by Aimée Thurlo
When Lee thanked Bowlegs again, the man simply nodded, then sang a short blessing and gave Lee a small piece of turquoise, something believed to be effective against Navajo skinwalkers and monsters, to add to his medicine pouch. There were no words of good-bye, and none were expected. Lee simply turned and walked away.
Lee went to the deuce and a half, quickly removed the canvas cover on the GMC, rolled it up, then tossed the bundle into the bed of the truck. It would appear somewhat different, at least, with just the framework showing. As additional insurance, he poured water in the dirt and splashed mud on the vehicle markings in the front and back so they would be obscured as naturally as possible.
He then looked over the contents, thought about leaving some of the tools or one of the cans of gasoline behind for Bowlegs, then realized that anyone finding the military-issue items would think the old man had stolen them.
There were two cases of C rations, however, and Lee put one and most of the other down by a tree for Bowlegs to find later. The food was something he could hide and consume as needed. Each ration included soluble coffee, premixed cereal, hard candies, canned meat, and several other items, including cigarettes, chewing gum, and even water-purification tablets. All would be very useful for the old man.
Lee started the truck up and drove to the highway. Smoothing out the tire tracks where they reached the road with a trenching tool, he did what he could to keep Bowlegs from being investigated.
Although he had no need for headlights, he decided to use them anyway to avoid attracting suspicion.
The more he thought about it, the more Lee realized he should check the body of the German vampire, Hans, to confirm he really had died. After shooting him in the head and having him recover completely within an hour or so, nothing seemed impossible anymore.
Running low on fuel, and knowing he didn’t dare stop to try to borrow or steal some, he arrived at the mesa where he’d thrown his enemy over the ledge. Lee stepped down from the cab of the truck and walked to the edge. He moved quickly and seemingly without effort, and felt like a cougar on the prowl.
The night was nearly daylight to him, and he realized he could be spotted by another vampire as easily as an owl tracked a mouse. Stepping just close enough to the edge to look over without exposing himself, he took a look down at the spot where the body had been.
The area below was blackened by fire, but Hans was gone. He’d seen the remains of livestock killed in the wild many times and even the largest predators left some evidence behind. Even the fire would have left traces of his skeleton. The German had disappeared without a trace and Lee was forced to conclude he’d moved away from the fire before it could consume him.
Lee thought about his next move. Should he assume his enemy was down there somewhere, maybe watching for him? Or perhaps he’d moved on, searching for the hidden weapon or trying to contact others who were part of his raid—the second squad, as Lieutenant Barnett had believed existed.
Lee looked around carefully, taking his time to check for motion or any human shape, listening for the slightest movement. Lee realized that he had the upper hand now. The German couldn’t ignore the possibility that Lee could have managed to deliver a message to the military and told them where to find the weapon. There were probably hundreds of men looking for whoever had ambushed that military convoy.
But Lee also knew he was in danger from the German vampire, who had powers that would allow him to hide and survive. Who knew how old the vampire was or what skills he’d learned? And if he was near and saw Lee with the truck, he might reasonably conclude that Lee hadn’t paid the military a visit yet.
On the other hand, this was Navajo country, and if Bowlegs was right, skinwalkers would eventually sense the German’s presence. If they could track Lee, who was only half vampire, Hans might be even easier to detect. Between the military searchers and the skinwalkers, the vampire had enemies everywhere, and he was thousands of miles from his own country.
Lee considered the situation. In his heart, he knew what he had to do. He’d never run from responsibility, and inside he was still a police officer. Cursing himself for wasting time, he jumped into the truck.
Before he could build a new life, he was going to track the man responsible for the murder of Patrolman Mondragon and the death of all those soldiers. No one else could fight Hans better than he could, so that duty fell to him.
Turning around, he drove to the base of the mesa. From there he’d try to pick up his enemy’s trail before it grew any colder.
CHAPTER 5
Present Day
Leonard Hawk, the name Lee Nez was using in his most recent identity, glanced at the gray cuff of his New Mexico state policeman’s charcoal-black uniform, then unclipped his gold shield and placed it in the small wooden box he used to store the symbol of his profession when he was off-duty. After more than fifty years, it was good to be back in uniform.
For over a decade, he’d dedicated himself to finding Hans Gruber, but the German had eluded him despite his best efforts. He’d simply disappeared after their last encounter, and Lee had never seen him again.
Months turned into years, and years into decades. During that time, Lee had learned about himself—his own nature, his capabilities and limitations. Yet, as it often was, the more life changed, the more things stayed the same.
Stripping off his uniform shirt and pants, he hung them on a wooden hanger and placed them on the brass hook he’d attached to the inside of his closet door. He had a small apartment in Las Cruces, which was the city he called home for his current duty assignment.
The light was intense here, and especially so this time of year in May. He figured he wasn’t the only vampire to consider sunblock the greatest invention of the twentieth century.
These days he knew a lot about sun protection. It was the ultraviolet rays, the part of the sun’s spectrum that caused sunburn in humans, that killed vampires. The best sunblock, covering every square inch of skin, protected full vampires for several minutes at a time, assuming they had excellent wraparound sunglasses to protect their eyes, covered their heads, and wore long sleeves and pants.
