Books by Linda Conrad

by Conrad, Linda

  As the last rays of a spectacular autumn sun turned the Four-Corners skies to a splashy magenta, two people melded their lives together. Black and white mixed to become not quite gray, but a breathtaking shade of silver.

  The same color as in the traditional silver bands the groom would make for the two of them to wear on the third fingers of their left hands—the same bands that would be leading them to all their dreams and tomorrows.

  Epilogue

  B rand-new Navajo Tribal Police Investigator Teal Benaly Tso, watched as her husband’s cousin, Michael Ayze, laid out his equipment on the floor of Lucas’s medicine hogan. As her medicine man for this Blessingway Sing, Michael had already shown her exactly where to sit for the curing ceremony. He was now taking things from the medicine bundle he’d been wearing earlier.

  For weeks, Teal had been studying and learning, getting her traditional training from Grandmother Gray Goats. Feeling only slightly silly now at being the object of this intense scrutiny from her new clansmen, Teal thought about the solemn way Michael lifted out his prayersticks, bags of pollen and arrow flints, laying them on the ground before him. There would be sand paintings drawn and destroyed here over the next two days. She would be required to walk on some of them as chants would be sung.

  Outside, all her new family, including her new husband, were waiting to help her celebrate this ceremony done to bring her back into harmony with her spirit. She’d imagined this Sing would not mean that much to her, since she was so totally happy and in balance with her brand-new life anyway. But to keep harmony in her family, she’d agreed.

  Lucas had been the one who’d really needed an extended ceremony. He’d had his done before the two of them got married. Now her husband was finding new ways to be creative and had just finished an oil painting—of crimson rain falling through a golden Navajo sunset.

  He was also back to being a Brotherhood warrior. The one who could communicate with the Bird People, along with his wife. His whole life had changed, and she was proud to be a big part of the reason he smiled all the time now.

  Two days later, after a long night of chanting, Teal obeyed orders and took in the right number of ceremonial breaths as the healing spirit took over her body. She felt different. Calmer. Walking in beauty.

  But, deep inside, her hidden spirit also kept its determined cop’s instincts. Sometime during her ceremony, Teal had finally realized that the vision of the woman and the baby on the bridge before their accident had been nothing but a magic trick done by Skinwalkers. But the Brotherhood had not yet located the Skinwalker Burrowing Owl or the Navajo Wolf. And she would be damned if she would rest until they did. Of course, now when she found them, she wouldn’t want to punish them. No, only to take away their evil with the proper ceremony and to bring them back into their own harmony.

  Not so bothered by the differences between black and white anymore, Teal ignored the contrary thoughts of witches for the moment and couldn’t wait to be back at the side of her husband. The man who’d brought her more than love. The man who’d given her the twin silver circles of clan and harmony.

  And for that, he was destined to forever be her dream lover.

  SRS 1465 Shadow Warrior (05-2007)

  ISBN: 9781426801433

  SHADOW WARRIOR

  Copyright © 2007 by Linda Lucas Sankpill

  To all lovers, married or single, everywhere—May you live and love with passion for the rest of your lives! And to my wonderful husband, the passion of my life. Thank you, Con, for always being there with support and love!

  1

  S omething was off.

  The darkened skies turned to a witches’ brew of boiling clouds and fire. Lightning spit, striking a dry desert and leaving black scars of burnt sandstone behind. Torrents of slapping, rushing water, which she knew were a rarity on the Navajo reservation, gushed into parched gullies and flooded sage-clogged ravines.

  Alexis Ayze took her foot off the gas pedal and turned to check on Jack, who was buckled into his car seat. Oblivious to his mother’s growing fears, the little boy slept soundly, in the deep kind of sleep only a child of four who implicitly trusts his world could manage.

  Thank heaven. She had to stay strong for Jack, regardless of how tired and terrified she became.

  Lexie wasn’t sure why she felt so jumpy and edgy. Well okay, maybe going to meet her in-laws for the first time was a little nerve-wracking all by itself. But as their son’s widow and the mother of their grandson, she was positive they would welcome her—even though they had more or less cut her late husband, Dan, out of their lives long ago.

  In pure desperation, Lexie had written to them and was relieved when they’d called to insist she and Jack come to stay. They had been her last hope of escaping Dan’s debts and finding a way to carve out a new life for herself and her son.

  The growing thunderstorm wasn’t helping her current state either, despite her familiarity with harsh storms. During her marriage to Dan, the two of them had lived in a lot of areas of the world subject to storms. Every oil field or potential well site had been fair game for Dan. The North Sea, the North Slope fields of Alaska and the Permian Basin in West Texas were just some of the places with plenty of nasty weather. She’d lived through them all. But this one still felt…different.

  Another sudden spark of dark fire raced across the night sky and Lexie felt static electricity run up her arms. It was so black out here. She wasn’t even sure where here was exactly. There weren’t any highway signs.

  At the crack of thunder, Jack stirred in the backseat, and she stepped lightly on the brakes again. The rain was coming down too hard to see more than a few feet ahead, so she pulled off to the right side of the road and brought the car to a stop. By the time she turned back to check on Jack, he had quieted down again.

