Firewalker

by Allyson James

  I could only think about Mick.

  Memories are most vivid when there is nothing else to interfere with them. Perhaps that’s why the very old remember their younger years so well while forgetting the monotonous drone of their current, day-to-day existence.

  I remembered the first night I’d made love with Mick, how he’d surprised me with his gentleness. He’d been patient with an inexperienced young woman, never hurrying me, never laughing at me. He’d introduced me to the astonishing pleasure that could be found in bed, and I’d fallen hard and fast in love with him.

  I thought of his smile, the one that said he was a wicked man who wanted to do naughty things with me. I thought of his blue eyes that could turn black when he was angry or aroused, his crazy hair that would never stay put. Any suggestion he cut his shoulder-length hair so he wouldn’t have to bother with it was met with an amazed stare. Maybe when he switched from dragon, that’s just the way his hair went. I’d noted that the other dragons—Colby, Bancroft, Drake—wore their hair long too.

  My mind dredged up the halcyon days after we’d first met, when Mick and I traveled up and down the country. They’d been the happiest of my life. I remembered standing on a rocky promontory overlooking the northern Pacific, wind buffeting my body while Mick stood rock-solid behind me. He’d held on to me, and I’d basked in his warmth while we watched the beauty of the cold sea. We’d gone from there up and down the country, gradually making our way across. We rode for miles during the day, stayed in motels at night. We laughed, talked, fought, made up, and made love.

  I remembered my astonishment when I found out Mick was a dragon. I’d been blind to it before that, because I hadn’t known that dragons existed at all. Skinwalkers, Nightwalkers, magic mirrors, yes. Dragons, no.

  My world had changed that night, and it had changed again tonight. I’d walked away from Mick a little over five years ago because I’d been young and afraid, but somehow I’d never thought of him as completely out of my life. And he hadn’t been; I just hadn’t been able to see him.

  The memories flew at me faster and faster, until my emotions were all twisted around, and I couldn’t stop crying. Who gave a damn about the magic inside me, when Mick was dead because of it?

  I heard a tiny noise, the barest click of rock on rock. I opened my eyes, and through my tears saw the Koshare sitting on a boulder opposite me, the light of the magic mirror between us.

  Twenty-five

  “Haven’t you tortured me enough?” My voice came out a harsh croak. “I thought clowns were supposed to make people laugh.”

  He sat still, his god power filling the room with crackling intensity. I might get a shock just touching the air. The Koshare’s dark eyes fixed on me, but his red mouth was closed, without smiles.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked. “I only know a few words in Hopi, and all of them are dirty.”

  I speak all languages. Including that of the Diné.

  The kachinas were benevolent gods, coming to the Hopi people to help them find the bounty of the land. As a kid, I’d loved watching the stately kachina dances, and the clowns and their antics. So why was I so afraid of them now?

  Then it struck me: because, in this story, they were the good guys, and I was the evil being. My mother had bestowed upon me her powers, her ruthlessness, and her evil. I could pretend all I wanted to that my storm power mitigated the effects of the Beneath magic, that I could handle both. But as I looked into the Koshare’s eyes, I knew it for the lie it was.

  “So now what?” I asked. “Are you going to leave me here? Or kill me? I suppose it doesn’t make much difference, but killing me outright will be quicker than leaving me here to starve.”

  Is that what you want? Death?

  “No, but it’s what you’re going to give me.”

  It is your choice, Stormwalker. You choose the path.

  “Now, see, this is what I don’t like about gods. I ask a straight question, and you give me some cryptic answer.”

  You can die. Or we can take the magic from you.

  I stared, shocked. “You can take away the magic?”

  We can. Your Stormwalker magic is natural, inherited from your Diné ancestors. It is a part of your world. The other magic is not. We can take it from you, return it to the world to which it belongs.

