“I like big,” he commented with a gleam in his eye, stepping aside to allow her space.
Yeahhhh. Me. Too. Casey looked up at him with guilty eyes as though her thoughts had been shared out loud. “Sorry?”
“My truck. I can tell you’re wondering why a vampire would drive a truck. I like a big vehicle.” He slapped the hood of the shiny truck and smiled. “It’s useful—for, you know, the bodies. A big bed like this pickup has can hold a lot of ’em.”
Her eyes glazed over. “Bodies?”
A snort flew from Wanda’s glossed lips. “If you could see your face,” she said on a giggle. “He’s joking, Case. Vampires don’t collect bodies. In fact, most don’t even drink from an actual human—only each other. Where’d your sense of humor go?”
I set fire to it along with your stupid, psychopathic, homicidal friend. You wanna go, too? She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, hoping to eradicate her horrible thoughts, giving them both a tight smile. “Sorry. I’m obviously not myself, and I’m having some rather unusual responses to situations I’d normally take with a grain of salt. I mean, I did get so angry with Nina I set her on fire. I think it’s fair to say, you know me well enough to know I’m not normally so edgy or so easily provoked. But that’s all gone the way of big hair and Tears for Fears. My only excuse is it’s been a long two days.”
Wanda threw a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I get it. C’mon, let’s go see what this Darnell has to say.”
Casey held Wanda back while Clay made his way to the red steel front door of the building. “Do you really trust this Clay, Wanda? Because I’m only being truthful when I tell you that I still don’t know if I’m over the nuts part of this night. Vampires and werewolves? I’m just not 100 percent sure I believe you, let alone this man who says he did this to me.”
Wanda’s tongue rolled along the inside of her cheek, a sign that she was growing impatient. “I told you I could show you.You want fangs or fur?”
Casey licked her lips with a nervous, darting tongue. “No! I’m sorry. I am, but you have to at least remember what it was like not to believe any of this was true. You couldn’t have just accepted it and not at least had a few moments of doubt.” And if Wanda hadn’t, she might have to rethink the butterfly net where her sister was concerned.
“Of course I did. When Marty first shifted in front of me I spent several days afterward denying what I’d seen with my own two eyes, kiddo. I was just shy of the corner of a room and the fetal position. But we don’t have time for denial, Casey. You’ve got something going on that will keep you from doing that slave labor you call a job, and just in general living your life. You had at it with Nina. Nina. Not only is she bat-shit crazy, she’s a hundred times more fearless than a kamikaze pilot. Even I, on my best days, shudder to think what she’d do to me if she were ever to call me on one of my many bluffs when I shoot her down, and I’m technically twice as strong as she is.You saw in the jail what she was capable of when she did nothing more than growl at that man ogling her back end, and still you chose to poke her. Whatever triggered that kind of anger has to be dealt with before you hurt yourself or someone else.”
What was worse was that she’d reveled in the chance to provoke Nina. Like, a lot. She’d wanted to wrap herself up in antagonism like a weenie in a blanket. “All that aside, what do you really know about this Clay? How do you know he’s really bringing us to meet a real demon? I mean, c’mon. . . .”
Wanda’s head cocked and her lips pursed. “How do you know he’s not?”
Valid. “I don’t. I don’t know anything anymore. I just know that this is so surreal, so Stephen King, I just can’t seem to wrap my brain around it.”
Her sister’s grin was wry. “Yeah. Been to that rodeo. But I do know one thing—Clay can be trusted. He’s Nina’s husband’s closest friend, and a really good guy. They have clan rules that strictly forbid them from harming anyone purposely, Casey. If Greg found out this was something he’d done on purpose, Clay would be shunned. Shunning’s a hot mess not many would risk—especially someone like Clay who’s next in line to run the clan if something happens to Greg. And he’s not too shabby on the eyes, either. How he’s eluded a mate all this time and continued to exist is beyond me.”
“A mate,” was Casey’s wooden response.
Wanda’s shoulder-length brown hair whispered in the breeze when she shook her head. “Forget it. Another paranormal deet that pertains to vampires and werewolves—of which you’re neither. It doesn’t matter if this guy turns out to be some hack, Casey, or even if he’s dangerous. I’m here. I’ll protect you.”
