Stormwalker

by Allyson James

  I dried my face, lowered the towel, and saw a man staring at me through my bathroom window.

  I screamed. The man was a big Native American, muscled like Mick, but he wasn’t Mick. He didn’t smell of skinwalker—I caught a scent of sage and wild grasses.

  The man ducked away at my scream, and I rushed to the window. I saw nothing outside but a coyote trotting off toward the empty railroad bed behind the hotel. No sign of any human except the prints of bare feet in the dust outside the window. Human feet, large and masculine.

  My eyes narrowed as I watched the spot where the coyote disappeared. I’d seen the same coyote hanging around the hotel since I’d moved in. They were scavengers, ready to eat anything humans threw away, or their pet dogs or cats if the animals strayed too far from home.

  I went into the bedroom and opened the window. The early-morning air was cool, and I breathed in the beauty of it. I saw no sign of the coyote, just blue sky blossoming on the eastern horizon. But in the interesting life of Janet Begay, things were never as simple as they seemed.

  “Peeping Tom!” I shouted into the desert. Far off, I heard a yip that sounded suspiciously like laughter, and then silence.

  I fixed a sheet over the curtainless window and took a shower. Because my hotel stood alone two miles north of Magellan, and my bedroom and bathroom faced the back, away from the road and the bar, I’d not felt the need to bother with curtains or blinds. I preferred sleeping where I could wake up and see stars and moon, and the privacy out here was nice. I’d forgotten that there were more things in my world to worry about than nosy neighbors.

  I dressed in clean clothes and walked out the back door to scatter a handful of corn to the rising sun. I had a lot to do today—I planned to go over the Amy McGuire case again and see if anything new jumped out at me. I’d gotten a list of her friends from her mother, young women who hadn’t been asked to give statements for the police file, but they might tell me something useful about where Amy might go, who she might meet. I wanted most of all to question Nash Jones about her, but he was thin ice I had to tread on carefully.

  Even so, I took time to perform my ritual greeting of the morning. I’d done this with my grandmother every day of my young life, and I’d retained the habit into adulthood. I hadn’t always been able to do the ritual during my life on the road, but I’d decided that while I was here, I’d make sure that I gave thanks to the gods for the dawn. I needed all the earth magic I could get out here by the vortexes, and it never hurts to keep the gods happy. Today, no one watched me but a big crow perched on top of a juniper at the edge of the parking lot. It peered at me with a stern black eye, and I got the feeling that it approved of what I did.

  I had no idea where Mick was. His bike was gone, but I knew he wouldn’t have left me unless it was safe to. Even the times he’d disappeared when we lived together, he’d made certain that I was in a safe place, or got to a safe place, to hole up until he got back. Protective, yes, but also suffocating.

  The hotel’s electricity wasn’t on yet, but I’d bought some nonperishables for a makeshift breakfast. The kitchen, like the rest of the hotel, was an empty shell, wires hanging out of holes in the walls like so much spaghetti.

  I ate my cold toaster pastries while reading Amy’s file, and then workers started showing up. Maya Medina, my electrician, got out of her sleek red pickup, wearing her white coverall, her glorious black hair tucked under a cap. She was the only female electrician in town, and from what I’d seen, she was damn good. Not that she acknowledged any praise I gave her. Maya was unfriendly to me to the point of enmity. I had no idea why, but at least she showed up and worked.

  Behind her came carpenters, tile layers, roofers, and glaziers, mostly locals from Magellan, with a few Hopi men down from Second Mesa. They needed the work, and there was a lot to be done here.

  To my surprise, Fremont Hansen pulled in not long after the others. I was standing by the front entrance, a huge old-Spanish door I’d picked up at an auction in Santa Fe, watching the workers come in. Fremont gave me a sorrowful look, set down his toolbox, and hugged me.

  Usually I don’t like to hug, and never without permission, but I sensed that Fremont needed the contact. I squeezed him back.

