Firewalker (15 page)

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Authors: Allyson James

Tags: #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Paranormal Romance Stories, #Shapeshifting, #Fiction

BOOK: Firewalker
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The corpse lay there for a long time, but by the way the wind moved through the grass, I could tell that time had sped up, as though we were watching a film in fast motion. I was about to blink, to try to banish the vision, when Jim’s eyes popped open.
Cassandra and I both jumped. Jim slowly lifted himself from the ground, limbs stiff, and then he stood up straight, blinking at the horizon. He drew a deep breath, put his hand to his back, and then stared in amazement at the blood that coated his fingers.
The image and the magic vanished the next second, leaving me breathless and staring at a T-shirt covered with blood on my desk. Pamela was on her feet.
“All right, what the hell just happened?” she demanded. “You two jerked like you saw something that scared you. What was it?”
Cassandra put her hand to her face, turning the nervous gesture into smoothing her already smooth hair. “We just witnessed a murder.”
“So, who did it?” Pamela demanded.
“Someone with a knife. I couldn’t see who.” I pretended to be less unnerved than I was. “Not very helpful.”
Cassandra studied the shirt with a bewildered look. “I don’t understand. That was Jim Mohan, definitely. But I’d swear that when Jim checked into the hotel, he wasn’t supernatural; he was human. I’d stake my reputation on it.”
“And now he’s a dead human?” Pamela asked.
“We also just witnessed him coming back to life.” Cassandra’s voice was faint.
“Not possible,” Pamela said with conviction. “Cassandra’s right; the guy was human, and he wasn’t magical. He didn’t smell like a sorcerer.”
“Let me think.” I massaged my aching temples. My mouth was dry, and I longed to suck down about a gallon of water. “I’m pretty sure that was the Homol’ovi ruins in the background. And you said the magic mirror went crazy when Jim went into the saloon,
after
he’d been out at Homol’ovi all day.”
“Yes,” Cassandra said. “But he was very much alive when he came back, not stabbed or covered with blood.”
I looked down at the T-shirt. Jim had worn it when he died, and now the bloody shirt was in his room. When did a murderer remove a T-shirt from a corpse and throw the bloody shirt into a closet? Had Jim somehow survived and was now walking around, alive and fine and thinking he was getting away with not paying his hotel bill? The vision might not have shown me everything.
Or the magic mirror and Cassandra might have seen his ghost. Cassandra and the mirror were both very magical; they would see things that Pamela and other humans couldn’t.
But in the vision, when Jim had climbed to his feet, he’d been breathing, if bloody. He’d not been a ghost but very much alive.
The next alternative on the list left me stone cold.
So, when
did
a murderer remove a T-shirt from a corpse and throw the bloody shirt into a closet? When the corpse did it himself.
“He was resurrected,” I said slowly. “Jim was resurrected before he returned to the hotel. He probably didn’t even know it, was surprised he’d survived, but the magic mirror knew something was wrong with him.”
Cassandra looked sick. “You mean resurrected by a necromancer? Can’t be. I’ve seen resurrected slaves before. They’re zombies, animated dead. Jim was alive. Breathing, drinking, sunburned, excited, and alive.”
“Then a very good resurrectionist,” Pamela broke in. “Is that possible?”
“Only if he were a god,” I said.
A god.
Oh, gods.
I withdrew my hands from the T-shirt and was suddenly very, very afraid.
Cassandra and Pamela left my office together, both of them a little dazed. I must have looked the same. I folded the shirt and stashed it in the bottom drawer of my desk. I clicked through all the pictures on Jim’s digital camera but saw nothing except innocent pictures of ancient ruins.
Shock and the strange surge of magic left me nauseated. I stashed the camera and left the office, heading up the stairs to the third floor and out to the roof, where I stood in the wind and the sunshine.
The storm was racing away, a few ragged clouds drifting in its wake. The air was sweet, washed clean by the rain, not charged with magic. I inhaled the freshness, letting it calm my roiling stomach.
But my worry didn’t leave me. A complete resurrection could be done only by someone extremely powerful, and the vision hadn’t showed me who’d done it. I remembered the fast-forward part of it—how long Jim had actually lain there, dead, I didn’t know, and I’d seen no one approach him. But anyone who was strong enough to bring someone back to life would have the magic to stay out of any vision I could conjure.
The fact that I’d been able to call up such a precise vision at all bothered me. I could read auras and sense past events if they were traumatic, but never with that clarity.
I looked east past the abandoned railroad bed that marked the edge of town. The vortexes lay beyond it, swirling magnets of mystical energy, gateways to Beneath. The vortex Mick and I had sealed last spring was still there, but the energy from it was gone. Completely shut off. We made it a point to hike the mile or so to it once a week to make sure.
I wanted to blame the vortexes for the Beneath magic that had been surging in me lately, but I couldn’t. What Coyote had told me in my dream I knew in my heart was right—the Beneath magic had been there since my birth, given to me by my goddess mother. But in the past, the magic had always been somewhat dormant, fighting my storm magic inside me, but doing no more damage than to give me a hangover.
Now the Beneath magic let me kill hordes of demons in one stroke and replay a man’s death in living color by my simply focusing on the shirt he’d died in. It had also tried to convince me to catch a murderer by killing everyone in Magellan.
I sat down, putting my back against the wall that made up the partial third floor. The wall was warm from the sun, but I still shivered. The Beneath magic made me feel powerful, unstoppable, invincible, and that scared the shit out of me.
“You should be scared.”
