CHAPTER TWELVE
After we took quick showers to get the mud off us, we sprang into action and started throwing stuff into our bags. At one point my bandage from my hand got caught on the zipper and pulled a bit of it loose.
I decided to check it out and unwrapped it. There were faint pink lines but other than that the cuts were completely healed. I undid the other hand and it was the same deal.
“Huh,” I mumbled. Dex came over to see what was up. I showed him my hands.
“Guess he really is a medicine man,” I said.
“Or was,” he added morbidly. He hunched down and lifted up the bottom of my tank top. I instinctively sucked in my stomach as his warm hands moved to the bandage. He peeled away the corners and peered at it inquisitively.
“Now that’s something,” he said, sounding impressed, and gently pulled the rest of the bandage off. I looked down. It looked like the cuts on my hands. Pink and smooth, like they had been that way for years. That was amazing.
Dex took the bandages from me and threw them in the trash. He wiped his hands and walked back to me.
“Let’s just hope he can heal himself,” he said.
There was a knock at the door. My heart beat loudly. Everything was going to catch me on edge now. Was it Bird? Was it Rudy?
“Who is it?” Dex asked suspiciously.
“Will,” was the reply.
Dex walked over and opened the door. Will looked as pale as a ghost.
“The phone is for you,” he said to Dex. “It’s Maximus.”
Huh. Dex hadn’t even had the chance to phone him yet.
“I better go explain,” he said and left with Will downstairs. I continued to pack, mulling over the speed in which my cuts healed. Rudy truly was a medicine man. It’s not that I really doubted it to begin with but I was obviously a bit skeptical. But he was a man who wanted to heal me, not harm me. If he were a skinwalker, why would he bother? No, that didn’t make sense. I didn’t sense anything but sincerity coming from him, even if he was a bit rough around the edges. As for Bird, I just couldn’t believe it. But then where did they go? If they were skinwalkers, the “logical” explanation would be that they turned into animals and left. If they weren’t skinwalkers, the “logical” explanation was that they had been killed or chased away by the skinwalkers. I hoped they had only been chased away, but either situation was devastating.
I heard the door click and my head snapped up. Sarah was in the room with me, the door closed behind her, a mug of something hot in her hands. She seemed to be staring straight at me behind those glasses. I could feel her unseeing eyes.
“Sarah,” I stammered and nervously crammed my last shirt into my duffel bag.
“I heard the news,” she said. Her voice had a soft, meek tone to it, a surprising change.
“Yeah,” I said and started fiddling absently with the bag.
She walked slowly around the bed but paused at the dresser, resting her mug on it. I studied her shyly, as if she was going to catch me staring. She didn’t look all that good, actually. Ashen and unkempt.
“I’m very worried,” she said wringing her hands. “It’s not like Bird to just disappear like that.”
I stopped packing and faced her. “Is it like Rudy?”
She thought about that for a second before shaking her head. “I don’t know Rudy very well. His business is none of my business. But he is an important man. That would not make much sense.”
I nodded, not feeling any closer to understanding the mystery. Sarah said nothing for a while. Perhaps she was reading my vibes or something. At last she picked up the mug and shuffled over to me.
“I made you this tea,” she said. She held the mug out awkwardly. I eyed it.
“It’s just Earl Grey,” she said quickly, sensing my hesitation. “None of that spiritual stuff.”
“Thank you,” I said slowly, “but I don’t really drink tea.”
I tensed for her reaction. She actually smiled and shrugged a little.
“That’s OK.” She moved forward, trying to put it down on the bedside table and missing. I grabbed it from her before it went all over the place. I sniffed it quickly. It was Earl Grey. It smelled like a London Fog actually. Damn drugs had me paranoid over everything I drank now.
I sat down on the bed and cupped the tea in my hands. Sarah still stood there, her attention now turned to the window.
“I have a feeling he’ll come back,” she said.
“Bird?”
“Mmmhmmm. As birds do.”
There were so many questions that I wanted to ask her. Mainly, why was she such a snickety bitch? And what did she think was going on? What were they going to do?
But I didn’t say anything. Instead I had a sip of my tea and let the silence get awkward.
She sighed and patted her frazzled black bun.
