Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) - Allyson James Page 0,97

Mountain Apaches spoke today. Elena’s voice was clear, beautiful, compelling, and the hotel shook as the pool of shaman power in the basement rose to engulf her.

Emmett was definitely distracted by that. I gathered the entirety of the storm outside, married it to my very angry Beneath magic, joined it with Mick’s fire, and let him have it.

Wind whipped through the saloon, tearing a bigger hole in the roof. Rain poured down, drenching us. The rain could do nothing, though, to quench the fire that seared across Emmett’s body or stop bolts of lightning I slammed into him.

Emmett screamed. I’d felt firsthand in my dream what it was like to be burned by dragon fire. Now Emmett’s body melted with it, his spell to counter it thwarted by the full power of my dual magic and Mick’s fire.

Triple threat.

The air around Emmett turned black. Pressure filled my ears, and the building rumbled ominously. I took a hesitant step back, just before the blackness shattered into fragments of obsidian.

I ducked as the deadly pieces sailed by. When I came up, I saw Emmett standing calmly in the middle of my falling-down saloon, brushing off his sleeves.

“Janet,” he said in a quiet voice. “Now you’re starting to piss me off.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Elena!” I yelled. “If you’re here to help—do it!”

Elena ignored me. She continued to chant, her arms raised, unprotected in the doorway.

“Not yet,” my grandmother said behind her. “It doesn’t work that way. The young are always so impatient.”

Emmett sliced a shaft of magic past them both and blew up the kitchen.

Before the resulting flames could hit my grandmother and Elena, two slim arms came around them, and Ansel leapt upward as only a Nightwalker can. He took them out through the roof, but I didn’t have time to see whether Grandmother and Elena made it to safety, because Emmett was on me again.

“You’re dangerous, Janet,” he said over the roar of fire, wind, lightning, and rain. “All that magic swirling around inside you, and you have no idea what to do with it.”

I couldn’t answer, concentrating on wrestling aside the Beneath magic he threw at me.

“Remember my analogy?” he asked. “When I told you how frustrated you’d be if you saw someone with an amazing camera, who didn’t know what to do with it? How you’d watch them blunder about, ruining it? That’s how I feel when I look at you. All that brilliant power roiling around inside you. Relinquish it to me, and I might let you and your friends live. They’d no longer be a threat to me, anyway.”

“Screw you!” I think I yelled. My hands were slick with sweat, my body cold. I fought, but I could feel myself losing.

He’d do it. Emmett would take my magic as he’d taken Gabrielle’s, leaving me an empty shell. Once he had that, Emmett would wrest away the mirror, and have everything he needed. I didn’t think even Coyote or the Beneath goddess would be able to stop him then.

Emmett chuckled. His eyes became the opaque, steel-colored orbs I’d seen in my dreams. “I am so looking forward to this,” he said.

He brought his palms together, then jerked his arms straight down. Without changing his stance, he turned and swatted aside the fire Mick shot at him, sending it back to burn him.

Mick wasn’t there when the fire returned. Moving as fast as a Nightwalker, he dove out a hole in the wall—not running away, I knew, but giving himself space to turn dragon. If nothing else, he could snatch up Emmett and drop him somewhere far away again, maybe into a volcano if we were lucky.

Emmett jerked his hands apart, and his magic began to tear me in two.

I shrieked. The pain that Mick, Drake, and Gabrielle must have felt cut into me and tore me apart, molecule by molecule. Agony stabbed through me as everything that made up my being was studied, dissected, and pulled asunder.

I became sharply aware of my two distinct parts—the Stormwalker with the shaman powers of my grandmother, Ruby; and the child of the Beneath-magic goddess. The magic from Beneath was immensely strong, could do anything, kill anyone. The Stormwalker was of this earth, drawing magic from the ground that had created her.

Drake was on his knees on the floor, rocking back and forth, his dragon-ness gone. Emmett had stolen it, just as he’d done to Mick in the dream. He’d done a similar thing to Gabrielle. Emmett was now trying to separate me from