Nightwalker

by Allyson James

  I put myself between him and Gabrielle and folded my arms. “Leave my family alone, and I’ll think about letting you live.”

  Emmett’s smile widened, his eyes still as cold as all the ice floes in the Arctic. “Hmm, I knew this would be interesting. Where is the vessel?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “But you know where it is. Call one of your minions and order him to bring it here.”

  “Minions.” I looked at him, straight-faced. “Are you serious?”

  “You’re a powerful magical being. You might pretend you don’t look down on those of lesser magnitude, but you do. You regard everyone below your power level as either useful or entertaining. Which one is the dragon?”

  “Insulting me is not going to convince me turn the artifact over to you,” I said.

  Emmett’s eyes widened. “You think I was trying to insult you? It’s truth. It’s how you think.”

  “No, it’s how you think. You care only for power, not people.”

  “Not true actually, but I won’t let you get around me by trying to figure out what broke my heart in the past. The one vulnerability of the dark mage. Is that right? What a cliché. I don’t have any vulnerabilities.”

  I folded my arms. “So you call yourself a dark mage, do you?”

  “I’m the ununculous,” Emmett said patiently. “Neither dark nor light—I just am. Dark and light designations are for amateurs, for feel-good witches to write about in popular books about magic, which they spell with a K. Where is your dragon, by the way?”

  “Not with me.”

  “I know that, but again, you know where he is. Don’t play with words, Stormwalker. You’re not good at it.”

  “I thought you wanted me to come alone.”

  “Yes, but I heard your grandmother’s not very well-veiled plea for you to bring him along. I imagine he’s hovering out there somewhere, going over tactics for how to extract you with the minimum number of casualties. Micalerianicum thinks like a general and always will. Doesn’t matter how much you’ve softened him up by agreeing to marry him in the human way.” He gestured to the silver and turquoise ring that clasped my finger.

  I sent him a smile. “Are you trying to beat me down by stirring up my emotions about Mick? Talk about cliché.”

  Emmett laughed softly. “I’d never dream of it. Get on the phone, and have someone bring me the vessel. I want a look at it.”

  I didn’t move. “If you take hold of that pot, every magical creature in the world will be after you, trying to wrest it from you. Do you want that kind of heat?”

  “I’m the ununculous,” he said without conceit. “No one will be able to take it from me.”

  “And as the ununculous, you can’t afford to let anyone else have it. I held the thing—I know what it’s capable of. I could have used it to best you if I’d wanted to.”

  “And you didn’t?” Emmett looked me up and down. “You have remarkable restraint, Stormwalker. I salute you. But very stupid—you ought to have taken me out when you had the chance.” He shook his head. “But you’re right. I can’t afford to let you keep it. I’m the best mage in the world, and I need to keep the most powerful toys for myself.”

  “And you’re willing to risk me bringing the pot here?” I pointed at Gabrielle. “With her? You’ve tasted her magic. You know what it is.”

  Gabrielle nodded, face grave. “Big sis is right. I’m crazy. You can’t know what I’d do with that kind of power in my hands.”

  Emmett took a handkerchief from his pocket, removed his glasses, and polished the lenses. With his glasses off, I saw that his irises were silver, like thin pieces of metal.

  “You know,” he said, “the only reason I didn’t kill your entire family today is because you once helped me. Granted, you had no wish to help, and you endangered me rather badly in the process, but in the end, it was a help. Now I wish to assist you.” He pinned me with a raw gaze that told me he didn’t need the glasses to see. “That vessel is too dangerous to be loose, and you know it. You also know that I’m strong enough to keep it out of the hands of amateurs. I’ll keep it safe for you.”

  “Sure you will,” I said. “You know Pericles McKinnon? He wants your position. I imagine he’ll be the first one after you once he knows you have the pot.”

  Emmett dismissed his archrival with the wave of his hand. “McKinnon, yes. I’ve met him. As a matter of fact, I told him that you had the pot and that I’d be coaxing you here today. I imagine he’ll be here soon.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “You did what?” I shrieked.

