“What are you doing, girlfriend?” the mirror called. “Don’t leave me here!”
Without lifting my hand I called off the storm magic. The wind swirled around me once, the ice stinging my bare flesh, and then it died. I loosened the entwined magic inside me and let it flow to its disparate parts.
I had to close my eyes for the last part, which I didn’t like, because I imagined Mick’s fire cutting me in half like a laser the second I took my gaze from him. But maybe he was curious enough to wonder what insane thing I was doing now.
I let my mind drift, thinking of calm things—the moon rising over the mountains I’d walked with my father, a stream tricking between rocky banks, the endless sky over my home. I’d found my greatest peace alone there with my father, in the silence between us that was serene and happy.
I remembered that peace and the love I’d always felt from him, which kept me going in times of loneliness, uncertainty, and downright fear.
I pictured my father, Pete Begay, with his wise eyes, the kindness that radiated from him like warmth from a hearth fire. Wrapping my senses around that peace, I let my Stormwalker magic and my Beneath magic recede until they were the tiniest of sparks buried inside my psyche.
I opened my eyes and at first worried when I couldn’t see anything. Then I realized that the karmii had faded. One or two lingered around the edges of the cave, but with my Beneath magic at low ebb, they’d stopped sensing it and had retreated, their job done.
The only light came from the fire in Mick’s hands, which lit him with a red glow. It showed me his hard and handsome face, the nose that had been broken, his hair hanging loose, his eyes dark in the shadows. He was still a beautiful man.
“Mirror,” I said, my voice so steady it surprised me. “Some light please?”
I didn’t need to use magic to make the mirror obey, because the mirror had magic of its own. That is why magic mirrors are such sought-after talismans—they can work when the mage’s defenses are down. And they always protect their masters.
Clean, white light sprang from each of the shards and lit the cave like a bank of LEDs. The light wasn’t bright enough to flood the cave but enough that I could see what I was doing.
I spread my arms. “Here I am. No magic. Nothing. Just me. Just Janet.”
“Good,” Mick said. “You make my job easier.” He didn’t say, Stupid human, but his body language radiated the thought.
Mick squished the fire in his hands into a ball. I stood and watched him, forcing fear from me. Peace, I told myself. Trust Coyote.
“Mick,” I said as he worked. “I love you.”
No answer.
I lifted my hand, letting the light dance on the band of silver, turquoise, and onyx. “I kept the ring you gave me. I didn’t give you an answer that day you scared me to death talking about marriage, but I’ve decided now.”
Mick looked at me, then at the ring. I swore I saw a brief blue spark in his eyes, but I couldn’t be sure.
He went back to making his fireball. “Throw the ring away. It’s no longer important.”
“It’s important to me. You gave it to me.”
“Trust me, Janet. Take that ring off and throw it from you as far as you can.”
His voice ended in a harsh note. I studied the band, silver for love, turquoise for healing, onyx for protection. Healing, love, protection. Around and around the ring they went. Entwined, unbroken.
“No,” I said.
“You should have gotten rid of it after I left you. I thought you would.”
“Well, I didn’t.” I turned the ring to catch the light. “Since I’m going to die here, tell me your name. Your true name. I want to hear it once, even if it’s the last thing.”
“Nice try.”
I shrugged. “I had to.” I lowered my hand and started walking toward him, pretending I didn’t fear him. My inner peace was no match for the terror of moving closer to the man who was coldly preparing to kill me. He didn’t give a damn about my inner peace, or about my love for him, or about the ring.
Except that me still having the ring bothered him. That intrigued me enough to keep walking to him though my fear begged me to run the other way.
Mick looked down at me with hard, cold eyes when I reached him. “I’m going to kill you, Janet.”
“I know.” I knew it, and I accepted it, and suddenly, I was no longer afraid.
Whether I lived or died, I was not going to kill Mick. I would get him free, if it was the last thing I did, and now it looked as though it would be the last thing I did. I loved him, as I loved my father and my grandmother, and my last act on this earth would not be to slaughter someone who had taught me how much selfless love could accomplish.
