound a loud crack in my ear. Her dank, rotten-meat belch wafted over me.

I tried to plug my nose with my shoulder, my arm muscles straining with the exertion of holding her at bay. “Bite me, Mitra.”

He sipped his latte, standing there immaculate and infuriating in a camel-colored trench coat more appropriate to a night at the theater than a demon raid. A raid, it turned out, Rohan had no intention of participating in, deeming it “a training exercise for the newbie.”

Overhead, a bulb sizzled and popped out, dimming the light and casting almost-romantic shadows over the warped structural beams and grotty walls.

Rohan had the gall to check his watch.

“Don’t let me keep you from anything.” I shot lightning bolts at the vral from my eyes and she jerked, her weight almost off me. Hand blasts were so level one. I rolled sideways, but the demon crashed back down on top of me. The two of us tumbled into the shadows, her teeth flashing in and out of the darkness.

“Then finish her,” he said.

“I’m trying, but I don’t think she’s into me that way.”

Rohan took another sip. “Make her want it.”

Continued grappling with the demon wasn’t going to get me anywhere other than exhausted and then dead. Fine, mostly dead. Rohan wouldn’t let me be unequivocally taken out.

I wove an electric net around the vral’s body, temporarily paralyzing her with my magic so I could scramble free. My problem? The only way to permanently stop a demon involved hitting their weak spot. My other problem? There was a different spot for each demon. With vral, it was their left eye. As in the one that bulged jiggling out toward me from her socket, laden with pus. “If I blast her eyeball, demon goo will splooge everywhere.”

“Always about the hard and messy,” he chastised. “Gentle has its place, too, you know.”

The vral, who I’d thought was still suffering the effects of my magic paralysis, lashed her tail around my arm. Surprise. What looked like smooth fur was actually dozens of tiny barbs. I wrenched free, my stomach heaving at the sight of my flesh that now looked like raw hamburger, and blasted the demon in the chest. “Have at it. Gently use one of your blades to puncture–son-of-a-bitch!”

The vral convulsed under the sharp crackle of my power, locking onto me in a spasming hug, her claws shredding my sweater. Eight bleeding gashes were not my idea of body adornment.

The air stank of sizzling fur, which was still a step up from the stale BO and garbage juice that had seeped into the walls of this squatter’s paradise.

“Stop acting from the flight part of your brain and go to the fight,” Rohan said.

Thrashing on the floor, I squeezed my eyes shut against the blood and sweat dripping into them. The vral’s claws burrowed into my back. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“Napping? Baruch trained you better than this.”

Yeah, for three whole weeks. Muttering an anatomically impossible suggestion Rohan’s way, I pulled out a self-defense move that Baruch had drilled into me. Before the demon’s tremors could subside, I wrapped my right leg around her left foreleg to trap it, curling my right arm over her body in a tight overhook. My fingers dug deeper into her wiry, scorched fur, hitting something squishy that was matted into her side.

Please don’t let that be leftover homeless person from her earlier meal.

I planted my left foot firmly on the floor, bridging up, my hips exploding into the air. The combination of that momentum, along with the pull/push dual action of my arms as I chopped my left hand into the demon, allowed me to swing on top of her.

“That’s a start,” Rohan said.

Snarling, the vral bucked me off like a seasoned rodeo bull. I flew onto my ass, then scrambled to my feet, panting, my right foot buckling as I stumbled backwards over a piece of ceiling tile.

Rohan tsked me. “We’re Fallen Angels, not Falling Angels. Try to stay upright.” In a display of rampant egotism, my fellow all-male hunters had dubbed themselves Fallen Angels. I’d graciously been extended the label.

“You’re hilarious.”

“I am rather,” he replied in a put-on posh British accent that intoxicated me like a shot of liquid sex. He gestured to the trash-strewn floor. “Be aware of your surroundings,” he directed in his normal voice that was all smoky baritone and velvet Californian curls. “Garbage can be your downfall.”

Nodding, I flung a damp lock of curly dark brown hair out of my face.

The vral scrambled back onto all fours, shaking out her fur like she was waking from a nap. Then the man-eating little fucker lunged and sank her two rows of teeth into the toes of my boots.

Steel-toed, but still. These babies were new. Very expensive. Who knew it was such a challenge to find badass boots with reinforced steel, a chunky heel that was far more practical to run in than stilettos, and silver buckles running up the side? It was my consolation gift to myself for having my lovely life of partying, sex, and naps getting shot to hell with the recent discovery that I was the first female Rasha, or demon hunter. I’d been reluctantly inducted into the Brotherhood of David, a dick-swinging secret organization.

Yeah, they weren’t thrilled to have their first vag-sporter either.

The vral’s eyes locked onto mine. She gave a chittered cackle, her teeth cracking deeper into the leather.

My old tap dance mantra popped into my head. A one, a two, you know what to do. Nothing to it but to do it. I blasted the vral’s eyeball, shielding myself with a ceiling tile against the putrid pus arcing out of her like a Tarantino kill. The splatter guard worked well, with only a few drops of warm liquid hitting my cheek. It tingled but nothing got in my eyes or mouth so score one, Nava. Which tipped into score the second, as the demon death throe’d down to a single nubbin of fur.

