Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) (11 page)

Chapter Eleven

Emmett hadn’t been leaning against the boulder, no. That might mess up his suit. Even so, he slid a handkerchief from his breast pocket and brushed off his sleeve, an affectation of his.
 

I ran up the hill, ready to tear his silk tie off him and make him eat it. “What the hell did you do to me?” I yelled. “Did you spell me?”

The eyes behind the glasses fixed me with a cold stare. “If you are going to be hysterical, I
can
spell you. Would you like that?”

“Touch me, and I’ll dust you. Did you put me into that coma? Or were you trying to kill me and didn’t succeed?”

Emmett tucked his handkerchief neatly into his pocket. “
Someone
has you riled. No, I did not put you into a coma. You woke up those demons all by yourself, got caught in the chaos, and were knocked out. If you had simply handed me your mirror, I would have considered myself your ally and helped you. As it was, I had to watch you go down under garden-variety demons.”

I clenched my fists, trying to catch my breath. “You expect me to believe that?”

“You will believe what you wish. I promise I did not open the pocket under the Flat Mesa motel and let out the demons. You did that yourself.” Emmett made a dismissing gesture. “If I wanted you dead, Janet, you’d be dead.”

“I had dreams,” I said in a hard voice. “Not normal dreams—the kind achieved only by magic.”

His gaze sharpened. “Dreams can be interesting. What were they?”

I made a frustrated noise. “I don’t remember now.”

“Again, interesting. Would you like me to help you remember?”

The last thing I wanted was Emmett tinkering in my brain. “No, thank you.”

“Your dreams would be fascinating. What does a Stormwalker envision in the night? Conquering hail?”

“Funny. Go away before I lose control and kick your ass.”

“No,” Emmett said, not moving. “I came for the magic mirror. I will have it, my dear, one way or another.”

His glasses began to gleam. I felt the bite of his power, a small one, testing me.

The night was beautifully clear, no storm on the horizon. Perfect for stargazers, bad for me. I had Beneath magic, of course, but if I used that here, I risked opening the vortex and letting out the hell goddess below us.
 

Emmett knew that. Why else would he have chosen this spot to confront me?

A rush of air passed me, and then Ansel was on Emmett, his Nightwalker mouth open, ready to rip out Emmett’s throat.

“Ansel, no!” I cried.

Ansel, snarling in rage, wrapped his thin but muscular arms around Emmett and shoved him into the huge slab of sandstone. Emmett, momentarily startled, let whatever magic he’d been preparing die back.

Ansel’s mouth came down on Emmett’s neck. I rushed forward at the same moment, grabbing Ansel to yank him away. I might as well have tried to yank a sequoia out of the ground with my bare hands. Ansel had latched on to Emmett’s throat, and Emmett’s blood flowed into his mouth.

A second later, Ansel flew backward about twenty feet and landed hard on his back on the desert ground. I heard bones crunch, and Ansel’s initial shriek died into a groan of pain.

Emmett took out his handkerchief again and dabbed at the blood dripping down his neck. “The mirror, please.”
 

I resisted running to Ansel to make certain he was all right. Nightwalkers healed quickly, but pain and weakness made them blood-frenzied. He might grab the nearest person—me—and drain me to restore his strength before he could stop himself. I had to let him lie there, moaning softly.

“I’m not going to say anything stupid like
over my dead body
,” I said to Emmett. “Anyway, it will be over
your
dead body. I’m not giving up the mirror.”

Emmett’s usual calm expression creased with anger. “You have no idea of its potential power, little girl. No idea how to tap into it. I do. Think of it this way—it would be like
you
watching a complete novice trying to work an amazing camera you’d give anything to have. Why this incompetent fool has a piece of equipment that sophisticated while you’re stuck with your phone camera is beyond your comprehension.”

“The difference is, I wouldn’t kill someone for their camera,” I said clearly.

“You would if it were the only one of its kind in the world.” Emmett’s glasses began to shine again. “You’d do anything in your power to get your hands on it.”

I don’t think I’d understood how important the mirror was to him until that moment. I’d been cautious and angry about Emmett’s attempt to steal the mirror but equally determined not to let him. Now as he looked at me, I realized he’d stop at nothing to reach his goal.

