Shadow Walker (24 page)

She was strong enough now, because she had a dragon, a dragon whose magic she’d imbibed, a dragon who did her bidding. Mick still didn’t turn around.

“So you are the Stormwalker.” Vonda’s tone was neutral, not betraying the eagerness I read in her. She looked me up and down, from my messy black hair to my mud-splotched motorcycle boots, unimpressed.

I gave Ted’s arm a squeeze, and he shuddered with cold. “I have your husband,” I said. “You have my boyfriend. How about a trade?”

My words were cut off by Gabrielle, who decided to launch herself at Vonda. Vonda coolly watched her come, and I saw wards on the walls around her spring to life. The magic in Gabrielle’s hands twisted around her own wrists, and Gabrielle screamed.

“Mick,” Vonda said.

Mick turned. His eyes were gray white, his face hard and expressionless. He lifted his hand and streamed fire at Gabrielle.

Gabrielle managed to block it with Beneath magic, but she panted with the effort, her eyes wide with fear and rage.

“Mick,” I said.

Mick’s gaze landed on me, his fire died, and my heart broke.

I looked into the eyes of a stranger. Whatever part of Mick had loved me was gone. This man wouldn’t smile at me over dinner in a fancy restaurant, wouldn’t growl as he licked the inside of my wrist, wouldn’t whisper naughty things to me as we stood together in a crowded room. Gone was the man who’d taught me how to control my magic and fix up my bike, who kept me warm when we curled up to sleep, who’d kissed syrup off my lips in the morning.

When Mick had startled me with his proposal of marriage, I’d put him off because I thought I’d have plenty of time to think about my answer. I’d ponder the question awhile until I got used to it, and then I’d tell him what I wanted.

Facing Mick now, I realized that there was no such thing as enough time. Time is snatched away swiftly, while we in our arrogance think it will always be there for us. I’d spent five years traveling alone, trying to figuring out who I was and coming to terms with it, before I’d returned to the vortexes and my mother and faced my fears. I’d been very lucky in that time that I hadn’t lost my father or grandmother, that I’d had a home to return to whenever I liked. That Mick had secretly watched over me and kept me safe.

I could have lost everything in those five years, and the thought had never once occurred to me.

Now I realized that I had to hang on to what I had and savor all of it for as long as I could. So that when whatever I had was taken away—and it would be—I’d have no regret that I hadn’t savored enough.

“Mick,” I said softly. “You can be free of her. Tell me your name, and we can break the spell.”

Behind me, Vonda laughed. “If it were that simple, don’t you think he’d have done it by now? He’s finished with you, Stormwalker. The dragon fights for me now. He’ll do anything for me.”

Her arch tone made me know she wanted me to picture them in bed together. I remembered the scorn in Mick’s voice, when he’d said
I don’t have sex with humans.
He’d meant it, but I couldn’t know what Vonda had compelled Mick to do since I’d last seen him. I swallowed, trying very hard not to imagine them together. I wondered how Ted felt about it.

I glanced back at Ted in time to see him try to sidle out of the room. I started to shout to Gabrielle to stop him, but Nash walked in at the moment and pointed his ninemillimeter at Ted’s head.

“Stay where you are.”

“Are you all right, Janet?” Cassandra asked as the heavy door swung shut behind her. I sensed the crackle of magic in her, the makings of her binding spell.

“Your pet witch,” Vonda said. She rose from the bed, went to the wet bar, and started clinking ice from a bucket into a glass. One glass. She wasn’t offering. “And the very interesting Nash Jones.” Her gaze lingered on Nash, the muddy gray of her aura brightening as she studied him. “A magic void. I’ve heard of a spell that can make a void, but not inside a person. No wonder Gabrielle wants you.”

I saw Nash’s interest in her comment about a spell, but he was too professional to be distracted.

I pretended to ignore Vonda, as though I’d sized her up and dismissed her. She was a threat, and a big one, but I had to solve the problem of Mick before facing her. After that, the gloves would be off.

“I’m fine,” I answered Cassandra. “Keep Gabrielle away from Vonda.”

“Screw that,” Gabrielle snarled. “This bitch messed with me. She
used
me.”

She had. Vonda must have been delighted when Gabrielle asked for her help in snaring Nash. Gabrielle, in her arrogant naïveté, had handed Vonda, the magic well, a dragon and a Stormwalker, and now Nash as well.

