Shadow Walker (29 page)

Gabrielle fell to her knees as blood gushed from the wound. I clamped my hands around her wrist as she slid backward into the vortex, my feet braced on the floor where reality met Beneath. I felt Gabrielle go slack, and her weight started dragging me into the vortex with her.

She looked at me in pathetic confusion, pain clouding her eyes. “I’m sorry, Janet.”

“No!” I yelled at her. “I’ve got you. I’m not letting go. You’re not giving up.”

But she was slipping, falling, and I either had to release her or be pulled down with her.

And then Mick was there. Without a word, he laced his strong arm around my waist and wound a string of bright magic around Gabrielle. The two of us hauled her, inch by inch, bleeding and coughing, back to the carpet.

Vonda was dead, and Elena had all the magic. Gabrielle was down, bleeding. And still the vortex was there.

“Damn it,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Mick, help me. We have to close it.”

He and I had closed a vortex before. But that had been in the middle of a raging storm, when I’d been supremely powerful. The storm outside had died, now when it would have been so helpful, and I couldn’t risk using my Beneath magic. The vortex rose like a vast drain, and in a few moments, we’d all be cascading down its pipes.

“Janet,” Mick said, his voice so calm that it reached me even through the roar. “Give me a little of your magic.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I drew forth a spark of Beneath magic and fed it into his hand. Mick smiled, and I felt him wrap that spark of magic within a fireball of his own and fling it at the vortex.

The vortex crackled with fire all along its edges, but other than that, nothing happened. Mick frowned, as though puzzled, that dragon curiosity again. I wanted to scream at him.

Cassandra appeared in the doorway, Pamela behind her. Maya was with them, and neither stopped her running to Nash.

Coyote joined me on my other side, watching the vortex, not bothering to help, damn him. Cassandra pressed her hands together and began to chant, magic flowing from her like a river of smoke. Still the vortex yawned, the power in it massive. It was hungry, and it wanted us.

Gabrielle lay still on the carpet, with Nash pressing his hand to her side, trying to stop the bleeding. He’d taken the gun from Ted, who was now on his hands and knees, weeping over the pathetic remains of Vonda.

Gabrielle opened her eyes and struggled away from Nash. He tried to stop her, but Gabrielle kicked away and lunged for Vonda’s body. She scraped it up, silk fabric and all, and hurled Vonda into the vortex.

The vortex flared, the magic hitting the ceiling and tearing plaster from it. The automatic sprinklers engaged, pouring a sudden cascade of water over us.

Mick and I smacked the vortex with magic, and Coyote, next to me, finally decided to help. My grandmother calmly walked to Coyote’s side, closed her eyes, and started to whisper in Navajo.

It wasn’t going to close. I silently swore at whoever had decided to build the hotel on top of a damn vortex. Their fault we were all going to be sucked into hell. Would it stop with us? Or swallow the entire hotel?

Wind whipped through the room, burning my still-healing skin. The water from the sprinklers became a deluge. We’d land in Beneath exhausted and soaked, and then have to face whatever demon master was down there.

I thought I heard a rustle of wings, so many wings. The kachinas? I wondered. The Hopi gods, come to help us? Or to shove me and Gabrielle in for using too much Beneath magic?

Through the middle of this tumult, Elena quietly approached the edge. She stood at Grandmother’s side, stretched out her hand and, without any noticeable effort, let one of the shadows drop from it.

The vortex trembled. Whatever the hell kind of magic had been in that shadow, the vortex didn’t like it. Elena watched, unperturbed, as the vortex boiled and whirled, trying to belch out what she’d thrown into it.

“Now!” Coyote shouted.

He grabbed my hand and Grandmother’s on his other side. I caught on and seized Mick’s hand, who in turn caught Cassandra’s, who took Pamela’s, then Maya, who held on to Nash, and all around the circle. Elena stood next to my grandmother, both hands over the vortex.

I felt us connect—Stormwalker, dragon, witch, god, crow, Changer, shaman, and the void that was Nash. It was heady, it was powerful, too powerful to contain. We fought the Beneath magic of the vortex, battling it back as it tried to reach for and obliterate Elena.

The backlash was incredible. I gritted my teeth, trying to stay on my feet. Mick’s strong hand on mine kept me grounded, but I barely remained upright. His love for me and the music of his name flowed through the connection between us—it was wonderful but also seriously distracting right now. I kept wanting to stop to absorb more of the music. His name was part of me now, filling me with Mick and his magic. Earth magic, dragon magic, more than enough to ground me.

