Doomsday Can Wait

by Lori Handeland

  While Sawyer wasn’t conventionally handsome—how could he be?—he had the best body of anyone I’d ever seen, both in person and in any underwear ad in America. I suspect the centuries of his life had allowed him to hone his pecs and abs more thoroughly than anyone around.

  He was perhaps only a hair taller than my own five ten, a height that would have been impressive in any previous age but was merely average in this one. As if Sawyer could ever be average.

  His face was all angles and planes; sharp, high cheekbones and annoyingly thick black eyelashes framed his spooky gray eyes. In human form his hair was long and straight and black, as soft as his body was hard. As a wolf it was just as dark, but coarse with an underlayer of silver that made him shimmer beneath the moon.

  Around us the room kept changing. One minute we were in his hogan in New Mexico, the next we were in a motel room in Indiana, then we whirled through places I’d never been, or perhaps had yet to be—on a bed, the ground, atop a blanket, in the sand. The passing of time and place became dizzying.

  Words flared on the walls, in the sky, there and then gone, some I could read and some I could not.

  Stars sparked against the black of the night. I thought they said: Never surrender.

  Across the dingy white motel ceiling, words appeared in paint as red as fresh blood. Toss evil to the four winds.

  Then, the sand of the desert swirled, an invisible hand casting the phrase: The birth of faith approaches.

  Dreams are so damn weird.

  Sawyer skimmed his palms down my waist, my hips, then over my belly and back up to cup my breasts. He laved the nipples, suckled and bit gently until I thought I’d go mad if he didn’t take me.

  Instead, he turned me over, made love to my shoulders and back with his mouth, urged me onto my knees and draped his body over mine. His hair sifted past my cheek, shrouding us both in shadow. His breath puffed against me, first across skin and then across fur as he plunged.

  The act was both virile and violent, his mouth on my cheek, his teeth at my neck. Me on all fours, hands, paws, fur, skin. Was I woman or was I wolf? I didn’t know. When Sawyer was inside of me, I didn’t care.

  I clenched around him, cried out, the sound his name, a curse, a howl. He pulsed, hot and heavy and deep, and I awoke in the still quiet of the dark all tangled up in him.

  Snout across my neck, his warm breath stirred the fur on my face. My body ached, from sleep, from sex, or both, I couldn’t recall. Once before I’d believed a dream just a dream only to find out that my dreams were too often reality.

  I smelled like him—smoke and fire, human and wolf. Because we’d slept curled together, or because we’d done it doggy-style?

  I jerked, my legs flailing as if I chased a rabbit through my dreams, but I was no longer asleep, and from the increased tempo of his breathing, neither was Sawyer.

  He lapped a lazy lick down my cheek, and my body leaped in response. I wanted him again.

  Again? Hell. I was going to kill him.

  I shot from the bed, landed on the ground. My chest no longer hurt. I had no doubt that when I shifted back the scar would be minimal to gone, but that wasn’t my main concern now.

  What the hell were you doing in my bed? You’ve got your own.

  You cried out in the night.

  I narrowed my eyes. There was crying out and then there was crying out—fear or passion, memories or reality?

  Did we —

  He lay on the bed, paws extended, snout resting between, at home amid the tangled sheets, warm, languid, and comfortable with himself and all the worlds he lived in.

  Did we what?

  You know what! I told you no.

  Then the answer must he no.

  I sniffed. Sawyer’s powers were based on sex. He reeked of it in any form. Seers and DKs were often sent to him to be unblocked, to get past any “issues” they might have and embrace what they were. Sawyer accomplished that by embracing them.

  He lifted his head; his gray eyes flared. Did you dream of me, Phoenix? Did you dream of us?

  You know I did. You made me.

  I don’t have the power to walk in dreams. You do.

  I’d inherited that power from Jimmy. When necessary, I could stroll through a person’s mind and discover the answer to my most desperate question. Only problem was, I needed to be half dead to do it. It was quite possible that yesterday’s fiasco with the woman of smoke had been just enough to warrant such a walk. But if I’d walked through Sawyer’s mind that meant the dreams had been his and not my own.

