I reconnoitered the area, searching for the best place to stand so that my shots would not be sent wide by low-hanging branches, but I could still remain far enough in the shadows so no one would see me if they happened to glance out of their windows. Once I found such a location, I doused the arrows with gasoline and built a pile so they’d be easy to reload.
All I had left to do was wait. I listened for the wind, thrilled to discover it had died, almost as if it were waiting, too.
I had no warning—not a shuffle of feet against the earth, not a whisper of a breath, but suddenly that invisible target on my back burned. Slowly, I turned.
In the depths of the trees, where the light had faded and the shadows ruled, a single pair of eyes flared. Too short to be human, too soon to be a lucere, nevertheless, I knew a wolf when I saw one.
Only that single set of eyes; was this a scout? Did the luceres plan to enter Lake Vista through the woods as I’d feared? I didn’t want to shoot what appeared to be people with burning arrows, but I would if I had to.
However, my arrows were on the ground and so was the unloaded crossbow. I could make a grab for them, but I doubted I’d be able to get off a shot before the wolf was on me.
My Glock was in the car, useless against the luceres, but my knife rested in a sheath at my waist. I put my palm on the hilt. The weapon might at least slow the beast down.
The wolf snorted—not anger, more like amusement— and I stilled.
“Come into the light,” I murmured, and when it did, I lowered my hand. “Sawyer.”
I should have known.
CHAPTER 10
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
The black wolf stepped completely out of the shadows. He looked just like a wolf—huge head, long legs, teeth and tail. I could never mistake him for a werewolf—he wasn’t large enough and his shadow, when there was one, reflected only his animal form.
Sawyer was a skinwalker—both witch and shape-shifter—a powerful medicine man who walked a fine line between good and evil. He’d been cast out by the Navajo, who were very wiggy about the supernatural.
Sometimes one of his people tried to kill him. They never succeeded—it was damn near impossible to kill a skinwalker—which only added to his spooky-ass legend.
Long ago Sawyer’s mother, the woman of smoke, had put a curse upon him. He could not leave the Dinetah as a man, which made it damn difficult for him to do anything but drool anywhere else.
The wolf was his spirit animal, but he could change into just about anything, as long as he wore a robe that reflected its likeness. For Sawyer, his skin was his robe. Upon it he’d tattooed the images of every animal he wished to become.
He strolled to my pile of arrows, sniffed, sneezed, and rolled his eyes in my direction. Then he sat and waited.
I opened my mouth again to demand answers, then snapped it shut. Despite his many powers, Sawyer wasn’t a talking wolf. So far, I hadn’t met anyone who was— one of the few disadvantages of shape-shifting, along with that annoying lack of opposable thumbs. I headed for the Impala.
In my duffel I carried a silk robe in all the shades of midnight: blue, purple, black with sparkles of silver. A gift from Sawyer, or perhaps my own personal curse, I hadn’t yet tried it out. Guess now was the time.
The thing was bunched into a corner of the bag, beneath my clothes, gun, and toiletries. I held it up and the luscious material tumbled downward, revealing the shimmering image of a wolf—there, gone, and then there again.
I glanced at Sawyer, who still sat patiently, panting a little as he stared at me.
“Turn around,” I ordered.
He snorted again. His repertoire of commentary was a tad limited in this form. Nevertheless, I could practically hear his thoughts. Nothing I haven’t seen, and touched, and tasted before.
Which was how I’d gotten into this predicament in the first place. Sex with Sawyer had given me the ability to shape-shift, too.
He needed only to brush his clever fingers across one of the inked images that graced his body, and he would become that animal. Since I’d gotten my power from him, I could shape-shift the same way. Touch a tattoo, become a beast. It was slightly more complicated than that, but not by much.
However, since Sawyer’s tattoos appeared on his human skin, this avenue wasn’t open to me now. Luckily—I clenched my fingers more tightly around the purple silk—there was another way.
