Stormwalker

by Allyson James

  Nash walked away. Lopez gave me another scared glance and went after him. I heard Nash tell the guy at the desk outside that they needed to get into the old cell block.

  I paced while they talked, taking their time. The stench didn’t fade. At length, Nash came back to my cell, this time without Lopez. I held on to the bars, flakes of rust staining my skin.

  “We couldn’t get it open,” Nash said. “The door’s rusted shut.”

  “Put me somewhere else, then, somewhere with lots of light.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Your breathalyzer said I wasn’t. I’m not drunk, I’m not high, and I’m not kidding.” I gave up and leaned my forehead on the bars. “It doesn’t matter. It will just track me.”

  “Will you shut up about the damned skinwalker?”

  “Don’t you believe in the legends of your own lands?”

  “No.” Nash said it with a force.

  Never argue with an Unbeliever, my friend Jamison, a Navajo shaman, artist, and shape-shifter, had told me when I first arrived in Magellan. He’d said it with a wry smile that spoke of experience.

  “Fine,” I said. “Go away, then.”

  I closed my eyes. If Nash couldn’t do anything about the skinwalker, it would be up to me. I didn’t like tapping the full power of a storm, because it tended to leave me sick and immobile for days. What I’d done out there at the wreck had been very little, and the storm hadn’t been full strength.

  The kind of lightning I felt playing around outside now was lethal. Clouds from the west had collided with those from the south, swelling over the desert plateau to form one dense, thick entity. If I tapped this storm, it would be heady, exhilarating, and I’d dance in it with a fiery joy. I’d pay the price, but I’d breathe pure pleasure first.

  “No more noise,” Nash was saying.

  “Sweet dreams to you too.”

  Nash walked away without another word. He reached the end of the cell block and went out, the gate clanging behind him. The drunk in the first cell, who’d been whimpering to himself, wound down, and then everything got quiet.

  I lay back down on the mattress and clasped my hands loosely over my chest, my shirt already soaked with sweat. The skinwalker’s stench filled the cell, and I gagged on it.

  Trying to ignore the smell, I closed my eyes and reached for the storm.

  Power whipped through my fingers as I curled myself through the molecules of water and wind, the storm exciting and deadly, difficult to control.

  I opened my arms to embrace it. An ache started between my legs and throbbed through my belly like the best kind of sex. I arched back, the feeling welling, until a groan escaped my mouth. I became the storm, channeled it, and power crackled through my fingertips.

  Yes.

  The warm air from the desert spiraled to meet the ice-cold air of the storm front. Winds whirled together, hot and cold, and thunder boomed. No windows let me see the lightning, but I knew the bolts stalked through the dry grasses surrounding Flat Mesa and the county jail. I unclenched my hands and let the storm unleash its fury.

  Hail pounded the roof. Wind tore at the building, shrieking and howling, and the lights inside flickered. My body rippled, my hips rocking as the storm entered me. The ecstasy was raw. The danger was raw too, which wound me up even more.

  “Come on,” I whispered, drenched in sweat.

  I wished Mick were here, adding his fire magic to my power. He’d be lying next to me, laughing, hard with desire, unashamed of his reaction to me and my magic. Damn, I wanted him here. I missed him.

  I lifted my hands. White light spilled out of my palms and mouth as I reached for the lightning. Power met power, and I pulled the storm down on the building.

  An explosion split my ears, then the jail plunged into darkness. I heard Lopez in the outer room give a yip of panic. The wall beside me shuddered, and stones fell to the lot below.

  One more.

  Lightning poured up the dark corridor to my cell. I smiled in welcome.

  I heard a snarl and a screech, then screaming, as the skinwalker buckled before the storm. The stench flared up, unbearable, and he started bashing the wall double time.

  The building shook and shuddered. A hole opened in the cell’s outer wall, blasted by my power on this side, the skinwalker on the other. His stench rolled in, and I saw him, the same skinwalker who’d accosted me in the desert, eight feet tall and mad as hell.

