“Sawyer wanted me to protect her,” I blurted. “He wouldn’t protect evil.”
“Sawyer’s . . . Sawyer,” Luther countered. “I don’t know what he’d do, and I don’t think you do, either. His mother was one of the psycho-est psychos ever. Who knows how badly she fucked him up.”
“Language,” I murmured, hating to admit that Luther was right. “The Nephilim sent those guys to kill her. Why would they pay for someone to off their future leader?”
“Are you sure the Nephilim sent them?”
I rubbed my forehead. The kid was starting to get on my nerves.
“I refuse to accept that anyone on the side of light would send assassins after a baby.” Not that I didn’t think they might; I just refused to accept it.
“The only way to know who wants her dead is to find out who she’ll become, and the only one who knows that is—”
“Sawyer,” I finished. “Which brings me back to the original plan—find Sanducci, dump the baby with him for safekeeping, then head for the hills.”
Luther stood. “Let’s do it.”
Since we’d showered the night before, we were dressed and gone in ten. Would have been five if Luther hadn’t thought to take Faith for a walk in the tall grass.
I had no worry that she’d dart off and we’d never see her again. She followed Luther around like an adoring little sister. Did her kitten sense his cub?
Once Faith was finished, we found the nearest McDonald’s drive-through, then hit the road. In this form Faith was easier to deal with—no crying, no bottle, no begging for her binkie, no fighting against the car seat.
She turned her nose up at the pancakes but devoured her sausage patties as well as mine, then lapped water out of a cup and settled into Luther’s lap to play with the sunbeams that traced across his jeans. When she got bored she trailed into the backseat, and the next time I looked her way she was asleep.
Being a kitten had to be easier than being a baby as well. She could move. She could eat food. She could pretty much do whatever the hell she wanted. I didn’t blame her for crying while in human form. It had to suck to find herself in the body of a frail child after she’d experienced the freedom that came from becoming a quick and clever little cat.
Six hours later we pulled off the highway and stared at a whole lot of empty. Called maco sica by the Lakota, or “land bad”—very original—the region was the epitome of desolation. Buttes and spires, canyons and gullies stretched in a seemingly unending stream toward the horizon.
“How, exactly, are we going to find Sanducci in the middle of that?” Luther asked.
From what I’d read on the Internet last night, the Badlands consisted of 244,000 square miles of constantly eroding sediment. So massive, so silent, so intimidating they went beyond creepy. Considering what I’d seen in the last several months, that was saying a lot.
The Badlands were also quite pretty. The erosion had revealed every color of the earth and sky. Purple and yellow, tan and gray, red, orange, and white—when the sun hit the land just right, the place called maco sica was nothing short of exquisite.
“I’m not sure how to find him,” I admitted.
“We just drove for two days,” Luther said, “and you’re not sure?”
“Any word from Ruthie?”
Closing his eyes, Luther tilted his head. I caught my breath, but when Luther opened his eyes, they remained hazel instead of brown.
“I called, she didn’t answer.” Luther shrugged. “Sometimes she does that. Usually when she’s already told me what I need to know.”
I’m only gonna say somethin’ once; you’d best listen.
A Ruthie-ism she rarely, if ever, broke. Which meant she’d told me where Jimmy was; I’d just been too preoccupied to hear it.
“Take the cat for a walk and let me think,” I ordered.
Luther and Faith disappeared into the dry grass; I sat on the hood of the Impala and racked my brain.
Jimmy had been sent to the Badlands to deal with a nest of Iyas.
“Badlands,” I murmured. “Check.”
Iyas were Lakota storm monsters that drank blood, a vampire in any language. When not in faceless, storm monster mode, they blended in.
I glanced at a nearby sign. “Pine Ridge Reservation. Check.”
According to my quick Internet jaunt last night, the Pine Ridge Reservation covered more area than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Though an exact tally of inhabitants was impossible due to the terrain of the land and the nature of the Lakota, estimates placed the population at around forty thousand.
