Firewalker (30 page)
Authors: Allyson James
Tags: #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Paranormal Romance Stories, #Shapeshifting, #Fiction
My face heated. “I swear I’m melting that thing.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. It was beautiful. Way better than any porn I can find on that motel TV.”
Mick, damn him, didn’t look ashamed at all, or even angry at Colby for having seen me in my naked glory. Maybe it was a dragon thing—having Colby watch Mick making such hard love to me reinforced the idea that I was Mick’s mate.
“Interesting, though,” Colby said, taking another sip of beer. “I mean about Bancroft wanting to grill you. Sounds like the dragon council is not at all united in their opinions about Micky or this trial. We can use that to our advantage.”
“How?”
Colby shrugged. “Trust me, darling.”
“Your defense was going to be that I was harmless,” I said. “But that’s out. Bancroft and Drake have seen what I can do. Even if I saved Bancroft’s life.”
“True. You fucked that up. Doesn’t matter. I have a few other things up my sleeves.”
“Like what?”
Colby gave me another shrug. “Have to think about what I can do.”
I glanced at Mick, but he and Colby exchanged a look. I grasped that the two of them knew exactly what Colby had in mind, and neither would bother to tell me.
Irritated, I stood up. “Fine. While you’re plotting together, try to think of a way I can find Undead Jim. One that won’t hurt anyone.”
I stalked out and nearly ran into Pamela at the door coming in. She looked me up and down, and for the first time, she smiled at me, even if it was a predatory smile.
“I heard what Colby said.” Her eyes smoldered. “He’s right. You’re hot, Janet.”
Boiling water couldn’t have made me any more uncomfortable. “I’m surprised the mirror didn’t sell tickets and serve popcorn.”
“It was a good show, believe me.”
“I thought you liked Cassandra,” I said.
“I do.” Pamela grinned. “But I still have eyes.” She walked on inside the saloon, and I hauled myself out of there.
Cassandra had no more guests at her counter. She was typing up something, her fingers skimming across the computer keyboard with ease and grace. She flicked her light blue gaze to me as I approached.
“You need to find Jim Mohan,” she told me.
“I do.” I wondered if she too had seen the show through the mirror, but if she had, I knew she’d never mention it. “He’s attracted to my magic, but I used it plenty in Santa Fe and never heard a peep from him.”
A small pucker appeared between Cassandra’s brows, and she lightly caressed the lip of the counter. “Perhaps because you weren’t in danger.”
“But I was in danger. I’d been kidnapped and held against my will.”
“If I understand what happened correctly, the dragons captured you to talk to you about Mick’s trial. They had no plans to kill you. Perhaps Jim sensed that.”
“The other dragon councilor wanted me dead. He said so, most emphatically.”
“But Draconilingius protected you. He didn’t let on that they had you in custody, which means they had no intention of letting you be hurt.”
“Gods, you can even pronounce their names.”
Cassandra’s shrug was elegant. “I studied up on dragons.”
“I never knew they existed until a few months ago.”
“You’re not a witch, and I was a diligent student. Dragons can be useful to witches, if the witch is powerful enough.”
First I’d heard of it. “My immediate problem is to find and stop Jim. If I can get him in front of a magistrate, a Hopi man might be spared a life sentence. Then again, Jim is unstable, and if he’s hauled into court, he might just kill the magistrate, the Hopi man, Nash, and me.”
“We can try to bind him.”
“His magic is pretty damn powerful, Cassandra. I can barely slap him.”
“I know some spells that are pretty damn powerful too.”
I leaned casually on the counter. “Is that why you’re working at a tiny hotel in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere?”
Cassandra gave me the tiniest of smiles. “I made some mistakes. But I enjoy working here. I like the quiet.”
“With horny dragons, attacking Changers, and an undead man filled with destructive magic wreaking havoc? Sure, I can see where that would be restful.”
Her smile widened. “I enjoy a challenge.”
