Deep Dark Secret (29 page)

“
You
,” he raged. “You had it all along.”

I looked at the sword. The phoenix inlay was made of some kind of metal alloy. The dragon was gold. Or at least that was what they appeared to be to the untrained eye. Where had I found Mayhew at the museum? In the geology department. He said he’d been looking for something to send him back. The lights emanating from the sword pulsed as if to congratulate me on my understanding.

The sword was the key to releasing him.

I staggered to my feet and braced myself. If he wanted to go back to his kingdom in hell, I was more than happy to send him there.

He lurched forward a step, then stopped. Tried to move again, but this time stumbled. He lifted his head and snarled, and I growled back with my fangs bared for good measure. Mayhew rose to one knee. After a split-second pause his body fractured, splitting open at seams I couldn’t see. Only then did I understand what
releasing
the demon meant.

The blade didn’t send him home.

The blade gave him back his true form.

Mayhew the identity-stealing demon was gone.

When the real Mayhew straightened his posture, he was something different and too terrifying to comprehend. I’d fought scary monsters in my time. Vampires, weres and a tidal fae I thought would never be topped on the creepy scale. Boy was I wrong.

Mayhew’s demon form was easily twelve feet tall. His skin was solid black, a leather-like hide over his whole body. With legs as thick with muscle as tree trunks and arms bigger around than any part of my body, I was pretty sure hand-to-hand combat was out.

Two huge blood-red horns jutted out of his forehead, wrapped around the back of his bat-like ears, and curved back along the path of his jaw, forming points near his mouth as if directing my vision to the teeth within. I didn’t need any help noticing the teeth. They were massive, exaggerated versions of his former shark teeth. Those had been intimidating enough. These looked like they could saw through bone with one snap of his hideous jaws.

Worse still, he was
smiling
at me.

The demon cracked his neck and rolled his giant shoulders. The talons on the end of his fingers were the same dark red as his horns. Must be handy to avoid unsightly bloodstains. He shook himself like a wet dog, and just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it got
so much
worse.

Two leathery wings unfurled off his back. They were too big to be compared to a bat’s. They were what I imagined dragon wings look like. They spanned so wide he couldn’t stretch them out across the observation deck between the building and the ledge.

“Crap.”

“Little girl,” he boomed, his demon voice resonating like thunder trapped in his enormous diaphragm. The cement beneath my feet rumbled. “You have released me.”

“Awesome. Do I get three wishes?”

“
Secret
,” Desmond hissed. “Shut
up
.”

He was crouched next to one of the viewfinders. I don’t know when he scuttled past Mayhew, but I was grateful he wasn’t too injured to move. I could smell fresh blood on him, but now wasn’t the time to check battle scars.

Mayhew as a demon apparently found me
way
funnier than Mayhew trapped in human form. The beast boomed out a laugh that made the metal bars hum and would likely be mistaken for a freak thunderstorm all over the city.

“Why don’t you rub me and find out?” He chuckled.

That was the first time I noticed the demon wasn’t wearing a lick of clothing.

“
Ewww
,” I managed, raising the sword in case the demon had any intention of putting his twisted, corkscrew,
barbed
penis anywhere near me. I didn’t think that sucker would hurt so good. I know I should have been happy he was in high spirits, but I didn’t want him in
too
chipper of a mood.

He flexed his wings, turning sideways so he could stretch them to their full width, nearly clipping me in the face with one taloned wing-barb.

I swatted him with the sword. “Watch it.”

“You have a very…open mouth for a woman.” He folded his wings and turned to face me directly again, looking mystified and a little bemused.

“Is that a polite way of saying I talk too much?”

The demon chuckled, and this time I could see how many rows of those nasty teeth he had in his mouth. “Because you have freed me and have amused me, I believe I will overlook your trespasses against me. You are lucky halfling. I will let you live. Just give me the sword.”

“What is it with you and the stipulations?
Give me the girl. Give me the sword.
”

“I only ask for that which is yours to provide. I did not say,
give me the vestigial virgin
, or
bring me the blood of twenty oxen.
”

“Who’s being funny now?”

