Apocalypse Happens (26 page)

“I’m your daughter,” I said. “I’ve been searching for you all my life.”

Basically BS, but pretty convincing BS. Didn’t all lost kids search for their parents? Or at least all lost kids except for me. Sure, I’d wondered; I’d asked, but I hadn’t looked. I’d had Ruthie, and she was all I’d ever really needed.

According to her, I’d been dumped, no record of my birth, my family, anything, until I’d entered the system. Although the more I discovered, the more that seemed like BS too. If that were truly the case—if no one had known anything about my parents—then how had I become Liz
Phoenix
?

“Now that I’ve found you,” I continued, “why wouldn’t I want to join you?”

“You were as unaware of me as I was of you until just a few days ago.”

“And how did you become aware that you had a daughter?” Jimmy asked.

“How do you think?” Her gaze went to Sawyer.

Jimmy’s gaze followed hers, as did mine. Sawyer shrugged. “Someone had to tell her.”

“A Judas excuse if ever I heard one,” I murmured.

“The federation is losing members by the minute,” Sawyer said. “The Nephilim are increasing at the same rate. I saw which way the tide was turning. I like to back a winner.”

“Wow, I think Iscariot said that too.”

“No more time to talk,” the Phoenix snapped. “Take them upstairs.”

The revenants clambered to their feet and surrounded us.

“Separate rooms,” Sawyer continued. “Leave them bound. If they manage to free their demons . . .” He lifted an eyebrow at me.

“Why would we do that?” I asked. “We came to join you.”

Sawyer didn’t comment, but I knew he didn’t believe me, which could be a problem.

“Whether you did or you didn’t,” the Phoenix said, “we’ll know soon enough.”

“Once we prove our loyalty.”

The Phoenix just smiled.

We had little choice but to go upstairs with the revenants. At the top I glanced back. Sawyer’s eyes were on me, his face expressionless, though his jaw was tighter than I could ever recall seeing it.

Was he being held prisoner somehow? Forced to help the Phoenix by a magic spell? A debt he owed? A promise he’d made?

His right hand, which had been resting on his left biceps, and vice versa, lowered. My gaze followed, lower, lower until a dark, curly head came into view near his waist. He cupped her neck, guiding her forward and back, forward and back. What the—?

I faced forward so fast, agony shot into my brain. I
squeezed my eyes shut, trying to blot out that image, but I doubted I ever would.

My hope, small though it had been that Sawyer was being coerced somehow, faded. I doubted he could be had for the price of a blow job.

No matter how much I hated to admit it, he’d caved. Jimmy and I were on our own.

CHAPTER 26

As ordered, the revenants deposited Jimmy and me in separate rooms. They tied me to the bed. Considering the bumps, bangs and curses from the room that shared a wall with mine, they were doing the same to Jimmy.

I didn’t bother to struggle. Sawyer had obviously told Maria all that he knew about us, hence the golden chains. Although if he’d told her everything, wouldn’t he have told her that there’s no way I’d ever change sides? Of course I’d believed there was no way
he’d
ever change sides either.

The walking dead departed. The thumps and thuds from the other side of the wall continued. I waited until Jimmy settled down, then called, “Sanducci?”

I heard a muffled, “Yeah,” in response. If I hadn’t had improved hearing, I wouldn’t have heard anything, but it was still going to be difficult to carry on any kind of conversation.

My hands were bound to the bedposts with the golden chains, but the revenants had left my feet free. For that I was grateful. If I’d been inclined to sleep, which I wasn’t, having my legs strapped down as well as my hands would have made it impossible

I tipped my chin to the ceiling, tilting my neck so I could see the wall behind the bed. Then I was doubly
grateful for the loose feet. With my prowess in gymnastics, it was a simple thing to hoist my legs over my head, grasping the bedposts hard at the same time for leverage, then tightening my stomach muscles enough to put some
oomph
behind the move.

My tennies cracked right through the plaster on my side, raining white fragments all over my hair, face and pillow. Though it had hurt, the pain didn’t last, and I yanked my feet out of the wall, let my heels touch the mattress, then cranked myself up and did it again. This time, my toes went through to the other side.

