The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Burn

1 “Come on, Avon. You can’t be late for your own performance.” Cole pushed his glasses up his nose with a little face scrunch, unwilling to cross the threshold into the Zone of Chaos, a.k.a. my bedroom. I dug through the pile of workout clothes on the closet floor and tossed a couple Ziplock bags over my shoulder. The one containing hair spray, gel, elastics, and bobby pins hit my fluffy area rug with a quiet thunk, while my jumble of makeup, false eyelashes, and glue sailed onto my mattress. “One second.” “Let’s go already. Parking is a b***h at the—” Cole’s irritation cut off with a yelp as a tangle of duct tape and extra shoelaces flew through the air to wing him in the shoulder. I sat back on my calves. “I can’t find the shoes you—” “I what?” I shook my head to clear it. “My custom leather taps. I need them for this performance.” “Dropping pricy hints for your next birthday? Noted. Meantime.” He nudged my dance bag across the floor. “Your shoes are in here. You put them in last night.” I pulled them out. Black worn taps. Not purple and red saddle shoes with a red heart. “These aren’t them. They don’t fit anymore.” My voice caught on a half-sob. Cole crouched down next to me and slid one onto my left foot. “They fit fine.” I ripped it off. “They don’t.” Yeah, I was being sulky and kind of childish, but I was a performer. Performers needed the right tools to put on a good show and the shoes I was looking for and annoyingly not finding were it for me. The old shoes would be okay, but I intended to set the world on fire. “You want to try dancing your heart out in front of a crowd wearing shoes you don’t feel absolutely confident in, be my guest,” I said. Cole put the shoe away, then grabbed my hair and makeup accoutrements, and snagged my costume bag from a chair. “Take a moment and breathe. You’ve got this. I’ll meet you at the car.” I dropped my face into my hands. This wasn’t my pre-show jitters that I fed off to give my tapping an exhilarating edge. This was a full-blown nightmare of being backstage with the lights dimming and the audience shushing, the first notes about to play, while I stood there in the wings, all my moves forgotten. Get it together, Katz. People were counting on me to nail this performance. I jogged down to the car, trying to weave my nerves into something more productive. My phone beeped with a flurry of texts from Leo and my family, even my mom, telling me to break a leg. Nothing from Ari, though. I’d give him s**t later when he got home from… I frowned. Where was he? When I slid into the passenger seat of his hand-me-down clunker, Cole made a big production of ceding control of the radio dial. “M’lady.” “M’thank you.” “Dork.” He pulled away from the curb. I fiddled with the cracked plastic knob, but every radio station was static. I was about to shut it off when I caught the faintest strain of a melody that filled me with hope, light, and deep anxiety. I gripped the dashboard. “Let’s slay all our demons I’ll lay down my knives For you, I’ll lay down my knives.” Cole groaned and snapped off the dial. “This emo crap can’t be helping your state of mind, babe.” I scrambled to twist the knob back on, but the song had vanished. Just more static. I spun through radio stations and got nothing. “Comebackcomebackcomeback!” Deep in my core, a spark caught with an agonizing electric snap. Current snaked over my body and a scream tore from my throat. “I know I’m good,” said a Southern Californian drawl that was dry with amusement, “but I didn’t even touch you.” I clutched his biceps. My body relaxed and my heart slowed its galloping. Rohan. I opened my eyes and wriggled closer to him, my cheek finding his solid pecs the perfect pillow. A dusting of dark hair tickled my nose. “If you can’t tell the difference between an o****m and a nightmare, you might need to rethink your technique.” He rolled me over and pinned me against the cool sheets, edging one knee between my legs. “Yeah? You think I need practice?” I ran my hands down his bare skin to his hipbone. “I mean, it does make perfect. And you are kind of anal about your technique.” “You’re getting kind of anal, too,” he snickered. I brushed my fingers over his erection and he hissed. “That’s right, buddy. You can c***k jokes or go for door number two.” Rohan waggled his eyebrows. Groaning loudly, I flopped onto my back. Ro stretched out against me, his lips brushing mine. If I lived until ninety, I would never tire of feeling him fitted against me. How the ridge of his hip pressed into my soft curves. He was like my own personal docking station. He recharged me, but he always left me better than I was: singing a little louder, shining a little brighter. “You looooove me,” he said. “Weellllll.” Now it was my turn to hiss as he slid a finger inside me. My n*****s tightened, and a drugged l**t snaked through my veins. “You are positively dripping with love for me.” “You’re hopeless,” I laughed, squirming against him as he stroked Cuntessa. I brushed my breasts against his chest, loving the fierce rumble he made. “Say it,” he growled, though he was grinning. His love shone in the twinkle of his eyes and in the way that he stoked the fire in my body with awed adoration. We were going to grow into that old couple who always held hands and giggled at some inside joke as they tottered along at a snail’s pace. I threaded my fingers into his hair, pulling his face close to reassure myself he was here. For as long as possible, I wanted us to stay like this, where he was my entire world. “I love you so much, Rohan. And I need you inside me.” “Patience, sweetheart.” “Please. Now.” My ribcage constricted and I held his forearms tighter so he couldn’t fade away. Rohan wrapped his hand around