Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(79)

We left Albuquerque baking beneath the summer sun and headed across flat, arid plains the shade of salmon and copper. Eventually mountain foothills appeared, dotted with towering ponderosa pines. In the distance, canyons surrounded by high, spiked sand-colored rock warred with red mesas, a landscape immortalized in the western movie classics of several previous generations.

An hour later, I reached for Sawyer's shoulder to shake him awake, but before my fingers even touched his skin, he opened his eyes and drew away from me.

Tiny houses dotted the horizon; the mountain rose behind them like a long, looming pyramid. Between 3.3 and 1.5 million years ago Mount Taylor had been an ac-tive volcano. Sometimes I still expected it to rumble.

The Navajo refer to it as their sacred mountain of the south or the turquoise mountain. Legends say it is fastened from the sky to the earth by a flint knife studded with turquoise.

I touched the stone still looped around my neck along with Ruthie's crucifix. "Did you find this on Mount Taylor?" I asked.

"Yes."

I thought that might be a very good thing. There was something magic about that mountain, always had been.

"Don't take it off," Sawyer said.

The turquoise had kept the woman of smoke from touching me. If I could capture Jimmy's evil essence, gain the strength that would allow me to fight her, and she couldn't fight back, then I'd win. This sounded like a slam dunk.

Which made me really, really nervous. I wasn't very old, might not get much older the way things were headed, but I'd learned long ago that when something looked like a slam dunk, it just meant you'd better get ready to eat the ball.

"You should probably remove the crucifix," Sawyer said.

I frowned. The crucifix had been Ruthie's. It was all I had left of her, except for her voice in my head, her presence in my dreams, and her power in my soul. Still, if this worked, if I became the darkness by becoming a vampire, the crucifix was going to burn one helluva hole in me. I'd heal, but I'd still like to avoid that.

I pulled over to the side of the road and slipped the silver icon from the chain, then handed it to Sawyer, before replacing the turquoise around my neck and easing back onto the highway.

A few minutes later, Sawyer murmured, "Turn at the next road."

I wheeled the Hummer off the paved highway and onto a dirt track. The subsequent dips and bumps woke Luther.

"We there yet?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.

I smiled at him in the rearview mirror. "Soon. I think you should stay in the car."

He dropped his hand, his head jerked up, and his kinky blond-brown hair waved. "Like hell!"

"It might be," I murmured.

"I can help," he said. "I'm a lion."

"Cub," Sawyer corrected.

"Bite me," the kid muttered.

"I'd be happy to."

"Hey," I interrupted. "We're on the same side."

All I needed was for the lion and the tiger—or wolf, cougar, eagle, whatever—to start fighting. Someone would get hurt, and I knew who that someone would be. We needed Luther, and about two million more like him.

"You'll stay in the car," I told the boy. I didn't want him to see what I might become.

He subsided, grumbling beneath his breath, sounding very much like a full-grown lion rather than the cub, but I thought he'd listen. I thought he'd stay.

"There." Sawyer pointed.

I slammed on the brakes. "Where?" I saw nothing.

"This is the fairy's house."

"What is?" Luther asked. At least he didn't see it, either.

Sawyer got out of the car and strode across the dry grass. He stopped, reached into his pocket, then, lifting his hands to the blazing sun, he chanted.

I got out, too. and followed, throwing one final "stay" glance over my shoulder at the kid. Sawyer finished whatever he'd been saying, then lowered his arms.

"I still don't see anything," I said.

He threw out his hands and something dry and pow-dery swirled in a sudden wind. The particles seemed to absorb then reflect all the colors around us—first yel-low, then tan. deep brown, and cayenne.

The powder paused and hovered, lingering as if thinking, perhaps listening. Then the wind died, the particles fell away, and where they'd once been now stood a house.

"What did you throw?" I asked.

Sawyer merely smiled.

The building looked strange sitting in front of the mountain revered by the Navajo. It looked even stranger when compared to the other houses speckled here and there across the land. Hogans, the traditional Navajo dwelling, abounded.

The round structures, made of logs and dirt, contained no windows and only one door, which faced east toward the sun. Next to most of the hogans were living quarters of a more modern nature—trailers, ranch houses, a few shacks. But nowhere was there an Irish cottage made of done.

"Is that real?" I murmured. "Or is it like the green hills and mists of Ireland?" Neither of which were in evidence today.

"Real enough," Sawyer answered, and at my exasperated hiss elaborated. "The dwelling changes, depending on her mood. I've come here and found a hacienda, a ranch complete with horses, a seaside villa, and a cabin deep in a dark forest of trees that would never grow in a place like this."