Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(14)

"Then what happened in Barnaby's Gap?"

"Jimmy's one of us."

"So we weren't warned that he's snacking on the little people? Sounds like a breakdown in communication to me."

"I saw him," Summer said quietly.

My eyes narrowed, and my mouth tightened. I didn't need reminding. "Why was that?" I asked. "You aren't a seer."

"And Jimmy's not a Nephilim."

"I'm not following."

"If the powers that be had sent a flash of Jimmy to any of the seers, a DK would have been dispatched and he'd be dead. Obviously they don't want him dead, hence the message to me."

"Conveniently minus the intel that he's gone off the deep end and started sucking on townspeople like a hungry six-month-old."

"That was left out for a reason. We're supposed to find him; we're supposed to help him. We are not supposed to kill him."

"The jury's still out on that," I said.

"Seems a little unfair since you're the judge, the jury, and—" She broke off, biting her lip.

"The executioner?" I finished. "Got that right."

"You want to punish him for something you don't know all the facts on."

"I know the facts, Summer. Jimmy shared blood with the strega; he became just like him. He started to kill people in that chrome tower in Manhattan. I know this because I was there. He kept me captive. He drank from me until I was too weak to fight back."

And the only reason I'd survived was because Jimmy hadn't known I had the power of empathy. He'd made me his sex slave in an attempt to take away first my will and then my life.

But the joke was on him, because in trying to hurt me, debase me, subjugate me, he'd actually made me stronger. When he'd taken my body, he'd given me his supernatural abilities. Those powers had allowed me to destroy the leader of the darkness.

"That wasn't him," she whispered.

"Walked like him, talked like him, looked like him." I didn't mention that it had f*cked like him, too.

I'd been so confused. I'd believed that Jimmy was still inside the thing that wore his skin, that if I could get him to remember what we'd had, I might save him. I'd been a fool.

"When I said you didn't know all the facts I wasn't talking about Manhattan," Summer said.

"Then what—" My fingers clenched on the steering wheel. I did not want to have this conversation.

"Didn't you ever wonder why he'd be so stupid as to sleep with me when he knew damn well you'd see it the next time you touched him?"

"I figured he was a man." I let my gaze sweep from the tip of her stupid white hat to the toes of her just-scuffed-enough boots. "He couldn't keep it in his pants any more than the next guy if you paid him."

"You don't have a very high opinion of men."

"Should I?" Every man I'd ever trusted had betrayed me.

She sighed. "You should think a little longer about Jimmy. He isn't as big of an idiot as he seems."

"That would be impossible," I muttered. If he were that big of an idiot, he wouldn't be able to walk and talk at the same time.

I continued to drive up the mountain, but I started to think, and I didn't like where my thoughts took me.

Summer was right—how I hated to admit that—Jimmy had known what I could do, so it followed that he knew I would see him with Summer.

"You're saying he wanted to end things?" I asked. "But he was too big of a weenie to face me, so he ..." I made a vague gesture in the direction of Summer's breasts.

"For someone with a standing reservation on the moron train, you throw the word around pretty easily at others."

I gaped. That was something I would say.

"If you think about it with your head instead of your childish heart," Summer said, "you'll see the truth." Her eyes lifted. "We're here."

I followed her gaze. Above us on the next curve of the highway, the large, black half circle of a cave loomed. Dotting the incline around it were no less than a dozen others. I didn't have time to worry about what Jimmy had done so many years ago. I had to deal with what he'd done lately.

I wheeled the car around the final bend, pulling it off the road and onto a gravel area carved out for breakdowns. We stepped out, glanced up, sighed.

"You take the ones on that side." I pointed with my left hand. "I'll take the ones on this side. Whoever finds him first—" I stopped, uncertain where to go with that.

"Wins?" Summer murmured, and floated upward without benefit of wings.





CHAPTER 6


I had to ascend the old-fashioned way—shuffling across the rock-strewn dirt, yanking myself over steep areas using exposed tree roots, sliding downward several feet here and there, then cursing Jimmy Sanducci, Summer, the Nephilim, and anything and anyone else I could think of.

Luckily I had superior strength and speed, thanks to Jimmy, and the cuts and scrapes I received healed almost immediately, thanks to him, too. Still, I would have preferred to fly. That had looked liked fun.

But I was sticking to my guns at least figuratively and making do with the powers I already possessed for as long as I could. I was certain that sooner rather than later, I was going to need more magic than I had to fight the Nephilim.