Black Moon Sing (The Turquoise Path Book 1) (10 page)

“It’s that path through the turquoise, like a road map to traders’ magic, that has my friends and me so worried. I’m still not entirely convinced that it’s possible for someone else to learn my magic—or William Roanhorse’s magic. But if the killer has figured out how to read what’s imprinted in Roanhorse’s turquoise, then everything we think we know about the Paranormal world is about to change. Dramatically.”

Hosteen let out a long breath. “That’s a place to start, for certain. Thank you for telling me all of this.”

“I’m not sure it’s really any use to you at all.”

Ellery felt queasy, realizing just how much of the Paranormal world she had revealed to this outsider. But Hosteen was patient and gentle, and most of all, he seemed interested in truly learning whatever she could teach him. That mitigated her fears. A little.

Hosteen tilted his head to one side. “I think everything you’ve shared with me is quite useful, actually. If it’s possible that we’re dealing with a… a rogue magic-user, for lack of a better term, then at least we know that we need to be prepared for anything. Magic that doesn’t work quite right; abilities we’ve never seen before from any other magic-user.”

Ellery narrowed her eyes. “Why do I get the feeling that when you say
we
, you really mean
me
?”

“What if your missing friend is tied in some way to this killer?” He leaned toward her with sudden intensity.

“The possibility has crossed my mind,” Ellery admitted.

“It seems like too much of a coincidence to ignore,” Hosteen said. “A Changer—or maybe
not
a Changer—killing two people within days of each other, stealing their tokens. And another Changer missing entirely. I feel like there
has
to be a link here. We just haven’t discovered it yet.”

“There you go, saying ‘we’ again.” Ellery folded her arms stubbornly. “I told you what happened to my sister. I can’t just lurk around the Navajo Nation, Hosteen! Who’s to say I won’t be killed, too, if anybody recognizes me? And if anyone on the Nation finds out I’m a Para, they’ll assume the worst of me.”

Despair gripped her suddenly in a tight, cold fist. She pressed her hands to her eyes, trying to shut out the whole damn world.

“You all right?” Hosteen asked gently.

“No, I’m not all right! I could be killed by Typs just for being misunderstood, and I could be killed by… whatever this
thing
is that’s messing with Changers, that made Vivi disappear and killed William Roanhorse!” A few tears leaked out despite her effort to control her emotions. She sniffled miserably. “I don’t know where to go, Hosteen. I don’t know what to do.”

To Ellery’s surprise, Hosteen left his arm chair and sat close beside her on the couch. She could feel the warmth from his body, and gritted her teeth to keep herself still, to resist the urge to lean her head against his shoulder and allow him to wrap his arms around her. She would have given anything in that moment for a feeling of security, even if it was temporary. But she knew security with a Typical was only an illusion. She couldn’t trust anybody who wasn’t Paranormal. That was the way of the world, and there was nothing Ellery could do to change it.

“You can stay here,” Hosteen said. “If you’re willing to help me, stay here while we investigate and I’ll keep you hidden. I’ll keep you safe.”

Ellery laughed bitterly and pushed herself up from the couch. She tottered a little on trembling, exhausted legs. “You can’t keep me safe! Here, of all places! It’s too damn dangerous for me, Hosteen. There’s too much at stake.”

She headed for the front door. Without her owl eyes, she couldn’t see the ley lines pulsing in the sky, but she could still feel the call tugging at her with an insistence that would have been irresistible if not for Sylvia’s protective spell.

“I’ve got to go,” Ellery said. “Thanks for letting me in. I’m glad I had the chance to talk to you. But I’ve got to go now; I need to figure out what’s going on at—”

Ellery snapped her teeth shut. She had been about to say,
What’s going on at the end of that big, glowing ley line
. But she had no desire to explain even more of her world to Hosteen.

He followed her closely and opened the door for her, then walked with her outside, into the deep shadows of the front yard. The smell of dry desert and cool wind overwhelmed Ellery; she breathed it in, remembering happier days—the times long-gone, when she and Taylor had lived in peace.

More than anything, she wanted to return to that world. But it would never be hers. It really never had been hers in the first place.

“Thank you again,” Hosteen said, sounding more than a little sad.

Ellery turned to look at him, and she saw him flinch at the sight of her eyes—red and luminous beneath the naked starlight. But to his credit, he straightened up again and stood firm, facing Ellery squarely, refusing to look away from her eerie Paranormal gaze.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you,” he added.

“I will,” Ellery said. Then she turned and walked away.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
he moment Ellery reached through her bracelet, stretching her spirit toward Ghost Owl, she knew something was terribly wrong. An eerie thickness seemed to surround her, a stifling force that impeded her magic, slowing her reactions, blunting her senses, making her mind sluggish and dull. She fought her way toward the owl and felt him respond as he had before, straining to reach her. But the same strange block appeared she had felt the night before—the barrier to her shift. Dimly, in a shadowed corner of her awareness, she felt Ghost Owl screech in anger.

