She dives for the bow, headfirst. I run toward the boulder, leap. Plant my foot on the rock and launch myself into the sky. Grab her ankle. Drag her down. She screams as we both crash to the ground.
We grapple, but I’m bigger and stronger and she’s not a fighter. I’ve got her pinned, my weight planted on her chest, in seconds.
She glares at me, brown eyes shining with hate I haven’t earned. Opens her mouth wide, and that strange locust song pours forth. I think I’m immune to it, but it’s obviously some kind of weapon, so I’m not taking any chances.
I hit her in the face, hard. Her jawbone connects with my knuckles. Her song cuts off abruptly as her cheek slams into the dirt.
“Quit that shit,” I warn her. “Or I’ll tape your mouth shut.” I don’t have any tape, but that’s a small detail.
Besides, I’ve got my own kind of song to contend with. Even now K’aahanáanii is crooning in my ear, urging me to spill her blood. And it would be justified for what she did to Hastiin. But this is a bounty hunt. We’re supposed to bring the White Locust and his followers in to face murder charges, not be murderers ourselves.
And I promised Kai I was going to try something else besides being a killer.
I draw my Böker and her eyes go from hate to fear. I’ve decided to let her live, but she doesn’t know that. For a moment I savor the terror I elicit, the control I have over her. It’s a dark emotion, something I’m not proud of, but it’s there nonetheless.
I flip my Böker around. Bring the hilt down full force against her temple. Her eyes roll back, and her face goes slack. I press my fingers under her nose and feel air. She’ll live, but she’ll wake up with a hell of a headache.
Instinct more than sound tickles something in my awareness. I twist as I draw my throwing knife. Release it before I can think twice.
It flies true, striking my target in the chest, right over his heart.
The Thirsty Boy stares at the knife protruding from his protective jacket. Swallows loudly enough for me to hear.
I grimace, irritated that he almost made me break my new vow not to kill people. If he thinks I’m going to apologize, he’s got the wrong girl. “Don’t sneak up on me,” I snap. “That’ll get you killed.”
He nods, his face bloodless.
I sigh, brace my hands on my thighs and push myself up off the unconscious archer. “You’re lucky I didn’t aim for your eye.”
He says nothing. Smarter than he looks. “You are . . . ?”
“Atcitty,” he says. “Marvin Atcitty.”
I nod an acknowledgment. Walk over. Brace a hand against his chest and pull my knife from his flak jacket. He lets me do it all without comment. “You see anyone else up here, Marvin? Any more like this one, or maybe the White Locust himself?”
He shakes his head. “Curley went down to help Hastiin. I’ve cleared the perimeter. There’s a cave up the trail”—he gestures higher up the path—“but it looks abandoned. I—I haven’t checked. I heard the commotion”—he means Ben—“so I came as fast as I could to help Hastiin.”
“Hastiin’s dead.”
Marvin bristles. “Curley went down to help him.”
I get it. He won’t believe until he sees it for himself. I run a hand over my face, feeling exhausted. My clan powers are draining, and the reality of Hastiin’s death is starting to sink in. And that broken sound Ben made. I never want to hear that again.
“I’m going to take a look at the cave. Restrain this one.” I kick at the archer. “And make sure you cover her mouth. She’s got some sort of weaponized singing thing.”
He slides his pack of supplies off his shoulder in reply.
I press past him, up the trail toward where he said he found the cave. I guess I need to see for myself too. See if there’s any sign of the White Locust. Get a feel for what kind of monster he is.
Plus, if I’m honest, I can’t deal with Ben right now. Because if I do, I’ll have to explain her uncle’s dying wish.
Chapter 6
The cave is empty, or, more correctly, abandoned. It’s clear someone’s been living here, and more than one someone. There are shallow shelves carved in the walls that still hold a stash of canned goods. A spatula and a wooden spoon hang next to each other from hooks forced into the cracks in the rock, and a tub of soapy water sits next to a Coleman camp stove, both on an old Walmart folding table. A metal chair is pushed back from the table in front of the remains of someone’s breakfast, hastily left unfinished. The archer was definitely living here. But it looks like she was living alone, at least for now. But if they’d all fled, why leave one woman behind alone? To protect something? To punish her?