  He came for me. I rose to meet him, power arcing around me. The storm I’d handled on the highway had been weak and miles away; this one was right on top of me. He now faced a Stormwalker at full strength. I laughed and let him have it.

  The skinwalker screamed as lightning struck his body. He convulsed with it, the forces of my magic and the one my mother had infused him with tearing him apart. His hot blood sprayed over me, his scream dying to a gurgle, and he slowly crumpled into a heap of stinking flesh.

  I directed a final bolt into him. The skinwalker burst into flames. He clawed at himself as he burned, collapsing into a pile of ash on the wet pavement of the parking lot. Rain and wind dispersed the ash, and his stench vanished, leaving behind the clean scent of dust and mud, rain and lightning.

  I let out my breath. My arms ached, my belly clenched, and I wanted to vomit. The storm tore away from me, the clouds continuing northward to dump much-needed rain on the desert.

  I heard Nash’s footsteps and voice, Nash assuming the building had been struck and coming to check on me. He found me huddled in the middle of the floor, making no attempt to crawl out through the hole and run for freedom. The power still gripped me, though the heart of it had receded, leaving me sick and weak. Besides, I figured that if I ran, Nash would just shoot me.

  Nash banged open the cell door, hauled me to my feet, half dragged me to the next cell, and tossed me inside. I fell onto the bunk, too exhausted even to swear at him. I wiped away my tired tears and found my fingertips covered with blood.

  Three

  “Janet Begay.”

  Nash Jones read from a folder he’d opened flat on the table. I sat across from him, leaning on the scarred surface, arms cradling my head. My eyes were closed, but I couldn’t quite shut out the daylight that poured through a high window and stabbed into my brain.

  I’d spent the rest of the night heaving out my guts into the waiting toilet in my cell. Now my head pounded, and my eyes were dry. The drunk had looked much better than I had when the on-duty deputy came to escort me to an interrogation room.

  “Born in Many Farms,” Nash droned. “Father a Navajo, mother—no record. Her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That was true. My mother didn’t have a name. The woman she’d possessed to seduce my poor, kindly father, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, must have had a name, but she’d refused to tell it. The name on my birth certificate said “Jane Doe.” I’d never lived that down. Among my people, not knowing your mother’s family or clan was a handicap. To my grandmother, it was anathema.

  “Graduated from high school in spite of frequent disciplinary problems,” Nash went on. “Attended NAU for a while.”

  “None of this is a crime,” I said. I’d enjoyed my time studying art at NAU, far enough from home to feel independent but in the shadow of mountains still sacred to the Navajo.

  Nash ignored me. “Arrested twice for being disorderly—once in a bar in Flagstaff, once in Albuquerque.” He flipped over a page. “Caught shoplifting, in Gallup this time.”

  “A bottle of Tylenol when I was ten.” I made myself lift my head and instantly regretted it. “For my grandmother. I thought that had been wiped off my record.” I knew now what I hadn’t known then, that when we’d been attacked on that dark road from Window Rock, my mother had instigated it. My grandmother and father had fought what I’d thought were gang boys who attacked us when we stopped on a lonely stretch of road. The demons had eventually run off, but my grandmother, though physically unhurt, had been in excruciating pain. Headache from
magic, I realized now. When we’d stopped for gas in Gallup, I’d swiped a small bottle of Tylenol from the convenience store inside. I’d been caught, of course, and the police called. My grandmother had been furious and made me give the store owner a cringing apology. He’d been touched by my tear-streaked contrition, far more than my grandmother had, and hadn’t pressed charges. My grandmother, on the other hand, had whacked me across the backside and never let me hear the end of it.

  “I talked to the tribal police this morning,” Nash said. “They know many things about you, not all of it official. You were a troublemaker, they said, even burned down a school building. I’m surprised you’re not in prison.”

  I laid my head down, willed my roiling stomach to calm. “The sins of a frustrated youth. I’m a grown-up now.”

