The keening wound all the way down and flattened out into a word. Summertiiime.
“Hey, you moronic piece of glass. Call Drake. Get him over here.”
The mirror kept on belting out the song from Porgy and Bess. I shook it and yelled at it, but my mirror ignored me.
“I don’t think it can hear you,” Mick said breathlessly.
“Damn it!” I flung the mirror into the wall. The voice dimmed somewhat but didn’t stop. I didn’t know which was worse, having the mirror dark or stuck singing show tunes.
“If he starts singing to the dragons, Drake will be out here fast enough,” Mick said. He ran a firm hand down my body. “Right now I need more.” He kissed my back. “So much more.”
It would be stupid to stay in here and have sex while Cassandra’s enemy waited for us to be at our weakest. But I willingly rolled over and drew him into my arms.
Mick had started kissing me again with hungry strokes when someone beat on the bedroom door.
“Janet,” Maya called through the wood, her agitation strong. “If you’re done screwing in there, Nash is out front. He’s with Pamela, and they’re trying to get in.”
Seven
I yanked on my clothes and was about to hurry out after Maya, but Mick put his arm across the door, blocking my way. He was a big man and made a formidable barrier.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me check it out first.”
Impatiently I buttoned my jeans. “It’s Nash, Maya said. Exactly who we need.”
“Maybe it’s Nash. I want you to stay in here and lock the door behind me.”
This was getting annoying. “Staying in my room won’t save me from the hex,” I said.
“Even so, wait for me to clear it before you come out.”
I wasn’t about to obey. I knew I couldn’t fight Mick, but I was small enough and swift enough to duck under him before he could grab me. I heard him growling in anger as he came after me, but this was my hotel, and I was more than ready for Mick’s alpha-dragon instincts to recede.
Someone was pounding on the front door. “Janet!” Nash called. “Open up. It’s Jones.”
As though that weren’t obvious. The blue lights of the Hopi County Sheriff’s Department SUV flared behind him, and his sheriff’s badge winked on the uniform coat he wore against the cold. Pamela, a Native American Changer in black leather pants and jacket, stood next to him in tall fury.
“Let me break it down,” we heard her say with impatience.
Cassandra pressed her hands to the window. “No, Pamela, get out of here! I don’t want you here!”
Pamela didn’t hear, and neither did Nash, nor did they see the rest of us at the windows like lizards against glass. Nash kept pounding and then trying the door handle, which wasn’t budging.
“Come on, Nash,” I whispered. “Open it.”
Nash took a step back, drew out his nine-millimeter, and shot the lock. I cringed, thinking of the Native American artisan who’d crafted the door handle and lock for me up in Santa Fe. His exquisite work was now slag with a bullet in it.
Nash and Pamela slammed against the door in unison, and the wood bulged inward. Another blow and the door splintered from the hinges. I felt the wards around the entrance crumble and die, reacting to the magic void that was Nash Jones. The curse magic that had piggybacked on them faded to nothing.
The wards in the walls were still intact, and so was the hex, but Nash was able to burst in and swing his pistol around the lobby.
He took us in: Maya, Fremont, Cassandra, me, Mick. I had no idea where Coyote had got to.
When Nash realized there was no immediate threat, he pointed the pistol at the floor. “Janet, what is this?”
Pamela rushed past him and caught Cassandra in a crushing hug, lifting her off her feet. “Are you all right, baby?”
Nash pinned me with an ice-gray stare. “Ms. Grant charged into my office, insisting there was something wrong at your hotel. So what are you up to?”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Nash looked past me to the kitchen door. “You have someone back there?”
“Nash,” I said. “Touch the walls. Hurry. Please.”
Nash completely ignored me to listen, his gun held ready.
“That’s just Ansel,” Maya told him. “He started going crazy, so we locked him in the refrigerator.”
“Nash, the walls. Please!”
Nash started for the kitchen. Mick was on him before he’d gone three strides, but Nash, combat-trained, knew how to fight. He had himself out of Mick’s grip in a flash, the pistol now pointed at Mick’s head.
