Apocalypse Happens

by Apocalypse Happens (epub)

  “Find the key, find the book,” I interrupted. “Unfortunately, the guy I put on that task wound up a little dead.”

  Ruthie-Luther frowned. “Xander Whitelaw is dead?”

  “How can you not know this?” I asked. “I thought you had a hotline to heaven.” On the heels of those thoughts came another, better one. “He’s on the other side. You can ask him what he found out.”

  My heart rate sped up. Maybe we weren’t doomed after all. Maybe we could find the key tonight, perform the spell and rid the earth of demons by morning.

  “He’s not in heaven,” Ruthie murmured.

  My heart stuttered. “He went to hell?” Hadn’t seen that coming. Not that Xander had been a goody-goody. I hadn’t known him well enough to know what he’d been. But he hadn’t felt evil.

  “No,” Ruthie-Luther said slowly. “Not hell.”

  “You aren’t making any sense. There’s heaven and hell and here.”

  “And then there’s where I am.”

  “You said you were in heaven.”

  “Not quite.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not quite’?”

  “I have a place for little ones to get used to the idea. Not heaven yet. More like the waiting room.”

  Ruthie’s version of heaven was a house with a white picket fence and kids who’d died too soon. Even in the afterlife, Ruthie was still the mother to every lost soul.

  The thought gave me pause. Obviously mothering was in her DNA, and that it was made me think that she had loved me for more than my talents.

  But thinking and believing, then accepting and forgiving can be pretty far apart, and they can take a lot of time to draw together. Time was one thing I didn’t have much of right now.

  “Is there another waiting room for adults?” I asked.

  “No. Adults understand death a little better than children.”

  “Then what are you saying?” I asked. “Xander’s dead. He has to be somewhere, and it isn’t where the living walk.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  There hadn’t been enough left of him to be anything but dead, even before we’d burned the place down.

  “Yes.”

  Ruthie-Luther lowered her-his chin toward the thin, olive drab–shrouded chest. “If he isn’t in heaven or hell, then his spirit’s still on earth.”

  Sawyer drew in a sharp breath, but when I glanced at him, his face remained stoic, and I returned my attention to the woman speaking from the boy’s mouth, resolving to get to the bottom of that later.

  “Xander’s a ghost,” I clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Spirits remain on earth for a lot of reasons. Unfinished business, a violent death.”

  “Two for two,” I murmured. “We need to ask him what he wanted to tell me, that’ll finish up his business, and he can . . .”—I made a fluttering, move along gesture with both hands—“go into the light. Win-win.”

  “Not that simple,” Ruthie said.

  “Why not? Just ask him.”

  “I can’t ask him, Lizbeth. I’m dead.”

  “So’s he.”

  “Not in the same way.”

  “There are degrees of deadness?”

  “No. Dead is dead. But for some, not really.”

  I smacked myself in the forehead. “Fine. You can’t ask him. The world’s gonna end; we’re all gonna be Satan’s bitch because the guy with the info can’t get his deadness to fit just right.”

  “Watch that mouth!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said automatically. I couldn’t help myself. Years of respecting Ruthie, loving her, practically worshiping the ground she walked on, died hard, perhaps never. But anger, hurt and fear died hard too, and I’d always been a sarcastic, snotty pain in the ass when any of those emotions were involved. Sometimes even when they weren’t.

  “I didn’t say we couldn’t find out the information,” Ruthie soothed, “just that I couldn’t talk to the man.”

  “Who can?”

  Ruthie-Luther turned her-his head toward Sawyer. “Him.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Him.

  I should have known.

  “You can talk to ghosts?” I asked.

  “It’s one of the gifts of a skinwalker.”

  “Then I can do it too.”

  “No. It’s a talent tied to my magic.”

  A skinwalker is both witch and shifter. The shifting comes at birth; the magic comes later.

  I could be as gifted as Sawyer. I could toss people across the room with a flick of my hand; I could talk to ghosts; I could heal wounds at the speed of sound. All I’d have to do was kill someone I loved.

