Any Given Doomsday (18 page)

“But some of them are on the side of the Nephilim, which means they’re open season. So how do I kill them?”

“According to legend, fairies can be killed with cold steel or rowan.”

“In other words, I freeze a knife or shove a bush down her throat.”

“Whatever works.”

“While we’re on the subject of killing legendary beings, what takes out a skinwalker?”

He looked down and didn’t answer. I hadn’t expected him to.

“What about a dhampir?”

That question brought his head up. “You plan on killing Sanducci?”

“You never know.”

Sawyer laughed—one short, sharp burst that sounded rusty. I couldn’t recall him ever laughing before.

“Perhaps I’ll tell you one day, but not this day.”

“Why the hell not? You don’t like him either.”

“I like this world as it is, and as much as I dislike Sanducci, for now he’s necessary.”

“And when he isn’t?”

Sawyer just smiled.

I turned and watched the last wisp of dust die in the wake of Summer’s truck. “You know who she was talking about? The latest seer who died?”

Sawyer nodded, his gaze turning north once more.

He’d told me all those years ago that north was the direction of evil to the Navajo. Terrific. I followed his gaze, but there was still nothing there. Or at least nothing that I could see.

Then a sneaking suspicion entered my mind. Sawyer had trained certain seers and DKs. Were those the ones who’d been dying?

His gaze flicked to mine. “Sanducci wouldn’t have left you here with me if he truly believed I was killing members of the federation.”

“You read minds?” I’d always wondered.

“Faces,” he corrected. “You need to do a better job with yours.”

“I’ll get right on that, as soon as we figure out who the traitor is and put a knife through his or her treacherous heart.”

His lips curved. “I bet you wish it
was
me.”

It would certainly solve half of my problems. If, by chance, sticking a knife into Sawyer’s heart would actually kill him. I didn’t think that it would.

“Obviously I couldn’t have killed a seer in New York while I was here with you,” he pointed out.

I had no idea what he could do, but I thought it was a lot more than he let on.

Sawyer turned suddenly and headed for the hogan. Before I could register the movement, he’d already ducked inside. The woven mat, which was all he had for a door, fell back into place. I stood outside, uncertain if I should knock or barge right in. I barged in.

A fire pit had been dug in the center of the earthen floor, directly beneath the smoke hole. On the west side lay his sheepskin bedroll and neat stacks of clothing. Mats woven of grass, some of bark, were strewn about near the walls like chairs.

Sawyer was already plucking dried herbs from tiny bags, which hung from the logs near the north side of the hogan.

“Where are you going?”

“You don’t want to do this the easy way.” He pulled two backpacks—incongruous in the middle of this traditional Navajo dwelling—from behind his bedroll. “There’s always the hard way.”

“Do what? And when has anything ever been easy with you?”

“You will learn to open yourself. I’d hoped the urgency of the situation would help, but it hasn’t, and we no longer have time to wait. You need the power now.”

“And just how do you propose we accomplish that?”

“Vision quest,” he said shortly, and tossed one of the backpacks in my direction. “Get your things.”

Chapter 22

Sawyer donned suitable clothing for a mountain death march. Since the temperatures would be lower at the higher altitude, where there could still be pockets of snow despite the calendar’s insistence it was spring, he covered his white T-shirt with long-sleeved flannel and shoved his slim feet into heavy socks and hiking boots. A lightweight ski jacket disappeared into his backpack.

He produced the same outfit for me, right down to the hiking boots. Every size was correct.

I lifted my gaze to the man who lounged in the doorway of my room as if he meant to stay right there for all eternity.

“How’d you know?” I asked.

His oddly light eyes swept from my head to my toes. Wherever his gaze touched, I burned. “I’m good with sizes.”

I bet he was good with a lot of things.

I shook my head. I did not want to go there. Not now. Not ever.

Sawyer’s lips curved, and once again I got the impression he could read my mind. Or maybe it
was
just my face. I hadn’t tried to keep what I was thinking a secret.

