Doomsday Can Wait (32 page)

"You think?" Sawyer asked.

I hated it when he repeated my sarcasm back at me, but as Ruthie always said, you get what you pay for, and I'd definitely paid for that.

There were times when nothing went right, one incident right after the other making me think I was cursed. And then there were times, like now, when serendipity made me believe that everything did happen for a reason, and in the end the forces of good would win.

Could it be a coincidence that Jimmy was only a vampire under the full moon, and we'd just happened to show up on that particular night?

Perhaps. But I didn't think so.

I contemplated the door again, biting my lip, trying to figure out a way to get in.

"He'll tear you apart," Summer said.

I wasn't certain tearing me apart would actually kill me, though I wasn't wild about finding out. "I'm fast and I'm strong."

"Not like he is when he's—" Summer drew back her lips from her teeth, hooked her fingers into claws, and hissed to illustrate.

"I'll be all right."

"He'll drain you."

I shrugged. I'd been drained before. I hadn't died; all I'd done was dream walk.

"Once he finds out what I want," I said, "he'll be game. The thought of making me. the leader of the light, into a dark force .. . When he's in vamp mode, he won't be able to resist."

"And when he comes back to himself," Summer whispered, "he'll be in agony."

"If I've spoiled Doomsday, he'll be thrilled."

"Even if you win, you'll still be a vampire. That isn't going to go away."

I paused, imagining what I would become. Could I do it?

I remembered the woman of smoke, what she'd done to Sawyer, his father, and so many others. I thought of all I'd seen in the short month I'd been aware that there was another world that existed parallel to our own—an evil world full of evil things—and I knew the truth.

"It doesn't matter what happens to me." I looked into Sawyer's eyes, and he nodded. He'd do what had to be done when all of this was through.

"Any ideas?" I flicked a finger at the golden prison door.

Summer started forward. Sawyer lifted his hand and flung her back. His eerie gray eyes shone on her like the full silver light of the moon. "If you continue," he murmured, "I will bind you with rowan."

"Rowan kills a fairy," I said.

"Eventually." Sawyer didn't sound concerned.

"I don't think that's necessary." In the past, I'd wished Summer dead on several occasions, but now ... not so much.

"Don't do me any favors, Phoenix," Summer said. "I've sold my soul to protect him—"

"You what?" I said softly.

"Figure of speech," she muttered. "If I'd gone to the dark side, don't you think you'd have heard about it by now?"

Hard to say. Ruthie'd been suspiciously silent. Was I unconsciously blocking her voice now that I'd learned of her betrayal? I didn't think so. I wasn't even certain I could.

"Don't kill her," I ordered Sawyer.

"If you do this," Summer murmured, "you'll devastate him. You think I'll care if I'm dead once that happens?"

Guilt beckoned, but I pushed it aside. Guilt was a weakness I couldn't afford.

"How do I get in?"

Sawyer still held one arm up to keep Summer back. He held the other out to me, the index finger of that hand pointing toward a thin gap between the floor and the bottom of the door.

At first I didn't understand, then my gaze caught on the tarantula creeping across his forearm.

"Be careful," he murmured.

Summer shrieked and tried to get off the floor. He smacked her back with a twitch of his thumb.

"No matter what you hear, no matter what I say, don't open the door."

"Phoenix," Sawyer said, his voice exasperated, "if I
could
open the door, there'd be no reason for this." He lifted his arm encouragingly. "And we both know that you'd cut out your own tongue before you'd admit you shouldn't have gone in there."

"Don't follow me," I said.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"I mean it."

"So do I."

I leaned forward and pressed a quick, hard kiss to his mouth. I might never again be the me I was right now, and I needed him to know something. "Thanks," I said.

I lost the clothes. After removing the turquoise from my neck, I shoved it under the door, then covered the tarantula with my palm, and reached with my mind for the essence of the black eight-legged creature.

Bright, icy light consumed me, followed by a sudden heat. I dropped so fast my head spun; the thin stream of light beckoned from the other side of the door, and I scurried in that direction.

Behind me another furious scream erupted, then a whirlwind of air pushed me forward an instant before a heavy thud shook the ground.