“I suggest you start explaining, Burns, before you spend the night in my lockup.”
“Fine by me,” I said cheerfully. “Let’s go.” Get out of cursed hotel now, finish breaking the hex later.
Coyote came bounding out of the kitchen. In his coyote form, he was the size of a large wolf, and he sprang full force onto Nash. The momentum, with an assist by Mick, carried Nash the five feet needed to land him against the lobby’s brightly painted wall.
The hotel shuddered. I screamed as I felt my wards, as infected as they were, stream from the brick and plaster into Nash’s body. I was deeply connected to the wards, and through them, to the hotel, and so was Mick.
Mick doubled over in pain, but this purging was necessary. All the wards had to go, no matter how much it hurt us. Then Mick and I would reset them, clean and free of the hex.
It was hurting Nash, too. Nash clenched his fists, the pistol still in one, eyes shut in silent agony.
“What are you doing?” Maya shouted. “Nash!”
“He’s negating the curse,” Cassandra said from within the protective circle of Pamela’s arm.
“Nash is?”
“He’s a magic null.” Cassandra sounded tired. “His touch renders anything magical harmless. Spells don’t work on him, and he can pull in even the strongest magic and dissipate it.”
I yelled again, my voice breaking as I collapsed to the floor. Mick tried to get to me, to help me, but his knees buckled as soon as he took a step.
Fremont crouched down and touched my shoulder, but Mick snarled at him. “Get away from her!”
Fremont raised his hands and backed away. “Easy there, big fella. Easy now.”
There was something wrong. Nash continued to suck in the wards, and I felt the last of them rush into him and vanish. But whatever was inside Nash didn’t stop at the wards. It reached out to me and then to Mick and began to drain us dry.
My Beneath magic flared up to stop him, but Nash sucked that in, too. The white-hot aura of it streamed into Nash’s body, and the agony of that had me falling flat to the tile. I saw Mick’s fire being pulled from him while Mick fought a losing battle to keep it.
“Ow!” Fremont said, slapping his hands to his head.
A tiny stream of yellow light—Fremont’s magic—yanked from him to Nash’s body. Cassandra was on the floor now, Pamela with her, as Nash drained their magical essences as well. A scream so high-pitched it was on the edge of human hearing streamed from the saloon, the magic mirror singing no longer.
Coyote shimmered and became the man Coyote, lying naked, facedown on the floor. Ansel stopped banging in the kitchen, and I wondered if he were dead, the magic that kept him alive stolen by Nash’s magic suction. Ansel might be nothing but decaying blood and bone on my refrigerator floor.
“Nash, stop,” I gasped.
He didn’t, and I had the feeling he had no idea how to. Mick lay next to me where he’d crawled in an effort to protect me. His tattoos faded to thin lines of ink, and then those shrank and disappeared. Cassandra struggled to breathe, and Pamela lay limply next to her. Coyote didn’t move.
Maya wasn’t affected, being the only non-magical one among us. She stared at us as we slowly died, the magic that had been par
t of us all our lives draining away.
Then she looked at Nash. I watched Maya draw a breath for courage, and then she stalked across the floor in her mile-high heels, grabbed Nash, and jerked away him from the wall.
Nash turned on her with eyes as white as twenty suns. Maya let him go in surprise, and Nash moved that awful gaze to the rest of us.
He’d absorbed everything. He shouldn’t have been able to do that—Nash only affected magic within a certain radius, or only if touched by it directly. He’d never simply stood in one place and sucked in all magic around him.
“Maya, get away from me,” Nash said, voice harsh. “Get out of here.”
I wanted to encourage her to go, to run, but I had no strength for speech. Fremont climbed to his feet, looking the least sick of the rest of us, but still not looking good.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Maya said. This from the woman who’d been the first to beat on the door when the curse locked us in. “Nash, what is happening to you?”
“I can’t.” Nash dragged in a harsh breath. “I can’t contain it.”
