Any Given Doomsday (The Phoenix Chronicles) Page 10

  “Son of a—” I muttered, staling at the pastel green walls with a border of giraffes and elephants. There wasn’t any furniture. Yet.

  Had she been pregnant, or just hoping?

  I didn’t know, would probably never know. Right now, I couldn’t bear to know.

  I crossed the hall to the bathroom, planning to rattle the door, shout for Jimmy to hurry up. But when my hand touched the knob, the door swung open. Steam flowed out. The water still ran, but other than that the room was eerily silent.

  The chill came back. I shoved the door wider with my foot, drawing my gun, bracing for a wash of red across the white shower curtain, another body, the end of a life with Jimmy in it.

  I tried to breathe. Couldn’t. No blood. No body either.

  Not a shadow beyond that white curtain. His gun lay on the toilet seat, but where was he?

  “Jimmy?”

  No response. I inched inside; my own gun lifted, finger on the trigger.

  The room was small. I could see all of it in my peripheral vision. 1 reached for the shower curtain and yanked it back; the rungs thundered across the steel rod. I flinched; Jimmy didn’t.

  He sat in the tub fully clothed. But that wasn’t what worried me the most. He didn’t look up. Didn’t move. Didn’t react. Just sat there as the water pounded on his head, cascading down his face like rain.

  Or tears.

  “Jimmy?” I tried again, got no response. Again. I was going to have to do something.

  I laid my gun next to his and locked the door. If anyone showed up, at least we’d have advance warning. Then I lost my shoes, considered my clothes and decided I didn’t have the time before stepping right in with them on, just as he had. Then I pulled the curtain around us, cranked the hot water hotter and sank down next to him in the tub.

  I wasn’t a nurturer, hadn’t even known what nurturing was until Ruthie. She’d been good at touching, cuddling. Only problem was most of the kids she took in weren’t good at being touched or cuddled, me included. Eventually I’d settled down, trusted her enough to let her hug me once in a while. But hold me? Rock me? Pet me? I’d never settled down that much.

  Because the things I heard, felt, knew were true, touching people was something I tried to avoid. Most often what I saw wasn’t something that I wanted to.

  As a result, my movements were stiff. We bumped heads, shoulders, I think I smacked him in the nose when I tried to put my arm around him. But I got Jimmy to lean on me for a second, before he slid lower and laid his head in my lap.

  1 waited for a jolt, some knowledge I didn’t want, but nothing came and I relaxed. Sometimes I got something, sometimes I didn’t, and I’d learned to shield myself more and more as the years had passed. I couldn’t have survived otherwise.

  The water pounded on Jimmy’s head. He didn’t react. I shifted my shoulders to block it, ran my fingertips over his face. His eyelids fluttered closed. At least it was movement.

  The tub was large, one of those old-time ceramic deals with legs. We were still packed pretty tight. I wondered how long the hot water would last. I wondered what in hell I was supposed to do with a catatonic DK.

  I continued to stroke Jimmy’s face; he seemed to be relaxing against me, not so rigid anymore. 1 let my fingers drift to his hair, tangled the tips in the lightly curling strands, kneading his scalp.

  Talk to him.

  That hadn’t been Ruthie’s voice. I’m not sure whose it was, maybe my own. Hopefully. I didn’t need any more voices than I already had telling me what to do.

  What should I talk to him about?

  Memories. Good ones.

  Did we have any? I let my mind drift back.

  I thought of the time Ruthie had let us have a dog, a stray that had wandered up the road and refused to leave, then reconsidered. Dog stories, or near enough, were what had gotten us into this mess in the first place.

  “Remember when we were invited to that house on Big Cedar Lake for the day? Half of us had never seen a lake beyond Michigan, and you certainly don’t swim in that.”

  Any time before August the big lake was icy, not to mention all the dead fish and floating gypsum.

  “So Ruthie stuffed us all in the van and off we went.”

  The day had been perfect. Eighty-four degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The air had been filled with the laughter of children, the scent of hot dogs on the grill, lemonade, cookies.

  “We were fourteen,” I continued.

