“You’re the local killer.” She waves her hand. “Kill.”
The difference between the woman she’d once been and this one is marked. They’d been a team and now . . . they aren’t.
“I need you to tell me where and what they are,” Sawyer says. “I can’t see them the way that you do.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to wait until I see something.”
She turns, and he snatches her arm. “I’ve watched you, Maria. Talking to someone who isn’t there.”
“You’re wrong.” She pulls out of his grasp, shifts shape and flies away.
He lets her go, watching as she becomes smaller and smaller, fading quickly into the burgeoning night.
The scene changes. Sawyer still stands in the yard, but now a tan station wagon bumps up the drive. I recognize the vehicle, though it’s a lot less rickety than the day I rode in it.
The woman inside is Lucinda. She’s Navajo, a seer. She’s also dead, which gives me a strange, dizzy sense of being in two worlds, which I am.
Her face is as sun-bronzed as when I met her, but less lined, her hair black and long, without any silver threads. The hands that I’d once likened to monkey’s paws—shriveled, bony and dark—are just dark.
Her ebony eyes refuse to meet Sawyer’s. She’s as scared of him now as when she dropped me off at his mailbox, then hauled ass before he ever came out the door.
Sawyer is a skinwalker, to the Navajo, adishgash. A witch. They believe he hurts others for his own selfish reasons, and I suddenly understand why. He’s been out killing what they believe are people, or in some cases harmless, helpless animals. That those he killed are actually half demons bent on the destruction of the human race is not something those half demons go around sharing.
And Sawyer, being Sawyer, has probably gone along doing his job however he can do it, never worrying about how things look, never caring. In truth, he’s probably fed his legend by allowing people to see him kill, allowing them to see the bodies burst into ashes and disappear. The more others fear him, the less likely they are to come around and try to kill him.
Lucinda keeps her gaze fixed on her feet. “There has been an attempt on the life of the leader of the light.”
In Cairo I jerked, and Sawyer’s muscles bulged as he pressed my hands, my head, my body, back down. “Shhh,” he murmured. “It’s in the past.”
I hadn’t been worried about me. Hell, attempts on my life came along as often as breakfast. But Ruthie—
If the leader then had even been Ruthie.
“You’ve been summoned,” Lucinda continues.
“Why me?”
She glances up, then quickly back down. “You’re the best we have. You won’t stop until the traitor is dead.”
Sawyer lifts one shoulder, tilts his head, then twists his mouth in an expression that very clearly says, Got that right, before he begins to strip. Since, as usual, he isn’t wearing a shirt, shoes or even underwear, it doesn’t take much. He hooks his thumbs in his loose tan trousers and drops them to the ground.
Lucinda chokes, then runs for the station wagon. What is wrong with the woman? Scary badass or not, why refuse a free peek? Sawyer obviously doesn’t care. I doubt she’ll view a finer male specimen this side of paradise.
The sun glints off Sawyer’s skin, smooth and bronze, the ink of his tattoos seeming to sparkle and shimmer and shift. He traces a finger along his neck and lightning flashes from a clear sky as he becomes an eagle.
The beat of his wings is drowned out by the roar of Lucinda’s engine, then the spraying of gravel beneath her tires as she reverses direction and leaves Sawyer’s now-deserted homestead behind.
Night falls as the eagle catches the scent of Lake Michigan. The Bradley Clock looms out of the jumble of low-slung industrial buildings. He veers off before he reaches it, clinging to the tree line as he coasts over block after block of fifties-style ranch houses, zeroing in on the only two-story in the area.
It’s late. He purposely took his time, planning to arrive after midnight. There are eagles in Wisconsin, but not many and most live much farther north. None would soar into a suburb and land in a backyard.
He stands on the grass and tilts his snowy white head, black gaze on the windows. Every single one is dark.
Human intelligence, bird body, sometimes it’s a hassle. No thumbs to open the door even if it wasn’t locked. He could burst through a window, but which one?
He lifts his beak to the just-rising moon; his call is shrill and loud. No one who hears it will ever confuse that shriek with the chirp of a twirpy city bird.
“No need for all that racket.” A voice drifts free of the smoky tendrils that surround the house. “I’m right here.”