Shadow Walker

by Allyson James

  Somehow Vonda had learned these tricks, the most difficult magics in existence, and she didn’t even look strained. The bitch.

  “And a harness,” Nash said calmly.

  A harness appeared in the pile. Nash, who’d been a fierce Unbeliever until he’d met me, said nothing as he skirted the vortex, which looked like a tornado that had sucked away half the floor, and picked up the gear.

  “Before I do this,” he said to Vonda as he strapped on the harness. “Tell me what I am.”

  Vonda lifted her plucked brows. “Bring me my husband and then we’ll talk.”

  “No,” Nash said. “Now.”

  “Why do you think I know?”

  “You seemed to know so much about everyone here. What about me? How did I become this way?”

  Vonda’s lip curled. “It’s very complicated. I doubt you’d understand.”

  Before Nash could growl at her again, I made a wild stab. “Does it have anything to do with my hotel? And why you want it?”

  Vonda looked at me with a flicker of anger, and did I detect worry? “We’re wasting time. My husband might be being eaten by demons even as we speak.”

  “I don’t notice you leaping to his rescue.” I moved to the wet bar, which was happily in an alcove away from the vortex, opened the refrigerator, and took out a water bottle. The cardboard collar on the bottle said that the hotel would add four dollars to Vonda’s bill if it was opened. I ripped off the collar, unscrewed the lid, and took a long drink.

  “Answer Nash and answer me,” I said. “You wanted me out of my hotel because you wanted the hotel. Not because it’s close to a vortex, because there’s one right under this hotel, which obviously you know how to open, and I don’t notice you trying to take over this place. It’s not the magic mirror. I thought maybe it was because of the Crossroads, but you could more quickly take over Barry’s bar, which lies even closer to the ley line. Barry’s human and easily disposed of, even with all his biker friends ready to shoot you. So what is it?”

  “Really, Janet, you’d let my husband die?” Vonda asked me. “A helpless human?”

  I took another sip of water. “I never liked Ted.”

  Vonda didn’t want to tell me. I saw in her face that once she explained her desires to me, she knew I’d try to stop her obtaining those desires. Which meant that she wanted something dark and horribly dangerous that would make her darker and still more dangerous. I planned to stop her no matter what, but the more specifics I knew, the easier my task would be.

  I watched her weigh her need for more power against Ted’s life. Despite her neutral expression, the indecision in her eyes was interesting. She must really love Ted. Why, I had no idea. I wondered if I’d experience the same turmoil if someone had told me that to rescue Mick, I’d have to let go of something vastly important to me, maybe my magic itself.

  I knew with sudden clarity that for me, such a choice would be simple. No turmoil about it. I loved Mick, and I’d give up all the secrets of the universe, the answer to magic itself, to keep him safe.

  I took another quick sip of water to hide my bewilderment. This stage of my love was new and fragile, and I viewed it in wonder.

  Vonda pressed her hands together, her silver bracelets clinking. “There was once a great mage,” she said. “An Apache shaman who grew to such power that he was asked to leave his home and not come back. This was a hundred and more years ago, when the railroads were new, bringing more and more settlers out into Indian lands. The Apache followed the Crossroads from his home in the mountains down to Magellan, to a hotel that had just been built next to the railway line.”

  “The man who owned the hotel didn’t want to let him in,” Vonda continued. “The hotel was for whites only, but the Apache shaman refused to leave. Because the shaman was old and pathetic, and it was snowing, the owner let him sleep in the basement for a night. The next morning, the old man was gone.”

  “And this Apache shaman put a spell on my hotel?” I asked.

  Vonda ran slender fingers up and down her bare arms. “No one knows. No one actually saw the man leave. He simply vanished. The owner didn’t care. He was happy that the old Indian had moved on. But a mage who stopped at the hotel a few years later felt a vast magic there and sought its source. He found it in your basement, a sink of magic, vibrating with potential but impossible to tap.” She drew a sharp breath. “There is a spell, you see, known only to the most powerful mages, that can be put on a specific thing to attract magic to it—a talisman, a place, a building in this case. It absorbs magic, sucking in more and more as time goes on, until the power it’s built is incredible.”

