Shadow Walker (28 page)

“No. That’s the beauty of it. The magic uses your power to enhance its own. It builds but doesn’t destroy.” Her dreamy look turned wistful. “And now you won’t let me have it.”

“Damn right I won’t.” Vonda was a magic stealer. Letting her get hold of a well of sparkly magic that had been building for a hundred years would not be a good idea. She’d unmake the world just for the fun of it and then take Ted out for pizza.

“What has all this got to do with me?” Nash asked in a hard voice. “Am I linked to the hotel somehow? I’m negative magic while it’s positive?”

“Nice theory, but no,” Vonda said. “But you’re similar to the hotel. Just as a mage can create a power sink, a mage can create a power
hole
. A place from which all magics are driven out, or maybe the magic is absorbed and negated, canceled. The spell I’m thinking of is very, very difficult, almost impossible for all but the strongest mages. It was first created to be a defensive spell, usually put into a talisman and to be used only for the short term—if the mage knows he has to go up against a very strong magical being, say. The talisman would cancel out the magic of the attacker—in theory. I’ve never actually seen such a spell in action.”

“I never remember anyone giving me a talisman or casting a defensive spell on me,” Nash said. “Or a spell of any kind, not that I’d have believed it anyway.”

“I’m not sure exactly what happened to you,” Vonda said, looking at him thoughtfully. “But if a group of very powerful mages combine efforts, they can sink the magic negativity into a larger thing, such as a building. Or sometimes a person if that person is strong enough to hold it, but that’s very rare. Mick told me your history. I’m willing to bet that in Baghdad, you led your men into a building that had been turned into a talisman for magic negation, probably by a group of mages working together. They must have been very powerful. Spells like that have a great sense of self-preservation. When the bomb went off with you in the building, the spell likely dove into the strongest thing it could find. You.”

Nash’s face drained of color until his unshaved whiskers stood out stark against his skin. “Are you saying that my men died, but I stayed alive so that a
spell
could survive?”

“It chose you, Nash Jones,” Vonda said. “Knowing that you were the strongest person in that building. You grew up around vortexes in that little town of yours. It’s possible that a spark of magic lingered in you, and the spell was drawn to it. Or maybe it just sensed your strength. You are a very strong man.” Her gaze roved up and down him in appreciation. “But no matter how it happened, you now possess some of the greatest negative magic that I have ever witnessed.”

“Can the spell be reversed? Or taken out? Or wear off?”

Vonda shrugged, silver clinking again. “Who knows? I do know that I want what’s in you. So does Gabrielle, and so does Janet’s mother. How deliciously powerful I could be if I could siphon off that negative energy but keep it from taking away my own magic. I tried to do it while you were unconscious in the hospital, but it didn’t work.”

I remembered the woman who’d pretended to be Nash’s mother while he lay in the ICU. I’d thought Gabrielle had sent her to kidnap Nash, but I realized now that not even Gabrielle was powerful enough to create a slave from nothing. “What was that thing?” I asked. “How did you do that?”

“A simple spell,” Vonda said offhandedly. “An animated talisman, infused with my magic, and fashioned to look like Nash’s mother. It was supposed to steal his magic and bring it back to me, but I had no idea at that time how strong Mick was. Or Nash.” She ran her tongue over her pale lips.

“How the hell did you know what my mother looked like?” Nash snarled.

“Photos. You have one of her in your office. Ted snapped a picture of it for me when he went to talk to you.”

The ever-handy Ted. I remembered Nash telling me, irritated, that Ted had barged into his office to accuse Nash of doing his job badly.

“Asshole,” Nash said.

“It didn’t work, so the effort was wasted. Your Stormwalker friend and the dragon protect you well. But of course they do—they want your magic to serve
their
needs, not anyone else’s.”

I noticed I was crushing the water bottle in my hand, and I set it down. “If you want to keep Nash alive to take his magic, why are you making him go into a vortex?”

Vonda looked surprised. “If his negative magic isn’t powerful enough to survive a vortex, then it’s of no use to me. This is a good way to find out.”

“You are one sick woman,” I said. “But you’re right about one thing. I won’t let you get your hands on my hotel, and I won’t let you get them on Nash. We should go, Nash. Let her fish up Ted on her own.”

