He wore a tie and khaki trousers, loafers with socks, all of which had to be hell in this heat. The administration building either wasn’t air-conditioned, or the powers that be didn’t see the point of turning it on in the summer. The place was probably cold as hell in the winter, too.
A book lay open in front of him, and a yellow legal pad covered with illegible scribbles lay next to that. He tapped a pen on the desk to a beat I could easily distinguish since I had superior hearing, and he was blasting it. Of course Guns N’ Roses sounded best at top volume.
Sawyer stepped forward, and I lifted my hand. I wanted to get a good look at the guy first, get a feel for him. Xander Whitelaw could be our salvation. Or, if what he knew turned out to be bogus, the seal of our doom.
His blond hair curled over the edge of his collar too long for an interview, but probably acceptable for the summer semester. I’d figured his skin would be sallow, even sickly—did prophecy professors get out much?— but instead his arms sported a golden tan. His shoulders were narrow, but sculpted. From what I could tell, he looked like a long-distance runner.
Suddenly the man shifted to the right, bringing his pen up to his mouth like a microphone as he sang the last line of “Paradise City” at top volume.
Axl really had nothing to worry about.
His jazzy side move must have brought us into his peripheral vision, because the man froze and turned his head. He was younger than I’d expected, around my age. Perhaps this wasn’t Xander Whitelaw at all but a grad student.
His face was long, chin square with a tiny scar just beneath his lip; his blond hair sifted over dark brown eyes, framed by rimless glasses. He was cute if you were into book people—teachers, writers, librarians.
I expected him to be flustered that we’d heard his solo, perhaps blush. Instead he grinned, the expression making him appear even younger if possible and quite a bit more interesting than he’d been without it. If it had been another time, another place, make that another world, and I’d been another person, I might have smiled back, given him my number, or taken him home.
As it was, I didn’t return the expression, just stepped closer and motioned for him to remove his ear buds.
“Oh.” He did, then hit a button, cutting Axl off mid-wail. “Sorry.”
“I’m looking for Dr. Whitelaw.”
“You found him.”
His voice had a soft Southern lilt that made you want to lean forward in expectation of his next words.
“You must be one of the youngest Ph.D.s in recorded history,” I muttered.
Whitelaw laughed. “Not really. You’d be surprised at the rate of genius in the hallowed halls of education, Miss …”
“Phoenix.” I led with my hand. “Elizabeth.”
Our fingers touched. I didn’t get much. He was excited about his new book, enjoyed his summer class, thought I was exotically attractive—I nearly yawned at that observation. How many men had told me the same in my lifetime?
“And you are?” He glanced past me, gaze avid.
If I hadn’t gotten that flash of interest in me, I’d think he was gone on Sawyer. As his hand slipped from mine I understood why. Sawyer was Navajo. Whitelaw couldn’t wait to get him alone and interview him about his life, his family, his past. That would make for an amusing conversation. Too bad it would never happen.
Sawyer and Luther introduced themselves politely enough, though they both refused to shake hands by folding their arms across their chests, then staring Whitelaw down. I half expected them to start snarling.
Whitelaw didn’t seem insulted. The Navajo weren’t very touchy-feely, so he’d probably had his handshakes ignored before.
He turned to me. “How can I help you?”
“We—uh—” I stopped. How was I going to explain what we wanted and why we thought he had it?
Silence fell over the room. Sawyer and Luther were no help at all. They seemed to have taken an instant dislike to the professor, and I wasn’t sure why.
As I floundered, trying to figure out how to bring up the subject, my gaze fell on the book Whitelaw had been studying, which had flipped closed when he stood.
The Benandanti.
That was too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.
“You’re interested in ancient Italian legends?” I nodded toward the desk.
“Among others. I’ve studied the benandanti before, but lately —” He spread his hands, smudged with ink. I got the impression that when he studied, he did so with the same blissful abandon that a child would finger-paint in kindergarten.
“Lately?” I prompted.
