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To my shí heart, Michael.
Couldn’t have done it without you.
Chapter 1
The monster has been here. I can smell him.
His stench is part the acrid sweat of exertion, part the meaty ripeness of a carnivore’s unwashed flesh, and part something else I can’t quite name. It fouls the evening air, stretching beyond smell to something deeper, more base. It unsettles me, sets my own instincts howling in warning. Cold sweat breaks out across my forehead. I wipe it away with the back of my hand.
I can also smell the child he’s stolen. Her scent is lighter, cleaner. Innocent. She smells alive to me, or at least she was alive when she left here. By now she could smell quite different.
The door to the Lukachukai Chapter House swings open. A woman, likely the child’s mother, sits stone-faced in an old dented metal folding chair at the front of the small meeting room. She’s flanked by a middle-aged man in a Silver Belly cowboy hat and a teenage boy in army fatigues who looks a few years younger than me. The boy holds the woman’s hand and murmurs in her ear.
Most of the town of Lukachukai is here too. For support or for curiosity or because they are drawn to the spectacle of grief. They huddle in groups of two or three, hunched in morose clumps on the same battered gray chairs, breathing in stale air made worse by the bolted-up windows and the suffocating feel of too many people in too small a space. They are all locals, Navajos, or Diné as we call ourselves, whose ancestors have lived at the foothills of the Chuska Mountains for more generations than the bilagáanas have lived on this continent, who can still tell stories of relatives broken and murdered on the Long Walk or in Indian boarding schools like it was last year, who have likely never traveled off the reservation, even back when it was just a forgotten backwater ward of the United States and not Dinétah risen like it is today. These Diné know the old stories sung by the hataałii, the ancient legends of monsters and the heroes who slew them, even before the monsters rose up out of legend to steal village children from their beds. And now they are looking to me to be their hero.
But I’m no hero. I’m more of a last resort, a scorched-earth policy. I’m the person you hire when the heroes have already come home in body bags.
My moccasins make no noise as I cross the cracked tile floor to stand in front of the mother. Whispered conversations hush in my wake and heads turn to stare. My reputation obviously precedes me, and not all of the looks are friendly. A group of boys who must be the teenage boy’s friends loiter along the far wall. They snicker loudly, eyes following me, and no one bothers to shush them. I ignore them and tell myself I don’t care. That I’m here to do a job and get paid, and what Lukachukai thinks of me beyond that doesn’t matter. But I’ve always been a terrible liar.
The mother has only one question for me.
“Can you save her?”
Can I? That’s the real question, isn’t it? What good are my skills, my clan powers, if I can’t save her?
“I can find her,” I say. And I can, no doubt. But saving and finding are two different things. The mother seems to sense that, and she shuts her eyes and turns away from me.
With a clearing of his throat, the man in the cowboy hat pushes himself up from his chair. He’s wearing old faded Levi’s that probably fit ten years ago but now shrink back to leave his belly protruding over his belt buckle. A similarly ill-fitting cowboy shirt covers his aging paunch, and the look he gives me through bloodshot eyes tells me he’s already in mourning. That maybe he doesn’t believe much in saving either.
He introduces the mother, the boy, and then himself. First and last name, and then clans, like you’re supposed to. He’s the missing girl’s uncle, the boy is her brother. They are all Begays, a last name as common here as Smith is to the bilagáanas. But his clans, the ancestral relations that make him Diné and decide our kinship obligations, are unfamiliar to me.
He pauses, waiting for me to give my name and clans so he and the others can place me in their little world, decide our relations and what k’é they might owe me. And what k’é I owe them. But I don’t oblige him. I’ve never been much for tradition, and it’s better all around if we just stay strangers.
Finally, the older Begay nods, understanding I’m not inclined toward proper Diné etiquette, and gestures to the cloth bag at his feet. “This is all we have for trade,” he says. His hands tremble as he speaks, which makes me think he’s as bad a liar as I am, but he raises his chin defiantly, eyes wide under the brim of his hat.
I step forward and crouch to look through the bag, doing the quick math in my head. The silver jewelry is nice—beads, old stampworked bracelets, a few small squash blossoms—even if the turquoise is sort of junk, missing the spidery veins that make the rocks worth big trade. I can exchange the silver for goods at the markets in Tse Bonito, but the turquoise is useless, no more than pretty blue stones.
“The turquoise is shit,” I tell him.
A loud grunt and the brother pushes his chair back. The metal feet screech across the tile in protest. He makes a show of crossing his arms in disgust.
I ignore him and look back at the uncle. “Maybe you should find someone else. Law Dogs or Thirsty Boys.”
He shakes his head, his moment of bravado leaking away under the weight of limited options. “We tried. Nobody came. We wouldn’t have sent a runner if we weren’t . . .”
Desperate. He doesn’t have to say it. I get it.
