Firewalker Read online

  My head turned of its own accord, and my gaze moved out the window to the west, where the distant mound of the San Francisco Peaks, the traditional boundary of the Navajo lands, lay in misty silhouette.

  The spell made me want to race out of the hotel, leap on my Harley, and ride off toward the mountains, now, now, now. But Mick would want me to be smart. I needed supplies, I needed to plan, and I’d need help. The fact that the spell let me calm myself and think this through meant that I was right.

  I forced my gaze back to Cassandra, who was still sitting stiffly on the sofa. I lifted the talisman, broke it, and said, “Be free.”

  Cassandra leapt to her feet, face dark with rage, and kicked the inert Changer in the buttocks with her Blahnik heel. “That’s for calling me a bitch.”

  Pamela opened her eyes. The white in them had faded to human brown, and though she retained the arrogant scorn of the Changer, she no longer looked terrifying.

  She pushed herself into a sitting position and smoothed back hair that had fallen from her braid. “Hey, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to sleep with you.”

  Cassandra flushed and folded her arms, but she didn’t look as offended as she could have.

  “She was under a spell,” I said tightly. “And now it’s gone. Right?”

  The Changer woman rubbed the back of her neck. “Finally. Your boyfriend is damn strong.”

  “Can you give me more specific directions than ‘head west’?”

  Pamela shook her head. “I was on the northwest side of Death Valley when your dragon man’s spell grabbed me. But there must be a memory cloud spell on the place, because I don’t remember exactly where. I was doing some hunting, minding my own business, and the next thing I know, I’m digging my way through a tunnel and talking to a dragon. He couldn’t talk back; he just invaded me with that damned spell. Bastard.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Middle of last night; then I rode straight here.”

  “Mick was alone? No other dragons around?”

  “One was enough. I’d never seen a dragon before, never believed they existed.” Her eyes flickered to gray and back to brown again. “Imagine my surprise.”

  That was Changer for “It scared the shit out of me.” Changers didn’t like to admit fear. Fear meant weakness, submission, and they took dominance-submission roles very seriously.

  Pamela pulled herself to her feet with lithe grace. She was tall for a Native American, but most Changers were tall. She towered a good foot over me. “Compulsion spells make me hungry. Is there anything to eat in this godsforsaken town?”

  “The saloon’s closed until five,” I said while I stared again at the clear blue of the western sky. “But there’s a diner in Magellan. Two miles south.”

  “It’ll have to do. Come with me, Wiccan?”

  Cassandra gave her a withering glance. “In your dreams, wolf-girl.”

  Pamela gave her a half smile, shrugged, and sauntered out of the office. Cassandra followed close behind, her spiked heels on the lobby tiles a staccato contrast to the thud of Pamela’s motorcycle boots. Through the window, I watched the Changer woman walk out of the hotel, mount her bike, and ride off toward Magellan.

  Once she was gone, Cassandra returned to my office and shut the door. She looked none the worse for wear for the fight, except for a faint bruise on her lower lip and one strand of fair hair fallen from her bun.

  “What are you going to do, Janet?” she asked. “You can’t charge off looking for Mick on the word of a Changer.”

  “It’s not just her word.” I pressed my fingers to my temples where the spell throbbed mercilessly. “I have to go. I have no choice. Mick must be desperate, or he wouldn’t have sent her.”

  “Don’t go alone.”

  Cassandra’s eyes were light blue, beautiful in her pale face. She was from Los Angeles, where she’d held a high-profile job at a luxury hotel chain. Why she’d wanted to move out to the middle of nowhere to help run my hotel, I had no idea, but I never asked. She was good with the tourists, knew the hotel business, and she put up with my magic mirror. I didn’t want to lose her by asking awkward questions.

  “I won’t be going alone,” I said. “Can you keep things together here?”

  “Of course.”

  Of course she would. Cassandra ran this place better than I ever could.

  “Keep an eye on the Changer,” I said.

  Cassandra gave me an odd smile. “Oh, I will.” She turned and walked out of the office, smoothing her hair as she went.

  I flopped into the chair behind my desk and put my head in my hands. I ached all over, would ache until the spell took me to Mick.

