Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(91)

Shit. This was going to be a lot more difficult than I thought. But I guess if she were easy to kill, everyone would do it.

I sat up, and the Naye'i backhanded me so hard I skidded across the ground, stray rocks gouging my bare ass. One of my fangs pierced my lip and blood flowed.

Her laughter echoed in the mountain's rumble. "You thought it would be simple. Become the darkness and swallow me whole. But / am the darkness." She lifted her hands to the silver-tinged night, and lightning rained down. "And you will be the one to die."

If I didn't move, I would die. I scrambled to my feet; her smirk said she'd let me. The fury came back, both icy and hot. I would bathe in her blood; I would use her bones for chopsticks. When she was dead I would dance a jig on her corpse.

There, that was more like the new me.

I tried to sweep her legs from beneath her. But she jumped my sweep, then hovered above me.

I leaped upward, very Matrix-like, and tried a roundhouse kick. She leaned back and my foot missed. My momentum swung me downward so fast I nearly ate dirt before I managed to get my hands in front of me.

"How to kill a vampire," she mused.

My back exposed, I flipped over just as she snapped her fingers. A wooden stake appeared in her hand, and as she threw the thing, I rolled. The stake stuck in the ground where my heart had just been.

Fire billowed all around me. Beyond the flames, the Naye'i seemed to dance.

"I'll kill you every way there is to kill a vampire. Little by little you'll die; then I'll do it again. And when you're nothing more than a pile of blood and empty skin—no Sawyer, no robe, no way to shift and heal— then the gates of hell will fly open, and I will rule every demon on this earth."

"Killing me will open Tartarus?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Can't hurt."

"Do you know how?"

I leaped through the fire; the places it burned healed almost instantly.

The Naye'i looked as if she'd sucked on a lemon.

"You think I'd tell you?"

"Can't hurt."

"This might," she said, and opening her arms, fingers spread wide, she swept her hands toward me.

Rocks flew, hundreds of them in all shapes and sizes, raining down on me, crushing me into the earth, piling up until I was buried.

When things stopped pinging against the cairn, I shoved upward and they all fell away. "What the hell was that?" I asked.

"Cover a vampire's grave with stones and she will never rise."

"I'm not dead" I said.

"Good point." She flicked her wrist and something small and sharp and shiny flew, sticking in my temple before I could catch it.

"Ouch!" I yanked out a three-inch nail, and the Naye'i shrieked her fury to the stars.

"Why don't you die?"

"Why don't you?" I countered.

She was trying to kill me nature by nature—a common cure. I'd tried it myself with Jimmy, hadn't managed it yet. But killing a vampire/dhampir/skinwalker was going to be a very neat trick. Not that she couldn't do it if I kept letting her try. Sooner or later the woman of smoke was going to hit on something that did kill a vampire, and then she'd ease on down the road to the next nature. I had to take away her magic, and thanks to Whitelaw I knew how.

"I hate to keep calling you psycho hell bitch," I said. "Though it does fit."

She flicked her wrist and a gun appeared. Before she could point it in my direction, I smacked the weapon out of her hand, and it slid across the dirt with a metallic ping-ping-ping. When she predictably went for my throat, I snatched those hands in mine and murmured, "What is your name?"

It was an old trick but a good one. She didn't have time to block me, to think of something else, to even figure out what I was doing. I touched her just as she thought, Lilith.

"Lilith?" I let her momentum carry her past me, and when I released her she sprawled in the dirt. "Not the Lilith?"

The woman of smoke flipped onto her back.

"You can't be that Lilith."

Her eyes widened as she realized what I meant to do. Her arm began to rise, no doubt to throw some other deadly magic my way, but I finished the spell with a final, "Lilith."

She screamed, but instead of sound a cloud of black sparkly dust rose from her mouth, swirling away on the wind and disappearing into the night.

"Aw. I think that was your magic. Bummer," I said, and decked her.

I had vampire strength; she flew about ten feet, scrambled to get up, and I hit her again.

She'd had the advantage as an evil witch, but without the witch, she was just evil.

That made two of us.

She landed on the far side of the gun, which lay about halfway between us. With my vampire speed I snatched the thing before she could slither in its direction, then pressed the muzzle to her temple.

The woman of smoke froze; her burning black eyes rolled up to mine, and she sneered. "Go ahead."

My finger twitched. The idea of blowing her brains to kingdom come was so damn appealing, but something stopped me. Probably the smirk lurking beneath her sneer.

"You'll just heal," I murmured, and tossed the gun far, far away.

The smirk bloomed. "I can heal anything."

"Heal this," I said, and pulled a Jimmy—tore her apart like the wishbone on a chicken.