Sanducci’s eyes glistened onyx, his hair blue-black night, his skin—
“Ahh.” I rubbed against him.
The sun sparkled off his skin, and he smelled like . . .
“Lunch.”
The vein in his neck pulsed as it called my name.
Ba-bump. Liz-zy. Ba-bump. Liz-zy.
“Do it,” Jimmy growled.
“Happy to.”
When I was a vampire, the urge to kill was impossible to deny. Hand in hand with that urge went another, that of an alpha wolf drawn to destroy any other alpha in the vicinity. I felt myself pulled toward Jimmy like the tide.
My fangs lengthened, the sensation itchy. The only thing that would soothe it was blood; the only way to end the buzzing in my brain was death.
But how to kill a dhampir. It wasn’t easy. Twice in the same way. Two stakes to the heart. Two golden bullets—kill shots in the exact same place.
I had no weapon but myself. I wanted to drain him, but how did I do that twice? Only one way to find out.
I reached for his head.
“No!”
The word swirled around me, along with a cool, twinkling mist. My arms fell to my sides. I was no longer on an errand of mercy; in this form I didn’t even know what that meant. I still wanted to kill Sanducci, but because of the fairy dust I couldn’t.
I guess Summer wasn’t dead. I’d fix that later.
My fangs still itched; my throat was parched; my stomach cramped in agony. But there was another powerful being very nearby.
I turned toward Sawyer.
“Lizzy, no,” Jimmy said. “That won’t help. You have to kill me.”
“Can’t,” I muttered, drawn across the grass toward the dazzling scent of blood and man and magic that was Sawyer. “And I’m not Lizzy.”
Jimmy began to curse and fight his bonds in earnest.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw fairy dust flying like cat fur in a catfight as Summer splashed the army of revenants.
“Grab her,” she ordered, and they went after the Phoenix like fury.
She fried them of course, but it took her some time. Which allowed me to reach Sawyer.
His face was so sad. I tilted my head. Sadder than I’d ever seen it. His pulse did not beat my name; his pulse barely beat at all.
“You chose him,” Sawyer said.
“Liz loves him. Always has, always will.”
“I know.” In his voice lay despair, and I breathed it in like nectar.
“So sad,” I murmured. “I like it.”
I pressed my hand to his chest, felt his heart beating beneath.
“One thing before I go,” he said.
“Be quick.” I was focused on the steady thump-thump against my palm. I wanted to feel that on the outside instead of the inside. I wanted to taste a heart as it stopped beating. I thought I probably could.
“I chose to leave a child behind.” My eyes flicked to his. “You must protect that gift of faith.”
“Whatever,” I said, and tore out his heart.
CHAPTER 34
I never found out if a heart could continue to beat on the outside of a body, because as soon as Sawyer died the power slammed into me like a truck.
In the distance thunder rumbled; I smelled rain on the wind. My hair crackled. The lightning danced nearby, and I wanted it.
Come to me.
The words were both in my head and in the roll of the thunder. Demonic laughter swelled; the whispers commenced, and I slammed the door. I was too fascinated with the magic to listen.
The Phoenix shrieked her rage, but there was nothing she could do. The fury of the storm was mine; I would command the lightning. Right now, as the newborn power flowed through me, I thought I could command just about anything.
I faced her. She was still fighting revenants, but she was mowing them down pretty fast. Summer had run to Jimmy, of course. But I didn’t care about them now; all I cared about was her.
“Bigger phoenix,” I growled, and called down the storm.
Bolts of lightning slammed into the ground at my feet. The earth trembled beneath my wrath. Blue light shimmered; I had to close my eyes as the lightning hit me. The sizzle and burn, the flare of electricity, made my teeth hum. The back of my neck blazed, and I knew that I could fly.
Dark clouds shrouded the sun, turning the air so cold my breath became smoke. Dust swirled by on the wind, and the rain began to fall like tears.
