Blood Oath, Blood River (The Downwinders Book 1) Read online

  “We’re going back in, with them,” Winn said.

  “Why?” Deem asked.

  “They need our help,” Winn answered. “Strength in numbers, that kind of thing.”

  Deem was skeptical. “What did he tell you?”

  “He? Oh, Sani? He just told me the game plan. We lead them until we reach the spot, then they take over.”

  “Why couldn’t he tell me that?” Deem asked. “Particularly since I’m the one who knows where it is. You couldn’t even see it.”

  Winn could see she was a little peeved; she’d been sitting in the car the whole time he was talking with Sani, stewing that she wasn’t part of the conversation.

  “I think she…he thought I was in charge,” Winn said. “Probably a native protocol thing. Don’t be pissed, Deem. We need you along. You are the one who knows where it’s at.”

  “Goddamn it, Winn, I don’t like being left in the dark,” she whispered to him.

  “I know!” he whispered back.

  Deem hopped out of the car and walked around to the other side, where the others all stood. “Fine,” she said.

  Sani walked up to Deem and put his hand on her arm.

  “Help us, child,” Sani said, “and we will remove this curse from you. Show us.”

  Deem felt a good amount of her irritation melt away at Sani’s words. “Alright,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Deem led the group back through the chain link fence, around the corner building, and back to the central area.

  “It’s that one, there,” Deem said, pointing to the Administration building.

  “Show us,” Sani said, following Deem by holding the arm of one of the Navajo men.

  Winn boosted Deem into the broken window of the building, and then followed her. Deem wondered if Sani would have trouble getting through, but one of the Navajo men jumped into the window and between the two of them, lifted Sani inside.

  Once inside, Sani began chanting. Deem stopped to watch him. He seemed to shuffle as he chanted, stepping lightly to his side and back again. Deem found the sounds he was making to be soothing.

  “Lead,” one of the Navajo men said. “We will follow.”

  Deem and Winn walked back through the building, taking a right turn at the reception area to avoid crossing through the auditorium. They led them down the stairwell and into the area where the tunnels connected. Sani’s chanting continued the entire way, and as they approached the tunnels, it became louder.

  “There was something that shifted when we were here, earlier,” Deem said. “I could see an opening in the floor down this tunnel. There was a blue light coming from it. I assumed that was it.” She pointed down the dark tunnel, a little embarrassed that the light and the hole couldn’t be seen.

  Sani’s chanting grew in volume until Deem began to feel pressure building, the same pressure she’d felt when they were there earlier. It quickly rose in intensity, much faster than before.

  She felt something rip all around her, and blue light washed into the room from the tunnel. Sani stopped chanting.

  The two Navajo men began walking down the tunnel, toward the hole. Sani continued to hold the arm of one of the men, keeping himself steady. Winn walked with them.

  “Winn?” Deem said. “Winn? What are you doing?”

  “I’m going with them,” Winn said. “I have to.”

  “You don’t have to,” Deem said. “You can’t even see it.”

  “I’m following Sani,” Winn said. “She told me to follow her, until it was over. I agreed to do it.”

  “Why?” Deem asked, confused. She didn’t like being out of the loop, especially on something this important.

  “You don’t have to come, Deem,” Winn said as Sani began to descend into the hole. “You can stay out here if you want.”

  Winn followed Sani down the hole, then the other Navajo man followed Winn. She watched as they walked out of her sight.

  Stay up here? Deem thought. Fuck that.

  She walked down into the hole, quickly catching up with the group.

  The light was much stronger here, emanating from a large blue star on one of the walls. Deem saw Kachina figures drawn everywhere. The room was large, about forty feet square. She looked for other exits, but couldn’t see any.

  Sani’s chanting resumed, once again growing in intensity. Deem sensed movement, and she looked up – the ceiling was moving, covered with something. She couldn’t see with what, but she could sense it. The group continued to walk forward, reaching the middle of the room. Deem could tell that Sani was in the River, so she concluded that it would be safe for her to drop as well.