  I glanced at the framed photo of my father that rested on the desk, a slim Navajo in a formal velvet shirt, his hair neatly braided. I’d taken the picture on my last visit to Many Farms, and he’d insisting on dressing up for it. My father didn’t believe in candid shots. His wise eyes held no advice, only quiet confidence that I’d know what to do.

  I did know what to do. Or rather, who to turn to. I hadn’t seen Coyote, who would have been the most help, in a long time, not even in my dreams, and I had no idea how to summon him. Jamison Kee, a mountain lion Changer, was the man in Magellan I trusted the most, but he had a wife and stepdaughter to take care of, and I couldn’t bring myself to put him in danger.

  That left the one man I didn’t trust, but he was powerful as all get-out. I didn’t understand his power, and neither did Mick, but if I could convince him to help, I knew I’d have a potent ally.

  I pulled the phone toward me and punched in the number of the sheriff’s office in Flat Mesa. The deputy at the desk put me straight through. The phone made a couple of clicks, and then the sheriff’s voice sounded in my ear.

  “Jones,” he said. Dark, biting, laconic.

  “Hey, Nash. It’s Janet.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Fuck,” Nash Jones said clearly, and he hung up on me.

  Two

  Did I mention that the sheriff of Hopi County was an asshole? Everyone cuts Nash Jones some slack because he spent time in Iraq and had battled with PTSD, but he could be the most arrogant, in-your-face bastard that ever lived.

  My head still thrumming with the spell, I buckled motorcycle chaps over my jeans and left the hotel. I rolled out my Harley, a nice little twelve hundred cc Sportster, midnight blue, and took the highway north to Flat Mesa.

  It was cool, the September wind chill despite the blue sky, and I was glad of my jacket. It’s desert out here, but we have altitude, nearly six thousand feet, which makes for crisp autumns and cold winters. I kept looking west, yearning to turn the bike that way and ride flat out. I needed to get to Mick, needed it with my whole body, and I would have, even without the spell.

  Mick and I had our differences, and he was uneasy about the latent magic I’d inherited from my bitch-queen goddess mother, but the thought that someone held him captive worried me senseless. Mick was a strong, powerful dragon, who could wield fire magic even in his human form. Beings strong enough to imprison him would be terrifyingly powerful.

  Mick had angered his dragon council this spring, and though we hadn’t seen a hint of them all summer, dragons ranked up there with the kinds of beings capable of trapping Mick. And they seriously wanted to kill him.

  I covered the twenty miles between Magellan and Flat Mesa quickly and pulled into the sheriff’s department parking lot. Lopez grinned at me as I walked in, and he waved me through without stopping me. Lopez liked me. I think what he liked was that I stuck in Sheriff Jones’s craw, and anything that could get under his boss’s skin made him happy.

  I did Jones the courtesy of knocking on his door. At his bitten off, “Come,” I flung open the door and went inside.

  Nash Jones glanced up at me with his habitual scowl, fluorescent light gleaming on his very short black hair. Nash was about thirty-two and had a hard but handsome face and gray eyes that could pierce a perp at forty paces
. I’d seen criminals back down, whimpering, from that ice-cold stare. His khaki sheriff’s uniform was spotless and wrinkle free, his badge shining. Even his creases had creases.

  “I’m busy, Begay,” he greeted me.

  I leaned my fists on his desk, right over the nameplate that read “Nash Jones.” “I need your help,” I said in a rush. “Mick’s being held against his will, out in Death Valley somewhere.”

  Nash didn’t even blink. “Way out of my jurisdiction.” He returned to the file on his desk. “Get the police up there to deal with it.”

  “It’s not a simple kidnapping case. This is Mick, my giant dragon boyfriend. The police wouldn’t stand a chance against anything that can snatch and hold Mick. Come on, Jones, please. I can’t do this alone.”

  He gave me a flat stare. “You and Mick nearly got me killed, remember? You and your storms and fires and earthquakes and dragons. In fact, for the safety of everyone in Hopi County, I should haul you back to your reservation and tell the tribal police to keep you there.”

