“What, exactly, do you feel?”
Sawyer must have loosened his hold a little because when Luther spoke again, his voice had returned almost to normal. “Oh, the fury still rumbled, but the pain was gone. I walk by someone, and there’s a hum, like bees or flies, but there ain’t none. Sometimes they stare at me and then eyes …” He shuddered. “It’s like there’s a demon in there.”
Silence fell over us all. Luther sighed. “I know I’m crazy.” His shoulders slumped. “Just like they always told me.”
Sawyer let him go. “They were always wrong.”
Poor kid. I saw Ruthie’s hand in this. I understood why I’d had to take this trip—to Detroit, to Indiana— and why I’d had to bring Sawyer.
“You’re coming with us.’” Sawyer said.
“You think I’m stupid.” The kid sneered.
Like the beast he was, Luther went for Sawyer’s throat. Like the beast he was, Sawyer sensed the movement and jerked back. Luther’s fingers tangled in the rawhide strip that held Sawyer’s earth-filled talisman and broke it in two.
I had to close my eyes against a sudden bright light, and when I opened them again, Sawyer was a wolf.
CHAPTER 24
Luther stared at Sawyer; Sawyer stared at Luther, then Sawyer lifted his lip in a silent snarl.
“Dude,” Luther said. “Cool.”
Sawyer’s lip lowered back over his sharp, pointy teeth.
“What is he?” Luther asked.
“Skinwalker.”
“Werewolf?”
“Not exactly.”
Quickly I explained that Sawyer was more than a werewolf much, much more than a witch.
“What are you?” he asked.
“Psychic.” I kept the sex-empath, ghost-channeling, psychometric part to myself. “What we call a seer. I can see—hear—what they are.”
“What are they? Demons?”
“Half demon, half human.”
The kid got a faraway expression in his eyes. “They don’t seem human.”
He was right about that.
I reached out and took the talisman from Luther’s hand. He blinked as if he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it. “Sorry,” he said.
I tied the thing around Sawyer’s neck and then stood back to watch the transformation. Sawyer’s shifting of shape was different from any I’d ever witnessed.
His dark fur twinkled, as if dusted with diamonds, then his outline re-formed, growing larger, taller, pushing against a circle of light until he burst free a man.
A very naked man. His clothes and shoes lay in tatters on the ground. Luckily, he’d bought a few sets.
He straightened, unashamed of his nakedness. Luther looked away, then quickly back, then away again.
“You said you can see what they are,” Luther began. “Can you see what I am?”
“Marbas.”
He choked. At first I thought he was coughing, then I realized he was trying to hold back a sob. “I am a demon. I’m evil. I did those things I dreamed about.”
“What things?”
He closed his eyes. “Terrible things.”
I brushed my palm over his shoulder, as if I were offering comfort and bam— I nearly sobbed myself.
For the most part foster care is given by caring individuals who truly want to help. And then there are those who prey on the weak. Perhaps Nephilim, perhaps not.
Luther had been molested. They’d found his foster father in pieces all over the backyard.
Good for Luther.
But the kid didn’t remember doing it? That was. .. strange.
I tried again, touching him lightly on the hand. He’d only changed at night, when deep dreams had allowed him to open to the magic. He had no control over the shift. Yet.
“You aren’t evil,” I said. “You didn’t kill those bullies, and you could have. Killed them, buried them, and moved on. No one would have ever known. That’s what evil would have done.”
“Really?” The kid’s voice was hopeful.
“Really.” I glanced at Sawyer, who dipped his chin, answering the question I hadn’t even asked. “Sawyer can help you understand what you are and how to use it.”
“Sawyer?” Luther’s voice trembled. “Not you?”
After what I’d just seen, I understood his reluctance to work with a man. If it were that big of an issue, maybe I could get Summer to help him. Once I found her.
“That’s not my job,” I said. “He’s training and I’m—”
Luther lifted his head. His eyes were shiny, but no tears had fallen. Crying was a weakness kids like Luther, kids like me, couldn’t afford. “You’re what?”
I opened my mouth to explain and Sawyer jumped in. “We’ll talk in the car.”
I glanced at Luther, afraid we’d have another light on our hands, and if he got really upset, we might have a lion on our hands. How in hell would we get that in the car?
But he rubbed his eyes and nodded. “Okay.”
He disappeared into the ridiculous excuse for a building, and I turned to Sawyer. “How did you know he was here?”
“That’s what I do, or at least what I did before my mother confined me to the Dinetah.”
“That’s right. Ruthie told me you were good at recruiting new federation members.”
“There’s no need for recruitment. We are what we are we’re born for a reason. I bring out special talents, refine and train them.”
I remembered how he’d brought my talent out. “You can’t—”
His nostrils flared, fury sparked in his eyes. “The child is a Marbas. He has shifted; he has killed. He doesn’t need to be opened to the magic, he just needs to be taught to control it. To bring it out when he wishes to and not when his anger or fear releases the beast against his will.”
“But—”
“You think I’d touch him?”
“You touched me.”
“You’ll never forgive me for that, will you?”
