“You have a destiny. I need to make sure you’re around to fulfill it.” She released my hand and turned to Desmond, mirroring the gesture she’d just made to me. When she pulled away from him, he smiled weakly and gave her a nod.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She patted his cheek. “Keep her alive tonight, and I can guarantee it.”
The pair didn’t look at me until their moment came to an end. Calliope faced me wearily and held out a hand. I placed my left hand in hers, palm up, and before I knew what was happening she withdrew a thin, twisted blade from God knows where and raked it across my skin.
“Ow,” I whined.
“Shush,” she instructed. “Now touch the door.”
I did as I was told and laid my bloody palm against the old wood, wondering for the first time how the door’s stain came to be so dark. For a beat nothing happened, then a bright, blinding white light appeared in the center of the door, illuminating a crack that hadn’t been there before. I stepped back in time for the doors to swing open towards us.
I’d expected the opening to be as luminous as that first light, but when the doors were ajar, all I could see was a pit of darkness so vast my vampire vision couldn’t penetrate it.
“Hold on to each other,” Calliope said, yelling. The darkness was howling like a fierce winter wind. “Don’t let go.”
Desmond took the instruction to heart and pulled me close, wrapping his arms around me and dragging my lips to his for a bone-trembling kiss. His eyes were damp when he pulled back. “Whatever happens,” he said, “know I love you.”
I ran my free hand down his cheek and hugged him tightly. “I love you too,” I whispered into his ear, not sure if he could hear me over the screaming black void.
“That’ll do just fine,” Calliope said, then shoved me and Desmond into the darkness and slammed the door behind us.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The sensation of falling was like something out of a bad nightmare, but the impact of landing was real enough. I crashed against hard cement, still clutching my sword, with Desmond on top of me, his own blade dangerously close to stabbing me.
I pushed him off me and rolled away from the broadsword, unsheathing my katana as I straightened up, taking in our surroundings.
“Well I’ll be giddy goddamned,” I muttered.
Desmond came to stand next to me and not for the first time that night was reduced to saying, “Wow.” This time, though, it was the only appropriate response.
Calliope had a magic door that could drop people on top of the bloody Empire State Building.
My mouth hung agape, and it was hard to process what I was looking at. I’d lived in New York for seven years and had tracked any number of paranormal creatures from one end of the island to the other, but never in that entire time had I come up to see this iconic view. I’d missed a lot of popular tourist draws, as was true for many locals. But standing here behind the raised bars meant to protect visitors from falling—or jumping—I wondered why I’d waited so long.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” a familiar British accent enquired.
Mayhew, still wearing his professor face, walked casually around the west corner of the observation deck, his hands in his pockets and his gaze turned out to the sparkling magical vista of the famous city. For one brief moment he looked a little sad.
I let my sword’s sheath clatter to the ground and lifted my blade in preparation. Desmond took a step back and held his sword by his side, waiting to see what would happen next.
The professor ignored my attack posture and peered around me like I didn’t exist. “It looks as though you brought one of your wolves. Did he get a chance to see the show?” Given how many times I’d experienced Mayhew shift forms tonight, one might think I’d have gotten used to it. But, no. There was no magic number of times that made it any less unsettling to see my face on a demon.
Desmond, witnessing it for the first time, swallowed a sound that might have been a yelp.
“Yeah, it’s fucked up, isn’t it?” I said.
“I thought you were exaggerating.”
Mayhew smiled, and his crazy-ass demon teeth ruined the illusion. “It was very considerate of you, Miss McQueen, to bring me your beloved so I could obliterate him.”
My grip tightened on the sword handle. “Believe it or not, that wasn’t my thought process.”
“Well, finding America wasn’t Columbus’s goal either, yet we still found ourselves here.”Oh please let that be a turn of speech. I didn’t want to imagine this demon coming across on the Santa Maria and waiting around to play identity theft with the Native Americans and the first comers on the Mayflower. It was a bit much.
I edged down the wheelchair ramp in the opposite direction of Mayhew. Desmond took the hint, following at my heels. The demon didn’t seem to care much that we were moving away from him, but I’d witnessed firsthand how fast he was. We could be halfway to Connecticut and he’d still be able to catch us.
