Apocalypse Happens

by Apocalypse Happens (epub)

  Lucinda keeps her gaze fixed on her feet. “There has been an attempt on the life of the leader of the light.”

  In Cairo I jerked, and Sawyer’s muscles bulged as he pressed my hands, my head, my body, back down. “Shhh,” he murmured. “It’s in the past.”

  I hadn’t been worried about me. Hell, attempts on my life came along as often as breakfast. But Ruthie—

  If the leader then had even been Ruthie.

  “You’ve been summoned,” Lucinda continues.

  “Why me?”

  She glances up, then quickly back down. “You’re the best we have. You won’t stop until the traitor is dead.”

  Sawyer lifts one shoulder, tilts his head, then twists his mouth in an expression that very clearly says, Got that right, before he begins to strip. Since, as usual, he isn’t wearing a shirt, shoes or even underwear, it doesn’t take much. He hooks his thumbs in his loose tan trousers and drops them to the ground.

  Lucinda chokes, then runs for the station wagon. What is wrong with the woman? Scary badass or not, why refuse a free peek? Sawyer obviously doesn’t care. I doubt she’ll view a finer male specimen this side of paradise.

  The sun glints off Sawyer’s skin, smooth and bronze, the ink of his tattoos seeming to sparkle and shimmer and shift. He traces a finger along his neck and lightning flashes from a clear sky as he becomes an eagle.

  The beat of his wings is drowned out by the roar of Lucinda’s engine, then the spraying of gravel beneath her tires as she reverses direction and leaves Sawyer’s now-deserted homestead behind.

  Night falls as the eagle catches the scent of Lake Michigan. The Bradley Clock looms out of the jumble of low-slung industrial buildings. He veers off before he reaches it, clinging to the tree line as he coasts over block after block of fifties-style ranch houses, zeroing in on the only two-story in the area.

  It’s late. He purposely took his time, planning to arrive after midnight. There are eagles in Wisconsin, but not many and most live much farther north. None would soar into a suburb and land in a backyard.

  He stands on the grass and tilts his snowy white head, black gaze on the windows. Every single one is dark.

  Human intelligence, bird body, sometimes it’s a hassle. No thumbs to open the door even if it wasn’t locked. He could burst through a window, but which one?

  He lifts his beak to the just-rising moon; his call is shrill and loud. No one who hears it will ever confuse that shriek with the chirp of a twirpy city bird.

  “No need for all that racket.” A voice drifts free of the smoky tendrils that surround the house. “I’m right here.”

  A much younger Ruthie steps into the frail moonlight—forties maybe—her dark skin unlined, her Afro still tight and short, but pitch-black, without a single strand of gray. Her breasts don’t sag; her legs aren’t veined, her hands not yet gnarled with arthritis.

  I’ve never seen her like this, not in a photo or any dream or vision. To me she’s always been Ruthie—my only mother. Soft heart, bony hips, firm but gentle hand. But seeing her young has me wondering for the first time why she never married, although maybe she did. Maybe he died; maybe he left her. Being a seer isn’t for sissies. Being the leader of the light leaves precious little to spare for anyone else but those in the federation and those just begging to die by it.

  Her thin arm is framed by a charcoal-gray house-dress, which only makes her appear even thinner, as its voluminous folds fall around her skinny body like a tent. That arm is wrapped in a stark white bandage; a tiny dot of blood has leaked through.

  “Careful, or some nosy neighbor might call the DNR with a wild tale of an eagle in my yard. Been enough stories ’bout strange goin’s-on. Don’t need any more.”

  That voice. I want to crawl out of Sawyer’s memory and right into her lap. When she’d died I’d been devastated, but having her pop into my dreams, flit through my head, speak to me even if it was to announce impending death by Nephilim had made her seem less gone.

  Exchanging Ruthie for a whispering, whining demon had been like losing her all over again. Every time I saw her in my memories or the memories of others, or heard her voice coming out of Luther’s mouth, I wanted to weep, and I was not the weeping kind.