  I’d decided to pass.

  Most days I had a hard time believing Sawyer was capable of loving anyone. Killing yes, loving no. However, I’d seen into his head, into his past. I knew he’d lived as a wolf; he’d had a mate, but he didn’t have her now. Maybe he’d killed her.

  Or maybe he’d killed someone else. When I’d touched him and seen the frighteningly long and lonely aeons of his existence, he’d hidden things from me, blocked me in a way that no one else ever had.

  “Why are we standing here chatting?” I asked. “Open up the phone lines. Talk to Xander and find out what he knows.” I frowned. “Knew. Whatever. Just do it.”

  “Just?” Sawyer repeated. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Do whatever voodoo you do.”

  “I’m not a bokur.”

  “A what?”

  “Voodoo dark priest,” Ruthie-Luther said. “Very dangerous.”

  “And he isn’t?”

  Sawyer’s lips curved. He loved it when someone called him dangerous. Sometimes I thought he purposely cultivated the fear that surrounded him, fed the legends by doing just enough creepy stuff to keep them circulating. I had a feeling that people being scared of him had kept Sawyer alive on more than one occasion.

  “I can’t just talk to Whitelaw,” Sawyer said. “I’ve got to bring him forth.”

  “From where?”

  “The realm where he walks.”

  “You’re talking about raising the dead. That doesn’t sound like a good idea.” I glanced at Ruthie-Luther. “Does it?”

  “He won’t actually be raising him to life,” Ruthie said, “just raising his ghost.”

  “So that’s okay?”

  “What else we gonna do?” Ruthie asked. “We need the key, the book, somethin’.”

  “All right,” I said, glancing at Sawyer. “What do you have to do?”

  His lips quirked, and suddenly I remembered what Xander Whitelaw had told me about Navajo skinwalkers.

  They have sex with the dead.

  I made a face. “Uck.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” Sawyer pointed out.

  “I’ve never been clear on all the powers of a skinwalker.”

  “And you never will be,” he returned.

  I narrowed my eyes. I wished I could make him tell me, but Sawyer still trumped me in power. Which might be why he refused to let me in on all his secrets. He wanted to keep it that way. He was so damn annoying.

  “Whitelaw had a lot of theories,” I began.

  Sawyer’s smile died. “So he did.”

  “How many of them were true?”

  “Hard to say.”

  I started ticking off all that I knew. “Shape-shifting. Check. Witchcraft. Bingo. Cannibalism?”

  Sawyer didn’t answer.

  “Killing from afar by use of ritual?”

  The smile returned, but he still didn’t speak.

  “Travel on storms?”

  That legend probably came about because skinwalkers could move faster than the wind. So, technically true.

  “Power from lightning?”

  I’d seen his mother throw lightning like Zeus. Never had seen Sawyer do it, but that didn’t meant he couldn’t.

  “Associated with death and the dead.”

  Obviously, since he planned on raisi
ng Xander’s ghost and asking him some questions.

  “Incest.”

  Sawyer’s face went as still as the dark mountain behind him.

  I guess I wouldn’t call the last a power but rather the source of any weakness. Another curse. The first but not the last Sawyer had received from his mother.

  “Sorry,” I murmured.

  What had happened to him at the hands of that psychotic evil spirit bitch wasn’t his fault, and I shouldn’t be reminding him of it now. Or ever again.

  Sawyer continued to make like a mountain. I glanced at Ruthie-Luther and spread my hands—code for Do something.

  She sighed. “Sawyer.”

  Her voice was gentle, the one that had soothed me when I was sick, strengthened me when I was weak, taught me what I needed to know and told me what I needed to hear. No matter what she’d done for the sake of the world, the fact remained that she’d done a lot for me as well. Regardless of her motives, Ruthie Kane had saved me from the streets and myself. She’d saved a lot of people. I was going to have to cut her some slack.

  Eventually.

