Any Given Doomsday (24 page)

His teeth worried a bit of skin, the sharpness of the bite igniting me further. My hands grasped his shoulders as he made his way to my breast, caressing, kissing, licking until I thought I might explode if he didn’t—

Suddenly he swung me off the ground. I gasped at the sensation. 1 wasn’t small; he wasn’t large. But he was strong. I’d known that even before he strode across the yard, kicked back the half-open door of the house, and laid me on the bed far more gently than I’d expected.

What I’d expected was for him to do me in the yard, on the ground, against the wall of the house. Or, once inside, to toss me oil the mattress, thrusting into me as he followed me down. The sex would be rough and fast, but fantastic.

Instead, he stared at me as the moon streamed through the window, casting him in ebony shadow. I couldn’t see his face; I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

“Sawyer?” I held out my hand.

The gesture broke whatever hesitation he’d had. I could have sworn I heard him curse again, but he joined me on the bed, covering my body with his.

However, he didn’t take me as I wanted him to, filling my eternal emptiness to bursting, opening my body, mind, and soul. Instead, he kissed me for hours it seemed, refusing to finish what I’d started no matter how much I begged.

I’d never been so aroused, so on the edge but unable to fall just from the touch of a man’s mouth on mine. I wondered if he’d been in the desert making magic beneath the moon, casting a spell over this house, over him and me, over us.

He lifted his head. The slight light of the moon glinted in his eyes, sparkled off his moistened lips, leached the color from his face so he seemed poised like a sepia photograph, something out of the distant past, frozen in time, surreal despite the burning heat of his body. Then he closed his eyes, shutting me out even as he joined us together.

The orgasm was immediate and intense; I cried out. Not his name, I wasn’t that far gone, but a sound both shocked and satisfied, pure woman touched by man in the darkest part of herself.

Out there something answered. Something wild and free. Something other. And Sawyer lifted his head and cried out too, as he spilled himself into me again and again and again.

I was still shuddering with reaction, still hot both inside and out, when he rolled free, got up and walked away. I was so surprised, I didn’t follow at first. Had I really expected him to cuddle?

He wasn’t the type. However, pretending for a few minutes was usually considered mandatory. Not that Sawyer had ever cared about rules or common decency.

Annoyed now, I jumped up and went to the door, but he was gone.

I crossed to the hogan, yanked back the woven mat, and stared at the empty room as a long, low, lonely howl rose from the mountain.

I expected a visit from Ruthie but none came. Maybe because I had such a hard time falling asleep. Without sleep, there are no dreams and so far without dreams there’d been no Ruthie.

I kept listening for Sawyer, drifting off, jerking awake at every brush of the wind, every chitter of a squirrel, each creak of the house or a tree. When dawn arrived I was more exhausted than I’d been the night before, and no further along in my quest for a vision.

I was a failure at this seer gig. Not that I’d wanted it in the first place, but since I appeared to be stuck it would certainly be nice not to be the worst seer in the history of the world.

“Come on,” I muttered. “Let me have it. I’m ready and I’m willing.” But was I able?

I sat up, and the room flickered. Dizziness hit me so hard I wanted to retch. I closed my eyes and—bam—I saw a man.

Or maybe
man
wasn’t quite the right word.

Strega
, Ruthie whispered.

I could see his face—handsome enough, but thin, the bones of his cheeks and nose prominent, the olive-toned skin stretched tightly so he had few wrinkles, yet his seemingly bottomless onyx eyes were ancient.

His hair spilled back from his forehead and down to his shoulders, ebony waves that reflected golden nickers of candlelight. Wisps of smoke trailed here and there before vanishing on the currents of air.

He passed his hands, long-fingered and supple, familiar somehow, over a bowl of liquid on the table in front of him. His lips moved in the rhythm of a chant, though no sound reached me. The liquid rippled—dark and ruby red in the half-light. It looked suspiciously like—

“Blood.”

He glanced up at the word, cocked his head. Had he heard me?

My heart thundered at the idea of this… Strega— whatever that was—seeing me as I saw him. He seemed to be casting a spell, which made him some kind of witch. I’d find out just what kind when the vision ended.

