Nightwalker

by Allyson James

Bear accepted the greeting graciously. “Ya-at-eeh, friend of my friend.” In the traditional way, Bear didn’t use Heather’s given name—names had power, and using a name could draw demons to that person. The younger generations didn’t always pay attention to that, and my grandmother called me by name plenty, but Bear did it as a courtesy.

  Heather, looking pleased, led us to the back of the store and through a beaded curtain to a short passage that ended in a French door, which led to fairly large private room. Heather’s store was one of the oldest buildings in town, originally built of brick, and shored up with plaster, wood, and cement over the years. The walls bowed, patches of new brick were mixed with old, and the wooden floors squeaked and sagged as we walked on them.

  This had been a rancher’s house, way back when, and supposedly haunted. Heather had purchased the abandoned building and fixed it up, much as I’d done with my hotel. She’d wanted the place for its atmosphere. I’d wanted the hotel so I could have something of my own, a permanent place that was part of me.

  Heather’s research had told her that the ghost that haunted her store was a child called Pearl, who’d died of a fever when she’d been about ten. Poor kid. That Pearl had existed, I believed—town records confirmed it. The story that she haunted the store was a load of shit.

  There aren’t any ghosts. What people think of as ghosts is usually psychic residue, which some people, me included, are good at detecting, whether they know they have the ability or not. The psychic aura can be strong, especially around places of violent death, but it’s not a ghost. Nightwalkers and Changers are real, but ghosts—no.

  Heather, however, believed in Pearl as hard as she could. She waved at a corner in the hall as she led Bear and me into the back room. “You can go to bed now, Pearl. I know you don’t like séances, but it’s okay. I won’t ask you for help tonight. I put your dolls in your trundle bed upstairs.”

  Bear and I exchanged a glance. There was absolutely nothing in the corner, not a presence, not a psychic residue, and definitely no ghost.

  A table had been set in the middle of the room with chairs drawn up to it. Candles clumped in the middle of the table, their thick fragrance battling with the incense that snaked from holes in a wooden incense burner.

  Another woman was already seated at the table. Her features and her dark blond hair told me she was Paige, Laura DiAngelo’s sister.

  Heather introduced us, but Paige didn’t seem interested or impressed with us, even when Heather told her I was a powerful magic user. I took the seat next to her, and Bear sat next to me, composed as usual. Bear spread her large hands on the table, her turquoise bracelets clinking.

  “A few more are coming,” Heather said. “Not long now.”

  The few more were my plumber, Fremont Hansen, and his cousin, Naomi Kee who was now married to my oldest and closest friend, Jamison. With them was Naomi’s deaf daughter Julie.

  Naomi greeted me with her usual big smile as she took the seat across from me. Fremont said a warm hello and took the chair across from Bear.

  Fremont believed himself a great mage in the making. He did have a little bit of natural magic, enough to get him into more trouble than he knew how to get out of. Then he came to Janet Begay, his local Stormwalker, to pull his balls from the fire. Fremont loved séances and ghost lore, so I wasn’t surprised to see him there.

  But Naomi and Julie, no. Naomi had once been the biggest Unbeliever I’d ever met—though she’d changed that status when she’d married the shape-shifting Jamison. Even so, she was skeptical about most of the woo-woo magic our town was famous for, and ninety percent of the time, she was right.

  “I didn’t think this would be your scene,” I said to her.

  “Heather invited us, and we were curious,” Naomi answered. Julie, who had sat down next to her and across from Paige silently signed to me: Séances are a bunch of crap.

  I bit back a laugh as I signed back the way she’d taught me. “I know.”

  “The sun is completely down now,” Heather announced, shutting the French door behind her. “I think we can begin. Paige, did you bring the things?”

  Heather took the seat at the head of the table, and Paige began fishing items out of a tote bag—a photograph, a bracelet, and a hat. Heather gathered them in front of her, put her open hands on top of them, and closed her eyes.

  The aura of the belongings floated around Heather’s fingers like dust motes, a tint of warmth from the missing Laura.

  Heather shivered. “She’s trying to get through.”

