Deep Dark Secret

He snorted. “Then you’ll have killed all her children.”

A familiar female voice said, “But isn’t that what children are for? Lambs for the slaughter.”

Holden stared at me. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

The voice had unmistakably been mine, though. In the disconnected way I could recognize my voice on an answering machine or video, I knew what I sounded like, and the voice was mine even if the words weren’t.

The door we’d come in through shut with a click, and suddenly we weren’t alone in the room. My back was to the entrance, so Holden saw the new arrival first. His eyes grew wide, and he hugged Lucy close to his chest, stepping away from me. I looked over my shoulder to see what had him so spooked, and my blood ran cold.

I used to joke that Brigit and I could have been twins, but I’d never again be able to make the same statement without a terror flashback to this moment.

Less than four feet from where I stood was a young woman who looked exactly like me, from the leather pants and jacket to Desmond’s Yankees shirt. Her hair was the same curly blonde, her eyes the same shade of brown, only hers were edged with a fine red ring. The woman didn’t just look like me.

She was me.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Hello,” my doppelganger said with a smile.

“What the fuck?” I replied.

Lucy chose that inopportune moment to regain consciousness. She took one look at the two of me, and her renewed screaming reached an ear-splitting volume. Holden held her close, tucking her head into his shoulder, and whispered something I couldn’t hear. After a moment the screaming stopped, and she went limp again. The whole time Holden didn’t take his eyes off me.

Both of me.

“That’s mine.” Alterna-me pointed to Lucy.

“Like hell.” Holden stepped back until he hit the cupboard. His eyes were getting darker, and I saw a flash of fang when he curled his lip at Bad Secret. It was hard to see someone I cared for look at me like that, even if I knew it wasn’t really me.

“What. The. Fuck,” I said again.

If ever there was a question of which was the real Secret, it would only be a matter of time before my blue-streak sailor’s mouth would give me away as the real deal.

“What’s the matter, Secret? Don’t you like it?” Bad Secret gave a small curtsy and arched her brow at me. “I thought the leather-on-leather look was a little Terminatrix for my taste, but that was your call, not mine.” She certainly had my sass mouth down pat. That was disconcerting. When I didn’t rise to her bait she snarled at me, the ring of red growing until there was no white left in her eyes at all.

“Creepy,” I whispered. It was as if I was staring into a mirror after a really bad night out. Like one where the devil himself kicked me in the face and tried to slip me a roofie. That’s how bad a night would have to be for me to look like Bad Secret.

“Give me the girl,” she snarled.

“No,” Holden and I said simultaneously.

“Give her to me or I will destroy everything you love.” This was no idle threat. Something in the way Bad Secret spoke gave me such a chill I wanted to crawl into the open cupboard we’d retrieved Lucy from. “Yes,” she said, seeming to sense my apprehension. “Look at me. I can walk into your house. I can walk right up to that handsome boyfriend of yours… Desmond, was it? He will look at me and smile, and I will rip his heart out through his mouth.” She smiled. “I will turn your little white cat inside out.” When I shuddered visibly, she looked at Holden. “And don’t think I’ll forget about him.”

Holden snarled.

“It’s okay, vampire, I might make it fun for you first. You could play with the body like she won’t let you.” Bad Secret ran her hands provocatively over the front of her body, fingernails dragging over her nipples as she licked her lips at Holden. It might have been titillating if not for the glowing red eyes and the fact she was Scary. As. Fuck.

How did she know everything about me?

Bad Secret turned her attention back to me. “Or maybe I’ll just kill you and take over your life. Play your role for a while. Wouldn’t that be fun? The vampire Tribunal? The wolf king’s pack.” I trembled. She knew it all. All my secrets. My whole life. “Like a fun supernatural soap opera. Just think of what I could do.”

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“Oh, love, I thought you’d figured that out by now.”

Love. My eyes bulged. “Mayhew.”

Bad Secret dipped her head and winked. “In your flesh. But if this look bothers you…” Mayhew’s skin bubbled like a bad sunburn, turning purple-red and peeling back to reveal a whole new face. My curls sloughed off and vanished when they hit the floor. My clothes burned away and were replaced by a gray Columbia sweatshirt and dumpy jeans. A mousy brunette with hunched posture and mild acne batted sheepish lashes at me.

The girl from the museum.

“It was you that night,” I blurted.

“Of course.” My voice was replaced with a meek, squeaky tone.