“You want to be forgiven?” I asked.
He thought a minute, then shook his head. “I did what needed to be done.” He glanced at the sunny sky. “As you will. We’re more alike than you know.”
“We’re nothing alike.”
He didn’t answer, which was answer enough. Sawyer believed what he believed. He didn’t care if I agreed with him or not. Which, come to think of it, Was a lot like me.
“How did you know he was here?” I repeated.
Sawyer tapped his temple.
“Voices?”
He shook his head.
“Then what?”
“As the boy said, it’s a buzz. Bees, flies. You feel the power along your skin.”
“You feel DKs?”
“And seers.”
“But he felt Nephilim.” I frowned. “How can that be?”
“All DKs have the ability to a certain extent. They know evil; they can sense it, feel it, some smell it. But they don’t know what it is without their seer. That sixth sense means less mistakes.”
“They see evil people,” I murmured.
Sawyer’s face creased. “What?”
Why I bothered to make pop culture references around him, I had no idea.
I supposed things could get confusing. Demons in a crowd, which one is “the one.” You think you know, but then again maybe you don’t. But if you can feel, sense, smell it. then you can kill it without a qualm. Worked for me.
“In theory”—I bent to pick up my knife and return it to the sheath at my waist—“a DK could just stick a Nephilim with silver, see if they burn.”
“And if they don’t, the DK is dead. Better to wait for the information from your seer and kill them right the first time. The federation was set up the way it was because their method works and has for a very long time.”
“If it worked, they’d all be dead.”
“They will be.” he said.
“You really think so?”
“No.”
Why did I try to talk to Sawyer at all?
Luther reemerged with a backpack as battered as his shoes. I remembered very clearly showing up at Ruthie’s with everything I owned in a similarly sized package.
I didn’t even consider what legal issues might exist in transporting a ward of the state—and probably not even this state, but who knew? Someone might be searching for Luther, and then again no one might be. Sadly, when troublesome kids went missing, they were often written off as lost.
In my mind, Luther was already part of the federation, which made him my responsibility. I’d deal with the legalities if we managed to save the world from the prophesied invasion of the demon horde. If we didn’t, I doubted there’d be anyone left to care about Luther, which probably wasn’t too far removed from the present situation.
“Is there someone who might miss you?” I asked, just to be on the safe side.
Luther rolled his eyes.
“How is it,” Sawyer asked as he led the way back to the Impala, “that you came to be here, in this town, this road, this house?”
“I just drifted, you know?”
Jimmy and I had both drifted when we were much younger than Luther. There was something in this kid’s eyes that reminded me a lot of Sanducci the first time I’d seen him. The big mouth that masked the fear, the need peeking out from behind the bravado.
“When I got here, this seemed like a good place to wait.”
“For what?” Sawyer asked.
Luther shrugged, his shoulder bones shifting beneath his threadbare shirt, reminding me of the shoulder bones of a lion, sliding beneath loose skin as he moved across the savannah.
More and more I was getting the sensation that everything happened for a reason, in its own time, or whatever other cliche applied. Life was fate, if you weren’t of the opinion that God had a plan.
Right now I knew with rock-solid certainty that Luther had been waiting for us.
Ahead, the powder-blue Impala shimmered between the low-hanging, leaf-heavy limbs of the trees. A few scratches marred the once perfect paint. Summer and I were going to have words, but then that had been a given from the beginning.
We got back on the road to Brownport, and after pulling on some clothes, Sawyer explained things to Luther. I don’t think I’d ever heard him string together that many words at one time. He laid it all down—past, present, and future prophecy. What the kid was, what he would become. He took it pretty well.
“Sweet,” Luther said, and then he went to sleep.
I stopped at the first Starbucks I found, grabbed my laptop and went inside. Luther didn’t stir. We opened the windows and let him sleep.
I ordered two iced lattes, handed them both to Saw-yer, and set up shop where we could keep an eye on the kid. Then I accessed the federation Web site with the code Summer had given me and typed Marbas into the search column.
“Descendant of the demon Barbas.” I glanced at Saw-yer, who handed me my latte.
“Makes sense.”
He took a sip of his, looked as if he might spit the iced coffee on the ground, then swallowed thickly and set his cup down with a disgusted click and a very dirty glance in my direction. I guess he’d never had one before. And wouldn’t be having one again.
“A breed is the son or daughter of a demon,” he finished.
“Half demon,” I said.
“The Nephilim might be part human but they don’t act like it,” Sawyer said, echoing Luther’s earlier comment. “When the legends refer to a demon, they’re talking about the Nephilim.”
“So what kind of demon is a Barbas?”
Sawyer shrugged and motioned at the computer. I typed some more.
“A great lion that, at a conjurer’s request, changes into a human. From the Latin barba, a type of plant used to invoke demons.” I sat back. “So a Barbas is a lion that turns into a person, but a Marbas—”
“Would appear to be a person,” Sawyer said, “who turns into a lion.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “His parents were killed by lions.”
Sawyer’s gaze sharpened. “How interesting.”
“Why?”
