Doomsday Can Wait

by Lori Handeland

  “But if she’s already the leader of the darkness,” I said, “she doesn’t need to kill me to become the leader.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So why is she so obsessed with trying?”

  “Ask him.” Carla inclined her head in Sawyer’s direction. He lifted his lip in a silent snarl.

  “I don’t think he’s going to tell me.” Even if he was capable of speech.

  “The Naye’i is an evil spirit,” Carla said. “She doesn’t need a reason to kill you beyond the pleasure of doing so.”

  Sadly, that made sense.

  “And it’s common practice in battle to take out the opposition’s leader. With no one to follow, armies disintegrate, some soldiers change sides, others desert.”

  “Mine won’t.” My voice sounded much more positive than I actually felt.

  “Time will tell,” Carla murmured.

  “How could I not have known this? I lived”—if you called sexual slavery living—“in the Strega’s lair for weeks. I never caught a whiff of the woman of smoke.” Or heard a whisper. That damned amulet was proving more of a pain in my ass than I’d ever thought possible.

  “She wasn’t there,” Carla said.

  “Ever?”

  “She didn’t have to be.” Carla swept her hand in an arc, from left shoulder, upward and over, as if she were drawing a rainbow in the air. A sparkling window of static appeared a few feet above our heads. “Watch.”

  The sound of that static swirled around the room. Sawyer woofed once and the silver, black, and white particles cleared.

  Though the strega appeared to be in his thirties with olive-toned skin stretched tightly over fine bones, his onyx eyes were ancient. He brushed back his shoulder-length ebony hair with hands that ought to have been permanently bloodstained, but instead drew the eye with their long-fingered, supple grace.

  His room had been decorated by Pashas ‘R Us. Filmy curtains surrounded a low, round bed; a huge fountain poured water into a stone pool that had probably been stolen from a Roman bathhouse, back when they still hand them. The walls were equipped with several pairs of cuffs and chains. The only illumination in the room came from the large white candles blazing from several candelabra.

  Obviously we were viewing the past since the strega was not only dead, but his lair was toast.

  He set a bowl on the end table. The flickering flames of the candles reflected in the shiny, maroon surface. I knew a bowl of blood when I saw one.

  He chanted in Latin, dipped a finger into the blood, then traced it around the edges of the framed photograph of the woman of smoke—the one I’d stolen and fed to the garbage disposal.

  “I always meant to ask you about that picture,” I murmured.

  Sawyer growled as the photograph began to talk.

  “We have the information we need. Send the shape-shifters after Ruthie Kane.”

  “Yes, mistress,” the strega said.

  That certainly didn’t sound like him.

  Her eyes flared, and her lips pulled back from her too-white teeth. “Make it bloody.”

  The strega lifted his head and smiled. “What other way is there?”

  My hands clenched. Ruthie had died badly. Not that there was a good way to die—unless it was at the age of a hundred and nine asleep in your bed after having just had sex with your seventy-year-old boy toy—but it hadn’t had to be the way it had been. The leader of the light dies, setting in motion Doomsday. Pain and blood and fear weren’t part of the equation. Those had been added just for the amusement of the Nephilim.

  Well, two could play at that game. I made a note to myself: Make it bloody right back.

  “Once your son is under your control,” she continued, “unleash the vampires.”

  The Strega bowed his head in an uncharacteristically submissive posture. He was either really scared of her or totally up to something.

  “My identity will be kept a secret,” she whispered. “It’s better that way.”

  The photo of the woman of smoke became just a photo once more. The strega walked to the window and pulled back the curtains to gaze at the bright lights of the city against the ebony night. I could see his face reflected in the glass.

  He was smiling.

  “What’s he so damn happy about?” I wondered. “She’s ordering him around like her stupid little brother, not to mention offering him up to me like a—a—a goat without horns.”

  “Which is exactly what he was,” Carla said. “Her goat. The sacrifice.”

  “I guess he was a stupid little brother if he couldn’t figure that out.”

