Stormwalker: Nightwalker Part 3

Frank took me to the corner of the campground. Whatever tent had stood there had been removed, along with Laura's gear, leaving only the stake holes in the ground and burned out ash in a fire pit.

I'd wished I could hold something that had belonged to her, but I made do with standing inside the four points of the stake holes and closing my eyes. To make it look to Frank like I was doing something, I raised my hands, palms down, over the place her sleeping bag would have been.

At first, I felt nothing but the same blinding, pounding presence that had been beating on me since I arrived, grinding through me like a toothache.

My problem with ancient sites is that I don't see auras from only the last few days. I see them through the ages, some bright, some faded, all overlapping until they swirl like a vortex in my head. This campsite wasn't as overwhelming as the ruined pueblos, but I felt a wave of humanity from the builders who'd laid the first stones to the last vacationer from Ohio.

I tried to concentrate. Many people had lain here over the years in this very spot, men and women, talking, laughing, sleeping, having s.e.x.

But the young woman from Santa Fe had been the only one abducted. I sucked in a breath when I saw it-not the incident itself but her fear.

Stark terror, rising up like blackness in the morning. I sensed her struggling and saw the aura of what she struggled with.

The stench of blood, the black outline of fear-Nightwalker.

But overlapping the Nightwalker aura was another aura, which sent my heart pounding.

Sharp, fiery, with a bite of hot ash.

Dragon.

Chapter Four.

Frank, of course, wanted to know what I'd sensed. I couldn't very well tell him I suspected that Laura had fought not only a Nightwalker, but a dragon, one whose aura was very much like my fiance's.

"Um," I said. "Not much. Are the campers sure she never came back?" He gave me his keen stare. "They're sure. The campground was crowded that night. Plenty of witnesses. Why?"

Because I'd sensed Laura being dragged from here. The campers might have missed seeing her return from her dinner in Gallup, or maybe she'd gotten back here very, very late.

But . . . if Ansel had been with her, what had happened to him between the time he'd blacked out in the car and Laura fighting him in the campsite later? If Ansel had gone into blood frenzy he most likely would have killed her right there in the car, not ridden with her the many, many miles to Chaco Canyon. At some point, he'd left her and woken up alone in the middle of the desert.

And a dragon had most definitely disturbed the campsite.

The auras had been left at the same time. Dragon, Nightwalker, and Laura had been there together that night.

I seriously needed to talk to Mick.

I convinced Frank to drive me back over the rutted road and down to Gallup. He left me with my now silent motorcycle at a large coffee shop that had just opened up, where I and a mixture of Indian and white travelers ordered breakfast.

From there I called Mick on a payphone-I could never find my cell phone when I needed it-told him what happened, and asked for a ride home. Mick's voice went rough with rage when he heard about my possessed bike, and said in clipped tones that he was leaving immediately.

I'd have an hour and more to kill before Mick arrived, so after consuming a breakfast burrito way too fast, I walked a few doors down the street to Jeff Benally's store. He wasn't open yet, but he was there, saw me, and let me in. He wrote me a commission check for a few photos he'd sold since he'd sent the last one, and I took it gladly. Running a hotel was expensive.

"I need more," he said. Jeff was a large Navajo who wore plenty of turquoise and silver, a walking advertis.e.m.e.nt for his store. "I can't keep your pictures in stock." I hadn't sent much more lately than the few photos I'd taken of Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly in the snow last winter. I thought of the sunrise I'd just seen at Chaco Canyon and decided it would be a good place for my next shoot, if I could dampen my reaction to the place long enough.

Plus it would be a good excuse to go back out there and look around.

"Soon, Jeff. You can't hurry art."

He gave me a grin. "Sure, Janet. That's what they all say." Mick pulled to a stop in front of his door, in a truck with Fremont Hansen: Plumbing and Fix-It on the side. Fremont wasn't with him, for which I was grateful, because Fremont could talk, talk, and talk some more, and I wasn't in the mood right now.

Mick pulled me into a hard embrace outside the shop, with Jeff looking on interestedly, then stood me back and checked me over for bruises and abrasions. Satisfied that I wasn't as near death as I sometimes had been in the past, he lifted my bike into the roomy truck bed and drove us west into Arizona.

I told him the whole story, slowly and with more details than I'd been able to convey on the phone, ending with me standing in the campground, taking in the aura.

Mick listened to me without interrupting, and when I'd finished he said, "Hmm."

"That's it?" I asked as his eyes flicked between road and speedometer as he drove around an eighteen-wheeler. "I'm carried off by my possessed Harley and sense that Laura was abducted possibly by a Nightwalker, possibly by a dragon, and all you can say is hmm?"