I glanced at the western horizon. No time for modesty; I had maybe half an hour of daylight left. I needed to talk to Sawyer, and then fight the invasion of the luceres.
Quickly I lost my jewelry and clothes—I didn’t have enough with me to just burst through them—then I spun the robe across my shoulders. As the material settled against my skin, I changed.
A burst of light made me close my eyes. My skin went cold then hot, and I was falling. By the time my hands met the ground they were paws.
In this form, I could think like a human. I could reason; I could plan. I could also kill.
Shape-shifters are stronger, faster, better than their bestial counterparts. We were stronger, faster, and better than humans in a lot of ways, too.
For instance, as a wolf I could see into the damp darkness of the forest much farther than I’d been able to seconds before. I could smell everything, hear so much. In the distance, cars swooshed down a highway. Beneath that tree, a deer had slept.
I shook my head, felt the breeze brush my fur, fought the urge to run until I found that deer and brought it down with ease. My mouth watered. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
Phoenix.
The word whispered through my head in Sawyer’s voice—so deep, so luscious, yet treacherous, it made me shiver.
Sawyer had always called me “Phoenix”; I couldn’t ever once remember him calling me “Liz” or “Elizabeth.” He’d definitely never called me “baby.”
I winced at the memory of Jimmy, then immediately brightened. If Sawyer were here, he wasn’t helping Jimmy to die.
He slid along my body, rubbed his snout against mine. As much as I wanted to stick a knife in him most days, in this form we were pack, a connection that sang to me like a siren. I couldn’t resist it, even when I knew that following him might get me smashed to death on sharp and dangerous rocks.
How did you find me? I thought.
“Speaking” as animals was a form of telepathy. Words were thoughts; feelings were scents. It’s hard to explain.
I will always find you.
Not only did the stone apparently protect me from the Naye’i, it was also a homing device. Sawyer sensed where I was whenever I wore it.
I had a visit from your mother. She didn’t much care for the turquoise.
His snout opened in a doggy grin, the most amusement I’d seen from Sawyer in any form. I caught the scent of something sweet; he was definitely laughing.
You thought she’d come after me?
Eventually.
Why?
I knew you’d become someone special, Phoenix. Which only meant killing you would be at the top of every Nephilim’s to-do list.
Killing me appears to be the new favorite pastime of the next up-and-coming Antichrist wannabe.
His laughter died. / don’t understand.
Quickly I filled him in on Summer’s theory.
Have you ever heard that before?
No, but the fairy’s right. Prophecies are guidelines and they can be interpreted many ways. Regardless of if Doomsday is still in motion or on hiatus, the Nephilim will try to kill you, and the Naye’i needs to he stopped. We continue on the same way we have been.
Why did you come looking for me? I asked.
I had a feeling you might need help.
I stared at him for several seconds, suspicious, but who was I to argue with a premonition.
I had a vision, I said. This place will be wiped out by luceres if we don’t do something.
What do you suggest?
In wolf form, Sawy
er wouldn’t be able to help me shoot luceres, even if I’d had an extra bow. However …
One of the ways to kill a shifter is a fight to the death with another shifter. Healing is accelerated by the shift itself, and if you’re dead you can’t shift, which means healing a mortal wound … ain’t gonna happen.
Technically, I could have gone that route myself, shifting then fighting. However, I wasn’t the killer Sawyer was. I hadn’t been a wolf often enough or long enough to be much more than bad at it.
I’d been concerned that I wouldn’t be able to shoot with sufficient speed or accuracy to kill all the luceres. But now that Sawyer was here . ..
I’ll blast them as they come out of the window. Any that I miss …
Sawyer’s gaze swung toward the nearby community center, his strangely light gray eyes assessing the layout. I won’t.
I had no worries that he wouldn’t be able to handle himself. I’d seen Sawyer fight a pack of coyotes once, with a little help from me. He knew exactly what to do when he was outnumbered. The luceres wouldn’t stand a chance.