  “Oh, he did figure it out,” Carla said. “That’s why he’s smiling.”

  “You lost me.”

  “He planned everything. He needed her to gather all the Nephilim.”

  “He couldn’t do it himself?”

  “I don’t know if you noticed, bella, but he was kind of a dick.”

  I choked. “Excuse me?”

  “Is that the wrong word?” She turned to Sawyer. “Asshole, perhaps?”

  Sawyer’s mouth hung open as his tongue lolled out. He had to be laughing.

  “The strega was definitely that,” I agreed. “How did you know?”

  “Stregas are all the same.” Carla shrugged. “He would have had a difficult time getting the Nephilim to follow him.”

  “But they’d gladly follow the psycho hell bitch?”

  “They like to back a winner.”

  I shivered. She couldn’t win. I had to stop her.

  “So what was the Strega’s secret plan?” I asked.

  “You.”

  “Again I say, ‘huh?’”

  Carla wiped her hand from the right to the left, erasing our view of the past. The vampire, his lair, and everything in it, disappeared.

  “Did he not try to seduce you to his side?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” I muttered.

  “Why do you think that is? You are powerful beyond anyone this world has ever known.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “You can be, bella. You can be anything.”

  Silence settled over the room, broken only by the merry crackle of the fire in the oven. As much as I hated to admit it, Carla was right. I could be anything. If I’d given in to the strega, I could have been … well, a strega.

  “He didn’t know what I could do,” I said. If he had he would have realized that once I’d slept with his son, I would have the power to kill him.

  “No,” Carla agreed. “But he sensed the depth of your strength. I’m sure he thought that the two of you could rule the world.”

  Together we’ll rule this rock.

  Yep. That’s what he’d thought.

  “Why didn’t Ruthie know the woman of smoke was pulling all the strings?”

  “The amulet.”

  I glanced at the fire. I hated that thing.

  The sense of urgency I’d been feeling since I became the leader of the light increased so much I got dizzy. Once again, the Nephilim were ahead of us, and we were playing catch-up. I needed Sawyer to be Sawyer very badly.

  “Do not despair,” Carla said. “I can do a spell of my own, which will allow him to walk as a man under certain conditions.”

  I straightened, the weight on my chest lightening. “Seriously?”

  “All I will need is some earth from the Glittering World.”

  The Glittering World was another name for the Dinetah. Navajo Land.

  My chest went tight again. The Dinetah was back in New Mexico. By the time we fetched dirt from there we’d all be dead. Unless—

  “I could have Summer—” I reached for my cell phone only to discover it had no signal in the depths of the basement. Figured.

  “No need.” Carla walked over to the shelves that held all her canning jars. As she passed the jar of eyes, she tapped it with her fingernail, and the single eye that had been watching me again faced the wall with a flick so quick I was left uncertain if I’d actually seen it at a
ll.

  She brought an empty container back to the table. A few more Latin words, a jab of her twig fingers, and between one blink and the next, empty became full.

  Carla attempted to remove the top with a twist of her wrist, but couldn’t, and after a glance at Sawyer, she handed the thing to me. I held it up. The clear glass container appeared to be stuffed to the brim with reddish-brown earth.

  I screwed off the cap and took a pinch between my fingers. Felt like earth.

  I lifted the particles to my nose. Smelled like earth.

  I handed the jar back to her, along with the screw top. “How did you do that?”

  She smiled. “Abra-kadabra?”

  “That jar was empty.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Then it was full.”

  “What is there about magic that you don’t understand, Elisabetta?”

  A helluva lot apparently.

  “You conjured dirt from the Dinetah?”

  “Isn’t that what I said we needed?”

  “And if you needed, say, ajar of money?”

  Carla merely smiled.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now I will do my spell. Run along.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Leave,” she said.

  “But—”

  “What I will do is between him and me.”

  I frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  Carla shrugged. “He’s been cursed this long, I’m sure a few more centuries won’t hurt him.”

