Another volley of gunfire broke out right outside the window, cutting me off.
When it died down, I looked back at Black, frowning.
“We have to try to stop her,” I said. “Elsie. For Manny.”
“The thought occurred to me, yes,” Black called back, scowling. “I’m just not sure how to do that right now without killing her. I tried knocking her out with my sight, but that doesn’t always work even at the best of times on this version of Earth… and Wolf’s got them all trained in basic forms of psychic self-defense. Even the kids.”
“Fantastic,” I yelled back.
The gunfire outside was beginning to die down for real now.
It was also growing further away. I heard triumphant hoots in the distance, broken up by more gunfire. Some of them sounded like they were happening on the move, like whoever made the sound might be running while they did it.
Seconds later, Black slowly rose to his feet.
“You can get up, doc,” he said, in his regular voice. He shoved his gun into a shoulder holster inside the leather jacket he wore. “We’re clear.”
I slowly rose to my feet.
Looking out the window, I grimaced, seeing the sprawl of bodies.
Most of them were wearing those all-black, strangely heavy-looking clothes. A number of them had exposed skin that was smoking and burning under the direct sunlight, now that their hats had been knocked off, and their faces exposed.
The smoke smelled bad––like burning a long-rotten corpse bad.
Covering my nose, I continued to scan the bodies, not quite counting them, but getting a sense of how many I saw. It looked to be at least twenty, so most of what I’d seen outside that window before the gunfire started. I also saw a dead wolf, and one that looked fatally wounded. It was whining, trying to pull itself across the packed earth with its front legs.
Wincing, I looked away from that, too.
One of us would have to put it out of its misery most likely.
Despite my revulsion, I didn’t stop scanning bodies, looking at each one individually, at least of those whose faces I could see. They were spread across a fairly wide area, filling most of the dirt clearing outside the classroom.
I didn’t see the face I was looking for, though.
“They didn’t get Wolf,” I said finally.
“Nope,” Black agreed, frowning. “Fucker’s slippery as an eel. Easton and Frank lit that whole area up. And they call me a ghost.”
He was already heading for the door to the classroom.
Realizing I was just standing there, staring at the carnage, I turned to follow after him.
I STOOD IN a cluster of bodies and guns, watching Black.
Those bodies and guns belonged to Black’s friends from that Louisiana prison.
All of us were watching Black surreptitiously where he was talking to Manny about a dozen yards away, one of his muscular hands clasped firmly on his friend’s shoulder. Black had his face close to Manny’s as he spoke to him, his lips moving in a murmur as Manny frowned.
The old man was clearly listening, though. I saw him nod to whatever Black was saying, but that frown never left his lips.
“That’s gotta suck,” a young voice muttered from next to me.
I turned to see a lanky, twenty-something Native American man with soft brown hair that hung about jaw-length. His white teeth flashed from a tan face when he smiled. He bounced his weight lightly against the chrome bumper of the old truck near where we stood, making the whole truck shake.
He’d been introduced to me as “Dog.”
A muscular Native American man stood next to him.
That man, who I’d been told was Easton, grunted.
Unlike Dog, who was lanky and lean, all long legs and arms and neck, Easton looked like someone who spent a lot of time lifting weights. He wore a flannel shirt with cut off sleeves that displayed rock hard biceps, native-looking tattoos, and a number of scars. Below that, he wore tight-fitting blue jeans that made it clear he worked on his legs, too, and cowboy boots.
He wasn’t very tall, but he was stocky, built almost like a wrestler.
“Which part isn’t easy?” Easton said to Dog. “The telling part? Or the finding out your only daughter is a murderer part?”
“Both,” Dog said, looking at his friend. “Either.”
Another man standing with us, who was even bigger than Easton, in that he was tall in addition to being muscular as hell, shook his head, half-smiling.
He didn’t say anything, though.
His name was Frank.
I’d already met Joseph too, and Devin, both of whom were currently out with a group of others from their settlement, which lived on the Arizona side of the Navajo Rez. Joseph was leading a group of trackers trying to pick up the trail of Wolf and his remaining vampires, to figure out where they’d gone. Devin went with him, another of the “chiefs” from that Louisiana prison, along with about fifteen others who were either relatives or close friends.
Cowboy went with them, too… and Angel.
Apparently Black had been busy on that organic headset Charles gave him, which also came equipped with a regular phone. For a good chunk of the time I’d been questioning kids, Black had been speaking to people in San Francisco and Santa Fe on sub-vocals.
He told me he’d called Frank and Easton the night before, after having Dex and Kiko hunt down their contact information. He called Angel and Cowboy to come up that morning, along with a few of his security people who’d been hanging out in Santa Fe, in part to keep an eye on me. Black said he figured he needed people around he actually trusted, once he suspected at least a portion of the B.I.A. and Navajo Nation police had been turned by Wolf.
Black said he knew something was off when they told him they couldn’t find any sign of Wolf on that bluff. At that point, he knew at least one of their trackers had to be working for Wolf––if not all of them. He hadn’t been sure about Red and Elsie, but now he assumed they’d been working for Wolf all this time, too.
