Doomsday Can Wait (28 page)

"According to Whitelaw, can't be done."

"He doesn't know everything."

"He appeared to know quite a lot."

"It's too dangerous," Sawyer said. "You'll be one of them, Phoenix. And then—"

He broke off, turned away.

"Then what?"

"Then I'll have to kill you."

I took a deep breath. "I'm counting on it."

Silence settled between us.

"It'll be all right," I said.

Sawyer had been the one to warn me that I should never sleep with a Nephilim; I might absorb their evil along with their strength. I'd figured then that there might come a day that the risk would be worth it. I just hadn't figured that day would arrive so soon.

"I'm the only one who can actually turn into a Nephilim," I said. "I'm the light that will become the dark."

"Because the darkness will swallow you. You'll be gone, Elizabeth."

I frowned. He never called me that. That he had scared me. But being scared had never stopped me before. Usually, being scared just got me started.

"I need to find a Nephilim," I began. "Shouldn't be hard. They're all over the damn place."

I glanced around. The campus looked empty. The entire town had rolled up the sidewalks when the sun went down. Where was a demon when you needed one? When you didn't need one, they were everywhere.

Strong, bare, brown arms came around me from behind. "I won't let you do it," Sawyer said.

"You can't stop me." I struggled but, as usual, he was stronger.  "I'll just bang the next Nephilim I see. One will show up. It's only a matter of time."

"It'll kill you."

"I doubt that."

The thought of sleeping with an evil thing made me slightly ill, but I'd do whatever I had to. Because if I didn't, the Grigori would once again walk this earth. They'd mate with humans; repopulate the world with demons. The chaos creeping over the planet now would be nothing compared to what would sweep over it then.

Sawyer sighed, his chest rubbing against my back, his arms sliding along mine. "There's another way."

I stilled. "What other way?"

"Sanducci."

"Sanducci?  What—"

I paused as I heard again what Whitelaw had said—

You
can't become one by sharing blood or being bitten or cursed
—

Except that I could.

 I'd gained dhampir powers from Jimmy. But I hadn't become a vampire—a Nephilim—because to do so I had to—

"Share blood," I murmured.

"Yes," Sawyer said, and let me go.

Sanducci hadn't been evil until he'd exchanged blood with his vampire father. He'd drunk from me in the strega's lair, but I'd managed to end his possession, obsession—whatever—by killing Daddy before Jimmy forced me to drink from him. Jimmy had begged me to remember that I must never share blood with a vampire, or I'd become one.

"Jimmy isn't a Nephilim," I pointed out, "he's a breed."

"When Sanducci is a vampire, he's a vampire. If you take his blood—"

"I'll become a vampire, too."

"Yes."

"He won't go for it."

"You'll have to make him."

That should be fun.

"I think I'd rather pick an evil demon, any evil demon."

"No. With Sanducci, there's a chance you might be able to put the demon back when you're finished with it."

"Put it back where? In him?"

"Inside of you. Trap it. Block it, perhaps."

"So it would always be there?" I fought an involuntary shudder. "Waiting?"

"That's better than the other option. You become the demon. Always."

"At least until you kill me," I muttered.

Sawyer didn't answer.

"Jimmy wasn't having much luck putting the demon back in the box. Can it be done?"

"Theoretically."

I guess theoretical was better than "not a snowball's chance."

I remembered Jimmy's anguish in the cave, the reason he'd taken off and gone there in the first place. Having that thing inside of him was killing him piece by piece. Enticing Jimmy to make me that way, too—

"I don't want to hurt him," I blurted.

Sawyer's face hardened. "He didn't have the same concern for you."

"He was possessed by the strega. That doesn't count."

"Did it count when he and Summer—" Sawyer made an obscene hand gesture. "He knew you'd see, that he'd break your heart. He didn't care."

True enough. Still, two wrongs didn't make a right. Or perhaps, in this case, it did.

"How am I going to find him?" I murmured.

Sawyer stared at me for several ticks of the clock, but he'd decided before I had that the only choice was Jimmy.

"I  don't know," he said at last. "Summer could hide them forever if she wanted to."

