“Yes. I am.” She twitched, a faint movement of shoulder blades, and her amusement slid away. “I’m going to kill the thing I followed here. It’s an old rogue vampire, a male. I’m sure of it. But my source . . . my source says it’s a liver-eater, not a vampire.”
After a moment, Aggie said, “Skinwalkers, before they turned to evil, were of The People. They lived among us from the earliest times as protectors, as warriors, sharing our history.” Aggie shrugged. “When the white man came, much was lost, much changed. I have heard it said: The skinwalkers shared the blood of The People. The liver-eaters stole it.”
Beast’s focus sharpened. Blood. And the strange scents caught in the bit of fabric that carried the rogue’s saliva and the blood of his victims, and the stink of rot. Beast went still, as if she understood, but if she did, she didn’t explain it to me. I needed to get back to the house and take another sniff of the bloody cloth.
But suddenly Aggie was talkative, her placid eyes intent, her mouth turned up in a smile. “My favorite story of the crone liver-eater is about Chickelili,” she said, “whose name means Truth Teller. Chickelili is a little snowbird, and the only one who tells the truth about the crone. Since Chickelili is little, nondescript, and has a small voice, her words are drowned out by the jays and crows, until a little boy listens and warns the parents that the killer of children is near. The message of the story is that the small voice is sometimes more important than loud ones.”
I stared at her, not knowing what her words might mean, but knowing that an elder seldom spoke unless there was great truth in the story, truth that was pertinent to the current situation. Little voices? I flashed on Katie’s ladies sitting at the dinner table.
“This creature you saw near the sweathouse. Does it have a long fingernail?”
I thought back to the vision of it in the alley, the prostitute’s body cradled in his arms. Then the brief glimpse as it lunged up the wall. “No. I didn’t see one.”
“Could you see its energies?” she asked.
“Gray light, black motes. I smelled them on the wind,” I said, and felt instantly foolish.
Aggie nodded. “Yes. I see that. You are a tracker of evil. A warrior woman, like the great ones of the far past.” I felt a blush start at the praise, and shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair. “I will set wards and burn smudge sticks at dusk,” she said, “to cleanse the taint of any evil that may be nearby. And my mother and I will watch in the night.”
“Your mother?” I asked, surprised.
“My mother is only seventy-four, and is still vibrant. My grandmother passed last year.”
Things clicked in my mind. “Her bones are buried in the back? Near the sweathouse.”
The same things clicked in Aggie’s mind and the animation drained from her face, showing me a clearer picture of her age. “You think this creature, this rogue vampire you hunt, is after the bones of my ancestors,” she said, her voice so low it was like grass in the wind. “Or after one of us to have power over the bones of my family and the magic in them.”
It made sense, and unknown knowledge fell into place in my mind; it made a lot more sense than anything Beast was thinking. “Having the bones of an elder who shares a bloodline buried nearby helps boost a shaman’s power, yes?” I said. Aggie nodded once, a jerky motion, full of fear. More gently, I said, “If the thing I’m chasing is a vampire, and if he turned one of you, could he call upon the ancestors, the macheiaellow, to give him strength?”
Aggie whispered, “Perhaps. It depends on what he knows. What magic he has.”
“He’s old,” I said. “Very, very old. Several hundred years, I’d guess. How many generations of ancestors are buried out back?”
Aggie dropped her eyes to her hands; she laced her fingers on the tabletop. “My grandmother, her mother and father, and my great-great-grandmother, who slipped away from the Removal—the Trail of Tears—and settled here.” If I reacted to the mention of the Trail of Tears, Aggie didn’t see it, her eyes downcast. “The bones of my sister, who died when a child. My uncle and his wife, who was a white woman but who joined us when she married. My grandmother’s brother, much older than she. Seven of the blood of The People, and one who joined us.”
“That’s a lot of powerful bones in one place,” I said.
“I’ll let the dogs loose tonight, to guard the yard,” Aggie said.
“Aggie,” I said gently. “It killed two of your dogs already.”
She closed her eyes, as if to block out the truth. But when she opened them again, they burned with fury. Low and fierce, she said, “I’ll kill it.” Her hands clenched on the table, small and dark and fragile, but with a terrible underlying strength of purpose. “If it comes here, I’ll kill it.” She took a breath that seemed to ache as she drew it in. “Do you have a cell phone number?”