The faintest scuff of claws on metal was our only clue that another demon was present. It flew off an overhead pipe, claws outstretched and the fur on its back raised. A baby vral, much smaller in size, but still deadly.

Before I even had time to gasp, Rohan’s hand shot up, one wicked sharp blade extended from his index finger, the movement pulling his coat tight around his astoundingly well-defined shoulders. His magic allowed him to do that party trick with all his fingers, not to mention extend a blade that ran the length of his body like an outline. One time I’d asked him why his clothes didn’t get shredded each time he brought out his knives. Maybe I’d said it a little too dejectedly because he’d stopped instructing me on the proper way to punch a chupacabra in the face and raised an amused eyebrow as he said, “It’s magic.”

He didn’t look up when he aimed now, didn’t even stop sipping that stupid latte, yet he shish-kabobed the vral right through the neck. Since it wasn’t the sweet spot, it wasn’t a kill strike, but he still stopped the demon in its tracks.

“Admit it. You’re the devil.” I trained my eyes on the shadowy corner but didn’t see any other movement.

“Nice to see I’ve risen in the hierarchy of Hell during our brief acquaintance.” With a snap of his wrist, Rohan flicked the demon over to me.

Baby vral plopped at my feet with a wet splat, still quivering.

“Don’t say I never give you anything,” he said.

“I couldn’t possibly accept. You caught it. You kill it.”

Rohan waved a hand at me. “I insist.”

I toed the baby vral. Hmm. I stood behind it, which meant its eyeballs faced Rohan. “I serve at the pleasure of my commanding officer.” Barely hiding my snigger, I nailed its eyeball with a concentrated stream of electricity, killing the demon with a tad too much enthusiastic zeal.

Its entire body exploded. An almost impossible amount of pus, guts, and fur flew, dousing our immediate area like the splash zone at SeaWorld. Its various bits then winked into oblivion like they were supposed to when a demon was offed, but the damage had been done.

Rohan remained pristine. He looked like a god and I looked like the aftermath of a dumpster fire. A dank-ass, gooey, dumpster fire of demon pus. Awesome.

I strode toward him, my hair dripping with sweat and filth, my skin and clothes not even that clean, determined to make him pay.

He snicked out the blades of one hand as I neared, warding me off.

Ignoring the threat that wasn’t, I swiped his coffee cup, tipping it back for those last few swallows. “Mmm, caramel.” I licked a drop of foam off my lip with deliberate slowness, gratified by Rohan’s nostril flare. Yeah, our attraction was a two-way street, with both of us engaged in a high-octane game of chicken to see who’d blink first.

The first night we’d met, I’d accused Rohan of being a demon because ordinary mortals could not look that good without Photoshop. Only the slight bent of his nose, broken on more than one occasion, marred his perfection. Too bad all of that ’tude poured into the tight package of leanly muscled torso, dark brown hair that curled in thick, sexy locks around his ears, gold eyes, killer cheekbones, firm chin, and light brown skin from his East Indian/Jewish heritage was my personal downfall.

And fall I had. Onto his very fine dick time and time again over the past few weeks of our acquaintance. What can I say? It was worth it.

“Home, Jeeves.” I tossed the cup on the ground with the rest of the trash. Ignoring Rohan’s sigh, I jumped up the rickety basement steps two at a time without a look back.

Taking the scenic route through the condemned home, I opted for the back door instead of the closer front one in the living room. Even though there were no longer leftovers of the poor desecrated victims, you couldn’t pay me to walk back through the site of the people buffet. We Rasha held our own pretty well against the evil spawn found throughout the world, but the hard truth was that we didn’t always win. Sometimes we died, and more often innocent victims did.

I gave a wide berth to the stained mattress leaning up against the kitchen wall, teeming with bed bugs. Insidious, unstoppable, blood-sucking demonic parasites. Do all the mattress wrapping and heat treatments you wanted, those bastards could only be killed for good with our help, and it wasn’t a service we advertised. Plus, I kept seeing the mangled human arm that one of the vral had been batting around beside the mattress like a cat toy when we’d first entered.

A yellow Post-It note stuck to the back door caught my eye. I smirked at the stick figure woman saying “IOU” to a buffed stick man. My friend, and fellow Rasha, Kane Hashimoto’s reminder that I’d be paying for him hauling body bits away. Probably in expensive booze and food. The longer before I was ever trained on clean-up, the better. Badass hunter, I was your girl. Handler of human remains and scourer of blood? Run away very fast. I crushed the note in my hand and stepped outside.

Cold rain pelted the back of my neck, sliding down along my spine into the waistband of my black miniskirt and leggings. The rest of the rain blew right through my tattered sweater, soaking me in less than a minute and burning like acid as it hit the vral claw wounds. Wincing, I sped up, my breath misting the air in sharp puffs.

