Nightwalker

by Allyson James

  At the time, he’d been a storyteller with shaman abilities—that was before he’d found out he was a Changer.

  Jamison was also an artist, a sculptor. One day he’d been working on carving a mountain lion out of a hunk of sandstone, when he’d became a mountain lion himself—a real one. Scared the shit out of him.

  Terrified he’d hurt Naomi and her daughter, with whom he’d been living at the time, he’d taken off to Mexico to find a group of Changers he’d heard about. They’d taught him about being a Changer—after torturing him a while, for his own good, they’d said—and he’d finally escaped them and returned home.

  Jamison had an artist’s studio behind the house he shared with Naomi and Julie, Naomi now his wife. Naomi owned and ran the plant nursery that fronted the highway, and their house lay behind that.

  When I pulled into the nursery’s lot, Naomi stood next to a flatbed trailer full of trees in big wooden planters and talked animatedly with one of the guys who worked for her. I waved but didn’t stop, going on through to the private drive, where I parked and went in search of Jamison.

  From the sounds coming from the hogan-like shed behind the house, he was in there sculpting. I debated disturbing him—the creative fire isn’t something that can be turned on and off like a faucet. Jamison’s creative work was worth giving him his solitude.

  Julie came out of the house, a big smile on her face. “Hello, Janet.” Her hands made the sign as she spoke.

  “What’s Jamison working on?” I asked, turning to hang my helmet on my bike. Then I felt stupid. Sometimes I forgot that, in spite of medical technology, Julie couldn’t hear well enough to make out my words, especially at this distance, without reading my lips. I had to be looking at her to talk.

  “He’s working on a piece of basalt,” Julie said before I could repeat the question. “He’s excited about it.”

  Apparently, she had been able to figure out what I was saying. Good. She wouldn’t have to gently remind me this time. “Do you think he’ll mind if I interrupt? It’s kind of important.” I used sign language with the last words, showing her how much I’d learned.

  Julie laughed, her face lighting up. “It’s all right, Janet. You don’t have to sign. I can hear you. Perfectly, in fact.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  My mouth dropped open in shock. Julie kept looking at me, her smile telling me she enjoyed seeing me jerked out of my presumptions.

  Then the enormity of her announcement connected in my brain. Julie can hear.

  I ran at her in joy, lifted her off her feet, swung her around, and kissed her cheek as I set her down. I was not usually one for impromptu demonstrations of affection, or even touching anyone without their permission, but this was a special occasion.

  “What happened?” I asked excitedly. “Did you have surgery? Is this a new kind of implant? What?”

  “Nothing like that.” Julie’s speech still slurred a little—she’d learned to say the words when she couldn’t hear the click and stop of every consonant. “Jamison did a spell.”

  “Jamison . . .” I stopped in a different kind of shock. “Did a spell . . .”

  My elation blew away on a cold wind, the heat of the summer day gone.

  There was no way that Jamison, as much as I cared for him, could have performed a spell of that magnitude. Changing a person in a profound way—giving the blind sight, the deaf hearing, or making a paralyzed person walk again—was complicated magic that took intense power, experience, and skill. I couldn’t have done it, and neither could Mick. The ununculous, Emmett Smith, might be able to—might—and only if he had help.

  Jamison Kee, artist and storyteller, didn’t possess this kind of power. Jamison’s shaman abilities had been enhanced when the Changer in him had surfaced, but they were still nowhere near enough for a spell of this level.

  Julie nodded happily, oblivious to my growing horror. “He did it the day after the séance. He asked me and Mom not to tell anyone right away, and then to say it had been a medical procedure, but you can know. You’re practically family.”

  Oh gods, Jamison, what have you done?

  I turned away from Julie, who started to look puzzled. “Janet? What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy.”

  I was. Or would have been. As it was, fear overrode any kind of gladness for Julie. I didn’t answer her as I headed at a run for Jamison’s studio.

  *** *** ***

  Jamison Kee, a tall, nicely muscled Diné with a mesmerizing voice, wore only a T-shirt and shorts as he worked with hammer and chisel in the summer heat. The shirt was sweat-soaked and stuck to his finely honed back, and the shorts bared legs of power and light chocolate-colored skin. His long hair hung in a tight braid down his back, and he wore goggles to protect his eyes.