“Do you have a hairbrush I can use?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, putting down the tea and going into the bathroom where my toiletries bag was. My hairbrush was tangled with oodles of my hair which is only gross when you have to give your brush to someone else but I figured she was blind and wouldn’t know.
I came out of the bathroom and stopped behind her.
“Here it is,” I said loudly and reached over and placed it in her hand.
“Oh, thank you.” She carefully made her way over to the bathroom and started undoing her bun. Her hair was mad-ass long. She looked like an old-fashioned wench from the olden days, long dress, long hair that she slowly brushed with a blank yet fragile expression on her face. I watched her for a bit before I started to feel creepy. I turned my attention to my tea.
Eventually she called, “How does it look?”
I turned and saw her standing by the bathroom. Her hair was back in a smooth bun. She was smiling broadly. Was she really proud of herself, or….?
“It looks great,” I said.
“No bumps?” she asked, patting it.
“No bumps.”
Suddenly the door handle jangled. I flinched but Sarah didn’t budge.
“Perry!” Dex called from outside. “Why is the door locked?”
I got up just as Sarah moved in front of the door, still facing me, still smiling.
“She’s in here with me. You can see her in a minute,” she said through pearly whites.
“Sarah? Perry?” He tried the door again.
I inched my way over to her, feeling something in this situation was terribly amiss.
“It’s OK, Dex,” I projected, sounding less confident than I would have liked. I was approaching her like she was some wild animal that I didn’t want to scare.
“I need to talk to my wife,” I heard him say.
Sarah laughed sarcastically.
“She’s not your wife,” she glowered.
I guess there was no point now in pretending anything.
She turned around, unlocked the door and opened it.
Dex was on the other side, looking rattled. Sarah stared up at him, still smiling.
“She’s all yours,” she remarked and shuffled past him into the hall. Dex stepped out of her way.
He jumped in the room and shut the door quickly behind him, making sure to lock it as well. He marched over to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Are you OK? What was she doing?” he asked, sounding panicked.
I shrugged. “Nothing much. She was actually being…nice, or something. At first anyway. She just brought me tea and wanted to talk about Bird.”
His eyes started flying around the room. “What tea?”
I pointed to the mug on the table.
“It was fine, I only had a bit,” I reassured him.
He went over to the tea and sniffed it, frowning.
“What?” I asked nervously.
He slowly shook his head and put it back down. “Nothing. What did she say about Bird?”
“She was worried about him, actually. And thought it was strange. We didn’t really get into it. What did Maximus say?”
Dex flopped backwards on the bed. He rubbed his face vigorously with his hands and sighed.
“He’s in Gallup already. He heard about what happened with the cattle from some people there. Apparently it’s a skinwalker…thing.”
“Oh, fabulous. Well, at least we can film it and it is what it is.”
He shook his head.
“Why not?” I said, coming over and sitting down next to him.
“Will talked to the sheriff afterward. We’ve put the alert out for Bird and Rudy but he says the cattle are gone. The farmer came and hauled their remains off.”
“So, we go to the farmer…”
“Oh, what’s the f*cking point?” he yelled abruptly and covered his face with his arm.
He sounded hopeless. It was unlike him.
“What if,” I tested gently, “we went back to Rudy’s place? We go with Will. And a gun. And the sheriff. And we film it as the aftermath, explaining what happened? If we are lucky, Boy Boy is still there.” >
“If we are lucky?” he mumbled.
“It’s part of the story, Dex. It’s part of our story. This happened to us. Actual people are missing or even worse. Not everything has to be some big dramatic thing. Did you really think we’d capture some actual skinwalker on camera? I mean, come on…”
He groaned as an answer.
“It makes sense,” I continued. “It’s on the way out of town, more or less. We go, now. Then at least we’ve got something. I trust you, I know you can make something really…compelling out of all of this.”
I reached over and poked his stomach. He winced but at least the arm came off of his face. His eyes looked fried, a combination of exhaustion, frustration and fear.
I got up, ready to pull on his legs but the room spun with a swoosh and suddenly I was down, down, down.
On the floor with a thump.
Ow.
Dex leaped up and peered over at me. “What the hell?”
