Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) (17 page)

I was tempted to yell
Get away from him, you bitch!
But I saved my breath for what I needed to do.

I dove under Aine’s descending talons, slammed both hands to Mick’s hide, and let out the lightning.

Mick’s huge body jumped and crackled, ropes of electricity crawling all over him. Aine let go in irritation, but she drew in some of the lightning. I reached for more of the storm, laughing as it filled me, and let it all go into Mick.

Want me to draw it off?
he’d always say to me, with the wicked gleam in his eyes. He’d let the residual trickle of my magic drift into his fingers as he so warmly caressed my skin.

Come on, Mick.

Mick writhed beneath Aine, lightning burning in blue arcs all over his black and red body. He rolled onto his back, one talon coming up, and sliced into Aine’s white hide.

She shrieked and beat the air, rising just high enough to be out of his reach. Red blood poured from her belly, hot droplets raining down on my skin.

Mick gathered more strength. He struck at Aine again, but she danced out of the way, bellowing in pain and fury. Mick’s wing lay broken at his side—he couldn’t fly to fight her.

Aine, as though realizing what I was doing, swung from Mick and aimed at me. Her fireball came at me, and I threw up my hands, as though that would deflect it.

A second stream of fire cut across Aine’s, sending it sideways into the woods. Drake had come to my rescue. Again, the trees caught, and again, a spell slammed it out. Not my magic this time, but Emmett’s.

Aine, thoroughly enraged, wheeled on her outstretched wings, avoided another line of Mick’s fire, and went after Drake.

“Mick!” I shouted.
 

He was surrounded by lightning, the red in his dragon hide pulsating like his tatts did when he was human. His head came around, great black dragon eyes pinning me. I read vast pain in them and also vast anger. Mick was seriously pissed off at me.

“Do your healing thing,” I shouted at him.
“Please.”
I’d seen him shroud himself in the dark mist dragons used for healing or shifting and emerge unscathed.

“He might be too far gone,” Emmett said behind me, as calm as ever. I bet his glasses weren’t even smudged.

“I don’t want your commentary,” I snarled at him. “Either help him or shut up.”

“I can save Mick the man,” Emmett said. “But maybe not Mick the dragon. Or the other way around.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Emmett lifted one hand and sliced the air. “He’s two-natured. He’s learned to be human, embraced it, and more than just for convenience. He’s now as much man as dragon. I can separate the two. One will live, and one will die.”

I remembered Drake explaining in his clinical voice in my hotel lobby that the only way a dragon could take a human lifespan was to split the dragon part of him from the human. No one could do that, he’d said, except a god. Now Emmett was saying he could do that very thing.

Mick snaked his head to Emmett, the wrath in his eyes growing. I quickly stepped between the two.

“No,” I said sharply to Emmett.

Emmett’s eyes flashed. “No choice. He’s not strong enough to heal himself. I promise I’ll show you how to put him back together again.”

Oh sure, because Emmett was so trustworthy.

At that moment, Aine wheeled above us and plunged at Mick, determined to kill. Drake was currently fighting Bancroft for his life—no help there.

Mick rolled away from us and rose on his back legs to meet Aine. He jumped, trying to get airborne, but his broken wing sagged to the ground. He snarled and lashed out, fighting hard, but Aine was less injured than he was, and strong. Her cut abdomen was a flesh wound to a dragon.

I turned on Emmett. “
Damn
you. Save him.”

Emmett bunched his fists, closed his eyes, and let his body go rigid. Aine struck out at Mick and ripped her claws through his wing that was still whole. Shreds of dragon flew out into the air and fell in blackened bits. Mick didn’t even cry out, his dragon jaw clenched in pain.

I drew a breath to yell at Emmett again when he opened his eyes. Those eyes had gone silver all the way across, making me know for certain that his glasses were only for show.

Emmett uncurled his fists, brought his hands, palms together, straight out in front of him, and jerked his arms apart.

Mick shrieked. The scream went on and on, a horrible sound that vibrated every iota of the air. The storm answered, fingers of lightning finding trees and exploding them into flame.
 

Aine sprang back as Mick’s body rippled, undulating in black waves so fierce that he threw a ring of dead trees, brush, and old ash in a wide circle around him. Aine beat her wings, lifting backwards as Mick thrashed.
 

