I rounded the tree. A naked man sat with his back against the trunk, his legs folded to his chest, brawny arms around his knees. His head was tilted back against the tree, his eyes closed, black curly hair hanging in torrents. Something seemed wrong about him, and it struck me after a few heart-pounding moments that his arms were now bare of tattoos.
“Mick?”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. Dark brows drew together over very blue eyes as he regarded me without fear but without recognition either.
“Mick, it’s Janet.” My heart sank as I crouched next to him. “Are you all right?”
“I seem to be whole,” he said, still not recognizing me. “But I don’t know where I am.”
His familiar voice made me want to fling my arms around him and bury my face in his shoulder. I’d grown used to Mick protecting me, even when I didn’t like it. Even when he drove me insane, I’d felt cared for, safe. The way he looked at me now, I realized that, in this place, it was my job to protect him.
“This is Beneath,” I said. “You fell down here during the storm.” I started to touch him, then curled my fingers into my palm. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. She made me.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
Mick looked me up and down again. “I don’t know.” A faint smile touched his mouth. “Do I remember having sex with you? Or do I just want to remember that?”
I exhaled and let myself put my hand on his bare knee. “You do remember that. It was fantastic, every time.”
“Good.” He slanted me a smile through his hanging hair. “I’d like to remember more.”
Even here, he could make my skin heat. “I’m not sure how to get us out of here, but I’ll try. I have some magic tied to this place, but I have a feeling that you don’t.”
I ran my fingers down Mick’s arms where his dragon tattoos used to be. His skin bore no sign he’d ever had them, the flesh smooth, whole, unmarked.
His eyes darkened. “You keep that up, and I’ll be happy to create new memories with you right now.”
I smiled, trying to bolster my spirits. “I’d rather do it back home, with you being you again. You’re a creature of the earth; you don’t belong here.”
“I didn’t think I did.” Mick glanced at the surrounding trees. “I hope not. Gods, this place is boring.”
I agreed. “No wonder the ones who got left Beneath are trying to get out.”
We looked around some more, neither of us voicing the thought How do we get out? I had an idea, but I wasn’t certain it would work. At least, I thought it might work on me, but Mick would be trapped if I left him behind.
He lied to you, a voice whispered in my brain. It wasn’t my mother’s voice—this time it was my own. He hid the truth from you for years. What loyalty do you have to him?
I willed the words to silence. I cared about Mick enough to not leave him here, no matter what was between us.
Mick tensed as he gazed into the distance. “There’s something alive over there.”
I followed his line of sight. I saw nothing at first, but after a few moments I spotted a shadow flitting from tree to tree, never stilling long enough to be identified.
Mick unfolded to his feet, the harmony of his raw-muscled body a joy to look at. He might have lost his dragonness, he might be confused and without his memories, but Mick was still a beautiful man. I’d have had to be dead not to notice him, and even then I might come back as a ghost just to watch him.
Mick reached for a fallen branch and tested its weight. Without having to tell me to stay behind him, he started softly toward the creature.
With no storm handy, I felt powerless, uncertain of what kind of magic I could wield in this place. Storms were of the earth, like Mick was—I knew in my gut I couldn’t use that magic here. But I had the Beneath power in me as well, the power I’d used to open the vortex. What I didn’t know was whether my Beneath magic was strong here, or whether I wouldn’t have enough to crush a gnat.
The shadow resolved into a huge creature that bellowed at Mick and charged. Mick met it with his makeshift club, grunting as branch connected with flesh.
The thing reminded me of a skinwalker—tall and broad, hard-muscled and fast, giant hands with claws, yellow eyes. However, skinwalkers had hideous faces and equally hideous BO, and this one bore the face of an angel with no odor I could detect.
Mick fought hard, but he was limited to his human strength, his fire magic gone. I swore I heard Mick’s rapid heartbeat thudding in my own ears, felt his anger and growing worry. I picked up a sturdy branch and sailed in to help him.
