“I know,” he replied. “But I still wanted my friend to see it.”
A shrug as she took the ten-dollar bill from him. “No problem. The gate closes at six, and we lock it fifteen minutes after that, so make sure you’re out by then…unless you want a park ranger to come along and collect you.”
“We’ll be out before then.”
“Have a good time.”
Levi nodded and maneuvered the truck down the narrow lane and into one of the parking spaces just past the guard shack. At this hour, only a few vehicles were left, one of which was an SUV with the tailgate open. The people there, a man and a woman, were in the middle of trading out their hiking boots for some sport sandals. They smiled at Levi and Hayley as they got out of their truck, but didn’t seem inclined toward any contact beyond that…which was just fine by him.
“You didn’t tell me I needed hiking boots,” Hayley said in an undertone.
“You don’t,” he replied. “At least, not for most of the hike. It’s really just a trail that goes through the woods and follows the creek. If you continue upstream for more than half a mile, then yes, boots would probably be a good idea. But we won’t have time to go that far anyway — we’ll only be going to a spot where the trail meets a nice open area where you can see Cathedral Rock.”
“All right.” Her gaze shifted from him to the creek, which was about twenty yards from where they stood. Two men — well, barely more than boys, probably only around nineteen or so — appeared to be standing in the middle of the water. “What are they doing?”
“There are some rocks in the creek bed that you can use to cross from one side to the other. That’s why it’s called Red Rock Crossing. But you don’t have river shoes, and it can be treacherous if you’re barefoot. It’s also something better left for another day.”
Hayley didn’t respond at first, as though she was trying to decide whether to contradict him and say she wanted to try the crossing anyway, even if she did have to do it in her bare feet. If she did, there wasn’t much he could do to stop her. For all he knew, she was experienced at this sort of thing. Were there a lot of streams and creeks around Payson? He couldn’t be sure. He’d had enough to occupy him, simply learning how to live in Jerome, learning enough about Cottonwood and Sedona and their environs so he wouldn’t make a mistake which might brand him as an outsider, that he hadn’t had the time to study up on places like Payson. Sometimes it had been exhausting, keeping up appearances. And yet, he felt far more relaxed around Hayley than he thought he had any right to be.
“All right,” she said at last. “Next time. Good thing I do have hiking boots — and river shoes. It looks like fun, though.”
“It is,” he agreed. “But we should probably start on the path, or we won’t have enough time to get to the spot where you can see Cathedral Rock.”
“Lead on.” She wore dark glasses, so he couldn’t tell whether that glint had returned to her blue eyes. Her voice had sounded somewhat amused, however.
He began to walk to the far end of the parking lot, and then to a path that followed the border of what used to be a pasture of some sort. This was his third outing here, and he had yet to see any animals grazing on the grass there, but it was clear enough from the pasture’s well-maintained fences that visitors to the park were supposed to stay out.
Almost immediately, though, they were down among the trees, fresh and bright with their new leaves. The air smelled good here, damp and laden with the scents of growing things. Damp air was something of a luxury in Arizona, and so he breathed in deeply, glad that they had come here, glad that with the trees on every side and the birds calling overhead, he could almost forget the grim reason why Hayley was here with him at all, and not back home in Payson.
She was quiet, looking from side to side, taking in her surroundings. Possibly these woods of oak and sycamore and willow were very similar to the ones where she’d grown up, or perhaps they were just enough different that they provided something of a novelty. Either way, she seemed happy enough to simply be in his company, to walk at his side, or, if the path narrowed enough that they couldn’t walk abreast, drop just behind him so he could continue to lead the way. He liked that about her, liked that she was willing to be silent, to absorb what she observed without having to endlessly discuss it. There were several McAllister girls in Jerome that he’d liked well enough, but the way they seemed compelled to chatter constantly made his head start to ache after a while.
They emerged from the woods into an open area where a large expanse of red sandstone, smoothed by millions of years of rain and wind exposure, spread out before them. Off to the right was the creek, not as bright as it might be at the height of day, its sparkle somewhat subdued but still lovely. All around were little towers, or cairns, of smooth river rocks.
Hayley looked around, apparently impressed enough to remove her sunglasses. Now that the sun was dipping behind the trees, she really didn’t need them that much. “Where did they all come from?”
“People build them,” he said. “I’m not really sure why. Possibly to see how high they can stack them, or to find out how many rocks of different shapes and sizes they can get to fit together.”
“Ah.” Smiling slightly, she went down to the water’s edge and began gathering up an assortment of the smooth stones. She sent him a glance over her shoulder, eyes crinkled with amusement. “You want to help?”
Actually, he had thought it might be amusing to make a cairn of his own one day. This seemed as good a time as any, although they couldn’t linger too long here if they wanted to get a glimpse of Cathedral Rock before they had to turn back. Besides, working together on the cairn might give him the opportunity he needed to broach the subject of his unusual origins.
“Sure.” He came down to meet her by the creek’s bank, began looking through the rocks she’d already gathered to see which ones would work best for the all-important base. “Do you want to start with this flat black one?”
