Doomsday Can Wait

by Lori Handeland

  But, hey, anything for the world, right?

  CHAPTER 28

  I slammed into my dream body with a thunk that sent me to the floor on my hands and knees. Jimmy sat on the bed in the same position as when I’d “left.”

  “Did you see what you needed to?” he asked.

  His voice was merely curious. He didn’t realize what I’d found out. I decided to keep it that way.

  My most desperate question had been why he’d left me when we were eighteen. How pathetic. Almost as pathetic as his leaving because he’d been ordered to.

  I tamped down on that anger. He’d been eighteen, same as me. Thrust into the federation long before I had been. He’d been adrift. Alone and floundering. I would have been no help to him at all. I would have gotten us both killed.

  That Ruthie had been right in her assumption did not make me feel any more warm and fuzzy toward her right now.

  But one thing at a time. I really needed to know where Summer had taken Jimmy. That I hadn’t fallen out of his dreams and back into my cold, half-dead body in Indiana meant I could still discover the answer to My Most Desperate Question, Part Deux.

  “Lizzy?”

  I lifted my head, and my nose brushed his knee. The scent of him—cinnamon, soap and water—washed over me and my eyes watered. So much given, taken, lost. I climbed to my feet just as he stood.

  We were only inches apart; the heat of his naked skin washed over me. I laid my palm against his chest, felt his heart heating, realized mine wasn’t.

  Uh-oh.

  I should probably do what I’d come here to do and get back. I wasn’t exactly certain how everything worked, but I had a feeling that once my body had healed, I’d be yanked out of here faster than I’d been dropped in.

  Jimmy covered my hand with his. He was so warm I wanted to burrow into him and let that warmth, his scent, wash over me. Now that I knew what was behind the secret locked door, a lot of other doors were being un-locked. Like the ones I’d slammed closed the day I’d first seen him with her.

  Damn.

  I’d been swaying forward, face lifted, lips puckered. Now I stiffened, stepped back, and he let me go.

  “What did you see?” Jimmy asked.

  “Not much in there.” I tapped on his head with my knuckles.

  “Ha-ha.”

  My attempt at humor relaxed him. Obviously, if I’d seen what he hadn’t wanted me to. I wouldn’t be able to joke about anything.

  Jimmy didn’t really know me very well at all anymore. Did anyone?

  I moved to the window. The bars were gold; they had to be. Jimmy could yank out anything else, though I had a feeling he’d have a hard time slipping through this small of a hole. He wasn’t a shape-shifter, like me.

  The moon that had shone in earlier had disappeared. The sun wasn’t yet up and darkness ruled. All I had to do was ask Jimmy where he was, and he’d tell me. I was in his head; he didn’t have much choice. Yet, I hesitated. Once I asked, once I knew, I’d come here, and I’d hurt him.

  He moved behind me, silently, but I knew he was there. I always knew. We were connected in a way nothing and no one could ever break.

  Unless it was me.

  He put his hands on my hips. I felt his lips in my hair, his breath on my ear. I leaned against him, just for a minute.

  “You seem better,” I whispered.

  “I’m not.”

  Was I happy about that or sad?

  “Summer cast a spell.”

  I fought not to stiffen at her name. None of this had been Summer’s fault. Although her falling in love with him was just annoying. It made me feel sorry for her, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep hating her. I did it so well.

  “What kind of spell?” I asked.

  “Subvert the demon.”

  “How?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he stilled. Something had changed. It took me a few seconds to figure out what, and when I did, I stilled, too.

  His skin seemed so hot; his hands on my hips had become almost bruising. Slowly I turned and for a minute, in the dark, I thought I’d imagined things. He smelled the same; his outline was so familiar; I’d seen it rise above me in the night so many times. The cadence of his breath, the fall of his hair, the curve of his neck into his shoulder were all Jimmy.

  Then, behind me, the sun burst free of the night and splashed merrily across his face. The center of his eyes flared red; his fangs had lengthened.

