Shadow Walker

by Allyson James

  “Mick,” I whispered.

  But he was gone, shooting past. He opened his vast wings to pump him up into the night and disappeared.

  Colby banked left, carrying me back to the clearing where we’d started. He set me on the ground, morphed back to human, and grabbed at me with human hands as I collapsed, numb and spent, to the grass.

  Drake insisted we stay the night before heading back home. I didn’t want to. I’d been gone twenty-four hours already, and I longed with all my heart for dry desert cold and my grandmother’s scolding. Drake gave me a grave look, shook his head, and said, “The human woman needs to rest or she risks death.”

  Colby, damn him, agreed with him.

  Drake proved himself useful by fashioning a shelter for me against the rain that had started to patter down. Darkness brought sudden cold, and the clouds that had formed against the high mountain now spread their bounty to the lowlands. Drake must have done this before, because the tropical roof he tied between the trees was pretty damned watertight. He ordered Colby to guard me and said he’d forage for food.

  Drake took a long time to return, and when he did, he brought me not whatever fruit was in season or some unfortunate tropical bird he’d snared, but a Hawaiian plate lunch in a plastic container. We weren’t that far, he explained, from Hawaii’s Big Island.

  I hadn’t thought I could eat a bite, but suddenly the meat and rice and fruit seemed a very good idea. “Don’t tell me you went into a restaurant naked,” I said around mouthfuls.

  “I keep stashes of clothing in various places in the world, in case I need to move among humans.”

  “Your lair’s around here too, is it?”

  Drake didn’t answer. I gathered from the chill in his silence that my question was the height of rudeness. The gleeful look on Colby’s face confirmed it.

  Once I’d eaten, my stomach settled a little, and exhaustion hit me. I huddled under the shelter, longing for my coat, and discovered that Drake had thoughtfully brought me a blanket.

  I slept fitfully, my dreams filled with Mick and fire, sorrow and worry. After a long time of tossing and turning, I woke abruptly in the pitch-dark, unaware what time it was. Drake was nowhere in sight, but Colby lay next to me, human and naked, snoring loudly. In his sleep, he’d stolen most of the blanket.

  I let him have it. I got to my feet as quietly as I could and walked away from the shelter.

  I made my way out of the clearing and down to the beach, where I could breathe the fresh air that came over the sea. The rain had abated, the clouds thinning to tatters before a running wind. The moon had set, but the stars shone above me in dense proliferation, reminding me of the petroglyphs the ancient artists had drawn in the sinkhole. Without manmade lights spoiling the sky, the pueblo peoples must have seen and drawn the same swirls of stars I looked at now.

  I saw him by that starlight, an upright man walking with strong steps toward me down the sand.

  I stopped. I knew in my heart Mick hadn’t come out here because he’d been miraculously released or because his love for me had overridden the spell. He’d come for a reason, the witch’s reason.

  I waited for him to approach. Mick hadn’t dressed; his naked skin glistened in the starlight where spray dampened him. The dragon tattoos on his arms looked blurred, out of focus, as though the dragons shivered, as I’d seen them do the night Mick had been taken from me. Mick’s eyes were white and cold, but fire flickered in them as he stopped and looked down at me.

  I cleared my throat. “Nice lair you have here. Long way to go for takeout, though.”

  “You need to leave.” His voice was so different, no longer the easygoing tones of my beloved Mick. “You won’t find what you seek here.”

  I folded my arms, both to keep myself warm and to hide the fact that I was shaking. My finger found the turquoise-and-onyx ring that still clasped my finger, and I stroked the cool silver. “What I’m seeking is you. I won’t let that bitch have you, Mick. If she wants a fight, I’ll give her one.”

  “You are not what she wants. She doesn’t care whether you live or die.”

  “No? What does she want, then? And why all the crap with Ted and my hotel?”

  I knew Mick wouldn’t tell me, even before he gave me a stony look. “Leave Magellan. Go back to your native land and stay there. For your own good.”

  “Is it my hotel she wants? Why? The damn thing stood empty for years. Why is she just now trying to move in?”

