Shadow Walker (27 page)

Lopez gave Mick a blanket, pretended to buy his explanation that he’d lost his clothes trying to save me from the caves, and politely didn’t arrest either of us. He drove us from the ranch to the Holbrook road and the sinkhole, so Mick could fetch his clothes and his motorcycle.

The sides of the sinkhole had caved in during our fight, filling the hole with debris and ruining the straight-sided effect. I wondered whether the caverns below would buckle some more, possibly across the whole valley, and bury the rock caves. That would be too bad, because all those petroglyphs would be lost, and I had a feeling they were important as well as being beautiful.

Mick had left his bike well back from the lip of the sinkhole, his clothes folded neatly next to it. He’d taken time to do that before he turned dragon and came to kill me.

The bike I’d stolen was wrecked and unusable. We left Lopez frowning over it, mounted Mick’s bike, me zipping my jacket to my chin, and prepared to race back to New Mexico.

As soon as we were out of Lopez’s sight, Mick opened it up, and we flew down the road at an astonishing speed. The snow had stopped falling, but the road was covered with it and icing over. Mick somehow kept his Harley under us as we sailed down the highway toward Holbrook, me clinging to him like a spider.

An accident west of Gallup clogged lanes on the 40 with halted eighteen-wheelers, snowplows, and DPS. Mick charged around all of these at about a hundred miles per hour, catching the attention of every cop in sight. They were too busy to chase us, but I knew they’d radio ahead. Sure enough, several cars full of New Mexico’s finest sprang out at us on the other side of Gallup, lights blazing. As soon as we hit the reservation, the tribal police joined in.

Mick never slowed. He ate up the few miles to the casino and swung into the parking lot, skidding out the bike as he stopped. I was off and running toward the hotel as three state police cars and two tribal dove into the lot with us.

“They’ve got my grandmother!” I screamed as men with weapons leapt out of patrol cars and tried to surround me and Mick. “They’ve kidnapped my grandmother and are holding her hostage upstairs!”

My panic wasn’t faked—Grandmother’s earth magic was well-grounded, but I had no idea whether she could hold her own against a witch like Vonda. The fact that Cassandra hadn’t contacted me in any way meant that things were bad on their end. And not only was Vonda in there, but also Gabrielle, my not-so-stable half sister with powerful magic and violent tendencies.

The cops tried to stop me, of course, but I was strong and wiry and slipped by them. I was in the elevator in short order, leaving Mick to deal with them, doors closing on their warnings to me to stop.

All was quiet on the seventh floor as I hurried down the hall. The door to suite 726 was closed, and I heard only silence behind it.

But I could sense the auras in there—the bright white one of Gabrielle, the strange shadowy one of Vonda, Cassandra’s pale cream. I didn’t sense Nash, but that was normal. I also sensed the auras that shouldn’t be there—Maya’s tinged with angry red, Pamela with the white spark of her wolf, the dark green of Elena, and the crackling black and red of my grandmother.

The door wasn’t locked. I opened it and walked right in.

There was a vortex in the middle of the floor. How it got there, I had no clue, but there it was, swirling away in the center of the beige carpet, my friends and family and all the furniture pressed against the walls. The white-hot evil I sensed from the vortex made my scalp prickle. Though I’d heard no sound in the hall, the room, now that I stood in it, was filled with sound—a roaring, screaming, maddening sound that poured up from the vortex.

I realized that the room was missing one person. “Where’s Ted?” I shouted over the noise.

For answer, Gabrielle pointed at the vortex. The rest of my friends turned to me, either furious or terrified. All except Vonda, who stood quietly, unperturbed.

“Gabrielle,” I yelled. “What did you do?”

Gabrielle looked up at me with a mixture of horror and anger. “
I
didn’t do anything! It was her.” Gabrielle pointed to Vonda, who stood casually, her gray silk outfit as pristine as ever. “She opened the vortex and fed her own husband into it.”

Twenty-seven

This was all kinds of bad. That the vortex had opened here meant that the hotel had been built on one.

What had the hotel builders been thinking? Hadn’t the shamans warned them? Or had someone had the great idea that building a hotel on a vortex would attract more business, maybe make the odds in the casino favor the house more?

