“No? Funny that the Strega’s in New York and so is Sanducci.”
“We know why he went there.”
“We do?”
“Aaargh!” I yanked my arm free, and he let me. “Stop talking.”
“Just one more thing,” Sawyer murmured. I glared. “I’ve never tried the method, more’s the pity, but there’s a legend that says in order to end the existence of a dhampir—”
I stilled as the skin on the back of my neck prickled. In horror or delight? I wasn’t sure I’d ever know the answer to that question. But I held my breath, waiting for him to finish.
“You must kill him twice in the same way,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s a legend.”
“Jimmy said not to believe the legends.”
“He would, wouldn’t he?”
Sawyer walked out. I took a quick shower, dressed, then packed what were mostly dirty clothes that weren’t even mine and stepped out of the house. Summer stood next to her truck.
“Sawyer asked me to take you to the airport.”
“How did he ask? He doesn’t have a phone.”
“He came to my house late last night.”
I scowled, remembering how he’d disappeared from the premises. What was it about Summer Bartholomew that made every man run directly from my bed to hers?
1 hadn’t planned to say good-bye, but now I realized I had a few questions that needed answering. If I left without those answers, I’d always wonder. I headed for the hogan.
“We kind of need to go if you’re going to make your flight,” Summer called after me.
I gave her the finger and ducked beneath the woven mat.
Sawyer lay on his bedroll. Stark naked, ankles crossed, arms beneath his head, he contemplated the drifting clouds through the smoke hole in the ceiling.
“Do you ever think to knock?”
“Why did you sleep with me last night?”
“We didn’t sleep.”
I kicked his bare feet with my boots. He didn’t even flinch, but he did lower his gaze from the roof to my face. Once that look would have made me grovel; now I just lifted a brow and demanded again, “Why?”
“You seemed insistent on sex.” He lifted one shoulder, then lowered it, his skin sliding along the skin of the sheep with a soft, sexy swoosh. “Who am I to say no?”
What had I expected to hear? That he’d been unable to resist me? That what had happened between us last night was more than sex for gain, for power, for the safety of everyone on earth?
Ha. Unlikely. Did I really want it to be?
“The snake said I’d have to do whatever it took to find my power.”
“You thought that meant do me? I can’t say I minded the freebie, but it wasn’t necessary.”
He was back to the man I’d hated, the one who had no heart, no soul, no compassion. Had he ever really been anything else? He’d tricked me into having sex with him for the sake of the world. That I’d enjoyed it, enjoyed him, didn’t change who he was, even if the sex had changed who I was.
The only difference now was that he no longer frightened me. There was an explanation for everything I’d seen, for everything he appeared to have done. He was a skinwalker, a catalyst telepath, and more. Since I now was too, the magic, be it black or not, didn’t scare me. The magic was part of me.
“What do you mean by freebie?” I asked. “Didn’t the sex we had last night allow me to have a vision of a Nephilim at last?”
“Hardly,” He smiled his thin, knowing smile, the one that always made me want to throw something at his head. “I don’t have visions, Phoenix. You got that talent from Ruthie. I unblocked you, and shared my skinwalker powers, the first time I made you come.”
“What? Then why—”
Sawyer continued to lounge on the sheepskin, body splayed suggestively, like an advertisement for a porn site. Was he trying to distract me?
“I mean… How? What?”
“Which is it? Why, how, or what?”
“Explain,” I said through clenched teeth. “Why didn’t I have a vision until this morning?”
He spread his hands, the muscles and bones moving smoothly, seductively, beneath his glistening skin. “Those who send the visions must not have had anything to say.”
“You asked Summer last night to take me to the airport today. How could you know then that I’d have a vision now?”
“I didn’t. But I knew that you would. I’ve done all I can, and it’s time for you to go.”
Was it time for me to go because he’d done all he could, or because he’d felt something he didn’t want to feel?
Either way, Sawyer was right. I had to go. If I could.
“I have all your powers?” I asked. He nodded, and I got a very bad feeling. “Which means I can’t leave the Dinetah as a woman?”
That was going to seriously screw up my life. How was I going to get on a plane as a wolf? Maybe that’s why Summer was here. She could book me a cage in the luggage compartment.
“That’s not a power,” Sawyer said softly, “but a curse.”
“You were cursed? By whom?”
“My mother.”
“She just keeps getting better and better,” I muttered.
“She knew if I was able to leave here, I’d kill her.”
“She’s still alive?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
I rubbed my forehead. Ding-dong, I’d really been hoping the Dreadful Witch was dead.
“You could still kill her as any one of your animals,” I said.
“True, but it’s difficult to travel across oceans and continents that way. Nearly impossible to find someone of her power without benefit of money and opposable thumbs.”
“You’ve tried it.”
“Every single year.”
Silence descended. What else was there to say? I turned to go. I’d been right in the first place. Why bother with good-bye? Sawyer wasn’t the type. Hell, neither was I.
I was reaching for the woven mat across the doorway when his hand slapped against the wall next to my head. “One more thing,” he whispered.
