Apocalypse Happens (22 page)

“It’s Illinois,” Jimmy answered.

I turned. He was still way over there. “You sure?”

“I
am
a globe-trotting portrait wizard,” he said.

Better and better. He was starting to throw my sarcastic digs back at me.

“You’ve been to Cairo?”

He shook his head. “Cairo, Illinois, with a whopping three thousand souls is not exactly a hotbed of high-profile faces with pockets deep enough to pay my exorbitant, though well-deserved, fee.”

“So, basically, you don’t know dink. You’re guessing.”

“I was in Carbondale—also located in Little Egypt.
The top pick in the NBA draft last year came from Southern Illinois University. Macon Talmudge.”

Sounded vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t much of a basketball fan.

“And I suppose the NBA sent you.”

“Of course. But I only took the job because I had to check out a few rumors.”

“Werewolf? Vampire?”

“Egyptian snake demon.”

“Tell me it wasn’t Talmudge.”

Jimmy and I had already been involved with the death of one NBA star—we hadn’t killed him; he’d been one of us—but if we started leaving trails of dead basketball players, we’d wind up locked in a cage without a key. Not that a cage would hold us, but the less hassle the better, and I really didn’t need my picture plastered in every post office from Corpus Christi to Anchorage.

“It wasn’t Talmudge,” Jimmy obliged.

“But the snake demon, you got it?”

Jimmy looked down his nose at me. Of course he’d gotten it.

“I’m sensing a theme here,” I mused. “Egyptian snake demon. Ancient Egyptian shape-shifting firebird. Both found in a place called Little Egypt. Why?”

The Dagda shrugged and spread his massive hands, but I hadn’t been asking him. I lifted a brow in Jimmy’s direction.

“I did some research on the area,” Jimmy said. “The origins of the name are unclear. Some say it started around the Civil War. Illinois was a free state; however, the section that became Little Egypt was given a pass so the saltworks in the region could be mined. People up north began to refer to that part as Egypt.”

“Because they kept slaves.”

“Yeah. Another theory is that the conflux of the Mississippi River—America’s Nile—and the Ohio River creates a basin similar to the Nile Basin. Which is why they named the town on the peninsula where the rivers meet Cairo.”

“That would explain why Egyptian creepy things are drawn there,” I mused. “It feels like home.”

“The Nephilim are descended from the fallen angels. They don’t really have a home.”

“No, but when they settled all over the world and gave rise to the legends that named them, they adopted one.”

“True,” he agreed.

“If Egyptian supernatural creatures traveled to America for whatever reason, I can understand why they’d gravitate to an area that was similar to where they’d spent centuries—if not in climate, at least in terrain and name. Shall we head for Cairo?”

“May as well,” Jimmy agreed.

I glanced at the Dagda. “You’ll be coming with us?”

“I will remain.”

“But”—I clenched my hands into fists—“you agreed to fight on my side.”

“And fight I will, once you grant my boon.”

“Which is?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Jimmy made an impatient sound. “And he never will. He’s as sneaky as a leprechaun.”

“I am nothing like a leprechaun.” The Dagda appeared insulted.

“They’re cunning and slick.” Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “They twist words to suit their purpose. They deceive every chance that they get.”

The fairy god tilted his head. “Perhaps I
am
like a leprechaun.”

“If he never requests a boon,” Jimmy said, “then he never owes you his allegiance, which is how he’ll remain down here and out of the fight.”

“Are you afraid?” I asked the Dagda.

I expected him to reach for his huge club, and then use it on my head. Instead, he laughed. “I fear nothing, light’s leader. However, I’d prefer to choose a side when the winner is more certain.”

“We’ll win,” I said.

“When you believe that with both your heart
and
your head, let me know.”

I turned back to the caldron. “What does the Phoenix look like?”

The water had gone black again, but as soon as I spoke the murk cleared.

“Not me,” I muttered impatiently, lifting my hand to rub away the dirt across my cheek.
“The . . .”

I paused, cursing when I realized why the reflection had not lifted her hand and rubbed at her face too.

The Phoenix looked a helluva lot like me.

