“To murder,” he said. “What else?”
Chapter Seventeen
I went ice cold despite the balmy wind blowing over us. “What murder? Who? When?” I thought about Ansel pushing his way out of the hotel past two powerful mages, and tried to stem my panic.
“A man with a crossbow,” Nash said. “Found dead on the side of the freeway not half an hour ago. He’s pretty torn up.”
Crossbow meant slayer. Maybe normal people enjoyed running around in the desert after dark shooting at things with crossbows, but I doubted it. The question was, which slayer?
“How am I a witness or accessory?” I asked. “Half an hour ago, I was leaving the diner in Magellan. Plenty of people can attest to that. Jolene. Pamela. Even Coyote.”
Nash didn’t look impressed. “A man with a crossbow was seen running down the railroad bed heading away from your place yesterday morning. Then there was that vigilante I arrested who was after Ansel. I’m sure there were more incidents.” He gave me his cold stare. “You knew about these attempts, and you didn’t report them.”
“Because this is supernatural stuff—Mick and I handle that.”
“This is where we disagree,” Nash said. “I want to know everything that goes on with you. Why are these hunters hot and bothered enough to try to kill Ansel? Is he going crazy again?”
“I hope not.” I prayed not. My Nightwalker had rushed out into the night, Cassandra and Elena unable to stop him, and now a slayer had been killed.
“This have anything to do why you drove at top speed into New Mexico two days ago, and why you and Mick went back there this morning?”
I figured Nash would know all my comings and goings. I wouldn’t be surprised if Frank Yellow had called him after he’d released me. I imagined their conversation—Frank: You know about this woman? Nash: Yeah, she’s trouble. Leave her to me. I’ll keep her in line.
I hadn’t wanted to bring Nash into this, but I knew he’d find out sooner or later.
I told him the story, as I knew it, up until now. I didn’t mention Ansel’s fear that he’d killed Laura, now groundless, because Laura was still alive. I also left out the part about me destroying Young’s house and his collection. I’m sure that incident had made it onto a police report somewhere, and Nash might already know, but I didn’t want to talk about it.
Nash listened—with no reaction, just his stare—and I don’t know whether he believed all I told him or not. He wasn’t one to accept facts without checking them out.
“Let’s get up to the scene of the crime,” he said when I finished. “I’ll be right behind you.” He made it sound like a threat.
I sedately rode the rest of the way out of Flat Mesa and up the highway to Holbrook. That town was already buttoned up for the night, and we didn’t meet much traffic as we wended through it and drove up onto the freeway.
We rode about five miles east on the 40 before I saw Mick and his big bike, and state police cruisers as well as county sheriff’s cars, lights flashing, on the shoulder.
This stretch was out of Nash’s jurisdiction, but the state police sometimes called him for his opinion, because Nash had a good reputation for thoroughness. He also wasn’t competitive about who caught the bad guy. As long as someone got locked up somewhere, he was happy.
Nash turned on his cop lights as he eased his SUV over, and I pulled up alongside Mick. I yanked off my helmet. “What happened?” I asked him.
Mick steadied my bike as I killed the engine, got off, and hung my helmet on the seat. “I smelled him out there while I was looking for Ansel,” Mick said. “A Nightwalker did this, Janet.”
I looked at him in disquiet. “You’re going to tell me you haven’t found Ansel, aren’t you?”
“Haven’t found him—yet.”
I hated this more and more. “Was the scent Ansel’s?”
“Couldn’t tell. Too much dead slayer. I think it’s the slayer you fought a couple mornings ago, the first one.”
I remembered the guy sticking a crossbow in my face while he fired the other one at Ansel. Now he was a heap of bone and flesh on a stretcher being carried to the waiting ambulance. Poor guy. Dying by Nightwalker was not a good way to go.
“Come and look at the scene,” Nash said to me before he climbed down the gully on the side of the road and headed for the lights in the desert.
Recent rains had filled the dry washes, and though the water had receded, the ground was still slick and muddy. By tomorrow afternoon, unless another storm rolled through, the land would be bone dry again, but for now, I had to slosh through mud and wet grass.
