Apocalypse Happens (5 page)

I moved forward, yanked him in, glanced into the corridor—empty—then locked the door. A thud had me spinning around.

Jimmy had gone to his knees. Summer caught him before his face kissed carpet. She began to fuss over him, gentle touches, soothing murmurs. He laid his head in her lap; the bruises flared dark purple against his olive-toned skin, but even as I cataloged them, they began to fade.

“Back off,” I ordered Summer “He needs to talk.”

She ignored me, whispering into his hair, petting him like a child.

I shoved his leg with my foot. He didn’t open his eyes. Passed out. Fantastic.

Reaching down, I patted him myself—once, hard on the cheek.

“Don’t,” Summer ordered in a voice I’d never heard
from her before—low, deadly, that of the demon killer she’d become and not the fairy she pretended to be.

I might have been scared, if I wasn’t already terrified. Something that could kick Sanducci’s ass like this was something we really needed to be prepared for.

“He can’t take a nap,” I snapped. “I need to know how many, of what and how soon they’re going to get here.”

“They’re all dead, or he wouldn’t be back.”

“What
are
they?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does. Why didn’t he wake me? Why didn’t they call me too?”

“He didn’t get a call. He just went hunting.”

“Excuse me?”

“He does that sometimes. When he’s . . .” She lifted one bare, perfect, white shoulder. “Upset.”

“Upset,” I repeated, and something shifted in my chest. For an instant I felt like crying; then I remembered I didn’t cry.

“When he feels out of control.” Summer threaded her fingers through Jimmy’s shaggy black hair. “Like when he was a child and—” She looked up. “You know.”

I did. When we were kids, on the street, we’d been prey and not predator. Things were different now.

Unless you were staked to the ground being tortured by Nephilim. Or being raped by someone you trusted.

“This is your fault,” Summer said. I didn’t argue.

Once I’d known Jimmy better than anyone on this earth. Sure, there were things he hadn’t shared—he was a dhampir, a demon killer, a bastard; I’d had to
find all that out for myself. I’d thought I was the only one—besides Ruthie—who knew about his past. Guess not.

Jimmy moved, groaned; his eyes fluttered, then opened and stared directly into mine. For an instant, his lips curved, and the expression in his eyes was one I remembered. He loved me. But memory returned, and the smile died along with the love.

His gaze slid away. He peered at Summer. “What are you doing here?”

“I knew you’d need me.”

Fairies supposedly have the sight, though I hadn’t observed any evidence of that myself. If Summer was so damn psychic, why was she a DK and not a seer? Maybe she wasn’t that good at it.

Summer had told me I’d meet my mother one day, and that I wouldn’t like it. So far that hadn’t happened, and I wasn’t holding my breath. My mother had dumped me, probably because I’d done something weird. No one had ever mentioned my father.

“What the hell, Jimmy?” I demanded. “You just take off? You could have gotten killed, and I’d have no idea what happened.”

“I wasn’t going to get killed.”

“How did you know where to find any Nephilim?”

He snorted, then winced and lifted a bloody hand to his nose, which was crooked. He twitched it back into place, and the thing knit together with a sickening slurch. “They’re everywhere, Elizabeth.”

Usually he called me Lizzy; sometimes, to my everlasting annoyance, he called me baby. But apparently not anymore.

“The way this works,” I said, “is that your seer has a vision, contacts you and tells you where to go, what to kill.”

Jimmy sat up, shrugging off Summer’s helping hands. “I know how it works.”

“Then explain what you just did.”

“I sense vampires. It’s what I do. What I am.”

“So you went out and staked a nest by yourself?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“Why do you think that’s okay? We get our orders from—” I stopped. I’d never been quite sure where those orders came from. Ruthie said God, and who was I to argue? I did know that the orders came; we obeyed. We didn’t just go hunting. Or at least I didn’t.

I glanced at Summer. “You ever go out on your own?”

“Sure,” she said.

“And how do you know what’s a Nephilim and what’s a human with an overdeveloped asshole gene?”

“Experience,” she answered. “I can sense them too.”

In theory, I understood what she meant. When evil came near there was a certain buzzing in the air. But still—

“What if you’re wrong? What if you cut the head off of a . . .” I paused, uncertain where to go with that.

