Shadow Walker (8 page)

Beside me, the woman stirred. She pushed back the hood of the parka, and I found myself looking into the face of a young Native American woman I’d met once before. She’d introduced herself last fall by the empty railroad bed behind my hotel, and when she had, my world changed. She was Apache, and her name was Gabrielle Massey.

“Hey, big sis,” she said, flashing a smile. “How’ve you been?”

I hit the brakes, and the car spun in a tight circle. Gabrielle smiled at me, right before the car exploded.

Eight

The car didn’t blow up in a big ball of flame. The doors and roof ripped away, the windows burst, and glass and snow poured in, wind whipping the shards into a frenzy.

Gabrielle disappeared, but I saw her on her feet a little way from the car, her arms outstretched. The storm wasn’t touching her. She’d enclosed herself inside a bubble of stillness, against which the snow beat.

Gabrielle was a child of Beneath. My mother the hell-goddess had created her, even though the hell-goddess had looked me in the eye last year and told me that I was an only child. That was my mother for you.

Most people would rejoice at finding a long-lost sister, but
my
long-lost sister was evil incarnate. The last time I’d seen Gabrielle, it had been a clear, sunny day in September. We’d talked, no battling, but I’d realized then that her Beneath magic was as strong as mine, maybe stronger. Since then I’d been working on tempering my Beneath magic with my Stormwalker magic, drawing on the strengths of both without letting either control me. It wasn’t easy. I was too new to using the Beneath magic, while Gabrielle had been training in it her entire life.

I wondered why Gabrielle had chosen to attack me during a storm, because now she faced a Stormwalker in her element. The storm tried to beat and ravage me, but I reached into it and made it my own.

The blizzard became a part of me, my body growing colder to blend with it. Ice spewed from my fingers, and I spread my hands and laughed. I was part of the storm, dancing in the wind, my touch turning the world to ice. It was orgasmic, this power, making me crazy with desire at the same time I was crazed with the need to destroy.

Gabrielle stood calmly behind her bubble of magic, watching me. “So that’s what you do.”

“I’m a Stormwalker,” I said. “This is a storm. Put it together.”

“It’s earth magic.” The words came with a sneer.

“Earth magic is strong. It’s old, grounded in the bones of the world.”

“Beneath magic is older,” she said.

“But earth magic rules here.”

Gabrielle’s smile widened, and her bubble expanded. “Don’t challenge me, big sis. I dream of taking you down, but this isn’t the time. Not yet.”

“Why not?” I smiled too and blasted her with ice.

Her bubble wavered and, with it, her smugness. “You don’t want to mess with me, Janet.”

I could kill her. I knew it. The storm magic was winding around my Beneath magic, honing me into a precise, efficient weapon.

I’d promised everyone who cared about me that I wouldn’t use the Beneath magic to go on a rampage. I’d made the promise to a Koshare, a Hopi spirit who watched over this land, and to Coyote, who watched over those he wanted to watch over. Both had made it clear that they’d kill me without remorse if I turned into anything like my mother.

But they couldn’t fault me for destroying Gabrielle before
she
went on a destructive rampage, could they? And besides, I could do this using Stormwalker magic only.

Gabrielle’s bubble splintered into glittering pieces, but not because of me. Her Beneath power rose like a sword, and she sliced it at me.

The blizzard whipped away her strike before it could touch me, and I answered with another barrage of ice. The ice struck Gabrielle like bullets, tearing at her face before she deflected it.

“Fine,” she panted. “If you want to do this now . . .”

“I want you gone now. This is my town, my people. Leave them alone.”

“Your
people
. Oh, the arrogance of you. Mother tried to warn me.”

Her power stabbed at me. We fought, Stormwalker to Beneath magic wielder, half goddess to half goddess. We were going to destroy each other.

We’d also destroy the world. Ice and snow tore up the ground, chunks of frozen earth heaving upward in seismic eruption. Black clouds swirled around us, a tornado in the making. If the storm got loose from me, it would flatten the two small towns sitting out here under endless sky.

I was freezing. My body had become the storm, my hair coated in snow, ice forming on my lashes. I was cold inside and out, which meant that all compassion, all warm feeling—any love I’d ever cultivated—was gone. I was ice: hard, uncaring destruction.

Gabrielle’s power hit me, and I fell. I landed hard on snow-covered rock and heard a couple of bones snap, but I didn’t feel a thing. I was on my feet again, the pain nonexistent. I slapped Gabrielle with wind. She fought back, the two of us smashing, grappling, falling, climbing to our feet to smash again.