  How did single mothers ever learn to cope with the concern all by themselves? Since having Jack, she’d gained a whole new respect for what her father had gone through as a single parent.

  Lexie wouldn’t give her darling boy up for anything on this earth. In fact, she would gladly die for him. But four years ago, if she had known she’d be raising a child all by herself, she might’ve thought better about having one.

  The constant worry was the hardest part. Damn Daniel Ayze for bringing them all to this point.

  She swiped at the few stray tears leaking from her eyes. If only her own father were still alive. He would’ve taken her and Jack into his home in a heartbeat.

  The one person who’d loved her more than life had not lived to meet his grandson. In fact, her father’s death eight years ago was what had put in motion a complete change in Lexie’s world. One that eventually led her right here—taking her son to Dan’s family home on the reservation in Arizona.

  And she and Jack were almost there. They couldn’t have more than a few miles left to go.

  She didn’t know much about Dan’s family. In fact, the only family member she’d even met was his older brother, Michael, who’d defied the rest of the family and had come to their Las Vegas wedding six years ago.

  It was kind of eerie, going to live with people she didn’t know. But she had no choice. Lexie had promised herself that she and Jack would only stay with her in-laws until she could get back on her feet and finish paying off Dan’s debts. She needed their help taking care of her son while she went to work.

  The rain began to let up and she stared out past the windshield wipers at what had suddenly become the darkest, blackest night she’d ever seen. Were they lost?

  Driving their old sedan from Louisiana had meant a good three-day drive with all the gasoline and motels and food included. At this point she was running low on cash and worried about Jack getting enough to eat. She could skip meals, but he couldn’t.

  So she had continued driving after their early dinner instead of stopping for another night at a motel in Gallup. But she’d had no idea how dark it could become in this remote, rural area of the reservation. Or how hard the rain could com
e down. Or that there would be no highway signs after they left the last major turnoff.

  Lexie wasn’t even positive they were still on the right road. They hadn’t passed another car for the last half hour. She turned on the dashboard lights and studied the map again. Had she made the proper turn back there?

  Putting a shaky finger on the road marked Navajo Route 7, she followed it northward from the corner where the huge Ft. Defiance Indian Hospital had been located. What an impressive place that had been, all lit up for the night.

  They’d turned at the intersection and were still traveling on the same asphalt road. But where was the gravel lane that was supposed to be her next turn? It had to be right ahead. It just had to be.

  Turning off the interior light and easing back onto the highway, she blinked away more of the petrified tears welling in her eyes. Something was off. She could feel it in her bones. Rather than turning back at this point though, she fought her quaking nerves and gritted her teeth in determination.

  In another few minutes, she finally spotted what must be her turn and swung the wheel to take it. They needed to get out of this storm and find safety right now. So as they crept along a narrow gravel road that showed no sign of life, Lexie prayed she hadn’t already made one of the most stupid moves of her entire life.

  “What do you mean, you’re still expecting them tonight? It’s already pitch dark. And the storm…” Michael Ayze tried to keep the annoyance and panic out of his voice as he talked to his mother over the phone. His mother knew little of the secret Skinwalker war raging across Dinetah, and it would not be smart to upset her more by mentioning it.

  “My daughter-in-law called from Gallup to say they wanted to come ahead tonight,” Louise Ayze told her oldest son. “She and my grandson have been on the road for many days already. I wanted to bring them under our roof as soon as possible so I encouraged her to continue driving. But now…”

  “It’s probably all right, Mother,” he told her with a calm lie. “Alexis is not familiar with the roads. She’s no doubt just a little turned around in the dark. I’ll go down to the turnoff and see if I can spot their car on any of the side roads.”

  Michael carefully hung up the receiver, hoping not to scare his mother any more than she already was. Navajos on the reservation had an inherent fear of the night—even the ones who did not know of the current war.

  But he did know, and the knowledge was nearly paralyzing. Swallowing hard, he grabbed up his rain slicker and keys and dashed out to his pickup.

  Up to now, he hadn’t let himself consider his sister-in-law’s visit. His mother had mentioned that Alexis and his nephew would be coming to stay with the family for a while, but he’d pushed the unwanted knowledge aside.

  Ever since the day he’d met Alexis six years ago at her and Daniel’s wedding, he had tried hard never to think of his sister-in-law. He wasn’t always successful, but most of the time he’d managed to suspend his memories of her soft hazel eyes and the slender curve of her neck under the silky, ash-colored hair.

  Anyway, there had been many other things besides Daniel’s sexy wife for him to think of recently. Most importantly, the Skinwalker war.

  As a member of the Brotherhood, the society of Navajo medicine men who had banded together to fight off the evil ones, Michael’s days and nights were consumed with finding ways to overpower and outsmart their enemies. The most difficult and scary fact of their war was that no one knew exactly what the enemy looked like. Or rather, the enemy could look like anyone—or anything.

  Skinwalkers were Navajo men who had turned to the dark side and had taken up Navajo witchcraft and shape-shifting. But most of the time they kept to their regular human forms and appeared as ordinary neighbors and family members.

