by Lila Bowen
That was when she almost forgot. That was when she almost bit him and ended it.
If he hadn’t growled at her, just then, showing fangs, she would’ve ruined everything.
Instead, she had the good grace to pass out while he cleaned the wound, packed it, and wrapped it gently in a stained bandanna he’d found in her saddlebag.
“I think maybe you’ll live,” he whispered into her ear, so sadly revealed by rough-shorn hair. “But first you must sleep. And dream. And then you’ve got a lot to learn.”
In the darkness of her mind, Nettie felt exposed, watched over by some bigger, outside force that was waiting. And weighing.
“You journeyed for four days without eating or drinking. You received a vision. What did you see?” The disembodied voice was stern but gentle.
Nettie opened her eyes, straight up, and stared into the sun. She saw nothing.
“Answer me, Nettie Lonesome.”
She swallowed, her throat a desert. “I saw a bird’s shadow against the sunset, wings spread to blot out the stars.”
“You saw a shadow.”
“Yes.”
“You are the Shadow.”
“No, I saw—”
“—the shadow.”
“So?”
She felt a tug at her waist but was unable to move. The leather pouch fell back against her hip, somehow heavier than it had been before. Everything was white light, hot and burning and fierce. “Your vision quest has shown you the truth. You are a man now.”
Blind and confused, still she smiled at the rightness of it. “You’re goddamn right I am.”
The voice laughed and whispered, “Sleep, then, warrior. Find peace.”
Nettie slept, dark and deep, not bothering to toss or turn on the cold, hard ground. She woke with the sun, her stained shirt painted pink and orange and her mouth tasting of leather. Her saddle blanket was carefully tucked over her, and her first notion was that horsehair on one’s lips was probably the reason folks up and moved to big cities. Blowing out hard, she sat up, noting that her arm was back in her sleeve, her collar rebuttoned, and her hat somewhere else entirely. And her arm hurt in an entirely different way than it had, but the pain was already fading. Monty’s bandanna was wrapped around a wound that stung and gave off an herbal-type smell but at least didn’t feel like an egg about to hatch a devil.
Coyote Dan was nowhere to be seen, but half a roasted rabbit carcass sat on a flat stone, close enough for her to smell. Eyes all shifty for the man who’d doctored her, or possibly for some new creature that might attack, she gobbled down the food so quick she barely tasted it and burped rabbit breath behind a fist. Her filled water skin was beside her, and she drank so much that she felt like a water skin herself, round and full in the belly. Kind of funny, how she was eating better, half-dead and on the run across the prairie, than she had under Pap’s barely-a-roof.
Knee-deep in the grass, Ragdoll whinnied in welcome, and Nettie followed the mare’s line of sight to a shape wavering as it neared her. Her gun was back in its holster, and she checked that it was loaded. The Bowie knife had also been returned, far cleaner than it had been when she’d last seen it, and sharper, too. A weapon in each hand, she climbed onto a boulder and sat, legs aggressively spread and boots less than firm on the ground, to wait out the approaching horseman.
The horse clopped closer, but all she could see was a shadow wearing a wide hat. Ragdoll whinnied again, more insistent this time, and Nettie couldn’t figure if the mare was just happy to see another horse or if maybe she recognized the pair. Holy crow—what if the Double TK cowpokes had come after her? Her belly flopped around, clenching in fear. She was weak and alone, as it was. But surely one feller wouldn’t chase her down on his own, even if there was a bounty on her for killing Monty and Chuck.
She cocked the pistol, just in case.
The horseman laughed, an easy and familiar sound that carried over the prairie. “Are you going to shoot me, Nettie Lonesome? You must be feeling better, then.”
All the fight and worry bled out of her, replaced by slight annoyance. She shoved her gun and knife back into place. Not only did she find this particular feller’s attitude off-putting, but she hated owing anybody anything, and now that she was clear-headed and mostly alive again, she realized just how much she owed the the man who’d doctored her.
At least he’d finally put on some damn clothes.