  Fremont pulled away, his hands still on my shoulders. He was a little taller than me, slim, in his late thirties, with receding brown hair and friendly hazel eyes. “I’m glad you’re all right, Janet.”

  “Just a few bruises.” My leg still hurt, and my back was sore as hell from both sleeping in the jail cell and the motionless night I’d spent on my own bed, but I’d live. The healing magic that had leaked into me from Mick, plus the sleep, had done the trick. “Fremont, I’m really, really sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Fremont gave my shoulders another pat, then released me. “It should have been me driving that truck, you know, not Charlie. He was running an errand for me.” He shook his head. “Poor Charlie. He messed in some bad stuff, and he paid the price.”

  “Bad stuff? You mean drugs?”

  “Black magic. Dangerous, if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Fremont spoke with authority, but I knew damn well that Fremont, for all his boasting, didn’t have much magical ability. He wouldn’t be able to handle anything darker than light gray. He was assuming that something Charlie had done had caused the accident, and I didn’t correct him. I didn’t think he’d believe my explanation, and the less he knew, the safer he’d be.

  Fremont picked up his toolbox and squared his shoulders, like a man ready to battle demons but not looking forward to it.

  “Take the day off,” I said. “The plumbing will still be here tomorrow.”

  “Nah. I’d just sit home and brood. Working keeps my mind off things. Besides, I want to get the water in your bathroom hooked up.”

  “You did,” I said in surprise. “It’s working.”

  Fremont gave me a puzzled look and strode through the lobby and down the back hall to my private suite. I followed him into the bathroom, where he cranked on both faucets at the sink. Nothing came out, not even air. The sink bowl looked dusty and unused.

  “It was probably just some residue,” he said. “I hope you didn’t drink it.”

  I didn’t answer. I’d showered, used the toilet, and brushed my teeth in plumbing ecstasy. Mick had showered too, obviously, from the pile of damp towels he’d left.

  I made myself shrug. “You’re probably right.”

  Fremont turned on his big flashlight and sank down under the sink. I left him to it, not sure what to think. That was the trouble with Mick. I spent a lot of time pushing him away, but when he was around, things had a way of working out for me. He’d give me that devilish smile, and I’d start feeling warm and comforted, and the impossible became possible.

  But could I justify keeping him around because he gave me hot water and a good night’s sleep? I didn’t know what Mick was, but I was pretty sure facing a goddess from Beneath wouldn’t be good for him.

  Plus, the fact that Mick looked exactly the same unnerved me. I’d never asked him how old he was, assuming around thirty when I’d met him. But even five years affected people, didn’t it? They gained or lost weight, changed how they cut their hair, got more lines in their faces. Very few stayed exactly the same. But Mick had.

  The workers started clanking and banging, power tools whirring. No one needed me underfoot, so I left the hotel and made my way to the empty railroad bed behind it.

  The big black crow flapped past me as I climbed the four-foot bank that used to carry trains from Winslow and the main line to the mountain towns of Heber-Overgaard and Show Low. The railroad had been abandoned early in the twentieth century, the ties and rails eventually disappearing, leaving the forlorn bed a reddish streak across the desert. My hotel had once been the railroad hotel, thriving in the 1890s, closed and forgotten, reopened in the thirties for a time, then again in the sixties, and finally completely abandoned. I’d bought an almost empty shell an
d was piecing it back together.

  The crow landed in a gnarled juniper that clung to the bank of a wash. The desert to the east of my hotel was deceptively flat. The earth bore a reddish tint, like rust seeping through the dirt, and clumps of wild grass and thorny plants carpeted the ground. Occasional clusters of trees signaled where arroyos, washes, and narrow canyons sliced through the seemingly featureless desert. These washes served as runoff channels for the mountains. In rainless months, the washes were bone-dry; after a storm, they filled with torrents of water that destroyed everything in their way.

  In and among these washes lay the vortexes. They were most prevalent to the south and east, where the land rose to a stunted ridgeline. Long, flat boulders studded the hill—some of the rocks had been eroded from beneath, giving them the look of anvils made for giants.