A March day in Vancouver and rain flowed from the heavens faster than beer down a frat boy’s throat. In summertime, my hometown was one of the most beautiful places on the planet, but on days like today where the sky was heavy and gray and the rain incessant, I felt like Mother Nature was sucking out my soul. Not literally. As far I knew there was no Mother Nature demon, soul-sucking or otherwise, though at this point, nothing would surprise me.

Rohan strode past, his coat flapping in the breeze with each of his measured strides, his unique scent of musk and iron teasing my senses. Fishing the keys out of his pocket, he stopped beside the ’67 Shelby parked alongside the house. Fully restored, this vintage two-door muscle car with its midnight blue finish and white racing stripe was Rohan’s pride and joy.

I dodged a large puddle to catch up, desperate for the car’s heat.

The casual observer may have thought it sweet how Rohan lay out a veritable cocoon of towels to wrap me in, but I wasn’t fooled. It was to protect the car. Any warmth or comfort on my end was strictly accidental.

Shivering, I pulled the towels around me and slid past him onto the passenger seat. “Such a gentleman.”

Rohan gave me a wolfish grin. “You wouldn’t want me if I was.” He chucked me under the chin. Bastard. Even his door shutting sounded like it was smirking.

I grabbed the sports drink waiting for me in the cup’s holder, my stiff fingers fumbling the cap until I gave up, using the edge of one of the towels to open it. I chugged half the bottle in one go. Every time we Rasha used our magic to kill a demon, it took a toll on us physically. Today’s little venture was nothing an electrolyte top-up wouldn’t fix, but I never looked forward to being zonked out and exhausted post-epic battle.

Rohan started the engine and we headed back to the Brotherhood-owned mansion that served as the Vancouver chapter of Demon Club. The mansion where I now lived.

Beverage consumed, I replaced the empty bottle in the cup holder, and fiddled with the radio dial until I found Radiohead’s “Creep.” I sang along. “I’m a winnnneeeeer.”

“It’s ‘weirdo,’ you weirdo,” Rohan said. “Why would he sing he’s a winner in a song about self-loathing?”

“I thought it was sarcastic. You know,” I dropped into a snarky voice, “I’m a winner.” I turned the heat vent to blow directly on my face, holding my hands up to catch more warmth. “As per my basic assumption of how many things are said. Those jeans look good on you. It’s so great to see you again. I love you.”

If Rohan’s eyebrows had knit together any lower, they would have been a V-neck. “Have you ever sought help?”

I snapped off the radio. “Is that an actual question or are you wasting my time with hypotheticals?”

The “Imperial March” from Star Wars blasted out. Not because I was such a fan but because most of my calls these days were on Brotherhood business. The only non-Brotherhood people who had the number were my family and my best friend Leonie Hendricks. She’d been assigned Flight of the Conchords’ “Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor)”–our anthem once we’d started sneaking into clubs.

“Number’s blocked.” My stomach clenched. This had to be the call from HQ in Jerusalem that I’d been waiting for.

Rohan slowed to a stop at a red light, then laid his hand on the back of my neck. “You’ve got this.”

“Damn straight,” I said, though it took me another ring to steady myself and answer. “Hello?”

“Ms. Katz.” Rabbi Mandelbaum managed to make my name sound like an insult.

“Hello, Rabbi.” My voice remained neutral, despite my clenched jaw.

“Wait,” he barked at me in his Russian accent.

I traced a dick in the window’s condensation.

There were two sections to the Brotherhood. Rasha, the hunters out there actually fighting, came from every race and religion, descendants of the original men that King David had chosen to magically fight evil. They weren’t all Jewish, and it was kind of interesting to see how far-reaching those original bloodlines had travelled.

Then there were the rabbis, the ones who cast the spells involved in finding and inducting hunters. The overall pool of rabbis in turn, voted six of their number to form the Executive to govern and oversee everything to do with the Brotherhood. The Executive wielded a fair bit of power and Mandelbutt, as its de facto leader, had the most power of all.

“Ms. Katz, are you still with us?”

I added horns to my drawing. “Ever your faithful servant, Rabbi.”

I swear I could hear him grinding his teeth long distance. “Consider this your official permission.”

I sagged against the seat in relief. I’d been waiting for the green light to accompany Rohan and another Rasha called Drio Ricci to Prague and the film set of Hard Knock Strife. All to help my Demon Club compadres get proof that mega A-list celebrity Samson King was a demon intent on using humiliation and envy to help achieve his world domination master plan.

Before I could thank the rabbi for allowing me to go, he blew the half point he’d earned in my estimation by adding, “Do exactly what the men say.”

My hand tightened on the phone and I punched the seat warmer on with excessive force.

Rohan raised his eyebrows in question but I shook my head at him. He massaged the back of my neck in calming, even strokes.

Religious Jewish men said a daily prayer thanking God for not making them a woman. Rabbi Mandelbaum was probably more effusive than most with that gratitude. Not to mention, the Brotherhood had been a total sausage fest since King David assembled the finest men around him for his secret demon club. Many saw no reason for that to change now.

I had to prove myself a thousand times more than any other new hunter and for most of them, I’d still never be as good as a man. I’d expected to be put on a tight leash with this mission, but this was bullshit. “I’ll make sure not to think for myself.”