  I lifted one side of my mouth in a soundless snarl. Though I’d enjoyed sex with Sawyer, both in reality and in my head, that he was dreaming of me nightly was kind of creepy. But then so was he.

  What information had he imparted during the dream? What desperate question had I needed an answer to?

  I had no idea. But I’d learned over the last month that sooner or later, the truth would come to me.

  At least I hadn’t really done him. The images I recalled—wolf, man, woman, wolf, and several in between—gave me the willies. Shape-shifting was for beating the bad guys. It wasn’t a new and innovative sex toy.

  Someday you’ll mate with me, Phoenix. He laid his head back between his paws. It’s only a matter of time.

  I took a step forward as my hackles rose. Those dreams, which had felt far too much like memories, had been seductive. I wanted to touch him in both forms, to shift as we mated, to come screaming as he took me, to clench around him, to make him spurt, the heat both scalding and comforting, the scent of him my own.

  You’re being —I broke off. I’d been about to say an asshole, but instead I finished with a murmured you, before I disappeared into the bathroom.

  I nosed the door too hard and it slammed. I heard his laughter in my mind. I wanted to shut out his voice; I wanted to forget everything I’d remembered. The first was easy, the second impossible.

  Closing my eyes, I imagined myself human. I welcomed the brush of air past my face as I lengthened from quadrapedal to bipedal, my skin prickling with gooseflesh as the air went from hot to cool.

  I stood in front of the mirror. My dark hair stuck up every which way, my usually tan cheeks appeared pale, the skin beneath my eyes bruised.

  “Rough night?” I asked the woman. She didn’t answer.

  At least the wound was gone. Completely, as if it had never been. Sawyer was right again. What else was new?

  In an attempt to get rid of the scent of him that clung to me like perfume, I took another shower. The hot spike of the water hitting my still vulnerable flesh made me bite my lip to keep from moaning.

  Instead of feeling satiated, as I would have if I’d actually done him, I was instead so on edge a slight buzz thrummed at the corners of my consciousness. That stinging sense of thwarted lust. The hum that signaled sexual deprivation. If Sawyer were a man, I’d jump him just to make it all go away.

  I tried to think of something else. What I thought of was Jimmy. Not a good way to make the needy hum disappear. If anything it got worse.

  I had to call Summer, see how she was doing with the Jimmy hunt. Maybe I should have touched her as she’d suggested. Maybe I would have gotten a clearer flash of where he’d gone.

  “Touch something he did.” I gave a halfhearted laugh and let the water pound on my face. If that worked, I might as well touch myself.

  I stilled, then lifted my head out of the water, tilting it as if I’d just heard something very far away and very interesting.

  I laughed again, this time putting more heart into it. “Why the hell not?”

  Slowly, I laid my palm across my stomach and thought of Jimmy.

  “Squat,” I muttered, but I didn’t give up easily.

  I smoothed my fingers across my ribs, then upward, cupping the heavy weight of my own breasts. Jimmy’s face flickered behind my closed eyelids. I might just be on to something here.

  Perhaps, in order to “see” someone who’d touched me, I had to
touch myself in the same way they had. Or at least in the way most likely to invoke some kind of response.

  I rolled my own nipples between my fingers, lifting my breasts until I could take the rosy tips into my mouth and suckle, first one and then the other. The sensation shot through me like a dying star across the sky. My skin tingled; my toes curled. I was so close to eruption, thanks to the dreams I’d had, that a single stroke between my legs brought me home, and in the seconds that followed, I saw everything that I needed to.

  CHAPTER 14

  Jimmy was in New Mexico, staying in a virtual clone of the motel we now occupied. Two signs were visible through the open window at his back—the sleep cheap—a name like that really made you want to curl up on the sheets, didn’t it?—and interstate 25.

  It was daytime, and Jimmy was reading the Red Rock Sentinel. He appeared awfully interested in what was inside.