He was going to kill me, Mick, and anyone who stood in his way until the mirror was his. Not only kill us but torture us if necessary until we gave it up.
Then
he’d kill us.

Why not simply give it to him?
A voice inside me whispered.
He’d go away, you’d be rid of the smart-ass mirror, and life would go on.

It was tempting, that thought. No more mirror making lewd comments on my sex life, no more show tunes in the middle of the night, no more hours of listening to it weep for no reason followed by a longer period of hysterical laughter. Magic mirrors developed their own eccentric personalities, and most of them were insane, so I’d been told. Knowing my mirror, I believed it.

I glared at Emmett. “
Stop
putting thoughts into my head. I’m not giving it up.”

Emmett sent me a little smile, and the diamonds on his glasses flashed. “I’m not in your head, Stormwalker. You’re thinking those thoughts all by yourself.” He glanced at the filled-in wash behind me. “Good place for a fight, don’t you think?”

No, it was a terrible place, and he knew it. “How about we settle this somewhere less vortex-y?” I said. “Have a fair fight. You want to win by might, not trickery, right?”

Emmett chuckled. “You have amusing ideas. No, Janet. I just want to win.”

He let fly a wave of nasty magic without any warning. All I could do was slam myself to the ground, my face meeting weeds and red dirt as the spell flashed past. When I lifted my head, I saw I’d only given myself a temporary reprieve, because the dark arrow of magic homed in on me like a heat-seeking missile.
 

If I didn’t raise a shield of Beneath magic, I’d be dead, or possibly so weak he’d crush my bones with his Prada shoe. If I did raise the shield, I’d likely rip open the vortex ten feet away.

As I hovered between life and death, I dimly wondered how Emmett would fare against my mother and her minions once they poured out of the hole I’d rip open. Not well, I guessed. But then, I’d probably not fare well against them either.

White light flashed, and the spell broke. I jerked my head up in surprise as another luminous ball of magic flew toward Emmett and fried the next dark spell in his hand.

“You total bastard!” Gabrielle yelled as she flew at Emmett, blue-white fire in her hands. “Stay away from my sister!”

She had Beneath magic worked up in her until she glowed with it. Gabrielle’s feet were a few inches off the ground, rage and magic propelling her at the source of her fury.

I felt Emmett bring up defenses at the same time he laughed. Behind me, down the slope, the debris-choked wash began to rumble.

“No!” I sprang to my feet, my jeans and shirt plastered with powdery dirt and dried grass. I latched my arms around Gabrielle’s waist and hung on. “Gabrielle,
don’t!
”

Her Beneath magic smacked me, stirring my own to life. I saw in that split second that if she and I ever combined our powers, we could unmake the earth.

Gabrielle kicked, but I hung on. “Stop,” I said sharply. “Beneath magic will open the vortex. Tamp it down.”

Gabrielle twisted. “I don’t care. I want to kill him. He hurt me, and you, and he’s fucking
evil
. You know I can kill him.”

“Yes, but not
here
. You want our mom coming out to play?”

At the mention of our mutual mother, Gabrielle’s fury wound up even more.

The goddess had made the two of us, hoping one of us would be her conduit to spread hell on earth. When the time had come to bring her plans to fruition, she’d spurned Gabrielle and chosen me. Gabrielle, even our mother had realized, had been too unstable. Plus, Gabrielle possessed no earthbound magic, while my father’s family came from a long line of powerful earth-magic shamans.

The sting of that rejection had made Gabrielle even more unstable. Grandmother and I had been spending time teaching her that not everyone in the world would reject her, but I knew we had a long way to go.

“Yes!” Gabrielle shouted with glee. “Bring her out. I’ll kill her too.”

Tears of rage ran down her cheeks, and I squeezed her tighter. “No. Think about it. If she gets out, she’ll try to wipe out not only Emmett, me, and you, but Mick, Colby, my dad, Gina …”

I felt Gabrielle start, as though she hadn’t considered this. It spoke to how much Gabrielle had grown in the last year that she paused a beat to realize that people she’d come to care about could be hurt by her need for revenge.

She gave a scream of frustration, but the Beneath magic in her faded. I set her on her feet, loosening my hold, but I remained right behind her, in case Gabrielle changed her mind.

