Apocalypse Happens

by Apocalypse Happens (epub)

  The three of us began to hunt all over the porch, in the bushes, the grass, everywhere. Once that was done, by unspoken consensus we went inside and searched the house, top to bottom. I touched everything, tried to see something, got a whole lot of nothing.

  “This sucks!” I clenched my hands, frustrated, furious, and thunder rumbled in the west. I wanted to kill someone. My gaze moved to Summer, and Jimmy stepped between us.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  Summer’s eyes widened and, if possible, her already pale skin got paler. She’d never believed that Jimmy would kill her if he had to—she certainly wouldn’t kill him—but I think she was starting to catch a clue.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “She did it for me,” Jimmy said softly.

  “She’s a traitor. You know I can’t let her live.”

  “You let me live.”

  “You seriously think it’s the same thing? She knew what she was doing. She chose to sell her soul.”

  “For me,” he repeated.

  “And that excuses it? How many people died because she listened to Satan whispering? If the Phoenix had never been raised, Sawyer might still be alive.” Someone else would probably be dead, but I wasn’t exactly rational at the moment.

  “So you’re going to punish Summer because she knows what love means?”

  “No, I’m going to kill her because she’s a whiny, traitorous bitch. And just what in hell does ‘love mean’?”

  “It means you’ll do anything, even die, even sell your soul, for someone else.”

  “And you’re saying I wouldn’t?”

  Jimmy threw up his hands. “You were going to kill me!”

  “You told me to.”

  “It had to be done.”

  “Hey, I chose you because I loved you,” I said.

  “You loved him too, obviously.”

  “Lucky him.” My voice broke. Why were we arguing? Because it felt good. It felt like nothing had changed, even though everything had.

  “Summer would do anything for me,” Jimmy continued. “You’d do anything for the world.”

  “Which is why I’m the leader of the light and she’s not.” I took a deep breath. “You do realize that I managed to send the Grigori and their leader back to Tartarus? This wasn’t a total loss.”

  “Unfortunately, someone stole the Key of Solomon, which contains the directions for letting them right back out again.”

  I frowned. “First they have to kill me.”

  “They can get in line,” Jimmy muttered.

  I knew he was just blowing off steam, but still—

  I turned toward the door; so did Jimmy. One glance outside and we froze.

  Sawyer was gone.

  CHAPTER 36

  We couldn’t find a trace of Sawyer or the Key of Solomon. Believe me, we looked.

  No footprints. Not a single ash at the base of the telephone pole.

  “He stole the key,” Jimmy accused.

  “He was a little dead to be stealing anything.”

  “He was a little dead to be walking away too, but there you go.” Jimmy threw his hands out in the direction of the empty pole.

  “He was still here when the thing disappeared.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I hadn’t glanced in Sawyer’s direction once we went to retrieve the book from the porch. Why bother? He wasn’t going anywhere.

  “If he wanted the key he could have taken it before we even showed up,” I pointed out.

  “You’re going to have to raise him,” Summer said.

  Both Jimmy and I turned to her, and she shrugged. “Aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “But we’ll have to go back to New Mexico first.”

  “What the hell for?” Jimmy demanded.

  “I’ll need a part of him. Hair, nails, spit. Okay with you?”

  If Jimmy had been an animal, he would have snarled. As it was, he just kicked the dirt and walked away.

  Summer had left the Impala off the highway a few miles from Cairo. She hadn’t had any problem getting into town either, and I wasn’t surprised. Selling your soul to the Devil must create one hell of an inner darkness.

  Once she’d retrieved the vehicle, we piled in and headed west. I didn’t even ask to drive. I just wasn’t up to it. The last time I’d gone on a road trip in this car I’d been with Sawyer, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Luther waited in front of the hogan. As we got out, Ruthie’s voice greeted us. “Been waitin’ on you.”

  “Sawyer,” I began.

  “I know.”

  “He’s with you?”

  Jimmy snorted. “You think Sawyer’s in heaven?”

