Stormwalker Read online

  The door banged open, and a man shouldered his way in, shoving aside the deputy who tried to get in his way. He was six-feet-six of solid muscle in jeans, a black T-shirt, and motorcycle boots, had a silver earring dangling from one ear, and dragon tattoos snaking down both arms. His hair was black, the wild curls of it just contained in a ponytail. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, and I vividly recalled staring into them the night I lost my virginity.

  My mouth formed the name, “Mick,” at the same time Nash rose to his feet and aimed his nine-millimeter right at Mick’s head.

  “Stop.”

  Nash might as well have tried to stop a freight train. Mick came on.

  “I said, stop.”

  Nash’s voice was ice-hard. He might have scared the hell out of insurgents in Iraq, but he didn’t know Mick. Mick ignored him, and Nash fired.

  The sound exploded in my head. I screamed. The bullet hit Mick in the shoulder, and he grunted with the impact, but it barely slowed him down. He made it to me and scooped me up.

  “Hey, baby,” he said, grinning. “Miss me?”

  Four

  The deputy leapt out of the way as Mick ran out of the room, carrying me over his shoulder. I raised my head in time to see Nash aim his gun, then lower it again, face thunderous. He couldn’t be sure of not hitting me, and I was getting the idea that Nash was the kind who’d follow the rules to the core. He’d never allow a prisoner to be hurt in his custody.

  Banging against Mick’s hip, upside down, wasn’t helping my unsteady stomach. I clapped my hand to my mouth, trying to keep from spewing.

  In the parking lot Mick set me gently on my feet and took my face between his hands. He gave me his cocky smile, the one that said he looked at life and saw nothing he couldn’t handle, no matter how dangerous. The world might be full of badasses who tried to kill him, but Mick knew he could out-badass them any day.

  “Can you hold it together for me, sweetheart?”

  If Mick had been anyone else, I’d be screaming at him to get to a hospital, worried to death about the gunshot wound. But I’d seen Mick laugh under an onslaught of deadly sorcerer’s magic, had seen him grab fire with both hands and eat it. I had a hard time believing a mundane piece of lead in the shoulder would do much more than irritate him.

  “You all right?” he asked me again.

  I nodded. My stomach was still roiling, but he made me want to feel better. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked between shallow breaths.

  “I told you, Janet. When you need me, all you have to do is call. Anytime.”

  “I didn’t call you.”

  “Sure about that?” He caressed my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “We need to go. Can you ride?”

  Did I have a choice? I could either let Mick take me out of there or run back to the nice cell Nash Jones was giving me rent-free. I nodded again, and Mick helped me onto the back of his bike, a big Harley for a big man. He started it up, the throbbing too loud for my aching skull.

  Questions and emotions whirled through my brain, but all I could do was wrap my arms around Mick’s waist and hold on as he pulled into the street. I looked back to see Nash and his deputies watching from the parking lot, the officers with mouths open, Nash’s face dark with fury. I couldn’t resist raising my hand in farewell as we rode away.

  I was about ready to fall off the bike by the time we pulled into the deserted parking lot between my hotel and the Crossroads Bar. The sun was overhead, the May morning hot. Everything was quiet, no one in sight. I wondered briefly if they’d all stayed home because of the accident and me being in jail, then I remembered it was Sunday. No one would have come to work on the place today, anyway.

  Good thing. I couldn’t have dealt with all their questions or the hostile looks of my Latina electrician, who didn’t like me for some reason. I especially didn’t want to face Fremont. I needed to sort out my thoughts before I talked to him, plus I had to figure out what to do with Mick.

  Mick carried me inside and laid me on my bed. He hadn’t changed since I’d last seen him, more than five years ago. I mean he hadn’t changed at all. He was wearing different clothes, but that was about it. His face was still as granite hard, his black hair as unruly, his eyes as amazingly blue. His eyes could turn completely black when he was enraged or ready to fight, and I’d never seen Mick lose a fight. I’d never figured out exactly what he was—very magical, and definitely not fully human—but other than that, I didn’t know. He could shoot fire from his hands and cast spells, but he wasn’t a full sorcerer, as far as I knew. He wasn’t a Changer, not a Nightwalker, not a demon—I didn’t think.