I tried to see everything the vision afforded me. He wore a business suit—black, with an equally black shirt and tie. The effect should have been funereal, but was instead elegant. Probably because of the strong, straight line of his body, the sense that beneath the clothes someone—
something
—powerful lurked. He appeared both ancient and modern—the candlelight and bowl of blood in contrast to the fashionable suit and silk tie.

The room was modern too, the decor slick chrome and glass. Some kind of office, since I could see a desk with neat stacks of papers and a telephone; the table he stood at was long with chairs positioned every few feet.

Suddenly the Strega dropped his hands and moved toward the curtains, yanking them aside. Sunlight spilled in through the wall of windows beyond which a booming metropolis loomed.

I knew this place. I’d seen it on the television for days on end one September in 2001. From this window I could see the hole in the buildings where the towers had tumbled down. And if that wasn’t a big enough hint, the Empire State Building rose up just to the right on the opposite side of the street.

The Strega was in New York City, and so was Jimmy.

Chapter 29

I came out of the vision with a jerk, tumbling from the edge of the bed and barely catching myself before my face slammed into the floor. Then I lay there, trembling with reaction. Visions kind of sucked.

I managed to get up. I had no time to waste. I needed to call Jimmy. Except my cell phone didn’t have a battery.

I threw on whatever clothes were handy and headed out the door. I ran right into Sawyer.

“I need my phone battery. Now.”

His gaze sharpened. “You had a vision. What did you see?”

“Strega.”

“Witch,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “The spell he was casting kind of gave it away.”

“Spell?”

“Bowl of blood, a lot of hand-waving, a chant I couldn’t hear.” Sawyer frowned. “You know what that means?”

“No, but I’ve never known a bowl of blood to be a good thing.”

Sawyer left the room, returning quickly with a book so old the paper looked like parchment, the writing on the cover faded and spidery. Trust him not to have an Internet connection for research. No, he had to have a book that appeared as old as his soul, written with a quill.

He opened it, thumbed through, then met my gaze. “This is the being responsible for killing Ruthie and all the others.”

I started and reached for the book. “How do you know that?”

“A Strega is not only a medieval Italian witch but a vampire, one with the power to control animals. So if he didn’t kill her outright—”

“He sent those things to do it for him.”

All the pieces were falling into place. We’d already established that whoever had set the chaos of doomsday in motion had to have more power than most Nephilim. A witch from medieval Italy certainly fit the bill.

I skimmed the text, frowned and glanced up. “I don’t see any way to kill it.”

“Maybe there isn’t one.”

My heart lurched. “That’s impossible.”

“Is it?”

“I’ve got to call Jimmy.”

Sawyer tossed me my cell phone battery. I snapped it in, pleased to discover I had service, then punched buttons until I found Jimmy’s number. I got voice mail.

“It’s me,” I said. “Liz. Call me right away.”

I disconnected, frowning. “The phone didn’t even ring.”

“You’ll have to explain why that makes you frown. I’ve never owned one of those things.”

“What?” I glanced up. “Oh. The phone goes to the message service without a ring if it’s turned off, or out of juice—”

“Or at the bottom of the ocean along with its owner?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Wishful thinking?”

“1 gotta get to New York.”

Sawyer caught my arm as I tried to rush by. “Don’t you find it interesting that the one you’re seeking is a vampire?”

“Lately, isn’t everyone?”

His ringers tightened. “Listen to me.” His voice was a growl; his eyes flickered to beast and back again. “A dhampir is the son of a vampire.”

An icy finger trailed down my spine. “Coincidence.”

“Is it?”

“Jimmy’s on our side. Even you said so.”

“Maybe I was wrong. Isn’t Sanducci an Italian name?”

“Who knows? Even if it is, that doesn’t mean
he
is. Jimmy could be anything. For all we know some social worker plucked the name out of a hat like they did for me.”

“You truly think the name Phoenix was random?”

I had, but now I wasn’t so sure.

Sawyer waved away my questions before I could ask them. “I told you already, I know nothing about your past beyond what you do. 1 just find the fact that you were named for a mythical bird that is reborn out of the ashes again and again to be curious.”

