Any Given Doomsday

by Lori Handeland

  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 San
ducci 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?

  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.