The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Burn (Nava Katz #6) Paperback

Chapter 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 bitch 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 shit 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 orgasm 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 crack 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 nipples tightened, and a drugged lust 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 cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Oh good,” I said. “You remember you’re here. Inside me.”

“I could never forget that.” He fucked 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 fuck 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 bitch. 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 drug 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.

“You know what they say,” I cackled. “If you remember 900 BCE, you weren’t there.” I focused somewhere to the left of the abomination the rabbi had become. My voice was raspy, my throat dry from the drugs. And the screaming. Really parched a girl.

The rabbi gripped my shoulders with his talons hard enough to leave new bruises. “She was alive when the ring was stolen. The Brotherhood doesn’t have it and neither do the demons or Hybris wouldn’t have asked me for it.”

Yeah, right before you double-crossed the demon.

Next to the cot they’d set up for me, the symbols etched into the Tomb of Endless Night floated off the iron sarcophagus and swirled around the room.

“I hear Hybris killed your boyfriend. What a waste. He used to be a good Rasha.” Mandelbaum’s words jolted me into looking at him and his shark smile despite myself.

“See now, if you’d said Sienna’s dark magic had killed—” I turned the catch in my voice into a cough. “—killed Rohan, I might have believed you. But Hybris? No way. Rohan would never let himself die in that fight. Not before destroying her. You can do better than that, Rabbi.”

“You’re right, I can.” He jerked his horns at his Rasha minion. “Get Lilith’s connection to the ring.”

Rasha-creature checked my straps.

How could he do this to another hunter? How could he follow this monster when his fellow Brothers were being held hostage? I’d be tearing the world apart to find them if I was capable of standing.

The Rasha moved out of my line of vision and turned on a tap.

When he returned with a damp towel, my first thought was that he was going to wipe me down. That maybe he’d been truly bothered by the mess on my pants, and even if he wasn’t bothered as badly as I had been morally, by the captivity and torture, that at the very least he’d play good cop and help me. That he’d stick it to his shitty boss and show me a small mitzvah.

Instead, he adjusted the table until it tilted backward, leaving my head lower than my feet, then placed the towel over my face.

And in that moment, I knew I’d been a fool to think that compassion existed in this chamber of horrors.

Glacial-cold water streamed over my face and panic exploded like cluster bombs under my skin, my gag reflex kicking in. I was suffocating, drowning.

Another part of my lucidity crumbled away.

I gathered my last vestiges of sanity, carefully bundling them up and moving them to my happy place. A mental sanctuary where I had magic, where Rohan, my brother, and my friends were safe, and where I got to snuff Mandelbaum out like a candle.

Then I lost consciousness. My system was still full of narcotics, so instead of a merciful void, I was tossed about in a watery, Kafkaesque nightmare.

If you’re alive, I stay alive. I reached out for Lilith’s sorrow-filled voice, but she wasn’t here to help me.

I came to, vomiting on my DSI shirt. This wasn’t what I’d been originally wearing. I had a fuzzy memory of being thrown the shirt along with a pair of sweats.

The towel had been removed from my face and the Rasha was pushing down on my stomach to expel the water.

Mandelbeast grimaced. “Get that disgusting smell off her.”

A freezing jet of water hit my hair courtesy of the Rasha giving me a thorough soaking from head-to-toe with a hose. As a cleaning aid it barely rated; however, if their intent was to make me shiver violently, then achievement unlocked.

“Could use lemon, but still fairly refreshing,” I croaked.

Rabbi Mandelbaum checked his expensive watch.

“Don’t let me keep you from anything.”

“I’ll be back.” He spun sharply on a hoof and walked out through the melting door that could have been featured in one of those Dali paintings that Ari loved so much.

“Sure thing, Terminator,” I said.

The Rasha-creature looked at me with a kaleidoscope of cold, dead eyes. Despite the fact that I was a lone female strapped down and still dripping from the waterboarding, he showed no interest. No mercy.

I didn’t register as a lifeform for him. Good. Being underestimated had always worked for me. I was bound, still tripping, and I faced a stronger, larger Rasha whose powers, unlike my own, worked just fine.

