Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I did not crumple to the ground in shock when Nash announced Mick wasn't sitting in a corner, waiting for us. I'd already known he wasn't here—I hadn't felt his aura or any tingle through my ring.

I did feel a pain in my heart beneath my worry. Some part of me had hoped against hope that I'd see his blue eyes or hear his sexy voice asking me if I missed him.

"I didn't think he would be." I kept my voice steady. "They're evil beings. Probably not big on keeping their word."

"If they were supposed to have been dragons, then they would keep their words," Nash said sternly. "Your boyfriend has told me a number of times that dragons are all about honor."

"Maybe it's one reason the Phantomwalkers' creators gave up on them." I folded my arms and shivered. It was hot in here, but my terror for Mick was building anew.

Nash held out the bag. "Where do you want me to put this? "

"The deal was, I leave the egg when I see Mick. I don't see him."

The only auras I sensed were human. Some of the people in the alley were enjoying themselves, while others were anxious about their game or something else in their life. I sensed the focus of the league bowlers, the boredom of kids with their parents, the giddy excitement of girls on a night out together.

As I scanned the crowd, fighting despair, a stain on this normality began to seep in like a cold touch. Alert, I scoured the room but saw nothing that should alarm me.

The evil was outside, behind the building.

"This way," I told Nash, and headed back out the way we'd come in.

Revelers spilled out of the club next door among raucous shouting, thumping music, and exuberant laughter. The fetid aura I sensed came from behind the club and a little to the west, where trees towered in the darkness.

There was a park in that direction, in the middle of a residential neighborhood. What I felt might come from beyond it, but it would be a good place to reconnoiter.

"Follow me," I told Nash as I headed for my motorcycle.

He wanted to argue, because he was Nash. I ignored him and thrust on my helmet, starting my bike. Nash, clutching the bowling bag, had to run for his truck so he wouldn't lose me.

To reach the park, I ducked out to the 66 and then took side roads that wound uphill through houses and trees, Nash's headlights behind me. I slid into the park's lot, which was empty—too late now for evening picnics or tennis. Even the skateboarders had gone to bed.

Clouds piled up over the mountains, blotting out the stars The frigid air of the high peaks grabbed the moisture swirling around them and spit it back as rain. Or at this time of year, snow. Skiers were still enjoying deep powder on the summit.

Nash parked next to me, his window down. "What are we doing here?"

I couldn't answer. I only knew that something waited for me. Did it think me stupid enough to bring the actual egg? Possibly.

I shut off my motorcycle, removed and stowed my helmet, and then jogged under the tall pines that made this place a shady haven in the summer. Patches from the last snowfall lingered, pale smudges in the darkness.

"Where is Mick?" I called into the night.

Wind moved the pine boughs in a soft sigh. The breeze was sharp, carrying cold from the higher elevations. The sky grew darker still.

If the beings thought a storm would send me into hiding, they were wrong. I stretched my senses to the gathering clouds, the icy wind, the bite of snow. Not a very volatile storm, but it was enough to spark my magic alight.

Nash arrived beside me, toting the bag and breathing hard. He didn't ask questions but stilled and listened with me. He'd been a soldier and knew about assessing terrain that might hold an enemy.

As I gazed into the growing blackness, I faced the possibility that I'd never see Mick again.

I'd promised to marry him, to be his mate in the dragon way, and also in the human one. To pledge myself to him alone, which hadn't been as difficult as I'd feared. Mick had always been the only one for me.

"Bring him to me," I commanded whatever waited for me out there. "Do it in the next five minutes, and I'll consider being merciful."

Lightning flashed somewhere to the north, beyond the mountains. I smiled as I encouraged the storm to come to me.

I expected Nash to admonish me for being dramatic, but instead, he called into the darkness, "You heard the lady."

"You believe me when I say something's out there?" I whispered.

Nash shrugged. "I don't see anything but trees and leftover snow, but I've experienced your weird shit before." Too many times, in his opinion.

The reply I received was not what I expected. The darkness moved. It was not a cloud or a shadow, but a thing .

Coyote told me that the dragon gods had made a mistake with the Phantomwalkers, that the creatures were unfinished. They'd been trying to make dragons but had got the formula wrong, like a bad batch of pottery that had to be discarded.

What rose before us now was what should have been a dragon. It had the bulk of such a being, with wide, leathery wings. But its body was skeletal, its face likewise, and it had a glow in its void-like eyes.

It opened its mouth and belched fire.

I yelped and tackled Nash, taking him to the dirt. Rocks scraped my skin, and my hands landed in a cold patch of snow .

Nash rolled away from me and gained his feet, snatching up the bag as he went.

"Don't worry—I saw that ," he snapped. Nash held the bag out and growled at the dragon-beast. "If you want this, you won't hit me with flames. You might burn it."

For answer, the creature threw a fireball right at him. This time I was too far away to help.

The fire wrapped around Nash, who stood his ground. It was magical fire, though it could ignite real things, like trees, dead grass, the houses around the park, and Drake's bowling bag. That went up like a roman candle.

Nash threw the bag away from him, sending it end over end through the dirt. I ran for the bag, grabbing it and beating out the flames.

Nash stood calmly in the middle of a pillar of fire. The Phantomwalker drew back in surprise—or maybe it was waiting for Nash to crumble into ash. The flames poured over Nash for a few moments then died with a whump.

The creature didn't wait around to puzzle out how this happened. It flapped its wings, sending a foul stench over us. Reaching with its talons, it snatched Nash off the ground.