  Fremont leaned forward, his balding head shining under the lamplight. He had soft brown hair that he kept cut short and the warmest brown eyes I’d ever seen. “You can feel that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Heather whispered.

  Heather had less magic in her than Fremont did, but both were responding to the faint psychic buzz that clung to Laura’s things.

  Heather let go of the bracelet, hat, and photo, arranged the lit candles around them, then instructed us to hold hands.

  I took the ice-cold hand of Paige in my right and Bear’s warm, strong one in my left. Bear gave my hand a little squeeze.

  Heather turned out the lights and sat down with us, telling us to close our eyes.

  I’d prepared myself for an evening of Heather moaning and then talking extensively to her Native American spirit guide, who didn’t act or speak like any Indian I’d ever met. Heather had a great imagination and conjured things so real to her that she convinced herself she had extensive powers. It made her happy, and she truly believed she helped people, so I let her enjoy herself.

  I was therefore unprepared when the windows in the back of the room burst open, and an Arctic wind rushing through the close room, stirring my hair and rattling the blinds.

  “Ah,” Heather said, in an excited whisper. “She’s here.”

  Chapter Six

  The temperature today had topped out at a hundred and three, and while the desert cools down pretty rapidly at night, the balmy seventy-five degrees outside now was a long way from the icy air that poured in on us.

  Half the candle flames went out. Bear jumped, her eyes as wide open as mine. I looked out the windows, but saw nothing but a strip of dark desert and a strand of streetlights about a mile away.

  “Laura?” Heather asked.

  She alone had her eyes closed—the rest of us were trying to figure out what was going on. I looked around for special-effects machines. I’d once watched a movie being made in New Mexico, and they’d faked everything—wind, sunshine, snow, rain . . . even when it was raining. The director had wanted to control every detail.

  The machines had fascinated me, and the techs had showed me a lot of stuff. That was back when I’d been traveling the country with Mick, us carefree on our Harleys. He’d known the technical director on the film, who’d let us hang out with him on the movie location. Mick had known everyone, I’d thought, and I’d been starry-eyed in love with him.

  I was still in love with him, with fewer innocent stars but more strength. Some things are better second time around.

  “Are you there?” Heather asked.

  The wind picked up again, and the rest of the candles died.

  “Are you there?” Heather called.

  “Yes!”

  The voice echoed through the room, and everyone but Heather swiveled heads trying to see who’d spoken.

  I am here. Softer now, a woman’s voice, a bit muffled, with both a touch of anger and sorrow. Paige, have you come?

  “Laura?” Paige’s hand clamped down on mine so hard that I clenched my teeth. “Where are you?”

  In a better place.

  “Then it’s true. He killed you?”

  Heather’s eyes remained firmly closed, her body rigid.

  Yes, sister. He murdered me. He drained me of blood and left me to die.

  “The Nightwalker?”

  I thought he was my friend. A long, despairing sigh. Avenge me.

  “I will,” Pai
ge said, still crushing my hand. “I’ll get him for you, Laura. Do you understand?”

  Yes. Another sigh, this one relieved. Avenge me, sister. Avenge me . . . The voice drifted away.

  “Wait!” Paige called. “Laura, don’t leave me . . .”

  Julie frantically tapped her mother’s shoulder and pointed out the open windows. All of us except Heather and Paige craned to look. I froze, astonished.

  A white light whirled out in the desert a foot above the ground, the wind kicking up dust and giving it an eerie glow. I’d seen light like that swirling above vortexes, but there were no vortexes in this part of Magellan. Vortexes are ancient things—they don’t just form—so this wasn’t a new one.

  The light danced, back and forth, back and forth. I couldn’t help thinking it was making fun of us.

  And then, everything stopped. The light vanished, the wind died, the voice was gone. The seven of us were left sitting in the dark around a table in a windswept room, the only light coming from faint starlight outside.

  Heather jumped to her feet and switched on the overhead light, a triumphant smile on her face. The rest of us blinked at the sudden glare, Paige shaken, Fremont fearful. I extracted my hand from Paige’s grip and rubbed it.