The vortex yawned wider, and Gabrielle screamed. But Nash was there, standing in front of her, guarding her from the deadly pull. The vortex touched Nash and shank back.

It was lessening. Under the combined power of our magic, the vortex started to give up. Elena held out her hand and dropped another shadow. She shouted in a high-pitched, wailing voice, blowing out every light in the room.

The vortex swirled once, then with a rush and a roar, winked out of existence.

The room went black but for the fingers of dawn that touched the broken window, and the pattering of water on the carpet was loud in the sudden silence.

Twenty-nine

The morning sun burnished the emergency vehicles filling the parking lot. Medics surrounded a frightened Gabrielle, and I stuck next to her in case she panicked and tried to kill the nice humans trying to help her. Grandmother and Elena planted themselves by the stretcher, once again looking like nothing more than two harmless older ladies who’d come to the casino for an exciting night out.

The hotel manager, of course, wanted to know why we’d wrecked the room. The window was broken out, the lights were destroyed, the furniture was shattered against the walls, and everything had been soaked by the sprinklers. Plus the door to the room was now in the parking lot. Coyote walked off with the manager, talking rapidly. I wondered if Coyote would use his magic to make the man forget all about us, or whether one of us would be writing a large check.

Nash turned over the handcuffed Ted to the New Mexico police, and I noticed Mick fading into the shadows while the police loaded up Ted and drove away with him. Nash did not look good—pale smudges of skin showed through the black on his face, and his clothes were soot-marked and torn, as though he’d fought his way through a fire. When I looked at him, wanting to ask what had happened to him, Nash put his arm around Maya and walked away from me.

No sign of dragons in the powder blue sky. They’d obeyed Mick’s command not to attack, and Mick must have sent them away again. I loved a man who could keep everything straight.

“Grandmother,” I said in a low voice as the paramedics loaded Gabrielle into the ambulance. “You and Elena knew all about Vonda and the Apache shaman in my basement, didn’t you? Any reason you didn’t bother telling me?”

“We didn’t know all about it,” Grandmother said. “We suspected, once we discovered she was a Shadow Walker, but we didn’t know for certain until we heard Vonda tell the story.”

I ground my teeth. “
This
is what you and Elena were conspiring about in the kitchen? And Coyote right along with you?”

“I don’t have to share everything I do with you, Janet. I have my own friends, my own puzzles to solve.”

“Coyote’s important errand was to discover all he could about Vonda?”

“Yes.”

“When I could have used his help figuring out Mick’s name,” I finished. “You still should have told me.”

“I didn’t want you to try to stop us going after the Shadow Walker,” Grandmother said. “You were too worried about what would happen to Mick if she died, and rightly so. Besides, Coyote wasn’t able to find Mick’s name.”

“Because Mick had to tell me the name himself.” My anger softened. “I get that now. Vonda’s shadows sucked Mick’s name from him, but when Mick gave it to me as a gift, it was stronger than Vonda’s pull.”

“Because your emotional tie to Mick is powerful,” Grandmother said. “Very powerful.”

Mick’s arms came around me from behind, his wonderful heat surrounding me. “Exactly.”

Grandmother sniffed. “Firewalkers are always sentimental.” She gathered her skirts and started to climb into the ambulance, Elena after her.

“Where are you going?” I asked them in surprise.

“To the hospital. We’ve decided to look after Gabrielle. She needs us.”

“She’s my sister and not your responsibility.”

“I know she’s your sister,” Grandmother said. “Which means she’s trouble. I trained you; now Elena and I will train her. Go home, Janet, and leave us to it.”

The ambulance doors slammed behind her before I could say good-bye, the med techs wanting to get Gabrielle to the hospital as quickly as possible. The lights went on, the siren wailed, and the ambulance hurried out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

I leaned back against Mick and sighed happily. “Let’s go home.”

He kissed my hair. “You don’t want to rest here awhile? Plenty of beds. Room service. Anything you want.”

Tempting. We were a long way from home, and I didn’t relish the cold ride back. But no. “I don’t think I should stay in a hotel right on top of a vortex. Too dangerous. Let’s go to my nice, safe hotel with the magic sink in the basement, the nosy magic mirror, and Colby and Drake the irritated dragons.”

“We’ll send them all away and lock the doors, then I’ll cook you a kick-ass breakfast.”

“Now, that I can go for.”