She eyed it critically, then nodded. “I think that should work.”
He found a spot a few paces away from where she was sorting stones and put the black rock down. “Hayley, there’s something I should talk to you about.”
Her head lifted, and she straightened up from where she’d been crouching. “That sounds ominous.”
Although the words were almost flip, he could tell from her expression that she was anxious about what he intended to say next. Did she think he was trying to come up with a way to let her know that, while they might have had a good time together today, she shouldn’t expect a repeat of the experience any time soon?
Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. He wanted very much to spend as many days like this as possible with her. His only fear was that she wouldn’t wish to spend any more time in his company after she learned the truth.
“I’m not sure ‘ominous’ is the right word. Only that there is something you should know about me.”
Expression deadpan, she said, “You’re married.”
Was that supposed to be a joke? He still hadn’t quite learned all the ins and out of human humor. “No, I’m not married.”
“Then what?”
“I — ”
“Hey — ” came a new voice, a male voice, and Levi stopped, annoyed that a stranger had interrupted him at such a critical moment.
A man and a woman emerged from the woods. They looked vaguely familiar, and then Levi realized that they were the couple he’d spotted in the parking area, the ones who had been trading out their footwear. Now it seemed that they had their hiking boots back on, although he couldn’t quite figure out why. There was no way they could walk that far on the trail in the time they had left before the park closed.
“Hi,” he said, his tone as neutral as he could make it.
Hayley set down the rocks she was holding, then smiled at the newcomers. “Hi.”
“I dropped my phone,” the woman said. “It had one of those bright lime green neoprene cases
. Have you seen anything like that around here?”
“No,” Levi replied. Not that he’d been looking, either, but anything lime green should have stood out fairly well against the red rocks where they stood.
Hayley sent a quick glance around, then shook her head. “Sorry — we haven’t seen anything like a phone case.”
“Damn,” the woman said. She glanced up at her companion. They both appeared to be in their late thirties, dark-haired, with the kind of trim, athletic builds that indicated they probably hiked and participated in a lot of other outdoor activities. “I guess that means we’ll have to keep going up the trail.”
Levi pulled his phone from his pocket. He didn’t get a signal out here, but the phone still displayed the time. “There’s only about twenty-five minutes before the park closes.”
“That’s all right,” the woman said. She smiled, and there was something strange about that smile, as if it was just slightly too wide, and possessed too many teeth. “That’s plenty of time.”
Before Levi could even blink, her smile stretched and stretched, her face shifting from that of an attractive woman to something out of a nightmare, all teeth and glaring red eyes. Black wings sprouted from her back.
Beside her, the man underwent a similar transformation, cargo shorts and hiking boots disappearing as they morphed into something monstrous, something that should never have been seen in this world.
Hayley’s fingers dug into his arm. “What the hell are they?”
“Demons,” he said.
The two hideous figures launched into the air, wings beating, stirring up dust and last year’s dead leaves. “We want nothing of you, traveler,” one of them said, its voice thin and sharp. Its baleful red eyes shifted to Hayley. “We only wish to take the girl from this place, so our master might have better use of her.”
Of course. He didn’t precisely know how the Escobars’ demonic minions had managed to track him and Hayley to this place. Not that it mattered now. What mattered was getting away from them.
Hayley’s chin lifted, and the wind moving down the creek bed caught at her long blonde hair, blowing it around her in a flurry of golden strands. In that moment, she looked more like a valkyrie than a witch of the McAllister clan. “You can tell Joaquin Escobar that I don’t feel like being used, and that he can go straight to hell!”
The demons laughed, the sound like sharpened nails down a chalkboard. Despite himself, Levi couldn’t help flinching slightly. “You can tell him yourself,” one of the demons hissed.
And then they both dove.
Levi raised his hands. The power of the earth was strong here, so strong that he understood why the McAllisters and the Wilcoxes had agreed to leave this as neutral territory, so that none of them could use it to their advantage. Still, that power would serve him well now.
The shockwave burst out from him, catching the demons mid-dive so they both tumbled toward the rocky ground. Before they hit the earth, however, they somehow managed to pull out of their fall and burst skyward again, the frenzied beating of their wings stirring up so much debris that Levi could feel his eyes sting with it.
“You are strong,” one of the demons said. “But not strong enough.”
“Tell me,” Hayley said in a fierce, urgent undertone. “Tell me about your talent. I can make you strong enough.”
The moment was here, although it had arrived in a way he had never imagined. He didn’t have time to tell her everything. Just enough. “My talent is…all of them. All at the same time. Just lend me your strength, so I might use it.”
Those sapphire-hued eyes widened, but she didn’t hesitate. She moved closer to him, appeared to take in a breath and let it out.
And it was as if — well, she’d said that other witches and warlocks had told her the boost from her talent felt like drinking a shot of espresso, but in his own case, Levi thought it was more like getting a syringe full of adrenaline straight to his heart, or perhaps grabbing hold of two downed power lines with his bare hands. The energy flowed through him, sparking along every nerve ending, waking his power.