  Sawyer’s dark gaze moved to Luther’s face and softened. I wasn’t sure what lay between Ruthie and Sawyer. She’d sent me to him when I was fifteen to learn how to control what I was. Hadn’t worked completely; I’d had to come back recently and learn some more.

  Sure, it had been beyond strange to send a fifteen-year-old girl to spend the summer alone with a grown man in the New Mexico desert. But I wasn’t an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl and Sawyer wasn’t really a man.

  If Social Services had found out, they would have yanked me from Ruthie’s care quicker than a starving cat snatched a baby mouse from its nest, but they hadn’t found out. I now knew that Ruthie had controlled more than just the federation—or rather, the federation had members just about everywhere in very high places, and if things were discovered that weren’t supposed to be, it was an easy task to wipe memories from human minds. Or, in some cases, wipe those human minds from the face of the earth and move on.

  Besides, Sawyer had never touched me inappropriately. The first time. Not because he had any morals to speak of but because he was scared of Ruthie. Considering Sawyer, I had to wonder what lay in their past and just how much power Ruthie had that I didn’t know about.

  Ruthie reached out for Sawyer with Luther’s hand, and Sawyer took it. Seeing the two of them connected like that was kind of weird. But right now Luther was Ruthie and the touch seemed to help. Sawyer straightened, removing his hand from Luther’s as he got down to business.

  “I’ll need something from him.”

  “From him,” I repeated, confused.

  “A part of the person who is now a ghost. Hair, nails, skin.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, well,” Sawyer said, and headed for his hogan.

  “ ‘Oh, well’?” I glanced at Ruthie-Luther. “That’s it? ‘Oh, well. Have a happy end of the world.’ ”

  “What do you want me to do?” Sawyer stopped, turned. “Conjure something from nothing?”

  “Uh . . . yeah,” I said in my best “duh” voice, which Sawyer ignored.

  “There has to be a connection. Something to tell the . . .”—he waved his hands vaguely—“powers that be who we want to bring forth.”

  “This is such BS,” I muttered.

  “Lizbeth,” Ruthie murmured. “Think. Where can we find a part of Xander?”

  “Got me. We burned him,” I said. “Had to. He was a mess.”

  Ruthie winced. “Nevertheless, humans leave little pieces of themselves all over the place.”

  “We burned his office too.”

  “Didn’t realize Sanducci was a pyro as well as an asshole,” Sawyer murmured.

  Sawyer might be as old as dirt, but he could also be quite childish. Especially about Jimmy.

  “His apartment,” Ruthie said. “Hairbrush, toothbrush, nail clippers, hat.”

  “Hat!” All eyes turned to me as my shout echoed back from the mountains. “I took his hat.”

  “You didn’t think to mention this?” Ruthie asked.

  “What for? It’s a cool hat. I didn’t want it to—” I broke off. I hadn’t wanted it to burn. I’d liked Xander. I wished I’d had time to get to know him better.

  I went to the rental car, leaned in and came back out with the felt hat. Sure enough, several blond hairs were stuck in a ribbon that went around the inside of the crown. I handed the whole thing to Sawyer.

  “Bury hair beneath a lightning-struck tree,” Ruthie murmured.

  “That’s to kill a person,” Sawyer said. “Not raise their ghost.”

  I cast Ruthie-Luther a quick glance. “Where’d you learn that?”

  She lifted a bushy light-brown brow.

  “Oh,” I said, and turned my attention to Sawyer. “I guess you really can kill from afar by the use of ritual.”

  “I guess I can.”

  “We could end a lot of demons that way.”

  “Doesn’t work on demons,” he said absently.

  “Of course it doesn’t,” I muttered. “That would be too damn easy.”

  “What do you have to do?” The voice was Luther’s. On closer examination, the eyes and the body were now his too.

  “Where’s Ruthie?” I asked.

  The kid shrugged. Obviously gone. Her work here—for now—was done.

  “We must wait for the lightning.” Sawyer contemplated the perfectly clear sky. “The fire of its strike is needed to raise a ghost.”