  “It’s coming.” His gaze lowered from my eyes to my neck.

  My pulse pounded in my temples. I guess something had jump-started my heart. Most likely the sight of his hellfire-lit eyes.

  “I can’t hold it back all the time.” Jimmy stared at what must be my throbbing carotid artery and licked his lips “Sometimes it gets free.”

  I backed up. smacked into the wall, threw a glance over my shoulder, and froze at the sight framed in the window.

  I knew exactly where he was.

  The next instant I lay on the pavement in the parking lot in the dark. I had a bad fucking headache.

  The lopsided moon flaring brightly against a navy blue night confused me, as I’d just watched the sun come up in dream-walk world. Two heads appeared above me, haloed by that moon.

  “Better?” Sawyer murmured, sounding completely calm, not at all freaked out by what had to have been a pretty freaky situation. There were a few good things about Sawyer, and that was one of them.

  “What are you?” Luther sounded freaked out enough for both of them.

  I sat up, touched my head, which still throbbed but appeared to be all there, though sticky with things I didn’t want to think about. Then I glanced around. We were amazingly alone.

  “No one heard?” I asked.

  I’d been in too big of a hurry to worry about the noise and I should have been. This wasn’t L.A. A gunshot should have brought the whole town running—at the least Whitelaw should have looked out a window.

  “He did some fancy hoodoo shit,” Luther said, “People came, but they couldn’t see us.”

  That was another good thing about Sawyer. Magic. Centuries of it.

  “I need a shower,” I murmured.

  “You need more than that,” Luther said. “You healed a bullet in the brain.”

  “In that case, it sounds like I don’t need anything.” I stood up, swayed a little. The headache was fading but not fast enough.

  “Why did you do it?” Luther’s voice wavered.

  “Sorry.” I put a hand on his arm. “I should have warned you. That wasn’t fair.”

  He bit his lip. Shrugged. I’d scared him. Pretty badly from the way he was shaking. Poor kid. He had the heart of a lion, literally, but he was still just a cub.

  I rounded on Sawyer. “You couldn’t tell him I wasn’t in any danger?”

  “I was a little busy keeping the invisibility bubble around us.”

  I stared at him a minute, trying to figure out if he was joking, but I didn’t think he knew how. I shouldn’t blame him for my own hasty behavior. I’d gotten the knowledge I needed, but at what cost to those around me? I hoped I hadn’t scarred the kid more than he already was.

  We’d told Luther the basics of the federation, about the Grigori, Nephilim, the leaders of the light and the dark, but there was so much that had happened, so many things we could do, I guess I’d left out the empathy part of my program.

  “You absorb powers through sex,” he repeated when I’d finished explaining. Then shook his head. “That makes no sense.”

  I’d never tried to make sense of it. What was, was. What happened, happened. It wasn’t as if I had any choice. But now that Luther was questioning things, I had to wonder “What the hell?” myself.

  “There’s a reason for everything,” Sawyer murmured. He didn’t seem like the “reason for everything” type. More in the “life is chaos” category if you asked me.

  “And the reason for me being the way I am?” I asked.

  “Sex requires openi
ng yourself.”

  I rolled my eyes. We’d gone round and round about that in the past. I wasn’t exactly an “open” kind of gal. It had taken me a long time and a lot of hassle to be able to open myself the way that I needed to.

  “For a woman, sex is the ultimate commitment,” Sawyer murmured. “Giving yourself to someone isn’t easy.”

  That just might be the understatement of the year.

  “You give of yourself, but you also take,” he continued. “The level of dedication required to do that assures that you won’t be absorbing powers willy-nilly.”

  I choked. Had Sawyer actually said willy-nilly? If I didn’t know the end of the world was on the way, I’d think it was already here.

  “Powers are not to be acquired foolishly, just as sex isn’t to be engaged in lightly.”

  Except for him. He engaged in sex pretty willy-nilly, which made his explanation of my empathy bizarre to say the least.