I snuggled under his chin and basked in the beauty of standing with my lover, mine once more, with the rising sun illuminating the New Mexico landscape. This was happiness.

“Hey!”

I jumped at the harsh voice. A large human male in a T-shirt and biker vest had approached us. He had shaggy hair, a salt-and-pepper beard, huge arms covered with tatts, and he carried a gun in a shoulder holster under his vest. Several similar-looking men backed him up.

“I think you took something of mine,” he said.

The motorcycle. Well, shit.

I did not want to tell this tall, angry, armed man that I’d wrecked his Harley on a lonely road seventy miles from here. “Hopi County Sheriff’s Department,” I said, trying on a smile. “You’ll find it there.”

“Hopi . . . Where the hell is that?”

“Flat Mesa,” Mick said, voice rumbling. “Arizona.”

“It was an emergency,” I put in.

The biker drew out his pistol. “Listen, bitch, you’d better take me to this Podunk town, and you’d better hope that nothing happened to my ride, or you’ll owe me for the rest of your life. Your boyfriend too. Got it?”

Damn it. I’d tried to help him; really I’d tried. I didn’t want to use Beneath magic so near a vortex, but I couldn’t risk the man shooting Mick.

Before I could raise even a spark of magic, another pistol pressed into the man’s temple, and I heard the click of a handcuff.

“I’d be happy to escort you to Hopi County to locate your bike,” Nash Jones said. “At
my
sheriff’s department. And you’d better hope that the weapon I just witnessed you threaten my friends with is registered and that when I search you, you’re clean. Your colleagues can come with us, if they want. Or they can go. Now.”

The other bikers backed away and left their fellow to his fate. Nash plucked the pistol out of the biker’s hand and clicked the second cuff around the man’s other wrist.

“Take her home,” Nash said to Mick, and then gave me a severe look. “We’ll talk about the stolen motorcycle later.”

Without further word, Nash started pulling the biker toward his truck, his voice droning the man’s Miranda rights.

Maya, who’d been waiting for Nash, threw up her hands in exasperation. “Really, Nash? I thought we were going to spend the night here. Don’t you
ever
take vacation?”

Nash didn’t answer but shoved the perp into his black pickup. He turned around, crushed a kiss to Maya’s mouth, then left her with a stunned but glowing look on her face.

One month later

Early March brought rain but an end to the frigid weather. I’d reopened the hotel a week after our New Mexico adventure, and business was booming, with a backlog of reservations that would last me all the way through the summer.

Elena was back in the kitchen, as prickly as ever, behaving as though nothing unusual had happened. She still glared at anyone who interrupted her prepping, and now that I knew she had amazing magic at her disposal as well as sharp knives, I gave her all the space she wanted.

Colby hung around as well. Still bound to the dragon council, but at least allowed to come and go between the hotel and the dragon compound near Santa Fe, he decided it was fun to drink in my saloon and irritate me. But strangely, Elena started to like him, and even let him into the kitchen. I wondered if Elena was gearing up to enslave a dragon now that she had all the magic Vonda had accumulated. So far, though, it looked as though she only enslaved Colby with sweet tamales and cornbread fritters.

Grandmother had taken the recovering Gabrielle back to Many Farms, and I wasn’t certain how I felt about that. On the one hand, I knew that if anyone could keep Gabrielle under control, it was my grandmother. On the other, I worried about the rest of my family with Gabrielle’s destructive magic. But then I thought about my nosy, gossiping aunts visiting the house every day, and I had to smile.

Mick and I . . .

Mick took me to the Winslow hotel for a much-needed vacation, and we rarely left the bedroom. I showed him how much I’d missed him, and he showed me how grateful he was to me for rescuing him. We had to put sound-smothering spells on the room so we wouldn’t be asked to leave.

Sometimes we simply held each other in the moonlight and listened to the trains rumble by. Mick would touch the ring on my finger, and I’d sing notes of his true name. We were bound in the dragon way, he said, and the way he whispered that made me shiver in delight.

My promise to marry him still held, but we hadn’t told anyone about our engagement. It was fun, having a lover’s secret.

I didn’t see much of Nash Jones, except for when he sternly summoned me to the sheriff’s office to lecture me about stealing the motorcycle. He’d found meth on the biker he’d arrested, plus learned that the biker had stolen the gun he’d waved in my face. Said biker was languishing in Nash’s jail, unable to make bail, on charges of assault, possession, dealing, theft, and other things. I’d have to be a witness, Nash told me, but he let me off with a warning about the motorcycle.

