Stormwalker

by Allyson James

“Why?”

  Her gaze flicked away. “I thought it best.”

  “I mean why are you here? They all think you’re dead. Your father and mother, everyone in Magellan, Nash Jones.”

  She bowed her head, showing me her hair cut close to her scalp, as though her head had been shaved and the hair was just now growing out. “Poor Nash. Is he all right?”

  “No, he isn’t. He’s done nothing but brood and wonder what happened to you for a year. Same with your parents. If you could see them, it would break your heart. Or at least, I hope it would make you feel bad for being such a selfish bitch. You never even bothered to call them to tell them you were all right.”

  My voice rose as I spoke. I was suddenly furious with her for all the grief she’d caused, and it didn’t help that she aroused the guilt in me as well. After meeting my mother, I’d taken off halfway across the country before I calmed down and called my dad. He must have been scared to death wondering what had happened to me. But at least I’d called after a week. Amy hadn’t in twelve months.

  Then again, I hadn’t exactly rushed home every weekend to embrace my family. I’d been avoiding them for six years. I was angry at Amy, but part of my anger swung around and directed itself back at me.

  I stepped toward her, right into a patch of sunlight. Amy jerked her attention to me, and then her eyes widened, her face paled, and she scrambled back, lifting her hands.

  “No. This is sacred ground. You can’t touch me here.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not going to hit you, mad as I am.”

  “This is sanctuary. You can’t bring her in here.”

  “Bring who here? No one is with me but Mick, and he’s waiting outside.”

  “I see her in your eyes. I see her shining out of you.” Amy slammed her hands to her face and started babbling. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .”

  Twenty-three

  “Stop it.” I grabbed Amy’s shoulders and shook her.

  “I’m not her. I swear to you. I know who you mean, and she’s not inside me.”

  Amy blinked at me, her eyes more gray than green. In spite of her shorn hair, she looked much like the girl in her photos, with a lovely face and a soft look. I could see why Nash had fallen for her.

  “Sit down with me.” I led her to the bench under the tree and patted its flat surface. The stone was cool through my jeans, soothing after the glaring heat of the road.

  “When did it start?” I asked her.

  Amy didn’t sit down. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Janet Begay. Your parents asked me to find out what happened to you. They’re grieving, sick with it. They’ve pretty much decided you’re dead.”

  “It’s better that way. Go back and tell them that I died.”

  “Screw that. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  Amy’s face twisted. “You have no idea what happened. The things she made me do.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know you, and if my mom and dad sent you, I don’t want you to tell them what happened to me.”

  I bit back a sigh. I had to know what this was all about, but Amy wasn’t just afraid, she was ashamed. She’d always been the good girl, and my mother was badness personified.

  “How about if I promise not to tell them anything but that you’re all right?” I asked. “They deserve to know that. What they truly deserve is for you to call them and tell them yourself.”

  “Don’t admonish me when you can’t possibly know what I’ve been through. The things I did . . .”

  “That wasn’t you.”

  “No,” she snapped. “What you don’t understand is that I wanted to do those things. I was evil before the demon ever came to me. It was difficult to do the right thing all the time, but people were so proud of me for being good that I had to keep on doing it, no matter what was going on inside me. I don’t know if you can understand that.”

  I completely understood it, more than she knew. “Trust me, Amy, we’re all shoved into roles that we don’t fit. We either adjust or rebel. Me, I rebelled. I made my grandmother’s life living hell, not that she didn’t give as good as she got. You at least made your parents happy and proud.”

  “Which is why I can’t leave here. Let them think I’m a saint or something, sacrificing my life to do good for others.” Amy’s expression turned wistful. “I do like the work we do here. We go to shut-ins and take them food, clean their houses, look after those who can’t help themselves. I like that. I feel useful for the first time in my life.”

  “You helped Nash Jones. I heard he was pretty crazed when he came home from the army, but when he took up with you, he calmed down. Everyone agrees that you were good for him.”

  Amy looked away with a shudder. “I don’t want to talk about Nash.”

  “I think we’d better. Was it your idea to lure him from Maya? Or hers?”

  “I don’t know.” Amy turned back to me, angry. “Don’t you understand? I can never be sure. I always thought Nash was attractive, I always liked him, but I never believed he’d look twice at someone like me. Besides, he was going out with Maya. I used to watch him whenever he came into Magellan. Sometimes I’d follow him into stores or the diner, pretending I happened to be going there too, so I could talk to him, or just watch him.”

  I snorted with laughter, and Amy broke off, looking offended.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” I said. “Nash is a gorgeous, hard-bodied man. I’m surprised he can walk anywhere without a string of women stumbling after him. It’s natural for you to want to look at beautiful men. I do too. It’s the mating instinct. We can’t help our hormones.”

  “But we can. We can behave like civilized human beings and not stalk whatever person happens to strike our fancy. It’s why we abhor rape—the violation of others to satisfy our own needs.”

  “I wasn’t talking about rape.”

  “But I was.” Amy’s face was set. “What I did to Nash was as good as. I coerced him away from Maya, a woman he loved, and took him for my own. I made him have sex with me so that I could carry his baby.”