  “Friday,” he whispered, and then he smiled. His damn fangs were out, and the sun sparked red off the glare at the center of his eyes. I could say he didn’t look himself, but I’d be lying. The new and not so improved Jimmy Sanducci was beginning to look just like this.

  He placed the paper face up on the table, and my gaze flicked over every advertisement, every article. The only one that said anything about Friday spoke of a traveling show.

  The Gypsy Fortune-telling Circus Extravaganza.

  Wow. Something for everyone.

  What did they have for Jimmy? The question gave me a bad, bad feeling.

  Wrapping a towel around myself since I’d left my duffel in the other room, I barreled through the door and grabbed my phone.

  Sawyer was watching the hunt, fish, kill channel again and barely spared me a glance. He probably knew I’d bean him with the nearest heavy object if he messed with me right now. The man might be annoying, but the wolf learned fast.

  Summer picked up on the other end sounding wide awake and far too chirpy—when didn’t she?—for what had to be long before dawn in the west. “I’m glad you called.”

  “You found him?”

  It would be too much to ask that she’d already corralled Jimmy and— My thoughts ended there. I had no idea what she could do to make him give up his fascination with killing himself.

  “No. I flew over the mountains. They weren’t there, so I’m waiting at Sawyer’s.”

  “Ditch that. He’s with me.”

  “Sawyer? But how—”

  “What has four legs and likes to howl at the moon?”

  “Oh. Then why—”

  Quickly I filled her in on what had happened since she’d flown off.

  “Don’t tell Jimmy he’s here,” I finished.

  “You think I’m an idiot?”

  “I’ll assume you don’t really want me to answer that.”

  I heard a soft laugh on the other end of the line and found myself smiling. Sometimes talking to Summer was almost like talking to Megan.

  Son of a— I rubbed my forehead. I needed to call Megan.

  “Head to Red Rock,” I continued. “You know it?”

  “A little place near Las Cruces. Jimmy’s there?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t wait around for her to ask me how I knew where he was, just continued giving orders. It was my strong suit.

  “He’s planning to attend a traveling show on Friday.” I paused, frowned. “What in hell day is it anyway?”

  “Friday.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Relax. I can get to Red Rock pretty fast.”

  She could fly.

  “What kind of traveling show?” she asked. “I can’t see him attending the latest touring presentation of The Lion King.”

  “A circus. With Gypsies.”

  Silence came over the line, and I got an even worse feeling than I’d had before.

  “What’s so bad about Gypsies?” I asked.

  “You don’t know?”

  I wasn’t going to explain again how little I knew, how woefully inadequate I was to lead the forces against Armageddon, the Apocalypse, Doomsday, end of days. Whatever you called it, I so wasn’t ready for it. Luckily Summer didn’t make me explain; she did.

  “Gypsies know all about dhampirs, including how to kill them.”

  “First off—there are still Gypsies?”

  “There are still Italians, Navajo, Irish, and every other nationality you can think of. Gypsies are no different.” She paused. “Well, they are different. Even though they spread all over the globe centuries ago and have wandered on every continent, they rarely interact with anyone else, except in cases of commerce. If a Gypsy intermarries with a gaje, a non-Gypsy, they’re banished.”

  “Feudal much?”

  “It’s their way.”

  “Tell me why they know about dhampirs.”

  “Because they started them.”

  I glanced at Sawyer, who’d turned off the hunting channel and now stared at me avidly. I had no doubt that his superior hearing allowed him to catch both sides of the conversation.

  “That makes no sense. Dhampirs are the offspring of a Nephilim and a human, same as any breed. Which means the Nephilim started them.”

  “Yes and no.” She took a deep breath. “Gypsies are nomadic. They’ve traveled all over the world, and in doing so, they’ve seen things.”

  “Nephilim kind of things?”

  “Yes. Many of them have the sight.”

  “Why haven’t we recruited them?”

  “They don’t deal with the gaje,” she repeated. “But they do pretty well killing Nephilim on their own. The word dhampir means ‘son of vampire’ in Romany, the language of the Rom, which is what the Gypsies call themselves.”

