More than that, I distinctly got the impression Dr. Washington was afraid of this girl, despite her young age and tiny-looking body. Given that Ruby Washington was a board-certified psychiatrist with an M.D. out of Boston University and a decades-long career working in these kinds of institutions, she didn’t strike me as someone easily rattled.
That was good to know, too.
Letting her gaze rest a beat longer on those dark blue eyes, and on the hands resting on top of that white table, Dr. Ruby Washington nodded to the girl, almost like one would to a fellow adult.
“You can trust Dr. Fox, Birdy,” she said, a faint warning in her voice. “Talk to her. She wants to help you… and your brothers and sisters. She’s Native American, like you. She’ll understand.”
The girl blinked, looking up at Dr. Washington with those serious eyes.
It was hard to tell how she’d reacted to her words.
“Well,” the doctor sighed. “I’ll let you two alone, like I said.”
I nodded my thanks when she gave me a last look before turning to leave.
We’d discussed that, as well––that it would be easier for me to get Birdy Phillips to talk to me, and to cooperate, if she knew I had Native American ancestry.
I waited for the door to shut behind the doctor and Jason, the silent corrections officer who’d been standing in the corner. I waited until it was just me and Birdy.
Then, walking closer, I motioned to one of the plastic chairs.
“May I?” I said, more to see if she would reply.
She looked up, then nodded slowly.
“Of course,” she said.
Her voice was so adult-sounding, I flinched.
Looking at her, at that small, thin-limbed, still-underdeveloped body, it felt like I’d just witnessed someone throwing their voice, making it appear this child had spoken, when it was really an adult in another part of the room.
I recovered quickly and smiled.
“Thank you, Birdy.”
Pulling out a white plastic chair, I sat on it carefully, resting my hands and forearms on the white tabletop and interweaving my fingers.
Those somber, dark-blue eyes met mine, still holding that oddly adult scrutiny as she looked me over. I felt whispers of emotion off her, but none of those emotions were what I would have expected from a child, even a child imprisoned for first degree murder.
She assessed me with a near clinical eye, as if I were an adversary she might have to fight, either physically or mentally.
I got glimmers of that assessment of me.
It wasn’t wholly inaccurate, nor naive.
She definitely sensed something different about me, compared to other doctors she’d seen.
I let her look at me, not trying to push a conversation too quickly. I wondered if she would speak to me first, if I didn’t prompt her in any particular direction.
I didn’t have long to wait.
“You’re here about Wolf, aren’t you?” she said.
After a pause, I nodded slowly. “More or less.”
“Why? What did he do?”
Thinking about Angel and Cowboy’s description of Wolf’s appearance at Mañuel Azure’s house the night before, I lifted my hands briefly from the table in a noncommittal shrug.
“Nothing specific that I know of, as yet,” I said. “He came back to the reservation last night, and made what might be construed as threats.” I studied her face. “Did you know he had been banished from the rez, Birdy?”
She nodded.
“Yes. I knew.” Still studying my face, she added, “They’re a bunch of tired old men. They didn’t understand what he was offering them… what he was trying to do. They’ve gotten too lazy over the years, too used to being the dog tied outside the white man’s house. They whine and scratch, wag their tails when he throws them a few scraps.”
I held her gaze, keeping mine more or less blank.
“And what is Wolf offering them?” I said. “In your opinion?”
She snorted. “What do you think? He’s offering them a way out. A way to fight. A way to take back our land… our birthright. He’s a warrior. Not a tied dog.”
I gauged her face, and her light.
She believed this. She believed every word of what she’d just said.
She really believed Wolf could mount a violent uprising that would win the Navajo back their true claim to the land.
Leaning back in my chair, I frowned.
“He’s pretty heavily outnumbered, isn’t he Birdy?” I said. “If he was serious about taking this fight to the ‘white man,’ as you say, wouldn’t that just be suicide? Not just for him, but for all of you? For anyone who fought with him?”
“That’s what they want us to believe,” she said, smiling knowingly. “That’s the lie Wolf wants to smash. That’s the story the white man tells, to force obedience.”
I nodded, but my mouth remained in a frown.
“Birdy,” I said. “I was in the military. I fought in the Middle East. I’ve seen what the United States military can do. I’ve seen it first hand. I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but they could easily kill every man, woman and child on that reservation. On all reservations. Without losing more than a handful of their own people.”
At Birdy’s knowing smile, what hung on her lips as a near-smirk, I frowned, adding,
“The time for those types of battles is over, Birdy. We lost that war a long time ago.”
That smirk still hovering on her lips, she only looked at me.
“If you say so,” she said.
I just looked at her for a moment.
I could feel the hard wall there, the utter impenetrability of that mental frame. If Wolf had been the one to indoctrinate her, he’d done a thorough job. It felt almost like a cage had been constructed around her mind.
“Do you know anything about the new people, Birdy?” I said next. “The ones Wolf has with him? The ones who don’t speak English, or Navajo.” I glanced at the door, did a quick scan for cameras, then added, “You would know them if you saw them. They aren’t like regular people. They have strange eyes. I’m also told they wear black. They wear gloves. And hats.”
