I expected him to fall down, rise up, shape-shift. Instead, Carla jerked with a pained cry, as if the power she'd tossed his way had been tossed right back, and she stumbled, then crumpled to the ground.
By the time I reached her, she was already struggling to sit up. As I knelt at her side, the ends of her hair glowed with the remnants of whatever had knocked her down. A singed scent hovered in the room. Her gown began to smoke where cinders had sparked, and she patted them out with absent but shaking hands.
"What the hell was that?" I asked, glancing at Sawyer.
He sat on his haunches, gazing at both of us with a wary expression in his gray eyes.
"I didn't know," Carla murmured.
"Know what?"
"He isn't a breed."
"He isn't?" I asked, though I had been told that before. By Jimmy.
"He's other," Carla said.
"Other what?"
"Nephilim plus Nephilim creates something apart from both humans and monsters. Something that can never truly be either one."
Sawyer continued to stare into my eyes.
"His father was a medicine man who wore the robe,'" I murmured. "An amateur. Not a Nephilim."
"No?" Carla gained her feet, brushing away my offer of help. "You think that turning into an animal, even by use of a robe, is something humans can do?"
I could, but I wasn't entirely sure how human I was.
"So he's other," I said. "So what?"
"They can't be trusted."
I let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. "I knew that even before I knew what he was."
Sawyer rolled his eyes. He didn't seem overly concerned about Carla's observations or my lack of trust. Sawyer never seemed overly concerned about much.
"Breeds have power, but they're more human than Nephilim," she continued. "Those that are other, by combining two forces of evil, can become stronger than either one of them."
"Which explains a few things," I murmured.
"If he were to go to his mother's side . . ." Carla left the rest of the sentence unspoken.
"We'd be fucked," I finished. "I know. So maybe you should remove the curse she placed on him. Might make him pledge everlasting devotion to our side, don't you think?"
She laughed, that sound of pure joy, which made me think of Christmas trees and sugar cookies. "You have a lot of strange ideas, Elisabetta."
"And you're stalling," I said. A thought occurred to me, one I didn't like much at all. "Can you fix him?"
"Fix? No."
I got a sudden pain in my chest. I'd have to continue to flail around alone, with Sawyer's satanic mommy trying to kill me, and Sawyer of no more help than an extremely fast, very strong, really mean wolf could be.
I would die. But, thanks to the Naye'i, dying was nothing I hadn't done before. I just wasn't certain I could keep coming back from it.
"What she's done to him," Carla continued, "is too strong. Because he is not a breed, he's drawn to that evil. It rails to him in a voice from his childhood. The only way to completely end this curse is to kill the one who cursed him."
"Got it on my list. Right below 'Find the bitch.'"
Sawyer sneezed. Carla cast me a disappointed glance, and I muttered, "Sorry."
"I believe she is trying to discover how to open Tartarus, or if she already knows, then she is preparing to open it."
I glanced at Sawyer. He blinked; so did I.
"Wait a second," I said. "Tartarus is opened during the time of the great tribulation. The chaos that follows Doomsday."
"Yes."
"But I stopped Doomsday when I killed the strega."
Carla's sharp blue eyes met mine. "Does it seem to you as if chaos were interrupted?"
Well, it had. Sure, the seers I'd been in contact with had their hands full, but we were short on soldiers and long on demons.
"You didn't know?" Carla asked.
"Know what?" I managed between clenched teeth.
"The strega was a minion, not the leader of the darkness. The leader of the darkness was—"
I cursed. "The woman of smoke."
CHAPTER 17
"But if she's already the leader of the darkness," I said, "she doesn't need to kill me to become the leader."
"That's correct."
"So why is she so obsessed with trying?"
"Ask him." Carla inclined her head in Sawyer's direction. He lifted his lip in a silent snarl.
"I don't think he's going to tell me." Even if he was capable of speech.
"The Naye'i is an evil spirit," Carla said. "She doesn't need a reason to kill you beyond the pleasure of doing so."
Sadly, that made sense.
"And it's common practice in battle to take out the opposition's leader. With no one to follow, armies disintegrate, some soldiers change sides, others desert."
"Mine won't." My voice sounded much more positive than I actually felt.
"Time will tell," Carla murmured.
"How could I not have known this? I lived"—if you called sexual slavery living—"in the Strega's lair for weeks. I never caught a whiff of the woman of smoke." Or heard a whisper. That damned amulet was proving more of a pain in my ass than I'd ever thought possible.
"She wasn't there," Carla said.
"Ever?"