Doomsday Can Wait

_DOOMSDAY

_{CAN WAIT}

Lori Handeland

CHAPTER 1

A month ago I put a stake through the heart of the only man I've ever loved. Luckily, or not, depending on the day and my mood, that wasn't enough to kill him.

I found myself the leader of a band of seers and demon killers at the dawn of the Apocalypse. Turns out a lot of that biblical prophesy crap is true.

I consider it both strange and frightening that I was chosen to lead the final battle between the forces of good and evil. Until last month I'd been nothing more than a former cop turned bartender.

Oh, and I was psychic. Always had been.

Not that being psychic had done anything for me except lose me the only job I wanted—being a cop—and the only man, too: the aforementioned extremely hard-to-kill Jimmy Sanducci. It had also gotten my partner killed, something I had yet to get over despite his wife's insistence that it hadn't been my fault.

In an attempt to pay a debt I could never truly pay, I'd taken a job as the first-shift bartender in a tavern owned by my partner's widow. I also found myself best friends with the woman. I'm not quite sure how.

After last month's free-for-all of death and destruction, I'd come home to Milwaukee to try and figure out what to do next. The army of darkness was winning. Their former leader had taken me prisoner, turned Jimmy evil, then nearly wiped out my whole troop before I managed to kill the creep and escape with Jimmy in tow.

Now three-quarters of my Doomsday soldiers were dead and the rest were in hiding. I had no way of finding them, no way of even knowing who in hell they were. Unless I found Jimmy. That was proving more difficult than I'd thought.

So while I hung out and waited for the psychic flash that would make all things clear, I went back to work at Murphy's. A girl had to eat and pay the mortgage. Amazingly, being the leader of the supernatural forces of sunshine—I'm kidding, we're actually called the federation—didn't pay jack shit.

On the night all hell broke loose—again—I was working a double shift. The evening bartender had come down with a case of the "I'd rather be at Summerfest" blues, and I couldn't walk out at the end of my scheduled hours and leave Megan alone to deal with the dinner rush.

Not that there was much of one. Summerfest. Milwaukee's famous music festival on the lake, drew most of the party crowd. A few off-duty cops drifted in now and then—they were the mainstay of Megan's business—but in truth, Murphy's was the deadest I'd ever seen it. Hell, the place was empty. Which made it easy for the woman who appeared at dusk to draw my attention.

Tall and slim and dark, she strolled in on dangerously high heels. Her hair was up in a fancy twist I never could have managed, even if my own hair were longer than the nape of my neck. Her white suit made her bronze skin and the copper pendant revealed by the plunging neckline of her jacket gleam in the half-light.

Megan took one look, rolled her eyes and retreated to the kitchen. She had no patience for lawyers. Did anyone? This woman's clothes, heels, carriage screamed bloodsucker. In my world, there was always great concern that the term was literal. I nearly laughed out loud when she ordered cabernet.

"With that suit?" I asked.

Her lips curved; her perfectly plucked eyebrows lifted past the rims of her self-regulating sunglasses, which had yet to lighten even though she'd stepped indoors. I could see only the shadow of her eyes beyond the lenses. Brown, perhaps black. Definitely not blue like mine.

The cheekbones and nose hinted at Indian blood somewhere in her past, as did the dusky shade of her skin. Mine was the same hue. I'd been told I was mixed race, but I had no idea what that mix was. Who I'd been before I'd become Elizabeth Phoenix was as much a mystery to me as the identity of my parents.

"You think I'd spill a single drop?" she murmured in a smoky voice.

How could something sound like smoke? I'd never understood that term. But as soon as she spoke, it suddenly became clear to me. She sounded like a gray, hot mist that could kill you.

"You from around here?" I asked.

Murphy's, located in the middle of a residential area, wasn't exactly a tourist attraction. The place was as old as the city and had been a tavern all of its life. Back in the day, fathers would finish their shifts at the factories, then stop by for a brew before heading home. They'd come in after dinner and watch the game, or retreat here if they'd fought with the wife or had enough of the screaming kids.

Such establishments could be found all over Milwaukee, hell, all over Wisconsin. Bar, house, bar, house, house, house, another bar. In Friedenberg, where I lived, about twenty miles north of the city, there were five bars in the one-mile-square village. Walking more than a block for a beer? It just wasn't done.

"I'm from everywhere," the stranger said, then sipped the wine.

A small drop clung to her lip. Gravity pulled it downward, the remaining moisture pooling into a droplet the shade of blood. Her tongue snaked out and captured the bead before it fell on the pristine white lapel of her suit. I had a bizarre flash of Snow White.

"Or maybe it's nowhere." She tilted her head. "You decide."

I was starting to get uneasy. She might be beautiful, but she was weird. Not that we didn't get weirdos in the bar every day. But there was usually a cop or ten around.

Sure, I'd once been a cop, but I wasn't anymore. And pretty much everyone, even Megan, frowned on bartenders pulling a gun on the clientele. Of course, if she wasn't human—

My fingers stroked the solid silver knife I hid beneath my ugly green uniform vest as I waited for some kind of sign.

The woman reached again for her wine. Contrary to her earlier assertion, she knocked it over. The ruby-red liquid sloshed across the bar, pooling at the edge before dripping onto the floor.

I should have been diving for a towel; instead I found myself fascinated by the shimmering puddle, which reflected the dim lights and the face of the woman.

The shiny dark surface leached the color from everything, not that there'd been all that much color to her in the first place. Black hair, white suit, light brown skin.

Slowly I lifted my gaze to hers. The glasses had cleared. I could see her eyes. I'd seen them before.

