Skin Walk (A Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 2)

by Melissa Bowersock

  “All right,” she said with her own resolve. “So we’re going out to the ridge this morning?”

  He nodded.

  “I am going with you,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah, I know.” When her brows shot up in surprise at the quick agreement, he shrugged. “I guess I’m just not meant to have a shrinking violet for a partner.”

  Lacey just grinned at him.

  After a quick breakfast, Lacey went to grab her parka and made one slight adjustment. She’d brought her gun, a Smith and Wesson nine millimeter, but had kept it buried in her suitcase up to now. After seeing that thing last night, she decided it would not be a bad idea to have the gun handy, at least. She shrugged into her shoulder harness and settled the silver and white weapon into the holster beneath her left arm. It felt good there, familiar and safe. She pulled her down vest over it, then her parka and was ready to go.

  They piled into Blanche and headed for the ridge.

  “Where did you first see it?” he asked as he coaxed the little car up the dirt road.

  Lacey thought back. “We’d just come up out of the wash, and once we got on the flat, you sped up a little. It was right there.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. “That gives us a good starting point. I think it ran alongside the truck for a quarter mile or so, so we should be able to pick up its tracks anywhere in that area.”

  “And we’re looking for…?” The little car rattled over rocks and loose gravel, and Lacey silently apologized for the maltreatment.

  “Any clues we can find,” he finished. “Direction, depth of prints, speed, ease of travel. Tracking is not just about following prints on the ground; it’s about getting to know the animal you’re following.”

  She gritted her teeth as they traversed a particularly rough patch. “You’ll have to show me,” she said.

  He nodded. “I will.”

  They approached the highest point of the ridge before it began to slope downward into the wash. Sam pulled the car to a stop, assessing their position, then backed up a short ways. Finally he put it in park and shut the engine off.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Lacey stepped out gingerly. Her eyes scanning the ground, she could see nothing but the faint pattern of tire tracks on the hard ground. Sam moved carefully across the road to the far side, and she followed. For the first time, she noticed that he had traded his cowboy boots for soft suede moccasins that laced up almost to his knees. He stepped lightly, soundlessly. A hunter after his prey.

  “We’ll start here,” he said, pointing to the looser dirt just beyond the hard-packed road. “You know what a coyote print—a dog print—looks like?”

  “Basically,” she said. “Pads? Claws?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  They began their careful search. Lacey kept her own feet on the hardpack and scanned the margin. At first she studied every dent, every impression, but realized she was looking too hard. She forced herself to widen her field of view and be more aware of patterns than individual marks.

  They moved down the road, edging back the way they had come. A cold wind stirred little tufts of gravel near her feet. She noted that, remembering what Sam had said about witches commanding the air, but kept going.

  They’d gone fifty feet or more when Lacey noticed an impression in the small ridge thrown up outside a tire track. A flat spot, roundish, but no claw marks. She stood very still and looked beyond it. She had no idea what the stride of this thing might be, but guessed two or three feet. She searched carefully.

  Another flat, round spot, this one in looser dirt. She thought she could make out a pad, but she wasn’t sure. She felt like she was trying too hard.

  “Sam?”

  “You got something?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. Come and see what you think.”

  Sam stepped up beside her and followed the line of her pointing finger. Once he had a bead on it, he crouched down on his haunches and looked more closely. Carefully he laid a finger along the inside of the depression wall.

  “And see that?” she asked, pointing to the second one.

  He moved around the first one to the second, then searched wider. “Here,” he said, pointing. This one was more definite. Pads and claws. “That’s it,” he said. “You found it, Lace. Good job.” He tossed her a look of congratulations, but then immediately returned to the tracks.

  Lacey stayed with him, letting him lead the way. She wasn’t going to get a swelled head over this; she was just lucky. But as the tracks moved further away from the road, they impressed softer and softer dirt, the outline of pads more distinct, the deeper indent of claws more defined. Even she could follow the trail now.

  “So what are we learning about this thing?” she asked.

  Sam pointed. “See where these two tracks are close? But then there’s a gap until the next one? It’s still running here, loping along.” He glanced back at the road behind them. “It was probably still within the headlights here.” He moved on past more prints and stopped. “Okay, here the tracks are more evenly spaced; it’s slowed to a walk. And here,” he pointed again, “it stopped. See all four prints?”

  Lacey could see. All four prints were just where they should be if the animal were standing in them. The prints were well-defined, not scuffed from the paws being lifted and dragged across the ground with any speed.

  “It was probably watching us down the road,” he said. Lacey looked behind them and noticed the road had turned back toward the houses below. As she and Sam had rounded the curve in the road, the thing had loped off in a tangent, then stopped to watch as they distanced themselves.

  “All right, let’s see where it goes now,” he said.

  The tracks led off in a straight line atop the bluff behind the houses.

  “It’s not worried about being followed,” Sam said. “If it was, it would stop and turn around, maybe even circle around and check back. But it’s going straight. It’s very confident it’s not being followed.”

  Lacey looked ahead and noticed they were approaching the area of an old rock slide. A slanting line from the top of the bluff above them to the far level below was a slope of solidly packed rock. There were pieces from fist-sized clear up to boulders, all tightly jammed together after their spill down the hillside. She wondered how Sam would track the thing over that.