I had a million questions, of course, as per usual with Black––but I found myself piecing together a few things, too, based on what Black had already figured out.
For one, Red being involved most likely explained why the local Feds stayed away from Wolf. I remembered how odd that was to Rodriguez, that homicide detective I’d talked to in Santa Fe. It also explained why no one had found Wolf in all this time.
The only thing I didn’t understand was why Red let Manny bring Black into this at all. Why would they let Black come here, given everything?
For some reason, the question nagged at me.
Either way, Black and Joseph seemed confident they’d be able to find Wolf, now that they had a tracking team that was actually looking for him.
According to Dog, Joseph was a good tracker in his own right.
So was Devin, despite him being about Dog’s age.
Cowboy was skilled in that regard, as well, Black said––something that didn’t surprise me particularly, from what little I knew of him. What did surprise me, simply because I hadn’t known it about her, was that Angel had some tracking ability as well.
We were supposed to pick them all up on our way out of town, when we joined them to try and catch up with Wolf.
Of course, we all had a pretty good idea of where they’d gone already.
Dog shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, which hung low on his hips.
“What do you suppose?” he said. “Are we waiting to find out from Black if he’s got permission to shoot at her?”
I gave him an incredulous look. “You think Manny’s going to give the go-ahead for us to shoot at his daughter? Seriously? His own daughter?”
Dog shrugged. “Maybe. If he’s practical.”
“Practical? She’s got children.”
Dog shrugged. “So? I’ve got children. Didn’t stop the cops shooting at me.”
“You’ve got children?” I said, unable to hide my incredulity. I kn
ew he was in his twenties, but he looked like a boy to me. “Really?”
Dog gave me a sheepish look. “I suspect I do, somewhere.”
Easton broke out in a laugh.
“You flirting with Black’s wife, Dog?” He grinned at me, jerking a chin towards the younger man. “Dog says that nonsense so we won’t know he’s really a virgin. He talks so much he scares most women off anyway.”
Dog gave him a deeply offended look. “Virgin? Please. You’re the one who spends more time with his dogs than with actual girls.”
Easton shrugged, clearly unbothered by the accusation.
“Better dogs than those stupid video games you play all the time,” he said.
“You only say that because you’ve never played them,” Dog scoffed. “Join the current century, man. You’re like… an artifact.”
Easton shook his head, giving Dog a disbelieving smile, then looked at me.
“Frank’s the only one here with kids,” he explained. “He’s also the only one here likely to have a few running around he never found out about. Before he got married,” he added to me, when Frank cuffed the back of his head. “Frank’s not like that. Are you, Frank?”
Still frowning, Frank looked between him and Dog.
“I’m honestly not sure which of you is the biggest asshole,” Frank said. “You’d think neither of you had talked to a pretty native girl before.”
I rolled my eyes at that, snorting.
Still, there was something about the easy companionability of these three that made me relax in a way I hadn’t in days. It also made me realize how tense most of the Navajo were in this town. Somehow I hadn’t fully taken in how strange everyone acted here, with the exception of Manny himself.
As if he’d heard my thoughts, Dog glanced down the dusty street.
“What the fuck’s up with this place, anyway?” he muttered. “Is this the crazy part of the Rez? Where all the looney-birds come to hang out together?” He grunted, still looking up and down the dusty storefronts. “Maybe that’s why I’d never heard of it. Everyone here is tripping out on peyote and datura.”
“Or maybe they just don’t have any cute girls they send to pow-wows,” Easton joked. “That’d explain why you’d never heard of it.”
Dog elbowed him, still looking up and down the empty street.
“No, really,” he said, chewing on his lower lip as he jostled his leg. “It’s like a ghost town here. Did the vampires really kill that many of them?”
I followed Dog’s eyes, frowning.
He was right. The town did look dead.
It hit me again that Wolf had been preying on the people here for a while. Maybe they’d converted a lot more of the adults than Black and I had realized.
Maybe the whole town was part of his cult now, all but a few outliers like Manny.
Hell, maybe Wolf really had been dosing the town’s water supply with peyote.
“Children of the Corn, man,” Dog muttered, bouncing his rear against the truck’s bumper. “I keep waiting for kids with dead eyes to come out of the desert, holding scythes. Chanting.”
I burst out in a real laugh at that.
“There’s no corn here, dumbass,” Easton said fondly.
“I mean the spirit of the thing. Not literally corn kids. Jesus, Easton. See a fucking movie for once, would you? I worry about you man. I mean it. I worry.”
Black was walking back towards us, though.
Turning to face him, I saw Manny walking in the opposite direction, away from us, heading with purposeful strides for his truck. I wondered if he was going back home.
“Is he okay?” I asked Black, once he was near enough.
Black shook his head, once, giving me a grim look.
Then he looked at Easton and Frank.
“He wants to go out there with us. That okay with you guys? He’s good with a gun. Damned good. I can vouch. And he has a right to be there, under the circumstances. His grandkids are gone, too.”