I shrieked, jumped halfway to my feet, and slid down the wall again. “Damn it, I wish you wouldn’t
do
that.”
Coyote grinned down at me. “I like to make an entrance.”
At least this time we were both dressed. Coyote wore his jeans and denim jacket, as he had at the diner, turquoise buckle, and cowboy boots. “I want to keep you on your toes,” he said.
“Not when I feel like this.” I rubbed my temples, wishing this damn headache would go away.
Coyote crouched next to me, jeans stretching over hard thighs. “Stop using the Beneath magic, Janet.”
“It uses
me
. It surges up and tells me how to do things, and I just do them.” I gave him a hopeful look. “Can you teach me to control it?”
“No, I mean
stop using the Beneath magic
. I don’t want you controlling it. I want you not using it.”
“I can’t help it. . .”
“Let me put it this way. Stop using it, or I’ll destroy you. I don’t want to—I’d rather sleep with you. But I will kill you if I have to.”
I looked up into the face of a god. Coyote, the affable Indian who made the tourists laugh and was friends with young Julie, had faded. His eyes were dark and hard, the power in him unmistakable. He could squash me and not break a sweat.
No, he can’t,
my magic whispered.
You have the strength to stop even him.
Coyote’s eyes went black.
I quickly held up my hands. “Don’t. I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
The way he looked at me made me want to run far and fast. “Did you resurrect Jim?” I asked him.
Coyote blinked. “Who?”
“The guy in my hotel that the mirror scared away. He got stabbed and brought back to life. I know you know who I’m talking about. Did you resurrect him?”
“No.” His voice was flat. “I don’t believe in that shit.”
“But you could do it?”
“I could. But I didn’t.”
“Do you know who did?”
“Nope.” He didn’t look much interested. But then, Coyote wasn’t always forthcoming with his feelings, except about sex.
“You’ve been a lot of help. As usual.”
“I’m not here to help, Janet. I’m here to keep the balance.”
“And screw as much as you can.”
A flicker of his usual grin crossed his face. “That too.” Coyote got to his feet, still the god. “Don’t use the magic again.”
“I don’t know if I can stop it.”
“If you don’t, I will.”
Damn it, this was so unfair. I didn’t want my mother’s magic to be in me, but I hadn’t been given the choice.
I opened my mouth to argue some more, but a fiery presence burst onto the roof. Mick was across it in the space of three seconds, and by second number four, he had his hand around Coyote’s neck and Coyote against the wall.
“Leave her alone,” Mick said. His eyes were as black as Coyote’s, and fire flickered on the lines of the dragon tattoos.
“Dragon,” Coyote said without changing expression. “You want to tangle with me again?”
“No, I want to throw you off the roof. Leave Janet alone.”
Mick radiated power, but so did Coyote. A fight between them would blow a hole in my hotel. Just what I needed, my hotel obliterated by a god and a dragon.
I got to my feet. “Would it do me any good to ask the two of you to stop it?”
“No,” Coyote said. “It’s sweet that he wants to protect you. Even as dangerous as you are.”
“I don’t care if she’s queen of the damned,” Mick snarled. “You won’t touch her.”
Coyote never lost his smile. I knew him capable of killing me and Mick both without blinking, but he just kept grinning. “I’ll go through you to get to her, dragon.”
“You’ll have to.” Mick’s voice was ice-cold.
“Just make sure she doesn’t use that crazy magic from the world below, and I’ll leave her alone.”
Mick finally eased his hand away from Coyote’s throat. Coyote straightened his shirt but made no other indication that Mick had hurt him. He winked at me, turned away, and went back inside, whistling.
Mick watched him go, his eyes still hard, before he turned to me. “You all right?”
I leaned back against the sun-drenched wall. “He didn’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I won’t let him touch you, Janet, I promise.”
“What can you possibly do against him? He’s a god.”
To my surprise, Mick smiled his bad-ass smile. “Remember when he told you we’d met in the past? It was a long time ago, maybe a hundred years. I won that fight, not Coyote.”
I’d been curious about the encounter since the day I’d learned about it. “What happened?”
“Dragons don’t stand in awe of any gods but their own. Coyote was exploring—he likes to explore and get into other people’s business. He invaded my territory, and I objected. Strongly. I protected what was mine and ran him off. Gods are powerful, but you don’t mess with a dragon on his territory.”
I folded my arms, the air cool despite the sunshine. “Where is your territory?”
“Volcano. On a Pacific island.”
I lifted a brow. “You’re a Polynesian dragon?”
“Sort of. There’s volcanic activity all around the Pacific Rim. There’s a reason the volcanoes are named after gods.”
“Because those gods are really dragons.”
“No. There are gods. And dragons.” He smiled at me, his eyes becoming sparkling blue again. “That was my territory—still is. But this is my territory now too. And you’re my mate.” He stepped in front of me, cupped my shoulders with his warm hands. “I defend you, and it, against all comers. Including Native American trickster gods and asshole dragons like Colby.”
I swallowed. “Speaking of Colby, where is he?”
“Magellan Inn. I wasn’t about to let him stay here.”
“Because it’s your territory?”
“Damn right. He’s a dragon and my chief rival. It would be in his nature to try to take over if he stayed here. If he’s holed up in town, less of a temptation.”
Mick was firmly in front of me, the wall just as firmly behind me. “You know, Mick, this hotel actually belongs to me,” I said. “I bought it with my own money.”
His breath smelled of mint and was warm on my face. “Territory isn’t about who owns what. You should know that.”
“And we’ve never talked about the connotations of this ‘mate’ thing.”
“It means I take care of you.” Mick gently pried my arms apart and skimmed his hands to my wrists. “I defend you from your enemies. I keep you safe.”
How nice it would be to melt into that protective warmth and let him ease my troubles. I didn’t think it could be done anymore, but it was a fine fantasy.

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