  He tapped the chisel in careful strokes into the black rock on the sculpting stand, not looking up when I ran into the hogan. The sculpture was in early stages, but a feathered wing already emerged from the basalt, and I could tell that it and the rest of the bird would be beautiful.

  “Jamison,” I said.

  The chisel slipped, and Jamison swung around. The goggles hid his eyes, and his face was flushed from the heat.

  The quiet-spoken, good-hearted Jamison I knew growled, “Son of a bitch, Janet. I’m trying to work.”

  “Where is it?” I demanded.

  “Where is what?”

  I slammed the door behind me. “You know what I’m talking about. There’s no way you are magical enough to do what you did with Julie. Are you crazy? Or just stupid?”

  His mouth firmed, Jamison displeased, not ashamed. “I only did the one spell.”

  “Who was the person who told me that when you deal with forces of magic, the first thing you have to learn is control? Total control.” I was speaking the Diné language, angry. Gods, I sounded like my grandmother. “We have to resist the temptation to play god, and first be reasonable and thoughtful. Who told me that? Oh. I remember now. You!”

  Jamison dropped his tools and ripped the goggles from his face. “I told you. I did the one spell. One. The most important one.”

  “Shit, Jamison. How long have you had the artifact?”

  He didn’t even try to deny it. “A week, I think. Yes, I got it a week ago.”

  “Where did you get it? From Laura DiAngelo? Someone else?”

  “Laura brought it to me. She said she didn’t trust anyone but me.”

  Laura. A week ago. She must have managed to get away across the desert from Chaco Canyon after all, and she’d sought out Jamison. And then went where?

  “How did she even know you?” I broke off. “Oh, wait . . .” Jamison Kee, historian and storyteller, familiar with legends from the Four Corners area and beyond, would be a fantastic resource to an antiquities dealer who needed to know the location and value of a certain historic pot.

  “I told Ansel where it was,” he said, confirming my guess. “Ansel and Laura brought me drawings Richard Young had given her of the pot he was looking for. I told Ansel I’d seen a pot like it in Flagstaff. I swear to you, I had no idea what it was, or how powerful it was, until Laura brought it to me for safekeeping.”

  “No, because if you’d known how dangerous it was, you would have told me or Mick at once, so we could rush up to Flag and destroy it. Right?”

  “What do you mean destroy it?” Jamison’s flush drained away. “You can’t destroy it. It’s our heritage.”

  “Yes, I can. It’s fucking dangerous.”

  “One spell—I told you, that’s all I did. I promised myself I’d never touch it again after that.”

  “Sure. That’s how it starts.”

  Jamison balled his strong, sculptor’s hands, dusted with black grime. “Show some faith in me, Janet. I’ve been a practicing shaman since I was in junior high. I know all about talismans and temptation. But you can’t blame me for what I did. If something like this came into your possession, the first thing you’d do would be to make life better for someone you
love. You know you would.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “What is the point then? What’s the point of having all this magic if we can’t heal Julie with it? You think I can be handed something with that much power and say, Sorry, Julie, you’ll have to go the rest of your life not being able to hear, because Janet will be pissed off if I help you?”

  He was breathing hard, sweating from the heat outside and the closeness in here. His dark eyes held a wildness I’d never seen in him before, and on top of the wildness, guilt and defiance.

  There was no way Jamison could best me in a magical fight. I could slash him down with Beneath magic if I dared to, take the pot, and walk away.

  Jamison knew that too. His defiance grew, and I saw him think about the fact that with the artifact, maybe he could best me.

  I reached for no magics, because Jamison was talented enough to sense that. “This has nothing to do with Julie,” I said. “Some very bad people are after this vessel. For one, a mage who’s vying to be the most powerful in the world and doesn’t have any scruples about how he gets that power. For another, dragons who will stop being polite when they get impatient, and simply take what they want. For a third, a Nightwalker—not Ansel, but one who’s struck down and killed a slayer, a human being. That’s only the beginning. When the rest of the powerful magical beings of the world figure out you have the pot, they’ll come down here for it, and they won’t care who they have to kill to get at it. You. Naomi. Julie.”

