Stormwalker: Nightwalker Part 2

Now that I wasn't flying through it at breakneck speed, the aura of Chaco Canyon descended upon me full force. Sensory data from a thousand and more years pressed on me, the eons rus.h.i.+ng together to crush me as I lay there. Blood ran from my nose, but I couldn't lift my hands to dislodge my helmet.

My head pounded as though I had a five-day hangover, and my body began to thrum in time with the vibrations of the place. I swore I started to compress, flattening out against the land as though I'd ooze into it and vanish, becoming one more mote in the fine layer of dust.

Over the humming in my ears, I heard the tribal SUV skid to a dusty halt and its door open.

Booted feet hit the ground, then the cop strode cautiously but quickly for me. I knew without looking that he'd drawn his gun, approaching me with textbook precision.

He stopped in front of my head, then when I didn't move, he leaned down, dragged my helmet from my head, and started checking my body for injuries. I lay there, stunned, and let him.

I could tell he'd been a cop for a long time, because he checked me quickly and competently, without trying to grope me or hurt me. He checked my bones for breaks and my head for contusions, then satisfied that I wasn't too badly hurt, he rolled me onto my back.

I looked up into the face of a middle-aged Navajo cop, one with a large, flat nose and an even flatter scarred face. His hair was very black, no gray in sight, but his face bore lines of experience, and his eyes were hard. He'd seen a lot on his years patrolling the huge reservation, and he obviously wasn't impressed with me.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Not really." My voice was a croak.

He looked me over, taking in the blood on my face plus the bruises the slayer had left when he'd punched me. The cop slid broad fingers around to my back pocket, pulled out my wallet, and plucked out my license. "Janet Begay," he read.

"That's me," I mumbled.

He tucked the license and wallet into his pocket, then hauled me to my feet. I suppose he was being nice to me by not putting me in handcuffs, but I couldn't have fought off a mosquito at the moment. No storms were around to help me, and using Beneath magic in this place could be suicide. One spark might leave a hole a mile wide and have geologists and meteorologists scratching their heads for centuries to come.

The cop holstered his gun and marched me with him to his SUV. He opened the back door, stuffed me into the seat, thrust some tissues at me so I could mop up the blood on my face, and slammed the door again.

I was locked in, behind a grill. I touched the tissues to my nose, wincing as more blood flowed out. The cop's identification in the front showed him as Frank Yellow from Farmington, his ID photo stiff and unemotional. Now that I was secure, the cop got into his front seat and ran a check on my driver's license and the motorcycle's registration.

Minutes pa.s.sed, he not hurrying through the procedure. He had all day, his movements said, to figure out what was going on with me.

I glanced out the windows at the ruins, the canyon walls thrusting up from uneven land, the stillness immense. My skin p.r.i.c.kled all over, my scalp tingling as though I'd washed my hair with minty shampoo. Last time I was here, Mick's presence had dampened the aura which rendered me barely able to breathe or think. I'd survived my last trip here because of him, and I had to wonder if I'd survive this one.

At the same time, I needed to know why I'd been brought to this place. Someone or something had possessed my bike to drag me here. To do what? To find something? Laura?

Frank wasn't ready to let me go, though. He looked at the readout from his police computer, checked a few more things, then made a phone call and chatted to the person on the other end.

He finished the call, put away his phone, and studied me in the rearview mirror for a long time, as though trying to understand what I was from my face, my eyes, and my b.l.o.o.d.y nose.

When he spoke, he took his time, a Navajo man who'd learned how to get things accomplished with slow patience.

"It seems you were a real worry to your folks when you were younger. Started a couple of fires, ran away from home."

Under his calm stare, I wanted to squirm and apologize for my entire childhood. It hadn't been easy when my Stormwalker powers had started to manifest, which turned out to be a picnic compared to what had happened when I'd figured out I had Beneath magic in me too.

"Not on purpose," I said. "Except the running away part. But I always went back home." That is, until I turned eighteen and lit out, trying to get away from who and what I was.

Frank returned his placid gaze to me. Deceptively placid. This man wasn't stupid.

"Any reason you decided to break a clean adult record with some criminal speeding this morning?"

My bike got possessed and decided I needed to visit some ancient ruins?

I always tried honesty first, in case it worked. "My bike got stuck in high speed. I couldn't slow it enough to ditch it until I got here."

"You try turning off the engine?"

"Yes." The annoyed tone of my voice conveyed I wasn't lying. "Maybe the G.o.ds wanted me out here for a reason." Whatever that reason, they were certainly beating me over the head for it.

