Any Given Doomsday (The Phoenix Chronicles)

by Lori Handeland

  The coyote recovered and jumped on my back; his teeth sank into my shoulder. Yelping, I tried to throw him off, couldn’t, so I rolled again, smashing him into the ground, and he let go. I scrambled free and, before he could right himself, I did to him what he’d planned to do to me.

  The arterial spray blinded me. I wasn’t used to fighting with my face. I backed away sneezing and pawing at my snout. I was tempted to jump in the lake, but as soon as my vision cleared I saw Sawyer.

  He’d already killed one coyote and was chewing his way through another. But the third was huge, and he wasn’t going to fight in the way of every movie villain, politely allowing Sawyer to finish what he was doing before he tried to kill him. The big coyote preferred the tag-team method.

  But then so did I.

  I charged across the space separating us and plowed into him just as he sank his teeth into Sawyer’s back. The coyote grunted and let go, though not without taking a bit of Sawyer with him. I had to give Sawyer credit. Despite the pain, he didn’t stop what he was doing, which was holding the other shifter down, teeth buried in his throat, until he quit moving. There had to be a quicker way.

  A way I needed to find because the third coyote recovered from my broadside blow with such ease 1 knew he could wear me down. If I tired, I was done, because my only weapon against this one was my speed and determination.

  He charged me as I’d charged him, but I saw it coming and got out of the way. He stopped, turned, and launched himself before I had time to recover. Maybe speed wasn’t going to save me after all.

  I cast a quick glance at Sawyer. He was still screwing around. I gave a sharp yip as the big coyote knocked me over. The yip turned into a yowl when he bit into my leg; I scrambled to protect my soft underbelly.

  Kicking and clawing, I managed to hit him in the face, near enough to the eyes that he released me, but my leg wouldn’t hold when 1 tried to get up. My right flank sank to the ground.

  The big coyote’s mouth opened in a lolling, victory grin. He hovered over my prone form, letting me think about what he meant to do. From the expression in his eyes, I had a bad feeling I was going to wish I were dead long before I was.

  He turned in Sawyer’s direction; I’m sure he meant to lope over there and kill him; I wasn’t going anywhere. I used the last of my strength to yank on his hind leg as he’d yanked on mine.

  The bones crunched between my teeth; he went down with a thud and I twisted, forcing him onto his back. He scrabbled frantically, trying to defend his underbelly, but it was too late. Sawyer was there, and he finished him off, much quicker than he’d finished off any of the others.

  I lay for a minute, panting. The clearing was awash with blood and fur and bodies. Groaning, I tried to get up. Sawyer used his head to nudge me back down.

  He shimmered, body lengthening, fur shortening, face melding back into that of a man as he rose from four legs to two. If I didn’t know better I’d think he’d been performing some strange, Navajo mountain ritual, complete with red war paint.

  I whined. I wanted to change back too, but I didn’t know how. Panic made my heart thunder. What if I stayed this way?

  “Relax, Phoenix.”

  I understood him. How strange. If I was a wolf, how could I understand words? But I was a woman too. I had all my memories. I knew who he was, who I was.

  “Imagine yourself as yourself and yourself you will be.”

  Amazingly, that gibberish made sense. I closed my eyes and focused on my own image. Heat flooded through me, followed by icy cold. I saw a bright flash beyond my closed eyelids, as if lightning had flared from the clear blue sky. A breeze blew, ruffling hair, not fur. I opened my eyes and lifted my hand, tilting it this way and that, fascinated with each one of my five fingers.

  I couldn’t stop shivering. I wasn’t sure if that was because of the sudden loss of fur, or the dampness of the blood on my skin. I was naked, like Sawyer; the clothes I’d been wearing lay in shreds across the ground.

  I touched my face and my palm came away coated in red. My mouth tasted of hot copper pennies; my nose filled with the scent of them. Leaning over, I retched.

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  My head came up so fast, the world rocked. “What was in that fire?”

