Apocalypse Happens (13 page)

If Social Services had found out, they would have yanked me from Ruthie’s care quicker than a starving cat snatched a baby mouse from its nest, but they
hadn’t found out. I now knew that Ruthie had controlled more than just the federation—or rather, the federation had members just about everywhere in very high places, and if things were discovered that weren’t supposed to be, it was an easy task to wipe memories from human minds. Or, in some cases, wipe those human minds from the face of the earth and move on.

Besides, Sawyer had never touched me inappropriately. The first time. Not because he had any morals to speak of but because he was scared of Ruthie. Considering Sawyer, I had to wonder what lay in their past and just how much power Ruthie had that I didn’t know about.

Ruthie reached out for Sawyer with Luther’s hand, and Sawyer took it. Seeing the two of them connected like that was kind of weird. But right now Luther was Ruthie and the touch seemed to help. Sawyer straightened, removing his hand from Luther’s as he got down to business.

“I’ll need something from him.”

“From him,” I repeated, confused.

“A part of the person who is now a ghost. Hair, nails, skin.”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh, well,” Sawyer said, and headed for his hogan.

“ ‘Oh, well’?” I glanced at Ruthie-Luther. “That’s it? ‘Oh, well. Have a happy end of the world.’ ”

“What do you want me to do?” Sawyer stopped, turned. “Conjure something from nothing?”

“Uh . . . yeah,” I said in my best “duh” voice, which Sawyer ignored.

“There has to be a connection. Something to tell the . . .”—he waved his hands vaguely—“powers that be who we want to bring forth.”

“This is such BS,” I muttered.

“Lizbeth,” Ruthie murmured. “Think. Where can we find a part of Xander?”

“Got me. We burned him,” I said. “Had to. He was a mess.”

Ruthie winced. “Nevertheless, humans leave little pieces of themselves all over the place.”

“We burned his office too.”

“Didn’t realize Sanducci was a pyro as well as an asshole,” Sawyer murmured.

Sawyer might be as old as dirt, but he could also be quite childish. Especially about Jimmy.

“His apartment,” Ruthie said. “Hairbrush, toothbrush, nail clippers, hat.”

“Hat!” All eyes turned to me as my shout echoed back from the mountains. “I took his hat.”

“You didn’t think to mention this?” Ruthie asked.

“What for? It’s a cool hat. I didn’t want it to—” I broke off. I hadn’t wanted it to burn. I’d liked Xander. I wished I’d had time to get to know him better.

I went to the rental car, leaned in and came back out with the felt hat. Sure enough, several blond hairs were stuck in a ribbon that went around the inside of the crown. I handed the whole thing to Sawyer.

“Bury hair beneath a lightning-struck tree,” Ruthie murmured.

“That’s to kill a person,” Sawyer said. “Not raise their ghost.”

I cast Ruthie-Luther a quick glance. “Where’d you learn that?”

She lifted a bushy light-brown brow.

“Oh,” I said, and turned my attention to Sawyer. “I guess you really can kill from afar by the use of ritual.”

“I guess I can.”

“We could end a lot of demons that way.”

“Doesn’t work on demons,” he said absently.

“Of course it doesn’t,” I muttered. “That would be too damn easy.”

“What do you have to do?” The voice was Luther’s. On closer examination, the eyes and the body were now his too.

“Where’s Ruthie?” I asked.

The kid shrugged. Obviously gone. Her work here—for now—was done.

“We must wait for the lightning.” Sawyer contemplated the perfectly clear sky. “The fire of its strike is needed to raise a ghost.”

“We have to wait for a storm?” Even though storms were common around here in the summer, we might be waiting for weeks. “And the lightning has to strike . . . what? Where?”

Sawyer didn’t answer. This time when he headed for his hogan, he disappeared inside, and he didn’t come back out.

I took a step in that direction, and Luther put a hand on my arm. “He doesn’t like it when you go in there.”

“I don’t care what he likes.” And I knew better. The last time I’d gone in there, he’d liked it a lot.

But I paused and contemplated the boy. “How have things been here? With him?”

“All right. He knows stuff.”

“Living forever will do that,” I said dryly. “You aren’t uncomfortable with him? He doesn’t scare you?”

Luther had been beating on his chest—as wild animals and young males can’t help but do—when he’d said he would kick Sawyer’s ass, but I wanted to know the real truth. So, with Luther’s hand still on my arm, I opened my mind and saw into his.

