Tribal Ways (21 page)

Montoya shook his head. “He seems to have come to believe that a sufficient amount of killing would make him immortal.”

“From the amount of gunfire he took before he went down,” Annja said, “it almost seems he was on to something.”

“The chief medical examiner who examined his body made a similar comment off the record, I’m given to understand. Here’s an interesting detail. It turns out Dr. Michel was a veteran of the French paratroops, with a certain amount of combat experience, largely in Africa. He only entered medical school after his discharge. He was a skilled martial artist and a fitness fanatic.”

“That would explain his strength and speed,” she said. But not all of it. And far from everything. She shook her head to clear from behind her eyes the vision of slavering wide-open jaws with nothing remotely human about them. And those blue self-luminous eyes.

“The FBI claims the madman used a classified hallucinogenic military gas, akin to BZ, an agent whose use the U.S. abandoned years ago. He would open canisters upwind or throw grenades loaded with the gas to put his victims in a mild hallucinatory state. One in which they might be receptive to perceiving him as a man-wolf or an actual wolf.”

“Huh,” Annja said. That struck her as far-fetched. Yet she couldn’t help recalling the recurrent sense of wooziness and light-headedness she’d experienced, near and inside the derelict ranch house.

And really, is it nearly as far-fetched as the alternative? she asked herself. Like, he really was a werewolf?

“Agents say they shot a large if scrubby wolf-dog hybrid near the ranch house. They had the impression it had been following Michel. It attacked as technicians were removing the body. They theorize he must’ve trained the animal to help in his murders.”

He leaned back, clasping his hands and tapping the tips of his forefingers together.

“There remain a number of loose ends that I admit puzzle me. For instance, all the wounds inflicted by the skinwalker were consistent with canid teeth and natural claws, not just some. The late Dr. Michel displayed a fortitude worthy of Rasputin simply to survive as long as he did, much less inflict such frightful wounds as the ones he did on Mr. White Bird in that condition. Even extreme fitness and berserk fury can only account for so much. And Mr. White Bird’s knife, with which you claim to have finally dispatched the murderer—a feat of truly epic courage, I have to say, Ms. Creed—fails to match the wound that took his life.”

He drew a deep breath and sighed. “But these ends, I fear, must remain forever loose. They are the very sort of thing the Bureau has agreed it would be in the national interest to just forget about.
If
you sign the agreement, that is. Will you?”

“Answer me one more thing, if you will, Mr. Montoya.”

“If it lies in my power and will not subject me to extraordinary rendition, of course.”

“Just how on earth can they can possibly explain all this away?”

He smiled.

“The federal government employs a good many public relations professionals tasked to provide just such explanations, Ms. Creed,” he said. “Believe me, they have most extensive experience.”

The wind was rising as Annja walked out of a northern exit of the federal courthouse. Its cool caress was welcome on her face, and it felt good as she filled her lungs with it. It even smelled good to her, full as it was with the fumes of just-past-rush-hour exhausts. Because it smelled of freedom.

I didn’t know if I’d ever breathe free air again, she thought.

With the muted growl of a powerful V-twin engine a big Indian motorcycle prowled around the corner of Third Street onto Marble, the back street onto which Annja had emerged. The sun, swelling and reddening as it sank behind the skyline of Albuquerque’s modest downtown, gave glowing life to its red-and-cream paint job.

The motorcycle pulled to a stop at the curb in front of Annja. Illegally, on the wrong side of the street right behind the federal courthouse. Of course.

Johnny Ten Bears turned to look at Annja. Bending his head forward he pushed a pair of sunglasses down the narrow bridge of his nose.

“They just cutting you loose?” he asked.

“You mean they let you go before me?” she demanded, in partially mock outrage.

He shrugged. He wore a black leather jacket over his colors, she saw. “Hey, you’re the famous media personality. You’re a lot bigger threat to the FBI’s rep than some Injun scooter-trash outlaw like me.”

“You have an inflated estimate of my importance,” she said with a laugh.

“Not for my family and me,” he said seriously. “Either my blood family or the Iron Horse People.”

“Thanks. And thank you for your help with…everything.”

He looked at her. She looked at him. The sun continued to set.

“Why not climb on?” he asked, patting the leather-covered seat behind him.

“What happens then?”

“We ride away and live happily ever after.”

She laughed. It still hurt.

“You think things can possibly go that simply for either one of us?”

“Hell, no. But a body can always hope. So how about it, Annja? Climb on behind me?”

She drew in a sharp breath.

“Thanks,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “But I think not. I guess I’m not the kind to ride behind anyone.”

He sighed and slumped slightly. George Abell had given him a far more brutal battering than the false werewolf had given her. Yet he wore his hurts, physical and spiritual, even more lightly than she did. Even though she knew how deeply he grieved for his lost brothers and sisters. And for his father, lost, regained and lost again.

“You’re right, I guess,” he said. “Problem is, we’re both pretty dominant type personalities, no?”

“Yes,” she said, slumping with relief so dangerously that she had to snap herself back upright, almost to attention. One way or another she was going to collapse soon. She’d rather do it in the hotel room bed the U.S. government was buying her for the night than on the sidewalk outside the federal courthouse.

“It’d be great at first,” she said. “I know that. But give us a few weeks—”

“Yes,” he said. “We’d be all up in each other’s faces.”

“Six months for sure.”

“If that.”

“Scrapping.”

“Fighting.”

“Arguing about nothing.”

“Right,” she said. “You know how it goes.”

“’Fraid that I do.”

“So.”

“So.”

Someone walked past her with long confident strides. Mostly stifling an urge to jump, Annja looked around to see Snake heading toward Johnny and his vintage ride. The side of her exotically beautiful face was a big green bruise. Her colors were bulked out by the inflatable body cast that stabilized her broken ribs. Her left arm rode in a camouflage sling. Heaven knew how she’d gotten ahold of that. The skinwalker’s assault had broken her ulna.

At the curb she stopped and looked back. “You’re pretty good for a white girl, Creed,” she said. “But one day you have to learn—sometimes even a warrior woman’s gotta know when to ride behind her man.”

She swung aboard the bike. Behind Johnny. She carefully wound her arms around his own bruised and battered torso. Johnny shrugged and gunned the engine.

“Happy trails, Annja,” he said. “See you.”

She raised a hand.

“Bye,” she said in a small voice.

With a snarl of the powerful engine Johnny and his warrior woman rode off, into the wilds of downtown Albuquerque, and the red eye of the setting sun.

And Annja, bemused, was left alone.

Again.