Any Given Doomsday (7 page)

Of course he’d said the knife wouldn’t hurt him. But he’d also said he loved me, that he’d never leave, that there was no one for him but me. So sue me if I didn’t believe a word out of his lying mouth.

I stomped on his foot. “Back off!”

He didn’t seem to feel it; he didn’t seem to hear me, or maybe he just didn’t care. His head lowered.

I opened my mouth to protest, and he was kissing me, long-fingered artist’s hands cupping my hips, drawing me in. He was hard against my stomach, his chest warm against my own. I couldn’t help it; I rubbed myself against him, moaning at the friction, increasing it until my nipples hardened against the soft material of my bra.

His tongue taunted mine. He tasted like heat and the night. Memories.

Air brushed my stomach as his hands swept upward, palms tracing my ribs, then cupping my breasts, thumbs sliding beneath the cotton to roll the spike of my nipples.

There was something I was supposed to remember, something I was supposed to think, to do, to wonder. I almost had it and then—

He yanked the sleeves of my shirt over my shoulders; two of the buttons popped. My arms were pinned; I struggled a little, but the movements only made another button give a dull
ping
as it lost the battle and tumbled to the floor.

His mouth left mine; tiny kisses feathered across my jaw, my neck, my collarbone. He pressed his face into the curve of my shoulder and took a deep breath. His hands, still cupping my breasts, seemed to tremble.

“Anything?” he repeated.

I closed my eyes, saw… nothing. Then I heard Ruthie’s voice, past or present, I wasn’t sure.

I’m only gonna say somethin’once; you’d best listen.

I should have known she wouldn’t send me another flash. What would be the point? She’d told me what Jimmy was, and now I’d have to deal.

I opened my eyes; his face was only inches away. “Nothing.”

His mouth curved as his fingers, still under my shirt, flexed. I bit back a moan as sensations I hadn’t experienced in years shot through me.

“Good,” he said. “I was afraid you’d be getting a news-reel on me every time I touched you. That would cramp my style.”

“What style?”

Instead of answering, he yanked a few more buttons free, then lowered his head and closed his lips over my nipple.

His mouth was scalding; his tongue pressed me against the roof of his mouth, over and over, suckling. This was such a bad idea; so why did it feel so good?

“No,” I whispered. His only response was to score me with his teeth. My breath hissed in. I wasn’t hurt; I was even more aroused. But now was not the time; this was not the place.

“Stop,” I said, but he didn’t.

His fingers dug into my ribs; his mouth continued its assault on my skin. Annoyance replaced the arousal, and I brought my elbow up toward his nose. Without even lifting his head he blocked the blow with the palm of his hand. The impact vibrated all the way to my shoulder. I began to get scared.

I’d never felt physically threatened by Jimmy, probably because I’d beat the crap out of him on several occasions. I always suspected he’d let me, or at least not fought back very hard. But Jimmy was no longer the man I’d known. He was no longer just a man at all, and who was to say he wouldn’t take what he wanted.

His teeth scraped me again, harder this time, and I bit back a startled cry. I wouldn’t be afraid. I hated being afraid. Once I’d gotten off the streets I’d vowed never to be afraid again.

Big hopes that were too easily dashed.

My hands clenched, and the hilt of the knife I still carried bit into my palm. I brought it up without thinking, or maybe I’d been thinking it all along.

Jimmy twisted away with a slightly feral snarl. I missed sticking him by centimeters. I expected to see fangs pressing against his lips, blood trickling down my breast, but he looked the same as he always did. So did my breast.

I held the knife in front of me like a talisman. “Don’t touch me again.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

“You took them from Ruthie, and since I’m assuming Ruthie’s place…” My lips curved. “I always wanted to be the boss of you.”

He reached out with that inhuman speed and snatched the knife from my hand. “I told you this wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Like I would believe anything you had to say, San-ducci.”

He rolled his eyes, then stabbed himself through the palm with the blade. The damn thing went all the way through his hand and stuck out the other side. The blood I’d been dreaming of flowed, pattering onto the plank floor like a light spring rain.

“Oh, shit. Oh, hell,” I muttered, taking a step forward, meaning to help, remembering what he’d done, what he was, then taking a step back.