Emmett was watching our drama with enjoyment. “You two are so very fascinating. Like two sides of the same coin, but not quite.” He lifted a finger and ran it down the air, as though dividing something in half.

I braced for a spell, but nothing came at us. I did feel a ripple of breeze but a natural one, no taint of magic on it.

Emmett smiled, and then let rip another spell.

A black net arched at me and Gabrielle so rapidly we could only look up and watch it come. The two of us slammed into a crouch, my arms around Gabrielle, as the net fell over us. Burning magic seared my skin, and Gabrielle screamed.

Her Beneath magic wound up again, but I yelled, “No! Wait!”

I stuffed my hand into my pocket, every part of me feeling fire, and jerked out my shard of mirror. My vision had blurred, sounds dimming, and my fingers fumbled as I pulled away the chamois bag.

I had no idea how to use the mirror for anything but reflecting. I’d asked it to enhance my magic before, but I hadn’t really told it what to do. It had simply known.

I raised the shard to my eyes, though I could see little in it—everything was fuzzy, dark colors on a gray backdrop. “Help us!” I cried.

Oh, sugar,
it wailed.
I’m scared!

“Suck it up,” I yelled back. “
Do
something.”

The mirror sounded as though it inhaled a deep breath. Then a high-pitched shriek came out of it, the pitch rising, rising, past glass-breaking, eardrum-shattering decibels, and on up into sounds only animals could hear.

The net spell around us cracked and broke, shards falling away like splinters of glass. A few of the shards fell on the mirror—the reflected bits of spell gathered themselves, coalesced into another fibrous net, and launched itself at Emmett.

My vision cleared as the spell dove for Emmett. He watched it come in astonishment, then at the last minute, put up his hand. The spell halted in midair, writhed around itself, then vanished with a popping sound.

“Well,” Emmett said. “That was educational.”

He removed his glasses to dab a bit of perspiration from his brow. In the next instant, another shriek split the night, this one from a dragon.
 

One moment, Emmett was standing, delicately rubbing his forehead, the next, he was jerked from the ground by a dragon talon and carried far, far up into the air. Warm wind swamped us as Mick’s black dragon wings came down with a
whump,
lifting himself and Emmett high into the sky.

I heard Emmett’s snarl of outrage, sensed him bring up powerful magics. Before Emmett’s spell could strike, Mick opened his claw.

Five hundred feet up, Emmett Smith tumbled from Mick’s talon, down, down, down, to smash to earth somewhere out in the empty desert.

Chapter Twelve

Gabrielle leapt from her feet, punching the air.
“Yes!”
she shouted. “Dragon power! Eat that, asshole.”

I, more skeptical than Gabrielle, would believe Emmett dead when I saw his crushed body. Still more when I lit it on fire myself and watched it burn to ash.

Mick, his red and black dragon hide catching the starlight, wheeled through the desert sky, searching the ground below him. I started in that direction. The flashlight had broken when I’d hit the dirt to avoid Emmett’s spell, so I had only the moon to guide me. It gave off enough light so I could see where I was going, but not quite enough to help me avoid small holes and loose rocks waiting to trip me. It must be nice to fly.

Gabrielle ran on light feet ahead of me, illuminating her way with a ball of Beneath magic. The flicker was tiny, but I watched it with trepidation. Fortunately, we were heading away from the vortexes, out to non-magical country.

As we reached the spot over which Mick hovered, another dragon joined him. This one was silken black, its silhouette blocking the stars. He wheeled, shrieked a dragon scream at Mick, then dove for the earth.

Mick did one more circle then flew after the black dragon, touching down just behind him. Both dragons disappeared behind a cloud of dark mist; when it cleared, two men walked toward us.

The black dragon was Drake, a tall man with dark hair. His back was covered with a tattoo of dragon wings, the points of which flowed over his shoulders and up the sides of his neck. He had dark eyes, a hard, handsome face, and a severe expression.

Drake worked for the Dragon Council, the body of three elder dragons who decided which dragons were and weren’t breaking dragon law, and meted out final justice. This council had nearly condemned Mick to death for
not
killing me, and I hadn’t forgiven them for that yet. Drake had proved that he didn’t obey the council unquestioningly, but he could be ruthless himself.
 

Behind him came Mick, his eyes sparkling red and black, the tatts on his arms writhing, their eyes glittering too.