From Jennifer Ashley, With Love

by Jennifer Ashley

  I looked at Mick, fantasizing about peeling the tight jeans from his fine behind once we made it to the bedroom. I hooked one finger through his belt loop in preparation.

  Mick, though, towed me to the front door and started unlocking the heavy thing, opening the hotel for the day.

  This did not make me happy. Mick had been walking on eggshells around me the past couple of months. I’d thought we’d worked it out—what had happened this winter wasn’t his fault, so there was nothing to forgive. I’d told him this. Repeatedly.

  Should have been end of story, but Mick is a complicated guy. Plus, he’d been making mysterious trips, thankfully not long ones, that he wouldn’t talk about. I worried about him like crazy when he wasn’t around, but when Mick didn’t want to say something, he was master at not saying it. He’s about two hundred and fifty years old and has had a lot of practice.

  “It’s still early,” I said, my finger finding his belt loop again.

  “Why don’t you go shower and take off for Gallup, and I’ll prep for breakfast. You know Elena pitches a fit if the kitchen isn’t set up the way she likes it.”

  “That can wait a few minutes, can’t it?” Your girlfriend’s horny, Mick. Catch the hint.

  He gave me his heart-melting smile. Mick was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a hard body, currently wearing jeans and nothing else. I knew there was nothing else, because I’d watched him don the jeans over bare skin down in Ansel’s room. His waistband rode low on his hips, showing me the glory trail that pointed downward from his navel.

  As irritated as I was, I couldn’t deny that Mick was sexiness wrapped in human form. Who could blame me wanting a little morning delight before I ran off to investigate a week-old possible murder?

  Mick bent to kiss my forehead. “Trust me, Janet. We’d need longer than a few minutes.” He touched my hair then turned away for the kitchen.

  I put my hands on my hips and watched him go, filling my senses his bare back, fine ass under one layer of cloth, and the sharp-lined fire tattoo that ran across his lower back.

  The vision would have to sustain me for a while. He ducked into the kitchen without looking back again, and I had to let him go.

  In my bedroom, I ditched my clothes and showered, scrubbing off the dirt, blood, and sweat from the fight. I dried off, dressed, and walked out the back door to greet the sunrise—one thankfully empty of slayers, and of coyotes who liked to spy on me.

  Not that I’d seen much of Coyote since his wife—his wife, the gods help us—had shown up. I liked Bear, what little I saw of her, but Coyote had made himself scarce.

  What I did see outside was my new Harley gleaming in the morning sunlight. Mick had brought it out of the shed and parked it at my back door while I showered.

  Mick, now with a shirt and boots to go with the jeans, came out of the kitchen. I gave him another full glance. The black T-shirt clung to his body, and I knew he was still commando under the jeans.

  “Come with me,” I said. “You’re good at this.”

  Mick could be a more clearheaded thinker than I was—most of the time. When he got mad, though, all bets were off. He was a dragon and thought like a dragon, which meant, If it pisses me off, crush it.

  “One of us needs to stay,” Mick said. “Ansel’s vulnerable in his day sleep, and the slayer was human, which means our wards won’t keep him out. And . . .” Mick looked up at the two stories of square brick hotel rising behind us. “If there’s a price on Ansel’s head, who’s to say that one of your other guests isn’t a slayer? I’ll stay and keep watch and fill in Cassandra and Elena when they get here.”

  Cassandra, my hotel manager, was a witch of incredible power, in addition to being a damn good hotel manager. She’d understand the need to protect Ansel until we knew what was up.

  I wasn’t as certain about Elena, the temperamental cook. She too was a powerful witch, but in a different way, having access to incredible Apache shaman magic that had pooled for about a century. She didn’t much like Nightwalkers, though. She was good about stocking blood for Ansel, but she’d made it known she didn’t approve. Elena could go either way on the Ansel question, and might decide to give aid to the slayers.

  However, Elena liked Mick—one of the few people she did like—and Mick would better be able to persuade her to help than I could.

  Mick kissed me good-bye, a lingering kiss that made me want to push him back inside the hotel and lock the door. But he straightened up, told me to watch myself, and waved me off.

