Chaos Bites (22 page)

Bright light, cold and heat, my body contorted, becoming something else. I experienced both the pain of the change and the pleasure at bursting forth. In an instant, I could fly.

I doubted anyone would notice a huge, multicolored bird banking over Bourbon Street. They had better things to discover on the ground. Even if they happened to glance up and see me, they’d blame the bourbon.

I sailed out of New Orleans, easily following the scent of brackish water, cypress and rot. The Honey Island Swamp is over seventy thousand acres huge, with more than half of that a government-protected wildlife refuge. There was no way I could check the place for an abandoned church at a crossroads on foot.

Even with wings it took me most of the night, flying back and forth from one corner to the next in a tight grid pattern so as not to miss anything. Broken-down buildings abounded—not just in the swamp but everywhere across New Orleans—and upon landing I discovered that a lot of them were still occupied, and none of them was a church.

I was near to giving up, the sun just beginning to lighten the eastern horizon, turning the blue-black night a hazy purple, when I caught sight of a listing belfry and dived like the phoenix I was into the trees.

The instant I came within ten yards of the place, a screeching began, so loud and horrific I became disoriented and flew into the dripping Spanish moss of a cypress tree. Similar to a spider’s web, but damp and musty, the tendrils clung to my brightly colored wings like a net.

Trapped and panicked fire shot from my beak, and the moss dissolved into nothing an instant before I would have tumbled toward the earth.

But I wasn’t safe yet. The screaming continued as dark, prehistorically huge bat-like creatures sailed out of the belfry. They were large enough to be pterodactyls, if pterodactyls weren’t extinct. Of course
extinct
was just a word these days.

My breath was a flame, rolling over their darkly ethereal bodies, making them appear like Halloween decorations studded with tiny orange lights. Then the fire went out with a puff, and they kept coming.

I braced for impact, and one flew right through me. I’d have thought it was a ghost-bird, except I felt its talons scrape my bowels, its beak peck at my liver. The pain was like being torn apart from the inside out. Two skimmed either side of me and wherever they touched, agony flared, as though their feathers were tipped with razor blades.

Tumbling toward the earth, I picked up speed as I  fell, and the horrible winged creatures followed, shrieking so that my eardrums seemed to rupture and bleed. I hit the ground with a solid thump, and at last blessed silence was mine.

I awoke as a woman, the sun blaring into my eyes. I moaned, laying my arm across my face. I hurt all over.

“What the fuck was that?” I muttered.

“Night demons.”

I sat up in a hurry, wincing as my head spun. I put my palm to my forehead to keep it from falling off.

A man leaned in the crumbling doorway of the church. Tall and muscular, his chest was bare, his sienna skin shining in the sun. At first I thought his ebony hair had been cropped brutally close to his scalp, but when he moved, straightening away from the doorjamb, the skin between the teenie-tiny braids that had been woven into his hair flashed. There appeared to be a design to their swirl, but from where I sat, I couldn’t tell what it was.

The church did stand at a crossroads, but not the kind I’d been looking for. To me cross
roads
meant a street of some kind—paved or at least covered in gravel. In this case the “road” was a waterway in two directions, with the church perched on a small plot of land between a dirt trail and a creek so narrow, only a canoe could pass.

“You are here for de book,” the man said, his accent a melodic combination of France and Jamaica.

“I—uh—” Should I lie or shouldn’t I? I was never quite sure.

“De night demons know. They attack only those who are up to no good.”

“And who would that be?”

“Nephilim, for de most part.”

“The Nephilim are trying to steal the
Book of Samyaza
?” Why pretend I had no idea what he meant when I did, and he knew it?

He inclined his head. “To possess de book is to rule this world as well as de next.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

“I protect de book until our Prince comes.”

“From what I hear, all the demons got sent back to hell.”

He shrugged. “There will come another chance.”

Unfortunately he was right. Doomsday, Armageddon, Apocalypse, they were inevitable. The only thing we could do was attempt to put them off until we were better prepared to win.

He tilted his head. “Why would you be happy to see de Grigori sent back? You’re as Nephilim as I am.”

