Deep Dark 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.

“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.

I felt like I was being punished for every awful, painful thing I’d wished on Gabriel after he left me. Seeing him now with tears pouring down his cheeks and pitiful, mewling pants coming from his lips, I wanted to take it all back. Be careful what you wish for, they always warn you. Who knew my vindictive fantasies could come so cruelly to life?

Mercedes had apparently been answering my question, but I hadn’t heard a damn thing she’d said. “…you went for the door before I could stop you. By the time Tyler and I got here, well…” Her gaze drifted to the macabre tableau outside the door. “It was too late.”

Mayhew’s face was splattered with blood, making the whites of his eyes shine impressively.