The Unlikeable Demon Hunter (Nava Katz #1)(76)
“The ring and the power are proof,” I said.
“We’ll see if the Executive thinks so.”
“No!” I grabbed Drio’s arm as he stood. Baruch caught me with one hand and Drio with the other, pushing us back into our respective seats.
“Maspik.” Given Baruch’s growl I figured he was telling us to knock it off.
“Tell him not to tattle on me to Big Brother,” I said.
“No one is tattling,” Kane said.
Drio crossed his arms.
“We done?” Rohan leveled a hard gaze between the two of us. I nodded and Drio sat there stonily, which was the best case scenario.
“Do we know where the demons are holding Ari?” I asked.
Kane’s expression gentled. “Ari isn’t–”
“Yes,” I snapped. “He is. My twin is alive and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go find him.” I jumped to my feet. “Can we do that?”
Baruch nodded. “We can, in fact.”
Rohan’s hand came down on my shoulder. “That anger? Hold on to it. Don’t let it rule you. But let it fuel you.”
Count on it.
“It would have to be Riverview.” I peered through a copse of trees at the largely abandoned psychiatric hospital located about a half hour drive outside Vancouver.
The looming stone buildings with their iron-barred windows were creepy enough when seen in all the various TV shows that shot here. Onscreen didn’t come close to capturing the eerie vibe while actually standing on the edge of the property under an ink-black sky with only the faintest trace of moonlight. Suddenly, that oppressive dusk seemed like the better option.
I’d requested one of those crazy bright flashlights that Scully and Mulder always seemed to have on hand. Instead I’d been clothed in lightweight, fibrous clothing like an armor covering me from neck to ankle that would help deflect demon claws and teeth and given a tight scratchy black cap to tuck my hair under. I resembled a giant black sock with boobs.
The four guys, on the other hand, looked like cool ninja assassins.
It was a good thing I only got the vaguest sense of the buildings. Too much of a close inspection would have played havoc with my already fraught nerves. I’d heard rumors of voices here at Riverview and that was without a demon presence.
Even knowing I was going in with the super mensches and my own magic abilities didn’t stop me from jumping at every little sound and obsessively checking over my shoulder.
“Got an idea of what we’ll be faced with when we get inside? Based on all the successful demon raids you’ve led?” I whispered, creeping behind Rohan in the shadows.
“Danger.” At a sign from Drio that he was zipping ahead, Rohan put up his own hand to bring the rest of us to a stop.
“That vagueness doesn’t inspire confidence.”
He flashed me a wry smile. “I rock improvisation.”
We waited in tense silence. I sort of wished the demons would hurry up and rush us because the anticipation was awful. At long last, Drio returned, pointing to a building on the west side of the property. “In there.”
In another time and place, say on a sunny day in the Deep South, sipping sweet tea while rocking lazily on the front porch, our destination would have been a charming place to hang out. A long staircase led up to a row of two-story columns, supporting the wide balconies on each floor. Now, however, the once-white paint was streaked with black. Clumps of moss clung to the sides of the railings and ferns grew in wild abandonment over the windows.
I shivered, very glad to have Baruch at my back as we stepped inside because my inner things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-o-meter was vibrating hard enough to snap. A coat of silver paint, probably from a film shoot, had been applied, now peeling in huge scabby swathes. Or rather, flaked like something with massive nails had tried to scrabble its way out through the walls. There was junk everywhere, from plaster, wood, and pipes vomited out of the structure itself and strewn around like a bomb blast, to an abandoned shopping cart sitting in an otherwise empty room.
Drio kept zipping off ahead to scout. This time when he came back, he touched Rohan’s shoulder to turn us into a large room, then, motioning for Kane to come with him, left.
Rohan, Baruch, and I picked our way over fallen ceiling tiles.
I looked up, then wished I hadn’t because the ceiling was rife with gaping holes, perfect for some demon to drop down on us. Say, a seven-foot-high wooden snowman demon, exploding out in a shower of ruptured tiles.
I rocked sideways at the resounding crash of the demon hitting the floor.
The demon’s head, the smallest segment, was a good foot and a half in diameter. His eyes took me a moment to find, since his skin was the consistency of weathered bark, but finally I saw the slowly blinking slits. He had no legs and stumpy T-Rex arms. It would have been comical except each of these tiny limbs ended in foot-long, blood-encrusted pincers. He slithered toward us with a scraping sound, each of his segments wobbling in different tempos.
“Sakacha,” Baruch said. The pain demon.
This atrocity was one of the creatures that Asmodeus ordered to kidnap Ari? Before I could light up, Baruch stepped in front of me to battle it. The foresty showdown of Tree Trunk versus Segmented Wood Block. Baruch ducked under the demon’s snapping left pincer to pop up behind him and snap his head off. He broke off that heavy chunk of wood as easily as if he was breaking off a piece of a cracker.