From Jennifer Ashley, With Love Read online

  “The Nightwalker?”

  I thought he was my friend. A long, despairing sigh. Avenge me.

  “I will,” Paige said, still crushing my hand. “I’ll get him for you, Laura. Do you understand?”

  Yes. Another sigh, this one relieved. Avenge me, sister. Avenge me . . . The voice drifted away.

  “Wait!” Paige called. “Laura, don’t leave me . . .”

  Julie frantically tapped her mother’s shoulder and pointed out the open windows. All of us except Heather and Paige craned to look. I froze, astonished.

  A white light whirled out in the desert a foot above the ground, the wind kicking up dust and giving it an eerie glow. I’d seen light like that swirling above vortexes, but there were no vortexes in this part of Magellan. Vortexes are ancient things—they don’t just form—so this wasn’t a new one.

  The light danced, back and forth, back and forth. I couldn’t help thinking it was making fun of us.

  And then, everything stopped. The light vanished, the wind died, the voice was gone. The seven of us were left sitting in the dark around a table in a windswept room, the only light coming from faint starlight outside.

  Heather jumped to her feet and switched on the overhead light, a triumphant smile on her face. The rest of us blinked at the sudden glare, Paige shaken, Fremont fearful. I extracted my hand from Paige’s grip and rubbed it.

  “Wonderful!” Heather said. “I’ve had the spirits speak through me, but never out loud like that.”

  “What was that light?” Fremont asked. “Outside, behind you. Did you see it?”

  “No.” Heather looked disappointed, then she shrugged. “Probably the manifestation of Laura’s spirit. I ward this shop very well, so only the voice got through.”

  Bear and I exchanged a glance. She agreed with me—the voice and the light had been two different things. The voice and the wind had definitely been fake, though I didn’t know how Heather had done it. The light, I wasn’t so sure.

  Paige started pulling Laura’s things back toward her. “I know now what I need to know. Laura is dead, and the Nightwalker you are harboring in your hotel, Ms. Begay, killed her.”

  “You don’t know that at all,” I said hotly.

  “She never called Ansel by name,” Fremont pointed out. “She could have meant another Nightwalker. Ansel’s a decent guy. You know, when he’s not under a hex.”

  Paige’s voice was thick with anger. “He killed her. I want him to pay.”

  “Now, hang on,” Fremont said, getting to his feet. “What do you mean, pay? You have to prove it was him first.”

  “You heard her,” Paige said. “Laura told me to avenge her.” She jammed her sister’s belongings into her big purse. “Thank you, Heather. This was worth it.”

  Without saying good night, she slung her purse over her shoulder and stalked out of the room. We heard the shop’s front door bang a few moments after that.

  “Great,” I said, getting up. Following the dictates I’d learned as a kid, I pushed in my chair. “She’ll have every slayer in the country running out here for the bounty. Mick and I can’t fight all of them.”

  “Nightwalkers are dangerous, Janet,” Heather said, walking past me in a whiff of patchouli. “I’ve never been easy with you letting him live in your hotel.”

  “I’m more dangerous than any Nightwalker, Heather. Trust me.”

  I walked out into the cool night with Naomi, Julie, and Fremont in time to see Paige peel out of the dirt lot in a small sedan. Bear had already disappeared, but this didn’t surprise me. Like Coyote, she came and went as she pleased.

  “I’d give you a lift home, Janet,” Fremont said, starting for his truck. “But I have a date.” He winked.

  “With who?” I asked in alarm. Fremont had the propensity for going out with entirely the wrong women—magical femme fatales—to dire consequences. I’ve had to extract him from disastrous relationships more than once.

  Fremont’s grin flashed in the darkness. “It’s Olivia Medina.”

  “Oh.” One of Maya’s cousins, who was a harmless human being. Hmm. A Medina going out with a Hansen. The world might cease revolving.

  Fremont drove away south, and Naomi offered to give me a lift home. I accepted and climbed with Julie into the big truck in which Naomi hauled around nursery plants for her business. As Naomi pulled around the strand of big cottonwoods that lined the parking lot, I saw to the north an orange light, the definite flicker of flame, and black smoke rise to blot out the stars.

