Any Given Doomsday (8 page)

No one but Jimmy, and I didn’t have his number.

My eyes lifted to the only other exit, that small western window about twelve feet above the ground. This wasn’t going to be easy.

I stowed the knife in my fanny pack, kicked off my shoes, then tossed the mattress off the cot and leaned the metal frame against the wall. If I stood on the top, I should be able to jump and catch hold of a beam, then swing myself onto it, hop over to the ledge and shimmy out the window. Piece of cake.

But what lay outside? A sheer drop or a convenient drainpipe?

“Only one way to find out,” I murmured, and scrambled up the iron frame until I was perched at the precipice.

The sound of my voice seemed to enrage the cat, which shrieked so loudly I wanted to cover my ears. However, I needed my hands for more important things.

I took a deep breath, bent at the knees, said a little prayer—if I missed there was a good chance I’d tumble off the metal contraption and sprain or strain something important—then leaped.

I caught the beam on the first try. I didn’t hesitate, but arched and then swung my legs as if the thick plank were a parallel bar and I was in the middle of the state competition.

My hips rolled over the wood; a splinter sliced through my jeans. I barely felt it. As 1 gained my feet, another resounding crash sounded below and a huge, golden paw swept through the ever-widening hole in the door.

I needed to get a move on before the cat broke all the way in and followed me. Then things would get ugly.

After gauging the distance between the beam and the ledge, I backed up as far as 1 could, accelerated for all of five steps, and performed a stag-split leap over the gap. The jeans made the movement kind of awkward, but I wasn’t being scored, unless I wanted to award myself a ten for making it and a zero for falling and dying by shape-shifter.

A quick glance revealed that the window opened onto the roof of the milking parlor, which ran parallel to the barn. I opened the catch, pushed the long, thin glass outward, and inched through.

Night had fallen while I’d been performing amazing feats of gymnastic excellence. The moon hovered at the edge of the world, spreading a haze of silvery light over the deserted farm. I hurried across the flat roof, thinking I could drop down, shut and lock the barn door, trapping the beast inside, then get in my car and drive away.

However, that left Jimmy with a shape-shifting… whatever locked in his barn instead of me. I had no way of reaching him, of warning him. He’d return to pick me up for our meeting with Springboard and the next thing I knew… cat food.

Maybe I’d just wait in my car until he got back. I could stop myself from running him over.

Really.

Content with the plan, at least for now, I hurried along the bank of windows. Glancing in, I could see nothing but the navy blue sky reflecting off the glass.

A sudden crash and then a thump, followed by ferocious snarling, made me jump. The animal had broken through the door. From the sounds behind me, it was kicking the crap out of the tack room. Now was my chance.

After peeking over the edge to make sure there weren’t more beasts waiting for me, I hung from the roof for an instant, then fell lightly to the earth. I came around the corner and stopped. My car was gone.

“Dammit, Jimmy,” I muttered. Now what?

First things first, I needed to shut the barn door with the cougar inside. I’d taken one step in that direction when the sound of a vehicle turning into the drive made me freeze.

Headlights washed over me. Something crashed inside the barn, closer now than it had been before. I gauged the distance between myself and the door. Too far.

Instead, 1 ran toward the approaching vehicle. Whoever it was, I had to warn them. Just as soon as I jumped into their back seat.

The car—a huge, black Hummer—jerked to a halt, and Jimmy hopped out of the driver’s side even as a tall, lanky black man unfolded himself from the passenger seat.

It was on the tip of my tongue to make a comment about the phallic nature of his ride, but before I could, Jimmy’s gaze went beyond me and he cursed.

I spun, ringers groping for the knife in my pack. Should have had it out already. Stupid, stupid me.

The cat, a cougar all right, was framed in the barn doorway, the lights of the Hummer splashing over it like sunshine. 1 found the knife, pulled the weapon out, then stood gaping.

The animal had to be six foot three from heel to head, easy enough to determine since it stood on its hind legs. I’d never seen one do that, not that I saw a whole lot of cougars.

Something bothered me about its eyes. It took me a minute to figure out what. The headlights were so bright they made the cat’s tawny fur sparkle, but not the eyes. Those were dull, as if the animal were already dead.