  “I thought you were a good witch.”

  “I am.” She made a disgusted sound. “I’m not going to hurt him, Elisabetta, I’m going to elp him. You think he can’t take care of himself?”

  Sawyer dipped his chin and threw his head up, then repeated the movement, as if saying both Yes and Get lost.

  I was still uneasy. If she wasn’t up to something, why did they need to be alone? Then again, what could they possibly be up to?

  Sawyer crossed the floor and shoved me with his nose toward the basement stairs. “All right, all right. I get the hint. I’ll be in the car.”

  “Go to a hotel,” Carla ordered. “This will take a while, and it isn’t safe to loiter in my neighborhood.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You think he can’t find you?” Carla made a shooing motion. “Go!”

  I could stand here and argue but Sawyer wasn’t getting any more human, so I went upstairs. As I reached the hallway, Carla murmured, “Payment must be made.”

  Payment? When dealing with magic, payment was usually in blood, guts, your soul—things you really couldn’t afford to lose.

  I took a step back toward the door, and it slammed in my face. No amounting of tugging could get it open again.

  I pounded. I shouted. I went quiet and I listened. It was as if I were alone in the house. Whatever they were doing in the basement, they were doing very quietly. For all I knew, they weren’t even down there any longer.

  I hung around, tried the door again, got nowhere. Considering the superior strength I’d attained from Jimmy, I should have been able to yank the door from its hinges. That I couldn’t made me think the portal had been fortified in some way, most likely by magic. Which meant I wasn’t getting through unless I went out and found myself another witch. I wasn’t in the mood.

  By the laws of my gift of empathy, I would possess Sawyer’s magic if he’d been born with it. That I didn’t meant he’d either learned his witchery, or taken it the same as his mother had. He’d never been quite clear on which.

  I wandered through the house, which was dark and dusty—an old lady’s house—where a lot of cats might live, though I didn’t see evidence of a single one. Maybe they were invisible. Like the dog.

  The only bizarre thing I found was a nursery. For a baby, not plants.

  The place didn’t appear to ever have been used. Had Carla lost a child? Or perhaps she was expecting a grandchild. I hoped she didn’t frighten the kid to death.

  As time passed, I began to feel vulnerable. In the Impala lay all my weapons of warfare. Besides—I glanced at my phone—I still couldn’t get any service. What if Summer had called while I was loitering in this dead zone?

  I couldn’t hang around any longer. I needed to let her in on the news that while we’d been moving forward with the assumption that Doomsday was on hiatus, it was, in fact, here.

  The sun was setting as I stepped onto the porch. As soon as the latch clicked shut behind me, I was sorry, but it was too late to go back. The front door was as impenetrable as the basement door had been.

  I stood in the fading light, and the permanent bull’s-eye on my back began to burn. I scanned the swirling shadows but saw no one, heard nothing.

  If another Nephilim had been dispatched to kill me, if the woman of smoke had returned, I’d have some warning. The amulet was, if not ashes, definitely a lump of molten metal.

  Of course, in this neighborhood, someone could very well be watching me with no more designs than to rob me, perhaps rape or kill me—maybe all three. Sadly, that scenario would be preferable to the first, if only because I could handle human monsters with ease. The problem would be getting rid of the bodies so I didn’t have to explain how I’d done it.

  Wasn’t that always the rub?

  Carla had said I should not wait in the car but head to a hotel. I could only hope that Sawyer would survive whatever she might do to him and find me as promised.

  I checked my cell phone, which now had plenty of service and no indication of any missed calls.

  “Damn.” Summer hadn’t gotten back to me. What was she playing at? She’d gone after Jimmy this morning. She had to know I’d be waiting to hear what had happened. Unless—

  I broke off the thought. I didn’t want to consider what might be keeping Summer from getting back to me. Anything that could take out a fairy and a dhampir was something I didn’t want to meet but no doubt would. Soon.

