Nash locked the cabinet, and we left his house for his SUV. His radio crackled when he turned it on, a deputy calling in from a remote area of the county to report not much of anything. Nash didn’t answer. I think he understood as much as I did why he and I were the only ones who could go to Maya’s rescue. Anyone else was a potential casualty and would increase the risk to Maya’s life.
We rode in silence through the darkened back streets of Flat Mesa, avoiding the sheriff’s department. Nash floored it on the highway between the towns, the first time I’d ever seen him break the speed limit. It was fifty-five on this narrow road, and Nash pushed it to eighty and ninety, eating up the miles in a matter of minutes.
He slowed to legal speed as we passed my hotel, not wanting to draw attention, and continued this way all the way to Maya’s. Nash drove through the alley behind the houses and parked in front of a vacant lot.
Maya’s street was dark, the back neighborhoods of Magellan having few streetlights. Nash and I crept quietly through Maya’s unfenced yard, going slowly in the darkness. Maya had a little porch in the back with lawn chairs for warm days. Hummingbird feeders hung at intervals, all filled.
French doors led to Maya’s bedroom, but they were locked, the blinds drawn so we couldn’t see in. I didn’t sense any wards around the windows—but then, Jim was human; he wouldn’t know how to ward a house. He counted on his god magic to keep Maya penned in and others out. The moment I tried to use magic to unlock the doors, Jim would know it.
I was pondering how we’d get in without alerting Jim or Maya, when Nash pulled out a key.
I filed that fact away to think about later. Nash quietly slipped the key in the lock and turned it. He had his gun out, ready, as he quickly pushed open the door and stepped sideways into the room. I copied his movements, ducking in behind him.
The room was empty. If a magic barrier had existed to keep out the magically inclined, Nash would have just negated it.
Nash moved soundlessly to the closed bedroom door, listened, and eased the door open.
“Maya!” a man called from the second bedroom. “Bring me more coffee.”
“I’m all out,” Maya said. “I have to go get some.”
“You are not leaving this house.” Jim’s voice took on a note of panic, and he flung open the second bedroom’s door.
Jim looked the same as he ever had, tall and thin, a face neither handsome nor ugly, brown hair and brown eyes. A plain, ordinary man. He stepped out of the room and found himself facing the barrel of Nash’s gun.
Jim stopped. For one frozen, soundless moment Jim stared at Nash and me, and we stared back at Jim. Then he threw magic at us.
Jim had grown in strength and skill. His ball of magic hit Nash full in the chest, the impact sending Nash crashing into the wall. But Nash didn’t fall down dead, as he was supposed to. A wave of magic emerged from Nash’s back as he staggered upright; then the magic slammed back into him, dissipated, and was gone.
Jim’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. How’d he do that?”
Maya appeared at the end of the hallway. “Nash? What the hell?”
I stepped past Nash and shoved Maya back into the living room. “Get out,” I said. I fumbled with the locks of the front door, pushed it open. “Run.”
“This is my house!”
“If you want to live in it some more, run now. Go!”
Maya cast an anguished look down the hall. “Nash,” she cried. “I love you!” Tears on her face, she ran out the door.
“No!” Jim shouted. He tried to blast Maya with a wave of magic, but Nash got in his way. Once again Nash’s body absorbed the magic, but Nash drew a sharp breath with the impact. I wondered how much of Jim’s power he’d be able to take before he was spent.
“You don’t deserve her,” Jim snarled at him. “A fine girl like that, and you ignore her.”
Nash’s lips were white. “If you touched her, I will twist your head from your body and kick it down the street.”
“She’s hung up on you, man. I tried to persuade her to drop you, but she won’t.”
“What do you want?” I asked Jim.
Nash wouldn’t put down his damn gun. I knew bullets wouldn’t hurt Jim, but Nash probably felt more comfortable with the heaviness of a weapon in his hands.
Jim faced me. “What do you mean, what do I want?”