  I ran to the window, expecting a black cloud of evil to be boiling toward us. The sun was still setting, clouds bathed in last wild color, the land empty except for a neighbor’s horse who’d wandered toward our house in search of more interesting grass.

  I swung back to Emmett. “Why the hell did you tell Pericles?”

  “To give you a choice.” Emmett finished polishing his glasses and slid them back on. “You’ve met Pericles, that less-than-elegant mage with dreams of grandeur. Think about it. Would you rather give the pot to him, or to me?”

  “That isn’t the point!”

  If Pericles knew I had the pot, or could at least bring it to our little house in Many Farms, and if he let that information slip—intentionally or not—we could expect trouble. Piles of trouble. The dragons had their collective ear out, so Drake would be up here, possibly Bancroft with him, definitely dragging Colby along to help with the dirty work. Entities more powerful and less inclined to reason than Drake might be here too, including Paige’s Nightwalker.

  I’d have a war on my hands.

  And then there was Gabrielle. I hadn’t exaggerated when I talked about the risk of letting her anywhere near the pot. I’d barely stopped myself using the thing to destroy every person who’d ever endangered or threatened me.

  I’d stopped because I’d understood what I’d become if I did, and I didn’t want to start hurting those who’d never done me harm. The threat of gods coming after me hadn’t slowed me down at all.

  Gabrielle didn’t have the restrictions I’d learned to put on myself. Those restrictions let me have friends, a family who didn’t shun me, and a relationship with a guy I loved. A normal life—well, normal for me.

  Gabrielle, on the other hand, had been raised by an abusive dickhead, had abandonment issues out the ass, and professed not to care about being “normal.” She’d calmed down a little under the tutelage of my grandmother, but I knew that any change I observed in her was Gabrielle’s choice. If she thought she could go back to taking vengeance on anyone who’d ever hurt her—and get away with it—she just might.

  If Pericles came here, with Emmett and Gabrielle already present, and Mick and Elena on the way—my beloved home could become a smoking sinkhole, even before I fetched the pot.

  Emmett cleared his throat. “I don’t see you making phone calls. You and your boyfriend don’t have a way to communicate magically, do you?”

  I didn’t like the gleam of interest in his silver eyes. So far, I’d been able to keep quiet to Emmett that I had a magic mirror, and I wanted it to stay that way. Now the mirror shard in its chamois bag in my pocket made my leg tingle.

  I slammed my focus out the window to the shed a little way from the house. That shed had replaced the one I’d burned down as a kid, when my Stormwalker powers had first manifested. “Shut up, and let me think.”

  Pericles and any followers would be coming after me, whether I liked it or not. What I had to do was make sure they didn’t come here.

  I turned from the window. “All right,” I said to Emmett, raising my hands in surrender. “I’ll get you the pot. But not here. I’ll have it taken to Chaco Canyon.”

  Emmett’s well-groomed brows shot upward. “In the middle of the desert in the dark? I’ll get my shoes dirty.”

  “Janet,” my grandmother said in the Diné language. “Chaco is heavy with old magic. No telling what will happen w
hen you let loose something like him in it, let alone that vessel.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it’s the only place I can think of that can take the kind of forces he’ll bring down on us.”

  “You know I speak at least a hundred and fifty languages,” Emmett interrupted in Diné. “Including many Native American ones. But I agree with your assessment. Chaco has taken great influxes of magic for millennia. A little tiff between mages won’t hurt it. But I’ll still get my shoes dirty.”

  “You can buy new ones,” I said. “Grandmother, I need to use your phone.”

  *** *** ***

  “A magic showdown,” Gabrielle said when I finished calling Nash. “This is going to be fun.”

  I ignored her for the moment to call Mick. Elena answered Mick’s phone, explaining that Mick was a dragon at the moment. But she promised to give him the message.

  “I have a message for you,” Elena said before I could hang up. “Cassandra called and said that a person named Rory is trying to find you. He says to tell you he has the package you ordered.”