  She jumped into the flow. The ceiling was covered with large bats, all moving, crawling over themselves. She looked up and saw them, five feet overhead. They were large, much larger than normal bats in the area. She saw them looking down at her, snapping their mouths open and closed the same way she’d seen the bat her father had killed with the bible, trapped under the door. She wanted to lie flat on the ground and slowly crawl back out of the room.

  Sani’s chanting grew loud. This chant was different – it was punctuated with an occasional grunt that seemed to come from Sani’s depths. He was shuffling from foot to foot, increasing the volume of his chant. He suddenly stopped and gave a final grunt.

  Two large bears appeared in front of them. Deem recognized the bears as the ones she’d seen in the hallway upstairs. They were huge, their shoulders standing ten feet high.

  Between them stood a man, wearing a Hopi mask and headdress. Colorful spikes emerged from the headdress, each ending in a sharp tip. The mask was white, with red lines running through it.

  One of the bears tried to rise up, but was stopped by the ceiling. It lowered and opened its mouth, letting out a large and loud growl.

  “Shilah,” Sani called. “It is over.”

  “Far from over, Shilah,” the man in the mask called back. “It’s just beginning.”

  They both have the same name? Deem wondered, watching their exchange closely.

  “No,” Sani said. “You still hurt the tribe.”

  “The tribe hurt me!” the man called back.

  “You are perverted, Shilah,” Sani called. “Your medicine is rotten belly, and your twisted naagloshii are killing innocent people, innocent children desecrated for their corpse powder.”

  “You kicked me out, and I left,” the man in the mask said, removing the headdress and mask from his head. He was dark skinned, and old. He smiled as he talked, confident Sani’s visit would come to naught. “I’m off tribal lands. Go back home and run your kingdom. Out here I play by white man rules.”

  “The white man doesn’t know how to deal with you,” Sani said, “but we do.”

  “You can’t do anything to me, Shilah,” he said. “We both know that. I’m too powerful for any of you. I’m old, but I still have the ancient knowledge. And I bring the Ninth Sign.”

  “Shilah,” Sani said, laughing. “You’re not even Hopi! You think you can make a blue star here in this place of horror, and bring about the end of the world? You are deluded.”

  “When I have the right skinwalkers,” the man said, advancing toward Sani, “they will stop your ceremonies, and the prophecy will be fulfilled.”

  “Is that why you’re making so many?” Sani asked. “Looking for an army? We will never stop our ceremonies. If the Hopi legend is to come true, it will not be by you, Shilah.”

  “My name is Ninth Sign!” the man yelled at Sani.

  “Your name is Shilah,” Sani said. He started chanting again, and shuffling. Deem watched as he moved his hands in the air, up and down, as he shuffled. The air around him seemed to tighten somehow, as though it was condensing.

  “You old fool,” Ninth Sign said, walking closer to him, examining Sani’s motions. “That won’t work.”

  Sani didn’t stop. He kept chanting, shuffling, and moving his arms. The air developed a thickness that radiated out from Sani. Then it began to move, slowly, t
oward him, as though it was being folded up. Deem felt her lungs drawn in his direction, but she held her spot. She took slow, deep breaths.

  “I would know if you had the compass, old man,” Ninth Sign said. “You can’t divide the elements on your own. You’ll die trying.”

  Deem heard a sound overhead and felt wind as a bat descended from the ceiling and flew past her. She ducked. Then she felt the wind from them all descending, leaving their perches overhead. Deem threw herself on the ground, and looked up at the others. They were all still standing, even as the bats flew around them, creating an incredible wind. Sani continued to chant. Winn was on the ground, lying on his back. The Navajo men stood at Sani’s side, ready to hold him if necessary.

  Eventually the bats thinned out – Deem realized they were leaving the room, going up through the hole. But the wind didn’t stop – in fact, it was increasing. She raised back up on her knees and felt the wind pushing her toward the left wall of the room. It was so strong that she decided to lie back down on the ground, raising her head to see what was going on, but not able to keep her eyes open for very long before the wind blew dirt and dust into them. She raised a hand in front of her face to shield it from the wind, but it didn’t help much.