“Wanda?”
“Yep?”
“Do you remember when you were in middle school and I was still in elementary school?”
“Vaguely.”
“Do you remember when Nunzio Titaglioni pulled your hair when we were walking home from school and made you cry?”
“Yeah, I think so. Why?”
“Do you remember who punched him in the head with her Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox for it?”
“You did.”
“That’s right. I did. The I in the sentence being the operative word. I always protected you, Wanda. When did you go all fierce?”
Her wry laughter cloaked Casey in the dark night, swirling around her head in circles. “When I met Marty and Nina. I didn’t realize how much I needed a spine until I met those two. A lot’s changed for me, Casey. I’m not the wimpy woman who was married to an asshole podiatrist. Some of those changes are because of my friendships with Marty and Nina—I learned more than just how to be tough because of them. I learned what it is to have someone’s back. And now I’ve got yours. Nowadays, I don’t so much let life roll over me, I roll over it.” She grinned. “But it isn’t just that, Casey. I’m half vampire, half werewolf. That has some serious advantages that leave me unafraid of much. Not to mention, if anything ever happened to me, Heath and my clan members would be so on this Darnell the demon’s ass, he’d wish the devil himself had taken him directly to Hell without passing go.”
Stabs of guilt needled her. She’d have known about all of the changes in Wanda’s life if she hadn’t been so selfishly absorbed in doing a job that was so meaningless. To find out that Wanda had battled something as severe as ovarian cancer, that she’d turned to her friends for help, and had never said a word to her own flesh and blood, left Casey chilled to the bone and so filled with sadness. Yet here Wanda was, offering her help as if their relationship of late had consisted of more than just three- minute phone calls and a Christmas card. Straight up, she was a shitty sister and not even that stopped Wanda from being selfless.
Casey threw her arms around Wanda’s neck and squeezed her hard. “I trust you. And thank you. I’m not sure how I would have handled this if not for you and your—your—”
“Paranormal skillz?” Wanda’s question was muffled against Casey’s shoulder. Gripping her arms, Wanda set her from her and smiled, her white teeth flashing in the deep of the night. “It definitely helps to have someone in the know. Now let’s go find out what’s next and how we can make this manageable.”
Clayton was already at the door when a large, very round man opened it with a wide, gleaming white smile. His multiple chains, or swag, as she’d learned it was called in the holding tank, rested beneath two—no, three chins. He topped Clayton by at least three inches, putting him in at least the six- foot-five range. “Yo, yo, yo, Clayton, my brotha! Whass good?”
Clayton gave him a half smile, shaking his hand and pulling him in hard for a quick shoulder bump. “I think it’s safe to say, not a lot is good right now, my friend. Though, I gotta admit, I’m a little green with envy over the levitation.”
Darnell, clad in a large football jersey and baggy jeans, eyed Casey. “Sho nuff. Ain’t nuthin’ good about what’s gone down. That her?” He pointed a burly finger at Casey, giving her a good, hard stare.
“That’s her. Every floating, fireball-throwing inch of her.
”
Oh, label, label, label, why don’t you?
Darnell paused for a long moment, taking a lengthy, squinted look at her. The silence between them pulsed with a life of its own, making Casey pause, too. His scrutiny was done in increments until she was left feeling naked and exposed.
Dramatic.
Out of nowhere, Darnell’s eyes opened wide in terror. He held up two fingers in the sign of a cross, backing away with stuttering steps and emitting a terrified wail so loud, Casey grabbed Wanda’s arm, her fingers digging into the material of her jacket. “She’s the devil! Evil, I say—she’s eviiiiil! Eviiiil! Oh, Lawd Jesus—save yourself!”
Oh, Christ. She was the devil. All her worst fears on the ride over confirmed, her stomach gurgled and rolled in protest. It could happen, right? If her sister and her friends could be vampires and werewolves, why couldn’t she be possessed by the devil no matter what Clayton had said? What the hell did he know about demons anyway? He was a vampire. Why would possession be any nuttier than what had already transpired?
