“It means ‘the beautiful one has come,’ ” Sawyer translated. “She didn’t name you. She didn’t know about you until she rose from the dead.”
The Phoenix scampered over to Sawyer, cuddling up to his side as he draped his arm over her shoulders in a casual gesture that spoke of a long association. Watching them made me want to puke for so many reasons.
I was trying very hard not to dwell on Sawyer’s total betrayal. What kind of a leader was I? I hadn’t seen this coming. I’d had no inkling at all that Sawyer was anything but loyal.
Oh, sure, Jimmy always said Sawyer had been bought by the federation and what could be bought by one could be easily stolen by another for the right price. But I hadn’t believed it. I still didn’t.
Sawyer wouldn’t change sides for money. He had no use for it. But he did have use for other things. I just wasn’t quite sure what they were. It appeared my mother was.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my pounding heart and my dancing stomach. If I started to think about what could happen if Sawyer’s power was against us instead of for us, I really might puke. I had to concentrate on other things, anything, or lose my mind.
“She never knew about me?” I blurted. “I haven’t been pregnant”—praise every saint ever named—“but I still can’t see how anyone could give birth and not be aware of it.” I frowned. Unless . . . “Did they tell her I was dead?”
That would explain why she’d abandoned me.
“No,” Sawyer said shortly.
“I’m a phoenix.” My mother moved her hands like the wings of a great bird. “Only when I die is another born.”
“I was born when you died?”
“How else?”
“How else?” I muttered. “How ’bout how?”
She lowered her hands with a flutter. “I wasn’t there.” She pointed at Sawyer.
“What would you know about it?” I asked; then as a terrible, nasty thought occurred to me I bent at the waist, afraid I might throw up again.
“Oh, get ahold of yourself,” the Phoenix said. “He isn’t your father.”
It took several minutes to wrestle my stomach and my brain under control. Then I lifted my head. “You’re sure?”
“Me?” She put a palm against her chest. Lucky her dress was already red. Her hands still glistened with Sawyer’s blood. “No. But he insists such a thing isn’t possible.”
I turned my gaze to Sawyer’s implacable face. “Impossible physically or impossible because you don’t want me to puke until I die?”
Something flickered in his too-light eyes, something that made them suddenly appear dark and entirely savage. “Impossible because I would not do—”
The fury overcame him. His hand clenched on Mommy’s upper arm so tightly I thought she might break. Instead of wincing, she drew in an ecstatic breath and arched as if in the throes of pleasure.
I coughed. The gag reflex was back.
“I would not do—,” he tried again.
“Me?” I offered helpfully, and was rewarded with a growl from so deep in his throat I half-expected his wolf to burst free.
“That,” he spit between clenched teeth. “I would not do that.”
“But you’d do just about anything or anyone else,” Jimmy murmured.
Sawyer ignored him, though the flash in his eyes made me think there would be payback later. There always was.
“Elizabeth,” Sawyer continued, “you, of all people, should know better.”
He’d called me Phoenix in the past. I figured now that would be redundant.
“I don’t know what I know anymore,” I muttered, my gaze on his hand, still wrapped around my mother’s arm as she practically had an orgasm from the exquisite pain.
Freaking nut bag.
I guess Sawyer and I had something in common. Our mothers were on the far side of crazy.
“Does it have a name?” I asked. Two could play the “it” game, and in truth I didn’t want to think of her as anything other than sub-human.
She narrowed her eyes. “I am the Phoenix.”
I glanced at Sawyer. “Tell me you didn’t call her Phoenix.”
His face was as tight as my own. He understood what I was asking. Had he called us both that? Had he been pretending that I was her?
“No,” he said. “Then she was known as Maria.”
“Maria,” I repeated. “Spanish for Mary.”
“It was her name.”
I didn’t like that one bit. Mary as the mother of Christ. Maria as the mother of me and, if she had her way, the vessel for the Antichrist.
Names were important. I’d learned that much.
Maria Phoenix, bored with the conversation, tapped Sawyer’s hand like a nun with a ruler, and he let her go. Then her dark, mad eyes met mine. “Tomorrow will be time enough for you to prove your allegiance.”
Prove? I didn’t like the sound of that any more now than when Geek Boy had said “test” before. But when was the last time I’d liked the sound of anything?
I glanced at Jimmy; he appeared as thrilled about this conversation as I was.