Stormwalker (12 page)

I stepped to Mick’s side and looked down the hill. The desert floor at our feet, which a few minutes ago had been so silent and peaceful under the stars, seemed to move. Things were crawling out of the wash we’d crossed and making for the slope on which we stood. The little animals we’d disturbed had fled in absolute terror.

“I think we’re on a hive,” Mick said. He glanced once at me, and in the darkness, his eyes looked solid black all the way across.

“A hive?” Fremont gave me a wild look. “What does that mean?”

Mick answered, his voice quiet. “It means, we are so fucked.”

“How many?” I asked Mick in a low voice.

“A couple dozen I think.” He turned to look at me, and there was no doubt this time. The whites of his eyes were gone, as were the blues of his irises. I found myself staring into voids of black. “I’m going to cut a path for you,” he said. “Take Fremont and get back to the hotel. Flood the place with light, and stay there.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll fight them. You can’t.”

“A couple dozen? By yourself? Are you crazy?”

He glanced at the horizon, and I felt his magic building like I’d never felt it before. “And how are you going to help me?”

I knew Mick was powerful. I
knew
that. I’d seen him in action. But how could he stand against two dozen skinwalkers, not to mention who controlled them?

I was angry at him for keeping secrets from me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see him go down under a horde of crazed demons in animal skins. Then again, without a storm, I didn’t know what I could do to help.

Damn Fremont and damn the skinwalker that had wrecked his truck and killed Charlie. Damn my mother for sending the things after me; damn me for coming back to Magellan at all. I could be holed up with Mick somewhere cozy, my blind trust in him undamaged, avoiding who I was with the precision of long practice. But no, I’d decided to confront my demons and find out more about myself. Illusions were being stripped from me one by one, the fog I’d lived in all my life burning away. And I found I hated the light.

Mick handed me his flashlight and stripped off his T-shirt. Starlight gleamed on his tight body, his black tattoos stark on his skin. He lifted his hands, giving me a view of his back muscles rippling to his low waistband. The tattoo around his hips took on a red outline, as though fire burned him from within.

Mick shouted something—a word or words, or just guttural sounds, I couldn’t tell. The sky lit up like a torch. Under the sheet of fire, I saw the skinwalkers, at least twenty of them, seven feet tall with blazing eyes and white flesh. A few of them had shifted to animal form—a mountain lion, a coyote, a bear. The animals looked wrong, more like zombified creatures than true shifters. The stench that rolled off them made my eyes water.

Fremont gaped in terror. I think his revenge fantasy consisted of him whacking a rather spindly skinwalker on the head and having said skinwalker fall dead at his feet. The reality put panic on his face.

Mick’s magical fire stymied the skinwalkers a little, but not as much as I’d hoped. The skinwalkers were on their own territory and they’d banded together—unusually—and they came on.

Mick drew the fire along the skinwalkers’ left flank, and as one they moved away from the light, clearing a sort of path toward the hotel. “Go!” Mick shouted at me. “Now!”

I seized Fremont and dragged him down the rocky slope, leaving the man I loved to stand alone against a mess of demons. I wanted to cry and scream and rage, but I kept it together and ran with Fremont toward relative safety, the twin flashlights I held cutting a swath through the blackness.

Hiking without a track was dangerous, and the terror of leaving Mick behind clawed at me. I had the benefit of knowing the skinwalkers
probably
wouldn’t kill me, because my mother wanted me, but they’d have no compunction about killing Mick.

Fremont screamed as our lights gleamed on the faceted reflection of a big cat’s eyes. A mountain lion bounded toward us, running flat out. I pulled Fremont behind a low boulder, which didn’t hide us, but it might make the cat break its stride before it ran into us.

The mountain lion never stopped. It leapt over us, boulder and all, giving me a glimpse of the thick fur of its belly. I smelled no skinwalker stench, only pure night air. The cat’s spirit shimmered with a faint silver light.

Fremont raised his pipe, but I caught his arm. “It’s not one of them.”
It’s Jamison Kee,
I wanted to say, but I wasn’t sure how happy Jamison would be if I told the font of Magellan gossip that he was a Changer. Jamison landed and ran on, the air of his wake brushing my skin.

Another animal hurtled toward us out of the darkness, this one a coyote, a big one, growling. A blue light surrounded it, and it ran on rapid feet.