“Secret,” Desmond warned again.

“Give me the weapon before I grow bored of you.” The demon crooked his claws at me.

I pretended to consider it, then shook my head. “No, thanks. I think I’ll keep it.”

Mayhew stepped forward, the ground trembling and cement fracturing under his immense weight. “You try my patience, girl.”

Shockingly, I had no comeback.

“I have ways to make you do what I want,” the demon promised. “I will enjoy making you bleed.”

I wiggled my fingers, trying to pry the fused skin free from the metal. The sword was still glowing, but with the demon blood quickly drying it lacked the same intensity it first had.

“You were a big, bad demon ruler in the underworld, weren’t you?”

“I
am
lord and master of a thousand legions,” Mayhew snarled.

“You think? A thousand years on Earth is like what? Eight bazillion eons in the underworld? Isn’t that how time works there? An hour here is like ten years there or some weird conversion like that.”

“A minute can be an eternity,” he said. “As I may force you to experience.”

“So in a thousand years’ worth of eternities, do you honestly think you’ll
still
be lord and master?”

Mayhew stopped advancing and blinked his crimson eyes at me. “What?”

“Face it,” I continued, edging closer by half-inch increments. “You’ve been replaced.”

The demon bared his teeth at me.

I wanted to whimper and run, but I squared my shoulders and forced myself to look him in the eye. “When you get home, you’ll be someone’s bitch.”

I had expected him to get mad, to swat at me or growl or tell me I was a useless flesh sack or something. Instead he lowered his head so he could meet my gaze. He didn’t appear defeated, instead he seemed jubilant.

“Then I won’t go home.”

“W-what?”

“I will build a new kingdom. Isn’t your world always waiting for the end of days? A hell on Earth? I can make it happen. Starting here.”

Awesome. I had singlehandedly convinced a demon to act out some Biblical Revelation-level horror on the citizens of Manhattan. When my plans backfire, they backfire spectacularly. Desmond seemed to agree because he groaned. I should have listened when he told me to shut up.

“You could have a special place by my side,” Mayhew added. “You would have everything you ever dreamed of and more.”

“Oh.” I looked at the demon, then at the expanse of Manhattan, my beloved home. Might be righteous to be the queen of something bigger than a wolf pack. But at what cost? I didn’t think working at Mayhew’s side would give me an all-access spending account at Bergdorf. I was pretty sure his plan was to level the city.

Besides, my fiance was a billionaire and I had an unlimited Tribunal credit card when a shopping urge struck. I didn’t need a demon sugar daddy to feel all-powerful.

“No thanks.”

“
What?
”

“You heard me.” Then—having finally said the one thing that threw him off—I attacked.

Demon rib cages are more sturdily built than flimsy human ones, but my sword missed the memo on that. It slid between his ribs like his thick flesh was made of melted butter, and pierced his heart for a second time that night.

I twisted the blade, and a torrent of blood the consistency of molasses poured out from the open wound, coating the sword. The blade, fed anew, almost hummed with energy. This time I was prepared for the heat and light and looked at the demon instead of the blade. “Tell me your name,” I demanded. “Tell me your name and I can end this now.”

He blinked stupidly, gawking at the sword protruding from his heart. He swatted at me, but the sword held true, and there was nothing I could do to detach myself from it or it from him. The demon seemed to appreciate our predicament and did something I should have seen coming but hadn’t expected.

Big, tattered leather wings unfolded and fluttered in the cold February air. My eyes widened as he took a few exploratory swings, his body lifting a foot or two with each flap. He couldn’t be thinking of doing what I thought he was thinking of doing. His wings cut through the air once, twice, and he went up but this time didn’t come back down.

We hovered six feet off the ground, then seven. When I was eye level with the top of the protective bars, reality kicked in. We weren’t landing. Desmond struggled to his feet, slowed by his wounds, and jumped up to grab my leg. His fingers grazed me, but we’d gotten too high too fast and he wasn’t able to keep hold. Mayhew pushed upwards higher and higher, and I dangled underneath him, tethered to him only by my grip on the sword. When we were clear of the bars, he roared and kicked off from the building.

