Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) (22 page)

I ignored his observations. “How did you get into my dream?”

Emmett’s eyes widened the slightest bit. “Riding dreams is easy. Doing anything effective there, on the other hand, depends on the person having the dream. I could never hurt
you
inside your dreams, my dear. Your instincts are too quick, and your magic is strong. I could only hurt your physical body while you were lying in bed having the dream—that is if you weren’t constantly protected by a dragon.”

Mick said nothing, but he didn’t have to. He regarded Emmett calmly, as though unworried about anything that might happen in this place.

“You did a spell on Mick that tore him apart,” I said to Emmett, my anger rising. “It was horrible.”

“But saved his life.” Emmett came around to the front of his desk and leaned his hip on it, for all the world looking like an executive trying to speak casually to an important client. “He was about to become dragon offal.”

“Are you saying that if Mick had died in the dream, that would have been real?” Cold horror spiked through me.

Emmett shrugged. “Who knows? I haven’t studied dreams extensively—I’ve never needed to. Or dreamwalking, which is what you seem to have been doing.”

“Because you spelled me to!” I said in fury. “You sent me into comas so you could try to steal the mirror!”

Emmett’s eyes opened and closed once, slowly. “I admit I
have
tried to kill you. First with John and Monica, second with the self-destruct spells in my lackeys. Both were backup attempts—I couldn’t be sure you’d go near either of them. John and Monica—they’re perfectly ordinary humans, if you want to know, but they love being with demons and will do anything for me, because I pay well. They were only supposed to wait in bar in case you came in and then lure you to their hotel room. I had no idea you’d let loose a horde of demons, Janet. But you did. You can’t keep out of other people’s business, can you?”

“And in case I didn’t die all the way, you sent me dreams to drive me insane.”

Emmett was already shaking his head. “No, Janet, you have that wrong. I can’t coerce you in dreams to give me the mirror. You need to die, or we need to come to some other kind of agreement. I’m not the one sending you dreamwalking.”

“You keep saying
dreamwalking
. What does that mean, exactly?”

Emmett made an expansive gesture with one hand. “Just what you’ve been doing. Reliving your past, either trying to change it or reacting to what might have been.”

Not helpful. “The dreamwalking doesn’t change anything … does it? Mick obviously never got de-dragoned.”

Emmett shifted his stance, crossing his feet at the ankles and resting his hands behind him on his desk. He was the very picture of an important man condescending to be friendly to the less important.

“Are you claiming that you had nothing to do with my dreams?” I asked, skeptical. “I don’t believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I have nothing to do with your dreams, I assure you. I
could
spell you to dream and reveal secrets to me, but that method is unreliable. I prefer a more direct approach.”

He meant torture and dire threats. “Then why did you wish me sweet dreams after you took me home in your limo?”

“Being polite. Showing you I could still be nice after your boyfriend blew up my favorite car.” Emmett’s eyes flickered with brief annoyance. “It’s what people say to each other, isn’t it? If your subconscious took it as a suggestion, I can’t help that.”

I took a step forward. “Dreams in which I forget all about my current life, Mick almost gets killed, other people from my present wander in to interact with me …”

“Your hang-ups are your own, my dear Janet. Dreams often show you what you wish for and what you fear. They reveal your frustrations and desires—often both at the same time.”

“Regardless,” I said firmly. Mick, beside me, had not said a word, but I couldn’t ask him why at the moment. “Whether you have anything to do with this dreamwalking or not, I’ve come to tell you to give up on taking our magic mirror. If we have to kill you to stop you, we will. Less work for everyone if you simply give up.”

Emmett gave me a pitying look. “I haven’t even begun to try to wrest the mirror from you. If you had died in one of my little traps, well and good, but those were incidental—just in case. When I come for the mirror, you’ll know.”

“And we’ll fight you,” I answered. “Trust me.”

