Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I couldn't simply run into the canyon, yelling, hands blazing with Beneath magic. I needed a strategy, to line up my troops in the most effective way.

Colby had to stay out of the line of fire, but he could distract the Phantomwalkers, and maybe help Mick escape. Gabrielle and Nash would be with me in the front. Maya and Carl should stay in the truck. They'd be safer, and Maya could race the two of them to safety if need be.

Of course, none of that happened.

Gabrielle swung off Colby's bike and charged into the narrow crevice in the sandstone. "Eat hot death, dirtbags!" she shouted.

Colby rushed right after her.

Nash, who'd clearly also wanted a plan of attack, growled his frustration. He carried a toolbox, which, typical of Nash, was meticulously organized. Ropes, crampons, flashlights, small cubes that would become rain gear, and little packs of rations were all carefully packed into their own compartments .

He pulled out a flashlight, then shouldered a coil of rope and added a grappling hook to it. Smart. The rocks around here could open in sudden fissures, pretty to look at but deadly to fall into.

"Grandad, you stay—" Nash broke off as Carl jogged toward the slit in the rock after Colby. "Get back here! Stay with Maya."

Carl turned at the entrance. "You aren't the only one who saw combat, son. This isn't the jungles of southeast Asia, but I know how to avoid the enemy."

"You were eighteen," Nash argued.

"Doesn't matter. It's something you never forget." Carl started forward again and slipped into the darkness.

"See what I put up with?" Nash muttered, his face tight.

"We'll catch up to them and toss them out," I said. "Then you and I and Gabrielle extract Mick."

"Agreed."

When Nash thought I made sense, things were truly precarious.

I lifted Fremont's bowling bag from my motorcycle and tightly clenched its handle. Leaving it in the truck would be better than bringing it with me but not with only Maya to guard it. I couldn't put her into that danger. I hefted the bag, ready to defend the egg with all I had.

Maya was the only person who showed any astuteness for the situation. She remained by my motorcycle, cell phone in hand. Before we could start for the canyon, Maya strode to Nash and threw her arms around him.

"Come back alive, or I'll kill you," she promised.

Nash's face softened as he cupped her cheek and pressed a kiss to her lips. He said nothing, but their eyes met in understanding .

I glanced away to let them have their moment, and when I looked back, Maya was trotting in the direction of the truck, her sneakers stirring up puffs of dust.

"I love seeing the two of you happy," I told Nash as he joined me.

I got a scowl in return. "It's none of your business. Stay behind me."

Nash strode into the cave before I could say another word. I rolled my eyes and followed him.

We stepped from bright morning sunshine into cool shadow, the sounds of breeze and birdsong abruptly shutting off.

Slot canyons are nature's sculptures hidden deep in the desert. Many of them lie on Navajo lands, accessible only through a tour booked with a Diné company. They'd closed them off fairly recently to keep their beauty from being destroyed by vandals or too many visitors.

Some, like this one, lay far from the tourists' radar, remote, alone, unvisited. Only those who ventured far off the beaten track—and didn't get caught—would have found this place.

I'd learned about this canyon from exploring the land as a child with my father, and as I say, I'd never liked it. Carl had discovered it in his younger days as well, when there were fewer hikers seeking the dwindling wilderness. The Phantomwalkers might have been dormant then or saw no reason to drive either of us away. After all, we weren't dragons.

No matter what this canyon was to them, the Phantomwalkers were now luring me into a well-baited trap. But that didn't matter. I had to rescue Mick, even if he was being used as a dragon-shaped piece of cheese to attract me, the unruly mouse.

I couldn't hear Gabrielle, Colby, or Carl up ahead. The sound of Nash leading the way was all that came back to me, his footfalls thudding in the sand.

Nash's flashlight shone on the sharp curves of the canyon, stone that captured the beauty of the land and froze it forever. Sunlight shone down on us from cracks above, varying the colors of the walls from pink to purple to deep violet to light red.

