Night of the Panther

by Suzanne Forster

  “Your way is not powerful enough. You must listen to the spirits, consult the four winds.”

  Johnny couldn’t hide his exasperation. “My way is powerful enough to have won nearly every important case I’ve argued, all the way up to the state supreme court. Somehow I managed all that without consulting the four winds.”

  “Those were not Indian matters.”

  “Why the hell do you want me to take on your case if you object to my methods?”

  The old man persisted as though he were trying to reason with a child. “It isn’t me who wants you. It’s the spirits. When they call, our first duty is to listen.”

  Johnny shook his head. He was getting very close to the end of his rope. “I’m already questioning my sanity just by being here. All I need now is to start listening to spirits.”

  The shaman turned his back on Johnny and spoke to the tribal leader in hushed tones. After a moment he swung around to face Johnny again. “You’re free to go.”

  “What? You’re firing me?”

  “Only a fool would hire an attorney who can’t win.”

  Johnny raised his hands, his eyes flashing hotly over Honor as he did so. If it weren’t for her— He stopped himself in the middle of the caustic thought. She wasn’t the cause of his trouble with the tribe. That had started with his birth. His quarrel with his grandfather had to do with beliefs and superstitions so arcane he didn’t know how to address them, much less fight them. But Honor was the reason he’d left the tribe. And she was part of the reason he was back here now, a large part of it.

  “All right,” he said at last, speaking to the front door as though it were his sworn enemy. “I’ll go to the mountains, if that’s what you want.”

  “It’s not what I want,” the shaman replied.

  Johnny spun around to face his grandfather. “I said I’ll go, but I have a condition.”

  “What is that?”

  “It involves her.” He indicated Honor. “I’d like to speak to her privately.”

  Honor felt as if the attention of the entire room had shifted to her. She met the shaman’s silent, watchful gaze, but found no guidance there. Turning to Johnny’s smoldering heat, she felt a pool of liquid weakness in the pit of her stomach. Lord, but she was a fool for love where he was concerned. She had no backbone at all. “All right,” she said.

  Johnny walked to the front door of the building and opened it, waiting for her.

  Once outside. Honor walked to the shade of a large aspen where a black-and-silver Jeep Cherokee was parked. By the way Johnny leaned up against the car’s chassis, facing her, his arms loosely folded, she was sure it must be the car he’d driven.

  The very casualness of his stance made her nervous. He looked like a man who’d calculated the odds and knew he couldn’t lose. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked.

  “Your immediate future. Don’t make any plans, because I want you here, in Whiteriver, at my beck and call.”

  “Why? What help could I possibly be?”

  “I’m going to need an assistant—a gofer, a girl Friday, and an all-around flunky.”

  “I don’t think I like the job description.”

  “Then call it whatever you want. Indentured servitude, slave labor. I’m easy.”

  Honor could hardly believe that he was serious. Staring at him in surprise, she had a fleeting fantasy of walking over and slapping his arrogantly handsome face. The thought gave her such intense pleasure, she savored it for a moment and felt her fingers twitch. “Why would I agree to anything like that?”

  “Because you’re the one who got me here, and if you want to keep me here, you’ll do whatever I ask.”

  “Whatever you ask?”

  Johnny felt a second’s pleasure at her trembling intake of air. He pushed away from the car, rising to his full height, which forced her to look up to meet his gaze. He could imagine her turmoil, he could almost feel it, but he told himself he didn’t care. He was calling the shots now.

  “Anything?” she pressed, her voice faint.

  Yes, he thought, probing the misty veil of her blue eyes. Whatever I ask, Honor. Anything. Everything. And don’t think I won’t demand it all. Your body, your heart, whatever you hold most precious. I’ll take it all and leave you just what you left me. Nothing.

  “The work will be hell,” he said, letting her draw her own conclusions about what that work might be. “So make your decision carefully. Once you commit, there’s no way out.”