  “You didn’t exactly force him. He and Maya were already falling apart.”

  “But they’d have married and made it if not for me.”

  “Possibly, but you can’t be sure. I know that my mother can’t manifest in people for very long. I take it that there were periods when you didn’t know what you were doing?”

  “Hours at a time. Sometimes an entire day, though never longer. I’d come to myself out in the desert, not realizing I’d walked there. But I’d be dressed, wearing sweats and carrying water, as though I’d decided to go hiking.”

  I nodded. “She had you take her back to the vortexes. She can get her spirit through the cracks, but she can’t manifest fully. So she grabs the nearest woman, usually one young and pretty, and does what she pleases. She hasn’t possessed any men as far as I know. I wonder if that’s because she can’t or because she doesn’t want to.”

  Amy stared at me with wide eyes. “What are you talking about? I was possessed by a demon. A devil, from hell.”

  “More or less. She’s a goddess from Beneath. It’s not really hell; it’s another world, but she’s trapped there, she and the other gods and goddesses who were considered too evil to emerge. She got sealed in by gods like Coyote with the help of the dragons. Other, weaker things got out—they became the skinwalkers and what we call demons and evil spirits. She can manipulate the skinwalkers who live around the vortexes when she wants to.”

  Amy listened with her mouth open. “You’re crazier than I am.”

  “No, just more experienced. These evil things are real, Amy.”

  She looked away again. “The devil tested me with a demon, as the Lord allowed him to with Job. Except I failed.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Amy moved restlessly. “Yes, it was. The demon wasn’t in me all the time. I’d go home when I c
ame to my senses, and there would be Nash, sleeping in my bed, and I’d be so proud of myself and happy that he belonged to me. Even if the demon had to seduce him for me, Nash was all mine. I told myself that I’d take care of him far better than Maya ever could. But if I’d loved Nash—truly loved him—I’d have let him go. I’d have been horrified at what I’d done and told him to stay away from me. Instead I let him kiss me and sleep with me, and I planned to marry him and have his baby. I wanted to prove that Amy McGuire could get the best-looking man in the county and have the perfect life with him. I’d use the demon to make Nash fall in love with me if that’s what it took.” She stopped pacing. “Now look at me and tell me that I’m still a good person.”

  I’d met girls at college who’d ruthlessly hunted handsome, rich, successful men, intending to marry them for their money, and those girls hadn’t needed demons to help them. But I didn’t think Amy wanted to be placated.

  I hiked my boot up on the bench and wrapped my leg around my knee. We must have looked odd together, me in my tight jeans and low-cut shirt, she in her plain blouse and skirt that was just shy of being a nun’s habit. But I shared something with this young woman that most people wouldn’t understand.

  “What happened to the baby?” I asked in a gentle voice.

  Amy’s eyes filled with pain. “I lost it. I was four months.”

  “Did you go to a hospital? I couldn’t find any records . . .”

  “I’d come down here to talk to the sisters about joining them. They weren’t going to let me. I wasn’t Catholic, and there’s a process of study and prayer—and besides, the things I’d done with Nash, especially outside of marriage. I had the miscarriage here. They brought in a doctor and agreed to keep it quiet. I’ve been working here to pay them back ever since. The demon child must have known it was in a holy place and couldn’t fight.”

  I didn’t dispute her, although I believed Amy simply hadn’t been strong enough to carry a child filled with my mother’s power.

  “So the day you left Magellan, you were coming down here to scope out the place?”

  She nodded. “Sister Margaret gave me the appointment that day, and I feared I wouldn’t have another chance. I didn’t want anyone to see me leave—I thought that if the convent rejected me, I could come back home and no one would be the wiser. If they had accepted me, I would have called. But when I had the miscarriage, I got scared. I didn’t want to have anything to do with Magellan or anyone in it, ever again.”

  “No one saw you leave. You didn’t take your own car.”

  “I’d bought an old car from a couple in Winslow a week before and hid it south of town. I walked through the desert to it that morning and drove away.”

  A private cash purchase would leave no record, an old car wouldn’t cost much, and she could have stashed away the cash for it little by little, so we wouldn’t have seen large withdrawals on her bank records. A police chief’s daughter would think of things like that.

  She could have easily hidden the car in a juniper- and mesquite-lined wash south of Magellan—there were so many of them, and that road wasn’t well traveled. Amy had planned with care, making certain no one would see her or stop her. Knowing Nash, if he’d had any inkling what she’d planned to do, he’d have done everything shy of padlocking her into her own house, and I wasn’t so sure he’d have stopped at that.

  “Maybe you did do the right thing leaving,” I said. “Getting far away from the vortexes was a good plan. If you do want to stay here and do good works, who am I to say you’re wrong? But tell your parents. It’s killing them.”

  Amy nodded, tears in her eyes. “You see? I’m selfish, like you say. I was so afraid of what had happened to me, so afraid that my family would make me come home again, that I didn’t think about what they were going through. They have each other and they’re strong. I thought they’d be all right.”

  “Well, they’re not.” I thought of Mrs. McGuire and the dead look in her eyes. “Call them. It’s your life—you can choose to stay here and grow vegetables and take food to shut-ins if that makes you happy. But tell them.”