“I’ve felt oddly compelled to learn more about them.”
Oddly compelled. Hmm.
One person’s odd compulsion was another’s supernatural push. Was the good doctor just a bit psychic? Had he felt Carla watching him? Had he sensed what she was?
“What have you found out?”
“Fascinating stuff. You’ve heard of them?”
“I know the basics.”
“Excellent.” His slow Southern drawl was at odds with the precisely clipped commentary. Colin Firth channeling Atticus Finch. “The power was passed from mother to daughter. Only daughters did a benandanti bear, and if she were killed in the underworld before she gave birth, her magic would be lost forever.”
A familiar story. Ruthie had passed her power on to me before I was ready for the very same reason. Better to fry my brain circuits and send me into a short but freaky coma than to allow all that power to disappear.
“A benandanti was haglike,” Whitelaw continued. “Which made it a bit difficult to procreate, unless—”
“Enough,” Sawyer interrupted, his deep voice cutting the professor off mid-explanation.
Confused, I glanced behind me, prepared to tell Sawyer to zip his lip, let the man finish.
Sawyer stood deceptively still, his face reflecting nothing but the fluorescent lights, but I sensed his urgency and understood it.
Certainly I was interested in what Whitelaw knew about the legend of the benandanti, but I didn’t need to know that information. We’d come here for other, much more important clues and we didn’t have time to chat.
Who knew when the woman of smoke might show up. Knowing her, she’d arrive just as Whitelaw began to tell us what we needed to know and she’d rip his tongue out of his head before he finished.
“Excuse me,” Whitelaw apologized. “I get carried away sometimes. You’re Navajo, Mr. Sawyer, is that correct?”
Sawyer inclined his head. His gaze flicked to me then back to the doctor. His muscles flexed, the cords in his forearms tightening. If he got any more territorial, the two of them might begin a pissing contest.
However, Whitelaw seemed oblivious to the undercurrents. “I did my dissertation on the Navajo.”
“So I hear,” Sawyer murmured, and I sensed the rumble of his beasts just below the surface.
“Your people are fascinating,” Whitelaw continued. “I’ve researched the Witchery Way.” His words tumbled out more quickly as he warmed to his topic. “Most of my subjects equate the word wolf with the word witch. Would you agree?”
Sawyer just smiled, then struck a match against his thumb and lit a cigarette that had appeared out of nowhere.
“You—uh—can’t smoke in a public—” Whitelaw began.
Sawyer lifted his brow and blew a stream in Whitelaw’s direction. The professor coughed and gave up.
“I see you have a wolf on your …” Whitelaw flicked a finger at Sawyer’s bicep, which rippled and twitched as if the wolf wanted very badly to get out. “Are you it—” He stopped as if suddenly realizing that asking a witch if he was a witch might be a very good way to get dead. He swallowed, his throat clicking loudly in the sudden, waiting silence of the room.
I jumped in before things got too uncomfortable. “I’d love in hear more about your research into the Navajo,” I said. “That’s why we came.”
“Really?” Whitelaw’s face lit
up again.
“Yes—” I began.
“Tell us what you know,” Sawyer ordered, and words spilled from Whitelaw’s mouth like a fountain. I cast sawyer a suspicious glance. I hadn’t seen him do anything to make Whitelaw talk, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t.
“Navajo witches are shape-shifters. Skinwalkers.” Whitelaw’s gaze flicked to Sawyer’s tattoos again, and he licked his lips nervously. “They have sex with the dead, practice cannibalism, and possess the ability to kill from afar with the use of ritual.”
“Go on,” Sawyer murmured. He didn’t seem shocked by the professor’s words, but I was.
“Dogs will bite a witch when the witch is in human form.”
“And?” Sawyer said.
Next he’d be asking Whitelaw where he’d gotten his information, and then deciding just who needed to die—those who’d told secrets or the one who’d listened to them. There were times when he was very much his mother’s son.
