Firewalker

by Allyson James

  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.”

  Jones snapped out of his self-pity. “I need to get you to an emergency room. Do you think you can make it down, or do I need to carry you?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not leaving until I find Mick.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You’re concussed. You need stitches and a doctor.”

  “Then patch me up with your state-of-the-art first aid kit. We find Mick, and then I promise you can drive me to the nearest ER.” I couldn’t leave Mick after coming this far. Even if I weren’t so worried about him, the spell had me in its grip and wouldn’t let me go. I felt like I was being squeezed by a giant octopus.

  “I can�
��t risk that,” Nash said.

  “Too bad. I can do healing spells on myself. I’ve done them before.” So many, many times before. What did that say about my life? “They won’t cure me completely, but I’ll be able to go on. I have to find Mick.”

  Nash heard the panic in my voice; maybe he even understood it. With a growl, he returned to his first aid kit, which already lay open on the ground. He took out the antibacterial I’d used on him and cleaned my wound with gauze. It hurt like hell.

  I quickly whispered the words of a healing spell, some of the minor magic I could do when there wasn’t a nearby storm, but nothing happened. For a moment, fear squeezed my heart, and then I realized that Nash’s body touched mine as he wiped blood from my head.

  “Could you move away a little?” I asked. “I think you’re killing my healing spells.”

  He stopped. “What?”

  “You’re a walking magic void, remember? My powers aren’t strong enough to overcome the negative field that is you.”

  Nash stared at me, bloody gauze hovering. “How far?”

  “I have no idea. Start walking, and I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  No one could pin someone with a suspicious glare like Nash Jones could. Criminals who came through Magellan and Flat Mesa, thinking to hide out in small towns, ended up begging to be turned over to the feds or state police once Nash got hold of them. The times I’d been in Nash’s custody, his deputies claimed Nash had gone easy on me. The thought made me shiver.

  “Seriously,” I said.

  Nash gave me one final icy look, then unfolded to his feet and started up the ridge.

  I whispered more spells to myself as he went, and finally, I felt my scalp prickle and the pain ease a little. “Far enough,” I called to Nash.

  He waited while I got to my feet, brushed off the gravel that had cut my skin, and packed up the first aid kit. My hands shook, and my nausea let me know the healing spells helped only so much.

  Nash pushed one of the canteens into my hand when I reached him. “Don’t dehydrate. I don’t want to have to carry you down this mountain.”

  “You have a heart of gold, Jones,” I said but sucked greedily at the plastic-tasting water.

  We went on. I had to stop often. My healing spell could keep my blood inside my body, but I wasn’t a strong enough mage to cure myself completely. The night remained blissfully clear and quiet, the wind coming off the mountains, chilly.

  “Nash,” I called softly.

  Nash stopped, hand on weapon. “What?”

  “He wants us to go that way.” I pointed to a ridge off to our left, one that this path wouldn’t take us to.

  Nash’s eyes glittered in the beam of his flashlight. “How can you be sure?”

  “I just know.” I touched my temple, winced, and rubbed it. The closer I got, the more the compulsion spell hauled me to it, like a fish in a net.

  “We have to backtrack about a mile to get there.”

  I started back down what I laughingly called our “trail.” “Better than going the wrong direction the rest of the night.”

  Nash grunted something, but he came after me. Rocks slipped and slid under my feet, as I picked my way down the steep trail. Nash came behind, his steps slow, deliberate, the light of his flashlight bobbing behind mine. The mountains were closing around us, the occasional tree straight and stark in the moonlight.

  We found the side trail that led across a saddle, folds of jagged rock tumbling away to either side of us. If I could have seen better, I’d have been nervous about the sheer drops to the right and left. As it was, we concentrated on the narrow ribbon of land beneath our feet and moved slowly.

  Our makeshift trail widened when we reached the other side of the saddle, and we climbed again. I was glad of Nash’s GPS device, because I’d lost track of where the hell we were.

  More climbing for another mile or two. The spell grew stronger as I ascended, which increased both my hope and impatience.

  Nash stopped so abruptly I almost ran into him. He stood still, saying nothing while he played flashlight over the trail.

  Ahead of us, the ridge ended, dropping into a craggy morass that connected to the higher wall of mountain beyond. The gap wasn’t wide—Nash’s flashlight beam reached the other side—but it was wide enough. One of the bighorn sheep that populated this place might traverse it, but never two humans without rappelling gear. Flying would be another asset, but neither of us could turn into something with wings.

  I was breathing hard. We’d climbed from the below-sea-level desert floor to three thousand feet according to Nash’s device, and the next ridgeline was another couple thousand feet higher than that.

  “What now?” Nash asked me.

