Any Given Doomsday Read online

  “Elizabeth Phoenix, this is Summer Bartholomew.”

  I’d taken an aggressive step forward, as if I wanted to beat her face in. I did, but I wasn’t going to. It wasn’t her fault Jimmy couldn’t keep it in his pants.

  Then Sawyer finished, “One of your DKs.”

  “My DKs. What about Lucinda?” It would seem that a DK in New Mexico should have a seer in New Mexico, but what did I know.

  Sawyer cut me a quick glance. “Lucinda’s been gone for years.”

  I was amazed at the wave of sadness that washed over me. I hadn’t even known the woman. But she’d been Ruthie’s friend, her colleague. Lucinda’s loss seemed to emphasize Ruthie’s, which was just foolish considering how often Ruthie dropped into my dreams. As long as she continued to do that, Ruthie wasn’t really gone.

  “She’s a DK?” I looked Summer up and down; I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “She’s a pixie.”

  Her chin lifted. “Fairy actually.”

  “You’re a fairy,” I repeated, the words sounding vaguely homophobic, even though I was certain she wasn’t a gay male masquerading as a petite blond female. She was a real live fairy. How’s that for a sentence you don’t hear every day?

  “Where are your wings?” I asked.

  “Kind of a myth.”

  “But fairies aren’t?”

  “You’re standing next to a skinwalker, and you’re balking at fairies?”

  I glanced at Sawyer. “Am I supposed to kill her? I’m confused.”

  He shook his head but kept silent, visibly delighted at the encounter. I wanted to smack him, but that would involve touching him, and I wasn’t going to go there.

  “I’m not a Nephilim,” Summer said, her voice a little higher, her face a bit more tense. “Tell her, Sawyer.”

  “Obviously not, if you’re a DK.”

  “A breed then?” I asked.

  “No.” Summer came closer. “I’m & fairy.”

  I really wished I had a weapon, though what killed a fairy? The enormity of what I didn’t know washed over me in a wave of exhaustion so strong I nearly staggered.

  “Supernatural creature means Nephilim.” I took a few steps backward, thinking if I could get into the house, I could grab the gun I’d taken from Jimmy’s arsenal, or maybe my knife.

  I didn’t like the way Sawyer watched us, as if waiting to see what we might do. Was Summer a test? Maybe I should touch her.

  Duh.

  Striding forward, I wrapped my hand around her forearm. She was startled at the sudden shift, and her bright blue eyes went wide as her pretty pink mouth shaped into an O.

  The instant I touched her I saw Jimmy, wearing what he’d worn last night—make that early this morning. I let her go as if she were a snake.

  “He went to see you.”

  Her gaze met mine. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She glanced away, her cheeks turning pink. Stupid question.

  “He sent me here to tell you—”

  “He couldn’t call?”

  Did he think I wouldn’t recognize her? Sometimes Jimmy was so damn dense, he worried me. Then again, most men were.

  “Your cell phone isn’t working.” She waved at the mountains. “Might be those.”

  I reached into my pocket and withdrew the phone. I’d spoken with Megan; the thing had worked just fine then. But mountains were tricky. One minute you had service and the next—

  I glanced at the display. Blank. I shook it. Not that shaking had ever helped.

  “You don’t need that here,” Sawyer said.

  I had a sudden, sneaking suspicion and opened the battery case. It was empty.

  I scowled in Sawyer’s direction. “Give that back.”

  He lifted a brow and didn’t answer.

  “I do need it. Jimmy couldn’t call. He had to send—” I waved my hand furiously in Summer’s direction.

  “Yes, well, that was poor form, wasn’t it?”

  Poor form? Had he learned English from the English?

  I narrowed my eyes. How much did Sawyer know about Jimmy and Summer? More than I wanted him to, obviously.

  My cheeks burned, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it short of finding the memory sector of Sawyer’s brain and destroying it.

  “You’re here to learn,” he continued. “You don’t need any interruptions.”