Rohan snorted, returning his hand to the wheel.

“Good.” Mandelbutt paused and I seethed. “The Executive will be watching your performance.” Meaning he was waiting for a reason to remove me–in whatever form that took.

“I’ll do you proud.”

He didn’t even say good-bye, just hung up on me.

Fuck him. I’d still been given my go ahead and that’s all that counted. “Guess who’s officially going to Prague?” I crowed.

“I didn’t doubt it for a second.” Rohan squeezed my thigh. You’d have thought he’d ripped my clothes off, licking his way up my body given the hot, tight coil of lust that wound through me. I was seriously addicted to him. Intervention-level addiction, except for the fact that I didn’t believe in interventions. If something didn’t kill me, why stop?

I let my legs fall open.

Rohan swung his head my way, his amber eyes molten, until he took in my disarray, grimaced, and focused back on the road.

“Asshole,” I said.

“Don’t judge.”

“But I have no other hobbies.”

Rohan grinned at me. “Except poor character judgment since I am a prince among men.” He gestured at my towel. “The care I take with you.”

We pulled up to Demon Club’s gate to be scanned. The house was situated in the Southlands area of the city on a large tract of land, surrounded by forest. Case in point, you couldn’t even see the three-story mansion made of chunky stone and large windows or any of its multiple chimneys from the street.

“I’m not deceived by your chivalrous ways, Snowflake.” I pulled my fluffy cocoon tighter around me. “I know this is about your car, not me.”

His aggrieved sigh was the only indication of how much he hated that nickname, short for Emo Snowflake and an homage to the emo rock band Fugue State Five that he’d been the broody lead singer of in his late teens. Or more precisely, the world-chart dominating musical juggernaut that he’d fronted.

Retiring from that about three years ago at age twenty when he’d been inducted as a hunter hadn’t hurt his massive ego one bit. Though he’d dumped the graphic Ts, platinum dye job, and eyeliner for an improved fashion sense and a return to his inherent natural hotness.

The black wrought-iron gate set into the thick stone fence swung silently open.

“Why waste chivalry when I wouldn’t even be rewarded with a kiss?” Rohan sported a massive chip on his shoulder about the fact that I refused to kiss him on the lips, during sex or otherwise. One word: hook-up. The sum total of our relationship status and thus, no kissing necessary.

Weirdly, my boundaries offended his control-freak nature.

The rain picked up, lashing the car.

“As if you were sharing sweet kisses with the many girls you screwed in your rock star days.”

Windshield wipers on high, Rohan gunned the car up the remainder of the long, winding drive, past well-tended gardens and copses of arbutus and cedar trees. “You’re comparing us to tour sex?”

“It’s all hook-ups.” I zeroed in on the line of muscle flowing from his bicep across to his pec and back to his bicep. A better panorama than anything outside.

Rohan stopped the car in front of the house with enough force that my skull crashed back against the seat. “One-time fucks. No repeat button.”

Glowering at him, I rubbed my head. “That doesn’t make any difference.”

“Doesn’t it?” His tone was casual but I sidled sideways to escape the freezer-cold depths of his accompanying smile.

I peeled myself off the passenger door. “Gearing up for a full-scale offensive?”

Rohan cut the engine. Rain pounded on the roof and black thunderclouds seemed to press in from every direction. “If I ever go full-scale, I’ll take no prisoners,” he said.

He’d have to do better than that.

I let the towel flutter to the seat, giving a sultry head toss, my perky C cups front and center. Despite me still being covered with demon goo, Rohan looked. I leaned in toward him, trailing my finger down his chest. “No quarter. No mercy.”

I’d figured our mutual attraction and constant tug-of-war to be a fairly level playing field until I’d seen Rohan in full-on rock god mode, prepping for our upcoming trip to Prague and his return to the spotlight. That’s when I’d realized my hot fuck buddy was merely swimming with me in the kiddie pool because he felt like it, and that the deep end was calling again.

I’d had two choices: A) the sane path of ending the mind-blowing sex aspect of our leisure time or B) amping my game. In the animal kingdom, challenging an alpha was a good way to get your throat ripped out. With this kinky boy, dominance games were foreplay. Thing is, despite his bitching about my no-kissing decree, I didn’t see him swimming off yet. After the long dry spell of my sexual escapades, Rohan was an oasis I wanted to suck dry. As I’d barely begun to quench my thirst, no way was I the one tapping out first.

Rohan caught my hand before it reached his jeans. Trapping it.

I met his level stare, despite my lungs feeling two sizes too tight. Just because I refused to bow down didn’t mean this came easy to me. Still, I shivered in delicious anticipation of what he might do next–like haul me into his room and screw me seven ways from Sunday. Then again, he might drown me in the pool out back then dump me in the forest. Given the wild gleam in the depths of his gold eyes, anything was a go.

That’s when both our phones buzzed with texts. It was Drio. Get the fuck inside.

2

I scratched at the vral grime coating my skin. A shower would have to wait, because the second we stepped through the front door into the foyer with its cathedral ceiling, Drio snapped, “In here,” in a way that left no room for discussion.