“I can’t.” Nash’s face was nearly green, but he shook his head. “I can’t deliberately let a man die when I can save him. Even a man as irritating as Ted.” He looked up at Vonda. “But when I bring him back, you and he are leaving my county. My state. No, the entire Southwest. I’m putting you two in every police database in the country and sending the info around the world. You do anything to anyone ever again, I’ll be alerted, and when I find you again, I won’t hold back.”

His voice was cold, Nash at the end of his tether. He would never deliberately hunt and kill another person—unless they broke the law. Then they wouldn’t have a prayer of escaping the wrath of Nash Jones.

“All right, hurry up,” I muttered. I couldn’t walk away from Ted either. Demons from Beneath could be nasty, and even Ted didn’t deserve death at their hands.

Nash gave me a nod, dug the grappling hook through the carpet into the cement floor, and dove straight into the vortex.

Twenty-eight

I started for the rope, but Vonda reached me before I could and shoved a cold pistol into my ribs. “Not you.”

I brought up my Beneath magic to squish her pistol in half, but she slapped me with a touch of it herself, canceling mine out. The vortex, responding to our little play, yawned wider.

This could get ugly fast. “Let me help him. Nash is my friend.”

“I want to see what happens to him. Or what he does to the vortex.”

The rope stretched tight, the grappling hook creaking as it swayed. I prayed that Nash had fixed it right, though he seemed to know what he was doing. There was no sound from below us, only the rushing, roaring noise of the vortex.

“If Nash dies, you’re going in there headfirst,” I said.

“And you with me.”

Fine. I could kill her down there as well as I could up here. “How did you acquire Beneath magic? Witches are earth magic.”

“Correction, witches are
supposed
to have only earth magic. I learned to be open-minded.”

“But how did you get it? The more important question: who from?” Or did I mean
from whom
? I’d never done well with English grammar.

“From Gabrielle.” Vonda smiled. “The day I met her.”

Shit. “Does she know?”

“No. Gabrielle thinks she is powerful, but I am more powerful.”

“You’re a leech,” I said. “You suck power from others the same way a leech draws blood. What happens if you get too bloated with magic? You explode?”

Interesting thought. Taking inventory of myself, I knew she hadn’t taken power yet from me. Why hadn’t she? And could I overload her if she tried?

“I learned a long time ago how to make sure I don’t hurt myself,” Vonda said.

“How long ago? Are you even human?”

“I am. A hundred years and more I’ve been imbibing magic.” She looked me up and down and smiled. “You’ll taste good.”

“A hundred years. Like the Apache in your story. Are you him? Is that why he disappeared? You changed form?”

“No. He died. I killed him and buried his body under the railroad bed.
After
I took his magic. Well, what was left of it, damn him.”

I leaned against the wall, still wary of her pistol. “Why don’t you tell me about it? While Nash and Ted are busy fighting for their lives?”

Vonda shrugged as though we chatted at a cocktail party, a boring one. “I lived in Magellan back then, very young, about sixteen. My mother was a night bird, a lady of the evening, if you will, and naturally, I became one too. I’d lived in Magellan long enough to understand that the vortexes held magic, and that I held magic. And that I was strong. The hotel owner hired me to go down to the Apache and keep him quiet. The Indian smelled and was filthy, and I didn’t want to touch him. But the hotel owner promised to pay me a large sum—large for those days—and down I went. I figured out pretty quickly that he was a powerful shaman, too powerful for his own people’s comfort. I stole that old man’s magic tricks, but he’d already dumped most of what he had into the walls of the hotel, locking it in with spells I couldn’t break. That made me very, very angry. So I drained him of everything he had left. Once he was too weak to fight me, I stuck a knife into his chest.”

Heartless bitch. “And carried him upstairs and buried him in the desert with no one knowing?”

“Oh, the hotel owner knew. He helped me bury the man. Who cared? He was only an old Apache, outcast from his tribe. We didn’t have to be PC in those days.”

I doubted Vonda had ever caught on to treating anyone with dignity, no matter who they were or what their culture. “So that makes it all right?”

Vonda laughed, and she really shouldn’t have. “Janet, I was young and broke. I wanted his magic, and I wanted the money. The Apache was like an animal to me, one ready to die. I did him a favor.”

When Nash came out that vortex, I was pushing her in. End of story.

I imagined the terror of the old man in the dark of my basement, fear shining in his eyes, as the beguiling woman stole the last of what he was. Vonda hadn’t even had the decency to return him to his home, his lands, his people. She’d dumped his body, and he’d disappeared as though he’d never existed. Had he been able to find his ancestors? Or was he still out there wandering, searching? I’d never seen any ghosts on the railroad bed, but others, including Fremont, claimed to.