There are papers on the table next to the Coleman. I dig through them, looking for some sign of where the White Locust and his people might have gone. I find a guard schedule, penciled in neat, precise handwriting. A list of traveling supplies. An inventory of weapons.
The weapons list gives me pause. Hastiin was right. The White Locust has a shitload of explosives. And not just explosives. Compound bows, likely similar to the one the archer was using. Small firearms. Long guns. Grenades. I’m starting to think we were lucky we missed visiting with the White Locust. Guns are one thing, but a grenade?
A map catches my eye. Lake Asááyi is clearly marked with a “RV.” No idea what that means. Black pencil limns the road back to the main highway and then down through Tse Bonito, all the way to the southern Wall. The markings end abruptly at Lupton, a small border town on the edge of the Wall. Beyond Lupton, on the other side of the Wall, is the old highway. Route 66, they used to call it, and then Interstate 40.
I pocket the map in case the Thirsty Boys want to take a look, but I can guarantee that the Thirsty Boys won’t cross the Wall for any amount of trade, or revenge. The truth is that Dinétah got off easy when the rest of the world went to shit. Outside that wall is the horror of what happened to everyone else. And it may sound truly selfish, but I’ve had enough horror in my life. I don’t want to know about other people’s horrors too.
I walk past the makeshift kitchen to find at least a dozen crudely dug holes, wide enough to accommodate a human and about ten to fifteen feet deep. I bend to look down into one and see blankets piled at the bottom. Sleeping holes? Prisons? Whatever they are, people were living in them. In the last hole I find him. The Tribal Council representative. Dead. But there’s no smell, so he can’t have been dead long. A day, two days max.
A sound comes from outside the cave. A high-pitched keening, the sound of a girl in mourning, that instinctively makes me want to cover my ears and run away.
But as much as I’m tempted to run, I don’t have the option. I owe Hastiin for the month he took me in, gave me a purpose with the Thirsty Boys so that I wouldn’t dwell on what happened at Black Mesa, what I’d done there. The blood staining my hands. I owe him for his friendship, prickly as it was. For his forgiveness of my social transgressions. For being there, in his own way, when everyone else was ready to give up on me.
And so, mouth set in a grim line and soul aching, I leave the cave to face Hastiin’s niece.
Chapter 7
Marvin Atcitty’s splayed the archer out on her back, tied and staked spread-eagle. She’s got a skull bandanna stuffed in her mouth, and her eyes roll wildly between Atcitty, the other Thirsty Boy, and now me.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I expected them to have the prisoner tied up and ready to take back to Tse Bonito to be turned over to the police or the Law Dogs or whoever’s in charge of paying out the bounty. “Why is she staked to the ground?”
Ben rises to her feet. The front of her shirt is covered in blood I know isn’t hers.
“Maggie,” she says. Her voice is a teary whisper. Her eyes are red-rimmed and so hard to look at that I have to stop myself from turning away.
“Maggie?” she says again, but this time her voice is heavy with a question. More than a question. A demand.
She wants something from me. Something terrible t
hat I recognize. Hastiin must have told her stories about me. About the bloodthirsty monsterslayer. About the indiscriminate killer.
And now she’s asking me to be that person for her. To kill the archer.
I know it.
But it’s a request that I have no interest in fulfilling. My stomach hardens like a rock. My jaw clenches, the frustration so acute that I dig my fingernails into my palm for relief. I relax my hand, but the tiny moons shallow with blood stay carved in my flesh.
“No, Ben,” I say, my voice firm. It’s not her fault that Hastiin misled her, but I won’t be that monster for her. I can’t.
She whimpers. Looks to my hip where my Böker is sheathed.
“Ask Atcitty,” I tell her, somewhere between weary and angry. “Or that other guy. I don’t owe you this.”
“My uncle said it would be you. If I got in trouble, I should ask you. That the Boys weren’t . . .”
“Weren’t what?”