“Well, shit, Coyote Dan. I still could shoot you, if you like.”
He dismounted and walked his gelding to Ragdoll to introduce them. “I don’t think so. You can barely stand. Too much trouble to pull the trigger. Besides, I come bearing gifts.” She could see him better now, and he looked entirely different in a cowpoke’s get-up. He wore butternut britches, a red plaid shirt, and a wide-brim hat with his hair braided back as hers had once been. But he wasn’t wearing boots, and he hadn’t been using the stirrups in his Aztecan saddle, which struck her as the most peculiar of his peculiarities thus far. Something about his voice plucked at her, reminding her that she’d had and forgotten a dream that seemed more important than most.
“How do you feel?”
Nettie twitched her head back and forth, ran a hand thoughtfully down her arm and chest. “Better, I reckon. What’d you do to my arm?”
Dan unlaced his saddle bags and carried them over a shoulder before dropping them, clanking, by Nettie’s feet. “I used Inde magic.”
“Bullshit, Dan.”
His face lit up in a grin, all white teeth and good humor. “You caught me. I used white-man medicine. Just removed the piece of thorn, bled the wound, rinsed it with boiling water, applied a salve, and burned it closed with the blade of your knife.”
“Why don’t it hurt more, then?”
A grin. “I told you. Inde magic.”
She flapped a callused hand at him. “Sell that manure somewhere else, boy.”
His grin didn’t waver as he kicked the saddlebags with a dusty bare foot. “Perhaps I spent a few years working with a sawbones in the city. Don’t you want to know what’s in the bags?”
Nettie spit in the dust, glad to have enough spit to do so. “More Inde magic, I reckon.”
But she was curious, so she waited a few minutes just to vex him before unbuckling the flap to peer inside. It was mostly clothes—a clean plaid shirt; a pair of britches; tall, thick socks; and a passel of bandannas. The clanking she’d heard was spurs and bullets, all garbled up in the bottom. The other bag was full of grain packed down under jerky.
Looking up and blinking against the sun, she speared Dan with narrowed eyes. “You steal this?”
He shook his head at her like maybe she was soft-headed. “Of course.”
“Where from?”
Coyote Dan shrugged and grinned. “A cattle outfit northwest of here. We’re a bit far from Gloomy Bluebird, you know.”
Nettie was holding up the shirt against her own to compare sizes, but she dropped it when she heard that, her hand falling on her gun.
“How’d you know about Gloomy Bluebird? Did Pap send you after me?”
Dan sat next to her, legs crossed, and handed her a strip of jerky. “There’s no bounty on you. Boss Kimble thinks you were beset by vaqueros, and your owner is too drunk to care who cooks for his breakfast. He sold your mule, I’m sorry to say.”
“He ain’t my owner.” Nettie spit again, this time with more feeling.
Dan quirked an eyebrow. “Not anymore, he isn’t. Now eat.”
Nettie threw the uneaten jerky at the man’s face, and he caught it and took a large, ripping bite. “Look, Dan. You been good to me, so I ain’t shot you. Yet. But you got a smart mouth for some stranger that found me in the middle of the desert. So how do you know so much, and what the hell do you want from me?”
“It’s not so much what I want as what I consider my duty. There are things you need to know.”
“No shit, Dan. Let’s start with how you know every goddamn thing about me.”
Dan didn’t act a bit mannerly, for all that he was dressed in cowpoke clothes and talked like a preacher. He placed his hat on the ground, leaned back against a rock, and chewed his jerky for a few minutes as if searching for the right words in the beef fat.
“So far, if I count correctly, you’ve met a vampire, a chupacabra, and a harpy. Is that right?”
“A bunch of vampires,” she muttered. “Whole whorehouse of the damn things.”
Coyote Dan nodded. “So you’ve met three kinds of dangerous creatures. Three individuals who wished to cause you harm and, as you put it, ‘a whole whorehouse’ of creatures who did not wish you ill but could’ve killed you on the spot, yes?”
