I couldn’t tear my eyes off the view now filling most of the windshield.
Looking up at Ship Rock itself, at the jagged spires of the volcanic formation, I could see the Barrier storm without reaching out with my seer’s sight at all. Heavy red, gold and orange clouds merged with the sunset and the red rock, rotating over Ship Rock like a hurricane made of light.
The eye hovered, twisting, directly over the tallest part of the rock spire.
Looking at it, I could almost believe Wolf was right.
I could almost believe the world was coming to an end.
BEFORE WE GOT to the Rock itself, Black had us veer off, heading north and eventually east of the spire, towards where Manny told Black he’d described the entrance to the underground tunnels that led to the Barrier door.
All of us were quiet now.
I couldn’t even hear the younger natives in the back of the truck.
They’d been talking and laughing most of the way here, but now it was as silent in the truck’s bed as it was in the passenger cab.
When I looked back there, they were all staring at Ship Rock, the expressions on their faces grim. I knew they probably couldn’t see any of what I saw, with the insane clouds and the storm high over the jagged tops of the rock formation, but clearly at least some of them could sense it on some level.
I found myself looking at one young-looking Navajo girl in particular, maybe because she looked like a teenager to me. She wore a dark blue bandanna to hold back her thick black hair, and gripped a rifle like the rest of them. I watched her gaze up at the sky with wonder in her eyes, almost like she could see the Barrier storm.
I looked through the windshield and realized I could see Wolf’s cars now.
I also saw a couple of one-seater tractors, along with an assortment of shovels, picks, axes and what looked like metal detectors.
A Ford Bronco with darkened windows was parked in a diagonal line next to an ancient and dust-covered Chevy station wagon, and a newer but still old-looking Grand Cherokee. All three of the vehicles looked abandoned. All three had windows painted black, and what looked like homemade partitions between the driver’s seat and the passenger areas in the back.
On the other side of the Cherokee, once we’d gone around the station wagon, I saw the hole in the ground. The bigger of the two tractors and the haphazard pile of digging tools had been left on the other side of that hole, across from the cars.
I’d expected a natural-looking opening in the desert floor, more like a cave, or maybe an overly-large rabbit burrow.
Instead, I saw a rectangular opening with steps leading down into what was a distinctly man-made tunnel through the rock and dirt. To the left of that opening, a heavy wooden and iron door lay flat on the red dirt, collecting dust from the wind.
It looked like Wolf’s people dug about ten feet down to reach that door.
“Gaos,” Black muttered, staring at it. “What the hell is this?”
I didn’t answer him.
The truck pulled to a stop next to the Cherokee, and I opened the door at once, climbing out of Black’s lap and jumping down to the packed dirt.
Instantly, a head-rush tried to tilt my balance again.
I managed to regain control over my light and my body as I gripped the open door of Joseph’s truck, watching the others jump out beside me.
Once my eyes were more or less focused, I looked at Black.
He seemed to be okay, from what I could tell––maybe more okay than me.
At the very least, he was upright, and his eyes were relatively clear as he stared around at our group, and at the row of vehicles.
I watched him walk to the back of the truck bed, and pull out a bundle that was wrapped in dark cloth. I assumed it was a rifle, something specialized, but I blinked when I saw the two dark handles of his swords, along with a twin scabbard that he normally wore on his back. He shouldered it on over his jacket as I watched.
“You all right?” I asked, that wariness in my voice. “Is it better than last time?”
He glanced at me, his gold eyes catching the sunset sun.
“I’m fine, doc.”
He tossed the dark cloth back into the back of the truck bed, checking the holsters he wore at his hips and adjusting the nylon straps of the twin scabbard.
“It’s night and day with last time,” he added, frowning as his gaze turned inward. “I have no idea why. I can still feel the storm, but it’s like something is tying me to the ground this time.”
He glanced in the direction of Ship Rock, then back at me, frowning.
“We were closer before, but not that much closer. And I was getting hit pretty hard during the last part of the drive that time, too, and this time I was more or less fine.”
“Could you just be more used to it now?” I said.
Black frowned. Gazing out over the desert, then back at me, he shrugged.
“Maybe.”
From his expression, I knew he didn’t really believe that, though.
He thought something had changed.
Yeah, Black murmured in my mind. But what, doc? What changed?
I didn’t have an answer for him.
I think it’s you, he said next, his mind still feeling like he was turning it over. I think you’re connected to this land… maybe even to this place. I think you’re keeping me tied to this ground. I feel more in harmony with it somehow. Like with you here, I belong here. Before it was like magnet ends repelling one another. I felt like an interloper… like I wasn’t wanted. I felt like I shouldn’t be here.
Like you shouldn’t be here? I frowned, studying his profile as he gazed up at the rock formation. You felt like you shouldn’t be here, at Ship Rock? At the door? Or like you shouldn’t be on Rez land more generally?
Thinking about his own words, he frowned.
I think it was bigger than that, doc. I think I felt like I shouldn’t be on this planet… on this version of Earth. I’d never felt that before. Not like that.
