Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(19)
“I mean,” he continues, “if you’re given a gift, you’re sort of obligated to use it, right? Granted”—he holds up a hand to stave off my reply—“granted, your talents might be considered a little unconventional, and I wouldn’t recommend it as a career choice for most, but if it’s working for you . . .”
I pick at the place on my leg. “So you’re really not bothered? You could be stuck out here alone with a stone-cold killer.”
“When we’re trying to find whatever, or whoever, was powerful enough to create the monster I saw back at my cheii’s? No, I am really not bothered.” He hesitates, then gives me a megawatt smile. “As long as I’m not on your shit list.” He shifts to the side, leaning on one elbow. “Don’t get me wrong. I know I’ve got a long way to go in my training, but I am a man of peace.”
“A lover not a fighter?”
He grins. “Bingo. And it’s all a balance, really, isn’t it? I figure if there’s someone like me, there’s got to be someone like you, too. So long as I’m on your good side and you’re not tempted to . . .” He makes a slashing motion across his neck with one hand.
I chuckle. “Take a nap, Kai. If you wake up, you’re on my good side.”
He thumbs the edge of his blanket. Hesitates.
“I was just kidding,” I say.
“No, it’s not that.”
“Then what? Look, I didn’t sleep last night and it’s catching up w—”
“I have dreams.”
He has my attention. Diné take their dreams seriously, especially if they’re coming from a medicine man. Even a not-quite one like Kai. “What kind of dreams?”
“Nothing to worry about. Just . . .” He fiddles with the edge of the blanket. “If I start talking in my sleep or anything, wake me up. Okay?”
“Sure.”
He touches his lips, a clearly unconscious gesture, and I’d bet that Two Grey Hills I left in Lukachukai that he’s thinking about his long-gone whiskey. “I mean it. Don’t let me—”
“I said okay. You talk, you roll on your side too often, and I’ll wake you. Promise.”
But it’s not Kai who dreams.
The smell of bad medicine hits me first. The sky is shades of green, a roiling sickness of vomit and pale yellow lightning, thunder cracking dissonant and hollow in the distance. Clouds scuttle black across a bloated red moon, and the earth moans low and painful, rolls in her agony, shifting mountains and oceans and drowning the cities of the world in blood-capped tsunamis.
It is the Big Water of my nightmares, but I don’t stay long. Time shifts and I’m in a moonscape of desiccated earth and flat empty nothingness.
I recognize this place. I’m back on Black Mesa.
There’s someone here with me. Someone just out of eyesight. I try to turn my head, but I am made of wood. Petrified and hard and immobile. I roll my eyes in their sockets, but can only catch a glimpse of the intruder. Long raven-colored hair flares like wings. Neizghání.
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. Try to lift my hand, but it stays frozen at my side. My jaw works, making a wet sucking sound. Blood coats the inside of my mouth and I choke on it, thick and warm and meaty. Neizghání hears, and our eyes meet. His eyes are gray, the color of dead things left too long in the sun. His teeth are yellow, stained with the fat of human flesh. Globules of it stick to his gums. On his head is the skin of a coyote, furred and trailing down his neck, across his shoulders. Around his neck, a silver striped tie. It’s all wrong. Neizghání’s eyes are onyx, his teeth diamonds. And only a yee naaldlshii would wear an animal’s pelt. I scream, choking on my own blood, the cords in my throat trying to work, but they’re being chewed on, bitten through by a monster with no soul, wearing a crown of flames on his ash-covered head. His rough fingers caress my cheek, trail almost lovingly through my hair. There’s a weight on my shoulder, the monster’s blunt teeth worrying my bones. My skin breaks open and maggots stream out of my flesh in a putrid puddling mess. Longarm laughs and scoops them up with two fingers and pops them into his mouth. “Tastes like chicken,” he says to Kai. Kai smiles, bright and charming. A pair of massive insect wings flare open behind him. Mounds of thick cobwebs cover his eyes, blinding him. “Kill them,” he whispers to me, his words a lover’s plea, his graceful long-fingered hands glittering with rings, his touch soft as spring rain against my skin. He leans in to kiss my blood-filled mouth as he says it again. “Kill them all.”
I wake, chilled and shivering in the overhang’s shadow. Kai’s still across from me, sleeping soundly after all. The air smells of dust and heat, not bad medicine. And I’m the only potential monster around for miles.
By the time we are back on the road, the sun is a kinder, gentler smear of gold headed toward the horizon. Kai tries to engage me in conversation a few times, but I can’t shake my dream. The diseased sky above Black Mesa, the smell of witchcraft. Neizghání dressed as the yee naaldlshii witch that murdered my nalí, right down to the muddy gray eyes and yellow teeth. The coyote head was wrong, though. The witch who attacked us wore a wolf’s pelt. But it’s close enough, and combined with the rest of the dream, it’s got me off-kilter. So when Kai asks about my family, I say, “Dead.” When he asks who raised me, I say, “Probably dead.”