Nettie’s eyes were almost permanently slitted in suspicion, at this point. “I reckon.”
“And now you’ve met me. Do you think I’m a bad creature?”
Breakfast rose in Nettie’s throat. Coyote Dan was a… thing? A monster? He’d admitted as much last night, but she’d been too weak and mad with fever to challenge it. It was clear he wasn’t a vampire, a harpy, or what Chuck had become—a chupacabra, supposedly. So what the heck was he? The way he sat across from her, back straight and face open and hands empty of weapons, made him seem trustworthy. And he could’ve easily killed her a hundred times over since shooting the harpy off her. But he hadn’t. He’d helped her, again and again.
But that didn’t necessarily mean she trusted him.
“You don’t seem bad,” she finally said. “But I reckon most bad things don’t think they’re bad.”
He nodded. “That’s wise. Many monsters will hide what they are, especially when they suspect you might see the truth. Truth requires trust. So my question, Nettie Lonesome, is this: Can I trust you? Because I can smell that you still do not trust me.”
Lord, Nettie felt like she was standing on a cliff and staring down, about to take a step into nothing. But what was her other choice? Admit that she was scared to know whatever Coyote Dan wanted to tell her? Considering he’d all but admitted he was a “bad creature,” she wasn’t much in the mood to arouse his anger. And she now owed him even more, considering he’d confirmed that no one back home was currently hunting her.
“I don’t trust easy, but I sure as hell won’t shoot you unless you try to kill me first,” she finally said.
“Is that a promise?”
Nettie spit in her hand and held it out, and Dan spit in his hand, and the wet globs merged against her dry palm.
But Dan didn’t say anything, didn’t explain. He just stood up and walked away.
“Where are you going now?”
He glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “You’ll see. Just remember that you promised not to shoot unless I tried to kill you. Unless you want to be haunted by two angry Injuns, you’d best keep that promise.”
Filled with doubt, Nettie placed her gun on the ground and kicked it away.
Dan walked past the horses and around a big boulder. Nettie wiped her spit-gloppy hand off on her pants, turned away from the direction Dan had gone, and was just about to change out her shirt for the new, unstained one from the saddlebag when she heard a familiar yip.
Turning around, she found a coyote staring at her with intelligent green eyes. Her hand went to where her gun usually sat on her hip, but the holster was empty, her gun five steps away. Heart ratcheting up, she called out, “Dan? There’s a coyote out here staring at me. Must be rabid. Can I pick up my gun now?”
He didn’t answer, but the coyote sat back on its haunches and opened its mouth wide in a yawn that showed sharp white teeth devoid of froth. As Nettie’s hand crept to her knife, the critter shook its head back and forth as if scolding her. When she left the knife alone, the coyote’s mouth split open in a grin, tongue spilling out as if laughing.
“Dan?”
The coyote yipped.
“Not you, feller. I got a friend out here. He’s got good aim, too. You’d better git.”
It yipped again, turned around, and ran off. As if it understood her. Maybe it was Dan’s pet?
The second the coyote turned around, Nettie went for her gun, but by the time she’d snatched it out of the dirt and aimed, the dang thing had darted behind a boulder. She’d never seen a friendly coyote, and the critters weren’t often out during daylight, but it hadn’t seemed mad. It had appeared… right clever. Pap had put down a mad dog once, and the thing had acted like it was trying to fight out of its own skin, its eyes insane and rolling and its mouth dripping red foam.
“Don’t shoot me, Nettie. I’m not mad.”
Dan appeared, buttoning up his shirt and deeply amused.
“I ain’t worried about you, Dan. There was a coyote out here acting peculiar. Did you pass it?”
In response, Dan let out a familiar yip and tied his bandanna back on around his neck.
Nettie’s mouth dropped open wide enough to admit a buffalo.
“I didn’t pass the coyote, Nettie Lonesome. I am the coyote.”
CHAPTER
11
What the Sam Hill business do you got being a coyote, Dan?”
