Firewalker

by Allyson James

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Nash said in a tight voice.

  “His ass was way better than yours.”

  I laughed, which quickly turned into a cough. “Can I have some water?”

  Mick helped me sit up against him and fed me water from a sports bottle. I almost choked on it.

  He patiently wiped my mouth with a tissue, and I looked up into his worried eyes. “It’s gone,” I said. “The Beneath magic. I don’t have a drop left.”

  I didn’t. Outside the windows, deep banks of clouds hugged the approaching mountains, a good old-fashioned storm building. The storm tingled through my blood, but the Beneath magic had fled. Not forever; I knew that.

  “Janet, Nash thinks we killed someone,” Maya said. “You and me. Can you believe it?” Her voice begged me to support her in the lie.

  Nash’s hands tightened on the wheel. “There was a bloody corpse on the hotel room floor. The only reason you two aren’t locked behind heavy bars is because I vouched for you. It looked like the guy had been turned inside out. Sound familiar?”

  I leaned back against Mick. “I didn’t kill him, and neither did Maya. Jim did. He killed the guy in Magellan too, a hiker. I don’t know who the hiker was.”

  Nash gave me a furious glance in the rearview mirror. “Who the hell is Jim?”

  “Jim Mohan. He was a guest at my hotel. He’s dead too, stabbed up at Homol’ovi a couple days ago. Not by me,” I added quickly.

  “If he was stabbed a couple days ago, how the hell did he kill someone in Maya’s hotel room tonight?”

  “He got resurrected. I don’t know who by. Now he’s undead and out of control.”

  “Undead,” Nash repeated. “Right.”

  “Where is he?” I asked. “Jim, I mean. He was in the club when it came down.”

  “They didn’t pull anyone out,” Mick said.

  I pushed myself up into a sitting position. Outside, desert mountains rushed by, rolling Arizona mountains, not stark Nevada peaks. The motion of the SUV made my stomach unhappy, and my neck hurt too. I rubbed it, and I suddenly remembered Mick’s fiercely strong hand twisting it; that plus his binding spell and his palm over my face rendering me unconscious. He could have snapped my neck right there, end of Janet problem.

  I scooted away from him. “Don’t touch me.”

  Mick didn’t look contrite. I knew he wouldn’t bother explaining or apologizing, and I knew he’d decided that it was the only way to stop me. I folded my arms and stared out the window. I was getting tired of being grateful to Mick for not killing me.

  I’d grown up being distrusted by my own family, by my own people, and I’d left home as soon as I could. When I’d met Mick on the road, I’d thought I’d finally found someone for me. He’d protected me and treasured me, and I’d basked in his attention. But he’d kept so much from me, and when I’d found out why he’d really picked me up, the hurt of that had stung for a long time. I’d talked myself into putting it behind us, starting our relationship afresh.

  And here was Mick, still watching me, still waiting for me to go wrong. He was my guardian and my lover but also my parole officer. When he thought I was getting dangerous, he’d step in and render me harmless. Then say, “I’m sorry, baby,” kiss me, and make love to me until I forgot about it.

  What the hell kind of relationship was that?

  “Nash, stop,” I said.

  Nash continued driving at a precise seventy-five miles per hour. “Why?”

  “Just stop. I want to get out.”

  “What for? I have airsick bags back there if you need to throw up.”

  “You’re all heart. No, I want to get out because I don’t want to be around you people. If I’m so fucking dangerous, I’ll leave. I’ll go to Greenland or something, and you’ll never have to worry about me again.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Maya said.

  “No one is going anywhere,” Nash said firmly. “You, Maya, are going home to sleep it off, and you, Janet, are staying put in your hotel while you tell me everything that’s really going on.”

  “You’re a bastard,” Maya said. “We went dancing. We didn’t ask for some guy to pull a gun on us, or for someone to attack us in the club.”

  “A gun?” Nash roared. “What the hell?”

  “Stop the truck,” Mick said. “I’ll get out.”

  My arms were jammed over my chest, fists buried in my sides. My throat was so tight I couldn’t speak.