He’d just absorbed the power of a dragon, a major witch, a Changer, a Stormwalker with goddess magic, and a magic mirror, not to mention Coyote’s god magic and the supercharged wards of the hotel. And Nash seemed surprised he couldn’t contain it.
Nash’s eyes became incandescent. He threw back his head, opened his arms, and roared as the magic came pouring back out of him.
The Beneath and Stormwalker magic slammed into me simultaneously. The impact lifted me several feet and threw me across the room, and I landed hard against the reception counter. Cassandra started retching. Fremont sat down on the floor, his hands to his head. Mick shouted, his body on fire, and I saw his flesh crackle and expand, the dragon in him trying to get out.
All I could do was fold up into myself, my body a ball of pain. I heard animal snarls coming from Pamela and knew she was now a wolf. The magic mirror’s high-pitched keening returned.
I felt the wards burst out of Nash and flow back into the walls, all of them, doubled in strength. And with them the curse, twice as strong as before, clinging to our wards and permeating the building. The candles we’d lit died at the same time, leaving us in absolute darkness.
“Damn.” Cassandra’s voice came as a weak whisper, but it held a hint of awe. “It’s a double hex.”
***
“And a double hex is . . .?” I asked irritably about a half hour later.
We couldn’t get the candles lit again. The eight of us huddled in the dark in the lobby while rain beat down outside. Our only light was what filtered through the front windows from the floodlights on the Crossroads Bar.
Ansel hadn’t made any noise in the kitchen since Nash sucked out the wards, but the magic mirror had returned to singing. It finished Porgy and Bess and began Cabaret.
“A double hex is exactly what it sounds like,” Cassandra said. In spite of what had happened, she sounded as apathetic as ever. “Most hexes eventually wear off or weaken enough to be broken by the victim, if it doesn’t kill them soon enough. Therefore, some sorcerers take the precaution of making it a double hex—if the curse gets broken, it casts itself again, this time twice as strong. It’s tricky, and only the best sorcerers can do it.”
“Or gods,” Coyote put in. He’d remained in his human form, lying flat on the floor. He’d refused Mick’s offer of clothes, so he was stark naked. At least it was dark.
“And one of the best sorcerers is after you,” Fremont said.
Cassandra looked at me. “I told you, let me summon him and get this over with. It’s me he’s been sent to kill.”
“No summoning,” I said firmly. “We aren’t in any shape to defend ourselves, and like I said, there’s nothing to say the ununculous won’t try to kill the rest of us for the hell of it.”
“What do we do, then?” Fremont asked. “Sit here and wait for him?”
“No, we keep trying to break the hex,” I said. “Every sorcerer has a weakness. We need to find his.”
“Sage words, Stormwalker.” Pamela’s voice was bestial and odd.
She’d gotten stuck in the form between wolf and human and looked like something from a horror movie. Pamela’s face was wolf. She had the limbs of a human covered in wolf fur, a tail, and two complete sets of breasts, human and wolf. She sat with her back against the couch and held Cassandra, who didn’t seem to mind that her girlfriend was now a nightmare beast.
I’d made Mick sit close to Nash, hoping Nash’s strange canceling effect would keep Mick’s need to become dragon at bay. I also needed Nash’s now-increased dampening field to keep my own magic quiet. The storm magic was at least calming as the lightning moved off, though I still had urges to grab the rain and sweep it in through the windows. The Beneath magic, though, kept wanting to come out and play. If I lost control of that, everyone here could die.
I actually did have a plan, one I didn’t bother mentioning, especially not to Mick. If Mick knew what I had in mind, he’d simply lock me in the basement and secure the door with dragon fire. But once I had everyone busy working out the ununculous’s weakness, I would sneak away, call the ununculous myself, and face him alone. The way my Beneath magic was raging, I could kill the bastard with one blow, and I would.
I felt Coyote looking at me. Hard at me, his eyes glittering in the darkness.