  “Oh. Great. Thanks.”

  “What package, Janet?” Elena asked in suspicion.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I lied. “Thanks.”

  I hung up and turned my back on the avidly listening crowd in the living room to punch in Rory’s phone number. “You got him?” I asked when he answered.

  “Of course I have him,” Rory the slayer said. “Why else would I call? You still want him alive?”

  The question was delivered in disbelieving tones. “Yes,” I said. “Don’t kill him. Stash him somewhere safe. Sheriff Jones will want to talk to him. And be careful. He’s already murdered another slayer.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Rory said testily. “It’s going to cost you extra.”

  He hung up.

  I replaced the phone on its hook and turned around to find the eyes of everyone in the house on me. Those of my family were disapproving or concerned, Gabrielle curious, Emmett amused.

  “You done?” Gabrielle asked. “Can we go already?”

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” I said firmly. “You’re staying here with grandmother and Dad in case anyone tries to double back here and cause more trouble.”

  “No way, Janet. I’m coming with you. I want to see this.”

  “And me.” My grandmother gave me her mulish look. “Don’t bother to argue. Start up your father’s truck, and let’s go.”

  “I don’t want Janet leaving.”

  The quiet words came from my father. All of us, including Emmett, turned to him in surprise.

  Dad had risen from the sofa, Gina with him. Now Dad let go of Gina’s hand and moved to stand in front of me.

  My father, Pete Begay, was an inch or so taller than me. In his early fifties, his hair was still midnight black, and his face bore few lines. He carried himself with a straight posture, without shame, but he kept himself to himself.

  I’d spent many days and nights in companionable silence with this man while we’d driven out under the stars, or searched for stray sheep, or repaired his truck. I’d always felt a silent but strong bond between us, no words necessary.

  Dad rarely said out loud what he truly thought. He’d always lived in a houseful of women with strong opinions—first Grandmother and his sisters, then Grandmother and me, and now Grandmother and Gabrielle. No one but me had ever asked for his thoughts or advice, so my father had stopped bothering to give either one.

  Now he faced me, his mouth set in a stubborn line.

  “Dad,” I said softly. “I have to.”

  “No, you do not.” His frown deepened until furrows appeared on either side of his mouth. “Mick can take care of this for you. I am tired of wondering when someone will come and tell me you are dead.”

  I glanced at Gina, but she’d backed away from the conversation, remaining on the other side of the small room.

  My heart ached. I knew how Dad felt, because I equally feared such a phone call about him. I lived in terror I’d receive a call like the one today, informing me that my family—especially my dad—was in danger because of me. Or one that told me someone had figured out how to kill Mick. Even dragons aren’t indestructible, and now that he’d mentioned dragonslayers, I had that to worry about too.

  But I couldn’t send Mick out there alone to face Emmett and Pericles, and who knew who else, even with Nash and Elena to back him up.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Mick is strong, but his magic is different from mine. He’ll need me for this.”

  “Your grandmother has told me what the pot does. It fills you up with power, but when it is drained, it will try to take yours to build up its own.”

  “Really?” I thought about how the splinters of pottery had detached themselves from the pot and flown at Nash at first. Jamison had said the same thing happened to him, except the shards had cut Jamison’s flesh while the pot lent him power. Maybe the fragments dragged in power the same way, then poured themselves back into the pot.

  “So the legend goes,” Emmett said. “But a very strong mage such as myself can resist the drain.”

  “Huh,” Grandmother said. “You think so? Janet, you never told me he was this arrogant.”

  My father said nothing, his focus on me.

  I looked at the man who’d been my anchor, the only person in my life who’d loved me in spite of what I and who I was. He’d loved my mother, who’d lured him into an affair only so she could produce me. Pete Begay, when he found himself saddled with me, had decided to take care of me, where a lesser man might have dumped me onto the mercy of the world.

  I owed Dad my life, my gratitude, my respect, my love. Which he had. All of it.

  “I have to,” I whispered.