  “And how, exactly, did the Gypsies start the dhampirs?”

  “I shouldn’t have said started; they discovered their powers, gave them a name and began to use them to fight the Nephilim long ago.”

  “Are you saying Jimmy’s mother was a Gypsy?”

  “It’s possible, though the term dhampir has come to mean any offspring of a vampire and a human. Dhampirs can recognize vampires; they’re extremely good at killing them. Legend says that they have all the good attributes and none of the bad.”

  “Tell it to Jimmy,” I muttered.

  “Unless they share blood,” she continued. “Then they become more vampire than human, and the Gypsies kill them. Unlike the majority of the world, the Rom believe in the supernatural.”

  “Which is why Jimmy is headed there. He’ll bare his fangs, snarl a little, maybe bite someone—”

  “And they’ll put a stake through his heart,” Summer agreed. “Twice.”

  Hell.

  “Stop him,” I ordered. “Stop them.”

  “I’m on it,” she said, and was gone.

  I glanced at Sawyer. “I’m sure you heard that.”

  He blinked once, which I took as a yes, then padded to the door and waited for me to open it. Once I had, he loped to the overgrown held behind the motel and disappeared into the tall, dry grass.

  I glanced around. Not yet dawn, no one was in the parking lot, thank goodness. I didn’t want to explain why I had a pet wolf.

  Sure, I’d tell anyone who saw him that Sawyer was a dog, and maybe in this area—city, not country—people would believe me. But if I’d been in rural Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, definitely Canada, not only would people laugh in my face, they’d probably shoot Sawyer before I even had the chance to lie.

  Myself, I thought wolves were beautiful, or at least I had until I’d turned into one. Now I thought they were practical.

  Wolves can run at speeds of up to forty miles an hour and can cover a hundred and twenty-five miles in a day. They’ve been known to follow prey at a run for five miles and then accelerate. They’re good fighters, better killers, and in my new life, there were some situations where only a wolf would do.

  However, folks in the northern reaches of civilization considered wolves varmints, and they shot them if they could get away with it.
Sure, the species was endangered in some places, protected in others, but tell that to a farmer who’d lost several sheep or a calf. He’d blast the wolf into the next dimension, then bury the thing in the woods where no one would ever find it.

  I remained at the open door in a towel, unwilling to take my eyes off the field where Sawyer had disappeared to do whatever wolves did in fields. What if a trucker with a rifle showed up?

  Not that a bullet would have much effect on a skinwalker, or so I’d been led to believe. Though tales of Sawyer’s indestructibility might have been greatly exaggerated just to keep me from blowing his brains out.

  Still, that Jimmy hadn’t ended him spoke volumes. I didn’t need to be psychic to know that if Sanducci could have killed Sawyer, he would have and vice versa. Which was why Jimmy had gone looking for him in the first place. When he hadn’t found him, Jimmy had moved on to Plan B.

  While I waited for Sawyer, I retrieved my cell phone and hit speed dial for Megan. Anyone else, I’d be worried that I might wake her, but Megan was always up long before dawn. She said it was her only “alone time.”

  “You know, don’t you?” Megan didn’t bother with hello. Why waste words when you had caller ID?

  I frowned. “Know what?”

  “I was going to call you as soon as the sun came up.”

  Unlike Megan, I didn’t need alone time, and getting up before the sun was considered cruel and unusual punishment. Or at least it had been before I’d gone on call twenty-four/seven for Nephilim disposal. Two months ago, if I didn’t get out of bed, someone might have to wait for their beer; now people would die.

  “Why were you going to call me?” I asked.

  “There’s been a murder.”

  “There are a lot of murders in Milwaukee.”

  The average person didn’t know that Milwaukee was one of the top ten big cities on the murder hit parade, often coming in above Los Angeles in the ratings. Considering that Milwaukee was actually on the small side of big and L. A. was on the big side of large, that was just embarrassing.

  “Not in Milwaukee,” Megan clarified, “in Friedenberg.”

  “Shit.”

  “At your place.”

  Was double shit a word?

  “Who? How?”