Nightwalker

by Allyson James

  “Since when?” I snapped.

  “Let me finish. In Drake’s worldview, you should have given him the Nightwalker without argument. Drake would have found out what Ansel knew, then fried him. End of Nightwalker problem. You defended Ansel, an evil being, and you’re letting him live in your basement. Plus, you defied Drake, and he doesn’t like that.”

  “Too bad.”

  “It is too bad.” Colby looked more serious than I’d seen him look in a long time. “Drake’s hot to arrest you and take you prisoner, like he did me, for violating dragon law. Mickey would try to defend you—you being his mate—but Drake would take it to court.”

  “You mean up before the dragon council? But I’m not a dragon.”

  “No, but you’re a dragon’s mate. They can’t kill you without going through Mick—and trust me, they don’t want to go through Mickey—but you’d do time in the dragon compound. But hey, it wouldn’t be so bad. We’d be inmates.”

  I growled under my breath. How easy my life had been when I hadn’t believed in dragons. Now I was beleaguered by them.

  Dragons were the most arrogant creatures in the universe. They didn’t trust me, and they’d assigned Mick, long ago, to watch me, to kill me if I ever got out of line.

  Mick had told them what they could do with themselves, but Drake and his master, Bancroft, still thought I needed that restriction. And I couldn’t blame them. I was pretty dangerous, after all. But that didn’t mean I’d sit still and obey their rules.

  I dumped the rest of the shards I’d gathered to the table and slammed the bottle of glue down in front of Colby. “Start repairing,” I said. “I’m going to talk to Drake.”

  Colby grabbed my arm. “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? Drake will arrest you. That means bind you, not have a chat over an interrogation table.”

  “He can try.”

  Colby studied me, concern in his brown eyes, then he released me, letting his grin return. “In that case, can I watch? Please?”

  I tapped the glue bottle. “Glue now. Watch later.”

  “Aw, you’re no fun.”

  I patted Colby on the shoulder, grateful to him even if he was a shit, and marched upstairs.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Drake had opened the bottom of a cabinet and was on his knees pulling out the contents—flattened boxes, paper, little foam popcorns, and shredded paper. The popcorns and paper had scattered across the tile floor, but I don’t think Drake cared about being neat with Laura’s things.

  He was fully dressed in a black suit, his black leather duster draped over the counter. He and Colby must not have flown here—they wouldn’t have taken the time to dress again. Drake had probably insisted on bringing the limo.

  The store’s lights were on, Drake unconcerned if anyone saw him. I remembered how, during my stay in the dragon compound, the police had been suspiciously deferential to Bancroft and Drake, instead of arresting them for kidnapping me. If the Santa Fe cops caught Drake turning over an antiques store, they’d probably apologize for interrupting him and leave him to it.

  I cleared my throat.

  Drake’s head whipped around, but he only lost his composure for a second. Then he was rising to his feet, smooth as butter, dark threads of a binding spell streaking for me before I could so much as say hello.

  I countered the spell with my very last spark of storm magic, which then went out. The binding spell regrouped and came at me again.

  I quickly pressed a bubble of Beneath magic out around me—a trick I’d learned from Gabrielle. The binding spell hit it and bounced back toward Drake. He snapped off the spell with a flick of his fingers, the black threads disappearing.

  “What’s so special about the pot?” I asked him. “And why couldn’t you explain before you burned down my saloon?”

  Drake lowered his hand, as cool as ever. Did he look ashamed for vandalizing my hotel, terrifying my guests, burning off a piece of my hair, and destroying my magic mirror? Not in the slightest. “Council orders,” he said. “Those same council orders forbid me to tell you any more than you already know.”

  I sent him a smile, not a nice one. “Come on, Drake. I thought we were friends.”

  His look told me he wondered where I’d gotten that idea. “Council orders are that I bring you in for harboring a Nightwalker. Nightwalkers are deadly, Ms. Begay. It doesn’t matter if some of them pretend to reform. As soon as they let down their guard, they go into a blood frenzy and become killing machines. You know that.”

