Stormwalker

by Allyson James

  Now I was thinking about things that had bothered me from the beginning. How had Mick happened to be on hand to rescue me that night north of Las Vegas—the only being I’d ever met who could draw off my power? And how had he known that I was here in Magellan, when I hadn’t communicated with him for five years? And why had Coyote said to me, He’ll try to stop you?

  Damn it, stop me doing what? I suddenly didn’t want Mick’s arm around me. I told him I had to use the ladies’, and when he released me, I walked out the front door i nstead.

  Mick caught up to me before I even reached the hotel. He said nothing, only held the carved front door open for me and locked it behind us.

  “I needed some air,” I said defensively. “The smoke was thick in there.”

  “So was the bullshit.” Mick started for the stairs. “I want a look at this magic mirror.”

  “It’s annoying.”

  “They all are. I’ve never had one under my control before.”

  “I also think it’s flaming.”

  Mick laughed. “It’s a mirror. They don’t have sexual orientation.”

  “This one does.”

  When we reached the third-floor room, Mick pulled the drop cloths from the mirror and crouched to peer into it.

  “Well, hel-lo, firewalker,” the mirror said. “Nice view, honey. Spread those knees a little wider.”

  Mick didn’t even flinch. “A pretty strong one,” he said to me.

  “You’ve seen a lot of them?” I asked.

  “About a dozen, I think. They’re good, solid earth magic. Made of silicon and silver, elements that have been part of the earth for eons.”

  I bent down. The mirror reflected us side by side, a muscle-bound man and his slim, Navajo girlfriend. “Why do they have to be so mouthy?” I asked.

  “They know they’re powerful, but also helpless,” Mick said. “The mage who owns one controls it completely.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the mirror purred.

  “Now we own it, according to it,” I said, leaning closer.

  “Mmm,” the mirror said. “Nice cleavage.”

  I straightened up in a hurry. “I thought you preferred men.”

  “I swing both ways, honey. I’m an equal opportunity mirror.”

  Mick laughed. He left the drop cloths off, to the mirror’s delight, took my hand, and led me out onto the roof.

  I greeted the cool desert night in relief. I really did need air. The stars were out in abundance, but far to the east, heat lightning flickered.

  I sat down with my back against the wall, liking how the cool of the stone leeched through my shirt. Mick folded himself next to me, brawny arms around his knees. We lapsed into silence. The night was beautiful, the cool bite to the air pleasant after the warm day.

  “You’re quiet tonight,” Mick said. “Something happen at the funeral that upset you?”

  “No. It was just a funeral.”

  Mick didn’t pursue it. One thing I’d liked about him from the start was that he never would make me talk when I didn’t want to, unlike my grandmother, who demanded to know every single thing going on inside my head. Tonight, however, his casual attitude irritated me. I wanted Mick to be easy to love or easy to hate. Gray areas are a bitch to navigate.

  “I know you don’t want me here,” he said. It was a flat statement, not a question. “But I’m not leaving.”

  “I wasn’t looking for an argument.”

  “I’m not giving you one.”

  His quiet stoicism brought my anger to the surface. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Mick,” I snapped. “I’m tired of people asking me things about you, and me not having any answers.”

  Mick’s brows went up. “People like Nash Jones?”

  “For one.”

  “You let me take care of Jones.”

  “He’s not stupid. He’ll keep poking and prying. Not like me. I just let you have sex with me and welcomed you back with open arms.”

  I felt his stare through the darkness. “I’m not expecting us to pick up where we left off.”

  “Well, I’m acting like I do,” I said. “I’m the stupid one. I don’t know who I’m more mad at—you or me.”

  “I came back to help you,” Mick said. “You need help, and I was worried about you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I folded my arms, breathing hard. I didn’t like arguing with Mick, because our arguments always ended one of two ways—me storming off or Mick persuading me into bed. Arguing with him solved nothing.

