Storm of Reckoning Read online

  “Kehar,” Lucia said, a dreamy tone in her voice. “A whole ’nother world. You still owe me details.”

  “Seriously... not,” Garrie told her. “Not safe.”

  “That’s what you said about him.” Lucia gave Garrie a brief if pointed glance. “Look how that ended up.”

  Right. Reckoner power mingling with the power from another world. Shimmering skin, streaky hair... and other changes, not yet truly known. Drew, opting out.

  But that’s not what Lucia was talking about. Not really.

  “On Kehar,” Trevarr said, without concern for their byplay, “they set warnings.”

  “Of course they do,” Garrie muttered, tugging at the hair behind her ear.

  But she believed it.

  ~~~~~

  Sklayne sulked.

  Not-cat, being of much power, trusted bond-mate. Also, left in the farking car, as if he couldn’t be trusted at this thing called rest stop.

  As if he might be tempted by someone’s bouncy little dog.

  ::O fine snack!::

  Maybe not such a bad idea, staying here.

  It wasn’t as if the car could actually contain him. Not with locks, not with closed windows. Trevarr knew that; the Garrie knew it. The Lucia person had yet to learn it. The Lucia person understood not-cat... but she didn’t yet know all that not-cat could encompass.

  Not-cat was as big as the world. As small as the crack where the car window met the door. As solid as he wished, or pure energy and flow. Appearing as cat merely because it pleased him, as Abyssinian because it was what he had seen first.

  Perhaps because it suited Trevarr. Atreyvo. Bonded.

  Just as they were here because it suited Trevarr.

  Never mind that Trevarr had been hurt, and healing was best done in the sweet woods of Kehar — in the safe warded cave lair where they’d never been found and never would be. Stubborn Trevarr.

  Never mind that the food here lacked the vital spirit that fed Trevarr’s other. O stubborn.

  Never mind that Kehar was the only place he and Trevarr could overturn what had been done to Trevarr’s people. O foolish stubborn.

  Because of the Garrie. All because of the Garrie. Because she knew nothing of the tribunal or its ways or its wants.

  Or its threats.

  Sklayne experimented with disliking the Garrie. Small person of much power, the Garrie. Experimented with mean thoughts and making himself bristly.

  No. Maybe not.

  But he still wanted to go home. To be home.

  Trevarr’s self-voice rolled into his head, not far away at all. We cannot leave her unprotected. Hunted.

  “Mrrp!” Sklayne made a surprised noise into the stuffy, muffled silence of the car interior. Thinking too loud. Bored. Homesick and bored and...

  Hungry.

  He eyed a small mahogany dog with a long body and pointy snout and wagging, whip thin little tail. Tasteeeee.

  No. Trevarr’s direct voice. Implacable. Paying attention.

  Sklayne growled. With precision and a set of extra-long claws, he knocked the cigarette lighter aside, sipping at the hot power that gathered in its wake. And eavesdropping — ever eavesdropping — through the lightest thread to Trevarr.

  Listening... and watching. Wary and guarding.

  Hunted.

  ~~~~~

  Garrie moved away from the overlook’s pipe rail barriers as the next round of hapless travelers meandered into the touristy area of the rest stop, circling through the shaded picnic shelter. Maybe a big sun hat?

  She already wore a second tissue-thin shirt — a watercolor wash of long-sleeved blues over a camisole top and tucked into low-slung trail shorts with all the pockets she could ever want. Add lightweight, sneakerish hiking boots and thick white socks, and along with the overlapping braided leather bracelets on one wrist, wasn’t she just the perfect blend of funk and tourist?

  Unlike Lucia, who simply looked clean and crisp. Then again, Garrie had long ago quit comparing her wiry, petite self to elegant Lucia. Because Lucia would somehow walk the Sedona trails in her slim-cut clam-diggers and espadrilles and little cap-sleeved shirt with the eyelet panels, and she wouldn’t trip, turn her ankle, or acquire so much as a smudge of dust.

  “Whatever,” Garrie muttered.

  “Aie,” Lucia said. “Grumpy!”

  Garrie raised a sharp eyebrow. The other one tried to join it. So much for the Spock look.

  “Oh, not you, chicalet.” Lucia nodded at the rest rooms. “In there.”