  “And that’s what you say happened to my hotel?” I said doubtfully. “The shaman put a spell on it to absorb magic? I’ve lived there almost a year, have worked wards all over it and deep into the walls. Why wouldn’t I have known it was a magic sponge?”

  “The spell is very subtle. Only a powerful witch or shaman who understands these things would find it, and without the right knowledge, the magic can’t be tapped. But you were attracted to the hotel, weren’t you?” Vonda smiled at me, her eyes still cool. “Why else would a young Navajo photographer, who thought herself a free spirit, decide it a good idea to open a hotel. A run-down place that hadn’t been successful for any other owner before her?”

  Good point. I remembered when I’d ridden past the Crossroads the first time and seen the hotel standing abandoned next to the biker bar. A square, brick, rather ugly thing, windows gone, stones crumbling, unwanted and alone. I’d felt an affinity for it, a need to pat its walls and reassure it that I’d take care of it. I’d been able to get the building cheap because no one wanted it—no one wanted even the land it was on. I’d stubbornly put the hotel back together and had fought time and again to hang on to it.

  “You see?” Vonda said. “You sensed its power, even if you didn’t know why. I have a feeling that’s why your witch Cassandra came to you. She was attracted by the magic sink, but she must not know how to unlock its power, because she would have by now if she could.” Vonda took on a dreamy look. “All that potential, and it’s just sitting there. Protected by you and your dragon boyfriend and your magic mirror, while it quietly imbibes all your magics at the same time.”

  “It’s draining us?” I asked in alarm. But my magic and my ability had grown since I’d moved in. She made no sense.

  “No. That’s the beauty of it. The magic uses your power to enhance its own. It builds but doesn’t destroy.” Her dreamy look turned wistful. “And now you won’t let me have it.”

  “Damn right I won’t.” Vonda was a magic stealer. Letting her get hold of a well of sparkly magic that had been building for a hundred years would not be a good idea. She’d unmake the world just for the fun of it and then take Ted out for pizza.

  “What has all this got to do with me?” Nash asked in a hard voice. “Am I linked to the hotel somehow? I’m negative magic while it’s positive?”

  “Nice theory, but no,” Vonda said. “But you’re similar to the hotel. Just as a mage can create a power sink, a mage can create a power hole. A place from which all magics are driven out, or maybe the magic is absorbed and negated, canceled. The spell I’m thinking of is very, very difficult, almost impossible for all but the strongest mages. It was first created to be a defensive spell, usually put into a talisman and to be used only for the short term—if the mage knows he has to go up against a very strong magical being, say. The talisman would cancel out the magic of the attacker—in theory. I’ve never actually seen such a spell in action.”

  “I never remember anyone giving me a talisman or casting a defensive spell on me,” Nash said. “Or a spell of any kind, not that I’d have believed it anyway.”

  “I’m not sure exactly what happened to you,” Vonda said, looking at him thoughtfully. “But if a group of very powerful mages combine efforts, they can sink the magic negativity into a larger thing, such as a building. Or sometimes a person if that person is strong en
ough to hold it, but that’s very rare. Mick told me your history. I’m willing to bet that in Baghdad, you led your men into a building that had been turned into a talisman for magic negation, probably by a group of mages working together. They must have been very powerful. Spells like that have a great sense of self-preservation. When the bomb went off with you in the building, the spell likely dove into the strongest thing it could find. You.”

  Nash’s face drained of color until his unshaved whiskers stood out stark against his skin. “Are you saying that my men died, but I stayed alive so that a spell could survive?”

  “It chose you, Nash Jones,” Vonda said. “Knowing that you were the strongest person in that building. You grew up around vortexes in that little town of yours. It’s possible that a spark of magic lingered in you, and the spell was drawn to it. Or maybe it just sensed your strength. You are a very strong man.” Her gaze roved up and down him in appreciation. “But no matter how it happened, you now possess some of the greatest negative magic that I have ever witnessed.”