  My eyes met Ruthie’s, and she shook her head.

  I went into the house, reemerging with Sawyer’s toothbrush, which I tossed on the ground, then drew a circle around it.

  “Stand back,” I said; then I raised a storm.

  I brought the rain, the clouds, the thunder and the lightning. I did everything the way that Sawyer had—almost. But after the earth moved and the blue-white light flashed, all that lay in the circle was the damn toothbrush.

  “Sanducci,” I ordered, “get over here.”

  He frowned, but he started forward; then Summer grabbed his arm. “Sex increases her power.”

  He stiffened and looked me in the eye. “No.”

  “Don’t make me come and get you.”

  “Lizbeth,” Ruthie said softly. “That won’t help.”

  My breath hitched. I gritted my teeth until they ached. “What will?”

  “You need to learn how to manage your powers.”

  “That’s going to be a little hard, since I had to kill the one who knows that info in order to get them.”

  “Did you think fighting for the light would be easy?” Ruthie asked. “It would be simpler to fight for the darkness, to give in to the evil that lives in everyone. But it’s the fighting of that evil, the triumphing over it, that gives us our strength. When we win, we’ll win because we chose right over wrong, because we believed in it and in ourselves.”

  “I just . . .” I trailed off. I wasn’t sure what I’d meant to say.

  “Everything happens for a reason, child.” Ruthie’s voice—Luther’s face softened. “Quit bein’ so hard on yourself. You did what you set out to do, didn’t you?”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  I’d saved the world, at least from this threat, but there’d be more.

  “We’re going to have to find us another skinwalker.”

  “There’s another?”

  “How you think Sawyer got his first tattoos?”

  I hadn’t thought of it. But obviously, since he hadn’t been a sorcerer until he’d killed my mother, someone had given them to him.

  “It’s gonna take me a little time to track one down,” Ruthie continued. “You three get back to work. The Grigori have increased the Nephilim tenfold. There are more of them and less of us.”

  “What about her?” I jerked my thumb at the fairy.

  “Jimmy will keep an eye on her.”

  I scowled. “She’s a soulless traitor.”

  “She still has her soul and will until Samyaza takes form. Until then, we need her.”

  I glared at Summer; she did the same right back.

  “If Sanducci’s keeping an eye on her, who am I working with?” I asked.

  “Me,” Luther said.

  Jimmy and Summer went to her Irish cottage on the other side of the mountain. I called and checked in with Megan. She was fine and still had no clue that Quinn was anything other than a slightly klutzy bartender. She wasn’t catching a hint of his adoration either. Poor guy.

  I went to bed early. I hadn’t slept since we’d left Cairo. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sawyer. Tonight was no different. As soon as I drifted off, there he was.

  I chose to leave a child behind.

  I sat straight up in bed, heart pounding so loudly I couldn’t hear anyt
hing else. What had he meant?

  My hand drifted to my stomach, which was rolling and pitching enough to make me sick. “Nah.”

  I was on the pill. Had been for years. However, I doubted something as flimsy as 98 percent effectiveness would stop Sawyer’s magic sperm.

  Now my heart really started pounding. Which is why it took me a few seconds to hear the knocking at my door.

  I tumbled out of bed, stumbled across the floor. Luther stood in the hallway, looking as tired as I felt.

  He tapped his head. “We gotta go.”

  “We?”

  “Take my word for it, you’re gonna need me.”

  The Grigori might be confined, but the Nephilim were still here. Not much had changed except there were more of them, less of us. Until we managed to even things out, DKs and seers were going to be interchangeable. Luther and I would go out together and so would Jimmy and Summer, as well as a host of others I hadn’t met yet.

  I might be the leader of the light, but there was a lot I didn’t know. What had happened to Sawyer? Who had stolen the Key of Solomon? Would we win or would they? Who would live and who would die?

  “We need to get going.” Luther shuffled his big feet, then glanced uneasily over his shoulder. “It’s chaos out there.”

  Well, there was one thing I did know. One thing of which I was completely, utterly certain.

