Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World Book 1) Read online

  In one practiced move, I slide my shotgun into the holster across my back and draw my Böker. Seven inches of curved steel, down-weighted for a machete-like strike. But before I can attack, he pivots toward the girl, scoops her up, throws her over his shoulder, and runs.

  “Shit!”

  I take off after him, struggling to put my hunting knife away and get the small quick knife tucked in my moccasins. I throw the obsidian blade fast as lightning, smooth and spinless in an underhanded release. Grim satisfaction as it flies true and hits him in the back of the knee. He roars and stumbles, almost drops the girl, who shrieks in terror. But he keeps on going. Faster than he should be with a knife in his leg. Faster than he looks. Quickly disappearing into the dark woods. So I do the only thing I can do. I chase.

  And with my need, Honágháahnii comes. Like a streak of wildfire through my veins, churning through my muscles, turning me into something more than I am without it. My eyesight sharpens. My lungs expand. And I fly, feet light, barely touching the ground. Instinctively I dodge trees, leap felled branches and dense underbrush. I am close to the monster too fast, in the milliseconds between breaths. I stutter step and then launch myself at his broad back.

  Impact, and the three of us crash to the forest floor. The girl goes flying from his arms as he smashes face-first into the ground. His big body cushions my fall, giving me a moment of advantage that I take. I roll, drawing my knife even as I get my legs under me. I’m ready when the monster gets to his feet.

  His eyes flicker between my knife and the girl. She’s sprawled out facedown, silent. Maybe already dead, but I can’t tell for sure. His eyes dart between us again, and this time when his gaze settles on the girl, he licks his lips.

  I swing my knife for his throat, still Honágháahnii fast, but he throws out an arm to block me. I adjust, twisting before the blade hits, nimble as a mountain cat, and invade his inner guard. I plunge my knife into his belly and rip. Again. A third time. Hard and fast and merciless like I’ve been taught. My hands grows slippery with his blood. The stench of his innards is overwhelming, and my eyes water and blur, but I don’t stop. I don’t pause between strikes to see if it’s working. I just wait for his body to hit the ground.

  No luck, as huge arms wrap around me and squeeze. The barrel of my shotgun digs painfully into my spine. I fight to breathe. Fire blazes across my shoulder as he clamps down, trying his best to bite through my leather jacket.

  I scream. Pure and instinctual as I thrash helplessly in his massive arms. Panic judders through my bones and stars burst and flame out on the edge of my vision. He squeezes harder. Uses his teeth to worry my shoulder like a dog with a bone. I’ve still got my Böker in my right hand. Desperate, I shift my knife to my left, shimmy that arm loose. And with all my strength, I take a swinging hack at his neck. It’s awkward and clumsy, but it works. He releases me with a bellow of pain. Hurls me away. I go flying, arms and legs paddling wildly.

  I strike the ground hard. Agony jolts my side. I can’t catch my breath and my shoulder is throbbing, but I scramble to my feet, fumbling to put my knife between us.

  But there’s no need. He staggers, hand clumsily shoving to contain the flesh and tendons of his neck, and I realize I’ve severed his head. I watch in awe as he crumples to the ground.

  Dead.

  The monster is dead.

  I drop to my knees, exhausted. Because what Honágháahnii gives, it takes away, and even that limited use of my clan powers has left me drained. My heart pounds like a big drum in my chest. The roar of a windstorm crashes in my ears, and the shakes are ridiculous. They rattle through my muscles as the adrenaline melts away.

  I scream, exhilarated, obscenely euphoric. I know this high. K’aahanáanii, my clan power, a bloodlust that revels in the kill. Guilt and horror suffuse me, and I try to mentally push K’aahanáanii away, but it won’t be denied as long as I am covered in the blood of my enemy, his lifeless body at my feet. I listen as my voice echoes back to me through the trees and wait for the perversity of my killing clan power to pass.

  For a while the only sound is my own breath in my ears. The soft rustle of wind through the trees.

  Dirt and rocks stick to my blood-soaked leggings and poke painfully at my knees as I crawl over to retrieve my knives. I clean them both as best I can, sheathe the obsidian blade.

