“We need to let him feed,” I said.
Pamela had Cassandra safely behind her, her werewolf lips curled. “And who would be the fool to volunteer for that?”
Ansel wrinkled his nose. “Not you, wolf-girl. Changer blood is disgusting. I want the Spanish lass.” He licked his teeth. “Mmm, the dark-eyed beauty of Maya Medina.”
Nash’s pistol was back, the barrel digging into Ansel’s cheek. “Touch her, and I blow your face off.”
“Or maybe Sheriff Jones,” Ansel purred. “What does the blood of a man who lives to harass my friends taste like?”
“No,” I said.
Nash exchanged a glance with me. “Janet.”
We’d both, once upon a time, seen the effect of Nash’s blood on a Nightwalker. “What’s happening is not Ansel’s fault,” I said firmly. “He stays alive.”
“What about the rest of us?” Pamela asked in her thick Changer voice.
Ansel looked us over. “I don’t trust the witch. The coyote? Hmm, the blood of a god?”
“Would be bad for you,” Coyote rumbled. “And Janet wants you to live. She’s such a sweetie.”
“I see.” Ansel turned away. “I don’t want the plumber. He probably tastes like a sewer. But Janet.” Ansel touched my neck, his fingers ice-cold. “Pretty Navajo girl. Fine blood of a Stormwalker.”
Mick was beside me in a heartbeat, lifting Ansel by the throat. Mick’s eyes were black with rage, and his hand burst into flame as he pinned Ansel against the wall.
“Mick, no!” I shouted. As frightening as Ansel was, I knew that, at heart, he was a shy man who’d be horrified when he remembered that he’d tried to hurt anyone. I also knew that if we couldn’t subdue him, Ansel would have to die before he killed us all.
Mick let his fire fade. “You don’t touch Janet. If you need to feed, you feed on me.”
Ansel didn’t trust Mick, for good reason. “No, give me the señorita. I’ll make it good for her.”
Mick’s barely contained dragon frenzy made him as strong as Ansel. He grabbed the back of Ansel’s neck and yanked the man’s mouth down to his jugular. “Drink me, damn you.”
Ansel’s eyes went bright red as the bloodlust took him. His mouth opened—the narrow, catlike mouth of a Nightwalker—and he plunged his fangs into Mick’s neck.
Fremont gasped in horror, and I wanted to scream. Ansel might drain Mick dry before we could pull him off. Nightwalkers hung on like leeches even after their victims were dead.
I lunged for them, but Mick put out one arm to stop me, fire flaring from his palm. His muscles bulged as he held Ansel in place, the other man’s mouth working, sucking, pulling at Mick’s neck. Mick grunted, his face creased in pain, but still he held me off.
The rain continued to pour outside, building to a deluge. Water slid between my fingers, starting to patter on the floor. As much as I felt sorry for the real Ansel, I wanted to kill the Nightwalker for hurting Mick. When Mick gasped for breath, blood running in rivulets down his neck, Ansel still drinking, I almost did it.
“No.” Mick lifted his hand again, the fire keeping me back. “Let him. I’ll heal.”
“Mick, damn it.”
I was aware of the others, in a semicircle, tense, watching, waiting to see what would happen next. Mick started to sag, but so did Ansel, Ansel’s frantic, moist sucking noises slowing.
When Ansel fell from Mick like a full tick, a smile on his face, Mick folded to the floor next to him. I got to Mick’s side, but Mick raised his head and gave me a weak nod. “I’m all right.”
“That was stupid.”
“No.” Mick caressed my thigh, his fire gone. “I couldn’t let him touch you, baby. I’d die before I let him do that. I’d do it again even if it killed me.”
Part of me was pleased with the sentiment, part of me furious he’d even consider dying for me. I dragged myself away from Mick, past the others, and sat on a stool at the stainless steel worktable. I put my head in my hands, finding my fingers wet with rainwater.
I had to stop this. I’d begun the evening believing this a simple hex that Mick and I could handle. Now Mick’s dragon nature was taking over, the one that took unbelievable risks without fear of death. Cassandra had lost all emotional control, and Coyote’s power was down.
