"Sorry. Trying to lighten the mood." He met Abigail's gaze. "If it makes you feel any better, this isn't my first apocalypse. There is hope."
She wasn't sure what to make of that. "Obviously the world survived."
Even in the darkness, she could see the pain those words brought to him. "Yeah, not really. It kind of blew everything back to the Stone Age. The good news is, people are resilient, and that which doesn't kill you merely serves as a cautionary tale for others." He glanced out the window and sighed. "It also makes one hell of a bedtime story, especially if the Crypt-Keeper's your audience."
She sucked her breath in sharply at the unspoken agony that lay beneath those words. "What happened?"
"What always happens when preternatural powers are unleashed or go to war, and no one cares about the collateral damage during the battle." He gestured toward the people on the street. "I lost my entire family in the blink of an eye. But hey, I saved a lot of money on not having to buy Christmas cards."
How could he make light of something that was obviously so painful for him?
Without thinking, she reached out and touched his hand.
Sasha didn't look at her, but he closed his fingers around hers and gave a light squeeze that said he appreciated it.
Sasha cleared his throat. "So, Choo? How many apocalypses have you survived?"
"More than you, Wolf. More than you."
Abigail was humbled by their experience. The misery they'd seen. It was easy to lose sight of other people's pain when your own was so strong. What was it that Plato said? Be kind to all you meet, for everyone is fighting a hard battle?
It was so true.
"Are you all right?" Jess asked.
She caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. "Yeah."
No. Not really. Her guilt ate at her.
And one question hung heaviest in her mind. "How did you learn to live with being a hired killer?"
"It's just like any other act of cruelty. You lie to yourself. You say that they deserved it. You create stories to justify why they needed to die and tell yourself that if you hadn't struck first, they'd have done it to you. In the end, you do your damnedest not to think about it all."
Yeah, people did have a nasty tendency to excuse their bad behavior and then to hold it against others whenever they did the same thing.
Sasha let go of her hand. "Hey, Choo? Wanna take odds on our survival tonight? We are in Vegas, after all. I think we should up the ante and have a huge payout for whoever calls it." When Choo Co La Tah failed to respond, he turned his attention to Jess. "What about you, cowboy?"
Jess scoffed. "I only gamble with my life."
"Ah ... explains so much about you. And off on a random topic in an attempt to divert our attention from the fact that we're all most likely speeding to our impending doom, how did you get the name Sundown, anyway?"
"You want to know that now?" His tone was incredulous.
"Why not?"
Jess shook his head. "Why?"
"It's just an odd moniker for an outlaw. Figured it had some deeper meaning."
"A newspaper reporter gave it to him," Abigail said quietly. She'd read the article in something Jonah found years ago. "The man wrote that everyone called him Sundown because he did his best and most gruesome work after dark."
"You believe everything you read in the papers?" The anger in Jess's tone cut through the truck as an angry tic beat a fierce rhythm in his sculpted jaw. "They get all the facts screwed up, and I think most of them are so crooked, they have to screw their pants on in the morning. Hell, most of them have to go diagonal just to walk in a straight line."
Obviously that had struck a nerve with him. "It was wrong?"
Sasha gave her a no-duh stare.
"Yeah." Venom saturated his voice. "It was wrong. Some..." He paused as if he was about to say something offensive and then caught himself. "Trying to take credit for something that has nothing to do with anything he did. My real name is Manee Ya Doy Ay ... it means 'sundown' in my mother's language."