  She heard a rushing sound from behind her, and turned. It looked like water, pouring in from the floor above, falling down through the hole and into the room. There were thousands of gallons coming down – Deem braced herself for the feeling of cold water to hit her any second.

  He’s summoning the elements, Deem thought. She looked at Ninth Sign – the smug look that had been on his face when he removed his mask was now gone, replaced by concern. He was tracing the path of the oncoming water. He knew exactly what Sani was doing, but he didn’t seem to believe that it was happening.

  A flash of light accompanied by a crack of thunder caused her to turn back and look behind the bears. A fire had broken out, and within seconds it was raging along the north wall as if the entire are had been doused with gasoline. The flames lit the room in a pattern of dancing yellow and orange. The bears were caught in the fire, unable to escape it. Deem watched as Ninth Sign turned to see the fire, and his bears burning within it. When he turned back, he was panicked. Deem could feel the heat from the fire and knew it had to feel more intense where Ninth Sign was standing.

  She wasn’t sure it was the Navajo men or Ninth Sign first, but suddenly there was movement between the two. The Navajo men moved in front of Sani, physically blocking him just as Ninth Sign appeared to bend over and pick up something from the floor. Deem saw it was a spear, with two feathers attached near the tip. Ninth Sign blew on the feathers, and they began to glow a bright blue. He reared back, and threw the spear at Sani and the Navajos with all of his might.

  One of the Navajo men reached forward as the spear approached, and grabbed it by the shaft mid-air, just inches below the sharp tip and feathers. Deem watched as the spear dissolved into a large snake, rapidly wrapping its body around the man’s right arm. It opened its mouth wide, exposing two large fangs, and sank them into the flesh of the man’s hand between the thumb and the index finger.

  The other Navajo man reached over to the snake. It was a quick move, so fast that Deem wasn’t sure she’d seen it. The coils of the snake instantly loosened from the man’s hand and slipped to the ground. The head remained buried in the soft part of his hand.

  Just as quickly, the second Navajo man returned his focus to Ninth Sign, while the first man reached over with his left and removed the snake head from his right. He cast the snake head aside. Deem saw it hit the floor and roll.

  Behind the two men, Sani’s chanting had increased to a frantic pace, and Deem felt as though everything was coming apart. The wind continued to blow against her, she heard the rushing of the water to her right, and the fire was consuming the walls ahead of her, subsuming the blue star and causing the paint of the Kachina figures on the walls to melt and run. The whole thing seemed surreal and hallucinogenic.

  Once again she felt the air around her condensing, folding in toward Sani.

  The water, wind, and fire raged around her, slowly approaching, slowly trapping her and the others. Deem hugged the earth, watching as Ninth Sign stood before Sani. He seemed most affected by the change in the air, his body arching slightly toward Sani, as though he was being pulled from the inside.

  The ground began to shake, and Deem instinctually spread her fingers, trying to grab something to hold. Between Sani and Ninth Sign the ground began to split open. The look on Ninth Sign’s face changed from panic to horror. “You don’t have it!” he yelled above the roar of the element. “You don’t have it!”

  Deem saw Sani stop his shuffling in front of her, and raise his right hand. He was holding something, but it was turned away from Deem. Whatever it was, Ninth Sign saw it, and reacted. His face turned angry.

  Long arms of the fire flashed out toward them and through Ninth Sign. Deem could see black marks across his body where the fire had struck him. The attack caused him to fall to his knees, but even before they reached the ground, Deem could see that he was collapsing upon himself, becoming wrinkled and shriveled, as though all of the moisture in his body had been sucked out. Within a moment, the life in his eyes had left, replaced briefly by a dead stare before his eyes collapsed inside his skull. Fire struck out again, and what was left of Ninth Sign turned to ash. Deem watched as the wind blew his ashes into the open hole in the ground in front of them. Slowly Ninth Sign’s body was dissolved. As the last of the ashes were lifted by the wind, the fire extinguished. Deem realized she’d never been hit by water; it had all stayed to her right, waiting to receive that part of Ninth Sign that it had been called to receive. The ground rumbled beneath them all once again, the hole slowly closing, sealing up what was left of Ninth Sign. Once it closed the wind began to die down until you could no longer feel it against the skin.

