Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(7)

"Jimmy's going to need help," Summer finished.

Panic flared. Had the woman of smoke gone after him?

"How do we kill her?" I blurted.

"Her who?"

"You aren't talking about the Naye'i?"



"Naye'i," she murmured. "Dreadful One. The only time I ever heard that was—" Her eyes widened. "Sawyer's mother?"

"Yeah."

"That bitch has been a nightmare since she was born," Summer said.

Hearing the word bitch come out of Summer's sweet mouth gave me a nearly irrepressible urge to giggle. The only way I was able to stop it was by remembering that I did not giggle. Ever.

"Haven't all the Nephilim been a nightmare?" I asked. "I think it's part of the definition."

"She's different."

"Why?"

"She's more than a Navajo evil spirit, she's a witch, too."

"I know. She gained her power by killing Sawyer's father." Who'd been a powerful medicine man in his own right.

I'd said Sawyer was hard to explain. That was one of the reasons. Being raised by a murdering-evil spirit-witch-demon would give anyone issues. We were lucky the guy hadn't been gibbering in a corner for the last few centuries.

"She's the reason I was headed to New Mexico to talk to Sawyer," I continued. "She showed up tonight and tried to kill me."

"You'd better get used to it," Summer muttered.

"Ruthie didn't have to deal with constant assassination attempts."

"None of the Nephilim knew Ruthie's identity."

"True." Everyone and Satan's sister knew who I was.

" 'Leader of the darkness kills leader of the light and sets in motion Doomsday,'" Summer recited. "But when you reverse that, you reverse everything. Or at least that's the rumor."

"Say what?"

"Haven't you noticed there hasn't been a whole lot of chaos going on?"

"Well, yeah."

"The scuttlebutt on the streets is that by having the head good guy—you—kill the head bad guy, we get a rewind. At least until—"

"Some other bozo with a god complex kills me."

Summer shrugged. I guess I knew now why the woman of smoke wanted me dead.

"Are you sure this is good intel?"

She nodded. "As soon as I heard the whispers, I nabbed a few Nephilim, beat the truth out of them."

When she said things like that I was never quite certain whether she was serious or not.

"They all spilled the same story." She twirled her finger. "We get a do-over."

"Why didn't we know this?" I asked. "Why didn't Jimmy or Ruthie or even Sawyer tell me?"

"I'm not sure they knew. The prophesies about the end times are confusing to say the least. Everyone interprets them differently."

"You'd think that Ruthie, having died and gone to her version of heaven, would have a pretty good handle on the truth."

"You'd think," Summer agreed. "But what is truth?"

I groaned. I hated existential questions. Give me black or white, good or evil, truth or lies. Please.

"We have free will," Summer continued. "So, we choose one path instead of another and the whole prophesy shifts."

"Swell."

"Ruthie's the first leader of the light to be killed by a leader of the darkness. They've tried, but they've never succeeded. Doomsday hasn't been set in motion before, though many believed that it was."

By definition Doomsday is the period of chaos that leads up to the Apocalypse. I'd really been hoping to avoid that ticking clock. Sure, it was going to happen eventually. The end of days was inevitable. But why couldn't it happen on someone else's watch?

"What do you mean, people believed that it was?"

"Every generation thinks it's living in the end times. The events of Revelation—Doomsday, chaos, tribulation, the beast, 666—could have played out at any point in history. But we've always stopped them."

"We. The federation?"

"Yes. The list of historical figures that could have turned out to be the Antichrist without us around is pretty long. Nero, Caligula, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, to name just a few."

"Those guys were Nephilim?"

"Did you seriously think they were human?"

Not really.

“You're saying that any demonic nut bag can become the Antichrist?" I asked.

"If he manages to fulfill all the requirements before one of us kills him."

"Requirements. Like killing me?"

"For starters, then killing all the DKs and seers."

The last nut bag had made pretty good headway on that.

"Then?"

"Charismatic leader of the world, rebuilding the temple, abolition of paper money, rising from the dead."

"Whoa. What was the last one?"

"Eventually, one of them is going to heal a head shot and then .. . what's that expression?" She tapped her pink nail against her pink lips. "All hell will break loose. Literally."

"Healing a head shot isn't much of a chore for most Nephilim."