Tribal Ways (19 page)

“Back off!” the man with the knife screamed. “We’ll kill the little girl.”

Annja cut her eyes to Snake. The other woman caught her look. She nodded once, barely perceptibly.

The two warrior women fired as one.

Both Dog Soldiers fell as one. Each sported a hole dead between staring empty eyes.

Sallie flung herself forward, sobbing, and caught Annja in a ferocious embrace. Annja hugged her briefly, keeping her pistol tipped toward the ceiling so as not to endanger any of her friends.

“Your mom is fine,” she said, in response to what she thought were the questions the shaking girl was sobbing into her sternum. “Your dad and brother are outside. We need to get you out of here. Let’s go out the back door.”

“No!” Sallie ripped herself free. Her face was suffused with blood and twisted in panic. “We can’t!”

“Why not?” Snake asked, hunkering down so as not to loom above the terrified child. She kept switching her eyes from rear window to hallway door, taking nothing for granted.

“There’s something out there,” the girl gasped. Fear seemed to constrict her like a giant python. “A
monster.
Even the bad guys are scared of it. They told me it would rip me apart if I ran away. They—they showed me pictures of all these torn-up dead people!”

“The skinwalker,” Billy said. He stood in the hallway behind the women. He had sheathed his hatchet at his belt and picked up his gun.

Annja drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “She’s probably safest staying put, then. Sallie, go in the bathroom. Will you do that for me, honey, please? Lie down in the bathtub. That’ll keep you safe from bullets.”

Unless the FBI sprays the house with bullets from a helicopter overhead, she thought. The clock was running out. Outside, the firefight had resumed. And on top of everything else the Navajo wolf was apparently somewhere on the scene.

“But I want to watch!” Sallie said.

“Please,” Annja said. “Do it for your mom and dad and Johnny. If you get hurt they’ll never forgive themselves, ever. Understand?”

For a moment the girl looked mulish. The stubborn family temperament bred true, it seemed. Then she nodded. “All right.”

She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Through what little was left of it Annja saw her climb into the bathtub, cross her arms and pout.

“Good enough,” she said.

Having seen something curious when she checked the bedroom across the hall, Annja ducked down below window level and went inside. Sure enough, computers and flat-screen monitors were set on a wooden desk and a card table.

“Damn,” Snake said, running eyes over the displays. “They really did watch us the whole time.”

“Wouldn’t they have to task a satellite especially for it?” Annja asked.

“There’s way more surveillance-capable satellites over our heads than most people realize.” Snake gestured. “This might not even be from an American bird. It could be a real-time feed purchased from anybody. Even Russians or Chinese. Your tax dollars at work.”

Staying low, they moved to the window and peered out.

“Oh, no,” Annja said.

“What’s the matter?” Billy asked, hunkering down behind them.

The shooting was picking up outside. “The Dogs have come out from under cover,” she said.

“Signifying what?” Snake asked.

Annja gave her a worried look. “Maybe some of our snipers have been taken out by the skinwalker.”

“Damn,” Snake said. “And no way to warn the others.”

Billy laid two fingers on Annja’s shoulder and pointed. “Look!”

Johnny Ten Bears emerged from the tall grass on the north side of the road that led to the derelict Otero house. He was walking bent over and holding his Glock ready in his hand.

From beyond the garage George Abell suddenly rushed him. The Crazy Dog wore fringed buckskin pants. His broad flabby torso was bare from the waist up. In classic Comanche fashion his hair was divided in two large braids. A narrow scalplock streamed behind him like a cavalry pennon. He caught the unsuspecting Johnny from behind and slammed him to the ground.

As if the participants were stopping to spectate, the gunfire slackened. Annja could plainly hear Abell bellow, “I got you now, punk! You never could beat me. And you never will!”

Straddling Johnny’s back he grabbed handfuls of his long black hair and started pounding his face into the hard-packed ground.

Annja raised her carbine and lined the front sight post on Abell’s head.

“No,” Billy said. The weapon was gently pushed off-line.

“You don’t know Johnny the way we do,” Snake said. “He needs this. Live or die.”

“So what if he does die?” Annja asked, alarmed.

Snake shrugged. “If Georgie wins, then we kill him.”

“Deal.”

Johnny Ten Bears got an arm under himself and pushed upward. So focused was his opponent on hammering the ground with Johnny’s face, he’d risen up on his legs for better leverage. Johnny’s hips were no longer pinned by Abell’s great weight. The Iron Horse war chief half rolled onto his left side and scissored his right thigh up into Abell’s crotch.