  Nash closed the folder and looked at me with his cold gray eyes. A person might think that Nash Jones was as hard as he was because of the tragedy of his missing girlfriend. But Fremont, my font of county gossip, told me that Nash had never been a sweet man. Getting shipped out to Iraq hadn’t improved things, and he’d been in a building in Baghdad when several bombs went off inside it. The building had collapsed on him and his squad, and no one had made it out but him.

  This morning, he’d obviously slept, showered, shaved, and dressed in clean clothes, every crease in his uniform sharp. The perfect sheriff, was Nash. Like he’d studied it in a book, trying to pin down the character he was supposed to play. It was as though he knew what he was supposed to do and went through the motions, but some part of him just couldn’t make it work.

  I was still sweaty and gritty from the wreck and my subsequent night in jail. The faucet in my cell had given up only a trickle of water, barely enough to rinse my face. The water had been clean for washing out my mouth, but its metallic taste left me feeling like I’d gargled acid.

  Result: Nash was clean and rested, while I looked and felt like shit.

  “Who called in the accident?” I asked groggily.

  “What?”

  “My cell phone broke, and there was no one on the road. How did you know there’d been an accident? Or are you clairvoyant?”

  He gave me an Unbeliever scowl. “That drifter who calls himself Coyote. He saw.”

  I’d never met the guy. “Maybe he can corroborate my story.”

  “He was walking from Magellan and saw the flipped truck. He didn’t witness the accident itself.”

  Damn. “Why didn’t he stick around?”

  “He never does. But I’ll find him and question him.”

  I was certain he would. Nash Jones was a thorough guy.

  He reached into a shallow box next to him, took out the silver spell ball, and rolled it onto the folder. “What is this for?”

  I glanced at it. “It’s a ball bearing.”

  “No it isn’t. It’s too light. I asked you, what is it for? What’s it part of?”

  “Something off my motorcycle.”

  “Try again.”

  “All right. None of your business.”

  Nash turned the ball around and around in his fingers. “Is it part of a weapon? Or a way to transport drugs?”

  My head pounded. “You have drugs on the brain. All right, it’s part of a weapon—a mystical, magical weapon. Give it here, and I’ll show you.”

  The way I felt, I doubted I could ignite a match, but wouldn’t it be fun to activate the light spell and give him a scare? Of course, if I saw that much light right now, I might personally die, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone else.

  “I’ll just hang on to it.”

  As Nash started to set it down, a needlelike spark arced between his thumb and the ball. I held my breath, but nothing happened. Nash didn’t notice the spark, but the pulse of the spell beat at the inside of my skull.

  Nash dropped the spell ball back into the box, then leaned toward me like a sergeant dressing down a raw recruit. “Listen to me, Begay. I know you fed McGuire a load of crap, playing on his grief, telling him you can find his daughter with your psychic abilities. But let me tell you, if you try to scam any more money out of him with your bullshit, I will kick your ass all the way back to the reservation and make sure you stay on it for the rest of your life. Got it?”

  I didn’t make the mistake of raising my head again, leaving it on the cool tabletop. But he pissed me off. I hated white people who called the Navajo Nation “the reservation,” and I was just as free as he was to come and go as I pleased. “I don’t charge to investigate anything; I’m doing it as a favor. And it’s not illegal to renovate a hotel or ask questions about a missing woman. I told Chief McGuire I couldn’t guarantee that I’d find his daughter. I only told him I’d try.”

  “Reckless endangerment is illegal. A man is dead after you ran your motorcycle into the back of his truck.”

  “I didn’t hit him, I keep telling you. Check the skid marks.”

  “My deputies are out there right now, trust me. If they find one thing that doesn’t add up, I’ll bust your ass so hard you’ll never get up again. You’ll pay and pay for killing my cousin.”

  I forced my head off the table. “You are one angry man, you know that? I’m sorry about your cousin, I really am, but I never touched his truck. It’s not my fault your girlfriend disappeared. I’d think you’d at least let me try to find her, that you’d want to help me try to find her.”

  “I’m not McGuire, and I don’t want to hear your false promises about your woo-woo investigating. Amy’s dead. I know that.”