Magic burned inside me, needing release. The magic urged me to crush Jim, end of problem.
But Coyote was right—if I did that, I’d be no different from Jim. I realized that Coyote could have killed me long ago, when the Beneath magic first manifested in me—no, he could have killed me at birth, or whenever he’d realized that my mother had successfully made a child. But Coyote had given me a chance, many chances. I had to step back and do the same with Jim.
“When you came here, you were looking to get rich,” I said. “You’d steal a few old pots, sell them for big money on the black market. But that got you killed, and you aren’t interested in pot hunting anymore. So, what are you interested in?”
Jim shrugged. “Figuring out what happened to me.”
“Then why take Maya hostage?”
“I didn’t take her hostage. I just needed a place to crash where no one was trying to shoot me. You all ran off and left her alone last night, and I needed to heal.”
“You’ve killed three people,” I pointed out.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“But you did it,” Nash said. “And you’ll answer for it.”
“What about the guy who killed me? Will he answer for it?”
“Yes,” Nash said in a steady voice.
“What about whoever brought me back to life? Made me a killing machine? What happens to her? It’s not my fault.”
“Her?” I asked. “Why do you say her?”
“Because it was a her. I thought it was you.”
Not me, not my mother. Then who? Cassandra? I chilled. No, couldn’t be. She’d been as amazed as I was when she’d seen the vision of Jim’s resurrection.
“Well, it wasn’t me.” I buried my speculations, but I would remember the clue. “You have to control this magic. You’re hurting people who never did anything to you.”
“What about the man who tried to shove you into that limo at gunpoint? I was trying to save you. And that guy in the hotel in Las Vegas—he wanted to rape you and Maya. Was I supposed to let that go? You’re my only friends.”
The fact that he described me and Maya as his friends made me slightly sick. “We’d already gotten away from the guy in Las Vegas. Security would have found him and taken care of him.”
“He tried to hurt you,” Jim argued. “I couldn’t let that go.”
“Damn it, why are you so determined to be my avenging angel?”
“Avenging angel. I like that. Because you’re like me, and they’re trying to kill you too. I thought you made me...”
“At the time of your death and resurrection in Homol’ovi, I was in Death Valley with Nash and Mick. Nowhere near you.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Maybe I was brought back for a reason.”
“No,” I said. “It was a mistake.”
Jim’s face darkened. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Because no human can handle the magic that was dumped into you. I don’t know why whoever it was, whatever god it was, decided to bring you back to life, but they should never have. You’re not even bothering to control yourself.”
“I did at first. It scared me, and I’m sorry about the hiker. I really was trying to help him. The others—they deserved it.”
“No one deserves that.”
“No?” Jim lifted his brows. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“If you can control the magic, if you stop hurting people with it, maybe I can help you.” Coyote might not let him off so easy, but Jim didn’t need to know that. I just wanted him out of Maya’s house.
“While he’s in prison,” Nash said tightly. “He’s
killed three people.”
Jim smiled. “I’m not going to prison, Sheriff. I’m staying here with Maya. She’ll come back. She likes me.”
Nash’s finger moved on the trigger.
“Take some advice,” I said quickly to Jim. “If you want to live a peaceful, happy life, don’t piss off Nash Jones.”
“Screw Nash Jones,” Jim said, and he blasted both of us with magic.
Nash shot him. The bullet went right into Jim’s brain, and he flinched, but he didn’t fall or stop. Nothing showed he’d been shot but a small, red hole in the side of his head.
You don’t have to take this.
At the same time my little voice spoke, I raised a shield of white light between me and Jim. I could kill him. I had the power. Days ago, at the club in Las Vegas, I could barely fend him off. Today, I knew exactly what to do.
“Jim,” I said. “Stop.”
Jim’s eyes widened when his power couldn’t break through my barrier. He stared at me through it for a second, and then he swung around and ran for his bedroom window.
Nash shot him again, plugging him at the base of the spine. Jim threw open the window and dove through it as though he didn’t feel a thing.