Luther and Sawyer beneath the noonday sun. Stripped to the waist, sweating, laughing. Sawyer seemed almost . . . human. I got distracted.

Luther moved away, breaking our connection. My eyes met his.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

I tilted my head. I’d never told him what I could do.

He looked away. “Ruthie speaks through me, but she also speaks to me. She tells me things I need to know.”

“Okay.”

“Sawyer wouldn’t hurt me,” Luther said. “Well, he would. He has. If I let my guard down, and he knocks me ten feet into a wall or some rocks, it hurts, and I heal. But he wouldn’t . . . you know.”

“I know. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left you here.”

“No?” he asked. “Not even if my being here would make me into the type of killing machine you need?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I know what’s at stake. I know that some of us will die, maybe all of us. We don’t have any choice. You didn’t have any choice. I am what I am. I’m this way for a reason. I need to learn how to control my lion, how to kill Nephilim, and Sawyer’s the best one to teach me. If there’s a price to be paid for the knowledge, I’ll pay it.”

“
I’ll
pay it,” I corrected. “Not you.”

Luther’s gaze went to the hogan. “I think that’s been his plan all along.”

CHAPTER 13

Luther went into the house, and a silence as cool and navy blue as the sky settled over the land.

“How do you plan to pay me, Phoenix?”

I turned, half-expecting Sawyer to be right behind me, so close my breasts would brush his chest. I’d gasp, stumble back, nearly fall, and he’d catch me.

But Sawyer wasn’t there, and he wasn’t standing in front of the hogan or in the doorway of the house or anywhere that I could see.

“How were you paid in the past?” I asked.

“The usual way.”

His voice seemed to come out of the darkness, seemed to
be
the darkness, and I shivered. His mother had been the darkness. Sawyer had warned me often enough that she was a part of him. I should probably kill him, but I didn’t know how.

I moved toward the hogan. “When you say ‘usual,’ where are you headed with that?”

“Blood, guts, the souls of children.”

“You aren’t funny,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to be.”

“You aren’t ready to turn over a new leaf?” I asked. “Start helping us out of the goodness of your heart rather than . . .” I paused.

Jimmy had said Sawyer trained federation members
for money, but Sawyer didn’t seem the type, and I knew now that Jimmy lied.

I reached the arched dwelling, pulled back the woven mat that served as a door and peeked inside. The place was empty.

Sawyer hadn’t disappeared into thin air, as much as it might seem so. I’d been distracted. So had Luther. Our gazes had not been on the hogan the entire time, and Sawyer only needed an instant to turn into whichever one of his beasts he desired; then in a blink he’d be gone.

“Can’t do that.”

His voice came from farther away. He still sounded as if he were all around me, but fainter. More the wind than the night. Could he turn into the wind? I had no idea.

“Can’t do what?” I backed out of the hogan.

“Help you out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Goodness or a heart?”

“Exactly.”

I rubbed my forehead. Whether I was woman or wolf, talking to Sawyer always gave me a headache.

“What are you going to charge for training Luther?” I demanded.

I had a pretty good idea. With Sawyer it was always about sex. His powers were based in sex. His body was built for sex. His mind was filled with sex.

Or perhaps that’s just what he wanted everyone to think. If he were dismissed as a supernatural nymphomaniac, he didn’t have to connect with anyone. He didn’t have to put himself out there. He didn’t have to risk rejection or heartache. If Sawyer was all about sex, then no one ever expected love. I certainly didn’t.

Besides, according to legend, loving Sawyer, or having him love you, was a one-way ticket to Deadsville.

“I’ll put it on your account,” Sawyer answered.

I didn’t like the sound of that. I already owed the Dagda a favor.

“Can’t I just . . .” I paused. What? I had very little money. My power was minuscule compared to his. The only thing I had that he wanted was me, and he’d already had that. Many times.

“I think you already did,” he said, seeming to echo my thoughts.

“Then we should be even.”

“Not yet,” he whispered.

“Great. Put it on my account,” I snapped. “At this rate, I’ll be doing you until the end of the world.”

“That should work.”

My only consolation was that the end of the world appeared to be right around the corner.

As we’d been talking, I’d been strolling around the yard, behind the hogan, the house; I’d peeked into the sweat lodge and the ramada. No Sawyer. I gave up.

