Storm of Locusts Read online

  “You’re not faster than a bullet,” he says, but there’s no conviction in his voice.

  I grin at even getting that small admission out of him. I actually don’t know if I’m faster than a bullet. But I do know that I’m faster than the human that is holding the gun that is shooting the bullet. And my clan power, Honágháahnii, will show me where that bullet is heading in plenty of time for me to get out of the way. And that usually means I’m a pretty good bullet dodger. I must have a smart-ass look on my face because Hastiin grumbles, “Humor me.”

  I stare at him. He stares back. I consider whether this is really the hill I want to die on and decide it’s not. “Fine.” I lay my shotgun across the seat of the jeep. Shrug out of my back holster. Place it and my leather jacket in the vehicle. “So these people think Kai’s storm cloud is a sign of another Big Water?”

  “You know the story of the Emergence?” Hastiin asks.

  “Some,” I acknowledge, remembering the stories Coyote liked to tell me about the creation of the world. “I know that the First World was a red world, inhabited by insect people. Beetle, dragonfly—”

  “Locusts.”

  “—locusts. But they screwed up their world and were forced to flee to the Second World, the Blue World.”

  “And what made them flee?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Floods. A storm.”

  “So this White Locust guy fits in how?”

  “When the Air-Surface People escaped the First World and traveled to the Second World, they sent out scouts to try to find a place to live. One of those scouts was White Locust.”

  “So this White Locust guy thinks he’s . . . what? Scouting for a new world?”

  “Something like that,” he admits. “Says the Big Water was some kind of moral punishment and it’s his job to lead us to a new land.”

  “I like the land we’re on just fine. Besides, the Big Water didn’t flood Dinétah.” That was a sobering thought. The Big Water drowned most of the continent, hell most of the world. The coastline these days starts somewhere in West Texas, the island chain of the Appalachians being the only land until somewhere near the Alps. The western half of the continent fared a little better. California was below twenty feet of sea water, but places like New Denver had risen, a chaotic but prosperous place, from what I’d heard. Salt Lake City had extended its influence over most of Utah, Nevada, and what was left of northern Arizona to become the Exalted Mormon Kingdom. Albuquerque was the Burque, a volatile city-state run by Hispanic land-grant families and water barons.

  “The White Locust is just another New Ager turned doomsday prophet,” Hastiin says. “Men like him can’t be happy with living. They got to be praying for the end of the world. They thrive on death. Convince weaker men that only they can save them, but it’s all bullshit. Don’t trust those death-dealers, no matter how sweet their words. They only want to die and take you down with them.”

  I stare until, under the weight of my gaze, Hastiin looks up. “What?”

  “That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make.”

  He narrows his eyes, annoyed. “Check her straps,” he says to his niece. She follows orders, although she looks a little reluctant. No, a little scared. Like I might bite if she gets too close. I lift my arms, an invitation, and she approaches me with a small smile. I wince as she tightens my vest.

  “Sorry,” she mutters.

  “It’s okay. What’s your name?”

  “Ben.”

  “Ben what?”

  “Just Ben.”

  “Well, thanks, just Ben.”

  She finishes up. Gives me a shy nod and steps back to the jeep and tries to look busy moving equipment around.

  “So how’d you get involved with this White Locust?” I ask Hastiin.

  “Tribal Council’s put a bounty out on him. Seems the White Locust has been buying up every piece of dynamite in Dinétah. Trading posts. Black markets, too. Not just TNT, but anything that will make things go ‘boom.’ Camped up here at the lake with all his bombs in some hidey-hole. Got the Tribal Council worried. They decide they should have a sit-down, just to talk. So they send a representative out to do just that. Only the rep doesn’t come back. Nobody’s heard from him since.”

  “You think he’s dead?”

  “That’s what they’re paying us to find out.”

  “So, what’s the plan?”

  Hastiin looks at Ben. “Go on. You can tell her.”