“I’m fine,” I said, slowly easing myself back onto my elbows which hurt against the hard floor. “Guess I’m not entirely better yet.”
He didn’t say anything. I looked up at him. He was eyeing the tea.
“What?” I asked.
“Did she really come here to give you tea?” he questioned.
“I don’t know if that was her plan. But when I said I didn’t want any, she said that was fine.”
“Then why did you have some?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know, actually. My actions acted separate from my mind.
“Felt like something to do while she was brushing her hair.”
“She was brushing her hair?” he repeated slowly.
“Yeah…in there. With my hairbrush…”
“Why would she brush her hair in there?” he asked.
I shrugged again. “The mirror is in there?”
Dex’s eyes widened. He scampered off the bed and went into the bathroom. The mirror…she was blind. What good what that do?
“Where’s the hairbrush?” he yelled.
I sighed and got to my feet. Still a bit unsteady, I moved as quickly as I could over to the bathroom and looked in. The brush wasn’t there.
I rifled through the bag and the cupboards. Nothing.
“Did you see her leave with it?” he asked.
“No,” I said. I tried to think. No, I only saw her smiling. Would I have noticed the brush?
“She could have hidden it in her dress or something,” he said leaning against the sink. “You weren’t watching her the whole time?”
I shook my head feebly. “Why would I? And why would she take my brush?”
He took me by the shoulders and moved me to the bathroom window. Clouds had appeared around the mountains, covering up the sun and casting a dark, grayish gloom over the land. There was just enough light to see by. He tilted my head back and peered into my eyes. The light hurt.
“What?” I asked, worried.
“Your pupils,” he said. “They aren’t retracting.”
“Drugs?” I stammered.
He nodded. “I think so.”
“Why would she drug me? I mean…I was just drugged, I…”
“She didn’t get what she wanted the first time,” he said under his breath. He reached over and shut the bathroom door.
I felt sick to my stomach. Not only was I getting light-headed by the second, similar to what I felt last night, but my head was reeling with what Dex was proposing. It sounded so crazy that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend it.
“What do you mean?” I whimpered.
I felt for my forehead. Dex did too. It was hot.
He closed his eyes as if he were conjuring up inner strength. Or the patience to deal with my questions. He knew I was only going to get stupider with time.
“I think,” he whispered cautiously, “that we’ve been played this whole time. I think Sarah is a skinwalker.”
“She’s a Christian!”
“How do we know? Don’t you think this whole Christian thing is a bit, well, much? I mean, the religion has its fair share of hypocrites but she’s different. You can almost see her fighting herself when it comes to the Navajo way versus Christianity. You can see it when she talks to Shan.”
“Shan…” I said slowly, remembering how I had passed it off earlier as an affair. “The medicine man.”
“Yes. And that could explain a lot of things. Bird and Rudy didn’t jump to that conclusion but look where they are now. We don’t know. Sarah may be an accomplice to Shan, she may be an actual skinwalker herself.”
“But why…why would she do all this…I mean even before we came. She would be sabotaging her own ranch, torturing her own husband.”
“I’ve seen a lot of women do worse,” he said, his eyes growing darker, an edge creeping on his voice.
“But Will…”
“I think Will is the only person here we can trust. But he trusts his wife and that’s going to be a problem.”
“Problem?”
“If we go to Rudy’s with him and the sheriff…it’s going to be really hard to convince them about what we think. We’re just two ignorant white city f*cks hunting for ghosts. They won’t take us seriously.”
“So we pretend we don’t know anything,” I said.
He chewed on his lip for a second before a smile twitched on them. “I picked a hell of a weekend to quit drugs, huh?”
“And I picked a hell of a weekend to try drugs again. Accidently, of course” I added.
He gave me the once over. “How are you feeling now?”
I told him I was still a bit dizzy but I wasn’t anything like I was the night before.
“That’s good,” he said. “Maybe you didn’t have enough of whatever it was.”
“I don’t think so. I only had a few sips.”
I looked outside, at the storm clouds as they swarmed closer. It was ominous and filled my heart with a shadowy, sinking feeling.
“But I think we should probably go now, in case I do get worse.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy…,” he said. “If she’s drugged you, it’s for a purpose. If she has your hair…it’s for a purpose. A sick f*cking purpose.”
