In Graves Below

by Carol Van Natta

  He wanted a shower. If he was honest, he wanted a shower with Riya, but she was right. He felt the pull of dreamwalk like a song he couldn’t get out of his head.

  In his bedroom, Riya, still gloriously naked, was pulling back the sheets. She turned to watch him enter with unabashed admiration, giving his dick ideas.

  He wanted her to know how happy he was, how perfect she was. All his stupid brain could come up with was, “Bathroom’s all yours.”

  She grabbed a small pouch from her bag and passed by him, but not before she kissed him. “There’s a present under your pillow.”

  He turned on the bedside light, turned off the overhead, then sat on the bed and pulled off the prosthesis. The bedside clock said it was one in the morning. He was exhausted and exhilarated at the same time, and dreamwalk was insistent.

  He lifted his pillow to see that she’d left him a half dozen condom packages, lined up in a row. He made a vow to use every one of them with her, even though it would probably kill him. At least he’d die a happy man.

  Chapter 15

  Riya entered through her sliding-glass door into summer and directly into her beloved Idrián’s embrace. “Hi there, handsome.” She kissed him. “Still loving the loincloth and the eagle’s feet.” She slid her hand onto his bare ass under the loincloth and squeezed gently.

  He laughed and shook his head. “They’re just legs.”

  She’d thought that entering dreamwalk would solve everything, but all it did was make the pull stronger. She pointed toward the distant red lump that seemed to be the source. “Do you feel the call?”

  “Yes.” He took her hand. “I’ll teach you to travel next time. For now, just hang on.”

  It was as dizzying as always, but at least it was short. Their destination turned out to be the graves of his ancestors, the windows facedown in the mounds of red dirt. She remembered that to him, they were rocks. The call was almost shouting now, and she pulled Idrián toward the one mound that didn’t have a window. It hadn’t been there the last time.

  “What do you see?” she asked.

  “A pile of dirt.” He shook his head. “I feel it. Like a rhythm in my chest of a song I should know.”

  Inspiration struck. “Dance with me.” She felt his objection rise and put her finger on his lips to forestall it. “This is dreamwalk, where your potential isn’t limited by what you think you can’t do in the real world.” She put his hand on her waist and put her hand on his hip. “Start with the beat.”

  She swung her hips left and right, and gently pushed on his hip. “Move, and I’ll mirror you.”

  He shut his eyes and began swaying. It was subtle at first, then more pronounced. The connection between them flared, and she felt the beat through him. She could lead him, but it wouldn’t help. He’d learn best by doing. “Teach me.”

  He began shuffling his feet left and right, tentatively at first, then with purpose and design. She matched him, movement for movement, step for step. His shoulders and torso moved in counterpoint, and she matched those, too. Electricity was building between them, wanting somewhere to go. She used her gift for opening doors to shape a key just for him and sent it to him over their connection. His eyes flew open as he opened his arms wide. His feet stilled. His chest thrust up and out, like a dancer at the top of an arc. The electricity became a yellow beam that shot from his chest to blast away the red dirt to reveal a hole in the ground, with the top of a ladder sticking out of it.

  He took a step closer, then held out his hand to her. “It’s a kiva. I should have known. Come on.”

  “What’s a kiva?” She wasn’t liking the idea of climbing a rickety ladder into the unknown.

  “Subterranean sacred room. My people borrowed it from earlier tribes to hide our treasure and our magic from the Spaniards.”

  She took a step back. “You go on. I’ll wait.”

  He crossed to her and wrapped her in a hug. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t like dark holes in the ground. There aren’t any doors.” She shivered. “When I was twelve, my uncle trapped me in a well. It took my mother a day to find me because he used magic to hide it.”

  She felt the tension rise in him. “Why does he do it?”

  “He’s an orphaned condor shifter, the last of his kind. He refused to look outside his species for a mate, and he hated humans. I’m mostly human, so…” She caressed the side of his face where his jaw tightened. “He’s no threat. He’s doing hard time in the cloud realm.”

