Stormwalker Read online

  “Is this real?” I asked. “Or illusion?”

  “My, you are distrustful, Janet. Had I raised you, you would delight in this place and your powers. But you’ve been tainted by that awful woman you call your grandmother.”

  “She isn’t awful.” I’d grown up resenting Grandmother, but in retrospect I could see many reasons for the things my grandmother had done. She’d feared what I might become, feared for me and tried to protect me.

  “She brainwashed you,” my mother said. “Taught you to hate me.”

  “She didn’t, actually.” I sat on the lip of the fountain, mostly to see if it was real. I felt cold stone through my jeans and a spray of water on my skin. “She tried to teach me to fear and hate you, which of course made me romanticize you. My grandmother never met you, but she saw you in me and feared what might happen if I gave in to you.” I nodded. “Rightly so.”

  “Ah, but when you join me, my love, you’ll understand.”

  “And what did you mean when you said that thing was your consort?” I asked. “You don’t have sex with it, do you?” I thought of the minotaur’s snout with its jutting teeth and shuddered.

  My mother’s answering smile gave me the creeps. “He is most pleasing. He has many brothers, if you would like one for yourself.”

  “Ick. No. And I mean that with all the offense it implies.”

  “Yet you sleep with a dragon.”

  “Not while he’s a dragon.”

  “You can have Mick back, you know. I will teach you how to call him to you, how to bind him and make him do whatever you wish. He will exist for you, for your pleasure, and do everything you command. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t like that.”

  Having Mick as my love slave? Of course I wouldn’t mind that. But my mother didn’t understand that I wouldn’t want Mick coming to me because I forced him to, loathing me every time he touched me. But by the look on her face, the words “free will” weren’t in my mother’s vocabulary.

  “And the others,” she went on. “The human who absorbs magic—Nash—he will be a powerful ally, and he’s lovely to sleep with. Such strength. Even Coyote could be useful. He chose to bind himself to the earth and abandon his Beneath magic, so he’ll be helpless when we pull him down here. He will do anything we want.” She wet her lips. “We could share him.”

  I wasn’t so sure Coyote would be helpless—knowing Coyote, he’d hedge his bets to retain power wherever he went. But I didn’t argue. I saw no point.

  My mother touched my head, and my mind flooded with images I couldn’t stop. Erotic images like those in my dreams: Mick and Nash touching and licking me; Coyote behind me with his hands cupping my naked breasts. All three men making love to me, taking my pleasure to heights it had never seen.

  I jerked away. “Stop that.”

  “You see what it is you want, deep in your heart. You can make it reality.”

  I knew then that she’d never understand me. She confused sex with love and caring, physical pleasure with deep emotion. “I don’t want to make that reality.”

  “You do, you know. You just don’t want to admit it.” My mother reached for me again, but this time she put her hands on my elbows and pulled me to my feet.

  “I know this is difficult for you, dear,” she said, sounding like a mother genuinely concerned for her child. “But you will understand in time. Here, in my realm, you are as powerful as you were meant to be. Together you and I can be more powerful still. You’ll have the power of the gods, Janet. Nothing will be able to stop you.”

  I looked into her green eyes and saw pure ambition but also desperation and the need to be accepted.

  The temptation to take what she offered—to embrace the magic I could have here, to not be shunned for what I was—was great.

  Altruistic thoughts tumbled through my head as well, tempting me as much. If I agreed to join her, I might be powerful enough to stop her from breaking through the vortexes and wreaking havoc above. It would be worth the sacrifice of my earthbound life if I could keep her down here, to make sure she never hurt anyone again.

  What did I have to lose above, anyway? Few friends, a family who didn’t respect me, a dragon-man who’d admitted that his purpose in coming to me had been to kill me. I’d spent my life trying to please everyone, to prove to them that I was worth something. Even with my beloved photography, I only sold what other people were willing to buy, what made them happy, not me.

  In this place, I would be accepted without question, the daughter of a goddess, able to command hordes of skinwalkers—hell, I could command the vines and the trees. Everything. I could do anything I wanted, have anything I liked.