“Why don’t you fight me?” Mick asked.
He genuinely wanted to know. I’d seen his dragon curiosity at work, and now he brought it to bear on this question. Why would the puny Stormwalker shut off her power and wait to die? Foolish, foolish Stormwalker.
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“I’m being controlled by another, and her wish is for me to kill you. I have no choice but to obey.”
“I know. But it doesn’t matter. I love you, Mick, the real you that’s behind the puppet Vonda controls. Because what you and I had means something to me, and she can never take that from me. It might be over between us now, but it meant something, and I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget you.”
“You’ll remember me only for the seconds it takes you to die.”
“Maybe.” I stepped closer to him, looked right up into his eyes. “I love you, Mick. Tell me your name.”
“I can’t. Even if I wanted to, the spell is too strong.”
The ring tingled on my hand, so cool in the heat of the cave. It didn’t contain his name, no. He’d have been compelled to destroy it if it had. But Mick had put a tiny bite of his essence in there, the spark of dragon fire I’d sensed. He’d made the confusing proposal to me and slipped the ring on my finger.
“Yes,” I whispered. I lifted my hand to Mick’s arm, pressing my fingers and the ring against the dragon on his biceps. “My answer is yes. I’ll marry you.”
A spark stung him, and he jerked. Mick looked swiftly down at me, and for an instant, the horrible gray in his eyes cleared, and the clear blue of Mick shone through.
“Your name,” I said. “Hurry.”
Mick pushed me off with a growl, and my hope died. I’d thought that maybe the name would burst from him when he felt a touch of his own, untainted magic, but perhaps the spark wasn’t big enough. I couldn’t reawaken my own magic to amplify what was in the ring, because the karmii would strike.
Amplify.
I held up my hand, thrusting the ring into a beam from one of the mirror shards. “Hey, magic mirror. What do you make of this?”
“Ooh, honey,” the mirror said in delight. “Love the bling. Think he’d give me one?”
Mick began to growl. His curiosity about what I was trying to do kept his fire at bay for two more seconds, but two seconds was enough.
The mirror grabbed the glint from the silver ring, bounced it across the five or so pieces of itself scattered on the floor, then slammed the five beams together. I grabbed Mick and dragged him straight into that light.
The dragon fire in Mick’s hands burned me to the bone. I grunted with pain but didn’t let go until the beams from the mirror shot into his eyes. Then my senseless fingers lost hold of him, and I folded, groaning, to the floor.
The skin of my hands was gone, blackened and burned, the blood and muscle oozing around the ring, which still clasped my finger. I saw the splinter of bone that had broken sticking through the disgusting mass. I curled up onto myself and whimpered in pain.
Mick roared. I don’t mean he shouted like a human; I mean he roared like a dragon. An earth-shaking, earsplitting, oh-gods-I’m-going-to-die-if-he-doesn’t-stop roar. It went on and on, and rocks began to fall on us, and the mirror shrieked. I couldn’t move my
hands to clap them over my ears. I could only squeeze my eyes shut, clench my jaw, and pray.
The roar built and shook, tumbled and spun, rocking the cave and the earth above and beneath it. The shaft that led to the sinkhole exploded in dust as more of the surface fell down.
The sound wound up until I couldn’t take it anymore. My eardrums were about to burst—no, maybe my entire head—when the roaring turned into a string of music so sharp and pure that my heart began to break.
I looked up and saw Mick standing in the light. His fists were clenched, the dragon tattoos writhing up and down his bunched arms. His head was thrown back, his wild hair straggling across his face, but his now-black eyes were wideopen. So was his mouth, and from it issued that sound, the music that sounded of the most beautiful string of chimes, and wind, and ringing crystals.
The music filled the cave and wrapped me like a cocoon. The mirror caught the vibrations and reflected them back, amplifying the music as it had amplified the spark of dragon magic in the ring.