I remembered what Rudy had said about hair and body parts (shudder) making skinwalkers more powerful. What was she planning on doing to me? The same thing they tried to do last night? Something worse?
“Do you think that was her last night? Her and Shan?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He carefully brushed my bangs off my forehead. His fingers felt soft, his voice was soft, too. “I’m not sure if skinwalkers can appear to be other people or not. But I’m gonna bet that whether it was her, or just some local trash she had some kind of f*cking spell on, that they had a part of it.”
Maybe it was the drugs slowly working their way through my system, or maybe it was the fear, but an icy numbness made its way from my heart and down to my limbs like a slow-drip IV.
“You OK?” he said, searching my face with his eyes. His fingers paused on my forehead. The physical contact was all too much.
I felt the hot, prickly sensation of tears poking around behind my eyes.
“No,” I said. “I’m not OK. I don’t want to die.”
I looked away, ashamed.
“Hey,” he whispered. He put his arms around me and pulled me into him, embracing me. I didn’t want to cry. And I definitely didn’t want to die. I felt stupid.
He stroked the back of my head with his hand. The comfort was heartbreaking. “You’re not going to die. I will do everything I can to make sure of that.”
He kept his arms around me for a few minutes, pressing me up to him, while I gained my composure. Normally, a little thrill would have gone through me at how close we were, but I felt both like a blubbering fool and also like someone who could be having their last day on earth.
At long last he pulled back and said, “I am not going to let anything happen to you.”
He looked me square in the eye and I knew he meant that. I felt it in the air around us, in the warmth of his touch. I also knew that no matter what happened in the future, whether I truly was in love with him or not, or whether he’d be with Jenn forever, that it didn’t really hold a candle to what was really important: I had someone in my life that had my back. I had never had that before.
I almost got teary all over again.
Thankfully Dex took this opportunity to shake some sense into me.
“Listen, we have one choice,” he said. “We have to leave, out that front door.”
I eyed the window. It didn’t seem that awkward to go out of the room that way. We could throw our bags down, jump onto the low roof below and –
“No,” he said, knowing what I was thinking. “We go out the front door and we act like nothing is wrong. As long as Will is there, Sarah can’t do anything. If you can, don’t act like you’re drugged.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” I said. My body was wobbling as it was. Had Dex not had his hands on both my arms, I probably would have fallen over ten times by now.
“You can do it. If anything, blame it on last night.”
“Then what?” I asked fearfully. The idea of seeing Sarah again, knowing now what she was, made my heart pump loudly in my ears. I wanted to vomit.
“We can get through this,” he said.
“At least you sound confident.”
“I don’t have a choice, Perry.”
I gave him a small smile. If it wasn’t for Dex, I’d hate to think where I’d end up.
“Okay,” I said, mustering a bit more effort into my voice. I made my way to the bed, picked up the duffel bag, and carefully placed it on my shoulder without making myself tip over.
He picked up his stuff and gave me a firm nod. I nodded back.
Go time.
He opened the door and we walked down the hall. It was dark save for the light coming from downstairs. The pictures on the wall were barely visible in the grainy dim. I studied them as I had before. Everything seemed to take on importance now. The mundane details always stood out when you thought they might be the last details you’d ever see. Even someone else’s photographs became something more than wall decorations.
Now, these photos told so much: Sarah’s smiling face back when she wasn’t blind, her sparkling eyes, her relaxed body language as she draped herself over a giddy and less portly young Will. I compared to the later shots, Sarah with her big dark glasses, her stiff posture, Will’s sad, beaten demeanor. It was all too easy to blame the change on what happened to Sarah. She went blind. That’s enough to change anyone’s marriage, their personality even. But from these simple photos, there was an energy radiating off of them, hinting at a story that was yet untold. Something told me we were close to finding out what that was.
We got to the stairs and made our way down. Dex reached for my hand and held it as an act of solidarity. I knew we were done with the charade. This was just us being us.
Down below, Shan and Miguel were sitting on one side of the dining room table, while Sarah and Will were on the other. They were quiet, waiting for us.
We stopped at the bottom and smiled uneasily.
Will stood up.