“Lizzy.” Jimmy sneezed, spit, coughed. Plaster tinkled, a distant tip-tap. “What are you doing?”

His voice was now distinct. I could hear him as if he were right next to me, which technically he was, minus the wall.

Downstairs, no one raised the alarm. They’d obviously expected one of us, probably me, to throw a violent hissy fit. Unless plaster began to rain like hail in the living room or the house came tumbling down, I figured they’d leave us alone.

“Can you hear me now?” I asked, the inflection on the words just like that annoying, bespectacled cell phone hawker on television.

Jimmy laughed once, short and sharp. “Yeah. You got a plan?”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. We can’t escape or kill them yet. Although I’d really like to do both in reverse order.”

“Shh,” I hissed.

We were speaking fairly quietly, but still . . . Around here, everyone had supersonic hearing.

“We’re alone,” he said. “Can’t you feel it?”

I closed my eyes and “listened.” For us, supernatural entities buzzed like bees; the more demony the demon,
the harder the sensation strumming along our skin. I’d been feeling it in the background since we’d gotten to Cairo, so I was surprised I hadn’t noticed when it had faded.

Of course that didn’t mean Sawyer and the queen of the damned or one of their newly risen slaves couldn’t return at any moment.

Then, from what sounded like the second floor but still distant, maybe the rear of the house, came a shout: “Now! We will play now!”

A deep, calm, familiar voice answered, though I couldn’t make out the words.

What followed made my skin vibrate. The Phoenix shrieked—fury or passion, I wasn’t sure, maybe both. The scream went on so long, my hair ached. Then it lowered—in pitch and volume—lower, lower, lower still, until it became a moan that was definitely sexual. I guess we didn’t have to worry about them lounging in the hall eavesdropping on our conversation.

“He does everyone, Lizzy. It’s not personal.”

“I know,” I said too quickly. It had never been personal; it had always been just sex.

“I often wondered why Sawyer hung around,” Jimmy mused. “Why he helped us just enough to be considered friendly, but never enough to actually
be
one of us—and never for free.”

“What did you conclude?”

“He stayed close so he’d know when it was time to raise the Phoenix and take over the world.”

“He wouldn’t know that anyway? He
is
Sawyer, remember?”

“Ruthie was the leader of the light. Until she died, we were just marking time.”

“You really think Sawyer raised the Phoenix?” I asked.

“He raised Xander.”

“He said he could only raise ghosts, not people.”

“She’s not people.”

“I know, but—”

“Lizzy,” Jimmy interrupted, voice soft. “Sawyer’s said a lot of things.”

He had. And I wondered now if any one of them were true.

Another scream erupted from somewhere in the house. Not the Phoenix this time, but I doubted it was Sawyer. I couldn’t imagine him screaming in passion or pain. I couldn’t imagine him screaming for any reason at all.

Perhaps I’d make it my mission. Before I died, I would definitely hear Sawyer scream.

That decided, I felt much better. I always did once I had a plan.

“What are we going to do?” Jimmy asked.

I wasn’t going to tell him what I’d just decided. Not that Jimmy wouldn’t be down with it. In fact, he’d probably be so down with the plan, he’d steal it for himself.

“Wing it,” I answered.

“I hate winging it.”

“You got a better idea?”

His silence was its own response. All we could do was wait—not only because we were a little tied up, har-har, but also because we still didn’t have the key.

“You might have to seduce it out of him.” Jimmy’s murmur drifted on the silver-tinged night, cascading over me like chill water, making me stutter and shiver and gasp.

“Seduce what out of who?” My voice was much louder than it should have been, even if there was no one around who cared to listen.

“The key out of Sawyer, what do you think?”

“He doesn’t have it.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No.”

“Because even if he did, consider the source.”

Silence settled between us again and it went on for a long, long time. Jimmy was right, but there was just one problem.

“I don’t think I could seduce anything out of Sawyer.”

“Why not?”

“Because to Sawyer sex is—” I broke off. I shouldn’t be talking about this with anyone, especially Jimmy.

“A means to an end,” Jimmy filled in. “A job. Currency. He’s messed up. We all are. But he wants you. He always has.”