Damn it, he wasn’t telepathic. And yet Coyote always did seem to know what I was thinking. I remembered what he’d said about me ripping open vortexes if I tried to fight the curse or the sorcerer, but I saw no other way. Anyway, I didn’t plan to fight, I planned to kill quickly and get it over with.
I returned Coyote’s stare with a determined one of my own before asking Pamela, “How did you know something was wrong here? Did you see my fire?”
“No.” Pamela’s voice was thick. “Cassandra didn’t come home, and then I saw your bartender at the gas station. He told me the hotel was shut down and dark, and he didn’t know why. I came up here, but I couldn’t get the door open and couldn’t see through the windows, so I rode up and got the sheriff.”
We must have been busy with Ansel in the kitchen when Pamela arrived, because none of us had seen or heard her.
“What was the sheriff doing at his office?” Maya studied her polished nails. “Did he forget something, like, I don’t know, our date?”
Nash’s voice went cold. “I didn’t forget. I assumed you found something better to do, so I went back to work.”
“You thought I stood you up?” Maya’s screech rang to the rafters. “I spent two hours getting ready for you. Why would I stand you up?”
The mirror’s voice cut through her shout with something about life being a cabaret.
“And you look great,” Coyote said from his supine position.
“You, shut up,” Maya snapped. “If I hadn’t agreed to give you a ride up here, I would have been in Flat Mesa in plenty of time. But no, I had to be nice. Look what it got me. Stranded here all night with the freak show.”
“Coyote’s right, though,” Fremont said. “You do look great, Maya. That part was worth it.”
“Thank you, Fremont.” Maya gave him a big smile. “Forget you, Nash. I’m going out with Fremont.”
“Hold on . . .” Fremont started.
“Fremont already has a girlfriend,” I said. “In Holbrook.”
“Not anymore.” Fremont sounded sad. “She went back East. She asked me to go with her, but what the hell would I do back East? So, she’s gone.”
“I’m sorry.” I really was sorry. Fremont was a nice guy, and he deserved someone who appreciated that.
“Her loss,” Maya said. “Take me to the movies.”
“Maya . . .”
We were spared further argument about Maya’s love life by a huge bang in the kitchen. This time, not only did Ansel strike the
door of the walk-in fridge, he tore it from its hinges. We were on our feet, sprinting for the kitchen, when the door landed on the floor with a second bang and a clatter.
Ansel was alive, awake, and free.
Eight
I’ve done some frightening things in my life, but I think stumbling into a pitch-black kitchen, knowing that somewhere in there lurked a blood-starved, very angry Nightwalker, rates as one of the scariest.
Nightwalkers don’t breathe, so we couldn’t listen for his breath, and Ansel had chosen to go into silent mode. The fire in Mick’s hands was our only light, but even by that Ansel was nowhere to be seen.
“He couldn’t have gotten out, could he?” Fremont’s nervous voice was right behind me.
He and Maya were staying as close to me as they could. I’m not sure why they thought I’d keep them safe, because my fingers kept drawing the pounding rain, and my Beneath magic was going to flare out of control any second. I had contained the magic relatively well in the living room, but fear of the Nightwalker was bringing it out of me.
A check of the back door proved it was still solidly shut, as though it had been fused. Ansel couldn’t have escaped that way. He was as trapped as the rest of us.
We found him when he whispered, right behind Maya, “Hola, señorita.”
Maya’s scream took me a few inches off the ground. Mick’s fire roared high at the same time Nash yanked Maya from Ansel and shoved his gun into Ansel’s face.
Ansel laughed and ignored the pistol. “I’m hungry, Janet. What do I have to do to get some service in this hotel?”
I knew then that the double hex had doubled Ansel’s strength and need for blood. Unless his appetite was slaked, and slaked soon, he’d simply rip into us. A Nightwalker in a blood frenzy was not a pretty sight—I’d seen the aftermath of one on a rampage before. I never wanted to see that again.
We could knock him out—if we could—or find another place to lock him up, but Ansel would break out of whatever prison we devised sooner or later, hungrier than ever. We still had six or seven hours to go before daylight would force him to find a dark place to sleep.