Any Given Doomsday (13 page)

We approached the outskirts of the Navajo Reservation near dusk. The reservation spread across three states: Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, with the largest portion in Arizona. The area occupied by the Dineh, what the Navajo call themselves, was larger than ten of the fifty United States.

The terrain was so different from home. Flat, arid plains of salmon and copper gave way to mountain foothills dotted with towering Ponderosa Pines. Canyons surrounded by high, spiked, sandy shaded rock existed not far from red mesas immortalized in at least a dozen John Wayne movies.

Sawyer lived at the very edge of the reservation near Mount Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains that marked the boundaries of Navajo land, known as the Dinetah, or the Glittering World.

As we got closer to our destination, my shoulders tightened. My neck ached. I found myself leaning forward, fighting the opposing pull of the seat belt as I strained to see the house and outbuildings.

I was so focused on what was coming that I almost missed what was already there. But a dark flash to the right drew my reluctant attention.

A wolf loped at our side. Hard to say if it was real or—

Well, it was real, as in
there
. But was it an actual wolf, or was it another were?

I opened my mouth to tell Jimmy, then shut it again. His policy was to shoot any wolf that he saw, and it wasn’t a bad policy if a wolf was found near humans. But this one wasn’t. The animal was running along minding its own business.

And it was so beautiful. Sleek and black. Wild and free. I’d always liked wolves, or at least the idea of them. Until yesterday.

The beast wasn’t huge, as most of those in Hard-eyville had been, but it could be a woman, a small man, hell, it could even be a teenager. What did I know? But if it was a Nephilim, we needed to kill it before it killed someone else. I gave in to the inevitable.

“Jimmy,” I murmured.

His gaze went immediately past me, narrowed, and he jerked the Hummer to the right as if he meant to run the wolf over. Between one blink and the next, the animal was gone.

Jimmy wrestled the Hummer back on the road as I pressed my nose to the glass and squinted.

“Where did it go?”

He didn’t answer, just continued to stare at the road, fingers tight on the steering wheel, jaw working as he ground his teeth loud enough to make me wince. He seemed angry, not scared, and I wasn’t sure why.

“It disappeared,” I murmured. “That wasn’t a werewolf.”

Or at least not the kind we’d seen in Hardeyville.

The more I thought about it the more certain I became that this wolf had not been an actual wolf. I didn’t know much about them, but I doubted they could keep pace, with a car on the highway. We had to be going seventy.

And that vanishing act. Too damn strange.

The car lurched to the right again, and my gaze flicked to the side of the road, expecting to see the black beast, if not running, then attacking. But outside the window, the empty desert loomed.

I had bigger problems than a speedy, disappearing wolf. I had Sawyer. His place materialized out of the desert like a mirage.

Darkness had fallen in the last few minutes as it always did here—fast and hard. The colors at dusk were some of the most beautiful in the world—vivid fuchsia, muted gold, and hunter’s orange swirling through the brilliant blue of an endless ocean. In the evening they faded like a watercolor painting brushed by a cool black rain.

The Hummer’s headlights washed over the homestead. Someone waited in the yard. I didn’t have to get any closer to know who that someone was.

The house—a small ranch with two bedrooms, a kitchen, bath, and living area—sat right next to the traditional Navajo hogan, a round dwelling made of logs and dirt.

Fashioned after the sky, which was in turn considered the hogan of the earth, the building contained no windows and only one door, facing east toward the sun, so the inhabitant could greet each new day.

Behind it, dug into a short rise, was a smaller hogan, which was used as a sweat lodge. Between the two, a ra-mada, or open porch, had been built. This was used in the summer months for both eating and sleeping.

Jimmy stopped the car and I got out, moving jerkily as if I were in a trance. Maybe I was. What I wanted to do was run, hide, burrow in somewhere and be forgotten, but the first sight of Sawyer pulled me like a magnet. I couldn’t stay away.

I’d never understood what he was. Psychic? Perhaps. Magic? Probably. He was a mystic, a medicine man, but even that didn’t explain all the things he’d done, the power that rolled off him like the heat that wavered above the pavement on a scalding summer day.

“Phoenix,” he murmured, his voice deep, the cadence slow and even, as if he had all the time in the world to do anything that he wanted.

