“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 work table. 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
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.
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 bloodfrenzy 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