  I did know that. I’d had my share of encounters with blood-frenzied Nightwalkers, up to and including Ansel last night.

  “I agree,” I said. “And if Ansel gets out of control, both Mick and I know it’s our duty to kill him. But Ansel is trying. Being Nightwalker isn’t his fault. He was turned against his will.”

  “That makes no difference.” Drake’s eyes were dark like a starless night. “Nightwalkers lose their humanity the instant they are turned. That’s why there’s nothing left but blood and sinew when they die. The human being they once were is gone.”

  “Since when do you love humans so much?”

  “I don’t. But I also don’t like to see humans slaughtered like animals. As I have. Believe me, it’s a terrible, terrible thing.”

  The quiet horror in his expression wasn’t feigned. Drake was a tight-ass, but he wasn’t completely cold.

  “Tell the dragon council that I’m protecting Ansel,” I said, “whether they like it or not. That means I’m willing to take full responsibility for him. If he screws up, I kill him. Even if I can’t, you know Mick will. The dragon council will have to live with it.”

  “My orders are to bring you in,” Drake said, stubborn. “And find the pot and take it out of the world.”

  “What’s so special about it? It has magical abilities—I get that—but what does it do? Enhance magic? Protect the mage? Sing sea chanteys while you’re working tough spells?”

  I watched his reaction as I spoke, and I realized—Drake didn’t know. He’d only been told the pot was dangerous and had to be found.

  I knew that, like Nash, Drake was a straight-up guy. He liked rules and regulations, believing they’d been put in place for a reason, and strove to abide by them. If Drake said he wanted to protect the world from the pot, he meant it.

  However, I didn’t trust the dragon council he worked for an inch. I’d seen what they could do—what they thought they were entitled to do. I didn’t want a vessel filled with magic anywhere near Bancroft, leader of the dragon compound in Santa Fe, or even Colby, as warmhearted as he could be.

  Dragons might decide that the pot was too dangerous for humans to use but not for dragons. Dragons could be perfectly trusted to know what was best, their rationalization would go. They loved power, and they didn’t mind using people, gods, supernatural beings, and even other dragons to get more of it.

  “I don’t know where the real pot is,” I said.

  “Your Nightwalker does.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s as baffled as I am by all this.”

  Drake shook his head. “He stole the woman.”

  “You mean Laura?” I went through what little I knew in my head. “I looked over her campsite. I saw the aura of Nightwalker there, but also of dragon. That dragon was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Not me,” Drake said, giving me a little shake of his head. “Colby.”

  I paused for one surprised heartbeat, then turned around and yelled down the stairs, “Colby! Get up here!”

  Colby barreled up so fast that I knew he’d been listening on the stairs.

  “I heard,” Colby said as I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought. “It wasn’t my fault.” He pulled at imaginary threads on his chest. “Binding spell, remember? I have to do what the dragon shits order me to do.”

  “I know, but you couldn’t have told me?”

  “What part of binding spell don’t you understand? They tell me to go to the campground and fly off with
a cute human blond woman—and by the way, don’t tell anyone, especially not Janet Begay and her boyfriend Mick—and I have to do it. To the letter. Now that you know, my lips are loosened. But now that you know, there’s nothing left to tell.”

  “What about Ansel? Was he there?”

  “When I got to the campsite? No. When I grabbed Laura, yes. He came out of nowhere. Blood frenzied, strong as . . . well, as strong as a Nightwalker in a blood frenzy. I fought him hard—that boy is damn fast. I tried to fry him, squash him, grab him, drop him. Nothing. He moved like lightning. I finally chased him off, but by that time, Laura was gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  Colby shrugged, looking unhappy. “Just gone. She wasn’t stupid enough to sit around waiting to see who won the fight over her. She ran off into the night, and it was hellacious dark out there. I flew around looking for her, but nothing. By sunup, I had to leave before anyone saw me as a dragon, but I never found her.” He shot a look at Drake. “Don’t think that didn’t get me into trouble.”