  I use the Böker to hack at what’s left of his neck until the head comes off. I’m not sure what kind of monster I just killed, but I do know he took too damn long to die, and that makes me cautious. Taking the head is about the only way to guarantee he won’t stand up the moment I turn my back.

  There’s a shuffling behind me.

  I whirl, too fast, and my head throbs. If there’s another monster, I’m in no shape to fight it.

  It’s the girl. I forgot all about the girl.

  She’s dragged herself upright, back braced against a bare tree trunk. Her nightgown is torn and filthy. Her hair hangs in stringy blood-clotted clumps. The color in her face is an awful ghostly chalk under her brown skin. I can see her wound now, the black blood, the white of bone and tendon showing through where the flesh has been scraped away by the monster’s teeth. I shake off a shudder of horror and wonder how she’s still alive. The monster wasn’t just gnawing at her. He was trying to dig out her throat.

  She tries to talk, her mouth working soundlessly, but the damage is so bad that she can’t speak. Her eyes are big, wide and glazed over. She can’t be more than twelve years old. And, as I’m looking at that wound, my gut says she’s not going to make it to thirteen.

  I go to her, crouch down so we’re closer to eye-to-eye. She looks a lot like me. The same dark hair, the same brown skin and broad angular face.

  I still have the Böker in my hand, but I keep it flat to the ground, out of sight.

  “The monster got you,” I tell her quietly. I point to the wound. Her eyes roll, trying to see the bloody place on her neck. “Do you know what that means?”

  A low painful sound is all she can manage.

  Neizghání once told me that evil was a sickness. He told me he could see it on people, like a taint. That the bilagáanas had it wrong, and evil wasn’t just some spiritual concept or the deeds of a bad man. It was real, physical, more like an infectious disease. And you could catch evil if something evil got inside you. And once inside you, it could take you over. Make you do evil things. Destroy what you once cared for. Hurt people you wouldn’t have hurt otherwise, and eventually, kill. And if that happened, you ran the risk of becoming just another monster.

  He told me I had some of that evil in me, that I’d been touched by what happened the night he had found me. And that it manifested as K’aahanáanii, and it made me strong, made me vicious when I needed to be. But it was a narrow road that I walked. I had to be vigilant not to let it grow, not to feed it unnecessarily. Because my fate wasn’t decided yet. I could be a monsterslayer, or I could be a monster.

  I laughed it off when he told me this. Said it sounded like superstition, old people’s talk. Never mind that I was talking to an immortal. But the truth is, he scared the piss out of me. Because I knew why he was telling me this.

  We were standing in a field of corpses at the time, his eyes on me, but as distant and unfathomable as the farthest corners of the universe. I was cleaning my Böker on a dead man’s coat. But the curl of Neizghání’s lips and the pinch in his heavy brows told me clear enough what he was thinking.

  He was gone the next morning. Why he, the Monsterslayer, didn’t just kill me if he thought I was becoming a monster, I’m not sure. Maybe those years as his apprentice meant something. Maybe he had second thoughts about it all in the end. But here, facing this girl who doesn’t look so different from me, it hits me like a punch in the gut.

  I think of giving her the speech Neizghání gave me, but I’m not cruel, just honest. I keep it simple. “It means you’re infected.”

  Her wet panting grows louder.

  “Even if you survive, t
he infection is only going to get worse. You’ll have to fight it all your life. It will dig into you, take you over.” I swallow to clear my throat. “I met your family. Back in town. They seemed nice.” I rub at my nose with the back of my hand where it suddenly itches.

  She sways where she sits, but her eyes stay on me.

  “They would try to say the right things. Try to fix things. Fix you. But they won’t understand. What’s happened to you can’t be fixed.” It’s the most I’ve said to another human being in months. But now that I’m talking, it feels urgent that she know. That she understand why I have to do what I’m going to do.

  “The infection,” I tell her. “It’ll make you . . . something else inside. Something that hurts people. Something you don’t want to be.” Something monstrous, I want to say. “Do you understand?”

