Apocalypse Happens (10 page)

In human form, he wasn’t handsome. His face was too finely angled for that, but he was striking, with silky black hair trailing past his shoulders, his bronze skin a sharp contrast to his strangely light eyes.

I’d never known a Navajo to have gray eyes, especially a full-blood like Sawyer, which led me to believe those eyes had marked him as a skinwalker, a sorcerer, a witch from birth. Since the Navajo fear the supernatural and hate witches above all else, this probably explained a lot about Sawyer.

“When we’re wolves, Phoenix, we’re wolves,” he began.

“We’re not.”

I pulled my gaze away from the sleek, glistening expanse of his skin. No matter how much he infuriated me, scared me, confused me, if Sawyer took off his clothes—and he did that a lot—my mouth went dry and my mind went south. No one on earth, in any century, had a better body than Sawyer.

“Wolves can’t think,” I continued, “can’t reason, can’t talk to one another with their minds.”

“Are you sure?”

I drew back my arm to slug him; I don’t know why. I couldn’t hurt him. I didn’t know if anyone or anything could. He grabbed my wrist, quicker than the snake tattooed on his penis. I’d never been sure if that was Sawyer’s idea of a joke or not.

My other hand came up, also clenched into a fist, and headed right for his blade of a nose. He snatched that wrist too. Our bodies smacked together—breast to chest, hip to hip.

His snake was awake.

I had an instant to think,
What the hell?
and then we were kissing. If you could call it that. More of a battle—with teeth clashing, tongues plunging, tiny nips at the lips and the chin. We might be human—or then again we might not be—but we were behaving more like animals than we had only moments before.

I’m not exactly certain what got into me, besides him. Sure, I was still aroused from the encounter in the burrow, and being naked in the pine-scented shadow of Mount Taylor with the breeze stirring my hair and the light of the stars dancing across my skin would make anyone moon mad.

Perhaps I needed to have sex with someone for no other reason than that. No exchange of power—I already had Sawyer’s and I didn’t get double no matter how many times I tried—no favors to be granted, no boons to be asked, no forgiveness to be begged. Just sex with a man who knew better than any how to have it.

I tugged on my wrists, and he let them go so I could run my open palms over his incredible body. As I touched each tattoo the essence of the beast flickered—wolf, hawk, crocodile, tarantula, snaaaaake.

The hiss of a rattler slid through my mind even as the sleek, hard skin of Sawyer slid through my hand.
He cursed, then nipped my collarbone. He was as on edge as I was.

A growl purred through the air—him or me? Hard to say. His hands at my hips, he twirled me around, my back to his front. We were nearly the same height, Sawyer maybe an inch taller, which allowed his erection to rest in the cleft of my buttocks. The sensation was exquisite. I rubbed against him like a cat.

He cupped my breasts, lifting them like an offering to the goddess of the moon, her silvery breath a hint of frost across our skin.

His lips at the curve of my neck caressed; his teeth worried a fold, a siren call to what lay captured inside of me. His tongue trailed along the collar that bound me, tickled beneath it, and the demon within me roared.

I bent at the waist, took him in from behind. As always, he knew what I wanted, what I needed, better than I did. Fast, hard, no words, only actions. Make me forget, make me feel but not think, make me come.

He held me to him with one arm around my waist, palm warm at my belly as his long, supple fingers stroked me higher and higher even as his other hand teased my nipples until they peaked and ached and burned. His body slammed into me so violently the slap of skin on skin echoed in the still and silent night, the sound as enticing as the actions.

I wanted more and he gave me more, he gave me all that he had, all that he could, until together we convulsed, our bodies shuddering against each other, within, around, as one.

When the glow faded—it always did—I straightened. He stepped back. I cast him a glance, but he was staring at the moon and not at me.

He looked exactly the same as he had the first time
I’d seen him, and he always would. Sawyer was ageless, virtually indestructible and, for those reasons and several others, damned dangerous. Lucky for us he was on our side.

I think. With Sawyer, one could never quite tell.

I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, howls erupted from the darkness all around us. Weird howls. Howls that did not belong in the New Mexico desert. More like calls, maybe cackles.

“Foxes?” I asked.

