Doomsday Can Wait (17 page)

"Excellent." She nodded once. "That saves me a trip."

My lips curved. I liked her.

"What about the
Naye'i?"
she asked.

"Could be anywhere."

Carla sighed. "They're like that."

"Can you remove the spell?"

"I'm the only one who can." I lifted my brows, and she continued. "Balance, Elisabetta. An evil Italian witch placed the curse—"

"So only a good Italian witch can remove it."

"Precisely."

And since the strega was no longer with us, the woman of smoke might have a tough time getting her tentacles on another.

One problem down, three or four hundred to go.

"You'll remove the spell now?" I asked.

"Now?" She glanced at Sawyer, who cocked his head. "But what about—"

"The amulet first, please."

Sawyer could remain a wolf for a little while longer, but the amulet was bugging me. With my luck, the woman of smoke would appear and not only take the copper medallion back but kill the benandanti, as well. If the amulet became just a necklace, there'd be no reason for any of that.

"All right," she said. "Come with me."

Carla headed toward the rear of the house. Sawyer following after. I had to hurry to keep up. She moved pretty well for an old hag.

At the farthest end of the hall, she opened a door beneath the stairs. I reached her just as she began to descend. Hesitating, I stared down the shadowed cement staircase, which disappeared into a chilly gloom.

It was never a good idea to go into the basement. Legions of teen scream queens learned this lesson every Halloween in Technicolor across the silver screens. However, what choice did I have? I could stay upstairs and wait, but then I'd never know for certain if she'd done what I'd asked.

Besides, I wanted to watch.

Sawyer had already trotted downward in her wake. He didn't seem at all spooked by the idea of serial-killing basement murderers. But Sawyer didn't own a television; he'd probably never entered a movie theater in his life.

Still, Sawyer knew about evil. He'd been born of it.

So either Carta was truly a good witch and the basement was just a basement or Sawyer planned to tear her into itty-bitty bloody pieces so that no one would ever find her.

The thought didn't even bother me. And that it didn't should really bother me. I'd come a long way from the cop I'd been, even farther from the bartender I'd become.

I went downstairs. The basement wasn't just a basement; it was a laboratory.

Beakers, bottles, Bunsen burners lay scattered across several tables. Dusty books were stacked everywhere. Canning jars lined shelf after shelf, and they weren't full of applesauce.

"Are those eyes'?" I blurted. As I did, I could have sworn one of them glanced at me.

I gave a squeak and stumbled backward, tripping over the last step and landing hard. Both Carta and Sawyer stared at me as if I were a foolish child who'd fallen in the mud.

"I don't like eyes," I murmured defensively. "Especially in jars." Really, who did?

"Those are pickled onions, Elisabetta." Carta flicked a hand at them dismissively.

Sure they were. When I glanced in that direction again, the "eyes" faced the wall, revealing only their onionlike white, round rears. All hints of humanoid awareness were gone, along with the pupils.

I narrowed
my
eyes on Carta, but she'd already moved to one of her workstations and laid the amulet on top. I left the jar of onion eyes behind to join her.

As I came closer, the air that brushed my cheeks became hotter and hotter. When I cleared the heavy table, I saw why. The entire inside wall of the basement consisted of a furnace. Maybe it was an oven. It definitely looked like something she'd stolen from Auschwitz.

I glanced at Carta as she hunched over the amulet. With the fire blazing merrily at her back, she'd make a good model for a poster of
Hansel and Gretel, the Return.

"Do you bake down here?" I asked.

"You might say that. My kiln comes in handy for the disposal of just about anything. Or anyone."

"Sawyer," I murmured as I inched toward the stairs. I'd seen good guys go bad. Jimmy in particular. I didn't really want to see it again.

Sawyer ignored me. I was tempted to grab him, but that would be the hard way to lose a finger or two.

Carla's smile faded. Her brow creased. "Where are you going? I thought you wanted me to remove the bewitchment?"