From sixty yards away Annja saw the strike lift the bigger man. His grip loosened on Johnny’s long black hair. Johnny threw him off and came up to one knee with a fist on the ground.

“Didn’t think that crotch shot’d do much to Georgie,” Billy remarked. “Not much by way of a target.”

Abell recovered quickly. He was up almost at once, charging his kneeling foe like an angry rhino.

To Annja’s surprise Johnny launched himself not backward or away, but forward. He rolled right into Abell’s shins. The rogue SIU chief was even more surprised than Annja. He took a header over his opponent and landed heavily on his face.

“Whoa!” Billy exclaimed softly. “That registered on the Richter scale.”

Abell got right back up, only a lot more slowly. Too slowly. Johnny popped upright and skip-stepped toward him. As Abell reared up on his knees Johnny caught him in the left side of the face with a beautiful roundhouse kick that snapped his opponent’s head around.

Annja winced. She had distinctly heard the blow land. Only the bearlike thickness of Abell’s neck saved him from having it broken by that kick.

Abell toppled backward. Johnny danced in with his knee still raised like a kickboxer. Abell lashed out with a leg in an attempt to sweep Johnny’s limb from beneath him.

But Johnny wasn’t caught out. One-legged, he hopped straight in the air. Abell’s short but massive leg passed harmlessly beneath. When he landed, Johnny used the momentum gravity gave him to stomp Abell in the side of his big jiggling paunch.

Abell bawled like a fighting bull stuck by a picador. Far from being stunned by what had to be a painful hit he lunged for Johnny. Johnny had to leap back so fast he almost overbalanced and went over backward.

As Johnny caught himself Abell got back to his feet. He raised half-furled fists by his face. The left side was swelling, the eye reddened and half-closed. Deliberately Abell advanced on his foe.

“Dad’s watching,” Billy said.

Unwilling as she was to look away from the bare-hand duel for even an instant, Annja moved her gaze left. Tom Ten Bears, dressed in a red flannel shirt that had come untucked and hung down in front of his jeans, stood watching his son battle for his life from twenty yards away. Out of his gray-on-gray Oklahoma Highway Patrol uniform he looked vulnerable. His big hands were empty, but Annja noticed his .41 Magnum still rode in its holster at his right hip. She’d bet the safety strap was unsnapped.

Snake nudged her with surprising gentleness. Annja looked to her. She nodded off to the right. Annja saw a Dog Soldier, shirtless like his leader, who had emerged from cover and was hunkered down, peering around a corner of the shed at the death match. He was mostly hidden from view from the combatants’ direction—but plainly in sight of the house. It suddenly struck Annja that, as far as he knew, he was still safe in the hands of his revolutionary martyr-wannabe comrades.

A quick check around showed at least two more surviving Dog riflemen, like the first, concealed if not covered from Johnny and his friends to the west—and in easy view of Annja, Snake and Billy. She grinned briefly. She wasn’t worried about notions of fair play. Not with violent criminals who had committed mass murder, attacked an innocent woman and kidnapped her even-more-blameless child.

Besides, Annja knew perfectly well the Crazy Dogs were only taking a quick time-out from trying to kill her and her friends. They had less sense of fair play than she did. They just wanted to watch a good fight.

So did Annja. She enjoyed a battle between experts. For all his bulk and general loathsomeness, Abell was very good.

And so was Johnny Ten Bears. He and his foe traded jabs, ranging shots that had no visible effect. Johnny tried a feint wheel kick at head level in Abell’s face, just to let him know he had it in his arsenal. It was risky kicking above the waist in a real fight; but if you were good enough you could get away with it sometimes. As Annja had herself in her time.

Abell lunged at Johnny, diving at his thighs to take him down. Johnny countered with a classic sprawl. He danced back, putting his hands on the backs of Abell’s immense shoulders and pushing him down on his face. Instead of diving atop his grounded foe Johnny jumped back, cat-graceful.

He doesn’t want to go strength to strength with Abell, Annja thought. Smart man.

Once more Abell was quickly back to his feet. For a time the two men punched and kicked each other. Johnny landed more often than Abell, and they were strong, solid blows, too. But along with his strength Abell showed a bull-bison’s ability to absorb punishment. For all his wiry strength Johnny didn’t seem to have the power to put his broader foe down. His lone hope seemed to be to wear his man down by attrition.

Johnny tried no more fancy high kicks. He did manage to crack a few shin kicks into Abell’s bowed legs.

And then Abell, once again moving with unexpected quickness, trapped Johnny’s left leg with a grab to the knee.

Johnny wrenched it free at once. But the trap kept him in range of Abell’s terrible power a beat too long, and breaking the hold put him off balance. He fell off onto a left foot planted too far behind him.