Though I didn’t sense my mother’s unique brand of evil in this vortex, who the hell knew what was down there?

Vortexes are evil, no matter where they open. They’re gateways to Beneath, but Beneath isn’t all one place. It’s a series of places, like different pieces of hell, each with its own gateway. You can jump into a vortex a few yards away from another and find yourself in a completely different world below. It will still be Beneath, still evil, still full of gods pissed off because they were left behind when the rest of humanity made it out to this world eons ago.

I didn’t ever want to visit the world of Beneath again. It had been terrifying and, let’s face it, just plain weird. My storm magic didn’t work there, and the chances of me getting out once I was in weren’t good.

“Gabrielle, what’s down there?”

Gabrielle shrugged, her face so wan it was tinged with green. “Demons, I think. Probably a demon master. I don’t know. I haven’t seen this one before.”

“Janet,” Grandmother said from Elena’s side. “You can’t leave Mr. Wingate down there.”

I glared around the room. “Please, someone tell me
why
you all let her open a vortex?”

“Like we had a choice,” Maya said. She stood with Nash, who looked furious, not at Vonda, but at
me
. Of course.

I pointed at Gabrielle and at my grandmother. “You two had a choice. Why didn’t you stop her?”

“I couldn’t.” Gabrielle’s voice was small.

I focused again on Vonda, who coolly lounged against the bed, which had been upended.

“I took away your dragon,” I told her. “Mick is free of you. If he tells me that you hurt him in any way, I’ll kill you slowly and enjoy it.”

Vonda looked bored. “Ted will be fine. I needed his sacrifice to open the vortex. Once I imbibe its magic, I’ll be finished, and you all can go home. Safe and sound.”

Sure, I believed her. “You can’t imbibe the magic of a vortex. It will kill you.”

“Not if you take precautions and know what you’re doing. I’m experienced at this, Janet Begay. I find it interesting that you have so much magic inside you, and yet you never try to enhance it, never try to build it to its fullest potential. You’ve gotten misguided advice.”

No, I’d gotten good advice from wise people who had compassion. I could barely handle the powers I already had. Why go looking for trouble?

“If you suck down the power of the vortex, you’ll destroy this hotel and everyone inside it,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t like to throw away lives like that.”

“But you don’t have to. I could teach you much.”

“Janet, don’t listen to her,” Grandmother said. “She has a silver tongue, that one.”

“No kidding,” I said.

Vonda smiled. “These people all claim to care about you. It’s sweet.”

“Let them leave.”

“I will. Really, I will. They don’t have much power that interests me—well, none that I haven’t already taken from others.” She glanced dismissively at Pamela, Cassandra, and Elena, not even seeming to see Maya. “Except Nash. And you.”

Maya broke in angrily. “Why the hell does everyone want to get their hands on Nash?”

“Because he’s unique,” Vonda said without heat. “What I couldn’t do with power like his. The bargain is this, Janet. You and Nash stay, and all the rest of these people can go home.”

“I’ll stay,” Nash said at once. “If everyone, including Janet, leaves.”

My friends, being my friends, all started arguing at once. Gabrielle’s voice rose above the others. “You don’t want
me
?” She sounded hurt.

Vonda answered. “Gabrielle, sweetie, you have powerful Beneath magic, but Janet’s is as powerful, and she’s wrapped it around earth magic, something no one else has ever done. I want that.”

Gabrielle started for Vonda, but I grabbed Gabrielle and pulled her aside, speaking rapidly in a low voice. “Stop it. I need you. I don’t trust her not to kill everyone as soon as you all walk out, so I need you to protect them. Especially Grandmother and Maya. Got it? Find Mick, tell him what’s going on. But protect them. All right? You’re stronger than anyone here, the only one who can keep them safe.”

Gabrielle just looked at me. No eager happiness that I was trusting her, no anger that I wanted to use her. Only a thoughtful light in her eyes as she studied me.

Finally she nodded. “All right.”

I didn’t smile in relief or throw my arms around her. Gabrielle played her own game, and if she’d agreed, it was for her own reasons.

“Please,” I said.

