The receptionist looked up from her computer and told me listlessly that Mr. Wingate was busy, and I’d have to wait. I hadn’t sat long in the uncomfortable plastic chair, though, when Ted himself walked down the hall to greet me.
He smiled a broad smile, his teeth very straight and white in his tanned face. He should be out playing golf on some high-priced golf course, not carrying a clipboard through the linoleum-tiled halls of a county office.
“Ms. Begay,” he said, sounding happy to see me. “How are you? Let’s talk in my office.”
Ted’s office was sparse and lacked personality. The desk and chairs were gunmetal gray, and the only things on the walls were official certificates of training and licenses Ted had received. The white metal window blind was raised a precise one-quarter of the way, an angle that shut out the enormous and beautiful sky in favor of a slice of parking lot.
Ted’s smile held as I put in my plea for more time.
“Not possible,” he said. “I’m on a deadline too, Ms. Begay.”
“What deadline? I had to pass inspection to open, but even then the county didn’t give me a deadline. I just couldn’t open until I passed.”
Ted leaned against the edge of his desk. His light brown eyes set off his tan, as did his white polo shirt.
“Well, you see, little gal, that hotel is sitting on prime real estate. If the county seizes the property, we can sell it for a pretty penny. Hopi County can always use money. Now, I wouldn’t want to see this happen to you.” He set the clipboard on the desk with a decisive click. “I want to help you keep your cozy hotel, I really do. But the county says that if it’s not up to code by end of next week, I have to shut it down.”
“I have a team working on it.” My mouth hurt as I said it.
Ted’s smile widened. “I’m sure you do, sweetie. I’m sure you do. I’m not your enemy, you know. I’ve always liked Indians, and I want to see them catch a break after so many years of oppression. What can I do to help you out?”
If he were so sympathetic, why did his sympathy grate on my nerves? People existed who really did want to help Native Americans, some of them not very effectual, some clueless and doing more harm than good, but many were well-meaning and even kind. Ted, however, was in the condescending, what-will-make-me-look-good class.
“Give me another month,” I said. “That would help.”
“Now, that I can’t do. Although . . .” Ted stepped around me and shut the door, giving me a furtive wink in the process. “Maybe we can talk. My job gives me some pull.” He brushed by me again to close the blinds all the way. He smelled of fresh soap and toothpaste, not bad smells, but for some reason I didn’t like them.
“My electrician showed me where the wiring has been sabotaged,” I said, folding my arms. “I don’t know who did that, and I don’t know how, but I know she didn’t do it.”
I’d have suspected Ted himself, but the extent of the damage was vast and would have taken a long time. Someone would have noticed Ted repeatedly trotting down to my basement. No, something else was going on.
“I can’t give you more time,” Ted said. “Honestly I can’t. But maybe, you know, when I come back to inspect next week, I can cut you some slack.”
Again with the winking. Did he know how annoying that was?
Winter wind struck the building with a crash, rattling the window panes and howling around the eaves. Wind danced in my fingers, and I closed my fists to contain it.
“Sounds like a nice storm brewing,” Ted said. “So, how about it, little gal? Want me to help you out?”
I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he’d help me out of the goodness of his heart. “In exchange for what?”
Another wink. “You know, we could be friends, Janet. Good friends.”
The tips of my fingers began to crackle. “A free drink in my saloon?” I asked, letting the sarcasm drip. “Or a room for any friends and relatives who want to visit?”
Ted chuckled. “Your hotel isn’t exactly four-star accommodations, and my family are too citified to come to a godforsaken place like Magellan. I was thinking something a little more . . . personal.” He stopped an inch in front of me, smarmy smile and all.
I’d known damn well what he was getting at. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Come on, little gal. You’re a cute thing, and my wife, she’s always busy. So busy, you wouldn’t believe it. If you keep me satisfied, I’ll make sure your hotel will pass its inspection.”
He closed his hands over my wrists. I tried to yank away, but he held me fast. His face was coming down to mine, his mouth open. He had to be crazy. All I had to do was mention this incident to Mick, and Ted would be toast.
