Doomsday Can Wait (30 page)

"I don't think I would be, either," Luther muttered.

"And a lion's going to stick out in Indiana, Illinois. Missouri, hell, everywhere, like a—" I searched for an appropriate simile and floundered.

"Lion in a haystack?" Sawyer offered.

Was that a mixed metaphor? Maybe. But basically . ..

"Yeah," I said. "You have ID?"

Sawyer nodded, so did Luther. I nearly asked how that was possible, then decided it didn't matter, as long as we got where we needed to go and fast.

By the time dawn lightened the Louisville skyline, we were pulling into long-term parking, then heading for the terminal. I'd showered and changed in the locker room of the Brownport Bible College field house while Sawyer and Luther kept watch.

Since it was well after midnight, the place was empty. But I'd needed to wash away all traces of my ticket to dream walking before we went anywhere. Traveling— in a car or a plane—looking as if I'd been on the losing end of a very bloody fight was not a good idea. Sure, we could get out of jams using brute force or magic, but that took time. And time was one thing in short supply.

I don't know how I knew that but I did. Ever since I'd woken up with the moon shining down and a good portion of my brains on the outside instead of the inside, I'd felt as if a dragon were breathing fire on my neck. In other words, I needed to move forward and fast.

Inside the Louisville International Airport, I paused in front of  a news kiosk and read a few headlines.

EARTHQUAKE SHAKES ANTARCTICA

TORNADO HITS INDIA

BLIZZARD SWEEPS ACROSS KENYA

And the television was even worse. Riots. Murders. Fires.  I'd say it was a day just like any other day, but the anchors couldn't seem to keep up with the reports. One bad thing tumbled into the next and into the next.

"Chaos," I whispered.

"Doomsday," Sawyer said.

The urgency I'd felt earlier increased. If they hadn't called out flight right then, I might have slipped into a bathroom as a woman and come out something else.

Time turned back as we headed west. When we landed in Albuquerque, we'd gained several hours, yet several hours had passed, and so much more chaos had ensued.

As we walked through the Albuquerque International Sunport, headed for the rental car booth, I caught snatches of conversations.

"Something blew up in Israel."

Nothing new.

"London, Paris, Rome, and Madrid, too."

I cursed and glanced at the televisions. Smoke poured from several well-known buildings. Military personnel and law enforcement scurried around like ants.

"So far, nothing's happened here," someone murmured.

So far,
I thought.

"The world's gone crazy."

"Did you expect anything less?" Sawyer asked.

Not really.

"Why did they back off for a while?"

"I'm not sure that they did. You were blocked by the amulet, and I have a feeling a lot of others were, too."

"Just because we weren't seeing the chaos in our visions doesn't mean it wasn't happening."

"The world's screwed up. Until things really got out of hand," he lifted his chin toward the television, "it was just another day at Fox News."

Maybe he was right. Or maybe humans had started to feed off the evil of the Nephilim. Or the Nephilim had gone hog wild. And why not? Their time was coming; soon their creators would roam the earth, and the soulless would outnumber the souls.

Unless I managed to become the darkness as well as the light. I'd drop the dreadful bitch into the pit with all her friends, seal up any cracks in the door, then throw away the key. How was that for a plan?

"Compact, mid-size, full, or luxury?" the rental car clerk asked.

"What do they call those brand-new vehicles that resemble a tank on truck wheels?" Sawyer asked.

"Hummers?"

Sawyer's eyebrows lifted. "I always thought a hummer was something else entirely."

Considering this was Sawyer, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

So did the rental clerk. She looked Sawyer up and down—even in his stupid discount tourist outfit, he was hotter than hot—and licked her lips. "You'd like a hummer, sir? I think I can take care of that."

I just bet she could. Honestly, there was chaos all over the news, we were trying to save the world here, and I had to deal with slutty rental agents and Sawyer's innuendos.

"Any old car will do," I said.

"No." Sawyer quit having eye sex with the clerk and became all business. "Summer's place isn't easy to get to. We need that Hummer."