  “We’re miles from anywhere,” Nash said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Pull off.”

  Nash went silent, which meant he didn’t have a legitimate argument for dragging Mick back to Magellan with us. Even Maya stopped berating Nash and sat silently. At the Ash Fork exit, Nash left the freeway, pulling over at the bottom of the ramp.

  Mick opened the door before the SUV stopped. I wanted to be sick. I thought of the dragons waiting to make him go through gods-knew-what ordeal. I thought of other dangers lurking, like an undead man who couldn’t control his homicidal tendencies. I was scared for Mick and furious at him, and mad at myself for caring so much.

  Mick hopped from the SUV. He held the door, his body silhouetted against the morning sky. “Janet, tell Colby that if he brings you to the trial, I will kill him.”

  “Mick,” I said. “It’s dangerous out there.”

  “So am I.” He slammed the door. Nash gave him an inquiring look out his open window, but Mick shook his head and walked away.

  Nash pulled off, and Mick started down the highway that snaked southward to Chino Valley. I watched his lone, upright figure as long as I could, until Nash rounded a curve, and Mick was lost to sight.

  I had to explain to Naomi why I’d left her shoe behind in Las Vegas. Nash had sent a deputy to retrieve Maya’s truck, but of course Naomi’s sandal was buried under rubble. Naomi didn’t care about the shoes, but she was not happy with me for running off as we had, after I’d admonished her to be careful. I meekly offered to buy her another pair, but I could see that she was mad as hell at me.

  If Naomi was angry, Jamison was furious. At me, not Maya. Jamison came to the hotel the evening we got home, while I was in my office still nursing one hell of a hangover. I’d already related the entire tale to Nash, including everything I knew about the undead Jim Mohan. When Jamison started demanding explanations, I lost it.

  “Mick is the gods know where,” I shouted. “With dragons breathing down his neck, and a lunatic out there turning people inside out. Mick looks at me like he’s scared to death of what’s inside me, and unless you’ve had someone do that to you, you can’t understand it. I’m sorry some idiot tried to rape us in Las Vegas and that Undead Jim tried to kill us. It happens to me, all right? I’m doing the best I can.”

  Jamison listened to me with his usual stoicism. He’d known me since high school, when he, a handsome Navajo a couple of years older than me, had helped me come to terms with my storm powers. Then, he’d been a minor shaman; now he was a Changer. It was because of Jamison that I’d moved to Magellan in the first place, and he felt responsible for me.

  “None of that is why I’m angry at you,” Jamison said.

  “Just tell me, then. I’m not in the mood for cryptic.”

  Jamison folded his strong hands, the same hands that could sculpt like a god and touch Naomi with tenderness. “You’re battling something, and you’re doing it alone. I thought we were friends.”

  “If you mean the Beneath magic, it’s powerful shit, Jamison. I don’t want you anywhere near it. Besides, I think I can control it now.”

  “I’m remembering a fifteen-year-old girl, one eaten up with storm magic. So scared she was afraid to go to school, and she’d run away from home so her grandmother wouldn’t make her go. She was sitting on a ledge overlooking Spider Rock and crying because she couldn’t make the lightning stop.”

  I remembered. The storm had been a major one. Electricity had crawled all over my body, and it was coming out of me in bursts. Terrified that
I’d burn down my house, the school, and everyone within reach, I’d stolen my dad’s pickup and driven down to Canyon de Chelly, figuring I could direct the lightning into the chasm. The storm would keep people away, and I wouldn’t hurt anyone.

  Then Jamison had arrived, the young shaman out to commune with nature. The gods had been looking out for me that day. Because of Jamison, I’d finally believed I could live a somewhat normal life.

  “I helped you then,” Jamison said. “I can help you now.”

  “This is different. Storm magic is earth magic, wholesome even if it’s deadly. Beneath magic isn’t like that at all. It’s like a living entity. It wants to destroy, and it wants to use me to do it. I hear words in my head.”

  “Your mother’s words?”

  “No. It’s not her. It’s me. Or some part of me I never knew existed.”

  “So we explore what it is. You have to look at it, Janet. You can’t run away from it.”