  I gazed that way for a long time, my body still, listening. I heard nothing but the wind in the grass, the quick slither of a hidden lizard or snake, the trickle of water in the sandy wash below, a leftover from last night’s deluge. The crow ruffled her feathers against the wind, and far down the railroad bed, the spindly legged coyote trotted leisurely from the wash to the shade of another tree.

  The sky arched blue overhead, not a cloud in sight. No storms to torment me, but then again, no magic to defend myself with either. She was out there somewhere, waiting for me.

  As I stood there with sun pounding down on the top of my head, I remembered my first and only encounter with my mother. I’d just bought myself the Harley, a sweet little Sportster now in the impound lot of Nash Jones’s jail. There I was, no longer a student living in cramped student housing in Flagstaff, no longer running home between terms to listen to my grandmother berate me.

  I’d had the grandiose dream of riding up and down the country, taking photos, first of Diné lands, and then of the traditional lands of all tribes everywhere. I had visions of myself showing the collection at a gallery, selling them as a series, perhaps getting them published in a book.

  My dream lasted as far as Holbrook, a town only twenty miles from the Navajo Nation. I pulled in for lunch, my camera at my side, in case I decided to do a study of roadside diners. I’d just given my order to the bored-looking waitress when a woman, pale even for a white person, slid into the booth across from me.

  She had blond hair and light green eyes, a blouse and jeans on her slim form, and wore much silver jewelry. I had no idea who she was.

  “Hello, Janet,” she said in a low voice. “I’m your mother.”

  I laughed. I was Navajo through and through, and she was so very white. “Sorry, lady. You’re mixing me up with someone else.”

  Her answering smile was wide, her teeth perfect. “No mistake, love. I am your true mother.”

  I laughed again. “You’re way too young to be my mother, and besides, my mother died in a hospital in Albuquerque when I was born.”

  She kept trying to look me full in the eyes, which I had been brought up to consider rude. My evasive eye flicks weren’t dissuading her.

  “Oh, you’re mine all right, Janet Begay. What a beautiful young woman you turned out to be.” She touched my wrist, her fingertips so chill I swore I felt my blood congeal. “And so strong. You’ll do very well for me.”

  I snatched my hand away, not hiding my shiver. “You’re crazy, lady.”

  She leaned a little to me, her perfect breasts resting on the table. “The storms, they get under your skin, don’t they?”

  I stared at her in sudden alarm. No one knew about the madness the storms stirred inside me. When I’d first manifested the power, at age eleven, I hadn’t been able to control it at all. I’d nearly destroyed my father’s house before I’d run away into the desert, pulling the lightning with me. Later I’d burned down one of the prefab buildings at my school, fortunately with no one in it at the time. I’d learned to stay away from other people when storms approached, which meant ditching school and running away. But better to get suspended than to let people die because I couldn’t handle my own power. Learning control had been a slow and painful process, and even then, at age twenty-one, I still struggled with it.

  “What are you talking about?” I managed.

  Again the cold smile. “I gave you magic too, Janet. If you don’t fight it, if you let it come, it won’t hurt you anymore.”

  I had no idea what she meant. I sat, frozen, my heart beating double time.

  She traced a light design on the tabletop. “Your biological mother, poor little thing, wasn’t strong enough to take both you and the power. I can’t stay in people for long, so I had to leave her alone and pregnant. She died having you, but you lived.”

  “You see?” I croaked. “You’ve just admitted you weren’t her.”

  Her fingers were drawing runes of power. Nasty things, with little trickles of darkness following them. I reached over and slapped her hand to the table.

  The woman smiled. “Ah, you do understand. Your mother was the vessel I chose to bring you into the world. She was weaker than I’d anticipated, unfortunately. Your father was the means.” Her green eyes took on a warm gleam. “He was a handsome young man, and oh so virile. Is he still as . . . robust?”