  “Wonderful!” Heather said. “I’ve had the spirits speak through me, but never out loud like that.”

  “What was that light?” Fremont asked. “Outside, behind you. Did you see it?”

  “No.” Heather looked disappointed, then she shrugged. “Probably the manifestation of Laura’s spirit. I ward this shop very well, so only the voice got through.”

  Bear and I exchanged a glance. She agreed with me—the voice and the light had been two different things. The voice and the wind had definitely been fake, though I didn’t know how Heather had done it. The light, I wasn’t so sure.

  Paige started pulling Laura’s things back toward her. “I know now what I need to know. Laura is dead, and the Nightwalker you are harboring in your hotel, Ms. Begay, killed her.”

  “You don’t know that at all,” I said hotly.

  “She never called Ansel by name,” Fremont pointed out. “She could have meant another Nightwalker. Ansel’s a decent guy. You know, when he’s not under a hex.”

  Paige’s voice was thick with anger. “He killed her. I want him to pay.”

  “Now, hang on,” Fremont said, getting to his feet. “What do you mean, pay? You have to prove it was him first.”

  “You heard her,” Paige said. “Laura told me to avenge her.” She jammed her sister’s belongings into her big purse. “Thank you, Heather. This was worth it.”

  Without saying good night, she slung her purse over her shoulder and stalked out of the room. We heard the shop’s front door bang a few moments after that.

  “Great,” I said, getting up. Following the dictates I’d learned as a kid, I pushed in my chair. “She’ll have every slayer in the country running out here for the bounty. Mick and I can’t fight all of them.”

  “Nightwalkers are dangerous, Janet,” Heather said, walking past me in a whiff of patchouli. “I’ve never been easy with you letting him live in your hotel.”

  “I’m more dangerous than any Nightwalker, Heather. Trust me.”

  I walked out into the cool night with Naomi, Julie, and Fremont in time to see Paige peel out of the dirt lot in a small sedan. Bear had already disappeared, but this didn’t surprise me. Like Coyote, she came and went as she pleased.

  “I’d give you a lift home, Janet,” Fremont said, starting for his truck. “But I have a date.” He winked.

  “With who?” I asked in alarm. Fremont had the propensity for going out with entirely the wrong women—magical femme fatales—to dire consequences. I’ve had to extract him from disastrous relationships more than once.

  Fremont’s grin flashed in the darkness. “It’s Olivia Medina.”

  “Oh.” One of Maya’s cousins, who was a harmless human being. Hmm. A Medina going out with a Hansen. The world might cease revolving.

  Fremont drove away south, and Naomi offered to give me a lift home. I accepted and climbed with Julie into the big truck in which Naomi hauled around nursery plants for her business. As Naomi pulled around the strand of big cottonwoods that lined the parking lot, I saw to the north an orange light, the definite flicker of flame, and black smoke rise to blot out the stars.

  Only two things lay in that direction—Barry’s bar and the Crossroads hotel. One of them was on fire.

  “Shit!”

  Two fire trucks rushed past us, and Naomi turned onto the highway to follow them. I couldn’t help pressing my feet to the floorboard as Naomi drove the twisting road north out of town.

  “If the slayers are trying to burn Ansel out,” I said, “I’m slaying them.”

  Naomi shot me a glance. “You said something about slayers inside. What do you mean by slayers?”

  Julie watched my mouth, reading my lips interestedly as I explained. “Bounty hunters who kill Nightwalkers. The bounty on Nightwalkers is temptingly high.”

  “Who puts a bounty on something no one believes in?”

  “Lots of people. Pissed off mages, families of Nightwalker victims, families of the Nightwalkers themselves. Who wants a vampire in the family?”

  Naomi shook her head. “Poor Ansel.”

  “Some Nightwalkers do deserve to be staked,” I said. “But why the fuck are they burning down my hotel?”

  “Almost there.” Naomi didn’t admonish me for swearing in front of her daughter, not that I’d have noticed at the moment.

