Stormwalker (26 page)

“Please stop reading my mind.”

“I don’t have to. I can read your face.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not in the room,” Nash snapped. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“Neither do we,” Coyote said. “You, Nash Jones, are an enigma. I’ve never met a null before.”

Maya struggled up from the floor. Her hair hung in tangles, and her dress was ripped, but she faced Coyote with her head high, eyes snapping. “Leave him alone. All right, so magic is real. I felt my arm heal, and it hurt like hell, if you care. But that doesn’t mean you can bombard him when he doesn’t understand what’s going on. You aren’t going to use Nash for anything.”

Nash put his hands on her shoulders. “Maya, why don’t you go home?”

Maya jerked to face him. “Don’t be condescending to me, you son of a bitch. I’m only saying what’s right.”

I saw the pulse beating in Nash’s neck again, his growing anger on top of confusion. I did the best thing I possibly could for him. I grabbed Mick’s hand and told him and Coyote that I needed to talk to them out front.

I closed the kitchen door behind us as Nash’s and Maya’s voices rose. The saloon outside was peaceful in comparison, a haven from anger.

“What is it, baby?” Mick asked me. His warm voice sent shivers down my spine, the answering storm magic rising inside me.

“Nothing,” I said. “I want them to be alone so they’ll fight it out.”

Coyote laughed at me. “I like the way you think, Begay. I’m out of here. Have things to do and places to go before morning. Be careful.” His voice dropped to serious tones. “Things are dangerous, and your time is coming.”

He swung around and walked out, his boots grating on the tile floor.

“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” I said. “Cryptic is one thing, but he’s just spooky.”

“I agree with him. I’m still not sure I understand why you wanted to come back here, now that you found Amy.”

“I have to stop her, Mick. She’s dangerous, and I’m the only one who’s been able to get away from her—as far as I know.”

“And what makes you think you can fight her?”

I ran my hands up the insides of Mick’s arms. “I have you.”

His kiss breathed new life into me. I’d been avoiding him since we’d returned from Tucson, and we’d retreated somewhat into the shells we’d worn before. I’d buried myself in details of the hotel, and he did whatever it was he did when he wasn’t here protecting me.

But I’d realized on our trip to Tucson how much I needed him. Whatever Mick’s motive for manipulating our first meeting, whatever his motive for protecting me, he’d done more than simply keep me alive. He’d showed me how to
live
.

Mick had allowed me to become more than Janet the misunderstood, misfit child, or Janet the woman running away from her terrifying origins. Being with Mick had been more than about sex, more than about riding together. Mick had given me life itself.

I wound my arms around his neck, and opened my mouth for his kiss. My braless breasts ached, the nipples tingling where my shirt rubbed them.

Mick lifted me and set me on the bar. I wrapped my legs around him, letting us contact, groin to groin, through our clothes. He moved his hands under my shirt, cupping my breasts.

The magic mirror drew a shuddering breath. “Oh, sweet-hearts, normally I’d die before I interrupted this
stimulating
little scene, but . . .”

“What?” I asked it in irritation.

The mirror’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s here!”

Mick whipped around, but there was nothing behind him. Outside the window, emptiness filled the dark parking lot, with the glow of the Crossroads Bar beyond it. Behind that, on the western horizon, forks of lightning fingered the earth.

From the kitchen, I heard a clear, light voice. “Nash?”

Mick and I looked at each other again, Mick’s eyes holding knowledge and fear. We nodded in silent agreement, then he released me, and we did what we needed to do.

“Nash?” Amy repeated, looking from Nash to Maya. “I don’t understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand,” Maya said. “You went to find God. I stayed with Nash.”

Amy gave Maya a glower of vast annoyance. “You are the Whore of Babylon, Maya Medina. Look at you, dressed to seduce. I’m surprised you didn’t come riding in on the Beast.”

“The Beast.” Mick’s smile was more intimidating than I’d ever seen it, his eyes darkening to midnight black. “That would be me.”

“Ah, so
that’s
what you are.”

Nash broke in. “Amy, what are you doing here?”

Amy flicked her green gaze back to Nash. “I came to see you. To explain what I’d done and why.” She moved nearer. “To touch you again. To taste what we had. And I find you here with this
slut
. May God forgive you.” She laughed. “Because I won’t.”

“What is wrong with you?” Maya asked. “You think you can waltz back here like nothing ever happened? You deserted him without so much as saying good-bye. Did you desert the nuns too? What did they ever do to you?”

Amy smiled, and I recognized the smile. “They gave me teeth,” she said.

Before Nash could move, Amy had gone for a knife, the big, long chef’s knife I’d been using to slice tomatoes for the sandwiches. I grabbed the pistol that was still on the counter and jammed the magazine into it.

Nash remained frozen and so did Mick. Only Maya knew I wasn’t joking and dove for the floor. Amy rushed at Maya, knife raised, and I shot Amy, three slugs, straight into her shoulder.