Nash vanished around a tight corner. I followed a few steps behind him, but when I rounded the bend, I found only another curve and no Nash. I hurried, pattering to keep up.

After the next corner, the canyon straightened into a narrow passage, sunlight showing me empty sand and stone. Nash wasn't there.

I didn't dare shout for him. I pressed outwardly with my senses, searching for auras, but I found none.

The dragon egg jiggled inside the bag, as though it also knew we were alone.

My heart beating swiftly, I pulled the shard of mirror from my pocket and opened its chamois bag. "Hey," I whispered. "Where are they?"

"Gone," the mirror whispered back. "And here. They're all around us."

"Not helping. Where's Mick?"

"In the deepest shadow."

Still not the most lucid answer, but I took the warning seriously. This canyon was a magical place, not only for its splendor but also for the deep cloak of earth magic that embraced it .

Dragons—Firewalkers—were earth magic, very much so. Phantomwalkers, created at the same time, were as well. I couldn't defeat them with my Stormwalker power alone.

I recalled the night Mick had dragged me from a fight in a roadhouse bar in Nevada to the cheap motel across the highway. My opponents had thought he'd planned to teach me a lesson, and I was terrified he was too.

Mick had stood six feet away from me in the motel bedroom and told me to give him my best shot.

I'd fired him with all the lightning from the thunderstorm that had been booming around us. He'd flared with electricity, spreading his arms to light up like a firework. For one horrified moment, I'd thought I'd killed him.

Mick had absorbed all the lightning, a large bolt of it diving down his throat, and he'd laughed. Then he'd taken me to dinner.

Dragons could devour my storm magic for breakfast—or in that particular case, an evening snack. Logically, Phantomwalkers would be able to as well.

Fine. I'd give them a dose of the other side of me, and this time, I wouldn't hold back.

I drew a breath, hugged the bowling bag against my side, and strode onward.

Around the next corner, the crack overhead closed, and the light faded. I conjured the tiniest spark of magic between my fingers, enough to keep me from tripping over any errant rocks, and continued.

I could feel them around me, as the mirror had said. Were they a piece of the cave wall? I recalled the rock thing that had attacked Mick in Cesnia's lair. This entire slot canyon could be a Phantomwalker, or a collection of them .

In that case, I was already inside their collective throat. Not a happy thought.

They didn't attack. I walked alone, in silence, deeper into the cave.

I knew from experience that this slot canyon had an exit on its far end. It came out through a narrow opening above a steep drop to a wash about five feet below it.

As I walked farther and farther in, my small light showing the way, I realized that the canyon I'd explored as a girl with my dad and this place were no longer the same. Had the Phantomwalkers bent the rocks around us to their will, or taken them over somehow? Or was I in a shadow world of the Phantomwalkers, as I'd guessed?

The bag jumped harder in my hand. Warning me?

I rounded another corner and stumbled to a halt when bright light flooded my face. I screwed my eyes shut and flung up my hand, ready to blast whatever had come at me.

"Oops," Carl said, and the light grew less intense. "Didn't mean to night blind you."

I cracked open my eyes to find the older Jones with his back against the dark wall, Nash's big flashlight now pointed at the ground.

"Are you all right?" I asked him. "Where's Nash? Gabrielle and Colby?"

Carl shrugged. "Nash ran past me and gave me his light. I never caught up to your sister and her boyfriend."

This did not bode well. "You can get out if you go back the way I came. Keep your hand on a wall, and that should guide you to the entrance."

Carl regarded me in annoyance. "No shit, Sherlock. But I'm not going back. My grandson's in there, with who knows what else? Besides, I can light your way. "

"Signaling to everything in there that we're coming."

"They already know." Carl shrugged. "We've given away our position, so let's use whatever advantages we have. Sneakiness only gets you so far, then you need tactics to win a battle."

"I don't have any tactics," I confessed. "That is, I started to form them, then everyone ran off."