  “You think—” Sawyer broke off.

  “It wasn’t in the fire?”

  He strode to the lake, stepping neatly over the prone forms of the coyotes. Were they really dead? I couldn’t detect any breathing, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t start. However, Sawyer didn’t appear concerned that they might suddenly heal all their wounds and try to kill us again, so I decided not to borrow trouble. I had enough without it.

  Sawyer dived in. The splash and trickle lured me. I began to crawl in that direction.

  “What are you doing?” Sawyer stood hip deep, lifting water and splashing his chest, rubbing his arms, loosening the dried blood and dirt.

  “I need to wash.”

  “Walk.”

  “But my—” 1 paused, frowned, then glanced at the leg the coyote had mauled. It appeared to be healing at warp speed.

  I scrambled backward, as if to distance myself from the bizarrely knitting thing, but it was part of me and followed. I twisted, trying to see the wound on my shoulder where the first coyote had bitten me. I was too covered in blood to tell for certain, but I thought that one was completely gone.

  “What the hell?” I whispered.

  “Shape-shifters aren’t easy to kill.” His voice was matter-of-fact. He wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t heard before, except—

  “When did I become a shape-shifter?” “Last night,” he said simply, and ducked beneath the surface of the lake.

  First things first; I joined him. My mind wasn’t working quite right. I kept catching scents that distracted me. Blood, death, coyotes. How long was that going to last?

  I had a lot of questions. I just couldn’t seem to keep one of them in my head for more than an instant. So I dived into the chilly lake, keeping my distance from Sawyer. I had no doubt he was the source of this change in me. I wasn’t going to let him get close enough to change me again.

  By the time I’d washed all evidence of the battle from my body, Sawyer had dragged the coyotes into the trees. I wondered momentarily why, then decided I didn’t care as long as they were gone.

  I climbed out of the water and used the towel he’d discarded; the dampness on the cloth that he’d rubbed all over his naked body made me tingle. I couldn’t stop remembering the things I’d done with him, things I’d believed to be a dream but knew now to be real.

  I felt less scattered, more myself. Although yesterday I never would have walked around camp stark naked, today it didn’t matter. Sawyer had seen all of me, touched all of me too. What did I have to hide? Nevertheless, I went into the hogan and donned my last set of mountain attire.

  When I came out, he’d started a fire; this time the flames burned yellow, red, and orange, no rainbow connection. I didn’t smell anything but wood and meat. He’d donned his breechclout again, then skinned the rabbit and now roasted it on a spit.

  “Are they dead?” I asked. Not the most important question, but one I could handle.

  Sawyer nodded, staring into the flames, turning the rabbit spit slowly.

  “They can’t heal? Like… us?”

  He shook his head.

  “But they’re shifters.”

  “One of the ways to kill a shifter is a fight to the death with another shifter. The wounds don’t heal.”

  “Ours did.”

  “Because we shifted shape, which accelerates the healing process; when you’re dead, you can’t shift.”

  My gaze wandered over him. “How is it that your tattoos don’t heal?” I asked.

  “They weren’t made by a human wielding a needle, but by a sorcerer who wielded lightning.”

  “They’re magic tattoos,” I clarified.

  He glanced up; the hair casting over his face did no
thing to hide his wry expression. “Obviously.”

  Since his explanation of magic tattoos actually made sense, I moved on.

  “I still don’t understand why we couldn’t just blast the coyote shifters with silver like Jimmy and I did with the werewolves in Hardeyville.” Besides the fact that we’d left all our weapons at home. That decision looked stupider by the minute. But it hadn’t been my decision.

  Sawyer’s lips tightened when I said Jimmy’s name, but for once he answered my question. “These weren’t werewolves. They were coyote shifters.”

  I threw up my hands. “So?”

  “Werewolves are people who can turn into wolves. Coyote shifters are coyotes that can take human form.”

  That made me pause. I hadn’t considered the shifting might work both ways.

