Firewalker

by Allyson James

  “And so you rushed out to try to reason with the dragon council on his behalf? Why? Obviously Mick thinks of you as an enemy. Tell me what happened between you two.”

  Colby gave me another grin. “Now, for that, you’ll have to ask Micky. It’s old, old history, but dragons have long memories.”

  “Then why should Mick trust you?”

  “Because this time, I’m on his side. I rushed out to help him, because the dragon council was going to have a sham trial and execute him without defense. Already decided. I figured, what they do to him, they can do to me, so I petitioned for them to give him a real, legal trial, sticking to the letter of dragon law. The whole works.”

  “And you don’t care whether he’s executed, only that he has a fair hearing.”

  Colby raised his beer to me and took a sip. “That’s about the size of it.”

  I set my beer can on the table beside the television, came to him, leaned down, and got in his face. “Let me tell you something, Colby. You’d better damn well care. You’d better pull out all the stops to save his butt, or I guarantee there won’t be anyone who can save yours.”

  “Hey, I’m not afraid of you, Stormwalker. If you throw lightning at me, I’ll just lap it up. I’d love to, in fact. I’d lap anything off you, any day of the week.”

  I couldn’t grab him by the shirt since he wasn’t wearing one, so I reached behind him for his long braid. His hair was warm and thick, like coarse silk. Mick’s was much the same. Nothing dragony about it.

  “But I’m more than just a Stormwalker,” I said. “You know that. Plus, I have some very powerful friends.” I looked straight into his eyes. “Some of them are gods who don’t much like dragons.”

  Uneasiness flickered in Colby’s gaze, but he didn’t drop his bravado. “You keep talking like that, and you’ll condemn Mick, no matter what I try to say to the council. My line of defense was going to be that you’re harmless, that Micky understood that the order to kill you was unnecessary, and besides, you helped seal up the vortexes and end the threat. Dragons hate waste, and they don’t like arbitrary murder, especially not of innocents.”

  “How ethical of them.”

  “So you see, sweetheart, in order to save Micky’s hide, we have to convince the dragons that you’re no threat. Not to them, not to anyone.”

  “But I’m not a threat.” I smiled. “At least, not to dragons as a whole. Just to you.”

  “No, darling, you are. You’re bubbling with power, and sooner or later, you’re going to blow. I was willing to give Micky the benefit of the doubt for not offing you, and then I met you.” His smile was gone, his eyes darkening like Mick’s did. “Now I think it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t kill you. I’m betting you wouldn’t let him.”

  I remembered the night I’d met Mick, him and me in a seedy motel room he’d dragged me to after pulling me out of a big bar fight. Mick had dared me to try to hurt him, and I’d been angry enough and scared enough to hit him with lightning. I’d watched in shock while he absorbed my storm power like it was nothing, and then he’d laughed and taken me out to dinner.

  Colby was wrong. All the decisions that night had been Mick’s, not mine. The night I’d opened the vortexes, Mick had stood with me in the rain, ready to break my neck. He’d have done it; I’d felt it in him, and he’d had the strength to do it. Colby was talking out of his ass.

  I released Colby’s braid and straightened up. “If Mick wanted me dead, he could have killed me anytime since I met him.”

  “Bullshit. I see in your eyes that you would never have let him. You’re a powerful being, Janet Begay, and you look down on the rest of us. I’ll lie my ass off and defend Micky, because I don’t want the dragon council getting too uppity. But you, girl, are another story. The dragons were right to put out a death order on you.”

  “You told me that when the dragons first asked you to kill me, you refused.”

  “Hell, yes. I’m not their puppet. Let them do their own dirty work. Plus, then, I didn’t really believe you were a threat. What could a Stormwalker do against the might of the dragons, even if you do have a bit of goddess in you?” He looked me up and down again. “Now that I’ve met you, I think you could do a lot of damage, no matter how small you are.”

  “I don’t care about any of that. I have no intention of messing with the dragons; I only want to save Mick. I’m not letting him die because of me. Understand?”

