Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) - Allyson James Page 0,100

the years.

He’d taken from all—witches, demons, shamans, Changers, Nightwalkers, skinwalkers—every single magical person he could best, Emmett had robbed. He was the Ununculous because he’d defeated the last mage who’d called himself that, and I drew the collected magics of that Ununculous into me as well.

All these, plus the power of the magic mirror and the original powers of Emmett himself—fairly strong earth magic—now became part of me.

I no longer had to hold on to the mirror to use its magics. My disparate bodies floated upward then slid together and became one.

Emmett, crying, sank to the floor. Blood poured from his nose, and he weakly tried to mop it up with a wad of tissue he’d pulled from his pocket.

He was no longer the slick executive Emmett, nor was he the scary walking-dead Emmett. He was an ordinary looking man with a body running to fat, hair thinning on top, and eyes of indeterminate hazel, blinking behind thick-lensed glasses. He was more ordinary looking even than Fremont Hansen, whose kindhearted and affable personality made him well-liked and unique.

Emmett was a nobody. A man so nondescript no one noticed him, and he likely didn’t have the personality to compensate. And so he’d enhanced the magic inside him and learned to steal from others to remake himself and get back at the world.

All that magic was now inside me. I had knowledge of ages and the cosmos, of magic and chemistry, folklore and true history. It filled me, that knowledge, artistry, and skill, and made me laugh.

“So much for Emmett Smith,” I announced, while Cassandra and Pamela watched me, open-mouthed. Mick had at some point shifted back from dragon, and now he stood in the doorway of the burned-out kitchen, my delectable man of fire.

“So much for the Ununculous,” I said, carrying on my theme. I rose on a cushion of air. “He messed with the wrong mage, one with a magic mirror. Poor Emmett. Now I am the Ununculous.”

I put out my hand, and changed the world.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

My reach extended all the way to Magellan, and I could see the little town in my mind’s eye. It was an ordinary community in this part of the Southwest, small but close-knit, people supplementing the goods they could find at local businesses with trips to Flag or Phoenix on the weekends. The Native Americans who lived here or came here to work were comfortably close to their families in the Indian nations that surrounded the area.

I could do anything to these people, and I could do anything for these people.

First, I gave everyone sleeping happy dreams. I gave a young woman in the vast Medina clan who’d been debating leaving home the knowledge that she could seek her fortune in the cities and still find a place with her family in Magellan. I assured one of the Salases that asking the woman of his dreams to marry him would result in a fine life together.

I moved my knowledge into the home of Jamison Kee and Naomi Hansen, found Julie lying awake in her bedroom, and made her deafness go away. It was so easy, the manipulation of bones and nerves of the ear canal, so simple to make them work properly again. Why had no one else done this?

The magic I worked on her wasn’t like the spell Jamison had performed this summer, to fade when the magic did, but a true cure. Julie’s physiology was now the way it was supposed to be.

I withdrew as Julie sat up and gasped.

I flowed away, to the outskirts of Magellan again, found Fremont and Flora staring at each other in front of Fremont’s house, and encouraged him to kiss her.

I found Drake where Mick had stashed him on the other side of the railroad bed, and fed his dragon self back into him. I left him, gasping and astonished, and wended my way north to Flat Mesa.

In the medical center, a man who’d been rushed there by his wife after a massive heart attack would live, his heart strong and sound again. A woman with pneumonia suddenly got better, those germs dead.

I could do anything, I realized, cure anyone. I could fly around the world with Mick and never have to worry about my goddess mother and the vortexes again. In fact …

I zoomed my awareness out to the vortex, lifted another two feet of desert floor over the wash, and slammed it down. Did I hear a faint cry of anguish from the goddess