  I’d worn a hand-me-down—what wasn’t a hand-me-down at Ruthie’s?—Green Bay Packers T-shirt over my swimming suit. There was no way I was going to let anyone, especially Sanducci, see my chest. But, oh, how I’d wanted to dive into that smooth clear water.

  “Ruthie coaxed me to do it.” I leaned against the side of the tub, ignoring the heavy weight of my soaked clothes, concentrating on the memory, the joy of it, and the rhythmic movement of my fingers through Jimmy’s hair.

  “She put on a swimming suit.” My lips curved. “And dived right in.”

  Ruthie’s suit had bagged off her bony behind. Her skinny arms had appeared chickenlike framed by the straps of the tank. But no one had dared laugh. Maybe no one had noticed. To every single one of us, Ruthie was the most beautiful being on this earth, and that had nothing to do with her appearance.

  Since Ruthie had done it, I did too. The water, not icy but cool enough to shock at first, had become welcoming, refreshing, revitalizing.

  I hadn’t been the best swimmer. No lessons. I’d learned because I’d had to or drown. But the water hadn’t been deep. We’d played games. Gotten sunburned. Eaten too much.

  “You made s’mores.”

  My gaze flicked to Jimmy’s face. His eyes were open and someone was home.

  I let my thumb stroke his cheek. “You ate five and got a gut ache.”

  “It was the best day.” Our voices sounded in unison.

  I smiled into his face. He reached up and cupped my cheek. For an instant our shared past was right there with us, something that made us stronger, better, saner.

  “Jimmy, I—”

  He sat up, pulling away from my stroking fingers, from me. “I’m okay.”

  “You don’t seem okay.”

  “You don’t know what I seem.”

  Standing, he didn’t waver; his face had gone hard again.

  I tried not to feel rejected and failed. The sweet memory we’d shared soured, crowded out by other memories of unhappier times.

  He’d taken me and discarded me. He’d told me he loved me, then fucked someone else. He’d disappeared without a trace and he hadn’t come back. Those were the things I needed to remember about Jimmy Sanducci.

  He stuck his head under the shower stream, scrubbed the blood from his hair and hands, then stepped out, dripping water all over the floor. Pig.

  “Finish up,” he ordered without even looking at me. “We’re back on the road in fifteen.”

  The door closed seconds later.

  “Asswipe,” I muttered.

  It didn’t help.

  Chapter 16

  We were back on the road in thirty. I doubted the extra fifteen made much difference.

  By the time I’d finished in the shower, Jimmy was downstairs dressed in dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and he’d even managed to find black shoes. I found it a bit creepy that he could fit into the dead man’s clothes so well, right down to the footwear.

  He’d made eggs, toast, coffee. I slurped mine without comment. What was there to say?

  We’d done what we had to. We’d do it again, of that I had no doubt. Jimmy had lost it for a minute, but he’d gotten it back without too much trouble, then he’d pushed me away, both physically and emotionally. Nothing new there.

  I’d also chosen jeans, but my shirt was hot pink with tiny green and white flowers; my shoes were also pink and at least half a size too large.

  The outfit had been the least of all the evils stored in the closet and drawers. The dead woman had had a thing for pa
stels, which were definitely not my thing. Despite my light eyes, I was too dark everywhere else to pull off pink.

  We each left the house with a carry-on bag stuffed with more clothes. When I’d gone searching for our bloody discards, I hadn’t found them. When I’d asked where they were, Jimmy had pointed to the still burning school. I took that to mean he’d tossed them into the inferno, which solved the problem nicely. If we wanted this to look like a tragic accident, leaving blood-splattered clothing anywhere in the vicinity would be a bad idea.

  Taking it along in the car would be a worse one. Can you imagine a deputy finding that on a routine traffic stop? We’d be locked up until the next millennium and any explanations of a werewolf attack would only add to our chances of incarceration. We’d look and sound like lunatics.

  Jimmy continued to drive. He still didn’t trust me not to make a U-turn while he was sleeping and race as far away from Sawyer as I could get. Being an ass hadn’t decreased his intelligence one iota.

  The day was half over. We’d lost time by stopping in Hardeyville, but since no one was expecting us, it didn’t matter. Besides, I wasn’t in any hurry to arrive.