“Let it go, Janet. I said I would.” Gabrielle turned to the others. “You heard her. Out. When Janet takes down the mean old witch, we can come back and dance on her entrails.”

I needed to have a serious talk with Gabrielle.

I thought I’d have to fight Maya again, but Nash laid his hands on Maya’s shoulders and spoke to her in a quiet voice. I saw Maya nod and Nash bend to kiss her. When Nash let Maya go, she walked away with tears in her eyes, but she went.

Grandmother gave me a long and defiant look as Elena followed Maya out. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Grandmother said to me in Navajo.

“I don’t, but this is the best chance I have to keep you safe. Watch Gabrielle.”

“Oh, I intend to.”

“And then we’re going to talk about why you came out here in the first place,” I said.

“I had my reasons. I’m not a stupid old woman, you know.”

“I never said you were. Now let me and Nash deal with Vonda.” I didn’t want to mention the dragons Mick had put on standby, not knowing how much Navajo Vonda might know.

Pamela almost dragged Cassandra out of there, the only one who didn’t protest about leaving me and Nash alone. Pamela’s world was Cassandra, and when Cassandra was safe, Pamela was happy.

Nash gave me an inquiring glance, and I knew he wondered about Mick. Mick hadn’t come charging up here, which meant he was planning something. Those cops wouldn’t have distracted him for long. I hoped that Mick was quickly and quietly evacuating the hotel.

I shrugged at Nash, and he closed the door, leaving us with Vonda and a vortex.

“Now,” Vonda said. “Would one of you please fetch Ted for me? I like him and want to keep him around.”

I questioned her taste, but Ted was human, a civilian, as Mick termed it, and he didn’t deserve to die a horrible death in a vortex. Really, he didn’t, I told myself.

“It should be me that goes down there,” Nash said. “Magic can’t hurt me.”

“
Maybe
it can’t hurt you,” I said. “The rules Beneath are different.”

“Then what do you suggest?” he snapped.

Vonda didn’t help; she watched us with cool indifference.

I sighed. “You have a rope?” I asked Nash.

“In my truck. With a grappling hook.”

Of course he did. “Something in your truck doesn’t help us much.”

“Yes, it does,” Vonda said. She didn’t move, but suddenly, a rope and grappling hook rested at her feet.

My heart beat rapidly in surprise. Teleportation magic didn’t exist, or shouldn’t. Witches pushed and bent reality to make things happen—they cast spells that defended or healed or attacked or simply revealed something—but they weren’t like television witches who popped in and out or snapped their fingers to produce what they wanted. The laws of physics still applied to mages. Moving something through space took vast amounts of energy, and it was easier to simply pick up something and carry it.

Somehow Vonda had learned these tricks, the most difficult magics in existence, and she didn’t even look strained. The bitch.

“And a harness,” Nash said calmly.

A harness appeared in the pile. Nash, who’d been a fierce Unbeliever until he’d met me, said nothing as he skirted the vortex, which looked like a tornado that had sucked away half the floor, and picked up the gear.

“Before I do this,” he said to Vonda as he strapped on the harness. “Tell me what I am.”

Vonda lifted her plucked brows. “Bring me my husband and then we’ll talk.”

“No,” Nash said. “Now.”

“Why do you think I know?”

“You seemed to know so much about everyone here. What about me? How did I become this way?”

Vonda’s lip curled. “It’s very complicated. I doubt you’d understand.”

Before Nash could growl at her again, I made a wild stab. “Does it have anything to do with my hotel? And why you want it?”

Vonda looked at me with a flicker of anger, and did I detect worry? “We’re wasting time. My husband might be being eaten by demons even as we speak.”

“I don’t notice you leaping to his rescue.” I moved to the wet bar, which was happily in an alcove away from the vortex, opened the refrigerator, and took out a water bottle. The cardboard collar on the bottle said that the hotel would add four dollars to Vonda’s bill if it was opened. I ripped off the collar, unscrewed the lid, and took a long drink.

