Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(8)

"I know."

"Then we move forward on the assumption that we've been granted a reprieve."

"We move forward as we always do," Summer said. "Kill them, kill them, kill them."

"At this rate," I said, rubbing my forehead, "the cycle might never end. Kill the leader of the light—Doomsday; kill the leader of the darkness—not. Doomsday, not, Doomsday, not." I was getting dizzy.

I lowered my hand as something occurred to me. Ruthie told me the final battle is now."

"Maybe." Summer's deceptively innocent blue eyes met mine. "There's never been anyone like you before."

"So according to the rumor"—which should be a legend by next week—"by killing the leader of the darkness, I thwarted Doomsday. To start up another, they'd have to kill me. But I'm not going to be as easy to take out as Ruthie."

"Then there's nothing to worry about."

"Except psycho evil spirit bitch—"

"Witch," Summer corrected.

"No, I had it right." We shared a smile, then realized what we were doing and stopped. "She's—uh—after me," I finished. "And I don't know how to kill her."

"First things first," Summer said. "We get Jimmy, then we find Sawyer."

"Does it have to be 'we'?" I asked.

Me and Summer on a road trip. Hunting down Jimmy Sanducci and confronting him together.

Talk about a nightmare.





CHAPTER 4


A '57 Chevy Impala was parked in front of my building, light blue and so gorgeous it brought tears to my eyes. Summer walked to the driver's side and got in.

"This is yours?"

She shot me a duh look.

Summer the fairy couldn't fly—at least on a plane.

She messed up the controls, and when dealing with several tons of airborne metal and fuel . . . extremely bad idea. She could hit the skies without wings, a trick I'd yet to see, but cloud-dancing people tend to get noticed. So, unless there was a dire emergency that required her immediate presence—and there were quite a few— Summer stuck to cars.

"I meant, what happened to your pickup?"

"That's for New Mexico. This"—she smoothed her hand over the dash—"is for the road."

Yes, it was.

I wasn't a classic car nut. I drove a Jetta, for crying out loud. But I'd always admired old automobiles, the ones that really sucked the gas. Those cars had balls, guts, chutzpah—real staying power. It had always made perfect sense to me that Christine, Stephen King's car that never died, had been a 1958 Plymouth Fury.

Summer pulled away from the curb and pointed the Impala southwest. "What's in your pocket?" she asked.

My hand stilled in the act of rubbing the amulet. I hesitated, then realized that two heads were better than one, even when one of them was Summer's. She'd been around as long as the woman of smoke. That had to be good for something.

I drew out the necklace. "I tore this off the Naye'i."

Summer glanced at the copper circlet and frowned. "That's a pentacle."

"Never heard of it."

Which wasn't surprising. Ask me how to clean a gun or mix a martini and I was a damn genius, but ask me about secret Satanic things and you could color me worthless.

“Pentacles are amulets used in magical rites," Summer said. "The star is a pentagram—five points. If the symbol is drawn with one point up, we're talking good magic."

"And if there are two points up and one point down, like this?"

"Black magic."

I wasn't surprised. "Until I tore the amulet off the Naye'i, I didn't know what she was. I think it blocked my sight."

"Fantastic," Summer muttered. "What if there are more of them out there?"

I hadn't thought of that. I'd just been concerned that there was one.

"How do you know all this stuff?" I asked.

Since I'd been thrust into my role as leader of the federation, along with my destiny as a seer, with virtually no preparation, I didn't know all I was supposed to about the Nephilim. In truth, I didn't know anything.

DKs were trained in killing tactics. Seers were just supposed to see, but I was both. However, I hadn't had the time to study the ancient texts, the legends of every country and people. The way things were going, I doubted I ever would.

Thus far I'd made do with consulting any available DK and that friend to seekers of knowledge everywhere, the Internet.

"I've been doing this a while," Summer answered. "There's also a Web site where DKs and seers have begun to enter into a database what they know about a particular Nephilim or breed. Cuts down on research time."

"Why don't I know about this?"

"Just went live in the past few weeks." She rattled off an address, then told me how to access the files with a code. "It's not comprehensive since DKs are better at killing than typing, and a lot of knowledge was lost when three-quarters of the federation was wiped out."

I cursed.

"Live with it," Summer said. "And move on."

I didn't have much choice.

"Have you ever seen anything similar to this?" I held up the amulet.