  Mick tugged off my boots one-handed, cradling his other arm against his chest. Blood from his T-shirt stained his neck.

  “You’re not all right,” I told him.

  I shook so hard I could barely speak. What did you say to a lover you hadn’t seen in five years? How have you been? What are you doing back in my life? Why now?

  “Neither are you,” he said.

  My cropped top bared my midriff, and Mick put his large hand on my belly. His hand was warm, and I wanted to rise to it.

  “You sucked down a lot of power from that storm,” he said. “I felt it from miles away. I’ve never seen you use that much power.”

  He moved his palm, and the residue of storm magic flowed toward his hand. Sparks crackled across his fingertips, warming me inside.

  “I’ve learned a lot since I saw you last. Why are you here?”

  Mick leaned to me. His blue, blue eyes were darkening to black, the irises widening to fill the whites. “I came to rescue my girl.”

  He leaned closer, nearly nuzzling me. He’d always done that, like an animal identifying its mate by scent. Mick was the most tactile person I’d ever met; he’d wanted to touch, smell, taste every inch of me. I who’d grown up learning to respect other people’s personal space had found it unnerving at first. Once used to it, I’d liked it, and decided that Mick could invade my personal space when he wanted to. No one else, only Mick.

  I liked it now. Even though our breakup had been volatile, I wanted to lift myself to meet his lips, to drag him down into my embrace. I wanted to hold his body against mine and find out whether he still liked sex to be wild and wicked and need safety words.

  “I’m not leaving you alone, Janet,” he said softly. “Not this time.”

  A drop of scarlet blood fell on my cheek. I half sat up, pushing him away. “You can’t help me when you’re bleeding like crazy.”

  Mick sat on the bed and peeled off his shirt. His entire right side was coated with blood, scarlet clots covering the dragon tattoo. In spite of the care he took of his right arm, he acted as though he felt no pain. He clasped my hand in his, raised my fingers to his lips. “Help me heal?”

  I wanted to. My thoughts shot back to the nights we’d go to ground after a fight, when we’d wash each other’s bodies and heal each other with magic. The heady spells had led to kisses, and hands stroking, arousing, and then to sex. Most activity with Mick had led to sex.

  The bullet had gone deep into Mick’s shoulder, high enough to miss the lung, but it left a ragged, bloody hole. Anyone else would be in agony, but Mick shrugged it off like he would a mosquito bite. He kissed my fingers, rose from the bed, and headed for my bathroom.

  “There’s no water in there,” I called after him. “That’s what I was doing in Flagstaff, finding more plumbing parts.”

  My words were cut off by a whoosh from the pipes. Air exploded through the taps to be replaced by the steady trickle of water. I sat up, surprised. Maybe Fremont had finished while I was gone?

  “It’s clean,” Mick announced. I heard splashing, and Mick returned with a handful of wet towels. He sat down on the bed again and handed me a clean one. “Hold that on the wound.”

  I folded the towel into a thick wad and pressed it to the hole in his shoulder. Blood seeped out, quickly staining the cloth red.

  Mick grunted. “Shots li
ke this are always a bitch.”

  He closed his eyes. Mick didn’t need rituals or chants or accoutrements to work his healing magic; he simply got very quiet and forced his body to fix itself.

  Under my touch, his skin started to warm. More than warm, his skin grew hot, sweat beading up and spilling down his arm. Mick tilted his head back, jaw clenched, cords standing out on his neck. I held the towel so tightly against him I could feel his muscles moving beneath it, changing shape, rearranging themselves.

  I put my other arm around him, my hand right over his heart. His skin was hot to the touch, almost fiery.

  He growled. I pressed my body against his hot back, keeping the towel tight to the wound. His power crawled through me, meeting the last vestiges of my own. Mick gripped my hand over his heart, tighter, tighter, until my fingers ached. I sucked in a breath, feeling our natures entwining.