I would have known even without his confession. I felt a buzz in the air, the hum that made my teeth ache and screamed that evil was near. There was a darkness about him, so abysmal I could almost see it hovering like smoke.

Since I wasn’t about to explain myself—to him or anyone else—I ignored his question to reiterate my own. “Why are you protecting a book for someone else when you could become the Prince of All You Survey?”

“We each have our parts to play. One of de reasons we haven’t won yet is that we fight one another as much as we fight de light. I promised long ago to keep our
Book of Samyaza
safe for when de Prince would come.”

A Nephilim that kept his word. The world really was coming to an end.

“What do you get if you do?”

He smiled, a brilliant white flash in his handsome, dark face. “Anything I desire.”

His gaze wandered from my no doubt tousled head to my—eek!—bare feet. I was all-over bare, and from the expression on his face, he didn’t have a problem with that.

“Come closer,” he murmured, his voice a mesmerizing melody that compelled me to obey.

I took a single step before I managed to stop myself. “What are you?”

“Mait. Commander of de night demons.”

“Which explains why they don’t peck the crap out of you whenever you get near the book.”

“I am their god.”

I didn’t like that one bit. Commander
and
god. I needed to get that book out of his clutches and fast. No matter what Mait said, it was only a matter of time until he got sick of waiting for the Prince to come and decided the Prince was here and it was him.

His tongue swept his lips; his emerald gaze refused to leave my breasts. I crossed my arms, and he smirked. “Come here,” he said again.

This time I was prepared and held my ground. “No, thanks.” He might be beautiful to behold, but if I got too close I’d be sorry.

“I want to touch you.”

“And I don’t want to be touched.”

He lifted his face, breathed in the dawn. “Your scent is enticing; you are so many things. Strong and dangerous, soft and smooth and round. You’ll be so warm inside.” His head fell back, his chest muscles tightened and flexed. From the bulge in his khaki cotton pants, he was having a great time without me. “First I will satisfy my lust and then my hunger.”

“Hunger,” I repeated.

“I thirst for fear, terror, for de darkness only I can bring.”

“You ‘eat’ fear?”

“Mmmm,” he murmured. “I doubt I’ll sleep again until I’ve had you.”

I tensed, prepared for a fight. I wasn’t going to let this guy “have” anything. But he stayed where he was, and I began to wonder.

“If you want me so bad why don’t you—” I bit my lip, considering. “You stuck in there?”

His head came up; his eyes flashed fury, darkening to evergreen, and I laughed. “No wonder you aren’t marching at the head of the army of doom. You can’t leave.”

“Yet,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

He merely smiled and didn’t answer.

“Where are your night demons now?” I lifted my face to the sky.

“At night they protect this place. In de daylight, I do.”

“How long have you been here?”

His gaze lowered to my breasts again. “A long, long time.”

Oh, brother.

“Would you like to see de
Book of Samyaza
?” he asked.

“Sure.”

Once again, it couldn’t be this easy.

“All you need do is fuck me.”

And it wasn’t.

There was no way I could sleep with this guy for the book. He was a Nephilim. I’d been warned. I could absorb his evil along with his strengths—whatever they were. For all I knew, I might even be trapped in this place with him forever.

“How about we do it my way?” I asked.

“We can do it any way that you like.” His voice roughened in anticipation.

I flicked my hand, hoping I could knock him senseless on the first try. No such luck.

He murmured a few words that didn’t sound like French—maybe Latin, maybe Greek—and something that felt very much like the fist of a giant smacked me in the chest and sent me flying backward several feet. I landed on my ass with a thud.

“Care to try again?” Mait asked.

“What exactly are you?” I managed when I could speak. I climbed to my feet, but I stayed right where I was. The farther away the better.

“God of night demons, protector of de book.”

“You threw my power back at me.”

“Not me. The spell.”

My gaze narrowed. “From the book?”

He shrugged. “What else am I to do while I’m waiting for another Nephilim to arrive?”

I didn’t think he was supposed to be reading the book and trying out the spells. Then again, I would have been.

