Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) (20 page)

But she hadn’t been the one to produce the stab of Beneath magic. Another young woman, this one Native American, came around the corner of the house. She puffed on her cocked finger, as though blowing smoke from a gun, and grinned at us all.

“Now, now,” Gabrielle said. “No one needs to move. What a cozy, family reunion.”

Chapter Nineteen

Nash quickly upended his gun, even though the most dangerous person in the little tableau had just walked into it. Part of Gabrielle’s menace was that she appeared to be innocent and harmless.

“Gabrielle?” I asked warily.

Her brows snapped together. “How do you know my name?” she demanded, which confirmed my worst fears.

This was Gabrielle of the past, before she and I had called a truce, before Grandmother had sat her down and taught her a few things. Gabrielle before I’d met her had been just this side of crazy, had caused the death of her father and stepmother, and gone on a rampage. I wasn’t certain whether she’d met our mutual mother at this point or not, but it hardly mattered at the moment.

“You know who
I
am,” I countered.

“I do.” Gabrielle looked me over. “And I know you’re not needed, Janet Begay.” She sent a shaft of Beneath magic at me, designed to kill.

Mick jerked me out of the way, but not fast enough. He took a shot of Gabrielle’s power in his shoulder, which started to burn him alive. He dove to the grass, desperately trying to crush out the white-hot flame.

Gabrielle shot again, but this time, Drake was ready with fire, hurling it at her without hesitation. Gabrielle’s magic broke but an instant later was back, supported by another blast from Amy.

It was far too much for Drake to resist on his own. Mick couldn’t help him at the moment, and my Beneath power, while welling inside me, paled compared to Gabrielle’s and Amy’s, and I was minus a storm.

Nash flung himself in front of the shafts of light, taking the full brunt of them. Both Amy and Gabrielle stepped back, uncertain, as the Beneath magic lifted Nash from his feet.

It turned him around, and then, as Amy and Gabrielle stared in astonishment, Nash’s body began to absorb it. Faster and faster, the white magic poured into Nash, like a deluge down a street grating.

He absorbed it all, his body glowing with it, until the magic broke into fragments and exploded outward. The fragments became sparks of brilliant light, then extinguished altogether, like dying fireworks.

Nash thumped back to the ground, remaining on his feet, and drew a long, but unlabored breath.

“Shit,” Gabrielle said in astonishment. “How’d he do that?” She sent him a smile I’d seen her direct at him before. “Want to do it again?”

“No!” I cried as she lifted her hand. Nash only stared at her, his gray eyes moving as he tried to work out what was happening to his efficient, by-the-book world.

I started running for Nash, praying he wouldn’t shoot me as I charged him. But I’d had an idea. I was under a dream spell, and Nash was a null. Nash’s anti-magic might possibly be able to negate the spell on me and wake me up. I had no idea whether this would work, but it was worth a shot.

Mick was up again but weak and in obvious pain. Pissed off, though. He brought his hands up in front of him, chanting words I didn’t know.

Drake’s palms filled with fire, he ready to throw everything he had at Gabrielle and Amy. Nash spun and met my charge, not shooting, thank the gods, but prepared to tackle me.

I slammed into him. We both went down in a tangle on the grass, and I felt a strange pressure in my chest.

I didn’t snap out of the dream, however. I lay there with Nash on top of me, he struggling to get to his feet and not lose hold of the gun at the same time.
 

Flames soared overhead, Drake letting loose at Amy and Gabrielle. His fire was met with white light that battled the orange flames with a sound of thunder.

Mick shouted something. He dove for me at the same time I saw Maya’s truck rise from the ground and go straight for him.

How I threw off Nash, I never knew, but I was up, hurtling myself at Mick. Mick grabbed for me as my momentum carried him backward, trying to pull me with him, but he’d never get out of the way in time if he did that.

I pushed again, using all my strength and a burst of Beneath magic. I broke his hold and pushed him to safety just as the truck came down on me. I saw its underside, which had been pristine until the engine had blown a black hole in it. Maya would be upset—she prided herself on her truck.

Then the pile of metal was landing on top of me. I heard Mick’s voice, holding vast grief, Nash snarling swear words.

I felt a lightness, and behind that, pain so great I couldn’t comprehend it. Mick’s hold was slipping, his warmth sliding away.

