I sighed and told him. Coyote regarded me thoughtfully then crossed his paws and began to pant again. Heavily. He moved the whole boulder.
Why would she make up something like being your aunt? You saw she was from Beneath as soon as she started throwing around her power.
“Maybe she’s my mother playing tricks on me?”
Nope. If your mother was running around, I’d know it. That’s something I’d pay attention to. Lots of Beneath gods and goddesses are related to each other. We were created by all-powerful entities. I’m probably one of your long-lost, a-hundred-times-removed cousins. His mouth widened into a canine grin. Kissing cousins.
“Forget it, coyote breath.”
More grinning. Give her a chance. Like you want everyone to give you. Coyote flopped his tongue back into his mouth. And if she truly is evil, snuff her.
“Sure. ’Cause that would be so easy.” I let out a long breath. “What do I do, Coyote? You’re a wise god. Give me some wisdom.”
Wisdom. Hmm. Well, if you ask Jolene at the diner real nice, she’ll have the cook put jalapeños on your burger. Tasty.
“Thanks a lot. I was thinking more like, I don’t have anywhere to go. The Crossroads Hotel is Janet’s. Grandmother Begay is putting up with me at Many Farms. Chandra got me the job in Vegas, so who knows what that’s about? There’s no place, you know, where I fit.”
Aw. Coyote gave me sad eyes. Poor little thing.
“Don’t make fun of me. No one has wanted anything to do with me since the day I was born.” Tears stung me.
Yeah, that’s true.
Note to self: Don’t go to Coyote for comfort. He’ll give you unvarnished truth.
“Why am I even talking to you?” I growled.
Because I sat down here, and you wanted to whine. I said before—does it matter?
“That they’d like to see the back of me at the Crossroads, that Pete is happy about leaving Many Farms, that Cornelius had to be talked into hiring me? You’re asking me if that stuff matters?”
None of those places are yours. Don’t try to take them. Acknowledge that you’re accepting hospitality. Be a good guest.
I stared at him while his words sank in. “You mean, Suck it up, Gabrielle.”
His laughter was full-blown this time. I always knew you were smart. One day you’ll be who you were meant to be, and your family will be right there with you. I know it in my bones.
I sighed. “I hope your bones are right.” I gazed into the distance, the darkness to the east tinged with the slightest bit of gray at the horizon. “Any more helpful hints on how to fight the un-fightable?”
Silence. I turned to find myself sitting next to nothing. Coyote had vanished, taking his warmth with him.
I shivered, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets. “Aren’t you even going to walk me home?” I called out. “A helpless little thing like me?”
My answer was a coyote’s yipping howl, which faded quickly into the darkness.
* * *
Janet
When I woke in the morning, not long after sunrise, it was to find Gabrielle sitting cross-legged at the bottom of my bed.
“Morning, Sis,” she said.
I rose on my elbows, every muscle aching. “Morning. Is it any use to ask what you’re doing here?”
Gabrielle, neatly dressed, her hair damp and combed as though she’d just had a shower, grinned at me, her teeth even and white in her pretty face. “Helping you save the world.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Janet
I sat up, pushing my tangled hair from my face. “Are you all right?” I demanded. “Where’s Grandmother? The mirror stopped broadcasting. Colby called Mick and said you won, but that you needed some space. What is that about?”
“You worry a lot, Janet.” Gabrielle slid off the bed, as lovely and poised as ever. “It can’t be good for you. You also ask a lot of questions. Get yourself dressed and come out and talk to me. We have many things to do.” There was a new strength in her eyes, a determination that had me forcing wakefulness into my body.
“Hold it.” I slid out of bed in my T-shirt and underwear, stopping her from sailing out of the room. “What happened to the mirror? Why did it shut up?”
“It broke itself so it wouldn’t get taken over by the Earth entity,” Gabrielle said calmly. “Which did take over my friend, and that pisses me off.” She swung away, her hair a black wave. “See you outside in ten.”
