Chaos Bites (12 page)

“Voilà!” I yanked the blanket off. The black kitten’s tail twitched back and forth as she contemplated each of us in turn with her pale gray gaze.

“Is she yours?” Jimmy asked.

I threw up the hand that wasn’t holding the blanket. “Why does everyone ask me that?”

“She’s a shape-shifter.”

“So are half the people I meet these days.”

“You’re denying she’s yours?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“She’s quite obviously Sawyer’s.” Summer smoothed her hand over Faith’s dark head, and the kitten began to purr. “So why wouldn’t we think she’s yours, too?”

I glanced at Jimmy, but his eyes revealed nothing. How could he believe I’d bring a child into this world with anyone but—

I cut that thought off before it showed all over my face. What Jimmy and I had once had—a love so deep I thought it would never die—had been wounded so often and so badly, I wasn’t sure it could survive. The dream of a future for us—especially one that included the white-picket-fence hopes I hid in my heart—was no longer possible.

I pulled my gaze from Jimmy’s still, stoic face. “I have power, but not enough to cook a kid in less than a month.”

“So you say,” Summer murmured, “but you lie.”

I took a step toward her. “You are so lucky you’re holding the baby.”

Summer shoved the kitten at Jimmy, but he refused to take her, behaving as if Faith were still an infant, backing away, shaking his head. “Nuh-uh. Not me.”

The fairy turned to Luther, who shook his head. When she glanced again at me, I allowed my lips to curve just a little. “I may lie, but at least I didn’t sell my soul to Satan.”

“Yet.” Summer tilted her pretty, pointed chin. “Just because you aren’t capable of loving someone—”

“I can love!”

“Loving someone
enough,
” she continued, “to choose a fate
worse
than death. Oh, we know you’re perfectly capable of dying for someone. You throw yourself headlong into danger every chance you get.” Her tone sneered
overachiever
even louder than her expression. “But try picking the worst thing you can imagine. Try pledging eternity in the flames just to save him.” She glanced at Jimmy. “Even though you know he might hate you for it.”

“That’s enough,” Jimmy said quietly. But Summer wasn’t finished.

“She wouldn’t have done it for you.”

“I know.”

Summer smiled, a thin, nasty smile that did not fit on her sweet, heart-shaped face. “You think she might do it for him?”

CHAPTER 12

“Do what for who?” I asked.

“What do you think?” Summer didn’t even glance at me, just continued to hold Jimmy’s gaze. “Sell your soul for Sawyer.”

I laughed. “Right.”

“You’re on your way to the Black Hills,” she said. “To see a skinwalker about raising his ghost.”

“How do you know that?” I glanced at Luther, but he shook his head.

Summer tapped an index finger against her temple. She was psychic, too. I took ridiculous satisfaction in observing that her manicure was chipped.

“Someone’s gotta do it,” I said, avoiding Jimmy’s gaze, “and as usual that someone’s me.”

“Let him rest, Lizzy.”

I couldn’t help it. I met Jimmy’s eyes, and then I couldn’t look away. “He isn’t resting. He’s wandering.” I swallowed. “Through my dreams.”

“You’ve got to let him go,” Jimmy continued. “He’s dead. You of all people should know that.”

“Low blow,” I murmured.

“It had to be done.”

“Just like raising him has to be.”

“You sure about that?”

“He disappeared with the key.”

What I referred to was the original text of the
Key of Solomon.
A grimoire, or book of spells, supposedly composed by the biblical King Solomon. Inside were incantations used to summon, release, and command demons—for starters.

My mother, the Phoenix, had had the key in her possession. Then I’d killed her, turned my back—I’d had a few things to clear off my plate at the time—and when I went to retrieve the thing, it was as gone as Sawyer.

“Did you ever consider that someone took both the body and the book?” Jimmy asked.

“They would have had to be awful fast and awful quiet. Awful invisible, too.”

Jimmy, Summer, and I had all been within a few hundred feet of the key and Sawyer. We hadn’t been paying attention, but we were also a little above average in the hearing, seeing, and sensing departments.

“Maybe they were,” Jimmy said.

Conversations like this always gave me a headache.

