“Badlands,” I murmured. “Check.”
Iyas were Lakota storm monsters that drank blood, a vampire in any language. When not in faceless, storm monster mode, they blended in.
I glanced at a nearby sign. “Pine Ridge Reservation. Check.”
According to my quick Internet jaunt last night, the Pine Ridge Reservation covered more area than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Though an exact tally of inhabitants was impossible due to the terrain of the land and the nature of the Lakota, estimates placed the population at around forty thousand.
With unemployment hovering near eighty percent and creating an alcoholism issue that defied sanity, it was easy to understand how the Iyas could blend in. The people of Pine Ridge had enough problems of their own without worrying about vampire storm monsters hiding among them.
In fact, maybe those vampire storm monsters were partially responsible for one of the shortest life expectancies of any group in the western hemisphere. Adult males of Pine Ridge only lived to be around forty-seven, with females lasting into their early fifties. While I was at it, I might as well go ahead and blame a four-times-the-normal rate of adolescent suicide on the Iyas, too.
“What else?” I murmured.
Iyas brought winter wherever they walked.
My gaze wandered over the hills and valleys, the spires, gulches, and gullies, drawn inexorably to one flat-topped precipice that appeared capped with white. Behind it cobalt-colored clouds roiled.
“Bingo,” I muttered.
I turned to call for the kid, but he was already barreling out of the tall grass with the kitten in his arms. My hand went immediately to the knife at my waist, and my gaze searched the peacefully swaying foliage for an enemy. None appeared.
“Lizbeth!” Ruthie’s voice flowed from Luther’s mouth.
“Now she talks,” I muttered.
“Jimmy’s in trouble, child, and you’re the only one who can help.”
CHAPTER 10
Luther hopped into the car; I did the same. Faith was wired, and at first bounced off the windows screeching. When Luther tried to grab her she scratched him.
“What if we bought a blanket with a baby on it? Would that make her change back?” Luther asked around the bleeding finger he’d shoved into his mouth.
Ruthie was gone; the kid had returned, which was fine by me. If Jimmy was in trouble, I needed Luther’s talent for fighting creatures of the damned, not Ruthie’s talent for talking about them.
“Good idea.” I spun gravel as I put us back on the road. “I’ll get right on that once everything calms down.”
Luther snorted. “As if.”
Right again. For me, for him, nothing ever calmed down.
As we approached the flat-topped mountain, signs proclaimed it SHEEP MOUNTAIN TABLE—summit 3,143 feet above sea level. I wasn’t sure how high that was, but it appeared pretty damn high from where I sat.
Continuing upward, the road became less traveled, more a trail, better for bikes, but the Impala was no more a quitter than I was, and she made the climb, gravel pinging against the undercarriage, weeds tangling in her bumper, dust spraying over the glistening powder-blue paint job.
I was driving faster than I should, but the sense of urgency that had sprung to life with Ruthie’s voice only increased the closer I got to the top. I could smell a storm—sweet rain and ozone. Thunder rumbled and lightning crackled overhead. The wind began to whip up dust devils, twirling the red, brown, and gray particles of earth into a thousand mini cyclones.
We came over the rise too fast, and the bottom of the car crunched nauseatingly. But the sight that met my wide-eyed gaze made my stomach lurch even worse.
“Looks like a scene from The Mummy Returns All Over Again,” Luther muttered.
I’d have laughed if anything about this—beyond Luther beginning to talk like me—were funny.
Jimmy was here, and damn but he needed me. Sure, he had help. Summer Bartholomew—his current seer—and Sanducci fought, back-to-back, in the center of a spotty grass-covered plain atop the mountain. Patches of snow melted here and there, and what trees there were shuddered beneath the weight of far too many icicles.
The Iyas were something to see. The bodies of warriors, honed strong, their skin glistening as snow-flakes swirled about them, melting wherever they touched. They wore traditional Lakota leggings made from hides, probably buffalo, and from their waists hung the skulls of those they’d killed. The clack of the bones whenever the Iyas moved was louder and more terrible than thunder.
Even worse were their faces. They had none. Just a swirling miasma of gray, as if the storm overhead gained power from the evil within them.
And they were evil. The telltale humming in my head was so loud, I wanted to put my hands over my ears and wail.