Ten? How fast did she think I could move after only a few hours’ sleep?
Mick was nowhere in sight. He had made me go to bed by the simple tactic of picking me up, slinging me over his shoulder, and carrying me into our bedroom.
He’d also undressed me and sent a little healing magic through me so I wanted to stay on the bed. He’d done a little bit more than that to make me relax, though I’d fallen asleep just when it was getting exciting. He’d known exactly how to play me, damn him.
But Mick had been right that I needed rest. I felt less despairing as I showered and dressed, and I definitely wanted to talk to Gabrielle.
I found her and Flora chatting to guests and making sure they were well. Elena had loaded the buffet tables with more food—was she cooking around the clock? I lifted a piece of pound cake, and for something healthy, a banana, and motioned for Gabrielle to join me outside.
“Mick’s down with the dragon slayer,” Gabrielle said, noticing how I glanced around for him. “That guy is dangerous. We should toast him.”
“Not until we know what he knows,” I said.
“Exactly. But once this is over, if we don’t stop him, he’ll go back to hunting Mick and Colby and all our other dragon friends.”
“One thing at a time?” I put a pleading note into the words. “Now tell me what happened and why I shouldn’t be worried about Grandmother.”
“Because she’s the Crow, and she can take care of herself. She faced down the Earth entity like it was nothing.”
I shivered, the October wind bringing a sudden chill. “I don’t want Grandmother to face down anything. I want her safe at Many Farms, driving Dad crazy with her wedding planning.”
Gabrielle’s smile flared then faded. “She won’t be safe even there if we don’t stop this thing. But there’s more I have to tell you.”
She led me beyond the hotel toward the railroad bed. Gabrielle took a running start at it, her boots digging into the red earth as she climbed. I followed less exuberantly.
From the top of the embankment we studied the land, the sun picking out pockets that were steeply cut arroyos leading to wider canyons. Clouds gathered over the mountains to the south but the plateau was bathed in sunlight under blue sky.
Gabrielle told me a long and somewhat garbled story of carrying out her job in Las Vegas, her exploration of the arena, and the battle on top of the C last night. She ended by claiming that the woman called Chandra was in fact the sister of our mother.
I stared at her. “How the hell can that be?”
Gabrielle studied the desert and its clumps of wild grasses and gnarled trees, her expression somber. “I don’t know. I ran off before I asked all the questions I should have. If she’d even answer. At that moment, I’d just wanted to talk to you.”
She slid her hands into her back pockets. We stood side by side, wind catching our hair, two children of this land connected by a mother we feared.
We were connected by more than that, I knew. We had a common struggle, an awareness that we didn’t fit into patterns our families and even our magic-wielding friends understood.
We’d begun our wary relationship with a battle that hadn’t ceased after we’d halted the physical fight. We’d been circling each other ever since, Gabrielle doing one crazy thing after another, me trying to stop her and tame her.
The revelation that I had a sister had shaken me, and I was still trying to deal with it. The fact that our mother had a sister scared me to death.
“What does Chandra want?” I asked, h
ugging my chest. “To drag us back Beneath?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been thinking about this.” Gabrielle watched a hawk leave a stunted juniper and soar across the land. “Chandra dragged me out of the pool when the dragon slayer tried to drown me. She could have killed me when I was unconscious, but she made sure I was all right instead. She told me things about myself that no one else has. I liked her.” Gabrielle trailed off, her mouth turning down.
“Our mother claimed she wanted to help us too.”
“But this was different—hard to explain. Chandra doesn’t have the brilliant beauty our mother does, like a diamond that glitters but also cuts.” When Gabrielle looked at me again, her brown eyes held more seriousness than I’d ever seen in them. “But like you said, one thing at a time. First, we have to stop this Earth entity. It will go after Grandmother and our dragons—everyone trying to protect the abominations. That’s us, by the way. Plus all these people who’ve come to the Crossroads to hide. They aren’t safe here, no matter what they think.”