  Honor turned away from him. The weakness she’d felt earlier washed through her in waves. The shaman had told her that bringing Johnny back was the way to free herself, but she wasn’t free. She was hopelessly ensnared. Even if she wanted to resist him, she couldn’t. The Apache boy’s freedom was at stake. From now until this nightmare was over, she was hostage to Johnny’s every whim, his darkest fantasies.

  Six

  A HUGE CEREMONIAL BONFIRE blazed in the old fairgrounds down by the river. The flames leaped high, showering the darkness with white-hot sparks and making ghosts of the plumes of smoke that drifted into the night. Residents came from every corner of the reservation, drawn by the primordial beauty of the fire, the chanting of tribal medicine men, and the sensual throb of rawhide drums.

  Honor sat among the crowd, aware of the mounting tension around her. Tonight the gaan dancers would perform what some still called “the devil dance.” Costumed to represent the gaan, which were believed to be ancient mountain spirits who resided in sacred caves, the dancers would drive away evil spirits and invoke blessings on the tribe’s endeavors and on Johnny as a strong and able warrior.

  The drums ceased, and a hush fell over the crowd as the tribal leaders filed into the fairgrounds and took their places around the roaring fire. The first to enter were the representatives of the neighboring districts, all considered to be honored guests. Next came the White Mountain tribal leaders, led by the tall, weathered man Honor had met that day. In the ritual dances of the past the tribe’s warriors always entered last, after the others were seated. Tonight the last person to enter the arena was Johnny.

  Honor’s breath caught when she saw him.

  He was naked except for a breechcloth and calf-high moccasins, and as he walked toward the fire, its roaring light turned his bronze skin to molten gold. The flames that danced over his muscular torso seemed to caress him, stroking him with the sensuality of a woman’s touch. And his hair spilled like glittering black water over his powerful shoulders.

  It was not a sight Honor was in any way prepared for. And neither was she expecting to see him painted with stark slashes of black and white pigment. The streaks on his face and body evoked memories of the Apache warriors who fought in the bloody Indian wars of the prior century.

  He moved with the same animal grace she’d witnessed in the courtroom, and as he took his place next to the tribal leader, the drums and chanting grew louder, turning feverish. Torches could be seen approaching the bonfire from the darkness beyond. The medicine men’s chanting shrilled to an eerie, high-pitched wail, and suddenly the gaan dancers appeared, swooping out of the night like devils. Their faces were concealed by black hoods, and the huge spiked crowns they wore were vibrantly painted with sacred Apache symbols—sunlike spheres, lightning bolts, and snakes with forked tails.

  The five dancers approached the fire and backed off, melting in and out of the darkness several times before one of them broke loose and burst out of the shadows, dashing through the crowd, whirling a bull-roarer. The drums rose to a fever pitch, and the other dancers materialized again, encircling Johnny.

  The gaan leader carried a triple medicine cross adorned with feathers, which he offered to Johnny, jerking it back as Johnny reached for it. The chanting soared to an eerie shriek, and the crowd shouted Apache words that Honor couldn’t understand. She suddenly felt afraid, as if this were some test Johnny must pass.

  The leader coaxed and taunted Johnny until the din grew unbearable. At last, with a dramatic flo
urish, he touched the crown of Johnny’s head with his medicine cross, then brought the wand to his own mouth and released a hissing breath.

  The crowd gasped as Johnny sprang up unexpectedly, his muscles rippling with firelight, his hair aglow. The chanters shrieked a warning, and the dancers swarmed around him, slicing the air with their wands as though fighting off demons. One of the wands struck Johnny’s arm, another his chest, lacerating his skin. Honor watched in horror, but Johnny didn’t move to protect himself in any way. He didn’t even flinch at the blows. As the dancers hissed and leaped. Honor was reminded of an exorcism, and she couldn’t help wondering if the evil they were trying to ward off was associated with Johnny’s birth.

  The bizarre ceremony went on until all five gaan dancers had performed rituals that were both beautiful and grotesque over Johnny’s statuelike form. After each dance, Chy Starhawk, as chief medicine man, offered sacred pollen to the four winds, then showered Johnny with the golden powder.

