Firewalker (33 page)
Authors: Allyson James
Tags: #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Paranormal Romance Stories, #Shapeshifting, #Fiction
Gasping, I snapped my magic from Mick and threw it directly at Jim. Jim collapsed.
But the second before his magic winked out, Jim gave a twist of his hand. Mick’s body wrenched in two different directions at once. I heard the crunch of bones and cartilage, two hundred feet above me. Then Jim’s magic vanished, and Mick plummeted to the ground.
I tried to grab Mick, to cushion his fall, but he hit hard. The ground shook as Mick’s huge dragon body landed at the top of the canyon wall, the impact cascading boulders and gravel into the creek.
I was racing to Mick, scrambling up the side of the canyon, stumbling and falling, racked with sobs. Dragons touched down around me as I reached the top, became human. The smaller red that had gotten burned was Colby; the other black, Drake, the large red orange, Bancroft. They converged around Mick as he lay motionless in the darkness. Mick opened one huge silver and black eye, which flickered with flame and then started to film over.
The dragons surrounded him. Air shimmered. Mick shifted from dragon into the naked and limp human body of the man I loved and sought me with eyes that could no longer see. I threw myself on my knees next to him, where I could touch his hair, kiss his face, let him know I was there.
His smiled at me with a hint of his bad-boy smile. “Sorry, baby,” he whispered.
“Mick.” My voice grated, barely working.
The other dragons circled around us. Colby was inked all over, only his hands, feet, and face free of tattoos. Drake’s dragon tattoo covered his back with a wing down each arm. Bancroft, older, had more modest tattoos, like Mick, dragons encircling his biceps and flowing upward around his neck. I gazed at them all through my tears.
“Help him,” I said.
Bancroft put a gentle hand on my back. “He’s too far gone. There’s nothing to be done.”
“He can turn back into a dragon. That will save him, right?”
Colby answered, his gravelly voice somber. “It’s too late, Janet. If that would have helped, he’d have stayed dragon.”
“You don’t want to help him,” I said. “You all want him dead.”
They didn’t contradict me, and my anger flowed anew. I was about to scream at them when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. A large coyote was bounding toward us, his body surrounded by a blue nimbus.
He became the man Coyote as he stopped and looked down at Mick with profound sorrow.
“Janet,” he said, his dark eyes filled with sadness. For me, for Mick. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Help him! You can bring him back to life. I’ve seen you do it.”
“Mick is mortal,” Coyote said. “I told you. You can’t change someone’s time to die.”
I couldn’t believe this. My lover was dying, and the most powerful men I’d ever met were standing around shaking their heads and feeling sorry for me. I flung myself away from Coyote just as I heard more shots in the canyon.
Don’t let him get away,
my voice said.
my voice said.
I sprinted for the edge of the canyon. Coyote in coyote form bounded after me, planted himself in front of me, and snarled.
“Fuck you!” I screamed. I shoved Coyote aside. It didn’t even hurt.
As I scrambled to the bottom, Nash was shooting frantically at Jim, who was racing down the creek, splashing water as he ran. I reached out with my magic, lassoed Jim around the middle, and jerked him to a halt.
Jim looked horrible, half his skin burned away, his body a bloody mess. Bone poked through his melted flesh, and still he faced me, his burned mouth forming a parody of a smile.
Never piss off a Stormwalker who’s been filled with the power of the gods.
“Jim,” I said. I held up my hand. A small ball of white light hovered above my palm.
“Janet, no,” Coyote, human again, growled. The command was clear.
“This is your life,” I said to Jim, pointing at the silver white ball. “And now, it’s over.”
I pinched the ball between my thumb and forefinger. It went out like a spark, and Undead Jim died.
Twenty-four
Coyote blasted me with magic. I should have died on the spot, but Nash stepped between him and me and took the brunt of Coyote’s power.
Damned if Nash didn’t absorb it all, the full magic of a powerful god like Coyote. Coyote’s eyes widened in surprise as Nash sucked the blue light into his body until the magic flickered out and disappeared.
At least Nash was breathing hard this time. “Is that all you’ve got?” he asked.
“Well, fuck me,” Coyote whispered.
Jim was dead. Unmistakably, irrevocably dead. The pile of his bones lay motionlessly in a few inches of water, his skin half-rotted, the decomposition that should have started days ago finally catching up to him.
I’d killed him. And if I had to do it all over again, I would.
Still, I kept Nash between myself and Coyote, just in case. I glared at Coyote. “Save Mick.”
“Janet...”
I knew my eyes were ice green without looking into a mirror. “Save him. All-powerful god, can’t you even heal a dragon?”
“It’s too late.” Coyote’s voice was so damn calm it made me livid.
“No, it isn’t. And if you can’t, I will.”
Coyote took a step toward me, but Nash remained planted in his way, a firm, protective wall.
“Look at him.” Coyote pointed an angry finger at Jim’s remains. “Mick would become as Jim was. Is that what you want?”
“Whoever resurrected Jim didn’t know what they were doing,” I said. “They gave him life, animation, but not a soul. I know how to restore Mick completely.”
Coyote’s eyes narrowed. “No mortal knows how to bestow a soul. Only the gods can do that.”
“You’d better start learning what mortals can do, Trickster. Especially
this
mortal. I’m the daughter of a goddess; why shouldn’t I have a goddess’s power?”
this
mortal. I’m the daughter of a goddess; why shouldn’t I have a goddess’s power?”
“Because if you use it, she will have won.”
Something cold burned in my stomach, fear churning with dread. “It’s worth it. Worth it to save Mick.”
“Janet,” Nash said. “You know that you’re acting more crazy than you normally do, right?”
I switched my green gaze to Nash. “My mother wanted me to mate with you. To create a child that combined my power and yours, because she said that such a child would be unstoppable. I understand what she meant now. You’re infused with more power than any of us put together.”