“Witches are most dreaded when the wind blows. They travel on the storm; they take their power from lightning. They say the rain is a woman.”
I doubted Whitelaw would have needed much encouragement to give us a history lesson, but the way he couldn’t seem to shut his mouth was too suspicious.
“Witches are associated with death and the dead, also incest.”
I jerked so hard I nearly put my neck out of whack. Sawyer’s hair lifted. Just a little, as if a fan had stirred the air nearby. But there wasn’t a fan anywhere that I could see. Sawyer took another drag of his cigarette, then fixed his eyes, which were the same shade as the smoke coming out of his nose, on Whitelaw as he continued.
“To take a witch’s power you must repeat their true name four times.”
“True name?” I asked.
“At birth the Navajo are given a secret war name. This name is that person’s personal property, never used by anyone, even his or her family.”
“How are people distinguished if no one knows their name?”
“Most have nicknames,” Whitelaw answered. “Something for the white people to call them. It’s still considered bad manners by many of the old ones to call someone by their name in their presence.”
I glanced at Sawyer. He’d lost his cigarette and was staring at Whitelaw with murder in his eyes.
“What do you know about the Naye’i?” I blurted.
“Dreadful Ones. The most evil spirits the Navajo have.”
“Ever hear how to kill one?”
“Kill?” Whitelaw’s face creased. “An evil spirit? I don’t think that’s possible.”
Carla had said we might have to help him piece things together. But how would I do that if I didn’t know the pieces in the first place?
“Spirits are good and evil,” Whitelaw mused. “Both light and dark. There was something once . ..” His voice trailed off; he stared out the window.
I glanced at Sawyer, whose stoic gaze remained on Whitelaw. Luther still hung by the door; he’d be the first one out if getting out were a good idea. I had a feeling he’d be hanging out by the open doors for several years to come. Poor kid.
Suddenly Whitelaw spun and headed for his desk. He flipped through a pile of books, tossed several papers aside. “It’s not written anywhere; I heard it. Someone told me.” He rubbed his forehead for several seconds, then “Something ,” he murmured, “something about killing the darkness.”
It was only because Sawyer’s eyes had made me un-easy before that I bothered to glance at him now. He was lifting his hand, still staring at Whitelaw. I didn’t think; I stepped between them.
Behind me. Luther’s snarl rumbled. I didn’t dare glance back and see what was happening. I didn’t dare move at all.
Whitelaw’s eyes had gone wide, the dark brown irises looking like demonic egg yolks in the middle of a sea of white. He saw that Sawyer meant murder; I could smell it. That scalding scent of ozone in the air, the very same scent that signaled fury in Mommy Dearest.
“Go on,” I ordered, and when Whitelaw hesitated, I snapped, “Hurry.”
Whitelaw wasn’t stupid. He knew he was in trouble, that he’d better spit out the information because once he did there’d be no more reason to kill him. Once the method to kill the darkness was shared, it could no lon-ger die with him.
The question was, why did Sawyer want it to?
CHAPTER 26
“Stop that!” I ordered the room at large.
Luther’s snarls faded, which was as good an indication as any that Sawyer had lowered his hand. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t raise it again. Didn’t mean he couldn’t kill Whitelaw in some other way. Although I had to think that if Sawyer could have, he would have.
“What are they?” Whitelaw whispered, eyes still too wide and too white.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I think I might.”
I thought he might, too, but—
“Not now,” I said, and he nodded, understanding the urgency was still there.
“To kill the darkness,” he murmured, “one must embrace it.”
“Embrace?” My lip curled. That was so not going to happen.
“Embrace or become. I remember asking and he said—”
“Who said? A Navajo?”
It seemed impossible that the Navajo would know that their evilest evil spirit would be the future leader of Hell’s army. Hell being a Christian concept as well as its leader.
However, I was finding out that Christianity didn’t mean so much in terms of end-time prophecy. Sure, the Christians were the authors of it, but maybe that was only because they’d been the first to write it down.