I screamed. Nash was impervious to magic, but if the thing released him from a great height, he'd smash to the ground as easily as any human. He was as helpless up there as Fremont would be.

Wind came to me, and with it, flakes of snow. Another winter storm was hitting the high country.

I set down the bag and reached for the storm, swirls of snow lighting my fingers. I let the Stormwalker magic ground me as I built up Beneath power to strike.

I hesitated. I needed to make the Phantomwalker put Nash down, somehow, before I hit it. I couldn't risk it dropping Nash if I pounded the Phantomwalker with enough magic to hurt it. Another worry was that Nash's null magic might destroy the Phantomwalker altogether as he hung in its grasp, which would send him plummeting to the ground. Same dire result.

If I got Nash killed, Maya would hunt me down the rest of my days.

"Nash," I yelled. "Hang on."

The Phantomwalker began to ponderously flap away. I shouted at it, waving my arms as though that would make any difference. But if it got away from me, who the hell knew what it would do with Nash?

Lightning flickered over the mountains. I've heard people express surprise when there is lightning in snow, but it happens all the time. A storm is a storm, whether the precipitation drops out in the form of rain, hail, or snow.

I grabbed for the snowstorm, letting the frigid air penetrate my senses. Living in Flagstaff had driven me nuts, because there had been some kind of weather almost every day. However, the volatile climate had also gotten me used to storms so that they didn't always send me into a frenzy.

I twined the wind with Beneath magic but found that tonight, the storm power wanted to take over. The forces inside me recognized the intense weather forming above the peaks of the sacred Diné mountains. With effort, I held in the lightning I wanted to let fly, fearing for Nash.

The creature turned, raked its second talon down, and grabbed for the half-burned bowling bag.

I dove for it, letting the storm magic lash from me. Wrapping a chain of lightning around the bag, I jerked it from beneath the Phantomwalker's descending claw. I tossed the bag aside, using another snake of power to cushion its fall. It landed with a soft thump on a bed of pine needles dusted with snow.

There was nothing in the bag but Fremont's bowling ball, but the creature didn't need to know that. Plus, Fremont might want his ball back.

My save was for nothing, though, because the Phantomwalker shot a pale stream of electricity from its mouth, the same as what had blanketed my hotel. It blew the bag into a thousand pieces.

Fragments of canvas, foam rubber, and hard resin sprayed over me to settle, burning, on the park's damp ground.

Well then. Either the creature knew I hadn't brought the real egg, or it didn't care whether it was the egg or not. Which meant the Phantomwalkers didn't give a crap about what happened to Mick. Or Nash for that matter. Or me.

Despair wanted to take over, but Mick had taught me, during our hours of training, to focus on the problem at hand. Right now, that meant rescuing Nash and getting us out of here.

I tried to tamp down the storm powers as I willed my Beneath magic to build. I needed the Beneath part to kill the creature, with an assist from the storm to catch Nash.

Mick could have done something like this without breaking stride. I had to concentrate.

The storm, intense and highly localized, had other ideas. The Stormwalker in me liked it, wanted to grab the growing blizzard and dance on its icy flakes. I broke into a sweat despite the cold, trying to ground myself and launch an attack at the same time .

The creature, done with its task, wheeled away, carrying Nash with it.

"Stop!" I roared.

I started running, tripping over tree roots, and sliding on patches of ice. Then I gathered myself and leapt into the air.

Sometimes I could levitate on my magic, as Gabrielle did, though I couldn't always control it. If a storm was robust enough, I did amazing things, but the hell if I knew how. This storm was pretty wild, so I hoped …

I landed flat on my face, spreadeagled in the mud. Damn it.

A hot breeze from strong wings blasted over me, melting the snow under my hands. The odor that came with it wasn't the horrible stench of the Phantomwalker, but one that held fire and warm smoke, the kind you welcomed on a winter night.

A dragon, black as soot, streaked above the trees after the Phantomwalker. Not Mick—Drake. Another dragon who shimmered with iridescent light—dark greens, blacks, and purples—charged after him. Titus.

"No!" I yelled. The Phantomwalker would destroy them as easily as it had the bowling bag.

I scrambled to my feet and sprinted through the park, trying to keep the dragons and Phantomwalker in sight.

Drake and Titus flamed the creature, who shrugged it off. I kept running until I tumbled right over a metal railing into a concrete pit, flailing until I hit bottom.

Not a pit, I realized as I struggled to my feet, but the skateboard ramps. This space was clear of trees, and I had an unobstructed view of the dragons fighting overhead .

"Grab Nash!" I screamed, hands cupped around my mouth.

I couldn't tell if they heard me, but I could wait no longer. Lightning played at the top of Mount Elden, going for the antenna farm up there. I grabbed it and redirected it toward the Phantomwalker.

The Phantomwalker screeched when the lightning hit it, then it roared with the keen of a category five blizzard. I wound my Beneath magic through the storm, building it into a massive ball of white fire.

"Look out!" I yelled at the dragons, and then I let my magic fly.

The Phantomwalker tried to swoop away, but I'd been ready for that. With the precision of a heat-seeking missile, the incandescent ball struck the Phantomwalker full in the chest.

It let out a piercing shriek that must have shattered every window in the neighborhood before the cry gurgled to nothing. The Phantomwalker hurtled toward the ground but exploded in midair, pieces of it flying over the trees to land with a boom in the parking lot.

The bulk of the creature above me dissolved into thousands of tiny bright lights. The lights became powdery ash that drifted down to coat the trees, the bed of the skateboard park, and me.

Nash, released from the non-existent talon, plunged toward the ground, heading right for the concrete on which I stood.