  Something tugged Mick’s shoulder. I held the towel beneath the wound as the bullet wriggled its way out of Mick’s flesh and dropped onto the bloody cloth. Mick dragged my other hand to his lips and kissed the palm. I watched the hole in Mick’s flesh close over itself, until the wound was nothing but an angry mark and a black bruise.

  Mick turned to me, his eyes dark. “We work some wicked magic together, don’t we, sweetheart?”

  “We did,” I said.

  “It was always good,” he whispered as he slid his hand behind my neck. “The best.” He kissed me, a brief but intense brush of lips, followed by another, and another. His arm went behind my back, pulling me to his sweat-slicked chest.

  His mouth was hot with promise, his hands knowing exactly how to arouse. He had me straddling his lap, my legs wrapped around him, while he rolled with me down into the mattress.

  I brought my hands up and pressed them flat against his chest. “Mick.”

  He gave me an innocent “what?” look, but he still smiled at me. My heart turned over. Gods, the man had a sexy smile. “I missed you so much, baby.”

  “I missed you too.” I touched his face, fingertips caressing. “But you can’t stay.” My voice didn’t hold much conviction, but I meant it.

  “Sweetheart, if you’re here to face your mama and the vortexes from Beneath, you’re going to need all the help you can get. You know that. Don’t lie to me and tell me you don’t.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t need to feel guilty because I got you hurt.” As powerful as Mick was, I knew that if my mother wanted to get to me enough, Mick would be blown out like a spent match.

  “You’ve gotten a lot stronger.” Mick traced my cheek. “The way you took down that skinwalker was beautiful.”

  “It was a good storm.”

  “But you controlled it with the skill of a master. When I first met you, your power was all over the place.”

  That was true. I’d met Mick when I was twenty-one, and by then I’d at least learned to contain my storm power and not hurt people arbitrarily with it. But I hadn’t yet honed the ability to handle it well or channel it where I needed to. What Mick had taught me in the six months I was with him doubled my ability, and I’d worked on it diligently since.

  “Explain to me how you knew I was here, in Magellan,” I said. “And stuck in the sheriff’s office.”

  “Let’s just say I always know where you are. I came to finish off the skinwalker for you, but like I said, you got him, and you got him good. I thought the sheriff would let you go in the morning, but you didn’t come out. When I felt one of my spells go off, I decided I needed to get you out of there.”

  I thought of Nash rolling the silver ball between his fingers. “It didn’t go off. It sparked when Nash touched it, but that’s all. He’s not magical.”

  Mick lifted his brows. “You sure? I felt the pressure.”

  “Believe me, I would have noticed incandescent light searing through my brain. The spell didn’t go off. It must have been something else.”

  “Maybe.” He kissed the tip of my nose and finally got off me, making me feel cold and bereft. I heard him running water in the bathroom, and he returned with more clean, damp towels. He seated himself on the bed again and started wiping my face. The cool water felt delicious on my hot, dirty skin. “You warded this place.”

  It wasn’t a question. The day I moved in, I’d gone to Paradox, the local New Age store, and bought smudge sticks, incense, candles, stones, and oil, and spent the evening chanting spells and marking wards everywhere.

  “Wards, spells, offerings to the gods,” I said. “Anything I could think of.”

  Mick ran his gaze over the symbols I’d drawn. They were invisible to the human eye, but I knew Mick saw them. “They could stand strengthening.”

  From the look he gave me, I knew how he wanted to strengthen them. Mick had once taught me the fine art of Tantric.

  “Not now,” I said. “You just had a bullet in you. You need to finish healing.”

  “It’s not that bad. Your sheriff is a lousy shot.”

  “He wasn’t trying to kill you, just stop you.” I knew that in my heart. Nash might be an asshole, but he wasn’t a killer. I’d met enough killers to know one when I saw one.

  Mick didn’t look convinced. He finished wiping my face and started on my hands.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate you helping me out,” I said. “But you know you’ve only made it worse for me if Jones decides to charge me. I’m sure he’ll recommend holding me without bail and somehow get the trial scheduled for two years from now.”

