“And is that part of the storm inside you, child?”
I shook my head, stopped, and nodded, uncertain. “I think that there’s more. I need to remember the rest.”
Aggie looked as if she would disagree, but after a long indecisive moment, she passed me another bottle of water. “One bottle should have kept you in the dream place for many hours. No one has ever needed two.”
I stopped with the bottle halfway to my mouth, watching her.
“Did your grandmother have yellow eyes like you?” she asked
Holding her gaze, I drank the drugged water down. Recapped the bottle. Handed it back to her. “Yes. So did my father.”
“I see.” And I was afraid that she did indeed see. Before I could comment, the dreams took me again.
*
The yunega was in a cave up the hill beyond Elisi’s house, bound and naked. I squatted before him, bare feet on the smooth clay floor, my hands clasped between my knees. “Did you see what they did to him, to your friend?” I asked. “They will do much worse to you.” The man looked at me. He was yunega. He did not understand the speech of Tsalagiyi. He was staring at my face. It was still crusty with the traces of the blood of my father. I wouldn’t wash it until my vengeance was done. I smiled. He shrank back against the cave wall.
*
The night was cold and wind blew through the trees, whispering and sighing, and golden leaves swirled on the night air. But I was warm in the coat that had once belonged to the killer of my father. It had been in the saddlebags of his horse, wrapped up in brown paper and twine. It was too big, but it was warm and red, the color of blood.
The last yunega had been brought to the clearing. He was gagged. Naked. Tied. He was lying on his stomach, screaming into the dirt as Elisi pounded deer antlers through his shoulders with a huge piece of white quartz the size of a human head. I was with the women this time, sitting on a log at the fire, not hiding. The wind skirled through the clearing, setting the leaves dancing. I pulled my new coat closer and the women hauled on ropes, lifting the man into the air and over the fire circle. There was no fire tonight. Tonight the women each held knives. I too had a knife, my first blade. It felt strange in my hand, cold as the winter wind, sharp as the pain in my heart at the death of my father. We gathered close. Etsa, my mother, made the first cut.
*
When I woke much later, it was night, and the sweathouse was cool and empty, the fire out, Aggie One Feather gone. I was alone. And I knew why Aggie One Feather thought me angry and full of storms. I knew. Slowly I stood and went outside into the night. Winter had come in the past hours. It was cool, with a north wind blowing. I removed my cloth covering and placed it in the basket for used sweat clothes. Turning the faucet on, I washed the smoke and sweat from me, the cool well water sluicing me clean—the washing part of the ritual—a cleansing after the pain of old memories. On the narrow shelf high above the faucet, there was a scrub brush, new, still in its plastic wrap, a new bar of soap, and shampoo in a small bottle like the kind hotels leave on the counters for the forgetful patron. They were gifts from Aggie. I opened them all and applied them to my body to remove the stink of fear-sweat and the stubborn reek of smoke. Afterward, I dried off, braided my hair, and dressed. The house was dark and silent as I walked to Bitsa. I helmeted up, kick-started her, and drove into the night.
The ride over the river and back into the French Quarter was fast, but less furious than the one this morning. My mind was quiet, my spirit was quiet, and even my emotions were quiet. I was quietness all inside me. I had found a part of me that I had lost. It wasn’t a pretty part, but it tied the lost pieces together. I was born of a war clan. Of a skinwalker clan. We led our people into battle, tribe against tribe, tribe against the white man. When there was no war, we were the executioners.
I remembered the vision of one of the men who had raped my mother, hanging, bucking his body, fighting to get free as the women took their time with him. I blinked the image away, but it was burned into my mind, the memory, once found, now a part of me.
My grandmother had not let evil lie. She had searched the evil ones out, had hunted them down, and killed them in the worst way possible, which was the ancient, long-forgotten way of her skinwalker culture. She had brought justice to the people who depended on her. But there was a narrow, thin line between justice and sadism. Between justice and evil. My grandmother had surely crossed that line, had dumped gallons of blood onto it, obscuring it totally. I wasn’t sure she was any better than the men who had killed my father.
No wonder skinwalkers went crazy when we got old, if we carried that kind of thing with us, inside us. Vengeance and justice were what we did. It was what I was. That spiritual constraint and demand for justice was why I had become a rogue-vamp hunter. Was why I was so good at killing. Living with it had never been easy, but at least I understood more of who I was now, more of why I made the choices I made. And more of the guilt that rested in my heart, a guilt that was trying to reconcile the duties of the skinwalker with the rules of the Christian God. Thou shalt not kill. Turn the other cheek. Pray for those that despitefully use you. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. The rules were supposed to uplift the human spirit and make us better people and help take us to a better place within our own hearts here on earth and after death. I had helped torture a man to death, and then buried the memory.