“Killers.” She looks right at me as she says it. Hard, uncompromising. Older than sixteen.
I must have looked the same way when I was her age and faced down the men who killed my nalí. It’s not a good thing.
I curse. Something crude enough to make Atcitty shuffle his feet uncomfortably. The archer between us writhes in her bonds, looks at me with big brown eyes, pleading for her life. A cut mars her cheek, blood smeared across her face from where I punched her.
“Don’t ask me this, Ben.”
“I have to.”
“You don’t.”
“I—please.”
I flinch back like she hit me. So dumb. Such a small word, trite even. But I can’t ignore it. My surrender must show in the set of my shoulders, the way I shift on my feet, because Atcitty comes forward to unstake the archer’s hands and legs and pull her up on her knees. He stretches her arms up high behind her, pulls her head back, exposing her throat.
So easy.
I glance at the other Thirsty Boy, but he’s looking down into the valley where somewhere below us Lake Asááyi glitters in the late-morning sun. “Coward,” I mutter, and watch him recoil.
As I come to her, the archer’s strange wings flare momentarily. They look like spun lace in the sunlight, fine and delicate. Atcitty struggles to hold her. I lay the tip of the Böker against the delicate skin in the hollow of her throat. She stills, wings drooping to her sides.
One cut, one small thrust of my hand, and the blade is in her brain. But I wait, pull the bandanna from her mouth, and ask instead, “Who are you?”
She opens her mouth, and I tap her chin with the tip of my knife. “Words,” I warn her. “I hear singing and it’s the last noise you’ll make.”
“What are you doing?” Ben shouts, confused. “I don’t care who she is. I want her dead.”
“We need information,” I say. Not a lie, but I’m definitely stalling. “You want to know about the White Locust, don’t you? We won’t know anything if she’s dead.”
“I don’t care about—”
“Ben,” Atcitty says gently. “We should find out.”
Ben stares at him as if he’s betrayed her, but she quiets anyway.
“You seek the White Locust,” the archer says, her voice ringing, “but he is gone. You will get nothing from me.”
“Break her wing,” I instruct Atcitty.
The archer makes a strangled cry and Atcitty glares at me. I shrug, unimpressed with his disapproval. “It’s either that or I just kill her outright,” I tell him, “but if you want her to talk . . .”
Atcitty twists the thin wire at the top of the membrane, and the archer’s wing crumbles. She screams and buckles, folding her body over her right shoulder as if she could protect it. We wait until she calms, her breath coming in slow, painful pants.
The other Thirsty Boy, Curley, curses darkly and walks away. Fucking cowards, all of them.
“You won’t find him!” the archer says, barely above a whisper. Her face is slick and fevered with sweat. “You’re too late. You can torture me, but it won’t matter. He’s gone!”
“Gone where?” I ask.
“To call for a reckoning. To cleanse the unworthy from this world.”
“Original,” I say.
“She’s not going to—” Atcitty begins, and then cuts off abruptly as Ben rushes forward.
“Do you know who this is?” Ben screams in the archer’s face, spittle flying. She thrusts a finger in my direction. “She’s the Monsterslayer,” Ben hisses. “Have you heard of her? If you’ve heard of her, then you should be afraid.”
I stare at Ben. What exactly did Hastiin tell her? Do I even want to know? I want to tell her I’m not some sort of boogeyman, no matter what her uncle said.
But Hastiin’s niece won’t look at me. Her eyes bore into the woman kneeling in front of her. “She slit the throat of Coyote because he double-crossed her, and she buried alive Naayéé’ Neizghání, the hero of Dinétah, even though she really loved him. She shot a powerful medicine man through the heart. So, who are you? Who are you that she won’t slit your throat? That she won’t bury you alive? Or slice off your wings inch by inch? Or cut out your tongue out to make sure you never sing again!”
Holy fucking hell.
The woman looks at me, eyes huge. She mouths something I can’t quite follow. Again, less than a whisper. Again, growing louder until I can make out what she is saying.
“Godslayer.”
“Godslayer,” she says again, louder, as she starts to tremble.
