CHAPTER 29

“Yes,” Sawyer agreed.

His eyes were now closed; his forehead remained pressed to mine. I couldn’t hear any emotion behind that single word, couldn’t see any reaction in that granite face.

“And you were her DK.”

He stayed silent and still, our bodies aligned, our hands making a gesture of prayer against the bed.

The memory explained a lot. The connection between a seer and a DK is strong—a bond of secrecy and trust. Was that why Sawyer had come back to her when she’d risen? Had he been unable to stop himself?

“What happened?” I asked. “When did things go wrong? Why? How?”

Sawyer’s fingers threaded between my own, clenching so that our palms rode ever closer. The room receded as I returned to the past.

The scenes flash quickly, images like photographs tumbling from an album and cascading across the ground.

The flare of her eyes, yellow to orange, the shifting of her pupil to reflect what she saw, creatures that populated legends all dying by his hand. Time passes; together they fight, always together. He is as gifted at killing as she is at seeing what needs to be killed. Nothing can stop them.

Until it does.

“Where have you been?” Sawyer asks.

The shadow of Mount Taylor casts over them, purple against a dusky pink sky. Sawyer’s place looks almost the same as the last time I saw it. Perhaps the hogan is less weathered, the outside of the house less faded.

Time in the West is hard to determine. If the house hadn’t been there, the year could be B.C. for all I knew. The Navajo arrived on this continent back when Moses was still bobbing in the bulrushes, although they didn’t migrate south until much later.

I had no idea when the Phoenix had decided to come from Egypt or why. Maybe she’d had a falling-out with Cleopatra. I guess it didn’t really matter.

“I’ve been busy,” she says.

“People are dying, Maria. We’re supposed to stop that.”

She lifts her chin. “We can’t save everyone.”

“We’re supposed to try.”

“You’re the local killer.” She waves her hand. “Kill.”

The difference between the woman she’d once been and this one is marked. They’d been a team and now . . . they aren’t.

“I need you to tell me where and what they are,” Sawyer says. “I can’t see them the way that you do.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to wait until I see something.”

She turns, and he snatches her arm. “I’ve watched you, Maria. Talking to someone who isn’t there.”

“You’re wrong.” She pulls out of his grasp, shifts shape and flies away.

He lets her go, watching as she becomes smaller and smaller, fading quickly into the burgeoning night.

The scene changes. Sawyer still stands in the yard, but now a tan station wagon bumps up the drive. I recognize the vehicle, though it’s a lot less rickety than the day I rode in it.

The woman inside is Lucinda. She’s Navajo, a seer. She’s also dead, which gives me a strange, dizzy sense of being in two worlds, which I am.

Her face is as sun-bronzed as when I met her, but less lined, her hair black and long, without any silver threads. The hands that I’d once likened to monkey’s paws—shriveled, bony and dark—are just dark.

Her ebony eyes refuse to meet Sawyer’s. She’s as scared of him now as when she dropped me off at his mailbox, then hauled ass before he ever came out the door.

Sawyer is a skinwalker, to the Navajo, adishgash. A witch. They believe he hurts others for his own selfish reasons, and I suddenly understand why. He’s been out killing what they believe are people, or in some cases harmless, helpless animals. That those he killed are actually half demons bent on the destruction of the human race is not something those half demons go around sharing.

And Sawyer, being Sawyer, has probably gone along doing his job however he can do it, never worrying about how things look, never caring. In truth, he’s probably fed his legend by allowing people to see him kill, allowing them to see the bodies burst into ashes and disappear. The more others fear him, the less likely they are to come around and try to kill him.

Lucinda keeps her gaze fixed on her feet. “There has been an attempt on the life of the leader of the light.”

In Cairo I jerked, and Sawyer’s muscles bulged as he pressed my hands, my head, my body, back down. “Shhh,” he murmured. “It’s in the past.”

I hadn’t been worried about me. Hell, attempts on my life came along as often as breakfast. But Ruthie—

If the leader then had even been Ruthie.

“You’ve been summoned,” Lucinda continues.

“Why me?”

She glances up, then quickly back down. “You’re the best we have. You won’t stop until the traitor is dead.”

Sawyer lifts one shoulder, tilts his head, then twists his mouth in an expression that very clearly says, Got that right, before he begins to strip. Since, as usual, he isn’t wearing a shirt, shoes or even underwear, it doesn’t take much. He hooks his thumbs in his loose tan trousers and drops them to the ground.