With unemployment hovering near eighty percent and creating an alcoholism issue that defied sanity, it was easy to understand how the Iyas could blend in. The people of Pine Ridge had enough problems of their own without worrying about vampire storm monsters hiding among them.
In fact, maybe those vampire storm monsters were partially responsible for one of the shortest life expectancies of any group in the western hemisphere. Adult males of Pine Ridge only lived to be around forty-seven, with females lasting into their early fifties. While I was at it, I might as well go ahead and blame a four-times-the-normal rate of adolescent suicide on the Iyas, too.
“What else?” I murmured.
Iyas brought winter wherever they walked.
My gaze wandered over the hills and valleys, the spires, gulches, and gullies, drawn inexorably to one flat-topped precipice that appeared capped with white. Behind it cobalt-colored clouds roiled.
“Bingo,” I muttered.
I turned to call for the kid, but he was already barreling out of the tall grass with the kitten in his arms. My hand went immediately to the knife at my waist, and my gaze searched the peacefully swaying foliage for an enemy. None appeared.
“Lizbeth!” Ruthie’s voice flowed from Luther’s mouth.
“Now she talks,” I muttered.
“Jimmy’s in trouble, child, and you’re the only one who can help.”
CHAPTER 10
Luther hopped into the car; I did the same. Faith was wired, and at first bounced off the windows screeching. When Luther tried to grab her she scratched him.
“What if we bought a blanket with a baby on it? Would that make her change back?” Luther asked around the bleeding finger he’d shoved into his mouth.
Ruthie was gone; the kid had returned, which was fine by me. If Jimmy was in trouble, I needed Luther’s talent for fighting creatures of the damned, not Ruthie’s talent for talking about them.
“Good idea.” I spun gravel as I put us back on the road. “I’ll get right on that once everything calms down.”
Luther snorted. “As if.”
Right again. For me, for him, nothing ever calmed down.
As we approached the flat-topped mountain, signs proclaimed it SHEEP MOUNTAIN TABLE—summit 3,143 feet above sea level. I wasn’t sure how high that was, but it appeared pretty damn high from where I sat.
Continuing upward, the road became less traveled, more a trail, better for bikes, but the Impala was no more a quitter than I was, and she made the climb, gravel pinging against the undercarriage, weeds tangling in her bumper, dust spraying over the glistening powder-blue paint job.
I was driving faster than I should, but the sense of urgency that had sprung to life with Ruthie’s voice only increased the closer I got to the top. I could smell a storm—sweet rain and ozone. Thunder rumbled and lightning crackled overhead. The wind began to whip up dust devils, twirling the red, brown, and gray particles of earth into a thousand mini cyclones.
We came over the rise too fast, and the bottom of the car crunched nauseatingly. But the sight that met my wide-eyed gaze made my stomach lurch even worse.
“Looks like a scene from The Mummy Returns All Over Again,” Luther muttered.
I’d have laughed if anything about this—beyond Luther beginning to talk like me—were funny.
Jimmy was here, and damn but he needed me. Sure, he had help. Summer Bartholomew—his current
seer—and Sanducci fought, back-to-back, in the center of a spotty grass-covered plain atop the mountain. Patches of snow melted here and there, and what trees there were shuddered beneath the weight of far too many icicles.
The Iyas were something to see. The bodies of warriors, honed strong, their skin glistening as snow-flakes swirled about them, melting wherever they touched. They wore traditional Lakota leggings made from hides, probably buffalo, and from their waists hung the skulls of those they’d killed. The clack of the bones whenever the Iyas moved was louder and more terrible than thunder.
Even worse were their faces. They had none. Just a swirling miasma of gray, as if the storm overhead gained power from the evil within them.
And they were evil. The telltale humming in my head was so loud, I wanted to put my hands over my ears and wail.
Jimmy and Summer used spears against the Iyas. Whenever they pierced one, sunlight seemed to pour from the wound, incinerating the monster-man in seconds. But there were hundreds, and all too soon Jimmy and Summer would be overrun.