  There were bound to be hotels near the airport, so I followed the signs, picked one, checked in, called Summer. She didn’t answer. Again.

  I was too nervous to sleep, too nervous to eat, too nervous to read or watch TV, which was full of stories about the increasing chaos in the world. All I could do was pace.

  I had to know so I picked up the phone again, then remembered my other connection.

  “Touch something he did,” I whispered.

  I sank onto the bed, lay back, brushed my hand over my stomach, my breasts, my lips.

  Nothing.

  The last time I’d tried this, I’d been aroused, on edge, lust had been thrumming in my blood. Now I was too upset to feel anything but scared.

  I took a deep breath, let it out. Forced myself to relax, and as I did my mind spun backward.

  As kids, Jimmy and I had fought. There’d been jealousy over Ruthie’s attention, a wrangling to be the leader of all the little children. We’d poked at each other, played tricks. After he’d put a snake in my bed, I’d bloodied his nose and loosened a few of his teeth. But he’d never laid a hand on me in violence, and for Jimmy that was downright saintly. Then had come a time when we’d realized there was something more than rivalry between us.

  The heat of a summer day, the breathless excitement at the touch of his hand, his mouth, the knowledge that what we were doing was big trouble, but we were going to do it anyway.

  Hiding in closets to steal a kiss. We’d sneak outside in the depths of the night. The moon spilled over us as we lay in the grass. He was so beautiful—skin smooth and dark, his hair shaggy and soft, his face full of everything he felt.

  He’d worshipped me. I was quite certain he’d killed for me.

  For an instant I heard another voice, saw my tears, the bruises, Jimmy’s face, and I forced those thoughts away.

  “Jimmy,” I murmured. “Where are you now?”

  I needed a memory of love. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have quite a few. Even if he’d never loved me, as I’d come to believe, I h
ad loved him enough back then for both of us.

  Once we’d bumped into each other in the upstairs hall; he’d been heading down to help Ruthie bring in groceries from the huge van that was our only vehicle. I’d been heading to my room to grab my shoes and do the same thing. All the kids had been outside. We could hear them through the window.

  It was early autumn. School had just started, and the air was still muggy and hot. I had on shorts and a tiny white top.

  We’d looked both ways and crossed the hall, our mouths crushing together, my back meeting the wall, even as his fingers brushed my thighs, sliding upward, beneath the material, to caress the barely hidden curves.

  As always the instant he touched me my heart beat so fast my skin flushed, becoming supersensitive, so that every stroke seemed to echo everywhere.

  He lifted me; I crossed my ankles behind his hips and he pressed his erection between my legs. All that lay between us were some flimsy nylon shorts and underwear. I could feel the heat of him, the pulse. I took a breath to cry out and he drank in the sound with his mouth, as together we shuddered. Then he laid his forehead against mine, the dark drift of his hair across my cheek making my heart tumble into love as the scent of his skin was forever imprinted upon me.

  “Lizzy,” he’d whispered. “I—”

  Then Ruthie had shouted for us and we’d fallen apart, straightened up, hurried down, whatever he’d been about to say as lost as we were soon after.

  But I would remember until the day that I died how I’d felt right then when he held me, when he’d said my name in a voice so full of longing my eyes had burned, and my chest had ached. I’d believed that for the rest of my life, the only man I’d ever truly love was him.

  Now, in a rented bed in a rented room in Detroit, I touched my chest, where my heart lay, where Jimmy had touched me that day merely by saying my name, and I tumbled out of myself and into the vision.

  New Mexico. Different terrain from Sawyer’s place on the reservation. The rock was still red, mountains still loomed, but the grass, the scrub, the cacti were slightly off. Still I recognized it instantly.

  I assumed the white tents set up in an open area outside a small town were for the Gypsy traveling show. Especially since I could just make out the sign welcome to red rock on the dusty road beyond.

  Though the place blazed with spotlights, it appeared deserted. From the litter here and there across the ground and the wispy scent of popcorn and cotton candy still in the air, the show had gone on.