“I know,” I said glumly. “I don’t know why they believe they are.”
“You have a rep.” Gabrielle’s grin flashed. “You and Mick. When the shit hits the fan, the weak seek the strong. Everyone knows you kick magical ass and that Mick is right there beside you. Kind of like Colby and me now.”
More worry stirred. “Colby? Are you still stringing him along?”
“Don’t make fun. We have a thing.” Gabrielle deflated. “At least, I think we have a thing. I hope we do. I really like him, Janet.”
“What about Drake?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “I don’t know about anything right now.”
“Let’s stick to kicking ass,” I suggested. “Neither of us is very good at relationships.”
Her smile returned. “Yeah, one day when it was bored, the mirror told me all about you and Mick and your rocky start.”
I flushed, my face hot. The mirror had pried my entire history out of my head and watched, the nosy shit.
Gabrielle gave me her amused look but with understanding in her eyes. “We need to learn how to defeat the Earth entity,” she said, back to the matter at hand. “Best way to learn? Ask it.”
“Oh, sure. How do you propose to do that?”
“It likes to speak through people. Vessels, it calls them. The best candidate to be that vessel right now is sitting in your basement.” Gabrielle swung to face the hotel and held out her hand to me. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Janet
The basement was dry and warm after the cool wind outside. Mick’s blue eyes darkened when he saw me, and the ring I always wore, turquoise and onyx, tingled with his magic.
The dragon slayer lay against the wall in his prison, still bound by the dark threads of Drake’s spell. I saw Mick’s magic woven into the binding as well, plus a glimmer of Titus’s.
Gabrielle crouched next to the slayer, grasped his sandy brown hair, and yanked his head up. “Wakey, wakey!”
The dragon slayer swam to consciousness. He glanced at Gabrielle, his eyes widening, but he wasn’t cowed.
“Killing me won’t help you,” he said in a cracked voice.
“I have no intention of killing you,” Gabrielle answered. “You told Colby you were a vessel. So be one.”
The dragon slayer gave her a faint smile. “It doesn’t work that way. He chooses. Not me. Or maybe she chooses. It doesn’t have a gender.”
“Lucky it,” I said. “Can you call it?”
“I just said—it chooses—ow!”
Gabrielle had slapped the back of his head. “Tell it we need to talk. Now.”
“Please,” Mick rumbled at the slayer. “I’ll even say pretty please if it helps.”
“Why do you want to?” the slayer asked in true curiosity. “It will kill all of you.”
Gabrielle poked at the dark threads the dragons had wrought. “Not when you’re bound like this. When the entity showed up for a chat in Vegas, I got the idea it couldn’t do much more than talk through another’s lips.”
The dragon slayer looked smug. “You’re wrong. You don’t understand what it can do. I will be happy to see you die.”
“You’ll likely die along with us,” Mick pointed out.
“Yep,” Gabrielle said. “It said it doesn’t always discriminate about which magical beings it kills.”
“True,” the slayer said. “But I can be happy watching you go along with me.”
Gabrielle turned to me, incredulity in her eyes. “This guy’s nuts. I mean totally. Trust me, I know about crazy.”
“I know, but we need his information.” I leaned down and looked the dragon slayer in the face. “So get in touch with your inner entity and let us worry about the consequences.”
“I can’t,” the slayer said. “Not when I’m dragon-bound.”
“I’ll take care of that.” Gabrielle wrapped her arms around him.
I started forward to stop her but after a second I realized she wasn’t trying to break the binding. White magic snaked out of her fingers into the slayer’s body as she infused him with Beneath magic.
“Oh, Earth entity,” she sang. “Remember me? Gabrielle? Kicking your ass with my demons on the roof? You know I’m all about the Beneath magic. So come find me.”
The dragon slayer’s body jerked, Gabrielle holding him tightly. The slayer sucked in a breath then gave an anguished cry and banged his head against the wall.