  “The Nightwalker must have taken her,” Drake said. “It’s the only explanation. She ran while Colby and Ansel fought, then Ansel caught up to her and spirited her somewhere. There’s nowhere to go out there.”

  That was true. The Chaco Culture monument was surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Beautiful nothing, but miles and miles of open country. A human woman, especially one unused to the open desert, was unlikely to survive a hike across that country, not in the dark, and not in daylight when summer temperatures rose into triple digits.

  Therefore, either Laura was dead in the desert, and Heather’s séance really had conjured her spirit, or Ansel had found her and taken her to safety.

  Ansel had said he remembered nothing until he’d awakened alone, and I believed him. The blood frenzy erased whatever part of him was Ansel the stamp collector, turning him into an evil fiend. That didn’t mean, though, that Ansel hadn’t hidden Laura somewhere safe and simply couldn’t remember where.

  “Damn it,” I said softly.

  Mr. Young had accused Laura of switching the pot on him. If he was right, that meant that the one person who knew where the real vessel lay was Laura. And if Colby and Drake were right, the one person who knew where Laura was, was Ansel.

  If my Nightwalker didn’t start talking to me, I’d slay him myself.

  I needed to go home, and I needed to do it quickly, or I’d have to wait another day for Ansel to wake up. Riding back with Mick on his motorcycle would take too long, even as swiftly as Mick drove. We wouldn’t reach home much before dawn.

  Albuquerque, an hour from here, had an airport, but any flight that could put me in the middle-of-nowhere Arizona would have to go through Phoenix or Denver, with a connection that would get me only as far as Flagstaff. There’d be another hour or so drive after that to Magellan, and the last flights to Phoenix and Denver had probably already left Albuquerque anyway. A passenger train from Albuquerque heading west did stop at Winslow, only thirty or so miles from Magellan, but only once a day. I’d likely already missed it, and a train might not get me to Winslow any faster than riding with Mick down the freeway.

  “Move,” someone said.

  I knew that voice. Small but stentorian. My grandmother, Ruby Begay, barged through the front door of the shop to plant herself in front of a startled Drake.

  My grandmother, as usual, wore long skirts and a dark blouse. Most Diné women these days donned traditional garb only when dressing up for an event, but Grandmother lived in her traditional clothes and didn’t care who thought her old-fashioned. I saw that she’d taken the time to put on her turquoise and silver rings and a necklace as well. Anyone who came across her would be impressed, which was the point.

  “Firewalkers are nothing but trouble.” Grandmother leaned on her cane, turquoise-clad fingers gripping it tightly. She looked Drake over with her crow-dark eyes, the glitter in them of a creature who could be both wise and deadly.

  Behind my grandmother came Gabrielle and Mick. Drake looked pained. “I was trying not to alert the street to our presence,” he said.

  News to me. But I agreed with him that a bunch of people walking in the front door of a closed shop might attract attention.

  “It’s not here,” I said around everyone to Mick.

  Mick wasn’t listening. He pushed past Drake and Colby to me and caught me by the shoulders.

  Mick didn’t ask whether I was all right. He studied me with his dark blue eyes, looking deep down inside, examining me for hurt, relaxing when he found none. He brushed his hand over the back of my head where I’d hit the table, and tingling healing magic itched through my scalp. The lingering pain went away, blessed relief.

  “How’d you know I was still here?” I asked him.

  “I enhanced the GPS chip on your phone with a little magic.” Mick traced a circle on the base of my neck with his thumb. “When the signal went dead, I came to its last known location.”

  The look in his eyes told me that when the signal had gone, his fears for me had kicked in.

  I tried to lighten the moment. “Don’t tell me my grandmother rode with you on the back of your motorcycle.”

  Mick gave me the smallest of grins. “She bullied a taxi driver into following me.”

  I imagined the taxi had shot away once they’d reached the store, the poor driver happy to escape.

  Gabrielle had darted around us and down to the basement, and now she emerged with the pot, pasted back together, more or less, by Colby.