The cougar began to move forward on two feet, like a human. The stuttering walk broke my inertia, and I stepped toward it.

“No, Lizzy,” Jimmy snapped.

Either my movement, or his words, keyed the cougar, which swung its gaze in my direction, hit the ground on all fours and headed straight for me.

I considered running for the barn, seeing if I could catch the edge of the roof and pull myself up. But I’d never make it. Even if I did, I had a bad feeling the cougar would make it too. Instead I stood frozen, knife out, hoping for another miracle.

Everything slowed. In the foreground I saw the cat speeding toward me. Behind it, Jimmy reached into the truck even as Springboard drew a gun.

Along with the slow-mo, I heard an announcer’s voice.

Springboard shoots.

A puff of dirt sprang upward near the animal’s feet, followed by the report of a gunshot so loud I jerked. The cat kept coming.

He misses.

Crap.

Gets his own rebound, folks, and shoots again.

This time the cougar jerked, its front legs folding even as its back legs kept churning against the ground. The momentum flipped the animal end over end, and it landed just inches from my feet.

The shot goes in from downtown.

“Three points,” I murmured.

“Were those silver bullets?” Jimmy asked.

“What you think, man? I don’t carry nothin’ but the best.”

I frowned at the dead cat. If it had been shot with a silver bullet, why wasn’t it ashes?

Maybe it wasn’t a shape-shifter.

Bending, I brushed my fingertips over the sheen of fur. A sudden wind fluttered what was left of my hair.

Chindi
, Ruthie whispered.

For just an instant, I kept my hand on the cougar, and the wind continued to blow. I closed my eyes and let Ruthie swirl around me. She’d only been gone a week, and I missed her so badly my stomach hurt every time I thought about her.

“Lizzy?” 1 opened my eyes. Jimmy and Springboard stood a few feet away.

“Chindi,” I said.

“Shit!” Jimmy cursed. “You shouldn’t have shot it.”

“Shootin’ is what I do, Sanducci. You want me to stand by and let the damn thang kill the new seer?”

In Springboard’s words lay a silent condemnation, as if Jimmy had stood by and let the last seer die. But that wasn’t what had happened.

I didn’t think. In truth, I didn’t know.

“Get away from it,” Jimmy ordered.

In times past I would have argued. However, those times
were
past. I might be stubborn, but I could be taught. When Jimmy said get away from the dead
chindi
—whatever that was—I got away.

“What’s—” I began, but before I could finish my question, Springboard suddenly stiffened as if goosed.

The headlights of the Hummer still shone on us like spotlights, but the man’s eyes were as flat as the cougar’s had been both before and after it died.

Springboard lifted his gun and pointed it at my head.

Chapter 11

I didn’t have time to duck. Even if 1 had, I doubted I was faster than a speeding bullet. Jimmy, however, was.

He tackled Springboard, knocking the weapon aside just as it went off, then driving the much larger man to the ground. Springboard’s gun flew right, Jimmy’s flew left as they proceeded to beat the crap out of each other.

I might be new at the seer game, but I could fit the pieces together. Springboard had tried to shoot me; therefore he was the one I was going to shoot.

I snatched up the nearest weapon. Unfortunately, Jimmy and Springboard were rolling over and over in the dirt.

Jimmy had grown up fighting; Springboard appeared to have done the same. Though Jimmy possessed superior speed and strength, Springboard wasn’t exactly a tortoise, and his biceps bulged inside the silky material of his shirt. I wondered idly what kind of breed he was.

For several minutes, neither one of them had the upper hand, and I couldn’t get off a shot with them so thoroughly intertwined. Then Jimmy got sick of playing around—he always did—and rammed his elbow into Springboard’s nose. There was a sharp crack, a yowl, then a whole lot of blood. The two of them separated, and I cocked the gun.

“Don’t, Lizzy!” Jimmy whirled. “The chindi’s possessed him. If you kill the body, the demon will hop to someone else. We have to—”

Springboard grabbed Jimmy around the knees and yanked. Jimmy went down fast and hard. He caught himself with his hands but his head still bopped against the dirt, and he lay still.

