At first I thought he’d refuse, but despite what had happened last night and today, he was still supposed to be my teacher, preparing me to lead a battle I had no business leading.
“They’re coyotes most of the time,” he said. “But one night a month they walk as humans, and they howl in despair for their coyote form.”
“Isn’t being human an advantage? Power of speech. Indoor plumbing. Fingers.”
“Humans who’ve never had the joy of being a beast don’t understand.”
I’d had the joy. It hadn’t been so great.
He must have read my expression because he continued to explain. “Being an animal means freedom. No job. Few worries. As a wolf, you belong to a pack. They take care of you. You have a mate. She never leaves you.” His gaze turned toward the mountains. “Until she dies.”
There was more to that story, but he didn’t give me a chance to ask. Not that he’d have answered.
“Becoming a human for only one night means they have nowhere to go. They wander the earth, naked and confused. Different.”
I could see where that might suck.
“What’s the purpose of one night as a human?”
“A coyote shifter is more than a beast because it takes on certain aspects of the human side. Those aspects are regenerated every month beneath the moon.”
“Full moon.”
“New moon, when it’s dark and easy to hide.” He contemplated the rabbit. “A coyote shifter has the speed of a coyote, but they’re larger than most and much, much smarter. They understand how humans think, because they are human.”
“Once a month.”
Sawyer dipped his chin. “To the Navajo the coyote is a bad omen. They’re a symbol of black magic.”
I let my gaze wander over his tattoos. “Then why don’t you have one? Aren’t you the black magic king?”
“So they say. I could never bring myself to become a coyote.” He tilted his head to the side and slightly up, peering at me through the curtain of his long, black hair. “I was a boy once; I learned all the legends. I believed what I was taught. They said that Satan rode a coyote as he spread evil across the earth.”
“I thought Satan was a Christian boogeyman.”
“So did I, until I learned that the legend of the fallen angels is fact.” He let his hair fall back across his face as he stared at the fire once more. “Now I think he’s after everyone.”
“Satan’s running around loose?”
“Hard to say. But his underlings certainly are. My mother was one of them.”
Despite myself, I took a step forward. Sawyer tensed. He didn’t want my sympathy. In truth, I didn’t want to give it to him. I was still understandably pissed off about the drugging-me-and-fucking-me incident. But we’d get to that.
“Did you know we’d meet coyote shifters?”
“How could I?”
A better question would be: How couldn’t he? He knew everything else.
“It just seems to me that a gun would be a good idea. Boy Scout law, be prepared. It’s a good law.”
He leaned forward, putting his weight on his knees, before meeting my eyes. “This was a vision quest. That means we go into the mountains with only water and clothes. No weapons, no food.”
“And what?” I threw out my hands. “Wait for the Great and Powerful Oz to help us?”
He sighed. “I’m supposed to be teaching you.”
My eyes narrowed. “Is that what you call it?”
He held up his hand, and I stifled all of the angry words within me at the expression on his face. When he looked like that, even the wind died.
“There will be times when you only have yourself and what power comes from within. You can’t depend on conventional weapons when dealing with the Nephilim. Most of them are killed by one thing, and it isn’t often a weapon forged by modern man since the Nephilim predate Christ.”
When the only weapons were swords, knives, and the ever-popular cross and nail.
“In the case of the coyote shifters,” Sawyer continued, “being killed by another shifter is the only thing that works, which makes them damn dangerous. They’ll keep coming and coming until whatever they’ve been sent to eliminate is dead.”
Since what they’d been sent to eliminate was me, I remained silent. I was lucky to be alive, and I knew it.
“How did they know where we were?” he murmured. “That’s what I can’t figure out. I cloaked our whereabouts.”
“You’re no slouch in the power department,” I agreed.
“I’m not,” he said without a trace of false pride. “Which means that whatever is sending these beings— the chindi, the coyote shifters, the Nephilim that are finding and killing the others—is extremely gifted.”
“So maybe Satan is riding the coyote.”
“Maybe he is.”
Chapter 26
Silence fell over the clearing. It didn’t last long.
“You drugged me so I’d sleep with you.”
His eerily light eyes flicked to mine. “Make no mistake, you’d have slept with me eventually. I just hastened the occurrence of the inevitable.”
“What was the rush? Haven’t gotten any in a few centuries?”