Danger loomed. A shadow in the shape of a shoe coming right for me.

Another thud, like a body hitting the wall, then all went still; the whirlwind died, and I scuttled safely beneath the prison door.

CHAPTER 31

As soon as I was on the other side, I imagined myself as myself, and the heat became again a sudden chill. My view of the world, since I now had eight eyes, was epic; as I changed it narrowed. My fangs retracted; my legs and arms decreased by half.

I    was three inches tall, then three feet, and then five-ten. I didn't take time to glance at the room. I'd been here before. I understood now why the place was so plain and empty. Prisons were like that.

Jimmy stood at the window, as naked as I was, staring at the coming night. On the floor next to the bed lay one of his never-ending supply of T-shirts. This one declared TOM PETTY—WORLD TOUR.

It was a status symbol among those whose images graced tabloids and CD cases to have the great Sanducci wear a T-shirt bearing their name or likeness. If San-ducci wore your shirt, he'd taken your picture and you had arrived. I doubted Tom Petty cared, but I was cer-tain his "people" did.

I'd heard that dozens of T-shirts a month crowded Sanducci's mailbox. He donated those sent by people he'd never photographed to a homeless shelter and packed the ones that were true into his suitcase. He liked to wear them with jeans and a jacket—neither of which were in evidence on the floor of the prison cell.

I snatched up the turquoise and Tom's tee and put them on. The material smelled like Jimmy, and I resisted the urge to rub my face in it, to just inhale a while.

Some movement or small sound on my part made Jimmy glance toward the door. He sighed and hung his head. "Are you really here?"

He looked worse than he had in the dream—paler if possible, exhausted, emaciated, sad, and very defeated.

I crossed the room and laid a hand on his shoulder. He flinched. '"Hey," I murmured. "It's me."

He didn't ask how I'd gotten in. He knew what I could do.

"Change back and get out."

Or maybe he didn't.

"I can't shift on my own."

Jimmy cursed, and in a movement so swift I couldn't get away, even if I'd wanted to, he grabbed my arms and shook me. "Get out!" he roared.

"Oh, that'll help." I kept my voice calm. No use for both of us losing our minds.

"You don't understand." His fingers still dug into my flesh, causing bruises that would disappear almost as fast as they appeared. "You can't be here. The moon is coming. I can . . ." He swallowed, closed his eyes, shuddered. "Smell it."

"You can smell it," I repeated.

"Hear it, feel it. Like the tide it pulls."

I put my palm against his forehead. He jerked away. 'I'm not sick."

"'Like the tide it pulls'? You're spouting poetry and that isn't you." In the past, Jimmy's idea of poetry had been "Do me, baby, one more time."

He pulled at his hair. "It's whispering."

"The moon," I clarified.

"Yesssss."

The way he hissed the word caused gooseflesh to ripple across my bare arms and legs.

"It tells me to—" He paused and his dark gaze slid over my neck, my breasts, the juncture of my thighs, barely covered by his complimentary T-shirt. "Do terrible things." He licked his lips, and I caught a hint of fang.

Once the moon finished whispering, once he became the beast his father had made him into, he would want to hurt me in the most vicious way possible. Because when Jimmy was a vampire, he was as Nephilim as the rest of them.

I couldn't tell him why I was here, that I wanted him to drink from me, that I needed to drink from him. Because even though he became something other than himself when he became a vamp, he remembered everything, and if he knew why I aspired to become like him, he'd make certain that I didn't.

Tact was necessary, never my strong suit.

"Everything will be all right," I murmured, and brushed his sweat-dampened hair away from his face.

He cast me a quick, suspicious glance—I'd never been the nurturing type, probably because I'd never been nurtured—and put his palm to my forehead.

"You
sick?" he asked, and I had to smile at his attempt to joke. He was still Jimmy, at least until the moon came up.

I tangled our fingers together, and when he tugged to be released I didn't let go. I had an idea.

Since he was still Jimmy, for now, the best way to get him to do what I wanted was to give him what he wanted.

Me.

