Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(23)
He’s grinning. I roll my eyes. “Forget it. I say anything more and your ego’s not going to fit through those double doors out front.”
He gives the drawer a solid shove, and just like that, it opens. He hands me back my knife with an elaborate flourish. I sheathe the blade and pull the drawer open.
There’s a row of at least a hundred slim plastic cases, each one containing a round disc about the size of my palm. Kai picks up a case at random and turns it over in his hands. “I haven’t seen one of these in a long time. Good thing the tribal funding ran out before they could upload all this data offsite somewhere.”
I take one and hold it up to the dull light that’s filtering in through the high windows. “Do you think they have a CD player?”
“I’m sure the library has one. We just have to find it.”
“If you tell me where to look . . .”
“No, I’ll do it.” He scratches absently at his ear. “But I want to catalog these first.”
“All of them?”
“I’ll start with just these, but even then it may take a while.”
“Okay. I’ll let you work. I’m going out to scout around.”
“Sure,” he says. He’s already focused on the recorded discs, mouthing the names on the labels—Atcitty, Bahe, Begay, Bitsue—and sorting through the collection.
“Hey.” I rap my knuckles on the side of the cabinet. “If you see anything, scream real loud.”
He looks up, like he’s surprised to find I’m still there and talking to him. “I’ll be fine, Mags. Really.”
I give him one last look. His brow is lined in concentration as his fingers dance across the discs, his lips sounding out the Navajo names. Part of me wants to stay and watch him work. The other part of me is itching to get out of this dead box of a library and see what the hell happened to Crownpoint. I take my shotgun and go.
I step out of the library, blinking away the dim gloom of indoors in exchange for the overbright blue desert sky. A breeze blows across the library parking lot and I catch a whiff of ozone. And just like that, the sweet metallic smell from the remnants of the fire clicks into place. No one tried to burn down the library, or at least not by hand. It was struck by lightning.
Only problem is, it hasn’t rained in Dinétah in at least six months. I know it’s not impossible to have dry lightning strikes randomly starting fires on land this parched, but there’s a much more likely explanation.
Neizghání.
Whatever happened here to kill all these people must have drawn his attention. He’s been missing from my life for nine months, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still hunting monsters. Maybe he’s just doing it without me.
I swallow down a tic of panic. I’m not ready to face him, may never be ready, but there’s also nothing I want more than to see him again. I wipe my suddenly sweaty hands on my pants and tell myself it’ll be okay, even though I know it’s a lie.
Our last day together dawned bright and cold. January on Black Mesa. We’d camped in the shadow of Dzi?íjiin, the Black Mountain itself, the distinctive slurry tower of the abandoned coal mine just a handful of miles north, jutting skyward to mar the view.
The old mine haunts Black Mesa sure as any ghost. Once this part of the rez had boomed with jobs and lease payments and royalties. But with the money came the crooked lawyers, the double dealing, the forced relocations, the dirty water, the cancer.
The whole place troubles me, pushes at my monster instincts, keeps my clan powers near the surface, like my life is in danger just being here. A shiver that has nothing to do with the subzero air runs down my back. All that ugly, the sickness, the loss and unhappiness. It still lives here even if the people have fled. It colors the black seams of earth that limn the landscape into something darker and deadlier than just unmined coal.
Neizghání feels it too. He’s restless, pacing around the small fire I made to chase away some of the winter cold. His flint armor glints brightly in the crisp winter light. His fine moccasins make small breaks in the crust of ice that frosts the earth, a layer of silver that might be more beautiful if I wasn’t freezing my ass off. I hunch my shoulders and huddle closer to the fire. We’ve been up for the better part of an hour, him pacing and staring toward the abandoned mine. Me, waiting for him to speak.
His silence is not exactly unusual. We often go days without speaking. But it’s normally a familiar quiet, a shared peace that reassures. But this morning I feel the distance between us. Man, woman. Immortal to five-fingered. Hero of legend to whatever I am. I don’t know if he somehow tangentially blames me, the human, for what’s happened to Black Mesa or if he’s thinking of something that has nothing to do with me at all. But I’m all alone out here, even with him standing a few feet away.
“What’s the plan?” I ask, not for the first time. My voice cracks a little, but it’s not the cold, or even my uneasiness at his strange reticence. It’s excitement. I’m eager for the hunt.
He ignored me the first four times I asked, but this time he glances back at me, his face dark with some emotion. “This place is sickness,” he says.
“I’m not a fan of this place either,” I tell Neizghání, wrapping myself a little tighter in my coat and holding my hands out over the flames. “But you’re the one who said we had to come. That there were reports of monsters near the mine.”