The grizzly easily gained on Coyote as he loped through the dry wash and up the other side. The morning light flashed on the bear’s brindled coat as she leapt, crashed into Coyote, and dragged him to the ground.
I started to laugh. Coyote should know better than to try to run from his wife.
Coyote shifted to his man shape, a big, muscular Indian male, well-formed in all areas. At the same time, Bear rose into her human female form, tall and formidable, breathtakingly beautiful.
My laughter cut off as Bear raised her hand. In it was a long, brutal-looking knife that had appeared out of nowhere. As I watched, my eyes getting wider, she plunged the knife straight down into Coyote’s heart.
Chapter Ten
I found my feet moving, faster and faster, carrying me down the side of the railroad bed and through the warm morning toward the scene of the carnage.
I sprinted through the dry wash and up the other side. By the time I came out from behind a screen of scraggly cedars, Bear was gone. Completely gone—no sign of her bear lumbering into the desert, or she in human form walking away.
Coyote lay on his back on a flat stretch of ground, still human, a huge knife protruding from his chest.
The knife looked odd, very plain and obviously old, but nothing like I’d ever seen before. As I dropped to my knees I saw that the inch of blood-soaked blade sticking up was made of stone—not flint or obsidian, but ground stone like granite. The handle was made of the same stone and wrapped with a strip of leather.
I noticed this distractedly, because what I saw mostly was Coyote, his breathing labored as blood poured from his wound.
“Janet.” His voice was barely a sigh. “You weren’t meant to see this.”
“But why did she do this? Why?”
I liked Bear. I hadn’t been able to get to know her as well as I’d wanted, because I’d been busy in the five or so months since she’d arrived, and she, like Coyote, tended to disappear for long stretches of time. Even so, I’d found her to be patient, kind, and full of practical wisdom.
Not the type to pull a huge stone knife out of the air and viciously thrust it into her husband.
But this was Coyote. Coyote was a god, a seemingly indestructible god. Earlier this year I’d thought him dead, but then he’d been fine. He’d laughed at me for worrying.
Bear was a goddess—did that make a difference? Gods could kill each other, while mortals couldn’t make a dent in them.
“What can I do? How do I help you?”
“Take the knife out.”
I reached for it. If this was some bizarre god game with god rules, maybe taking out the knife would restore him.
As soon as I touched the handle, the knife dissolved and disappeared. I snatched my hand back, a dark tingle snaking up my arm.
The wound didn’t close, Coyote didn’t spring to his feet and laugh, or tease me for worrying. He lay gasping, his lifeblood pouring out of him, his eyes clouding. He could no longer see me.
I pressed my hands to the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. He couldn’t stay here. I needed Mick to take him off somewhere to heal him—anywhere. Maybe even a human hospital could help him.
“Don’t try to move,” I said. “I’ll get Mick.”
Coyote grabbed my wrist with a bloody but still strong hand. “No. Nothing you can do. This is between Bear and me.”
“Why would you let her do this? I don’t understand.”
“It’s her right.” Coyote gave me a smile, his eyes as warm as ever, even glazing over in death. “One thing you can do.”
“What? Tell me.”
“Kiss me. Legends say that a maiden’s kiss can heal a dying god.”
“I’m not a maiden.”
“I’ll risk it.”
Coyote’s hand tightened around my wrist. He tried to reach for me, but he fell back, weak.
I knew he wasn’t faking this. I’d seen people die before, and Coyote was dying. No way he could survive all the blood streaming from his chest.
What the hell? I leaned down, reflecting that I’d always liked his big, handsome face, which always seemed to be in need of a shave.
I pressed a kiss to his warm, parted lips.
Coyote thrust his tongue hard inside my mouth, taking command. His lips banged against mine, teeth scraping. No gentle good-bye kiss for Coyote.
I was about to smack him and call him a fraud, when his head fell back again, striking the ground with an audible thud.
Coyote was still alive, but he wasn’t healing. More blood gushed from his wound, and his skin was cooling, his face taking on the ashen gray tinge of death.
