Any Given Doomsday (17 page)

“I’ll pass,” I said. “Got any wheat toast?”

“Eat.” He set my plate on the ground and filled one of his own. “You’re going to need it.”

I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Today was not going to be easy. While training, Sawyer not only forgot meals but such niceties as bathroom breaks and sleep. The man could go for days without food or water or rest. He often did.

When we were finished, we picked up our plates and went into the house. Sawyer loaded the dishwasher. For an instant I paused at the incongruity of him cooking breakfast in the yard over an open fire, then loading a dishwasher as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“It’s time,” he said, and pushed the start button.

I jumped as the machine sprang to life with a dull roar. Sawyer walked past me without a glance. By the time I got outside, he’d tossed something funky onto the fire, which then leaped higher than his head.

He sat in the dirt cross-legged and stared into the dancing flames. He seemed fascinated by them, so I plopped down and stared too, but all I saw was fire.

“Open yourself,” he murmured.

I tensed so fast and so hard, my back screamed in protest. “You know I—”

He turned his head; his eyes were pools of black, the pupils dilated so large, they’d overtaken the gray of the irises. The sun blazed down. How could he keep his eyes open without agony shooting into his brain from the abundance of light?

“To know the truth, you must open yourself.”

“I don’t know how.” I never had.

All those years ago Sawyer had tried everything to get me to open myself to the heavens, the earth, the father, the mother, all manner of beings and places and New Age—or was that hippie?—claptrap. I couldn’t do it.

“Open your mind.” He placed his palm against my forehead.

My eyes crossed. I should have closed them, except that would be like turning my back on a wild animal, and I knew better.

“Open your heart.” His palm lowered to my chest. Fingers spread, his pinky brushed the swell of one breast, his thumb paused just short of the nipple on the other.

My borrowed shirt was cotton, thin from repeated washings. The heat of his skin seemed to burn through the fabric, scalding what lay beneath. Awareness sprang to life, and for just an instant another world shimmered at the edge of my vision before winking out as if it had never been.

Our gazes met. Mine narrowed; his stayed wide and eerily black.

“Open yourself,” he intoned.

I lifted my hand and removed his from my chest. He blinked. His eyes went back the way they were supposed to be—human, not… whatever they’d been—and the dancing flames fell back to the earth with an audible whoosh.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

When he touched me I didn’t feel like myself. When he touched me I wanted something I had no business wanting.

Him.

Chapter 21

The crunch of tires on gravel had us glancing toward the road. I hadn’t realized I’d been hoping to see a Hummer until my stomach dropped at the sight of a pickup truck.

It dropped even farther at the sight of the woman who climbed out of it.

Short and slim, with naturally blond hair and dewy pink skin, she had blue eyes, of course. Her Levi’s fit like a second skin; her denim shirt was unbuttoned halfway down, bestowing enticing peaks at her perky breasts: her cowboy hat framed a beautiful oval face, and her boots were just dusty enough to make her human. She looked strange in these clothes, probably because the last time I’d seen her she hadn’t been wearing any.

“What in hell are you doing here?” I demanded.

“Have we met?”

Not really. She’d never seen me, and I’d only seen her once, all those years ago when I’d touched Jimmy and discovered he’d been touching someone else.

My hands curled into fists as I got to my feet. Sawyer was already standing, contemplating me with both amusement and concern.

“Elizabeth Phoenix, this is Summer Bartholomew.”

I’d taken an aggressive step forward, as if I wanted to beat her face in. I did, but I wasn’t going to. It wasn’t her fault Jimmy couldn’t keep it in his pants.

Then Sawyer finished, “One of your DKs.”

“My DKs. What about Lucinda?” It would seem that a DK in New Mexico should have a seer in New Mexico, but what did I know.

Sawyer cut me a quick glance. “Lucinda’s been gone for years.”

I was amazed at the wave of sadness that washed over me. I hadn’t even known the woman. But she’d been Ruthie’s friend, her colleague. Lucinda’s loss seemed to emphasize Ruthie’s, which was just foolish considering how often Ruthie dropped into my dreams. As long as she continued to do that, Ruthie wasn’t really gone.

“
She’s
a DK?” I looked Summer up and down; I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “She’s a pixie.”