  “There’s somethin’ I need done.” Ruthie lays her dark hand on Sawyer’s head, and he fluffs his feathers, preening. “I’d do it myself, but I got kids here can’t be left. Besides.” Her bony shoulder shifts beneath her sagging dress. “I’m the leader now. No more fieldwork for me.”

  Those were the days. Since the battle is now it’s fieldwork for everybody. Although . . .

  Ruthie was a seer. What in hell was she ever doing in the field? Funny how some answers only bring more questions.

  “Someone came to kill me.” Ruthie glances at the dark house, and silvery moonlight spills across her face. Is that a shadow or the hint of a bruise along her jaw? “Tried to bring about Doomsday.” Her dark eyes narrow. “We ain’t ready for that yet. Someone knows where I live, what I am, and that can’t be. Only way to make it not be is for them to no longer be.” She lowers her gaze to the eagle’s. “Understand?”

  Sawyer dips his head, waddles back and forth, back and forth on taloned feet.

  “This ain’t gonna be easy.” Ruthie sighs, long and sad and deep. “It never is.”

  She reaches into her house dress and pulls out a feather. Even in the moonlight, which seeps color from everything, making the backyard appear like a scene from 1940s film noir, the plumage is radiant.

  Sawyer makes a different sound—caw, screech—an unearthly howl of shock and pain.

  “Hush now,” Ruthie whispers, and lets the feather go. “Just hush.”

  The feather coasts downward, a bright red slash canting to and fro, coming to rest half on Sawyer’s bird feet and half against the thick carpet of ebony grass.

  He lifts his beak. Gray eyes meet black.

  “You know what you have to do,” Ruthie says.

  Sawyer picks up the feather and heads back to New Mexico, to the Glittering World, the Dinetah, where he can walk as both man and beast. He feels stronger there, in the shadow of that mountain where he first changed.

  He waits, still and silent, the light from the fire flickering across his naked skin as he stares at that red feather night after day after night.

  I appreciate his confusion and pain. There is right and there is wrong and attempting to kill the conduit to God . . .

  So wrong.

  That Sawyer’s seer, the one he trusts most on this earth to guide him, has obviously gone to the dark side . . . Well, it takes some getting used to.

  Not that he isn’t going to kill her when she shows up. He has to. The only question is how. As far as he knows, there is only one Phoenix, which makes legends on how to kill them nearly as rare as they are.

  He pulls out his ancient book, pages through it over and over. There are beings of fire and smoke. Hell, his mother is one. He’s tried to kill her every way he’s heard and read and learned, but he’s never had any luck.

  He snaps the book shut. Lack of oxygen, dousing with water, covering with earth. The evil bitch has survived all of them. She has more magic than he does, and she probably always will.

  The Phoenix is a shape-shifter. He can try silver; he can fight her as one of his beasts, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll just strangle her, drown her and bury her alive, one after the other, until something does.

  At last the sound of great wings fills the sky, and the Phoenix appears, circling lower and lower until she lands on her feet in the yard.

  Sawyer doesn’t waste any time. What would be the point? Words will only be lies; a touch will be an even bigger one.

  He crosses the short distance between them as if he’s missed her so much, he can’t bear to be apart one more second. If he didn’t know the truth, he’d never notice the quick tensing of her body, the way she forces herself to relax, to smile, to let him draw her close and lean over, mouth hovering just above
hers.

  He lays his hand on her throat and she purrs; then he puts the other there and she frowns. As her eyes snap open, he squeezes, quick before she becomes a bird.

  She’s strong; he’s stronger. Her hands pull on his, but they are like buzzing flies, annoying but no real trouble. Even when they begin to glow and his flesh begins to burn, he keeps up the pressure. He’ll heal soon enough.

  But strangulation works no better on the Phoenix than it did on the woman of smoke. Even when the Phoenix has no breath, she doesn’t die, and eventually he releases her with a shove.

  She falls to the ground, hands on her neck, taking great gulps of air. Her gaze, focused on him, is full of horror, as if he’s lost his mind instead of her.