“Ah.” Her eyes filled with recognition. “The Chindi.”
“Chindi.” I frowned.
I’d heard the word before, so I knew roughly what it meant, but it was a lot closer to ghost or “bad spirit” than vampire. They were also generally believed to be invisible.
“You believe these are Chindi?” I said. “Or people possessed by Chindi?”
“They are given to us by the gods,” she said. “Coyote gave them to Wolf. Tklehanoai, the god of night and birth gave them to Wolf. Naestsan and Yadilyil gave them to Wolf. He had a vision and went to the Rock, and they were there, waiting for him. They were hungry, so he fed them. He brought them back to life… so they would fight for us.”
I watched her warily, feeling her light shift, going into a more euphoric, dream-like state as she spoke. Like with chindi, I was vaguely aware of the deities to which she was referring.
Like Dr. Washington warned, Birdy had clearly twisted the meaning and depictions of those deities to fit Wolf’s twisted ideology, or religion, or whatever it was.
“More will come,” Birdy told me, smiling that confident, knowing smile of hers. “More come all the time. We’ll have enough to fight soon.”
I sat back in my chair, frowning harder.
“How many more, Birdy?” I said.
“Until we can win the war,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “They will keep coming and coming, until they overrun these lands. Until they drive the white man and his children back where they come from.”
“And they come from the rock?” I said, still trying to make sense of her words. “Where? What rock? In only one place? Or do they come from all rock, everywhere?”
She grimaced, giving me a disbelieving look.
“No,” she said coldly. “Not a rock… the Rock. Tsé Bi
tʼaʼí. They come from the Winged Rock. They walk through the worlds when Wolf calls to them.”
My eyes widened in understanding.
“Ship Rock,” I said. “You mean Ship Rock, don’t you?”
Her eyes grew significantly more hostile.
“That’s the white man’s name for it,” she said, her words an open rebuke. “Are you sure you’re NDN, Dr. Fox?” Her voice grew colder, more disparaging. “You say you bled for them. You work for them. You wore their uniform, planted their flags. You killed for them in other lands. Are you sure you remember who you are?”
I looked at her directly that time, my eyes unflinching.
Meeting the anger I saw reflected in her dark blue eyes with a harder surety of my own, I nodded once.
“I know who I am,” I told her, my voice as unflinching as hers.
8
A REALLY BIG PROBLEM
“HANG ON. I’D better let Manny talk to her.” Black handed the phone to his friend, wincing and grimacing from the wave of separation pain that simultaneously flooded and sparked through his light.
It worsened the instant he felt Miri in close proximity to Angel.
Hell, it worsened when Miri’s plane landed at Albuquerque.
Manny gave him a baffled look, but accepted the phone when Black handed it to him, reaching over the old, linoleum kitchen table. Leaning back in his metal chair, he folded one arm across his chest and put the phone to his ear.
“Mañuel speaking.” His eyebrows went up when whoever it was answered. He glanced at Black, his eyes showing disbelief even as he sat up straighter in his seat. “Well, hello to you too, Mrs. Black. Or… apologies. It’s Dr. Black, isn’t it? Yes.” He chuckled. “Nice to speak with you, too. And Manny’s fine.”
Wincing harder that time, Black got to his feet.
Pain coiled around his light, making it hard to think, to even breathe normally.
He could feel her awareness of him, too.
Without leaving the room entirely, he moved away from where Manny sat, standing in the doorway of the small kitchen and leaning against the wooden frame.
He found himself listening minutely anyway.
“You talked to her already, then?” his friend said into the phone. “That was fast. But then, we weren’t expecting you to get here until tonight…”
He paused, waiting while the person on the other end of the line spoke.
“Ah, yes. Well, I can understand that. So about Birdy. You got in there okay?” There was another silence when he trailed, listening for her answer. Whatever she said caused Manny’s eyebrows to furrow. “Ship Rock? You sure about that?”
There was another silence where Miri continued to talk.
“Well,” Manny said, sighing. “We’ll need to get permission to bring you out there, but that won’t be a problem. I suspect your ball and chain will want to go, too.”
Black stiffened, glancing over directly that time.
“…Well, not only because of that,” Manny said, giving Black a faint smile and a wink. “But yes, ma’am, it’s not the safest thing to be doing on your own, I suspect, if what Birdy said was true. Anyway, that brings you mighty close to where we are here. In fact, we could do the scouting for you, if you rather? Pull you in if we find anything interesting?”
Miriam spoke again from the other end of the phone.
“Sure,” Manny said next. “We’ve got a few of the Wolf Children here, too. You think they’re still working with him? With Wolf?”
He grew quiet, listening.
That time, Manny looked troubled by whatever Miri was telling him. A kind of disturbed worry emanated off his light.
“Are you sure she’s not kind of an exception?” he said, in the voice of a man looking for a way to argue with whatever she’d said. “Birdy fell real hard for all of Wolf’s stories. I guess we figured there was some issue there, with her mind. Something we missed.”
Miri spoke again, causing the old man to nod.
“No,” he said, his voice grim. “No, of course not. That makes sense. You’d better take a look at all of them. I’d very much appreciate it if you would, in fact.” Manny paused, giving Black a grim look. “My grandson and granddaughter went to a few of those meetings. With friends of theirs from school. I’d like you to talk to them, too.”
