by Aimée Thurlo
“Right now? This is only our second date.”
“Don’t be an asshole. This is serious. I also have another question and I might as well get everything out in the open now. When you were attacked, you were quicker than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life, like one of those movie fight scenes with everything speeded up. Can you explain what I saw?”
Diane held his gaze. Lee didn’t look away but he was worried now. She was getting closer to the truth every second. He decided to wait her out in silence.
“Okay, and here’s the kicker,” she said after a brief pause. “I read the background report on the German pilot, then took things further through the German government and Interpol. He’s odd. Do you know he never takes off his cap and glasses outside and he has a rare skin condition that makes him hypersensitive to sunlight? I’ve noticed you wear your sunglasses outside all the time as well, even at night.”
“My eyes are sensitive to light. It’s not that unusual. I still test out twenty-twenty.”
“I also found out that Interpol keeps their own photo archive gathered from all major European newspapers. When asked specifically for information on the German pilot, their computer matched up two photos—one was the pilot visiting at Holloman. The other was a German glider pilot who was around in 1939. Both men looked identical.”
“How come they had photos dating back to 1939?”
“Access to old German military records and photo archives, I assume. It was from a photo exhibit hosted by a veterans’ group. Interpol also has access to most WW II-era photos of German men, donated by a Holocaust organization that is still tracking possible war criminals.”
Lee wondered if that was the same group he’d worked for years ago. “Coincidence? Screwup? They say everybody has a twin somewhere. That doesn’t mean they had to live in the same time frame.”
Diane took a step closer, and reached out to grab him in the right bicep. Without thinking, he instantly reached up and grabbed her hand.
“Ow! You have a grip like a vise.”
“Sorry.” He let go of her hand, and started to step back, but realized he was up against the counter. In other circumstances, he would have welcomed this aggressive woman, but she was too close to the truth and he wasn’t ready to share.
“There’s an even bigger coincidence I have a hard time accepting. I decided to check with the state newspaper’s electronic photo archive. It goes back over seventy years, and it seems that you have a twin too, a twenty-five-year-old New Mexico state police officer who disappeared in March of 1945. Supposedly he drowned when he drove a motorcycle into an irrigation canal chasing after a fugitive, though they didn’t find the body. His first name was Lee, just like yours. And another photo came up in 1963 that looks remarkably like that same officer—like you—except for the hairstyle and the fact that he looked the same age as the man eighteen years earlier. It’s a wedding photo. Then, several years later, the woman in that photo was apparently killed by a wild animal—a wolf, the reporter suggests.” She looked him in the eye, and he had a hard time not showing any emotion.
He took a while to respond. “Okay, I understand that a computer looking for similarities can link photos of people who look alike. That’s their purpose. But you’ve got to know that they couldn’t all be the same person—me. People age, right?”
Diane’s cell phone rang, and she reluctantly flipped it open. She listened for a few moments, then walked over toward the window. “My partner knows about Johnny Tanner and the attack on you near Shiprock, so he’s wondering about something. He’s noticed a pack of big dogs roaming around outside the building, and he says they look just like . . .”
“Wolves? Get away from the window!” Lee grabbed his .45, and in two steps was between her and the heavy curtain.
CHAPTER 8
The window exploded inward and the curtain was torn away from the wall along with the rod as a massive brown-and-gold furry blur crashed into the room with a vicious snarl.
Lee already had his backup .45 out. He fired twice, the noise like a bomb in the enclosed space, striking the animal in the midsection. It howled, and slid hallway across the room, knocking over a chair.
Two more wolves, one a black animal and the other a massive beast with silvery gray fur, leaped through the opening the first wolf had made, landing right in front of Diane. She shot the black one at point-blank range.
Lee’s attention went back to the first wolf. The animal tried to stand up on its back legs. The yellow eyes glowed with hatred, razor-sharp teeth snapping at the air. Lee shot it a third time, making sure the hellish beast would stay down this time.
Lee snapped a shot at the silver-colored animal before it could reach Diane but, in a breath, the black one she’d shot once already was upon her again. She fired, but the beast kept coming, and her pistol was knocked out of her hands as she tried to ward the animal off.
Diane grabbed the black wolf by the throat with both hands, forcing it away from her face, but unable to let go to recover her weapon.
In one quick, fluid motion that utilized all his night walker’s speed, Lee grabbed the animal by the back legs and jerked it away from Diane. Still holding it by the legs, he swung the one-hundred-pound beast around, launching it into the bedroom where it bounced off the dresser with a yelp.
Diane scooped up her weapon and fired again, striking the silver wolf in the upper body as it launched itself at Lee.
He stood his ground and stopped the wounded wolf’s charge with his forearms, giving ground slightly from the impact. The animal howled and raked Lees right arm with its fangs, then fell to the carpet. The large male beast tried to crawl away, then suddenly sagged and lay still.
“Are they all dead?” Lee spun around, his small backup .45 sweeping the area in front of him. Blood dripped down his arm and the wound hurt like hell. He peeked into the bedroom, and the animal he’d thrown into there was very still.
“I don’t know. But they’re not moving.” Diane stared at Lee, then looked at the two dead wolves before them.