"It's interesting."

"Not the word I used. My language was more colorful."

Mick moved his strong hand to rest on my thigh. "The fact that you're all right is what's filling my mind, Janet. The rest of it-the bike, the abduction, the missing woman-all that is noise."

I suddenly wished we weren't in a pickup racing at eighty down the freeway. Mick's blue eyes darkened, and he gave my thigh a warm caress.

"Did you hear what I said about sensing she might have been taken by a dragon?" I asked.

"Yes." Mick calmly drove on, but his eyes changed from blue to deep black. "Do you know which dragon?"

"I couldn't tell. I was hoping you would know. What is this dragon business you keep going out to the compound for?"

"Nothing to do with abducting antiques dealers from Santa Fe." I waited, but it was clear he wasn't going to tell me. I kept my temper in check and asked, "Do you know who could have done this?"

"No. But I'll find out."

"You know, if you turn this truck around, we can be at the compound by this afternoon," I said.

Mick kept stubbornly driving west. "No way am I letting you near the dragon compound again. They tried to hold you hostage before, and there's nothing to say they won't again. I can get there faster on my own, and I'll interrogate a certain obnoxious dragon out there until he gives me some answers."

"You mean Colby? I was thinking more of Drake."

Drake was the a.s.sistant to Bancroft, one of the dragon council, which consisted of three dragons who pretty much ruled dragonkind. Drake's position as Bancroft's eyes and ears gave him a lot of power but also meant that Drake did whatever dirty deed Bancroft didn't want to handle himself.

Colby, on the other hand, though a troublemaker, was not an evil b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He inked his human body like a yakuza, lived to hara.s.s Mick and other dragons, and was currently serving a sentence at the dragon compound for some crime he hadn't told me about. Probably hadn't genuflected to his dragon highness Bancroft fast enough, or something.

I conceded that Mick should approach Colby alone, because he was right-the dragons didn't like me. I was not the most popular person at the dragon compound that rested high on a cliff outside Santa Fe.

Mick took the turnoff at Holbrook and drove us back south through Flat Mesa to my hotel at the Crossroads. By the time we rolled through the dirt parking lot, the tourists were up and wandering about, taking pictures of the view, the hotel, and-after I stepped out of the truck- me, the Navajo woman who ran the place.

Mick unloaded my motorcycle, saying he'd check it over before he started contacting dragons and getting them to talk. He pushed it toward its shed while the guests snapped pictures until they'd had enough and headed out for their destinations of the day.

Inside the high-ceilinged lobby, Ca.s.sandra had fixed her steely gaze on a woman who jabbered at her over the counter. Ca.s.sandra wore her usual work attire-raw silk business suit, hair in a sleek bun. No one would put her down as the most powerful witch in the western United States, but she was.

More powerful than the woman gesticulating to her-Heather Hansen, dressed in flowing clothes, multiple pendants, and lots of bangles. Heather owned the local New Age store, which sold incense, jewelry, tarot cards, books, and plenty of souvenirs from Magellan and its vortexes. Our vortexes weren't as famous as the ones in the red rocks of Sedona, but ours were more deadly. Not many people knew how deadly.

Heather and Ca.s.sandra were arguing, Ca.s.sandra in her understated way, Heather with hands on hips and determination in her eyes.

"It's too dangerous," I heard Ca.s.sandra say. "You'll be messing with forces beyond your control."

"That's why I want you there," Heather said. "You're a much better witch than I am." She said this with envy, but it was the truth. "I need your help. Janet, you too."

"Help with what?"

Ca.s.sandra gave me a dark look. "Heather wants to have a seance."

"Oh?" I asked, understanding her alarm. "Why?"

What most people think of as seances-mediums, dark rooms, candles, supplicants holding hands around a table-are harmless nonsense. Most are hosted by fake mediums out to impress people.

Real seances are dangerous. Ca.s.sandra wasn't kidding about forces that could be unleashed by a weak witch-demons, dead witches who should stay dead, and other bad things, always waiting for a gateway to open.

I doubted Heather could deliberately open a path herself, but she might accidentally.

Though she was more the nature-lover variety of witch, Heather did have some magic in her.

Heather answered me. "I have a client whose sister has been killed, but she has no proof of the culprit. She wants to ask her sister in person what happened." Three guesses as to who the sister was. Heather suddenly had my interest.

"The dead are notoriously unreliable witnesses," I said cautiously. "Nine times out of ten, they have no idea what happened to them."