  Only two things lay in that direction—Barry’s bar and the Crossroads hotel. One of them was on fire.

  “Shit!”

  Two fire trucks rushed past us, and Naomi turned onto the highway to follow them. I couldn’t help pressing my feet to the floorboard as Naomi drove the twisting road north out of town.

  “If the slayers are trying to burn Ansel out,” I said, “I’m slaying them.”

  Naomi shot me a glance. “You said something about slayers inside. What do you mean by slayers?”

  Julie watched my mouth, reading my lips interestedly as I explained. “Bounty hunters who kill Nightwalkers. The bounty on Nightwalkers is temptingly high.”

  “Who puts a bounty on something no one believes in?”

  “Lots of people. Pissed off mages, families of Nightwalker victims, families of the Nightwalkers themselves. Who wants a vampire in the family?”

  Naomi shook her head. “Poor Ansel.”

  “Some Nightwalkers do deserve to be staked,” I said. “But why the fuck are they burning down my hotel?”

  “Almost there.” Naomi didn’t admonish me for swearing in front of her daughter, not that I’d have noticed at the moment.

  Naomi’s truck flew through the parking lot of Barry’s bar—the bar intact—and pulled up behind the fire trucks. The bar had emptied, bikers standing outside in the motorcycle-filled lot to watch the flames eat into my hotel. Red lights flashed from the north on the highway, Flat Mesa responding to the call as well.

  I leapt from the pickup before it stopped moving and sprinted toward the commotion.

  My saloon was on fire. The high-ceilinged saloon had been an add-on to the three-story, nearly square hotel back in the 1920s. It jutted out from the rest of the hotel and had its own outside entrance as well as one from the lobby. Carlos, the bartender, in his white shirt and black pants, stared morosely at the saloon, hands on hips.

  My guests and hired help had gathered on the west side of the hotel. I scanned the knot of them, about twenty people in all, but I didn’t see Ansel.

  I did hear the magic mirror screaming inside. The sound reverberated through every mirror in the hotel, winding up to a shattering frequency. I could hear it even in the mirror on my motorcycle around the back.

  I couldn’t do anything for it. It might be terrified, but an ordinary fire wouldn’t destroy the mirror. It would have to tough it out for now.

  If this was an ordinary fire.

  The firemen were unrolling hoses and getting on with their business. “What happened?” I yelled at Carlos.

  He only spread his hands. “No se. Everything was fine, and all the sudden, the roof exploded into flames. I ran like hell.”

  “You all right?”

  Carlos nodded, swallowing. “Yeah, I’m okay. We got everyone out.”

  “Ansel?”

  He shot me a startled look. “I don’t know.”

  I left him, sprinting around to the back of the building. Acrid smoke poured into the night, stinging my throat. I saw another clump of people gathered on top of the empty railroad bed, and I ran for that.

  Mick broke away from the group and met me at the bottom of the bank. Before I could demand he tell me what had happened, he cupped my face in my hands, his eyes filled all the way across with black. “You all right?” His voice was fierce.

  “Fine. What—?”

  My word choked off as Mick yanked me into his arms and held me in a breath-stealing embrace, his lips finding
mine in a savage kiss.

  He released me and rearranged his look of raw worry to a grim one of anger. “Ansel’s still inside,” he said. “He refused to come out.”

  “Is he crazy? If that fire reaches him, he’s dead.”

  “He said he might be dead if he stays inside, but he will be dead if he comes out. I didn’t argue with him.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Mick took my hand and helped me scramble up the six-foot, soft-sided bank of the raised railroad bed. On the top, where ties and rails used to be, was a flat stretch about four feet wide that ran for miles, used now as a hiking trail.

  On the summit stood Elena my cook, and a tall, black-haired man, stark naked, with the tattooed ends of dragon wings rising from around his shoulders up his neck.

  “Drake!” I snarled, starting for him. “You flamed my hotel? Please, let me kill you.”

  Mick seized me from behind and lifted me off my feet. Drake looked me over with quiet dark eyes. His long black hair was loose in the moonlight, he obviously having recently shifted from being a dragon.

