CHAPTER 15

“Son of a—”

Pain yanked me out of the dream, but a final image flashed inside my head.

The sun rising, red lava against a gray sky and a woman flying straight into that fire, arms becoming wings, hair and skin turning into feathers brighter than the colors surrounding them, as she headed slowly toward a familiar, seductive whisper.

The sight of Luther with my own blood-covered knife in his hand made me bite off the end of the curse. Not that Luther hadn’t heard it all before, and he’d probably hear worse before this was over; I just didn’t like him to hear it from me.

“You okay?” he asked.

I sat up, my hand instinctively reaching for the wound, even though, now that the knife was out, it had nearly healed. My chest slick with blood, I was also naked.

Everything came rushing back. The shower. The shifter. The knife.

“Turn around!” I ordered. After tossing me a towel, he did.

The floor was slippery, the water pink. I’d bled a lot and the shower had continued to run even after the lion man had killed me.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Hell, I hope.” Luther took a cautious peek, turning when he saw I was decent. Or as decent as I got sitting naked beneath a tiny towel.

His head tilted, and his curling, tangled golden-brown hair shifted over one hazel eye. “Do the demons go to hell when we kill them?”

“Not a clue, kid.”

“If they do, then they would just fly right out again now that hell is an open doorway.”

I lifted my hand to rub my forehead, saw the blood and let it drop back to my side. “I guess.”

“Which would defeat the purpose of killing them.”

“Since they turn to dust, I think they’re just . . . gone.”

Luther considered that awhile and then nodded. “I think so too.”

We might be deluding ourselves, but right now I needed a better delusion than the one I’d just had, which I didn’t think was any delusion at all. But I couldn’t figure out just what it was.

I managed to get to my feet without falling on my ass. The slightly slimy sensation of bloody water squishing beneath toes would have turned anyone’s stomach, but not mine. As long as I—or someone I cared about—wasn’t dead in that bloody water, I’d grit my teeth and move on.

Another mantra—I had a hundred of them.

I quickly washed off my hands, my feet, then shooed Luther ahead of me and into the hallway. “Wait here,” I ordered, and ducked into the bedroom where I’d left my duffel.

Quickly I donned my usual costume of jeans and a tank top, good socks and tennis shoes. Once, I’d been partial to sandals, but that was before I had to fight for my life all the damn time. Flip-flops just aren’t any good on a battlefield.

My fingers brushed against a plastic sandwich bag that held two items of jewelry I’d once never left home without looping around my neck. Now, one could give me quite a burn and the other . . .

I sighed and pulled the bag free of the rest. Through the sheer container, Ruthie’s silver crucifix gleamed. I missed wearing that almost as much as I missed her.

The remaining item was a chunk of turquoise culled from Mount Taylor. Sawyer had drilled a hole, strung the stone on a chain and given it to me when I was fifteen. I hadn’t known it then, but the turquoise not only protected me from his mother but also was a type of homing device. When I wore it, Sawyer knew where I was.

Why I’d continued to wear the stone right up until the jeweled collar had made a second necklace overkill—not to mention that the chain had caught on the stones and I’d feared one day it would break and disappear forever—I wasn’t sure. Sawyer had scared the pants off me back then. He’d also fascinated me, and that he’d given me a gift had charmed me. Back when I hadn’t known what true charm was.

Before Jimmy.

I winced. I’d been trying not to think of Sanducci. About where I’d left him, and what was being done to him.

My fingers convulsed around the turquoise, and thunder rumbled from the mountain. Did the mountain call to the tiny part of it that had been taken away? Did it mourn this bit of stone like a little child lost?

I snorted and dropped the plastic bag back into my duffel. The mountain was magic, but that was going too far.

I zipped the duffel and took it with me when I left the room. I wasn’t staying, though I wasn’t sure yet where I needed to go.

Luther wasn’t in the hallway, and for an instant I panicked until I heard someone moving around in the kitchen. I went to the doorway and watched the kid pilfer through the cabinets for food.

“I told you to stay.”

He turned with a bag of chips clutched between long, dark fingers. “I’m not a dog.”

No, he was a teenage boy with more power than was good for him. I’d left him with Sawyer and Summer because they were the best choice at the time, but now—

“You’re going to have to come with me.”

“Not.”

I blinked. “I can’t leave you here alone.”

“I’ve been alone most of my life. Believe me, this”—he spread his arms wide, the bag of Ruffles swinging merrily—“is easy street. Ain’t nothin’ round here that can do me any harm.”

“Listen—”

“No,” he snapped. “I’m waiting for Summer. She’ll come looking for me here when she—”

My eyes narrowed. “When she what? Do you know where she is?”

Luther shook his head, and his kinky golden-brown locks jiggled. Funny, but suddenly I didn’t trust the kid at all.

So I reached out and touched him, but I didn’t see what I thought I would. With my gift, that happened a lot.

I couldn’t read minds; more’s the pity. Sure, when I touched people, and un-people too, I saw things—where they’d been, what they’d done—but I couldn’t see everything.