I didn’t have time right now to sort out Gabrielle’s problems. I shut out the rest of the room, quietly reached for the storm outside and the Beneath magic within me, and walked toward Mick.

He hadn’t moved, not to stop Nash or Cassandra, or even to glance at Vonda pouring a drink for herself. Mick watched me as I closed the space between us, and I watched Mick.

His eyes were mostly white, his pupils black pinpricks, the beautiful blue of his human eyes gone. I hated that, but I forced myself to focus. Nothing in this room mattered but getting Mick free. Nothing.

“Mick,” I said. “Your name.”

He still wouldn’t answer, didn’t speak a word. I took another step, now within arm’s length of him, my magic ready.

Mick was ready too. He reached out, not with his fire, but with his bare hands. As soon as I was close enough, he grabbed me around the waist, whirled with me, and threw me at the window.

The windows didn’t open in this fairly new hotel. Buildings with sealed windows creeped me out—why would you want to entomb yourself in glass and concrete?

But as Mick tossed me at the window, it suddenly wasn’t there. A rectangle of flame melted it, and I flew right through the hot glass and out into the swirling snow, seven stories from the ground.

Twenty-four

First came screaming. Second came me catching the storm and whirling it around my body so fast that the air currents cushioned my fall.

“Cushioned” is a relative term. I bounced off the roof of a car in the dark parking lot, setting off its alarm, rolled down the hood, and landed, hard, on my feet. I staggered, trying to get my balance. The wind had picked up, and the snowstorm raged around me, snow clinging to my clothes. I must have looked like a drunken abominable snowman.

I made it to the edge of the parking lot and stumbled into the desert. Dizzy and scared, I heaved my guts out.

When I straightened up again, trying not to sob, it was to see Mick standing five feet away from me. He was alone, no Vonda or Gabrielle behind him. Snow swirled around him, whitening his dark hair, but he didn’t seem to notice the cold.

“We can’t do this here,” I said. “Too many people. Why can’t you just tell me your name?”

No answer. Mick walked toward me, and I backed away, straight back into the parking lot. I didn’t want to fight him here, not near all these people, with more zooming by on the highway. I could lead him out into the desert, but this wasn’t my terrain. But if I could lead him to a place of my choosing . . .

I turned and sprinted across the lot. Five motorcycles had been parked close together, a group inside either gambling or staying the night. It was easy to freeze off the lock of the first one I came to, and start it up, not with magic, but with know-how. I drove it out of the lot without looking back.

I saw the flaw in my plan as I moved onto the highway. Mick could simply return to Vonda and obliterate my friends.

But he didn’t. Maybe he saw the wisdom of the two of us facing off for once and for all, or maybe Vonda had ordered him to drag me back to her.

Either way, Mick started up his own bike and chased me up the highway, toward the interstate.

When I reached the 40, I headed west, to home and the territory I knew. I leaned forward, not worrying about speeding, and opened up the bike. It was a good Harley, and someone had tuned it into a fine machine. The CCs throbbed under me, and we went like a dream, no hard shaking as sometimes had happened with my own bike.

The headlight cut through the snow, which turned to sleet, then back to snow again as we went. This was a big storm, I could feel it, swallowing the sky for miles.

Mick pulled alongside me, and we rode neck and neck. He wasn’t chasing me but making sure I didn’t get out of his sight. Side by side we rode at ninety miles an hour down into the canyons, the lights of Gallup flying by on our left, and then across the state line.

I would take him up to Canyon de Chelly. It was in the middle of the Dinetah, the Navajo Nation, my land, my home. The canyon was a mystical place, an ancient place, and my Stormwalker powers would be strongest there.

But when the exit to the north 171 came up, Mick ran his bike up on my right side, nearly swerving into me, so I had to dive into the left lane. I missed the exit, and the two of us sped around a slow-moving semi, ending up side by side again down the middle of the road.

Mick stuck to my right. He didn’t want me pulling off, doubling back. He stayed there for about fifty more miles, until he zoomed to my left again, forcing me down the ramp to Holbrook.

This highway led south, right through town. Again, I couldn’t stop and risk people, so I rode through until we made the other side. The best place to go from there was my hotel, but Mick again had a different idea. I was trying to lead him; he was herding me.

Mick forced me onto the road I’d been riding when the sinkhole happened, and he stuck right by me as we flew down the highway. Our speed reached one that would make Nash write us fourteen tickets, but Nash was back in New Mexico, and his deputies obviously had better things to do than man the speed trap on a snowy night.