  Not that riding out into the dawn on my new, dark blue Softail was a bad thing. I’d wrecked my last Harley, a Sportster, this past winter, by falling with it into a two-hundred foot sinkhole. The thing had shattered, and all that was left now fit into a shoebox. Mick had bought me the new one after he’d assessed that I’d had time enough to grieve for the old one.

  I started the Softail and closed my eyes to enjoy the throb under me. My previous bike had rattled my bones no matter how much I’d tuned it, but this girl was smooth as silk. Mick had tucked a pair of gloves onto the handlebars, and I drew them on, fastened my helmet, lifted my feet, waved to Mick, and glided out of the parking lot.

  I rode north, up through Flat Mesa toward the I-40. With any luck, Sheriff Jones would still be curled up next to Maya Medina in his house in Flat Mesa and not out watching for the first opportunity to pull me over. Not because I’d done anything wrong, but because he could. In Hopi County, Sheriff Nash Jones was God.

  Whether Jones was still home or striding in early to work, I made it through the quiet streets of Flat Mesa unharassed, and continued to Holbrook. The early morning was cool, a breeze moving the dry grasses. North of me, the land was pink and gold with the rising sun, thin red buttes poking from the desert like fingers into the morning.

  In that direction lay home—Chinle and Many Farms—but I needed to go east, on the freeway that would take me along the edge of the Navajo Nation, to Gallup where Laura and Ansel had dined.

  I wished Ansel hadn’t fallen asleep before he’d given me more than Laura’s name and her photo, but at least I had that. I could ask connections in Santa Fe to tell me what antique store Laura owned, and Ansel could fill me in on more details when he woke up.

  Ever thoughtful, Mick had filled my gas tank. The freeway was quiet this early, and I smiled as I leaned into the bike, riding into the rising sun.

  About an hour later, I rode between straight-sided cliffs, an ancient river valley, and into Gallup, a town upon which people from the Navajo, Zuni, and other Pueblo nations converged to trade, shop, eat, sleep, pass the time of day, and sell things to tourists.

  I’d been an art photographer before I’d decided to restore the hotel in Magellan, and I still sold the pictures I took of the Navajo Nation and the deserts around Magellan through a shop run by a man called Jeff Benally on the main highway in town. Jeff was always up on gossip. He’d be able to tell me if Ansel had come to town to have dinner with a white woman from Santa Fe—and probably what they’d ordered, what time they’d left the restaurant, whether they’d left together, and which direction they’d been heading.

  I started to take the exit to town—Jeff and his wife never minded me dropping by—and discovered I couldn’t move the handlebars. At all. The bike was still going seventy miles per hour, but the handlebars were locked solid.

  I tried to lean into the turn, to slow down and glide off the road, but nothing happened. Alarmed, I yanked the bike toward the road’s shoulder, and the bike yanked back.

  I hit the brakes, which did nothing. I tried throttling down. Nothing. I cut the power, but the bike roared to life again under my hands. What the fuck?

  The motorcycle took off, me clinging on to its back like a spider. The speedometer climbed to seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred.

  The bike flew on east as the sun climbed, Mount Taylor looming in the distance, but I was closing that distance fast. Leaping off the motorcycle at a hundred miles an hour would only kill me, and smac
king the bike with magic might destroy it and me along with it.

  A voice chirped to my right, a piece of magic mirror custom ground by Mick into my side mirror. “Oh, girlfriend,” it said in its drag-queen drawl. “What’s going on?”

  “Tell Mick!” I shouted. The wind tore away my words, but the mirror heard me.

  “Can’t,” it said.

  “Can’t? What do you mean can’t? You have to. You’re supposed to obey me.”

  “Can’t,” it repeated. “Sorry, sugar.”

  The mirror—the original of which was hanging in the saloon at my hotel—was magic-bound to obey me and Mick, and no one should be able to take that obedience from us. The idea that someone or something had done it scared me even more than my out-of-control bike.

  The bike glided around eighteen wheelers, RVs, and cars without me doing a thing, taking me east at breakneck speed.