  “Can the spell be reversed? Or taken out? Or wear off?”

  Vonda shrugged, silver clinking again. “Who knows? I do know that I want what’s in you. So does Gabrielle, and so does Janet’s mother. How deliciously powerful I could be if I could siphon off that negative energy but keep it from taking away my own magic. I tried to do it while you were unconscious in the hospital, but it didn’t work.”

  I remembered the woman who’d pretended to be Nash’s mother while he lay in the ICU. I’d thought Gabrielle had sent her to kidnap Nash, but I realized now that not even Gabrielle was powerful enough to create a slave from nothing. “What was that thing?” I asked. “How did you do that?”

  “A simple spell,” Vonda said offhandedly. “An animated talisman, infused with my magic, and fashioned to look like Nash’s mother. It was supposed to steal his magic and bring it back to me, but I had no idea at that time how strong Mick was. Or Nash.” She ran her tongue over her pale lips.

  “How the hell did you know what my mother looked like?” Nash snarled.

  “Photos. You have one of her in your office. Ted snapped a picture of it for me when he went to talk to you.”

  The ever-handy Ted. I remembered Nash telling me, irritated, that Ted had barged into his office to accuse Nash of doing his job badly.

  “Asshole,” Nash said.

  “It didn’t work, so the effort was wasted. Your Stormwalker friend and the dragon protect you well. But of course they do—they want your magic to serve their needs, not anyone else’s.”

  I noticed I was crushing the water bottle in my hand, and I set it down. “If you want to keep Nash alive to take his magic, why are you making him go into a vortex?”

  Vonda looked surprised. “If his negative magic isn’t powerful enough to survive a vortex, then it’s of no use to me. This is a good way to find out.”

  “You are one sick woman,” I said. “But you’re right about one thing. I won’t let you get your hands on my hotel, and I won’t let you get them on Nash. We should go, Nash. Let her fish up Ted on her own.”

  “I can’t.” Nash’s face was nearly green, but he shook his head. “I can’t deliberately let a man die when I can save him. Even a man as irritating as Ted.” He looked up at Vonda. “But when I bring him back, you and he are leaving my county. My state. No, the entire Southwest. I’m putting you two in every police database in the country and sending the info around the world. You do anything to anyone ever again, I’ll be alerted, and when I find you again, I won’t hold back.”

  His voice was cold, Nash at the end of his tether. He would never deliberately hunt and kill another person—unless they broke the law. Then they wouldn’t have a prayer of escaping the wrath of Nash Jones.

  “All right, hurry up,” I muttered. I couldn’t walk away from Ted either. Demons from Beneath could be nasty, and even Ted didn’t deserve death at their hands.

  Nash gave me a nod, dug the grappling hook through the carpet into the cement floor, and dove straight into the vortex.

  Twenty-eight

  I started for the rope, but Vonda reached me before I could and shoved a cold pistol into my ribs. “Not you.”

  I brought up my Beneath magic to squish her pistol in half, but she slapped me with a touch of it herself, canceling mine out. The vortex, responding to our little play, yawned wider.

  This could get ugly fast. “Let me help him. Nash is my friend.”

  “I want to see what happens to him. Or what he does to the vortex.”

  The rope stretched tight, the grappling hook creaking as it swayed. I prayed that Nash had fixed it right, though he seemed to know what he was doing. There was no sound from below us, only the rushing, roaring noise of the vortex.

  “If Nash dies, you’re going in there headfirst,” I said.

  “And you with me.”

  Fine. I could kill her down there as well as I could up here. “How did you acquire Beneath magic? Witches are earth magic.”

  “Correction, witches are supposed to have only earth magic. I learned to be open-minded.”

  “But how did you get it? The more important question: who from?” Or did I mean from whom? I’d never done well with English grammar.

  “From Gabrielle.” Vonda smiled. “The day I met her.”

  Shit. “Does she know?”