  “I’ll take that,” I said. I wanted to wave it under Ansel’s nose and demand to be told what he’d done with the real one.

  “No, I will,” Grandmother said.

  “It comes with me,” Drake said.

  “No.” Mick gave Drake a quiet look across the room, his eyes black, and Drake snapped his mouth shut.

  “Why is everyone so hot to have it?” Colby asked. “It’s not the real one.”

  “To keep others from using it to dupe more victims,” Drake said.

  Mick kept looking at him. “That’s not why the dragons want it. You want it because you don’t want anyone else to know the real one is loose.”

  “The Firewalkers can’t ever have it,” Grandmother said.

  I broke in. “I want it so I can get answers out of people without having to explain what I’m looking for. The fake pot has one magical power that I’m going to use—getting people to talk about it.”

  “Which is why I instructed Gabrielle to take it,” Grandmother said. “I don’t want people talking about it.”

  “Mick and I can keep it safe,” I said.

  My grandmother humphed. She was master of the humph. “A fine job you’ve done so far. You’ve gotten your hotel ignited, your Nightwalker nearly killed, and you’ve lost the real pot.”

  I didn’t bother answering. Any argument that if I’d known what was going on in the first place, I could have prevented much of this, would run against the stone wall of her stubbornness.

  I took the pot out of Gabrielle’s hands, and to my surprise, she let me. She gave me a wink and said, “I’d rather have the real thing.”

  “Gabrielle,” Grandmother said sharply.

  “Big sis is right,” Gabrielle said. “This one’s harmless, and besides, if Janet uses it as a decoy, people can chase it around and not the real one.”

  No one in that room looked happy, except maybe Colby, who didn’t want to be involved in the problem at all.

  “What does the real one do, Grandmother?” I asked, resting the pot against my hip. “It’s magical, yes, but in what way?”

  “I don’t know.” Grandmother looked troubled. “I need to find out. That’s why I want it—so I can ask the shamans about it. Ones I trust.”

  Grandmother trusted about two people on the entire planet, and neither one was me. I set the pot on a counter, took Mick’s cell phone from his belt, turned on the photo function, and snapped a picture of the vessel. I turned the pot around and took pictu
res from all angles, including the bottom and the inside.

  I handed the phone back to Mick. “Mick will email these to you.”

  “I don’t like computers,” Grandmother said. “They suck every bit of common sense out of anyone who looks at them. Your father likes the laptop you gave him.” Her look told me she’d consider any lack of sense on his part from here on out to be my fault.

  “Mick will email them to Dad, then. Right now, I want to get my hands on Ansel.”

  “I will go with you,” Grandmother said. “I, too, want to talk to your Nightwalker.”

  I shifted in impatience. “Fine, but we have to go now.”

  “I’ll fly you, Janet,” Colby said. “Promise to hold you nice and snug.”

  I said no. I might, any other time, trust Colby not to drop me, but while he was under the binding spell to Drake, Drake might order Colby to use the three-hundred and more miles of empty desert to rid the dragons of a pesky Stormwalker.

  “We all go,” Drake said. “I too want a word with the Nightwalker, as you know.”

  “Stop!” I grabbed Mick’s cell phone again. “Let’s do this the easy way.”

  I punched numbers. Almost instantly, Cassandra answered in her crisp tones, but I heard worry in her voice.

  “It’s Janet. Would you go down and tell Ansel I want to talk to him?”

  Cassandra dropped the hotel-manager facade. “He’s not here, Janet.” The worry escalated, unusual for Cassandra. “He went just after dark. Yes, I tried to stop him, and no, I couldn’t. He threw off my binding spell like it was a cobweb, and he was gone. Where are you? I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ansel’s disappearance fomented another argument, which Mick ended. He’d stood quietly through most of our discussion, but now he took the pot firmly away from me.

  “Janet and I are returning to Magellan. Drake, tell the dragons to stop pursuing. Ruby, this is dangerous—too dangerous even for you. Let Janet and me handle it.”