“What else
can
you do?”

He smiled and went inside.

Shifting into a phoenix, I followed. In this form I could fly through the doorway, snatch the book out of his hands, or wherever it might be, and leave. If he tried anything, I’d fling fire at him. If he flung it back, it wouldn’t matter. I was a firebird. I didn’t burn.

I never got the chance to see what he’d do; I never got close enough to see anything at all, at least not the
Book of Samyaza.

Three feet from the door, I hit a wall. I’d say it was literal, except there was nothing there. Nevertheless, I slammed into a tall, wide, immovable object and fluttered to the ground with the worst headache I’d had since I’d blown my brains out with my own gun. Don’t ask.

Luckily I didn’t lose consciousness. I fluttered my wings until I was upright then stumbled sideways on woozy talons.

Mait leaned through the empty window. “I possess de power of protection. Around anything or anyone I can build a wall that cannot be breached.”

I let out my breath in an annoyed huff and fire swirled outward, running up the invisible barrier, then back down, hitting the ground and disappearing in a puff of dirt and black smoke.

“You have failed.” Mait turned away, dismissing me as if I were no more powerful than the last Nephilim to try.

CHAPTER 24

I cut my losses. I needed to learn more about Mait. I could stand in the swamp until I was as old as he was and never figure out how to break through his invisible, enchanted wall.

I had no doubt it could be broken. One of the many things I’d learned since I’d become the new me was that everything had a weakness. Nothing and no one was indestructible. Just look at Sawyer.

Not a scratch on him but tattoos for centuries, and then I was born. Had he known the first time he saw me that I’d be the death of him? If so, then why had he ever left me alive?

I returned to town as a phoenix. This might be New Orleans, but I still didn’t think I’d make it from the Honey Island Swamp to the French Quarter, naked, without drawing a crowd or at least a cop.

Less than half an hour later, I landed on the terrace, shifted, and went inside. I scared the shit out of the maid.

“Eeek!” she squeaked as I strode in from the balcony.

“Whoops.” I snatched my clothes off the floor.

“I knocked,” she managed. “You didn’t answer.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I could lose my job.”

“Not if we keep this between us, all right? You didn’t come in when I was naked,” I said.

And a woman-sized bird didn’t just land on the balcony,
I thought.

She nodded eagerly, her eyes too calm and her manner too normal for her to have seen anything but me walking in off the terrace.

“I’ll just—” I edged toward the bathroom.

“Of course.” She inched toward the door. “I’ll come back later.”

As soon as she left, I flipped the security latch and booted up my computer. I went first to the members-only, password-protected, super-secret Web site of the federation.

Members logged in and entered what information they’d gleaned on every Nephilim and breed combination they came across—specifically how to kill them. Unfortunately the federation was down to a skeleton crew, most of them doing the best they could to stem the demon tide but instead being washed away by the flood. Which meant not too many had the time to add new information to the database.

On Mait I didn’t find much, so I was forced to go about this the old-fashioned way—trial and error by Google search. My luck there wasn’t any better.

I rubbed my eyes. I needed a shower, coffee, and food, in that order. Then I’d make some calls.

The hot water felt heavenly on skin that had been stretched and released, sprouted feathers then regrown skin. My shoulders were a little sore from flying.

My stomach growling and my head beginning to pound with a lack-of-caffeine headache, I wasn’t paying attention when I strode back into the room sans towel. My only warning was a slight shimmy in the air.

I rammed my elbow backward. The blow should have sent whatever had snuck up on me flying into, if not through, a wall. Instead that elbow was grabbed so hard my bones crunched, and I was spun like a top. An instant before my eyes registered the sight of him, my nose caught his scent—cinnamon and soap.

“Sanducci,” I growled.

Jimmy wrapped his arms around me, one hand circling both wrists and holding them still at the small of my back. “You gonna hit me, Lizzy?”

My breasts crushed against his thin overwashed T-shirt—this one with jagged red lettering I’d had no time to read. With his knuckles teasing the curve of my ass and my mouth a mere inch below his, I couldn’t help but whisper, “You want me to?”