by Lee Collins
They quickly reached the outskirts of Albuquerque. Victoria knew the train station was somewhere off to their left, but the vampire was leading them eastward. Once again, the New Mexico desert opened up before her eyes, its thirsty plants nothing but silhouettes in the dwindling light. The vampire charged headlong into the wilderness, gravel flying from its heels. Even after the creature itself disappeared into the scrub, the cloud of dust it kicked up was all the trail they needed.
Cora took the lead, guiding her galloping mare around hidden obstacles with practiced ease. Riding just far enough behind her to avoid the hunter's dust cloud, Victoria bent low over her mare's neck. Around them, the desert had become a smear of dark blues and greens and browns. She did not have any idea what lay in this direction, but somewhere out there, far beyond the horizon, was the Atlantic Ocean. Each drumming stride of her mare's hooves brought her a little closer to home. The thought gave her a small measure of comfort. If Cora's plan worked, they would be heading this way again in the next day or two, relaxing in a rail carriage as they discussed a strategy for bringing justice to the black shucks.
Lost in thoughts of home, she nearly rode into Cora. Only the hunter's panicked hollering brought her back to the present. Victoria pulled on the reins as hard as she dared, her mare voicing its objections loudly. The animal stopped less than a foot from Cora's mount and champed on its bit in protest.
"Got us a problem," Cora said.
Looking beyond the hunter, Victoria's heart sank. The two of them stood at the edge of a small cliff. Below them, the desert stretched out like a great dark ocean. From the look on Cora's face, Victoria could guess what the problem was.
"It went down there?" she asked.
The hunter nodded. "All lickety-split. Ain't rightly sure if it climbed down, jumped off, or sprouted a damn pair of wings, but this is where the trail ends."
"Vampires can fly?"
"Some say so," Cora said. "Turn into bats or some such. Ain't never seen it myself."
"So what do we do now?"
"Ain't much we can do, way I see it. This here cliff don't taper off for a spell in either direction. By the time we got to the bottom, all we'd find is a bunch of scrub and a cold trail."
"What of the dust cloud?" Victoria asked. "Surely we could follow that."
The hunter shook her head. "We'd still take too long getting down there. Dust will have settled by then."
"You aren't suggesting we abandon the chase?"
"Afraid so," Cora said. "Can't say I like it myself. That blue-eyed bastard still owes me answers, and that squaw's got to answer for killing Our Lady. I don't want nothing more in the world than to settle them both, but we can't do that if we get ourselves lost in the desert. Best thing we can do now is head on back to town, settle in for some drinks, and lay plans for when that skin-walker of yours to make a move."
"Have you learned nothing of tracking bounties in all your years of hunting them?"
Cora's eyes gleamed with the last of the daylight. "I know more about it than your fancy fox hunters could shake a stick at, but ain't no good in the dark, see? Sun's gone down, and moon won't show herself for another few hours. Maybe you got some fancy cat eyes that let you track a body at night, but I don't."
"I refuse to accept that waiting for our enemies to come after us is the wisest course of action," Victoria said.
"Worked just fine back in town when them outlaws was fixing for trouble."
The incident hadn't left Victoria's memory. "A splendid plan, certainly. I can't believe you so easily bargained with them - using my honesty as your currency, no less - to spare yourself some unpleasantness. Will that be the order of the day when the skin-walker comes calling? Trade me to her so you can have yourself a comfortable time playing cards?"
"You really are thick sometimes, you know that?"
"What do you mean by that?"
The hunter's silhouette shook its head. "Ain't no point in explaining it if you ain't figured it out by now. Just like there ain't no point in riding around after a monster we can't find without some hounds."
Cora turned her mare back the way they had come and nudged her into a walk. Victoria remained where she was, staring helplessly at the endless desert below her. Somewhere in that gathering darkness, their only hope of finding the skin-walker and the blue-eyed vampire was fading into the distance. With it went their best chance of catching their enemies by surprise and ending the fight before the sun rose. Frustration boiled in her chest, threatening to overflow from her eyes.