“You shit, don’t you dare die.” Tears clogged my voice. “I can’t do this without you.”
Coyote gave my wrist a little squeeze. “Yes, you can.” He spoke in the Diné language, making my tears come all the more. “You’re so strong, little one. Stronger than all of us. You’ll need that in the time to come.”
“Don’t you go all cryptic on me and then die. Hang on, Coyote. You’re a god.”
“Even gods have their limits. Remember that. I . . .”
He drew one breath to say something more, then he stopped. Just stopped. Stopped breathing, stopped moving, and his eyes went blank.
“No! Quit messing with me. Stop it.”
I shook him. My hands were red with his blood, and I rocked there, shaking him, yelling at him to open his eyes and tell me this was a big joke.
He didn’t. A beam of the rising sun touched him, and his body rippled with light. Then he dissolved into stream of thousands of tiny light and dust motes that sparkled under the sun for a moment, and then they too were gone.
I was kneeling alone in the dirt, sobbing, hands and shirt covered in blood, the warmth of the desert floor soaking into my knees.
*** *** ***
I don’t remember how I made it back to the hotel, but I found myself there again, stumbling in through my private entrance and right into Mick.
He took a step back and stared down at me, then he grabbed my wrists and turned up my gore-soaked hands.
“Janet, what happened?” He shook me, his voice harsher than I’d ever heard it. “What happened?”
“It’s not my blood.” I sniffled, then told him all of it. “He’s gone.”
“He might not be. He’s Coyote.”
“I thought of that. But Bear’s a goddess, and what if the rules are different?”
Mick stared at me a moment longer, then he dragged me close, blood and all. “Baby, I’m so sorry you had to see that.”
I was sorry too. I couldn’t erase the picture of my friend Bear rising up like an earth elemental and striking her knife into Coyote’s heart.
Mick kissed me gently on the lips. “You go get cleaned up and have some breakfast. Elena’s going all out for everyone this morning.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to shower; I wanted to grab Mick and run away with him, somewhere a long way from hotels, vortexes, dead gods, dragons, Nightwalkers, and my burned-down saloon. This spring, Mick had taken me to Hawaii, the Big Island, where we’d stayed in an old ranch house on the side of a mountain, riding down to the beach whenever we felt like it, lying in our big bed on cool sheets all day when we felt like that. He’d flown me to his lair, on an island not far away, and showed me his paradise.
We’d only been able to stay in Hawaii a week. I wanted to go back there for a year, or better still, kick around the world with Mick like we’d done years ago, when I’d first fallen in love with him.
My shoulders weighted, I slogged into the bathroom, undressed and took another shower. When I was clean again, I found Mick in the kitchen with Elena.
Elena had indeed cooked a big spread—everything from eggs with chiles and spices to flatbreads, corn pancakes, and fluffy syrup-dripping puffed apple pancakes that my guests loved. I looked at it all and felt sick.
Mick made me eat. He hadn’t mentioned Coyote’s murder to Elena, and the look in his blue eyes warned me not to.
He plunked me down at the kitchen table, dumped a mess of chilaquiles and corn pancakes onto my plate, and rested his hip on the table, watching to see that I ate it.
I gulped it down with the aid of Elena’s thick black coffee. Elena paid no attention to me, busy filling plates for the horde of workers that had showed up to start tearing up my saloon.
“Drake sent them,” Mick told me before I could ask. I figured my insurance company had nothing to do with it—days would pass before they even sent out an assessor. “He’s paying for all the damage.”
“Did you talk to him last night when you were out healing?” I asked, eating a another corn pancake, the knot in my stomach easing a little.
“I did.” His eyes twinkled. “How did you know?”
“Because otherwise he wouldn’t have sent someone out this fast,” I said. “Or he would have conveniently forgotten about it.”
“No, he wouldn’t have. Whatever you think of him, Drake has honor. He lives by a rigid code of it. I admit I pushed him a little to have people out here first thing.”
I laid my fork on my empty plate. “Well, thank you for that.”