Lucinda chokes, then runs for the station wagon. What is wrong with the woman? Scary badass or not, why refuse a free peek? Sawyer obviously doesn’t care. I doubt she’ll view a finer male specimen this side of paradise.

The sun glints off Sawyer’s skin, smooth and bronze, the ink of his tattoos seeming to sparkle and shimmer and shift. He traces a finger along his neck and lightning flashes from a clear sky as he becomes an eagle.

The beat of his wings is drowned out by the roar of Lucinda’s engine, then the spraying of gravel beneath her tires as she reverses direction and leaves Sawyer’s now-deserted homestead behind.

Night falls as the eagle catches the scent of Lake Michigan. The Bradley Clock looms out of the jumble of low-slung industrial buildings. He veers off before he reaches it, clinging to the tree line as he coasts over block after block of fifties-style ranch houses, zeroing in on the only two-story in the area.

It’s late. He purposely took his time, planning to arrive after midnight. There are eagles in Wisconsin, but not many and most live much farther north. None would soar into a suburb and land in a backyard.

He stands on the grass and tilts his snowy white head, black gaze on the windows. Every single one is dark.

Human intelligence, bird body, sometimes it’s a hassle. No thumbs to open the door even if it wasn’t locked. He could burst through a window, but which one?

He lifts his beak to the just-rising moon; his call is shrill and loud. No one who hears it will ever confuse that shriek with the chirp of a twirpy city bird.

“No need for all that racket.” A voice drifts free of the smoky tendrils that surround the house. “I’m right here.”

A much younger Ruthie steps into the frail moonlight—forties maybe—her dark skin unlined, her Afro still tight and short, but pitch-black, without a single strand of gray. Her breasts don’t sag; her legs aren’t veined, her hands not yet gnarled with arthritis.

I’ve never seen her like this, not in a photo or any dream or vision. To me she’s always been Ruthie—my only mother. Soft heart, bony hips, firm but gentle hand. But seeing her young has me wondering for the first time why she never married, although maybe she did. Maybe he died; maybe he left her. Being a seer isn’t for sissies. Being the leader of the light leaves precious little to spare for anyone else but those in the federation and those just begging to die by it.

Her thin arm is framed by a charcoal-gray house-dress, which only makes her appear even thinner, as its voluminous folds fall around her skinny body like a tent. That arm is wrapped in a stark white bandage; a tiny dot of blood has leaked through.

“Careful, or some nosy neighbor might call the DNR with a wild tale of an eagle in my yard. Been enough stories ’bout strange goin’s-on. Don’t need any more.”

That voice. I want to crawl out of Sawyer’s memory and right into her lap. When she’d died I’d been devastated, but having her pop into my dreams, flit through my head, speak to me even if it was to announce impending death by Nephilim had made her seem less gone.

Exchanging Ruthie for a whispering, whining demon had been like losing her all over again. Every time I saw her in my memories or the memories of others, or heard her voice coming out of Luther’s mouth, I wanted to weep, and I was not the weeping kind.

“There’s somethin’ I need done.” Ruthie lays her dark hand on Sawyer’s head, and he fluffs his feathers, preening. “I’d do it myself, but I got kids here can’t be left. Besides.” Her bony shoulder shifts beneath her sagging dress. “I’m the leader now. No more fieldwork for me.”

Those were the days. Since the battle is now it’s fieldwork for everybody. Although . . .

Ruthie was a seer. What in hell was she ever doing in the field? Funny how some answers only bring more questions.

“Someone came to kill me.” Ruthie glances at the dark house, and silvery moonlight spills across her face. Is that a shadow or the hint of a bruise along her jaw? “Tried to bring about Doomsday.” Her dark eyes narrow. “We ain’t ready for that yet. Someone knows where I live, what I am, and that can’t be. Only way to make it not be is for them to no longer be.” She lowers her gaze to the eagle’s. “Understand?”

Sawyer dips his head, waddles back and forth, back and forth on taloned feet.

“This ain’t gonna be easy.” Ruthie sighs, long and sad and deep. “It never is.”

She reaches into her house dress and pulls out a feather. Even in the moonlight, which seeps color from everything, making the backyard appear like a scene from 1940s film noir, the plumage is radiant.

Sawyer makes a different sound—caw, screech—an unearthly howl of shock and pain.

