Deep Dark Secret

Goddamn shapeshifting demons.

The force of the blow was enough to make Mayhew release me. I kicked off from the wall when his grip slackened, and rolled away before bouncing back to my feet. For the time being Mayhew had forgotten all about me, which was awesome except for one problem. It meant he was now focused on Desmond. The demon looked intent on following through with his promise to murder my live-in loved one.

Mayhew struck a hard blow and knocked Desmond to the ground.

The werewolf backpedaled, moving himself out of the path of Mayhew’s next strike. The punch landed on concrete and left a disconcerting crater where my boyfriend’s head had previously been. If I left Desmond fighting the demon on his own much longer, the next crater would be in his skull.

I climbed onto the ledge on the outside of the observation deck, avoiding a bank of viewfinders and using the metal bars to guide me along the narrow path that rose and fell in height like a brick wave. I got within a few feet of their tussle and waited for my opportunity to show itself.

If Desmond saw me, he made no indication of it, keeping his eyes fixed on Mayhew and preparing himself for the next assault. Mayhew was like a cobra, swaying in place to some internal melody and looking almost benign as he waited for the right moment. The demon was a predator in the truest sense of the word. Instead of diving in willy-nilly, he wouldn’t move again until he thought he could strike a death blow.

There was definitely a death blow coming. It just wouldn’t be delivered by the demon.

There was no better time than now to make my move, and if I waited any longer, Desmond might be dead and I’d never get another chance.

I leaped through the air with my sword angled for a heart strike. The blade hit first, piercing the bare skin of Mayhew-as-Angie’s back. My weight collided next, and we both pitched forward. My momentum rammed the sword through flesh and bone until it crashed into Mayhew’s sternum and thrust out the other side.

Direct hit.

We were falling, and I realized a moment too late where we were going to land.

“Roll, roll, roll,” I screamed, but Desmond didn’t hear me or didn’t process the words in time.

Mayhew landed on top of Desmond, and I was still firmly on top of Mayhew. All three layers of the pile were connected via the sword like a demon-werewolf shish kebab. Over Mayhew’s shoulder I saw Desmond’s eyes widen and his mouth form a surprised O. He’d been hit by the blade, there was no doubt in my mind.

“Are you okay? Desmond, are you okay? Oh God I’m so sorry. Desmond?”

He blinked a few times, fighting back tears, then wheezed, “Get him off me.”

I got to my feet, bracing my heel against Mayhew’s back like he’d done with Gabriel, and tugged on the sword, expecting it to slide out easily. It didn’t budge. I pulled harder, but still the sword wouldn’t move. Even if the blade was embedded in a stubborn bone shard, there was no way it would be stuck like this. Every time I pulled, Desmond winced.

“I’m sorry, I’m trying.”

That perfectly ideal moment was when Mayhew decided to come to. The demon was face-to-face with Desmond, and the werewolf had no way to protect himself if Mayhew went for his throat. I started yanking on the blade harder and harder, standing with both feet on the demon’s back as I tried like a would-be Arthur to remove the stubborn Excalibur from its lodging.

Then I felt the heat.

The katana’s handle grew warmer as it had at Calliope’s. Warmth transformed into heat, and heat into an unbearable fire. I wanted to let go but found myself unable to release the weapon. The phoenix inset on the handle of the sword glowed bright red to match the searing pain.

Mayhew must have felt it too. Instead of finishing off Desmond, the demon reared back his head and let out a terrifying bellow. His body bucked, trying to knock me off, and both his hands reached around in an attempt to withdraw the blade.

My skin bubbled and split, my open palms fusing to the phoenix design. The dragon pattern of the blade began to glow. It started out faint, but as Mayhew’s blood flowed up the blade—an impossibility of physics—the light turned white and so intense I couldn’t look directly at it. When the demon’s blood reached the hilt of the sword, there was a loud pop, the same kind you hear when a jet breaks the sound barrier.

The sword suddenly yielded to my desperate pulls, and the weapon and I tumbled backwards, the handle still melted to my skin. Mayhew staggered to his feet, no longer holding one form. He shifted through all the human identities he’d had, dozens of them I’d never seen before, then they all started getting mixed up. My hair would end up on the professor’s face, or Trish’s head would find its way onto the body of a German SS officer. That one was especially off-putting.

Finally the transformations stopped, leaving his form a bizarre Frankenstein monster mishmash of all the people he’d been. He pointed at the sword, which was still glowing red and white in my hand but no longer hot enough to burn me. Or maybe I was numb to the pain.

“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.

Chapter Thirty-Five

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.