  All I had to do was stay here with her.

  “If I go back above,” I said slowly, “the magic I have here won’t follow, will it?”

  “Not in the same way as it is here. But you are a unique being, Janet, able to exist as you truly are both on earth and Beneath.” She smiled. “But when we leave together, when we break free of my prison and my magic joins with yours, there will be no one to stop us. Nothing we can’t do.”

  I stuck my thumbs in my belt loops, a teenage habit my grandmother had abhorred. “Yes, I could enjoy that heady power. How wonderful to be able to punish everyone who ever hurt me.”

  My mother’s green eyes glowed. “Yes. Now you understand.”

  “But I think you don’t understand me.”

  She looked puzzled. But I suddenly understood what Coyote had been trying to explain to me with his cryptic hints. I had not been able to choose the path that led me here—I hadn’t asked to be born of a goddess and inherit Stormwalker powers through my father. I hadn’t asked to be the strange by-product of a powerful bitch queen and a quiet human, hadn’t asked for the amalgam of magic that tore me up inside.

  Now my path forked, and Coyote’s words from my dream came back to me: Only you can choose which direction to take.

  I could remain with my mother and embrace my own goddess-like power, or I could return and be a slightly crazed Navajo Stormwalker, struggling to finish a hotel, pay my bills, make new friends. An all-powerful goddess from Beneath like my mother, or a creature of the earth like my grandmother, like my father, like Mick. My life, my path, my choice.

  My mother watched me with narrowed eyes, as though she knew the thoughts that spun inside my brain. She leaned to me, her beauty dimming for a fleeting moment into something gray and hideous.

  “My darling, if you reject me, if you leave me, I’ll make certain your precious dragon is tortured for eternity and that your so-called father and grandmother die horrible deaths.”

  We were the same height and faced each other eye to eye. Her beauty returned almost instantly, but I’d glimpsed the monster inside her.

  “You don’t know where I sent Mick,” I said. “Maybe I do.”

  “You don’t, my dear. You said so yourself.”

  I smiled, brazening it out. “You don’t know much about kids, do you? Growing up is a constant struggle between adoring your parents and wanting to push them away. You want their approval and you want to be your own person at the same time. During this complicated process, a few lies get told.”

  Her brow puckered. “You are grown-up, Janet, in the manner of earth children. When I found you, you were an adult.”

  I contrived to look wise. “Sometimes, though, the growing up process stretches into the adult years, especially when you’re as confused as I was. But then you get over it.” I stepped closer to her and spoke in a hard voice. “Mother dearest, I gave up wanting to please you years ago.”

  She gave me a hurt look. “But I never gave up wanting to please you.”

  “You should,” I said. “Because you never will.”

  “Why are you being so cruel to me?”

  “To show you what it feels like. My magic is very strong here—you’ve let me discover that. Here I flick my fingers, say a word, and get what I want.”

  “Is there something wrong with that? Embra
ce it, my dear. Understand that you can have anything you’ve ever dreamed of.”

  “Except real love,” I said. “Peace of mind. Knowing what’s true.”

  “Don’t be stupid. You can have all the love you want. No one will be able to help adoring you.”

  She meant sex again and pleasing born of fear. I thought of my father, with his warm eyes, loving me hard at sacrifice to himself. I thought of my grandmother and her constant scolding but her understanding of why I needed to be fiercely protected. I thought of Mick, who’d defied his own kind to keep me alive. Life would have been so much easier for him if he’d simply killed me when he first met me. But he’d loved me and protected me instead.

  “What you offer is not enough,” I said softly.

  Again her beauty flickered. “You are mad, Janet. It’s perfectly adequate.”

  “Coyote told me I’d have to choose, so now I’m choosing. I will never forgive you for trying to kill my father and my grandmother. And Mick. I’ll never forgive you for killing Sherry Beaumont and causing such grief. I won’t forgive you for driving Amy McGuire half out of her mind and messing up the lives of her parents, Nash, and even a woman who hated her. I’ll never forgive you for the sorrow you caused a Navajo man I’d never even met. I choose the earth above, and the earth magic that makes me insane and all the people who are pretty sure I’m crazy because of it. I choose that path, because I never, ever want to be like you.”

