From Jennifer Ashley, With Love

by Jennifer Ashley

  I turned from the window. “All right,” I said to Emmett, raising my hands in surrender. “I’ll get you the pot. But not here. I’ll have it taken to Chaco Canyon.”

  Emmett’s well-groomed brows shot upward. “In the middle of the desert in the dark? I’ll get my shoes dirty.”

  “Janet,” my grandmother said in the Diné language. “Chaco is heavy with old magic. No telling what will happen when you let loose something like him in it, let alone that vessel.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it’s the only place I can think of that can take the kind of forces he’ll bring down on us.”

  “You know I speak at least a hundred and fifty languages,” Emmett interrupted in Diné. “Including many Native American ones. But I agree with your assessment. Chaco has taken great influxes of magic for millennia. A little tiff between mages won’t hurt it. But I’ll still get my shoes dirty.”

  “You can buy new ones,” I said. “Grandmother, I need to use your phone.”

  * * *

  “A magic showdown,” Gabrielle said when I finished calling Nash. “This is going to be fun.”

  I ignored her for the moment to call Mick. Elena answered Mick’s phone, explaining that Mick was a dragon at the moment. But she promised to give him the message.

  “I have a message for you,” Elena said before I could hang up. “Cassandra called and said that a person named Rory is trying to find you. He says to tell you he has the package you ordered.”

  “Oh. Great. Thanks.”

  “What package, Janet?” Elena asked in suspicion.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I lied. “Thanks.”

  I hung up and turned my back on the avidly listening crowd in the living room to punch in Rory’s phone number. “You got him?” I asked when he answered.

  “Of course I have him,” Rory the slayer said. “Why else would I call? You still want him alive?”

  The question was delivered in disbelieving tones. “Yes,” I said. “Don’t kill him. Stash him somewhere safe. Sheriff Jones will want to talk to him. And be careful. He’s already murdered another slayer.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Rory said testily. “It’s going to cost you extra.”

  He hung up.

  I replaced the phone on its hook and turned around to find the eyes of everyone in the house on me. Those of my family were disapproving or concerned, Gabrielle curious, Emmett amused.

  “You done?” Gabrielle asked. “Can we go already?”

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” I said firmly. “You’re staying here with Grandmother and Dad in case anyone tries to double back here and cause more trouble.”

  “No way, Janet. I’m coming with you. I want to see this.”

  “And me.” My grandmother gave me her mulish look. “Don’t bother to argue. Start up your father’s truck, and let’s go.”

  “I don’t want Janet leaving.”

  The quiet words came from my father. All of us, including Emmett, turned to him in surprise.

  Dad had risen from the sofa, Gina with him. Now Dad let go of Gina’s hand and moved to stand in front of me.

  My father, Pete Begay, was an inch or so taller than me. In his early fifties, his hair was still midnight black, and his face bore few lines. He carried himself with a straight posture, without shame, but he kept himself to himself.

  I’d spent many days and nights in companionable silence with this man while we’d driven out under the stars, or searched for stray sheep, or repaired his truck. I’d always felt a silent but strong bond between us, no words necessary.

  Dad rarely said out loud what he truly thought. He’d always lived in a houseful of women with strong opinions—first Grandmother and his sisters, then Grandmother and me, and now Grandmother and Gabrielle. No one but me had ever asked for his thoughts or advice, so my father had stopped bothering to give either one.

  Now he faced me, his mouth set in a stubborn line.

  “Dad,” I said softly. “I have to.”

  “No, you do not.” His frown deepened until furrows appeared on either side of his mouth. “Mick can take care of this for you. I am tired of wondering when someone will come and tell me you are dead.”

  I glanced at Gina, but she’d backed away from the conversation, remaining on the other side of the small room.

  My heart ached. I knew how Dad felt, because I equally feared such a phone call about him. I lived in terror I’d receive a call like the one today, informing me that my family—especially my dad—was in danger because of me. Or one that told me someone had figured out how to kill Mick. Even dragons aren’t indestructible, and now that he’d mentioned dragonslayers, I had that to worry about too.