“About time you showed up,” I said as it streamed past. The only answer I got was a tail flicking upward, looking for all the world like he’d flipped me off.

“Are they on our side?” Fremont asked shakily.

“The mountain lion is. The coyote is on his own side. But they’ll help Mick.”

“Janet, I’m sorry. I made it all worse, didn’t I?”

“Mick is a big boy, and he has help now.” I laid Mick’s flashlight, still lit, on top of the boulder and took Fremont’s arm. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

I rummaged in the drawer of my nightstand until my fingers closed on the smooth round ball that was the last of Mick’s spells. I stuffed that into my pocket, took up the metal pipe Fremont had laid down, and went outside, retracing the path toward the boulder on which I’d placed Mick’s flashlight. Fire raged in the darkness, flames licking the night.

I hurried through the wash, stumbling on loose rocks. Swearing under my breath, I trudged out the other side and scrambled on toward the light I’d left to guide me.

Janet.

The word whispered on the breeze, and I froze. Oh, damn her.

I stood on the top of a hill, looking down the slope. At the bottom was another wash, a black streak in the middle of shadows. A pale light slid against the ground, marking for me and any magical person who might see it, a vortex.

They’re closed,
I reminded myself.
Closed for eternity.
“This is as far as I’m coming.”

Be with me,
she whispered
.

My skin prickled. For all my bravado, I was terrified, and I bet she knew it. I swore I could feel her gloat.

“If you sent the skinwalkers to scare away my friends, you don’t know my friends,” I said clearly.

They are not your friends. They want to destroy you.

“Why should they?”

Because you are powerful, more powerful than they will ever be. They fear you.

“I don’t think so.”

Low laughter.
They pretend. They know you are the key.

I had a sudden vision of myself standing at the bottom of this hill, lightning streaming from my hands. It filled the crack of the wash and the earth buckled, heaving upward, opening . . .

“No!” I shouted. “Never.”

When the time is right, you will open the door.

“Stay away from me!” I screamed.

The wind picked up, but it was natural wind, cold air pushing from the desert floor and meeting pressure from the mountains. I stood there for a long time, starlight and the half moon playing on the ground, leaves of bushes outlined in black.

I stood still until I heard an owl swoop past me and the squeak of some hapless creature as it struck. I said a prayer for the mouse, grabbed Mick’s flashlight from the boulder where I’d left it, and made for the flames at the top of the ridge. Cold penetrated my bones, and I felt exhausted. I wanted a cup of hot coffee, a shower, and a bed, no more skinwalkers, vortexes, or evil goddesses calling my name.

But I couldn’t leave Mick and the others to fight the skinwalkers alone. I hurried on, willing the distant storm to come in, but I knew it wouldn’t listen to me. Storms have minds of their own.

The glowing nimbus surrounding the coyote flared in the darkness. The skinwalkers retreated from him, but Jamison, the mountain lion, didn’t have that defense. Mick fought next to him, my boyfriend stark naked, fire streaking from his hands.

Coyote fought easily, but more demons kept coming at him, drawing his attention from the other two. Mick fried one, and Jamison tore out another’s throat. That creature should have died, but it reared up, Jamison’s jaws still closed on it. It shook Jamison like a cat shaking a mouse, until I feared the mountain lion’s head would snap. I hefted my piece of pipe and ran toward the skinwalker, beaning it on the back of the skull.

Mick turned. His eyes were no longer black but orange red, as though flames danced inside them. He conjured a fist-sized fireball and threw it at the skinwalker that had attacked Jamison. The skinwalker screamed as it burned alive, the stench gagging me.

Jamison and Mick immediately turned to deal with more. The damned things kept coming, as though the earth belched them out. If my mother wanted to eliminate the strongest help I’d have, she was doing a good job of it.

I reached for the lightning again, but still it eluded me. Ducking behind Mick for protection, I wormed my hand into my pocket, drew out the silver ball, and tossed it into the air.

“Burn!” I shouted.

The ball exploded into light. The flare of a thousand fires burned the sky, and by the incandescent glow, I saw at least a hundred skinwalkers in that little valley. They flinched and screamed, but they didn’t flee.

Coyote gave a howl of glee and launched himself into the middle of them. Jamison retreated, panting, his muzzle covered with blood. Mick walked forward, fire dancing in his hands, the dragon tattoos seeming to slither around his arms.