  I opened my mouth to bellow, Yes! Without the Beneath magic vying for mastery inside me, I could go back to being only half-crazy. I could use only the storm magic as I’d learned to, knowing I controlled it, not the other way around. Maybe I could get rid of the hangovers I got after a storm—I’d discovered that they came from the Beneath magic fighting my Stormwalker power. I’d be able to sleep better, and Coyote and all the dragons would cease talking about killing me.

  But then a truth hit me, and I closed my mouth again. If the Stormwalker magic was a natural part of me, so was my mother’s magic. It might have lain quietly inside me until I’d awakened it traveling Beneath, but it had always been there.

  I didn’t want to be evil. I was tired of gods and dragons following me around, watching my every move. I wanted to be plain old Janet, who’d spent a few years wandering the country photographing the remotest parts of it, and who now was taking on the challenge of running a small hotel in the middle of nowhere. But on the other hand, if something so deeply ingrained in me was ripped out, what would happen to me?

  “You’re afraid that the Beneath magic will take me over,” I said. “That I’ll be too great a threat to you. Coyote fears that too. But that’s because none of you understand what it is to be human. We make mistakes, and then we fix them.”

  The Koshare watched me in silence. He was supposed to be comical with his striped paint and knobby horns, but his grave stillness gave him dignity.

  “If I didn’t have this magic, Undead Jim would have killed so many more people,” I said. “You can’t blame his existence on me. I didn’t bring him back to life.”

  Humans like to argue. To justify their deeds.

  “When my life depends on it, hell yes.”

  It was easy to be in touch with my earth magic in this place—the earth was all around me. I’d managed to twine the two magics together when I was trying to save Mick, and looking inside myself, the interwoven magic was still there, warm and quiet. Part of me.

  I knew right then I couldn’t separate them, that if the Koshare and the kachinas or Coyote tried to remove the Beneath magic from me, I’d cease to exist. The two magics would fight to remain twined into my psyche, as they had always been, and I would end up empty, dead, nothing.

  Before this awful day started, my Beneath magic would have told me that I could best this puny god and then goad me into doing it. Now I knew that I couldn’t best him—the attempt would be the death of me—but I also knew that I wasn’t as powerless as I feared.

  I gathered the woven magic and let my senses reach through the heavy rock above me, up, up, and up until I found the open air. It smelled pungent with humidity and greenery, the air sharp and cool.

  “A storm outside.” I smiled. “I like storms.”

  The Koshare just watched me.

  “You don’t want to kill me, you know,” I said. “You didn’t even want to kill Jim, and he was a walking destructive force.”

  The Koshare’s eyes widened in surprise. I knew the clown, for his talk, did not really want to do murder. His job was to make people laugh, or to admonish them by making fun of them. I wasn’t so certain about the kachinas, some of whom were pretty damn powerful, but he had been sent to me because he’d try every method he could before he had to give up and kill me. Because he had compassion.

  But his compassion meant that he might keep me stuck in here the rest of my natural life if I didn’t cooperate with him. I reached with my mind through the hundreds of feet of rock and touched water, wind, lightning.

  I was a Stormwalker, a strong one. Lightning struck the earth where I guided it, tearing a hole in the rock. The Koshare jumped, but he made no atte
mpt to stop me. Either he wanted to see what I’d do, or he was waiting for his brethren to drag me out and crush me into little pieces.

  The mountain rumbled, and dust and pebbles rained down. I snapped off my magic current in alarm. Bringing the cave down on my head was not what I had in mind.

  The rumbling didn’t cease. The Koshare looked up in alarm, and the magic mirror said, “Oh, honey bun, this does not look good.”

  I snatched up the mirror and thrust it into its bag. The cave plunged into darkness.

  I don’t know whether the Koshare stayed or vanished, but I was on my feet, trying to divert the storm elsewhere. Maybe trying to have it dig me out had been a bad idea.

  More dirt rained on me, and I heard a loud boom. I screamed as half the ceiling crashed down, and I fell. I expected to land on the Koshare, but he wasn’t there. He’d left me to my fate.

  Above me the rocks were ripped aside, and dirt started to smother me. I didn’t want to die like this. I grabbed my magic and forced it into a bubble shape, with me inside. What good it would do me in the long run I didn’t know, but I needed to breathe now.

