by Sierra Dean
“Can someone take the head, please?” I asked, my jaw aching with the effort of forming words.
Lucas was the first to move, but stayed out of my reach as he pulled the head off the end of the sword, almost dropping it when the demon tried to bite him. “What should I…? Uh… How do I…?”
“Put it in the tub and burn it.” I shuffled past him and smiled weakly at Desmond. “Head or heart, right?”
He winced. I must have gotten him pretty good. “Is it really you?” he asked cautiously.
I thought the demon-pop I’d carried in would be a dead giveaway, but I couldn’t blame the guy for asking. I nodded. “Dracula.”
He heaved a relieved sigh and collapsed on the loveseat, resting his head back and looking at the ceiling. I think he was crying.
I didn’t have the energy left to comfort him.
By the time Lucas returned from the bathroom, I was already lying horizontally across my bed in the same position I’d landed when I fell onto it. I was still clutching the sword when I passed out, listening to Desmond and Lucas debate how to burn a demon head.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
There were a lot of things Mercedes didn’t say to me the night of Gabriel’s funeral. She didn’t ask why I’d paid for it, or where I’d gotten the money. She didn’t ask me to explain how the whole station had lost their collective memories and only she and Tyler could remember the truth. She never said anything about the two officers whose funerals she’d had to attend, whose families believed they’d died in a tragic fire in the basement of the police station.
Faulty wiring was the official report.
That report had been drafted by my people.
Fire was the easiest way to make a mess like that go away. Vampire clean-up crews had been using it as a get-out-of-jail-free card for centuries. Gabriel Holbrook had been another casualty in a terrible tragedy.
It was easy to paint him as the villain. He was dead, the families of the missing girls had their justice. That was what went into the file so we didn’t have to answer any impossible questions. But Cedes, Tyler and I all knew the truth. Gabriel wasn’t innocent, but he wasn’t the killer.
As it turned out, Professor Oliver Mayhew had been a real Columbia professor once. Nolan did some research at my request and discovered that Mayhew had originally come to New York in the mid-eighties. I couldn’t be sure when the demon had killed the real Mayhew—it might have been long before—but now both incarnations were gone.
Erasing the memory of Mayhew from an entire school would have been too much for even the Tribunal’s resources. Instead I’d had the wardens convince the dean Mayhew had given his notice months earlier so he could return to England as a faculty transfer to Cambridge.
Lucy Renard had some permanent scars on her feet thanks to the filthy sawdust, but otherwise she had made a miraculous physical recovery thanks to her shifter blood. The memories of the event, however, were still too fresh for her to process properly. It turned out she’d been locked in the dark little room in the basement for days, visited periodically by Mayhew so he could scare the bejeezus out of her, and once so he could bite her. Genevieve told me Lucy couldn’t even look at a closet without screaming.
I doubted she’d ever be able to cross my path, and it made me sad knowing someone I’d never had a chance to know would be terrified of me for the rest of her life.
We hadn’t yet been able to figure out what type of demon it had been exactly. Without knowing the specifics, it was hard for us to understand why Mayhew had chosen the girls he had, or what he’d gotten from them. But I’d been thinking about his actions, and of what I’d seen at Calliope’s the night she drank the boy’s aura.
Calliope fed on life force, and on the goodness of youth. It wasn’t impossible to believe Mayhew had been doing something similar. When he’d stolen my memories, I remembered feeling something escape my body like a breath.
What if it hadn’t just been my memories, but a part of my soul?
By taking little bits from many different girls, he could have continued taking only slivers of life essence without actually killing anyone for decades. I’d looked into missing persons and homicide reports in the Columbia campus area dating back to Mayhew’s arrival, but they weren’t as substantial as I’d anticipated. It seemed like Mayhew the demon hadn’t actually started killing his victims until recently. My best guess was he’d gotten more and more desperate lately to return home, and it had made him sloppy. Girls ended up dead, and that was how he’d been found out.
Who knew how long he could have carried on with his feedings if only he’d left the girls alive? I wasn’t sure what I’d have preferred. Too many lives had been lost in such a short period of time. Was their sacrifice worth it to know a demon was no longer in our midst?
There was no easy answer.
Stranger still, I never regained my memory of the missing hour in Mayhew’s office. It still nagged me constantly, the wonder over what had happened and why I’d gotten years’ worth of missing memories back, but not that scant hour.
Cedes walked with me back to my car, her hand wrapped around the inside of my elbow. Instead of asking me any of the questions that must have nagged at her, she asked me the hardest question of all. “Are you okay?”
When I looked at her, I forced a smile and squeezed her hand. “I’m getting there.”
The truth was, I was so far from okay I didn’t know what okay looked like anymore. Both of the officers who’d died in the supposed fire had families. One had just had a new baby a few months earlier. I had read their obituaries about a hundred times.
And Gabriel—for all his wrongs—had just been a stupid young man who’d made a mistake. He’d been taken in by a demon, and though it was his own weakness that had allowed it, it didn’t mean he deserved to die. During the day, when I slept, I was haunted by the sounds of his screams.