  My headache gave a sharp jab, or it might have been my fear. “It’s nothing you want to have anything to do with. You can’t understand what this is like.”

  Jamison gave a short laugh. “I found out I was a Changer when my body morphed into a mountain lion’s, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I spent two years locked in a cage in Mexico while crazy people taught me how to control the change and the power. That ordeal knocked the arrogance out of me. I do think your power’s dangerous, which is exactly why you need to find out what it is and how to deal with it.”

  I clenched my hands on my desk. My father gazed out of his picture at me, seeming to agree with Jamison.

  “I hate it when you’re logical,” I said.

  He grinned. “Get some sage. Let’s do this.”

  We went upstairs to the roof, under the twilit sky. East of Magellan, the railroad bed made a straight border between town and desert. Beyond that, the world rolled away to the horizon. The ground looked flat, but scores of washes and arroyos cut through it, along with the wide crevice that housed Chevelon Creek. Chevelon was a place of mysteries, where ancient peoples had left petroglyphs along the walls, depicting strange-looking beings. I liked to walk there in dry weather, looking at the pictograms and trying to figure out what they meant. I was pretty sure that many of them depicted the goddesses and demons from Beneath, though some New Agers liked to believe they were aliens. But then, Beneath was another world, so maybe the New Agers aren’t too far off.

  Jamison and I faced each other, cross-legged, and he lit a sage stick and dropped it into a stone bowl. I’d brought a shard of the magic mirror in case it could help, though I warned it sternly to stay quiet.

  Jamison took my hands and held them in the smoke. The pungent sage wafted into the cooling air, and I inhaled deeply.

  Jamison spoke in the Diné language, whispering words of magic. I loved Jamison’s voice, velvet and lilting. He was one hell of a good storyteller. Naomi had fallen in love with him the night he’d come to tell stories in Magellan, and I understood why.

  “Let your thoughts go,” he murmured to me. “Let them drift wherever they will.” His hands tightened. “And stop concentrating on sex.”

  How did he always know? “I was thinking about you and Naomi.”

  Jamison flushed but didn’t look all that embarrassed. “I never thought of you as a voyeur.”

  “I meant that what you two have is great.”

  “Mmm,” the shard of magic mirror said at my feet. “Please tell me everything you’re thinking, so I can imagine it too. Don’t hold back.”

  Jamison squeezed my hands again. “You’re avoiding what we’re supposed to do. Let your thoughts go. Concentrate on the smell of smoke and the sounds of the night.”

  What Jamison wanted me to do scared me. I could pretend that I’d already learned to direct the Beneath magic in me—hadn’t I done well fighting at the club, not to mention knocking out the guy in the hotel room? But I knew Jamison was right; the magic inside me was like a beast, waiting to get out.

  Jamison’s low Navajo words made my Beneath magic stir. Not in fear, in anger.

  The desert at our feet was also home to skinwalkers, hideous creatures of massive strength that wrapped themselves in the skins of animals or people they killed to take their form. My Beneath magic could summon them. I knew this instantly, although I’d never thought about it before.

  You can summon them, control them, use them to destroy your enemies.

  I didn’t have enemies. I didn’t have time for that.

  Images of people flashed before me, everyone who’d ever hurt me. Girls at school who made fun of me. High school boys who were nice to me until they revealed they only wanted a free grope. My grandmother and her strict admonitions. Nash Jones, who liked to lock me in his jail. The dragons, vast winged creatures who wanted me to cease to exist. Mick.

  You can command any of them. Skinwalkers, Nightwalkers. You summoned the one who tried to kill Nash.

  Like hell I had. I opened my eyes, which had drifted shut. The sage glowed with hot sparks, orange and angry in the darkness. Jamison’s voice went on, low words in Navajo that enveloped us in prayer and protection.

  I’d had nothing to do with that Nightwalker at the checkpoint. How could I have? He’d been there looking for easy pickings, hadn’t he?

  But then, the Nightwalker had looked at me with something like fear in his eyes after I’d had the strange vision of grinding him to dust with a beam of light. What if my latent anger at Nash had manifested in me calling on a Nightwalker to finish him off? Nash’s unique resistance to magic had killed it, but I’d been uncertain about that outcome.

