“I thought you said my future was uncertain.”
“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.”