The creature lunged at Mick, picked him up by the throat, and squeezed. Mick thrashed, dropping his club to dig at the fingers cutting into his windpipe.
I screamed and beat on the thing with my branch, but I might as well have hit an alligator with a twig. Mick’s face turned purple, his eyes bulging as he fought to breathe.
“Leave him alone.” I whacked the creature’s back with my stick. “Drop him and die, asshole.”
The monster let go of Mick. Mick fell to the ground and folded up, coughing.
The creature swung around, and I backed up a step. The thing was twice my size, and my only weapon was a dead branch.
Then, before my astonished eyes, the monster crumpled to the ground. He exhaled with a little sigh, his eyes fixed, and he lay still. Mick and I stared, dumbfounded, as the dead body dissipated into dust.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
“What did you do?” Mick raked his hair back from his face, his voice harsh with fear and anger.
“Nothing.” I flung away the branch as though it burned me. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You said ‘drop him and die,’ and it dropped me and died.”
“Did I?” I’d yelled words, not too worried about being coherent.
“Say something else.”
“Like what?”
He pointed. “Tell that vine to move out of your way.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I looked at the vine in question, a scraggly tangle on the forest floor. I felt like an idiot giving orders to a plant, but I said, “Move aside, you.”
A gust of wind swirled around the vine, uprooted it, and tossed it away. I gaped, heart pounding.
“Looks like you have magic here,” Mick said. “Amazing magic. If we get into an argument, please don’t accuse me of having a small penis.”
I couldn’t laugh. “I don’t know how I did that. I shouldn’t have been able to.”
“Maybe it’s this place. It took all my powers but gave you more.”
I reached for him, and my chest felt hollow as Mick flinched from me. “I’m scared,” I said.
“I am too.”
Mick was never afraid. He laughed at danger—literally; I’d seen him do it.
I folded my arms and didn’t try to touch him again. I was afraid to say anything as well. What if my words accidentally magicked Mick somewhere or made his arms fall off or something?
By the look on Mick’s face, similar thoughts were occurring to him. “Have you ever seen a being like that?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “He looked like a skinwalker, but a clean, pretty one.”
“Skinwalkers should be foul, smell of death.”
“In our world,” I said. “But here? Maybe this is what they really look like, and what we see above are shadows of what they used to be. Coyote appears to us as a coyote and a man, but who knows what he looked like when he lived down here?”
“Coyote.” Mick grasped the word. “I’ve heard of him. I know him. I remember what his magic feels like.”
“Is that good?”
Mick’s muscles rippled as he shrugged. “How can I know?”
I wanted to touch him. More than that, I wanted to hold him. I wanted to make love to him, right here in the mud, to feel his warmth around me, to hear him tell me how much he loved me.
&n
bsp; “Mick, I wish—”
He clapped his hand over my mouth. “Don’t. Don’t wish, don’t command, don’t say anything until we figure out what kind of damage you can do.”
Damage. He meant to him. Gods, he was afraid of me.
His eyes were pure blue, his hand firm across my lips. I touched my tongue to his palm, liking the warm sensation that started in my breasts and between my legs. His skin prickled with goose bumps, as though need pulsed through him too.
“Janet,” he murmured. “I don’t think . . .”
“I don’t want to think at all.” I rose on tiptoes and kissed his lips.
Mick’s arms came around me, the adrenaline rush of the fight transferring to his kiss. He held me hard against him, mouth opening mine, hand sliding to my breast. I curled my fingers around his neck, trying to draw his warmth into me. I needed him, wanted him, craved him.
“Mick, please, let’s . . .”
Mick abruptly broke the kiss. I looked up at him, worried that I’d hurt him, but he wasn’t looking at me.
He jerked his hands from me, and I spun around to face whatever he’d seen behind me.
A woman stepped from the shadow of the trees, a woman I’d never seen before. And yet I knew her.
