Apocalypse Happens (34 page)

“I just . . .” I trailed off. I wasn’t sure what I’d meant to say.

“Everything happens for a reason, child.” Ruthie’s voice—Luther’s face softened. “Quit bein’ so hard on yourself. You did what you set out to do, didn’t you?”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

I’d saved the world, at least from this threat, but there’d be more.

“We’re going to have to find us another skinwalker.”

“There’s another?”

“How you think Sawyer got his first tattoos?”

I
hadn’t
thought of it. But obviously, since he hadn’t been a sorcerer until he’d killed my mother, someone had given them to him.

“It’s gonna take me a little time to track one down,” Ruthie continued. “You three get back to work. The Grigori have increased the Nephilim tenfold. There are more of them and less of us.”

“What about her?” I jerked my thumb at the fairy.

“Jimmy will keep an eye on her.”

I scowled. “She’s a soulless traitor.”

“She still has her soul and will until Samyaza takes form. Until then, we need her.”

I glared at Summer; she did the same right back.

“If Sanducci’s keeping an eye on her, who am I working with?” I asked.

“Me,” Luther said.

Jimmy and Summer went to her Irish cottage on the other side of the mountain. I called and checked in with Megan. She was fine and still had no clue that Quinn was anything other than a slightly klutzy bartender. She wasn’t catching a hint of his adoration either. Poor guy.

I went to bed early. I hadn’t slept since we’d left Cairo. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sawyer. Tonight was no different. As soon as I drifted off, there he was.

I chose to leave a child behind.

I sat straight up in bed, heart pounding so loudly I couldn’t hear anything else. What had he meant?

My hand drifted to my stomach, which was rolling and pitching enough to make me sick. “Nah.”

I was on the pill. Had been for years. However, I doubted something as flimsy as 98 percent effectiveness would stop Sawyer’s magic sperm.

Now my heart really started pounding. Which is why it took me a few seconds to hear the knocking at my door.

I tumbled out of bed, stumbled across the floor. Luther stood in the hallway, looking as tired as I felt.

He tapped his head. “We gotta go.”

“We?”

“Take my word for it, you’re gonna need me.”

The Grigori might be confined, but the Nephilim were still here. Not much had changed except there
were more of them, less of us. Until we managed to even things out, DKs and seers were going to be interchangeable. Luther and I would go out together and so would Jimmy and Summer, as well as a host of others I hadn’t met yet.

I might be the leader of the light, but there was a lot I didn’t know. What had happened to Sawyer? Who had stolen the
Key of Solomon
? Would we win or would they? Who would live and who would die?

“We need to get going.” Luther shuffled his big feet, then glanced uneasily over his shoulder. “It’s chaos out there.”

Well, there was one thing I
did
know. One thing of which I was completely, utterly certain.

“Chaos bites,” I said, and then I followed him into the night.

Read on for an excerpt from the next book
book Lori Handeland

Chaos Bites

Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Being the leader of the supernatural forces of good isn’t as cool as it sounds. For one thing, I had to put the world first. So everything else was second, third, four hundred and fifty-ninth. And we’re talking about important things like love, friendship, family. Which was how I ended up killing the man I loved.

Again.

Oh, I didn’t kill him twice. I killed two separate men. One didn’t stay dead, the other . . . I’m not so sure.

Yes, I’m in love with two different guys. It was news to me, too. Add to that the beginning of the end of the world and you’ve got chaos. As anyone who’s ever experienced it can tell you—chaos bites.

Since the night my foster mother died in my arms, leaving me in charge of the Apocalypse, chaos had been, for me, standard operating procedure.

Several weeks after I’d killed him, Sawyer invaded my dreams. He was a Navajo skinwalker—both witch and shape-shifter, a sorcerer of incredible power. Unfortunately, his power hadn’t kept him from dying. Considering that he’d wanted to, I doubted anything could have. I still felt guilty. Tearing out a guy’s heart with your bare hand can do that.

The dream was a sex dream. With Sawyer they usually were. He was a catalyst telepath—he brought
out the supernatural abilities of others through sex. Something about opening yourself to yourself, the universe, the magical possibilities within—yada-yada, blah, blah, blah.

