by Sierra Dean
Something that didn’t involve any advanced form of locomotion.
On the bottom shelf within arm’s reach was a row of dark brown bottles with a thick layer of dust on them and labels so faded I didn’t think an archaeologist would be able to decipher them. Given that everything in the room seemed to be expired chemistry department supplies, I figured there was a good chance it might be dangerous.
Or, at the very least, irritating.
I picked up the bottle and chucked it at Mayhew. Instead of shattering dramatically, the bottle bounced off his head with a thwock sound and fell to the floor undamaged.
Well, shit.
As it turns out, bashing a demon in the head with a glass bottle accomplishes two things. First, it gets their attention long enough for a vampire to land one hell of a right hook. Second, it really pisses them off.
“Vile creatures,” Mayhew hollered. Holden’s punch had caused the demon to stagger backwards into the door, cracking the weak wood frame. We were breaking an awful lot of doors at Columbia tonight. Mayhew touched his mouth, and his fingers came away bloody. “This won’t be forgotten.” He looked to me, and his red eyes glowed like lava, hot and angry. “I hope you said fond farewells to your loved ones, halfling. Tonight they all die.”
My lips parted, but I never got a chance to find out what marvelous wordsmithery was about to tumble out. Mayhew grabbed the door handle, twisting the knob into a gob of brass chewing gum, and the door buckled in half before he was able to get it open.
Then he was gone, still wearing my face.
Desmond’s phone went straight to voicemail, as did Lucas’s. I tried to sum up the problem quickly, knowing I had a dozen other calls to make before everyone I cared about was safe from…well, safe from me.
“Hey,” I told Desmond’s message. “I have an evil demon twin. He…she…it will kill you without question, and may try to sleep with you first. I’m sort of fuzzy on the plan. Unless I say…” I looked around for a code word to distinguish myself as the real Secret and the first thing I saw was Holden, “…Dracula, it’s not me. And you better run.”
I snapped my phone shut and ignored Holden’s disgusted expression. “You’re making excellent strides at butchering all the classics of British literature tonight.”
“The vamps ruined Stoker long before I got to him.” Vampires had a nasty habit of calling those who had been too corrupted by the thrall Renfields. Ick.
Holden had draped his coat over Lucy, and we had managed to get her back to her dorm room without much fuss. It was too cold and too late for most students to be outside. Lucy’s roommate was an apparent exception. I was starting to wonder if Katie was ever in their room, or if it was just a storage locker for her crap.
I left Lucas the same message I’d left Desmond, then turned my attention to the unconscious girl. We couldn’t leave her here unattended, not with Mayhew on the loose and obviously aware of where he could find her. I wanted to leave and make sure my friends were safe, but I had to protect the most vulnerable target first. Almost everyone I cared about was a supernatural creature of some kind, and though I didn’t think they could best a demon in a fight, they would be able to hold their own longer than a human.
Lucy may have been a were-ocelot, but right now she was just an injured girl who needed help. My help.
Genevieve’s cell was the next call I made.
“Hello?” If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn I called a phone-sex operator by accident. Genevieve’s voice was a sultry, inviting purr.
“Genevieve, it’s Secret.”
“Lord.” Her breath whooshed out, and it took her a moment to regain her composure. “What’s happened? What did you find?”
“We’ve got her.”
She let out an excited cry, and when she spoke again her voice was thick with emotion. “Is she…is she okay?”
“She’s alive. She’s pretty badly hurt. Her feet are cut up, and it looks like a demon took a bite out of her.”
“Did you say a demon?”
“Long story.”
“Where are you?” The rustle of movement interrupted our conversation, and a door slammed on her end. She was on the move.
“We’re in Lucy’s dorm room. Holden carried her back here.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
I nodded and went to hang up the phone, then stopped. “Shit. Genevieve?”
“Mmm?”
“If you see me anywhere but in this room…run like hell. Understand?”
“Is that a threat?” She sounded more mystified than angry.