I could deal with those odds. I took a deep breath, came up with a plan, and then burst into ugly, snotty tears.

It didn’t require any great acting ability.

The Rasha told me to shut up, but I let my hysteria escalate until I was choking on my sobs.

He stomped over and leveled out the table. Couldn’t let me die before they were absolutely certain I didn’t know where the ring was. When I didn’t stop spasming, he freed the straps across my chest, his stiff insect hairs rasping against my bare hands.

I grabbed one of the syringes with the blue liquid from the push cart and jammed it into his right eye.

He reeled back with a shriek, his hands flailing.

I loosened the other two sets of straps holding me down and slid off the table, catching myself on the cold edge to stay upright since my legs were a tad rusty.

Gotta hand it to Mandelbaum, his arsenal of drugs was top notch. Like “squeaky-clean pop star with a secret addiction” bona fide shit. The Rasha wobbled and fell to the ground, whimpering and convulsing.

“Tiiiimbeer.” I commiserated with the poor guy. For half a second. Then I kicked him in the balls while he was down.

Ripping the leather tourniquet from my arm, I wrapped it around his neck, pulling as tightly as I could until I cut off his pained howl. I dragged his limp body across the room to the Tomb of Endless Night, batting at the air to move the dancing symbols away. Heaving and grunting, I shoved him in, throwing my weight against the door to wedge his muscled frame into the narrow interior, then slammed the sarcophagus shut.

Dabbing my sweaty brow with my sleeve, I peeked into the corridor that looped overhead like a crazy Escher drawing. Black goats were doing the macarena on two hooves. I beckoned one over, poking a finger through him as he shimmied and turned. Okay, not real.

These magic-suppressing drugs with the tripping balls side effects were insanely potent, but they didn’t last very long, which was why they’d kept doping me. Hopeful, I reached for my magic. Not even a spark.

Okay, I needed more time for my healing powers to kick in now that I wasn’t being dosed, but it wasn’t safe to hang around. I had a narrow window of opportunity to escape before someone discovered that I’d broken out. If I couldn’t portal, then there’d better be clearly marked exits.

Sadly, there were no signs on the pockmarked concrete walls painted baby-poo yellow that flaked off in eczema-like patches. Stale, recycled air held the faint tang of bleach. Either Mandelbaum was too cheap to pony up for electricity or he got off on the creepy vibe for his evil lair, because most of the fluorescent bulbs were burned out. The few that worked, flickered and buzzed.

Voices grew louder, nothing urgent, just a relaxed chatter in a mix of languages.

I pressed back into the room, peering out through the barely cracked-open door.

Several dozen men wearing kippahs streamed toward the far end of the corridor, blowing away the goats who looked indignant at not getting to finish their dance. Most of the men were armed with semi-automatics. Actually, I only assumed they were semi-automatics. Right now, they were giant, gleaming hot dogs on straps, so I was extrapolating.

There was a smattering of Rasha among the men, but most didn’t wear the hamsa ring. Mandelbaum must have brought in non-magic reinforcements.

They turned the corner and I crept after them. I didn’t even have to get too close, thanks to the shimmering rainbow air streams they left in their wake.

The corridor sloped gently down for a long stretch. I kept to the deepest shadows at the walls, still hugely exposed. The need to be away from Chez Mandelbaum itched my skin. As a tourist destination, it left a lot to be desired: the beds were metal, the food was intravenous, and the spa treatments weren’t so much exfoliating as PTSD-inducing.

After several more twists and turns, I came to a heavy wooden door studded with metal. I eased it open and barely refrained from whistling. This wasn’t just a room, it was an ode to all villainous HQs. Torches threw menacing shadows on the stone walls and the air was cool, like we were underground, though that might have been the faulty air conditioning because something dripped from vents in the ceiling into a small puddle next to my feet.

My clothes were still clammy and I started shivering again, doing my best to keep my chattering teeth from giving me away. I snuck closer, again sticking firmly to the shadows because there was a lot of firepower in here. I’d been shot once before and had crossed that experience firmly off my bucket list.

