Apocalypse Happens (15 page)

Instead, he slapped his palm to his biceps. The resulting flash of light made me shield my eyes, and when I opened them again, he was gone.

“What about me!” I shouted to the night.

I waited until dawn streaked the sky before I headed down the mountain. When I’d come up the hill, I’d done so as a wolf—better eyes, better nose, better traction. Since I’d left my robe behind and Sawyer was gone, I’d be returning as a human. Yes, I was nimble and quick; I was strong. But the mountain was stronger. If I left in the dark, I might end up sliding into a culvert and breaking my neck.

Not that I couldn’t heal a broken neck, but I really didn’t want to. Just because my body could mend when broken didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell when the break occurred.

What was the rush anyway? Sure, Sawyer had been in a helluva hurry, but I had no idea why. If he’d needed me along, he wouldn’t have left me behind.

By the time I reached the foot of the mountain, I was hot, tired and thirsty. If Sawyer were lounging around drinking lemonade, I just might try to kill him again.

But he wasn’t. No one was. Which made me nervous. Where was the kid?

I checked the house, the hogan, the sweat lodge and the ramada. Not a sign of him. Maybe Sawyer
had
come back here; then they’d left together.

I began to touch things—Luther’s huge Nikes, Sawyer’s pillow—maybe I’d get a hint of where they’d gone. But Sawyer had always been good at blocking me, and it appeared that ability extended to his inanimate belongings as well, since I saw nothing. As for Luther, he’d worn those shoes to town, where he’d
bought . . . comic books. Which wasn’t really very helpful at all.

My car sat in the yard. I retrieved my duffel and my cell phone, although getting a signal in the shadow of the mountain was iffy at best.

I’d get cleaned up, changed, eat a bit and then head to the nearest burg where I could boot up my laptop and research the Phoenix. Sometimes I missed Ruthie’s whisper more than I missed . . .

I tried to think of something I missed more than that and couldn’t.

“Okay,” I muttered. “I miss Ruthie’s whisper more than I miss anything.” But missing the voice wasn’t going to bring that voice back. I wasn’t sure what would.

I fingered the dog collar still latched around my neck. Perhaps if I got rid of this demon, but I didn’t know if that was possible.

I turned on the water and, as I waited for it to warm, lost Sawyer’s tattered, sweat-encrusted clothing. Exhaustion weighed on me. Fighting evil wasn’t easy. Fighting the evil inside of you . . . Well, that was downright excruciating sometimes.

I stood under the stream, letting the heated mist curl around me, breathing in the steam like a balm, allowing the familiar pulse of the water to soothe the prickling unease that had followed me down the mountain. By the time I finished, I almost felt human. Quite a feat, considering I wasn’t.

The door opened and then closed. Beyond the filmy white shower curtain, the shadow of a man loomed. Though I assumed it was Sawyer, I leaned down and palmed my knife, which I’d laid on the lip of the tub.

“We need to talk,” I said.

The only answer was a long, rolling growl. Not a wolf. More like a big cat. Again.

My head tilted. “Luther?”

This time my answer was a roar that shook the mirror over the sink. Not Luther. A bigger, badder lion.

I glanced at the blade in my slick hand, wishing I hadn’t left the gun loaded with silver bullets in the duffel bag. The knife was going to be tricky in such close quarters.

Suddenly the shower curtain was yanked violently from the rod and I stood face to chest with a man I’d never seen before: tall and broad, his skin as dark as the continent his ancestors had roamed and his eyes as golden as his shaggy hair. Even without the rumble that continued to roll from his throat, I’d have pegged him for a lion shifter.

“Where is de boy?” he asked.

“What boy?” I stalled.

The man let out another roar, snatched the knife from my own hand with speed that blurred even for me and planted it in my chest.

Why did every evil thing want to stab me in the chest? I have to admit it was a pretty big target, but come on. Be original. Try a kidney, the jugular, something, anything, else. None of those shots would truly kill me anyway.

However, the pain made me drop my guard, and the still-roaring lion man knocked my head against the ceramic tile. I heard the thunk and watched as the world fell away. My temple conked the lip of the tub as I went down, and I slid along the smooth side, coming to rest with my neck at an odd angle.

