"Ruthie's the first leader of the light to be killed by a leader of the darkness. They've tried, but they've never succeeded. Doomsday hasn't been set in motion before, though many believed that it was."
By definition Doomsday is the period of chaos that leads up to the Apocalypse. I'd really been hoping to avoid that ticking clock. Sure, it was going to happen eventually. The end of days was inevitable. But why couldn't it happen on someone else's watch?
"What do you mean, people believed that it was?"
"Every generation thinks it's living in the end times. The events of Revelation—Doomsday, chaos, tribulation, the beast, 666—could have played out at any point in history. But we've always stopped them."
"We. The federation?"
"Yes. The list of historical figures that could have turned out to be the Antichrist without us around is pretty long. Nero, Caligula, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, to name just a few."
"Those guys were Nephilim?"
"Did you seriously think they were human?"
Not really.
“You're saying that any demonic nut bag can become the Antichrist?" I asked.
"If he manages to fulfill all the requirements before one of us kills him."
"Requirements. Like killing me?"
"For starters, then killing all the DKs and seers."
The last nut bag had made pretty good headway on that.
"Then?"
"Charismatic leader of the world, rebuilding the temple, abolition of paper money, rising from the dead."
"Whoa. What was the last one?"
"Eventually, one of them is going to heal a head shot and then .. . what's that expression?" She tapped her pink nail against her pink lips. "All hell will break loose. Literally."
"Healing a head shot isn't much of a chore for most Nephilim."
"I know."
"Then we move forward on the assumption that we've been granted a reprieve."
"We move forward as we always do," Summer said. "Kill them, kill them, kill them."
"At this rate," I said, rubbing my forehead, "the cycle might never end. Kill the leader of the light—Doomsday; kill the leader of the darkness—not. Doomsday, not, Doomsday, not." I was getting dizzy.
I lowered my hand as something occurred to me. Ruthie told me the final battle is now."
"Maybe." Summer's deceptively innocent blue eyes met mine. "There's never been anyone like you before."
"So according to the rumor"—which should be a legend by next week—"by killing the leader of the darkness, I thwarted Doomsday. To start up another, they'd have to kill me. But I'm not going to be as easy to take out as Ruthie."
"Then there's nothing to worry about."
"Except psycho evil spirit bitch—"
"Witch," Summer corrected.
"No, I had it right." We shared a smile, then realized what we were doing and stopped. "She's—uh—after me," I finished. "And I don't know how to kill her."
"First things first," Summer said. "We get Jimmy, then we find Sawyer."
"Does it have to be 'we'?" I asked.
Me and Summer on a road trip. Hunting down Jimmy Sanducci and confronting him together.
Talk about a nightmare.
CHAPTER 4
A '57 Chevy Impala was parked in front of my building, light blue and so gorgeous it brought tears to my eyes. Summer walked to the driver's side and got in.
"This is yours?"
She shot me a duh look.
Summer the fairy couldn't fly—at least on a plane.
She messed up the controls, and when dealing with several tons of airborne metal and fuel . . . extremely bad idea. She could hit the skies without wings, a trick I'd yet to see, but cloud-dancing people tend to get noticed. So, unless there was a dire emergency that required her immediate presence—and there were quite a few— Summer stuck to cars.
"I meant, what happened to your pickup?"
"That's for New Mexico. This"—she smoothed her hand over the dash—"is for the road."
Yes, it was.
I wasn't a classic car nut. I drove a Jetta, for crying out loud. But I'd always admired old automobiles, the ones that really sucked the gas. Those cars had balls, guts, chutzpah—real staying power. It had always made perfect sense to me that Christine, Stephen King's car that never died, had been a 1958 Plymouth Fury.
Summer pulled away from the curb and pointed the Impala southwest. "What's in your pocket?" she asked.
My hand stilled in the act of rubbing the amulet. I hesitated, then realized that two heads were better than one, even when one of them was Summer's. She'd been around as long as the woman of smoke. That had to be good for something.
I drew out the necklace. "I tore this off the Naye'i."
Summer glanced at the copper circlet and frowned. "That's a pentacle."
"Never heard of it."
Which wasn't surprising. Ask me how to clean a gun or mix a martini and I was a damn genius, but ask me about secret Satanic things and you could color me worthless.
“Pentacles are amulets used in magical rites," Summer said. "The star is a pentagram—five points. If the symbol is drawn with one point up, we're talking good magic."
"And if there are two points up and one point down, like this?"
"Black magic."
I wasn't surprised. "Until I tore the amulet off the Naye'i, I didn't know what she was. I think it blocked my sight."