I’d never understood what he did or how. Not that it didn’t work. One night with Sawyer and I’d had more power than I knew what to do with.

In my dream I lay in my bed, in my apartment in Friedenburg, a northern suburb of Milwaukee. Sawyer lay behind me. His hand cupped my hip; he spooned himself around me. Since we were nearly the same height, his breath brushed my neck, his hair—long and black and silky—cascaded over my skin. I covered his hand with mine and began to turn.

Our legs tangled, his tightened, along with his fingers at my hip. “Don’t,” he ordered, his voice forever deep and commanding.

“But—”

He nipped lightly at the curve of my neck, and I gasped—both surprise and arousal. I knew this was a dream, but my body was responding as if it weren’t.

He felt so real—sleek, hard muscles rippling beneath smooth hot skin. Sawyer had had an exquisite form; living for centuries had given him plenty of time to work on every muscle group for several decades each, honing every inch to a state designed to make women drool. He’d have been perfect if not for the tattoos that wound all over him.

To shift, most skinwalkers used a robe adorned with the likeness of their spirit animal. For Sawyer, his skin was his robe, and upon it he’d inscribed the likenesses of many beasts of prey. Sometimes, in the firelight, those tattoos seemed to dance.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Why do you think?” He arched, pressing his erection
against me. I couldn’t help it, I arched, too. Sure, it had only been a few weeks. But I missed him. I was going to miss him for the rest of my life.

Without Sawyer, the forces of good—aka the federation—were in deep shit. Certainly I was powerful, and would no doubt get even more so, but I’d been thrown into this without any training. I was like a magical bull in a very full china shop, thrashing around breaking things, breaking people. So far I’d been able to keep those who followed me from getting completely wiped out, but only because I’d had help.

From Sawyer.

“It’s a long trip from hell for a booty call,” I murmured.

His tongue tickled my neck in the same place he’d so recently nipped. “I’m not in hell.”

“Where are you?”

He slid his hand from my hip to my breast. “Where does it feel like I am?” He rubbed a thumb over my nipple, and the sensation made me tingle all over.

“I know you’re not here,” I said. “You’ll never be here again.”

I was proud I’d kept my voice from breaking, even though it had wanted to. I couldn’t show weakness, even to him.

Sawyer didn’t speak, just kept sliding his thumb over and back, over and back, then he sighed and stopped. I bit my lip to keep myself from begging him to start.

His lithe, clever fingers brushed over the chain that hung from my neck, then captured the turquoise strung onto it. “You’re wearing this again?”

Sawyer had given me the necklace years ago. I’d taken it off only recently. When he’d died, I’d put the turquoise back on. It was all I had left of him.

I hoped.

“I—” I paused, uncertain what to say. I didn’t want him to know how badly I missed him. How I rubbed the smooth stone at least a dozen times a day and remembered.

“I’m glad,” he said softly. “It brought me to you.”

In the beginning I’d thought the necklace just jewelry, but it had turned out to be magic, marking me as Sawyer’s, saving my life on occasion and allowing him to know where I was whenever he wanted to.

He let the turquoise fall back between my breasts. “Do you remember the last thing I said to you?”

I stiffened so fast I conked the back of my head against his nose. The resultant thunk and his hiss sounded pretty real to me, as did the dull throbbing in my skull that followed.

“Phoenix,” Sawyer snapped. “Do you—”

“ ‘Protect that gift of faith’,” I repeated.

He ran his palm over my shoulder. “Yes.”

“What does that
mean
?”

“You’ll see.”

I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath. Right before he’d said those words, Sawyer had said a few others. Words that had kept me up nights almost as much as his death had.

I chose to leave a child behind
.

I blotted out the memory of what had come after those statements with what had come not long before. He’d crept into the room where I was chained to a bed, a prisoner of my own mother, a woman I’d thought long dead. She’d been a winner. Five minutes in her company and I no longer regretted being an orphan.

The situation had been dire, yet he’d seduced me. I hadn’t wondered why until he was gone. My hand
went to my still-flat stomach. Had he left a child behind in me?

“Sawyer,” I began. I had so many questions. I didn’t get to ask any of them.