mine, pressing it to his heart as he knelt on the bed and pushed inside me. But he didn’t move, just demolished me with a single volcanic gaze, his eyes amber rum and cinnamon. I bucked my hips and he c****d an eyebrow at me. “Oh good,” I said. “You remember you’re here. Inside me.” “I could never forget that.” He f****d me in a lazy tempo. Something in my chest eased as Rohan leaned down to whisper in my ear and I laughed as his stubble tickled my neck. This was it, this was perfect. “You’re my heart, my home. I love you, Lilith.” I gasped, my lungs seizing. The world was burning and I burned with it. Flames of orange and red surrounded me like a funeral pyre. The blaze popped and snarled. I thrashed, twisting, fighting to get free, but I was held fast. Hotter and higher the fire danced. Molten agony coursed through my blood. “Lilith, speak with me.” Rabbi Mandelbaum pried my eyes open, his rank breath hitting my face. When the world slid into focus, there was no fire. No Rohan. Just a cold, clinical room with a worked-up rabbi in a fancy suit. “I command you!” Immediately, I wished I was dreaming again. Because no matter how bad the dreams were, they couldn’t hurt more than the truth. The last time I’d seen Rohan, he was convulsing with the dark magic trying to take over his body. My brother and my friends were imprisoned. And I lay strapped to a metal table in a damp concrete room surrounded by a variety of mad scientist machines, each one colder, more soulless, and more pain-inducing than the last. Blackish-green mold streaked the bottoms of the walls like a child’s finger painting. If I were to approach my situation rationally, as much as one could approach “where the f**k is the all-powerful witch who is supposed to be intimately co-habiting with me?” in a rational manner, I’d have concluded that Lilith had checked out. Either gotten out of me somehow or died when the Tomb of Endless Night nulled her magic, neither of which helped my situation. An olive-skinned Rasha clamped his meaty hand over my mouth and nose and a too-familiar, scathing magic rode me like its prison b***h. No matter how many times this happened, I never got used to it, always bristled at the way it flared from his skin like B.O., snaked up my nostrils, and seeped through my lips. I gagged, tasting motor oil, and tried to cough the magic out but ended up swallowing more of it. “Do you know where the ring is?” the Rasha said. His magic compelled me, and as much as I tried to fight it, I shook my head in answer. “She’s lying!” Mandelbaum slammed his hand down on the metal table and I flinched against the straps. “She can’t lie. My magic prevents that.” “Then you didn’t give her enough.” The taste of motor oil grew stronger. “Is Lilith connected to the Ring of Solomon?” I pressed my lips together. These fuckers didn’t deserve to know a damn thing. But the harder I clamped my mouth shut, the more my eyeballs bulged out and my internal organs were buffeted like Dorothy’s house in the tornado. The word “yes” burst forth, mumbled against his palm. Mandelbaum smirked. “I knew it.” “Her skin sparked,” the Rasha said. “She’s burning through the suppressant again.” “Double the dosage.” “I’ve been giving her the maximum safe limit. Doubling it could kill her.” The rabbi shrugged. “Then it kills her. But not before you get answers. Understood?” The Rasha grabbed a leather strap from the cart and tied it around my upper arm. He reached for a syringe filled with blue liquid, but hesitated. “I don’t have all day,” the rabbi ordered. The Rasha shot the d**g into my vein. Bzzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzzzzz. A segmented fly arm about the length of a javelin and studded with hundreds of tiny hairs, waved at the edge of my vision. The rabbi and the Rasha wavered, replaced by two mad bestiary fusions of hooves, iridescent wings, and those horrible fly arms. One of them wore a fat gold hamsa ring, the other bulged grotesquely out of his gunmetal suit. I locked my eyes onto the pitted, dirt-streaked ceiling swimming in and out of focus, repeating the mantra I’d clung to through this entire ordeal. I am Nava Liron Katz. My parents are Dov and Shana Katz. Ari Katz is my twin. Leonie Hendricks is my best friend. Rohan Liam Mitra is my Snowflake. And Rabbi Mandelbaum is going to die. These visions weren’t real and they weren’t going to break me. The Rasha poked me with a second syringe of the blue liquid and I braced myself for my mind to finally snap under this fresh new hell. The trippiness didn’t intensify, but the pain did, slapping me hard. It ebbed and flowed in waves, every lull cruelly tricking me into believing this would end. My body bucked against the straps as I strained to curl into a fetal position, the drugs a boiling acid gnawing through my veins and into my bones with razor-sharp teeth. I writhed, my broken whimpers echoing off the walls. Where was Lilith’s healing magic? It should have taken care of the stuff they’d been drugging me with. “Enough,” Mandelbaum-beast said. The Rasha-creature gave me another shot, this one a purple liquid. The pain mercifully abated and my entire body went limp. “She pissed herself,” he said in a voice heavy with disgust. I was so far past that on the humiliation scale that I didn’t have it in me to care. Mandelbeast leaned over me, thick, twisted horns sprouting from his coiffed hair. “Where is the Ring of Solomon?” “My precious. Where is my precious?” It was a pretty good Gollum impression. “You have her memories.” Wrong. I didn’t have Lilith’s memories and I had no idea why I was positive that she had some connection to the ring because Lilith was M.I.A. I cast about inside me for any spark of magic, but as with the five thousand other times I’d checked, it was buried or gone.