A generator-run light had been set up where Mick had found the body. We were about thirty yards from the freeway and well hidden by dips in the land and overgrown brush.
The lights fell on flattened grasses stained with blood. Quite a lot of blood. The very young state police trooper who’d been left to watch over the scene kept trying not to look at it.
The slayer hadn’t died that long ago. Maybe a few hours, not more, and Nash said that the medical examiner had agreed. The blood had congealed on the grasses but hadn’t been washed away yet.
I was aware of scavengers gathering around the perimeter of our light—tall turkey vultures unworried by our presence, and coyotes that yipped and snarled in the darkness. They wouldn’t find much when we left the scene to them, but they smelled the blood, and they were hungry.
I knew without asking that Nash had brought me here to examine the aura of the scene. The psychic residue was already coming to me—violence and fear, desperation, terror, and then pain, horrific pain, followed by a blank.
I was already shaking before I stretched out my hands over the kill site and closed my eyes. Mick’s bulk beside me reassured me somewhat, but I was still queasy.
I saw the aura of the slayer himself—faint, yellow, no rage in him. He’d hunted Ansel because he’d wanted the money and thought Nightwalkers were vermin. He was like a glorified rat catcher.
The Nightwalker aura was there too, black with orange streaks, smelling of blood and death. And fear. I saw fear in the aura, a Nightwalker thinking he was about to die.
Which posed the question. Did Ansel kill the slayer in blood frenzy? Or fight in his nice guy persona, in fear for his life?
I opened my eyes. “I don’t think Ansel did this.”
“Why not?” Nash asked. “The man was trying to kill him. Ansel fought back, went into his Nightwalker rage, and killed him.”
I stared down at the torn-up grass. “Too much blood,” I said. “Nightwalkers drain their victims completely. Once they start feeding, they can’t stop. Ansel goes into his blood frenzy because he wants blood, not just a kill. He might break apart the corpse afterward, but by then it’s dried skin and bones.”
They trooper, who’d turned to watch me in curiosity, looked shocked and sick. First body, I suspected.
Mick said, “Janet’s right. Too much blood.”
“But a Nightwalker was here,” I said. “Maybe the slayer tried to kill Ansel but Ansel got away.”
“Or whoever killed the slayer took Ansel,” Mick said.
Nash looked skeptical. “Who else would want to kill a vampire bounty hunter besides a vampire? Vigilantes are tough. They don’t go down easily, and this guy didn’t even get a chance to fire his weapon.”
“A supernatural killer then,” I said. “Let me look around.”
I didn’t want to walk beyond the circle of light where the coyotes and the birds waited to scrounge for whatever they could get. But the aura of death and Nightwalker was so strong that if a third person had been there, his or her aura had been masked.
I made myself walk a perimeter of about twenty feet, Nash and Mick with me. Mick was right beside me, his aura smoky black shot with red. Nash was with me too, but his aura was a blank. Always was.
I didn’t find anything else. I felt the tiny auras of the vultures and coyotes, plus snakes also attracted by the warm smell of blood. Beyond that, not
hing. The fight had been intense in that one spot, but no one else had wandered out here.
After a time, I gave up and shook my head. “Sorry.”
Nash let out his breath. “Not helpful. What are you getting, Mick?”
“She’s right. I don’t smell anything other than what happened at the fight.”
“Mmm.” Nash stood looking around, but it was clear he didn’t see anything or sense anything either. “I’m interested in talking to your friend Ansel. Find him and bring him to me.”
“Get in line,” I said.
Nash had turned to walk back to the crime scene, but he swung around again. “No—bring him to me first. It’s important.”
Without letting either of us answer, he walked on toward the lights.
I looked at Mick, and he looked back at me, his eyes black in the darkness. “Do you have any idea which direction Ansel went?” I asked.
“East.” Mick slid his hand down my arm and locked his fingers around mine. “He must be trying to find out where he left Laura, and figure out what he was doing at Chaco Canyon.”