In the face of a woman of smoke who'd been conjured from a bonfire in the New Mexico desert. No wonder she hid them behind dark lenses. Those eyes would scare the pants off anyone who stared directly into them. I was surprised I hadn't been turned to stone. They held eons of hate, centuries of evil, millenniums of joy in the act of murder, with a dash of madness on the side.

I drew my knife, threw it—I ought to have been able to hit her in such close quarters—but she snatched the weapon out of the air with freakishly fast fingers.

"Shit," I said.

Smirking, she returned the knife—straight at my head. I ducked, and the thing struck the wall behind me with a thunk and a
boing
worthy of any cartoon soundtrack.

I straightened, meaning to grab the weapon and leap across the bar. I had supernatural speed and strength of my own. But the instant my head cleared wood, she grabbed me by the neck and hauled me over, breaking bottles, knocking glasses everywhere.

"Liz?" Megan called.

I opened my mouth to shout "Run!" and choked instead as the woman squeezed.

She lifted her gaze to where Megan must surely be. I wanted to say "Don't look at her," but speech was as beyond me as breathing.

I heard a whoosh and then a thud. Like a body sliding down a wall to collapse on the floor. Had the woman of smoke killed Megan with a single glance? I wouldn't put it past her.

I pulled at her hands, tugged on her fingers, managed to loosen her hold enough by breaking a few to gulp several quick breaths.

What in hell had happened? The woman of smoke was obviously a minion of evil out to kill me. Being the leader of the light, in a battle with the demon horde, seemed to have put a great big, invisible target on my back.

However, the other times I'd always had a warning— what I called a ghost whisper. The voice of the woman who'd raised me, Ruthie Kane—whose death had set this whole mess in motion—would tell me what kind of creature I was facing. Even if I didn't know how to kill it—and considering that I'd been dropped into this job with no training, that was usually the case—I still preferred advance notice of impending bloody death rather than having bloody death sprung upon me.

I tried to think. It was amazingly hard without oxygen, but I managed.

The woman of smoke had grabbed my silver knife and her fingers hadn't broken out in a rash. Not a shape-shifter, or at least not a common one such as a werewolf. When you mix silver and werewolves, you usually wind up with ashes.

Her strength hinted at vampire, though most of those would just tear out my throat and have a nice, relaxing bath in my blood. Still—

I let go of her arm and tore open my uniform so that Ruthie's silver crucifix spilled free. Vampires tended to flip when they saw the icon, not because of the shape, or the silver, but the blessing upon it. She didn't even blink.

I pressed it to her wrist anyway. Nothing. So, not a vampire.

Suddenly she stilled. The pressure on my throat eased; the black spots cleared from in front of my eyes. She stared at my chest and not with the fascinated expression I often got after opening my shirt. If I did say so myself, my breasts weren't bad. However, I'd never had a woman this interested in them. I didn't like it any more than I liked her.

"Where did you get that?" Her eyes sparked; I could have sworn I saw flames leap in the center of all that black.

"Th-the crucifix is—"

"A crucifix can't stop me." She sneered and yanked it from my neck, tossing the treasured memento aside.

"Hey!" I tore her amulet off the same way.

The very air seemed to still, yet my hair stirred in an impossible wind.

Dreadful One,
Ruthie whispered at last,
Naye'i.

A Naye'i
was a Navajo spirit. I'd heard of them before. Several puzzle pieces suddenly fit together with a nearly audible click.

The woman of smoke backed away, staring at the stone I had recently strung on its own chain rather than continuing to let it share Ruthie's.

"You don't like my turquoise." I sat up.

Her gaze lifted from the necklace to my face. All I could see between the narrowed lids was a blaze of orange flame. "That isn't yours."

"I know someone who'd say differently." My hand inched toward the blue-green gem. "The someone who gave it to me. I think you call him . . . your son."

As soon as my fingers closed around it. the turquoise went white-hot, and the
Naye'i
snarled like the demon she was, then turned to smoke and disappeared.

CHAPTER 2

A movement near the bar had me crouching and swivel-ing in that direction, even though I was fresh out of weapons except for the turquoise. I doubted the stone would do me much good against the shotgun in Megan's hands.

Though short, Megan was strong, probably from hauling three kids around—first in her belly and then on her hip—not to mention being a single mom with a thriving business. She didn't get much sleep; she frequently forgot to eat; yet her pale skin, which fried like bacon in the sun, glowed as healthy as her thick, curly red hair and dark blue eyes.

She was cute as a button—and several other similes for cuteness, such as puppies and kittens, all of which drove Megan crazy. She wanted to be elegant and classy, but you get what you get. I, myself, was tall, dark, and different when all I'd ever wanted to be was normal.

Nevertheless, Megan's adorability, her girl-next-doorness, would have been adequate grounds to put her on my "too annoying to live" list except she also had a dry, sarcastic wit that matched my own and a genuine lack of interest in how she looked or who she impressed. All Megan cared about were her kids, her bar, and me. Crazy woman.

She lowered the shotgun, cast me a quick, unreadable glance, then poured herself a shot of Jameson's and slammed it back like water.

I let out a sigh of relief that she was alive and standing, with all her faculties still intact. Obviously the woman of smoke had the power to knock someone unconscious with a single glance, but she couldn't kill anyone that way. The first good news I'd had in weeks. I wondered why she hadn't tried it on me.

Without raising her voice, Megan said, "You're gonna sit right down and tell me what the fuck that was."

I hesitated. Panic was just around the corner if the world at large discovered Doomsday was at hand. But I didn't know how I could avoid telling Megan something. Unless I just left and never came back. Probably a good choice considering my presence here had nearly gotten her killed.