“What’s going on? And how in the hell do you move so fast?”
“We don’t have time for questions. Where’s your partner?” Lee gathered up another weapon, the nine-millimeter Beretta from the holster on the kitchen counter.
Diane flipped open her phone and dialed. “Agent Thomas, what’s your status?” Suddenly the sound of gunshots echoed from across the complex. “Oh, my God! Him too.” She ran to the door.
“I’ll go. I’m faster. Make sure the ones here are dead, and if they aren’t, shoot them until they are.”
“What? Just go.”
Lee nearly flew down the hall. Me was capable of running a hundred yards in under five seconds. He’d timed it once. He planned to beat that record now.
Once outside, he could see the apartment Diane and her partner had used to stake out his place. A long, sleek black panther or jaguar jumped out of the window effortlessly, spun around, and took three long strides, leaping over the seven-foot-high fence. Lee thought about taking a shot, but houses and businesses lay within the sight line, and he couldn’t risk hitting a civilian. By the time Lee got to the fence, the beautiful, deadly animal had disappeared among the cars in an adjacent strip mall parking lot.
“Damn. I’ll never catch him now.” Lee sprinted over to the FBI’s apartment, and peeked into the window. Agent Thomas was lying faceup on the carpet, a pool of blood around his right arm, and a virtual lake around his upper body. It appeared that the man’s throat had been ripped open. The red-haired agent’s pale blue eyes were already glazing over with death.
“What’s going on? Were those gunshots?” a middle-aged woman asked, poking her head out her apartment door.
“Call 911. A man’s been attacked by a wild animal. Don’t go outside until the police arrive,” Lee yelled.
Then he heard a flurry of shots coming from his building.
He raced back the way he’d come. The door to his apartment was closed, just like
he’d left it.
“Diane. It’s Lee. I’m coming in now.” He opened the door and stepped inside. Diane was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her pistol in her hand, but now down by her side, the action open, indicating the weapon was empty.
“They weren’t all dead—and they’ve . . . gone?” She looked at him, utterly confused and shaking badly. In front of her on the living-room carpet was a naked Navajo man in his early forties or so, still clutching a long sliver of plate glass like a knife. He had at least three bullet wounds, one in his stomach, one in his leg, and another in his left side. He was bleeding badly, and if not already dead, almost certainly beyond help. “He came at me with the glass. It was him or me. What the hell is happening?”
A small Navajo woman, not much older than a teenager, was also there naked, lying on the floor against the dresser, cut up badly from the glass that had come from the shattered mirror. She was as limp as a rag doll, and her head hung at an impossible angle. The impact of Lee throwing her across the room had probably broken her neck.
“How did they get in there? And where are the other two wolves? What happened to Burt . . . Agent Thomas? Is he okay?” Diane asked, her voice still shaky. Instinctively, she ejected the magazine on her pistol and inserted a fresh one.
“I‘ll tell you as we go. We still have one to track down.” Lee looked around the room, grabbed his jacket and a bandoleer of extra ammunition, then looked back at the bodies. The skinwalkers were dead, but two had lived long enough after their initial wounds to shift back into human form. The big brown-and-gold wolf had died in animal form, and would not change back, this he knew. It would only add to the confusion when more officers arrived. He stepped around the blood and opened the closet door, retrieving his duty weapon, a .45 Smith & Wesson, then left the bedroom and shut the door.
“One got away?” She looked over at the wolf, then holstered her pistol and grabbed her purse and jacket. Still confused, she followed him into the hall. He reached back and pulled the apartment door shut.
They ran down the hall, hearing sounds of excited voices in the apartments they passed. “I’ll explain, but we need to track down another animal, a large black panther or jaguar that attacked your partner. We’ll take my patrol unit. If we wait around and answer questions from the local cops, the killer will get away.” Lee pulled her out the back door of the apartment building, and they jogged toward his police cruiser.
“Killer? Burt Thomas is dead?” Diane stopped. “No! I should have been there.” It was obvious she was considering going to the apartment where Thomas’s body lay.
“Come on, we can’t help him now except to catch his killer. You saw what we encountered. Thomas was alone, and what came after him was in the form of a two-hundred-pound panther. I was too late to stop it, and couldn’t risk a shot after the animal leaped the fence. I’m sorry for what happened to Agent Thomas, but do you want the creature to get away now?” Lee grabbed her hand and pulled, urging her forward.
She resisted for a moment, then must have realized what he was saying might be true. “What happened to Burt?”
“The big cat came through the window, like what happened to us. Your partner must have hesitated, or just been a second too slow. You heard the shots. He pulled his weapon, but the cat got to his throat before he could bring the pistol up. If we move fast and get lucky, we can catch the killer while he’s still a cat. I saw the creature loping toward the strip mall across the complex.”
They jumped into his black patrol unit, and Lee was out on the street in seconds. Circling around to the alley behind the strip mall, he cruised slowly down the narrow path behind an insurance office, pizza parlor, and laundry, working the searchlight with his left hand.
“What do you mean, if he’s still a cat? You’re bullshitting me.”