I fought, but Ted slammed me against him, arms around my back. His breath was minty fresh, but I didn’t want it mingling with mine.
“Let go of me.” I tried to shout, but Ted slapped a hand over my mouth.
“No you don’t, little gal. You make my cock happy, or I shut you down. Your choice.”
The arm at my back was iron hard, Ted’s hand over my mouth biting into my face. He knew how to pin me—his body held me in place as he thrust his hand up the back of my shirt.
No one can say I didn’t give him a chance. I really, really gave him every opportunity to let me go.
Ted’s hand still covered my mouth, but I didn’t need to speak. I reached for the snowstorm, smiling as wind and ice surged through my body.
My blood burned with cold, my skin goose-bumped, and I exhaled frost. Ted’s eyes widened as my frozen breath coated his hand; they widened more when I reached up and touched his face.
Ice.
Ted yelled and shoved me away. He stared in blank astonishment as the walls of his office iced over, and snow started falling inside.
I gathered ice in my hands, whirling it around and around my cupped palms while Ted watched in horror. Faster and faster the ice shards flew, and then I released them.
Ted screamed and threw up his arms. The icicles hit him, cutting his face, and the window shattered behind him. Wind exploded through the office, whirling up a cyclone of papers, glass, snow, and ice.
I ducked past Ted and ran out. Ted screamed and cursed behind me, his face dripping blood. The receptionist sprang up in alarm, and I shouted at her as I ran past.
“The storm broke the window. It’s a mess in there, and Ted’s hurt. Get some help!”
The receptionist dashed to Ted’s office, and I ran out and leapt into Cassandra’s car. Wind and snow slapped it, but I spun out of the parking lot and sped out to the open highway to Magellan.
Straight into a whiteout.
I slowed as the wash of snow met the windshield, the wind pushing and buffeting Cassandra’s tiny car.
I laughed out loud. The storm was still whirling within me, me part of it. I lapped up the elements and danced in them. I was the goddess of ice and wind and I loved it.
My golden brown skin was turning pale, my lips blue, but I felt no cold. I beheld my strange face in the mirror, my eyes burning with fire in the middle of the cold.
I slowed the car to a crawl but didn’t stop. I knew mine was the only vehicle on the road—I’d noted that before the world had gone white. No one else was stupid enough to be driving out here.
But I could sense the road beneath me, its cold texture different from the soft pockets of desert to either side. I was doing fine, singing in Navajo at the top of my voice, enjoying the freedom and the wildness of pure Stormwalker power.
The shadow of a human being reared up in front of my window. Gasping, I jerked the car to the right, but I felt a dull thud as the driver’s side fender hit whoever it was.
I’d been going maybe ten miles an hour, but even that could knock a person down and do serious damage, especially if they’d been blundering around on the ice. I got the car stopped and opened the door, shoving hard against wind and swirling snow.
I scrambled to the body on the road. It was a woman, lying facedown, wind
whipping the hood of her parka and her long black hair.
I was afraid to touch her with my snow queen thing going on, but I had no choice. I grabbed the woman under the arms and dragged her to the relative safety of the car.
She was light, and I tucked her into the passenger’s seat without problem. Her parka hood flopped over her face, and she never looked up. The car was still running as I slipped back inside and slammed the door, shutting us into silence and warmth.
“You all right?” I didn’t want to touch her again in case my crazy ice-fingers hurt her, but she didn’t respond. “I’ll take you to my hotel, and we can call for help from there.”
No answer. My heart racing in panic, I put the car in gear and moved it slowly forward. The tires spun a little on the side of the road, but with a boost from my storm power, I got back on the highway. I cranked up the heater to counteract the cold my own body radiated and drove on.
Beside me, the woman stirred. She pushed back the hood of the parka, and I found myself looking into the face of a young Native American woman I’d met once before. She’d introduced herself last fall by the empty railroad bed behind my hotel, and when she had, my world changed. She was Apache, and her name was Gabrielle Massey.
