“Him and me.” She looked at her feet. “That was Ruthie.”
“I know.” Her chin jerked up, and I tapped my own head. “I saw.”
“Then how can you—”
“I have to!” I shouted. “Jimmy will understand.”
“You wish,” Summer said at the same time Sawyer murmured, “I doubt that.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Regardless of whether he understood or he didn’t, I was still going to do this.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Summer stuck out her tongue.
“Oh, that’s mature.”
She gave me the finger. Even better.
I glanced at Sawyer. “Can you do something?”
“I’ve exhausted the magical options,” he said. “Saint-John’s-wort allowed us to see this place.” He held up a hand before I could speak. “And I used all I had to get that far.”
So he couldn’t make the cavernous gray prison revert to whatever it really was.
“What’s up with that?” I lifted my chin to indicate the tiny green plant still stuck in Summer’s hair.
“A four-leaf clover blocks her influence.”
“She can’t sway anyone with her ‘make me’ dust while she’s wearing that?”
“Exactly.”
“She can’t just yank it out?”
Sawyer gave me a withering glare. “Please,” he murmured.
As if to illustrate, Summer swiped at the clover, then hissed in pain as if the thing were embedded in her skull along with her hair.
“I have to remove it,” Sawyer said. He lifted a brow at Summer. “So you’d better be nice.”
She gave him the finger, too. She’d really been hanging out with me way too much.
“If you’re blocking her influence, why is this place such a maze?” I lifted my gaze. The prison had continued to grow—hall upon hall, stairway beyond stairway.
“We’re talking two different things—innate magic and spells. Clover, for one—” He swept his hand out, empty palm up.
“Saint-John’s-wort, which you’re out of, for the other.” Sawyer nodded. “Why are you carrying these things in the first place?”
“There are a lot of fairies, Phoenix, and I’m rarely merciful.”
I glanced at Summer, who was too busy trying to pick the clover out of her hair to comment. She was going to snatch herself bald if she didn’t knock it off.
“Where do you stock up on antifairy meds?”
“Wal-Mart,” he said simply.
“I can understand the Saint-John’s-wort”—it was an herb used for a lot of ailments—“but the four-leaf clover? I doubt they carry them.”
“The benandanti did,” he said simply.
That made Summer pause. “The benandanti is dead.”
“What was that?” Sawyer’s voice betrayed no emotion beyond mild curiosity.
“She went to the underworld to fight the Grigori. And she lost.”
“So they’re free?” I asked.
“Not yet. I assume there are more steps involved.”
I glanced at Sawyer.
“I don’t know what they are,” he said.
That hadn’t been why I was looking at him. I thought maybe he’d be upset, at least a little, that a woman he’d recently slept with was dead. The way Sawyer was behaving, you’d never even know they’d met.
I thought of Carla as I’d seen her last—young and strong again thanks to Sawyer. Nevertheless she’d lost the fight and we’d moved one step closer to Armageddon’s Apocalypse.
“I need to see Jimmy,” I blurted.
“Good luck with that.” Summer indicated the still-multiplying cool gray corridors and the ever-increasing stairway to heaven.
I grabbed her by the arms, planning to shake her until the truth rattled out along with her teeth, but as soon as I touched her, I saw the path that led to the single cell-like room that housed Jimmy.
Touch something he did. Worked nearly every time.
I ran down the nearest hall. Summer followed, keeping up admirably well considering my dhampir speed. But then she could fly, and did, hovering above me, chattering like a damned squirrel as she continued to try and convince me that I shouldn’t do this.
“He’s better,” she said. “He won’t do what you want.”
I didn’t point out that if that were true, he wouldn’t be locked up, and she wouldn’t be working so hard to keep me from finding him.
I reached the golden door—how obvious was that?— and Summer’s feet touched the floor just as Sawyer caught up.
No doorknob, no latch, no way to open the thing that I could see. I glanced at Summer, who lifted a brow and crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn’t going to open it, and I couldn’t make her.