  My mother flinched during my speech, but when I finished, she smiled. “Too late, my darling. You are exactly like me.”

  “I know that if I let myself, I could be. But I don’t have to be. And so I make the choice.”

  Emotion swam in her enormous eyes—surprise, hurt, anger. The anger rose and burned until her eyes were black with it.

  “No, daughter. You had the illusion of choice, and you made the wrong one.”

  Wind rose as she spoke, chilled droplets from the fountain sweeping over me like a freezing curtain. The grasses, flowers, and little trees in the meadow bent as sudden black clouds blotted out the sky. Lightning forked across the valley, bringing with it the smell of fire.

  “Above, you walk with the storms,” my mother said. “But here in my realm, I command them.”

  Thunderheads welled up in the sky with purple black ferocity. Fingers of tornadoes reached from flat-bottomed clouds, dust and debris exploding where the funnels touched the earth.

  I held up my hand to the storm. “Stop.”

  It ignored me.

  I stared at the clouds in sheer, watery terror. Never since I’d been a child had I been afraid of a storm. I’d feared what I could do with its power, yes, but I never worried about what it would do to me.

  Rocks exploded as lightning struck a boulder. Shards of rock rained on me, slicing into my skin. I knew with certainty that if the next bolt hit me, it would splinter me like glass.

  Heart pounding, I pointed to the rock I’d been sitting on. “Grow.”

  The rock trembled for a few seconds before it burst upward. Pebbles shot out like bullets and slashed red across my mother’s face.

  So she could bleed, I thought abstractedly. I wondered if she could also die.

  “Cease,” my mother shouted at the rock. It went obediently still. “What do you hope to do, Janet?”

  I didn’t know. Confuse her, panic her, scare her? Distract her long enough for me to flee?

  She gave me a pitying look and swept her arm toward the garden. The pretty fuchsia and honeysuckle burst out of their beds and shot toward me. I beat at them to no avail as they closed leafy fingers around my flesh. I tried to run, but trees’ roots thrust from the ground and wrapped around my ankles. Lightning bolts struck with wretched speed. I felt hollow and helpless with no weapon, nothing to fight with.

  I lunged at my mother. I couldn’t fight the vines that cut my skin, and I couldn’t fight the storm that whipped my hair and clothes, but maybe I could fight her. She still bled where the rocks had cut her.

  Rain pounded in my face, and my fingers slipped as I grabbed for her throat. My mother’s stare was disdainful, but finally I managed to fasten my hands around her neck, and I started to squeeze.

  Her eyes widened. She grabbed my wrists in a crushing grip, her strength immense. I twisted away, letting her go, but I’d learned something. I could hurt her, possibly kill her. Goddess or no, down here her body obeyed the same laws of physiology that mine did.

  My mother flicked her fingers and more vines spewed toward me. I dove to the ground and rolled away, but they rose around me, ready to pin me, to bury me alive.

  My mouth was dry with terror as I fought. My mother might have bleated that she loved me and needed me, but once I proved I wouldn’t capitulate, she had no more use for me. She’d kill me and find another woman above to serve as her vessel, trying again to make another Janet, this one more malleable. She’d been trying for centuries, and she’d keep on trying. My little rebellion would slow her only a little.

  I had to get away, or I’d die here, painfully. She’d crush me into oblivion and make me scream all the way. She’d kill me and not care.

  I kicked and twisted until I managed to get to my feet. I leapt to the top of a boulder, but the vines kept coming. Wind threatened to throw me to the ground again, and the rain beat on me with ferocity.

  I jammed my hand into my pocket and dug out the broken piece of mirror I’d shoved into it before I’d run into the kitchen to stop Amy. The mirror’s surface was dark, but when lightning lit it I saw that it didn’t reflect me or this place. I saw desert, thin lightning flickers, a smaller storm. I was looking above, outside the vortex.