  “Oh, I understand. So, help me convince the dragons that you’re harmless. That’s all you have to do.”

  I wanted to rage at him. Of course, I was harmless. Of course, I could convince them of that.

  So why did I just stand there, doubts flying through my head? I had the awful feeling that if Mick’s fate depended on my being a sweet and good little Stormwalker, Mick was so screwed.

  I left Colby putting up his feet and skimming through the satellite channels the motel provided. He’d given me a lot to think about, ideas that hadn’t occurred to me. I’d somehow prevented Mick from killing me? Couldn’t be. My Beneath magic had always been dormant until recently, and Mick was damn powerful, whatever Colby thought about him.

  Assistant Chief Salas came out of the office as I prepared to climb into Fremont’s truck. “Hey, Janet. Luis told me you were here. Need to talk to you.”

  I was impatient to go, but I liked Emilio Salas, so I waited for him.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “I know this is Fremont’s truck, but he let me borrow it, honest.”

  Salas smiled, eyes crinkling. He was good-looking, about thirty, with blue black hair and dark eyes, and did his job with quiet efficiency. “It’s not about the truck. It’s a personal question. You mind?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t really like people asking me personal questions, but Salas was a nice guy, and besides, I could always choose not to answer.

  “I’m thinking of asking Maya out,” he surprised me by saying. “You know her pretty well. Is it worth a shot, or is she still hung up on Jones?”

  I toyed with the keys while I considered how to answer. I remembered how Nash had brushed off any question about Maya during our road trip, and the hurt in Maya’s eyes when she’d approached me about it at the diner. I knew their problems were none of my business, but Nash needed a kick in the pants, and maybe Salas would give him that kick. I hated to watch Maya wasting her life waiting for Nash.

  “I say go for it,” I said. “Ask her. If Maya doesn’t want to go out with you, she’ll tell you.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. Maya speaks her mind, doesn’t she?”

  I couldn’t help smiling back. Maya had decided opinions and didn’t keep them to herself. “Jones had his chance, and he blew it. There’s an old Navajo saying that I think applies here: ‘You snooze, you lose.’ ”

  Salas burst out laughing. “Thanks, Janet. I’ll ask her. I never know until I try, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll take a chance. See you, Janet.” Salas gave the truck a pat and walked away, singing under his breath. At least I’d made one person happy today.

  Nash Jones himself was waiting for me at my hotel. Cassandra behind the desk looked like thunder, and I concluded that Nash had pissed her off in his usual charming way.

  “Office?” Nash stalked to my cubbyhole behind reception without waiting for my reply.

  “He grilled me about what kind of witchcraft I did,” Cassandra muttered. “I should do a spell to make his balls fall off.”

  “I’d pay to see that,” I said and went into my office and shut the door.

  Nash waited for me on his feet like a gentleman and gestured for me to sit down. I leaned my hip against my desk and folded my arms, waiting.

  Nash took his little notebook from his pocket and flipped a few pages. “Why didn’t you mention that Cassandra Bryson was a witch? When I asked you at the crime scene what kind of a person could have killed the victim, you said witches. You told me you thought Heather Hansen incapable of the crime, but y
ou never bothered to mention that you employ a woman who calls herself a witch.”

  “I didn’t have the chance. Lopez showed up, and you shoved us off on him.”

  “You have the chance now. What do you know about Ms. Bryson?”

  “That she’s a damn good hotel manager. That’s not witchcraft; that’s know-how. She’s good with the customers.”

  “If she killed the person I found out in the desert, I don’t care how good she is with your customers.”

  “Until you have cause, Jones, could you not interrogate my employees? I have a hotel to run.”

  Nash’s gray eyes flicked to me over the notebook. “I have a murder to solve, and my list of suspects is pretty short. You assured me that this was a magical crime, and that only certain types of people could have done it. So far I have Cassandra Bryson, Coyote with no last name, Mick Burns, and you.”

  “I could never have done that. That was awful.”

  His gaze sharpened. “I saw how easily you killed those things attacking us in Death Valley. For a moment, I thought you were going to turn on us.”

