The hyenas had scared me.
Not just that there were hyenas where they did not belong. That happened in my world. But that there were so damned many of them. Would Sawyer and I have been able to handle the swarm without Luther and his spell? How long until something I couldn’t handle came along?
Tiny sparks appeared to my right—the lights of Sawyer’s place. I wheeled off the main road and headed down the dirt drive. The night was too dark to see everything, but I knew what lay at the end of the lane as well as I knew the tattoos that graced Sawyer’s skin.
The house—a small ranch with two bedrooms, a kitchen, bath and living area—sat at the foot of the mountain, along with a hogan, a traditional Navajo dwelling made of logs and dirt.
Behind it, dug into a hill, was a sweat lodge, and between the two ran an open porch that could be used for both eating and sleeping when the temperature climbed too high.
Sawyer lived in the hogan most of the time, and though he used the coffeemaker in the kitchen, he often cooked his meals over an open flame. Right now that flame leaped toward the sky, sending flickers of shadow and light across the two figures in the yard.
Since Sawyer often wore the traditional breechclout of the Navajo several centuries in the past, I was surprised to see him in a pair of jeans. He’d tied his long hair back with a strip of rawhide, throwing the planes of his face into sharp relief.
Luther was dressed nearly the same as he’d been the first time I’d seen him. The clothes were just newer and a whole lot cleaner. Sneakers, jeans several sizes too large and a T-shirt. Plain. Olive green. Something an army recruit might wear in basic training, which is kind of what this was.
He appeared to have put on some weight. A good thing; the kid had been far too skinny. He was tall—probably six-two—and his feet and hands revealed the promise of more growth to come.
His skin was darker than mine, lighter than Sawyer’s, his hair kinky and a gorgeous combination of gold and sun-streaked brown. His eyes were light—hazel right now, turning amber when his beast began to purr.
I climbed out of the rental and confronted the boy. “I told you to run.”
He rolled his eyes. “Why would I run away when I came there to save you?”
“To save us.” I glanced at Sawyer, who shrugged. “Did you know he could do . . . whatever that was?”
Sawyer shook his head.
“Who taught you?” I demanded. “Summer?”
The fairy had struck up a friendship with Luther, or perhaps it was vice versa. The kid had issues with strange men. I didn’t blame him. I’d seen what lay in his past, and it was much the same as what lay in Jimmy’s and my own—people we should have been able to trust proving untrustworthy.
“The fairy has been obsessed with Sanducci, as usual.” Sawyer took a drag on a cigarette he hadn’t had an instant before, then blew out a stream of smoke on a sigh. “She’s been no help training the boy at all.”
“So you’ve been training him?”
“Some.”
My gaze sought Luther’s. “That’s okay?”
Luther nodded. Where, at first, he’d been unable to stand near Sawyer without twitching, would sidle closer to me whenever possible, now he seemed more confident, less uncertain and no longer frightened at all. Might have been teen bravado and very good acting, but I didn’t think so.
“You’re sure,” I pressed.
“I’m as powerful as he is.” The kid lifted his chin. “He tries anything, I’ll tear him up.”
Behind the boy’s back Sawyer’s smirk was illuminated by the red-orange glow of his cigarette. We both knew better, but there was no point in telling Luther. If he felt safer believing he could take Sawyer, then let him. Sawyer would never touch Luther inappropriately. Sawyer had been touched that way enough himself.
“Why’d you fight at all if you knew a spell to get rid of them?”
“Because I could,” the boy said with all the arrogance of his youth and the pride of his lion.
“Just because we can fight doesn’t mean we should. Especially if there’s a way to end the Nephilim without bloodshed.”
Luther’s gaze flicked to mine. “I needed blood.”
“Theirs?” He shrugged, which I took as a “yes.” “You aren’t ready to fight yet.”
The boy’s shoulders straightened. “Am too. I been fightin’ all my life.”
“Not things like this.”
“I did fine.” He spread his big hands wide. “Not a mark on me.”
“Anymore.”
“I heal just like you and him.”
“We aren’t indestructible, Luther. We can die.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sawyer murmured, and I shot him a glare. He wasn’t helping.
“You brought me here to become one of you,” Luther insisted. “I can’t if you don’t let me.”
“But—”