He’d always called me by my last name. I’d figured that was to keep a certain distance between us. Understandable, all things considered. However, the way he said it always sounded as if he were whispering secret nothings in front of the world.

Behind me I heard Jimmy scrambling out of the car. I didn’t spare him a glance. He’d brought me here. He’d soon learn why I hadn’t wanted to come.

In a normal world, it would be considered beyond inappropriate to send a fifteen-year-old girl to stay in an isolated cabin with a single man. In a normal world it would probably be grounds for jail time. But, as already established, mine was not a normal world.

Though I’d seen things in his eyes then that had frightened me, things I didn’t understand, things I wasn’t old enough, wise enough, foolish enough to put a name to, Sawyer had never once touched me with anything other than respect. Maybe he’d been afraid of Ruthie.

But Ruthie was gone.

I continued forward. Sawyer waited. The headlights were still on, the car still running. Even without the light I’d have been able to describe the man who’d walked often enough through my dreams.

He wasn’t much taller than me—perhaps five ten—but he’d seemed huge, imposing from his aura alone. His hair was long, though he always tied it back with whatever he found handy—string, ribbon, the dried intestines of his victims. I’m exaggerating. He rarely used anything as mundane as siring.

His face wasn’t handsome. The angles were too sharp for that. But his smooth bronzed skin and his cover-model cheekbones, which only emphasized the ridiculously long and thick eyelashes that surrounded his strangely light gray eyes, were mesmerizing. Those eyes softened the face if you didn’t stare into them too long and realize that behind their gaze was one of the scariest men alive.

He wore nothing but a breechclout, his typical attire. I’d always wanted to ask him why he walked around dressed like an escapee from a historical romance novel, but I’d never had the courage. Instead I’d done a little research and discovered that what he wore was common to the Navajo.

About three centuries ago.

Most breechclouts were worn with leggings and a loose shirt. Sawyer’s wasn’t. I could see every ripple and curve of his incredible body. As a teen I’d known he was hot; I just hadn’t known then what to do with it.

I’d come here when 1 was fifteen. I was now twenty-five. Ten years added to however the hell old he’d been then, yet he hadn’t aged at all. There wasn’t a line on his face; there’d never been so much as a hitch in his step no matter how long we’d trained, no matter how hard we’d worked.

I stopped over an arm’s length away, feeling the pull to go nearer, gritting my teeth against it. I didn’t want him to touch me. I never had.

This close I could see his tattoos. They wound up his arms, down his back, across his chest. Nearly every inch of skin I could see and most likely every inch I could not had been etched with the likeness of an animal.

My gaze shifted to his right bicep where there’d once been a howling black wolf. There still was—along with a mountain lion across his chest; a tarantula crept down his forearm, a hawk took flight from the small of his back. There were others too, all as predatory as the man whose skin they marked.

Frowning, I lifted my gaze from the wolf tattoo to Sawyer’s face. He was watching me.

Jimmy came up behind me, and I turned. I’m not sure what I meant to ask, but as I moved, Sawyer suddenly reached out, his long, strong fingers wrapping around my elbow. I gasped, both at the scalding heat of his skin and at the touch itself. I’d made certain I wasn’t close enough for him to grab. So how had he?

The wind came up from nowhere, its whisper a single word. “
Skinwalker
.”

Yanking my arm from Sawyer’s took no small amount of effort, but I did it. Unfortunately, I stumbled into Jimmy, got my too big shoes tangled with his, and fell hard on my ass.

“Dammit,” I muttered. “Isn’t
anyone
human anymore?”

Chapter 17

Jimmy growled, an unearthly sound that made the skin on the back of my neck and all the way down my arms prickle, as he put himself between Sawyer and me. Sawyer just smiled a smile that made the gooseflesh intensify until I was shivering with it.

“I’m okay. Stop. Shit.” I struggled to my feet, trying to shove myself between the two of them, who were circling and snarling like wild dogs. Jimmy shoved me back.

“Hey!” My hands balled into fists. He didn’t even look at me.

“Don’t touch her,” Jimmy said.

Sawyer’s eyes flattened along with his mouth. “I’ll do whatever I have to. As she will.”