“You think? Just keep watching. If you see anything move, man or beast, let me know.” Lee muttered, his gaze following the beam of the light as he inched the vehicle forward. He really didn’t need the damned light, but it would help her see better, and he needed Diane’s eyes as well right now.
Diane was silent, and still frightened, but she was helping him search as he drove. She had courage, overcoming her fear when it really had counted. And now that she wasn’t operating on automatic anymore, Diane was probably analyzing the situation again. He wondered how much she’d figured out already, and had she tried to make sense of it all? Or did she just think he’d slipped some peyote into her coffee?
“The man and woman in your apartment. What were they? We shot three wolves when they attacked. I turn my back to look outside, and the next thing I know, there’s a man trying to stab me . . .” she admitted, her voice steady, but strangely hollow now.
“You saw what happened with your own eyes. You don’t need to ask me.” Lee pulled out onto the street at the end of the alley, and turned left, intending to turn down the next street.
“But that’s fantasy, make-believe, TV-fucking nonsense, Lee. We’re not living in a fairy-tale world.”
Lee noted approvingly that her attitude was back full strength, and she was keeping her eyes on their surroundings.
“I understand your skepticism. But look at the facts, and feel the ache in your arms and the blood and sweat on your clothes before you dismiss this as some kind of Candid Camera stunt. You saw their fangs, smelled their foul breath, and kept one at bay with your bare hands for a moment. Did they look like fairies to you?” Lee asked.
He saw the disbelief lingering, so he continued. “They’ve been in the Southwest since the first human walked the land, just hidden from most eyes. It’s a Navajo thing, probably has to do with a combination of genetics and some viruslike infection that’s remained unidentified. The Dineh, the Navajo people, call them skinwalkers—at least that’s the Anglo translation.”
She looked at him, still shaking her head, so he continued, never taking his eyes off his search. “They are Navajo witches, humans that can take the form of animals, changing to the beasts like some real-life Lon Chaney Jr. character. The ones we shot may have killed a dozen or more Navajos since they were turned. They aren’t the nose-twitching, spell-casting demon hunters in designer clothes you’ve seen on TV either. These people are evil in every form they take.”
Lee’s police radio suddenly came to life, and he started to reach for the mike, then changed his mind. It was a call for him, asking for his location and information about the situation around his apartment. After several requests, the calls stopped.
“You’re going to get a call too, soon, Diane. We’re going to have to hunt down these creatures by ourselves, especially the one who killed Agent Thomas. They’ll probably hole up for the night now. Try and buy us some time.”
“What can I say? Nobody will believe what really happened.” She shook her head. “I don’t believe it either, and I was there. Something tells me there’s a lot more shit going on than what you’re saying.”
“That’s true enough. For now, just tell them that some Indian cult using trained wolves decided to attack some law-enforcement officers that were investigating a shooting that took place on the Navajo Nation. At least one human and one of the animals, a black panther, got away, and for some reason known only to them, the humans were naked. You’re trying to track them now. They attacked your partner and they’re after you, too. You’re working with me because it’s connected to that incident with Johnny Tanner. You’re going to maintain radio silence to avoid being an easy target, but you’ll keep in touch and update them at every opportunity. Emphasize this is the best way to catch those who killed Agent Thomas.” Lee looked over, hoping it would sink in.
“How much of that crap is really true?” Her phone buzzed, and she flipped it open, but didn’t answer immediately.
“About half, give or take. They were naked.” He stopped the cruiser, turned off the searchlight, and waited. “If you can’t deal with it, tell me now and I’ll let you out at a safe location. Go have a drug test done on yourself
if you think this has just been a psychedelic experience. Or find a shrink. I can hunt down these skinwalkers by myself. It’s pretty much my goal in life anyway.”
Diane looked at him for a moment, cursed once, then pushed the receive button. After answering some questions, she basically repeated what he’d suggested, argued for a few moments with a superior who obviously wanted to see her, then hung up abruptly.
“I’m sticking with you, for now, but only if you’ll tell me the complete truth about yourself, and what’s really going on. Otherwise, I’ll do what I have to, and you’ll be on your own.”
Anger in her eyes, Diane looked out the window, glancing inside parked cars and into people’s yards as he drove up and down through the neighborhood. They searched for another half hour in a slowly expanding box pattern, then Diane spoke again. “Lots of cops, a few civilians, but nobody naked and no animals other than a few dogs and one cat. We aren’t going to find a damn thing doing this.”
“Let’s get out of here, then.” Lee turned north, catching I-25 and heading northwest out of Las Cruces. “We’ll take up the hunt tomorrow night. They don’t go into animal form in the daylight, and we’d have a hell of a time trying to guess what the human looks like.”
Diane sat up in her seat, checking out the side mirror from time to time, then glancing back at him. Lee could tell she was still trying to come up with a logical explanation for this. Unfortunately, he knew that the logical explanation left no alternative but the truth, and she wasn’t going to like that at all. Agent Lopez was one stubborn lady.
“We won’t be on the Interstate for long. I have a place just south of one eighty-five, close to the river. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Lee looked over at Diane again, trying to decide if he should risk telling her any more about himself. fled been alone lor such a long time now, ever since they’d killed Annie, and the life he’d been living was finally starting to get to him.