  I didn’t know. The spell was stronger than ever, but no way in hell could I climb down those rocks with my head spinning like a merry-go-round.

  Nash started exploring the top of the ridge, while I sank to a boulder and tried to feel the source of the spell. I fished a chamois bag from my backpack, carefully pulled out a shard of magic mirror, and set it on my knee.

  The void inside the mirror was black, no color, no light. One big nothing.

  A chill went through me. Mick also carried a piece of the broken magic mirror with him in case he needed to communicate with me. Magic mirrors beat cell phones every time. But lately, whenever I’d tried to focus on his shard, I got this.

  “Anything?” I asked it.

  The blackness cleared, and the mirror reflected my anxious brown eyes in the glow of my flashlight.

  “Sorry, sweetcakes,” the mirror answered me in a drag-queen drawl. “Our Micky’s just not answering.”

  “You can’t tell where he is?”

  “It’s dark.” The mirror’s tone was worried, and that worried me.

  “Thanks for trying,” I said.

  “Sure thing, sugar. Hey, tell the sheriff to come over here.”

  “Why? Can he help?”

  “I don’t know. I just want to look at his pretty ass.”

  I growled and stuffed the mirror back into the bag.

  “Who are you talking to?” Nash stood over me, his flashlight like an interrogator’s lamp.

  “No one,” I said. “Did you find anything?”

  “There might be a cave over there. Or an old mine shaft.”

  Shafts dotted the land around here, left over from the days when these mountains were picked over for gold, silver, talc, and borax. No one mined up here anymore, the shafts played out and abandoned decades ago.

  Nash hauled me to my feet and led me to a small hole that yawned from the base of a boulder. When Nash crouched down and shone his light inside, I saw that the hole dropped a long way below the surface. A foul-scented breeze rose from it, to be blown away by the increasing wind.

  The spell wrenched me with a mighty throb. “Yes,” I gasped. “Down there.”

  “Are you sure? Old shafts are unstable and full of poisonous gases.”

  I got to my hands and knees beside him and peered down the shaft. Once upon a time, wood planks had shored up the hole, but they’d rotted away, leaving a few gray slivers. The pull of the spell was damn strong.

  “I’m sure. I need to go down there.”

  Nash moved back. “Janet, you came up here on the word of a woman you’ve never met, who charged into your hotel and started acting crazy. She could have lured you out here on purpose—to kill you, maybe. Have you thought of that?”

  “Of course I’ve thought of that. It’s one reason I didn’t want to come alone. But I can’t take the chance that Mick isn’t in trouble. I have to know. I can’t leave him out here without help.”

  Nash played the flashlight on the hole again, then on me. “You’re ready to get yourself killed for him, and you don’t even know if he’s really down there?”

  “Mick’s nearly gotten himself killed for me lots of times,” I said. My voice bordered on hysteria. “He’s been living his whole life on the line for me.”

&nb
sp; Nash shone his light into the shaft, but he was looking at me, not the hole. “If he’s risked his life for you, he’d not want you to die now. It’s foolish to put yourself in danger because of guilt.”

  I tried a smile. “Says the man with PTSD.”

  “I know all about guilt. I crawled out of a pile of rubble that should have crushed me, the nine men I was supposed to lead and protect dead behind me. I lost every man, and to this day, I don’t know why I lived. But I’ve learned the painful lesson that throwing away my life won’t bring them back. Jumping into that hole and choking to death on sulfur fumes isn’t going to save Mick.”

  “You have some better ideas?” I asked him.

  “We go to the ranger station and tell them we’ve lost someone up here. They’ll have the equipment to get in there and find him.”

  “If it were that simple, don’t you think Mick would be out by now? He’s a dragon and pretty damned resilient. So, if he hasn’t been able to blow himself out of this place, he’s seriously trapped, magically as well as physically. No ranger station will be equipped to handle that.”

  “And you are?”

  “No, I’m not. That’s why I brought you.”

  “Because I’m this magic void,” he said, sounding skeptical.

  “That, and you’re good in an emergency. Please, Nash. Anyway, if you want to talk about guilt, you’ve just hit me on the head with your gun. I think I’m entitled to some help for that.”

  Nash growled at me, but I was past caring.

  He dumped his backpack on the ground and started rummaging through it. He took out a spool of twine and a candle and tied the candle securely. Leaning over the hole, he lit the candle and started unwinding the twine down into the shaft. I watched the candle burning merrily as it went down, the flame high, steady, and bright yellow.

  “What happens if there’s methane down there?” I asked worriedly. “Won’t that explode?”

  “Then we’ll know it’s not safe.”

  I backed quickly from the hole. “You’re a fun date, Nash.”

  Nothing dire happened. The candle continued to burn, the flame looking normal and happy.