Abell rocked Johnny Ten Bears’ head back with a lead left that seemed too powerful to call a stiff jab, though technically it was. Abell had a weight lifter’s arm strength and the technique to step into the punch. Nailed squarely in the face, Johnny staggered. Annja cried out as she saw him sag.

Showing true killer instinct Abell closed with his stunned foe. He pistoned short but monstrously powerful hooks and crosses into Johnny’s short ribs.

Johnny caught Abell with a lead right hook of his own. But his old enemy leaned in so that the blow mostly glanced off the back of his skull. Johnny started to push him off.

Abell brought up the point of his left elbow in a rising smash that caught Johnny right under the point of the chin. His jaws clacked together.

The taller, lighter man reeled backward. With a roar of triumph Abell rushed forward and seized him around the middle in a bear hug. Johnny called out in pain as Abell locked hand on wrist behind his back and brought down crushing pressure on his bruised and cracked rib cage.

Triumphantly George Abell hoisted his imprisoned foe into the air. And Annja, who had long since forgotten to breathe, filled her lungs in one big gasp. Abell had allowed his overconfidence to run away with him. In his eagerness to crush his hated rival, he’d left Johnny Ten Bears’ arms free.

It was a novice brawler’s mistake—and whatever he was, Abell was no novice. For a moment it looked as if he hadn’t miscalculated, after all. Johnny hung limp, bowed back against the killing pressure of those thick arms, his long hair falling unbound across his face. He seemed too stunned and badly hurt to resist the relentless pressure which must soon either break his spine or asphyxiate him like a python constricting a rabbit.

But then without raising his lolling head Johnny clapped his hands sharply over Abell’s ears. Abell cried out with startled shrillness as his eardrums imploded.

Johnny jackknifed forward and smashed George Abell’s nose with a head butt.

George bellowed and dropped him. Abell staggered back as his free-flowing blood painted a moustache and beard of red down his lips and chin. Johnny’s knees buckled as his feet hit the ground.

He had barely lurched back to his feet when Abell put his head down and charged. He rammed the point of his skull into Johnny’s stomach.

But Johnny Ten Bears bent forward to meet the flesh-and-bone battering ram. His right arm encircled Abell’s throat, slipping just beneath his powerful chin.

As Abell’s head hit his gut Johnny pushed hard off the ground with his legs. He used the force of his enemy’s charge to drive his legs and torso upward. Confused, Abell reared upright, boosting his opponent higher.

Johnny did a front roll right over the top of Abell’s vast back. As his feet came down behind him Johnny surged forward with all his strength. His arms, themselves now locked beneath Abell’s jaw with left hand gripping right wrist, dragged Abell’s head back and over Johnny’s right shoulder. Johnny leaned forward, pulling on the captive head and thrusting with his legs as if trying to tow a Greyhound bus by a rope across his shoulder.

George Abell’s neck snapped.

His dead weight dropped Johnny Ten Bears beneath it to the ground. The victor lay unmoving.

The first Crazy Dog Annja had noticed, the one crouching behind the shed, raised his M-4. Annja already had her Mini-14 shouldered. She lined a flash sight picture between his bare shoulder blades, let out half of a breath and squeezed the trigger.

The carbine had little kick. It came back online so fast she was able to double-tap her foe as if it were a handgun. He was already slumping toward the dirt. The second shot hit him in the back of the neck.

Billy’s .44 Magnum lever action roared, temporarily deafening Annja’s left ear. Another Dog went down as he tried to draw bead on the Iron Horse chieftain, who was feebly struggling to extricate himself from beneath his enemy’s dead-buffalo bulk. Tracking her carbine left looking for other targets, Annja saw Tom Ten Bears quick draw his big-framed Smith & Wesson revolver, present it into a fast modified Weaver stance and blast out two rapid double-action shots. Another Crazy Dog Wishing to Die fell forward into sight from beyond the garage, an M-16 falling from his hands.

He’d gotten his wish.

Like a sudden rain squall gunfire broke loose again. Another shirtless, gaudily painted Crazy Dog raced madly around the rear of the maroon SUV with a short M-4 carbine in one pistoning hand. Black holes appeared on his bare chest, and red mist puffed out ahead of him as at least two bullets holed him back to front. He fell and slid five feet on his face and didn’t move again.

“I guess not all the bros and sisses were watching the fight,” Billy said. Snake had an M-16 recovered from the dead guy in the doorway up and was squeezing off aimed single shots at a target no one could see.

Abruptly the shooting stopped. No targets presented themselves to the trio crouched in the front-bedroom-cum-command-post. It seemed that the other surviving Horses had run out of bad guys to shoot at, too.