I studied what appeared to be a solid-gold structure, as thick as any bank vault. Obviously she’d bespelled the thing somehow. I placed my palm on Summer’s head, hoping for a clue, but she was ready for me this time, and all I got was a blast of her and Jimmy rolling in the sheets.
I snatched my hand back as she smirked. I was pretty certain that had been recent.
“Those who peek into heads uninvited deserve whatever they see,” she said. “You told me to do anything.”
I hadn’t told her to do him, but—I shrugged. Whatever worked. I couldn’t throw stones at that glass house.
I returned my attention to the door, knocked and called, “Jimmy?”
My answer was a snarl that wasn’t even close to human, then something slammed into the other side so hard the entire building shuddered.
I lifted my gaze to Summer’s. “You call that better?”
“I did a spell,” she admitted. “It subverts the vampire.”
I tilted my head, remembering the term from my dream walk. “Subverts how?”
“Channels the demon.” Summer lifted her hands, pressing them together as if making a snowball. “He fights and fights—”
“Which means the demon gets stronger and stronger because he won’t let it free,” Sawyer said. “It’s like damming up a creek. The water’s got to go somewhere.”
“So it overflows the banks,” I murmured, “or bursts past the dam.”
“When’s he set to explode?” Sawyer asked.
In answer, Jimmy snarled again, and this time, when he hit the door, the outline of a fist expanded outward.
“I’d say right about now,” I murmured.
Sawyer frowned. “Maybe you should wait before going inside.”
“Not.”
“Tomorrow would be better,” Summer agreed.
If she wanted me to wait, I knew I had to get in there. “What happens tomorrow?”
Sawyer stared at Summer, his expression considering, “Plenus luna malum,” he murmured, and her eyes narrowed as her fingers clenched. She really wanted to zap him and couldn’t.
“Something Latin about the moon,” I guessed.
“Translates to ‘full moon evil,’” Sawyer explained. “She channeled his vampire tendencies into the night of the full moon. Every other night, he’s normal. Or as normal as Sanducci gets. But when the moon is whole, he goes—”
Jimmy slammed into the door again.
“Batshit,” I muttered. “I take it the full moon’s tonight.”
“You think?” Sawyer asked.
I hated it when he repeated my sarcasm back at me, but as Ruthie always said, you get what you pay for, and I’d definitely paid for that.
There were times when nothing went right, one incident right after the other making me think I was cursed. And then there were times, like now, when serendipity made me believe that everything did happen for a reason, and in the end the forces of good would win.
Could it be a coincidence that Jimmy was only a vampire under the full moon, and we’d just happened to show up on that particular night?
Perhaps. But I didn’t think so.
I contemplated the door again, biting my lip, trying to figure out a way to get i
n.
“He’ll tear you apart,” Summer said.
I wasn’t certain tearing me apart would actually kill me, though I wasn’t wild about finding out. “I’m fast and I’m strong.”
“Not like he is when he’s—” Summer drew back her lips from her teeth, hooked her fingers into claws, and hissed to illustrate.
“I’ll be all right.”
“He’ll drain you.”
I shrugged. I’d been drained before. I hadn’t died; all I’d done was dream walk.
“Once he finds out what I want,” I said, “he’ll be game. The thought of making me. the leader of the light, into a dark force .. . When he’s in vamp mode, he won’t be able to resist.”
“And when he comes back to himself,” Summer whispered, “he’ll be in agony.”
“If I’ve spoiled Doomsday, he’ll be thrilled.”
“Even if you win, you’ll still be a vampire. That isn’t going to go away.”
I paused, imagining what I would become. Could I do it?
I remembered the woman of smoke, what she’d done to Sawyer, his father, and so many others. I thought of all I’d seen in the short month I’d been aware that there was another world that existed parallel to our own—an evil world full of evil things—and I knew the truth.
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me.” I looked into Sawyer’s eyes, and he nodded. He’d do what had to be done when all of this was through.