Nearby, a dog began to bark frantically. Several others joined in, and the ruff on the back of my neck stood up. Domestic animals go ballistic in the presence of shape-shifters. They sense our otherness.
They can smell us, I thought.
Sawyer appeared at my side; he lifted his snout, and his fur ruffled. The breeze is blowing in our direction.
Which meant the dogs had caught wind of something arriving from the opposite end of Lake Vista.
I caught a whiff of something myself—human with just a dash of beast, the scent of skin with a touch of ozone.
Though I should have shifted back, get dressed, move my ass. I wanted to see them. I needed to know.
With the superior eyesight of my wolf form, I detected a hint of movement. A line of people walked right down the center of the suburban street. Shoulder to shoulder they came, looking like gunslingers in an old Western. Tombstone by way of the Land of Lincoln.
They obviously had no fear of being seen, of being asked what they were doing, why they were here. They believed they would own this town, and even if someone saw them, questioned them, tried to stop them, it wouldn’t matter. They’d be killing every living soul soon enough.
I hadn’t realized I’d moved toward the Impala, that I’d reached for my human form and become me again until the breeze brushed across skin instead of fur and made me shiver.
Quickly I dressed and moved into position. Sawyer glided past me as the luceres disappeared into the community center. I lifted the first arrow and fitted it into the crossbow. Sawyer sank onto his belly and wiggled through the long grass until he lurked right next to the building.
Darkness fell; candles flickered on the other side of the window. I swore I could hear the low-voiced chants from within. Maybe it was just a sliver of memory from my vision, probably it was the increase in my senses from the absorption of either Jimmy’s or Sawyer’s powers.
A sudden flare of light and color to the east was followed by the soft pop of the gunpowder, and the first lucere burst through the window in a shower of glass.
Though I was now in human form, and my eyesight was not as good as it had been when I was a wolf, it was still better than most. I could see the dark shadow of the lucere arching toward the ground.
I lit the arrow, let it fly, enjoyed the trail of orange cutting through the night, followed by a soft thunk and then a burst of gray-black ash sprinkling over the grass as the lucere disappeared from this world forever.
Another came through the window, hitting the ground and loping off toward the houses before I could grab a second arrow. Sawyer sprang out of the tall grass, a low blurry shape that moved so quickly he seemed to vanish from one place and reappear in another.
He landed on the back of the lucere and knocked it to the ground. I couldn’t see what he was doing, I could only hear the snarling, the growling, then the yelping. Since Sawyer would never yelp, I murmured, “Two down,” and fit another arrow into my bow. I lifted the weapon to fire and nearly dropped everything.
Between me and the community center, a column of smoke swirled, faster and faster, until I could no longer follow the morph from wisp to woman.
Suddenly she was there, solid and deadly. Her smile said she’d won even before the battle had begun. It didn’t take me long to realize why.
The turquoise was no longer around my neck. Instead, it hung over the rearview mirror of the Impala, where I’d placed it before I’d shape-shifted, then left it forgotten in my hurry to shift back.
No wonder she was smiling. The woman of smoke had been waiting for this.
I loosed the burning arrow. Couldn’t hurt. Maybe I’d actually have my first piece of incredible luck, and she’d burst into flames, dying in agony as I roasted marshmal-lows over her corpse.
I should have known better. Any luck I had was usually bad.
With the speed she’d shown when she’d snatched my knife at Murphy’s, the woman of smoke plucked the ar-row out of the air and tossed it to the side. The long, dry summer grass began to smolder.
“Uh-oh.”
Luceres tumbled out of the window, ran toward the houses. As far as I could tell, Sawyer was still messing with the first one.
“Sawyer!” I shouted, but the woman of smoke lifted her hand like a crossing guard stopping traffic, and the word was flung back down my throat, the sound never reaching the air.