  “I need the Nightwalker,” he said to me in his cool voice.

  “Too bad. What did you have to do with abducting Laura DiAngelo? Where is she? Is she dead?”

  “I did not abduct her, she is not dead, and I insist you bring me the Nightwalker. Surrender him to me, and I’ll stop the fire.”

  His answer told me he knew all about Laura and much more about what was going on than I did. “Ansel’s my friend,” I said. “And if Laura is alive, it means he didn’t kill her.” That fact both relieved and confused me, though relief was buried way down on my list of emotions at the moment.

  “Even if Ansel did not kill this woman, he’s murdered in the past,” Drake said. “He’s drained humans of blood and left crushed bodies in his wake. He must make restitution. Give him to me.”

  “Since when are dragons interested in standing up for humankind? What do you really want, Drake?”

  “I want the Nightwalker,” Drake said in a hard voice.

  Elena stepped up to Drake. At first glance, Elena Williams, an Apache from Whiteriver, looked like a harmless middle-aged woman, plump in body, a habitual frown on her face. She wore her hair pulled into a tight bun, and her attire, as usual, was white polyester pants, a bright print top, and white sneakers.

  She was also the conduit of generations of Apache shaman magic. She made a mean tamale pie and had a temper as sharp as the knives she kept honed in my kitchen.

  Drake looked down at her without worry—big mistake.

  “The Nightwalker is under my protection,” Elena said. “And if that fire gets into my kitchen, my next dish will be roasted dragon wings.”

  Drake looked puzzled. “You would defend a Nightwalker? I’d thought he would be anathema to your people.”

  “I haven’t asked my people,” Elena said. “but he’s done no harm to me. Or to you. Dragons don’t care about how many humans Nightwalkers drain. You Firewalkers care about no one but yourselves.”

  I couldn’t have put it better myself. Drake pretending he wanted to kill Ansel to avenge human victims was a big, fat lie.

  “You have to give us more than that,” Mick said to him.

  Though Mick hadn’t spoken until now, he hadn’t let me go. I stood in the circle of his arms, his chest hard against my back.

  Mick wasn’t just being affectionate—he held me because he didn’t trust me around dragons, with good reason. My Beneath magic was clamoring to come out so I could whack Drake fifty feet backward. He was burning down my hotel, for the gods’ sake.

  “The Nightwalker has something I want,” Drake said impatiently.

  “What?” Mick asked.

  “He stole it, he and that woman. She doesn’t have it, so he must. Bring him to me.”

  Ansel had stolen something from the dragons? Ansel hadn’t mentioned dragons in his story about Laura and finding antiques for her, but then, Laura lived in Santa Fe, and the dragon compound on the cliffs near there probably had immeasurable treasure stored in it. Dragons liked to hoard.

  Mick let go of me, but it was to move me behind him so he could face Drake full on. “Unless you have proof, the Nightwalker is under my protection.”

  Drake started to growl. “Once you bring him out here, I will make him reveal where the object is. That will be proof enough.”

  Dragon logic. Then again, Ansel’s day sleep this morning had come upon him a little too conveniently. I seriously wanted to interrogate him myself.

  “Leave the Nightwalker to me,” Mick said. “If he has stolen something belonging to the dragons, I’ll let you know.”

  Fire danced in Drake’s hands, rage glittering in his eyes. “This is not your business Micalerianicum. I don’t care what kind of general you are, or how bravely you fought in the war. My task is to get the object back, and I intend to use any force at my disposal to do it.”

  Behind us, the firemen were struggling to put out the flames, arcs of water shooting into the sky. But dragon fire burns ten times hotter than a normal fire, and there would be no saving my hotel.

  “Mick,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm. “Please, let me kill him.”

  “Bring me the Nightwalker,” Drake repeated with more force. “And I’ll spare the rest of your abode. That’s all you have to do.”

  I stepped out from behind Mick. “Do the words fuck you mean anything to you?”

  Drake’s eyes burned red, and a big ball of fire danced between his hands. He tilted back his head and shouted a word into the night.

  I had no idea what he said, but Mick apparently did. He was past me, going for Drake before I could draw a breath.