"That might be," Frank said. "Doesn't mean I won't give you a ticket for reckless driving and excessive speeding."

Just my luck. A man who was spiritual but not superst.i.tious. He probably wasn't happy with me blaming the G.o.ds for my predicament. But who else could I blame? If Coyote had something to do with this, I'd . . .

Well, I didn't know what I could do to him. Nothing ever seemed to work.

Frank was reading my record again. "I've met your dad."

"Yeah?" Pete Begay, my poor, innocent, gentle dad, stuck with a crazy daughter like me.

"One of the sisters of my clan is marrying him," he said.

I didn't gasp, press my hand to my heart, or exclaim that it was a small world. The Dine might make up one of the largest tribes in the United States, but when I was in this part of the country, I could never not run into someone I knew, or who knew someone I knew, or who was related to someone I knew.

When the man said sister he meant cousin, as Anglos term it. It wasn't unlikely that a cop from Farmington would be related to the woman from Farmington who'd agreed to marry my father.

Gina Tsotsie would become my stepmother this autumn. I'd met her this spring, a woman taller than my slender father, quiet but strong. I'd not had a chance to truly get to know her yet, because every time I went to Many Farms, there was either a melee of people at my house, or my father and Gina had gone off to Farmington to visit her family.

"She is the daughter of my mother's sister," Frank said, clarifying. "Do you want to stick to your story of your bike malfunctioning?"

"Not so much a malfunction as a possession."

Another skeptical look in the rearview mirror. "The G.o.ds or demons aren't to blame for everything we do, you know."

"Not always in my case."

"My cousin told me about your family's shaman ability. Don't shame it by using it to cover up for your mistakes. I'll let you off with a warning this time, but don't let me catch you speeding like that again, family or no family."

Once again, I was being blamed for the weird things that happened around me, out of my control. But I kept my annoyance to myself. Frank could have hauled my b.u.t.t to jail and called my dad. "Thanks," I said with sincerity.

He slid his bulk out of the front seat, opened the back door, and helped me out again. "I'll take you and the motorcycle to Gallup or Farmington and let you call someone from there. I don't want you riding home."

I hadn't thought he'd let me back on the bike. But I didn't want to leave Chaco Canyon just yet. I needed to find out why I'd been brought here-what ent.i.ty had bothered to yank me up the road and across the desert to dump me into the middle of it?

Would whatever wanted me here possess Frank's car if I tried to leave? Or hurt Frank in some way? I couldn't risk that. I needed to stay, as much as the canyon's aura was coating my skin like thick oil.

Before I could open my mouth to suggest that I call my boyfriend from the visitor's center instead and wait for him there, Frank stiffened, his gaze focusing on the ruins behind me. Like an animal that scents danger approaching, he went still, unmoving except for the breeze stirring strands of his hair.

I turned and followed his line of sight. I saw the natural walls of the canyon, the tumbled rocks and walls of the ruins. Everything stood stark in the morning light as they'd stood for a thousand years. The ancient road, smooth and straight, running to nowhere, lay empty except for my motorcycle lying forlornly in the middle of it.

"What?" I whispered.

"I don't know," Frank said, his words murmured so they wouldn't carry. His hand was on the b.u.t.t of his gun, but he didn't draw. "Spooky out here." I tried to find a hint of what had alerted him, but I couldn't feel anything apart from the intensity of the place, which I didn't dare touch more closely. The thousand years of people living, working, praying, and fighting piled upon the canyon like layers upon layers of paint.

G.o.ds had been here, and humans, and the demonic. One more demon, human, or G.o.d wouldn't put a dent in what I already felt like whips all over my skin.

After a long moment, Frank eased his hand from his gun. "Come on. Let's get your bike into the SUV."

"What did you think you saw?" I asked as I followed him across the dirt back to the motorcycle.

"Don't know. Someone poking around where he shouldn't be."

"People camp here. Could be an early hiker."

"Maybe . . ." Frank glanced at me, his eyes went flat again, and he walked to the motorcycle.

"Aren't you going to check it out?"

Frank turned back to me, easily and neutrally, as he'd been doing everything else. "Why do you want me to?"

I wasn't sure. Frank needed to get out of here, before he got involved in anything concerning me. A demon might toss Frank aside as collateral damage in order to get to me.

Then again, perhaps the ent.i.ty had only wanted me to follow Laura's path. Ansel had said they'd taken the highway north toward s.h.i.+prock-had Laura meant to come out here? Driving all the way to s.h.i.+prock, then to Farmington and back south to Chaco Canyon gave a regular car better roads than the way I'd come.