A lot was, lately,

“If Jimmy were working against us, I’d have known when I touched him.” I frowned, remembering the flicker of fangs and blood, his seemingly logical explanation of his subverted vampire nature. “Ruthie would have told me.”

“Ruthie’s dead. Ghosts don’t know who killed them, that’s usually why they’re ghosts.”

“She’s not a ghost.”

“Then what is she?”

Crap. I had no idea.

“We’re back to Jimmy killing Ruthie? I thought we established that was impossible.”

“I think we established it was impossible that
I’d
killed her.”

“He wouldn’t.”

Sawyer just stared at me and said nothing.

“I refuse to believe that Jimmy would kill Ruthie.”

“Maybe he didn’t kill her with his own fangs, but her identity was leaked, as well as the identity and whereabouts of all the others.”

“He didn’t know all the others.”

“Someone did.”

“Even if the Strega is his—” I swallowed, and my throat clicked loudly in the still, empty morning. “Father. That doesn’t mean Jimmy betrayed the federation, that doesn’t mean he won’t kill him.”

“No? Funny that the Strega’s in New York and so is Sanducci.”

“We know why he went there.”

“We do?”

“Aaargh!” I yanked my arm free, and he let me. “Stop talking.”

“Just one more thing,” Sawyer murmured. I glared. “I’ve never tried the method, more’s the pity, but there’s a legend that says in order to end the existence of a dhampir—”

I stilled as the skin on the back of my neck prickled. In horror or delight? I wasn’t sure I’d ever know the answer to that question. But I held my breath, waiting for him to finish.

“You must kill him twice in the same way,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s a legend.”

“Jimmy said not to believe the legends.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?”

Sawyer walked out. I took a quick shower, dressed, then packed what were mostly dirty clothes that weren’t even mine and stepped out of the house. Summer stood next to her truck.

“Sawyer asked me to take you to the airport.”

“How did he ask? He doesn’t have a phone.”

“He came to my house late last night.”

I scowled, remembering how he’d disappeared from the premises. What was it about Summer Bartholomew that made every man run directly from my bed to hers?

1 hadn’t planned to say good-bye, but now I realized I had a few questions that needed answering. If I left without those answers, I’d always wonder. I headed for the hogan.

“We kind of need to go if you’re going to make your flight,” Summer called after me.

I gave her the finger and ducked beneath the woven mat.

Sawyer lay on his bedroll. Stark naked, ankles crossed, arms beneath his head, he contemplated the drifting clouds through the smoke hole in the ceiling.

“Do you ever think to knock?”

“Why did you sleep with me last night?”

“We didn’t sleep.”

I kicked his bare feet with my boots. He didn’t even flinch, but he did lower his gaze from the roof to my face. Once that look would have made me grovel; now I just lifted a brow and demanded again, “Why?”

“You seemed insistent on sex.” He lifted one shoulder, then lowered it, his skin sliding along the skin of the sheep with a soft, sexy swoosh. “Who am I to say no?”

What had I expected to hear? That he’d been unable to resist me? That what had happened between us last night was more than sex for gain, for power, for the safety of everyone on earth?

Ha. Unlikely. Did I really want it to be?

“The snake said I’d have to do whatever it took to find my power.”

“You thought that meant do me? I can’t say I minded the freebie, but it wasn’t necessary.”

He was back to the man I’d hated, the one who had no heart, no soul, no compassion. Had he ever really been anything else? He’d tricked me into having sex with him for the sake of the world. That I’d enjoyed it, enjoyed him, didn’t change who he was, even if the sex had changed who I was.

The only difference now was that he no longer frightened me. There was an explanation for everything I’d seen, for everything he appeared to have done. He was a skinwalker, a catalyst telepath, and more. Since I now was too, the magic, be it black or not, didn’t scare me. The magic was part of me.

“What do you mean by freebie?” I asked. “Didn’t the sex we had last night allow me to have a vision of a Nephilim at last?”

“Hardly,” He smiled his thin, knowing smile, the one that always made me want to throw something at his head. “I don’t have visions, Phoenix. You got that talent from Ruthie. I unblocked you, and shared my skinwalker powers, the first time I made you come.”