"Que será, será."
The Naye'i appeared confused. I guess she didn't listen to much Doris Day.
From the first moment I'd seen her—as a spirit of smoke in the desert and as flesh in Murphy's bar—I'd known she was dangerous. The more I learned about her, the more I hated her. But I'd hated as a human. A paltry, pathetic hatred, unworthy of the word.
As a spirit of darkness, I understood hate; I welcomed the desire to wreak havoc, to maim and kill just for the joy of it, and I saw why I'd needed to become like her to win.
The Naye'i had no humanity, no compassion, no restraint. And now neither did I.
We circled each other like all-star wrestlers waiting for an opening. I wasn't worried. I could still taste Jimmy's blood; the strength we'd shared pulsed through me; supernatural power lay at my fingertips; and the turquoise would prevent her from laying a hand on me.
The word cakewalk strolled through my head, and the Naye'i smiled. That smile made me pause. It was the smile of someone with a secret.
The woman of smoke's hand snaked out and closed around my throat. I blinked, shocked. "Wha—" I managed before she lifted me from my feet, squeezing off all the air.
Wherever her fingers touched, pain erupted, but not the icy burn that had occurred the last time her skin had met mine. Something had changed.
My legs flailed, my arms, too. I reached for the turquoise, but she was there before me.
"You thought this would protect you." She broke the chain with a single jerk and tossed the stone away. "Not anymore."
I couldn't breathe, which made thinking damn difficult. Even when she dropped me to the ground, I lay gasping like a fish on the shore.
"The turquoise marked you as his, but you chose another," she whispered, her brimstone breath washing over my face, making my skin flame. "And when you chose him, the stone became just a stone."
Shit. This was going to be a lot more difficult than I thought. But I guess if she were easy to kill, everyone would do it.
I sat up, and the Naye'i backhanded me so hard I skidded across the ground, stray rocks gouging my bare ass. One of my fangs pierced my lip and blood flowed.
Her laughter echoed in the mountain's rumble. "You thought it would be simple. Become the darkness and swallow me whole. But / am the darkness." She lifted her hands to the silver-tinged night, and lightning rained down. "And you will be the one to die."
If I didn't move, I would die. I scrambled to my feet; her smirk said she'd let me. The fury came back, both icy and hot. I would bathe in her blood; I would use her bones for chopsticks. When she was dead I would dance a jig on her corpse.
There, that was more like the new me.
I tried to sweep her legs from beneath her. But she jumped my sweep, then hovered above me.
I leaped upward, very Matrix-like, and tried a roundhouse kick. She leaned back and my foot missed. My momentum swung me downward so fast I nearly ate dirt before I managed to get my hands in front of me.
"How to kill a vampire," she mused.
My back exposed, I flipped over just as she snapped her fingers. A wooden stake appeared in her hand, and as she threw the thing, I rolled. The stake stuck in the ground where my heart had just been.
Fire billowed all around me. Beyond the flames, the Naye'i seemed to dance.
"I'll kill you every way there is to kill a vampire. Little by little you'll die; then I'll do it again. And when you're nothing more than a pile of blood and empty skin—no Sawyer, no robe, no way to shift and heal— then the gates of hell will fly open, and I will rule every demon on this earth."
"Killing me will open Tartarus?" I asked.
She shrugged. "Can't hurt."
"Do you know how?"
I leaped through the fire; the places it burned healed almost instantly.
The Naye'i looked as if she'd sucked on a lemon.
"You think I'd tell you?"
"Can't hurt."
"This might," she said, and opening her arms, fingers spread wide, she swept her hands toward me.
Rocks flew, hundreds of them in all shapes and sizes, raining down on me, crushing me into the earth, piling up until I was buried.
When things stopped pinging against the cairn, I shoved upward and they all fell away. "What the hell was that?" I asked.
"Cover a vampire's grave with stones and she will never rise."
"I'm not dead" I said.
"Good point." She flicked her wrist and something small and sharp and shiny flew, sticking in my temple before I could catch it.
"Ouch!" I yanked out a three-inch nail, and the Naye'i shrieked her fury to the stars.
"Why don't you die?"
"Why don't you?" I countered.