“You bitch!” The Phoenix stalked across the yard and slapped me in the face. The more I got to know her, the happier I was about foster care. “I told you I was the only one who got to kill around here. Daughter or not, you die.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
“You forget. I’m still the Phoenix.” She poked me hard in the chest. “And you’re not.”
Then she turned and headed for the porch. I assumed she’d read something in the key that she thought might kill me.
“Wrong,” I said, and clasped a hand to the phoenix tattoo imprinted on the back of my neck only moments before by the lightning.
Shifting as a vampire. God, it was great. The flash of light so much flashier, the bone-deep chill delicious when followed by the flare of welcome heat.
I fluffed my wings. The colors dazzled—scarlet and neon orange, daffodil against sapphire. I opened my beak and called out. The Phoenix froze as suddenly she understood.
Slowly she turned, lip curled like a rabid dog. “You loved him?”
Yeah, it was news to me too.
She shot fire in my direction, but I could fly, and I zoomed straight up, then dived back down, headed right for her. Except she’d already shifted, admirably fast, and we met a dozen feet off the ground.
Our clash was the thunder, the slash of fire new lightning. My wings sizzled, and I called on the rain to put them out. Before I circled back to hit her again, I’d grown new ones, and so had she.
The battle was epic—flames and blood across the sky. Feathers flew everywhere, like a rainbow tumbling to the earth in a thousand oval pieces.
We could do this for days—hurt and then heal, die and be reborn—but the simple fact remained that I was the bigger phoenix. I was more than just a firebird; I was a vampire and a shifter and now a sorcerer too; the depth of my power stunned even me.
So I called on the storm; I brought the lightning, and then I hit her with everything at once—fire and electricity, wind and magic.
Her outline flared white. The silhouette against the stormy sky made me think of a cartoon X-ray. ZZZAAAPP!
Then the light went out. For a single instant she hung there, no longer brightly colored, but black as coal dust.
Slowly the cinders began to drip away, falling toward the ground like silver-edged snowflakes. Before they could pile into a drift and—who knows?—maybe regenerate, restore, renew, arise, I hit them with a gale-force wind and sent her in a thousand different parts to a hundred different places.
Resurrect that, I thought.
I sailed downward, and the dust of the revenants blew past me like a sandstorm. I ignored them, all my intentions centered on the two beings left alive in the yard.
Summer had released Jimmy. They stood close, but not touching, staring up at me. As I neared, the fairy stepped in front of Jimmy, but he shoved her back.
I imagined myself as myself, and the change reversed—a bright flash, the heat gave way to a certain chill, and I touched down with five toes instead of three.
Naked, but I didn’t care. Vampires don’t care about much. Pure evil can be so liberating.
I still wanted to suck Jimmy dry—he practically glittered with power—and it occurred to me that if I killed the fairy, I could.
I crossed the short distance between us. Summer flew upward without benefit of wings, a graceful leapfrog, over Jimmy’s head, to land between him and me.
Idiot. I couldn’t touch him until she was dead, and she’d just made it so much easier.
I grabbed her by the thro
at, lifted her off the ground, glanced around for something to kill her with. I didn’t have to look far. An old bird feeder atop a steel bar listed crookedly at the side of the house. I dragged her in that direction by her shiny blond hair.
I should have known that something was wrong when Jimmy let me have her. He didn’t jump on my back; he didn’t yank off his cock ring and try to kill me. And I say try, because killing me just wasn’t going to happen—unless I chose to die.
Talk about liberating.
I reached the bird feeder, yanked it out with one hand, while I held Summer with the other. A quick shake and the wooden container on the top flew into the side of the house and burst into smithereens. I considered shaking Summer the same way, just for the hell of it. Could I rattle her brains? I kind of thought so.
But I wanted to open Sanducci’s neck, let the blood run free, touch it, drink of it and discover how long it would take him to die. Unless he tasted so good I decided to keep him alive forever. The possibilities were endless once this annoying Tinkerbell takeoff was gone.
