“I’m dangerous, Firewalker,” Grandmother said.
Mick acknowledged this with a nod. “True, but no mage gets to be the caliber this one is without leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. They con and kill their way to the top. He’ll use you, and he’ll use your family. I’d hate to see Pete get hurt.”
Grandmother was very protective of my father—we all were. I’m not sure Dad appreciated our protectiveness all the time, but he was vulnerable, and my grandmother knew that.
“Don’t smarm me, dragon,” she said to Mick. “If this mage finds the real artifact, you know none of us will be safe.”
“Yes, but Janet and I can meet him in battle. You can’t.”
“Don’t be so sure of that. I’m not an old woman cowering in the corner.”
“Especially not with me to protect her,” Gabrielle put in.
Grandmother turned to Gabrielle, and for a split second, her eyes filled with compassion. “I am the one protecting you, child.”
Gabrielle opened her mouth opened to argue, then she went still. She looked away from Grandmother, her gaze resting anywhere but on one of us.
Drake rumbled in his throat, his eyes sparking red fire. “I don’t take orders from you, Micalerianicum. You might be a decorated general, but I work for Bancroft.”
“Who can’t be allowed access to this kind of magic.” Mick met Drake stare for stare. “Which means I fight you.”
Drake didn’t like that, but he didn’t flinch. I’d seen a battle between them before—not the little one of last night, but a true dragon-to-dragon, all-out fight—and it had been nasty. I, for one, did not want to witness another fight like that.
Colby, on the other hand, wasn’t shy about expressing his views. “Don’t catch me in the middle of this shit, Mickey. If you fight him, I’m under this stupid binding spell, which means I’d have to join him to stop you. And I know you’d kick my ass. So if you plan to fight Drake, could you please wait five months, six days and . . .” Colby looked at the ceiling as he calculated. “Three hours and forty-five minutes.”
“I’m flying Janet back,” Mick said, ignoring him. “Ruby, would you make sure my bike is somewhere safe for the night? I’ll send someone for it tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, let me,” Gabrielle said. “I’ll take good care of your ride, Mick, I swear.”
Colby chuckled. “I like her, in a weird sort of way.”
“Come on, Mick.” Gabrielle held out her hand for the keys.
Mick handed the keys to my grandmother, and Gabrielle scowled at him. “Ruby’s right,” she said. “Firewalkers are the most arrogant sons of bitches ever to come out of the earth. Just for that, I’m frying it.” She started for the front door.
“No, you won’t,” Mick said calmly. “It’s warded. Don’t be a brat.”
Gabrielle turned around and beamed a big smile at him. “You are such a shit. I always wanted a big brother, even if he is a dragon.” She started for the door again, but as she passed Drake, she stopped and turned to him. She took a slow look at him, roving her gaze over his still body.
Drake was handsome as a human, with dark hair, sloe-black eyes, and swarthy skin. He was also tall and well built, with an athletic body. His suit, tailored for him, enhanced what he had rather than hid it. Because I’d seen him naked, I could safely say that Drake could make his own pinup calendar, and women would pay good money for it.
Drake also had no idea that he was attractive. Absolutely no sense of it at all. His arrogance didn’t come from self-adoration.
Gabrielle ran her finger down his dark silk tie, pressing between his finely defined pectorals. “You, my friend, are hot. You ever want a vacation from that compound of yours, you come and find me.”
She let her fingers go down, down, way down, while the rest of us watched in a kind of stunned fascination. Gabrielle skimmed her touch all the way down past Drake’s belt to rest for a fraction of a second on his fly. Then she turned and walked out of the store.
Drake had jumped when her fingers had brushed his cock through his trousers, and now he stared after her in amazement. My grandmother snorted her disapproval, and Colby threw back his head and laughed.
“Damn. That was worth my captivity to see. Okay, maybe not, but thinking about it will make the time go by faster.”
Drake scowled at him. He made for the door, catching up his leather coat. “Colby,” he snapped.
