Accidentally Demonic (25 page)

Clay shot her his best sad face. “Oh, c’mon, now, Casey. We’ve been apart for at least twenty minutes. Admit it. You missed me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and snorted. “I missed you and your lies like a dog misses fleas. Like a girl misses that thingy her gynecologist uses in an examination—or a—”

“I think you’re not being truthful, and you’re hiding your deep longing for me by hurling insults. No doubt, a very fetching attribute in a woman.” Clay chucked her under the chin with a laugh.

“Like you’d know truthful if it slapped you in the face.”

His smile teased her. “I’m hurt.”

Her lips thinned. She would not be won over by his humorous attempts to cajole her out of her foul mood. “You’re infuriating.”

“But cute, right?”

Ugh. Right. All the more reason to resist. “Would you just go away and let me have two seconds of peace?”

“Yeah. I could do that. But you know that guy you had by the throat?”

“What about him?”

“He’s awake.”

Movement at her feet rustled along the pavement. “So what? I think I just proved I can take care of him, didn’t I?”

“I know that’s what you’d like to think. I’d go on letting you think that but for one small fact.”

“And that is?”

“I don’t smell a human.” Rick had risen and scrambled to his feet, backing away, but Clay caught him with one sharp snap of his hand, his eyes blazing when he hauled him upward with one hand. And she’d be impressed with his Conan-like strength if she wasn’t so hacked off at him. “Who do you think this is?”

She sighed in aggravation. “This is Rick.”

“The Rick you childishly refuse to talk about?” Clay asked, suspicion succinct in his tone.

Takes one to know one. “The one and only.”

Clay’s nostrils flared when he sniffed the air. “Who the fuck are you?” he shouted.

Casey frowned. “I told you who he is, now put him down. He’s just a pathetic, aging lothario.” She glanced at Rick.
Take that!
Tugging at Clay’s arm, she tried to pry him off Rick. ’Cause he was older now—brittle-bone disease could be a factor here, and she wanted no part of whatever they called senior citizen abuse.

But Clay only clamped his fist around Rick’s shirt that much tighter. “Who are you—speak now or I’ll drain you bone dry.”

Sinister. He threw that threat around often. Could you really drain one dry? “I said let him go, Clay! He’s my ex—nothing more, nothing less.”

Cocking his head in her direction, Clay’s sharp jaw shifted. “No, Casey. He’s not Rick. Not the Rick you knew. He just looks like the Rick you knew, and if you’d quit with the dramatic ‘I want to be alone’ thing, you might have noticed. Now, c’mere.”

She was wary. “Why?”

“Because school’s in.”

Huh?

“Give him a good smell, Casey,” Clay ordered, tipping his head in the general vicinity of Rick’s armpit.

She looked at Rick, pondering. “Did you use deodorant today?”

“Casey—I meant sniff the air
around
him, damn it.”

She moved in with a tentative step, taking a deep whiff. Oh. Oh, yeah.

“Do you smell that?”

“I think I do.”

“Good job, grasshopper. Now. A couple of things—first, kiss me.”

“
What?
I can’t kiss you. You’re married. Kissing isn’t allowed when you’re hitched.”

He grabbed hold of her waist with his free hand, hauling her close. “It is when dire circumstances are going to prevail.”

She placed her hands on his chest. “Dire circumstances?”

He grinned. “Yeah, like when a warrior’s going into battle, the fair maiden kisses him for luck. Now shut up,” he ordered, laying his lips on hers and blowing her already fragile mind with the firm, tantalizing press of his mouth against hers. Just as her breathing became ragged, he tore them apart. “Now, second—back away, and don’t give me any lip or your alone time will be spent chained to something. Something hard and uncomfortable.”

Casey did as she was ordered without question due to the force of his demand.

Clay eyeballed Rick. “Now who are you, and what the hell are you doing pretending to be someone you’re not?”

Wowzers. He looked exactly like the Rick she knew—a carbon copy. Right down to the mole by his left eye. If he wasn’t Rick, these demons had cloning hands down.

Clay shook him again, like a rag doll who was about to lose its stuffing. “Who are you, you bastard?
Who—sent—you
?” he roared, deep and blaring.