  Naomi’s truck flew through the parking lot of Barry’s bar—the bar intact—and pulled up behind the fire trucks. The bar had emptied, bikers standing outside in the motorcycle-filled lot to watch the flames eat into my hotel. Red lights flashed from the north on the highway, Flat Mesa responding to the call as well.

  I leapt from the pickup before it stopped moving and sprinted toward the commotion.

  My saloon was on fire. The high-ceilinged saloon had been an add-on to the three-story, nearly square hotel back in 1920s. It jutted out from the rest of the hotel and had its own outside entrance as well as one from the lobby. Carlos, the bartender, in his white shirt and black pants, stared morosely at the saloon, hands on hips.

  My guests and hired help had gathered on the west side of the hotel. I scanned the knot of them, about twenty people in all, but I didn’t see Ansel.

  I did hear the magic mirror screaming inside. The sound reverberated through every mirror in the hotel, winding up to a shattering frequency. I could hear it even in the mirror on my motorcycle around the back.

  I couldn’t do anything for it. It might be terrified, but an ordinary fire wouldn’t destroy the mirror. It would have to tough it out for now.

  If this was an ordinary fire.

  The firemen were unrolling hoses and getting on with their business. “What happened?” I yelled at Carlos.

  He only spread his hands. “No se. Everything was fine, and all the sudden, the roof exploded into flames. I ran like hell.”

  “You all right?”

  Carlos nodded, swallowing. “Yeah, I’m okay. We got everyone out.”

  “Ansel?”

  He shot me a startled look. “I don’t know.”

  I left him, sprinting around to the back of the building. Acrid smoke poured into the night, stinging my throat. I saw another clump of people gathered on top of the empty railroad bed, and I ran for that.

  Mick broke away from the group and met me at the bottom of the bank. Before I could demand he tell me what had happened, he cupped my face in my hands, his eyes filled all the way across with black. “You all right?” His voice was savage.

  “Fine. What—?”

  My word choked off as Mick yanked me into his arms and held me in a breath-stealing embrace, his lips finding mine in a savage kiss.

  He released me and rearranged his look of raw worry to a grim one of anger. “Ansel’s still inside,” he said. “He re
fused to come out.”

  “Is he crazy? If that fire reaches him, he’s dead.”

  “He said he might be dead if he stays inside, but he will be dead if he comes out. I didn’t argue with him.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Mick took my hand and helped me scramble up the six-foot, soft-sided bank of the raised railroad bed. On the top, where ties and rails used to be, was a flat stretch about four feet wide that ran for miles, used now as a hiking trail.

  On the summit stood Elena my cook, and a tall, black-haired man, stark naked, with the tattooed ends of dragon wings rising from around his shoulders up his neck.

  “Drake!” I snarled, starting for him. “You flamed my hotel? Please, let me kill you.”

  Mick seized me from behind and lifted me off my feet. Drake looked me over with quiet dark eyes. His long black hair was loose in the moonlight, he obviously having recently shifted from being a dragon.

  “I need the Nightwalker,” he said to me in his cool voice.

  “Too bad. What did you have to do with abducting Laura DiAngelo? Where is she? Is she dead?”

  “I did not abduct her, she is not dead, and I insist you bring me the Nightwalker. Surrender him to me, and I’ll stop the fire.”

  His answer told me he knew all about Laura and much more about what was going on than I did. “Ansel’s my friend,” I said. “And if Laura is alive, it means he didn’t kill her.” That fact both relieved and confused me, though relief was buried way down on my list of emotions at the moment.

  “Even if Ansel did not kill this woman, he’s murdered in the past,” Drake said. “He’s drained humans of blood and left crushed bodies in his wake. He must make restitution. Give him to me.”

  “Since when are dragons interested in standing up for humankind? What do you really want, Drake?”

  “I want the Nightwalker,” Drake said in a hard voice.

  Elena stepped up to Drake. At first glance, Elena Williams, an Apache from Whiteriver, looked like a harmless middle-aged woman, plump in body, a habitual frown on her face. She wore her hair pulled into a tight bun, and her attire, as usual, was white polyester pants, a bright print top, and white sneakers.