“Oh, I do trust you, Janet,” Emmett said softly. “I also like you a little bit, which is why I’m giving you fair warning. Now …” He straightened up, the businessman finished with the interview. “I have another appointment in about five minutes. If I keep the client waiting, my PA will have a conniption. Ah.” He paused as though remembering something. “By the way, I’ve sent the cleaning bill for my shirt, the one the Nightwalker bloodied in his vain attempt to bite me, to your hotel. I believe it came to two-hundred dollars.” He gestured toward the door through which we’d entered. “My receptionist will see you out now, fetch you a taxi if you need one.”

The door he pointed to was closed, the wall unbroken, but I had no doubt it would open to release us when he wished. I turned around and started for it, ready to get out of this chilling place.

I was halfway across the glaring white floor when I realized Mick hadn’t followed me. I turned to see him still facing Emmett, his hands at his sides, his dragon aura crackling.

“Smith,” he said.
 

His voice was quiet and steady, but everything in me came alert. I headed for him, uneasiness surging.

“If you ever try to hurt Janet again,” Mick continued without a break. “I will rain hell down upon you.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Emmett said. “I believe—”

He never got a chance to tell us what he believed. Mick brought up his hands, his dragon aura rushed outward, and the entire office exploded into flames.
 

I let out a cry and shielded my face with my hands, but the fire didn’t touch me. Mick and I stood in a clear, five-foot space on the white floor, while the flame raced around us and through the rest of the office.
 

A rope of fire lifted Emmett’s desk and tumbled it end over end straight through the thick glass wall. The windows were meant to withstand impact—and Emmett no doubt had his bulletproofed—but the desk crashed through the heated glass and flew out into the bright daylight. Fire consumed the steel frame and the computer, raining ash to the city below.

Emmett himself was on fire, a pillar of flame, but he only stood there, no screaming, no flailing. He watched, with me, as darkness filled the room, and every window melted and flowed to the pristine floor in a thick river of glass.

Sudden wind blasted through the three open sides, sweeping both Emmett and me off our feet, the wind tunnel sucking Emmett out into open air.
 

I skittered on my stomach across the smooth floor, hit the edge, scrabbled for hold, and found myself swept into empty space.

Chapter Twenty-One

I screamed and screamed as I fell, knowing that nothing between me and the thirty floors of air would stop me. My arms pumped, as though some primordial ancestor whose DNA I carried instinctively tried to fly.

I tumbled, dizzy and sick, for all of two seconds—a very, very long two seconds—before a talon caught me and pulled me up into the sky.

“Mick!” I yelled. “You …” I choked off my words, knowing he’d never hear me, and slumped down into the now-familiar dragon’s claw.

Mick didn’t like to go dragon in front of anyone, but he should have thought of that before he destroyed the windows of Emmett’s building and dove out to a metropolis of five million on a bright, clear-skied morning.

We soared far too high above the teeming city, the freeway streaming with cars to our left, arteries feeding into it. Mick flapped over the baseball park, the roof open today, letting me see down to the green of the field too far below me. He winged his way toward the airport, then turned and streamed north just before we reached the flight path of the landing jets.

As he passed over the freeway in the middle of town, cars flowing into a short tunnel staggered to a halt, quickly building a jam that began to stretch for miles. Mick let out a screech that I knew was a dragon laugh, then flew straight north, following a main avenue that crossed low mountains to northern suburbs, then beyond to open desert hills.

Mick headed skyward to navigate the eight-thousand foot mountains of Rim country and off to the high desert of Magellan and home.

***

Mick landed with precision on the other side of the railroad bed from the Crossroads Hotel about an hour and a half after he’d destroyed Emmett’s office.

I fell to my knees when he set me down, weariness and reaction taking over. By the time I hauled myself up, Mick had shifted back into his human form and was helping me with strong, warm hands.

I glared at him. “You enjoyed that!”

“Fuck, yeah.” Mick grinned down at me, his eyes smoky black. “Even if Emmett can protect his body from my fire, I’ll destroy every single thing he enjoys until he leaves you the hell alone.”

I shivered, suddenly cold though the September day was plenty warm. “If you irritate him enough, he’ll come after you.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass. I will make his life a misery. Wherever he turns, there I’ll be, ready to—how did I put it?—rain down hell. I want him out of your life.”