I tamped down my curiosity and returned to the problem at hand. “I could find a place out in the desert, work a little magic, see if he comes. Someplace far from town, far from the vortexes, far from people. If we can do a binding spell, great. It would have to be a very powerful one.” I remembered the binding spell Mick had used on me to stop me in Las Vegas. That spell had been decently strong, but if I’d seen it coming, I knew I’d have been able to resist it. We needed something more powerful for Jim.
“I can do it,” Cassandra said. “Give me a little time to prepare. But will you be able to take away what’s animating him? If you can do that, he’ll die of his own accord, his body responding to the natural force of death.”
I grimaced. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Mick can either, or even whether Mick and I combined can do anything. My magic doesn’t always come at will.”
I wondered whether I could combine my storm magic with the Beneath magic to defeat Jim. Whether I could or not, that process would be contingent on having a powerful storm raging at the time. I couldn’t count on the weather cooperating, and I couldn’t count on my Beneath magic working perfectly either.
I pushed away from the counter. “I’m going to go scout a location.”
Cassandra gave me a warning look. “Don’t try
anything
until I can perfect a binding spell.”
anything
until I can perfect a binding spell.”
I agreed and left the hotel. I didn’t bother telling Mick where I was going. I had picked up another shard of magic mirror from my bedroom nightstand, this one a little larger than the others. I reflected that maybe I shouldn’t bother getting the mirror repaired at all. Having pieces of it to carry around was too useful.
I climbed the railroad bed and headed east of town, to the vortexes. Magellan had been built on an ancient crossroads, and the vanished tribes that had once populated this place had left petroglyphs that indicated its mystical energy. It had been no coincidence, Jamison had told me, that the railroad had been laid where it had, along a line of mystical energy, and no coincidence that the railway had gone broke and shut down.
The ties and rails had been stripped away decades ago, to leave a long, flat trail from Flat Mesa all the way to the southern end of town. I had no idea how far the bed went, not having explored that far yet.
On the other side of the railroad bed lay the vortexes. I had no intention of luring Jim out here. If he had godlike magic in him, I didn’t want him throwing it around and maybe unlocking one of the gateways; no telling what would come out of one.
I’d come here for a different reason. I made my way down the other side of the railroad bed and climbed to the top of a rise. From here I had a good view of Magellan, the town strung out along the curving highway. Behind me, the desert stretched its emptiness to the horizon. A wash had once flowed at the bottom of the little hill I stood on, but no more. The sides of it had collapsed, and fallen trees lay encased in baked earth where the mud from a terrible storm had dried.
Mick and I had done this, destroyed the wash and sealed the vortex beneath it. I closed my eyes, calmed my mind, letting nothing but the sounds, scents, and feel of the place touch me.
I breathed clean air that bore only the scent of drying grasses and the pungent odor of juniper. Nothing more. No tingle of magic, no shiver of danger.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a crow hopping near my feet. It stopped and cocked a black eye at me.
“She’s still trapped, isn’t she?” I asked it.
The crow didn’t answer. It half hopped, half walked in its ungainly way to the middle of the now-closed wash and pecked the ground with a haughty manner.
“Still trapped,” I said with certainty. Whoever or whatever had brought Undead Jim back to life, it hadn’t been my mother. That relieved me, but it also left open far too many possibilities.
When I turned around, Coyote was standing right behind me.
“Damn it, will you please stop doing that?”
Coyote regarded me with glittering dark eyes, no trace of his usual humor anywhere. “I told you, Janet, not to use the Beneath magic, ever again. Not for any reason.”
Twenty-two
My smart-ass retort died in my mouth. Coyote had made me nervous before, but right now he looked terrifying. There was nothing in his eyes of the Coyote I knew, nothing but deep rage and vast power.
“I had to,” I began. “The dragon—Bancroft—would have died. He couldn’t heal himself.”
“Then he should have died. It’s the natural order of things. Dragons are mortal—they’re hurt, they bleed, and they die.”
“I didn’t have a choice. First of all, I couldn’t stand to see a creature die because of me; second, I needed to do something to keep Drake from killing me; and third, Bancroft seems more reasonable about this trial than the others. I couldn’t risk not having him there.”
“I see. You healed the dragon to save your boyfriend.”
“Not just that. I saved Bancroft’s life to save his life.”