CHAPTER 22

“What is it?” Jimmy started forward, but I held him back with a lift of one finger. I wanted to study the face of the Phoenix, to catalog the differences, and I needed a little quiet time to do it.

Hair curlier than mine, maybe because it was longer, darker too, more the cast of Jimmy’s blue-black tresses than the auburn I called my own, eyes also dark. Guess Daddy was the source of my blue eyes, or perhaps one of his relatives. Her skin reflected a lifetime beneath a hundred thousand suns. I’d always known I wasn’t white, that I was at least part something else. But I’d figured African-American, Native American, even Italian-American, never Egyptian.

If you saw her in the shadows, if you saw me in the dark, we could easily be mistaken for the other. Which might work out to my advantage, or it might yet get me killed.

“We need to go.” I glanced at the Dagda. “To Cairo, Illinois.”

“Follow me.” He ducked through the opening of the cave.

I motioned for Jimmy to proceed, but he was already moving. I suppose getting out of the Otherworld was worth anything. Even getting out of here with me.

“You will hold hands,” the Dagda ordered.

I could barely see Jimmy. The damn mist was thicker and colder than ever. I inched closer, but he inched back. I reached for him, and he lifted his lip like a cornered dog.

“Knock that off before I smack you with a rolled newspaper,” I muttered. “I won’t bite.”

“Yes,” he said simply, “you will.”

I grabbed his hand anyway, holding on tightly in case he took it into his head to pull away. I was treating him like a little kid again, but if the behavior fit . . .

As soon as I touched him a warm, dry wind stirred my hair. We were no longer in the cool, misty Otherworld but standing on a decent-sized hill above a tired small town bordered by a lot of muddy water. I’d seen the Mississippi River often enough to recognize it.

“Welcome to Cairo,” I murmured.

Jimmy was looking around, blinking as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Freak-y,” he said. “I didn’t even see him . . . anything.”

“Guess it pays to be a fairy god.”

“Probably not well.”

Jimmy was joking again. That was good. It just had to be, so I smiled, even though he chose that moment to yank his hand out of mine as if I’d recently been infected with leprosy.

I tried to make conversation, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that the only time he could bear to touch me was when he was evil.

“Nice hill.” I kicked the grass, which was more like hay, and a puff of dirt rose around my foot. “Back where I come from, we call those from the Land of Lincoln
flatlanders
, with good reason.”

“Back where I come from too.” Jimmy headed for Cairo, his pace speeding up more than it should have
despite the downward dip, probably because he didn’t try to slow his pace.

The better to get away from you, my dear.

“This part of Illinois has more hills than the rest.” He gestured toward the water. “The rivers.”

I nodded. The area around the Mississippi in Wisconsin was downright craggy.

Since we’d popped out of the Otherworld without benefit of a car, we had little choice but to hoof it in the direction of Cairo. I could see houses in the distance and beyond them another body of water, the Ohio River, I assumed.

“Who thought it would be a good idea to build a town between two major rivers?” I asked.

“Probably the same guy who thought New Orleans was a fabulous concept.”

“New Orleans
is
a fabulous concept,” I argued. I’d been there once, for a bartenders seminar—code for tax-deductible drunk fest—and I’d been charmed.

“Except when it’s getting hit by a category five and caskets start floating down the street.” I cast him a quick glance, and he shrugged. “When you bury people above ground, which is actually below sea level, shit happens.”

“And Cairo?”

“Gets flooded a lot. The highest ground around here is the levees.” He pointed to a bridge with the word “CAIRO” painted across the front. “There’s a gate they shut when it gets really bad. Cuts the town off and sends the floodwaters into the fields.”

“Why settle here?”

“In the eighteen hundreds, this place was hopping. Major port on both rivers.”

“And now?”

“The ships don’t need a port between Minneapolis
and New Orleans. No passengers, no need to fuel up.” He shrugged. “I hear the place is pretty ghostly.”

The sun had nearly set, casting everything in sepia. Shadows loomed. I hated shadows.

“What did you see when you stared into the pot?” Jimmy asked. “At the end, I mean.”

“My mother looks oddly like me.”

“How oddly?”

I slid my gaze in his direction, then back to the road. “Just don’t kill me by accident.”