Even without discernible eyes within the swirling fog of their faces, the Iyas had no problem seeing. They headed straight for the demon killers in their midst, and when Jimmy and Summer attacked, every Iya countered.
I’d known that upon their release the Grigori had immediately begun to have sex with humans and re-populate the world with their half-demon seed. As a result, the Nephilim had increased—a lot.
But I hadn’t really understood what a lot meant until I saw the Iyas pouring over the opposite ridge, running across the tabletop mesa toward Jimmy and Summer, trailing snow and ice in their wake. There were so many of them, they nearly blotted out the horizon. The more that appeared, the darker the sky became, and the more furious the coming of the storm.
“Sheesh,” I muttered, “talk about a last stand.” I guessed we were in the right place for one.
Luther leaped out of his seat, popping the trunk on the Impala to reveal an impressive cache of weapons, including spears. I had a feeling they weren’t going to be enough.
“Hold on,” I called.
Faith was upset, mewing at the glass, pawing at it, trying to get to Luther.
“Sorry, honey, but you can’t go.” I opened each window a fraction of an inch, then got out and quickly shut the door. Her face slammed against it as she tried to escape, and she sneezed, shook her head, then glared at me.
I ignored her. What else could I do? She couldn’t wander around out here. I didn’t want to see her head swinging from a belt.
Luther tossed me a spear, which I caught with one hand. He took a step toward the melee, and I lowered the weapon in front of him like a gate. “Wait.”
“Liz, they’re going to die out there.”
“Ruthie sent us here for a reason.”
“To dump the kid on Sanducci and talk to a skin-walker in the Black Hills.”
I shook my head. “It’s more than that. I could have taken the baby to New Mexico, or had Jimmy come to me. That would have made more sense, been safer for everyone.”
“So?” Luther bounced on his toes, so pumped with adrenaline, so ready for the battle he could scarcely contain himself. “Are you going to fight or aren’t you?”
“They have to have done something to their weapons,” I said, watching Jimmy and Summer work.
“What?” Luther had one hand around my spear, probably in preparation for wresting it from my grip.
“Either coated them in . . . I don’t know. What mimics sunlight?” Luther’s answer was a blink. “Or maybe a spell, a blessing on the weapons?”
Luther frowned and glanced at the roiling thunderclouds. Not a single ray of sun pressed through them.
“So if I stick them with this—” He tugged on my spear, and this time I let him have it. He seemed to be catching a clue as to our dilemma.
“You’ll probably do nothing more than piss them off.”
“Let’s see,” he said, and launched the weapon at the nearest half demon.
I was quick, but not quick enough to grab the spear before it sailed out of reach. The nearest Iya stood a good hundred yards away, but Luther managed to hit him. The boy had skills.
The monster-man roared. The sky above him opened and poured down rain. He turned, and the gray swirl of his face had deepened to black. A slash of lightning cut across the oval. An instant later lightning struck the ground two feet away from us. My toenails sizzled.
“Uh-oh,” Luther said.
I cast him an annoyed glance as the Iya yanked the spear free, tossing it aside as if it were nothing more than a toothpick, and ran toward us.
“Luther.” The kid had tensed, prepared for a fight, gaze on the approaching threat. The clack of the skulls at the Iya’s waist was so loud I had to raise my voice. “Luther!”
His eyes flicked to mine. They’d gone amber. “I need you to do something.” I lifted my hands to my collar.
Luther began to shake his head. “Liz, you shouldn’t—”
“I have to. Ruthie sent me because I could help in a way no one else could.”
“If that was the way, Sanducci wouldn’t need you.”
Jimmy had a demon, too. His was just a bit harder to release than mine.
“He would,” I corrected. “Better if only one of us releases the beast, so the other can . . .” I took a deep breath. “You know.”
Once I became a vampire, I was evil incarnate. Because we’d contained the demon, when we released it . . .
Well, hell hath no fury like a vampire in a box. I’d decimate every Iya, and then I’d start in on whoever was left. The only one who’d be strong enough to contain me again would be another just like me.