A warbled chuckle of laughter followed, deep and resonant, and it came from the black, gaping hole of the entrance to Darnell’s building. When he came back into view, he was doubled over with laughter, placing his hands on his ample belly and wiping tears from his eyes with a thick thumb.
Clayton shook his head like he was indulging a small child’s antics. His eyes glimmered in the dark night and it was obvious from his profile that he fought a grin. “Enough, Darnell. She’s had a tough enough time as it is. I need to get this show on the road. It’s late. So let’s hit it.”
Darnell held the door open for them, sweeping them inside a foyer swathed in deep red with only the dim light from an ornate chandelier to guide their way. “No sweat, man. Let’s get it on. Tell me everything.”
As Casey passed this “way too happy to be a demon,” teddy-bear cuddly, large man, he sniffed her. Her gaze shot to Wanda’s in question as Clayton and Darnell turned to climb a long staircase.
“Smell is very important in my world now, sweetie. I can tell a human from a paranormal, vampire from werewolf, in just a whiff. I’m guessing demons can do the same. C’mon.” Wanda motioned, looking up the staircase with determined eyes. “It’s okay. Well, all right, it’s not totally okay, but it beats not knowing, right? So let’s get it over with.” She held out her hand. Casey took it, fighting her fear and instead focusing on the graffiti that lined the stairwell walls.
Big swirls of loud colors bled into shapes that intrigued her, yet she couldn’t identify one as any particular geometrical form.
Clayton and Darnell spoke in hushed tones when they entered Darnell’s apartment with a reluctant Casey and a clearly fearless Wanda in their wake. Pictures of famous rappers hung on Darnell’s walls above a purple velour sectional that took up almost the entire space of floor. The white shag carpet under her feet was cushioned and immaculate.
Darnell slapped Clay on the back, shaking his dark head. “Didn’t I tell ya to stay away from temptation? Now look what you gone an done. So you spilled that shit on her, man? Oooo- wee, and now you say she’s shootin’ fireballs and levitating—already? Righteous—a noob, too. Huh.” His perplexed surprise was evident in the crinkle of his wide, heavily wrinkled forehead.
From what Casey could gather, it would seem she’d somehow managed to excel at this demon thing, skipping right through the harder powers to master, such as levitation, and had moved to the head of the class without even trying.
Her parents would be so proud.
Casey’s voice, or maybe it was just the recent occasional trance she found herself in, was almost lost to her. But not quite. “So I’m not supposed to be able to shoot fireballs yet?” was the first question out of her mouth. Not “How can we make these ugly protrusions poking out of my head go away? Or, even, “Are you sure there’s nothing we can do to, oh, I dunno, fix this?” No, she wanted to garner a pat on the back for best novice shot with a fireball.
Darnell rubbed his jaw with fingers covered in shiny rings. “Took me near eight months to get that shit right. Fo real, I musta set fire to half of the Bronx before I nailed that. I don’t even wanna talk about how long it took me to figure out the summoning of vermin thing, and levitating? Shoot. I still get dizzy. Fo sho, you got somethin’ crazy-ass goin’ on. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
Vermin. How four- legged and long-tailed. Casey shuddered. She wasn’t interested in summoning anything but a way out of this mess. According to Nina, there was no way out, and if that was true, it was time to face the music. “I have a question before we get any deeper. Feel free to tell me if I’m being inappropriate.”
“Go.” Darnell nodded, and for the first time, Casey caught sight of his initials shaven into his closely cropped hair.
Gripping Wanda’s arm, her gaze was hesitant, but she met Darnell’s chocolate brown eyes head-on. “Maybe this is too personal. I mean, I don’t know if demons feel uncomfortable talking about their . . . choices. But how—how did—you, you know, become a demon?” Clay had said that sometimes trickery was involved when you didn’t choose the light. Where Darnell was concerned, his reasons would go a long way in making her at least feel a bit less like she’d gone to Genghis Khan for advice on how to be a demon—a good one. And not good in the sense that she’d rival demons far and wide when it came to her skills for eval. The kind of good that meant no one would end up chicken-fried.