"Go ahead." I remained near the stairs, ready to run up at the first sign of trouble, or at least try. I had no doubt she could wave her hand and freeze me in my tracks, maybe even send a lightning bolt to drop me dead. If a lightning bolt would kill me. I wasn't sure.

Carla picked up the amulet and, without another word, without a single deed, tossed it into the blazing furnace. Then she dusted off her hands and turned her attention to Sawyer. "You're next."

His mouth opened, and his tongue lolled out. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he was smiling.

"Hold on," I said, taking a step forward in spite of myself. "That's it?"

I indicated the kiln, where the flames leaped ever higher, as if they were feeding off the amulet. I couldn't see that a bit of copper would be all that combustible. Maybe the flames drew power from the magic.

The thought made me uneasy. Magic fire might be a serious problem.

"No spell?" I continued. "No eye of. . ."—I waved at the "onion" jars—"whatever? You just toss the thing into the fire? I could have done that."

Carla raised a brow. "Are you benandanti?"

I could be—if I had sex with one.

I looked Carla up and down. I didn't want to be benandanti that badly.

"Be grateful it's dust," she said.

I thought about it, then shrugged. "All right."

Carla turned to Sawyer, who still stared at her as if she were the most fascinating being on the planet or perhaps as if he smelled Scooby snacks in the pocket of her black sack dress.

She began to chant. Italian? No, Latin. Always a good chanting language.

Energy zipped through the room. Sawyer looked as if he'd stuck a claw into a light socket. Every inch of his black fur lifted toward the ceiling. When I touched my own hair a spark of static electricity sizzled.

Carla's pale, bony fingers seemed to glow silver against the dancing orange flames of the open oven-kiln. She made a motion, as if she were throwing something at Sawyer.

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 Tar-tarus, 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 dark-ness. 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?"

"She didn't have to be." Carla swept her hand in an arc, from left shoulder, upward and over, as if she were drawing a rainbow in the air. A sparkling window of static appeared a few feet above our heads. "Watch."

The sound of that static swirled around the room. Sawyer woofed once and the silver, black, and white particles cleared.

Though the strega appeared to be in his thirties with olive-toned skin stretched tightly over fine bones, his onyx eyes were ancient. He brushed back his shoulder-length ebony hair with hands that ought to have been permanently bloodstained, but instead drew the eye with their long-fingered, supple grace.

His room had been decorated by Pashas 'R Us. Filmy curtains surrounded a low, round bed; a huge fountain poured water into a stone pool that had probably been stolen from a Roman bathhouse, back when they still
hand
them. The walls were equipped with several pairs of cuffs and chains. The only illumination in the room came from the large white candles blazing from several candelabra.

Obviously we were viewing the past since the strega was not only dead, but his lair was toast.

He set a bowl on the end table. The flickering flames of the candles reflected in the shiny, maroon surface. I knew a bowl of blood when I saw one.

He chanted in Latin, dipped a finger into the blood, then traced it around the edges of the framed photograph of the woman of smoke—the one I'd stolen and fed to the garbage disposal.

"I always meant to ask you about that picture," I murmured.

Sawyer growled as the photograph began to talk.

"We have the information we need. Send the shape-shifters after Ruthie Kane."

"Yes, mistress," the strega said.

That certainly didn't sound like him.

Her eyes flared, and her lips pulled back from her too-white teeth. "Make it bloody."

The strega lifted his head and smiled. "What other way is there?"

My hands clenched. Ruthie had died badly. Not that there was a good way to die—unless it was at the age of a hundred and nine asleep in your bed after having just had sex with your seventy-year-old boy toy—but it hadn't had to be the way it had been. The leader of the light dies, setting in motion Doomsday. Pain and blood and fear weren't part of the equation. Those had been added just for the amusement of the Nephilim.

Well, two could play at that game. I made a note to myself: Make it bloody right back.