  Ben straightens, tries to look authoritative. “We believe that he and a handful of followers are camping in the caves along the top ridge of the mesa. I tracked one of them back up there when she came down for a first aid kit last week at the medical depot. Her knuckle was all busted and she threw away a bloody bandage, right there in the common trash. She thought nobody saw her. She was real careful, running the switchback, but I’m good on the mountain trails. The best, actually.” She barely blushes at the brag.

  I press my lips together. Consider young Ben. “Good on the mountain trails?”

  Hastiin exhales loudly and pointedly, and Ben reddens for real this time. “Keha’atiinii,” she admits, “born for Bįįh Dine’é.” Her chin comes up, proud.

  Foot-trails People, born for Deer People. A potent combination for a tracker.

  “Good for you,” I say. I don’t ask her what life-threatening trauma brought on her clan powers. Us trauma survivors try to respect each other’s boundaries. And I’m fairly impressed that she’s not hiding her powers. I did when I was her age. Actually, I just lived with a supernatural warrior and avoided human contact. We all deal in different ways.

  “I’m sending Ben up first because of her . . . talents. She’s only going to scout it out and report back. Not engage.” He glares at his niece, who looks sufficiently cowed. “Then you and I will follow, Hoskie. Atcitty and Curley are circling around the other side of the canyon as we speak. They’ll come down from the east.” Atcitty and Curley must be the other Thirsty Boys, the ones on the bikes.

  “Check her straps,” Hastiin says to Ben. Ben’s eyes crinkle, and I hold up a hand to stop her.

  “Seems straightforward enough, Hastiin. Go up, find the guy, maybe find the Tribal Council rep, dead or alive. Nothing we haven’t done a dozen times in the past month. What’s making you so nervous?”

  “What are you talking about?” he says, voice thick with irritation.

  “You’re fidgeting like I asked you to tell me how you feel about your mother loving her other sons the best, and you told Ben to check my straps twice.”

  Hastiin looks taken aback. He stills for a moment, something I rarely see him do, before he grunts and hawks another mouthful of tobacco on the ground. “It’s nothing.”

  “Say it.”

  His shoulders tense. “I said it’s nothing. Just some dreams I’ve been having.”

  A shiver of alarm dances down my spine, my monster instincts flaring. “What kind of dreams?”

  “Did Ben tell you there’s rumors that the White Locust can fly?” he says, a clear attempt to change the subject.

  “Okay,” I say carefully. I’m not quite ready to let the subject of his dreams go, but I also want to know more about our bounty. I decide I’m not going to get much more out of him about his nightmares, or whatever he’s been having, so I let it go for now. Decide to concentrate on the issue at hand. “There’s a lot of strange things in Dinétah after the Big Water. It’s weird, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Clan powers? Or something else?”

  “Nobody’s sure. But they say he’s got other powers too. Dark medicine maybe.”

  “Like witchcraft?” I shudder. If that’s it, Hastiin’s right to be nervous.

  “Nobody said that. But there’s something not right with him and his people.”

  “Who exactly are his people?”

  Hastiin squints up at the mesa ridge. “Rumor is there’s a whole mess of them. Converts, I guess.” He reaches into a back pocket and pulls out a folded
piece of paper. Hands it over. I open it and read the big block lettering.

  ARE YOU READY FOR THE NEXT WORLD?

  WILL YOU HEED THE SIGNS?

  Below the words is a picture of the four sacred mountains being overcome by a cresting wave. People flee in terror. And hovering above it all, like some sort of dark angel, is a man with locust wings. He points a finger at the drowning people in judgment.

  “He seems nice,” I remark.

  “Tribal Council would probably let it go if they weren’t stockpiling explosives. Nobody wants a bunch of doomsdayers with the means to enact their madness.”

  “Well, let’s go relieve them of their means, then,” I say. “Maybe knock a few heads together. Return the Tribal Council representative to the Tribal Council.”

  “They are so screwed!” Ben chirps enthusiastically.

  Hastiin looks at me and then Ben, lines creasing his face.

  “Well, don’t look so damn happy about it, you two,” he mutters before he slings his pack over his shoulders and motions for Ben to lead the way.