Situations that packed strong emotions—love, hate, joy, terror—came through the quickest and the strongest. Often, if I asked a question, then followed up with a brush of my hand, I could “hear” the answer.

But not today.

With the kid I didn’t see Summer. Instead I got slammed with his memory of the fight with the lion man.

Luther training in the desert, running, rolling, kicking, jumping. Suddenly he pauses as the wind rustles his hair and Ruthie’s voice whispers, Barbas.

I’d believed the man who’d invaded my shower had been a lion shifter, but there was more than one kind. That he’d been the same kind that had killed Luther’s parents, the same kind as Luther’s mother, was not a coincidence. Not in my world.

The memory continued to play out, and as long as Luther let me I continued to watch.

The roar of the barbas splits the suddenly still air. Luther’s eyes flare from hazel to gold. His head turns toward Sawyer’s house as the man emerges, already shedding his clothes and shifting to his true form.

I expect Luther to grab a knife, a spear, preferably a gun, and take out this guy. Instead, Luther strips too, and then he shifts.

They come at each other just like the lions on Wild Kingdom. Fast and furious, all snarls and claws and teeth. Blood and spittle fly. Horrible gashes open in their sides; chunks of fur and flesh thunk against the ground.

I yanked my hand from Luther’s arm and lifted my gaze to his.

Luther’s eyes, ancient despite the youth of his face, stared into mine. For an instant they flared gold, and the lion inside peered out. “Seen enough?”

His voice was a rumble—part beast and part man. I blinked, and he was just a kid again. Tall, gangly, he gave the appearance of being too awkward to do much but trip over his own massive feet. But I’d seen him fight in human form, and that appearance was deceiving.

“You could have shot him,” I murmured. “Silver plus shifter equals ashes.”

“Not with a barbas. I’m surprised you don’t know this.”

“I’ve been a little busy,” I muttered, but he was right. It was my job to know. The instant I’d heard the word “barbas” the first time, I should have found out how to kill one. “Clue me in.”

For an instant I thought he might refuse. Since I’d returned from LA, he was behaving as if he could barely stand the sight of me, as if he trusted me even less than a stranger. I couldn’t blame him. He’d been there before Sawyer and Jimmy had managed to cage the new and not-so-improved me behind my fancy jeweled collar. It hadn’t been pretty.

The kid reached into his pocket and pulled out a white flower with a few crumpled green leaves attached. “Hellebore.” At my frown he continued. “A plant used in witchcraft to invoke demons. Specifically demons of Barbas.”

“You brought that thing here on purpose?” My voice rose, cracking on the last word.

“You think I was out there?” He flung his long arm and nearly clipped me in the nose with one huge hand. “All alone? Just for fun?”

I didn’t know what to think. “Why would you—?”

“It’s better to face them on my terms. Right here. When I’m ready for them, one at a time, rather than have them sneak up on me in a group.”

The words like they snuck up on my parents were left unsaid.

I digested that for a second. I liked this scenario a whole lot better than the one where the barbas had somehow found Luther at Sawyer’s compound. This place was supposed to be shielded from prying eyes by Sawyer’s magic.

I let out the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding on a long, relieved sigh.

“They’ve been searching for me all along.”

My breath stuck in my chest again. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve always known it.” He shoved the hellebore back into his pocket. “I always felt stalked. When the feeling got to be too much, I’d run. Thought I was paranoid, but like they say, you aren’t paranoid if they’re really after you.”

“Why are they after you?”

“I didn’t ask. Don’t care. They killed my family. They die. End of story.”

He sounded so much like Jimmy my mouth fell open. If the kid continued to lure in demons and dust them with ease, he’d be another Jimmy—the best demon killer in the federation. Which wasn’t such a bad thing considering how short my list of available demon killers had become.

“Now that I know what they are,” Luther continued, “that I’m not crazy when I feel evil, when I see things, hear things, now that I know how to kill them . . .” His eyes flared golden fury once more. “I plan to.”

He lifted his chin as if he expected me to argue. I didn’t. The idea of sending him out alone was hard to swallow, but I’d swallow it. I had to.

Besides, the kid had Ruthie now. Theoretically, I was in more danger than he was.

“So you lured him in with hellebore?” Luther nodded. “But how’d you kill him?”

Luther grinned. He was going to be so handsome—if he lived long enough. “Not only does hellebore bring them forth, but if you use it right, damn stuff kills them.”

“How do we”—I made quotation marks in the air with my fingers—“ ‘use it right’?”

“Boil the plant in oil, then dip the tip of a weapon into the juice. Pow!” He slammed a massive fist into an equally large palm, then flipped his hands outward. “Whoosh.”

“Where’d you discover this info?”

There was a brand-new federation database where DKs and seers could enter what they’d learned about the Nephilim from their personal encounters. But I couldn’t recall giving Luther the code.

“Sawyer,” he said shortly.

“Hmm,” I murmured. I wasn’t surprised. “You know where he is?”

The kid frowned. “I thought he was with you.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. So, to be clear, you dipped a weapon in boiled hellebore oil. What weapon?”

Luther’s smile was thin and just a little scary. “Me.”