"It doesn't. The priests I knew were gentle men of charity and hope. They couldn't kill things."

"So what happened to you?"

"I witnessed the truth. Over and over and over again until I couldn't not kill them."

The more I talked to this guy, the more I wondered just how random his showing up to save my a.s.s had been. I'd come to understand in the last few months that random just wasn't what it used to be.

"You saw the draugars in a dream?" He nodded. "Did you see me?"

"No. I saw the cemetery and the Vikings. They were attacking a really big, colorful bird that shot fire from its wings." He frowned. "You see anything like that?"

I forced myself not to scratch the very itchy tattoo at my nape. "Not me."

"First I thought it was an actual nightmare. I have those sometimes. But the same dream kept returning night after night, and when that happens, I have to act or never find a moment's peace." He tilted his head. "I wonder what that weird bird was."

"Maybe the girl's name was Robin."

"This bird wasn't a robin. More like a-" He glanced at the sun. "Thunderbird. That would make sense around here."

"Because?"

"The Sioux say the thunderbird is huge and many-colored with the power of the storm and command of the rain. The flap of their wings is the thunder; the breeze created by the beat brings together the clouds, and when the thunderbird blinks the flash of its eyes is the lightning."

Sounded pretty phoenix-y to me, but most cultures had their own version of every legend.

"In the old days the thunderbirds killed monsters," Bram continued.

"Which means they weren't one."

"Anything can become a monster if it chooses to be."

Bram reminded me of Xander Whitelaw, who'd been a prophecy professor at an Indiana Bible college. Intelligent, knowledgeable, yet innocent in so many ways, nevertheless I'd sent him looking for clues about both the Key of Solomon and the Book of Samyaza. Big mistake.

He'd found the location of the key. Unfortunately, the Nephilim had found him. I still had nightmares.

The loss of Xander had been a big one. He'd known a lot and what he hadn't known, he'd been able to discover.

My gaze took in Bram's hard hands, bulging biceps, and collection of crosses. I didn't think he'd be killed as easily as Xander.

"You're sure you don't want to join the federation?" I asked.

"I'm sure."

I wasn't willing to give up that easily. "How'd you like to freelance?"

He lifted a brow. "I'm listening."

"Ever heard of the Key of Solomon?"

"I was a priest," he said.

Which I took to mean yes.

"I need it."

"There are copies all over the place."

"The original."

"That, there's only one of."

"And the Book of Samyaza."

Now his brows tilted downward as he frowned. "It's real?"

"Wanna find out?"

Slowly, a half smile appeared. "Actually, yeah." He nodded thoughtfully and repeated, "Yeah. I still have connections."

"One more thing."

I reached for his arm, but he pulled back. Instead of being hurt, I was glad. The less he trusted, the better. I didn't want to walk into a room someday and find pieces of him all over the place.

"If the Nephilim know you're searching for it-"

"They'll kill me. They try that all the time."

"I was going to say 'they'll follow you.' If you find it, they'll kill you."

"Then they'll take it and march all over the earth in glory," he finished.

"I'd hate to see either of those things happen."

"You and me both."

I gave him my cell phone number and e-mail address. He did the same.

"Where you headed?" I asked.

"Where are you?" he countered.

I decided not to share. Bram might try to burn me for a witch if he heard I was raising ghosts.

"I'm not sure," I said.

"Me either."

We were both lying, and we both knew it. Welcome to my world-trust no one who hasn't proved trustworthy, and sometimes not even them. It was a sad, bad, lonely way to live.

I glanced at the sky. The sun was falling rapidly. There was no way I'd be able to find the Old One today. "You know of any motels nearby?"

"I don't stay in motels."

I lowered my gaze. "Ever?"

"Sometimes I wake myself screaming. Had the cops called a few times. Better to sleep in the van."

Talk about sad, bad, and lonely. Poor guy. His life had not been easy. A weaker man would have gone stark, raving loony. But Bram had the confidence to believe in his dreams and the strength to do something about them. We needed more like him. The problem was finding them.

I might now possess Sawyer's talent for detecting candidates. What I didn't have was the time to troll the population waiting for a ripple.

Ruthie had used the social services system to discover kids turned out of foster homes again and again, often for very strange reasons. Weird stuff happened around breeds all the time-usually deadly, b.l.o.o.d.y, scary stuff.

But Ruthie was gone and the federation didn't have the manpower to spare a member to run the group home that had been the salvation of so many. At Ruthie's everyone was loved no matter what. Hers was the first place I'd ever felt like a girl and not a freak.