“I know you two probably wish to be on your way after all this. But I think Fred, our Sheriff, is going to want your cooperation.”
I glanced at Dex. He seemed to be expecting this and was nonplussed.
“We’ll do whatever you need to help out,” he said. “Just figured Perry and I better be all packed and ready to go, just in case.”
“In case of what?” Sarah said. I looked at her, conscious now that I had avoided looking in her direction the entire time. I didn’t want to speak or move further lest I end up saying something that would give my “drugging” away.
Dex knew this. He squeezed my hand and eyed her. “In case we’ve overstayed our welcome.”
He looked back at Will. “I think this is the only way we’ll find Bird and Rudy.”
Will nodded quickly, obviously relieved. It seemed his present company hadn’t felt the same way.
“OK.” He wrung his hands. “Sarah and Miguel will come with me. Dex, you don’t mind if Shan rides with you? There’s not enough room in my truck.”
Dex nodded on autopilot. The room started to spin again. My heart thumped so loudly in my ears that I could have sworn someone was stomping around on the floor above us.
Shan? In our car?
I wanted to scream, run, protest, hide. But I couldn’t do any of those things. The only thing I could do was squeeze Dex’s hand even tighter. It must have turned blue.
I caught a quick glance between Sarah and Shan as everyone started to leave the house. Odd, to see glances from the blind.
Will hung around by the door as Dex and I were the last to step out into the gloomy evening. The air smelled tense, rain-filled, like the sky was ready to let go at any moment. It was much darker than earlier.
We waited on the porch as Will shut the door behind him and looked up at the sky.
“Looks like a storm. We need it,” he said sincerely.
He pulled his collar up against the wind that had suddenly picked up and hurried towards his truck with Sarah and Miguel following. Shan stood in front of us, expressionless and waiting. Even in the dim light, he looked more youthful and vigorous than before. Powerful.
Will called over his shoulder, “You remember how to get there? Do you need to follow me?”
Yes, we need to follow you, don’t you f*ckers let us out of your sight, I thought. But Dex said: “No, we’re good.” >
I wanted to kick him. And judging from the brief wince that passed over his brow, I knew he immediately regretted it. This was not the time to hold onto our pride.
Regardless, Dex smiled at Shan.
“Shall we? My rental chariot awaits.”
I was relieved to see Dex acting as if everything was normal, or at least as normal as it could be. I hoped Shan bought it.
I climbed in shotgun, Shan went in the back right behind me. Dex put the car on the road, but already Will and his truck was quite a way in the distance, a meager blue blot against the hazy dying light.
The tension in the car was unbearable. I didn’t know what to do. I knew Dex wanted me to play it cool but I could not play it cool with a f*cking skinwalker sitting behind me. Every inch of me was on edge, my breath was short and shallow, the hairs on my arms and neck were sticking up, and I knew that Shan knew it. I kept silent, my hands fidgeting.
Dex controlled the conversation. Anyone that didn’t know him that well probably couldn’t tell that he was feeling apprehensive, but I could. I hoped Shan couldn’t tell something was amiss.
“Do you get big storms here this time of year?” Dex asked, eyeing Shan in the rearview mirror. I looked out at the graying road ahead.
“Usually. It’s been pretty quiet so far this year. The rain goes a long way here, providing it isn’t a flash flood.” Shan sounded calm and collected. Not that that was unusual.
I couldn’t stand it. Will’s truck was out of sight now and it was growing darker by the minute. What were we going to do? Did we really expect to make it all the way to Rudy’s place without anything happening?
There was a brief moment where I thought that maybe we were overreacting. Maybe Shan wasn’t a skinwalker after all. I mean, he didn’t give me any drug tea, that was all Sarah. I kept pondering that over and over again like it was a washing machine on spin cycle. It was at least keeping me sane, and kept my fidgeting to a minimum.
Dex continued his small talk with Shan about the weather. The more that Shan replied in a casual manner, the more I started to think that maybe we actually did have it all wrong. Maybe we were paranoid to the max and Shan really was just a loyal rancher.
“So,” Shan said. I could hear him leaning forward in his seat so his breath was right in my ear. “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly was Rudy trying to do with you?”