Springboard, or what had once been Springboard, lifted his gaze to mine. His eyes reminded me of those in stuffed deer, teddy bears, creepy little dolls—no expression, no life, no damn reflection.

He climbed to his feet, blood still flowing down his face and darkening the once fashionable pale orange dress shirt. He walked right over Jimmy as if he weren’t even there, his flat zombielike gaze on me.

My fingers tightened, but I didn’t dare shoot. I didn’t want that demon in me; I didn’t want it in Jimmy either. But would I be able to keep myself from using the gun once he started to kill me?

I threw the weapon aside. That should help.

Springboard kept coming; I kept backing away. He reached for me with longer arms than I’d expected, nearly caught me too, then my stocking-covered heel came down on a stone. I winced, recoiled, and tripped over a much larger one, landing with a brain-jarring thud on my rear end.

I braced for his weight. Instead, he started to shriek. Light poured from his eyes, ears, and mouth, as if he were a jack-o’-lantern with a flashlight inside.

I sat up, and his arms flew out, his back bowed, and the sheen increased, flowing up and out of him like lightning. The scream no longer seemed to come from Springboard, but from the pillar of light that rose into the night.

As suddenly as it had started, the screeching stopped, and the light went out. Springboard collapsed, thankfully not on me, and lay still.

I crawled the few inches between us and checked for a pulse; he didn’t have one.

Jimmy moaned, and I scrambled toward him as he rolled onto his back. The bump on his head was huge, but as I watched it seemed to get smaller, the scrape from the gravel and dirt fading.

“What happened?” he asked.

I glanced at Springboard. “I’m not sure.”

He followed my gaze and cursed again. “I told you not to kill him.” He grabbed my chin, tilted my face this way and that, staring into my eyes by the light of the Hummer, then frowning. “It didn’t leap to you.”

“No. It went—” I pointed skyward with one finger.

“How?”

“You tell me.”

He lifted a hand to his forehead, encountered the bump, winced, and lowered it again. “A chindi is a demon that possesses animals. It’s often sent for purposes of vengeance.”

“On me?”

“Hard to say. I’m not sure how much control the sender has over the demon. Usually a chindi just kills everything in the vicinity.”

“How did whoever sent that…”—I waved my hand at the bodies of Springboard and the cougar—”know where we were?”

He shook his head, then groaned and rested his cheek on his knees. “No one knew about this place but me and you.”

“You’re forgetting Springboard.”

“He didn’t know until I brought him here.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t tell anyone.” I couldn’t have.

I’d been locked in the freaking tack room, but we’d get to that later. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about chindis?”

I half expected him to blow off my question. But he answered in a voice that reminded me of my sophomore biology teacher, Mr. Desre, who’d spent the year reading to us from the textbook instead of making learning fun.

“A chindi can’t be killed with the usual weapons. The body it’s inhabiting will die, and the demon will jump to another.”

“You seem to know a lot about them.”

“I’ve seen one before.”

“And how did you kill it?”

“1 didn’t. I returned the chindi to the one who sent it by reciting a prayer of protection inside a charmed circle.” His lips tightened as he stared at Springboard. “You’d better tell me exactly what happened.”

“He tried to grab me; I fell and he started screaming, then light shot out of his eyeholes and—” I waved a hand at the body.

“No chant of protection?”

“As if I’d know one.”

“Any prayer will do.”

“Thanks for the tip. It would have been helpful
before
I accidentally killed him.”

“Did he touch you?”

“No.”

He leaned his head on his knees again. “There was something about killing a chindi. It’s been so long since I saw one. Let me think a minute.”

Whenever I tried to remember something, silence was best. So I sat in the dirt next to a dead man and a dead cougar and waited for Jimmy to—

His head came up; his eyes had sharpened to dark pools of onyx. He reached across the space separating us with that queer flash of speed and yanked my blouse open. The few buttons I hadn’t already lost popped, striking the ground with dull thuds.

“Hey!” I smacked his hands away; my fingers curled into fists. “You are so asking for an ass-kicking.”

He ignored me, his gaze focused on my chest.

“To kill a chindi,” he said, “all you have to do is lay turquoise in its path.’“