  “What about you?” Jamison asked me, his voice harsh. “You’re one of the powerfully magical. How do I know you haven’t come to take it for yourself?”

  “You don’t. But who has a better chance of surviving a fight over it? You, or me?”

  “If I have the pot, I can survive anything.”

  My friend Jamison had the best heart of anyone I knew. The man I faced had violent insanity in his eyes. He’d touched the power; he’d learned what it was like to have intense magic surging through every part of him, had felt the joy of making something wonderful happen with it.

  “Remember when you first found me?” I asked. “I was sitting on a rock on the edge of Canyon de Chelly, with lightning striking around me. I was so scared, and at the same time, so excited that I had this uncontrollable magic in my body. Remember what you said to me? You said—The magic is not you. You are you, and the magic is part of your whole. So now I’m telling you, Jamison—this magic isn’t you.”

  “I said a lot of dumb-ass things when I was younger. I’m not letting you take the pot away and risk that Julie will go back to being deaf. Do you think I can do that to her?”

  He pulled off his T-shirt as he spoke. When I saw his skin, my eyes widened. Jamison’s flesh was scored with hundreds of little cuts, now scabbed over, crisscrossing his chest, abdomen, sides, and I assumed his back as well.

  “Shit, what happened to you?”

  “When I did the spell, dust from the pot flew up and started cutting me all over. Hurt like hell. But I kept going, and I got through it. And Julie is cured.”

  “Gods, Jamison, you didn’t stop? What if the magic had done something to Julie? You never touch an unfamiliar magical device without knowing exactly what it wants as payback. You should have called me and asked me before you did this.”

  “No, because you would have tried to talk me out of it, like you’re doing now. A thousand shallow cuts won’t kill me. I’m a Changer. I heal quickly. I’m the perfect person to use it.”

  “The pot made you think that—”

  Jamison snarled. “What the hell do you know about it? You didn’t know anything about this vessel until other people started looking for it. I’m protecting it. I deserve a little reward for that, and you can’t tell me that Julie being able to hear isn’t a giant reward.”

  “Jamison, stop it—”

  “Is that your argument? Stop it, because Janet knows about everything?” He struck his chest with his gathered fingers. “You don’t understand about this, or about ordinary people. I was wrong about the magic not being who you are. You glow with magic, and if it left you, you’d die. I’m made of magic. This what I am.”

  As he said the last, his body distorted, his hands becoming paws, his face elongating into a mountain lion’s muzzle. His eyes turned dark yellow tinged with red, and the rest of his clothes fell from his body.

  I had an instant to see his ears go back flat and his mouth open in a fang-bearing snarl before he leapt at me, several hundred pounds of enraged wildcat ready to kill.

  I scrambled away from him, but Jamison’s leap caught my side, and we went down to the floor, him on top of me. I fought, but my human strength was nothing to his mountain lion’s.

  His grappling claws bit deep, shredding my shirt and drawing blood. His fangs snapped closed an inch from my skin. I held him off, but I wouldn’t be able to for long. Mountain lions are tough, and Changers are larger than natural wildcats. He was strong, and he was furious.

  As we thrashed around the floor, Jamison’s huge back caught his sculpting stand. The thing teetered, and the chunk of black basalt he’d been working on came down.

  I rolled desperately, managing to separate myself from Jamison. The basalt piece hit the floor between the two of us. The intricate wing Jamison had almost finished broke off, shattering into several pieces.

  I was sure the loss of his artwork would shake Jamison back to himself, but the red eyes that turned to me didn’t give a shit about art. The beast wanted me dead.

  I scrambled to my feet, trying to get to the door, but Jamison was on me again. Claws raked my back as I went down for the second time.

  My Beneath magic wanted to rampage. I could stop Jamison, as I’d stopped the slayer from shooting me and Ansel, but I might kill Jamison. I’d had to use all my willpower to keep the burst of Beneath magic tiny when I’d blown up the crossbow bolt. I hadn’t been angry then, or fighting for my life, just annoyed at a human.