Nettie wasn’t particularly surprised, which surprised her. Considering what had happened in the last week, she was ready to believe just about anything, provided it didn’t attack her. He’d said from the start his name was Coyote Dan. After the fact, she felt a bit stupid for not having figured out that the meaning was literal. He’d showed up nearly nekkid. He’d known about the lady-buzzard, known how to kill it. He’d counted himself among the monsters. Of course he was one of… them.
“I could ask you what business you have being a runaway slave girl who thinks she’s a boy.”
Her cheeks flaring hot, Nettie bared her noncoyote but still threatening teeth. “I ain’t no runaway slave girl.”
Dan’s head cocked, and he finished straightening his cowpoke clothes and sat down across from her, too far away for her to strike him, if the urge took her.
“There’s no shame in being what you are.”
She pointed her knife at him. “I’m the only one who gets to say what I am.”
“But once you accept what you are and what you want to be, you’ll be closer to your goal. You were a slave, Nettie. Why do you deny it? Did Pap and Mam show you any love?”
“Plenty of folks don’t show their kids love. Preacher used to beat his kids in the street while reading from his Good Book.”
Dan sighed. “You performed every piece of work on that sad little farm. They barely fed you. They didn’t pay you. They didn’t school you. They dressed you in rags, passed on their old shoes. There was no talk of you marrying or taking a trade. Perhaps they didn’t hold papers, but you were a slave as sure as any woman in chains in Tanasi.”
A dark rage bubbled up in Nettie’s belly, and before her brain could put a foot down, she dropped the knife and launched herself at Coyote Dan, aiming to strangle him silent. The feller halfway let her, holding her gently but firmly away as if she were a kitten caught by the neck scruff as it clawed the air.
“I. Ain’t. Nobody’s. Slave!”
Dan didn’t say anything, which was what finally sucked the fight out of the girl. She flopped over onto her back on the hard ground and stared up into the white-fire sun, hoping that Dan wouldn’t see her tears. Of course, considering he’d been able to sniff out her wound, he could probably smell her tears just as easily.
“You’re nobody’s slave now, and now is all that matters.”
She breathed in deep, considering. It was true. And yet the truth of it washed the first sixteen years of her life with a shameful pain that she’d pushed deep down into a dark hole in her soul, one where she never had to look at the ugliness that was human nature. Pap and Mam said they’d adopted her, that she owed them for taking her in when nobody else wanted a little nut-brown baby with a loud yowl. Nobody ever said slave or even servant. But they’d definitely said whip and switch and Come out now, girl, or I’ll beat you blind. And they had sure enough followed up on that threat, ple
nty of times. She carried the scars on her back to prove it.
“Never again,” she muttered. Then she sat up. “Wait. Answer the original question. What the hell are you?”
He shrugged, easy in his skin. “Shapeshifter. Skinwalker. There are many names, many bands, many kinds. When I wish it, I walk on four legs.”
Nettie stared at the bottoms of his feet, dusted tan with prairie dirt. They were one big callus and made her twitch her toes, just thinking about what it must feel like to step on the various pokey things of the desert without thick boots.
“Does it hurt?”
Dan cocked his head, and she saw the mischievous look of his coyote self shining through his human face. “When I was a child, it didn’t. But then, when I first became a man, it hurt terribly. Because I fought it and tried to deny it, to push it down. Now that I’ve claimed it and accepted it, it’s natural. It flows like the river over rocks. You have to let it take you. You have to embrace it.”
A shadow flickered overhead, and Nettie stared up at the circling vulture. When she flinched and went for her gun, Dan shook his head.
“That’s not a harpy. Just a regular vulture. Don’t waste your bullets.”
Nettie shaded her eyes and stared up, squinting for details. “How can you tell?”
“The fact that it’s circling instead of descending and laughing. And there’s a tremor in the air when a monster is near. Like throwing a pebble in a pond, it ripples outward and laps against the skin of one who knows. You’ve simply grown accustomed to mine, but you’ll learn to feel it. Every creature has its own particular feeling.”
Nettie glared knives at him.