  Which Garrie would have known, if she’d bothered to sweep the area for problematic ethereal breezes or darkside presence. The ones that now seemed so obvious.

  “Tsk,” Lucia said, interpreting Garrie’s scowl with precision. “This is a bathroom break. You can be off duty for that. It’s just that you have to look, while I have to remember not to.”

  For Lucia could read the emotional resonance of a place — whether she wanted to or not. But Lucia understood Garrie the best, and always had. Like Garrie, Lucia couldn’t not do this work.

  Quinn had no such concerns; he gloried in his incredible knack for supernatural trivia and ghostly details, and turned it off to work with his second avocation — books. And Drew had an amazing touch with structural history, but only when he reached for it.

  Not that Drew was with them. He’d stayed behind in San Jose with his new girlfriend, and thanks to her connections, already had his first freelance gig: vetting a potential construction site for inconvenient ancient remains.

  Or even worse, those more recent.

  Garrie glanced back at Trevarr. He was imposing, even as he continued to heal from what had gone down in San Jose — an arm still stiff, a side still tender, the scar over his eye angry but fading faster than it had any right to. He lingered at the pipe railing, gazing out on the long, lean desert mountain ridges. Not exactly anything like it, back at home.

  On Kehar, it was all deep gloom and black fog and heavy-branched trees over rugged ground, the air spicy and thick, the sounds muffled and threatening. Garrie still wasn’t sure if her short, singular visit had been just long enough, or if she yearned to see more.

  Not much chance, with Trevarr exiled. Not to mention distinctly taciturn about his people, whose fate had rested on his ability to capture the half-ethereal Keharian fugitives in San Jose.

  The ones he’d mostly ended up killing instead.

  She returned her attention to the grumpy bathrooms, casting a greater awareness their way — long, low, pale brick, recently remodeled... surrounded by a deep glow-stick green morass of nastiness...

  Creeping tendrils trailed from the heels of the unsuspecting, a proverbial spiritual toilet paper trail. Garrie wrinkled her nose. “Wow, that stinks.” Not quite as bad as ghost poo, when a particularly strong spirit threw an effluvia tantrum, but close enough.

  Lucia reached into her Burberry tote, all details and buckles and D-rings and faint plaid imprint on supple leather. “Time for the secret herbs and spices?” As if she ever went anywhere without Garrie’s own special spirit containment system — some storage baggies, a little petroleum jelly, a few carefully chosen herbs... tried and true and field-tested.

  Garrie shook her head at the sticky, burbling ethereal morass. “No Bob or Bobbie Ghost in that mess.”

  “Aiee,” Lucia said, withdrawing her hand. “Darkside visitors?” No containment worked for darksiders. Intimidation and dissipation — those things worked, through the ethereal breezes at Garrie’s command.

  Breezes and gusts... and, if need be, gale storms.

  Even if her control had turned somewhat erratic in nature since San Jose. As if she’d just learned to shout, but no longer knew how to sing a fine sustained note.

  As if, every time she opened her mouth, she wasn’t sure exactly whose voice would even come out.

  She pretended to have her usual confidence. Her lifelong confidence. “Nibblers, I think.” And business as usual, so soon after...

  After s
aving San Jose and thus the world.

  And after channeling power that had changed her nature in ways she hadn’t yet begun to explore. Or maybe to admit to herself.

  Business as usual, because what else was there to hang onto?

  Garrie’s gaze flickered over Trevarr. Standing at that railing as though his mind were a million miles away, and knowing it was probably even further.

  And yet he’d come back for her.

  I think.

  Garrie headed for the bathrooms. Protecting energies circled around her as she sent breezes to warn them. Letting them run for it, if they would.

  Better that than a pitched battle in a public place.

  “Eep!” Lucia hastened to catch up with her. Trevarr jerked around, and those sunglasses did nothing to hide his subtle frown.

  Didn’t do anything to stop her, either.

  Trevarr wasn’t the boss of Garrie.

  Especially when he had things he wasn’t yet telling.

  What happened to your people, Trevarr?

  “Garrie!” Lucia said, catching up just in time to grab Garrie’s arm and spin her away from the bathroom’s dark, cool shaded doorway. “That’s the men’s!”

  Oh. Right.

