Firewalker (38 page)
Authors: Allyson James
Tags: #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Paranormal Romance Stories, #Shapeshifting, #Fiction
I caught up to Nash, who was setting a swift pace. “Thanks for the things you said about me back there.”
“They were true.” His voice held no inflection.
“It was real sweet.” I couldn’t resist saying that. “I didn’t know you loved me so much.”
Nash’s glance, even through sunglasses, could have crumbled boulders into dust. “What I said about you being a pain in the ass with a smart mouth was true too. That and the fact that you cause trouble.”
“I can’t deny it.” I shrugged as I strode next to him. “So, how are things between you and Maya? I saw the passionate kiss you gave her.”
“None of your business.”
I gave him a dry-lipped smile. “That’s all right. I’ll just ask her.”
Nash scowled. He picked up his pace to a quick-time march, his long legs eating distance. If I wanted to keep up with him, I’d have to trot, panting, at his side.
I dropped back to walk with Mick and Colby. Mick slanted me a smile that made me hot, even under the burning sun, and took my hand. I looked forward, in more ways than one, to getting home again.
Drake also gave me a look, but one of undisguised fury. I knew he blamed me for his being chosen to carry out the sentence with us. Would I have problems with Drake in the future? Probably. I didn’t have the energy to contemplate it right now.
Already I needed water, having drunk nothing since sometime the day before. I was going to be half-dead before we even reached the edge of the lake bed. The boulders stood innocently behind us, where I’d left them. I could imagine the geologists scratching their heads at the pattern they’d left, drawn from the edges of the lake to a circle in the center. It would give my ghost something amusing to watch when I was a pile of dried bones in the dust.
When we finally reached the narrow dirt road that led into a pass between the hills, there were no vehicles in sight. Any approaching truck or SUV would kick a thin spiral of dust high into the air behind it, but the sky remained a clear and bright blue. No one would come. It would be just the five of us traipsing across open desert under the blinding sun.
Colby said behind me, “If you get hot, Janet, feel free to take off your top.”
I ignored him, too tired to banter.
For the first mile or so after that, I was fine. The dragons had made it too easy, I thought. I finished the next two miles drenched in sweat, feeling a sunburn. What little shade the sides of the mountains had made in the pass vanished as the sun climbed overhead.
By mile seven, I was stumbling. My tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth, and my breathing was labored. We rested, taking our time, but it didn’t help much.
At mile ten, or at least I think it was mile ten, Mick picked me up and carried me. We’d seen no cars, trucks, SUVs, park rangers, hikers, campers, or anyone. The place was deserted, eerily so. I wondered how much Bancroft had paid off the park employees.
Mick carried me without complaint, his strong arms never faltering. But even Nash was slowing—twenty miles was likely not that far for him, but being without water, while the temperature climbed past one hundred degrees, took its toll. Talk had ceased, each of us saving breath and moisture for the journey.
A carrion crow glided overhead, on the lookout for fresh kill. I waved to it.
“Over here,” I croaked.
“Don’t invite it,” Colby said behind Mick. “It might want to get an early start on picking meat off us.”
The crow didn’t seem to see us. I dug into my pocket, and Mick had to put me down. Barely able to stand, I pulled out the piece of magic mirror. I couldn’t use it magically, but I could use it for what it was—a mirror, a piece of silvered glass. I moved it until it caught the sun, flashing a bright white star of light.
The crow saw it. It wheeled over us once, head cocked to investigate, then flew away into searing blue sky.
“What the hell was that about?” Nash asked.
“You never know,” I said.
“A harbinger,” Colby said, and then we all fell silent again.
Mick carried me again as we moved up another hill and walked down into the trough on the other side. I heard rattling like a metal shed in a windstorm, and I started to laugh.
“I knew she wouldn’t let me down.”
My words were unintelligible, even to me. Mick leaned to me. “What, baby?”