“Get out of the way, kid.”
I fumbled with the catch on my collar, fingers thick and unruly. They did not want to follow the dictates of my brain. Becoming an evil thing always left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Usually blood.
I lifted my gaze and scowled at the heavy, dark clouds, imagining just one single beam of light. “Damn, I wish there was sun.”
The lead Iya was only a few feet away when a small ray of gold pierced the storm and shone across his face. He went up in flames like a Buddhist monk. The heat forced me back a step, then two. I bumped into Luther.
“What did you do?” he whispered.
I wasn’t sure. I could command a storm, bring the lightning and the thunder and the rain. I could even create a magic tattoo for shape-shifting by wielding that lightning like a mystical needle complete with supernatural ink—hence the phoenix on my neck.
But get rid of a storm? Bring the sun? Hadn’t seen that coming.
I tilted my face to the sky, imagining a giant split in the charcoal twilight. I envisioned the bright yellow daylight bursting through. I thought about it so hard, I broke a sweat. Reaching upward with both hands, I smacked my palms together then pushed them apart.
And the sun came out exactly as I’d wanted it to.
CHAPTER 11
Within minutes every last Iya was gone. I glanced over my shoulder. Luther appeared as shocked as I was.
“Lucky you didn’t take off the collar,” he said.
“Lucky,” I echoed. There’d have been a lot of blood before the ashes that way. Been there, done that, didn’t like it. Ashes and blood created a paste reminiscent of tar-and-feathering. I much preferred this method. The wind stirred, and the remains of the Iyas simply fluttered away.
“Why didn’t Ruthie tell me I could bring the sun?” I demanded.
Luther frowned. “Got me.”
“Well—” I waved my hand. “Get her ass out here.”
Luther lifted a brow. “You really want to go with that statement?”
“No.”
Ruthie had raised us with love and an iron fist, and she saw no reason to change what worked even when the kids became adults. Since Ruthie’s fist came in the shape of Luther’s hand these days, any disrespect and I might wind up snacking on my teeth.
�
��Just let me talk to her.”
Luther did his thing, and this time Ruthie appeared. “Lizbeth, you can’t be callin’ me all the time. I got things to do. Children to manage.”
“The world to save.”
“Darn right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me I could bring the sun and exterminate the Iyas?”
Luther’s body, usually in constant, teenage motion, stilled. His head tilted. “Say what?”
“I thought I had to go vamp, and I almost did. Then—” I wasn’t sure how to explain what I had done, or how. “I brought the sun and chased away the storm and they all—”
I made a gesture that indicated fire, explosion, kaboom. She got the picture.
“I nearly took off my collar.” I shuddered at the thought of what would have happened then. “You should have just told me to bring the sun.”
“I would have been happy to.” Luther’s eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened. “If I’d known you could.”
I’d been rubbing the grit of a hundred Iyas out of my eyes, but at her words I dropped my hand. “Say what?” I repeated.
“I sent you because I knew your vampire could deal with several hundred Iyas, and Jimmy could deal with your vampire. I had no idea that you could bring the sun.”
“And why can she?”
I turned just as Jimmy joined us. Sweat had drawn squiggly lines in the dust on his face. Streaks of blood—his? theirs?—marred his hands and forearms. Tiny burn holes randomly dotted a T-shirt that proclaimed TEAM EDWARD. Sanducci was a real comedian.
Jimmy’s cover for his globe-trotting-demon-killing was portrait photographer to the stars. He was a genius with a camera. Almost as good as he was with a silver knife.
His photos had graced magazines, books, posters, CD cases, once even Times Square. Everyone who was anyone understood that if Sanducci took their photograph, they had arrived, or they very soon would.
However, there was one final test of glory—Sanducci and his T-shirts. He wore them all the time—with jeans or a jacket, for breakfast or bed. But no matter how many were stuffed into his post box every month—and there were a lot—he only wore the shirts of those he had photographed. It became a stamp of stardom if Sanducci himself was photographed in your shirt.
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