I tensed and he laughed, low and kind of scary. I refused to react. Hadn’t I just convinced myself I wasn’t afraid of him? I wasn’t. But I appeared to be afraid of how I felt about him.
I didn’t love him, but I couldn’t stop wanting him. The sex had been incredible—from the first time when I hadn’t known it was real right through the last time, when I’d wanted both power and him. I was downright terrified that if he touched me now I’d beg him to take me again, even knowing that there was no other reason for it than desire.
I’d called him a whore for the federation, so what did that make me?
He leaned forward. Despite my clothes, I could feel the unnatural heat of his skin. His chest pressed to my back; his hand lowered from the wall to my stomach as he slid his cheek along mine.
His face was smooth; I’d never seen him shave. I’d read somewhere that the original Native Americans had very little facial hair, but as they’d interbred with whites that had changed. Considering the aeons he’d lived, I’d guess what I’d read was true.
“You are capable of obtaining powers unimaginable,” he whispered. “But have a care. Never have sex with a Nephilim.” Sawyer turned his head so that his mouth was right next to my ear. “Never.”
His tongue flicked the lobe, and I jumped. He soothed me by stroking his clever fingers across my skin, which wasn’t very soothing at all.
I slapped my free hand over his, halting the movement, then slowly turned my head until our eyes met. “I’d think the power of a Nephilim would be all that much stronger.”
“There’s every chance you’ll absorb their evil as well as their magic. Nephilim don’t care who they kill, or how many, or what they destroy. They never look back, only forward, focused on themselves always and no one else.”
His voice was cool, his eyes gray ice, but I
knew he remembered his mother. I leaned in and kissed him, meaning to be gentle, a “sorry for your sucky childhood” without words, but he would have none of it.
Sure he kissed me back, but he made it all sex. Tongue and teeth, devouring me until I forgot what the kiss had started out to be.
He lifted his mouth from mine, but hovered there, so close our breath mingled. Then he kissed me once more, quick and hard, before moving away. “You could be headed into a trap.”
“I know.” I lifted my chin. “I’m going anyway.”
“I know.” Sawyer held out his hand, palm down, fingers curled inward. “This is for you.”
I reached out, and he dropped a silver chain and charm into my palm.
Ruthie’s crucifix.
“Where did you get this?”
He gave me a wicked smile, and then he was gone— out the door and… I’m not sure where, just gone, the yard empty, not a sway of the foliage to reveal in what direction he’d fled.
The morning breeze blew across lips still wet from his. My body was aroused from his touch, edgy with a lack of satisfaction.
I guess that had been good-bye.
Chapter 30
Summer sat in the pickup. I didn’t want to go anywhere with her, but I doubted there was a Yellow Cab company that serviced the dregs of the Navajo Reservation.
The trip to Albuquerque was long and silent. New Mexico had a definite shortage of airports large enough to service jets.
Summer kept her lips zipped. If I didn’t get a flash of her and Jimmy entwined every time I looked at her, I might just like her for that alone. But I did, so I didn’t.
The landscape was gorgeous—mountains bleeding into desert, every color found in nature bursting from the land, the trees, and the sky—revealing why so many artists and photographers gravitated here. There was something about the light in New Mexico that made everything seem etched by God.
Though one of the oldest cities in the U.S., Albuquerque appeared to have been plopped down at the foot of the Sandia Mountains on a whim. Ancient Native American culture existed right next to modern high-rises. According to local propaganda, the sun shone on Albuquerque over three hundred days a year. That should be enough to make anyone give the place a try.
We took the exit for the Albuquerque International Sunport, and Summer pulled over at the curb near check-in. “You’re on the three p.m. flight to Minneapolis, with a connection into Milwaukee.”
I just smiled at her and shut the door. I could care less which flight I was supposed to be on.
“Hey.” Summer scrambled out, ran around the front of the car, and caught me before I could escape into the terminal. A patrol car slowed, the officer rolled down his window, no doubt to tell her she couldn’t park there, and she flicked her hand in his direction. Sparkles flew from the tips of her ringers, cascading over the man’s face like confetti.
I gaped. I could see them, sticking in his eyelashes, coating his lips and cheeks. He drove on without saying anything.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
Her eyebrows lifted. “You saw?”
“Oh, yeah. Isn’t sparkly dust that makes people obey your every unvoiced command a little obvious on the keep-it-quiet scale?”
She rolled her annoyingly pretty blue eyes. “No one else can see. That you can, is… interesting. The only other person I’ve ever known who can see fairy dust is—” Now her eyes widened. “Oh,” she breathed.
From her surprise, I guessed she hadn’t been in on the plan to sacrifice me on Sawyer’s sex altar.
“Was he—” She broke off, biting her lip again. I could see where the gesture would be enticing. To a man. I wanted to reach out and yank her poor lip free of her tiny, perfect, white teeth.
“Good?” I finished.
She blinked. “I—uh… Well, I was going to say—”
“Rough? Gentle? Amazing? Mind-blowing? Totally fuckable?” She winced at each word. I was tempted to continue, but I finished with a simple, “Yes.”
Summer opened her mouth, thought better of whatever she’d been about to say, and shut it again. She was racking up smart points by the second.