  “Shouldn’t we be meeting with Ruthie’s DKs?” I asked.

  “It’ll have to wait.” Jimmy kept his eyes on the road.

  “I really think I should meet them.”

  “Not yet.”

  “But—”

  “No, Lizzy. You need to be trained. Now. Every day we aren’t on the job makes them another day stronger. We can’t afford that.”

  I stared out over the flat Kansas landscape, and I knew that he was right, but that didn’t mean I was happy about it.

  “So we’re going to Sawyer’s, and you’re going to learn whatever you have to, and fast, or we’re going to see a lot more towns like Hardeyville.”

  Since I never wanted to see another town like Hard-eyville again, I silently gave in to the inevitable. A visit with Sawyer. More training. I’d have to be near him, listen to him, touch him.

  Around Sawyer there was always an air of barely suppressed violence. He was a wild, unpredictable animal. I’d never known what he would do. It had taken me weeks to stop flinching whenever he moved fast. Since I hadn’t seen him, in person, for nearly ten years, I had no doubt I’d be flinching again soon. 1 hated it.

  “You okay?” Jimmy asked.

  “No.” I turned my face to the window and took in the scenery. Wisely, he left me alone.

  The rest of the trip was uneventful. Jimmy drove. I didn’t. I slept; he didn’t. I expected a visit from Ruthie; none came. Instead, I dreamed of Hardeyville, and I feared that we would lose every battle to come, because I wasn’t ready for this, and I wasn’t sure I ever could be.

  We approached the outskirts of the Navajo Reservation near dusk. The reservation spread across three states: Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, with the largest portion in Arizona. The area occupied by the Dineh, what the Navajo call themselves, was larger than ten of the fifty United States.

  The terrain was so different from home. Flat, arid plains of salmon and copper gave way to mountain foothills dotted with towering Ponderosa Pines. Canyons surrounded by high, spiked, sandy shaded rock existed not far from red mesas immortalized in at least a dozen John Wayne movies.

  Sawyer lived at the very edge of the reservation near Mount Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains that marked the boundaries of Navajo land, known as the Dinetah, or the Glittering World.

  As we got closer to our destination, my shoulders tightened. My neck ached. I found myself leaning forward, fighting the opposing pull of the seat belt as I strained to see the house and outbuildings.

  I was so focused on what was coming that I almost missed what was already there. But a dark flash to the right drew my reluctant attention.

  A wolf loped at our side. Hard to say if it was real or—

  Well, it was real, as in there. But was it an actual wolf, or was it another were?

  I opened my mouth to tell Jimmy, then shut it again. His policy was to shoot any wolf that he saw, and it wasn’t a bad policy if a wolf was found near humans. But this one wasn’t. The animal was running along minding its own business.

  And it was so beautiful. Sleek and black. Wild and free. I’d always liked wolves, or at least the idea of them. Until yesterday.

  The beast wasn’t huge, as most of those in Hard-eyville had been, but it could be a woman, a small man, hell, it could even be a teenager. What did I know? But if it was a Nephilim, we needed to kill it before it killed someone else. I gave in to the inevitable.

  “Jimmy,” I murmured.

  His gaze went immediately past me, narrowed, and he jerked the Hummer to the right as if he meant to run the wolf over. Between one blink and the next, the animal was gone.

  Jimmy wrestled the Hummer back on the road as I pressed my nose to the glass and squinted.

  “Where did it go?”

  He didn’t answer, just continued to stare at the road, fingers tight on the steering wheel, jaw working as he ground his teeth loud enough to make me wince. He seemed angry, not scared, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “It disappeared,” I murmured. “That wasn’t a werewolf.”

  Or at least not the kind we’d seen in Hardeyville.

  The more I thought about it the more certain I became that this wolf had not been an actual wolf. I didn’t know much about them, but I doubted they could keep pace, with a car on the highway. We had to be going seventy.

  And that vanishing act. Too damn strange.

  The car lurched to the right again, and my gaze flicked to the side of the road, expecting to see the black beast, if not running, then attacking. But outside the window, the empty desert loomed.