The skin on the back of her neck prickled. She turned in a slow circle, staring around the yard and out into the desert beyond, certain that danger was creeping up on her but unable to determine where the threat came from or what had made her sense it.

She drew in a sharp breath—and nearly gagged. Instead of the desert’s clean air, she smelled a strong whiff of a musky, animal odor.

She had only one moment to think,
Cat!

Dusty added her opinion with a yip of fearful surprise that echoed faintly through Ellery’s half-smothered consciousness:
Big cat. Cougar.

Wrenching herself out of the dull trance with every speck of her strength, Ellery gasped and whirled, forcing her legs to move—to run, faster, faster! She sprinted back toward Hosteen’s house with the superhuman speed only Changers could attain. She was at the cop’s side in a flash, and noted the widening of his eyes, the tensing of his body as he registered her distress.

Hosteen moved quickly, stepping between Ellery and the night. He backed her toward the open door, to the relative safety of his home’s interior.

But the inside of a house isn’t safe at all, is it?

Ellery’s thoughts were bitter through the fog that blocked her from the shift. Home had been no protection for William Roanhorse, nor for the man who’d been killed inside his apartment on the outskirts of Flagstaff. She shuddered.

“What is it?” Hosteen asked. His right hand lowered to the waistband of his jeans and groped there for a moment, closing on nothing. Ellery realized he was reaching for a gun that wasn’t there.

“Cougar,” she said.

The muscle in his temple jumped as Hosteen clenched his jaw. Ellery knew she didn’t need to say any more.

As they stared out into the darkness, a pale shadow slunk across the yard. The long, lean, powerful body moved on all fours, but with no gait any true cougar had ever used. Its legs flashed in an uncoordinated stutter-step and its back moved gracelessly, humping up and lengthening again without regard for the rhythm of movement. The beast was large and imposing. It crossed the exact place in the yard where Ellery had stood moments before, and ducked its head as it went, sniffing the ground to capture her scent.

Then it turned and stared at the house, jaws gaping, head swaying slowly from side to side. Hosteen’s shoulders jumped as he struggled to control his shock. Unlike any natural animal that went about in darkness, the cougar’s eyes reflected none of the light that spilled from the house. They were two points of perfect blackness in that huge, snarling skull.

The cougar made a strange sound, a twisted, tortured call that was somewhere between an animal roar and the mirthless laughter of a man. Then it turned and walked on into the darkness. Its gait was grotesque, chilling. It had none of a cougar’s deadly grace. Each leg moved with a jerking hesitation. It seemed to Ellery that whatever was inside that cougar’s body was unused to working with a spirit animal. There was no doubt in her mind that this was the foul creature who had killed her old friend—and who might know where Vivi was now.

And it had come looking for Ellery—had tracked her down, found her in the night like a true predator. Or perhaps it was searching for Hosteen, aware that he was determined to solve the murder.

Either way, the cougar had found its prey.

Through the icy fog of her fear, Ellery felt her coyote spirit hackle. She bared her teeth in an unconscious imitation of Dusty’s snarl. The beast that stalked her, circling in the night, was her enemy—the enemy of Changers everywhere. Ellery would not be intimidated.

She tried again to shift, this time reaching for Dusty’s spirit. But the block remained firmly in place.

The cougar circled the yard again, then returned to the patch of light that spilled from Hosteen’s door. It stared at them both, amused confidence emanating from its posture, from the two black holes of its eyes. Then it opened its mouth in a coughing roar. Starlight glinted on its long, sharp teeth, and the sound that came from its throat sent a shiver of sick dread through Ellery’s stomach. A grating call, unlike any cougar Ellery had ever heard. It was like a human voice mocking of a mountain lion’s roar.

Then, while its eerie cry still hung in the air, the beast sprang forward, bounding toward the house.

Hosteen gave a wordless shout of alarm; he lurched backward, taking Ellery with him as he retreated into the house. With one quick movement he slammed the door and bolted its lock. The door shuddered as the cougar slammed against it barely a heartbeat later. The whole house seemed to reverberate with the impact, a boom like too-close thunder.

“Shit!” Ellery screeched.

Hosteen remained remarkably cool. He took her by the hand, drawing her down the hallway and into his darkened bedroom. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness; she saw him retrieve a hand gun from his night stand and flick off the safety.

Outside, the cougar’s unearthly calls continued. Ellery sank down beside Hosteen’s neatly made bed, kneeling on the floor, unwilling to go near the window where the passing creature might spot her.

Hosteen edged over to the window and stood beside it, his body tense and alert, dark eyes unblinking as he scanned the night. He held his gun at the ready, watching the starlit desert with an expression of perfect calm.

The cougar continued its mocking roar as it circled. Ellery could hear the sound grow fainter as it reached the other end of the house, and her skin prickled when the roar became louder as the beast passed near the bedroom window.

