by Sierra Dean
Tyler set a tablet down in front of me, where he had opened a video that displayed the main entrance of the Hotel Beverly. The clip clearly showed me leaving the hotel side by side with the demon who hadn’t yet told me his name.
The caption read, Werewolf queen spotted with demon.
“Do you think they’re implying something untoward?” I asked. “Should I tell Desmond?” My husband, Desmond Alvarez, would probably find this hilarious.
The corner of Emilio’s mouth quirked up in a smirk before the expression vanished.
Tyler saw it.
“This isn’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” Emilio offered.
“She brought a demon into the office.”
“Oh, come on, Tyler, chill out,” I said. “This is what we do. He came in willingly to help us. Maybe. I hope. But the point is it’s not like we’re showing the world something they didn’t know existed.”
“Demons aren’t the same as vampires, Secret.”
“Uh, to Joe Human they might as well be.” I drummed my nails on the table. “Something scary they don’t understand.”
“We want to normalize vampires,” he countered. “We don’t want to normalize demons.”
“If people knew what demons were and how to spot them, they wouldn’t let their stupid asses get possessed. Did you ever think of that, smart guy?”
“Did you ever think that if we start telling the human population what the signs of demon possession are, they’ll see those everywhere they look? Everyone’s malcontent neighbor is going to be a demon. Oh God, the church is going to lose their minds over this.”
“The church is maybe the only one who already thought demons were legit, so they’ll be cool.”
“Cool? Secret, you just paraded out of a hotel with a guy whose mouth is filled with razor-sharp teeth, and he was waving to the cameras like he was opening up for Britney Spears in Las Vegas. This is a disaster.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re going to put me in an early grave,” he announced, burying his face in his palms.
“Been there, done that.”
“Stop bragging about your premature death,” Emilio tsked. “Not all of us have nine lives, you little weirdo.”
“How dare you.”
He smirked at me.
“The two of you are never allowed in the same room together.” Tyler pointed between us, and we gave him matching who me? expressions.
We take our jobs very seriously, you see.
The truth of the matter was, in spite of the appearances given off by our most ludicrous staff meeting of all time, we were serious about what we did, and we were good at it. The fact that the government had allowed us to grow from a staff of three to a staff of eighty-five with our own downtown Los Angeles office was incredibly impressive.
It was still Tyler, Emilio, and me at the helm, but it was cool to know we had lab geeks and fresh-out-of-Quantico special agents who were desperate to impress us. There were guys who were afraid to look me in the eyes. I loved it.
“I know you’re mad about my new demon BFF, but can you at least take a step back and look at it like a rational human being? He could be valuable to us.”
“What’s the first rule of demons?” Tyler asked.
“Don’t talk about demon Fight Club?”
He sat down in the chair across from us as though I had finally broken his spirit entirely and he simply no longer had the will to stand up.
I had that effect on people, I was told. Often.
“Please take this seriously.”
“That’s what I have you for.”
“Demons lie, Secret. That’s like the one absolute. They lie to get what they want. The lie to destroy human lives. They. Are. Liars.”
“Okay, sure, but I had a good feeling about this one.”
“You had…” He drifted off then stared up at the ceiling, taking in a deep breath through his nose. When he looked back at us again, his focus was on Emilio instead of me, like he couldn’t handle dealing with me for another second.
“Can you please explain this to her?”
“Do you want me to try in Spanish?” Emilio asked.
Haaaaaaa. Emilio was on my side.
I continued. “Can we just see what he tells us, and if any of it pans out, we can say, hurray, Secret was right! And also she’s incredibly smart and beautiful.”
“That seems about as likely as a demon telling the truth,” Tyler shot back.
“Enough, enough.” Emilio waved his hands. “I didn’t leave special ops to babysit bickering FBI agents. And I certainly never thought a former vampire-werewolf hybrid would have this much goddamn sass.”
“He started it.”
“You’re both grown-ass adults arguing over a demon like it’s a stray kitten Secret brought home and Big Daddy Nowakowski won’t let her keep,” Emilio chided.
“Can we please all agree to never refer to Tyler as Big Daddy Nowakowski ever again?”
Tyler raised his hand in agreement.
“Hopeless. Both of you.” Emilio pushed his chair back and got up from the table.
“Where are you going? He and I can’t be left alone together.” I gestured between Tyler and myself. “He thinks I’m going to kill him.”
“You’re going to kill us all one day, Secret.” Emilio walked to the door and opened it. “But for right now, we’re all going to go talk to a demon.”
Chapter Three
The nice thing about having an actual government budget to back you up was that you got all sorts of cool shit you could spend money on. Part of that for our office was a demon-proofed room in one of the labs. It was marked with protective sigils that would keep my new demon friend from vanishing at will, and also put a damper on his powers so he couldn’t simply possess someone if they were in the room with him.
This was our first time hosting a demon who had come in freely, and we’d never had one in the room longer than a day, so if this was going to be a long-term stay, it was as much a test of the room as it was learning what our little buddy knew.