  Then, silence.

  Sani collapsed, and one of the Navajo men grabbed him, scooping him up in his arms. They walked back toward Deem, who was still lying on the ground. Winn walked over to her to help her up.

  “Now we leave,” one of the Navajo men said as they passed her. “Come.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Winn said, grabbing her arm. “I’ll tell you everything.”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  At the car, Deem watched as the two Navajo men placed Sani in the back seat, lying down.

  “Will he be OK?” Winn asked one of them.

  “He’s breathing, so I think so,” the man replied. “We’re done here. Thank you.” He extended his hand to Winn, and he shook it. Then he got in the Impala and they drove off.

  “Goodbye to you, too,” Deem said as their car disappeared in the distance. She grabbed her Big Gulp and took a sip. “Ugh. Warm.”

  “Let’s get a cold one,” Winn said, starting up the Jeep and driving them back into Kanab. “No 7-11 here, how about Walker’s?”

  “I’ll take it,” Deem said, waiting for him to park in front of the store. She jumped out of the Jeep and ran inside. Winn followed. They both bought drinks and snacks.

  Winn began the drive back to Leeds. “You want to call Carma, let her know our ETA?”

  “Sure,” Deem said. She pulled out her phone and gave Carma a call. She told her they’d be about an hour.

  “Wow, it’s later than I thought,” Deem said, checking her watch. “How long were we in there?”

  “Longer than it seemed,” Winn said. “Couple of hours.”

  “I think I’ve been pretty patient,” Deem said. “Let you take me to the store, get me all caffeinated up, get something to munch on for the ride back. My sugar’s all balanced now. Are you gonna tell me what the hell happened in there?”

  Winn smiled. “I’m a blank,” he said, looking at her.

  “A what?”

  “A blank,” Winn said. “That’s what Sani called it.”

  “What’s a blank?”

  “I thought it was odd that you, your m
other, and your aunt all were targeted by the skinrunner, but not me.”

  “True.”

  “And then, once we were inside the school, I couldn’t see any of the things you saw.”

  “You saw the ghosts in the auditorium.”

  “Those were just normal, downwind ghosts, naturally there,” Winn said. “Not put there by Ninth Sign, like the bear. When it came to him, things that used his power, I was a blank. Like the sounds you heard, the animal in the hall, the blue light, all of that.”

  “Did you see him? Ninth Sign? When Sani confronted him?”

  “I saw a man. They talked back and forth.”

  “You didn’t see the bears? The fucking bats?”

  “No, none of that. Just a man, standing there talking to Sani.”

  “Is that what Sani was talking to you about, by the car, before we went in?”

  “He had me swallow something,” Winn said. “A small, round, flat rock. It was hard to get down. He called it a compass.”

  “Ninth Sign said something about a compass,” Deem said. “He told Sani what he was doing was a waste of time, because he didn’t have a compass.”

  “Sani hid the compass in me,” Winn said. “All those green barriers, all over the complex? They were to alert Ninth Sign if a compass came through. He knew it was the only thing powerful enough to threaten him. Hiding it in me was Sani’s way of keeping it hidden from Ninth Sign long enough to get close to him, so he could disperse him.”

  “Is that what he did? Disperse him?”

  “Sani told me Ninth Sign was too powerful to simply kill. He had to split him into the four elements, to weaken him. He needed the compass to be able to do that. Then he scattered what was left, underground.”

  “Why not tell me?” Deem asked. “Why keep me in the dark while it was going on?”

  “Sani said you’d already been tagged by Ninth Sign from when we went in earlier. If you had known about the compass, Ninth Sign would have picked it up in your thoughts and tried to take it out of me. Sani needed the element of surprise.”

  “I saw you duck when the bats flew,” Deem said. “But you couldn’t see the bats, could you?”