The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Sting (Nava Katz #2) Paperback

Chapter 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.