Mick’s smile had vanished, his anger taking over. Mick rarely lost his temper in a big way, but when he did, continents took cover.

I clasped his hands in mine, closing over his hot fingers. “I don’t want him taking
you
away from
me
, Mick. When I thought you were dying in my dream, it was …”
Empty, terrifying, a dark hole in my life.
“I never want to feel like that again. I was ready to make a deal with the devil to keep you alive.”

I had told him everything about the dream as I recovered in the hospital, though some of the details had gone. Mick squeezed my hands.

“Maybe that’s what the dream was telling you—that you’d go to Emmett if you were desperate. That you’d give him anything.”

I shook my head. “I think it was telling me I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

Mick’s voice went quiet. “I’m supposed to be keeping
you
safe. From dragons, Beneath goddesses, powerful mages, and your own magic.” He took a step closer, right into my personal space, his body heat warming me. “You’re my mate. I live to keep you safe and next to me.”

I liked the way my heartbeat quickened. “Yeah? Well, you’re
my
mate. It goes both ways. Either lock me on your island lair or let me protect you.”

Mick growled low in his throat. “Don’t tempt me.”

I knew damn well he’d fly me out to the atoll in the middle of the Pacific and make sure I couldn’t get away if he thought I’d be safer.

To keep him from deciding to go there right now, I pressed myself against him. While I’d been in the hospital, there had been no way to be completely intimate, and last night in the hotel room, Mick had insisted I sleep, not that I hadn’t passed out as soon as my head touched the pillow.

I still wasn’t quite at my normal strength today, and the impromptu flight home had drained me a bit. It was also broad daylight, the sun shining on Mick’s bare skin, and the hotel was full of guests.

Even so, I gave his hands a little tug, indicating we should go inside. I was ready to show him how much I appreciated him springing to my defense.

Mick gave me a brief kiss on the lips before he gently pushed me away, but not to reject me. He moved a few steps down the railroad bed to the clothes he’d hidden there, pulling on a pair of jeans over his nakedness.
 

Then he took my hand, led me up and over the railroad bed and across the open space to the back door of my hotel. He was barefoot, but rocks and thorns never bothered Mick.

He kissed me again on the doorstep, the kiss holding all of his fire and plenty of promise. Then he took me inside and down the short hall to my bedroom, where he closed the door, shutting out the world.

Only an old crow, perched high in the juniper tree, watched us go in, and she said nothing at all.

***

I woke in darkness, the moon high, clouds dragging across it to dim its light. Mick was gone, but the pillow beside me was warm, and I knew he hadn’t gone far.

I rolled out of bed to my feet, my body sore from my recovery and Mick’s exuberant welcome. I was grateful for the dreamless sleep I’d plunged into, I guessed courtesy of Mick, whose healing magic included sending the hurt person to cozy oblivion.

I dragged on some clothes and went to check out the quiet hotel. Tomorrow I’d go see Maya and find Drake. While I’d been in the hospital, Fremont had called to tell me Maya was better and had gone home, to her old house, he’d stressed.

We’d had no word from Drake, and Mick was worried, though he said nothing. Drake hadn’t been at the jail when it had fallen—as far as I knew—but that didn’t mean Emmett hadn’t found some way to hurt him too. Pain and suffering seemed to be the criteria for walking the dreams with me.

It was late, but guests were still in the lobby, and Cassandra was behind the reception desk. This was a hotel for the paranormal, which meant people who were at home in the night—witches, Nightwalkers, Changers, and other things I didn’t know much about.
 

The small, wizened couple reading together on the couch caught my eye. They didn’t look human, but their auras weren’t demon or anything witchy. They had the solid, clean auras of earth magic, but I had no clue what they were.

I headed into the saloon, wanting to make sure the magic mirror was intact. It was the focus of Emmett’s attention, and finding the frame empty in the dream worried me.

I nodded at Carlos, the bartender, and looked past him to the wall. A shudder of déjà vu went through me as I saw that the entire mirror was gone, frame and all.

My mouth opened and closed as I pointed at the empty space. Carlos looked puzzled then glanced to what I stared at.