  Or maybe I’d summoned the Nightwalker to test Nash’s ability to nullify its magic. Used it and let it die to satisfy my curiosity.

  “No!” I said out loud.

  Jamison jumped and opened his eyes.

  I jerked my hands from his grasp. “This is crazy. It won’t work. Leave it alone.”

  “What are you afraid of, Janet?”

  His voice was too gentle, too understanding. It drove me crazy.

  “Me.” I got to my feet. “The magic telling me how evil I am, how I can make that evil work for me.”

  “Demons lie, Janet. They tell frightening lies to bring you under their power. That’s all. You’re strong enough to resist.”

  “It isn’t demons. It’s me. And I don’t think it’s wrong about me being evil.”

  Jamison got to his feet, boots grating. “It is wrong. I know you. You need to learn to separate yourself from it, to observe it, to not let it have power over you.”

  “Is this what they taught you down in Mexico?” My voice had a sneer to it I didn’t like.

  “No, they tried to keep me wasted on drugs down in Mexico. I learned control the hard way. But it works. Trust me.”

  “You can teach me to control this?”

  The magic leapt into my hands, white light so hot that it made my hangover beat through my brain afresh. The agony in my head was so fierce I feared I was having a stroke, but at the same time, the pain was detached and faraway.

  Jamison stepped back, wariness in his eyes. I scented the Changer in him, the wildcat waiting to break free in case it needed to attack.

  I kicked the bowl with the sage, scattering herbs and ashes. “You don’t know the first thing about me, Jamison Kee. Your arrogance never left you, no matter what you claim. They should have locked you in a stronger cage and spared all of us you coming back here.”

  “Janet.” Jamison backed another foot or two. “This is what you need to control. Focus.”

  “You focus on this.”

  I scooped the white light into one hand, squishing it into a ball. Then I threw it, not at Jamison, but at the piece of magic mirror.

  The mirror screamed, “Oh, no, girlfriend!” and then the light hit it. The mirror didn’t break but reflected the light back, doubled in size and strength.

  As soon as the magic left my fist, it released my body, and I sat down hard. M
y head pounded like fury, and I wanted to vomit.

  “No,” I croaked at the light. “Stop.”

  Jamison’s dark eyes widened in fear as the light swept his feet out from under him. I cried out, trying to get up, trying desperately to stop it. Then the magic lifted Jamison, my oldest and dearest friend, and threw him from the roof.

  Seventeen

  Weeping and screaming, I crawled to the edge and peered into the darkness below. The Beneath magic had dissipated and vanished, leaving me weak. Behind me, the magic mirror sobbed.

  “Jamison!” I shouted.

  The growl of a mountain lion answered me. I saw eyes in the dark, glowing faintly in the twilight.

  I scrambled to my feet and stumbled back inside, down the stairs, around the gallery, and down to the first floor. A couple was checking in, and they stopped and stared as I ran past, my clothes filthy and my eyes wild. I heard Cassandra behind me, reassuring the guests in soothing tones. I had to wonder what excuse she was coming up with for me.

  I tore out the back door and headed for the railroad bed. A mountain lion was limping toward it, leaving a trail of Jamison’s clothes behind him.

  “Jamison!”

  He climbed to the railroad bed and stopped, sides heaving. The rising moonlight showed me pieces of Jamison’s shirt still clinging to his back.

  “I’m sorry,” I babbled. “It’s gone. The magic has gone. Are you all right?”

  Thank the gods he’d had the presence of mind to change as he fell, landing like a cat. The air shimmered, and Jamison rose on bare feet to his man shape. He moved his shirt rags to cover his privates and regarded me with a mixture of anger and fear.

  “Are you all right?” I repeated.

  “I’ll live,” he said wearily. “You were right. I am arrogant. I’m not strong enough to help you. My magics are nowhere near what yours are.”

  “That wasn’t me saying that. It was the magic, whatever is inside me. I lied. I can’t control it. Jamison, what the hell am I going to do?”