Therefore, Lopez and the other deputies weren’t there to see Mick and me zoom by, swing around the black barrier now heaped with snow, and race toward the gaping hole at breakneck speed.

Mick was going to run me into the sinkhole. Well, screw that. I and a bike had already fallen down there once. I wasn’t about to do it again.

Right before we reached the hole, I yanked my handlebars sideways and ditched the bike in, well, the ditch. The bike slid out from under me, and I rolled through soft snow and muddy grass to come to a halt in icy water.

Mick didn’t ditch his motorcycle. He ran it right at me.

I scrambled to my feet and ran like hell on feet numb with snow and water. Mick came on. I noticed distractedly that the sinkhole had gotten bigger. Lopez’s geology professor had warned us that the hole might widen, as the ceilings of the caverns below weakened further. Mick was chasing me right toward the edge.

Between falling from a window and the first incident of the sinkhole, I was developing a healthy fear of heights—or rather, of falling from heights. But I couldn’t afford to let Mick be in too much control. If he chased me until I fell into the hole, I’d be flailing around trying to save myself and possibly die. I needed to gain some advantage here, much as it terrified me.

When Mick turned his motorcycle to take another run at me, I took a deep breath, whirled wind and snow around me like heavy blanket, and jumped straight into the sinkhole.

I didn’t scream this time but curled my arms around my body and tucked my face to my chest. The storm cushioned my descent a little, but still I landed hard on the rocks that had snagged me and Nash the first time.

The storm swirled away from me, shooting upward to join the winds above. Everything went quiet.

And dark. I struggled for breath, noting how the air, though cold, was more bearable down here than on the surface. I had my leather jacket against the elements and the rocks, but I groaned as I sat up and brushed dust from my hair.

I didn’t want to risk a light spell. I couldn’t do light spells with storm magic, and using Beneath magic would alert the
karmii.
I stilled my labored breathing, hoping that, if I used no magic at all, the
karmii
would leave me alone.

But I was too agitated, and Beneath magic swam through my body, filling it like the magic that filled Vonda. Both of my magics were whirling inside me as much as the snow and ice whirled in the blizzard above.

Mick hadn’t followed me down, and I no longer heard the throb of his motorcycle. He hadn’t even glanced in to see whether his prey lived or died. Maybe he figured that I couldn’t get out, that the
karmii
would finish me. Or that I’d be trapped here while he went to get Vonda.

The sinkhole began to glow. Dread clogged my throat as drawings of wiry hands appeared on the rocks in front of me, then behind me, then above, then below. The breath went out of me at the same time I felt a hot draft over my shoulder from the beating of massive wings.

Mick floated by, above me in the night. I forced myself to my feet and hunkered as close to the rock wall as I could, nearly whimpering when the
karmii
reached out to me. Mick turned and dove at the hole, his fire burning a streak through the dark.

Here it was then. Mick and me. Facing each other, alone.

Me in a hole with the
karmii
dancing around me, Mick above, trying to burn me alive. The hole was plenty big enough now for Mick to dive into it, but he kept flying, sending his flame roaring down to roast me.

There was nothing to save me from him. Mick, a dragon, was able to take my Stormwalker magic and resist it. I pressed my hands together, drew them to my chest, and closed my eyes.

I saw inside me what I’d seen when I’d saved Mick last fall, my Stormwalker magic and my Beneath magic twining around each other like black and white, yin and yang. Whirling together into one solid foundation.

When I opened my eyes again, my entire body sparkled. Earth magic and Beneath magic, a powerful combination. As far as I knew, I was the only being in the world who had it. I thought Vonda wanted it, thought that her desire for my magic would keep me alive. But Mick didn’t seem to care about keeping me alive. He was going for the kill.

“Ice,” I whispered, and the ice in the storm bent to my will.

It flowed through my fingers, freezing my body. Ice crackled through my hair and my skin and shot upward from my hands to meet Mick’s arrow of flame.

Fire and ice met with an explosion that rocked the sinkhole. The impact tried to lift me off my feet, but I held on to the tight braid of both my magics and stayed put, my hands together. Mick screamed and beat the air before he swooped down for another pass.

I laughed up at him. “Come on! Let’s see what we can do!”

We were going to kill each other. Him by burying me in fire, me by burying him in snow. Legends would be sung about this battle between the dragon and the Stormwalker, the flame and the ice.