As still as the night had been was as loud as the night became in a flash of light and booming sound. Chaos erupted in the way of a harsh wind that began to gust in swirls, leaving Casey fighting to remain erect and Clay still clinging to her ex- lover. The Rick look-alike made a grotesque twitch of his limbs. The crunch of bone and the tear of flesh left Casey battling blowing chunks. A thick, gooey substance ran in rivers along his morphing body, oozing and dripping to the ground in fat globs of black, oily puddles. The shape he took didn’t remotely resemble anything human.

Mouth agape, knees buckling, terror struck her motionless.

When his horns popped out, Casey’s first wild thought was, she’d never, ever complain about her wee protrusions for as long as she was forced to live. Ringed with ridges that were deeply cut and deep purple in color, they sprang from his head like a jack- in-the-box. So tremendous in size, they caught the limbs of the oak tree she’d just had him pressed against.

He was bald, the skin on his head taking on a deathly chalky pallor, his eyes a silvery green that held a raging malice she wanted to fly low under the radar far away from.

Hookay. It was time to bail. “Clay!” she screamed over the howl of arctic air the demon summoned, blowing it from his gaping nostrils. “Let him go!” Bowing her head to the wind, Casey fought her way to Clay, hurling herself at his back to pull him off this thing that had once been Rick. Circling his neck, she tightened her arm and pulled upward. “Let—goooooooo!”

However, Clay clearly wanted a piece of demon ass, so he clung that much harder, rearing a fist up and jamming it under the demon’s jaw with a crack so loud, it jarred Casey with a hard jolt.

Then things got sorta hairy.

The demon smiled, his pointy, rotting teeth hanging from gums that were black and veined. With a war cry that surely was as good, if not better than, any she’d ever heard, he screeched. The howl so loud, it physically stung her eardrums.

So not a fighter, Casey put her hands to her ears to defend their sensitivity, thus dropping off Clay’s back to the ground like a brick thrown from a rooftop. She hit the pavement hard, scraping her hands when she braced her fall, and tearing a nail.

And just as terror had been her closest friend, fury took its place. A broken nail pissed her off. Not just because she had an owie, but because she’d just had a manicure, and she wasn’t sure when she’d be able to afford one again—if ever.

A well of out-of-control anger showed up by way of her fingertips. Twisting her wrist, she rolled it until her palm faced upward, then fired her first shot.

Okay, so she missed, but she’d been damn close to landing one in the demon’s mouth. Except for Clay, who clearly was a stubborn ass and had moved his head at the wrong time.

The back of his scalp lit up in orangey blue flames. Yet still, he hung on to the demon.

All reason gone, she was in the air, hovering above the two engaged in a roaring match of wills and superhuman strength. For all the good floating would do her. If only she’d learned how to summon icky things like snakes and big, ugly bugs. Panic was swift, while her thoughts raced. She wasn’t a force to be reckoned with. A lame fireball and some midair hovering were hardly an arsenal of pain waiting to be inflicted.

Fear sliced through her when Clay’s body arced in the air, shot with such force she felt the whiz of wind when he flew past her.

But then Clay was in the air, too, howling his rage, and steamrolling the demon, knocking him to his back. Dirt puffed up around them when they hit the ground, clouding her view. Panic had handed off its torch to desperation while she tried to think of what she could possibly do to help Clay.

“Evil be gone from this plane!” someone screeched, the words clear and drifting to her ears by way of the whistle of the ferocious wind.

The slosh of water and the howling hiss of the demon as he literally deflated and disappeared made Casey lose her concentration and flop back to the ground, though a pat on her back was well deserved for landing on her feet.

Clay grimaced, knocking the back of his hand against his jaw.

Darnell. It was Darnell. Oh, thank God it was Darnell.

He danced around, stomping his high-tops on the pavement and shaking off his hands. “Man, you know the kind of risk I run even bein’ near some holy water? Gives me the hives just thinkin’ on it.”

Clay clapped him on the back with a jovial grin. “Nice shot. Totally missed me. Who said you couldn’t play the majors?”

Darnell chuckled. “You okay?”

Casey launched herself at Darnell, throwing her arms around his thick neck and squeezing him. Never had she been so grateful to see someone. “Thank God. I didn’t know what to do! And this stubborn numbskull wouldn’t let him go.”

Darnell gave her an awkward pat on the back, reaching around and prying her locked fingers from his neck. She slid down his round body with a grunt. “I just gotta know, Darnell. . . .”