  Chapter 4

  The path we follow is steep and narrow, an animal trail that wanders up the side of the mountain from the lake. It’s peaceful here before the heat of the day’s settled in, the glint of the water visible through the trees every time we hit a curve in the trail. But it’s steep, steeper than it looked from down where we parked the jeep, and twenty minutes in Hastiin and I are huffing under the weight of our body armor and packs. Ben seems none the worse for wear, despite wearing the same heavy flak jacket we are, as she flits up the trail ahead of us and then circles back every few minutes to let us know we’re still on the right track.

  “What do you think of her?” Hastiin asks me, lips thrust forward, pointing toward the place Ben disappeared down the trail in front of us.

  I turn sharply. Hastiin has never asked me what I thought about anything expect the caliber of ammo he needs to take down a runner from fifty yards away.

  “I mean, she’s good, right?” He nods like a proud uncle, which I guess he is. “Yeah, she’s good.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I say, borrowing a curse from Grace Goodacre.

  The old mercenary growls at me. “Forget I asked, Hoskie.”

  “I will.”

  He stiffens, then hurries his gait, moving away from me at apace.

  I roll my eyes, but he can’t see it. “Okay, okay,” I say, jogging to catch him. “She seems good. I mean, she found the trail, right?”

  He slows a little, allows me to match his stride. “She did. She’s a natural.”

  I open my mouth to remind him of her clan powers, but I shut it when I see the look on his face. Why ruin his familial pride with a few pesky supernatural facts?

  He coughs. “Promise me something, Hoskie,” he growls. “No. Don’t give me that look. Just promise.”

  “I’m listening,”

  Something flashes silver on the path ahead, Ben headed back to us. Hastiin sees her too, and his words come out in a fast tumble. “If anything happens to me, you take care of her. She wants to be a Thirsty Boy, but the Boys won’t know what to do with her. She needs another . . . female. You’re a female.”

  “Nice of you to notice.”

  “I’m not asking you to take her in, but just look out for her. Be a role model.”

  “Now I know you’re delusional.”

  “C’mon, Hoskie. You’re not that bad. I mean, you did pay me back that money you owed me, and Grandpa Tah thinks you’re okay.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “He understands more than you give him credit for.”

  “Whatever. Wait. Is that why you invited me along today? You wanted me to meet Ben?”

  He nods.

  “Sonofabitch.” So much for some budding friendship. He wants something like everyone else does. I shouldn’t feel that prick of disappointment in my chest, but I do.

  “Don’t look so sour,” he says. “I wouldn’t ask you if I did think you were worth—” He cuts off as Ben bounds down the hill to join us.

  “Their hideout is just around the next turn,” she announces. “You’ll be able to see the mouth of the cave from there. And there’s someone up there for sure. I saw movement.”

  Before either of us can say anything, she pivots on her toes and bounces back the way she came, the white yarn of her tsiiyééł bright in the sun, a glint of silver from her hair clip catching the light.

  I blink. How had I not noticed before? How had Hastiin not noticed?

  “Ben,” I warn, the dread hitting me fast and hard. I push up the hill behind her, legs turning. But she’s supernaturally light, like the deer clan she draws her power from. She hits the clearing first before I can reach her.

  “Your hair clip!” I shout.

  “Ben!” Hastiin growls behind me. He must have noticed the silver clip, the same thought hitting him like it did me. “Get down!” he shouts to her. “If you can see them, they can see you!”

  Ben skids to a stop. Loose pebbles shake free under her feet. I expect her to backtrack toward us, or at least get down behind the grove of creosote bushes that line the path. But she turns to us, eyes wide with wonder.

  “What are you doing?” Hastiin shouts to her in a low whisper. He’s still a good ten feet behind me, his gear rattling as he presses up the mountain.

  “Do you hear that?” Ben asks. She turns to us, a beatific look on her face.

  Hastiin lets out a string of curses and hustles past me toward his niece. For a moment the only sound is the noise of his shoulder holster, the slap of the knife belt as he passes me.

  But I’m stopped dead in my tracks. Because I hear it too.