Lee guessed that for the first time in history, a sunblock-protected vampire could actually survive outdoors in the sun for a few minutes at a time. And, with his half-vampire status, he barely got a tan nowadays, even when he was out in the sun for a half hour. The light hurt his eyes, but he’d found it didn’t actually damage them.
Just in case, however, he always wore sunglasses and used sunblock literally all over his body. Many times he’d seen an accident victim have their clothes cut away by the EMTs, and he wasn’t about to risk adding burns to his injuries if he was ever involved in a major collision.
Removing his underwear and socks, Lee stepped into the shower and washed away the perspiration from his ten-hour shift, plus his protective oils. The lotion would be reapplied as soon as he’d dried himself off and before he dressed in civilian clothes. It was a ritual he’d followed for years and one of the things that would make him appear “different” to anyone getting to know him well.
Such “differences” were why Lee rarely allowed himself to make close friends. He’d done so just once since 1945 and experienced the best years of his life—followed by the darkest times he’d ever known. Falling in love was something he’d sworn never to let happen again. Someone had once said that dying was easy—living was hard. He agreed with that sentiment completely.
Lee took several minutes to apply the sunblock, then dressed in the dark blue slacks he normally wore off-duty. Anyone glancing into his closet would find tightly woven black, brown, and dark gray clothes, and boots. He had several caps, and usually wore them outside at night as well as day just in case he didn’t get a chance to reapply sunblock when it wore off.
Picking up his deerskin medicine pouch—he still carried one in his pocket, even on duty—Lee attached it to his belt via a leather strap he’d added. It carried the same items the old hataalii had
given him: flint, corn pollen, turquoise, and quartz crystal, plus a flattened plastic bottle of emergency sunblock.
For less esoteric dangers, he carried a small .45 backup auto in his front pocket in a special holster, even when at home. He’d found that locks meant nothing to vampires who’d been threatened by his nearly equal abilities and his dedication to destroying evil. Vampires, good or bad, had learned to get around obstacles. If they couldn’t pick a lock, they had the strength to force just about anything open but a safe. It was a survival trait for those who had a desperate need to get out of the sun.
The skinwalkers he’d met were a mixed bag as well. Bowlegs had been right to warn him about them. If they came at him out from behind cover or through a door or window in the form of a two-hundred-pound wolf or cougar, he needed stopping power right then. He’d learned that the hard way. He forced himself to put those memories out of his mind for now as he prepared dinner.
He quickly cooked and ate two nearly raw hamburgers with everything, a skillet full of french fries, a pound of bloody calves liver, and a quarter of a thick chocolate icecream cake.
After all that, plus two cups of coffee, no sugar and strong enough to stand the spoon up straight, he was ready for tonight’s hunt, He quickly cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. When he returned, he didn’t want a mess to clean up. He might be gone all night, or even for several days.
He checked the razor-sharp commando dagger, then placed it back into the custom-made boot sheath. With his off-duty Beretta nine-millimeter clipped to his belt inside his Levi’s jacket, he sang a quick blessing, as was his custom, and touched his hunting fetish and sacred turquoise before returning them to his pocket.
Turning off the light, he left the apartment, locking the dead bolt before he walked down the hall and left the building.
Lee stood for a while in the dark under the porch, looking up and down the sidewalk, and at the doors and windows of the apartments in the surrounding buildings of the large complex. Then he studied the cars and pickups in their parking spaces underneath the long carport. Somebody’s overweight cat lurked beside the tire of a white Dodge pickup, but at barely ten pounds, it was way too small to be a skinwalker.
Around the Xeriscaped buildings, with their sparse drought-tolerant plants surrounded by a lot of gravel, footprints were hard to spot, but he’d recently noticed some enormous tracks from what looked like a wolf in several places, including one spot beneath his window where the drip watering system had been repaired and the gravel not completely replaced.
Casually walking beside the building, he saw another track, this one less than twelve hours old. The animal had been there early this morning, before dawn, probably looking for him. This complex only allowed small dogs and cats, so these were definitely not prints from the pet of a resident. His finely honed hunting instincts told Lee this was no stray domestic dog or a Mexican gray wolf either. The only real wolves still in the wild were those that had been reintroduced, and all of them were monitored. It was a skinwalker seeking him out and waiting for the opportunity to strike.
He’d learned that even though they had the ability to shape-shift into a specific animal, the form couldn’t change its mass, so if one attempted to assume the shape of a bird, it would weigh the same as its human form. A 150-pound hawk would have a hard time flying unless it had the wingspan of a Cessna. It wouldn’t be subtle and certainly not very sneaky—both traits skinwalkers favored—and probably not possible. Besides, he’d never seen a skinwalker except as a wolf or wild cat, and didn’t know if they could become a hawk or, say, a giant catfish.
He’d learned that any animal under eighty or so pounds wasn’t likely to present a danger to him unless there were a lot of them working together, and skinwalkers had no self-healing abilities that he’d been able to observe.