"Maybe you do," I muttered. Jimmy drove a Hum-mer.  Last time I'd seen it had been when he'd dumped me at Sawyer's and run off to become evil. Things had gone downhill from there.

However, I could understand why such a car would be helpful where we were headed, so I nodded at the woman, signed the papers, took the key.

Fifteen minutes later I stared at the military assault vehicle I'd just rented. "Who thought putting these on the road was a good idea?"

"Bigger is always better." Sawyer climbed into the passenger seat as Luther clambered into the back. "It's the American way."

I'd put my foot down at renting a taxicab-yellow tank, so ours was a sparkly shade of beige, which should blend into the desert, but wouldn't. Anything this big was going to stand out like a—

"Lion in a haystack," I muttered. That phrase was really growing on me.

I pulled out of the parking lot and headed west.

The Navajo reservation spread across Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, with the largest portion in Arizona. Sawyer lived near Mount Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains that marked the boundaries of the Dinetah. According to my walk through Jimmy's head, Summer's place should be near Mount Taylor, too, but on the far side.

I didn't know when Summer had moved to the reser-vation, but I did know why. She'd been sent to spy on Sawyer.

"You know where Summer lives?" I asked.

Sawyer's eyes were closed; his head lay back against the headrest. Luther, stretched out on the rear seat, was already fast asleep.

In this huge car, they both seemed so small. I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie—
The Incredible Shrinking Leader of the Light.
I had to reach up to get my hands around the steering wheel, tilt the rearview mirror way down. The only people who might be at home in this beast were Yao Ming or maybe Peyton Manning.

"You don't know?" Sawyer murmured.

"I got the gist," I said. "But what if she glamours everything up again?"

Sawyer opened one eye. "She will."

"Then maybe you should open both eyes and tell me where to turn."

He shut them instead. "Stay on this road. Wake me in an hour."

Silence settled over us; the steady, even cadence of both Sawyer's and Luther's breathing soothed me. I considered turning on the radio, but I was afraid there'd be no music, only news, and I'd heard enough.

What I needed to do was spend some quiet time preparing for what was to come. It was all well and good to say I was going to do whatever I had to, but when push came to shove, would I be able to go through with it? Would I be able to let Jimmy make me like him? Would I be able to battle with the woman of smoke and win?

The answer to every single one of those questions was: I had to.

We left Albuquerque baking beneath the summer sun and headed across flat, arid plains the shade of salmon and copper. Eventually mountain foothills appeared, dotted with towering ponderosa pines. In the distance, canyons surrounded by high, spiked sand-colored rock warred with red mesas, a landscape immortalized in the western movie classics of several previous generations.

An hour later, I reached for Sawyer's shoulder to shake him awake, but before my fingers even touched his skin, he opened his eyes and drew away from me.

Tiny houses dotted the horizon; the mountain rose behind them like a long, looming pyramid. Between 3.3 and 1.5 million years ago Mount Taylor had been an ac-tive volcano. Sometimes I still expected it to rumble.

The Navajo refer to it as their
sacred mountain of the south
or
the turquoise mountain.
Legends say it is fastened from the sky to the earth by a flint knife studded with turquoise.

I touched the stone still looped around my neck along with Ruthie's crucifix. "Did you find this on Mount Taylor?" I asked.

"Yes."

I thought that might be a very good thing. There was something magic about that mountain,  always had been.

"Don't take it off," Sawyer said.

The turquoise had kept the woman of smoke from touching me. If I could capture Jimmy's evil essence, gain the strength that would allow me to fight her, and she couldn't fight back, then I'd win. This sounded like a slam dunk.

Which made me really, really nervous. I wasn't very old, might not get much older the way things were headed, but I'd learned long ago that when something looked like a slam dunk, it just meant you'd better get ready to eat the ball.

"You should probably remove the crucifix," Sawyer said.

I frowned. The crucifix had been Ruthie's. It was all I had left of her, except for her voice in my head, her presence in my dreams, and her power in my soul. Still, if this worked, if I became the darkness by becoming a vampire, the crucifix was going to burn one helluva hole in me. I'd heal, but I'd still like to avoid that.