  “It’s music,” Ben says, her voice suffused with awe. “Someone’s singing.”

  A sweet chorus, like the best summer day you ever had. Sticky with grape snow cones and staying out too late at the creek with your cousins as the locusts sing their mating songs.

  Locusts. My monster instincts scream a warning that shakes through my bones.

  “It’s a trap!” I yell. But I’m too late.

  I watch helpless as Hastiin reaches for his niece, pulling her to the ground. Just as the arrow that was meant for Ben strikes him. Dead center through his throat.

  His eyes bulge in surprise. His mouth opens to speak. But no words come out.

  Another arrow. Ripping through his eye.

  And Hastiin falls down dead at my feet.

  Chapter 5

  Ben screams.

  I hit the ground, rolling for cover. Whoever killed Hastiin is shooting from somewhere above us, an insurmountable vantage point.

  Another arrow flies and strikes Hastiin in the meat of his thigh. It makes an ugly thudding sound. He doesn’t flinch. He’s dead.

  Ben stands there, staring at her uncle’s body. She makes a keening sound, something low and broken.

  “Get to cover!” I hiss at her. “He’s gone. You can’t help him!”

  But Ben isn’t listening. She drops to her knees. Falls against Hastiin’s chest, wraps arms around his still frame.

  “Move, Ben! You’re a targ—” An arrow flies past my cheek, close enough that I feel a kiss of air as it passes. It’s only a matter of time before an arrow finds one of us. Cursing, I glance around, looking for the other two Thirsty Boys, who took the alternate path up the mountain, but they’re nowhere in sight. I’m on my own.

  I focus on the ridge, scanning the switchback for movement. I can feel my clan powers awakening, kindled to life by the danger. My vision sharpens, and my mind shows me the fastest way up the mountain. A thrill of blood lust rises, hot and urgent.

  I roll to my feet and run, Honágháahnii fast. Not up the curving path where I’m a nice fat target, but straight up the side of the hill, hands grappling for holds. Branches yank at the sleeves of my shirt. Something sharp rips across my forehead. I ignore it all. Keep moving, tacking slightly north from where the archer should be.

  Th
irty feet up and I see an echo of something bright on the cliff side to my left. Something pearlescent, diaphanous, and delicate like a dew-soaked spiderweb caught in the sunlight. My mind can’t quite figure out what I’m seeing. Is it fabric? Metal? But it doesn’t matter as a human face rises from behind an oversize boulder. Then shoulders. Chest. The dull black of a compound bow rises above the edge of the rock as the archer raises it to aim down the mountain.

  The archer is a Navajo woman dressed in loose white cotton pants and wearing an open-backed shirt. She has a sighting device over one eye, and fingerless gloves grip her bow. She looks formidable. But what has me slowing in my tracks isn’t so much her deadly technology, but the thin membranous insect wings that sprout from just below her shoulder to drape down the length of her back.

  She’s focused down mountain, oblivious. She doesn’t even look my way.

  She opens her mouth, and a high humming song flows from her lips. It surrounds me, and for a moment I feel that sun-soaked warmth of late summer again, something fragile and beautiful from an idyllic childhood. But it’s a childhood that was never mine. It’s fake, something pretty that has nothing to do with me. An approximation of a perfect childhood too foreign a seduction to lure me in.

  She’s still singing when I launch myself onto the path. She startles to silence. Her eyes bulge in shock. She seems to forget that she’s holding a weapon, and by the time she remembers, it’s too late.

  I grip the bow, twisting as I rip it from her hands. She cries out as I hurl the weapon over the ledge. I spin back to face her, but she’s no longer standing on the trail. Instead, she’s hovering five feet off the ground, wings buzzing. She’s holding a flimsy-looking knife in her hand.

  Her eyes dart toward where the bow went over the ledge. Her fingers work nervously on the hilt of her knife. I have a feeling she’s never used that knife for more than eating dinner. I almost feel bad for her. But then I remember Hastiin and the sound Ben made over his body, and any sympathy in me goes dead.