  “A phone call would have been much less of an interruption than this.”

  “What did you see when you touched her?” Sawyer murmured. “Sanducci banging the natives again?”

  I lifted my chin. “I have no idea.” I’d let her go before I’d seen too much.

  “He came to question me,” Summer said. “He’s questioning all of Ruthie’s DKs.”

  “You must have passed the test,” Sawyer drawled. “You’re still breathing.”

  She cast him a quick, suspicious glance. “Jimmy wouldn’t—”

  “Oh, he would,” Sawyer interrupted. “I don’t like much about him, but I do like that.”

  “Why are you in New Mexico?” I asked.

  It seemed a bit too coincidental that we were here and so was she.

  “She’s supposed to keep an eye on me,” Sawyer murmured.

  In Summer’s face I saw a shred of fear. Maybe she wasn’t as blond as she looked.

  “You think I didn’t know?” he continued, his voice so deceptively soft and conversational, I got a chill. Summer appeared as if she might puke.

  “It isn’t—”

  “It is. You’re a spy for Sanducci.”

  She had the good sense not to deny it. I wondered what he would have done if she had.

  “It doesn’t matter now. We have much bigger problems than a lack of trust between him and me. What happened?”

  For an instant she stood there blinking her baby blues as if she had no idea why she’d come. Sawyer gave an impatient growl that had us both jumping as if goosed. “Why are you here, Summer?”

  “Oh—yes. Jimmy, he—” She swallowed and glanced at me apologetically. “There’s been another death.”

  My heart caught. Jimmy.

  I must have made a soft sound of distress because Sawyer blew a derisive breath out his nose. “Worry about yourself, Phoenix, Sanducci is nearly as hard to kill as lam.”

  “He’s fine,” Summer said quickly. “He left—”

  “Focus,” Sawyer snapped. “Who is dead?”

  She spread her hands. Her nails were manicured and painted the same pink as her lips. I wanted to snap them off, one by one. Her nails, not her fingers. At least not yet.

  “A seer. In New York City.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Jimmy wouldn’t tell me. As soon as he got the call, he went to check things out.”

  Sawyer’s gaze shifted to Mount Taylor. “Run along,” he murmured.

  She ran.

  When the rumble of her engine had faded to nothing but a purr, I murmured, “Fairies? Seriously?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But they’re not Nephilim.”

  “No. They’re not human either.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase.” I rubbed my forehead. “Just tell me what she is. How she got here. What she does.”

  “Besides Sanducci?”

  I let my hand fall back to my side and met his eyes. “Yes, besides that.”

  He hesitated, glancing north with a worried frown, before turning back. “You know the story of the angels’ fall?”

  He didn’t wait for my nod, but continued as if he were in a hurry. “When the angels were cast out, God closed heaven. The good ones were on one side of the gate with him, the rebellious ones were on the other. Those who disobeyed his command and interbred with the humans were confined in a hell dimension.”

  “Tartarus,” I murmured.

  “Yes. Their offspring, the Nephilim, remained on earth.”

  “Why didn’t God send them all to hell?”

  “He will, once we win this war. But ear
th isn’t Eden. There has to be evil. The Nephilim are our test.”

  “If the Grigori are locked up in a fiery pit, they can’t create more Nephilim. We keep killing them off and eventually we’ll win.”

  “Theoretically. However, Nephilim can breed with Nephilim and then you get some really strange things.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Stranger than what we’ve got?”

  “Nephilim are evil, but put two of them together and what do you think you’ll get?”

  “Double the evil, double the fun.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then why aren’t we overrun?”

  “Nephilim are beings of incredible selfishness. They certainly don’t want to give birth to something that will need their care and attention for the next decade and more. Be glad they’re that way or we’d be outnumbered to the point of extinction.”

  I guess every cloud did have a silver lining, or was that every silver lining came with its own personal cloud?

  “Explain why the fairies aren’t Nephilim.”