“Where are you?” Supernatural hide-and-seek just wasn’t my thing.

“Remember the lake? On the mountain?”

I turned, staring up at the shadowy expanse of Mount Taylor, and as I did so, thunder rumbled in the west. “Yes.”

“We need to do something about that lightning.”

“What kind of something?”

“Bring it forth.”

“You said we had to wait for it.”

“I say a lot of things.”

Not really. Sawyer was the least likely sayer of a lot in this world.

He took a breath, let it out long and slow. “I don’t want the boy to know, to follow. He should stay here.”

I glanced uneasily at the house where Luther had disappeared. “But—”

“He’s safe. He’s a lion when he wants to be.”

“There are so many of them now.”

“And so few of us,” he agreed. “He’s going to have to go out on his own soon. I’ve nearly taught him all that I know. All he lacks is practice.”

The thought of ordering Luther—who insisted he was eighteen, but I had my doubts—to kill demons made me slightly ill. I’d sworn I wouldn’t send teenagers out to die. But once again, I didn’t have much choice.

“He’ll be fine, Phoenix.” Sawyer’s voice was soft, low, and he sounded so certain. “I need you here. We have to bring the lightning.”

“How is it that I can hear you?” I asked.

Not telepathy. I wasn’t a beast, and I was hearing him on the wind, or the air or the stars—who knew?—but not in my head.

“Magic,” Sawyer said. “I can do all sorts of great things.”

“If you’re so damn special, why do you need me to bring the lightning?”

“You’ll see.”

The last time I’d gone up the mountain to the lake I’d been on two feet. The trip had taken a good portion of a day.

This time I didn’t have a day. The storm was rumbling. I didn’t need Sawyer to tell me I had to move my ass. I didn’t need him to tell me to make my ass furry and run like the wind. I just did.

As a wolf, I loped up the overgrown path. Bushes
and branches pulled at my mahogany coat, brambles stuck here and there. Tiny, wild things skittered out of my way. Because I was both wolf
and
woman, I could ignore them.

However, the spill of the moon dazzled. I found my gaze pulled to it, and my throat ached as I stifled the call. I wanted so badly to sing to that nearly full moon and to hear others like me answer.

I caught the scent of smoke and water long before I would have if I’d been wearing shoes. My paws dislodged rocks on the path that tumbled downward, spilling me out of the overgrown fir and pine boughs and into the small clearing that fronted the clear mountain lake.

The moon flared off the water like a spotlight, the glow illuminating the hogan at the base of a mound of rock. A fire blazed higher than Sawyer’s head, turning every color seen upon the earth.

He was naked. What else was new? He kept extra clothes in the hogan, but Sawyer preferred to walk around with only his tattoos for adornment. He always had.

I reached for myself, and in a blast of light and ice I became a woman. I headed for the hogan and Sawyer lifted a hand.

“No,” he murmured.

“No what?”

“No time,” he said, then lifted his arms to the starry sky.

I expected the fire to leap higher, to swirl, perhaps to speak. He’d done funky things with fire before. Tossed in strange Navajo herbs that had made me do . . . him. Conjured a woman from the smoke who had turned out to be the mommy dearest of all time.

But the fire remained the same—too high for
safety, too colorful to be only fire—and when his fingers pointed heavenward, the sky split wide open.

I tensed, expecting lightning to spark. Instead rain tumbled down, drenching us in seconds as the fire continued to dance on unharmed.

“Come closer,” Sawyer whispered, and I did, drawn by his deep, commanding voice as well as the warmth of the flames against the sudden chill of the night.

Xander’s hat sat on the ground near his feet, a circle drawn in the dirt around it.

“What . . . ?” I began.

“Touch me.”

“Huh?”

Sawyer’s dark gaze swept to mine. “Touch me.”

“I don’t—”

“Now. I need help.”

“You’ve never needed anything or anyone. Ever.”

In his eyes, something flared. Fire? Fury? I couldn’t tell. “You’re wrong.”

The earth trembled. Sawyer’s mouth thinned, and he seemed to tremble too.

I glanced up, but the sky was as clear as a sterling winter night. The moon and the stars continued to shine through the falling rain. However, the wind began to swirl and the rain began to sting. Strangely enough, Xander’s hat stayed right where it was.