We arrived in the lab, which was in a triple-secured area on the second floor. The first floor had been the original plan, but after hearing about a bank heist in L.A. where thieves had come up into the vault by drilling into it from below, we had made the decision to house all truly valuable artifacts and specimens on the higher floors. Our offices were on the main floor as well as the sparring rooms where I trained new recruits how to fight vampires and werewolves and come away with their lives.
Yes, I know my job is weird.
The three of us swiped our badges at the lab entrance and emerged into a clean white space, where three people in honest-to-goodness lab coats were milling around. There were microscopes and everything. They didn’t let me come in here alone, since I liked to poke at expensive things too much.
One of the labs techs worked exclusively in the development of weapons which was—no pun intended—a double-edged sword. It was great to have someone designing things that could help me do my job better, but at the back of my mind it bothered me that the government was funding the development of supernatural-specific weaponry. Having these toys was useful, sure, but was there an ulterior goal I wasn’t aware of?
Not like they’d tell us grunts.
Still, having someone craft ultra-high-dose silver bullets I could keep at the ready was extra beneficial when I had to go out on regular hunts for rogue vamps and lone wolves who posed a threat to society.
A tenuous acceptance of supernatural creatures had been established for the time being, one that could easily tip towards the dangerous and scary if humankind had any reason to believe supes were a risk to them.
Vampires and werewolves might be tough as nails, but humans still outnumbered them about a hundred thousand to one. The odds weren’t awesome if humankind decided to turn on the supernatural community.
That was our entire job here. Eliminate the threats to that peace. We we
ren’t the only ones doing it either. There was a branch of Scotland Yard following our model, and all over the world special units had been established to help wipe out the dangerous in order to keep humans satisfied that they were safe at night.
It was a job that would likely never end, the same way human police would never stop needing homicide detectives. But we were the ones who had the task, and we were really good at what we did.
Humble brag.
Lily, our head lab tech, approached us with a tight smile on her full lips. Her head was shaved almost completely bald, and her dark skin stood out in contrast to the bright-white lab coat. She was also rocking a vibrant plum lipstick that was giving me some serious jealousy issues.
“You know it would be nice if we could have a little advance warning about the arrival of something like a third-hierarchy demon.”
I slapped Emilio in the arm. “I knew he wasn’t a Prince of Hell. That sneaky liar.”
Tyler gave me a look that reminded me of our discussion upstairs and his primary concern about housing the demon to begin with. We might be able to keep him locked up, but the room couldn’t compel him to tell us the truth.
That was something these guys ought to start working on.
Bevin was our guru with the weapons, so maybe I could mention the idea of a truth serum room to her. The girl had mad chops. If anyone could figure it out, it was her. But she currently seemed fully absorbed in a gun that looked like an AK-47 but also somehow not. Not the most ideal time to bother her.
Teddy, the third of our lab techs, was standing near the demon holding room, staring tentatively through the window. At thirty-five, he was the oldest of the techies, but he also bent to Lily’s will entirely. There was no doubt who was in charge down here.
Right now we were on Lily’s turf, and she was mad.
“You can thank Director McQueen for that,” Tyler said without looking at me.
“Really, we should always be prepared for every eventuality here, shouldn’t we?” I said.
“Are you insinuating I was unprepared?” Lily asked.
Oops. Backpedal, Secret, backpedal. The last thing I wanted was to be on Lily’s bad side. We needed her. She had turned down an opportunity to teach supernatural biology at Oxford to work with us. In the short amount of time supernaturals had been out in the world, she hadn’t balked in fear. Instead she had set to work learning as much as she could about them.
It helped that her fiancé had been outed as a were-panther.
“I’m sorry for the short notice,” I said.
“No notice. There was no notice. Just suddenly an eight-foot-tall demon in the lobby.”
“I had it under control.”
Lily pulled out her phone from her lab coat pocket and aggressively punched something into it, then held up the phone for me to see.
It was a video of me falling off the roof of the Hotel Beverly and landing in the pool.
Son of a bitch, I thought I’d dealt with that when I threw the phone in the pool. I guess more than one person had been filming.
“I did that on purpose.” I crossed my arms over my chest and was glad I’d taken off the wet leather jacket before coming here. “Had to keep him guessing.”
Lily shook her head. “I don’t pretend that I can do what you do, Secret. I know there’s a good reason you got where you are today, and I respect it. I respect you. But I have people here I need to keep safe, and in order to do my job so that you can do your job, I need to be prepared.”
Tyler shot me a look.
“It was a bad move bringing him in with no warning, and I won’t let it happen again.” I did not use the word promise, because there was no way I could know what the future held. But I could at least try to be a little better about supporting my team.
I’d been a one-woman show for a very long time. It was hard to adapt to a whole new way of being, and I was probably slower on the learning curve than the rest of them.