  “When God closed the gates, some of the angels trapped outside had not given in to temptation. They weren’t bad enough for hell, but they weren’t good enough for heaven, so they became fairies.”

  “Okeydokey.” Pretty much anything made a certain sort of sense these days.

  “Fairies are unable to use their supernatural powers on anyone who is on an errand of mercy, which means all the DKs and seers. They’re fairly trustworthy.”

  I scowled at the idea of trusting Summer, although really it was Jimmy who needed a good swift kick in the ass. He usually did.

  “What kind of supernatural powers are we talking about?”

  “They can fly.”

  “Without wings.”

  “Handy, yes?”

  “Then why in hell did she bother with a car?”

  “Flying people tend to get noticed, especially during the daytime. That skill is used sparingly.”

  “What else?”

  “Casting spells. Altering their appearance.” He paused, his gaze intent on my face. “Seeing the future.”

  So Summer the fairy was psychic. Was that supposed to make us BFFs?

  Not happening.

  “Are all of the fairies on our side?”

  He didn’t answer right away, perhaps waiting for me to break down and quiz him about the nature of the fairy’s psychic abilities. He’d wait a helluva long time. Unless the fairies knew how to get rid of their abilities, I didn’t have any interest in sharing info.

  “Sawyer,” I pressed. “Are they all on the side of good?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Some have been won to the Nephilim.”

  “How do you kill a fairy?”

  Surprise spread over his face, followed quickly by a smirk. “Bloodthirsty today?”

  “I thought that was what I was supposed to learn— how to kill these things.”

  “Fairies aren’t Nephilim.”

  “But some of them are on the side of the Nephilim, which means they’re open season. So how do I kill them?”

  “According to legend, fairies can be killed with cold steel or rowan.”

  “In other words, I freeze a knife or shove a bush down her throat.”

  “Whatever works.”

  “While we’re on the subject of killing legendary beings, what takes out a skinwalker?”

  He looked down and didn’t answer. I hadn’t expected him to.

  “What about a dhampir?”

  That question brought his head up. “You plan on killing Sanducci?”

  “You never know.”

  Sawyer laughed—one short, sharp burst that sounded rusty. I couldn’t recall him ever laughing before.

  “Perhaps I’ll tell you one day, but not this day.”

  “Why the hell not? You don’t like him either.”

  “I like this world as it is, and as much as I dislike Sanducci, for now he’s necessary.”

  “And when he isn’t?”

  Sawyer just smiled.

  I turned and watched the last wisp of dust die in the wake of Summer’s truck. “You know who she was talking about? The latest seer who died?”

  Sawyer nodded, his gaze turning north once more.

  He’d told me all those years ago that north was the direction of evil to the Navajo. Terrific. I followed his gaze, but there was still nothing there. Or at least nothing that I could see.

  Then a sneaking suspicion entered my mind. Sawyer had trained certain seers and DKs. Were those the ones who’d been dying?

  His gaze flicked to mine. “Sanducci wouldn’t have left you here with me if he truly believed I was killing members of the federation.”

  “You read minds?” I’d always wondered.

  “Faces,” he corrected. “You need to do a better job with yours.”

  “I’ll get right on that, as soon as we figure out who the traitor is and put a knife through his or her treacherous heart.”

  His lips curved. “I bet you wish it was me.”

  It would certainly solve half of my problems. If, by chance, sticking a knife into Sawyer’s heart would actually kill him. I didn’t think that it would.

  “Obviously I couldn’t have killed a seer in New York while I was here with you,” he pointed out.

  I had no idea what he could do, but I thought it was a lot more than he let on.

  Sawyer turned suddenly and headed for the hogan. Before I could register the movement, he’d already ducked inside. The woven mat, which was all he had for a door, fell back into place. I stood outside, uncertain if I should knock or barge right in. I barged in.

  A fire pit had been dug in the center of the earthen floor, directly beneath the smoke hole. On the west side lay his sheepskin bedroll and neat stacks of clothing. Mats woven of grass, some of bark, were strewn about near the walls like chairs.