“No.” Sawyer tensed, muscles gliding beneath marked skin. The tattoos seemed to live, to breathe, even dance. Since they were magic tattoos, fashioned by a sorcerer wielding lightning rather than a biker guy with a needle and ink, dancing wasn’t completely out of the question.

Shadows flickered, meeting, melding, then separating into strangely hunched figures that moved with a rolling yet oddly jerky gait.

“What are they?” I whispered.

“Hyenas,” Sawyer said, even as their hair-raising laughter rose again toward the moon.

“In New Mexico,” I clarified.

Sawyer cast me a quick, unreadable glance. “They aren’t real hyenas.”

“Duh,” I muttered, my gaze returning to the steadily multiplying shades.

Sawyer and I had no weapons but ourselves. Good thing we were pretty amazing.

I reached for his biceps where the image of a black wolf howled. But Sawyer stopped me with a quick shake of his head as he circled my wrist and drew my hand much, much lower.

For an instant I resisted. This was no time to play
with the snake; then Sawyer spoke. “The only animals the hyenas fear are the big cats.”

My gaze lit on his thigh, where the image of a tiger roamed. I laid my palm on Sawyer’s leg, high up where his pulse beat thick and heavy.

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

CHAPTER 10

The flash came again—bright light and icy heat, the whoosh of the breeze as I fell. I’d never changed into a tiger, wasn’t sure what to expect.

I’d discovered over time that shape-shifting—at least for skinwalkers—had nothing to do with our human shape. When I was a wolf, I was a wolf. Less than a hundred pounds despite being quite a bit over a hundred pounds as a human. As a snake, I was a regular-sized snake. As a tiger, I appeared to be one big mother—maybe three hundred pounds if the size of my paws and the drag of flesh on my bones was any indication.

A second flash drew my attention to Sawyer. Damn, he was gorgeous. Orange coat, brown stripes, sleek, muscular and even bigger than me.

The hyenas were toast.

Unfortunately, they didn’t appear to see it that way. Instead of running for their lives as a good hyena should when confronted with a tiger, they surged forward.

Sure, there were a bazillion of them. But tigers were
mean
if the roiling, burning fury that pulsed in my blood was any indication. Seeing the hyenas here, on my land, my place, my
territory
, made me want to crunch their bones like uncooked spaghetti.

The pack came at us like a wave. I went with my
instincts; they were all I had. One swipe from my mammoth paw and the first hyena’s neck broke. I sank my teeth into the throat of another and twisted, then just kept smacking and tearing, snatching and yanking, mowing through the throng on the left as Sawyer did the same from the right. With any luck, we’d meet in the middle unscathed.

If I’d been nothing more than human I would have died. I had no idea what killed a hyena shifter—silver, gold, bullets, knives, strangulation with the cursed entrails of a billy goat. However, a fight to the death
between
shifters works nearly every time, and the telltale burst of ash from each hyena proved it was working just fine right now.

That was the good news. The bad news? There were too many of them. They were legion—again.

They tag-teamed us. I began to bleed. Would a skinwalker die if bled to death by the wounds of another shifter? I didn’t know.

What I did know was that to kill me, they had to kill not only my skinwalker nature but my dhampir and vampire natures as well. Not that it couldn’t be done. It would just take time. But from the number of hyenas tumbling over the dunes, time was on their side.

What should we do?
I thought.

Sawyer replied,
Keep fighting. Help will arrive.

Help? From where? What? Who? How? And most important—when?

Two hyenas engaged me from the front, and as I smacked them around, a third snagged my leg and clamped down. Hyenas have the most powerful jaws in the animal kingdom. I roared as bones snapped.

The thunder of my call made the shifter flinch, and I pulled away. But I was hurt, couldn’t move as fast, wouldn’t heal completely until I shifted back into my
human form, which I couldn’t do with an army of hyenas all around.

Sawyer jabbed and parried, tossing animals willy-nilly. He was bleeding too; one particularly nasty wound flapped open on his shoulder, making him gimp as badly as I did. I began to get a little scared. We weren’t going to last forever.

Help!
I thought. A plea. A prayer. Right now, not much more than a platitude.