“Whatever.” I flapped my hand, and Jimmy stepped back. So did Summer and Luther. I guess I couldn’t blame them. When I used that tone and flipped my fingers, people usually flew. “If some
one
or some
thing
took Sawyer as well as the book, his ghost should know who. We need the key, Sanducci. If the Nephilim have it, they’ll just let all the Grigori out again.”

“Don’t you think if they were going to, they would have?”

“They
did
.”

“I mean again. It’s been weeks.”

“You know as well as I do that the first step to starting Doomsday is killing the leader of the light.”

The Nephilim had begun this whole mess by killing Ruthie. But I’d managed to stop the Doomsday clock by ending their leader then sending the demon horde back to hell.

However, they’d be back for round two. No matter how many battles the federation won, the final war was inevitable.

“They’re going to have a pretty hard time killing you,” Jimmy said.

“Bummer for them, huh?”

Jimmy grinned, and for just an instant I caught a glimpse of the boy I’d adored. My breath caught. I didn’t want to lose that memory, not right away. Sometimes the memories of good times were all that kept us from giving in to the bad.

As if he’d read my mind, Jimmy’s smile faded. “We need to stop screwing around searching for the key when we have better things to do.”

“Like?”

“Kill Nephilim. If we manage to obliterate them all, don’t we win?”

“I don’t think we can.”

He lifted his chin. “Why not?”

Jimmy was the best DK in the federation, had been since he was eighteen. He’d been Ruthie’s right-hand man. He’d be mine now if he could stand to be near me for more than a minute.

“There’d always be one that we missed,” I said. “Or a breed would take it into his head that he wanted to rule the world, then run through the sequence that opens Tartarus”—the lowest level of hell reserved for the worst of the worst—“release the Grigori, re-populate the earth with Nephilim, and so on and so forth.”

“I think we could take care of a breed before he managed all that.”

“What if he had the
Book of Samyaza
?”

“That’s a myth,” Jimmy muttered.

“So are we.”

It was an old argument. One we’d never resolved.

The
Book of Samyaza
was a legend. No one had ever seen it, but according to the stories it had been written by a minion of Satan whose ear was filled with revelatory prophecies for the dark side.

The Bible said good would triumph, and I believed that. I had to. Unfortunately, the
Book of Samyaza
said just the opposite. And the Nephilim believed that, too.

I didn’t hear Jimmy approach until he spoke right next to me. “You need to let sleeping wolves die.”

“Very funny.”

“I liked it.” He remained silent until I met his eyes. “Sawyer’s gone. He isn’t coming back. Even if you raised his ghost, then what?”

“I ask him the questions I need answered.”

“And then?”

“He goes into the light?”

“Sure he does.”

Sawyer had told me himself he was too damned to be innocent, although that had turned out not to be true. Still, I wasn’t sure the light was in his future. But I didn’t think the darkness should be, either.

“I don’t know what happens then,” I snapped. “All I know is that I have to talk to him one more time.”

“You think he’ll forgive you?”

“I don’t think he blames me.”

“No.” Jimmy turned away. “That’s all you.”

Jimmy and Summer had left Jimmy’s black Hummer at the base of Sheep Mountain. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t seen the thing on our way up. It was visible from outer space.

“We can ride there in the Impala,” I offered.

“
My
Impala?” Summer muttered.

“Not anymore. Forfeit your soul, forfeit your very cool car. It’s in the manual.”

“There’s a manual?”

I wasn’t actually going to keep the Impala. But I
was
going to use the vehicle for as long as she’d let me get away with it.

“Can I drive?” Luther had returned. I didn’t even bother to answer.

We piled inside and made our way down Sheep Mountain. Summer sat in the front seat and held Faith. The kitten’s eyes were heavy. She’d had an upsetting day.

The men were in back, spears across their laps. Which reminded me. I glanced in the rearview mirror.

“What did you put on the tips?” At Jimmy’s confused frown, I elaborated. “To kill the Iyas.”

Understanding dawned. “Vitamin D.”

Now I frowned. “Huh?”

“Lack of sunlight causes vitamin D deficiency. Increase of vitamin D cures that, so to reproduce the effects of the sun we coated the tips of the spears with vitamin D.”

Sometimes the methods of ending these creatures were almost as bizarre as the creatures themselves.