  But I couldn’t send Mick out there alone to face Emmett and Pericles, and who knew who else, even with Nash and Elena to back him up.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Mick is strong, but his magic is different from mine. He’ll need me for this.”

  “Your grandmother has told me what the pot does. It fills you up with power, but when it is drained, it will try to take yours to build up its own.”

  “Really?” I thought about how the splinters of pottery had detached themselves from the pot and flown at Nash at first. Jamison had said the same thing happened to him, except the shards had cut Jamison’s flesh while the pot lent him power. Maybe the fragments dragged in power the same way, then poured themselves back into the pot.

  “So the legend goes,” Emmett said. “But a very strong mage such as myself can resist the drain.”

  “Huh,” Grandmother said. “You think so? Janet, you never told me he was this arrogant.”

  My father said nothing, his focus on me.

  I looked at the man who’d been my anchor, the only person in my life who’d loved me in spite of what what and who I was. He’d loved my mother, who’d lured him into an affair only so she could produce me. Pete Begay, when he found himself saddled with me, had decided to take care of me, where a lesser man might have dumped me onto the mercy of the world.

  I owed Dad my life, my gratitude, my respect, my love. Which he had. All of it.

  “I have to,” I whispered.

  Something had taken me to Chaco Canyon four mornings ago—it seemed a lifetime ago now. Had it been the vessel? Or the place itself? I had to know.

  “I have to,” I repeated, my voice steadier.

  My father was never one to show his anger. No matter how much trouble I’d gotten myself into as a child, he’d never raised his voice at me.

  He was good, however, at expressing disappointment. He’d inherited that from my grandmother.

  He stared straight at me now, his eyes showing a deep sadness that cut me. He wasn’t hurting me on purpose, because he didn’t believe in making people feel bad, but I knew his sadness was real.

  My father walked past me and to the back window, where he stood looking out at the desert beyond. His shoulders went up the slightest bit as he took a long breath, then down as he let it out.

  Gina said nothing to me. She sat again on the sofa and watched us with her dark-eyed placidity.

  “Are you finished?” Emmett asked.

  “Meet us there,” I said to Emmett. “I’ll have the vessel.”

  “No,” Emmett said, his lips curving into a humorless smile. “I don’t trust you, Stormwalker. I want to be next to you every step of the way, even if I have to ride in a pickup truck.”

  * * *

  I drove. I didn’t trust Gabrielle behind the wheel of anything, and I wasn’t about to let Emmett drive my dad’s pickup, so I slid into the driver’s seat and started the truck. Emmett squeezed into the cab with me, Grandmother between us, and Gabrielle climbed into the pickup’s bed. Gabrielle waved to everyone we passed on our way out of town, making no secret about us leaving.

  I continued north on the 191, almost to the Utah border, then took the 160 east to Farmington, heading south again through New Mexico to the turnoff to Chaco Canyon. The journey took hours, and it was solidly dark whe
n we reached the narrow road to the ruins.

  The truck bumped and jounced down the winding road, the sky black with bulges of clouds on the horizon and tatters of clouds overhead. Through gaps in the thinner clouds, stars clustered in a thick smudge.

  I had never feared the night, a time of intense beauty. What I feared was the layers of magic and old auras at the end of this road, and who or what we’d find waiting for us.

  I drove past the entrance to the visitor’s center, now closed, and around on maintenance roads past the ruins. My dad’s sturdy truck, used to washed-out back roads, soldiered on.

  Something huge rose in the headlights and slammed into the front of the truck. Gabrielle screamed, and I hit the brakes.

  Grandmother and Emmett did little more than inhale sharply. Emmett opened the passenger door, balanced himself on the doorstep and pulled himself up to look over the top of the truck. Wouldn’t want to get his precious shoes dirty getting out to see what was wrong.

  “It’s nothing,” he said after a moment. “Just a dead coyote.”

  A dead coyote.