  Nash threatened me like this all the time and hadn’t yet made good on it, but I knew that his bite really was as bad as his bark. Someday he might just arrest me and ship me back to the Navajo Nation, and the tribal police, who’d had to deal with me as a kid, would lock me up with glee.

  “Believe me, if I thought I could rescue him alone, I would. If I could turn to someone else, I would. How about if I remind you that Mick once saved your ass?”

  “Yes, he saved my ass from you. If you think I’ll travel alone with you to someplace as remote as Death Valley, you’re crazier than I thought.”

  I considered this while I hung over his desk and met the hardness in his eyes. It was true that last spring, Nash had gotten caught up in the madness when my evil goddess mother from Beneath—the shell world below this one—had possessed me and forced me to open the vortexes and let her out. She’d had nefarious plans for Nash too, because Nash, for some reason, wasn’t affected by magic, any magic, no matter how powerful. My mother had wanted me to make a child with Nash, to produce a baby steeped in both my magic and Nash’s ability to resist magic. Needless to say, Nash hadn’t cooperated.

  Nash had also taken a full blast of my mother’s power, not to mention Mick’s fire, which should have obliterated any human being. But not only had Nash survived the attacks, he’d brushed them off and lived to be sarcastic about it.

  Playing nice wasn’t working. I needed to play dirty. “Tell you what,” I said. “You help me, and I’ll keep it quiet about you and Maya.”

  That got me a look of outrage. Maya Medina, a beautiful Latina woman who was my electrician and more or less my friend, had once had a thing going with Nash, a pretty serious one. When Nash had come home from war, they’d broken up—split at the seams was a better way of putting it. Even better, exploded into fiery fragments. What she and Jones had now couldn’t be called a relationship—more a series of one-night stands—but Jones wanted it kept quiet. This hurt Maya, but she was proud and refused to acknowledge that she cared.

  “Leave Maya alone,” was his swift response.

  “I don’t think she’d mind if everyone knew you went to bed with her.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Begay. No one would believe you, anyway. You’re an outsider, and everyone thinks you’re a little crazy.” His tone said, They’re not wrong.

  “Maybe not,” I said, producing my ace. “But they’d believe Fremont.”

  Jones jerked his head up again, and I knew I had him. Fremont Hansen, my plumber, was a nice guy, but he was also the biggest gossip in Hopi County. If I told Fremont the interesting tidbit about Jones and Maya, it would be all over Magellan and Flat Mesa by morning, and Nash knew it.

  “Don’t bluff me, Janet.”

  “I’m perfectly serious. I need you. You do this for me, and your secret stays safe.” I had no intention in the world of embarrassing Maya, but damn it, I was desperate.

  “I don’t have time to go traipsing through the desert,” he tried.

  “Not traipsing. It’s a straight shot through Las Vegas, big wide freeways and highways the whole route.” At least until we got to Death Valley itself. Then we’d have to search the knife-sharp mountains to find the tunnel Pamela had mentioned. I knew that once I got there, the spell would pull me to Mick’s precise location, but I didn’t think Nash wanted to hear that I had no idea where to start looking. “It’s five or six hours there. We can be back by morning.”

  He gave me a severe look. “I can’t leave right this minute. Maybe not until seven, or even eight. I have a job to do.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. What was the use of being sheriff of the whole place if you couldn’t come and go as you pleased? “There’s that much crime around here that you can’t take an afternoon off?”

  “You want me to come with you, or not?”

  I held up my hands. “Fine. Fine. You take your time.”

  “Go back to Magellan. I’ll pick you up when I’m finished here.” Nash opened his folder again and looked determinedly at it. Discussion over.

  “You’ll be driving?” I asked.

  “I’m not riding all the way to Death Valley on the back of your motorcycle. Besides, we’ll need a way to bring Mick back with us.”

  He was going to do it. My heart hammered in relief. I wanted to lunge across the desk and hug him, but I suspected that if I did, he’d break out the handcuffs. “Good. I’ll be waiting.”

  I didn’t miss his glare as I hurried out.

