“I know.” I nodded. “Believe me, when a storm first reached out to me, it scared the shit out of me. I thought I was
chindi
, a sorceress filled with evil. The sad thing is, I wasn’t far from wrong.”
“What am I, then?”
“We’re not sure. Coyote called you a null, a walking magic void. You’ve taken the brunt of some amazing power and never broken a sweat.”
“Did you know for sure that I could kill that Nightwalker thing?”
I hesitated but decided to be truthful. “I figured it was worth a shot.”
He shot me a scathing glance. “What the hell were you going to do if it didn’t work?”
“Shoot him, maybe. Run for help.”
“While I stayed behind and turned into a vampire?”
“Nightwalkers don’t turn their victims,” I said. “Usually. They drain them until they’re dead, or they can keep them alive if they want to. Some drink only a little from each victim and then make them forget in order to not leave a trail of bodies. Some even become civilized and learn to drink animal blood, live among humans almost normally, as long as they avoid direct sunlight. The crosses and garlic thing is all a myth, though. I once met a Nightwalker who was a monk. He probably still is one.”
“Damn it,” Nash said when I wound down. His hands were steadier now. I’d never seen anyone heal so fast from a Nightwalker attack.
“This one bit the wrong neck, tonight,” I said.
Nash banged his fists on the steering wheel. Not too hard—he wouldn’t want to damage his new truck. “My life made so much more sense before you came into it. What the hell did you do to me?”
“Sorry.” I really did feel sorry for him. Moving from Unbeliever to acceptance wasn’t easy. “But it didn’t really make sense, and you know it.”
Nash had been injured in the Iraq War, when a building he’d rushed into had collapsed on him and all his men. He’d been the only one who’d made it out. He’d suffered from flashbacks and had gone through all kinds of hell.
“So, educate me,” Nash said. “There are Stormwalkers like you; Nightwalkers, which are vampires; and then skinwalkers, those creatures I fought out at the vortexes. What are werewolves—dogwalkers?”
“You’re hilarious, Jones. There aren’t any werewolves, just Changers who can become wolves.”
We were approaching the dam, the road descending sharply around hairpin curves, traffic slowing to a crawl. “I liked being an Unbeliever,” Nash said. “I liked not knowing this shit was out there, on top of all the other shit. But I felt that thing die while he was drinking me, and I saw it disintegrate in a way no human could.”
I said nothing but stared up at the arch of the bridge that hung against the sky. Lit up by construction lights, the man-made steel was suspended between sheer cliffs hundreds of feet above the Colorado River.
“It isn’t the world I grew up in,” Nash said, but I knew he’d resigned himself.
“Yes, it is,” I said quietly. “But I know what you mean.” My magical cherry had been broken at age eleven. Nash was thirty-two, with a lifetime of stubborn disbelief to give up. I couldn’t decide which would be more difficult.
Nash fell silent again as he crossed the dam and navigated up the cliffs on the other side. Then we were heading down the highway to the glow of Las Vegas, Nash maintaining the speed limit and properly using his turn signals. The city spread out at the bottom of the valley, its line of bright colors tempting travelers to its pleasures. Nash stuck to the freeway, passing the tall hotels that reached out to us with promises of easy money, delectable food, and tantalizing glimpses of flesh of both genders.
On the other side of the city, the desert was stark and empty, lonely and cold. After more miles of endless night, Nash turned off on a narrow slice of road that headed due west.
We drove through a crease in the mountains into California and down into Death Valley itself, where moonlight danced on alkali beds that spread across the valley floor. Mountains soared around us, ten thousand feet high, cutting off moisture from this bleak gash of the land. At the same time it was cold, the hard cold of a high-desert night.
“So?” Nash asked me. “Where to?”
I looked out into all the darkness, feeling the spell pulling me northward. “Keep following this road. Pamela said she was on the northwest side of the valley.”
“Who the hell is Pamela?”
If Nash had let me indulge in conversation before, I could have told him the whole story. I gave him a truncated version now.
“We need to turn off somewhere around here,” I finished.
“This is the only paved road out this way, if you hadn’t noticed. I won’t try to navigate unfamiliar dirt ones at night.”
Which meant he didn’t want to get his precious new truck dirty or, gods help us, stuck. I agreed he was probably right to be cautious; in the dark it would be easy to run off a dirt road straight into desert. Desert floors aren’t necessarily hard or sandy—pockets exist under the crust that can swallow an unwary hiker’s foot, or bike, or half a car. Being stranded out here when the sun came up was not a good idea.
“We’ll go on foot, then,” I said.
Nash grunted but pulled the truck onto the road’s shoulder. “You don’t have a more specific direction than ‘somewhere around here?’ ”
“I’m lucky Pamela could tell me this much. There are probably spells all over the place to prevent people like me from finding Mick, compulsion or no compulsion. So no, I doubt she left me a detailed trail.”
Nash set the brake and turned off the ignition. He got out and rummaged in the back of the cab, then began to pile stuff on his seat.
My eyes widened at the cache: a thin thermal blanket, filled canteens plus a packet of water-purifying tablets, food rations, a smaller version of his car’s first aid kit, flashlights, extra batteries, waterproof matches and a couple candles, chem lights, sunscreen, a length of rope, crampons, a compass and an electronic GPS device, a pocketknife, socks and hiking boots, and a Windbreaker that would deflect the night’s cold as well as tomorrow’s sun. He dropped all this on his seat plus ammunition for his nine-millimeter. He retrieved both pistols from the glove compartment, adding the Nightwalker’s gun to the growing pile and holstering his own.
“Shit, Nash,” I said as he began stuffing all the accoutrements into a backpack. “Were you planning to invade a country?”