As she stalked toward me, an ice-cold wind that smelled of brimstone singed my nostrils, making my eyes water. I’d never smelled brimstone, but what else could it have been? The scent was hell unleashed, fire, ashes, death, all that was evil, the end of the world come upon us.
I coughed, choked; tears streamed down my face. Then I reached for my knife—at least I’d remembered to lace that back around my waist—but before I could pull it from the sheath her hand closed about my wrist.
Wherever her fingers touched my skin it sizzled, but not with heat, with cold. The sensation reminded me of the pain that followed near frostbite, the aching, the burning, the tingling that occurred when frozen flesh began to warm.
She snapped my wrist, the dry click made by the bone breaking exactly the sound of a twig being crushed beneath a boot in the depths of a winter wood.
As I opened my mouth to scream, she yanked my knife from its sheath and killed me.
CHAPTER 11
One strike straight to my heart, then another in exactly the same place. The woman of smoke knew what I was. Did I have no secrets left?
A horrible, dying gurgle bubbled from my lips, and she laughed, a bizarre sound of both joy and malevolence. Nearby, something howled—a mournful wail of pain and fury.
The Naye’i glanced over her shoulder, lips pulling away from her gleaming white teeth into a snarl. She spun, becoming smoke again, before whirling upward and disappearing into the night.
I tumbled to the ground with the knife still embedded in my chest. As my vision faded, more snarls erupted in the distance, and the earth seemed to rattle beneath the heavy thuds of an epic battle.
The air around me went dark, and the world went out like the snuff of a candle’s flame beneath the rain.
I woke at Ruthie’s place. I wasn’t surprised. Not only did I go there when I needed help, but Ruthie often welcomed those who’d died too soon to her own little purgatory. This meant that Ruthie’s house was usually filled with children, just as it had been on earth.
Ruthie had run a group home on the south side of Milwaukee. When she’d first opened her doors to stray kids and the occasional dog, Ruthie had been the only African American within thirty miles. She hadn’t cared. Amazingly, no one else had, either.
I went through the gate in the white picket fence, strolled up the pristine sidewalk to the green-trimmed white house, and knocked. The music of children’s laughter, the trill of their happy voices, rang from inside. The door opened, and there she was—the only mother I’d ever known.
&
nbsp; She looked exactly the same as the day she’d died— minus the blood splatter, torn throat, and various bite marks.
“Lizbeth,” Ruthie said, and gathered me into her arms.
Despite the knobbiness of her elbows and knees, the boniness of her entire body, Ruthie gave the very best hugs.
She’d taken me in when I was twelve, fresh from another foster home that didn’t want me. She’d seemed ancient even then—her lined face the shade of rich coffee, her dark eyes so sharp she saw everything about you, even things you’d spent a lifetime learning to hide.
None of that mattered to Ruthie—where you’d been, what you’d done, who you were. Once she took you in, she never let you go. For throwaway kids, that promise was worth more than money, it was worth our very souls. To be accepted, to know that no matter what happened, Ruthie would love you …
We’d have done anything for her.
I was still having a bit of a problem accepting that Ruthie had purposely gone searching for kids who were “special,” taking them in and preparing them to become part of the federation. I knew she hadn’t had any choice—we were talking about the end of the world—still, it would have been nice to be chosen for myself and not my psychic abilities.
However, since my psychic abilities were what had, more often than not, gotten me tossed from every foster home I’d been in, being chosen for them instead of despite them wasn’t the worst thing.
I drew back, and Ruthie let me go. She touched my cheek and worry shadowed her eyes.
“I’m dead, aren’t I?”
She sighed and turned away, leaving the door open as an invitation to follow. I trailed after her, down the hall and into the sunshine-bright kitchen, where the large back windows allowed her to watch over the children in the yard.
I counted four. The small number, and lack of a baby carriage, lightened my spirits. The last time I’d been here the place had been bursting with kids I’d failed to save, as well as a tiny bundle that wouldn’t stop crying.
That was a memory I’d do just about anything to erase from my brain.
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