The water that swirled past me ran a rainbow of reds—maroon to fuchsia, fuchsia to petal pink. My
heart thudded, stuttered, almost failed, and the rainbow began all over again—maroon, fuchsia, pink.

I needed to remove the knife. I wasn’t going to be able to heal with that stuck inside of me. But I couldn’t seem to lift my hand.

I watched the water’s rainbow swirl and wondered absently what would happen next. I couldn’t die, but I couldn’t heal.

And by the way . . . where was that lion man?

Right before I lost the last thread of consciousness, I heard a distant roar, followed almost instantly by a sound that made me fight against the dark spots overtaking my vision.

A second roar, a familiar one.

Luther.

“No,” I whispered. But, as usual, no one was listening.

The kid wasn’t ready for this. Someone had to help him, and the only someone available right now was me.

I managed to grip the side of the tub, even pulled myself half over the edge before the dark spots dancing in front of my eyes collided, and then the whole world went black. But it didn’t stay black for long.

During most of the occasions when I’d almost died—yes, I did this a lot—I awoke in the dreams of others. The ability was known as dream walking, and I’d caught it from Jimmy.

In the land between life and death, the place where dreams live, I would be drawn to the unconscious meanderings of the one with the answer to my most desperate question.

Opening my eyes, I expected the darkness to end, but the world was black. The air was hot, yet I was so cold, and something smelled really, really bad.

I tried to sit up and rapped my head against a very low ceiling. Lying back, I felt along my prison, the sides, above, behind. Surrounded by solid walls covered with satin, and when I stretched my feet, my toes—oddly bare—brushed satin too.

“Hello?” I shouted, startled to discover I had an accent—melodic, deep and dark and foreign. How strange.

Usually when I dream walked, I found myself in a person’s head. I could talk with them. I could stroll through the corridors of their mind and peek at things they didn’t want anyone to know. This was the first time I’d actually
been
the person whose dream I’d invaded. I couldn’t say that I cared for it.

I was trapped. Closed in. Buried.

My mind spun; a chittering insanity threatened. I slammed my hands against the roof, and a loud
crack
split the silence. Dirt sifted across my face.

Arise.
The word drifted through my head, a faraway, maddening whisper.
The time is here.

A compulsion, sudden and impossible to ignore, filled me. Before, I’d desperately wanted to get out; now I just had to.

I clawed upward, a nearly impossible task, through six feet of hard-packed earth. My nails broke; my fingers ached, as did my legs, which I kept pushing against whatever lay beneath. My heart beat a rapid and painful cadence. My ears and nose, my mouth and eyes, were stifled by dirt.

This journey brought back memories of my descent into the Otherworld, confusing me a little, because that memory was mine and this was . . . not. I’d never been two people before. If the body I inhabited now actually
was
people, and I didn’t think so.

People don’t rise from the dead.

The whisper returned.
The promise is fulfilled. Your fate awaits. Arise!

I couldn’t resist that voice. It lured me onward, and soon my hand burst free.

Heated, humid air caressed my cool, cool skin, so heavenly I surged ever higher. First my shoulder, then my neck, then my face emerged into the approaching dawn. On the eastern horizon, the sun would soon rise and with it a brand-new me.

In the half-light I caught a glimpse of my arms. The shade of the skin was dark, the texture supple and young. As I watched, the scratches I’d sustained from my battle with the earth faded first to thin white lines and then away completely. My lips curved. What had been promised was now delivered.

I was
free
.

Morning kissed the horizon. As the flames spread across the sky, strength spread through my body, blazing away every ache, every doubt and every last remnant of exhaustion.

The sun—ahh, the sun. It had been so long.

Is it all that you remember?
asked the voice—louder now, no longer muffled by earth, but still far away and maddeningly familiar.

“More.”

It will be yours if you do what you promised.

“I will.”

I patted a rough-hewn sack that hung from a strap looped across my chest. My clothing—some kind of sarong-type dress—was in tatters, but that sack, though dirty, had remained in one piece, and inside rested something hard and rather large for a necklace.

