Stormwalker

by Allyson James

  The crow I’d seen earlier sailed to the tree at the north-east corner of the lot and perched there. The coyote came out from behind the hotel about the same time. He stopped in the shade of the tree and sat down, tongue lolling.

  “Better watch it, smart ass,” I said to him. “The sheriff is trigger happy. Next time he might not stop at scaring you away.”

  The coyote’s yellow eyes held scorn. I was pretty sure that even were Nash a dead shot, the bullet would do nothing to this one.

  “The question is, who sent you?” If it was my mother, then the coyote and the crow were my enemies. If Mick, my friends, or at least, they’d be told to help me. If my grandmother, it was an open field. I never knew with my grandmother.

  Neither answered. Very helpful. The could be just animals, but I doubted it. Wild animals tended to avoid people, wise creatures.

  My speculations were cut short by the arrival of the medical examiner’s van. Two men went inside with a stretcher. People from town started showing up to ask what was going on. Fremont appeared from the hotel and decided to be spokesman, telling the tale over and over. Instead of this irritating me, I was grateful to him for drawing attention from me.

  Not long later, Salas came out of the hotel and walked to me. Salas seemed like a competent guy, a calmer version of Jones. “I don’t think it’s Amy,” he said to me. “This woman was older, the ME says, maybe in her forties or early fifties. I’ll call the chief, let him know.”

  I nodded. “Sheriff Jones didn’t think it was her either.”

  Salas gave me a look, but he turned away to make his call without commenting.

  The stretcher came up out of the basement at that point, and I watched in silence as the body was loaded into the medical examiner’s van. The medics climbed into the front, and the coyote and I watched the van drive away toward Flat Mesa.

  Another woman, another disappearance. And my mother hovering out there by the vortexes, waiting to possess people so she could move about in this world and interact with others, just as she had the day I’d met her in Holbrook. I remembered how she’d told me that the “shell” she inhabited was weak, just like my biological mother’s had been. The woman who’d borne me had died. I didn’t think this woman’s death was a coincidence, and I swore I’d stop my mother before she could cause any more damage.

  Good.

  I swung around at the voice, but I saw no one except the coyote. When I caught his eyes, he looked innocent and determinedly scratched at a flea.

  Seven

  The Crossroads Bar had opened before Salas finished inside. My workers had already been told to go, and they’d packed up trucks and vans and driven away. Salas came up from the basement at about five o’clock, followed by the uniform. I’d retreated inside as the day grew hot. The hotel had been built long before air-conditioning had been invented, but the walls were thick enough to keep out the heat of the day.

  “You have somewhere to stay?” Salas asked me when he emerged.

  “Yes. Here.”

  “It’s a crime scene.”

  “The basement is. My bedroom isn’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Janet. We need to go over the entire place, try to find out if the woman was brought here or killed here.”

  “I’ve been renovating.” I gestured at the freshly plastered walls, the newly tiled floor and staircase. “Any evidence is on the county dump.”

  Even with my aversion to staying in a place where death had happened, I had no intention of abandoning my hotel. The place was becoming a part of me, something I couldn’t walk away from. The problems I kept encountering made it more challenging, but I wasn’t about to give up. I wouldn’t give my mother the satisfaction.

  Salas conceded. “All right, but you see anything out of place, anything weird, you call me,” he said. “Me, not Jones or the chief.”

  “Got it.”

  Salas was neutral on the subject of Amy, or at least not as closely connected as the other two, as far as the police file told me. Of course, the reports hadn’t mentioned Maya’s fierce hatred of the girl either. But Maya hadn’t been a witness and hadn’t been questioned, and so had made no statement.

  Salas left, and I was finally alone. The uniform had covered the gaping hole of my basement door with crisscrossed police tape, the yellow stark against the darkness. Death oozed from the opening even though the woman had been removed. Another cleansing spell was in order, I decided, but I was too tired and unnerved to do it now.