“While they have things in hand,” Mick said, “you and I can ride out to New Mexico and visit to Richard Young.”
Elena stopped chopping and held up her knife. “Who is he?”
“A rich man who might have some answers for us,” Mick answered.
“I don’t trust rich people,” Elena said, resuming her torture of a bell pepper. “They don’t understand the importance of day-to-day work, of talking to people like they’re people. They hide in their fancy mansions, afraid to come out, afraid people might take all their money away if they ever leave.”
I watched her plump hands working to viciously gut the pepper. “Are you speaking from experience?” I asked.
“When I lived in Manhattan, I worked for rich folks who shut themselves up in penthouses on top of buildings, living in decadence you can’t imagine. They liked to show off their Apache cook, so I saw a lot of the rooms and their guests. Parasites living off the hard work of others.”
But the anger with which she moved from the pepper to an onion told me that her anger was personal, not general. Someone had outraged her more than by simply existing in decadence.
But I wouldn’t hear the story today. Elena closed her mouth into a tight line, which told me she was finished talking. In fact, her eyes had a dangerous flash, and I sensed that the kitchen was closed.
Mick took my plates to the sink while I slipped out of the room.
I looked in on the saloon, where workers in hard hats were prying down burned beams. I found the foreman and asked him to have the mirror taken down and moved into my office.
He eyed the mirror skeptically. “I don’t think you can save that. Best get a new one.”
I agreed that the mirror, its frame half-melted, cracks radiating out from a hole in the middle of the glass, looked beyond repair. But the foreman couldn’t know what finding a new one or repairing this one entailed. I doubted Drake would foot the bill for that.
Besides, I owed it to the mirror to take care of it. I told the foreman that it was a family heirloom and to cart it to my office anyway. He shouted for two men to come and lift it down.
I supervised the move, hovering a like a mother with her hurt child as two men carried the mirror between them across the lobby. Mick joined us. I cleared space in my office, and Mick helped the men set down the mirror and lean it against the wall.
The mirror was still smoky black. I studied it a while, hands on hips, before Mick covered it with a sheet he’d brought from the linen room and gave its frame a little pat.
“Ready?” Mick asked me.
“Sure.” Action was better than sitting around here looking at the wreck of my mirror and thinking about Coyote’s death. Was he dead, or wasn’t he? Were the shimmering motes I’d seen his soul disappearing back into nothingness? And dead or alive, why had Bear killed him?
Too much for me to take in right now.
I headed for my Softail in the shed, but Mick stopped me. “Ride with me.”
I rubbed my arms. “Storms are coming. You want me on the back of your bike when that happens?”
There weren’t many clouds overhead, but I could feel the tingle that meant the weather, always changeable around here, was building to something big. Yesterday I’d seen clouds over the San Francisco peaks to the west, but nothing had come down to the plateau. Unusual in this season, when afternoons could bring storm after storm.
Today, on the other hand, clouds were already gathering to the north, over the Navajo and Hopi Nations, west over Flagstaff, south on the Rim, and far to the east. By the time noon rolled around, thunderheads would be swirling around us, and I’d want to soak up their power.
“I can handle your lightning, remember?” Mick said with a hint of his smile. “And I’d rather you not be on a motorcycle that ran away with you before.”
He had a point. Not that I minded snuggling in behind Mick to enjoy the ride. Mick rode a big bike, which gave me a nice space to sit and wrap myself around him. The bike throbbed under me, Mick was warm in front of me, and my heart lightened the slightest bit as we headed out.
Santa Fe is about three hundred miles from Magellan, five hours or so, give or take weather, road construction, traffic, and how often I have to stop for the bathroom.
It was a glorious summer morning, perfect for a long ride. The road unrolled in front of us, flat as Elena’s corn pancakes for a time, then running past low cliffs as we entered the old river valley around Holbrook and beyond. On the other side of Gallup, in New Mexico, the rise of Mount Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains of the Diné, towered to the north and east.
We passed the turnoff I’d been forced to take toward Crownpoint. I held my breath, but Mick’s motorcycle kept going, obeying Mick.