  “Mick!” I screamed into it. “I need you.”

  I waited for several sickening heartbeats while another lightning strike sent me tumbling from the boulder. I landed on my butt, and the earth itself rose to wrap muddy fingers around me.

  When the mirror lit with red-hot fire, I laughed with joy. I wrenched myself free of the mud fingers and clenched my hand around the mirror shard, welcoming the pain as it cut into my palm.

  I lifted my bleeding fist and shouted, “Up!”

  I started to rise. The wind buffeted me and the lightning slammed toward me, but I picked up speed and punched my way into the dense clouds. Below me, my mother stood like a white flame in the middle of the meadow, her eyes gleaming black, her red mouth open.

  I couldn’t fight her, couldn’t control what she controlled, but I could command myself, and I could stop her. She lifted her arms, screaming something, and the storm dove at me.

  “Up,” I shouted again. I rocketed through the clouds, the magic mirror, made from sands of the earth above, instinctively returning home.

  Twenty-nine

  The magic mirror’s strong pull nearly yanked my arm from its socket, but I didn’t care. I flew upward at sickening speed, away from the landscape trying its best to kill me.

  I wasn’t certain of the physics of the barrier between one world and the next, but I shot above clouds of Beneath, and then everything went black as I flew into a void of freezing darkness.

  Red fire broke the blackness with a suddenness that made me scream. I started to fall, to where I didn’t know, until something grabbed me and jerked me upward again.

  I kicked and fought, but whatever held me clamped like iron. I realized after a terrified instant that I was in the grasp of a dragon’s talon. Remembering the winged formation that had filled the sky before I’d jumped into the vortex, I prayed to any god who would listen that the dragon was Mick.

  Wind pounded at me, then hard rain. Lightning flared, trying again to wrap itself around me. Except this time, the lightning wasn’t trying to kill me. It burned through me and made me sick, and my skin tingled like crazy. But the pain was familiar. I laughed out loud and raised my face to the storm.

  “Mick!” I shouted. “Please tell me that’s you.”

  The dragon screamed in response. I didn’t speak dragon, but the sinful gleam in his
eye as he twisted his head to look at me told me that my lover had come to my rescue. My heart wanted to break. Mick was all right.

  He swooped, streaming at a dangerous speed toward the desert floor. I smelled dust and rain, the desert heat turning steamy, but it felt nothing like the cloying humidity of the forests Beneath.

  The dragon set me on the ground. My knees buckled when I felt my feet on solid earth, but I forced myself to stand. This wasn’t over. Light glowed from the arroyo I’d burst from, and I sensed the Beneath storm reaching up to this one.

  Mick shot into the air again, the downdraft from his dragon wings like hot wind. A large coyote sprinted to my side, and under the next lightning flare, he rose to his man shape.

  I shouted to him. “Help me close it!”

  Coyote put his hands on his hips and regarded me with dark eyes that had seen so much. “You know that if you seal that, you can never go back.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “You sure, Janet? You’re a goddess there. Here, you’re just a Stormwalker. A good one, but nothing more. Weak flesh. Beneath, you can be all-powerful.”

  “Screw that. I like my weak flesh.”

  “Are you sure you won’t regret it?”

  “Are you going to help me or stand there and lecture me? Why would you want to keep it open, anyway?”

  “I don’t. I’m just seeing if I need to kill you.”

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t shut up and help me.”

  Coyote burst out laughing. “That’s my girl.”

  A dark shape detached itself from the shadows beyond the wash, a drenched and dirty Nash who looked mad at me as usual. “What are you two doing, having a chat? Things are coming out of there.”

  White light burst through the crack, solidifying as it rose, resolving into a face of terrible beauty. My mother was emerging, along with a crawling mass of skinwalkers. She grew, rising into the night, becoming bigger by the second.

  I reached for the lightning, and it came to my hands with pinpoint precision. I’d never been able to draw it so quickly, so elegantly. With control I’d never known I had, I directed the lightning at my mother and to the crack in the earth.