It was up to me. The light from the parking lot touched my hands, which were sopping with water, my storm magic taking over. My body ran with water, my clothes began to soak, and a faint spark of lightning danced on my skin just before we heard the rumble of distant thunder.
I would stop the ununculous. I would carry out my plan to pull the sorcerer to us and kill him, but I no longer felt the need to be secretive about it. Coyote wouldn’t like it, but Coyote could kill me later.
My Beneath magic agreed. It rose to twine the storm magic, its incredible power squeezing through my body.
The visions returned. More distinct now—fire, the town burning, the desert itself on fire. White light of the vortexes, a darkness rising: behind it, the dragons, and Hopi and Navajo gods fighting for their lives. Terror, destruction, and in the center, one lone figure. I didn’t know who it was.
Maya gasped. “Look at Janet.”
I sensed them turn my way, all of them, even Ansel, and with a precise flash of vision, I saw what they saw. I sat at the table, my body rigid, fists clenched on the metal. Water flowed out of me, across the table, and to the floor. My black hair hung in sodden clumps around my face, which had turned almost sheet white, my eyes burning black within it.
“Go,” I told them in a booming voice. “Leave this place, while I cleanse it.”
Coyote got to me first, though I know Mick would have if he hadn’t been weakened by Ansel’s feeding. Nash was right behind Coyote, and Mick made it a staggering second later.
“Look at me, Janet,” Coyote said.
I turned my gaze to him, the vision of myself through his eyes fading. I saw only Coyote, his stern face and dark god eyes that no longer held any power.
“You can’t fix it,” I said. “So I will.”
Nash’s ice-gray eyes were a cold contrast to Coyote’s dark ones. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I smiled at him. “Hello, Sheriff. Do you remember what fun we had out by the vortexes? Want to do it again?”
Nash recoiled, and so he should. The encounter had been violent and nasty, mostly with me doing all the violence. Nash hadn’t known what was going on at the time, but Mick and I had filled him in since then.
The real me, the Diné woman screaming deep inside myself, begged me to stop, but the new me, the Stormwalker-Beneath goddess, was angry. I loved the men in this room, but they had their places in my life, and when it came down to it, they were pretty useless. The goddess in me had to fix everything, even if those men had to be sacrificed to do it.
I stood up. “I will cleanse this place,” I repeated.
“Stop her,” Mick said.
“No, don’t.” Cassandra had been crying again. “Let her. What choice do we have? We can’t win, and if she can destroy the curse and the ununculous, I say, so be it.”
Mick hemmed me in with Coyote and Nash. Coyote said, “If she unleashes what’s inside her, you’re going to wish you were facing the ununculous. We’ll all die.”
“What does it matter? Either Janet kills us or the sorcerer does. I’d rather it be Janet, who can take him down with her.”
“Glad you feel that way,” Fremont said. “I don’t particularly want to die at all.”
“Or me,” Maya agreed in a hard voice. “Sit the hell down, Janet.”
I laughed. After all this time, after everything I’d done for them, they still didn’t trust me. They deserved to die, my so-called friends who belittled me and bothered me, whined at me to solve their problems, and then tried to stop me when I wanted to go after the evil in the world.
I turned my smile on Coyote. “You can’t stop me, powerless god. Or you.” I swung on Mick. “Dragon sacrificing his blood that others might live. So noble is the dragon. The one who wants to drag me to his Pacific island and trap me there.”
“Hey, I’d go with him,” Maya said. “I’d love some beach time.”
“He’d pen me up in his lair,” I said, my voice dripping scorn. “His mate, he calls me. More like his pet.”
I smacked the man I loved with a wave of water that washed him off his feet. Mick responded with fire that slammed me back onto my ass. A dragon after being drained by a Nightwalker is still five times more powerful than an ordinary human being.
I was on my feet again, my magic—both Stormwalker and Beneath—gathered in my hands. My mind’s eye found all the wards in the walls and over the windows and in the doors, the hex clinging to them like a sticky black infection.