  Lightning flared again at the edge of the horizon, and an answering flicker shone in the darkness much closer to us. The blackness of the desert was absolute out here, Magellan’s lights too few to penetrate the night. North of us lay the small smudge of Flat Mesa, but east was one big empty nothing.

  “Janet, go back inside,” Mick said, coming alert.

  I stood up. The tiny star of the flashlight barely pricked the darkness. “Oh, gods, I bet it’s Fremont. He was upset today, and he told me he wanted to go after the skinwalker that killed Charlie.”

  “That skinwalker is dead. You got it.”

  “So I told him. I don’t think he believed me.”

  “Is he stupid?” Mick asked. “Even if he doesn’t find a skinwalker, there are plenty of things out there to hurt him.”

  Rattlesnakes. Mountain lions. Even javelinas, if he pissed one off. The big porkers were having babies, it would be easy to stumble into a nest, and Mama Javelina wouldn’t be happy.

  The desert floor was also pockmarked with holes made by rodents and snakes—easy to twist an ankle in one and lie there helplessly, waiting for the sun. On top of that, there were things out there no human could handle, and I wasn’t talking only about skinwalkers.

  “Go inside,” Mick repeated. “I’ll find him and bring him back.”

  “Not alone, you won’t.”

  “I’ll move faster on my own.”

  His blue eyes glittered in a way I didn’t like. But as angry as I was at Mick right now, I also didn’t want him running into something dangerous and dying.

  “That’s my territory out there, whether I like it or not,” I said. “I have to face it sometime.”

  “Not when there’s no storm. That one’s too far away.”

  “Fine. Come and protect me. But I’m going.”

  Mick wasn’t happy, but he stopped wasting time with words and followed me off the roof. We went downstairs, and Mick grabbed a couple big lantern flashlights I kept in my bedroom before we left the hotel.

  I saw no sign of Coyote as we crested the railroad bed and stopped to get our bearings. A trickster god would be helpful about now, but of course one was never around when I needed one.

  For a few minutes I saw nothing—no flashlight, no movement. Then Mick pointed far to our right, and I spotted the pinpoint of light moving in the emptiness.

  Mick took the lead, his long stride breaking a path and eating up distance. I kept my flashlight beam directed alongside his, trying not to trip over loose rocks or stare into my own light. Night-blinding myself wouldn’t help, and Mick was right—I was essentially powerless without a nearby storm.

  Mick dropped down a wash, navigating between brush that clung to the banks. I heard the quick slither of snakes, the reptiles fleeing our light, and lizards skittering over pebbles. We climbed up the other side of the wash, startling a group of rabbits who’d tried to freeze into invisibility.

  Ahead of me, Mick stopped. I followed suit, in silence, and listened. Not a breath of wind moved the air.

  Mick snapped off his flashlight and motioned for me to do the same. He navigated the uneven ground with ease, making me feel clumsy and ineffectual. He must possess incredible night vision, another thing I hadn’t known about him.

  Mick’s stride quickened. I let him go ahead, knowing that if I ran after him, I’d only fall on my butt and slow him down. Mick was sure-footed as a mountain lion, bounding from rock to rock, jogging up a ridge laced wit
h rock that made footing treacherous. I followed more slowly, quickening my pace when I heard someone yell.

  When I caught up to Mick, he’d stopped near an anvil-shaped boulder, its silhouette weird against the night sky. Mick had a man pinned against the rock, and I turned on my flashlight to reveal a white-faced, red-eyed Fremont.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” I asked in exasperation.

  Fremont’s eyes glittered. “I’m going to get one of the bastards even if it kills me.”

  “It will kill you,” I said. “A skinwalker will rip you apart before you can blink.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll take it with me. It should have been me that died, not Charlie.”

  “No one should have died,” I said in a firm voice. “If you want to blame someone, blame me. The skinwalker was going for me and missed.”