Or at least until Jimmy was better. I needed to get to him before that happened. And I knew exactly how.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, or at least the answer to my most desperate question. A plan formulated in my mind, unfolding with all its twists and turns, paths and possibilities.

"Don't do it," Sawyer murmured, I glanced up. Reading my mind again, or perhaps just my face?

"I have to find him."

"Dream walking requires you to walk the line be-tween life and death. What if you cross that line?"

"What if I do?"

"I won't do it, Phoenix. I won't kill you just so you can walk through Sanducci's dreams and find out where the fairy has hidden him."

"I don't need you to," I said, and shot myself in the head.

CHAPTER 27

Everything went neon white. In the distance rhythmic-thunder, maybe guns, or horses, then a final burst that sounded like a word I couldn't quite make out.

Home? Come? Some? Done?

Whatever.

Had I made a mistake? Had I actually killed myself for real?

No. A kill shot would only work on me if it were done twice. So unless Sawyer had picked up the gun and finished the job, I was safe enough.

My eyes felt as if they'd been scalded with boiling oil. When I opened them, Jimmy was with me. Or rather I was with him. He was in a bedroom—stark and sterile. White sheets, single bed, a battered dresser with a mirror on the wall. Night shrouded the windows, but I could still see the bars.

He lay on the bed, naked, the moon shining through the glass, turning his olive skin the shade of alabaster. His body was long and lean, finely muscled, damn near perfect.

His eyes were open. He seemed dead, until he turned his head and saw me.

"Lizzy," he murmured. He sounded drugged, looked it, too.

"What has she done to you?" I asked.

"She's trying to help." He sat up, muscles rippling across his stomach and arms as he rubbed a palm over his face.  "I think it's working."

Dread clogged my throat. If he was better, I was doomed. Nevertheless, beneath the dread, a tiny ray of joy fluttered.  I wanted him to be better. I wanted him whole again. I didn't want to have to betray him the way I planned to.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"Need?"

"I know you're not really here. You must be pretty desperate to dream walk."

"Desperate." I laughed, thinking of the gun I'd put to my head. "You might say that."

Jimmy held out his hand. "Ask me."

I glanced at the windows, but the moon must have gone behind a cloud and it was too dark to see where we were. I reached for him, my mouth opening, my mind forming the words
Where are you
?, but the instant our fingers touched, I was thrown backward at a sickening speed. Jimmy was gone, so was the room. Instead I flew through a long, dark corridor with a whole lot of doors.

I'd been here before. Well, not here, here. But in someone's mind, so I recognized the decor. Memories lived behind those doors.

The wind took me, around one corner, then another, sometimes flinging me so fast I bumped an edge, hissed with pain, but the wind kept on.

Papers scattered, some hit me in the face, the hand; one stuck to my chest, and I snatched up the stub of Jimmy's first magazine paycheck. He'd sold some of the photos he'd taken at a dairy farm the summer I'd gone to Sawyer and he'd stayed in Wisconsin to milk cows. Jimmy'd made the most of it, as Jimmy always did. Those photos had gotten him a scholarship to Western Kentucky. Not that he'd used it.

Littered across the floor were old baseballs, a few knives with suspicious stains, negatives, and in one corner the shirt I'd been wearing the day I'd lost my virginity. Amazing what strata haunt the corridors of the mind.

The wind suddenly died, depositing me in front of a pristine white door. Harmless enough, especially when compared to some of the others in this hall. Faded gray wooden slats to my right, so warped I could see light shining through them from the room on the other side. The rusted heavy enclosure from an old meat locker hung to my left. Behind me loomed something that appeared to have been hijacked from Bram Stoker's nightmares—a large, dark, curved entryway with a huge black bat for a door knocker. My hand itched to give that a rap, but Jimmy would probably end up with a brain tumor, or at the least a helluva headache.

Farther down the hall, one door keened outward, hanging from a single brass hinge. Wonder what had been behind there?

Curious, I took a step in that direction. Or tried to. My sandals felt glued to the floor. If there was a floor. When I glanced down, all I saw were my feet, my shoes, and a whole lot of nothing beneath.

"Okay," I murmured. "Guess the answer to my most desperate question is behind door number one."