  I grew cold at the memory, not so much of killing the demons but of how I’d been tempted to test my new powers against a dragon and a man who could absorb magic.

  I cleared my throat. “For one thing, they were demons, ready to eat us alive.” I gestured to the red scabs on his arms. “For another, it wasn’t ‘easy.’ Mick had to carry me down the mountain, remember? And I didn’t notice you getting too upset that the demons were dead.”

  “I wasn’t sorry to see the danger eliminated, no. But I also saw you struggle to contain yourself. The incident tells me that you have the power or magic needed to kill the person at my crime scene, and Mick admitted to me that a dragon could have done the same.”

  “Mick had no idea the body was out there,” I said quickly. “He was with me at the time in question, remember? It’s in Lopez’s statement, I’m sure in lurid detail.”

  “So you say. But you’re lovers. You’d corroborate each other.”

  “This is a no-win situation, isn’t it?”

  Nash flipped another page of his notebook. “If you or Mick did it, I’ll find the evidence to prove it. Same goes for Coyote, if I can ever find him.”

  “Then why are you bothering Cassandra? She was here, running the hotel last night.”

  “At the time of the murder, Cassandra claims to have gone for a walk along the railroad bed to take a break and clear her head. No one saw her, and she met no one.”

  “It’s three or four miles from here to the crime scene. What, she jogged there and back?”

  “She could easily have driven her car and made up the story of the walk. People do tend to lie when they’ve committed a crime. I will be verifying the story. Meanwhile, why don’t you tell me what you know about Cassandra? Besides the fact that she’s good at running your hotel.”

  “Ask her yourself,” I said.

  “I did. Now I’m asking you. Don’t hold out on me, Begay, or I’ll ask you—and her—in an interrogation room.”

  Gods, he drove me crazy.

  On the one hand, I didn’t want to feed my manager to Jones. On the other—what did I really know about Cassandra? She’d worked for a luxury hotel chain in California, which was the main reason I’d hired her. When I’d questioned her decision to move from Los Angeles to middle-of-nowhere Magellan, she’d said she needed a break from the rat race and that she liked the energy of the vortexes. I’d taken this at face value. I liked Cassandra, needed her help, and didn’t want to pry too much.

  I gave Nash an abbreviated version of her work history, which he noted. “That’s not much more than she said.”

  “It’s all I know. Maybe she’s coming out of a bad relationship and doesn’t want the man involved to know where she is.” Or woman involved, I added silently, thinking of looks passed between her and Pamela.

  Nash closed his notebook. “When people move to Magellan for no apparent reason, it interests me. It’s not as though Magellan is the garden spot of the world.”

  For interests I knew he meant annoys. Nash liked to keep his finger on the pulse of everything that went on in Hopi County. Nash had three deputies under him, and both Flat Mesa and Magellan had police departments, but Nash managed to patrol every mile of his territory. Hopi County was small, squeezed between the larger entities of Navajo and Coconino, so it wasn’t difficult to drive its perimeters, but I had to wonder when the guy slept.

  “Are you done grilling me?” I asked. “I have things to do.”

  “What about Coyote?”

  I blinked. “What about him?”

  “What do you know about him? Where does he go when he’s not in Magellan?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. He’s a god. Maybe he lives out in the desert as a coyote. Maybe he has a den.”

  He spared me an irritated glance. “He’s Native American.”

  “We don’t all know each other,” I said. “Besides, he’s not Diné. He’s not any tribe specifically. He’s Coyote.”

  “It doesn’t excuse him of murder. Not in my jurisdiction.”

  I could imagine the Norse gods trying to have Ragnarok, and Nash lifting his hand, cop-style, and saying, “No, you don’t. Not in my jurisdiction.”

  I said, “Well, if you do manage to find him, you can ask him whether he did it. Good luck getting a straight answer. Now, I really have things to do.”

  Nash didn’t like being dismissed. “What things do you have to do?”

  “Hotel things. I have a business to run.”