I could tell by the way his gaze kept straying to my legs, my breasts, and my neck that he did still want me. He always had. No matter how long we'd been apart, how we'd fought, what he'd done, what I had, that one thing never changed.

He'd fight making me like him; he might even win. That he'd been able to push the dark side of himself back as far as he had, that he hadn't killed anyone in the month he'd been free, revealed how strong he was.

To do this, I'd have to slip beneath his defenses and seduce him—mind, body, and what was left of his soul.

I slid in close, brushing my unbound breasts against his bare chest, just a little, as if "oops!" it were an accident, and Jimmy tightened his lips, closed his eyes, his face going as taut as his body.

For a vampire, sex and violence, blood and lust, were all rolled together. Get him to lose control in one way, he'd be powerless to exert control in another. In the throes of passion, in the midst of an orgasm, he'd bite me. He'd done it before.

Guilt flickered, and again I shoved it away.

"I've been so worried." My free hand trailed up his forearm; I leaned in and let my breath trickle over his collarbone. Gooseflesh rose across his shoulder, and I licked him, then grazed him with my teeth.

"Lizzy, stop." He grabbed my shoulders and held me away, but he couldn't keep his gaze from drifting lower, catching on where my nipples must be thrusting at the thin, overwashed material of the shirt. Begging to be touched, calling out for one man to do the touching.

"Please," he whispered. "Don't make me."

Then, as if he were hypnotized, his hands slid down my arms, scooped inward and cupped me, lifting, kneading, thumbs rolling over the turgid peaks.

My head fell back as I offered my neck, my blood, myself. He buried his face in the soft mounds, his lips closing over me, taking cotton and flesh within. The heat, the pressure was both pleasure and pain. My hands tangled in his hair, holding him closer, urging him on.

I needed to feel his skin against mine, so I snatched the hem of the shirt, tugging it upward. The material got caught on his face; he released me as I whipped the shirt away.

But that tiny instant was my mistake. As soon as his mouth left me, sanity returned, and he stepped back.

"No," he muttered. "We can't."

"Since when?" I followed him. "This has always been the one thing we
could
do. Very well."

"I'll lose control—"

I snatched his hand and brought it to my lips, pressing a kiss to his palm, flicking my tongue across the center, then grazing the wrist with my teeth as I pressed my bare belly to his erection. "I like it when you do."

He tore away and crossed to the other side of the room, staring at the door as if he were trying to figure out how to break free. "What are you doing, Lizzy?"

He was too smart by half and far too strong-willed. But I couldn't give up now.

"I'll make you feel better."

"I'll make you feel dead," he muttered.

"You can't hurt me, Jimmy. Come on." I lowered my voice. "You know you want to."

"I've done nothing but hurt you," he said, eyes wide, voice desperate. "I—I slept with Summer on purpose. I knew you'd see."

"And I know you were ordered to do it."

He went very still. "Who told you that?"

He wouldn't remember I'd walked through his dreams. Dream walking was like that. The victim might think they'd dreamed of you, but they wouldn't remember when or what or why.

However, Jimmy was a dream walker, too, and he understood what those wisps of memory meant. Comprehension bloomed across his face, and he cursed. "You saw it in my head. Along with where I was."

I shrugged. What could I say?

"You walked on the brink of death just to find me?"

"You needed me," I lied. What was one more in a long, unholy line of them?

"Oh, baby, no," he whispered, and I nearly caved and ran away.

But I had nowhere to go, no way to leave, so I stayed and I lied a little more.

"I'll be with you all night. I'm the only one who can." That was true enough. "If you fight the bloodlust under the full moon and you win, maybe it'll be gone forever."

He tilted his head. "Is that possible?"

Doubtful,
I thought.

"Anything's possible," I said.

God, I was such a Judas.

Jimmy sighed. "You forgive me for Summer?"

"There's nothing to forgive." Considering what I was about to do, the betrayal with Summer had been child's play. Literally. "You did it for me, Jimmy. That only makes you more of a hero in my eyes."

"Shit." he muttered. "And Manhattan? When I made you my slave? When I kept you prisoner and drank from you until you nearly died? Was I a hero then?"