  “No. Gabrielle thinks she is powerful, but I am more powerful.”

  “You’re a leech,” I said. “You suck power from others the same way a leech draws blood. What happens if you get too bloated with magic? You explode?”

  Interesting thought. Taking inventory of myself, I knew she hadn’t taken power yet from me. Why hadn’t she? And could I overload her if she tried?

  “I learned a long time ago how to make sure I don’t hurt myself,” Vonda said.

  “How long ago? Are you even human?”

  “I am. A hundred years and more I’ve been imbibing magic.” She looked me up and down and smiled. “You’ll taste good.”

  “A hundred years. Like the Apache in your story. Are you him? Is that why he disappeared? You changed form?”

  “No. He died. I killed him and buried his body under the railroad bed. After I took his magic. Well, what was left of it, damn him.”

  I leaned against the wall, still wary of her pistol. “Why don’t you tell me about it? While Nash and Ted are busy fighting for their lives?”

  Vonda shrugged as though we chatted at a cocktail party, a boring one. “I lived in Magellan back then, very young, about sixteen. My mother was a night bird, a lady of the evening, if you will, and naturally, I became one too. I’d lived in Magellan long enough to understand that the vortexes held magic, and that I held magic. And that I was strong. The hotel owner hired me to go down to the Apache and keep him quiet. The Indian smelled and was filthy, and I didn’t want to touch him. But the hotel owner promised to pay me a large sum—large for those days—and down I went. I figured out pretty quickly that he was a powerful shaman, too powerful for his own people’s comfort. I stole that old man’s magic tricks, but he’d already dumped most of what he had into the walls of the hotel, locking it in with spells I couldn’t break. That made me very, very angry. So I drained him of everything he had left. Once he was too weak to fight me, I stuck a knife into his chest.”

  Heartless bitch. “And carried him upstairs and buried him in the desert with no one knowing?”

  “Oh, the hotel owner knew. He helped me bury the man. Who cared? He was only an old Apache, outcast from his tribe. We didn’t have to be PC in those days.”

  I doubted Vonda had ever caught on to treating anyone with dignity, no matter who they were or what their culture. “So that makes it all right?”

  Vonda laughed, and she really shouldn’t have. “Janet, I was young and broke. I wanted his magic, and I wanted the money. The Apache was like an animal to me, one ready to die. I did him a favor.”

  When Nash came out that vortex, I was pushing her in
. End of story.

  I imagined the terror of the old man in the dark of my basement, fear shining in his eyes, as the beguiling woman stole the last of what he was. Vonda hadn’t even had the decency to return him to his home, his lands, his people. She’d dumped his body, and he’d disappeared as though he’d never existed. Had he been able to find his ancestors? Or was he still out there wandering, searching? I’d never seen any ghosts on the railroad bed, but others, including Fremont, claimed to.

  “And now you’re back to see if you can take the magic out of my basement,” I said. “Why did you wait so long to return to Magellan?”

  Vonda looked annoyed. “Because I knew I wouldn’t be strong enough to tap into the magic. It took me decades to build up my powers and educate myself. No one wanted that old hotel, and I thought I could simply come back when I was ready and take it. And then you moved in. A Stormwalker with Beneath magic, drawing wards all over the place. Then your dragon turned up and added his magic. Irritating. I had to watch and plan, but once I’d learned how to suck away a dragon name, I struck. I don’t care that you’ve taken Mick away from me. I’ll fight you, and I’ll win. I’ll get your magic and the rest of the shaman’s magic from your hotel. And then I’ll be invincible.”

  “You know . . .” A familiar male voice came from the door, one I’d last heard talking to me from a wall in the cave. “I always wondered what happened to that old shaman.”

  Coyote walked in, his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket, his dark eyes watchful. I let out a quiet breath in some relief. About damn time.

  “I looked for him for a long time before I decided he must have died,” Coyote said. “You buried him under the railroad bed, eh? Not good.”

  Vonda drew herself up, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. “I’m not afraid of you, Trickster. I can take your magic too.”