“Any ideas?” I flicked a finger at the golden prison door.
Summer started forward. Sawyer lifted his hand and flung her back. His eerie gray eyes shone on her like the full silver light of the moon. “If you continue,” he murmured, “I will bind you with rowan.”
“Rowan kills a fairy,” I said.
“Eventually.” Sawyer didn’t sound concerned.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.” In the past, I’d wished Summer dead on several occasions, but now … not so much.
“Don’t do me any favors, Phoenix,” Summer said. “I’ve sold my soul to protect him—”
“You what?” I said softly.
“Figure of speech,” she muttered. “If I’d gone to the dark side, don’t you think you’d have heard about it by now?”
Hard to say. Ruthie’d been suspiciously silent. Was I unconsciously blocking her voice now that I’d learned of her betrayal? I didn’t think so. I wasn’t even certain I could.
“Don’t kill her,” I ordered Sawyer.
“If you do this,” Summer murmured, “you’ll devastate him. You think I’ll care if I’m dead once that happens?”
Guilt beckoned, but I pushed it aside. Guilt was a weakness I couldn’t afford.
“How do I get in?”
Sawyer still held one arm up to keep Summer back. He held the other out to me, the index finger of that hand pointing toward a thin gap between the floor and the bottom of the door.
At first I didn’t understand, then my gaze caught on the tarantula creeping across his forearm.
“Be careful,” he murmured.
Summer shrieked and tried to get off the floor. He smacked her back with a twitch of his thumb.
“No matter what you hear, no matter what I say, don’t open the door.”
“Phoenix,” Sawyer said, his voice exasperated, “if I could open the door, there’d be no reason for this.” He lifted his arm encouragingly. “And we both know that you’d cut out your own tongue before you’d admit you shouldn’t have gone in there.”
“Don’t follow me,” I said.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
I leaned forward and pressed a quick, hard kiss to his mouth. I might never again be the me I was right now, and I needed him to know something. “Thanks,” I said.
I lost the clothes. After removing the turquoise from my neck, I shoved it under the door, then covered the tarantula with my palm, and reached with my mind for the essence of the black eight-legged creature.
Bright, icy light consumed me, followed by a sudden heat. I dropped so fast my head spun; the thin stream of light beckoned from the other side of the door, and I scurried in that direction.
Behind me another furious scream erupted, then a whirlwind of air pushed me forward an instant before a heavy thud shook the ground.
Danger loomed. A shadow in the shape of a shoe coming right for me.
Another thud, like a body hitting the wall, then all went still; the whirlwind died, and I scuttled safely beneath the prison door.
CHAPTER 31
As soon as I was on the other side, I imagined myself as myself, and the heat became again a sudden chill. My view of the world, since I now had eight eyes, was epic; as I changed it narrowed. My fangs retracted; my legs and arms decreased by half.
I was three inches tall, then three feet, and then five-ten. I didn’t take time to glance at the room. I’d been here before. I understood now why the place was so plain and empty. Prisons were like that.
Jimmy stood at the window, as naked as I was, staring at the coming night. On the floor next to the bed lay one of his never-ending supply of T-shirts. This one declared TOM PETTY—WORLD TOUR.
It was a status symbol among those whose images graced tabloids and CD cases to have the great Sanducci wear a T-shirt bearing their name or likeness. If Sanducci wore your shirt, he’d taken your picture and you had arrived. I doubted Tom Petty cared, but I was certain his “people” did.
I’d heard that dozens of T-shirts a month crowded Sanducci’s mailbox. He donated those sent by people he’d never photographed to a homeless shelter and packed the ones that were true into his suitcase. He liked to wear them with jeans and a jacket—neither of which were in evidence on the floor of the prison cell.
I snatched up the turquoise and Tom’s tee and put them on. The material smelled like Jimmy, and I resisted the urge to rub my face in it, to just inhale a while.