  Not surprisingly, I picked up the attention of the local police. A state patrol car got on my tail, and another one going west tore through the island between the east- and westbound lanes and pulled in behind me. Nothing I could do. I put my head down into the wind, and the cops kept pace behind me.

  At the turnoff to the 371 toward Farmington, my motorcycle swerved onto the off-ramp, squealed around the corner at the end of it, and headed north. The cops were right behind me. A tribal police SUV swung in ahead of me, trying to cut me off, but my bike kicked in still faster. The motorcycle rocked back, front wheel rising into the air like a rearing horse, me hanging on in terror.

  The bike came down and sped forward, swerving around the tribal SUV and tearing on up the road.

  The Softail dodged onto a narrow road after Crownpoint and headed east then north again on a rough, unpaved road. My bike banged through ruts and holes without stopping, me gritting my teeth and clinging on as best I could.

  The state patrollers in their sedans got left behind, but the Navajo cop was still on me. This road was supposed to be impassable for passenger cars, but the cop had a high-clearance SUV, so he’d be fine. Or, if not, and I got him stuck in a wash, he’d only bust my ass even harder.

  I finally had an idea where we were headed, though. About forty miles up this road lay Chaco Canyon, a mysterious place with deep history, and an aura that made me crazy. The huge structures at Chaco had been built a thousand and more years ago, and the pueblo people who lived in them had also constructed wide roads that led nowhere. New Agers claim the roads are landing strips for aliens; Navajo stories say that the peoples who lived there built the roads for races against a god. Whatever the theories, the place has the weight of magic and the ages.

  The first time I’d gone to Chaco Canyon, years ago by myself, I’d screamed and ridden away before I’d been five minutes into the monument. The weight of the place had nearly crushed me, its magic tearing through my body so hard I was sick for days.

  The second time, I’d been with Mick, and he’d helped temper my reaction. That time, I could pause to appreciate the beauty of the place, but I’d still had to rest for a while afterward.

  For whatever reason, my motorcycle now wanted to take me straight into the heart of Chaco Canyon, my sensitivity to auras be damned. It sped me through the gates and tore toward the ruins, never mind the parking areas and not-yet-open visitors center. I raced between the canyon walls, and the houses and kivas there, and out onto one of the ancient roads.

  There the Softail spun out, dumping me in the dirt before landing on its side. The engine cut out, and all was quiet.

  Chapter Three

  I lay facedown, hurting all over. The rising sun gently touched my bare arms, stinging on cuts and abrasions, my helmet the only thing keeping my face from the dirt.

  Now that I wasn’t flying through it at breakneck speed, the aura of Chaco Canyon descended upon me full force. Sensory data from a thousand and more years pressed on me, the eons rushing together to crush me as I lay there. Blood ran from my nose, but I couldn’t lift my hands to dislodge my helmet.

  My head pounded as though I had a five-day hangover, and my body began to thrum in time with the vibrations of the place. I swore I started to compress, flattening out against the land as though I’d ooze into it and vanish, becoming one more mote in the fine layer of dust.

  Over the humming in my ears, I heard the tribal SUV skid to a dusty halt and its door open. Booted feet hit the ground, then the cop strode cautiously but quickly for me. I knew without looking that he’d drawn his gun, approaching me with textbook precision.

  He stopped in front of my head, then when I didn’t move, he leaned down, dragged my helmet from my head, and started checking my body for injuries. I lay there, stunned, and let him.

  I could tell he’d been a cop for a long time, because he checked me quickly and competently, without trying to grope me or hurt me. He checked my bones for breaks and my head for contusions, then satisfied that I wasn’t too badly hurt, he rolled me onto my back.

  I looked up into the face of a middle-aged Navajo cop, one with a large, flat nose and an even flatter scarred face. His hair was very black, no gray in sight, but his face bore lines of experience, and his eyes were hard. He’d seen a lot on his years patrolling the huge reservation, and he obviously wasn’t impressed with me.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Not really.” My voice was a croak.