Swearing, Nash ran back through Maya’s bedroom and out the French doors. I rushed to the window in Jim’s bedroom and slid my slim body through it.
Jim found himself caught between the two of us. He gave us a wild look before bolting through the neighbors’ side yard. Nash went right after him, me coming behind. Jim ran between houses, dodging garden sheds, kids’ toys, and barking dogs. He hit the edge of the neighborhood and kept running out into the desert.
His runner’s body made him fast, and the magic made him strong. But Nash had stamina. He kept a flat-out pace, as tired as he must be. I felt like crap, but my magic was awake and excited and propelled me along.
Jim scrambled over the railroad bed and headed for the vortexes. Shit. If he started using god-magic around them, he might open one and let out who knew what. The last thing the world needed was my mother emerging to go on a rampage.
The sky was beautifully clear, the moon so bright it was like an incandescent light. The moonlight outlined Jim against the dark desert, and Nash took a few more shots at him. Not that it did any good.
Jim kept running. I was panting, lagging, realizing I needed to get into better shape. I saw Jim disappear into the earth, Nash after him. Heart hammering, I made it to where they’d vanished and realized they’d jumped not into a vortex but down into the canyon that housed Chevelon Creek. The walls were steep, the bottom wide and rocky, the flat edges of the creek itself thick with scrub seeking water.
Nash had Jim cornered against the rock wall on the other side of the canyon. I jogged through weeds and water until I caught up to them.
“Leave me alone,” Jim said. His face was wan in the moonlight, his body full of bullet holes, sagging against the rock. “I’ll go somewhere else, never bother you again.”
“We can’t let you go.” I rested my hands on my thighs, trying to catch my breath. “You know we can’t. You’re too dangerous. You have to learn control.”
“Like you do?” Jim asked with a sneer. “You can’t control your magic either.”
I shook my head, straightening up. “But I’m willing to learn. Willing not to use it at all.”
“But you have to use it, if you’re going to stop me. A dilemma, isn’t it?”
At that moment, I hated Jim, hated Coyote for making me so scared of him and myself, and hated my mother for bestowing this magic on me at all. The Beneath magic had given me nothing but trouble since the moment I’d first felt it stir.
Just kill him, my voice said.
“No. I won’t. I’ll find another way.”
“You can’t.” Jim sounded smug. “No one is strong enough to kill me but you. I’m going.”
“Like hell you are,” Nash said.
“And how do you intend to stop me?”
Nash glanced upward. “With them.”
I jerked my gaze to where he pointed. Four giant beasts filled the sky, and they were angling toward our position. Four jets of dragon flame burst into the night, the dragons winging in to solve the problem.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I would be spared the decision. Coyote couldn’t blame me if Mick led three dragons in formation to eliminate the deadly undead. I suddenly loved Mick very, very much.
The dragons came on, the black bulk of Mick in front. Streams of dragon fire met and meshed, becoming one single flame that arrowed toward Jim. I watched the bright fire, mesmerized, until Nash grabbed me and yanked me out of the way.
We landed ankle-deep in the creek as all four flames shot into Jim. Jim shouted and flailed, looking like a man made of fire, his screams horrible. I watched, unable to look away, as Jim’s skin melted, draining away to the earth.
Nash still held me, the butt of his gun pressed into my stomach. I knew even then that I could have saved Jim. I was powerful enough to do it. I could have damped the dragon fire and let him live, but I chose to stand with Nash and watch Jim die.
Except that he didn’t die. The flames started to dim, although the dragons continued to pour them on. The fire and smoke dampened more and more until I could see that Jim was grabbing the flames into his own hands, squishing them down into a smaller and smaller ball. The thing glowed like a dwarf star that longed to be a supernova.
I shouted. I fought my away out of Nash’s hold and charged at Jim just as he released the fire back into the air.