  I had bigger problems than a speedy, disappearing wolf. I had Sawyer. His place materialized out of the desert like a mirage.

  Darkness had fallen in the last few minutes as it always did here—fast and hard. The colors at dusk were some of the most beautiful in the world—vivid fuchsia, muted gold, and hunter’s orange swirling through the brilliant blue of an endless ocean. In the evening they faded like a watercolor painting brushed by a cool black rain.

  The Hummer’s headlights washed over the homestead. Someone waited in the yard. I didn’t have to get any closer to know who that someone was.

  The house—a small ranch with two bedrooms, a kitchen, bath, and living area—sat right next to the traditional Navajo hogan, a round dwelling made of logs and dirt.

  Fashioned after the sky, which was in turn considered the hogan of the earth, the building contained no windows and only one door, facing east toward the sun, so the inhabitant could greet each new day.

  Behind it, dug into a short rise, was a smaller hogan, which was used as a sweat lodge. Between the two, a ra-mada, or open porch, had been built. This was used in the summer months for both eating and sleeping.

  Jimmy stopped the car and I got out, moving jerkily as if I were in a trance. Maybe I was. What I wanted to do was run, hide, burrow in somewhere and be forgotten, but the first sight of Sawyer pulled me like a magnet. I couldn’t stay away.

  I’d never understood what he was. Psychic? Perhaps. Magic? Probably. He was a mystic, a medicine man, but even that didn’t explain all the things he’d done, the power that rolled off him like the heat that wavered above the pavement on a scalding summer day.

  “Phoenix,” he murmured, his voice deep, the cadence slow and even, as if he had all the time in the world to do anything that he wanted.

  He’d always called me by my last name. I’d figured that was to keep a certain distance between us. Understandable, all things considered. However, the way he said it always sounded as if he were whispering secret nothings in front of the world.

  Behind me I heard Jimmy scrambling out of the car. I didn’t spare him a glance. He’d brought me here. He’d soon learn why I hadn’t wanted to come.

  In a normal world, it would be considered beyond inappropriate to send a fifteen-year-o
ld girl to stay in an isolated cabin with a single man. In a normal world it would probably be grounds for jail time. But, as already established, mine was not a normal world.

  Though I’d seen things in his eyes then that had frightened me, things I didn’t understand, things I wasn’t old enough, wise enough, foolish enough to put a name to, Sawyer had never once touched me with anything other than respect. Maybe he’d been afraid of Ruthie.

  But Ruthie was gone.

  I continued forward. Sawyer waited. The headlights were still on, the car still running. Even without the light I’d have been able to describe the man who’d walked often enough through my dreams.

  He wasn’t much taller than me—perhaps five ten—but he’d seemed huge, imposing from his aura alone. His hair was long, though he always tied it back with whatever he found handy—string, ribbon, the dried intestines of his victims. I’m exaggerating. He rarely used anything as mundane as siring.

  His face wasn’t handsome. The angles were too sharp for that. But his smooth bronzed skin and his cover-model cheekbones, which only emphasized the ridiculously long and thick eyelashes that surrounded his strangely light gray eyes, were mesmerizing. Those eyes softened the face if you didn’t stare into them too long and realize that behind their gaze was one of the scariest men alive.

  He wore nothing but a breechclout, his typical attire. I’d always wanted to ask him why he walked around dressed like an escapee from a historical romance novel, but I’d never had the courage. Instead I’d done a little research and discovered that what he wore was common to the Navajo.

  About three centuries ago.

  Most breechclouts were worn with leggings and a loose shirt. Sawyer’s wasn’t. I could see every ripple and curve of his incredible body. As a teen I’d known he was hot; I just hadn’t known then what to do with it.

  I’d come here when 1 was fifteen. I was now twenty-five. Ten years added to however the hell old he’d been then, yet he hadn’t aged at all. There wasn’t a line on his face; there’d never been so much as a hitch in his step no matter how long we’d trained, no matter how hard we’d worked.

  I stopped over an arm’s length away, feeling the pull to go nearer, gritting my teeth against it. I didn’t want him to touch me. I never had.