The runner was a kid on a motorbike. Short and squat, so runner was a bit of a misnomer, but he wore a pair of ancient Nikes, duct tape wrapped carefully thick around the toe and reinforcing the seam at the heel, so what do I know? He sat in my yard with the bike’s motor idling loudly, making my dogs bark. I came to the door to tell him to go the hell away. That I wasn’t in the monster-hunting business anymore. But he told me Lukachukai needed help and nobody else would come and there was a little girl and besides they were paying. I said it wasn’t my problem, but the kid was persistent, and the truth was I was interested. All I’d been doing the past nine months was staring at the walls of my trailer, so what else did I have to do? Plus, I was getting low on funds and could use the trade. So when the kid refused to leave, I decided I’d go to Lukachukai. But now I’m starting to regret it. I’d forgotten in my months of self-imposed isolation how much I hate a crowd, and how much a crowd hates me.
The uncle spreads his hands, eyes begging where words fail. “I thought, maybe once you saw . . .”
And I do see. But I figure the Begays are holding out. Maybe they don’t want to pay because I
’m a woman.
Maybe because I’m not Him.
“This is bullshit,” the brother says loudly, and his challenge sends a nervous titter rippling through the gathering. “What can she do that we can’t do?” He gestures to encompass his posse of friends along the wall. “Clan powers? She won’t even tell us what her clans are. And Neizghání’s apprentice? We only have her word for it.”
At the mention of Neizghání’s name my heart speeds up and I can’t breathe past the knot in my throat. But I force myself to swallow down the familiar hurt, the ache of abandonment. The pathetic flutter of desire. I haven’t been Neizghání’s anything for a long while now.
“Not just her word,” the uncle says. “Everyone says it.”
“Everyone? Everyone says she’s not right. That she’s wrong, Navajo way. That’s what everyone says.”
A general burst of murmuring through the crowd, comparing notes on my wrongness, no doubt. But the uncle quiets them down with a flapping wave of his hands.
“She’s the only one who came. What do you want me to do? Send her away? Leave your sister out there at night with that thing that took her?”
“Send me!” he shouts.
“No! The mountain’s no place to be after dark. The monsters . . .” His eyes flicker to me, the person he is willing to send up the mountain after dark. But there’s nothing like consternation on his face. After all, he’s paying me to risk my life, although it’s a pretty stingy deal. The nephew is a relative, and another matter. “We already lost one,” he finishes weakly.
For a moment the boy looks like he’ll challenge his uncle, but he catches his mother’s gaze and his shoulders fall. He exhales loudly and slumps in his seat. “I’m not scared,” he mutters, a final volley. But it’s not true. He’s all show in those army castoffs and he surrendered quick enough. I glance over at his boys against the wall. Quiet now, looking everywhere but at their friend. I revise his age down a few years.
I let my eyes drift toward the boarded-up window where outside the sun is swiftly setting. If I had a watch, I’d make a show of checking it.
“Seems to me all this talk is just wasting my daylight,” I tell them. “Pay me what I’m worth and let me do my job or don’t pay and let me go home. Makes no difference to me.” I pause before I look at the mother. “But it might make a difference to your daughter.”
The boy flinches. I get a small tick of pleasure watching him flush in shame before a voice cuts through the heavy air.
“Do you have clan powers?” It’s the first thing the mother’s said since she asked if I could find her daughter. She seems startled by her own outburst and raises her hands as if to cover her mouth. But she stops short, lowers her hands to her lap, and grips the fabric of her long skirt before she adds quietly, “Like him, the Monsterslayer. The rumor is you do. That he taught you. That you’re . . . like him.”
I’m not like Neizghání, no. He is the Monsterslayer of legend, an immortal who is the son of two Holy People. I’m human, a five-fingered girl. But I’m not exactly normal, either, not like this brother and his friends. If the others asked, the boy or the uncle, I would refuse. But I won’t deny a grieving mother.
“Honágháahnii, born for K’aahanáanii.” Only my first two clans, but that’s enough.
The crowd’s muttered suspicions rise to vocal hostility, and one of the boys barks something ugly at me.
The mother stands up, back straight, and silences the crowd with a hard stare. Her eyes fill with something fierce that stirs my sympathy in spite of my best efforts not to give a damn. “We have more,” she says. The uncle starts to protest, but she cuts him off, her voice louder, commanding. “We have more trade. We’ll pay. Just find her. Find my daughter.”
And that’s my cue.
I roll my shoulders, shifting the shotgun in the holster across my back. Habit makes me briefly palm the belt of shotgun shells at my waist and the Böker hunting knife sheathed against my hip. Fingertips brush the throwing knives tucked in the tops of my moccasin wraps, silver on the right, obsidian on the left. I sling my pack over my shoulder and turn on silent feet, moving through the muted crowd. Keep my head up, my hands loose, and my eyes straight ahead. I push the door open and step out of the stifling Chapter House just as the brother shouts, “What if you don’t come back?”
I don’t bother to answer. If I don’t come back, Lukachukai’s got bigger problems than one missing girl.