Nash’s touch was there too, he still growling, but his hand lay on my ankle, the one place that didn’t hurt. Everything else was throbbing.

I heard Mick’s voice saying my name, the rumble so warm and familiar I clung to it.

But it couldn’t save me. I was dying, and I knew it. Darkness took place of the bright morning sunshine, the glint of the truck, erasing even the smell of fuel and burning.

Through the darkness and numbing pain, a sound floated, sweet and low. It was music, the soft but trembling note of a flute, like that of the one my father had carved for himself.

I was transported back to my childhood, when I’d lain in my bed and listened to my father playing on the flat land under the night sky. I’d thought him playing to the moon, but I knew now he’d been playing for my mother.

Not anymore,
my thoughts whispered. Pete Begay had sat on the patio of my hotel and played in the darkness for Gina, for her warm smile and the love in her eyes. He’d played for her, and now he played for me.

“Dad,” I croaked. I reached for him. He couldn’t be here—there was danger.

The flute answered me, rising like the wind, ending in what sounded remarkably like the yip of a coyote.

“No,” I said. “Don’t stop.”

I yearned for the music, and relaxed a fraction as the song returned. This time the flute sounded like a bird, fluttering, brightly calling. I was a little girl again, in the rather hard bed in my room at Many Farms, knowing I was safe in the night because my father played outside my window.

The serenity was broken when my grandmother stumped into the room and poked the end of her walking cane at my blankets. A trickle of magic came from it, manifesting into a spark when it touched me.

“Janet,” Grandmother said sternly. “Time to wake up now.”

I groaned. It was too early, surely. Too early to drag myself up for another day of school, with kids who didn’t know much what to make of me, the crazy girl with no mother.

“Janet,” Grandmother repeated. The cane poked me again.

“Ow,” I said. The voice that came out of me was adult and slurred. Didn’t matter, though. Grandmother was not above jostling me out of bed now that I was twenty-eight instead of eight. Before she had a cane, she’d simply shake me until I responded.

“Janet,” this voice was Mick’s, rumbling at me with all his strength. His aura touched me, fire and smoke.

I twitched my fingers, happy. “You got your dragon back.”
 

Or tried to say. My mouth barely worked at all.

“Let me try.” Gabrielle sounded close by.

She put a warm hand on my wrist. I tried to jerk away, afraid, but a spark of mind-shaking magic zapped through me. It was answered on my other side by a bite of dragon magic, meeting the Beneath power in a wash of heat.

I gasped. Something was on my face, and I started to choke.

The crushing feeling returned to my chest. I gasped again, struggling for breath, and my eyes flew open.

Before I could cry out, Mick brushed my face, lifting away whatever was on it. “Hey, baby,” he said softly.

I blinked. I lay in a dimly lit room lined with windows and curtains. A quiet beeping filled my ears, and beyond it, the dying notes of the flute.

Gabrielle stood on one side of my bed, her dark eyes wide with worry. Mick was on the other side, his hand in mine. His eyes were black, the blue barely there, and his aura showed me the shadow of his dragon.

I exhaled in relief. “Dream,” I mumbled. “Only a dream.”

Grandmother’s cane moved Gabrielle aside. Beyond her, I saw my beloved father, holding his flute, Gina standing close to him.

“Dreams?” my grandmother asked, her dark eyes fixed on me. “What dreams? When you feel better, you need to tell me all about them.”

***

Much later, after nurses kicked everyone out, doctors came to check me. Mick had told me that I’d been here two days, and surgeons had fixed me after the jail in Flat Mesa had all but crushed me. The doctors now told me I’d be fine, but I had to lie there for a while longer.
 

When the nurse returned to hang new bags on the hooks above my bed, I asked her to please send Mick to me. The nurse gave me a disapproving look, but I must have appeared pathetic, because she nodded and departed.

Not ten seconds later, Mick was coming in the door. He’d have been right outside.

“I hate hospitals,” I said, my tongue clumsy.

Mick pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down, taking my hand between his. His face was a misery.

“Cheer up,” I told him. “I’m alive. Where am I?” I felt the press of too many people around me, noises outside the window, not the immense silence of a desert night.

“Phoenix,” Mick said. “They airlifted you here.”