  Drake threw the fire at him. I yelped, but the fire hit a wall of flame that Mick had thrown up in front of him. Drake’s fire struck Mick’s wall and flowed harmlessly around him, leaving him untouched in a bubble in the middle.

  I grabbed Elena and pulled her well out of the way as Mick let fly his fire at Drake. Drake defended with his own flame wall, and then both dragon-men disappeared into fire and smoke, the inferno competing with the already wild one of my saloon.

  An orange-red missile zoomed out of the night from the east, coming in on us with swift precision. I recognized it as a dragon, and I knew which dragon, but instead of touching down, he headed for the hotel, rising above it in a cloud of darkness.

  The darkness hid him from the people below, but I the magical being could still see him. He hovered above the hotel proper, his dragon sides expanding as he drew a long breath.

  “Colby!” I screamed. “No!”

  Colby let out his breath. Fire belched out of his mouth, streaming through the blackness of the night, aimed directly at the main part of the hotel.

  My hard work, the year and a half of my life, the place I’d carved out for myself, was about to be swallowed by dragon flame.

  Elena reached out her plump and work-worn hand, skin covered with little burns and nicks from her work in the kitchen. She chanted a word under her breath.

  As I watched in astonishment, a glassy light flowed up from the base of my hotel and oozed around it. Colby’s fire met the glasslike bubble around the hotel walls and dispersed.

  Elena’s face, touched by the firelight, was calm, even serene. If I’d performed that feat, I’d be panting and exhausted, crazed with power and trying to stop myself blasting Colby out of the sky so he’d fall on Drake.

  Colby somersaulted in midair and came for us, dragon wings sending a hot wind to whip my long hair into my face. He landed out in the desert with another whap of dragon wings, and a dark mist obscured him.

  When the mist cleared, Colby the man was jogging toward us, his all-over inked body an interesting pattern in the darkness.

  I ran at him. “Colby, you—”

  Colby raised his big hands. “Before you start yelling at me, Janet, I’m bound by dragon law to obey that asshole for another five months. Drake gives me the command to flame your
hotel, I flame your hotel. I’m a loaded gun, and he’s allowed to point me and shoot.”

  He’d stopped my words, but my anger didn’t die. “What the hell for? Why is he doing this?”

  “Because he wants that Nightwalker. Don’t ask me why—no one tells me a damn thing.”

  Colby was a big man, as all dragons were, his body tattooed all over, his hair as dark as his dragon eyes, though his human eyes were light blue. I was still boiling in rage, but Colby wrapped his big arms around me and lifted me off my feet in a crushing hug.

  “Janet, sweet baby, it’s been too long.”

  “Put me down, you idiot.”

  Colby thumped me back to the ground but didn’t let me go. “Hey, just because Micky and Drakey are battling it out doesn’t mean we can’t catch up on old times.”

  I struggled away from him, trying to see what was going on with Drake and Mick. They’d battled before, but Drake was formidable, and this time they were more evenly matched.

  Mick was punching Drake in the face behind the flames, which made me feel slightly better, but then Drake raked fiery hands down Mick’s chest, burning flesh.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I reached down within myself to find my Beneath magic, but before I could touch the coil of gleeful power waiting for me, a gunshot sounded not ten feet away.

  I yelled and clapped my hands over my ears. Colby spun around, and even Elena jerked her attention from the hotel.

  Sheriff Nash Jones marched up the bank of the railroad bed. Red and blue lights flashed from the top of his new SUV, parked as close to the railroad as he could put it, white spotlights glaring through the night. The light glistened on his short black hair and also on the shotgun he carried in his hands.

  Nash said nothing to me, Elena, or Colby, but moved past us to the dragons. He slung his shotgun over his shoulder, reached right in through the fire, grabbed both men, and yanked them apart.

  Mick cut off his fire instantly as Nash let them go, but Drake shot out another flame to whirl around Nash. Not to kill him, I saw, but to try to drag him off his feet.

  The fire covered Nash all right, as he stood unmoving. Nash lit up like a halo, a being surrounded by St. Elmo’s fire. Then the flame imploded, rushed into the depths of Nash’s body, and winked out.