  “How do you know?”

  His stare burned all the way to the back of my skull. “I just know.”

  Nash Jones had been both suspect number one and the biggest pain in the ass to the investigation when Amy first went missing. Chief McGuire had never actually said that, but I could interpret. Nash admitted to having episodes of PTSD since returning from Iraq, and even to having one the day Amy vanished. He’d apparently gotten into his car and driven all the way to Albuquerque and had a meal, not remembering any of it. But even with this, McGuire concluded that Nash Jones truly had no idea what happened to Amy.

  The police file on Amy was pretty sparse. Nice girl, lived alone in a decent neighborhood, sang in the church choir, volunteered at the library, enjoyed gardening. No enemies—everyone professed to liking Amy. Last seen at ten in the morning on a Saturday, one year ago, watering her plants. No report of an unfamiliar vehicle in the neighborhood, no report of strangers. Amy had lived at the end of a road with no outlet, and her neighbors had not noted anyone going in or out that day.

  McGuire had asked the state DPS special investigations unit to step in, since both he and Jones had close ties to the missing woman. Every single conventional method of tracking down Amy had been utilized. After a year of nothing, the McGuires decided to try unconventional methods, namely me. I’d had success solving seemingly inexplicable crimes such as one I’d done in Flagstaff, where a murdered man’s shade had pointed me to evidence that told me his business partner killed him. The McGuires had invited me to Magellan to determine whether something magical hadn’t carried off their daughter. People believed such things in Magellan, and I knew that where my mother was concerned, anything was possible.

  “Why the hotel?” Nash asked.

  “What?” I looked up at him. Nash had his arms folded on the table, which made his biceps bulge in his uniform shirt.

  “You came to Magellan because Chief McGuire thinks you’re psychic. Why buy the hotel?”

  I shrugged, which hurt. “Why not?”

  “It’s been derelict for fifty years.”

  I couldn’t explain that the place had called to me. When I’d looked at the empty three-story square building, its windows broken and dark, something in it had spoken to me. The hotel reminded me of myself, sitting off to the side, alone and unwanted. It was also the perfect base of operations from which I could conduct my investigation and a fortified stronghold to keep my mother from simply sending along her skinwalkers to drag me to her.<
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  “I thought the people of Magellan might like me better if I was doing something besides asking questions,” I said. “Anyway, I’m giving jobs to a lot of locals.”

  “Where did you get the money?”

  “That’s really none of your business.”

  “Everything in Hopi County is my business.”

  I was getting that idea. “I take photographs and sell them. In art galleries, from California to Santa Fe. They’re popular.”

  “I’ve seen them.”

  From the grim line to Nash’s mouth, I surmised that he either disapproved of my talent or flat-out didn’t like the pictures—studies of landscape or portraits of Native Americans living their lives. Probably both.

  “So I won’t give you one for Christmas,” I said. “When can I go home?”

  “When my deputies are finished with the accident scene. Then we’ll go see the magistrate.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “The public defender will meet you before we go to the courthouse.”

  I rested my forehead on the table. “How did you get to be sheriff when you have PTSD?”

  I knew I shouldn’t have asked such a dangerous question, but I didn’t have the energy to care.

  “Because I do the job better than anyone else,” Nash answered. I believed him, somehow. “I haven’t had an episode in a year.”

  “Not since Amy.”

  As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew I’d just blown any chance of getting out of here today. I peeled open my eyes and looked up, wincing when I saw Nash’s gray ones.

  “You give up this so-called investigation and go home,” he said in a hard voice, “or I’ll bust you for fraud and expose you for the con artist you are.”

  I started to answer that I had the right to live in any town I wanted to, but my stomach decided just then to punish me for the night of storm magic. I pressed my arm over my abdomen, but it didn’t help.

  I staggered to my feet and made it to the trash can in the corner before my morning coffee and a gob of bile came up.

  “Damn it, Begay—”

  Nash’s diatribe was cut off by a deputy outside saying quickly and worriedly, “You can’t go in there.”