I didn’t answer. A battered white pickup crested the rise ahead of us, banging and clattering down the rutted road. It was full of people, three in the cab, a couple in the bed. Nash stopped, hands on hips, and waited.
The pickup pulled to a halt next to Nash, and a Native American man with a lined face leaned out and called to Mick, “Hey, what happened to your clothes?” He chortled. “Must have been some windstorm.”
Two grinning young men jumped out of the back, tossing pants and shirts at Mick, Colby, and Drake.
Colby caught them with an amazed look. “You carry extra sets of clothes, in case you meet naked men on the road?”
Inside the cab, the young woman—Beth, I remembered her name was—leaned around her father. “The crow, she told us what you’d need. She said Firewalkers didn’t have any sense of decency.”
That was my grandmother. Colby chuckled as he pulled on the worn pair of jeans. “She’s right. Whoever she is.”
Mick didn’t move to pick up the clothes or cover himself. He carried me around the other side of the truck and waited for Beth to open the door. “Do you have water?” he asked. “She’s dehydrated.”
“Sure thing.” As Mick set me gently on the seat next to her, Beth produced a thermos, poured out a trickle of beautiful water, and handed me the cup. She had to help me raise it to my swollen lips.
Sweet, clear, cool liquid filled my mouth. I wanted to savor it, but my needy body sucked it down, and I nearly choked as I swallowed.
“Easy,” Beth said. She poured me another cup.
I felt the truck list as the others climbed into the back. In my half-dazed state, I once again saw other beings superimposed on Beth and her father. White swirling lights, a hint of feather.
“Are you kachinas too?” I asked.
Beth’s father chuckled. “Nah. We’re similar, but we use a different term. Where you need to go?”
“Home,” I said. “Although, anyplace with a phone is fine.”
“That’s easy.” Beth’s father put the truck in gear and started to drive.
Beth glanced through the open back window at Mick, Colby, Drake, and Nash. “Hey, cute white sheriff,” she called. “I think we found your truck.”
Nash was at the window, ripping off his sunglasses. “Did you? Black? Ford 250? Arizona plates?” He rattled off the license number.
“Yeah, I think that’s it,” Beth’s father said. “Want me to take you to it?”
“Please.” Nash sat back. “Yes. Thank you.”
I drank more water. “He’s happier to find his truck than he is to get out of here alive.”
“Men and their cars,” Beth agreed. “But he still is cute.”
We banged and bounced over the dirt road for a very long time. Then Beth’s father turned a corner, and the road eased into the smoothness of pavement. The truck’s horrible jouncing died into sudden calm.
I closed my eyes as we glided down the restful highway. Before we’d gone far, Beth’s father turned off on another dirt road, this one wider and better graded than the one from the Racetrack.
We stopped, and I peeled open my eyes. We were on top of a little bridge that had been constructed over an arroyo, the bridge just high enough so that a mild rainstorm wouldn’t wash it out. Anything stronger, and this road would be flooded.
An intense rain had obviously come and gone. The bottom of the arroyo was filled with silt and loose brush, though much of it had piled over an obstacle upstream of the bridge. From this jetsam protruded a dust-covered black cab. Nash’s beautiful, shiny new pickup in which I’d ridden out here to search for Mick was now half-buried in white sand.
Tension drained, and a sudden wave of sleep hit me. The last thing I heard before I drifted away, smiling, against Beth’s comfortable shoulder was Nash Jones swearing and swearing hard.
Two mornings later I wandered out of my bedroom and sank into a leather couch in my lobby. It was quiet—guests had breakfasted and either checked out or gone off sightseeing. We had a few hours’ respite before lunch.
Mick came out of the back, hair wet from his shower, and sat next to me, our bodies touching. He twined his fingers through mine.
“How are you doing?” he asked me.
“Better.”
He was silent for a while, just holding my hand. He’d done this a lot since we’d gotten home. The Shoshone had driven us to Furnace Creek, and Mick had somehow booked the two of us into the luxury inn there. Cool sheets, air-conditioning, gourmet food . . . It reinforced my belief that there is nowhere in the world so remote that someone won’t try to build a resort in it.