We hurried into the TV room with its brown leather man cave couches and comfortable clutter. The one place in the house that didn’t feel straight out of Exclusive British Men’s Club Monthly. Drio was perched on the fat arm of one sofa, staring in bewilderment at the massive flat screen TV mounted to the wall. “King’s holding a press conference.”

The sexy rumble of Drio’s Italian accent combined with his olive skin, blond hair, and startling green eyes made him an irresistible combination. For most. His open loathing of me and sadistic hard-on for demon torture meant I could resist him just fine.

I turned my attention to the screen. Samson King sat at a long table, speaking into the microphone placed in front of him, decked out in a tailored button-down that I’d recently seen on the cover of GQ. His hair was more artfully gelled than a performing boy band’s at the Teen Choice Awards. Projected behind him was a huge logo featuring a stylized red SK in the middle of a black diamond. The flurry of flashbulbs were blinding even on my side of the TV.

“He’s still in Prague, right?” Standing, since I didn’t want to dirty the furniture, I squirmed, trying to relieve the throb in my back from my wounds.

Rohan rummaged amidst the shit on the coffee table for a tin of salve.

“Sì. He’s there,” said Drio.

Samson had flown from Vancouver to Prague a few days ago to shoot the remaining scenes of Hard Knock Strife, with its age-old plot of “childhood buddies get caught up in a gangster lifestyle.” His character finds redemption in the end, scarred but wiser. In other words, total fiction.

I sighed as Rohan tugged up the back of my sweater to gently apply the mint-based healing gel to my skin. The relief as it numbed the area was immediate.

Drio jerked his head toward the TV. “Watch, they’re replaying the clip.”

Samson had the build and smug handsome looks of a rich-kid college athlete even though he was pushing thirty. The good guy with enough of a bad boy edge to keep from being too All-American, he was always up for a party–that was both his character in this flick and the essence of his brand. He gave people life at its funnest and the masses thirsted for it like water.

Our suspicion was that Samson fed off the envy he inspired and the humiliation he drove people to in their quest to be more like him. Coupled with the number of deaths around him that couldn’t be directly linked but were too frequent and too much the inevitable end result of the misery he incited to be accidental, we had probable cause to believe him a demon.

Emphasis on probable.

Once we had proof that he was a demon, either his true name, form, or hard evidence about the specifics of his master plan, we’d kill him, because that was what we Rasha did.

I barely registered the feel of Rohan dropping my sweater down, his ministrations finished, listening as Samson announced his retirement from acting to follow his interests behind the scenes. This made no logical sense. He expounded on his plans, pointing to the logo behind him and explaining his new ventures of a record label and management company, with further media expansion to come.

Drio muted the sound, not interested in Samson introducing the two clients he’d already signed, the baby-faced teen boy that I recognized as a viral singing sensation on his left, and on his right, the jet-setting It Girl in her late twenties who was making quite the name for herself as an indie actress. Both of whom wore identical expressions of boredom until it was their turn to speak.

Rohan tossed the salve back on the table with a clatter. “What’s King playing at?”

I gnawed on my lip. “Signing a YouTuber hardly lines up with unleashing the apocalypse or enslaving humanity as his minions.”

Drio snarled a ferocious torrent of Italian swear words. I was both impressed and unsettled by how long he could go without pausing for air.

“What if we’re wrong?” I asked. “If he’s not a demon?”

“That’s why we don’t assume anything until we have irrefutable evidence. We also don’t want our assumptions to make us lazy or complacent,” Rohan said.

“Or tip our hand. Even if our gut screams ‘demon,’ we play it smart,” Drio added.

“Got it.” I scratched at my skin, demon death goo flaking off me, revealing a bumpy red rash.

“Library. Ten minutes,” Rohan said.

A shower imperative, I sprinted up the wide, curving staircase to my bedroom on the top floor. Barely a month into my new living arrangements, moved out of my parents’ house for the first time in my life, and I’d yet to choose the paint color to replace the bleh beige adorning my walls. Though the furniture was decent enough dark wood, and at least I had my own tiny bathroom.

The sole personal touch I’d given the room was to hang my large framed poster of Gregory Hines caught by the camera in mid-tap step, his face lit up in glee. I hadn’t gotten around to unpacking two of the five Rubbermaids I’d carted my belongings over in, but the other three did a pretty epic job exploding out over every surface. Folding and organizing were for saps. I preferred hunting and rooting, the thrill of the never-ending treasure hunt for my personal belongings.

Stripping down, I tossed my clothes in the trash and stepped under the hot spray in the small black-and-white tiled bathroom. I used to go through clothes because I hated the visual reminder of bad decisions when wearing hook-up togs more than once. At least the wear and tear of killing monsters left me with no regrets. Though demon kills required lube job levels of skin maintenance.

To celebrate the Executive sending me to Prague, I yanked on the T-shirt Leonie had bought for me. Tight, bright, and hot pink, its glittering silver letters proclaimed “50% boobs. 50% sarcasm. 100% new breed of hunter.”

What’s a girl without a tagline?