Amy went down, eyes glazing, blood rushing out of her to pool on my newly cleaned ceramic tile floor. Maya rolled away from her, gasping.

Nash rounded on me, gray eyes lit with fires of wrath. He had the pistol out of my hand and me slammed facedown into the counter before Mick could move to stop him.

“What the hell did you do?” Nash screamed at me.

“It’s not her,” I shouted into the counter.

Nash yanked my hands behind my back, and I felt the cold steel of handcuffs. “You have the
fucking
right to remain silent. Anything you say I’ll make damned sure is used against you . . .”

He went on, but I had bigger things to worry about. My mother would desert Amy’s body now that she was down, which left the question—where would she go?

“Mick, get Maya out of here!”

Mick was hustling Maya out before I finished the command, figuring out the problem the same time I did.

“Don’t you go anywhere. Call an ambulance!” Nash shouted. “I’m hauling you to jail, Janet Begay, and I’m going to make damn sure you never see the light of day again.”

“Nash . . .”

“Shut up!” He grabbed towels and pressed them to Amy’s shoulder, Amy’s face pale and drained. I heard Mick’s bike starting up, the loud throbbing dying into the distance.

Amy blinked in confusion, her eyes clear and sane but filled with pain. “Nash?”

My heart hammered. My mother had left her, but damn it, where was she?

Sirens erupted into the night air, help racing toward the hotel from Magellan. The storms converged as well, the two from the south and the west meeting that of the north. Chill wind cut across the desert, followed by a shower of hail.

When the paramedic team burst into the kitchen, one of them the woman who’d patched me up after the wreck on the highway, Nash dragged me out through the saloon, past the groaning mirror, and out the front door, not caring how much I tripped and stumbled on the way. When we reached the sheriff’s SUV, Nash slammed me into the backseat, locking me inside.

He opened the driver’s door, grabbed his radio, and started talking. He was going to lock me in jail and toss away the key, probably giving his deputies orders not to feed me either. This was the thanks I got for saving Maya’s life.

Lightning forked into the wash beyond the railroad bed, the air crackling. I laughed as the power surged through me. Electricity sparkled through the handcuffs, and I pulled them apart as though they were made of butter.

Ah, this is perfect.

Cold knifed through me. Well, there wasn’t much doubt where my mother’s spirit had gone. She’d always said she wanted to get chummy with her daughter.

My body was icy with fear, the fear growing as I watched myself hook fingers around the grill that separated front from back seats and with one tug loosen it. I let it go, making it look as though it was still fastened in place so Nash wouldn’t notice.

I waited while Nash went to help the paramedics, lounging with my feet up and yawning in boredom. I watched Amy being carried on a stretcher from the hotel to an ambulance. Chief McGuire and his wife had come, Maude McGuire leaning against her upright husband while McGuire spoke to Nash. No doubt he was telling them the whole story. They’d never understand what I’d done—that I had to hurt Amy to save her life as well as Maya’s. I wondered if they’d ever speak to me again.

They don’t matter, you know. They’re ants, crawling on the earth. Are you upset if one ant gets hurt?

“I am, actually,” I said out loud. Proving I could still use my mouth to talk made me feel a little better.

Janet, the compassionate. You can’t bleed for every living creature, my dear. There will never be enough time for that.

“I can bleed for some of them.”

Of course you can, darling. Where is that Nash? I need him.

“Leave him alone.”

Do you not understand how powerful he is? He can resist the strongest magic of this earth. Think what someone with both his power and mine could do. He can help break us out from Beneath and resist those who try to stop us—like the dragons. You saw what happened when that dragon you keep as a slut poured fire into Nash. Nothing. The dragons will bow before me now. And you.

Gods help me, she was right. Nash could resist my magic and Mick’s, my strongest lightning and Mick’s hottest fire. If Nash could be commanded by those Beneath, nothing could stop them.

Nash got into the SUV, slamming the door. He didn’t look at me or acknowledge my presence, but I felt rage boiling from him. He started the truck and roared off onto the dark highway, leaving the other vehicles behind.

Halfway to Flat Mesa, where the road dipped to accommodate a winding wash, my mother said,
Now.

Unable to stop her, I ripped the grill from between the seats and laced one arm around Nash’s throat.

Nash was strong, fast, and well trained. He had me hauled over the seat with his elbow in my neck before I could think. I grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it, feeling the SUV careen off the road and out onto the rocks. We hit the bank of the dry wash and plunged straight into it.

In silence, Nash fought me off and reached for his radio. I fried it with one zap of lightning magic and, for good measure, fried his cell phone as well.

We make a good team.

“We don’t make any team, bitch.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Nash was on me, his breath hot on my face. “And why are your eyes green?”

“Nash, just run,” I urged.

He had my shoulders pressed to the seat.
Oh, nice. He’s making it easy.

Lightning flashed overhead, and the boom of thunder split my ears. The truck lit up brighter than day, showing Nash’s eyes clear like diamonds.