Lily nodded, accepting the apology, then her eyes widened along with her grin. “He really is fascinating,” she gushed ebulliently. “I was in there with him for about fifteen minutes getting some general readings and information about his physiology. I think he might let me do some active measurements off him later. He’s quite talkative. Usually they’re not so thrilled to be here, but this one is just chat chat chatting away.”
“Usually they’re dead,” Bevin chimed in, hoisting up the gun in front of her.
She was only about five-foot-two, same as me, and with a similar petite build. Her pixie-cut black hair and giant blue eyes made her look like a cartoon caricature of a badass vixen with the huge gun in her hands.
“This is almost ready.”
“Ooh.” I was about to make gimme hand motions when Emilio elbowed me in the ribs.
“Demon first, then a big gun later.”
“You’re no fun.”
Lily led us through the lab until we were next to Teddy. He was as bald as Lily, but the halo of silver stubble around the back of his head indicated that his was a means of hiding the fact that he’d been going bald for real. Hers was all about fashion.
The window next to the door was a two-way mirror, so we could observe the demon without being seen ourselves. Not just handy for interrogation rooms, kids.
He was pacing the room but didn’t look anxious. A cot in the corner appeared untouched. Taking in the side of him, how his goat-legs were shaped and that massive lizard tail, I wasn’t entirely certain he could use the bed if he wanted to. He’d managed to sit in my car, but there’d been a whole ordeal with him bending and twisting to get in place.
In L.A. I drove a government-issue black Ford SUV. I imagined what would have happened if I’d tried to wedge the bulky demon into my yellow BMW at home, and the visual made me chuckle. That would have been the Secret version of a clown car for sure. How big of a demon can you wedge into a custom BMW coup?
“What’s so funny?” Tyler asked.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“In that case your smirk is making me nervous.”
I winked at him.
The demon poked at the ceiling in a generally curious way, not like he was trying to escape. To no one in particular, he said, “Could I get some water?”
We all glanced at each other, not sure how to handle the utter banality of his request.
“I’ll take him some,” I volunteered.
There was a cart in the lab with bottled water and a single-cup coffee machine. I grabbed two of the bottles, then used my badge to swipe myself into the holding room. I couldn’t go anywhere in this building without this badge, but at least I was one of the few people who had access to every single room.
I stepped carefully over the salt line at the doorway then shut the door behind me. The metal click of the bolt latching made my skin prickle.
I could get into the room no problem, but I couldn’t swipe myself out again. It was security protocol. Someone on the outside needed to open the doors. That way if someone inside managed to get ahold of a security badge, they couldn’t simply use it to get themselves out.
Still, it made me nervous knowing I was in here on my own.
The demon stopped pacing and fixed me with the kind of look that was hard to read but made me queasy.
“This feels very much like a cage,” he mused.
“It very much is a cage.” I held the water bottle out to him, and he took it, his long claws grazing my skin and sending an unpleasant shiver down my back.
I was truly appreciating how stupid this idea was right about now. I wouldn’t be telling Tyler that, because his “I told you sos” would be epic and infuriating, but yeah, I could see I’d made a mistake by bringing home a stray demon and suggesting we keep it as a pet.
He poked at one of the protective wards on the floor with his hoof and made an indignant sniffing noise. “I thought we were friends.”
“Friends don’t let friends use their demonic superpowers around unarmed human beings.�
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“Hmm.”
“Can you tell me your name?” I asked him.
“We went through this.”
“Right, and if you’re Belphegor, I’m Kate Middleton.”
He bowed dramatically. “Your highness.”
“If you don’t tell me your name, I’m just going to make something up, and you really won’t enjoy whatever I come up with.”
“Go for it. You can’t banish me with a name like Justin any more than you can Belphegor. I care not.”
“All right, Harold.”
“Harold.”
“Yes, Harold.” I smiled at him.
“Very well.”
We locked eyes and both knew in that moment that each was as stubborn as the other. Rock, meet hard place. Hard place, meet Harold.
“Now, on the rooftop at the Hotel Beverly, before I brought you here, you strongly indicated you might be of some help to us.”
“Oh sure.”
“So, do you have useful knowledge or demon insight to offer us?” I was praying this guy had anything to make this whole ordeal worth my time, otherwise I would absolutely owe Tyler a coffee every day for the rest of my natural life, and that dude did not drink the cheap stuff.
“I know something you’ll definitely find interesting.” He smiled, and I wished he hadn’t.
“All right, share with the class, then.”
“How does a demon uprising sound? Literal Hell on Earth.”
I blinked at him, then opened the second bottle of water and took a long drink. “I’m listening.”
Chapter Four
Demon uprising.
Sure, it was about as original as casting a pretty white girl to play a concerned doctor on TV, but still, it was the kind of line you didn’t want to take lightly, especially when coming from a bona fide demon.
“Pfft,” is what I said. “You demons are always promising Hell on Earth, but then you spend all your time making little girls throw up on themselves. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t jump straight to the believing-you part.”
“There’s a good reason you humans are so easy for us to control, you know. It’s that you want to believe anything, even when you pretend to believe nothing.”