  I found that Nash had stashed my belongings behind the old reception desk—wallet and keys, belt, what little money I’d been carrying, receipt for the supplies I’d ordered in Flagstaff—everything there except the spell ball. Nash hadn’t returned that.

  I wanted to get out and find food, since I hadn’t eaten all day, but without my Harley, I was stuck. I could always walk the two miles into Magellan and eat at the diner, but everyone there would want to talk about the dead woman, and I’d be bombarded with questions. Barry, who owned the Crossroads Bar, could probably give me something to snack on, but same problem about the questions. I scrounged through my pantry and ate some pretzels, not really hungry for much else.

  Restless, I climbed the staircase that rose to a gallery, which ran in a U-shape around the second floor. The guest rooms, half-finished, opened out to it.

  The staircase to the third floor lay at the end of the gallery, beyond a locked door. I’d decided that the rooms up here would be private, including an office for me. In the biggest room on the low-ceilinged third floor, I’d found an old-fashioned rolltop desk that I’d refinish and a gigantic mirror that had once hung over the bar in the saloon. The mirror was in good shape, solid frame, glass still whole. Some of the silver had started to flake off, but I’d send it somewhere to get re-silvered and then hang it in the saloon again.

  The third floor was only a partial floor, and a door led from the big room to the flat roof. I’d swept off the roof when I first moved in, creating a place where I could sit and watch the stars come out. It was peaceful up here, away from noise and people.

  Tonight the sky was clear, but lightning flickered on the northeastern horizon. Stars pricked out and a half moon hovered in the sky.

  I heard Mick’s motorcycle throbbing below, then cut off into silence. Not long later, he strolled out onto the roof.

  He’d found a holeless shirt somewhere and a clean pair of jeans, but other than that, he looked the same as he had yesterday. I rose to meet him, and in total silence, he gathered me in and held me close.

  It felt good to lean on his rock-solid chest and rest my head against his shoulder. He ran his hands down my back, lips brushing my hair.

  “I heard,” he said. “You all right, baby?”

  Lightning struck so far away that I didn’t hear a rumble, but I jumped. “No.”

  Mick slid his palm to the small of my back. “Want me to make you feel better?”

  I did. I truly did. I craved him, and this storm, if it rolled in, was going to hurt me. I hadn’t had enough time to recover from the gigantic one two nights ago.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Are you all right?” I touched his shoulder where the gunshot wound had been, but I found no indentation from the bullet or any bump of scar.

  “Yep. All better.”

  I wanted to ask where he’d gone and how he’d so completely healed himself. And why, if he claimed he’d come to protect me, he hadn’t been here when the body was found. I knew he wouldn’t tell me any of these things, so I didn’t bother with the questions.

  “How did you know about the woman?” I asked instead.

  “Everyone in town knows. I stopped for gas, and three people asked me if I’d heard about the dead woman buried in the Navajo woman’s hotel.”

  I tried to laugh. “I’m getting a reputation.”

  “You’re shaking. Have you eaten anything?” I shrugged, trying to downplay, but Mick gave me a severe look. “I’m taking you to get some food,” he said.
/>   “Not the diner. I don’t want to talk to people right now.”

  “No, not the diner.” He laced his fingers through mine. “Come on.”

  Mick took me out of the hotel, boosted me onto his bike, and rode with me up to Winslow. The storm grew closer as we went, sliding down the freeway toward us as we dined at a fast-food restaurant. I needed this: normal, generic surroundings with normal, generic people.

  The storm moved south as we rode back to the hotel, the smell of rain on bare earth fresh and pungent. I stopped myself from reaching for the lightning, not wanting the storm’s crazy magic tonight. The storm had other ideas, and I fended it off with effort, sweat breaking out on my brow.

  We reached the hotel. While I locked up, Mick went into my bedroom and took candles and sage sticks from the top drawer of my dresser. Without argument, I helped him set the candles out and light them. We moved through the hotel with smudge sticks, wafting fragrant smoke everywhere. The storm kept trying to find me, and I gritted my teeth while I chanted spells and Mick silently traced runes over doors and windows. I could feel my magic and his seeping into the walls, connecting with the spells I had laid before, erasing the spidery fingers of darkness that came from the basement.