Easton shrugged. “‘Course.” He glanced up at the sun, which was already about halfway down in the sky, and frowned. “It’ll be dark when we get there. Does it matter?”
Black shook his head, taking my hand and tugging me closer to him.
“No,” he said. “Not anymore.”
19
SUNSET
WE DROVE FAST across the desert.
We stopped here and there for the trackers to make sure we were still going the right direction, but Wolf and his people jumped into cars about a mile out of town, which made following their route a lot easier.
They were driving an old Chevy station wagon that was probably older than I was, and a Ford Bronco. Easton told us they’d cased both cars before they got to the schoolhouse, and every window but the windshield had been blacked out with dark paint and cardboard. The driver’s sections of both cars had also been blocked off from the passenger areas, again presumably so the sunlight wouldn’t reach vampires in the back seats.
The whole thing struck me as pretty weird.
Moreover, I couldn’t help thinking about how sweltering hot it must have been in the back seats of those old cars, with the windows rolled up and painted black and cut off from any air blowing back from fans set in the dashboard.
Remembering the leather gloves, heavy coats, and thick, black clothing worn by Wolf’s vampires, I grimaced. Just thinking about it made me feel sick.
Black’s arm snaked around me where I sat in his lap.
We’d crammed as many people as we could in Frank’s big 350 Ford truck, which meant I was in Black’s lap, even though about ten of Joseph’s people were sitting in the truck’s bed, along with most of the guns and rifles.
I was trying not to be distracted by being in Black’s lap.
I could tell he was doing his best to ignore it, too, but I couldn’t help noticing reactions from both of us every so often, both physical and through our light.
Yeah, it’s distracting all right, Black murmured in my mind.
Shifting in his seat, he pressed against me briefly, pointedly enough that I felt him through the jeans both of us wore. There was a silence while both of us stared out the window, then his mind rose in mine again.
Are you coming back with me after this, doc? Back to San Francisco?
I turned, looking down at him.
You want to talk about this now?
He gave a faint shrug, his light carefully neutral. Why not? We’ve got some time.
Frowning, I glanced around at his friends crammed around us inside the truck’s cab. Both the front and the back rows of seats were completely full. Even where we were, Joseph’s wife, Geraldine, sat between us and Joseph, who was driving the truck.
Yeah. Black sighed in my mind. Maybe you’re right.
There was another silence.
Then, exhaling, I leaned back into his chest, resting my head on his shoulder.
Yes, I sent. I’m coming back with you, Black. If that’s okay.
Black’s arm tightened around me more.
He didn’t answer directly, but I felt enough relief on his light that I closed my eyes. Feeling a dip in my balance and a dizzying head-rush when I opened them again, facing the desert, I wrapped my fingers around his where he held me.
I’m coming back, I repeated. So don’t worry about that. But we should focus on staying grounded right now. My light’s getting pretty weird. I glanced back at him. How far are we? From Ship Rock? I only know it by the highway.
We should be able to see it in a few minutes.
I nodded, clenching my jaw.
Truthfully, I still didn’t want Black anywhere near this place.
Some part of me also worried we were doing exactly what Wolf wanted us to do, coming out here.
Like Black, I couldn’t see that we had much choice, though.
We couldn’t just leave the door open. We couldn’t let Wolf continue to collect vampires either, whether to build some kind of whites-killing army or to terrorize other na
tives living on the reservation. While I wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to the desire to take land back––or even the desire for revenge for that land having been stolen in the first place––what Wolf was doing was clearly wrong. I could feel the wrongness of it, even beyond what my mind told me.
Also, as much as I hated to admit it, I couldn’t leave Uncle Charles.
I only hoped he wasn’t dead already.
I don’t think he is, Black murmured in my mind. I felt him a few times, in the storm.
You felt him? I turned again, looking down at him.
Black nodded.
Did he say anything to you? I sent, lips pursed.
Black shrugged, leaning back on the cloth seat. Only more or less what you’d expect.
Meaning what?
Black gave me a grim look, his hand wrapping around my hip.
He was calling for help, doc, Black sent, blunt. He asked me to come for him. He asked us to get him the fuck out of there. He said they were going to kill him. I tried to ask him where he was exactly, but the communication didn’t really work both ways.
Thinking about his words, I bit my lip, fighting an emotional reaction that rippled through my light. I was worried about Charles, in spite of everything––in spite of myself.
In the end, I could only nod, gazing out over the desert.
I was still looking out over that yellow and red landscape, watching the sun dip towards the horizon, when Black nudged me with his arms.
“There, doc,” he said. “There it is.”
I looked over, squinting through the windshield.
We were driving almost due east now, so the Rock got hit with the full brunt of the sunset light coming from behind us. Shining a dark red on the pink stretch of desert, the Winged Rock rose out of the flatlands like something from another world.
Just looking at it brought back that light-headedness, making me grip Black’s hands tighter where he held me.
Black To Dust: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery (Quentin Black Mystery Book 7) Page 28