There was another silence where Manny just seemed to be listening intently.
“How about the day after tomorrow?” he said. “I’m thinking we don’t need you for the Ship Rock thing. We can head there ourselves tomorrow. It’s definitely too late today… I won’t let anyone drive up there when it’s not light out, not even your husband. If there’s something worth checking out, we can bring you back when you come up here to do the interviews.”
Black frowned, folding his arms as he watched Manny speak.
His mind was still fixating on the “dangerous” comment his friend made.
“Naw, I’d rather be here for that, if you don’t mind,” Manny said next. “And the extra day’ll give me time to talk to the other parents here, maybe get something organized so you can talk to the kids all in one place. If you want to pop in at the F.B.I. offices in Santa Fe tomorrow, that would be most appreciated. Red’s been talking to them, of course, but it’d be nice to have someone on location, so to speak. Ask around, see if anyone’s seen signs Wolf could be active again, and let us know about those clothing samples, if you can. We sent them up there first thing this morning, so they might know something by tomorrow.”
Listening again, Manny nodded.
“Gotcha.” There was another silence, then he chuckled, glancing up at Black. “No, he’s here. You want to talk to him?”
There was another silence where Black stood by the doorframe, tense.
After another few seconds, Manny chuckled.
“No, I understand.” His friend smiled, glancing at Black again. Smiling wider at something else she said, he added, “Well, you didn’t pick an easy one, that’s for sure.”
When Black scowled at him openly, Manny chuckled louder.
“Of course,” he said next. “You’re welcome anytime, Mrs. Black. Anytime at all.”
She spoke to him for a few seconds more, then Manny nodded, his voice growing warmer.
“No, I understand entirely. And thank you. We’ll see you Wednesday morning.” He paused. “All right, be sure and call us tomorrow… bye now.”
Black just stood there, gritting his teeth as it sank in that Miri didn’t want to talk to him, that she’d told Manny not to give him the phone.
He was still standing there, motionless, when Manny hung up, setting Black’s phone face up on the table. Leaning back in his rickety metal chair, he rubbed his scalp with a few fingers before he raised his eyes to his friend standing by the door.
“You’re a damned fool, Black,” he told him, that smile still ghosting his face. “A damned, immature fool.”
Black didn’t have anything to say to that.
In the end, he only looked out the kitchen window at the desert, gritting his teeth as another coil of separation pain slid through his light.
“SO, YOU SEE,” Manny said, after recounting everything Miri told him. “We might have a big damned problem, Black, if that little girl was telling the truth.”
His mouth hardened as he watched Black’s face, maybe looking for a reaction.
“If Wolf really is growing the number of vampires he has in his ‘undead army,’” he added. “If there really is some place––some kind of source for the damned things, somewhere out in the middle of the desert––then we have a big damned problem indeed, brother.”
Black frowned, thinking over everything he’d just been told.
It didn’t really make sense.
He knew that, logically.
Even so, something about the girl’s story bothered him. It bothered him the way the vampire’s clothes bothered him, the way the odd language it spoke bothered him, the way the oddness of its features bothered him, the
way its teeth bothered him.
He found himself frowning harder, the longer the silence stretched.
Taking a sip of the brutally strong whisky Manny poured him––strong enough, it was in all likelihood homemade––Black glanced at what remained of the chile verde and mole poblano they’d just eaten. Both dishes had been damned good as well, and went a long way towards killing the last whispers of his hangover from the night before.
Of course, that might have been the whisky, too.
He took another sip, grimacing, and pushed his plate away.
When Manny reached over to take his plate, Black smacked his hand away.
“I’m doing the dishes tonight,” he grumbled. “Stop waiting on me. Christ. You’re like an old nursemaid. If anyone should be playing geriatric caretaker, it’s me.”
Manny chuckled, but held up his hands obediently, leaning back in his own chair and taking a sip of the same whiskey.
He didn’t grimace when he drank it, Black noticed.
“Where’s Red?” Black said. “Your asshole-in-law. He around tonight?”
“He’s short-handed, so he’s out with the patrol tonight.”
At Black’s questioning look, Manny explained,
“They have a group that keeps an eye on the town at night. They started up about a week before you got here… trying to give us some advance warning if more of those things got hungry and wandered into town.” Manny’s voice turned grim. “They’re the ones who caught the vampire you killed.”
“Dangerous,” Black muttered, taking a sip of his drink.
“They travel in decent-sized groups. Usually eight, sometimes ten. With fire, rifles, wooden spears and stakes. They’ve found the bloodsuckers don’t like fire much, but it also provides a good distraction, pulling any stragglers away from the town. Generally speaking, the vamps only approach if they’re desperate… but they still go for them over trying to break into someone’s house. Maybe it’s an instinctual thing for them, to go after prey on open ground, even if it outnumbers them. Even if it has fire.”
Black nodded. A patrol was a good idea.
Fire was a good idea, too.
“I could take a turn,” he offered.
Black To Dust: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery (Quentin Black Mystery Book 7) Page 12