Mick laid down fire to incinerate the hole. Rocks crackled and broke, tree roots burst into flame, and the fire sucked oxygen from the air. I would have burned alive but for the bubble of ice I formed around me to deflect the fire. Mick blasted me again and again, trying to wear me down, but I held on, my sweat forming into instant ice on my skin.

My next stream of ice hit Mick’s flame, and he had to fight his way skyward, roaring with rage. Mick wheeled back, sucked in a breath, and blasted me with fire.

The heat of the volcano that had created him flowed down at me like molten lava. My defensive shield of ice was enough to deflect it, but the rocks around me couldn’t hold. They crumbled and melted, sandstone not strong enough to withstand the heat.

Rocks jerked out from under me, and I fell. And fell and fell. This rockslide, if anything, was bigger than the first that had opened the sinkhole. Tons of rocks cascaded around me, battering me, smothering me. My magic snapped and broke, and so did one of my ribs. The pain made me sick, but I didn’t have time for that as I rolled and tumbled down the shaft.

I hit hard at the bottom, and I had enough presence of mind to scramble out of the way of the rocks coming down on top of me. I crawled through sharp gravel toward a light, moving mindlessly, and wriggled through a small hole as rocks filled the shaft behind me.

The impact of the last rocks propelled me forward, and I landed on my stomach, my broken ribs aching. There was light in here, and I saw why when I managed to roll over.

I was in the cave in which we’d found Jamison. Petroglyphs had been chipped into the reddish walls in thick clusters, stars and comets and constellations. I could see them because of the
karmii
, thousands of them, skeletal hands flowing down the walls and across the rock floor in a race toward me.

“No,” I whispered. I reached for the storm, managing to let my body vibrate with it. The
karmii
sensed my earth magic and paused, as though debating.

I rolled over, groaning, and got to my knees. Cradling my arm across my stomach, I climbed painfully to my feet. The
karmii
gave me a clear circle about two feet in diameter, but they waited, watching. When the storm died, I would too.

The circle of
karmii
followed me as I hobbled through the cave, searching for the rockslide that led up to the tunnel Nash had brought me through. Outside, a dragon waited to roast me alive. Down here, petroglyphs waited to freeze me to death.

Janet.

“Coyote!” I screamed.

Where was he? I scanned the cave but saw nothing, no tall naked man, no large coyote. Damn him. I swore I was taking a rolled-up newspaper to his nose when I faced him again.

Janet.

“What? I’m right here! Where are you?”

Here.

I raised my head to look in the direction of the voice and found him. Sort of. Among the dense whorls of petroglyphs on the ceiling, someone had drawn the face of a coyote.

“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Get down here. Blast these things away from me. Help me get out of here. Help me fight Mick.”

I’m not really with you, Janet. I’m projecting. I’m thousands of miles and an age away.

“An age? What’s that supposed to mean?”

It means I can guide you, but you must do this yourself.

“Oh, of course.” I started crying as I spoke, tears smearing on my cheeks, and my rib cage
hurt
. “Do you see anyone else in this cave to help me? No. It’s just me, with broken ribs, surrounded by drawings who think I’m some kind of walking evil lodestone. Mick is trying to kill me, and my friends are trying to keep my sister from killing the witch who enslaved him—so Mick can stay alive to kill me. Now my strongest ally is saying he’s nothing more than a chippedout drawing on a wall?”

Only you can save Mick, Janet. You must use his true name.

“I know that! What is it?”

As I told you, dragons can hide such things even from the gods, especially from gods that are not theirs.

I kicked the floor, spattering gravel over the
karmii
who didn’t move or even notice. “Then what good are you?”

You know Mick’s true name.

“No, I
don’t
! That’s why I wanted you to find it, that’s why Colby took me to Mick’s lair. The name is not at his lair, it’s not in the ring, it wasn’t in the wards at the hotel. It’s not even in his toothbrush. Trust me, I checked!”

He tells it to you when he makes love to you.

“That’s not what Mick says when we make love.” Various dirty suggestions and graphic descriptions of how I made him feel, yes; names that sounded like strings of music, no.

I know what he says. That is different from what he tells you.

“Oh, very clear, thank you. And why haven’t you bothered to tell me this before? I might have had time to figure it out.”

I didn’t know. It is one thing I learned on my travels through the earth and time.

“Where the hell are you? What did my grandmother send you to do? Why aren’t you helping me instead?”