  Honor was hypnotized by what she saw. Johnny remained unmoving as the medicine cross was applied to various parts of his body. He looked as much a magical, supernatural creature as the dancers. With his eyes lit by the fire and his body dusted with gold, he appeared eerily capable of invoking powers, including the powers of darkness. She knew the ceremony might go on all night, until all the evil spirits had been driven away and the gaan’s benevolence was assured. But she couldn’t tear herself away from the primal power of it.

  In the morning Johnny would leave for the mountains on foot, wearing only what he wore now, with no provisions or weapons except what he could forage from nature. The shaman had told Honor that she was to be involved in some way with Johnny’s ordeal, but he’d refused to tell her how. That possibility had intrigued her at first. Now it was beginning to alarm her.

  Honor woke up with a start, sensing the presence of someone in her darkened motel room. She lay very still, hardly daring to breathe as she became aware of a shadowy figure hovering near the foot of the bed. Somehow she found the button at the base of table lamp next to her bed and pressed it.

  The sudden burst of light blinded her, revealing the intruder as a black-on-white form, like a foreground figure in a photographic negative. She shielded her eyes, trying to bring him into focus. Gradually the form materialized into a man.

  “How did you get in here?” she asked, clutching the blankets around her as she sat up. It was Chy Starhawk who stood at the foot of her bed.

  The shaman lifted a shoulder, conveying the naturalness of the situation. “The lock on your door doesn’t work.”

  “But you can’t just walk into people’s room and frighten them half to death! Why didn’t you knock?”

  “It would have been rude to knock when you were sleeping,” he explained. “I would have disturbed you.”

  The man’s logic confounded her. But what confounded her even more was that in some impenetrable way it also made sense. “What do you want?” she asked.

  He approached her with an envelope in hand. “Johnny’s gone to the mountains. He left you these instructions.”

  Honor tore open the envelope and scanned the handwritten list on the yellow legal paper. The first items were instructions on how to proceed in the case with the Apache boy. The last items were more personal. “Wear your hair down,” he’d printed in bold strokes. But it was the postscript that made her blush. “Anything I ask,” it said, and there were three slashes under the words.

  Honor glanced up at Chy Starhawk, wondering how much he knew. His darkly eloquent eyes told her he knew it all, what had happened between her and Johnny, what would happen. Not the details perhaps, but the inescapable web of emotion they’d found themselves entangled in, and the web of life that awaited them.

  “When does Johnny return?” she asked.

  “Only he can say,” the old man answered.

  Honor worked incessantly for the next few days, trying to complete all of Johnny’s instructions before he came back. He’d asked her to arrange bail and secure the Apache boy’s release from jail. He’d also asked her to work with the attorney from the legal-services agency in researching the case, including searching the legal record for similar incidents. And his final request was that she contact Geoff Dias, one of his former partners in the recovery work he’d done for the Pentagon. Johnny wanted Geoff to run surveillance on the mining operation and see what evidence he could find to support the tribe’s claims of toxic runoff, then bring the information to Honor on the reservation.

  Honor worked late into the night, poring over casebooks written in legalese she barely understood. She pushed herself until the young attorney she was working with became concerned and advised her to slow down. But the case had begun to feel like a second chance to Honor. If she could help to free the accused boy, perhaps that would in some way balance the mistakes she’d made. And it also gave her a kind of comfort to know that she and Johnny were in accord on something, that they were both working on the boy’s behalf.

  And yet what occupied her mind the most as she tried to immerse herself in the case was Johnny himself. Nights in the mountains were still frigid this time of year, and Johnny had no clothing, no food, no weapons to protect himself against wolves, mountain lions, and other predators. As the days passed, she found herself worrying more and more about his safety. He had Apache blood and instincts, but did he have the ability to survive such a punishing physical test?

  She was working late one evening in the office she shared with the legal-services attorney when again she felt a presence in the room. As she glanced up, Johnny’s grandfather moved toward her out of the shadows.