Dex popped his nicotine gum in his mouth and chewed vigorously before saying, “He had some idea that we should be cleansed with a sweat session.”
“Do you know what that means?”
Dex nodded, keeping his eyes on the road, his hands gripped tightly on the wheel. I didn’t like seeing him nervous. It destroyed what little confidence I had.
“I see,” Shan said thoughtfully. “And I bet Rudy told you it would keep you safe from whatever is going on over here?”
There was an odd tone to his voice. I saw Dex’s eyes move to the mirror and frown. “Yeah. Actually he did.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Of course I did. And I do.”
I could feel Shan’s eyes turn to me. They burned like lasers into the back of my skull. I was unable to contain a shiver that ran through me. It was like he was sucking the thoughts out of my head. I had read that they could do that.
“Did you believe him, Perry?”
I wanted to look at Dex, I wanted to see what he thought but I couldn’t do that. I needed every shred of control and fearlessness I had left. I turned my head to the window and stared at the dark clouds above the barren, bone landscape.
“I wanted to,” I said, trying to keep my voice level and my words clear.
I heard Shan sit back in his seat. I closed my eyes and breathed out.
“That’s interesting,” he commented.
“How so?” asked Dex.
“Rudy’s not a stupid man. To trust that a bunch of white kids would have any faith in what he was doing…that was quite the risk.”
Dex and I didn’t say anything. There was a moment of heavy, ominous silence before Shan spoke again.
“Do you feel your lack of faith is what killed him?”
Shan’s words cut through my very core. Killed him?
Dex gripped the steering wheel even tighter and nervously eyed our surroundings. There was nothing but dry pastureland for miles. The lights of the city were coming closer but not close enough.
“Did I say something wrong?” Shan asked. “That is what happened to him. Is it not?”
I couldn’t breathe. What was Shan saying? That Rudy was dead? How did he know Rudy was dead? I wanted to ask but I was afraid of what would happen to us if we did ask. I wanted to play it cool, I really did but the wooziness of the drugs just made my heart pump harder. I wanted out of the car right there and then.
And then, it was like my wish came true. Before either of us could say anything to Shan, the car started to slow.
I looked at the road. It was a straight shot with nothing in front of us.
“What are you doing?” I asked Dex, slurring the last word a bit. I hoped Shan hadn’t noticed.
He shook his head, staring at the dashboard in confusion. “Nothing, I’m doing nothing.”
The Jeep came to a crawl and all the lights on the panel died along with the engine. The car just died. We were engulfed in darkness. It reminded me of scenes from alien abduction movies and that did not help my courage at all.
“How old is the battery?” Shan asked.
Dex shrugged, flustered, and hit the steering wheel. “I don’t know. It’s a rental car, it shouldn’t be more than a few years old!”
“You never know,” Shan said and opened his door. “I’ll go take a look. Can you pop the trunk?”
Dex quickly reached under the wheel and the hood unlatched with a clang. Shan stepped out and walked around to the front and lifted the hood. Once he was obscured by it, I turned to Dex.
“What the f*ck?” I whispered, panicking.
His brown eyes were as wide as saucers as he watched Shan work. His chewing slowed down.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said trying to keep his voice hushed.
I leaned further into him. “He said Rudy was dead! How would he know that? Even we don’t know that!”
He nodded quickly. “I don’t f*cking know.”
I didn’t know if he got the urgency. I reached over and grabbed his arm, hard. He looked at me, fear brimming on all his features.
“He’s going to kill us,” I hissed.
“You don’t know that,” he mustered.
“We have to do something!”
“What can we do? Our car is dead.”
“Yeah. Coincidentally it died at the right time.”
I looked at the hood and could see Shan’s faint figure in the crack between it and the rest of the car. It was almost nighttime, the sun had set somewhere behind the black pillows in the sky. The wind was out and rocking the car gently. It was cold. We had nowhere to go. We were stuck in the desert with a supernatural being that wanted us to go the same way that Rudy did.
“I think I’m going to puke,” I whispered. I put my hand to my mouth. I wasn’t lying. It was too much.
Dex put his hand on my head and held it there.
“Stay with me,” he said determinedly.