All I had to do was burn away the infection, every atom of it, and the wards would be clean. The hex had doubled in strength, and the task would take all my power, but I could do it. I knew the walls would melt into rubble under such forces, and we’d be buried alive by three stories of hotel, but at least the magic of the sorcerer, who’d dared to penetrate my realm, would be gone.
I raised my hands. Water and white light streamed out of me, and I opened my mouth to cry the words of power that would begin the cleansing.
And found myself falling over the stool and to the floor, crushed by a blanket of blackness that sucked out every bit of my power and left me helpless.
Nash Jones, the walking magic void, had tackled me. He pinned me to the floor in the perfect law-enforcement technique for subduing a suspect, his magic-null field absorbing storm power and goddess power alike.
I screamed and screamed as my magic drained. It was like having my soul ripped out. I beat on the floor, but Nash was a big guy, and I couldn’t dislodge him.
Mick crawled to me. “Back off, Jones. I think she’ll be all right now.”
If being weak, magic-less, aching, exhausted, and for some reason, hungry, was “all right,” then sure, I was. I lay limply on the floor as Nash got off me and to his feet, our mighty sheriff none the worse for wear.
Mick lifted me into his lap. “You okay, baby?”
“Sorry,” I croaked.
He kissed my forehead and cuddled me close. That was my Mick. Forgiving me for turning into a crazy, murderous, insulting bitch who’d just tried to kill him. Times like these kept our relationship strong.
Dear gods.
***
With me down for the count, my head pounding with the worst magic hangover I’d had in months, and Mick still weak from the blood draining, Nash took charge. Back in the lobby, he grilled us all for possible answers to the predicament.
Ansel wasn’t there—fairly sated, he’d gone back to the relative coolness of the refrigerator, which he said would keep his blood thick and his hunger down for a while. But the blood-frenzy still danced in his eyes, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he’d need to feed again.
As Nash stood like a drill sergeant grilling his troops, my gaze strayed to Maya. She huddled in one corner of a sofa, her elegant legs pulled up under her, her beautiful eyes riveted to Nash. She loved the idiot, and one day, I was going to smack him upside the head and make him understand that.
“The best thing to do is the summoning,” Cassandra repeated stubbornly. “I will give myself up, John Christianson will have his revenge, end of problem.”
“Like hell you will,” Pamela growled. “I’m not letting that asshole kill you.”
“But this all-powerful sorcerer is the cause of this hex thing, right?” Nash asked. “And if he’s dead, no more spell?”
Nash didn’t have much knowledge of magic—only what he’d learned, reluctantly, from me and Mick—but he was good at grasping essentials.
“I think so,” Cassandra said. “Some hexes can outlast their creator, but this one is so intense, it needs big magic to keep it up. If the ununculous dies, I’m sure this hex would go or at least weaken enough for someone like Mick to break it.”
“Then we kill him,” Pamela said. “Simple as that.”
Cassandra wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “If it were that simple, someone would have killed him a long time ago.” The Cassandra I knew would never wipe her runny nose with anything but an antibacterial tissue. She looked awful, her hair dangling loose from its French braid, her eyes red-rimmed in her sallow face. “No one here is strong enough to best him, except maybe Coyote, and the hex has made sure that Coyote can’t fight.”
“Could we conjure something else, then?” Fremont asked. “Someone bigger and stronger to kill the ununculous for us?”
“With this hex in place?” I rasped. “Who knows what would go wrong if we tried that? Besides, if Cassandra is right about how powerful the sorcerer is, we’d have to summon something with enormous power, like a god or one of the demon deities.”
“And then we’d be left dealing with the god or demon deity,” Mick said. “No thanks.”
Nash nodded. “It would be like asking the leader of the strongest gang to take out the leader of a weaker one. Then we’d just be in debt to the top gang leader. Not a good idea.”
“I was thinking something more like an angel,” Fremont said.
Coyote, sitting, still naked, against the wall, finally contributed to the discussion. “You start calling gods, and you risk messing with the vortexes. Gods come when they want to. They don’t like being summoned.”