“Who is this?” I pointed an accusatory finger at the chubby girl who stood before me. “Whose life did you steal for this?”

“Ellory Marx from Lincoln, Nebraska.” The new form Mayhew had taken over blushed almost apologetically. “Wonder if anyone misses her.” Ellory’s skin bubbled like before, and this time the shift occurred faster. I didn’t need help to recognize the new incarnation. Trish Keller snapped gum at me and thrust a defiant hip out, her short skirt riding up a little too high. If I waited long enough, I was willing to bet Mayhew might show me the faces of every missing and dead girl from the Columbia campus.

Going back God knows how long.

“Why?” I asked, not sure what I meant specifically.

Mayhew-as-Trish shrugged and popped her gum again, rolling her eyes. “The young, pretty ones are best.” She spit her gum into the corner of the room and gave Holden a cheeky smile. The vampire bared his fangs at her. “They taste fresher, don’t they?”

Trish’s legs took on the texture of lizard skin, turned black and leathery, and Mayhew became me again. The effect was no less disturbing the second time around. He stepped closer, and I moved until my back was against Holden.

“You tasted different though, didn’t you?” Mayhew asked, though it wasn’t really a question. “You’re a special one, Secret McQueen. I liked the flavor of your mouth.” Mayhew licked his lips—my lips—and I suppressed another shudder. It wasn’t doing me any good to let him know how badly he was scaring me.

“What are you?” I managed to make my mouth form words instead of a scream. Point for me.

“Who or what I am doesn’t concern you, halfling. Give me the girl. I’ve barely tasted her yet, and I want more.” Mayhew reached out a hand for Lucy, but Holden didn’t budge an inch behind me.

“You took my memories,” I said stupidly.

“Of course.”

“Did you force Gabriel to seduce the girls? Why doesn’t he know anything about their deaths?”

“You ask too many questions.” Mayhew rolled his eyes, and it was eerie to see one of my own expressions mirrored back to me. “I’m not here for an interview; I’m here for what’s mine.” He paused. “Why do you care what I did to Gabriel? I know what he did to you. You should want him to suffer. That is the way human women think.”

Holden snorted.

“You’ve seen inside my head. You should know well enough by now I’m not exactly human,” I replied.

“Yet loyalty for betrayers isn’t a trait of weres or vampires, either.” Mayhew stared at me like he was seeing me for the first time. “You truly are an odd one.”

Normally I might have a glib reply for him, but it was hard to make basic conversation—let alone be a smartass—when you’re talking to yourself.

“You did something to him. That’s why he couldn’t tell me about you earlier. You destroyed him. Gabriel was a decent person once.”

“He still is,” Mayhew assured me. “Just easily led astray.”

Something about the way Mayhew said it, and the way he’d called children lambs for the slaughter, made an alarm bell go off in my head. A tingly sensation stung the synapses all over my body as my skin rose in a forest of goose bumps. “What’s your name?”

“You know my name.”

“I know the human name you have adopted to suit the form you wear. What’s your real name?”

Mayhew smiled, and I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t turn away. My pearly whites were replaced with rows of sharp, pointed, sharklike teeth that appeared more than capable of creating the wound on Lucy’s neck and much worse. Mayhew tongued the tip of his demonic incisors and leered at us.

Demonic. Yes, the thought nagging at the back of my head had formed itself into a full-on understanding. Mayhew was a demon. And not just any earth-born half-demon either. They were mischief-makers and wannabe hell-raisers at best. This guy was the real deal. An honest-to-God full-blooded demon was standing in front of me demanding I give him something.

And I had said no.

“Why do you want to know my name?” he asked almost pleasantly.

“So I can send you back to Hell.”

Chapter Thirty

I should have known better than to use a snappy one-liner on a demon.

Mayhew sneered and hit me. Or at least I think he hit me. One minute I was looking at myself, the next I was flat on my back staring at the array of mold spores decorating the ceiling. Spots of light swam around me like fireflies.

Pretty.

Oh, right. Seeing dancing lights wasn’t a good thing.

Groaning, I managed to move into a sitting position. The little lights now seemed like angry wasps, and my body was insisting I lay back down. But in the few seconds since I’d been laid out, Holden and Mayhew had gotten into a knockdown drag-out fight over the fate of Lucy Renard. Miraculously, Lucy was still out cold. Even more of a miracle was the fact Holden was holding his own against Mayhew while clinging to the girl.