“No. It’s part of the long story.”
Genevieve didn’t care about my story as long as her niece was safe. She agreed not to trust me unless I was with Holden and hung up. Holden had wrapped Lucy in her twin duvet and added the one from her roommate’s bed as well. He crouched next to her and brushed an errant copper hair off her balmy forehead.
“What the hell happened down there, Secret?” he asked, but never took his attention off the girl.
“I think I pissed off a demon.”
“I believe you could piss off God himself. But that’s not what I mean.”
“I know. I wish I could explain it.” I gave him the brief rundown of my week, skipping over any werewolf-related drama and emphasizing the issues with Gabriel and Mayhew. I gave him more details about my previous evening under Mayhew’s spell.
“So he stole your memories, made you forget, then stole your appearance. Basically he wasn’t full of shit when he said he could take over your life.” If he was mad about Mayhew violating me, it didn’t show. “You need to call Sig. Now.”
Shit, he was right. Sig and the council hadn’t even been on my top-ten list of people I needed to warn about Mayhew, but Holden’s mind cut right through the warm-and-fuzzy stuff and went straight to business. If Mayhew got into the Tribunal’s lair and killed Sig and Juan Carlos, he could effectively destroy the entire vampire political structure.
And the council would never believe I was innocent.
I picked up my phone again to dial Sig’s number, but it began to ring before I got the chance. The boppy eighties pop song felt out of place in the somber atmosphere of the room. Next time I picked a ringtone, it was going to have to fit my lifestyle a bit better. Nine Inch Nails, maybe. Or some Alkaline Trio.
Mercedes’s number was flashing on the caller ID screen.
“Cedes, hey, can I call—”
“No, hold on. I have been trying to get in touch with you all goddamn night and your phone goes straight to voicemail. Hold your horses if you think you’re going to hang up on me right now.”
“I’m sort of in the middle of a crisis.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Seriously, I—”
She cut me off again. “What the hell happened last night? I’ve never seen you like that. You were like an amnesiac right out of a bad soap opera. And I would know, I watch General Hospital a lot.”
“Uhhh…”
“Sure. Now you’re at a loss. Do you have any clue what kind of questions I’m fielding from Tyler tonight? He’s not an idiot, Secret. He knows something out of the ordinary happened last night, and I don’t know how to explain it to him without…you know. Telling him.”
“Don’t.”
“Duh.” I could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “But I’m going to need something to tell him that he’ll buy.”
“Tell him I had a head wound.”
“That gave you selective amnesia.”
“He should buy selective amnesia better than most people.”
Cedes paused. I should have known better than to say that, because she wouldn’t gloss over it. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing, forget it.”
“Missy, once you’re out of whatever crisis you’re in, you and I are going to have margaritas and a very, very long chat.”
“There’s something else.”
“Yeah?”
&nb
sp; “Next time you see me, it’s important you ask me—”
“Oh. You sneaky devil, why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I see you. Tell me now.”
My pulse dipped, and my blood went cold. “Cedes, no, that’s not…” But it was too late. The line was dead. And if I didn’t haul ass, more than the line would be dead soon.
“Oh God,” I breathed out, my eyes going hazy with pink as tears flooded to the surface. “Oh my God.”
“Go.” I’d forgotten Holden was there, and his voice gave me a start.
“But, what about…” I nodded to Lucy.
“I think I’m capable of taking care of her until Genevieve gets here. It’s my fault you’re messed up in this to begin with, so I’ll take my part of the responsibility now. Go.”
I wanted to believe he’d be okay without me. Logic told me he was the best person to guard Lucy, and I couldn’t help him by staying, but I needed to know I’d done all I could. I took my gun from its holster and laid it on the end of the bed.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“Just in case.”
“Secret…”
“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t argue. Please.”
He forced a small smile but didn’t fight about the weapon any further.
I was halfway out the door when I skidded to a halt and turned back to him. “I need you to—”
“Call the council. Send backup. Stay alive. You need a lot.”
I nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”
As I darted back out the door I heard him mutter in an irritated but mildly amused voice, “Dracula.”
Chapter Thirty-One
On a good day Barbie looked confused. On a bad day she looked ready to spit venom when she saw me. Based on those criteria I would have said today was a good day, because she certainly looked mystified when I walked through the police station’s front doors. She stared at me, then back over her shoulder to the stairs, then back to me with both eyebrows knit together in consternation.
“Did you go out the back way, change, then come back?”
I’ll give the idiot girl this: it was the most logical explanation. “Yes,” I agreed.
“Why?”
“How else is a single girl supposed to land a handsome detective?” My voice caught in my throat. Before tonight I’d never believed there would be a situation where being a smartass would be difficult for me. Tonight I was learning it was almost impossible to be tart and clever when people you love might die because of you.
“Trust me, honey,” Barbie said with the winsome, sagelike voice of a girl who’d been there. “All you need is tits and access to Krispy Kreme. They won’t appreciate Betsey Johnson and Stella McCartney.” She waved her hand in the direction of my outfit.
Normally I’d have given her credit for her correct analysis of my ensemble. After all, what New York girl doesn’t like to talk about her clothes? But tonight I just nodded and bolted for the stairs.
The main room upstairs was so quiet my heels echoed as I crossed the tile floor at a half-run. A few detectives were seated at their desks, behaving as if it were a normal night and there wasn’t a homicidal demon in their midst.
“Where’s Castilla?” I asked a balding detective with a paunchy belly.
He didn’t look up, only jerked his thumb towards the employee-access stairs to the basement. “She and Novak just headed to the cages.”
“Thanks,” I muttered and bolted for the door, praying I wasn’t too late.
The first indication everything was far from all right was the reek of copper and iron when I opened the stairwell doors. Only one thing could account for the potency of the smell. Fresh blood and lots of it. With my last remaining rational thought, I locked the door so accessing the corridor wouldn’t be possible from above. I didn’t need anyone stumbling onto what was sure to be a mess and losing their life for their bad timing.
Halfway down the stairs on a small concrete landing was the first body, lying facedown in a pool of partially congealed blood. My heart pounded as I came level to the corpse. Part of me said it was better not to know and I should keep going. But whoever it was, they were dead because of me. I had to accept responsibility for it and look them in the face.
I rolled the body over with my shoe. A pale, panic-stricken expression stared back. The officer had been in his thirties. He had a wedding band on his finger. I fought against the new wave of tears threatening me. The man’s jaw hung slack, broken. He appeared to have been mid-scream when he died.
The front of his chest was ripped open in a jagged, garnet-colored hole. The white spires of his ribs jutted out, and everything inside was a mess of shredded parts that didn’t look like they were in the right place anymore. I prayed most of the damage had been done after he died, but judging by all the blood leaking out, I didn’t think he’d been so lucky.
I stepped over his body and made my way to the bottom of the stairs. The back door leading into the sign-in room hung ajar, and the smell of blood was as strong as it had been at the top of the stairs. My brain screamed at me to turn around and go back, but the warning was fruitless. I was going in, and my brain damn well knew it.
Inside, the desk was askew, shoved up against the far wall. The monitor for the cameras inside the cells had been knocked onto the floor, but the power was still on, so sparks were issuing forth from the shattered black screen. Glass littered the floor, shining out from the expanding pool of blood like flat, glinting islands. There was so much blood. I didn’t know if one person could produce that much. Slumped on top of the desk was the same uniformed officer I’d seen on both my previous visits here. His face lay cheek down on the desk with his vacant eyes wide and his mouth agape in a scream, much like the officer on the stairwell.
The desk officer’s arms were behind him, cracked and bent at odd angles, his spine bowed inwards, giving his back an inverted hump. It looked like someone had come from behind him, pulled his arms back until they popped, while breaking his spine with their foot. The outcome was grisly enough. I was glad I hadn’t been here to see it happen.