Victoria slammed the heel of her hand into the saddle horn. "No."
Behind her, the sound of hooves stopped. "What's that, now?"
"I refuse to accept it," Victoria said. "We aren't going to give up now."
"Maybe you ain't," Cora replied, "but I am. Ain't too keen on wandering around in the desert again so quick after our last outing. Maybe in a week or so, but no way I'm doing it tonight."
"What if we weren't roaming aimlessly?"
The hunter's cackle rolled down the cliff. "Only way we'd manage that is if we was headed back to town, which is the way I'm pointing."
Victoria's heart raced. She didn't know if what she was thinking was even possible, much less if she should tell Cora about it. The Navajo singer's voice echoed in her memory, telling her that her dream was not a dream, that she had the power to separate her body and her spirit. It had seemed preposterous to her. It still did. Even now, her rational mind belittled her for even considering it as a possibility. With everything else that had happened to her, though, why should this come as a surprise? Skinwalkers were real; she had seen one with her own eyes. If such creatures existed, it wasn't so much of a stretch to believe other Navajo folk tales could have truth behind them.
"I can track them."
"Sure, and I'm the Queen of England," Cora said.
Victoria turned her mare to face the hunter. "I mean it."
"So you followed along after your daddy on his fox hunts, then?" Cora asked. "Or maybe you just got the eyes of a cougar and ain't never told nobody about it."
"Neither." Victoria's ire at the hunter's ridicule set her resolve. "I can walk in the spirit world."
A silence fell between them. Victoria watched Cora's silhouette with a strange mixture of anxiety and anger. Her mare snorted and lowered her head to graze. In the distance, an unseen animal raised its voice in a yipping cry.
"You can do what now?" Cora finally asked.
"Walk in the spirit world," Victoria said. When the words passed through her lips a second time, their absurdity nearly drove her to laughter. She took a deep breath to steady herself. "You recall what I told you of my conversation with the Indian singer?"
"About them skin-walkers and the ashes and all that, sure," Cora said. "Don't recollect you saying nothing about walking in no spirit world."
Victoria lifted her chin. "Because I didn't see any reason to mention it, and I did not wish to endure your mockery." The hunter made no reply, so she continued. "While I was keeping watch in the desert during our expedition, I dreamt I could fly over the desert like a bird. I flew to a nearby hill and saw both the skin-walker and your Fodor Glava impostor. They spoke of us."
"Ain't a week goes by but I get a dream of running down one monster or another, even after all this time. Don't mean I'm actually doing it in my sleep."
"That was my conclusion at first, too," Victoria said, "but the singer believed that my spirit left my body and traveled across the desert freely. I have given it a good deal of thought, and I'm not entirely sure I disbelieve him anymore."
"Why's that?"
"Because everything else he told me appears to be accurate."
Cora's hat moved up and down as she nodded. "Wise men is wise men, and I reckon they're the same anywhere you go. Don't matter if he calls himself a professor or a singer or a shaman. Thing is, all them wise folk got a funny way of mixing in what really is with what they think is, and the two don't always match up. Could be this
singer of yours is spot-on about the skin-walker woman, but that don't mean every word he says is true."
"Yes, I realize that," Victoria said, "but what choice do we have?"
"We can ride on back to town and play a few hands, maybe win us some drinking money."
"You truly care only for gambling and tippling." Victoria shook her head and sighed. "Go on, then, if you wish. I shall track down this menace myself and kill it if I can. Should I come across your blue-eyed vampire, I will kill him as well, and you will be forever left to wonder who he really was."
"Suit yourself," Cora said.
With that, the hunter resumed her course back the way they had come. Victoria watched her form melt into the evening's shadows, her insides a knot of conflicting emotions. Anger at Cora's belittlement, fear at being left alone in the desert, determination to prove the hunter wrong, to see her boast through and come back alive. Each rose to the surface and slipped beneath it again like onions in a simmering stew. Part of her wanted nothing more than to prod the old mare beneath her into a canter and follow Cora back to town. An evening spent indoors, warm and comfortable, safe from the horrors roaming through the desert, was the loveliest thing she could imagine at that moment.