  An elderly man startled as he exited the facilities, then neatly stepped around them. He’d be even more startled if he could see what clung to his shoes, trailing behind in ribbons of darkness and threat.

  Nibblers. Not such a big deal for a virile young man. For a Trevarr. Even for a Garrie or Lucia. But for an elderly man? He just went downhill, they’d say. No one knows why.

  Garrie wasn’t about to let it happen. A quick, precise puff of power severed the darkside ribbons at the man’s heels; if he stumbled a little, he regained quick dignity and didn’t look back. The darkness recoiled into the men’s room like a snapped rubber band, radiating indignant offense.

  “Not happy,” Lucia whispered, effort in her voice. She, too, was a little off her game. “Maybe Trevarr’s cat is, you know... hungry—”

  Trevarr’s not- cat was always hungry for energies, as far as Garrie knew. But she hardly needed help.

  “You might want to step back,” she said, pretending to herself that she hadn’t been just a little hurt at the suggestion. Tendrils of darkness emerged from the bathroom — appeared around the corner, coming from the ladies’ room as well. “Because the sneaky little bastards are going to get a whole lot more not happy before I’m done.”

  Laced through with electric green and steaming in a particularly unhealthy fashion, the energies were for her eyes — and nose — only. Or maybe also for Trevarr’s, as he came up from behind; she wasn’t sure. She cast him a warning glance. “Might be some splashback.”

  Because of course her breezes and his energies weren’t exactly oil and water. Something more combustible, perhaps.

  He eased back. Not deterred so much as intending to check the perimeter. “Sklayne likely hungers—”

  “I don’t. Need. Help.” An unexpected thread of fraying temper flared, its individual strands snapping... ping-ping-ping! Trevarr went inscrutable — and then winced, heading out for that perimeter check, as she pushed those unwanted energies out in a breeze and watched the nibblers recoil. Testing their mettle, assessing her options. Nibblers were simple, but intense. On their own, they were darksider cockroaches, easily squashed with a pointy-toed shoe in the corner. In aggregate, they required a clean strike or they’d bristle back like darkside porcupines flinging nastiness quills.

  A man fled from the facility, towing a reluctant little boy. “But Daddy, did you see? Why did the toilet do that, Daddy? Can we go back and watch? Did Mommy’s toilet do that? Daddy, my pants aren’t done yet!”

  Whatever Daddy muttered, he kept it under his breath — except for the quick advice he aimed at Trevarr’s retreating form. “Go find a cactus, man. Trust me on this one.” He swung the kid up for a quick rescue before the pants went entirely south.

  Garrie took a deep breath, trying hard to pretend everything was as it had been not so very long ago — even if that didn’t include bold nibbler aggregates quite this large. She stalked forward, straight-arming the door without actually entering the facility. “Blundering woman, incoming!”

  “What? You can’t!” A curse, scurry, and a slam followed those panicked tones; her hapless social victim made good his escape through the opposite exit.

  “Doing you a favor, buddy,” Garrie murmured, sticking her foot against the open door. An eye-watering incredulosity of stench wafted out of the building.

  Lucia intercepted someone behind her. “Sorry, the restrooms are, um... closed?” Her voice grew less certain with every word. “For, um, repairs..?” Then she clearly gave it up. “Garrie, this gentleman really wants to—”

  Garrie looked over her shoulder. Tall. Beefy. Shorn hair and no neck and scowling, one hand already hovering near his fly. He’d crowded Lucia off the sidewalk and into the decorative gravel of desert landscaping.

  Lucia peered around the building after Trevarr, but faltered at Garrie’s reaction.

  Since when did they need a strong-arm? A warrior?

  Dark-blooded bounty hunter from another world.

  “No problem.” Garrie assumed an airy confidence she wasn’t in the mood to feel. “I think we can work around him.” She pressed herself back against the door frame, one arm out to push the door open, and gestured the man through.

  “Weird bitch,” the man grunted. “Want to watch me take a piss, too?”

  “Completely unnecessary,” Garrie told him. “And we’re busy. Repairs. You’ll understand.”

  He disappeared within, but his fervent curse over whatever sumbitch had left the deviant-sexual-act odor followed clearly enough.

  Lucia shifted uncertainly, regaining the sidewalk. “Chicalet... maybe you should wait?”