He opened the car door. I grabbed for him but he pushed away my hands and shut the door. I wanted to scream but I didn’t dare. I watched him walk around to the hood and say something to Shan. Then he nodded and went around to the trunk. He opened it and started rummaging through stuff. I turned and watched him. I didn’t want to say anything but his eyes met mine. I wished I could have read them in the darkness. I had no idea what Dex had planned.
He took a small bag out of the back, shut the trunk, and walked around to Shan. Through the crack of the hood I saw Dex hand him a flashlight from a black bag that he put on the ground.
Then I saw Dex grab a wrench out of the bag. He held it in the air, and before I knew what was going on, he brought it down behind the hood. I saw the light from the flashlight scatter and felt something hit the car with a THUNK.
I gasped, unbuckled my seatbelt, and jumped out of the car without thinking. I ran to the front, the wind whipping my hair back, and saw Shan lying on the ground in front of the open hood. Dex stood above him with the wrench in hand, breathing heavily.
OK. I didn’t see this one coming. My first thought was that if Shan wasn’t a skinwalker, we were going to be in some deep shit. My second thought was that Dex certainly had some sort of crazy fighter (or clubber) instinct in him. My third thought was a guilty sort of relief.
“Dex,” I squeaked out, glancing between the lifeless Shan and him. “Is he dead?”
Dex shook his head, staring at the body curiously. “No, I don’t think so.”
No, I don’t think so? The way he said it so casually rattled me. He might have killed a person. Or he might have saved our lives.
He dropped the wrench on the ground beside him. It clanked loudly causing Shan to stir slightly. Now that we knew he was alive, I was suddenly very afraid.
He looked up at me, biting his lower lip hard. He looked worried, sad, frightened and lost, all in one. I suppose I looked the same.
“What now?” I asked, my voice straining to be heard in the coming wind. I put one hand against the car for balance.
He looked around him, thinking. The approaching darkness made it hard to see. What could we do? The car didn’t work. We were far from town, from anything. And Shan was unconscious in front of us.
I did have my phone though. I reached for it and held it up so Dex could see.
“We can’t tell Will with Sarah there,” he cautioned.
“We’ll make something up. We have car troubles. That’s not a lie.”
“Why is Shan unconscious then?” he said. “We need another car.”
I almost laughed. “From where? A storm is coming and we are in the middle of the f*cking desert.”
“We were only driving for five minutes. Look, you can see the lights from the ranch.”
He pointed behind us. There were flickering lights in the distance but I couldn’t be sure who they belonged to.
I looked at Shan, who still looked eerily dangerous and powerful, even when he was in an unconscious heap. “We can’t leave him here like this. And we can’t leave our stuff in the car.”
“I’ll lock the doors.”
I threw my hands up and almost fell over. “Oh come on.”
“We’ll take the most expensive equipment with us. We go back to the ranch. We get Miguel’s car. We drive to town, where there are people and we get a hold of the sheriff from there.”
“It’s still going to be the same problem,” I said.
“But we won’t be here, alone.”
He had a point. I sighed and tried to steady my heart and my body.
Dex leaned over and picked up Shan underneath the shoulders and looked up at me. “Get the door.”
I walked over to his side and opened the back door. We put Shan in the backseat lying down. I felt immensely dirty, like I was hiding a dead body. It was almost the same.
I quickly grabbed my purse from the front while Dex brought one camera and his laptop out of the trunk.
He aimed the key at the car but I put my hand on his and lowered it.
“You can’t lock someone in a car.”
We looked down the road towards the house. He was right. We had only been traveling for five minutes or so. We were much closer to the Lancaster’s than to any other property around here.
“Do we take the road?” I asked.
“I don’t think we should. That would be too easy.”
“Of course,” I nodded. It figured he would chose to slog through the rocks and cacti while I wasn’t exactly in the most agile state.
He handed me the flashlight and hoisted the camera on his shoulder and turned on the camera’s light so we had extra illumination. Then he grabbed my hand and led me off the road and onto the rocky desert floor. I wished all this hand-holding could have happened in happier times.
“I think we should hurry,” he added. “If he wakes up anytime soon…”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. We both picked up a trot simultaneously and headed across the dusty grounds in the direction of the Lancaster’s lights.