“My master calls.” Colby leaned down and kissed me noisily on the cheek. “See you, Janet. If you need me, you know where to find me.”
Grandmother was in a hurry to go after Gabrielle, but before she left, she addressed Mick, not me. “I trust that you’ll take care of it.”
Mick nodded. “I will.”
She made another humph noise, and started out the front door.
“Take care of what?” I called.
Grandmother turned around. “Mick knows. Go find that pot, granddaughter. It’s very important.”
She was gone. Not in silence. I heard her remonstrating with Gabrielle to get away from the motorcycle, then start haranguing Drake to give them a ride back to their hotel and to take Mick’s bike as well.
Mick grasped my elbow and turned me around. “Time to go.”
“Take care of what?” I asked him.
Mick kissed me on the mouth. He steered me out the back and down the alley. I had to be quiet back here, damn him, and he knew it, so no more questions.
*** *** ***
We had to walk a long way to find a space big enough for him to change to dragon. We ended up beyond a railroad switchyard, in a deserted area among sidings. Railroad cars old and new lingered here, waiting to be hooked to an engine and carried off to a new destination.
Mick calmly undressed and gave me the care of his clothes and the glued-together pot. Then he kissed me again, jogged away into the darkness, and became dragon.
Mick’s dragon was gigantic, black and gleaming in what was left of the moonlight. His eyes were black and golden, pupils tinged with red. He brought his great scaly head down to my level, the heat of his dragon body engulfing me.
I was never sure what to do with Mick in this form. He was still my Mick, but his dragon was a precise and deadly killing machine, and dragons did not have a lot of mercy in them. I couldn’t communicate with him—I could talk, but he couldn’t answer in words. I couldn’t yet understand the snarls and roars dragons used, and the nuances of their body language was way beyond me.
However, when Mick closed his talons around me, he was gentleness itself. He lifted me without moving a hair on my head and cradled me against his warm chest, sheltering me from the night.
That was fine, but as soon as he launched himself from the ground, my stomach pretty much stayed behind, and I had to fight my screams. Think of the scariest, most stomach-churning ride at an amusement park, and then multiply that by about a hundred and fifty. That’s flying with a dragon.
Mick shot across the darkness, dragon wings pumping in the night. I huddled against his chest, clutching everything I was trying to carry, and tried not to think about the hundreds of feet of empty space between me and the hard ground.
Happily, nothing happened to make him drop me. Mick held me competently, even keeping me warm, and we landed a few hours later in the desert behind my hotel, the railroad bed between us and the Crossroads.
When I say landed, I mean Mick dove for the ground with the force of a cannonball. At the last minute, he reversed, bringing his hind feet down, his great wings spreading like sails.
He touched down with a whump, but when he leaned to lower me, again it was with every tenderness.
I stood up, unkinking my stiff limbs and trying to catch my breath. Mick glided away into the darkness, shifted, and came walking back, my tall man replete with muscles and dragon tatts.
“You okay?” he asked when he reached me.
I handed him his clothes. “Dragon is not the most comfortable way to travel.”
“
Sorry.” Mick sounded sorry. “But we needed to get here fast.”
“I know. Any sign of a runaway Nightwalker as we flew?” Not that I thought there would have been.
“Didn’t see any,” Mick said.
I started to walk toward the hotel, but Mick drew me back. One arm full of his clothes, he wrapped the other around me and kissed me on the mouth.
His healing magic entered me through the kiss. My legs stopped trembling, and my stomach settled down.
He released me, dressed, and we walked together back to the hotel.
Cassandra was locking the doors for the night, though she planned to stay, not knowing how long I’d be absent. Pamela was there with her.
“I don’t know where he went,” Cassandra said before I asked. “Even Elena couldn’t stop him. Ansel wasn’t blood frenzied, just determined.”
Mick and I went downstairs to Ansel’s room to hunt for any clue to where he’d gone, but we came up with one big nothing. Nothing specific, anyway.
Mick stood in the middle of the tidy chamber, his blue eyes taking in everything. “He’s gone to try to find Laura.”