Technically, Leo wasn’t supposed to know about the Brotherhood. The Mafia were a bunch of gossipy soccer moms compared to the code of silence the Brotherhood demanded. While DSI–David Security International–a.k.a. the global security firm the Brotherhood ran– had a respected rep in high-powered circles, it was a closely guarded secret that its man candy employees were demon hunters. Or that demons even existed.

Scrunching some mousse into my hair, I snagged my hair drier for a quick blow so I didn’t head downstairs dripping.

Part of our secrecy was maintained by the fine job the Brotherhood did, and part of it was due to natural human desire to explain away anything vaguely monstrous with “rational” explanations, i.e. any reason that wasn’t supernatural. Human determination to live within our comfort zones was not to be underestimated. It worked in the Brotherhood’s favor.

My three-minute patience of hair drying achieved, I threw on some eye makeup.

I would never have told Leo about any of it if our reunion meeting after about a year and a half of radio silence–mostly stemming from the bad place I’d been in after high school–hadn’t come with the mind-blowing discovery that she was half-goblin. Goblins were tricksters and smooth talkers, so combined with the sperm donor’s glamouring ability to present as human, it left Leo’s mom thinking (bitterly and to this day) that she’d succumbed to the charms of a very handsome rogue for an unforgettable one night stand.

Leo, who only had a human form and no glamour abilities of her own, hadn’t enlightened her mom. Luckily, her sole visible redcap goblin features were a propensity to white chin hair, shortness, and a fascination for fussy jewels that had never made sense in our teens. Otherwise, her long straight red hair, funky style, and incredible confidence were pure awesome woman.

Given Leo’s half-demon status, she was well aware of Rasha. Though she’d been shocked to find out that I, of all people, was the first chick to be among their number.

I glanced back into the bedroom at my alarm clock. Thirty seconds to spare to Rohan’s deadline. I hustled out of my room, finger-combing my still damp curls, anxious for this meeting with Rohan and Drio and the specifics of my cover assignment.

Forrest Chang, the film’s director and a huge Fugue State Five fan, had invited Rohan to write the theme song. Meanwhile, I was going in under the guise of Rohan’s groupie, a role that Rohan was having altogether too much fun lording over me. Supposedly this cover story allowed him to stick close to me as I gained Samson’s attention, but I had my doubts. This wasn’t the eighteenth century and I wasn’t chattel.

Drio was posing as part of Rohan’s entourage without the backstory of blowing him on a regular basis, so why couldn’t that be true for me as well? Go for fiction not imitating life. By the time I was halfway down the stairs, I’d resolved to bring this matter up at the start of our meeting.

The front door slammed open and Kane stormed in, bleeding from a gash to his temple. Japanese-Canadian and silky-hot with a tendency to shirtlessness, he could have been naked right now and all anyone would have noticed was the anger rolling off him in waves.

I came to a screeching halt.

Kane raked a hand through his spiky black hair. “Swear to God, babyslay, I will kill him myself, he pulls this shit again.”

My heart sinking, I braced a hand on the wooden bannister, polished to a high gleam. “How many?”

“One. But it was Abyzou, the psycho spawn. She’d cornered a pregnant woman in a parking lot and was working her evil mojo to cause a miscarriage.” He held up his hand at the anxious eep I emitted. “Breeder and fetus are fine.”

“Is Ari okay?”

“Your twin is untouched. I, on the other hand?” He tapped his wound. “My perfection is marred.” He’d heal quickly like all Rasha did, but Kane loved his dramatic flare.

I exhaled hard, then trotted down the stairs, gesturing at his temple. “Did Abyzou do that?”

“Yep. Compounded by your idiot brother. He clocked me when I stopped him from getting involved.” Kane’s jaw tightened. “If I hadn’t been worried about protecting his ass, I might have taken Abyzou down. As it was, she got away.”

A faint sheen of purple iridescence on his forearm caught the light, indicating his arms were still coated in traces of the salt-based poison that was his magic power. Toxic to demons.

Toxic to humans, too. I couldn’t touch him until he’d showered.

“What about the pregnant woman?”

“She thought it was some crazy person attacking. Ari and I distracted the demon enough for the breeder to get into her minivan and bolt.” Kane took a steadying breath, clearly trying to get his anger under control. “I can’t keep babysitting him.”

“I know.” My stomach knotted itself up. Ever since Ari had been abducted and tortured by a powerful demon a few weeks back, my heroically-inclined twin had become a one-man, monster-slaying vigilante. Sure, he’d trained his whole life for this, but since his Rasha ceremony had gone horribly wrong–inducting me instead of him in the surprise of the century–he hadn’t yet been officially made a hunter and therefore, didn’t have any magic power. Without that magic, Ari could wound but not kill.

Though he could piss the demons off enough to end up a tragic statistic himself.

In a rare display of cold calculation, my brother was exploiting Kane’s feelings for him, dysfunctional as they were. With or without backup, Ari wasn’t stopping and Kane was able to make the killing strikes. Payback had twisted my usually rational twin and I was terrified for his well-being.

Kane stomped up the stairs.

I rubbed my temples, sympathetic to Kane’s frustration.