“Hey, big sis,” she said, flashing a smile. “How’ve you been?”
I hit the brakes, and the car spun in a tight circle. Gabrielle smiled at me, right before the car exploded.
Eight
The car didn’t blow up in a big ball of flame. The doors and roof ripped away, the windows burst, and glass and snow poured in, wind whipping the shards into a frenzy.
Gabrielle disappeared, but I saw her on her feet a little way from the car, her arms outstretched. The storm wasn’t touching her. She’d enclosed herself inside a bubble of stillness, against which the snow beat.
Gabrielle was a child of Beneath. My mother the hell-goddess had created her, even though the hell-goddess had looked me in the eye last year and told me that I was an only child. That was my mother for you.
Most people would rejoice at finding a long-lost sister, but my long-lost sister was evil incarnate. The last time I’d seen Gabrielle, it had been a clear, sunny day in September. We’d talked, no battling, but I’d realized then that her Beneath magic was as strong as mine, maybe stronger. Since then I’d been working on tempering my Beneath magic with my Stormwalker magic, drawing on the strengths of both without letting either control me. It wasn’t easy. I was too new to using the Beneath magic, while Gabrielle had been training in it her entire life.
I wondered why Gabrielle had chosen to attack me during a storm, because now she faced a Stormwalker in her element. The storm tried to beat and ravage me, but I reached into it and made it my own.
The blizzard became a part of me, my body growing colder to blend with it. Ice spewed from my fingers, and I spread my hands and laughed. I was part of the storm, dancing in the wind, my touch turning the world to ice. It was orgasmic, this power, making me crazy with desire at the same time I was crazed with the need to destroy.
Gabrielle stood calmly behind her bubble of magic, watching me. “So that’s what you do.”
“I’m a Stormwalker,” I said. “This is a storm. Put it together.”
“It’s earth magic.” The words came with a sneer.
“Earth magic is strong. It’s old, grounded in the bones of the world.”
“Beneath magic is older,” she said.
“But earth magic rules here.”
Gabrielle’s smile widened, and her bubble expanded. “Don’t challenge me, big sis. I dream of taking you down, but this isn’t the time. Not yet.”
“Why not?” I smiled too and blasted her with ice.
Her bubble wavered and, with it, her smugness. “You don’t want to mess with me, Janet.”
I could kill her. I knew it. The storm magic was winding around my Beneath magic, honing me into a precise, efficient weapon.
I’d promised everyone who cared about me that I wouldn’t use the Beneath magic to go on a rampage. I’d made the promise to a Koshare, a Hopi spirit who watched over this land, and to Coyote, who watched over those he wanted to watch over. Both had made it clear that they’d kill me without remorse if I turned into anything like my mother.
But they couldn’t fault me for destroying Gabrielle before she went on a destructive rampage, could they? And besides, I could do this using Stormwalker magic only.
Gabrielle’s bubble splintered into glittering pieces, but not because of me. Her Beneath power rose like a sword, and she sliced it at me.
The blizzard whipped away her strike before it could touch me, and I answered with another barrage of ice. The ice struck Gabrielle like bullets, tearing at her face before she deflected it.
“Fine,” she panted. “If you want to do this now . . .”
“I want you gone now. This is my town, my people. Leave them alone.”
“Your people. Oh, the arrogance of you. Mother tried to warn me.”
Her power stabbed at me. We fought, Stormwalker to Beneath magic wielder, half goddess to half goddess. We were going to destroy each other.
We’d also destroy the world. Ice and snow tore up the ground, chunks of frozen earth heaving upward in seismic eruption. Black clouds swirled around us, a tornado in the making. If the storm got loose from me, it would flatten the two small towns sitting out here under endless sky.
I was freezing. My body had become the storm, my hair coated in snow, ice forming on my lashes. I was cold inside and out, which meant that all compassion, all warm feeling—any love I’d ever cultivated—was gone. I was ice: hard, uncaring destruction.