  I set the parking brake, scrambled out, and ran to the front of the truck. Lying in the dirt, illuminated by our headlights, was a large coyote, bloody and definitely dead. Its head was half cut off, and entrails snaked out of its belly.

  I fell to my knees beside it. The corpse stank, as though it had been out here a day at least. This animal hadn’t run in front of our truck—someone had hurled him there.

  “Coyote?” While the beast was covered in blood, it was giant for its species, and I was pretty sure the face, still intact, was Coyote’s.

  “This isn’t time for your weird games,” I shouted at him. “Come back to life already. I need you!”

  Gabrielle stopped at my side, her motorcycle boots a match for my own. “You all right, sis? It’s dead.”

  “He’s Coyote.” I shook the body. “Come on. Wake up.”

  The beast shimmered. Gabrielle drew back, but I didn’t take my hand from his bloody body.

  When mist cleared, Coyote the man lay on the ground. A deep gash cut through his neck, now coated with dried blood, and his belly lay open and pathetically exposed.

  “Stop this,” I babbled. “I need you.”

  Coyote opened his eyes. As when I’d found him dying behind the railroad bed, his dark irises were filmed over, and I knew he couldn’t see me. “Bear,” he said.

  “I know. You explained about your bizarre ritual. But I need you. I have the pot. Or will have.”

  “You must destroy . . .”

  “I know that. But how do I destroy it? Tell me.”

  “Bear . . .”

  “She knows?” Tears spilled down my cheeks. “Coyote, stop this, and get up.”

  Gabrielle bent to me, her hands on her knees. “Give him a break, Janet. He’s dying.”

  “No, he isn’t.” I shook Coyote’s shoulder. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Bear.” He covered my hand with his. His strength, even in this state, nearly crushed my fingers. “Love you, girl,” he said, and he called me by my spirit name—the name known to no one but my father and me. Gabrielle didn’t hear it, because Coyote whispered it straight into my mind.

  The word gave me a burst of strength. Coyote’s form shimmered again, then the hand holding mine relaxed, and Coyote vanished.

  I shuddered as I rose to my feet. Gabrielle remained staring down at the spot where Coyote had lain. “Well, that was weird.”

  I turned away in silence and got back into the truck. Gabrielle climbed into the bed again, and I drove on.

  “He’s dead then,” Emmett said.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Shut up.” I took the truck down a slippery track and stopped at the bottom.

  The moon thrust itself out from behind the clouds and bathed the valley in subtle light. The rocky outcrops to either side of us became stark silhouettes.

  One of the roads to nowhere, built for the gods, seemed to stretch toward the pile of clouds on the horizon. Lightning licked the clouds, flashing them purple and gold before the world faded again to black.

  A figure stood at the foot of the road just inside the circle of my headlights, like a tall, upright monolith in open ground. At first I thought a bear stood there, a giant grizzly up on its hind legs.

  As I got out of the truck, I saw that it was Bear. She was in human form, with a bearskin wrapped around her body, the dead bear’s face forever fixed in a carnivorous snarl. Under the skin she wore flowing skirts like my grandmother’s and her usual silver and turquoise jewelry. She’d tied three hawk’s feathers in her black hair.

  Her bangles, rings, and necklace caught the moonlight as she raised her hands, throwing the reflection at us in wide bands. The stone knife she’d used to slay Coyote hung on her belt, the aura of it thick and black against her otherwise clean silver.

  “What the hell?” Gabrielle had stopped by my side.

  Emmett, who’d gotten out of the truck in spite of the dirt, adjusted his glasses. “Bear goddess. Interesting.”

  Grandmother was walking toward Bear, her stick tapping the earth. She stopped about ten feet in front of Bear who watched us, her dark eyes quiet. “Did you know we were coming?”

  Bear said nothing. I’d never seen her like this, not in her goddess persona. She’d always appeared to me as the large, rather placid Indian woman in her old-fashioned dress and jewelry, ready with her gentle strength and good advice—her hunting of Coyote with the knife notwithstanding.

  Now she radiated power, the aura of her stronger even then the aura of Chaco itself. I felt her strength and her compassion, but also a power beyond measure, plus the crushing knowledge all deities had that they were far stronger than any creature on the earth.

