“We need to let him feed,” I said.
Pamela had Cassandra safely behind her, her werewolf lips curled. “And who would be the fool to volunteer for that?”
Ansel wrinkled his nose. “Not you, wolf-girl. Changer blood is disgusting. I want the Spanish lass.” He licked his teeth. “Mmm, the dark-eyed beauty of Maya Medina.”
Nash’s pistol was back, the barrel digging into Ansel’s cheek. “Touch her, and I blow your face off.”
“Or maybe Sheriff Jones,” Ansel purred. “What does the blood of a man who lives to harass my friends taste like?”
“No,” I said.
Nash exchanged a glance with me. “Janet.”
We’d both, once upon a time, seen the effect of Nash’s blood on a Nightwalker. “What’s happening is not Ansel’s fault,” I said firmly. “He stays alive.”
“What about the rest of us?” Pamela asked in her thick Changer voice.
Ansel looked us over. “I don’t trust the witch. The coyote? Hmm, the blood of a god?”
“Would be bad for you,” Coyote rumbled. “And Janet wants you to live. She’s such a sweetie.”
“I see.” Ansel turned away. “I don’t want the plumber. He probably tastes like a sewer. But Janet.” Ansel touched my neck, his fingers ice cold. “Pretty Navajo girl. Fine blood of a Stormwalker.”
Mick was beside me in a heartbeat, lifting Ansel by the throat. Mick’s eyes were black with rage, and his hand burst into flame as he pinned Ansel against the wall.
“Mick, no!” I shouted. As frightening as Ansel was, I knew that, at heart, he was a shy man who’d be horrified when he remembered that he’d tried to hurt anyone. I also knew that if we couldn’t subdue him, Ansel would have to die before he killed us all.
Mick let his fire fade. “You don’t touch Janet. If you need to feed, you feed on me.”
Ansel didn’t trust Mick, for good reason. “No, give me the señorita. I’ll make it good for her.”
Mick’s barely contained dragon frenzy made him as strong as Ansel. He grabbed the back of Ansel’s neck and yanked the man’s mouth down to his jugular. “Drink me, damn you.”
Ansel’s eyes went bright red as the bloodlust took him. His mouth opened—the narrow, catlike mouth of a Nightwalker—and he plunged his fangs into Mick’s neck.
Fremont gasped in horror, and I wanted to scream. Ansel might drain Mick dry before we could pull him off. Nightwalkers hung on like leeches even after their victims were dead.
I lunged for them, but Mick put out one arm to stop me, fire flaring from his palm. His muscles bulged as he held Ansel in place, the other man’s mouth working, sucking, pulling at Mick’s neck. Mick grunted, his face creased in pain, but still he held me off.
The rain continued to pour outside, building to a deluge. Water slid between my fingers, starting to patter on the floor. As much as I felt sorry for the real Ansel, I wanted to kill the Nightwalker for hurting Mick. When Mick gasped for breath, blood running in rivulets down his neck, Ansel still drinking, I almost did it.
“No.” Mick lifted his hand again, the fire keeping me back. “Let him. I’ll heal.”
“Mick, damn it.”
I was aware of the others, in a semicircle, tense, watching, waiting to see what would happen next. Mick started to sag, but so did Ansel, Ansel’s frantic, moist sucking noises slowing.
When Ansel fell from Mick like a full tick, a smile on his face, Mick folded to the floor next to him. I got to Mick’s side, but Mick raised his head and gave me a weak nod. “I’m all right.”
“That was stupid.”
“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.