She had blond hair, shimmering gold, even though little sunlight penetrated the leafy canopy to touch anything. Her hair tumbled all the way to her delicate, bare feet. She had milk white skin—pasty white, in fact—eyes disproportionately large for her face. I couldn’t tell what color they were at this distance. Her iridescent gown shimmered like her hair. She was the shimmer queen.
I realized now why my mother liked to inhabit blond women. Both Amy and Sherry Beaumont looked a little like her, as had the woman I’d met at the diner. Same coloring, same slender build, same softness. She’d been trying for a woman with looks as close to hers as possible.
As she neared me, I saw that her eyes were a dark, intense green like that of the leaves on the trees around us.
“Janet.” Her voice was a whisper of silk, a strain of music too beautiful to be understood. “My daughter. At last, you have come to me.”
She closed the final measure of space between us and brushed my face with her fingertips. Her touch nearly froze my blood. She was ice-cold, no warmth anywhere.
“I have so longed to touch you,” she said. “How horrible it was that I could only connect to you through another’s flesh.”
I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. “It’s only through another’s flesh that I was born at all.”
“That is true. Think how heartbreaking it was for me to leave you behind, to not be able to hold you, comfort you, even touch you. My child, and I had to abandon you to others.”
“You didn’t abandon me.” I was angry, very angry, but so cold I couldn’t move. “You killed the woman who gave birth to me.”
“The female vessel was weak. She was stronger than the others, able to carry you to term, but still too weak in the end.”
“That ‘vessel’ was my mother,” I snapped.
“No, child. She bore you, but I gave rise to you. She was a surrogate, nothing more.”
“There were other surrogates. Amy. Sherry Beaumont. The woman who seduced Harold Yazzie. I’m sure the list goes on.”
“But in all the centuries, there was only you.” My mother brushed a light finger across my lips. “You with your powerful storm magic. You are very, very special, daughter.”
If I didn’t like her touching me, Mick certainly didn’t. He was at my side, growling a warning, ready to do battle.
I think I realized in that moment how much I loved him. He was helpless here, and he knew it, and still he wanted to protect me.
“How sweet,” my mother said to me. “Will you give him to me as a present?”
“Leave Mick alone.”
“No, darling. I won’t. This thing is nowhere near good enough for you.” She gave Mick a look that was nearly identical to the one my grandmother had given him upon meeting him. I’d have found that comical if I hadn’t been so terrified.
“You belong to me now, Janet,” my mother said. “You will love me, not this monster.”
“Mick has been far more loving to me than you ever were.”
My mother looked hurt. “I didn’t have a chance, darling. I can’t exist above except through other shells—you know that. The dirty little town where your father raised you was too far away and too protected for me to come to you. Thankfully you escaped it in the end.”
“I didn’t escape.” But hadn’t I regarded leaving home as an escape? Fleeing the cage my aunts, cousins, and grandmother had placed around me?
“Your grandmother was a fool and kept you for herself,” my mother said. “But now you are with me.”
I took a step back. “If you wanted to be with me so much, why didn’t you just take over my body the first time you met me? You jumped into me readily enough tonight.”
“Because I didn’t want to weaken you, love, and my power would have strained you. I wanted you to stay strong for me. Tonight, all I needed from you was for you to take me to the vortex and open it. I knew you’d dive down here after your dragon if I made him fall in. And you did.”
“Fine. You’ve got me. Let Mick go.”
“No, darling.” My mother leaned toward me but didn’t touch me again. “Kill him for me.”
I ground my teeth, fighting fear. Not of her, but of the fact that I could kill Mick with a word, and she knew that. I felt Mick tense next to me, knowing it too. “I would never hurt him.”
My mother gave me a pitying look. “Dear heart, I wasn’t talking to you.” She looked behind Mick and smiled a chilling smile.
Twenty-eight
“Janet,” Mick said, very softly.