While I skulked, I counted heads. It was slow going because every so often their bodies stuttered like a frame on an old projector had gotten caught and I’d have to start again, but in the end, I totaled up about sixty men. Most remained fully human, with only the odd segmented limb or forked tongue cropping up.

Before me was a legit Jewish league of evildoers. My people had been victims in history so many times, that I guess it was nice to see us living up to all the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories?

Rabbi Mandelbaum, now mostly back to being human except for those horns, stood on a small raised platform at the far end of the chamber. Maybe I’d buy him a fake pair once I got out of here because the horns suited him. Brought out the batshit fanaticism in his eyes.

He raised his hands and the place fell silent.

“My friends.” He surveyed the crowd with a long dramatic pause. “I ask you to consider the phoenix. As that magical bird is eternal, so too is the Jewish nation.”

The flames in the torch closest to me flared and took the shape of the majestic bird.

Be a good hallucination and show me the way out of here.

The phoenix cawed mockingly at me. Yeah, well, back at ya. Had the bird been some kind of magic manifestation, I’d have drawn on it. Sadly, I was still a dud power-wise.

The rabbi droned on. “With its death and rebirth, the phoenix experiences bitter times of despair and soaring moments of triumph, as do the Jewish people. Our history is mired with petty, small-minded, fearful men trying to eradicate us.”

Takes one to know one.

I couldn’t dismiss him entirely though, because the rabbi was right. Going to synagogue on the High Holidays meant passing the security guards stationed there. It always made me so mad, because church-goers didn’t have to worry about being hurt or killed every time they visited their place of worship. Even our local Jewish Community Center had guards. At the same time, the rabbi was twisting our past to justify behaving exactly as those he disdained.

“But from the darkest of ashes,” he said, “the Jewish nation has been reborn time and time again. Always stronger and more committed to our existence. And this time, my Brotherhood will be at the forefront of that rebirth.”

A roar greeted his news.

What Brotherhood? The six guys who weren’t carrying guns?

“…and our friends on the Jerusalem City Council have come through for us. We have approval to build the Third Temple!”

Third Temple sounded like a second-rate Christian boy band but it also sounded vaguely familiar. I pressed through the remaining drugs to tease out the knowledge. Jerusalem was a powder keg at the best of times with Jews, Christians, and Muslims all laying claim to the city. One more temple, just like an additional church or mosque, would be like saying one group had more of a stake in the city than the other two, and it was sure to light that fuse and blow tensions sky high. And that was without the rabbi throwing demons into the mix.

A supernova simmered and exploded inside me, engulfing me and knocking the breath from my lungs. It devoured me, licking and lapping at the curve of my hip, the jut of my elbow, the crown of my head. I was a raging inferno, aching to burn his world down.

If only I had my magic. I wouldn’t be stuck here. I wouldn’t have been tortured. I could solve this problem right away, melting these assholes down like the wrath unleashed when the Nazis opened the ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Once, I would have been upset by all these people needing to die. Now, things were different. I’d let their fear nourish my soul and their pleas be a siren’s call that I’d dance to.

Soon, but not yet. To lose control here would mean exposing myself and that would get me killed. Fuck that. I wasn’t dying for this bullshit. I’d gotten over that idea twenty minutes into my first torture session and I certainly wasn’t going to cave to some tragic demise now.

Keeping my lips pressed tight, I clawed my way to a greater and greater control of the blaze inside me, icing my swirling fury with a fusion of panic and resolve until I’d locked the emotion down tight.

Rabbi Mandelbaum motioned for the men to quiet down.

“Have you found the rabbis?” a man called out.

“Yes. I’ve just received word that we know where those witches” —he practically spat the word— “imprisoned them. Plans are being made to storm the location.”

I’d heard enough. Dizzy, I felt my way along the wall back to the door. I had to get out. I had no idea where the exits were, could barely keep what little I knew of the floor plan straight in my head, and this was my one chance to escape. If I messed this up then I’d be thrown back into that room, strapped down, and I really would never see the light of day. My stomach turned and I stumbled down the corridor, colliding immediately with a set of rock-hard abs.

“Cazzo!”

My head jerked up.

Drio sneered down at me, a bruised and bloody Leonie caught in his grasp.