“Even when I told you not to use the magic?”
I regarded him with a courage I didn’t have. “It was necessary.”
“No, it wasn’t. You don’t get to choose who lives and who dies, Janet Begay.”
“And you do?”
“I’m a god. One of the first gods. I’ve existed since the first world. Some consider me the embodiment of all that is evil, but I’m not. I’m just a god, and gods can be capricious.”
No kidding. “I made the best decision I could given the circumstances.”
“You went with your emotions, and you thought me far away, where I’d never know.”
“But you did know.”
A hint of a wicked glimmer returned to his eyes. “Your mirror put on a good show.”
“Hell,” I said.
“You’re a beautiful woman, Janet. You’re passionate, and you’re in love. But you’re human. Leave the god forces alone.”
“But
am
I truly human? I was conceived by a woman possessed by a goddess, born to a man with Stormwalker magic in his family. My grandmother is powerful enough to project herself as a crow a couple hundred miles from home. I didn’t ask to inherit both powers. I’d have been happy being plain Janet, one with a real mother and father, who found simple joy in walking the land.”
am
I truly human? I was conceived by a woman possessed by a goddess, born to a man with Stormwalker magic in his family. My grandmother is powerful enough to project herself as a crow a couple hundred miles from home. I didn’t ask to inherit both powers. I’d have been happy being plain Janet, one with a real mother and father, who found simple joy in walking the land.”
“I once told you that we don’t choose what we are,” Coyote said. “We only choose what we do with what we’ve been given.”
“And I chose to save the dragon’s life. And to help Mick, and those people in Las Vegas. And I’ll choose again to find that undead menace and stop him before he hurts anyone else.”
Coyote gave me a thoughtful look. “You know, Janet, I feel about you the way you feel about Jim.”
“No, there’s one thing different,” I said. “I don’t want to have sex with Jim.”
“Touché.”
“Damn it, I wish you’d stop threatening me and
help
me. We’ve got to find this guy. Do you know where he is?”
help
me. We’ve got to find this guy. Do you know where he is?”
“No. You plan to take away his life?”
“What choice do we have? If I thought he could control the magic in him, then it would be different, but I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”
“Exactly.”
The way he said the word made my heart squeeze in fear. But I knew that if I ran, Coyote would just catch me. He’d tumble me to the ground, and with one flick of his big paw, he’d kill me. Janet would be dust, floating away on the wind.
“Are you saying that if I give Jim a chance, you’ll give me one?” I asked.
“I’m saying that I’m watching you, and that you don’t have that many chances left.”
I knew he meant it. Coyote held my life between his fingers, and all he had to do was snap them, and I’d be gone.
I closed my eyes. I thought of the voice that spoke within me every time the magic stirred, the evil it urged me to do. Could I stop the whispers? Could I somehow kill that part of my power and channel the rest to do what I bade it? Or would the Beneath magic simply consume me in the end? My mother was evil, and that evil was in me. Coyote, the dragons, my grandmother—none of them were wrong about that.
I heard voices, human ones, and opened my eyes, exhaling in relief. Naomi Kee and Jamison, with Julie between them, were climbing down the railroad bed to make their way toward us. Julie broke from her mother and started running with the long-legged, coltish lope of an eleven-year-old. She reached Coyote and threw her arms around him, and he spun her off her feet.
“Hello, Julie.” Coyote’s voice was gentleness itself as he set her down.
“Hello, Coyote.” Julie both spoke and signed at the same time. “What are you doing way out here? Are you and Janet walking to Chevelon Canyon? That’s where we’re going. Can we come with you?”
Other books
Evidence of Trust by Stacey Joy Netzel
The Dream by Jaycee Clark
Blind Love (The Complete Box Set Romance Series) by Wes, Erin
Night Walker by Donald Hamilton
Branded by Jenika Snow
Semipro by Kit Tunstall
Cleopatra�s Perfume by Jina Bacarr
Watch for Me by Moonlight by Jacquelyn Mitchard
The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison by Aldous, Susan, Pierce, Nicola
Mint Julep Murder by Carolyn G. Hart