Whitelaw shook his head. “The Navajo believe in evil, which is why they don’t like to talk about it. Sometimes, talking about it”—he lowered his voice, pointedly keeping his gaze from straying to Sawyer—“brings it forth.”
“Let’s hope not,” I murmured, and Whitelaw shuddered, making me wonder if his yapping about supernatural entities, his writing down of those legends, had brought forth things that had no business being brought forth.
“When I was doing research for my book on Revelation,” he continued, “I spoke with a rabbi who had an interesting theory about the end of the world. He said that the final battle would be between good and evil.”
“What’s so interesting about that?”
“He didn’t use those terms. He used darkness and light. Said the only way to defeat the darkness was with the light. That the light would have to …” Whitelaw squinted, closed his eyes, then blurted the rest. “Embrace the darkness and in doing so would become it. Only then could evil be defeated.”
“Become,” I repeated, glancing at Sawyer. He shrugged, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was still looking at Whitelaw as if he wanted to do something very unpleasant to the man.
Luther stood between us, back to me, his gaze on Sawyer. I’d been wrong. The kid hadn’t gone out the door at the first sign of trouble, he’d stepped forward to face it. I was so impressed.
“I had no idea what he meant,” Whitelaw mused. “Those old languages are difficult to figure out and sometimes the translations are wrong and sometimes they mix dialects.”
He was gibbering. The longer I was here, the more I thought Whitelaw just might be a little psychic himself. He was certainly feeling the “gonna kill you” vibes that were washing off Sawyer like bad BO.
“This rabbi,” I said. “Where can I find him?”
Whitelaw winced. “He was killed. Very strange case. Wild dogs.”
“Wasn’t me,” Sawyer murmured.
Whitelaw opened his mouth, then shut it again. Smart man.
“Did the rabbi say how he’d discovered this information?”
“In a grimoire.”
“Huh?”
“A textbook of magic. Most are instructions for invoking angels or demons.”
“Are?” I straightened. “They still exist today?”
“Parts of them. In translation. Which is why the rabbi wasn
’t certain of the exact wording.” The professor frowned. “I don’t know why he told me any of this in the first place, but he seemed determined that I know it.”
I was getting more and more certain that this rabbi had been one of us, had known somehow that I, or someone like me, would eventually come to Whitelaw and need this info. So he’d told the doctor and then he’d died. From the sound of it, by shape-shifters. Werewolves, coyotes, possessed puppies—didn’t matter. He was dead.
“Do you have a copy of the grimoire he used?”
Whitelaw shook his head. “He said he’d gotten the information from the Key of Solomon, which is a book attributed to King Solomon. There are translations and parts of it all over the place. But this particular section”— Whitelaw bit his lip—“he swore it was from the original book.”
“And where is that?”
“It doesn’t exist. Or rather, no one’s ever found it.”
Sheesh, could someone please play a new tune?
“The translations date from the Middle Ages,” Whitelaw continued.
“But no one’s seen it since?”
“Except Rabbi Turnblat. He insisted he’d read the recipe for killing the darkness in the original Key of Solomon.”
“Do you think that was true?”
“If it was, the book disappeared; it wasn’t in his effects when he died.”
Probably because whatever had killed him had taken it. I didn’t think that was going to prove a plus for our side.
“What else was in this book?”
“Spells to become invisible, gain favor and love, find stolen items, constrain and release demons.”
Ah, hell. I had a pretty good idea who had the damn thing.
“We need to go.” I said.
“Wait!” Whitelaw started forward, freezing when both Sawyer and Luther growled.
I cast them a look and they subsided, though they both appeared as if they might jump out of their skin, or perhaps into another, furrier one.
“I want to help,” Whitelaw said.
“Help what?”
“I’ve been studying Revelation; I see the signs. I also had a pretty good idea that a lot of those supernatural legends I’d read about were real.” He stared pointedly at Sawyer and Luther. “Even before they showed up. I think you could use someone with my knowledge on your side.”
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