Her chin lifted. “Fairy actually.”

“You’re a fairy,” I repeated, the words sounding vaguely homophobic, even though I was certain she wasn’t a gay male masquerading as a petite blond female. She was a real live fairy. How’s that for a sentence you don’t hear every day?

“Where are your wings?” I asked.

“Kind of a myth.”

“But fairies aren’t?”

“You’re standing next to a skinwalker, and you’re balking at fairies?”

I glanced at Sawyer. “Am I supposed to kill her? I’m confused.”

He shook his head but kept silent, visibly delighted at the encounter. I wanted to smack him, but that would involve touching him, and I wasn’t going to go there.

“I’m not a Nephilim,” Summer said, her voice a little higher, her face a bit more tense. “Tell her, Sawyer.”

“Obviously not, if you’re a DK.”

“A breed then?” I asked.

“No.” Summer came closer. “I’m
& fairy
.”

I really wished I had a weapon, though what killed a fairy? The enormity of what I didn’t know washed over me in a wave of exhaustion so strong I nearly staggered.

“Supernatural creature means Nephilim.” I took a few steps backward, thinking if I could get into the house, I could grab the gun I’d taken from Jimmy’s arsenal, or maybe my knife.

I didn’t like the way Sawyer watched us, as if waiting to see what we might do. Was Summer a test? Maybe I should touch her.

Duh.

Striding forward, I wrapped my hand around her forearm. She was startled at the sudden shift, and her bright blue eyes went wide as her pretty pink mouth shaped into an O.

The instant I touched her I saw Jimmy, wearing what he’d worn last night—make that early this morning. I let her go as if she were a snake.

“He went to see you.”

Her gaze met mine. “Yes.”

“Why?”

She glanced away, her cheeks turning pink. Stupid question.

“He sent me here to tell you—”

“He couldn’t call?”

Did he think I wouldn’t recognize her? Sometimes Jimmy was so damn dense, he worried me. Then again, most men were.

“Your cell phone isn’t working.” She waved at the mountains. “Might be those.”

I reached into my pocket and withdrew the phone. I’d spoken with Megan; the thing had worked just fine then. But mountains were tricky. One minute you had service and the next—

I glanced at the display. Blank. I shook it. Not that shaking had ever helped.

“You don’t need that here,” Sawyer said.

I had a sudden, sneaking suspicion and opened the battery case. It was empty.

I scowled in Sawyer’s direction. “Give that back.”

He lifted a brow and didn’t answer.

“I
do
need it. Jimmy couldn’t call. He had to send—” I waved my hand furiously in Summer’s direction.

“Yes, well, that was poor form, wasn’t it?”

Poor form? Had he learned English from the English?

I narrowed my eyes. How much did Sawyer know about Jimmy and Summer? More than I wanted him to, obviously.

My cheeks burned, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it short of finding the memory sector of Sawyer’s brain and destroying it.

“You’re here to learn,” he continued. “You don’t need any interruptions.”

“A phone call would have been much less of an interruption than this.”

“What did you see when you touched her?” Sawyer murmured. “Sanducci banging the natives again?”

I lifted my chin. “I have no idea.” I’d let her go before I’d seen too much.

“He came to question me,” Summer said. “He’s questioning all of Ruthie’s DKs.”

“You must have passed the test,” Sawyer drawled. “You’re still breathing.”

She cast him a quick, suspicious glance. “Jimmy wouldn’t—”

“Oh, he would,” Sawyer interrupted. “I don’t like much about him, but I do like that.”

“Why are you in New Mexico?” I asked.

It seemed a bit too coincidental that we were here and so was she.

“She’s supposed to keep an eye on me,” Sawyer murmured.

In Summer’s face I saw a shred of fear. Maybe she wasn’t as blond as she looked.

“You think I didn’t know?” he continued, his voice so deceptively soft and conversational, I got a chill. Summer appeared as if she might puke.

“It isn’t—”

“It is. You’re a spy for Sanducci.”

She had the good sense not to deny it. I wondered what he would have done if she had.

“It doesn’t matter now. We have much bigger problems than a lack of trust between him and me. What happened?”