I’d slept for a long time, and Mick left me to it. I had no idea what had become of Drake, Colby, and Nash, but when Mick returned to take me to dinner, he told me that Nash had gotten park rangers plus the California Highway Patrol to help him rescue his truck. Apparently, joy riders had taken it while we’d been running around the mountains and then abandoned it in the wash. It had been hot-wired, the underside of the dash broken, and a nice torrent of rain had done the rest. Poor Nash.
“So what did Colby do to you all those years ago?” I asked Mick over a quiet table in the restaurant. “To make him your enemy, I mean?”
Mick looked uncomfortable. “Long story.”
“We have time,” I said, sipping my cool wine. No martinis.
Mick toyed with the frosted glass of his beer mug for a while. I waited. I wasn’t going anywhere, not while I was cool and fed and hydrated.
Finally Mick took a sip of beer and sat back. “He stole my mate.”
I blinked in surprise. “Wait, I thought I was your mate.”
“A long time ago. She was a dragon. I shouldn’t strictly say she was my mate—I was courting her, in the dragon way, and Colby decided to cut in. We fought. He won.”
“
Colby
won? But why is he so afraid of you?”
Colby
won? But why is he so afraid of you?”
“Because he fought dirty, and he knows it. I stupidly clung to honor and the rules, while he went behind my back. He destroyed my lair, stole everything I had—and it turns out that this lady was looking for a mate based on his worth. I was young enough to think it was me she wanted. When I discovered her true colors, I withdrew from the contest and let Colby have her.”
“What happened to the lady dragon? Is she still with Colby?”
“She died.”
“Oh.” Though I’d already labeled the dragon as a she-bitch, that was sad. “How?”
“Battle with another dragon faction. We’re not all best friends.”
I remembered the fight when Drake had pulled me out of the mountain. “So I gathered.” I toyed with the stem of my wineglass. “I’m sorry. About the lady dragon, I mean.”
“She and Colby hadn’t mated yet. No bond there. But still it was hard on him.”
“And you?”
He nodded. “And on me too.”
It gave me something to think about later while he held me so tenderly in bed. Mick fighting Colby for a lady dragon. I remembered him telling me that female dragons could turn on their mates and try to kill them. If female dragons were all like Aine, I believed it. I wondered how Mick viewed me in comparison.
Fast-forward two days to the cool lobby of my hotel, me sitting comfortably with Mick and watching day-to-day business commence. Fremont came in to check a leak in the kitchen, his cheerful affability soothing. Pamela leaned over the counter to talk to Cassandra. I didn’t see Maya, but I would visit her later and grill her about her and Nash. Nash had damn well better have gone to see her by this time.
I hadn’t seen Coyote since the big fight in the wash. Had he forgiven me, eased his strictures, and let me go? I needed to know.
I also wanted to twist his fur to help me figure out who had made Undead Jim in the first place. Now that the dragon trial was over, I’d take more time to pursue the question. If some other goddess with the same kind of powers as my mother was walking around up here, I’d need to know. I also wanted to know why they’d brought Jim back to life and given him Beneath powers. And, more important, would they try again?
I didn’t
think
Coyote had done it, but he needed to help me track this person down. We could start at the vortexes and work our way from there.
think
Coyote had done it, but he needed to help me track this person down. We could start at the vortexes and work our way from there.
Worrying about all this was a strain, so I told Mick I needed to take a walk.
Mick didn’t want to let me out of his sight—he had that look.
“To the railroad bed, that’s all,” I said. “You won against the dragons, and the kachinas will keep away the dragons who still want to kill me. So you told me.”
Mick didn’t like it, but he’d learned something about me—that if he tried to tether me, I’d struggle that much harder to break free. I gave him a smile that said that when I got back, he could tether me in a more fun way. I kissed him and left.
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