“I meant…” I was gritting my teeth. The words came out tight and angry, which only made his mouth curve more. “Did someone tell you we were coming?”

That someone would have had to be Jimmy—who else would have known?—but I couldn’t see Jimmy dialing Sawyer for any reason.

Sawyer’s eyebrows lifted, and he spread his big, hard hands. “I have no phone.”

“You’ve got something,” I muttered, then tilted my head. “Have you been talking to Ruthie too?”

His smile faded. “No. I have my own connections.”

I had no doubt that he did. I just wondered if his connections were in heaven or hell.

Once, back then, I’d woken in the night. A flicker of firelight had illuminated my window, drawing me across the room.

He wasn’t alone.

I should have gone back to bed, pulled the covers over my head, and stayed there. But I was curious what the goat was for.

I was an old fifteen. I had several ideas, most of them pornographic. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The goat bleated. Sawyer slit its throat. I slapped both hands over my mouth to keep from screaming.

The blood poured onto the ground. Wherever it struck, smoke billowed, a column that grew taller and taller as the blood continued to flow. He bathed his hands in the red river, then laid the broken animal down, with something resembling tenderness.

The contrast between the violent sacrifice of the life and the gentle laying to rest gave me goose bumps on top of my goose bumps. We always fear what we can’t understand.

He spoke, his deep voice ringing through the oddly silent night, in a language I didn’t know. His glistening hands rose, and behind him the fire seemed to leap higher than the mountains, shifting from red flame to a silvery molten glow.

The fire and the smoke twined together, then shot around the edge of the clearing, a living thing, whirling and whirling as if trying to break free.

Sawyer barked one word, an order, and the dancing flame paused, lengthened, and became a woman of smoke. No colors, only black, white, and gray, yet I could see her very clearly standing in the puddle of blood he’d made.

She was Native American—perhaps his age, hard to say, with hair streaming to her ankles and a nose and two cheekbones that fought for prominence in a face that should have been etched in stone—ancient and new, both beautiful and deadly.

They stood together, neither speaking nor touching, though the air seemed ripe with the promise of both. He’d conjured her; for what purpose, who could say?

The Navajo are superstitious about their ghosts, their legends and magic. Yet I knew, even before she glanced up, that what I was watching I was not meant to see.

I never moved; I did not—could not—make a sound, but suddenly her glistening black eyes left his and instead bored into mine. The spell over me broke, and I dove beneath the covers, shivering, whimpering the night away. In those eyes I’d seen all that was dreadful in the world— hatred, murder, evil for the sake of evil alone and an underlying joy of it.

With the light of day, the fear should have left me, but it didn’t. I felt that being seen by the woman of smoke was a very bad thing; she would come for me. Not that day or the next, but someday. Her coming was inevitable.

Sawyer still stood in the hall watching me. I could ask him about that night, but I knew with a certainty I had about very few things that he wouldn’t answer me. Most likely he’d deny ever having conjured her at all.

I slammed the door in his face, then changed my clothes. Moments later I followed him across the long expanse of land toward the sacred mountain of the south,
Tso dzilh
, better known as Mount Taylor.

“You aren’t going to lock the house?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Anyone could come by and take things.”

“Do you know why I live out here, Phoenix?”

I had a pretty good idea.

“My people have very little tolerance for witches. In order to avoid the constant assassination attempts, I live as far away from the rest of them as possible. But I can’t leave. I need to be within the circle of the sacred mountains. To leave here is to die.”

“Seriously?”

He cast an impatient look over his shoulder, then paused. “Do you really think killing me would be as simple as tossing me across the imaginary line that separates the Glittering World from the land of the
Bila-gaanal?”

“
Bilagaana
,” I repeated.

“Whites.”

When he talked like this it made me believe that we were not only from different generations, but, most likely, different centuries.

“So you
could
go; there’s nothing stopping you?”

“Not exactly.”

“What exactly?”

“I can only depart the Dinetah as an animal, never a man.”

“Seriously?” I repeated.

“Do you think I make this up?”