I swung around. A horde of skinwalkers—the Beneath version of them—had formed an arc behind us. They didn’t carry weapons, but they didn’t need to; they could rip Mick to pieces with their bare hands.
Leading them was a thing. I didn’t know what it was supposed to be. It had the body of a man, one taller and bigger than Mick, but its head was a cross between that of a bull and a wolf. Long muzzle, pointed teeth, horns, round, blazing eyes.
“What the hell is that?” I managed.
“This is my consort,” my mother said. “You will like him.” She smiled at the monstrosity. “Kill him for me, love.”
The minotaur-like thing charged, the skinwalkers right behind him. Mick balled his fists and faced the onslaught. I saw in Mick’s face that he knew he was going to die, that he was fully prepared to die, but that he was happy he could go out fighting.
“Come on, let’s tangle,” he shouted at the monster. He laughed, his blue eyes flashing with the wickedness I loved. “This could be fun.”
“No!” I screamed. “No, Mick. Go!”
I grabbed Mick around the waist and shoved him as I shouted. Mick’s feet left the ground, and he gave me a startled, then a horrified, look. He reached for me, his mouth forming my name, and then he vanished. My hands closed on nothing, and Mick was gone.
I whirled, my grappling hands reaching for my mother. “Where is he? What did you do?”
Behind me the monster and the skinwalkers stopped their charge, their halt kicking mud that spattered the backs of my legs. My mother smiled and shook her head.
“I did nothing. You sent him away, dear. He is wherever you told him to go.”
Icy panic hit me. Where the hell had I shoved him? Back to the desert of above? To the realms of the dragons? Or to some world worse than this one? I tried to picture the exact thought I’d had when I’d yelled the word, “Go!” but I had no idea.
“You’re making me do this.”
“No, child. You did it yourself. You have great power here. You will fit in nicely.”
“No.” I wanted to cry, but my eyes and throat were too dry. “I belong with my father, in the lands of the Diné.”
“You have made yourself believe that. But
what do you have there? A family who is deeply suspicious of you, an outside world that herded your people onto reservations as though they were cattle. You weren’t human to them, just animals to be penned up and starved, shot if you put a foot wrong. They did it so they could take everything you had for themselves, no other reason. Why should you go back to a world like that? When you can stay here, and be strong, and thrive?”
“Here?” I looked at the enclosing woods, the heavy sky I could barely see, the skinwalkers with beautiful faces. I thought of the land around Many Farms, the stark beauty of its measureless vistas, the scorching blue sky that faded to crimson and gold at dusk. My recent ancestors had been penned up as my mother claimed, but Navajo had lived on that land for centuries, and it was in my bones.
I wanted to be back there so much I could taste it. I wanted to see my father walking in from the fields, his fists stuffed into his jacket pockets, his head bowed as he moved along, careful not to step on stray insects or lizards in his path. I wanted to see my grandmother chopping vegetables for the stew, frowning at me for some wrong or other she was certain I’d done. I missed them with an ache as big as a cavern.
“What is here that I could possibly want?” I asked my mother.
“This woods is not the only place. Take my hands.”
I stared at her outstretched fingers in suspicion. “Why?”
“I will show you my true home. But it’s a long journey.”
I continued to look at her hands, beautifully shaped, so pale they might have been made of moonlight. Impatiently, she grabbed my much browner and mud-coated fingers, her touch ice-cold.
The woods spun around me, faster and faster until I snapped my eyes closed. Before I could decide to be sick, the world stopped, and I opened my eyes again.
The woods were gone. We stood in a garden perched on top of a rocky hill, with a green meadow studded with flowers flowing away from our feet. A fountain bubbled beside us, water falling over natural rock to splash in a wind-carved sandstone bowl. Bright fuchsia hung along the rocks beside honeysuckle and light blue flowers I didn’t recognize. The air was deliciously cool and scented with sweetness.
Stormwalker Page 27