  “They were born animals and learned to walk as humans?”

  “Cursed to walk.”

  “Cursed,” I repeated.

  “By a witch.”

  “You?”

  He sent me a disgusted glance before returning his attention to the rabbit. “I’m not the only witch in the world, Phoenix.”

  “Why would walking as a human be a curse?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” he muttered.

  I frowned. “Explain the powers of a coyote shifter.”

  At first I thought he’d refuse, but despite what had happened last night and today, he was still supposed to be my teacher, preparing me to lead a battle I had no business leading.

  “They’re coyotes most of the time,” he said. “But one night a month they walk as humans, and they howl in despair for their coyote form.”

  “Isn’t being human an advantage? Power of speech. Indoor plumbing. Fingers.”

  “Humans who’ve never had the joy of being a beast don’t understand.”

  I’d had the joy. It hadn’t been so great.

  He must have read my expression because he continued to explain. “Being an animal means freedom. No job. Few worries. As a wolf, you belong to a pack. They take care of you. You have a mate. She never leaves you.” His gaze turned toward the mountains. “Until she dies.”

  There was more to that story, but he didn’t give me a chance to ask. Not that he’d have answered.

  “Becoming a human for only one night means they have nowhere to go. They wander the earth, naked and confused. Different.”

  I could see where that might suck.

  “What’s the purpose of one night as a human?”

  “A coyote shifter is more than a beast because it takes on certain aspects of the human side. Those aspects are regenerated every month beneath the moon.”

  “Full moon.”

  “New moon, when it’s dark and easy to hide.” He contemplated the rabbit. “A coyote shifter has the speed of a coyote, but they’re larger than most and much, much smarter. They understand how humans think, because they are human.”

  “Once a month.”

  Sawyer dipped his chin. “To the Navajo the coyote is a bad omen. They’re a symbol of black magic.”

  I let my gaze wander over his tattoos. “Then why don’t you have one? Aren’t you the black magic king?”

  “So they say. I could never bring myself to become a coyote.” He tilted his head to the side and slightly up, peering at me through the curtain of his long, black hair. “I was a boy once; I learned all the legends. I believed what I was taught. They said that Satan rode a coyote as he spread evil across the earth.”

  “I thought Satan was a Christian boogeyman.”

  “So did I, until I learned that the legend of the fallen angels is fact.” He let his hair fall back across his face as he stared at the fire once more. “Now I think he’s after everyone.”

  “Satan’s running around loose?”

  “Hard to say. But his underlings certainly are. My mother was one of them.”

  Despite myself, I took a step forward. Sawyer tensed. He didn’t want my sympathy. In truth, I didn’t want to give it to him. I was still understandably pissed off about the drugging-me-and-fucking-me incident. But we’d get to that.

  “Did you know we’d meet coyote shifters?”

  “How could I?”

  A better question would be: How couldn’t he? He knew everything else.

  “It just seems to me that a gun would be a good idea. Boy Scout law, be prepared. It’s a good law.”

  He leaned forward, putting his weight on his knees, before meeting my eyes. “This was a vision quest. That means we go into the mountains with only water and clothes. No weapons, no food.”

  “And what?” I threw out my hands. “Wait for the Great and Powerful Oz to help us?”

  He sighed. “I’m supposed to be teaching you.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Is that what you call it?”

  He held up his hand, and I stifled all of the angry words within me at the expression on his face. When he looked like that, even the wind died.

  “There will be times when you only have yourself and what power comes from within. You can’t depend on conventional weapons when dealing with the Nephilim. Most of them are killed by one thing, and it isn’t often a weapon forged by modern man since the Nephilim predate Christ.”

  When the only weapons were swords, knives, and the ever-popular cross and nail.

  “In the case of the coyote shifters,” Sawyer continued, “being killed by another shifter is the only thing that works, which makes them damn dangerous. They’ll keep coming and coming until whatever they’ve been sent to eliminate is dead.”