She was testing me, and I her. We hadn’t been ready to fight, but neither of us could stop now.

A shadow blotted out the snow, a huge black object that swooped through the storm. Red-hot fire streamed in front of it, melting the snow and ice down to bare earth.

The dragon’s fire sent Gabrielle tumbling. She rolled over and over, coming to rest on the snow-covered road. I laughed, my triumph ringing out, and then the dragon turned on me.

“Mick—no!”

Fire blossomed in an arc around me. The ice melted, my body returning to normal temperature with a bang. Pain roared through me, and I screamed.

Mick lifted me in a clawed talon, and his wings blew snow in all directions as he launched into the sky. The storm reached for me, and I reached for it, but Mick’s fire kept it from touching us.

The blizzard receded as Mick flew south with me, leaving Cassandra’s wrecked car in the middle of the road, and Gabrielle nowhere in sight.

I groaned as Mick peeled my clothes from my body. The blizzard raged outside, but I lay on my bed inside my warm hotel, teeth gritted against the pain of cracked bones. Mick tried to be gentle, but I was broken and battered, my storm power still pounding me.

“Gabrielle?” I croaked.

Mick’s eyes were black all the way through, his dragon tattoos red and writhing. “She’s gone.”

He was naked, his body so warm it hurt. Mick dropped the last of my clothing on the floor and lay down on top of me. I was shivering hard, but Mick’s soft kisses heated my blood.

Fire danced in his eyes as my storm power sought him. The first time I’d met Mick, he’d dared me to blast him with lightning. He’d stood back and laughed as electricity crawled all over him, and then he’d swallowed it down and smiled at me.

What he did now wasn’t quite the same but had similar effect. He absorbed the ice and cold I still radiated, inhaled it as he nuzzled my cheek and licked my skin. Mick’s body shuddered with the cold, but dragon fire blazed along the lines of his tattoos. He drew the lingering storm magic out of me, until my body felt like it was roasting.

Caught in the frenzy, I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him down to me. My mouth sought his, my body welcomed him.

Mick went slow, mindful of my hurts. As he made love to me—deep, satisfying love—my cracked bones grew warm and whole, the heat of the healing nearly searing the sheets. I laughed, imagining my bed a smoldering cinder when we were done.

Mick smiled at me, his strange moods gone. This was
my
Mick, the man who’d watched over me for years, even when I hadn’t been aware of it. I loved him for that, with everything I had.

He touched and kissed me, and once I felt stronger I touched him back. I knew what he liked, and I smiled as I licked him, tasted him, stroked him, teased him. Growling, Mick let me play, and then he showed me how much he appreciated the pleasuring.

The blizzard unwound into straight, heavy snowfall while Mick made me wild. At one point, I was facedown on the bed, my arms spread out across the mattress while he loved me until I was mindless with it. Nothing existed but him and me, and this feeling. Nothing.

Much later, we slept, curled together, my healing complete. But when I awoke to gray morning and freezing cold, I was alone.

I’d kicked off the covers in my sleep, and I now lay exposed to an ice-cold room. I grabbed the blankets and jerked them over my naked body. “What the hell happened to the heat?”

“Don’t know, girlfriend,” the magic mirror said from my bedside table. It wasn’t in the drawer, where it was supposed to be; it sat happily on top. “But it sure was hot in here for a while. That was
good
. Dragon-boy has stamina, not to mention a gorgeous butt.”

“Shut up.” My injuries from the fight had healed, and the storm was gone, but I felt groggy and annoyed, not to mention cold.

I turned on the lamp, which glowed with light. The electricity was on, at least.

I got up and started to run a shower, then I gave up and turned off the water when nothing but cold poured from the pipes. I dressed with shaking fingers, pulled on my coat, and went out to the lobby.

Cassandra was there, the only one. She had a fire going in the fireplace, and she was dressed in the same clothes she’d worn yesterday, though covered with a white fake fur coat.

I went to the fireplace and held out my hands to the blaze. “Cassandra,” I said. “About your car . . .”

“It’s insured,” Cassandra replied in her brisk voice. “I knew when it wrecked, because my wards on it alerted me. I called Mick, and he went to find you. The car can be replaced, and I’m happy to see you back in one piece.”

“More or less,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to spend the night here.”