  He stroked her hair. “If he comes anywhere near you, I’ll kill him.”

  “You’ll have to get in line behind my family.” She shrugged a shoulder. “That’s why they’re so protective of me.” She sighed. “I’m going to have go in the hole, aren’t I?”

  “Like I said before, prophecies are hard on the people in them.” He gave her a quick kiss. “I’ll go first and turn on the lights.”

  Just as he stepped away, something invisible wrapped around her chest and yanked her backward, hard. “Idrián!” Her sliding door appeared and she sailed through it, barely missing slamming into the glass…

  …She awoke in darkness, coughing, her eyes stinging from smoke pouring into the room. She shook Idrián’s sleeping form, but he didn’t respond. She remembered reading somewhere to get down low, under the smoke, so she wrestled his nude body onto the floor, wincing with each bruise she was sure she gave him. She used her magic to feel for openings and discovered one she hadn’t noticed before, in the floor of the hallway. The windows in Idrián’s bedroom were too high and small to be of any use, even if she could have lifted Idrián’s inert body.

  She pulled the coverlet off the bed and rolled Idrián onto it, hoping she wasn’t about to make a dragging tarp out of a priceless heirloom.

  Juana Morales flashed into view. “We’re under attack. We were holding them off at the wards until the firecat flamed one of the small demons, and the big demon got mad and launched its burning body into the other end of the trailer. You have to renew the wards, or we’ll be overrun.”

  “How do I do that?” She hastily pulled on her shoes, trying to take shallow breaths.

  “Use the kiva below and connect with Idrián in dreamwalk.”

  Riya remembered something Idrián had told her. “Juana, invoke the treaty with Magic. They’ll help.”

  Juana flickered like an old-time filmstrip. “We can’t. It has to be someone living.”

  “Great,” Riya grumbled. “No pressure.” She knocked into something, and Idrián’s wire frame prosthesis toppled into her. She grabbed it, the silicone liner, and his shoes and put them on top of Idrián’s chest, along with whatever clothes she could find.

  She found her T-shirt and wet it with water from a glass on the bedside table. She started to tie it around her face, then called herself an idiot and used her dreamwalk skill and morphed it into a wet bandanna, which made it easier to handle. If they lived through this, she was going to memorize a whole catalog’s worth of safety equipment, starting with a firefighter’s breathing mask. She morphed heavy jeans and a long-sleeve shirt onto herself.

  Foot by foot, she backed down the hall, sliding her butt along the floor, pulling the coverlet with Idrián. Adrenaline gave her strength, but made her shaky and wanting to pee. The walls made it easier to brace her legs for leverage with each new pull, but she couldn’t see where she was going. She sensed the door to the kiva and used portal magic to brute-force it open. The trap door missed her by inches and banged against the wall.

  She wiped her heavily watering eyes and looked into the opening. Attic-type stairs led down into inky darkness. Her involuntary gasp got her a lungful of smoke, which set off a fit of coughing that felt like it could break her ribs. If she didn’t get Idrián down there, they’d both suffocate in the hallway.

  Gritting her teeth, she pivoted on her butt and put her legs on the first step, then yanked on the coverlet to pull Idrián’s shoulders onto her lap. His head lolled sideways, exposing the bur
ned side of his face. He didn’t need any more scars. She moved her feet to the next step down, then slid her butt down a step, pulling Idrián along with her.

  Another step. She heard something fall in the living room and saw a flare of flame.

  She yanked Idrián farther down with her. Something tore in her shoulder, but she could deal with that later. Another step.

  Idrián’s prosthesis slid off his chest into the darkness and landed with a soft thud. As soon as Idrián’s legs cleared, she wrenched him further, then used her magic to close the trap door behind her. She hoped to hell there was some other source of oxygen in the kiva besides what came from burning trailer above.

  Idrián’s body started to slide downward on its own. She hung on and tried to protect his head as they bumped hard down six more steps. The darkness ate at her soul and terror had her teeth chattering in reaction. Where was a damn fear-eater demon when she needed one?