Mick’s name. His true name, the entire beauty of it. My mind drank it in, the music finding the empty spaces in my body and filling them.
Mick looked at me. The black receded from his eyes and blue filled them, the brilliant blue I’d looked up into in that hotel in Las Vegas, when he’d laid me down and made love to me for the first time.
“Janet.” The light played over Mick’s bronzed body, his wide shoulders, the dragons on his arms, his thick phallus, his blue black hair, and the eyes that held the blue of twilit skies. “I give it to you,” he said.
His name. His gift to me. The music flared and flooded me, then it faded, the last notes dying like a breeze whispering through wind chimes.
That was my last thought before the magic mirror’s light winked out. My eyes rolled back into my head, and the cave’s gravel cut what was left of my skin as I fell face-first onto it.
Twenty-six
I swam awake to the sound of Mick’s voice. I felt a warm hand in my hair, and I smelled Mick, the good scent of his human body and the fiery spark of dragon magic.
I opened my eyes and was rewarded by the sight of his face hanging over mine, and his blue eyes. I lay on his lap, which was bare, nothing between me and the warm goodness of Mick.
I couldn’t imagine where we were, and I didn’t care. The place was dark and dusty, and pebbles cut into my legs, but I was with Mick, on his lap, his big hands cradling me, his whispers healing me.
“Hey, baby,” I murmured.
Mick closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were filled with tears. “Janet.” He gently touched my arms, and I hissed in pain. Something had burned me and burned me bad.
“Janet, love.”
This was more like it. Mick whispering endearments instead of trying to kill me with his fire. I liked this dream.
“Move your arm,” he said.
No. Too comfortable. Moving meant pain.
“Come on, sweetheart. I need to know that you’re all right.”
“Want to sleep,” I whispered.
Mick lifted me. I groaned, every part of me protesting. I stopped protesting when I found myself resting against his chest, the warmth of him against my cheek. Mick cupped his hand around my wrist, which had skin on it again, but the skin was red and sensitive to the touch.
“Ow!” The pain cut through my fogged senses and my mind began to clear.
We were still in the cave, which was lit only by a single shard of magic mirror. That shard was tiny and threw light like that of a pencil-thin flashlight. We all-powerful magic people couldn’t have thought to bring a real flashlight, could we?
Mick was gazing at me not with the cold malevolence of an enslaved dragon but with the fiery concern of the man who’d rescued me six years ago. His healing spells were winding through my body, restoring my hands and arms he’d burned, the ribs that had cracked. Skin covered my hands again, solid, whole, unbroken. But, gods, it hurt.
Mick kissed the top of my head. “I want to tell you . . .”
I waited, but he didn’t finish. He kept kissing me, stroking my hair, his body shuddering. I realized, after a stunned moment, that Mick was weeping.
Mick, my bad-ass biker boyfriend who could stand against a horde of demons without flinching, who’d faced my hell-goddess mother Beneath and laughed at his impending death. I raised my hand, touched his face, and marveled to feel tears on my fingertips.
“Not your fault,” I whispered.
“I fought her with everything I had. Everything. And it wasn’t enough. She still made me hurt you. Gods, Janet, I watched myself hurt you, heard the things I said to you.”
“Hey, I didn’t go down so easy.” I brushed a tear from his rough face. “I think I did pretty good, in fact.”
“I forced you down here to kill you. I knew the karmii would keep you pinned and stop you using your Beneath magic, the only way you can fight me.”
“I know. It was a good idea.” I lifted my hand, where the ring, miraculously, still clasped my finger. “What did you do to the ring?”
“Put a piece of my aura into it.” Mick touched the silver, which vibrated a little, and I smelled the good smell of dragon fire. “I felt the compulsion spell start on me, so I went to a friend, a Zuni who’s a shaman. I knew I couldn’t fight the spell, and he couldn’t either, but I asked him to help me put a tiny bit of aura into the ring, enough that it might touch you when I was gone. So that you wouldn’t forget me, the real me, no matter what happened.”