I needed cold steel, but the post in my hand remained warm from the sun that had shone down before I’d called the storm. I closed my eyes, and an icy wind stirred my hair. Seconds later hail pinged against the ground. I waited until my fingers cramped from the cold, until the metal became foggy with frost; then I lifted the post and prepared to ram it down her throat.
The light began to flicker and I paused, tilting my head upward. The sun came out from behind the storm clouds, but the shapes flying in front of it made the rays go dark-light, dark-light.
I’d seen this once before. When the Grigori had flown free of Tartarus they had made patterns across the full white moon. Now, they were returning at their master’s call—at my call—making the same shadows across the brilliant flare of the sun.
Command them.
I glanced at Sawyer, still hanging on the pole, heartless. I guess he hadn’t been too damned to be innocent after all.
I dropped the fairy, and she crumpled to the ground; then I tossed the steel through the front window of the house. The resulting crash of glass made me laugh, and the laughter was that of the demon inside.
“Kill her,” I ordered, and the Grigori—chaos spirits that glimmered like misshapen bats and crows and vultures—swooped down.
That’s it, the familiar voice crooned. Command them and you are the Prince; then all you have to do is let me in. No more pain, no more fear, no more death. Anything you’ve ever wanted will be yours.
Sounded reasonable to me. I opened my mouth to agree, and the catch on my collar clicked closed. Like air running out of a punctured balloon, the evil flowed away, leaving behind only a whisper.
“Call them off.” Jimmy grabbed my elbow so hard my bones seemed to grate together. “Now, before they kill her.”
The dark, whirling cloud of evil spirits had gathered above the fairy. The way they slithered and danced, the scent of them—burned rubber garnished with rotten eggs—their voices, part screech, part insane murmur, repelled me.
“Stop,” I ordered, and they did.
Feel the power. Wouldn’t you like more? Wouldn’t you like it all?
The Grigori began to murmur again, their voices just like his, promising impossible things, guaranteeing all. I fell to the ground, covered my ears with my hands, but I could still hear, because the voice inside of me had only gotten louder.
The temptation was overwhelming. No more pain. No more fear. No more death.
Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.
The words pulsed to the beat of my heart. I thought I might go mad if they didn’t stop. So I sat up, and I shouted to the sky, “Go to hell!”
And they did.
CHAPTER 35
The Grigori were pulled shrieking from the earth, their voices inhuman with fury, their screams full of pain. I watched, stunned, as the flickering shadows lengthened, seeming to cling to the rays of the sun. My ears ached; my skin prickled with gooseflesh, my muscles so tense they threatened to cramp. Then, the Grigori were gone, their howls fading along with their misshapen black bodies, as the sun brightened.
The silence after so much noise was overwhelming. I sat on the ground stunned as everything I’d said and done rushed in; the scents and sights, the words and the feelings, the temptations I’d accepted and rejected, bombarded me.
I waited for Jimmy to touch me, to whisper that everything was all right, that I’d had to do all that I’d done. Instead, he stepped around me and went to the fairy.
“You okay?” He touched her shoulder, took her into his arms as she cried.
I was so shocked I just stared at the two of them, blinking in the sudden sunlight—the storm had disappeared as if it had never even been—expecting the scene before me to fade, a hallucination, a vision, anything but the truth, except it didn’t.
Neither did the one behind them, a scene that would haunt me for the rest of my days.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “Sawyer’s dead.”
I didn’t want to touch him, wasn’t sure what I’d see. But I couldn’t leave him hanging there like some kind of sacrifice.
“Jesus,” I muttered, and dragged myself to my feet as all that had happened became clear.
Sawyer had been the sacrifice that allowed me to command the demons. He’d been wrong. He wasn’t too damned to be innocent. Perhaps he was just damned enough. At any rate, his death had allowed me to send the Grigori and, from the welcome silence in my brain, Satan back to Tartarus.
Because the only way Sawyer could die was if he wanted to and therefore he’d given his life freely. A sacrifice.
Jimmy and Summer didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t offer to help. I had to stop looking at them, or I might do something I’d regret.