  If I hit Jamison with the magic, I’d kill him. I’d try not to, but I couldn’t guarantee it. I had no storm with which to stabilize myself—the magic would be raw and pure, like Gabrielle’s.

  I closed my eyes, trying to tamp down the white ball that rose inside me into something less than lethal. I needed to knock out Jamison, nothing more.

  But the evil goddess buried within me, the she-witch I battled every day, surged up in fury, wanting to kill. The same wildness in this hogan that was calling to Jamison started calling to me. The Beneath magic rose into incandescence, the power of it searing my hands.

  “Jamison!” Naomi’s voice rang through the slammed-open door, the heat of the desert sweeping in with her.

  I opened my eyes. The sudden sunlight hurt my sensitive retinas, but I saw Naomi in the doorway, sighting down the tranquilizer rifle in her hands. Julie peered around her, her eyes wide with terror.

  “Jamison,” Naomi said again.

  I fought down my Beneath magic, but the stuff glowed and pulsed, building up into a wild ball of lightning in my hands. It wanted me to slam the magic into Jamison, to watch him burn and writhe like Pericles had, except that Jamison wouldn’t be able to shrug it off.

  “Naomi!” I screamed. “Shoot him!”

  The tranquilizer gun popped. The dart hit the mountain lion right between his shoulder blades, missing my hand by an inch.

  Jamison gave one final snarl of rage, then his eyes clouded over, and he collapsed, unconscious, right on top of me.

  I pushed at him, jiggling on my elbows and hips, trying to squirm out from under several hundred pounds of limp mountain lion. Jamison heaved a little sigh in his sleep. His wildcat receded, and I had Jamison, my best friend, stark naked on top of me, with his wife and stepdaughter standing over us.

  Naomi leaned the tranq rifle against the wall, reached down, and rolled Jamison off me with gentle compassion. I sat up, panting, shoving my hair from my face. My hands came away covered in blood.

  Jamison, one of the most modest men I
knew, lay sprawled on his back, his privates out for everyone to see. Julie, the sensible girl, snatched up one of the tarps he used to keep his work covered, and draped it over him.

  Naomi didn’t try to help me up. She let me sit on the floor, breathing hard, as I fought my magic back down again.

  “Janet,” Naomi said, her eyes soft. “Thank you.”

  “For what? Enraging the nicest guy in the world so he’d turn into a mountain lion and attack me?”

  “For not killing him. I know you could have. You might have had no choice.”

  I shuddered, swallowing bile as I forced the white magic buzzing in my body to go away. It trickled off slowly, angrily. “Yeah, well, it came close.”

  Naomi smoothed Jamison’s hair back from his face, her love for him plain to see.

  Julie picked up the sculpting stand and the basalt, grunting a little as she lifted the stone back into place. She picked up the pieces of the broken bird’s wing and gazed at them mournfully. “He was making this for me.”

  “Julie, I’m so sorry.” I scrubbed my face, finding more blood. “Tell me what happened,” I said to Naomi. “Were you here when Laura brought the pot?”

  “She showed up in the middle of the night,” Naomi said. “Jamison went down to meet her, but I followed him. I didn’t know who she was—Jamison hadn’t met her face-to-face before—but she was terrified. She gave him this thing, wrapped up in a leather bag, telling him to keep it secret. Then she was gone.”

  “That’s it? You didn’t ask any questions?”

  “She didn’t give us a chance. She said she couldn’t think of anyone else she trusted besides Jamison, and that we were to tell no one, including you. She said it was dangerous for anyone to know about it—especially you. Jamison promised, and I promised too. I’m sorry.”

  Explained why Naomi had shown up at the séance. She’d wanted to know whether Laura was truly dead, or at least why her sister thought so. Julie had seemed oblivious to everything at the séance, which meant she hadn’t known about Laura and the pot until Jamison performed the spell the next day. Naomi should have said something about Laura to me then, but if she’d thought she was helping Jamison, I understood—reluctantly—why she’d kept silent. I didn’t agree with her, but I knew that with Naomi, Jamison and Julie always came first.