I pulled over to the side of the road and slipped the silver icon from the chain, then handed it to Sawyer, before replacing the turquoise around my neck and easing back onto the highway.

A few minutes later, Sawyer murmured, "Turn at the next road."

I wheeled the Hummer off the paved highway and onto a dirt track. The subsequent dips and bumps woke Luther.

"We there yet?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.

I smiled at him in the rearview mirror. "Soon. I think you should stay in the car."

He dropped his hand, his head jerked up, and his kinky blond-brown hair waved. "Like hell!"

"It might be," I murmured.

"I can help," he said. "I'm a lion."

"Cub," Sawyer corrected.

"Bite me," the kid muttered.

"I'd be happy to."

"Hey," I interrupted. "We're on the same side."

All I needed was for the lion and the tiger—or wolf, cougar, eagle,
whatever
—to start fighting. Someone would get hurt, and I knew who that someone would be. We needed Luther, and about two million more like him.

"You'll stay in the car," I told the boy. I didn't want him to see what I might become.

He subsided, grumbling beneath his breath, sounding very much like a full-grown lion rather than the cub, but I thought he'd listen. I thought he'd stay.

"There." Sawyer pointed.

I slammed on the brakes. "Where?" I saw nothing.

"This is the fairy's house."

"What is?" Luther asked. At least he didn't see it, either.

Sawyer got out of the car and strode across the dry grass. He stopped, reached into his pocket, then, lifting his hands to the blazing sun, he chanted.

I got out, too. and followed, throwing one final "stay" glance over my shoulder at the kid. Sawyer finished whatever he'd been saying, then lowered his arms.

"I still don't see anything," I said.

He threw out his hands and something dry and pow-dery swirled in a sudden wind. The particles seemed to absorb then reflect all the colors around us—first yel-low, then tan. deep brown, and cayenne.

The powder paused and hovered, lingering as if thinking, perhaps listening. Then the wind died, the par-ticles fell away, and where they'd once been now stood a house.

"What did you throw?" I asked.

Sawyer merely smiled.

The building looked strange sitting in front of the mountain revered by the Navajo. It looked even stranger when compared to the other houses speckled here and there across the land. Hogans, the traditional Navajo dwelling, abounded.

The round structures, made of logs and dirt, contained no windows and only one door, which faced east toward the sun. Next to most of the hogans were living quarters of a more modern nature—trailers, ranch houses, a few shacks. But nowhere was there an Irish cottage made of done.

"Is that real?" I murmured. "Or is it like the green hills and mists of Ireland?" Neither of which were in evidence today.

"Real enough," Sawyer answered, and at my exasperated hiss elaborated. "The dwelling changes, depending on her mood. I've come here and found a hacienda, a ranch complete with horses, a seaside villa, and a cabin deep in a dark forest of trees that would never grow in a place like this."

"Don't people in the area get a little wigged out?" I started up the cobblestone walkway, and Sawyer followed.

"I don't think people in the area are aware of her being here at all. If they were, they'd be forced to take action."

"Because they'd think she was a witch," I said.

Sawyer didn't answer. He didn't need to.

"What would they do?"

"Common practice is to tie a witch down, no food or water until they confess."

"And if they don't confess?"

"Hot coals to the bottom of the feet on the fourth day."

"And then?"

Sawyer slowly drew his finger across his throat.

"What if they do confess?"

Sawyer made the same gesture in the opposite direction.

"That hardly seems fair."

"Since when has life or death or justice, for that matter, ever been fair?"

What a bright and cheery outlook on life. Sadly, Sawyer was right.

"I guess the Navajo method is no better or worse than the Inquisition's test for witches," I said. "If you survive drowning, you're a witch and you burn. If you drown, whoops. Sorry. My bad."

Sawyer stopped and glanced at me with a deadpan expression. "I highly doubt any members of the Inquisi-tion said 
my bad."

"And I doubt they said
sorry."
Or
whoops,
either.

For an instant I nearly forgot where we were, what we—make that I—was about to do, and smiled at him. Then, out of the corner of my eye, something shifted, shimmered, and changed shape.