Gabrielle sprang up as the dragon slayer began to thrash violently. His feet drummed the floor, and he clenched his fists until his fingernails cut into his flesh.
The binding spell didn’t give. The shimmering black threads squeezed him all the more as whatever was inside the dragon slayer tried to fight them off. Bindings worked like that, growing stronger the more the bound struggled against them.
Strands of the threads reached from the slayer to Mick, silver in the darkness—the magic Mick had used to contribute to the spell.
My eyes widened when I saw those strands spark. Gabrielle noticed at the same time, and the two of us sprang at Mick to shove him away from the slayer. Gabrielle swiped a crackle of Beneath magic to sever the threads between the two men.
But too late. As the sparks died, Mick jerked away from me and rose to his full height.
“So I’m here,” Mick’s deep voice boomed through the space. “Talk fast, sweetheart. I’m busy getting ready to destroy you and all your kind.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Janet
Mick stood over us, his eyes dragon black, but with an un-Mick-like arrogance.
I felt sick. Once upon a time, a witch had enslaved Mick and forced him to try to kill me. I remembered my heartbreak when I’d seen the man I loved become someone else, turn on me, do his best to destroy me.
This situation was different—the witch had brought out the cold dragon part of Mick, the magical beast of old who’d cared for nothing but its own power. This time, only Mick’s voice changed, his lips moving but his eyes holding Mick’s rage.
“Yes, this one is strong,” the entity said. “Better than the other. Dragons were the best of my creations.”
The dragon slayer started to laugh. “Be careful what you wish for,” he told us.
Gabrielle kicked him. The dragon slayer made an oof noise but didn’t cease his quiet laughter.
“You wanted to speak to me.” Mick spread his hands in a gesture so like his own it twisted pain through me. “You probably want to ask how you kill me, or banish me, or otherwise rid the world of me. The answer is, you don’t. I am the Earth. Kill me and all else vanishes.”
Fury danced my Beneath magic awake inside me. I wanted to slice it into Mick and burn the entity out, though I knew logically that would only kill Mick.
“I don’t believe you,” Gabrielle said before I could answer. “The Earth existed before you did. It made you.”
“Is that what that disgusting coyote god told you? Doesn’t matter. I’
m so entwined in the Earth, so much a part of it, that you’ll never separate us.”
Gabrielle folded her arms. “If that’s true, why aren’t you here all the time? You said you disappear for centuries at a stretch and can’t believe what happens to the world in the meantime. And why are Beneath magic creatures still around? Why didn’t they go extinct when you last manifested and cleansed everything? Skinwalkers are everywhere these days. So are the old gods. Seems like your apocalypses aren’t working.”
Don’t taunt the evil being, Gabrielle, I wanted to say. But I didn’t trust myself to speak—I was busy keeping my Beneath magic in check.
Mick flexed and balled his hands, as though his body struggled to expel its intruder. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and the dragon tatts on his arms began to sluggishly swirl.
“I oversleep,” the entity said. “Evil spawns so rapidly I can’t keep up with it. Look at you. And you.” Mick’s eyes swiveled from Gabrielle to me. “A goddess nearly destroyed you, and still you didn’t kill her. What were you thinking?”
I answered, my jaw tight. “We were thinking she couldn’t get out of her realm and do any more harm. She’s sealed off from this world. Why are you so worried about her?”
“Oh, good point,” Gabrielle said. “You seem to be fixated on Beneath goddesses.”
“Please. You are nothing to me. The Earth will crush you.” He pinned Mick’s dark gaze on me. “It is already crushing you, half-Beneath, half-Earth creature, inside your own body. You know this.”
Gabrielle cut in. “But you can’t wait to mess with me. You’ve been after me since day one. Why?” She took a step closer to him. “Why do I scare you so much?”
Did I detect a flicker of unease? Mick’s eyes didn’t waver as he returned his focus to her.
“You will be dead, Abomination.”
“Why am I not I already? You’ve attacked me a couple times now, and here I am.” Gabrielle spread her arms.
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