  Something ripped at my bubble, and the air burned red with fire. Great, just great. I was inside a live volcano that had decided to erupt. I’d never see my father again. Or my grandmother. Or the moon rising over the stark hill at Many Farms. Or my hotel and my new friends. I whimpered like a baby.

  Or . . . not a volcano. My protective shell was torn apart, not by the forces of an eruption, but by a huge talon. A dragon talon.

  My name is Janet Begay, and dragons want to slay me.

  Now that Mick was dead and no longer protected me as his mate, there was no dragon law to stop them finding me and flaming me out of existence.

  I fought. The trouble with figuring out how to serenely blend my magics was that each one grew a little less powerful as it combined with the other. The whole was stronger than its parts, but dragons, creatures of air and fire, could absorb my storm magic. They ate lightning for breakfast. So they’d swallow half my magic, and the other half would no longer be strong enough to best them.

  That’s what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? A Stormwalker who could use her Beneath powers for benevolence and goodness?

  The dragon who pulled me out of the mountain wasn’t interested in benevolence or goodness. He yanked me straight through a dragon-sized hole, wings beating the air to gain height. It was a black dragon, a big one, but not Mick. It was Drake, the flunky to Bancroft of the dragon council, the flunky who really didn’t like me.

  Once we hit the starry night, I saw flames high in the sky, bright streams like comets. Dragons, dozens of them, were fighting winged beings who darted and dodged the fires.

  My stomach lurched as Drake dove swiftly down and sideways, avoiding a fireball that erupted in the exact place we’d been. What the hell?

  Then I realized I wasn’t seeing a simple battle out here. Dragons were flaming dragons. The winged creatures, the kachinas, zapped dragons with white magic, but not all the dragons. I couldn’t work out who was on whose side, and Drake dipping and whirling didn’t help. All I could do was hang on and pray.

  A dragon took the brunt of another’s fire. He screamed on the way down, until he met a kachina’s white light and disappeared. Dead? Or sent somewhere? Alive? Or incinerated?

  “Why are they fighting?” I shouted. “What do they want?”

  The wind tore away my words. Either Drake didn’t hear, or he had no interest in answering.

  The battle heated, fire lashing the night, white heat answering. I didn’t understand how it happened, but a formation of dragons suddenly cut high, roaring in triumph. The dragons below them began streaking for the horizon. The kachinas chased those dragons, the gods’ huge, feathery wings flashing in the sunrise. Then dragons and kachinas alike were swallowed into the coming dawn.

  The formation, about a dozen dragons in a perfect phalanx, headed our way. Drake’s wings whooshed, and we shot backward at least a couple thousand feet. I screamed, then snapped my mouth shut as bile boiled up from my stomach.

  I had no idea who’d won the battle, or whether the phalanx of dragons forming behind one screaming leader was on Drake’s side or not. I got my answer as the formation streamed past us, the dragons a winged blur, and Drake took his place at the end of one of the lines.

  Who led them, I wondered. Bancroft? Or a dragon interested in killing off an interfering Stormwalker?

  Drake carried me through graying light at the end of the dragon line. I decided against trying to hit him with magic, because if he dropped me, it was a long way down. Could Beneath magic keep me from splatting on the ground? I didn’t want to find out.

  The dragons angled away from city lights I could see to the south of us and out across the blackness of desert. If I’d been right about being inside the San Francisco Peaks, then the town we were speeding north and west from was Flagstaff. Which meant if Drake dropped me now, I’d fall about a mile and a half or more to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

  The wind was freezing. I hunkered behind the dragon talon to keep warm the best I could.

  “Couldn’t bother to bring me a sweater?” I asked between chattering teeth. Drake didn’t answer, but I hadn’t really thought he would.

  We flew a long way, over another city of lights and off again into darkness. The dragons began to circle, and as we descended, the rising sun outlined sharp, high mountains and glittered on white alkali flats.