  Suddenly Sam stopped, so abruptly that Lacey almost ran up on his heels. She steadied herself with light fingertips against his back.

  “What?” she asked. She searched the area ahead of them, half fearful the thing had seen them and returned. Out of habit, she patted the gun against her side just to assure herself it was there.

  “Look at this,” he said.

  Lacey hesitated. Just the low, serious tone of his voice alarmed her. She didn’t want to see any scattered baby bones.

  But when she peered around his shoulder, she saw no bones, only the same dirt and rocks they’d been walking. She tried to see something new, something telling but only found the same tracks.

  “What is it?” she asked. “I don’t see—”

  “Right here,” he said, pointing. “See this track?”

  “Yes.” It was the same as all the others; no difference at all that she could tell.

  “Do you see any more?”

  She looked again. No, she could not see any more round spots, no claw marks. She scanned again. “No. Nothing.”

  Sam pointed a little further out. “See that?”

  She tilted her head. Yes, there was a print but not a coyote print. A person had walked here; so what? She turned back to Sam. “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “Look at the whole track,” he said. He swept his hand back the way they had come, back down the straight line of coyote prints, then forward along the same line where the human tracks led off.

  Lacey shook her head. “I’m confused,” she said but even as she said it, a ridiculous, unbelievable possibility began to form in her mind. She looked at Sam, met his eyes and
still could not trust what his direct gaze said to her.

  “Tell me what this is,” she said. “Tell me what this means.” She would not go there on her own. She would make him say it.

  “This is where it turned back into a human being,” he said. “And it’s a woman.”

  ~~~

  EIGHT

  Lacey stood dumbly, not moving, barely breathing. All her energy was taken up by the effort to get her brain working again, but it refused to do so. It seemed to loop around Sam’s words, over and over, going nowhere.

  Turned back into a human being. It’s a woman.

  “Lacey,” he said, touching her arm. “Did you hear me?”

  His touch and voice broke her out of the paralysis. She turned her head toward him. “This is insane,” she said.

  In a rush of jumbled thoughts and feelings, she realized she had kept the concept of the skinwalker at arm’s length. She had accepted it intellectually; how could she not, with Sam’s certainty, with Gabe, Roxanne and Ben all as sure as he was? But now she knew she had never accepted it on a visceral level—a very real, literal level. She looked again at the tracks. Coyote print, coyote print… human print. Her mind conjured up visions of werewolves morphing into humans, all the fantastic, realistic effects of CGI in the movies.

  But this… This was real.

  “Lacey.” Sam put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  She nodded, or tried to. She wasn’t actually sure if she had moved her head or not. “Yeah,” she said. Sure. I’m okay, she thought. I’m just in a werewolf movie, except it’s not a movie. It’s real.

  It’s real.

  “Look at this print,” Sam said, hunkering down beside the first human impression. “You can see by the length of it that it’s a smaller person. Put your own foot here next to it.”

  She set her foot carefully beside the track, not close enough to disturb the raised rim around it. Her tennis shoe was precisely the same length.

  Somewhere inside, she clicked into cop mode.

  “Smaller, yes, but how do you know it’s a woman? I’m five foot five, and lots of men are, too. Why couldn’t this be a smaller man?”

  “Look closely at this print,” he said, motioning toward the track of the left foot. “And now this one.” The right foot, just beyond. Lacey stared at each in turn, not sure what she was looking for. The foot that made the tracks was bare; no help from a shoe size embedded into a rubber sole.

  “I’m not getting it,” she said finally.

  Sam pointed to the toes, then curved his hand around the outside of the track. “Pigeon-toed. Most women are pigeon-toed to one degree or another. It’s a result of the angle of the pelvis. Men are more apt to walk duck-footed, toes out. This is definitely a woman.” He stood up and followed the tracks with his eyes. “Come on.”

  They walked silently beside the tracks. Lacey caught herself unwittingly placing her feet alongside the prints, matching the stride with no effort at all. When she realized she was doing it, she deliberately altered her stride.

  As Sam had said earlier, the tracks went straight, without any sideways detours. The person—the woman—had never looked back. She had been sure she was not being followed.

  Then they reached the rock fall. The last of the tracks was on sandy soil; beyond that, there was nothing for a foot to press into except solid rock. Sam crouched down and touched one flat rock where a scuff of loose sand grains showed evidence of a single step, but beyond that… nothing.

  He stood up and sighed. “I guess this is as far as we go,” he said. “She could have gone up the rock fall, down it, crossed it at any of a hundred places. We could search for days and never find the trail again.”

  Lacey stared down the rock fall to the cluster of houses down below. Gabe’s, she knew, was at the far northern end, behind them.

  “Who lives in those other houses?” she asked.

  Sam looked at her thoughtfully. “Friends,” he said. Then more pointedly, “Family.”

  Lacey crossed her arms and tilted her head back toward Gabe’s. “Any female cousins that might be coming to the barbecue tomorrow?”

  A slow smile spread across his face. “As a matter of fact…”

  ~~~

  By the time they hiked back to the car and returned to the house, Lacey was in full-on cop mode. They repeated their lunch prep of yesterday—soup and peanut butter sandwiches—while she grilled Sam.