Beyond them, Bancroft broke from Drake, but he didn’t come to see what was happening. He arrowed off into the night, pursued by Drake.

Aine screeched again. She angled her head to look down at the small humans on the ground, then recoiled as her gaze fixed on Emmett. She jerked back, and I swear I saw fear in her ice-green eyes. Aine turned in midair and headed for the sky, dodging lightning strikes as she went.

Mick was still keening. His tail dislodged a stand of trees that had caught fire from the lightning, scattering them like straw.

“Stop!” I yelled at Emmett. Tears stung my face, and my throat was raw. “You’re killing him.”

“No,” Emmett said without looking at me. “I’m saving him. The dragon is dying.”

The mist of dragon darkness gathered around Mick. He continued to fight and flail, but his body gradually disappeared behind the thick cloud.

The darkness solidified around him like a cocoon. I watched in shock, my heart pounding. The storm increased its intensity, lightning filling the sky, one strike following immediately after the other. Thunder rolled continuously, one rumble overriding the next. Wind from the storm reached the clearing, and an icy breeze tore at my hair.

Emmett said nothing, did nothing. He merely stood, his arms lowering to his sides, his eyes opaque.

Another blast of lighting struck the ground twenty feet from the cocoon. The boom of thunder made me shout, and then it deafened me.

The storm had hold of me. Lightning thrust up through me, coming out my hands, lifting me from the ground. I was a Stormwalker in the heart of the storm, with nothing to stop me—no Beneath magic, no Coyote.

I turned and blasted my full power at Emmett.

I was pleased that I made him step off balance. He shot me an annoyed look from behind the lightning, then shielded himself, sending the lightning bouncing harmlessly into the dirt around him.
 

Emmett yelled something, but I couldn’t hear him. His mouth opened wider, his face reddened, and he glared at me as he pointed at the cocoon.

I finally understood—he wanted me to hit the cocoon with the lightning. I hesitated. I didn’t trust Emmett and had no idea what was going on behind the darkness. My heart was tearing out of my chest, Mick dying in front of me, and I had no idea how to help him.

Emmett drew another breath to shout. I still couldn’t hear him, but I could read his lips.
“Do it!”

Forgive me, Mick
, I whispered silently, then I let the lightning fly.

It struck the cocoon and broke it open. Fragments of obsidian exploded outward, cutting me and Emmett as they flew by. Tiny streaks of blood decorated Emmett’s face, and I felt the bite on mine.

The cocoon blew apart in a steady stream, shards of volcanic rock and glass flying out faster and faster until both Emmett and I had to dive to the ground, shielding ourselves from the deadly rain. My lightning continued to flare from my hands, digging a little furrow from my outstretched fingers to the trees.

Then, with one last crash of thunder, the storm died. Rain fell, the wind carried the clouds away, breaking them apart.

A tearing sound came from where the cocoon had been. I raised my head to see a dragon emerge from the mess, stumbling and dazed. His wings were whole again, but the fire had gone from his eyes.
 

He looked around, head turning on his long neck. His gaze rested on me and Emmett beside me, but there was no recognition there—not only of who we were but of
what
we were.

The dragon turned from us, eyes black and devoid of intelligence. It lifted itself on ungainly wings and soared upward, caught the wind, dipped once, then flapped away into the darkness.

A groan jerked my attention back to earth. A man sat in the circle of broken obsidian and apache’s tears, his arms around his knees. He was naked, his skin tanned but clear, no tatts marking him.

Mick raised his head, unruly black hair caught by the wind. His eyes were blue in the darkness, no hint of dragon in them.

“Janet,” he said in a rasping voice. “What did you do to me?”

Chapter Seventeen

I scrambled to my feet, mud plastered down my front, and ran to him. Mick was huddled in on himself, his body no different except for the lack of tattoos, but the fear in his eyes as he looked up at me was stark.

I put my hand on his back. His skin was ice-cold, and both of us flinched.

“You shouldn’t …” Mick began. “You can’t know …”
 

“That you’re a dragon? No, I didn’t know.” My heart was hammering, but my blood was sluggish with worry. “We need to get you inside, and warm. Emmett …”

I turned to tell Emmett to give his clothes to Mick, but Emmett was gone. I scanned the clearing, but no, the man had vanished.