“No kidding,” I muttered. “Sometimes they won’t even answer their cell phones.”
“I heard that.”
“I’ve conjured angels,” Fremont said. “Well, one. Once. Sort of.”
I had my doubts about that—I wasn’t sure Fremont had enough magic to summon anything, but even if he had, lesser beings could pretend to be angels.
“Maybe we don’t have to kill the sorcerer,” Nash was saying. “Couldn’t we contain him? Force him to remove the spell?”
I couldn’t help laughing, sounding a bit drunk. “What are you going to do Nash, arrest him?”
“Not a bad idea,” Fremont said, animated. “Do a binding spell—I can help with that—and then Mick threatens to burn the man’s balls off if he doesn’t drop the hex.”
“True,” Maya said. “Men are very attached to their gonads.”
“Unless they have ice in their veins,” Cassandra said. “Like this ununculous.”
Nash cast his gaze on Mick. “Could you do it? Could you restrain him with magic?”
“Possibly. Cassandra can help.”
Cassandra pressed her lips in a tight line and shook her head. “We won’t be able to. But it doesn’t matter. Summon him, and I’ll die. I’m ready.”
“Cass—” Pamela began, and I joined in the protest. Coyote cut us off.
“Before you all go getting excited,” he said, “what Cassandra’s not telling you is that calling a dark sorcerer doesn’t simply involve drawing a pentagram, lighting incense, and doing a little chant. A summoning like this one, strong enough to keep the hex from interfering, will take a sacrifice. A blood sacrifice. A death. And I’m not talking about a chicken you later make into stew.”
My mouth went dry, and Fremont’s eyes widened. “You mean a human sacrifice?”
“You got it.”
I hadn’t known that. I thought of my crazed plan to slip off on my own and summon the sorcerer myself and felt cold. No wonder Coyote had given me the evil eye.
“I know,” Cassandra said, resigned. “I figured the sacrifice would be me.”
Nine
The room erupted in noise. Maya’s voice rose above the others, first in English, then in Spanish. Inside the saloon, the mirror kept on singing. We’d graduated to Oklahoma! and “The Surrey wi
th the Fringe on Top.”
Pamela leapt away from Cassandra in fury, her fearsome mouth in a bloodred snarl. “Is what we have that bad, Cassandra? That you’d walk away from it and die?”
“I’d be dying for you, sweetheart,” Cassandra said. Her calling the seven-foot walking nightmare “sweetheart” made me want to giggle hysterically, even with my headache.
“I vote we sacrifice the Nightwalker,” Pamela said. “Get rid of two threats at once. What’s Ansel doing but waiting to drain us dry?”
“Typical,” Ansel’s voice came from the kitchen doorway. He leaned on the doorframe, his stance unthreatening, but I saw the red shine to his eyes. “Changers. Half animal, half human, not one thing or the other. You think like animals. Rut like them. You must be fun in bed.”
“She has a point, though, Janet,” Fremont whispered to me. “He is the most dangerous of us.”
“Ansel is not being sacrificed,” I said in a loud voice. Ansel would have heard Fremont anyway—Nightwalkers had terrific hearing. “It’s not Ansel’s fault he’s blood frenzied. When the hex is broken, he’ll revert to normal.”
“Sure about that?” Fremont asked worriedly.
No, I wasn’t sure. Nightwalkers were unstable by nature. Ansel might decide he liked the taste of living blood and be unable to give it up again.
“Don’t anyone look at me,” Maya said irritably. “I know I’m the only one here without so-called magical abilities, but the fuck I came here to have someone stick a knife in me.”
“Yeah, me either,” Fremont said.
I sat up. “No one’s getting sacrificed, because we’re not calling the sorcerer. We’ll think of another way.”
Coyote huffed a breath. “Like you blowing up the building? Forget that. I’ll be the sacrifice, ladies and gentlemen. You can stick the knife into my heart.”
Everyone stared at him in silence. I opened my mouth to object, but Mick beat me to it. “No, they’ll need you once the hex is broken. The logical choice is me. As long as I become dragon after I get stabbed, I can heal from it.”