A breeze hissed through the scrub around her horse's hooves, carrying the promise of a chilly night. Victoria shivered. She could no longer see the hunter's retreating form or hear the steady crunching of her mare's steps on the hard-packed earth. The hunt was hers and hers alone now. She ran a finger along the grip of the revolver on her hip. Cora's revolver. It brought her comfort. The gun had shot and killed more monsters than she could imagine. It would do so once more, even if her hand was not as skilled or practiced at its previous owner.
Straightening up in the saddle, Victoria let her gaze sweep over the landscape sprawled out beneath her. She drew a deep breath. Now was the moment of truth. If she couldn't free her spirit as she had before, she would have to return to town, defeated and humiliated. Worse, their quarry would escape, making a living return to Oxford that much more unlikely.
Victoria bowed her head, closed her eyes, and pictured the world as it would appear through a falcon's eyes.
FIFTEEN
A frown passed over the woman's face. Somewhere nearby, skulking beneath the faint moonlight, she could feel a presence. Like her, it was at once human and inhuman, but it was not ant'iihnii. Closing her eyes, she slipped her skin and rose above the ruined city. Yes, there was a new creature in the desert, one she had never before encountered.
The woman shaped her aura and extended it toward the presence. Black as burnt wood, the channel of energy stretched out over the desert. The creature took notice of it, and the woman filled its heart with a desire to seek her out. Once the seed of thought had taken root, she returned to her body and waited.
She did not need to wait long. As the creature approached, she could feel its intense hunger, its desire to feed on her, but she did not fear it. Not here, in this ancient place once inhabited by the ancestral enemies of her people. Here, the veil between worlds was thin; the ruins hummed with spiritual power. Other Dine feared and shunned this place, calling it dangerous and evil, but to her, it was a place of power.
When the monster stepped into view across the remains of the kiva, she opened her eyes. It looked like a man, but its eyes burned with an inhuman radiance.
"Stay, demon," she said in the American tongue.
The figure halted.
"What do you want of me?" she asked.
"Your blood," the demon replied.
"You will not have it," the woman said.
The demon snarled at her. In response, the woman bent her will around it, testing the strength of its mind. Finding it weak, she smiled again. This creature could be of use.
"You will help me."
The blue eyes flickered with hesitation for only a moment. "How?"
"We are both creatures of the night," the woman said, her own eyes gleaming red. "There is a woman who lives near this place. She hunts those such as us. I must kill her, and you will help me."
"A woman hunter?" the demon asked. "Just so happens I'm looking for one, myself. Yours got a name?"
The woman felt anger flowing from the creature in great dark waves. Perhaps controlling him would be easier than she thought.
Her elation was short-lived, vanishing beneath an unexpected shadow of regret. How would her father look at her if he knew what she was? The daughter of a singer, now a skin-walker and companion of demons. Could she make him believe that it was for the protection of all Dine that she did these things? Surely the warrior spirit in him would admire her bravery and determination to right the wrongs done to them. Yet all she could see at that moment were his eyes, filled with disappointment.
The demon was waiting for her answer.
She drew herself up to her full height and looked into his eyes. "Her name is Cora Oglesby."
The ground dropped away as Victoria rushed upward. The air whistled around her, but she could not feel its chill. She spun around, ecstatic in the giddy weightlessness, the absolute freedom. Her eyes drank in the view, marveling at how the world changed when one saw it from the sky. The rational aristocrat in her mind still insisted it was a dream. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't; she no longer cared.
She wanted to continue sailing through the sky, a hawk drifting effortlessly on the night air, but time was short. Taking herself in hand, she turned her gaze eastward, down the cliff and on toward the horizon. A panic filled her when she realized she felt nothing in that direction. No familiar sense of darkness, no ominous shadow on her mind. She waited for a few minutes, hoping that the sensation would come to her in time. When it didn't, her heart sank. How had she done it before? It wasn't through any conscious act that she could remember, but she had believed it all to be a dream then, acting with the carefree trust that comes naturally in dreams. If only she could recover that same instinct.
