Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) (33 page)

“Instead, you wagged your finger at me, figuratively speaking. I’m ashamed of myself, though, and a little freaked out. I might not have stopped if not for that goblin woman and her husband. What exactly are they?”

Ancient beings from the dawn of this world.
Coyote closed his mouth and furrowed his coyote brow.
Well, they might not have been alive that
whole
time, but they’re descended from those ancient beings and retain their power. They certainly have potent earth magics. Stronger than gods sometimes, are ancient earth beings.

“Like the dragons,” I said.

Like the dragons. Arrogant shits
.
But don’t beat yourself up, Janet. You are stronger than you know. It’s that strength that’s let you survive a lot of crap, including having messed-up magic fighting a war inside you. That strength is why your mother is afraid of you, why Emmett is afraid of you, why the Dragon Council is afraid of you. You’re stronger than all of them put together. Remember that … but don’t let it go to your head.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. “I hate this. I so need a vacation.”

So take one.
Coyote gave me an enigmatic, tawny-eyed stare.
Relax, Janet. The world isn’t coming to an end
every
day.

Sounded so nice. I stretched my arms … and yawned.

I woke to dawn on the horizon. My body was still sore, but the mattress beneath me felt soft and comfortable. I basked here for a time, thankful to Mick and his magic that let me sleep, but eventually I pried myself out of bed.

My hotel was a ruin … again. After my ablutions and my ritual greeting of the morning, I perused the damage.

Saloon roof gone, courtesy of Emmett and Mick. Saloon walls blown apart and ruined on three sides, courtesy of Emmett and me. Kitchen—a smoking ruin, again courtesy of Emmett. The mirror was cracked all over, and bore a hole in the middle that looked exactly the same as the one put there by the original shotgun blast.

“It was that way when I came down,” Cassandra told me as I stared at the mirror. Cassandra was dressed in a blue silk skirt suit, her hair perfectly combed, her face pink and lovely as usual, as though she hadn’t been caught in a terrible magical battle last night. “My theory is that it couldn’t take the strain of the intense magics dumped into it over the past day or so and reverted to its previous state. Kind of like a computer reversing to its last clean backup.”

“As long as it’s all right.” I went close to the mirror and peered into it. One of the shards moved, as though it winked at me, but all was silent.

“Hey,” I said. “I want to ask you questions. Like—how did you show me the stuff you wanted to show me, when you couldn’t have known about most of it?”

The mirror made a sound of taking a sleepy breath. Well, I guess it was tired too, after our ordeal. “I showed you what was in your head,” it said. “When you had others with you—Micky, Drake, your grandmother, even Emmett, you could see things they knew. Like your childhood. That was interesting. Your grandmother has learned all she could about Gabrielle, so you could find out more about her too. Some beautiful moments, I thought. You were a cute little kid.”

I leaned closer. “Keep it to yourself, all right?”

The mirror moved a little, glass tinkling. “Sugar, your secrets are safe with me. What happens in your head … stays in your head.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll get you fixed again, soon as we can.”

The mirror made a growly noise. “Mmm. Looking forward to it.”

I stepped over bricks back to the lobby, stretching again, trying to remove the kinks from my shoulders.
 

“Nash arrested Emmett,” I said to Cassandra as she made her way to the reception desk, heels clicking. “And took him where? The county jail looks even worse than this place.”

“Hopi County is sharing facilities with the Flat Mesa and Magellan town police,” Cassandra told me, brushing gravel from her desk. “But Emmett was transferred, courtesy of Colby and Drake, to the dragon compound in Santa Fe.”

My eyes widened. “Nash let him go?” I couldn’t imagine Nash handing over a prisoner of any kind to anyone, especially not to the dragons.

“Nash had nothing to charge him with. The murders Emmett committed were well covered up—no evidence—and Emmett wasn’t about to confess. If Nash charged him with destruction of property, he’d have to charge you, Mick, Drake, and me too. The dragons, on the other hand, don’t care about evidence. They’ll confine Emmett until he’s rendered harmless. Or, until they decide to kill him.”

Thinking about Bancroft, Aine, and the third member of the council, Ferrell, whom I’d met at Mick’s trial, I knew the dragons would do just that. When they decided a being was a threat, especially a threat to dragons, they dealt with it in a final fashion.