“It’s open desert, and you don’t know where we’re going or how long it will take. Were you going to come out here and look around without water or light?”
I hadn’t, but Nash could make an elite ops unit look underprepared. “I brought enough for you too,” he said. “Can we get a move on? Dawn’s at seven.”
It was already two. Five hours to find Mick before daylight, when the desert floor, even in September, would become brutally hot. I’d lived my entire life in and around deserts and knew that heatstroke was swift and deadly.
I stood on the gravel waiting while Nash locked all the doors and set up a warning triangle, so that anyone driving up this road would be sure to see his precious truck.
A wash ribboned up the side of the hill a few yards from the road, rocky and treacherous, but I knew I had to ascend it. There was no other trail.
“Up there?” Nash asked in a disbelieving voice when I pointed it out. He gave me an irritated look, but he started climbing. Taking a deep breath, I scrambled up after him.
The wash was full of gravel and difficult to navigate. I slipped and slid, bloodying my hands when I grabbed boulders to steady myself, keeping a sharp eye out for snakes.
Nash reached the top of the first ridge and waited while I clambered up the last few yards, the dry limbs of creosote scratching me. Nash was in damned good shape, barely breathing hard as he stood in shadow and surveyed the landscape. Silhouetted against the sky, he looked formidable, biceps bulging, his shoulder holster and gun emphasizing the fact that he was a walking danger zone.
The truck already looked small and faraway, the valley empty and wide in the darkness. Nash flicked on his flashlight, checked his GPS, and played the light around the ridge. The mountain rose in folds around us, the narrow ridgeline running a long way north into the hills.
We walked on, following the ridge until we found another wash that led up another fold of the mountain. Nash moved swiftly along the uneven ground, me lagging farther and farther behind. It was a good thing the night remained cloudless, brilliantly clear—washes like the one we traversed would explode with water after a rain, pouring whitewater and debris down the hill, sweeping us along like so much flotsam.
A rock clicked on rock somewhere below me, and I halted, tense. It might be lizard, I reasoned, slithering to a safer shelter, or a night bird looking for a meal. I didn’t sense anything down there, no auras of evil or even plain human. After a moment, I relaxed a little, and then I realized that Nash had vanished.
Shit
. I looked around wildly but saw no sign of him. “Nash,” I called in a whisper.
The small sound was loud in the stillness. I hurried forward, dislodging gravel in my haste, and finally, after a few yards of scrambling, I spotted him.
Wind and water had carved out a niche in the rock wall a little way up the trail, years of erosion forming a shelter. Nash had his back to the cliff, deep in shadow, his shirt a pale smudge in the darkness. As I drew closer, I saw starlight gleam softly on his drawn weapon.
“What is it?” I asked, keeping my voice soft.
Nash remained motionless.
I stepped closer before realizing my mistake. Nash was watching
me
approach, deadly purpose in his eyes. Whoever he thought was coming for him, he wasn’t seeing me.
“Nash, it’s Janet,” I said desperately, but my words were too late.
The last thing I saw was the butt of Nash’s pistol coming toward my head, and then the startled horror in his eyes when it connected with my skull.
Four
I resisted wakefulness, because waking meant pain. I didn’t want pain. The darkness was so much nicer.
I heard someone calling my name, and something cold touched my forehead.
“Janet, son of a bitch, wake up.” It was Nash’s voice, swift, worried, urgent.
“Are you going to hit me again?” I tried to ask. No actual words came out, only a groan.
“Open your eyes, damn you.”
I couldn’t. I tried to make my eyelids obey, but they remained heavy and sealed shut.
I felt a hand in my hair and Nash’s voice in my ear, both gentler than I’d thought possible. “Janet, I’m so, so sorry.”
I floated off again, dreaming that I was in a lovely, warm bed, snuggled up to Mick, who held me against his large, sexy body. We were naked, settling down into an afterglow of lovemaking as frenzied as only Mick could make it. What Nash was doing there, I didn’t know. Arresting us for having too much fun in bed? I was pretty sure that some of the things Mick liked to do were illegal in a few states.
“Janet, come on.” Tender no more, the flat of Nash’s palm connected with my cheek.
“Would you stop hitting me?” I growled and opened my eyes.
I lay flat on my back on hard-packed earth under a sky full of stars. Nash was silhouetted against the bright pattern of the stars until his flashlight played into my eyes. The warm dream of me in Mick’s arms dissolved to mist, and a sudden headache stabbed my temples.
“Ow.”
“You need to sit up. Slowly.”
I felt like something was trying to bang my head into a different shape from the inside, but Nash’s touch was almost tender as he helped me to sit. If he was like this as a lover, no wonder Maya had fallen for him.
“Why did you hit me?” I put my hand to my head and flinched at the pain. My fingers came away wet with blood.
Nash looked ashamed, an expression I’d never seen on him before. “I didn’t mean to. I thought you were . . . No, I don’t know what I thought.”
“You were having a flashback.” I’d understood that the second before he’d brained me. I should have hung back and talked to him before I approached. I was lucky he’d decided to disable his enemy without making noise, or I’d be dead right now, a bullet through my head. Nash’s aim was accurate and sure.
“Yes,” he answered, almost in a whisper.
I was sitting up now, my throbbing head making me dizzy and nauseated. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have startled you.”
“Don’t take the blame on yourself, Janet. I’m the one who hit you.”
“You shouldn’t take the blame, either.” I tried a smile. “It’s not your fault that you’re crazy.”
He didn’t look amused. “I haven’t had a flashback in over a year. I thought I was finished with them.”
“Maybe it’s something you never get over.”
Nash shook his head. “When Maya told me to get help, I wouldn’t listen to her. I thought I was strong enough to handle it. But she was right.”
“You don’t want to be weak. I get that.”