“Good.” Nash clearly didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, but that didn’t matter. “Then let’s go help Mick.”
He took my hand, and we started climbing out of the canyon. Coyote watched us go, neither interfering nor helping. Just watching. He was letting me make my choice.
Nash and I pulled each other through dirt and rock. I was so tired I could barely move, and Nash was shaky also. When we scrambled over the top, we walked to the dragons who encircled Mick’s motionless body.
When I saw Mick, my heart broke all over again. His human limbs were askew, his chest no longer rising with breath. He stared at nothing, his black hair flowing over his lifeless face.
I dropped to my knees beside him and lifted his head into my lap. I smoothed his wild hair from the face I loved so much, the mouth I’d kissed so many times. “Mick, do you trust me?”
Colby moved behind me, his voice subdued for the first time since I’d met him. “Janet, he’s dead.”
“He will have a dragon funeral,” Bancroft said. “With full honors.”
“Screw that,” I said. “He’s coming home with me.”
“Stop her,” Drake growled. I flung the smallest amount of magic at him, and Drake froze in his tracks.
I touched Mick’s face again. What I had to do was complicated, requiring great stillness within myself. My thoughts had to be orderly and straight. One wrong word, one wrong syllable, and Mick would be lost, beyond saving, or else messed up like Jim.
Nash knelt on Mick’s other side. He’d holstered both his pistols, and he looked at me in grave sympathy. “What do you want me to do?”
“Keep them off me.”
Nash got to his feet and walked toward the three dragons, arms out, like a police officer keeping a crowd from a crime scene. “Stand back, gentlemen. Let her work.”
“What she’s doing violates every law of life and death,” Bancroft said. “This is why we sent Mick to kill her in the first place.”
“Mick is my friend,” Nash answered. “I have to let her help him.”
I was touched by Nash’s compassion. I also didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I closed my eyes and tried to look inside myself, as Jamison had wanted me to. He’d wanted me to find my two natures, to observe them, to learn about them, to make them play nicely together.
I wished I was better at meditation. I knew I needed to focus on something specific—a sound, a string of words, my breathing. But all I heard was buzzing in my ears, I couldn’t think of a mantra to say to myself, and my breathing was all over the place.
It’s simple,
the magic said.
Push the puny Stormwalker power out, and let this one take over. You can do anything. Remember what it felt like when you were Beneath.
the magic said.
Push the puny Stormwalker power out, and let this one take over. You can do anything. Remember what it felt like when you were Beneath.
That experience had been heady. When I’d been Beneath and wanted something to happen, it just happened. I had but to say a word.
And you don’t even really need the word.
Being a Stormwalker is what I am. The storms drive me crazy, but if I couldn’t ride them, who would I be?
A damn powerful hell-goddess,
the magic answered.
the magic answered.
A hell-goddess who has arguments with herself. Both magics are part of me. I’m not all one or the other.
You can’t save Mick with the storm magic.
Why not? Storm magic makes dragons even stronger.
Because there’s no storm, you simple-minded bitch!
Well, that was true. The night was cloudless, cold, crisp.
Watch who you’re calling a bitch,
I thought grumpily.
You want to rule me, to take over and use me to work your own will. Well, I’m not letting you. Wimpy Janet doesn’t live here anymore.
I thought grumpily.
You want to rule me, to take over and use me to work your own will. Well, I’m not letting you. Wimpy Janet doesn’t live here anymore.
You must embrace the goddess power entirely, or you’ll never be able to save Mick.
Wanna bet?
For just an instant, I felt the other voice waver. Then it went on.
Forget about Mick. He’s weak. The other dragon, Drake, has a nice body, and he’d make a good slave. Or the human, Nash. You know you want him in bed with you. Just to see what it would be like.
A vision took me. Mick gone, ashes scattered, Nash consoling me. His mouth on mine. Me on top of him on the exercise machine in his long, low house.
Then I thought of the way he usually looked at me—in vast irritation. I thought about Maya, the look on her face when she’d called down the hall tonight:
Nash, I love you.
Nash, I love you.
The vision fled.
Not likely
.
Not likely
.
You won’t be able to save Mick. Not by yourself.
I had the feeling the voice was right. But talking to it let me start to separate it from the Stormwalker within me. The feeling of each magic was different. The Beneath power was bright, sharp, brittle. The storm power smelled like damp, clean earth; it was thick, substantial, solid, and strong. The Beneath power came and went, but the Stormwalker power was always there, centering me.
I touched both, marveling at the difference. If I wound them together, grounding myself with the Stormwalker magic while wielding the Beneath magic like a sword, I could do this. I could do anything.
I drew a breath. With my feet I reached for the earth, for the core that bound the world together. With my hands I reached for the Beneath magic. I twined the darkness of the storm power with the brightness of Beneath, and twisted it into something that sparkled like black onyx.
Beneath my fingers, Mick twitched.
At the same time, all the breath was abruptly squeezed out of me. My storm power and the Beneath power squeaked like the magic mirror when it was scared, and both vanished. I opened my eyes, weak, sick, and suddenly magicless.
Cassandra stood not far from me, protected by Drake and Colby. She wore a business skirt suit, which looked ridiculous out here in the middle of dust, rocks, and scrub. Pamela stood behind her, arms folded.
Cassandra’s glowing hands were pressed together while she chanted words I didn’t understand. I knelt beside Mick, rigid, unable to move.
The binding spell. Cassandra had been working on one to weave around Jim, except now she’d decided to work it on me. And it was so damned powerful that my own magic, both Stormwalker and Beneath, hid behind me and whimpered.
The dragons stood back and let her work. I saw Coyote at the lip of the canyon in his coyote form, simply watching.
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