"I tried to tell her that," Ca.s.sandra said. "Nine times out of ten, you don't even get the person you are trying to reach. A demon or someone else waiting to cross over sees the opportunity and rides in on your pathway. Like a hitchhiker. A demonic, slash-your-throat and spit down your neck hitchhiker."

Heather waved this away with a soft clinking of bracelets. "I've done hundreds of seances, ladies. I'm very good at finding connections for people. This will be simple. Paige will talk with her sister, and we'll be done."

"Paige?" I asked, pretending to be casual.

"She came here from Santa Fe. Her sister disappeared, but Paige is sure she's dead." The bite of uneasiness in my stomach turned into a melee, which didn't sit well with my breakfast burrito. "I'll come," I said, ignoring Ca.s.sandra's anger. "Where and when?"

"Tonight at Paradox," Heather said. "Eight thirty. I want to make sure it's fully dark." A person could hold a seance any time of the day or night with the same result, but people are attracted to the dark and spooky. I don't know why. I like safety, friends around me who can kick some serious a.s.s, and no demons.

"Good." Heather beamed. "I wanted to let you know, Ca.s.sandra, as we are the only true witches in town."

Ca.s.sandra gave her a cold stare, but she was businesslike enough to realize she shouldn't p.i.s.s off the person who constantly recommended my hotel to her tourist customers. If you want the full Magellan experience, visit the vortexes, shop at Paradox, and stay at the Crossroads Hotel, Heather would tell them.

"Then I thank you for telling me," Ca.s.sandra said. Fortunately for her, the phone rang, and she said, "Excuse me," and turned away to answer it.

As I walked Heather to the front door, she said, "Don't take this the wrong way, Janet, but leave Mick at home. I don't want him scaring away my guests." Heather was afraid of Mick. She had no idea that Mick was a dragon-she thought he was a biker, a h.e.l.l's Angel, maybe, and she was more afraid of bikers than she was of dark forces.

Not very smart, but understandable. The Crossroads Bar across the parking lot attracted some pretty scary-looking humans.

I agreed I'd come without Mick, and Heather left, mollified.

I needed to question Ansel again, but there was nothing I could do about that until he woke up, so I went to question another being I needed to interrogate.

At least all seemed to be in order in my hotel this morning, thank the G.o.ds. Elena was chopping vegetables with vigor in the kitchen, the two new maids were busy cleaning upstairs, the brochure rack was full, and the plants were watered. The saloon was well stocked to open this afternoon, complete with cracked magic mirror hanging over the bar.

The mirror had come with the hotel. I'd found it upstairs in the dusty attic soon after I'd moved in, after Mick and I had awakened it with a burst of Tantric magic. The crack in it had come later, after one of the harrowing adventures that made me question my wisdom in opening a hotel.

Because Mick and I had woken it, the mirror was now bound to obey both of us unquestioningly. The fact that the mirror had been able to disobey me on the road made me more than uneasy.

The mirror appeared to be asleep. I shook its frame, the gla.s.s tinkling, and was rewarded with a sleepy, "What?"

"What happened out there?" I demanded. "I told you to contact Mick, and you said you couldn't. What did you mean, you couldn't?"

"I mean I couldn't, honey," it said, the mirror coming more awake. "Something was keeping my mouth shut. Oh, girlfriend, it was terrible."

I didn't like the sound of that-something or someone that could make my magic mirror immune to my commands had to be deadly powerful. Magic mirrors were highly magical talismans, and as annoying as this one could be, it had proved its worth more than once, saving my life and Mick's several times over.

"Janet," the mirror said. "Take me with you to the seance. Please? "

"No," I said immediately. I could see the trouble that would bring.

"I can make spooky noises," it said. "You know, lend atmosphere."

"The people such a thing might impress wouldn't hear you anyway." Those without magical ability can't hear the magic mirror at all. I envied them. "And I thought you were asleep during that conversation."

"Maybe, maybe not."

"Forget it. You're not going."

"Fine," the mirror said grumpily. "Seances are c.r.a.p anyway. It wasn't a person," it finished.

"Sorry?" I blinked at the non sequitur.

"On the bike, sweetie. I didn't sense the presence of another mage. Not a person."

"A spell then?" I asked.

"But someone has to cast the spell, don't they?"

Someone did. I left the magic mirror, disquieted.

I went in search of Mick, who was tinkering with my bike near its shed behind the hotel.

His only greeting was a quick look at me before returning his gaze to his socket wrench, but Mick could smolder me to ash with just a glance.

He had very blue eyes, the color of which had caught me when I'd looked up into them the night he'd taken my virginity. That had been after I'd tried to kill him with my storm magic, which he'd let crawl all over his body before he'd dispersed it and laughed at me.