“I guess we won,” Snake said, not raising her eye from her rifle’s battle sights.

“Maybe so,” Annja said.

Tom Ten Bears knelt by Johnny’s side. During the resurgent firefight he helped his savagely battered son work his way out from under the corpse of George Abell. Johnny had promptly collapsed on his back.

Another motion drew Annja’s eye outward to her left. Angel was kneeling in the grass, cradling something in her lap. Her head was tipped forward, her long black hair hanging to obscure her beautiful face. The shaking of her shoulders in the outsize leather jacket told Annja all she needed to know and more than she cared to. The young ex-attorney was cradling the head of her dead fiancé, Ricky, in her lap.

The wind shifted to blow straight from the west, in through the window of the bedroom. Though it was tainted with burned propellants and lubricants, and more organic smells, it still tasted fresh after the more concentrated gunsmoke and spilled blood smells in the room. Its chill seemed to cleanse Annja’s nostrils, throat and lungs and acted like a dash of icy water on the face.

Yet at the same time she felt an increased sense of the light-headedness from before.

Annja breathed deep. Shaking her head and blinking back tears, Annja pushed away from the window. She stayed hunched over. No point standing bolt upright and giving some bitter-ender Crazy Dog a free shot at her from hiding.

“I’m going to go check on Sallie,” she said.

Then she turned and froze.

Sallie stood in the bedroom doorway. Her eyes were huge.

“Sallie,” Annja said, “it’s not safe yet. You need to stay in the bathroom.”

“But I heard shooting,” she said. “Where’s Johnny? Where’s Daddy?”

“They’re fine, sweetie. We’re almost through this. But not yet. We—”

“Annja,” she heard Snake say in a peculiarly taut voice. As she did the gunfire erupted anew, with a frantic vigor Annja hadn’t heard earlier.

Electrified by horror and fear, Annja ran forward two steps to grab and hug the gangly girl against her. Blocking the child’s view of the window with her body Annja looked back over her shoulder.

Like a great gray dog it bounded from the yellow grass. It covered ground with such amazing speed that it looked like a blur. In fact, its outlines seemed somehow to
shift
as it streaked toward the ranch house.

Holding his revolver in both hands Tom Ten Bears rose from his son’s side and stepped quickly into the gray shape’s path. He fired twice. To no effect.

The beast reared up. Now it seemed to be a man with the head of a wolf. It struck Tom with its claws, driving him back. Snouted jaws snapped for his neck.

The highway patrol lieutenant fell, blood spurting from a ripped-out throat. With a desperate cry Johnny flung himself at the monster. Ignoring him it leaped over his supine father and raced on, intent on the house. Johnny collapsed in the dirt as his strength failed him.

“Oh, shit,” Billy White Bird said.

He turned for the door as Snake began firing at the creature. Outside, the surviving Horses and what Annja thought were at least two of the old-boy snipers were firing furiously. They must be dumping boxes of bullets into the thing. Yet its step never faltered.

“What? What’s going on?” Sallie demanded. Annja yanked her back against the far wall of the hallway as Billy churned past on his short legs. Snake followed right behind him.

Annja still had her Mini-14 in her right hand. Sallie broke free and tried to run past her to the window. Frantically Annja clutched at her arm.

“For God’s sake, stay back!” she screamed at the girl. She thrust her into the bathroom and raced down the short hallway. From the living room came the thunder of Billy’s lever action carbine, cranking out shots. Somehow she knew it wouldn’t be enough.

She had a dread sensation all the firepower in the world wouldn’t be enough. The skinwalker was like a force of nature, like a hurricane or a volcano’s glowing cloud. Yet unlike those impersonal yet irresistible forces of destruction it seemed to give a black radiance of evil that penetrated the thick adobe walls like gamma rays.

Billy bellowed. Annja reached the end of the hall in time to see the burly man grappling with the gray-furred shape. She heard snarling and the tearing of leather and cloth and flesh. Billy’s furious outcries turned to gurgles.

The monster cast the torn body away like a rag doll. For a moment it stood on its hind legs, growling a deep, savage growl, seeming to fill the doorway with its black presence. Its outline still seemed to shimmer, as if Annja—not twenty feet away—was seeing it through a haze of midsummer heat.

The flash and boom of Snake’s 20-gauge pump gun filled the empty living room to overflowing. The shadow shape flinched back. Then with a snarl it sprang at her.

Snake racked the action with speed like that of the fang-bared totems tattooed on her wiry muscled arms. Her courage was as impressive as her skill.