“I figured,” I said. “The dragons thought Ansel had Laura, and I bet Ansel thinks the dragons have her. If he breaks into the dragon compound . . .”
“He hasn’t,” Mick said. “I would have heard.”
“You mean he hasn’t yet.”
“Colby will tell me the minute he shows up. They know Ansel’s under my protection, and that if they kill him, they have to mess with me.”
“Doesn’t mean they won’t kill him and take their chances,” I said unhappily. “We need to find him.”
“I’ll search. You need to rest and eat something.”
“I had a sandwich before I went to Laura’s store.”
Mick came to me. “And a fight with a bad-ass mage, who knocked you out and nearly killed you.” He looked down at me, the raw pain in his eyes erasing his habitual calm. Here was a man who felt deeply, with emotions I couldn’t begin to understand.
He smoothed my hair with a hand that shook a little. “He could have killed you, Janet. He didn’t have to leave you alive. And I wouldn’t have been there to stop it.”
“I was still walking the storm,” I said. “And he couldn’t have gotten past my Beneath magic in the end. He’s strong, but not my evil mother strong.”
Mick exhaled, and at the end of it he pressed his lips to the top of my head. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s all I can do not to drag you out to my island and keep you there, safe from Nightwalkers, dragons, your goddess mother—from everyone who ever tried to hurt you. I want to so bad, it’s killing me not to.”
“Is that your dragon instinct?” I asked. His eyes had gone black now, without a hint of blue, his hand resting against the side of my head, strength there but contained. “What would I do all day on your tropical island?”
“Whatever the hell you wanted. I wouldn’t give a shit. You’d be safe.”
“I’d be bored. Your island is nice, but I can only drink so many Mai Tais on the beach. I’d start hankering to see my dad, my friends, the Diné lands . . .”
“And I wouldn’t care,” he said, his voice on the edge of a growl. “I fight against my instincts every day. I want to keep you safe, but I also want you to be happy. I know I can’t have both. So I hold back.” Mick put his other hand on the small of my back, grip firm, no holding back there. “I force myself to let you live in your world. I watch over you and work the wards on this hotel, but I know it’s not enough. Will never be enough. I can’t ever truly keep you safe out here, and I can’t explain to you how much I hate that.”
My mouth opened as I listened. His words were grating, the dragon in him looking out from his black eyes.
Mick had always been protective, but I’d had no idea he fought himself not to be as protective as he wanted to be. I knew that if he chose to sweep me up and keep me sequestered on his island, he could do it, and I’d have a hard time fighting him. He could have done it tonight.
“I’m not good at being confined,” I said, my voice faint. “I never have been. I’d end up trying to kill you to get away.”
“I know that. I also know I could stop you. I almost did before.”
“That was different.” I put my hands on his chest. His heart was beating rapidly, the skin beneath his shirt hot. “You had me in a place where I couldn’t fight back.” In a cave full of scary petroglyphs that tried to feed off my boiling evil magic.
“I know,” he said. “I manipulated you there, because I knew I’d have the advantage. I’d do the same thing again, this time to protect you. The only reason I don’t . . .” Mick stopped and drew a breath. “I don’t because . . . I love you.”
His eyes switched to blue when he said it. My throat went tight. “I love you too, Mick.”
“You still don’t understand. Dragons don’t love.”
“What are you talking about? You love.” Mick loved—fiercely.
“No, dragons obsess. We hoard, and we defend what we hoard. We mate to produce offspring, which we also possessively defend. All dragons know that another dragon’s one weak point is his lair.”
“I thought it was the true name.”
Mick shook his head. “No dragon will reveal his true name to another dragon, even accidentally. But the lair can be found, can be attacked. We’ll defend it to the death. Not because we love it, but because it’s ours.”
“And now I’m yours.”
“Yes.” The dragon black returned to his eyes. “If what I felt for you was desire alone, it wouldn’t be so hard for me. I’d lock you away and be done with it. I’d own you, keep you—end of story. But for some reason, I’ve decided I want you to be happy. It hurts me when you aren’t happy.” Mick let out a breath. “This . . . this need . . . is new.”
