Stormwalker by Allyson James Page B

dangerous than most things out there. I’d known that from the very first night I met him.

Nine
    FIVE YEARS AGO

    “I called the cops, girl. Do you understand me?”
    I had a broken pool cue in my hands. I had no idea where I’d picked it up or why, but I hefted it as I faced the men in the middle of the bar.
    I’d just wanted a beer. One cold beer to refresh myself after a battle with dark forces—was that too much for a girl to ask?
    Apparently so. Lightning flickered outside in the Mojave Desert, near a town too far north of Las Vegas to be entertaining. These people had no idea what had been crawling around out there, waiting for lone travelers on the empty highway, no idea how hard I’d fought to kill the creatures.
    Ingrates .
    I’d finished with the demons and ridden toward the lights, exhausted and sick, storm magic pounding through me. Thirsty, I’d found a bar in a town with one intersection. The faint neon signs outside advertised brand-name beers and “the loosest slots in town.” By the look of things, they were the only slots in town. A beer to wet my throat, I’d thought, maybe a bit of food if I could keep it down.
    So what did I get? A seedy-looking asshole hitting on me.
    I don’t think he’d bathed in a week. He had lank brown hair and a scruffy goatee, and he reeked of stale cigarette smoke, packs of it.
    “Come to visit, Indian girl?” Great pickup line. “Maybe I can provide some accommodation.”
    I tried to be nice. Really I did. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just passing through.”
    He stroked my hair, and I jerked away. I wasn’t that nice. The man scowled. “Now, Tommy don’t like to take no for an answer.”
    I assumed that he was Tommy. I hated men who referred to themselves in the third person. “Well, he’ll have to take it tonight.”
    I think it would have been all right if Tommy’s friends hadn’t laughed at him. But they did laugh, and he got embarrassed and mad.
    He closed his hand around my neck, proving stronger than his gangly limbs had led me to believe.
    The bartender said, “Easy, Tommy,” but Tommy was drunk and didn’t care.
    He yanked me backward off the stool, hand on my neck like a vise. His armpit was far too close to my face, and I gagged on his BO as he shook me.
    “You listen to me, bitch . . .”
    I let him have it. Storm magic still raced through my system from the battle in the desert, and I didn’t have to try very hard to tap it. But it hurt—bad. This was going to kill me one day.
    I slammed my hand into Tommy’s face, and he arched back with a wordless scream. I gave one push, and his body flew across several tables and tumbled with them to the ground. Tommy’s head hit the floor, and he lay still.
    “Shit,” someone said. The room went deathly quiet. I could hear a drip , drip , drip from one of the taps at the bar that hadn’t shut off right.
    Tommy wasn’t dead; I’d given him enough only to knock him out. Whatever these people thought, I didn’t kill humans.
    I think I would have been all right, even then, if they’d let me walk out. I’d get on my bike and ride away, leaving their town far behind. They’d never see me again.
    Tommy’s friends looked at one another. They were as scruffy as he was, one large with a huge beer belly. Beer Belly lifted a pool cue from the nearest table, and his friends did the same.
    “Take it outside,” the bartender said. “I don’t need my place wrecked.”
    They ignored him, and I didn’t bother to wait for them to strike. I was crazed, sick, and scared, not of them, but of the magic inside me. Tonight, in the desert, as I battled the demons, I’d seen for the first time what I really could do with my powers if I wanted to.
    It had terrified me. The storm had wrapped itself around me with glee, and it wouldn’t let me go. I’d killed so many demons, and the others had fled in terror. The triumph that had welled in my throat had made me sick.
    And now these losers came at me with