I checked the lock on the front door leading to the main holding area, but someone had already turned it. My boots were smeared with blood by the time I waded across the growing puddle to buzz myself into the small holding-cell area beyond.
Mercedes and Tyler both rounded on me, guns raised. I was so shocked to see them alive, I didn’t care about the weapons trained on my head and heart.
“What the…?” Tyler looked from me to Gabriel’s cell, then back. His gun followed his eyes like he wasn’t certain which way he should be aiming it. I couldn’t get a view into Gabriel’s cell, but I had a pretty good idea of what Mercedes and Tyler were seeing.
“I can explain.” I could? “I know this looks bad.”
Gabriel squealed. It was the kind of frantic, distressed noise an animal in a trap makes. It was not the kind of noise a grown man makes unless he is pushed beyond the limits of pain his body can withstand. I edged forward, and Tyler pivoted his weapon back to me, a wild gleam in his eyes.
“The person you saw, that isn’t me.”
“Don’t listen to her,” my voice inside the cell insisted. “She’s an imposter.”
I lost it. “Shut up. You’re in there mutilating an innocent man. You’ve killed God knows how many others on your way here. I don’t think they’re going to buy you as the good one here, Mayhew.”
A crack-pop issued forth from the cell, and Gabriel bleated out another noise of distress.
“Well, if I’m not playing nice, then I guess I’ll just finish what I came here to do.”
Mercedes looked from me to the other me, then turned her gun towards Mayhew. Thank God. I hadn’t had time to feed her the safe word, yet she still seemed to believe I was real and he was the imposter. It helped that Mayhew was in the process of dismembering my ex.
Though, come to think of it, I think I’d threatened to do the same thing once or twice myself.
&nbs
p; “You can’t kill it with bullets,” I told the detectives.
“You can kill anything with bullets,” Tyler countered, still eyeing me suspiciously, having not decided who should be his target.
“Not a demon.” I guess now was as good a time as any to let Tyler in on the situation.
He snorted. I wasn’t going to be able to ease him into the truth the way I would have liked to. This was a crash course at best, and if he chose to believe it, awesome. If not, well, there was a team of council wardens on their way here to enthrall anyone who encountered Bad Secret tonight. I hoped Holden had the presence of mind to request a clean-up crew. Memories of the men outside the door made hot bile press against the back of my throat.
“I don’t have time to make you understand. I wish I did. The thing in that cell is a demon. It has stolen my form and my memories. There is no way to tell us apart except that I’m standing out here, trying to save you, and she’s in there killing someone.” As if to emphasize his guilt, Mayhew did something new and awful to Gabriel, making my ex cry out in a horrible way. “Please, Tyler. Believe I am who I say I am, and I swear to God I will explain everything to you if we get out of this alive.”
“You won’t,” Mayhew said. “No one will make it out alive.”
Tyler stared at me for a heartbeat, then moved closer to Cedes and aimed his own weapon at Mayhew. I hadn’t bothered pulling a weapon since I’d left Columbia. Nothing I’d brought with me was any use against a full-blooded demon, and I’d left my gun with Holden in case he needed the firepower to keep Lucy safe.
I only knew one thing that might do me any good, and it was decorating the mantle at my apartment. I hadn’t exactly had an opportunity to swing by home and pick up a katana on my way here, but it was the only thing that would make sense in a fight against an immortal monster.
“How did he kill the two officers but not you two?” I asked when I came up next to them.
Now that I could see Gabriel, I wished I’d stayed by the door. Mayhew had Gabriel’s arms pinned behind him like the officer at the desk. My ex was on his knees, his handsome face twisted into a grimace. Blood was matted in his hair, and one side of his face was tacky with redness from a gaping cut on his forehead. I was guessing his face had been smashed into the concrete floor. His nose was crooked, and it looked like Mayhew had dislocated both shoulders.