And strange to him. I thought about the times Mick watched me with a look I couldn’t decipher. He’d study me as though trying to figure me out, to understand why the hell I did the things I did.
I hadn’t realized he was battling himself, torn between wanting to bury me in his comfortable prison and letting me walk around free and happy, but in severe and constant danger. He went through this dilemma every day.
I ran my hands up Mick’s chest again, brushing my thumbs over the hollow of his throat. “When you start leaning toward sequestering me, let me know. I’ll help you fight it.”
“No guarantees that you can.”
He took my mouth in a long, slow kiss, one that said that if we weren’t trying to find Ansel and figure out the secret of this pot, he’d have me on Ansel’s mission-style bed in a heartbeat.
Instead he released me, his eyes changing to blue again.
I knew he was right that fighting him would be tricky. While Mick wasn’t affected by my storm magic, my Beneath magic was a little different. Dragon magic was the magic of this earth, magic forged in the inferno of volcanoes. Beneath magic came from the worlds that existed before this one, where gods held power, and humans were few. Beneath magic was different from earth magic—in some ways more powerful, and in some ways less.
Mick, though, was resourceful enough and strong enough to compensate against my Beneath magic. I’d never won a contest of magics against him, and I never wanted to have to.
We wouldn’t find Ansel by standing here talking about our bizarre relationship. After another bone-searing kiss, Mick led me back upstairs, where Cassandra was busily looking over the glued-together pot. While Mick ducked into my office, saying he needed to make a few phone calls—and probably to calm down from our little talk downstairs—I approached Cassandra and leaned my elbows on the counter.
“Do you know what that is?” I asked.
She shook her head, still studying the patterns. “I’ve never heard about anything like it, or anything about these designs. I could look it up, but . . .” She set down the pot. Pamela picked it up, turning it in her hands, but she didn’t look enlightened either.
I finished Cassandra’s thought. “But if you ask about it on your Wiccan network, you’ll alert other mages to its existence.”
“Exactly. Witches and mages are always looking for something with which to enhance power. From what you’ve told me, a lot of people seem to want it. I’d be careful who finds out about it.”
“Have you heard of Pericles McKinnon?” I asked.
“Yes.” Cassandra looked at me so sharply that Pamela set down the pot and stepped closer to her. “He’s cunning and mean,” Cassandra went on. “And powerful. Why?”
“Like Emmett Smith powerful?”
“Not as strong as Emmett, but close. Pericles makes it no secret that he’d love to push Emmett out of power.”
I nodded. “He said as much to me.”
“Why don’t we just let Emmett have at him, then?” Pamela asked. “Pesky mage problem solved.”
“The enemy of my enemy?” I mused. Pamela had met Emmett too, and her wolf had wanted to chomp on him. I’d love to have let her. “If Emmett kills Pericles for us, then we’d have to worry about Emmett trying to get his hands on this pot. The last thing we need is an all-powerful mage going for more power.”
“I’ll try to see what I can find out without alerting anyone,” Cassandra said. I knew she could, since she was one of the most resourceful and efficient people I’d ever met. “Laura must have known more about it than she let on, even to Ansel.”
“Which is why we need to find her.”
Mick came out from my office, which was still dark. He hadn’t bothered turning on the light in there. “I’ve asked people around town, but no one’s seen Ansel. But I’m going to scour the ground for him. Eat something, Janet.”
“Not here,” Pamela said. “Elena’s closed the kitchen. And locked it. I want a snack, but I guess I’ll have to go hunt a rabbit.”
“Not if you’re sleeping with me, you’re not,” Cassandra said briskly. “That’s why the Goddess invented all-night diners. Both of you go. Eat.”
*** *** ***
Which was how Pamela and I ended up at the diner in Magellan. Pamela actually going somewhere with me said a lot for her hunger. We rode our separate motorcycles but walked into the diner more or less together and sat at the counter next to each other.
Nightwalker Page 15