  Fremont shook his head. “You’re a cute girl, Janet, but it wanted me. It’s been stalking me for a while, because of this.” He wriggled his fingers. “It wants my powers. Charlie was driving my truck because . . .” His voice broke. “I wanted to head home early. I had a date. But I got a call that a part I’d been waiting for, for another job, had come in up in Winslow. Charlie offered to run and get it for me, so I wouldn’t be late for my date, and I let him.”

  I think the most surprising revelation in that confession was that Fremont had had a date. He’d never talked about interest in any particular woman. “That’s not your fault,” I said. “You couldn’t have predicted that Charlie would be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I should have run my own errand, or waited until the next day. I was in a hurry and nervous. And Charlie died.” He hefted a metal pipe in a shaky hand. “So I’m going to get the son of a bitch.”

  “I told you. I already got him. He died in the storm when he chased me to Flat Mesa.”

  “I have to do something. I’m a mage. I can fight it.”

  Mick gave him a shake. “Your magic could barely light a candle. You keep wandering around out here and the sheriff will be hunting for your body.”

  “I’m not going back until I get a skinwalker.”

  I winced as he said the word again. Fremont hadn’t been wrong when he’d told Maya that talking about skinwalkers could call them. We’d been fairly safe from them in broad daylight at the warded hotel, but out here in the dark, in their territory, we were vulnerable. The lightning was still too far away for me to touch, and Mick carried no weapons.

  In a sudden move, I wrenched the pipe from Fremont’s hand and knocked his flashlight to the ground. Fremont yelped and grabbed for the pipe, but Mick easily held him back.

  “If you’re going to be disarmed that quickly, you have no business being out here,” I said. “Are you going to fight me for this?” I hefted the pipe.

  “No. You’re a girl.”

  I laughed and swung the pipe against the stone. A chunk of sandstone broke away and fell to the ground. “What if I were a skinwalker? They can take human guise, did you know that? If they’re very powerful, they can steal a human’s skin and their essence.”

  Fremont’s eyes bulged. “You’re not. You’re Janet.”

  “Yes, but is that what you want? For a thing to kill you, wrap itself in your skin, and pass itself off as you? Who else do you think would get hurt besides Charlie?”

  Fremont stopped. Being familiar with vengeance myself, I knew that pointing out to Fremont that he couldn’t possibly fight the things wouldn’t change his mind. But if he thought that his actions might hurt more people he cared about, maybe that would move him. It sometimes worked with me, making me a good little girl. Mostly.

  Mick came alert, whipping around and peering down the ridge into the darkness to the east. “Janet,” he said softly.

  I smelled it in the next heartbeat. A rotting, fetid smell, a cross between backed-up sewers and weeks-old corpses.

  “What the hell?” Fremont whispered. “What is that?”

  “What you came to hunt.” I pressed the pipe back into his hands. “Hit anything that comes near you, except me.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Right next to you.”

  “Janet,” Mick repeated, his voice still controlled.

  I stepped to Mick’s side and looked down the hill. The desert floor at our feet, which a few minutes ago had been so silent and peaceful under the stars, seemed to move. Things were crawling out of the wash we’d crossed and making for the slope on which we stood. The little animals we’d disturbed had fled in absolute terror.

  “I think we’re on a hive,” Mick said. He glanced once at me, and in the darkness, his eyes looked solid black all the way across.

  “A hive?” Fremont gave me a wild look. “What does that mean?”

  Mick answered, his voice quiet. “It means, we are so fucked.”

  Eleven

  Fear pooled in my stomach. I reached for the lightning on the horizon, but it was still too far away for me to feel anything but the barest flicker. Damn.

  We were cut off. Behind the boulders at our backs was open desert, the undulating ground treacherous in the dark. The homey lights of Magellan winked in the opposite direction, relative safety mocking us. Between us and the town, a horde of skinwalkers.

  “How many?” I asked Mick in a low voice.