“Hush now,” Ruthie whispers, and lets the feather go. “Just hush.”

The feather coasts downward, a bright red slash canting to and fro, coming to rest half on Sawyer’s bird feet and half against the thick carpet of ebony grass.

He lifts his beak. Gray eyes meet black.

“You know what you have to do,” Ruthie says.

Sawyer picks up the feather and heads back to New Mexico, to the Glittering World, the Dinetah, where he can walk as both man and beast. He feels stronger there, in the shadow of that mountain where he first changed.

He waits, still and silent, the light from the fire flickering across his naked skin as he stares at that red feather night after day after night.

I appreciate his confusion and pain. There is right and there is wrong and attempting to kill the conduit to God . . .

So wrong.

That Sawyer’s seer, the one he trusts most on this earth to guide him, has obviously gone to the dark side . . . Well, it takes some getting used to.

Not that he isn’t going to kill her when she shows up. He has to. The only question is how. As far as he knows, there is only one Phoenix, which makes legends on how to kill them nearly as rare as they are.

He pulls out his ancient book, pages through it over and over. There are beings of fire and smoke. Hell, his mother is one. He’s tried to kill her every way he’s heard and read and learned, but he’s never had any luck.

He snaps the book shut. Lack of oxygen, dousing with water, covering with earth. The evil bitch has survived all of them. She has more magic than he does, and she probably always will.

The Phoenix is a shape-shifter. He can try silver; he can fight her as one of his beasts, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll just strangle her, drown her and bury her alive, one after the other, until something does.

At last the sound of great wings fills the sky, and the Phoenix appears, circling lower and lower until she lands on her feet in the yard.

Sawyer doesn’t waste any time. What would be the point? Words will only be lies; a touch will be an even bigger one.

He crosses the short distance between them as if he’s missed her so much, he can’t bear to be apart one more second. If he didn’t know the truth, he’d never notice the quick tensing of her body, the way she forces herself to relax, to smile, to let him draw her close and lean over, mouth hovering just above hers.

He lays his hand on her throat and she purrs; then he puts the other there and she frowns. As her eyes snap open, he squeezes, quick before she becomes a bird.

She’s strong; he’s stronger. Her hands pull on his, but they are like buzzing flies, annoying but no real trouble. Even when they begin to glow and his flesh begins to burn, he keeps up the pressure. He’ll heal soon enough.

But strangulation works no better on the Phoenix than it did on the woman of smoke. Even when the Phoenix has no breath, she doesn’t die, and eventually he releases her with a shove.

She falls to the ground, hands on her neck, taking great gulps of air. Her gaze, focused on him, is full of horror, as if he’s lost his mind instead of her.

Sawyer touches his eagle, shifts, then dives beak first, talons outstretched. Before the light fades from his change, she is a bird as well.

The battle rages. Neither one of them can win. Blood and feathers fly until the ground beneath them looks like a farmyard after a rooster fight.

This is getting them nowhere, so Sawyer flits up the mountain, leading her farther from the ground, closer to the summit and to a place he’s shared with no one else.

Below them the sun sparkles off the crystal mountain lake. He slams into her with all he has and takes her with him toward the water.

They hit the surface so hard it knocks the air out of them both. He holds her beneath as she struggles and kicks. The water begins to churn, to smoke and bubble; the chill turns to a caldron in minutes. The scent of boiling meat fills the air.

One second he is holding down a phoenix, brilliant feathers made even more so by the reflection of the sun on the water. The next he is holding down a woman, naked and slick; her dark hair mixes with the blood streaming from the deep cuts his talons are making in her skin.

She stares straight at him, and the confusion, the pain and the misery are so real—as if she doesn’t know why he is doing this—he nearly lets her go. For a second he thinks, I should have asked her, and then suddenly—

She stops fighting. Her eyes cloud over, and the life leaves her body like the air sifting from a tire. In the distance thunder rumbles, and somewhere lightning flashes. But the sky is completely clear.

Sawyer shifts, eagle to man, and drags Maria to the banks of the lake. Her face holds the eternal expression: Why?

He begins to wonder himself.

Reaching out to touch her, his hand trembles, and he yanks it back. Fury shoots through him, and thunder shakes the ground. He throws back his head; storm clouds race toward him as if he’s called them home, and he knows in a flash of understanding as bright as the lightning that slams into the earth all around them just what he has done.