  “Chaos bites,” I said, and then I followed him into the night.

  Read on for an excerpt from the next book

  book Lori Handeland

  Chaos Bites

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  Being the leader of the supernatural forces of good isn’t as cool as it sounds. For one thing, I had to put the world first. So everything else was second, third, four hundred and fifty-ninth. And we’re talking about important things like love, friendship, family. Which was how I ended up killing the man I loved.

  Again.

  Oh, I didn’t kill him twice. I killed two separate men. One didn’t stay dead, the other . . . I’m not so sure.

  Yes, I’m in love with two different guys. It was news to me, too. Add to that the beginning of the end of the world and you’ve got chaos. As anyone who’s ever experienced it can tell you—chaos bites.

  Since the night my foster mother died in my arms, leaving me in charge of the Apocalypse, chaos had been, for me, standard operating procedure.

  Several weeks after I’d killed him, Sawyer invaded my dreams. He was a Navajo skinwalker—both witch and shape-shifter, a sorcerer of incredible power. Unfortunately, his power hadn’t kept him from dying. Considering that he’d wanted to, I doubted anything could have. I still felt guilty. Tearing out a guy’s heart with your bare hand can do that.

  The dream was a sex dream. With Sawyer they usually were. He was a catalyst telepath—he brought out the supernatural abilities of others through sex. Something about opening yourself to yourself, the universe, the magical possibilities within—yada-yada, blah, blah, blah.

  I’d never understood what he did or how. Not that it didn’t work. One night with Sawyer and I’d had more power than I knew what to do with.

  In my dream I lay in my bed, in my apartment in Friedenburg, a northern suburb of Milwaukee. Sawyer lay behind me. His hand cupped my hip; he spooned himself around me. Since we were nearly the same height, his breath brushed my neck, his hair—long and black and silky—cascaded over my skin. I covered his hand with mine and began to turn.

  Our legs tangled, his tightened, along with his fingers at my hip. “Don’t,” he ordered, his voice forever deep and commanding.

  “But—”

  He nipped lightly at the curve of my neck, and I gasped—both surprise and arousal. I knew this was a dream, but my body was responding as if it weren’t.

  He felt so real—sleek, hard muscles rippling beneath smooth hot skin. Sawyer had had an exquisite form; living for centuries had given him plenty of time to work on every muscle group for several decades each, honing every inch to a state designed to make women drool. He’d have been perfect if not for the tattoos that wound all over him.

  To shift, most skinwalkers used a robe adorned with the likeness of their spirit animal. For Sawyer, his skin was his robe, and upon it he’d inscribed the likenesses of many beasts of prey. Sometimes, in the firelight, those tattoos seemed to dance.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Why do you think?” He arched, pressing his erection against me. I couldn’t help it, I arched, too. Sure, it had only been a few weeks. But I missed him. I was going to miss him for the rest of my life.

  Without Sawyer, the forces of good—aka the federation—were in deep shit. Certainly I was powerful, and would no doubt get even more so, but I’d been thrown into this without any training. I was like a magical bull in a very full china shop, thrashing around breaking things, breaking people. So far I’d been able to keep those who followed me from getting completely wiped out, but only because I’d had help.

  From Sawyer.

  “It’s a long trip from hell for a booty call,” I murmured.

  His tongue tickled my neck in the same place he’d so recently nipped. “I’m not in hell.”

  “Where are you?”

  He slid his hand from my hip to my breast. “Where does it feel like I am?” He rubbed a thumb over my nipple, and the sensation made me tingle all over.

  “I know you’re not here,” I said. “You’ll never be here again.”

  I was proud I’d kept my voice from breaking, even though it had wanted to. I couldn’t show weakness, even to him.

  Sawyer didn’t speak, just kept sliding his thumb over and back, over and back, then he sighed and stopped. I bit my lip to keep myself from begging him to start.

  His lithe, clever fingers brushed over the chain that hung from my neck, then captured the turquoise strung onto it. “You’re wearing this again?”