I reached out and turned the knob. It didn't budge. I rattled it. Knocked on it. Slammed my palms against it.

"Hey!" I shouted, and tried to walk away again. I nearly twisted my feet off my ankles, but I didn't get anywhere. Then I saw the peephole.

Obviously, Jimmy didn't want me to know what was behind this door, but dream walking was a powerful thing. That he was able to keep the door locked against me was impressive. However, a desperate question, the blood I'd spilled to have it answered, took precedence. Hence the hole in the door.

I leaned forward. Instead of the reverse, blurry image commonly projected through peepholes if you peered into them from the outside, I was able to see quite clearly.

Jimmy and Ruthie, at the house in Milwaukee. Years agofrom the looks of them.

Though Ruthie had never appeared to age, this view of her showed me that she had. Her hair was less gray, her hands less bony, her eyes somehow more tired rather than less. How odd.

Jimmy was maybe seventeen. Tall and still just a little gangly, but with the promise of the man he'd become, his hair shining blue-black in the sun, his eyes sparking fury. What else was new? Jimmy had always been angry back then. It was his thing.

"Are you crazy?" he asked, the anger and something else making his voice crack.

Ruthie's face tightened. I waited for the eruption. Disrespect wasn't tolerated in any form. When she didn't speak, or smack him upside the head, I shifted uneasily, realized my feet could now move; however, I no longer wanted to be anywhere but here. What my most desper-ate question was, I didn't know, but I was certain it would be answered very soon.

"I can't," he continued. "She'll—"

"That's the idea," Ruthie said, and her voice was the coldest I'd ever heard. So cold, I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering alone in the halls of Jimmy's mind.

"But—" He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, a gesture I knew came from uncertainty, indecision, fear.

"Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

Jimmy dropped his hand. "I didn't know—"

"That I could see?" She smiled but the expression wasn't the one I was used to. The one that made every child smile back, that made lost boys and girls know they'd come home.

No, this smile was something else entirely. This smile was calculating. It was almost, but not quite, the smile of the woman of smoke. The smile of a being that would do anything, pay any price, sacrifice anyone, to get what she wanted.

"Would you have kept it in your pants if you'd known?" Ruthie murmured.

Jimmy glanced away and didn't answer.

"Well, you won't have to keep it in your pants now. Do what I told you. It's the only way."

"It'll kill her."

"She's stronger than that," Ruthie said. "What will kill her is loving you. She can't have a weakness. She has to be able to think of the world."

I rubbed my hands over my stingingly cold arms, shivering so badly my back ached from it.

"You can't have a weakness, either. They'll know," she continued. "And you have to be able to do what you do best."

"Kill." His voice had lost the fury. He sounded almost broken. I wanted to go to him, but he wasn't really there.

"It's what you were born to do," Ruthie said.

Born to kill? Ruthie was telling Jimmy he'd been born to kill? I wasn't a psychiatrist, but even I knew that wasn't a good thing to tell a kid. Sure, we all understood Jimmy wasn't killing
people,
but still—

He had.

I wanted to smack somebody, and I knew exactly who.  Too bad Ruthie wasn't any more there than Jimmy was.

"There's no other way?" Jimmy asked.

"You think she'll believe you just left her behind? You think she'll stop loving you now that you've gone and been her first? I told you not to touch her." Ruthie's voice rose. "Didn't I tell you never to touch her?"

"I couldn't—" He stopped, and I leaned forward, smacking my nose against the door. He couldn't what?

But Ruthie didn't let him finish. "If you just leave, she'll search for you forever. She'll never get over you, and she has to. It's time for you to take your place. But she ain't ready. If she follows—"

"She could die." Ruthie nodded, and after several seconds Jimmy sighed. "Okay. I'll do it." He gave a short, sharp, unamused laugh. "I mean I'll do her. What was  her name?"

"Summer," Ruthie said. "Summer Bartholomew."

I gasped, and both Ruthie and Jimmy glanced toward the door, but I was gone, being dragged out of Jimmy's head so fast my stomach roiled. Or maybe it was just the disgust over what I'd heard bubbling in my gut like acid.