I gave him a sharp look. What do you mean, you don’t belong here? This is your home. Coreq brought you here. You live here now.
Looking away from Ship Rock, he met my gaze.
It’s just a feeling, doc. I don’t know what it means.
He looked back towards Ship Rock, that small frown on his lips, and I forced myself to drop it, at least with him. I could feel what he was talking about, though. In an abstract way, I could feel how something about him aligned differently with the land here through me.
I didn’t know what it meant either, but in all honesty, it frightened me.
It also brought back that initial, irrational surge of feelings I’d had when Manny first told me about Black and Ship Rock. When Manny told me about Black passing out here, it terrified me out of my mind, even before I’d come up with a remotely logical reason as to why.
Those feelings had told me to keep Black far, far away from this place.
No, it’s okay now, doc, Black assured me. Really, it’s okay.
Stepping closer to me with his long, graceful, catlike strides, he wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me tight against his chest, and against the straps of the scabbards he wore. I felt so much warmth and reassurance and affection in the hug, I couldn’t help but relax.
When I did, I felt more grounded in my body again, too.
“So Nick sent you your swords?” I said, glancing at the custom twin blades strapped to his back. “I swear he spoils you more than I do.”
Black gave me a sideways smile.
Leaning down, he kissed me on the mouth just lingeringly enough and just long enough to cause that pain to sharpen briefly in the middle of my chest.
“Nick’s a good egg,” he said, squeezing me against him again.
We followed the others over to the hole in the dirt.
Frank had pulled up in his truck by then, too, and everyone on board had already climbed out, including Manny, Cowboy and Angel. Manny saw me and Black first and walked
over to where we stood, looking down at the door and those stairs carved into the rock along with the rest of us.
After a pause, he whistled.
“He told me they had to dig it out,” Manny said, shaking his head. “Red. He didn’t tell me it looked like this. He didn’t say anything about it looking like this.”
Black exchanged tense looks with his friend.
“We have to go down there, right?” Manny prompted. “Black. We have to go down there. My whole damned family’s down there.”
Black nodded, laying a hand on Manny’s shoulder without letting go of me.
“We’re going,” he assured him.
Turning to Frank, then to Joseph, then to Cowboy and Angel, then to the rest of the group, Black raised his voice.
“No one has to come who doesn’t want to,” he said. “We have no idea what we’ll find down there exactly. We do know there are vampires. Wolves. Ghosts. Many of your people, who may or may not try to stop us… or even kill us.”
He paused, looking around at faces.
“But some of us are going down there now.” Black glanced at me, then at Manny, before adding, “We’re going down now, because we have family down there. You don’t have to come with us, if you don’t want. But we’re going, and we’d appreciate the help.”
I saw relief touch Manny’s eyes.
Looks were exchanged among Joseph, Easton, Frank, Dog, and Devin, as well as among all of their family and friends.
No one looked ready to leave though.
Cowboy and Angel didn’t even bother to exchange looks. They just stood there, checking the weapons they wore for dust and ammunition, their expressions oddly similar in their utter calm and certainty.
Looking at the two of them, I really got them, maybe for the first time.
I saw exactly where the two of them lived energetically, and why it worked in a way I’d never seen it work with Angel and Anthony, Angel’s last boyfriend and, for a short time, her fiancé.
She and Cowboy just… fit.
I glanced at the teenaged girl with the blue bandanna. She gripped her rifle in front of her, looking determined.
Nodding as he scanned faces, Black sighed.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
20
A HOLE THROUGH THE WORLD
NO LIGHTS LIVED in that underground cave.
Frank and Easton each brought flashlights they’d been keeping in their respective trucks, and a number of us had lights on our mobile phones, and two of Frank’s cousins even had zippo lighters, but it was difficult to see other than in disjointed flashes and pulses.
Even so, I got a good look at the dimensions of the tunnel.
It was shockingly big, and surprisingly well-made.
After we’d been walking for twenty or so minutes down there, I reached out my psychic sight to get a sense of how long the tunnel was.
When I did, I immediately got hit with another shiver of shock when I felt just how massive the underground space was. It didn’t feel like anything remotely natural to me at that point. All of this definitely felt man-made.
Moreover, I felt more than one tunnel.
I felt multiple tunnels, rooms, even different levels to this maze.
Rather than any kind of cave, it felt more like some kind of end of the world bunker, set up to house an entire city. I wondered if some survivalist NDN had built it during the Cold War to house every living person on the reservation in the event the crazy white men decided to blow up the world for real. Truthfully, though, it felt older than that.
It felt a lot older.
I even wondered if it predated Europeans coming to this continent altogether.
Black led the way, walking just in front of me.
I could feel him using his sight to locate the door, and the determination on him now that he felt more grounded and clear in this space. I still felt the Barrier storm affecting both of us. It swirled around our bodies, pulling at our light, flooding our psychic structures with what felt like high-voltage energy, rippling through our minds and emotions.