She shrugged, her sleek hair showing no sign of her having slept on it. “Even if I’d had a car, I couldn’t have made it home in that weather. Fremont and Maya were stuck here too. Heat’s out, and so is the hot water, but we have plenty of wood.”

All the rooms, including mine, had been fitted with woodburning stoves or fireplaces in addition to the central heating. Guests liked the extra fire, and desert winter nights could be severely cold.

“At least we have electricity,” I said.

“We didn’t even have that, but we have Maya. She got it back on, and she and Fremont are working on the heat. The only guest last night was Ansel, and he doesn’t mind the cold. Good thing—he was the one who brought in all the wood. He wouldn’t let me go out to get it.”

Ansel would be asleep now, hiding from what little daylight there was. “I never thought I’d say this, but thank the gods for Nightwalkers.”

“At least for Ansel,” Cassandra agreed.

“If it wouldn’t drive him to a killing frenzy, I’d open a vein for him myself,” I said. “It sounds like the storm’s pretty much done, though. When it gets lighter, maybe Fremont and Maya can get home. You too. I can handle things today.”

Cassandra gave me a hesitant look. “Do you know what time it is?”

“No.” I hadn’t bothered to glance at a clock.

“Noon,” she said. “You slept a long time.”

Noon? I did a mental readjustment. “Why is it so dark? Is there another storm coming?” I didn’t feel one, so I knew as soon as I asked that this wasn’t the case.

For answer, Cassandra crossed the lobby and threw open the shutters. The lobby windows were supposed to look across the parking lot toward the open desert on the other side of the Crossroads, with part of the Crossroads Bar in view.

I saw only blank white. A bank of snow reached all the way to the top of the windows, cutting out the light.

It’s handy to have a boyfriend who can wield fire. Mick came down from the roof, where he’d been surveying our surroundings, and melted a path from the front door, across the parking lot, and to the road. We decided to let the snow remain piled everywhere else, because it insulated the hotel and kept it warmer now that we had no central heating.

I climbed up to the roof, which shared a floor with the building’s third story. I huddled in my coat and looked down at the bank of snow that rose to the second-floor windows.

Cassandra stood beside me. With her hands in the pockets of her white coat, she looked like a supermodel showing off winter fashions.

“I heard that half the Navajo Nation is cut off, same with the Hopi,” she said. “Roads to remote areas are impassable.”

“I believe it.” The highway between Flat Mesa and Magellan, a major road, was blanketed with several feet of snow. Except for where Mick had cleared it, the snow lay unbroken for miles.

I’d already called my father. He’d assured me that in Many Farms they were cold but fine. They had a pile of snow, but their heat worked, at least, and they had a well-stocked stove in the family hogan.

Maya and Fremont were in the basement trying to coax the heater back online. We had food, I’d checked, and Ansel’s gallon jugs of blood were still there. Ted hadn’t thrown them away, and I silently blessed Elena for chasing him out before he could.

I told Cassandra what had happened at Ted’s office, and Cassandra’s brows shot up. “He tried to force you? And he’s still alive?”

“I hit him hard. He won’t be touching me again.”

Cassandra’s eyes blazed with outrage. “Men like him can’t be allowed to get away with sexual harassment, Janet. You should report him.”

I contemplated holding Ted upside down over the sinkhole Nash and I had fallen into until he retracted his demands. Screaming. Much more satisfying than suing him. I sighed. “He’s not worth the hassle. Let me make sure my hotel is safe, and then I’ll ask Mick to have a talk with him.”

“You can take him to court about the inspection. Have the county supervisor make him prove his case.”

“I would,” I said, “but have you seen the garbage behind my walls? I don’t know how it happened, but everything’s a complete mess. All Ted would have to do is get an independent inspector in here to confirm his report, and we’d be done for. We have to fix it.”

“I can help—come up with some spells.”

“I’d appreciate that. I have to wonder whether Gabrielle is destroying my hotel just to prove she can. But I have wards that would go off like crazy if she comes within ten feet of the place. I’d know.”

“The damage might simply be due to water and dry rot,” Cassandra said. “It happens.”

“That quickly?” The deterioration was strange, and there had to be an explanation besides the weather and the arid climate. This hotel had been abandoned three times in its life, the owners simply walking away. I wondered if the deterioration was the reason why. But if something magical had caused the damage, we’d have known, wouldn’t we? Between Mick, me, and Cassandra, we had so many magical warnings in place that we’d be able to detect a gnat that had been magicked to death.