  We finished in the middle of the lobby. Mick dropped both smudge sticks into a ceramic bowl, then he took me by the elbows and pulled me against him.

  I felt the tension in him, the magic that spiraled through his body. Lightning sizzled in my fingers as Mick leaned down to kiss my lips.

  “You taste as good as ever,” he murmured. “Want me to draw it off?”

  I knew what that would lead to. “Why did you really come here?”

  “I told you, to protect you.” In the candlelight, Mick’s black hair shone with a glossy hue. When he let it out, it went everywhere, curls so crazy they almost had a life of their own.

  “You said yourself you were impressed with how I handled that skinwalker,” I said. “You know I’m much stronger now.”

  “You are. But there are things much worse than skinwalkers out there. Very bad things are coming, Janet, and you know it. You need me.”

  I couldn’t deny that Magellan was a dangerous place for me. “I don’t want you to get hurt. Least of all because of me.”

  Mick ran the backs of his fingers across my cheek. “Let me? For old time’s sake?”

  The hotel lit with lightning, and the answering boom came the next second. Electricity crackled along my skin, wanting me to grab it, to throw it at something, to destroy.

  Silently, I nodded. Mick smiled his old, devilish smile. “Come on, then. Give me your best shot.”

  I closed my eyes. Magic danced through me, released at last, channeling out through my fingers and straight into Mick. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Oh, that’s good.”

  My body squeezed in delight. Being caught in a storm was like the best foreplay, and here I was with a strong, virile man who wanted me. I moved my lightning-encased hands to his face and pulled him down for a long kiss.

  Magic flowed from my mouth to his. I hadn’t seen this man in five years, and yet his kiss, the way he swept his tongue into mine, felt so familiar, so right. I needed him to do this.

  Mick ran his hands over my body, and I tugged up his T-shirt. Beneath, his skin was smooth and hot, hard with muscle. The shoulder where he’d been shot was whole and unblemished; even the bruise had disappeared.

  My own shirt ended up on the floor, and we were kissing, kissing. Magic floated between and around us, touching the spells we’d begun and flaring them to life.

  Mick had taught me all about Tantric, the use of sex and sexual pleasure to build up magical power and then channel it. I remembered the first night we’d tried it, a week after I’d met him, remembered every press of his fingers on my skin, the slide of his body against mine, every thrust of his hips. He’d tied my hands to the headboard so I couldn’t touch him, which had driven me crazy, as he’d known it would. My frustration, coupled with the things he’d done to me, made the final release, when it came, incredibly i ntense.

  Mick carried me into the bedroom and laid me on the bed. I feasted my eyes on him while he got rid of his pants and boots and underwear. His chest and arms were replete with muscle, and his abs were flat, the indentation of his navel a shadow. He had strong thighs, and his long, thick penis, now hard, stuck straight out.

  The sight of him stirred the primal female in me. No more worry about what he was, why he was here, where he’d been. I wanted that beautiful male body on mine, urges as old as time wiping out my questions and my common sense.

  The electricity eased away as he kissed me, a slow, deliberate kiss that explained how he wanted to proceed. He kissed down my throat, lingering at the hollow, then down to my breasts. Each kiss was unhurried, and each caress made my body hum, my blood warm.

  By the time he’d undressed me, he’d drawn off the worst of the storm magic, and I felt damn good. And needy. Mick pinned my hands above my head, his mouth on mine as he entered me. Magic drifted through the room, the marks on the walls we’d traced starting to glow.

  I lifted my legs and wrapped them around his hips. He was big, filling me. The sensations were so familiar, as though we’d lain together only last night, not five long years ago. As though we’d never been apart.

  Mick had skill and finesse. He built us toward release until we were both ready to peak, then he eased off, cooling the sensations.

  “Damn you,” I growled.

  “It’s the way it works, sweetheart.”

  “I know. You don’t have to like it so much.”