In one breath I was twenty-five feet above the observation deck of the Empire State Building, where falling would maybe break my legs and give me one hell of a story to tell. The next moment we were flying over the city and falling would turn me into a pulpy smear some civil servant would spend all morning hosing off the sidewalk.

And that’s when the sword decided to stop glowing.

The sword slipped free of the demon’s chest, and I was airborne.

I always liked to think I was good in a crisis. A clear thinker when the shit hit the fan. Being thrown into a free fall a thousand feet over the city really tested my opinion about how I handled crisis situations.

I sucked.

Both my hands were still fused to the sword, and when the weapon popped out of Mayhew’s sternum I screamed and did the only thing I could think of. I thrust the sword out and prayed like hell I would hit something solid. The demon’s rear foot dropped when he tried to propel himself higher without my weight to drag him down. My sword dug into the meaty tissue of his leg, and I was suddenly thankful for his trunk-thick legs. If not for the extra muscle of his calf, my sword might have cut right through and I’d be left holding a severed leg while I fell to my death. Mayhew bellowed when my blade dug in, and we plummeted a good ten feet.

As Mayhew regained control of his flight we swung back upwards, barely missing a direct collision with the Chrysler Building. I managed to wrap my whole body around his foot and was holding on for dear life as we soared higher.

Once he stopped trying to kick me off, I knew I had to find a different position and do something to bring him down before he made good on his promise to destroy the city. A lot of bad guys had promised to do horrible things to New York and its civilian population. Unleashing hungry newborn vampires had been a particularly nasty one. But a demon with a plan to become the dark, unholy lord of the world?

Well, that took the cake, didn’t it?

Making sure my thighs were clinging to his foot tighter than a stripper upside-down on a pole, I pulled the sword free. This time it didn’t fight. Maybe it was something specific to Mayhew’s heart blood that activated the lock-and-glow. I didn’t know, and right then I didn’t care.

I clambered up his flank using my elbows and the sword’s handle to find purchase on his skin. Climbing a demon’s leg would have been hard enough with the use of both hands, but since I couldn’t use either of them, I had to make do. I almost fell a half-dozen times on the short journey from his foot to his back. By the time I’d reached his shoulders, the demon seemed to have decided to ignore me completely.

His mistake.

For a few elated seconds I perched on my knees and took a good look at the scene. I was flying over New York with the winter wind stinging my cheeks. The lights of Midtown gave way to the southern part of the island, the only slightly less glamorous Financial District. In a few minutes we’d be over open water, and if I wanted to take him down with minimal human casualties, that was the best place to strike.

Taking him out mid-flight would mean a several-hundred-foot free fall into frigid February water. If I survived the fall, I wasn’t sure I’d live through the water.

Calliope said I was supposed to die with someone I loved standing by.

I guess my future really had gone off track this time.

Mayhew passed the end of the island and began to rise. We were halfway between lower Manhattan and Liberty Island when I decided if tonight was the night I died, now was as good a time as any. I got to my feet, awkward to maintain my balance even in a low crouch as the demon soared higher.

I wasn’t a big believer in higher powers, but with my death mere seconds away I figured it couldn’t hurt to put myself in someone’s good graces. I said a prayer, and the wind whipped it out of my mouth as the words were spoken. With nothing left to delay me, I sprang forward, this time not bothering with the heart. Apparently he wasn’t going to make it easy for me to cut a vital organ out of his chest, so I was going to have to go with my favorite standby method of monster-slaying. I stood over Mayhew’s neck and swung my sword like I was on the eighteenth hole at Pebble Beach. It arced downward, and when it split the skin of his throat it roared to life again.

The ear-splitting
pop
was almost enough to topple me back off my feet, but I didn’t stop. My arms screamed in protest, and the sword’s progress through his neck seemed to go in slow motion. Mayhew snarled and screamed, but when the sword met his windpipe he was silenced forever.