  Hearing this woman talk about my father, a quiet, slim Diné, as though he’d been her personal toy made me sick. Quiet, shy Pete Begay, a man who’d learned to say little in his houseful of headstrong women, was beautiful to me, but I wasn’t about to share my thoughts with this scary bitch of a woman.

  “Stop talking about my father, and get away from me.”

  She gave me a pitying look. “Poor baby. Did he not tell you that your mother was a magical woman from beyond the sky? That’s what he thought I was, and it’s more or less true. What you are looking at now is a shell, not my real form. I can only come out when I find a body that can take me, a woman strong enough and young enough to endure my power. This one won’t last long, but I can use her long enough for me to talk to my daughter.”

  Her words trickled beneath my skin, stirring fear so deep I didn’t want to look at it.

  “I’m twenty-one,” I pointed out. “If you truly are my mother, why wait so long to find me?”

  “Because my power can only stretch over so much distance, before I have to retreat to Beneath and replenish. Your pokey town on the reservation is too far away, and so was the university you chose. Besides, your grandmother’s magic is powerful on her home territory—like mine is, except hers is earthbound. As long as you were tied to your home, I couldn’t get to you. But now you have that.” She glanced out the window at my gleaming new Harley. “And you can come to me whenever you like.”

  My heart pounded, fear overlaid with confusion and anger. “What are you talking about? My grandmother has no magic. She hates magic.”

  “If she told you that, she lied. She’s a mage, a shaman, and dangerous to you. You are right to flee her, because she will destroy you.”

  “My grandmother doesn’t like me, but she wouldn’t do that.” I spoke without conviction, and the woman knew it.

  “No, my dear, she is strong. That’s why I chose your father, because I knew he’d carry the power to you, even though he has none himself.” She leaned to me again. “You feel it, the two natures inside you. You will come to me, and I will teach you. You will be so powerful, so strong, that you’ll be able to squash your grandmother like a bug.”

  I sat in a pool of fear, because I knew she was right about the two natures inside me. I felt them when my storm power manifested, a second power trying to mesh with the first, not quite able to. It made my storm power that much more difficult to control, had made the first shaman my grandmother took me to pronounce me a witch.

  “I can make it better, my dear.” The woman touched my face, her fingertips like ice. “Be with me.”

  Something inside me tingled, woke up, yearned to claw its way through me and respond to her touch.

  “You feel it, don’t you?” she purred. “My daughter. My love. Let me teach you. I c
an make you powerful beyond your wildest dreams.”

  I tried to get up, to run, but I was fixed in place, mesmerized. Her eyes were deep green, the green of ferns that choked stagnant ponds.

  “You are mine, Janet,” she whispered.

  The power wanted me to touch her. It wanted me to take her hands and look deep into her eyes, to do whatever she told me to.

  I seemed to hear my grandmother’s voice from far away, shouting at me in Navajo. Janet Begay, what do you think you’re doing?

  The sound snapped through my mind. The woman gasped and blinked, and my rigid gaze broke. I jerked away, my eyes wide, my face slick with sweat.

  I jumped to my feet. “Stop talking about my mother,” I said to her in a vicious voice. “And stay away from me.”

  She sat back, and I fled the diner, ignoring the protests of the waitress who’d been hurrying toward our table with my food. I made it to my bike, shaking with rage—to find the woman standing beside it.

  Fear came flooding back. No one could move that fast, except maybe skinwalkers. This woman was evil, pure, powerful evil. And I knew, though I didn’t want to give voice to the thought, that her evil was also inside me.

  “Get out of my way,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “We will meet again, Janet. This I promise you. In time, you’ll come to me on your own. You won’t be able to stop yourself.”

  She reached for me, but I shoved her aside, swung onto my bike, and rode the hell out of there. I didn’t look back, didn’t slow down. I gunned it through the small town, drove up the freeway ramp, and opened up the bike, heading out at top speed. If she could only move so far, all I had to do was keep riding and not come back.

  I rode so fast that I got stopped for speeding before I hit the state line, but I didn’t care. As long as the woman with the strange green eyes didn’t follow me, I didn’t mind about tickets.