A rifle would have been better but impossible to conceal easily. His pistol would serve him when the time came to act. But he’d have to wait for the animal to strike. Killing a citizen’s malamute, then claiming you thought it was a shape-shifter, was a lousy alibi. A cop couldn’t afford to get the reputation for having an itchy trigger finger.
Though he had his night-walker abilities and sufficient firepower, Lee knew skinwalkers had advantages too. Navajo witches could smell a vampire at a considerable distance, for one, even when they were in human form. Maybe their animal side remembered the scent or they had some kind of instinct or intuition that enabled them to sense a vampire’s power. But whatever it was, when it came to initial detection, vampires were at a disadvantage. The fact that he was only half vampire didn’t seem to make Navajo skinwalkers incapable of tracking him, and he’d never had a vampire around for comparison tests.
Lee strolled casually over to the mailboxes noting that there was a woman sitting in a small green sedan three slots down from his parked police cruiser, apparently waiting for someone. Perhaps she was waiting for a boyfriend to get home, or maybe it was a process server waiting for a tenant so she could serve papers.
He took out his key, opened mailbox C-8, and looked inside. All he found was a flyer addressed to occupant from a local supermarket, and one of those “have you seen this child” cards. As a responsible cop, Lee looked at the image carefully, reading the name of the father who’d taken the child and noticing his photo as well. He had a good memory for faces and if he ever came across the man or child, he’d remember. By now, tracking down people was second nature for him as well as his job. There was only one person who’d ever evaded him completely. But that would change someday soon.
The woman opened the door of her sedan, but the dome light didn’t come on. This wasn’t typical and sent off warning signals in his head. The police officers and law-enforcement personnel he knew never set their interior lights to come on when the door was opened, preferring not to make themselves a target at night when entering or exiting their units. Perhaps the woman was a cop or a skinwalker in human form. He waited, pretending to be absorbed in his mail, and watched her approaching, out of the corner of his eye.
Lee noted that she was a natural beauty—an attractive, light-haired Hispanic woman with subtle red lipstick and little other makeup. Her eyes were a beautiful shade of brown—amber—but they didn’t conceal her alertness as she drew near. Her arms remained by her sides but as she moved, her black leather jacket opened and Lee caught a glimpse of the pancake holster and semiauto pistol attached to her belt.
He’d seen several of the local PD officers in the course of his patrols, and she wasn’t one of the ones he’d met. This woman carried herself like an experienced officer, and she had brought backup, a man in a suit who was walking slowly along the sidewalk behind Lee. He had to hand it to them, they were playing it cool. Her partner even had a dog with him, and was doing his level best to look like a tenant walking his pet.
Lee decided to preempt her. He went up and greeted her, keeping his hands well away from his handgun. “Hello, Detective, or is it Special Agent? I’m a state police officer, off-duty, in case you noticed my handgun—as I did yours,” Lee said, deciding to neutralize the superior attitude many federal cops wore instead of a uniform. “Oh, and by the way, you might remind your partner that he needs to clean up after the dog. Complex rules.”
The woman gave him a half smile, then reached into her jacket pocket. “FBI Special Agent Lopez, Officer Hawk.” She held up her badge. “You’re very observant, or were you expecting me?”
“I’ve been a police officer long enough to spot ‘feebees’ from five hundred yards on a stormy night. This isn’t your usual hunting ground, is it, Agent Lopez? Somebody still looking for a motive for that incident up on the Rez several months ago?”
Lee knew that the Bureau hadn’t come up with a credible motive, much less a perpetrator, for the attack on him that had taken place along Highway 666. They weren’t going to get the real answer about that from the locals or the Navajo police either.
Of course Lee had been forced to lie about that attac
k from the very beginning. The truth was too difficult to swallow without the X-Files explanation—that skinwalkers with supernatural powers were out to get him—and that was something he was never going to admit.
“The Bureau is still working that case . . . and none of the local residents are talking,” Special Agent Lopez said with a shrug. “You mind if we go somewhere and discuss this?”
“How about one of the picnic tables over by the clubhouse? I’ve been cooped up in my unit for most of the day, and would like to breathe a little fresh air. Your partner can let the dog run loose on the grass. I won’t tell.”
The woman agent gestured to her partner, who nodded back, then followed them at a discreet distance to the brightly lit clubhouse in the center of the complex. The large outdoor pool was being used by several serious swimmers doing laps, but it was quiet outside, even here.
Selecting the table farthest from the clubhouse, Lee sat across from the agent on the wooden bench. “Want me to start from the beginning?” he offered.
“Not necessary. Just stop me if I get something wrong or you need to add something new you just remembered. I’ve read your written report,” Agent Lopez responded. Her voice was pleasant and casual, which probably disarmed less experienced suspects, but her eyes were strictly business, analyzing his every reaction.
Lee knew he was still under suspicion, not because he had killed the skinwalkers who’d attacked him, but because the events surrounding the shooting would never make sense to anyone except vampires and skinwalkers. “Okay, Special Agent Lopez.” Lee nodded.
“Just Diane, please.”
Lee could see how someone with her natural charisma could lead a suspect to provide more information than they’d planned. He’d have to work hard to stay immune. “Call me Lee or Leo, Diane. Unlike most of my tribe, I don’t mind you using my Anglo name.”