My magic wouldn’t work on him—that was a slight comfort. Nash, of course, could strangle the life out of me if he needed to. He’d be safe, and my mother would have to dissipate, since his null magic probably wouldn’t let her possess him. She’d have to limp, somehow, to a crack in the earth to seep Beneath. I’d be dead, of course, but the world would be safe for another day.

I wasn’t in the mood for self-sacrifice. I fought Nash as he pinned me.

With a sudden burst of strength I rolled Nash over on the seat, grunting with the effort of it. Then I was on top of
him
. He was a trained fighter and struggled hard, but he was no match for my doubled physical strength.

I broke his belt, ripped open his pants, and dragged them and his underwear down his thighs. Nash fought me like crazy. His cock sprang out, and I closed my hand around it, stroking until it hardened. Nash was gone on adrenaline, fear, and fury, but his body still responded to both my touch and the pheromones from my storm magic.

“Janet, damn you . . .” Nash jabbed his thumbs at my throat, trying to cut off my air, but I batted his hands aside.

“Don’t
fight
me, you idiot—get away from me!” I shouted. Then my voice changed, and my mother said through my lips, “We’ll make a fine baby together, and you’ll be a consort in my kingdom. You’ll have everything, even that Hispanic whore as your slave, if you want her.”

“Jesus H. Fucking Christ, what is wrong with you?”

Nash was a fighter. He wouldn’t go down easily, which I guess was the point. I laughed with my mother’s voice and cried Janet’s tears.

“Stop me,” I whispered.

The door behind me was ripped from its hinges, and the storm came pouring in. Freezing hail pounded on my back, and a lightning bolt struck a tree not twenty feet away.

A rock-hard arm wrapped around my waist and ripped me from Nash. Nash sat up, pale in the dome light that somehow still worked. He was breathing fast, his penis deflating quickly against his abdomen.

Mick’s strength squeezed the breath out of me as he turned me directly into the hail. “Let her go!”

“No, Dragon,” my lips said. “She’s my daughter. I love her, and you can’t have her.”

I realized that Mick had me positioned so that he could quickly snap my neck.

“Don’t make me do it,” he rasped. Tears streamed down his face and mingled with the rain. “Please, don’t.”

“Poor Dragon,” my mother said through my mouth. “This is what you were sent to do, wasn’t it? To kill her so I couldn’t use her. But, foolish Dragon, you fell in love. And now you must make a sacrifice. You should have killed her all those years ago and been done with it.”

Lightning strikes multiplied until the sky was almost constantly white. Mick’s eyes had gone black, his dragon tattoos writhing like live things.

“Mick, I love you,” I shouted. “If you have to, stop her.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” my mouth said. I jerked my head up to gaze into the heart of the storm, and I called it to me.

The storm was huge. As it descended on me I sucked every bit of its essence into my body.

I’d never handled anything so gigantic before. I became living lightning. I had my mother’s strength inside me, and even as I knew her strength would eventually kill me, as it had my biological mother and Harold Yazzie’s lover and Sherry Beaumont, I reveled in every second of it.

Nash had sprung out of the truck, gun in hand. I didn’t bother to throw anything at him, not knowing how much he could suck down until it had an effect on him. Instead, I tried to destroy Mick.

Mick roared as the storm magic poured into him. He’d taken a lot from me before, but never in the heart of the storm, when I was at my strongest. He’d always drawn off the remainder of my magics, not the whole, living stream, and never with the impact of my mother’s Beneath magic mixed with it.

Nash pointed the gun at my head, the flares of the electricity around me bouncing off him. “Let her go, Mick.”

A bullet to my brain probably wouldn’t stop me. I was swimming with so much magic that it would probably animate my body for as long as it took.
Nice try, Sheriff.

Mick whipped me away from the gun. His body chilled as it began to swell and grow. Nash jumped back, and Mick spread enormous dragon wings and lifted himself—and me—off the ground.

My stomach dropped as we rose abruptly, straight into the apex of the storm.

Mick fought the wind. His dragon fire flamed out, clearing a path through the chunks of ice pouring from the clouds.

I kept drawing the lightning into me, sending it surging into his body. I don’t know why my mother wanted to do that—if Mick dropped me, it could kill me.

More fire shot from Mick’s mouth as he struggled to gain height. I didn’t know where he’d try to take me, and I wondered whether it would be to whatever volcano had created him. Drown the magic from Beneath in the magic of the earth’s bones—that was a good idea. However, that would mean flinging me into molten lava, which would be a pretty final solution.

My mother realized this too. Together we sucked lightning into my body, she laughing maniacally. Mick roared in pain and dipped toward the ground.

I felt a suction down there, a faint, swirling light that rose to meet the black clouds. A vortex, the one between the small hills, where I’d found the animal bones.

Open it,
she whispered to me.
Then we’ll be safe.

I’m not letting you win.

We’ll retreat there. Let the dragon go.

Oh, sure, you’d never lie to me.