  Sawyer touches his eagle, shifts, then dives beak first, talons outstretched. Before the light fades from his change, she is a bird as well.

  The battle rages. Neither one of them can win. Blood and feathers fly until the ground beneath them looks like a farmyard after a rooster fight.

  This is getting them nowhere, so Sawyer flits up the mountain, leading her farther from the ground, closer to the summit and to a place he’s shared with no one else.

  Below them the sun sparkles off the crystal mountain lake. He slams into her with all he has and takes her with him toward the water.

  They hit the surface so hard it knocks the air out of them both. He holds her beneath as she struggles and kicks. The water begins to churn, to smoke and bubble; the chill turns to a caldron in minutes. The scent of boiling meat fills the air.

  One second he is holding down a phoenix, brilliant feathers made even more so by the reflection of the sun on the water. The next he is holding down a woman, naked and slick; her dark hair mixes with the blood streaming from the deep cuts his talons are making in her skin.

  She stares straight at him, and the confusion, the pain and the misery are so real—as if she doesn’t know why he is doing this—he nearly lets her go. For a second he thinks, I should have asked her, and then suddenly—

  She stops fighting. Her eyes cloud over, and the life leaves her body like the air sifting from a tire. In the distance thunder rumbles, and somewhere lightning flashes. But the sky is completely clear.

  Sawyer shifts, eagle to man, and drags Maria to the banks of the lake. Her face holds the eternal expression: Why?

  He begins to wonder himself.

  Reaching out to touch her, his hand trembles, and he yanks it back. Fury shoots through him, and thunder shakes the ground. He throws back his head; storm clouds race toward him as if he’s called them home, and he knows in a flash of understanding as bright as the lightning that slams into the earth all around them just what he has done.

  CHAPTER 30

  “You loved her,” I whispered, my voice full of both awe and horror.

  Sawyer continued to press his forehead, his body, against mine, though he did stop crunching our hands together. “So it would appear.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “No?” He rolled off me and sat on the side of the bed, scrubbing at his hair as if he’d just woken up.

  “Sawyer.” I put my hand on his shoulder, felt the shimmer of the shark and yanked it back.

  “Perhaps I did know. Perhaps I wanted the power that killing love would bring me. My mother had it. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “You’re not her. You’re nothing like her.”

  He stood and walked to the window, staring out at the night. “Soon, Elizabeth, you’ll think differently.”

  I sat up then, his tone, his words, making my skin prickle. “What are you talking about?”

  He produced a cigarette from nowhere, literally since he was naked, and then a match the same way. “You’ll see.” He took a drag, let the smoke trail out his nose in a slow, curling stream. “We’re all going to have to choose.”

  “I have.”

  “No.” Another drag. “But you will. Make sure it’s the right choice.”

  “Gibberish,” I muttered. “I need help, answers, something, and he gives me gibberish.”

  Sawyer glanced over his shoulder. “You can’t trust me. Sanducci is right about that.”

  “You came here tonight to—” I stopped, confused. “Why did you come here?”

  He let his gaze wander over me from the top of my short, dark hair down to my rapidly cooling toes, then lifted a brow.

  “Ew. You just did my mother.”

  He shrugged.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Sawyer turned calmly back to the window and didn’t answer.

  I clenched and unclenched my fingers, dazzled by the thought of beating it out of him. As if I could, but right now it was so appealing to try.

  “Certain things you have to figure out for yourself,” he continued. “Certain choices must be made from . . .”—he took a final drag of the cigarette and tossed it out the window—“the heart.”

  “Gibberish,” I muttered again.

  “Take it or leave it.”

  He was trying to tell me something. So why didn’t he just tell me? Maybe he couldn’t.

  I crossed the floor. “What happened after she died?”

  He didn’t answer, so I laid my hand on his back, careful to avoid any legs, heads or tails, and wonder of wonders, he continued to let me see.