Some movement or small sound on my part made Jimmy glance toward the door. He sighed and hung his head. “Are you really here?”
He looked worse than he had in the dream—paler if possible, exhausted, emaciated, sad, and very defeated.
I crossed the room and laid a hand on his shoulder. He flinched. ‘“Hey,” I murmured. “It’s me.”
He didn’t ask how I’d gotten in. He knew what I could do.
“Change back and get out.”
Or maybe he didn’t.
“I can’t shift on my own.”
Jimmy cursed, and in a movement so swift I couldn’t get away, even if I’d wanted to, he grabbed my arms and shook me. “Get out!” he roared.
“Oh, that’ll help.” I kept my voice calm. No use for both of us losing our minds.
“You don’t understand.” His fingers still dug into my flesh, causing bruises that would disappear almost as fast as they appeared. “You can’t be here. The moon is coming. I can …” He swallowed, closed his eyes, shuddered. “Smell it.”
“You can smell it,” I repeated.
“Hear it, feel it. Like the tide it pulls.”
I put my palm against his forehead. He jerked away. “I’m not sick.”
“‘Like the tide it pulls’? You’re spouting poetry and that isn’t you.” In the past, Jimmy’s idea of poetry had been “Do me, baby, one more time.”
He pulled at his hair. “It’s whispering.”
“The moon,” I clarified.
“Yesssss.”
The way he hissed the word caused gooseflesh to ripple across my bare arms and legs.
“It tells me to—” He paused and his dark gaze slid over my neck, my breasts, the juncture of my thighs, barely covered by his complimentary T-shirt. “Do terrible things.” He licked his lips, and I caught a hint of fang.
Once the moon finished whispering, once he became the beast his father had made him into, he would want to hurt me in the most vicious way possible. Because when Jimmy was a vampire, he was as Nephilim as the rest of them.
I couldn’t tell him why I was here, that I wanted him to drink from me, that I needed to drink from him. Because even though he became something other than himself when he became a vamp, he remembered everything, and if he knew why I aspired to become like him, he’d make certain that I didn’t.
Tact was necessary, never my strong suit.
“Everything will be all right,” I murmured, and brushed his sweat-dampened hair away from his face.
He cast me a quick, suspicious glance—I’d never been the nurturing type, probably because I’d never been nurtured—and put his palm to my forehead.
“You sick?” he asked, and I had to smile at his attempt to joke. He was still Jimmy, at least until the moon came up.
I tangled our fingers together, and when he tugged to be released I didn’t let go. I had an idea.
Since he was still Jimmy, for now, the best way to get him to do what I wanted was to give him what he wanted.
Me.
I could tell by the way his gaze kept straying to my legs, my breasts, and my neck that he did still want me. He always had. No matter how long we’d been apart, how we’d fought, what he’d done, what I had, that one thing never changed.
He’d fight making me like him; he might even win. That he’d been able to push the dark side of himself back as far as he had, that he hadn’t killed anyone in the month he’d been free, revealed how strong he was.
To do this, I’d have to slip beneath his defenses and seduce him—mind, body, and what was left of his soul.
I slid in close, brushing my unbound breasts against his bare chest, just a little, as if “oops!” it were an accident, and Jimmy tightened his lips, closed his eyes, his face going as taut as his body.
For a vampire, sex and violence, blood and lust, were all rolled together. Get him to lose control in one way, he’d be powerless to exert control in another. In the throes of passion, in the midst of an orgasm, he’d bite me. He’d done it before.
Guilt flickered, and again I shoved it away.
“I’ve been so worried.” My free hand trailed up his forearm; I leaned in and let my breath trickle over his collarbone. Gooseflesh rose across his shoulder, and I licked him, then grazed him with my teeth.
“Lizzy, stop.” He grabbed my shoulders and held me away, but he couldn’t keep his gaze from drifting lower, catching on where my nipples must be thrusting at the thin, overwashed material of the shirt. Begging to be touched, calling out for one man to do the touching.
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