  Even more bizarre was that it made complete sense within the boundaries of this clandestine world we inhabited.

  Luther was nodding. It made sense to him, too. At least I wasn’t completely delusional.

  “Where’s Sanducci?” Sawyer asked.

  “You’re so certain I found out?”

  “Because dream walking requires great risk, it works.”

  That was comforting. I’d hate to have blown my brains out for nothing.

  “New Mexico,” I said, then paused. “I think.”

  “What makes you doubt?”

  I’d been so certain when I’d seen the sun splash over the landscape, but as I thought back—

  “The mountains were wrong. When I first saw their outline, I recognized them. They were yours, but from a different angle. Maybe the other side. But now …” I waggled my hand, wincing at the blood speckled across it. “I think of them, and I see green rolling hills, instead of pink, red, and orange. The flowers are different— more lush and … floaty. There’s mist everywhere.”

  “It’s the fairy. She does that.”

  “Does what?”

  The three of us began to stroll toward the Impala, which stood a few hundred feet away, passenger door still hanging open, revealing that Luther had gotten out in one helluva big hurry.

  “She makes my mountains look like the hills of Ireland,” Sawyer said.

  “Ireland? Why?”

  “A lot of the fairies went there after the fall, which is how all the Fey stories began. It must look just like heaven to them.”

  “But Summer’s … a rodeo fairy.”

  Sawyer’s eyes widened, and I thought he might laugh. Luther glanced back and forth between us, absorbing everything, questioning nothing. He learned fast.

  “She’s different, true,” Sawyer agreed. “But she was in Ireland for a very long time.”

  “No accent,” I said.

  “Glamour. She can be anything she desires.”

  Could she be anything anyone desired? For instance, was Summer a blond, busty, “come on and ride me” fairy because that was what Jimmy wanted? And if she was had she become that way on Ruthie’s orders?

  I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t worry about that now. I had to get to New Mexico and do what needed to be done before the woman of smoke figured out what I was up to and stopped me.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Plane or paws?” I asked.

  We definitely needed to get to New Mexico faster than the Impala could take us.

  Skinwalkers can move quicker than the eye can track, which is what gave rise to the legend that a skinwalker could disappear in one place and appear in another. I wasn’t certain how fast a Marbas could run, but I was betting pretty damn fast.

  “Plane,” Sawyer said.

  “Really?”

  I was not only shocked at his choice but shocked that he wasn’t going to argue with me. I’d been formulating a plan—what would I do if he tried to keep me here?—that involved yanking off Sawyer’s talisman, then leaving him behind while Luther and I hopped a plane to Albuquerque.

  The problem with that plan was that Sawyer as a wolf would probably beat us there. At the least he wouldn’t be very late, which threw a wrench into the whole getting-away-from-him idea. But his being so agreeable, that was another kind of wrench.

  “What’s up with you?” I asked.

  “Me?” He put a bloody palm to his now bloody white shirt, which made me think he hadn’t been as calm as he’d appeared when I’d come out of it. He’d been trying to save me, even though I hadn’t needed saving. “What did I do?”

  “You refused to help me.”

  “I refused to kill you.” He dropped his hand and sniffed. “So shoot me. Or did you use all your bullets on your own head?”

  He was pissed. That was new. Guess I’d really scared him Though I couldn’t quite figure out how.

  Luther stood off to the side, watching us closely. My gun had disappeared. From the way his saggy pants sagged more on his right side, I had a pretty good idea where it had gone.

  “We should wait a while,” Sawyer murmured. “We might find another way to end her.”

  “Have you found a way in all the decades?” He lifted a brow. “Fine. Centuries that you’ve been trying?”

  “No.”

  “Then I doubt another method will drop into our lap any time soon.”

  “Miracles happen.”

  “Not to me.”

  “You’ve come back from the dead twice in the last week. That’s not a miracle?”

  I frowned. There was something about that statement that gave me the creeps, but I couldn’t figure out what.