We came out of Navajo country and flew on by the pueblos of smaller tribes, ancient cultures that had existed long before Europeans had ever heard of this place. Along some stretches, except for the black ribbon of freeway and its caravans of eighteen wheelers and RVs, the landscape looked the same as it must have those thousand and more years ago.
Storm clouds gathered out here too, for now mostly hugging the mountain ridges to the north and south. Behind us, in the Chuska Mountains on the Navajo lands, the sky started to turn black with rainclouds.
After a time, Albuquerque loomed out of the desert with its glittering buildings and huge mountain behind it. Mick took the loop of freeway that headed north, and we were out of the town before we even got properly into it. The freeway climbed. And climbed, and climbed, taking us on to higher mountains and lowering storms.
Mick leaned into the ascent, his powerful bike passing cars, SUVs, and trucks that struggled up the long, steep hill toward Santa Fe and Taos beyond it. The air cooled, mercifully, but the sky darkened to slate gray, thunderheads climbing high over flat curtains of rain.
I loved it. When the first lightning strike hit the ground a mile from the freeway, I whooped.
I resisted calling to the lightning bolt, because I’d only short out the bike’s electrical system, or maybe blow up the gas tank. Mick could survive that and pull me to safety, but he’d be pretty pissed off if I wrecked his Harley.
I held myself together while we climbed to the seven-thousand or so elevation of Santa Fe. Mick left the freeway behind and started winding through the city’s streets.
Richard Young lived in a hilly part of the town, his house the last in a secluded neighborhood of residences that hid behind walls, gates, and tall foliage. Young’s home had a big stucco wall around it pierced by tall wooden gates, reminiscent of a hacienda of old. Piñon pines and dogwood lined the wall on both sides, creating a tall barrier between Mr. Young and his neighbors.
Behind Young’s property, mountains rose against the sky. A tiny dusting of snow coated the tops like powdered sugar, despite the fact that this was July. The storm clouds were dens
est there, a wall of gray surrounding the green. The air was cool, soothing, smelling of rain and pine, and the slight odor of electricity.
Mick pushed a button on a speaker near the gate. Through an intercom, he proclaimed who he was and said he had an appointment.
First I’d heard of this appointment, but I didn’t argue. One of the wooden gates opened in silence, powered by an electronic control somewhere in the house. Mick rode us through, and the gate closed as silently behind us, its lock clicking into place.
I didn’t like that. The walls were high, about ten feet, and those wall-hugging trees towered another twenty over that.
I took heart that I was with a dragon, who could fly, and though the driveway between the walls was narrow, Mick wouldn’t mind breaking down stucco and concrete with his dragon body. Even if the walls had been reinforced with iron rebar, they wouldn’t be able to withstand a dragon who really wanted to get out.
The path to the house wound through a landscaped garden, complete with a little stream and a wooden bridge spanning the stream. The gardeners had planted native trees and shrubs, which meant they thrived in high altitude and could survive brutal winters and arid seasons. This being high summer, most of the bushes and flowerbeds were in full bloom, a riot of scarlet, blue, violet, and yellow.
Should have been idyllic. I found it sinister. The garden screamed look, don’t touch—don’t even linger. The back of my neck itched, and I was fully aware of the security cameras that trained on us as we walked.
The front door was opened by a lackey as well-groomed as the garden. His tie was very tight, his expression tighter. The lackey looked us over in our jeans and motorcycle chaps and didn’t bother to hide his disdain.
“Mr. Young will see you in his library.”
Lackey walked away without further word, expecting us to follow. Since neither Mick nor I knew where the library was, we did.
The dragon compound not far from here was a truly old Spanish-style house, with narrow corridors, stairs tucked into niches, and few windows that mostly overlooked the courtyard. Young’s house was new and modern, built within the last decade. We walked through a massive front room with a ceiling that soared three floors above us, with floor-to-ceiling windows bringing in the mountains. A ponderous iron chandelier hung from a thick chain from the planked ceiling high above.
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