“Chaco Canyon,” I repeated. “That keeps cropping up. There was some reason I was taken up there in the first place.”
“I say we find out.”
“It’s a long way from here.”
“Not if I fly.”
I shivered. “Not that I don’t appreciate seeing you naked as often as possible, but I still haven’t recovered from the trip back from Santa Fe.”
Mick’s teeth flashed in the darkness. “I’ll make it up to you.”
His way of saying, Suck it up, Janet.
I let out a sigh. “As long as we can leave our bikes someplace safe.”
*** *** ***
We left them in the parking lot of the Hopi County Sheriff’s Department. No one in their right minds would steal anything from Nash’s parking lot, and if they weren’t in their right minds, Nash would lock them up and explain why they needed to be.
I walked with Mick back out of town and into the desert where he could change to dragon.
As Mick lowered his head to look at me, I reflected that I was always stunned that this sinuous black, gigantic dragon was Mick. He wasn’t a cold lizard—his scales were warm and satiny, a pleasure to touch. I rubbed my hand under his eye, which I knew he liked, and he rewarded me with a rumble, like a colossal cat who’s decided to purr.
I’d become more used to Mick like this over the past year. I was comfortable enough to press a kiss to the end of his nose before he lifted me in his talons and tucked me against his chest.
I closed my eyes as he took his dizzying leap into the air, and kept them closed while he took off across the night.
We made it to Chaco Canyon fairly quickly, Mick landing on his powerful back legs, wings spread. He carefully set me down, and I rubbed my arms, catching my breath, while Mick changed back to human form.
Dragons shift a little differently from Changers and other shapeshifters. They cause a black mist or cloud to form around their bodies, and from this emerges either the dragon or the human. I asked Mick about it once—was the darkness the magic that made the change? Or a side effect of the magic?
Mick had blinked at me and said he didn’t know. Which meant he didn’t care. It worked, and it wasn’t important to him. If it had been important to him, Mick would have been able to tell me every single detail about it, probably more than I ever wanted to know.
Mick came walking out of the cloud, human-shaped once more. He didn’t bother with the clothes I’d once more carried for him, but there was no one out here to see him. He took my hand, and we walked together to the ruins, which lay silent under the moonlight.
The layers of auras began to pound at me, but Mick’s hand in mine both kept me steady and served as a conduit to the little bit of healing magic he trickled into me.
If we hadn’t been looking for a Nightwalker, possibly in a killing frenzy, in a dark place sacred to the gods and full of ancient auras, I’d like this. My boyfriend walked tall by my side, we were alone in a night of beauty, and we were in love.
But our lives were such that the best places for us to look for romance were generic hotel rooms, far from anything magical and anyone who knew us. Moonlit walks among ruins only meant potential trouble.
Mick at least pulled on his jeans before I showed him the campsite where Laura had disappeared. The campground was open again, but few people were here tonight. A place where someone had recently been abducted made all but the hardiest curiosity seekers shy away. By day, fine; staying here overnight, no.
The aura of the fight between dragon and Nightwalker had faded further, but Mick nodded at me, smelling what I’d sensed. We knew that Laura had gotten away from Colby and Ansel, but not where she’d gone.
We tried to find her trail into the desert. The terrain was tough, it was dark, and I stumbled over rocks and scrub. Mick walked more steadily on his bare feet, which wasn’t fair, but he was Mick.
“There,” he said.
He started walking ahead of me, picking a trail for me across the uneven ground. Moonlight highlighted his straight back down to the flame tattoo that rode across his hips, right above the jeans’ waistline.
Now he stopped and pointed into a crease of wash that cut across our path. I heard coyotes rustling in the darkness, watching us.
Mick walked unerringly to a place in the soft wall of the wash where someone had been digging. Not an animal—the marks were too regular, made by a trowel or small spade.
I crouched down. Someone had dug a hole and covered it back up again. Mick sank back on his heels and gingerly began scraping the dirt away. Out here in the cool darkness, any hole probably contained a snake, either one sleeping or one waiting to feed, so Mick moved the dirt very carefully.