Sawyer had said as much, and when we were together the sex was incredible. But it was never anything more than that. I never got the feeling that he cared about me any deeper than he’d care about any other protégée who got his engine revved. Perhaps our shared powers, the fact that we could shift into the same animals, gave me a bit of an edge—I was more like him than anyone else on this earth—but I really didn’t think our similarities would get me very far with Sawyer. Of course it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

“Let me get this straight,” I began. “You want me to seduce him.”

“I didn’t say that.” Jimmy sighed, sounding tired and old. This job, this world, could wear anyone down. “I said I think you’re gonna have to.”

I thought I was going to have to, too.

“Lizzy,” he began, and paused, interrupted by the distinct click of a door being opened.

A stir in the air, something moved, but no footsteps. How strange.

“What the hell do you want?”

I tilted my head, strained to hear, but got nothing beyond the slight buzz that signaled supernatural energy. No big shock there.

“Hey!” Jimmy said. “Don’t.”

What followed was sounds of a struggle, one dull thud and then silence.

“Jimmy?” I called.

The only answer was the closing of a door.

I tugged on my bonds, fat lot of good that it did me. I only managed to make my skin burn so badly a cloud of smoke encircled my head, the scent of scalding flesh causing me to choke. I lifted my legs, tried to kick a bigger hole in the wall; I’m not sure why. I wasn’t really thinking beyond getting to Jimmy and making sure he was okay.

Then the latch on my door clicked, and I let my legs tumble to the bed, where they bounced once from the force of the fall and lay still.

The hallway was dark; so was the room, no prayer of a silhouette to hint who it was. The air stirred again; something drifted close, no footsteps, just that maddening buzz that said monster.

“What did you do to him?” I demanded.

“Nothing that hasn’t been done before,” Sawyer answered.

CHAPTER 27

“What,” I repeated through clenched teeth, “did you do?”

“Nothing, Phoen . . .” Sawyer paused. I could hear his teeth grinding together. Neither one of us was going to have much left but stubs soon. “Elizabeth,” he corrected.

“He’d better not be dead.”

“Or what?” Sawyer’s voice held the smile so rarely found on his face.

“I’ll kill you.”

“The threat is getting old. Especially since you have no way to back it up.”

“You think I can’t do it?”

“I know you can’t. You have no idea how to kill a skinwalker.”

There was that. No one in the world—except for him—appeared to know how, or if they did, they weren’t sharing. Considering Sawyer, his power, his reputation, I didn’t blame them.

“Did you come here to show me how?” I asked.

A slight pause reflected his surprise. “You think I came to kill you?”

“Did you kill Jimmy?”

He sighed. “It would be better for you both if I did.”

“Mercy killing. That is so . . . not you.”

I lost my shoes, then flung out my leg in the direction of the voice, not to kick him—although that would have been an acceptable bonus—but to try to touch him and maybe “see” some of his secrets.

But my foot met air. I’d kicked so hard I nearly shot myself off the bed. Considering I was still chained to it by my arms . . . ouch!

“Relax.” His voice now came from the other side, nearer my face. I considered lifting my feet and smashing him the way I’d smashed the wall, but I figured he’d see that coming, if not literally then with whatever tenth sense he’d always had that had kept him alive for so long.

“I don’t want to relax.”

“You never do,” he murmured.

I strained my eyes. He was close enough that I could feel the incredible heat that always rolled off of him in waves, close enough that the breeze through the slightly cracked window no longer overpowered his scent, which was the same as always—the mountains beneath the sun, newborn leaves, a tinge of fire and just a hint of smoke.

However, I still couldn’t see him, and I started to wonder if he was really here at all. There were so many things that Sawyer could do that he’d never told me, that I might never know unless he did.

“Touch me,” I murmured.

Silence followed my demand. I felt his surprise flare so brightly I almost saw it—fireflies flickering in the depths of the night.

“Touch me,” I repeated, lowering my voice to what I hoped was a sexy murmur. I had no idea if it was; I’d never sexy murmured before. “You know that you want to.”

“I—uh. What?”

My lips curved. I discovered that I wasn’t afraid. If it was my time to die, if Sawyer had been sent to kill me, so be it. One thing I’d learned long ago: When it was your time, it was your time. There was no damn way to stop it.