Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(15)

I'd left my Glock in the car and brought only the knife. Ricochets, rock chips, not to mention lack of adequate lighting, made shooting a firearm in a cave a tad ill-advised.

Hauling myself over a dirt embankment, I contemplated a dark, nasty cave. If I hadn't known better I'd think dusk was falling, but it was still too early.

I glanced to the west and cursed some more—just what I needed to make this day complete. Huge, indigo clouds of thunder rolled across the horizon. My luck, the storm would turn into a tornado.

Inside the cave I pulled out the trusty flashlight that had also been in my duffel, and scouted every creepy corner. No sign of Jimmy. It would have been too simple for him to be lurking in the first place I searched.

I continued upward, listening with one ear for Summer and with the other for a swish of wind. I remembered reading somewhere about storms in the mountains making the roads impassable. Wouldn't it just be special to get stuck up here all night with Jimmy the vampire on a rampage?

I talked big, thought big about killing him, but when push came to shove, it wasn't going to be easy—neither emotionally nor physically. Jimmy was dangerous. He had been even before he'd gone vamp.

Jimmy's real job—or perhaps it was his cover and the demon killing was his real job, hard to say—was portrait photographer to the stars. He traveled the world; he was in high demand. He'd always had the best eye for color, light, people, and it had taken him places.

But once he'd been a street kid like me, handy with a knife—I stroked the hilt of the silver blade—and he'd had a hair trigger of a temper. No one had crossed Sanducci back then; if they had, they'd been very, very sorry.

At the fourth cave, I hit pay dirt. At first I thought it was another empty, damp hole. But this one kept going; it was slightly bigger than all the others.

The air became cooler; I could smell water, hear a trickle somewhere in the distance. The narrow, rock walls widened until they opened into a cavern.

Something squeaked. Bats or mice. Either one didn't work for me. I swished the flashlight around and was turning to leave when my brain registered what I'd revealed in the far corner.

Feet clad in shoes, legs covered by blue jeans. Could be anyone, but it wasn't. I'd know the scent of Jimmy Sanducci anywhere.

Even when his scent was shrouded by dirt, water, moss, and other less pleasant odors, I could smell the last hint of cinnamon and soap.

Slowly I turned, casting the round yellow light upward. He was a mess.

The T-shirt had once been white but was now brownish gray and hung in tatters. His skin, always tan, even in the longest, coldest of winters, glistened; the ripples of his belly and the supple curves of his biceps and pecs shone lusciously in the light.

His dark eyes were closed; he muttered in a tense and uneasy sleep. Dark hair, tangled with sweat and dirt, fell across his just short of pretty face.

If I'd needed any more evidence that Jimmy was not himself, the dirt would have done it. From the moment he'd arrived at Ruthie's, he'd taken two or three showers a day. He always smelled better than anyone I knew. I figured his obsession with soap stemmed from so many years on the streets without it.

There were worse compulsions. Sucking blood, for instance.

I inched my knife from the scabbard at my waist, clutching the hilt so tightly my fingers ached. I crept forward, uncertain what I meant to do. I couldn't kill him while he slept, although if I needed to kill him that was probably my best bet. I just wasn't sure . . .

It would be so much easier if he opened those eyes to reveal a spark of red in their dark depths, then smiled with a mouthful of fangs and tried to kill me.

"Jimmy." I could barely hear myself speak, my voice drowned out by my own thundering heart.

Or maybe that was just thunder. The ground seemed to rumble with it.

"Jimmy," I tried again. This time I managed some volume to the word. Again it was drowned out but not by thunder.

The wind I'd expected rolled through the cave, stirring my hair as Ruthie's voice murmured, Black Howler.

I faced the entrance, far away and very small. Something moved into the gray fading light, making it flicker down the tunnel like a strobe.

From the tone and the volume of Ruthie's whisper I deduced the howler was a Nephilim and not a breed. Usually I could tell just by the number of bodies lying around. Nephilim like to kill.

However, certain breeds did, too. Some fought for us, some for them, and still others had yet to be swayed to either side. Same goes for the fairies.

I glanced at Jimmy. He continued to twitch and mutter, but he didn't wake up. I caught a few words. "No ... Can't.. . Won't... Thirsty." And then, "Sorry, Lizzy."

Hell.

He was the only one who called me that, and when he did, I knew it was Jimmy. When he'd been controlled by his freak show of a father, he'd called me "Elizabeth." I'd hated it almost as much as when he sometimes called me "baby."

The thing in the doorway moved forward. I clutched my knife tighter and went to meet it.

Big and shaggy, with a huge rack branching out from its bearlike head, this was quite possibly the ugliest Nephilim I'd yet to see. I wondered idly where the human part of it lay hidden, until I got close enough and saw that the long black hair shrouded a nose that would have been at home in the middle of anyone's face.

I kept my gaze averted, flicking glances at it out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't risk dropping dead, though I was starting to wonder if that power was a myth. If this beast had been long in the mountains, corpses would have been strewn all over the place.