“Sawyer told me to make certain you got on the plane to Minneapolis.”
“Knock yourself out,” I said, and went through the door.
She followed, of course. No one was going to be able to stop her. Not when she could shoot magic make-me dust from her fingertips. It might be worth sleeping with her to get some of that action.
Nah. I’d never been attracted to women, even though men were so obviously bad for me.
“You’re not supposed to go to New York.” Summer’s shorter legs worked double time to keep up.
“Are you sure? Because I think I am supposed to.”
“Sawyer’s called some of the DKs he knows. They’re going to meet you in Milwaukee so you can come up with a plan.”
“I’m not going into Manhattan with guns blasting.” I lowered my voice. I was in an airport after all. “I just want to find Jimmy, see what’s going on. I hear that’s my job.”
“Jimmy can take care of himself.”
Under normal circumstances, I was sure he could. However, I was equally certain the circumstances in Manhattan were not normal. But since I was in charge, I didn’t have to explain myself to Summer or anyone else, so I kept walking.
I wasn’t sure why Sawyer hadn’t tried to convince me to stay away from Manhattan himself. Probably because I wouldn’t have listened. But I wasn’t going to listen to Summer either.
I guess she felt that she had to try. Just like I had to try and save Jimmy.
“I can make you,” Summer said, still hustling along at my side.
“No you can’t.”
We’d reached the ticket line. I hoped that the difference between a fare to Milwaukee and one to New York wouldn’t be over my credit card limit. If I had to, I’d call Megan for a loan, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to.
I glanced at Summer, planning to tell her to fly along, and got a face full of fairy dust. Sparkles flew, clouding my vision; when they hit my face they felt like cool rain after a day in the sun.
Her mouth curved into a satisfied smile. I should have kept my mouth shut, let her believe I was going to use the ticket to Milwaukee, let her leave. But I’d never been very good at shutting up.
Instead, I leaned down, got into her face. “Don’t ever throw that pixie shit at me again. Errand of mercy, remember?”
Summer cursed. I was impressed with the depth and range of her vocabulary, which sounded much more foul coming from those plump pink lips than they ever would have sounded coming from mine.
“Nice.” I straightened. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“I don’t have a mother.”
“That makes two of us.” I stepped up to the counter, gave the clerk my name, and changed my ticket. Luckily there was a flight to New York leaving only half an hour after the flight to Milwaukee.
Though I hated to do it, I checked my duffel bag. I’d left the gun at Sawyer’s, but the silver knife was another story. There was no way I was getting that through in a carry-on, so into the luggage compartment it went.
I headed for the gate, the fairy still at my side. “You have a mother.”
I cast her a quick, suspicious glance.
“You’ll meet her one day.”
A chill went over me. “She’s alive?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You know who she is?”
“No. But you will.” She tilted her head, and I could have sworn I heard the far-off tinkling of tiny silver bells. “You might not like it.”
I was sick of useless advice from a fairy. I stopped walking and faced her. “If you’re flashing on the future, care to let me know how things are gonna turn out with the doomsday portion of our program?”
“Can’t.”
“Can’t because you don’t know or can’t because you aren’t supposed to tell me?”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know. The outcome isn’t certain. Everything depends on you.”
“Terrific,” I muttered. But Summer wasn’t finished.
“There will be pain, betrayal, all you hold dear will prove suspect. What you believed once, you can believe no longer.”
“So, the usual, then?” I paused as a thought occurred to me. Summer was a DK. She’d been killing Nephilim for centuries. She might be more useful than she looked.
“Ever meet up with a Strega?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Come on. You must have.”
“They’re very rare, extremely powerful.”
“Any tips on how to kill one?”
She shook her head again. “There’s no known way to kill a Strega.”
“Bullshit.”
She blinked. “If I knew of one I’d tell you.”
“Would you?”
“Of course. You’re the leader of the federation. I swore allegiance long ago.”
“You have to do what I say?”
“Well, I don’t have to, as in I’m compelled to, but you are the boss.”
“Goody.” I rubbed my hands together. “Before I go, do you have any insights on killing a dhampir?” Sawyer’s method really wasn’t working for me since it didn’t make much sense.
Now her eyes widened. “You can’t—”
“Oh, I assure you I can. If Jimmy’s in any way responsible for Ruthie’s death, he’ll answer to me.” I snapped my fingers. “Death of a dhampir. Spill it.”
“I never— I mean I didn’t because I wouldn’t—”
“Make some sense, Summer.”
“I never researched that because I wouldn’t hurt him.”
“Even if he was going to rip out your throat, drink your blood— Wait a second. Do you even have blood?”
“Jimmy’s not like that. He kills Nephilim, not people.”
“So he says.”
“You don’t trust him?”
I laughed in her face.
She bit her lip. “I should go with you.”
I paused for a minute, imagining what it would be like to locate Jimmy with Summer in tow. It might be amusing enough to put up with her, but I doubted it.
“I don’t need your help.”
“You do, but I can’t fly.”
Any Given Doomsday (The Phoenix Chronicles) Page 20