Neither helped. The beast lashed out with its right arm. Black talons gashed open Snake’s left side and flung her clear across the living room to slam against a huge fieldstone fireplace. Her head slammed back into the slate mantle and she slumped, the shotgun dropping from limp fingers.

Now it was Annja’s turn to face the horror. She had the Mini-14 shouldered. The monster of constantly shifting gray shadow filled the space between the steel ears that flanked the front-sight post. She began to squeeze off shots, compact surprise breaks, well schooled to the end.

She
saw
her bullets hit. Saw the fur fluff out where they went home. They had no effect.

The creature sprang at her. She thrust the carbine crosswise into gaping yellow-fanged jaws. They ground together, crunching the brown-stained wood. Its breath stank of corruption from beyond the grave.

For a moment her gaze met eyes that seemed to glow with their own blue witch fire. It snarled and struck her. The carbine’s forestock splintered as she managed to interpose the weapon to take most of the force of the blow. Yet it still threw her over to slam onto her back and slide across the bare wood floor of the hallway.

She came to a stop with her head and shoulders right in front of the open bathroom door. Sallie stared down at her in horror.

She threw a hand toward the child. “Stay! Get back!”

Low growling dragged her reluctant eyes toward the mouth of the hall. On all fours now, its back fur bristling, the shadow monster prowled around the corner. Its tongue lolled over lips that seemed to grin. Triumph glowed in the blue-hot flames of its eyes.

“You’re enjoying this,” Annja croaked. Though bruised and battered, her body feeling as if it had turned to lead and her limbs to string cheese, she thrust her torso up off the floor with her left hand while she held her right wardingly toward the beast.

It stopped. Its shadow shape contracted as it cocked itself like a spring to strike.

Like a living spear of righteousness Annja Creed flung herself to meet it. The sword came into her hand. She just had time to wrap both hands in a death grip on the hilt and thrust with all her might before she struck.

The sword met the leaping monster in midair and drove deep into its chest where its neck blended in between the muscles of its forelegs. Its snarl of triumph turned to a yowl.

The hurtling mass crashed upon Annja and drove her back. Hot stinking breath surrounded her head, stinging her skin like acid mist. With the skinwalker lying atop her Annja slid down the corridor on her back. She knew with frightful certainty that she dare not let go of the sword—dare not let it vanish back to the otherwhere. Not until its work was done.

The back of her head struck the drawers at hall’s end. The beast’s forepaws drove into her belly. But they weren’t raking her, tearing her belly open and spilling her guts as they had poor Billy’s. Instead, it was an ineffectual scrabbling that weakened, heartbeat by heartbeat.

With no more strength in her arms she held its snapping jaws away from her face by the sheer power of her will, pressing the sword’s hilt against the gray-furred chest. The monster writhed. It uttered a long agonized cry.

She felt the monster die.

She released the sword. It vanished. With the last of her resources Annja half steered the limp body to her left as it fell, half pushed herself out from under it. It landed diagonally across her hips.

She didn’t lose consciousness then. Not quite.

“Annja! Annja, are you all right? Oh, please, don’t be dead!”

A child’s hands and a child’s voice tugged at her, dragging soul back into her body and mind back behind her eyes. She opened them.

Sallie Ten Bears was holding Annja’s right wrist in both little hands and pulling for all she was worth. Then Snake appeared, tugging at the dead thing that lay across Annja, trapping her.

When the fearful weight came off her legs Annja managed to climb to her feet—slowly, and with more help from a young girl than she’d care to admit.

“Snake,” she rasped through a throat that felt sanded. “Are you all right?”

“Nothing that won’t heal,” the tall Cheyenne woman said. The left side of her black T-shirt was sodden. From the labored whistle of her breath she had broken ribs, and possibly a raw end threatening to pierce a lung. But she threaded Annja’s left arm over her right shoulder as Sallie inserted herself under Annja’s right arm, bracing her armpit with her shoulder, like a living crutch.

“Who the hell is that?” Snake asked, nodding at the shape that lay rolled with its back against the hallway wall.

Annja looked down. A man lay there, naked but for the tattered head and pelt of a wolf. His pallid skin was punctured by innumerable small round holes that bled a tracery of blood, black in the gloom. He had a bit of whitish stubble on his gaunt cheeks, and his wide-open blue eyes seemed to gaze sightlessly upon their own damnation.

“Dr. Yves Michel,” Annja said. “The U.N. guy. The skinwalker expert. I should’ve known.”

The woman and the girl walked Annja out, through the living room and out into the healing sunlight and cleansing wind. Annja made herself look at the torn wreckage of Billy White Bird’s body as they passed.