I stumbled across the dusty ground. Sawyer’s head hung limp. The gaping hole in his chest had not healed; the blood that washed over his tattooed skin had just begun to dry.
His heart lay at his feet where I’d dropped it when the magic took me. A strange thought trickled through my numb brain. What if I put it back?
I was a sorcerer. I could command a storm, control lightning. I could raise a ghost. Hell, I’d just sent demons back to hell. Maybe if I combined every power I had, I could raise him like I’d killed her.
Bending, I scooped up the gory organ. Dirt and grass and dust clung to it. I didn’t bother to wash them away. If I could raise Sawyer from the dead, a little grit wouldn’t hurt him.
I pressed the heart back into his chest; the squishing sound nearly undid me. Someone was whimpering and so I crooned, “Shh. Shh,” as if talking to a frightened child. But I was just talking to myself.
My hand shook. My fingers were as cold as ice atop a lake, his skin the chill water beneath. I patted his chest, uncertain what to do next. Call the storm? Cast a spell? I couldn’t remember how to do one and didn’t know how to do the other.
I was in shock; I knew that, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from touching his face, calling his name. Then I was slapping him, begging him, and at last Jimmy came.
“Lizzy.” He grabbed one arm, Summer the other. I flipped my hands upward, but only Summer flew away. Jimmy was unaffected, the fairy dust spell still intact.
“Take it off,” Jimmy ordered Summer, his voice low and flat. He was angry, but I wasn’t sure why.
“Sh-she’ll hurt you.”
“Do it,” he said. “Now.”
Strange, but he sounded mad. At her.
“Hit me,” Jimmy whispered into my hair. “It might help. It usually does.”
I reached for Sawyer again, and this time when Jimmy took my arm I punched him. My fist met his rock-hard gut, and then I was crying, even though I never cried. There was no point. But again, I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
The crying didn’t last, but the buzzing sense of unreality did. I kept expecting Sawyer to lift his head and demand to be released; then he’d annoy me, piss off Jimmy, scare Summer, and everything would be back
the way it should be.
But, regardless of what I’d just accomplished, nothing was ever going to be as it should be again. I knew that.
I stared over Jimmy’s shoulder as he patted my back, stiffly, as if he didn’t want to hold me, to help me, but he didn’t have much choice.
My gaze was drawn to Sawyer’s tattoos. They no longer sparkled and danced; they were just ink, growing darker as his skin began to pale.
I inched out of Jimmy’s arms, and he breathed a sigh of relief. But when I reached again for Sawyer, Jimmy snatched my wrist before I could touch him.
“Take your hand off me before I break every finger you’ve got.” I met his eyes, and he lifted his arms, palms face out as he surrendered.
I moved closer to Sawyer’s body and rubbed my thumb, then my fingers, then my whole hand against the wolf on his biceps. I didn’t see a single shimmer, didn’t feel a breath of air, nor a hint of the phantom chill. I began to panic, frantically patting the tiger, the tarantula, the crocodile. None of them worked. Why would they? The power lay in Sawyer, not the ink.
There had to be a way to fix this. Maybe a spell. Hey—
“The key.”
That had been the mission all along. Find the key, send the Grigori back to hell. The spells in that book were ancient and obviously very powerful. There had to be something in there about raising the dead.
My clothes appeared in front of me, clutched in Jimmy’s hand. I’d forgotten I was naked. I had to be pretty out of it to forget that.
Yanking them on, I glanced at Summer, who hovered a few feet away chewing her nails, eyes on Jimmy. For an instant I felt sorry for her. If I’d seen this future, would I have agreed to anything to make it go away? I had no idea.
I hurried toward the porch, then walked up the steps to the place where I’d last seen the key.
It wasn’t there.
I turned right, then left, then all the way around. “You saw her with the book, didn’t you?”
Jimmy joined me, gaze becoming as frantic as mine. “What the fuck!”
“The Phoenix was reading it.”
“Then she put it down right there.” Jimmy pointed to the same place I’d expected to find the thing.
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