"Good thing you found me." Carl grinned and gestured with the flashlight. "Let's do some planning."

As strategies went, it wasn't the best, but we didn't have much choice. First, we had to find the enemy before we could engage them.

I told Carl my theory that the Phantomwalkers were part of the stones themselves, but he shook his head. "If that were true, we'd already be dead."

He was likely right. I reasoned that the others were still alive, only hidden from me. I could hope that they'd already found Mick and would come bursting out with him any moment. Any moment, now …

In the meantime, Carl and I executed our plan. I had Carl stay put, then I walked forward with the bag, rounding a couple of corners but keeping Carl's flashlight behind me in sight. I didn't want to lose him as well. I tiptoed to a niche in the rock and placed the bag there before returning to Carl.

Did I really think the Phantomwalkers would fall for the old fake-egg-in-the-bag trick again? Probably not, but it might distract them. All I needed was for them to move their attention from me for a few moments .

I breathed a sigh of relief when I found Carl where I left him. He held the flashlight in one hand and cradled the egg I'd wrapped in my jacket in the other.

Now to wait.

I wasn't certain what I expected. For the Phantomwalkers to gleefully rush to the bag and run off with it, guiding the way to Mick? They'd proved to be more canny than that.

What I heard as Carl and I waited, hunkered together in the dark—flashlight off, magic extinguished—was wings.

Not the giant ones of dragons or the skeletal ones of the Phantomwalkers, but the feathery rustle of a bird that had flown into the canyon through one of its openings. A bird-sized bird, nothing massive about it.

Carl and I ducked instinctively as the avian zipped over our heads and landed next to the niche where I'd left the bag. I crept forward, Carl at my heels, and we peered around the corner.

It should be dark in that tunnel, but a shadowy-gray glow surrounded the bird. By that light I saw a large crow with white head feathers among its sable ones.

Nitis hopped on top of the bowling bag and used his strong beak to pry open the zipper. He bent to peer inside it, his head disappearing in an almost comical fashion as he rummaged. His big legs remained planted on the bag, while his tail feathers stuck straight up into the air.

The crow emerged from the bag, shook out his plumage, cocked his head, and pinned me with one black eye.

"Wish I had my slingshot," Carl whispered in my ear.

Nitis's head cocked the other direction, clearly hearing him. He jumped down from the bag, opening his wings to soften his landing, and started toward us with that arrogant strut crows had.

I heard another flutter, and a second crow sailed past us, landing with more grace in front of Nitis. She planted herself there and let out a hoarse caw.

I abandoned all thoughts of hiding and raced forward. "No!"

The first crow grew larger, his black wings smoothing into his sides to become arms. His feathers and beak receded until Nitis stood before us in his human form.

The second crow squawked in annoyance and flapped past him into the darkness.

"Stop her," I cried, my Beneath magic light flaring. "Why did you let her come?"

Nitis faced me, folding his arms across his bare chest. "Let her?" he asked me incredulously. "Ruby Begay?"

My grandmother walked out of the darkness. Unlike Nitis, she was fully clothed, wearing a long velvet skirt and a blouse, as though she'd dressed up for an event. She tapped her way forward on her formal walking stick, the one embedded with turquoise and silver.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded of her. "This is dangerous!"

"Is it?" Grandmother asked. "But putting a bag with a rock in it and pretending it's the egg isn't dangerous?"

I made a noise of exasperation. "I was trying to draw them out. Which you both have put an end to."

"Yeah, way to ruin a plan, dude," Carl said to Nitis. "Do you have anything to cover that up with?" He waved his hand at Nitis's groin. "It's nothing I want to see. Why women like those, I have no idea. "

Nitis ignored him. "There is an easier way to make them reveal themselves."

Carl snorted. " Reveal themselves . You're certainly doing that."

Grandmother shot Carl a look of vast disapproval. "It is simple." She raised her cane and brushed it through the air. "Come to us. Now. "