For an instant she stood there blinking her baby blues as if she had no idea why she’d come. Sawyer gave an impatient growl that had us both jumping as if goosed. “Why are you here, Summer?”

“Oh—yes. Jimmy, he—” She swallowed and glanced at me apologetically. “There’s been another death.”

My heart caught.
Jimmy
.

I must have made a soft sound of distress because Sawyer blew a derisive breath out his nose. “Worry about yourself, Phoenix, Sanducci is nearly as hard to kill as lam.”

“He’s fine,” Summer said quickly. “He left—”

“Focus,” Sawyer snapped. “Who is dead?”

She spread her hands. Her nails were manicured and painted the same pink as her lips. I wanted to snap them off, one by one. Her nails, not her fingers. At least not yet.

“A seer. In New York City.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Jimmy wouldn’t tell me. As soon as he got the call, he went to check things out.”

Sawyer’s gaze shifted to Mount Taylor. “Run along,” he murmured.

She ran.

When the rumble of her engine had faded to nothing but a purr, I murmured, “Fairies? Seriously?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But they’re not Nephilim.”

“No. They’re not human either.”

“Let’s cut to the chase.” I rubbed my forehead. “Just tell me what she is. How she got here. What she does.”

“Besides Sanducci?”

I let my hand fall back to my side and met his eyes. “Yes, besides that.”

He hesitated, glancing north with a worried frown, before turning back. “You know the story of the angels’ fall?”

He didn’t wait for my nod, but continued as if he were in a hurry. “When the angels were cast out, God closed heaven. The good ones were on one side of the gate with him, the rebellious ones were on the other. Those who disobeyed his command and interbred with the humans were confined in a hell dimension.”

“Tartarus,” I murmured.

“Yes. Their offspring, the Nephilim, remained on earth.”

“Why didn’t God send them all to hell?”

“He will, once we win this war. But earth isn’t Eden. There has to be evil. The Nephilim are our test.”

“If the Grigori are locked up in a fiery pit, they can’t create more Nephilim. We keep killing them off and eventually we’ll win.”

“Theoretically. However, Nephilim can breed with Nephilim and then you get some really strange things.”

I rubbed my forehead. “Stranger than what we’ve got?”

“Nephilim are evil, but put two of them together and what do you think you’ll get?”

“Double the evil, double the fun.”

“Exactly.”

“Then why aren’t we overrun?”

“Nephilim are beings of incredible selfishness. They certainly don’t want to give birth to something that will need their care and attention for the next decade and more. Be glad they’re that way or we’d be outnumbered to the point of extinction.”

I guess every cloud did have a silver lining, or was that every silver lining came with its own personal cloud?

“Explain why the fairies aren’t Nephilim.”

“When God closed the gates, some of the angels trapped outside had not given in to temptation. They weren’t bad enough for hell, but they weren’t good enough for heaven, so they became fairies.”

“Okeydokey.” Pretty much anything made a certain sort of sense these days.

“Fairies are unable to use their supernatural powers on anyone who is on an errand of mercy, which means all the DKs and seers. They’re fairly trustworthy.”

I scowled at the idea of trusting Summer, although really it was Jimmy who needed a good swift kick in the ass. He usually did.

“What kind of supernatural powers are we talking about?”

“They can fly.”

“Without wings.”

“Handy, yes?”

“Then why in hell did she bother with a car?”

“Flying people tend to get noticed, especially during the daytime. That skill is used sparingly.”

“What else?”

“Casting spells. Altering their appearance.” He paused, his gaze intent on my face. “Seeing the future.”

So Summer the fairy was psychic. Was that supposed to make us BFFs?

Not happening.

“Are all of the fairies on our side?”

He didn’t answer right away, perhaps waiting for me to break down and quiz him about the nature of the fairy’s psychic abilities. He’d wait a helluva long time. Unless the fairies knew how to get rid of their abilities, I didn’t have any interest in sharing info.

“Sawyer,” I pressed. “Are they all on the side of good?”

“Unfortunately, no. Some have been won to the Nephilim.”

“How do you kill a fairy?”

Surprise spread over his face, followed quickly by a smirk. “Bloodthirsty today?”

“I thought that was what I was supposed to learn— how to kill these things.”

“Fairies aren’t Nephilim.”