“What’s that?”

“Is that what I’m going to look like when I do this full change thing? Because I have to tell you—even having the ability to eventually look like Megan Fox isn’t ever going to make up for that. Did you see . . .
it
?” A violent shiver ran the length of her body.

“He’s a bad dude, Casey. Hardcore demon.”

“Then I never want to be hardcore.”

“And he’s not Rick,” Clay reminded her with obvious pleasure. “So who’s Rick, Casey? I think I deserve an explanation. I did just beat him up for you.”

She gave Darnell a pointed look. He shoved his fingers in his ears and looked away, whistling a tune. Glaring at Clay, she spilled. “Oh, fine. He was my college professor. We had a brief fling; then I found out he was married and because of it, I ended up labeled a slut all over campus, okay? I didn’t know he was married, and if I had, I wouldn’t have gone there. I’m no cheating enabler, which is why I’m so adamant about staying away from
you
. I left college to be a teacher’s aide at a private school because of him, met Lola and Lita, and that’s when I took the job with the Castalanos. Have we reached satisfaction?”

He smiled, smug due to his coup. “Yeah. I’m good.”

Casey pulled Darnell’s fingers out of his ears and shot Clay a disgusted look.

Darnell looked to Clay. “You find out what he wants?”

Bending at the waist, he placed his hands on his knees. “Obviously Casey. He appeared to her in the form of her ex-boyfriend.”

“Oooooweee, my man. Somebody messin’ with you two. Somebody that don’t like Casey.”

Duh. “So do you suppose Hildegard sent him?”

“I’d stake my eternity on it.” Clay’s confirmation made her shiver.

Casey threw her hands up in frustration, looking to the sky. “
What
does this woman want? I don’t get it. I told her I was hands-off. No hanky-panky. Does she need it in writing? Blood?” And there hadn’t been any hanky-panky. Not the kind that warranted this kind of warning. It was a kiss. Okay, two now, and the second time he’d made her kiss him.

Darnell clucked his tongue. “You a threat to her, Casey.”

Her snort was loud. “Oh, I can toootally see that, Darnell. I mean, look at me. I’m, like, five inches shorter than her on a good day—my legs couldn’t be that long if you slapped me on a rack and stretched them. Never in a trillion years could I fill out a sweater the way her and her hooters do, and to top it all off, she slinks when she walks. Me? Not so much. I stumble and occasionally even trip. I already assured her nothing was going on between Clay and me because I’d never risk his immortality by boinking him! I don’t go where another woman has tread—nuh-uh. So how the hell am I a threat to her?” And staying away from Clay and all his yumminess hadn’t been easy. Now to find out she had that sex-on-heels Hildegard’s blood running through her made her doubly impressed she’d managed not to haul him off to the nearest available bedroom.

“Darnell—don’t. Shut up now,” Clayton warned, long gone was his look of playful cat and mouse.

Casey waved a cautionary finger at Clay. “You be quiet! Darnell’s just trying to do the right thing. We demons have to stick together, right, Darnell?” She slapped him affectionately on his shoulders. “So go ahead. Spill it. Spill it alllll!”

Darnell looked from Clay to Casey.

Now Clay was the one to throw his hand up in an act of defeat. “Far be it from me to tell you what to do—even if it’ll only add to an already miserable situation.”

Now he thought she was miserable? “Of your own making,” Casey reminded him.

Darnell looked torn, but valor won. “You know what, Clay, I ain’t playin’ with y’all no mo. Casey deserves the truth, and I need to sleep at night.” He turned his broad back on Clay and placed two hands on her shoulders. “I’m gonna try an’ be all delicate here. I didn’t put it together, either, and that makes ole Darnell not on his game. But I got a friend who was once one a them forensic guys and he explained that DNA shit. Crazy is what it is, but this is what he said. You got
Hildegard’s
blood in ya, right? That means you just like her. If you an’ Clay get to . . . well, you know.” He wiggled his eyebrows for effect. “It’s okay because it ain’t no different than if Clay was usin’ his matrimonial privileges with her.”

Her mouth fell open. So it was like wonking by proxy. If she and Clay whipped some satin sheets into a passion-slicked frenzy, he wouldn’t expire because essentially she was Hildegard’s demonic clone?