“Can I ask you something?” I wasn’t sure why I was engaging him, but I figured if he was being passive for the moment I might get some nagging questions off my chest. I doubted I’d get an honest answer from a demon, but it was worth a shot.
He cocked his head to the side, red eyes glowing, and chuckled. “You amuse me, halfling.”
I gathered I was supposed to take this as a compliment. I bet it was tough to tickle his funny bone after a thousand years of stealing people’s identities.
“What were you looking for at the museum? When I saw you there as the mousy girl, Ellory, you were searching for something. It couldn’t have been your next meal, because there sure as hell wasn’t anyone around for you to eat.”
His smile faded. Guess he hadn’t figured me for being blonde and smart. I was a true double threat. He took a step closer, and Desmond and I backed up instinctively, both of us raising our weapons.
“Do you know what it feels like to be trapped here, in this world, being forced to inhabit a human form?”
“Uhh, yes.”
“I was a destroyer of worlds. A master among the demon class.” His voice bubbled with rage. Now I knew what it sounded like every time I yelled at Lucas. “Then some half-rate mage calls me up by accident, mistaking my name for some idiot lust demon.” Mayhew’s lip curled, and he spat on the ground. “And suddenly I’m stuck.”
It was more of an honest answer than I’d anticipated. More of one than he’d planned to give too, apparently, since he was now glaring at me. “There is a way to unlock the binding. That is what I was looking for. The key to my freedom. Only a stupid girl with a sword interrupted me. She seems to spoil all my plans.”
“I’m a notorious buzzkill,” I agreed.
Using kill in relation to a discussion about me might not have been my most genius play on words to date.
Mayhew advanced another half-dozen steps. “Hac nocte morieris.”
I didn’t understand the words, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone had threatened me in a language I couldn’t translate. It would be the first time I’d challenged myself in a battle to the death, though.
I looked at Desmond and indicated the ramp with the slightest darting of my gaze. “Head and heart,” I whispered.
He inched away from me, staring at the advancing demon. When I lunged for Mayhew, Desmond was a blur in the corner of my eye, bolting past us. It was the last peripheral thing I saw before I collided with my spitting image, and we fell to the ground in a tangle of gnashing teeth and flailing limbs.
“Vile girl,” the demon seethed, this time in English. “Killing you will be my greatest triumph in a lifetime.”
I rolled off him and crouched a few feet away with my sword poised, ready to spring. “In whose lifetime?”
Mayhew wiped a thin trickle of blood off his lip. I don’t know when I landed a punch, but I had gotten lucky at some point. I smiled maniacally, but my victory celebration was short-lived. As it turns out, demons only like to see blood when they’re drawing someone else’s.
“Insolent half-breed freak.”
“There’s no need to resort to name-calling.” Yeah, that’s right, Secret. Keep poking the hornet’s nest.
He clambered to his feet, rising over me in my supine position. His glowing eyes glimmered brighter than ever before, and in one swift motion he grabbed me by the hair and hoisted me off the ground.
Self-defense classes warn how long hair and ponytails can be used against you by potential attackers. It’s true. But let’s be clear about this, in a fight against a demon any hair could be used against you. I might as well have been bald given how Mayhew’s clawed fingernails dug into my scalp, sending a radiant aura of pain through my nerve sensors.
Who knew hair-pulling could hurt so badly? I took back every catty thing I’d ever said about the ladies on Jersey Shore.
The major pitfall of hauling me around this way was it left Mayhew’s midsection exposed and kept him one arm short.
As he went to toss me off the building—or to attempt it, since the wonderful safety-minded keepers of the tower had seen fit to add lovely high bars as a barricade—Desmond made his move.
Had I not been dangling by my hair, precariously avoiding a substantial fall, I would have taken a longer time to enjoy the visual of my strong, handsome boyfriend running into the fray with his broadsword raised, like an extra from Braveheart. The only thing missing was the battle cry, but Desmond darted towards us quietly so as not to draw attention to himself.
I would have to stock the visual away for late nights when I was home alone.
Desmond swung the sword in a horizontal arc aimed for Mayhew’s neck. He would have done it too if Mayhew hadn’t sensed the attack and shifted forms. As me, or as the professor, he was short enough to be lobotomized by Desmond’s swing. As Angie, who might as well have been a part-time supermodel with her mile-long legs and stupid heels, he was now tall enough to take the hit in the arm instead of the neck.