  Nash tucked his notebook and pen into his pocket. “Don’t leave town.”

  “What? Why the hell not?”

  “You’re a suspect. Don’t go anywhere until I’ve cleared you.”

  Damn the man. I wanted to go up to Homol’ovi to see if I could figure out what had happened to Jim Mohan.

  Nash gave me a suspicious stare, but then, his stares were mostly suspicious, so it was difficult to decide what he was thinking. At last he left me alone, and I sat down in the desk chair and stared out the window at the wide, sunlit sky.

  I knew I hadn’t killed whoever had lain in the desert grasses south of town, but Nash was right; I could have. I felt the power crawling inside me, dancing with glee, wanting a way out. Likewise, I could have crushed Colby anytime I wanted to today, and he’d known it. Coyote had warned me about my magic, and so had Mick, and now Nash believed it too.

  They were all waiting for me to go on a rampage, to kill everyone in my path, and the trouble was, I had no idea whether they were wrong. I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my hands. I’d learned control over my storm powers; I could learn control over this. Couldn’t I?

  The best thing I could do, I reasoned, was to figure out what had happened. If the murder victim was Jim, my hotel guest, or if Jim had been the killer, I needed to find out. I could present the solution to Nash and clear myself, Mick, Coyote, and Cassandra.

  If Nash didn’t like the human crimes of murder and drug dealing in his county, I didn’t like unaccounted-for supernatural beings running around my territory. I left the office, told Cassandra I’d be gone the rest of the day, and fetched one of our old maps of Homol’ovi.

  Thirteen

  I waited forty-five minutes before I left the hotel to make sure that Jones was really gone. I wouldn’t put it past him to double back to check up on me. When I figured he would be safely harassing the next person on his list, I mounted my bike and drove up the highway to Winslow.

  On the north side of Winslow, I turned onto the narrow road that led the short distance to the ruins on the banks of the Little Colorado. Homol’ovi was the site of settlements dating back about eighteen hundred years, the large aboveground pueblos being built during the twelve hundreds. Archaeologists called the culture that built them the Anasazi, and they were the ancestors of the current pueblo peoples, including the Zunis and Hopis.

  The state park was closed for now, but that didn’t stop
determined people from poking around the ruins. I parked my motorcycle well off the road and looked around, using the map to to orient myself to what I’d seen in the vision as well as in the photos on Jim’s discarded camera.

  A green streak of vegetation on red brown land showed the flow of the Little Colorado, which snaked across the desert with life-giving water. I hiked that way, keeping the mounds of the pueblo ruins in sight. Jamison had told me that those buildings, part of a complex civilization, had contained more than a thousand rooms.

  The ruins were empty and silent, but the river teemed with life. Birds called in the trees, and water birds waded through the stream, an oasis in an arid land. Five steps behind me, the damp banks gave way to hard desert, but here, the wet was a cool and welcome relief.

  I found nothing, however, no clue about Jim or what had happened to him. Once I’d ambled along the river a bit, I climbed back to drier land and walked toward the excavation sites. About halfway between, I stopped. Here, I thought. It was here.

  As in the vision, I saw the walls of what was called Homol’ovi II in front of me, the river behind me. There was nothing that told me why Jim had stopped here, but maybe he’d wanted to take a distance shot of the ruins against the earth and sky. The professional photographer in me wouldn’t have chosen this angle; there were better places from which to shoot. But then, as far as I knew, Jim had just come here to take pretty pictures, not get his fine arts degree.

  But I knew I’d found the place of his death. I smelled it here, the acrid sweetness of decay, similar to what had been at the murder scene south of Magellan, but this had dissipated with time. I also felt a residue of power, strong power, again that godlike but uncertain magic I’d felt at the other crime scene. Something evil had disturbed the sacredness of this place.

  A saw a flash of movement, and I remembered that the park was closed, but people who worried about the ruins watched it closely. I hoped I wasn’t about to be arrested for being a suspected looter—it was a felony to pocket so much as a potsherd or obsidian blade. Wouldn’t Nash love that?