  She swallows and I can see the muscles of her throat working, slick and wet where they show through her ruined skin.

  I nod, tighten the grip on my knife. I want to tell her I’m sorry, but I settle for “Close your eyes.”

  Her eyes flutter shut. I brush her hair away from her face. Expose her neck.

  I murmur “I’m sorry” after all. And I tell myself she understands that I’m saving her, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

  I swing the Böker.

  Her head separates cleanly.

  Her body wilts to the forest floor.

  There’s a hard ball in my stomach that bends me over, makes me want to heave. I try to ignore the way my knife suddenly feels heavy and wrong in my hand. How the familiar grip grates like sandpaper against my palm. And I can’t help but think that if this was the right thing to do, why does it feel so fucking wrong?

  I stagger back from her body. The ground is littered with the carnage I have wrought in only a handful of minutes. I make myself take it in. The smells, the blood, the headless bodies. I commit it to memory. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

  The forest around me is quiet and whatever judgment it makes of me, merciful or monstrous, it keeps to itself. The bare kindling of the campfire sputters and hisses in the distance before it finally surrenders to the flames. Moments later the flames die too, leaving me with only darkness and ash.

  Chapter 3

  I don’t make it back to Lukachukai until well past midnight.

  I break the monster’s makeshift camp down, briefly rekindling the fire to burn anything that can’t be salvaged for supplies, and collect the two heads into separate canvas bags. I split open one of my shotgun shells, pour a little corn pollen into my hand, and dust it over both bodies with a quick prayer. Not that I’m much for praying, but Grandpa Tah tells me that the pollen binds the flesh to the earth. I think removing the head is pretty effective too, but who am I to argue with a medicine man?

  The severed heads are heavy and wet against my back, and the long trek out of the forest in the dark carrying them is more nightmare stuff. The only plus side is that I’m alone. No animals, no more monsters. I catch sight of a coyote trailing me a time or two, but it keeps its distance. Just a pair of yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness.

  A single bare bulb lights the door to the Chapter House. It should feel like a beacon welcoming me back, but instead it glows menacing and pale. The front door is shuttered, barred against the monsters in the night. Not sure if they meant to include me in that or not, but I pound heavy on the door, hoping someone’s still waiting up.

  Locks turn inside. A face peers out. It’s my runner, the same kid who came to my door this morning to offer me the Lukachukai job.

  “Where is everybody?” I ask.

  He eyeballs me, and I realize I must look pretty grisly. I push my hair out of my face, streaking blood across my forehead, and give him a smile.

  “Locked up tight,” he says. “Scared of the monsters.”

  “Even the brother?”

  His mouth twists. “Especially him.”

  I grin. I’m not the only one who was unimpressed with the younger Begay. “Why aren’t you locked up tight?”

  “I volunteered to stay. I’m not scared of monsters.”

  “No?” I shift the bloody bags on my shoulder to the other side, hear the click of skull bone against skull bone. “Why not?”

  “I knew you’d kill it. You’re famous.”

  I snort. “Famous, huh?”

  “The girlfriend of the Monsterslayer.”

  My mouth turns down in a hard frown. “I am not his girlfriend.”

  He looks at me, disappointed. You and me both.

  “Look,” I say, “you got my trade?”

  “You got the bounty?”

  No nonsense, this kid. I swing the bags off my shoulder. Hang on to the bigger one and drop the smaller one to the side. “Don’t open that.” I point with my lips to the small bag. “That’s for the family. Give them something to bury.”

  “You didn’t save her?”

  I don’t answer that. It’s too complicated and I’m too tired to explain it. I hold the bigger bag open, give him a chance to peer inside.

  As he does, some of his bluster fades and he swallows hard. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Monster’s head. I’m taking it to a medicine man I know in Tse Bonito so he can tell me what it is. What it was.”

  The kid nods. “Cool.” Maybe it is when you’re his age, but to me it’s anything but. He reaches around behind the door and pulls out the same Blue Bird bag from before.

  I take a moment to check it. Same silver jewelry, same shit turquoise.

  “Really?”