Darnell stuck his hands into the pockets of his sagging jeans, crossing his high-top-sneakered feet at the ankles when he leaned against the wall for support. His grin was sheepish. “You know who Hank Aaron is?”
Casey relaxed a bit, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat. “The baseball player?”
His sigh was wistful. “That’s him. Shoulda been me. ’Cept I was a broke-ass baseball player back then—still am. Even now, couldn’t hit a ball if I drove my Escalade straight into it. Just no damn good at the game was all, but I loved it just the same. Long story, but here’s the score. Some dude told me if I signed a piece of paper, I could be in the majors just like Hank. Maybe I could make some money to help out my family. I was poor. Quit school in the seventh grade. I wanted to help out Mama and my sisters.”
Casey didn’t know a whole lot about baseball, but she didn’t remember ever hearing about a Darnell anyone playing baseball who was as famous as Hank had been. She winced in sympathy. “I have a bad feeling things didn’t go according to plan.”
His snort was husky. “Oh, I made it to the majors all right—as a bat boy. I was tricked by that jacked-up muthafucker! ’Scuse my language, but it still makes me hot he took advantage of me that way. Anyway, I got hit in the head with a baseball that took me out. When collectin’ time came, that dude had the piece of paper I signed, all wavin’ it up in my face. Told me I owed him my soul, and now I had to pay that shit up.” His chuckle made Casey’s open mouth snap shut. “S’all good now. I might never get upstairs, but I do what I can to help out a demon in need. Feel me?”
A fist lodged firmly in her stomach, twisting her intestines, increasing a newly found fear. She wasn’t 100 percent sure when Hank Aaron was in the majors—she definitely was no sports aficionado, but she was pretty damn sure it hadn’t been, like, last year. “When did you die?”
“1966. Was a nice day to do it, too. Spring training, birds were chirpin’, weather was just fine for practice.” Darnell’s expression grew wistful.
1966. Darnell had been dead for more than forty years. Yet here he was, upright and mobile. Her fingers reached for the outlandish purple velour couch for support. Clayton was instantly at her side, placing a hand at her elbow to steady her, but she brushed him off. “So you’ve been dead for more than forty years.”
“And counting. I didn’t mean to scare ya, but Clay told me you want this shit straight up. So straight up, I’m a demon. It ain’t no thang to me anymore, and I can help you learn what needs to be learned. If you want, that is. I know plenty a demons like
me. Dudes who didn’t know what they was gettin’ into. Just ’cause Satan’s got my soul, and I hafta live like this forever, don’t mean I gotta do no harm.”
Clay must have seen Casey struggling and immediately took the reins. His rakishly handsome face, pale in the dimly lit room, held questions. “What does this all mean, Darnell—for Casey? What’s going to happen to her because she’s a demon? This wasn’t something she chose. It was an accident—my accident. Nobody asked her to sign anything, and no one made promises to her. Her soul wasn’t up for grabs. So where do we go from here?”
Darnell’s immense shoulders shrugged. “Best I can figure is the blood you spilled on her absorbed into her skin. I told you that shit was toxic, didn’t I? You spill it on a human, and that’s a bad thing. Does some jacked-up shit to ’em. Now, I smell some demon on her, but she ain’t full demon.Yer right. She can’t be if she didn’t give up her soul, and I don’t even know if that means she’s got eternal life either. Course, that don’t explain her powers bein’ so strong so soon. Takes a while to learn all that. Might help if you knew what kinda demon that blood you was nursin’ like an expensive Cuban cigar came from.”
Clayton’s head popped up with a sharp motion, his large frame became ramrod straight, the muscles beneath his jacket rippling with tension. “Why?”
“If I knew where it came from, I might be able to figure out what kind of a demon she got runnin’ through her pretty veins. Good demon, bad demon—in between. If she got all those powers in such a short time, musta been some powerful shit you hooked up with. I hafta go with the idea that this is like transference, ya know? Like the blood she absorbed—which, like I said, for a human is bad mojo, kicked her powers up a notch because it came from another demon. Gave her a head start nobody I know had. When you a noob, you gotta learn how to do all the shit she’s already doin’ in just what—twenty-four hours?”
Accidentally Demonic Page 9
