Apocalypse Happens (32 page)

“You dropped me on a doorstep,” I accused.

“Would you have preferred I left you to die on the ground?”

Considering certain memories of my youth . . . maybe.

“Why didn’t you take me directly to Ruthie?”

“You were the daughter of a traitor,” Summer said. “Your mother tried to kill the light.”

I jerked a thumb at Sawyer. “So did his.”

“By then he was a big boy. He didn’t need anyone to protect him.”

“You were
protecting
me?” My voice was aghast. “You really do need a dictionary.” I thought of the note that had been left along with me. “Why ‘Elizabeth Phoenix’?”

“ ‘Phoenix’ so we could find you later.”

“And ‘Elizabeth’?”

“I liked it.”

“You say you sold your soul for Sanducci, but he wasn’t even born when this happened.”

Her dewy blue eyes met mine. “The future was bright with him. I dreamed of him when I slept. When I woke, my chest ached for missing him. I saw how it would be when I lost him. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you dialed Satan’s hotline and volunteered your immortal soul?” Call me crazy, but that wasn’t love; it was obsession.

“Samyaza found me,” she said.

Ruthie had told me that Satan had been pulling strings on earth since he’d been thrown into the pit. All he needed was a willing conduit, and there were plenty. We had one right here.

“I just had to bury the Phoenix, and Jimmy’s life would be spared. It seemed so easy.”

“It’s all fun and games until the Apocalypse shows up,” I muttered.

“He’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for me,” she snapped.

“Well, we’ll never really know that for sure, will we?”

Summer lifted her chin. “I do.”

“How did the key end up in there with her?”

“Wasn’t me,” Summer said.

“Time’s up.” The Phoenix crossed the yard; the key lay discarded on the top porch step. “Choose now, or I’ll choose for you.”

“You can’t choose Jimmy,” Summer blurted.

I narrowed my gaze on the pastel perfection of her face. “How about we kill you?”

“No!” Jimmy shouted, and I turned to him in surprise.

“I’m sorry. Did you actually say no to killing the soul-selling fairy?”

“Lizzy.” His face was tormented. “You can’t.”

I could, but that wasn’t the point. That he was so bent out of shape about it seemed to be. Since when did Sanducci care? Sure, he’d slept with her. A lot. But he hadn’t loved her. He’d loved me.

Except he didn’t anymore.

Why Jimmy loving Summer mattered I couldn’t quite say. I had bigger issues at hand.

“Choose!” the Phoenix screamed, and her hands began to glow.

“Shit,” Summer muttered. “I think we’re gonna need a bigger phoenix.”

I actually laughed. Nerves? Panic? End of the world fever? Probably all three.

“Elizabeth.” Sawyer’s gray eyes seemed to glow as silver as the lightning that had flashed from the sky on the night he’d killed my mother. “Listen to the fairy. Think. And remember.”

My laughter died as I stared at Sawyer, and all the little pieces clicked into place.

Lightning.

I looked at Jimmy.

Love.

I returned my gaze to Summer.

A bigger phoenix.

And I knew what I had to do.

“I choose Jimmy,” I said.

“No!” Summer shrieked, and lunged for me.

The Phoenix backhanded her; the fairy flew several yards and lay still. My mother walked across the grass and stared at the still form. Then she lifted her foot over Summer’s head. Before she brought it down, I turned and hurried toward Jimmy.

I could tell by the way he stared at me that he’d added all the parts and come up with the same solution.

I kissed him, quick and hard. No time for anything more. “I
do
love you.”

“I guess we’re gonna find out.”

I reached for my collar, casting a quick glance at Sawyer, who nodded, grim-faced, so I opened the catch. The necklace tumbled to the ground and someone gasped.

I stilled as the change flowed over me, relishing the flare of strength and power, the knowledge that anyone with a brain should be afraid. They should be very afraid.

In this form life was magnified—color and sound and scent. Every whisper, every movement, from the revenants crashed in my ears like waves breaking on a rocky beach.

Sanducci’s eyes glistened onyx, his hair blue-black night, his skin—

“Ahh.” I rubbed against him.

The sun sparkled off his skin, and he smelled like . . .

“Lunch.”