  “Oh!” he says, like he forgot. He reaches back behind the door and pulls out two blankets. One looks like a Pendleton, thick and warm but the bright blues and greens and yellows of the generic arrow patterns are common enough. But the other one. I recognize it as a Two Grey Hills, a rug my nalí taught me was rare and prized and not made that often anymore.

  I’m impressed. “That’s big trade.”

  He shrugs, digs at something between his teeth. His eyes wander to the small blood-crusted bag, but not like he’s scared of what’s in it. More like he’s curious.

  I keep the Pendleton but hand him back the Two Grey Hills. “Tell the family that we’re even. Traded up.” Pay is pay, and I’m not going soft. But I can’t take the Two Grey Hills when I’ve got their daughter’s head in a bag.

  I tuck the garish blanket under my arm, pick up the jewelry bag in one hand, and scoop up the bag with the monster’s head in the other. Turn toward my truck.

  “So you think there’s more monsters?” His voice behind me is a little breathy, growing excitement more than fear.

  “Won’t know until the medicine man tells me about it.”

  I sense rather than see him reach for the little bag. “Don’t do that.”

  “It’s her, enit?” he says, full-on excited now. “Atty?”

  I didn’t know her name.

  I throw the monster’s head in the back of the truck, and place the rugs and the jewelry on the seat next to me. I look back in the rearview to see the kid still crouched there under the bare bulb, staring at the bag with Atty’s head.

  Chapter 4

  I live in a one-bedroom single-wide trailer I picked up a few months back. The previous owner died in his sleep, and nobody else would live in it after that. So it was a steal, as in free. I’ve got it parked on a scrubby parcel of land about an hour south of Lukachukai in the Crystal Valley. It sits a half mile from the old abandoned boarding school that gave the valley its nominal fame and right below the entrance to Narbona Pass, the only road across the Chuska Mountains for fifty miles in either direction. The pass itself is named for the ill-fated Navajo chief named Narbona who, back in 1849, showed up to negotiate a peace treaty with the US Army and ended up shot to death over a stolen horse and a bad translator. So go the peacemakers.

  There are only about twenty-five families stretched sparsely throughout the ten-mile-long valley, and most of them are clustered at the highway turnoff that I passed four miles back.
That leaves me with no close neighbors, which is fine by me. Of course, not having any people around also means that if I get in trouble, no one’s going to come save me. I’m pretty good at saving myself, but even badass Diné warriors need a little help sometimes. Just ask Narbona.

  That’s why I have my dogs. A trio of rez mutts that run herd on me and keep the place pretty well guarded from unwanted visitors—human, animal, and otherwise. I picked the first pup up after I figured out Neizghání wasn’t coming back. The second one invited herself in and never left, and the third was the sole survivor of her litter—just like me.

  They greet me now as I pull my truck in through the gate and over the cattle guard. Anyone but me pulls in those gates and they bark and carry on. But they know me, know the rattle and hum of my old Chevy that I’ve hooked up to run on hooch now that gasoline’s harder to come by. Know the thump of the tires, especially that one on the right in the back where a lug has come loose and bangs against the wheel in protest. I remind myself that I need to fix that, sooner than later.

  Once inside, I stand in the bathroom and peel off my bloody clothes. They’re so covered in gore that I consider throwing them out, but I dump them in the sink, pull the plug up, and run a little of my precious water over them so they soak instead. I’m hoping that most of the blood will come out on its own, but with my luck I’ll have to scour them to make them wearable again. The clothes they have at the government trading post in Tse Bonito are serviceable, but it’s mostly undyed wool and salvaged hand-offs that are priced just short of highway robbery.

  I pump the generator and give it time to heat up what’s left in my water tank. I know it’s indulgent to take a shower with water rations the way they are, but I do it anyway. There’s blood and bits of something nastier in my hair, and nothing but a hot shower and yucca soap is going to fix it. It’ll leave me short on water for the rest of the month since the water delivery truck won’t come in for another two weeks, but it’s worth it. I even stand in the steam and take the time to dig the dried blood out from under my nails. My cuticles feel raw by the time I’m done, and my face is flush and tingly to the touch, but I’m clean.