Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(37)

"Yes and no." She took a deep breath. "Gypsies are nomadic. They've traveled all over the world, and in doing so, they've seen things."

"Nephilim kind of things?"

"Yes. Many of them have the sight."

"Why haven't we recruited them?"

"They don't deal with the gaje," she repeated. "But they do pretty well killing Nephilim on their own. The word dhampir means 'son of vampire' in Romany, the language of the Rom, which is what the Gypsies call themselves."

"And how, exactly, did the Gypsies start the dhampirs?"

"I shouldn't have said started; they discovered their powers, gave them a name and began to use them to fight the Nephilim long ago."

"Are you saying Jimmy's mother was a Gypsy?"

"It's possible, though the term dhampir has come to mean any offspring of a vampire and a human. Dhampirs can recognize vampires; they're extremely good at killing them. Legend says that they have all the good attributes and none of the bad."

"Tell it to Jimmy," I muttered.

"Unless they share blood," she continued. "Then they become more vampire than human, and the Gypsies kill them. Unlike the majority of the world, the Rom believe in the supernatural."

"Which is why Jimmy is headed there. He'll bare his fangs, snarl a little, maybe bite someone—"

"And they'll put a stake through his heart," Summer agreed. "Twice."

Hell.

"Stop him," I ordered. "Stop them."

"I'm on it," she said, and was gone.

I glanced at Sawyer. "I'm sure you heard that."

He blinked once, which I took as a yes, then padded to the door and waited for me to open it. Once I had, he loped to the overgrown held behind the motel and disappeared into the tall, dry grass.

I glanced around. Not yet dawn, no one was in the parking lot, thank goodness. I didn't want to explain why I had a pet wolf.

Sure, I'd tell anyone who saw him that Sawyer was a dog, and maybe in this area—city, not country—people would believe me. But if I'd been in rural Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, definitely Canada, not only would people laugh in my face, they'd probably shoot Sawyer before I even had the chance to lie.

Myself, I thought wolves were beautiful, or at least I had until I'd turned into one. Now I thought they were practical.

Wolves can run at speeds of up to forty miles an hour and can cover a hundred and twenty-five miles in a day. They've been known to follow prey at a run for five miles and then accelerate. They're good fighters, better killers, and in my new life, there were some situations where only a wolf would do.

However, folks in the northern reaches of civilization considered wolves varmints, and they shot them if they could get away with it. Sure, the species was endangered in some places, protected in others, but tell that to a farmer who'd lost several sheep or a calf. He'd blast the wolf into the next dimension, then bury the thing in the woods where no one would ever find it.

I remained at the open door in a towel, unwilling to take my eyes off the field where Sawyer had disappeared to do whatever wolves did in fields. What if a trucker with a rifle showed up?

Not that a bullet would have much effect on a skin-walker, or so I'd been led to believe. Though tales of Sawyer's indestructibility might have been greatly exaggerated just to keep me from blowing his brains out.

Still, that Jimmy hadn't ended him spoke volumes. I didn't need to be psychic to know that if Sanducci could have killed Sawyer, he would have and vice versa. Which was why Jimmy had gone looking for him in the first place. When he hadn't found him, Jimmy had moved on to Plan B.

While I waited for Sawyer, I retrieved my cell phone and hit speed dial for Megan. Anyone else, I'd be worried that I might wake her, but Megan was always up long before dawn. She said it was her only "alone time."

"You know, don't you?" Megan didn't bother with hello. Why waste words when you had caller ID?

I frowned. "Know what?"

"I was going to call you as soon as the sun came up."

Unlike Megan, I didn't need alone time, and getting up before the sun was considered cruel and unusual punishment. Or at least it had been before I'd gone on call twenty-four/seven for Nephilim disposal. Two months ago, if I didn't get out of bed, someone might have to wait for their beer; now people would die.

"Why were you going to call me?" I asked.

"There's been a murder."

"There are a lot of murders in Milwaukee."

The average person didn't know that Milwaukee was one of the top ten big cities on the murder hit parade, often coming in above Los Angeles in the ratings. Considering that Milwaukee was actually on the small side of big and L. A. was on the big side of large, that was just embarrassing.

"Not in Milwaukee," Megan clarified, "in Frieden-berg."

"Shit."

"At your place."

Was double shit a word?

"Who? How?"

"Do you know a woman named Jenny Voorhaven?"

The name sounded familiar, but I couldn't place her. In my line of work that happened a lot. People introduced themselves at the bar; we became great pals for a night while I listened to their incredible sob story—I'd heard some doozies—then I never saw them again.