  All the better to confuse and terrorize the Dine, who refused to talk or think about the unnatural and out-of-balance monsters who walked among them.

  It seemed the Brotherhood had been making inroads in the war over the last year, though. Few Navajos had been bothered by witches lately and no one had died or disappeared in months.

  But Michael was increasingly uneasy about the unholy quiet in Dinetah. He’d taken a leave of absence from his day job as a professor of anthropology and comparative religion at the Dine College three months ago to search for the ultimate answer to putting an end to their terror.

  The Brotherhood had learned that a special map, an ancient guide to long-lost parchments, was missing. The parchments were thought to contain chants and potions which would either kill off the Skinwalker witches—or allow them to live forever.

  The map in question had been hidden a year ago by a Skinwalker lieutenant in some kind of double cross of his superior, the Navajo Wolf. But that foolish Skinwalker lieutenant had died before revealing where he had buried the map. Now, both the Wolf and the Brotherhood were racing to uncover the map first.

  Their searches had been keeping Skinwalkers and the Brotherhood from skirmishing with each other. But Michael knew it was only a matter of time before the uneasy peace would be over.

  He braked, looking up through the windshield as the downpour continued and a layer of clouds descended from the mountain tops. Fog had moved into low spots and wetness dripped from every branch and rock. Rivulets of running water trickled over roadside gravel with a force Michael would not have recognized from the rare rain on the reservation.

  Fighting off a shiver, he wondered if this unusually strong storm might be nature’s signal that their inadvertent truce with the deadly enemy had already been broken.

  Where the heck were his dead brother’s wife and child? This was no night for strangers to be out after dark.

  Lexie knew she was lost. What she didn’t know was how to turn around and go back.

  She’d been so positive she’d made the right turn off the asphalt highway back there. But after a mile or two of driving, the gravel road had almost disappeared. Until, finally and miserably, she found herself heading down a narrow, one-lane path with tall brush growing higher than the car on both sides.

  How on earth was she going to get out of here? She blinked back another frisson of panic and reminded herself that even narrow gravel roads went somewhere. Eventually she would come to a house or another turnoff. All she needed was enough space to turn the car around.

  If only the weather had been a little better tonight. True, the downpour had slowed to a drizzle, but misty fog had begun to fill up all the dips in the road. The gravel lane she’d been driving had dips, potholes and gullies in abundance, too.

  As if to prove her point, the car’s headlights shined on the edge of a huge, dark dip in the road. No choice now but to slow down and carefully navigate the upcoming hill like she’d already done for the last few.

  But as the car slowly moved over the edge, she saw that this particular gully seemed a lot steeper than any before. On the way down, her headlights beamed against a puddle at the bottom. She’d already driven through a lot of wet spots on the roads, but it was hard to judge the width of any puddle in the extreme darkness of the cloudy night.

  Slowing to a stop as her car came to the edge of the water, Lexie tried to peer across but couldn’t see to the uphill side of the gully because of the fog. She put her foot on the brake, closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the steering wheel.

  What could she do to keep herself from becoming totally spooked? She had to remain calm for Jack, so she tried a series of small stretches. Would her car be able to get up enough speed in order to climb the other side?

  Please let this old sedan make it as far as her in-laws’ house. She’d never been very religious and hadn’t prayed in years. But this was the time for it.

  “You’ve made a bad mistake. Get out of here.”

  Dan? The voice seemed to be her dead husband’s. Impossible. She must be hallucinating.

  She opened her eyes and turned to the familiar voice coming from the passenger seat. There, casually slumped in the seat and grinning the same old nonchalant sm
ile she’d once fallen in love with, was her husband, Dan.

  Oh. My. God. Lexie blinked, then swiped at her tired eyes. She bit back a scream and took shallow breaths, trying desperately not to freak out. This was one more time where she needed to stay strong for Jack.

  Seeing dead people wasn’t a totally foreign concept. Lexie’s talent for such things had been immature while her mother had been alive, but definitely there, whether she’d wanted it or not.

  Lexie had put that part of her life away in a secret compartment of her mind after her mother’s death. Mother had been the one who’d seen ghosts.

  Until now.

  Why was Dan’s ghost here? Why now?

  “Am I dreaming?” she managed to say as she tried to stem the shakes. “Or dead, maybe?”

  “Neither one,” the spirit of Dan’s body said. “It’s me, and you are definitely not dead. Not yet anyway.”

  She shot a quick glance at Jack in the backseat, trying to assure herself he was okay. Her child kept on sleeping and seemed fine. Turning back, she frowned at the vision of his father.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded, as if the apparition were her real husband. “Why are you here?”

  He laughed in the same overly charming manner that had once enthralled her but eventually had grated on her nerves. “I’m whatever you want me to be, and I’m here to warn you away.”

  “Warn me away from what? Will you please stop speaking in code? Would it kill you to say what you mean?”

  Her words brought out another bark of laughter from Dan’s ghost, and she gritted her teeth to keep from yelling at him. Death did not seem to make her husband any more endearing than he’d ever been.

  “I’d say there isn’t much that can kill me these days, darlin’.”

  “R-right.” She swallowed hard. “Then at least tell me straight out what you came to say.”