  “He won’t charge you. He’d have already done it if he had clear evidence, and he won’t get any.”

  I wondered how he could be so sure. Nash Jones followed the book, but would his deputies be able to tell what had happened out there on that highway? I was the sole witness. Maybe. Who was this drifter who’d seen the flipped truck? Calls himself Coyote, Nash had said. What would he say?

  “I’d still love to know how you knew I was in trouble,” I said.

  “You know I’m not going to tell you.” Mick’s voice was reasonable, his arrogant refusal to answer my questions raising familiar anger in me.

  “Mick . . .”

  “Forget it. There are some things you aren’t meant to know.”

  Remembered exasperation returned. During our brief relationship, Mick had been adamant about not wanting me to go anywhere on my own, but he’d disappear when he damn well pleased and refuse to tell me where he went. He’d driven me insane. I’d been torn between loving how treasured I felt with him and wanting the freedom to live my life.

  Mick had argued with me for days when I told him I wanted to go, threatened to chain me up or put stasis spells on me before I finally wore him down. And now, in a place where the danger from my mother was its greatest—here he was.

  “You know, one reason I took off was because I got tired of being treated like a child,” I said.

  “You were a child, Janet. Twenty-one and a legal adult, certain you could take on the world.”

  “I’ve been on my own since then and can take care of myself just fine.”

  “Because you ran in the right direction—away from here. This place will kill you, and you know it.” He leaned to me again, his smile gone, his eyes serious. “I don’t want to see you die. Call me selfish. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why I’m staying.”

  “Staying in Magellan?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “In your hotel. With you.”

  “Excuse me.” I tried to push myself into a sitting position, but I could only manage a slump against the headboard. “My hotel, Mick. Mine. Guests will pay for a room or be personally invited by me. After I get the damn thing finished.”

  He wouldn’t budge, his body heat like a blanket. “I let you go before, because you weren’t heading to danger. This time, if I don’t stay with you, you’ll be dead, and that’s all there is to that.”

  He was challenging me. When I was younger, I let him lead me. Now I knew what I had to do.

  “It is dangerous here, yes,
” I said. “Dangerous for you. I don’t need to be worried about you on top of everything else.”

  “So don’t worry. You run your hotel, and I’ll watch your back. You need someone watching—tonight is proof of that.”

  “All right, maybe.” I admitted that for all his mysterious-ness, Mick was a good person to have on my side. “Why are you still so damned protective of me?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “I do.”

  Mick came closer still, until his face hung an inch from mine. “If you have to ask, then you wouldn’t believe my answer.” He drew away and continued wiping my hands.

  “You are still an arrogant pain in the ass.”

  Mick flashed his teeth in a brilliant smile. Gods, he was gorgeous. His smile warmed the room and made me remember how precious he’d made me feel. Stay with me and nothing will ever hurt you, he’d say.

  Had I been wise or foolish to stay? Or to leave?

  He finished with the towels and kissed the tips of my fingers. “You sleep now. I’ll stand guard.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right? Your shoulder still looks awful.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” The man who’d been my first, last, and only love smiled and touched my forehead. “Sleep, Janet.”

  Maybe he infused the command with magic, because the world went black, and I slept hard. I slept through the rest of the afternoon and on into morning, a dark, thankfully dreamless slumber. When I woke again, I felt better, the sun was rising, and Mick was gone.

  Five

  I wondered briefly whether I’d dreamed Mick. Maybe I’d passed out in Nash’s office, and Lopez or someone had gotten me home and to bed. Not that I could see Nash being that kind to me.

  I found bloody towels in the bathroom when I hobbled into it, and Mick’s torn T-shirt tossed into my hamper of dirty clothes. He was no dream.

  I also hoped I hadn’t dreamed the running water. Nope, it streamed out of the taps, gloriously hot. I peeled off my shirt and stood in my bra while I washed my face and hands. I turned on the cold water to rinse out my mouth and brush my teeth. Toothpaste had never tasted so good. I drank a few mouthfuls from the faucet, realizing I hadn’t eaten or drunk since leaving for Flagstaff two evenings ago.