On the off chance, I took Laura's photo out of my pocket and held it out to Frank. "Have you ever seen her?"

Frank's eyes widened, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed the picture from my hand. "Where did you get this?"

"You recognize her, then?"

"What do you know about her?"

Frank was a good cop-he wouldn't give up anything about Laura until he knew who I was and why I had this picture.

"I'm looking for her," I said.

"Why? You a friend? Relative?"

"I'm looking for her . . . for a friend. I'm kind of a private detective." Unpaid, doing favors for people when they were at their most desperate.

Frank didn't change expression, but his eyes managed to radiate disapproval. I probably shouldn't have said private detective. My grandmother always had the same reaction. "What friend?"

"Client confidentiality," I said, pretending I used the phrase all the time. "This friend is worried about her and asked me to find out whether something supernatural had happened to her."

"Because you're a shaman?" he asked, voice ringing with skepticism.

"Something like that. I can sense psychic residue."

His look said, Don't bulls.h.i.+t me, but he decided to nod. "That why you were riding out here this early in the morning?"

"I was heading this way, then my bike brought me here. I can't explain it, but I'm thinking I was brought for a good reason. Will you let me look around?" Frank's eyes narrowed as he studied me. I couldn't read minds, but I didn't have to be telepathic to see that he knew I wasn't telling the whole truth. He didn't believe in my so-called ability, and he wondered if he shouldn't arrest me. Maybe a night in jail along with a psychiatric evaluation might straighten me out.

"Please," I said. "If something's happened to her, we should find out what. Maybe I can help."

I tried to sound helpful. I knew Frank had read my entire record, which said Troublemaker with a capital T. But that was all in the past, which I'd put well behind me. Right?

Could my innocent look convince him, or the fact that my dad was such a nice guy and we were about to become family?

Frank a.s.sessed me, the man not impatient, arrogant, or surly. He knew his job, he knew right from wrong, and he understood the gray area in between. Some people grow wiser as they grow older, and middle-aged Frank was one of them.

"Tell me everything you know about her," he said.

Again, I decided to go with as much truth as I could. "I know she owns an antique store in Santa Fe, that she was driving this direction after having dinner in Gallup a week ago. She'd been talking to my friend about something she'd found, but she never said what."

"This friend was with her?"

"He doesn't know what happened to her," I said.

"Was he with her?"

Frank had the stubbornness of deep water. "He had dinner with her in Gallup. You'd probably find that out anyway." At this point, I had to veer from the truth. "But she drove off and left him, and he hasn't seen her since."

Frank just looked at me, his gaze going all the way down inside me. I'd never met anyone who could stare at me with such unmoving exactness, no one human anyway. Mick could do it, and now Frank Yellow.

"She was camping out here," he said.

The words were flat and uninflected, but I read in them that he was prompting me for whatever information I could give him.

"Camping?" I asked.

"In the campground over there." He pointed to the east of the ruins. "She told a couple other campers she was driving down to Gallup to meet someone." He looked at me again. "She never came back. Witnesses in Gallup say she ate at a diner with a slim white man with brown hair. She never made it back here." More staring deep inside Janet. "I'd be interested to find this slim white man and ask him a few questions."

"Mind if I look at the campsite? I might be able to pick up something." Frank kept staring at me, his dark eyes glittering in the morning sunlight. I could imagine tough criminals facing him across an interrogation table and wilting more every second.

He also struck me as a guy who'd use any resource he could no matter how bizarre to get to the bottom of a matter.

"I'll take you there," he said. "But you stand next to me all the time and you touch nothing.

Understand?"

I raised my hands. "Got it."

He nodded once and turned back to the SUV. He wasn't doing me a favor, his broad back told me. He was milking a source.

Frank loaded my bike into the back of his SUV, a strong man who didn't need any help. He let me sit in the front seat while he drove me back across the ruins to the main road and around to one of the camping areas.

"It's a hike from here," he said, setting the break and turning off the engine.

I was still sore from my fall, but I clumped along after him, down a trail, through a dry wash, and along another fairly flat mile to the camping area. Part of the site had been cordoned off and emptied of campers' gear, but the dirt was filled with footprints, too many for individual sets to be distinguishable.

A few tents had been erected in the far part of the campground, and campers were already up, eating or pulling on big backpacks to hike out. They went early, because the summer day would get blistering hot, and rains could come in the afternoon to fill the washes, stranding anyone on the wrong side of them.