“Where’s Gabrielle?” I asked. “She all right?”

“She left earlier with your grandmother. She wanted to go back to Many Farms and make sure your dad and Gina were okay. Gabrielle said to send you her best, and that she’d call. She was quite subdued.”

I’d have to check on her, have a sisterly talk. Later, though. For now, in spite of my decent sleep of several hours, I was beat.

“Cassandra,” I said, leaning on the counter. “When I was dreamwalking—in my coma for a couple weeks—you kept this place going without a hitch. I was impressed.”

“We’ve had this discussion,” Cassandra said, her cheeks reddening. “I told you, I don’t want to take over the hotel.”

“No, but I realize I can ditch it for a little while and not have everything fall apart. In fact, it’s probably safer when I’m not here. Walls tend to stay solid.”

Cassandra gave me a faint smile but looked worried. “What are you trying to ask?”

“I want to take Mick on a road trip. Kind of capture the magic we had when we first found each other. I owe him that. We’ve had a couple of vacations, but I’ve never felt comfortable leaving the hotel for too long. But you have it covered.” I tapped my fingers to the counter. “So, I’m going to take off.”

Cassandra looked alarmed. “You’ll let me know how to get hold of you, won’t you? Just in case.”

“Like I said, the danger will more likely follow me. But sure. I’ll buy myself a dozen cell phones and make sure at least
one
of them survives. And I’ll have a shard of the mirror. Or you can always call Mick. He’s way more reliable.”

Cassandra nodded, but her gaze had gone past me, her hotel-manager expression returning. Two guests had come to check out—the goblin couple.

Mrs. Goblin stood a few steps behind her husband, her fingers clutching an old-fashioned fold-over handbag. Her long skirt hid her legs, and she wore low-heeled pumps.

Her husband was in a tan suit, his dark brown tie loose. He laid the key to their room on the counter, along with a stack of cash, the price of the room for however many nights they’d been here.

Mr. Goblin gave Cassandra a nod and me a warm smile. His teeth were somewhat pointed.

“This is a beautiful hotel,” he said.

“Um.” I choked and cleared my throat. “Thank you.”

Mrs. Goblin gave me an equally pointy-toothed smile as her husband turned away. “We’ve already decided—we’re coming back here for our two-hundred and
first
anniversary.” She leaned a little closer to me. “We had a wonderful time.”

She beamed at us both, turned away, took her husband’s arm, and let him lead her out.

I dashed to the front window as soon as the door closed, craning my head to watch them. They climbed into a perfectly ordinary Buick sedan, Mr. Goblin started it up, and they rolled sedately out of the parking lot.

They turned onto the highway that led west from the Crossroads. After a few moments, the air above the pavement shimmered with heat waves. When they cleared, the car had vanished.

“Well,” I said. “You don’t see that every day.”

Mick’s hand came to rest next to mine on the window frame. “What are you talking about?” he rumbled. “We see shit like that all the time.”

“Good point.” I turned to look at him, my tall, sexy man with the untamed black hair, stark tatts, and beautiful blue eyes. “I was just telling Cassandra I’d like to head out on the road with you for a while. See the sights. Go the hell away from vortexes, dragon compounds, and Magellan’s woo-woo magic for a while.”

“I heard you.” Mick lifted a duffel bag from the floor. “I’m packed. So are you.” He lifted a second, smaller one. “Let’s go.”

Without waiting for my response, he carried both bags out the door. I followed quickly, catching up to him in time to watch him load the duffels into the saddlebags on our bikes.
 

Mick pulled on his driving gloves, gave me a long, heartfelt kiss, straddled his larger motorcycle, and started it up.

I lost no time sliding into the chaps he’d laid over my bike’s seat, tugging on my own gloves, and tucking my hair into a ponytail to go under my helmet. Mick popped on his sunglasses, to look badass as well as keep off the glare, grinned at me, and motioned for me to lead the way.

I started up my Softail, the bike gleaming darkly in the early morning sun. I sent a loving smile back at Mick and headed out of the Crossroads, following the same highway west the goblins had.

We didn’t vanish into the heat waves, but the sun warmed us as it rose behind us, lighting the sky with red, orange, fuchsia, and the gentle blue of morning. It pointed the way west, toward the high volcanic summits waiting for us down the road, and I followed its direction.