  A good place to die: Death Valley.

  The dragons flew over mountains from which I’d rescued Mick not many days ago to land in the very center of a dry lake bed. Drake set me on my feet with a thump, and when my head stopped spinning, I understood where we were.

  They call it the Racetrack. Not because there are any races on it, or even pavement on which to race. The dry lake bed was an oval two and a half miles long, and its floor consisted of flat, baked, cracked earth. Boulders stood like sentinels at one end; behind each of them was a long, pale smear in the dirt.

  The boulders moved by themselves when no one was looking—no one knew how or why, although there were plenty of theories. It was eerie to see the trails each had taken stretching out behind them, like stone creatures who glided across the lake bed and then froze the moment someone looked at them.

  Dragons touched down around us, still in formation, changing from beast to human as they landed. There were tall women among the equally tall men, and all were well tattooed.

  My eyes riveted to the leader of the phalanx, the dragon who’d been the point of the formation. Not Bancroft, as I’d thought, or the second dragon councilor, as I’d feared.

  The phalanx’s leader had dragon tattoos winding down his arms and a flame tattoo across the small of his back, wildly curly black hair, and amazing blue eyes. Drake tried to hold me back, but I shook him off and was running, running, kicking up a choking white cloud of dust as I sprinted across the lake bed.

  I launched myself at Mick so hard he stumbled as he caught me, and we went down, tangled together, to the parched, cracked earth.

  Twenty-six

  I kissed Mick’s lips, his face, his neck, his lips again, tears of relief and joy streaming down my cheeks. Mick cupped my face and returned the kisses, his own eyes wet. I drew a deep, choking breath, swallowing the dust I’d kicked up.

  “Damn you,” I cried. “Why aren’t you dead?”

  Mick wrapped me in arms that were whole and unbroken. “It was a close-run thing, sweetheart. But you gave me the spark that kept me alive.”

  I splayed one hand against his chest, feeling his heart beating hard and strong. “You’re not undead, are you?” I asked, worried.

  He smiled his bad-boy smile. “No. You jump-started me and my healing magic. Kind of like CPR—or a shock to a battery. Colby and Drake took me off and helped me heal. Don’t be too hard on them.”

  “I’ll love them to pieces if they brought you back to me.”

  Hands seized my shoulders.
I fought as they tried to pull me off of Mick. Mick climbed to his feet and lifted me with him. “It’s all right,” he told the other dragon, one I didn’t know. “She’s not attacking me.”

  “Not yet,” I promised, my smile hot.

  Mick turned me around and gave me a long kiss. His skin was covered with white dust, which stuck to him like powder, and my skin was covered with black volcanic dust. I’m sure we looked hilarious.

  The other dragons remained in place, as though they were waiting for Mick to tell them what to do. Drake had maintained his position, and Colby was there, naked, inked, and grinning.

  None of the dragons had clothes, I noticed, and none of them seemed bothered by it. If a park ranger happened along, what would he or she think of a group of people standing in naked formation in the middle of the lake?

  Only one person was clothed, Nash Jones, who stood next to Colby. He must have been carried here as well—I wondered how he’d fared.

  “Why did you bring us here?” I asked Mick. “You were fighting kachinas and other dragons. Weren’t you? What the hell is going on?”

  “We’re here because this is where my trial will take place.”

  “Your trial?” I sought out Colby, who nodded confirmation. “Why? You almost died. Isn’t that good enough for them?”

  Mick smoothed a lock of hair from my face. “It’s dragon law. I still have to face the charges, no matter what else has happened.”

  “What else did happen? Besides Drake rescuing me? Should I be thanking him?”

  “Cassandra found me through the mirror. She said you’d told her you thought you were inside a volcano. We flew to the one sacred to the kachinas, and then a lightning bolt struck the mountain, pointing the way. I knew you’d called it to you.”

  “So you had Drake dig me out?”

  “Yes. There are other dragons who want you dead—they thought me dead and gone, so they decided to go for you. I and my dragons got there first.”