“And now you’re back to see if you can take the magic out of my basement,” I said. “Why did you wait so long to return to Magellan?”

Vonda looked annoyed. “Because I knew I wouldn’t be strong enough to tap into the magic. It took me decades to build up my powers and educate myself. No one wanted that old hotel, and I thought I could simply come back when I was ready and take it. And then you moved in. A Stormwalker with Beneath magic, drawing wards all over the place. Then your dragon turned up and added
his
magic. Irritating. I had to watch and plan, but once I’d learned how to suck away a dragon name, I struck. I don’t care that you’ve taken Mick away from me. I’ll fight you, and I’ll win. I’ll get your magic and the rest of the shaman’s magic from your hotel. And then I’ll be invincible.”

“You know . . .” A familiar male voice came from the door, one I’d last heard talking to me from a wall in the cave. “I always wondered what happened to that old shaman.”

Coyote walked in, his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket, his dark eyes watchful. I let out a quiet breath in some relief. About damn time.

“I looked for him for a long time before I decided he must have died,” Coyote said. “You buried him under the railroad bed, eh? Not good.”

Vonda drew herself up, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. “I’m not afraid of you, Trickster. I can take your magic too.”

“I’d be afraid of me.” Coyote grinned. “You don’t know everything.”

“I’ve learned. I’ve studied. God magic is a little different, but it can be done.”

I saw the shadow detach from her, the strange, smoky piece of her aura that floated across the room and made for Coyote. The blue nimbus of Coyote’s own aura encircled him, but when the shadow touched it, the blue dimmed.

“No!” I yelled.

“Don’t worry, Janet,” Coyote said, but his face had lost color. “I always have a trick or two up my sleeve.”

I swung to face Vonda, bringing my own magic to bear. I had to stop her.

“Can we come in now?”

My grandmother chose that moment to push her way into the room, Elena with her. Behind them came Mick.

“Mick—crap—get them out of here!”

Mick, his eyes firmly blue, closed the door and locked it. “It’s all right, Janet.”

“No, it isn’t! Vonda’s stealing Coyote’s magic. Nash is down there.” I pointed at the vortex.
And you’re still too weak to use any dragon magic.
I kept that to myself.

“And I have a god,” Vonda said, another shadow snaking out to surround Coyote. “Much better than a dragon.”

Damn it, we had to stop her.

“Don’t kill her,” Elena said.

In her polyester yellow pants and bright top, her hair in a black bun, Elena could have been any of the RVers playing the slots in the casino downstairs. My grandmother still wore her more traditional skirts, but as she took a stance next to Elena, I saw the crow in her aura, the hint of black feathers, the dark eye, the anger.

“I have to,” I babbled at them. “If she takes Coyote’s power, we’re done for. Everyone is done for.”

“She won’t have it.” Elena unfolded her arms, hands at her sides. I’d watched those plump hands chop vegetables for stew with graceful competence, and now her fingers hung loose, relaxed.

“You stole something from me, Shadow Walker,” Elena said to Vonda. “From my family.”

I stared at her. “The Apache?”

“He was my great-great-grandfather. My ancestor. His power should have passed down through the generations to me.”

Vonda didn’t look concerned. “That’s the way it goes. He was gone long before you were born.”

“We are always connected to the ancestors, ignorant witch. Family—past and present—all connected. That’s what you don’t understand. There is no break. You took from me. Now I will take from you.”

“You can’t,” Vonda said. “You have no magic, old woman.”

“I have a little,” Elena said. “I have the latent magic of my family, still there in spite of what my great-great-grandfather did.”

“Liar.” Vonda sneered. “If you had even a spark of that old man’s magic, you would have already retrieved what he left at the hotel. I don’t see that you have, so you must not know how.”

“I know how.” Elena’s voice was matter-of-fact. “But I know the magic is safe where it is. When I saw Janet and her dragon move in to the hotel, I knew my great-great-grandfather’s legacy would be protected. And now I look after it too.”

“You can’t take it,” Vonda said with conviction. “You’re not powerful enough. You can’t work the spells.”

“No power comes without a price,” my grandmother broke in. “You pay a price for anything you take in life. Even if you avoid the price as long as you can, it will someday find you.”

Did her words make Vonda uneasy? If so, the woman hid it well. “
You
can’t take it either.”

Grandmother shrugged, not looking worried.