Chapter 2
I follow the easy tracks, broken branches and grass shine, up the mountain for over an hour with no visual on my prey. I keep moving anyway, sure of my path. And for a moment, lost in the beauty of the waning sunlight and the steady rhythm of my breath, I forget I am here to kill something.
The forest surrounds me. Ponderosa and blue spruce spread across the high desert mountains, sheltering small badgers and mice and night birds. Pine trees scent the air, their fallen needles crunching softly under my feet. Insects drone happily in the cooling evening, buzzing near my ears, attracted to my sweat. There is a beauty here, a calmness that I savor. I will savor the bloodshed, too, no doubt, but this balance between earth and animal and self feels right. Feels true.
The sun sets, the moon rises, and the night settles in thick around me. The trees become shadows, the creatures flee from night predators, and the insects fly away. My pleasure fades along with my daylight.
I keep moving until the stench of corruption grows so strong it becomes overwhelming. Dread, like a dark intuition, builds in my stomach, telling me I must be almost there. I swallow my fear, my mouth dry and sour, and keep going. I run my hands across my weapons again just to be sure.
A flicker of light ahead on the path catches my eye and draws me closer. I hunch down and move in for a better look. A campfire flutters and shivers, casting haphazard flames against the trunks of tall trees. The fire tries its best to rise higher, but it’s just a bunch of loose sticks thrown in a shallow dugout, quickly consumed and not up to the task.
I circle south to come in somewhere downwind and east of the camp. I load my shotgun with shells full of corn pollen and obsidian shot, both sacred to the Diné. Ammo meant for taking out the yee naaldlshii and ch’įdii and any of the other monsters that call Dinétah home. If I’m wrong and this monster is of the more common human variety, the ammo will work just fine on him, too. A hole in the heart is a hole in the heart, no matter what makes it.
I find a good spot, foliage providing me cover but not breaking my sight line into the camp, and I brace the shotgun against my shoulder. I sight down the barrel. What I see turns my stomach.
The monster looks like a man, but I know better. He lies stretched out on a blue sleeping bag under a makeshift lean-to, rough canvas tarp strung across two ponderosas with trading post twine. The bulk of his body hides the girl from view, but I can hear her. A low whimpering mewing as his mouth works at her neck and she begs him to stop.
He doesn’t stop.
Rage floods my body, turns my vision hazy as I fight a wave of memory. The remembered feel of a man’s weight holding my own body down, blood thick and choking in my mouth as powerful fingers grip my skull and slam my head into the floor. A strong smell of wrongness in my nose.
The memory shudders through me, makes my hands unsteady. I force myself to shake it off. Remind myself that it’s just a memory and can’t hurt me anymore—the monster that did that to me is dead. I killed him.
I spare one last hope that Neizghání will come charging up the mountain, flaming lightning sword aloft to save the day. I even wait half a second to see if it’ll happen. But . . . nothing. Just me. Alone.
I raise the shotgun, bracing it against my shoulder. I stick out a foot, eyes still focused in front of me. I step heavily on a fallen branch. The break sends a loud snap into the otherwise silent night.
I wait for him to move, to give me a clear shot. Zilch.
Eyes still set on the monster’s back, I reach down and pick up a rock. I throw it hard at a d
istant sumac. It smacks into the trunk with a loud thunk. I grip the shotgun, finger on the trigger.
Still nothing, and the girl’s cries get higher, more frantic.
Screw it. I bang the butt of my shotgun on the tree I am using for cover and yell, “Hey! Over here!”
He rears up, head jerking back and forth as he searches the night for me. The nearness to the fire has left him blind.
I swallow down bile. His mouth is covered in red gore. He’s been gnawing at her throat. The sonofabitch is eating her.
I fire. The shot rips through his chest. He staggers but doesn’t go down. Blood trickles, sparkling wet in the firelight, and then pours. I start counting down from ten. Ten seconds and a human loses enough blood that he falls like a brick. I know he’s only shaped like a human, but I hope the rule still stands: I stay alive for ten seconds and I win.
He’s big, broad-shouldered and thick. No wonder he was able to carry the girl up the side of the mountain for miles. In the flickering light of the poor fire, I can’t see much detail. Man-shaped, but with knotty lumps like oversize tumors protruding from his back, shoulders, and thighs. Arms that seem too long, that branch out from his trunk and drag the ground. Skin so translucent it almost glows. And now he’s sporting a bloody hole in his chest.
I pump and fire again, this time taking off a chunk of his shoulder. Flesh and other bits spatter down on the girl, who skitters backward on all fours.
The monster is still standing, and he roars at me like a wounded boar, enraged.
“Run!” I shout at the girl as I advance. Six, five, four and he barely staggers with a hole in his heart and half his arm missing. And I know I’m in trouble.
“Go down,” I whisper. “Go down.”
He reaches a massive pawlike hand under the sleeping bag and pulls out a long wicked-looking ax meant for chopping through trees and little girls’ windows. I have no doubt it will slice through my flesh nice and easy. I don’t plan on giving him the chance.
Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World Book 1) Page 1