Even so, I didn’t feel in danger of losing touch with myself, whether in relation to my body or my mind. I felt grounded in Black, in the same way he felt grounded in me.
We walked another twenty or so minutes.
Then another ten.
We’d been walking over an hour before I heard the sounds.
Strange, howling sounds were coming from somewhere up ahead.
They were faint at first, as if coming through the rock walls, but I could feel everyone in our group reacting to them, fear pluming off their light as they tried to identify what those sounds meant, what could be causing them.
Black shifted direction in front of us then, and came to a stop.
Everyone stopped behind him.
When he didn’t move right away, I walked up beside him to get a better look at what he was examining with the light on his phone.
It was a hole in the wall.
Handholds had been carved into the rock on the far side.
When I got closer and peered over the edge, I realized it led straight down, descending what looked like the equivalent of at least a few stories. Even with the flashlight on my phone, I couldn’t see how far it went down exactly, not with any accuracy, but it had to be in excess of thirty or forty feet.
The sounds were a lot louder there.
I could tell at once that whatever we were hearing, it was coming from some level below us. The howls and growls were traveling up the vertical passage from the source.
“Do you think it’s Wolf’s wolves?” I asked Black, quiet.
He glanced at me, then shook his head. “No.”
I thought he might go on, but he didn’t. Instead, he handed me his phone with the flashlight app turned on high, and walked closer to the hole in the wall and floor.
“Keep it on me when I go down.”
“Black.” I bit my lip. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Turning, he frowned at me. “Not much point in coming down here, doc, if we don’t go to where they are. It’s pretty clear they’re down there, not up here.”
I shook my head. “No. I meant, are you sure you should go first?”
He glanced over, as if startled.
Then, studying the look on my face, his expression softened, just before he plumed heat at my chest.
It’ll be okay, doc.
Gazing down into the hole below the handholds, he added,
We can’t send a human down first. It has to be one of us, and I have more experience spotting vampires with my light than you do. I also have more experience fighting them. Glancing at me again as he reached the edge of the opening, he added, I also have more experience killing them. Don’t worry, okay? At least I’ll feel most of the things that might be coming my way.
I glanced at the twin handles sticking up off his back in a V shape. He’d had the scabbard custom-made too, in addition to the swords. He’d practiced with both––a lot.
I knew that, but still felt my light tensing and contracting at his words.
Nodding reluctantly, I held his phone for him, shining the flashlight down the hole so he could see with his eyes as well as his light while he descended.
Easton, Frank, Dog, Joseph, Cowboy, Angel, and Manny stood with me at the mouth of the hole as Black reached over to the wall, using his height to bridge the opening and fitting one of his booted feet carefully into a slot cut into the rock.
Testing his weight on the make-shift step, he glanced at me, and nodded.
“It’s okay,” he said.
I only bit my lip, nodding back.
The howling still echoed up through the hole, sounding almost like wind.
I knew it wasn’t wind, though.
Black climbed swiftly, silently, disappearing down through that opening so fast I barely had time to get used to the idea of him going. I watched him move down the wall like a spider, and leaned over the hole, still trying
to see how far it went down. It looked like he’d climbed around three floors’ worth of distance before I saw him jump to the ground below. Then he looked up, his gold eyes glowing in the light from the phone.
Drop the phone, doc, he sent to my mind. Don’t worry. It’s shock-proof. It should be all right, even if it hits a few times on the way down.
I felt him looking around where he was, scanning with his light.
I’m in some kind of room, he added. It connects to another tunnel. Both feel empty right now, but I’d like to take a look with my eyes before the rest of you climb down.
Nodding, I held the phone over the middle of the hole.
After debating briefly which way to hold it where it would be less likely to twist and knock into the sides, I held it upright, and let it go.
The phone fell down in a nearly straight line.
I was unsurprised to see Black catch it at the bottom.
Thanks, doc. Give me a minute.
Glancing at the others, I explained, “He’s just checking it out. He’ll tell us when to come down.”
The older man, Joseph, pursed his lips, exchanging sideways looks with Easton and Frank.
None of them spoke, but it occurred to me that they were likely wondering how I knew that, given that Black and I hadn’t exchanged words aloud since he climbed down.
Just then, Black’s mind rose in mind.
Okay. Come on down, doc. Tell the others it’s all right.
I glanced at Joseph and Easton again.
They don’t know, do they? I asked. About you, I mean. Your prison pals looked at me funny when I told them you were scouting the area.
I practically saw Black shrug in my mind.
I don’t want to shout, Miri, he sent. And my phone’s not getting a signal down here. Let them wonder. It’s better than sending up a flare to Wolf that we’re heading his way. He likely knows that already, given what happened at the schoolhouse.
I clenched my jaw, nodding.
I couldn’t argue with that.
Looking at Joseph, I jerked my chin towards the hole. “Okay,” I said. “It’s all right. He’ll cover us as we come down, but he said there’s no one in the immediate area.”
Black To Dust_A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Page 29