He said nothing about Vonda, or the vortex, or his rescue of Ted, who was in jail in New Mexico for shooting Gabrielle. Nash brushed me off coldly when I tried to ask him what had happened inside the vortex.

So I asked Maya. She breezed into the hotel on a morning in early March, ready to check the maintenance work she’d done in the basement. Once she and Fremont had restored everything from Vonda’s last deterioration spell, my electricity and plumbing had worked like a dream.

The basement fascinated me now that I knew magic had been sunk there, though I couldn’t discern anything different about it. I found no spots where magic dragged at me or jumped up and down and screamed at me, and even the piece of magic mirror I flashed around couldn’t distinguish the long-dead shaman’s magic from any other. Elena never said that she’d tapped into it, or even mentioned it at all. Maybe the Apache’s magic had so long permeated the bones of the hotel that the magic simply had become part of the structure.

“Did Nash tell you?” I asked Maya as she checked her wiring. “About what happened to him in the vortex?”

“Yes,” Maya said. “And he told me not to tell you.”

“It might be important. I’m worried about him.”

“So am I.”

“Maya . . .”

Maya took off her work hat, ran her hand through her hair, and leaned one foot back against the wall. “You’re right. It was awful. Nash has been spending nights at my house, and one time, I woke up and found him crying. He was pretty pissed off that I’d caught him, but I made him tell me what was wrong.” She gave me a heartbroken look. “Janet, when Nash went down into the vortex, he found himself back in that building in Iraq, the one that blew up when he and his men were in it. It happened all over again—the explosion, the fire, the walls collapsing, his men screaming. Only this time, Nash knew he’d be able to save one man: the asshole Ted Wingate. Nash said he knew none of it was real, but at the same time, he didn’t have a choice about who he could save. He had to bring Ted back, and all the others had to die. Again.”

I listened in horror. “Oh, gods.” Whether some demon Beneath or Vonda herself had made Nash relive the worst day of his life, it had been an act of pure cruelty. “Poor Nash.”

“He’s getting better. Slowly. Don’t you dare tell him I told you.”

“No.” Some secrets needed to be kept.

“Nash doesn’t blame you,” Maya said. “But he doesn’t want to see you. Or Mick, or anyone really, because . . . well, Nash isn’t good with letting people see him vulnerable.”

“At least he’s talking to you.”

“Yeah.” Maya put her hat back on, her eyes soft. “He’s talking to me. I’m going to move in with him.”

That caught me by surprise. “Yeah?”

“We talked about it and decided we’d live in his house in Flat Mesa. It’s closer to his office. Besides, I need to do
something
about his décor. The whole weapons and weight machine look has got to go.”

Wow. Maya’s house was beautiful, and I imagined she’d work her magic on Nash’s plain one.

Nash Jones shopping for furniture and curtains. It boggled the mind.

I left her, my thoughts whirling, and went back upstairs.

Mick met me in my bedroom and gave me a long, bonemelting kiss. I loved this man, this dragon-shifter with the hard body, who stood in front of me in jeans and nothing else. I knew there was nothing else, because Mick’s jeans rode low on his hips, no underwear in sight.

“Can we tell now?” I asked him. “Our friends will drive us crazy, but I think they should know. Happy secrets should be shared.”

Mick kissed me again and shrugged. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Now I was excited. I knew the first person I wanted to tell, so I took out my cell phone and called the number of my home in Many Farms.

Gabrielle answered. “Hey, Janet. Your grandmother is one amazing bitch.”

I agreed. “How’s it going?”

Gabrielle made a sound of disgust. “She wants me to do all these rituals, morning, noon, and night. Tedious, timeconsuming rituals. Gods, tell her to at least let me go to the movies once in a while.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Do the rituals. I hated them too, but they helped me. A lot.”

“Snotty big sister,” Gabrielle said. “Come on up to Many Farms and take me out of here. I want to have some fun.”

“Only if you can control yourself. No killing people.”

“Oh, all right. If you insist.” I knew by her tone that Grandmother had already had an effect on her.

“Is my dad there? I need to talk to him.”

“He’s here. He’s the only nice person around here. Your aunts are just scary.”

This from the crazy daughter of a crazed hell-goddess. I smiled. “I know they are. Put him on.”

“Janet?” Pete Begay’s gentle voice came to me through the line, and my eyes got misty. “How are you?”