“Nash’s jail fell on me.” I remembered the ceiling coming down just as Nash was yelling at me, Maya screaming. “I bet he’s not happy.”

“He’s not doing well himself.” Mick gave me a grave look, any glint of humor in him gone. “Maya got caught in the collapse too. She’s not as bad off as you were—they took her to the clinic in Flat Mesa. Nash ordered the helicopter for you.” Mick let out a breath. “I thought you were dead when they pulled you out …”

His eyes filled with moisture and a tear trickled down his cheek. He only held my hand as though he didn’t notice, his fingers biting down.

“Maya was in my dream,” I said. “So was Drake … Is Drake all right?”

Mick shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what he did after we left him at the hotel. I haven’t been back there.”

“Call him.” I struggled to sit up, but I only came four inches off the pillow before dizziness sent me back down. “And call Cassandra. Tell her the mirror is in danger …”

Mick’s firm hand landed on my chest, though I wasn’t going anywhere. “You rest. If there’s a problem with the mirror, Cassandra will tell us. Plus, I have a piece of it with me.”

I relaxed, though not much. “Are
you
all right? In my dream, Emmett had a spell that split you in two—human and dragon, just like Drake claimed god magic could do. The dragon was pure animal, and just … flew away. You were left behind, but you weren’t dragon anymore.”

Mick’s look changed not to concern but interest. The tear remained on his cheek, but his eyes filled with the curiosity of his dragon. “A condensing and separating of essences. Hmm. I’ve never seen it done.”

“Believe me, you wouldn’t want to. And I’m not going to let Emmett split you in half for real—ever.”

“It’s not so much splitting in half,” Mick said. “A person can have many essences, more than two. You, for instance, have Beneath magic, storm magic, and then a part that’s
you
—daughter of your father.”

I gripped his hand. “I know these things amaze you, but can we talk about them later?”

A hint of his usual grin returned. “I take an interest in all magic. I never know when it will come in useful.”

“It hurt you when Emmett took away your dragon. It broke my heart.”

“What did
I
do? Break down and cry like a whiny baby?”

I was surprised he’d even think so. “No. You still took care of me. And you had some earth magic left, and strength. You were still my Mick.”

“I see.” Mick squeezed my hand, but gently. “Glad I didn’t fall apart. It shows that you believe I wouldn’t. It was your dream, so I acted as you perceive me in real life. I’m flattered.”

I started to argue that I wasn’t sure it had been a true dream when I noticed that the fingers on my left hand were bare. I slid my hand from his grasp and studied my fingers in alarm. “My engagement ring. Why don’t I—”

I broke off as Mick dug the silver circlet out of the pocket of his jeans. “I kept it safe for you. I didn’t want it to get lost.”

I blew out my breath. For one awful moment, I’d thought myself still dreaming, in yet another weird alternate reality.

“I’m not sure they’re truly dreams,” I said as Mick slipped the band onto my finger. I relaxed when I felt the silver, warmed by Mick’s body heat, against my skin. “I might have been riding some kind of spell into the past, or an alternate version of it. In this one, the Dragon Council tried to kill you for telling them you’d protect me from them.”

Mick looked interested again. “I remember when I met with them. I knew that night could have gone either way.”

I shuddered. “It was horrible, but it’s over now. Can we go home? I don’t like cities. Phoenix is too big, too hot, too scary.”

“Not yet.” Mick splayed his hand on my chest, as though believing I’d leap up and run to the nearest bus heading north. “You heal first.”

Thoughts were coming back to me. “Before I was crushed, Emmett’s driver said Emmett had offices here. Remember? What happened to him—Sam, the chauffeur? Emmett dosed him with a strange spell.” I remembered Mick’s hands beginning to fuse to Sam’s body, which was why Mick had become a dragon.

“He made it,” Mick said. “The paramedics took him. Whatever was trying to meld us stopped when I grew scales—maybe the spell only worked on humans. I didn’t collapse the building, though—I tore out the back wall in the interrogation room to escape and left everything else intact. Emmett must have triggered the rest of it.”

He broke off, his look becoming sad again. “Nash and firemen were digging you out by the time I flew back.” Mick swallowed, his voice quieting. “I don’t know what happened to Emmett’s thugs.”