“You need to wake up now.”

“Wait, I—”

“Phoenix,” he said, then more softly, “Elizabeth.”

Most people called me Liz, but Sawyer never had.

“There’s someone here.”

In the next instant I scrambled toward consciousness, and as I did, the sound of his voice, the weight of his hand, and the warmth of his body began to fade.

“Someone or some
thing
?” I asked.

“Both,” he answered, and then he was gone.

My eyes snapped open, my hand already reaching for the silver knife beneath my pillow.

The world wasn’t what it seemed. Beneath the façades of many humans lurked half demons bent on our destruction. They’re known as the Nephilim, the offspring of the fallen angels and the daughters of men.

They’ve been here since the beginning, glimpsed more often in times past when wolf men and women of smoke were commonplace and gave rise to the legends we now see most often on the screen at the Multiplex. Unless you’re me, and then they show up in your apartment.

My fingers wrapped around the hilt of the knife even as I stilled, waiting for the slight buzz that signaled evil creepy thing to wash over me. But it didn’t.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, eyes narrowing, ears straining, then I took a deep breath, and my skin prickled. The bed smelled of Sawyer—snow on the mountain, leaves on the wind, fire and smoke and heat.

“Dream my ass,” I muttered.

Downstairs, outside, there was a soft thud, then the scrape of something hard against the pavement. A shoe? A toe? A claw?

As I crossed the room, I could have sworn fur brushed my thigh. I glanced down but saw nothing but the flutter of the loose cotton shorts I’d worn to bed along with a worn and faded Milwaukee Brewers T-shirt.

An odd cry drew me to the window, where I kept to the side and out of sight. New moon and the sky was dark, the stars pale this close to the city. The single streetlight in Friedenburg revealed nothing but empty sidewalks and dark storefronts. Which meant nothing. Nephilim rarely used the front door. They didn’t have to.

Uneasy, I glanced up, but found only shadows on the rooftops. Of course those shadows could become anything.

“Psst. Kid.”

I kicked the cot shoved against the wall in the corner. My apartment was an efficiency located above a knick knack shop. I owned the building, rented out the first floor, and was considering renting out the second. I was rarely in town these days. The only reason I was here now was that I’d promised my best friend I’d attend her daughter’s ninth birthday party. I owed Megan so much, the least I could do was show up when she begged me to.

“Luther!” I nudged the cot again. I didn’t want to touch him if I didn’t have to.

I was psychometric. Had been since birth I assumed, since I couldn’t remember a time that I wasn’t able to touch people and see where they’d been, what they’d done. In the case of the Nephilim, I could see what they truly were. Or at least I could until recently. Now I had Luther for that.

“Wha—? Huh?” Luther rubbed at his face. His kinky golden-brown hair stuck out from his smooth brown skin even more than usual.

“Getting any bad guy vibes?” I asked.

I’ll give the kid credit; he woke right up. “No,” he said slowly, head tilted, hazel eyes narrowed.

“You sleep pretty deep.” From what I heard, most kids did, though Luther would say he was no longer a kid but a man.

He swore he was eighteen, but I had my doubts. Tall and gangly, Luther’s feet and hands were huge. Many Nephilim had believed Luther’s awkward appearance meant he was slow and clumsy. However, Luther moved as quickly and gracefully as the lion he could become.

The kid was a breed—the offspring of a Nephilim and a human. Being part demon gave him supernatural powers. Being less demon than human meant he could choose to fight on the side of good. A lot of breeds did.

“I’d hear Ruthie if she had somethin’ to say. Wouldn’t matter if I was sleeping or not.”

Ruthie Kane, my foster mother, had been the former leader of the light. Now I was. In the beginning, she’d spoken to me on the wind, in dreams, or in visions, to let me know what flavor of evil lay behind a Nephilim’s human face. Now she spoke through Luther. I had demon issues.

“There’s something out there,” I said.

Luther’s silver knife appeared in his hand as quickly as mine had. Silver kills most shifters, and if it doesn’t, it will at least slow them down.

“Ruthie talking to you again?” Luther was already making his way toward the door that led to the back stairs.