  “We have to wait for a storm?” Even though storms were common around here in the summer, we might be waiting for weeks. “And the lightning has to strike . . . what? Where?”

  Sawyer didn’t answer. This time when he headed for his hogan, he disappeared inside, and he didn’t come back out.

  I took a step in that direction, and Luther put a hand on my arm. “He doesn’t like it when you go in there.”

  “I don’t care what he likes.” And I knew better. The last time I’d gone in there, he’d liked it a lot.

  But I paused and contemplated the boy. “How have things been here? With him?”

  “All right. He knows stuff.”

  “Living forever will do that,” I said dryly. “You aren’t uncomfortable with him? He doesn’t scare you?”

  Luther had been beating on his chest—as wild animals and young males can’t help but do—when he’d said he would kick Sawyer’s ass, but I wanted to know the real truth. So, with Luther’s hand still on my arm, I opened my mind and saw into his.

  Luther and Sawyer beneath the noonday sun. Stripped to the waist, sweating, laughing. Sawyer seemed almost . . . human. I got distracted.

  Luther moved away, breaking our connection. My eyes met his.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said.

  I tilted my head. I’d never told him what I could do.

  He looked away. “Ruthie speaks through me, but she also speaks to me. She tells me things I need to know.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sawyer wouldn’t hurt me,” Luther said. “Well, he would. He has. If I let my guard down, and he knocks me ten feet into a wall or some rocks, it hurts, and I heal. But he wouldn’t . . . you know.”

  “I know. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left you here.”

  “No?” he asked. “Not even if my being here would make me into the type of killing machine you need?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I know what’s at stake. I know that some of us will die, maybe all of us. We don’t have any choice. You didn’t have any choice. I am what I am. I’m this way for a reason. I need to learn how to control my lion, how to kill Nephilim, and Sawyer’s the best one to teach me. If there’s a price to be paid for the knowledge, I’ll pay it.”

  “I’ll pay it,” I corrected. “Not you.”

  Luther’s gaze went to the hogan. “I think that’s been his plan all along.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Luther went
into the house, and a silence as cool and navy blue as the sky settled over the land.

  “How do you plan to pay me, Phoenix?”

  I turned, half-expecting Sawyer to be right behind me, so close my breasts would brush his chest. I’d gasp, stumble back, nearly fall, and he’d catch me.

  But Sawyer wasn’t there, and he wasn’t standing in front of the hogan or in the doorway of the house or anywhere that I could see.

  “How were you paid in the past?” I asked.

  “The usual way.”

  His voice seemed to come out of the darkness, seemed to be the darkness, and I shivered. His mother had been the darkness. Sawyer had warned me often enough that she was a part of him. I should probably kill him, but I didn’t know how.

  I moved toward the hogan. “When you say ‘usual,’ where are you headed with that?”

  “Blood, guts, the souls of children.”

  “You aren’t funny,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean to be.”

  “You aren’t ready to turn over a new leaf?” I asked. “Start helping us out of the goodness of your heart rather than . . .” I paused.

  Jimmy had said Sawyer trained federation members for money, but Sawyer didn’t seem the type, and I knew now that Jimmy lied.

  I reached the arched dwelling, pulled back the woven mat that served as a door and peeked inside. The place was empty.

  Sawyer hadn’t disappeared into thin air, as much as it might seem so. I’d been distracted. So had Luther. Our gazes had not been on the hogan the entire time, and Sawyer only needed an instant to turn into whichever one of his beasts he desired; then in a blink he’d be gone.

  “Can’t do that.”

  His voice came from farther away. He still sounded as if he were all around me, but fainter. More the wind than the night. Could he turn into the wind? I had no idea.

  “Can’t do what?” I backed out of the hogan.

  “Help you out of the goodness of my heart.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Goodness or a heart?”

  “Exactly.”

  I rubbed my forehead. Whether I was woman or wolf, talking to Sawyer always gave me a headache.

  “What are you going to charge for training Luther?” I demanded.