The vein in his neck pulsed as it called my name.

Ba-
bump
. Liz-
zy
. Ba-
bump
. Liz-
zy
.

“Do it,” Jimmy growled.

“Happy to.”

When I was a vampire, the urge to kill was impossible to deny. Hand in hand with that urge went another, that of an alpha wolf drawn to destroy any other alpha in the vicinity. I felt myself pulled toward Jimmy like the tide.

My fangs lengthened, the sensation itchy. The only thing that would soothe it was blood; the only way to end the buzzing in my brain was death.

But how to kill a dhampir. It wasn’t easy. Twice in the same way. Two stakes to the heart. Two golden bullets—kill shots in the exact same place.

I had no weapon but myself. I wanted to drain him, but how did I do that twice? Only one way to find out.

I reached for his head.

“No!”

The word swirled around me, along with a cool, twinkling mist. My arms fell to my sides. I was no longer on an errand of mercy; in this form I didn’t even know what that meant. I still wanted to kill Sanducci, but because of the fairy dust I couldn’t.

I guess Summer wasn’t dead. I’d fix that later.

My fangs still itched; my throat was parched; my stomach cramped in agony. But there was another powerful being very nearby.

I turned toward Sawyer.

“Lizzy, no,” Jimmy said. “That won’t help. You have to kill
me
.”

“Can’t,” I muttered, drawn across the grass toward the dazzling scent of blood and man and magic that was Sawyer. “And I’m
not
Lizzy.”

Jimmy began to curse and fight his bonds in earnest.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw fairy dust flying like cat fur in a catfight as Summer splashed the army of revenants.

“Grab her,” she ordered, and they went after the Phoenix like fury.

She fried them of course, but it took her some time. Which allowed me to reach Sawyer.

His face was so sad. I tilted my head. Sadder than I’d ever seen it. His pulse did not beat my name; his pulse barely beat at all.

“You chose him,” Sawyer said.

“Liz loves him. Always has, always will.”

“I know.” In his voice lay despair, and I breathed it in like nectar.

“So sad,” I murmured. “I like it.”

I pressed my hand to his chest, felt his heart beating beneath.

“One thing before I go,” he said.

“Be quick.” I was focused on the steady thump-thump against my palm. I wanted to feel that on the outside instead of the inside. I wanted to taste a heart as it stopped beating. I thought I probably could.

“I chose to leave a child behind.” My eyes flicked to his. “You must protect that gift of faith.”

“Whatever,” I said, and tore out his heart.

CHAPTER 34

I never found out if a heart could continue to beat on the outside of a body, because as soon as Sawyer died the power slammed into me like a truck.

In the distance thunder rumbled; I smelled rain on the wind. My hair crackled. The lightning danced nearby, and I wanted it.

Come to me.

The words were both in my head and in the roll of the thunder. Demonic laughter swelled; the whispers commenced, and I slammed the door. I was too fascinated with the magic to listen.

The Phoenix shrieked her rage, but there was nothing she could do. The fury of the storm was mine; I would command the lightning. Right now, as the newborn power flowed through me, I thought I could command just about anything.

I faced her. She was still fighting revenants, but she was mowing them down pretty fast. Summer had run to Jimmy, of course. But I didn’t care about them now; all I cared about was her.

“Bigger phoenix,” I growled, and called down the storm.

Bolts of lightning slammed into the ground at my feet. The earth trembled beneath my wrath. Blue light
shimmered; I had to close my eyes as the lightning hit me. The sizzle and burn, the flare of electricity, made my teeth hum. The back of my neck blazed, and I knew that I could fly.

Dark clouds shrouded the sun, turning the air so cold my breath became smoke. Dust swirled by on the wind, and the rain began to fall like tears.

“You bitch!” The Phoenix stalked across the yard and slapped me in the face. The more I got to know her, the happier I was about foster care. “I told you I was the only one who got to kill around here. Daughter or not, you die.”

“Good luck with that,” I said.

“You forget. I’m still the Phoenix.” She poked me hard in the chest. “And you’re not.”

Then she turned and headed for the porch. I assumed she’d read something in the key that she thought might kill me.

“Wrong,” I said, and clasped a hand to the phoenix tattoo imprinted on the back of my neck only moments before by the lightning.