  He looked me over, taking in the blood on my face plus the bruises the slayer had left when he’d punched me. The cop slid broad fingers around to my back pocket, pulled out my wallet, and plucked out my license. “Janet Begay,” he read.

  “That’s me,” I mumbled.

  He tucked the license and wallet into his pocket, then hauled me to my feet. I suppose he was being nice to me by not putting me in handcuffs, but I couldn’t have fought off a mosquito at the moment. No storms were around to help me, and using Beneath magic in this place could be suicide. One spark might leave a hole a mile wide and have geologists and meteorologists scratching their heads for centuries to come.

  The cop holstered his gun and marched me with him to his SUV. He opened the back door, stuffed me into the seat, thrust some tissues at me so I could mop up the blood on my face, and slammed the door again.

  I was locked in, behind a grill. I touched the tissues to my nose, wincing as more blood flowed out. The cop’s identification in the front showed him as Frank Yellow from Farmington, his ID photo stiff and unemotional. Now that I was secure, the cop got into his front seat and ran a check on my driver’s license and the motorcycle’s registration.

  Minutes passed, he not hurrying through the procedure. He had all day, his movements said, to figure out what was going on with me.

  I glanced out the windows at the ruins, the canyon walls thrusting up from uneven land, the stillness immense. My skin prickled all over, my scalp tingling as though I’d washed my hair with minty shampoo. Last time I was here, Mick’s presence had dampened the aura which rendered me barely able to breathe or think. I’d survived my last trip here because of him, and I had to wonder if I’d survive this one.

  At the same time, I needed to know why I’d been brought to this place. Someone or something had possessed my bike to drag me here. To do what? To find something? Laura?

  Frank wasn’t ready to let me go, though. He looked at the readout from his police computer, checked a few more things, then made a phone call and chatted to the person on the other end.

  He finished the call, put away his phone, and studied me in the rearview mirror for a long time, as though trying to understand what I was from my face, my eyes, and my bloody nose. When he spoke, he took his time, a Navajo man who’d learned how to get things accomplished with slow patience.

  “It seems you were a real worry to your folks when you were younger. Started a couple of fires, ran away from home.”

  Under his calm stare, I wanted to squirm and apologize for my entire childhood. It hadn’t been easy when my Stormwalker powers had started to manifest, which turned out to
be a picnic compared to what had happened when I’d figured out I had Beneath magic in me too.

  “Not on purpose,” I said. “Except the running away part. But I always went back home.” That is, until I turned eighteen and lit out, trying to get away from who and what I was.

  Frank returned his placid gaze to me. Deceptively placid. This man wasn’t stupid.

  “Any reason you decided to break a clean adult record with some criminal speeding this morning?”

  My bike got possessed and decided I needed to visit some ancient ruins?

  I always tried honesty first, in case it worked. “My bike got stuck in high speed. I couldn’t slow it enough to ditch it until I got here.”

  “You try turning off the engine?”

  “Yes.” The annoyed tone of my voice conveyed I wasn’t lying. “Maybe the gods wanted me out here for a reason.” Whatever that reason, they were certainly beating me over the head for it.

  “That might be,” Frank said. “Doesn’t mean I won’t give you a ticket for reckless driving and excessive speeding.”

  Just my luck. A man who was spiritual but not superstitious. He probably wasn’t happy with me blaming the gods for my predicament. But who else could I blame? If Coyote had something to do with this, I’d . . .

  Well, I didn’t know what I could do to him. Nothing ever seemed to work.

  Frank was reading my record again. “I’ve met your dad.”

  “Yeah?” Pete Begay, my poor, innocent, gentle dad, stuck with a crazy daughter like me.

  “One of the sisters of my clan is marrying him,” he said.

  I didn’t gasp, press my hand to my heart, or exclaim that it was a small world. The Diné might make up one of the largest tribes in the United States, but when I was in this part of the country, I could never not run into someone I knew, or who knew someone I knew, or who was related to someone I knew.

  When the man said sister he meant cousin, as Anglos term it. It wasn’t unlikely that a cop from Farmington would be related to the woman from Farmington who’d agreed to marry my father.