  “It’s time,” he said. “You must join Johnny in the white mountains.”

  “Join him?” Honor closed the casebook she’d been reading. “Is he all right? Does he know about this?”

  “He does not need to know.”

  “But why am I going?”

  “Because you are part of the medicine through which he will find his power.”

  Honor couldn’t hide her surprise, not only at what Chy Starhawk was suggesting, but at what he was asking her to do. It seemed as if he were casually pulling strings and manipulating people’s fates without any regard to the dangers involved. “I’m sure Johnny would consider me an enemy of his power,” she said softly but emphatically. “I told you before that in his heart he still hates me for what I did.”

  “Johnny will come to see what is so,” the shaman said, seeming not to be swayed by her concerns.

  “I don’t think you understand,” she persisted. “He wants revenge.”

  The old man’s shrug was fatalistic. “I do understand. It was the ancient way of our people. To let a wrong go unpunished invited more wrongs. One act balanced another.”

  Honor rose from her chair, frightened and appalled. “And you’re willing to let that happen? You’re willing to send me in as some kind of human sacrifice so that Johnny can find his power, as you call it?”

  “It is not I who must be willing. It is you.”

  “But you do believe that Johnny will try to exact his revenge?” Honor’s pulse rate went wild as the shaman’s silence seemed to indicate his agreement. “And that I will be hurt in all of this?” she asked.

  The silence seemed to drag on forever before the shaman finally nodded, a measure of sympathy in his expression. “Yes, you surely will be hurt in all of this. But if you are brave and strong enough to endure it, you will win.”

  “What do you mean? Win what?”

  “The right to know . . . what you do not yet know.”

  Honor heaved a tremulous sigh and turned away, wishing she could make the old man understand how terribly dangerous his suggestion was. To interrupt Johnny’s vigil, to inflict herself upon him now, would surely trigger all the dark impulses Johnny himself had warned her about, the very rage she was trying to avoid. She wasn’t brave or strong enough for that!

  Johnny sat cross-legged before the glowing embers of the small campfire
he’d built. The kindling crackled and popped noisily, filling the air with the rich scent of pine. Behind him a full moon was on the rise, spilling its dazzlingly bright light through a canopy of blue spruce and ponderosa pine.

  The contents of his medicine bag lay scattered on the ground before him, each charm’s distinctive color representing one of the four directions—black jet for East, blue turquoise for South, red stone for West, and white shell for North. His grandfather had told him that the stones would reveal secrets, but tonight their starlike patterns had begun to blur and distort before his eyes, taking on sinister shapes.

  A coyote howled in the distance. Johnny glanced up at the night sky and knew it was time. He had been told to fast and let the spirits speak, but the hunger and fatigue that resulted from going several days without food were fouling his senses. The full moon meant it was time to hunt.

  The knife he slipped into the top of his high moccasins was a weapon he’d worked from chalcedony, a translucent quartz stone. It was sharp enough to kill quickly and virtually painlessly, but first he had to be clever enough to ensnare the animal.

  A hawk swooped out of nowhere as Johnny rose to track the coyote. Dizziness washed over him as he watched the magnificent bird dip and soar, its wings flashing silver in the moonlight. Johnny began to follow the creature on instinct, knowing it was no ordinary bird.

  He moved swiftly through the trees, tracking the hawk, but as the bird soared over an alpine meadow, Johnny stopped in confusion. Hundreds of rabbits danced and bobbed in the moon-drenched meadow, weaving stuporously. At first he thought he was hallucinating, but he’d heard of this phenomenon from Apache lore, animals made drunk by moonlight. Perhaps that was why the hawk had led him there. For an easy kill.

  But the bird shrieked urgently, reclaiming Johnny’s attention and drawing it to a mountain stream that crashed through a stand of pines. A puma hovered on the opposite shore of the stream, its golden coat bleached white by the intense light. Johnny crouched to get his knife. When he looked up, the cat was gone, and a woman was standing in its place.