  Something had taken me to Chaco Canyon four mornings ago—it seemed a lifetime ago now. Had it been the vessel? Or the place itself? I had to know.

  “I have to,” I repeated, my voice steadier.

  My father was never one to show his anger. No matter how much trouble I’d gotten myself into as a child, he’d never raised his voice at me.

  He was good, however, at expressing disappointment. He’d inherited that from my grandmother.

  He stared straight at me now, his eyes showing a deep sadness that cut me. He wasn’t hurting me on purpose, because he didn’t believe in making people feel bad, but I knew his sadness was real.

  My father walked past me and to the back window, where he stood looking out at the desert beyond. His shoulders went up the slightest bit as he took a long breath, then down as he let it out.

  Gina said nothing to me. She sat again on the sofa and watched us with her dark-eyed placidity.

  “Are you finished?” Emmett asked.

  “Meet us there,” I said to Emmett. “I’ll have the vessel.”

  “No,” Emmett said, his lips curving into a humorless smile. “I don’t trust you, Stormwalker. I want to be next to you every step of the way, even if I have to ride in a pickup truck.”

  *** *** ***

  I drove. I didn’t trust Gabrielle behind the wheel of anything, and I wasn’t about to let Emmett drive my dad’s pickup, so I slid into the driver’s seat and started the truck. Emmett squeezed into the cab with me, Grandmother between us, and Gabrielle climbed into the pickup’s bed. Gabrielle waved to everyone we passed on our way out of town, making no secret about us leaving.

  I continued north on the 191, almost to the Utah border, then took the 160 east to Farmington, heading south again through New Mexico to the turnoff to Chaco Canyon. The journey took hours, and it was solidly dark when we reached the narrow road to the ruins.

  The truck bumped and jounced down the winding road, the sky black with bulges of clouds on the horizon and tatters of clouds overhead. Through gaps in the thinner clouds, stars clustered in a thick smudge.

  I had never feared the night, a time of intense beauty. What I feared was the layers of magic and old auras at the end of this road, and who or what we’d find waiting for
us.

  I drove past the entrance to the visitor’s center, now closed, and around on maintenance roads past the ruins. My dad’s sturdy truck, used to washed out-back roads, soldiered on.

  Something huge rose in the headlights and slammed into the front of the truck. Gabrielle screamed, and I hit the brakes.

  Grandmother and Emmett did little more than inhale sharply. Emmett opened the passenger door, balanced himself on the doorstep and pulled himself up to look over the top of the truck. Wouldn’t want to get his precious shoes dirty getting out to see what was wrong.

  “It’s nothing,” he said after a moment. “Just a dead coyote.”

  A dead coyote.

  I set the parking brake, scrambled out, and ran to the front of the truck. Lying in the dirt, illuminated by our headlights, was a large coyote, bloody and definitely dead. Its head was half cut off, and entrails snaked out of its belly.

  I fell to my knees beside it. The corpse stank, as though it had been out here a day at least. This animal hadn’t run in front of our truck—someone had hurled him there.

  “Coyote?” While the beast was covered in blood, it was giant for its species, and I was pretty sure the face, still intact, was Coyote’s.

  “This isn’t time for your weird games,” I shouted at him. “Come back to life already. I need you!”

  Gabrielle stopped at my side, her motorcycle boots a match for my own. “You all right, sis? It’s dead.”

  “He’s Coyote.” I shook the body. “Come on. Wake up.”

  The beast shimmered. Gabrielle drew back, but I didn’t take my hand from his bloody body.

  When mist cleared, Coyote the man lay on the ground. A deep gash cut through his neck, now coated with dried blood, and his belly lay open and pathetically exposed.

  “Stop this,” I babbled. “I need you.”

  Coyote opened his eyes. As when I’d found him dying behind the railroad bed, his dark irises were filmed over, and I knew he couldn’t see me. “Bear,” he said.

  “I know. You explained about your bizarre ritual. But I need you. I have the pot. Or will have.”