  Again, the unhelpful stare. “I can tell you this, Janet. Take your grandmother and go home, or you will die.”

  My shaking calmed as I thought things through. “If Vonda Wingate is so big and bad, why does she need a dragon to deliver messages for her? She had to use you to get through the wards to put the damaging spell into my hotel—which means she’s not as all-powerful as she’d like to be.”

  “She is stronger than you understand. This is her warning.”

  “Gods, Mick, listen to you.” I stepped to him, looked into his hard face, my heart aching because I wanted to touch him and didn’t dare. “She’s made you destroy the heart of your own lair. Drake told me it was sacred to you. Doesn’t that mean anything? Plus you tried to kill me, right after you gave me this.” I held up my hand, letting the stars reflect on the ring.

  Mick’s gaze went to the ring, and for an instant—the barest instant—I saw his eyes become blue.

  The flicker fed my hope and made me reckless. He was in there, somewhere, my Mick. I grabbed his arms, but Mick jerked away with a snarl. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Mick, come back to me. Don’t let her have you. Please!” I was crying and begging, and I didn’t care. I loved this man, and I knew, somewhere deep inside him, that he still loved me.

  Mick pushed me from him so hard that I stumbled, and by the time I regained my balance, he’d lifted both hands and surrounded them with fire.

  “I’m ordered to kill you if I have to,” he said. He gave me a sickening parody of his usual grin. “It’s nothing personal, baby.”

  I rested my weight on the balls of my feet, ready. “Tell me one thing. Are you sleeping with her?”

  He gave me a look of disgust. “I don’t have sex with humans.”

  “Except with me, you mean.”

  “And for that, you die.”

  The little aside gave me the time I needed. Mick’s fire burst from his hands, but I threw up a shield of Beneath magic, drawing on the barest remains of the passing rainstorm to ground me. My shield deflected Mick’s fire into a little circle around me, and sand melted into glass.

  My defense pissed him off, and again I saw the monster that was Mick, the dragon who wanted to crush the puny human. The sneer he’d made about sex with humans had been real. I was seeing the Mick from long ago, from before the dragon council had sent him after me, before he’d watched me and decided that maybe humans, especially Navajo biker-chick Stormwalkers, weren’t so bad.

  He threw fire at me again. But Mick had trained me to fight, to reach for and control my powers. I was no longer the child who burned down buildings by accident until she fled, crying into the storm. I was no longer the young woman running away from what she was, who feared killing a bunch of human bikers in a bar when they tried to mess with her. I wasn’t even the Stormwalker determined to, yet afraid of, confronting her goddess-from-hell mother.

  I was the Janet in control of her newly awakened goddess powers.

  Well, nearly in control of them.

  I surrounded myself with Beneath magic, making a bubble of it as Gabrielle had when I’d fought her in the snow. Mick’s fire streamed at me, the sand burning and boiling in its wake. I sweated as it struck my barrier, my skin blistering even behind the bubble.

  “I taught you,” Mick said, as though he knew what I was thinking. “I taught you everything. I know all your tricks, Stormwalker.”

  “Maybe you taught me some. But we spent time apart, Firewalker, five years apart. I learned plenty of other things then. Without
you.”

  “I watched what you learned. I’ve always been watching you.”

  He had me there. Mick had watched and protected me when I thought I was alone and vulnerable, which I hadn’t learned until much later.

  “Stalking me,” I countered.

  Mick shrugged. “Whatever.”

  I wasn’t going to win a battle of words. I rarely won arguments with Mick when he was sane. I doubted enslaved Mick would pull his punches.

  So I didn’t pull mine. I grabbed the fading wind, built it into my own little microburst, mixed it with Beneath magic, and threw that at him. Mick’s flame widened, sucking the wind into himself at the same time keeping the Beneath magic out. My power pulled back into my hands with a jerk.

  Mick didn’t give me time to recover. Another wave of flame came at me, and another, and another, engulfing my little bubble in heat. My hair crackled, my skin blistered. Mick was going to roast me alive.

  He circled closer, a smile on his face, ready to kill me and enjoy it.