Gabrielle’s power hit me, and I fell. I landed hard on snow-covered rock and heard a couple of bones snap, but I didn’t feel a thing. I was on my feet again, the pain nonexistent. I slapped Gabrielle with wind. She fought back, the two of us smashing, grappling, falling, climbing to our feet to smash again.
She was testing me, and I her. We hadn’t been ready to fight, but neither of us could stop now.
A shadow blotted out the snow, a huge black object that swooped through the storm. Red-hot fire streamed in front of it, melting the snow and ice down to bare earth.
The dragon’s fire sent Gabrielle tumbling. She rolled over and over, coming to rest on the snow-covered road. I laughed, my triumph ringing out, and then the dragon turned on me.
“Mick—no!”
Fire blossomed in an arc around me. The ice melted, my body returning to normal temperature with a bang. Pain roared through me, and I screamed.
Mick lifted me in a clawed talon, and his wings blew snow in all directions as he launched into the sky. The storm reached for me, and I reached for it, but Mick’s fire kept it from touching us.
The blizzard receded as Mick flew south with me, leaving Cassandra’s wrecked car in the middle of the road, and Gabrielle nowhere in sight.
I groaned as Mick peeled my clothes from my body. The blizzard raged outside, but I lay on my bed inside my warm hotel, teeth gritted against the pain of cracked bones. Mick tried to be gentle, but I was broken and battered, my storm power still pounding me.
“Gabrielle?” I croaked.
Mick’s eyes were black all the way through, his dragon tattoos red and writhing. “She’s gone.”
He was naked, his body so warm it hurt. Mick dropped the last of my clothing on the floor and lay down on top of me. I was shivering hard, but Mick’s soft kisses heated my blood.
Fire danced in his eyes as my storm power sought him. The first time I’d met Mick, he’d dared me to blast him with lightning. He’d stood back and laughed as electricity crawled all over him, and then he’d swallowed it down and smiled at me.
What he did now wasn’t quite the same but had similar effect. He absorbed the ice and cold I still radiated, inhaled it as he nuzzled my cheek and licked my skin. Mick’s body shuddered with the cold, but dragon fire blazed along the lines of his tattoos. He drew the lingering storm magic out of me,
until my body felt like it was roasting.
Caught in the frenzy, I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him down to me. My mouth sought his, my body welcomed him.
Mick went slow, mindful of my hurts. As he made love to me—deep, satisfying love—my cracked bones grew warm and whole, the heat of the healing nearly searing the sheets. I laughed, imagining my bed a smoldering cinder when we were done.
Mick smiled at me, his strange moods gone. This was my Mick, the man who’d watched over me for years, even when I hadn’t been aware of it. I loved him for that, with everything I had.
He touched and kissed me, and once I felt stronger I touched him back. I knew what he liked, and I smiled as I licked him, tasted him, stroked him, teased him. Growling, Mick let me play, and then he showed me how much he appreciated the pleasuring.
The blizzard unwound into straight, heavy snowfall while Mick made me wild. At one point, I was facedown on the bed, my arms spread out across the mattress while he loved me until I was mindless with it. Nothing existed but him and me, and this feeling. Nothing.
Much later, we slept, curled together, my healing complete. But when I awoke to gray morning and freezing cold, I was alone.
I’d kicked off the covers in my sleep, and I now lay exposed to an ice-cold room. I grabbed the blankets and jerked them over my naked body. “What the hell happened to the heat?”
“Don’t know, girlfriend,” the magic mirror said from my bedside table. It wasn’t in the drawer, where it was supposed to be; it sat happily on top. “But it sure was hot in here for a while. That was good. Dragon-boy has stamina, not to mention a gorgeous butt.”
“Shut up.” My injuries from the fight had healed, and the storm was gone, but I felt groggy and annoyed, not to mention cold.
I turned on the lamp, which glowed with light. The electricity was on, at least.
I got up and started to run a shower, then I gave up and turned off the water when nothing but cold poured from the pipes. I dressed with shaking fingers, pulled on my coat, and went out to the lobby.
Shadow Walker Page 7