“Godslayer!” she screams. She shakes, spasms of fear juddering through her body. She shrieks the word again, bending in half and convulsing painfully. Her good wing flares, and she jerks forward. Ben stumbles back, thrown off-balance.
The archer wrenches away from Atcitty. And for a moment she’s free.
Ben surges forward to meet her, something in her hand. She thrusts her arm forward. Blood sprays, hitting me in the face. The archer falls.
The knife, the flimsy little knife the archer had before, is planted in her lower torso. The woman gasps, hands grasping for the hilt. But Ben falls on her, grabbing the knife and stabbing her again. Twice more until the knife breaks off at the handle. And then Ben starts beating her with her bare hands.
“That’s enough!” I yell, dragging her off. “Stop it, Ben! Enough!”
I shake her until she stops struggling. Her hands tremble, palms coated in blood. Her face is drained of color, and she looks at me with huge lost eyes.
Dammit.
Atcitty’s eyes meet mine, and he glances down at the archer. Shrugs. Not dead, despite Ben’s best efforts. A belly wound with a knife like that may cause a lot of blood, but it will take more than that to kill.
“I never killed anyone before,” Ben whispers, head against my chest.
“Of course you haven’t killed anyone,” I tell Ben, trying to sound soothing. I don’t have the heart to tell Ben that the archer will probably live if the Boys can get her medical care in time. I nod to Atcitty, who nods back in understanding.
I wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead Ben away, down the mountain, careful to keep her turned until we’re far enough away that she can’t look back.
“I—I was just so angry,” she sobs. “And she was going to get away. I—I had to kill her, didn’t I? I had to.”
Probably not, to both of those, but no need to tell Ben that now.
“My uncle’s going to be so mad.”
I close my eyes. “Ben . . .”
“Oh.” She nods. “Right. He’s dead.”
Her knees give. I catch her just before she hits the ground.
Chapter 8
We don’t speak on the drive home. Ben curls up in the passenger’s seat of the jeep, a small ball of grief. I keep my eyes on the road, try to avoid the worst of the potholes and keep the jostling to a minimum. We get back to my trailer with the setting sun, the vehicle rattling over the cattle grate. The noise wakes Ben from her stupor. She looks around, confused.
/> “We’re at your place?” she asks, as I guide the vehicle up the sloping hill to my house. The lights are on above the porch, and in the front window, a warm glow that tells me Tah is in there making an early dinner or afternoon tea. At the thought, my muscles slide loose and some of the horror of the afternoon fades. I decide right then and there to clear the air with Tah and fix the rift I’ve let fester. If that means talking about Kai, so be it. It’s time I made things right between us.
But that vow holds only until Tah opens the door, a cup of broth in his hands. He doesn’t say anything, just takes one look at Ben, wrung-out and blood-spattered, and hustles her into the house. I can hear him fussing, probably getting her out of those bloody clothes and making her wash up before he puts her to bed.
I collapse on the couch, mindful of my own bloody face and clothes, but too tired to do much about it. Dealing with a shell-shocked teenager seems to have compounded my fatigue.
Confident Tah’s got Ben in hand, I close my eyes. Just a moment of rest before I figure out what comes next.
I wake up to Tah standing over me, holding out a cup of broth. I take it, grateful and silent, and we sit together, stealing a moment of peace. He waits until I’ve finished my broth to ask what happened.
“Hastiin’s dead.” I don’t equivocate. “Arrow through the throat. The brain. She saw it all.”
Tah sighs, long and heavy. “He was a good man.”
“No, he was a complete ass,” I say, tired, “but he was my friend in the end. And I don’t have many of those.”
Tah nods. “And who is the girl?”
“His niece. A tracker with clan powers.”
Tah’s eyes are tired. “So she’s a bit like you, then, Maggie.”
“I hope not.” He looks surprised at my vehemence. “I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through, Tah. It would be better to be dead. I mean it.”
“But she’s already come into her clan powers. So she’s already suffered. And her clans aren’t . . . She’s not . . .”
He’s trying to say she’s not K’aahanáanii, so she won’t suffer the same blood lust as me. She won’t become a killer.
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