  Two more steps, and her feet hit soft dirt instead of wooden stair.

  She was alone in the bottom of a black pit with no way out.

  Except she wasn’t alone, and she wasn’t a helpless child who hadn’t come into her magic.

  Idrián knew how to create magical light from the earth, so maybe she could, too. She reached for their connection and poured her need into it. Slowly, as if on a dimmer, lights came up in the room, which turned out to be circular, with a chair-height ledge all the way around. The center of the twenty-foot-diameter space had a bed of soft-looking, rich brown soil, and the whole room had a clean-earth smell. How perfect for an earth mage.

  Now that she wasn’t in a near panic, the dreamwalk call started again. Every muscle she owned protested while she dragged Idrián to the center of the room. In the earth light, she could tell she’d have some explaining to do about the scrapes and bruises on his body. Acting on instinct, she arranged him on his back so his naked skin had full contact with the soil. Even in comatose sleep, he was wickedly handsome. She smoothed his hair away from his face and wiped a smudge of dust from his chin.

  Not knowing what else to do, she sat next to him, one hand flat on his chest, feeling it expand and release with each slow breath he took. She tracked the edges of his scars with her eyes, remembering the dreamwalk version of them that told a story of fire and rebirth.

  From far away, and yet right behind her, she heard a voice calling her name.

  “Idrián?”

  The dreamwalk call swelled in her and brought her to her feet. She heard the beat that Idrián had in dreamwalk. She kicked off her shoes and morphed away her clothes, then began the dance Idrián had taught her in dreamwalk. With each step, sparks of electricity joined a mass of energy centered in her chest. When she got to the last steps, the stars of the Milky Way galaxy on a moonless desert night overlaid on the cozy world of the kiva. She had a vision of eagle-footed Idrián cradling her sleeping body in his arms, speaking words she couldn’t hear.

  The energy burst from her chest and shot into Idrián’s at her feet. He arched up at the connection. In her vision, she saw a plasma ball of energy surround the images of eagle-footed Idrián and feather-haired Riya. Idrián in real life howled, and dreamwalk Riya keened, and they were suddenly fully awake, together, and aware.

  Riya dropped to her knees and put her hands on his chest. “The wards,” she told him. “Demons are attacking.”

  Because they were joined, bonded, on Earth and in dreamwalk, she felt his magic connect with the power of the earth, the strength of his ancestors, the sacrifices of his warrior ancestors who gave up their spiritual existence to become the wards of the sacred lands. The wards were thin in spots, scorched in others, barely holding. The sieging demons felt like blotches of creeping rot on white sand.

  Idrián sent his warrior ancestors respect and honor. Dreamwalk Riya poured her magic into eagle-footed Idrián. Real-life Riya helped Idrián to sit up, and poured her love for him into their bond.

  Fusion from above and heat from the deepest core below collected in the kiva, then shot out like a starburst, powering the wards to an all-consuming fiery brilliance that disintegrated any demon unlucky enough to be within twenty feet of them. The wards solidified and became whole. Riya saw a blocked tunnel that had to be the connection to the wards of the town of Magic. She called up her own magic and willed it to open. In her mind, the fallen rocks exploded away from the entrance and interior lights blinked on.

  And with that, she was out of energy. All she could do was watch as Idrián created a permanent connection to the deep earth to provide continuous power to the wards. The stars began spinning in earnest, like they had in the translocation spell. With her last bit of will, she threw herself against Idrián, so they wouldn’t be separated again. Even though the lights faded, she felt his abiding love, and was content to sink into the darkness.

  * * * * *

  Idrián came to in his family’s kiva with a full-body shudder, caused by the emergency exit from dreamwalk, and the power of his newly bonded status.