“Sometimes. So, if you step over the invisible line, bam, you shape-shift?”

He shrugged, which I took as a yes.

“Bummer.”

“There’s nothing I need that isn’t here with me now.”

My gaze went to his face, but as always it was inscrutable.

“All right,” I said slowly. “Let’s get back to the no-lock policy.”

His eyes glittered for just an instant—animal, man. animal—before he turned away. “While they might try to kill me, they’re a little too scared of me to steal from me.”

I could understand that.

We walked for an hour at high speed. Luckily I’d stayed in shape since leaving the force. Still, keeping up with Sawyer left me breathless.

“What’s the rush?” I managed.

“You heard Summer. A seer in New York is dead.”

“Yes, and I’m sorry about that. But why is this one different from Ruthie or any of the others who’ve died?”

“The seer in New York was very old, very powerful.”

“And Ruthie wasn’t?”

“Ruthie appears to be a lot more powerful dead than she ever was alive,” he said softly, as if the thought had just occurred to him. He paused in his headlong rush, then zoned off as if several other interesting thoughts had come on the heels of the first.

I cleared my throat, and he glanced up, eyebrows lifted. “New York?” I reminded him. “You were going to elaborate on why this seer’s death is more catastrophic than any of the others?”

“Yes.” He still sounded distracted, but he went on. “New York has always been a place where the Nephilim throng. Without that seer in place, chaos is coming.”

“I thought it was already here.”

“Things are taking more of a downward turn than I ever thought they could.” His distraction fled, and his gaze bored into mine. “You
will
come into your full powers immediately. I don’t care what we have to do to make that happen.”

I didn’t care for all this talk of making something happen, especially when that something involved me.

“So the answer to everything is to hightail it into the mountains for a vision?” I asked. “I couldn’t have one on level ground?”

In his face I suddenly saw something I’d never seen before. Not fear exactly. I doubted I’d ever see that. But grave concern. For me.

“You think they’re coming here,” I said.

He looked north again. “I know they are.”

The sun shone with a fury, yet suddenly I was so damn cold.

“I can take care of myself.”

“You can’t. Not yet.” He started to walk again. “I won’t let anyone hurt you while you’re with me.” He said the words as if he were telling me what we’d have for dinner. “But you can’t stay with me. We both know that.”

There was something in his voice that made me twitchy, something I didn’t want to examine too closely, so I went back to walking and talking.

“Jimmy thinks you sent a chindi after us.”

“I didn’t. Not that he’ll believe me.”

“Make
me
believe you.”

“Why?”

“Dammit, Sawyer!” My shout startled a few birds from the nearby scrub. “You want me to trust you, let me trust you. For once, just answer a question.”

He continued inexorably on. I had to follow or be left behind. I considered the latter, but in the end I hur-ried to catch up. I wasn’t a complete idiot. I was safer with him.

“Do you think I mean you harm, Phoenix?”

I considered the question. If he’d wanted me dead, he’d have killed me years ago. Why wait until I was stronger? Unless he hadn’t known what I’d become.

I snorted. He’d known. Probably before anyone else.

“All right,” I allowed. “You didn’t send the chindi after me.”

“Obviously, since I gave you the turquoise.”

I touched the stone where it rested beneath two layers of clothing. Funny, that only made me suspicious again.

“You think 1 sent it for Sanducci?” he asked,

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Someone did.”

“That goes without saying.” He sounded bored. I suspect being accused of sending evil Navajo spirits to kill people did get old fast.

“I wish I knew who,” I murmured.

“I’m sure you’ll find out.”

He had that much faith in me? Despite myself, I was warmed by the praise.

“Anyone who has the power to send a chindi has the power to send a whole lot more. Something new should show up to kill you any day now.”

The warmth died. Constant references to my imminent death were getting old fast, as well.

“Jimmy said a chindi is a vengeance demon.”

“That’s one interpretation.”

“It isn’t true?”

“A chindi is a malevolent spirit released with the dying breath of a Dineh.”

“A ghost?”