  Nash showed up in front of the hotel at seven-thirty, and I was packed and ready. It was already dark, stars pricking the clear September sky. I’d been chafing with impatience and the spell, driving Cassandra crazy. She waved me off in obvious relief but told me to keep in touch—through the magic mirror if cell phones were out of range.

  Nash drove his new truck, a shining black F-250 with a cab and a half and tinted windows. It looked freshly washed and polished, as though he’d readied it specifically for the trip. I tossed my duffel bag behind the front seat and climbed inside, sighing with relief that we were finally going. Nash said nothing, only waited until I’d buckled my seat belt before he drove carefully out of the parking lot, far too slowly for my taste. But at least we were off.

  “Can’t you go any faster?” I asked, as Nash drove up the highway at a sedate fifty miles an hour.

  “No,” Nash answered without looking at me.

  He did the speed limit all the way to Winslow, and I was clenching my fists and biting the side of my mouth by the time we finally made it onto the I-40 heading west. Traffic picked up as we approached the Flagstaff exits, the town twinkling under the dark bulk of its volcanic mountains. The air grew chill, ponderosa pines soaring against the night sky. After Flagstaff, traffic died off again, and we rode down from green hills to rolling desert mountains.

  Nash didn’t talk. He didn’t listen to the radio; he didn’t offer conversation; he just drove. Eyes on the road, oncoming headlights glittering in his eyes, the red glow of the dashboard lighting his face. He never surpassed the speed limit—of course not—but then, he never slowed down, either.

  I was a person who liked silence; my dad and I had enjoyed driving for hours through empty lands without words. But with Nash, the silence was strained. It took on its own personality—like a hostile relative who glared at a room until the happy chatter died away. It pressed on you, that silence, waited to beat you to death.

  On the outskirts of Kingman, I said, “I hear that Maya’s birthday is next week.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Maya.”

  The answer, swift and abrupt, shut me down. Nash didn’t even adjust his hands on the wheel.

  He stopped for gas in Kingman and grudgingly let me use the bathroom, and then we took the highway that climbed north out of town, curving along the side of a mountain. Lights twinkled in the valley to our left, becoming sparser as we moved on. Within a few miles, the desert night was black again, the road straight and monoto
nous.

  I folded my arms and slumped against the door, trying to grab some sleep while I could. I couldn’t. My eyes stayed open, the spell pulling me onward.

  After about another hour, the road began rolling through steep cuts, hard rock hammered out by dynamite long ago. To our left, beyond the hills that lined the road, was a steep drop to the Colorado River, which snaked its way southward through bone-dry land.

  Orange cones gleamed ahead of us, directing us into one narrow lane that led to a checkpoint. There were only a few cars ahead of us this late, red taillights silhouetting drivers and passengers inside the cars.

  I drummed my fingers on the dashboard as Nash slowed, but he had no choice. The road we took led over the massive Hoover Dam into Nevada, and a checkpoint had been set up by the nice feds to make sure we didn’t do anything cute like carry explosives to the middle of the dam and set them off.

  The cars in front of us moved through and drove on, but one of the officers held up his hand, signaling Nash to stop. Nash halted and rolled down the window, letting in a blast of cool night air and the acrid scent of exhaust. I folded into myself and tried not to scream in impatience.

  The uniformed man strolled the few feet to us, flashlight shining. Every hair prickled on my skin, the latent Beneath magic in me screaming a warning.

  “Nash, gun it,” I whispered. “Get us out of here.”

  “Janet, if I speed out of here, every state and federal cop within range will be after us, and they won’t be afraid to use deadly force.”

  “I’m telling you, there’s something not right.”

  “I know that. I’m not stupid.” Nash waited calmly, his hands on the wheel, as the fed approached. Gods, he drove me crazy.

  “Can I see some ID?” the officer asked.

  My insides crawled. I could feel the man’s aura, thick, black, and inky. I had no idea what one of them was doing out here in the middle of the highway at a brightly lit checkpoint—an easy way to find victims, maybe?

  The officer shone his light on the driver’s license and sheriff’s ID Jones handed him. The man lifted his brows and spoke in the friendly way of a patroller just doing his job. “Sheriff, eh? Official business?”