“A serial killer?” she supplied. “A child molester? A gang-banging, drive-by-shooting, drug-dealing prick?” Summer flipped her palms upward. “Bummer.”

I blinked. “Bummer?”

“You know as well as I do that most of the psychotic killers in this world are just Nephilim begging to be dusted.”

“Most?”

“All. They’re
all
Nephilim.”

Somehow I doubted that.

“You don’t think the world is a better place without them, be they half demons or not a demon at all?” Summer asked.

“I didn’t say that.” But I’d been a cop. I’d believed in what I’d done, loved it, thrived on it. That I’d had to give it up didn’t make me believe in it any less.

“We let the law handle the human bad guys.”

“Because they’ve done such a great job so far,” Summer muttered.

“They’re doing the best that they can.”

“We can do better.”

“Everyone thinks that.”

“But we actually can.”

Jimmy got to his feet, lips tightening in pain even though most of the bruises and cuts had disappeared. “Let it go,” he said. “Hunters hunt. We can’t help ourselves. Evil is evil, and it has to be stopped.”

I knew when I was beaten. I could tell them not to go out and fight the Nephilim, but they were going to do it anyway, and who was I to change the way things were, the way they’d always been? The federation had been around a lot longer than I had. Than we all had.

I narrowed my gaze on the fairy. Except for her.

Jimmy took a step toward the bathroom and stumbled. Both Summer and I lunged forward, each grabbing an arm; then we froze and glared at each other.

“You can fly away now,” I said.

“Eat shit and die,” she returned.

“Um, you mind?” Jimmy tugged on his arms. “You make me feel like you’re going to split me down the middle like a wishbone.”

I started; so did Jimmy. We’d both made use of that practice to kill when we were vamps. The spray of blood was like a Las Vegas fountain.

Do it again
, whispered the demon.

Jimmy licked his lips. I knew what he was thinking. Same thing I was. Or same thing my demon was.

He shifted his arm. I let him go. Summer didn’t, so I grabbed him again and he sighed. “You can go back to your room, Elizabeth. Get some sleep. I’ll be fine.”

As if I could sleep—

“What about her?” I asked. My voice sounded childish, petulant, which worked out because that was how I felt. I wanted to kick Summer, and Jimmy, in the shins. “Is she going back to her room?”

Jimmy didn’t answer. Instead he limped into the bathroom, and he took Summer along.

Which, I guess, was answer enough.

At least his damn Yankee shirt was toast.

My cell phone was ringing when I got back to my room. The connecting door was busted, so I left it hanging open and snatched the phone from the dresser.

“Phoenix,” I answered.

“Yes, hello.”

The voice was familiar, but not one I immediately recognized. Not surprising since the remaining members of the federation all had my number, yet most of them I’d never met.

“This is Xander Whitelaw.”

Not federation, but he at least knew the score. Alexander Whitelaw was a professor at Brownport Bible College in southern Indiana. Specialty: revelatory prophecy. However, before he’d gotten his doctorate in that, he’d studied obscure supernatural legends, particularly those of the Navajo. He’d been a great help last month when I’d needed to find a way to destroy the Naye’i, a particularly nasty Navajo witch with an Antichrist complex.

“Dr. Whitelaw, what can I do for you?”

“I found something,” he said.

I’d sent Whitelaw to look for the
Book of Samyaza
and the
Key of Solomon
, or at least a clue about the location of either one. He was a fantastic researcher, but I hadn’t figured he was this fantastic. He’d only been at it for a few weeks, and those books had been lost for . . . hard to say, since one of them had never been seen and the other was mostly a rumor.

“You need to come to Brownport.”

“You can’t just tell me?” I asked.

“Not a good idea.”

He didn’t elaborate, but I could hear what he wasn’t saying even without touching him.

Cell phones aren’t secure, and the information he had for me wasn’t information that we wanted in the wrong hands, for obvious reasons.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” I said, and hung up.

The eastern horizon was turning a murky peach when I strode back through the broken door. I hadn’t heard anyone come out of the bathroom. The bedroom, the bed, was empty—thank God—but . . .