In that moment, he felt as if he could do anything.
The sky was cloudless, but lightning rained down nonetheless, striking the demons in multiple places all over their dark, inhuman bodies. Foul-smelling smoke began to steam up from their wounded flesh, and they cried out, those cries so sharp, they seemed to tear at the very air itself, assaulting his eardrums.
But still they forced themselves forward, although the lightning strikes had made them earthbound, and they could only drag themselves toward their assailant on bleeding hands and knees, the rocky ground beneath them causing additional wounds. Hayley clamped one hand on his arm, and another wash of energy flowed over him, bright and brilliant as the lightning he’d just called.
A wall of flame roared out from him, engulfing the demons, so fierce, so hungry, that once it had passed, all that was left was a pitiful pile of strange, distorted bones, a pile which collapsed into dust even as he stared at it.
Thunder seemed to echo off the cliff walls around them, but he knew that was only the shock of the flame wall dissipating…or perhaps the pounding of his own heart.
A deafening silence fell. Then, very deliberately, Hayley lifted her hand from his bicep. Her face was pale but resolute.
“What in the Goddess’ name are you, Levi McAllister?”
5
They didn’t speak on the way back to the parking lot. The guard smiled and waved at them as they drove over the backup spikes at the park’s exit, just as though she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, that this was just the normal end of a normal day. The SUV that had belonged to the demons was gone, too. Had it disappeared in a puff of smoke the same time they were immolated by the wall of flame Levi had summoned?
You’d think the park ranger might have noticed that.
Hayley’s thoughts bounced this way and that, refusing to settle on any one thing. The way Levi had been able to call down the lightning, the fire, to create shockwaves out of empty air. She’d never seen anything like it. Oh, sure, witches and warlocks had always been able to summon fire. Not like that, though. Enough to light a candle, or kindle logs in a hearth, or to touch a spark to the sacred bonfires at Samhain and Beltane. Not a raging wall of flame so powerful, it might as well have been napalm.
And never had they been able to call the fire to them along with everything else.
My talent is…all of them, he’d said. All at the same time.
It wasn’t possible. And yet…she’d seen it with her own eyes.
Only after they were back on the highway, the late afternoon sun flaring out above Mingus before it sank at last behind the dark bulk of the mountain, did Levi speak. “I was about to tell you.”
Her mouth was dry. She wished they had some bottled water in the truck so she might wet her throat before she replied, but its cab was empty, spotlessly clean. “What exactly were you going to tell me, Levi?”
That you have the powers of a god?
Another silence. His hands tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles pale against his lightly tanned skin. “I’m not really a McAllister.”
That much seemed obvious enough. Hayley gave a dry little cough before she said, “I kind of gathered that. So who are you?”
“I’m….” He paused for a few seconds, then gave her a quick sideways glance, as though he needed to gauge her mood before continuing. Then he returned his attention to the road, although there weren’t that many vehicles on the highway. A few people heading back to Cottonwood after a day spent working in Sedona’s gift shops and hotels, tourists going to their timeshares in Sedona after a few hours of tasting wine in Old Town. “I was brought here by Zoe Sandoval. She’s the prima-in-waiting of the de la Paz clan.”
“I know who she is,” Hayley said. Actually, the only reason she knew anything about Zoe at all was because she’d married a McAllister, although it sounded as though she was still using her maiden name. Wel
l, that made some sense. It would be sort of confusing to have a prima with the last name of an entirely different witch family. “You said she brought you here? Are you from a clan in a different part of the country?”
“I wish it were that easy.” His gaze was now fixed on the road ahead of them, tension clear in the lines of his throat and jaw. “No, I’m not a warlock at all. I’m not exactly sure what I am. She brought me here from a place outside the world because she was getting desperate, because she hadn’t yet found her consort.”
A place outside the world. Hayley rubbed her temple, which had begun to throb. Well, she supposed she shouldn’t be too surprised that she was getting a headache, not after what she’d just witnessed. Her brain seemed to think this might be a good time to check out. “But Evan McAllister is her consort,” she pointed out, fastening on the part of Levi’s remark that seemed the easiest to unpack.
“Yes, she found that out after she summoned me. I couldn’t return to the place where I’d come from, and so I came to live here in Jerome with the McAllisters.”
“Why couldn’t you go back?” she asked, then wondered why she’d asked the question. Yes, she was confused and still more than a little freaked out, but she knew she didn’t want to give Levi the impression that she thought it might have been better if he’d gone back wherever he’d come from.
“I still don’t know for sure,” he replied. “The most logical theory I’ve been able to come up with was that, since Zoe was the one who’d opened the gateway between the worlds and brought me here, only she had the power to send me back.”
“I assume she didn’t want to.”
“No. Actually, we spoke on the phone, about a month after I came here. I asked her why she hadn’t sent me back to the place I’d come from, since it would have been simpler for her, for her family and the McAllisters. And she told me that she didn’t even realize what she was doing as she was doing it. The spell she used — it wasn’t as if she could simply reverse it and send me away. The magic didn’t work like that.”
Deep Magic Page 6