“Give it a rest, Lizzy. I’m fine.”

He hadn’t burst into ashes. That was good. Maybe.

Jimmy yanked the knife out. I winced at the wet, sucking sound, and he glanced at me with a worried frown, probably wondering if I’d faint. He should have known better.

The gory wound in his palm began slowly to close. Within seconds, the blood had stopped dripping. Within minutes, his palm appeared as if it had only been cut with broken glass instead of pierced by a silver blade.

My eyes met his. “How?”

“I’m a breed. Mostly human, which is why I’m not evil, but still something more.”

“I’m just supposed to believe you when you tell me you’re not evil?”

“I work for the good guys. Doesn’t that make me one of them?”

“Not necessarily.”

“I don’t kill people. I kill Nephilim.”

“According to you, they’re half people.”

He wiped his hand on his pants, leaving a streak of blood that blended into the navy blue denim. Could be mud. Could be ketchup. Could be anything. I needed to buy darker jeans.

“The Nephilim are evil.” He lifted one shoulder. “It’s just the way they are.”

“But you’re not?”

“No. I’m not saying that some of the breeds don’t fight for the other side. But given the generation or generations we’ve been removed, that added influx of humanity seems to have allowed us a choice.”

What he was saying did make a weird kind of sense. Or as much sense as anything else did lately. Except…

“Why did I see fangs, Jimmy?”

“There’s vampire in me; I’m not denying it. But those traits are dormant. I don’t have fangs.” He smiled widely; there was no joy in the expression—and no fangs in his mouth. “I don’t drink blood. You saw for yourself that silver didn’t hurt me.”

“Does it hurt any vampire?”

“No.”

I almost laughed. Trust Jimmy to bring up a defense that wasn’t a defense at all. He always pushed every boundary there was, stepped over every line that he saw. That hadn’t changed.

“You had to have sensed my dormant nature when you touched me; that’s the only thing that makes sense,” he muttered.

He could be right. What did I know?

“I worked with Ruthie,” he said softly. “She trusted me. Can’t you?”

I wasn’t sure. But the reasons I didn’t trust him had little to do with this.

Jimmy was right. Ruthie had worked with him. She’d given me her gift. She’d told me to help him, and I’d said that I would.

“We’ll work together to find out who killed Ruthie,” I agreed.

“And then?”

“Then we’ll see.”

“You have the power now, Lizzy. You’re kind of stuck.”

Kind of fucked was more like it, but I kept that to myself.

“We’ll
work
together,” I repeated, “but that’s it.”

“No problem,” he said, and opened the door to the tack room.

I scowled at his back. He didn’t have to sound like he could care less; he could whine at least a little. Beg a little more.

“It’s a bad idea for DKs to be involved with anyone.” He glanced over his shoulder. “My life expectancy is pretty dim.”

My gaze fell to his steadily healing hand. “But—”

“I can heal, but I can also die. Wounds inflicted by a Nephilim don’t mend as fast.” He flicked a finger toward his eye. “Remember this?”

In my hospital room, after I’d checked out for nearly a week, he’d still had a shiner from getting hit at Ruthie’s place.

A weight seemed to settle on my chest at the idea of Jimmy dying. I didn’t want him touching me, but I didn’t want him dead and incapable of it either.

I rubbed my forehead. Working with him was going to be
such
a pain in the ass.

“Besides healing”—I dropped my arm—”what else makes you special?”

“Extreme strength and speed. My eyesight is better than most. 1 can see a vampire behind their human disguise.”

“Do all DKs have special abilities?”

“Pretty much.”

“They’re all breeds?”

He hesitated as if thinking, then nodded.

I let that sink in. I guess it made sense. You didn’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and you didn’t send just plain folks to fight demons of biblical proportions. Not if you actually wanted to save the world instead of watch it die.

Laughter tickled the back of my throat. This was all so ridiculous it had to be true.

“Wait a minute. How am I supposed to know the difference between Nephilim and breeds?” I asked. “Ruthie whispered berserker
and
she whispered dhampir.”

“When something’s trying to kill you, it’s always a good idea to kill it back,” he said.

“I’m serious.”