“You didn’t give it part of your name, then?”
“There’s no way to do that, and at the time, I still didn’t know what was happening to me. I never remembered meeting Vonda, but then all of a sudden, she was singing my name, calling me. I’m an arrogant dragon, Janet. I never thought such a thing could happen to me, so I never took precautions.”
Mick was so strong I would never have thought it possible either, and I knew he’d beat himself up about it for a while. “So how did the ring bring you back?”
“It held a piece of me that wasn’t wholly enslaved. It allowed me, when the magic mirror multiplied that piece, to release enough of me from the spell so that I could give you my name. Giving it to you, the most powerful magical being around, took it away from her.”
I didn’t feel like the most powerful being around. I felt weak, sick, and magicless. I shifted, rock digging into my backside and thighs. “We couldn’t be talking about this in some nice cushy hotel room?”
“I didn’t want to move you. It’s freezing outside, and I doubt I have the strength to go dragon right now. I don’t even have enough to make a light spell.”
And between the two of us, we had nothing but one pair of jeans, and I was wearing those. “I don’t suppose my cell phone survived.”
“You’re amazing, Janet.”
“Why? Because I’ve broken another cell phone?”
“Because you didn’t give up on me. You could have found a way to kill me, or you could have killed Vonda. Why didn’t you?”
“Why do you think?” I wriggled, trying to get comfortable. “I didn’t want you to die.”
Mick stared at me in surprise. “I made sure you were alone and defenseless. I tried to kill you for her. Why didn’t you protect yourself?”
I squirmed again; the damn cave floor was too hard. “Because I love you, you idiot. Vonda’s the enemy, not you.”
Mick kept looking at me, his eyes so blue, even in the darkness. I’d seen tenderness on his face before, but what I saw now was more than that—a deep joy, sudden understanding coupled with astonishment.
“Janet.” His voice was clogged with emotion.
I wanted to see where that emotion led, but we couldn’t relax yet. “By now, Vonda will have realized she’s lost her dragon. I hope she packs up Ted and runs off, but I’m thinking she won’t.”
Mick nodded, still watching me with that awe. “She’ll try to take another dragon. Drake or Colby, maybe.”
; I sat up suddenly, wincing when my head pounded. “Drake. Crap. His deadline.”
“What deadline?”
Fighting, nearly dying, and excruciating pain had distracted me from the fact that Drake was about to call the dragon council and have them round up an army of dragons to hunt and fry Mick. “Drake gave me twenty-four hours to free you. He’ll be coming to kill you.”
“No, he won’t.”
“Why not? How do you know?”
“The magic mirror,” Mick said. “It broadcasted into the dragon compound. They’ll have seen our fight, seen me break from the spell.”
“But now the council will know your name too—not to mention Drake and Colby. And so will the magic mirror. This is so not good.”
Mick shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. I didn’t tell you my name; I gave it to you.”
“While they listened.”
“You didn’t hear it with your ears; you heard it inside your head. They just heard me screaming.”
“Oh,” I said, relaxing. A little. I remembered Mick’s long, drawn-out roar of pain, and I felt his body shaking even now. Vonda had reduced him to this, and for that, she’d pay.
“We have to deal with the witch,” I said, my voice strengthening.
I started up, made it an inch, and fell back against Mick. I couldn’t deal with a hangnail right now.
Mick held me in arms that felt so good. “Not yet. You need to get better before we leave. We’re safe enough down here.”
“With no light, and petroglyphs that can freeze me to death.”
“Hey, darling, I’m here.” The magic mirror’s voice from the inch-wide shard sounded tiny and shrill, as though it had breathed helium. “At your service.”
“The karmii will alert us to any danger,” Mick said. “That’s what they were made for, to protect the shamans who came down here to capture the magic of the stars.”
I looked up at the walls. Comets and star clusters danced in the light from the mirror. Under these stars I lifted up, wound my arms around Mick’s neck, and kissed him.
Shadow Walker Page 24