Mick threw fire right and left. The noise, the smell, the smoke made tears stream from my eyes. A skinwalker got behind Mick, ready to take him down. I lifted my trusty pipe and hit the thing behind the knees. I’d hoped to make it fall, but the skinwalker swung on me. I tried a round-house kick, but he caught my ankle and threw me onto my back. I rolled to my feet before he could jump on top of me, not wanting to be in a clinch with a skinwalker.

I ducked, came up under him, and smashed the pipe into what passed for his elbow. He howled and punched me. I felt my face open, blood drip down my skin. The skinwalker hit me again, and I landed on the ground again, my head banging into the dry earth. The skinwalker came at me, drawing back a thick-booted foot, preparing to kick the hell out of my ribs. I tried to roll away, but my bruised body moved slowly. His kick came down.

Before his foot reached me, the skinwalker exploded into fire. As I watched, wide-eyed, his body disintegrated, held firmly by two hands that glowed with flame. The skinwalker faded to a stream of ash, and then Mick was grinning at me through the falling powder.

“Sorry I took so long,” he said.

I hesitated to touch the hand he held out to me, the one that had been outlined in flames a second ago. Mick grabbed me and hauled me to my feet, his palm surprisingly cool.

Jamison had returned to human form, a tall, nude, well-muscled Navajo, breathing hard and wiping sweat and soot from his face. Coyote leapt over the smoking remains of the skinwalkers, changing to human form as he landed.

Jamison, more modest than the other two, morphed back into the broad-shouldered mountain lion as I neared them. Neither Mick nor Coyote seemed worried about their lack of clothing, standing casually naked in the middle of the desert night, the light from the spell gleaming on their sweaty skin.

“
Ya’at’eeh
, Janet,” Coyote said. “Nice light spell.”

“Mick gave it to me,” I answered, trying to catch my breath.

“Impressive.”

Mick shrugged modestly. “Light magic concentrated into a transportable object. Simple to make but takes several hours of intense focus. I’m surprised you kept them,” he said to me.

“Why wouldn’t I have?”

The look he gave me was warm, too warm. I had the feeling that if Coyote and Jamison hadn’t been there, Mick would have carried me off to a comfortable boulder and showed me how touched he was that I’d kept the spells.

“Good fight,” Coyote said. He cracked his knuckles and laughed.

Around us, little fires sparkled where the skinwalkers had burned, the smoke oily and disgusting. Too much for me. I hobbled a little way away and retched into the dirt.

Mick’s large hands came to rest on my shoulders. “You okay, sweetheart?”

“No. I am very certainly not okay.”

Mick turned me around to him, his skin smelling of sweat and smoke. I was suddenly angry with him, and Coyote, and even Jamison, for standing around complimenting one another and feeling good about the fight. “Damn it, this is dangerous. My mother seriously wants to kill you.”

“I know that, sweetheart. But I’m not leaving you to her mercy. I told you that.”

“How do you think I’d feel if you stayed to get killed for me?” I demanded. “Do you think I’d get a warm glow and sing ballads about how brave you were? No, I’d be sick with it. I’d rather know you were elsewhere. Safe.”

“Leaving you alone?”

“Coyote can protect me.”

Mick glanced at the god-man who gazed out over the dying fires, hands on hips. Jamison, still in his mountain lion form, stood at Coyote’s side.

“Coyote can’t be trusted,” Mick said. “He does what he wants, and if you had to die, he wouldn’t care.”

“Not really true,” Coyote remarked without turning around. “I’d care.”

“You’re powerful,” I said to Mick. “But not powerful enough.”

“She’s right, you know,” Coyote put in.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass,” Mick said. “And I don’t give a rat’s ass what you say, Janet. If you’re staying near the vortexes, I’m staying. Got that?”

I was too tired to argue anymore, at least not tonight. I flicked on my flashlight, my heart burning. “Tell Jamison to go home and be safe. I’m heading back to the hotel.”

I walked away, not waiting for Mick, not saying good-bye to the others.

As I reached the railroad bed, I heard sirens, Magellan’s two fire engines hurrying to discover what was burning out in the desert. What they’d make of the remains of the skinwalkers, or whether Coyote would make certain they found nothing, I didn’t know.

Mick caught up to me before I reached the hotel, dressed again, his T-shirt damp and dusty. He took my flashlight, threaded his fingers through mine, and led me inside.