There is a place prepared for you. Come.

I had no choice but to obey. In truth I wanted nothing
but
to obey. I ran past crumbling headstones. The
spindly limbs of ancient trees reached toward an increasingly colorful sky as beneath my bare feet the earth rumbled and shook. The dirt spilled out its dead and they began to walk.

I lifted my arms to the dawn. As the warmth radiated over my skin, power returned and with it all of the magic.

CHAPTER 15

“Son of a—”

Pain yanked me out of the dream, but a final image flashed inside my head.

The sun rising, red lava against a gray sky and a woman flying straight into that fire, arms becoming wings, hair and skin turning into feathers brighter than the colors surrounding them, as she headed slowly toward a familiar, seductive whisper.

The sight of Luther with my own blood-covered knife in his hand made me bite off the end of the curse. Not that Luther hadn’t heard it all before, and he’d probably hear worse before this was over; I just didn’t like him to hear it from me.

“You okay?” he asked.

I sat up, my hand instinctively reaching for the wound, even though, now that the knife was out, it had nearly healed. My chest slick with blood, I was also naked.

Everything came rushing back. The shower. The shifter. The knife.

“Turn around!” I ordered. After tossing me a towel, he did.

The floor was slippery, the water pink. I’d bled a lot and the shower had continued to run even after the lion man had killed me.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Hell, I hope.” Luther took a cautious peek, turning when he saw I was decent. Or as decent as I got sitting naked beneath a tiny towel.

His head tilted, and his curling, tangled golden-brown hair shifted over one hazel eye. “Do the demons go to hell when we kill them?”

“Not a clue, kid.”

“If they do, then they would just fly right out again now that hell is an open doorway.”

I lifted my hand to rub my forehead, saw the blood and let it drop back to my side. “I guess.”

“Which would defeat the purpose of killing them.”

“Since they turn to dust, I think they’re just . . . gone.”

Luther considered that awhile and then nodded. “I think so too.”

We might be deluding ourselves, but right now I needed a better delusion than the one I’d just had, which I didn’t think was any delusion at all. But I couldn’t figure out just
what
it was.

I managed to get to my feet without falling on my ass. The slightly slimy sensation of bloody water squishing beneath toes would have turned anyone’s stomach, but not mine. As long as I—or someone I cared about—wasn’t dead in that bloody water, I’d grit my teeth and move on.

Another mantra—I had a hundred of them.

I quickly washed off my hands, my feet, then shooed Luther ahead of me and into the hallway. “Wait here,” I ordered, and ducked into the bedroom where I’d left my duffel.

Quickly I donned my usual costume of jeans and a tank top, good socks and tennis shoes. Once, I’d been
partial to sandals, but that was before I had to fight for my life all the damn time. Flip-flops just aren’t any good on a battlefield.

My fingers brushed against a plastic sandwich bag that held two items of jewelry I’d once never left home without looping around my neck. Now, one could give me quite a burn and the other . . .

I sighed and pulled the bag free of the rest. Through the sheer container, Ruthie’s silver crucifix gleamed. I missed wearing that almost as much as I missed her.

The remaining item was a chunk of turquoise culled from Mount Taylor. Sawyer had drilled a hole, strung the stone on a chain and given it to me when I was fifteen. I hadn’t known it then, but the turquoise not only protected me from his mother but also was a type of homing device. When I wore it, Sawyer knew where I was.

Why I’d continued to wear the stone right up until the jeweled collar had made a second necklace overkill—not to mention that the chain had caught on the stones and I’d feared one day it would break and disappear forever—I wasn’t sure. Sawyer had scared the pants off me back then. He’d also fascinated me, and that he’d given me a gift had charmed me. Back when I hadn’t known what true charm was.

Before Jimmy.

I winced. I’d been trying not to think of Sanducci. About where I’d left him, and what was being done to him.

My fingers convulsed around the turquoise, and thunder rumbled from the mountain. Did the mountain call to the tiny part of it that had been taken away? Did it mourn this bit of stone like a little child lost?

I snorted and dropped the plastic bag back into my
duffel. The mountain
was
magic, but that was going too far.