  Riya’s form sprawled across his legs. He lifted her to a more comfortable position and cradled her in his arms, like he’d held her in the dreamwalk kiva. Dreamwalk Riya had called his name after he’d kissed her and started into the dreamwalk kiva, then had collapsed into an unconscious heap. He’d carried her down into the dreamwalk kiva, which turned out to be much bigger than the real-life one under his home. Polished rocks at intervals in the rounded walls represented the graves of his warrior ancestors who’d become the wards of the tribal lands. He’d been honored and humbled when interacting with them to create the permanent connection to earth magic that would power the wards for as long as the planet lived. He would have stayed longer, but dreamwalk Riya faded as real-life Riya passed out.

  Now all he needed to do was wake Riya and figure out how to rid the New Mexico desert of hundreds of voracious demons and one soul-eater that wanted Riya’s magic. The good news was that, as near as he could tell, the demon occupying Emerson had translocated every last one of the smaller demons with it for the assault. It would make killing them easier.

  The room smelled of smoke, so he used a bit of magic to renew the air as he took stock. He knew from foggy memories that Riya had dragged him out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the dark kiva. She’d been terrified, and yet she’d even remembered to bring his prosthesis and some clothes for him. She was the bravest person he’d ever known.

  Hoping she was just sleeping because she was exhausted, he left her to rest on the soft earth while he crawled to where his leg and liner had dropped, beneath the stairs.

  He used magic to clean the liner before putting it on and seating his stump. He walked to where the rest of his clothes lay and put them on. His stiff right knee felt surprisingly good, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He took the coverlet to Riya to wrap her in, since she was buck naked.

  She awoke as he knelt on one knee to lift her. “Hey, there,” she said, then sat up and coughed like a three-pack-a-day smoker. “We kicked dreamwalk ass.” She rotated her left shoulder and winced.

  “We did, but we still have to kick demon ass.” He held out his hands to her.

  She groaned as she used him as a support to struggle to her feet. “Call Magic and invoke the treaty.”

  He nodded. “As soon as I find a phone.” He stood.

  She held her hand out to him. His cellphone materialized in it. “Call now. We need help.”

  He smiled and took the phone to send a text message, glad for magical women and modern technology. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her change the coverlet into boots, jeans, and a T-shirt that said “Easily Distracted by Shiny Things” over an illustration of a spaceship.

  “Can we ask Juana what’s going on upstairs?”

  “No. I banned the spirits from here, or I’d never have a moment alone.” He put his hand on her left shoulder and felt the pain radiating through their bond. “I think I can fix this for you.” Ever since waking, he’d felt a deeper connection with the healin
g power of the earth.

  She smiled and caressed the side of his face. “I’ll be okay in a few hours.”

  He climbed to the top of the stairs and touched the wooden trap door, then sent his magic throughout the mobile home. The west end was charred, but the rest of the structure was sound, if permeated with smoke. He used magic to spin the two ventilator turbines on the roof, sucking out the smoke and replacing it with clean air from the mountains. He spoke the spell to open the door.

  Riya was right behind him as he emerged into the hallway. Juana Morales was waiting for him.

  “Did we lose any of the animals?” he asked. “Patli?”

  “None,” said Juana. “Moyolhuani and Citlali herded most of the animals into the fireproof barn.”

  “Idrián invoked the treaty,” said Riya, slipping her hand into his. Their bond hummed in his heart.

  Juana nodded, looking relieved. “I’ll warn the others.” She blinked out.

  The ground shook beneath their feet, and something exploded in the yard. “Dammit,” muttered Riya. “Now what?”

  Chapter 16

  Idrián winced as another screaming demon fireball arced over their heads and smashed through the fence. At this rate, it would take months of work to repair all the damage to the property.

  Thanks to the unlucky accident that had damaged the mobile home, the soul-eater demon had discovered that burning demons could breach the ranch’s protections, so it conjured a catapult and launched any demon it could catch, then used magic to set them on fire. The small demons died true deaths, but the earth told Idrián that more demons were being born even as their brethren died.

  Idrián couldn’t stop the fireballs, but he could create illusions that caused the soul-eater demon to misjudge the locations of the buildings. The southwest field looked like a battlefield.

  The love of his life scrambled into the cab of the pickup truck and shut the door. “Everything’s set.” She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss, then fumbled for her seat belt. “I like your friends.”