We had a lot to talk about, Mick and I—our upcoming wedding, fixing the hotel, his worry about our lifespans, and other nitpicky problems a Stormwalker and her dragon might face. But for now, I was with the man I loved, and we were heading out to be alone, to be just Mick and me.

“Woo hoo!” the voice of the magic mirror yelped from the mirror on my bike. “This is awesome.
Now
we’re going to have some adventures!”

I heard Mick laughing—he had a bit of the mirror on his bike too.

Then Mick pulled in beside me, and we headed into our future together.

The End

Author’s Note

Thank you for reading! I’m always delighted to return to the world of Stormwalker and revisit Janet, Mick, and their many friends, old and new. I live very close to the setting of Janet’s Crossroads Hotel, and it’s a thrill to write these stories set in my own backyard.

Apart from the fictitious towns of Magellan and Flat Mesa, and Hopi County itself, the rest of the settings are real. Many Farms, Janet’s hometown, is not far from Chinle, which sits on the edge of the beautiful Canyon de Chelly, a winding river canyon well worth a visit. The salsa restaurant Gabrielle mentions is Salsa Brava, in Flagstaff, which does indeed have an extensive salsa bar and some of the best carnitas I’ve ever had. The restored hotel in Winslow that Janet mentions, the La Posada, was a Harvey Girls hotel and has been beautifully redone. It’s an excellent base from which to visit northern Arizona landmarks such as Meteor Crater, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, the Homol’ovi ruins (where some of the action of Firewalker is set), and up into the Indian lands.

But who knows? If you follow highway 99 south of Winslow, maybe you’ll come upon another narrow road heading east, which will bring you to a crossroads containing a biker bar and an old hotel, where the paranormal is real …

I was inspired to write this series by the landscape itself. In northern Arizona, which is a very different place from southern Arizona, a high-elevation sweeping plateau leads to even higher mountains, steep canyons seem to drop from nowhere, and rapidly changing weather fills the huge skies.
 

Coyotes howl in the darkness and crows and ravens call in the mornings. You can hear Janet’s father’s flute on the wind, answered by a long roll of thunder. I imagined Janet, a young woman on the brink of her life, speeding down the back roads on her motorcycle, followed by a hard-faced, black-haired man with dragon tattoos …

I plan to continue the series—I have too many potential stories in my head for these characters in this place not to. All books will be in e-, print, and audio.

The next book is
Dragon Bites
, which will be followed by several more. Keep checking my website:
http://www.allysonjames.com
for publication dates and more information on the entire series, or sign up for my newsletter at
http://eepurl.com/47kLL
to be kept informed of forthcoming titles, pre-orders, audio editions, and other news.

Thanks for reading, and happy wandering.

Allyson James

Books in the
Stormwalker
Series
 

By Allyson James
Stormwalker
Firewalker
Shadow Walker
“Double Hexed”
Nightwalker
Dreamwalker

Dragon Bites

“A Little Night Magic”
in Hot for the Holidays
(short story “prequel”—Jamison and Naomi’s story)
And more to come!

Shifters Unbound Series

w/a Jennifer Ashley

Pride Mates

Primal Bonds

Bodyguard

Wild Cat

Hard Mated

Mate Claimed

Perfect Mate (novella)

Lone Wolf

Tiger Magic

Feral Heat

Wild Wolf

Bear Attraction

Mate Bond

Lion Eyes

Bad Wolf

Wild Things

White Tiger

Guardian’s Mate

Shifter Made
(short story "prequel")

And more to come!

About the Author
 

Award-winning author Allyson James is a pen name of
New York Times
bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. Allyson has written more than 85 published novels and novellas in romance, urban fantasy, and mystery under the names Jennifer Ashley, Allyson James, and Ashley Gardner. Allyson’s books have been nominated for and won Romance Writers of America’s RITA (given for the best romance novels and novellas of the year), and several
RT BookReviews
Reviewers Choice awards (including Best Urban Fantasy, Best Shapeshifter Romance, and Career Achievement in Historical Romance), and Prism awards for her paranormal romances and urban fantasy.
More about Allyson’s books can be found at the website
www.allysonjames.com
Email Allyson at
[email protected]
or join her newsletter at
http://eepurl.com/47kLL
.