  “I don’t understand you,” I said. “I’m the only one who can do this, yet you try to talk me out of it.”

  “I know what she’s capable of.” He took a deep breath as he stared at the dark shadows that composed Brownport College. “You’ll sell your soul, and she’ll still win.”

  “Gee, thanks.” He shrugged. “So you want me to give up? To hide in a hole and let everyone die?”

  Sawyer returned his gaze to mine. “I want you to, but I know you won’t. So…” He spread his hands. “We’ll go to New Mexico.”

  “On a plane,” I clarified.

  “We could go on four paws, all of us.” Sawyer contemplated Luther. “I could help him change, but I don’t think he’d be in control of his beast well enough to travel cross-country yet.”

  “I don’t think I would be, either,” Luther muttered.

  “And a lion’s going to stick out in Indiana, Illinois. Missouri, hell, everywhere, like a—” I searched for an appropriate simile and floundered.

  “Lion in a haystack?” Sawyer offered.

  Was that a mixed metaphor? Maybe. But basically . ..

  “Yeah,” I said. “You have ID?”

  Sawyer nodded, so did Luther. I nearly asked how that was possible, then decided it didn’t matter, as long as we got where we needed to go and fast.

  By the time dawn lightened the Louisville skyline, we were pulling into long-term parking, then heading for the terminal. I’d showered and changed in the locker room of the Brownport Bible College field house while Sawyer and Luther kept watch.

  Since it was well after midnight, the place was empty. But I’d needed to wash away all traces of my ticket to dream walking before we went anywhere. Traveling— in a car or a plane—looking as if I’d been on the losing end of a very bloody fight was not a good idea. Sure, we could get out of jams using brute force or magic, but that took time. And time was one thing in short supply.

  I don’t know how I knew that but I did. Ever since I’d woken up with the moon shining down and a good portion of my brains on the outside instead of the inside, I’d felt as if a dragon were breathing fire on my neck. In other words, I needed to move forward and fast.

  Inside the Louisville International Airport, I paused in front of a news kiosk and read a few headlines.

  EARTHQUAKE SHAKES ANTARCTICA

  TORNADO HITS INDIA

 
BLIZZARD SWEEPS ACROSS KENYA

  And the television was even worse. Riots. Murders. Fires. I’d say it was a day just like any other day, but the anchors couldn’t seem to keep up with the reports. One bad thing tumbled into the next and into the next.

  “Chaos,” I whispered.

  “Doomsday,” Sawyer said.

  The urgency I’d felt earlier increased. If they hadn’t called out flight right then, I might have slipped into a bathroom as a woman and come out something else.

  Time turned back as we headed west. When we landed in Albuquerque, we’d gained several hours, yet several hours had passed, and so much more chaos had ensued.

  As we walked through the Albuquerque International Sunport, headed for the rental car booth, I caught snatches of conversations.

  “Something blew up in Israel.”

  Nothing new.

  “London, Paris, Rome, and Madrid, too.”

  I cursed and glanced at the televisions. Smoke poured from several well-known buildings. Military personnel and law enforcement scurried around like ants.

  “So far, nothing’s happened here,” someone murmured.

  So far, I thought.

  “The world’s gone crazy.”

  “Did you expect anything less?” Sawyer asked.

  Not really.

  “Why did they back off for a while?”

  “I’m not sure that they did. You were blocked by the amulet, and I have a feeling a lot of others were, too.”

  “Just because we weren’t seeing the chaos in our visions doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.”

  “The world’s screwed up. Until things really got out of hand,” he lifted his chin toward the television, “it was just another day at Fox News.”

  Maybe he was right. Or maybe humans had started to feed off the evil of the Nephilim. Or the Nephilim had gone hog wild. And why not? Their time was coming; soon their creators would roam the earth, and the soulless would outnumber the souls.

  Unless I managed to become the darkness as well as the light. I’d drop the dreadful bitch into the pit with all her friends, seal up any cracks in the door, then throw away the key. How was that for a plan?