Perhaps she was too high up. She swooped toward the earth, picturing herself as a bird with wings swept backward in a graceful dive. The ground rose to meet her. Banking this way and that, she skimmed along just above the tallest bushes. Whimsy guided her course as she lost herself again in the wondrous sensations.
Mesas, dark and brooding, loomed against the horizon ahead. Below her, the ground swelled and receded like ocean waves as she flew over dry riverbeds and small, rolling hills. She wondered how others with this gift, the Navajo spirit walkers mentioned by the old Indian, ever thought of returning to themselves. The spirit world was so free, so invigorating and limitless. She never wanted to trap herself in her small, confined prison of a body again.
Her body.
The thought halted her carefree flight beneath the stars. What was her body doing without her? She imagined it slumped in the saddle as if asleep, perhaps drooling out of drooped lips. If a wild animal, one of the many creatures she had heard calling and screaming and laughing in the night, came upon her like that, would she realize it? Would she know to return to her body in time to save herself? If she didn't, the animals could very well kill her body and leave her stranded, a nomad of the spirit world. The idea washed over her like cold water on naked flesh. Despite her earlier wish, she found herself not at all eager to learn what such an existence would be like.
Victoria's worry blossomed into full-blown panic when she realized she no longer knew where her body was. She may very well have traveled miles from the small cliff where she and Cora parted ways. The desert landscape, now barely discernible in the advancing gloom of the night, offered her no clues. Desperate, she began zipping to and fro, hoping for something - a prominent rock formation or odd-looking hill - to jump out at her as a familiar sight.
So great was her panic that she did not notice the creeping shadow on her mind at first. When it finally caught her attention, she dismissed it as a product of her own mounting fear. It burrowed deeper into her awareness, pricking and poking at her mind like a grain of sand in her undergarments. Fi
nally pulling her mind away from her frantic search, Victoria paused to consider the growing sensation. It only took her a moment to recognize it. A thrill of excitement and fear ran through her. It was the skin-walker's aura; she was certain of it.
The dark energy flowed out from beneath the approaching night to the east. It would be easy enough to follow, but Victoria had to find her way back to her body first. Shutting the skin-walker's power out of her mind, she envisioned her own aura as a sphere around herself. She willed the sphere to expand, to envelop the landscape beneath her. The radiating power from the witch became a visible stream in her mind, but she turned her attention away from it, stretching her energy westward.
After a few minutes, her growing alarm broke her concentration. Maybe the Navajo spirit walkers could navigate the world in such a manner, but she didn't seem to have the power herself, and now she would be forever trapped in the spirit world. Worse, the skin-walker might find her in this state and devise some method of torturing or enslaving her spirit. The singer had been vague on what sort of interactions could happen between spirits, but Victoria's imagination was more than willing to supply various outcomes, all of them terrifying.
The skin-walker's ripples of energy abruptly changed. They became waves, large and full of purpose. Victoria could sense them closing in on her like the jaws of an animal trap. She dove for the desert floor, hoping to somehow hide herself from the witch's awareness. Pressing herself as close to a large rock as she could, she watched and waited.
Above her, the waves began forming a narrow cone of darkness against the evening sky. They swept through the space she had just occupied like an animal sniffing after some escaped prey. Had her spirit needed breath, she surely would have been holding it. She didn't know what she would do if the skin-walker discovered her. Flee, most likely, but to where? The desert's endless march of shrubs and rocks had already defeated her sense of direction; a blind flight through it would destroy any hope she had of finding her body again. If only she could stumble upon that same instinctive reflex that transported her back in an instant during her last journey. Somehow, though, she figured it wouldn't work if she was expecting it to, much like a kettle refusing to boil until she looked away.