“One of his parents was a lion and from the description you read, I’d say the other was a conjurer whose magic allowed his or her spouse to remain human.”
“Why would lions—Barbas or Marbas—kill their own kind?”
“In nature, there’s only one alpha male per pride. Battles are fought, and when a male is vanquished, his cubs are killed, too.”
My gaze went to the Impala. Luther slept on, the descending sun shining on his hair, picking up the gold in the brown and making it sparkle. “That’s horrible.”
“Law of the jungle,” Sawyer said.
“The jungle sucks.” My voice was too loud and several people glanced my way, then went back to their books, their kids, their laptops. I lowered the volume. “This isn’t the jungle.”
“It is to them.”
My gaze was once again drawn through the front window and back to the tangled, golden-hued hair of the man-child in my backseat.
“Then why did they leave this cub alive?”
CHAPTER 25
“Who knows?” Sawyer reached for his iced coffee, seemed to remember that he’d hated it, and let his hand fall back to his knee.
“Maybe the kid does.” I tossed my cup, packed up the computer, and headed outside. People inside glanced furtively at Sawyer as we passed.
The second set of tourist clothes weren’t any better at disgusting Sawyer’s otherness than the first had been. His biceps bulged, the white tank only made his skin appear sultrier, and his tattoos, the ones that were visible, seemed to shimmer and dance beneath the electric lights. His hair billowed around his shoulders like an ebony river.
As we climbed into the Impala, Luther sat up, rubbing his eyes like a child. “Where are we?”
“Not a clue.” I turned, extending a bag of muffins and several cartons of milk over the seat.
Luther’s face lit up. His teeth were white but crooked. My tongue skimmed over my own not quite right teeth—typical in foster care. The government wasn’t going to pay for a million and one sets of braces.
As he reached for the food and the drinks, I asked, “What do you know about your parents?” then brushed his hand with my own.
Lions. A lot of them. Stalking through the suburban house. Blood everywhere.
Mommy, her eyes like mine, yellow-green and angry. She screams for Daddy to let her change, but Daddy is with me. Daddy touches me and then —
“I wasn’t there,” Luther said.
He was telling the truth, or what he thought was the truth. His dad had touched him, and Luther had no longer been there. Because his father—the conjurer—had sent him somewhere else.
Sawyer was looking at me. I shook my head. I didn’t think Luther knew anything useful, and I didn’t think the lions—be they Marbas or Barbas—knew he existed. Or if they did, they had no idea where he’d gone. If they had, they would have followed, and Luther had been in no position then to stop them from killing him.
Luther downed the muffins and milk like the hungry lion he could easily become, then fell asleep again. He was such an odd, yet endearing, mixture of little boy and almost man. I found myself drawn to him. I wanted to protect him, even though he could no doubt protect himself much better than I ever could.
Once I was certain the kid was out cold. I murmured to Sawyer, “I saw something strange.”
That I could use the word strange in a conversation about lion-shifters and conjurers was in itself strange.
“Luther loved his parents; they loved him and each other.”
“Why is that strange?”
“They’re demons, or at least the mother was.”
“You think love is only for humans?”
“What about your—” I paused, but he knew who I meant.
“Just as there are humans who are much less than human, there are Nephilim who are much less than half human.”
“So she was an exceptio
n?”
“Unfortunately she was more of the rule and what you saw in the boy’s past an exception. It may be that the conjurer was not only able to control the shifting of the Barbas but also her evil tendencies.”
It was something to think about—all the way to Brownport.
The town was small—mostly college—but it didn’t have the usual college-town feel. Or perhaps it didn’t have the usual Wisconsin college-town feel.
For instance, there wasn’t a bar on every other corner. There wasn’t a bar anywhere at all. Brownport just might be dry, which was understandable considering the college was Bible.
Instead, the businesses all reflected service to the people who lived and worked there and to the entity they served. There was one church, and it was huge.
Brownport Bible College spread out at the south end of town. Backed by a ripe and swaying cornfield, it consisted of ten buildings with two dorms—one male, one female.
Both the school and the town seemed empty. According to the Web site, which I’d also accessed at Starbucks, most of the students went on mission trips at this time of year. But I’d been assured by Carla that Dr. Whitelaw was in residence—he lived here—and that I could find him in his office in the late afternoon, right before his evening summer school course.
Finding him wasn’t difficult. Instead of having their offices in the buildings where they taught, each professor had one on the third floor of the administration building.
The structure was ancient—no elevator that I could see. The tile had yellowed. The walls showed water damage. On the third floor, only one door was open and through it spilled light.
Inside a man sat at a desk all alone. Books were piled on every surface not covered by papers. The bookcases overflowed; bound term papers had been stacked along two walls. On top of the highest stack sat a hat that made something tickle in my head. I recognized that hat, but I didn’t know why.
The guy didn’t hear us. No big surprise considering I was with a shape-shifting Indian and a lion in human form. They tended to move quietly, and I was no slouch in that department myself. However, the man’s ears were plugged with white ear buds and cords trailed down each side of his neck, making a V that disappeared into the pocket of his light blue, short-sleeved button-down shirt,
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