Outside the closed bathroom door, I hesitated, biting my lip; then I knocked once and walked in.

Jimmy lay in the bathtub, the water tinged rusty with blood, his skin paler than usual, ghostly white against the blue-black length of his hair.

For an instant I thought he was dead, and my gaze went to his hands as I imagined the horizontal slashes on his wrists. Of course they weren’t there. Jimmy couldn’t kill himself that easily.

Nevertheless, I gasped, and he opened his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

The image of Jimmy dead in the water fled and
another took its place—the real one, the one in front of me now.

Sanducci sprawled naked in the tub, one leg hanging over the rim, his hair curling from the heat, the ends floating on the surface, tickling his shoulders, his chest muscles, his abdomen slick and moist.

I couldn’t help it. I licked my lips, and the curiosity in his eyes turned to disgust.

“No,” he said, and sat up, twitching the curtain across the rod with a shriek that nearly made me jump out of my shivering skin.

No
. That was new. Since the first time he’d touched me the answer—at least to that particular question—had always been yes. Of course we were no longer the people we’d been at seventeen. We weren’t really people at all.

“Don’t you knock?” Jimmy asked.

“I knocked.”

“I didn’t hear you or I’d have said, ‘Go away.’ ”

I was getting pissed, probably because I understood his disgust, felt it myself. I hated the vampire inside of me almost as much as I hated the one inside of him.

The demon began to laugh.

“Shut up,” I muttered.

Jimmy cast me a quick, sharp glance around the edge of the curtain. I wondered how much his vampire whispered to him—and how often he listened.

“We’ve gotta go.”

The water sloshed as Jimmy sat up. “What and where?”

He thought we’d gotten a call. We had—or at least I had—but not that kind of call. “Not Nephilim,” I said. “A lead on the key.” Or maybe the book.

“All right.” Water sloshed again. “Can you—uh—get out?”

I blinked. “What?”

“I’m naked.”

I laughed. “Right.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’ve seen it all before, Sanducci.” And it was good.

“Then you don’t need to see it again. Get out.” His voice shook, broke.

I got out.

Our roles had reversed. Not very long ago I’d been the one saying,
Don’t look. Don’t touch. I despise you.

It hurt more than I’d thought it could. How had he stood it when I’d hated him more than I’d loved him?

I took a deep breath and forced myself to stop shaking.

“Big, bad demon hunter,” I muttered.

I needed to hit something. Summer would do. Beating the location of a dagda out of her was next on my list anyway. I glanced around the room. Empty.

I walked into mine and found it the same way. By the time I returned, Jimmy was coming out of the bathroom fully dressed and scrubbing a towel through his hair.

The scent of him wafted over me—sweet water, tart soap and cinnamon aftershave. Jimmy always smelled like he’d just stepped out of the shower. Usually because he had. When we were kids he’d hog the bathroom two or three times a day. It had taken me a few years to figure out that his time on the streets without the luxury of cleanliness had made Sanducci a tad obsessed with it.

“Where’s the fairy?” I asked.

“Gone.”

“Where?”

He shrugged.

“Sanducci, you knew I wanted to talk to her.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Talk to. Beat on. Whatever. I need to know where to find a dagda.”

“She wasn’t going to tell you.”

“You told her to fly away,” I accused.

“
You
told her to fly away.”

Shit. I had.

“I can ask Sawyer.”

Jimmy’s lips curved. “Not right now you can’t.”

Sawyer was a Navajo medicine man. He was also a skinwalker—both witch and shape-shifter—one of the most powerful beings on earth. And he didn’t have a telephone.

“It’s only a matter of time until I find out what I want to know. You could tell me and save everyone some trouble.”

“I don’t know where to find a dagda.”

I crossed the room and put my hand on his arm. He shoved me so hard I flew onto the bed, bounced once and tumbled off.

“My thoughts are my own,” he said. “Stay out of them.”

I got to my feet. Before he’d shoved me, I’d seen the truth. He didn’t know.

“You can’t just go around touching everyone, invading their minds, stealing their secrets.”

“Actually, I can.”

Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “Oh, really?”

In the past I couldn’t read everyone all the time, couldn’t see everything. I still couldn’t, but I was getting better at it.