Shifting as a vampire. God, it was great. The flash of light so much flashier, the bone-deep chill delicious when followed by the flare of welcome heat.

I fluffed my wings. The colors dazzled—scarlet and neon orange, daffodil against sapphire. I opened my beak and called out. The Phoenix froze as suddenly she understood.

Slowly she turned, lip curled like a rabid dog. “You
loved
him?”

Yeah, it was news to me too.

She shot fire in my direction, but I could fly, and I zoomed straight up, then dived back down, headed right for her. Except she’d already shifted, admirably fast, and we met a dozen feet off the ground.

Our clash was the thunder, the slash of fire new lightning. My wings sizzled, and I called on the rain to put them out. Before I circled back to hit her again, I’d grown new ones, and so had she.

The battle was epic—flames and blood across the sky. Feathers flew everywhere, like a rainbow tumbling to the earth in a thousand oval pieces.

We could do this for days—hurt and then heal, die and be reborn—but the simple fact remained that I was the bigger phoenix. I was more than just a firebird; I was a vampire and a shifter and now a sorcerer too; the depth of my power stunned even me.

So I called on the storm; I brought the lightning, and then I hit her with everything at once—fire and electricity, wind and magic.

Her outline flared white. The silhouette against the stormy sky made me think of a cartoon X-ray.
ZZZAAAPP!

Then the light went out. For a single instant she hung there, no longer brightly colored, but black as coal dust.

Slowly the cinders began to drip away, falling toward the ground like silver-edged snowflakes. Before they could pile into a drift and—who knows?—maybe regenerate, restore, renew, arise, I hit them with a gale-force wind and sent her in a thousand different parts to a hundred different places.

Resurrect that
, I thought.

I sailed downward, and the dust of the revenants blew past me like a sandstorm. I ignored them, all my intentions centered on the two beings left alive in the yard.

Summer had released Jimmy. They stood close, but not touching, staring up at me. As I neared, the fairy stepped in front of Jimmy, but he shoved her back.

I imagined myself as myself, and the change reversed—a bright flash, the heat gave way to a certain chill, and I touched down with five toes instead of three.

Naked, but I didn’t care. Vampires don’t care about much. Pure evil can be so liberating.

I still wanted to suck Jimmy dry—he practically glittered with power—and it occurred to me that if I killed the fairy, I could.

I crossed the short distance between us. Summer flew upward without benefit of wings, a graceful leapfrog, over Jimmy’s head, to land between him and me.

Idiot. I couldn’t touch him until she was dead, and she’d just made it so much easier.

I grabbed her by the throat, lifted her off the ground, glanced around for something to kill her with. I didn’t have to look far. An old bird feeder atop a steel bar listed crookedly at the side of the house. I dragged her in that direction by her shiny blond hair.

I should have known that something was wrong when Jimmy let me have her. He didn’t jump on my back; he didn’t yank off his cock ring and try to kill me. And I say
try
, because killing me just wasn’t going to happen—unless I chose to die.

Talk about liberating.

I reached the bird feeder, yanked it out with one hand, while I held Summer with the other. A quick shake and the wooden container on the top flew into the side of the house and burst into smithereens. I considered shaking Summer the same way, just for the hell of it. Could I rattle her brains? I kind of thought so.

But I wanted to open Sanducci’s neck, let the blood run free, touch it, drink of it and discover how long it would take him to die. Unless he tasted so good I
decided to keep him alive forever. The possibilities were endless once this annoying Tinkerbell takeoff was gone.

I needed cold steel, but the post in my hand remained warm from the sun that had shone down before I’d called the storm. I closed my eyes, and an icy wind stirred my hair. Seconds later hail pinged against the ground. I waited until my fingers cramped from the cold, until the metal became foggy with frost; then I lifted the post and prepared to ram it down her throat.

The light began to flicker and I paused, tilting my head upward. The sun came out from behind the storm clouds, but the shapes flying in front of it made the rays go dark-light, dark-light.

I’d seen this once before. When the Grigori had flown free of Tartarus they had made patterns across the full white moon. Now, they were returning at their master’s call—at my call—making the same shadows across the brilliant flare of the sun.