  Sawyer had given me the necklace years ago. I’d taken it off only recently. When he’d died, I’d put the turquoise back on. It was all I had left of him.

  I hoped.

  “I—” I paused, uncertain what to say. I didn’t want him to know how badly I missed him. How I rubbed the smooth stone at least a dozen times a day and remembered.

  “I’m glad,” he said softly. “It brought me to you.”

  In the beginning I’d thought the necklace just jewelry, but it had turned out to be magic, marking me as Sawyer’s, saving my life on occasion and allowing him to know where I was whenever he wanted to.

  He let the turquoise fall back between my breasts. “Do you remember the last thing I said to you?”

  I stiffened so fast I conked the back of my head against his nose. The resultant thunk and his hiss sounded pretty real to me, as did the dull throbbing in my skull that followed.

  “Phoenix,” Sawyer snapped. “Do you—”

  “ ‘Protect that gift of faith’,” I repeated.

  He ran his palm over my shoulder. “Yes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath. Right before he’d said those words, Sawyer had said a few others. Words that had kept me up nights almost as much as his death had.

  I chose to leave a child behind.

  I blotted out the memory of what had come after those statements with what had come not long before. He’d crept into the room where I was chained to a bed, a prisoner of my own mother, a woman I’d thought long dead. She’d been a winner. Five minutes in her company and I no longer regretted being an orphan.

  The situation had been dire, yet he’d seduced me. I hadn’t wondered why until he was gone. My hand went to my still-flat stomach. Had he left a child behind in me?

  “Sawyer,” I began. I had so many questions. I didn’t get to ask any of them.

  “You need to wake up now.”

  “Wait, I—”

  “Phoenix,” he said, then more softly, “Elizabeth.”
/>
  Most people called me Liz, but Sawyer never had.

  “There’s someone here.”

  In the next instant I scrambled toward consciousness, and as I did, the sound of his voice, the weight of his hand, and the warmth of his body began to fade.

  “Someone or something?” I asked.

  “Both,” he answered, and then he was gone.

  My eyes snapped open, my hand already reaching for the silver knife beneath my pillow.

  The world wasn’t what it seemed. Beneath the façades of many humans lurked half demons bent on our destruction. They’re known as the Nephilim, the offspring of the fallen angels and the daughters of men.

  They’ve been here since the beginning, glimpsed more often in times past when wolf men and women of smoke were commonplace and gave rise to the legends we now see most often on the screen at the Multiplex. Unless you’re me, and then they show up in your apartment.

  My fingers wrapped around the hilt of the knife even as I stilled, waiting for the slight buzz that signaled evil creepy thing to wash over me. But it didn’t.

  I sat on the edge of the mattress, eyes narrowing, ears straining, then I took a deep breath, and my skin prickled. The bed smelled of Sawyer—snow on the mountain, leaves on the wind, fire and smoke and heat.

  “Dream my ass,” I muttered.

  Downstairs, outside, there was a soft thud, then the scrape of something hard against the pavement. A shoe? A toe? A claw?

  As I crossed the room, I could have sworn fur brushed my thigh. I glanced down but saw nothing but the flutter of the loose cotton shorts I’d worn to bed along with a worn and faded Milwaukee Brewers T-shirt.

  An odd cry drew me to the window, where I kept to the side and out of sight. New moon and the sky was dark, the stars pale this close to the city. The single streetlight in Friedenburg revealed nothing but empty sidewalks and dark storefronts. Which meant nothing. Nephilim rarely used the front door. They didn’t have to.

  Uneasy, I glanced up, but found only shadows on the rooftops. Of course those shadows could become anything.

  “Psst. Kid.”

  I kicked the cot shoved against the wall in the corner. My apartment was an efficiency located above a knick knack shop. I owned the building, rented out the first floor, and was considering renting out the second. I was rarely in town these days. The only reason I was here now was that I’d promised my best friend I’d attend her daughter’s ninth birthday party. I owed Megan so much, the least I could do was show up when she begged me to.