We neared the foot of the mountain and, sure enough, there on a dusty side track sat Jimmy’s Hummer. He’d done a decent job camouflaging it with brush. The storm clouds had done the rest. Now the hood of the SUV reflected the sun, drawing the attention of every passerby—if there’d been any—to what appeared to be a behemoth alien land cruiser.

I’d said it before, so I said it again. “Whoever thought selling US Army tactical vehicles to the public was a good idea?”

Jimmy lifted his hand. He loved that damn thing.

As we climbed out of the Impala I realized that I’d neglected to mention the reason we’d come to the Badlands in the first place.

“I need a favor.”

“I’m not coming with you to the Black Hills to raise Sawyer.” Jimmy opened the rear door on the Hummer and tossed the spears inside.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

That surprised him. He’d been headed toward the driver’s seat, but now stopped and turned. “Then what do you want?”

“For you to watch the baby while I search the Black Hills for Sani, the skinwalker.”

“Watch the baby,” he repeated. “Where’s her mom?”

“That’s almost as good a question as
Who’s her mom?
”

“You don’t know?”

“Why would I?”

“You didn’t ask?”

“A kitten?”

Jimmy made a sound of annoyance. “Sawyer.”

“Dead, remember?”

“You said he was in your dreams.”

“He is, but it’s strange. You know how dreamwalking feels?” Jimmy nodded. “It’s not like that.”

“Because the dead don’t dream.”

“Is that on a T-shirt or something?” I snapped.

Jimmy just lifted a brow and waited for me to go on.

“I can’t control the dream. I can’t get Sawyer to answer questions. He tells me things, but not everything. And I don’t know if it’s really him in there”—I rapped my knuckles lightly against my temple—“or if it’s just me wishing he were.”

“What about Ruthie? Doesn’t she have any info about the kid?”

“She was as surprised to see Faith as I was. Claims she knows nothing about her.”

“You believe that?”

I sighed. “I’m not sure.”

Ruthie had lied to us both when it suited her—always for the good of the world. That didn’t make her lies any easier to stomach, and it didn’t make her any easier to trust now that we knew about them. But it was also difficult
not
to trust her since we had for most of our lives, and in the end we all wanted the same thing.

To save the world.

“I guess you have more than a few questions for Sawyer.”

“More than a few,” I agreed.

“Why drag the kid all the way here?” Jimmy asked.

“Ruthie—”

“Said,” Jimmy finished. “But why? What’s wrong with Luther?”

I glanced over my shoulder. Luther and Summer were playing with Faith. They’d each grabbed a pussy willow, and the kitten was trying to catch one, but she couldn’t decide which one to grab. She glanced back and forth, back and forth. Then she’d snatch at a fuzzy toy, only to have it rise higher than she could jump. So she’d lose interest and focus on the other one, only to repeat the same process. The scene could make Norman Rockwell sit up in his grave just to paint it.

“What happened?” Jimmy asked. He always knew when something had.

Quickly I told him about the men in the motel room—what they’d known, what they hadn’t, and what Sawyer—be he dream or vision—had said.

“They’re after her because of who she will become,” Jimmy repeated.

I spread my hands. “I promised to protect her.”

“Then do it.”

“I am!”

Summer, Luther, and Faith turned their heads toward us as my voice carried. Summer frowned and began to get up. Luther murmured something and pulled her back down. That she let him was quite a surprise. I wasn’t sure what there was between the boy and the fairy, but they had connected the first time they’d met. Kind of like the baby and the fairy. I wondered if Summer was using magic.

I lowered my voice. “I have to find that skinwalker, Jimmy. Ruthie said Faith would be safe with you. You think I’d ask this of you if I had any other choice?”

His dark eyes stared into mine. He was so damn beautiful. My gaze lowered to his mouth. He could do amazing things with that mouth. Once Sanducci and I had spent hours just kissing. I missed that.

Our breath became shallow. His gaze lowered as well. He took a step forward, and I stopped breathing altogether.

But he caught himself before we could touch, backed up, and lifted his face to the sun. “I wish things could be the way they were,” he murmured. “I want to forget, Lizzy, but I can’t. Every time I look at you I see what hides beneath that collar.”