“Coward!” I yelled into the air.

“What the hell did you do to me?” Mick repeated.

He was still on the ground, but he’d lifted his head, rage in his eyes. And betrayal, I realized. He thought he’d been wrong about me—that I was evil after all.

“I didn’t do this,” I said quickly. “I can’t handle magics like that. It was Emmett. He saved your life.”

Mick gave me an incredulous look. “By splitting me in two? Not life,” he snarled. “Living death.”

“I didn’t know what else to do!” I balled my fists, tightening myself against my tears. “You were dying. Aine was killing you.”

“And how the hell do you know the name of one of the Dragon Council?”

I fell to my knees beside him, the wet ground soaking through my jeans. “Mick …”

He studied me with scrutiny no less intense than his dragon’s.
“Tell me.”

“This isn’t real.” I swept my hand to take in the clearing, the rain pattering on the fire-stricken trees, the receding storm. “We’re dreaming this.
I’m
dreaming it. Drake might be too—I don’t know.”

Mick’s eyes fixed on me, solid blue, the color I loved. “This feels fucking real to me,” he said savagely.

“I don’t know what’s going on. This mage, Emmett Smith—he’s doing his best to kill us, and this is one way he’s trying.”

“Emmett Smith,” Mick said. “Never heard of him.”

“No, you haven’t. Not yet. We have to wake up.”

The last time I’d come out of the dreaming, it had taken Mick, Coyote, Cassandra, Colby, and the mirror to do it.

I remembered fire in my hand, the shard of mirror cutting my skin. Mick’s healing magic had helped me too.
 

The Mick of the future hadn’t remembered anything I’d done in my dream—nothing from his past—so maybe this was true
un
-reality. Once I woke up everything would be fine. Mick would be dragon again, and the world would be back to normal. Wouldn’t it?

The mirror. “Mick, we have to—”

I was interrupted by a downdraft from dragon wings, hot wind rushing over us. I looked up in alarm, but it was Drake, settling in to the clearing. He transformed behind a cloud of darkness and made for us.

Drake’s skin was cut and dark with abrasions and bruises, but he seemed otherwise whole. He stared in shock at Mick, whose skin held no tattoos, his aura free of all things dragon.

“Is he well?” Drake asked abruptly.

“No,” I said.

“I can speak for myself.” Mick got to his feet as robustly as ever, fists balling as he towered over me. “What were you about to say, Janet? We have to what?”

“Find the mirror. It’s key to this …” I trailed off, realizing. “Oh gods, Emmett knows where it is.”

At this time in my life, the mirror was lying forgotten in the attic of my old hotel, waiting for me to come buy the place and then Mick and I to wake it up. If the Emmett in my dream went to the hotel, found the mirror, and woke it himself, would that change future reality? It shouldn’t, if my previous dream was anything to go by, but magic mirrors were powerful and unpredictable, and Emmett was one hell of a mage.

I tried to calm down. Emmett didn’t necessarily know where the mirror had been before I’d found it—he only knew I’d hung it in my saloon.

Then again, Emmett was thorough. He’d probably created a dossier on the mirror, knowing who’d made it and who’d owned it through the centuries.

“What mirror?” The hands Mick put on my shoulders were no less strong, and I felt a bite of magic in them.

I stared at his fingers then back up at him. I shouldn’t be feeling magic if Emmett split him in two, but then again, maybe dragon magic wasn’t the only kind of power Mick had. Some of the spells he’d shown me had been very close to witch magics and other powers of the earth.

“We’ll fix this,” I promised him.

“Janet is right,” Drake said. “We must go to the Crossroads and retrieve the mirror before Emmett does. The mirror has much power and responds well to you.”

Mick didn’t release me. “What mirror? What crossroads?”

“A magic mirror,” I said. “As powerful as it is obnoxious.”

“All magic mirrors are obnoxious,” Mick said. “And a shitload of trouble. What are you doing with one?”

“It belongs to you too. At the Crossroads—a hotel I bought in Magellan.”

Mick raised his head, finally letting go of me. “Magellan. Where the vortexes are.” It was a statement, not a question. When I nodded, he said, “The very place I’m trying to keep you from.”

“That’s the one.” The vortex that held my mother, at this time, had not been sealed and buried. It was lying there, like the mirror, waiting for me to come and open it.