Jimmy took a swing. Sawyer ducked it easily. I threw up my hands and got out of the way. I’d lived among men like this all my life.

Well, maybe not men exactly like this, since I’d lived among actual
men
, but the principle was similar. Street kids. System boys. Cops. Tough guys were all the same. Once they decided to beat the shit out of one another, you might as well grab a cup of coffee and watch because you weren’t going to stop them.

The battle was like none I’d ever seen—probably because it was a battle and not just a fight. Sawyer and Jimmy had powers beyond the realm of mere mortals. As Jimmy had said, superior speed and strength were his. Sawyer’s speed and strength—though lesser than Jimmy’s—weren’t too shabby either.

When one man landed a blow, the other flew several feet. They flitted around the yard, here, there, onto the roof of the house and then tumbling off, landing hard, getting up and slamming at each other again.

“This isn’t getting anywhere,” I shouted.

Jimmy glanced my way. Blood trickled from a cut in his lip, though not as freely as it would have on a human.

Sawyer took advantage of his distraction and his fist shot out, headed for Jimmy’s chin, but Jimmy saw it coming and dropped to the ground, rolling quickly out of Sawyer’s reach.

“I’m not the kid I once was,” Jimmy said. “You can’t take me anymore, old man. Those days are done.”

Old man?

Sawyer appeared to be thirty, but then he always had. Good genes? Or perhaps no genes? I had no idea what constituted a skinwalker. Was he Nephilim, breed, or something else entirely? Ruthie’s whisper had been vague.

Sawyer’s face shimmered. I saw wolf-man-wolf, as if a battle were being raged beneath the skin, behind those freakishly light eyes. Then he was man again, and he stayed that way. For now.

He turned away, dismissing Jimmy like a servant. Jimmy rolled onto his feet and sprang. Right before he would have plowed into Sawyer’s back, the other man ducked and Jimmy sailed over gracefully, landing in front of me as if he’d just completed a violent game of leapfrog.

“That’s enough,” I said softly, firmly.

Jimmy glanced over his shoulder. I didn’t think he was going to listen, but he slowly lowered his head, breathing in a measured pace—in through the nose, out through the mouth, calming himself.

Sawyer walked toward me, and I had to force myself not to back up as he came near.

“That was you on the road,” I said. “The wolf.”

He lifted his brows but didn’t answer.

I turned to Jimmy. “Right?”

He straightened; dust sprinkled off his clothes, swirling through the garish beams of the Hummer’s headlights. “Why do you think I tried to hit him?”

I contemplated Sawyer, who’d stopped several feet away from us and stood watching with an eerie stillness that had always given me the willies.

“You brought me here to be trained,” I continued, “so why would you try and kill him before that happened?”

“He wouldn’t have died. He’s a damn skinwalker.”

“You two obviously know each other a lot better than I thought.”

“He trains some of us.” Jimmy’s lip curled. “For a price.”

“You think I should do it for free?” Sawyer asked.

“You’re a breed, just like me.”

“No.” Sawyer walked toward his house. “I’m not anything like you.”

He disappeared inside.

Jimmy joined me and together we contemplated the open doorway.

“What is he?” I asked.

“You know.”

“
Skinwalker
doesn’t mean jack to me. You say he’s a breed. He says he isn’t.”

“He is.” Jimmy tilted his head. “Maybe.”

I smacked myself in the forehead. “Maybe?”

“He’s not Nephilim.”

“Because?”

“They’re evil.”

“He’s not exactly what I’d call a good guy.”

“No.” Jimmy sighed. “He’s different. He’s right about that. But he is like me. Kind of.”

“Dammit, Jimmy, you’re giving me a headache.” I rubbed my forehead where I’d just smacked it. Maybe I was giving myself one. “Why don’t you start by telling me just what in hell
skinwalker
means?”

Instead of answering, Jimmy went to the Hummer. I glanced at the open door, then at Jimmy. It wasn’t much of a choice; I followed. If he thought he was jumping in the car and taking off without me, he’d find out differently when I landed on the hood.

But all he did was reach in and switch off the engine, withdraw the keys and shove them into the pocket of his borrowed jeans.

Seconds later the headlights went off with a tinny
thunk
and shadows descended over us both. Sawyer’s house remained dark and silent. Was he even inside?