The dragons shrieked and broke apart. Mick streamed past me, his black hide gleaming in the moonlight as the four dragons regrouped and re-formed. They streaked again toward Jim, faster and faster, flaming him a split second before they reached him.
This time, Jim was ready for them. The dragon flames burst against a wall of nothing, while Jim, burned and blackened, hid behind the wall and sucked the dispersed dragon fire into his hands. As the dragons rolled away and climbed to the sky again, Jim hurled the fire back at them.
The flames caught a red dragon on the tail. He screeched and sailed downward, landing somewhere out in the darkness. Mick soared over the spot where his comrade had fallen, and then he turned back to the canyon and came at Jim like a bullet from a gun.
Mick was furious. I read it in the tight line of his huge body, in his intense speed, in the red of his eyes as he zoomed between the canyon walls. He went for Jim with his mouth open, ready to finish this in the dragon way—with one bite.
Jim gathered every bit of god-magic in him and threw it at Mick.
Nash tried to jump in the way, to take it, but Mick was coming too fast. Mick’s talon batted Nash out of the way, and the white light grabbed Mick full force. The magic carried Mick up and up, higher and higher. Desperately, I threw my own magic at him, and Jim and I had a wrestling match for Mick’s dragon body while it hung in midair.
The forces of our fight rippled through the darkness, expanding the air until a sonic boom floated over the desert. Mick was being torn apart. He was screaming and writhing, trying to escape the both of us. I had to let go, but if I did...
Gasping, I snapped my magic from Mick and threw it directly at Jim. Jim collapsed.
But the second before his magic winked out, Jim gave a twist of his hand. Mick’s body wrenched in two different directions at once. I heard the crunch of bones and cartilage, two hundred feet above me. Then Jim’s magic vanished, and Mick plummeted to the ground.
I tried to grab Mick, to cushion his fall, but he hit hard. The ground shook as Mick’s huge dragon body landed at the top of the canyon wall, the impact cascading boulders and gravel into the creek.
I was racing to Mick, scrambling up the side of the canyon, stumbling and falling, racked with sobs. Dragons touched down around me as I reached the top, became human. The smaller red that had gotten burned was Colby; the other black, Drake, the large red orange, Bancroft. They converged around Mick as he lay motionless in the darkness
. Mick opened one huge silver and black eye, which flickered with flame and then started to film over.
The dragons surrounded him. Air shimmered. Mick shifted from dragon into the naked and limp human body of the man I loved and sought me with eyes that could no longer see. I threw myself on my knees next to him, where I could touch his hair, kiss his face, let him know I was there.
His smiled at me with a hint of his bad-boy smile. “Sorry, baby,” he whispered.
“Mick.” My voice grated, barely working.
The other dragons circled around us. Colby was inked all over, only his hands, feet, and face free of tattoos. Drake’s dragon tattoo covered his back with a wing down each arm. Bancroft, older, had more modest tattoos, like Mick, dragons encircling his biceps and flowing upward around his neck. I gazed at them all through my tears.
“Help him,” I said.
Bancroft put a gentle hand on my back. “He’s too far gone. There’s nothing to be done.”
“He can turn back into a dragon. That will save him, right?”
Colby answered, his gravelly voice somber. “It’s too late, Janet. If that would have helped, he’d have stayed dragon.”
“You don’t want to help him,” I said. “You all want him dead.”
They didn’t contradict me, and my anger flowed anew. I was about to scream at them when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. A large coyote was bounding toward us, his body surrounded by a blue nimbus.
He became the man Coyote as he stopped and looked down at Mick with profound sorrow.
“Janet,” he said, his dark eyes filled with sadness. For me, for Mick. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Help him! You can bring him back to life. I’ve seen you do it.”
“Mick is mortal,” Coyote said. “I told you. You can’t change someone’s time to die.”
I couldn’t believe this. My lover was dying, and the most powerful men I’d ever met were standing around shaking their heads and feeling sorry for me. I flung myself away from Coyote just as I heard more shots in the canyon.
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