“Me, too.”

“Even if I knew the difference between breeds and Nephilim, according to you, some of your kind fight for the other side.”

“It’ll take time for you to get used to this. Eventually you’ll learn—from books, from others, from seeing the same types of creatures over and over again—what’s a Nephilim and what’s a breed. But Ruthie always said that she could distinguish good and evil just from the nuances in tone and the volume of the voice in her head.”

“Swell,” 1 muttered.

“You’re going to need some training and some practice, but right now we have to meet Springboard.”

“They’re waiting for you at City High.”

“You think?”

I resisted the urge to slug him. I was getting better and better at that. “Where are we going to meet?”

Without answering my question, he slipped out of the tack room, closing the door behind him.

I reached it quickly, but with Jimmy quick just wasn’t good enough. He’d not only closed the door but locked it.

I slammed my fist against the wood. “What the hell?”

“You need to stay put, Lizzy. They know where you live. You’ll be safe here, and I’ll be back for the meeting.”

“You can’t leave me behind.”

“I think I just did.” His voice got farther away.

“Sanducci!” I hit the door again. “Let me out!”

Silence was my only answer.

Did he think I’d never been locked up before? I’d be out of here in no time.

Then what?

Jimmy was right; I couldn’t go back to my place. Not now, perhaps never. I bit my lip, worried about Megan, my job, my apartment.

“Any advice?” I asked the empty room. “Or are you only going to come to me in dreams?”

As I muttered to myself, I looked around for something to use on the lock. Flicking the light switch, I cursed when nothing happened. The electricity was either out or disconnected. Probably the latter. Who would need electricity on an old farm that was no longer used? In truth, having it would be worse than a neon sign stating: HERE 1 AM; COME AND GET ME!

I glanced at the single small window high up in the western wall. The sun sparkled on the dirty pane—red, pink, orange—the sky behind it was a dark but brilliant blue. What light I had wasn’t going to last much longer.

I checked the doorknob, which was shiny and new, damn near unpickable, even if I’d had the tools to pick it. I should have known Sanducci would buy the best. Frustrated, I rattled the door.

And something on the other side rattled back.

Chapter 10

“Sanducci?”

That something growled. The growl didn’t sound human. It sounded more—

Rrrarrrr!

“Cat,” 1 murmured. “Damn big one.”

The thing slammed against the wood, snarling now, scratching, trying to make its way to me.

I felt exposed, my hands far too empty. Where in hell was that knife?

My gaze searched the floor. The light had faded to a pale gray, shot through with streams of pink. Pretty if I’d had the time to daydream. The way my life was going, daydreams would become a fond memory. Nightmares were going to be more my style.

At first I didn’t see the knife anywhere, and I had a panicked moment thinking Jimmy had taken it along. Then I caught the last flash of the dying sun off something just under the edge of the cot.

I went onto my knees and grabbed the hilt, feeling so much better with its now familiar weight in my hand, despite the remnants of Jimmy’s blood on the blade. Turning, I faced the door just as the big beasty crashed into it again. The wood split down the middle like a melon.

“Wonderful.”

I glanced at the knife. Silver worked on most shape-shifters. I knew that firsthand. I was pretty certain what was out there was some variation of the berserker I’d already killed, but it could be just a big cat.

I snorted.
Just
?

The thing snarled again, and I tilted my head. Sounded like a cougar, although it would be kind of odd for a cougar not only to wander so far south but to stroll into this barn and get a hard-on for me. Shape-shifter made a lot more sense, and that it did brought home to me how much my life had changed.

The door creaked alarmingly as the thing threw its body against the wood. I couldn’t stay here. If the animal got in, it would kill me, despite the silver weapon. The room was too small. The beast would break through and rush me. I’d have nowhere to retreat, no way to maneuver.

I’d lucked out with the bear. I doubted I’d continue to have that kind of good fortune with everything else. My sole chance was to escape somehow, then either run and hide, or if I had to, stand and face it. My gaze scanned the small room.

Anywhere but here.

I had a cell phone, but fat lot of good it would do me. Who would I call that I could explain this to? Who could I call that was capable of killing whatever was out there and not getting killed themselves?