“Navela.” Rabbi Abrams, Ari’s mentor for his entire life, touched my shoulder.

“You heard Kane?”

He nodded, motioning me into the kitchen. Rain hit the windows, wind scattering leaves off the trees.

I took a seat at the island, knowing from previous conversations that he’d speak in his own time. True to form, the rabbi boiled water for his pot of Darjeeling in silence.

The rabbi reached for a large mug. Slowly. No surprise since the guy was ancient. More wrinkles than anything else, he was clad in one of his many black suits, a kippah perched on his thinning white hair. He’d trimmed his beard, which was good since it had been straying into ZZ Top territory.

The only thing that ever seemed to radically change about Rabbi Abrams was his scent, ranging from mothballs to lavender and today… I surreptitiously sniffed him. Lemon candy drops.

“Ready for Prague?” he asked.

“You bet.” Ever my helpful self, I retrieved the honey kept in his special cabinet of “rabbi-only” cups, kettle, and kosher tea supplies.

He raised a shaggy eyebrow at me. I was growing on him.

“My mitzvah for the day,” I said, referring to the Hebrew word for a good deed. Like certain Hebrew words, it probably had some other literal meaning.

The kettle clicked off. Rabbi Abrams poured the hot water over the tea diffuser in his cup, his hands strong and steady despite his age. “A mitzvah should not come with expectation of reciprocity.”

“Then consider my next question totally unrelated. When will you be inducting Ari?”

After a ton of begging and my capitulation to mild blackmail, Rabbi Abrams had confirmed that yes, Ari did indeed still have initiate status. Thing is, re-running the traditional induction ceremony on Ari after I’d been inducted hadn’t worked. That’s why the Brotherhood believed they’d made a mistake about Ari’s status in the first place. With each passing day that my brother remained an initiate and not a full Rasha, the greater the risk that Ari got seriously hurt.

I was worried that my existence had screwed things up, magically speaking, and now the Brotherhood had no clue how to make my twin a hunter.

I leaned on the counter fidgeting, but the rabbi waited for his tea to steep before answering me. “I am not sure that official permission to try alternate methods of inducting Ari as Rasha will be forthcoming,” he said.

“You’re picking your words rather carefully there.” I frowned. “Please. Be straight with me. Did you ask the Executive?”

“It would not be a good idea at this time to seek authorization on this matter.” He blew on the steaming liquid before taking a sip.

Clamping my lips shut against my first impulse to shout, “Why the fuck not?” I took a deep breath, forcing myself to lay out my argument in a calm, logical form. “Ari won’t be deterred and this won’t end well.”

The rabbi took another sip. “There is someone I want you to meet in Prague.”

Huh? “Who?”

“Dr. Esther Gelman. She’s attending an environmental physics conference there.” He waved at the miscellaneous drawer across the room. “Get me a pen.”

Biddable me, I did as I was told.

He scribbled down Dr. Gelman’s name and email but held on to the paper a moment longer. “Send her this message. ‘Golem. Alea iacta est.’” He added that to the paper.

I took it from him. “What does it mean?”

“‘The die is cast.’ Request a meeting. Do not let her say no.”

I stuffed the paper in my pocket. “Uh. Okay. Why am I emailing a scientist about a fictional clay monster? Why don’t you do it?”

“She doesn’t like the Brotherhood.” Well, we had that in common. “This isn’t about the folkloric version of the golem,” he said. “It’s the meaning as it appears in the Tehilim. Psalms 139:16. An unformed body.”

Like Ari in regards to being Rasha. Rabbi Abrams wasn’t ignoring me. He was investigating a way to induct my twin that would not be sanctioned by the Brotherhood. “Way to work the loophole, Rabbi.”

He gave me an enigmatic smile. “Ari remains my responsibility. I do not take that lightly,” he said. “Get Esther to meet. She will know if there is a way.”

“Who is she?”

“That is not for me to share.” He pulled a tiny glass bottle out of his pocket, like one used for aromatherapy oils. It was half-full of some brown liquid. “I need your ring.”

I held out my right hand with my Rasha ring worn on my index finger. It was a fat gold band with an engraving of a hamsa, a palm-shaped design with two symmetrical thumbs meant to ward off the evil eye. The single open eye etched into the middle of the design boasted a tiny blue sapphire iris. Standard issue. Trust an all-male Brotherhood to ignore the opportunity for a variety of gemstones that could be accessorized at will.

As a hunter, I was incapable of removing the ring. Believe me, I’d tried.

The first night I’d met Rohan, his identical ring had been the only proof that he wasn’t a demon. Though if demon power was based on arrogance alone, Rohan would hands down be one of the most dangerous beings to ever live.

Rabbi Abrams unscrewed the cap, flipping the bottle upside down against the pad of his index finger. I tried not to flinch at the feel of his giant old man knuckles as he took my hand and smeared the liquid around my ring, speaking a couple words in Hebrew. The scent of cloves filled the air.

The gold warmed against my skin and from one blink to the next, the rich color leeched to a hard titanium. The hamsa engraving and sapphire iris disappeared, replaced by tiny diamonds encircling the band. “Can I touch it?”