  “It does make me happy.” Her look turned defiant. “And I’m not faking my desire to join the sisters. I’ve always been devout, and coming here was the logical choice. I’m working through the study and have already converted to Catholicism. God will look after me, and in return, I will serve Him.”

  “Good.” This place was peaceful, I had to admit. It was tempting to stay in this silence—pulling weeds in a garden or praying and meditating sounded like a balm to the soul. But Mick waited for me outside, I had responsibilities, and it would take only one desert storm for me to destroy the peace and quiet around here. This place was sanctuary, but not for me.

  “Will you promise to call your mom and dad?” I asked as I rose. “I understand if you don’t want to talk to Nash or anyone else, but call your parents at least.”

  “Can’t you just tell them I’m all right?”

  “It has to come from you, Amy, and you know it.”

  She nodded, her eyes showing her misery. “All right. I’ll call them.”

  I believed her, though I planned to ask Sister Margaret to make sure Amy did it. Good intentions sometimes never manifested.

  I felt a huge weight lift from me as I turned away. I’d fulfilled my mission, found Amy McGuire, solved the mystery of her disappearance. I was free of the investigation now.

  But when I emerged and saw Mick leaning against my bike in the shade of the bougainvillea-hung wall, I reminded myself that however much I didn’t like it, I had many more things to do before I could find my own peace.

  Mick drove again, and I was content to hang on behind him. I drooped with exhaustion and opened my eyes only when he pulled into the parking lot of a chain motel on the northern outskirts of Tucson.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as he stopped. “We have time to make it to Magellan tonight.”

  “Not with me worried about you falling off every mile. We’ll stay the night, have breakfast, and make a fresh start.”

  His plan did make sense. I was very tired, and a long snooze sounded like a good idea. I waited by the bike while Mick went in and booked rooms. He handed me a plastic key card and told me to find my room while he parked the bike.

  I walked through the motel, which wrapped around a sparkling pool full of kids, until I found the room number. I let myself in, dumped my backpack on the floor, dropped the key to the beside table, and landed on my back on the bed. I was just dozing off when Mick opened the door and came in.

  “You didn’t bring anything for yourself,” I said sleepily.

  He held up a plastic bag. “Gift counter has toothbrushes, and I don’t wear pajamas.”

  I was tired enough to smile. “Don’t swim in the nude, though; I think they’ll throw you out. Where’s your room?”

  “This is my room.” He tossed the plastic bag into the bathroom and sat down on the bed.

  I rose up on my elbows. “Then where’s mine?”

  “You’re staying with me, Janet. I told you, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “No one knows where I am.”

  “Amy does.”

  “She’s an innocent in all this, and she wants to become a nun. You wouldn’t trust a nun?”

  “Not when the lady from Beneath is involved,” Mick said. “She’s tricky.”

  True. I wasn’t in the mood to argue, and I didn’t have the energy for it. I dropped back down to the mattress, reflecting that he’d at least gotten a room with two beds.

  Mick stripped the boots from my feet and peeled off my socks. His strong hands felt good as he started to massage the bottoms of my feet.

  “I miss you,” I whispered.

  “I miss you too, baby.”

  “It can’t ever be like it was, can it?” I said. “You and me, on the road, arguing and making up. I mean, now I know that you were there because you’d been sent to kill me.”

  Mick rubbe
d his thumb deep into the arch of my foot, and I let out a sigh of pleasure. “I’d never hurt you,” he said. “Never.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  “What if your dragons come after you?”

  “Let them come.” Mick leaned to me. “I’ll fight them to my last breath to keep them from touching you.”

  “Why?” For some reason I was getting angry. “I’m just a Stormwalker, Mick, who might open vortexes and destroy your kind. Why are you so interested in me?”

  Mick’s body pressed mine into the mattress, his heat all over me. “Dragons aren’t like humans; they don’t have the same emotions—not love and hate, sadness and grief. But when I met you, I felt something, something new. I didn’t want to let it go until I figured out what it was. Dragons do have one thing in common with humans. Curiosity.”

  “So you didn’t kill me because you were curious about me?” Very flattering.

  “Curious about my reaction to you.” He nuzzled my cheek. “You awakened feelings in my human form, ones I’d never experienced. Protectiveness, worry, desire.” He kissed the corner of my eye. “Love.”

  I wanted to melt but I resisted. “You should have told me.”

  “I can’t change what I did. But I don’t regret one second of being with you, of touching you, of loving you. Exploring your body was one of the best things I had in my life. That hasn’t changed.”

  I started to warm. “We could get pretty crazy sometimes.”

  Mick skimmed kisses down my throat and chest to my bared abdomen and rested his lips on my navel.

  “Crazy,” he whispered, and his breath burned my skin.

  Twenty-four

  “Mick . . .”

  He kissed his way back to my breasts and nuzzled my nipple through my shirt. The point rose, and he took the bud between his teeth.

  “Mick.” My voice changed from admonition to a soft groan, me responding to him like an instrument to an expert musician’s touch.

  He licked my throat and nipped it. My hips rose to meet his, his hardness moving between my legs.