  I gathered wind and blew it at him, following it with a whip of white magic that cracked through the fire and across his skin. His eyes widened in rage, and he came for me.

  My bubble burst under the next fireball, the magic evaporating like water. I ran. I pounded down the beach and straight into the waves as streams of fire followed me.

  The water slapped me, salty and cold. Mick came after me. He was pissed as hell, and his fire boiled the sea. Bubbles formed around me, the water roiling as Mick decided to steam me like a lobster. He strode into the water, like a very good-looking sea monster, and I could do nothing against him. The rainstorm was now completely gone, and it hadn’t been much more than gentle in the first place. I had only my Beneath magic left.

  I could kill Mick with that raw power, but Mick knew I wasn’t prepared to kill him. The witch must be counting on that too. I didn’t want Mick dead. I wanted him free.

  “What is your name?” I shouted at him. “Come on, Mick. Tell me!”

  Mick ignored my plea. He kept coming, me treading water now, my clothes soaked.

  “You have to be in there somewhere, Mick. Please, tell the witch to kiss off and come back to me.”

  Mick had finished with banter. He was the most frightening when he was quiet, focused, deadly. That deadly focus was now trained on me.

  His next burst of fire flowed around me, so hot it burned even the water. I realized dimly that he knew my Beneath magic could shield me as it had on the beach, but that I’d corner myself in a trap of my own making. He’d surround me with fire and heat until the shield failed, and Mick was a long way from tired.

  Mick didn’t bother with another burst of flame once he neared me. He reached, physically, through the fire, immune to his own dragon magic, and grabbed me around the throat.

  I couldn’t scream, couldn’t do much of anything but kick and flail and try to beat him. Mick was a big man, with three times my strength. I’d always loved how he kept that strength gentled for me, even during our wildest sexual escapades, but he wasn’t gentling it now.

  He lifted me out of the water, one hand around my neck. He didn’t squeeze, didn’t shake, simply lifted me until I was face-to-face with him, until I knew the hard power of his hands that would take my life.

  Except he didn’t take it. He held me fast, my clawing not making a damn bit of difference. With the other hand, he ripped open the pocket of my jeans. When Mick’s fingers closed around the shard of magic mirror I kept there, I understood.

  I kicked him squarely in the balls.

  Any man kicked by a hard motorcycle boot between the legs should fold over in exquisite pain, but Mick just looked at me. He pulled up the shard of mirror, his hand bleeding as the glass cut him. I stopped clawing at his death grip and started going for the mirror. I couldn’t let him have it.

  Mick heaved me away from him, one-handed. I flew backward and landed hard on the water, the flames still licking it. I went under but fought my way upward, coughing and spluttering. The mirror was screaming, its high-pitched keen echoing through the deep valleys of the island.

  The mirror would be compelled to obey him, because Mick and I had woken the mirror from dormancy with a spell we’d worked together. It had to obey me too, but right now, Mick held the shard, and it was Mick bouncing fire magic off it, doubled in strength, directed at me.

  I dove. Down into coral that waited to scrape the hell out of my face and hands and rip my jeans. Startled fish burst apart as I invaded their space. I kicked and swam, well under the water, and surfaced right next to Mick.

  His eyes were pearl white, his hands dancing with red light, the mirror screaming. “Oh, Mommy, help me!”

  I dove into Mick and at least made him trip, but I couldn’t get him down. I jumped aside as his mirror-enhanced flame came for me, but my clothes caught fire, and I had to roll back into the water. I looked up, weakening, to see Mick with the mirror reflecting red. Behind Mick rose another dragon, huge and black, wings beating the air, poised for the kill.

  “No!” I screamed.

  But Drake wanted to kill. He pounced on Mick, ready to tear him apart, and Mick, armed with the mirror, turned to incinerate him. Only Drake’s dragon hide saved him from the fire that lanced him, and he shot upward, screeching.

  Undaunted, Drake attacked again, intent to kill. I tackled Mick’s legs, trying to drive him to his knees, but if he hadn’t felt me kicking him in the balls, me landing on the backs of his knees was like a gnat landing on a buffalo.