I dropped Mercedes off with the promise we would have a tequila-filled evening very soon. Before I pulled away she made me swear I would talk to Tyler. There was only so much she could explain, and his questions wouldn’t wait as long as hers.
At home I parked behind Desmond’s car and sat in the warm interior of my BMW for a few quiet minutes.
Ever since my little swim in the Hudson, I couldn’t seem to get warm enough. Desmond told me I wrapped myself around him while we slept. I lifted my palms from the steering wheel and looked at them. There were no visible burn scars from the sword. When I’d woken the night after my fight with Mayhew, the sword had freed itself from my grip and my hands were healed.
I’d gone back to Koreatown to talk to the ogre, but the shop was empty. I had to wonder if he’d run because of me and the sword. It certainly cast a dark pall over the future if I could make an ancient fae bolt for the hills without even threatening him.
Things didn’t get much better when I finally called Grandmere to tell her what had happened and fill her in on my new engagement. When I explained the precarious position of Lucas’s leadership, I hadn’t been able to help asking her about Callum. My grandmere was French, and quiet wasn’t a word I would typically use to describe her. But when I told her Callum was making a play for Lucas’s territory, she had fallen so silent I thought the call had dropped. When she did finally speak, I almost wished she hadn’t.
“You stay clear of him, Secret,” she had warned. “He’s not your maman, but he is no less dangerous. You tell that man of yours to do whatever it takes to get out of this without Callum getting mad. Promise me.”
Promises were made, but they weren’t mine to keep. Lucas hadn’t heard from Callum since Ben and Amelia had come to the gala, but I didn’t think we’d seen the last of my uncle or his people.
I sighed and flattened my palms, studying the lines that Calliope told me represented two destinies. Then I balled my hands up into fists. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I wasn’t sure I believed I had any destiny, let alone two of them.
Bundling myself in my coat, I fin
ally got out of the car and dashed for my apartment door. Inside, the smell of burnt demon head was still a lingering reminder of what had happened. After the head had been incinerated, I’d poked it once to see if Mayhew would open his eyes again. It had dissolved into black goo, and now I had a permanent ring in my pink bathtub.
My shoes and coat formed a messy pile in the entrance, but I didn’t bother picking them up. Desmond was sitting on the loveseat, his feet on top of The Sunday Times as he played Assassin’s Creed on the Xbox. Of all the things I’d expected my architect boyfriend to bring with him when he moved in, the Xbox hadn’t been one of them. But as it turned out, all twenty-seven-year-old men have an inner teenager. Even werewolves.
When I sat next to him, his on-screen persona—aptly also named Desmond—was busy slitting throats.
“How was it?” he asked, never turning his eyes from the television.
“It was a funeral.” I shrugged. “It was depressing.”
He paused the game and looked at me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I started to say no but then stopped myself. “Can I be honest?”
“Of course.”
“I was relieved.”
He arched a brow but didn’t say anything.
“I was relieved because I was going to Gabriel’s funeral, not yours.” I rested my head against his shoulder, and he put the controller on the coffee table, before wrapping me in a Desmond-patented hug. Breathing in his scent, tasting the lime on my tongue, I felt safe for the first time in weeks.
“I thought it might be my funeral trying to get off the damned Empire State Building that night,” he said with a laugh, trying to push away the seriousness of the moment.
I wiped the corners of my eyes with the pad of my thumb. “You never did tell me how you got home.”
“And I’ll never tell you.” He kissed my forehead. “Let’s just say I owe a security guard named Butch a very big reward and leave it at that.”
I cozied into his side as he picked up the Xbox controller again. When I pointed to the newspaper under his feet, he paused the game a second time.
“Did you read it?” I asked.
“I glanced.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” I issued his own question back to him.
He shook his head. The official engagement announcement for my wedding to Lucas had been a full-page story in the Times wedding section. They said it was going to be the social event of the decade, or something along those lines. Apparently Sarah Jessica Parker was on the guest list, along with Barbara Walters, Jay-Z and Beyoncé. News to me. My guest list was about ten people long.
Desmond ran his fingers through my hair and pulled my legs onto his lap. “Does it change how you feel about me?”
“No,” I replied, without hesitation.
“And we both know it’s good for the pack and will keep your uncle at a distance a little longer.”
“Yes.”
“Then it doesn’t matter.” His voice sounded strained.
“Des…”
“Who are you with right now?” He dipped his head back so he could look me in the eyes. “Who do you come home to every night? It isn’t him. It’s never been him.”
I gave him a weak smile.
“I don’t care what the paper says.” He kicked it off the table for emphasis. “I know how you feel. All that matters is you’re alive. And I’ve got you a little longer.”
I draped my arm over his stomach and rested my head on his chest. “You’ve got me forever.”
I could feel his smile against the crown of my head. “Good.”
After a pause, I couldn’t resist my next question any longer. “What did Calliope tell you that night?”