  Lightning rains all around them, slamming into the ground, leaving behind scorched earth and the scent of ozone. The rain pounds down, drenching them, though they are already drenched. Sawyer lifts his hands to the sky, in anguish, in fury, and the lightning . . .

  Strikes him.

  His outline sizzles, neon white and blue. He shape-shifts; a man reaching upward hunches into a great tarantula. When the light fades, a new tattoo traces one forearm. Again he reaches; again the lightning answers. Man to shark, leaving behind the likeness on his shoulder. Several more times the lightning flashes and when it fades a new tattoo is in place.

  When at last he drops his hands, then sinks to his knees in what is now mud, every tattoo he had when I first met him is stenciled into his skin, and he’s become the sorcerer he never wanted to be.

  The storm wanes as he loses consciousness, the thunder dies, the rain slows to a drizzle, then stops completely, burned away by the return of the sun, leaving two bodies on the muddy banks of the mountain lake—one breathing, one not.

  When Sawyer awakens, he rolls away, unable to bear looking at her. He’s dreamed of her death, of holding her beneath the water until her life drains away, even as more power than he’s ever imagined flows into him. He is haunted by the glittering dazzle of the magic, tempted by all the possibilities that are now his. He doesn’t want this power, but there’s no giving it back.

  He shifts into a wolf and runs. Then he runs and runs and runs. He hunts; he kills; he doesn’t come back for months. By then her body is gone. He tries not to think of her ever again, but he does. Every time he sees—

  Sawyer turned, grabbing my wrist and holding my hand away from his skin. “Enough,” he said.

  I stared into his face. Had he thought of her every time he’d seen me? Had he felt her skin every time he’d touched mine?

  Sawyer had loved Maria Phoenix. Did he still, even though the woman who’d risen from the grave was a far cry from the woman who’d gone into it? Which side was he truly trying to infiltrate? Hers or ours? I might never know. He certainly wasn’t going to tell me.

  “You didn’t need me to bring the storm, did you?” I tugged on my wrist; he didn’t let me go. “You could always do it by yourself.”

  “Not always,” he murmured, and released me.

  “How did she end up buried in Cairo?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Sawyer crossed to the bed and found his trousers.

  “You were good; she went bad,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  He stood there, holding his pants in one hand as if he weren’t sure what to do with them.

  “Jimmy thinks you hung ar
ound, doing just enough to be considered one of us so you’d be ready to join her when she rose.”

  “Sanducci thinks a lot of things.” Sawyer shrugged one shoulder, the muscles rippling like water beneath. “He’s often right.”

  “You had to do it,” I said. “She tried to kill Ruthie.”

  “Did she?”

  “What?” The word erupted, too loud, too high.

  “Perhaps Ruthie merely needed a sorcerer, and she needed one fast.”

  “You think she played you?”

  “She isn’t above it. Ruthie’s played us all; she’s played you.”

  “It’s a far cry from making me think Sanducci didn’t love me to having you kill someone.”

  “Not that far.”

  “Your morals are skewed.”

  “Pot. Kettle,” he murmured.

  I let that slide. “Ruthie had the feather.”

  “So?”

  “And a wound.”

  He snorted.

  “You seriously think she stuck herself with a knife and bled, then lied about it as she ordered you to kill the woman you loved just so you would become the great and powerful Sawyer?”

  He let out a long, low, sad breath. “Maybe.”

  “You’ve been listening to the evil voices in your head.”

  His gaze narrowed. “What evil voices?”

  Whoops. That was me.

  “I’m just saying—where in hell do you get this stuff?”

  He glanced at the door, then back.

  “Her?” I asked. “She’s insane, or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Waking up in a grave and having to dig your way out will do that.”

  I was pretty sure the Phoenix had been crazy long before she’d clawed her way out from under, but that was beside the point at the moment. At the moment I had a bigger, better point that needed clarifying.

  “Did you raise her?”

  “I told you I couldn’t raise the dead.”

  “And then you raised Xander.”

  “Ghosts are different.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed him, so I reached for his arm, and he growled at me.