A snake did lay coiled in this hole about an inch beneath the surface. Mick said a soft, sort of hissing word I didn’t understand and lifted out, by its neck, five feet of rattlesnake. The snake slid its body around Mick’s arm, but gently, touching as though getting to know him.
Mick carried the snake a few yards down the wash and released it. “Good hunting, my friend.”
“He a cousin or something?” I asked Mick when he came back.
“She,” Mick corrected me, deadpan. “No relation.”
“You speak reptile?”
Mick gave me a modest look. “Learned it at my mama’s knee. Now let’s see what she was guarding.”
Nothing. When Mick cleared out the hole, we found it empty. But the aura that burst out like a comet when Mick cleared away the last of the rocks and dirt smacked me hard and sent me backward onto the rocky ground.
Chapter Eighteen
“It was here.”
I lay on my back, gasping for breath. The residue of whatever magic coated the pot entangled me in its net like strands of live wire. My heart jerked, then raced, as though someone had just defibrillated me.
Mick was instantly at my side, the moonlight showing the concern on his face. He helped me back to my feet with strong hands. “I feel it too.”
“It’s not here now,” another voice broke in. “Neither is she.”
I knew the voice, and when the aura that had knocked me over receded a little, I could feel him too. Tall and lanky, his brown hair shining in the moonlight, his clothes blood-free, Ansel stopped a few feet from us and gazed at us with mournful eyes.
“Ansel,” I said in relief. “You all right?”
“If you mean, am I blood frenzied, then I can safely say I’m not.” Ansel gazed at the dark opening in the bank of the wash, the pent-up aura still plenty strong. “I’ve been searching for something that points me to her.”
“What about the slayer?” Mick asked.
“Which one?” Ansel gave him the ghost of a smile. “I’m losing track of them all.”
“The one Janet and I scared off two mornings ago,” Mick said. “He’s dead on the side of the 40, near Holbrook.”
Ansel’s eyes widened in
surprise. “Dead?” His astonishment was replaced by alarm when he looked at our expressions. “You think by me? No. I was nowhere near Holbrook tonight. I hitched a ride with a guy who was going through Snowflake and St. John’s. Then another guy out to Gallup. Then I walked.”
Nightwalkers could move fast, covering a miles in a matter of minutes. Nightwalkers don’t need to breathe and don’t get tired. As long as the sun isn’t around, they’re stronger than any human athlete could aspire to be.
But that meant that not only could Ansel have gotten here quickly on foot, he could have made a detour to kill a slayer.
“How did you know to come here?” I asked him. “To this spot.”
“Laura talked about hiding the real pot in or near Chaco Canyon. Taking it home, she said. But I wasn’t sure exactly where she had in mind, so I didn’t lie to you when I told you I didn’t know what she meant to do that night. We decided it was best that way—plausible deniability. But now that she’s disappeared, I have no way of knowing what she did with the pot. Did she take it from here? Or did someone else?”
I pushed around Mick. “You held out on me, Ansel. You told me that the swindle with Young was that you made him pay fifty grand more than he needed to, and you and Laura split it between you. You said nothing about hiding the real pot and giving Young a fake. Explain to me why you didn’t tell me.”
“Because it’s bloody dangerous!” Ansel, my quiet boarder, cried out into the night. “I wanted you to leave the pot alone. I thought you’d interrogate the dragons or find out they had it. I thought they must have grabbed it. And maybe Laura too.” He gestured wildly at the open hole. “I know you must feel that. And that’s from a place the pot rested only a short time. Imagine what would happen if that got into Young’s collection, what effect it would have on his other things? And imagine what would happen if the mage Pericles got hold of it.”
“You knew about Pericles?” I asked, my temper rising. The pot’s aura was doing things to me, stirring up the nastier side of my magic. My fingers twitched, my magic wanting to strike out at Ansel and make him cower.
Nightwalker Page 17