“Answer Nash and answer me,” I said. “You wanted me out of my hotel because you wanted the hotel. Not because it’s close to a vortex, because there’s one right under this hotel, which obviously you know how to open, and I don’t notice you trying to take over this place. It’s not the magic mirror. I thought maybe it was because of the Crossroads, but you could more quickly take over Barry’s bar, which lies even closer to the ley line. Barry’s human and easily disposed of, even with all his biker friends ready to shoot you. So what is it?”

“Really, Janet, you’d let my husband die?” Vonda asked me. “A helpless human?”

I took another sip of water. “I never liked Ted.”

Vonda didn’t want to tell me. I saw in her face that once she explained her desires to me, she knew I’d try to stop her obtaining those desires. Which meant that she wanted something dark and horribly dangerous that would make her darker and still more dangerous. I planned to stop her no matter what, but the more specifics I knew, the easier my task would be.

I watched her weigh her need for more power against Ted’s life. Despite her neutral expression, the indecision in her eyes was interesting. She must really love Ted. Why, I had no idea. I wondered if I’d experience the same turmoil if someone had told me that to rescue Mick, I’d have to let go of something vastly important to me, maybe my magic itself.

I knew with sudden clarity that for me, such a choice would be simple. No turmoil about it. I loved Mick, and I’d give up all the secrets of the universe, the answer to magic itself, to keep him safe.

I took another quick sip of water to hide my bewilderment. This stage of my love was new and fragile, and I viewed it in wonder.

Vonda pressed her hands together, her silver bracelets clinking. “There was once a great mage,” she said. “An Apache shaman who grew to such power that he was asked to leave his home and not come back. This was a hundred and more years ago, when the railroads were new, bringing more and more settlers out into Indian lands. The Apache followed the Crossroads from his home in the mountains down to Magellan, to a hotel that had just been built next to the railway line.”

“The man who owned the hotel didn’t want to let him in,” Vonda continued. “The hotel was for whites only, but the Apache shaman refused to leave. Because the shaman was old and pathetic, and it was snowing, the owner let him sleep in the basement for a night. The next morning, the old man was gone.”

“And this Apache shaman put a spell on my hotel?” I asked.

Vonda ran slender fingers up and down her bare arms. “No one knows. No one actually saw the man leave. He simply vanished. The owner didn’t care. He was happy that the old Indian had moved on. But a mage who stopped at the hotel a few years later felt a vast magic there and sought its source. He found it in your basement, a sink of magic, vibrating with potential but impossible to tap.” She drew a sharp breath. “There is a spell, you see, known only to the most powerful mages, that can be put on a specific thing to attract magic to it—a talisman, a place, a building in this case. It absorbs magic, sucking in more and more as time goes on, until the power it’s built is incredible.”

“And that’s what you say happened to my hotel?” I said doubtfully. “The shaman put a spell on it to absorb magic? I’ve lived there almost a year, have worked wards all over it and deep into the walls. Why wouldn’t I have known it was a magic sponge?”

“The spell is very subtle. Only a powerful witch or shaman who understands these things would find it, and without the right knowledge, the magic can’t be tapped. But you were attracted to the hotel, weren’t you?” Vonda smiled at me, her eyes still cool. “Why else would a young Navajo photographer, who thought herself a free spirit, decide it a good idea to open a
hotel
. A run-down place that hadn’t been successful for any other owner before her?”

Good point. I remembered when I’d ridden past the Crossroads the first time and seen the hotel standing abandoned next to the biker bar. A square, brick, rather ugly thing, windows gone, stones crumbling, unwanted and alone. I’d felt an affinity for it, a need to pat its walls and reassure it that I’d take care of it. I’d been able to get the building cheap because no one wanted it—no one wanted even the land it was on. I’d stubbornly put the hotel back together and had fought time and again to hang on to it.

“You see?” Vonda said. “You sensed its power, even if you didn’t know why. I have a feeling that’s why your witch Cassandra came to you. She was attracted by the magic sink, but she must not know how to unlock its power, because she would have by now if she could.” Vonda took on a dreamy look. “All that potential, and it’s just sitting there. Protected by you and your dragon boyfriend and your magic mirror, while it quietly imbibes all your magics at the same time.”

“It’s draining us?” I asked in alarm. But my magic and my ability had
grown
since I’d moved in. She made no sense.