Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(90)

“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 my magic, or rather, my magic from me.

Two parts of a whole—Stormwalker and Beneath goddess. I’d been fighting the two natures all my life. Now Emmett, with a flick of his wrist, yanked them apart.

The pain went on and on, so terrible that I became curiously detached from it. I saw my body coalesce into two distinct ones, two Janets, each slightly translucent and hanging a few inches above the debris-strewn floor.

One Janet had skin darkened by genetics and a life in the sunshine. The other’s skin glowed white, the unhealthy shade of a goddess who never saw the sun of this earth.

The two of us were powerful, but I realized immediately that I derived my strongest magic from the mixture. I’d never understood how much until this moment.

It was the grounding of the Stormwalker that let me draw the Beneath magic and focus it. Likewise, my well of Beneath magic let me enhance the storms and direct them where I wanted them to go. I’d been working in the past year to find the exact balance that would make me strong and keep me sane at the same time. I had nearly learned that equilibrium, until Emmett, this moment, stole it from me.

I hung there, staring at myself, seeing out of both Janets at the same time. Stormwalker watched Beneath goddess, and Beneath goddess watched Stormwalker.

Mick chose that moment to tear off the rest of the roof. His black dragon head peered down, fire in his eyes. He saw the two mes dangling in the air, and stopped.

“No,” I told him, both Janets speaking in tandem. “If you kill him now, I’ll never live.”

Mick must have understood that, or Emmett would already have been snatched up. Mick drew his head back, his eyes filled with rage and frustration.

“Get Drake, Cass, and Pamela to safety,” I told him, my voice chorusing.

Mick reached down and plucked up Drake. Cassandra raised her hands. “No, I’m not letting this bastard win.”

She’d die trying, I saw. I didn’t want to lose Cassandra, but Mick backed off. He would understand that she needed to fight. Pamela looked unhappy, but she would stay with Cassandra and protect her while I couldn’t.

Mick withdrew, but I knew he wouldn’t go far. I held on to the comfort of knowing he was near. The turquoise and onyx ring he’d given me clasped the fingers of both Janets, the sensation letting me know he’d never desert me.