Then, with a sudden thud that nearly made Ellery jump out of her skin, the cougar sprang up onto the roof. She could hear its graceless gait, the rhythmless stumbling of its uncoordinated paws as it paced back and forth overhead. And all the while, it never stopped its terrible noise. That strangled, choking voice went on coughing and shouting into the night.

“What do we do?” Ellery whispered. She cursed the tremble in her voice, trying to will herself again to be brave. She wanted to remain unintimidated by the creature, but was losing that battle with every ragged heartbeat.

“Just stay calm,” Hosteen said, gazing up at the ceiling, turning his face to track the cougar as it paced across the rooftop.

Stay calm. That was easy for Hosteen to say. Ellery still couldn’t shift. Somehow the cougar-thing was blocking her; somehow it was the source of the barrier that kept her from her own magic.

“How do you kill a Changer?” Hosteen asked.

Ellery shrugged, though Hosteen wasn’t looking at her. “Same way as anybody else. A gun will do the trick. There’s no secret formula, nothing special you need. We aren’t like vampires or fae.”

“Anything special I can do to protect against its powers?”

“No. Not that I’m aware of. Just… don’t get eaten.”

But his question did remind Ellery of Sylvia’s protective spell. Maybe her knife—the turquoise bead, with its subtle, witch-woven spell—could be of some use against the cougar.

Ellery grabbed the smooth bone handle of her knife, and the moment she touched it, the cougar loosed a ferocious roar. It was louder and more rage-filled than any sound it had made before. The beast seemed to sense she had gained the upper hand—albeit a very small upper hand. In the terrible fury of that sound, Ellery sensed that the cougar knew she had found the means to fend off its magic.

She glanced over to Hosteen, ready to tell him something had changed, that the knife had somehow altered the magic. But the words froze in her throat. A pale streak fell heavily past the bedroom window—the cougar had jumped down from the roof. The fact that it was so near, that she had seen it at such close range, made Ellery’s skin crawl.

“Look,” Hosteen said, watching it through the glass. “Something’s happening to it.”

Reluctantly, Ellery picked herself up from the floor and crept to Hosteen’s side. She peered past his shoulder, out the window and into the desert.

She could see the cougar clearly in the starlight; she watched, dry-mouthed and wide-eyed, as the beast hobbled and jerked across the yard. It seemed to be frustrated, or perhaps confused and lost, where moments before it had been a confident predator reveling in the thrill of the hunt.

Ellery drew the knife from its sheath, feeling with relief the solid smoothness of the bone handle against her palm. The cougar gave a tormented cry, almost painful to hear. Its form wobbled, passing from cougar to that of a crouched-over human and back again rapidly, with a flicker of the same bright-blue light that Ellery saw when she shifted.

“Did you see that light?” she whispered to Hosteen.

He shook his head. “No, but that thing looks… different somehow. It’s changing, but I can’t say how or why.”

Ellery squeezed the knife tighter in her fist.
Sylvia, you saved my life
. Somehow, the charmed turquoise bead seemed to wither the creature’s magic. That wouldn’t happen to a regular Changer, Ellery felt sure, no matter what kind of spell a witch cast. The cougar-thing’s odd reaction to Sylvia’s protective spell made up Ellery’s mind, erasing any shred of doubt that had lingered before.
This
creature was definitely no Changer.
That explains why it moves so awkwardly inside the body of the cougar
.

A determined calm fell over her, body and mind. “That’s the person who killed Roanhorse,” Ellery said.

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be of anything.”

The cougar turned away, struggling and limping across the yard, fleeing the knife and its magic bead as quickly as its uncoordinated paws would carry it.

“Come on,” Hosteen said.

He ran down the hall toward the front door. Ellery followed close behind. In a distant part of her mind, she knew she was still afraid. But she was certain that Hosteen needed her help—and if they were to keep the cougar at bay, he must have the spell-cast knife close beside him.

Hosteen threw open the door and stepped out boldly into the yard. The cougar was a dim shadow fading rapidly into the darkness, but she could still make out the twisting, morphing shape of its body—and the human that rode inside it—along with the occasional splash of blue light as it lost control of its shift.

A tiny red dot appeared on the cougar’s fleeing haunch—the laser site of Hosteen’s gun.

An instant later the crack of his shot split the night, leaving Ellery’s ears ringing painfully. She clapped her hands over her ears, choking back a cry of shock.

Hosteen ran a few more steps into the yard and fired again. Then he stood still in the starlight, gazing after the cougar, his gun held rigidly at his side.

Ellery shook her head to try to dispel the high-pitched whine in her ears. She slunk closer to Hosteen, terrified that in spite of the knife’s protection, the beast would pounce out of the night behind her and sink its claws into her back.

“I hit it,” Hosteen said. “I’m sure of it. But there’s no way to track it now.”

Ellery swallowed hard. She reached through the coyote-tooth necklace and found the barrier between herself and her animal spirits gone.

“There is a way,” she said. “I may regret this, and it’s dangerous, but… there is a way.”