He nodded so I brushed my thumb across the band. There was no sense of any of the diamonds, though I felt the hamsa and iris.

“You glamoured it,” I said.

He returned the bottle to his pocket. “You need to be able to get close to Samson without him seeing the true ring. Just make sure he doesn’t touch it. Anyone who does will see through the illusion.”

“Got it. Is there a time limit on the glamour?”

“No. I’ll remove it once you return from Prague.” He picked up his tea, indicating our meeting was at an end. “And Nava?”

I paused at the doorway, half turning back. “Yes?”

“Do as Rohan and Drio command. Show the Brotherhood how well you fit in.”

I had to unclench my teeth to answer him in the affirmative. Playing nice meant accepting the role of groupie that I’d been designated and that power dynamic did not sit well with me. But if the alternative would cause any trouble in terms of seeing Ari become Rasha, what choice did I have?

I had no idea what to do. Betray my principles or betray my brother? Either my gut-level certainty about what was best for my well-being or that of what was best for my twin’s was in jeopardy. I had no idea how to win on both fronts.

I trudged down the hallway, passing airy open rooms with detailed crown molding and gleaming inlaid wood floors. Rohan and Drio were probably stewing in the library waiting for my tardy self to arrive. The faintest hint of furniture polish scented the air, lending a bright note to the decidedly bleak choice I had to make.

Ari had held my hair out of my face the first time I’d thrown up, covered for me when I’d snuck out, and before this Rasha mix-up, never once cut me out of his confidences. I may not have always been the perfect sibling, but I’d lucked into having someone who was always on my side.

Now that the tables had turned, could I really throw Ari to the wolves?

3

Lost in thought, I missed most of Drio’s complaint about me taking my sweet time, even though the men were still in the TV room. Though I caught his sneered, “You look… sparkly,” as he waved a hand at the glittery silver letters on my shirt.

“I exude sparkly, thank you very much. But in a deadly way.”

Rohan cocked his head to read my shirt. “Fifty percent seems generous, Lolita. I’d say more thirty/seventy.”

Lolita was the nickname Rohan had bestowed on me the night we met, when he’d learned I wrote self-insert fanfic in my teens about his band. Not him, mind you. Just the rest of them. It hurt Snowflake’s terribly fragile ego that he wasn’t included, and since those boys were a whopping three years older than me, Rohan had chosen the pet name he thought most likely to piss me off.

I clapped my hands over my boobs as if protecting their delicate sensibilities from his cruelty. “I’ll cop to a forty-five, fifty-five spread. And for that insult, you can forget handling these fine representations of womanhood ever again.”

Rohan leaned forward and said, nowhere near soft enough for only me to hear, “Tonight.”

“Will you do it?” Drio asked Rohan in his Italian-accented English.

“Of course not,” I said hotly. “And you’re dead wrong if you don’t think I get a say.”

Drio paused and arched a single elegant eyebrow.

Rohan stifled a laugh. “He means Child’s Play.” The massive rock concert slated to happen in London next month to raise funds for war orphans.

Ah.

Drio kicked my chair like an obnoxious ten-year-old, which was several years higher than his actual emotional age.

“You got invited?” I swayed at the thought of being backstage with all that rock royalty, since I’d be happy to accompany Rohan as his groupie on that jaunt. My mental list of which rock stars I wanted to meet–and screw–was assembled at light speed. A brief fun escape from more serious matters.

Rohan reached out to steady me with one hand. “Never gonna happen.” Spoilsport. “Forrest hoped I’d premiere the theme song there, but it won’t be ready.”

I’d once read in a years-old interview that when Rohan Mitra got inspired the song flowed out of him all at once. He’d race to write the words down and then he’d tap out beats and hum strings to himself until he had a skeleton he could share with the band to build off of. It’d happen in a day, like a spirit being raised from the dead or lightning being channeled from the heavens, something so powerful you had to do it all at once to do it well.

Given the flatness in his eyes, there was more to his refusal to premiere it than its lack of completion. “You don’t want to get back into things at that level, do you?”

He didn’t answer. He’d eschewed the musical spotlight once he’d become Rasha. Fame and his own rock star ego had done a number on him, and when his beloved cousin had needed him, he’d failed to save her from demons. Enter his own inner ones. Or rather, more of his inner demons given the lyrics to some of his songs. To the point that he’d tattooed a heart on his left bicep as a reminder of his failure and of his character shortcomings whilst famous.

The tattoo lay directly in line with where his outline blade snicked out. Every time he used his power, the heart got slashed. Even that metaphor wasn’t enough. Nope, in further penance, he’d stopped singing. Yet, a week ago, Rohan had stepped back into the rock star role for the sake of the mission.

At my request.

I wiped my damp palms on my jeans.

“Selfish bastard,” Drio said. But he didn’t push it. He was fiercely loyal to Rohan, but not out of friendship’s sake alone. It was the kind of loyalty that stemmed from something else, something dark and volatile. I wasn’t sure what the deal between them was yet, because I’d been busy killing demons and saving Ari and stuff, but mark my words, I was going to find out.