  “So how many female relatives do you have?” she asked.

  Sam calculated. “Two aunts, five first cousins and at least that many second cousins. Oh, and seven in-laws, the wives of my male cousins.”

  “But they’re not blood relations,” Lacey said. “Didn’t you say the SW needed to kill a blood relative to attain the power?”

  “That way provides more power than killing a non-relative, but taking any life is still a pathway. The most potent power comes from killing a blood relative that’s a child.”

  There’s that thing about children again, she thought. Why are the innocents always the most highly prized sacrifices? It gave her the creeps.

  “So how many do you think will come tomorrow?”

  “Probably not the aunts. Maybe three or four cousins, maybe the same amount of in-laws. I don’t know for sure; I don’t know how widely the word went out.”

  Lacey frowned as she stirred her soup. How was she going to keep tabs on so many people? With her eight years on the LAPD, she had honed her instincts pretty well and was adept at picking up subtle signs of guilt or deceit, but that was mostly in one-on-one interactions in an interrogation room. Trying to catch those nuances—a quick shift of the eyes, a slight change in breathing—would be practically impossible in a large, loose family gathering like this was going to be. She’d certainly give it her best shot, but the odds were not in her favor.

  She poured her soup in a bowl and took it to the table where Sam was already chowing down on his sandwiches. The sun was streaming through the windows, making the house toasty warm. She unzipped her vest and started to eat.

  “We’ll just have to both keep our eyes open,” she said as she scooped up a spoonful. “Just be on the lookout for any—”

  “What’s that?”

  She looked up to see Sam pointing at her, at her chest. She glanced down; part of her shoulder harness was visible.

  “My gun,” she said simply. “After seeing that thing last night, it just seemed like a good idea.” She shrugged. “Extra insurance.”

  Sam might not have heard. He stared out the sliding glass door to the back yard, chewing slowly.

  “That’s actually not a bad idea,” he said finally. “We’ll fix it up after lunch.”

  “Fix it up?” she queried.

  Sam just smiled.

  He surprised her further after lunch by rinsing their dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. So far, from what she had seen of the culture on the reservation, it seemed to have the usual sexual divide on household tasks.

  “So what are we doing?” she asked, pulling off her vest and drawing her gun from the holster.

  “Go back into the master bedroom,” he said. “On the dresser is a bowl with smudge sticks. Just grab one and bring it out here.”

  Okay, she thought. More smudging. She went down the hall and entered the master bedroom. Neat and clean, like the rest of the house. She went to the dresser and found the large, flat ceramic bowl. One of Ben’s? she wondered. But as she reached for a smudge stick, the sight of a fanged animal skull startled her. Swallowing down the flash of fear, she examined the pure white bone. The brain case was smallish, maybe the size of a croquet ball, and the snout was long, fringed with the fangs and other, smaller teeth. The back of the skull, she realized, was attached to a stick of wood riddled with holes. She put a cautious fingertip to the strange wood.

  “You find it?” Sam’s voice boomed from the doorway and Lacey jumped.

  “Jeez,” she said, holding a flat hand to her poundi
ng heart. “Can you not sneak up on me like that?” She glared at him.

  Sam joined her at the dresser, his soft moccasins making no sound at all. “Sorry,” he said, but he sounded more amused than contrite.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the skull.

  “Coyote skull,” he said. “It’s a rattle, actually.” He picked up the instrument by the wooden handle and shook it. Small objects inside the brain case rattled around. “Those are dried beans inside,” he said.

  “What kind of wood is that?” she asked. “I’ve never seen wood with a regular pattern of holes like that.”

  “Cholla,” he said. “The jumping cactus. The wood looks like this underneath the skin of the cactus.” He put the rattle back on the dresser and grabbed a smudge stick.

  “So does everyone have dead animal parts in their homes?” she asked. She followed him down the hall to the kitchen. “Lou with her owl wing, now a coyote skull rattle.”

  “Pretty much,” Sam said. He pulled out the ashtray and matches they’d used before. “Let’s see your gun.”

  Lacey picked up her Smith and Wesson. “Let me unload it,” she said. She pulled the clip out and checked to make sure there was no bullet in the chamber, then offered the gun to Sam.

  “You hold it,” he said. He lit the smudge stick and blew on it to get the embers smoking. “Okay, pull the smoke all around the gun,” he said.

  Lacey did as he asked. She bathed the gun in the smoke, noting how the blue tendrils curled around the silver barrel and the black grip. When Sam was satisfied, he had her put the gun down and smudge the bullets as well.

  “Will regular bullets work against a witch?” she asked. “You don’t need silver bullets or anything?”

  “That’s werewolves,” he said. “These are fine.”

  Lacey smiled grimly. “So I guess I don’t need the garlic wreath or the crucifix, either, huh?”

  “Nope.” When he was satisfied with the smoking, he tamped out the embers in the ashtray. “This doesn’t imbue any magical powers or anything,” he explained. “Like you said, just a little extra insurance.”