  Mick’s laughter was low, wicked. “Believe me, this is torture. I want to do you hard and not stop until we’re done. It’s all I can do to hold back.”

  “Sure,” I said. He was so full of shit. “Let me torture you some more, then.”

  I made him regret that he’d taught me so much about sex, and that I’d been such an eager pupil. His smiles died as I arched to him, and soon he was growling at me, trying to slow his thrusts and make it last.

  Magic swirled through the room like dancing comets. We built again and again, Mick taking us down before we reached the peak every time. My body felt open and hot, I was dripping with sweat, and my thoughts narrowed to nothing but the crazed need inside me.

  Mick’s body lit with sudden, incandescent light, and for one instant, I thought I saw a monster with us in the bedroom, something so huge it would burst the walls. Its skin glistened black, and its eyes were like midnight but with red fire in their depths.

  I screamed, and the vision vanished. There was only Mick making love to me.

  He kissed my swollen lips. “Now,” he whispered.

  I screamed again, this time in ecstasy. Mick’s shout answered me. Pent-up magic shot out of us, the room burst into light, and the spell runes burned as red as the fire in the monster-creature’s eyes.

  Mick and I went on climaxing, hours of buildup peaking into one amazing, drawn-out release. I twisted under him, and he thrust into me, holding me hard. Finally, after a long time of drowning, I gave out and collapsed, panting. I knew I’d never be able to move again.

  Mick fell beside me, laughing. The glowing runes vanished into the walls; the magic absorbed into the building.

  “Gods, I missed you, Janet,” Mick said, voice raw. He kissed my face, my hair. “I missed you so damned much. Don’t ever leave me again, all right?”

  I was too tired to answer, too tired to argue, but I couldn’t deny that I’d missed him too. I wished with all my heart that we were two simple, boring humans, with nothing complicated between us.

  For now I felt safe, the magic in here strong.

  He circled my wrist with his finger and thumb, his pupils widening until his eyes were nearly black. “You are so beautiful.” He rubbed my wrist, then kissed it. “I don’t think you ever believed me when I told you how beautiful you were.”

  “Mmm, I thought you said that just to get into my pants.”
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br />   “I did want to get into your pants.” Mick licked my wrist, his hot breath stirring need. “I still do. I love every part of you.” He released my wrist and plied his tongue to my abdomen, my navel, and down to the curls between my thighs.

  I groaned. “Mick, I can’t. I’m too tired for more.”

  Mick had always enjoyed proving me wrong. He licked and kissed me for a while, then he rolled me on top of him, moving me to straddle him. He was already hard, and it was easy to slide right onto him.

  My eyes closed, need I’d thought gone for the night returning with amazing strength. Mick cupped my breasts as I rode him, and I smiled down at him, enjoying the pleasure he so freely offered.

  Much later, after we’d both fallen asleep, exhausted and sated, I woke to blissful silence. Mick slept next to me, moonlight bathing his naked body. In addition to the stylized dragons that ran down his arms, a tattoo hugged Mick’s waist and hips like a chain, a point of it dipping to the cleave of his buttocks. The ink was stark black in the moonlight, and the eyes in the dragon tattoos seemed to glitter as though they watched me.

  I slid out of bed and went to the window. The night was beautiful, shadows sharp, the moonlight shining hard on the empty desert. Something moved under the juniper at the edge of my property, but I neither smelled the stench of skinwalker nor felt the terror they exuded.

  I shrugged on a long shirt, slid my feet into shoes, and went out the back door.

  The coyote lay under the tree, paws out, tongue curling with his fast breath. He watched me approach, then glanced at the bare patch of ground next to him. Come. Sit.

  I sank down, bunching my shirt under my butt to cushion the hard ground. We sat quietly for a few moments; then I said, “So tell me. Who sent you to me and what do you want?”

  Eight

  The air shimmered and resolved into a very large, very naked man with long black hair. He had a Native American face, though I couldn’t tell what tribe he belonged to. I knew a Hopi from a Havasupai from an Apache, and all those from tribes not Southwestern, but I couldn’t place him.