“Or no genes,” I muttered.
Jimmy elbowed me in the ribs, but the man didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t have many newcomers to Cairo. Not much goin’ on here these days for em-ploy-ment but the one factory. Biggest thing to happen in a coon’s age was your ma showin’ up.”
He had no idea how big. Or how lucky he was that we’d arrived before she’d started stringing the streetlights with dried intestines and using severed heads to decorate the fence posts or doing whatever else she might have to do to become queen of the end of the world.
I shivered.
“Cold, miss? Chilly when the sun goes down on the river. But don’t worry; it’ll heat up tomorrow.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said.
“So”—he rocked back on his heels—“just you two come to town?”
“You see anyone else?” Jimmy asked.
“What is with you?” I muttered, but he ignored me.
The man didn’t take offense; I wasn’t sure why. “Just wondered if you’d need a place to stay is all.”
“Uh-huh.” Jimmy’s voice was as skeptical as his expression. “So, where’d you say she lives?” Jimmy asked.
The man pointed to the far end of town. “She’s in the biggest old house left standin’. Probably a half mile out. Just follow this street. Red brick. Pert’ near big as a hotel. Can’t miss it.”
“We won’t,” Jimmy said.
I caught a strange sound, one I recognized but couldn’t place right away because it didn’t fit. Not until the talkative, friendly townsman turned to dust right before my eyes. One minute he was solid; the next tiny particles sluiced into a pile at my feet, then drifted away on the wind.
Jimmy flipped his wrist, causing his silver switchblade—the source of the odd yet familiar noise—to fold back in two before he slipped it into his pocket.
The guy hadn’t burst into ashes, as if he’d been incinerated with a flame hotter than any known to man, as he would have if he’d been a Nephilim. No. He’d turned to dust like a— I hadn’t a clue.
“What in hell was that?” I demanded.
“Could you be a little louder? I don’t think they heard you in Panama.”
“There’s no one here.”
“You’re wrong,” Jimmy said quietly, his gaze intent on something farther up the street.
The chill I’d felt earlier came back and gave me gooseflesh on my gooseflesh. When Sanducci moved into the road, I followed.
The sun was completely gone, the sky an icy gray. The streetlights hadn’t yet kicked in, so the figures at the outskirts of Cairo seemed to loom up from the ground, materializing out of nowhere. Hell, maybe they had.
“There are a few other signs of the Apocalypse I left out,” Jimmy said.
“I take it those are one of them?”
“Revenants.”
“And you left them out why?”
“There are thousands of signs, which come from just as many interpretations of prophecy. I can’t remember every one. And until they actually happen”—he spread his hands—“they’re just a theory.”
The crowd of shadows began to move forward. “These look a little more solid than a theory. What are revenants?”
“ ‘When hell is full,’ ” Jimmy quoted, “ ‘the dead will walk the earth.’ ”
“Revelation?”
“George Romero. Dawn of the Dead.”
“They’re zombies?” I thought of the graves spilling upward as the Phoenix sprinted over them.
“Kind of.” At my evil glare he continued. “They’re a special type. Not your garden-variety zombie or they’d be decaying all over the place.”
“But they’re not Nephilim.”
“Nephilim turn to ashes, and zombies—”
“Turn to dust,” I finished.
“Uh-huh. They’re dead, not demonic.”
“How’d you know what he was?”
“Wasn’t sure. Had to stick him and see.”
“What if he’d been a person?” I snapped.
“He definitely wasn’t a person. I knew that much.”
“How?”
“Can’t you feel them?”
He jerked his chin toward the advancing shades, which appeared to have increased greatly in number in the few seconds we’d been chatting.
That buzzing I’d sensed earlier, which I’d thought was too much silence or cancer vibes spreading from the power lines, I now recognized as the hum of supernatural entities—a lot of them.
A scuffle behind us and I spun, only to discover that there were even more revenants closing in from the rear. My knife was in my hand, and I didn’t remember how it had gotten there; I was just glad that it had.
I pressed my back to Jimmy’s. “How’d you kill the first one?”
I knew there’d been a silver knife, pointy end into the revenant, but when killing supernatural boogies, where the knife went was sometimes as important as there being a knife at all.
“Silver straight through the heart.”
“Heart only?”
“Yes.”
“Shit,” I muttered. Hitting the heart dead on isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when you’re outnumbered a helluva lot to two.
“Do you want to surrender first?” Jimmy asked. “Or should I?”