“I’ll try,” he said dryly. “I don’t suppose you know how to kill a phoenix.”

“I was hoping you did.”

“Never met one. Considering the legend, there might be a reason for that.” At my curious glance, he continued. “A phoenix lives for a thousand years and is reborn for another thousand from the ashes of its funeral pyre.”

“Still not catching a clue.”

“Maybe there’s only one.”

“Seems like a waste of a good legend,” I said. “There could be a thousand of them. None of which ever truly die, but are instead reborn again and again.”

“An army of virtually indestructible birds,” Jimmy mused. “I hate it when that happens.”

“Ha-ha,” I said, but I didn’t feel like laughing. “You think that’s why she’s been raised? To lead the army of indestructible birds?”

“Why stop there? Why not lead the whole damn indestructible army of the Apocalypse?”

I’d been thinking the same thing; I just hadn’t wanted to say it.

“Nice to meet you,” I muttered. “They call me the daughter of the Antichrist.”

“She hasn’t taken over yet.”

“She has the key; it’s only a matter of time.”

“I think if the Antichrist had taken form—whatever form—we’d know, don’t you?”

“Why? Is there a sign? Big red letters in the sky? A rain of fire? Perhaps a mass e-mail?”

Jimmy stared at me for several seconds before answering my original question. “The end of the world is predated by wars and rumors of wars, famine, disease, lawlessness, earthquakes.”

“Check and mate.” I frowned. “Except that’s been going on since forever.”

“Because there’s been the possibility of the end over and over and over again, but we’ve always stopped it.”

“We’ll stop it this time too.”

“It’s never gotten this far before. We’re one step away from Armageddon.”

“The final battle is now,” I whispered, paraphrasing the last words a living Ruthie had ever spoken to me.

“Ruthie!” Jimmy exclaimed. “She’d tell us if we were fighting a losing battle.”

“Would she?” I asked. “What good would that do?”

At his confused expression I continued. “If she told us the Antichrist had taken form, that all of our efforts weren’t enough to stem the demon tide, people would give up, crawl in a hole or surrender. Hell, maybe they’d even join the other side.”

“Would you?”

I gave him an evil glare. As if.

“The end is just the beginning,” I said. “Ruthie knows that. We’ve got prophecy coming out of our ears and none of it is exactly crystal. There’s always a way out if you just keep searching.”

“It ain’t over until . . .” Jimmy stopped, tilted his head and glanced back at me. “When’s it over?”

“When I say it’s over.”

His grin made me catch my breath. Sure, he still appeared as if he’d just spent several days worshiping the porcelain god, then another two or three unconscious in a garbage dump. Regardless, his physical beauty shone through. It would take more than a torture session with a fairy god to erase that. Thank goodness.

Because his smile, and that face, made me think of things I shouldn’t, I kept walking.

“There’s another problem,” I said as Jimmy hustled to catch up. “Even if Ruthie
would
tell us that the end of the world is nigh, she can’t.” I tapped myself on the temple. “Cable’s on the fritz.”

The reminder that I no longer had a direct line to Ruthie because of what he’d done—and how I’d made him—caused Jimmy’s smile to disappear like the last ray of sun before the storm of the century. His gaze returned to the horizon where bits of pink and orange had faded to a thin, purple line.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” he murmured.

“It’s
the
idea. Ruthie’s idea. Only by becoming the darkness can we overcome it.”

“I’ve never been real clear on how we do that.”

I wasn’t either, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Ruthie said to infiltrate the Nephilim.”

“Because walking straight into the lion’s den is
always
a good idea.”

“Worked for Daniel.”

Jimmy rubbed his eyes and didn’t answer.

“Relax,” I said, then remembered something Sawyer had told me once. “To win, we have to believe that we will.”

Dropping his hand, Jimmy began to laugh. “You think they don’t believe
they
will?”

“You have to have faith, Sanducci.”

He sobered as quickly as he’d lost it. “Do
not
quote George Michael to me, Lizzy.”

And then I was laughing. It felt good.

We reached the outskirts of Cairo. The place had a haunted air that I didn’t think had anything to do with the Phoenix. My laughter died. I wished like crazy we’d popped out of the Otherworld when the sun was still shining.