  “Busy, remember?” Garrie told her, pulling in swift breezes from all around — completely aware of Trevarr’s return as he stationed himself near her elbow. Right. Strong arm. Warrior. Dark-blooded bounty hunter from another world. Hard to miss.

  Whatever Lucia said then, Garrie truly didn’t hear. Clean strike time. She stripped her awareness down to the aggregate now huddled up inside the building, nibblers thinking themselves so sly. You can’t see us! How clever are we!

  Yeahhh, not so much. The breezes piled up around her, stirring her hair in the hot, dry air... stirring the thick miasma until her eyes watered. Didn’t matter; she wasn’t seeing with her eyes. She pulled the breezes in close, winding them up... winding tighter. Impulse flared from deep within, an invigorating tug of feeling. Of power to burn.

  Suddenly, sharply tempting. Beguiling.

  Demanding.

  The sensation threw her out of rhythm, and threw the gathered breezes into turmoil. Rather than lose them, she flung them out as they were — hard and fast and wham. Not tidy; not neat. Not restrained.

  Trevarr stiffened, taking the hit of it. Guilt washed through her; she struggled for better control, riding the storm she’d created. Sending the breezes where she wanted them, sharply seeking.

  The nibbler aggregate fled, breaking into myriad pieces — hockey pucks of slick darkness racing frantically for escape, rebounding off each other in a black comedy of panic as they dove deeply into the earth.

  But they didn’t go all the way darkside — and that meant they’d only return, stronger than ever, if Garrie didn’t stop them now.

  She dove after them, circling the entire foundation with breezes; her hand, reaching out into the suddenly frigid air of the roadside facility, clenched into a crushing, fisted finality. The nibblers imploded, sucking into themselves and then exploding free as undefined energy.

  Garrie took a little stagger-step back, bracing against the turbulence. But she didn’t need Trevarr’s steadying hands on her shoulders. She sure didn’t need them closing down, an extra, infinitesimal hint of...

  What was that? Possessiveness, or —?

  She twisted
around, caught the look on his face, the rising scent of smoke and ash. Didn’t need to see behind those sunglasses to know the pewter eyes shone bright, or to see that the breezes had hit him solidly, rousing those things he tried to keep in check.

  They had things to work out, he and she.

  From the bathroom came a cry of horror. “Holy fucking shit! Oh God oh God oh—”

  Lucia was, somehow, halfway to the parking lot. “We’re through with this, right? ¡Caray! I feel that we are.”

  Garrie came fully back to the non-ethereal, to the über-bright sunshine with the heat set to broil, sand and pebbles crunching underfoot and giant armored stink beetles trundling across open ground. “Hey, it’s all good—”

  Trevarr moved without warning, just that fast — he reached out, snagged her arm, and jerked her away from the door.

  She turned on him with fierce resentment, words snapping to ready —

  The interior erupted with a great banging of metal stall doors, a tremendous bloated gurgle... a sudden muted roar followed by breaking glass and ceramic shrapnel pinging off tile. The big thick-necked dude bolted out from within, his pants precarious and unfastened, his belt flapping... his clothing soaked. “Gah!” he said, grabbing at his pants and diving for freedom at the same time. “Gahhh!”

  “Chicalet,” Lucia whispered in horror before she turned for further flight. “You set off fireworks in the plumbing.”

  Trevarr looked down at her, sharp sunlight coasting along the strong, lean angles of his face.

  “Never mind.” Garrie resolutely straightened her shirt, aiming herself in Lucia’s wake. “My work here is done.”

  Chapter 2

  Vortexes, Crystals, Auras, & Guided Spiritual Journeys

  “Communication skills should be foremost in your arsenal.”

  — Rhonda Rose

  “Spill it, ghosties.”

  — Lisa McGarrity

  “Aie Dios, do you think I don’t already know?”

  — Lucia Reyes

  Lucia Reyes on the road to Sedona. Desperate for something normal.

  Then again, her life hadn’t exactly been normal before this, had it? Never mind the flirty convertible back in Albuquerque, or the massive walk-in-closet full of designer clothing. Never mind flirting with the handsome gardener or the pool boy, or how she’d hidden herself in shopping and in trailing her abuela in the kitchen. They’d all known the unspoken, the whispered. Her whole family, their employees, her teachers... they’d known.