Free Firewalker by Allyson James

glowed a little too. He was at once a black-haired Native American in dusty jeans, and a shining creature I couldn’t identify. Were they aliens, maybe? I giggled.
    “You okay?” Beth asked me.
    I think I nodded, but the world was going dark. It occurred to me that we’d been very lucky that they’d happened by just at the time we’d made it to the road, as though they’d known we’d be in trouble and exactly where to find us.
    Guardian angels?
    “Did my grandmother put you up to this?” I tried to ask.
    Beth gave me a worried look and touched my forehead. She whispered soothing words in Shoshone, and my eyes drifted closed again. When they opened, I was lying alone in a hospital bed with white curtains around it, and the ride in the pickup was fading like a dream.

    I first noticed that I was cool and not thirsty, and then I noticed that I felt no pain. Not an iota. In fact, I felt pretty good.
    “Mm,” I said in satisfaction.
    The curtain opened, and there was Mick, cleaned up a little, but still in the T-shirt and jeans I’d stuffed into my backpack for him. His arms and face were covered with gouges from the demons, but the wounds were closed.
    “Hey, Mick.” I held out my hand. “Come and get into bed with me.”
    Mick’s smile warmed his face—gods, how I’d missed that smile—but his eyes were still watchful.
    “Sounds like you’re feeling better.”
    I wanted to throw my arms around him and pull him down to me, but my arms felt like rubber, and they were filled with tubes. I also had a big bandage on my head. No pain, but the bandage was awkward.
    “She sounds high.” I saw Nash Jones on a chair behind Mick, a magazine in his hands. “What did they give her?”
    I smiled. “Whatever it is, I like it.”
    “You had a concussion, sweetheart,” Mick said. “Plus dehydration, the beginning of sunstroke, and a third-degree burn on your arm. Lie back and take it easy.”
    In other words, I was lucky my guardian angels got me here before I keeled over. “You find your truck, Nash?”
    “No.” The answer was short, irritated. “I have the park rangers and sheriffs in both Nevada and California on alert for it.”
    “Must be nice to have so much power.”
    He gave me a noncommittal grunt.
    “I want to go home,” I said.
    Mick smoothed my hair. “Not just yet, baby. You get better, then we’ll go.”
    “Turn around,” I said, my mind relaxing. “I want to look at your ass. I’ve missed your ass.”
    “Can you gag her?” Nash growled.
    “Hey, your ass isn’t so bad either,” I told him.
    “Please, gag her,” Nash said.
    Fear worked its way through the soothing drug. “Mick, why are you so certain the dragons won’t come after you? What were you talking about—making bail? What the hell does that mean?”
    “Janet.” Mick sat on the edge of the bed and took my hands in his warm ones. With muscles and his tattoos he looked like a big, bad biker—and he was—but to me, he could be gentleness itself. Even so, there was some part of him always wary around me, and my little display on the mountain had heightened that. “Like I told you, it was a test of my resources, the equivalent of a human putting together enough money to get out on bail. They won’t lock me in again, but I’m honor-bound to turn up at the trial. They know I’ll show up; it’s a dragon thing.”
    My mouth popped opened. “Trial?”
    “For breaking dragon law, for letting you live.” Mick’s gaze held mine, that deep, ancient gaze that betrayed how nonhuman he truly was. “When they convict me at the trial, then there will be no escape from that.”

    The problem with good drugs is that they wear off. By the time the doctors decided I was well enough to go home the next morning, I was hungover and aching. I had meds to stave off the worst of the pain, but I was stiff and sore, my skin smarting from both the fire in the cave and the brutal sun of Death Valley.
    I discovered once I was coherent that we