“For me, the price would be too great,” Elena said. “I have all I need. I have a family, and I have my friends. And my friends in this room are very, very strong.”

Fear flickered across Vonda’s face, and she looked at Mick. Mick was grinning that wicked grin that turned me inside out, and I felt his aura flare. No more weakness; he was a full-strength, full-powered dragon.

Mick ripped sudden fire through the shadows around Coyote, severing them from Vonda. Vonda gasped, and quickly, before the shadows faded, Elena stepped into them and grabbed them with both hands.

Coyote’s blue nimbus burst out as strong as ever. It surrounded Elena and the shadows, and the shadows started swirling through Elena’s hands and into her body. Elena looked at Vonda, a smile on her face.

I knew that smile. Elena used it when someone was foolish enough to bother her or, worse, tried to steal a morsel of food while she sliced up something with her wickedly long knife. The smile would be followed by choice words in the Apache language and her knife rising until the intruder whirled and ran.

Vonda had stolen much more than mushrooms for the stew. She’d told me that she’d viewed the old Apache as little better than an animal, as though he didn’t matter. But every life mattered, because every life was connected to every other life in the world. A part of that old and powerful Apache man lived on in Elena, and he wanted his revenge.

Elena started chanting words I didn’t understand. More shadows unwrapped from Vonda and streamed toward my cook, and Vonda started to scream. My grandmother, next to Elena, simply watched.

As Vonda’s shadows left her, one by one, the vortex started to shrink. In alarm I grabbed Nash’s rope. “Nash!”

I felt warmth at my side as Mick joined me. In spite of the craziness going on in this room, I felt the surging joy of working side by side with the man I loved, the two of us understanding each other so well that we didn’t have to speak or even signal. Mick started pulling up the rope, grunting with the effort of it, and I whirled in time to defend him from Vonda’s attack.

She was losing the magic that kept her looking like a cool, successful forty-year-old woman. Vonda’s silk skirt and blouse began to hang on her body as she shrank, her limbs growing thin and wasted. Her face became pinched, skin receding to the skull, and still she fought with strength. The power she’d acquired was vast.

I didn’t pity her. Vonda had stolen for years from the magical, siphoning what she wanted from them. She’d tried to steal Mick from me, taking the one person in my life who’d always believed in me. I wouldn’t forgive her for that.

Elena kept chanting, her eyes closed, a look of vast concentration on her face.

The next part happened so swiftly that for a long time afterward I puzzled over the exact sequence of events. Nash’s hand, blackened with soot, met Mick’s, and his face, just as blackened, appeared within the whirling madness of the vortex. Nash had his arm looped under Ted’s, dragging the man up and out. Ted was alive, but barely, his face as black with soot as Nash’s, and cut and bleeding.

At the same time, the door burst off its hinges, sailed across the room, smacked into the again-whole window, shattered the glass, and tumbled out into the night.

Gabrielle stormed in on a wave of Beneath magic, her hands full of white fire. I tried to get in her way, but she flew across the room, and her boot heels connected with Vonda’s chest.

Gabrielle landed on her feet as Vonda went down, and smiled a wide, mad smile. “Die, bitch. That’s the last time you suck magic out of me.”

“Gabrielle, no!”

My shouting went unheeded. Gabrielle fired up her magic and flung it at Vonda, and the vortex went crazy.

The whirlpool of it expanded, sending the rest of us slamming into the walls of the big room. Vonda screamed and screamed as Elena stole from her and the Beneath magic burned her, Vonda’s body dying as it should have done a hundred years past. Nash and Ted gained the floor, what was left of it. Mick smacked his fire at Gabrielle as she wound up to throw more Beneath magic at Vonda.

All the while, Elena was chanting, chanting, Vonda’s shadows sliding into her hands. When Elena opened her eyes, they were white with power. She’d become the Shadow Walker, while Vonda slowly crumpled into ash.

With the last of her strength, Vonda shoved Gabrielle toward the vortex. Gabrielle flailed on the edge, and I screamed and grabbed for her.

Ted, lifting his head, seeing what was left of his wife, wailed in sudden grief. I saw his hand go to the pistol Vonda had dropped, and before I could draw breath to shout, he’d aimed it at Gabrielle and pulled the trigger.

The gun exploded from the energy in the room, but the bullet sailed straight and true. Gabrielle didn’t notice, trying to keep herself—and me—out of the abyss, and the bullet shoved itself right into her side.