  I climbed up him, going for the shard of mirror, and Mick fought me all the way. This allowed Drake to swoop in, talons extended, and I don’t think he minded that I might die along with Mick.

  But Mick was ready. He lifted the shard, out of my reach, and the fire that he reflected from it ripped Drake across the chest.

  Drake’s hide opened to the bone, a torrent of blood raining on Mick and me and the mirror. As Drake screamed and took to the air, Mick let fly another blast that struck Drake on the underbelly.

  Drake ponderously flapped away, but he didn’t make it far. He wheeled and fell into the thick trees, and the boom as he struck the ground reverberated through the valley.

  I didn’t stop to watch or wonder. I went for the shard.

  Colby flew in and landed yards away, then ran for us. He closed his arms around my waist, trying to pull me away from Mick, and I fought him off.

  “Get the mirror!” I screamed. “Don’t let him have the mirror!”

  I suddenly adored Colby, because he didn’t stop to ask questions. Colby matched Mick in human strength, and facing that coupled with me clawing at him, Mick suddenly had to truly fight.

  Mick punched Colby across the chest, but as he did, I sank my teeth into Mick’s bloody hand. When he flinched, his grip loosened, and I whipped the shard from his fingers. I cut him deeply, and cut myself as well.

  At my touch, and the touch of my blood, the mirror homed in on me.

  Mick, eyes wild, clamped his hand around my wrist. I felt my bones give, screamed as they broke. I grabbed the shard with my other hand and threw it as hard as I could. As it arced toward the water, I directed Beneath magic at it, which caught in its reflection and arrowed back to Mick.

  Mick had to drop me. The white-hot Beneath magic missed him, shot into the trees, and obliterated them.

  Mick looked at me in surprise. That blow had been intended to kill, something Mick had not believed I’d try. I gave him a smile, trying to mask my own surprise that the burst had been so strong.

  “Sorry, baby,” I said. “Nothing personal.”

  Colby was digging through the water trying to find the mirror. Mick snarled at me, turned and sprinted down the beach, then morphed, shrouded in darkness, into his dragon. He took wing and flew into the dawn, a beautiful black dragon outlined against gray sky. My heart ached as I watched him lift toward the rising sun.

  “Damn it.” Colby stood up, hands on hips. “Can’t reach it.”

 
I hobbled over to him, torn between wanting to curl into a weeping ball and wanting to puke my guts out. I told myself I had time for neither and made it to Colby’s side. Nothing glimmered in the water, but I’d seen the mirror drop into it, free of Mick.

  “We have to find it.” My voice grated, my useless wrist hurting like hell. “You never know what kind of creatures exist in the ocean.” Nasty ones, according to my grandmother.

  “I’m here! I’m here! Don’t leave me, for the love of the gods!”

  The voice echoed to me from our left, and I saw morning sunlight glimmer on something on the coral. I reached for it, closing my eyes in relief as I picked up the piece of glass.

  “This is what Mick came for.” My panic rose even through my pain, burns, and exhaustion. “I have to get back to the hotel. Now. Before Mick figures out a way to enter it and get to the original.”

  Seventeen

  We found Drake collapsed, still dragon, in a stand of crushed trees. His eye was filmy white, his hide covered with blood. He still lived, though his breathing was labored and loud.

  “We’ll have to leave him,” Colby announced. “If you want to get back to your hotel anytime soon, we can’t take him with us.”

  I knew damn well why Colby wanted to leave Drake behind, and it had nothing to do with getting me back to the hotel quickly. Colby was free from the council’s binding spell, and he wanted to fly off before Drake was strong enough to renew it.

  “What’s to keep Mick from returning and killing him?” I asked.

  Colby shrugged. “If Micky wants your mirror, why should he?”

  I didn’t know, but there was more going on here than met the eye. If Mick managed to take the mirror away from the hotel, he could do a lot of damage. The mirror had to obey him, as it had to obey me. Maybe the mirror couldn’t directly murder me while I had power over it, but Mick could use it to destroy everyone else in my life.

  But if there was the slightest chance Drake could figure out Mick’s name while lying here soaking up the earth of Mick’s lair, wouldn’t Mick return to prevent that?