I stood, running my fingers over the dent in the hood. I wished I knew more about magic. I could probably fix that with a twitch of my nose. Turning, I stared at the empty road.

"You are definitely something more than human," I said.

CHAPTER 17.

Before getting into the Impala, I used one of the gallon jugs of water in the trunk to sponge off the draugar blood. I couldn't drive around like this; I especially couldn't drive into a small western town and check in for the night looking as if I'd spent the day as an extra in the latest Quentin Tarantino movie.

After removing my ruined lime-green tank top and bra, I changed into fresh ones-this time in power red. Maybe the shade would wake me up.

I bought shirts, bras, and underwear by the bagful at Wal-Mart. They rarely lasted long enough to wear out. I'd learned quickly to purchase dark-colored jeans that could disguise myriad questionable body fluids. I'd also bought black sneakers after my white pair had first become pink when I washed them, and then fallen apart when I bleached them.

I'd had high hopes for finding a motel in Osage, the next town up the road, but it turned out to have a population between two and three hundred and little use for a motel. Luckily I saw the sign for a family-owned establishment near Upton that promised an Internet connection and a free breakfast.

I paid cash. Too many Nephilim knew me by name. The federation did have a wide network in place-members in every walk of life and level of business and government-that could erase all trace of my transaction with a single phone call on my part. But they had better things to do with their time and talents. Besides, the Nephilim had a similar network. One never knew who might see the info first, or even intercept a phone call.

Though I was the leader of the light, I wasn't exactly sure how many members the federation had, who they were, or even what all they did. Ruthie had died too suddenly to tell me much of anything, and I'd been a little busy sticking my finger in the dike of the Apocalypse to take an administrative crash course.

But Ruthie had trained her people well-except for me-and they were used to working alone. They continued to do so with no input or management on my part. As a result, the federation had kept chugging along pretty smoothly, considering.

The motel clerk appeared as if he'd just come in from a three-week fly-fishing excursion. His face and arms were fried the shade of an overripe strawberry. He had to have a hundred mosquito bites. He still smelled of fish, and I could swear there were a few entrails hanging off his seed cap.

He couldn't stop staring at me. I wondered if I was the first non-Caucasian to walk through his door this year.

"Miss," he began.

"I'm Egyptian," I said in an attempt to stave off the usual questions about my nationality. Since I got them in Milwaukee-a town where around forty percent of the population was African American-I was certain I'd get them here.

"Oh. Ah. Well. Ain't that nice? I was gonna say you've got something there behind yer ear." He pointed.

I swiped a glob of draugar off my neck then casually wiped it on my jeans. "Deerfly," I said, hoping like h.e.l.l they had them here.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," the man muttered, and spit a brown stream of tobacco juice into a cup at his elbow.

I was a little embarra.s.sed that I'd expected the guy to question if I was black. I'd been asked that all my life, and I hated it. Not because I didn't want to be seen as African American. Ruthie had been, after all, and I'd wanted nothing more than to be exactly like her-until I was.

No, it had bothered me then because I hadn't known who my parents were. I had no idea why I looked the way I did, and I hadn't wanted to be reminded of that. Of course once I'd met my mother, I'd only wanted a return to my blissful state of ignorance.

"You doin' some sightseeing?" the man asked.

"Mmm," I said, eyeing the key in his hand. Why didn't he just hand it over?

" 'Cause if ye are, it's good ye aren't white."

My gaze flicked from the key to his face. "Excuse me?"

"There are a lot of places 'round here that are cursed for the white man."

"Sure there are."

He grinned, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. Why on earth would someone do that on purpose? "You can hardly blame the Sioux for being teed off."

"Interesting position for a white man."

"My great-great-great-granny was Lakota."

My ears perked up as the curse got a whole lot more interesting. "Really?" I'd discovered that family legends often held the truth.

"Really. You know the government stole the Black Hills from the People."

"I heard something about that."

He grinned that terrible grin again. "They call the hills Paha Sapa, and they're sacred. In the Treaty of Fort Laramie the Sioux were given ownership. But then gold was discovered."

"And suddenly the land that was useless enough to give to the Indians wasn't so useless anymore."

"You've heard the story?"

"It's common enough. They found oil in Indian Territory. Shazaam. Not so Indian anymore."

The clerk nodded. "White men started pourin' into the Black Hills. Custer even led an expedition in 1874. Carved his name right into the peak of Inyan Kara. You can still see it. G. CUSTER. '74. According to my granny, the mountain was angry. Ever since then, any white man steps foot on Inyan Kara is cursed."

"You believe that?"

"Didn't work out too well for Custer."