His hand twitched, and the reaction surprised me enough I pulled back and looked at his face, bracing my hand on the arm of the loveseat. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to say,” he admitted.
“She didn’t say you couldn’t.” Now curiosity was overwhelming my more rational characteristics. I had to know.
“She said I’d be the one standing with you in the end.”
My blood ran cold. What was it Calliope had said to me?
One day you will die standing by someone you love.
About the Author
Sierra Dean is a reformed historian. She was born and raised in the Canadian prairies and is allowed annual exit visas in order to continue her quest of steadily conquering the world one city at a time. Making the best of the cold Canadian winters, Sierra indulges in her less global interests: drinking too much tea and writing urban fantasy.
Ever since she was a young girl she has loved the idea of the supernatural coexisting with the mundane. As an adult, however, the idea evolved from the notion of fairies in flower beds, to imagining that the rugged-looking guy at the garage might secretly be a werewolf. She has used her overactive imagination to create her own version of the world, where vampire, werewolves, fairies, gods and monsters all walk among us, and she’ll continue to travel as much as possible until she finds it for real.
Sierra can be reached all over the place, as she’s a little addicted to social networking. Find her on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sierradeanbooks
Website: www.sierradean.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Twitter: @sierradean
Look for these titles by Sierra Dean
Now Available:
Secret McQueen
Something Secret This Way Comes
The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters
A Bloody Good Secret
Secret Santa
’Tis the season for ho-ho-homicide.
Secret Santa
© 2011 Sierra Dean
Secret McQueen, Book 2.5
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The season for mistletoe, Christmas lights…and a killing spree. When Secret’s friend, Detective Mercedes Castilla, asks for help to solve a series of murders longer than a string of lights, Secret resigns herself to the fact her holidays will be anything but peaceful.
It seems someone is killing New Yorkers in an unusually gruesome way, and as the bodies pile up faster than presents under the tree, the police are no closer to finding the killer than Secret is to finding the perfect present for one of her boyfriends, Lucas.
Tracking down a monster in Manhattan the week before Christmas is almost as difficult as shopping for her ever-expanding collection of loved ones. When tragedy strikes close to home, Secret must do everything in her power to put an end to the horror in time for Santa to come down the chimney.
Warning: Contains a less than merry McQueen with a sword and a reason to use it; a festive new use for mistletoe; and a promise that will haunt Secret like the Ghost of Christmas Future.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Secret Santa:
Desmond lifted me as though I weighed nothing—which was probably what I felt like to a buff werewolf—and slung me over his shoulder. I wanted to fight, but this angle gave me a fabulous view of his wonderful, toned butt, and I was hard-pressed to find anything wrong with that.
He kicked the door closed behind us, and I watched the apartment slide by as I dangled upside down, a curtain of my blonde curls obscuring most of the view.
“Aren’t you at all curious about the knocking?” I wheezed, the question directed at his tush.
He didn’t stop walking until we were in the bedroom, where he heaved me onto the unmade bed.
“Do you hear that?” he asked, lifting his head and looking around the room.
“Hear what?” I listened closely but heard nothing.
“Nada. Not a damned thing. No knocking.” With his coat on the chair and his tie already loosened, I could tell strange noises were the last thing on Desmond’s mind. Getting to my knees, I fixed him with a serious look.
“What if it was a monster?” My tone was playful, but just saying the word reawakened my guilt. He must have seen the shift in my eyes because he climbed onto the b
ed and knelt in front of me, cupping my face between his warm, rough hands.
The touch of his wide, familiar palms made a sensational heat bloom inside me. If there was one thing Desmond could be counted on for, it was making me forget my problems.
“The monsters will always be there, Secret. Let’s just pretend for a little while we don’t know anything about them. Deal?”
I ran my hand through the thick, dark waves of his hair. It had gotten longer in our time together, and wilder. Sometimes it reminded me of the carefree waves Holden had always favored, but I bit my tongue whenever the comparison sprang to mind. Desmond’s extraordinary violet-gray eyes were searching my face, trying to judge my reaction to his request.
I smiled and traced a path from his hair, down his cheek, my fingernails grazing the five o’clock shadow that made him look both mature and dangerous.
“Stand up,” I whispered.
A befuddled look overcame him, but he edged backwards off the bed and complied with my instructions. I crawled towards him, my gaze fixed on his face, and the new expression there was worth every slow, painstaking inch I traveled.
When I stopped I was on all fours at the end of the bed, eye level with his Gucci belt buckle. I breathed out a hot, openmouthed sigh, and Desmond groaned. He reached out to touch my hair, but the instant I felt the brush of fingers, I pulled back and shook my head.
“That’s not how this is going to work.”
He raised a single brow and couldn’t hide the smirk threatening to overtake his lips. As patient as he was, his resolve wouldn’t last forever. Werewolves, especially those with Alpha leanings like Desmond, were used to being in control at all times. It had never bothered me that his dominant nature exhibited itself in our bedroom, because I knew it was hard for him to keep it buried in the pack.