  She, like Coyote, had lived in the worlds before this one, the Beneath worlds, out of which the first men and women had climbed. She’d been one of the gods who’d sealed the Beneath worlds behind them, trapping the more evil gods and goddesses—my mother being one of them—inside.

  But though Coyote and Bear and others had thus protected the world from the evils of Beneath, that didn’t mean the gods who’d stayed in this world were wholly benevolent. They had their good sides and their frightening sides.

  I was starting to get frightened.

  Bear watched me as I stopped next to Grandmother, both of us sensing we shouldn’t move closer.

  “Stormwalker,” Bear said. Her rich contralto rolled across the valley. “I’ve come for my vessel. Bring it to me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Your vessel?” I asked in surprise, though Grandmother didn’t look astonished in the least.

  “I created it,” Bear said, her voice filling the spaces around us. “I’ve come to take it back.”

  “And do what with it, exactly?” I asked. “Destroy it?”

  “No.”

  Emmett and Gabrielle came up beside us—Emmett must think hearing this worth the dust on shoe leather. “A vessel fashioned by a Native American bear goddess?” he mused. “My price just went up.”

  “Price?” Grandmother scowled at him. “I thought you wanted it for yourself.”

  “I was speaking figuratively. Let me put it this way—the price for me helping you keep it away from her.”

  “You can’t let her have it, Janet,” Grandmother said, ignoring Emmett.

  “Why not? I certainly don’t want Emmett or the dragons getting their hands on it.”

  “Gods can’t be trusted,” Grandmother said firmly. “Even friendly ones. What she thinks is right to do with it might destroy half this world. She’s originally from Beneath, remember? She doesn’t have good, solid earth magic to ground her.”

  “Hey, I’m from Beneath,” Gabrielle said hotly.

  “Exactly my point.”

  I took a step forward, trying to shut out the distractions. “What do you want the pot for?” I asked Bear.

  She fixed a gaze on me like the power
of seventeen suns. “For? Why must things be for, human child?”

  “I’m trying to understand why you didn’t destroy a thing that dangerous a long time ago. It tried to turn me into something I didn’t want to be. If I’d kept resisting it, I’d have died.”

  “Because you are human, Stormwalker. Though god blood beats in your veins, you are held to the earth, as is your sister. Humans are too weak for my vessel. The shamans who decided to destroy it in lava many years ago were unable to throw it away, so I took it from them and hid it. But it uncovered itself eventually, and so your Nightwalker’s friend found it.”

  “You’re going to hide it again?”

  “Bring me the vessel, Janet.”

  “Janet.” Another rumbling voice assailed me, one I was relieved to hear.

  Mick walked out of the black shadows of the canyon walls, Elena with him. Mick was dressed, so he must have had Elena carry clothes for him, but the aura of his dragon flight was pungent—the familiar taste of fire and smoke wrapped up in the music of his name.

  I tried not to hurry as I went to meet him. “Did you bring him?” I asked in a low voice.

  Mick took my hand. “He’s coming.”

  Elena wore her usual look of disapproval. “The Nightwalker insisted on accompanying us.”

  Ansel walked shakily out of the shadows, as though he’d been waiting until summoned. He folded his arms over his lanky body, his sandstone-colored Sedona T-shirt making his skin even starker white.

  “This was my fault,” he said. “I want to put it right.”

  I didn’t agree with him, but Elena broke in before I could answer. “Whatever you do, don’t give the vessel to the goddess.”

  “So Grandmother advised me.”

  “Ruby is correct. The bear goddess has infinite power, maybe more than Coyote himself. She made that vessel to contain some of her extra power so she could hold onto her shape and live more easily in this world. But she didn’t know how to temper her strength. She gave it to shamans of a tribe, trying to help them. They found that the pot enhanced their magic, but the magic built to dangerous levels, and then the pot, made to siphon off excess power, sucked it all back out of them until they were dead. Mortals simply can’t handle those kinds of forces.”