  Since what they’d been sent to eliminate was me, I remained silent. I was lucky to be alive, and I knew it.

  “How did they know where we were?” he murmured. “That’s what I can’t figure out. I cloaked our whereabouts.”

  “You’re no slouch in the power department,” I agreed.

  “I’m not,” he said without a trace of false pride. “Which means that whatever is sending these beings— the chindi, the coyote shifters, the Nephilim that are finding and killing the others—is extremely gifted.”

  “So maybe Satan is riding the coyote.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  Chapter 26

  Silence fell over the clearing. It didn’t last long.

  “You drugged me so I’d sleep with you.”

  His eerily light eyes flicked to mine. “Make no mistake, you’d have slept with me eventually. I just hastened the occurrence of the inevitable.”

  “What was the rush? Haven’t gotten any in a few centuries?”

  His lips curved. “Oh, I’ve gotten plenty.”

  The way he said it made me think he’d had better, and I wanted to smack him. Last night had been the best sex I’d ever had. Which only made me…

  Pathetic? Confused? Furious? Tempted?

  “That was rape,” I lashed out.

  “I didn’t force you to do anything you didn’t want to do. The ya’ lid is a Navajo herb that releases your true desires.” His voice lowered until I had to strain to hear him. “From deep down where those desires live.”

  Because his words made that deep-down part of me throb, I snapped, “So you say.”

  “You want to believe I raped you, believe it.” He stood and caught me by the forearms, hauling me against him. “That won’t change what happened and why.”

  I struggled, but I shouldn’t have bothered. He’d let me go only when he was finished with me.

  “I’m a catalyst telepath,” he said.

  I stopped struggling, my brain searching for the knowledge I’d obtained long ago. “You bring out abilities in others.”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  His brows lifted. “How do you think?”

  Sex.

  I heard the word in my head as clearly as if he’d said it.

  A vague sense of disappointment washed over me, followed closely by embarrassment at my stupidity. Had I really hoped he’d drugged me because he couldn’t wait another instant to get between my legs? App
arently I did, deep down where all those secret desires lived.

  “So you whore for the federation?”

  I had expected him to pale, let me go, maybe slap me in the mouth. 1 did not expect him to shrug and say, “Someone has to.”

  This time when I struggled, he let me go. “What ability did I need in such a great big hurry? Shape-shifting?”

  He frowned, opened his mouth as if to say one thing, then shut it, shook his head and said another. “Ruthie gave you her gift, which was clairvoyance, the ability to clearly see.”

  “The future? The past?”

  “The identities and supernatural natures of the Nephilim. However, you were partially blocking the talent. Or maybe your innate psychometery was. Knowing by touching is your gift. But you had to be able to hear, to see another way. You needed to open yourself.”

  “Sheesh, could you play a new tune?” I muttered. He ignored me.

  “I’d hoped I could get you to open without sex, but you were being as stubborn now as you were when you were here the first time.”

  “Excuse me if I’m no good at being open.” I made quotation marks in the air around the last word. I did have a few trust issues. Considering Sawyer, considering Jimmy, who could blame me?

  “Does Jimmy know how you—” I paused, uncertain how to say it.

  With his usual intuitiveness, Sawyer filled in the blank. “He knows what I do.”

  I expected fury, hot and bubbling. Instead my eyes stung, shocking me. I turned toward the clear, calm waters of the mountain lake and waited until the uncommon urge to weep passed. It didn’t take long.

  I thought about what had happened today, and a prickle of unease came over me. Shape-shifting was a Nephilim trait, at the least a breed. I had no idea who my parents were, but maybe Sawyer did.

  “What about the shifting?” I faced him. “Where in hell did I get that?” I braced myself to hear that I was descended from a werewolf or worse. As usual, I was wrong.

  “You’re an empath.”

  I’d never been particularly empathetic. People’s emotions usually annoyed me. Especially my own.