I heard a sound then and stopped walking. There was something out there. I turned slowly, peering into the dim glow offered by the moon and the handful of oil lamps that hung from the camels we’d been able to take with us, casting them in small pools of light.
I saw it a second before it sprang. The ghoul unfurled from a viscous leathery ball into spindly limbs and filmy black wings, its huge gaping mouth opened in a screech as it leapt.
I fired. A few of the caravan folks cried out and ducked instinctively at the noise.
My bullet caught it square in the chest. Black guts scattered across the sand. The thing screeched again. And this time, from the deep of the night, a hundred identical voices screeched back.
Yasmin turned the body over with her toe as the caravan silently stared. Frozen in shock.
“A Nightmare,” Yasmin confirmed.
I hadn’t seen a Nightmare since I was a kid. One had crawled into the house I grew up in while we slept. My mother had put a kitchen knife through it before it got to anyone. It’d barely put up a fight. But that one was alone and injured and desperate. This one was in its own territory, where they traveled in packs.
I could see them now as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Scuttling through the sand, their sinewy wings rippling through the blackness. They fed on fear instead of flesh and blood. One venomous bite sent victims into an uneasy sleep, and a second drew out the fear that bled from the first bite. Some said they drained the soul itself. Most folks didn’t wake up from a Nightmare bite.
I checked the handful of bullets in my pocket.
“Everybody stay close to the light,” I called down the caravan. Ghouls couldn’t hunt in the day. Firelight wasn’t exactly the same, but it was the closest we had. “This doesn’t change anything. We keep walking, and—”
“Skinwalker!” The voice belonged to Tall Oman. My gun swung up, ready to face the new monster, tracking Tall Oman’s pointed finger.
Only it was me he was pointing at.
My sheema, badly tied after the escape from Fahali, had fallen away when I shot, and now my hair was tumbling down to my shoulders, my face on show.
Tall Oman came at me in long, angry strides. Jin was in front of me in a blink. His hand caught Tall Oman in the chest three steps before he reached me, a warning gesture that he could easily turn more painful if he wanted. “Rethink your next move, my friend.”
“He’s a Skinwalker,” Tall Oman spat, though he had the sense not to strain any farther against Jin’s grip. “He changed his shape.”
“No.” Parviz held up a lamp so he could see me clearer. “She’s a liar.”
“Well, I didn’t so much lie as trick you.” It was a relief to speak in my own voice, even if it was strained by false lightness. “The difference being you can blame yourselves as well as me.” I wasn’t shaking anymore. I refused to shake, no matter that the whole caravan was looking at me like I was some abomination.
It was Isra who whispered too loudly to Jin, “So I guess she’s not your brother, then?” She treated me to a once-over. “And here I was thinking you might be worth marrying to young Yasmin. Should’ve been suspicious when you listened to her so close. No man does that.”
Parviz sized me up the same way he had back in Massil. I didn’t know what he saw. The same kid with the gun, maybe, except with a chest and some hips, and not so much a kid. “And I’m supposed to trust a girl to keep us alive?”
“Father, she saved us from the gallows in Fahali,” Yasmin snorted, but she was silenced with one raised hand.
“Saved us to drag us out into the desert at night.” Parviz waved at the Nightmares stalking us in the dark. “And look where we are now. We would be safe in the daylight if it weren’t for you.” That one stung. After almost two months of being trusted, this was all it took.
“No, you’re here because you decided you valued money over your own lives,” Jin interrupted. “And now Amani is your best chance at staying alive. So I’d listen to the girl with the gun if I were you.”
“I’m planning on surviving the night.” I slammed the chamber of the gun shut. In this desert I could never seem to escape being seen as powerless, so long as I wasn’t a man. “Everybody stay in the light and grab hold of any iron you’ve got. If something moves, we’ll shoot it.” But I’d lost any authority with my gender.
The caravan looked to Parviz, whose eyes traveled between me and Jin. “Do as she says,” he ordered finally, spurring the caravan into movement. And then, turning back to me, he added, “Get us to dawn alive and I won’t cut your pay.”
The Nightmares were wary but hungry. They kept out of the circle of the light, but every time they spotted a shadow they leapt into the air in a spread of wings that blotted out the stars. A gunshot would go off and they would fall thrashing into the sand.
I was mostly shooting blind. Nightmares were as black as the night around us. They looked like part of the sand until they launched themselves, the torchlight catching them a second before it was too late.
But I was never too late. And I didn’t miss.
I fired one shot after another, falling into a hypnotic daze as my mind surrendered to my hands and the trigger. The night was screams, and the smell of gunpowder, and my gun snapping shut with a fresh round in the chamber.
I fired again, two shots in a row. A pair of Nightmares went down and my gun clicked empty. I was reaching for fresh bullets before the last one was done twitching. My fingers scraped over three bullets. Only three.
I came back to myself all at once.
My hands shook a little as I loaded them into the gun. The sky was the color of a healing wound. Somewhere across the horizon, the sun was taking its sweet time. I didn’t know if I could make three bullets last.
A Nightmare unstitched itself from the shadows two feet away, and I fired before my eyes could focus.
Two bullets now. One more dead Nightmare. Dozens more crawling in the sand. I knuckled my eyes tiredly.
“You all right?” Jin’s hand was on my shoulder, but his eyes were still on the desert. The faint glow on the horizon sent light and shadow playing across his jaw.
“I’m alive,” I said. “You seem to be, too.”
“You know, there’s a saying at sea: Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”
I glanced at the horizon. “Yeah, well, it’s a little late for a warning. We could’ve used that yesterday.” I cracked my fingers; my hands were sore from clenching the gun so tight. “How many bullets do you have left?”
Jin just shook his head, spreading empty hands wide. I opened the chamber of my gun. My tired fingers fumbled for the bullet.
“No.” Jin shook his head. “You’re the better shot.”
“One bullet each. It’s only fair. You cover the back, I’ll take the front.” Jin hesitated only a second. Then he took it and flicked open the chamber of his gun as I trained my own pistol on the desert, covering long enough for him to reload and drop back. The sun was almost up now.
Two of them leapt at once. I aimed for the second. And hesitated. The first was racing across the sand, straight for Yasmin. She yelped. Jin shoved her out of the way, firing before I could take aim. And he missed.