Then a roar split the heavens. Everyone froze, glanced upward. I almost expected to see fire raining down. Perhaps a huge celestial hand sweeping from the sky and scooping Sawyer and me to safety.

Hey, I
had
lost a lot of blood.

Instead, a lion stood on a nearby rise, the desert breeze ruffling his mane, the rising moon throwing silver sparkles across the golden expanse of his fur.

He loped down the hill, came at the army of hyenas with wild and savage abandon. Waded into them with claws and teeth and snarls. They scattered like pigeons. Unfortunately, they regrouped like pigeons too.

I braced myself for the onslaught, then sent out a thought to the lion:
Run, Luther!

Luther was a street kid we’d picked up last month south of Indianapolis. He was a Marbas, the offspring of a lion shifter and a conjurer. His parents had been killed by other lions—a cadre of shifters descended from the demon Barbas—and we still weren’t sure why.

Luther had become the latest addition to the federation. He was an accomplished channeler and a damn good fighter—living on the streets tends to make that happen. I should know.

For an instant I thought he hadn’t heard me. Lions
and tigers are similar, can even interbreed. Ligers, anyone? Or tigons? However, we aren’t the same species, and our telepathy might be funky.

But Luther cast me a scornful glance—the type every teenager gives his idiot parents—then went right back to fighting the hyenas. He seemed to be enjoying himself, crunching and munching his way through half a dozen.

My leg was healing—slowly, but I could put weight on it. With the addition of Luther, we held off the tide. However, at this rate, we weren’t going to win. It was only a matter of time until they did.

Luther roared, both pain and fury, and I drove forward, finishing off every hyena in my path until I reached him. Ever since I’d met the kid, I’d felt a bizarre affinity for him, a near maternal devotion I didn’t understand but couldn’t shake. When I saw one of the speckled beasts with his teeth sunk into Luther’s neck, I grabbed the freaky humpback by his hump and tore him free.

Luther bled from several nasty gashes, but they didn’t slow him down in the least. He turned to face another wave, and I snarled. He ignored me some more.

I couldn’t force him to leave; I had my paws full. But if we lived through this, we were going to have words. Despite Summer’s dig that I was no longer in charge, I was. Especially of Luther.

I don’t know how long we fought the hyenas, how many we killed or how many more poured into the fight. But there came a time when it was just Sawyer and I in the middle of the fray, and my chest seized up, thinking that some of the ash floating through the air was Luther.

Then I saw a flash of leonine tail at the outskirts of the melee. Luther trailed a circle of bloody footprints
around the hyenas. And as he did so, they stopped fighting, milling within the confines of the paw prints, bumping against one another and snarling but never breaking the plane.

Now what?
I thought. Should we slaughter them while they were confined? Or perhaps leave them within the charmed ring forever?

Get out
, Sawyer ordered.
Quickly, before the spell is complete.

Neither one of us had any problem stepping past the bloody circle. As soon as my pads touched the pristine dirt on the other side, a faint chanting arose. Foreign and rhythmic, yet still I recognized Luther’s voice in my head.

Blood, the moon, a chant—magic was definitely afoot. I stood back, so did Sawyer, and we watched and listened as the kid weaved an unknown spell.

The night stilled. Silence pressed on us as heavy as a rain-drenched quilt. Then the hyenas began to glow as if the sun poured down on them alone. A tiny flame blazed on each and every one—like E.T.’s heart light—then with a final yipping laugh-howl they burst into ashes. Bizarrely, not a single fleck landed outside that charmed space.

What in hell did you teach him?
I murmured as Luther turned and loped toward Mount Taylor.

Not that
, Sawyer answered, then followed the lion back home.

Me, I had a car to retrieve, clothes to put on. I might not care if Sawyer saw me in only my skin, but the kid was another story. I wasn’t
that
comfortable with shape-shifting. I doubted I ever would be.

Sawyer and I had run a long way as wolves, but I was able to retrace the miles just as easily as a tiger. Sure, a tiger was probably more conspicuous than a
naked woman, but weird stuff happened around Sawyer’s place all the time.

The locals avoided the area, especially at night. The Navajo are very superstitious. They believe that all sorts of evil spirits walk in the darkness, and they’re right.