  “A couple dozen I think.” He turned to look at me, and there was no doubt this time. The whites of his eyes were gone, as were the blues of his irises. I found myself staring into voids of black. “I’m going to cut a path for you,” he said. “Take Fremont and get back to the hotel. Flood the place with light, and stay there.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll fight them. You can’t.”

  “A couple dozen? By yourself? Are you crazy?”

  He glanced at the horizon, and I felt his magic building like I’d never felt it before. “And how are you going to help me?”

  I knew Mick was powerful. I knew that. I’d seen him in action. But how could he stand against two dozen skinwalkers, not to mention who controlled them?

  I was angry at him for keeping secrets from me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see him go down under a horde of crazed demons in animal skins. Then again, without a storm, I didn’t know what I could do to help.

  Damn Fremont and damn the skinwalker that had wrecked his truck and killed Charlie. Damn my mother for sending the things after me; damn me for coming back to Magellan at all. I could be holed up with Mick somewhere cozy, my blind trust in him undamaged, avoiding who I was with the precision of long practice. But no, I’d decided to confront my demons and find out more about myself. Illusions were being stripped from me one by one, the fog I’d lived in all my life burning away. And I found I hated the light.

  Mick handed me his flashlight and stripped off his T-shirt. Starlight gleamed on his tight body, his black tattoos stark on his skin. He lifted his hands, giving me a view of his back muscles rippling to his low waistband. The tattoo around his hips took on a red outline, as though fire burned him from within.

  Mick shouted something—a word or words, or just guttural sounds, I couldn’t tell. The sky lit up like a torch. Under the sheet of fire, I saw the skinwalkers, at least twenty of them, seven feet tall with blazing eyes and white flesh. A few of them had shifted to animal form—a mountain lion, a coyote, a bear. The animals looked wrong, more like zombified creatures than true shifters. The stench that rolled off them made my eyes water.

  Fremont gaped in terror. I think his revenge fantasy consisted of him whacking a rather spindly skinwalker on the head and having said skinwalker fall dead at his feet. The reality put panic on his face.

  Mick’s magical fire stymied the skinwalkers a little, but not as much as I’d hoped. The skinwalkers were on their own territory and they’d banded together—unusually—and they came on.

  Mick drew the fire along the skinwalkers’ left flank, and as one they moved away from the light, clearing a sort of path toward the hotel. “Go!” Mick sh
outed at me. “Now!”

  I seized Fremont and dragged him down the rocky slope, leaving the man I loved to stand alone against a mess of demons. I wanted to cry and scream and rage, but I kept it together and ran with Fremont toward relative safety, the twin flashlights I held cutting a swath through the blackness.

  Hiking without a track was dangerous, and the terror of leaving Mick behind clawed at me. I had the benefit of knowing the skinwalkers probably wouldn’t kill me, because my mother wanted me, but they’d have no compunction about killing Mick.

  Fremont screamed as our lights gleamed on the faceted reflection of a big cat’s eyes. A mountain lion bounded toward us, running flat out. I pulled Fremont behind a low boulder, which didn’t hide us, but it might make the cat break its stride before it ran into us.

  The mountain lion never stopped. It leapt over us, boulder and all, giving me a glimpse of the thick fur of its belly. I smelled no skinwalker stench, only pure night air. The cat’s spirit shimmered with a faint silver light.

  Fremont raised his pipe, but I caught his arm. “It’s not one of them.” It’s Jamison Kee, I wanted to say, but I wasn’t sure how happy Jamison would be if I told the font of Magellan gossip that he was a Changer. Jamison landed and ran on, the air of his wake brushing my skin.

  Another animal hurtled toward us out of the darkness, this one a coyote, a big one, growling. A blue light surrounded it, and it ran on rapid feet.

  “About time you showed up,” I said as it streamed past. The only answer I got was a tail flicking upward, looking for all the world like he’d flipped me off.

  “Are they on our side?” Fremont asked shakily.

  “The mountain lion is. The coyote is on his own side. But they’ll help Mick.”

  “Janet, I’m sorry. I made it all worse, didn’t I?”