  Sawyer was already plucking dried herbs from tiny bags, which hung from the logs near the north side of the hogan.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You don’t want to do this the easy way.” He pulled two backpacks—incongruous in the middle of this traditional Navajo dwelling—from behind his bedroll. “There’s always the hard way.”

  “Do what? And when has anything ever been easy with you?”

  “You will learn to open yourself. I’d hoped the urgency of the situation would help, but it hasn’t, and we no longer have time to wait. You need the power now.”

  “And just how do you propose we accomplish that?”

  “Vision quest,” he said shortly, and tossed one of the backpacks in my direction. “Get your things.”

  Chapter 22

  Sawyer donned suitable clothing for a mountain death march. Since the temperatures would be lower at the higher altitude, where there could still be pockets of snow despite the calendar’s insistence it was spring, he covered his white T-shirt with long-sleeved flannel and shoved his slim feet into heavy socks and hiking boots. A lightweight ski jacket disappeared into his backpack.

  He produced the same outfit for me, right down to the hiking boots. Every size was correct.

  I lifted my gaze to the man who lounged in the doorway of my room as if he meant to stay right there for all eternity.

  “How’d you know?” I asked.

  His oddly light eyes swept from my head to my toes. Wherever his gaze touched, I burned. “I’m good with sizes.”

  I bet he was good with a lot of things.

  I shook my head. I did not want to go there. Not now. Not ever.

  Sawyer’s lips curved, and once again I got the impression he could read my mind. Or maybe it was just my face. I hadn’t tried to keep what I was thinking a secret.

  “I meant…” I was gritting my teeth. The words came out tight and angry, which only made his mouth curve more. “Did someone tell you we were coming?”

  That someone would have had to be Jimmy—who else would have known?—but I couldn’t see Jimmy dialing Sawyer for any reason.

 
; Sawyer’s eyebrows lifted, and he spread his big, hard hands. “I have no phone.”

  “You’ve got something,” I muttered, then tilted my head. “Have you been talking to Ruthie too?”

  His smile faded. “No. I have my own connections.”

  I had no doubt that he did. I just wondered if his connections were in heaven or hell.

  Once, back then, I’d woken in the night. A flicker of firelight had illuminated my window, drawing me across the room.

  He wasn’t alone.

  I should have gone back to bed, pulled the covers over my head, and stayed there. But I was curious what the goat was for.

  I was an old fifteen. I had several ideas, most of them pornographic. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  The goat bleated. Sawyer slit its throat. I slapped both hands over my mouth to keep from screaming.

  The blood poured onto the ground. Wherever it struck, smoke billowed, a column that grew taller and taller as the blood continued to flow. He bathed his hands in the red river, then laid the broken animal down, with something resembling tenderness.

  The contrast between the violent sacrifice of the life and the gentle laying to rest gave me goose bumps on top of my goose bumps. We always fear what we can’t understand.

  He spoke, his deep voice ringing through the oddly silent night, in a language I didn’t know. His glistening hands rose, and behind him the fire seemed to leap higher than the mountains, shifting from red flame to a silvery molten glow.

  The fire and the smoke twined together, then shot around the edge of the clearing, a living thing, whirling and whirling as if trying to break free.

  Sawyer barked one word, an order, and the dancing flame paused, lengthened, and became a woman of smoke. No colors, only black, white, and gray, yet I could see her very clearly standing in the puddle of blood he’d made.

  She was Native American—perhaps his age, hard to say, with hair streaming to her ankles and a nose and two cheekbones that fought for prominence in a face that should have been etched in stone—ancient and new, both beautiful and deadly.

  They stood together, neither speaking nor touching, though the air seemed ripe with the promise of both. He’d conjured her; for what purpose, who could say?

  The Navajo are superstitious about their ghosts, their legends and magic. Yet I knew, even before she glanced up, that what I was watching I was not meant to see.