“He’s right, Phoenix,” Sawyer interrupted, flicking the remnants of his cigarette away. “He’s more prepared than you were.”
Luther had known there were demons out there, had sensed them and fought, if not actual Nephilim, then humans who were close enough. When I’d discovered the whole demon deal, I was more shocked than I should have been.
I was a cop once. I’d seen things that still made me start up in the night, sweaty and shaking. I should have figured out the score long before Ruthie’s death opened my eyes.
I contemplated Luther. “You need to be more careful.”
He snorted. “They’re all toast. I think they need to be more careful.”
Which reminded me.
“If Sawyer didn’t teach you the spell and Summer didn’t, then—”
The air stilled, yet my hair stirred in an impossible breeze. Luther’s carriage changed; his head tilted in a way that was more feminine than masculine; his shoulders rounded so that he seemed ancient and tired with it; even his eyes grew darker, appearing brown instead of hazel.
He opened his mouth, and Ruthie’s voice came out. “I taught him, child. Who do you think?”
CHAPTER 11
“That still freaks me out,” I muttered.
Since I’d released the vampire side of my dhampir nature, Ruthie no longer spoke in my head or my dreams but through Luther’s mouth.
“Don’t matter how I talk to you, Lizbeth, just that I do continue to talk. We do what we gotta do to win this war.”
“You should know.”
Ruthie had taken me in when no one else would. She’d loved me more than anyone else in my life ever had, and because of that I’d adored her. I’d have done anything for Ruthie Kane. When she’d died in my arms, I’d been devastated.
Or at least I would have been devastated if the transfer of power hadn’t knocked me into a three-day coma. Then, when I’d woken up, I’d had my hands a little full with the end of the world raining down and monsters I hadn’t known existed all trying to kill me.
“You wanna explain that comment, Lizbeth?”
I really didn’t but probably should.
“Jimmy said—” Sawyer made a derisive sound, which I ignored. The two of them had been at each other’s throats—sometimes literally—forever, it seemed. “He said that you only took in kids with special talents. Ones you could send off to fight this war.”
“Not all of my kids are fighters.”
My heart lightened. Maybe what I’d always believed about Ruthie was partially true, that her devotion to those who needed someone to love them so badly was real.
“Some of them didn’t have the talent,” she continued. “It was nearly impossible to gauge power until I got them under my roof.”
My hope sputtered and went out. “So you took us in to use us. To sacrifice us on the altar of Armageddon.”
Ruthie-Luther tilted her-his head, studying me with eyes that were so much like Ruthie’s, set in a face that wasn’t, I got chills. “I believe I was the one sacrificed, Lizbeth.”
“Just because I’m still alive doesn’t mean I haven’t lost things.” I rubbed my hand over my face. “Some of them were more important to me than my life.”
Ruthie, for instance. And then there was Jimmy.
Those eyes continued to stare at me, and they knew so much. “You ain’t gonna forgive me for that, are you?”
“I’m not sure I can.”
I’d discovered only recently that Ruthie’s betrayal hadn’t just been in her deluding me into believing I’d been chosen by her for my charming personality and not my psychic abilities. Ruthie had also ordered Jimmy to break my heart by sleeping with Summer. She’d wanted me to “see,” to hate him so much that when he left me to become a demon killer, I wouldn’t search for him.
“I knew what I was doing,” Ruthie said.
“So did Jimmy.”
“You gonna punish him for that forever?”
“Forever isn’t as long as it used to be.”
Ruthie-Luther’s mouth curved, but the expression was more than a little sad. “You’d have done exactly what I did if you’d been me.”
“I am you now.”
“And are you any different? You made him change you into a monster, though he begged you not to. You left him with the Dagda, and you saw what he’d do.”
I flinched, then fell back on the same pathetic excuse used by every goose-stepping moron from the beginning of time. “You ordered me to.”
“We all have our orders,” Ruthie-Luther whispered, and in her-his voice lay all the sorrows of the ages.
“I don’t like it,” I muttered.
“You and everyone else who’s ever had to take orders.”
She had a point, but then Ruthie usually did.
“If there’s a spell to end Nephilim without battling them by hand, why don’t we just cast it over the earth and watch them burn?”
“Nothing’s ever that simple, child. The spell I taught Luther was for Boudas.”
“Witches that can shift into hyenas.” I’d seen one before.
“Since a big cat is the hyenas’ only predator, the spell required someone of African descent, with the blood of an African big cat. Spells are very specific.”